#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #CZECH #PRAGUE #ANARCHISM #LIBRARY #News #Journal #Update - (en) #Czech, AFED: Strategic party - Report from a traditional discussion meeting on the last issue of the anarchist magazine Existence (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 On Thursday, January 19, the Zdena space in Prague's Holešovice hosted an

Existence party. This event has been organized by the Anarchist Federation (AF)
since 2014 every time (more or less at intervals) after a new issue of the
anarchist magazine Existence is published. The parties were held in Žižkov -
first at the Salé info center, then at the Infopavlacka. Last year, after the
issue on the theme "Defiance of Invasion" was published, instead of a party, we
chose an outing option and spoke about the Existence theme in the info tent at
the summer Fluff Fest in Rokycany. ---- Let's start our report with the most
important thing - something that no anarchist can do without - food. Existential
parties are inextricably linked to a good vegan bastion that precedes the
subsequent soul food. This time, the program started at six in the evening with
soy pastries with spinach and bread dumplings. And so the alcoholic and
non-alcoholic orders at the bar were accompanied by satisfied patting, and
everything slowly moved towards the fact that, after a moment, which the smokers
present had asserted themselves, we sat down in a circle under the black and red
banner for a conversation. But more people arrived than we expected, so instead
of a circle, a condensed ellipse was formed on one side, consisting of
approximately thirty people.

At the beginning, a new publication of Nakladatelství AF dedicated to Ricardo
Flores Magón was presented, which was part of the distributed entertainment,
where the greatest interest was in the new issue of Existence on the topic
"Anarchist strategy". But before moving on to the main topic, the most essential
of the remaining content was presented, especially texts devoted to the war in
Ukraine, such as a transcript of AF's lecture on myths, some of which also appear
in this context in the anarchist movement in the West (and in the rare rate also
here). Related to this is the published polemic with the statement of the Italian
Anarchist Federation, the position of Belarusian anarchists and Antti
Rautiainen's text on misconceptions about imperialism and anarchist traumas,
which prevent a real analysis of events.

 From this we got to the main thing - why we need an anarchist strategy, or why
it is so necessary to be able to think through our steps strategically. It allows
us to react to the changing real world around us. By asking ourselves new
questions and perhaps opening up some old ones, we create a starting point to
outline the path we take towards fulfilling our goals. And it was the question of
goals and their temporal stratification that took up a relatively large part of
the opening speech. Another starting point for our strategic considerations is
ourselves, as we have to keep in mind our own lives here and now in addition to
social visions. We questioned how we understand ourselves based on the older
discussion of activism and highlighted the pitfalls that activism can bring. From
there, we smoothly moved on to the question of what a revolutionary organization
can do in non-revolutionary times. So they also talked about the need to focus on
building the background for the anarchist movement and the positive aspects that
this can bring. In that context, the Prague group AF officially announced for the
first time that the opening of a new infoshop in Prague is imminent. After this
happy news, there was talk for a while about the need for analysis, which in no
way must be influenced by dogma, otherwise it would be completely devoid of
sincerity and meaning. The closing words were in the spirit of how important it
is to realize that anarchism is not a rigid doctrine, but a dynamic school of
thought.

The subsequent discussion started with an invitation to try to think
strategically about a specific problem. We reached for the most current - the
election of the president, which brings with it questions such as what the
presidential election means for us; how to deal with them; how to use/abuse them;
whether in some cases the choice of the lesser evil is justified; what about
after the elections... The debate started quite quickly and quite a few people
participated in it, which was more than positive. Most of the observations were
very stimulating and thought-provoking. In the second part, the topic of
elections was mixed with the topic of the war in Ukraine. It was interesting to
see that personal attitudes often come from different starting points, which
teaches us that these starting points need to be respected and worked with in
case we set some collective decisions. There were also people present who do not
consider themselves anarchists, but even among those who consider themselves to
be anarchists, a different level of importance could be seen, which they
attribute to certain aspects connected with the discussed topic. It was felt that
many were happy to be able to talk about these things with others without people
imposing their own views on each other or attacking others for theirs. It was
equally important to observe that many, even if they do not have clear answers to
the questions asked, are thinking about them intensively.

Before the program switched to the informal "Beer with AF" mode, the
circumstances of the violent death of the anti-fascist skinhead Honza Kucera, 15
years have just passed. Some then took a photo with the traveling banner "We will
not forget! We will not forgive!" to honor Honz's memory.

So there was still a lot of time left for chatting in groups, getting to know
each other better, casual planning, but also fun, humor, and even singing and
reciting "election" poetry.

https://www.afed.cz/text/7847/strategicky-vecirek
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