We express our full solidarity with the Autistici/Inventati collective, which was targeted on August 26, 2026, by the decision of the United States Department of State and Treasury to include it in the list of "Specially Designated Global Terrorists." --- This decision was made administratively, through a unilateral act of the executive branch of another state. --- For twenty-five years, Autistici/Inventati has provided, on a voluntary and non-commercial basis, communication services to those who request them: mailboxes, mailing lists, web space, etc. It is an IT service provider, a technical intermediary. The accusation leveled against it is not that it committed a crime, but that it provided those services to individuals whom some in Washington suspect are extremists.
This is a very serious act that affects the life and freedom of all. It is established that anyone who provides a service automatically becomes complicit in how that service is used by third parties. It's like arresting a bus driver-or outlawing the entire transportation company-because someone, perhaps, once took that bus to commit an act unwelcome to the US government.
It's the reversal of personal responsibility in its oldest and most ferocious form: collective guilt. It's not what you did that matters, but the group you belong to. It's the same logic that punishes an entire population for the actions of a few and rejects migrants simply because they were born on the wrong side of a border. It's the logic with which the US government justifies the closure of A/I: guilty of being used by "Marxist, anarchist, and left-wing extremist groups in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere." And in that elsewhere that closes the list, we all find ourselves: our mailing lists, our inboxes, our digital freedoms.
There's also a clear hypocrisy to the measure. If one of the organizations labeled "terrorist" had a Gmail address, no one would ever have considered shutting down Google, freezing its accounts, or forcing anyone to sever ties with it. The measure targets a small, self-managed, non-commercial collective precisely because it is small and independent. The most alarming fact is that this hypocrisy works, and it works thanks to control of its infrastructure. In fact, the collective's website was made unreachable because the .org domain registry-the Public Interest Registry, a US entity formally independent but effectively executing the decisions of the US government-no longer correctly addressing it. An infrastructure we imagine to be neutral and global is actually in the hands of entities subject to the jurisdiction of a single government. Behind the language of the "war on terror" lies this: the excessive power of US multinationals and the infrastructure they control, used to crush those, on a small scale, who choose to organize themselves independently online rather than rely on large platforms.
Defending Autistici/Inventati means defending a basic principle: that no one should be at the mercy of a bully with an atomic bomb who thinks he owns the world, and that no government should arrogate to itself the right to decide, for everyone, everywhere, what can and cannot be done online.
For these reasons, we stand with Autistici/Inventati.
Bakunin Anarchist Group - FAI Rome and Lazio
https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1500938522071807&set=a.448484783983858
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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