Rebranding Fascism
By Spencer Sunshine
Public Eye

On September 8, 2007 in Sydney, Australia, the antiglobalization movement mobilized once again against neoliberal economic policies, this time to oppose the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) summit. Just as during the protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle,Washington, in 1999, the streets were filled with an array of groups, such as environmentalists, socialists, and human rights advocates. And also just like in Seattle, there was a “Black Bloc”—a group of militant activists, usually left-wing anarchists, who wore masks and dressed all in black.

In Sydney, the Black Bloc assembled and hoisted banners proclaiming “Globalization is Genocide.” But when fellow demonstrators looked closely, they realized these Black Bloc marchers were “National- Anarchists”—local fascists dressed as anarchists who were infiltrating the demonstration. The police had to protect the interlopers from being expelled by irate activists.

Since then, the National-Anarchists have joined other marches in Australia and in the United States; in April 2008, they protested on behalf of Tibet against the Chinese government during the Olympic torch relay in both Canberra, Australia, and San Francisco. In September, U.S. National-Anarchists protested the Folsom Street Fair, an annual gay “leather” event held in San Francisco.

While these may seem like isolated incidents of quirky subterfuge, these quasi anarchists are an international export of a new version of fascism that represent a significant shift in the trends and ideology of the movement. National-Anarchists have adherents in Australia, Great Britain, the United States, and throughout continental Europe, and in turn are part of a larger trend of fascists who appropriate elements of the radical Left. Like “Autonomous Nationalists” in Germany and the genteel intellectual fascism of the European New Right, the National-Anarchists appropriate leftist ideas and symbols, and use them to obscure their core fascist values. The National-Anarchists, for example, denounce the centralized state, capitalism, and globalization — but in its place they seek to establish a system of ethnically pure villages.

The Greek Events, A Chronology
Stathis Stassinos

I don't know how familiar you are with the situation in Greece. Im writing one armed, cause I broke my elbow in the Sunday protest. Im not a fighter of course, I just stumbled after a chemical attack from the riot police. So excuse me if I leave questions unanswered , I will try to do so, in the following days.

Worker Occupations and the Domino Effect
Marie Trigona

For many the worker occupation of the Chicago Republic Windows and Doors plant on December 5 may have come as a surprise. But for US workers who are facing a very bleak economic horizon - the Chicago sit-down strike has ignited a spark amongst workers fed up with corporate bailouts and job losses. In the midst of an overwhelming financial crisis, massive layoffs and a deepening economic recession workers are left with little other option that to take direct action in order to defend their rights.

In Chicago, a group of workers decided to occupy their plant - to demand severance pay and benefits after being abruptly fired. Inside the plant, 50 workers rotated during the occupation - sitting firmly on fold out chairs and taking care of the now quiet machinery. Outside, supporters and fellow unionists carried banners in solidarity with the Chicago sit-down strike stating "Bank of...America gets bail out, workers get sold out."

The workers at the Chicago Republic Windows and Doors plant are setting an example for the millions of people who are set to lose their jobs in the US recession. They are the voice of workers who see the emergency bailout plans for Wall Street as unfair and ultimately hurt working America. One of the winners on Wall Street, Bank of America, the second largest bank in the US and major beneficiary to the government's bailout plan for banks, refused to loan the company, Republic Windows and Doors, 1.5 million dollars the company owed to the 200 workers in severance and vacation pay.

THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY ALWAYS COMES WITH A KNIFE BETWEEN THE TEETH

The ne plus ultra of social oppression is being shot at in cold blood.

All the stones, torn from the pavement and thrown at the shields of cops or at the façades of commercial temples, all the flaming bottles that traced their orbits in the night sky, all the barricades erected on city streets, dividing our areas from theirs, all the bins of consumer trash which, thanks to the fire of revolt, came to be Something out of Nothing, all the fists raised under the moon, are the arms giving flesh, as well as true power, not only to resistance but also to freedom. And it is precisely the feeling of freedom that, in those moments, remains the sole thing worth betting on: that feeling of forgotten childhood mornings, when everything may happen, for it is ourselves, as creative humans, who have awoken _ not those future productive human machines known as "obedient subject," "student," "alienated worker," "owner," "family wo/man." The feeling of facing the enemies of freedom-- of no longer fearing them.

20 Theses against green capitalism
Tadzio Mueller and Alexis Passadakis

1. The current world economic crisis marks the end of the neoliberal phase of capitalism. ‘Business as usual’ (financialisation, deregulation, privatisation…) is thus no longer an option: new spaces of accumulation and types of political regulation will need to be found by governments and corporations to keep capitalism going

2. Alongside the economic and political as well as energy crises, there is another crisis rocking the world: the biocrisis, the result of a suicidal mismatch between the ecological life support system that guarantees our collective human survival and capital’s need for constant growth

3. This biocrisis is an immense danger to our collective survival, but like all crises it also presents us, social movements, with a historic opportunity: to really go for capitalism's exposed jugular, its need for unceasing, destructive, insane growth

4. Of the proposals that have emerged from global elites, the only one that promises to address all these crises is the ‘Green New Deal’. This is not the cuddly green capitalism 1.0 of organic agriculture and D.I.Y. windmills, but a proposal for a new ’green’ phase of capitalism that seeks to generate profits from the piecemeal ecological modernisation of certain key areas of production (cars, energy, etc.)

5. Green capitalism 2.0 cannot solve the biocrisis (climate change and other ecological problems such as the dangerous reduction of biodiversity), but rather tries to profit from it. It therefore does not fundamentally alter the collision course on which any market-driven economy sets humanity with the biosphere.

"Dispensing with Clausewitz"
Not Bored!

Once employed by the political consultancy group Devine Mulvey, and now pursuing a graduate degree at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, Gene McHugh says he is interested in "questioning the applicability of [Guy] Debord's own conception of resistance (particularly detournement) in an age of networked, topological communication." Perhaps "Debord's strategies of resistance do not in fact jive with our version of the society of the spectacle."[1] Then why keep bringing him up? Like so many before him, McHugh needs to both cite Debord (an obligation at this point) and put Debord behind him so that he (McHugh) can continue to do what he is doing "in good faith."[2] McHugh's article on the Radical Software Group's version of Debord's cabinet game Kriegspiel -- which drew a cease and desist letter, alleging copyright infringement, from a lawyer retained by Debord's widow, Alice Becker-Ho, in April 2008 -- attacks Debord's relevance on two fronts.

Cities and new wars: after Mumbai
Saskia Sassen
Open Democracy

The Mumbai attacks of 26-29 November 2008 are part of an emerging type of urban violence. These were organised, simultaneous frontal assaults with grenades and machine-guns on ten high-profile sites in or near the central business and tourism district.Also in openDemocracy on the assaults of November 2008 in Mumbai:

This has affinities with the asymmetric street warfare waged by the gangs in Rio de Janeiro that every now and then announce they will take over a major central area of the city from (say) 9am to 5pm: the result is shuttered shops and empty streets. If the police try to respond, it is open warfare, and the police rarely win - this is a challenge for which the police are not trained. After 5pm the gangs withdraw. It is often said that all of this results from inadequate policing or crime waves.

But that is too simple. There is a deeper transformation afoot. It is still rare but it is more frequently becoming visible. It is as if the centre no longer holds. Cities seem to be losing the capacity they have long had to triage conflict - through commerce, through civic activity. The national state, confronted with a similar conflict, has historically chosen to go to war. In my new research project - on cities and war - I am studying whether cities are losing this capacity and are becoming sites for a range of new types of violence.

Finance and Social Production
Adam Arvidsson
P2P Foundation

I’d like to expand a bit on a number of ideas that came out of a discussion with Christian Marazzi on the financial crisis, organized by the student movement at the University of Milano, last Friday. Marazzi has done a lot of innovative and thought-provoking work on the role of finance within the post-Fordist economy and the deep structural roots of the financial expansion that has marked the last two decades (or since 1979 and Paul Volker’s monetarist turn at the Fed). Indeed, the growing size and importance of financial markets is one of the two important structural trends that have marked the transition away from industrial Fordism (to an ‘information economy’ a ‘knowledge economy’ an ‘ethical economy’ or simply ‘post-Fordism’ the exact denomination is not an issue here). Indeed, with Geroge Soros, we can argue that the current crisis is the end of a financial ’super bubble’ that has run its course since the early 1980s. This has built on a continuous expansion of credit (refinanced by a massive inflow of cash from emerging economies like China). The consequence has been a substitution of credit and financial rent for wages as the source of income of the US (and Western European) middle class. The most visible structural consequence of this financial expansion have been a financialization of a number of services related to the reproduction of everyday life: credit card debt, housing and mortages, pensions, insurance, health care and education. To this transfer of the responsibility for the reproduction of life from the public sector and the welfare state to financial markets has corresponded a massive securitization of life conduct, that is; the invention of a number of often very complex financial instruments, the risks of which are are in the end related to the life conduct of human subjects (their liability to pay their mortages, to get sick and so on). Indeed Christian Marazzi argues convincingly that this link between finance and life conduct is one of the defining elements of the neoliberal political order, tracing it back to the New York City bancrupcy in 1975. At that point, the City relied heavily on the issue of municipal bonds. In turn, its ability to repay those bonds was contingent on its ability to reduce costs for social services and crime. This way, the financial rent that the middle class (that had purchased the bonds through, mainly pension funds) could receive, came to rely on the life conduct of the underclass (who were the main recipients of costly social services) and, consequently, policing the latter became a way of securing the income of the former.

An Expose of the Abuse Perpetrated by Bob Black, Written by One of His Victims
Bill Brown

One of the worst things about abuse (physical, emotional or verbal) is that the victim can rarely be counted on to come forward, identify his or her attacker, and describe what he or she was forced to endure. The victim was originally chosen because of perceived weakness. There is shame in realizing this, as there is shame in the very fact of being abused. There are fears about being abused again. And so, many victims of abuse find it easier to suffer their abuse in silence. Unfortunately, many abusive people are aware of this all-too-human tendency, and take advantage of it. Not only do they remain unpunished; they become brazen. They know that their crimes won't be reported to the precise extent that these crimes are shameful; victims of shameful crimes are ashamed to come forward; thus their victimizers feel comfortable with attacking them again and again, for many years in some cases.

"Terrorism or Tragicomedy?"
Giorgio Agamben, Libération

On the morning of November 11, 150 police officers, most of which
belonged to the anti-terrorist brigades, surrounded a village of 350
inhabitants on the Millevaches plateau, before raiding a farm in order
to arrest nine young people (who ran the local grocery store and tried
to revive the cultural life of the village). Four days later, these
nine people were sent before an anti-terrorist judge and "accused of
criminal conspiracy with terrorist intentions." The newspapers
reported that the Ministry of the Interior and the Secretary of State
"had congratulated local and state police for their diligence."
Everything is in order, or so it would appear. But let's try to
examine the facts a little more closely and grasp the reasons and the
results of this "diligence."