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Like Mushrooms After a Rain: The Jewish Insurrectionary Anarchists of Bialystok

in the ‘jews who like to fight‘ piece yall posted a bit back, which i hugely appreciated, the author mentioned a group of fighting anarchist jews active in bialystok in the early 1900s. i went & wrote a zine discussing that history more thoroughly than i’ve seen done in english so far – here are [READ] & [PRINT] versions to share widely online, offline, wherever!

-some jewish anarchist

Submitted anonymously.

Another way out: The propaganda of violence

From Prism
December 10, 2024
by William C. Anderson

The UnitedHealthcare CEO’s assassination is a good time to observe the history of class warfare, grievance, and the classic anarchist militancy of “the propaganda of the deed”

“Who is it that provokes the violence? Who is it that makes it necessary and inescapable? The entire established social order is founded upon brute force harnessed for the purposes of a tiny minority that exploits and oppresses the vast majority.” – Errico Malatesta

“Once a person is a believer in violence, it is with him only a question of the most effective way of applying it, which can be determined only by a knowledge of conditions and means at his disposal.”  act– Voltairine de Cleyre

The killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on the morning of Dec. 4 may have shocked people for several reasons. A masked gunman committing a targeted killing with tactical precision before making an illusive escape stunned authorities and captured the imaginations of others, offering him instant celebrity status. Gunning down an insurance executive became a cathartic scene with all the trappings of cause célèbre. The initial reaction should be analyzed to understand what it communicates to us. This sort of violence holds a special place in the history of insurrectionary anarchism, which has not only theorized about it but actively practiced it to world-changing ends. A killing is not just a killing, and the popular reaction to the shooter can supply us with some important lessons just as police close in on a suspect. If the authorities are not careful with this case, they may end up uniting people behind common interests. Now is a good time to observe the history of class warfare, grievance, and the classic anarchist militancy of a form of direct action meant to catalyze revolution, known as “the propaganda of the deed.”

In 1885, the Chicago Tribune quoted the formerly enslaved Black anarchist Lucy Parsons saying something many wouldn’t dare say almost 150 years later: “Let every dirty, lousy tramp arm himself with a revolver or knife and lay in wait on the steps of the palaces of the rich and stab or shoot the owners as they come out. Let us kill them without mercy, and let it be a war of extermination and without pity.” Far beyond a mere call for sporadic violence, it’s essential to understand that the impulse to make such a confrontational statement was not so unconventional back then. Different factions of anarchists used calls for revolutionary violence toward different ends and influenced one another.

While some, like Parsons, worked with organizations like the International Working People’s Association (IWPA), doing pivotal work to transform labor conditions, others had individual motives based on self-organized immediate interventions. The historian Paul Avrich noted that the violent rhetoric of anarchists like Parsons attracted the “skilled and unskilled, employed and unemployed” based on the “​​hopes of immediate redemption.” However, some people took that mandate into their own hands, targeting some of the world’s most powerful elites.

Anarchists went after and often successfully assassinated multiple heads of state, politicians, businessmen, military figures, and police around the world under the proclamation of propaganda by the deed. The idea that killing reviled and oppressive authority figures would be a catalyst for revolution has long been debated. These ideas are not limited to just one faction of anarchists or only the anarchist segments of the historical socialist and communist movements. Furthermore, their effectiveness often produced unintended consequences that the purveyors couldn’t have necessarily predicted. For example, when a self-professed anarchist killed President William McKinley in 1901, it led to the creation of the FBI and a proto-“war on terror” that reshaped international policing and worldwide immigration policy and nearly destroyed anarchism. Understanding this in the context of Thompson’s killing in New York should let us know that the ruling class won’t simply accept this. The protectors of their interests and property, the police, will do their bidding to make an example of the killer (or a necessary scapegoat). Authorities will also be hard at work deciding what agencies, legislation, or punishment should be meted out to stop lethal direct action from becoming too popular. Just as it has been throughout anarchist history, quashing such jubilance and excitement about the collective awakening to the possibilities of violent resistance will be necessary.

Anarchist proponents of violence like Errico Malatesta, Johann Most, and Luigi Galleani saw attacks as a necessary response to the oppression of the working class, immigrants, poor people, and the enslaved. Even Alexander Berkman, who wrote about the anarchist movement’s departure from the propaganda of the deed, attempted to assassinate the industrialist oligarch Henry Clay Frick who turned guns on workers and was tyrannical in his business practices. Berkman once wrote, “You don’t question the right of the government to kill, to confiscate and imprison. If a private person should be guilty of the things the government is doing all the time, you’d brand him a murderer, thief and scoundrel. But as long as the violence committed is ‘lawful,’ you approve of it and submit to it. So it is not really violence that you object to, but to people using violence ‘unlawfully.’”

Berkman’s nearly 100-year-old perspective still holds, though what’s interesting now is seeing a murder bring people together. Anarchist history shows that sometimes it’s unexpectedly hard to find a prominent figure so universally reviled that nearly everyone celebrates their ending. Though many have prefaced their commentary on the current moment with the need to say they don’t “condone” violence, Berkman’s point bites back at inconsistency. The monopoly on violence known as “the state” conducts regular killing both directly and indirectly the world over daily to maintain itself. Also, do those who don’t condone the killing of a businessman by a vigilante announce they don’t “condone” violence before using their conflict mineral technologies with apps that use artificial intelligence powered by slave labor? Do they announce that they don’t condone violence when they pay taxes to fund a genocidal onslaught or militarism that destroys the planet? What about the violence on our plates in our food or in the “fast fashion” we wear? No, that inescapable violence is accepted as ordinary and not worth showy moralizing statements.

Those who denounce killing in response to the shooting of Thompson reinforce the imbalance that upholds oppression. Blood has different weights depending on where it spills from. Who has the power to kill as an acceptable norm versus who doesn’t is what tips the scale. The gravity given to those this society privileges, empowers, and prioritizes dictates how much we’re supposed to care about deaths. It also dictates what’s even considered violent. That’s why we are instructed to mindlessly condemn any and every act of violence that threatens the status quo of capitalism, imperialism, and class-based society. We should be able to respect those who choose not to practice violence while distancing ourselves from those who make false equivalencies out of it. Their “peace” comes at the expense of the most abused, whose screams are drowned out. This is the “peace of the pharaohs, the peace of the tsars, the peace of the Caesars,” as Ricardo Flores Magón once wrote and rightly concluded, “Let such a peace be damned!”

It would be helpful if more of us accepted the fact that we cannot indeed be anti-violence in a society where even our most passive actions are reinforcing the most deplorable crimes against oppressed people around the globe. This is why I’ve argued that we should identify the counterviolence we need in our politics. So, rather than projecting onto a mysterious shooter or endlessly looking for a hero to venerate, the questions of the utility of violence here are answered by past instruction. However, I do not invoke all this history and quotation to suggest it’s inherently instructive for mimicry. Instead, I think it helps us realize that there is something beneath the surface here that people yearn for. There’s a confrontation dying to be taken up by those who refuse to wait for more tragedy and endless pain. Such a clash isn’t expected to be neat, nice, or consistently nonviolent. If force is the tool used to shape our subjugation, then pushing that oppressive momentum back so that we can completely throw it off of us should be the standard.

Luigi’s Manifesto

I’ve obtained a copy of suspected killer Luigi Mangione’s manifesto — the real one, not the forgery circulating online. Major media outlets are also in possession of the document but have refused to publish it and not even articulated a reason why. My queries to The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and NBC to explain their rationale for withholding the manifesto, while gladly quoting from it selectively, have not been answered.

I’ll have more to say on this later — on how unhealthy the media’s drift away from public disclosure is — but for now, here’s the manifesto:

“To the Feds, I’ll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn’t working with anyone. This was fairly trivial: some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience. The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and To Do lists that illuminate the gist of it. My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering so probably not much info there. I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allwed them to get away with it. Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.”

Source: Ken Klippenstein

UnitedHealthcare CEO Updates: Luigi Mangione’s Manifesto States ‘These Parasites Had It Coming’

The person of interest in the healthcare CEO shooting wrote that “these parasites had it coming.”

Luigi Mangione’s handwritten manifesto was heavily critical of the healthcare industry and warned that violence was the only answer to changing it.

“These parasites had it coming,” he wrote in the document, a police official who has seen the document told [news source].

“I do apologize for any strife and trauma, but it had to be done,” it continued.

The manifesto also stated that Mangione was acting alone and had funded himself.

Continue reading “UnitedHealthcare CEO Updates: Luigi Mangione’s Manifesto States ‘These Parasites Had It Coming’”

UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting latest

The man suspected of gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a Midtown Manhattan hotel took a taxi to the Port Authority bus facility at 178th Street and boarded a bus out of New York City following the shooting, according to police.

The unidentified man remains at large in the wake of Wednesday’s attack, which was described by police as “brazen, targeted” and “premeditated.”

The FBI is assisting in a nationwide manhunt for the suspect, according to law enforcement sources. The bus the suspect is believed to have boarded out of the city made six or seven stops, and investigators have followed leads in multiple states, the sources said.

Police still do not have a name of the suspect, the sources said.

Suspect’s backpack believed to be found

In another development in the investigation, police officers have recovered what is suspected to be the backpack carried by the suspected shooter, a source familiar with the case tells [news source].

The bag was discovered Friday evening in Central Park, where the NYPD deployed an army of officers and drones to conduct a grid search, the source said.

The suspect is seen in footage wearing a backpack prior to the shooting but does not appear to have it on in another video of him on a bike 15 minutes after the shooting.

The killer entered New York City by bus on Nov. 24, when a surveillance camera at Port Authority Bus Terminal caught his arrival at 9 p.m., law enforcement sources told [news source].

The inbound bus originated in Atlanta but it was not immediately clear where the suspect boarded. Sources told [news source] he was spotted on board in Washington, D.C.

The 10-day period he was in New York City before the shooting is the focus of investigative efforts.

Police have collected video of the suspect all over the city, including in the subway, in cabs and a McDonald’s, sources told [news source]. In each place, he paid with cash and he made sure to keep his mask on, which indicates to detectives he knew he was coming to New York City to commit the murder, sources said.

Police were able to find a surveillance image of the suspect without his face mask on because he was flirting with the woman who checked him into a hostel on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, police sources said.

As he stood at the check-in desk, the sources said the woman asked to see his smile. The shooter obliged, pulling down his mask long enough for the surveillance camera to capture his face.

Police have determined the suspect checked into the hostel using a New Jersey license that wasn’t his own, police sources told [news source].

The masked gunman shot Thompson at point-blank range at 6:44 a.m. Wednesday outside the New York Hilton Midtown, where Thompson was heading for his company’s investors conference.

“The shooter then walks toward the victim and continues to shoot,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said. “It appears that the gun malfunctions, as he clears the jam and begins to fire again.”

Written on the shell casings were the words “deny,” “defend” and “depose,” according to police sources.

The words on the bullets echo the title of the 2010 book “Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It.” Police are aware of the similarity, and are investigating whether one possible motive is anger at the insurance industry, sources said.

Investigators believe they were able to score DNA samples from several pieces of evidence discovered at or near the crime scene, law enforcement sources told [news source]. The samples are currently at the NYC Office of the Chief Medical Examiner to be run through databases for a possible match — a process that could take several days, the sources said.

Police were also able to extract a fingerprint off a water bottle the suspect bought at a Starbucks, but the print is smudged so it’s not clear how helpful it will be, sources said.

The suspect fled on foot and then fled north on a bike and rode into Central Park, police said.

After leaving Central Park, he took a cab to the bus terminal.

Suspect’s backpack had Monopoly money: Sources

The backpack recovered by the NYPD that allegedly belonged to the suspect wanted in the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, only had two items inside: a Tommy Hilfiger jacket and Monopoly money, sources with knowledge of the ongoing investigation told [news source] Saturday.

The NYPD believes it is making good progress toward identifying the suspect but, as of Saturday evening, no identification has been made, sources told [news source].

Investigators continued to comb through the city for evidence and clues for a fourth day to try and catch the unidentified fugitive. That included the use of police divers.

Officers searched a pond near Bethesda Fountain in Central Park, not too far from where the suspect’s backpack was found Friday night.

Police have not yet recovered the distinctive gun used in the shooting. It is unclear if officers recovered any evidence from the water.

New York investigators and the FBI continue to track the shooter’s movements after the Wednesday morning incident and have said that he left the city that day.

Some New York investigators arrived in Atlanta Saturday following tips that have come in about the shooter, according to sources. The Atlanta PD confirmed the arrival of the New York team but declined to give more specifics.

Meanwhile, citing the recent killing of Thompson, Centene, a major health insurer, said it would be moving its planned in-person investor day in New York City next week to virtual, according to a statement from the company on Friday.

Health insurance shares fall after UnitedHealth CEO murder in New York

Shares of health insurance companies including UnitedHealth Group UNH.N continued to fall on Friday, two days after Brian Thompson, the CEO of the company’s health insurance unit, was fatally shot outside a Manhattan hotel by a gunman lying in wait.

Thompson’s death sparked a wide social media conversation over frustrations with navigating the U.S. health insurance system, particularly when medical expenses are not covered or insurance claims or requests for care are denied.

“The anti-insurer sentiment expressed by the public after this event suggests that UnitedHealth and perhaps the industry may need to adjust how they handle coverage decisions,” said Morningstar analyst Julie Utterback.

Shares of UnitedHealth were down 4.8% on Friday after a 5% drop on Thursday. Rival insurers Elevance ELV.N, Centene CNC.N, CVS Health CVS.N, and Cigna CI.N also fell between 1% and 3% in afternoon trading. Those shares all lost ground on Thursday as well.

Social media sites have been flooded with angry posts attacking the companies and users sharing personal frustrations on coverage rejections and how they have been denied necessary care, as well as sarcastic videos with unsympathetic messages like “thoughts and prayers require prior authorization.”

Health insurance companies are reassessing the risks for their top executives with both UnitedHealth and CVS removing photos of their leadership teams from their websites after the shooting.

Compiled from mainstream news sources.

UnitedHealthcare CEO killed in a ‘targeted shooting’ outside a New York hotel

UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot and killed Wednesday morning in what police said was a “brazen, targeted attack” outside a Manhattan hotel where the health insurer was holding an investor conference.

The 50-year-old executive was shot around 6:45 a.m. as he walked alone to the New York Hilton Midtown from a nearby hotel, police said. The gunman appeared to be “lying in wait for several minutes” before approaching Thompson from behind and opening fire.

Thompson was struck at least once in the back and once in the calf, Tisch said. He was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

The suspect, dressed in a hooded sweatshirt and carrying a distinct gray backpack, then fled on foot down an alleyway before pedaling an e-bike into Central Park a few blocks away. The shooter was at large, sparking a search that included police drones, helicopters and dogs.

The killing shook a part of New York City that’s normally quiet at that hour, happening about four blocks from where tens of thousands of people are set to gather Wednesday night for the annual Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting.

Police sought to reassure New Yorkers and promised extra security for the tree lighting, which will go on as scheduled.

Investigators recovered several 9 mm shell casings from outside the hotel and a cellphone from the alleyway through which the suspect fled. They were also searching Thompson’s hotel room and interviewing his UnitedHealthcare colleagues, Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said.

Thompson’s wife, Paulette Thompson, told NBC News that the executive told her “there were some people that had been threatening him.” She said she didn’t have details, but suggested they may have involved issues with insurance coverage.

UnitedHealthcare is the insurance arm of the health care giant UnitedHealth Group Inc.

The Minnetonka, Minnesota-based company was scheduled to have its annual meeting with investors in New York City to update Wall Street on the company’s direction and expectations for the coming year, according to a company media advisory. The company ended the conference early in the wake of Thompson’s death.

Found on mainstream news.

Festivals of Resistance

A Call for Gatherings the Weekend Before Trump Takes Office

Along with others around the country, we invite you to join us in organizing festivals of resistance on the weekend of January 18, immediately before Donald Trump takes office. This is a crucial opportunity to engage in outreach, education, and action ahead of what it is sure to be a tumultuous time.

Once Trump takes power, it will only become more challenging to make connections with our neighbors, create the networks that we will need to face down his assaults, and share the skills we will need to survive his reign. Right now, we have a precious window of time in which to prepare. Let’s make the most of it.

When Donald Trump enters office on January 20, he will order mass deportations, escalate the repression of protesters, dismantle the few judicial and legislative provisions that still protect ordinary people, and consolidate a propaganda ecosystem intended to stupefy us all into obedience. The Democratic Party is willingly handing power to an autocrat they say will bring democracy to an end; the Democrats show every intention of continuing to ratchet their own politics to the right. Authoritarian leftist groups are simply treating this as a recruitment opportunity.

But from Texas to the West Bank, millions of people’s lives are about to get even harder. We owe it to each other to meet the second Trump era side by side in solidarity.

The chaos that will accompany the return of the Trump administration represents an opportunity as well as a challenge. This is a chance to assert an autonomous pole of organizing, carrying forward the lessons of 2020 and the movement against Cop City while continuing the fight against patriarchal violence, white supremacy, and colonialism.

By organizing ahead of Trump’s inauguration, we can seize the initiative and set our own timeline rather than being caught flat-footed and forced to react. We need to welcome new participants into these struggles and foster a revolutionary perspective that can orient us through the challenges ahead. No amount of internet activity could substitute for gathering face to face. The most important battles ahead will not be fought online, but in the streets of our communities.

January 18 is observed as the Day of the Forest Defender. It will be the two-year anniversary of the murder of Tortuguita in Weelaunee Forest. It is an important date to gather, honor the memory of the fallen, and pledge ourselves to resistance and to one another.

Continue reading “Festivals of Resistance”

Jews who Like to Fight: A Response to an Anti-fascist Proposal

Our group… called for active resistance. But public opinion was against us. The majority still thought such action provocative and maintained that if the required contingent of Jews could be delivered [to death camps], the remainder of the ghetto would be left in peace. The instinct for self-preservation finally drove the people into a state of mind permitting them to disregard the safety of others in order to save their own necks… the Germans had already succeeded in dividing the Jewish population into two distinct groups – those already condemned to die and those who still hoped to remain alive. Afterwards, step by step, the Germans will succeed in pitting these two groups against one another and cause some Jews to lead others to certain death in order to save their own skin.” – Marek Edelman, co-founder of the Warsaw Ghetto’s Jewish Combat Organization, reflecting on July 1942, when armed Jewish uprising was initially rejected.

Jews, you are being deceived… Do not let them take you to death voluntarily. Resist! Fight tooth and nail… Fight for your lives!” – The illegal socialist bulletin, Storm, of the Warsaw Ghetto.

I started writing this in response to an article and booklet put out by Jewish anarchists called “Don’t Just Do Nothing to Counter Fascism.” It is now a more general proposal for Jews and non-Jews to see the need and outlines of aboveground and underground resistance.

The basis of what I am going to be saying comes from resonating moments of Jewish anti-fascism. These moments include the Warsaw Ghetto uprising where hundreds of Jews killed their Nazi guards and defended parts of the ghetto for weeks against a far better armed SS fighting force. Warsaw combatants had been preparing for years through underground combat organizations with different detachments and commanders elected in the ghetto. They met regularly, coordinated counter-espionage and intelligence, procured weapons and explosives, forged alliances, and operated an illegal printing press. This was all within the confines of an extremely surveilled open-air prison. After the war, the 43 group and 62 group formed, made up of anti-fascist Jews with boxing, martial arts, and military experience in Britain, using street fighting and deploying combative counter-protests at fascist speaking events from the 1940s until the 1970s. And although limited in their success, there are groups like the 2000s’ direct action Palestine-solidarity group, Anarchists Against the Wall, based within the borders of the state of Israel.

Growing up, being Jewish meant a connection to these parts of history. I know like many Jews coming from union families or working class backgrounds, my family took the most pride and found its roots in the historical figure of the Jewish activist, resistance member, labour organizer, holocaust survivor, and artist, rather than any religious or Zionist tradition. A family member had participated in guerilla warfare against the Nazi regime in France. All the other old timers were survivors who had gotten lucky owing largely to chance run-ins with underground resistance. I know I really deeply internalized a lot of these stories, particularly their incredible violence that, from a young age, made me afraid, angry, and want to fight. I have nothing but disgust or rage for the rabbis and collaborators who encouraged six million Jews to, without resistance, walk into gas chambers, die as slaves, and be slaughtered in the open streets.

Already, there is little resistance to the far-right’s platform of attacks on reproductive rights or the mass deportation and internment of migrants. We need to start looking at the places and times where fascism was actually defeated. This includes the historic guerrilla movements of Yugoslavia, France, or China. Today, the revolution in Rojava largely eradicated the fascist Islamic State within Syria in favour of a libertarian feminist society. What all of these projects have in common is armed militias or cells, and combative solidarity based in above-ground mass organizations such as unions, explicitly far-left political organizations, and neighbourhood and town council structures.

Many of the suggestions outlined in “Don’t Just Do Nothing to Counter Fascism” are important, emphasizing our need to rest, develop our skill sets, create collectives based on deep relationships, and practice direct action & mutual aid. I consider its writers comrades and have no intention but a friendly response. Reading their text, I cannot help but feel that a study of our actual Jewish anti-fascist history would have stressed different lessons. This history teaches us that there are uncomfortable risks that we will need to take going forward, that there are disruptions to our usual lifestyles that are required, a necessity of underground fighting groups and sabotage, and the need for organizational infrastructure that can have massive outreach and participation. It is not that the “care culture,” popular among the Jewish Left, is wrong, it is just misleading and an incomplete proposal if taken on its own – as it has been by many. In line with the conclusion of some Black anarchists following the George Floyd uprising, there continues to be a need for “networks of aboveground and underground self-organized resistance.”

In this vein, I would like to respond to the tendency of many Jewish radicals, leftists and anarchists who I feel do not want to fight because they would like to preserve their comfort for as long as they can, and turn their nose up at fighting as though we are not submerged in a dramatic confluence of violence, crises, and hierarchy: fascism or not. We know from the Holocaust that this instinct to not throw ourselves into battle, leads only to prolongation of suffering and attempts to find ourselves within the lucky few who are saved while we leave others behind to suffer. I know it is difficult because many of us have been raised by survivors and working class Jews who fought to survive and now pressure us to live the American Dream. The benefits of our labour union struggles and communalist culture have made many of us, but certainly not all, privileged. Yet, for young people, there is still that desire for revolt, a deep-felt solidarity, and spirit of autonomy that needs encouragement and support, not recuperation and sedating.

This failure of Jewish radicalism is reflected in the present state of Israel. There was never a serious drive by Jewish anarchists and socialists to destroy the Israeli state and capitalism. Even worse, there was no serious effort to prevent the state from forming. The Jewish working-class accepted, passively or actively, ethno-nationalism above all else, a compromise with the Jewish bourgeoisie and political class rather than a revolutionary struggle to overcome them. This is despite the attractive alliances available, not to mention basic obligations of solidarity, with Palestinian revolutionaries. It is impossible to speculate on such a dramatic imaginary turn in history, but had such an anarchist spirit existed and prevailed in executing a revolution in Palestine, there could have been self-organization, communalization of property and workplaces, and cooperative multi-racial communities in the place of government authority. This is a mistake by the Jewish left of historic proportions. I do not see how the suggestions listed in “Don’t Just Do Nothing to Counter Fascism” would materially undermine states like Israel or have changed the course of this history. There needs to be a greater emphasis on guerilla, mass movement, and other attacks that would be required to overthrow a government. And for this to exist, there must be the structure and group cultures that can bring this insurrection about. Unless we follow this path, we’re just speculating on ways to carve out our own comfortable activist lives within fascism as Israeli leftists have done.

It is worth studying the success of the 1904-1907 Yiddish anarchists in Poland’s industrial city of Bialystok. There, anarchism became the dominant political ideology among the working class. The Bialystok groups were taken up as a tendency across the Russian empire due to their success, including by the anarchists of Gulyai Pole who would later liberate a territory of up to seven million people. Anarchists created neighbourhoods within Bialystok which the police dared not enter, ensured the victory of strikes (typically through terrorizing bosses into accepting strikers’ demands), and when a pogrom started in the city, it was anarchists who led its armed defence and street patrols.

These Yiddish anarchists organized through groups, usually based on affinity, with different sections for technical, agitational, propaganda, Polish-language outreach, and weaponry work. All combined, the anarchist groups never had more than a few dozen members, most aged 15 to 20. One account of a meeting of a group, done in a cemetery, counts just four members in attendance. Connected to the groups were federations of hundreds of workers organized along an anarchist basis and divided by industry. Furthermore, the small groups created spaces within the city where crowds could gather for political discussions, debates, and the distribution of anarchist flyers and newspapers. In this way, these numerically small anarchist groups developed an outreach and influence across a broad population. The confidence in the group was so considerable that they developed an arbitration board, being overwhelmed with people, including petitioners from villages surrounding the city, coming to them to settle interpersonal disputes and issues of daily exploitation. Anarchists stockpiled weapons for the complete takeover of Bialystok and the development of an “industrial-military commune,” something for which workers were ready to launch a general strike, only to abandon the plans due to a lack of joint revolutionary action from other cities.

We need answers that can allow us to similarly confront the state and capitalism. Past generations of Jews have developed these responses before. Based on this, here are some additional recommendations for our fight. These recommendations are for everyone in and outside of the US, in rural and in urban areas. Whether fascism seems on the distant horizon or a close reality, the violence of oppression in our current society – call it fascism, colonialism, capitalism, or whatever you want – requires active preparation for a revolution:

1. Create or join underground resistance : This resistance can deploy industrial sabotage, military sabotage, attacks against private property, black blocs, surprise or “whisper” demonstrations, riots, conduct expropriations, looting, seize property (also known as “squats”), execute untraceable online activity, and other combative offensive and defensive moves. They can equally coordinate safehouses for migrants facing deportation or confinement – such as was done by many Polish and French people for us Jews – or perform clandestine abortions – as was done by the Lodz Ghetto survivor, Henry Morgantaler in Montreal.

This resistance can be based in small groups of people who work well together, assist each other in meeting each others’ needs, and develop a robust culture of secrecy and security. There needs to be a focus on propaganda work, onboarding, skill training, critical discussions on short/medium/long-term goals, confederation with other such groups, and connection to above-ground organizations and struggles. There is never a bad time for an underground resistance. It is never too soon. It is only ever too late. Anarchist news sites across the US regularly broadcast report-backs on nocturnal attacks against military facilities, extractive industries, and businesses being targeted by public movements. This resistance work needs to develop further structures (as was done by Bialystok anarchists), courage, affinity, skills, deeper revolutionary analysis, broader propaganda efforts, and synergy with aboveground groups to become a more serious threat.

2. Create or join radical mass organizations or movements : These organizations should be based on individual autonomy, confederation, combativeness, direct action, the elimination of internal hierarchy, mutual aid/education, and solidarity. Anarchist labour unions, tenant self-defence, neighbourhood and student assemblies, and anti-fascist fronts have all been examples employed by Jews from the women working in the Shmata Business, to the New York mothers leading rent strikes from 1918-1920, to the striking students fighting antisemitism at Aberdeen elementary school.

For those not yet ready for underground resistance, these mass organizations are a place to start and one in which most skills of any sort prove to be valuable. But do not mistake an NGO, political party, or your institutional student or workers’ union as such an organization. This is just a recipe for losing time.

3. Create or join a specifically anarchist aboveground group : Potentially modelled in the same way as the anarchist affinity group: unapologetic and vocally anarchist public facing activity is often necessary. Organizations of anarchists, such as Food Not Bombs, are interesting projects, but not a replacement for a specifically anarchist group, just like starting a breakfast program for kids is not a replacement for the Black Panther Party. Public anarchist activity should incorporate infrastructure for meeting peoples’ basic needs through direct action, mutual aid, and social centres where people can gather to build knowledge and relationships. People should be given skills to not just fight fascism, but its roots: the state, capitalism, patriarchy, racism, and all other systems of oppression and authority. Aboveground anarchist activity, namely education, mutual aid, direct action, and social events, can be carried out by these groups.

“Murder us, tyrants, but new fighters will come and we will fight on and on, until the world is free.”

– In Kamf (In Struggle)

 

Questions and comments are warmly welcomed at Jewswholiketofight@proton.me

Submitted anonymously over email.

How to Defend Yourself during a Police Interrogation

Book: How-the-police-interrogate_english_projet-evasions

Preface to the English version

In summer 2022, 2000 copies of this book were printed in French and 2000 in German. The french version is now sold out, and the Publisher «Editions du Commun» will soon reissued the book. The book was written with the intention of serving as a tool of self-defense against the manipulative interrogation strategies employed by the police. As stated in the introduction, “It addresses readers in various countries in which legislation may differ”. And indeed, we soon received feedback that the content conveyed by the book is equally applicable to countries such as Turkey, Morocco, Serbia, Italy, Denmark, and many more. And soon a number of supportive people were offering to translate the book into other languages. This is what happened with the English version, and we’d like to take this opportunity to warmly thank our translator and proofreader for their fine work.

As a consequence of imperialism and colonization, English is spoken today in contexts as diverse as Kenya, Australia and, of course UK and the USA. So many different places from which you may be reading these words, and where the contexts of repression are very different. Most of what is conveyed in the book applies to all these contexts, but, in case of doubts, it makes sense to keep an eye out for certain elements that differ and check them with your local legal team.

Our network lacks relays in the English-speaking world, so let us take this opportunity to pass on the message that we are looking for a publishing house or collective that would be interested in distributing the book in its geographical regions.

With these words, we wish you a pleasant reading.
Project-evasions – network of anarchist friendship

https://projet-evasions.org/

Submitted anonymously over email.