This weekend’s elections were very important for the fate of Europe. No, we are not talking about the miserable staging of the Italian round of elections, but about the referendums held in some occupied territories of Ukraine for annexation to the Russian Federation.
With them, the proxy and regionalized “world war” being fought between Russia and NATO takes a formal turn with important practical consequences. From the moment the Donbass, Kherson and Zaporozhye officially become part of Russia, Putin’s regime can claim that any Ukrainian attack in these territories will be read as an attack on Russia itself. The result is the order for general mobilization, the proclamation of martial law, and the transformation of its industry into a war economy to defend the homeland.
With this strategic shift, the Russian government moves away from the rhetoric of Special Military Operation – a neologism taken in inspiration from “international police missions,” “peacekeeping missions,” “humanitarian wars,” and other fanciful Doctor Strangelove sorties of the much-hated West – to the declaration of outright war. Demonstrating the farcical nature of any electoral mechanism, which always photographs the power relations between dominants and never an abstruse as non-existent “popular will,” Putin ordered partial mobilization even before knowing the referendum outcome, recalling the first three hundred thousand reservists.
From now on, all those states that have been arming the Kiev regime for months and that have enabled it to resist so effectively and to counterattack with unexpected successes become cobelligerent. Those who arm a state to which war is formally declared are also (almost) at war. Europe and the United States will now have to take responsibility for a conflict that they have fueled by all means, with the aim of bleeding the Russian enemy dry, hoping to achieve maximum results with minimum effort, i.e., by sending Ukrainian ascari1 to their deaths.
Rather than expire in the partisan readings of the court pen-pushers and opposing supporters, which as internationalists and enemies of every state we cannot but reject, reiterating our hostility against all sides in the war, it is worth dwelling on a couple of thoughts.
The first. The Russian government certainly made a risky gamble. To annex those territories is to further dramatize an eventual defeat (to take an example, clearly a stretch, let us try to imagine the geopolitical tragedy if the U.S. lost Texas again in a war with Mexico). This means gambling everything to avoid such a defeat. We realize the dangers this deduction brings when we talk about the world’s leading nuclear power. The very choice of a general mobilization brings with it, as an immediate consequence, the advent of war in the homes of millions of Russian citizens. Until now, Putin had been playing “the American,” waging a distant war while trying to maintain a normal, comfortable life for citizens in major cities; sending postcards home and taking away, perhaps never to return, millions of sons, husbands, and brothers radically breaks with this imagery. This also means radicalizing the home front and opposition to the war, which, as the large street demonstrations and dozens of direct actions of sabotage and disaffection indicate to us, is very strong in the country.
The second reflection. While this represents another important step toward a possible nuclear war, there is still an important countervailing element to this scenario. If there is one thing Russia is strong on today it lies on the energy front. The coming winter will give it additional strength. Clearly this does not go with a nuclear war: a nuclear war by definition can only last a few days, after which it would extinguish if not the human race then at least its current civilization. In contrast, the gas lever is effective if it tries to prolong the current situation through the winter, in the hope that it can implode the European economy. But for this to happen it is first necessary to stop the Ukrainian counteroffensive before it succeeds in breaking through, then to immediately call up hundreds of thousands of troops.
From these two reflections we can deduce the possible evolution of the current conflict in the coming months: the formal declaration of war on Ukraine, then the mobilization of millions of soldiers to stabilize the front; simultaneously the declaration of boycott of all industrial interaction with all those states that militarily support the Kiev regime. Russian strategists will once again focus on General Winter, as with the wars against Napoleon and Hitler.
How will revolutionary anarchism have to act at this juncture? As we have declared from the beginning of hostilities, we are enemies of every state, every government, against their wars that send proletarians to die and kill each other for the interests of the big oligarchs. Our defeatist action must be directed particularly against “our” state, against “our” government. Any other attitude would inevitably end in opportunism. Russian anarchists, and along with them a still minority but increasingly determined and quantitatively fast-growing segment of Russian society, are setting an example with dozens of actions of diasaffectionism: rail sabotage, burning down recruitment centers, desertions and mass escapes from the country. We must take an example from their courage, certainly not to attack Russian interests in the West, which would mean giving aid to the Euro-American front, but by opposing our governments, slowing down their military mobilization.
On the other hand, European and American governments have serious responsibilities in the current situation. Not only in general terms, with NATO expansion being over all the main factor that set the stage for this disaster, but also in the specific case of Ukraine: Supporting anti-Russian forces in that country, arming and training local Nazi groups, integrating the Ukrainian economy within a sphere of unbridled neoliberalism, silencing and supporting episodes such as the lynching of trade unionists (Odessa, 2014), or the killing of dozens of opposition journalists and politicians, oppressing Russian-speaking populations in the east. Since last February, supporting with increasingly powerful weapons, intelligence, satellites, and sanctions one side of the conflict. In effect, therefore, turning the war between Russia and Ukraine into a world war where Ukraine acts as a proxy for Western imperialism.
Being an internationalist in a Western country means fighting for the defeat of NATO. We will be acting in a context in which the war economy will transform our lives. European governments have laid out a “slimming cure” for the coming winter in hopes of having their economies survive the halt to gas and oil imports from Russia. The measures include a forced reduction in energy consumption, the lowering at source of electricity volumes for the entire population. This is taking place in the context of inflation that is now out of control. The struggle against the cost of living must take on the consciousness of being a struggle against war. The same goes for local struggles against works such as the Piombino regasifier, TAP or the Snam gas pipeline.2
As for Italy, the war has already derailed the government of National Unity. Mario Draghi, named in recent days “statesman of the year,” preferred to resign rather than continue having to endure the social and political stomachaches that his war policies were beginning to provoke with increasing insistence. But the new government that came out of the polls on September 25 can only continue with those policies. Giorgia Meloni spent the campaign reassuring about her allegiance to NATO and sanctions. Having come to power on the wave of social unrest, the winter in the cold, the cost of living, the new right-wing government already has the pit dug before its feet by the war economy: let’s push it in!
However, it is clear that no alliance, no popular front, with the left-wing opposition will be possible. The only rebuke that the Italian democratic left has been able to oppose in recent months to the right has centered on the accusation of ambiguity, of friendships with Putin, of suspected pro-Russian interests that the right-wingers would have woven over the years. In other words, the PD3 opposition will be totally set in accusing the new government of not being pro-American enough, of not being committed enough to the war. On the issue of war, a PD government today would even represent a worse scenario than a right-wing government. The revolutionaries will therefore be able to rely solely on their own strength, as always. While “helping” us will be an increasingly dramatic objective condition, on the other hand, military mobilization has always also meant the intensification of repression on the home front. Power in particular fears anarchists; it knows that they are the most dangerous area of radical opposition, both in ideas and especially in practices. The fierce repression of recent months should be read in this context. To cite only the case of the decision to transfer Alfredo Cospito to the 41 bis regime, this speaks to us, and not only suggestively, of the will of power to shut up anarchists. Will expressed in recent months with the numerous investigations that have targeted and ordered the seizure of books, newspapers, and counter-information websites. How curious it is that while they are asking us to make sacrifices, they are charging us two euros a liter for gasoline, they have increased the cost of gas by 1000%, they are telling us that all this we have to put up with because we have to make sanctions against a cruel tyrant who imprisons political opponents, yet in Italy, newspapers, sites, inconvenient books are being seized and anarchists buried in 41 bis!
These are the contradictions we must agitate against our enemies. At this level, general, of the confrontation, we can also get partial results. There is no time to waste.
Anarchists in Foligno
September 30, 2022
e-mail: circoloanarchicolafaglia[at]inventati[dot]org
telegram: t.me/circoloanarchicolafaglia
PDF: linverno-del-capitale-volantino-a4
DN Notes
1. ascari, plural of ascaro, taken from the Swahili askari (“soldier”) as a plural form, from Arabic. To mean a soldier for hire or killer for hire. Closest meaning in English is ‘Hatchet Man’ one who is hired for murder, coercion, or attack.
2. The Port of Piombino is set to be a site for one of Italy’s new liquefied natural gas (LNG) regasifiers plants. The port is on the border between the Ligurian and Tyrrhenian Seas in Western Italy, Livorno. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Italy is taking urgent measures to reduce its imports of Russian energy.
Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), is an 878km-long pipeline under-construction to transport natural gas from the Caspian region to Europe through Greece, Albania, and Italy. Snam is one of the main shareholders of the pipeline. https://en-contrainfo.espiv.net/2017/06/14/greece-albania-italy-the-struggle-against-the-construction-of-the-trans-adriatic-pipeline/
3. Democratic Party (Partito Democratico, PD) is a social-democratic political party in Italy.
From: Dark Nights