Insurgent City

Who were th terrible black block that constituted, at least for the media, the other side of the police violence, if no its improbable justification? The considerations on the secret services and infiltrators are of little use just as has sense to try to push beyond ritual taking of distance from the maddened or extreme fringe of the movement. For sure on the 20th there were groups bent of finding confrontation. This was widely foreseen, there were differences in the degree of confrontation, different the orientations of the protagonist groups of what had been the first day to propose again the question of violnce that was not mimed, not ritualised, but haked and crude. An enormous question that is unsolvable in the abstract, which only the future developments of the movement will be able o give a sensible response, according o the scenarios which present themselves. But the split inside the groups that pressed upo the walled city was more apparent than real, and their action was shared/divided on more levels, that wewre however involuntarily intercommunicating. he violation of the red zone, symbolic or real, the practices of the squares peaceful or less, spke of forces nonetheless with common objectives.

What interests me more however is that which happened the day after, the 21st, on a day in which the representations and the self-representations of the differing positions on the square had already happened, and some of the protagonists, for the better and worse, of that day had already, to a large degree, gone home. The incidents and the riots of the 21 revealed another face of the events. often SOTTACIUTA, but that will be weighed up/evaluated for what it is. The desire to avenge the death of Carlo in combination with the mediated fascination of the day before made it so hat the spirit of the riots was not the exotic black-clad fighters, as much as a significant slice of Genovese marginal youth. A day of revolt furious and partially ou of place, certianly ill-timed, even if understandable, that saw among the players the youth of the defeated districts, the younger brothers of the generation that died silently on heroin. Genoa is no novice to these impromptu summer explosions, it is a city accustomed to cloaking its own illness and to await, sometimes for years the occaion of a day of fire. A small riot of the losers, a parenthesis to the football stadium guerilla, inside a violnce distinct and differently organised.

The placing of the emphsis as in the main did the media and local politicaians on that violence coming from outside is only a means of exorcising the internal violence, that which has grown for almost twenty years amongst the long-term unemployed, in the suburbs of permanent exclusion, in te "worlds apart", as urbanists have defined the "social housing cities" buiòlt out of the popular construction, in which smoulders a rage that found, perhaps already on the 20th, but especially on the 21st an occasion to express itself fully. But with difficulty will one try to underdstand this violenc or prevent it... we will probably have to expect further manifestations, to await the wriing of other heavy chapters in this "cold civil war".

p.36 Agostino Petrillo Genova la settimana della meraviglie Derive Approdi 21, March 2002

“La différence la plus frappante entre les sophistes antiques et les sophistes modernes est que les anciens se contentaient d’une victoire fugitive dans la discussion, aux dépens de la vérité, tandis que les modernes veulent une victoire plus durable, aux dépens de la réalité. En d’autres termes, les premiers détruisaient la dignité de la pensée humaine, tandis que les seconds détruisent la dignité de l’action humaine. Dans l’Antiquité, les manipulateurs de la logique embarrassaient le philosophe, tandis que les manipulateurs de faits, à notre époque, gênent l’historien.” Hannah Arendt, in Les origines du totalitarisme

Ce qui c’est passé à Gêne c’est que la logique de l’offensive et de l’autonomie de classe a entraîné une fraction non négligeable des prolétaires présents et que pendant que les chefaillons magouillent avec les Bové, les Aguiton et les Chevènement, ceux de la base se radicalisent et tissent des liens sans eux et contre eux. C’est ça qui leur est insupportable, c’est contre ça qu’ils inventent la fiction de la manipulation qui occulte tout le reste... L’action violente ne peut être que le fait de l’Etat ou du Parti, ne pas suivre un chef c’est se faire manipuler, comme les staliniens l’ont dit systématiquement avant eux. Le plus étonnant c’est qu’après Orwell, il se trouve encore des nigauds pour croire à de telles balivernes. (A ce propos, une petite anecdote : lorsqu’à la fête de l’Huma 2001, le sieur Agnoletto c’était vu prendre à parti par plus de la moitié de l’assistance, exigeant de lui qu’il exhibe au moins une preuve de la manipulation, il ne s’était vu défendre que par une poignée de vieux stalinien, citant l’exemple “historiquement prouvé” des “gauchistes Marcelin” en mai 68).

hi roberto by bah 1:17pm Mon Aug 12 '02

The unwillingness to believe your claims about the scale of infiltration might derive from the fact that for substantiation, you used an article from the XIX Secolo stating not only that there were going to be hundreds of fascists but '500 british members of the black block(!)' on their way to Genoa as well. The apparent falsehood of the latter makes me doubt the veracity of the former.

Anyway, it's too easy to reduce what went wrong at the G8 to a simple problem of infiltration.

What about....? by Wu Ming 1 3:19pm Mon Aug 12 '02

Of course infiltration (but I'd rather use the term "imitation") of the BB and other radical fringes of Genoa demonstrators is only one of the issues which deserve further investigation, and I never said I agreed with any of the things printed in that Secolo XIX article, and yet the piece was interesting and worth translating, I wouldn't dismiss it this way, because there are some matters of facts: - in the past twelve months nobody has been able to disavow the things former chief-of-police Colucci admitted in his hearings: about 600 far-right activists appeared to be on the scene in Genoa. - about 40 of the rioters whose names are going to be in the list of defendants are reported to be Genoa-based petty criminals and far-right football supporters. - there have been several eye-witness accounts of strange "talks" between rioters and carabinieri. - The trashing in Genoa was indiscriminated, it didn't destroyed just banks and corporation seats, but anything that stood in the way, including working class cars, small shops etc. Some German Black Blockers were interviewed by Dutch weekly magazine Vrij Nederlaand and kept their distance from indiscriminated trashing. Would it hurt too much to know the truth? >:-) - a 25-year-old British nazi called Liam "Doggy" Stevens (from Birmingham, if I remember well) was among the rioters in via Canaregis on July 20th 2002. His name came out immediately and was posted on this very newswire the day after. How come the people who immediately dismissed any allegation on infiltrators haven't made an investigation to see whether this guy exists or not, instead of complaining about "reformists" who slander anarchists?

at http://www.newbrainframes.org or http://www.informationguerrilla.org http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=10553

"Vengo da Birmingham e sono un nazi mi hanno invitato i fratelli italiani"

GENOVA - "Sono qui per spaccare tutto. Non m'interessano né il G8 né le cazzate dell'antiglobalizzazione. I fratelli italiani mi hanno invitato, mi hanno garantito che non avremmo avuto noie dalla polizia e che ci avrebbero lasciato fare tutto quel che volevamo". E' felice Liam "Doggy" Stevens, 26 anni, di Birmingham. "Sono un nazi, non un anarchico." E' seduto per terra in via Casaregis, mentre a pochi passi infuria la guerriglia, sul viso una bandiera inglese e addosso una felpa con un cane inferocito. "E' il simbolo del gruppo, i Black Dogs". La sua ragazza lo chiama: "Doggy, non parlare con i giornalisti"; lui s'allontana tra i fumogeni."

"I COME FROM BIRMINGHAM AND I'M A NAZI. THE ITALIAN BROTHERS INVITED ME.

GENOVA - "I'm here to destroy everything. I don't care about the G8 or anti-globalization bullshit. The Italian brothers invited me, they told me we wouldn't have troubles with the police, that they would allow us to do all we wanted". Liam "Doggy" Stevens, a 26-year-old from Birmingham, is happy. "I'm a Nazi, not an anarchist". He sits on the ground in via Casaregis, riots go on a few metres away. His face is covered by a Union Jack, he has a foaming dog on the sweatshirt. "It is the symbol of my group, the Black Dogs." His girlfriend calls him: "Doggy, don't talk to journalists!". He gets up and vanishes in the tear gas.

'Everything that lives, does so under the categorical condition of decisively interfering in the life of someone else... Freedom itself, the freedom of every man, is the ever-renewed effect of the great mass of physical. intellectual, and moral influonces to which this man is subjected by the people surrounding him and the environment in which he was born and in which he passed his whole life.

To wish to escape this influence in the name of some . . . self- sufficient and absolutely egoistical freedom. is to aim toward non- being.

To do away with this reciprocal influence is tantamount to death. And in demanding the freedom of the masses we do not intend to do away with natural influences to which man is subjected by individuals and groups. All we want is to do away with is factitious. legitimized influences. to do away with the privileges in exerting influence."

Shots in the Paris night. There is a point on the endless adventure where events unfold unexpectedly. Actions reap their own consequences, planning counts for little, moments uncertain between fantasy and reality lose all their seperations. When the movement against the state plan to enslave young unemployed to petty bosses at a cut price rate, fate was already on our minds. In the next months there was some of the most intense looting and rioting in France in the recent history. With a government capitulation the establkishment sought to refind the consensuas and easy social management. The confrontations had demonstrated that there was a new force to be reckoned with: a youth disabused of the illusions of career, who saw their only place in the dominant order was to be miserable- but life was for the living. Of course the effort to devclare a return to normality in the aftermath was just a deception of governmental art, for who could believe that those who repossessed the city in a carnival of broken glass and fire coulld care less for the society which had built toytown. Florence and Audrey were two two such revoltes. Children of the suburbs - wretched grey blocks of the poverty of economy, boredom and despair - they had made their deciosion announced themselves against this world. Working with radical groups such as SCALP (an autonomist network) and the CNT ( anarchist militants) they fought hard during those months of March and April 1994 when the movements offensive was at a peak. From the cs gas filled streets of Paris to the university of Nanterre on the fringe of the Peripherique they tended the flowers of the revolution. As the crisis passed (apparently) and the drift back to surface obedience and cynical despair gathered pace, Florence and Audrey wanted to go on. Witnessing the savagery that the state held waiting as a response to its enenmies, seeing the blood on the batons of the CRS and knowing that the rulers cannot give up their realm with resort to war, they began to argue for a radical violence. Over the next months they left the halls of organised activists and moved in the world of the squatted houses of revolutionary hedonism where talk turns often to the armed bandits who have repudiated the morality of humanism and the social consensus. They read of the Red Brigades, Action Directe and also the story of Jacques Mesrine. Hated by the police and government, Mesrine was an armed robber with conviction, a prison rebel,a philosopher of desire who believed that the only way to be free, was not to be a slave...... So it was that one night in October they made their way across Paris to Nation in the east where the police depot was the target of their interest. Gassing several cops they stole some weaopns and then made their escape. Quickly they hijacked a taxi and headed further east towards the forest at Vincennes. The taxi driver panicking, crashed the car into a police patrol to alert them that something was at foot. In the ensuing shoot-out, three policemen, the taxi-driver and Audrey were all killed. Florence was arrested at the scene. As the news emerged, the pornographers who practice journalism turned all eyes on the polidce photo of Florence, defiant and silent in the face of their questions. After fouty eight hours she finally told the her name, Then she said, "it's destiny". Of course the media needed other falsifdications to render the story suitable for sensatiuonalisation. There was no mention connection allowed between the gesture fo that october night and their hate for this dying society and their lust for one made anew. Repackaged in the bizarre costume of the media and its ideological supermarket, they became Natural Born Killers!!! on the evidence of a programme for the film found in their squatted house in a run down part of Nanterre. It was painful to see them stripped of their dignity. Meanwhile the subversive community in Paris held its breath, knowing that the arrest of Florence would not be sufficent to satisfy the appetites of the flics , reeling from the death of three of their number. Paranoia torched the thermometers, the heat was on. And in the city it's hard to live if you want to isolate yourself, which is the only safety paranoia can ever consider. The modern world splits us up into atoms, living alone or in small distant flats, caught between the divisions of gender, race and age, the individual the collective....... the radiacl community dissolved itself. People stopped visiting one another, ceased to speak openly about anything which could implicate them in the crime of even understanding what Florence and Audry had done but the secret is to tell all, All mentions of this affair were greeted wn attitude of we can't talk about it; sub judice...... One week, two weeks, three weeks and Florence is in jail, 19, her lover dead, and they want to make her pay, and fear forces even her friends to disavow her.In the months that followed no thought of a public display pf support for her was ever brought, no posters, no collections, no stickers. The anarchist press distanced themselves from their actions, the FA (anarchist federation) even going so far as to advise their regional sections to play down the link with radical libertarian politics and practice. Twomi was an algerian radical who had been around the fringe of the autonomist milieu and squats of the city, and close to the apocalyptic cult of the end whichmade him a specialist of radical aestheticism in his writings on Algeria. One of the guns found at the soot out of Vincennes had been bought by Tuomi who had been close to Florence and Audrey, although he was disliked by many. Arrested by the police, Twomi revealed lies as truth so as to help him save his own skin. Claiming that he did not buy the gun for them but for another, Philippe, he said that he was in fact working for the Algerian sate to entrap Islamic radicals and autonomists, providing a justification fopr repression. Philippe had been active within autonomy in the 1980s and had also already done five years for armed robbery ( convicted when he also was 19) and made the perfect target for a police framing and manipulation. On the basis of Twomi's information he was held for four months whilst the police attempted to fabricate evidence to link him with the shoot-out; the state wanted a conspiracy. Eventually, in the utter impossibility of him being involved he was freed. Meanwhile a map of the prison with the positions of the prison guards marked was found in Florence's cell, we smiled with reilef that she thinks still of escape and hope despite all the state's need for vengeance which circles around her.

Vandalism; an exciting game played in three adventures.

I began spraypainting a long time ago. In and out oif it over the years it took a new significance when I realised that it could express the way that I ferlt personally, aesthetically and politically. So when I returned o this city in the summer I was intent on criminal damage. It was after all not only an intervention into the visual environment of the cityscape, an area dominated by commerce with their advertising and neon, but also a concrete assault which cost my 'vitims' money to erase. I found a car supplies shop with an unscrupulous governor who must have known exactly what was going on as over the weeks, I and my compagneros visited regularly to pick up cans of paint . He never blinked an eyelid as he gave us discounts due to our regular custom, despite the fact that we clearly didn't have a car but had spray paint on our fingers in an area recently covered by our daubings. I tried to combine as many aspects of my personality into these dawn jhouneys around the city, running down alleyways and sidestreets; there were stencils in a sequence: stop, power, pause, play, each accompanied by their respective technical symbol. They were ambivalent, vague. The urbanity of the industrial design was technological and sterilised , reeked of a purge of humanity, these were the signifiers of the functional. On the other hand the commands themselves lost all sense of the imperative and utilitarian, sprayed on grey walls they stood out defiantly, appealiing to the spirit, words that could raise a thousand different questions. STOP, POWER, PAUSE, PLAY a demand to others to reflect on why it is that so often we are mechanical than any machine in accepting a role as cogs in the slow death of the murderous work-leisure- money routine. Then there was the tag. This was my individual act, territorial but anonymous , it's quick to paint and allows you to inflict the maximum of material damage in the minimum of time. It's also an agent of communication to the other sprayers in the city who may not immediately identify themselves with my other work. The tag is our morse code, our beacon to the others fighting on the visual battlefield, whom I respect for their relentlessness and the risks they take. The tag is important to our fragmented community as it is our acknowledgement of one another in recognition and respect. I wanted these people to know that I existed and that I felt solidarity with them. There is something almost tender when you tag a fresh street or becoming wall and return the next week to find ten or twelve others have signed onm as well, without spraying over one another's emblems these become companions and in their anonymity they are like kisses blown in the air. Often I will leave a stencil and a tag beside onme another so that the others will begin to build up the associations and hopefully be inspired to diversify themselves. Lastly there are the slogans of more explicit political or cultural content. As a child I carved, painted and biroed IRA all over the place. It seemed as natural then as now that grafitti be a weapon in politixcal confrontation. More recently, inspired by the Zapatista rebellion which began on New Years eve 1994 and their message to the world that demanding the impossible was not without hope, I chose to try and raise awareness or at least curiousity about their story. EZLN, DESTROY ALL PRISONS, VIVA ZAPATA, SUPPORT THE REVOLT IN MEXICO, these were the most simple gestures I could make to arouse interest. Of course it is impossible to convey any of their ideas in this way but the purpose was not to persuade ideologically, rather it was to encourage the curious weho felt an affinity with echoes of resistance to investigate the everyda heroes fighting the state from the mountains of the Mexican South-East. This was in the context of a series of meetings and the diffusion of litterature which we undertook at the same time and it was a pleasure to see that we had some impact. It first became clear that it was not simply a matter of arty gallavanting around town on a cool summer's night when a friend and I went out to put up some stencils and spray around the south side of the city centre. It was down on the Ranelagh road near Charlemont Bridge where we were initally noticed by the cops. I had sprayed Viva Zapa when Day spotted the car and we picked up our things to walk down the road as though we were just going about our businness. They purred across the road as we passed Norhtbrook Avenue and the window peeled down. Excuse I said top them as we walked around the car, by our composure and accent they were appeased and we made our way off. We switched track and decorated the smaller streets around Mount Pleasant and Rathmines where there is not so much traffic and more alleys to escape wouldbe -pursuers. A short time later the same cop car rolled by, they checked us out again. Why were we still around the area? Wearing bomber Jackets and hats we made ourselves stand out, ill-advisedly. We had more pretensions to make up for not being the dangerous substance we wished to be. But the hours went by and we were tiring, Day's watch said three o'clock so we decided to hit home. By the canal T recalled my unfinished job which had begun the intrigue. I had to complete Zapa..ta so that there would be no misunderstanding! Passing the stencils to Day we agrreed to rendez-vous back at the house for a celebratory joint. As I approached the bridge the car cruised by again, slowly, they wanted me this time but they were on a one way street on the wrong side of the canal. Allowing a few moments for them to advance enough to create a little distance, thus compelling them to cross a different path, I reckoned that there was just enough time to speed over and finish the task. I began to run. Beside McGovern's metals and its alleyway, I did the deed. Relieved .....then in the same instant I felt thwe beam of the lights 9on my ass and turned to find the squad car centred on me. Break. Up the alley at fifty miles an hour; the car mounted the pavement and pursued. Mount pleasant is a difficulkt little estate with many bollards but just as many short cul de sacs, it would have been easy to be cornered. At the end of the alley I had about thirty yards on them, I swung right my head spinning, but remained intent on escape; this was an easier rod for them and there were almost on me when I darted to right again and they were late missing the turn, precious metres. Back down to the Ranelagh Rd and they were on my course again. Straight over the road, quick right, quick left, spray can ejected into a front garden, Northbrook Rd. I see a wall and realise I am momentarily out of their sight, over wall, I bounce on my toes back against the concrete, the cold eases the hot sweat all over my body, quiet.... A car purrs upslowly somewhere on the other side of my hideout. I recognise that engine. Silent now. A door opens,and two heavy shoes echo on the pavement. No breathing. A moment. The door slams shut, my eyes close and my head rings, snowballing adrenalin and areosol fumes. The car fucks off.

Sub Urbis in Ignem, Outside the City In the Fire.

The sky is grey and sullen, The glistening sun, history, Pale fumes are all that gleam now, Over concrete, dirt and apathy. II Here in the Banlieues we are nameless, Except for Mantes La Jolie where we riot, Its name belongs to us all now, Disgrace? Resistance, defiance, rebellion. III Several people died there, cops, Arabs, children, Victims of the Urban Wasteland, Forgotten tomorrow. The rioters wre young, angry at betrayal, For they betrayed their country, To the femme fatale France. IV Harkis they called themselves, Stressing seperation, Lost among two cultures, finding little in either, With the colonialists in the civil war, They fled the country after, Without Olive branch or Armalite, To three women of justice, And a new beginning. V No privelige they found, But displacement, disillusion, They began again to seethe. Algeria`s struggle rages now , The Harkis just beginning. VI I too am a Harki, Cocooned in discontent, Superfluos, redundant, talent dispelled, Cliched clerical tasks, menial mundanity Meaningless! I grip my hair and tear, And yearn for change. VII Creteil isn`t Mantes La Jolie, The excitement, variety would be misplaced, Just a commercial monolith Where the forgotten people work, I among them, dissatisfied, Different reason, same feeling, Hope for Banlieue hystericism To take us all with rage.

-December 3 1991.