Letter from prison

This letter is an attempt to explain my positions and choices[1] as a part of the anarchist insurrectionist action hoping that they serve as a trigger for its spreading. It is not written under the prism of a specific ideology or crystallized tendency, it is a synthesis with products stolen from the ideological super-market, as are my thoughts. It is overwhelmed however by the judgements and values of someone participating in the war against authority, charging from the dazzling ideal of anarchy. An ideal seen so much in traditional communities of the past, as well as revolted communities of past and present. An ideal which up to now can only be approached, and might never totally dominate. Because as comrade Giannis Naxakis wrote “authority is not metaphysical, it is inside us” just like the passion for free and non-authoritative relations. The realization that the reality of capitalism is war of everyone against everyone, it is a competition of survival, pushed me to take part in the war against it, to choose position. And considering the fans of order non-conscience murderers, I went with the side of insurrection. Anarchy is the way to revolt while trying to not reproduce what I am fighting against -relations of authority-, anti-hierarchically organizing the communities of struggle.

The evolution of civilization contains the constant update of a grid of social conventions. This grid is universal, in includes money, laws, ethics. Every clash and every competition of interests is mediated and settled by this system of conventions.

The modern social structure, has been formed in order to balance the counter-forces based on the reproduction but also its strengthening. It is constantly evolving and re-adjusted by many centres of authority, powerful capitalists, state officials and scientists whose prosperity depends on the ability of the social machine to survive and reproduce itself.

Even the destruction of a part of a gigantic machine functions as an opportunity for its updating. Every war, every natural disaster, insurrection, or revolution creates new fields of investment for capitalism and a new, steadier regime is born from the ashes of the previous one. Every previous empire of the past was threatened by other authorities. Capitalism offers such social flexibility that every powerful element of authority, is simply assimilated.

The power of the modern social machine, is its ability to assimilate everything. Every citizen, every worker, is a gear that must be put in the right place. And all feel that they depend on this genius system of depreciation of social vibrations called capitalism and dominates all:

Money is the global language, it is the measure of ability of each person to exploit. Each one when learning how to manage money is initiated in the system of authority.

“These people are the system. And this system is the enemy”

This is the powerful world of capital. But the universal religion of money besides a clergy, needs also miracles: The complexion science-technology which has placed human intellect at the service of the most pathetic subjects. Powerful machines which murder en mass, torture, exterminate, and worst of all decompose human comprehension. From nuclear bombs, to experiments on animals, to slaughterhouses and animal farms, up to the pollution and destruction of the planet. From the cameras and televisions which spread the role model of a modern slave, up to the smart weapons of the police.

But technology is not neutral, it is a whore which could sleep with you, but will never forget its pimp. A massive force which evolves rapidly bringing this world closer and closer to the brink of absolute control, closer to the final defeat of freedom.

The wondrous new world therefore is here and is so complex that it leaves no one the right to claim they are innocent.

As much as the hypocritical ethics of bourgeois culture has rooted into society, tough reality is present and is incapable of hiding behind the mountain of alleged altruistic ethical rules. The appearances of sensitivity are not earthed with total of forbidden behaviours, the diffuse imposed self-oppression with sole function the prosperity and reproduction of a society of castrated individuals.

Theft is unethical, when it disputes the holy grail of legitimate property, while exploitation through property must be respected. Murders are unethical unless they have been carried out by a cop or mercenary, then it is heroism. It is not worth mentioning the numerous pointless and unimportant rules which simply reproduce complexed humanoids, limiting the erotic and wider human relations.

But ethics is for victims, the lower part of the social pyramid. Those who are at its peak, have already spat on it in order to be there while pretending that they respect and recognize it. Just as it has been spat on by the free and conscious revolutionaries who act based on their judgement feelings and their ethos is formed from the source of empathy defying the norms of prohibitions, with the difference that they do not need to pretend.

Of course the capitalist system is not limited to diffuse structures of authority neither could prosper based on an ethic which anyone can dispute. What it needs is a violent mechanism which will deter everyone from a prospect of dispute of its routine. The violence of legitimacy replaces the margins of ethical rules and ideologies. The global capital is an empire and has as the core of its violence imposition, the democratic co-government.

Just as every totalitarian regime, democracy is also promoted to its subjects as the most beneficial form of authority. And of course it makes sure it reproduces its ethics, culture and propaganda through the state education, spectacle and centrally controlled information. The message that every non authoritative form of organizing human relations is infeasible, is needless to mention, it is implied.

“There cannot be naked, brutal force violence, because if that was the case Caligula’s horse would have the same right to the ypatia of Rome as its owner” — Thomas Pownall

In order for the regime to seem as the favourable but also only choice it is not enough for it to be applied with raw violence, it needs appearances of leniency.

Democracy of capital is paradise compared to the hell it creates on the lands in exploits.

It avoids applying to its interior the dogma of zero tolerance even if its in its rhetoric in the frames of terrorising those who consciously or not dispute law and order. The limit of tolerance is adjusted in order to secure sensitive balances. Democracy therefore avoids the physical extermination of its internal enemies maintaining the humanistic façade which covers the bloodied nature of the cluster state-capital. Every deviation from this rule consists a confirmation of a destabilization of the system, is and echo of an intense internal dispute which threatens to change the character of the regime. Damage for upper class democracy — which functioning on the guidance of the principles of economy — is called to spend more energy for the restitution of its internal order.

Of course, the whole mechanism of physical violence within democracy, police-justice-prisons, is based on the ideology of security. Crime is the imaginary enemy from which the state protects while producing conditions which create it. The same system which creates weapons, defines their legitimate use from the military branch which through raw violence creates conditions of brutal looting abroad, and the police branch for the imposition of order in the interior, that is the streamlined condition of capitalist exploitation.

Basic mechanism of subjugation of capitalist democracy, is the institution of imprisonment. Incarceration — for humanists, correction — functions as blackmail for whoever thinks of derogating from civil legitimacy consisting a more lenient way of punishment compared to execution, which protects the humanistic façade of the regime. An elementary part of the modern scientifically structured system of authority which continues to be based on direct and indirect violence in order to accomplish the control of consciences.

Armed Consciences

Observing the constant evolution of the technology of oppression and control towards more and more totalitarian models, one question erupts. Against who is the system shielding itself? What threatens to sink its orderliness into chaos? What force are the humanistic appearances trying to deceit?

A force so powerful as the force that created it. Human conscience. A conscience which revealed values that go against the mindless exploitation and oppression. What is called “social vested” is nothing but the update of the regime in order to absorb the values and decrease the reactions against it, remaining in its substance violent and exploitative.

The modern system of authority with basic pylons the constantly evolving technology and science, the powerful capitalistic mechanism and the western democracies as regulators, is the result of a dialectic co-evolution of authority and insurrection. The regime was born from revolutions and remains revolutionary.

The “miracle” of the modern world is the bastard of the intercourse between authority with liberated ideas.

On one side authority limits its brutality, on the other its explosive and swift evolution — sometimes under persecution — of knowledge and freedom of expression launch its power.

A situation that cannot take a positive or negative sign compared with societies of the past, since there are neither measures for comparison, nor a hypothetical history, but only an evolving world, and in its evolution we have the possibility to participate with the force of our own conscience.

The evolution of consciousness goes through the dispute of established ideas and values and creates new ideals going through individual or social insurrections and revolutions. This is course of history. Besides the blood which flows in abundance in order to serve the interests of the rulers, flows also the blood that wets the blossom of insurrection, leaning towards the sun of freedom, subversion of empires. Because free spirits arm themselves and claim their own place in history. Whoever claims that revolutionary action means nothing since the system is too powerful, should wonder how the world would be if it was not formed out of insurrections and revolutions, should wonder to what degree would totalitarianism of authority would have gotten to if the only force evolving was the greedy tendency for more power, more control. And since the answer is so obvious, let them look at themselves and see the cover-up of their guilty choices.

Tracking my journey in the world of insurrection resistance and solidarity

Ever since my experiences led me to dispute the dominating state ideology, ever since I realized that every minute of inactivity is complicity in the crimes of the rulers, I aspired for my action to be consistent with my thought. I sought ways to sabotage the orderly function of state and economy, I sought accomplices in this task. Many comrades ended up in similar choices long before me and I was inspired by their thoughts, their action, their journeys. Journeys hard many times and painful which they made claiming their self-definition, their freedom, their life.

Every form and choice of struggle has importance and a value in itself. In order to give life to the desires of every insurgent individuality participating, to contribute the necessary expansion of the revolutionary front spreading the liberating ideas, to sabotage hierarchies, markets, social structures, the machines which at the service of capital annihilate nature, human and not.

Obviously the means and strategies chosen in the revolutionary war — as in any war — are defined to a great degree from the corresponding strategy of the opponent: Ruling democracy in its greek version prefers to allow the free expression of revolutionary ideas, having secured not only that they will be slandered by the controlled mass media, but mainly that they will be buried under the plethora of advertisement flyers. That the masses will continue to consume the mock experience. Television languor prevails. The state knows well that in order to stand in the war of information overload, we must be dynamic, and in order for the message to infiltrate socially, it needs action. And the update of oppression has been orientated to this action. The aim of this little analysis is to stress the importance so much of the projects of spreading anarchist speech, as well as guerilla actions.

Because speech on its own, not only would have been buried in the grave over information overload dug up by urban civilization, but would have lost its meaning if it had not disputed the state’s violence monopoly, if it did not find its incarnation in factual revolutionary violence.

Respectively no responsibility claim through printed or electronic media can substitute for the hand to hand sharing of communiques, the communication through the organic relation developed in open resistance projects.

The strategy of the state to nerve system of the anarchist struggle by striking its dynamic, violent and aggressive forms, renders some some choices more crucial. Of course a claim that some forms of struggle are superior to others would ridiculous however a bet must be placed in every insurgent individuality or collective: if we will abandon some fields of the revolutionary war succumbing to the constant state black-mail called legitimacy.

Still alive in the belly of the beast

I am now dealing up against the world of prison, the space-time defined exclusively by conventions. I was led here by a series of choices of mine, in my attempt to carve my path of refusal. A refusal to succumb to the state blackmails, a refusal to live as one more microscopical pawn. It was a conscious journey of insurrection, resistance and solidarity. A tracing of many paths which go up hill towards the volcano of anarchic revolution.

Being temporarily inactivated, I take advantage of the possibility provided by the democratic regime to express myself freely, attempting to transform its force into weakness.

The dead time of prison feeds the development of ideas that undermine the foundations of democratic illusions.

It is necessary that every revolutionary transmits messages which ignite insurrectionist activity. At the same time, the actions, as well as the life attitude we choose, functions as a message. Therefore I think its important to defend the choices which I consider nodal, revealing what they meant to me. I consider this more important than the “leniency” which the democratic courts might show if I choose to remain silent on the more sensitive matters. I discredit the legal codes. I will not allow them to restrict my speech dynamic. I also discredit the alleged “strategy”

Because, our struggle takes place first of all in the political and social field, its not a military clash of finite camps. The dynamic of the barricade of the revolution is the prospect of spreading, and the spreading is feasible when we shout messages of insurrection, not when we wait around expecting a more favourable treatment by the enemy.

Of course the regime of conventions is not based on mindless violence, the modern state adjusts the penalties depending on the attitude towards its police and juridical institutions. Snitches are dealt with differently, repentant prisoners are also dealt with differently, those who step back are dealt with differently and so are those who defend their choices.

Obviously some were fooled by more able generals who know that:

“better to leave an escape path for the enemy and slaughter them as they retreat” (Sun Tzu)

No retreat therefore, raging battle to the end.

The path of derogation

Right now I am accused of attempted murder with a bow and arrow at a protest, participation in the r.o. Conspiracy Cells of Fire, 160 attacks of this organization, the bloody clash with the cops in Pefki and the bank robberies in Velvendo, Kozani and Filota, in Florina. Every such charge for me is a title of honour, since I feel proud that the regime includes me in their enemies. Of course I was an armed enemy of the system of authority before the police recorded me in their files. And I want to explain the mind frame that guided my journey, referring to some points of my actions and choices. Obviously there will be some omissions since I do not intend to give the enemy information they do not have.

When in 2009 some structures of the anarchist guerilla were hit by the state and many comrades went underground, for me it was evident not only to support those wanted, but also the necessity for me to participate in the guerilla action.

In these frames emerged my relationship with the r.o. C.C.F.

I was never a member of the organization, since in anarchy each individuality has the possibility to follow an autonomous course and collectivize freely forming new organizations, contrary to a centralized structure — as projected by the journalistic propaganda — which wants all to be in the same organization, tearing down the different characteristics of each one. Recognizing however during that time period some common targeting, emerged relations of factual solidarity and those relations led to a deeper cooperation.

And this cooperation led to me accepting the consequences of the oppressive operation against the Conspiracy.

A few days before the raiding of the anti-terrorist force in Volos, I had been arrested during a protest while aiming at the parliament with a bow and arrow -an action I support in full to this day since in the frames of the polymorphism of the struggle it moved in the direction of enriching the means, and the evolution based on imagination, and I stick to the positions I expressed in the letter I published then.

Back then therefore I was released on bail conditions, which I had already decided to break in order to not risk being arrested in the case that the police already knew things they hadn’t reveal. The choice, the conscious choice of going underground, was validated by the arrest warrants issued for me after the arrests of the 5 members of the CCF in Volos.

I found myself at a crossroad of choices but I already knew my path. I chose the inaccessible path through the beautiful sceneries of the outlaw action and life. I chose the constant guerilla warfare with its amazing moments, so much in the structuring work like night-time excursions to steal vehicles or the armed robberies, as well as the moments of attack.

You are deprived of many things when you are wanted, but to not be a citizen of the state any more is now a equal to a declaration of war. This fact made me as an anarchist feel consistent towards myself, something that would not be the case if for a quite life in the arms of legitimacy I risked arrest or even worse, I chose to surrender anticipating a more lenient treatment by the enemy.

I had to support, together with my comrades, my refusal to surrender in a tough and constant labouring of infrastructure: fake id cards, renting houses, collecting weapons, self-funding with armed robberies. Infrastructure of defence which was simultaneously infrastructure of attack when we chose. Combined with the rules of security and the counter-surveillance measures, our endless labouring in the pressured condition of illegality pushed us to taste the experience of war. Life on the edge suitable only for lovers of real experiences, life which the peaceful consumers fail to approach in the cinema rooms of passivity. Because life means intervention, demand, war, not to be a battery for the giant machine to work.

Realizing myself as a fighter against the regime and knowing that its armed dogs can any moment attack me and take me captive, I adjusted my life and my moves awaiting also the moment an armed clash with mercenaries of the state would break out. The moment where the value of life of a cop has a negative sign depending on the degree in which they will be an obstacle to my freedom. Undoubtedly there are inhibitions which deter us from taking the life of even a soldier of the enemy, whether it is the consequences, or the leniency towards the “irresponsible” idiots who the condition of generalized apathy led them to enlist with authority. But when I receive an attack from the guards of legality, my freedom will cost more than their anyway unnecessary life.

Despite our equipment so much at a material level, as well as a conscience level, the moment we had to go against two armed cops, during a infrastructure process, found us poorly armed — in the vortex of the pressured situations of cladestinity — to be exact we had one pistol.

It so happened that I was unarmed and when I felt the cops getting closer, I tried to escape by running until I was immobilized.

I will never forget how beautifully the shots sounded, while I was contemplating desperate the short end of freedom. However, the difficult choice of an armed clash from a clearly disadvantaged position, which anarchist Theofilos Mavropoulos took, freed me awaking inside me the rage of freedom. We had to escape going over their bodies.

In the battle in Pefki, my contribution was to snatch the vehicle of the cops, which I used as a weapon, threatening to crush under its wheels the cop who would be overzealous enough to try and stop me, always directed towards the escape to freedom.

The final outcome of this raging battle was two cops heavily wounded, a cost which contributes to the spreading of fear in the mercenary force of the police, but had a heavy price for us also, the injury and subsequent captivity of the comrade.

For me on a personal level, the two-year extension of my unlawful freedom was invaluable. The only thing I regret is that I did not manage in the time before my arrest to complete my expectations, the intensification of guerilla action and the coveted liberation of comrades from the prisons of democracy. But I gained experiences that I wouldn’t exchange for anything, relations which were forged in the armed comradeship which roamed the mountains and cities preparing robbing attacks and guerilla actions. I gained experiences which I will save as a treasure in order to manage better when I am out free again.

I will neither ever forget how enclosed I felt when two years later we found ourselves hunted but armed to the teeth in a van in Northern Macedonia and decided that we will not risk the life of a hostage in a battle with the police. Contradictory conditions, contradictory choices.

In the world where subjugation to the weapons of the cops dominates, only with the threat of weapons can we secure our existence. It is almost certain that if any of our moves is perceived, it will be snitched to the police. Therefore, the only way to keep the information of our variants safe, it to subjugate the carrier of information with our violence. Since they are use to being subordinate to the orders of the cops, may they temporarily obey the imposition of the insurgents. Until their conscience is harmonized with the proposition of resistance, where an anti-authoritarian relationship is then possible.

If someone is found in the difficult position to be subjugated to the intensity of a voice which screams “robbery, keep your head down” — while not intending to cooperate with the oppression — surely understands that our choice was a necessity and is on our side without causing problems to this tense condition.

The world of capitalism is at war and every wannabe snitch has in advance chosen to enlist with our enemy. We can understand the choices and be lenient, but to impose ourselves on them is the least we can do, since we chose to answer to war with war.

It is groundless to critique the authority relations developed during a bank robbery or hostage situation, since authority relations are already in the bank, money is hid in the safes by the police weapons, and after a small part of it is withdrawn, it will be used to buy products and “services”, that is the continuation of the slavery chain.

The only non-authoritative relationship that can exist, is born in communities of struggle.

Organization and attack

Of course, the above analysis and narration would not have any special meaning if it was not accompanied by the proposition of continuing the struggle with all means and all forms. Because communities of struggle consist of different individualities with different beginnings and motives which meet in the war against authority, and thus appears the desired and necessary multi-form of theories, but also means of struggle.

Of course the bet of organizing the anarchist war remains open. For the accomplishing of more powerful and effective action against the enemy, as well as the strengthening of the relations between comrades.

Organization which means comprising groups and cells of action either on the base of common experiences, or the base of common targets and views.

Action which concerns the diffuse of our propositions and values, the connection with other forms struggle, intending that every individual struggle transfers its focus from one side to the whole, from the special condition of oppression and exploitation, to the generalized captivity produced by the civilization of authority.

Action which violently strikes the enemy without recognizing the dipole of legal and illegal, which never accepts to speak the language of the enemy, even if it knows how to decode it.

Collective action, individual action, direct action. From demonstrations and popular assemblies to night-time incendiary sabotage, bombs, robberies and executions of executives of the system.

In this action, relations between revolutionaries are moulded, they take the form of comradeship, they become a whole in the meaning of solidarity. In this action every individual feels their completion and lives in consistency with their emotion conscience.

Organization therefore means also overcoming yourself, self-critique, rupture, dilution and re-grouping on higher bases and relations. However it also means coordination of forces in our common directions seeking ways to bridge the differentiability, reconnect the cracked lands, never forget where the enemy is located.

Head on attack on the edge of evolution of the civilization of authority

closing I would like to stress a crucial lack of directions of the struggle. We concentrate almost exclusively on the police and oppression or the political and economic institutions, the moment when the world of absolute control is being prepared in unguarded scientific laboratories. The moment when the most twisted animal torturers, in the name of knowledge and science experiment on controlling the mind, while they do not have police guardians, such as politicians the targeted window front of the system.

It is truly easy to return to the clergy of technological-science a bit of the violence it produces and very few things happen in this prospect. In a text where I speak of my choices, I close with a self-critique on this basic omission, which is included in what I always postponed, awaiting the right moment which never came. In order for new comrades to heal the gaps of the previous. I consider substantial, beyond the symbolic meaning, the sabotage of technological-scientific infrastructure of civilization. Because whoever examines the directions of researches and their funding realizes that the powerful capital and its dominant state mechanisms lead the evolution of sciences and technology in order to serve the intentions of economic profit and social control.

It is known that industry exploits the scientific accomplishing in the most disastrous way towards nature and the most painful way for animals and humans. Starting from the infection and overheating of the planet, going through the decrease of biodiversity and ending up at the torture of asphyxiating caging in animal breeding factories intended for food or fur , humans do not reserve a better fate for their kind, except violence, pain, exploitation, death.

The power of scientific method eases the social manipulation through psychological propaganda, prepares the generalized surveillance through ingenious systems with telescopic cameras on satellites, even microscopic cameras on spying robot insects, experiments on animals brains unravelling the thread of of thought control. They evolve the unmanned bombing air-crafts which are already spreading death in the zones of military conflicts, and robot soldiers. Simultaneously, they prepare the merge of human and machine, a technocratic ideal, where the distance between eye and screen, and between hand and keyboard will decrease in the direct interconnection with the brain, allowing an even more rapid evolution of the super power of technology.

An ideal which is not science fiction since there are already laboratories which “host” different kinds of animal-cyborg with electronic implants in their brains and university infrastructure which hope to prepare the world ethically and legally in order to welcome this technology of singularity of human-machine.

This reality places a clear blackmail which we must realize: Either us or them.

And I believe that as time goes by this blackmail will be felt by more and more people, but we will become more and more helpless. We must act while its time and we are already very late. The new fascism is here and is not being imposed, its being bought. We owe it to our selves to sabotage it and put together a strong front against it, independently of ideological or theoretical differences.

In order to fight the techno-scientific complex we have to adjust, absorb the new technologies and use them against it. Just like the Indians could not fight the european conquerors, revolutionaries will be wiped out if they do not update their ways of action. Unfortunately these sound distant, but the future is predicted even more pressured stating it clear that there is no other way.

Together with the call for action I send a signal of solidarity to the comrades globally who fought and fight the techno-scientific complex, the state and capital inside and out of the prison walls.

Revolutionary greetings to the cells of the international network of the ALF, the ELF, the IRF, FAI, the Conspiracy Cells of Fire and all groups and organizations anonymous and eponymous which are not global networks of cells — independently of their agreement or disagreement with their theories — keep the bet of resistance, insurrection and revolution open.

Giannis Mihailidis
Koridallos prison

[1] Accused for the double robbery in Velvedo-Kozani (Greece)