It is in the context of a social fabric that we struggle to recognize as an interlocutor, “neutralized” by those apparatuses of domination that are committed to the distortion of their image in order to justify the arms race and the achievement of technological sovereignty, that we try to recognize ourselves as elements of anarchist subversion.
We are trying to understand and clear those massive clouds of smoke in the eyes of those around us who, in accordance with the narrative canons of political society, are coming ever closer to a vision of their identity based on reactionary and sovereignist rhetoric. This is the emergent feeling on which the actions of governments are based. By instrumentalizing widespread phenomena or circumstantial events, they persist in a process aimed at establishing the spectre of generalized insecurity, of a “criminal drift” of social marginality, thus laying the foundations that ensure tacit acceptance of continuous repressive reforms. On the other hand, the voices of dissent appear to us to be weak, at least those based on a structural and total irreconcilability with those States that, while silently dusting off the robes of a colonial-extractivist imperialism, are meanwhile performing choral acts, cloaked in “wills” directed towards an illusory collective welfare.
To trained ears, this is the unsettling dissonance of a fumbling performance, of an Atlanticist front continuing to drowse people with fairy tales of non-violence while arming the Ukrainian conflict to the teeth and supporting the genocide of the Palestinian people; of a European fortress that alternates between humane and charitable faces (bulwark of a now outdated democratic model) and muscular and compact postures, ready for any eventuality in the face of the newfound external enemy. The acceleration of the repressive machine, which in recent years has abandoned associative crimes and is now rediscovering itself by concentrating on “ink crimes”, is proportional to the degree of credibility that the state apparatus can afford to lose at such a moment in history.
We find, for example, an Italian state that, as in the case of Alfredo’s transfer to 41BIS, aims at suppressing propaganda that sheds light on its own actions, at silencing and rendering harmless the “troublemakers of the pen”: deviant and deviating “instigators of the masses” of the anarchist movement… a movement that, we will agree, is currently having difficulty instigating even itself, which leads us to reflect on the reasons for our current ineffectiveness and our enormous contradictions.
The swelling ranks of an army of alleged anarchists, the gap established by the responses given to that experiment in totalitarian control called pandemic, and the timeless reactionary obscurantism of the anti-feminist current (rediscovered queer-transphobic where accompanied by the – more than ever necessary – anti-technological critique) are just some of those antinomies that stand as a warning to remind us that perhaps there is no oxygen for all in this muddy swamp.
There is not and cannot be an a priori imposed commonality that does not reduce us to being subjects of a repressed tension, dismantled of its destructive ecstasy, or mutilated of the joy of complicity. The reasons for our ineffectiveness in this present, in which the world assumes the all the more real (and all the less grasped) guise of the techno-militarist capitalist disease, must also be sought in this, even and above all by turning our gaze inwards, to our contradictions, to our feeling as part of a revolutionary movement, and to our questioning of for whom, today, we should answer the call to action. For ourselves first and foremost? For those we feel as comrades? For those we recognize as oppressed? For the sole love of our world of rage, basis of our affinity in converging to attack this society?
It is in order to answer these questions, to consolidate, create and rediscover the paths of affinity that make us perceive ourselves as consciously united (or deliberately divided), that we believe a bookfair is important. Without discussions and debates about our ideas, our history and our dreams, we risk becoming just another part of the antagonistic world: sectarian, ideological, identity-based,
definitively harmless because subjugated by political thought. A book, a debate, and a language that, through our editions, becomes collective by promoting conspiracy, is a necessity aimed at destroying the future that is before us in order to speed up the hatching of action from that chrysalis we call word.
Our goal is to create a moment of encounter between comrades from different backgrounds, that seeks to break down boundaries (including cultural and linguistic ones) and that aims for qualitative growth in the sharing of analyses and experiences that transcend our territorial horizons, thus giving new impetus to our desire for subversion.
Let’s take back in our hands the tool of anarchist solidarity, in order to break the isolation into which the prisoners are forced and to intertwine with the proposals of struggle that are underway elsewhere, with the aim of multiplying the potential of our intervention in terms of a concrete projectuality that knows no borders.
A meeting that we hope will also subvert the categories on which this society is based. Rejecting specializations, the insidious forms of authority, and the division of tasks that often lead to delegate, we will try to create moments of discussion that abandon as much as possible the frontal dynamics of presentation, building multi-voice, circular debates that contaminate each other in the embrace of ink-
and-flame perspectives.
Let’s weave the webs of complicity in order to trace the paths of liberation, once again, among the dark shades of the existent!

Introduction (i.e. why we decided to organize an anarchist book fair on
publishing and propaganda)

The anarchist press is under attack. Various forms of repression are unfolding against this important means of subversion. Trials based on the redaction of ” instigating ” texts or pamphlets, ” terrorist ” associations for the distribution of newspapers and pamphlets, closures and seizures of printing presses…
All of this is part of a broader attack on the anarchist movement that is taking place where militant anarchism is trying to come out of the corner of the alternative counterculture (however radical in content) to actually try to disrupt the apparatuses of domination through revolutionary theory. This kind of attack is qualitatively different in nature from those the anarchist movement is accustomed to receiving, because it undermines the basis of its propagation, development and dissemination of ideas that are intended to be transformed into actions of attack. With the winds of war once again blow over European soil and social conflicts are flaring up everywhere due to the contradictions inherent in the capitalist system, the need of power is to preventively crush any voice that does not conform to the ongoing mobilization and that could sabotage the states’ call to order and duty.

Faced with this disturbing scenario, which tastes of déjà vu, we do not intend to resign ourselves to the proclamations of more or less anarchist realpolitik, but to continue to insist on the paths of insubordination. To this end, in addition to creating opportunities for exchange and circulation of our publications, we believe it is important to pursue the creation of the widest possible spaces/moments of debate, to discuss – from an anarchist perspective – the changes in the context we are facing and the best ways to transform them into possibilities for revolt, insurrection and freedom.

Snapshot of the Situation – Contextualization as Self-Criticism (i.e., How
Defending Against Repressive Attacks Cannot Be an Excuse to Sweep Shit
Under the Rug)

While every situation in which we find ourselves under attack can be an opportunity to reaffirm our ideals and principles, we do not believe that it should instead be an excuse for an uncritical closing of ranks in the name of some vague and unspecified “anarchist community”. Anarchism, as we understand it, is a bubbling magma, a constellation of projects, a multicolored swarm of tensions. It continues to generate trends, often through ruptures and internal earthquakes, because the passion that animates us is not accustomed to be sitting at the tables of compromise. Ideas, in order not to remain dead letters, must be incarnated in living bodies and coagulate in them into ethical principles that guide practice and action. Just as we cannot remain silent in face of what we identify as injustice, neither we can keep it quiet when faced with what we see as the antithesis of those cherished principles that animate us. Silence would be like turning away; it would be like sweeping shit under the rug. Silence is complicity.

In the Italian territory, for some years now, we have been facing a series of unpleasant events that have led to the disintegration of groups and old relationships of complicity, clashes, the need for constant positioning and a poisoned debate. This situation has a negative impact on our projects, on our collectives of struggle, absorbing time and energy.
To be clear, we are talking about gender violence that has happened in our circles. We talkabout machismo, self-centeredness, Übermensch-ism of the worst interpretation of Nietzche. We talk about cowardice, boorish convenience, inability to self criticize, fear of judgment and lack of humility. This is what is happening in the Italian anarchist movement and, consequently, in editorial and publishing projects. The tendency of people accused of violent acts to approach these issues with a total rejection of the charge has made it difficult in recent years to distribute anarchist press and to organize events such as bookfairs. With this fair, we have decided to take on the responsibility that being together implies, and to step forward with this text, which we hope will tear open the veil of silence that tries to hide our domestic decay in the name of “more urgent” issues, often lamenting unspecified “feminist infiltration” and “Americanization of struggles”.

For us, this does not mean taking sides uncritically. We have no truth in our pockets; we have always refused to have any. Reducing gender issues to a mere clash of opposing poles (feminism-antifeminism) distances us from the possibility of individual and collective liberation, which we believe cannot be separated from a critique of patriarchal oppression.
To open spaces for debate, to give visibility to open questions, to confront each other among comrades, seems to us a good response in the face of gregariousness and indifference. The responsibility for the situation we are experiencing is certainly also collective. As an Italian-speaking anarchist movement, we have ignored issues related to the millennial patriarchal tradition of our society for too long. Perhaps due to the prevailing economic analysis of the nature of social oppression, this historical form of prevarication has not had much place in our struggles for liberation.
The lack of tools to deal with the discussions that these events have generated has obviously done a lot of damage. We are paying the price for our delay and superficiality in dealing with such complex issues, and it is being paid on the skin of our comrades. We feel that this needs to be addressed urgently, because if we affirm that solidarity among the oppressed, mutual support and strong and sincere relationships among comrades in struggle are our response to a world of segregation and oppression, then our conscience demands that we be consistent. Because we are talking about our ideas, our values.
Because we are talking about anarchist ethics.

Anarchist ethics, let’s talk about it.

For us, the issue is so serious because it raises deep questions: what kind of relationships do we want to establish between comrades? How do we understand our principles, especially anti-authoritarianism? How do we try to put them into practice in our daily lives? Is anarchy something we relegate to the realm of possible futures, or is it something we try to live every day?
From the answers that each person gives to these questions, we believe that different paths branch out, representing different tensions and projects, different ways of understanding oneself as anarchist. And it is whether or not we find ourselves in agreement in relation to them that establishes one of the basic parameters of organization among anarchists, affinity. We repeat: we are not among those who wish for the creation of a “strong anarchist movement” to serve as a beacon for the proletariat. We believe that this would lead to an inevitable flattening of diversity as well as a centralization of dynamics and political action that we reject. Instead, for us, the chaotic ferment of different tensions and projects is the best antidote to the crystallization of the movement into recognizable organizations, structures and groups that are necessarily stable and therefore at risk of “formalization”.For us, informal organization is not simply a strategic choice to be applied in different contexts of struggle, but the basis of our relationship between comrades. Affinity is thus the fundamental parameter that guides our lives. From the moment we do not separate struggle from everyday life, we understand our existence as a continuous conflict against the society of domination and oppression in all its shades and forms. For us, to recognize each other as comrades is to share a certain ethical vision of life that comes from our specific conception of anarchy. And that is why our blood runs cold when we see the issues of gender violence being avoided or made invisible, as well as the power dynamics and the multiple forms of oppression that can take shape in our environment. For these issues relate to the very basis of our being and, above all, of our being together, of our recognizing ourselves as comrades in our organizing to dismantle this world.

So caesura [break] (not censorship)

We have decided not to invite to this bookfair those publishing projects in which people have been accused of violence (of which we are aware) and who have not yet shown any accountability for their behavior, as well as groups, projects or individuals who have supported them. We have chosen to organize around the principle of affinity, and we stand by that choice. To those who will accuse us of exclusion, we respond that it seems consistent to us to distance those with whom we do not feel we share common ethical grounds, and that we want to build a space that welcomes people who have been excluded for so long as a result of choosing not to address certain issues clearly. To those who will accuse us of censorship: censorship is something systematic and total, put in place by total institutions like the state. We do not prevent anyone from organizing themselves to promote texts through the channels they consider to be the most appropriate, but we claim the freedom to choose what to distribute within our initiatives.

And in practice?

A problem we face today, when we organize bookfairs or carry out projects for the
distribution of anarchist texts, is therefore how to position ourselves with relation to the spreading of books – in some cases even of a certain relevance – that are nevertheless edited and published by collectives that continue to have collaborative relationships with people accused of gender violence. The question is open and not easily resolved, and it invites us to reflect on what anarchist distribution means for each of us. What sense do we give to the circulation of our content, and how much can that content be separated from those who write or edit it? Not only that, but how much does the uncritical distribution of certain editions contribute to giving them (and the individuals who participate in them) a certain legitimacy, fame, and credibility, in addition to financial support, in our circles? Or in contexts that are not even aware of such issues?

For some time now, there has been a debate about whether the distribution of books from certain publishing projects is in itself a form of taking sides.
In the discussions we had, we have encountered various forms of response that are used to cut off or avoid support for certain editions. We are aware that the issue is complex and that the ways of dealing with it are many and partly yet to be invented. Moreover, we do not wish to encourage conformism or homogeneity of behavior, so we have not found it necessary to call for conformity with the decisions already made by some in distributing or not distributing certain editions.
We are aware that the subject is complex and that the ways of dealing with it are multiple and in part still to be invented, and we do not wish, moreover, any conformism orhomogeneity of behavior, so we did not deem it necessary to invite to comply with the choices already adopted by some of the distribution projects involved.

We remain open and curious to debates and exchanges during the bookfair on the effectiveness of the different practical approaches that have been put in place on this issue, inviting anyone who shares the basic assumptions of this text to participate. We anticipate that our positioning within this debate does not imply the creation of any kind of safe spaces or awareness groups, care teams or similar things. The atmosphere and quality of the exchanges we will experience during the days of the bookfair will be responsibility of each and every individual.