Group & Guerilla Anarchism
Innate to Anarchism practice is the practice of guerrilla struggle. Anarchism as an ideology and practice is one of asymmetric warfare – this means struggle that does not play the game of the oppressors such as the state or the capitalists. It seeks to undermine those forces through propaganda and action, to trigger an insurrectionary process that sweeps away the old world, for the new one built on federalism, mutual aid and solidarity.
Anarchist Guerrilla practice is taking many forms around the world, overwhelmingly armed and mobile.
It places hit and run tactics at the forefront, unlike static insurrectionary squatting and informal attacks by individuals, it recognizes the need for support networks, group organisation and mobile, underground tactics. A rejection of mass structures of organisation and and an emphasis on direct action, waged by autonomous groups is at the heart of the modern anarcho-guerrilla.
The Guerrilla is our practice, the group is our preferred form of organisation. The autonomous group, sometimes known as the affinity group in the history books, does not negate the necessity for structured, permanent organisation, roles and specialization. It also does not stifle the absolute need for individual initiative from within and outside the groups themselves. The small group is both structured and flexible, allowing the fullest development of the individual and the concerted attack of the collective. It rejects mass structures, which soon descend into leadership, bureaucracy, and are prone to police infiltration.
With a tight nit security, and small numbers as a limit on scale, informally federating with other groups for specific actions, any police infiltration is kept to a minimum, isolated in each group – ling at worst.
Contemporary examples such as RUIS, formerly the IRPGF in Rojava and ”Revolutionary Struggle” in Greece are the seeds of this new (and old) anarchism.
Historical examples such Los Solidarios, Los Indomables in Spain, OPR-33 in Uruguay and numerous other examples, effectively prosecuted the armed struggle against both state and capital, based out of networks of community support.
These militant struggles, particularly in the Spanish experience were instrumental in building the revolutionary movements and cultures of their respective countries. They formed the backbone of the revolt against the fascist onslaught and were the embryos of the Durruti column, the Ascaso column, the Ortiz column and the Iron column ect. The groups were kept small but structured, embedded in local communities.
Utilising propaganda of the deed and sabotage they prosecuted a wars of attrition, culminating in organised insurrectionary attempts. These insurrectionary attempts, while highly organised where massive propaganda efforts to draw more working class individuals towards the anarchists and to cause cyclical revolutionary attempts culminating in the destruction of the state.
The networks of groups used expropriation to fund their acquisitions of arms and to support the numerous prisoner held in Spanish jails at the time. After the failed revolution, Anarchists such as Sabate, Facerias and many other continued to prosecute the guerrilla war against Franco, often circumventing the formal structures of the CNT-FAI, which as before the revolution, tended towards reformism and compromise – and even outright complicity with the state.
In many other countries, it was the armed guerrilla that provided the backbone to Anarchist struggle, from Bulgaria, to France to South America the armed anarchist guerrilla, based out of small groups have waged war against the capitalist order.
This is a history that has been widely ignored among ”anarcho-liberals” and their historians, mostly likely due to their own cowardice and lack of revolutionary intent. Leave the ”anarcho-liberals” to their reformism-build the revolutionary movement of action!
Slowly Anarchism is being re-armed and therefore rein-vigorated.
Long live the Insurrection!
Renzo Durruti.
Guerilla anarchism and its support base
Guerilla anarchism is not a populist ideology and practice-it will never be a popular one either.
Guerilla anarchism is built on, sustained by and shielded by networks of support, not organic communities within capitalism. It will always be a minoritarian tendency even within anarchist thought, nevermind within capitalist society.
Despite this it plays an indispensable role in the formation and maintenance of the anarchist movement and the insurrectionary process of revolution. It forms the defence groups of the anarchist movement, its funding sources, a key propaganda tool and the forces of attack.
Its support base is both rural and urban, based out of sympathetic individuals who provide finance, transport and shelter.
Organic communities in capitalism, whether they be the local area, the workplace community ect ect, will often view the anarchist guerilla in hostile terms, and often act against the guerilla in a negative fashion. This is the reality of the anarchist guerilla.
That is until the mass insurrectionary process, when the community engages in a social insurrection alongside the guerilla. Only then does the strength and necessity of the guerilla become apparent–as the sharp edge of the social insurrection.
The guerilla insurrectionary process.
A historical example such as the 1969 insurrection in the north of ireland is a prime example of the minoritarian role played by the armed insurrectionist in the wider insurrection.
For most of the build up to the 1969 insurrection the republican guerrillas were tiny groups of isolated insurrectionists, based out of support networks rather than wider community support. Only when the insurrection breaks out on a mass scale does the the community come to the guerilla.
This led to free territories being established in the bogside of Derry (Free Derry) , west Belfast and almost all of south Armagh, with the near takeover of Crossmaglen police barracks by a handful of armed protestors.
After these events the community came to the guerilla in large swathes, in a cyclical insurrectionary process of attack and repression and leading to the qualitative growth of the insurrectionary movement.
The movement was eventually defeated from within by it’s own leadership and centralisation of power into the hands of reformists.
Examples of the Anarchist Guerilla.
Durutti, Facerias, and Sabate ,all Anarchist guerrillas, all recognised the necessity of of the underground guerilla in the qualitative and quantitative development of the overall anarchist movement. All recognised that the guerilla movement must be built on an anarchist praxis to avoid the pitfalls and dangers that Irish revolutionaries succumbed to, such as centralisation, militarisation and eventually, reformism.
This does not negate the necessity of a polyform anarchist movement, engaged in various types of activity and propaganda. Anarchism is a broad church movement, with a broad back, that endures all. It means only the recognition that some of these “official” tendencies will oppose the specific guerilla tendency out of cowardice and self serving interests. This is too expected.
Those of static activity and institutional forms will always have a vested interest in maintaining their own power and standing.
All previous guerrillas have faced similar circumstances-these factors must be ignored or overcome, the academics of the movement will always place roadblocks on the path to insurrection.
Viva la Insurrection!
Renzo Durruti.
From BO-AK.org on the wayback machine https://bo-ak.org/index.php/en/theory-en/102-guerilla-anarchism