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This book is about living in hiding. It pierces the darkness and leaps into the secrecy of the incognito, a parallel dimension in which even what could be said often is not. Out of excess of tact, fear or because one thinks it is not relevant. Or, in certain milieux and in the worst cases, due to mere political tactics. But, even at a glance, the world of clandestine people is not a desert land; on the contrary it is populated by living beings, experiences and ideas that are very close to ours, in both the most miserable and the most fascinating aspects of our lives, close to our most ardent desires and passionate daydreams.

As G8 summits have become annual appointments attended by thousands of demonstrators from all over the world, this article presents a few points of reflection on how the struggle against power can be really effective: do the protests carried out during the big events set by the leaders of the world bring any real attack on power? Do they really express solidarity to the oppressed? Do they really pose any significant obstacle to the destruction of the planet towards which we are all heading?

The theme of war has been present in almost every kind of publication in recent months, including anarchist ones. War is approaching, it is about to break out, the two great international blocks are moving towards war: we must do everything we can to prevent the world from being completely annihilated through a mad impulse of those who govern us.

Contributions to the struggle against the construction of a maxi-prison in Brussels. c/o Le Passage, espace d’info et de coordination dans la lutte contre la maxi-prison. Translation of the transcription of the meetings, which were held in French.

One part of this society has every interest in continuing to rule, the other in it all collapsing as soon as possible. Deciding which side one is on is the first step. But resignation, the basis of agreement between the parts (improvers of the existent and its false critics) is everywhere, even in our own lives — the authentic place of the social war — in our desires and resoluteness, just as in our little daily submissions. With all this it is necessary to draw daggers, to finally draw daggers with life.

This book has a lot to say, far more than might seem at first sight. But it requires a particular disposition on the part of the reader, a disposition to understand rather than to simply inform oneself.

Why on earth did these dear children shoot Montanelli in the legs? Wouldn’t it have been better to have shot him in the mouth? Of course it would. But it would also have been heavier. More vindictive and sombre. To lame a beast like that can have a deeper, more meaningful side to it that goes beyond revenge, beyond punishing him for his responsibility—fascist journalist and bosses’ lackey that he is.

What is anarchy? An idea that helps guide this desire. Anarchy means: no rulers. No domination. No one is a master and no one is a slave. But we live in a world of domination. The overwhelming force of the state, the all-pervading power of the market, the ever-present oppressions of species, gender, race, class, religion, down to the petty hierarchies and degradations of our everyday lives and personal relationships, the social norms of status, submission, isolation dug deep into our bodies. In totality: a system of shit.

Words. Mere Words. The pages that follow are in part transcriptions of the spoken word—‘the wonder worker that is no more’, as Emma Goldman wrote wistfully over one hundred years ago when referring to the inadequacy of the spoken word to awaken thought and shake people out of their lethargy. Here in the twenty-first century anarchists no longer talk about spoken propaganda to awaken the masses, bemoaning the absence of orators such as Johann Most or Luigi Galleani. In rare encounters organized by comrades today ‘the masses’ are noticeably absent, they don’t even enter the equation.

The book we are presenting here is an interesting attempt by Osvaldo Bayer to reconstruct the activities of the Italian anarchist Severino Di Giovanni in Argentina in the 1920’s. It also bears all the consequences of such a difficult task undertaken with the thorough but limited tools of the journalist.