FAI attempts letter bombing of Deutsche Bank CEO

Uggggg. Triple post.

Those idiots need to read this.

Acal, the line is fairly clear. Like someone else said, an illegal picket is going to have a much better effect and will cause a fraction of the repression caused by something like this. Not only is it totally immoral (as Malva pointed out), it's just plain ineffective. When has propaganda of the deed ever actually worked? And as Red Ed pointed out, letter bombs are probably the worst form of propaganda of the deed (and that's saying something).

I mean, I can imagine a time when revolutionaries actually might have to start thinking about responding to ruling class violence more effectively than with bricks and molotovs, but that time certainly isn't now.

Yeah, for sure this is an apples to oranges type of comparison, but one of the posts above stirred my memory of the Belgrade situation. While the actual actions are not comparable, I do think the principle and consequent repression is.

The point that acal makes is valid. Where do we draw the line on something like this if the same type of arguments can be made against a wide variety of totally legitimate--but possibly illegal--tactics? My gut reaction is to say that collective action looks significantly different than individualist (and inherently vanguardist) action. As tastybrain above said, there might be a time during a revolutionary upheaval where something like this could be appropriate, but obviously we are nowhere near there now.

For those of you who want more substantial background on the FAI(nformale), I'd recommend:
325.nostate.net/library/escalation1.pdf

It's a compilation of texts put together a few years ago about the "last generation" of FAI actions. Parts of the group interview are genuinely terrifying, and point to the ways FAI seems to draw more from national liberation/Stalinist strands of armed struggle than classical insurrectionary anarchism. 'On A Few Topical Questions Concerning Anarchists and Not Only..' which is included in the above booklet, is an excellent and hostile critique of the FAI released way back in 2003 from within the Italian insurrectional current. Much more recently, the "Letter to the Anarchist Galaxy" is another critique, this time prompted by the worrying spread of the FAI worldwide, now that there have been FAI-claimed actions in Mexico, Peru, Russia, Indonesia, etc.

the webpage of the German mainstream weekly news magazine stern posted yesterday an article on the Informal AF (in German, sorry) which pointed out, that most anarchists despise them at that they are extremly dodgy, implicitely pointing out, that they may be something else than an anarchist group ...

Wow, unusual to read an article like that. Stern and Spiegel especially are the first ones to go apeshit over stuff like this IME.

Kinda waiting for a new series on the RAF and "left terrorism" in the Spiegel any day now lol...

there is a link in that article to our article.
this is our article (english translation):

One year after letterbombs have been send to the embassis of Switzerland and Chile in Rome, another senseless attack was committed. This time they tried to attack the boss of „Deutsche Bank“ Josef Ackermann. The group „informell anarchist Federation“ claims responsibility for this act.
This group is known for letterbombs attacks in the past. More than one time people have been injured by these actions.

Now we ask ourselfs what people are part of this group. There have been many „false flag“-actions in history. From time to time there have been several examples of how the ruling class trys to condemn political opponents and/or keep up a form of tension inside the society: La mano negra, Celler hole, Lavon affair, Gleiwitz incident.
Of course we dont know if there is a secret state agency behind this group or if those people are just confused idiots who consider themselves as anarchists.

We repudiate ourselves from this so called „informell anarchist federation“. This group is not part of the libertarian/anarchist movement and we condemn their actions. People are surpressed and murdered by this capitalist system every single day, but this fact is not a legitimation for making and sending letterbombs. This „propaganda of the deed“ is not a tool to achieve political objectives. These actions are against the idea of anarchism.
„The true anarchist violence ends where the need for defense and liberation ends.” - Errico Malatesta

It is important to point out that this group probably uses the same acronym (FAI) as the itlaian anarchist federation, which exists for many decades, on purpose. These are two completly different groups. The italian anarchist federation has repudiated themselves from the terrorist “informell anarchist federation” in the past, too.

anarchistischer Funke – anarchist spark

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we will write a bigger one with an analysis of this issue. i hope we can also translate it in englisch then.