page_title: Insurrectionary anarchism
section_title: Contemporary approaches
hierarchical_section_title: Insurrectionary anarchism / Origins and evolution / Contemporary approaches
caption_attribution_description: This was shot at the WTO protests in Seattle WA Nov. 1999. This is also from the roll that was damaged in processing.
context_page_description: Insurrectionary anarchism is a revolutionary theory and tendency within the anarchist movement that emphasizes insurrection as a revolutionary practice. It is critical of formal organizations such as labor unions and federations that are based on a political programme and periodic congresses. Instead, insurrectionary anarchists advocate informal organization and small affinity group based organization. Insurrectionary anarchists put value in attack, permanent class conflict and a refusal to negotiate or compromise with class enemies.
context_section_description: A resurgence of such ideas for Joe Black happened "in the peculiar conditions of post war Italy and Greece". "Towards the end of World War II there was a real possibility of revolution in both countries." "Greece was to suffer decades of military dictatorship while in Italy the Communist Party continued to hold back struggles. Insurrectionalism was one of a number of new socialist ideologies which arose to address these particular circumstances." In Italy a tendency that did not identify either with the more classical Italian Anarchist Federation or with the platformist inclined (GAAP  Anarchist Groups of Proletarian Action) started to emerge as local groups. These groups emphasized direct action, informal affinity groups and expropriation for financing anarchist activity. From within these groups the influential Italian insurrectionary anarchist Alfredo Maria Bonanno will emerge influenced by the practice of the Spanish exiled anarchist Josep Lluís i Facerias.
  One insurrectionalist has described how the ideas spread from Italy: "Insurrectionary anarchism has been developing in the English language anarchist movement since the 1980s, thanks to translations and writings by Jean Weir in her Elephant Editions and her magazine Insurrection.... In Vancouver, Canada, local comrades involved in the Anarchist Black Cross, the local anarchist social center, and the magazines No Picnic and Endless Struggle were influenced by Jean's projects, and this carried over into the always developing practice of insurrectionary anarchists in this region today ... The anarchist magazine Demolition Derby in Montreal also covered some insurrectionary anarchist news back in the day."
  Insurrectionalist ideas also spread to the New Left movement in the United States, often being present in various revolutionary terrorist organizations, such as the Weathermen, Black Liberation Army, and M19CO. Weathermen leader Bernardine Dohrn argued for violence, saying: "We've known that our job is to lead white kids into armed revolution. We never intended to spend the next five to twenty-five years of our lives in jail. Ever since SDS became revolutionary, we've been trying to show how it is possible to overcome frustration and impotence that comes from trying to reform this system. Kids know the lines are drawn: revolution is touching all of our lives. Tens of thousands have learned that protest and marches don't do it. Revolutionary violence is the only way."
  Magazine Do or Die reports that "Much of the Italian insurrectionary anarchist critique of the movements of the '70s focused on the forms of organisation that shaped the forces of struggle and out of this a more developed idea of informal organisation grew. A critique of the authoritarian organisations of the '70s, whose members often believed they were in a privileged position to struggle as compared to the proletariat as a whole, was further refined in the struggles of the '80s, such as the early 1980s struggle against a military base that was to house nuclear weapons in Comiso, Sicily. Anarchists were very active in that struggle, which was organised into self-managed leagues." Later in 1993 the Italian insurrectionary anarchist Alfredo Bonanno writes For An Anti-authoritarian Insurrectionalist International in which he proposes coordination between mediterranean insurrectionists after the period of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and civil war in the ex-Yugoslavia.
  For Joe Black "That insurrectionalism should emerge as a more distinct trend in English language anarchism at this point in time should be no surprise. The massive boost anarchism received from the summit protest movement was in part due to the high visibility of black bloc style tactics." In the USA Feral Faun (later writing as Wolfi Landstreicher and Apio Ludd) gained notoriety as he wrote articles that appeared in the post-left anarchy magazine Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed. Feral Faun wrote in 1995, "In the game of insurgence—a lived guerilla war game—it is strategically necessary to use identities and roles. Unfortunately, t
caption: Protester facing riot police in the "Battle of Seattle"
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