Until Palo Alto burns...

international | sci-tech | opinion/analysis Thursday May 06, 2021 09:56 by steven

This text is a free translation from an article found on Barrikade.info in german and published a few days ago.

In january, the french police annonced 121 mobile phone masts had been sabotaged in only one year in France. At the time of this article, in the end of march 2021, a new communication on France Info radio, annonced the number had rose to 173.

That the State, the police, the minister of Interior, the judges or the medias try intensively to link these sabotages either to a so-called ultra-left, or to somewhat conspirationnists must not surprise us. This kind of communication operation comes from the conter-insurgency doctrine developed by the french state during the colonial war in Indochina, and was sophisticated through various conflitcs, from the Algerian war to the different social movements. To isolate the ennemy who revolts itself and depoliticize its struggle, the methodology is here wellknown.
On the opposit, it is confusing to see such a depolitisation towards mobile phone masts sabotage from the autonomous network as well, which allows us to raise some questions. How is it possible that today, it seems normal and justified, autonomous persons use these terms so easily, as they are themselves persons too often facing the same attempts of depolitisation of their own struggles.
We would have hoped a bit more sensitiveness, care and a deeper analysis of the situation.
But let’s look back in time.
Duing the first lock-down, there was in europe a big wave of sabotages against mobile phone masts. Meanwhile, on internet, theories were spread considering the 5G deployement would be, among other things, responsible of the massive epidemy of the covid virus, saying the density of the raditions would allow the virus to survive longer in the air, spreading therefore in a greater way, or this kind of things. Quickly, these ideas were shared by different state and mediatic institutions, so to discredit the saboteurs. But although it was spread by the repression forces this rethoric was quickly taken back by and in the autonomous network.
That the State who, during the covid crisis, took the opportunity to boost the digital restructuration of the mean of production and capitalists lifestyles - allowing, as proudly Bruno Le Maire was saying, to leap 10 years ahead – had all profit in isolating and discredit any form of resistance against the digitalisation of our lives, is obvious. We even could have pitied our political ennemys not to have reacted in such a way.
Nothing alike, concerning some of the autonomous scenes. The reason why they howl with the wolves in the same directions will remain a mystery, and reveal an unbelievable shrunken and mistaken vision.
The mobile phone masts or the optical fiber ligns were found and targeted by different scenes coming from various ideological and social currents, and pointed like crucial nerves and pillars of the digital capitalist restructuration, far before than this sanitary crisis began. Already, in the heart of the yellow vest movement, these infrastructures were targeted, and they are since many years, attacked by anarchists, sometimes supported by different articles or revendications.
A large part of the population is aware that digital restructuration is a central pillar of the neoliberal political leadership. You just need to be working as a nurse in a hospital, or all day on a production chain in a connected factory managed by algorithmes, or to ride on bycicle these neverending kilometers as a uber, to see what kind of monster we’re facing and in which way it drives us sick.
In that way, even though some of those saboteurs did truly believe that the 5G was the cause the Covid pandemia against all rationality, it doesn’t change that the intution guiding the action was a good one.
What counts in the end, is that human beings feel a clear threat to be seen for their lives and freedom land react to it, attacking what is choking them.
Therefore, to depoliticise these fears and critics in action, only because the reduced intellectual analysis thought to be those of the person commiting the action, seems to us a big mistake.

To push aside and to isolate politicaly people who decide to resist public order or the daily attacks made to us, is to open the way to the far-rightwing forces, leaving them the opportunity to capture this anger and dislike.
That’s why, we pleadge for an international conspiration against the neo-liberal and capitalist order, and for a raging support for all the saboteurs of the digital octopuss.
The association of the friends of Klaus Augenthaler