(Lima, Peru) Against the Authoritarianism of the System and the False Compañerxs

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Editor’s Note: We find this communique important to share in English, but as an editorial committee it doesn’t necessarily reflect our perspectives in their entirety.

The Juventud Anarquista de Lima (Anarchist Youth of Lima), a collective of anarchist affinity in the region dominated by the Peruvian state, expresses its solidarity to fellow libertarians that day in and day out continue struggling in all possible forms for the revolutionary destruction of the system and in favor of the construction of social harmony that does not discriminate nor oppress any individual, beneath the principles of the anarchistic ideal: antiauthoritarianism, autonomy, self-organization, mutual aid, federalism and direct action, etc.

The contemporary moment shows us the emergence of a libertarian movement with great projection to the future, carried out by anarchists themselves, that organized or individually assume not only a consciousness but aggressive and destructive action against the prevailing system of exploitation and oppression.  From the trench of propaganda and diffusion of the anarchistic ideals and practices, our grain of sand as another group, as another individual.

The social war shapes us and unites us in the conviction to struggle until the last fist for social emancipation, without hegemonic pretensions, whether sometimes organized as individual-collective or as a collective of individuals, at the service of one common cause: freedom.

This occasion also serves to demarcate us from—and this will never be sufficient—whatever pretension of altering the course of our path, or of falsifying our principles.  As for words and writings, there are mountains of ink and paper, but in terms of actions and practices, we are still demonstrating who we are, what we want and where we are going.  Our labor of struggle and revolution comes from our own individuality, and encompasses our neighborhoods, communities, autonomous spaces, self-organized and self-managed projects, direct actions and all libertarian forms or tactics that are necessary.  These labors face permanent threat from factors that can be harmful or simply distracting of this process of social construction-destruction.

One of those factors is internalized authoritarianism, present in individuals or groups that call themselves “anarchists”.  First of all, we assume that, as individuals raised within a system of oppression and a society plagued by injustice and perversions, we also carry the weight and contamination of this classist society.  However, the anarchist is the slave who becomes aware of their chains (physical and mental) and fights to destroy them.  In this sense, the forging of rebelliousness as a conscious attitude of rupture with the established system, implies overcoming as individuals all the inherited conservatism and internalized attitudes that reinforce the moral patterns, institutions and power of the bourgeois. That fight both within and outside ourselves is reflected in how we complete ourselves with our environment, how we form free associations with each other, and how we channel ourselves towards social relations grounded in equality, solidarity, kinship/fraternity and tolerance.  That is to say, social relations that are horizontal and liberatory.

The opposite is the assumption of typical attitudes of bourgeois individualism, like arrogance, vanity, jealousy, intolerance, contempt, etc., that is to say, social relations that are vertical or hierarchical, typical expressions of narcissistic individuals, egoists and authoritarians.

These false compañerxs that exercise vertical social relations, will not be the last nor have they been the first – fortunately miniscule – droves of unhappy creatures of an authoritarian society, that have believed that it was enough to tag themselves “anarchist” to invest themselves with a new authority over other individuals and assume themselves to be the priests of the new truth revealed by “anarchy”, to award themselves further, the power of giving out excommunications left and right, and judge who is or who isn’t “anarchist” far from a practical and principled criteria.

The petit-bourgeois always will be seen as ridiculous in their intent of camouflaging themselves as rebels… and they will be able to be “rebels” if they like to project that image, but they NEVER will be REVOLUTIONARIES, because that is never determined by a self-elected priest, but by the acts that each one unravels internally and externally that have repercussions in the daily destruction of all forms of power.

They can deceive those who do not know their tricks, but they can’t deceive everyone.  They pontificate from their platform as “assembly members” of those vertical, rigged assemblies (that serve to legitimize them as hidden lovers of institutionality).  Let’s see it that these pontificating pseudo-anarchists don’t fool anybody.  The “popes” of anarchism have no place in any liberatory project.

Our forceful rejection is against all forms of individual and group authoritarianism, of those individuals that, perhaps blinded in their feeling of intellectual superiority or of having better logic and resources than others, assume they can direct and centralize in their group of friends the spontaneous actions of other collectives and of the entire movement.

The partisan temptation is a constant tension in a rebel movement.  When all forms of neo-idolatry have not been irreversibly buried, when the rebellion is not at the same time iconoclasm, the old society takes refuge in the old or new strong man politics to win the leadership of a new rebel movement, and in it, the enlightened pastors only look for sheep to slaughter in their herd.

Although these authoritarian specimens still are far from a partisan ability to split or direct a movement in development, it is necessary to make evident and DISCARD these practices that already prelude such characters.

This valid mention is for those “fellow travelers” that were on our side and whose inconsistency or in consequence of our terms of ideals and actions led us to distance them from our spaces and distance ourselves from their presence, as it is harmful, toxic and totally incongruent with anarchist principles.

Our separation is therefore a principled act, not an attack on individuality, but on all of those masquerading attitudes and practices that hope to pass strong man politics as voluntarism, debauchery as freedom, free sex (another bourgeois variety of sexism) as free love, “cronyism” as anarchist affinity, and partisanship as principalism, etc.  Between them there is great difference, like between anarchism and what their acts have made evident of the so-called “fellow travelers” or “false compañeros”.

And this is also a warning to those other “fellow travelers” that still walk around camouflaged, harboring some still hidden desire to approach a movement only to satisfy personal desire for leadership, protagonism, revenge, lumpen or bourgeois depravation, totalitarian temptation in politics, hegemony, partisanship, etc.  Fortunately, such individuals are already identifiable, and although they unite to continue to get ahead and sabotage libertarian projects, they will not be successful.  Their faces and acts have almost all been uncovered.  At least enough so as to be able to distinguish and separate the wheat from the straw.

Ridiculous then, are certain authoritarian sexists and “macho” thugs, disguising themselves as anti-patriarchal, whitewashed to deceive the brothers and sisters of good faith that recently approached these circles to impregnate themselves with the anarchist idea.  Those that do not know the recent past of these constant disgraces including political positions of obstruction and sabotage on other projects and collectives, to the physically and psychologically aggressive individuals toward other anarchist brothers and sisters and against their own partners and kids.

For their fruits they are known.  Their actions speak for them.  And only one act is worth more than a thousand speeches.  As such, they occupy their days and nights typing in social networks.  In place of favorable propaganda for libertarian construction and proposition, they type constant tirades charged with hate, with insulting irony toward those that are not “their friends” and of self-complacency and futile back-slapping of their cheerleaders.  But, just as easy as it is to recognize the criminal that shouts “the criminal”, it is easy to see that their private actions have been unmasked.

However, we will not be judges to anyone, because we firmly believe in the capacity of the individuals to assume with courage a SINCERE SELF-CRITICISM OF ONE’S OWN ACTS and to reconcile them with the ideals and with other individuals to whom they have attacked.  But let it be by CONVICTION and not for CONVENIENCE.

In the meantime, we believe that we can exercise our freedom to mark our distances, excluding those from our spaces, activities and associations who have already demonstrated in actions and words an authoritarian, aggressive and violent character.  Those that have demonstrated a tendency to sabotage other collectives and compañeros.  Most importantly, because THEY DO NOT SHOW THE WILLINGNESS TO CHANGE but rather continue justifying the unjustifiable in their actions.

The federative principle, alludes to the free association of individuals and the criteria of affinity, thus excluding all AUTHORITY, whether it be individual or group.  Those can then, with their own authority criticize their victims who resort to self-defense against them.  Nobody obligates them to those arrogant, vertical and authoritarian attitudes that discount them as compañerxs.  Nobody wants neither their presence nor aggression in our anarchist spaces.  If this occurs, we will no longer respond with passivity, but with SELF-DEFENSE.

Meanwhile, we will continue with our quiet yet vigorous work, without fuss, nor bombs or symbols warning the enemy of our actions and projects of diffusion and concretion of the anarchist ideal.  We do this in order to construct a vigorous libertarian movement and to clarify consciousness, to illuminate the pathway forward toward the freedom of our community and ourselves.


Be vigilant and take caution, fellow anarchist, of those who seek to falsify the ideal.  Be vigilant and be careful of those that love etiquette, exaggeration, and overvaluation.  Those that mask futile interests.  So that they don’t deceive you when they call their personal gain “self-organization”.  So that they don’t deceive you when they call vertical businesses, “cooperatives”, nor when they disguise their parties as groups of direct action, or their friends’ clubs as affinity groups.

The process itself is separating the derogatory, diluting, treacherous and partisan individuals, that believe that anarchism can reproduce positions of leadership, of strong man politics and to falsify the organization of the movement to undermine it, with their inept sectarian sabotage.  Those that stay only to agitate with their drunken swipes, pompous but sterile invitations, like their speeches and projects, where authoritarianism and mercantilism win.

Vulgar and reactionary authoritarianism does not have a place in this movement.  These individuals have already been isolated, and as such their pseudo “libertarian” projects will perish.  On this occasion also, we summon the compañeros to an adequate use of the social networks in favor of diffusion of the libertarian ideal avoiding to fall into the false spectacle, in the easy defamation of other compañerxs without any foundation or proof.  To not fall in the false “debate” of chat, in the naïve discussion boards in cyberspace where denunciations are fed by whatever radical “blunder”.  We do not want, and we will not consider that there exists salon, coffee shop, bar nor chat anarchists…less so that the revolution is planned or arrives from “social networks”.  Anarchism is neither bullfighting with a compañerx, nor discourse and half measures before the enemy: it is first of all revolutionary consciousness, consequence and action.

Translated from the original here: https://www.facebook.com/juventudanarquistalima/posts/1973745059556344

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