A-Infos (en) Mexico, FAM, Regeneracion #19 - Editorial: Pacifists, Not Passivists (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

We live in times of war, both "low-intensity" and outright carnage. When 
Zionist henchmen massacre Gaza, bomb neighboring countries, and also the 
regional powerhouse Iran and its patriarchal religious dictatorship, on 
the verge of unleashing a nuclear world war due to the involvement of 
the empires that divided the planet, we feel the echoes of the past 
returning to the present like never before. The rotten breath of the 
20th century-imperialism, colonialism, nationalism, fascism, 
totalitarianism, militarism, institutionalized genocide-returns with 
even greater force, reminding us that, in reality, it never left, 
denying the "end of history" so heralded by neoliberal academia.
At the same time, the war of capital against society is intensifying, 
with the precarization of working conditions, the criminalization of 
struggles, the dispossession and plundering of territories and common 
goods, the rise of authoritarianism and fascist-like governments 
sheltered by liberal democracy, and the totalitarian control of the 
population through computer systems. Suffice it to mention the recent 
reform of the General Population Law, which exposes the Big Brother face 
of the 4T. Both left and right, even if they call themselves new, 
actually give off the well-known national-militarist stench that, step 
by step, just as it did a hundred years ago, is shedding its 
"democratic" masks and positioning terror, war, and shock as tools of 
salvation for a global capitalism in crisis.
Armies are becoming capitalist, and capitalists are building armies. And 
the "citizens," victims of nationalism, despite hunger and exhaustion, 
remain in the eternal zócalo, singing the anthem, saluting the 
president, and taking pride in the Armed Forces and their shining 
planes. Nationalism, this great magician who numbs consciences and makes 
us imagine ourselves as a community of equals that we have never been, 
is born as a war ideology of the modern state. Nationalism is the "opium 
of the people," which makes us seek imaginary enemies, confronting other 
peoples to the death in the name of a jealous homeland, while our true 
adversaries greet us calmly from their boxes adorned with patriotic 
colors. At the same time, they maintain relations with a genocidal 
regime like Israel.
Faced with such a reality, anarchism offers a long and rich history of 
antimilitarist, antifascist, and pacifist reflection and action that 
should not be forgotten, especially in these times of cyclical 
reactivations of oppression. Both yesterday and today, the anarchist 
struggle against war and authoritarianism must be intensified, recalling 
Paul Gille's phrase: "pacifists, not passivists." What does this mean? 
What kind of pacifism does anarchism promote?
If we look at the anarchist mobilizations against World War I, denounced 
as a confrontation between empires and their capitals; as in Latin 
America, the anarchist calls for the boycott and desertion of workers 
from both countries during the Chaco War (1932-35) between Bolivia and 
Paraguay; the anti-patriotic and anti-militarist education of the Modern 
School; the anti-fascist propaganda of so many libertarians such as 
Maria Lacerda da Moura, Luigi and Luce Fabbri, Rudolf Rocker, and many 
others- And finally, the direct combat against fascism during the 
Spanish Civil War and on the front lines of World War II, with 
anarchists acting on the front lines in the fight against the Nazis, we 
can identify some key elements of anarchist thought and action in the 
face of war.
First and foremost, anarchism, an enemy of the State and Capital and 
promoter of the fraternity and solidarity of the oppressed, rejects 
nationalism as a bourgeois ideology and promotes horizontal 
internationalism among subalterns: "Our homeland is the whole world," 
said Pietro Gori. It believes that war between states is waged at the 
expense of the working classes, who are thrown in as cannon fodder to 
murder their fellow human beings in the name of imperial, expansionist, 
and capitalist plundering interests. It rejects the arms race, the right 
of the strongest, and the ethos of the jackboot. In the face of the 
chauvinistic hatred that segregates and separates human beings, he 
proposes fraternal love, as Luce Fabbri said: "the love of the one who 
threw down his rifle and was executed for having shouted 'brother!' to 
the one who spoke another language on the other side of the trenches; 
the love of the deserters who had fought against the war and had gone to 
jail so that others would not die; the love of those who were outraged 
by injustice; the love of manual or intellectual workers who organized 
strikes and prepared a revolution that never came."1

Anarchism denounces that the supreme objective of each state is to 
impose itself on others, which is why as long as states exist, there 
will be no peace on Earth. Thus, once equipped with a state with 
powerful alliances and state-of-the-art weapons, formerly oppressed 
peoples become oppressors and murderers of others. The war that 
massacres peoples lines the pockets of capitalists, speculators, arms 
dealers, and mercenaries, opening up "new opportunities" for them in 
dispossessed territories: just look at Trump's hotel plans in Gaza.
---------------------------------------------------
1. See Fabbri, Luce, Fascism: Definition and History, Montevideo, 
Microutopias, 2019, p. 9.

Hence the pacifist stance of anarchists, which, however, does not imply 
passivism, but rather opposes imperial war with social revolution. As 
demonstrated by the Paris Commune, the CNT during the Spanish Civil War, 
or the Kurdish army in Rojava: in the context of war, one doesn't choose 
sides; rather, one fights, not just defends, for a better society. And 
in the face of internal war, one acts in rejection of authoritarianism, 
militarization, and the totalitarian surveillance of our societies, 
promoting a culture of solidarity and mutual support among the oppressed 
and defending the autonomy of our spaces and territories.

FAM Press and Propaganda Commission
August 2025.

https://www.federacionanarquistademexico.org/
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