Reposted from Return Fire

Samhain, 2020

Here you can find the first chapter of Return Fire vol.6, our new format for releasing the zine with what we hope to be improved layout and readability. (See here for the intention for the staged release plan.) And here is the imposed version (A3 size) for the usual comrades doing autonomous print-runs, and those who want to do the same.

Global events around the spectre of COVID-19 have added to the longer period between this release and the previous one, although less so than the book we have been preparing and are now in a dynamic and enriching trans-continental discussion about before publishing. Also watch out for more chapters of the current volume of the zine, as well as book updates and new Return Fire website features to follow.

This chapter features anti-authoritarian propositions, social movement analysis, dispatches from frontlines of revolt and from its edges, conceptions of various indigenous anarchisms, odes to play and dis-alienation, the usual repression reports and action methodologies, love letters to the land and bodily practices for rejoining ourselves with it.

As we announced a full turning of the year past, this volume hopes to confront the relation of our anarchy to the amorphous outline of what is often called The Left: something that seems as topical now as ever, and about which we are excited by the outlines of submission proposals already received. Accordingly, most articles in this chapter (explicitly or not) bring a critical eye to historical legacies of leftism as they impact our worlds and our circles, though we have also made space for some anarchists who do see their project as more compatible with the base (and not the hierarchies) of leftist elements than we do, when we have found their contributions interesting and hope to press on these questions, to better identify friends and enemies beyond simple categorisations.

With the deck now cleared of some selections and translations we’d been sitting on (sorry translators!), various thoughts about the current regime of ‘pandemic capitalism’ and the current state of techno-industrial society will be further addressed in chapter 2.

Return Fire vol.6 chap.1 contents:

Anarchism in the North East and Beyond

(introducing the Beautiful Idea afresh)

23 Theses Concerning Revolt

(how can we stop defeating ourselves each time?)

‘Dispassion and Timelessness’

(identify the practices of dominator ecology)

The Fight in Catalunya

(what’s at stake in a messy and contradictory movement)

‘Wearing the Scars Inside’

(provocation from the margins)

‘It Depends on All of Us’

(rounding up the previous phase of struggle across the pond)

Rebellion Extinction

(don’t believe the hype…)

Green Capital and Environmental “Leaders” Won’t Save Us

(review: Jeff Gibbs’ Planet of the Humans)

Rebels Behind Bars

(text by prisoners & repression news)

Memory as a Weapon

(continuities from the meeting of worlds to this day)

Skills and Sabotage

(a return to the body through subverting public space)

Poems for Love, Loss and War

Ghosts of the Land

(a seasonal song for connection, mourning, and resolve)

…and more!

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