Montréal Contre-information
Montréal Contre-information
Montréal Contre-information

The Briarthorn OpSec Guide

 Comments Off on The Briarthorn OpSec Guide
Jul 132025
 

From No Trace Project

PDF: read | letter booklet • TXT

Introduction

There’s a lot of work that goes into figuring out how not to get arrested, and how to minimise the damage if you are. To try to make it easier for our comrades, we want to share the techniques we’ve developed while operating an illegal activist organisation. This is a guide for non-experts, but for some procedures it will help to be moderately techy or at least be working with some techy friends.

Caveats

DON’T TRUST US TOO MUCH. We’ve put a lot of thought into this and we haven’t been caught yet, but it’s always possible we’ve just been getting lucky. Where possible, do your own research and think it through for yourself. These procedures are starting points to develop from, provided because they’re a better place to start from than the usual insecure ways of doing things. We’ve tried to make it harder to blindly trust us by explicitly noting when there’s something we don’t know.

THIS INFORMATION WILL GO OUT OF DATE. We’re writing this in 2025. The longer after that you’re reading this, the more likely some details are no longer true.

ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT WHAT THE POLICE CAN OR WILL DO ARE RELEVANT TO THE UNITED KINGDOM (UK), because that’s where we work.

And perhaps most importantly, DON’T LET WORRYING ABOUT SECURITY STOP YOU FROM GETTING SHIT DONE! If you get paranoid and don’t do something because it’s too difficult to do perfectly safely, the surveillance state wins. Do things safely enough for the level of risk they carry, and always take easy opportunities to make things safer, but if you spend days setting things up perfectly safely just to do some graffiti or something then they’ve won by virtue of stopping whatever other thing you could have done with all that effort.

General Principles

There are two fundamental principles to bear in mind across all of this.

Threat Modeling

In order to know what to do to keep yourself safe, you need to know what the realistically likely dangers are. A threat model is an idea of who’s trying to stop you and what they can do, and if you’re doing operational security then you need to have one. The procedures in this document are written on the assumption that you’re mainly up against the UK police, and they’re not willing to invest more resources into stopping you than they are any random low-to-mid-level illegal activist group (i.e. you’re not doing any terrorism or anything). It also assumes that you’re not doing anything very public, that most of your operations will never be reported to the police. If you’re doing headline-grabbing propaganda stuff then you may face a different threat profile, for instance you don’t have to keep the existence of the group secret but you might have to worry more about infiltrators. The reason we’ve chosen this threat model is that it’s the situation we have experience with, and also that we feel more groups could do with focusing on changing the world directly ourselves rather than trying to convince the government to do it for us.

Defense In Depth

There will always be things you overlook, and things you couldn’t have known. When your defenses inevitably fail, you should have other defenses in place so that it’s not a total disaster. This means that even if you trust someone completely, you still don’t tell them incriminating things they don’t need to know. Even if your encrypted drive is secure, you still delete things off it when you don’t need them anymore. Even if you’re using an encrypted messaging app, you still use pseudonyms. When you fuck something up, it shouldn’t be the end of the world.

Procedures

This section is the bulk of the guide. It contains a set of procedures for doing various things more securely. Often they refer to each other, e.g. part of the procedure for securely buying things from the internet is to apply the procedure for securely using the web. Each procedure has three increasingly secure versions: Acceptable, Good and Paranoid. More secure versions include doing all the things mentioned in the less secure versions as well unless otherwise specified. We’ve made this division so that people won’t get bogged down worrying about security that’s way over the top for what they’re doing. As a rough guide, we feel that for crimes that don’t necessarily invite police attention every time as described in the introduction, the Acceptable level is appropriate for when we’re risking up to maybe six months, Good for up to a couple of years, Paranoid for up to maybe five or six years. But that’s just our personal comfort levels at this particular stage in our lives, so don’t take that as gospel. For crimes that do invite police attention, we’d probably move everything down one category — no custodial sentence, six months, a couple of years.

Going Somewhere

Acceptable

Wear a mask and nondescript clothing.

Good

Leave your phone behind — the phone company knows its location at all times and keeps records for years. Pay for public transport in cash if possible. Be aware of CCTV, especially cameras that may be government-operated rather than belonging to private businesses since the police can access them more easily.

Paranoid

Don’t bring anything with your name on it. Possibly arrange for a comrade to alibi you if necessary.[1]

Using The Web

Acceptable

Use Tor Browser. If you’re not familiar with it, Tor Browser is a web browser that routes your connection through a series of other computers before it reaches the website you’re connecting to. This means the website doesn’t know who you are because your connection appears to come from somewhere else, unless of course you tell it who you are yourself (e.g. by signing into an account in your own name). It’s easy to install and use on pretty much any computer, including smartphones. See torproject.org.

Good

Use Tails. If you’re not familiar with it, Tails is a piece of software you put on a USB stick or SD card (see the procedure for storing digital information) that lets you boot the computer you plug it into using a secure operating system. Tails ensures all internet traffic goes through Tor, and leaves no trace on the computer of what you were doing. See tails.net.

Paranoid

Use Tails from a public wifi network, such as in a coffee shop. This will probably involve applying the procedure for going somewhere, unless you live across the road from a coffee shop or something and can connect to the wifi from your house. Be aware of CCTV, but most businesses don’t store CCTV records for too long. If you get a coffee, pay in cash. Don’t make a habit of using the same place every time.

Messaging Someone On The Internet

Acceptable

Use Signal. If you’re not familiar with it, Signal is an encrypted messaging app. It requires a phone number to sign up, but can be used on a computer as long as the account is tied to a phone. Apply the procedure for storing digital information to any device that you install Signal on. If you think you might be arrested, uninstall Signal. When you reinstall it you will have lost all your messages, this is an unavoidable consequence of the security features that prevent the police from recovering your Signal messages from a device you’ve uninstalled it from. Note that the way that your Signal messages with someone are most likely to be leaked is if the police get hold of your or that person’s inadequately-secured device and simply unlock it and read the messages the same way the intended recipient would. However, if that happens they won’t necessarily know who the other person in the conversation is (unless you revealed who you are in one of the messages they read). See signal.org.

Other encryted messaging platforms exist, but Signal is very popular, so firstly it’s less suspicious to be using it and secondly it’s been extensively tested in practice. If Signal isn’t an option, we like the look of Matrix or SimpleX, but we don’t have experience with them.[2]

Good

Use separate Signal accounts for different purposes, so if one of them is identified as you the others may not be. You need a separate phone number for each account, so you’ll need to get a SIM card, they’re sold in many supermarkets (apply the procedure for buying something in person, or just apply the procedure for going somewhere and steal one). You don’t have to activate the SIM card in order to receive the verification text, so don’t — that will connect your bank account to it. You’ll need to keep hold of the SIM card in case you lose access to your account (e.g. by having to uninstall Signal), but you should keep it hidden because if the police search your house and find it they may be able to discover and maybe even impersonate the account it’s associated with. Alternatively, if you set a Signal PIN (see below) you may be able to use that to recover your account without the SIM.

Configure Signal settings to be more secure — set “who can see my number” and “who can find me by number” to nobody, set a default disappearing messages timer, turn off link previews, read receipts and typing indicators, turn on call relaying, turn on screen lock, set a Signal PIN (use a secure alphanumeric PIN) and enable registration lock.

Consider using Molly (molly.im). Molly is an alternative frontend for Signal. It makes it harder for someone who has your phone to get into your account, but it isn’t widely-used enough to be quite sure it’s well-made and safe.

Paranoid

Instead of using a phone, have your sensitive Signal accounts on Tails using signal-cli. We won’t go into detail about signal-cli because if you’re technical enough to use it you’ll be able to figure it out yourself. You can connect signal-desktop to the account for ease of use. Don’t put the SIM in your own phone, use a burner phone (acquired with the procedures for buying something, either online or in person). Never turn the burner on at home or in a location connected to you, or in the presence of your or your comrades’ phones, as the phone company will know where it is and what other phones are nearby and store that information. Once you’ve registered your account, get rid of the burner. Apply the procedure for storing an object for the burner and SIM. They should be stored together, as getting access to either one will reveal all the information that could be acquired from either, unless you decide to just dispose of the phone and get a new one if you need it.

Eventually, the phone company deactivates unregistered or registered but unused SIMs and allows a new one to be made with the same number. When this happens you’ll no longer be able to recover your account using the SIM, and it’s possible that the person who buys the new SIM will use it to register for Signal, kicking you out of your account (note that they won’t gain access to your account, it’ll just be lost). In order to prevent this, note when your SIM will expire and move your account to a new number before it happens. If you’re getting reasonably newly made SIMs this shouldn’t be more than every couple of years. You’ll need to do this even if you haven’t kept the SIM card and you’re just using the PIN to get back in if you lose access.

Using Cryptocurrency

A detailed guide to the non-security aspects of using cryptocurrency is out of scope for this document, so this procedure is written assuming you know how to use cryptocurrency.

Acceptable

Apply the procedure for using the web, and use monero. Monero is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency, which is important, because contrary to popular belief most cryptocurrencies are extremely traceable. For regulatory reasons it’s difficult to buy monero in the UK, but you can buy other currencies and easily exchange them. Apply the procedure for storing digital information to your wallet. You can buy cryptocurrency from an onramp service or an exchange.

If the thing you want to buy can’t be bought with cryptocurrencies, you can buy virtual prepaid debit cards using monero on sites like coinsbee.com (not forgetting to still apply the procedure for using the web) and use those to pay for it.

Since storing information securely leads to an increased risk of losing it, you may want to keep a record of your wallet seed. This should be stored securely itself, either as digital information or written down. Someone who gets access to it gets full access to the wallet.

Good

Make sure you’re using a local wallet rather than an exchange (but it’s unlikely you can get monero on an exchange these days anyway). Access the monero network over Tor, the feather wallet has a facility for this built in (featherwallet.org). Make sure to transfer your monero between two wallets you control, so that more than one transaction has to be compromised to trace what you’re spending it on. If you’re buying cryptocurrency, consider buying it from a peer-to-peer exchange so it’s harder to tie to your bank account.

When storing the seed, consider writing the seed words out of order, as long as you’ll be able to remember how to put them back in order.

Paranoid

When moving money through any kind of series of accounts, always put more in than you take out at the far end, so someone watching both ends can’t guess that it’s the same money because it’s the same amount. Likewise don’t do it all at once, leave delays between transfers.

If you’re keeping the seed words written out of order, recover the wallet corresponding to the order they’re written in and make some small, non-incriminating transaction with it, so if the seed is found you can make a plausible case that this is the real wallet.

Buying Something In Person

Acceptable

Apply the procedure for going somewhere. Pay in cash.

The Good and Paranoid versions of this procedure are just the same using the Good and Paranoid versions of the procedure for going somewhere.

Buying Something On The Internet

Acceptable

If it’s something that’s not illegal in itself, have someone who’s not doing anything else illegal order it and pick it up from them. You can reimburse them in cash. Don’t forget to remove the label with their address on it from the box if you’re keeping it, so if your house is searched the police won’t find out about this person from the label.

Good

Apply the procedure for using the web and order it using the procedure for using cryptocurrency, either still to someone else’s address or poste restante[3] in a name that you have a good fake ID for (if you can’t give a valid ID the post office may refuse to give you the parcel).

There isn’t a Paranoid level for this, because we don’t have the experience with ordering anything that warrants that level of security to be able to speak authoritatively on it. Anything we could say would be speculative.

Laundering Money

Acceptable

Buy things with the money and sell them. Buy and/or sell things in a similar way with your own money to obscure it. This process is okay at a glance but won’t stand up to actual investigation, and isn’t practical for large quantities of money.

Good

Using the procedure for accessing the web, buy monero with the money (see the procedure for using cryptocurrency). At this point the money should be disconnected from its source. Use the monero to buy prepaid virtual debit cards as mentioned in the procedure for using cryptocurrency. Note that although the source of the money is obscured, the fact that it came in the form of monero isn’t, so it may still look suspicious.

Paranoid

Buy monero with the money and move it between two accounts. At this point the money should be disconnected from its source. Trade the monero for cash sent to you by mail on a peer-to-peer exchange such as retoswap (retoswap.com) (using the advice in the procedure for buying something on the internet for receiving it by post securely).

Sending Post

Acceptable

Apply the procedure for going somewhere. Buy postage in cash. Alternate between various post offices. Follow the post office rules (e.g. on the proper way to post liquids) as far as possible to reduce the chances of your packages being opened.

Good

Buy stamps and envelopes in cash, and post at postboxes. Alternate between various postboxes. If you need to send large items, use parcel postboxes, but if you’re not in a city there might not be many to alternate between. Don’t post lots of things all at once in one postbox, as this might raise suspicions and get them opened. With stamps, be aware that the barcodes on them can’t be used to trace where they were bought, but they are scanned by the sorting office so they can be used to trace at least to the sorting office of the place where something was posted from (and that’s one of their purposes).

Paranoid

For occasional posting, use commemorative stamps, as they don’t have the barcodes on them (but posting lots of parcels with commemorative stamps in one place would be suspicious). Buy envelopes from different places so which brands of envelope you use can’t be used to identify where you’re going to buy them (or more likely as circumstantial evidence after the fact based on the fact you frequently went somewhere that sold those envelopes). Pick postboxes in locations such that your house isn’t in the centre of all the locations you use.

Storing An Object

Acceptable

If your address is unlikely to be a target of investigation, just keep it in your house. If you or your housemates are at risk of arrest, or if the address is used to order things to, hide it. Small things like SD cards and SIMs are easy to hide very well, so don’t just stick them behind a picture frame and call it a day, unscrew the back of something that isn’t ever opened up under normal circumstances or something.

Good

Even if your house isn’t likely to be searched, hide it anyway. If it doesn’t need to be regularly accessed, keep it at the house of someone who isn’t doing anything dodgy.

Don’t be tempted to hide things in public places, since a search warrant then isn’t needed to get at them.[4] Storage units are probably a bad idea too, since they’ll be connected to whoever pays for them.

Paranoid

If the item is replaceable, and it’s cheap and/or rarely used, consider not storing it at all and getting a new one whenever you need it. If the item can be split into parts that aren’t (as) incriminating on their own, store it across several people’s houses. We know of no good way to hide a unique, single item to a Paranoid standard of security, so if you find yourself needing to do so all we can recommend is minimising the time you need to do so for.

Storing Digital Information

Acceptable

Store it on a computer with full disk encryption. If you don’t know how to set this up, see VeraCrypt (veracrypt.fr).[5]

If you must store it on a smartphone, e.g. because it’s a messaging app that’s hard to make work on a computer or because you need access to it on the go, then set a strong password on your phone (i.e. NOT just a numeric PIN) and disable fingerprint unlocking. If you think you may be going to be arrested, turn your phone off, as some methods of unlocking it only work if it’s been unlocked previously since it was turned on.

If the police believe that encrypted data they’ve found is relevant to an investigation and that you know the password, they can legally compel you to decrypt it. The penalty for refusing can be up to two years imprisonment, or five if it’s a terrorism investigation. For this reason, don’t assume that even totally secure encryption will keep the police out if the evidence it protects is worth less that two years. There is a defense if you can cast doubt on whether there really is any encrypted data (this requires technical skills to set up) or on whether you really know the password.

Using cryptpad (cryptpad.org) is okay as long as you remember to set a password, and don’t share the password right next to the link as this defeats most of the point of having one.

When you no longer need the information, apply the procedure for destroying digital information.

Good

Store it on an encrypted microSD card and keep it hidden, or store it in a VeraCrypt hidden volume on a traditional hard drive (i.e. not an SSD, and not a USB stick or SD card, as these can’t hide the existence of a hidden volume reliably). If using an SD card or USB stick, note that they can sometimes fail. If the information is important, keep a backup, also encrypted. If you’re using Tails (see the procedure for using the web), you can use the persistent storage to store information in this way, and it’ll sometimes warn you before the device fails.[6]

Paranoid

We don’t have a good strategy for storing digital information with a Paranoid level of security.[7] We can only recommend minimising the amount of time you have to store it for, and making it as hard as possible to prove that any one person knows the password.

Destroying Digital Information

There isn’t an Acceptable level for this procedure, because overwriting is good enough to be Good but just deleting isn’t good enough to be Acceptable.

Good

When a file is deleted it’s not removed from the drive, it’s just marked as deleted until it’s overwritten by something else being stored in the same place. In order to delete it properly, you’ll need to overwrite it with meaningless data first. This can be achieved with tools such as sdelete and secure-delete. However, this only applies if you’re using a traditional hard drive, as opposed to an SSD (almost certainly the case in a laptop), USB stick or SD card. If you’re using an one of these, this approach won’t work for individual files. Instead you’ll need to wipe the whole thing at once, by overwriting the entire drive using a tool like DBAN or dd.

Paranoid

Overwrite the entire drive multiple times (even if it’s a traditional hard drive in case a copy has been stored somewhere for automatic backups or something). Alternatively, and this is probably overkill but quicker if you’re in a hurry, physically destroy the drive it was stored on. You’ll need to make sure you’re actually getting at the part where the data is held. The traditional approach of drilling holes in a hard drive isn’t actually that reliable, ideally you’ll want intense heat or powerful magnetism.

If You Do Get Arrested

(As a reminder, this document is based on UK police practices.)

If, despite your precautions, you do get arrested, there are still things you can do — or mostly, avoid doing — to minimise the damage. What it boils down to is: DO NOT TALK TO THE POLICE FOR ANY REASON. The police are very good at tricking you into saying something incriminating or that they can use as the basis for reasonable suspicion. There are many circumstances under which talking to the police can make your life harder. There are no circumstances under which talking to the police will make your life easier (with maybe two exceptions, discussed later). If they suspect you, nothing you can possibly say will make them suspect you less. It doesn’t matter how you refuse to talk to them — you can say “no comment”, “I’m not going to answer that”, “Am I legally obliged to answer that?”, nothing at all, whatever, just don’t tell them anything. Here is a list of circumstances under which you should not answer police questions:

  • If they tell you they’ll let you go quicker if you talk, or keep you longer if you don’t. This is generally not true, and they can’t keep you for too long without charging you anyway.
  • If they make any kind of offer to reduce your sentence. The police don’t have the authority to reduce your sentence, that’s a matter for the court.
  • If they offer only to charge you for a small offense if you admit to it, and drop a more serious charge. They are lying.
  • If they tell you they have enough evidence already to convict you, or that an accomplice has confessed. They are probably lying, and even if they aren’t, unless a competent lawyer says otherwise you probably still stand a better chance of minimising your sentence by keeping quiet.
  • If they make polite small talk. Once you start talking it’s easier for them to keep you talking. Remember, they’re trained to extract information from people.
  • If they ask questions whose answers are definitely not incriminating. If you answer these questions but then refuse to answer the questions which are incriminating, it looks pretty bad in court.
  • If you have an alibi. Save it for your lawyer and the court. The police don’t need to know your alibi, and they won’t believe it. Anything you say to the police, you’ve effectively committed to saying in court. You don’t have to commit to anything, so don’t.
  • Likewise, if they’re accusing you of something you can easily prove you didn’t do. It’s to your advantage if they try to charge you with something you can easily prove you didn’t do, as it makes the rest of the charges look less credible. Save it for your lawyer and the court.
  • If they’re demonstrating ignorance. It may be genuine, or they may be baiting you into showing knowledge of a topic relevant to the accusations. Either way, making fun of them isn’t worth the risk.
  • ANY OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES AT ALL, apart from the exceptions mentioned below.

The two cases in which it might possibly be to your advantage to tell the police something are these:

  • When you arrive at the station (and not before), you may want to tell them your name and address. This is because if you refuse to provide your name and address and they decide to charge you, they can keep you locked up until the court date regardless of what you’re accused of (because if they let you go they wouldn’t be able to find you again). Giving false details is an offense, and they can usually check pretty easily. Note that if you do you give your address, they may go and search it.
  • Under some rare circumstances, refusing to answer certain questions may be an offense in itself. A specific example of this is mentioned in the section on storing digital information — under some circumstances it may be an offense not to give up the password for encrypted data. This kind of thing doesn’t come up very often, and if it is the case they’ll tell you (or they should, and probably will if they actually intend to charge you with it since the court would likely require them to demonstrate that they did). Conversely though, if they tell you that you’re legally obliged to answer a question, they may be lying — if at all possible verify that with your lawyer.

Last Words

Having read all that, the thing we most want to make sure is that you’re not too intimidated. Like we said at the start, if the attempt to be secure leads to not taking action, the surveillance state wins without having to do anything. If you don’t feel capable of achieving the level of security that you feel you’d need for the actions you want to take, take less dangerous actions in the meantime rather than focusing exclusively on learning everything about security. Real life experience is the best way to learn.

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1. No Trace Project (N.T.P.) note: For this level, you may also want to take precautions to ensure you are not being followed. For more information, see our Threat Library mitigations “Surveillance detection” and “Anti-surveillance”.

2. N.T.P. note: We would recommend SimpleX rather than Matrix, as Matrix does not protect communication metadata as well as SimpleX does. Compared to Signal, SimpleX does not require a phone number to create an account. For more information, see AnarSec’s guide “Encrypted Messaging for Anarchists”.

3. N.T.P. note: Poste restante is a service where the post office holds mail until the recipient calls for it.

4. N.T.P. note: We think storing things in public places can be a viable solution if done properly. For more information, see our Threat Library mitigation “Stash spot or safe house”.

5. N.T.P. note: On computers (i.e. not smartphones) we recommend encrypting all your digital information using the full disk encryption system Linux Unified Key Setup (LUKS), which is available by default in most modern Linux systems, and thus does not require installing additional software such as VeraCrypt.

6. N.T.P. note: The Tails persistent storage uses LUKS.

7. N.T.P. note: An additional strategy for this level is to store the devices that contain the digital information in a tamper-evident way. For more information, see our Threat Library mitigation “Tamper-evident preparation”.

A Practical Security Handbook: No Trace Project edition

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Jun 182025
 

From No Trace Project

PDF: read | letter booklet part 1, part 2 | tabloid booklet • TXT

Note from the No Trace Project:

A Practical Security Handbook for Activists and Campaigns was originally published in the United Kingdom in 2004. While part of this handbook is now outdated, we believe some of it is still very relevant.

This document is a partial re-edition of the original handbook. We have freely adapted its contents, leaving out sections that we deemed outdated or irrelevant to this re-edition, improving wording, and changing a few details, while trying to stay as close as possible to the spirit of the original text. We have also added footnotes to point the reader to up-to-date information on DNA, CCTV, and other topics.

This re-edition contains a wealth of information to help anarchists and other rebels analyze their security needs, plan and carry out direct actions, and detect or evade physical surveillance. We hope it will help you defeat the State and achieve your goals. Good luck!

The full original handbook can be found on our website.

A Few Basics About Fascism And How To Deal With It

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Jun 032025
 

From Montréal Antifasciste

Anonymous
May 2025, Bas-du-Fleuve
[Version pdf – French /// Version pdf format livret – French]

We are witnessing the most documented genocide in history in Palestine and the consolidation of a fascist regime in the United States. Many of us are wondering what to do about it. Here’s a conceptual framework for understanding what’s going on and how we can respond. This synthesis draws upon material from Kelly Hayes and her Organizing My Thoughts blog, the thinking of Mariame Kaba and Andrea Ritchie of Interrupting Criminalization, Ejeris Dixon and his podcast Fascism Barometer, Scot Nakagawa’s  The Anti-Authoritarian Playbook blog, Anne Archet’s blog flegmatique, the YouTube channel Thought Slime, and Mark Bray’s Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, among other sources.

///

Some Basics

Fascist movements, parties, and regimes can be recognized by:

  • an authoritarian trajectory aimed at dismantling democratic structures, eliminating dissent, and maintaining their leader’s power.
  • blatant lies that do not undermine their support.
  • a propensity for instrumentalizing crises or creating them out of thin air to enrich themselves and to restrict civil liberties, including freedom of movement and assembly, the right to demonstrate, freedom of the press, and the right to a fair trial.
  • idealized representations of race and nation, articulated in terms of purity, unity, and loyalty.
  • a desire to dominate and/or eliminate marginalized groups (women, migrants, 2LGBTQIA+ people, Black people, Indigenous people, religious minorities, people with disabilities, the poor, autistic people, etc.) that takes the form of dehumanizing rhetoric and repeated attacks on their fundamental rights.
  • a conviction that inequalities do not stem from social conditions but are natural and biological, and that this hierarchy is entirely legitimate.
  • references to a fictional past where all of the above was allegedly the case.
  • a fetishization of violence as the response to the humiliation of failing to entirely dominate marginalized groups.
  • a dual objective of internal cleansing and external expansion.

Fascism can seize state power through elections, a coup d’état, or a combination of both, as in the case of the Trump administration, which won the election and used its ascension to power to carry out an “administrative coup”—the illegal usurpation of congressional power and various state department powers by Elon Musk and the DOGE.

Once in power, fascism uses a well-known operative approach: criminalization. It passes laws that make certain activities criminal and deploys the police, the justice system, and prisons against the people who engage in them. For example, it criminalizes:

  • giving or receiving certain types of care (abortion, gender-affirming care, and possibly care for people with autism and people with disabilities. . .).
  • providing information (by transforming the definition of pornography so that the laws sanction any book dealing with queerness, by transforming the definition of antisemitism to include any denunciation of the genocide of the Palestinian people, by arresting lawyers who give legal information to migrants. . .).
  • simply existing on its territory (the mass revoking of visas, cancellation of status, criminalization of the homeless. . .).

Beyond laws, criminalization is politicized to designate entire groups of people as threats:

  • trans and intersex women are a threat to cis women in sports and more generally.
  • demonstrators are a threat to the rest of society.
  • migrants undermine job security and the housing market and threaten the working class.
  • Muslims threaten national security.

These threats are nurtured by fascist narratives and presented as existential threats to the nation’s future, thereby:

  • dehumanizing targeted groups.
  • pre-emptively stripping them of their fundamental rights.
  • portraying them as “others” who must be violently controlled, punished, and eliminated.
  • using them as scapegoats for all the evils of capitalism and fascism.

It is through this process of criminalization that fascist regimes create popular consent for the violence deployed against certain groups (physical and psychological violence, disappearances, forced labor, denial of care, murder. . .). People are made to believe that:

  • those target by hatred are not victims but are being punished for their crimes.
  • violence is both justified and completely normal.
  • those targeted would have been left in peace it they hadn’t committed a crime.

However, what is defined as a crime continuously grows.

This process also exists in so-called liberal democracies, which have developed expansive judicial and prison apparatuses. Fascists need the infrastructure and the legitimization that liberal democracies readily provide for the industrial-carceral system to function.

Keep in mind that:

  • police and prisons are a legacy of slavery and colonization.
  • Indigenous peoples in Canada have been the targets of genocidal violence.
  • their dances, rituals, and languages were criminalized.
  • they have suffered mass sterilization, forced displacement, and far-reaching abuse in residential schools.

Fascism is not so much a break with liberal democracies as a form its panic takes. As a result, the fascism currently consolidating in the United States and taking shape in Canada and Québec is characterized by:

  • panic in the face of recent advances in social justice, which they call “wokeness,” and which threaten their domination.
  • panic over the climate crisis and the efforts to mitigate it, both of which threaten access to the resources that underpin their dominance.
  • a tense alliance of Christian fundamentalists, a racist and sexist grassroots movement, a political elite, and ultra-rich big tech oligarchs.

Here are a few other important facts about fascism:

  • The fascists want us to waste our time. They will tell all sorts of lies so that we spend hours trying to prove our point, deconstructing their rhetoric, and clarifying facts. Then the next day they completely change their tune forcing us to do it all over again.
  • For fascists, certain (mythical) truths are more important than reality. If reality doesn’t agree with their truth, reality is wrong. Their relationship to reality is substantially undermined, so reality won’t convince them that they’re wrong. Reality has no bearing on their truth.
  • Above all, fascists want power. That’s what motivates them. They will adjust their rhetoric and values as much as is necessary to acquire and maintain power.
  • Fascists want survival of the fittest, based on a cartoonish Darwinian vision of evolution. They want to dominate. As they see it, anything that keeps them in power is justified. Their domination proves them right, and that’s all they need.
  • Fascism is not the work of a few outsiders hovering above the population. People participate, cooperate, and then become acculturated to fascism. It becomes their reality, their way of understanding the world.

How to Deal with Fascism

Historically, state apparatuses, opposition parties, the justice system, and the mainstream media have all failed to prevent the rise of fascist regimes. The neoliberal elites who run democracies may appear to oppose fascism, but faced with an increasingly unlivable world in which it becomes impossible to sustain both capitalism and liberal democracy, they too will adopt increasingly fascistic policies. For neoliberals, the criminalization and/or abandonment of ever-larger groups of marginalized people will be articulated as a matter of pragmatism and inevitability, while fascists will present it as the desirable return of a violently unequal natural order. In short, don’t expect the support of the neoliberal elites.

Popular organization is the best form of resistance. If the normalization of police, prisons, and mass surveillance has made this effort more difficult, presenting these tools of control as necessary, even natural, there are nonetheless multiple avenues for collective resistance.

Where to start:

  • Openly resist the consolidation of fascism. Clearly identify what is happening in the United States, Palestine, Canada, and elsewhere. Talk about fascism with those closest to you. Don’t let it be surreptitious. Force it out into the open.
  • Act locally against events organized by fascist groups. Attack them in every possible way. Physically prevent them from spreading their hatred.
  • Call bullshit what it is. Don’t get sidetracked by their lies. Don’t waste your time arguing with them. Don’t get caught up in their way of framing the situation. Bring the discussion back to what they do, to the horrors they commit, to the hatred that drives them.
  • Above all, don’t immediately fall into line if fascists come to power. When faced with authoritarian power, people tend to anticipate what a repressive government would want, and immediately cooperate, to make sure they don’t anger those in power and to protect themselves. This anticipatory obedience tells the regime what compromises people are willing to make and enables it to go much further much faster. This way of adapting harms everyone. It’s essential not to reflexively obey.
  • Maintain solidarity. Fascism normalizes human suffering and the jettisoning of groups of people designated as negligible or insignificant. Fascists want us to fall back upon our survival instinct, to get caught up in our personal preoccupations, to be isolated and weak. Solidarity is our strength.

We must build and maintain collective people’s power: the power to keep our communities safe; the power to prevent any of our own from being disappeared; the power to make sure everyone has food. We must begin by exploring all the ways in which we can participate in building this power, for example, by working to:

  • block fascist advances (e.g., by fighting anything that increases the scope, capacity, resources, and power of the prison state and fascist movements, such as building new prisons, militarizing borders, new identification systems targeting certain groups, etc.).
  • break their alliances and links with local groups and organizations (e.g., links between workers’ unions and organizations representing the police, links between the police and far-right militias, links between the mass media and transphobic activists, etc.).
  • minimize the impact of their policies (e.g., build and support a strong community network, self-help groups, secure communications networks, community defense infrastructures, gathering spaces, etc.).
  • build bridges between the communities affected (e.g., trade unions, women’s groups, anarchist gangs, anti-colonial movements, abolitionists, disability rights activists, etc.).
  • develop resources (e.g., organizations dedicated to sharing the history of struggle, transformative justice organizations, as many spaces as possible where we can gather, debate, digest all of the available information, have block parties, organize workshops, conferences, and marches, etc.).

To explore this issue further, I suggest the zine Block and Build: But Make It Abolitionist by the Interrupting Criminalization organization. Then it’s a matter of determining what makes sense for us, what we’re able to do, and how we understand our social context and the overall situation. For this, I recommend the zine Making a Plan, also an Interrupting Criminalization publication.

It could start with a union, a local chapter of Food not Bombs, a group that organizes people’s assemblies, a housing committee, a group of friends who make engaged art, a women’s group, and so on. All of it is relevant. these groups must:

  • develop a common language and an overall assessment of the situation.
  • coordinate in a decentralized way that encourages autonomous action as part of a larger whole.
  • develop a security culture commensurate with the level of risk.
  • prepare for repression by setting up a support system in advance.

Then, when the time comes, it will be possible to fight a fascist regime on a large scale thanks to:

  • a large enough mass of people committed to noncooperation, people who forget to deliver a letter or to forward an e-mail, who slow down some construction project, who don’t remove books from the shelves, who continue teaching history to children, who sabotage bureaucratic processes, who give false information to the police, who continue making music outside and at night, all of it to disrupt the smooth functioning of the regime.
  • diversity of tactics, including mass demonstrations, a general strike, industrial sabotage, alternative health care networks, etc.

If we join forces to fight fascism and the criminalization process that underpins it, anything is in our reach.

A Response to the Commentary on “When There Are Many of Us, We Do What We Want”

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Apr 252025
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Following the repeated failures of so-called “combative” demonstrations in Montreal between 2023 and 2025, two militant texts sought to offer, on the one hand, a strategic analysis focused on massification through autonomous structures, and on the other, a skeptical critique of that orientation, denouncing the fetishization of demonstrations and militant voluntarism. Both texts share a common diagnosis: our collective weakness in the face of the state, our isolation, and the routinization of our mobilizations. The present text is a critique of the second piece, written by N.

The Fetishization of Spontaneity: A Critique of Anti-Strategy

The core disagreement between the two texts seems to me to hinge on a central strategic question: how can we explain the fact that the majority of the working class—including its most exploited segments—does not spontaneously respond to calls for radical mobilization, and instead, in advanced capitalist countries, remains largely passive or aligned with various forms of reformism?

N. rightly points out the routinized and sometimes performative nature of certain activist practices. However, in attempting to explain this passivity, his response leans into a kind of mechanical determinism that legitimizes a cynical skepticism—one that dismisses any form of political mediation as a futile avant-garde project: “It is the social contradictions themselves that produce struggles, not a group of revolutionary evangelists trying to convince proletarians dulled by capitalism one by one.”

If it is necessary to break with the “fetishization of the demonstration”—the idea that it constitutes the core of our political practice—it is equally important to be wary of the fetishization of spontaneity, which consists in rejecting the necessity of organization in favour of a passive expectation, based on the illusion that the contradictions of capitalism will mechanically trigger a mass uprising. This posture amounts to a strategic retreat that cloaks political powerlessness in the mystique of spontaneity.

The Passivity of the Exploited Classes

The passivity or reformist orientation of the working class is largely explained by the fundamentally episodic nature of the class struggle. The contradictions of capitalism are not, in themselves, sufficient to make workers revolutionary. As Charles Post argues, class consciousness does not arise mechanically from exploitation, but rather emerges primarily through the lived experience of self-organization and collective struggle—experiences that open space for receptivity to radical ideas.

However, this foundational condition for the development of class consciousness—active participation in mass struggles—can only ever be partial, rare, and temporary. Structurally, the vast majority of workers cannot sustain long-term engagement in the struggle, since their position within capitalist social relations requires them to sell their labour power in order to ensure their own material reproduction. The imperative of individual survival therefore limits, under normal conditions, the possibility of sustained collective engagement.

In the absence of collective struggles, capitalist logics, reformism, and the institutional forms of liberal politics tend to regain hegemonic status. Workers are then less inclined to seek a transformation of the system and instead aim to secure what they perceive as a fair share of it—without challenging its underlying structures of power. Worse still, when reformism fails and no credible radical alternative is available, capitalism is able to produce the very material conditions for its own ideological reinforcement: individualization, social fragmentation, and competition among the exploited. In this vacuum, reactionary, racist, and patriarchal movements flourish—even within segments of the working class itself.

It is therefore deeply irresponsible to abandon the self-organization of direct action and the construction of alternatives—whether in the name of reformism or out of a fetishization of spontaneity. The contradictions of capitalism, on their own, do not generate class consciousness, nor do they lead to human emancipation.

The Avant-Garde

The inherently episodic nature of class struggle means that only a small minority of the working class remains durably engaged in militant activity. What we might call an “avant-garde”—without any dogmatic overtones—refers here to those who, in the lulls between waves of struggle, strive to keep alive practices of solidarity and confrontation, whether in the workplace or within communities.

To avoid any misunderstanding, this is not a classical “Leninist” or “Trotskyist” notion of the avant-garde as an enlightened minority bearing a political truth to impose upon the masses. Rather, it is a way to designate a concrete role: that of individuals who, despite isolation, exhaustion, and defeat, persist in sustaining institutions, practices, and imaginaries of struggle—often invisible, yet essential to the reproduction of a militant collective memory. This role can—and should—be debated, renamed, and critiqued. But to abandon it altogether would be to surrender to strategic disarmament.

It is true that some militant figures, in certain contexts, become the social base of a working-class bureaucracy, detached from the concrete realities of waged labour and prone to the logic of reformism: distance from sites of production, freedom from the constraints of wage labour, and the adoption of organizational jargon and apparatus-driven practices.

But there are many others who continue to organize while living the contradictions of capitalist work: precarity, alienation, subordination. These are militants embedded in the everyday life of the class, patiently organizing their co-workers, neighbours, and communities.

Any organization, no matter how well intentioned, can generate its own inertia, rigidity, and hierarchical tendencies. But this should not serve as a justification for rejecting political mediation altogether. The fetishization of spontaneity, which draws a strict line between conscious militancy and popular authenticity, runs the risk of discrediting organic militant activity—that is, the kind of organizing that emerges from the lived experience of the oppressed—by reducing it to a suspicious form of avant-gardism, or even to a so-called “revolutionary racket.”

N.’s article illustrates this tendency when it cites contemporary movements perceived as spontaneous—such as the BLM/George Floyd uprisings, the Yellow vests movement, or the social revolts in Chile—highlighting the absence of mass organizations guiding them from the outset. However, it is highly unlikely that these movements emerged without the active involvement of a core group of experienced individuals, shaped by various militant traditions, whether or not they explicitly identified with a revolutionary consciousness.

Moreover, despite their strength, these movements did not articulate a clear revolutionary project—which might in fact serve as an argument in favour of the initial text. In the absence of autonomous mass structures grounded in explicitly anti-capitalist practises and discourse, social conflict tends to express itself in reformist, incoherent, or contradictory ways. Had a structured revolutionary counter-power existed over the past two decades—one rooted in collective memory, political culture, and autonomous forms of organization—it is likely that the political consciousness emerging from these popular movements would have been more clearly oriented toward systemic rupture.

Post-Industrial Society and Class Consciousness

Social classes are historically dynamic relations, and their political expression requires both a shared experience of exploitation and an organizational effort to build a collective force conscious of its own interests.

Yet many activists today resist the project of constructing class consciousness, often drawing on assumptions rooted in post-industrial society theories. According to these perspectives, the expansion of the service sector, the growing complexity of professional structures, the rise of theoretical knowledge, increased living standards, and the emergence of state regulation have reshaped social conflict around the control of information. This, in turn, is said to have enabled the emergence of a new middle class composed of managers and skilled employees. For these approaches, contemporary society is no longer structured primarily by class conflict, but rather by identities and discourses capable of defining themselves. As such, our societies are seen as less constrained by socioeconomic factors like class, and as offering greater room for individual agency—unlike the more rigid industrial societies of the past.

Nevertheless, these analyses tend to overestimate the impact of changes in the division of labour on relations of exploitation. As Peter Meiksins aptly puts it, “capitalism has never, not in the past, and not now, generated a homogeneous working class. On the contrary, it has consistently created a varied, highly stratified working class, and capitalists have had an inherent interest in making sure that it is as divided as it possibly can be.” Likewise, the increasing complexity of the contemporary division of labour does not eliminate the structural conditions of reproduction for the working class—namely, the obligation to perform surplus labour by selling one’s labour power on the market.

Although specific relations of exploitation characterize particular sociohistorical conditions and shape class formation, class consciousness has always been a contingent, relational, and collective process—constantly in flux between formation and disintegration. In this sense, class consciousness is not a mechanical product of socioeconomic factors, but the outcome of conscious agents acting within given social, political, and economic conditions. In the past as today, the development of a collective class consciousness has been a difficult and demanding process, forged through sustained and deliberate efforts of militant organization.

In short, capitalism still generates “fields of attraction” that polarize society into lived class positions. Sociohistorical processes can—and have—led to the emergence of groups becoming conscious of themselves as a class opposed to another. The challenge today is to bring about such a process through sustained organizational efforts, as was achieved in previous periods.

Self-Organization as a Conclusion

The lack of people in our demonstrations is a symptom of the current passivity of the working classes, in the sense that the street is an extension, not the centre, of social conflict. This passivity is rooted in the absence of collective struggles that provide an alternative to individualized or reactionary responses.

To claim that we should avoid organizational efforts for fear of becoming “revolutionary evangelists” is irresponsible. It condemns us to remain what we have been for the past three decades in Quebec: a radical fringe within reformist social movements; a weak political mediation with no real capacity to constitute a social force capable of threatening the existing order.

What is needed is not a dogmatic return to a rigid form of organization, nor a moralistic conception of militancy, but a materialist strategy for rebuilding the autonomous social power of the working class. This is not about imposing a universal model, but about affirming that without durable forms of mediation between experiences of exploitation and a political horizon, no counter-power can take shape.

A coherent revolutionary politics today should:

  • Identify the sites where exploitation is most intense, visible, and collectively experienced;
  • Build struggles that aim to democratize and repoliticize production and social reproduction;
  • Make the street an extension, not the centre, of social conflict;
  • Focus on the patient construction of class consciousness as a historical process;
  • Build popular organizations capable of demanding democratic control over economic spheres, through the unification, not the mere juxtaposition, of struggles.

É.

Among the Fragments – A Response to Inaction

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Apr 252025
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Struggle isn’t a puzzle we solve by sharpening definitions.

It is mud. It is cold dawn. It is the door that must be knocked on twice because the first knock was fear and the second is a promise. Like we’ve always been told.

He insists: “We must write, because only then will we be able to tell who is serious and who is not”.

We need theory that walks like the body does: limping when we limp, sprinting when sirens grow, picking glass from its heel after the march, then laughing about it around the kitchen table while the kettle shrieks.

Remember how it felt when the names were lighter? We called ourselves anarchists, autonomist, anti-authoritarian, some remained nameless, only to be used as a shorthand for the impossible promise we carried like contraband in our chests: that no hierarchy is eternal and that ordinary people can and should arrange their life without overseers.

We were meant to be the crowbar; we were meant to pry open rooms we were locked out of. Then the rooms multiplied, each declaring itself the only legitimate sanctuary. We became curators of micro‑identities: anti‑authoritarian but not anarchist, autonomist but not left, insurrectionist but suspicious of the autonomists. Language then turned itself into something heavier than the deeds it was meant to inspire.

Writing is not the enemy. Writing is a whetstone — but the blade must leave the house. Let pamphlets circulate, but let every pamphlet end with a time and place: “Meet here. Bring tools. No Phones.”

Let zines be passports that expire unless stamped by action.

Our word need be scrawled on cardboard, rehearsed in networks, corrected in practice, revised by failure, annotated in bruises, and eventually sung — without copyright — by crowds that forget who wrote the first verse, by crowds we won’t be apart of.

Hold the pen lightly, hold one another firmly, and hold no illusion that theory absolves us from the necessity of risk that is expected from each of us. Our pages must be worth the dirt that clings to their margins. So dirty them.

Fred Hampton claimed that only revolutionaries die, not revolutions. Yet, I can’t help but smell the reeking odor of formaldehyde off of both me and those around. Our rallies feel like wakes: we chant slogans that sound like last rites, we smash storefronts like mourners breaking dishes, hoping the clatter will bring about the insurrection, the revolution, le grand soir. The streets reply with sirens, batons, no red sun. Insurance replaces the window, we keep the bruises, lose momentum again.

Meanwhile, the rest of us exchange theoretical love letters across online boulevards where eye contact is impossible. We scroll, applaud, eviscerate, scroll again, waiting for the curtain to fall on the academic pageantry. If the pen must be hoisted like a holy relic above all else, I would sooner snap it, scatter the ink into garden soil, let it nourish tomatoes for me to eat, as only then would it be of use to me.

To the comrades in our Montreal milieu, who walked away, who have been seduced by the glow of theory, who are disillusioned, your absence gapes like an open ravine; it’s filled with ritualized quarrels. We keep circling the same questions — what now, how, with whom — discovering each time that the void is expanding because we have no base, no ground compacted by shared labour, no community. Inaction does not merely leave a space; it deepens the chasm that now threatens to swallow what little remains of our common ground.

To those who’ve departed: where are you now? Will we only cross paths under tear gas, silhouettes lit by dumpsters on fire? Will we be worthy of your presence then? Must devotion be visible only in the strobe of police batons? Will your labour be lent for barricades only? Come argue across the table while the coffee burns, scream at me in raw disagreement, have an unexpected laugh.

When you are all satisfied after the ink is finally dry, close the laptop, lace your boots, find the fraction of the faction you cannot stand and invite them to hash this out over a beer no obscure webpage can overhear. Let our factions braid themselves into something sturdier than agreement — into familiarity, into a landscape where contradiction is welcomed and nobody is exiled. Only dialogue, stubborn and messy, can weld practice back onto principle until sparks fly and the metal holds.

Writing is a spark, not a furnace. The furnace is built in kitchens, meetings, late night phone calls, and beer soaked arguments that end with a workable list of next steps, and a solid plan.

Respond to this post if you must, but understand I won’t scroll back to read it. I only seek a tap on the shoulder, a chair pulled out for us to sit.

Let the streets supply the footnotes.

— A Comrade Among The Fragments

Three Murders in 24 Hours. Night Attack on Police Training College. Justice for Abisay!

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Apr 182025
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

On Monday night, April 14th, anarchists entered Collège de Maisonneuve, which hosts the police training program, Techniques policières. The entrance was painted with “MINI COPS = FUTURE KILLERS” and “JUSTICE FOR ABISAY CRUZ” as well as other tags like “3 STATE MURDERS IN 24H” and “MAKE FASCISTS AFRAID”. A fire extinguisher filled with paint was very helpful, and a window was smashed. We do not forget the murders and abuses committed by the Montreal police over the last few weeks; readers, please spread the popular vengeance. To the students of the Techniques policières program: drop out and change paths, it is not a safe future, neither for us, nor for you. This program trains people who will be the future of state violence. The police is a force that punishes the poor, immigrants and racialized people, that beats and shoots protesters, that arrests and kills people like flies. This society is sick and the sickness is capitalism, the State, and hierarchy, and the guardians of this terrible social order are the police. We will never forget the injustices committed against us. Long live the memory of Abisay Cruz and that of all those killed by the police.

In this video, we can see the curious looks of passersby the following day.

Flyer: REMEMBER 2020, 1968, 1878, 1791

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Apr 042025
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Download PDF to print (front/back), cut in half, hand out.

For distribution at protests, festivals, sporting events, waiting rooms, cookouts, libraries, dining halls, courtrooms, traffic jams, emergency rooms, corner stores, public transportation, sideshows, recreation yards, or anywhere else you may encounter others who’ve had enough.

\\\\\\\\\\\\ FRONT & BACK TEXT BELOW \\\\\\\\\\\\

REMEMBER 2020, 1968, 1878, 1791 — WE CAN WIN

Thousands of years of kings, queens, emperors, presidents, & ministers demanding obedience. 500 years of crackers enslaving & colonizing this planet. 250 years of anglo/yankee domination.

Trump this, Musk that. Democrats, Republicans, Zionists, Confederates, Fascists, Conservatives, Liberals, Progressives. So many flavors of the same expired bullshit.

2020: Cops executed George Floyd. A police station was burnt down. For a brief moment, the world opened up.

1968: White power executed MLK. Black communities erupted into rebellion. For a brief moment, the world opened up.

1878: Indigenous peoples in the South Pacific rose up in arms against european colonizers attempting to exterminate their communities & hijack their homelands. For a moment, the world opened up.

1791: Enslaved Africans & their descendants began an uprising in the Caribbean, destroying property, profit, & slavery. For a long moment, the world opened up.

Whether a handful of friends or a massive crowd, we know that the footsoldiers of every regime can be defeated. The secret is to begin.

« In Memory Of Our Fallen; Let us turn their cities into funeral pyres.
In Memory Of Our Fighters; Let us honor your names with fire and gunpowder.
Peace By Piece
(A) »

NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE!
¡QUEREMOS UN MUNDO DONDE QUEPAN MUCHOS MUNDOS!

What’s Happening in Turkey — From an anti-Authoritarian Perspective

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Mar 312025
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Why the current uprising in Turkey deserves our support.

Background

The Republic of Turkey, which was founded on the genocide of the Armenians in the region with a nationalist and murderous leaven, has not changed much in the past century. For non-Muslims, Kurds, Alevis and women who did not hold the majority and power in their hands, the state and its successfully constructed society were always a source of oppression. But starting in 2002, as a consequence of Erdoğan’s dictatorship, oppression, poverty, violence and exploitation started to be felt also by the majority of the society. In 2013, after increasing bans and oppressions, millions of people stood up for their freedoms in the Gezi Park riot that took place in cities all over the country. The months-long resistance ended with unprecedented national-scale police attacks in which eight young people aged 15-22 were killed and thousands detained. Since 2014, the Turkish state has become a police state, and after the 2016 fictitious coup attempt, it has been ruled with absolute authoritarianism under the state of emergency. Since 2021, as a result of the economic crisis that has escalated with great momentum, 60% of the population now lives below the hunger line.

Millions of people, forced into more misery every year, believed that the government and this situation would change in every election, but Erdoğan, who controls the media and the justice system, has never allowed this to happen through fear and manipulation. In the meantime, in order to prevent oppressed groups from coming together, he created a deep hatred within society, labeling each day a new community as terrorist-enemy-foreign agent: Kurds, Alevis, university students, syndicators, lawyers, journalists, academics. While these people were imprisoned on terrorism charges through state courts, those who were still out of prison were fooled by the propaganda that those imprisoned were terrorists. ‘Terror’ became a magic word for Erdoğan to maintain his power, while people who challenged authority ended up in prison, exile or death. In this way, he created zombified individuals and society that is losing its power day by day and collapsing politically, economically and morally. It is exactly in this context that the current uprising is being driven by the youth, who have never seen a mass uprising in their lives, but who have taken to the streets saying ‘nothing can be worse than living this way’. Millions of young people who have been brought up with the teaching that the previous rebels were terrorists and that the state and the police were friends, at least in theoretical terms, are now facing a different reality. Let us take a closer look at these protests.

Towards the 19 March ‘coup’

On the morning of 19 March 2025, hundreds of police arrested Ekrem İmamoğlu from his home – the mayor of Istanbul, who is believed to be a presidential candidate in the next election and to defeat Erdoğan- on terrorism and corruption charges. While the incident sparked widespread outrage in Turkey and around the world, Imamoğlu was not the first metropolitan mayor in Turkey to be dismissed and detained by the Turkish courts. Since 2016, many elected mayors from Kurdish cities have been dismissed, arrested and replaced by a government official in similar operations. The fact that these Kurdish mayors have been accused of these magical terrorism offenses has convinced the majority of Turkish public to legitimize this and not to oppose it. The silence against this injustice in Kurdish cities empowered Erdoğan to do the same to other mayors run by the CHP (second largest political party, turkish-nationalist centre-left) and prepared the ground for this ‘coup’ on 19 March. The detention of even this highly popular, politically powerful, rich, Turkish, Sunni, privileged man on magical terrorism charges for opposing Erdogan has caused great shock and outrage. Now the honour of being a terrorist could be awarded not only to marginalised people, but to anyone who did not take Erdoğan’s side.

While the public dissent was being destroyed a little more every year, the people who had kept silent in deference to the state, the media and the courts had now found themselves in the target list. Thus, thousands of young people who had even forgotten how to dream under poverty, restrictions and oppression, and who had not yet been labeled as terrorists, suddenly woke up from their sleep or finally exploded in anger and took to the streets in many cities across Turkey on 19 March to start protests. Although it is difficult to say that the protesters are homogeneous, it is possible to say that the majority of them are gen-z who have no previous protest experience for the reasons described above, who have not been able to get out of the fear bubble created by the government, who have been exposed to the very intense social engineering of the Turkish state through institutions such as school, media, family, etc., but who are now unable to breathe out of despair and want change. Although the detention of Ekrem İmamoğlu was a spark for these young people to take to the streets, they started to express their anger and demands on many issues by saying ‘the issue is not only about imamoğlu, have you not understood yet?’.

Encountering the state and overcoming the fear wall

Like almost every other gathering in Turkey, these protests were responded with massive violence by the police. For the first time, the protesters encountered the police, who not only wanted to disperse the crowd, but also to make everyone there pay a price for being there; who saw themselves as having the authority to punish people without the need for judgment, who were arrogant, bully, brutal, who had a personal hatred for the protesters and personal pleasure in torturing them, who were sure that they would not be held accountable for any of their violence. The protesters, who until then had regarded the police as a regular job like teaching, nursing or engineering, were unaware of how the police had become more mafia-like and monster-like every year, by hunting down ‘yesterday’s terrorists’. Thousands of youth seeing enemy law being applied to them too were brutally attacked by the police using an unbelievable amount of tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons in one night. Faced with a massive attack, the majority of these young people did not know how to protect themselves in such an attack, how to care for each other, how to organise themselves. For some of them, responding to the police would mean being a ‘traitor’ or a ‘terrorist’, so they just froze, while a larger number, thinking that they had nothing to lose, broke the legitimacy of the police and responded to police violence with resistance. Having had the opportunity to express their anger for the first time, they covered their faces and threw everything they could at the police, danced in front of the water cannons instead of running away from them, and discovered that the power and legitimacy of the police was something that could be overcome. They did not seem to have a strategic plan for where this protest was going, nor did they seem to have a well-thought-out political consciousness. But the night was dominated by anger and a sense of having been heard for once, and this in itself was highly political, and the night ended with many injuries and arrests.

It was the first time since 2013 that there was such a massive protest with hours of resistance against the police. Although the protests were not shown on any TV channel, they were followed by many people through social media. The wall of fear was crossed for many people who realised that it was possible to oppose, to challenge the state, to rebel. The next day, more and more people took to the streets in more cities in Turkey to protest. At the same time, the Turkish state nationwide restricted the internet bands, taking minutes to upload even a ten-second video to the internet. Experienced protesters who supported the protests both at the streets and online informed people that this problem could be overcome with a VPN. And this time, the Turkish state blocked access to about 200 X accounts of journalists, legal associations, media collectives and political parties through Elon Musk. On the same day, the High Council of Radio and Television (RTÜK) prohibited any live broadcasts on TV channels. Again on the same day, although not directly related to the protests, the Board of Directors of the Istanbul Bar Association, known to oppose Erdoğan, was dismissed by a court decision.

At the same time, many lawyers from different cities who wanted to defend the detained protesters were also detained in police stations and courthouses. The number of detainees was increasing all the time, and some were ordered to be imprisoned or house arrest. The mayor, Ekrem Imamoğlu and around a hundred politicians, who had been detained the previous day, were still being questioned at the police station. All this oppression and fear did not discourage people from protesting in the streets, but only fueled it. During the protests, MPs who took the microphone and gave speeches hoping for help from the election and the law were booed. The youth were pressuring the MPs to make a call to the streets, not to the ballot box, and this was accepted. This moment itself was another threshold point because ‘calling for the streets’ had been recognised as illegitimate in the law and society fabricated by Erdoğan for years. The fact that MPs who were engaged in ‘legal’ politics dared to do so was itself quite surprising for everyone. It was as if thousands of people, one by one, were crossing the invisible wall that the whole society did not know whether it really existed or not, but no one dared to go beyond it, and they were looking around in bewilderment in this land they had never set foot in, wondering what would happen to them.

Nothing is more horrible than living this way.

Strategy of the Turkish State

Many long-established social opposition actors in Turkey made widespread calls for these protests, condemned the arrest of imamoğlu, supported the youth’s legitimate demands for justice, democracy and freedom, and stood up against police violence and bans. On the other hand, the Kurdish political movement (DEM Party), one of the strongest established actors of street protest, chose to limit its support to its high-level party leaders. Only party representatives made a symbolic visit to the centre of the protest, and released a statement declaring Imamoğlu’s detention as a coup d’état. The DEM Party’s support for such a large and widespread uprising, where ‘ordinary citizens’ were able to protest for the first time in years, could have been a game changer for the fate of the country and could have put Erdoğan in a harder position than ever before. From today’s perspective, it is not difficult to guess what was behind Erdoğan’s intention to start a peace process with the PKK in the past few weeks. However, why the DEM Party took such a stance remains a more complex question, the answer to which is left to be answered by history. Nevertheless, at this stage I think it is more important to talk about the results rather than the reasons, because the DEM Party’s distance has had two important consequences. The police on the street as well as Erdoğan in the political Arena, managed to escape from a very important threat. The participation of the DEM party and the Kurdish youth in the protest could have make Erdoğan’s job very more difficult. Compared to the Gezi Park riots, the lack of experience, resilience, organizational skills and determination that the DEM Party and Kurdish youth could have brought in the protest was clearly noticeable.

I think that if Erdoğan and his police had one single wish for this time, they would use it to keep the Kurds away from these protests. The second of the results explains this better: The absence of the Kurds as a collective in this field gave more space to the nationalist and statist tendency, which was already quite strong among the protesters. Leaving aside the argument that this is both a cause and a consequence of the absence of the DEM Party, it should be noted that this crowd, which was uniformised in terms of ethnic identity, tended to be uniformised in other issues as well, with the result that those among the protesters who struggle with an intersectional approach, such as Kurds, feminists, LGBTI+s, socialists, anarchists, animal rights defenders, etc., became even more ‘marginalised’ in the protests and were understandably hesitant to be visible with these identities, for example, to hold up a rainbow flag, for their own safety. In most cities, LGBTI+ people did not feel safe to come to the protests collectively, nor an individual queer could figure out with whom they would feel safe at the protests. If Erdoğan and his police could make a second wish, they would definitely choose to wish that an intersectional struggle would not emerge from these protests. Because intersectionality, both in terms of the number and the quality it would bring, was Erdoğan’s worst nightmare. Because the future, the sustainability and the direction of this legitimate anger that emerged in the protests and whether it would ever threaten the state or not depended on its intersectional character. As explained at length above, Erdoğan had manage to achieve his current absolute authority through his precise policy of destroying the grounds of intersectionality. There was no doubt that the joining forces of all the oppressed in these protests would benefit all the oppressed and disadvantage their common enemy. However, I regret to say that Erdoğan and his police seem to be having good luck and their two most desirable wishes are being realised in the uprising that has been taking place since 19 March.

Happening now: widespread resistance against a very violent repression

As of today, 27 March, the protests still continue with the character I mentioned above. In the past week, queers, feminists, anarchists, socialists… have made significant progress in becoming more visible and giving the protests a revolutionary character. Simultaneously, the launching of a massive boycott campaign against many government related companies caused a great panic. On the same day, seeing high-ranking government officials giving pose in boycotted companies and advertising their products in support of these companies proved once again that we were officially at war: The Turkish state criminal organisation and its capital had declared a war against everyone they perceived as a threat to their interests. Apparently, their priority was not even to arrest people in this war, but to collect data on who was on the opposing front. It was not for nothing that the police, who surrounded the demonstration at the universities yesterday, said that they would release the protesters in exchange for removing their masks. Meanwhile, several guides on personal data security posted on social media by those who have been on the streets for years have been life-saving. While Erdoğan’s professors at some universities have been sharing attendance sheets with the police to mark students who are not attending classes these days, many professors who supported the call for an academic boycott have already been dismissed from their posts. Although I have said that arrests are not the first priority, the prisons around Istanbul have reached their capacity and new detainees are expected to be sent to prisons in nearby cities. It is surprising only for those who do not know the real function of the law that dozens of people have now been arrested for the minor offense of ‘violation of the law on meetings and demonstrations’, which was not taken seriously in previous years because most of the time people did not even receive a fine as a result of the trial.

Resist queer!

The necessity to take the side of the stone thrown at the police, not the person who throws it

We are at a point where it is once again clear that the approach taught to us by classical justice system and politicians, that we should unconditionally take the side of one of those in conflict, or that the status of victim and perpetrator should be two different people/identities that are strictly separated from each other, is leading us into a trap. It is so striking to watch how so many of 16-24 year old protesters, who are ready to threaten and expel Kurds or LGBTI+s who would come to the protests with their open identities and visibility, based on the mandatory education they have received from Erdoğan’s school, media and family, become perpetrators and victims at the same time. Since 19 March, as victims of the state in this uprising, if more than 2000 people have been detained, thousands of people have been injured – some of them fatally -, dozens of people have already been put in prison, unknown numbers of people have been kicked out of their families’ homes, universities, jobs, and have been labeled as terrorists by the intelligence services, this is partly because of the power they have lost as a result of their role as perpetrators. I see that this trap has caught on among some ‘yesterday’s terrorists’ and that a significant part of them, in particular in the Kurdish political party, which have spent their lives fighting against the state are at best indifferent to the violence of the state and the justified demands of the protesters. I also interpret the lack of knowledge and the silence of the antifascist movement in Switzerland and Europe in this light. Therefore, I feel a responsibility to explain what is happening in this uprising to other rebels around the world, because explaining that the current uprising, despite its complexity, deserves international support and solidarity can only be possible with an anti-authoritarian perspective that does not fall into the trap of taking sides, which is about to disappear in Turkey. It is possible to support this uprising without victim blaming of someone for being tortured by the police and without excusing the same person as a perpetrator for attempting to suppress the Kurdish banner.

Where to place such a controversial uprising?

This uprising in Turkey still deserves to be supported, because the protesters are not only nationalist/apolitical generation z. Many queer, Kurdish, anarchist, socialist, anti-speciesist, feminist, people who believe in intersectional struggle… are raising their voices against injustice and resisting the Turkish state in the streets today as they have been doing for years. Despite their fear of the majority of protesters, they prefer to be on the streets and they are bearing a heavier share from state violence. The complexity of this uprising means that they need support more than ever. Backing this uprising is essential for them to come out of it with some regained ground or at least without being further pushed back. This uprising in Turkey still deserves to be supported because, one by one, the protesters, even if they harbour counter-revolutionary ideas, are legitimate in what they are revolting against, and this is what determines the legitimacy of an uprising: The organs and policies of the Turkish state, symbolised by Erdoğan. It does not matter that the majority of protesters want the dictator Erdoğan to fall and be replaced by the nationalist Imamoğlu. Today, we can stand shoulder to shoulder in the fight to bring down Erdoğan and tomorrow, we can part ways when the demand is to replace him with İmamoğlu. Once we have destroyed the biggest existing power, then we will fight to destroy the second biggest power, and then the third, until there is no power above us. This anarchist point of view calls for the support of any threat to Erdoğan, his state, his police, his judiciary. Criticism of these protests shouldn’t serve to isolate the uprising, but rather to inform the debates that will follow if it succeeds.

This uprising in Turkey still deserves to be supported because a dictator is using all the power and resources of the Turkish state, which has become a ‘criminal organisation’, to massacre people who do not have these power and resources, regardless of who they are. Not only protesters, but also their lawyers, journalists documenting torture, doctors treating the wounded at the protests, those who speak out about it, those who open their doors to people affected by the tear gas, anyone who is not in absolute obedience is now being punished. In the Turkey of 2025, where the state controls all private and public aspects of life and all our potential support is dismantled, Erdoğan surviving this uprising would mean leaving everyone who has ever questioned his authority locked in a burning building. This might be the first, only, and last chance we’ve had in years to act against Erdoğan’s power. That’s why any support for this uprising or any blow struck against its target, the Turkish state carries vital significance. This uprising in Turkey still deserves to be supported because for those who do not hold power and the majority, women, Kurds, Alevis, queers, the poor, youth, immigrants, ‘yesterday’s terrorists’, the first step toward breathing, being heard, and gaining freedom is the collapse of the current order. This uprising in Turkey still deserves to be supported, because this may be the last chance for us ‘yesterday’s terrorists’, who have already been imprisoned and forced into exile for rebelling for years, to see the daylight again in the country we were born.

Counter-Attack Against SIRCO

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Mar 162025
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Early this morning, anarchists attacked SIRCO by smashing windows and spraying paint inside and outside the building. If that name rings a bell, SIRCO was the company responsible for dismantling the McGill Gaza solidarity encampment in July 2024. Since October, they have been employed by the Ville de Montréal to spy on and intimidate unhoused and marginalized folks in the Ville-Marie borough. As Valérie Plante’s administration declares open warfare on the most vulnerable people in society, there is no doubt that this strategy of outsourcing the SPVM’s dirty work to private companies will be generalized to the entire island like EMMIS if nothing is done to stop it.

Statement On Arrest, Police Raid and Dropped Charges

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Mar 112025
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

On October 23rd, 2024, at 6:50 AM, I was arrested by the SPVM (Service de police de la Ville de Montréal) for allegedly “uttering threats to burn or damage property”. They forced their way into my apartment, and several pieces of my technology were seized. I was interrogated for hours, pushed to the edge, but despite the state’s efforts, the Crown Prosecutor ultimately failed to gather enough evidence to move forward with any charges, even before a pre-trial was conducted. This is a victory, not just for me, but for all those fighting within the movement, and the broader militant community. The sudden dropping of charges is a clear reflection of the over-policing, over-surveillance, that militants within our movement have been experiencing since the huge surge of Pro-Palestine organizing. My arrest came after a wave of repression that occurred across so-called “Canada”, with house raids being issued against militants in Toronto and the sanctioning of Samidoun, a Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network. It is clear, that my arrest was apart of a broader strategy to intimidate and demobilize us, to fracture the solidarity and resistance we’re attempting to build. They believed by targeting individuals could disrupt our efforts. But they failed.

What repression at this level does mentally is difficult to explain unless you’ve experienced it firsthand. I’m still attempting to find the correct words as I write this. The emotional and psychological toll is immense. The guilt of “being caught”, of sucking up the little resources we barely have and the overall shame still hangs over me. The weight of knowing you’ve been watched, followed, and targeted takes a toll that is far beyond the physical. The trauma of being detained, interrogated, and silenced for so long leaves scars that don’t just vanish with the dropping of charges. I could not speak publicly until now as legal conditions had restricted me, furthering the violence imposed by the state. For months, my ability to express myself was controlled, and it left me completely powerless.

Repression can provoke a range of reactions that only escalate an already fragile situation. Historically, the tactics used by the police to destabilize movements often lead people to act in ways that harm both those who are arrested and the broader community. It fosters distrust, wastes time on petty conflicts, and diverts attention from our true adversaries. When unchecked egos and harmful behaviour take hold, they inadvertently play into the hands of the state and its goals. Our movement is built on trust—without it, we have nothing, and repression triumphs. In the future, I hope that, alongside thinking about what’s best for the movement, we also consider empathy. I hope we can prioritize creating a community that supports arrestees, without infantilizing them or dismissing them based on the misguided assumption that they are “too traumatized” to make sound decisions.

The overwhelming majority of the community supported me without hesitation. I express my deepest gratitude to those who stood by me through this ordeal. To those who brought me groceries, helped put my life back together or gave me a shoulder to cry on — you are the reason I am standing here today. You saved me during the darkest period of my life. Your support was not just a comfort— it was a life line. Without your help, I would not have survived. 

Let me be clear: the movement is far from over. The charges being dropped does not mean that this is the end. This is proof of our collective resilience, it is a sign that the state’s efforts to repress us were in vain. What happened to me is not an isolated incident, but a testament to the overall strength among us all. Repression is a temporary setback, a minor bump on the road, not a nail in the coffin. It will not stop us. It will only fuel us.

We will not be broken. We will keep fighting. We will continue to build a movement grounded in solidarity and resistance. The work we do is far from finished, and this experience will only strengthen our resolve to keep pushing forward. I hope my story, can be seen not as some cautionary tale but rather a ray of hope that there is a life after repression. The threat of jail time, being kicked out of school, losing your job, is not the end, it’s the beginning of the next chapter in our fight.

The black flag is at full mast.

In resistance, in love and in rage,

★

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