Pseudoanarchist Federation
A word to the members and sympathizers of the AF

Translator’s note

Even though this text was originally supposed to be directed towards the Anarchist Federation in Poland (Federacja Anarchistyczna), it wouldn’t be a far stretch to say that it shouldn’t be directed towards every single "officially unofficial" leading anarchist organization around the world as well.

While these massive (and supposedly) anarchist organizations monopolize anarchism by telling individuals how to properly "do anarchism" (whatever that means) and by ostracizing those, who do not share the same principles and praxis [1], there are those who confront the majority and act against it, even on the surface level, by writing texts similar to this one.

Insurrectionism in Poland is dead; in fact, it has never truly lived. But so is anarcho-syndicalism - dead; it is a rotten corpse, wandering since before the Second World War, first through the indirectly anti-anarchist regime of so-called real socialism, and then through the neoliberal wastelands of Polish catholic conservatism in hope - or to be more precise - in belief, of being revived. Besides two really small anarcho-syndicalist unions (actually, one of them doesn't consider itself anarcho-syndicalist, but for their advantage, let's suppose there are two), anarcho-syndicalism isn't really a thing. And yet, it is the pompous (and mainly) anarcho-syndicalist AF that is patronizing, due to it dominating anarchism in Poland.

I did not translate "Pseudoanarchist Federation" to annoy the Polish AF, neither to publicly complain how much the AF here sucks – it does, but not in its entirety, since it is varied. The AF has been doing a lot of good for some workers, for other anarchists, for certain oppressed groups, and even for anarchism itself. I am not trying to diminish the influence of Polish anarcho-syndicalism on the movement of today or to completely eradicate it. I just want the anarcho-outsiders to know, that if the following translated words relate to you and your experiences you had with the local anarcho-monopolist, you are not alone with these thoughts and observations – no matter where you’re from, who you are, or what your anarchist background is.

I am not the original author of this call, but in a sense, I am the co-author, just as you, just as anybody else: not because I wrote it alongside the one who did, because I didn’t, but because I subscribe to what has been written here.

Pseudoanarchist federation

These workers’ revolutions, these proletarian utopias, these pamphlets and newspapers of yours – who cares about them, really?

The revolutionary situation has been, is, and will always be here, if only you filter the picture of everyday life through enough lenses. So where are your militias, proudly replacing the Polish flag flying on the Sejm building [2] with black and red banners? Let's face it - there are none because nobody needs that. There shall be no more heroic clashes on the barricades - these dreams have died, if they were even still alive at all, together with the Paris Commune. It's still better than the syndicalist and anarcho-communist pipe dreams that didn't even get to become overdue as they never were valid. The 21st century is a time of ubiquitous cameras, police states with a human face, cyberdystopias adorned equally with Coca-Cola advertising banners, and corporations boasting of producing green, "friendly" energy.

You are the first to shout after Durutti that "the only church that enlightens is a burning church". At the same time, you wash your hands of it and mumble embarrassedly about your friendly social image when angry youngsters set fire to some Christian shrine of suffering in Bumfuck Nowhere. You applaud when you see pictures of puppets of bishops hanging on gallows from an overpass somewhere across the ocean but you do nothing so that instead of these puppets hung those who every day turn people into serfs, pigs, ready to be slaughtered with smiles on their faces. Why is it that on the bridges of Warsaw [3] there is not even a puppet of the altar boy and nun raping Cardinal, let alone the Cardinal himself?

You proudly hand out hundreds of leaflets and newspapers at your demonstrations to liberals and social democrats from rich families who have no conception of suffering, while your comrades, who are squatting tenement houses forgotten by the system, burn them in their stoves. No amount of talk about revolution, printed by you on cheap paper, can warm their hearts. It's a good thing that from time to time they at least warm their freezing, wire- and glass-scarred hands. Are you ailing, tired, gripped by depression? That's all right, you don't have to build bombs or clear cities of fascist garbage with your own hands. Just don't preach your pacifist morals to the fighters whose blood is spilling on the city pavement before your eyes.

You meet in your cramped apartments, which this shitty system has thrown at you like a few scraps of meat from the lord's table. While you are having your revolutionary-worker discussions about nothing, real proletarian youths are crouched down smoking cigarettes outside your housing blocks. You hasten to call them rednecks and chavs [4], while they are fed their fascist propaganda by patriotic rappers or national-socialist rock bands. Nazis don't even have to try, they don't even have to steal the proletariat from you, because it's simply not yours.

Let the trumpets of wrath blow, by the deities of vengeance, slumbering deep within each and every one of us. Let cathedrals burn because we don't want any Christian theology of liberation. Let the walls of the Sejm crumble into dust, for we do not want your National Trade Union Parliament [5] there. Let the bones of officers and politicians be broken, for we want no allied policemen and revolutionary prophets.

We want war. And we fight it, every day. Why don't you finally join in?

[1] i.e. the historically mainly anarcho-syndicalist AF in Poland, probably due to the fear of lacking its pro-social reputation in the eyes of… who knows who exactly - probably the mythical "masses", opposes individualist, nihilist, and insurrectionist anarchist schools of thought, claiming that these unorthodox (non-)ideologies only hurt the image of anarchism and in addition provide nothing for anarchism’s sake

[2] the lower house of the bicameral parliament of Poland; the most important and most recognizable political building for the Polish society

[3] the Polish capital

[4] Sebastiany [Seby] i Karyny – a pejorative term typically describing teens and young adults from poor families associated with pathological behavior; Seba(stian) is a man’s name, and Karyna – a woman’s name.

[5] Ogólnokrajowy Parlament Związków Zawodowych – this is probably a reference to the All-Poland Alliance of Trade Unions (Ogólnopolskie Porozumienie Związków Zawodowych (OPZZ)), implying that we are not interested in participating in the anarcho-syndicalist struggle, whose objective is to be as controlling and shitty, as the OPZZ