The Parallel Conspiracy

In an earlier short essay -more a call to action- “a letter to my dearest comrade”, I tried to persuade and motivate people to straight up abandon and shed the chains of capitalist civilization. I don't believe in the post revolutionary world, I believe in anarchy as a chaotic force which has no ends, or goals but only means. I wrote that there is no individual escape from capitalism, you either try to work through it and become a cog within the machine or become dead. The only way to truly “escape” is to become collectively independant, to form a grand parallel conspiracy of anarchic solidarity and chaos.

The Lamentations of a Squatter

I have spent some years living in Dutch squats and have more recently become familiar with the German forest occupier communities, both of these scenes exist of course within their own cultural context, applying anarchy in vastly different ways from squat to squat and occupation to occupation. But also across the so called “borders” of the state occupiers. The squats I've lived and participated in have been to some degree a kind of clumsily cobbled together intentional community sometimes, carefully playing the balancing act between social center, and living space for individuals surviving within the machinations of the industrial civilized machine. I’m not going to pretend like the reason some of these spaces were not able to fulfill the utopian vision I’m calling for in this text, was not because of my own faults and process of unlearning civilized brain-rot. Nevertheless a pattern which I see constantly repeated in the squatting scene is spaces which were squatted with the intention of providing a third autonomous space, being appropriated to provide just the need for housing and only the need for housing. I did this in 2022, I’ve seen this happen in every subsequent squat since. I’ve seen this happen in other cities and scenes as well. Now there’s nothing inherently wrong with this, squatting is the struggle to radically provide for housing after all. So squats being used,,,,as squats is perfectly fine, there’s nothing holy about the “intention” of the people who broke open the doors and peoples’ needs change all the time. But what a fucking waste it is sometimes.

A vision in the forest of a better world.

Forest occupiers are people who squat the forests to stop the expansion of the industrial machine of capital, they like “city”-squatters form into a kind of semi-intentional community. The stark difference between the two is something you notice within hours of experiencing both environments. Forest occupations are generally truly autonomous, people come and go as they like, access to resources of the community is generally free and open and you are part of the community by virtue of your participation in it. Squatting communities function way more closed off, you cannot just walk into a squat and participate (for ‘some’ good reasons), you cannot just grab food out of the pantry and cook for the community, you cannot just come to live there out of the blue. Forest occupier communities are not some kind of utopian vision for the future They like all gatherings of people are shit in their own unique ways, but in my humble opinion, they are inspirational as fuck to me.

That time a stranger pissed me off, became my friend and showed me a vision of utopia.

In the later days of KINO, the first squat I had ever lived at. Someone stuck around after a party to live with us because she needed imminent access to housing. But not only did she ask to live there, she expected us to agree, as according to her “that's the way squats work”. This kind of pissed a young me off a lot, not because I did not believe in helping those who need it. But because my idea of “helping” was not anarchist in any way at all. I was raised Catholic and had literally just left my parent’s home, I was barely an adult and barely an anarchist. I had read Kropotkin and had the Idea in my head, but not the Soul of an anarchist yet. I was actually kind of right-wing still, where my aid was not mutual at all, it was charity, it was a pittance from my privileged middle class perspective. It pissed me off that she had the absolute audacity to waltz into “my” house and demand to live there as a right, and not as an act of charity from me to her. Now this perspective absolutely disgusts me, it is a revolting kind of brain-rot that is completely contradictory to everything I believe in. What I did not realize back then was that she was right! This is how squatting should be! We can only escape and destroy Capitalism by providing an alternative that people can rely on. The way we do that is by emulating the autonomy we see in the communities of forest occupations in Germany.

The Autonomous Dream

I dream of a network of people who radically take care of eachother, who truly do mutual-aid not as charity but as something to fully lean on. I wish and strive to build a community which like that of the forest occupiers, unconditionally provides access to shelter, food and all other resources. I am an anarchist, I am responsible for the well being of my comrades and they are responsible for mine in kind. I am not a slave to some so-called “revolution” and my participation in this network will be unconditional to my labor within it. Every individual should have their autonomy respected and their needs met, and we should all collectively strive to achieve this. What this looks like without fancy sounding theory-speak is actually very simple:

*the principles outlined in this section

This network is not one building or squat, it is a tempest of insurrection that will uproot the concrete prison capitalist civilization has built for us. It is a grand conspiracy of dozens, hundreds and thousands of individuals. It is a parallel society of terrorists, punks and insurrectionaries to put an end to their repressive state apparatus.

15/09/2024

Kat(erina) Romeownov