The writings of Tiqqun and the Invisible Committee have given rise to the emergence of an authoritarian insurrectionalist tendency that has been recruiting and building its ranks for about the past decade and a half. Although one of the trademarks of tiqqunism is its approach to “invisibility”, or not being legible as a distinct tendency, after so many years and some significant betrayals, tiqqunists have thoroughly revealed who they are and what they want, which is at direct odds with any struggle against authority.
At this point, many anarchists in the US are already familiar with how tiqqunists destroyed the struggle at the Notre-Dame-des-Landes ZAD (Zone to Defend) occupation in France in favor of legalization and property ownership [1]. The narrative that this tragic conclusion to the decade-long struggle was actually a victory has been regurgitated ad nauseum by tiqqunist platforms in the US. For example, Ill Will Edition’s “The Strategy of Composition” is about applying this “strategy” to the struggle against Cop City:
“The territorial phase of the struggle took shape gradually over a ten year period from 2008 until its eventual victory in 2018, and has since continued to nourish collective experiments on the Zone to this day”.
Recently a handful of people, likely a very small group associated with the Ungrateful Hyenas, who live thousands of miles from Atlanta and do not participate in the struggle against Cop City, have posted long tracts critiquing “Tiqqunism” on a platform dedicated to hosting communiques of sabotage against Cop City. If thoughtful, capable people come to believe the writings of the hyenas, it is not because they have posed interesting ideas or demonstrated any impressive capacity to act individually or as a group. Rather, their claims resonate only on the basis of their banality. The stories they are bandying out, the pseudo-debate they are attempting to conjure, and the odd slogans they are peddling on the internet magnify the same generalized timidity, powerlessness, and repression that all counter-revolutionary forces strive to produce.
We would have preferred to stay out of the recent Internet bickering, but we saw that Walter Benjamin’s name got dragged into the mix, so we decided to say something. “Ten Theses on Anti-(((Tiqqunism)))” is a disingenuous defense of an ideological tendency that the authors stridently insist does not exist. It finally commits to print a strategy of deflection long practiced by a North American milieu which denies its existence in the face of the countless comrades who know it all too well. If the term “Tiqqunism” is objectionable, let’s speak instead of lineage. The authors of “Ten Theses” acknowledge that the Tiqqun journal, The Coming Insurrection, and The Call (L’appel) came out of a specific milieu in France which considered Benjamin a “major reference.” We all know that there is a North American communist milieu which, in turn, has historically looked to the French milieu as its major reference. It’s unfortunate that neither group heeded the advice in The Coming Insurrection: “Beware of all existing social milieus, and above all, don’t become one.”
but me and my friends were tiqqun a walk and came across a nationwide insurance salesman’s office and we messed it up with rocks and paint. nationwide is insuring cop city.
less talk more rock! death to cop city by 1000 cuts
To the individuals who wrote the theses on “anti-tiqqunism”, we don’t want to spend a lot of time on you, because there’s better things we could all be doing like actually defending the forest, and we are glad some French comrades who have had horrible experiences with appelistes (the French tiqqunists who sold out anarchists at the Zad in order to negotiate for state-sanctioned land projects) got to you first on here. We hope people check out the links they shared about the history of the Zad, in reading these pieces we see familiar parallels to the specific ways militants have already been fucked over in Atlanta.
As some context, I’ve spent the better part of my life in circles that are now commonly derided as “Tiqqunist” but could also be called autonomist, or appelist, vitalist etc. I’ve cooked for gatherings and community meals. I’ve read everything our projects put out and listened attentively in meetings. I lost count of how many copies of the orange book I’ve given out. I’ve seen this tendency grow and strengthen in ways I couldn’t imagine since the days when I first read the zine version of The Call and everything I knew fell away and a new world of possibilities opened up. I’ve formed some of the deepest loves in my entire life through this community. My biological family as well as my chosen family is part of this community. I’ve suffered with this community, I’ve watched as numerous close friends from our community pass away and each time have felt a much needed warmth in the gentle embrace of these friends that I can only say are a deep part of myself.
Entering scenes as a young anarchist in the mid-2010s, the legacy of Bash Back! and its influence on queer insurrectionary & criminal activity deeply influenced my anarchism and my queerness. As such, I was excited about the re-emergence of the convergence and the chance to tap into a tendency and a network that has profoundly influenced me…
My favorite leggings glow orange in ultraviolet rays; Autonomy shines anew bathed in the light of queer ultraviolence.
There is a proposed plan for a single day of nonviolent action on November 13 at the Cop City construction site in so-called Atlanta. We think that this proposal is counter-revolutionary, poorly planned, and unnecessarily dangerous to participants. Also, it’s stupid and liberal.
Appelists generally do not present themselves as appelists. The term “appelist” refers to The Call (L’Appel in the original French) by the Invisible Committee, written by some of the same authors as the 1999 journal Tiqqun. This is why “appelists” are sometimes also called “tiqqunists.” Both are terms popularized by anarchists to counteract appelists’ claims that they do not have an ideology or established political network.
A grip of French appellisme reaches out from the labyrinth of reports to address its sordid past and intertwine its story with queerness via BashBack! – a connection as elusive and indistinct as ships passing in the twilight.
And what timing! As appellisme sings its swan song, it moves to interweave melodies and join in the queer chorus. The following text went out on the first day of the BB23 convergence, crying, “Appellisme is dead! Long live Bash Back!”
Tire fire barricade at the AirBnBs! Throw a molotov at the PowerPoint Presentations! Dump a smelly bucket of shrimp on the peaceful protest! We’re going to Stop Block Cop City!!
Why?
Because I’m mad that they wasted my time with their awful presentation/book-report/thinly-veiled-business-management-double-speak that tried to sell me and a bunch of other anarchists a program of non-violent civil disobedience to stop the police training facility from being constructed in the Old Prison Farm.
threatening to fire bomb stop cop city events fucking sucks and you should really reflect on your commitments if your response to people organizing to disrupt construction of cop city is to send them violent threats on the internet.
We believe that it’s a stretch to say that the quote from the discourse submission… could be considered as a genuine threat to firebomb activists, prevent them from doing the NVDA, or any genuine sense of threat… We removed it because do not want this silly discourse rhetoric that flagrantly incites comedic violence in the manner of empty words to continue to permeate a counter-information site that has been often not so empty.
In February of 1999, a journal titled Tiqqun appeared in France. Its subtitle was Organe conscient du Parti Imaginaire (Conscious Organ of the Imaginary Party), followed by Exercices de Metaphysique Crtique (Exercises in Critical Metaphysics). It was published by several graduate students in Paris, all of whom included their names in the publication data on the back page of Tiqqun.
Make no mistake. Block Cop City was a defeat. Nobody gained entry to the site, in spite of what organizers said. Construction on the project, while halted for two days, continues today. The state used its power to ensure that the construction site would be safe.
Despite the (lack of) final result, the organizers of the Block Cop City demo did do a few things right. Their celebrated 80-something city speaking tour was straight out of the old summit hopping playbook, and did a lot to raise awareness of the mobilization. And despite rumors to the contrary, BCC had a robust legal support structure in place, although it didn’t end up having much to do. BCC’s voluminous rhetoric even convinced the cops to halt construction at the site for a day, although they might not have bothered if they’d known how harmless the action would be. That’s about it, though.
On Monday, November 13, a group of about 350 people marched from Gresham Park to Constitution Road in an effort to march onto the Cop City construction site. We participated as an affinity group of five people from Atlanta. “You fight with the army you have, not the army you wish you had.”
“The Invisible Committee” to which [The Coming Insurrection] is attributed claims to be “an imaginary collective,” made up of “contributors” to the book who “are not its authors,” but merely “scribes” introducing “a little order into the common-places of our time.”… The book is actually authorless—so the authors tell us. But this doesn’t prevent the imaginary Committee, which repeatedly proclaims its adherence to communism, from copyrighting the book, thus claiming exclusive, private ownership of the text. After all, “The commune needs money”…
It’s a dirty job, representing the insurrection, acting as its spokesperson with institutions, mass media and the market – holding discussions, granting interviews, getting photographed, signing contracts, clasping hands – but someone has to do it! And it is fortunate that there are revolutionaries with noble and generous hearts who are willing to submit to such a sacrifice.
A Monday night. New York City. An empty bar.
To the traveler: “How’s shit in Bloomington?”
“Okay. Everyone’s obsessing over this French books, The Call and The Coming Insurrection. It’s annoying, ’cause it’s like they’ve forgotten all the feminism and anti-racism we’ve pounded into their heads over the past five or whatever years.”
Leijia laughs. “I feel you.”
“No, you don’t get it. Everyone! It’s this ridiculous insurrectionist bullshit –”
Leijia and I look at each other almost gleefully. “No, we know exactly what you’re talking about.”
I want to critique The Coming Insurrection and some of the writings of Tiqqun not because I dislike these texts but on the contrary because I like them, because I find them interesting, and because they have become so popular… The aura of fashion that has surrounded them encourages one to swallow these texts wholesale and uncritically, so that they become digested as a style rather than as an analysis.
As you scroll down, a demanding cadre sets about an interminable list of impossible tasks, the reader thus incurs in a great debt from the outset. Their 1-short-of-10 commandments begin with “Find each other”. This is because they begin their journey as shepherds without a sheeple.