you cannot fight authority if you are the authority
It is already few years that the atmosphere in Leiden’s squats is getting more and more creepy.
''How does one keep from being fascist, even (especially) when one believes oneself to be a revolutionary militant? How do we rid our spe-ech and our acts, our hearts and our pleasures, of fascism? How do we ferret out the fascism that is ingrained in our behaviour?
Develop action, thought, and desires by proliferation, juxta- position, and disjunction, and not by subdivision and pyramidal hierarchization." (M. Foucault - Introdution To The Non-Fascist Life)
It is already few years that the atmosphere in Leiden’s squats is getting more and more creepy.
Over the years, increasingly authoritarian and hierarchical practices consolidated in the Leiden squatters “movement”, apparently close to the anarchist political reality.
These logics seem to have become not only tolerated but also passively and actively accepted.
As anarchists, enemies of every forms of authority, we consider squats as spaces freed from the authoritarian, hierarchical, capitalist and fascist logics typical of the society we claim to fight.
We believe in self-analysis and self-criticism as the prime insurrectional weapons, because, as Foucault wrote, we have to destroy the authority that was indoctrinated in ourselves in order to recognize and fight the power, in all its shapes.
Attempts of critical analysis and confrontation on these practices have been refused, demonstrating that inside these “squats” there is any room for critics on authority, power, consumerism, capitalism and paid employment. Anty-psychiatry is neither taken in consideration. Instead any individual who doesn’t fit the pattern of the “good quiet squatter” is labeled and denigrated as mentally ill. We consider this inacceptable.
Multiple episodes and factors contribute to confirm their tendency to embrace and reproduce inside the squats behaviours and practices typical of our capitalist and authoritarian society.
The prerogative for living in these places is a purely economic factor. If you can pay the monthly rate you are welcome! The decision of who to accept inside the squat is independent from any political or ethical factor. Most of the people who hang around and live in Leiden’s squats are indeed interested to cure their own interests and to not cause any disturbance, in line with a citizenism that aims to unify everybody in that shitty soup call social peace.
Multiple episodes have moreover demonstrated that there is no critic (and we would dare to say any aversion) towards cops, that have indeed been allowed inside the squats during squatting actions or called for help.
Sneaky authoritarian games, defamation and discredit attempts, closed doors and people expelled on a mere individual decision. These are some of the tactics used by some of the people living in these squats in order to intimidate and dispel any attempt to critical discussion and opposition to such authoritarian practices.
As enemies of every form of authority, and as believing in the possibility of creating spaces that contribute to destroy all power mechanisms, we can only be hostile towards such places.
''Last but not least, the major enemy, the strategic adversary is fascism (..). And not only historical fascism(..) but also the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.'' (M. Foucault - Introdution To The Non-Fascist Life)
Ⓐ for the self-management of minds and bodies Ⓐ