12/03/2007 Giorgos Voutsis-Vogiatzis letter from Korydallos' Prison

[Photo: "The bank robs you legitimately and likes it", "Their wealth, our blood": Slogans spray painted outside a bank in Solonos Str, where anarchist Giannis Dimitrakis got arrested after an armed bank robbery, the same bank was burnt down by anarchists-antiautoritarians]

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Giorgos Voutsis-Vogiatzis letter from Korydallos' Prison

Now that they've all shut their mouths, let's talk about choices

"...Many of us died or were taken prisoner along the way; many others were wounded and permanently put out of action; and certain elements even let themselves slip into the background because of their lack of courage; but I believe I can say that our formation as a whole never wavered until it plunged into the very core of destruction."

To attack the modern institutions of repression and exploitation, it takes -first of all- to refuse the mass production of consciences that this world gives birth to. Authority no more stands for a privileged technique of administration, held fast in the net of a minority elite. It is a pervasive social relationship that finds its expression in every aspect of every day life. The transmutation of social antagonism has inevitably created the necessity for the refabrication and the sophistication of the old terms of repression. This process did not appear out of the blue, nor was it simply forced by physical violence. Social relations have been shaped over the course of decades spent inside the social factory; they have plenty of their own keywords. Integration, “morality”, homogeneity, “proper citizenship”. That’s the way the bosses manufactured the managers and their supervisors, the modern class to bridge the gap that were named syndicalists as well as, of course, the obedient worker, who, having broken –at last- the chainsaws of mass production, is now able to afford his own proper handcuffs. They created volunteers to raise the vision of “Great Greece”. Unpaid submissive people who named their volontary servitute “giving back to society”. Social groups working for the maintenance of the existent repression and exploitation that now act the role of shock absorbers contributing to the global attack of the rulers.

Organisations (i.e. the N.G.O.s) created out of democracy's need to show a humanitarian public image. Based on non-violence and charity they are busily preparing the cemeteries for tomorrow's casualties on their battlefields of democracy. They maintain the modern work camps in the third-world countries. Factories of misery, where the slaves of economy build the glass window of western civilization, as well as the consent of the modern schizo-proletariat, transforming its class conscience into consumerist conscience.

The “proper citizens”, the armed heroes of the greek democracy constitute the modern expression of law and order. They participate actively in volunteer work in security projects, they inform the police on suspicious figures and even attack delinquents themselves. They get their little awards from the police for their achievements and feel proud. The demand for security is not an imposed convention anymore. It is a social instinct. A pervasive militarized demand for the merciless defence of property. The cops are not the only ones in uniforms. This world's morality wears a uniform too, and has enlisted with vigor on the side of the bosses.

On 3-10-2007 I robbed the ETE (Ethniki) bank on Gyzi Street. On my way out, about 1,5 minute after the robbery and once I got on my bicycle, I noticed a passerby crossing Ragkavi Street not far from where I was (a street parallel to the one I was on), who was heading towards me. After a short dialogue and while I was still on my bicycle, this passerby turned into a “hero” and kicked my bicycle resulting to its crashing with a passing car, and me falling down, on the pavement. From that point on alarm sirens were blasting all around me...

My choice to rob a bank constitutes a point in my way to negation. Guerilla attacks to the enemy’s wealth under by acts of expropriation uphold a perpetuous choice of attack, historically consistent to the history of negation. Consistency has to move with a military step between thinking and acting. Rioters, robbers, arsonists, they are all detonators to set off the same war. The negation of work is a partial negation of the economy and its world. Wage labour is an alienated process producing inequalities, based upon one’s exploitation by another. It is the commercialization of humanity's natural urge for creation and its integration in the social factory of alienated relations. Alienated work has its own ethics of submission. Legality, the boss-model, career.

Where do you work? How much do you earn? When do you get a day-off? Questions to inquire the subject’s social status. Alienated work manages and organizes also leisure/spare time, that is equally modified by the work status that enslaves it (weekend, holidays, days off). In reality, alienated work defines our whole existence. Our every day chat: How was work? When do you get paid? Our mood: I ‘m dead-tired today, not in a mood for anything, I have to wake up early in the morning. We can finally see how exactly the deep meaning of time is in great degree shaped upon the world of labor and the needs of the economy. The immaterial dimension of time takes on a material expression modified by the schedule of our every day captivity. Robbing an economic mechanism of captivity is not the only choice to realize negation to work. But even attacks against economic targets constitute a radical suggestion of organization and struggle, which jumpstarts the project for the destruction of work.

I will say it again: the negation of work constitutes a partial negation of economy and its world. For example: the expropriation of commodities (from bookstores, super markets) constitutes a kind of negation of consumption, though not a total attack on economy. Robbing a bank is a way of negating work, but is not a total attack on capitalism. If the end justify anything, it's not the means, but the choices developed for action. The means follow the decision to act. They are dialectically related to the project. They are shaped inside it, but don’t shape it. My decision to rob the ETE bank at Gyzi was not a vindictive, fortuitous attempt based on the weapons I possessed, but a point in my way to a total negation of this world. A way with no final destination, but with many intermediate points. Many as the guns a revolutionary possesses at his arsenal. So, if there is anything we need to take back, it is personal consciousness. Or else, everything mass-based and collective is doomed to reproduce the simultaneous defeat of our consciousness, that will turn into the new defeated masses of our era.

Hostilities continue.

Giorgos Voutsis-Vogiatzis

Instead of a P.S.: The identity of a person is not defined by its surname, but by the way and the choices that are of his own. We know however that when the cameras are smashed and the informants of the lie are beaten up mercilessly a timer begins ticking, measuring a reverse reality. Those that have slandered and pillaged my "personal data" will soon find me in front of them. In any action of solidarity, I wish all mentions of my name to include both my surnames.

[Some actions of solidarity (October-November 2007):

12 October: Arson attacks against two banks at Zografou (Athens)
13 October: Arson attack against the offices of the deputy minister of education (Athens)
16 October: Arson attack against an ETE bank in the city center and a rulling party office at Evosmos (Thessaloniki)
18 October: Arson attack against an ETE bank and a rulling party office at Nea Krini (Thessaloniki)
5 November: Broken glass windows and damages at the ETE bank in Exarchia, at Eurobank on Solonos Str., and at the Union of Greek Banks, on Massalias Str. (Athens)
Giorgos will be held for up to 18 months before jury in Korydallos' Prison, Athens.]