A week ago, the far-right government in Washington added the Autistici/Inventati (a/i) platform—which provides technical support to various anarchist and antifascist groups – to its list of terrorist organizations. The collective provides blog creation services through the noblogs.org platform, email hosting, website hosting (pramen.io is hosted with a/i), and many other technical services.
The reasons given by the government are, for the most part, merely a formality. In practice, this step is a continuation of the campaign by American fascists against the infrastructure of the anarchist and antifascist movement, both within the United States and abroad. To combat their ideological opponents, the Trump administration is also using international agreements with law-enforcement agencies in other countries, hoping to destroy the left-wing and anarchist movements. This behavior largely mirrors the actions of authoritarian regimes around the world, including Belarus and Russia. For example, the Lukashenko and Putin regimes often use Interpol databases to seize political opponents who have fled to relative safety.
It is not yet clear how European states will respond to this move, or whether any repression will be directed against the collective. However, the project’s website is already inaccessible at autistici.org and will most likely never return. Other technical collectives recommend creating backups of blogs hosted on Noblogs.org and on individual hosting services. This does not mean that people need to move immediately, but having a backup plan in case the project is completely destroyed certainly cannot hurt.
Over the past year, the fascists in Washington have added several European anarchist organizations to the terrorist list and, more broadly, classified “Antifa” as a terrorist organization. Other far-right governments followed Trump’s lead: in the Netherlands and Hungary, “Antifa” is also being classified as terrorist. As far-right influence grows in Western Europe and the United States, we can expect an intensification of the response and repression directed against antifascist organizations. For the far right, this approach is a logical step toward authoritarian rule and the destruction not only of left-wing and anarchist opposition, but also of liberal forces.
Anarchists in Eastern Europe can hardly influence these processes, but we hope that our comrades in the West will be able to resist fascism!
