Summer camp — August 2024

For one week, the summer camp acts as a theoretical and practical training ground in order to lead the anti-tech revolution. This camp also allows comrades — national and international — to meet and strengthen human ties, which is essential in view of geographical distance. The pace is intense, and the content galvanizing.

AN INSPIRING PLACE

End of August. More than 25 determined anti-techs went to Lorraine in Lorraine in a welcoming and pleasant permaculture place. There are no pesticides or chemicals here. Instead, elbow grease and Indian runner ducks help to regulate predatory species. In the middle of this small symbiocene: boards to make tables, a modest cabin to cook, and off we go. Our main place of living and working is adopted.

Many of us sleep outside in the forest. The forest's vibrant canopy and humus remind us of what we're fighting for.

This region has been ravaged by mining extractivism, and local populations are still suffering from the consequences of this industry (disfigured landscapes, soil and water pollution, etc.).

The common tasks are distributed each day by self-management on boards, and I still have a hard time believing, given the density of the training schedule, that everything could be completed.

ENLIGHTENING FORMATIONS

The Sun is rising, and comrades are leaving the forest, from the camping area, and other building corners. The bravest take advantage of their sleep time to stretch and strengthen muscles. Every day, despite the cold and humid night, everyone meets up early in the morning to eat, tidy up, take out the notebooks, and start activities.

During the various presentations, the one on mining extractivism allowed us to learn things that are sometimes difficult to digest: in a digital world that depends entirely on minerals, Europe consumes a third of the resources plucked from the earth, while it only supplies the rest of the world with 5%. To achieve “decarbonization”, the quantity of metals that excavators will remove from the Earth's crust will quadruple. This enthusiasm for allegedly “green” or “clean” technologies is stimulating the development of the lithium industry in Europe and France, especially in Allier and Alsace. Thanks to the ongoing reindustrialization, the French will soon (re) discover the joys of living near an industrial site.

We are exploring offensive axes, we are training ourselves in order to be able to target the roots of the techno-industrial system that enslaves us. Thus, to compensate for militant error and burnout, or even internal conflicts, we learn about the pitfalls of liberalism, individualism and short-termism. Given the magnitude of the task, and especially in the face of the climate and ecosystem emergency, we must collectively prioritize bringing the system to a standstill. On everything else.

This questioning is well complemented by rhetorical exercises. We learn to generate interest by conveying strong ideas, sometimes with diplomacy, other times by deliberately dividing. Feedback from classmates makes it possible to differentiate between tactics that work and those that fail, depending on the context.

Some evenings, movie debates are organized to learn more about the history of the struggles. These stories allow us to highlight and learn from our predecessors, in the West and elsewhere in the global South. Will the ardor, courage and ability to unite Black Panthers, played by Fred Hampton, become a reality again in activist circles? Judas And The Black Messiah invites us to work in this direction. Will the anti-tech movement be as imaginative and combative as the independence and anti-extractivist resistance in Mekaamui (Bougainville Island)? The movie Coconut Revolution reminds us that this is imperative, and that the anti-colonial and anti-extractivist struggle will continue as long as the industrial system is a reality.

We spend our other evenings singing around a campfire. Some songs are great revolutionary classics, legacies of past struggles: Makhnovchina. la Blanche Hermine. The Pile. Other texts are compositions prepared by the classmates.

A PROMISING INTERNATIONAL HUB

This year is the first meeting between international anti-tech comrades. Everything has been prepared to receive them in the best conditions: a team of translators manages the translation of the training courses as well as the oral exchanges, as well as the schedules and the formats of the training courses.

The dissemination of anti-tech analysis internationally is essential from a strategic point of view. As Theodore Kaczynski explicitly mentions, “any movement seeking to limit technology must be Global.” It is inspiring to see that in exchanging with our international comrades on anti-industrial analysis, we speak the same language. The anti-tech front will soon know no borders.

LET'S NOT BE AFRAID OF BODIES

This mental mixing is constructive, but it takes time to digest the amount of information. Luckily for us, theoretical training is interspersed with sports time — but always with a focus on strategy in mind! Captures of flags in asymmetric combat mode, rugby, self-defense or even playfight are on the program.

For some people, physical contact is unusual. So groups are simply divided up to best match the needs of each and every one. In the end, during the debriefs, all the feedback goes in the same direction: over the course of the exercises, it is rather liberating to feel the strength of the collective that carries us, helps us to leave our comfort zone and to push our limits.

A CERTAIN IDEA OF CASTLE LIFE

Halfway through the week, a whole group of volunteers sets off on an excursion in the Vosges. A column of backpacks crisscrosses the forests and mountains for two days and one night. Sometimes singing, sometimes in silence, and sometimes even walking barefoot, the skin in direct contact with the earth and the stones.

The night takes place in a castle ruin - today a beast in the shape of a stone cut into the rock. We are taking over from History to invest this place in a new way. The people are divided into teams to organize the camp and guarantee the safety of everyone. We keep in mind that a few nights before our expedition, on the ZAD of the A69 between Toulouse and Castres, a techno-fascist militia attacked with a knife and set fire to a camp of activists present on site. This story reminds us that preparation and safety culture have a very real purpose.

The summer camp is coming to an end, the emotion is palpable. The anti-techs go home with lots of memorable memories of these few days spent together. But returning to the land of concrete can be difficult. So we remember what we understood, what we felt, and we rehash memories shared with classmates so as not to forget who we are fighting with, these people we can count on.

After leaving the anti-tech oasis, it is time for us to dive back into the technosphere, to face industrial pollution so as not to forget what we are fighting against. Stopping the destruction of the living world is the top priority. Courage comrades, the road will be long and difficult.
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“When you see your neighborhood as a cardboard decor,
Get out of your cinder block box and slam the door on the way out.
Go on! Life is short!
Leave the city and follow the roads,
Get away from all these screens
Who gave you doubts,
Before you turn into a badger belonging
To his fucking smartphone and his exercise bike.”

- Zippo, Paradise Lost