The borders won't protect you - but they could kill you

Coordinated bombings and shootings in Paris claimed by the Islamic State killed 129 people on November 13. Although this is just the latest in a series of attacks, it has attracted a different kind of attention than the massacres in Suruç and Ankara, in which 135 people were killed. The lives of the young activists supporting the Kurdish fight against IS – so far the only ground-based operation to block the spread of the Islamic State – are valued differently than the lives of Western Europeans.

The same applies to the lives of the millions killed or displaced from their homes in Syria. European nationalists were quick to link the attacks to the so-called “refugee crisis.” Based on the claim that a passport belonging to a refugee who had entered Greece via Greece was found on one of the attackers, the British media headlined: "Jihadists sneaked into Europe as fake Syrian refugees." These opportunists want to harness the fresh blood on the streets of Paris to complete their project of closing Fortress Europe.

Ironically, many of those attempting to reach Europe from the Middle East are fleeing similar attacks carried out by ISIS (and other groups). That's why they cross border after border, risking their lives, to reach a Europe that doesn't welcome them. Cutting off their escape route would trap them in ISIS-controlled territory, potentially increasing the Islamic State's resources and certainly increasing the frustration that drives people into the hands of Islamist fundamentalism.

The people who planned the attacks certainly knew that. It may even have been one of their goals.

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There are striking similarities between the intentions of European nationalists and the fundamentalists of the Islamic State. The nationalists want to see the world divided into “gated communities” in which belonging to a nation functions as a kind of caste system; European history shows that in a world so divided, the final answer to every problem is war. The fundamentalists, on the other hand, hope to position Islamist identity as the basis for a global jihad.

In this respect, the only real difference between IS and the European nationalists is the criterion of membership in the New World Order©: nationality or religion? Both ISIS and the nationalists want the conflicts of the 21st century to be between clearly defined and constructed "peoples" ruled by competing powers, rather than between the rulers and the ruled as a whole.

Of course, the expansion of Fortress Europe and the next wave of airstrikes will be presented as a way to protect Europeans from foreign barbarians, not as a means of escalating the global conflict.

Back to September 11, 2001, when Al-Qaeda carried out attacks in Manhattan and Washington. In response, then-President George W. Bush ordered US troops to invade Afghanistan and Iraq to “secure the world for democracy.” He borrowed from another president who justified a war to end all wars while demonizing immigrants. One of Bush's justifications was that by occupying these "rogue states" the places from which the terror was being coordinated could be eliminated. The Bush administration claimed to be able to protect U.S. citizens through acts of the same indiscriminate violence that generated so much hostility in the first place.

Anarchists didn’t give in to this. In response to the September 11 attacks and the military operations that followed, we posted posters on walls across the United States with the statement, "Your leaders can't protect you, but they can kill you."

As we predicted, the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan could only destabilize the Middle East and create new generations of embittered Islamist fighters. Just as Al-Qaeda was originally funded and trained by the CIA, ISIS today is equipped with the very military hardware that was sent to Iraq to bring the region under U.S. control. As we wrote in Rolling Thunder #3 [9MB, PDF ] in 2006, the Bush administration could hardly have achieved its stated goal of generating Islamist resistance more effectively:

»A repressive regime cannot do anything with sheer world domination. Once there are no more barbarians knocking on the gates to point to as the greater evil, people become restless - an example of this is the decade following the fall of the Berlin Wall, when in the vacuum left by the communist threat, internal resistance grew and grew. War without end could also make people restless. However, it also keeps them busy reacting to it, if not dying in it - rather than getting to the root of the problem.

Militant Islam, once a garage startup, is now a global threat poised to replace the communist bloc. Western capitalism has expanded its influence and control to such an extent that external opposition must now come from previously peripheral parts of the world such as Afghanistan; Back in 2001, only a few fanatics from this periphery were enough to usher in the new era of terror-versus-democracy. However, it will take many more fanatics to maintain it, and US foreign policy will produce them.

The intensification of the security state and border controls will only increase the tensions that are driving people from France and Great Britain, as well as in Iraq and Syria, into the ranks of IS. A crackdown on Europe's external borders means a crackdown on every aspect of life within the fortress. Special forces were deployed to support the British police; the president of the New York Police Department hopes to increase surveillance of telecommunications devices; Former French President Sarkozy wants to force anyone suspected of being a radical to wear an electronic bracelet. This is not just a question of how refugees are treated, it is about what life will be like for all of us in an era of ever-increasing state control.

The Paris attacks are convenient for those busy suppressing social unrest. When Hillary Clinton says, "We are not at war with Islam, we are at war with violent extremism," it implies that anyone who stands up for themselves against the crackdown will be treated as a violent extremist. In the United States, the National Guard was deployed three times last year to quell protests against police killings - not just IS killings. In Europe, where there have been very violent protests against austerity, 68 anarchists have been arrested on terrorism charges in the last three years - in retaliation for activity in social movements, not for attacks on civilians.

From Washington and Paris to Raqqa and Mosul, those in power have no real solutions to the economic, environmental and social crises of our time; they are more focused on suppressing the social movements that pose a threat to them. But wherever such movements are crushed, discontent will be channeled into organizations like ISIS, which prefer to solve their problems through religious war rather than through collective revolutionary upheaval.

So cracking down can only make the situation worse. Tougher border controls will not protect us from attacks like the one in Paris, but will continue to cause the deaths of countless refugees. Air strikes will not stop suicide bombers, but they will create new generations with hatred of the West. Surveillance will not prevent every assassination, but it will affect social movements that offer an alternative to nationalism and war.

If the proponents of Fortress Europe successfully oppress and divide us, we will surely find ourselves fighting against each other: divide and conquer. Our only hope is to make common cause against our rulers; To build bridges across the limitations of nation and religion before the entire world is dismantled on the slaughterhouse of war.

In this context, we can draw inspiration from all those who have defied borders in recent months and shown that these artificial divisions can be overcome. In August, hundreds broke through the border from Greece into Macedonia. In September, when trains that were supposed to take refugees through Hungary to the Austrian border instead arrived at an internment camp surrounded by fences and riot cops, the passengers locked themselves in the train, refused food and water, eventually broke through the fence and fled across the fields to the highway. In October, over a hundred people stormed the Channel Tunnel between France and London. Just a few weeks ago, thousands repeatedly broke through the police lines that separated Slovenia and Austria. In each of these cases, we see people working together to find the weak spots in the walls that divide humanity. Without these efforts, European governments would certainly have done even less to support refugees.

By breaking down the borders and supporting others who break them, we can show those fleeing Syria - and Mexico and all the other war zones around the world - that they have comrades in arms on the other side of the fences. This is our best chance to stop them from giving up the possibility of common solidarity and joining organizations like ISIS. Likewise, the more we disrupt the security apparatus and war machine, the less ISIS will be able to influence potential converts by highlighting the harm being done to Muslims around the world. Every time we do this, we take the initiative to define the essential fight of our time: not terrorists against governments, not Islam against the West, but all of humanity against the structures and ideologies that pit us against each other.

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