Freedom News

It ain’t liberation until it’s total liberation

The Total Liberation Club reflects on Do or Die Magazine, Earth First! and the rich tradition of eco-anarchism. In the last piece we wrote for Freedom we defended some aspects of Extinction Rebellion (XR) — or rather we defended In Defence of Extinction Rebellion — but subsequent club meetings saw heated ‘discussions’ around letting XR

Impressions: A Normal Life, the memoir of Vassilis Palaiokostas

As Freedom Press launches its (first ever) crowdfunder to get the story of the Greek Robin Hood into print, George F waxes lyrical about the importance of telling tales of working class illegalism. Freedom is aiming to publish the translated memoir this November, you can find out more about the project and pick up some

Cuba: Economic change and authoritarian stasis

Octavio Alberola looks at the Cuban state’s post-Fidel shift towards a more privatised economic model and the way it has prioritised retaining elite interests while the masses remain locked out of the decisions affecting their lives. Alberola, an author and anarcho-syndicalist veteran of the fight against Franco, has spent decades critiquing the Castro regime from

Kropotkin: Syndicalism and Anarchism

The following long read first appeared in Freedom’s July and August issues in 1912, as the Great Unrest was in full swing. He discusses the differences between northern and southern European attitudes, and the problems caused by a failure to push into revolutionary territory. I We are asked on many sides: “What is Syndicalism? What

A polymath mind: Kropotkin’s contributions to science

While Peter Kropotkin is today best remembered as a leading anarchist thinker, one of the most persuasive advocates of anarchist communism, we should not forget that he was also a world-renown scientist, a geographer who revolutionised our understanding of the physical features of Asia. His stature was such that as well as his justly famous

100 years on, Kropotkin remains strikingly modern

The centenary of Kropotkin’s death is a good time to return to the question he asked in Freedom in 1886: what must we do? Ruth Kinna considers a thinker whose work evolved through a rapidly changing political and social era but never lost its humanity and faith in the possibility of real change. Kropotkin’s different

Against anarcho-smugness

As Corbyn’s suspension from the Labour Party occasions yet another wave of anarcho-smugness, Anna K. takes aim at the strange self-satisfaction of our politically irrelevant movement. On December 13th 2019, the day after the General Election, I had the grave misfortune of being behind the till at Freedom Bookshop. To be clear, my misfortune lay

Voice from the frontline: Brazil’s antifa firefighters

As record-breaking wildfires rage in the rainforest a member of the newly-formed Autonomous Brigade writes for Freedom about its defence of affected people, animals and the environment. Brazil has always suffered from the fires, unfortunately, but what made Brazilian anarchists organise was the emergency situation that is in the biomes of the Pantanal and the

History: Baltic and Polish anarchism at the end of the 19th century

At the beginning of the twentieth century, anarchist anti-State ideals were most widely felt in what were then the western regions of the Russian Empire. This reflected both their proximity to the fast-changing social conflicts of Europe and the presence of significant national and cultural tensions within the occupied territories. Of great importance, in particular,