[Found on Indymedia.nl]

In the course of awaiting the processes of several anarchists that are accused of having robbed banks in Aachen in 2013 and 2014, the prosecution office of Aachen, Germany, and their obedient voice, the media, use every chance available to advance their investigation. Whether it is on a juridical or a more subtle mediatic level, all these expressions are different tentacles of the same mechanism of repression. As usual the mainstream media are eager to get a “good” story by all means necessary, pervertedly scrutinizing people’s lives regardless of any ethics. They therefore do not hesitate in aiding the prosecution in spreading their fantastical tales. We have read these without much surprise – this is what journalists do after all –, have watched the hysterical spectacle that is being created around the implicated. Not being surprised however does not mean that we do not feel the need to clarify a few things that may have become blurred in the midst of this incessant stream of written and televised vomit.

After having ejaculated several articles in which the accused were portrayed according to the image the prosecution is trying to spread, the media has now decided it is time to create their own story. A rumour came to us through the grapevine that a certain Dutch journalist has posted a request on Indymedia asking for information concerning one of the accused. Apparently not satisfied with the image dictated by the prosecution, he searches for “people in the squatting movement of Amsterdam who could tell me something about X”, after which he states that whoever decides to snitch need not worry, as he “will not tell anyone these conversations have taken place.” Needless to say, we are disgusted by this. What should be said is that until this day no statement has been made by the accused towards neither the media nor the cops, and therefore – excuse us for pointing out the obvious – no statement should be made by anyone else either.

Let it be clear that the media and the police are two sides of the same coin, and work closely together in a most refined manner: the media hunts for a story, the prosecution throws out a few assumptions and character sketches, the media publishes these and thus transforms it into “truth”, et voilà, the prosecution is able to reproduce this “truth” and use the mediatic hunt against the implicated. For if the media say so, it must be true. For if the media states these are dangerous criminals on the run, they must be – etcetera ad nauseam. All these intimidation efforts only aim to reinforce the State’s accusations and bring the accused in the dock already convicted by a machine of lies, slander and State propaganda. These tactics are not limited to this case; they have endlessly reproduced themselves throughout history. The media are not only in service of repression, they too are at the very core of repression.

The collaboration between State and media has always been a recipe for misleading information, witch hunts and repression. The media play an important role in manipulating the public opinion, it assures the hegemony of support for the State, even when it is forced to drop the mask of “justice” and openly show its repressive mechanisms. The media excuses repression against everything or anyone that deviates from the norm, against those who do not function in a manner that is productive for or supportive of State and capital. Even, or perhaps especially in a democratic regime such as the one we live under, the media are intertwined with State propaganda; both offer us the illusion we have the choice to form an opinion, decide by whom we want to be oppressed. Yet these “choices” are always confined within the same rigid parameters of a totalitarian regime that does not allow any challenge to itself, to its logics, to its Power.

Democracy has refined the art of brainwashing, to the point of making media propaganda pass as coexistence of multiple opinions, as the transmission of unbiased information and “free” thinking. Its only aim however consists of maintaining the authority of the States and of capital. Of course democracy allows some slightly contradicting – but in fact complimentary – divergences of positions to exist, to create a self-reinforcing debate, but never a challenge to the existence of institutional authority itself. It creates a wilful participation based on the only claim that democracy is less worse than other totalitarian regimes, that we should count ourselves lucky to be living under a democratic regime.

However, every regime needs enemies in order to offer a solution for the problems they have created, to legitimize its repressive apparatus and ultimately legitimize itself. The search for and classification of enemies too is reinforced and exercised by the media. We have noted the silence and excuses of the media in the economic “crisis” and the troubles of the banks; we have also heard their sickening stories about “external enemies” rattling at the gates of Fortress Europe, accused of wanting to enjoy the fruits of western welfare – fruits that were won by centuries of pillaging by the same western countries. The media reinforce the depiction of people as mere numbers, reinforce the climate of fear in which western countries saturate themselves, and simultaneously show an ever increasing eagerness to praise new “security measures” supposed to keep out or lock up the unwanted, those who might cause the system to stagger.

Whether these unwanted denominate the thousands of people seeking a better life somewhere in the world or those who refuse to or cannot bow down to Power (or a combination of the two) is irrelevant. Murdering borders are being pulled up around its Fortress to keep out “refugees”, while inside the walls repression aims to silence and punish anyone who cannot be kept out or removed from the grounds. The media speak of external enemies, the State also seeks out its internal enemies. Obviously repression is not limited to anarchists, it does however often focus on those who decide to fight repression. For example, in The Hague several people were given an area ban because they dared to show solidarity and agitate in a neighbourhood in a time of control, of cameras, preventive arrests and searches. The ban concerns the Schilderswijk neighbourhood, where in the summer of 2015 riots took place several days in a row after cops had murdered someone. Anarchists were later accused of having incited the revolt. These days even questioning the system and calling out for struggle on a poster referring to the revolt is enough to be prosecuted for incitation.

Repressive blows however cannot be seen as single isolated events, do not exist in a vacuum. They form part of an aggressive multi-front campaign, which aims to achieve a further, distinct step in the devouring of freedom, in violently expressing the domination of the State. Whether it concerns justifying the militarization of streets, emergency measures, legitimizing building walls at borders, massacring people or pursuing its campaigns against rebels and revolutionaries, it certainly needs a voice that creates a reality and an atmosphere in which repression is possible, acceptable and hopefully unquestioned. These are the mechanisms of State propaganda, this is the purpose of the media. Media is an integral and essential part in authority guarding its control and dictating the dependence and approval it needs to rule. The millions of words and images that fill the screens and (toilet)papers are not an echo or reflection of reality, they form an integral part of the creation of that reality, of the imposition of the morals, rules and logics that permit the existence of the State.

When someone challenges this reality – the frame of authority itself –, when someone fights against it or simply refuses it, there is no mercy shown to the isolation or neutralization that by all means it unleashes against these individuals or groups. Not only through the sentences of the justice system, but also through the stigmatization of these individuals towards the rest of society, making sure they will carry their scarlet letter for the rest of their lives. The media aids the State in relying on public opinion to continue its work: judging, speculating and rendering as uncontagious as possible the ideas and practices that those incompatible with the system defend or are accused of. When the media portrays itself as a court room, it seeks out judges and prosecutors in the public. And this is where we need to be careful, where we need to consider our (perhaps subconscious) role in the continuation of these mechanisms, and ask ourselves how much we contribute to the speculation and creation of roles and a reality that only suits the narrative of domination.

Let’s not forget that repression can be fought in many areas. A court room and newspaper articles however are not among those, this is not the terrain of our struggles, methods and ideas. Let’s leave the speculation and distortion of reality to the experts – the State, cops, media, and their defenders –, let’s understand and intervene in reality on our own terms.

A few enemies of the society of the spectacle

On the 13th of April, with a brief press release spread by the Mossos d’Esquadra, the policial operation was announced in which the comrade currently imprisoned in Cologne (Germany) was arrested in Barcelona, on accusation of having expropriated a bank in the city of Aachen.

According to this press release, the operation responded to compliance with an international request sent out by the prosecution office of Aachen that two days before the operation had issued an arrest warrant for the militant anarchist in Barcelona. What the press release did not explain and which until now had not been known to the public is that the arrest and the house raids carried out by the cops in the neighbourhoods Gracia and Carmel in Barcelona were not the simple execution of an international request, but the culmination of a long and narrow collaboration between the policial and judicial forces of the German and Spanish states, with active participation of the autonomous Catalan police. The involvement of the Mossos d’Esquadra in the case was initiated long before April and, as has become obvious, went far beyond a passive and merely executory role.

An ordinary morning in Aachen

On the morning of the 14th November 2014 a group of armed people enters an office of the Pax Bank in the Westphalian city of Aachen, in the east of the country. After having emptied the heavy safe and tying up the employees of the bank, they leave the building without having caused any personal injuries or damage. During the two days that follow, the police responsible for the investigation, the Landeskriminalamt Nordrhein-Westfalen (LKA NRW), will connect this expropriation with two other attacks that occurred in the previous two years in the city (1) and will begin an authentic – and fruitless – mediatic campaign of denunciation, publicly spreading the details of the robberies and offering rewards of thousands of euros to anyone who could provide information about possible suspects. The LKA goes so far in this strategy that it decides to use a famous and deplorable TV program in its campaign, which is broadcasted on one of the country’s main channels: Aktenzeichen XY… Ungelöst (Case File XY… Unsolved). This is a reality show with a vigilante character, in which cases that the police were unable to solve are presented in a sick manner, showing CCTV footage, clothes found on the “crime” scenes, composite sketches, and dramatic reconstructions of the deeds in order to impress and incite the masses of spectators to help the forces of the State and snitch.

The wig, the glove and the can

Four months after the action, in March 2015, the investigation will adopt a new direction with the appearance of the Catalan police on the scene. They will sent information to Germany, in response to the international request the LKA had sent out containing profiles of DNA samples (2) that supposedly were found on the scene, to see if there are any matches in the databases of other States. According to the Mossos, the profile of a sample taken from a wig found in the proximity of the Pax Bank in Aachen in November matches with an entry in their DNA database, a trace taken from a glove that was found in the street after a political direct action that took place in the neighbourhood of Sants in Barcelona in June 2009. From this moment a shared investigation begins in which the police forces of both States share information and start an intensive investigation within what the German press has called “the extreme left squatter movement of Barcelona” and which, according to the thesis exposed to the media by the prosecutor and police of Aachen, has been the main stage of the investigation.

In the course of this investigation, and always according to the version of the cops, toward the end of June agents of the information division of the Mossos secretly confiscate an empty can of beer left on the street by the accused comrade. From this can they would have taken DNA samples in order to realise a direct comparison with the traces of genetic material found close to the Pax Bank after the expropriation. Four months later, toward the end of October, information from the biological laboratories of the Mossos would have confirmed the match between both samples. Nevertheless, almost six more months will pass before on the 12^th of April of this year an European arrest warrant and extradition order with her name will be sent from Aachen, resulting in the arrest in her house in the neighbourhood of Carmel the following day.

Repression and social control: the DNA of the States

The policial process that resulted in this arrest therefore confirms that which many of us already suspected, namely that the Mossos d’Esquadra since years have been massively and systematically confiscating our DNA during actions, mobilisations, house raids and protests in order to build a database with genetic data that increases the control over antagonistic movements. That which initially was introduced as an exceptional means, arguing the necessity of protecting oneself against repeat sexual offenders and similar cases, is being used and normalised as a repressive technology in service of the persecution of political militants.

In the Spanish State this policial modus operandi has been experimented with by the autonomous Basque police (Ertzaintza) in the repression of the patriotic left and the struggles of Euskal Herria. Just like the newspaper Gara already pointed out in 2007, the Ertzaintza started to build a database with genetic data by confiscating cigarette butts and glasses during street celebrations, toothbrushes during house raids, or plastic nozzles used in fake controls with breathalysers. The problems of reliability and validity that experts have attributed to using DNA methods as evidence did not prevent the autonomous Basque police to initiate judicial processes based on genetic profiles as the only proof, processes that with the priceless help of the exception courts of the Spanish Audiencia Nacional often have resulted in huge prison sentences for the accused.

On a European level, the use of genetic technologies in the policial and judicial scope has only increased since at the end of the ’80s Interpol imported the strategy of creating databases aimed at the identification of persons through DNA profiles from the United States. Despite the differences in the socio-political and judicial context in every place, the general shared tendency on an international level is the exponential growth of personal information registered in these databases and the progressive elimination of legal restrictions that limit the introduction of and persecution with new samples. The policial use of genetic technologies has drastically increased in the entire European Union, and the criteria for allowing its use are weaker every time. Therefore we find ourselves facing an enormous qualitative leap, this time not in the repressive methods directed at dissident minorities, but in the capacity of the States of social control of the entire population. In front of this challenge, as enemies of the status quo we will need to decide between letting ourselves be intimidated by the control mechanisms of Power, or creating adequate political strategies and practices to confront it, knowing that the hypothesis of a totally controlled society is only that; the unrealisable dark fantasy of a logic of domination that will always encounter resistance.

Notes

(1) Let’s not forget that recently a comrade was arrested again in Amsterdam, who is accused of having participated in one of these expropriations, more specifically the one that took place in July 2013. [TN: She has been released with conditions and is currently awaiting her extradition case in the Netherlands]

(2) Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a chemical component of cell nucleus that contains the genetic information which is transmitted in a hereditary manner in living organisms. This acid is found in all animal cells – human and non-human –, plants and other organisms, except in red blood cells. DNA is used in various methods (biogenetic, nanotechnology, bioinformatics, etc.), but what this text is concerned with is the so-called “forensic”, used in policial, judicial and penal contexts. In these cases DNA is used that is extracted from hair, saliva or blood, resulting in what is called a genetic fingerprint or “DNA profile”. The various sequences of this fingerprint of profile is what establishes a difference between people, as if it were a “human bar code”.

https://solidaritatrebel.noblogs.org