THAT FEAR CHANGES IN THE FIELD

 

They terrorize us in order to turn us against each other, those born here against foreigners, documented immigrants against illegal immigrants.

 

They terrorize us, forcing many of us to live us undocumented aliens: with the police breathing down our neck and the fear of expulsion, the state and the masters push thousands of individuals into the shadows, rendering them even more docile for exploitation.

 

They terrorize us with the blackmail of wage labor: either sell yourself to a master or don’t eat.

 

They terrorize us with images of “barbarous and fundamentalist” Foreigners in order to make us accept more restrictions, more control, more precariousness; or else to make us love an empty and worthless national identity – if capitalism recognizes no borders, why ever should the exploited do so?

 

They terrorize us with police in the neighborhoods, with the fascist patrols, with the sweeps. The pretext is criminality (at bottom, what creates criminality if not the need for money?), but the real objective is to make everyone bow their heads.

 

They terrorize us with prison or expulsion, with the barracks or the lagers for the undocumented.

 

The more the poor hate each other, the fatter the rich grow.

 

They terrorize us by making us believe that the one who struggles against the state and the masters is the terrorist, and not the one who bombs entire populations, colonizes lands and minds, razes houses to the ground with bulldozers.

 

Now is the time that fear must change in the field.

 

Now is the time that the hatred between “races” must be replaced with class solidarity, the war of the exploited against the exploiters.

—Guerra sociale