Good for a short read!

scornful seasons of extrajudicial murder and the disproportionate ravage of covid.

whatever your purpose, this exists to reaffirm sentiments of revolution and guerilla militancy. the will to kill all police, fight repression, and expropriate resources. to become vigilant. improve your survival tactics. practice patience. demonstrate decisiveness. harness hope in your discipline. a conviction to develop knowledge and proficiency in guns, makeshift medicine, and explosives. for the guerilla, offensive attack and rapid retreat become self preservation.

i've seen changes in my imagination, my habits, the overarching purpose i wish to serve. i let my environment judge and shape what i should take from this handbook. any notes taken should be inclusive of people living with disabilities as well as marginalized genders, and take into account the newer threats to be faced.

the minutiae of centers to target, discretion praxis and stratagem is something to condition yourself to internalizing over time but it reads naturally. urban revolutions allowing ones in rural areas to cascade, raiding police vans before destroying them, and perceiving jails and prisons as inevitable sites of revolution seem like understated observations that begin to take precedence.

for as much violence is theorized, it's always made clear to impede enemy movement and munitions without harming citizenry, as armed action should only be directed against the exploitative class that is the rich and wealthy.

in the face of lipservice cries like “defund the police” or "#endsars”, governments have no alternative but to intensify their repression. whether that's gassing protestors, shooting projectiles at children or turning off cameras before massacring their own people.

even for someone familiar with organizing, rigorously recruiting for counterintelligence espionage services against state attempts at infiltration and keeping fragmented, international organizations mobilized and independently informed, are invaluable points to keep in mind that when ignored manage to plague even the most tight knit orgs.

for as much as nonBlack people and neoliberals convince themselves of “harm reduction”, them and their favorite celebrities continue to participate in perpetuating electoral facades and installing imperialist puppets that continue to torment the marginalized people in our own countries, if not outside said borders.

antiBlackness via the death and suffering of Black people will always be trivialized as topic for nonBlack consumption because it is how they manage to survive in this world - with our labor and on our backs, all the while denying us "humanity" as well as our indigeneity. nonBlack people, especially whites, have no revolutionary potential - and even if they did, their antiBlackness would persist. what incentive do they have to dissolve the oppressive system they thrive and feed upon?

one has to imagine a better reality than this. to acknowledge, that for a revolution now or in the next 100 years (if a new world will even be worth fighting for by then) - Black people should be ready. this means doing our best to create a culture of revolution and mutual aid within our communities. building autonomous zones, strengthening ourselves on all metaphysical fronts, bolstering our skills. to ensure the survival of this cause beyond ourselves - we must divorce from the poisonous frameworks and crumbling constructs white supremacy has instilled in and built around us.


rest in power - floyd. mcclain. reed. mcdade. arbery.
salau. breonna. paquet. - remember their names.

and the same to every Black person before and after them.

"A guide for anyone who rebels against the capitalist state and finds the only way out of their revolt: violent revolution."

Non è facile parlare di un libro del genere. Innanzitutto, perché 4 stelle? Soprattutto per un'opera senza alcuna pretesa o valore letterario né, per fortuna, attualità, almeno in questa parte del mondo.
Ero convinto di trovarmi di fronte ad un'opera ancora più fanatica ed esaltata, visto l'insurrezionalismo non condivisibile di fondo. Ma bisogna tenere anche conto di una cosa, ovvero che il libro è stato scritto nel peggior momento della storia del Brasile, quando la dittatura militare era all'apice e dissidenti venivano torturati ogni giorno e una grave crisi economia funestava il paese. Da questo punto di vista questo piccolo manuale si dimostra un documento di grande valore storico che ricorda a cosa era disposta ad arrivare una parte della popolazione che viveva sotto dittatura. Con ciò ovviamente non condividendo le idee insurrezionaliste di Marighella, le quali gli valsero l'allontanamento dal Partito Comunista Brasiliano né tantomeno il modus operandi di portare avanti le proprie idee. Con ciò Marighella morì nl novembre del 1969 in un'imboscata a 57 anni facendo diventare il libro un cult per molti gruppi rivoluzionari e insurrezionalisti intorno al mondo. Circa dieci anni dopo la sua morte la dittatura cadde per il dissenso popolare ormai diventato intollerabile a causa della crisi economica e dei continui tagli ai salari che costrinsero il governo ad ammorbidire i toni permettendo le prime elezioni popolari del paese da prima della dittatura, facendo finalmene vincere l'opposizione.

Just gonna copy some of my notes here:

"This effectively turns the urban guerrilla into a sort of James Bond figure, half secret agent half Carbonari, and the clear and obvious logistical impossibility of having members with all these skills, considering that each action group was meant to have 5 members, who are not aware of the other members, and that they are mostly drawn from the civilian population. So we see that the "manual" has a much more propagandistic aim, a sort of reconstruction of the romantic revolutionary, of the extremely well studied and morally pure putschist, a Blanqui for a new generation. But even when one considers this, Marighella makes errors and omissions that are completely incomprehensible for an experienced commander of paramilitary operations. He says that helicopters are useless for pursuing guerrillas, since they have difficulty landing in the urban fabric, as if their mission was capture and not recon. He suggests that police pursuits could be paralyzed with traffic jams, mines, switched traffic signs, and machine-gunning tires, when each of these operations would require its own logistical mobilization, and in fact often times would require a bigger logistical mobilization than the actual assault for which they're being pursued. There is not a single lesson in the entire book about hiding, even though this is essential for any guerrilla conflict."

Attached to this note is a historical footnote, which is also worth noting:

"When the mini-manual began to circulate, the ALN had already lost two commanders of its Armed Tactical Group - the highest rank in the organization's military hierarchy - because of recklessness and insecure devices. Marighella himself coded his meeting points in writing, despite warning to never do that in the manual, and one of these notes said: "d2 2000 RCVxAvRe". The incompetent Paulista police could not decipher it but whoever had to remember a meeting on Day 2, at 8 pm, at the Rua of Capote Valente and Rebouças Avenues, probably noticed that Marighella was not a very creative cryptographer"

Really I could go into detail into the mistakes of this manual but they are of a fundamental strategic nature. Get Armed Insurrection, the Comintern manual from 1928, instead.

A very important book during the Brazilian dictatorship period.

Dentro do contexto em que o livro foi escrito ele oferece de forma detalhada as táticas da guerrilha urbana descentralizada e se preocupa em descrever desde o momento de seleção de guerrilheiros até a fuga de algum ataque ou roubo.