Adventures in the Terrible Beauty of Resistance
An interview by Millennials are Killing Capitalism

Welcome to Millennials Are Killing Capitalism. This is Jay. In this episode we had the rare opportunity to interview a spokesperson from a direct action group that has targeted Toll Holdings, in australia. The campaign has engaged in a range of sabotage, vandalism, and disruptive actions, including sledgehammering windows, cutting internet cables, blockading roads and in an international port entrance, they have also slashed lines and cut valves to disable vehicles, covered facilities inside and out with paint and foul liquids, and sabotaged infrastructure such as signal boxes used by Toll. In this discussion we asked them about the development of the antizionist movement in australia after October 7^th 2023, and asked about how their group settled on its target, prepared their campaign, and selected the tactics they wanted to use in it. As our guest raises the spirit of adventure they see as necessary to take meaningful direct action to confront the genocidal war machine, I also asked them what they think about allegations of adventurism that can be levied from the left at those who take such action. Because this campaign is heavily under threat by the State, we agreed to some additional security measures in this conversation. The voice you hear is not the actual voice of the person we interviewed; the original interview was transcribed and then converted to audio using text-to-voice generator. Just as an editorial disclaimer from me amid heightened attacks on various forms of speech, I just want to say as a platform we are not advocating that people engage in any form of illegal activity. Having said that we do understand the greatest crime that humanity has recognized, the crime of genocide, is still ongoing. There are moral, ethical, and even legal imperatives that people are engaging in order to try to stop that crime from continuing to unfold. This interview is to hear from those who are taking direct action to hold genocide and War crimes. These actions have been threatened with severe repression, and many who take these forms of action do face repression. We see it as a journalistic responsibility to ensure that people hear from those who are willing to take action to stop genocide. We know that their voices will be marginalized by most media platforms out there. It is also very important that people show up and support political prisoners if we are ever to build a movement that is capable of confronting the machinery of genocide and imperialism. We will include links to the Death to Toll campaign website, and other interviews with their spokespeople in the show description.

First of all welcome to Millennials are Killing Capitalism, it’s great that we are able to do this interview to talk about the work that you’re doing in so-called australia, or that region in the world. It’s not an area that we get to cover as often as we should, and that’s typical of us US-brained people that you know, we tend to be quite US-centric. Or maybe focusing on areas like Palestine, and Iran, and Lebanon, where we’ve seen some of the hot elements of this war in its most direct forms. But we do want to highlight different ways that people in different places are resisting the genocide of Palestinians, and this broader campaign to undermine the sovereignty of the entire West Asian region as we see it. And your campaign is one that was brought to my attention by some friends of the platform. And it’s really important that people are able to hear from you.

A: Thanks so much. Really happy to be here.

So to start, could you talk a little bit about the anti-zionist or pro-Palestine movement in so-called australia. Obviously I’m saying so-called because like the United States, Australia is another settler colony historically. Give me some of the lay of the land, what that has looked like over the last however many years you want — and share what inspired this campaign we are discussing today.

A: Yeah, so there’s obviously been activism in solidarity with Palestine for a long time in Australia, but I would say that post-Al Aqsa Flood, there was this moment of intensity where, for a minute, it felt like everything changed. And it felt like things had changed in a bad way because of the horror of the genocide and the urgency that that engendered. But I think that one thing that also changed was the sense that, like, honour and agency had been returned to colonized people, in a way. You’d be familiar with the sort of humanitarian thing of like, all these poor people, they’re suffering but the idea of colonized people fighting back. Of colonizers running for their lives. And of the possibilities of what this world can look like just being blown open, like, suddenly I felt and I think many others felt that this was something which was opened up by Al Aqsa Flood. And of course, when possibilities are opened up, you know, the possibility of resistance is opened up. And then at the same time, where you have resistance you have counter-insurgency.

And so, there was this energy, you’ve got thousands of people marching in the streets. And at the same time, you have all of these kinds of counter-insurgent movements or pressures to channel this resistance or this desire for resistance into a purely symbolic outlet. So it was like: okay, we can walk from A to B, a hundred of us can walk, a thousand of us can walk, but ultimately we’re going to march, there’s going to be marshals in yellow vests walking next to us. We’re going to obey directions of police. And it felt quite reminiscent of, when you look at the historical footage of the marches against the War in Iraq and all of the good that that did, which in hindsight it is clear is very little. And even at the time, like you had national security agencies, so that’s ASIO is the national security agency in Australia. Well, they actually explicitly described some of the marches taking place at this time as a pressure release valve . So they wanted people to have the ability to sort of blow off some steam, you know, express a bit of symbolic anger and then go home. And so there were some people around the sort of pro-Palestine movement who could sort of feel how messed up this was. You know, we could feel the sense of contradiction that we were walking around shouting things like, there is no other solution, Intifada revolution . And then going home with absolutely no sign of an Intifada or a revolution being enacted through our actions.

And so there were people who wanted to take it a bit further and who identified this need to really hit the supply chains of genocide. So, what are the things which are physically enabling this genocide to take place in terms of bullets and bombs and how do we cut that off? And so in terms of what that could look like, there was a lot of experimentation and looking to different possibilities of what that could look like. So, Palestine Action in Britain was obviously one very shining light in terms of sort of physically attacking the sites of production for genocidal weapons. And here also sort of the block the boat movements, which were focused on Zim shipping, the Israeli shipping company. And so different people also participated in various, you know, some material and some symbolic actions around these issues. There was some level of, you know, blockade against Zim shipping. So, there were these things that occurred.

And then in terms of this particular campaign, one thing that some of us began to get a sense was that, as you mentioned, a lot of the discourse around anti-Zionism in the West is very, you know, it’s Eurocentric, it’s very Anglo-Centric and it’s very Western-focused. And so we found a lot of material in the media and in activist circles about companies such as Zim, which, like, these are obviously very evil companies which do evil things. But their primary evil-doing does not necessarily happen in Australia or in that region. So, there are Zim boats in Australia and they should be stopped and they should be, you know, they should be opposed because they have a financial link to Zionism and imperialism. But Zim ships in Australia aren’t necessarily carrying weapons. In fact, they’re mostly probably carrying plastic crap for Kmart, right? And Zim s primary markets are not in so-called Australia, so the extent of the commercial damage you can do to them here is limited. And so, some of us started to think about how we could adapt these sorts of direct action movements and strategies to our own context.

Say a little bit about how you settled on the company Toll Holdings as a target. It’s funny because even the notion of Toll, like it sounds like some kind of fee you are all against, right? So explain a little about what Toll Holdings is and how you settled on it as the appropriate target for your campaign.

A: Yeah, so yeah, it’s funny. It does have a slightly evil sounding name. So, Toll Holdings is this company. It actually self-describes as the Amazon of Defense. So, it does all kinds of things to do with military supply chains. It moves bullets and bombs manufactured in Australia for the use of the Zionist armed forces and for the use of U.S.-led imperialism. It supplies American warships, it has this billion dollar contract to service and supply US warships all over the world, including a very direct role supporting the warships which launched the Tomahawk missiles against that primary school, the Minab school in Iran. And it’s playing a really kind of terrifying role in terms of supplying American military bases in the Asia Pacific and actually pre-positioning ammunition stocks in anticipation of aggression enacted against the People’s Republic of China. But maybe we’ll move to that a little bit later. And it also has a civilian arm. So, it’s this mixed military-and-civilian business. It does a whole bunch of stuff like delivering parcels, logistical stuff in terms of managing warehouses. So, the military and the civilian wings of this company operate in parallel and they cross subsidize each other. And so, that’s a really important part of our campaign that both parts of this company, we consider are completely legitimate targets for direct action against genocide.

But in terms of like choosing how, you know, determining why Toll Holdings was an appropriate target for sort of anti-genocide, anti-imperialist action. Well, basically, we wanted to choose a target which had two characteristics, right? And the first was that its work is fundamental to upholding supply chains for genocide. And the second is that there are actually vulnerabilities which we can hit. And so, in terms of, you know, what is the evil stuff that Toll is doing? One thing that we were looking at was where the weapons are coming from to be deployed against Gaza. And what we found is that because, because, you know, everyone knows that the Israeli Army is just really being heavily supplied with ammunition by the U.S., right? But you have this situation where the U.S. is supplying these huge amounts of ammunition to its ally Israel. And also, as time goes on, fighting so many other imperialist wars simultaneously, like the war against Iran, aggression in Lebanon, aggression against Ansarallah, aggression across West Asia, as you’ve mentioned, and elsewhere in the world against Cuba, against Venezuela. So the question is, you’ve got the U.S.: it’s not the industrial power that it used to be. You know, its productive power, its manufacturing power, is not what it used to be. In terms of production, the U.S. is actually a declining hegemon. So how is it fighting all of these wars, all of these imperialist wars simultaneously? And part of the answer to that is that it is assembling a second supply line of capacity overseas in Australia. So you’ve got these weapons factories in Australia, and they re sort of these mixed public private facilities, they’re called government-owned contractor-operated. So they’re operated by Thales, the French arms company, but they’re owned by the Government. And what these factories have been doing is that they’ve been producing a particular kind of artillery shell at that time, the 155mm artillery shell, which was actually really key to the kind of devastation which was being enacted against Gaza. And this is just an incredibly important role, because of the number of these shells that were being expended in that war, because the Israeli army are cowards, they can’t fight, they have to spray the whole area, kill every living thing instead of actually showing up to fight, because if they do show up they’re going to get absolutely murked, because they’re so useless, but anyway.

So you have the U.S. assembling the second supply line of weapons which are made in Australia. And to get from Australia to the U.S. and then to Israel, they have to be transported by someone. And so we did a bunch of research, and we won’t necessarily reveal all of our methods or sources, but it has been both physically and contractually observed and confirmed that Toll is the company, which moves these weapons manufactured by Thales so that they can reach ammunition depots, either in the U.S., from which they’re onsold to Israel, or in Singapore, from which they are again onsold to Israel. That’s this concept of how we identify Toll as the company which is doing the bad thing.

In terms of why Toll was identified as a strategically appropriate target to attack, in terms of attacking Zionism and U.S.-led imperialism, part of this is about the nature of Toll as a logistics company. Basically: it’s got trucks, it’s got warehouses, it’s got a mix of sort of static locations like warehouses, fuel depots or whatever, and it’s also got trucks, which move through roads, hundreds of kilometers, through communities, and it also has a mix of commercial operations and military operations, and so we felt that that created this strategic opening because if you’re just attacking one or two government-owned and operated military sites, the level of security which can be deployed at these sites and the level of surveillance which can be deployed at these sites is quite high. You’ve only got one or two targets, once you ve hit them once they can be a bit more on alert, I guess, and so you lose that element of surprise, which is a really important thing when you’re fighting an asymmetric conflict, which is in effect what this is. And so for a logistics company like Toll, there’s really almost an infinite number of sites because inherently they’re moving stuff, they must be on the move. And then also because it has its commercial sites, as well as its military sites, the commercial sites are not legally or physically fortified the way that the military sites are. So in terms of it being a strategic target, we chose it because it’s doing the bad thing and because it’s vulnerable in that sense, it can be reached.

I guess the third reason why we chose Toll is because looking into some of the sort of commercial position of Toll and its ownership, we consider that this renders Toll quite strategically vulnerable, because of its position, not just in Australia, but in Asia, as well. So Toll has this history where it was initially an Australian company, and it was actually purchased by Japan Post, which is part-owned by the Japanese Government. And that was part of this deal which was negotiated by the fascist Shinzo Abe, who has since been removed from this world, by the most direct form of action. But anyway, Abe was this major proponent of the remilitarisation of Japan and Toll in terms of the role that it’s playing in terms of supplying U.S. bases, supplying the Japanese armed forces and moving bullets and bombs in terms of ammunition. Toll is a key player as well in the re-militarization of Japan. And so you’ve got this question, why are these Japanese owners interested in an Australian company?

And it’s quite explicit, when this deal was done, the owners of Toll and of Japan Post were quite explicit that they’ve chosen as Australian company because they wanted to expand their commercial operations in Asia. But they understood that particularly in China and in Southeast Asia, they were not welcome as a Japanese logistics company, because of the memories that people have about Japanese imperialism in this region, during the World War II era, and the absolutely horrifying things which happened there. And so, we consider this incredibly relevant to this campaign, because you’ve got this imperialist political movement to remilitarize Japan, and you’ve got this attempt to hide that behind this beard of an Australian company. And so when something’s being hidden, there’s a vulnerability, right? You know, you hide that vulnerability, because you don’t want it to be exposed. There is a contradiction between the commercial goals of Toll as a company, and the role that it’s playing around militarization and imperialism, and a contradiction creates a vulnerability which we consider can be exploited.

As you’re talking about asymmetric conflict, it got me thinking. Could you say a bit about how you studied, or how one studies to engage in those types of activities? I’m curios what education you all have done, or self-learning around this. Like, how does one prepare themselves for that sort of struggle?

A: That is a fantastic question. Thank you for asking it. I think in terms of our preparation, maybe I’ll talk a little bit about what we have learned and what has been successful and I think what the shortcomings have been as well. So in terms for preparing for a kind of asymmetric conflict, where, you know, you’re attempting to do stuff which the State doesn’t want and which the State will punish extremely harshly if the State has the ability to identify who and what. A lot of our initial self-education came from anarchist sources, so there’s this whole kind of ecology of zines, if you like, which are hosted on various places, like the anarchist library, like Sprout Distro, there’s a lot of U.S. centric distros, like Filler Distro, Crimethinc, Notrace, lots of places. And so there’s a lot of manuals about things like how to engage in nighttime direct action, how to remain anonymous, how not to get caught. And I think that that provided the basic level of education for a lot of people entering direct action around this time and place.

And I think when you look at the last couple of years, particularly in the West, in terms of undertaking direct action against Zionists, supply chains, I would say it’s very much anarchist movements which have been at the forefront of this, so that was the basis of our initial self-education. At the same time, I would say that two or three years in, we are also seeing some of the limits of that mode of attack and analysis. I think that a lot of the sort of existing materials we have, focus on how to enact a successful hit, if you like, the techniques of damaging a building, damaging whatever infrastructure, getting away, not getting caught. In terms of building the kind of communicative, interpersonal, or political-education infrastructure, such that this movement can proliferate and generalize beyond the sort of still fairly-isolated number of cells within the West who are engaging in these kind of actions, I would say that there is necessity for our movements to be looking a little bit further. Personally, I think that a lot of the writings of Chairman Mao have been very helpful in identifying this concept of how you fight an asymmetric war. I think a lot of the political education materials shared by the Palestinian resistance have also, obviously they are in a completely different context from us, but, like, the concept of a unity of fields. The idea that Al Aqsa Flood could happen. And as I understand the political bureau of Hamas in Qatar didn’t necessarily know this was going to happen in advance, because the underground and the guerilla units were operating somewhat independently. But once it happened, there was this ability to cohere and to work collectively towards this common political goal. I think that building that level of shared understanding across movements is important and that is something which we need to be educating ourselves towards further.

In the previous response you talked a little bit about the supply chains and understanding tools roll, and looking at other companies right? And recognizing that even if they were owned by israelis, that they weren’t necessarily directly involved in the moving of weapons. And stopping the flow of weapons was, you know, key to what you were thinking about because of the genocide. But I’m just curious in that process, mainly for other people in other parts of the world, I know you probably won’t want to get into like sources and methods, and that makes sense, and I know there are other groups out there, like we interviewed some organizers in Italy, right? And they’ve done a study you know about logistics and Italy supporting the Zionist entity and that kind of stuff. I think PYM chapters all over the world have done this sort of stuff. And so there have been these even like above ground studies and reports and things like that that have come out. But I’m curious — if in that research that you did — if there are other things that you thought about, that you could potentially disrupt or could be disrupted that would be useful to stopping the genocide and the war in the region, but that are not strategically really located in your area?

A: Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that has come out from researching, I’m just going to say — obviously, we’re not necessarily going to talk or give away our methods, but as a bit of sharing, I guess, for any comrades who are interested in this sort of thing. You probably need a combination of the physical and the desktop research, let’s put it like that. And obviously, the physical layout of the transport of goods and different facilities is going to be different in different countries. And so we’re not going to tell you how to do that, but, you know, have a bit of adventure, live a little, you know, sorry if that’s a little bit too vague or whatever. And I don’t necessarily mean doing anything super high risk, although of course it may entail that. But I actually really think that a spirit of adventure and saying ‘fuck it, let’s have a look’ — is quite an important thing in political work and researching. I think that sometimes we can get so sort of earnest about trying to do the right thing and trying to, you know, read the right books and learn from what came before that we can kind of forget that we’re living in the world right now, and there’s no way to really see the world without seeing it. So, that, that, that, that’s just something that I’ve learned in my life over time. In terms of what can potentially be disrupted in different areas, um, can I segue a little bit and talk a bit about logistics, as in, like,

A: In terms of what Toll actually does, logistics, it calls itself the ‘Amazon of Defence’ — but what does that physically constitute? Well, it constitutes a bunch of things. There’ll be those static targets in terms of physical sorts of offices, fuel depots, and those are places you can go, you can do various kinds of damage from the lower level in terms of breaking glass, to perhaps things a little bit higher, and, you know, you can use your own imagination. Then you’ve got the sorts of disruption terms of moving vehicles. And that’s something particularly important in this era of just-in-time supply chains. So one thing that we, referring broadly to direct action movements around Palestine and the learnings that have come from that, have taken into this campaign. So one thing that we learned around, like, boat blocking stuff, was that boats are often really delayed just normally, because, like, the ocean is huge, the ocean is really big. So when you’re disrupting a commercial ship, it’s actually quite normal for ships just because of the ocean to be delayed by like, a week. So the amount of sort of delay that you have to cause for this to really get disruptive in terms of eating into people’s contracts or commercial position or whatever, is quite high. Whereas when you’re disrupting trucks, because of these just-in-time supply chains, you know, quite often a delay of 45 minutes or 90 minutes already triggers a kind of late penalty for the parties to that contract in terms of the truck delivering whatever it’s got to deliver. So that’s one sort of little strategic thought. But yeah, the thing about logistics is because it goes from the static locations to the moving, sort of physical entities of the trucks or boats, and then because the kinds of damage which can be done to a physical place versus a truck, versus different kinds of equipment. There’s just a lot of different things.

Another thing that our campaign has done a little bit more of this year is disrupting signalling infrastructure. So we’ve actually broken into a couple of, um, not just this year actually. We’ve done this for a while. We’ve broken into the signal boxes which manage traffic lights and smashed them up at intersections or a road where Toll trucks and other trucks implicated in genocide and imperialist supply chains are moving. And so what that means is that, obviously, that intersection or, you know, the flow is delayed in that sense. The flow of logistics is delayed. So those are just a few of the techniques that we’ve come up with. There’s also, I think, I guess, a potential for actions to be enacted in a mixed sort of above-ground and below-ground way, so where you can actually kind of intensify the impact of actions, which are undertaken in a more above ground-sense. So for instance, there’s where there will be this protest where people are blocking the road or walking on the road and inhibiting the movement of vehicles and trucks at a facility that is used by Toll Holdings and other imperialist entities. And what people actually do is they get on those trucks and they sabotage them physically, either by cutting out the valves of the tyres, or by cutting out the airlines of the braking system, which disables that truck from being able to move. And so then, even once the people blocking the road or whatever, protesting are cleared out, you’ve still got this massive truck, which is sitting there in the middle of the road. And that causes a very costly, annoying delay for everyone involved. This is something that we’ve done against Toll, against facilities which house Toll Holdings. Um, I don’t know if this is a little bit too concrete rather than theoretical, but like, yeah, those are a few things.

So I just have to say one of the things you mentioned was having this kind of spirit of adventure, right? And I think that this is often something at least today that really does often separate different tendencies and orientations. You talked a little bit about the anarchist self-education right, around some of those tactics and so on. And it’s an interesting thing because I think that there has kind of developed over the course of the last whatever, century-plus probably, which is this Marxist-Leninist critique of adventurism. But specifically, I would say over the last 40 years, and you know you mentioned the Iraq War protests — which I remember, I was in some of them. And I have this sense that you described a kind of... On one level it’s sort of amazing, because you’re like “wow all of these people are passionate about this and come out into the streets!” And you see that you’re not alone. That in that moment, 2003 or so, it was amazing to see that. But then many people do feel this deflation, and I felt this, in some instances where for instance in the United States, you might be right outside the White House right? And there’s half a million of you or something like that, at least in the Iraq War context. And yet nobody is really willing to do anything. Or it’s sort of curated in a way where nothing is ever going to happen that’s actually confrontational. The kind of blowing off steam thing that you said.

A: Yeah, exactly.

And I mean look there’s some debates around some of this stuff, right? There’s practical and theoretical considerations that do go into some of these things. But one of the things I found quite interesting is the way that the critique of adventurism has, which, just for folks who don’t know, specifically the foundational texts is by Lenin on this — it is effectively coincided with a real tactical defanging of anti-war movements, specifically in the last 40 years or so. And for example I’ve seen some people say that “all direct action is adventurism at this point.” And I thought this was very strange, but also a telling kind of comment. And I mean look there’s a whole theoretical discussion about the issue of separation with the masses, and that we should be organizing labour in order to stop these things, there’s the question of repression and who will be repressed by certain actions, so there are considerations. But it’s very interesting because I have encountered kind of what you described in the beginning, right? Which is that most people who are willing to take risks and willing to say, “okay we’re going to do something to try and stop something material.” In my experience a lot of those people are anarchists, and it’s not necessarily from, I mean some of them are theoretically anarchists right, some of them are Maoists, in some cases some of them wouldn’t identify with a specific tendency. But they all have this kind of — I’m sorry I realize this is a really long comment!!

A: no, I love it I love it.

But you know within that, there are also a lot of people who hate all States, right? And this sometimes causes a problem on an international level, maybe we’ll get into this at some point, probably later on, maybe to talk a little bit about Iran and so forth. The difficulty certain people have, once the solidarity is to be aligned with the State, versus a people who are just being oppressed by State actors and imperialists. Which is why on our programme we try to do a lot of Marxist political education because I do think — on a geopolitical level or a geostrategic level — it’s important to understand different layers of contradiction. But at the same time, one of the reasons we often have had conversations with people who are more anarchistically aligned in certain ways, it’s because those are very often the people I’ve experienced in my life and seen in my life, in organizing and movement spaces, that actually take action and are willing to take action, want to take action. And in some cases from what I’ve seen actually get real material wins for people around them, because of the direct action that they are willing to take. I think part of it is there’s an element of what you’re talking about, of people who actually do gravitate a little bit to say, “well, we’re just going to take risk here. We’re in, and yes there might be some feeling of adventure, and also fear, and acceleration, maybe panic, and all those things. But it’s necessary and we are just going to do it.” And I’m curious, like the degree to which you all have thought about this piece, and have any thoughts around some of the things I’ve raised.

A: That’s a wonderful question. I think that I’m actually going to, I think I can answer this as an individual. I can’t necessarily answer this on anyone’s behalf. And when, you know, when I’m speaking about the way this campaign has been organized in so-called Australia, it has never officially affiliated itself with any particular ideology. That said, it has been externally identified as anarchists, so I believe that enemy media, the Jerusalem Post, identified it as an anarchist campaign. And much of the modes of organizing, the sort of decentralization, the anonymity, it is certainly inflected by anarchist ways of doing things and anarchist culture, if you like. Wait, sorry. I forgot your question.

Well it was really supposed to be like: the critique or the concern around adventurism, does it feel like that has been detrimental, the over-concern, has it been detrimental to the types of actions that people are willing to take, to stop what we’re talking about, how do you feel about that?

A: Wow, this is a really great question. Can I just quickly, like, just to push back and I know it’s not your allegation — on this allegation of adventureism, which to me carries this connotation of, like, ‘oh, these acts are being carried out, but there’s no impact, or they’re really just the sort of personal, you know, blowing off of steam or whatever. Now, our campaign has existed for just over a year and within, you know, the first couple of months of this campaign existing, this campaign was pretty quickly identified as a threat to the supply chains of Zionist and U.S.-led imperialism. So within a couple of months, like I’ve mentioned, the Jerusalem Post had actually posted this sort of hit piece on, you know, anti-Semitic direct action undertaken by anarchists in Australia. And then a few months later, this American security contractor called Recorded Futures, which is actually owned by Mastercard, published this report on global threats and actually named the campaign against Toll as a security threat. So the people who have a material incentive to identify things that actually represent a threat, see this campaign as a threat to their operations. So if this is an adventure, this is an adventure I’m very happy to undertake.

In terms of, like, the idea that a spirit of adventure is something which is wrong, I guess, or juvenile, or to be critiqued, I think I come from a very different sort of political background and tradition from you, because I certainly know that these critiques exist, but for the most part, you know, they don’t play a big part in my life. Personally I would not describe as an anarchist, but I would describe myself as a materialist, and in that, I mean, I’m interested in things which are real in the world, things which exist in the world, they have an impact on people’s lives, or which are part of people’s lives in the world. And as you’ve mentioned, the reality of anarchists being at the forefront of people in the West who are willing to take material action is something which is real. But I think also when you look at some of the materials put out by the Palestinian resistance, it’s not just this sort of lock step, oh, we are doing the right thing because we read, you know, the correct program by Lenin, and then we went out and did it. When you look at the music, when you look at the art, when you look at those videos, of, you know, those point-of-view videos, of various resistance fighters confronting and destroying, you know, losers in the IOF. I don’t know if you can watch those videos and interpret them as something other than expressing the joy of resistance. And yes, expressing the adventure which exists in resistance, even if that is, you know, quite a terrible beauty, and a terrible joy in terms of the losses which people experience in their lives. I can remember quite early on after Al Aqsa flood, there was this video released about the Palestinian resistance of this guy, and he’s just destroyed an Israeli tank and he’s wearing thongs, he’s wearing flip flops and he’s just running down the street, jumping, you know, in the air, waving his arms and shouting ‘it’s burning, it’s burning!’ You know, that spirit of joy, that spirit of reversal when the colonizer is running for their life. Like, this moves people, this moves people to act on an almost, like, spiritual level. I don’t know how you can be against this, to be honest. And I think there are certainly questions about the limitations of the emotional or the spiritual architecture of movements in the West, is Western anarchism enough, is it sustaining people to, you know, sustain the ability to resist while they make the kinds of sacrifices that people in Palestine or in Iran or historically in terms of the various revolutions which have happened, communist revolutions in Asia, is it enough? I don’t know. But I will not hear some annoying loser telling me, you know, to be miserable all the time and just, like, read, and not experiment and not actually live in the world. I think that’s stupid. Sorry, maybe that was a bit too strong.

No you’re fine, I’m just trying to raise something that I feel like some of our listeners would feel hearing you talk about this spirit of adventure.

A: Oh, no, but you can totally make critiques, like I think, I think we need to hear them.

No no but genuinely it’s not. It’s horrendous that what has been allowed to unfold in the world and that we have been unable to stop it. And I think it requires us to be really self-critical around some of their. Just anecdotally, we interviewed Ed Mead a long time ago, years ago, may he rest in peace. He was a member of several organizations, George Jackson Brigade being one of them. And you know he used to use this commentary on the “tame left”, and in particular he would talk about movements policing folks who wanted to for instance light a trash can.

A: Oh my God, that is something that has been widely experienced.

Yeah, and he would say this is “pure puke.” And to be clear he was very much a Marxist. But also someone who is probably critiqued for adventurism by some in his time. But sorry getting to the question, so I read the interview that your campaign did that was conducted by Calla Walsh. One of the things that’s discussed there is how despite being inspired by Palestine Action in the UK, is something you talked about a little bit about earlier in studying your own context: you determined that slightly different tactics would be necessary in so-called australia. Can you share a little bit about your groups assessment of that?

A: Yeah, look, so Palestine Action has really, in the first few years of existence, been centered around what s known as an accountable above-ground campaign. So what that means is that people go, they have their faces out, they’re not anonymous, they film themselves, and they go and they take a sledgehammer to an Elbit facility or they lock themselves on, something like that. And the point is not to evade arrest. The point is to do damage and to sort of, like, to be completely visible while you’re doing that. And that was an incredibly powerful strategy for them. And it really enabled them, I think, to build their movement in this sustained way, because it was, it was just so visible anyone could see what was what was going on. But that also arose out of these very specific contextual conditions. One of those conditions is that for the first couple of years of operation, Elbit Systems didn’t actually press charges. So it’s not just that people weren’t getting convicted, people weren’t actually getting charged for the first couple of years. And so that enabled them, you know, it was great to be above-ground, I think, in that context, because they could just, like, if you could just stand there and smash that thing with a sledgehammer for like hours, think of the damage you can do. And their achievements are testaments to the damage you can do. That is not a context that has ever existed in so-called Australia. So even before Palestine Action, there were a couple of cases in Britain where people did damage to an arms factory, and juries refused to convict them. There was this case going right back to 1996, the Ploughshares case. And so there was this context where that was a very viable thing. That has never existed in Australia to our knowledge. So that s one thing. And I think that maybe the context in Britain is changing now as well. And so with that changing context, you actually see this shift with groups like People Against Genocide moving towards that below-ground, underground, mode of action. And some really excellent sort of, you know, arsons and stuff, I think, carried out by those wonderful comrades there. But I think, yeah, the point being that there was a legal context, which was not the same.

Another thing I think we really try and emphasize a lot is that Australian policing, you can think of it as kind of halfway in between, policing in Britain and in the U.S., it’s not as violent as policing in the U.S. But Australian police routinely carry guns, which they do not do in Britain. So this is level of sort of normalized physical violence enacted by cops in Australia, which is very different from what we hear comrades over there describe. You know, it’s not unusual for people to come out of an above ground protest where there’s been some conflict with the cops in Australia with a number of broken bones. Like that happens quite routinely. Even in the area where I’ve been living in Australia. There was this like one year period where, because I was a hermit, I barely went out. And even in the very few places where I went out, there was something like four people killed by cops, not protesters, just people killed, murdered by cops, over, you know, over that period. So, we consider that in this context for us to be just openly, statically staying there and waiting for the cops to effectively come and get us, was not something that we wanted to do. And that doesn’t mean that every single protest in Australia is met in that way. So, there have been cases where the cops will be quite hands off with people engaging in a protest, and they’ve been cases when they’re very much the opposite of that, hands on. So basically, they follow this kind of policing model, which is known as strategic incapacitation. They want to sort of separate the good protesters from the bad protesters, and then just come down really hard on the so-called bad protesters, and sort of undermine, create fear and undermine solidarity in that way. And in this context, yeah, we did not see it as viable to do these above ground accountable actions in the same way.

I think it’s really important as well, Australia is like the US, it’s a settler colony. And so the entire system of policing here is built out of the regularized and ongoing murder and brutalization of First Nations people. And the normalization of that brutalization has to a small extent bled over into the brutalization of those considered politically resistant. I don’t pretend that settlers resisting the Australian State, like, the level of violence which is deployed against First Nations people, it’s just on another level. And I’m not First Nations. I don’t pretend that that’s the same thing. But it exists within the same policing and the same social apparatus. Yeah, so that’s some of the context for us making a different strategic decision there.

As you were talking about the different context before you got to the settler colonialism point, that was the thing that was sitting in my mind as well. Because I mean in the US, I think it’s also the settler colonial legacy and also the legacy of control of the enslaved population, runaway slaves and all that, that contribute to our policing architecture being so heavily armed and violent. But I think it’s kind of interesting because I’ve spent a little time in England and also in Ireland, the ways that you know, European countries which were the centers of these imperial cores of these colonial projects, do often have — and I haven’t studied this enough to really think through all the things that contribute to this history, there’s probably great work on it — but I imagine it probably has something to do with something with histories of the left there, and union organizing there, as well. But it struck me with like Palestine Action how they could do direct action. We interviewed folks from Palestine Action a few times and obviously solidarity to them in their struggle against the legal system. But I always found that fascinating the degree of activity that they could do and not have the kind of consequences that they are now facing which they continued to fight of course. But it did seem so unusual to me, because I knew how the US State would respond. And obviously we’ve seen instances of that whether it’s Calla Walsh or even the prairieland folks now as well. How over the top the State can respond to actions that ultimately don’t pose any immediate threat to their imperial machinery. And I’m not saying that the mean those actions, because I think that it’s important for people to try to do things — to attempt different things. But I do think any reasonable person would look at what they’re doing and say, well the way the State is responding here is so out of step with reality. What they are actually responding to. I guess that’s the pedagogical effect of that, to teach people to be docile.

A: Yes, yeah. Yeah, I was going to say there’s also an aspect, I think because Australia is a settler colonial society. I think it is kind of base level of violence which underlies a settler colonial society. Like I remember seeing this quote from someone in Palestine Action who is saying, ‘well, I’m locked on, what are you going to do?’ And, you know, there’s this history of like anti-logging protesters, especially in Queensland, but like around Australia, environmentalists locking on to logging equipment or destructive equipment. And it’s quite common for workers to just bash them in the head, people get brain injuries from this.

Yeah. There’s a similar antagonism in the United States. So speaking a little on Palestine Action again, and maybe this is also part of how you have thought about things as you did from the outset — but there has been more tagging, using terrorism labels more and more. Obviously this is going on in the United States: there is this effort to ramp up the application even without a really firm legal basis. But sort of like by executive orders and so on of terrorism labels for people engaging in things that you’re talking about, right? Like reading zines together. Like all of these things. And I’m curious what effect those have had in your context, on your organizing, as well as maybe what you’ve seen in terms of State responses to the actions that you have taken against Toll?

A: Yeah, so the State does not like us to put it mildly. And there has been a pretty intensive escalation of State action against this campaign, and against pro-Palestinian anti-Zionist movements, in so-called Australia more generally. I guess I’m not necessarily at liberty to tell the full story, if you like, but to give you one example of a legal case which has been wrapped up, so a couple of people were accused of involvement in our campaign. And the basis or the evidence behind this allegation was effectively nothing, like, it was just basically that they were in the city at around the same time that one of these actions was enacted in the city. And bear in mind that Melbourne is a city of what, 5 million people? Like, being in the city at night is not particularly damning, in my view. But nonetheless, there were these counter-terror raids, their houses were smashed up, their doors were kicked in, their devices were confiscated, they were interrogated, they were threatened, you know, all of these things, there was this long drawn-out process. And the State had absolutely nothing on them, except the fact that the cops demanded that they unlock their devices, right? And they refused to do this, which is the right thing to do. And so the State actually threatened them with these charges and wanted to put them in jail, and that was something that was quite legitimately on the table, as an early indication of the outcome of this legal matter. That people would spend about a month in jail, not because they were charged with anything to do with an actual action, but merely because they did not roll over and comply. And in the end, they ended up getting off with some very minor penalty, some small fine, because there was no evidence.

But it just, it goes to show the State is marshalling quite a high level of violence and intimidation. With the goal, I would say, not necessarily of getting convictions. Of course they would like to do that, if they could, but when they have no evidence, there’s no convictions — and to be clear, you know, these people don’t necessarily have anything to do with our campaign. But when people are attacked on the basis of the allegation they are involved with the campaign, then this is an attack on the movement. This is an attack on the campaign, and so they need to be defended as part of that movement and as part of that campaign. And I will also say that when these people refused to give their passcodes, this was the brave and right choice in principle, and the fact that they essentially got off also shows that it was also the right choice to make on a self-interested level. Collaborating doesn’t make you safe. That s a baseline understanding we need to have in our movements. But yeah, that’s a sign of, I guess, how seriously the Australian State is taking this.

And the effect of this, I would say, the goal is to isolate the sort of underground and above ground elements of the pro-Palestinian movement. So it’s to be like, okay, you can engage in these direct actions, and that sits over here, probably you’ll get away with it, or maybe you’ll get away with it if you do it right, but we’re going to make it really, really hard for you to generalize this into the kind of movement where these actions can be enacted again and again, by different people, you know, or connected to other forms of action, to the level of achieving the material goal we have, which is to sever the connection between Toll Holdings and Zionism and US-led imperialism. So it really, you know, it makes life a lot harder. It makes that communication and that ability to achieve that ‘unity of fields’, if you like, between the above ground and the below ground, much harder. And, you know, that is one of the reasons which we very much appreciate, your being willing to speak to us in this conversation.

Say a little bit more about what you see as a healthy relationship between an above ground and below ground. I think that largely there hasn’t really been — at least in the US context, I’ll speak of — no underground to speak of. Maybe there has been a little bit that’s less recognized because we have had environmental activists and things like that.

A: You know, the Earth Liberation Front right?

Yeah we’ve had sort of understanding clandestine activism in certain instances. But it hasn’t really written to this level of this heyday I guess, that you could harken back to in the US. And we’ve had a lot of conversations with folks from this era over the years, people like from the 60s and 70s, and people who ended up joining the Black Liberation Army, or Weather, or the United Freedom Front, or other organizations that were directly trying to target legitimate military targets and certain things like this. And I think many of us have told ourselves this story right — I’ll speak for myself again — sort of told myself that due to the rise of technology and surveillance, and all these things, that’s really not possible anymore. And I think there’s been a demonstration by campaigns like yours, and others around the world, over the last few years as well as of course by resistance actors in the region that this view is actually totally wrong. That this was not a correct assessment, that in struggles against imperialism it’s necessary but it’s also possible. So how do you think about that today? What does that look like in today’s contexts? I mean there is what it is and what it should be I guess, I’m curious your thoughts on that.

A: Yeah, you know, I guess, and I’m speaking personally, not necessarily, as a representative of anything, for me, the ultimate goal is to free the people free the land, right, and for us to do this, if we purely have legal above ground sorts of activities in terms of teach-ins or podcasts or education or walks, marches from A to B, that’s not going to free the people free the land, right? Like, it’s just self-evidently not. Land and people are held and oppressed by a violent process. It’s not going to be given up voluntarily. And so that necessitates the existence of some kind of resistance, and I think, because resistance is pursued by the State and pursued by the colony and by capital, that necessitates a level of covert action. At the same time, you know, the below-ground, if these covert actions exist, but they’re sort of isolated or they’re in a way not even, you know, they’re not politicized. It’s like, ‘okay, we did this hit, and the purpose of the hit was to do that hit, and we’re successfully done one hit, okay, cool.’ But in terms of communicating the meaning of that hit to, you know, a broader part or a mass part of society, and creating a sort of living ecosystem where other people can actually enter the kinds of relationships and the kinds of skills and the kinds of circles where they too can undertake further hits, which builds this material force, which actually, you know, prevents the supply chains for genocide and imperialism.

I don’t believe that we can do this without some kind of above ground collaboration. And I think that is something which, you know, my mind has changed over the course of the last two, three years. I think that immediately after Al-Aqsa flood, with the sort of simultaneous understanding by many people that a genocide was happening, and with the existence of sort of modern communications technology, the idea that you could do a hit that you could sort of post in an anonymous communique, maybe a video, and post a sort of message saying, join us, and then not have any other sort of communicative or educative infrastructure — just that anonymous thing — and that other people elsewhere would spontaneously and in adequate numbers, you know, engage in their own hits against a similar target. Like, that was something which, theoretically, it was possible, and there was a hope for it, just after Al-Aqsa Flood. For me, I think that reality has intervened to show us that actually, we need to take it further than that. We actually do need to take some responsibility, both for the actions and also for the communication and the education. I keep coming back to this idea of a unity of fields. Obviously, the Palestinian resistance are able to work in this decentralized way, to have people who are in the political bureau, to have people who no one knows who they are, because they live in the tunnels, and nonetheless, they’re working, you know, it’s like drops of water in a stream, they’re not necessarily all the same thing, but they’re working together to create this unstoppable flood, if you like. And so that is something we need to learn to do. So what does a healthy relationship between the above and the underground look like? It’s very hard. I don’t know. But I think there needs to be some level of mutual understanding of our goals, and I think there also has to be some mutual accountability to each other. In the end, the podcasts are meaningless without the hits. But the hits are not very meaningful without people’s minds and hearts being reached, and that’s where the podcast comes in, I guess.

So again this kind of comes just sort of my own assessment of thoughts of what I have seen shift among people’s everyday attitudes as this genocide has progressed, since the so-called ceasefire, a meaningless term now, but where people in Gaza are just being slowly starved and denied the opportunity to be rebuilt. Their life it’s just an ongoing state of misery and exception. Has progressed out of entire blocks be destroyed, although even as I say that like yesterday when we were recording this, there was a video I think I saw of the entity a video blowing up an entire historical village in Lebanon. So things have shifted a bit, but there is obviously there’s this slower intensity. I wouldn’t even say it’s a slower intensity. It’s hard to describe. There is what’s going on in Gaza, it’s being done by the entity at this point, and with the US support and everything else. Which is not necessarily I guess dependent upon artillery shells perhaps in that instance? There is what’s going on in Lebanon which is dependent upon various kinds of munitions. And then there’s what’s going on against Iran. Which of course Iran is very much defending itself against the attacks it’s facing in various ways. But I feel like what I’ve experienced or seen shifted in the movement largely speaking, there’s less talk frankly about Palestine, in some ways perhaps it’s related to, we don’t see the resistant fighter in Palestine anymore. That figure is not as visible today. As well as obviously the frequency of the bombing and so on. But there’s a way that I feel like the kind of military components have become a little bit subordinated in terms of people’s mass consciousness around this. And maybe they’re upset like in the United States, maybe they’re upset about the war in Iran but it really only registers from people I hear talking about it in terms of like cost of living! Or price of gas.

A: That’s disgusting. So, that’s an emotional response, but that’s so disgusting.

It is, and I’m less talking about really politicized folks to be clear. I’m more talking about the way in which the average person that was not a Zionist — if you came across them during the highest portions of this genocide, there was a visceral disgust that they had with what was going on. In our context, I feel like that visceral disgust is less visible right? This might be a very US-centric thing right? Because it might be more that what you have right now is mostly liberal anti-Trump focus. But anyways I’m curious in your context if you’ve seen a shift in so-called australia around how mobilized and motivated people are around this ongoing genocide and the war on this whole region. Have the shifting dynamics of how it’s playing out led to any differences for you all in terms of how you approach to work you do? Or do you see the work you do basically still the same and in continuity?

A: Yeah, look, I think that there has been a very similar shift actually, in so-called Australia, from what you describe in the US, I think, you know, the sort of stage or nature of the genocide, which is being enacted in Palestine now. My personal view is that people in the West can sort of understand bombs, because it’s so spectacular and dramatic. But the concept of being starved to death, the concept of having the basic necessities of life, just priced out or physically blockaded out — like, Australia has never experienced sanctions. Iran’s experienced sanctions, China’s experienced sanctions, many, many countries in the Global South have been starved. But I don’t think Australians really empathize with that to be honest, and I think that that goes to a lot of the decline of interest in Palestine.

I think what you say about the figure of the resistance fighter, and particularly for politicized people, retreating from people’s consciousness, that’s a very important thing. My own view is that part of it is this sort of humanitarian idea, I think that many people were not comfortable with the figure of the resistance fighter to start off with, you know? The eviscerated Palestinian child was an image that they were comfortable with, if you like. But the resistance fighter was not. Although there was some breaking through with that, I think, particularly in politicized circles. There is a base level of comfort in so-called Australian society, and I think the shock of sacrifice and the shock of, you know, a level of resistance won by blood, during Al-Aqsa flood, had the ability to temporarily jolt people out of that comfort. I don’t know if that has been lasting, unfortunately, for a lot of political movements in Australia.

I think as well, and again, this is my, this is my interpretation, please don’t take it as gospel, but there could be a sort of thing of like getting behind Hamas or getting behind the Palestinian resistance, almost as a kind of shock value, like, ‘oh, this is the most radical thing that we could possibly say, it’s really offending people.’ But really entering into the psychic or the spiritual worlds, which animate these kinds of resistance, like the idea of a concept of self which does not begin or end with the bounds of one’s individual self. I think that there’s a real struggle for people in the West, self-included, to commune with that. And I don’t know if the changes that we have wrought in ourselves have been enough to sustain the kind of energy which existed right after Al-Aqsa flood. And so I think in terms of strategies and tactics, there is a continuity. But there is also a need for change. And I don’t know exactly what that change should look like, but what I do recall from those sorts of early months is that in this shock of change, there was a willingness for a lot of people to talk who hadn’t talked before, and a lot of people to work together who hadn’t worked together before. There was this willingness to take a leap of faith from that, if you like, and yeah, have an adventure. And my belief is that we need to find a way to preserve this spirit and to sort of, yeah, take that spirit forward in a different phase of the genocide and the anti-imperialist struggle.

I think as well, and I want to talk about Iran a little bit, you know Toll supplies U.S. warships, you know, you’ve got the situation of these U.S. warships, like the USS Spruance which directly fired those missiles against that primary school. That is a ship which has been supplied by Toll. And I think the sort of relative lack of interest by political movements in Australia reflects something you alluded to before, which is this discomfort, you know: the Palestinians don’t have a state, they don’t have weapons, or they have tiny little weapons, they certainly don’t have the kind of firepower which the Iranian Revolutionary Guard have. And I think there is a discomfort being involved in an anti-imperialist struggle when some of the people fighting can actually kill a bunch of U.S. soldiers, to be frank.

You mentioned interestingly the potential encirclement of China, or the strategic positioning of things around China as well earlier on. Was there anything else you wanted to go into in terms of that?

A: Yeah, so the strategic encirclement of China is a really terrifying and a really interesting thing. And I think in a way that goes to the heart of this campaign. Because of Toll’s involvement in this. You’ve got Toll actually pre-positioning ammunition stocks in Melbourne and also in a US military base in the Philippines, in Subic Bay. And you’ve got this explicitly described as this, you know, this, this goal of the US and its network of alliances in so-called Australia and Japan to contain China. And I think in that sort of articulation, there’s this idea that China constitutes this threat to the region, which I think personally — for the US to be saying that is completely ridiculous, you know, you’ve got an empire which is fighting so many wars it can’t manufacture enough bullets for them, versus a country which hasn’t fired a bullet outside of its own borders in, what is it, 40 years? Like, these things are not equivalent.

I certainly think that there is potential, like, we talk about BDS, boycott divestment sanctions as an organization but also as a spectrum of tactics, right? And in terms of resistance movements, certainly in the West, boycott and consumer boycotts, that’s been a big thing. But there’s a little bit of a limitation to the role of consumer boycotts. Because, as consumers, most of us don’t directly purchase from the companies manufacturing weapons, because, you know, I don’t buy 155 millimeter shells! I can’t boycott that company. And so this is obviously really important in terms of this sort of secondary economic pressure on the entity, but, you know, it’s not adequate. And then you scale that upwards towards divestment campaigns, which involves putting some level of corporate pressure and you’ve got, you know, honestly, not a lot of successes on this front. Where there have been successes so you had this case where this Japanese company, Itochu, actually cancelled this memorandum of operations with Elbit Systems and there was this sort of threatened boycott of Itochu, which occurred in Malaysia. It was organised by a group of Palestinians in Japan as far as I know, who did some wonderful work. My perception is that a lot of these things were very much amplified by Palestine Action’s direct action campaign against Elbit which kind of invigorated, if you like, the possibilities of a level of boycott. By themselves, I see these financial sort of tools as being important but kind of limited.

Like, one thing which is happening in terms of sanctions, is that China has actually put sanctions on a number of Zionist and imperialist arms companies, including Elbit, including Lockheed Martin. And China has also put export restrictions on a bunch of in fact Japanese entities involved with dual-use military and civilian products, especially those associated with rare earths, which are used in weapons production. And I’ve noticed very little conversation in Palestinian solidarity movements about this. Which is very strange, right? Because we’ve got this concept of boycott divestment sanctions, as our strategy toolkit. And we’ve actually got a very concrete example of the kind of sanctions which we want levelled against imperialist weapons companies actually being levelled. And so one sort of strategic question, which is in my mind, is what is there that direct action movements — and connected to them, mass, and maybe above-ground movements — in the Asia-Pacific region — what is there that we can do, to put sanctions on the agenda as, you know, a concrete thing? Which can happen, not just in China, but in different countries across the Asia-Pacific region? And that’s another reason, why we see Toll as a really important strategic target: because it is so heavily invested in the Asia-Pacific region, because no one in this region wants to see a war or military conflict with China. And because we have this model of these sanctions already being levelled against military companies and Zionist companies. I see this as a very fruitful avenue for strategic investigation. I don’t know if I’ve got a bit off topic there, but that’s something that we want to put on the table.

Thank you for doing this interview. I know that our audience will learn a lot from listening to it. Is there anything else you’d want to say or share with folks before we wrap things up?

A: Yeah, okay, thank you, thank you very much. I really really appreciate this conversation. It’s been, okay, two random little things. One thing that you were talking about earlier about the sorts of materiality of resistance and about adventurism. It made me think about cutting internet cables! And about the sorts of suggestions for how different things can be disrupted. So that’s actually something which a group called Shut the System in Britain actually pioneered and put out a very good manual about. I’m not sure if it’s still online. But basically like fiber optic cables leading to, for instance, you know, a data center or for instance, to an office of a company like Toll. By definition, infrastructure like this, it can’t be just inside the sort of secured facility, right? It has to go outside. Because it has to connect to a broader network. And so basically opening up the internet pit and cutting the cable is just quite a satisfying thing you might want to do if you want to have an adventure! And, you know, as we ve established, we’re quite pro-adventure! But I think that goes to the sort of theoretical point as well, that the sort of supply chains and networked logistics of imperialism inherently have vulnerabilities. They pass through your area they can be found, in your area. That’s one thing I wanted to say.

Another thing is to do with rallies. You know, I spoke quite critically earlier of the role of rallies as this kind of counter-insurgent, A to B activity. But at the same time, the experience of people gathering together and engaging in this symbolic activity actually did provide an opportunity for people to identify the contradictions and want to move things further. And now with the so-called Australian state becoming more and more reactionary, they re actually cracking down more even on things that used to be permitted, including A to B rallies. So how should we approach this tactically? I don t have the answers, but I want us to be approaching these questions in a way that is responsive to changing conditions and trying to really see what s going on around us. To me, that s part of what it means to live a little.

For anyone listening to this podcast — if you want to learn a bit more about the campaign, and also see some cool videos, you can go to tolldeath.noblogs.org. At time of speaking the site is up, Trump has issued his anti-terrorist order against NoBlogs, so it may at some point be taken down. If that happens, we hope to get back to Jared very shortly with a link to a new platform. This is a decentralised campaign, it’s a movement, not just a campaign, so if you or your comrades want to set up your own platform and your own materials based on campaigning against Toll, go right ahead. We would love to see it.

I guess the last thing I wanted to say is that, you know, this is a work in progress. Our goal is to free the people, free the land. I think that we’ve succeeded in creating tangible material costs and a tangible material threat against the perpetrators of Zionism and imperialism. But we have not freed the people, we have not freed the land. We want wins. We want contracts dropped, we want sites closed and we want Toll to be materially inhibited and pushed back from supplying these arteries of imperialism. And we also want to create an example, just as Palestine Action has been this real light on the hill, in terms of how, you know, an at least initially above-ground direct action movement could materially inhibit the operation of a really evil genocidal entity like Elbit Systems. We want to create an example of how in these different conditions, which exist when those legal conditions are less favourable, this can still be done. We want to do this and speaking directly to the listeners of this podcast, we want to do it with you and we hope to see you there.

All right thank you for all your time and your thoughts.

A: This has been, this has been great. Thank you.