From Riot to Insurrection: The G8 Summit of 2001 & The Battle of Genoa
“…but in the end, we will win.” In 1992, following the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, the ruling class declared the end of history and the triumph of capitalism. Less than two years later, the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas galvanized a worldwide movement against capitalist globalization. All around the world, history began to crack and move again, like a frozen river thawing in the spring. This momentum culminated in July 2001 with the protests against the G8 summit, in what became known as the battle of Genoa. For days, tens of thousands of aspiring revolutionaries clashed with an army of police in a city on fire. From Riot to Insurrection offers a vivid account of this pivotal moment. In electrifying prose, Tomas Rothaus escorts the reader through those explosive days, recounting the chaotic street battles, the exhilarating sense of possibility, the heart-wrenching moments of triumph and loss. This is an ode to audacity, to what we become capable of when we believe in our collective power. The real lesson of the end of the Cold War is not that capitalism is inevitable; it is that empires always fall. While “socialism without freedom” had crumbled by 1992, “freedom without socialism” has yet to expire. That revolution remains possible—even today—provided that we fight for it the way people did in Genoa. What People Are Saying “Tomas Rothaus’s writing is able to thread the ever-thin-needle between lived history, the rush of revolutionary moments, incisive analysis, and humor in his writings on Genoa. I cannot recommend his work highly enough to anyone who wants to understand both radical anarchist politics and the lessons that the antiglobalization movement of the 1990s and early 2000s has to offer us.” Charlie Allison, author of No Harmless Power: The Life and Times of the Ukrainian Anarchist Nestor Makhno “In the past half century, there was one tiny window when a global anticapitalist movement was on the offensive: the short years of the so-called antiglobalization movement at the turn of the millennium. That window was shut with the crackdown on the G8-summit protests in Genoa, Italy, in July 2001. The state raised the stakes and the movement could not answer. No serious analysis of the potentials and pitfalls of revolutionary anticapitalist politics can do without revisiting this crucial moment in history, and no one is more suited for the task than Tomas Rothaus, the rising star of contemporary revolutionary historiography. An eyewitness to the events, he takes us back with an unfailing sense for the essentials, rolled into a narrative that is both enlightening and hugely entertaining. If books decided the revolution, this one would carry us over the finish line with ease.” Gabriel Kuhn, author of From Hash Rebels to Urban Guerrillas: A Documentary History of the 2nd of June Movement and X: Straight Edge and Radical Sobriety “From Riot to Insurrection: The G8 Summit of 2001 & The Battle of Genoa is a searing chronicle of one of the most electrifying confrontations in the modern struggle against capitalism. With gripping detail and unflinching insight, Tomas Rothaus brings the Genoa commune to life, where tens of thousands dared to defy the world’s most notorious class war criminals—and paid the price. More than just a history of a pivotal protest, this is a passionate meditation on rebellion, memory, and the enduring possibility of revolution. Rothaus reminds us that the fall of empires is not just inevitable; it is written in the courage of those who resist.” Andrej Grubačić, professor of Anthropology and Social Change at CIIS, San Francisco About the Author Tomas Rothaus is a lifelong anarchist and antifascist as well as an athlete and a father. He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and his nomadic life led to him moving around with stops in Athens, Boston, Buenos Aires, and Paris, followed by longer stints in Germany, and more recently returning to Argentina. He has been involved with a broad range of organizations including the CNT-Vignoles, Collectif Anti Expulsions (Anti Deportation Collective), Barricada Collective, Northeastern Federation of Anarcho-Communists, Antifaschistische Linke International, and Acción Antifascista Buenos Aires. Over the past twenty plus years he has been an active participant in militant demonstrations and antifascist mobilizations ranging from the 2001 Bush inauguration, the FTAA summit in Quebec, the 2007 G8 summit in Rostock, and the 2011 mobilization to stop the march of several thousand neo-Nazis in the city of Dresden. PM Press published his first two books, Another War Is Possible and Argentina, a Tale of Two Utopias. Mark Bray (Foreword) is a historian of Modern Europe at Rutgers University and the author of Antifa: The Antifascist Handbook and The Anarchist Inquisition: Assassins, Activists, and Martyrs in Spain and France and the coeditor of Anarchist Education and the Modern School: A Francisco Ferrer Reader.