1/ 🚨 News broke yesterday (): Anticapitalist, anarchist (and degrowth) activist Enric Duran, aka “Robin Banks,” has been in preventive detention in France since June on dubious charges. The real reason? His activism. Here’s why this is so important 👇 bit.ly/3XGKLPc
2/ I was lucky enough to work with Enric on a few projects over the years. I even got him to speak at a master’s seminar at LSE 😁 and later wrote my thesis on Faircoin, the attempt he was involved in to create anticapitalist money. But here’s his story from the start 👇
3/ Enric Duran grew up in Catalunya and was a young ping pong champion before turning coach. In the late '90s/early 2000s, he became a key node in the Barcelona alter-globalization movement network, known as “the connected man” (as per anthropologist Jeffrey Juris).
4/ In 2008, Duran co-organized the #degrowth March, a cycling tour across Catalunya to raise awareness about capitalism’s destructive impact on society and ecology, while creating networks for future activism. 🚴♀️
5/ On Sept 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers collapsed. The same day, Duran fled to Brazil. Two days later, 200k copies of self-printed magazine 'Crisi' were distributed in Catalunya. In it, he revealed he’d expropriated €492k from banks via 68 loans, with no intent to repay them. 💸
6/ Duran’s Crisi exposed how banks create money via debt, not by lending deposits—something only later admitted by institutions like the Bank of England. He also insisted on how debt-based growth fuels capitalism’s expansion at the cost of a finite planet.
7/ Most of that money was distributed to self-managed anticapitalist projects, and some were saved for the coming ones. Indeed, six months later, 350,000 copies of Podem! (We Can!) appeared, calling for life beyond capitalism through the creation of integral cooperatives.
8/ On the same day Podem! was distributed, Duran unexpectedly reappeared at the University of Barcelona and was arrested. Two months later, a donor posted his bail. Over the next four years, he worked to build the “Integral Revolution.” 💥
9/ In 2010, Duran helped launch the Cooperativa Integral Catalana (CIC). This was an explicitly subversive project that operated as an umbrella cooperative, providing a legal framework for hundreds of cooperatives to interact “without capitalism” using a social currency, Ecos.
10/ CIC brought together health workers, legal experts, software developers, babysitters, and more. CIC also ran an interest-free investment bank with a half-million euro annual budget. By 2011, it had thousands of members and funded countless projects.
11/ In 2013, Duran fled from Spain to avoid prison, going underground. From afar, he helped launch FairCoin and FairCoop, a global currency and cooperative network built on the principles of cooperativism, self-management, and direct democracy.
12/ For a few years, FairCoin expanded globally, from Catalunya to Exarchia (Greece) Mexico and beyond. Thousands were using Faircoin. Some, only Faircoin.
Slowly, though, the system collapsed. This revolution, as many others, did not succeed. We would have noticed otherwise.
Slowly, though, the system collapsed. This revolution, as many others, did not succeed. We would have noticed otherwise.
13/ Mistakes were made—many by Duran himself. But that’s not the point. The point is to pay tribute and defend one of the most ingenious anticapitalist activists of our time, who fought tirelessly against oppression and sacrificed his freedom for this cause. 🖤
14/ Now, Duran is in prison in France for trading crypto with someone involved in fraud. Chats show he didn’t know, but the judge won’t read them. Cryptos are notoriously unregulated, so why is Duran being singled out? This is quite obviously a political attack. 🎯
15/ In a 2022 documentary by Ana Giralt ('Robin Bank'), Duran revealed he was planning a new global-scale hack. Could this be the reason he’s been arrested now? Could his imprisonment be a preemptive move to stop whatever he had planned?
16/ All my solidarity goes to Enric Duran. He’s being persecuted for his activism. Let's not forget him. Let's fight for his freedom #freeEnricDuran #LlibertatEnricDuran ✊
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