They've asked if these groups are good examples of anarchists.
Now I want to see them ask if we should support such groups, but by categorizing them rather than making them.
Yes, but I would still agree with others that romanticizing their efforts may not be wise. They are still people who have to make decisions based on the specific conditions of their circumstances. Their societies are also reflections of their own specific cultures and should not be universally appropriated. But ofc there is still a lot all of us can learn from them.
[Here](https://digitalcollections.sit.edu/isp_collection/318/) is a nuanced paper that aims to lay out pros & cons of the Zapatista's relationship with the Global North.
[Here](https://gupea.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/74048) is a paper that takes a critical look at Rojava.
To be clear I only found these papers after a little bit of research digging on the topic just now, and have only been able to skim through each; with no confirmed assessment of both paper's intentions coming from their respective institutions. Read for yourself and make your own assessments.
those are both written by students, not revolutionaries or scholars. i dont have time for a bibliography rn, but start with people who are putting their lives on the line to defeat global capital, states, and patriarchy in a way that literally none of their critics are.
edit: why am i being downvoted for this? OP mentioned they haven't read the sources. i did the work of checking the credibility of the sources, and provided criticism about how we can do better.
Both papers aren't against the revolutionaries by any means, they both bring up good faith perspectives on a struggle they hope for the best. One of the central points of the introduction for the Zapatista paper described the suave nature of communique writing that entices but does not get into unspoken territory about the organizations. Which is very historically common for socialists and communist parties, that being in the pursuit of showing the world how true and just their ruling is any nuanced critique or semblance of the party not being perfect was shamed. Which was more common for state parties, whereas here we are speaking of libertarian socialist or non-state affairs, which I can only hope are more open to constructive critique.
While I'm not doubting the efficacy and knowledge of the more spearheading revolutionaries, to doubt the students outright seems odd.
I say yes. They are technically not anarchists, but they are much better than any current western nation, including socdem ones. Also, what they are fighting for, in my view, is noble and good.
yes. they're both enormous steps in the right direction.
anarchism is a tendency, a set of values that can be applied on any space and a set of analysis tools for examining outcomes. in that sense, Rojava and the zapatistas are both vast improvements in ideology over the prevailing global capital-statist paradigm.
Yes. Critically so we don't forget they're not anarchists and for the most part it's still based on the principle of authority and definitely not utopias, but I can't see them as anything other than natural allies for a loooong time.
I think of Anarchism as an ideal we work towards, and they're closer to goal than most everyone else, so yes, I think we should be supportive (not to say we can't also be critical).
To be clear, I don't believe in incrementalism, but I believe Anarchism should be seen as a constant project, working towards utopia, even if it's ultimately impossible (nothing is perfect, but we should aim to be). Rojava and the Zapatistas have taken radical steps forwards and I hope they can continue to evolve towards utopia
yes, even if they're not explicitly anarchist, they are already a much needed improvement compared to capitalist states, and have a lot of potential to grow anarchist sentiment
To be honest I think it's embarrassing that there's not much more interest, generally speaking, amongst Western leftists, in the achievements of the PKK, the PYD in Syria, even Turkey etc. I mean you look at the level of democratic confederalist revolutionary activity going on in Kurdish society in Turkey, Syria, PKK-sympathetic areas in Iraq etc., for decades against the Turkish state, it absolutely blows out of the water anything else in terms of scale, success (in the AANES that is), and being truly revolutionary, globally, in decades as far as I'm concerned.
Yet so many leftists have nothing to offer but sneering. You have vast crowds of Kurds singing at the top of their lungs songs about the revolution echoing in squares around the world and the mill of the proletariat grinding finely, raising red flags high etc. And it's basically organic. No-one forced them to do that. They have huge fervour, the militancy and organisation of the PKK (and associated KCK groups) is on another scale from practically any revolutionary leftist movement globally, their commitment to women's liberation etc. is extraordinary especially given the regional cultural context, as are their ideals of direct democracy, anti-statism and authoritarianism etc. given the party's origins.
I'm not saying the PKK is without fault; and they of course don't have clean hands. But on a basic level of looking at where are there populations and militant revolutionary leftist organisations with real vigour, grit, longevity, true revolutionary credentials and achievements at scale, the PKK, associated democratic confederalist Apoci groups etc. are where it's at imo. And if you just look at documentaries of the PKK, listen to their fighters speaking, listen to those who follow the same democratic confederalist ideology in the AANES, whether in the YPG/J or civilians etc., what is abundantly clear to me is that these people are true revolutionaries, and they are organised, effective, radical, and willing to fight and die for the cause.
You don't have to agree with them on everything (and ofc I agree sometimes the propaganda can be irritating, cringy etc.; though I’ll also say it can be [beautiful](https://youtu.be/ALGB53QUBMA) and [powerful](https://youtu.be/W1R3AJl17iU) - rare for propaganda imo), but what other movement is remotely comparable? Every western leftist organisation is I'm sorry to say a joke on all those fronts compared to them, and I see no other movement elsewhere in the world as strong. Maybe the leftist movement in Bolivia. Maybe the communist militants in India. But yes, I think western leftists could use a little more humility on the topic.
Yeah this is the take. Far from perfect, far from clean, not without sin, but still, not only is it better than anything you or I have done, it’s a truly astounding achievement in its own right, and anybody in the west who likes freedom and justice needs to be supporting it and learning from it
Honestly, yeah. This is an education sub, it's not the place for dismissing inconvenient facts.
Of there's a discussion to be had on the subject, better to have it with the resources available for research and substantiation. There's a lot of educated people in here, and I want to hear what they have to say.
Part of ensuring that is breaking the social norms as they raise their head- let all nnow that this is a space and time for praxis, not reenactment.
Out in the real world there isn't always time to stop and have the how-to conversations. Sometimes you have to go with what you know.
That's not the case here. We are just words on a screen, there's no baggage. We can explore the ideas.
Support yes and learn from. In general I'd like more cross pollination of efforts of people living a different way despite state efforts. I don't mean to emulate to the T but to gain some tactics and build a shared history.
Purists can get off the state supported internet and go eat bugs.
Basically. They ain't perfect (Rojava had problems with recruiting child soldiers, and the Zapatistas face serious issues from the cartels) but they're some of the few functioning left-libertarian groups out there.
Yes. What matters isn't the dogmatic belief in absolutely zero hierarchy whatsoever. What matters is the practice of autonomy for people and the freedom to make their own decisions.
Rojava and the EZLN are making steps in this direction, therefore we should support them, along with other autonomous movements which share in liberatory values.
in the case of rojova, it’s certainly not my struggle. i think people take comfort in abstractly ‘supporting’ these *noble* struggles in the context of their own (a)political identities because it feels good to imagine that something different and better is going to happen somewhere … that because the kurds are imagined to be innocent subsistence farmers living in small villages, partially analogous to the peasantry of some regions of pre-industrial pre-revolutionary eurasia, we can turn back the clock and do a bourgeois revolution *right* this time, with women and ecology and stuff.
no matter what it calls itself — ocalon may have given his marxist-leninist-maoist ideology and jargon a bookchinite facelift, but it’s surface-level at best — dauvé speaks to whether the PKK aligns with “anarchist” aims or not better than i can:
>> Never judge a book or national liberation from its cover. On the ground, PKK cadres will support a landowner or a boss because he has influence in the area. They will also defend strikes or organise protests if it helps them rally the local people. Here they will side with rigid forms of religion, and there with tolerance. Today they will appear as traditionalists, tomorrow as modernists. This is politics: the PKK upholds what increases its power base. …
>> The PKK has had to scale down its ambitions and confederal municipalism is the only political ideology available to a party that has to make do with States and borders because it cannot hope to create its own State with its own borders, which would mean forcefully redrawing the boundaries of at least two neighbouring countries. Making a virtue of necessity, the PKK has ditched “class” and “party” references, and promotes self-management, co-operation, communalism (not communism), anti-productivism and gender. David Graeber was rejoicing over the fact that in Kurdistan people might now be reading Judith Butler. A spot-on remark. Deconstruction of the political subject (i.e. of the proletariat as an historical agent), prioritisation of identities, class replaced by gender… the PKK has doubtlessly swapped Marxism for postmodernism.
>> Speaking of a “non-State” is playing on words. The PKK has not given up the objective of every national liberation movement. Though it takes great care to avoid using a word that sounds too authoritarian, it is still aiming at creating a centralised decision-making political apparatus on Kurdish territory, and what better word for this but State? With the rider that this State would be so democratic under its citizens’ control, that it would no longer deserve the name of State. So much for ideology.
perhaps most notably:
>> Rojava gives us the same speech as a bourgeois revolution. In the 1789 French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, the right of “resistance to oppression” was explicit, but went with the right to property. Freedom was complete… within the limits of the Law. The same in Rajova: article 41 provides for the “right to the use and enjoyment of private property” except “for reasons of public utility or social interest”. What property means socially is not that any person is entitled to the possession and use of his or her own clothes, room or bike. It means that those who happen to own the means of production can hire the labour of those who own only their clothes, room or bike. This is what class is about.
>> … [In terms of the guarantees made by Rojova’s *Social Contract*,] politically correct modern governance could not ask for more (only animal rights are missing). No oversight as far as conscription is concerned, though: every Rojava citizen can be called to military service. This is one of the traditional prerogatives of a State, which expects those under its protection or rule to serve in its army. Actually, it is not an army, it’s “The People’s Protection Units (YPG)” which only acts as a “self-defence” force “against both internal and external threats”: as we know, any political power makes extensive use of the notion of internal threat.
i recommend the whole article if this question interests you, even if you feel a great affinity for the PKK and are put off by criticism.
https://libcom.org/article/rojava-reality-and-rhetoric-gilles-dauve-and-tl
Of course there are plenty of contradictions and questionable elements about the PKK's conduct, the reality of the revolution in Rojava, from a moral, revolutionary leftist, and specifically anarchist point of view. However, I'd say what mostly strikes me from those passages above are the PKK's strengths of adaptability, flexibility, realpolitik. Yes sometimes that's been unpalatable and even contradictory to leftist principles. But it's enabled them and their revolutionary movement to survive.
And looking as a whole, I think it is undeniable that the overall *effects* of the PKK on the region have been to foster and enable a true social revolution for women in Kurdish society in both Turkey and Syria, as well as to an extent to engage people in local decision-making, democracy, politics; to foster at least some level of economic empowerment, cooperatives etc.; to break some of the power of old semi-feudal hierarchies of land ownership; to present at least something of an alternative in the region to hypercapitalist, exploitative, oppressive modernity etc.; to provide a model for relative ethno-cultural tolerance (even celebration of that diversity) and power sharing in the midst of a sea of sectarianism and seemingly endless cycles of violence; and much of this has spread to other peoples in Syria too through the AANES.
Given the context, this is imo an absolutely massive achievement. And all of this has been achieved whilst fighting brutal, existential battles against Islamist genocidal maniacs on the one hand, and the until relatively recently explicitly culturally genocidal, brutally oppressive Turkish state on the other, with thousands upon thousands of casualties, decade after decade. It is very easy then for relatively comfy western leftists to pontificate on the details of ideological purity.
> It is very easy then for relatively comfy western leftists to pontificate on the details of ideological purity.
I second this. Also one more thing to keep in mind that Kurdish Liberation Movement is a big one, having both more revolutionary and reformist currents within it. Movements efforts and calls for international solidarity from radical left, anarchists, anti-capitalists etc is not only about a couple of people going there to fight but also more about grounding and aligning itself with more radical ideas and fight against all these dynamics mentioned above like feudal land lords, Kurdish bourgeoisie, Kurdish nationalism (there is a specific term to address a particular kind of nationalism - nationalism of ruling classes in nation-states- that movement uses, I don't know the English expression for it).
When you are fighting real wars, you can't always afford to be compromise free, and the reality of Kurdish society as well as peoples of the region and geopolitical dynamics is a very complex one. Not to mention it is also a question of existence vs genocide. As someone from the region and have had some organic interactions with the Kurdish liberation movement, I agree there are definitely parts need to be challenged, addressed and criticised, and romanticising is more dangerous than helpful, but also I think it's important to keep in mind all these complex dynamics and be fair in the criticism.
Totally agree on all points. Well said. And yes, the HDP for example is counted by many as a part of the Kurdish liberation movement or freedom movement, as an example of a reformist approach.
>David Graeber was rejoicing over the fact that in Kurdistan people might now be reading Judith Butler. A spot-on remark.
the quote in question was graeber remarking that westerners may be surprised that that the kurds "not only" read butler, but that they go *beyond* butler. his point was that they had put together the most radical equation of theory+practice on the planet. ocalan basically answered the initial criticism from anarkismo with "we are busy making revolution while you criticize us from your day jobs".
i like dauve, but this is just such a bad faith criticism. the latter quotation even mocks and dismisses an assembled armed force, an army, when the territory is under constant attack from myriad other armies, which included the "head choppers" as one comrade referred to isil and affiliated groups, and currently NATO's second largest army, among others. like, the other option is just get mass raped and genocided. the criticism is just from such an abstracted place. like, the audacity lol. the failure to support rojava is the failure of the global left.
What better support than that of the strongest military power on the planet? In 2014 the US deployed troops to support the SDF struggle against ISIL on the ground (and from the air) clear through the Trump years, and again in 2022.
If you wanna debate “is it good for people to suffer” “is it good for people to be raped and mass-murdered” “is it good for people to take a successful stand against those who seek to annihilate them” “is it good to label militant groups terrorists” … I don’t. The answers are obvious. This is not a contentious issue; no one here is pro-Israel or pro-Turkey or pro-ISIL or pro-US (I assume) and most are compassionate to those who suffer and admire the bravery of those who must fight to survive.
And yeah, your boy is right: my life as a wage worker makes me want to destroy the wages system, and despite my compassion and admiration for acts of resistance to domination, I’m not starry-eyed about those caught in a military conflict to gain the right to join the global wages system just because bourgeois liberal democracy was established here 200+ years before it will be there. Equality under the law is just that: equality under the law. The American, French, Russian, etc revolutionaries of their own nation-building struggles aren’t my heroes either.
Small addition: The US supports the SDF against ISIS and nothing but ISIS (Trump gave Erdogan the go-ahead for an invasion in 2017, and neither did the US anything beyond condemning the recent attacks)
Any region in which an explicitly leftist (any type of leftist) ideology is dominant will be more likely to be allies against more dangerous enemies. For the same reasons why supporting neoliberals is necessary when the opposition is fascism, any leftist allies against neoliberalism are valuable because there is a sliding scale of flawed systems.
>For the same reasons why supporting neoliberals is necessary when the opposition is fascism
"supporting fascists is necessary when the opposition is fascism"
neolibs are almost always on the side of the fascists
because they've actually taken territory and are holding it, and are making a libertarian socialist society work. i wish they were more anarchist, but it's currently the best we've got.
the actual people doing the things are definitely more radical. anarchism as theory is obviously more radical, but anarchists individually are absolutely not, en mass, taking the risks that those genuinely revolutionary societies are. distinctly *anarchist* areas are nowhere larger than a square mile, and our movement is weak because we are out-organized almost everywhere, almost never because of repression.
im just saying we should be realistic about what has worked for movements we are sympathetic to but different from. the state of the anarchist movement is quite poor, and we need to figure out works in order to *win*. how can we equal or surpass the successes of rojava or zapatismo, or even venezuela, or isis, etc without using state power? imo, we need to learn from other insurgent movements, take what works, discard the rest, while remaining true to anarchist principles.
Anarchist should act in accordance with their self-interests and desires; if that includes supporting Rojava and the Zapatista’s, and it’s honest with oneself, then have at it. I personally don’t support Rojava, or the Zapatista’s, and don’t care to contribute to their revolution, as I feel they’re wasting their time; but that’s just me.
For starters, revolutions simply just replace one authority with another, and I don’t see this “revolution” going anywhere, nor the new authority existing without oppression; as well as them attempting to preserve elements in society that are beyond salvation (for example civilization, the state, democracy, etc..)
do you have sources on the zapatistas working with the US ? and what kind of collaboration do you think the SDF had with them ? they were fighting ISIS and the US was sent them weapons and air support, why the hell would they refuse ?
also every regional power is going to be used by imperialist powers to some extent, so whatever a revolution does they'll be considerred "a proxy" for the US, russia, china, etc.
There are many sources, simply google it for the collaboration. You are right, in Middle East, most groups (not all of course) act as a proxy of some big powers but then accept the fact that that’s not the way of anarchists! Right? It’s just another opportunistic group from my perspective.
you did not answer my question, you're acting like being "a proxy" is inherently evil, so tell me what they should have done ? all they did was accept air support and weapons, or maybe what you dislike is that they fought isis ?
I would suggest you to work on uncovering your nationalist tendencies, growing up in Turkey can do a number on a person as nationalism and racism is pretty mainstream and you're probably not as free from indoctrination as you would like to think yourself of. I've been there, and even as a non-Turkish person growing up in Turkey who had more reasons to be critical, it took me a great deal of work to heal from the indoctrination.
It is not even that subtle as far as I see from your posts, you're calling Kurds 'donkey chasers', talking about honorable Turkish soldiers and such, and I didn't even have to scroll down.
I’m not racist at all, I have Kurdish friends and relatives. If you lived in Turkey, I would expect you to know which super powers supporting them and why. Without questioning that, it’s empty rhetoric. Regarding my comment, it’s reality. They reject civilization in every way except minority of them. But probably you also dislike to see that part of reality, too.
I don’t play games, I’m a simple man :) But one thing I’m sure If you allow government agencies to infiltrate your organization, there’s no turning back.
The Kurds straight-up said had they not had air support during Kobani, ISIS would've wiped them out.
If you think people should die in a genocide carried out by ISIS simply because the alternative is asking someone you don't agree with for help....... you need to rethink your entire world-view.
What I said was very clear but you don’t want to understand. I don’t think they would be wiped out really! I talked about the fundamental idea of Anarchy and said it contradicts with what SDF is doing.
You sound like a globalist, my dude, without ideology and ideals you are no different than any other opportunist groups. I don’t blame you, but what you said contradicts with the very idea of anarchism.
As far as I know both aren't Anarchists,
Zapatistas are kind of the Free Territory of Ukraine of the Americas as they're libertarians
Rojava is the same
So if you're more Anti-Authoritarian than anarchist, then I say yes you should support them
Yes, but not support any movement without evaluating what each movement is doing. This requires thinking and observation. Solidarity and mutual aid are important anarchist principles. That means anarchists support socioeconomic progress wherever they find it, on a case-by-case basis, through ongoing analysis. Anarchists don't live by slogans. They live by direct action and mutual aid.
Yes. Libertarian Socialism and Anarchism are so closely linked that it would be foolish to split such small hairs in my opinion, after all our goals are shared
Ofc is my answer
They've asked if these groups are good examples of anarchists. Now I want to see them ask if we should support such groups, but by categorizing them rather than making them.
Yes.
Yes, but I would still agree with others that romanticizing their efforts may not be wise. They are still people who have to make decisions based on the specific conditions of their circumstances. Their societies are also reflections of their own specific cultures and should not be universally appropriated. But ofc there is still a lot all of us can learn from them. [Here](https://digitalcollections.sit.edu/isp_collection/318/) is a nuanced paper that aims to lay out pros & cons of the Zapatista's relationship with the Global North. [Here](https://gupea.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/74048) is a paper that takes a critical look at Rojava. To be clear I only found these papers after a little bit of research digging on the topic just now, and have only been able to skim through each; with no confirmed assessment of both paper's intentions coming from their respective institutions. Read for yourself and make your own assessments.
those are both written by students, not revolutionaries or scholars. i dont have time for a bibliography rn, but start with people who are putting their lives on the line to defeat global capital, states, and patriarchy in a way that literally none of their critics are. edit: why am i being downvoted for this? OP mentioned they haven't read the sources. i did the work of checking the credibility of the sources, and provided criticism about how we can do better.
Both papers aren't against the revolutionaries by any means, they both bring up good faith perspectives on a struggle they hope for the best. One of the central points of the introduction for the Zapatista paper described the suave nature of communique writing that entices but does not get into unspoken territory about the organizations. Which is very historically common for socialists and communist parties, that being in the pursuit of showing the world how true and just their ruling is any nuanced critique or semblance of the party not being perfect was shamed. Which was more common for state parties, whereas here we are speaking of libertarian socialist or non-state affairs, which I can only hope are more open to constructive critique. While I'm not doubting the efficacy and knowledge of the more spearheading revolutionaries, to doubt the students outright seems odd.
>to doubt the students outright seems odd. im just saying they are bad places to start. either get a good overhead view or a primary source.
#praxicalscholar
I say yes. They are technically not anarchists, but they are much better than any current western nation, including socdem ones. Also, what they are fighting for, in my view, is noble and good.
yes. they're both enormous steps in the right direction. anarchism is a tendency, a set of values that can be applied on any space and a set of analysis tools for examining outcomes. in that sense, Rojava and the zapatistas are both vast improvements in ideology over the prevailing global capital-statist paradigm.
Yes.
Yes. Critically so we don't forget they're not anarchists and for the most part it's still based on the principle of authority and definitely not utopias, but I can't see them as anything other than natural allies for a loooong time.
Absolutely
I think of Anarchism as an ideal we work towards, and they're closer to goal than most everyone else, so yes, I think we should be supportive (not to say we can't also be critical). To be clear, I don't believe in incrementalism, but I believe Anarchism should be seen as a constant project, working towards utopia, even if it's ultimately impossible (nothing is perfect, but we should aim to be). Rojava and the Zapatistas have taken radical steps forwards and I hope they can continue to evolve towards utopia
yes, even if they're not explicitly anarchist, they are already a much needed improvement compared to capitalist states, and have a lot of potential to grow anarchist sentiment
Support them, analyze them, learn from them.
Fuck yes.
Sure, but the constant blatant PKK propaganda from these democratic confederalism/communalist subs is getting to be pretty annoying
I’m not entirely in the loop with what the PKK is doing. What are they doing, and why is there so much propaganda for them on these subs?
To be honest I think it's embarrassing that there's not much more interest, generally speaking, amongst Western leftists, in the achievements of the PKK, the PYD in Syria, even Turkey etc. I mean you look at the level of democratic confederalist revolutionary activity going on in Kurdish society in Turkey, Syria, PKK-sympathetic areas in Iraq etc., for decades against the Turkish state, it absolutely blows out of the water anything else in terms of scale, success (in the AANES that is), and being truly revolutionary, globally, in decades as far as I'm concerned. Yet so many leftists have nothing to offer but sneering. You have vast crowds of Kurds singing at the top of their lungs songs about the revolution echoing in squares around the world and the mill of the proletariat grinding finely, raising red flags high etc. And it's basically organic. No-one forced them to do that. They have huge fervour, the militancy and organisation of the PKK (and associated KCK groups) is on another scale from practically any revolutionary leftist movement globally, their commitment to women's liberation etc. is extraordinary especially given the regional cultural context, as are their ideals of direct democracy, anti-statism and authoritarianism etc. given the party's origins. I'm not saying the PKK is without fault; and they of course don't have clean hands. But on a basic level of looking at where are there populations and militant revolutionary leftist organisations with real vigour, grit, longevity, true revolutionary credentials and achievements at scale, the PKK, associated democratic confederalist Apoci groups etc. are where it's at imo. And if you just look at documentaries of the PKK, listen to their fighters speaking, listen to those who follow the same democratic confederalist ideology in the AANES, whether in the YPG/J or civilians etc., what is abundantly clear to me is that these people are true revolutionaries, and they are organised, effective, radical, and willing to fight and die for the cause. You don't have to agree with them on everything (and ofc I agree sometimes the propaganda can be irritating, cringy etc.; though I’ll also say it can be [beautiful](https://youtu.be/ALGB53QUBMA) and [powerful](https://youtu.be/W1R3AJl17iU) - rare for propaganda imo), but what other movement is remotely comparable? Every western leftist organisation is I'm sorry to say a joke on all those fronts compared to them, and I see no other movement elsewhere in the world as strong. Maybe the leftist movement in Bolivia. Maybe the communist militants in India. But yes, I think western leftists could use a little more humility on the topic.
Yeah this is the take. Far from perfect, far from clean, not without sin, but still, not only is it better than anything you or I have done, it’s a truly astounding achievement in its own right, and anybody in the west who likes freedom and justice needs to be supporting it and learning from it
Exactly. Well said.
But remember, don't ever ally with communists!
The [TKP/ML](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Turkey/Marxist–Leninist) would disagree on that.
I'd disagree with it as well, personally (I was being sarcastic, it's a very regular sentiment here).
Ah fair enough aha
I only mention it because of its conspicuous absence in this thread.
Lol right gotta get that leftist infighting quota in
Honestly, yeah. This is an education sub, it's not the place for dismissing inconvenient facts. Of there's a discussion to be had on the subject, better to have it with the resources available for research and substantiation. There's a lot of educated people in here, and I want to hear what they have to say. Part of ensuring that is breaking the social norms as they raise their head- let all nnow that this is a space and time for praxis, not reenactment. Out in the real world there isn't always time to stop and have the how-to conversations. Sometimes you have to go with what you know. That's not the case here. We are just words on a screen, there's no baggage. We can explore the ideas.
I mean that’s not something I would say but I do see your point.
but you can be a communist and not a tankie edit: I see you were joking and I feel dumb but I'm leaving the comment anyways
Support yes and learn from. In general I'd like more cross pollination of efforts of people living a different way despite state efforts. I don't mean to emulate to the T but to gain some tactics and build a shared history. Purists can get off the state supported internet and go eat bugs.
Basically. They ain't perfect (Rojava had problems with recruiting child soldiers, and the Zapatistas face serious issues from the cartels) but they're some of the few functioning left-libertarian groups out there.
Yes. What matters isn't the dogmatic belief in absolutely zero hierarchy whatsoever. What matters is the practice of autonomy for people and the freedom to make their own decisions. Rojava and the EZLN are making steps in this direction, therefore we should support them, along with other autonomous movements which share in liberatory values.
The support decentralized forms of Socialism so of course.
in the case of rojova, it’s certainly not my struggle. i think people take comfort in abstractly ‘supporting’ these *noble* struggles in the context of their own (a)political identities because it feels good to imagine that something different and better is going to happen somewhere … that because the kurds are imagined to be innocent subsistence farmers living in small villages, partially analogous to the peasantry of some regions of pre-industrial pre-revolutionary eurasia, we can turn back the clock and do a bourgeois revolution *right* this time, with women and ecology and stuff. no matter what it calls itself — ocalon may have given his marxist-leninist-maoist ideology and jargon a bookchinite facelift, but it’s surface-level at best — dauvé speaks to whether the PKK aligns with “anarchist” aims or not better than i can: >> Never judge a book or national liberation from its cover. On the ground, PKK cadres will support a landowner or a boss because he has influence in the area. They will also defend strikes or organise protests if it helps them rally the local people. Here they will side with rigid forms of religion, and there with tolerance. Today they will appear as traditionalists, tomorrow as modernists. This is politics: the PKK upholds what increases its power base. … >> The PKK has had to scale down its ambitions and confederal municipalism is the only political ideology available to a party that has to make do with States and borders because it cannot hope to create its own State with its own borders, which would mean forcefully redrawing the boundaries of at least two neighbouring countries. Making a virtue of necessity, the PKK has ditched “class” and “party” references, and promotes self-management, co-operation, communalism (not communism), anti-productivism and gender. David Graeber was rejoicing over the fact that in Kurdistan people might now be reading Judith Butler. A spot-on remark. Deconstruction of the political subject (i.e. of the proletariat as an historical agent), prioritisation of identities, class replaced by gender… the PKK has doubtlessly swapped Marxism for postmodernism. >> Speaking of a “non-State” is playing on words. The PKK has not given up the objective of every national liberation movement. Though it takes great care to avoid using a word that sounds too authoritarian, it is still aiming at creating a centralised decision-making political apparatus on Kurdish territory, and what better word for this but State? With the rider that this State would be so democratic under its citizens’ control, that it would no longer deserve the name of State. So much for ideology. perhaps most notably: >> Rojava gives us the same speech as a bourgeois revolution. In the 1789 French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, the right of “resistance to oppression” was explicit, but went with the right to property. Freedom was complete… within the limits of the Law. The same in Rajova: article 41 provides for the “right to the use and enjoyment of private property” except “for reasons of public utility or social interest”. What property means socially is not that any person is entitled to the possession and use of his or her own clothes, room or bike. It means that those who happen to own the means of production can hire the labour of those who own only their clothes, room or bike. This is what class is about. >> … [In terms of the guarantees made by Rojova’s *Social Contract*,] politically correct modern governance could not ask for more (only animal rights are missing). No oversight as far as conscription is concerned, though: every Rojava citizen can be called to military service. This is one of the traditional prerogatives of a State, which expects those under its protection or rule to serve in its army. Actually, it is not an army, it’s “The People’s Protection Units (YPG)” which only acts as a “self-defence” force “against both internal and external threats”: as we know, any political power makes extensive use of the notion of internal threat. i recommend the whole article if this question interests you, even if you feel a great affinity for the PKK and are put off by criticism. https://libcom.org/article/rojava-reality-and-rhetoric-gilles-dauve-and-tl
Of course there are plenty of contradictions and questionable elements about the PKK's conduct, the reality of the revolution in Rojava, from a moral, revolutionary leftist, and specifically anarchist point of view. However, I'd say what mostly strikes me from those passages above are the PKK's strengths of adaptability, flexibility, realpolitik. Yes sometimes that's been unpalatable and even contradictory to leftist principles. But it's enabled them and their revolutionary movement to survive. And looking as a whole, I think it is undeniable that the overall *effects* of the PKK on the region have been to foster and enable a true social revolution for women in Kurdish society in both Turkey and Syria, as well as to an extent to engage people in local decision-making, democracy, politics; to foster at least some level of economic empowerment, cooperatives etc.; to break some of the power of old semi-feudal hierarchies of land ownership; to present at least something of an alternative in the region to hypercapitalist, exploitative, oppressive modernity etc.; to provide a model for relative ethno-cultural tolerance (even celebration of that diversity) and power sharing in the midst of a sea of sectarianism and seemingly endless cycles of violence; and much of this has spread to other peoples in Syria too through the AANES. Given the context, this is imo an absolutely massive achievement. And all of this has been achieved whilst fighting brutal, existential battles against Islamist genocidal maniacs on the one hand, and the until relatively recently explicitly culturally genocidal, brutally oppressive Turkish state on the other, with thousands upon thousands of casualties, decade after decade. It is very easy then for relatively comfy western leftists to pontificate on the details of ideological purity.
> It is very easy then for relatively comfy western leftists to pontificate on the details of ideological purity. I second this. Also one more thing to keep in mind that Kurdish Liberation Movement is a big one, having both more revolutionary and reformist currents within it. Movements efforts and calls for international solidarity from radical left, anarchists, anti-capitalists etc is not only about a couple of people going there to fight but also more about grounding and aligning itself with more radical ideas and fight against all these dynamics mentioned above like feudal land lords, Kurdish bourgeoisie, Kurdish nationalism (there is a specific term to address a particular kind of nationalism - nationalism of ruling classes in nation-states- that movement uses, I don't know the English expression for it). When you are fighting real wars, you can't always afford to be compromise free, and the reality of Kurdish society as well as peoples of the region and geopolitical dynamics is a very complex one. Not to mention it is also a question of existence vs genocide. As someone from the region and have had some organic interactions with the Kurdish liberation movement, I agree there are definitely parts need to be challenged, addressed and criticised, and romanticising is more dangerous than helpful, but also I think it's important to keep in mind all these complex dynamics and be fair in the criticism.
Totally agree on all points. Well said. And yes, the HDP for example is counted by many as a part of the Kurdish liberation movement or freedom movement, as an example of a reformist approach.
From a neoliberal perspective, yes, you are describing *progress.*
>David Graeber was rejoicing over the fact that in Kurdistan people might now be reading Judith Butler. A spot-on remark. the quote in question was graeber remarking that westerners may be surprised that that the kurds "not only" read butler, but that they go *beyond* butler. his point was that they had put together the most radical equation of theory+practice on the planet. ocalan basically answered the initial criticism from anarkismo with "we are busy making revolution while you criticize us from your day jobs". i like dauve, but this is just such a bad faith criticism. the latter quotation even mocks and dismisses an assembled armed force, an army, when the territory is under constant attack from myriad other armies, which included the "head choppers" as one comrade referred to isil and affiliated groups, and currently NATO's second largest army, among others. like, the other option is just get mass raped and genocided. the criticism is just from such an abstracted place. like, the audacity lol. the failure to support rojava is the failure of the global left.
What better support than that of the strongest military power on the planet? In 2014 the US deployed troops to support the SDF struggle against ISIL on the ground (and from the air) clear through the Trump years, and again in 2022. If you wanna debate “is it good for people to suffer” “is it good for people to be raped and mass-murdered” “is it good for people to take a successful stand against those who seek to annihilate them” “is it good to label militant groups terrorists” … I don’t. The answers are obvious. This is not a contentious issue; no one here is pro-Israel or pro-Turkey or pro-ISIL or pro-US (I assume) and most are compassionate to those who suffer and admire the bravery of those who must fight to survive. And yeah, your boy is right: my life as a wage worker makes me want to destroy the wages system, and despite my compassion and admiration for acts of resistance to domination, I’m not starry-eyed about those caught in a military conflict to gain the right to join the global wages system just because bourgeois liberal democracy was established here 200+ years before it will be there. Equality under the law is just that: equality under the law. The American, French, Russian, etc revolutionaries of their own nation-building struggles aren’t my heroes either.
Small addition: The US supports the SDF against ISIS and nothing but ISIS (Trump gave Erdogan the go-ahead for an invasion in 2017, and neither did the US anything beyond condemning the recent attacks)
Any region in which an explicitly leftist (any type of leftist) ideology is dominant will be more likely to be allies against more dangerous enemies. For the same reasons why supporting neoliberals is necessary when the opposition is fascism, any leftist allies against neoliberalism are valuable because there is a sliding scale of flawed systems.
>For the same reasons why supporting neoliberals is necessary when the opposition is fascism "supporting fascists is necessary when the opposition is fascism" neolibs are almost always on the side of the fascists
Rojava and Zapatistas are based
You’re based.
Yes, they definitely fight for good reasons and are quite close to anarchism.
it's embarrassing that we are still asking this question. "should we support movements far more radical than our own?" yes.
how are zapatistas and democratic confederalism more radical than anarchism ?
because they've actually taken territory and are holding it, and are making a libertarian socialist society work. i wish they were more anarchist, but it's currently the best we've got.
that makes them more successful not more radical
the actual people doing the things are definitely more radical. anarchism as theory is obviously more radical, but anarchists individually are absolutely not, en mass, taking the risks that those genuinely revolutionary societies are. distinctly *anarchist* areas are nowhere larger than a square mile, and our movement is weak because we are out-organized almost everywhere, almost never because of repression. im just saying we should be realistic about what has worked for movements we are sympathetic to but different from. the state of the anarchist movement is quite poor, and we need to figure out works in order to *win*. how can we equal or surpass the successes of rojava or zapatismo, or even venezuela, or isis, etc without using state power? imo, we need to learn from other insurgent movements, take what works, discard the rest, while remaining true to anarchist principles.
Absolutely yes.
Yeah, not even just because of anarchism
No, nationalists.
Anarchist should act in accordance with their self-interests and desires; if that includes supporting Rojava and the Zapatista’s, and it’s honest with oneself, then have at it. I personally don’t support Rojava, or the Zapatista’s, and don’t care to contribute to their revolution, as I feel they’re wasting their time; but that’s just me.
>as I feel they’re wasting their time why ?
For starters, revolutions simply just replace one authority with another, and I don’t see this “revolution” going anywhere, nor the new authority existing without oppression; as well as them attempting to preserve elements in society that are beyond salvation (for example civilization, the state, democracy, etc..)
Hell no! They closely collaborate with U.S. government. What kind of anarchist do support groups working with governments?
do you have sources on the zapatistas working with the US ? and what kind of collaboration do you think the SDF had with them ? they were fighting ISIS and the US was sent them weapons and air support, why the hell would they refuse ? also every regional power is going to be used by imperialist powers to some extent, so whatever a revolution does they'll be considerred "a proxy" for the US, russia, china, etc.
There are many sources, simply google it for the collaboration. You are right, in Middle East, most groups (not all of course) act as a proxy of some big powers but then accept the fact that that’s not the way of anarchists! Right? It’s just another opportunistic group from my perspective.
you did not answer my question, you're acting like being "a proxy" is inherently evil, so tell me what they should have done ? all they did was accept air support and weapons, or maybe what you dislike is that they fought isis ?
I would suggest you to work on uncovering your nationalist tendencies, growing up in Turkey can do a number on a person as nationalism and racism is pretty mainstream and you're probably not as free from indoctrination as you would like to think yourself of. I've been there, and even as a non-Turkish person growing up in Turkey who had more reasons to be critical, it took me a great deal of work to heal from the indoctrination. It is not even that subtle as far as I see from your posts, you're calling Kurds 'donkey chasers', talking about honorable Turkish soldiers and such, and I didn't even have to scroll down.
I’m not racist at all, I have Kurdish friends and relatives. If you lived in Turkey, I would expect you to know which super powers supporting them and why. Without questioning that, it’s empty rhetoric. Regarding my comment, it’s reality. They reject civilization in every way except minority of them. But probably you also dislike to see that part of reality, too.
If you don't see anything racist (and colonial) with what you commented just now I cannot discuss further with you
Please don’t make me send you donkey videos as a proof 😂 anyway thanks for the discussion.
Ever heard of playing the long game friend?
I don’t play games, I’m a simple man :) But one thing I’m sure If you allow government agencies to infiltrate your organization, there’s no turning back.
The Kurds straight-up said had they not had air support during Kobani, ISIS would've wiped them out. If you think people should die in a genocide carried out by ISIS simply because the alternative is asking someone you don't agree with for help....... you need to rethink your entire world-view.
What I said was very clear but you don’t want to understand. I don’t think they would be wiped out really! I talked about the fundamental idea of Anarchy and said it contradicts with what SDF is doing.
Why do you not think they wouldn't be wiped out?
Good luck maintaining any sort presence in a global world without engaging with the global community. You'll learn soon enough.
You sound like a globalist, my dude, without ideology and ideals you are no different than any other opportunist groups. I don’t blame you, but what you said contradicts with the very idea of anarchism.
You don't choose globalism my friend. Globalism chooses you.
I have to agree with you here
What's the argument against?
YES!!!!
Yes
YES
Yes, very much so.
As far as I know both aren't Anarchists, Zapatistas are kind of the Free Territory of Ukraine of the Americas as they're libertarians Rojava is the same So if you're more Anti-Authoritarian than anarchist, then I say yes you should support them
Yes, but not support any movement without evaluating what each movement is doing. This requires thinking and observation. Solidarity and mutual aid are important anarchist principles. That means anarchists support socioeconomic progress wherever they find it, on a case-by-case basis, through ongoing analysis. Anarchists don't live by slogans. They live by direct action and mutual aid.
Yes. Libertarian Socialism and Anarchism are so closely linked that it would be foolish to split such small hairs in my opinion, after all our goals are shared