Im not linking to it but here is a quick response to that woeful statement from the AF on Rojave. Im going to write a more detailed what we should be saying / doing when I get a few minutes which will be more constructive than this instant annoyed reaction. That statement is really woeful, it treats the YPG / PKK as the main enemy to be exposed (almost every paragraph serves that function). There is almost nothing on ISIS, nothing on Turkey, nothing on the Syrian revolution & civil war, nothing on the actual economic conditions in Rojava It presents their turn as simply some sort of trick by Ocalan to get our of jail i.e. When this failed to impress his captors, Ocalan then took another turn, recommending that Bookchin must be read and even stranger an intensive marketing campaign by the PKK towards Western leftists and anarchists in order to look for support and allies It even compares the YPJ to ISIS .. all-female brigades All this to build up to the demand that Any such independent initiatives must free themselves from PKK/PYD control, and equally from aid by the Western allies, from their clients like the Free Syrian Army, Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party, and the Turkish state. In other words the almost non existent anarchist movement in the region must pretend that everyone is equally terrible and fight them all simultaneously. In conclusion they use the same weasel escape clause they used in 1994 when the Zapatistas emerged What we are saying might not be popular at the moment, but we feel that our analysis will be borne out by unfolding events. Well firstly that analysis is popular with a section of the colonialist ultra left and has been for decades. And its also wonderfully safe, do nothing and wait for events to unfold so you can either told you so or simple repeat unfolding events because they will always be unfolding. What should we be saying? We should clearly state that ISIS, imperialism, the Turkish state and the Assad regime are enemies enough to take on. That while the PYD is indeed not an anarchist formation its feminist, direct democratic, social democratic environmentalism is worth defending against the assault of the above mentioned forces. That the way to treat the PKKs turn is not to present it as a cynical marketing ploy for western anarchists or to get Ocalan out of jail but a moment of engagement with tens of thousands of Kurdish activists both in Kurdistan and across Europe who are for whatever reasons now studying libertarian politics and engaged in experimentation around implementation of some of these ideas in some places.
Posted on: Wed, 03 Dec 2014 10:45:51 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015