💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › anonymous-anarchist-who-fought-in-rojava.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 06:22:46. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-06-20)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Anarchist who Fought in Rojava Author: Anonymous Date: 2022/04/18 Language: en Topics: Ukraine, Rojava Source: Retrieved on 2022-04-19 from https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2022/04/18/anarchist-who-fought-in-rojava-response-to-no-war-but-class-war-debate/ Notes: Response to this piece: https://itsgoingdown.org/a-response-on-ukraine/
I left Rojava nearly three years ago now and up until this point has
chosen to remain quiet, leaving the writing to those who prefer to talk
rather than act. I’ve looked on as the Ukrainians have gotten more
support amongst the western anarchist milieu than the Kurds, Arabs,
Assyrians, Yezidis and others could have ever imagined.
In the first month alone tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars
were raised for the “anti-authoritarians”. Truckloads of medical ifaks,
plate carriers, optics, thermals, and other combat supplies were sent at
a moment’s notice. There was zero hesitation amongst western anarchists
when it came to mobilizing solidarity efforts for those affected by the
Russian invasion.
My initial reaction was one of confusion. If the anarchist milieu has
the capacity to fundraise money and donations on such a massive scale
why in Rojava were we rationing what little celox we had and sharing a
single plate carrier amongst many comrades rotating it based on who was
going to the front? Our donations were in the hundreds of dollars and
our collective funds were mostly built upon the stipend given by YPG. I
recall the personal project of a close heval (comrade) who later fell
sehid (martyr) which was to raise enough funds to obtain a single
thermal for our unit. A project he spent months trying to coordinate and
in the end was a failure. Simply no one cared enough to contribute.
The wildly disproportional logistical international solidarity for the
struggle in Rojava compared to that of Ukraine aside. I find the
ideological creation of the Ukrainian resistance as sacred to be the
most disturbing. Recently an article was published on Abolition Media as
well as with a disclaimer on It’s Going Down. It was a critical take on
the situation in Ukraine. I’m not going into the merits of the article
because that simply is not the point of this piece. However, the article
has caused shockwaves in the milieu by committing blasphemy against
anarchism’s new sacred cow: the Ukrainian resistance. A response article
was published to IGD some days after and it is this which I’d like to
respond to. Both the initial article and the response deal with a
comparison between Rojava and Ukraine. The conflict voyeur who authors
the response begins engaging with the question of Rojava by stating, “As
someone whose own tendency to ask awkward questions has often (not
always, but often) meant that I’ve been more of a critical observer of
than an active participant in Rojava solidarity projects, I would very
much like to see North American anarchists making an active effort to
engage with the difficult questions that have often gone unanswered
around Rojava.”
From the very start of their discussion they admit that they were a
critical observer of Rojava and ask the North American anarchists to
engage in the “difficult questions unanswered around Rojava”. This isn’t
necessarily wrong insofar as analyzing the contradictions of the Rojava
project is beneficial for further radical development. It does, however
right from the get-go demonstrate an entirely different approach than
that of the unquestioning support for Ukraine. The struggle in Rojava
which has a many decades-long history of radical politics and
participation in militant struggles from training and fighting with
Palestinians to contemporary resistance to Turkish Fascism and
occupation was born and remains firmly within the revolutionary
struggle. Rojava is very much at least within our purview if not
tangential to our tradition. The resistance in Ukraine has absolutely
nothing to do with the anarchist tradition whatsoever. Sure one can make
arguments about the necessity of defense against encroaching imperialist
interests and that’s all fine and good but it’s not a radical project.
So then why is any criticism of the Ukraine resistance met with overhand
bad jacketing and slander? I’ve never encountered something in the
anarchist milieu to be so impenetrable to critique and elicit such a
vile response if one dares to. From the Zapatistas to the Spanish Civil
War to Rojava, everything is fair game for critique but daring to be
critical of Ukraine is met with a venomous assault and accusations of
apologism for everything from rape to genocide.
I’ll continue quoting the drivel of this arm-chair author. They go on to
state, “It does also feel somewhat odd to see, after all the attacks on
the Resistance Committee for not being pure enough, the authors
championing the International People’s Guerrilla Forces and
International Freedom Battalion, while also freely admitting how closely
those groups were/are allied with Turkish Maoists and Marxist-Leninists.
As though all the criticisms and arguments that anarchists have always
made against Maoists and Marxist-Leninists somehow don’t apply to TİKKO
or the THKP-C/MLSPB!” This quote is a perfect example of not letting
absolute ignorance stop you from spewing your dumb opinion. First, where
does this author pull MLSPB from? MLSPB didn’t even have people in IFB,
they had a few kadro in Seri Kaniye, and there was limited interaction
with them. As far as their discussion of TiKKO it was a relationship of
material solidarity and TiKKO respected the full autonomy of the
anarchists. TiKKO allowed political protection to the anarchists while
they built capacity and diplomatic relations with the broader movement.
Furthermore, there were many discussions with members of TiKKO
recognizing the antithetical political positions and necessary conflict
if the situation ever changed.
The author’s discussion of tentative alliances with communists
demonstrates the absolutely absurd purist standards they held anarchists
in Rojava to while simultaneously apologizing for cooperation with
nationalists and the literal state military in Ukraine. It should be
noted here that there is NO anarchist battalion in Ukraine. If you
believe otherwise you need to research the topic further. They may be
clustered but they are dispersed amongst regular territorial defense
units. They are necessarily working alongside at the very least liberals
if not nationalists and take their orders directly from the Ukrainian
military. So according to the author, this is no problem and we can’t be
too critical but damn those anarchists in Rojava for having an
autonomous unit that had tentative diplomatic relations with some
communists.
The last point that the author uses to delegitimize anarchist militants
who lived, fought, and died in Rojava is as follows, “That might not be
the most inspiring and uncompromising slogan, but some of us found it
more convincing than some of the overheated rhetoric coming from IRPGF
types that tried to portray a small group of people picking up guns,
posing with English-language banners aimed at Western audiences, and
making friends with Maoists as a dramatic leap forward in anarchist
theory and practice.” Here from the comfort of rhetorical fantasy the
author attacks anarchists for “picking up guns” and “posing with
banners”. First off, what do you think the RC is doing? Every single day
there’s a new drop in telegram of them waving guns and sending messages
to their supporters in the west. They make these posts precisely for the
western IGD reader. And second, this is a massive oversimplification of
what the project in Rojava was in order to dismiss it as larping
foolishness. There’s no mention of the large-scale medical project that
the anarchists created and engaged in often operating as the only
medical unit directly on the front line. Or perhaps the experience and
training it gave to many radicals in the tradition of the Bekaa Valley?
Omission of these critical aspects is essential for the author’s
narrative of westerners going to play militant.
The fact that I’m still defending anarchists going to Rojava years later
while any criticism of Ukraine is met with moral outrage and vehement
personal attacks demonstrates that western anarchists have a peculiar
and visceral attachment to the situation there. I can only conclude that
this is indicative of latent white supremacy within the anarchist
milieu. Anyone who points out any contradictions with the situation in
Ukraine is immediately ripped to pieces and bad-jacketed. People were
openly shedding tears on anarchist podcasts for those in Ukraine while
not a drop was spilled for the occupation of Afrin or Seri Kaniye. In
fact, the radical milieu has largely forgotten about Rojava, and even
when they did care, the solidarity efforts were infinitesimal compared
to that of those in Ukraine.