PKK/YPJ KURDISH FEMINIST DEMOCRACY

Rûken Nexede: Women did not surrender to male-dominated mentality

Rûken Nexede of the KJAR said that the women's struggle in Iran and East Kurdistan continues. Inspired by Öcalan’s philosophy, a great social awakening has taken place.

HEWRÎN CENGAWER
NEWS DESK
Tuesday, 19 November 2024,


East Kurdistan, which is ruled by the Iranian regime, is a focus of women's resistance. The 'Jin Jiyan Azadî' revolution was initiated by the women of East Kurdistan. The region is a place of both determined resistance and the harshest repression. On the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on 25 November, Rûken Nexede of the Community of Free Women of Eastern Kurdistan (KJAR) spoke about the prospects of women's freedom struggle.


"An unprecedented level of women's struggle"

First, Rûken Nexede paid tribute to the people who lost their lives in the fight against patriarchy and emphasized that the existence of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women is the result of the anti-patriarchal women's struggle. She spoke about the special level that the women's struggle has reached today, and said: "Today there is a general women's organization, women are discussing confederalism, they are expanding their knowledge of military organization. Women have reached a level in the 21st century for which we can proudly congratulate them on their resistance and uprisings. With the emergence of the apoist movement, many achievements such as the women's revolution, the military organization of women and the science of women have been realized."

"Women have never submitted to patriarchy"

Nexede added: "Throughout history, women have not submitted to patriarchy either spiritually or intellectually. Through Rêber Apo [Abdulla Öcalan], women returned to their true nature and learned how to fight against the patriarchal mentality, organize themselves and build a free life. The apoist women's movement was organized from this awareness and continues to fight on this basis today. Rêber Apo defined the 21st century as the women's revolution. We are proud of all the women's struggles that have taken place up to now. All of these struggles were fought with great difficulties and sacrifices. This struggle was fought by our martyrs like Heval Roza, Heval Sara and Heval Şîrîn in the prisons, mountains, cities and villages. With their heads held high, women emerged from the darkness with the philosophy of Rêber Apo."

"A free life means true love"

Nexede continued: "Rêber Apo described the personality of free women and men in a way that we can see in the sacrificial attitude of Heval Asya and Heval Rojger. Their willingness to make any sacrifice is so meaningful that we do not know how to appreciate them sufficiently. From the personality and actions of these comrades, we can see that a free life means true love. Therefore, I would like to pay tribute to them once again for the level of freedom they have achieved. The way to honor these martyrs is to also attain this level of freedom. In order to build a free life, all women should adopt these actions."

"Every place that Apoism reaches experiences a change"

Nexede said: "With the 'Jin Jiyan Azadî' revolution, women recognized the lost will and power of the people. At the same time, questions arose for both women and men: Who am I, how do I live, what do I live for and where do I live, what is domination, what is violence? This revolution made everyone question themselves. Artists questioned what their art was for; scientists began to investigate what science was and who it served. There was discussion about the extent to which the state was using science for its own interests. Everyone began to ask questions."

"Fear was defeated"

Nexede said: "Families began to question what family meant, what the roots of the family concept were and what it was for. The predetermined role of women, girls and boys was questioned. Students began to question how they learned things and whether it was for life or in the service of the system. Rêber Apo's philosophy brings about change wherever it reaches. The Iranian regime is currently desperate, it has no more resources and is in crisis. The pressure on society is great. Women and young people are massively oppressed under the guise of religion. But people have now seen the true face of this regime, they are taking a stand and fighting without fear. Although they know they may fall as martyrs, they continue to fight, make no compromises and sacrifice themselves for the freedom revolution."

TJK-E: Let's fill the streets with the slogan

 'Jin Jiyan Azadi'

'WOMAN, LIFE, FREEDOM'

TJK-E called on all women to participate in the actions and events they will hold on the occasion of 25 November International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.


ANF
NEWS DESK
Monday, 18 November 2024, 12:02

The European Kurdish Women’s Movement (TJK-E) issued a written statement on the occasion of 25 November International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

TJK-E said: “We welcome 25 November 2024, with the slogans ‘Jin, Jiyan, Azadi’ rising all around the world. With the great struggles of women who say another world is possible, the patriarchal-statist system is being shaken from its roots today. On the occasion of 25 November International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, we remember with love and respect all women who resisted, worked hard and paid the price on this path, from the Mirabel Sisters to Sara, from Hevrin Xelef to Jîna Amini, who were the expressions of insistence on a free life against the fascist Trujillo regime. Their determination, love and struggle for a free life continues to grow in women’s struggle for freedom today.”

The TJK-E added: “We are going through a time when the Third World War is making itself felt the most. Women are the ones who suffer the most from the reality of war that has seeped into the daily life of society; from the attacks and policies developed by the nation-state, capitalist modernity and the patriarchal system in a multi-layered and multi-faceted manner. The Third World War, which developed as a result of the existence and interests of hegemonic powers, concerns us Kurdish women the most, both because its center is in the Middle East and because misogynist policies are being brought to the top. For this reason, the task of developing our own self-organization, self-policy, self-defense, and creating alternatives in terms of social, economic, cultural and educational aspects, as well as resisting genocidal attacks, is more urgent than ever. This urgency determines the essence of our struggle as Kurdish women.”

We will expand the struggle against attacks

The statement continued: “We, the European Kurdish Women's Movement (TJK-E), are aware that women are targeted in the Third World War, and that women's self-defense must be developed.

We see 25 November as a day when our continuous struggle reached its peak, when women's organization, actions and creations reached their peak.

As Kurdish women living in Europe, we say that we will defeat the trustees who disregard the will of women in Bakur, the execution policies of the Iranian regime, the invasion plans for Rojava, the betrayal in Bashur and isolation in Imrali. On this basis, we call on all women to participate in the actions and events we will hold with great enthusiasm and to make the streets in every country in Europe resound with the slogan “Jin Jiyan Azadi.”

ACTION CALENDAR

The actions and events to be held between November 18-25

Hundreds of men march against violence against women in Qamishlo

Events are being held in many centres in North-East Syria to combat violence against women on the occasion of 25 November, International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.


ANF
QAMISHLO
Monday, 18 November 2024

On the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on 25 November, the autonomous region of North and East Syria is holding a series of events over several weeks. This year's activities by the women's associations in the region are under the motto ‘Defend yourselves with the Jin-Jiyan-Azadî philosophy’ and aim to raise awareness in society and empower women through education and high-profile actions.

Hundreds of men took to the streets in Qamishlo and staged a march with slogans condemning violence against women.

The march from Sonî Junction to Martyr Rûbar Junction was participated by hundreds of people from civil society organisations and many institutions of the Democratic Autonomous Administration.



A press statement made on behalf of Kongra Star highlighted Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan’s thoughts on women's struggle and pointed out that society needs free women.

Referring to the meaning of 25 November, Cewahir Osman said, “The ruling forces impose violence on society in the person of women. Violence against Leader Apo (Abdullah Öcalan) is violence against all women. We say enough is enough and we say that you cannot break our will as a people.”

Another speaker, Xufran Tewkeb, who addressed the crowd pointed out that women struggle for freedom all over the world and stated that violence must be rejected.

Xufran Tewkeb stated that Öcalan’s ideas and philosophy are the source of the struggle for women's freedom and emphasised that women will continue this struggle in the strongest way.

Karasu: Violence against women is a social problem


ANF
NEWS DESK
Monday, 18 November 2024

In the third part of this interview, Mustafa Karasu, member of the KCK Executive Council, talked about the upcoming 25 November, International Day Against Violence Against Women, as well as the 27 November, the anniversary of the founding of the PKK.

The first part of the interview can be read here, the second here.

We are currently approaching an anniversary, namely November 25, the International Day Against Violence Against Women. What do you have to say in this context, especially to men?

The women’s issue is, of course, an important cause. Violence against women is a thousand-year phenomenon. Violence against women is a historical phenomenon, and one can say that it is one of the oldest problems of society. In fact, it is the source of all other problems. The source of social problems is domination over women. And what is dominance built on? It is achieved through violence, through many forms of violence against women. Rêber Apo speaks of the woman as the first colony. She was treated like the first colonized nation. And has since then been oppressed for thousands of years.

In this respect, this problem is more than just the fact that many men have oppressed women and many men have killed women. It is a social problem that concerns the whole society. It is a problem that needs to be solved. Without the elimination of violence against women, without the elimination of the policy of violence against women, in other words, without women being free, society cannot be at peace. Society cannot be healthy. Where there is violence against women, society is sick and unhealthy. It is a great humanitarian problem to inflict violence on the mother, the one who gives birth and raises the child. A woman is part of society, half of it, and violence is particularly practiced against her. Of course, this must be opposed. One cannot be a democrat, a human being, a moral person, or a conscientious person without taking a stand against this.

Violence against women is a social problem. There is this approach among men. It is an approach that feeds on male dominance and is related to morality and conscience. Men have that tendency. It has been implemented in their genes for thousands of years. It has become a culture of belittling women and practicing violence against women. Every man must know that this culture has infected him, and he must get rid of this evil, this ugliness. This is a very important issue.

Rêber Apo has paved the way for the women’s freedom struggle, and there have been important developments in Kurdistan. But still, in Kurdish society, men’s understanding of violence against women continues. He has not been able to get rid of all that dirt and rust. If Kurdish youths and Kurdish men say that they are loyal to Rêber Apo, if they talk about the freedom of the Kurdish people and democracy, they should definitely change their approach towards women. Men, patriots need to get rid of this tendency to violence against women. Otherwise, their patriotism is incomplete. One cannot be a true patriot, democrat, or freedom seeker; one cannot be conscientious or moral if one doesn’t work on getting rid of this.

The issue of violence against women is important. And when I say violence, I mean it in any aspect. Even raising one’s voice against a woman is violence. Generally, men raise their voices to women when something happens. This is a tendency of masculinity, a tendency to dominance. But there are so many more forms of violence, restriction in social life, not seeing women as equal, exclusion, etc.

On the occasion of the approaching November 25th, I commemorate the Mirabal sisters with gratitude and respect. November 25th has become a day of struggle against violence, and it is having a great impact. It has spread to the world. On this occasion, I condemn all violence against women, and I call on all patriots and democrats to fight against violence against women. All patriots in Kurdistan must avoid violence when approaching their wives, children, daughters, and sisters. This is true patriotism.

Another anniversary is also slowly approaching, the founding day of the PKK, on November 27. For decades, it has been said that the PKK is on the verge of being crushed, but again and again it continues to develop and emerge stronger as before. What can you tell us about this, or about the approaching anniversary in general?

The founder of the PKK is Rêber Apo. Rêber Apo founded, developed, and brought the PKK to the present day on the basis of an ideology that has continuously developed and sustained itself from the first to the present day, that is, on the basis of an ideology that integrates itself with society, integrates itself with the people, integrates the struggle, in other words, ensures that the society embraces the people. It has been 46 years now, and there have even been more before that. For more than 50 years, a struggle has been going on. This has created a culture. The PKK is no longer just an organization or a political party.

Today, the PKK is a social culture, a social mentality, a part of society. In other words, society has also become the PKK. That’s why society constantly chanted slogans like “PKK is the people, the people are here.” This is the reality. It is no longer possible to separate the PKK from the Kurdish people. It is not possible to separate it from Kurdish history. It is not possible to separate it from Kurdish culture. The PKK’s survival at this level, its strong existence despite all the attacks, is the result of this. The PKK is a power beyond its current concrete strength. If the attacks against the PKK fail to achieve results, it is because the PKK is a bigger force than it appears. It is a movement deeply rooted in society.

The PKK has always gotten stronger, is getting stronger, and will get stronger. The PKK is the organized form of Rêber Apo’s thought. Rêber Apo’s thought is a thought that will no longer determine the present but the future. The PKK, which is its organized form, will continue its influence in the future. It has militants like Asya Ali and Rojger Helin. These are the values they have created. There is prison resistance; there is the women’s movement. As Rêber Apo said, the PKK is a women’s party. It is a party shaped on values that we cannot list here. It is delusional to think that the PKK can be destroyed through these and those attacks. That is why the reality of the PKK is a reality that needs to be further researched and analyzed.

The PKK has become a reality beyond us. This needs to be seen. If the PKK were just material assets, concrete realities, the PKK would not be able to survive under so many attacks. The PKK has a spirit that keeps it alive. That power, which is beyond its concrete existence, beyond its material existence, sustains the PKK. It keeps us constantly struggling, and by struggling, we constantly yield results. This cannot be prevented by any attack. On this basis, I salute Rêber Apo once again with gratitude and respect for creating such a party. I also remember with gratitude and respect all our martyrs who have brought the PKK to this day. The PKK will struggle by adhering to their memory and will realize their aspirations.

Notes on Fighting Trumpism

To mobilize the abandoned working class, we need to revive the idea of solidarity.

By Robin D.G. Kelley

November 18, 2024

Source: Boston Review


I am baffled, as I was in 2016, as to why so many liberals are still shocked by Trump’s victory—and why, in their efforts to dissect what happened, they can’t get beyond their incredulity that so many people would blindly back a venal, mendacious fascist peddling racism, misogyny, xenophobia, ableism, and so forth, while cloaking his anti-labor, anti-earth, pro-corporate agenda behind a veil of white nationalism and authoritarian promises that “Trump will fix it.”

We don’t need to waste time trying to parse the differences between the last three elections. In all three, he won—and lost—with historic vote tallies. The message has been clear since 2016, when Trump, despite losing the popular vote to Hilary Clinton, still won the electoral college with nearly sixty-three million votes, just three million fewer than what Obama got in 2012. Trump lost in 2020, but received seventy-four million votes, the second-largest total in U.S. history. For an incumbent presiding disastrously over the start of the Covid pandemic, that astounding number of votes should have told us something. And if we were honest, we would acknowledge that Joe Biden owes most of his victory to the uprisings against police violence that momentarily shifted public opinion toward greater awareness of racial injustice and delivered Democrats an unearned historic turnout. Even though the Biden campaign aggressively distanced itself from Black Lives Matter and demands to defund the police, it benefited from the sentiment that racial injustice ought to be addressed and liberals were best suited to address it.

I’m less interested in conducting a postmortem of this election than trying to understand how to build a movement.

Yet in all three elections, white men and women still overwhelmingly went for Trump. (Despite the hope that this time, the issue of abortion would drive a majority of white women to vote for Harris, 53 percent of them voted for Trump, only 2 percent down from 2020.) The vaunted demographic shift in the 2024 electorate wasn’t all that significant. True, Trump attracted more Black men this time, but about 77 percent of Black men voted for Harris, so the shocking headline, “Why did Black men vote for Trump?” is misdirected. Yes, Latino support for Trump increased, but that demographic needs to be disaggregated; it is an extremely diverse population with different political histories, national origins, and the like. And we should not be shocked that many working-class men, especially working-class men of color, did not vote for Harris. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is right to point to the condescension of the Democrats for implying that sexism alone explains why a small portion of Black men and Latinos flipped toward Trump, when homelessness, hunger, rent, personal debt, and overall insecurity are on the rise. The Democrats, she explained on Democracy Now, failed “to capture what is actually happening on the ground—that is measured not just by the historic low unemployment that Biden and Harris have talked about or by the historic low rates of poverty.”

The Democratic Party lost—again—because it turned its back on working people, choosing instead to pivot to the right: recruiting Liz and Dick Cheney, quoting former Trump chief of staff John Kelly, and boasting of how many Republican endorsements Harris had rather than about her plans to lift thirty-eight million Americans out of poverty. The campaign touted the strength of the economy under Biden, but failed to address the fact that the benefits did not seem to trickle down to large swaths of the working class. Instead, millions of workers improved their situation the old-fashioned way: through strikes and collective bargaining. The UAW, UPS, longshore and warehouse workers, health care workers, machinists at Boeing, baristas at Starbucks, and others won significant gains. For some, Biden’s public support for unions secured his place as the most pro-labor president since F.D.R. Perhaps, but the bar isn’t that high. He campaigned on raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15.00, but, once taking office, quietly tabled the issue in a compromise with Republicans, choosing instead to issue an executive order raising the wage for federal contractors.

It is true that the Uncommitted movement, and the antiwar protest vote more broadly, lacked the raw numbers to change the election’s outcome. But it is not an exaggeration to argue that the Biden-Harris administration’s unqualified support for Israel cost the Democrats the election as much as did their abandonment of the working class. In fact, the two issues are related. The administration could have used the $18 billion in military aid it gave to Israel for its Gaza operations during its first year alone and redirected it toward the needs of struggling working people. $18 billion is about one quarter of the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s annual budget and 16 percent of the budget for the federal Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program. They could have cut even more from the military budget, which for fiscal year 2024 stood at slightly more than $824 billion. Moreover, tens of thousands of Palestinian lives would have been spared, much of Gaza’s land and infrastructure would have been spared irreversible damage, and the escalation of regional war in Lebanon and Iran would not have happened—the consequences of which remain to be seen for the federal budget.

Workers improved their situation the old-fashioned way: through strikes and collective bargaining.

Of course, detractors will say that the Israel lobby, especially AIPAC, would not allow it. But the Democrats’ fealty to Israel is not a product of fear, nor is it simply a matter of cold electoral calculus. It is an orientation grounded in ideology. Only ideology can explain why the Biden-Harris administration did not direct UN representative Linda Thomas-Greenfield to stop providing cover for Israel’s criminal slaughter and support the Security Council’s resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire. And only ideology can explain why the administration and Congress has not abided by its own laws—notably the Arms Export Control Act and the Foreign Assistance Act, which prohibits the use of U.S. weapons in occupied territories and the transfer of weapons or aid to a country “which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights”—and stopped propping up Israel’s military.

While candidate Trump had encouraged Netanyahu to “finish the job” in Gaza, don’t be surprised if President Trump “negotiates” a swift ceasefire agreement. (Reagan pulled a similar stunt when he secured the return of U.S. hostages from Iran on the same day he was sworn into office.) Such a deal would prove Trump’s campaign mantra that only he can fix it, strengthen his ties with his ruling-class friends in the Gulf countries, and permit the Likud Party and its rabid settler supporters to annex Gaza, in whole or in part, and continue its illegal population transfer under the guise of “reconstruction.” After all, the Biden-Harris administration and the Democrats have already done all the work of “finishing the job.” Gaza is virtually uninhabitable. Once we factor in disease, starvation, inadequate medical care for the wounded, and the numbers under the rubble, the actual death toll will be many times higher than the official count. And with nearly three-quarters of the casualties women and children, the U.S.-Israel alliance will have succeeded, long before Trump takes power, in temporarily neutralizing what Israeli politicians call the Palestinian “demographic threat.”

The 2024 election indicates a rightward shift across the county. We see it in the Senate races, right-wing control of state legislatures (though here, gerrymandering played a major role), and in some of the successful state ballot measures, with the exception of abortion. But part of this shift can be explained by voter suppression, a general opposition to incumbents, and working-class disaffection expressed in low turnout. I also contend that one of the main reasons why such a large proportion of the working class voted for Trump has to do with what we old Marxists call class consciousness. Marx made a distinction between a class “in itself” and a class “for itself.” The former signals status, one’s relationship to means—of production, of survival, of living. The latter signals solidarity—to think like a class, to recognize that all working people, regardless of color, gender, ability, nationality, citizenship status, religion, are your comrades. When the idea of solidarity has been under relentless assault for decades, it is impossible for the class to recognize its shared interests or stand up for others with whom they may not have identical interests.

The Democratic Party lost—again—because it turned its back on working people.

So I’m less interested in conducting a postmortem of this election and tweaking the Democrats’ tactics than trying to understand how to build a movement—not in reaction to Trump, but toward workers’ power, a just economy, reproductive justice, queer and trans liberation, and ending racism and patriarchy and war—in Palestine, Sudan, Congo, Haiti, and elsewhere, in our streets masquerading as a war on crime, on our borders masquerading as security, and on the earth driven by the five centuries of colonial and capitalist extraction. We have to revive the idea of solidarity, and this requires a revived class politics: not a politics that evades the racism and misogyny that pervades American life but one that confronts it directly. It is a mistake to think that white working-class support for Trump is reducible to racism and misogyny or “false consciousness” substituting for the injuries of class. As I wrote back in 2016, we cannot afford to dismiss


the white working class’s very real economic grievances. It is not a matter of disaffection versus  racism or sexism versus  fear. Rather, racism, class anxieties, and prevailing gender ideologies operate together, inseparably. . . . White working-class men understand their plight through a racial and gendered lens. For women and people of color to hold positions of privilege or power over  them is simply unnatural and can only be explained by an act of unfairness—for example, affirmative action.”

There have always been efforts to build worker solidarity, in culture and in practice. We see it in some elements of the labor movement, such as UNITE-HERE, progressive elements in SEIU, National Nurses United, United All Workers for Democracy, Southern Worker Power, Black Workers for Justice, and Change to Win. Leading these efforts has been the tenacious but much embattled Working Families Party (WFP) and its sister organization, Working Families Power. Their most recent survey found that growing working-class support for Trump and the MAGA Republicans does not mean working people are more conservative than wealthier Americans. Instead, it concluded, working people are “uniformly to the left of the middle and upper classes” when it comes to economic policies promoting fairness, equity, and distribution. On other issues such as immigration, education, and crime and policing, their findings are mixed and, not surprisingly, differentiated by race, gender, and political orientation. Most importantly, the WFP understands that the chief source of disaffection has been the neoliberal assault on labor and the severe weakening of workers’ political and economic power. Over the last five decades we’ve witnessed massive social disinvestment: the erosion of the welfare state, living-wage jobs, collective bargaining rights, union membership, government investment in education, accessible and affordable housing, health care, and food, and basic democracy. In some states, Emergency Financial Managers have replaced elected governments, overseeing the privatization of public assets, corporate tax abatements, and cuts in employee pension funds in order to “balance” city budgets. At the same time, we have seen an exponential growth in income inequality, corporate profits, prisons, and well-funded conservative think tanks and lobbying groups whose dominance in the legislative arena has significantly weakened union rights, environmental and consumer protection, occupational safety, and the social safety net.

And the neoliberal assault is also ideological; it is an attack on the very concept of solidarity, of labor as a community with shared interests. David Harvey, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, David McNally, Nancy Fraser, Wendy Brown and many others have all compellingly articulated this challenge. In response to the 1970s strike wave and the global slump that opened the door for the neoliberal turn, the Thatcherite mantra that “there is no such thing as society; there are individual men and women” took hold. For decades unions have been disparaged as the real enemy of progress, their opponents insisting that they take dues from hardworking Americans, pay union bosses bloated salaries, kill jobs with their demand for high wages, and undermine businesses and government budgets with excessive pension packages. Remember Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign talking points: workers are the “takers,” capitalists are the “makers” who should decide what to pay workers. Neoliberal ideology insists that any attempt to promote equality, tolerance, and inclusion is a form of coercion over the individual and undermines freedom and choice. Such regulatory or redistributive actions, especially on the part of government, would amount to social engineering and therefore threaten liberty, competition, and natural market forces.

The idea of solidarity has been under relentless assault for decades.

Generations have grown up learning that the world is a market, and we are individual entrepreneurs. Any aid or support from the state makes us dependent and unworthy. Personal responsibility and family values replace the very idea of the “social,” that is to say, a nation obligated to provide for those in need. Life is governed by market principles: the idea that if we make the right investment, become more responsible for ourselves, and enhance our productivity—if we build up our human capital—we can become more competitive and, possibly, become a billionaire. Mix neoliberal logic with (white) populism and Christian nationalism and you get what Wendy Brown calls “authoritarian freedom”: a freedom that posits exclusion, patriarchy, tradition, and nepotism as legitimate challenges to those dangerous, destabilizing demands of inclusion, autonomy, equal rights, secularism, and the very principle of equality. Such a toxic blend did not come out of nowhere, she insists: it was born out of the stagnation of the entire working class under neoliberal policies.

That diagnosis points toward an obvious cure. If we are going to ever defeat Trumpism, modern fascism, and wage a viable challenge to gendered racial capitalism, we must revive the old IWW slogan, “An injury to one is an injury to all.” Putting that into practice means thinking beyond nation, organizing to resist mass deportation rather than vote for the party promoting it. It means seeing every racist, sexist, homophobic, and transphobic act, every brutal beating and killing of unarmed Black people by police, every denial of healthcare for the most vulnerable, as an attack on the class. It means standing up for struggling workers around the world, from Palestine to the Congo to Haiti. It means fighting for the social wage, not just higher pay and better working conditions but a reinvestment in public institutions—hospitals, housing, education, tuition-free college, libraries, parks. It means worker power and worker democracy. And if history is any guide, this cannot be accomplished through the Democratic Party. Trying to move the Democrats to the left has never worked. We need to build up independent, class-conscious, multiracial organizations such as the Working Families Party, the Poor People’s Campaign, and their allies, not simply to enter the electoral arena but to effectively exercise the power to dispel ruling class lies about how our economy and society actually work. The only way out of this mess is learning to think like a class. It’s all of us or none.

Robin D. G. Kelley is Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at UCLA and a contributing editor at Boston Review. His many books include Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination.  Kelley has described himself as a Marxist surrealist feminist.

Labor’s Resurgence Can Continue Despite Trump

By Chris Bohner, Eric Blanc 

November 19, 2024

Source: Jacobin

Image by Kire1975, public domain

Does Trump’s reelection mean that the US labor resurgence is over? Not necessarily.

It’s true that the new administration is preparing major attacks against workers and the labor movement. And many union leaders will assume that the most we can hope for over the next four years is to survive through purely defensive struggles.

But unions are actually still well-positioned to continue their organizing and bargaining momentum. Here are seven positive factors that should ward off despair — and that should encourage unions to invest more, not less, in organizing the unorganized:

1. The economic forces fueling Trumpism also favor labor’s continued resurgence. After the pandemic laid bare the fundamental unfairness of our economic system, workers responded with a burst of union organizing and the most significant strike activity in decades. The same underlying economic forces — chronic economic insecurity and inequality — helped propel Trumpism to a narrow victory in the 2024 elections. But Trump’s actual policies will inevitably exacerbate economic inequality, undermining the Republican Party’s hollow populist rhetoric.

Stepping into the breach of Trump’s fake populism, unions remain workers’ best tool to provide a real solution to economic insecurity. And projected low unemployment will continue to provide a fertile economic environment for new organizing. As long as we remain in a tight labor market, employers will have less power to threaten employees who dare to unionize their workplaces and workers will have more bargaining leverage against employers, increasing the chances of successful — and headline-grabbing — strikes.

2. Unions can still grow under Republican administrations. It’s certainly true that the organizing terrain will be significantly harder under Trump and a hostile National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). But it’s still possible to fight and win even in these conditions.

It’s worth remembering that US labor’s current uptick began with the statewide teachers’ strikes that swept across red states in 2018 during Trump’s first term. And NLRB data show that putting major resources toward new organizing can go a long way in counterbalancing the negative impact of an adverse political context.

Unions organized significantly more workers under George W. Bush’s administration than under Barack Obama. Why? The main reason is that the labor movement in the early 2000s was still in the midst of a relatively well-resourced push to organize the unorganized, whereas by the time Obama took office, labor had mostly thrown in the towel on external organizing, hoping instead to be saved from above by lobbying establishment Democrats to pass national labor law reform. Labor can grow over the coming years if it starts putting serious resources toward this goal.

3. Labor has huge financial assets at its disposal. According to the latest data from the Department of Labor, unions hold $42 billion in financial assets and only $6.4 billion in debt. These assets — the vast majority of which are liquid assets — can help defend against the coming political attack and be deployed in aggressive organizing drives and strikes. Unions have the financial cushion to go on the offensive while simultaneously defending themselves from regulatory and legislative attacks.

4. Unions remain popular and trusted. According to a September 2024 Gallup poll, 70 percent of Americans approve of labor unions, the highest support since the 1950s — even 49 percent of Republicans these days support unions. Overall, Americans trust organized labor far more than the president, Congress, big business, and the media.

When workers have the opportunity to vote for a union at their workplace, unions win 77 percent of those elections. The American public also supports strikes. According to a poll by YouGov in August, 55 percent of Americans believe that going on strike is an effective strategy for workers to get what they want from management, compared to 23 percent who say no. Similarly, 50 percent of Americans believe it is unacceptable to scab, while only 26 percent say it is acceptable. Strong public support for labor continues to provide fertile ground for a union advance.

5. Organized labor is reforming. The bad news: most union officials remain risk-averse and their failure to seriously pivot toward organizing new members — despite exceptionally favorable conditions since 2020 — helped pave the way for Trump’s inroads among working people. The good news: the “troublemakers” wing of the labor movement is larger than ever, as seen in the dramatic growth of Labor Notes, the election of militants to head a growing number of local and national unions, and the emergence of much-needed rank-and-file reform movements in unions like the United Food and Commercial Workers.

Most notably, a reformed United Auto Workers (UAW) led by Shawn Fain is going full steam ahead with its push to organize the auto industry across the South — an effort that will soon get a big boost when unionized Volkswagen workers finalize their first contract. Rank-and-file activists across the country can continue to point to the UAW, as well as other fighting unions, as an example that their unions should be emulating.

6. Young worker activism is not going away. Most of the labor upsurge since 2020 has been driven forward by Gen Z and millennial workers radicalized by economic inequality, Bernie Sanders, and racial justice struggles. And contrary to what some have suggested, the 2024 election did not register a major shift to the Right among young people, but rather a sharp drop in young Democratic turnout.

7. The (latent) power of unions to disrupt the political and economic system is high. Despite declines in union membership and density (the percentage of the workforce in a union), union members still have significant representation in critical sectors of the economy.

Labor’s existing power provides a base for beating back the worst of Trump’s attacks and expanding union representation to nonunion workers in the semiorganized sectors. In addition, coordinated strikes or labor unrest in any of these sectors would significantly disrupt the functioning of the economy or public services, providing a potent tool for workers and unions. While logistically and legally difficult, workers and their unions have the power to shut down critical sectors of the economy if they so choose — an approach that could repolarize the country around class lines instead of Republican-fueled scapegoating.

8. Republicans may overplay their hand, creating new openings for labor. A scorched-earth legislative, regulatory, and judicial attack on labor law may create unintended opportunities. For example, if the Supreme Court follows Elon Musk’s bidding by throwing out the National Labor Relations Act — the primary law governing private sector organizing — states would have the power to enact union-friendly labor laws and legal restrictions on strikes and boycotts could be loosened. As Jennifer Abruzzo, the NLRB’s general counsel, told Bloomberg, if the federal government steps away from protecting the right to organize, “I think workers are going to take matters into their own hands.”

Conclusion

Labor’s decades-long tendency to defensively hunker down is one of the major factors that has led our movement — and the country — into crisis. Turning things around will depend on pivoting to a new approach.

The strongest case for labor to scale up ambitious organizing efforts and disruptive strike action is not just that it’s possible, but that it’s necessary. Without increased initiatives to expand our base and to polarize the country around our issues, union density is sure to keep dropping. Organized labor’s last islands of strength — from K-12 public education and the federal government to UPS and Midwest auto — will become extremely vulnerable to attack. And unions will be forced to fight entirely on the political terrain chosen by Republicans, who will paint them as a narrow interest group of privileged employees beholden to “union bosses,” Democratic leaders, and “woke” ideology.

Sometimes going on the offense is also the best form of defense. The best way to expose Trump’s faux populism is by waging large-scale workplace battles that force all politicians to show which side they’re on.

Nobody has a crystal ball about what lays ahead, nor should anybody underestimate the importance of defending our movement — and all working people — against Trump’s looming attacks. But it’s not factually or tactically justified to dismiss the potential for labor advance over the next four years.

Conditions overall remain favorable for labor growth, despite Trump’s reelection. Political contexts matter, but so do factors like the economy, high public support for unions, labor’s deep financial pockets, the growth of union reform efforts, labor’s continued disruptive capacity, and the spread of young worker activism. Rebuilding a powerful labor movement remains our best bet to defeat Trumpism, reverse rampant inequalities, and transform American politics. Now is not the time for retreat.


Chris Bohner is a union researcher and activist.

Beware the Fascist-Clown: 

Working Class Anxiety in an Age of Climate Catastrophe

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump held a press conference from inside trash hauler at Green Bay Austin Straubel International Airport on October 30, 2024 in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Much of the working class, feeling neglected and sidelined by the Democratic Party for decades, are increasingly prepared to allow Trump to twist and turn their grievances into shapes that fit a fascist agenda.

William E. ConnollyThomas Dumm
Nov 13, 2024

Common Dreams

We now live during the time of the fasci-clown. In post-election analyses, all the discussions of the appeal of his racism and patriarchy capture important things. But they may not speak starkly enough to why these sentiments run so deep and cut so broad a swath, though for different reasons, through both the white donor class and so much of the working class. Neither do they explain how and why growing segments of the populace laugh so much at Trump's fascist humor. Dressing up and clowning as a "garbage man" illustrates only one recent instance of that conjunction.

The donor class knows, and much of the working class senses, that neoliberal capitalism cannot survive in its old form for much longer. Knowing that, the donor class intends to capture as much wealth and power as it can in the time left to it, prepared to support a transition from neoliberalism to fascism if that is what it takes. Elon Musk is a perfect exemplar here, turning Twitter into a propaganda machine, becoming the fasci-clown’s Goebbels, and informally assuming the role of his economic lieutenant, preparing to impose punishing austerity in the name of a restoration of a pre-New Deal government. So much of the working class, feeling neglected and sidelined by the Democratic Party for decades, are increasingly prepared to allow Trump to twist and turn their grievances into shapes that fit a fascist agenda.

Why? Filtering into the sense of extreme entitlement of the superrich and desperation of growing segments of the working class-- sliding into those intensities in ways electoral polls do not directly capture--is a sense that the old alternatives are not working and cannot be sustained into the indefinite future. Workers, for instance, probably do not truly believe that climate wreckage is a liberal farce. Many sense that it is real, but that attempts to really reckon with it would leave them in the lurch. So they laugh at the clown's outrageous jokes, hateful comments about women, race, transgender people and immigration, and allow the fasci-clown to twist their grievances into support for his themes.

In Mein Kampf, Hitler, the fascist, malignant narcissist, and vicious humorist, summarized in two sentences the essence of his campaign to become Fuhrer:

"It belongs to the genius of a great leader to make even adversaries far removed from one another to belong to a single category, because in weak and uncertain characters the knowledge of having different enemies can only too readily lead to the beginning of doubt in their own right." And: "If he suspects they do not seem convinced by the soundness of his argument, repeat it over and over with constantly new examples."

The irony, just lurking below the rhetorical surface, is that neoliberal capitalism, in both the past and today, fosters the climate wreckage that helps to drive refugees north; and it will increasingly do so in the future.

For Hitler, writing after the massive German defeat in WWI, high inflation, and the return of hardened soldiers from battle with no jobs, Jews became the "red thread" to which he tied, through constant repetition, military defeat, social democracy, and communism. He thus condensed multiple adversaries into one enemy. For Trump, living during a time when imperial instabilities and climate wreckage create more and more refugees heading from southern to northern states, immigrants of color become the new red thread. The stagnation of the working class, the problems facing large cities, the "uppity-ness" of women of color, the snarky-ness of the liberal snowflake, and the loss of "black jobs," are all tied to the red thread of immigration. As you intensify opposition to immigration by, first, treating immigration as something insidious as such, and, second, linking it to everything else you oppose, you thereby loosen the rhetorical reins previously restraining public attacks on women, Blacks, Democrats, cities, and secularists. They are all now placed on the same line of associations, with resentments to any one magnified by those felt against others. A brilliant, cruel campaign.

The irony, just lurking below the rhetorical surface, is that neoliberal capitalism, in both the past and today, fosters the climate wreckage that helps to drive refugees north; and it will increasingly do so in the future. That is the truth that Trump and his followers must resist and shout down whenever it rears its ugly head. That is one reason racism must be intensified by the fasci-clown. This core truth must never be acknowledged: America works to produce the immigration it increasingly abhors.

But what about us? That is, what of those of us on the democratic left who have resisted Trump, supported Harris, and oppose the regime the fasci-comic seeks to impose? We participate, in at least one way, in the very condition we resist. As neoliberal capitalism morphs toward fascist capitalism during the second Trump term, we too have failed to come up with an alternative that could both work and attract droves from the working and middle classes to it.

This core truth must never be acknowledged: America works to produce the immigration it increasingly abhors.

As productive capitalism forges a future it cannot sustain in the face of growing climate wreckage, as many flirt with fascist capitalism to avoid facing this truth, nobody really believes in the alternative models of rapid growth and mastery over nature supported by classical social democracy and communism either. The danger of fascist capitalism, indeed, is tied to the failure of other familiar critical traditions to respond in a credible and sufficient way to the time of climate wreckage. This failure insinuates itself inside climate denialism and casualism today.

Such a failure encourages many to deny climate wreckage, that is, to embrace fascist tendencies. It may also encourage others to pretend that it can be resolved within either old forms of productive capitalism or one of the twentieth century alternatives to it. So, we critics, too are caught in a bind. We insist that immigration is good economically, by which we mean that it will lead to greater economic growth, when the truth is that the pursuit of that growth is at the heart of our current crisis. Is our failure connected in some subliminal sense to the growing attractions of many others to Big Lies today, to lies that growing numbers embrace without necessarily believing?

Our sense—though we cannot prove it—is that growing attractions to, and tolerances for, fascist capitalism within the working classes is tied to a larger intellectual failure to show how to evolve a political economy that curtails the future scope of climate wreckage while speaking to real grievances and anxieties of the working class writ large. Unless and until that happens it will not be that hard for fasci-clown leaders to attract the billionaire class and capture large segments of the working class. Fascist humor flourishes when no other responses to deep grievances appear credible.


Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


William E. Connolly


William E. Connolly is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. His most recent book is Stormy Weather: Pagan Cosmologies, Christian Times, Climate Wreckage (Fordham, 2024)

Full Bio >
Thomas Dumm
Thomas Dumm is William H. Hastie '25 Professor of Political Science at Amherst College.
Full Bio >

PAKISTAN WOMEN'S DOWERY

Unsafe inheritance

Editorial 

November 11, 2024

DAWN


DESPITE regulations, the troubling practice of robbing women of their rightful inheritance — the culprits are often their own kin — is rampant in Pakistan. In fact, the mental health law is being misused to limit a woman’s agency; some women are even kept in psychiatric facilities by families. A recent complaint about the misuse of this law by male heirs, mistreatment of patients in private rehabilitation centres and forced hospitalisations prompted the National Commission for Human Rights to support the petitioner’s suggestions, such as including neutral government psychiatrists in the board to uphold personal freedoms and evaluate an individual’s admission in a private centre, and direct the Punjab government to review the Mental Health Ordinance 2001. In 2022, the NCHR had released the report Malpractice in Mental Health in Pakistan: A Call for Regulation, which highlighted many gaps in mental health services, statute and policy, as well as in practitioners’ qualification and accreditation.

The primary obstacles between women and their inheritance are patriarchy and legal illiteracy. Women face court battles, social prejudice and financial losses because of an absence of information about legal rights, a loophole that must be addressed through community outreach initiatives. Further, women’s property rights are enshrined in the Constitution: Article 23 specifies the right to own property for men and women and Article 24 ensures that no one is divested of their property. The Enforcement of Women’s Property Rights Act, 2020, was seen as a breakthrough as it protects ownership and possession of women’s properties and shields females from harassment, coercion and deceit. But enforcing it will be a challenge unless the judicial system is more sensitised to women’s security. In addition, lawyers, activists and government representatives must join forces to highlight and thwart attempts to exploit and violate liberties. Only a gender-neutral system can save women from becoming casualties of male avarice.

Published in Dawn, November 11th, 2024

 

Anarchism on the periphery: struggle under emigration and war

Nov

11

2024

comments

From Pramen

This text was written by a small group of Russian anarchists. We are not in Russia and are actively engaged in revolutionary struggle in another country.In this article we examine the current situation of the anarchist movement in the Russian Federation and in emigration, draw conclusions about its readiness for revolutionary events, and share our thoughts on what should be done now.

Today Russian anarchist movement is in bad situation. But this is not a reason to give up, quite the contrary. There are advantageous circumstances in all difficult situations, and we must use them. Right now the Russian emigration has such an opportunity.We are convinced that revolution in Russia is possible and necessary. The anarchist movement must participate in taking down the regime and join processes of social changes under political regimes that will come after.

Without a strong movement we won’t be able to act in a coherent and organized way in upcoming revolutionary events. We do not consider success of anarchism in the post Soviet countries possible without anarchist organizations – above-ground and social, combat and underground. That’s why in this text we are calling for creation of organizations, making it possible to shape a united and coherent movement that can rise to the challenge of our times.

We consider it necessary to analyse Russian political emigration and seek to draw useful lessons from it. Our analyses are not complete and focus on only a few aspects that are important to us specifically. In the process of these reflections we make critical remarks, with the aim of motivating those people who will find what is expressed in this text interesting and important. We are writing primarily for people from Russia. We see the need for greater unity in the anarchist movement, the need for organised struggle and internationalism as a revolutionary tradition. This text aims to share this vision.

We realise that the idea of “revolutionary struggle”, as well as many of the other formulations we use, may be unclear and seem unrelatable to everyday reality for many of the readers of this text, our close friends, and even for those with whom we share this very struggle. We believe that it is essential to define for ourselves this idea, its concept and meaning. We need to envision ourselves in it and draw conclusions for our lives and priorities. This is a basic component and a first step for personal and collective orientation in current events if we are to not only understand them, but actively participate in them as an anarchist movement. So despite any discomfort you may have in reading this, we ask you to focus on the essence of what’s written, and encourage you to engage in discussion about it.

Another important concept for us is BUR (Belarus, Ukraine, Russia). Although this abbreviation may seem outdated or even problematic, we find it quite appropriate in view of the Russian Federation’s imperial project and its implications for Belarus and Ukraine.

Anarchism and the global crisis

The third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is just around the corner, and it has been 10 years since the war began. This war is shaking up geopolitical maps, changing military doctrines, claiming hundreds of thousands of lives, bringing to the fore the crimes of the Putin regime and the bravery of the Ukrainian people in the face of such a threat. At the same time, Israel is wiping Gaza off the face of the Earth, invading Lebanon, while other long-smouldering military conflicts in the Middle East and beyond are escalating. The current state of affairs on the peripheries of empires and former colonies gives us clear clues about possible future scenarios. The number of wars will increase, militarisation will grow, and more and more people will be pushed out of their lands, doomed to dehumanisation, to the position of a migrant labour force, banging against the deaf walls of the visa fortresses of first-world countries in an attempt to gain legal status for their families.

In the dystopian future thus envisioned, anarchist ideas grow more relevant, not less. Other ideas of social organisation that do not strive for radical direct democracy, equality, the elimination of human oppression and the cessation of the destruction of the planet have already proven to be untenable and disastrous. Nevertheless, the current of projects for a free society are not in their strongest at the moment.

Where are we, anarchists, in this global picture? A significant part of the anarchist movement in Belarus and Russia is currently in exile. In trying to generalise and understand its situation, we can outline some thoughts that we hope can help us to overcome the current state of the anarchist movement. Since we ourselves have come out of the context of internal Russian colonialism, our understanding of Belarusian emigration is based only on our comrades’ retelling of experiences and observation of their external work, so we will concentrate on what we have seen with our own eyes and about which we have a better understanding.

Challenges, losses and hopes

Confrontation at the Bolotnaya square in Moscow. May 6th 2012

The situation in which anarchism in BUR finds itself is a difficult one. Over the last fifteen years the movement has experienced a series of defeats: the failure of the protests in Russia in the early 2010s; the ousting of the organised anarchist force from the Maidan in Ukraine and the rise to power of a new elite; the effective repression of the anarchist movement in Russia and Belarus that put dozens of people behind bars; the defeat of the protests and uprising in Belarus in 2020; the failure of the anti-war resistance in Russia in 2022 that led to the exodus of thousands of politically active people and the imprisonment of hundreds. As a movement we have lost and continue to lose comrades: deaths in battle or on the streets, suicides, imprisonment. But internal factors also play a role, for example, disillusionment: with many leaving in search of another way of fulfilment in life, or with the many crises of relationships within the movement, including interpersonal violence, incidents of which often remain unresolved. However, these problems are not unique to our context; they are found in all human communities. At the same time, one can clearly see hope and the will to change: lessons from the past are analysed and discussed, mistakes are worked on, comrades in prison are supported, and the memory of those who died in battle is cherished. Prisoners and the fallen remind us of the need to continue the struggle and to strive for the development of the movement.

Anarchist partisans. Ihar Alinevich, Dmitry Dubovsky, Dmitry Rezanovich, Sergey Romanov

Azat Mikhtakhov, an anarchist and a mathematician from Moscow

We want to particularly emphasise the significance of the Russian war in Ukraine for anarchist movements in BUR, because it is an event that has disrupted the usual order. The diversity of views on Ukrainian comrades’ participation in the war exposed many problems in the understanding of anarchism. Narrow ideological views and dogmatism of some parts of the international movement has led to criticism of the Ukrainian movement and the groups that support it in the struggle while real war is taking place in Ukraine, in which thousands of people, including our comrades, are dying. The Ukrainian experience is extremely important and relevant: the work of the Solidarity Collectives, the organisation of the Anti-Authoritarian Platoon https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ilya-leshiy-four-months-in-an-an..., the continuation of activities under the conditions of military invasion should serve as examples for us, and not become occasions for attacks.

Now the anarchist movement in BUR is small in number and is represented in several spheres: political prisoners and their support in Belarus ABC-Belarus and Russia Solidarity Zone, armed resistance to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) under the emblem of the Resistance Committee and the activities of Solidarity Collectives, the partisan movement (Combat Organisation of Anarcho-Communists (BOAK), and the anarcho-partisans now in detention and Black Nightingales), collectives and projects engaged in diverse work (Antijob, Akrateia, DIAna, Black Square, Only Ourselves, as well as emigration (Pramen, Egalite), book publishing and media Avtonom.org. There are also many people who sympathise with anarchist ideas but for one reason or another do not find a place in existing organised activity.

Anarchists at the front of resistance to Russian invasion

It is also worth noting that the position of the anarchist movement in Russia is of key importance not only for Russian anarchists, but also for Belarusian and Ukrainian comrades. Lukashenko’s dictatorial regime is completely dependent on Putin’s regime, and the stability of the latter guarantees the preservation of the former, just as the continuation of the war in Ukraine is directly connected with the unleashed ambitions of the Russian top brass. The failures and setbacks of the Russian anarchist movement, the inability to organise the struggle in such a way as to significantly destabilise the influence of the empire in Belarus and Ukraine, constrain the potential actions of comrades there. There is a good article about this relationship by Pramen.

A moment from uprising in Belarus. 2020

The problem and potential of emigration

Anarchists from BUR found themselves quite often in European countries before 2022: they escaped repression, went away to study or work, crossed the borders of states through mountains and forests to establish connections and organize activities in foreign countries. Now it is a more mass phenomenon. The main waves of emigration from Russia took place in the spring and autumn of 2022, with the overwhelming majority of those who left going to nearby Armenia, Georgia and Kazakhstan. The first two countries became havens for the majority of anarchists, leftists, liberals and less politically determined people. Over time, various projects and initiatives came to be realised there, and the community itself formed enclaves of sorts, without building strong ties with local movements. Unfortunately, this emigration can most easily be characterised as problematic from an economic, political and cultural point of view. The former Soviet republics are still bearing the consequences of colonisation by the Russian Empire and the USSR, a tradition which Russia continues today by maintaining its influence in these countries. The waves of Russian emigration brought with them not only political dissidents who were unable to continue living under the regime’s already open aggression and repression. With them came unexamined colonial culture, metropolitan consumerism in the service sector, rising prices and other problems affecting the places that received them. This could be described as a new spontaneous and often unconscious colonisation of territories already occupied by Russian culture and economy. This is important to keep in mind when talking about the new Russian emigration, which in scale and meaning has been compared to the emigration of Soviet dissidents during and after the Russian Revolution. Back then, the routes were mainly to Western Europe and the United States, and the emigrants were in a different position in relation to the local cultures of the “first world” countries.

Anarchists at the demonstration in support of Ukraine in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Approaching the scale to a more familiar reality and taking a closer look, we can say that the mood in emigrant anarchist circles and projects in Georgia and Armenia seems ambiguous and the general situation is precarious. In all of this we can note a tendency: many people are feeling rather depressed. Apart from despondency and a lack of will to act, there are cases of suicide and many people struggle with mental health. This is influenced by the difficult financial situation, problems with addictions and irresponsible drug use, a constant search for funds, lack of confidence in the future and lack of any prospects. These factors are further aggravated by the serious problem of interpersonal violence and frequent conflicts within small communities. It should be noted that these problems existed and were quite widespread in the anarchist milieu even before emigration. Expectedly, these problems came along with the people from this milieu, and were further complicated by the insularity of emigrant groups in the new environments of unfamiliar countries. However, there is also a constructive tendency in these communities, for example, to explore conflict resolution mechanisms and approaches to justice. Some parts of the expatriate anarchist community work hard in this direction, and devote a lot of energy to supporting friends in difficult situations. This work often coincides with the labour of reflecting on the influence of patriarchy in the community and dealing with its various consequences.

The instability is also seen in the frequent movement of people from one project to another, as they try to find something that gives meaning, but at the same time does not encroach on personal comfort. Nevertheless, there is no idea what to do with life. Usually communities provide stability, collectivity and some kind of support. Not finding this, people naturally follow learned individualistic and atomised modes of existence. In this case, values such as struggle, comradeship and organisation are not readily understood. In our movement right now it is even hard to talk about a strong ethical foundation as an expected minimum for everyone. But if this is so, then what are the defining values now? Personal financial success, a certain level of comfort and an excessive focus on partnerships come to the fore. Because of this, one often sees resistance to anything that requires giving up much of this comfort to which the capitalist system has accustomed us. The core value in this context is individualism. It allows us to think of ourself as an independent unit, separate from other people and the world around us. This thinking orientates a person first of all to organise his or her own life in isolation from other people and to be unwilling to see themself as a part of something bigger in a global perspective.

Here we see one of the tasks of any revolutionary movement: to give reason and motivation to voluntarily sacrifice comfort and belief that it is not for nothing. Because we see that even with the full-scale war in Ukraine and the deaths of hundreds of thousands, relatively few people in the politically conscious part of the Russian population found reasons to sacrifice their comfort and fight against the regime.

A particular phenomenon felt in Georgia and Armenia, but also present in European emigration, is the artistic milieu from Moscow and St. Petersburg, which discovered political struggle and anarchist principles after Navalny’s imprisonment and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Given the deplorable state of the anarchist movement, it is somewhat disconnected from anarchist ideology itself and the history of the movement in Russia. This example highlights the need for ideological discussion that can support a high level of ideological training. Such training is very important because it provides the foundation for the anarchist struggle, without which it will be impossible to engage in it effectively. In our view, [Belarusian School of Anarchism, https://pramen.io/ru/shkola-anarhizma/]] has been moving in the right direction and can serve as an example and inspiration in this endeavour.

Lesson at the Belarusian School of Anarchism.

Another reason for the need for ideological training is that the political imagination of Russian anarchist emigration has been undermined by collapsed organisations and collectives, Soviet and post-Soviet experiences, repression, isolation and failure. These factors should not be taken as excuses, but as a reality that we have had to face and which have much to teach us. Nowadays, however, post-irony is often the main ideological approach to the challenges of emigration, war and the need for revolution. This attitude prevents us from taking events seriously and giving them meaning. Post-irony helps to deal with difficulties and stress on a personal level through distancing and mocking the big and difficult questions which, nevertheless, require answers. For example: Russia has fully revealed its authoritarianism, started a full-scale war, and we are in exile. What do we do about it? How to act honourably? Most of us cannot give a concrete answer to this question, because many of us think and answer as individual people who do not see themselves in such large-scale categories as resistance or a revolutionary movement. But we need to start thinking in these terms. Although there is no revolutionary movement at the moment, there is certainly resistance to the regime and the necessary preconditions for the rise of such a force.

Nevertheless, emigration has great potential. For example, it can bring new people in. We see material mutual aid and educational projects as good channels for opening the doors of the anarchist movement to people in emigration who want to contribute to the destruction of Putin’s regime. It is possible and necessary to enter the non-anarchist Russian emigrant environment with clearly formulated ideas, concrete proposals and ways of realising them.

All of the above is often not a problem of emigrants alone. For the last 10 years there has not been a united organised movement in Russia. Therefore, we realise that we cannot expect that anarchist emigration, with all its difficulties, will suddenly have concrete ideas and a direction of action. Nevertheless, we cannot but mention the experience of the Belarusian comrades who have been in emigration for many years and who have been active. Unfortunately, the Russian emigration has scarcely looked to this experience, and direct co-operation and common struggle have not been established. The absence of an organised movement makes these tasks difficult. Yet, in our opinion, existing collectives and projects could devote more time and effort to this kind of co-operation. The same can be said about the links with the Ukrainian anarchist movement: we consider criticism from Ukrainian comrades about insufficient or ambiguous support and weak attempts at contact to be very important and serious. The conclusion from this criticism is not that we are bad and guilty. The main conclusion we see is this: we need a cohesive and effective movement, for which we need organisations. Then we can develop not only a worthy struggle against the regime, but also prepare for what comes after.

Belarusian anarchists at the demonstration in Poland.

Events of the Arab Spring became an inspiration for the anarchist movement.

10 years without an organisation

There is much to think about and discuss, and this is already being done – for example, the Dogma podcast, which has collected many relevant and important contemporary experiences, critiques and voices from the anarchist movement. Yet the necessary analysis of the condition of contemporary anarchism in the BUR has yet to be done, as a holistic view is not yet available. It is necessary for the realisation of the ideas of a free society after the fall of the Russian regime. This analysis would allow the anarchist movement to understand its history, its shortcomings and advantages, to unite and act as a strong movement that can realise its proposals for society. At the moment we are not such a movement, and it is particularly painful and frustrating to realise this while comrades are dying in Ukraine and a desperate struggle lies ahead.

Let’s take a look at the event that only few of those currently active in the anarchist movement have witnessed: split and demise of Autonomous Action (AA). Ten years have passed since that event. This federative interregional organization had chapters in many cities accross the whole country and existed since 2002. This organization had many shortcomings and problems, but also AA as such was needed and had meaning. For that reason its loss, signifying the ongoing decline of the organized movement in Russia, became a massive set back for the subsequent generations of anarchists. It was not the first organisation in the RF to disintegrate, but this case is particularly memorable because it had cross-regional implications. Deep reflection, work on mistakes and reorganisation were needed and could have prevented the decline of anarchism in Russia that had already begun at that time. Instead, with the collapse of Autonomous Action we arrived at disillusionment, lack of ideological principle and hostility that fragmented the anarchist movement in Russia and undermined its potential for years to come. We moved on to isolated projects and less formal types of organisation: collectives, affinity groups, personal projects. In and of themselves, these things are not bad at all. However, if that’s all we have, it becomes a problem. Despite the excellent examples of ABC-Belarus, Solidarity Zone, Antijob, Solidarity Collectives – they are only a fraction of the strength that could be realized by a more organised movement.

Visiually the Autonomous Action was most known thanks to its recognizable banners and slogans in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

One of the most organized long-term groups was Irkutsk chapter of the Autonomous Action. At the picture we see a street protest organized by the Movement of Irkutsk Anarchists, its successor. 2017

Projects and people are scattered around the world and often poorly connected to one another. Non-constructive conflict and, more importantly, a lack of global vision and willingness to join forces beyond a small group of people contibute to this weakness of connection. This leads to a lack of shared and accessible movement infrastructure and resources: from finance, transport and housing to people, knowledge, skills and the ability to mobilise the movement as a coordinated force. This deficiency is crowned by the lack of formal anarchist organisations with a long-term perspective, a political programme, clear goals and committed people.

We are already experiencing the consequences of this shortcoming today, with each new round of global events. We are generally not keeping up with their development and are not adequately preparing for the challenges and opportunities ahead of us in the near and distant future. As we have already written, there will be more and more wars and invasions, regimes will lose stability, and emerging crises may again lead people to self-organise and confront the state. The general problem anarchists are facing is that our readiness for such turns of events is low. If the movement fails to seize these opportunities, they will be seized by other forces, or quickly slammed shut. The result then is likely to be the opposite of what we want: instead of uprisings against the regime, we are likely to see people rallying under its flag. This problem keeps us in a position from which the most we can do is react symbolically to what is happening, without the ability to take initiative and develop our own vision on a more global level. There is no doubt that those of us who have observed this process several times over the past decades in different countries have experienced much pain and frustration, and are prepared to go to great lengths to prevent this picture from unfolding before our eyes again.

Our brief assessment of the position, resources and readiness for action of anarchist movements in BUR paints a complex picture. It is not surprising that talk of a coherent and organised anarchist movement in BUR often provokes either incomprehension or rejection and ironic bitter chuckles. And yet these thoughts are already being voiced – both by anarchist Alexei Makarov, who participates in the armed resistance to the Russian invasion, and by BOAK, which conducts partisan warfare in the Russian Federation. Moreover, these thoughts slip into private conversations among people in exile. The idea is not new; it is in the air, waiting to be put into practice.

Alexey Makarov: It’s time to put our efforts on forming a united, organized anarchist movement everywhere.

In summary, we can say that in its current situation the anarchist movement is not living as an organism capable of combining diversity and unity, spontaneity and organisation, idea and reflection, form and content, high standards and accessibility – the common characteristics of a strong revolutionary movement. In our view, without this capacity, the anarchist project has no chance of being successfully realised in BUR and beyond. We believe that the best version of our future lies in the direction of organised anarchism and an international movement.

How do we move forward?

From all of the above we can derive what the movement is lacking and what it should focus on. We see a direction for action in the following five areas.

Infrastructure and resources
There is a need for infrastructure that makes possible both organised mutual assistance in emigration and preparation for returning home – technical, financial, tactical, ideological. Now is a good time to build such infrastructure and find resources without attracting attention, given the choice of good locations and distance from Russian law enforcement.

Political analysis
We need a detailed analysis of the current political and social situation in Russia and the world, study of history, to gain a better understanding of our place in it. All this will allow us not only to familiarise ourselves with what has happened, but also to think strategically, to anticipate probable scenarios of events, to develop plans for each of them and to be flexible. A possible programme for an anarchist movement also requires this analysis. It is not a question of academic work: it should be the tool of all ideologically prepared anarchists. Every comrade needs to be able to analyse the situation, draw conclusions about it and make decisions accordingly.

Studying the anarchist emigration of the past is a useful work that could help us draw lessons from previous century. A good example can be Italian anarchist emigration in time period between 1874 and 1930. Even though fascism in Italy triumphed for some time, Italian anarchists and anti-fascists from other political currents succeeded in defeating fascism in their community and contributed to revolutionary struggle in other countries. Perhaps today we could learn something from their experience and strategies.

Another example can be the influence of emigré activities on political situation in Russia – starting with “The Bell” newspaper published by Alexander Herzen all the way through many anarchist circles who began organizing long before the revolutions of the start of 20th century.

We should look to the experience and stories of the anarchists of the past, who were paved the path we are walking today.

Organisation
There needs to be a clear organisational structure and an understanding of its purpose. We now have time to prepare a clear and strong framework consisting of objectives, strategy, working methods and principles, networks, resource base, programme, common standards. We need to move beyond closed affinity groups and see the benefits that a more structured approach brings. This will also help to bring people back into the movement who have left because of its lack of seriousness and unresolved problems. An important part of this process is the transfer of experience from the “older” anarchist generation to the newcomers, to prevent repeated stepping on a rake.

Revolutionary personality
Participation in an organisation requires the development of certain qualities. It is necessary to develop a personality that combines discipline, dedication, faith, responsibility to the organisation, comradeship, political imagination, the desire to work on mistakes and self-criticism. It is very difficult to develop such a personality without an organisation, but it is also impossible to develop a revolutionary organisation without such a personality.

Not only the already mentioned ideological training, but also tactical training can help us in this. The Russian aggression has once again shown the need to acquire military skills that most anarchists do not have. However, to become militarised and take up arms is not only about physical self-defense, but also about developing a mindset that is based on discipline and responsibility.

Ideological and tactical training constitute a complex knowledge that requires training. It can only be learnt in specific contexts and with the appropriate infrastructure.

Revolutionary personality and organisation have been already well written about by BOAK.

Coordination

Establishing and re-establishing links with Belarusian and Ukrainian comrades is necessary both to better understand the regional context and to join forces. We should also look beyond the capitals Moscow and St. Petersburg, because there are struggles in the regions of the Russian Federation and abroad that could be the starting point for big events that will shape the course of events. To fight the regime, we will need the support of like-minded people from all over the world. We need aid of the organizations with already existing organizations and communities in the countries where we are ending up as emigrants. In them we can find ideological and resource base for creation of our own collectives and organizations.

Conclusion

This article is not the final truth, but an invitation to dialogue. The more voices are heard in our movement, the more different opinions and reflections, the more debates and search for solutions, the better we will understand our prospects and the necessary steps to achieve our goals. Obviously, there is a lot of hard work to be done to rebuild an anarchist movement that will be capable of real action and of support for its members, but if we really want to get to the level where we can give our contribution in overthrowing the Putin regime and Russian imperialism, this work must be our priority.