Turkey: What's behind Erdogan's outreach to Kurds?

Elmas Topcu 

DW

November 20, 2024

The Turkish government is sending ambiguous signals to the Kurds. Analysts believe it is hoping to garner some votes while also possibly splitting the opposition.

Political gestures of importance: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (R) shakes the hand of Turkish Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) Leader Devlet Bahceli (L)

Image: DHA

When Devlet Bahceli, chairman of the ultra-nationalist Nationalist Movement Party, or MHP party, shook hands with politicians from the Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), the gesture marked a political U-turn.

Up until October, Bahceli had claimed that the left-wing, pro-Kurdish DEM Party, just like its predecessor, the HDP, was an extension of the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party ( PKK) and should, therefore, be banned.

Even more surprising was Bahceli's next suggestion that PKK head Abdullah Ocalan could be released in exchange for announcing the dissolution of his party. Bahceli's party is considered the parent organization of the right-wing extremist group Grey Wolves and is known for its anti-minority ideology.

In the following days, the 76-year-old Ocalan received a visit from his family for the first time in 43 months. He has been in solitary confinement in a high-security prison since 1999.

A peace process with the PKK was put in place a decade ago already, but President Recep Tayyip Erdogan terminated it a year later in 2015.

After a few non-violent years, the bloody conflict flared up once more.

The Turkish government cracked down on Kurdish politicians in Turkey and launched military operations in northern Iraq and northeastern Syria.

The PKK has its headquarters in Iraq's Qandil Mountains. A de facto self-governing Kurdish state, known as Rojava, has established itself in northeastern Syria.

Ahmet Turk, a pro-Kurdish politician, was elected as mayor three times and also dismissed three times

Image: Kivanc El/DW

A carrot and stick approach?

Since Bahceli's push for Ocalan's potential early release, people in Turkey have been puzzling over what the government in Ankara is up to.

Why are its representatives seeking proximity to Ocalan at the same time as elected Kurdish local politicians are being removed from office?

In late October, Ahmet Ozer, the mayor of Istanbul's Esenyurt district and a member of the Republican People's Party (CHP), was arrested for alleged links to the PKK.

A few days later, three Kurdish mayors in southeastern Turkey were replaced by state officers.

This also happened to Ahmet Turk, an 82-year-old veteran of Kurdish politics. He has been elected and dismissed as mayor of the city of Mardin three times.

Observers agree that Erdogan is set on becoming the president of Turkey again.

However, a constitutional amendment would be necessary for a fourth term in office. As of now, Erdogan lacks the necessary majority in parliament.

Analysts believe that his plan is to use the carrot and stick approach to bring the Kurds and pro-Kurdish DEM Party into line by offering concessions, such as softening Ocalan's sentence to house arrest or possibly ending the practice of imposing state officials in Kurdish regions.

Moreover, such moves could also split the opposition.

Could the Turkish government's hope be to offset Abdullah Ocalan's release for Kurdish votes?

Image: Christoph Hardt/Panama Pictures/picture alliance

Power shift in the Middle East?

Arzu Yilmaz, a political scientist at the University of Kurdistan Hewler in Iraq's city of Erbil believes that there are other reasons for the latest developments.

"First and foremost, the unstable situation in the Middle East and the US govenment's decision to withdraw US soldiers from Iraq and Syria by 2026," she told DW.

Given Donald Trump's re-election, this could happen sooner than expected, she added.

Around 2,500 US soldiers are still stationed in Iraq, and some 900 in Syria, where they cooperate closely with local Kurdish militias.

"The balance of power in the Middle East is shifting, but despite its ambitions, Turkey is not an important player," Yilmaz said, saying that Ankara might want to change that.

Bese Hozat, the co-chair of the Kurdistan Communities Union, an umbrella organization of several parties of Kurdistan, including the PKK, echoed these thoughts. "Turkey's geopolitical and geostrategic position and influence in the region is gradually weakening," she said in an interview, adding that this was "causing the Turkish government to panic."

In her view, this has pushed it to find a workaround and try to instrumentalize Kurdish leader Ocalan for its own purposes.

Military operations expected

Earlier this month, Erdogan announced that he would soon close the "security gaps on the southern borders".

This signals a new round of Turkish military operations in Syria and Iraq.

Arzu Yilmaz believes that the Iraqi Kurds have no reason to worry about the future as their status quo is enshrined in Iraq's constitution.

However, the future of the self-governing Kurdish region in northeastern Syria is more uncertain, she said, adding that so far the US had supported the Kurds but it remained to be seen what would happen after the withdrawal of US troops. It was unclear who would fill the resulting power vacuum.

A key factor would be how the Kurds in the various regions cooperated with each other, she said: "This will determine whether the Kurds ultimately emerge from this crisis stronger or weaker."

Sources close to the PKK say that an initial meeting of Kurdish parties from Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey took place in the Belgian capital Brussels in November, however, the result of the discussion remains unknown.

The Kurds are the largest ethnic group in the world without their own state. According to estimates, more than 12 million live in Turkey, around 6 million in Iraq and the same in Iran, and just under 3 million in Syria.

Germany boasts the largest Kurdish diaspora community, which numbers around 1 million.

This article was translated from German.

 

Sweet tooth- Ethiopian wolves seen feeding on nectar

University of Oxford

 

image: 

An Ethiopian wolf (Canis simensis) licks nectar from the Ethiopian red hot poker flower (Kniphofia foliosa). © Adrien Lesaffre

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Credit: Adrien Lesaffre

Summary:

• For the first time, Ethiopian wolves have been documented feeding on the nectar of Ethiopian red hot poker flowers.
• This is the first large carnivore species ever to be documented feeding on nectar.
• In doing so, the wolves may act as pollinators – perhaps the first known plant-pollinator interaction involving a large carnivore. 

Content:

New findings, published in the journal Ecology, describe a newly documented behaviour of Ethiopian wolves (Canis simensis). Researchers at the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme (EWCP) observed Ethiopian wolves foraging for the nectar of the Ethiopian red hot poker (Kniphofia foliosa) flower. Some individuals would visit as many as 30 blooms in a single trip, with multiple wolves from different packs exploiting this resource. There is also some evidence of social learning, with juveniles being brought to the flower fields along with adults.

In doing so, the wolves’ muzzles become covered in pollen, which they could potentially transfer from flower to flower as they feed. This novel behaviour is perhaps the first known plant-pollinator interaction involving a large predator, as well as the only large meat-eating predator ever to be observed feeding on nectar.

Dr Sandra Lai, EWCP Senior Scientist based at the University of Oxford, and lead author on the new study, said: “These findings highlight just how much we still have to learn about one of the world’s most-threatened carnivores. It also demonstrates the complexity of interactions between different species living on the beautiful Roof of Africa. This extremely unique and biodiverse ecosystem remains under threat from habitat loss and fragmentation.”

Professor Claudio Sillero, EWCP founder and director based at the University of Oxford, describes seeing this behaviour: “I first became aware of the nectar of the Ethiopian red hot poker when I saw children of shepherds in the Bale Mountains licking the flowers. In no time, I had a taste of it myself - the nectar was pleasantly sweet. When I later saw the wolves doing the same, I knew they were enjoying themselves, tapping into this unusual source of energy. I am chuffed that we have now reported this behaviour as being commonplace among Ethiopian wolves and explored its ecological significance.”

The Ethiopian wolf is the rarest wild canid species in the world, and Africa’s most threatened carnivore. Found only in the Ethiopian highlands, fewer than 500 individuals survive, in 99 packs restricted to 6 Afroalpine enclaves.

The Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme (EWCP) was set up in 1995 to protect the wolves, and their unique habitat. It is a partnership between the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) at the University of Oxford, the Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation Authority (EWCA), and Dinkenesh Ethiopia. EWCP is the longest-running conservation programme in Ethiopia, aiming to safeguard the future of natural habitats for the benefit of wildlife and people in the highlands of Ethiopia.

EWCP Website: https://www.ethiopianwolf.org/

An Ethiopian wolf (Canis simensis) feeding amongst the blooming Ethiopian red hot poker flowers (Kniphofia foliosa). © Adrien Lesaffre

An Ethiopian wolf (Canis simensis) with its muzzle covered in pollen after feeding on the nectar of the red hot poker (Kniphofia foliosa). © Adrien Lesaffre

Notes to editors:
The study ‘Canids as pollinators? Nectar foraging by Ethiopian wolves may contribute to the pollination of Kniphofia foliosa’ has been published in Ecology at https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ecy.4470

Images relating to this release that can be used in articles can be found here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1tdnRo2HpSPhTX1c6jrKrbWQfPmNiQLuK?usp=sharing These are for editorial purposes relating to this press release ONLY and MUST BE credited. They MUST NOT be sold on to third parties.

Americans Demand Protection for Wild Carnivores; Will Wildlife Agencies Finally Listen?

Camilla Fox

 November 15, 2024 
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Mexican Wolf.. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

The ongoing slaughter of wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains, the return of gray wolves to California, the perilous reintroduction of wolves to Colorado’s Western Slope, and the ongoing debates over removing gray wolves from the Endangered Species List underscore a fundamental divide: the American public overwhelmingly supports protecting wild carnivores, yet many wildlife agencies remain stuck in a bygone era of eradication and control.

A recent national survey conducted by Project Coyote and Colorado State University’s Animal-Human Policy Center highlights this rift between how the public values wildlife versus how policy makers manage wildlife—leaving wolves and other misunderstood species like coyotes, foxes, and bobcats vulnerable to outdated practices that defy public sentiment and scientific understanding.

Wolves, systematically driven from the American landscape through government-sponsored eradication campaigns (often to make room for cattle), were nearly exterminated by the 1970s. Then came the Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973, offering wolves and other imperiled species a slim lifeline. Landmark efforts like the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone in the mid-1990s proved the species could rebound when given a chance. Yet, half a century later, wolves and other carnivores are still routinely subjected to unscientific and inhumane treatment.

Despite some policy advances, the grim reality remains: in many states, wolves and other “non-game” carnivores, including coyotes, foxes, and bobcats, face year-round, unregulated killing sprees—even during critical breeding seasons. Unlike deer and elk, which are managed with regulated hunting seasons, wolves and other wild carnivores are often hunted without limit or mercy, subject to “predator whacking” in states like Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho—a grotesque practice that involves using motorized vehicles to run down animals in the wild. Recent legislation in Wyoming aims not to ban this brutality but to codify it into law, exposing the shocking indifference of some lawmakers to animal cruelty.

This unbridled brutality has spurred bipartisan action. The Snowmobiles Aren’t Weapons Act, now pending, seeks to end the practice of using motorized vehicles to kill wolves and coyotes on federal lands. The public’s resounding support for these protections is reflected in our survey of U.S. residents on their views toward wildlife killing practices. The results show that over 80% of Americans want limitations on wild carnivore killings, including a ban on purposely running over wild carnivores with vehicles, and 81.7% support a ban on wildlife killing contests. Yet state policies remain shockingly regressive, clinging to practices that prioritize agricultural interests over ecological balance and ethical treatment.

Wyoming’s attempts to enshrine “predator whacking” in law, coupled with federal agencies’ lethal control programs, lay bare the growing disconnect between public opinion and official policy. Recent federal moves to strip wolves of ESA protections further emphasize the need for urgent reform in wildlife management.

In response to growing pressure, some states have restricted the recreational killing of wild carnivores, including ten states who have banned wildlife killing contests. While these steps are critical, they remain insufficient. Systemic reform is essential to prevent future tragedies like the Cody Roberts wolf torture incident and to ensure the ethical treatment of all wildlife.

Our treatment of wolves, coyotes, and other wild carnivores reflects how we value the natural world. As Americans increasingly rally behind wild carnivore protection, wildlife agencies must move beyond the outdated and cruel practices of the past and align our policies with the public’s demand for humane treatment and ecological balance.

Europe’s growing border barriers: an invisible threat to wildlife

As the EU builds more fences to curb migration, these structures disrupt wildlife habitats, posing significant ecological challenges.



Reuters

From lynxes and bears to reptiles, these barriers block critical migration paths and isolate animal populations, damaging Europe’s already fragile ecosystems. / Photo: Reuters


In recent years, the European Union has intensified its border security to prevent illegal migration, erecting physical barriers through some of the continent’s largest forests.


According to data from the European Parliament, the total length of border fences at the EU’s external and internal borders within the EU/Schengen area expanded from 315 kilometres in 2014 to 2,048 kilometres by 2022.

However, these fences—often stretching through biodiverse regions like the Carpathians, the Balkans, and the Białowieża Forest in the Polish-Belarusian wall—pose significant threats to Europe’s wildlife.


Walls and fences designed to secure borders could make it difficult for almost 700 mammal species to roam freely as they do seasonally, thus impacting their ability to adapt to climate change, according to a study by the Natural Environment Research Council.


From lynxes and bears to reptiles, these barriers block critical migration paths and isolate animal populations, damaging Europe’s already fragile ecosystems.

The Białowieża Forest, which spans the border of Poland and Belarus, is one of Europe’s last remaining primaeval forests and home to species such as European bison, wolves, and lynxes.


Here, fences prevent animals from following natural migratory paths, effectively trapping them in isolated habitats on one side of the border.


The inability to cross over means animals like the endangered European bison, which roam across large areas for food, are cut off from essential resources, impacting their survival.


Additionally, this confinement reduces genetic diversity by limiting breeding options, leading to weaker populations that are more susceptible to disease and environmental changes.

Habitat degradation

The Carpathian Mountains, spanning multiple Central and Eastern European countries, host diverse wildlife, including brown bears, lynxes, and wolves.

Border fences cut through these vast forests, obstructing the movement of these apex predators that rely on large hunting grounds. Without access to adequate territory, bears and wolves are forced into smaller areas, leading to conflicts over resources and driving them closer to human populations.

The barriers and fences built to prevent human migration also pose a direct physical threat to many animals. In the Balkans, where cross-border migration of large animals is common, deer and wolves often try to navigate these barbed wire fences, leading to injuries or even death.

Smaller animals, like certain reptiles and amphibians, struggle to reach water sources and breeding grounds, putting local populations at risk. The isolation of habitats by fencing impacts everything from plant life to insects and small mammals, further undermining local biodiversity.

Beyond physical harm, the ecological impact is far-reaching.

Fences alter predator-prey relationships, as animals forced into confined areas can overgraze or overhunt certain regions, leading to habitat degradation.

 

La Tempesta: The unforeseen Palestinian issue in the global war

Nov

08

2024

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From Act for freedom now

“The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.”
– Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

The main value of these texts, published in Italy last March, is undoubtedly the commitment of the authors to the fate of the struggle of the colonized, imprisoned and massacred Palestinian population, and, additionally, the fact that their position does not yield to the overwhelming blackmail of those who try to equate any “pro-Palestinian” position with anti-Semitism. Amidst the general indifference to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, there are few who care to act; La Tempesta does.

However, after a first reading of the various texts that make up this publication, we are left with a mixed impression and a certain uneasiness. We are struck by the fact that some of the analyses, proposals and points of view with which we are in deep agreement are juxtaposed with others — sometimes separated by only a period or a comma — that evoke in us only repulsion, nausea and, since the authors are anarchists, dismay. We’re not used to well-argued and coherent words that, on the one hand, win our deepest convictions and, on the other, attract our most vigorous dissent.

Nevertheless, we have decided to translate these texts in order to make them available for reflection, discussion and debate. Some will find this an ambiguous choice, and they may be right. Despite the problematic aspects of the following texts, and despite the superficial, imprecise or unsubstantiated1 aspects and passages that some will certainly notice, it seems to us that in the course of the decisive events we are living through, which herald calamities that are likely to be even worse, these texts express, develop or repeat certain ideas, certain premises, certain principles that we consider relevant both for understanding reality and for orienting anarchist action today. Among others:

• The importance of supporting, through international solidarity movements, the emancipatory impulse of decolonization struggles and a clear, uncompromising stand against Israeli colonialism.
• The inflexible need to destroy the state, whatever it may be, and the assertion that there is an unbridgeable gap between political revolution and social revolution.
• Despite its naivety and lack of realism, given the circumstances and poverty of the times — both existentially and in terms of ideals — the affirmation and argument that replacing the Israeli State (or any other State) with a free federation of free communities is the only desirable horizon2, the only perspective capable of preventing decades of violence and dehumanization from making living together impossible.
• The affirmation of the defeatist principle, still valid today, according to which the struggle of the exploited during a war must be directed first and foremost against their own state, which logically leads to the voluntarist incitement that the battle is being fought here, at home, and that “it is up to us to attack the masters at home.”
• The observation that “if we do not do our part, with internationalist action from below, the initiative can only pass to the States“, which stems from the conviction that only internationalist interventions can make a difference.
• An overview of the current context, summarized as follows: “The war in Ukraine, as well as the conflict in West Asia (a definition that seems to us decidely less Eurocentric than the so-called Middle East), are chapters, for certain aspects different frontlines, of an increasingly heated global conflict, which sees in prospect the direct clash between the USA and China within the strategic horizon of the slow loss of hegemony by Western capitalism, even if it remains largely dominant for the time being.”
• The assertion that militarization is not an ongoing process, but a fundamental principle of modernity, its precondition. That the spread of war today must not be attributed solely to the military sphere, but is inseparable from the civil, social and economic spheres, once presented as separate and now shamelessly organized ever more closely by the masters of the abyss.
• Awareness of the threat posed by the inextricable link between war, increased forms of censorship and propaganda, and repression.

That said, we find it unacceptable that what happened on October 7th is presented with euphemistic and misleading language such as “the October 7th action” and “the Palestinian resistance’s October 7th action.” The choice of these terms — when we would find it more accurate to speak of a massacre, or at the very least, bloody attacks — is indicative of a more general problem in the various texts, namely a kind of flight from reality on the part of the authors, an ideological relationship to the world that necessarily leads to the distortion of facts to the point of trapping oneself in a miserable campism: the purity of good on one side (the “Palestinian resistance”) and absolute evil on the other (Israel and those who live there).

For our part, we continue to believe that nothing can justify acts such as rape, torture and the slaughter of unarmed civilians, wherever they may come from, whatever the context, whoever the perpetrators, whatever the intentions. We used to think that one had to be a scumbag, a reactionary, or a Leftist — in short, a despicable person — not to oppose such acts adamantly, or to diminish their significance and sweep aside this abyss with a wave of the hand, on the pretext that they were “settlers”.3 We were wrong.4 Historically, while some anarchists have always sought to understand, promote and defend violence as a necessary and just means of action, this has always been a liberatory violence that has its own rules, its own ethics, and can in no way be indiscriminate violence. Need we remind you that the anarchists of the Makhnovshchina and the Spanish Revolution punished rape and pogroms with death?

It is one thing to not want to “cry with the wolves” against the October 7 attack, justifying it on the whole by the fact that “when someone is locked up in terrible conditions, don’t be surprised if they blindly make a bloodbath when they escape the cage” (an already slippery argument), or by preferring to “dilute” certain horrors through the search for the “truth of the facts” and to minimize them through intellectual relativization (the relationship to “violence” in such a context of colonization has its own distinctive features that cannot be sidestepped). But that today’s anarchists can not only ignore the horrors of October 7, offering no criticism whatsoever, not even the slightest reservation — falling, by the way, into the same logic of dehumanizing the enemy that the authors identify in the “automated genocide” carried out by the Israeli state and its army — but even implicitly valorize and praise these horrors (“the retaliation of the human and oppressed variant against the techno-military omnipotence”) by presenting them as “Palestinian Resistance” is, in our view, as unjustifiable as it is toxic.

The recurrent use of the concept “Palestinian resistance” is, in our view, a second source of problems. While speaking of “Palestinian resistance” (and sometimes even of “Palestinian Resistance”) is undoubtedly a convenient way to avoid dealing with the thorny issues that have accumulated over the past decades, it is also a distortion of reality, since it means using a smooth, homogeneous imaginary construct to cover up a complex reality. The “Palestinian resistance” here is nothing but a spectre that erases all the alterity, antagonisms, differences, rifts, contradictions, incompatibilities and conflicts between different real expressions of struggle — and struggles within the struggle — of the past and present in Palestine. This is tantamount to erasing the history and evolution of these struggles, their different elements, the perspectives of these different elements and the people who participated in them.

Is there no difference, then, between the intifadas of the past, the incendiary kites that set fire to Israeli fields in 2018, and bus bombings, or between demonstrations along the Israeli border and attacks like those of October 7? Is there no fundamental difference between the formation and organization of a religious “armed party” like Hamas — an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, which claims to find its principles in the Koran and to fight in the name of Islam, which has close ties to the Iranian state and the state of Qatar, and which values martyrdom and suicide bombings — and armed groups that pursue ideals of freedom, social justice and emancipation, or popular uprisings with all their self-organization? Is there no difference, then, between military conflict and social insurrection, between combat orchestrated by politicians and popular uprisings? Concerns and reflections on problems such as the militarization of “the resistance”, the specialization into combatants, the concentration of decisions, the organization and material resources in the hands of a general staff, not to mention the dependence on foreign organizations and powers and the consequent subjection to their logic and interests, have marked the history of past struggles. To flatten these problems today under the guise of a fantasized “Palestinian resistance” would constitute a loss of immeasurable proportions. Struggles and resistance movements are not precious gemstones, and anarchists, revolutionaries and subversives are not jewelers: so let’s make sure that we bring together understanding, engagement, solidarity and criticism in the same movement, and that the quest for purity remains the sad business of diamond cutters.

After all, do we really need these ideological mystifications to criticize Israeli massacres, those of NATO, the military industry or technology? Must we refrain from necessary criticism, must we deny ourselves our anti-authoritarian, anti-nationalist and anti-religious ideas in order to take a clear stand against Israeli colonialism and the ethnic cleansing it has been carrying out for several decades? How would an uncritical glorification of “Palestinian resistance” advance us here or contribute to the ongoing conflict there?

***

Contemporary history is littered with events that teach us that, contrary to the blind promise of the Enlightenment, it is not the sleep of reason that creates monsters, but reason itself. As for our worlds of perception, engulfed by the icy currents of progress, battered by the metallic dominion of technology, eroded by the metastases of politics, paralyzed by the cold waters of egotistical calculations, dazed by the drums of ideology, we are no longer stunned by the realization that very little remains. We believe, however, that it is of fundamental importance to preserve what remains, in spite of everything. Bringing clarity to the anarchist struggle today also means understanding events (and evaluating or commenting on the discourses that accompany them) in relation to the following: the sleep of emotion and sensitivity generates good reasons.

A plethora of commentators (be they military experts, politicians, intellectuals, journalists, activists or militants) are forever reiterating their good reasons to justify this or that ongoing or future war, spewing their good reasons in the face of piles of corpses and shattered existences. How many of them would swallow these good reasons if they (or their loved ones) found themselves in the middle of mass graves and bloody quagmires, surrounded by desolation, directly affected by the events? Against the Western tradition that separates reason and intellect from passions and affects, considering the former as noble and the latter as vile, we are committed to thinking, always, with the heart and the mind. It is for this reason, moreover, that we reproduce in the appendix a recently published text entitled “Carnage in Palestine: The Reason of States Against Humanity,” which combines intelligence, sensitivity, revolutionary and anarchist principles and ethics in a powerful response to all those who for months now have managed to intoxicate an already stale and unbreathable air.

The translators of the French version, June 2024.

“Here is the tragedy in our situation: while I am convinced of the existence of human virtue, I doubt the human capacity to halt the holocaust we all fear. And the doubt is there because it is not humanity who makes decisions about the world’s ultimate fate but political blocs, constellations of power, clusters of States that speak a different language, that of power.

“I believe that the natural enemy of mankind is the mega-organization. It robs the individual of his vital responsibility for his fellow man. It shuts down his propensity for solidarity and love, instead making him a stakeholder in a power that seems directed at others, but ultimately is directed at himself. Because what is power other than the feeling of not having to pay for the consequences of evil deeds with your own life but with those of others?

“If, at last, I were to declare the futile dream that I like many others carry, it would be this one: that as many people as possible will realize the need to break away from the blocs, churches and organizations that hold a hostile power over the human being, not to mount new structures but to weaken the sway of power’s life-destroying forces in the world. Such a realization may be humanity’s only chance to relate as one fellow human being to another, to once again become one another’s friend and source of joy.”

Among other things, when the authors summarize the development of events in Ukraine from 2014 to the present, heavily imbued with the “Putin narrative”, or when they casually describe the population of Gaza as a “people-class without a State.” ↵
This necessarily means overcoming national, ethnic and religious barriers. Overcoming these barriers was a key feature of the Arab Spring uprisings, especially in Syria and more recently in Iran. In this respect, it is as significant as it is disastrous that during the pro-Palestinian rallies in Paris last October-November, groups of Iranian and Syrian exiles who criticized Hamas were sidelined by a Leftist anti-imperialism that was implicitly pro-Hamas. ↵
Settlers, really, the Thai workers, the Negev Bedouins, the Israeli Arabs, the exploited in the kibbutz, dead by the dozens on October 7, and taken hostage by the dozens and dozens? ↵
We must admit that it is disturbing to discover that there can be agreement between anarchists and the above categories on these matters. ↵

– Stig Dagerman, The fate of humanity is at stake everywhere and at all times

Among other things, when the authors summarize the development of events in Ukraine from 2014 to the present, heavily imbued with the “Putin narrative”, or when they casually describe the population of Gaza as a “people-class without a State.” ↵
This necessarily means overcoming national, ethnic and religious barriers. Overcoming these barriers was a key feature of the Arab Spring uprisings, especially in Syria and more recently in Iran. In this respect, it is as significant as it is disastrous that during the pro-Palestinian rallies in Paris last October-November, groups of Iranian and Syrian exiles who criticized Hamas were sidelined by a Leftist anti-imperialism that was implicitly pro-Hamas. ↵
Settlers, really, the Thai workers, the Negev Bedouins, the Israeli Arabs, the exploited in the kibbutz, dead by the dozens on October 7, and taken hostage by the dozens and dozens? ↵
We must admit that it is disturbing to discover that there can be agreement between anarchists and the above categories on these matters. ↵

PRESCIENT WARNING

Trump and Trumpism Are the Violent Threat—And They Must Be Stopped

We are not our own worst enemies. Trump is the worst enemy of every one of us.

By Jeffrey C. Isaac

November 3, 2024

Source: Common Dreams


Copyright: CC BY-SA 4.0
William Jacob Parsons was arrested recently in North Carolina on charges of appearing at a FEMA office carrying a semi-automatic handgun and making threats against employees.
According to the Washington Post:

Parsons said he was motivated by social media reports claiming that FEMA was withholding supplies from hurricane victims in western North Carolina. Such false claims are part of a wave of misinformation that has hampered hurricane recovery efforts across the Southeast. ‘I viewed it as if our people are sitting here on American soil, and they’re refusing to aid our people,’ Parsons told FOX8.

A ”wave.” The phenomenon sounds beyond human control, like the waves caused by the hurricane itself.

Only a few paragraphs down does the story mention that there is a politics here: “As the country digs out, false claims about the storms have divided the Republican Party. While Donald Trump and his allies have spread the falsehoods, other GOP lawmakers and officials have sought to counter these rumors without directly criticizing the former president.” It turns out that it was Trump and his allies who caused this “wave.” Even here, the reporter needs to emphasize that “other GOP lawmakers and officials have sought to counter these rumors without directly criticizing the former president.” What is not said: these officials, like Republican office holders throughout the country, continue to support Donald Trump as he runs a campaign centered on lies, threats, and promises to use coercive force to deal with immigrants, suspected criminals, and various “enemies from within”—the same types he described only a few months ago as “the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections.”

Focusing on the lone wolf rather than the rabid wolf pack led and incited by Trump, and exaggerating the extent to which anyone in the GOP is constraining him in any way, this piece exemplifies the widespread tendency of so many journalists and commentators to downplay the threat that Trump’s rhetoric and his promises poses to so many people—federal workers, election workers, Haitians, anyone suspected of a crime, and pretty much all people on the left.

Robert Pape is a highly respected political scientist at the University of Chicago, and the Chicago Project on Security and Threats that he founded and directs is a major source of data on political violence. In recent weeks he has weighed in on the current U.S. political situation, in a Foreign Affairs essay entitled “Our Own Worst Enemies: The Violent Style in American Politics,” and in a New York Times op-ed entitled “I Study Political Violence. I’m Worried About the Election.” Unfortunately, Pape furnishes the downplaying of Trumpist violence with a patina of “scientific” credibility.

Pape begins by noting that “As we approach the presidential election next month, our election sites and officials may be in considerable physical danger.” He proceeds to note the most obvious source of concern: “Over the past four years, an alarming number of election officials and workers nationwide have been intimidated or threatened by people who appear to believe the widespread lies about voter fraud and rigged voting machines that supposedly helped steal the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump.”

But as the empirical scientist of politics that he is, he seeks to go beyond the obvious. And the point of his interventions is to share the “worrisome evidence” of his center’s survey research: “we found disturbingly high levels of support for political violence. Notably, this attitude was bipartisan. Nearly 6 percent of the respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the ‘use of force is justified to restore Donald Trump to the presidency.’ A little over 8 percent agreed or strongly agreed that ‘the use of force is justified to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president.’ These results reflect a relatively stable pattern over the past year.”

The upshot is clear: both sides of the political divide display troubling support for violence, and we are, as his essay says, “our own worst enemies.” His recommendation: Republican and Democratic Governors, especially in swing states, should make a joint public statement condemning violence, and dedicate resources to election security, so that both election officials and the broad public can feel safe and confident about the election.

The closing words of Pape’s op-ed underscore that the source of his urgent worry is even-handed and not partisan:


If we had not recently witnessed some of the worst election-related violence in modern American history — the Jan. 6 riot, the attempted kidnapping of Speaker Nancy Pelosi before the 2022 midterms and the two attempted assassinations of Mr. Trump — it might make sense to take more modest precautions. But the past four years have shown that we live in a dangerous new world.

Unfortunately Pape, the prisoner of his data, downplays the Trumpist danger no less egregiously than the many journalists who lack his scientific authority. And the problem is not in his data. It is in the lack of political judgment that he brings to it.

For it is quite obvious that not a single instance of violence that he references has anything to do with the left.

The January 6 insurrection, the attacks on Pelosi (and violent threats against many others, from AOC to General Mark Milley and Georgia Republican Brad Raffensperger), the threats to election officials—all of these things, like the threat to FEMA, come from the right and are indeed directly promoted and incited by Donald Trump. Even the two assassination attempts on Trump had nothing to do with the left—though Trump and Vance continue to lie about this. The first accused assassin was a registered Republican with obvious mental problems. The second was a disgruntled former Trump supporter who actually wrote a book explaining his disillusionment and calling for Trump’s assassination. Both assailants were products of the cult of violence produced by Trump (in a recent Atlantic piece, “The Gunman and the Would-Be Dictator,” David Frum points out that Trump was the victim of his own rhetoric).

There is no obvious reason to doubt Pape’s survey results. There are people on the left who hate Trump as much as people on the right hate Democrats, and many of those on the left might be as willing to say “yes” to a survey question about violence as those on the right.

But all of the threats and the actual violence that Pape notes, and that are so obviously so very dangerous right now, have come from the right.

Not a single Democratic leader has done anything to justify or incite violence or question the legitimacy of the electoral system or describe J-6 insurrectionists as “us” and police as the “they” who had weapons at the Capitol. Only one of the two major parties has unreservedly supported a candidate whose entire campaign has centered on vindicating the insurrection and promising to “eradicate” an opposition that he describes as “vermin,” going so far as to propose using federal troops to repress them. Retired Generals Mark Milley and John Kelly—both former Trump appointees, and neither a member of Democratic Socialist of America– have publicly declared that Donald Trump is a fascist. A fascist. Has any serious military official outside of the deranged Michael Flynn said anything like this about Joe Biden or Kamala Harris or any Democrat? No. Because no Democrat is a fascist.

There may be some symmetry in the way “extremists” on both sides of our polarized politics poll as “sympathetic to violence.”

But as serious political scientists have long known, filling out questionnaires is one thing, and politics is another. Only on the Trumpist right is there an organized campaign to demonize opponents and to incite and justify violence, and only on the Trumpist right are there many thousands of armed individuals—some organized as “patriot” paramilitary groups, some as lone wolves—who have acted on the incitement to violence. Is there a single election official, anywhere, who fears that there are leftist activists who threaten them because they believe that the 2020 election was stolen by Democrats, liberals, progressives and Marxists, and that “we need to take our country back” from the “lunatic communists?”

“There is violence on both sides,” or “we are our own worst enemies”—such rhetoric is stupid and grievously misleading as we approach a truly watershed election in which, to use the words of Trump critic, conservative Republican jurist J. Michael Luttig, democracy itself is “on a knife’s edge.”

There is no symmetry when it comes to the danger of political violence.

We are not our own worst enemies. Trump is the worst enemy of every one of us—from Liz Cheney to Bernie Sanders– who cares about constitutional democracy, and he makes no bones about saying so. He is retribution. He is vengeance.

Trumpism is the source of the violence that threatens to engulf us.

And the solution is simple: Stop Trump!

We have no time to waste.

Jeffrey C. Isaac is James H. Rudy Professor of Political Science at Indiana University, Bloomington. His books include: "Democracy in Dark Times"(1998); "The Poverty of Progressivism: The Future of American Democracy in a Time of Liberal Decline" (2003), and "Arendt, Camus, and Modern Rebellion" (1994).