MR. ANARCHIST, WE NEED TO HAVE A CHAT ABOUT COLONIALISM by Petar Stanchev for Roarmag.org

03 April 2015 ---- The dogmatic criticism of popular struggles for autonomy in Chiapas and 
Rojava reveals a colonial mentality that should be stamped out of our movement. ---- 
Photo: comrades from the Revolutionary Anarchist Action (DAF) in Turkey express their 
solidarity with the Kurdish defenders of Kobani at the Turkish-Syrian border. DAF has 
consistently called on anarchist groups elsewhere to support the Rojava revolution. ---- 
Dogmatism is nurtured by abstract truths which become habitual ways of thinking. As soon 
as you put such general truths into words you feel like a high priest in the service of 
his god. ---- – Abdullah Öcalan ---- Back in 2002, the US journal Green Anarchy published 
a critical article of the Zapatista movement, including a judgment that seemed to express 
the author’s worst fears: “The EZLN are not anarchist!” In the piece, the Zapatistas were 
depicted as “vanguard nationalists” and “reformists” who were denied the privilege of 
calling themselves anarchist by the anarchist license commission — even if the indigenous 
rebels never asked to be called such.

The EZLN responded to the article — although, as Subcomandante Marcos made clear, few 
Zapatistas are willing to engage in arguments with “insignificant elements along an 
ideological fringe” and even fewer of the EZLN’s militiamen and -women are concerned with 
the judgments of “people whose greatest virtue is spreading their lack of understanding 
and knowledge around in newspapers and magazines.” But Marcos decided to reply to the 
article anyway as it was a clear example of “good old colonialism”:

This attitude, though hidden behind thin veils of objectivity, is the same attitude that 
we have been dealing with for 500 years, where someone else in some other country from 
some other culture thinks they know what is best for us, more than we do ourselves.

Positions as the one taken by Green Anarchy are neither an exception nor a thing of the 
past. Certain elements in the “anarchist” milieu still like to criticize in a similarly 
short-sighted, poorly informed, dogmatic and sectarian manner the struggles of the peoples 
in the Global South, wittingly or unwittingly reproducing the logic of colonialism in the 
process.

I am writing this piece in response to a recent article by Gilles Dauvé, who slanders the 
Kurdish movement in Rojava in much the same way. A similar piece, based on equally dubious 
ethical and logical grounds, was published by the Anarchist Federation in London. It is 
important to emphasize that, although I will be responding specifically to the poorly 
informed critiques of the aforementioned articles, the issues I am raising here are far 
more important for the anarchist movement in the West than for the Kurdish or Zapatista 
movements themselves, which do not need any judgment or approval from some privileged 
ideological purists elsewhere.

My main concern in writing this article is that the colonial mentality and profound 
dogmatism of certain individuals and groups in Western anarchist circles are symptomatic 
of a deeper crisis in the organizational and imaginative capacities of parts of our 
movement. This issue should therefore be a matter of serious debate. If we fail to have 
such a conversation, we risk marginalizing ourselves and transforming our movement into a 
self-centered subculture that is incapable of connecting to the outside world. This, in 
turn, would make Western anarchism fade away as a historical relic that proved to be 
mostly impotent in its efforts to challenge the status quo.

Not to judge, not to lose our heads

This is the presumption Dauvé’s article starts with: we are not to judge the Kurdish 
movement, but we should not lose our heads admiring it either. So far, so good. But 
despite this claim of objectivity, the author ends up doing precisely what he tells us not 
to do: he applies the concepts and standards of Western political thought to the Rojava 
revolution and rules that it does not fit into his preconceived category of a “social 
revolution.”

Those anarchists (and they are not just a few) who do support the struggle for democratic 
autonomy in Kurdistan are reminded not to “lose their heads.” Their support is depicted as 
a sign of “spineless” radicalism because it does not adhere to God-knows-what puritan 
dogma. This is an interesting form of “anarchism,” I would say, if we consider the 
richness and diversity of the anarchist tradition. Apart from the patronizing discourse, 
it’s interesting to examine the facts and claims of these supposedly righteous and 
clear-headed armchair revolutionaries.

Dauvé’s claims can be summarized as follows:

The struggle in Rojava is being waged by a population that “does not interest anyone” and 
that is left by the great powers to play its game of autonomy because it doesn’t really 
disturb the capitalist order.
The Rojava revolution, in the most generous reading, is a struggle based on the principles 
of Western liberalism. It is not a social revolution, it has not affected the deeper 
structures of society, and it is not explicitly anti-capitalist.
There is no challenge to the state apparatus and the struggle is inherently nationalistic.
The emancipation of women is a farce and an exaggeration, and the revolution is not a 
feminist one.
As the same criticisms are often leveraged at other movements of similar character, 
including the Zapatistas, challenging these particular points has a relevance that extends 
far beyond Rojava.

The dignity of the nobodies

“Never again a Mexico without us,” is one of the slogans marking the ideological essence 
of the EZLN. The indigenous people in Chiapas were unknown, unimportant and forgotten, 
left by the wayside for hunger and disease to finish them off. This is why the Zapatista 
uprising of 1994 is often referred to as “a war against oblivion.” This oblivion was never 
and still isn’t an accidental one: it is a deliberate product of racism and colonialism, 
both external and internal, which devalues the life and the suffering of the people of the 
Global South to the extent that they often do not exist for the rest of the world.

When this silence was broken in 1994, the Mexican government and the mass media realized 
the power of information and imposed a media blockade that was relatively successful in 
erasing the presence and achievements of the Zapatistas from mass consciousness in Mexico 
and abroad. In a similar vein, the revolutionary struggle of the Kurds was largely omitted 
from the global media (at least until the iconic struggle for Kobani), and the repression 
and aggression they face from powers other than ISIS continues to go unmentioned.

Both the Zapatistas and the Kurdish movement are a threat to the status quo because they 
offer and put into practice alternatives that are actually working. The danger that stems 
from the very existence of such successful examples has led to their persistent 
elimination from the mainstream media and the public debate — and, indeed, to a constant 
assault by reactionary forces on the ground. To claim that these movements exist by the 
grace of greater powers simply because they do not bother anyone is ludicrous.

Moreover, to state that these movements are left to do what they want because they are not 
a threat to state and capital is extremely offensive to the memory of all those who have 
been killed, prosecuted and dispossessed by the Mexican, Turkish or Syrian governments 
over the years. Both movements have been vigorously persecuted and remain so. Tens of 
thousands have been displaced. Dirty warfare and direct military confrontation were and 
continue to be used against them. Since both Rojava and Chiapas are rich in natural 
resources, Dauvé’s claim that they do not really interest capital and that this is why 
they are left to themselves is directly contradicted by the facts on the ground.

Image by Devrimci Anarsist Faaliyet (Revolutionary Anarchist Action), showing comrades 
from the DAF marching in Kobani holding a banner that reads: “We are all Kawa in the fight 
against Dehak,” referring to the Kurdish legend about the uprising of the oppressed.

The revolution that reinvents itself

“Walking and asking questions” is the core principle that the Zapatistas defined in their 
effort to move beyond predetermined and narrow conceptualizations of revolutionary 
struggle. The Zapatistas see revolution as a process in which the people build their 
freedom from below and learn to govern themselves in the process.

This principle rejects the traditional Marxist-Leninist notion of the historical vanguard 
and immunizes the revolutionary process from authoritarian tendencies “in the name of the 
revolution” — a contamination that was all too common in the state-socialist regimes of 
the 20th century. In the very same way, the revolution in Rojava is construed as a 
process, not an application of ready-made formulas.

The eager use of Western terminology and the attempt to classify the Rojava revolution 
accordingly end up giving the impression that the real reason why these supposedly 
critical “anarchists” are skeptical is simply because some unknown brown people are 
refusing to follow the instructions of their Cookbook. Of course, all this is done without 
any practical evidence because it turns out that these “anarchists” might have read the 
Cookbook but are somehow awful cooks.

To take just one important example, Dauvé’s analysis of what he calls the “liberal” 
structure of the Rojava cantons is based purely on his narrow reading of the Social 
Contract — the framework law of the cantons — but fails delve deeper into the parallel 
system of direct participation that accompanies it. Interestingly enough, he claims that 
the social structure in the Kurdish cantons has not changed, which contradicts all factual 
evidence and direct observation by journalists, scholars and activists who have actually 
visited the cantons.

Without any doubt, these structures of democratic self-governance are under development, 
with many issues still to be addressed and plenty to learn. However, they do reaffirm the 
basic principle that true liberation can only be lived and applied here and now through 
the self-organization of the people.

State, nationalism and capitalism

The Democratic Union Party (PYD), as the leading force in the Rojava revolution, has 
recognized the integrity of the Syrian state and proposed democratic confederalism as a 
preferable model for the country as a whole after the overthrow of the regime and the 
defeat of ISIS. This is a reflection of the ideological shift that has taken place within 
the Kurdish movement over the years, away from its initial emphasis on the creation of an 
independent Kurdish state. In Öcalan’s own words:

The call for a separate nation state results from the interests of the ruling class or the 
interests of the bourgeoisie, but does not reflect the interests of the people, since 
another state would only involve the creation of additional injustice and would curtail 
the right to freedom even more.

The Kurdish liberation movement now considers the state to be a patriarchal, hierarchical 
and exclusionary set of institutions. There can be no better evidence for the PYD’s real 
intentions than the granting of equal rights to all ethnic groups in the three cantons, as 
well as their representation on all levels of government and their active participation in 
grassroots democratic structures. As the Kurdish activist and scholar Dilar Dirik 
explained in her speech at the New World Summit in Brussels last year, the solution of the 
Kurdish issue was not to set up a new state, as the state was the very problem to begin with.

Dauvé argues that, secretly, the Kurdish movement has not abandoned the idea of a nation 
state at all, but simply rephrased it to sound less authoritarian. Yet a strange paradox 
remains at the heart of this argument: it is not at all clear why the Kurdish movement 
would adopt a libertarian anti-statist disguise in order to achieve the secret objective 
of founding an independent Kurdish state — taking on the extremely difficult task of 
organizing popular power while it would probably have been much more easier to acquire 
recognition from the international community as an actual nation state than as a 
decentralized system of confederated communes.

As for the anti-capitalist nature of the Rojava revolution, the economic system of the 
cantons is based on three main pillars: the cooperative economy, the open economy, and the 
private economy. The cooperative economy, which focuses mainly on agriculture and 
small-scale production, is central. It is based on communal ownership and self-management 
and often operates outside the monetary economy. Some of the lands were collectivized 
after the big land-owners left the region following the PYD takeover. Private companies 
are allowed, but they have to work together with the administration and abide by the 
social principles of the revolution.

The so-called open economy is based on foreign investment, which unfortunately remains 
necessary for the development of the region’s scarce infrastructure. There are, for 
example, no oil refineries in Rojava, even though the Cizire canton has large reserves of 
petrol. The idea is to attract foreign investment — but only at the price of respecting 
the social nature of the cantons. The local economy will be developed on the terms set by 
the inhabitants of Rojava and their assemblies, not by Western capitalists. The industry 
that will eventually be developed in Rojava should be under direct workers’ control, or at 
least this is the expressed intention of the PYD officials.

According to Dauvé, the revolution in Rojava is not anti-capitalist because the 
“proletarians” have not seized the means of production and private property is still 
allowed. This is a laughable statement, considering that the “proletariat” in the 
classical Western sense does not exist in Rojava. Here the author once again illustrates 
the limitations of a purist class analysis based solely on the outdated and inapplicable 
realities of 19th century industrial Europe.

Not a women’s revolution?

“The subversive nature of a movement or organization cannot be measured by the number of 
armed women — nor its feminist character,” states Dauvé, who goes on to claim that the 
whole idea that the revolution in Rojava is also a women’s revolution is based purely on 
the image of the all-female YPJ militias that became famous during the heroic defense of 
Kobani.

Of course it is true that we cannot measure the feminist character of a movement simply by 
the participation of women in armed conflict. Yet this is precisely why Dauvé should have 
done more research before slandering the Rojava revolution for not being feminist enough. 
He briefly mentions that women are guaranteed 40% participation in the communes and that 
all public positions have a dual character — one man and one woman. But what the author 
misses is the social analysis that is actively transforming gender relations in the whole 
of Kurdistan.

In his book, Liberating Life: Woman’s Revolution, Abdullah Öcalan emphasizes patriarchy as 
the central element of oppression that has produced all forms of hierarchy and domination. 
He argues that our civilization is based on three forms of domination over women: through 
ideology, through force and through the seizure of the economy: “From this relationship 
stem all forms of relationship that foster inequality, slavery, despotism and militarism.”

The practical expressions of these ideas in Rojava are numerous, and they include the ban 
on forced marriages, honor killings, polygamy, sexual violence and discrimination, and 
most importantly, putting women’s issues solely in women’s hands. Women have their own 
assemblies that have power over women’s issues and that can impose their decisions on 
those of mixed assemblies if they believe they concern or negatively impact women.

The international human rights lawyer and advocate for women’s rights in conflict, 
Margaret Owen, describes the developments in gender rights under the PYD administration in 
a very positive light. She highlights the all-woman party Star Union and the guaranteed 
equal participation of women in all spheres of public life, including “associations, 
political, educational, medical, military, police, social and financial services.” With 
the so-called Women’s Houses, the movement has also developed a system of protection 
against male violence.

From sectarian impotence to revolutionary creativity

Blinded by frustration with their own marginality and isolated by the incapacity to adapt 
their ideas to reality and to build a social force that is actually capable of challenging 
capitalist modernity and the nation state, some Western anarchists still prefer to retreat 
into their own ideological ivory towers and claim superior knowledge and righteousness 
through empty statements about the “spineless” radicalism of other people — especially 
those in the Global South.

Clearly, such sectarian positions negatively affect the ability of “anarchist” groups in 
the West to actually produce radical and meaningful alternatives to capitalism and the 
state. It ends up restraining the revolutionary anarchist ideal in the chains of an 
arrogant self-serving dogma that ultimately renders these groupuscules impotent in their 
supposed ideological purity.

This is the crisis we face in the West — and it does not promise a better future if 
sectarian elements in our movement remain incapable of reinventing themselves and finding 
new and creative forms of struggle and organization. The latter, I believe, is much more 
important than the flamboyant “revolutionary” rhetoric that, in some Western anarchist 
circles, seems so sadly separated from practice.

Petar Stanchev is finishing a degree in Latin American Studies and Human Rights at the 
University of Essex. He has previously lived and studied in Mexico and has been involved 
in the Zapatista solidarity movement for four years.

Originally published at: http://roarmag.org/2015/04/zapatistas-rojava-anarchist-revolution/