Hello! "Bookchinite" drawn here by Rojava de-Mystification Posts (title edited)

Submitted by squdgyFez in lobby (edited )

Note: replaced "Anti-Rojava" descriptor in original title with "Rojava de-Mystification" in order to to align with clarifying comment--hopefully this is an improvement.

Hi,

So yeah, I seen this post here, and I'm thinkin' I gotta start looking at things a bit more closely and trying to engage more with contrary ideas. NGL DecoDecoMan's essay didn't do more than put a little doubt into me, but then I found my way to this post (don't remember how). I'm not super confident in my media analysis abilities, but yeah I dunno I at least can't ignore what was in some of those articles. Feel like I'm gonna have to devote some time to figuring out what's real and deciding what I think.

But yeah that's why I'm here pretty much. Also coz I browsed around a little and saw that there's some criticism of Bookchin and Communalism generally so I figure I could probably benefit from engaging with that and some other stuff I haven't really seen anarchists being critical of.

K, that's about it. I'll try not to be super annoying. Probably won't be here all that often either, if at all, coz I'm likely to forget that this exists.

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ziq wrote (edited )

it's not really anti-rojava, it's just explaining the ideology in place there because for some reason redditors confuse it with either anarchy or communalism when it doesn't purport to be either. it's partly due to wilful propaganda - the Kurds used to make a concerted effort to attract western leftists to fight for them by presenting Rojava as a bastion of libertarian socialism. in practice it turned out to be more social democratic, and the internal propaganda is a lot different than the external e.g. anti-queer and anti-feminism. there were a lot of westerners who went to rojava, joined the govenment's propaganda arm and then spent the remainder of their time there just posting on reddit, facebook and twitter to trump up support, do counter-propaganda, etc. There was at least one of them on r/anarchism's mod team for years, scrubbing any slights against the Rojava movement. But that seems to have stopped now, and the government has stopped recruiting from the western left as far as I can tell, so a more accurate analysis of the Kurdistan program is becoming possible because we no longer need to fight off an organized propaganda farm and have struggle sessions mounted against us when we have these discussions.

the culture of rojava is very reminiscent of Maoism, with people who violate the enforced social norms being forced to undergo what is essentially a brainwashing process of 'self-criticism', so this bleeds into anarchist spaces since our spaces are so important for the Kurds to maintain a foreign support base (and eager foot-soldiers) for their project, and it results in all anarchist spaces being pulled in a decidedly non-anarchist direction just to benefit the political aspirations of a government in a region of Syria, creating massive conflict when anarchists realize they've become outnumbered by a legion of Apoists and other pro-government socialists that have internalized the Rojava propaganda that has convinced them anarchy isn't worth reaching for because democratic socialism is more "practical".

this is a cycle that has been happening for more than 100 years, with Marxists cannibalizing anarchist movements to recruit for their ranks

since we're at the tail end of this current marxist (apoist) cannibalization process, there are scant few anarchists left as the project enters the stage where it gets absorbed into the state form (which we see with rojava gradually being absorbed into Assad's government).

at some point, rojava will cease to have any utility to 'the left' as it becomes indistinguishable from any other government, all the apoists will stop latching onto anarchist movements and spaces, and we'll be able to rebuild anarchy and again distance it from the governmentalism, vanguardism and democracy its constantly falling prey to due to marxist and socdem creep

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monday wrote

Not trying to defend Rojava or the PKK, but I can't help but think that the international brigade was filled with white settler colonialism - sure that many idealistic poor European/Western kids managed to get there to fight for socialism/communism/anarchism but how many of those really understood what was happening in the moment? Not to mention the fetishizing of Kurds like what was done with Zapatistas a decade earlier.

And for a person who grew up in the days of Anti-globalization movement I understand the desire of utopia, but how we can change anything if our neighborhood is the same?

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ziq wrote

It's for sure settler colonial when u consider that the whole thing is bankrolled by Turkish Kurds who don't even speak the language. It's settlers from Turkey setting up shop in Syria and then bringing in German, Brit and Murican kids to give their Kurdistan project some plot armor (because when white people are in any kind of danger, the western media will cover it but won't if it's just Kurds)

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Tequila_Wolf wrote

Welcome. I'll be interested to follow this process.

I'm curious about what brings people to change their minds and come to be willing to change their mind, so if you have anything to say about what you think might have affected you or reached you specifically, that could be interesting!

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squdgyFez OP wrote (edited )

As far as being willing to change my mind, it's prolly coz I'm just generally very aware that I don't know much about anything at this point. I'm only like 2 years in to engaging with actually-left politics, and it's been mostly limited to reading, watching video essays, listening to podcasts, and talking with people online (but I'm slowly starting to get out of that.) At the start straight-up anarchism seemed too nebulous for me to wrap my head around how it might be accomplished, and the more I looked at Marxism the more it seemed too arcane and cult-y and rigid and dogmatic and reliant on a weird teleological understanding of the progression of history, but nevertheless seemed to have some interesting nuggets here and there. So, like a li'l Goldilocks baby-lefty I asked "is there anything in between anarchism and Marxism?" and someone pointed me to libertarian municipalism, and I was like "oh shit, this makes a lot of sense"--so that's mostly what I've been looking at. It's pretty easy to wrap your head around, and I still like the like... shape of the strategy even if I'm not married to the particulars (which pretty much every Communalist I've talked to isn't either, to be fair.)

On things that affected/reached me, well, I just finished reading the crimethinc piece linked in this post by u/ziq in f/okbookchin. I think ziq just meant to use a quote from it to illustrate an undesirable feature of libertarian municipalism, but I actually liked the essay overall. I think there might be something to the idea of preferring "spaces of encounter" to directly democratic decision making bodies; the example of how assemblies at Occupy were perceived by participants was useful in illustrating the difference. Up to now, the discourse about decision-making has only been presented to me as a debate between majoritarian democracy vs. consensus, so it's cool to learn about this other way of thinking about it.

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Tequila_Wolf wrote

just generally very aware that I don't know much about anything at this point. I'm only like 2 years in

It's a nice place to be. I've been doing this for long enough that sometimes I feel like I know what I'm doing, and that's a bad place to be imo.

Yeah I like crimethinc very much if only for their accessible and clear articulations of anarchist positions. They don't always get things right obviously but it's a great resource for people coming into anarchism especially if they engage it in relation to the US.

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squdgyFez OP wrote

I've been doing this for long enough that sometimes I feel like I know what I'm doing, and that's a bad place to be imo.

How come?

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Tequila_Wolf wrote

So far as I can tell, people who think they know stuff are wrong. And worse, they think they can stop learning. People who think they've got it figured out usually stop growing at that point, or trap themselves within a narrow range of positions.

Learning is in motion, knowledge is dead.

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monday wrote

It's a good stance, It's a daoist flow

I also want to build a pedagogy wiki, maybe I will use this bit if you allow

One thing that I usually add to this line of thought is that avoid overcomplicating things, and also appreciate more life than theory in my experience is useful when you feel burdened by words. Not an antiintellectual stance but a more grounded one.

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Tequila_Wolf wrote

Looks like I did not reply to this yet. Yes you would be welcome to use that bit.

I think that some people benefit from making things complicated and some don't - specicially some are able to do it while still being grounded and willing to go out and act. Others may get lost in ways that make them immobile if they focus too much on enjoying theory. It's probably something that depends on the person.

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subrosa wrote

Probably won't be here all that often either, if at all, coz I'm likely to forget that this exists.

are we that forgettable

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squdgyFez OP wrote

it's more that I'm not really connected to anything or anyone here beyond a desire to check some of my assumptions about things, which is pretty tenuous, I'd say.

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squdgyFez OP wrote (edited )

How do folks here generally feel about necroposting? I'm seeing a lot of old and done conversations that I'd like to ask questions about, but I can see replying to year+ old comments straying into "being super annoying" territory :)

Which is better: 1.) Necropost; 2.) Make a new post about the old topic; 3.) something else; 4.) leave it be, or take it to an appropriate sub on reddit

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monday wrote

I am totally for necroposting here, it's not a big community and a lot of topics need more interaction

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OdiousOutlaw wrote (edited )

We generally don't care about necroposting, there are nor rules against it, nor is it frowned upon because it''s a weird thing to complain about.

You're more likely to see engagement from multiple users on a new post, though.

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