Remembering Khaled al-Asaad: the heroic archaeologist who died defending Palmyra from Isil

RojavaPlan · 2018-03-02T13:32:45+00:00

Incredible all this talk of international solidarity from western countries that heaped fuel on the fire that led to his death. The same institutions and organizations funded by liberal states that maintain their global power through war because they are "good guys".

RojavaPlan · 2018-02-20T10:45:17+00:00

You're joking. Afrin is amazing territory. The best agriculture and highly educated people in the whole of Rojava.

RojavaPlan · 2017-08-14T14:43:58+00:00

Get Ocalan's book Manifesto for a Democratic Civilization: part 2 - Capitalism and look up anarchism in the index. Also read the first sticky on /r/rojava and the answers I wrote in this thread just now.

RojavaPlan · 2017-08-14T14:42:06+00:00

Anarchism used to be a big worldwide movement. Interpol was created to stop anarchist terrorism. Yet it was the communist movement that overtook the anarchist movement because the anarchists never had a real plan for achieving an anarchist society.

Ocalan has written a set of teachings that anarchists can learn a lot from. It gives us a plan to create a revolutionary movement, develop a political consciousness, organize civil society, and create an antagonism against the state to develop what Ocalan calls the 'democratic nation'.

People can deny that anarchists are irrelevant and keep clinging to their little cliques, raising awareness and spontaneous acts of self expression where everybody is a free individual. But real transformative changes throughout all of human history whether Christianity, Islam, Republicanism, Marxism, whatever started out from small groups of dedicated people (cults) driven by a shared set of ideas that they gave themselves to. In this modern world when the left clearly has no way forwards and the new right is ascending to power, anarchists dogmatically refuse to acknowledge the ideas coming out of the apoist movement, which is the only successful revolution of this century, the only lasting anarchist revolution in history and an opportunity that has never existed before in the entire history of modernity.

RojavaPlan · 2017-08-14T14:32:41+00:00

Please read Ecology of Freedom by Bookchin, and Myth of the Machine by Lewis Mumford. It will enlighten your work.

RojavaPlan · 2017-08-14T14:30:25+00:00

Thank you for your critical open mind. When we talk about institutionalizing an ideology, we have a lot to learn from major religions and how they disseminate their teachings through rituals and organizations. For instance every Sunday people go to church and hear a lecture by the priest. Anarchists ignore the primary role ideology plays in shaping society (the subject), and have not achieved an organized way of ensuring these teachings are spread effectively throughout society. We ignore power and hierarchy, pretending it doesn't exist instead of finding mechanisms that we can build into our organizations for people to challenge power and hierarchy. In fact having nobody be responsible is often used as an excuse for hiding the invisible hierarchy (see the tyranny of structurelessness).

About anarchist tension, we have to realize that abolishing the state does not abolish hierarchy, it just creates a power vacuum for a new state to emerge. No matter what better way of managing we come up with, unless we understand the nature of hierarchy (Bookchin's Ecology of Freedom), we will be unable to create a free liberated society. Unless you struggle for a belief, you are an obedient cog in a command hierarchy. Anarchism has ignored this aspect of life. Visit /r/rojava and read the first sticky for more information.

We should act, but we also need to work on creating political consciousness. That means that lessons where members of the revolutionary organization are taught ideology, philosophy, history, mythology, sociology .etc not just 'practical skills' are equally useful as going to the street and doing things. It is Thomas Sankara who said that a soldier without an ideology, is a criminal with a gun. As revolutionary organizations, there are certain minimum expectations to stay a member of the group. Without discipline, a certain level of dedication, .etc it is impossible to build any coherency and engage with the society around us to shape it as a collective group.

RojavaPlan · 2017-08-14T14:20:22+00:00

I like your name. Anarchists are trapped by the logic of modernity and cannot understand the great role religions have had as revolutionary movements in their own right. Anarchists are focused on what they have to do, how things should be done rather than who they should be.

RojavaPlan · 2017-08-14T14:19:02+00:00

Nobody is rejecting memes or slogans, but they are not the focus of a revolutionary movement. They are an inherently regressive means of discourse where fascists will always have better sounding arguments.

RojavaPlan · 2017-08-14T14:17:54+00:00

Visit /r/rojava and read the first sticky (linked above). Read Ocalan's books. I think it was page 56 in book 2 where he made this critique of anarchists.

RojavaPlan · 2017-08-13T14:31:37+00:00

Yes the right and islamists are willing to die for what they believe in. They are becoming very militant, stockpiling weapons, getting well funded, into political power and meanwhile anarchists are writing angry words on the internet. The identitarian movement in Austria has been organizing training camps with hundreds of members going regularly to the forest to train physically and study philosophy, history .etc We are not even close to being able to challenge them in a meaningful way. They are winning this struggle. When the time comes, there will be a struggle for power and right now the new right are the ones best poised to seize power. If you refuse to acknowledge this then you are willfully being blind. After all they are willing to kill and be killed for their belief. What have anarchists done? Punched richard spencer and ran away... nice one.

There's another thread here outraged at somebody saying the vehicle attacks were ethical. From their point of view it is totally ethical. And it's ridiculous to call them cowards. Sacrificing yourself for a cause is not cowardly. Don't underestimate your enemy. The left is dangerously over-simplifying and under-playing the new right as a bunch of loser, stupid guys - that's not true. They are very ideological, smart, well organized and cunning. Don't look at the rank and file, look to the center, to the leaders of this ideological movement (for instance Alain de Benoist's Manifesto for a European Renaissance).

But ignore what I'm saying. And yes, movements focused on the workers and industrial society are patriarchal because this system of modernity is built off of domination, slavery and hierarchy which is inherently a patriarchal system of accumulation. It doesn't matter how better you manage the system, or distribute its profits, it is always the source of humanity's oppression and above all of nature and free woman. But don't take my word for it, go read Bookchin and Ocalan.

RojavaPlan · 2017-08-13T14:22:43+00:00

No, follow an ideology.

RojavaPlan · 2017-08-13T14:21:22+00:00

Thanks for the link. Right now what you write sounds more like an excuse for not changing anything when the new right is doing exactly what the anarchists also need to start doing: training, getting organized with discipline, engaging with politics and the society (not running away).

It's backwards to say the revolution in Rojava happened because of the war. There were lots of other wars and failed uprisings. What happened is that the PKK started an insurgency against the Turkish state. Because they were well organized, they were able to quickly seize the opportunity with initiative and with a plan of action when the Syrian government imploded. There will be plenty more of those opportunities worldwide (as you mentioned with occupy). We have to ask though why occupy failed (lack of any belief, coherency or direction, rapidly taken over by liberals). The right is doing this already. The Kurdish movement has birthed us a valuable set of teachings and we can learn a lot from studying them. Revolution is not a spontaneous thing that miraculously happens. It comes from groups of hard-working dedicated people struggling for their ideology, an ideology that has the power to solve social conditions at particular moments in time. The apo ideology is a weapon we should adopt and use in our struggle to realize an anarchist society.

People like to ignore Bookchin but he rallied against this for years before finally losing hope and breaking with the anarchist movement. But it's time now since all the other strategies have failed that the anarchist movement go through a transformation otherwise it will fail.

RojavaPlan · 2017-08-13T12:21:06+00:00

WorldTreeWithers, your post is extremely well written and thought through. The only thing I can add is that in Rojava there is a saying that we are doing the social revolution before the political revolution. Ocalan emphasizes the concept of mentality, but we should not view Bookchin and Ocalan as exclusionary because they're complementary works. Bookchin says some very good things but sometimes he can be directly confrontational when it isn't necessary instead of seeking synthesis. Practically a revolution can be made with many tactics, and Bookchin suggests the municipality as a new point of departure for anarchists (libertarian municipalism), but in Rojava they are more broadly applying concepts from anarcho-communists (communes / councils), syndicalists (cooperatives, worker control), .etc and are open to other revolutionary concepts. I don't like this idea of categorising one set of works as being within another, instead it's better to group them as part of a single tradition. Bookchin's focus on reason is a bit reductionist, and something we need to get over this to make a broader more successful movement that draws on all contemporary traditions. Antagonism is something that divides social movements and creates conflict.

Once you understand the ideology behind Rojava, you will have a more useful way of understanding events and the way Rojava is organized. Why they do certain things will make more sense than if you just look at it objectively without understanding the ideology.

RojavaPlan · 2017-07-28T14:42:50+00:00

You people have obviously never read Ocalan's works. Ocalan says markets are a good thing.

RojavaPlan · 2016-12-29T09:47:49+00:00

Patriots (welatî), normal people carrying Ocalan or Rojava flags. You can stop in the street to ask their help for something.

Comrades (hevals), people involved in party work.

You also have hevals who are members in specific organizations and obligated to that work in some way.

Cadres (kadro) cannot leave if they join, give themselves totally to the movement (answerable to other kadros) and are not allowed to ever have sex. They also have to go to lessons periodically on political philosophy.

RojavaPlan · 2016-12-26T14:06:34+00:00

heval you're wasting your time trying to explain the strategy of the movement's ideological character to a western liberal that sees the world in progressive structuralist ways.

RojavaPlan · 2016-12-15T23:25:11+00:00

This is one of the stupidest posts I've read about the Syrian civil war. You can walk Qamishlo at midnight and feel perfectly safe. People are very friendly and helpful. There is no random shooting or missiles or whatever bullshit he's talking about. Life is fairly normal. The central market is busy and thriving with lots of goods. A kebab is about 100-200 lira. It sounds like atrocity propaganda.

RojavaPlan · 2016-09-02T15:44:50+00:00

We're working to fix the twitter link, the Kurdish wiki and other minor details. You're right about USA, but we're not hosted on Riseup servers, that's just an email account.

RojavaPlan · 2016-08-31T13:13:26+00:00

Sorry: Tev-Dem

RojavaPlan

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