Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   Rasmus Fleischer (rasmusfleischer@tldr.nettime.org)'s status on Saturday, 20-Jan-2024 21:07:26 JST Rasmus Fleischer

   "Inquiry: Anarchists and the War in Ukraine"
   https://kontradikce.flu.cas.cz/en/online-content/156

   "Polish and Czech anarchists … also support us, but we did not feel any support from anarcho-syndicalists, … Instead, we hear from them about … how Ukraine is a NATO puppet. I was upset by the French, Spanish, Italian, and Greek anarchist movements. As it turned out, many of them got their information from Russia Today.
   ...
   The war did not in the least change the point of view of Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Russian anarchists. We have all known that Russia is an imperialist and fascist empire, that Lukashenko’s pro-Kremlin dictatorship in Belarus is fascist, and that Ukraine is an island of freedom among the countries of the former USSR."
   –– Davyd Chychkan, anarchist in Kyiv

   • Rasmus Fleischer repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Rasmus Fleischer (rasmusfleischer@tldr.nettime.org)'s status on Saturday, 20-Jan-2024 21:24:01 JST Rasmus Fleischer

     in reply to

     "the discussion could have been carried on with respect to various diverse interpretations of what is anarchism, as well as the diversity of the lived experiences of anarchists from different parts of the world, the general history of anarchists in armed conflict, as well as the respect for the actual reality we all live in and the ambition to come up with politics matching it. This, however, is not how it went, and instead we saw a rather ugly show of Western supremacy coming from some parts of Western anarchism, combined with a narrow, religious even, interpretation of what anarchism is, delivered with no regard for the diversity of the anarchist movement and the complexity of the world."
     –– Zosia Brom, Polish anarchist

   • Embed this notice
     Rasmus Fleischer (rasmusfleischer@tldr.nettime.org)'s status on Saturday, 20-Jan-2024 21:29:24 JST Rasmus Fleischer

     in reply to

     "In times of struggle – and especially wars – you can't stay away from battle. The best you can do is try and create your own force, fighting for the anarcho ideals. But if you can't create such force and you choose to stay away from the battle, to be 'against both sides of conflict' by doing nothing, you actually begin acting in favor of one of the sides. Not acting against the bigger evil, not trying to stop it – that means helping it."
     –– #БОАК (Combat Organization of Anarcho-Communists), Belarus/Russia

     [thead of different and sometimes contradictory positions by eastern european anarchist on russia's war in ukraine]

   • Embed this notice
     Rasmus Fleischer (rasmusfleischer@tldr.nettime.org)'s status on Saturday, 20-Jan-2024 21:43:20 JST Rasmus Fleischer

     in reply to

     "Like many key figures of early twentieth-century Moscow anarchism, who retained an imperial colonial understanding of planetary space – including an understanding of Ukraine as the South of Russia, … – many of the contemporary metropolitan anarchists have clearly inherited a Russian-imperial optic
     …
     they actually insist on the priority of some abstract anarchism in an ideal theoretical vacuum over reality, and they see themselves as priests of these sacred spaces,
     …
     This is not surprising, however: post-Soviet anarchism, represented predominantly by historians (articulately skeptical of philosophy …), has not really bothered to adopt at least a foreign philosophical perspective … and has therefore largely confined itself to unviable cosplay of anarchists of the past or vaguely abstract anarchists of the ideal world
     …
     It is characteristic that in the current war, these zealots of 'true anarchism' are not at all in favor of Esperanto being established on both sides (however, even this would be less fantastic than the demands they actually voice): given this, we can say that when the Russian world devours everything different from itself, whoever remains silent is no longer neutral but is clearly on the side of the aggressor.
     …
     the existing opposition of regionalism and universalism is not so simple, and it requires closer scrutiny, … It is worth remembering that decoloniality is only an optic equipped with a system of methods and approaches.
     Without an anti-state, anti-hierarchical, and emancipatory core, it risks slipping into a monstrous conservative order like the Taliban. The primary task of contemporary anarchists is to provide decolonial discourses with a coherent and properly developed anarchist perspective."
     –– Maria Rakhmaninova, Russian philosopher and artist

   • Embed this notice
     Rasmus Fleischer (rasmusfleischer@tldr.nettime.org)'s status on Saturday, 20-Jan-2024 21:47:59 JST Rasmus Fleischer

     in reply to

     "The Russian war against Ukraine is the key part of Putin's (and Lukashenko's) project of restoration of the Russian-Soviet empire. …
     this time the Empire is totally stripped of any shadow of a progressivist social ideology, which has been replaced by a Russian nationalist-chauvinist-revanchist-traditionalist-sexist (that is, classic right-wing) trash of a discourse. This, combined with Russia's natural and human resources and nuclear weapons, makes this ideology by far the most dangerous form of present-day fascism, which every sound leftist is morally obliged to fight – albeit sometimes in an unpleasant alliance with one’s political adversaries, which was also the case in WWII.
     …
     As for the two main anarchist approaches to the war, the anti-Western and the pro-Ukrainian, I think that the core problem here is actually the very definition of imperialism. To my knowledge, the anti-Western approach is historically based on the Marxist-Leninist concept of imperialism as 'the last stage of (liberal) capitalism' … and the pro-Ukrainian one draws from the Bakunist critique of imperialism(s)"
     –– Max Ščur, Belarusian anarchist in the Czech republic

   • Embed this notice
     Rasmus Fleischer (rasmusfleischer@tldr.nettime.org)'s status on Saturday, 20-Jan-2024 21:54:00 JST Rasmus Fleischer

     in reply to

     "the inter-imperialist war in Ukraine … the current conflict between NATO and Russia in Ukraine …
     Especially we anarchists from the Republic of Serbia … had the experience of a proxy war during the Yugoslav civil war. …
     I feel that in the theoretical realm a strong and conscious rejection of Kropotkin’s positivism, which has led us time and time again into a political dead end, is desperately needed, with a necessity for a vehement return to Bakunin’s revolutionary dialectical and materialist approach to understanding of the world."
     –– Ratibor Trivunac, anarchist in Belgrade

     [worth quoting to demonstrate the strong contrast between this and the position of other eastern european anarchists quoted in this thread]

   • Embed this notice
     Rasmus Fleischer (rasmusfleischer@tldr.nettime.org)'s status on Saturday, 20-Jan-2024 21:58:00 JST Rasmus Fleischer

     in reply to

     "In our opinion, the war has highlighted how much anarchists are products of their own local capitalist and geopolitical environment. …
     How many collectives in the West, understanding that they didn’t want to support the armed participation in the war, tried to negotiate with the Ukrainian comrades about how else that cooperation could look, if not buying helmets?
     The same can be said about the reaction of the Russian movement, which basically remained silent about the war, which started in 2014, and was cautious about trying to build connections with their Ukrainian comrades. …
     We can see how in countries like Germany, where there is no clear division between anarchists and communists, the 'general left' repeats the old Soviet and now Russian myths of 'the West against Russia' and 'capitalists against socialists'. … In most Southern European countries, this discourse is clearly connected to the 'reds' propaganda, but is hailed by the anarchist movement, just because it’s convenient.
     This war will leave a big schism in the movement for a longer time. The anarchist East stopped blindly taking for granted what is said or done by some of the Western comrades."
     –– Belarusian Anarchists in Warsaw

   • Embed this notice
     Rasmus Fleischer (rasmusfleischer@tldr.nettime.org)'s status on Saturday, 20-Jan-2024 22:17:16 JST Rasmus Fleischer

     in reply to

     "Russian anarchists, after the start of Russian military aggression, have not been able to launch a large-scale campaign against their state’s imperial aggression against the rebellious Ukraine.
     …
     'Russian' identity is not ethnic, but cultural, … “Russian culture” is imbued with imperialism. That is, it is an identity that can be acquired and that can also be abandoned. They don’t want to give up their imperial 'Russian' identity, but want to carry this imperial cultural heritage into the future.
     …
     Dmitry Petrov, who was one of the organizers and leaders of the BOAK, and who joined the Ukrainian Defence Forces … However, even in this message he is not free from the myth of a “free Russia”; he writes about the liberation of Russia from oppression – which is an oxymoron, because Russia itself is oppression for the people/peoples who inhabit it, as well as a constant threat and headache for its neighbors. …
     But, despite all this, I am glad that I still have comrades from Russia who really sympathize with us and wish Russia to be defeated and Ukraine to win."
     –– Oleksandr Kolchenko, Ukrainian anarchist taking active part in the fight against Russian invasion