Quote:
Originally Posted by microbet
Quote:
Originally Posted by microbet
Thanks for the linkees !!!1!
I'm not going to pretend I know what's going on in Rojava, Syria, or greater Kurdistan for that matter. It's obviously all very complicated, and cannot be reduced to binary sides. I'm also not conversant on
M.Bookchin's ideas on
Libertarian Municipalism. Given developments in Rojava, I've added this to my to-do list. Bookchin's day job was a historian, including a historian of RWA. I am familiar with that work (ex:
The Spanish Anarchists-The heroic years, 1868-1936, full text
here). When it comes to RWA, Bookchin was most definitely legit.
Last year, us San Diego IWWs were asked to host a leg of a speaking tour by some folks from Rojava, but that fell through because they couldn't get visas to come to the US.
Depending on what folks wanna count, which is always a good debate... this is the fourth large scale RWA experiment in history. Following on
Ukrainian Free Territory (1917-1921), the
Shinmin Autonomous Region in Manchuria (1929-1932), and revolutionary Spain (1936-1939). All four of these societies were war time societies. All formed in a short term power vacuum. The three previously experiments were defeated by external force of arms.
In Spain at least, there was constant tension between 'we need to win the war first to have the revolution' -vs- 'the revolution comes first'. The former ideal for most part won the day. Both
The Nation, and the
Rolling Stone articles point to this same dynamic, with the 'war first' ideal winning the day in Rojava.
But as you said, it's really hard for us to know here. We really need zombie G.Orwell to report on Rojava, but he'd probably sign up to fight instead. Being undead, that might be his best call anyways.