Because the social con­tract has been bro­ken across the world.1

Because pow­er stands a chance not to be imme­di­ate­ly per­vert­ed if, and only if it runs from the bot­tom to the top, and local con­fed­er­al assem­bly struc­tures hold exec­u­tive, leg­isla­tive and judi­cia­ry pow­er, leav­ing admin­is­tra­tion to sim­ple revo­ca­ble del­e­gates. [Lib­er­tar­i­an munic­i­pal­ism]

Because those are the rad­i­cal­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic foun­da­tions erect­ed in Roja­va, and notably in Afrin, on the basis of an ethics con­cep­tu­al­ized by Emmanuel Kant and devel­oped by the Kur­dish lib­er­a­tion move­ment: a law tak­ing its source in the full recog­ni­tion of the human being, in the belief in the activ­i­ty, dig­ni­ty and qual­i­ty of ratio­nal indi­vid­u­als who cre­ate the laws.

Because the full quote is “man is a wolf for man when he does not know who he is” (Plau­tus). Which is why a pro­found­ly human soci­ety must have “a human face” and allow for meet­ing the oth­er com­mu­ni­ty actors “face to face” [Bookchin] through local assem­blies of no more than 150 peo­ple with whom our brain allows us to main­tain a sta­ble human rela­tion­ship.2

Because the deploy­ment of the prac­tice of assem­blies is our best chance at guar­an­tee­ing the tak­ing of eco­log­i­cal deci­sions, at the local and the glob­al scale, along with inclu­sion of all kinds, of all eth­nic groups, and all faiths, and the tak­ing into account of non-human ani­mals via spe­cif­ic committees.

Because as soon as we deprive a cat­e­go­ry of human beings from the pow­er to leg­is­late, what­ev­er the rea­son for this dis­tinc­tion, we cease to rec­og­nize them as ratio­nal beings who can delib­er­ate on “what to do” in what­ev­er con­cerns them. They are deprived of all poten­tial for action on life. They are con­sid­ered like non-per­sons, un-living.

Because this is the foun­da­tion on which Nation-States rest, which only tru­ly con­sid­er as per­sons those who have the pow­er to leg­is­late, or to inter­vene in this cre­ative process.

Because Nation-States are the frame­work pre­serv­ing the laws allow­ing the appear­ance of legal per­sons with pow­ers greater than them­selves, via their exag­ger­at­ed pow­er of influ­ence on said leg­isla­tive process.3

Because the pres­ence of an inor­di­nate­ly unbal­anced pow­er was at the very ori­gin of the cre­ation of a rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment, the nec­es­sary con­di­tion for its birth, deemed too dan­ger­ous oth­er­wise, no mat­ter how equal­i­tar­i­an it may have claimed to be at the time.

Because yes­ter­day’s indus­tri­al boss­es and today’s multi­na­tion­al firms are, by their vest­ed inter­ests and omnipo­tent influ­ence the true gov­er­nors of the prison-ship on which we are all con­demned to strug­gle at their feet, the one whose steel hull applies the legal require­ments deliv­ered by the State they have set up, heav­ing and drift­ing on the dead­ly waters of the indi­vid­ual cor­rup­tion of local representatives.

Because this ghost-ship is head­ed by a soul­less one, a con­cen­trate of death impuls­es stem­ming not from human beings but from a dumb mech­a­nism that has spread faster than the plague across all spheres of human life on earth: the reduc­tion of costs in order to bet­ter serve the finan­cial mar­ket. From this springs the sav­age com­pe­ti­tion to be the one rak­ing in the most prof­its, from there infi­nite growth in a finite world. An age-old curse ini­ti­at­ed by a sor­cer­er’s appren­tice: man, and now land­ing on his head. A Pan­do­ra’s box that nev­er ceas­es to haunt us.

Because the Nation-States, through cajol­ing and their monop­oly on orga­nized vio­lence, are the main actors of our sub­jec­tion to the inequal­i­ties of access to resources, giv­ing us the illu­sions of par­tic­i­pat­ing in the main­te­nance of the jails con­sti­tut­ed by state bor­ders and in the main­te­nance of eco­nom­ic dis­tinc­tions they feed and protect.

Because politi­cians tak­ing part in Nation-States place the inter­est of the peo­ples at the ser­vice of their per­son­al glo­ry, as well demon­strat­ed by the self-pro­claimed Sul­tan-Khalif and his ever so oblig­ing French coun­ter­part, known as “Jupiter”, two exam­ples that sat­is­fy a rule with no exceptions.

Because the inter­est of those who pre­side these democ­ra­cy mas­ca­rades often find them­selves inti­mate­ly linked with those of the lead­ers of multi­na­tion­als. Some­times, State inter­ests com­bine with the per­son­al inter­ests of the heads of State and turn into hard cash in their noble pock­ets. In one spe­cif­ic instance, the Pres­i­den­t’s son-in-law hap­pens to be Min­is­ter of Ener­gy, thus allow­ing for the enrich­ment of his fam­i­ly through trad­ing in oil with ISIS.

Because we must stop blind­ly believ­ing that there are ben­e­fits to the cen­tral­iza­tion of pow­er and social wealth in oth­er hands than our own. Claim­ing that the excess­es of the pyra­mi­dal pow­er struc­ture can be ignored, giv­en the deci­sion­al ben­e­fits flow­ing from it, amounts to legit­imiz­ing the death by mal­nu­tri­tion of 3,5 mil­lion chil­dren per year and the mur­der of hun­dreds of thou­sands of human beings, in a world pro­duc­ing large­ly enough to nour­ish its inhab­i­tants and capa­ble of pro­vid­ing them with con­di­tions allow­ing their access to happiness.

Because it is in this over­all con­text, one in which human­i­ty’s main expen­di­tures are weapons and adver­tis­ing (in an attempt at self-per­sua­sion), one in which Turkey is the sec­ond pow­er in NATO with 720 646 active forces and weapons drawn from very prof­itable Euro­pean exper­tise, one in which the Turk­ish army is stomp­ing on the great­est attempt of this begin­ning of the 21st cen­tu­ry to sup­ply the bases for a rich and secure life for all human­i­ty in cen­turies to come, with no lim­i­ta­tions caused by social or eco­log­i­cal destruction.

Because at this very moment, we are wit­ness­ing a crime against human­i­ty in Afrin, as des­ig­nat­ed in the fol­low­ing description:

Any one of the fol­low­ing actions com­mit­ted in the frame­work of a gen­er­al­ized and sys­tem­at­ic attack launched against any civil­ian pop­u­la­tion in full cog­nizance of this attack:

a) Mur­der
b) Extermination
[…]
h) Per­se­cu­tion of any group or iden­ti­fi­able col­lec­tiv­i­ty for polit­i­cal, racial, nation­al, eth­nic, cul­tur­al or sex­u­al motives.
[…]
k) Oth­er inhu­mane acts of a sim­i­lar char­ac­ter inten­tion­al­ly caus­ing great suf­fer­ing or grave breach­es to phys­i­cal integri­ty or phys­i­cal or men­tal health.

The first reports attest to this, images and videos show­ing the death and wound­ing of scores of chil­dren, women and men among the civil­ians, because they are Kur­dish or sim­ply because they find them­selves in Afrin, as hap­pens to be the case for hun­dreds of thou­sands of refugees and inter­nal­ly dis­placed Syrians.

Because this is not a nov­el­ty. One of the first uses of this indict­ment was against the Armen­ian geno­cide, exe­cut­ed by the Ottoman empire to which Erdoğan refers so often.

Because in Turkey, nega­tion­ism of the Armen­ian geno­cide is insti­tu­tion­al­ized, as a refusal of all “den­i­gra­tion of Turk­ish iden­ti­ty” (known as “turci­ty”). This was the rea­son why the writer and Nobel Prize win­ner Orhan Pamuk was brought before jus­tice for hav­ing declared: “One mil­lion Arme­ni­ans and 30 000 Kurds were killed on these lands, but no one oth­er than I dares say so.” The repres­sion against the Kurds is also insti­tu­tion­al­ized since it is a con­se­quence of the estab­lish­ment of Turkey’s fron­tiers in the Sykes-Picot agree­ments signed by France and Great-Britain, and that con­sid­er­a­tion of the Kurds as sub-cit­i­zens was rec­og­nized by the Pres­i­dent in 2009, after 85 years of denial. The ban on the Kur­dish lan­guage, com­mon­ly spo­ken by 20 % of the pop­u­la­tion in Turkey, is still in force.

Because this repres­sion keeps on accel­er­at­ing, notably since the 2016 coup d’E­tat, open­ing wide the field to an unstint­ing track­ing of pro-Kur­dish oppo­nents, be they intel­lec­tu­als, artists, PKK mil­i­tants or not. Against the whole back­ground of exac­er­bat­ed nation­al­ism, which does not fail to remind us of “the dark­est hours in His­to­ry” pro­voked by a famous mus­ta­chioed-one who also referred to the Ottoman empire in his exter­mi­na­tion meth­ods against all who were not rec­og­nized by the national-state.

Because this attack is in the con­text of a con­flict ongo­ing in Syr­ia for the past 7 years, a civ­il war that has no fur­ther inter­est than to serve the impe­ri­al­is­tic fer­vors of the tra­di­tion­al super-pow­ers and their respec­tive alliances, includ­ing fas­cist fun­da­men­tal­ists devot­ed to their prof­its with no ethics what­so­ev­er. I refer you here to Dilar Dirik’s excel­lent arti­cle   [pub­lished by ROAR ] : “The offen­sive could not have been launched with­out Rus­si­a’s agree­ment, as it con­trols the air space above Afrin, as well as the con­sent of Assad and Iran. […] At the same time, the Unit­ed States […] remain silent on the ambi­tion of their NATO ally to sac­ri­fice the heroes of the war against ISIS.” The Syr­i­an peo­ple have noth­ing to gain, hav­ing already lost every­thing in this civ­il war now turned into a “grey zone” allow­ing for the USA’s “petro-busi­ness as usu­al”, or the immoral com­mer­cial exchanges, no mat­ter how dev­as­tat­ing they may be to ecology.

Because the strug­gle for the lib­er­a­tion move­ment is cer­tain­ly not with­out faults and con­tra­dic­tions, but it remains the great­est attempt at giv­ing life to lib­er­tar­i­an ideals in the world, and it puts these demands on view in transna­tion­al diplo­ma­cy, forc­ing the left­ist forces across the world to bet­ter define their ideas, to devel­op ide­o­log­i­cal­ly so as not to remain in the word­less con­fu­sion that cap­i­tal­ism and its agents have man­aged to impose on them.

Because the lack of human dig­ni­ty, rep­re­sen­ta­tive of this rul­ing sys­tem, goes so far as to make an open ref­er­ence to “1984” by call­ing this mil­i­tary oper­a­tion “Olive Branch”, in the man­ner of a dystopi­an super-dic­ta­tor­ship, fal­si­fy­ing its abject real­i­ty even before re-writ­ing the course of his­to­ry. In speak­ing of the attempt at lib­er­tar­i­an com­mu­nism of 1936, Orwell said: “Homage to Cat­alo­nia.” Let’s re-estab­lish his her­itage and cry: “Homage to Rojava.” 

In the name of human hap­pi­ness, we arrest you, “democ­ra­cies” that no longer bear any­thing oth­er than the name, whether you be Occi­den­tal, Ori­en­tal or from elsewhere.

In the name of human hap­pi­ness, we arrest you, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, you, your mega­lo­ma­nia, your autoc­ra­cy and your clan­nish logic.

Let’s Sup­port Afrin !


Afrin • Au nom du bon­heur humain, nous vous arrê­tons ! Cliquez pour lire

Translation by Renée Lucie Bourges
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