Subject piece of discussion: https://crimethinc.com/2024/10/03/ya-ghazze-habibti-gaza-my-love-understanding-the-genocide-in-palestine
A recent piece published by Crimethinc is described as “in-depth account, an anarchist from occupied Palestine reviews the history of Zionist colonialism and Palestinian resistance, makes the case for an anti-colonial understanding of the situation, and explores what it means to act in solidarity with Palestinians.” It is certainly an extensive account, but when it comes to depth there is always deeper one can go with this issue. That being the case, a response to such an account could easily be double or triple its size if it attempts to go any deeper. But the issue that I have with this account is not its depth, it’s a fundamental assumption that a good deal of the rest is built upon. That assumption can be seen easily here:
“We must be honest about what we’re saying. For example, in the debate about the phrase “from the river to sea,” about whether it means democracy or the abolition of Israel—the simple answer is that it means both. Decolonization on Palestinian conditions—the abolition of Zionism, the return of the refugees, the end of military rule, and equal civil rights—will mean that Palestine goes back to what it was before Zionist colonization, a majority Arab land.”
A majority Arab land…
As the author themselves notes early in the piece, the land in question has a long history of changing hands:
“Gaza, which has always been a central point for passing empires, trade routes, occupations, and cultures, owing to its geographic location along the coast line of the Mediterranean. Gaza, through which passed the Via Maris, connecting Egypt to Turkey and Europe. Gaza, through which the Greeks, the Romans, the Rashidun Caliphate, the Crusaders, the Mamluks, the Ottomans, the British, the Egyptians, and Zionist forces pressed their claims—writing its story as a history of occupations, wars, atrocities, and resistance.”
This is a region that has been ruled by many groups of people, by empires centered in the three continents the region is between. Only when history is truncated by thousands of years can we make sense of the notion that this region was meaningfully “majority Arab”. Though Arab peoples have lived in the region for centuries, long before the rise of Islam, the land has also been the home of non-Arab peoples. The demographics have shifted time and time again. From the 7th Century until the Zionist immigration waves, there was an Arab majority. But there have certainly been times when Arab peoples were a minority as well.
What makes all of this discussion of majorities and minorities relevant at all is a history of state-building: the state-building initiative that was decided upon by the League of Nations when they invented their system of mandates, transforming former German and Ottoman territories into territories governed by the so-called “People”. Prior to this history, ethnic majority was far less relevant. Under the rule of the Ottomans, there was no question that it was the Ottomans who were sovereign and that its subjects resided in Ottoman territory and resided on Ottoman land. It wasn’t until the Tanzimat in the mid-19th Century that these lands were registered and titles granted to landowners who could then treat such land as a commodity. And it is this development of land as private property which created the conditions of possibility for the historical developments that allowed the Jewish minority to grow through land purchases.
Before Zionism, the Jewish population of Ottoman Palestine was about 4% and the total population was somewhere between 450,000 to 500,000 people. This was not a large population for a region of its size. The ecological features of the region were themselves a limiting factor in how large of a population it could support. However, there were also several periods of drought, famine, and conflict that made it a difficult place to live. Although the Zionist notion “a land without a people for a people without a land” was an exaggeration that ignored not only the Arab peoples living there but also the Jews living there, the undesirability of much of the land was an important fact of the region. Besides being arid, malaria was extensive throughout. The eradication of malaria, the modernization of agricultural techniques, and the industrial development that followed later are the factors that made it possible for this region to support the population sizes that it does now.
Above are all factors that even made it possible for there to be 800,000 Arab people to displace during the Nakba, a number almost twice that of the total population prior to Zionism’s existence. From the Tanzimat when the land laws were reformed to the Nakba, capitalism and the creation of nation-states changed everything about what was possible.
The Ottomans reformed the land laws, which allowed the land to be accumulated by powerful individuals and families like the Sursock family, who sold hundreds-of-thousands of acres of land to Zionist organizations. The League of Nations then exacerbated the situation by giving the British a mandate to oversee the development of nation-states in the region. And since they were encouraging the development of nation-states, specifically, it was the notion of “nationality” that regulated the types of states that would form. According to the League of Nations and their emphasis on “national self-determination”, the new rulers would be those “nations” who could prove that they were capable of running a state… states that would be grounded in nationality and allied with the winners of first World War. In effect, nationalist groups were put into competition with one another for recognition by the developing global nation-state system. These conditions not only favored Zionist over Communist Jews. The conditions were intended to favor nationalist groups generally: Arab, Jew, or otherwise.
The factors that allowed the total population to grow did not on their own lead to the formation of nation-states. Those factors had to be harnessed by imperial powers and pointed towards the formation of nation-states. Additionally, the Soviet Union was also encouraging the development of nationalism, seeing such a development as the appropriate form of administering an industrial society. While some communists were opposed to nationalism, those with the approval of the Soviet Union were not opposed to it. There were indeed splits amongst the Jewish Left in Palestine along these lines, the nuances of which are outlined wonderfully in Zachary Lockman’s Comrades and Enemies. In the same book, we are also given an excellent overview of the very few and very weak forces opposed to the nationalists, both Jewish and Arab.
Anarchy in Palestine
It is with those very few and very weak forces that we anarchists and socialists broadly should see the history of our own movements in the region. Already in the 1920s and 1930s, European imperialism, antisemitism, industrialization, and world war had allowed for socialists, communists, and libertarians to organize under the mandate. But for the most part, those who were fighting each other were more nationalist than they were socialist, whether they were Jewish or Arab. The conflicts that these nationalists had with one another, which they were pushed into by the British, lead to cycles of violence that increasingly fed all of those feelings that nationalism thrives from. The less trust there could be between groups, the more people relied on who they thought of as their own kind. After the 1929 Palestine riots and especially after the 1936-1938 Arab Revolt, the nationalists had very much secured themselves as majority amongst the Jews and amongst the Arabs. By 1942, the Zionists made their aim to create an exclusively Jewish nation-state official at the Biltmore Conference and 2 and a half years later, the League of Arab States (the Arab League) formed and adopted the Alexandria Protocol.
To put this another way, by 1944 both the Zionists and the Arab League had officially decided on mutually exclusive programs, destined to bring explosive conflicts in the future…
As M Gouldhawke has been documenting, anarchists were very aware of the events taking place in Mandate Palestine and were debating the situation with themselves and other socialists. One debate of note between Emma Goldman and Reginald Reynolds highlights the depth and nuance that anarchists were considering these matters with. While their conclusions are interesting, what is most important is that we have an explicitly anarchist history that we can refer to when thinking about how we should relate to the situation today. That is to say that as anarchists, we have had and can continue to have our own distinct positions that aren’t merely the infrequently creative appropriation of nationalist narratives.
As Emma Goldman pointed out in response to Reginald Reynolds, the attempts by Arab Nationalists to prevent Jewish refugees from migrating to Palestine do not align in any straightforward way with anarchist principles. Thought that point was somewhat lost in their debate, it is still a critical point today. There is nothing anarchist about the logic that follows from what national group has a demographic majority to such a national group having a right to state sovereignty over an entire region. The idea that because the land was “majority Arab” it should be ruled by an Arab state is not an anarchist idea. It is a nationalist idea and it is only relevant as argument against the claims by Jewish nationalists… Zionists. The Arabs of Palestine had no ethical right to prevent Jewish refugees from migrating to Palestine. Nevermind that many of those Jewish refugees were not Zionists.
As anarchists, we can not justify the control of people’s free movement from one part of the Earth to another. We can not reject the control of Palestinian movement on the one hand and then approve the control of Jewish movement on the other hand. It doesn’t matter who the ethnic majority is in a region. In the same way that we reject the proposals of National Anarchists, we must reject this logic of government based on nationality. To whatever extent we affirm the right of a national group to self-determination, that does not include the right to draw borders on the map and police the migration of others across those borders.
Settlers and Settler-Colonizers
“We also need to talk about the settlers. There any many different ways to analyze Israeli society. We can use the useful distinction that historian Ilan Pappe makes between the State of Israel and the State of Judea. In short, on one side, the liberal, secular, and “democratic” (Jewish democracy, for Jews only) wing of Jewish supremacy, apartheid, and settler colonialism, the one leading the anti-Netanyahu protests in Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities; on the other side, the more far-right, theocratic, and openly fascist wing, composed chiefly of West Bank Jewish pogromists and their allies. The anti-fascist author and journalist, David Sheen, offers another useful schema, dividing Israeli society into supremacist, opportunist, reformist, and humanist camps.
All of these analyses explore the internal debate within settler society over the best way to manage apartheid, settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. These social rifts are not new, but they have been exacerbated over the last few months. If we do not understand them, we might reach the wrong conclusions.”
What anarchists condemn when they review the history of colonialism is not the mere migration of people from here to there. What we condemn is the displacement, exploitation, domination, and extermination of those who were living somewhere prior to the colonial project. The creation of colonies isn’t itself condemnable. It is the use of colonies for the establishment of an imperial outpost that we are against. A colony created by artists or back-to-the-landers isn’t itself a bad thing and as anarchists, we are often advocating explicitly for the creation of our own colonies. We have in fact called our own past projects “colonies,” such as the Ferrer Colony in Stelton or the Home Colony in Seattle.
There is an argument that can be made that even these anarchist projects are guilty of profiting from the theft of indigenous lands and that they strengthen instead of harm empires. In the context of Israel-Palestine, such arguments are made often about the most egalitarian of Kibbutzim. This is true and it can not be denied. But the intentions matter of the residents who create such colonies, communes, or whatever you want to call intentional communities engaged in collective production. Should the power of the State that rules a territory shatter and should those indigenous peoples who have been dominated by that state gain full control of the regions they live, it will matter whose side various groups of settlers take.
As anarchists, we do not have an interest in subordinating ourselves to a state of tribal nations nor to subordinating ourselves to a state of colonial nations. Anarchism isn’t a philosophy of putting all the right people into all the right places. Anarchism rejects such things so that it can affirm the self-determination of people, both collectively and individually.
Now, there is a somewhat popular idea on the Left today that fascism is really just settler-colonialism coming home. Again, we get an idea that is based on starting one’s reading of history at too-late a period. The formation of the states that become imperial and become settler-colonial was already based on the domination, assimilation, and extermination of ethnic groups that were not involved in defining the national cultures that became hegemonic. The formation of nation-states already has these characteristic qualities of settler-colonialism before it even becomes settler-colonial. Fascism is the militant rejection of communism. It is what nationalists resort to when the principle of rule by nationality is discarded by those who had once accepted it.
The creation of the nation-state itself is what leads to a situation where all political discourse is bound within the confines of a territorial entity that accepts no opposition to its legitimacy. The “internal debate within settler society” is the same internal debate that is had in indigenous society about who belongs to the nation and who does not. It is the very basis of the Jewish Question which asked first if Jews could even be considered a nation and second if they could be trusted as members of indigenous European nation-states. Afterall, in Germany the Germans were mostly German. This is the logic of nationalism, settler or not.
Therefore, it is within the normal development of nationalist politics for Israelis to distinguish themselves from one another superficially. And as the essay points out, it is also within the normal features of nationalism for those superficial distinctions to be put aside when defense becomes a priority. This is even true when nationalism isn’t ethnic and is instead based on civic belonging. We witnessed this for years after 9/11 in the United States where jingoist, islamophobic, and genocidal rhetoric exploded amongst those who united as Americans whose freedom was under attack. Attributing something special to Israelis because their state is “Jewish” is erroneous. This is how nation-states operate. They must reaffirm their claims to legitimacy when their power is threatened. Palestinian or Arab nationalism has similar consequences.
As anarchists, we should be trying to smash this nationalist logic. It needs to be addressed at its roots. We do not advance anarchist society by affirming the right to political national self-determination, which is the type of national self-determination that seeks to realize itself politically instead of being lived culturally, without territorial control. Ultimately, nationalism is the logic of property at the level of nationality. The nation-state is the institutionalization of the idea that a nation can own a land. A democratic nation-state is merely one way that a nationality can govern itself through state institutions. Democratizing nation-states does not undermine their national foundations. This is why anarchists aren’t mere democrats. We reject the first and most fundamental argument regarding states: that any group of people has the right to rule a territory that others also inhabit. Lands don’t have nations. They just have residents… some settled, some nomadic, some agricultural, some artisanal, etc.
Final Words
The essay says so many other things that are true. They are also things that I would hope anyone calling themselves an “anarchist” today would be familiar with. After a year since 10/7, most of us should be able to recite much of this history in our sleep. And for those of us who have been paying attention to any of this before 10/7, much of this has been understood for decades.
My intention isn’t to deny the atrocities that Israel has committed against Palestinians everywhere the live and especially in Gaza. My intention is to extend an anarchist critique beyond the broad anti-Zionist and anti-Colonial discourse that a lot of this essay articulates. However, I don’t want to suggest that this essay merely reproduces that discourse without adding anything to it. It does. It addresses some especially bad takes that have come from anarchist quarters, like the class reductionism. It also offers some much needed nuance to the way Palestinian resistance is understood in its diverse composition, ideologies, goals, and distinctions from Salafi-Jihadist organizations.
There is also much in the essay that I don’t agree with and that I didn’t address here. As I said at the outset, a response “could easily be double or triple its size”. I don’t have the concentration to write that, nor the energy. So I don’t expect anyone to have the concentration or energy to read that if this were to be any longer.
I also don’t want to suggest that there is anything close to moral equivalence when it comes to the various groups who have been in conflict throughout this history. Israel and the Zionist program it institutionalized has by far the most to condemn and fight against. For whatever blame can be laid on the Ottomans, League of Nations, Britain, the UN, the Soviet Union, the Arab League, and United States over the past 100+ years, today’s atrocities belong most to the hands of Israelis. Furthermore, it is quite fair to see Arab and Palestinian nationalism, including its Islamic forms, as various forms of struggle for liberation.
Finally, to emphasize my point again, the problem is that nationalism and its logic leads to conclusions like “Palestine should be a majority Arab land”. Obviously, it also lead to Zionist conclusions about Jewish statehood as well. The pursuit of a national politics and especially ones that seek a nation-state, whether Zionist or Palestinian, ties movements to the broader power dynamics of global capitalism and imperialism. This is a problem that an anti-colonial emphasis underplays by recognizing some forms of national sovereignty as more legitimate than others, so long as it is not colonial. From an anarchist perspective, national sovereignty itself is illegitimate: no one should be born to rule, nor born to serve.
Comments
Just a little note- I don't
anon (not verified) Thu, 10/03/2024 - 16:58
Just a little note- I don't think the author makes any moral judgement regarding whether the land "should" return to being majority Arab, they seem to mean it as a matter of tact, I mean, once the refugees will return etc., the demography would return to be how it was before. Also the land between the river to the sea is already majority Arab so liberation is expected to further this process
re: Just a little note
cyberdandy Thu, 10/03/2024 - 17:15
In reply to Just a little note- I don't by anon (not verified)
I realize it isn't phrased as a prescription, but if you conclude that the land would be majority Arab then something is going on with the way you're looking at the population stats: 14 million Palestinians and 15.3 million Jews. So if you imagine that only Palestinians would be returning to the land, ok that make sense as an expectation. But why would you imagine that only Palestinians would migrate there under such circumstances?
Regardless, I disagree and I think that the author does believe that the land should be majority Arab and that its future should reflect "Decolonization on Palestinian conditions"... meaning Palestinians, as the majority, decide the conditions... right?
You're not an expert on the
anon (not verified) Thu, 10/03/2024 - 17:29
In reply to re: Just a little note by cyberdandy
You're not an expert on the Mideast or Arab history at all. You haven't even been able to properly summarize history from outside a Western perspective. There's so much racist caricature in both the OP and the response of Cyberdandy. It's disheartening and makes replying in a meaningful way basically impossible. If you've demonstrated an inability to overcome orientalist tropes, why even engage? Question for both the thoroughly white Crimethinc and Cyberdandy.
not an expert
cyberdandy Thu, 10/03/2024 - 17:57
In reply to You're not an expert on the by anon (not verified)
You're right, I'm not an expert and I wouldn't try to make it seem like I am one. I am not writing from the assumption that I have a full grasp of ME and/or Arab history. I'm writing from the assumption that I'm familiar with the history of how anarchists have discussed these things and continue to today. If it seems like it would be too exhausting to respond meaningfully, that sucks and it's sad to hear that our perspectives are so distant it is that difficult to even discuss things...
How's OP "white"?
anon (not verified) Thu, 10/03/2024 - 18:37
In reply to You're not an expert on the by anon (not verified)
How's OP "white"?
Not OP. Crimethinc. Wholly in
anon (not verified) Thu, 10/03/2024 - 19:00
In reply to How's OP "white"? by anon (not verified)
Not OP. Crimethinc. Wholly in the category of "white American anarchism", as is thecollective. These people are a laughing stock among anticolonial PoC. Worse than that. An army of Karens who think of themselves of some kind of radical chaos agents when they are totally stuck in 19th century Northern Europe, philosophical, psychological, politically etc.
Even if this criticism has
anon (not verified) Thu, 10/03/2024 - 19:10
In reply to Not OP. Crimethinc. Wholly in by anon (not verified)
Even if this criticism has some truth to it the fact that they give their platform to anarchist voices from the region is at least commendable
The author's whiteness
cyberdandy Thu, 10/03/2024 - 19:13
In reply to Even if this criticism has by anon (not verified)
It isn't really clear what "an anarchist from occupied Palestine" says about the identity of the OP, especially when they seem to mean by "occupied Palestine" all of the land between the River and the Sea. They could be white, who fucking knows. Maybe they're not!
They make it clear in the
anon (not verified) Thu, 10/03/2024 - 19:19
In reply to The author's whiteness by cyberdandy
They make it clear in the piece itself they're Israeli... did any all y'all read the thing? anyway I don't think that was a comment on people's skin color but about white perspective. anyone can reproduce white perspectives, including PoC
Are yoh fucking denying there
anon (not verified) Thu, 10/03/2024 - 19:30
In reply to They make it clear in the by anon (not verified)
Are yoh fucking denying there's non-White Israelis!? lol what a mind job...
anon: "anyone can reproduce
anon (not verified) Fri, 10/04/2024 - 09:18
In reply to Are yoh fucking denying there by anon (not verified)
anon: "anyone can reproduce white perspectives, including PoC"
you: "Are yoh fucking denying there's non-White Israelis!?"
I'm gonna say this gently as possible: the answer to your question is no.
Israeli
cyberdandy Thu, 10/03/2024 - 19:31
In reply to They make it clear in the by anon (not verified)
And you can be Israeli and also identify as Palestinian. Anyway, I don't want to re-read it just to figure out what to assume about the author's identity. Yes, I read the whole thing before I responded to it. And yes, I agree that what we are calling a "white perspective" isn't the outcome of biology and we're talking about worldviews that can be learned without regard to one's ancestry.
Anyway, was the original comment saying that the original piece came from that perspective or not? Or were they talking about Crimethinc?
re: white American anarchists
anon (not verified) Thu, 10/03/2024 - 20:07
In reply to Israeli by cyberdandy
Believe it or not, the USA is cursed by mesoamerican corn demons
White corn or that seasonal
anon (not verified) Thu, 10/03/2024 - 20:50
In reply to re: white American anarchists by anon (not verified)
White corn or that seasonal multicolor stuff?
to clarify the move
alex (not verified) Thu, 10/03/2024 - 18:46
In reply to re: Just a little note by cyberdandy
to clarify the move cyberdandy is making here, anon at 16:48 is observing that when taking the current population of the land of palestine generally referred to as "from the river to the sea," there is a narrow arab/palestinian majority of approx 7.3m to approx 7.2m jews in the same region. if a "right of return" for even just the registered palestinian refugees of jordan, lebanon, syria etc were instituted one way or another, that majority would quickly extend. cyberdandy counters with a hypothetical comparing the total global population of the thousands of years old jewish diaspora and the much more recent palestinian diaspora, hence 15.3m to 14m.
this seems like straightforward zionist propaganda to me but regardless, i dont think moving entire ethnicities around in weird hypotheticals is very sound analysis.
You can't escape the hypotheticals
cyberdandy Thu, 10/03/2024 - 18:58
In reply to to clarify the move by alex (not verified)
Yes, I'm providing hypotheticals that would account for a "right of return" that applies to both Jews and Palestinians. Whatever the case, I don't see how it could look anything like the pre-Zionist demographic distribution of 4% being Jewish. The whole conversation about the return of refugees is full of hypotheticals one way or another. Some have proposed a full right of return and others have proposed a symbolic right of return that would permit some limited number of refugees. What is the non-hypothetical way to talk about this?
i said "weird hypotheticals"
alex (not verified) Thu, 10/03/2024 - 20:30
In reply to You can't escape the hypotheticals by cyberdandy
i said "weird hypotheticals" because yours, whatever its purpose, relied on the entire jewish diaspora uprooting themselves from homes around the world to "return" to israel/palestine. i would not expect that of either the jewish or palestinian diaspora should that region become liberated, and i will not engage with your absurd strawman that anyone in this conversation is proposing a reduction of the jewish population to "pre-zionist" levels.
hypotheticals
cyberdandy Thu, 10/03/2024 - 20:59
In reply to i said "weird hypotheticals" by alex (not verified)
No one is proposing that in the conversation we are having or in the original article? Are you saying that you don't think the original article is advocating for a reduction of the jewish population?
Anyway, there is definitely an understanding of decolonizing Palestine that demands all the Jews who are not descendents of the Old Yishuv should return to the countries of their families prior to migration. I even have a friend who advocates such things regularly and considers themselves somewhere in the DemSoc or LibSoc world of thought. So when someone writes that they think decolonizing Palestine "will mean that Palestine goes back to what it was before Zionist colonization," I connect that with a lot of things people have and still literally think should happen... that it's fine for there to remain a population of Jews who descend from the Old Yishuv and for them to have equal rights, but that those Jews who came after the 1880's should leave.
Maybe that's bad faith, but it isn't an absurd strawman.
Ok, that said... there are also hypothetical situations where the Jewish population is not reduced to pre-Zionist level but still maintains a majority even after Palestinian refugees' right of return would be recognized. That is the point I'm making. That because there are large populations of both Jews and Palestinians living outside of the region, it isn't just a given that the right of return would result in a Palestinian majority. It is conceivable that Zionist American Jews, for example, would make Aliyah in the hopes of maintaining a majority. And I don't think it's that weird to deal with that hypothetical... a hypothetical of a demographic race.
What do you think would really be the outcome of "the abolition of Zionism, the return of the refugees, the end of military rule, and equal civil rights"? In good faith I just do not think that would mean the region would become majority Arab. It's not a pro-Zionist argument, I just don't think that's what would happen.
as the author of the original
alex (not verified) Thu, 10/03/2024 - 21:46
In reply to hypotheticals by cyberdandy
as the author of the original article said, "I believe Jewish people would be welcome to stay—those who are willing to live equally with the rest of the people on the land, without a racist system of segregation and privilege based on ethnicity."
i believe in the free movements of people without control or restriction by political borders, apartheid, or economic entrapment, limited by something like a principle of hospitality, which is to say just the immediate considerations that come into play between people when they enter into each other's spaces without the interposition of state forces. in such a palestine, which is a hypothetical to be sure, i have no doubt that jewish immigrants would be able to find welcome, as they did in the past when they came as refugees and not as capitalists or settlers. but following your strange math, should 2 million jewish people show up to post-revolutionary palestine "in the hopes of maintaining a majority," which is definitionally a political project, i would not blame the residents of this hypothetical palestine from rejecting that project on its premises. i would not welcome into my home a person whose objective was to maintain any political principle of control at all. so i reject both your bald-facedly zionist assertion that the entire diaspora would have an interest, or simply would, "return" to palestine, and i reject your softer "good faith" scenario in which "zionist american jews" took it upon themselves to do the same thing that's already happening.
for the record, i engaged initially because i thought your "15.3m" claim was absolutely ridiculous and ethnonationalist in character, and obscured statistics i simply wanted to state for anyone else who might be confused what the fuck you were talking about. i agree with anon that the author of the original article is stating as a fact and not a prescription that a liberated palestine would be majority palestinian, which is analytically important because clearly israel is aware of this and cannot tolerate it. as a matter of principle, i dont think it should matter which ethnicity is in the numerical majority or not, nor am i interested in an analysis that is based in managing population levels whether concretely or abstractly. but the only way for that not to matter is to dismantle or otherwise render defunct the state forces that do in fact, presently, orient themselves around who is in the majority or not, and that do in fact, presently, concern themselves with managing population levels both concretely and abstractly.
Cyberdandy and several other
anon (not verified) Thu, 10/03/2024 - 22:40
In reply to as the author of the original by alex (not verified)
Cyberdandy and several other Anews participants do not seem to understand the Mideast, nor the history of the Arabs, nor Persia, nor Islam.
What you have today are a bunch of arbitrary lines drawn on maps. Cliche, sure, but I cannot emphasize enough how true this is for the Muslim world. Arabs did not have a Western concept of the atomized subdivisionsof the global geopolitical order called nations, much in the same way many historically tribal and nomadic people did not. A nation in the Arab world before European colonization was basically groups of people of similar cultural traditions and preferences spread throughout, often tied to commercial and regional hubs. There were always "nationalities" in a very loose way, but strict borders never worked for Arabs due to the vastness of the wilderness and the problems closed borders pose for open trade. Those nationalities are not what we have on the map today, either. You can't really explain the way the Palestinian, Lebanese, and Syrian people are both distinct and all one easily through the Western cultural lense because these identities transcend the rules of Western nation-states.
this I agree with
cyberdandy Thu, 10/03/2024 - 23:10
In reply to Cyberdandy and several other by anon (not verified)
I agree with all of this? That's what makes pan-Arab Nationalism and other political movements difficult to understand. That's why I spent so much time talking about the Tanzimat and the way that nationalism was encouraged in reaction to Zionism and British colonial rule, but also by imperial powers that were interested in creating nation-states in the Middle East.
Hi, this is the anon from
anon (not verified) Fri, 10/04/2024 - 09:05
In reply to this I agree with by cyberdandy
Hi, this is the anon from before, I didn't intend on an inflammatory comment "title".
Yes, it's clear that you agree, and that you have attained the knowledge, but because of clear bias and a lack of particular sensitive detailing that any Arab indigenous to the region would have to say in any comment about this, you come across as having ulterior and unknown motives. The Israeli entity is a giant oil plantation that's been absolutely non-stop ethnically cleansing this region that's been key throughout history for technological, medical, scientific, trade, military, religion, etc. It's an American colony. " Israelis"are cracker-ass white as fuck Europeans. Imagine still calling white South Africans "Rhodesians". Land back. End of convo.
the title
cyberdandy Fri, 10/04/2024 - 09:47
In reply to Hi, this is the anon from by anon (not verified)
I'm not the anon who made a comment about the title.
> "Israelis"are cracker-ass
anon (not verified) Sun, 10/06/2024 - 21:24
In reply to Hi, this is the anon from by anon (not verified)
> "Israelis"are cracker-ass white as fuck Europeans"
Patently false. The ethno-demographics of Israel is way more complicated, and this bad take on Israelis justifies racist violence on some people who aren't even White.
He's correct a lot are not
f (not verified) Mon, 10/07/2024 - 13:22
In reply to > "Israelis"are cracker-ass by anon (not verified)
He's correct a lot are not 'white', (to my memory it's something like 40% of from MENA, + 20% from African and Asian Other countries). But it is still a white power structure, white money, and so on society. We see who still primarily holds power, whom the generals, MP's and big-time bourgeoisie are.
Regardless though, the brown ones are settlers too, let us not do this american nonsense of creating this silly idea of the 'innocent' 'non-white' imperialist stormtrooper scum.
The Nazi's had Italian volenteers!
anon has learned the lesson
anonymous (not verified) Fri, 10/04/2024 - 07:01
In reply to Cyberdandy and several other by anon (not verified)
anon has learned the lesson of the clickbait title
i'm the anon who made the
anonymous (not verified) Fri, 10/04/2024 - 10:11
In reply to anon has learned the lesson by anonymous (not verified)
i'm the anon who made the comment about the title, and anon who made the title is barely walking back a title that says "CD and others are wrong" and then doesn't say how they're wrong, and then says CD's not wrong, just comes across as whack.
tldr: i stand by the clickbait comment.
well we don't agree on interpretation
cyberdandy Thu, 10/03/2024 - 23:06
In reply to as the author of the original by alex (not verified)
When I re-read the two sentences together, the first part still impacts me more:
"We must be honest about what we’re saying. For example, in the debate about the phrase “from the river to sea,” about whether it means democracy or the abolition of Israel—the simple answer is that it means both. Decolonization on Palestinian conditions—the abolition of Zionism, the return of the refugees, the end of military rule, and equal civil rights—will mean that Palestine goes back to what it was before Zionist colonization, a majority Arab land. I believe Jewish people would be welcome to stay—those who are willing to live equally with the rest of the people on the land, without a racist system of segregation and privilege based on ethnicity."
When the author says "Jewish people would be welcome to stay" ...I think, "Welcome by who?!" and when I see it qualified as "those who are willing to live equally with the rest of the people on the land..." I read an admission that those who are not willing to live equally would somehow be forced out. So maybe I'm just getting triggered by language that I have seen other people use, including other anarchists, who explicitly believe in sending most of the Jews currently living in Israel to somewhere else because those Jews are considered settler-colonizers. And I'll admit, that is a form of bad faith which may not be warranted.
That said, as far as what YOU believe in, I have assumed that you are for the same things I am for when it comes to free movement and the rest. If this has come off otherwise, that hasn't been my intent. But when you say, "in such a palestine, which is a hypothetical to be sure, i have no doubt that jewish immigrants would be able to find welcome, as they did in the past when they came as refugees and not as capitalists or settlers." then here I disagree about the history. And it is this part of the history that is much of what I wrote about in my response. Jewish migrants were NOT welcome into Palestine in the past. Whether or not they were personally Zionists, their immigration - even as refugees - was considered part of the settler-colonial project of the Zionists. And this was one of the major situations that Emma Goldman was arguing with Reginald Reynolds about. The Arab nationalists were petitioning the Ottomans and then the British to end sales of lands to Jews and to stop the immigration of Jews. Whether or not those Jews were Zionists individually wasn't as important as the fact that their numbers were giving the Zionists more power. It didn't matter if they were going to go live in the cities with Palestinians or live on Kibbutz with Jews. Their immigration was itself considered a problem that needed to be stopped.
But then you go on to say, "should 2 million jewish people show up to post-revolutionary palestine "in the hopes of maintaining a majority," which is definitionally a political project, i would not blame the residents of this hypothetical palestine from rejecting that project on its premises. i would not welcome into my home a person whose objective was to maintain any political principle of control at all. " well... It's real clear here that you are imagining something much more ideal than I am when thinking of a "post-revolutionary Palestine". What I imagine is one of the various proposals of the replacement of Israel with some kind of bi-national or civic national state that would still be vulnerable to nationalist political projects. I'm not imagining the ideal post-revolutionary Palestine that an anarchist would hope to see. And in the proposed bi-naitonal or civic national state, which nationalist group is bigger will still have political consequences. A constitution with a bill of rights for all citizens could prevent some of the worse outcomes, but I assume that nationalists would still be motivated to increase their numbers and push for their own agendas. That's not something I advocate for, it's just what I think that would look like. So it seems like we're not thinking of the same scenarios and I believe that the scenarios I am thinking about are based on popular proposals by existing nationalist groups.
As far as my "bald facedly zionist assertion," I never said that the entire diaspora of either Jews or Palestinians would actually return and I clarified with my "softer 'good faith' scenario" why I thought it is worthwhile to consider a demographic race that would be encouraged by nationalists, even in a civic state with equal rights and the rest. Again, this isn't something that I'm advocating for. This is just my prediction about what Zionists would be trying to do if Israel or whatever replaced it was no longer an enthno-nationalist state.
Regarding " i agree with anon that the author of the original article is stating as a fact and not a prescription that a liberated palestine would be majority palestinian, which is analytically important because clearly israel is aware of this and cannot tolerate it."
Yes and part of what Israel does now already is try to get more Jews to migrate there. This is why I think there would still be attempts by Zionists to encourage diaspora Jews to migrate to Palestine even if Israel became a civic state.
And to try and wrap this up, I agree with you on this:
"as a matter of principle, i dont think it should matter which ethnicity is in the numerical majority or not, nor am i interested in an analysis that is based in managing population levels whether concretely or abstractly. but the only way for that not to matter is to dismantle or otherwise render defunct the state forces that do in fact, presently, orient themselves around who is in the majority or not, and that do in fact, presently, concern themselves with managing population levels both concretely and abstractly."
Well, I don't know how many others agree with us, but I have seen many anti-Zionists and anti-Colonialists advocate for a Palestinian state because it would be a state of the indigenous and not a settler-colonial state. And I have seen even those who think of themselves as anarchists making justifications for such a state because it would be based on a nationalism rooted in national liberation and not rooted in settler-colonialism, making it at least preferable. There are plenty of anarchists that won't "tell oppressed people how to struggle" and so on, who by that logic do not oppose Palestinian nationalism. And perhaps for you and perhaps for me it is clear that this is contradictory, but I don't think that it's so clear for a lot of others.
Ok - well if I'm wrong about what the author of the original piece actually advocates for, then I'm wrong. I reacted. I projected some shit onto their writings that I shouldn't have. I'll happily add an update to the beginning of my response explaining this if I decide that I fucked that up.
what's clear to me is that
alex (not verified) Fri, 10/04/2024 - 00:29
In reply to well we don't agree on interpretation by cyberdandy
what's clear to me is that nationalism as a positive project is limited, even or especially in the context of oppressed people, wherever its cross-class composition meets up with the security demands of its petit bourgeois elements or with the "progressive" demands of its bourgeois elements, including participation in imperialist or quasi-imperialist forces, as the author here puts it. i can recognize limits, or contradictions, if you prefer, like that without condemning the genuine movement that speaks through it out of necessity--from every quarter, even the same mouths of the ones ive identified as compromised, in my infinite wisdom. i imagine the task for people experiencing it directly is much more serious than that but regardless the point for me is to try to learn how possibility is being phrased and opened up and on whose terms. the general horizon of the resistance across all its axes not being mine is not disqualifying, just differentiating, and the author of the piece youre responding to makes it clear that there are plenty of critical perspectives at play within it. here is another, from lebanon, which in a distinct but similar way emphasizes the reality of supporting resistance groups in a context like this despite their many historical and theoretical compromises: https://www.hauntologies.net/p/hezbollah-10-things-you-need-to-know?utm…
Good read, thanks.
anon (not verified) Fri, 10/04/2024 - 08:37
In reply to what's clear to me is that by alex (not verified)
Good read, thanks.
I'll have to be trolling
anon (not verified) Thu, 10/03/2024 - 22:33
In reply to hypotheticals by cyberdandy
I'll have to be trolling again about that minor detail (that's maybe more.essential.than we.think), that we're still.talking here about a pre-Zionist, Pure Palestine. That never existed. Both ethno-national projects are founded on a bunch of bullshit historical assumptions and some pretty bad imperialist language. It has been taken for granted due to receives notions inculcated by the some Xian traditions and Islam, both religious movements with a heavy imperialist past.
Palestinians are an existing people, despite having been assimilated by the Arabic caliphates and Islam long ago. But the "Palestine", what is that? When was it?
Focusing on groups of people
anon (not verified) Thu, 10/03/2024 - 22:43
In reply to I'll have to be trolling by anon (not verified)
Focusing on groups of people with shared history and culture rather than just nations as the UN defines it is certainly key. Underlying this discussion is the glaring fact of human tribalism as something likely inalienable from human sociality.
...yet alienating to human sociality.
anon (not verified) Fri, 10/04/2024 - 08:24
In reply to Focusing on groups of people by anon (not verified)
Don't look into tribalism as any sort liberatory project, as it is all about subjuguation of the individual to the herd, its culture, its morality. The tribe is the primitive totalitarian order, where contemporary fascist regimes have been only trying to force mass societies back into this old tribal order.
This isn't true, at all.
anon (not verified) Fri, 10/04/2024 - 08:52
In reply to ...yet alienating to human sociality. by anon (not verified)
This isn't true, at all. There's nothing worse than bourgeois democratic individualism. There was a healthy individualism present in many, if not most extinct and extant tribal societies. When you listen to tribal people, hunters, gatherers, pastoralists, the recently contacted, one theme is present through many cultures, although not all: the absence of other-control. These societies are more often than not based on enkrateia, self-control, and therefore foster an incredibly robust tribal individualism wherein not just Homo sapiens but all other people are granted a uniqueness and respect for that uniqueness.
hmmm, i think i see it, the
lumpy (not verified) Fri, 10/04/2024 - 08:47
hmmm, i think i see it, the magic bean of the "right of return" that haunts cyberdandy's thinking about all of this
i appreciate how this thoughtful person has been showing his work when he does his "ethical math" or shows his whole ass or however you'd prefer to read it. hits on something very interesting when he's responding to a comment about whether it's in "bad faith" or an "absurd strawman" about moving millions of people around the world like little chess pieces
there's a fascinating transformation there, from a seemingly laudable good intention that people deserve to be safe and have a home, in to a powerful rationalization for terrible things, fuel for the death machine, the misdirect for the cult leaders to ply their trade on scared and traumatized people...
this isn’t magic
cyberdandy Fri, 10/04/2024 - 09:01
In reply to hmmm, i think i see it, the by lumpy (not verified)
I don’t know what is so confusing about what I said to the people commenting here. If someone is an anti-Zionist and they are calling for a right of return for Palestinian refugees and then they assume that a result of that being implemented would be that the region would be majority Arab it seems to me like they aren’t considering that other people who aren’t Arab might move there too. This is barely even something I think about it just seems like an obvious oversight in predicting how something would turn out. I don’t even want a state that could grant a right of return so this whole thing is a fucking stupid conversation. The basic problem I have with the logic is like when liberals are telling people who usually don’t vote that they should vote, assuming that those people are going to vote liberal.Basically, I am just saying there’s a little bit of projection and how more freedom in the area would result in more of an air population instead of maybe resulting in more of a Jewish population too.
i didn't say i was confused .
lumpy (not verified) Fri, 10/04/2024 - 09:12
In reply to this isn’t magic by cyberdandy
i didn't say i was confused ... i said there's a strange thing happening in your thinking around this hypothetical, which you yourself seemed to acknowledge elsewhere.
for example, galloping past the large distinction between displaced people returning to where they were forced from in living memory, as compared to something far more abstract, like hypothetical free movement of everybody after the abolition of a modern nation state
lumpy I don’t understand
cyberdandy Fri, 10/04/2024 - 09:18
In reply to i didn't say i was confused . by lumpy (not verified)
sorry, I just really don’t know what you are trying to say. I am saying that when I look at what the most popular proposals are for a one state solution that includes a right of return for Palestinian refugees. My conclusion is not that it would result in a majority Arab state. The reason why I don’t think it would result in that is because Zionists already try to encourage Jews to migrate to Palestine, and I believe that they would ramp up those efforts even further if one of these one state solutions were to go into effect and make Israel or whatever you wind up, calling it a civic state. The whole point of me pointing towards the global population statistics for both Jews, and Palestinians was merely to indicate that they roughly have an equal chance of becoming a major majority in the area given different motivations and different variables. In other words, there is not an American cap on how many of each group could for whatever reason wind up moving to the regionand they are roughly equal in size.
voice to text
cyberdandy Fri, 10/04/2024 - 09:20
In reply to lumpy I don’t understand by cyberdandy
some serious voice to text errors in the above. I don’t know what an American cap is but I probably don’t like it.
yes, i understand your point
lumpy (not verified) Fri, 10/04/2024 - 09:25
In reply to lumpy I don’t understand by cyberdandy
yes, i understand your point and earlier in another comment, someone else referred to this as an "absurd strawman" and i tended to agree with them and their reasons
BUT then i thought, what is motivating cyberdandy, a clearly thoughtful person, to pick up the goalposts and start running all over the field like that? anyway, i can only guess about your blindspots in your own thinking
put another way, i don't think the framing of your thought experiment about hypothetical majorities has much merit
can you explain why?
cyberdandy Fri, 10/04/2024 - 09:36
In reply to yes, i understand your point by lumpy (not verified)
Can you explain why you think it's an absurd strawman or why the thought experiment about majorities doesn't have much merit? How would this post-revolutionary Palestine become majority Arab? What are the conditions that would make that happen? If I have a blindspot on this, it's because there is a big black box that no one can see into here.
there's probaby 1000 reasons
lumpy (not verified) Fri, 10/04/2024 - 09:48
In reply to can you explain why? by cyberdandy
there's probaby 1000 reasons but my knee-jerk, feelings-based reason would be it feels incredibly crass to be speculating about this utopian nonsense in the context of the ongoing genocide?
like, if i compared this to my own context, where i'm indigenous (however fraught that concept may be) and somebody (like you) who is in my view, flirting with genocide apologia when they talk about some hypothetical future version of aggressive zionist immigration programs that would be "ramped up" to hold on to an ethnic majority for demographic reasons ... this is after the bloodshed has theoretically stopped i guess? but engineering demographics like that? still genocide bro. genocide by other means only. not that i thought you're advocating for this stuff, you're just stating it would be likely, i think?
anyway, it's all quite grim and insulting and if i were you, i might set down that particular turd of a thought experiment and back away from it but hey, you asked my opinion!
happy to put down the turd
cyberdandy Fri, 10/04/2024 - 10:04
In reply to there's probaby 1000 reasons by lumpy (not verified)
Well I don't really think the thought experiment is much of a gem either and yes, I'm asking for your opinion because I'm trying to understand what you're telling me.
This is the fucking issue:
When the author of the original piece that Crimethinc published says that we anarchists "must be honest about what we're saying" and their example of that honesty is to say that "Palestine goes back to what it was before Zionist colonization, a majority Arab land.” To me, that opens up room for asking "why would it go back to being a majority Arab land?"
Who the fuck in this is proposing utopian nonsense? In the real context of Israel-Palestine and with the real proposals that have people dying for them, I think it is very fucking fair to interrogate what those real proposals are, what being honest means, what process is actually being suggested for reaching this condition of Palestine going back to the demographics it was before Zionist colonization.
Then I get responses from people saying that the author doesn't mean Jews would become the minority they were before Zionist colonization and other responses accusing me of coming up with "weird hypotheticals". They're not weird hypotheticals. They're based on the behavior Zionists have already demonstrated and on the calls that many activists have been making for Jews that migrated from European countries to "go back to Poland" and shit.
ok cool! well there's some
lumpy (not verified) Fri, 10/04/2024 - 10:09
In reply to happy to put down the turd by cyberdandy
ok cool! well there's some good news too!
we're anarchists so we don't need to answer for oops-didn't-mean-to structural genocide because we started from the assumption that nationalism and statecraft can't be justified
that's the news I like to hear
cyberdandy Fri, 10/04/2024 - 10:18
In reply to ok cool! well there's some by lumpy (not verified)
till next time lumpy! till next time.
"why would it go back to
Yourname (not verified) Sun, 10/06/2024 - 17:36
In reply to happy to put down the turd by cyberdandy
"why would it go back to being a majority Arab land?"
Maybe because there are some three million Palestinian refugees just in neighboring Arab countries alone and because other Arabs could move there too? When you don't start with Zionists assumptions you don't have to arrive at Zionist conclusions.
Anarchy doesn't mean everyone doing whatever they want inside of other peoples' homes. It means wanting what you can do when you respect the freedom of others as much as your own.
Anarcolonialism strikes again!
anon (not verified) Fri, 10/04/2024 - 08:59
While I did roll my eyes a bit at the circumstances of CrimethInc. finally publishing something supporting the right of Palestinians to resist—a year after October 7, by an Israeli—can't deny the utility of the piece finally drawing pro-colonial anarchism into the open.
"What anarchists condemn when they review the history of colonialism is not the mere migration of people from here to there. What we condemn is the displacement, exploitation, domination, and extermination of those who were living somewhere prior to the colonial project. The creation of colonies isn’t itself condemnable. It is the use of colonies for the establishment of an imperial outpost that we are against. A colony created by artists or back-to-the-landers isn’t itself a bad thing and as anarchists, we are often advocating explicitly for the creation of our own colonies. We have in fact called our own past projects “colonies,” such as the Ferrer Colony in Stelton or the Home Colony in Seattle."
This paragraph only makes sense if you take for granted that "A colony created by artists or back-to-the-landers" or the Ferrer & Home colonies were not part of "the displacement, exploitation, domination, and extermination of those who were living somewhere prior to the colonial project." The historical record in Palestine, U.S.-occupied Coast Salish territories, & elsewhere doesn't bear this out; the overwhelming white population of these colonies & their long-term [re]integration into colonial societies, including the genocidal state structures, is the best evidence we have of where their collective loyalties ultimately lay, even if they included individuals or periods of time where their conflicts with the colonial power opened the possibility of aligning with the indigenous. If communities of migrants aren't assisting or carrying out projects of domination & exploitation against those who were already there, then there's no reason to refer to their communities as colonies.
except…
cyberdandy Fri, 10/04/2024 - 09:04
In reply to Anarcolonialism strikes again! by anon (not verified)
except the term colony was not used in a strict, cultural studies, sense, and had a colloquial meaning that was much less triggering when these people were using it so yes, it doesn’t make sense for us to call something a colony when it is not colonial, but the reverse is not true when we see that people in the past use the term colony that doesn’t mean that they themselves thought of their project as part of a colonial project. That’s even true if they incidentally wind up, failing to smash the colonial state that they are saying they are against.
Fake exceptions
anon (not verified) Fri, 10/04/2024 - 09:32
In reply to except… by cyberdandy
You seem to be responding to a lot of things I didn't actually say.
"except the term colony was not used in a strict, cultural studies, sense"
I did not claim it was used in such a sense.
"and had a colloquial meaning that was much less triggering when these people were using it"
Triggering to…?
"when we see that people in the past use the term colony that doesn’t mean that they themselves thought of their project as part of a colonial project."
I did not assert this & don't believe this. In fact, I believe that for large swaths of colonizing populations their self-perception as colonizers is wildly & notoriously inaccurate.
"That’s even true if they incidentally wind up, failing to smash the colonial state that they are saying they are against."
I did not make any claims about their "failing to smash the colonial state" being the proof that they were never anti-colonial to begin with. I'd go as far as to say most struggles against colonial states could rightly be considered failures.
Re Fake exceptions
cyberdandy Fri, 10/04/2024 - 09:39
In reply to Fake exceptions by anon (not verified)
I'm responding to this sentence you wrote, "If communities of migrants aren't assisting or carrying out projects of domination & exploitation against those who were already there, then there's no reason to refer to their communities as colonies."
Especially, "then there's no reason to refer to their communities as colonies."
Hope that clarifies my response.
With the context of the other
anon (not verified) Fri, 10/04/2024 - 13:57
In reply to Re Fake exceptions by cyberdandy
With the context of the other branch of this thread, I guess I see why you think my concern might have mostly been semantic. I am critiquing/discussing the examples you brought up as communities which extend an oppressive racial & imperial order, despite/because of (depends on your perspective) their professed politics. If there's a less confusing word to use for that than "colonies" (presumably because of its intentional use by the colonists at times) you can fill it in in your head.
more regarding anarchist colonies or whatever
cyberdandy Fri, 10/04/2024 - 09:26
In reply to Anarcolonialism strikes again! by anon (not verified)
Anyway, I thought I was addressing exactly what you are saying here with the paragraph that followed the one you pasted:
"There is an argument that can be made that even these anarchist projects are guilty of profiting from the theft of indigenous lands and that they strengthen instead of harm empires. In the context of Israel-Palestine, such arguments are made often about the most egalitarian of Kibbutzim. This is true and it can not be denied. But the intentions matter of the residents who create such colonies, communes, or whatever you want to call intentional communities engaged in collective production. Should the power of the State that rules a territory shatter and should those indigenous peoples who have been dominated by that state gain full control of the regions they live, it will matter whose side various groups of settlers take."
Emphasis on "This is true and it can not be denied."
This is more or less okay,
anon (not verified) Fri, 10/04/2024 - 10:09
In reply to more regarding anarchist colonies or whatever by cyberdandy
This is more or less okay, but I read your reference to the anarchist colonies in the Coast Salish territories as a claim that they weren't bad (meaning, weren't advancing colonial domination) colonies—as evidence that colonies could be fine or even good. Is that wrong?
More or less wrong
cyberdandy Fri, 10/04/2024 - 10:17
In reply to This is more or less okay, by anon (not verified)
I'm saying that we shouldn't get too hung up on the use of the word "colony" when we talk about some of these old anarchist projects. I'm also saying that it is true that even with anti-imperial/anti-colonial intentions, these groups of settlers can still inadvertently advance the larger, state projects of re-populating regions once populated with indigenous people with new populations that would be more amenable to the state's project. And finally, I'm saying that it's still better to have anti-imperial/anti-colonial settlers who could become allies against the colonial state than to stop forming intentional communities. Maybe the shorter way of saying this would be, "anarchists should still create communes, but they should really try to figure out how to prevent those communes from serving the interests of the colonial state".
^completely agree with this
lumpy (not verified) Fri, 10/04/2024 - 10:28
In reply to More or less wrong by cyberdandy
^completely agree with this
there's an unfortunate trend in the PNW of what i would characterize as purity politics leading to anarchists seeming to argue that land projects by broke-ass anarchists can never be justified because it's "colonial"
i don't agree, to say the least and furthermore, it almost always plays out as lateral hostility between different groups of poor people and worst of all, injects more racism in to a perceived conflict where there wasn't any intentional racism to begin with
Hmm
anon (not verified) Fri, 10/04/2024 - 13:38
In reply to More or less wrong by cyberdandy
"I'm saying that we shouldn't get too hung up on the use of the word "colony" when we talk about some of these old anarchist projects."
Okay, I'm not hung up on the word, though I do think it's interesting in those well-known anarchist cases that it was used accurately. The point is that they were colonies (or extensions of a larger colony), largely because of their racial & cultural character, not that they had "colony" in the name.
"anarchists should still create communes, but they should really try to figure out how to prevent those communes from serving the interests of the colonial state".
I don't think this would be so contentious if anarchists weren't presumed to be part of the colonial culture in the first place. To give concrete examples, I think this might be a bigger problem for Israeli anarchists than Palestinian anarchists, Canadian anarchists rather than Wetʼsuwetʼen anarchists, etc.
This is a conversation that
anon (not verified) Sat, 10/05/2024 - 02:01
In reply to Hmm by anon (not verified)
This is a conversation that demands the participation of people who are surviving the immediate affects colonialism. Those people are very often not present for these discussions. One reason is tonedeaf shit like having a casual convo about why the word colony or colonist doesn't hurt your feelings. This isn't about your feelings, white Americans. This is about the feelings of those you enslaved and conquered.
... or maybe, you're assuming
lumpy (not verified) Sat, 10/05/2024 - 10:54
In reply to This is a conversation that by anon (not verified)
... or maybe, you're assuming things about the participants of the conversation, who you can't see and regardless, aren't entitled to verify whether their identities meet with your approval anyway. your sanctimony is noted, i'll toss it on the massive pile of purity politics over here
The word "colony"
cyberdandy Sat, 10/05/2024 - 11:56
In reply to ... or maybe, you're assuming by lumpy (not verified)
Look. I'm a Jew. I've been seeing the word "holocaust" used a lot lately in the most casual contexts there are, such as calling Kamala Harris by "Holocaust Harris". So if someone tells me that they are offended by words that relate to their own family's suffering, I care and respect that.
However, that is not what is happening here. We are not casually throwing around the word "colony" and are formally discussing what the word means in different contexts. Yes, it would be helpful to note that it has negative connotations for people who have suffered from colonialism. But the goal of the discussion is to figure out if people in the past were all using that word to mean the same thing. It is about as formal as one can get.
The words "colony" and "colonization" don't always refer to the same things. However, there is gray areas and that is what we're trying to figure out. Were the anarchists that created Home and the Stelton group using the word "colony" the way that it was used by colonial empires? What about the Jewish Colonisation Association? A non-Zionist group that was looking all over the world for places where refugee Jews could migrate to. That seems closer to the way European empires used the word, but comparisons are still worth making. Are terms like "ant colony" or "bacterial colony" related to European colonialism and if so, in what way and in what order? Which usage came first?
These are formal, etymological questions that can be investigated formally.
If we really want to understand what it is that people actually mean with the words they used, this is the kind of questioning that needs to happen.
Furthermore, I don't like to be called "white". I wasn't raised to understand myself as "white" and it's been an identity I feel is forced on me by others. It pisses me off to get called "white" and I've learned to just shut my mouth about it. My feelings don't change about it no matter how much I understand "white privilege" and what it is to be "white passing" and various things that go along with it. In a logical way, it seems like I should just accept that I am "white". But it isn't a logical thing. Throughout my life I have associated "white" with the people who are against me as a Jew. So it's never going to feel good to be called "white" for me.
So anyway, I find it fucking absurd that the same people calling me "white" are trying to lecture on the way that terms like "colony" can be hurtful and even mischaracterizing the conversation as "casual" to make it seem like I'm being even more insensitive.
not to mention, we started
lumpy (not verified) Sat, 10/05/2024 - 13:19
In reply to The word "colony" by cyberdandy
not to mention, we started off here by having what seemed like a fairly significant disagreement about genocide but i think maybe we resolved it, to my satisfaction anyway
so... to read all that and see - two white boys have a chuckle, decide colonialism is based - .... like, wtf?!
just sincerely hope they're trolling
anarchists should still create communes
cyberdandy Sat, 10/05/2024 - 14:12
In reply to Hmm by anon (not verified)
“ I don't think this would be so contentious if anarchists weren't presumed to be part of the colonial culture in the first place. To give concrete examples, I think this might be a bigger problem for Israeli anarchists than Palestinian anarchists, Canadian anarchists rather than Wetʼsuwetʼen anarchists, etc.”
Well how do we deal with the presumptions then? Do we need to make projects like Indigenous Action Media and the Táala Hooghan infoshop more visible so that internet critics can see that it’s not just settler anarchists doing things? Are we failing to change what people think of when they think “anarchist” by repeating the stereotypes over and over again that they are all white settlers?
I think there's been a lot of
GEF (not verified) Sun, 10/06/2024 - 08:49
In reply to anarchists should still create communes by cyberdandy
I think there's been a lot of the usual mundane semantical wiggling happening in this comment section, as what makes colonization comes down to two pretty simple indicators (IMO):
- you took the land where people lived before, without asking for their agreement or consent. That applies to the assumed consent of non-human animals living in a natural habitat, as you'll obviously be just displacing them... like previous colonizers have displaced native humans away.
- regardless of the land was vacant or not, you're privatizing an abstract space for yourself, your family, tribe, clan, religion, kingdom, coop... and, yes, commune. So you claim EXCLUSIVITY to it. Colonization doesn't share power; it's meant to give bits of "freedom" to whatever loyal members or servants or your domain, formal or NOT.
Settling only makes you a settler (a sedentary inhabitant of a space), but settler doesn't mean a colonizer by default! A tenant isn't the fucking King of the UK, neither are landless peasants, migrant workers, etc. How to make more obvious? If some idiots aren't making such an easy distinction well the fault is on them... not on anarchists trying to build spaces of free living for themselves. As far as there's an abolition of property, so that not only a commune isn't tied to an abstract defined space but also not claiming monopoly, exclusivity over it, there's no shame or reasons for concerns here.
THO, I've seen quite a few anarcho-left collectives ironically doing just that, with squats and some land projects... perhaps the same crowd talking about Decolonization, who knows.
Who knows?
quotes M Gouldhawke: I
anon (not verified) Sun, 10/06/2024 - 10:07
quotes M Gouldhawke: I immediately stop reading and cannot take the author seriously.
The article doesn't even
anon (not verified) Sun, 10/06/2024 - 13:24
In reply to quotes M Gouldhawke: I by anon (not verified)
The article doesn't even quote him, just mentions him. Big brain hours on Anarchy Planet, as usual.
There's a genocide happening
anon (not verified) Sun, 10/06/2024 - 18:12
There's a genocide happening right now. Total destruction and ethnic cleansing. But let's debate the semantics of the world colonist!
18:12 -- there's fucked up shti happening
anonymous (not verified) Sun, 10/06/2024 - 21:25
In reply to There's a genocide happening by anon (not verified)
let's go try to fix it without really understanding what it is!
Do you so firmly believe
anon (not verified) Sun, 10/06/2024 - 21:35
In reply to There's a genocide happening by anon (not verified)
Do you so firmly believe there's something we can do against that?
Like protesting for a nationalist cause? Sending more funds to Hamas via college charity proxies? What *else* would that be?
Yeah, yep...stopping the
anon (not verified) Mon, 10/07/2024 - 04:23
In reply to Do you so firmly believe by anon (not verified)
Yeah, yep...stopping the death of between 42,000-186,000+ civilians is nationalism and requires a PhD.
Again, what do you suggest?
anon (not verified) Mon, 10/07/2024 - 10:33
In reply to Yeah, yep...stopping the by anon (not verified)
Again, what do you suggest? Attack synanogues, random Jewish people, or.start a protest encampment at the entrance of thr Aushwitz memorial?
Srsly we could do peace marches, that would have better effects than these protests brandishing the Kingdom of Hejaz flag and run by sus pseudo-Leftists.
wtf ...are you playing dog
lumpy (not verified) Mon, 10/07/2024 - 19:11
In reply to Again, what do you suggest? by anon (not verified)
wtf ...are you playing dog-whistle bingo every time you try to think of a hypothetical?
Ok then let's rewind to the
anon (not verified) Mon, 10/07/2024 - 20:43
In reply to wtf ...are you playing dog by lumpy (not verified)
Ok then let's rewind to the first question and ignore the straw men ones. I wanna save Gaza from genocide. How can I make a difference about it, without making myself a pawn of some spooky group?
Add new comment