From Rebelión By Bahram Ghadimi, Shekufeh Mohammadi | 07/17/2023 Machine translated from Spanish to English. All the links from the original source are originally in English.

At the invitation of the colleagues from Slovenia we went to visit this book fair that has been held since 2003 in the territories known as the Balkans (Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Greece, Slovenia and Romania).

This fair has been since its inception a space for dialogue for anarchist and anti-authoritarian groups. The anarchists who, during the war that the nationalist rulers waged, including the NATO-sponsored war, against the peoples of Yugoslavia, had not fallen into the trap of nationalism, soon after the end of the conflict created this space to rebuild human relations. among the people of the Balkans.

For us who traveled there from outside the Balkans, the friendly atmosphere of the fair was notorious, as a utopian space advent in which human beings could relate beyond the structures imposed by capitalism. The fair had more than 600 participants whom the organizers supported with free lodging (for the majority) and three meals a day during the event. The participants, very diverse in terms of their age and sex, collaborated in turns and voluntarily in preparing meals and cleaning the premises.

Another notable point was the organizers' insistence on avoiding at all times animate behavior between people of different ideas, especially in relation to the war between Russia and Ukraine/NATO. Among the guidelines of the enclosure stood out the refusal to make any prowar propaganda.

All the days of the event were well organized so that each day from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., there were 4 blocks of two-hour discussion sessions and in each block up to three parallel sessions were held in separate rooms so that the participants could decide which one to attend. go. At 8:00 p.m. there was an assembly of participants and at 10:00 p.m., concerts. On Saturday, July 8 at 9:00 p.m., a march left the event venue with the participation of some 800 people. It was a jubilant, colorful march through the old part of the city. Some interesting slogans were: “In Balkans, in Russia, and Ukraine, the enemy is the capital and the state”, “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi”, “No NATO, No War, Leave us in Peace”, “Brick by brick , wall by wall, make the Fortress Europe fall”, “Passion for Freedom is stronger than your Prison”.

The place where the tables with books were located was the large main room of the compound. There participated dozens of independent publishers of anarchist and libertarian groups with books, magazines, posters and works of art. The fair was open every day from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.

At the Balkan Solidarity Network assembly (open to all participants) it was decided that the next book fair would be in Prishtina (Kosovo) in 2024.

Next, we share what we heard in the sessions that we were able to take part in.

1. Prison, identity, solidarity:

Imprisonment is for Burning, A Story About The Defence of a Forest and A Case for Dis-identification

A colleague, a former political prisoner in Germany, involved in the occupation of a forest (Dannenröder Forst) in Hessen and accused of “trying to kill” a policeman, spoke of her experience in prison. She refused to reveal her identification during her arrest and it was for this that she was held in “provisional” prison for a year and a half. Her talk was focused on how not identifying oneself challenges police and state control, how one must prepare beforehand to disidentify oneself (agree with colleagues) and recognize their own limits. But he also spoke about his most personal experience inside the prison, about how in his opinion the worlds outside and inside the prison are similar in that they are limited, lonely and sad spaces where people are forced to do certain things for the fear of punishment and the hope of a reward. According to her, prisons are a state control apparatus where nobody reforms or learns anything and that they should cease to exist completely. She argues that all prisoners are in some sense political because they are the result of a sick and corrupt system. He is of the opinion that, within the framework of the laws, crimes and punishments do not have a natural and consequential relationship and he wants a world in which the social fabric of solidarity can prevent crimes and that in some way the causes that force people to commit a crime detrimental act can be eliminated.

In the questions, she talked about how dis-identifying is a luxury that citizens of certain countries can afford and that for migrants and refugees the issue is very different. She spoke about the need to de-romantize the prison and how support for political prisoners builds solidarity networks outside prisons and unites the people who participate in them.

2. Experiences from Chile:

Revolts, Popular Power and anarchist proposals for our present and future

The comrades talked about their experiences as anarchists during the 2019 protests in Chile. They explained the context, the events and the consequences and results of the uprising. They analyzed their own mistakes and proposed some lines of action to improve their active social and political participation.

Call attention during protests:

⁃ The collective jubilation, feeling that extraordinary times are being lived, hope for radical changes.

⁃ The idea of disbanding the police as a real possibility raised by people.

⁃ Understand more clearly that there are differences between legality and legitimacy, that not everything legal is legitimate and vice versa, and that the second must be superimposed on the first.

⁃ Symbolic identification of the unruly with stray dogs, due to the idea of being helpless, of coming from a “mixed” and not pure origin. Beyond its other dimensions, this symbolism seems interesting to us because it shows a certain degree of humility, the ability to get out of anthropocentric thought.

Among the causes of the current decline of the movement were: fatigue (due to the long months of being present in the streets), the atmosphere at the end of the year, the pandemic that politicians took advantage of to weaken the movement: the preparation of a supposed agreement of peace, the release of prisoners to show commitment to this agreement, the use of the process of changing the constitution as the continuation and result of the movement, promoting the presidential elections in which the elected party with its liberal ecofeminist president he appropriated the protests to turn it into state propaganda: he used Tiktok to reach younger generations, proposed another state constitutional process to attract the votes of many anti-fascist groups and revalidated the police.

The lessons for the group were:

⁃ The need to consolidate something with the energy of the revolts

⁃ Being of the people and working with them beyond theoretical and political differences, not being arrogant, not hiding

⁃ Create spaces for discussion of alternatives

⁃ Be aware that we are a powerful enemy when we organize ourselves and that at all times, we must know the value of popular power, since all power accumulates over time and changes hands: it is a matter of directing the energy and not destroying it

⁃ Remove from the State the power to manage life (production and reproduction), not instrumentalize popular power, bet on democratic confederalism, have the ability to defend what has been won

⁃ Recognize our contradictions and know that the point we all have in common is that nobody helps us if we don't help ourselves

⁃ Go beyond the spontaneity of affinity with movements.

⁃ Start building now what we imagine for tomorrow: in our individual and social spaces (prefigurative politics). Some points to focus on would be: education, housing, social, free and popular anarchist spaces, participating as an anarchist in other non-anarchist mobilizations

The comrades (from the Valparaíso Anarchist Assembly) at the end shared their experience of working in the neighborhoods of Valparaíso and the spaces they are building there after the protests.

3. Nationalisms in the Balkans:

Anti-authoritarian perspectives on balkan nationalisms: national divisions of the balkan wars, 1st world war and greek-turkish war. Antinational/antimilitaristic/ antipatriarchal struggles on the balkan peninsula, then and now

The comrades proposed that all nationalisms are similar and allied to each other and that their creation in the Balkans did not have much to do with the war in Yugoslavia; they all pursue similar economic and political interests and justify their expansionism with the same excuse: that of freeing "our brothers" outside our borders, repressed by other nations.

4. 2020 protests in Belarus and the war in Ukraine:

ABC-Belarus talk on repressions in Belarus and current resistance to the regime

The speakers first spoke about the very hostile conditions of repression and political prisoners in Belarus, the weakness of spontaneous social organizations (organizations of social groups: women, the elderly, students, workers (strikes), spontaneous neighborhood assemblies in places public, chat, meals, marches in different neighborhoods at the same time, access to police personal data to attack them, etc.) and the lack of any possibility of immune resistance to the repression (peaceful marches without result, after the repression they close public spaces where people could meet and meet (NGOs, cafes, bookstores,...), closure of all independent media and persecution of those who read or share their content, criminalization of solidarity, laws that punish not only opposition organizations but to their followers and to those who support or reproduce the content created by them, expatriation of opponents, etc.). They pointed out that the fact that Russia and Belarus are not the same state is convenient for both, since Belarus functions as Russia's laboratory, and that, by law, if the president dies, a junta of military and intelligence forces takes power. .

Later, they proposed that under these conditions the only way out for the anarchist groups was to enter the Ukrainian army as a military unit and fight against Russia, since a regime change in Russia would mean a regime change in Belarus that could guarantee the democratic rights of the citizens. It seemed that the speakers knew little or nothing about the repression in other countries of the world or were not interested, since they wanted to affirm that the conditions of Belarus are exceptional and in the face of loss of hope, the only way to free themselves is the one that NATO proposes to through the war. That is to say that his gaze was fixed on the ruling powers and not on the peoples who struggle.

In the questions and comments they were told that entering the war would not be the solution and would be against the principles of anarchism. The speakers tried to argue that “white Europeans, comfortably sheltered in their safe NATO-created castles” do not understand conditions in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine and have no right to talk about boycotting the war. A colleague talked about how his group had boycotted the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) the very day it started, believing that wars between nation-states belong to the powerful and the real battle in which the The people must participate, it is only the class war: national wars strengthen the wealthy and oppressive classes and substitute one for the other without changing the living conditions of the people for the better. The speakers completely ignored this argument and only responded that NATO has saved the Europeans, including the Balkan countries, thus ignoring the NATO-led killings during the war against Yugoslavia.

5. The Balkans against the war:

Balkan Anarchists against War

The comrades from different Balkan countries (Kosovo, Serbia, Greece, Croatia, Slovenia) spoke about their anti-war position, also in relation to the current war in Ukraine. They started by saying that even during the Yugoslav war, they had boycotted the war and stood in solidarity with their comrades in the other countries of Yugoslavia. They pointed out that currently, nationalisms and religion in the Balkans are the points that unite the capitalists. They gave as an example the constant threat of war between Greece and Turkey, which is not carried out and serves to feed the repression of the peoples mutually through nationalisms that make propaganda for people to unite against a supposed "external" threat, coming from wherever it comes from, and open the way to capitalism. Propaganda that made, for example, all parties in Greece support the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

The comrades argued that war is a permanent state of capitalism and that capitalism expands thanks to war and takes control of people's lives through it to destroy social movements. They affirmed that the sanctions harm the population and not the governments, they are a form of war and militarism. They pointed out that the absence of war does not mean peace, since many times the peace of a country is achieved thanks to wars in other countries and that peace under capitalism means only a lack of resistance, since the undeclared war of the ruling class against the working class is always happening. No nation identifies with humanity; nation-states invite the oppressed to unite with their oppressors under the rules of the latter. They talked about the concept of "Proxy war" that applies to what is happening between Russia and Ukraine: war between the imperial powers of the East and the West on Ukrainian territory. In this regard, they made the following proposals:

– Understand the nature of war

– Reject and resist all manifestations of capitalism: nationalism, racism, exclusions, militarism, patriarchy, etc.

– The naturalization and normalization of war makes it possible; we have to stop the war before the shooting starts

– Reject the preference of some migrants over others, arms production, any war propaganda, solution of more war to stop the war (which takes power and importance away from popular movements), seek alliances

– Organize an international movement against the death machine; whether civilian or armed. Start fighting capitalism from the countries of each one and not at a geopolitical level

– The world is not black and white and bipolar; Other proposals have to be built.

– Do not speak for the people. Not differentiating small and large forces

– The end of the war is not achieved at the hands of anarchists but at the hands of people. Create conditions for this to happen

– Our main war is against the ruling class in our countries

– You cannot fight the military structure from within the army

– Not to any army! Yes to the popular and autonomous organization, revolts...

6. Experiences in Zapatista communities:

Struggle for life and autonomy in Chiapas: notes from a journey to the Zapatista communities

The comrades began with an introduction to the history of Zapatismo and explained in a general way how Zapatista autonomy works in different aspects, emphasizing three pillars: education, health, and territory. They then shared what they had experienced during their three-week stay in different Zapatista communities on a trip initiated by the Zapatistas' Journey for Life in Europe and the networks created in connection with it. A trip made by 10 colleagues from Germany, mostly young women, active in this country.

The comrades emphasized that Zapatismo has improved the life of the communities in many ways, it has made them more independent, it has given them access to services that were previously inaccessible, and it has reinforced in them the spirit of struggle for a self-governing territory.

They commented that one of the things that had inspired them the most was the quality of human relations in the communities, the fact that the Zapatista struggle is very directly linked to the daily life of the people, and that the communities found it very strange. and unfortunate that the compañeros did not have a land to work and that they lived in spaces very alien to themselves.

7. Russia, repression and popular organization:

The transformation of Russia’s political regime under the conditions of war – the impact on practices of self-organisation

The comrades talked about the repression in Russia and the ways in which anarchists resist them. They stated that Russia seems to be testing its methods of repression in Belarus, which with the start of the war against Ukraine has been steadily increasing. They talked about how other forms of protest, for example, because of economic conditions, are still allowed in Russia, as long as the war is not discussed, and this makes it possible for them to organize resistance groups against the state that have supported deserters from the army (trying to flee to countries like Turkey and Greece, among others), acts of sabotage (for example, the destruction of railway tracks used for military transport), etc. The comrades said that Russia's economic conditions have not yet catastrophically worsened by the war and that many of those who lose their jobs may find another in the military and arms industry. They claimed that the war economy is still largely under state control and that Russian oligarchs do not play a very important role in the country's economy. The comrades were of the opinion that in war conditions the solution is popular organization, despite the fact that state repression and its pro-war propaganda are very strong.

In the discussion they were asked if the Shanghai Pact had left visible traces in the Russian economy and the comrades replied that it has not yet been implemented.

Rebelión has published this article with the permission of the authors under a Creative Commons license, respecting their freedom to publish it in other sources.

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