Rojava and Nationalism

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"In 2016 RedStarCommando wrote the following:

Since then the Kurdish proto state has been ever more drawn into the logic of capitalist realpolitic, acting as willing proxy for Russian, American and Assadist interests. Despite their willingness to prostitute their ‘revolution’ they have found themselves betrayed on all sides.

An island of Socialism cannot survive within a Capitalist world.

“Amid the horror of the Syrian civil war/ revolution it seemed that there was one shining beacon of hope; in the far North Kurdish militants inspired by the political thought of imprisoned PKK leader abdullah Ocalan, had swept the Assadist butchers out of most of the Kurdish regions and were combatting and defeating the seemingly unstoppable Islamic State (Daesh).

The nature of the new regime being created under the protection of the YPG/PYG was greatly attractive to leftists and anarchists.

Ocalan in prison had been influenced by the writing of Murray Bookchin and other anarchist inspired writers and this had shifted the PKK and its allied Kurdish parties away from a rigid and military Stalinism towards a polity which stressed mutualism/ participatory democracy.

The vision of this communitarian experiment becoming flesh in the villages and towns of Syrian Kurdistan in the teeth of Islamist obscurantism and Turkish militarist assault galvanised solidarity,and even recruits, to embattled Rojava from across the world.

At the time voices urging a certain caution tended to be drowned out or were silenced by the sheer enormity and barbarity of the opposition that the Kurdish forces faced.

For socialists, as long as Capitalism exists as a world system, there can be no islands of socialism. No matter what the wishes or intentions or, no matter how sincere the participants are, eventually the logic and demands of the capitalist state system will prevail.

Rojava, trapped within a spider web of competing Great powers and local powers either faced extinction or acceded to this logic and took itself place as a junior partner to one or other of the great military powers.

With America's uncomfortable ally Turkey threatening it very existence, and the central thrust of Assad and his allies directed elsewhere. It is unsurprising that the nascent state of Rojava would fall to the siren call of Putin's Russia.

Nationalism, however it is ideologically justified, will always be first and foremost a movement for the establishment and defence of a nation state within a capitalist world system. all Kurdish Rojava's principles would always take second place to this.”

RedStarCommando

Nov 2016