From Germany to Rojava - Perspective of an anarchist youth

„There‘s only one thing that is bigger than the love for freedom: the hate against those who take it away.“

- Che Guevara

I feel myself part of an opressed and angry youth which society strives to fuck up absolutely.
We are required to give every effort and strain every (im)possible capacity, to submit ourselves to capital`s coercive force, to subsume the norms and values of this hypocrite society, to crave what lies above and fight off what rises below and to „optimize“ ourselves so as to always function without consideration of our own desires and honest dreams – and we should do all this with regard to a potentially „rich“ future life.
Besides the fact that this way only works for a select few who were born into the right classes from the outset - or who use their elbows the most ruthlessly while the overwhelming majority falls by the wayside, slaving away to death and psychological ruin - is that what is sold to us as desirable in no way a life worth living. For the life I would like to live I don‘t need a lot of money, but freedom. Real freedom, to do what I like and to be able to develop myself and live freely. Not fake freedom, to exploit others and thereafter sip cocktails in a Mercedes - if you make it to this point at all. You try to sell us shit as gold!

In some countries of Europe sections of the youth have already understood that they have nothing to win in this system and nothing to expect from this world. In France, Greece, Italy and some other regions of the West the youth is in revolt, making it clear that they will not play this hypocritical game which they only can lose. I feel myself to be a part of this „Ungovernable Generation“ - but I also have the feeling that here in Germany, I am holding a lost position on my own. The youth which should take their life in their own hands and fight on the frontline is, in this country, the feeble expression of generational ignorance and conservatism and the completion of neoliberal world domination. I realized with time that most of these „left-wing radicals“, „anarchists“ and „revolutionaries“ are not really serious about their cause. Most are just coward state citizens who are satisfied as passive slaves.
With this in mind I say to everybody who is serious about and shares this feeling with me:

Insurrection is the only thing we still can do.
The reality of capitalist modernity has reached a totality which cannot any longer be defeated by „talking seriously to the people“ or attempting to build alternative projects. The influence of decades of indoctrination by an ideological-technological-social complex of power has deeply reconstructed society. We have reached a point where dominance thrives due to the mere submission of the people, let alone our increasingly fascizising authoritarian police force and open surveillance state. Voluntary submission is the mantra of our time. Open repression is not even needed. The ruling order of the world has advanced and advanced, forcing itself into the people themselves. It has perverted moral values, debased interpersonal relationships, changed the way people interact with or against each other (the „radical left“ by no means excluded), guides the desires of the people and achieves its will through the coercive lie that „there is no alternative“. Power has entered into the last recesses of human life and taken over control.
Not least through its technological-social function, the system has forced people in the imperialist metropoles to accept its ideological dictats as their own values and to zealously hack themselves down into gears which function with the least possible friction.
In the superlatively technocratised urban prison society the choice is only between total submission and total insurrection.

 
It is pure naivety and misplaced optimism to believe we can still „guide things in a better direction“ in Germany or to hope for an „awakening“ of the people. If we consider the effects of capitalist modernity on the people, for whom can we still have hope? For those who look on the world with exhausted eyes but nonetheless submit to its order? For the embittered consumers and children of this hypocritical, money-crazed society? For the cynics who are unable to imagine anything better for themselves than what our hamster-wheel society has to offer? Or for those who stick their heads into the sand of idealism, refusing the burden of their individual skills and capabilities and the responsibilities following from this? The truth is that although everybody is conscious about the systematic, sky-high scream of injustice in this world, they are all so alienated and enslaved that they do not even feel its affects. Trapped in the prison society, people cling to an ever more totalitarian and repressive state like a drowning person clutching at a branch, grasping at the last barrier which still protects their way of life in a world otherwise sinking into chaos... a chaos which is caused by the exactly same state through war, impoverishment, mass expulsion, destruction of the ecological system, and so on.
In such a rotten society there can be no construction before the old world is destroyed.
Our practice should be to organize an anarchist conspiracy with the aim to destroy all the states of Europe!

In Rojava, and also other Kurdish-inhabited parts of the Middle East, society is being built up on the basis of democratic councils, women‘s emancipation and ecology, in a process which can be designated as revolutionary.
During the so-called „Arab spring“ in 2011, protests broke out against the authoritarian Assad regime in Syria. The majority Kurdish-populated north of Syria was one of the strongholds of resistance to Assad. Following the violent quashing of protests and the arming of many different groups the protests developed soon into a civil and imperialist war in which different groups vied to acheive different aims. When the Syrian government gave up control over the north of the country and removed their forces, YPG/YPJ took over control bit by bit by heroically – and with the loss of many lives - defeating the so-called Islamic State. The regime did not lose only military control over Rojava. With the breakdown and disintegration of the statist institutions and infrastructure imposed by the regime, the preexisting structures of the Kurdish movement came more and more into fruition and tried to begin the social administration. In the beginning of 2014 then self-administration was established in the three cantons of Cizîrê, Kobanê and Efrîn.
Since then an attempt has been underway to build up a new autonomous and democratic model of society, uniting the Kurds with other people living in the region through Abdullah Öcalan`s paradigm of democratic confederalism - difficult circumstances of war notwithstanding.

Öcalan writes that an interval of chaos, which he describes as a chaotic process of crisis qualitatively distinct from the „normal“ crisises of capitalism, is a necessary requirement for radical change. A symptom of this interval of chaos is, for example, the decay of the state - as we can observe it currently in the Middle East in general and Syria in particular. According to Öcalan we are currently witnessing the nation-state‘s biggest crisis in the Middle East, showing signs of decay in the Mesopotamian region where it arose 6000-7000 years ago. Of course this alone is not a guarantee of social progress, but the chaos of decay opens up the possibility to liberate territory from oppressive forces. It is then up to us to what we make of that territory, and how we influence the shape which the chaos will take.

„Taking life in our own hands means to be able to protect ourselves for reasons of self-esteem. It means counter-attack for anarchy.“
- Unknown author, Athens

In the imperialist centers of the West, the metropoles of capital, the state will - in view of its overweening power and ever-increasing strength – not decay by itself. The modern states of Europe largely „grew“ and were not artifically imposed by colonial powers like those in the Middle East, and thus are based on a stronger narrative which is believed and reproduced by most of the people. Moreover, a (shrinking) majority of the population are tendentially still profiteurs since the state is again and again able to pass the burden of the crises it produces on others. That the attitude of the German bourgoisie is traditionally more fascist than insurrectionary make it very unlikely that we will be witnesses of statist signs of decay in the next years – we have to push for by ourselves for our own interval of chaos!

Attacking the state for insurrectionary propaganda and to weaken it logistically. Defaming it in communiqués politically. Entangling it again and again in its own contradictions, aggravating the situation, pushing it politically and logistically toward its ultimate crisis. Carrying out insurgent actions like sabotage, looting/expropriation, vandalism, and targeteted attacks (especially on places of German-Turkish cooperation), etc. Escalating the social war. Because when the population gets polarised, frontlines stand out more clearly and solidarity with and support for the state can be seen more clearly as what it is: active participation in oppression and repression. This will also reveal who from the population is truly ready to fight, and who from the „radical left scene“ has only ever been engaged in theoretical reflections in order to feel morally superior despite their own integration in the system. Of course, insurrection does not only consist of militancy on the streets. We need insurgent parallel structures, otherwise all this will remain a mayfly.
To quote a German anarchist who is fighting in YPG: „Today is not the time to sit at home und fantasise about what could be, today is about insurrection and resistance!“
But not out of pure altruism, moral superiority or any revolutionary duty. Rather for ourselves, in order to liberate us from this world which ties us up and alienates us, which makes us desperate and depressed and which punishes us for the dreams and desires we have. In a riot I feel something big which goes beyond me. You stop thinking, you get rid of yourself, you only act - and these actions are honest. In this false, lying, hypocrital world we find honesty in the demolition of what makes us so broken and what we hate so much. In the course of this out of my sight women* should be permitted to attack right at the front.

„Nobody wants to talk to me

but everyone wants to walk with me

yeah i've always been that kid

maybe i won't be if i lived

long enough but i think i'ma die now

i just keep it to myself and try not to cry too loud"

- Lil Peep

The biggest cruelty of the ruling world is what it does to our psyche and our emotions. It inflicts indescribable inner pain on so many of us. People are isolated in the system and waste away as lonely, irrelevant individuals. This world makes them feel alone and lost and lets them experience their existence as absolute futility. We are made to feel we are worth nothing, and some of us perish through depression and self-doubt. Many develop protective mechanisms against this, toughen up, become numb, emotionless, ruthless, and cynical, and start to reproduce the same behaviours which once hurt them so much. Others feel too weak – which is not to condemn them for it – are anxious, retreat, despair, and don‘t want to live anymore. Many people try to repress their emotions. For many, life in the system is a daily struggle with their own feelings and thoughts. Many have experienced trauma. All are under inner strain, coerced into an endless performance, pressured to keep on functioning even if they inwardly desire only calmness and peace. Many feel powerless and have the feeling they cannot continue anymore.
Burnouts increase, suicides increase.
I think that more people feel that way than want to admit it. I do.

"We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth.

We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing in this minute.“

- Buenaventura Durruti

I am speaking from this world the whole time. By this, I mean the ruling world in which we live on this earth. But another world is possible here. I use this term because it would - considering the way many people accept and reproduce power, especially on the psychical-emotional level - be too easy and short to say it is just the state apparatus which rules and oppresses us. It is also general social interrelation. Most people, including many „comrades“, reproduce the ruling mentality and consequent behaviours, habits and ways of treating each other. Thus they contribute to the suffering of those who simply cannot deal with the coldness and hardness of the system.

That is the main point we have to change from the beginning on in insurrection. Those who are seriously convinced they must fight a David-and-Goliath struggle as metropole guerillas against the state and its world should not rub raw and reproduce the patriarchal culture of masculinity and severity. Instead, we should make an effort to realise the spirit of what we fight for in our struggle, in our relationships and inner selves, and let true Hevaltî - real comradeship - come into being through insurrectional practice. For this we must take care of one other, be honest, accept certain weaknesses, overcome gender roles as well as competition between us, and stop reproducing bourgoise attributes and neoliberal-capitalist logic.

"If you can't find something to live for, you best find something to die for."
-Tupac Shakur

I take the attack of the fascist Turkish state on Afrin as an attack on myself and on all revolutionaries worldwide. It is not just coincidence that all big powers of the system give their tacit agreement through silence, or even offer open support through weapon deals and persecution of Kurdish revolutionaries in the diaspora. They want to see the revolutionary project of Rojava erased, along with everything else revolutionary and insurrectionary worldwide. This attack is not just a Kurdish problem, but rather targets all those who fight against the ruling order of this world. It is the war of the ruling power and their stupid servants against all those who do not want to submit.

I will never forgive this world what it did to me.

The decision to go to Rojava to become a revolutionary is something like my personal and individual insurrection, breaking out of the prison which the rulers in Europe built around our free mind. It is a decision to rise up and fight instead of submitting and giving up. I want to learn, to create perspectives and to defend our biggest revolutionary beacon of hope.

No one is coming to save you, comrade!
Do insurrection now!
Liberation from everything!
Long live anarchy!

Serhildan Ciwan
March 2018

AUTHOR‘S NOTE: This is not a deep political analysis. For those who are interested in a deeper analysis, I suggest you read Abdullah Öcalan‘s Parastina Gel and Invisible Comittee‘s Now. These are only subjective views, impressions and feelings resulting from my daily experience.

As I cannot express myself so well on certain subjects, I made use of some formulations from pre-existing texts of similar-minded revolutionaries who managed this far better than I could. I trust you will not be angry about this.