Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Rojava: A practical example of ecosocialism?

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, August 12, 2019

Rojava: A practical example of ecosocialism?

Click here to access article by "Make Rojava Green Again" posted on Climate & Capitalism.

I was amazed that the Monthly Review crowd behind this website was deceived by this Empire propaganda piece. Its inspiration is a recent book entitled Make Rojava Green Again published self-servingly by the Internationalist Commune of Rojava. Rojava, for the people who don't know, is a center of the Kurdish enclave in northern Syria that has collaborated with, and supported by, US forces.

Five years ago a number of pieces started appearing in left-wing websites that extolled the same kind of pro-Kurdish propaganda that the Syrian Kurds were the most progressive scene on the face of the earth because they were supposedly promoting feminist and a new radical form of a socialist government.

In late 2014 I noticed a report by David Graeber from The Guardian and others reports, mostly in the website of Reflections on a Revolution (since sold to a non-profit organization) extolling the Syrian Kurds as having a very appealing ideal of progressive ideas about how to organize a society. And, I was so easily convinced of this view because of the authors or the sources.

Then in early 2016 I started noticing reports that gave a very different picture. In 2017 there was a number of articles that took issue with the earlier reports (see especially this, this, and this), and that viewed the Syrian Kurds as being used by the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire to balkanize Syria (this was a favorite strategy used to attack their enemy nations by the British in their earlier empire). I was thoroughly convinced of this view when Stephen Gowans posted his article in 2017 entitled "The Myth of the Kurdish YPG’s Moral Excellence".

Still, we see articles like this one and by Pete Dolack, normally a progressive writer, that keep on extolling the Syrian Kurds and that the Empire must defend them! I never cease to being amazed by the Empire propagandists and their accomplishments to infiltrate and influence leftist organizations to post articles like this one.