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There are three basic freedoms: freedom to say NO; freedom to move away; and freedom to change what does not work.

Individual freedom requires social support. To say NO, you need others to respect your choice and not force you to obey. To move freely, you need others to support your movement and not erect walls and roadblocks. To change what does not work, you need others who are affected to accept the change.

Basically, freedom is a social relationship, where me having my freedom depends on you having yours. A system is required to secure this social arrangement.

Systems shape us

We create systems in order to make things happen. A system has three elements: a purpose or goal; a set of rules, policies, and procedures designed to achieve the goal; and relationships that are shaped by applying the rules, policies, and procedures.

The systems we create are not separate from us; they organize us. Consider competitive sports. There is a goal (to win). There are rules of the game and penalties for violating them. And there are participants, whose behavior and relationships are shaped by the game.

The goal of the capitalist system is to extract capital from human labor. Achieving that goal requires a system with rules, penalties, and social relationships that all support the goal.

This three-part essay examines how the capitalist system robs us of all three basic freedoms; what blocks us from claiming our freedom; and how we can create a social system that supports freedom for all.

Part 1. My Body Is Not Your Capital-Producing Machine – Or Is It?

It is commonly believed that we have little control over our work lives, but that life outside of work – family and social relationships – is ours to shape.

In reality, time outside of work is largely consumed with two things: replacing the energy we put out on the job so we can work again the next day, and raising the next generation of workers to replace the current one. Production depends on this reproduction of the worker.

The tight connection between production and reproduction is difficult to see because they are organized differently. Production is organized socially, with billions of workers linked in global chains of manufacture and distribution. Reproduction is organized privately, with individuals and families expected to replenish and reproduce themselves with no outside support.

Employers benefit from privatized reproduction. They can hire workers to produce while avoiding the cost of replacing them, even though their business depends on it. According to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business,

Paid maternity leave is a totally ridiculous kind of demand to expect employers to pay. Those who want to have babies should pay for them.

Because production and reproduction are differently organized, it seems they exist in two different spheres: an economic sphere of work shaped by capitalism, where one has little control; and a personal sphere of friendship and family, not shaped by capitalism, where one is presumed to have total control.

In reality, work and life-outside-of-work are parts of a single capitalist system. Despite the relentless message that we make our own lives and ‘there is always a choice,’ it is impossible to have a personal life that is separate from, or exists outside of, the capitalist system. Lack of freedom on the job requires a lack of freedom outside it.

The more authorities restrict reproduction and individual behavior, the more the myth of two spheres breaks down to reveal only one sphere, capitalism, that dominates every aspect of life.

You cannot refuse, and you cannot leave

The goal of capitalist production is to produce capital. Capital is profit that is invested to extract more profit. Profit comes from paying workers less than the value of what they produce. The lower the wages, the higher the profit.

Jeff Bezos rakes in billions of dollars in profit by paying workers far less than the value of their work. He then uses this profit to purchase other businesses that enable him to exploit even more workers and make even more profit. Bezos is accumulating capital. The more capital he accumulates, the greater his power over society.

No one freely chooses to work all their life to produce capital to make others rich. The worker must be robbed of the freedom to say no, to leave, or to change the system. To maintain this social arrangement everyone, including the worker, must do their part.

Employers rely on the State to ensure the conditions for capital accumulation. As Braverman explained in Labor and Monopoly Capital,

In the most elementary sense, the State is guarantor of the conditions, the social relations, of capitalism, and the protector of the ever-more unequal distribution of property which this system brings about.

The State gives employers the legal authority to dictate the conditions of employment. Unionized workers can modify some of these conditions, but they have no legal right to challenge the nature of the work or how it is organized, to determine staffing levels, or to curb executive pay. All major work-related decisions fall under management rights. The State uses the legal system, the police, and the military to enforce those rights.

States allow employers to use, abuse, and discard workers as the cost of doing business. When hazardous working conditions cause sickness, injury, and death, the State sides with the employer. Workers’ claims for compensation are minimized or denied, fines levied against companies are too small to change anything, and no employer ever goes to jail for killing a worker.

States use legislation and monetary policy to prevent workers’ demands from cutting into profits. The legal minimum wage sets the bar so low that the average worker must go into debt to pay for basic essentials.

The only option for those who cannot work or refuse to do so is appeal to the State for support. Such support is notoriously difficult to get and kept miserably low to deter all but the most desperate. Ontario makes it easier to access euthanasia than to access social support.

States restrict travel in order to block workers from escaping to a better situation. Around the world, millions of people are incarcerated for the ‘crime’ of crossing a border in search of a better life.

Border restrictions trap workers in low-waged areas. Employers are free to move production in and out of these low-waged areas, giving them leverage to lower the pay of workers in higher-waged areas.

States use immigration controls to manage the size and composition of the workforce to benefit employers. Lower unemployment increases the pressure to raise wages, and importing more workers lowers that pressure. Denying equal rights to newcomers enables employers to underpay and overwork them, exerting a downward pressure on the pay and conditions of all workers.

All these measures ensure that, no matter how hard they labor or how much they protest, the worker is blocked from escaping their assigned role as a capital-producing machine.

What personal life?

The concept of ‘personal life’ ignores how much our lives are restricted outside work.

The modern family is a State-regulated institution. Laws dictate who can marry and who cannot, who is a family member and who is not, and how many unrelated people may live in a dwelling. Laws enforce gender norms, restrict access to contraception and abortion, and determine at what age a person may engage in adult activities.

One cannot leave a family at will. The State can forcibly return runaway youngsters to their families, place them in alternate families, or confine them in detention centers. Spouses who want to leave their marriages and parents seeking relief from childcare duties can be held financially responsible for ‘dependents.’

The State defines what it means to be a fit parent and can remove children from those it declares unfit. The State decides if families separated by national borders will be reunited or remain apart, and whether family members will be deported.

State laws compel young people to attend school, whether they want to or not, and parents are expected to enforce this law. In Jacksonville, Florida,

if a child has more than five unexcused absences [from school] in a calendar month or 15 unexcused absences in a 90-day period, parents can be arrested, charged with a misdemeanor, and face up to 60 days in jail.

Not free to be me

Organizing reproduction in family units demands distinct gender roles; men are cast as the primary producers, and women as the primary care-givers. Someone has to care for the young, sick, and infirm, and it’s typically the lower-paid woman who is paid less precisely because of her care-taking duties.

A family system based on reproducing couples allows no room for gender fluidity or for being intersex or trans. Those who do not conform to their socially assigned gender role risk punishment in the legal system or treatment in the medical system. As long as reproduction is rooted in the family, we cannot escape the pressure of binary gender roles and all the oppression they generate.

Capitalism favors standardized production, where large numbers of identical objects can be quickly produced with less labor and more profit. To produce uniform outcomes, the worker must make the same moves over and over again. This assembly-line model has been adopted in every industry, including hospitals and schools. As one principal instructed his teachers,

When I stand in the hallway, I should be able to hear all fourth grades saying the same thing. Do not deviate from the scripted program and do not fall behind in the pacing plan.

The demand for uniformity dominates every area of life. To maximize profit, the capitalist class engineer plants and animals to eliminate variation, reduce workers to the status of interchangeable cogs in a machine, and convince people of all nations to desire the same things and behave in the same ways.

Shut up and conform

Questioning makes progress possible; it invites us to examine what we are doing and why, and to consider different options. Capitalism makes questioning policies or those who make them a serious offense, even treasonous. We cannot speak freely or share vital information. The relentless persecution of whistle-blowers Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, and Steven Donziger serves as a general warning not to question authority or hold it accountable.

A system that demands conformity cannot tolerate dissent or diversity. In the past, people who thought, felt, or behaved differently were considered interesting, odd, eccentric, colorful, or characters. Today, such people risk being labeled ‘mentally ill,’ forcibly drugged, and confined to a psychiatric institution, possibly indefinitely.

The social power of modern psychiatry cannot be explained on the basis of its scientific validity or clinical effectiveness, both of which are highly contested. Its influence comes from its usefulness to the capitalist system.

Since slavery days, the State has partnered with medicine and psychiatry to enforce conformity and obedience. Today, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) catalogs unacceptable behavior in every area of life, with unacceptable behavior meaning protesting how things are, or disturbing others with your protest.

Being trapped in an oppressive social system is so painful that many people break down, lash out, use drugs, escape into fantasy, and so on. Mass misery cannot be acknowledged without bringing the entire capitalist system into question. Instead, modern medical systems practice damage control, where the sick and injured are patched up and returned to the same situations that harmed them.

Controlling fertility

States control reproduction to manage the size and composition of the workforce; minimize the cost of social support; and enforce social control. What the pregnant person wants or does not want is not considered.

To lower the birth rate, China imposed a limit of one child per family in 1980. Violators could be punished with fines, job loss, forced abortions, and loss of access to social services. As the birth rate fell, the one-child policy was replaced with a two-child policy in 2016, followed by a three-child policy in 2021.

To raise the birth rate, Nazi Germany outlawed all forms of birth control, including abortion, with stiff penalties for violators. ‘German-blooded’ women with large families were awarded the Mother’s Cross: bronze for up to five children; silver for six or seven; and gold for eight or more.

To increase the enslaved labor force in the US, Black women and girls were forcibly impregnated and compelled to bear their rapists’ children. When importing enslaved people was outlawed in 1808, forced reproduction became even more important to the slave economy.

Planters advertised for [Black women] as they did for breeding cows or mares, in farm magazines and catalogues. They shared tips with one another on how to get maximum value out of their breeders. They sold or lent enslaved men as studs and were known to lock teenage boys and girls together to mate in a kind of bullpen. They propagated new slaves themselves, and allowed their sons to [do so].

To minimize the cost of social support and reduce the risk of rebellion, States sterilize those they consider ‘surplus’ or socially unfit, including Black, Indigenous, imprisoned, addicted, disabled, and poor people.

During the Great Depression, the International Congress of Eugenics met in New York City to discuss the mass sterilization of unemployed workers. One speaker declared,

A major portion of this vast army of unemployed are social inadequates, and in many cases mental defectives, who might have been spared the misery they are now facing if they had never been born.

The US-funded program to sterilize Puerto Rican women had two goals: to reduce the number of poor people on the island; and to promote the migration of women workers to New York, which would be easier if they had no children.

Between the 1930s and the 1970s, approximately one-third of the female population of Puerto Rico was sterilized, making it highest rate of sterilization in the world.

In the US today, 31 states plus Washington, DC, legally allow the forced sterilization of people with disabilities

Forced birth

When the US Supreme Court abolished the legal right to abortion, it shattered the belief that our bodies belong to us, and that life-outside-of-work is ours to shape.

When states coerce and force women, girls and people with the capacity for pregnancy to remain pregnant against their will, they create human chattel and incubators of them. By doing so, state lawmakers force their bodies into the service of state interests.

States typically prioritize the welfare of the fetus over that of the parent. Prospective parents are bombarded with advice on how to produce a healthy child and can be penalized for behaviors that risk fetal health. In the US today, a miscarriage can get you charged with manslaughter or murder. In El Salvador, a women was sentenced to 50 years in prison after a stillbirth.

Protecting the pregnant person is not a priority. There are no public warnings that pregnancy can cause severe pain, traumatic injury, hemorrhage, sepsis, sterility, disability, and death.

Women in the US are 14 times more likely to die by carrying a pregnancy to term than by having an abortion. In Mississippi, a Black woman is 118 times as likely to die from carrying a pregnancy to term than from an abortion. The United States is the most dangerous place in the industrialized world to give birth, ranking 55th overall in the world.

Because staying pregnant is more dangerous than having an abortion, a complete abortion ban in the US would increase the number of pregnancy-related deaths by an estimated 21 percent overall, and 33 percent for Black women. These figures do not include the rise in deaths from unsafe abortions.

The Supreme Court refused to consider these matters. Justice Alito wrote,

We do not pretend to know how our political system or society will respond to today’s decision overruling Roe and Casey. And even if we could foresee what will happen, we would have no authority to let that knowledge influence our decision.

It seems counter-productive for capitalism to restrict abortion. Women need to control their fertility so they can work outside the home. Denying this control has a devastating impact on their earning potential, as well as disrupting industries that depend on female labor.

The capitalist class are not united on all things. For some sections, social control is the highest priority. They rightly fear that people who are free to choose in any area of life will push for freedom on the job. To prevent that, they claim the right to dictate what people can and cannot do, and use the State to impose their beliefs on society.

Authoritarian

A tiny elite can only rule a large majority by robbing them of the choice to live any other way. By definition, such rule is authoritarian.

As the gap grows between the wealthy capitalist class and the impoverished working class, the risk of rebellion rises. To maintain social control, governments all over the world are becoming more authoritarian. Two recent US examples include the Trump insurrection and the proliferation of forced-birth laws.

In Canada, a seemingly liberal government has adopted an unprecedented number of Secret Orders-in-Council that are never published and cannot be accessed by Parliament or the public. Secret decision-making enables elites to enact policies that ordinary people would reject, such as exporting billions of dollars in weaponry to the US and Saudi Arabia. A genuine democracy has no need for secret policies.

Technological advances make it easier to enforce authoritarian control. A 2011 report warned,

Within the next few years, it will be technically possible and financially feasible for authoritarian governments to record nearly everything that is said or done within their borders – every phone conversation, electronic message, social media interaction, the movements of nearly every person and vehicle, and video from every street corner.

Fear of majority rebellion has spurred increased funding for police and expanded police powers.

The budgets of modern police departments are staggeringly high and ever increasing, with no parallel in history, producing incarceration rates unseen around the world. If police and prisons made us safe, we would have the safest society in world history — but the opposite is true.

That is how afraid of us they are.

Fed Up

Having suffered through a lethal pandemic, most people are working harder and longer for less, while profits and executive pay soar. Inflation is rapidly rising, yet the modest demand that wages at least match inflation is rejected as excessive and inflationary. Corporate profiteers get no such criticism, even though fatter profits account for more than 50 percent of increased prices.

A US report found, “markups and profits skyrocketed in 2021 to their highest recorded level since the 1950s.” The average price markup was 72 percent higher than a company’s costs, pushing net profits to the highest value on record. The authors conclude,

Since markups are unusually and suddenly so high, there is room for reversing them with little economic harm and likely societal benefit, including lower prices and less inequality.

They must have missed the capitalist memo that profits are sacred and workers are expendable.

Instead of forcing corporations to lower prices or raise wages, officials are jacking up interest rates on loans and mortgages. This has the effect of undercutting wages, driving workers deeper into debt, and making it more difficult to pay for essentials, such as food, housing, and medical care.

Understandably, confidence in capitalist institutions is falling. Only 36 percent of Americans think the US system of government is sound, and only 13 percent of Americans are satisfied with how things are going in the US.

When the majority lose faith that the existing system can solve their problems, they look for alternatives. One result is a global resurgence of working-class rebellion with millions of people protesting their suffering and demanding fundamental social change.

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Written by Susan Rosenthal

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Source: https://susanrosenthal.com/capitalism/my-body-is-not-your-capital-producing-machine-or-is-it/

The post My Body Is Not Your Capital-Producing Machine – Or Is It? appeared first on Void Network.

Therefore, it is not enough to see the case of Ukraine only through the actions of a Russian authoritarian leader, nor through the prism of a violation of international law. This is for three reasons:

First, because we cannot ignore the presence of NATO, which after the fall of the USSR and in the context of the emerging “neoliberal consensus” became both a military vehicle of consolidation and a police institution against centrifugal forces. Thus, on the basis of the role of the US in this new phase of “globalisation”, NATO became essentially a mechanism for consolidating the US-led empire of capital. To put it in paradigmatic (and largely rhetorical) terms, what exactly did a supposed “defense alliance” do by bombing Yugoslavia without the approval of the Security Council, carrying out one of the largest military operations on European soil? How can it be denied that Yugoslavia was devastated by NATO for the interests of the US and its “New world order” doctrine? Did that event constitute war – at least some form of war – or a “special military operation”? Even if it is not just a powerful military instrument of the Americans, NATO cannot be conceived outside the imperialist policy of the USA. It is worth noting, in this context, that the inter-state relations between Russia and the US over the last 30 years have been largely structured by the initial assurances of the NATO alliance that they did not intend to expand the alliance eastwards and the gradual breaking of these promises. That these assurances, as Spinoza reminds us, have no substantive force outside of actual power relations and their historical unfolding points to the heart of the matter (something we will return to).

Second, war between states in its modern form tends to involve the clash, and therefore the intensification of two or more nationalisms. This is because nationalism is the ideology of the contemporary nation-state and therefore one of the inevitable languages of justification for a state of war. As a determinate historical form, the modern state relied on war for its birth and the organization of society on the scale it proposed: the boundaries of the state as a legal order of sovereignty to coincide with the geographical boundaries of the nation. It is truly an outrageous idea that continues to leave humanity blood-drenched, to produce cultural difference, and to systematically lead to tragedies and ethnic cleansing. Linking soil with blood: a genius German conception! Even the republican conception of the nation that draws on the American and French revolutions, and which admittedly provided the language for an entire revolutionary tradition, inevitably tends, after the consolidation of the state form, to become a language of legitimation of domination, exclusion, violence and expansion.

In the case of the Greek state, nationalism led to the tragedy of Smyrna with the help of the great fantasy – yet one with entirely material consequences – that we called the “Great Idea”. Nationalism is also responsible for the tragedy that Cypriot society has been experiencing for so many decades on both sides of the island. Rhetoric about living space was indeed used by Hitler and is now being used by Putin. But the difference is that the former was a Nazi and as such burned anyone who was not  ‘of aryan race’ in the crematoria, while the latter is the authoritarian leader of a country that sacrificed 20 million people to stop the Nazis. The difference is staggering. And it is a difference of content as much as of form: for all the autocracy, corruption and constant human rights violations that define the dysfunction of official institutions and the huge democratic deficit in the country, Russia is not a fascist state. This, of course, does not justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine, because whatever the context, it is an invasion. But we must be strict in the analogies and comparisons we make because they determine our perspective and therefore our political stance.

It is also worth pointing out that the identification of Russia with the USSR is untenable, at least in the ideological field. On the other hand, on the geopolitical and economic front, things are clearly more complex, since the USSR (from one point onwards) became to a considerable extent the continuation of the Russian state; thus the Russian Federation, together with its satellites, inherits the treaties left by the USSR. Putin’s rise to power is also the expression of this “continuity of the state”, against the aggressive (and destructive for the plebeian masses) disintegration that preceded it. Besides, apart from some fascists like Georgiades, who else considers “the communists” dangerous and still dreams of exile (really, “dangerous” for whom?). Despite the special symbolic weight of communism in the construction of various identities and perceptions, all countries, in one way or another, move to the rhythm of the capitalist organisation of the economy and society. So does Russia. Within this global system, nationalisms continue to develop and the great powers continue to compete with each other in national terms, without reference to the political-ideological differences of the past. The competition today, similar to some extent to the imperialist competition before the First World War, is about power within the globalised capitalist system. But political-economic competition is always conducted through a multitude of ideological-cultural mediations, de facto historically determined.

Thus, it is difficult to abandon the idea that the cultural representation of Russia in the ‘West’ passes through the imaginative conception (and constitution) of difference. At the state level, the hostility towards Russia clearly has as an objective basis, Russia’s independent hegemonic geopolitical and economic role and ambition (the political expression of which is precisely ‘Putinism’). Also, in the social imaginary (as mediated, of course, by spectacular media representations) the emerging suspicion and hostility towards Russia is due to Putin’s current attempt to regain the country’s old imperial power. On both (related) levels, however, the hostility is fueled by the stereotypical construction of Russia as a threatening authoritarian power coming from the barabaric East. It is within this cultural construction of otherness that the reflexive and endemic anti-communism that some Western military officers and diplomats have long since internalized, finds its functional place.

In this intense interface between the political and economic aspirations of the hegemonic centres and their ideological investments, obsessions and prejudices, international law can only be respected on a case-by-case basis and according to the interests at stake – sometimes invoked and sometimes ignored. Liberals and social democrats of all stripes and tendencies will retort that there is a whole material system of rules, deliberations, agreements, decisions, institutions and bodies which produces what we call ‘international law’, and which has a regulative role; even when it is ignored by some states, its actuality allows us to criticise this attitude while at the same time giving to Right an institutional and therefore practical status (i.e. clearly defining what ‘ought to be done’ and ‘how’ it can be done).

This is certainly not the place for an extended discussion of international law, which de facto presupposes a broader analysis of law in general. Its violation, however, as a fact systematically carried out by the powerful, makes the interpretation of reality on the basis of international law alone a symptom of a normative formalism that does not help explain a complex situation and the dynamics it contains. Founded on the liberal legalist logic that systematized it, international law is utterly incapable of both regulating the actual relations of states and providing a theoretical basis for understanding them. The same can be said differently: vis-à-vis ‘powerful players’, international law is a weak tool and therefore, especially in times of crisis, it is not sufficient either to dictate and organise the practical activity of the powerful, or to take it as the main unit of analysis in understanding complex historical processes, that shape inter-state rivalries and international balances. Unless we want to become the unhappy consciousness of this world, along with liberals and a significant part of the Left. 

The third reason why we need to be careful in our perspective is related to the collective self-identifications and the character of Ukrainian nationalism. It helps us to understand the complexity of Ukrainians’ perception of the Russian invasion, i.e. ultimately how they perceive the ethnic ‘self’ and the ethnic ‘other’ in this particular case. This clearly makes the way in which the invasion of Ukraine is presented by Western officials and the ‘Western’ media very problematic, i.e. as an attack by a foreign power on a fully distinct ethnic society. The empirical data that anyone who knows anything about Ukrainian society can cite suggests something quite different.

Between Russia and Ukraine there is a strong cultural affinity, with deep historical roots, reaching back to the very constitution of Tsarist Russia as the hegemonic political form of the Slavic ethnic group. Even today a large percentage of families in both Ukraine and Russia are mixed, and kinships spread beyond their borders. To this significant part of the population, this particular war seems rather like a civil war. Especially in the east, where there has been secession, a large percentage of Ukrainians have no particular problem with the political attachment to ‘Mother Russia’, which is why Russian forces initially met little resistance by advancing into the country.

On the other hand, colonial control and inequality has been a key index in this complex historical relation. Naturally, the Ukrainian nation-state de facto established its identity in against Russian domination, of which the USSR period was considered a part. This “anti-Russian” national narrative intensified after the events of 2014 in the country, when the balance was disturbed by the violent political shift towards the West and therefore NATO. In this context of geopolitical and economic restructuring, Ukrainian nationalism is becoming radicalized and seems to be gaining traction in the social sphere. Even so, until recently it is doubtful whether, outside the extreme nationalist circles, of which the neo-Nazis of the so-called ‘Right Sector’ (Pravyy Sektor) with their black and red flags or the even broader and more diverse ‘Azov Battalion’, which is part of the Ukrainian national army, most Ukrainians wanted to fight against Russia (which is also true in reverse). This is precisely what Russian expansionism is now decisively reversing, further fomenting Ukrainian nationalism.

In ‘Western’ media and in the mainstream discourse in general there is a deafening silence about the internal political balances and collective identity in Ukraine. In fact, the attack on Ukraine strikes at the pan-Slavic narrative – a central feature of ethnoromanticism there – replacing it with nationalist hatred. Is this not contradictory to the fact that Russia appears to be the main political exponent of this ethno-romantisism? But also, the hybrid character of the collective, national identity in Ukraine, or the fact that it is presented as ambivalent in terms of the distinction between ‘Russian’ and ‘Ukrainian’ nation and the related sense of collective belonging, is a catalyst for the attack. If, in terms of ethno-cultural relations and collective identities, similarity and affinity rather than ethnic difference prevail, without one group necessarily identifying or assimilating the other, the attack from Russia’s perspective ceases to be seen as an invasion. If, even more than in other countries of the former Soviet Union, Ukrainians are, in a sense, in an identity transition, since the process of Ukrainian nation-state building is unstable and ongoing, the attack on Ukraine may have had as an intrinsic purpose to radically interfere in the process. And the instability of the Ukrainian political system and the dysfunction of its democratic institutions actually contributes to this attempted rapprochement with Russia (for a country whose president is a former actor who played the president in a Ukrainian T.V series [!]). Therefore, in the face of the project of stabilising Ukrainian institutions and democracy within the EU. -which seems to have been the main claim of the 2014 protests and which necessarily took the form of anti-Russianism, thus opening up space even for nationalism drawn from the collaborators of the Nazi invasion- Russian imperialism, faced with the very real danger of Ukrainian attachment to NATO (i.e. the expansion of the latter), responded with an operation to strengthen the link with Russia. Of course, since the Russian surprise didn’t last long and the war drags on, it’s hard to see how a regime change could bring anything but instability.

Here it rather seems that we have two sides – Russia and the ‘West’ – that fear and perceive each other as a threat in terms shaped on the one hand by the history of conflicting expansionist nationalisms-imperialisms and on the other hand by the reality shaped by the capitalist economy in its modern globalised version. We will therefore support neither of them! A further reason for not supporting either one is evident from the fact that within the framework of once – but no longer – fringe theories like those of the 4th political theory, we are faced with the possibility of the creation of a deeply authoritarian informal coalition of disparate countries (from North Korea to Iran and China) on an ascending trajectory of conflict with the whole of a distinct civilization now defined in their eyes as “the West”.

Neutrality, by highlighting the community of those from below, with class characteristics and our dynamic peace-promoting practices is, in our opinion, the appropriate attitude in this case and therefore has nothing to do with an abstract refusal of war. This is all the more true since the consequences of such a war will affect us all. In this light, the revival of the international anti-war movement, which has been extinct for over 15 years (better proof of its total absence during the Syrian civil war) could perhaps have some positive influence on developments. However, judging by the content of public discourse, the low dynamics of collective action today and, above all, the proxy nature of the conflict between NATO and Russia, this possibility should not be considered particularly likely. Nevertheless, the anti-war demand for global nuclear disarmament is proving to be extremely necessary today.

Under the weight of developments in Ukraine there is no doubt that this is a moment of paramount historical importance. We are witnessing a direct violent challenge to the balance of power of the hegemonic centres, which is very interestingly linked to the economic challenge being waged by China. Something that has been discussed for a long time may be happening, but the outcome is really uncertain, especially since the ‘first move’ was made by the Russian military state. At a time when many people, while realising the role of planetary domination in the ongoing social and environmental decline, no longer have the courage to speak out, the conflict in Ukraine paints an extremely contradictory picture that has emerged particularly strong in the pandemic and is of immense value both for the left libertarian forces of our time and for radical forces in general. On the one hand we seem to not know how to survive without some kind of state organization, on the other hand the state leads us to social, health, economic and environmental destruction. How do we pragmatically manage such a complex reality?

The dystopia of a nuclear holocaust or a large-scale ecological (hence social) collapse may still seem distant (?), but we cannot ignore the fact that the forces that gave birth to these prospects as a technical possibility and political-military possibility are precisely the dominant forces today: capital, technocracy and all kinds of military-industrial complexes, nationalism and the modern state.

We conclude with some observations which will shed more light on the rationale that leads us to consider the neutrality stance in this war as the only appropriate option from the point of view of social emancipation. Like any authoritarian leader who wages war, Putin, by attacking Ukraine, is undermining, or at any rate endangering, his own power. However, its end will hopefully come with an internal uprising of the Russian people, especially the most oppressed social groups. Ukraine may of course be the occasion for this, but the battle for its downfall cannot be fought on Ukrainian soil. Among other things, because in this case national war and multilateral conflict signify not only the death of soldiers and civilians who have never supported Russia’s authoritarian regime, but also the nuclear threat. This, of course, implies that the phenomenon of Putin’s authoritarian rule cannot be reduced to the realm of individual psychology and personality, as the liberal position, that presents anti-democrats as ‘madmen’, deliberately and with artificial levity tries to sustain. The problem is not that Putin is “insane”. The problem is that the very juxtaposition of democracy and authoritarianism is now losing the formal validity it once had (which historically has always been more complex, of course).

Democratic political systems and their institutions all over the world, regardless of their specifically national versions, are subjected with undiminished intensity to the web of relations and practices that we call ‘capitalism’. So while states continue to be active forces, the contemporary globalised and interconnected world of transnational relations and antagonisms is regulated by the active presence of capital and the imperatives of accumulation and value valorization that define it. So along with a contradiction – transnational competition tends to undermine the capitalist totality that allows it to exist – there is also a truth that the adherents of liberal discourse cannot bear to hear, as it is a truth that calls for political displacement and personal engagement but also for the questioning of multiple cultural constants and perceptions. The configuration of democratic institutions and their articulation with the legal order and the economy allows for the simultaneous and perpetual reproduction, that is, the permanent co-existence, of representation, authoritarianism and inequality in many social fields and in decision-making. It is also a dynamic relationship that today is increasingly unable to take the formal form of democracy. Modern liberal democracies are technocratic oligarchies separated simply by the presence of a social liberalism (which is also challenged by the neo-right reaction).

The pacified societies of the ‘developed’ world in Europe and America are more likely to abandon Ukraine to the expansionist ambitions of a rising Russia than to fight for it. It is not only the experience of two world wars that is, fortunately, frightening. Material affluence, the ideology of producing and consuming infinite objects, the complete commodification of the world and the trivialization of multiple aspects of life by advertising – all of it, that is, which describe the hegemonic conception of ‘growth’ – guarantee (apart from ecological destruction) that war is removed from the range of culturally available options, not only for the sterile upper classes of ‘Western’ societies, but also for the lower classes and subordinate social groups.

And while we could not rule out the resurgence of European and US nationalisms in the face of a common antagonist, we can hardly imagine European citizens sacrificing themselves on the battlefields fighting against the Russians. Especially when everyone knows that the new ‘cold war’ we have already entered is exclusively a game of the powerful for the control of resources and wealth.

But unfortunately, it is even more difficult, to imagine the oppressed fighting an internationalist, anti-nationalist and anti-colonial battle for the equality of people in all corners of this world. This is despite the fact that from the pandemic and the impending ecological collapse to the devastating war in Ukraine, the great issue at stake is the power of the modern state and of capital, the complete inability to control and be controlled.

The question then becomes more crucial than ever and is this: at the dawn of a new ‘cold war’ and in the era of ecological crisis, will the left libertarian forces of our time be able to present a culturally convincing vision to make people believe again in a different way of organizing collective life that includes as its central point the symbiosis of all beings? Or will they forever distance themselves from people by adhering to simplistic rhetorical schemes that are of little interest to anyone? The questions, though theoretically profound, are primarily practical.

Active neutrality in the war raging in Ukraine is our position, the continuation of the global social war against all those who destroy life and freedom is our promise.

Solidarity with the antifascist anarchists in Ukraine and Russia.

DEATH TO TYRANTS –

LONG LIVE ANARCHY- FIGHT FOR GLOBAL FREEDOM

VOID NETWORK – http://voidnetwork.gr

The post The State, Nationalism and the War in Ukraine appeared first on Void Network.

(The text published in french language at “A contretemps” at 17 November 2019).

The sudden attacks of freedom on the suffocating capitalist hydra, constantly make the epicenter of the seismic disturbances fluctuate. The territories of the whole world affected by the system of private benefits are exposed to the outburst of insurrectional movements. Consciousness is forced to run after successive waves of events, reacting to constant, paradoxically predictable and unexpected shocks.

Two realities struggle against each other in the face of the violence. One is the reality of lying. Taking advantage of technological progress, you try to manipulate public opinion for the benefit of established power. The other is the reality of daily life of the population.

On the one hand, there are the hollow words of corporate jargon which show the importance of numbers, surveys and statistics; which teem with false debates whose proliferation serves to hide the real problems: existential and social demands. The media windows-screens of deceit spill out each day numerous tricks and insignificant conflicts of interest which are of no interest to us, but whose negative consequences affect us. Their profitable wars of devastation are not ours; they have no other purpose than to dissuade us from waging the only war that concerns us, the war against the inhumanity prevalent in the world.

On the same side, according to the absurd truth of leaders, things are clear: to claim the rights of the human being is characteristic of anti-democratic violence. Democracy would then consist of repressing the people, throwing at them a horde of police officers who, by developing the impunity guaranteed by the government and the candidates of the opposition eager to succeed them, incites fascist inducing behavior. Just imagine the songs of the media zombies if it were true that the self-immolation of a victim of impoverishment by fire would lead to the fire of the system responsible for the poverty!

On the other hand, the reality experienced by the people is also clear. We will never admit that the meaningless of poorly paid work, that the bureaucratic pressure that increases interest rates and decreases the amount of pensions and social conquests, that the wage pressure which reduces life to strict survival, can be reduced for business transactions. The lived reality is not a number, it is a feeling of unworthiness, it is the feeling of being nothing in the claws of the State, a monster which shrinks like the skin of a shoe before draining of international embezzlement money.

Well, in the confrontation between these two realities – the one that imposes the fetishism of money and the one that speaks in the name of life – a spark, often tiny, came to light the fuse.

There is no futility today, however small, that is not capable of unleashing the violence contained in repressed life, in the life determined to break everything that threatens to extinguish it.

Secular inertia and lethargy, under the aegis of the ancient “bread and circus” recipe, are the basis of the tremendous power of voluntary servitude. Denounced in the 16th century by La Boétie, it remains our most ruthless enemy. By attacking us from the inside, voluntary servitude promotes an inclination among many that functions as if it were a drug: the will to exercise power, to assume the role of guide. Frequently, the morbidity of the authority of a few has infected the libertarian media, so we should congratulate the determination of the yellow vests and other insurgents of everyday life to constantly evoke their rejection of leaders, of self-appointed delegates, of masters of thought and of pond frogs of the holy water of politics and labour unionism.

Free are those who are happy to die in peace while waiting for death in the combined comfort of the coffin and of television, but we will not let their self-spoiling infect over our will to live.

We want the sovereignty of the human being, no more no less.

Impoverishment knocks on doors with increasing violence, threatening to bring them down. The hedonism of the recent past which crushed us with the consumerist and government slogan is over: “Take advantage of today, tomorrow will be worse!” The worst is already today, especially if we continue to welcome it. We must stop believing in the omnipotence of capitalism and the fetishism of money. We have noticed that the great macabre farce that makes the world dance is the result of a sordid motivation, that of short-term profit, that of the absurd rapacity of a bankrupt merchant scratching at the back of the drawers in the search for more.

I’m not talking about hope. It is only the lure of despair. I am referring to all the regions of the world where an insurrection of everyday life – call it what you like – is trying to dismantle the dictatorship of private profit and to overthrow the States which impose it on the people they claim to represent. What we want is not for tomorrow, but for today, as caregivers, nurses, emergency doctors, paramedics and doctors who deal with the economic management that dehumanises the health care sector so well expressed [in the ongoing general strike in france].

The system of exploitation of terrestrial and human nature goes beyond all horizons. The mantle of profitability, at all costs, closes off all expressions of the generosity of life and the human feeling that promotes its practice.

Obviously, the exploiters and the exploited are convinced that the pot is about to explode. Violence is unavoidable. The problem does not lie with it. The approach to resolve the matter without ambiguity is based on an alternative.

Will we tolerate the social explosion leading to a state of endemic civil war, a chaos of revenge and hatred which will ultimately only benefit multinational mafias, already at liberty to continue with impunity and even to destroy themselves with their lucrative desertification project?

Or are we going to create micro-societies freed from the tyranny of the State and commodities, federated territories where the intelligence of individuals can get rid of this herd individualism in search of a supreme guide who will lead them to the slaughterhouse? Are we finally going to take the reins of our own destiny and outline a clear plan for this social jungle, where the beasts of burden have no more freedom than that to choose the prey which will devour them?

In 1888, Octave Mirabeau wrote: “Lambs go to the slaughterhouse. They say nothing and expect nothing. But at least they don’t vote for the butcher who will kill them or the bourgeois who will eat them. Worse than animals, more crowded than sheep, the voter chooses his butcher and chooses his bourgeois. S/he made revolutions to conquer the right to do so.”

Have they not transformed you from generation to generation with the same indescribable currency: heads, the baton of order; tails, the humanitarian lie?

There is no “vote of the lesser evil”, there is only a totalitarian democracy, which only the direct democracy exercised by the people and for the people will revoke. I was amused by the passage of a slogan which, however rough it may be, calls for a further reflection: “Macron, Le Pen, Mélenchon, the same fight of fools! “(I would have preferred “the same fight of capons”; but the rejection of all forms of power and dialogue with the State is one of those little pleasures from which come the great waves of individual and collective enjoyment).

Autonomy, self-organisation, self-defence

The authorities in power will not tolerate the people being freed from their tyranny. We must prepare for a long struggle. That to be carried out against voluntary servitude will be such a struggle. The only foundation that despotism can take advantage of is the acrimony over security of the resigned, it is the suicidal resentment of a supposedly silent majority who screams their hatred of life.

The best defense is always offensive. To this principle, amply demonstrated by military tradition, I would like to substitute that of openness, because, to the advantage of breaking up of the encirclement is added the pleasure of breaking up the barracks in which we find ourselves.

The openness to life, we see it at work in the fierce determination of the current insurrections. Even if some of them die out, they start again more powerfully. We can see it in the festive nature of the protests which endure, despite the fact that they are met with the blindness, the deafness, the repressive rage of governments. It was on the basis of this openness that I spoke of insurgent pacifism.

Insurrectionary pacifism is neither peaceful, in the bleating sense of the term, nor insurrectional, if one understands by this the aberrations of urban and Guevarist guerrillas.

I have neither the vocation of a warrior nor of a martyr. I leave it to life and its poetry to overcome opposites so that they do not become nuisances, so that they escape the Manichean duality of pros and cons. I rely on the creativity of individuals to invent a revolution of which there is no example in the past. The disarray and the uncertainties of a civilization which is born have nothing in common with the disarray of a civilization which has only the certainty of dying.

Philosophers, sociologists, experts of thought, spare us your endless discussions on the malignity of capitalism which makes its agony profitable. Everyone agrees on this point, even the capitalists. The real issues, however, have not been addressed. These are those of the base, those of villages and urban neighbourhoods, those of our own body, which is all the same, it must be remembered, the real decision maker of our destiny, right?

The more the struggles spread worldwide, the more their meaning gains in radicality, in depth, in lived experience, the more they dispense with militant engagement, the more they mock intellectuals, specialists in subversive or reactionary manipulation (because manipulation deals with both like two sides of the same coin). It is both in their existential experience and in their social function that individuals discover themselves on the ground where their aspiration to live begins to undermine and clear away the wall which counting of profits confronts them with, as if their fate stopped there.

No, we can no longer speak of abstract man, the only one recognised by statistics, budgetary calculations, the rhetoric of those who – laymen or religious, humanists or racists, progressives or conservatives – who have others beaten, blinded, imprisoned, massacred, while, lurking in their cowardly ghettos, they count on the arrogant cretinism of money to ensure their impunity and their security.

The dictatorship of profit is an aggression against the body. Entrusting in life the care of immunising us against the financial canker that corrupts our flesh implies a poetic and united struggle. Nothing like the fires of the joy of living to reduce the morbidity of the world to ashes! The revolution has therapeutic virtues, unsuspected until today.

Ecologists, why bother bawling at States for climate improvement when the same States taunt you by polluting more every day, and when it is urgent to act on a field where the questions have nothing to do with intellectual niceties. Questions such as:

How to move from land poisoned by the food industry to its renaturation by permaculture?

How to ban pesticides without harming the peasant who, trapped by Monsanto, Total and others, destroys her/his health by destroying that of others? How to rebuild on a new basis small village and neighborhood schools that the State has ruined and banned to promote concentration camp-like education?

How to boycott harmful and useless products that advertising harassment tells us to buy?

How to constitute local investment banks where the currency of exchange will compensate opportunely for monetary collapse and the planned financial crash?

How to cut short the tax levies that the State allocates to bank fraud, and undertake to invest them in the self-financing of local and regional projects?

Above all, how to spread everywhere the principle of a gratuitousness that life claims by nature and that the fetishism of money distorts. Free trains and public transport, free healthcare, free housing and self-construction, gradual free local craft and food production.

Utopia? Is there a worse utopia than the hodgepodge of absurd and deleterious projects unpacked, before the tired eyes of television viewers, these talented false actors who stir the specter of their wars of traveling salesmen, endlessly reiterating the antics of the combat of chiefs, veiling the real existential and social questions under false debates, overshadowing state terrorism by a terrorism of trivialities where suicidal madness grows with pauperisation and an increasingly unbreathable ambient air?

Have we not realised enough that, in their diversity, even in their divergences, the yellow vests and protest movements formed a formidable pressure group capable of boycotting, blocking, paralysing, destroying everything that pollutes, poisons, impoverishes, threatens our life and our environment? To make us underestimate our power and our creativity comes from the democratic mechanisms of state and market tyranny. More than its gendarmes, the illusory force of the State rests on a propaganda effect which urges us at every moment to give up the poetic power which is in us, this force of life which no tyranny will overcome.

Now, during this time …In Chile, the fight against the vermin which proliferates on the corpse of Pinochet has rekindled the awareness that everything must start from the base, that the representatives of the people are not the people, that the individualist manipulated by the gregarious spirit is not the individual capable of thinking for her/himself and taking the side of life against the side of money that kills. It is necessary to leave to the people the conquest of an intelligence which belongs to them and which the various forms of power endeavor to remove from them.

The same is true in Algeria, Sudan, Lebanon, Iraq. I trust Rojava to transform its temporary retirement into an offensive. The Zapatistas, for their part, responded to the socialist arguments of the socialist Lopez Obrador by increasing the number of their bases (caracoles) and their Councils of good government, where decisions are made by the people and for the people.

The obstinate demand for a democracy in Hong-Kong oscillates between on the one hand a blind anger, ready to be satisfied with a parliamentarism everywhere else put into questioned, and on the other hand a lucid anger which shakes and makes tremble by its persistence the gigantic pyramid of the totalitarian Chinese regime (which worries about the threat of a financial crash). Who knows? The ivy permeates everywhere, and the insurgent past of Shanghai is not far away.

Sudan shakes off the yoke of tyranny and military power, Iran falters. Lebanon is a wake-up call for Hezbollah and for Islamism, the defrocking of which no longer obscures the politico-oil objective. Algeria does not want a government face-lift. Iraq discovers that social reality outweighs the importance given to religious rivalries. There remain the Catalans, the only ones who want a state when the “coldest of cold monsters” is riddled with arrows everywhere. But it is not impossible that the separatists, engaged in an impasse by the standoff opposing the Madrid state to the no less statist Generalitat, suddenly breathe the ruffles of the Franco corpse that the nationalist spirit has taken out of its cemeteries. So it is not impossible that the memory of the libertarian communities of the revolution of 1936, where real independence was forged, will come back to them before the Communist Party and its ally, the Catalan State, crush them.

It’s only a dream but life is a dream and we have entered an era where poetry is the passage from dream to reality, a passage which marks the end of the nightmare and its valley of tears.

Opening a vital space to those paralyse the dismay and anxiety of the future, is it not poetic practice that makes the insolent novelty of the insurrection of everyday life? Do we not see it in the loss of militancy, in the erosion of this old military reflex which multiplies the little chiefs and their frightened herds?

Under the diversity of its pretexts, the only demand that is expressed today without reservation is full and whole life.

Who would be wrong? We are not in the tumult of foreseeable or unexpected revolts, we are in a revolutionary process. The world changes base, an old civilization collapses, a new civilization appears. Compassionate mentalities and archaic behaviors may be perpetuated under an ersatz of modernity, a new Renaissance is nevertheless emerging within a history whose inhumanity collapses into chaos before our eyes. And these eyes are slowly opening. They discover in women, men and children a genius to innocently experiment with incredible innovations, unusual energies, forms of resistance to death, universes that no imagination had dared to set in motion in the past.

Here we are! At the beginning of everything!

Raoul VANEIGEM, 17 novembre 2019

English translation: Autonomies.org

The post Raul Vaneigem: Here we are! At the beginning of everything! appeared first on Void Network.

______________

And so history repeats itself for the Kurds. The American forces who were the only buffer against a Turkish invasion and massacre of the YPG-YPJ and the people of Rojava are now withdrawing from the region. Erdogan, whose open backing of ISIS the entire period of the war against that terrorist organization was made public numerous times, is now geared towards a total air and land invasion in the next day or so. It does not bear repeating that the Kurds never shot a single bullet towards the Turkish border nor ever bore a threat. It does not bear repeating that Turkey has a long history of massacres and genocides against the Kurds and other minorities or that it is currently in total violation of international law occupying Afrin- where people have been kidnaped, massacred, displaced, Yezidis and Christians forced to convert to Islam and tortured daily.

How can we as Kurds articulate how we feel about this betrayal by the international community after we gave so much for your freedom and peace? how can we as Kurds bear the pain of what we know, and have known will come with this invasion? How many wars can we witness in one lifetime? how many generations must be displaced, remaining stateless, homeless, growing up in make shift camps and then punished further, labeled as terrorists for choosing the embrace of the mountains instead? How can we as Kurdish women speak of the terrors that we know our sisters will face across the Rojava border when the mutilated image of Barin is still so fresh in our collective psyche and when we are still missing so many Yezidi sisters? How can we bear, as Kurds, as humans that such injustice, such a travesty exists knowingly, openly while you give lip service about democracy and international law and human rights?

Don’t speak to me of humanity. Don’t speak to me of democracy. Don’t speak to me of solidarity. Today I believe nothing knowing that the blood of our YPG-YPJ is still fresh across the graveyards of Rojava and that it was all for you; and all in vain.

Hawzhin Azeez

__________________________

see also the article from The New York Times:

President Endorses Turkish Military Operation in Syria, Shifting U.S. Policy

The post SOS Kurdish Revolution Needs Us and We Need the Kurdish Revolution appeared first on Void Network.

CALL OUT for actions

The post EXARCHIA: Solidarity to squats and all spaces of struggle- ASSEMBLY Announcement appeared first on Void Network.

The post ARGENTINA: The Consequences of Mr Macri- by LUCIANA ZORZOLI appeared first on Void Network.

The stories and intent are the same, a policy to annihilate the people considered the enemy of those in authority. Describing the horrifying methods used in these countries to eliminate people by state-sponsored activity is mind-boggling.

The genocidal activities of the colonial government of Indonesia against the people of West Papua is benign to the level of subjugation and will take time to achieve maximum effect but will produce the same result, the obliteration of the Papuan people.

The program is called Operasi Tumpas or Operation Annihilation. Spearheaded by the military, it is an operation of total obliteration of not only the people but also the resources that sustain their existence as a social unit. In the long run these methods will alter or destroy the social infrastructures that maintain the existence of the people.

The current military operations in Nduga District in the Highlands of West Papua (West New Guinea) is yet another “tumpas” because there have been many during the past 57 years.

Infrastructure decimated

Whenever an area is declared a DOM (an area of military operation) no one, not even family members and churches are allowed to enter the area to deliver humanitarian assistance. It is strictly off limits to international contact.

The people have grown used to this cycle of military operations. That is why whenever it happens the whole population abandons their villages to the safety of the cold mountains and the jungle. They move with full knowledge that when it is safe to return there will be nothing left for them to return to. Their homes, churches, schools, clinics, including crops and animals will have been destroyed. While in hiding, exposed to the elements, many of their members, especially the young and the old, will die from exposure and malnutrition.

Military operations are a major factor, but there are other contributing factors, such as colonial settlers called transmigrasi. They arrive every week in their thousands, facilitated by the authorities to occupy traditional lands and marginalise Papuan owners.

Other contributing factors include poor health and less education. The people have demanded improvement in these areas but instead the government has put infrastructure, including road construction, as its priority to mainly benefit its military operations and colonial settlements.

Permanent military operations have been Indonesia’s legacy in West Papua for years and are the reason why the international media is banned from the territory. Direct requests for fact finding missions by the Pacific Islands Forum and the Melanesian Spearhead Group have been flatly denied for this very reason.

Calls for Indonesia to end human rights violations by the United Nations Human Rights Council and major international agencies such as Amnesty International, the Red Cross, World Council of Churches, Franciscan International and others, including governments, have all been ignored. Meanwhile human right abuses continue to be more devastating than ever, with the use of chemical weapons.

Crimes Indonesia wants hidden

It is well established that there is an undeclared war of resistance against Indonesian occupying forces.

The indiscriminate use of chemical weapons dropped from helicopter gunships against fleeing Villagers of the Nduga region in the Highlands of West Papua indicates the intensity of the war. The colonial army is using these banned weapons in desperation to terrorise the Papuans and reduce resistance. The tactics are well rehearsed. If the resistance does not create an incident the army will produce one as a pretext to launch a major operation.

Such pretexts have included, firstly, the death of so-called “civilians”. It is well-known that the TNI (Indonesian National Armed Forces) has long been involved in businesses in West Papua. This is part of their strategy to monitor and defeat the OPM (West Papua Independence Movement). Dressing as civilians is part of their concealed strategy to secure success.

Secondly, the people in the Nduga area are opposed to the decision by Indonesian President Joko Widodo to grant a permit to a TNI contractor to build the Trans Papua Highway. The highway will run through Nduga District — a stronghold of the TPN (West Papuan Liberation Army).

Tensions have been high since they entered the area and conflict of this magnitude was bound to happen. In late November the contractor was advised in writing by the regional commander of the TPN to cease activities on December 1 [the anniversary of the first raising of West Papua’s flag of independence, the Morning Star] and advising that employees should not interfere with the activities of people celebrating December 1, including the flag-raising ceremony.

In spite of this advice, a company employee made a video of the flag-raising ceremony — an action considered very serious by the TPN. The people asked him to stop and even followed him to their camp demanding that he delete the video, but he refused to do so.

The action by TPN troops on December 2 was a surprise to the people of Nduga but they accepted the rationale of self-defence by the TPN, because the video would have been used by the military as evidence against the people. The making of the video proved beyond doubt that employees of the company are members of the military. Some even carry weapons.

Tensions in this district have remained high ever since the massacre in Mapenduma in 1996. In the Mapenduma case, TPN commander Kelly Kwalik reached agreement with church leaders to release hostages, including foreigners, which were being held by his group. The people came together to witness a traditional ceremony on the day of the release. People, especially children, gathered excitedly to welcome the Red Cross helicopter that they thought would be bringing an official to receive the hostages. But there was no official, instead the military arrived with machine guns blazing, mowing down unsuspecting women and children. The incident was documented in a 1999 ABC Four Corners report, “Blood on the Cross”.

Repressive military operations are a government policy of annihilation. Whether armed or not, Papuans must be eliminated.

UK-based Amnesty International documented in its 2018 report, Don’t bother, just let him die: Killing with impunity in Papua; the abuses, arbitrary arrests and unlawful killings that have been carried out by members of the Indonesian military against the people of West Papua. This has been going on for the past 57 years and with the current instructions issued by the president, who is the highest commander of the armed forces of Indonesia, we are expecting the worst.

[Rex Ramakiek is the Secretary of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua.]

originally published Green Left Weekly

WEST PAPUA: THE GENOCIDE THAT IS BEING IGNORED BY THE WORLD

If you need evidence that politicians and the mainstream media pick and choose which oppressive conflicts to cover in order to further geopolitical ambitions, you need only Google “West Papua.”

Ever heard of it? Have you ever been sitting at home watching CNN, BBC, or Fox News and heard the news anchor mention West Papua?

It’s strange that this oppression receives little to no media coverage considering a recent fact-finding mission conducted by the Brisbane Archdiocese’s Catholic Justice and Peace Commission reported that West Papua was experiencing a “slow motion genocide.” The report warned West Papua’s indigenous population is at risk of becoming “an anthropological museum exhibit of a bygone culture.”

When you learn what fuels the conflict in West Papua, it becomes clear why this issue receives hardly a blink from our peace-loving politicians and media establishment.

West Papua is home to one of the world’s largest gold mines (and third largest copper mine), known as the Grasberg Mine. Grasberg is majority-owned by the American mining firm Freeport McMoRan. It has reserves worth an estimated $100 billion, and the company is Indonesia’s biggest taxpayer.

Money and geopolitics usually beat out human rights. Since the Suharto dictatorship of Indonesia annexed West Papua in a 1969 U.N. referendum – largely viewed as a land grab – an estimated 500,000 West Papuans have been killed fighting to achieve independence.

Freeport McMoRan was given rights to Grasberg when the Indonesian government signed the right to extract mineral wealth from the site in 1967. In order to preserve this quite literal gold mine, the Indonesian military uses brute force against the local indigenous population. Benny Wenda, a native Papuan who has campaigned his whole life for independence, details the kinds of experiences the local population has endured at the hands of the Indonesian military:

“Now, every morning on the way to their gardens, Benny and his mother and aunties would be stopped and checked by Indonesian soldiers. Often the soldiers would force the women to wash themselves in the river before brutally raping them in front of their children. Many young women, including three of Benny’s aunties, died in the jungle from the trauma and injuries inflicted during these attacks, which often involved genital mutilation. Every day Papuan women had to report to the military post to provide food from their gardens, and to clean and cook for the soldiers. Violence, racism and enforced subservience became part of daily routine.” [emphasis added]

Australia, a country with a cozy, albeit confusing relationship with Indonesia, plays its part in destroying any decent discussion on this horrifying issue. In November of last year, the Indonesian government asked Australia to put pressure on the Pacific nations who have begun to show support for West Papua’s campaign for independence, effectively stopping these tiny islands from “interfering” in Indonesia’s affairs. Australia has been quite complicit in this issue to date, even providing the Indonesian military with the equipment necessary to wreak havoc on the local population.

Lately, however, there has been some progress. The two countries suspended military ties after an Indonesian military official found “offensive” material at an Australian military base, including homework that suggested West Papua was part of Melanesia and should be given independence.

Regardless, Papua has the highest poverty rate in Indonesia. It is nearly three times the national average. It also has the highest infant, child, and maternal mortality rates in Indonesia, as well as the worst health indicators and the lowest literacy rates.

Imagine how greatly the West Papuans could improve their standard of living if they were allowed to control their own resources without the Indonesian military forcibly destroying their lives.

Meanwhile, an American mining company continues to make hundreds of billions of dollars at the expense of innocent natives.

Originally published January 18, 2017 / The Last American Vagabond

SEE ALSO:

The post West Papua: The genocide continues appeared first on Void Network.

Following the tragic events of the recent murders of 7 immigrant women in Cyprus we are calling for a March on Sunday 5th of May 14:00 starting from GSO Molos to the centre of the town in order to demonstrate our rage and disbelief to the State that let those women in despair. Domestic workers have Human Rights and those should be respected.

This is a MARCH AGAINST RACISM, A MEMORIAL MARCH FOR THE VICTIMS OF OUR INDIFFERENCE.

Texts, Posters and Leaflets. Ready to print and share – Κείμενα, Πόστερς και Τρικάκια για εκτύπωση και διαμοιρασμό:  https://www.dropbox.com

For almost two weeks now, the Cypriot society has been following the dramatic developments of finding dead bodies of murdered women, in a shaft at the Mitsero area and at a firing range at Orounda. Further Investigations are being carried out to find the missing body of the six-year-old daughter of one of the victims, as well as the bodies of a mother and her daughter from Romania.

Various analysts and experts appear daily in the media to explain these happenings and how we came across to witnessing the biggest crime in the history of this country. They talk about their analysis of the killer’s personality and actions, their analysis of how the victims were found in the shaft and in the firing range, their analysis of the total number of victims, the ways the offender approached his victims, the responsibilities of the police, etc., etc., etc.,…

We would like to raise a question that is not mentioned by ANY analyst… The so-called “Illegal People”, referring to the immigrants who, when fired for various reasons by their employers, are considered by this state as illegal. Because of their fear of being arrested and deported, they become “invisible”. People with no families or relatives in the country, without any security or protection, without papers. In many cases these are young women, single parents and all alone, trying to make it through under conditions of insecurity and terror. Such was the case of Marry Rose and her young daughter Sierra, quite similar was also the case of Livia and her daughter Helena, which were not only the victims of a serial killer, but “murdered” by the system itself and the society in general, who have exposed them and thus made them vulnerable and easy prey for exploitation and ultimately, for them being murdered, because of their class and origin.
Racism is a daily phenomenon for all immigrants living in Cyprus.

Devaluation in work and conditions of slavery, inhumane behavior, beatings, abuse, rape, humiliation, obsolescence, hostility, and ridicule are just a few examples of behaviors that immigrants are facing every day in Cyprus.

From the moment an immigrant decides to work in Cyprus, he or she has to pay the amount of around 4,000 euro to Human Traffickers. The Cyprus Republic is shamed to be one of the countries black-listed as a Human Trafficking destination. The immigrant’s debt takes years of labor to pay off. Countless times these workers get fired by their employers in a short period of time, as an example immigrants who are called to care for the elderly, with the result of not being able to pay off their debts and therefore left with a huge amount in a mortgage in their countries of origin.

Yes, the police bear enormous responsibility for what has happened. It is well proven and evidenced by various testimonials that there were repeated complaints about the missing women and children a long time ago. These pieces of evidence were in the hands of the police and for purely racist reasons, they had not acted to prevent the murders which followed. They did nothing, apparently because they were sure that these women and children had left Cyprus -without passports, salary, and other basics- because the racist Cypriot stereotype said “this is what these women do” and these words were taken as a fact by the police.
For many, Police is considered to be the protector of all citizens. But who do they really protect? The ones that have the power to control and to change it. The regime that ‘’feeds’’ the police and the governance that is called to service. For all the rest it has only one role, the role of repression for the benefit of the system! It has the role of suppressing immigrants and worker’s strikes maintaining segregation in privileged and non-privileged classes in the society. This is the police for all of us. A class repressive mechanism in the hands of the state.
All of the above-mentioned responsibilities burden everyone in the leading pyramid of the police, but also the political leaders and ministers. This totally racist negligence suggested by the state institutions leaves the Republic of Cyprus exposed to intense violations of basic human rights and cannot simply be restored by the resignation of certain officials.

Little Sierra and Elena just like the rest of the women, were not just killed by the murderer but also by the police. But all of us, through our indifference to the problems, the living conditions of immigrants, our tolerance to racists, to the patriarch stereotype in our home, in our work, in our neighborhood, for us not doing enough to eradicate the obscurantist perceptions in the society that we live in. If we want to call ourselves anti-racist, anti-fascist, PEOPLE! we shall participate in the memorial and solidarity march to the victims and immigrant communities in our country.

MARCH AGAINST RACISM, MEMORIAL MARCH FOR THE VICTIMS OF OUR INDIFFERENCE

Anarchist Group SPIRITHKIA

Ολόκληρη η Κυπριακή κοινωνία και όχι μόνο, εδώ και δυο εβδομάδες, παρακολουθεί τις εξελίξεις γύρω από την ανεύρεση πτωμάτων δολοφονημένων γυναικών, σε φρεάτιο στο Μιτσερό και στο πεδίο βολής της Ορούντας. Έρευνες γίνονται και για τον εντοπισμό της σορού της εξάχρονης κορούλας του ενός εκ των θυμάτων, όπως και για μια μάνα με την οκτάχρονη κορούλα της από την Ρουμανία.

Καθημερινά παρελαύνουν από τα ΜΜΕ αναλυτές και ειδικοί προσπαθώντας να μας εξηγήσουν τι συνέβη και πως φτάσαμε να γίνουμε μάρτυρες του μεγαλύτερου εγκλήματος στη χώρα μας. Αναλύσεις για την προσωπικότητα και την δράση του θύτη, αναλύσεις για το πως βρέθηκαν τα θύματα στο φρεάτιο και στο πεδίο βολής, αναλύσεις για τον συνολικό αριθμό των θυμάτων, για τους τρόπους που ο δράστης προσέγγιζε τα θύματα του, για τις ευθύνες της αστυνομίας, για, για, για…
Συμπληρώνουμε ακόμα ένα δεδομένο που δεν αναφέρεται πουθενά και από κανένα αναλυτή. Τους «Παράνομους Ανθρώπους». Δηλαδή τους εργάτες/τριες μετανάστες, που όταν εκδιωχθούν για χίλιους δυο λόγους από τους εργοδότες τους, θεωρούνται από το κράτος παράνομοι/ες. Μπροστά στον φόβο της σύλληψης και της απέλασης γίνονται «αόρατοι». Άνθρωποι χωρίς συγγενείς, χωρίς ασφάλεια, χωρίς προστασία, χωρίς χαρτιά. Πάρα πολλές φορές και νεαρές κοπέλες ολομόναχες, μονογονιοί που προσπαθούν να τα βγάλουν πέρα, μέσα σε συνθήκες τρόμου και ανασφάλειας. Τέτοια ήταν και η περίπτωση της Marry Rose και της μικρής Sierra όπως, με μικρές παραλλαγές, και η περίπτωση της Λίβια και της κόρης της Έλενα, οι οποίες δεν έγιναν μόνο τα θύματα ενός δολοφόνου, αλλά «δολοφονήθηκαν» προ πολλού από το ίδιο το σύστημα και την κοινωνία εκθέτοντας τες και κατ’επέκταση καθιστώντας τες ευάλωτες και εύκολη λεία για εκμετάλλευση και εν τέλει για την ίδια τους την δολοφονία, λόγω της ταξικής τους καταγωγής.
Η ρατσιστική αντιμετώπιση είναι καθημερινό φαινόμενο για όλες και όλους τους μετανάστες/τριες που ζουν στο νησί μας. Υποτίμηση στις δουλείες και συνθήκες σκλαβιάς, προώθηση εργαζομένων από συγγενή σε συγγενή ωσάν να είναι ιδιοκτησία τους, απάνθρωπες συμπεριφορές, ξυλοδαρμοί, κακοποιήσεις, βιασμοί, εξευτελισμοί, απαξίωση, εχθρικότητα και χλευασμός, είναι μόνο μερικά παραδείγματα συμπεριφορών που ο μετανάστης και η μετανάστρια αντιμετωπίζουν καθημερινά στη Κύπρο.

Ένας/μια μετανάστης/τρια από την στιγμή που αποφασίζει να εργαστεί στην Κύπρο είναι αναγκασμένος να καταβάλει ένα ποσό της τάξης των 3-4 χιλιάδων ευρώ σε Human Traffickers που “κανονίζουν” τα χαρτιά του και τις διαδικασίες “νομιμοποίησης” του. Η Κύπρος φιγουράρει ψηλά μέσα σε μαύρες λίστες Human Trafficking προορισμών, γεγονός άγνωστο στην κυπριακή κοινωνία. Για την εξόφληση του προαναφερθέν χρέους απαιτούνται χρόνια εργασίας. Πολλές φορές εργάτριες και εργάτες απολύονται από τους εργοδότες τους σε σύντομο χρονικά διάστημα, όπως για παράδειγμα οι μετανάστες/τριες που καλούνται για την φροντίδα ηλικιωμένων, με αποτέλεσμα να μένουν εκτεθειμένοι/ες λόγω των χρεών που έχουν στους traffickers τους και κατατρεγμένοι ως τις χώρες προορισμού τους.

Η αστυνομία φέρει τεράστιες ευθύνες για το ότι έχει συμβεί. Αποδεδειγμένα είχε μαρτυρίες και καταγγελίες για τις ελλείπουσες και για καθαρά ρατσιστικούς λόγους δεν ενήργησε για να αποτρέψει και άλλες δολοφονίες. Είχε καταγγελίες για σημαντικές λεπτομέρειες που αφορούσαν τις μητέρες και τα παιδιά τους, αλλά δεν έκανε τίποτα, προφανώς γιατί ήταν σίγουρη για το ότι μητέρες και παιδιά έφυγαν από την Κύπρο, χωρίς διαβατήρια, μισθό και άλλα βασικά, ήταν σίγουρη γιατί “έτσι κάμουν τούτες’’.

Αλλά ποια είναι η αστυνομία; Η αστυνομία για πολλούς έχει ρόλο προστάτιδας, αλλά προστάτιδας για ποιους; Για τους βολεμένους και το σύστημα που την ταΐζει, για το ίδιο το κράτος. Για όλους/ες τους/τις υπόλοιπους/ες έχει μόνο ένα ρόλο, τον ρόλο της καταστολής προς όφελος του συστήματος! Έχει τον ρόλο της καταστολής του μετανάστη, των απεργιών, των οπαδών, της διατήρησης του διαχωρισμού σε προνομιούχους και μη. Αυτή είναι η αστυνομία για όλους και όλες εμάς. Ένας ταξικός κατασταλτικός μηχανισμός στα χέρια του κράτους.

Όλες οι προαναφερθείσες ευθύνες, βαραίνουν όλους στην ηγετική πυραμίδα της αστυνομίας, αλλά και τους πολιτικούς τους προϊστάμενους. Αυτή η ολοκληρωτική ρατσιστική αμέλεια που υπέδειξαν οι θεσμοί του κράτους, αφήνουν εκτεθειμένη την Κυπριακή Δημοκρατία για κατάφορες παραβιάσεις βασικών ανθρωπίνων δικαιωμάτων και δεν μπορούν να αποκατασταθούν με μια ή δυο παραιτήσεις προσώπων.
Τις μικρές Sierra και Έλενα όπως και τις υπόλοιπες γυναίκες, δεν τις σκότωσε μόνο ο δολοφόνος, η αστυνομία και οι θεσμοί. Αλλά όλοι και όλες μας με την αδιαφορία για τα προβλήματα, τις συνθήκες διαβίωσης των μεταναστών, για την ανοχή μας στον/ην ρατσιστή/τρια, στον πατριάρχη στο σπίτι μας, στην δουλεία μας, στην γειτονιά μας, για το ότι δεν κάναμε αρκετά για να ξεριζώσουμε τις σκοταδιστικές αντιλήψεις στην κοινωνία που ζούμε. Αν θέλουμε να ονομαζόμαστε αντιρατσιστές, αντιφασίστες, ΑΝΘΡΩΠΟΙ! συμμετέχουμε στην πορεία μνήμης και αλληλεγγύης στα θύματα και στις μεταναστευτικές κοινότητες στη χώρα μας.

ΚΥΡ. 5 ΜΑΗ 2019- ΛΕΜΕΣΟΣ / ΩΡΑ 14.00- GSO Molos

ΠΟΡΕΙΑ ΕΝΑΝΤΙΑ ΣΤΟ ΡΑΤΣΙΣΜΟ,
ΠΟΡΕΙΑ ΜΝΗΜΗΣ ΣΤΑ ΘΥΜΑΤΑ ΤΗΣ ΑΔΙΑΦΟΡΙΑΣ ΜΑΣ

Αναρχική Ομάδα Σπιριθκιά

The post March Against Racism- SUN. 5/5/2019 Limassol Cyprus appeared first on Void Network.

Jovenel Moïse, the corrupt US backed president of Haiti, is faced with a rapidly spreading insurrection. The population had resoundingly rejected his claim to authority by repudiating the voting process, rising up during the elections, and now fighting for the president’s immediate removal.

The people in Haiti have been in near constant revolt since colonization and slavery. Resisting the French, the Americans, and the Duvalier dictatorship, Haitians have resisted all forms of subjugation, colonial and indigenous. After the US kidnapping of popular president, Aristide, the Haitian political system has been generally unpopular and, ultimately, a client of the US government.

Moïse was “elected” under the shadow of rebellion. Each step he took closer to political power was met with widespread popular disdain. His party, the right wing Tèt Kale (PHTK), was renowned for its corruption and incompetence. Moïse declared, “I alone have the solution for the question of corruption,” while he assumed power under an indictment for money laundering. He put several new PHTK politicians in positions of power while they were suspected of financial transgressions.

Last summer, the government implemented an IMF austerity program that raised the price of gasoline, diesel, and kerosine to almost 50%. This draconian attack was met with fierce resistance.

As the resistance tapered off the scope of the capitalist attack on the poor became clear. The Venezuelan government established a fund called PetroCaribe that offered revenue for Haiti. The program was promoted as a program of “economic solidarity,” valued at $3.8 billion dollars. The fund was supposed to help restore the country after the hurricane, and generally increase the standard of living for the poor. This money, in actuality, was squandered and embezzled. The resistance to the state immediately intensified and has never subsided. What began as a movement against state corruption has now morphed into resistance against the president and his party. Militants are not articulating piecemeal demands but are calling for the overthrow of the ruling party.

On February 9th revolutionaries blocked the roads to the president’s home and stoned his property. Thousands of people poured into Port-au-Prince demanding the overthrow of the regime, and the state has begun killing protesters.

Anarchists, revolutionaries, and internationalists have a responsibility. When the poor is under assault, fighting to regain dignity, and overthrow right wing forces revolutionaries must move in tandem. As the US state is impulsively trying to organize a coup, and destroy the communal/revolutionary process in Venezuela it is also propping up a corrupt, far right government in Haiti that is directly looting the oil revenue that was gifted from Venezuela.

Revolutionaries have an opportunity to increase international connections, participate in anti-colonial, anti-imperialist struggle, and combat the fascist momentum in the Americas.

Revolutionary action against Haitian state institutions is of utmost importance now, and small acts of solidarity can have a huge impact. The time to act is now!

source: Abolition Media Worldwide 

READ also

The Haitian Times

Mass Protests In Haiti, Like France’s Yellow Vests, Threaten Modern Oligarchic Structure

by Whitney Webb

MintPress News 

Haitian Authorities Arrest Americans Transporting Cache of Weapons amid Uprising

“President Jovenel Moise has brought home mercenaries to assassinate not only a desperate people who are clamoring for his resignation by demonstrating peacefully but especially his political opponents.” — Haitian online publication Vedeth

The post Haiti: Prelude to a Revolution-Mass Protests, Like in France, Threaten Modern Oligarchic Structure appeared first on Void Network.

NEW DELHI: Nov. 21, 2018 — After Twitter CEO and Co-Founder Jack Dorsey was pictured in India holding a poster reading, “Smash Brahminical Patriarchy,” pundits across the internet exploded with comparisons of anti-Brahminism to anti-Semitism.

Last week, Dorsey attended a meeting with female journalists, activists, and writers in Delhi. During the meeting, Dalit activist Sanghapali Aruna gifted him the poster. After the meeting, Dorsey posed for a group photo while holding the poster; subsequently, Indian journalist Anna Vetticad, who was present, shared the photo via Twitter.

The photo soon created a firestorm as several prominent pundits asserted that the poster was “inciting hatred” against a specific community. Arguing that Brahmins are a persecuted group analogous to European Jews, former business executive Mohandas Pai asked, “If Jack is given a poster with anti Semitic messages in a meeting, will his team allow him to hold it up?” David Frawley, who writes about Hinduism, stated, “Anti-Brahminism is a prejudice like Anti-Semitism.” The Hindu American Foundation (HAF), a US-based nonprofit, issued a statement claiming that the term “Brahminism” is an anti-Hindu slur which “has roots in white and Christian supremacy, and anti-Semitism.”

“Brahminism traps people in a caste system of artificial social hierarchy,” remarks Arvin Valmuci of Organization for Minorities of India (OFMI) “It specifically seeks to control women because they are viewed as the gateways to protecting caste purity. This new effort to annihilate caste by challenging Brahmanical patriarchy demonstrates that the outrage of upper-castes only emerges in response to anti-caste action. These same individuals and organizations are silent when it comes to the starving children of India, gang-rapes of women and girls, murders of men and women who marry outside of caste. Their only true interest lies in protecting the system of Brahminism.”

“Brahminism is an ideology which constructs a society where a caste known as Brahmins are taught to be and treated as superior to all other people,” explains South Asian affairs analyst Pieter Friedrich. “It is the practice of caste, a system that categorizes the vast mass of humanity as subhumans whose presence or touch can pollute a Brahmin. It literally teaches that a Brahmin ‘is born as the highest on earth, the lord of all created beings.’ Anti-Brahminism is focused on deconstructing this supremacist ideology by teaching equality, encouraging inter-marriage, inter-dining, and other social interactions which are prohibited by Brahminism, and ultimately annihilating the caste system. Guidelines for Brahmins, many of which are related in the ancient verses of the Manusmriti, are very close in spirit to the Nazi Nuremberg Laws as they mandate ghettoization and oppression of non-Brahmins for the purpose of maintaining racial purity.”

Manusmriti (or “Laws of Manu”), an approximately 2,000 year-old text considered the social code of conduct for Brahminism, details how the body of a god, Brahma, was broken into four pieces, with Brahmins (the highest caste) created from his head and Shudras (the lowest caste) from his feet. “There is no code of laws more infamous regarding social rights than the Laws of Manu,” wrote Dalit civil rights champion Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar. “Any instance from anywhere of social injustice must pale before it.”

The rights and privileges of Brahmins — who are considered “twice-born” — are explicitly detailed in Manusmriti’s hundreds of laws. Some of these include:

– “Other mortals subsist through the benevolence of the Brahmin.”

– “Let (the first part of) a Brahmin’s name (denote something) auspicious… but a Shudra’s (express something) contemptible…. (The second part of) a Brahmin’s (name) shall be (a word) implying happiness… and of a Shudra’s (an expression) denoting service.”

– “A Brahmin who takes a Shudra wife to his bed, will (after death) sink into hell; if he begets a child by her, he will lose the rank of a Brahmin.”

– “One whose (only or first) wife is a Shudra female, the son of a remarried woman… he who instructs Shudra pupils and he whose teacher is a Shudra… he who has contracted an alliance with outcasts either through the Veda or through a marriage… he who gains his subsistence from Shudras… a shepherd, a keeper of buffaloes, the husband of a remarried woman, and a carrier of dead bodies, (all these) must be carefully avoided.”

– “Let him always delight in truthfulness, (obedience to) the sacred law, conduct worthy of an Aryan, and purity.”

– “Let the king, after rising early in the morning, worship Brahmins.”

– “Let him daily worship aged Brahmins who know the Veda and are pure.”

– “To honor the Brahmins, is the best means for a king to secure happiness.”

– “A Brahmin who subsists only by the name of his caste (jati), or one who merely calls himself a Brahmin (though his origin be uncertain), may, at the king’s pleasure, interpret the law to him, but never a Shudra.”

– “When a learned Brahmin has found treasure, deposited in former (times), he may take even the whole (of it); for he is master of everything. When the king finds treasure of old concealed in the ground let him give one half to Brahmins and place the (other) half in his treasury.”

– “A once-born man (a Shudra), who insults a twice-born man with gross invective, shall have his tongue cut out; for he is of low origin…. If he arrogantly teaches Brahmins their duty, the king shall cause hot oil to be poured into his mouth and into his ears.”

– “A man who is not a Brahmin ought to suffer death for adultery (samgrahana); for the wives of all the four castes even must always be carefully guarded.”

– “A Shudra who has intercourse with a woman of a twice-born caste (varna), guarded or unguarded, (shall be punished in the following manner): if she was unguarded, he loses the part (offending) and all his property; if she was guarded, everything (even his life).”

– “No greater crime is known on earth than slaying a Brahmin; a king, therefore, must not even conceive in his mind the thought of killing a Brahmin.”

– “A Brahmin who approaches unguarded females (of the) Kshatriya or Vaishya (castes), or a Shudra female, shall be fined five hundred (panas); but (for intercourse with) a female (of the) lowest (castes), one thousand.”

– “A Brahmin who, because he is powerful, out of greed makes initiated (men of the) twice-born (castes) against their will do the work of slaves, shall be fined by the king six hundred (panas). But a Shudra, whether bought or unbought, he may compel to do servile work; for he was created by the Self-existent (Svayambhu) to be the slave of a Brahmin. A Shudra, though emancipated by his master, is not released from servitude; since that is innate in him, who can set him free from it?”

– “The property of a Brahmin must never be taken by the king, that is a settled rule; but (the property of men) of other castes the king may take.”

– “A Brahmin, be he ignorant or learned, is a great divinity.”

– “To serve Brahmins (who are) learned in the Vedas, householders, and famous (for virtue) is the highest duty of a Shudra, which leads to beatitude. (A Shudra who is) pure, the servant of his betters, gentle in his speech, and free from pride, and always seeks a refuge with Brahmins, attains (in his next life) a higher caste.”

Born as a Dalit, which is the self-adopted term for those historically treated as Untouchables or outcastes (those considered below Shudras), Dr. Ambedkar was educated at Columbia University and London School of Economics before leading a civil rights movement in India. One of his most famous protests was the December 25, 1927 public burning of copies of Manusmriti.

In his book, The Annihilation of Caste, Ambedkar denounced “the penal sanctions of the Manusmriti.” Suggesting a legal framework was necessary to counteract Manu’s laws, he wrote: “The priestly class must be brought under control by some such legislation as I have outlined above. This will prevent it from doing mischief and from misguiding people. It will democratize it by throwing it open to everyone. It will certainly help to kill the Brahminism and will also help to kill Caste, which is nothing but Brahminism incarnate. Brahminism is the poison which has spoiled Hinduism. You will succeed in saving Hinduism if you will kill Brahminism.”

Concluding that “we must uproot Brahminism,” Ambedkar explained in a 1938 speech:

“Brahminism is an enemy which must be dealt with. By Brahminism, I do not mean the power, privileges and interests of Brahmins as a community. That is not the sense in which I am using the word. By Brahminism, I mean the negation of the spirit of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. In that sense, it is rampant in classes and is not confined to the Brahmins alone, though they have been the originators of it. This Brahminism which pervades everywhere and which regulates the thought and deeds of all classes is an incontrovertible fact. It is also an incontrovertible fact that the Brahminism gives certain classes a privileged position. It denies certain other classes even equality of opportunity.”

Furthermore, in a 1943 speech, Ambedkar identified Brahminism as a supremacist ideology. He stated, “Long before Nietzsche was born, Manu had proclaimed the gospel which Nietzsche sought to preach. It is a religion which is not intended to establish liberty, equality and fraternity. It is a gospel which proclaims the worship of the superman — the Brahmin — by the rest of the Hindu Society. It propounds that the superman and his class alone are born to live and to rule. Others are born to serve them, and to nothing more. They have no life of their own to live, and no right to develop their own personality.”

According to a November 17 report by The New York Times, “The Dalit population, now estimated at more than 300 million, has been abused for as long as anyone can remember.” Although India’s 1950 constitution abolished the practice of Untouchability, it remains widespread and the practice of caste remains legal. The Times further reports, “95 percent of Indians still marry within their caste, experts say. And recent studies show income and education levels correlate very closely with caste…. The number of caste-based crimes has increased 25 percent since 2010, reaching nearly 41,000 cases in 2016, the last year on record.”

Speaking about the poster, Thenmozhi Soundararjan says, “The act of giving was an act of sharing our struggles and also the urgency of gender-based violence against Dalit women in India.” The Executive Director of Equality Labs, a South Asian community outreach organization, Soundararajan is also the co-creator of the “Smash Brahminical Patriarchy” poster. In an interview with The Indian Express, she states, “We have just opened the conversation with #MeToo India and yet no one is talking about Tamil Nadu’s Raja Lakshmi the 13-year-old who was decapitated by her perpetrator for speaking out about her harassment. How many Raja Lakshmis must die before our cries are heard? Sharing art that reflects our urgency and our pain is a way of connecting the world to our vital movements of justice, healing, and accountability related to caste apartheid. Only the most cynical troll would try to pervert the call for justice. For me, if these casteist trolls spent even one ounce of this time raising the issues of caste and gender atrocity instead of this faux outrage we would not have to create posters like this.”

At a 2015 conference co-hosted by OFMI to examine “pan-Brahminism in South Asia,” ethnic studies professor Dr. Amrik Singh noted, “Our belief systems make us what we are. So, all humans are created equally, including Brahmins…. It’s the ideology, not human beings — human beings, all are created equally.” Valmuci agrees with Singh, adding, “The same subjugation of people upheld by Brahminical patriarchy is unfortunately present in every community in the world. Even Dalits fall prey to practicing Brahminical patriarchy. Smashing Brahminical patriarchy means nothing less than persuading the whole world of the truth of equality, liberty, and fraternity. We want a future where the names of the four castes — Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Shudra — are abandoned and forgotten along with the hierarchy based on birth which those names create.”

Responding to allegations that use of the term “Brahminism” is analogous to anti-Semitism, Friedrich says, “HAF banks on American ignorance of the finer details of Indian religion and politics to propagandize dissent against religious nationalism, cultural supremacy, and Hindutva (a term with which most Americans are entirely unfamiliar) as ‘Hinduphobic’ — a strategy to corral and isolate nonconformists.” Opposition to Brahminism, he says, must be understood as a rejection of supremacy. “Comparing anti-Brahminism to anti-Semitism is not only logically absurd and intellectually dishonest, but it’s a real insult to those who suffered under the Holocaust. Anti-Brahminism is more accurately compared to anti-Nazism. Brahminism is a branch in the same tree as Nazism. Both are rooted in the philosophy of Aryanism, which focuses on dehumanization of others, social stratification and segregation, and belief in a supreme, pure race. The supposed superiority of Aryans is advanced by both ideologies to justify subjugating others and treating supposed non-Aryans as inferior. That’s exactly the belief system which led to the persecution of the Jews just as it leads today to the persecution of Mulnivasi Bahujans.”

HAF claims that “Brahminism was invented by 18th and 19th century European Indologists to describe and define Hinduism.” However, according to sociopolitical activist and analyst Dr. Manisha Bangar, the battle against caste traces back for thousands of years. “The argument given by mischievous Brahmin pseudo-historians that the caste/varna system is a British or Western construct or, at best, was created by Muslim invaders, is untenable and steeped in falsehood,” explains Dr. Bangar. “If that is true, then against what social order was Siddhartha Gautama Buddha fighting over 2,500 years ago? What were Kabir and Ravidas and Guru Nanak speaking against when they exposed caste discrimination and called for a society of equality?”

“This week we celebrate the birthday of Guru Nanak, the first Sikh Guru,” says Balbir Singh Dhillon, the president of West Sacramento Sikh Gurdwara. “Our Guru worked to liberate the downtrodden from the shackles of Brahminism and other teachings designed to exploit people. He taught us a new path where there is no Hindu and no Muslim, where we reject castes and classes, and where we recognize the Lord’s light within all. Our Gurus brought the Order of the Khalsa to the Shudra and the Dalit in order to uplift the lowest of the low. Following their example, we call for an end to Brahminism, patriarchy, and every system of oppression.”

Bhajan Singh, the founder of OFMI, states, “Denial of the existence of Brahminism is part of the agenda of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh to rewrite history.” The RSS, a nationalist paramilitary in India whose members include the Prime Minister, President, and Vice President, has a stated goal of declaring India a Hindu State. In recent years, it has aggressively pursued revision of school textbooks; most recently, Rajasthan State Education Minister Vasudev Devnani presented books produced by the RSS as models for new curriculum.

“The RSS isn’t confining its efforts to distort history to India, but extending its reach even into American classrooms,” notes Singh. He points to the years-long California textbook controversy which concluded in 2017 with adoption of a multitude of changes demanded by HAF and affiliated lobbyists. “The Hindu American Foundation worked to erase all references to how Guru Nanak challenged the authority of Brahmins and the caste order, as well insert claims that Bhagats like Kabir did not actually oppose caste. Their efforts were funded by RSS agents. HAF hired Murali Balaji as their Director of Education and Curriculum Reform in 2013 with money from the Uberoi Foundation. The Uberoi Foundation is chaired by Ved Nanda, who is director of the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh in America. The HSS is the international wing of the RSS.”

In conclusion, Singh points to a passage by Kabir, a weaver who lived in Uttar Pradesh in the 15th century. Kabir wrote:

“In the dwelling of the womb,
there is no ancestry or social status.
All have originated from the Seed of God.
Tell me, O Pandit, O religious scholar:
since when have you been a Brahmin?
Don’t waste your life by
continually claiming to be a Brahmin.
If you are indeed a Brahmin,
born of a Brahmin mother,
Then why didn’t you come by some other way?
How is it that you are a Brahmin,
and I am of a low social status?
How is it that I am formed of blood,
and you are made of milk?”

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