Autonomism and the Culture War

I wrote the following article on nationalism and anarchism for the celticanarchy.org site, which may or may not be getting taken down in the next few weeks. I liked it though and it provoked some interesting responses – as well as outrage from at least a couple so-called “national anarchists” – so i’d like to repost is here so i don’t lose it if/when celticanarchy.org goes down.

There’s been a lot of fuss in the last few years about attempt to merge nationalism and Anarchism, specifically third-positionist / post-fascist nationalism and anarchism. Groups that advocate such a move are a fringe of a fringe of a fringe, to say the least, but they’ve got their own wikipedia entries nowadays and at least a few websites. Calling themselves “National Anarchists” they advocate what is essentially an anarchist political system (radically decentralized and local with no central state) but generally hold onto private ownership of land and advocate monoculture communities based on “voluntary” racial and ethnic segregation in the name of “biodiversity;” one of the scariest examples I can think of of evil bastards appropriating rhetoric and using it to mean something totally opposite of what it actually means. Scary shit. I’m not going to link to any of their websites because, frankly, I don’t want to send them any traffic. But if you’re really interested just google ‘national anarchism’ and prepare to be horrified.

Now as I write this I can hear some of you out there in Internet land scratching your heads and saying to yourselves “but Lynx! Isn’t CelticAnarchy.org essentially the same thing – just another attempt to fuse nationalism and anarchism?”

My answer is: “not even close.”

Here’s the thing, the key differences between the politics of these post-fascist creeps and the folks (including myself) who came together to start CelticAnarchy.org:

First of all we are totally opposed to the concept of Race itself, let alone Racism which seeks to use the fiction of Race to separate people. If anything, our perspective is that as colonized peoples who are still grappling with the implications of hundreds of years of imperialism, we have a natural affinity to other oppressed peoples around the world and a responsibility to stand up for ourselves and for them and oppose racism and white supremacy anywhere and everywhere they manifest themselves.

Secondly, we are not nationalists, never have been, never will be. The key defining feature of Nationalism is the belief that in one way or another the Nation – that is to say the ethno//cultural//linguistic group – should be the primary political unit in society. So-called National-Anarchists want to do that by creating a ‘nation’ composed of racially and culturally homogeneous communities; destroying the diverse and explosively creative fusion of cultures that is the basis of everything from Appalachian music to Jazz to Hip Hop (and a lot of other things too… I’m a musician so music examples are the first to spring to mind but there are many others). Personally, I can think of very few things that would be worse for humanity – cultures have always blended, fusion is a fact of life, and the interchange between cultures is an essential ingredient in any recipe for real peace on a global scale. Learning to see the world through others eyes is the first step towards any meaningful understanding between peoples. and with thousands of cultures on one small planet we simply cannot afford to not understand each other.

One of the only things, in fact, that I can think of that would be as bad as (probably not worse, but equally horrific) then the National-Anarchist vision is the traditional anarchocommunists line, dating from Kropotkin on, that nations should be destroyed entirely right along with States and be supplanted by a single global culture, a single global language. While this view may have (thankfully) become a minority one within the global anarchist movement in the last fifty years, it was not so long ago that Anarchists in China were busily setting up Esperanza schools and preaching for a global monoculture. Little wonder then that when push came to shove China’s stateless nations threw their support behind the Maoists who (early on at least) promised them full cultural autonomy within a communist China rather then the Chinese Anarchists who -despite all of the beautiful organizing work they did – promised to consign the unique languages and customs of the national minorities to the “dustbin of history”, right alongside Capitalism and the State. The Tibetans – and many others with less charismatic representatives on the world stage – have learned the hard way that Marxist vanguards can’t be trusted to keep promises made to coalition partners. But the fact remains that when push came to shove anarchists offered a global monoculture and China’s ethnic minorities said “no thanks.” China is hardly an isolated example either, it just happens to be the one that I’ve done the most reading on. That should tell us something. Just as it should tell us something that our strongest successes as a movement have come in times and places where Anarchist revolution became the vehicle for stateless nations seeking independence and freedom to be themselves without the tyranny of State power – Catalonia, the Ukraine, Bavaria, and (to a lesser degree) places like Mexico and Poland. History is very clear on this.
The cold hard fact is that the Nation-State is a myth. And not a myth in the Joseph Cambell “power of myth” sense, but in the same sense that santa clause and the tooth fairy are myths. As my good friend Roger White points out in his excellent pamphlet Post Colonial Anarchism, there are less then a dozen true “nation-states” on the world stage – that is places where the territory claimed by the state exactly corresponds to a Nation. The vast majority of the 5,000 or so Nations on this planet are stateless nations – peoples whose language, culture, and identity are constantly suppressed by the languages, cultures, and traditions of the dominant group within whatever State claims their land. Nationalists within these various stateless nations want to “solve” this problem by breaking up existing States and replacing them with their own new States – a process that is typically violent and often results in massive population shifts as people who are suddenly minorities flee to escape the newly created state. And, for all that violence and bloodshed, nothing gets solved. Because even in places like Kosovo where 90% of the population of a newly minted State are members of the same ethnic Nation, you’ve still got 10% who are not and who are dramatically disenfranchised by the enfranchisement of others. State power is, after all, a Zero-sum game. The security of any State is predicated on the insecurity of others. In a Stateist system in order for the Albanians to exercise their fundamental right to self-determination they must deny that right to the Serbs, Roma, and others with whom they share their country. And I’m sorry, but that’s just not good enough.

So what do we propose?

Speaking personally, I see Anarchism as the solution. Not the bogus “national anarchism” of the far-right that seeks to appropriate our rhetoric and then stain it with their hatred nor the universalist global-monoculture anarchism of traditional anarchocommunism. I’m looking for an anarchism where all states are abolished, where communities are self-governing at the local level, and where ties of mutual aid and solidarity bind together a global community of communities based on diversity and mutual respect. An anarchism where the Kosovars and Serbs can both speak their own languages and practice their own religions without either needing to disenfranchise the other to make that happen. Where all the thousands of small local languages, from Irish to Scots Gaelic to Euskera to Lakota that are currently being pushed into extinction are revived and can once again become the primary languages of the local communities that have kept them alive despite all odds, and where their futures are safe because local languages make sense in a political system and an economy based on local control. An Anarchism that recognizes that Nations exist and makes no attempt to suppress them but at the same time doesn’t bow to the demands of extremists for supremacy over their neighbors. An anarchism where State borders and boundaries that currently forcibly separate people are erased but where no Nation ever again has the ability – or even a real motive – to move in and wipe out another, and where attempts by larger ethno-linguistic groups to repress the rights of minorities to be themselves are met with swift fury and withdrawals of mutual aid and support from everyone else in the global community of communities. An Anarchism where diversity and mutual respect are the norm – not just empty cliches in the mouths of liberals who see nothing wrong with imposing their own values on everyone else around them.

That is the anarchism which I’ve been working for, fighting for, and advocating for almost 10 years now. It is the animating vision behind all of my songs, all of my poems and the thing that motivates me to keep fighting no matter how many times I get arrested or beaten up by the police who serve a system based on divisions and hierarchy.

And if that also happens to be the kind of Anarchism that you’d like to see, join us. Post in the forums, send in an article (We need more writers!), and then get back out in the streets where we all belong. We’ve still got a revolution to win out there, and it’s not going to build itself.

Some of the most interesting (read: obnoxious short-sighted and downright slanderous) responses came from the folks over at LibCom.org after one of the visitors to celticanarchy.org reposted my article there. in two pages of responses i was denounced as a closet racist, a fascist sympathizer, an all kinds of other fun things before they decided to delete the entire thread and cleanse themselves of the “nationalist” taint on their boards. seriously. I’m honestly not sure where they pulled all that from since it should be pretty clear that that’s a load of horseshit. Frankly, I think most of them read what they expected to be in the article instead of what i’d actually written. When I found the thread I went and wrote a response.

hi.

I’m the person who wrote the article on celticanarchy.org that cornumbrian reposted here. there seems to have been a bit of confusion as to what out of his post was his and what was not. so for the record i’ll take full responsibility for the article from celticanarchy.org. I can guarantee it wasn’t 100% spot-on perfect in its rhetoric, but it was a genuine attempt to re-imagine anarchist politics in a way that I think would help them be much more widely accepted, understood, and implemented.

at core, what celticanarchy.org advocated (past-tense, i’m probably taking the site down) was the same exact political structure that anarchists have always advocated: abolish all borders, give power to local communities and individuals, eliminate all political and economic hierarchy, create a classless free society based on syndicated networks of autonomous communities, where mutual aid and cooperation are the norm. And, on top of all that, recognize that people value their languages and cultures and are not going to stop valuing them, that an anarchist society composed of those people will therefore also value them, and that therefore our organizations should do the same. Further, *failing* to do so is to de facto value the dominant culture at the expense of others. That may be all well and dandy if you have an organization that exclusively includes members of the dominant ethno-linguistic group, but at the point where you want to include anyone else it’s a good idea to allow them space to be themselves. APOC activists have been making this point for years.

As a good example of what I’m advocating, consider the fact that NEFAC prints their journal in both english and french in order to accommodate the quebecois francophiles that prefer to read and write in that language. Many other anarchist publications in north america are published in english and spanish, as well as other languages. and really, that’s all i’m asking for – a basic willingness to respect and reasonably accommodate local cultures. not that anarchists organize along ethnic lines or anything stupid like that. just recognize and respect the diversity that exists and oppose forced assimilation. it’s really not much to ask. Frankly, i find it hard to believe that so many self-described anti-authoritarians can’t understand that there is something intensely authoritarian about expecting other people to speak your language just because it’s convenient for you.

speaking of the growing trend to make anarchist publications multi-lingual, I think it’s a very good thing, a long-overdue development, and a marked shift from the instance i cited in my article where chinese anarchists in the 1920’s actively and explicitly promoted the idea that all of china’s regional languages and cultures would be erased in the wake of a global anarchist revolution. (Arif dirlick’s book on anarchism in the chinese revolution is a great resource if anyone is interested in learning more). that attitude did not win them any friends among the various minority groups in china. maoists, by contrast, promised those same national minorities regional autonomy and got their support and that support was critical in the maoist victory against the nationalists. the maoists didn’t keep their promise, of course. big suprise.

by contrast, in spain the anarchists did not advocate monoculture, they advocated personal freedom and an end to capitalist exploitation, as well as local control and autonomy in a country where people wanted exactly that and in just over 70 years went from being a tiny minority to being the largest organized political block. I’m not saying that their demands for cultural autonomy were the only ingredient or even the most significant, but they *were* a part of the platform. And if the anarchists in spain had done the same as the chinese anarchists and told the catalonian peasants to forget catalonian and learn esperanto – or even castilian, the dominant language spoken by the officers of the spanish state – i can guarantee there would not have been an anarchist revolution in spain in 1936. not because there’s anything particularly grand about castilian, but because it’s just plain rude to expect people to abandon an essential part of *who they are* – their culture. And people don’t react well to self-righteous radicals who make outrageous demands like that. Ward Churchill goes into this in greater detail in his essay on anarchism and indigenism. I recommend it.

Nations and states are different things and eliminating states won’t eliminate nations (if we use the standard definition of a nation as an ethno-cultural-linguistic group). That doesn’t mean nations should have anything at all to do with political or economic organization in an anarchist society and we don’t need to show them any particular un-warranted respect, but we do need to recognize cultural genocide when we see it and oppose it. look at big mountain and the tremendous solidarity work being done there by anarchists and others. those folks have decided that it’s not ok for the federal government and peabody coal to force D’neh people off their land and into mainstream (read: white) society in order to strip-mine for coal. It’s wrong because strip mining is horrific, it’s wrong because forced relocation is a crime, and it’s wrong because the actions of the federal government are an assault on the right of the Dneh people to be who they are on their own land and in their own way. By supporting their resistance to relocation the anarchists involved (and there are lots of them) are not tainting themselves with “nationalism” or anything ridiculous like that. they’re putting into practice basic fundamental principles of anarchist thought: autonomy, mutual aid, free association, and opposition to heirarchy.

I would argue that this type of work in support of minority groups, particularly indigenous groups, who have no desire to be assimilated into the larger society must be an essential part of anarchist organizing. Whether those people are D’neh, Lakota, Cornish, etc is irrelevant. that doesn’t mean the members of those groups have the right to exclude others or force their culture on anyone else, but they do have the right to be themselves. and, because we’re anarchists and not nationalists, it should be done on a community-by-community basis. so, to return to jambo1’s comment, no gaelic signs in parts of the highlands where no one speaks or is interested in speaking gaelic and yes gaelic signs in places where people genuinely want them. that’s just common sense really.

I’m rambling a bit, sorry for that. it’s late and reading through the comments here was a bit depressing. I guess my main point is that the article I wrote and that was reposted here did not advocate nationalism – the ideology that claims that the nation or ethnic group should be the primary political unit – in any way. In fact, my article explicitly rejected that ideology. Instead what I was attempting to do is to explain why anarchists should rethink our rhetoric about *abolishing* nations. nations aren’t our enemies, States are. There is no reason why anarchists should be opposed to people seeing value in and working to preserve and defend their local languages, cultures, customs, etc; and in fact our commitment to autonomy and individual liberty demands that we defend their right to do so, even while opposing nationalists and statists who seek to make the nation into a political unit instead of a social or cultural one and use it as a power-base to build political, economic, and cultural hierarchies.

i hope what i’ve written here makes sense. i don’t really expect to win converts here. these are just some of my own thoughts. if they make sense to ya’ll then great, and if not that’s fine too. i just felt the need to defend myself since people here were pulling out bits of my article and implying that it was nationalist or even fascist. that’s the kind of talk I take offense too very quickly and doesn’t make me feel friendly, but i’m trying to keep things level-headed and diplomatic in my response out of respect for ya’ll. I hope that respect is returned.

solidarity,
lynx
emceelynx.com

Maybe I’m missing something obvious here, but for the life of me I don’t know what. Is it really that outrageous to ask anarchists – people who claim to be devoted to defending individual liberty and community-level self determination – to stand up for people’s right to be themselves? why is it that so many anarchists get all bent out of shape as soon as anyone suggests that maybe there are other ways of life and being that have value outside of the dominant global monoculture?  is it really that scary?

Posted: June 29th, 2008 under culture war.
Comments: 2

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