"This left exhibits deeply authoritarian tendencies, one that places states themselves at the centre of political analysis. Solidarity is therefore extended to states (seen as the main actor in a struggle for liberation) rather than oppressed or underprivileged groups in any given society, no matter that state's tyranny."
– Leila Al Shami
https://libcom.org/article/anti-imperialism-idiots-leila-al-shami
– Leila Al Shami
https://libcom.org/article/anti-imperialism-idiots-leila-al-shami
libcom.org
The ‘anti-imperialism’ of idiots - Leila Al-Shami
Once more the western ‘anti-war’ movement has awoken to mobilise around Syria. This is the third time since 2011.
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"Stalinists and their ilk did not kill because they dreamed great dreams—actually, Stalinists were famous for being rather short on imagination—but because they mistook their dreams for scientific
certainties.
This led them to feel they had a right to impose their visions through a machinery of violence.
Anarchists are proposing nothing of the sort, on either count. They presume no inevitable course of history and one can never further the course of freedom by creating new forms of coercion.
In fact all forms of systemic violence are (among other things) assaults on the role of the imagination as a political principle, and the only way to begin to think about eliminating systematic violence is by recognizing this."
– David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology
certainties.
This led them to feel they had a right to impose their visions through a machinery of violence.
Anarchists are proposing nothing of the sort, on either count. They presume no inevitable course of history and one can never further the course of freedom by creating new forms of coercion.
In fact all forms of systemic violence are (among other things) assaults on the role of the imagination as a political principle, and the only way to begin to think about eliminating systematic violence is by recognizing this."
– David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology
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