David Graeber - Syria, Anarchism and Visiting Rojava
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- Опубликовано: 29 май 2017
- In the last part of our interview, a special 20 minute discussion with anthropologist David Graeber about anarchism, Syria, building a new kind of democracy, the bureaucracy of activism and his visit to Rojava where the building of a new kind of society is underfoot.
Rest In Power, Comrade Graeber ✊
So, Thomas,
You figure he was murdered?
h.
Such a loss. Brilliant guy, pleasant and clear explanations.
Fuck! I didn't realise. The man was a hero for me. Rest in power Comrade.
Rest in power, my comrade. You will always be close to my heart and your stories and perspectives have a home in my mind.
Rest in hell
A funny man with a beautiful mind. So glad you lived among us. Rest in Power.
What a pleasant surprise, to hear about anarcho-feminism at work. This made my day. I started laughing out loud with joy. Thank you! May you all be peaceful, happy and well.
@The Mitchell Special Wrong!!!! Feminist is about equality period!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@Anders Anderson this 'brocialism' is really shocking on the left. Highly recommend reading bell hooks. There's a good quote saying 'when you're used to privilege, equality feels like oppression'. That seems to be something a lot of men are going through. I disagree with a large amount of SJW feminist tactics and occasionally some ideas, but I wouldn't ever dismiss their efforts for justice as kooky, hateful, or ugly. Harrassment, pay equity, maternal burden, unfair labor etc. remain large problems for women. It's true that men have lots of specific problems or social roles as well, but it's mostly feminists who are vouching for those problems as well (violence, substance abuse, dangerous work, loneliness, etc.)
Amalija, I'm appalled how some people want to undermine your genuine honest joy by saying "oh but there's this thing that like to call themselves feminist or whatever that is not nice". Oh come on. There's a lot of self-proclaimed socialist things in the world too. That doesn't stop us from being intelligent and supporting the good stuff and reject the bad stuff regardless of the name. I guess technicality-oriented replies are not asking for an honest/deep/meaningful answer. *shrug*
@Anders Anderson Compete on a tough marketplace... sounds thoroughly corrupted by capitalist.
So, Kev. You believe the definition for feminism from a group you despise instead from people that seems to be caring for one another? Your argument is silly and naive. But I don't think you're silly or naive. I think you are a troll and prefer to support a shitty definition because you're not interested in equality. But hey, thanks for the comments. Good for the algorithm.
Human consciousness has been asleep for a long time as society evolves. Glad to see more and more people thinking about a better future like Professor Graeber!
Rest In Power, thank you for your courageous scholarship!
RIP Graeber, one of the best.
found this video from albert's znet... best elevator speech i've heard explaining anarchism... should make a t-shirt that reads "anarchists love organization more than anyone"
18 min Elevator ride?
Abiasaf López slow elevator or tall building
tall building and/or slow elevator
Hand pulled elevator to 40th floor?
P.S.
On Front
"Anarchists love organization more than anyone"
On Back
"Unfortunately they hate organizations more than everyone"
Lolololol
The circle around the anarchist 'A' literally stands for 'order'
This guy is a genius
not at all
@@biancavonmuhlendorf2608 whats ur definition of genius
@@biancavonmuhlendorf2608 go read his books and come back to this comment.
Just sensible.. It merely looks like 'genius' when you are surrounded by 7 billion idiots..
@@ianperfittHe was very insightful but I wouldn't call him a genius
ocalans works are largely inspired by Murray Bookchin, so if you want even more of a background on Rojavas ideology read some of his works!
currently studying his book "The ecology of freedom"
My Kurdish friends marching on the capital of ISIS is amazing news no matter how many times i hear it
Tell them good luck! And bless them! From America to Kurdistan ❤️❤️❤️
@i.e.d America doesn't represent its people, it represents its oligarchies. Many of the American international volunteers in Rojava are against the U.S. administration.
Nobody should doubt that the Kurds shed light on the darkness of the Middle East and Anatolia. Our rebellion began yesterday in Turkey's prisons, leading to peace in Syria these days.
Very cool (surprising and then not surprising) to hear what’s happening in that region! Not sure if this is a factor, but was wondering if there’s any research/ thoughts on how group dynamics and group psychology play into anarchist societies? Also is there a basic set of rules to prevent things going off the rails, e.g methods of discussions - or is the beauty that it’s actually not necessary (which would contradict my experience with small scale group decision processes)?
Ah, the second part or the question about rules is touched on in the last 1/4 of the interview
David Graeber.... ❤🩹❤🧡💛💚💙💜🤎👋🙏💐🌸🏵🌹🥀🌺🌻🌼🌷☀🌝🌞🌈💯
Miss you David
Love love love
"Uncle Öc" lmao
D a t b o i
thanks for this interview!
You will be missed Rest In Power ✊🏽❤️🌹
Very enlightening. Thank you
dont forget the zapatistas!
and manchuria!
I always loved it when we were assigned Graeber to read for my university classes.
RIP David, great man!!
We found the closest thing to a fremen we could find.
Brilliant
"I'm not for absolute consensus, I'm for modified consensus. There's always going to be one or two guys who are crazy." I wish the rest of Occupy had thought that way. ABosolute one hundred percent consensus dosn't work.
Could this be expressed as asking the remaining few to bear with the consensus of the rest for the time being, and reconsider/have another look at the issue at a later point in time?
@Max Mustermann you start with blanc votes : majority doesnot want either A or B. You cannot brush it off. You have to ask what is your C? Whether candidate or program, or both.
@@xCorvus7x analysis and alertness have to be constant, a state of mind, a way of living and.participating
@@michelegosse7116
I take this as a yes?
@Evi1M4chine
Blame is less important than results.
Going by modified consensus might have proven resilient against such subversion, so Occupy as a whole would have been sustained.
Much love to Kurdistan! ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Rest In Power and all solidarity with our comrades in Rojava/DANNES
This was fascinating, David speaks with so much wisdom. I am especially intrigued by how feminist theory is central to Rojava
good job on practical anarchy
Also, RIP David. You are missed ❤
I had seen him years ago but never learned more about him. Turn's out I agree with him on most things :/ RIP
RIP to a real one
I think a system helpful for what he was talking about at the end with not requiring participation in direct democracy is called liquid democracy, I can’t explain it all in a comment but that’s the search term if anyone wants to look it up.
you will be missed comrade
RIP, comrade.
Rip brother
Whats the status with this place now in 2020? we MUST continue to demonstrate that human beings can be grown ups and behave properly. also alternative currencies and means of exchange is essential. their money, their rules.
Crypto is not the answer if 'that's what you mean by 'alternative currencies'.
Of course people like to be dominated when they grew up being dominated, and the only way they ever get any pleasure out of life is through obedience and conforming to authority!
Billy OldMan as if obedience and conformity to authority are bad things. At any rate, those are normal features of militarized societies. These people have been fighting for a looooong time. I'm not a communist or an anarchist, but I praise their heroism in an age of battlefield abstraction. I support their claim to self-determination.
@@stefangeorge2844 Well, no one (except idiots) said it's not a lot more nuanced than bad/good.
Well 2 things, how families are legitimized affect how children/kids accept abuse, and also addiction to abuse does happen because of how it changes your brain's hormone cycles. Basically families being systemically abusive to children is holistic for a dictatorship of/serving the bourgeoisie/bosses who control everything you need to do your job & survive.
@Evi1M4chine finished hyperventilating?
love to Turkey and Syria
Rest in peace David
Thank you Graeber
how is this doing these days? does anyone know?
I heard he's collecting worms underground
@@Cd5ssmffan what the fuck kind of comment is that
Pretty well aside from Turkish intrusion !
I'm sure you've found out by now, but for reference, yes, Rojava are still in existence, against all odds and despite ongoing Turkish occupation. They've been forced to allow some Assad forces into their territory near the border with Turkey to deter further Turkish aggression, but otherwise the SDF still have numbers, discipline, and organisational integrity, there is still a mass public support and engagement with the Democratic Confederalism model, and feminism etc. And even the cooperation with Assad may not be a terrible thing overall; it begins to normalise relations which offers the potential of the long term survival of Rojava with a significant degree of autonomy technically within the Syrian state in some kind of special arrangement with Assad.
Practical Anarchy
Zapatistas! Also a current amazing example
RIP.
Lol @him saying capitalists aren't afraid of marxists
REST IN POWER DAVID
I support Rojava but I gotta say it is funny how he goes from talking about how you need to get rid of police and then almost immediately acknowledges that they have police in Rojava.
Well the context matters. Seeing as Rojava is surrounded by combatants, engaged in active revolution, and dismantling patriarchal norms, that’s gonna lead to a necessity of some kind of police and militarism. Especially pointing out that women are highly active in them, it’s a means to end that anarchist believe in. Anarchism, like communism, is more of end goal, where the need for such institutions will no longer be there. For the time being in Rojava, it is. Also I’m sure they’re police force isn’t based in the same kind of ideals as western police, seeing as how they are fighting for leftist principles
@@baptizednblood6813 I don't disagree with that, but that's also not what he said, and the reason he didn't say what you're saying is that your argument is basically the opposite of the logic anarchists used until the zapatistas and Kurds to declare Marxist revolutions failed, which is usually something like animal farm, the revolutionaries turn into pigs, because if your revolution has cops its not really a revolution.
The irony of this classic anarchist argument today is that all the major 21st century projects achieving any success (namely the zapatistas and rojava) which anarchists support have accepted Marx's premise that you do need a state to organize defensive violence at least in the world as it is rn, in the form of policing reactionaries and organizing military forces to repel counter revolution.
Of course loads of Marxist revolutions failed too, and the ones that haven't like Cuba and Vietnam, even arguably china, also heavily critiqued to og Soviet model as too top heavy and unaccountable to the people directly.
The approach really getting things done right now seems to be a syncretism of Marxist revolutionary theory and anarchist critique of completely embracing Lenin's mindset that the ends justify literally any means necessary.
But neither anarchists nor Marxists really admit that ATM.
I love how the interviewer calls him out on the semantics, he throws out a bunch of terms that could be any leftwing or Marxist military, and says their military doesn't do offensive wars, then talks about how they're waging an offensive action on raqqa. You're all over the place man
what's happening to him between 12:16 - 2:20
lmao
"uh uhh .... ugh .. uhh ahh" "Oh I see, ..."
Some kind of nervous ticks... Something that affects facial nerves and voicebox (maybe), he grinned later as if to stretch his face muscles and then the weird behaviour stopped. Sucks if thats true. Maybe a partial seizure, or just glitch from exhaustion... He is astonishingly bright though.
@@Lukaazas9 I've been watching some of his recorded lectures here on yt since his passing, and this is 100% it. He has some nervous ticks & stutters, which seem to come out a lot less in the 1:1 interviews than in public lectures. Agreed tho, brilliant writer & brilliant thinker.
Consensus attracts those crazy and unreasonable people because "consensus" is just a nice way of saying "minority rule", or at least, "let's pay the most attention to the most disagreeable people in the room." I like the idea of a consensus building *process*, when there's time, preferably in advance of the meeting itself, but ultimately decisions are made by a majority, a minority, or the group is just dysfunctional. There's no magic consensus dust that can dispel real disagreements and that's not necessarily a bad thing IMHO.
A good way to think about it consensus first. Theres no reason to think an idea is invalid just because a minority of people have it. Saying "take everything from group a and give it to group b." Would be an example.
Hes saying rules should be guidelines for maximizing the benefit in a situation.
Humans already have pretty complex social rules, and having general guidelines that people agree to works with these rules rather than using the social rules to win a game.
It's a realization and acceptance that no rule system will be perfect, but that there are better options most of the time and we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
It's called modified consensus, not 100 percent consensus. You'll always have crazy fucks trying to derail stuff with bad faith arguments and what not.
Well, ML & ML-Mao groups deal with this by saying everyone has to agree to a basic framework first (think how in bourgeois USA govt, the Democrats & The Republicans are divided on whether they think about the long-term survival of capitalism or on short-term profit, but they have bipartisanship on being obnoxiously capitalist), a common framework is required for organizing. Even "the great law of peace" of the iroquois nation allows for expulsion from the nation & also firing & replacing any member of the govt who doesn't adhere to the rules of the meeting & proper conduct.
And that's the gist of what the guy being interviewed was saying with dividing matters on technical vs moral. "The moral" is the common framework. He's merely saying there's a difference between "saber vs conocer" in approaches to forming a consensus. In computer science, it'd be called programming everything vs using AI heuristics. It's not exactly minority rule as much as trying to prevent infighting, due to "50%+1 having a dictatorship over the 50%-1" if you do a mere majoritarian approach. Another way of saying it is that there's a higher percentage needed than 50%+1 required in consensus building, similar but not exact to jury duty.
until Turkey on Afrin :(
Rip
You got the last name wrong, this is David Gilmour
Well, are anarchists 'Pipers at the Gates of Dawn' as in 'we are an image of the future'?
The Zapitistas are also a good example of grassroots organisation?
cuba is privatizing
@10:30 vis YPG/J success on the battlefield, how much a testament to the viability of bottom-up structures is that, vs the value of US Air Force support? From what I know, the YPG/J has the backing of US airstrikes, giving them total "air superiority" over ISIS. Under those conditions couldn't almost any semi-organized ground force have success?
The YPJ was kicking ISIS' ass with light weaponry and outdated weapons when ISIS had tanks and other modern weaponry, before the U.S gave them air support.
@@juliusc.8
They were? To my knowledge they were being owned and were confined to a small space in Kobani.
@@azmhyr No, they were kicking ISIS's a** for a long time until the Iraqi military randomly chose to give away Mosul without any fight. From Mosul ISIS got a huge amount of very sophisticated American heavy military weapons like Abraham tanks. That's where the fight became unequal, and the (at the time) isolated Kobanê Kanton became hard to defend. Instead of fighting Abraham tanks in the open field with light weapons, they pulled back from the whole region into the city where they had a better fighting chance. They hold that for a quite sometime before the US even entered the fight. The help of the US was however crucial to liberating the wider region. Not any force could've done it however. Turkish military tried several times with their local TFSA mecerneries and they failed terribly even with air power. That's why the US chose to help SDF in taking Raqqa over Turkey and their mecerneries.
@@element4element4 Turkish Army / TFSA didn't try to liberate Raqqa or other region before 2015. TFSA's first operation was Euphrates Shield and it ended with Turkish victory. If US didn't intervene and Turkey didn't allow Peshmerga, Kobane would be open graveyard for YPG.
@@potter3416 You need to recall recent history a bit better. US postponed the Raqqa mission for many months because they didn't want to end up with a diplomatic problem with Turkey by collaborating with YPG/SDF in taking Raqqa. They gave Turkey a chance to come up with a different strategy. Turkey entrered Jarabulus with Euphrates Shield to prove their strategy. It took them many months to even reach Al Bab with the most modern military weaponry and they couldn't take the city. Finally US started to support them with bombing missions and ISIS finally left Al Bab after a deal. There are countless of articles in the mainstream media about how pathetic Pentagon generals thought the Turkish performance was. It was so bad that they completely gave up on Turkey and went with the Kurds, depiste this creating diplomatic issues.
Brett McGurk, the leader of the international coalition against ISIS, just recently wrote an article/gave interviews about this. Not only were the turks useless, he says that he spent years going to Ankara because ISIS got all their war supplies from the Turkish border. But no matter what, Turkey didn't do anything to control the border as they saw ISIS as part of their strategy to weaken the kurds. They didn't care about ISIS until the kurds had kicked them out of almost the entire border. They only entered with Euphrates Shield, to deny the kurds more advances and to still have access to influence the civil war from the North.
Distributed democracy is not anarchy.
Yet today he tweets a journalist named joey ayoub who is from all evidence a saudi functionary, suggesting he will soon morph into another member of the cruise missile left.
bla bla bla
Great interview. Horrible editing
I really don’t know how communists can be anarchists. Anarchy comes from Nos archos which means no rulers but communism is essentially mob rule. The mob is not only one of the oldest forms of governing but it’s one of the most violent and authoritative
There is a dichotomy noticed in anarchocommunists. There are the ones who advocate for majority rule and the ones that advocate for consentual decision makings.The anarchists you are reffering to are the ones in the first category
Armies don't work with two Commanders second guessing each other.
The Spartans did all right with two kings.
The YPG/YPJ wins military conflicts, so it need not conform to a power structure you find familiar
What is Hindenburg and Ludendorffs eastern front
so they are winning all these battles with a non-working army. The soldiers must have superpowers.
@@kasaduhallo
Aka they have a rigid command structure.
Capitalism is the crisis!!! Anarchy is the solution!!!!
nope
@@biancavonmuhlendorf2608 exactly. Marxist-Leninism is the solution. Anarchy is a stupid pipe dream promoted by the intelligence agencies of imperialist countries.
@@viriathus2802 ah the good old CIa PrOPaGaNDa!!111!!1!!! tankie arguement
@@torcaace anarchists are bootlickers and low key apologists for Western imperialism. Enjoy your pathetic anarcho-Bidenism. Once you're done showing solidarity with American backed Kurdish proxy forces you will probably next show your solidarity for other American proxy forces (like Azov Battalion) world wide under the perverted understanding of internationalist solidarity.
@@viriathus2802 oh wow you are dumber than i thought. "AnarchoBidenisn" sure gave me a good chuckle
Anarchism in traffic exists in many muslim countries. Driving in Cairo is a nightmare. No rules (well there are but they are not respected). Accidents everywhere. Red light is a mere token. Societal anarchism, just like traffic anarchism, causes a lot of unnecessary deaths.
since when does Anarchism = no rules ? that is a serious flaw of knowledge
@@ottodidakt3069 Sure there are rules. An infinite amount:
Rule No 1: there are no rules
Rule No 2: deny existence of rule No 1
Rule No 3: deny existence of rule No 2 (and so forth)
Wikipedia : "Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that rejects all involuntary, coercive forms of hierarchy".
As long as the rules are emerging, and can be contested, in a decentralized manner from the people that are concerned by them, and within an agreed upon framework, anarchism is compatible with rules. You can even have de facto leaders, as long as they see themselves, and are seen, as servants of the community that will be demoted would they fail to meet their responsibilities.
It should be noted that for an anarchist system to survive, it kinda has to build up strong traditional values enforced by the community, making it a conservative political system. Strong initial ideological divergences make the establishment of an anarchist society extremely delicate, hence the special rules about women rights in the Rojava, which go against local tradition and thus can't emerge from their bottom up process.
He says they're not anarchists. Then he says they're anti state so it doesn't matter. Well it does matter. All marxists and communists are anti-state in some way. The difference are just the methods and the theory.
Also the anarchist definition of what's a state and what isn't is as usual very unclear.
Also weird that his idea of consensus was that nobody violently objects. Cool then in most stable areas of the world there is anarchist consensus?
It's also weird he doesn't talk about the economic system at all, in a conversation about anti-capitalism. Also he wonders why there is bureaucracy, maybe because you need some if that to plan for how to run things.
This hasn't really helped me get anarchism, not sure there's much to get.
1. If all Marxists and communists are "anti-state in some way", explain the Soviet Union and China.
2. Anarchism is not an economic system. This conversation was about a particular implementation of a political system. You might disagree and say that anarchism isn't a political system, but you don't "get" it, nor do you have a definition of it, so you don't have the knowledge to make this determination, so please don't.
3. This is not an explanation of the thing they are talking about. There's plenty of videos that do deep dives into all sorts of ideologies. You'd be better served finding one of their comment sections to profess your inability to understand the concept.
Still not understanding how a Kurdish gender based democracy is anarchism....
Roza Sin, no one said it is!! Its called democratic confederalism and is inspired in anarchist philosophies, in anarchist writers and libertarian societies and communes
Anarchism is real democracy.
I mostly agree with anarchist philosophy, depending on which one, but I don't believe in individualist anarchism, as we live in societies, and our actions have consequences for others. you can't allow people to dump mercury in their back yard, because the mercury doesn't stay there. I wouldn't care at all if they claim that rules about pollution don't apply to them, as they didn't choose them. I would support the use of force to stop them. I think communalism or democratic confederalism is much more realistic, as it actually provides ways to govern society.
Imo, anarchy is a philosphy and as long as you look at power structures and dismantle them when they are not justified you're and anarchist.
@@pedrorexSWG someone has actually listened to what he said !
Is ethnonationalism defensible in the case of Rojava? How about the ethnic-cleansing of non-Kurds from their region? What is it about certain "anarchists" who are obsessed with balkanizing the ME into ethnic bantustans and fetishizing ethnonationalism (cough, zionism) and providing intellectual and material cover for imperial interests in the region? See: Bookchin defending the genocidal settler-colonial state of Israel.
there is no ethnic cleansing of non Kurds, stop throwing shit around
Complete bullshit. Leftists like you denigrating Rojava needlessly are useful idiots for Assad and the genocidal Turkish state.
@@ottodidakt3069 I'm syrian, lived in Raqqa... and there were some 2 arab villages that were demolished by ypg, also in general arabs are treated like 3rd class citizens in Rojava even if they are native to the region as well, and I used to be in that mindset when I was there, luckly my mindset changed after escaping. but yeah Rojava is a kurdish ultra-nationalist project
No such country as Kurdistan in Syria
Then what is Rojava?
@@utilitymonster8267 That not a country nor is it recognized internationally as a sovereign state
stephen lennon, I don’t care as what it is recognized, I care about the facts. Rojava is a sovereign region in Syria.
@@utilitymonster8267 well you need to care clown because it not sovereign 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Perhaps he needs to move to Syrian Turkish border & live with the Kurds in these so called autonomous zones - then get back to us after another 20yrs. This guy sounds like an infant with ZERO knowledge of historic context.
Your opinion doesn’t matter. This man is loved around the world. Who the fuck are you. No one knows you and no one cares.
He's dead. Asshole
Appreciate Graeber very much but most self described anarchists I know are captured by various aspects of SJW ideology and are as intolerant of divergent views as most fascists. I’ve watched consensus process tossed out the window because someone dared to challenge some aspect of the (highly debatable) prevailing orthodoxy. I’m speaking of the US, not the whole world.
Marxist/Leninism over Anarchism
@paul w Bring it! Anarcho/Communists like Goldman are welcome, the rest of you petty-bougeosie Utopian Socialists can get it!
#Black #AK
We leftists should work together or we will fail to overthrow capitalism. In Rojava Anarchists, Communists and other Socialists work together and so shall we
@@kalks4334 the anti-electoral position and Utopian ideology at the heart of Anarchism is the crux of the division. Read Paul's comment above.
P.S.
Fuck Paul.
@@nanoaged1 I think Paul's upset about the fact that historically communists have killed anarchists.
Anarchists methods have utility, thinking that you cant use multiple methods for a revolution is anti dialectical.
@@ttlovepie101 The anti-electorial position of Anarchists is reactionary.
The way toward Revolution in the 21st century is Marxist/Leninist/Chavismo.
Bourgeois Anarchism is poison and it's historically Utopian, therefore anti-worker. What we need are concrete solutions that do encompass all tactics and that is with and without the use of the State at the same time, weakening the innate authoritarianism toward the withering away of the concept of the State and a transition towards a Socialist State and global system.
Everything else is honestly irrelevant, thanks for the thoughts on our "friend" lol