As the genocidal campaign against Palestinians continues, so have the outcries from supposed anarchists in the West against any expression of solidarity with the Palestinian Resistance. Recently, a post by the Kolektiva moderation team called anarchists who seek to learn from the Palestinian Resistance “deeply delusional” and “dripping with performative machismo.” While our platform was not directly referenced, the same post linked to an article called “Abolition Media’s Authoritarian Entryism,” a hit piece on our media site. We therefore find it necessary to make our intentions clear and to investigate exactly why a site claiming to be anarchist would slander coverage of the Resistance, even if our accusers are too cowardly to mention us by name.
Whether these anti-Resistance “anarchists” are merely ignorant or are intentionally misrepresenting our position, their reasoning is imbued with the liberal Zionist thinking typically found in New York Times editorials. For instance, Kolektiva condemns those who “openly celebrate Operation Al Aqsa Flood, the attack carried out by Palestinian militants on October 7th 2023.” Another recent article in a similar vein, “Towards Another Uprising” refers to October 7th as “the bloody incursion of Hamas into ‘Israel.'” This repudiation of October 7th betrays an opposition toward all forms of resistance of the oppressed. Like the revolts of enslaved people in Nat Turner’s uprising or the anti-colonial revolutions in Haiti and Algeria, October 7th broke through the normality of the daily humiliations and the oppressive violence that permeates everyday existence in a settler colonial society. While this anti-colonial rebellion may not neatly fit the criterion of purity demanded by the Kolektiva armchair critics, the hysteria and outright lies parroted from corporate media about October 7th is a massive endorsement of US State propaganda.
Kolektiva has accused Abolition Media of being “uncritical cheerleaders for authoritarian Islamist paramilitary actors.” This is a distortion of our position about publishing Palestinian Resistance statements, and the factions who are supporting their goals. While publishing such statements should not need an explanation for self-respecting anarchists, we published our reasoning when we wrote a “Statement on Editorial Decisions Regarding Palestine and Anti-Colonial Resistance.” In the statement, we wrote, “As a news source for revolutionary movements we consider it vital to spread the perspectives and action reports of anti-colonial resistance groups, regardless of whether we, as anarchists, are in complete agreement with their politics.” Our stance remains the same today.
Historically, anarchists have formed alliances and expressed solidarity with anti-colonial groups, regardless of differences of ideology. During the Spanish civil war, anarchists formed a pact with the Moroccan Action Committee and the anarchist Pierre Besnard even proposed breaking the anti-colonial leader Abd El Krim out of a French prison on the island of Réunion. Much like the leaders of Hamas, Abd El Krim was a brilliant guerrilla tactician and a devout Muslim, who used Islamic principles to help unify an anti-colonial alliance that proved quite effective in defeating better armed French and Spanish colonizers in the Rif region of Morocco. His victories led to the creation of an autonomous Republic of the Rif in 1921.
Decades later, anarchist BLA fighter Kuwasi Balagoon expressed solidarity with international anti-imperialist struggles, writing, “Imperialism must expand or die, and even as the pigs escalate their military and political offensive, they have lost their grip increasingly throughout this world, despite their wolf tickets, because the peoples of Cuba, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Libya, Angola, Tanzania, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Grenada, and other lands have put their heads and hearts together to devise no nonsense methods to drive the Americans out. If we do the same, we will obtain the same results. In fact, we will obtain greater results, because our liberation would mean a greater decline to imperialism than any of the previous people’s victory and reaction would be weakened to a corresponding extent.”
Speaking from Attica prison in New York state Balagoon euphorically praised Hezbollah’s first attack against the US war machine in Lebanon stating, “I think it’s beautiful! I thought that thing with the truck (the truck bombing in 1982) was incredible… we have a lot to learn from them and we will.”
In the tradition of Kuwasi Balagoon, revolutionary anarchists today are calling for studying the tactics and strategic victories of anti-colonial Resistance in Palestine and applying lessons to Resistance within the belly of the beast. These calls have been dismissed by Kolektiva as “delusional”, “reckless” and “dripping with performative machismo.” It is not delusional to apply anti-colonial tactics within the heart of the empire. It has been only four years since the Minneapolis precinct was set on fire during the George Floyd uprising and in the ’60s and ’70s, these types of armed revolutionary actions were nearly everyday occurrences. To consider these actions to be reckless comes from a position of attachment to the comforts afforded to these so-called anarchists in the West. These comforts can be directly linked to their complicity in the genocide in Gaza and more broadly to the pillaging of the global South and the racism that is used to justify these imperialist conquests. Moreover, to say that calls for direct action against Zionist targets are “dripping with performative machismo” is an insult to all those women who have taken up armed resistance against Zionism, including figures like Layla Khaled and Shadia Abu Ghazaleh, as well as slander to all those female, trans and non-binary anarchist revolutionaries around the world who are committed to fight for the movement.
Finally, Kolektiva asserts that anarchists who propose taking revolutionary actions in support of the Palestinian people “promote a ‘unity of fields’ strategy that imagines themselves as a fifth column of the Iranian military.” Kolektiva is here duplicating a common Zionist smear tactic, asserting that the Palestinian Resistance and all those who express solidarity with the Resistance are controlled by Iran. One need only to read the many first person accounts from Gaza and the West Bank to understand that the Resistance groups of Palestine are a genuinely homegrown phenomenon, supported by and totally enmeshed in their communities. Furthermore, the regional Resistance to imperialism emerged specifically out of Western excesses in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen. It is woeful to see that Kolektiva would try to deploy the ‘outside agitator’ narrative to discredit the resistance and its supporters. This misunderstanding, again, stemming from US and Zionist propaganda, is something Abolition Media is committed to countering with its articles.
Kolektiva is using these belligerent accusations as an excuse to censor anti-imperialist viewpoints from their social media platform, a practice which is the opposite of what anarchists have fought for historically. How far they have come from the legacy of anarchists who, like Emma Goldman in the context of American nationalism during World War I, fought against State censorship.
The counter-revolutionary position of these so-called anarchists who censor support for Palestinian Resistance, coupled with the condemnation by some of these same “anarchists” of Michael Reinoehl for taking up arms against a fascist during the George Floyd uprising, and the clear support many of them have maintained for Ukrainian fascism makes it clear that it would be foolish for Black and Brown people to gamble their freedom with these people. We would like to be very clear to comrades from colonized communities, internally and externally to the imperial core — be extraordinarily careful in your relations with this tendency, as it is fundamentally aligned with the interests of white supremacy, colonial arrogance, and the Euro/American genocidal drive for power consolidation. While enjoying the economic fruits of Palestinian genocide and the brutal destruction of left-wing movements in Central and South America, Kolektiva, and other “anarchists” in the West carry blood on their hands with their clear support for one of the last settler colonial projects in the world.
As the divides between settler and colonized, right and left become more stark in the current political climate, more and more supposed revolutionaries will be forced to show their hands and clearly articulate their positions. It will no longer be possible to hide behind the mask of insufficient ideologoical purity to hide an essentially colonial position. It is a good thing that we will be able to see everyone for who they actually are. At Abolition Media we are proud to uphold the anarchist revolutionary tradition and unapologetically stand on the side of those who are fighting Western hegemony and we invite everyone in good faith to join us on this trajectory.
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