Some people might see an internal contradiction between Hoppe’s repeated use of the term “dominated” to describe the role of certain privileged segments of society, and the idea that “libertarian” ideas were formulated by societies based on domination.

But obviously Hoppe does not, since he makes little effort to hide his salivation at the prospect that his avowedly principled belief in self-ownership, non-aggression and rules of initial acquisition will have the effect — just coincidentally, of course — of perpetuating the domination of these same white heterosexual males. So the primary beneficiaries of the ideas of liberty that straight white men invented will be those same straight white men.

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The Left… is convinced of the fundamental equality of man, that all men are “created equal.” It does not deny the patently obvious, of course: that there are environmental and physiological differences, i.e., that some people live in the mountains and others on the seaside, or that some men are tall and others short, some white and others black, some male and others female, etc.. But the Left does deny the existence of mental differences or, insofar as these are too apparent to be entirely denied, it tries to explain them away as “accidental.”…

In fact the Left (or at least most members of it) does not deny that there are differences in individual ability and intellect. But never mind that. Hoppe isn’t satisfied to stop there:

…[The right libertarian] realistically notices that libertarianism, as an intellectual system, was first developed and furthest elaborated in the Western world, by white males, in white male dominated societies. That it is in white, heterosexual male dominated societies, where adherence to libertarian principles is the greatest and the deviations from them the least severe (as indicated by comparatively less evil and extortionist State policies). That it is white heterosexual men, who have demonstrated the greatest ingenuity, industry, and economic prowess. And that it is societies dominated by white heterosexual males, and in particular by the most successful among them, which have produced and accumulated the greatest amount of capital goods and achieved the highest average living standards.

Some people might see an internal contradiction between Hoppe’s repeated use of the term “dominated” to describe the role of certain privileged segments of society, and the idea that “libertarian” ideas were formulated by societies based on domination.

But obviously Hoppe does not, since he makes little effort to hide his salivation at the prospect that his avowedly principled belief in self-ownership, non-aggression and rules of initial acquisition will have the effect — just coincidentally, of course — of perpetuating the domination of these same white heterosexual males. So the primary beneficiaries of the ideas of liberty that straight white men invented will be those same straight white men.

Hoppe is fond of arguing that every single bit of naturally scarce property should be assigned to “some specified individual.” From there, in a typical restatement of his stock argument, he goes on to assume the universal appropriation of all land within a country. And with all land in the entire country, including roads, under individual ownership, it follows that nobody can enter the country or travel along any stretch of road without the permission of some private landowner or landowners. This, at one stroke, solves the “problem” of immigration, since — although national borders as such do not exist — no one but an invited employee or bracero can enter a universally appropriated America without trespassing on somebody’s land. It also solves the gay rights “problem” since, the country being composed overwhelmingly of God-fearing Christian folk like Hoppe himself, nobody will want “those people” on their property. If you find the libertarianism of Thomas Paine and William Godwin hard to stomach, through the miracle of universal appropriation you (assuming you’re a straight white propertied male) can make your own “free” neo-feudal society in the image of The Handmaid’s Tale.

Maybe everybody else who’s not straight, white or male will benefit from having those smart straight white men managing them for their own good.

Hoppe’s ideas of universal appropriation don’t seem to hold up so well, though, at least from the perspective of someone without Herr Doktor Professor Hoppe’s Mount Rushmore-sized brain. Even among right-libertarians, the usual standard of legitimacy in private appropriation of land is that of John Locke and Murray Rothbard: actual occupancy and use. A piece of land that is undeveloped and unaltered is, by definition, unowned. And the vast majority of land in the United States, as no less a libertarian than Albert Jay Nock noted, is vacant and unimproved. The only way — now and in the foreseeable future — that land could ever be universally appropriated is through what Franz Oppenheimer called “political appropriation” and Nock called “law-made property.” This is the same thing that Rothbard — a name you’d think would carry some weight with Hoppe — called engrossment: the enclosure of land not yet occupied or developed, in order to collect tribute from its rightful owners, the first people to occupy it and put it to use.

Leaving aside Hoppe’s views on the universal appropriation of land and exclusion therefrom of “undesirables,” he also neglects the fact that the benevolent, naturally libertarian white men in the “civilized” West spent a few centuries robbing, pillaging and enslaving the non-European parts of the world that it colonized, before they decided to share the blessings of liberty with them. In the process of doing so, they also destroyed an awful lot of preexisting civilization and gutted a lot of civil society — and wealth — there.

Jawaharlal Nehru argued with some plausibility that Bengal was the poorest part of India because that was its first site of infection by the disease of British colonialism, via Warren Hastings. The British systematically stamped out the Indian textile industry as a competitor with Manchester, and also (starting with Hastings’ Permanent Settlement) robbed most of the population of their property in land and turned local elites into wealth extraction conduits for Empire.

And when these good-hearted white Western males they finally did get around to sharing these nifty new ideas of liberty with the people of color they ruled, they kept all the stuff they’d looted in the meantime — as a reward, I suppose, for their selflessness in inventing liberty for the good of all those brown and black people who would otherwise never have heard of it.

It almost makes you wonder, though, if there wasn’t some other, less costly way those unfortunate people of color might have acquired ideas of liberty.

Speaking of which, I almost forgot David Graeber’s account of consensus-based decision-making as an almost universal phenomenon throughout history, as opposed to Hoppe’s idea of “human rights” and “democracy” being some unique creation of the White Male Canon that required a Manhattan Project-level of effort and genius to come up with. Western conservatives (of whom Hoppe is one) typically see human liberty and self-government as the kind of advance ideas that only white males in places like Periclean Athens or Philadelphia ca. 1787 could come up with. On this assumption, Graeber comments:

Of course it’s the peculiar bias of Western historiography that this is the only sort of democracy that is seen to count as “democracy” at all. We are usually told that democracy originated in ancient Athens — like science, or philosophy, it was a Greek invention. It’s never entirely clear what this is supposed to mean. Are we supposed to believe that before the Athenians, it never really occurred to anyone, anywhere, to gather all the members of their community in order to make joint decisions in a way that gave everyone equal say? That would be ridiculous. Clearly there have been plenty of egalitarian societies in history — many far more egalitarian than Athens, many that must have existed before 500 BCE — and obviously, they must have had some kind of procedure for coming to decisions for matters of collective importance. Yet somehow, it is always assumed that these procedures, whatever they might have been, could not have been, properly speaking, “democratic.”

* * *

The real reason for the unwillingness of most scholars to see a Sulawezi or Tallensi village council as “democratic” — well, aside from simple racism, the reluctance to admit anyone Westerners slaughtered with such relative impunity were quite on the level as Pericles — is that they do not vote. Now, admittedly, this is an interesting fact. Why not? If we accept the idea that a show of hands, or having everyone who supports a proposition stand on one side of the plaza and everyone against stand on the other, are not really such incredibly sophisticated ideas that they never would have occurred to anyone until some ancient genius “invented” them, then why are they so rarely employed? Again, we seem to have an example of explicit rejection. Over and over, across the world, from Australia to Siberia, egalitarian communities have preferred some variation on consensus process. Why?

The explanation I would propose is this: it is much easier, in a face-to-face community, to figure out what most members of that community want to do, than to figure out how to convince those who do not to go along with it. Consensus decision-making is typical of societies where there would be no way to compel a minority to agree with a majority decision—either because there is no state with a monopoly of coercive force, or because the state has nothing to do with local decision-making. If there is no way to compel those who find a majority decision distasteful to go along with it, then the last thing one would want to do is to hold a vote: a public contest which someone will be seen to lose. Voting would be the most likely means to guarantee humiliations, resentments, hatreds, in the end, the destruction of communities. What is seen as an elaborate and difficult process of finding consensus is, in fact, a long process of making sure no one walks away feeling that their views have been totally ignored.

* * *

“We” — whether as “the West” (whatever that means), as the “modern world,” or anything else — are not really as special as we like to think we are; …we’re not the only people ever to have practiced democracy; …in fact, rather than disseminating democracy around the world, “Western” governments have been spending at least as much time inserting themselves into the lives of people who have been practicing democracy for thousands of years, and in one way or another, telling them to cut it out.

Those poor brown folks also arguably had more respect for the idea of “property” than their white instructors, when you consider that the white men selflessly extending the benefits of Western civilization to the rest of the world had already robbed the great majority of their own domestic population of their property (e.g. the Enclosures in England) before they decided that property rights were sacred. And that they went on to loot most of the property of the people in the Third World before they finally adjudged the locals as capable of enjoying the blessings of liberty without white supervision. But by that point, again, the commandment “Thou shalt respect property rights — starting NOW!” wasn’t retroactive — it didn’t apply to the enormous mass of wealth those white men and their ancestors had already looted, and continued to sit on. So the primary effect of those Western ideas about “property rights” was to protect the property rights of landed elites and transnational corporations who retained possession of all the land and mineral resources that previous generations of libertarian Western white men had looted for them under colonialism.

So as it turns out, ordinary people throughout the world had already somehow managed to find ways of dealing with each other as equals and settling their differences peacefully without white Western males thinking up libertarianism for them, and when white Western males finally came around with their new and improved idea of Capital-L Liberty they killed, enslaved or robbed most of the human race as compensation for their benevolence.

There’s a great line in Cool Hand Luke that applies here. One of the guards at the prison farm tells Luke that the clanking of the irons he’s wearing will “remind you of what I’ve been telling you — for your own good.” And Luke responds: “Wish you’d stop bein’ so good to me, Cap’n.”

La posizione degli anarchici è tanto ovvia quanto prevedibile: ci opponiamo all’esistenza dello stato e, naturalmente, a tutte le guerre. Ma per ragioni legate alla critica dell’azione dello stato basata su un’analisi anarchica e di mercato, un intervento in questa disputa è un’idea particolarmente brutta, ed è molto improbabile che gli interventisti trovino desiderabili le conclusioni a cui porta. Per capire perché, dobbiamo esaminare la storia dell’Ucraina in particolare, e dell’est europeo in generale.

Nella mente di un occidentale, la storia di questa regione è dominata dall’Unione Sovietica e dal suo collasso improvviso ventitré anni fa; ma l’Unione Sovietica non era altro che la continuazione in nuove forme ideologiche del vecchio impero russo, che nel corso dei secoli allargò la sua egemonia alle popolazioni confinanti finché non diventò un’unica distesa dal Baltico al Mare di Bering e dall’Artico ai confini con la Persia, la Mongolia e la Cina, formando il più grande impero coloniale mai visto.

Poiché le colonie russe non erano mai possedimenti oltremare popolati da genti di diverso colore e con culture profondamente diverse, la natura fondamentalmente coloniale dell’intento russo spesso si perde. Questa natura, poi, è ancora più oscurata dalla retorica anticolonialista sovietica, che al di là delle dichiarazioni faceva una politica verso i suoi confinanti che era il proseguimento dell’intento imperiale russo.

Per molti versi, l’Ucraina offre un esempio paradigmatico di come la Russia trattava il suo “vicino estero”, tanto per usare il termine russo che indica le colonie della Russia. Ufficialmente, gli ucraini non erano considerati una nazione separata, la lingua ucraina era bandita, le chiese ucraine erano costrette ad adottare le norme religiose della chiesa russa oppure ad andare in clandestinità, ed erano vietati perfino i vestiti e le festività tradizionali ucraine. La politica ufficiale, in Ucraina come altrove, era la “russificazione”, ovvero il tentativo dello stato di sostituire la cultura indigena con quella russa, e di convertire i colonizzati in russi.

Questo genere di politica è tipica dello stato ovunque sia nel suo processo di formazione. Come ha documentato con grande capacità Graham Robb nel suo The Discovery of France, gli stati accentratori impongono invariabilmente una lingua, una religione e una cultura specifica nel tentativo di “unificare la popolazione”, ovvero per indottrinarli, così che sentano l’asservimento più come patriottismo che come una dominazione straniera. Questo processo rappresenta la continuità tra il processo “domestico” di un indottrinamento imposto dallo stato, come la scuola pubblica e la chiesa di stato, e le forme più familiari di “colonialismo”.

Il modo in cui i russi trattano il vicino estero è una via di mezzo tra il “colonialismo domestico”, che serve alla formazione dello stato, e il più familiare colonialismo d’oltremare. Le culture soggiogate dallo stato russo, in particolare quelle di lingua e identità slava, sono parenti strette della cultura russa, e questa vicinanza ha il potere di oscurare la natura fondamentalmente imperiale dell’espansionismo russo; agli occhi degli occidentali, questo processo ricorda più la ormai accettata nascita dello stato, quando il governo centrale impone il suo potere “unificando la nazione”, abbattendo i movimenti locali e secessionisti, che un certo “imperialismo”, oggi riprovato, in cui i colonizzatori soggiogano i colonizzati eliminando le culture indigene. Le ideologie “pan-slave” presentano gli slavi, un insieme disparato di gruppi linguistici e culturali, come un unico popolo giustamente governato dal centro imperiale russo, che si tratti dell’ortodossia zarista o del “socialismo in un solo paese”.

Nel corso dei secoli, l’interazione delle successive potenze coloniali russe, zarista o sovietica, con le varie rinascite nazionaliste che scoppiavano ad intermittenza nei territori tra la Russia e la Germania, hanno creato una regione incostante, dai confini fortemente arbitrari che non corrispondono a nessun confine linguistico, etnico o culturale. La politica ufficiale russa ha incoraggiato gli insediamenti russi nel vicino estero, così come la politica francese incoraggiò gli insediamenti francesi in Algeria, e il risultato attuale è la presenza di grosse minoranze russe nella maggior parte dei paesi del vicino estero; e ci sono molte regioni all’interno di questi paesi che hanno una decisa maggioranza russa, con un impatto simile a quello che gli insediamenti dei presbiteriani scozzesi ebbero sulle “Piantagioni dell’Ulster” nel diciassettesimo secolo. I tentativi periodici di sterminare culturalmente e fisicamente le popolazioni indigene, poi, hanno creato una divisione netta tra colonizzatori e colonizzati. Per le popolazioni etnicamente ucraine, la Holodomor, la carestia ucraina come strumento del terrore, fu un tentativo deliberato da parte dei sovietici di sterminare il più possibile gli ucraini e distruggerli come popolo. Nei resoconti russi la Holodomor, quando è citata, diventa un’ordinaria carestia, non una politica deliberata dello stato, e le commemorazioni ucraine diventano semplice propaganda anti-russa. (Il parallelo con Gorta Mór, la Grande Carestia Irlandese del 1845, è evidente: gli irlandesi la considerano un prodotto della politica britannica. “Dio mandò la malattia delle piante, gli inglesi la carestia”. Dal canto loro, gli inglesi danno la colpa alla monocoltura degli irlandesi e, in un passato più crudamente razzista, alla natura degli irlandesi ritenuta primitiva).

L’Ucraina è attraversata da varie linee di divisione: fra le altre, tra ucraini e russi, ovviamente, ma anche tra cosacchi e non cosacchi, tra ortodossi e cattolici, e tra gli ucraini e tutte le altre minoranze etniche non russe. Certo non possiamo conoscere tutte le parti in cui è divisa l’Ucraina, perché possiamo accedere solo ad informazioni di seconda mano filtrate attraverso le varie lenti politiche. Ogni proposta di intervento occidentale in Ucraina dipende fortemente da queste linee di divisione. A differenza dei propositi puramente imperialistici di Putin, volti ad assicurare l’egemonia su un territorio più vasto, l’occidente vuole che l’Ucraina abbia un “governo stabile e democratico”. L’occidente è ancora legato all’imperativo della pace di Vestfalia, che considera sacri i confini nazionali, confini che, nel caso dell’ex impero russo-sovietico, furono tracciati in gran parte da burocrati imperiali per ragioni di stato imperiali.

Perciò, mentre noi anarchici considerano la forza militare sempre discutibile, e condanniamo senza dubbi la mossa di Putin per soggiogare l’Ucraina, l’intervento militare delle forze occidentali è particolarmente inadatto alla situazione. Non c’è accordo che possa soddisfare tutte le parti, perché chiunque si ritroverà dalla parte dei perdenti è sicuro che nutrirà sentimenti revanscistici e sarà determinato a vendicarsi non appena cesserà il sostegno occidentale. Se dovesse intervenire con l’obiettivo di ottenere un certo risultato favorevole, l’occidente sarebbe costretto ad intervenire in perpetuo; oppure, come vediamo in Iraq e Afganistan, ad un certo punto dovrebbe rassegnarsi a veder collassare l’ordine che ha stabilito.

La lunga, complessa storia dell’Ucraina, con l’eredità pesante dell’imperialismo (perché i discendenti dei coloni russi in Ucraina e in altre colonie del vicino estero hanno certamente interessi tanto legittimi quanto gli irlandesi e scozzesi, o gli americani bianchi che vivono in territori un tempo indiani) complicano le cose al punto che un insediamento diventa una sorta di pianificazione centrale. Chi pianifica, che si tratti degli autori del Gosplan o di Washington, non può accedere a tutte le informazioni rilevanti necessarie all’applicazione del piano. Non solo, ma queste informazioni non possono esistere finché le popolazioni non le hanno generate dopo aver ricomposto le loro differenze. Capita che una risposta facile non esista, e in questo centenario della Grande Guerra dovremmo tenere bene in mente che l’intervento in una crisi può scivolare rapidamente fuori controllo. Le popolazioni di questa regione possono andare d’accordo pacificamente e a lungo solo se si lascia che siano loro a determinare i termini della convivenza. Il nostro intervento non può che peggiorare le cose.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

A posição anarquista é óbvia e previsível – nós nos opomos à própria existência do estado, portanto somos contrários a todas as guerras. Contudo, pelos motivos delineados principalmente pela crítica anarquista de mercado da ação estatal, uma intervenção nesta disputa é uma ideia especialmente ruim e provavelmente trará resultados que até mesmo os intervencionistas considerarão indesejáveis. Para entender por quê, devemos examinar a história da Ucrânia e da Europa Oriental.

Para os ocidentais, a história da região é dominada pela União Soviética e determinada por seu colapso há 20 anos. Porém, a União Soviética era uma mera continuação numa nova roupagem ideológica do antigo Império Russo, que, ao longo dos séculos expandiu paulatinamente sua hegemonia sobre os povos fronteiriços até que dominasse desde o Mar Báltico até o Mar de Bering e deste o Ártico até a Pérsia, a Mongólia e a China, formando o maior império colonial já visto.

A natureza essencialmente colonial do Império Russo frequentemente é ignorada porque seus domínios não eram formados por territórios ultramarinos populados por pessoas de cores e culturas dramaticamente diferentes. Além disso, essa natureza também era ofuscada pela retórica anti-colonial da URSS, que, apesar de suas alegações, era, na verdade, uma continuação do projeto imperial russo. A Ucrânia é um dos exemplos paradigmáticos de como a Rússia tratava o “estrangeiro próximo”, que é o termo russo para suas colônias. Oficialmente, os ucranianos não eram considerados uma nacionalidade separada, a língua ucraniana era proibida, as igrejas da Ucrânia eram forçadas a se adequar as normas religiosas russas ou eram obrigadas a viver na ilegalidade para fazer celebrações ou utilizar roupas tradicionais. A política da oficial, tanto na Ucrânia quanto nas outras colônias, era a de “russificação”, isto é, a substituição das culturas locais pela cultura russa, transformando os colonos em russos.

Esse tipo de política é comum na formação de estados. Como documentado por Graham Robb em seu livro The Discovery of France, estados centralizados invariavelmente impõem suas línguas, religião e cultura preferidas numa tentativa de “unificar o povo”, o que significa aculturá-lo de forma que sua submissão ao centro pareça menos uma imposição externa e mais um tipo de patriotismo. São padrões que formam uma continuidade entre os processos “domésticos” de aculturação estatal, como aqueles empreendidos por escolas públicas e igrejas, e as formas mais comuns de “colonialismo”.

O tratamento russo do “exterior próximo” se localiza dentro de uma linha contínua entre o “colonialismo doméstico” da formação do estado e o colonialismo mais comum, em territórios longínquos. As culturas subjugadas ao estado russo, particularmente as que falavam línguas eslavas e que se identificavam como eslavas, de fato são parentes próximas da cultura russa. Tal proximidade pode obscurecer a natureza fundamentalmente imperial da expansão do estado russo – para os ocidentais, ela pode parecer similar a formas mais amplamente aceitas de formação do estado, nas quais o poder central afirma seu poder e “unifica a nação”, submetendo movimentos provinciais separatistas. Em formas mais comuns e menos defendidas de “imperialismo”, o colonizador subjuga os colonizados e substitui completamente a cultura indígena. As ideologias pan-eslavas patrocinadas pelos russos representam os eslavos – um agrupamento linguístico amplo e diverso de culturas basicamente diferentes – como um povo único sob a chefia do legítimo centro imperial russo, que era justificado a um momento pelo o tzarismo ortodoxo e, mais tarde, pelo “socialismo em um só país”.

Ao longo dos séculos, a interação com os sucessivos poderes colonialistas russos, com o ressurgimento intermitente de várias insurreições nacionalistas por vários povos das regiões entre a Rússia e a Alemanha, fomentou uma região de volatilidade política com fronteiras praticamente arbitrárias que não estabelecem quaisquer limites linguísticos, étnicos ou culturais. A política oficial da Rússia estimulava os assentamentos no exterior próximo, da mesma forma que a França estimulava assentamentos na Argélia, o que resultou em minorias expressivas de russos na maioria dos países colonizados. Em algumas regiões desses países, os russos são maioria, o que causa impactos similares ao assentamento de presbiterianos escoceses na Plantação de Ulster na Irlanda no século 17. Tentativas periódicas de extermínio cultural e físico dos povos indígenas criaram divisões profundas entre os colonizadores e colonizados. Para a população etnicamente ucraniana, Holodomor, a Grande Fome da Ucrânia, foi uma tentativa deliberada do governo soviético de exterminar a maior quantidade possível de ucranianos e destruí-los como povo. Nas narrativas russas, Holodomor, se é que aconteceu, foi uma fome comum, não uma política intencional do governo, e as lembranças ucranianas do acontecimento são vistas simplesmente como propaganda anti-Rússia. (Os paralelos com a Gorta Mór, a Grande Fome da Irlanda, são óbvios, uma vez que os irlandeses geralmente a veem como produto de uma política deliberada da Grã-Bretanha – “Deus enviou a peste, os ingleses enviaram a fome” -, enquanto a historiografia inglesa geralmente culpa a monocultura irlandesa e, no passado, quando o racismo era mais aberto, a natureza supostamente primitiva do povo da Irlanda.

Assim, na Ucrânia, há um estado dividido entre vários limites – ucranianos e russos, de forma mais óbvia, mas também cossacos e não-cossacos, ortodoxos e católicos, ucranianos e todas as minorias étnicas não-russas, entre outras. De fato, não é possível saber quais são todas as divisões dentro da Ucrânia, porque só temos acesso a informações relevantes de segunda mão, filtradas por vários pontos de vista políticos. Além disso, os objetivos para o Ocidente em uma intervenção na Ucrânia dependem largamente dessas divisões – ao contrário do desejo abertamente imperialista de Putin de garantir a hegemonia russa na região, o Ocidente supostamente quer o estabelecimento de um governo “estável e democrático” e apoia as resoluções de Vestfália que dão grande importância à inviolabilidade das fronteiras – fronteiras estas que, no caso do antigo Império Russo e da URSS, foram desenhadas em sua maior parte por burocratas imperiais por motivos de estado.

Portanto, embora o emprego da força militar seja sempre indesejável para os anarquistas e embora também nós condenemos a tentativa de Putin de subjugar a Ucrânia, uma intervenção militar ocidental seria particularmente prejudicial nesta situação. Nenhum acordo imposto por forças externas deixará todas as partes satisfeitas, uma vez que as partes perdedoras certamente continuarão a nutrir sentimentos revanchistas e estarão determinadas a se vingar assim que o apoio ocidental deixar de existir. Ao intervir para criar uma situação mais desejável, o Ocidente se comprometerá a perpetuar essa situação, como podemos ver o Iraque e no Afeganistão, e eventualmente se resignar a ver a ordem estabelecida entrar em colapso. A longa e complexa história da Ucrânia e o legado do imperialismo – já que, certamente, os descendentes de colonos russos na Ucrânia e em outros países próximos têm interesses tão legítimos quanto os dos escoceses-irlandeses e os dos brancos americanos que vivem em terras anteriormente indígenas – complicam a questão, porque os assentamentos se assemelham a instâncias de planejamento central. Os planejadores, estejam eles num escritório da Gosplan ou em Foggy Bottom em Washington, D.C., não têm acesso a todas as informações relevantes para implementar seus planos. De fato, a informação necessária não existe, já que os povos da região precisam gerá-la através da resolução de suas próprias diferenças. Às vezes não existem respostas fáceis e, neste centenário da Primeira Guerra Mundial, nós devemos nos lembrar mais do que nunca como as intervenções numa crise podem sair do controle rapidamente. Os povos desta região só poderão criar uma paz duradoura se puderem negociar a colonização de suas regiões entre si próprios. Nossa presença só pioraria as coisas.

Traduzido do inglês para o português por Erick Vasconcelos.

The anarchist line is as obvious as it is predictable — we are opposed to the very existence of the state, so naturally we opposed all wars. However, for reasons drawn particularly from the market anarchist critique of state action, intervention in this dispute is an especially bad idea and especially unlikely to result in any outcome the interventionists find desirable. To understand why, we must examine the history of Ukraine particularly and Eastern Europe generally.

The history of the region is dominated in Western minds by the Soviet Union and its sudden collapse twenty-three years ago, but the Soviet Union was merely the continuation in a new ideological guise of the old Russian Empire, which over the centuries steadily expanded its hegemony over the peoples on its borders until it stretched from the Baltic to the Bering Sea and from the Arctic to the borders of Persia, Mongolia and China, encompassing an imperial, colonial empire as large as any ever seen.

Because Russia’s colonies did not generally take the form of overseas possessions populated by peoples with different skin colors and dramatically different cultures, the fundamentally colonial nature of the Russian project is often missed. Further, this nature is still more obscured by the anti-colonial rhetoric of the USSR, which whatever its other claims was in its policy towards its neighbors a continuation of the Russian imperial project.
Ukraine is in many ways paradigmatic for how Russia treated her “near-abroad,” to use the Russian term for Russia’s colonies. Officially the Ukrainians were not regarded as a separate nationality, the Ukrainian language was banned, Ukrainian churches were forced to comply with Russian religious norms or to go underground, even traditional Ukrainian forms of dress and celebrations were suppressed. The official policy, in Ukraine and elsewhere, was “Russification,” that is, state attempts to replace indigenous cultures with Russian culture, and to turn the colonized into Russians.

This sort of policy is common to state formation wherever it occurs. As Graham Robb documented so ably in his The Discovery of France, centralizing states invariably impose favored forms of language, religion, and culture in an attempt to “unify the people,” that is, acculturate them so that their subjugation to the center feels less like foreign domination and more like patriotism. These patterns forms a continuity between “domestic” processes of state-imposed acculturation, such as public schools and state churches, and more familiar forms of “colonialism.”

The Russian treatment of the near-abroad falls between the “domestic colonialism” of state-forming and more familiar overseas colonialism. The cultures subjugated by the Russian state, particularly those speaking Slavic languages and identifying as Slavs, are in fact close relatives to Russian culture, and this closeness can obscure the fundamentally imperial nature of the Russian state’s expansion — to Westerners, it can more closely resemble favored forms of state formation in which the central government asserts its power and “unifies the nation,” overcoming provincialist, secessionist movements, than it does disfavored “imperialism,” in which a colonizer subjugates the colonized and displaces the indigenous culture. Russian-sponsored “Pan-Slavic” ideologies present the Slavs, a broad and diverse linguistic grouping of many disparate cultures, as a fundamentally unified people rightly ruled from the Russian imperial center, whether that center’s ideological orthodoxy was Tsarist Orthodoxy or “socialism in one country.”

Over the centuries the interplay of the successive Russian colonial powers, Tsarist and Soviet, with the various intermittently resurgent nationalisms of the various peoples of the lands between Russia and Germany have created a volatile region with largely arbitrary borders that do not trace any linguistic, ethnic, or cultural fault lines. Official Russian policy has encouraged Russian settlement in the near-abroad, just as French policy encouraged French settlement in Algeria, resulting today in substantial Russian minorities in most of the countries of the near-abroad, with many regions within these countries having outright Russian majorities, with impacts similar to the settlement of Scottish Presbyterians on the “Plantation of Ulster) in the 17th century. Further, periodic attempts at both the cultural and the physical extermination of the indigenous peoples have created deep divides between colonizer and colonized. For the ethnic Ukrainian, the Holodomor, or Ukrainian Terror-Famine, was a deliberate attempt by the Soviet Russian government to exterminate as many Ukrainians as possible and to destroy them as a people. In Russian accounts, the Holodomor, if it occurred at all, was an ordinary famine, not a deliberate policy of the government, and Ukrainian commemorations of it are seen as simple anti-Russian propaganda. (The parallels to the Gorta Mór, or Irish Potato Famine of 1845, are obvious, as the Irish generally see the famine as the product of British policy — “God sent the blight, the English sent the famine” — while English accounts generally blame Irish monoculture and, in an earlier, more nakedly racist time, the supposedly primitive nature of the Irish.)

So, in Ukraine, we have a state divided along several fault lines — between Ukrainian and Russian most obviously, but also between Cossack and non-Cossack, between Orthodox and Catholic, and between Ukrainian and all the non-Russian ethnic minorities, among others. Indeed, we cannot know all the various fault lines of Ukraine, because we have access to the relevant information only second-hand and filtered through various political lenses. Further, the goals of any proposed Western intervention in Ukraine depends heavily on these fault lines — unlike the Putin regime’s nakedly imperialistic desire to secure hegemony over more territory, the West desires a “stable, democratic government” in Ukraine, and adheres still to the Westphalian commitment to the sanctity of borders — borders that, in the case of the former Russian Empire/USSR, were drawn largely by imperial bureaucrats for imperial reasons of state.
Therefore, while for anarchists military force is always objectionable, and we indeed do condemn Putin’s moves to subjugate Ukraine, military intervention by Western powers is particularly ill-suited to the situation. No settlement imposed by outsiders will satisfy all parties, as whoever comes out on the losing end will doubtless harbor revanchist sentiments and determine to avenge themselves as soon as Western support disappears. By intervening to create some favored outcome, the West will commit itself to perpetually maintaining that outcome or, as we are seeing in Iraq and Afghanistan, eventually be forced to resign itself to seeing the order it establishes collapse.

The long and complex history of Ukraine and the fraught legacies of imperialism — for surely the descendants of Russian settlers in Ukraine and in other near-abroad colonies have interests as legitimate as those of the Scots-Irish, or of white Americans living on former Indian lands — complicate the issue such that imposing a settlement resembles central planning. The planners, be they at Gosplan or in Foggy Bottom, cannot access all the relevant information needed to implement their plan. Indeed, the necessary information does not yet exist, as the peoples of the region must generate it themselves via settling their own differences. Sometimes no easy answers exist, and in this centennial of the Great War, we should keep clearly in the forefront of our minds how rapidly intervention in a crisis far away can spin out of control. The peoples of this region can only create a peaceful, lasting, permanent settlement if they are permitted to determine the shape of that settlement for themselves. We can only make things worse.

Translations for this article:

• Portuguese, Ucrânia e o legado do imperialismo.
• Italian, Ucraina: L’Eredità del Colonialismo.

One really excellent point Dean Spade made essentially concerned a knowledge problem that impacts attempts at broad prison policy reform. Spade has worked as an attorney for many prisoners, particularly queer and transgender prisoners, and he pointed out that for many of them the particular prison conditions that would make their stay more survivable varied substantially. This means that seeking top down prison reforms is not likely to benefit the human rights of all oppressed and brutalized prisoners, and that therefore we should advocate for the needs expressed by individual prisoners while also seeking to abolish the system that cages and brutalizes them. At another point in the discussion Reina Gossett mentioned the important work that a group called Creative Interventions does as one example of how we intervene to stop violence without the state. The full discussion, as well as four great videos with Gossett and Spade that preceded it, is available here. I highly recommend watching the entire thing.

Towards the end of the conversation, Dean mentioned some resources for those who want to learn more about prison abolition. He recommended Angela Davis’s excellent book Are Prisons Obsolete, as well as Towards Transformative Justice [pdf], which was developed by activists with the group Generation Five. He also mentioned the organizations Black and Pink, the Audre Lorde Project and their Safe OUTside the System Collective, FIERCE, No One Is Illegal, and the Young Women’s Empowerment Project, all of which do work around prison abolition.

So that was Friday afternoon for me. On Friday evening I attended a presentation by Amanda Lickers, a Haudenosaunee woman who has been active in fighting against corporations that attempt to engage in fossil fuel extraction on indigenous land. Her website, Reclaim Turtle Island, documents the indigenous movements that are resisting this ongoing land theft and colonialism. Amanda has worked with submedia.tv to produce a variety of videos on these grassroots movements and the police repression directed against them. She is also a prison abolitionist who has done some excellent prisoner support work, and throughout her talk she made many important points that should be relevant to prison abolitionists. For example, the colonialist roots of many governments’ policing and prison systems. She showed footage documenting the Royal Colonial Mounted Police’s brutal attack on indigenous activists who were protecting their land from companies seeking to engage in fracking. She further noted that the RCMP is an institution founded to repress natives and secure colonial outposts. She also pointed out that the Canadian state’s laws criminalizing sex workers, some of which were recently struck down in court, were rooted in the Indian Act. These moralist assaults on bodily autonomy and free association are rooted in colonialism. Moreover, Amanda pointed us to the cases of multiple indigenous activists who have been held in Canadian prisons, often in solitary confinement, for standing against land theft. This belies the common claims that prisons are necessary to protect us from theft. To the contrary, they often are used to repress those who seek to defend their lands from theft by powerful corporations and governments. This post at Reclaim Turtle Island provides one example of political prisoners being abused by the Canadian state for defending their land. Reclaim Turtle Island is currently doing a fundraiser on Indiegogo to support their ongoing work against colonialist land theft by extractive industries.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the great news we had this week about Hank Magee. Police violently raided Magee’s home on suspicion that he was growing marijuana. Understandably, Hank Magee defended his home, and in the process a police officer was killed. Prosecutors attempted to charge Magee with capital murder, but last week a grand jury refused to indict. While Hank Magee still faces marijuana charges, he is free from the state’s cages for now. He’s with his family. My friend Jesse Fruhwirth reported on this story at his excellent blog Utah 4Ps. Radley Balko has a blog up on the case at the Washington Post. And Jonathan Carp wrote up an op-ed related to the case here at the Center for a Stateless Society.

I’m overjoyed that Hank’s free from prison walls. And I’m even happier to know that so many great people are acting to abolish the prison state itself.

Filmen är med avsikt strukturerad som en bok. Som filmens fulla titel Concerning Violence: Nine Scenes From the Anti-Imperialistic Self-Defense låter förstå är den indelat I nio kapitel. Dessa kapitel behandlar en bred uppsättning historier om kolonialism och motstånd.

En scen visar en intervju med en rasist I Rhodesia som är rädd att svarta “terrorister” snart kan komma att ta makten och beklagar att svarta människor uttrycker en strävan efter välstånd och oberoende. En annan följer gerillakämpar som attackerar en Portugisisk militärbas i det territorium som idag kallas Angola. Svenska reportrar pratar med kristna missionärer som jobbar på att påtvinga monogami på afrikanska befolkningar. Rasistiska kolonisatörer och rebelliska infödda filmas båda i länder Afrika runt.

För mig är filmens kraftigaste delar de som belyser det brutala våld och den exploatering som utgör kolonialismens kärna. En särskilt upplysande scen visar en gruvarbetarstrejk vid en europeiskt ägd gruva i Liberia. Den liberianska militären skickades in för att slå ner strejken. Presidenten menade att arbetarna borde helt enkelt borde ha tagit upp sina klagomål med regeringen innan de gick ut i strejk, och att han endast skickade dit trupper för att hindra våld. En av soldaterna intervjuas sen, och beskriver hur han fått order att initiera våld. Det är en avslöjande skildring av hur ekonomisk exploatering och ojämlikhet backas upp av statligt våld.

En annan otroligt viktig scen avbildar hur NATO-trupper försöker stoppa antikoloniala rebeller genom att droppa napalmbomber på hela byar av civila. Trots att de som försvarar sig mot imperialism än idag förses med ”terrorist”-etiketter, var det genom terrorkampanjer västliga krafter upprätthöll kolonial dominans.

Karske är den mest chockerande bilden I filmen en kvinna vars arm har blivit avhackad, så att hon liknar Venus de Milo-statyn. Hon tar hans om sitt barn, som har en liknande skada, i ett sjukhus, med deras motbjudande skador som en stark avbildning av kolonialt våld

Dessa och andra scener knyts ihop av Frantz Fanons ord, utbasunerade som text på skärmen och lästa högt och passionerat av musikern och aktivisten Lauryn Hill. Fanons text berättar hur de infödda drivs till våldsamt motstånd under kolonialismen, om den ekonomiska orättvisan kolonialism främjar, om dehumaniseringen som är inneboende i kolonialismen, om våldet som begås av polisen och militären för koloniala regeringars räkning.

Den här filmen är för kort för att ge tittaren en full bild av kolonialismen. Istället får vi korta vinjetter som visar oss exempel på kolonisering och dekolonisering. Förhoppningsvis lockar detta tittare att lära sig mer om kolonisering, motståndsrörelser, och Fanons verk. Om inte borde den åtminstone ge alla ett hum om vad det är för värld vi lever i: en värld där fängelser, krig och polisvåld möjliggör massiva mängder ekonomisk exploatering, förbrytelser och rasism.

The film is deliberately structured like a book. As the full title, Concerning Violence: Nine Scenes From the Anti-Imperialistic Self-Defense, suggests, it’s divided into nine chapters. These chapters cover a diverse range of stories of colonialism and resistance.

One scene shows an interview with a racist in a Rhodesia who fears that black “terrorists” may soon gain power and laments that black people openly express desire for wealth and independence. Another follows guerrilla fighters attacking a Portuguese military base in the territory now called Angola. Swedish interviewers speak to Christian missionaries who are working to impose monogamy upon African populations. Racist colonists and rebellious natives both are filmed in countries across Africa.

To me the most powerful parts of the film are those that expose the brutal violence and exploitation at the heart of colonialism. One particularly illuminating scene shows a miner’s strike at European owned mine in Liberia. The Liberian military was sent in to suppress the strike.  The president argued that the workers should have simply filed their grievances with the government before striking, and that he sent in the troops to prevent violence. One of the soldiers is then interviewed, describing his orders to initiate violence. It’s a revealing portrayal of how economic exploitation and inequity is backed up by state violence.

Another incredibly important scene portrays how NATO forces attempted to stop anti-colonial rebels by dropping napalm bombs on entire villages of civilians. While those who defend themselves from imperialism are to this day labeled “terrorists,” Western powers waged campaigns of terror to maintain colonial domination.

Perhaps the most disturbing image in the film is a woman whose arm has been hacked off, making her appear reminiscent of the Venus de Milo statue. She nurses her similarly injured child in a hospital, their appalling injuries a visceral portrait of colonialist violence.

These and other scenes are tied together by the words of Frantz Fanon, emblazoned as text upon the screen and read aloud passionately by musician and activist Lauryn Hill. Fanon’s text tells of how natives are driven to violent resistance under colonialism, of the economic injustice colonialism fosters, of the dehumanization inherent in colonialism, of the violence enacted by police and military forces on behalf of colonial governments.

This movie is too short to show viewers a full picture of colonialism. Instead, we are given brief vignettes that show us examples of colonization and decolonization. We are shown excerpts from Frantz Fanon’s incisive psychological analysis of colonialism. Hopefully this entices viewers to research more about colonization, resistance movements, and Fanon’s work. If not, it should at least provide an inkling of the world we live in: A world where prisons, warfare, and police violence enable massive economic exploitation, crime, and racism.

Translations for this article:

• Swedish, Goran Hugo Olsson’s “Concerning Violence”.