To Make a World, Part I: Ultranationalism and the Art of the Stateless State

In Hungary and Greece, the paramilitary fascists (respectively Jobbik and Golden Dawn), with which even the National Front is unwilling to collaborate, gained strength.

Vivienne Walt, “Inside Job,” TIME, May 26, 2014.

Peter Dale Scott, American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan (Lanham, Maryland: Roman & Littlefield, 2010), 2.

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, “Capitalism, Covert Action, and State-Terrorism: Toward a Political Economy of the Dual State,” in The Dual State: Parapolitics, Carl Schmitt and the National Security Complex, ed. Eric Wilson (London: Ashgate, 2012), 53.

Wilders’s chief ideologue, Martin Bosma, bases his use of the term “sleeper cells” on the Islamic concept of “takiyya,” which says that Muslims can hide or deny their faith if they are at risk of persecution. Bosma distorts this concept to claim that European Muslims are hiding their actual intention—namely, to implement Sharia Law in Europe—until they have gathered enough strength to do so. See Martin Bosma, De schijn-élite van de valse munters: Drees. extreem rechts, de sixties, nuttige idioten, Groep Wilders en ik (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Bert Bakker, 2010).

Geert Wilders, column at www.pvv.nl, October 30 2007, translated by the author. In the column, Wilders emphasizes that the model of preemptive detention is borrowed from the Israeli model of “administrative detention,” which Stephanie Cooper Blum, attorney for the Department of Homeland Security, describes this way: “In 1948, when Israel achieved its independence, Israel adopted the British Mandate’s Defense (Emergency) Regulations of 1945, which empowered the High Commissioner and Military Commander to detain any person it deemed necessary for maintaining public order or securing public safety or state security. In 1979, Israel reformed its detention laws and enacted a new statute: the Emergency Powers (Detentions) Law of 1979 (EPDL of 1979), which provided more rights to detainees than the prior regulations … While the EPDL of 1979 only applies once a state of emergency has been proclaimed by the Israeli Knesset (Israel’s legislature), Israel has been in such a state of emergency since its inception in 1948.” Stephanie Cooper Blum, “Preventive Detention in the War on Terror: A Comparison of How the United States, Britain, and Israel Detain and Incapacitate Terrorist Suspects,” Homeland Security Affairs vol. IV, no. 3 (October 2008).

In 2007, Wilders’s Freedom Party proposed banning the Quran, which he has described as the “Islamic Mein Kampf” (Geert Wilders, “Genoeg is genoeg: verbied de Koran,” de Volkskrant, August 8, 2007.) In 2010, a prohibition on headscarves in public buildings was part of the program of the Freedom Party in northern Holland.

Ben Hayes, Chris Jones, and Eric Töpfer, Eurodrones Inc. (Statewatch Transnational Institute, 2014), 9. See →.

Ibid., 8.

“During the last two years Frontex has been a regular participant in forums promoting the securitisation of border controls in Europe, alongside groups lobbying in favour of corporate interests such as the Aerospace and Defence (ASD) association, which promotes the aeronautics industry as a strategic priority for Europe, and the Security Defence Agenda (SDA), a Brussels based think tank that provides a platform for the meeting of EU institutions and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) with government officials and representatives of industry, international and specialised media, think-tanks, academia and NGOs.” Apostolis Fotiadis, “Drones may track migrants in EU,” Al Jazeera, Nov. 11, 2010 →.

See Trevor Paglen’s Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon’s Secret World (London: New American Library, 2010). The phrase also brings to mind the frustration of Dutch journalists who attempted to acquire documents providing insight into the involvement of the Netherlands in the Iraq War. When the journalists finally received the documents, they were censored with white ink, thus making the censorship itself invisible.

I think it’s possible to argue for important historical ties between stateless internationalism and the manner in which models of political emancipation and direct democracy are being developed within other acknowledged political parties such as Syriza in Greece, the international Pirate Parties that entered the EU parliament in Iceland and Germany, the rise of new Green Parties throughout the EU, and the Feminist Initiative in Sweden.

Subcomandante Marcos, “Tomorrow Begins Today” (August 3, 1996), in Our World is Our Weapon: Selected Writings (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2001), 118.

This is quoted, with Lekue’s permission, from a personal conversation I had with him in Berlin in summer 2013 about the future of the state in progressive politics.

Sortu, “Foundational Congress: International Resolution,” February 23, 2013 →.

Fadile Yıldırım , “Women and Democracy: The Kurdish Question and Beyond,” lecture at the first New World Summit, May 4, Sophiensaele, Berlin. See →.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Reflecting on the first Gezi Park protests one year after they broke out in Istanbul, philosopher Michael Hardt followed up on the rarely theorized practices of the Kurdish movement in relation to modern democratization movements, commenting that “An entire generation of activists across the globe has oriented its political compass toward Chiapas (home base of the Zapatistas). Why has so little international attention been focused on the Turkish Kurds?” Hardt continues: “Key to the current situation, as I understand it, is the fact that roughly a decade ago the stream of the Kurdish movement that follows Abdullah Öcalan radically shifted strategy from armed struggle aimed at national sovereignty toward the development of ‘democratic autonomy’ at a community level … I can see a vague correspondence between the roles of Marcos and (Abdullah) Öcalan (the imprisoned founder of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)), who is a kind of shadow leader that from prison periodically delivers somewhat poetic pronouncements that are interpreted by followers. The substantial and important point of contact, though, is the experimentation in village communities to practice a new kind of democracy.” Michael Hardt, “Innovation and Obstacles in Istanbul One Year After Gezi,” euronomade.info →.

Dilar Dirik, “The 'other' Kurds fighting the Islamic State,” Al Jazeera, September 2, 2014: →.

As Abdullah Öcalan has written: “When nationalism degenerated into secession and practically into a new religion, it became reactionary. The chauvinist thinking in nationalist terms, with its claims of superiority over other peoples and nations, became the cause of new hostilities. We now find wars between ethnically defined nations. As class struggles became fiercer, the capitalist class increasingly used these ideologies for their own purposes, hiding their true interests behind the mask of the nation.” Abdullah Öcalan, Prison Writings: The Roots of Civilization (London: Pluto Press, 2007), 200.

Tim Arango and Eric Schmitt, “U.S. Actions in Iraq Fueled Rise of a Rebel,” New York Times, Aug. 10, 2014 →.

See The Clashing of the Swords IV.

“The fact that Kurdish women take up arms, traditional symbols of male power, is in many ways a radical deviance from tradition ... Being a militant is seen as ‘unwomanly,’ it crosses social boundaries, it shakes the foundations of the status quo. Militant women are accused of violating the ‘sanctity of the family,’ because they dare to step outside of the centuries-old prison that has been assigned to them. Because they turn the system, the patriarchal, feminicidal order upside down, by becoming actors, instead of remaining victims. War is seen as a man's issue, started, led, and ended by men. So, it is the ‘woman’ part of ‘woman fighter,’ which causes this general discomfort.” Dilar Dirik, “The Representation of Kurdish Women Fighters in the Media,” Kurdish Question →.

Jose Maria Sison, “Cultural Imperialism in the Philippines,” in Towards a People’s Culture, ed. Jonas Staal (Utrecht: BAK, Basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, 2013), 21. Full download here →.

I have attempted to deepen the concept of cultural work as the rearticulation of the state through art in my introduction to the collected poetry of Professor Sison. See Jose Maria Sison, The Guerilla is Like a Poet (The Hague/Tirana: Uitgeverij, 2013).

The only proper reporting on the war between Azawad and Mali has been done by Al Jazeera, whose documentary Orphans of the Desert provides full coverage of the conflict since 2012, including interviews with representatives of the MNLA and with rival groups such as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. The webpage for the documentary includes regular updates. → For Security Council resolution 2100 of April 25, 2013—intended to support the political processes in Mali and carry out a number of security-related tasks—See →.

“Mali ‘at war’ with Tuareg rebels,” Al Jazeera, May 19, 2014 →.

“The artists of our time are like men hypnotized, repeating over and over a dreary formula of futility. And I say: Break this evil spell, young comrade; go out and meet the new dawning life, take your part in the battle, and put it into new art; do this service for a new public, which you yourself will make … that your creative gift shall not be content to make art works, but shall at the same time make a world; shall make new souls, moved by a new ideal of fellowship, a new impulse of love, and faith—and not merely hope, but determination.” Upton Sinclair, Mammonart (San Diego: Simon Publications, 2003), 386.