STATES THAT FIGHT THE PEOPLE WILL BE DEFEATED ---- Today, on a global level, we are deeper than ever in the midst of a historical phase of constant changes, accelerating events and intensifying antagonisms, which mark the violent transition to a new historical period. The pre-existing regime, already in disintegration, now reveals without pretense the deep decay of the systems of power, as each individual formation of global sovereignty - state, transnational, economic - is in crisis, trying to maintain its blood-stained gains through the intensity of repression, the escalation of war and the increasingly open devaluation of human life.
In Latin America, imperialist aspirations are once again expressed with brute force. The US military intervention and the kidnapping of the country's president demonstrate once again that the only law that can be imposed within the framework of the state-capitalist authoritarian system is the law of the strong, as defined each time by economic interests.Within the metropolises themselves, state violence is escalating in order to keep those who choose to resist the murderous policies of the states subjugated. The murder of Renee Goode by an ICE agent in the US is yet another example of structural state violence and terrorism. The witch hunt that has been going on in the US for several months now, the deportations, imprisonments and murders are an integral part of a system that attempts to impose order through fear and extermination.
Another structurally critical dimension of global politics is that of multipolarity. The transition from a unipolar world of Western hegemony to a multipolar system of competing centers of power and authority is naively presented as inherently, if not progressive and liberating for the oppressed, at least egalitarian. However, multipolarity does not equate to a liberating emancipation of societies. On the contrary, it often signals the coexistence and conflict of many state power blocs, which claim regional influence over the same societies. Multipolarity de facto means an increase in intra-imperialist contradictions and intra-sovereign antagonisms.
Iran is included in this network as an "anti-Western pole", but not as a vehicle for social liberation, but as a state that claims a space of power within a global market of violence, control and repression. Multipolarity, without a radical social rupture and liberatory emancipation from below, does not cancel the contemporary necropolitics of Western imperialism; it simply divides it. This is precisely where the danger lies of confusing the weakening of Western dominance with the strengthening of popular liberation.
For us, the criterion is not which pole of power rises, but whether societies breathe. If women can live without the fear of being murdered by the morality police for not wearing a headscarf, if the color of your skin is not a criterion for shouting "I can't breathe". If workers can organize without being crushed by repression. If uprisings are not sacrificed in the name of an "anti-imperialist" geopolitical balance that demands silence and submission.
Within this web of conflicts, hypocrisies and geopolitical antagonisms, Iran emerges as one of the most characteristic examples of the trap of pseudo-anti-imperialism. Of a discourse that, in the name of resistance to Western hegemony, ends up legitimizing - or at least silencing - authoritarian regimes, internal repression and state violence. Of a discourse that confuses the struggle of those below with the interests of states. Undoubtedly, the Iranian regime is in constant confrontation with Western and Israeli power, acting as a regional power that challenges the dominance of the United States and Israel in the Middle East. This confrontation, however, does not in itself constitute anti-imperialism. Anti-imperialism is not judged by a state's international alliances and the camp it joins, but by the position it takes towards the peoples, classes and societies it governs. And a state, due to its structural constitution, could not be a liberating agent for peoples around the world.
Internally, Iran remains a deeply theocratic, authoritarian, patriarchal and repressive regime. A regime that criminalizes dissent, crushes workers', students', and emancipatory struggles, oppresses ethnic and religious minorities, and practices systematic gender-based violence. The uprisings of recent years - culminating in the slogan "Women, Life, Freedom" - were neither a Western conspiracy nor a communications construct. It was an authentic cry for life against a regime that rules through fear, imprisonment and death. And this cry was paid for with blood.
Therefore, we cannot denounce the necropolitics practiced in Gaza and at the same time remain silent about the necropolitics practiced in Tehran. We cannot speak of colonial violence and turn a blind eye to the violence of the "anti-Western" state when it is directed against society itself. This selective sensitivity is not internationalism but a cynical choice of a power bloc.
At the same time, solidarity with the Iranian rebels cannot and should not be identified with any acceptance of Western sanctions, "humanitarian" interventions or the imperialist instrumentalization of rights. Sanctions do not harm regimes, they harm societies. They intensify poverty, break social bonds and turn misery into a geopolitical tool. Western "humanism" is often the other face of the same imperialist violence. The insurgents in Iran know well that the fall of a regime does not automatically mean freedom. They know that the restoration of the Shah and the monarchy is not a solution, but a return to an old form of oppression. The memory of the reign of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, with its violence, torture, political persecution and murder of dissidents, the political terrorism of SAVAK, has not faded from the memory of the society that is rebelling today.
And it is equally clear that the current promotion of Reza Pahlavi as a democratic alternative does not express the needs of the streets and the insurgents, but the plans for a controlled transition, cut and sewn to the measures of geopolitical stability and Western interests. The people who shout "Women, Life, Freedom" are not fighting for a change of persons at the top of power, but for the dismantling of the very mechanisms that produce oppression. Neither mullahs nor kings: what is being claimed is not another power over their lives, but the ability to take them back.
That is why our position must be dual and non-negotiable both against imperialism and internal state repression. Neither with the West, nor with "anti-Western" regimes. Always with the women who burn their headscarves, with the workers who strike, with the minorities who demand existence, with the rebels who refuse to live hunched over. With those below, not with the states. This is the only consistent anti-imperialism. And this is the only consistent stance that can soberly stand before the facts, avoid the vicious circle of the subjective "objective" readings that ultimately end in reaction, irrationality and conspiratorialism.
Anarchists have stripped themselves of Leninist maneuvers and the logic of the "lesser evil" from the beginning and with stakes extremely more important than the future of the "anti-imperialist" Khomeini and for this reason they do not hesitate to stand on the side of every people who rise up against their oppressors. We know very well both the letters of the goddess of geopolitics and that uprisings have this flaw: as a living history they cannot promise a heavenly future. After all, the Iranian Revolution itself was such an attempt.
Solidarity with the struggling people of Venezuela, solidarity with the rebels in Iran.
Global resistance against Imperialism, despotism, theocracy, the state & capitalism.
Always on the side of those from below - never with Power.
Organization - Internationalism - Social Revolution, for Anarchy and Libertarian Communism.
Collective for Social Anarchism - Black & Red member of the Anarchist Political Organization - Federation of Collectives
https://landandfreedom.gr/el/agones/2171-thes-niki-mikrofoniki-sygkentrosi-savvato-17-1-stis-12-00-kamara-allileggyi-stous-is-eksegermenous-es-sto-iran-allileggyi-ston-lao-tis-venezouelas
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en) Greece, APO, Land & Freedom -[Thessaloniki]Solidarity with the rebels in Iran - Solidarity with the people of Venezuela Microphone gathering: Saturday 17/1 at 12:00, Kamara (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]
Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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