Against all fascism: society's self-defense!

By Cudî Raperîn

Mere rage will not bring the beast of fascism to its knees, it needs a methodology superior to the cruelty of fascism, characterised by balance, ethics and intelligence. Cunning is required. The cold calculation of the enemy does not adhere to human values, ethics and morals. It draws its strength solely from the fanaticism of power and the resulting brute force. This is represented in the unimaginable chaos of the events of the Third World War which are unfolding before everyone’s eyes.

What is important now is the question that Vladimir Ilyich U. Lenin asked himself: ‘What is to be done?’. 

The question of ‘what is to be done’ is the question of how we as young people can present a united front against fascism and defeat it. For 50 years there has been fierce resistance in the land of the fertile crescent. The youth of Kurdistan together with the internationalist youth from all corners of the world represent a major front of internationalist resistance. The Turkish occupying state is the climax of 21st century fascism. Behind Turkey’s genocidal regime is NATO and the state of Israel. Ideologically, Turkish fascism in its campaign of annihilation against Kurdistan thus also represents the campaign of annihilation against humanity as such. The fascism of the Turkish state is a spawn of capitalist modernity. The Turkish state acted for NATO like a foreign minister for the Middle East, constantly trying by all dirty means and ways to assimilate the cradle of humanity into global capitalism. 

The Many Colours of Fascism

Abdullah Öcalan analysed in detail in his defence writings that the Turkish state laid the foundation for Zionism and thus for today’s state of Israel. The proto-Israel emerged from the early Turkish Republic. To reduce fascism merely to Mussolini, Hitler or Franco would not only be short-sighted, but would also play straight into the hands of liberalism. Similarly, fascism cannot be reduced to ‘mass psychology’; fascism is a much deeper thought process that is not only observed in mass movements. Such superficial approaches of positivist sociology and psychology are even an obstacle to the developement of a deeper understanding. But understanding is the first important step for a successful struggle. If we do not analyse this, we will not understand why the ‘black fascism’ of Germany emerged from the liberal Weimar Republic, why the so-called ‘green fascism’ of Islamism was strengthened by the USA and the Turkish state and why ‘white fascism’ was strengthened by Zionism and vice versa. 

What unites all forms of fascism - white, black and green - is their origin. Fascism does not stand alone, it is closely linked to the flow of capitalist modernity, based on the state, power and violence. State, power and violence in turn are based on the last 5000 years of the triumphant march of patriarchy and the enslavement of women and life. Fascism and patriarchy are therefore closely related. In other words, fascism needs patriarchy. This is because the culture and freedom of women and life would protect society from fascist ideas. Fascism thus initially creates a cage for women in order to keep them away from their revolutionary social role.

Society Genocide

Physical and cultural massacre are central elements of fascism. The homogenisation of society eradicates language, history and culture. Thousands of languages have already been wiped out or distorted beyond recognition in the course of history. Even today’s ‘official’ languages of the world system, such as English or German, or colonial languages such as Spanish and French, have little to do with their origins. Language is a mirror of thought and history. To fully entrench its rule in society, fascism must systematically ban and repress languages that are full of history and naturalness such as Kurdish, Ketchua, Tamil, Gaelic, Inuktitut and thousands of other indigenous languages, or assimilate languages so that little of them remain. One of the first things the fascist dictator Mussolini did was to ban all dialects and even completely different languages in Italy, thereby creating a fictitious Italian language. Which, as a rule, is also stolen from those assimilated languages.

A story that is still waiting to be written  

History is rewritten or forgotten, especially the history of women. Neither has the history of patriarchy has been written down, nor that of women’s resistance and life. As the German Nazi Göring said, ‘The winner will always be the judge and the loser will always be the accused’. The official historiography as it is preached in schools thus represents nothing other than the history of domination and misery. The great thorn in the side of the system is the culture of the people, including its language and history. Diversity of culture is in direct contradiction to fascism. All the more reason for fascism to try to manipulate culture and use it against the people. Traditional clothing, food, dances, songs, stories and myths are either destroyed and banned or put at the service of the state. Just as Mustafa Kemal created the Turkish Republic under the motto

 ‘One language, one fatherland, one culture, one flag, one nation’. 

Reclaim our cultures against fascism! 

Language, history and culture together form the identity of a people and a nation. The strong voice of society is silenced by fascism, as if it had scarlet fever, until it is almost no longer able to speak. A revolutionary youth movement must counter this head on by strength through diversity. In the fight against fascism, collective identity must be strengthened by defending and revitalising language, history and culture. Above all, women and young women within anti-fascist youth movements, must clearly take on their role in the fight against fascism. Because in the western world it is becoming increasingly clear how much the role of women is being utilised by facsist forces. 

European fascism in particular is being more than insidious in this approach. It puts women in the front row in order to say: ‘Look! The woman is emancipating herself, she has gone from housewife to stateswoman!’ The ideas behind this are nothing less than the basis of fascism itself. It lies dormant in the state, just waiting to be unleashed in all its cruelty. History, language and culture are systematically manipulated by fascism and young people in particular are deceived by this ideology. 

A revolutionary youth must strengthen their historical consciousness, familiarise themselves with their culture and defend its language. In this way, it can create an identity that is higly self-aware that it can defend itself against any attacks by fascism. But in today’s system of capitalist modernity, it is not possible to defend identity without organisation. The system concentrates more and more on spreading liberalism with methods of special warfare, weakening personalities and thus making organisation more and more difficult. 

Need of a new youth leadership

A strong organisation consists of strong individuals, strong individuals arise from a strong organisation. An organisation, a movement, is made up of all its different elements and forms a whole from them. It would be strange if a body consisted only of many identical organs, for example 78 lungs instead of lungs, heart, kidneys and intestines. All organs function in their own way embedded in the big picture - the body. Within it, they function harmoniously like an orchestra. However, both a body and an orchestra need a conductor. The revolutionary youth movements have been in a crisis of being without leadership since the first youth revolution of 1968. There have been strong personalities in every generation of history who have taken on the difficult task of paving the way. The 21st century also needs its pioneers. With the international plot against Abdullah Öcalan on 15 February 1999, NATO, Israel and Turkey hoped to destroy the Kurdish freedom movement once and for all by kidnapping its ideological and practical pioneer, and by locking him up in solitary confinement on Imrali. But true leadership is not simply characterised by physical presence. 

Zarathustra, Mani, Abraham, Jesus, Mohammed, the Trung siblings of Vietnam, Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, Thomas Sankara, Şehîd Sara Sakine Cansiz, Şehîd Kemal Pîr and thousands of revolutionaries of history still live in the minds of billions of people and show them the way. The revolutionary and internationalist youth of this age must honestly ask themselves the question of their leadership and act accordingly. The struggle against fascism is looking for its pioneers! 

Thus, Abdullah Öcalan and the ideology of the Kurdish Freedom Movement, its philosophy and its paradigm for a free life represent a universal approach. Both in the analysis of fascism, the history of patriarchy, the analysis of state, power and violence as well as in their alternative; the research of Jineolojî (science of women and life), democratic modernity and the revolution of women, Öcalan has proposed a solution approach that represents a line for all peoples of the world in the struggle. 

Education as action against fascism

In order to understand fascism and the solution in depth, a deeper ideological understanding through education is required. Nothing should stand in our way of placing education at the centre of our lives 24 hours a day. Education goes beyond reading. Every moment can become education, education is a way of life. Being a socialist brings with it this responsibility. Because fascism manipulates the historical consciousness and collective memory of society, we must defend and deepen it as a task of self-defence. At every single moment, even if no physical attack, murder or massacre is committed, special warfare and manipulation methods continually aim to influence us  ideologically. Whatever does not fit in to the fascist paradigm it will try to destroy. 

This is particularly evident in the reality of Kurdish society. Turkish fascism has created a ‘good Kurd’ and a ‘bad Kurd’, whereby the ‘good Kurd’ is merely the assimilated Kurd who is rendered weak-willed and completely integrated into the system. The ‘bad Kurd’, or ‘the terrorist’, is the Kurd who resists and defends their culture. This logic can be found everywhere in today’s world. This mentality can also be applied to patriarchy and the reality of women.

Especially in the raging third world war, thinking in black and white plays an important role in maintaining the state of war. Means such as social media, mass-produced news, the sports industry with its delusion of reducing people to their instincts such as eating, sleeping, drinking and sex have led to a mental stagnation that fascism needs to hypnotise and lull society to sleep. That the third world war has been raging for thirty years is no secret, a look at the state of the world should make this immediately clear. It is important to understand that there is a far more complex web behind the Third World War than behind the First and Second World Wars. Humanity is in a war of to be or not to be and the outcome of the third world war will determine the continued existence of humanity. In order to make young people unable to fight, and defenceless against attacks, the system creates powerlessness, hopelessness and nihilism. 

Fascism is not invincible 

But the fight against fascism is not a fight against an invincible power. Fascism is based on power, but postmodern fascism in particular is a system of fragility. It is not deeply rooted in society. No system based on the state, power and violence can become deeply rooted in society. On the contrary, such systems are fragile. Europe is a clear example of this. Modern fascism in the guise of Meloni, the AfD, Prawo i Sprawiedliwośćer (PiS), Rassemblement National, Fratelli d’Italia is gaining strength in a phase in which society is at a boiling point. Every conceivable crisis that society is struggling with has driven it into anger, fear and powerlessness. The youth in the fight against fascism, with a good understanding of history, clear and authentic language, mastery of the art of propaganda and an alternative cultural lifestyle, can put the nail in the coffin of this glass fascism and shatter it. Education can make young people understand that fascism is not as invincible as it is made out to be.

At the same time, it would be a devastating self-deception and denial of history to think that physical self-defence is not an absolute necessity. Anyone who learns from the history of the last thousands of years realises this; wherever the enemy sees no possibility of a cultural massacre, he will carry out a physical massacre. In addition to education, the organisation of society and the struggle at the level of our own mentality, physical self-defence must be well thought out and set up appropriately. The revolutionary people’s war has strong models in history and in the present. In the spirit of the Trung brothers and sisters of Vietnam two thousand years ago, from Lepa Radic to Şehîd Zîlan; the resistance against fascism has many fronts; in the spirit of internationalism these fronts will unite as one. 

Today, the free mountains of Kurdistan are the front line of socialism. Their victory will push back post-modern fascism by miles on the battlefield of humanity. Every attack of fascism on the free mountains of Kurdistan is therefore an attack on socialism as such. The construction of democratic modernity is thus the cure for the disease of capitalism. It is the task of every socialist to uphold the values of humanity, the values of socialism, and to use them to deal a death blow to fascism.