YPG-Training camp for international volunteers, canton of Cizîrê, April 12, 2017
This blog is the travel notebook of a libertarian communist who decided to join the revolution in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava).
I will try to hold it up do date (as far as practicable, as you can imagine) in order to keep you posted about my experiences and discoveries here.
I guess I should start with a short introduction of myself.
My name is Arthur Aberlin.
I don’t want to make it too easy for our friends from the intelligence service – even though I’m pretty sure they already know that I’m here – so I won’t tell you very much about my background, except the following: I was born in a workers family in a medium-sized town. I was lucky enough to study in a provincial college but given my study fields chances were low to find a job afterwards. I started to engage with the students movement and eventually joined a libertarian communist organization.
So, why did I decide to go?
An unavoidable question, I suppose… The first reason is, of course, my wish to put into practice my solidarity with the currently ongoing revolution in Rojava. I am aware of the intellectual masturbatory debates within the activist spheres that discuss whether one can call these events revolutionary or not, and, by the way, I have myself participated in such discussions.
Nevertheless, with time I gained more and more respect for imperfect action as compared to perfect theory. And I grew sick of being a simple observer of events that happen just a few days-trip away from us. The trigger was doubtlessly very personnel, but, as the saying goes, everything is political.
So, after several years of activism, I found it more and more difficult to give meaning to the militant routine… and I could sense, slowly but surely, a feeling of resignation taking over. It had been a while since I was following the situation in Syria; and I cherished the comforting thought that, worse case, I could join this revolution. A fantasy that allowed me to reassure myself about my true revolutionary nature, I suppose.
Anyway! On a January morning, reading the blog of a comrade who had taken the plunge – I hope I will meet him so I can tell him that, somehow, he created this turning point in my life -, I thought to myself that I’m standing at a crossroad:
- either I continue my everyday activism which I didn’t find satisfactory anymore and which I feared would lead to an unpleasant ending of disillusions from my ideals and a lot of alcohol to forget about it.
- or I make my dreams real and I walk ahead to the unknown.
The next day, I had made my choice.
I started to think about how to join the YPG
Link :http://libcom.org/news/libertarian-communist-fighting-ypg%C2%A0-why-i-joined-revolution-kurdistan-24062017
