​​​​​​​Raul Zibechi: I am very interested in seeing Ocalan

Raul believes that instead of perusing Marxist and Leninist works, instead Ocalan's thoughts ought to read, and via the leader Ocalan all the Kurdish people is being targeted, they aim to deter the Kurds from resistance. And many other issues were discussed with Mr. Raul Zibechi, in an interview conducted by ANHA, that went as following:

Mr. Raul Zibechi, a very warm welcome to you at ANHA.

First of all, what would you like to say about the imprisonment of Leader Abdullah Öcalan, who has been in isolation for 22 years?

- It is a measure against an entire people. Although it is Öcalan's body that is in jail, the target is the Kurdish people. It works in two ways. On the one hand, it is a warning to the Kurds who resist and fight that the same thing can happen to them as to Öcalan. It is a deterrent effect, a threat to stop them fighting.

On the other hand, Turkey is depriving the Kurdish people of direct participation in its struggle. In this way it is a way to weaken the resistance, since if he were active among his own, he could be guiding, indicating paths and setting objectives.

How do you see Leader Abdullah Öcalan's paradigm? What is the difference between advocates of similar ideas in history?

In my opinion the point of reference is Marxism-Leninism, particularly in its Soviet version. I can see what in Öcalan's ideas is a clear and radical break with that thought, in particular in his debt to capitalist modernity, to the State and to the logic of capital.

As far as I know, this is the most radical and complete break with that Soviet heritage, in particular with economism, the centrality of the economy as a way of seeing the world. In this sense, Öcalan manages to clear the field: he defines capitalism as power, not as economy. As a particular type of power that can be summed up in modern nation-states. In this way he manages to sweep away an inheritance that was focused on discovering the operation of the laws of the economy as the key to understanding the system that oppresses us.

This is a great contribution to popular and anti-capitalist movements, since from now on they can put aside theories that remain focused on observing how economic data evolve to try to guess where the system is going. And in reality the system is marching towards a greater concentration of power in fewer and fewer hands.

You have emphasized in your article that what has been happening in Rojava in recent years is in harmony with the work of a significant portion of Latin-American social movements, as much as the thought of Leader Abdullah Öcalan. How do you evaluate the universalization of Öcalan's ideas against capitalist modernity?

- I think that in Latin America a part of the movements, in particular the native and black peoples, converge with some points of view of Öcalan, in his view of capitalism and modernity, that the objective cannot consist of occupying the State , either by electoral or "revolutionary" route.

Of course this is the attitude of the Zapatistas, something that we are already getting to know in detail. But there are more and more native peoples (Mapuche from Chile and Argentina, Nasa and Misak from Colombia, as well as Amazonian peoples) who are walking in a different direction to the conquest of power.

In our continent, the way of formulating these ideas is called "autonomy" and it is a construction of its own that does not depend on European traditions but on its own. So what we are seeing is that there are processes of struggle and resistance that somehow dialogue with Öcalan's thought, although they do not know him. This happens because the peoples are discovering the limits of modernity, development and capitalism. In addition to the fact that in Kurdistan and in Latin America we face a system that the Zapatistas have called “the fourth world war”, in the sense that neoliberalism is being a war against the peoples to turn nature into merchandise.

You used the expression "Abdullah Öcalan is holding a mirror to the 60s generation". How was the 60s and how is it today? Are the conditions favorable for the paradigm of Democratic modernity to become practical in today's conditions?

- The 1960s was perhaps the last revolutionary generation in a classical sense, in a very particular way in Latin America: revolution in Cuba, guerrillas in all countries, the fall of Che in combat, the creation of organizations of popular power in Chile under Allende and in Bolivia. And it was also the generation of the great defeats and massacres, with a balance of hundreds of thousands of dead and missing. The political-military forces that developed the wars in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua come from that decade.

They are also the years in which organizations are formed that later give life to the EZLN in Mexico. The case of the PKK is similar, since it was founded in 197e, and its leaders like Öcalan also come from that period, let's say they are children of the world revolution of 1968, as Immanuel Wallerstein calls it.

So what I want to emphasize is that from those defeats, from the subsequent fall of Soviet socialism and the transformation of China into a capitalist hegemon, we must learn in the same direction that Öcalan proposes to us: to review what does not serve us from all that political baggage and cultural, because political culture is very important in this change that is taking place. I believe that one of his great contributions is the question of women, and in this aspect I see once again a great confluence between the thought of the Kurdish leader and the Zapatista postulates and other Latin American movements.

Can you comment on the definition you use "the thought of Öcalan who can turn the rudder without losing the north"?

For me, not losing the north is as much as continuing to resist this system, to continue fighting for a better world. By turning the wheel, I understand not always repeating the same schemes that have already shown that they do not work.

On the left, the mechanical repetition of what does not work remains the majority, of what since 1917 (or better, since the beginning of 1920) led the revolutionaries to failure. In this sense, Öcalan manages to make a very strong, intense and profound self-criticism, but without losing the point of changes towards a more just world.

Since the 1960s when Eurocommunism spread, and now with progressivism, there was a tension to move the helm but they ended up adapting to the system, they were integrated and the progressive parties of today (from Syriza and Podemos to Latin Americans) are limited to administer capitalism, abandoning the proposal to overcome it, to go further.

The books written by Leader Abdullah Öcalan are taught in many universities. However, he is still in Imrali prison as a prisoner. What consequences does Leader Abdullah Öcalan's being captive create?

- I do not know. On the one hand, it is something very painful, tremendously painful. But pain has the ability to strengthen individuals and peoples. Look at the case of Antonio Gramsci, whose thought and figure have grown throughout the 20th century to become an inescapable benchmark of critical thought and militant dignity.

I think Öcalan's thought is the son of his long and unjust confinement, but he is also the son of the life and history of his people. His figure will be ever greater among the Kurds and among the peoples of the world, because a person who faces prison and isolation with integrity, and also makes very important contributions to critical thinking, cannot but be increasingly recognized. in the world.

Would you like to see Leader Abdullah Öcalan? If so, what kind of topics would you discuss?

- Of course I would. I am very interested in asking you how this change in your thinking has been, since we belong to the same generation, we began political activism in similar years in study centers, and we learned the same “absurdities”, as Subcomandante Marcos said. So it would be a dialogue of "veterans", but in his case with a very rich life that is the life of the Kurdish people, which has both enormous challenges and disadvantages but also advantages, such as living in four states, having gone through centuries of learning and continuities. This is absolutely exceptional and can be of enormous use to the struggles for emancipation, if we are in a position to learn.

What should states and peoples do to end the captivity of Leader Abdullah Öcalan?

- I do not have the slightest confidence in the States or in the governments, in relation to the Öcalan prison. If they have not been able to condemn Turkey for the invasion of the Rojava region and Afrin, they are less going to worry about the life of a Kurdish leader.

However, I believe that the peoples of the world can do many interesting things. The first is to understand that in Rojava there is a revolution where women play a very important role. It is not just another revolution, but something much deeper that the peoples of the world must know.

But it would also be very important for the oppressed peoples to read Öcalan's books and texts, to see with their own eyes that it is possible to create new worlds and new thinking. We know that with old ideas we cannot do anything new. Therefore, instead of reciting the platitudes of the classics of Marxism, reading Öcalan can help you a lot to build new societies, without people oppressed and humiliated by the powerful. This would be a huge contribution to Öcalan's freedom.

L.A.

ANHA