“…nah bro, it’s still anarchist because they adhere to anarchist principles!!”
“…nah bro, the EZLN is actually anarchist even though they openly reject anarchism as their identity!!”
“…nah bro, it’s not an expression of a colonialist attitude to appropriate the EZLN struggle as being part of my political beliefs!!”
It’s astounding to me that western anarchists will defend to the death the right of trans people to self-identify but when a political struggle in the third world asserts its right to self-identify they’ll steamroll it without a second thought.
Imagine claiming to reject unjust hierarchies and then placing yourself above the people of a movement to paternalistically appropriate their cause as being part of your own political ideology.
Here are the EZLN in their own words on the matter:
The EZLN and its larger populist body the FZLN are NOT Anarchist. Nor do we intend to be, nor should we be.
Over the past 500 years, we have been subjected to a brutal system of exploitation and degradation few in North America have ever experienced.
It is apparent from your condescending language and arrogant short-sightedness that you understand very little about Mexican History or Mexicans in general.
Our struggle was raging before anarchism was even a word, much less an ideology with newspapers and disciples. Our struggle is older than Bakunin or Kropotkin. We are not willing to lower our history to meet some narrow ideology exported from the same countries we fought against in our Wars for independence. The struggle in Mexico, Zapatista and otherwise, is a product of our histories and our cultures and cannot be bent and manipulated to fit someone else’s formula, much less a formula not at all informed about our people, our country or our histories. We as a movement are not anarchist.
We see narrow-minded ideologies like anarchism… as tools to pull apart Mexicans into more easily exploitable groups.
But what really enraged [us is] the familiar old face of colonialism shining through your good intentions. Once again we Mexicans [find ourselves put into a position where we] are not as good as the all knowing North American Imperialist who thinks himself more aware, more intelligent and more sophisticated politically than the dumb Mexican. This attitude, though hidden behind thin veils of objectivity, is the same attitude that we have been dealing with for 500 years, where someone else in some other country from some other culture thinks they know what is best for us more than we do ourselves.
Once again, the anarchists in North America know better than us about how to wage a struggle we have been engaged in since 300 years before their country was founded and can therefore, even think about using us as a means to “advance their project.” That is the same exact attitude Capitalists and Empires have been using to exploit and degrade Mexico and the rest of the third world for the past five hundred years.
Even though [you talk] a lot about revolution, the attitudes and ideas held by [you] are no different than those held by Cortes, Monroe or any other corporate imperialist bastard you can think of. Your intervention is not wanted nor are we a “project” for some high-minded North Americans to profit off.
So long as North American anarchists hold and espouse colonialist belief systems they will forever find themselves without allies in the third world. The peasants in Bolivia and Ecuador, no matter how closely in conformity with your rigid ideology, will not appreciate your condescending colonial attitudes anymore than would the freedom fighters in Papua New Guinea or anywhere else in the world.
Colonialism is one of the many enemies we are fighting in this world and so long as North Americans reinforce colonial thought patterns in their “revolutionary” struggles, they will never be on the side of any anti-colonial struggle anywhere. We in the Zapatista struggle have… asked the world to… respect the historical context we are in and think about the actions we do to pull ourselves from under the boots of oppression.
(Excuse the minimisation that the editor feels compelled to engage in with their mention of “the subtle colonialist tendencies” and in saying “it is unclear whose voice is this Zapatista response, which uses ‘we’ to speak for all on such important themes. We [My note: Who is ‘we’? It is unclear whose voice in this editorial note which uses ‘we’ to speak for all on such important themes…] fully agree that arrogance toward the struggles in Mexico should have no part in any commentary. Perhaps it is also worth asking whether centralization and representation can be anti-authoritarian?” — does the editor have no shame and no capacity for insight? Did they even listen to the author before typing this out? It’s remarkable that this editor’s royal “we” applies a standard of demanding proof of consensus from the EZLN in their communications which is entirely absent from their concern when other movements write or when Subcommandante Marcos writes but is not directly criticising western anarchists, not to mention in their own editorial note itself. They are setting their own personal standards for how they define the terms centralisation and anti-authoritarian then they’re projecting this onto the EZLN and concern-trolling over what they assume to be the EZLN falling short of the editor’s standards. Way to miss the point, guys!)
Perhaps it is also worth asking whether centralization and representation can be anti-authoritarian?
What a piece of shit that editor is. Next try “You claim to be communist and yet use singular possessive pronouns”. Of course, there can be no questioning of the editor’s view of “anti-authoritarianism”, so their condescending attitude of projecting anarchism on to the EZLN can just be laundered through “anti-authoritarianism”.
Thanks for this read, with sources and notes too. As a resident anarchist in the imperial core I can personally attest to how anarchism is easily one of the most useful ideological trappings for American cultural individualism and academic liberal elites. To the point where it is almost an entirely captured ideology. I’m victim to such propaganda about Zapatista.
Thank you for helping me to further decolonize my mind.
I think when it comes to discussing the EZLN and anarchism, it’s really important to conceptualise them as separate yet equal.
To say that there are parallels between anarchism and what the Zapatistas are doing is fine because it isn’t centering anarchism and giving it a position of dominance over the EZLN. But it becomes problematic to claim the EZLN as anarchist when they don’t claim anarchism, for the reasons they lay out in that article.
While we regret some of the wording the author chose to use in the original article…
Do you think it’s the words that say not very nice things about anarchism?
[Additionally], it is unclear whose voice is this [anarchist] response, which uses “we” to speak for all on such important themes.
Not only is this doing the same condescending thing that the original article is criticising (suggesting that there might be more ‘enlightened’ segments of EZLN who accept the proclamations of westerners as gospel – an idealist position given the evidence under consideration), the editor’s note does the thing that it’s criticising the original article for doing – it uses ‘we’ 13 times by my count.
While we regret some of the wording the author chose to use in the original article…
This is another thing about the editorial note that really boils my piss tbh.
They don’t get to claim regret for a colonized people’s choice of words and framing it in those terms is deeply paternalistic.
At least be honest about it and say “The editor is disappointed with the wording the author chose to use”. But instead of owning it, they project that regret over the author’s article and yet they express no regret for the misunderstandings or for the first article (which this one is a response to).
It’s really fucking gross.
It’s not “We regret the circumstances that have elicited such a response from you” it’s just “We regret that you have gone and done this to us” when all the article is saying is to back off and to be respectful in recognising the EZLN struggle. Peak crybully shit.
Fuck the editor’s note, but the last three paragraphs… Man, that is heat. “No different than Cortes, Monroe, or any other corporate-imperial bastard you can think of”. The settlers need to understand that it doesn’t matter what other ideology they try and bundle their colonizer mentalities with-- the point is that the colonizer mentalities need to be consigned to the furnace before that settler’s safe to move with.
