NEWS CENTER – While the war in the Middle East has intensified in many crisis areas created and deepened by capitalism, the coronavirus (Covid-19) has reached a stage that seriously threatens social life worldwide. While creating a social psychology that threatens life and deepens the existential crisis with the diseases created by wars and the deterioration of the society-nature relationship in our world where capitalism is held hostage, they also preach that people stay in their homes and, as a precaution, with the argument of “social distance”, not to communicate with each other. However, eliminating the risks and threats that capitalism poses to our world and our social life is to withdraw, to stay at home,
All over the world, women who greeted March 8 with their greatest enthusiasm are doing what needs to be done against capitalism by filling the spaces more and increasing their rebellion. Starting from the Latin American country of Chile, a new wave of women’s freedom is developing across the continent and the world. While Rêber defined Apo women as the first colonized nation in social history, he also described them as a rebellion in their opposition to capitalism. In this sense, we are facing a new revolt of women, the oldest colony, against sexism, fascism and capitalism.
Latin America, the last center of this revolt, was colonized as a whole with the discovery of America and millions of natives of the continent were massacred by the guns of Europe. The rest had been decimated by viruses carried there by the colonizers, which invaded the continent and were unknown to the immune systems of the natives. This means that viruses and colonialism also have a historical connection! The Uruguayan revolutionary Eduardo Galeano, who evaluated this historical process as “The severed veins of Latin America” and wrote the history of resistance to colonization, applied this mainly to the stories of women.
Latin America is a region where for four centuries there has been a tradition of uninterrupted resistance, led by indigenous peoples and women, against colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism. This uninterrupted resistance combined with the struggle for socialism in the 20th century, socialist revolutions took place under the leadership of revolutionary organizations in many countries of the continent, the capitalist system led by the United States intervened in these revolutions with military coups and organized fascist juntas. This extended for decades and the uninterrupted resistance continued. In this sense, the history of Latin America is a history of revolutions and counterrevolutions. And the history of revolution was written by indigenous peoples and women.
Although “socialist governments” were established in many countries of the continent after the 2000s, these governments that set out in the name of the people could not overcome the practice of real socialism and were weakened in their system by the various interventions of capitalist modernity and fell from power. Right-wing populist and fascist governments are coming to power in many Latin American countries, most notably in Brazil, where former guerrilla commanders have been at the helm for a time. Instead of revolutionary leaders, fascist chieftains are reappearing on the stage of history. This new wave of rebellion, which is developing from Chile and is the basis of an increasingly global women’s resistance, is undoubtedly related to these developments.
The Cultural Revolution of 68, led by women and youth in Europe, had some similar characteristics. On the one hand, the blockage experienced by real socialism due to the abandonment of the utopias of freedom, on the other hand, the severe social crises triggered by the preparations for entering the financial age of capitalism and the developing national liberation movements , especially Vietnam, were the sources of the 68 revolution. Society was looking for a new outlet and the slogan of the great guerrilla commander Che Guavera, “Be realistic, demand the impossible”, was one of the main slogans of the time as a call to keep alive the utopias of freedom against capitalism. And, of course, the slogan “1,2,3 more Vietnam,” honoring the glorious resistance of the Vietnamese people against the American occupation.
Rêber Apo, with his assessment that “the 21st century will be the century of women,” pointed out that the real liberation movement against capitalism would develop under the leadership of women and on the basis of women’s freedom. When the spread of the women’s revolution starting from Kurdistan to the entire Middle East and the world and this new freedom rebellion spreading from Chile to the entire continent and the world are considered together, it is easy to see that this determination is not a future but a reality that is taking place at the moment. In different continents of the world, women of the world are spreading the freedom rebellion against capitalism in waves, these waves are uniting in public and the female face of the world is becoming more visible. In the 19th and 20th century, when the struggle for socialism was increasing, the basic slogan against capitalism was “workers of the world, unite”. In the 21st century, from Kurdistan to the Middle East, the slogan is “Jin, Jiyan, Azadî” (Women, Life, Freedom).
Revolt and revolution are phenomena that emerge against realities that are not overcome in natural development. In other words, when something insists on itself and does not change, it requires radical opposition, i.e. rebellion. The system that women are rebelling against is all traditional and reactionary mentalities that are against capitalism and women’s freedom. There is another historical fact that throughout the historical process, including capitalism, all systems and structures that reject women and try to kill their freedom have developed as a result of the male-dominated mind. In other words, rebellion in this sense is rebellion against the male mind. And if all these structures and systems based on misogyny have survived to this day, the man who claims this must make a serious self-criticism based on overcoming the power-state character that lives within him.
Yes, while women have risen to revolt for freedom, all men, especially we revolutionaries of Kurdistan, must rise against this macho male mentality that only brings water to their own backward, outdated, dominant and capitalist modernist culture!
