Saturday 15 August 2020

Belarus.

       We should continually highlight mass protests across the world, in an attempt show that people across the world are rising against the injustice and inequality that is the norm in this world, and against the authoritarian attitudes of all states across the globe. The authoritarianism is all a matter of degree, some more brutal than others, but the aim is the same, to keep wealth, power and privilege where they are, in the hands of a few pampered parasites. Brutality is the inherent tool of all states, to be brought out when ever it feels threatened by its own people or an external rival to its power.
        From Chile to France, from Peru to Mexico, Bolivia to Slovenia, the anger is rising and the streets are becoming the political arena, we should all be organising to join them, the streets are where we will eventually win, not in the marble halls of power, enter there and you play their game to their rules.
     Some extracts from AMW:
Situation in Belarus: Anarchist Perspective Briefly
       Finally, we face the outrage of Belarusian people in the streets. The increase of resistance is enormous. Many people say that such an uprising was never seen before during the rule of Alexander Lukashenko. These three nights, probably all the world has seen crowds of people giving fight to the police special forces, using barricades, burning tires and Molotovs.
      The police (or “militia” in Soviet-fashioned Belarus) reacts with great violence. Many people got seriously injured and there is one confirmed killed protester.
        There is also the call for the General Strike issued by the opposition. How successful it will be is yet to be seen. But there are first confirmed reports of strikes at several State-owned enterprises today (August 12).
        As it often happens in Eastern Europe, it was elections and electoral fraud that served as the starter for people’s unrest. However, deeper roots of the situation are long autocratic rule of the president, poverty, lack of prospects and opportunities. A big role in the current revolt is also played also by the inhuman policy of the government during the Coronavirus epidemic. Authorities decided to simply ignore it and made several scandalous statements. This ended up with a wave of infection and also a huge grassroots organizing of the society against the danger of the virus.------
       ------In this political landscape, anarchists are more visible than in Ukraine or Russia. In oppositional circles, they have the reputation of quite “hardcore” enemies of the regime who suffered very strong repressions, which is true, and also are always in the frontline of the resistance. The reverse of this image is that anarchists are seen more as eternal fighters, which can be a sort of “ram” of the changes, but then are supposed to give way to more conventional politicians.-----
-----From riot to revolution
        Today the whole protest movement shows a very simplistic demand: resign of Lukashenko and new “honest” elections. It helps to maintain the superficial unity of the protesters. But surely, this situation cannot last long.
       The specific of Belarus is state-ownership of the huge part of the economy. It is the basement for extracting wealth by state bureaucracy and capitalists close to the ruling clique.
     It is highly predictable that once either pro-Western or pro-Russian politicians are in power they’ll try to launch large-scale privatization and transformation this merely State-capitalism into the one ruled by external actors, i.e, international monetary organizations and Russian business-elites.
       In this context, the program and the call of revolutionary forces should be both clearly anti-authoritarian (Lukashenko MUST go) and also socially-concerned. We need to counter the ghost of privatization by promoting the turning of state-owned enterprises into municipal and collectively-ran ones, decentralization and democratization of different sphere of social life: self-defense, healthcare, education. At the same time, all social obligations for free access to different services monopolized by the state today should be promoted and developed.
       To be short: if anarchists of Belarus will be able to play key and organizing roles in the development of the popular uprising (while all opposition leaders are clearly confused now), then they have several prospects. As a minimum, to present actively the anarchist movement and its message, to make it known broadly within the population. As a medium goal, to become significant political actors, which will influence the social development of the new Belarus in terms mentioned in the previous paragraph, to take a foothold in infrastructure, media-sphere and society for rapid further political development. As a maximum… who knows our real limits?
Read the full article HERE:
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