CZM Book Club: Against the State by James Stout

war absolutely is kind of the most authoritarian. It's sort of like like, there's kind of nothing more authoritarian than killing someone, right.

and other people. So I want to record that.

the default of a story. Yeah, nonfiction the real one.

a sad anniversary. It is the three year anniversary of the death of three anarchist comrades who are killed in Ukraine fighting to defend the Road of Life, which is a road in Bakhmut that carried humanitarian aid into the city. And you've probably if you listen to my podcast Cool People Who Did Cool stuff. I have talked about these three anarchists, both in their own episodes a couple of years ago, year or so ago, and then recently I also talked about it again a lot in my episode

about Russian partisans. So if you want to hear more about it, but I just want to take a moment to remember Cooper Andrews from Cleveland Heights, a Black autonomous who died, Finn bar Kafarki and Irish anarchists from the

Galtech on the west coast of Ireland. And Dmitri Petrov, who was a Russian who spent his entire life as adult life fighting against Putin by organizing by midnight arson and eventually by fleeing the country and joining an army that opposed the government that was the dictatorship that he grew up under. And so the three of them died on April nineteenth, I believe, twenty twenty three. That's how math works. It's the three universary.

experience if they were colonized by Russia. And often they die and heralded, and like they don't get their respect they deserve, especially from the anarchist community, because like the war itself is not an anarchist struggle, but these people are building their little beautiful worlds as they fight, right, like people who are organizing horizontally, even in a military

which itself it's not horizontally organized. Yeah, they're fighting their own little struggle and like as they do so, they're trying to build the world that they want to live in. We should respect that.

there are people wanted to hurt me. You know, those of that swords can still die upon them, And so that's you can be anti war all you want, but there's a war there.

We're going to read what what are we.

isn't much to fachekable. A few single story flat buildings, a dusty courtyard, a small taxi rank, and a giant flag for anyone who has failed to notice that although the Tigris River runs through Kurdistan, the Iraqi Autonomous Reading of Kurdistan and the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria an ees better known as for a Java and

not an agreement about very much. On the eastern side of the border, two intelligence officials from the Kurdistan Regional Government, a more neoliberally aligned government that controls an area of for ruck as practically a separate country and has deep ideological differences with Rashaba, quizzed me for more than an hour about my intentions in Rajaba. All the areas you're going to are under heavy bombardment. One of them told me,

I advise you not to go. It was surreal to hear about the bombing from a very smartly dressed man relaxing on a leather sofa while I sat across the room trying to squeeze my six foot three frame into a comically small chair. And the time since I'd boarded the first to a series of flights, buses and cars that had carried me from California to the bank of the Tigris River, Turkey's drones had struck dozens of targets

inside AA and E S territory. Those targets were not military facilities, but civilian different structure in the middle of cities. Power stations, oil wells, and a cooking gas bottling facility had all been bombed in the quiet of the night when fell from the dark sky with no warning. Electricity was intermittent and water wasn't running in some cities. This happens every autumn. Turkey steps up its assaults on the independent Kurdish region that it sees as a threat to

its ability to control Kurds within the Turkish borders. It's a concerted effort on the part of the Turkish state to make sure that democratic confederates experiment in Rasjava ends in failure. Despite this and other difficulties, Rasjava still exists as a society trying to build democracy without the state. That's why I was there. I suspected the intelligence agents knew that I already knew what was going on in Risjava, and that it was part of why I was going there.

But I knew it was their job to tell me not to go. They weren't wrong. It was dangerous. As far as I could tell. I was entering at the same time as a handful of other journalists working in the region were leaving. Kurdish people are remarkably hospitable, so in addition to asking me probing questions about my past, the agent's also invited me for lunch and offered me the Wi FI code. While they debated whether they would allow me across the floating bridge over the Tigris, I

politely declined the offer of lunch. I had no desire to lay my trip and drive in Syria after nightfall, especially if we were going through regions and along roads where people had been killed in drone strikes the night before. But I gladly accepted the Wi Fi code, booted up my tour browser and tried to work out if my

hotel was close to any power stations. Looking out the window and across the river, I thought about how much I wanted to visit Rajava and breathe the air in a society that was trying to do away with the state. In the eleven years since the Kurdish majority cities Norse and Eassyria managed to expel most regime forces in a bloodless show of force, the conflict in a region more from one about the character of the state in Syria

to the existence of the state in Syria. In this conflict, the embattled Bathist regime, the increasingly authoritarian Turkish regime, the remains of the so called Islamic State, and Iranian proxy militias in Syria have all found themselves at war with one another, but united in opposition to the projects in Rojava and elsewhere in Syria that seek to redistribute power

away from the state and toward the people. It was these people who had managed to emerge from the fire of a burning country and the darkness of the so called Islamic State to secure their liberty, autonomy, and equality that I wanted to visit, but first they had to persuade it. Two intelligence officers who were scrolling my Facebook page that they wasn't off to join the Islamic State.

While I pondered if I had wasted my entire book advance, the intelligence agents called for a round of chai, a cinnamon of hues black tea served in tulip shaped glass with a generous helping of sugar, a drink that seems as critical to human existence as oxygen in this part of the world. Iraqi, Kurdistan's tea houses served as public spaces where, even under the oppressive bath regime of Saddam Hussein,

Kurds could gather and share their stories. Later, they became places where the pesh merger a term that is translated as those who faced death, the much revered fighters of Iraqi Kurdist Dan could gather, plan and even recruit The intelligence opposite at the border was no tea house. It didn't even have the requisite domino table, but the intelligence officers still shared their stories as we sipped our tea. Soon enough, I was looking at polaroid photos that had

been immortalized through the miracle of social media. One aged's uncle was a Peshmerger leader famous for his abilities with a rocket propelled grenade. I briefly considered offering the Kermanji word for the weapon as you search for the English one. I make a habit of learning as much as the language as I can before I travel. And I had been particularly charmed by the word bigsfing, which Syrian Curds

used for the rocket propelled grenade. But my grandmother had been arrested entering Syria half a century before, and I decided that showing too much knowledge of weapons systems would

be risking the same result. The other agent's grandfather had fought for years as a gorilla against Sabbathis, bravely holding out when the world had left the Kurds to die in and there thousands at that time, the agent said to me as he leaned across the sofa, to emphasize the point, our only friends with the mountains these days.

The more state is conception of Kurdish identity that's predominant in the Kurdish automenous for region of Iraq has descended from the mountains and resides in the giant villas and skyscrapers of fuel the region's capital, which is called a Bill in Arabic. The government and its friends have built skyscrapers in the city with corporate logos that light up the sky at night, just like the drone bonds that

up the sky and Rashava. However, the mountains of southern Turkey and north in Iraq have remained home to the Curdisdown Workers' Party, better known by its initials in Kurdish

the PKK or Partier Karakeren Kurda Dastani for decades. In nineteen eighty four, the group began insurgency against the Turkish state in an attempt to establish their own However, over time, the group and its leader, Abdullah Shin have moved beyond the state based conception of ESTRA and instead have an embraced in ideology of radical feminism, environmentalism they called democratic

and federalism. It was this ideology that had board about the revolution and eventually the self administration of a huge chunk of Syria. This way of thinking had come down from the mountains, swept across the plains and defeated the

Islamic state. Now having gained so much, it was being bombed so heavily that its future was in down, and I wanted to see the only multi ethnic democratic project in the Middle East before its adherents had to retreat to the jagged peaks that I could see through a dusty afternoon Offeshka War. Eventually, after a prolonged conversation about the care and breeding of sheep, including questions from the agent's family members who are now attending my interrogation remotely via WhatsApp,

I was allowed to cross into a shava. Growing up with livestock didn't seem abnormal or that useful to me as a child, but I've been pleasantly surprised with its ability to open doors in the most unlikely places. My interview completed, I began a circuit of small offices where people would stare at me for a few seconds, look at my past, read something down, and then send me forth to another official who would do exactly the same thing.

It felt like an unconscious parody of the state's capacity to turn every action into an office visit and a form to be filled out. Eventually, I was sent to a small waiting room and then to a long suffering bus that had just dropped a full load of people from Rojava on the eastern bank of the Tigris on its return journey, I was the only passenger. The driver

pointed across the river and I nodded. He took a huge drawer on a terrible cigarette and set off across the shaky bridge that floats on oil drums and spans the Tigris. From Rajava, my fixer, her Butt, and her brother Deirre greeted me with smiles, and as is often

the case, I remark about my height. We showed my passport to an official who smiled and addressed me in English to welcome you to Rajava and sent me to the immigration office, where I'd be given a sort of permission slip that allowed me to travel freely throughout the region.

The road of the border officials in Rojava, it's not so much to check for visas and the payment of import taxes as sure that those entering are not a threat to the community, in a manner not so different to Cattle, an anarchist militiamen who sees border checkpoints between Spain and France. In nineteen thirty six, the Ajavre officials permission slip also asked other group in the areas to accept their assessment that I was safe and should be treated as a guest because I was entering a country

that is not recognized by other countries. Nobody stamped my passport after offering me a cigarette. The man across a death from me politely answered my questions about the half dozen yellow and green frame portraits and laminated little cards hanging from a tree in his office. All friends, he told me, All Shahed, Shahed, I soon learn means martyr. You can't come to a Java and not learn that word.

Fifteen thousand people, some of whom had come down for the mountains in twenty eleven to join a Syrian revolution or in twenty fourteen to take on the task of riding the world of the Islamic State, had lost their lives in the process. Camislo the capital of the AA,

and e Yes Shahidah everywhere. Their portraits yellow back for men and green back for women, smile at you from billboards on every roundabout, reminding you that many of the people who died to rid the world of the Islamic State would be too young to get a drink in a bar in the United States, lined up in neat

little rows in the March's grave lad in Commissieu. They remind you that there is no such thing as a surgical strike, and the grandmothers and children of the region paid with their lives for the crime of living near a power plant or being in the street at the same time as a recognizable military leader.

or street lights blowing their bulbs. I got up every morning with the fighter of prayer, reminding us all that we'd made through another night and now had to start another day that would inevitably begin with news of the people we were not waking up this morning. Every morning before Herbarton arrived. I'd walked through the market, ducking down the canopies that were too low for my head. As if I needed a reminder I wasn't from here. But despite standing out like a man with two heads, I

felt welcome by everyone. Every morning, I shared cups of tea and stories with strangers, and faced to pot quiz from merchants who seemed to have taken on the in s a morble burden of improving my comandji Kurdish via a pedagogical medium of pointing at vegetables and shouting their names. Later in the day, Harbaton de Wa sat with me for hours as we sipped tea and shared our stories, hopes and fears with her Button deer Are conducted interviews

across re Java. In Comischlah, we heard a mother cry as she told me about how her fifteen year old son had been a promising goalkeeper on his local football team until a missile from a drone landed next to the garage where he was repairing his motorcycle. Now he was another martyr, Another grave in the cemetery, another yellow backed photograph, and a grieving mother's war. In the mountains, there are caves and tunnels, places where you can look

out the world without anyone looking down on you. In the city, there are houses, plazas, markets and shops, places where people sit at night with no idea if they'll wake up tomorrow. After ten years of war, it's normal now. But sitting in my hotel room listening to new friends play old songs on the tambour traditional string instrument, I was struck by the sadness of it all. The one thing most people hear and met wanted was a better world for their children and a chance to influence their

own futures. Having been attacked by the Iraqi, Iranian, Syrian and Turkish states, they no longer wanted a state at all. Because they had reached this very reasonable conclusion, the states of the world wouldn't trust them with anti aircraft missiles, the only tools with which they could prevent the slow destruction of their infrastructure. Instead, they were to be left alone to freeze or die as the drones they were powerless to stop, bomb their power stations and picked off

their children one by one. After several days in Rajava, at the urging of colleagues and family had departed. It was sad to be leaving this hopeful, friendly and hard won place. A friend who fought against the Islamic state in Rajaba told me that Rajavre is special because it's real. He was right, of course. The fact that Rajava is not just a utopian dream in the mountains or an idea in a book, but a daily reality for millions

of people is remarkable. That Rajava has held on to its gain rather than retreat into the mountains is admirable. As a young leftist, anarchism existed for me only in history books, in mutue groups in the woods, and in the moments when we stood in the street and saw the police back away. Now young leftists around the world compack their bags and come and see for themselves the

gains and incredible struggles of organizing without the state. Long before the Kurdish Freedom Movement took up arms in nineteen eighty four, the mountains are an ally of anyone looking

to escape the state. In his two thousand and nine book The Art of Not Being Governed, James C. Scott, one of Anchism's fhew defenders and academy, developed the idea of uplands as areas that are inherently harder for the state to exercise control over, and where people can go to choose a life without the state, States, Scott argues, spread out from urban centers into areas that didn't impede their roads and railways, and they left the upland areas

relatively untouched until much later in their consolidation. These areas were harder to generate revenue from and harder to make legible for the state in terms it understood, like grain sent to granaries, taxes extracted from people, or soldiers drafted

into armies. The state, as he argues in Seeing Like a state, might seek to make these areas more legible, but it beats resistance from free people who reject the need for fixed family names, units of measurement, and documented landownership in favor of their free association according to mutually

agreed upon norms. This slower and incomplete state expansion into the mountains at times met with the active resistance of free people, allowed for what's God called shatter zones to emerge where people could seek refuge from the controller and

coercion of states. In two Cheers for anarchism, Scott argues that these people people need not and often did not identify as anarchists, but that through the use of an anarchist squint, we can understand their actions and worldview in a way that explains the much better than the state perspective, which simply sees these people as backwards, unruly, or, as

one Burmese guerrilla commander put it to me, wild. In states and in histories that consider the state inevitable in the final form of human society, the free people who resist the state's attempts to make the uplands into legible areas are cast as a domain of barbarians or unruly hill tribes. These descriptors are applied as readily to the Picts and Scots the United Kingdom as to the Karen of Burma or the fictional peoples of George R. Martin's

Game of Thrones. If we start from the assumption that the state is the final form of human organization, it follows that people outside the state are behind the people inside it. Scott argues that if we view the state as a choice, we can see the people outside it as having chosen to avoid the state and instead to make their lives in the freedom offered by the terrain that is less capable of what the state sees as quantifiable production terrain, where they can often exist outside the

states of monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. It was in just such a mountain range, one that remains beyond the control of the state to this day, that the ideals I had traveled so far to than about were born. Sitting on a wobbly table in a town in Kurdistan, in the shadow of the mountains where the k CK, the Kormo sivake in Kordistani or Kurdistan Communities Union, still maintains its strongholds. Dagros Hiwa, the group's spokesman, told me that he'd taken a long and risky journey from

the group's basis to meet me. The region had been hammered by Turkish drone strikes against k c K affiliated leaders all month. The KCK is an umbrella organization that brings together the various armed and political groups dedicated to implementing their leader, abdelah Ausgelen's ideology of democratic and federalism, making the CASEYKS representatives high value targets for the movement's enemies. I smuggled myself at a town here, told me because

coming to my place would be too risky. Hua and the friend who accompanied him sat across a little wrought iron table from me, all of us seated on those small metal chairs that seemed custom made to make me look as awkward as a giraffe limbo dancing. Both he and his friend seemed aware the situation was high risk for them, and our conversation was marked with pauses as cars or pedestrians passed by. Every time a shopp and near us, we fell silent, and our conversations picked up

again only once they've gone on their way. Cars, parking, or any movement above were met with furtive glances. Such was a degree of concern that we were even escuing the Chinda's time. When it's safer, he will, promised, I'll be able to come and meet in the mountains. We talked for an hour about gender, the state, the French and Spanish revolutions, a situation that was unfolding in Gaza

at the time. When in the insights you'll find out the chapters of this book came from that hour in which he was seemed to weigh every word against the risk he'd taken to join me, and his years of experience in the Kurdish freedom struggle. He was glad I had come to Rushava because it was important for me to see the proof that people could exist without the control of the state, even in places that had once

been subject to it. Before we parted ways, he passed on a recommendation for a museum that I should visit on my travels, one with exhibits on the genocidal campaigns pursued by the Batists Iraqi state against the Kurdish people following the Iran Iraq War. A few days later, I found myself at loose ends and decided to travel to Slamani, one of the largest Kurdish cities and certainly one of the more charming, to visit the museum he'd recommend on entry.

After walking through a hall filled with thousands of pieces broken mirrors, each one representing a life cut short by state violence, I walked to the pesh Merga Museum. The first room simply houses a black and white photo of the snowcap peaks, and my driver had insisted on taking me to see on the drive to slam Money on

the woom. Next to the photo, a museum label repeats in English and Serauni Kurdish what the intelligence officer had remarked on those days when we had no friends but the mountains.

would have still been in middle school. Even if they'd been older then or especially precocious, it would have been very hard for them to read Scott's work, because access to the Internet and literature was heavily controlled by the military government. Twelve years later, in twenty twenty one, they would find themselves in one of the very shatter zones

that Scott had been talking about. The hills at the Thai Burmese border where I met these freedom fighters arch up from the Moay River that divides the two countries. The steep and densely wooded slopes are hard to farm, harder to pave, and harder yet to control. They stand in sharp contrast to the seven lane motorways giant pagodas of Napitau, the capital city that the military began building in two thousand and two to create an impenetrable fortress

in the country's arid central plains. After the coup, young people seeking to escape the reach of the state fled near Maa cities for these mountains and jungles, places where the Burmese state never really enjoyed the monopoly on the listimate use of violence that characterizes the avariant state following the coup and the bloody repression of the US demands

for democracy. It was from Yangon, Mandalay and Nepitor the young Bamar people, the majority ethnicity that has long done dominated the military and governments of the country, fled, and it was in these mountains that they found safety and refuge from the state. On a zoom call was Saya Montine, a leader in the Mandalay People's Defense Force, an armed revolutionary popular front formed after the coup to fight for a genuine, bottom up, substantive democracy for all of me

and math ethnic groups. He wanted to make very clear to me that they were not quote wild people. This, he said, has been a constant refrain from the military hunter they took up arms against. In twenty twenty one, the young city dwelling Bamar people had come to the mountains where the state had told them while people lived,

because they wanted human rights and democracy. Ironically, these things that are supposed to be guaranteed by the state were only available to them because of the assistance of the people the state deemed ungovernable. When the Bama City dwellers arrived in the mountains. They had been warmly received by their Tang National Liberation Army, whom they had been long told hated Bama people. When Montenay left Mandalay, he was nervous. Quote he expected some problems because of the different races.

His translator nine nine told me they'd been told most of the ethnic minority groups in miamm I hate the Bamar people quote. But when he actually reaches it to Aung region, he found out that there is no hatred for the Burmese people nine nine said. Instead, he found that TNLA was a quote well formed military and that

they were also following a code of conduct. Montinnae found that the TNLA was happy to stand shoulder and shoulder with him in his battle for a form of democracy based on bottom up community empowerment, noxtrict majoritarianism, and the appearance of elections. And to his great surprise quote, most of the leaders from the TNLA have liberal ideas and they also want to welcome the young leaders from their revolution.

He did run into one problem though, quote that the Young region is very cold for people from the Mandlay region. So we're still having problems with the weather, but now we're getting used to it. Montinay's assumption that the Bamar people will be discriminated against was typical. Andy, my fixer owned friend who seemingly never tired of my asking him to explain the complexities of race, language, and identity in Burma,

told me he'd had similar ideas growing up. He says the hate he was taught eventually had a way of making itself manifest even though it has no basis in reality. Quote, it was a really harsh reality for them, the minority ethnicities. And he told me it's not just a Burmer military, it's also Burmer's people that didn't care or do anything

while they're the minority ethnic groups being killed. So they have this hate against Berman people, which is very understandable at first, and he didn't question where the hate came from, and he assumed ustilities ethnic groups were natural. He said he began to question this in seventeen. Quote, there were hina thing happened in twenty seventeen. I was seventeen. I started getting phone calls from my friends in western countries, Westerners.

They would be like, Hey, what's happening in your country? Why are you killing all the Muslims. I'm in Masoon, Thailand, and I'm like, I know what you're talking about. I've never heard anything like that, right, And then I tried to learn a little bit more, but everyone had such intense opinions about it that at some point I'm like, ah, fuck, I don't know anymore. Because the military was still in control at that time, so they controlled the news, they

controlled the media. It wasn't until Andy experienced repression himself that he realized that, just like he was, many of the minority ethnic groups were victims of state violence, misrepresented in state propaganda. Quote, you're a kid. You're trying to get by day to day because she didn't really think

about it. And for me, that went on for a long time until the military coup happened in Myanmar, and he said, in reconsidering his politics, and he also reconsidered his own identity, spent much of his childhood in a refugee camp just across to me and my Thailand border, where most of the refugees were Karenne. I'm half Bama, half Karenne, he said, I don't identify myself as Karene anymore because when we're in the refugee camp. We got so much shit for being half Bama. So that was

the time when I was like, fuck Korente people. In changing his view of ethnicity, he has also changed his view of politics and of the ones revered Bahmark do Angsansuchi. She's not really a part of this revolution anymore. I think, especially for US, people will say different things. If you ask someone else about their opinions about her or the NLT the nug they would say something different. But for me,

I focus more on the ethnic groups. I tried to speak more about how they feel, on what they feel, and I speak for them when I speak In Maysot. I met Andy and his brothers every night after long, hot days of heart renting interviews, somewhat clandestine meetups, and the occasional carbon we'd meet to eat street food in tiny plastic chairs and drink cheap beer that was pretty

good and cheap whiskey that was pretty awful. Our last night, after being systematically humiliated at both pool and karaoke, we talked about politics. I told Andy I don't vote often and that I'd rather spend my time doing something with my hands, and I see voting as more of a harm reduction cool than a meaningful chance of political expression.

My explanation of anarchism wasn't my best work, but perhaps a young man who has experienced so much state violence is well placed to understand it through his own life experience. A few months later he asked me for some books to read. A few months after that, I saw him on social media, engaging with friends in Rashava. It wasn't until I was waking up to the call to pray and commichelo. More than a year after I'd met Andie, they realized how much is thinking on the state had evolved.

With eyes blurry from lack of sleep and a faint buzz puncturing the half light that might have been a drone or just a half dead air conditioning making a valiant effort to defeat the desert heat. I saw an unusual number of encrypted messages on my phone and he had sent a video, and I rushed over to the chair in the corner of the room, but had to

stand on to get good Wi Fi signal. As a video loaded, I saw the young men and women of the Krini Nationalities Defense Forces, a unit formed after the coup to fight against the junta and for the people. One of them stepped forward. I began reading a speech which, to my great surprise, expressed the solidarity with the people of a Java. From a world apart and without the help or recognition of the Community of States, these two groups had found one another. Soon I was suggesting readings

on Myanmar to interest a friends in Java. My reading is on democratic confederalism to teenage guerialism the Burmese Jungle. After so many years, so many lies from the US and other allies whould have bandoned them after they stopped being useful, the people who are Java had finally found a friend other than the mountains.

is so important. I think it's so important to understand ourselves placed in this large history that continues to this day. And also specifically that like things that don't necessarily call themselves anarchist, but are often influenced by anarchism. But that's not even what's important, because we are also influenced by them, And how it feels so modern and true to be

anti state in this way. And I love the way that you're talking about these two communities of people who are just have realized that they're like, oh, this state thing is not working out for us, and it it feels like in such a contrast to the way that the twentieth century and the nineteenth century like talked about revolution.

colonized anymore. And I just I really like the idea of like, you know, how are you talking about like this leftist revolution where you're hanging out and you're still woking up by the call to prayer because like people are still having lots of cultures there. I don't know where I'm going with us.

for blood at the hospital because they've run out. So I struggled to sleep, and I could sit in my bedroom and look out and I could hear the call to prayer and at the same time look at a church, and then I could go out of my bedroom and almost any time there would be some new CD people you see the people's faith is closer to Zoroastrianism. Right. They have a peacock angel, which I respect the fuck out of. Yeah. Yeah, you see a peacock for the first time, You're like, that's dio. Fine.

each other. Yeah, fuck yeah, And that was the beautiful thing I saw in both of these places that like, it is not about a doctrine, it's not about something that like, and I think there are some great things we can learn from theory. But like, people aren't doing this because a dead Russian dude with a beard said it was the right thing to do, totally, that doing it because they want to be nice to each other

and they're sick of people being shitty to them. Like that is a much more powerful motivation actually for these people anyway, And I think it's a much more beautiful thing that it came inherently from their desire to be free and to see others liberated.

You can also buy an e book. I'd encourage you to buy the paper book because there's some beautiful photographs on the front and I really like the cover design.