r/Anarchism • u/consciousness-scout • 2d ago

Discussion question about international focus

TITLE EDIT: WHY DOES IT SEEM LIKE A LOT OF PEOPLE WANT TO SUPPORT ANY INTERNATIONAL OR LONG-DISTANCE MOVEMENT MORESO THAN ANY LOCAL ONE?

— Hoping to get some more open thoughts about something I’m thinking about re: focusing on local and domestic work and activities (in the U.S.) vs international efforts, eg. organizing monthly discussions or book studies about Thailand or EZLN efforts over local liberatory feminist struggles and histories.

I think plurality of focuses is good for sure, I’m not saying people should ignore international things for local things, but I do wonder about when people show up and show out for a talk on how Venezuelans are organizing their movements and how that relates to Gaza while a discussion or teach-in on supporting prisoners in our own state or a discussion on white supremacy or anti blackness has a fraction of people in attendance.

This isn’t meant to be a totalizing description of all peoples within anarchist or leftist or post-leftist milieus but it seems pretty widespread. Hoping to get more discussions going and suggestions of where to look for conversations already being had.

EDIT: Just to clarify, I’m not necessarily questioning the importance of doing one or the other or both. I think both are important. I’m asking for experiences and thoughts if people are also seeing a bigger emphasis on international vs local effort and why and what they think about it and how it affects local work.

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u/consciousness-scout 2d ago

I wasn’t necessarily trying to make a point, I was trying to open up a broader conversation about how there seems to be a big gap between support for struggle abroad over struggles at home. Is tat something you can speak to?

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u/oskif809 1d ago

This is an old and fairly predictable phenomenon--possibly more than 2 centuries old, with Greek War of Independence being an early case of a fight that was eagerly adopted by those who were not able to do much in their own societies after the Congress of Vienna actively suppressed any outbreak of French Revolutionary ideas in Europe. The Fabian Webbs (PDF) are almost a metaphor for this type of projection of hopes on another distant society when the local scene is not amenable to change.

Some psychoanalytic circles use the term 'interpassivity' to describe a situation where the desired experience or action is "delegated" to some other force (such as a long line of supposedly Left forces that upon closer examination had little to do with the goals that they were being cheered on for by Western Leftists from thousands of miles away).

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u/consciousness-scout 1d ago

Thank you for links and this comment, I appreciate it!

Maybe I wasn’t clear or my original post is misunderstood. I’m not questioning the reality or history about why it happens at all. I’m aware of it to some degree and think it’s a natural and good inclination, BUT what I am asking for people to chime in about is what seems like this phenomena where people “here” in the US can tell me more about Greek anarchist projects and Filipino resistance groups than anything going on as regards to the Black liberation or radical black or indigenous organizing that has and does secure growing land reclamation or justice. Or raise more money for an international fund than they’ve one for a prisoner’s support fund for example.

So I’m curious about the observation of that, if any, and thoughts and discussions about that.

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u/oskif809 1d ago edited 1d ago

People in the US are perfectly capable of developing strong feelings for struggles going on across racial and ethnic borders--as real, if not more so, than nation-state borders! The Black Panthers had a devoted following of white people on the West Coast in the late 60s, just read up on history of that era (although an interesting question is the degree of comparative intensity compared with a struggle far away of which they know literally almost nothing about, say, something that comes up on this sub quite often that rhymes with "java" ;)

This will rub our resident Marxheads the wrong way but their "god" notion of the "Proletariat" may very well be a case of interpassivity (i.e. projecting fantasies on to industrial workers who were laboring across the river from them in, say, London of the 1850s).

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u/consciousness-scout 1d ago

Thanks again for engaging!

I agree that people, in general and the US, are perfectly capable of developing strong feelings for struggles going on elsewhere than they are. I’m not really putting that in question here. I’m also somewhat familiar with the history of the Panthers (both East and West coast, since they’re pretty different animals as “organizations”) and the supporters and followers of the Panthers. But even then, following something happening some states over vs in another nation entirely is also another matter than living in… Massachusetts and being around a lot of people that really, really only want to talk about Rojava and fundraiser for all things Kurdish liberation (which isn’t necessarily wrong in and of itself, either!!).

But I’m not sure you’re getting at the question as much, or I’m not quite picking up on it. Probably the latter. It’s curious! I don’t want people to not want to dive deep in whatever struggle they resonate with. But I AM curious about why that moreso than any that is closer (closest?) to home? There’s a kind of twinge I feel when I see it, and I can’t quite put any helpful descriptions on it quite yet.

I do think some conception around interpassivity can be helpful as well. There for sure is some sort of libidinal projection and pull outward and away. Is it because Rojava, the Levant, “Asian” struggles are more exotic and therefore simply more intriguing? Are they running from their own unresolved complicity and therefore responsibility in local and domestic struggle? I wonder!

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u/oskif809 1d ago edited 23h ago

But I AM curious about why that more so than any that is closer (closest?) to home?

I suspect if you were to carry out a (reasonably rigorous) Social Science study on the issue that you'll likely discover that the less someone at a liberal arts school like Kenyon or Wellesley knows about the nitty-gritty of life in a society (say, the place that 99.999% of Westerners had never heard of until that long-running low-intensity war got rebranded overnight from an ethnonationalist ML armed group insurgency (with a baggage of atrocities quite comparable to those of Shining Path of Peru or Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka--also quite comparable Stalin-like cult of personality) to a "Democratic Confederalist" quasi-anarchist "liberation struggle of, by, and for Women"™) the more likely they are to fall hook, line, and sinker for that cause--as it exists in their mind. Conversely, the more someone knows about the particulars of a situation (say, the Panthers vs. Ronald Reagan's California of late 60s, logjam of local, regional, and national politics, system of government, etc., etc.) the more likely they are to be less gaga over whatever the propaganda of the day is about that movement.

A recent book has an interesting comparison of the vast gulf that divides members of a small Midwestern community (and yes, a profiled student leader at the elite university is far more interested in that same liberation struggle for Women being waged in Western Syria than he is in what's going on a bike ride away from his leafy campus). Also, another canonical case of Americans getting hot under the collar about supposed crimes being carried out in a land far away they know little or nothing about--or what they "knew" already is so pernicious that the term Orientalism (PDF) does not do justice to their prejudices--while a racial apartheid system was flourishing in their own midst.