Amsterdam Anarcha Feminist Group responds to the Inauguration of Joe Biden

Hier kun je discussieren over Amsterdam Anarcha Feminist Group responds to the Inauguration of Joe Biden .
Amsterdam Anarcha Feminist Group responds to the Inauguration of Joe Biden

Our movement is international, and we stand in solidarity with comrades in the US and elsewhere fighting against the US war machine and police brutality. At the same time, as Anarcha feminists organising around Amsterdam, we cannot comment on the inauguration of Joe Biden without also speaking about the Dutch government. Just like the US government, the Dutch government is built on slavery, imperialism and exploitation. Recently, the Dutch government resigned over a child care benefit scandal which highlighted the institutional racism of the tax authorities and the Dutch state. Rutte’s resignation, however, is performative only. Even during the pandemic, the Dutch government has not stopped its deportations. The Dutch government is frequently involved in weapon exports and there are renewed attempts to criminalize sex work and to scale down on abortion rights.

We should oppose the way in which liberal feminists and others (mis)use the bodies of working class women to justify their own agenda. The language of women’s rights and the need to ‘protect women and children’ is often weaponised in order to justify imperialist wars and the putting in place of (economic) sanctions, as was done in the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. At the same time, the womxn and children that are supposedly protected by these wars and sanctions are disproportionately affected by them, it is them who are also killed by drone strikes, who cannot access the food and medicine needed because of economic sanctions. The same regime that supposedly cares about “protecting women and children’, locks them up in concentration camps, and performs forced hysterectomies on womxn in ICE detention centres. Not only is the narrative wrong because it is used to attack the womxn it claims to protect, it also undermines the role that working class womxn have played in leading the fight against their own oppression - it presents womxn as passive victims. Let’s not forget that it was the YPJ, The Women’s Protection Units, that played a vital role in defeating ISIS. The revolution in Rojava is an example of a truly democratic, decentralised, feminist, and ecologically sound way of organising society. The same people that defeated ISIS were quickly abandoned by the U.S. when it no longer served their interests, giving the fascists Turkish regime the green light to attack. Liberation can not be given to us, we will need to fight for it.

The Democratic Party in the U.S. has like no other tried to co-opt and pacify the struggle of BLM activists and the protests that happened after the horrific police murder of George Floyd. After banking on the narrative of Black Lives Matter activists for their own political gain, the democratic party was quick to abandon them, even blaming the Defund the police campaign and black organisers for the democratic losses in the presidential election. The democratic party, like most liberals and centrists, have a history of exploiting genuine grassroots movements to their own political advantage, purging them of their radical content and scapegoating and blaming them when they are no longer of political use to them. They are more concerned with critiquing the language and tactics used by BLM protestors than with dismantling the white supremacist power structures that allow for these racist police killings to happen.

This phenomenon is by no means exclusive to the US context, we see it here in the Netherlands as well. Where liberal political parties adopt the language of anti-capitalist environmentalist movements and of anti-fascist and anti-racist organising in order to show how ‘progressive’ they are while individualising it rather than attacking the power structures that enable these things to happen. An example of this would be GroenLinks. Even though GroenLinks claim to "want to put an end to institutional racism and ethnic profiling by the police" in their election program for 2021, they still voted in favour of preventive stop & searches in Amsterdam.

Though we by no means want to downplay the efforts and importance of the work done by those trying to confront these forms of oppression and problems in their own communities (we do this ourselves), we also believe that if these efforts are not also aimed at dismantling the structures and systems in place that allow these forms of oppression to arise, they are misguided at best. Changing our individual consumption choices, going vegan and showering less, will not solve the climate crisis – when just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of all global greenhouse gas emissions and when the richest 10% of the world population is responsible for over half of all carbon emissions. The appointment of Kamala Harris as vice president alone will do nothing to help end racist police killings. Rainbow capitalism is still capitalism.

These political parties have no interests in genuine change, they are concerned with maintaining the status quo, with protecting the interests of the ruling class, through pacifying grassroots movements. Let there be no mistake, the government is the problem. Representative democracy is a scam. We want real democracy. Replacing one sexual predator with another will not change anything. Replacing one warlord with another will not change anything. We need to attack the root causes, we need to dismantle the state, capitalism, and the patriarchy— everywhere.

We don’t get tired, we get even.
We don’t want Biden, we want revenge.


Thank you interesting and

Thank you interesting and good statement!

have a look into Harris history of voting against the ban of the death penalty and as a attorney responsible for mass incarceration of mainly minorities. Didn't agree to release marijuana related crimes after legalization and so on and so on. So this is not even rainbow capitalism I suggest although superficially it may seem like it.

I hope to hear more from your group, hopefully not only with focus on US politics. It's can be a distraction and Anti-Americanism as an ideology was also popular, and still is, amongst Nazis in Europe.

alsjeblieft hou toch op met

alsjeblieft hou toch op met die quatsch, verklaring van anarcho feministen, punt 1, wat zijn dat? en punt 2, Biden is erg onder de indruk.

veel in het engels

hallo,
Hoewel mijn Engels goed genoeg is om dit te lezen, even dit: Ik zie de laatste tijd wel erg veel teksten alleen in het Engels en dat baart me zorgen. Niet iedereen beheerst het goed genoeg en altijd alles alleen in het Engels sluit mensen uit die de taal niet (voldoende) machtig zijn. Dit terwijl er tegelijk heel veel voor 'militant proletariaat' (in andere teksten) geschreven wordt. Dan mogen mensen wel eens beginnen met te zorgen dat lager opgeleiden hun teksten ook kunnen lezen en ze niet alleen beschikbaar zijn voor goed Engels lezende Nederlanders (studenten/hoger opgeleiden) en expats. Komt mij nogal elitair over.
Mochten de schrijvers denken: schrijf ons dan aan in het Engels. Nope. Doe ook maar eens net zoveel moeite als niet goed Engels lezende/sprekende bezoekers van deze site om een tekst te lezen die je wel eens aan zou kunnen gaan.

If you speak Dutch maybe you

If you speak Dutch maybe you could take it upon yourself to translate it ? I agree with your point though. Normally when people post in one language others take initiative to add translations.

straattaal

Als ik tijd had ja, dan zou ik zoiets best wel eens doen. Maar het is in eerste plaats wel de verantwoordelijkheid van de schrijvers om hun teksten toegankelijk te maken. Daarbij speelt ook een rol de vaak nogal universitaire taal die gebezigd wordt in zulke teksten, het is vaak ook niet eens eenvoudig Engels. Wees daar meer bewust van, want je sluit echt mensen uit. Ik begrijp best dat migranten/vluchtelingen soms alleen Engels spreken en geen Nederlands, alle begrip en ik praat zelf een woordje genoeg om daarin tot communicatie te kunnen komen, maar veel mensen zullen gebaat zijn bij niet al te universitair taalgebruik, of dat nu in het Engels is of in het Nederlands. NB. dit gaat mij dus niet om ' je moet Nederlands spreken', het gaat mij om toegankelijkheid van teksten voor mensen met minder opleiding, minder kennis. Wil je mensen op straat, spreek dan ook de taal van de straat, en niet van de universiteit.

no

the underlying 'integrate yourself' argument smells. Post in dutch or do your comrades a favor by helping to translate. How much the Dutch left is speaking the language of the street is obvious by its size lol

Yes and Nej

The antifascist scene in the Netherlands due to globalisation now also includes political refugees, certainly expats, but also antifascists from Europe living in squats here. Whilst I do agree we should aim for translating into both languages the elitist arguement is only partly true. We'll try to put things into translate whilst learning the language or not. Which is also fine since your effort is required in such case

De antifascistische scene in Nederland door globalisering omvat nu ook politieke vluchtelingen, zeker expats, maar ook antifascisten uit Europa die hier in kraakpanden wonen. Hoewel ik het ermee eens ben dat we moeten streven naar vertaling in beide talen, is het elitaire argument slechts gedeeltelijk waar. We zullen proberen dingen te vertalen terwijl we de taal leren of niet. Dat is ook prima, want in dat geval is uw inspanning vereist

Is this a good translation I hope so haha

Apart from that one odd

Apart from that one odd political refugee, most of those European antifascists have a middle class background and are only here to play the radical for a couple of years, before they either move back or move on to settle in a more stabile lifestyle. No wonder they don't care about learning Dutch, what will it bring to them?

Hah

This is true. Especially the legalised squats inhibit more expactivists than you can shake a banner pole at.
De-gentrify activism.

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