“Smear campaigns have been launched in every field against the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES). Although the regional states have been trying to break up the system for a long time using siege, attacks, occupation and embargo, the recent increasingly vindictive smear campaigns inevitably beg the question, who is trying to do what?” writes Halit Ermiş for ANHA.
The Autonomous Administration is an administrative structure inclusive of all peoples of the region, a system in which society has direct representation. There are nation-state systems in which no individual, group or party has any right to speak, where the slightest criticism of the system is cited as grounds for severe punishment by use of laws and statutes in order to break down the will and subjugation of critics. However, the Autonomous Administration will never silence people and take hostages in this way. Then how can it be possible to so easily and blatantly make the Autonomous Administration a target of smear campaigns?
(…)
Society in the Middle East was built particularly on the basis of a monist and denialist mentality; it was built on punishment, the breaking of will and the creation of servants for the holy nation state. The secret of the persistence until today of 20th century regional nation-state structures is precisely this: their enslavement, centralistic, monist nature.
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The main nourishment of the nation state consists of force and violence, which seek to create a society which serves a certain elite class. This is how the reality of the police state, the military state or the mafia state emerges. Although this characteristic structure is different in each one, these are the dominant mentality and system in all Middle Eastern states. It is actually quite simple to see the structure of states and their real intentions, although some try to show them as complex and incomprehensible structures.
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“The state is holy.” The armor of holiness is indispensible to the sovereigns in their use of force, violence, oppression, subjugation, breaking of the will of and enslavement of the people, and controlling everything in the name of the holy state. It is a sin to speak against the holy state.
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The Autonomous Administration is just the opposite of this. It is the democratic nation as opposed to the centralised state or the nation-state. AANES is the embodiment of the democratic nation today.
In the democratic nation, people are the decision makers. It is not organised from top to bottom as in the nation-state, but from bottom to top. The top authority of the system is responsible for implementing the decisions taken by the unanimous will of the society. Thus those at the highest level of theadministrative body are there not to dominate, but to serve. And service is for the community.
This society in AANES is not homogeneous, but consists of the unity of all differences. There is no class or group, no exploiter or exploited. So there is no master or slave. Laws are based on the democratic unity of the society and the equality of the people. Punishment, on the other hand, is directed against those who disrupt this democratic unity, who divide or marginalise the individuals or groups from different ethnic, religious or cultural communities. Everyone has the right to criticise or speak against the system.
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People cannot express their criticisms against their governments in any nation-state as one can do in the region of the AANES. It is easy for everyone who criticises the AANES to see the difference between these two systems. It is enough just to recall the system they lived under before.
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To constantly compare the two systems is a must all those like us who want to be free, because by criticising and constantly exercising our rights, we should never serve those in power, the barons of capital, who consider in their right to use force and violence to subjugate us and gather up all the wealth, property and power over our labour and our futures.
We must be able when necessary to make constructive criticism to democratise the system further, but without being deceived by the black propaganda of the special war.
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Sovereigns strengthen their own power by social stratification. They define themselves as the only ones, who must be preferred above all others, and define all others as dangerous. We must not allow our pain, our problems, the things sacred to us to be made into tools for the owners of the capital and centres of power to further exploit us. Our sensitivities, our sorrows, our needs, our inadequacies must never be turned into tools for someone to achieve power. True freedom, like true patriotism and humanitarianism, is only possible with free individuasl and society.
