Internationalist Anti-War Conference in Prague
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This post concerns the Internationalist Anti-War Conference in Prague (‘AW2024’) held the last week of May.
1) Interview with the organising committee:https://actionweek.noblogs.org/interview-with-the-organising-committee-of-the-action-week/
2) List of groups participating at AW2024:https://actionweek.noblogs.org/list-of-participants-at-aw2024
3) (Confusing) site homepage:https://actionweek.noblogs.org/
4) From the following on the CWO site, the CWO was not invited but apparently attended nonetheless on an individual basis.
‘Some organisations who are in NWBCW [the No War but the Class War Initiative] like members of the AnarCom Network (ACN) and the Anarchist Communist Group (ACG), have been specifically invited to Prague. Others have not, including the Internationalist Communist Tendency (ICT), yet we shall be present alongside the other comrades as we accept all eight points of the invitation. It is in this spirit that we attend the Prague Week of Action which we hope will be a success and open out to other internationalist initiatives in an attempt to draw us all closer together.’
See the CWO’s whole article ‘To the Internationalists Attending the Prague Week of Action’:https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-05-01/to-the-internationalists-attending-the-prague-week-of-action
(Some WSMers may want to skip, or just very quickly scan, the first three or four paragraphs of that, and begin from ‘We thus welcome the Prague Week of Action […] .
Following the pre-congress CWO article whose url is given above, there has now appeared a post-congress comment. Its first paragraph is about the organisational/venue chaos. The second two paragraphs are of political content:
‘From a political point of view, the real divide that emerged was between the activists who were looking for immediate solutions on how to stop the war, and those with a class struggle orientation who had a more long term perspective and understood wars, as a product of the capitalist system, can only be ended by the mass struggle of workers.
However, it wasn’t all a waste of time. Over the week, many good conversations were had (particularly in smaller groups, in pubs, cafes, etc.). Experiences were shared and links were made between organisations and individuals from many different countries. Above all, seeing internationalists of various tendencies join forces to basically improvise their own congress was heartening. We all tried to make the best of a bad situation and it drew us closer together. In that sense, we are glad we went.’
And here is the verdict of the ICC. (Not the court!) Aside from blowing its own trumpet (and banging others over the head with it) just a bit, it provides useful information.
https://en.internationalism.org/content/17524/activism-barrier-political-clarification
This part of that report was revealing:
“On the weekend of the “Action Week” there was also an Anarchist Bookfair organised by the Czech Anarchist Federation, which openly defends the Ukrainian war effort and supports the formation of anarchist units in the Ukrainian army. The Bookfair issued a statement distancing itself from the Action Week and the Czech AF put out a leaflet denouncing its participants as “anarcho-Putinists”.”
An anarchist unit in the Ukrainian army ! What next? Why not one in every army?
It’s true as well. Just checked.
https://www.afed.cz/text/8114/let-s-clear-the-skies-over-ukraine
“An anarchist unit in the Ukrainian army ! What next?”
So they are pro-capitalist statists – not actual anarchists – defending the existence of a particular capitalist nation-state in the form of “Ukraine”. They are no better than the deluded nationalists who support Russian nationalism and the capitalist, Putin.
The civil war in anarchism over Ukraine is not in the least new news. From February of 2022–
‘British Anarchism Succumbs to War Fever’:
https://libcom.org/article/british-anarchism-succumbs-war-feverAnd here is the most recent installment from just three days ago. In it, the term ‘Natopolitan anarchist’ is liberally applied.
‘War on Anarchism — A response to two articles by Wayne Price in the anarchist journal Black Flag.’:
https://libcom.org/article/war-anarchism-bill-beechThe Russian army may be capturing Gulyapole soon and its museum to Nestor Makhno. That will send these “anarchists” into a real spin.
Internationalist Perspective (ie Sander and others) report on three internationalist anti-war meetings/conferences, one of which was Prague: https://internationalistperspective.org/capital-beats-the-war-drums-pro-revolutionaries-gather-against-it
(This may be the seventh or eighth commentary I’ve seen about Prague by anarchists, left-communists etc. Five months ago now and they keep coming!?)
Regarding the third event, in Poznan, which IP didn’t go to, the following caught my attention:
‘So we would have liked to participate in this year’s camp, despite some misgivings [1] but it wasn’t possible.’
Here’s the footnote:
[1] ‘For example, the invitation to the event announced that there would be a ‘care team’ with the responsibility to make sure that there would be no sexism at the camp and with the power to decide that people can no longer participate. Seriously, comrades? We need a sex police? In its wokish zeal the same text also reminds people to use the right pronouns and refers, as a guide for correct behavior, to a book titled “Männlichkeit verraten” (“Betraying masculinity”). What an awful perspective! Even if it is meant provocatively rather than literally, it’s a bad slogan. Never should we urge people to betray what they are (race, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, etc). Conflating masculinity with sexism and patriarchy, like conflating ‘whiteness’ with racism, is not only wrong and demagogic but also counter-productive if our aim is class unity and thus the rejection of bourgeois ideological traps like identity politics.’
Astounding.
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