The armed conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia has flared up again. For days dozens of people on both sides have been victims of a senseless war. We deeply regret that innocent people on both sides have lost their lives in a nonsensical war. We, as anti-authoritarian feminists, reject the war based on nationalist ideology on both sides!
It is inherent in militarism to contradict the concept of free human beings. Militarism must possess slaves – machine-like, obedient and disciplined beings – so that they can obey, shoot and kill at the orders of their leaders. What do people do as a result of this brainwashing, which has been rooted in the idea of militarism for decades? After the shootings, nationalists on both sides fall into the euphoria of the war, rejoicing at the news that more people had been killed and destroyed on the other side. The same people gather in front of embassies abroad, wave flags and insult each other. Well, you’ve played your assigned roles very well, disperse!
You are taught a concept of life, a value system, a lifestyle, a way of thinking, a truth regime, which are injected directly into your brain from above without filters. You follow this stinking value system like robots. You think the way the state wants you to, you feel the way it expects you to, you live the way it commands you to. You die when the state wants you to die, you live when the state wants you to live. Your life is directly conquered, occupied and controlled by the state.
The war secures the existence of a handful of rulers and their survival is ensured by the death of people. A few days ago a person born in 2002 died in this war. People express their sorrow by saying: “Soldiers are dead, what can we do, long live the fatherland” What an absurd sentence! Who dies for the “fatherland”? People born in 2002 and just beginning to understand themselves. Can you imagine that? Because of the country?! Long live the fatherland?!
We must now focus on the class struggle and the struggle against hierarchical values, authoritarian institutions and all social-patriarchal atrocities in countries like Azerbaijan and Armenia, where patriarchal values prevail, where there is a social class gap and where wealth is concentrated in a few hands of a very small group of people.
In contrast to liberal pacifism, our struggle will never be on the side of the militaristic politics on which the concept of the state is based. We are sure that there are people on both sides who do not support and reject the militaristic policy of Armenia and Azerbaijan, and we stand by these people and support their struggle. We oppose the existing war efforts with our solidarity!
Nationalists, do you want ground? Maybe blood? Here you are, they are in our hands. Take it, hopefully you suffocate.
Against nationalism, militarism and war!
Antimilitarist Feminist Collective RSB
