Otto's War Room (毛派): Right-wing Christian mercenaries snub the leftist- atheist Kurds

An article in Middle East Eye now says that many Christian rightist who went to the Kurdish lands to fight off IS (Islamic State) have left after finding out that most of the people there are both atheists and leftists. Many of these fighters are from YPG, (Kurdish People’s Protection Units/ Yekîneyên Parastina Gel) or from the PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistani), a formerly Marxist-Leninist party and guerrilla group. Today those groups have adopted a form of anarchism based on Murray Bookchin’s communalism theories.

According to the Middle East Eye:

According to foreign fighters quoted by AFP, an exodus is currently underway of US and other Western volunteers from the YPG due their left-wing stance, with one US army veteran – referred to as “Scott” – claiming he decided not to join after finding out they were a “bunch of damn Reds.”

And for many of these right-wing mercenaries, they are fighting for Christians and only Christians. They don't seem much different from IS except they are Christian rather than Muslim:

One Christian American volunteer, who called himself Brett, told Reuters that he had joined Dwekh Nawsha (which translates as “Self-sacrifice) in Iraq’s Ninevah province where Christian villages still held out against IS.

“Here I’m fighting for a people and for a faith, and the enemy is much bigger and more brutal,” the army veteran said, comparing it to his time with the US military in Iraq in 2006.

“These are some of the only towns in Nineveh where church bells ring. In every other town the bells have gone silent, and that’s unacceptable.”

One thing is for sure—Few fighters against IS have had the success of the Kurds. They have been fighting for their rights from Turkey for decades. These people have fighting experience and never needed a lot of aid. They also have their own democratic institutions and don't rely on the US to give them everything they need and help the fight off their enemies. They are dedicated, and motivated. They have recovered much of the land that IS took and they have kept it. Few fighters outside the Kurdish regions can make that claim.

Strangely they have adopted a political ideology from an American anarchist communist- Murray Bookchin.

For an example of what Bookchin believes in:

Indeed, Proudhon's famous declaration that 'whoever puts his hand on me to govern me is an usurper and a tyrant; I declare him my enemy' strongly tilts toward a personalistic, negative freedom that overshadows his opposition to oppressive social institutions and the vision of an anarchist society that he projected. His statement easily blends into William Godwin's distinctly individualistic declaration: 'There is but one power to which I can yield a heartfelt obedience, the decision of my own understanding, the dictates of my own conscience.' Godwin's appeal to the 'authority' of his own understanding and conscience, like Proudhon's condemnation of the 'hand' that threatens to restrict his liberty, gave anarchism an immensely individualistic thrust.

Compelling as such declarations may be — and in the United States they have won considerable admiration from the so-called libertarian (more accurately, proprietarian) right, with its avowals of 'free' enterprise — they reveal an anarchism very much at odds with itself. By contrast, Michael Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin held essentially collectivist views — in Kropotkin's case, explicitly communist ones. Bakunin emphatically prioritized the social over the individual. Society, he writes, 'antedates and at the same time survives every human individual, being in this respect like Nature itself. It is eternal like Nature, or rather, having been born upon our earth, it will last as long as the earth. A radical revolt against society would therefore be just as impossible for man as a revolt against Nature, human society being nothing else but the last great manifestation or creation of Nature upon this earth. And an individual who would want to rebel against society . . . would place himself beyond the pale of real existence.'[1]

This may not be Marxist-Leninism or Maoism but it makes for an interesting experiment in what can be accomplished when a theory is put in practice.[2] They also have many atheist among them and that also makes them unique. Even if these people are not adopting the right political ideology, they offer a positive attempt to create something better than what IS or the other Muslim movements have to offer. In some ways their anarchist views may not be that different from Marxist-Leninism or Maoism.

-សតិវអតុ