Dear colleagues,
From Migrant Pride and Edinburgh in Protest we did not want to miss the opportunity to participate in this meeting with a small written reflection to share with those present. We are a group of immigrants; we prefer to call ourselves individuals in economic exile, settled in Edinburgh (Scotland). For the last years, we have organised a number of activities linked to promote migrant rights in the UK, as well as to raise awareness on specific current case studies linked to the repression of the Spanish State. Most of us come from different communities of the Spanish Kingdom and the Republic of Catalonia.
Based on the information about the meeting, which the FAI comrades sent us, we would like first of all, to show our solidarity and support with those affected by the political situation that Turkey is undergoing and secondly, we want to tell you that we feel highly identified with these situations, as you may know, we suffer the repression of a State, which still maintains the structure of the dictatorial Franco’s regime, and this is hidden behind the mask of a Western European democracy.
Despite the cultural differences between Spain and Turkey, and how capitalism and neoliberalism have progressed in each country, we would like to start by highlighting all the things that places us on a common front against the loss of the social state. This loss of the social state is accompanied by an increase in repression, against the criminalization of poverty and social movements. In addition to this the loss of the social state is aggravated by the economic, social, cultural and ideological crisis. All these crises are underpinned by DE politicization of the population while many repressive actions are normalised such as: political pressures, torture, evictions, economic and political exiles, gag laws, authoritarianism, intolerance, political, ideological and judicial persecution.
That said one of the serious difficulties we encounter, when it comes to resisting, is to achieve DE legitimization of these policies that make up a criminal system. This is where we want to highlight the need to deepen the understanding of how the cultural influence imposed by the empire so-called the United States (not America) is influencing social movements globally.
We want to raise awareness on how a specific way of thinking and perceiving democracy led by dominant social classes and mainstream media is being imposed on the strategies that the states use to repress social movements. This results in a polarising narrative where people who disagree with the system are portrayed as ‘evil’ against the ‘common will/sense’. This polarised framing of social movements confuses society and even more we end up legitimising our own repressors.
It is time to unveil the relationships of ‘domination’ in all its areas, in the economic, political, social and cultural spheres.
We can not ignore that although the idea of colonialism and imperialism has been historically linked, in the collective unconscious, to the socialist, communist or Latin Americanist movements under the idea of the economic and territorial domination of the central capitalist countries, today it is extremely necessary to conform an ideological front that we can share following common objectives. We understand that while ideologies on the one hand have enriched and enriched us, on the other they are full of preconceived ideas that need to be deconstructed. We would like to raise here the need to reinvent social movements and their ways of resisting by distancing ourselves from the enemy we have inside (the police, the judge, the macho, etc.) understanding that the forms of emancipation are still a collective construction in a determined political moment against the four key elements of domination; Historical capitalism, patriarchy, colonialism and imperialism. It is necessary to remember the words of beloved commander Fidel Castro when he said that the capitalist economy could not be sustained if it were not for the triumph in the battle of ideas. This triumph would lead us to naturalize the consumer society and to place Western culture before others, Western knowledge before others, Western democracy before other systems of political organization, Western feminism before others and even Western resistance to other ways of resisting. That is just one aspect of colonialism; in order to counteract it we need to work together. Many of the ideologies on which we base ourselves come from the West and block us from knowing other equally valid ones such as those from Latin America, Kurdistan or Palestine.
Thank you very much to everyone and a strong solidarity hug from the Spanish migrant community in Scotland.
We hope to find an opportunity to discuss these things personally.