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Robert Gordt, antifa, the Kurds, and the rebranding of anti-fascism

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Robert Gordt joined the Kurdish YPG militia in March of 2017 and was martyred near Raqqa on July 5th.  Robert (or Rob or Bobby as some knew him) had a long history of political activism stretching back to the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011.  While the first wave of foreign volunteers who traveled to Syria in 2014 and 2015 were mostly military veterans, many of the current fighters are members of various anarcho-communist movements back home.  Rob was one of them.

Yesterday, a memorial service was held in Manhattan for Rob with members of the Kurdish diaspora, local political activists, and Rob’s family members.  Usually it would be bad form to use a memorial service as a jumping off point to discuss politics, but in this case the service itself was so inherently political that it seems like an unavoidable subject.  Further, based on what was said about Rob and who he was, it seems unlikely that he would have objected to his death being used as a platform to discuss his closely-held beliefs.

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  • Casey K

    Interesting work, I think you’re right about the desire on the part of the American anarchist movement to share in the glory of the Kurdish project. Though I think it might be fair to say that a modern Anti-Fascist could not find a more suitable enemy than the forces of Islamism. I agree that the phrase “Islamo-fascism” is tossed around the wingnut right, but Islamism, especially in the case of organizations like ISIS and Al-Qaeda encompasses a cult of the leader, a society formed around military mobilization, a state welded to a conservative religious institution, and all of it topped off with fanatical anti-Semitism. In broad strokes, that seems to fit the Fascist bill. It’s interesting to read here though that you’ve never heard the discussion framed this way by Kurds on the ground, not knowing any better I would have thought otherwise, considering their relationship to international socialism. At any rate, interesting reporting.

  • Tobias P

    The kurdish movement has a long tradition of referring to one of their principle enemies, the Turkish state, as fascist. The Turkish fascist party MHP was closely involved in the network of regular and irregular forces fighting the kurdish insurgency in the 80s and 90s, see the ERGENEKON car accident incident.
    One slogan of the kurdish movement roughly translates as “Kurdistan will be the grave of fascism”…

  • Yankee Papa

    .
    …I agree. But in this case…the Kurds in Syria come closest to meeting your criteria. With the exception of Israel and the U.S., just about everybody in the region unwilling to let them finish as “king of the hill…” Israel has good reasons not to grab this “tar baby” and the U.S. has a reputation over the past century of turning mother’s picture to the wall and leaving “allies” in the lurch… People who were promised more… and owed more than the Republic owes to the Syrian Kurds.
    …The Iraqi Kurds promised much and owed more. They may or may not get abandoned… Outlook very dark for Syrian Kurds…
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/69e16c92dc16021b075e12c6a71e57fbb2f70637bd9bf5747c6c76571c732816.jpg
    -YP-

  • Recon6

    ED… it’s been THREE DAYs…please elaborate…6

  • Recon6

    Rec’d +1….6