Interview of Brazilian Amazon Comrades (English)

The CCLA comrades from Brazilian Amazon interviewed with us recently. The Portuguese translation can be found on their website in the following link:
https://cclamazonia.noblogs.org/post/2024/04/23/entrevista-com-a-federacao-anarquista-era-ira-e-afeganistao/

Below is the English translation of the interview.

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1) What are the main fronts of struggle that you have already developed and those that you intend to develop in the near future?

Our initial core was formed outside of Iran on December 15, 2009. In 2018, we formed the Union of Anarchists of Afghanistan and Iran. Then, we formed the Federation of Anarchism Era.
We, anarchists, whether from the federation or otherwise, have a practical or intellectual presence in all movements (women’s, labor, student, environmental, animal liberation, etc.) in Iran and Afghanistan, and naturally, we have direct or indirect effects of our own.
We had worked on and still have hope to form an anarchist federation for Arab countries together with Arab anarchists, considering that Iran and Afghanistan together have several million ethnic Arab populations.
In addition, we hope that one day we will be able to form a Turkish anarchist network with the anarchists of the Turkish countries, considering their population of several tens of millions within Iran and Afghanistan.

2) The women’s struggle in your country is well known and talked about outside of Iran, does your organization have women comrades? If so, how are they involved in the ongoing struggles?

All in all, a significant part of our comrades in Iran and Afghanistan are women and members of LGBTQIA+.
Iran’s ongoing struggles are in two areas: one is civil and public struggles over disobedience and non-observance of the mandatory hijab by a large part of women in Iran, accompanied by our women comrades as a small part of women’s society in Iran.
However, the second area of the struggle is the covert and insurrectionary struggle, which includes the central part of the struggle of the Federation’s women comrades.

In Afghanistan, since August 15, 2021, when the world governments handed over power to the Taliban, we witnessed the presence of protesting women of Afghanistan. Two days later, on August 17, they came to the streets against the presence of the Taliban, and later, these protesting women formed dozens of campaign groups against the Taliban. We continue to support the struggle of protesting women against the Taliban. The danger of excluding women from Afghanistan’s society is grave, and the federation’s women comrades support these struggles in various ways.

3) Religion (as a human institution of oppression in the name of God) is a central theme of anarchist reflection and criticism of the power it represents. What are your thoughts on this, and how do you manage to position yourselves in relation to this issue?

The gods don’t exist; we do. Religious oppression is not oppression and exploitation by the gods but people, a class of people. This class of oppressors is the priestly class, a property-owning class with the original and the most exclusive property of all: The sacred, the divine. The sacred can be anything: land, knowledge, craft, custom, ritual, thought, feeling. Anything. However, the clergy class don’t work, they don’t produce anything; The clergy imagine, ponder, demand, order, chastise, and punish. It is us who labor, toil, fret, sweat, and sacrifice to fulfill their wishes and bring their imagination into reality. The clergy creates ethereal currencies for us to speculate and wager to win a good and fulfilling life now, eternal bliss in the afterlife, or good karma for the next reincarnation. The result of our wager doesn’t matter; the clergy benefitting from our labor is always the ultimate winner in the end. It doesn’t take long for one to realize religion created nothing; All religion has it took, it sabotaged, it appropriated, it stole, it corrupted. The majority of our ancient and deep communal and anarchistic customs, rituals, and stories are now twisted into a convoluted, contrived, contradictory mess of half-truths just to reproduce religion.

Yet, after centuries of religious manufacturing consent, we seem to have forgotten. Now, many see religion as an integral part of our cultures, not the saboteur and the thieves that they really are. The priests in the lower echelon and the faithful are doing the grunt work for the upper echelon, some with inspiration to rule once in power, some to do good in the world, and some to bring change. Then, old and new religions depict themselves as the next greatest thing, the solution, the salvation. Then, there are the spirituals, those whose relationship with religion has deteriorated but not radically broken free from concepts of divine and sacred, safeguarding and reproducing religion yet again. It is as if we are describing capitalism or state, yet religion precedes them both. Perhaps religion is the institution that ushered other forms of hierarchies into reality.

Many people don’t want to face these facts about religion, insisting that there are egalitarian True religions. But, power reveals, and it had shown that religion would be authoritarian whenever it was given the opportunity, whenever it finally eroded the community’s resistance to authority, everywhere, every time. We, The Federation of Anarchism Era, can’t afford to justify religion with the same excuses Liberals use to justify the state and capitalism. For us, the supreme leader, the congress, the judges, the lawyers, the police, the military, the landlords, the bourgeoisie, the petite-bourgeoisies, a large section of rapists, a large section of misogynists, the child killers, and many others are mullahs, the clergy class. This is the reality of a theocratic state. Given all these, our position is simple: Topple the theocratic state, topple their ideology, topple their religion, and salt the ideological ground from which these nightmares grew so no one ever experiences these eras of terror again.

4) At regional level, which organizations do you have contacts with? Is it difficult to build relationships of concrete solidarity?

In these 15 years, we have had a kind of cross-sectional and case-by-case cooperation with various anarchist groups in different parts of the world. However, considering most members are located in Iran and Afghanistan and a small few outside of the region, the possible formation of the two previously mentioned anarchist networks can propel us to more sustainable movements in the future.
In fact, it is this regional joint organization that makes more concrete cooperation possible.

5) Do you have relations with the Kurdish insurgent community in Syria? What do you think of their struggle, which is often based on refusing a statist solution?

In the past, we have helped some Iranian anarchists to participate in the Rojava struggle.
We are in contact with some Syrian anarchists and also Kurdish activists related to Rojava abroad.

Naturally, we support the struggle of the Kurds of Rojava. For us, it is a point of hope from the real examples of non-statist societies, such as the struggles of the Zapatistas in Mexico or the free commune of Barbacha in the Kabylia region of Algeria, which are areas of special interest to anarchists.

6) In theoretical terms, which line of organization would you take, more synthesist (Faure or Volin) or more platformist (Makhno and Arshinov)? Do these differences in organizational terms make sense to you?

We are not platformists. We are synthesis anarchists. However, in the organizational field, we naturally have our own form of organization.
As a synthesis federation, the Federation of Anarchism Era does not cooperate only with various tendencies following religion, capitalism, nationalism, and pacifism. The federation is formed from multiple self-organizations in the form of groups, collectives, networks, unions, and individuals with the independence of action, thinking, and organic and intricate relationships. As such, from egoists (and anarcho-goists who often see themselves as individuals in relation to the federation) to anarcho-syndicalists and anarcho-primitivists to anarcho-transhumanists and so on consider their activities to be related and to be members of the federation of Anarchism Era.

7) Now on an international level, what do you think of the support you receive from other organizations? Which ones do you have the most contact with?

The support we have received so far from the international anarchist movement has been very distinct. Whenever we needed specific help, individual anarchists and anarchist organizations have not spared us any help.
In fact, anarchists at the global level really act like a single body, and simply being an anarchist is enough to connect anarchists to each other, and being in different geographies with different languages ​​does not prevent anarchists from cooperating with each other.
Our communication at any point depends on the activity we do together. Still, we must find a way to establish permanent communication with a part of the anarchist movement in every corner of the world.

8) To conclude, do you have a request to pass on to the organized Brazilian anarchist movement? How can we help you?

Naturally, these interviews, their translation, and publication are considered to help the anarchist movement of Iran and Afghanistan. The interview that we will soon conduct with you comrades will inform our anarchist movement in the region of the anarchists’ struggle in Brazil and the world.
Your interview led us to think of a more continuous cooperation with a part of the anarchist movement. We just have to see how we can create more foundation for it.

In the end, we would like to thank you comrades for this interview, raising excellent questions.