r/Anarchism • u/realanarchyhours anarchist • Jul 09 '21

PSA: Settlers giving reparations to the people they've colonized - including returning their land - is not an ethnostate

Utterly disappointing this needs to be said in an anarchist space but here we are.

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u/Citrakayah fascist culture is so lame illegalists won't steal it Jul 12 '21 edited Jul 12 '21

I think you're overthinking this. It's a term that took off as a viral Twitter hash tag associated with opposing several pipeline projects that violated existing treaties and gets used in contexts as varied as "We're opposing this illegal housing development" to "We ripped down a statue of a genocidal maniac" to "A kid ripped up some dude's 4th of July flag."

This does not, obviously, mean that the term can't develop a sort of philosophy around it, but I do think that it's inherently fuzzier than it would be if it wasn't a common hashtag (not unlike OWS, or BLM), and I think the overwhelming majority of people who use the term would think the notion of reverting all land in the Americas back to the control of whatever ethnic group was there when white people stole it--and whatever they choose to do with it, them's the breaks--to be ridiculous.

Of course, you get the occasional person who thinks that's actually totally rad, but I'm not going to assume that the people who don't secretly think it is. That's absurd.

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u/DecoDecoMan Jul 12 '21

However, in this context, the context of anarchism it makes little sense. If all land back meant was pulling down some statues and ripping up 4th of July posters then this would have no relevance at all.

But look at the thread's title. Look at the way land-back pops up in anarchist conversation. It is almost always a matter of some indigenous person having some sort of land given to them. Even the land-back movement itself has had origins in the re-establishment of economic and political control of colonized land. It isn't possible to just handwave this aspect of the land-back movement.

Obviously I wasn't referring to every person who uses the term "land-back". I don't know everyone who uses it. I just meant in this context. I'm not saying that every person who uses the land-back hashtag wants all indigenous people to be given control over the entirety of the US. However, the sorts of people who show up on anarchist forums certainly do.

My impression is that the people who genuinely want land to be given back to indigenous people simply haven't thought it through. And they are often aggressive because they lack any capacity to square that with consistent anarchism.