John Kinsella
As each of us, no matter where we are in the world or what circumstances we live under, tries to come to grips with a collapsing biosphere and human injustice towards fellow humans and towards ‘nature’, we are confronted with the issues of people making decisions for themselves or on ‘our behalf’ that frequently offend or distress us, that go against all we believe in. Many people are suffering obvious and horrendous abuse and deprivation, are in conflict zones, suffering state-driven, social or domestic violence, suffering from criminal (for self-gain) exploitation, experiencing marginalisation or bigotry from people or institutions in the majority or far more empowered than themselves, or live in poverty or reduced circumstances.
The obviousness of all this is not an excuse to dismiss as ‘realpolitik’ or with ‘it was always thus’ stock sayings. The wrongs are not addressed by a fatalism of ‘the human condition’. Each of us might also have our ideas or theories about how to address wrongs on micro and macro levels, and many of us are trying or will try to live lives that reduce our corrosive impact of presence on others and on the biosphere. It goes without saying that some people will try to exploit for self-gain, or even for their own politics of personal, familial, national, and bespoke ‘community-mindedness’ above and beyond others. Into this will be woven the bandwidths of selfishness through to ‘loyalty’ (at the exclusion of other loyalties), but in the end such exclusionism of the outside one’s own belonging or orientation will lead to exploitation or bigotry on some level or other.
My personal concerns are to find a way around such exclusions, and to work on a respectful collective-communal decision-making that doesn’t diminish other communities and their connections to the biosphere, to specific places, to specific associations with others, to spiritual belief systems (or spiritual de-systeming). This is an anarchist positionality, of course, but at the core of this is a belief on my part that ‘leaders’ are inevitably part of any problem of diminished rights and unfair distribution of ‘wealth’.
As someone who also advocates for animals and eco-systems’ rights in both empathy and totemic interaction through/by/with humans, but also an independence of ‘being’ (a respect for the ‘animalness’ of an animal, for example), I include ecological and ‘personal’ animal quiddity and rights in these discussions. ‘Leaders’ in communities might function in a quasi-representative way in which they are spokespeople for a group, but hold no real power and cannot make decisions that control and/or oppress others. I am not talking about that dynamic here. I am referring to leaders who make unilateral decisions that are not uniquely and completely discussed with their community of representation.
It would seem that no political model outside anarchism achieves this. Every decision being one of mutual understanding and mutual aid, every choice one of collective affirmation. Once a leader is separated from that process, they are in essence a form of dictator. Sure, a leader operating with more checks and balances than one operating with few or none is only nominally acting as a dictator as opposed to the out-and-out dictator whose command system is entirely centred on their whim and response to any stimuli. But, essentially, with a leader who is not nominal, a leader who has the power to make decisions as even representative of their constituents without being in constant communication with all those constituents who could in an instant say ‘that person is not speaking for us’, then we are dealing with degrees of dictatorship.
Involved in this capacity for taking on the mantle of speaking for others who are distant from oneself is a belief that one can do so with principle and affirmation of having been chosen in the first place. There are degrees of choosing, from the small group selecting a spokesperson to the nation-state electing a government who selects a leader from their ranks, or direct election of a president, say, who the electors know has dictatorial tendencies. Leadership is something enforced through fiscal control, martial backing, and access to exclusive knowledge (‘security’).
As I hear leaders say that a nation (or any national ‘sovereignty’), for example, ‘has a right to defend itself’, I have to ask myself what defence is, as I have done since my late teens. ‘Defence’ is a quality of violence. ‘Defence’ is entwined with ‘attack’ and not really its opposite (maybe more a theoretical ‘counterpoint’). ‘Defence’ is the right to strike first as the ‘best form of defence’. ‘Defence’ is the quality of a colonial beachhead expanding into ‘hostile territory’, and living by constant pre-emptive action. Or when ‘defence’ is more literal (as in a nation-state being attacked by another), it can so quickly become ‘flexible’ to incorporate acts of aggression that extend far outside its earlier response/defend definition.
All nation-states have at some point or another formed out of military presence and maintain themselves through the same. Nation-states are built on values of control and oppression. Australia-as-nation is an example of that predictable claim of fair ‘treatment’ of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islands peoples via the state’s elected and appointed leaders and the institutions they are extensions of and embedded in. A faux ‘fairness’ to the very people who were dispossessed by colonialism... and many of whom experience an ongoing state of psychological and material siege.
As someone who strongly advocates for a ‘no-state’ approach to habitation of the world (communities rather than nations), and for the rights to co-inhabit land with respect for difference and with mutual support/aid, and for the valorisation of and full respect for any traditional relationship to country (and for complete intactness of those Indigenous relationships to country) while allowing for the peaceful co-existence of those with different connectivities with place (including newcomers — ‘migrants’... a word that is manipulated depending on where one sits in the equation of movement and ‘settling’), I see the core offence in the unthinkable hatred between communities around ‘Israel’ and ‘Palestine’ as arising from ‘leaders’ and ‘nation states’. The powerful nation-state of Israel is using its military power to control, oppress and destroy its constructed ‘enemy’.
Once organised into financial-military blocks of difference, with religious leadership and control over peoples’ lives being attended covertly or directly with the state/s, these ideas of nation establish conflict, apartheid and exclusion from their very inceptions, be that more recently or hundreds or thousands of years ago. Identity built out of exclusion risks conflict and the exploitation of an eternalised ‘other’. This should not be happening on any level.
This generalisation can extend to Ukraine and Russia, or anywhere else, allowing for the highly specific inflections of history and disintegration between larger community demographics over time. Each ‘case’ of hate is different, but behind them is the ‘leader’ or ‘leaders’ (from government to military, from ‘church to state’, and so on) making unilateral decisions for collective situations.
As fascism consolidates itself in Israel, the United States, Russia, China, Italy, Hungary, Iran, North Korea (with strong tendencies in the South as well), Ukraine (try being a pacifist in Ukraine under the present military regime... Ukraine is experiencing a colonial invasion, but it is also embracing the values of ‘leadered’ militarism and a cessation of tolerance for contrary views on achieving peace).... it hovers around the edges of the militarism of the UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany and so many other countries where it is participatory and exploiting through internal oppressions and bigotries, control over adversarial voices (especially in the arts and ‘humanities’), the manufacturing and sale of armaments, and the compliance of leadership with the power and ‘bonuses’ (or withholdings) of superpower leadership.
If a ‘business leader’ such as Elon Musk can wield as much power as the Robber Barons or, say, Alfred Krupp and his company, and use a spuriously ‘free’ social media platform as an extension of power to gather ‘like minds’ to form ‘posses’ of social bullying and control, then that leadership speaks for itself (and, perversely, proudly). Or The Dictator with his military parades, penchant for gift acceptance from corrupt and exploitive regimes akin to his own positionality, simply creating his own social media bullying platform. Leaders empower themselves beyond their initial ‘support’ and vectors into public office with guns (the bottom line), and guns rule the world.
Those who deny genocide is happening in Gaza (and other parts of the world — in those places off the Western media radar), those who deny the massive number of weapons-related deaths throughout the world, those who deny that the destruction of habitat is a participatory mass-extinction event, and those who see themselves as being morally, culturally or ethnically superior to others, are emboldened by leaders who either embrace similar ideologies or who essentially cover for them, allowing them to feel ‘represented’ in their hate. Leaders exist because we allow them to be leaders and we have established systems and platforms to ensure such leadership.
If we fail to:
— completely disarm
— to respect country and Indigenous claims whilst allowing for the free (borderless) movements of peoples (with respect to bio-protections to prevent the destruction of habitat — and this to be conducted on a voluntary/shared basis without punitive actions)
— to de-martialise policing so that small community groups manage their own ‘policing’ in non-violent and non-punitive ways
— to create universal healthcare on all levels, to deny anyone leadership roles beyond being spokespeople
— to reduce mining to the bare essentials for life and to de-industrialise (a slow process... but let’s start with de-nuclearising and de-fossil fuelling)
— to redistribute wealth fairly
— to start nurturing all that remains of old-growth forests and committing to an ideation of vast replanting and habitat restoration
— to end the abuses and destructiveness of industrial agriculture and animal exploitation
— to detoxify ecologies
— to work through a sharing/barter communalism
— respect diversity of belief and respect diversity in all our communities
— end/renounce capitalism (which accords with all of the above)
then injustice will grow rather than reduce, and some will have much and others will be lost to the world.
Every person has a right to be their own leader, and to enjoy their own communities without abuse.
