Antifa fags trained in Rojava
Normalcy Bias, Rojava, AntiFa, and the Bigger Picture
It’s easy for many to dismiss AntiFa as nothing more than street thugs; little organization, little experience, little threat to anyone or anything other than at public demonstrations. After all its much easier to reduce an enemy in your head to nothing more than what you want to believe. While a lot of folks went to sleep after the 2016 election, others found a cause.
With the battlefields of Syria raging, anarchism and syndicalism found a natural home among the socialist Kurds of the Rojava region of northern Syria. Bordering Turkey to the north and Iraqi Kurdistan to the east, the Kurdish YPG (or People’s Protection Units in English) found itself in need of foreign volunteers. While Americans fighting ISIS in Iraq has been going on since the rapid rise in the extremists’ power, it was mostly limited to prior service Vets who had specific knowledge of the region. I was approached in mid-2015 as part of a group to aid the Peshmerga in Kirkuk who were concerned with not just ISIS but the expanding influence of Iran in Iraqi politics. I declined for many reasons, some personal, some not; we had bigger problems at home and despite what some think, they might be worse now.
With the Obama years waning and the election of President Trump, disaffected Leftists no doubt inspired by tales of the Socialist International and Anarchist Brigades of the Spanish Civil War found a new enemy in ISIS. Europeans, Canadians and Americans all flooded the Rojava region by 2017 looking for purpose, looking for revolution, and above all, looking to take the fight to what they saw as another form of fascism, the Islamic State. The Socialists, Anarchists, Syndicalists and Communists who comprise AntiFa saw common cause in what they named the “Rojava Revolution.”
Many of the volunteers lacked any sort of military experience, resulting in a brief guerrilla campcalled only the Academy. Established to train them in the art of fire and maneuver, small arms marksmanship and crew-served weapons employment the month-long course was designed to rapidly create effective guerrilla fighters. Instructed by both veteran Peshmerga and battle-hardened foreign Communists, the course had seen success in many areas, including training informal Snipers to be used in Kobane. From Rolling Stone:
More foreigners arrived, all leftists, and they formed a sniper unit. “This was the first internationalist team,” Franceschi said, showing me a photo of himself in Kobani alongside a Spanish anarchist, a British Kurd and Keith Broomfield, the first American known to have died in the ranks of the YPG. “A lot of comrades were martyred during that time,” Franceschi said. “There was a lot of violence. But believe me, there was so much warmth. The conversation, the intimacy that you get knowing that you’re fighting for something and that you’re in the right. There were no ranks. You could go to your general, slap him behind his head and ask him for a cigarette. It was amazing. I had the time of my life, even though I lost my best friends there.”