Jonas Staal

To Make aWorld, Part I:Ultranationalismand the Art ofthe StatelessState

Ultranationalism and the Deep StateThere doesnt seem to be a worse moment thanthe present to defend the project of statelessinternationalism. The recent European electionsof May 2014 showed the growing influence ofultranationalist parties on the politicalestablishment; in terms of representation in theEuropean Parliament, ultranationalist partiesbecame the largest parties in France (NationalFront), Denmark (Danish Peoples Party), and theUnited Kingdom (United Kingdom IndependenceParty), while gaining substantial ground inAustria (Freedom Party of Austria) and Sweden(Swedish Democrats), and remaining relativelystable in the Netherlands (Freedom Party). Theysuffered heavy losses in Belgium (FlemishInterest), but this was due to the success of aslightly more moderate and competingnationalist party (New Flemish Alliance).1 Thenext step for these ultranationalist parties hasbeen to seek alliances and prepare to deliver thefinal blow to the supra-nationalist managerialproject of the European Union. Their challenge isto convince EU parliamentarians from seven ormore different countries to unite in order to, asLe Pen has said, make the EU disappear and bereplaced by a Europe of nations that are free andsovereign.2The leaders of the ultranationalist partiesseem to be in permanent competition toradicalize the discourse concerning immigrationand failing economies, with the hope that theirarguments will help reclaim national sovereigntyfrom the EU. These arguments range from MarineLe Pen in France claiming that the Muslimcommunity is the new anti-Semitic danger of thetwenty-first century, to the Danish Peoples Partydeclaring that Denmark should be kept Danishfor the Danish, culturally as well aseconomically. Their main obstacle does not seemto be a strong international progressivecounterforce, but rather their own incapacity todeal with each others extremisms, leading totwo prominent, competing right-wing blocks.One block organized itself into a coalition calledEurope of Freedom and Direct Democracy (whichincludes the UK Independence Party, theSwedish Democrats, and, to the surprise ofmany, the Italian comedian Beppe Grillos FiveStar Movement), while the other block organizeditself into the European Alliance for Freedom(which includes the National Front, the FreedomParty, and Lega Nord). The parties from bothblocks attempted to collaborate, as this is theonly way they could gain enough subsidies fromthe EU, but for now were unable to reach anagreement due to opposition against the anti-Semitic rhetoric of the National Front. Thismeans that for now, the strength of theultranationalists is limited to the UK

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Marine Le Pen, leader of Frances far-right National Front (FN), delivers a speech in front of a poster depicting Joan of Arc and the slogan No to Brussels, Yesto France during a rally in Paris on May 1, 2014. Photo: AFP PHOTO / Pierre Andrieu.

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Independence Partys group.It is important to observe that at the verytime that we are confronted with the rise ofultranationalism, we also face the growinginfluence of a set of structures which haveemerged alongside and parallel toultranationalist movements. Whereasultranationalism uses fundamental democraticrights to spread a thoroughly antidemocraticrhetoric steeped in racism, anti-Semitism,discrimination, and so on, these other structuresdevelop out of democratic decision-making butturn against the fundamentals of democraticpolitics, such as accountability, legality, andtransparency. The development of thesestructures follows naturally from neoliberalideology, which incessantly argues for theabolition of the state altogether (whiledepending on the state to be bailed out). Thesestructures are what former diplomat andVietnam-War-critic-turned-professor Peter DaleScott has called the Deep State, a term heborrowed from Turkish analysts. The Deep Statebecomes apparent through, for example,assignments handed off by an establishedagency to organized groups outside the law.3 Inthe context of the War on Terror, writer andjournalist Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed describesthese practices that outsource decision-makingto entities that are not accountable to the publicas

a novel but under-theorized conception ofthe modern liberal state as a complexdialectical structure composed of a publicdemocratic face which could however beroutinely subverted by an unaccountablesecurity structure.4

In simpler terms, our age of mass surveillance bysecret agencies in democratic countries,assisted by the massive amounts of data handedover5 by corporate entities such as internetservice providers and social media companies toorganizations such as the National SecurityAgency (NSA), has led to the rise of new politicalstructures that fall outside the democraticcontrol of people, and often even of politiciansthemselves. The rise of these political structuresmay at first glance seem opposed to the rise ofultranationalism, though in fact, they aremutually supportive.For example, in the Netherlands, GeertWilderss Freedom Party which, together withLe Pens National Front, has been one of thestrongest voices in the anti-EU and anti-Islammovement in Europe was a product of the post-9/11 era. Wilderss argument for closing bordersand forcing the return of Dutch-born Muslims totheir country of origin comes from his belief

that Muslims in Europe have become a fifthcolumn (a term used to describe a clandestinemilitary unit). Wilders claims that these Muslimsleeper cells are seemingly moderate, but infact can strike against democracy at anymoment.5 It is no coincidence that Wilders,during one of his many fundraising visits to theUS, took the opportunity to visit its militaryprison in Guantnamo Bay. Immediatelyafterwards, he stated:

I ask the government to build a Dutchdetention center for potential terrorists,modeled after Guantnamo Bay, in order toimprison the potential terrorists known tothe AIVD [Dutch Secret Service] as aprecaution I would gladly lay the firststone.6

Just like his colleagues from the anti-EU block,Wilders propounds a phantasmatic, conservativeutopia of the homeland as it once was andshould become once more. Needless to say,these presumed origins of the Netherlands thatare allegedly being lost never existed in the firstplace. Wilderss homeland that would close itsborders, build its own Guantnamo Bay, ban theQuran, and prohibit the wearing of headscarvesin public buildings may seem to limit itself to theterritorial space where the authentic Dutchcitizen supposedly dwells.7 But it serves thatother homeland just as well: politicalsubstructures that consist of the homelandsecurities of this world, which are increasinglygaining leverage over their own governments.Recently, the European organizationStatewatch published reports exposing the factthat the EU has invested large amounts of taxmoney into corporate research for thedevelopment of unmanned aerial vehicles,otherwise known as drones:

300 million of taxpayers money [wasinvested] in projects centered on orprominently featuring drone technology [D]rones are being adapted for securitypurposes through research anddevelopment projects, all of which aredominated by European (and Israeli)defense multinationals seeking furtherdiversification into civil markets.8

This investment, which the EU legitimizes asresearch (even though this is an obvious caseof a supra-national structure subsidizing thesecurity industry), encompasses all aspects ofdrone manufacturing:

The European Commission has longsubsidized research, development and

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Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch Freedom Party (PVV), cutting a star from the EU flag in front of the EU Parliament building in Brussels onMay 20, 2014. He then unfolded the Dutch flag, as a performative act in support of a Dutch withdrawal from the union. Photo: ANP / MartijnBeekman.

international cooperation among dronemanufacturers. The European DefenseAgency is sponsoring pan-Europeanresearch and development for both militaryand civilian drones. The European SpaceAgency is funding and undertaking researchinto the satellites and communicationsinfrastructure used to fly drones. Frontex,the EUs border agency, is keen to deploysurveillance drones along and beyond theEUs borders to hunt for migrants andrefugees.9

This is an example of the unaccountablestructures of the EU merging perfectly with theinterests of private lobbies in this case, toproduce equipment for the corporate-mercenaryarmies of the EU, of which Frontex has becomethe most notorious.10 This subsidizing of dronesis of a piece with other well-known operations ofthe Deep State: extraordinary rendition flights,which are carried out by civilian corporations;so-called black sites, which are legal under thepolicies of friendly nations, even though suchpolicies would be considered unconstitutional inthe homeland; and the infamous blackbudgets, which remain outside parliamentarycontrol and which help to sustain the mass

criminalization of civilians worldwide.Most importantly, there is a directrelationship between ultranationalism and theEUs unaccountable investments into dronetechnology. For citizens to outsource theiragency to the structures of the Deep State, theyneed to have the will to do so; the fears stoked byultranationalism create this will. These fears fuelthe global extralegal structures that we areconfronted with nowadays, and which underminethe celebrated sovereignty of the very states thatultranationalism swears to protect. These statesbecome mere proxies for a war that we only knowas blank spots on the map.11 Among all theunaccountable aspects of the EU project,ultranationalism proposes that the worst form ofunaccountability should become the norm.During the European elections, somepolitical parties and commentators attempted tocombat ultranationalism by making thecontradictory claim that far-right parties onlywanted to enter the European Parliament inorder to stop it from inside, so as to wrest backstate sovereignty from the moloch of Brussels.But this strategy is nothing but an ideologicalcover-up for the fact that the ultimateconsequence of ultranationalism is theannihilation of parliamentary representation

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altogether.Maybe the best illustration of this comesfrom Wilders himself. Prior to the EU elections,opinion polls promised him and his party a largevictory. Instead, his support among Dutch votersshrank his party lost one of its four seats in theEU parliament. The explanation? Hisconstituency refused to vote in EU elections: 65percent of his previous voters stayed home anddid not vote at all. Wilders won in the polls, butthere was no one to materialize his victory. Inother words: his constituency had already leftthe parliament, before he was able to abandon itfor them.

Cover of Eurodrones Inc. report by Statewatch. Design by Hans Roor atJubels, Amsterdam, 2014.

Stateless InternationalismThe ultimate outcome of ultranationalism is thedisappearance of the state altogether, and itsreplacement by power structures that do notrecognize any form of democratic control by thevery people these structures affect. Nor do thesestructures restrict themselves to what used to beknown as national borders. This reality ofglobalism after the annihilation of the nation-state forms a dark and perverted version of thatother dream of decentralized powers thatreaches beyond the nation-state: the progressiveproject of stateless internationalism. Thepremise of stateless internationalism wasechoed in the recent victories of regularpolitical parties such as Podemos in Spain,which was initiated by the Indignados movementas a form of parallel political representation: aparliamentary support for street politics,bringing to mind the autonomous workerscouncils that worked in alliance with the Allendegovernment before his toppling by the military.12But there are also stateless entities that havecontinued demanding in contrast to theultranationalists who have abandonedparliament the creation of new political

structures altogether.I will introduce here a number of examplesof the infrastructures proposed by groupsadvocating for different practices of statelessinternationalism. These examples are gatheredfrom my work as founder of the New WorldSummit an artistic and political organizationthat develops parliaments for stateless andblacklisted organizations and as cofounder(with BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht) ofthe New World Academy, where statelesspolitical groups have developed collaborativeprojects with artists and students, exploring therole of art in political struggles forrepresentation. The aim of the New WorldAcademy is to investigate artistic practice inrelation to the stateless state, with the conceptof state referring as much to a condition as toan administrative structure.Before Subcomandante Marcos twenty-year representative of the Zapatista Army ofNational Liberation (EZLN) in Chiapas, Mexico stepped down on the day after the Europeanelections, he argued that the struggle of so-called local and indigenous peoples today isthe avant-garde of a war against the generic non-spaces that form the global architecture ofneoliberal ideology. He refers to this struggle asthe Fourth World War, which has followed theThird World War (i.e., the Cold War). He describesthis Fourth World War as radically decentralized,with the main adversary being the dispersedapparatus of the Deep State, which he considersa product of neoliberal doctrine:

It is not possible for neoliberalism tobecome the worlds reality without theargument of death served up byinstitutional and private armies, withoutthe gag served up by prisons, without theblows and assassinations served up by themilitary and the police. National repressionis a necessary premise of the globalizationthat neoliberalism imposes. The moreneoliberalism advances a global system,the more numerous grow the weapons andthe ranks of the armies and national police.The numbers of the imprisoned, thedisappeared, and the assassinated indifferent regions also grows.13

In describing indigenous struggles around theworld as the avant-garde of the Fourth WorldWar, Marcos adopts an internationalist stancethat acknowledges the peoples of this world asequal yet radically differentiated.Internationalism is thus fundamentally differentfrom globalism, as its solidarities do nottranslate into a demand for a homogeneousstructure of governance. Rather, in the face of

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New World Summit Berlin (2012). Overview of the parliament of the first New World Summit in the Sophiensaele in Berlin, hosting nine representatives thatspoke on behalf of blacklisted organizations. Photo: Lidia Rossner.

countless disappeared and assassinatedindigenous people (as Marcos refers to them),the demand is for history as such. For theinherent paradox of attempting to write a historyof the victims of Deep State practices is thatdeep history is a history that is in a permanentstate of self-erasure. As such, the Fourth WorldWar is a cultural war: a war in which the stakesare the possibility of differentiated culture.

Left: Subcomandante Marcos fights Captain America in the work ofcomic artist and Zapatista supporter Philippe Squarzoni, literallysituating the Fourth World War in the context of mass media andpopular culture (Les Requins Marteaux / Ferraille Publication). Right:Comic books are used by the Communist Party of the Philippines toeducate peasants in dialectic materialism, adopting elements of whatis regarded by the party as cultural imperialism to act against itself.

During the last EU elections, DavidFernandez, a left-wing, pro-independencepolitician from Catalonia, stated that We are theZapatistas of the South of Europe, referring toleft-wing Basque, Catalan, and Galician pro-independence movements. According to JonAndoni Lekue, a representative of the movementSortu (which, as part of the left-wing Basquecoalition Bildu, just won its first seat in the EUparliament), the party is working towards apolitical concept of the Basque country as acondition that, as such, applies to all peoples ofthis world who struggle for the right to self-determination.14 One of the founding resolutionsof Sortu addresses the Basque situation mainlyby stating the partys support for otherindependence movements worldwide, endingwith the famous Guevarian phrase thatsolidarity represents the affection of peoples.15The autonomy of the Basque country or theZapatistas is thus a victory for the possibility ofinternationalism worldwide. This certainly doesnot mean that stateless internationalismsidesteps the concrete material struggle for aterritorial space, and all the very concreteinfrastructural questions of governance, security,and so forth that come with it. However, thisspace is not a goal in and of itself, but a spacethrough which a stateless internationalism isarticulated.

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La Revolution est sans Frontire (2014), Moussa Ag Assarid. Photograph of a graffiti in Kidal, one of the largest cities of the newly declared state of Azawad.

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This is what at least in theory (or better:all too often only in theory) fundamentallydifferentiates the historical struggles fornational liberation from ultranationalism.Whereas the latter regards separation fromothers as a victory, the former treats self-determination as one of many steps towardsarticulating an internationalist commons. That isnot to say that national liberation movementscannot turn out to become expressions ofultranationalism, or that the struggles of otherstateless entities cannot be easily forgottenonce the goal of independence is obtained. Thefundamental underlying idea here is if theconcept of liberation and the concept of thestate can coexist.Fadile Yldrm, a representative of theKurdish Womens Movement, has attempted todeepen the conflict surrounding the role of thestate within national liberation movements. Westarted our struggle against the Turkish state,she has said. But later we realized it was notjust the matter of the repression of the Turkishstate.16 Yldrm realized that there was asystemic inequality between men and womenwithin the Kurdish struggle, which resulted in,among other things, restrictions against womenbecoming fighters. Women were expected todedicate themselves to domestic work instead.Yldrm concluded that the enemy is not justoutside, we also have an enemy inside. Theresult was that the Kurdish womens freedommovement started inside the national liberationmovement.17 For Yldrm, national liberation isnot a goal in and of itself. It is within this strugglethat the very idea of the state as the endpoint ofthe movement for self-determination, freedom,and emancipation must be confronted:

We Kurdish women saw that if we want tobe free we have to be independent. Werealized that women represent the firstclass of slaves, and also the first colonizedclass. So we said if the first class and thefirst oppressed sex in history and societyare women, than history and society canonly be liberated by women. We believe thatfemale liberation is only possible in asociety where there is no state, nohierarchy and no power, where thesestructures are overcome. If we look at othernational liberation movements or if we lookat the Soviet Union we see that allrevolutionary organizations that could notmanage to do their own revolution insidelooked like the enemy.18

So whereas the forces of ultranationalism useparliamentary processes to dismantle the statein the name of the state and replace it with

unaccountable corporate-style structures ofpower, Yldrm defends the radical opposite. Sheattempts to save the idea of democracy defined as radically differentiated andfundamentally equal peoples by liberating itfrom the state.19 Scholar Dilar Dirik, a prominent voice in theKurdistan Communities of Woman (KJK),describes the concrete practice of this liberationin relation to Rojava (Syrian-Kurdistan) asfollowing:

In the midst of the Syrian war, the peoplethere created self-governance structures inthe form of three autonomous cantons.These have 22 ministries with one ministerand two deputies each, one Kurd, one Araband one Assyrian, at least one of which hasto be a woman. Several schools, women'sacademies, working, living, and farmingcooperatives, and women's and people'scouncils have been established.20

The state, as both Yldrm and Dirik claim, is apatriarchal construct, and as such, it is unable torecognize the right to self-determination and theequality of women, for the subjection of oneclass to another is inherent to the states verycreation.21 It will come as no surprise that it isthe stateless Kurdish movement in Turkey andSyria with a central role given to women in thefighting that is currently battling the IslamicState in Iraq, as the army of the autonomousregion of Kurdistan, the Peshmerga, wereincapable of forming an effective front bythemselves. On the one hand, the Islamic Stateexplicitly opposes the colonial borders of Iraq,and thus forces into public consciousness thehistory of foreign occupation, militaryintervention, and extralegal prisons that createdthe conditions for and in some ways legitimacy ofthe organization.22 On the other, the IslamicState also functions from the perspectiveproposed by Yldrm and Dirik as the unlimitedpatriarchal construct of the total state in theform of the ever-expanding caliphate. Theperformative gestures of Islamic State fighterspublicly destroying their passports and thusallowing no administrative way back, as can beseen in their latest film The Clashing of theSwords IV, actually oppose statelessness andcommit to one absolute and total state.23 Thefear of humiliation amongst Islamic Statefighters that they might be killed by a woman isthe fear of losing their martyr status: it meansthey would be infected by statelessness, andlose all privilege and status in the total state.24Yldrms proposition to liberate democracyfrom the state embodies what the ConcernedArtists of the Philippines consider the practice of

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the cultural worker: he or she who upholdsdiscursive or pictorial histories through culturalpractice, as an alternative to the powers that bewhich attempt to impose cultural amnesia inorder to secure their rule. The cultural workeropposes the erosion of the possibility of historyas such. This is a struggle that Professor JoseMaria Sison, founder of the Communist Party ofthe Philippines and the New Peoples Army,would refer to as the struggle of the culturalworker against cultural imperialism.25However different the struggles of Marcos,Lekue, and Yldrm may be, what they share istheir defense of a self-determination that, whileremaining stateless, is first and foremost amilitant cultural struggle. They are therepresentatives of stateless states of peoplesthat precede their administrative representationin the formal, recognized entity of a state.

Professor Jose Maria Sison speaks on the concept of culturalimperialism at the New World Academy (2013). Photo: Ernie Buts.

According to Sison, the cultural worker usesthe tools of art in order to uphold the narrativesand convictions of those who are marginalized,dispossessed, and persecuted by the militarizedstate. He or she is an educator, agitator, andorganizer, all in order to maintain and to enact to perform the symbolic universe of theunacknowledged state that is not so much anadministrative entity as a collective condition.The long cultural struggle of the Filipino peoplehas created a state in itself, a detailed networkof references, histories, and symbols that definea peoples identity far beyond what a state couldever contain. We are speaking here of artsstateless state.26It is within this stateless state that we findthe condition that may be understood as apermanent revolution of statelessinternationalism that is, the permanentprocess of collectively inscribing, criticizing,contesting, and altering our understanding ofcommunal culture. The cultural work of stateless

internationalism helps to reimagine and createnew and parallel political structures.

To Make a WorldWe are witnessing two forms of statelessness:the rise of ultranationalism, which ultimatelymanifests itself in political structures outside ofpublic control; and the resurfacing of statelessinternationalism, a political struggle thatattempts to redefine a common culture beyondterritorial and ethnic demarcations. The latterhas its historical base in movements of nationalliberation, but tries to think and act itself beyondthe nation-state.Around the time of the European election,writer Moussa Ag Assarid, the Europeanrepresentative of the National LiberationMovement of Azawad (MNLA) and previouscontributor to the summit, contacted me. He wascalling from Kidal, a city in the north of what iscurrently considered the state of Mali. In early2012, the nomadic Kel Tamasheq people betterknown as the Tuareg led a rebellion in thenorth. The Tuareg, who have engaged in threeearlier armed struggles against the Malinesestate since the latter gained independence in1959, had grown tired of failed treaties, asystematic denial of civil rights, repression, andviolence. They are now demanding fullindependence. With the help of weapons takenfrom the crumbling Gaddafi regime, the MNLA,which consists of Songhai, Arab, and Fulapeoples along with the Tuareg, declared two-thirds of northern Mali to be the independentstate of Azawad. But a coup by Islamic groups,which included Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,undermined the MNLAs control over the regionand led France, Malis former colonizer, to invadethe northern region in order to stabilize it. TheFrench were eventually replaced by the UnitedNations Multidimensional IntegratedStabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), whichis still ongoing.27When I initially met Ag Assarid some yearsago, I asked what exactly the homeland of theTuareg was. As a response, he drew a large circleon a map, crossing through Algeria, Niger,Burkina Faso, Mali, and Libya not a state but aspace; although ruled under tribal policies andstrict class separations, that the MNLA does nottend to glorify all too much today. So far, theTuareg populations in several of these countrieshave demanded an independent homeland. InMali, the recent declaration of the independentstate of Azawad was the fourth attempt todeclare independence since Mali was colonizedby France in the late nineteenth century. Eachattempt articulated a new state, because this isthe language that geopolitics might understandand recognize as legitimate. But the attempt to

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speak in the language of states is the result ofthe historic colonization of the territory by thesame army that now wishes to stabilize theregion: a self-replicating language ofterritorialization, separation, and administration.The nomad state the nomadic parliament might be a first articulation of a stateless state.Not a Deep State, but a liberation through thestate from the state.I received the call a day after the Malinesegovernment declared war on the Tuareg oncemore. Fights had broken out in Kidal, and theMNLA had taken control of the city.28 Ag Assaridlisted for me the things they had won in thebattle: camouflaged 44 trucks, an ambulance,and prisoners, who they released some daysafter. The only problem was that there was noone to report on the conflict; no media orjournalists were present, and a media outlet hadonce told him that independence would onlycome if CNN would broadcast you. He thusasked for phones with a large storage capacitythat could film, photograph, and upload, ideallythrough a satellite connection. It was not in theconcrete day-to-day fight that the MNLA was inneed of help from outside: Assarid had oncelaughed while telling me how the Malinese army,which is unfamiliar with the rough northernterritory, would at night mistake stones andgoats for enemies, and out of confusion wouldstart shooting at each other. As Assarid said, onehardly needs an army to defeat these opponents,since the terrain suffices. The problem was notliberation, but representation. Azawad is off thegrid: most of its citizens are not part of anyoutside administrative entity, and thus cannottravel. Further, there is hardly any running water,electricity, or paved roads, let alone effectivephone signals or internet.Writer and politician Upton Sinclair wrotethat the goal of the artist at the dawn ofinternationalism was not to make artworks, butto make a world.29 This is exactly what seemed tobe at stake here: contributing to the conditionsof representation after liberation to thepossibility of future history. Is that not the taskof any cultural worker?This is the art of the stateless state.I would like to thank philosopher Vincent W. J. van GervenOei, Professor Jose Maria Sison, Jon Andoni Lekue, MoussaAg Assarid, and Dilar Dirikfor their advice in writing thisessay.

Jonas Staal is a visual artist whose work deals withthe relation between art, propaganda, and democracy.He is the founder of the artistic and politicalorganization New World Summit, which developsparliaments for organizations excluded fromdemocracy, and the New World Academy (togetherwith BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht), whichinvites artists and students to work together withorganizations invested in progressive politicalprojects. He is also the initiator of the IdeologicalGuide to the Venice Biennale, a free smartphone appthat provides insight on the social, political, economicand overall ideological backgrounds of every pavilionin the 2013 biennale. His upcoming book Nosso Lar,Braslia (Capacete & Jap Sam Books, 2014)investigates the relationship between spiritism andmodernism in Brazilian architecture. His latest book,The Art of Creating a State (with writer Moussa AgAssarid) can be downloadedherehttp://newworldsummit.eu/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/The-Art-of-Creating-a-State.pdfStaal is currently working on his PhD on Art andPropaganda in the 21st Century at the University ofLeiden, The Netherlands.http://www.jonasstaal.nl

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1In Hungary and Greece, theparamilitary fascists(respectively Jobbik and GoldenDawn), with which even theNational Front is unwilling tocollaborate, gained strength.

2Vivienne Walt, InsideJob,TIME, May 26, 2014.

3Peter Dale Scott,American WarMachine: Deep Politics, the CIAGlobal Drug Connection, and theRoad to Afghanistan (Lanham,Maryland: Roman & Littlefield,2010), 2.

4 Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed,Capitalism, Covert Action, andState-Terrorism: Toward aPolitical Economy of the DualState, inThe Dual State:Parapolitics, Carl Schmitt andthe National Security Complex,ed. Eric Wilson (London:Ashgate, 2012), 53.

5Wilderss chief ideologue, MartinBosma, bases his use of theterm sleeper cells on theIslamic concept of takiyya,which says that Muslims canhide or deny their faith if theyare at risk of persecution.Bosma distorts this concept toclaim that European Muslimsare hiding their actual intention namely, to implement ShariaLaw in Europe until they havegathered enough strength to doso. See Martin Bosma,De schijn-lite van de valse munters:Drees. extreem rechts, de sixties,nuttige idioten, Groep Wilders enik (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij BertBakker, 2010).

6Geert Wilders, columnatwww.pvv.nl, October 30 2007,translated by the author. In thecolumn, Wilders emphasizesthat the model of preemptivedetention is borrowed from theIsraeli model of administrativedetention, which StephanieCooper Blum, attorney for theDepartment of HomelandSecurity, describes this way: In1948, when Israel achieved itsindependence, Israel adoptedthe British Mandates Defense(Emergency) Regulations of1945, which empowered theHigh Commissioner and MilitaryCommander to detain anyperson it deemed necessary formaintaining public order orsecuring public safety or statesecurity. In 1979, Israel reformedits detention laws and enacted anew statute: the EmergencyPowers (Detentions) Law of 1979(EPDL of 1979), which providedmore rights to detainees thanthe prior regulations While theEPDL of 1979 only applies once astate of emergency has beenproclaimed by the IsraeliKnesset (Israels legislature),Israel has been in such a state ofemergency since its inception in1948. Stephanie Cooper Blum,Preventive Detention in the Waron Terror: A Comparison of Howthe United States, Britain, and

Israel Detain and IncapacitateTerrorist Suspects,HomelandSecurity Affairs vol. IV, no. 3(October 2008).

7In 2007, Wilderss Freedom Partyproposed banning the Quran,which he has described as theIslamic Mein Kampf (GeertWilders, Genoeg is genoeg:verbied de Koran,de Volkskrant,August 8, 2007.) In 2010, aprohibition on headscarves inpublic buildings was part of theprogram of the Freedom Party innorthern Holland.

8Ben Hayes, Chris Jones, and EricTpfer, Eurodrones Inc.(Statewatch TransnationalInstitute, 2014), 9.Seehttp://www.tni.org/eurodrones

9Ibid., 8.

10 During the last two yearsFrontex has been a regularparticipant in forums promotingthe securitisation of bordercontrols in Europe, alongsidegroups lobbying in favour ofcorporate interests such as theAerospace and Defence (ASD)association, which promotes theaeronautics industry as astrategic priority for Europe, andthe Security Defence Agenda(SDA), a Brussels based thinktank that provides a platform forthe meeting of EU institutionsand the North Atlantic TreatyOrganisation (NATO) withgovernment officials andrepresentatives of industry,international and specialisedmedia, think-tanks, academiaand NGOs. Apostolis Fotiadis,Drones may track migrants inEU, Al Jazeera, Nov. 11,2010http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2010/11/2010118154029594475.html

11See Trevor PaglensBlank Spotson the Map: The Dark Geographyof the Pentagons Secret World(London: New American Library,2010). The phrase also brings tomind the frustration of Dutchjournalists who attempted toacquire documents providinginsight into the involvement ofthe Netherlands in the Iraq War.When the journalists finallyreceived the documents, theywere censored with white ink,thus making the censorshipitself invisible.

12I think its possible to argue forimportant historical tiesbetween statelessinternationalism and the mannerin which models of politicalemancipation and directdemocracy are being developedwithin other acknowledgedpolitical parties such as Syrizain Greece, the internationalPirate Parties that entered theEU parliament in Iceland andGermany, the rise of new GreenParties throughout the EU, andthe Feminist Initiative in

Sweden.

13Subcomandante Marcos,Tomorrow Begins Today(August 3, 1996), inOur World isOur Weapon: Selected Writings(New York: Seven Stories Press,2001), 118.

14This is quoted, with Lekuespermission, from a personalconversation I had with him inBerlin in summer 2013 about thefuture of the state in progressivepolitics.

15Sortu, Foundational Congress:International Resolution,February 23,2013http://sortu.net/dok/international-resolution.pdf

16Fadile Yldrm , Women andDemocracy: The KurdishQuestion and Beyond, lecture atthe first New World Summit,May 4, Sophiensaele, Berlin.Seehttp://newworldsummit.eu/locations/berlin/

17Ibid.

18Ibid.

19Reflecting on the first Gezi Parkprotests one year after theybroke out in Istanbul,philosopher Michael Hardtfollowed up on the rarelytheorized practices of theKurdish movement in relation tomodern democratizationmovements, commenting thatAn entire generation of activistsacross the globe has oriented itspolitical compass towardChiapas [home base of theZapatistas]. Why has so littleinternational attention beenfocused on the Turkish Kurds?Hardt continues: Key to thecurrent situation, as Iunderstand it, is the fact thatroughly a decade ago the streamof the Kurdish movement thatfollows Abdullah calanradically shifted strategy fromarmed struggle aimed atnational sovereignty toward thedevelopment of democraticautonomy at a community level I can see a vaguecorrespondence between theroles of Marcos and [Abdullah]calan [the imprisoned founderof the Kurdistan Workers Party(PKK)], who is a kind of shadowleader that from prisonperiodically delivers somewhatpoetic pronouncements that areinterpreted by followers. Thesubstantial and important pointof contact, though, is theexperimentation in villagecommunities to practice a newkind of democracy. MichaelHardt, Innovation andObstacles in Istanbul One YearAfter Gezi,euronomade.infohttp://www.euronomade.info/?p=2557

20 Dilar Dirik, The 'other' Kurds

fighting the Islamic State, AlJazeera, September 2, 2014:http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/09/other-kurds-fighting-islamic-stat-2014928753566705.html

21As Abdullah calan has written:When nationalism degeneratedinto secession and practicallyinto a new religion, it becamereactionary. The chauvinistthinking in nationalist terms,with its claims of superiorityover other peoples and nations,became the cause of newhostilities. We now find warsbetween ethnically definednations. As class strugglesbecame fiercer, the capitalistclass increasingly used theseideologies for their ownpurposes, hiding their trueinterests behind the mask of thenation. Abdullah calan,PrisonWritings: The Roots of Civilization(London: Pluto Press, 2007), 200.

22Tim Arango and Eric Schmitt,U.S. Actions in Iraq Fueled Riseof a Rebel,New York Times, Aug.10,2014http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/11/world/middleeast/us-actions-in-iraq-fueled-ri se-of-a-rebel.html?_r=3

23Seehttps://archive.org/details/ClashingOfTheSwords4

24The fact that Kurdish womentake up arms, traditionalsymbols of male power, is inmany ways a radical deviancefrom tradition ... Being a militantis seen as unwomanly,itcrosses social boundaries, itshakes the foundations of thestatus quo. Militant women areaccused of violating the sanctityof the family,because they dareto step outside of the centuries-old prison that has beenassigned to them. Because theyturn the system, the patriarchal,feminicidal order upside down,by becoming actors, instead ofremaining victims. War is seenas a man's issue, started, led,and ended by men. So, it is thewomanpart of womanfighter,which causes thisgeneral discomfort. DilarDirik,The Representation ofKurdish Women Fighters in theMedia, Kurdish Questionhttp://kurdishquestion.com/woman/the-representation-of-kurdish-women-fighters-in-the -media/115-the-representatio n-of-kurdish-women-fighters- in-the-media.html

25Jose Maria Sison, CulturalImperialism in the Philippines,inTowards a Peoples Culture, ed.Jonas Staal (Utrecht: BAK, Basisvoor actuele kunst, Utrecht,2013), 21. Full downloadherehttp://newworldsummit.eu/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/NWA-reader1b.pdf

26I have attempted to deepen theconcept of cultural work as the

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rearticulation of the statethrough art in my introduction tothe collected poetry of ProfessorSison. See Jose Maria Sison,TheGuerilla is Like a Poet (TheHague/Tirana: Uitgeverij, 2013).

27The only proper reporting on thewar between Azawad and Malihas been done by Al Jazeera,whose documentaryOrphans ofthe Desert provides full coverageof the conflict since 2012,including interviews withrepresentatives of the MNLA andwith rival groups such as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.The webpage for thedocumentary includes regularupdates.http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/orphans-of-the-sahara/ For Security Councilresolution 2100 of April 25, 2013 intended to support thepolitical processes in Mali andcarry out a number of security-related tasks seehttp://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/minusma/documents/mali%20_2100_E_.pdf

28Mali at war with Tuaregrebels, Al Jazeera,May 19,2014http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2014/05/mali-at-war-with-tuareg-rebels-201451815152681548.html

29The artists of our time are likemen hypnotized, repeating overand over a dreary formula offutility. And I say: Break this evilspell, young comrade; go out andmeet the new dawning life, takeyour part in the battle, and put itinto new art; do this service for anew public, which you yourselfwill make that your creativegift shall not be content to makeart works, but shall at the sametime make a world; shall makenew souls, moved by a new idealof fellowship, a new impulse oflove, and faith and not merelyhope, but determination. UptonSinclair,Mammonart (San Diego:Simon Publications, 2003), 386.

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