Maybe it sounds cliche because it is. Did you watch the video? Have you even read Bookchin? Rojava seems like someone created a society from scratch and organized the entire thing according to all of these idealist principles.
What doesn't mean anything? I felt like it was all addressed in detail in the video.
Women's rights- Women are fully at the table in Rojava. Every commune must be led by 1 man and 1 woman. HPC (substitute for police) are trained in feminism. They have women's commissions that handle peacemaking in regards to
patriarchy or patriarchal violence. Women must be 40% involved in any peacemaking decision. Women are 70% involved in the economy. I could go on and on.
Libertarianism-There is no state and all decision-making happens from the bottom up. Democratic con-federalism actually means a
stateless democracy. We are not talking about the American definition of libertarianism (even though they could live outside of a commune freely in Rojava), we are talking about the absence of state authority.
Socialism-T Everything is done on a local level instead of national level like socialists states. Communes (small neighborhoods) function more like families by buying most of their materials in bulk and taking care of each other. Everyone pays into a community fund and can use it if they get sick, have death in the family or misfortune (local social security/safety net). They heavily incentivize cooperatives with a goal of achieving full worker ownership. One type of
alienation leftists never talk about is alienation of social funds. People feel like tax money is going to some invisible lazy person on the other side of the country but in this system, people not only see how their work is benefiting the commune, they see how the fund helps their commune because its all done locally.
Multiculturalism- Rojava consists of groups of people from multiple religions and ethnic groups (Assyrians, Armenians, Kurds, Arabs, sunni, shia, yizidi, christians). Its useful to mention because they coexist peacefully in the middle of a civil war in a part of the world infamous for sectarian violence. Its also noteworthy because it goes against the myth that a society where people look out for one another is only possible through homogeny.
The link is that all of these things are achieved in Rojava's society.
You're making left ideologies seem so stupid and ridiculous, that's a real shame. People like you are the reason no one even tries to discuss left ideologies...
I agree with you here but what do you recommend I say instead of what I said? I actually brought this up in my local socialist group while we were on a service project last week. We talk to each other and our ideas resonate within an echo chamber of people already inclined to agree with us but everyone else thinks we are nuts. This is really the biggest challenge of our movement. The ideas appeal to people but we can't explain them in a way that doesn't come off as crazy. We can't even grow. Even the moon truthers and flat earthers have more traction than we do.
I'd love to actually see real criticism instead of just name-calling. "People like me" are never going to learn what is turning you off if you just tell us you hate us. We mostly see that as the response to rejecting capitalism but I try to assume everyone is honest because I genuinely want to know the source of the hatred. We don't get the chance to have debate because we live in echo chambers within the US. We either avoid politics or talk about it within echo chambers which isn't healthy. Thats why I am here.
To be honest, I've never had a person to the right of me make it past "this made millions of people starve" or "so who are you taking money from?" type arguments and the only other criticism I've seen was from the left with people saying my ideology of smooth transition is too soft and capitalists MUST be killed or they will crush any movement.
