1 Introduction
This text is a critique and reflection on the former Al-Azhar University Liberated Zone in Nijmegen, a Palestine solidarity encampment at Radboud University. The encampment had three demands: Condemn the genocide in Gaza, cut ties with Israeli universities and support Palestinian students and universities. I am writing this because, while a lot of things went right, a lot of things also went wrong or could have gone much better. This text will focus on the structures, strategy, tactics and (lack of) class position and class analysis of the encampment. The text is in English instead of cultuursocialisme.nl‘s usual Dutch, because the Palestine movement in the Netherlands contains a lot of people who do not speak Dutch, and I believe it is important they have the chance to read, (dis)agree with and react to this text.
2 Strategy and tactics
2.1 The evolutionary strategy
I want to begin by explaining the strategy of the encampment—or at least how I experienced it, since I was not part of the core group that decided it. This is not an impartial account, partly because I do not believe any account is unbiased, and partly because I wish to express my opinion without watering it down.
A big part of the strategy throughout was the idea of an escalation ladder. This concept stems from the fact that institutions such as universities, national governments, and society as a whole draw red lines that you supposedly “are not allowed to cross”, sometimes explicitly, but more often implicitly. The escalation ladder provides a framework for escalating protests beyond this line without inviting repression. This is done by approaching the line, and once you have almost reached it, very carefully and very slowly crossing it. History has shown that this tactic works when executed correctly. Examples are the civil rights movement and the Black Panther Party in the United States, which both crossed multiple red lines without being repressed for doing so.
The core organisers of the encampment expected to be repressed immediately, with the camp evicted. The best-case scenario that was envisioned by the organisers, before the camp had even started, was that the camp would be there for only a single night. This meant that the ‘long-term’ strategy of the camp was thrown off entirely, and in the days following the establishment of the camp, the part of the strategy around the camp had to be decided and was constantly being changed (the reasons for this fluidity I will discuss in chapter 3). This had one clear effect: There was no clear strategy to follow. Apart from this general strategy, there were separate groups in the camp coalition (e.g. the ‘Original Core’, ROOD, and one or multiple groups of anarchists) that followed their own strategies, both internally (to influence the camp’s broader strategy) and (usually later) externally.
In short, the strategy of an escalation ladder is in my view a correct one. Alongside this strategy, we must follow strict message (press) and action discipline, so as not to undermine the democratically decided strategy (more on this in chapters 2.2 and 3), without of course jeopardising diversity in thought and freedom of discussion, which are prerequisites to a successful movement. It is important that strategy is decided democratically and followed centrally to not endanger the movement, its goals and the people in the movement.
2.2 The tactics and their pitfalls
Alongside strategy, you always have tactics—the material expressions of the theoretical strategy. Tactics are less broad than the strategy, but no less important. In this subchapter, I will outline the different tactics that were and weren’t employed, and what I think went wrong. I will also touch on what I think is a strong tactic, which we unfortunately didn’t employ.
At the beginning of the camp, the tactics were geared towards portraying the encampment and movement as peaceful, such that any big reaction from the university would (rightly) be seen as extreme repression of a peaceful protest movement. I remember that during one of the early days, organisers caught wind of pro-Palestinian vandalism in toilets near the camp. This caused them to ask a group of people (including me) to search all toilets in buildings near the camp for vandalism and to clean it up if we found any. Luckily, we didn’t find any and the vandalism that was found was quickly cleaned up. I believe this reaction to be a good thing; we had only had an encampment for a short amount of time and it was necessary not to overstep on our escalation ladder, since otherwise, the strategy would have not been worth anything.
Another part of the peaceful strategy was the big art projects that were undertaken. Among these are the ‘row of shoes’ and the banners that were crafted for display around the camps and during marches. These projects are an accessible way for people to approach activism and the encampment. Art projects like these are extremely good tactically since the repression of them is almost impossible. If an institution does (attempt to) repress art, it will always be viewed as morally ‘wrong’ by the broader public. This is a positive outcome for activists. If an institution does not repress the art, the art will continue to be a tool to recruit new activists and activate inactive ones, thereby strengthening the movement. In the same vein as art, lectures are also important. Knowledge and information are powerful tools in the hands of anyone and, more importantly, without education about the topic you are protesting, strategies, tactics, etc. any movement will fail. Education is always the basis of an organisation, and organisation is always the basis of a potentially successful movement.
Historically, however, the most successful tactic in forcing institutions to meet a movement’s demands is occupation. Obviously, the encampment was already an occupation, but we accompanied this by sometimes temporarily or indefinitely occupying classrooms, buildings and other areas of the university. Examples are the lunchtime occupation of the Maria Montessori cafeteria, the temporary occupation of CC1 and the indefinite occupation of the Erasmus building. A different occupation, the occupation of the Thomas van Aquino building, would mean the death of the encampment. This occupation was not an occupation in any real sense of the word, even if it was intended to be by most. Many protesters moved in with the hope of establishing an indefinite, durable occupation (more on these later), but instead, the building was covered in paint which later proved almost impossible to remove. This was caused by anger and resentment toward the university for having ignored us for three weeks, all the while people were being killed in Gaza with support from them. I do not blame the perpetrators of this vandalism one bit, but I do think it was tactically the wrong choice. This tactical mistake was caused by, apart from the aforementioned anger, the earlier acceptance of autonomous actions and vandalism. The General Assembly of the encampment had decided to remove the agreement for no vandalism from the Action Consensus, a move I do not disagree with. The GA also decided, in addition to this, to accept autonomous actions, these being protest actions that are planned and executed entirely without the GA’s oversight. This is on its own not necessarily a problem, it’s fine for example to picket outside the office of the University Executive Board without asking the GA. It was, unfortunately, way too broad of an acceptance. I believe this acceptance of autonomous action should have been confined to small or agitational limits.
The historically successful version of occupations is what I and others like to call ‘Durable Occupations’. The encampment itself was already a form of durable occupation, although in a slightly lighter form, since it acted as a hub for art and knowledge, while at the same time exerting pressure on the university. This is exactly what durable occupations are, hubs for art and lectures, which present little threat on their own, are now weaponised to prevent the university from utilising certain buildings. That is what should have happened in TvA. The movement should have taken control of TvA like we did, but instead of covering everything in paint (some paint is, in my opinion, fine, but it is unnecessary and a bad look to cover every surface in paint), we should have made it a hub for hosting art, lectures, homework sessions, tutoring, and everything else that might be useful. We, the occupiers, would be deciding who could come in, but everyone would be free to come and go as they pleased. These kinds of occupations are the most successful historically, and that is because they serve the purpose of being a so-called ‘third space’ for education, agitation and organising, while also depriving the university of a large productive area. The short-lived Erasmus building occupation was closer to this ideal than TvA was, but it was less accessible and not actually geared towards this end.
In conclusion, the tactics of the encampment were good in the beginning, but they had many flaws which caused the eviction of the encampment. This was, in my experience, mostly the result of the encouragement of autonomous actions which the only semi-democratic organ of the movement had no oversight over. The occupation of the TvA building could have resulted in a bustling hub for activism, education, organising, agitation and art, but due to anger born out of impotence and tactical mistakes, it instead resulted in the total eviction of the camp and the retreat of the movement into a small core group. We must all learn from this experience to build a stronger movement in the future.
3 Activist ‘Democracy’
3.1 Spontaneity, structurelessness and accountability
You may be wondering, how did it go like this? Were there no structures to decide on tactics? Was there no discipline for people to follow? I have broadly answered, or otherwise implied the answer, to these questions already, but in this subchapter, I will explain in further detail how this occurred and how the structures of the encampment worked, in theory and practice.
Let us examine the structures that existed before the encampment first. I was not a member of these structures and I did not participate in their function, so this is secondhand information. About one and a half years ago Nijmegen for Palestine was formed. Nijmegen for Palestine is an action collective that also organised the sit-ins at the Nijmegen Central train station. This organisation is what the encampment grew out of. The organisation of the encampment itself was a coalition of Nijmegen for Palestine, ROOD and anarchist groups, which regularly met to discuss the future strategy and structures of the encampment.
The pre-encampment organisation, as I have already mentioned, did not anticipate it to be as successful as it was (i.e. last as long). What was expected to last for 2-3 days in the absolute best case scenario, in the end, lasted 3 weeks. This meant that the camp needed a decision-making organ, and one of the original organisers came up with the General Assembly. The General Assembly was based on consensus democracy, which meant that instead of voting on things like strategy and tactics, everyone would attempt to find common ground. This sounds very good in theory but in practice, there are multiple problems with this.
Problem number one: It makes the meetings take incredibly long since every little detail is being talked about for ages due to the need for consensus. This also caused very little to be decided, since nobody wanted to be in a GA the whole day. As a result, GAs became lightly exclusive events, since not that many people had the time to attend every single one—they were held daily—and only the most active people could attend.
Problem number two: Contrary to its name, consensus democracy is not actually democratic. While the democratic structures everyone is used to, use voting, consensus democracy uses a system of hand movements—shaking your hands around is considered agreeing, while making a cross with your arms is considered heavily disagreeing. In theory, this is fine, just look around at how many people are agreeing and disagreeing and find a consensus like that. However, this causes the opinions of popular people—public figures of the movement for example—to weigh stronger than the opinions of others. If one of the popular people makes a cross or disagrees with an idea, that idea is not going to happen, however, if a ‘normal’ activist were to do the same, they can safely be ignored. This causes a very authoritarian structure, exacerbated by the fact that it is informally authoritarian. If you were to bring this problem up at the GA, you would most likely be ignored at best and laughed out at worst.
Apart from these two problems, there was a problem with the general structure of the GA, but before I can get to that point I have to explain a segment of the division of labour in the encampment. The activists in the camp are subdivided into two groups: low-risk activists and high-risk activists. Simplified, low-risk activists are those who are okay with doing illegal actions but do not want to get arrested and also do not do illegal actions that have a high risk of arrest or carry large sentences. High-risk activists are those who stay behind to get arrested despite the order to evict, and they participate in the aforementioned high-risk actions. Because the high-risk activists, as the name suggests, have more risks associated with what they do, there was a tendency among many to disregard the decisions of the GA and argue that they should have the final say on important things. After all, they would be the ones getting arrested. Due to the high-risk group disregarding the decisions and arguing their opinion should matter more, there came to exist a mistrust between some of the high-risk group and the rest of the camp. This is always undesirable, but it teaches us that vague structures and structurelessness in general are to be avoided. More importantly, though, every activist in the camp is a puppet of the camp, and should not be able to circumvent the will of the majority.
From this we can conclude that the structures of the encampment not only lead to the eviction of said encampment with the retreat of the movement as a result, but also that these structures are undemocratic, authoritarian and lead to clique-forming. In the future, we must think about permanent, democratic, accountable, durable structures to not repeat these mistakes and build a lasting movement.
4 The class position
In Revolutionary Strategy Mike Macnair argues that movements that seek to achieve a goal without taking a class position, will inevitably splinter along various lines (class, ethnicity, age, politics, etc.). The broader Palestine movement, as well as specifically the Palestine movement in Nijmegen, is already showing these cracks. The Palestine movement does not yet take an explicit class position, and until it does so it will continue to crack and eventually splinter. The movement in Nijmegen specifically does, however, take an implicit class position. This way it has stayed together even after the eviction of the camp. The implicit class position is characterised by explicit hostility towards the (bourgeois) state. While encampments at other locations attempted to negotiate with the mayor and other state representatives, the movement in Nijmegen knows the state is our enemy. The explicit class position the movement must take is the position of the proletariat, since the liberation of Palestine is inherently linked to the international worker’s movement. Israel oppresses the Palestinians with the support of Western capital. Western capital supports the oppression because they profit from it. The fight against the oppression of Palestinians is thus always the fight against Western, and in our case specifically Dutch, capital. The liberation of all Palestine and all Palestinians will be a giant blow to western capital, and as such western capital is opposed to this liberation and throws its full weight behind the Zionist entity’s occupation and war of extermination. By failing to take this class position explicitly, the Palestine movement as a whole, and specifically the part of it that accepts the class position, risks collapse. The reason for this is twofold: a) taking this position as a movement inevitably results in a split. Petty bourgeois and reactionary elements within the movement will reject the class position, splitting the movement in two. Why do so then? First, because the liberation of Palestine is impossible without the liberation of the proletariat as a whole, and vice-versa, as explained above. Second, because b) the longer this class position is not adopted, the longer we wait, the larger the share of the movement that will split becomes. The petty bourgeois and reactionary wing of the movement can and would, if it was large enough after such a split, marginalise and make irrelevant the proletarian wing. It is thus of the utmost importance that the reactionary wing is too small to pose a threat after such a split. This means that we must take the class position as soon as possible, that being now. The current situation, where the proletarian wing masks its criticism of the reactionary wing, as well as its class position, as to not split the movement, is a popular front avant la lettre. History has shown us that the popular front strategy does not work1. The reactionary wing will continue to grow and will inevitably overshadow the proletarian wing, since the proletarian wing does not appear to be proletarian, as it masks and hides its class position. It prevents the worker’s movement of anchoring itself into the movement and make permanent the organisation of activists within the Palestine movement that are not class conscious.
5 Conclusion: Class consciousness, Centralist democracy and unity in action
The first thing we must achieve within the Palestine movement is to make it class conscious. The necessity and reason for this is explained in chapter 4. Without this, the movement will come to appear reactionary or will collapse wholesale. This is obviously undesirable.
Now, before we finally examine what structures and tactics would be preferable to those that existed it is necessary to summarise the conclusions from the previous chapters about how these structures and tactics came to be. The structures were born from the unexpected durability of the encampment and were established spontaneously. This caused the structures to be vague, dubious and authoritarian, even if they had a thin veneer of democracy. These structures led to the tactical mistakes which we have already discussed.
Now the actual question: How should the structures have been established? As mentioned there was discussion between the different groups of the camp coalition before the camp was established about strategy and structure. This is when these structures should have been decided. These structures would have held, since if the core organising group agrees on a certain structure, the moment the camp is established anyone that wishes to participate must take part in these already existing structures. This is also how the structures that existed kept existing.
That was the ‘how’-question, but we still need to discuss the ‘what’-question. What structures should have been established? The answer to this is pretty simple. It should have been democratic and centralist. The highest organ, in this case, the General Assembly—for clarity, I will continue to use this name—would have been based on votes, removing the need for endless discussion in pursuit of consensus. This would also have made every opinion count equally instead of those that are popular having more sway. Of course, discussion would still have taken place. The powers of the GA would be expanded to include electing an executive leadership that could act and decide while the GA was not in session, with members also being subject to recall by the GA. This executive leadership would in the beginning be made up of the pre-encampment organisers. An important aspect of these structures is discipline. As the highest decision-making organ of the encampment, everyone inside the encampment would be subject to its decisions. This also means that the high-risk group would be subject to the will of the majority, alongside everyone else. Any other specific details, like who plans and decides the tactics for specific actions are unnecessary to mention here since it would be the GA that decides that.
Of course, these democratic structures would have necessitated a high degree of trust within one another. This could be a challenge, especially due to the ideological variety within the camp. I think this could be overcome, however, by simply working together. Due to the encampment I, a member of ROOD, have come to see many different organisations (and non-organisations), such as the CJB, SP and anarchist groups in a more comradely way. I also think democratic structures will help us bridge the gap between these groups more easily, overcome our differences and fight for our demands: Cut the ties, boycott and divest!
– Róise Uí Mhartain
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Footnotes:
- See also: Revolutionary Strategy by Mike Macnair ↩︎
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