The State Is Your Enemy

Based on the incendiary and inspiring talks James Kelman gave between 1991 and 2018 in support of Kurdish resistance, The State is Your Enemy: Essays on Kurdish Liberation and Black Justice acts as a primer on the historical and current political situation faced by the people of Kurdistan, with explicit links to the culture of imperialism in the English-speaking world, and the violent racism it has engendered. People are repulsed by the actions and behaviour of the Turkish State, Kelman writes, and repulsed also by the cowardice, the collusion and the utter greed of those powers who might act to change the situation. For several decades people have detailed atrocities, massacres, rapes and tortures, even genocide. Petitions are presented. Analyses are performed, statistics and algorithms formulated. Meanwhile the tyrants do what tyrants always do: whatever they like. We cannot make sense of the horror. but we can do our best to end it by offering support and solidarity. We can act.