From Anton de Kom to Tan Malaka, from the LOSON to the Partai Komunis Indonesia, across the Global South, communists have risen up against 20th-century colonialism. Adapting the lessons of Marxist political thought to their own context, ‘slightly stretched’, in the words of Frantz Fanon, they created their own decolonial communist traditions. Traditions that can be placed in an older, larger history of resistance against colonialism and slavery. Yet these links are seldom mentioned today. After WW2, communists in the Global South were suppressed by a global campaign, led by the United States, that killed millions. During this evening, we will resurrect the lessons that these campaigns tried to bury. Are these lessons still relevant for decolonial struggles today? Join us for a talk with a wide variety of researchers and activists who will shed light on decolonial Marxism.
About the speakers
Artien Utrecht came to the Netherlands from Indonesia when she was twenty years old. She worked for 24 years on rights-related issues with the development organisation Hivos. She also took part in the Organizing Committee of the International People’s Tribunal 1965 (IPT1965 or the Tribunal) held in The Hague in 2015, which dealt with the anti-communist massacres of the Western-backed Suharto dictatorship. She currently writes political and literary essays and is co-founder of Watch65, a Netherlands-based association that advocates for the recommendations of the Tribunal.
Serda Nehirci is a Kurdish journalist, translator and political activist. Since 2005, she has been active in various organisations such as the Federation of Workers from Turkey in the Netherlands (HTIF), Radical Solidarity and Democratic Force Unity. She is currently organising and producing the series of meetings True Counterpower at the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven.
Phaedra Haringsma is a freelance journalist and photographer from Amsterdam. A previous nominee of the Rijksmuseum Junior Fellowship for her debut documentary on institutional racism, she is interested in Atlantic history and contemporary colonial power dynamics. She holds an MSc in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her dissertation examined the revolutionary contributions of the Black Marxists Anton de Kom and Otto and Hermina Huiswoud to international political thought. Currently, Phaedra is the guest correspondent for contemporary colonialism at the Dutch journalistic platform De Correspondent. She also works as a programmer for Decolonial Dialogues@Humanities.
