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Anarchism in Tunisia has its roots in the works of the philosopher Ibn Khaldun, with the modern anarchist movement being first brought to the country in the late 19th century by Italian immigrants. The contemporary anarchist movement arose as a result of the Arab Spring and the aftermath of the Tunisian Revolution.
The Amazighs of early Tunisia lived in semi-independent farming villages, composed of small, composite, tribal units under a local leader who worked to harmonize its clans. [1] Management of the affairs in such early Amazigh villages was probably shared with a council of elders. [2] With the Phoenician establishment of Carthage and other city-states, Amazigh villages were inspired to join together in order to marshall large-scale armies, which brought forth the centralization of leadership. [3] [4] [5] Tunisia was subsequently ruled as a state by the Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals and Byzantines, before coming under the control of the Islamic Caliphates. From the 10th-century onwards, medieval Tunisia was ruled as a monarchy by a series of Amazigh dynasties, including the Zirids, Almohads and Hafsids.
An early figure associated with the Tunisian libertarian movement was Ibn Khaldun, a 14th-century philosopher from Tunis, [6] particularly due to his book: the Muqaddimah . Having observed the earliest stages in the primitive accumulation of capital, Ibn Khaldun developed a labor theory of value. [7] He also developed a political theory of social cohesion known as Asabiyyah, describing a form of society united by social solidarity, [8] resembling a philosophy of classical republicanism. [9]
In 1574, Tunisia was conquered by the Ottomans and integrated into the empire as a province. A series of revolutions during the late 17th century eventually resulted in the establishment of the autonomous Beylik of Tunis, governed by the beys, who retained control of Tunisia even after the establishment of the French protectorate of Tunisia.
When the Risorgimento established the united Kingdom of Italy, Tunis became a place of refuge for Italians fleeing persecution by the new government, with many Italian anarchists moving to the city. [10] In the late 19th-century, a number of Italian language anarchist periodicals began to be published in Tunis. These included The Worker (1887-1904) and The Human Protest (1896), edited by the Calabrian doctor Nicolò Converti, as well as The Social Vespers (1924) and The Anarchist Vespers (1924), edited by Paolo Schicchi. [11]
Following the Tunisian independence from France, Habib Bourguiba became the first President of Tunisia, constituting a one party state under the Socialist Destourian Party and proclaiming himself president for life. [12] The government briefly experimented with socialism during the 1960s, under the direction of the trade union leader Ahmed Ben Salah, but this was brought to an end in 1969 after a series of peasant revolts against the policies collectivization and nationalization. [13] In 1987, Bourguiba was removed in a coup d'état by Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who assumed the presidency. [14] Ben Ali transformed the ruling party into the Democratic Constitutional Rally and began a series of reforms, increasing economic privatization. [15] Controls on the political opposition were loosened, but in practice, the opposition had little power to affect change.
High unemployment, food inflation, corruption, a lack of political freedoms and poor living conditions led to a wave of demonstrations breaking out in December 2011, catalyzed by the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi. Tunisian anarchists were among the participants, including the Disobedience Movement, which called for occupations, general strikes and other acts of civil disobedience. [16] Trade unions also played an integral role in the protests, calling a wave of strikes against the government. [17] After 28 days of sustained civil resistance, in January 2011, the government of Ben Ali was overthrown and Tunisia began a process of democratisation. [18]
The new political climate created by the revolution allowed for the emergence of the Tunisian anarchist movement into the public sphere. But it also saw the growth of Islamism on the political stage, with the Ennahda Movement winning the 2011 Tunisian Constituent Assembly election and forming a coalition government. [19] [20] The Disobedience Movement subsequently denounced what they described as a "counter-revolution" by the new Islamist-led government and issued a declaration of principles calling for the establishment of libertarian socialism in Tunisia. [21]
On February 6, 2013, the left-wing opposition leader Chokri Belaid was assassinated outside his house by an unknown gunman, [22] trigerring a political crisis and igniting a renewed series of protests against the new government. [23] [24] During the protests, the Ennahda Movement's headquarters were set on fire, in an action claimed by Tunisian anarchists. [25] In March 2013, the Disobedience Movement published an anti-capitalist manifesto, in response to the holding of the World Social Forum in Tunis. [26] At the beginning of July 2013, the Disobedience Movement also issued a call for unity of the revolutionary elements in Tunisia. [27] On July 21, 2013, three affiliates of the anarcha-feminist group Feminist Attack were arrested and beaten by police for painting graffiti on the wall of the Ministry of Women's Affairs. [28]
On July 25, 2013, another left-wing political leader Mohamed Brahmi was assassinated outside his home. [29] [30] The Disobedience Movement responded by calling for the establishment of local and regional councils, with the purpose of coordinating the self-management of community resources, as an alternative to the existing state system. [31]
In August 2013, the feminist activist Amina Tyler announced that she was leaving the Femen organization due to Islamophobia. Instead she linked up with Feminist Attack, participating in one of their actions in Tunis, and published a photo of herself topless while lighting a cigarette using a molotov cocktail, with the words "we don't need your democracy" and a circle-a painted on her torso. [32]
In January 2021, a series of protests started after police aggression against a shepherd in Siliana, [33] which saw rioting spread across Tunisia and the deployment of police and the army in several cities, with the arrest of hundreds of people. [34] Anarchists were among a broad coalition of participants in the protests, which notably did not include Islamic fundamentalists, demanding the abolition of police oppression and the rejection of the International Monetary Fund. One of the groups that participated in the protests was the anarchist and anti-fascist collective "The Wrong Generation", which popularized among protestors the slogan "there's anger under the ground", possibly inspired by Aboul-Qacem Echebbi's poem To the Tyrants of the World. [16]
Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including nation-states, and capitalism. Anarchism advocates for the replacement of the state with stateless societies and voluntary free associations. As a historically left-wing movement, this reading of anarchism is placed on the farthest left of the political spectrum, usually described as the libertarian wing of the socialist movement.
Anarchism in the United Kingdom initially developed within the religious dissent movement that began after the Protestant Reformation. Anarchism was first seen among the radical republican elements of the English Civil War and following the Stuart Restoration grew within the fringes of radical Whiggery. The Whig politician Edmund Burke was the first to expound anarchist ideas, which developed as a tendency that influenced the political philosophy of William Godwin, who became the first modern proponent of anarchism with the release of his 1793 book Enquiry Concerning Political Justice.
Anarchism in Africa refers both to purported anarchic political organisation of some traditional African societies and to modern anarchist movements in Africa.
Anarchism in Mexico, the anarchist movement in Mexico, extends from Plotino Rhodakanaty's organization of peasant workers in the 1890s, to Ricardo Flores Magón's activism prior to the Mexican Revolution, to the punk subcultures of the 1990s.
Ez-Zitouna University is a public ancient medieval university in Tunis, Tunisia. The university originates in the Al-Zaytuna Mosque, founded at the end of the 7th century or in the early 8th century, which developed into a major Islamic centre of learning in North Africa. It consists of the Higher Institute of Theology and the Higher Institute of Islamic Civilisation in Tunis and a research institution, the Center of Islamic Studies, in Kairouan.
Italian anarchism as a movement began primarily from the influence of Mikhail Bakunin, Giuseppe Fanelli, and Errico Malatesta. Rooted in collectivist anarchism and social anarchism, it expanded to include illegalist individualist anarchism, mutualism, anarcho-syndicalism, and especially anarcho-communism. In fact, anarcho-communism first fully formed into its modern strain within the Italian section of the First International. Italian anarchism and anarchists participated in the biennio rosso and survived Italian Fascism. Platformism and insurrectionary anarchism were particularly common in Italian anarchism and continue to influence the movement today. The synthesist Italian Anarchist Federation appeared after the war, and autonomismo and operaismo especially influenced Italian anarchism in the second half of the 20th century.
Contemporary anarchism within the history of anarchism is the period of the anarchist movement continuing from the end of World War II and into the present. Since the last third of the 20th century, anarchists have been involved in anti-globalisation, peace, squatter and student protest movements. Anarchists have participated in armed revolutions such as in those that created the Makhnovshchina and Revolutionary Catalonia, and anarchist political organizations such as the International Workers' Association and the Industrial Workers of the World have existed since the 20th century. Within contemporary anarchism, the anti-capitalism of classical anarchism has remained prominent.
The Tunisian Revolution was an intensive 28-day campaign of civil resistance. It included a series of street demonstrations which took place in Tunisia, and led to the ousting of longtime president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011. It eventually led to a thorough democratization of the country and to free and democratic elections, which had led to people believing it was the only successful movement in the Arab Spring.
The Ennahda Movement, also known as the Renaissance Party or simply known as Ennahda, is a self-defined Islamic democratic political party in Tunisia.
Chokri Belaïd, also transliterated as Shokri Belaïd, was a Tunisian politician and lawyer who was an opposition leader with the left-secular Democratic Patriots' Movement. Belaïd was a vocal critic of the Ben Ali regime prior to the 2011 Tunisian revolution and of the then Islamist-led Tunisian government. On 6 February 2013, he was fatally shot outside his house in El Menzah, close to the Tunisian capital, Tunis. As a result of his assassination, Tunisian Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali announced his plan to dissolve the existing national government and to form a temporary "national unity" government.
The Popular Front for the Realization of the Objectives of the Revolution, abbreviated as the Popular Front (ej-Jabha), is a leftist political and electoral alliance in Tunisia, made up of nine political parties and numerous independents.
Anarchism in Romania developed in the 1880s within the larger Romanian socialist movement and it had a small following throughout all the existence of the Kingdom of Romania. Social anarchism was initially propagated by the Revista Ideei during the time of the Old Kingdom, but following the rise of Bolshevism, socialist tendencies were sidelined in favor of individualism and vegetarianism, which were the predominant anarchist tendencies in Romania during the 1920s and 1930s.
Mohamed Brahmi was a Tunisian politician. Brahmi was the founder and former leader of the People's Movement, which, under his leadership, won two seats in the constituent election in 2011.
A political crisis evolved in Tunisia following the assassination of leftist leader Mohamed Brahmi in late July 2013, during which the country's mainly secular opposition organized several protests against the ruling Troika alliance that was dominated by Rashid al-Ghannushi's Islamist Ennahda Movement. The events came as part of the aftermath of the Tunisian Revolution which ousted the country's longtime president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, followed by a general election which saw Ennahda win a plurality alongside Moncef Marzouki's allied Congress for the Republic (CPR). The crisis gradually subsided when Prime Minister Ali Laarayedh resigned and a new constitution was adopted in January 2014.
Seifallah Ben Omar Ben Mohamed Ben Hassine, known as Abu Ayyad al-Tunisi, was a Tunisian Islamic militant and the founder and leader of Ansar al-Sharia (Tunisia).
Socialism in Tunisia or Tunisian socialism is a political philosophy that is shared by various political parties of the country. It has played a role in the country's history from the time of the Tunisian independence movement against France up through the Tunisian Revolution to the present day.
Anarchism in Indonesia has its roots in the anti-colonial struggle against the Dutch Empire. It became an organized movement at the behest of Chinese anarchist immigrants, who played a key part in the development of the workers' movement in the country. The anarchist movement was suppressed, first by the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies, then by the successive regimes of Sukarno and Suharto, before finally re-emerging in the 1990s.
Anarchism in Hungary emerged from the social democratic movement in the late 19th century, coming to play a prominent role in the anti-militarist movement during World War I and in the subsequent revolution that culminated in the Hungarian Soviet Republic. The anarchist movement was then repressed by the Horthy regime, before re-emerging as part of the anti-fascist resistance movement during World War II. This second wave of anarchism was also repressed, this time by the newly established communist regime. Anarchist ideas were briefly expressed during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 but remained largely suppressed until the fall of socialism, which gave way to a third wave of anarchism in Hungary.
Anarchism in Morocco has its roots in the federalism practiced by Amazigh communities in pre-colonial Morocco. During the Spanish Civil War, Moroccan nationalists formed connections with Spanish anarchists in an attempt to ignite a war of national liberation against Spanish colonialism, but this effort was not successful. Despite the brief establishment of an anarchist movement in post-war Morocco, the movement was suppressed by the newly independent government, before finally reemerging in the 21st century.
Anarchism in Iran has its roots in a number of dissident religious philosophies, as well as in the development of anti-authoritarian poetry throughout the rule of various imperial dynasties over the country. In the modern era, anarchism came to Iran during the late 19th century and rose to prominence in the wake of the Constitutional Revolution, with anarchists becoming leading members of the Jungle Movement that established the Persian Socialist Soviet Republic in Gilan.
