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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] triggering 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 against all forms of authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including the state 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.
The politics of Tunisia takes place within the framework of a unitary semi-presidential representative democratic republic, with a president serving as head of state, prime minister as head of government, a unicameral legislature and a court system influenced by French civil law. Between 1956 and 2011, Tunisia operated as a de facto one-party state, with politics dominated by the secular Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD) under former presidents Habib Bourguiba and then Zine el Abidine Ben Ali. However, in 2011 a national uprising led to the ousting of Ben Ali and the dismantling of the RCD, paving the way for a multi-party democracy. October 2014 saw the first democratic parliamentary elections since the 2011 revolution, resulting in a win by the secularist Nidaa Tounes party with 85 seats in the 217-member assembly.
The Democratic Constitutional Rally or Democratic Constitutional Assembly, also referred to by its French initials RCD, formerly called Neo Destour then Socialist Destourian Party, was the ruling party in Tunisia from independence in 1956 until it was overthrown and dissolved in the Tunisian revolution in 2011.
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 the United States began in the mid-19th century and started to grow in influence as it entered the American labor movements, growing an anarcho-communist current as well as gaining notoriety for violent propaganda of the deed and campaigning for diverse social reforms in the early 20th century. By around the start of the 20th century, the heyday of individualist anarchism had passed and anarcho-communism and other social anarchist currents emerged as the dominant anarchist tendency.
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.
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, also called the Jasmine Revolution and Tunisian Revolution of Dignity, 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 dictator 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.
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.
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.
Anarchism in Algeria mainly concerns the history of the anarchism movement during and after French colonization in Algeria.
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 the Philippines has its roots in the anti-colonial struggle against the Spanish Empire, becoming influential in the Philippine Revolution and the country's early trade unionist movement. After being supplanted by Marxism-Leninism as the leading revolutionary tendency during the mid-20th century, it experienced a resurgence as part of the punk subculture, following the fragmentation of the Communist Party of the Philippines.
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.
