"Anarkatas say States are formalized hierarchical structures that primarily benefit the ruling class and centralize power to protect the ruling class’ material interests.
The modern state was invented to secure the material interests of Western empire through the notion of modern “sovereignty” in the Treaty of Westphalia. States uphold the economy of Black suffering, commodification, and African dispossession engendered through slavery and colonialism and in so doing, enable the capture, enslavement, and securance of Black people and lands as property.
The Westphalian nation state crystallizes these anti-Black and colonial and capitalist functions of statism by ideologically centering the “human” citizen subject as its main concern, while excluding Black people and rendering us as enslavable under the state. States consolidate the power that allow for our thingification to be possible, and depend on the police to protect and enforce its hierarchies, codifying anti-blackness in law.
Anarkatas maintain that all states are inherently anti-Black structures of governance, ultimately incapable in bringing Black people toward full self-determination and autonomous community formations.
Whatever provision of protection from violence that a state (especially a Westphalian one) may provide is limited in the face of capital and white supremacy. Anarkatas therefore link neither national liberation, autonomous community formation, nor self-determination for Black people to the formation of a State, and believe that all of these can and ultimately should be developed by the community in non-State formations.
Anarkatas are against the existence of all states everywhere due to their inherent anti-blackness and dependency on centralized power, forms of enclosure, and property securance. We see the formation of Black nation states as a dysfunctional, counterrevolutionary means to achieve Black liberation because they pose serious weaknesses and do not release Black/African people from these initial vulnerabilities.
However, we recognize the unifying role of Black nationalism in anti-colonial movements and affirm that the continuing debate around our way forward must be worked out among ourselves without any interference from non-Black people."
Anarkata: A Statement | Anarkata Politics - Afrofuturist Abolitionists of the Americas
