NEWS CENTER – “The dead died for a great idea.” Two years have passed since our friend and comrade, our comrade Dilsoz Bahar, became immortal in the fight against the so-called “Islamic State” gangs. Kevin Jochim (his civil name) was 21 years old when he lost his life in combat. At the age of 19, he joined the Kurdish freedom movement as a professional revolutionary and left his civilian life behind once and for all. Comrade Dilsoz is today an example of the heroic attitude of countless young fighters who voluntarily sacrificed their lives for the victory of the revolution.
The reality of martyrdom is as old as the struggle against oppression and injustice itself. From the first day when patriarchy and the State were born in a terrible way, casting their dark and frightening shadows over humanity, society was divided into opposing classes and a whole apparatus of terror was created, whose sole aim is repression and violence. There have always been people who did not hesitate to face death or torture and courageously stand up to their oppressors.
The history of social struggles against statist civilization is a history of heroism and spirit of resistance, a history of struggle and the greatest sacrifices.
Socialism, as the sum of all social resistance, from the woman who resisted the establishment of patriarchal slavery, through Spartacus and the slave revolts, to the labor and national liberation struggles of the 19th and 20th centuries, is as old as human history itself. Just as the official historiography of the dominant civilization resembles a sequence of glorious battles and brilliant rulers, the unwritten history of the oppressed and disenfranchised, the history of democratic civilization, is woven together like a chain. It has always been the fallen, those who sacrificed their lives for the cause, who have written this history with their blood. Their lives, their path, their struggle and their sacrifice have drawn the line in the struggle for the liberation of mankind for 5,000 years.
The martyrs are the links in this chain that is our history.
They became a beacon of light in the dark, our guides through impenetrable thickets, our suns that broke through even the thickest fog. Their example gives us strength and courage daily to face the exploiters, to face our fears and to grow beyond ourselves.
Anyone who wants to stand up against violence, free themselves from coercion and permanently end exploitation has always had to take up arms. The ruling class has never voluntarily relinquished its power. They always resisted until the bitter end and did not hesitate to slaughter the rebellious people in bloody massacres. Our enemy knows no scruples and no one can expect an honorable and fair fight. The ruling class has no morals or conscience. Blood has always been visible on their hands, and they have fed on the death and suffering of innocents for millennia. We cannot expect mercy from them. They will not spare us, and therefore we must defend ourselves. They will not allow their own downfall to be arranged undisturbed. When your government begins to falter, the constitution and freedom of opinion end, so there is no martial law or human rights conventions, only violence and terror. Armed struggle, the people’s revolutionary war, which the oppressed defend as the supreme means of legitimate self-defense against the ruling class’ war, is the only option for liberation when there are no more compromises.
Armed struggle is a necessity of the revolutionary struggle which must be constantly prepared. The establishment of armed forces for the self-defense of the people is an activity that must not be neglected in any revolutionary process. We are not warmongers by any means. We are fed up with death and violence, fed up with massacres and mass murders. We want to eliminate violence from the world once and for all, but we need to be willing to take up arms one last time to do that.
We did not choose war as an option and of our own free will; war is imposed on us by the ruling class. But, if necessary, we will not hesitate to participate in it because the alternative, which can never be a choice for us, is submission. Anyone who wants to face them must be willing to fight and not hesitate to put their own head on the line. Death has always been the silent companion of every revolutionary. The communist and German revolutionary of the 1919 Munich Soviet Republic, Eugen Leviné, shortly before his death sentence, in his defense speech before the court, made the following statement “We communists are all dead on vacation”. He expressed a truth that probably applies to the fate of all revolutionaries, regardless of which current they may adhere to. How many untold millions of people lost their lives over the centuries on the gallows, on the firing squad and in combat, or in the dungeon under torture, no one can say today. It is only important that we do not fall into grief and depression, that we recognize that his sacrifice was not in vain, but a necessary step on the path to liberation.
Life is the most valuable thing a person has, as it is only given to us once. The art is to understand how to use it correctly, to live properly and also to have a true death.
Falling for the cause of humanity, fighting to lift the burden of 5,000 years from humanity’s shoulders and give tomorrow’s generations a free future is the most beautiful, highest, noblest and most sacred thing a person can achieve in life. It is clear that death is by no means desirable, and a revolutionary is distinguished, above all, by offering constant and resolute resistance against anything that brings death. However, the time will come when the path will end even for yourself. It is essential to walk this path with the same courage and determination, even with the unknown nothingness in mind, until the last step. We fight for freedom, truth and beauty in this world. We fight for life, but not just for ours. The willingness to accept our own departure sometimes, even consciously, characterizes a true revolutionary attitude. Our very lives fade before the immeasurable magnitude of our holy cause. Humanity’s liberation weighs more than all our lives, and it is a real shame that we don’t have more to give. That’s the truth.
It can be hard to imagine what drives a person to give up on their own life, but the answer is as simple as it is straightforward.
When a person realizes that we have nothing to lose in this system except our chains, that we have a world to gain and that this false life cannot give us anything, he is no longer afraid. The modern capitalist system has brought humanity to the brink of destruction today. The system’s crisis has reached its final character today. This is not to say that the system itself will collapse, the system will not disappear by itself. The revolution is a matter of the decisions we make. The revolution must be made. The system will not collapse, but humanity will if we don’t dare to make the change today. Our success today is the only option we have. Nothing else is up for debate. We entered a struggle for liberation that reached the level of World War III. This struggle will lead us to liberation or total enslavement. Only we make the decision today, no one else. Kevin, like many thousands of other young people, recognized this reality. What set him apart was the fact that he took the necessary consequences of this, left his home in Germany and turned to the liberated areas of the Middle East.
In Germany, Kevin was politically active from his youth. What drove him in his work was his strong sense of justice and his moral conviction to do what was right. He became involved in anti-fascist youth groups and always took a leadership role in his work. He later learned about scientific socialism and immersed himself in the writings and analyzes of Marx and Lenin. For the first time, he acquired a systematic ideological view of the world, found a direction and had an idea of what it might mean to make a real revolution. However, he couldn’t find hope and perspective. He often spoke that he doubted there could be a revolutionary perspective in Germany – that was in 2012. Above all, the contradictions of the Marxist-Leninist paradigm made him think. The fact that the Soviet Union, in its more than 70 years of existence, had failed to develop an alternative to statist civilization forced him to rethink. When he first heard about the revolution in northern Syria in the summer of 2012, he was immediately excited. He was driven by the hope that a different world might be possible after all. Since 1989, the system of capitalist modernity has consistently worked to rob people of hope for change. Capitalism proclaimed its own inevitability with the “end of history” and tried to set its dominance over the world in stone. The revolutionary awakening in Kurdistan comes at a time when socialism has already been declared completely failed and dead, as a red star of hope for all those who have not stopped seeking freedom. Kevin was full of hope again. Determined and believing in a free tomorrow, he set out for the free mountains of Kurdistan.
He did not embark on his journey in search of personal gain or self-fulfillment. His sole motivation was his socialist and internationalist ideals, which he had internalized with unparalleled purity.
For Kevin, it was clear that a revolutionary must be ready to fight wherever the revolution requires. Kevin followed the call of history and fell a martyr. But he never died. Tens, hundreds of young people from Germany and around the world have followed his call to this day and continue on his path. Kevin joined the eternal caravan of immortals, becoming an inseparable part of our history. With his life, his actions and his martyrdom, he wove the bond of brotherhood that connects all the peoples of the world even more closely and gave new sanctity and beauty to the great cause of internationalism.
The great hero of revolutionary youth, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, once expressed his own understanding of lived internationalism as follows:
“Imperialism must be attacked wherever it is. It must be made to feel like a hunted animal wherever it is. Its morale will continue to decline. It will become even more bestial, but there are increasing signs of its weakness. Then a true proletarian internationalism will arise: with international proletarian armies, fighting under the banner of a holy cause, the redemption of humanity. Dying under the flags of Vietnam, Venezuela, Guatemala, Laos, Guinea, Colombia, Bolivia, Brazil – to name but the current theaters of armed conflict – must be equally honorable and desirable for an American, an Asian, an African and even a European. to apply in the struggle for the liberation of their own homeland. And every people that frees itself is a stage won in the battle for the liberation of its own people. This is the time to put aside our differences and put everything in the service of the struggle.”
Kevin made this true internationalism his own line and defended it to the end. His name will forever be associated with the history of our peoples. Kevin breathed new life into the line of Spanish combatants from 1936, through Tamara Bunke and Che Guevara, Haki Karer and Kemal Pir, to Andrea Wolf and Ivana Hoffmann, and became a true representative of revolutionary internationalism. The revolutionary socialist youth of the world, and particularly of Germany, must organize themselves today in the spirit of Ivana, Kevin and Anton and assume their responsibility. In 1936, thousands of people went to Spain to defend the revolution against the fascist hordes, and with the same conscience, the revolutionary youth of Germany today must look to our liberated areas in the Middle East and play their part in defending that revolution. The last unspoken words of our dead must become our oath. Their sacrifice is our duty. Our biggest task is to do them justice and bring their hopes and dreams to life today.
In the well-known freedom song Warszawianka, the last stanza says
“The dead of the great idea are dead. Millions will be holy.”
The gaps they left in our ranks will not remain empty. Already tomorrow, we will see new companions at our side. Our cause will be invincible as long as we do not waver and keep the dead in honorable memory through our resistance. The dead may be absent from our ranks today, but they will be even more missed in our celebration of victory. Our victory is certain, as long as we accept no other alternative. So Kevin’s struggle will not have been in vain. Thousands of people will be like Dilsoz, and the enemy will have to accept that, while they may destroy revolutionaries, their ideas are indelible. “Democratic Confederalism has given me new hope,” Sehid Dilsoz said in a video. We will make sure your hopes are not dashed. We will continue your fight, take on your thoughts and become your voice.
Let us honor the memory of our comrades through our actions.
Long live revolutionary internationalism and the fraternity of peoples! Nothing is in vain. Nobody will be forgotten.
Comrade Dilsoz Bahar and all the dead of the world revolution are immortal!
