OK, this one is sending the irony meter into full tilt. Two Spanish volunteers who went to Iraq to fight ISIS at Sinjar (presumably alongside PKK forces) in an "International Brigade" were arrested upon their return to Madrid and face charges of… (wait for it)… membership in a "terrorist organization"! One defendant is named as Paco Arcadio; the other only by his nom de guerre "Marto." El Mundo reports they were released on bail July 6. Anarchist website Insurrection News informs us that they are followers of Reconstrucción Comunista, one of the more militant tendencies to emerge from Spain's fragmented Communist Party. Upon his release from jail, Arcadio made a statement about why they went to fight ISIS: "In this region, the proletarian struggle is advancing. It is the struggle against fascism as represented by the Islamic State. We went to help, as the international brigades came to help us in '36."
That, of course, is a reference to the international volunteers who came to Spain to fight the fascist forces of Gen. Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-9. Which just perversely compounds the irony of charging these guys wth "terrorism" for fighting an officially designated "terrorist organization"—pointing up yet again how elastic and politicized the word "terrorism" has become.
With thousands of jihadist volunteers from Europe and around the world flocking to swell the ranks of ISIS, we should be taking encouragement from heroes like Paco and Marto, not prosecuting them! Reports suggest that their International Brigade was organized by Turkey's Marxist–Leninist Communist Party (MLKP), and indeed there are young Turkish leftists who have similarly gone to Iraq and Syria to fight ISIS alongside Kurdish forces—in repudiation of their own government's bogus propaganda that cynically equates the revolutionary Kurds and ISIS as both "terrorists." (Sic!)
We urge all support for Paco and Marto! And if that gets us put on some "terrorist" watch list… So be it. As we've had many, many, many, many occasions to say: "Orwell would shit."
¡No pasarán!
Anti-fascist flag raised as Kurds advance on ISIS