Author Matt Broomfield joins us for a conversation with scholar Azize Aslan to discuss his new book on Rojava's tireless fight against oppression. Together they'll explore how the militant Kurdish movement can help the Western Left relearn its commitment to hope in hopeless times.
Hope Without Hope carries on the long tradition of history, absurdist philosophy, and radical thought that has studied how anti-fascist and anti-colonial movements answer defeat and repression with a revolutionary faith in transformation. Only by understanding this history can we pursue the steadfast work of organizing for long-term revolutionary change in our seemingly hopeless age.
Matt Broomfield is a British journalist, poet, and organizer. From 2018 to 2020, he spent three years living and working in Rojava (North and East Syria), where he cofounded the Rojava Information Centre, the top independent, English-language news source connecting the Kurdish-led autonomous regions with the international press. His writing has appeared in the Independent, New Statesman, VICE, The Nation, and Jacobin, among others.
Dr Azize Aslan is the author of Anticapitalist Economy in Rojava: The Contradictions of Revolution in the Kurdish Struggle. She was awarded a PhD in sociology at the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Mexico and received the Jorge Alonso Chair Award in 2021 for her work on women's economics and cooperativism in Kurdistan.
