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Germany ‘tracks down 50 suspected Auschwitz guards’

6 Apr
A sign that reads "Stop" placed near a barb wire is seen at the concentration camp during a ceremony marking the 68th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz by Soviet troops and to remember the victims of the Holocaust, in Auschwitz Birkenau.(Reuters / Peter Andrews)

A sign that reads “Stop” placed near a barb wire is seen at the concentration camp during a ceremony marking the 68th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz by Soviet troops and to remember the victims of the Holocaust, in Auschwitz Birkenau.(Reuters / Peter Andrews)

Fifty alleged former Auschwitz guards may face prison terms in Germany, sixty-eight years after the end of World War II, local media have reported.

The former Auschwitz guards, who’ve never faced prosecution for their posts, were tracked down by the Central Office for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes in Ludwigsburg.

The suspects may be charged with accessory to murder. The investigators possess the names and location details of the suspects, men in their 90s, who originate from all over Germany, the chief prosecutor Kurt Schrimm confirmed to WAZ-Mediengruppe on Friday.

He did not specify where the suspects are, but said some possibly moved to South America with the help of the Catholic Church. The federal law enforcement body is set to launch a preliminary investigation into the issue in the coming weeks.

The sentencing in 2011 of John Demjanjuk, a former guard at Sobibor concentration camp, set a precedent that allows authorities to bring proceedings against former concentration camp guards, even if the investigators cannot prove their direct involvement in the crime due to lack of witnesses, Schrimm told Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung.

“From now on, any activity in a concentration camp is enough to stand trial for complicity in murder,” the chief prosecutor said.

Kurt Schrimm.(Reuters / Alex Grimm)

Kurt Schrimm.(Reuters / Alex Grimm)

Demjanjuk, a native of Ukraine, lived in the United States after the war, but was stripped of citizenship and deported to Germany, where he was convicted of accessory to murder of about 28,000 people who died at Sobibor concentration camp based in occupied Poland. He was sentenced to 5 years in prison in May 2011.

The Munich Court then held that, although Demjanjuk cannot be imputed to any specific criminal acts, he “was part of the machine of destruction,” according to the verdict. He died in March last year in before the ruling came into effect.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau camp operated by the Third Reich in occupied Poland was the largest Nazi concentration camp during WWII. It was established by Third Reich’s Minister of the Interior Heinrich Himmler as the place of the “final solution” in the policy to annihilate the Jewish people in Europe.

There the Nazis killed about 1.3 million people of diverse nationalities, around 90 percent of whom were Jewish, according to data given by the Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau. Those not killed in the gas chambers died of starvation, forced labor, infectious diseases, individual executions, and medical experiments.

The center for solving crimes of National Socialism in Ludwigsburg was founded in 1958. Since then it has tracked down a total of 7,485 Nazi criminals, according to Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung.

Source

Fidel Castro: The Duty to Avoid War in Korea

5 Apr

fidel_.si

A few days ago I mentioned the great challenges humanity is currently facing. Intelligent life emerged on our planet approximately 200,000 years ago, although new discoveries demonstrate something else.

This is not to confuse intelligent life with the existence of life which, from its elemental forms in our solar system, emerged millions of years ago.

A virtually infinite number of life forms exist. In the sophisticated work of the world’s most eminent scientists the idea has already been conceived of reproducing the sounds which followed the Big Bang, the great explosion which took place more than 13.7 billion years ago.

This introduction would be too extensive if it was not to explain the gravity of an event as unbelievable and absurd as the situation created in the Korean Peninsula, within a geographic area containing close to five billion of the seven billion persons currently inhabiting the planet.

This is about one of the most serious dangers of nuclear war since the October Crisis around Cuba in 1962, 50 years ago.

In 1950, a war was unleashed there [the Korean Peninsula] which cost millions of lives. It came barely five years after two atomic bombs were exploded over the defenseless cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which, in a matter of seconds, killed and irradiated hundreds of thousands of people.

General Douglas MacArthur wanted to utilize atomic weapons against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Not even Harry Truman allowed that.

It has been affirmed that the People’s Republic of China lost one million valiant soldiers in order to prevent the installation of an enemy army on that country’s border with its homeland. For its part, the Soviet army provided weapons, air support, technological and economic aid.

I had the honor of meeting Kim Il Sung, a historic figure, notably courageous and revolutionary.

If war breaks out there, the peoples of both parts of the Peninsula will be terribly sacrificed, without benefit to all or either of them. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was always friendly with Cuba, as Cuba has always been and will continue to be with her.

Now that the country has demonstrated its technical and scientific achievements, we remind her of her duties to the countries which have been her great friends, and it would be unjust to forget that such a war would particularly affect more than 70% of the population of the planet.

If a conflict of that nature should break out there, the government of Barack Obama in his second mandate would be buried in a deluge of images which would present him as the most sinister character in the history of the United States. The duty of avoiding war is also his and that of the people of the United States.

Fidel Castro Ruz

April 4, 2013

11:12 p.m.

The Rise and Fall of Third Worldism – Part 1

1 Jan

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PART ONE: “Two, Three, many Vietnams”: National Liberation and the Rise of the Third World (1945 – 1991)

Asia, Africa and Latin America in the Early Years of the Century

With the exception of Latin America, and several noteworthy cases in Africa and Asia, the pre-1945 history of what came to be known as the “Third World” is overwhelmed by the fact of imperialism. Native voices were silenced and native cultures nearly eradicated.

In Asia, Japan was the only country to industrialize, and thus the only country to emerge as a major player in world affairs. Although at first resistant to Western influences; by the middle of the 19th century Japan had embarked on a major modernization program. Building upon traditional values, Japan built an army and navy powerful enough to challenge Russia over Korea at the turn of the last century; and strong enough to join the British, French, Germans, and Americans in carving out a sphere of influence in China. A hybrid of feudal/warrior institutions and modern technology would characterize Japan throughout most of the 20th century. Some argue that this mixture would enable Japanese economic success.

China, the most populous nation on earth, with a culture going back some 5,000 years, was weak and felt herself victimized by the Great Powers. Unlike Japan, China had not modernized. Chinese institutions had frozen. The Manchu dynasty which had ruled China for some 300 years seemed more interested in maintaining itself in power than in bettering the lot of its people; the majority of whom lived in conditions of appalling poverty. Although there was a strong feeling against foreign domination, which periodically erupted into mass uprisings such as the Boxer Rebellion; China had been effectively divided up amongst the Great Powers, who controlled large areas known as ‘concessions’ where they enjoyed trade monopolies. The corrupt and infirm Manchu dynasty fell underneath its own weight in 1911. The collapse of Manchu rule created a power vacuum which was filled by ambitions local strongmen, the ‘warlords,’ who became a law unto themselves in China’s vast outlying regions and frustrated any attempt at national unification.

Only two nations in Africa escaped colonial rule: Liberia and Ethiopia. Liberia, created by American abolitionists in 1825 as place to which future freed slaves could be “repatriated,” existed as a small anomaly to the general imperialist trend. Ethiopia, the ancient kingdom of Abyssinia, continued as a feudal monarchy surrounded by European protectorates and outright colonies.

Latin America was the great exception. By 1821, most of the old Spanish and Portuguese colonies had become independent states. Most of the 19th Century, in Latin America was consumed by a fierce struggle between traditional elites who favored a continuation of the old colonial plantation system and modernizers who wished to institute capitalist economics and bring in contemporary technologies and ideas. This conflict was further complicated by the beginning of the 20th Century by the active involvement of the United States in the region. Going back to the Monroe Doctrine of 1825, the United States had seen Latin America as its “back yard”; and American investments and interests in Latin America grew exponentially.

In Central America and the Caribbean, the battle between Conservatives (traditionalists) and Liberals (modernizers) lasted, in some case up to the 1930s. The ever increasing US presence stunted indigenous development and encouraged the rise of military dictatorships which maintained a precarious balance between repressing domestic dissent and ensuring continued US support. In Cuba and Puerto Rico, Spanish colonial rule was replaced, in the first instance by an apparent independence masking the reality of outside control, and in the second case, by direct US annexation.

Different scenarios were played out north and south of Central America. To the north, Mexico, which had, shortly after independence, lost much of its territory to the United States in the Mexican-American War of 1842, developed a strong, albeit contradictory state. In 1911, the Mexican Revolution overthrew the 40-year military dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz and inaugurated a period of titanic political/economic/social struggle. Populist radical leaders such as Francisco Villa and Emiliano Zapata vied with conservatives such as Venustiano Carranza and Alvaro Obregon as ad hoc revolutionary armies fought against whom ever happened to constitute the government at the time and each other. Eventually, the radicals were either marginalized or destroyed, and power settled into the hands of a conservative, modernizing elite composed of political strongmen and their followers. This elite held power through the mechanism of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The PRI oversaw the secularization and modernization of Mexican society. By 1945, Mexico was a contradictory mixture of large cities with modern industries, and a poor, backward countryside; a strong national sense of self, and control by a coterie of politicians and businessmen; an independent foreign policy, and a sharp awareness of the presence of the United States. In one way or another, this pattern would come to characterize not only Mexico, but much of Latin America.

In the south, Brazil and Argentina were becoming industrial power houses – albeit conflicted ones. Brazil seemed to follow the pre-established Mexican pattern: large, sprawling urban areas surrounded by impoverished rural zones. Brazil’s industries were concentrated in the north and along the coast; the wealth of the interior was only sporadically exploited. Argentina, with its large immigrant population (mainly Italian and Eastern European) provided something of a contrast. Heavy industry had appeared at the dawn of the century; the immense volume of European immigrant coming to work in those industries. The immigrants brought with them European ideas and social relations; both of which conflicted with traditional values. By 1945 the dictatorship of Juan Peron which combined a fascist core with modernizing elements initiated a period of military rule which would, by and large, characterize Argentina until the 1980s.

Imperialism and Colonialism Revisited

The decisions of the Versailles Conference of 1919 dismantled the Turkish, German and Austro-Hungarian Empires, but kept the British and French Empires intact. Not only that, but the Portuguese continued to rule Angola and Mozambique in Africa; the Belgians continued to rule the Congo; and the Dutch continued to govern Indonesia. The Middle East was divided between British French spheres of influence and protectorates. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand did become independent commonwealths – and Ireland did fight her way to a disunited independence – but, by and large, imperialism remained intact after World War I.

It wouldn’t be until after World War II that powerful drives towards independence and de-colonization would shatter the old European empires and create the modern states of Asia and Africa. The Second World War, with its anti-fascist and democratic aspirations, would impel the peoples of the colonial world to demand the same.

National Independence Struggles

In some cases, indigenous forces had played a major role in the defeat of the Axis powers. In Vietnam and Indonesia, Ho Chi Minh and Sukarno (respectively) emerged from the war as venerated national leaders. After the war, the French attempted to restore their rule in South East Asia. This misguided attempt came to an end in 1954 when, at the battle of Dien Bien Phu, Vietnamese forces under the Communist leader Ho Chi Minh which had previously defeated the Japanese; now prevented the French from returning. When the Americans tried to supplant the French, they too came to grief. A similar situation unfolded in Indonesia when the Dutch tried to restore the pre-war order. A similar outcome resulted: Sukarno, who had led resistance to the Japanese, now oversaw the independence of Indonesia.

The British came out of World War II in no condition to hold their empire together. In India, the Congress Party, under the leadership of Mohandas Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Mohammed Ali Jinnah had been the focus of the independence movement there for decades. Their moment arrived in 1948 when the British pulled out and Indian independence was declared. But independence brought crisis. Perhaps with British encouragement, Jinnah led a faction which demanded that a separate Muslim state be created. In multi-religious, polyglot India, this demand led to massive disruption, forced resettlement of huge amounts of people, and a great amount of ethnic and sectarian bloodshed. In the end, India (Hindu) and Pakistan (Muslim) were created as two separate – and mutually hostile – states.

In Africa, decolonization quite often led to extended periods of instability. Independence leaders such as Jomo Kenyatta (Kenya), Julius Nyere (Tanzania), and Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana) strove to modernize their countries by following a socialist model of development. In the Congo, Patrice Lumumba failed to establish a fully independent state, at the cost of his life. In many parts of Africa, the pull out of the colonial powers created confusion, chaos, and ethnic strife. Often this was caused by old imperial states themselves, as they continued to try to exert influence in their former possessions by sponsoring ethnic and political rivalries. Portugal refused to divest itself of its colonies, with the result that it took nationalist guerrilla movements until the 1970s to establish the independent nations of Mozambique and Angola. In the former British colonies of Rhodesia and South Africa, the white settler population refused to yield to demands for civil equality for the native Africans. Fighting lasted until 1975 when Rhodesia became the majority-African governed Zimbabwe (under Robert Mugabe); and until 1989 when the racist apartheid system was destroyed in South Africa (under Nelson Mandela).

In the Middle East, the Algerian Revolution of 1956 forced the French out of that country. In Egypt, Gamel Abdel Nasser came to power with a promise to encourage “Arab unity” and “Arab Socialism.” Nasser’s ideas spread to Syria and Iraq, where a movement claiming to champion Arab Socialism, but in fact more reminiscent of Italian Fascism took hold, Baathism. In many cases, interference by Western powers led to the displacement of radical, modernizing regimes with repressive conservative governments. The neutralization of the Left and the bankruptcy of the Right led many to see radical Islam as a viable political alternative.

The creation, by UN mandate, of the state of Israel in 1948 exacerbated the crises endemic to the area. The flow of immigrants to the new Jewish state led to the displacement of much of the native Palestinian population. The new Israel developed into a thoroughly militarized state, eventually going to war with the surrounding Arab states in 1967 and 1973.

The movement for de-colonization was strongly affected by the Cold War. Many independence movements had adopted one or another variety of socialism as its ideology, and many post-independence regimes sought Soviet aid. Other, more conservative post-independence governments became allies of the United States. Some changed sides. Thus, movements such as the National Liberation Front of Vietnam, Frelimo in Mozambique, and the MPLA in Angola saw themselves as Marxist; Israel, South Africa, and Saudi Arabia were in the US camp; while governments in Algeria, Egypt, and the Congo (Zaire) switched from Soviet to American sponsorship. The proxy conflict between the US and USSR was played out in the post-colonial world. Soon, two other forces, China and Cuba, would enter the fray.

The Chinese Revolution

China has seen a century of revolution – and some would say that it’s far from over. Revolution overthrew the decrepit Manchu dynasty in 1911. The newly created Chinese Republic, under the leadership of Dr. Sun Yat-sen and his Nationalist Party (Kuomintang), wanted to create a united, modern, and democratic China. The first step in achieving this would be the cancellation of foreign concessions and the bringing to heel of the regional warlords. It was ‘simple’ enough to ask the British, French, etc. to leave; the second part of that equation was more difficult to achieve. The warlords were ensconced in remote areas, unseating them would require a trained, professional army. In order to raise an officer class capable of leading such an army, the Whampoa military academy was established in 1920. The Whampoa academy attracted many young, patriotic Chinese of all political persuasions. Many of China’s future leaders would come out of the Whampoa Academy. At the head of the academy, as director, was Sun yat-Sen’s protégé, Chiang Kai-Shek. By the end of the 1920s, the “Northern Expedition,” as the anti-warlord campaign was termed, was largely successful. By that time, however, a new conflict had developed.

The new China was alone in the world. The former imperial powers, who had just been asked to leave, weren’t about to render any aid. Desperate for support, China turned to another nation just then going through a revolution of their own, the Soviet Union. The Soviets agreed to provide political and military aid to China, but at a price: that the Kuomintang bring into the government, as partners, the newly-created Communist Party of China. Sun Yat-Sen agreed, and the Communists were essential to victory in the Northern Expedition. However, Sun Yat-Sen’s lieutenant Chiang Kai-shek vehemently disagreed with any cooperation with the Communists. After Sun’s death in 1925, he was succeeded by Chiang who jettisoned any pretense of democracy, making himself military dictator. Chiang also wanted to get rid of the Communists at the first available opportunity.

In November of 1927, Chiang struck. Nationalist troops unexpectedly turned on their Communist fellows. In all of China’s major cities, Communists and their sympathizers were massacred in the streets. Overnight, the Chinese Communist Party was almost exterminated. In a state of confusion and disarray, the surviving Communists, made their way to the southern province of Jianxi where, a local Communist leader, an ex-librarian named Mao Tse-tung, had managed to hold the party together.

Organizing Communist guerrilla forces into a Red Army, Mao managed to hold off the Nationalists long enough to force an escape out of Jianxi. Known as the “Long March,” the Communists embarked on a 6,000 mile trek over rivers, mountains, and deserts, fighting Nationalists troops all the way. Finally, the Communists found sanctuary in the area of Yenan in China’s northern mountains. This, then, became their base. The Long March solidified Mao as the unquestioned leader of the Communist Party. From Yenan, Mao’s Communists engaged Chiang’s Nationalists in guerrilla warfare, and extended the Communist-controlled zone.

The full-scale Japanese invasion of China brought a temporary truce between the Communists and Nationalists, as they agreed to join forces against the foreign occupiers. Overall, as American advisers during World War II pointed out, the Communists were the more effective fighters against the Japanese. Chiang seemed to be more afraid of the Chinese Communists than he was of the invading Japanese; and American aid sent to Chiang often ended up in the pockets of Nationalist politicians. The end of the war and the defeat of Japan signaled a resumption of hostilities between the Nationalists and Communists. After an intense four-year civil war, Communist forces gained the upper hand. Chiang’s Nationalists were forced to flee the mainland; establishing themselves, as the republic of China, on the island of Taiwan – where they have remained to this very day. On October 10, 1949, from Beijing, Mao proclaimed the creation of the new, communist, Peoples Republic of China.

Communist China became a new and powerful ally of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. In fact, Chinese troops entered the Korean War against the United States. Domestically, the Communists embarked on numerous developmental and modernization campaigns. Campaigns to eliminate infectious disease and illiteracy, as well as campaigns to ensure the equality of women were, in great part, successful. Attempts to industrialize China’s economy were less so. The best known of these, the “Great Leap Forward” (1959), which tried to jump start China’s development through mass participation in the form of things such as encouraging the building of backyard blast furnaces to produce steel, was a failure.

Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union and his policy of Peaceful Coexistence with the West met with disapproval in Beijing. Mao felt that the new Soviet leaders were abandoning revolutionary principles and bowing to the US. Tensions within the Communist camp came to the breaking point in 1961 when, at a meeting of Communist parties in Moscow, the Chinese and Albanian delegations denounced the Soviets and their supporters and walked out. The Sino-Soviet split divided the world Communist movement and led to the creation of new, more militant Communist groups dedicated to the Chinese position. China felt itself to be the new center of the world revolutionary movement and, as such, supported and encouraged revolutionary parties and guerrilla groups in the Third World. The Cold War was developing into a three-cornered fight.

Within the Communist Party of China itself, Mao feared that elements similar to those represented by Khrushchev in the USSR would derail his revolutionary vision. Starting in 1964, Mao moved to isolate “conservative” and “pragmatic” elements in the Party. His attempt at a mass mobilization to reinvigorate revolutionary enthusiasm resulted in the upheaval known as the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.” The Cultural Revolution consumed China in chaos as radical and moderate forces, through the medium of youth organizations known as “Red Guards,” jostled each other for power and influence. Reaching a crescendo in 1966 – 1967, the Cultural Revolution involved pitched armed battles between rival Red Guard units. Mao called a halt to the anarchy in 1969, castigating some of the excesses of the more extreme radicals. However, tension and conflict between the more radical and the more pragmatic members of Mao’s inner circle remained.

The same year, 1969, that Mao rolled back the Cultural Revolution saw an intensification of the Sino-Soviet crisis as the Chinese and Soviets came to blows over a border dispute. This event seems to have convinced Mao that the Soviet Union was a greater threat to China than the United States. China offered the United States an opportunity to begin a normalization of relations; an opportunity the American President Richard Nixon took advantage of. In 1972, Nixon traveled to China, met with Mao and Chinese Premier Chou En-lai, and the thaw in the Chinese- American Cold War began.

Chou En-lai’s, a protector of the moderates in Mao’s circle, death in 1976, followed by Mao’s own passing later that year renewed the conflict between radicals and moderates within ruling Party circles. After a brief and intense power struggle, the radicals were defeated. Deng Xiaoping, who had been exiled as a “capitalist roader” during the Cultural Revolution emerged as China’s new leader. Deng’s policies not only reversed the Cultural Revolution, but effectively dismantle communism itself. Throughout the 1980s, China more and more embraced a pro-market orientation, encouraging foreign investment and development of key industries. By the 1990s, China had emerged as a major economic force, exporting goods across the globe. Although the People’s Republic of China is still ruled by the Communist Party, it has, in fact, become a modern capitalist power.

The Cuban Revolution

Although conducted on a much smaller scale than the Chinese Revolution, the Cuban Revolution of 1959 would send even stronger shock waves throughout the Third World. On New Year’s Eve of 1959, guerrilla forces led by Fidel Castro overthrew the long-standing government of dictator Fulgencio Batista. Batista had been supported by the United States since 1933; and, under his leadership, the island had become a haven for US interests which virtually managed the Cuban economy.

Castro’s victory signaled major reform, including land redistribution, literacy and public health campaigns, and the nationalization of major utilities and industries. These latter reforms incurred the ire of American corporations which lost their investments in Cuba. The United States’ severing of diplomatic relations followed by the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion and an economic embargo against Cuba caused the Castro government to fully enter the Soviet orbit. However, the relationship between Cuba and the Soviet Union was far from smooth. Having come to power in through a guerrilla movement in a peasant society, Cuba had much in common with China. Both China and the USSR courted Cuba to support them in their struggle with each other. Cuba was, for a time, caught between the feuding Communist powers. Instead, Cuba developed a unique image and presented itself as a model for Third World nations to follow. This pleased neither China nor the Soviet Union. Adding to the conflict with the Soviets was Cuba’s support for armed guerrilla movements, especially in Latin America, which threatened Soviet attempts at a rapprochement with the US.

In the wake of the Cuban Revolution guerrilla and national liberation movements emerged, aiming at spreading the Cuban example in Latin America. Castro’s right-hand-man, the Argentine born Ernesto “Che” Guevara, was central to this endeavor. Guevara personally led Cuban-trained guerrillas in Africa; and, in an attempt to foment revolution in South America, died while organizing a guerrilla force in Bolivia, becoming a revolutionary icon in the process. Although most of the guerrilla organizations spawned in the 1960s failed, they had the unexpected consequence of producing a severe reaction in the form of repressive military regimes devoted to their destruction. Thus, in Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Argentina, extremely violent military dictatorships characterized those nations in the 1970s. In Chile, the election and subsequent overthrow of a Socialist president, Salvador Allende, produced a similar phenomenon. Cuban advisers trained guerrillas in other parts of the world, as well, namely Angola and South Africa.

Cuban attempts at developing an independent, diversified, modern economy met with failure. By the 1970s, Cuba had abandoned overtly encouraging armed struggle and integrated itself into the Soviet system. This would continue until the collapse of the Soviet Union itself in 1991.

In the 1950s, Indian Prime Minister Nehru stated that the modern world was divided into “Three Worlds.” The “First World” consisted of the United States and the advanced capitalist countries of Western Europe; the “Second World” was the Soviet Union and its Communist Bloc allies; the “Third World” was the poor, underdeveloped nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Fought over by both the First and Second Worlds, Nehru urged the Third World to develop an independent stance, find its own voice, and put forward its own demands and aspirations. Thus, the “Non-Aligned Movement” came into being.

Led by India’s Nehru, Yugoslavia’s Tito, and Egypt’s Nasser, Non-Alignment did not mean neutrality. India leaned to the West, Cuba (who later joined the Non-Aligned Movement), leaned towards the Soviets; instead, Non-Alignment meant that the Third World countries recognized that they shared a commonality of interests. Indeed, many of the Non-Aligned nations were bitter rivals; India and Pakistan readily come to mind. However, despite sometimes serious differences, the Non-Aligned nations managed to bring questions of development and industrialization, debt and poverty, national independence and self-determination to the world’s attention.

Although the Non-Aligned movement seems to have greatly dissipated with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the appearance of a unipolar world dominated by the United States, non-alignment did shift world politics from the East vs. West emphasis of the Cold War to the North vs. South conflict that persists to this very day.

FORTHCOMING:

PART TWO: “The coming of the new international:” Third Worldist Theory in the 1950s – 1970s.

UN outlaws praising Nazis (Baltic states disagree)

10 Sep

The United Nations General Assembly has passed a Russia-sponsored draft resolution against the glorification of Nazism and attempts to rewrite WWII history.

The document states that any attempts to revise the history for war, the Nuremberg decisions and to whitewash former Nazis must be considered as violations of the UN Charter and the principles on which it was established, reports Itar-Tass.

The resolution on “Inadmissibility of certain practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance” was supported by 120 states in the Third Committee of the UN GA. Twenty-two countries – including the Baltic states – said “no” to the document, while 31 UN members abstained.

It becomes increasingly frequent that monuments to the Nazis are unveiled in a solemn atmosphere, the days of liberation from the Nazi forces are declared days of mourning, and people who oppose the trend face arrests, Russia’s representative to the UN Grigory Lukyantsev pointed out prior to the vote.

“To add more, in some countries they are trying hard to raise to the rank of …heroes of the national liberation movement those who fought against the anti-Hitler coalition or collaborated with the Nazis,” he is quoted as saying.

Lukyantsev stressed that it is “not about political correctness, but very frank and cynical blasphemy towards those who liberated the world from the horrors of National-Socialism.” It is also about criminal acts within the meaning of Article 4 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

The Russian representative called “untenable” attempts by some politicians to convince the international community that the glorification of the Nazism is only an implementation of the right to freedom of expression and Nazi marches – the freedom of assembly and association.

Lukyantsev suggested that authors of such statements should “read once again the UN Charter, the human rights provisions of which are a direct response to the horrors of World War II and to the horrific crimes committed by the Nazi regime.”

“Let’s not forget about what has been worked out in suffering and written in blood in the literal sense of the word,” he concluded.

Nationalist and neo-Nazi movements have been on the rise in some former Soviet republics since the disintegration of the USSR. It has become a common trend in, for instance, western Ukraine and the Baltic states to claim that the Soviet period was even worse than the Nazi occupation.

SS marches glorifying Nazi legions are no longer uncommon in Latvia and Estonia. Not long ago, a small town in the western Ukrainian Lvov region changed the name of Peace Street to the Nachtigall Battalion Warriors Street, which is named after members of the auxiliary formation that fought alongside the Nazis in WWII.

The victory in the bloodiest war in the history of humanity – where representatives of different nationalities and religions fought shoulder to shoulder against the common enemy – cost the Soviet Union over 20 million lives.

Source

Review of “Animal Farm” (1954 & 1999 Films)

26 Jul


Introduction

Hailed by capitalist literary critics, Trotskyites and anarchists as a masterpiece, the mediocre book Animal Farm has served a very important role in distorting the history of socialism in the Soviet Union. Modern editions of the book hail author George Orwell’s selfless journalistic integrity in producing the work, which is said to be a totally accurate portrayal of life under socialism.

But a close examination tells differently. Especially important in understanding the true reason Animal Farm is still crammed down the throats of the public are the two film versions of Animal Farm.

“The CIA obtained the film rights to “Animal Farm” from Orwell’s widow, Sonia, after his death and covertly funded the production as anti-Communist propaganda. Some sources assert that the ending of the story was altered by the CIA (in the book, the pigs and humans join forces) to press home their message[.]” [1].

The CIA agent Howard Hunt, who bought the film rights, also helped set up production of the 1984 movie, which also changed the ending of the original book to be more anti-communist.

“The head of the CIA operation to obtain the film rights was none other than E. Howard Hunt, later famous as Nixon’s Watergate burglar. As part of the deal, Sonia Orwell requested that she get to meet her idol, Clark Gable; this was arranged. A large portion of the budget ($300,000 out of a cost of over $500,000) was supplied by the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Policy Coordination, through one of its shell corporations, Touchstone Inc” [2].

Animal Farm has become a classic of capitalist propaganda. First published during World War II, it conveniently packages decades’ worth of lies about socialism in the U.S.S.R., and more specifically the leadership of Joseph Stalin, into an easy-to-understand book small enough to fit in your pocket. Animal Farm is supposed to be a classic satire and critique of socialism; however, George Orwell never went to the U.S.S.R., and received all the information he knew from anti-communists. The book is not journalism at all, and should not be considered the be-all end-all of learning about Soviet socialism.

Plot Summery

The original book and the two films have roughly the same basic plot. Subtitled “a political fable,” Animal Farm tells the tale of the poor and ill-run Manor Farm, managed by the drunken farmer Jones, who abuses the animals. The neglected creatures are called to a meeting by a wise old pig named Old Major, who tells them that if they will rise up together, they can overthrow Jones and create a new world where all animals will be free and equal. Led by a clever pig named Snowball, the beasts run Jones off the farm and take all his property for themselves, proudly renaming the plot Animal Farm.

Conditions improve at first, but the pigs (smartest of the animals) begin to keep certain luxuries, like apples, for themselves. The greedy and mediocre pig Napoleon uses a gang of trained dogs he has brainwashed to run Snowball off the farm and institute a new, terrifying society not at all like the one envisaged by Old Major. Life for the pigs gets better and better, but the other animals are murdered and starved and battered into an oppression worse and more horrifying than existed when Jones ran the farm.

Orwell made no attempt at subtlety – even children can see without much difficulty that Animal Farm is a crude metaphor for the Soviet Union – Napoleon is Stalin, and Snowball is Stalin’s rival Leon Trotsky, who was justly exiled from the U.S.S.R. in the mid 1920s.

Review of Both Films

The first of the two films based on the book, released in 1954 and made possible by funding from the notorious American Central Intelligence Agency, is a dark and gloomy cartoon that, true to the book, paints a disgusting picture of Animal Farm and the struggle between the white pig Snowball and the black and conniving Napoleon.

The second film, released in 1999 and produced by Hallmark, is a live action film boasting a cast of stars including Patrick Stewart, Seinfeld’s Julia-Louis Dreyfus and Fraiser’s Kelsey Grammer. Both of these films have been made easily available to anyone with a computer, with the first film streaming for free on Hulu and the second on services like Netflix and YouTube.

What makes these films important is the way they deviate from Orwell’s book, especially when it comes to the endings. In his original work, Orwell closes the novel with a scene in which the animals realize that they are no longer able to tell their bloated pig leaders from the human farmers who oppressed them. It is a closing of cynical misery, driving home Orwell’s anti-revolutionary idea that any attempt by the workers to create a better world for themselves would only end in the same kind of tyranny they overthrew.

But both of the films go a step further. The 1954 animated ends quite differently than the book. The mistreated animals from many farms join together and, instead of attacking their human owners, march defiantly to Animal Farm and kill Napoleon. We must bear in mind who it was that funded this change – the CIA. The message is simple, and directed at the Soviet peoples – “Not only is your new government atrocious, you can and must overthrow it now!” The CIA, of course, was ever working for this to happen, but failed miserably during the Soviet Union’s time as a socialist country.

The 1999 live action version was made decades after the Stalin era, and does not bother leaving the plot and end open to interpretation. In the ending sequence, in a clumsy attempt to be poetic, a heavy rain “washes away” Napoleon’s government, the animals welcome a loving new human family to the farm to boss them about, command them, consume them and exploit them. The film closes with a shot of the sickeningly stereotypical family driving up to what was once Animal Farm, their smiles suggesting that the problem all along was just that Jones was a bad owner. All the animals really needed was to be owned and exploited by a family more like the Cleavers.

In these films, the biased and deceitful nature of Animal Farm is laid bare. Going a step further than the slanders of Orwell’s book, they openly call for violent counterrevolution in the Soviet Union.

Conclusion

The films themselves – taken as art – are as bad as their message. It is a real chore to sit through the creepy “Dr. Dolittle” talking animals of the 1999 Hallmark film or the poorly animated and clumsily sinister tone of the 1954 release. The dialogue is absolutely painful, and the voice performances, even Patrick Stewart as Napoleon, are phoned-in and uninspired.

The artistic elements are secondary, both for us and for the people who made them. What is important to understand about films like Animal Farm is why they are made – for propaganda. Both films, as well as the original book, have no appeal as art whatsoever other than their obvious metaphor for the Soviet Union. Without that, the films are hollow.

The pseudo-history of the U.S.S.R. presented in Animal Farm is junk, but we are pushed to accept it as fact. Many people do, since Animal Farm is a fictional work, there is no need for citations and it can be difficult for the defenders of socialism to argue against its more specific, ludicrous claims because they are hidden within a fairy tale. Worst yet, many people accept the attitude of Animal Farm, believing like the film’s donkey Benjamin that no matter what they do or how hard they fight, things will only end up worse than before.

The two Animal Farm films are worth seeing only as a way to get to know what you’re up against and as a great glimpse into how the capitalist media uses popular culture to promote its ideological objectives. But as films in their own right, they are contrived and soulless. Anyone looking for a good film to relax with for an hour or so should look elsewhere.

Sources

(1) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047834/trivia

(2) http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/031800-02.htm

On the Day of American Independence

4 Jul

Today is the 4th of July, a holiday celebrated all over the nation as the date of American Independence from the British crown. I was considering burning an American flag to protest US foreign policy, imperial aggression, indigenous holocaust, sponsorship of terrorism, slavery and discrimination of minorities, etc., and promptly began wondering if flag-burning on public property is considered to be a fire hazard. Today is a holiday that is spent trying to spread patriotic feelings among our people, and thus in effect to try and goad them into flag-waving, chauvinism, jingoism and xenophobia. Patriotism, the way the imperialists see it, means love for their government and love for their class of oppressors. It means love for the police, the prison complex, the courts, the army and the ruling class dictatorship. It means love for the exploitive system of capitalism and the settler-fascists that have run it from the start.

On this celebrated day of the creation of the American state, it is time to take a look back at our long, star-crossed history, and it is time to present a challenge to ourselves—what has American really been about all this time? As Frederick Douglass famously said about this particular holiday in 1852:

“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

He continues,

“Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.”

There are those who might say that Douglass’s words no longer ring true because of the Obama presidency, and then there are those who know that a change in the ruler’s skin color does not abolish racism and oppression overnight. In addition, Major General Smedley Butler from the US Marines speaks about what real role the US military has been playing over the years:

“I spent 33 years and 4 months in active service as a member of our country’s most agile military force – the Marine Corps… And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect money in. I helped in the raping of a half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street… I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-12. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped get Honduras “right” for American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I feel I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents.”

These revelations are by no means new, since they have been given by many anti-imperialist and anti-colonialists since the beginning of the domination of American imperialism, which started after World War II and strengthened itself through the selling-out of the Soviet Union during the Cold War and the collapse of socialist Albania.

To give a more detailed or complete account of American foreign policy, which has always been driven by nothing more and nothing less than the capitalist system’s desire for global hegemony under American leadership, would take many pages and several lifetimes of research into the history of the modern-day Roman Empire. But this 4th of July, and keeping with our challenge to ourselves, a few examples taken from the recent history of the United States alone should serve to give an idea of what this class dictatorship has really been about since the beginnings of its foundation.


A History Lesson

In 1945, the US invades the Korean peninsula and declares a “temporary” partition of Korea. America installs an illegitimate American-friendly regime in the South, backed by a force of 50,000 troops. After 2,617 troop incursions in the Northern Pro-Soviet half, sometimes with as many as a few thousand troops, a war ensues when North Korea finally invades South Korea in response. A three-year war takes place and millions are killed. Thousands of American troops remain in South Korea to this day.

In 1966, a US-backed coup ousted President Sukarno of Indonesia and replaced him with the fascist butcher Suharto. Over a million people were hunted down and killed, including thousands of popular leftist leaders, whose names were given to the military by the American Embassy. Suharto would go on to rule Indonesia with an iron fist for decades. Newly-liberated East Timor was then invaded by Suharto’s Indonesia the day after President Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (both butchers of the Vietnam War) gave them permission. By 1989, over one-third of East Timor’s 700,000 people had been killed. Indonesia had US backing, including armaments, throughout its 24-year occupation.

In 1967, a US-backed military coup took place to prevent Greek politician George Papandreou being elected Prime Minister. The colonels declared martial law, implemented torture, beatings, arrests, leaving 8,000 dead in the first month. The coup leaders were fiercely anti-communist and pro-American, working closely with the CIA. The colonels held power until 1974.

In 1970, Marxist reformist Salvador Allende was elected as President of Chile. He nationalized the giant US companies. Soon, the right-wing, backed by the CIA and US foreign policy, engineered a 1973 coup lead by the infamous General Augusto Pinochet. Allende was overthrown and replaced by a fascist military dictatorship that used mass executions and torture. Thousands were murdered and disappeared. Chile became an economic experiment that led to economic growth for the richest while leaving many homeless and greatly decreasing economic equality.

In 1978 in Nicaragua, the popular and progressive Sandinista movement overthrows the US-backed dictator Anastasio Samoza. The US then launches a military occupation in order to prevent “another Cuba.” A program of terrorism and economic sabotage is begun, which leads to the US support of the infamous Contra death squads. The Contras prove to be one of the most brutal fighting forces Latin America has ever seen, infamous for burning down schools, churches and hospitals as well as using mass murder, rape and torture. The Contras massacre whole villages though to be sympathetic to the Sandinistas. Over 60,000 die. President Reagan labels them as “freedom fighters.”

Summation

From these examples alone—Korea, Indonesia, East Timor, Greece, Chile and Nicaragua, which are merely the most prominent of many dozens more ready-made examples including the Vietnam War—we can see that United States foreign policy has never been driven by a devotion to any kind of morality, nor by any kind of longing for freedom or democracy. From the start, the United States has been driven by the necessity to make the world safe for investment by capitalism, to enrich US armaments who contribute generously to Congress members, to prevent the development of any society which becomes an example of an independent alternative to the capitalist model and to extend its political and economic control over as much of the globe as possible.

Everyone alive today remembers the media immediately after the events of 9/11. “Why Do They Hate Us So Much?” the newspapers asked. Gee, I don’t know. Perhaps dropping bombs really pisses some “less civilized” people off. This is a simple list of the nations bombed since World War II:

China 1945-46, Korea 1950-53, China 1950-53, Guatemala 1954, Indonesia 1958, Cuba 1959-60, Guatemala 1960, Congo 1964, Peru 1965, Laos 1965-73, Vietnam 1961-73. Cambodia 1969-70, Guatemala 1967-69, Grenada 1983, Libya 1986, El Salvador 1980s, Nicaragua 1980s, Panama 1989, Iraq 1991-2002, Sudan 1998, Afghanistan 1998, Yugoslavia 1999, Afghanistan 2001 and Iraq 2003 (1).

It is worth noting that violence and exploitation are also not limited to outside the US borders, either. Of all western nations, the US has the greatest income inequality. 40% of the wealth is controlled by 1% of the population. The US has the greatest discrepancy in the world between the wealthy and the poor when it comes to health care, and also when it comes to life expectancy.

Finally, the Land of the Free has the highest number of its population in prison than any other state in the world (2). And all this is without mentioning the minute details of the oppressive structure of the class society as it exists for us every day. These sorts of atrocities will continue until this capitalist system is done away with through struggle and revolution in the US.

On the day of American Independence, among all other days, this is a fact for all of us to remember.

Sources

(1) Taken from Australian Options Quarterly No. 31, Summer 2002.

(2) From Scientific American, Dec. 2005

Juan Perón and Social-Fascism in Argentina

5 Mar

President Perón at his 1946 inaugural parade.

History of the Terms “Social-Democracy” and “Social-Fascism”

The term “social-democracy” has been used by the left since the time of Marx and Engels. The term is a pejorative one today, since it has become almost synonymous with liberal reformism. About a century ago, “social-democrat” was a word to describe other appendages of the socialist movement. Everyone who was an adherent to either the First or Second Internationals before 1914-1919 would be called a “social-democrat,” regardless if they were supporters of the revolutionary Marxism of V.I. Lenin in Russia or the reformist Socialist Party of America.

The Second International under Karl Kautsky failed to rally the working class when it encouraged supporting “one’s own” governments during the inter-imperialist First World War. It encouraged this viewpoint among the international socialist movement, many of whom began supporting the war. This amounted to betrayal of the working class and conciliation towards the capitalist system. This caused a split in the social-democratic movement, eventually leading to the formation of the Third International, also called the Communist International or Comintern, in 1919. The Third International was primarily led by the revolutionary wing of Russian social-democracy, the Bolsheviks under V.I. Lenin, who had seized power and led the first successful socialist revolution in the world in October of 1917. They opposed the World War as an imperialist war between capitalist powers and called for “turning imperialist war into civil war,” meaning into revolution.

After the foundation of the Third International, revolutionary social-democrats the world over abandoned the term “social-democrat” and called themselves “communists.” The term “social-democracy” became the viewpoint of surviving adherents of the Second International, including many socialist parties who had adopted reformist lines. “Social-democracy,” then, changed from being a term meaning the ideology of the entire socialist movement to mean bourgeois reformism that was in opposition to the working class and the revolutionary science of Marxism-Leninism.

The term “social-fascism” came from a theory supported by the Comintern of the 1930′s that social-democracy was the “left-wing of fascism.” This perception became commonplace after the German Revolution of 1918–1919 and the crushing of the Spartacist Uprising, which resulted in the murder of the German socialists Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht among many other revolutionaries by a social-democratic German government, assisted by right-wing paramilitaries called the Freikorps. While some historic applications of this theory were incorrect, there is a trend in modern social-democracy that gave support to fascism and tends toward fascism even while using left-wing or populist rhetoric.

While modern social-democrats have appealed to centrists and center-leftists, there are a few that make full-on attempts to sway the revolutionary left by appealing to social programs, economism and trade unionism as a way of disorganizing the left’s revolutionary determination. While raising wages and improving the populace’s immediate standing of living, the class nature of the state remains the same: in the hands of the bourgeoisie. Labor is still treated as a commodity and surplus value is still extracted from the workers for the sake of “incentive” and private profit. It’s common practice for bourgeois politicians to appeal to those who demand change and progress, only to surrender to the status quo and multinational corporations upon seizing power. Modern capitalist politicians are very skilled at making public appeals to the progressive sections of the populations, only to turn their backs on the same people who voted them into office.

Argentina’s government under Juan Perón is frequently portrayed by the bourgeois media by many misguided “leftists” as a socialist government where the working class had power. Others have described it as a social-democracy, as some alternative form of fascism less offensive than the Hitlerite variety, or even as some kind of “compromise between capitalism and communism.” Argentina’s Perónist period is perhaps the most fitting example of social-fascism in practice.

Juan Perón’s Early Life and Rise to Power

Born in Buenos Aires on October 8, 1895, Juan Domingo Perón had a staunch Catholic upbringing. In 1911, at the age of 16, he was sent to the Argentine National Military College. In 1938, he was sent overseas as a military advisor to the Axis powers and their allies, collaborators and colonies including Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Hungary, Albania and Yugoslavia. It was there that he first came into contact with the fascist government of Benito Mussolini, whom Perón vigorously endorsed.

According to Robert J. Alexander in his book Juan Domingo Perón: A History, Perón’s advisory role to Italy “gave him a chance to study in some detail and at first hand the way in which the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini had reorganized, or tried to reorganize, Italian society” [1].

Even more damning are Perón’s own words:

“Italian Fascism led popular organizations to an effective participation in national life, which had always been denied to the people. Before Mussolini’s rise to power, the nation was on one hand and the worker on the other, and the latter had no involvement in the former. [...] In Germany happened exactly the same phenomenon, meaning, an organized state for a perfectly ordered community, for a perfectly ordered population as well: a community where the state was the tool of the nation, whose representation was, under my view, effective. I thought that this should be the future political form, meaning, the true people’s democracy, the true social democracy.”[3]

Perón returned to Argentina in 1941 and became a colonel of Ramon Castillo’s Military. It was then that the “Group of United Officers” or “GUO” was formed in order to prevent the succession of Castillo’s rampantly corrupt regime. The GUO staged a coup prior to the year’s presidential election. This brought an end to Castillo’s conservative traditionalist regime and brought about the military government of Argentina.

Upon first coming to notoriety in 1943, Perón’s policies were embraced by a variety of tendencies all across the political spectrum, although the corporatist character of Perónism drew attacks from socialists who accused his administration of preserving capitalist exploitation and class division. This viewpoint shared by the leftists turned out to be prophetic, as capitalist production relations remained intact despite the raising of wages and the generally elevated status of the Department of Labor, including the department obtaining secretariat status under Perón’s leadership.

The main opposition to Perón came from the Socialist International-affiliated Radical Civic Union, the Socialist Party of Argentina and the Comintern-affiliated Communist Party of Argentina, although the conservative National Autonomist Party also showed opposition to Perón by relying on support of the financial sector of the economy, as well as the Argentine Chamber of Commerce.

Populist Tactics of Juan Perón: With the Workers and the Capitalists

The colonel served under three different military government administrations: those of Arturo Rawson, Pedro Pablo Ramirez, and Edelmiro Farrell. All throughout his political career, Perón maintained the reputation of a pro-labor military man, constantly bolstering up the labor unions, engaging in pushing through social programs such as greater unemployment and health care benefits, and urging the “leading role” that labor played in the economy of Argentina.

Upon ascending to the status of President of Argentina on June 4, 1946, his outspoken goals were comprised of very leftist and pro-labor sentiments, including the need for a five-year plan, increase in salaries, giving priority to pensions, economic independence and diversification and investment in public transportation.[2]

Perón even encouraged striking amongst laborers who employers did not grant labor benefits. With the abundant amount of vocal support from the General Conference of Labor, or “CGT,” they followed his word. Strike activity led to a loss of 500,000 work days in 1945, which leapt to 2 million days in 1946 following his election, and to over 3 million lost days in 1947. This stress put on the advancement of Labor’s status in the Argentine economy consequently led to a boom in the amount of members among the CGT. The ranks grew to 2 million active dues-paying members by 1950 [3]. It seemed at this point that Perón was truly a man of his word. However, we shall delve further into his career to show that he was not, by any means, a friend of international socialism or the working people.

Juan Perón as a Friend of Fascism

While urging “neutrality” in the face of the Second World War, Perón’s foreign and domestic policies were much closer to the fascist and military governments of Europe than anything resembling full-hearted socialism. Perón not only traveled to, but admired Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. He seems to have no objections to their invasion and colonization of countries such as Austria, Hungary, Ethiopia, Yugoslavia and Albania.

If this was not alarming enough, it was and still is common knowledge that escaped Nazi war criminals sought refuge and lived fairly comfortable lives in Argentina, turning the country into a sort of haven for Nazis perpetrators and collaborators. Among those whom Perón openly welcomed:

  • Emile Dewointine (who manufactured Luftwaffe aircraft, later seeking refuge under Franco before arriving in Argentina) [4]
  • Josef Mengele (the infamous Nazi doctor who performed notoriously sick-minded medical experiments on concentration camp inmates)
  • Adolph Eichmann (one of the chief bureaucrats of the Holocaust)
  • Franz Stangl (Austrian representative of Spitzy in Spain)
  • Charles Lescat (editor of Je Suis Partout in Vichy France)
  • SS functionary Ludwig Lienhart
  • German industrialist Ludwig Freude

Aside from Nazi war criminals, members of the genocidal Croatian Ustaša, a pro-Nazi puppet government responsible for the extermination of hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews and Roma in Croatia and Bosnia, took refuge in Argentina, including their notorious leader, Ante Pavelić, and Milan Stojadinović. The latter was allowed to spend the rest of his life as presidential advisor on economic and and financial affairs to governments in Argentina, and was the founder of the financial newspaper, El Economista [5].

In “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Latin America,” authors Leandro Narloch and Duda Teixeira wrote:

“It is still suspected that among her [Eva Perón's] possessions, there were pieces of Nazi treasure that came from rich Jewish families killed in concentration camps”.

They add that,

“Perón himself even spoke of goods of ‘German and Japanese origin’ that the Argentine government had appropriated”.

In 1947, the first lady of Argentina, Eva Perón, traveled across Europe in an attempt to boost her husband’s regime abroad. It was here that she is believed to have opened a Swiss bank account to deposit funds and other valuables she received from Nazi war criminals in exchange for Argentine passports to the aforementioned [6].

Juan Peron Makes Overtures to the Left

On June 15, 1955, Pope Pius XII excommunicated Perón after the fifty-nine year old military President described himself as “not superstitious”. The following day, Perón called for a rally of support on the Plaza de Mayo, a time-honored custom among Argentine presidents during a challenge. However, as he spoke before a crowd of thousands, Navy fighter jets flew overhead and dropped bombs into the crowded square below before seeking refuge in Uruguay. This effectively ended Juan Perón’s second term in office. First seeking refuge in Venezuela, and later Panama, he eventually settled in Francoist Spain. Desperate to reclaim his position in government, Perón began making appeals to the revolutionary left.

In his book, “La Hora de los Pueblos,” he made his appeal to internationalists:

“Mao is at the head of Asia, Nasser of Africa, De Gaulle of the old Europe and Castro of Latin America [7].”

Throughout the late 60s and early 70s, Perón started aligning himself with more militant unions and maintained close links with Montoneros, a “leftist” Perónist Catholic grouping who later kidnapped and assassinated anti-Perónist President Pedro Aramburu in retaliation for the June 1956 mass execution of a Perónist uprising against the ruling military junta.

However, while attempting to play both sides of the coin, Perón hailed the far-right as well. He supported the conservative leader of the UCR, as well as members of the Tacuara Nationalist Movement. Political tendencies did not play a role in the man’s mind when it came to power grabs and smooth talk.

Following Perón’s example, the Movimiento Nacionalista Tacuara, or the Tacuara Nationalist Movement, was a right-wing extremist guerilla group in Argentina formed in the 1960s. Although initially opposed to Perónism, it later adopted Juan Perón’s idea of “Special Formations (gathering right-wing radicals in the TNM as well as the Argentine Iron Guard),” and the movement was directly inspired by the anti-Semitic Catholic Julio Meinvielle’s writings (Meinvielle not only blamed Martin Luther, but also both the French and October revolutions for the decline of Catholicism).

As such, the TNM defended nationalist, Catholic, anti-communist, anti-democratic and anti-Semitic ideologues, such as Primo de Rivera (the founder of the fascist Falange in Spain). The guerilla group’s routes can be traced back to the “Nationalist Students Union Side” (UNESCO) as well as the “Alliance of Nationalist Youth,” both centrally based in the capital of Buenos Aires [8].

The group opposed the secularization of schools that occurred under Perón and admired both Hitler and Mussolini [9]. Entrenched in anti-Semitic hatred, the group gained notoriety for kidnapping and injuring a number of Jewish students including 15 year old Edgardo Trilnik, and 19 year old Graciela Sirota, who was subject to torture and was eventually scarred with Swastika insignias [10].

In 1963, a TNM commando group robbed the Polyclinic Bank, killing two employees, wounding fourteen and taking for themselves fourteen million pesos, the equivalent of one-hundred thousand U.S. dollars. The TNM’s objectives were to afford a boat to travel to the Falkland Islands so that they may establish a guerrilla base in Formosa. All were arrested after seven months after one of the perpetrators spend a portion of the spoils at a brothel in France. While the group was formally outlawed in 1963, most of those imprisoned for the robbery were released in May 1973 when the Perónists returned to power and President Hector Campora decreed a broad amnesty for political prisoners [11]. Most of the former group’s leaders dead, imprisoned, disillusioned with the right-wing, or seeking other professions (one of the TNM’s strongest supporters of anti-Semitism, Alberto Ezcurra Uriburu, became a Catholic priest in 1964 and later joined the “Argentine Anticommunist Alliance” death squad).

The Class Nature of Perónism

Perónism is an opportunist and Third-Positionist ideology geared at dismembering and demobilizing the revolutionary workers through attempts of reformism, economism and pacifism. A military government, no matter how “worker friendly” it may initially appear to be, only opens the way for further exploitation of the working class, more coup attempts and power grabs. While championing himself to be an ally of the working masses of Argentina, Juan Perón simultaneously aided in the protection of some of the most notorious war criminals of World War II.

While Juan Perón’s government did not completely match up with those of Hitler, Mussolini, or Franco, what they all have in common is militarism, nationalism, appeals to emotionalism and class collaborationism. A state based on these principles simply cannot offer working people anything other than defeat. The experience in Argentina is a shining example “social-fascism,” of the fusion between social-democracy and fascism, of failed reformism and corporatism.

Though the Argentine President boasted about giving the leading role in government to the working class of Argentina, put a strong emphasis on “social justice” and even nationalized key industries, this does not earn Perón’s government the title of socialist. The protection of the far-right, along with the numerous left groups that exposed Perón’s fascist leanings (including both the Argentine Socialist and the Communist parties) offers material and historical evidence as to why social-democracy and/or Third-Positionism can and most likely will lead to a fascist state.

Perón’s coming to power did not consist of a revolution, let alone the organization of the proletariat as the leading class in society to whom the means of production are to belong. Rather, a military coup was what brought this fascist-sympathizing military colonel to political standing. The “peaceful path” of social-democracy was not only a political slogan, but also a method of demobilization that is directed at the workers movement. Its aim is to deny the inevitability of armed struggle when the class struggle reaches a higher stage and the question of power comes to the forefront. It has historically been used as an anesthetic; a vice that claims to solve the contradictions of the rule of capital.

However, history is on the side of the revolutionary workers in this day and age. Millions of people all across the world have witnessed these instances of class collaboration over struggle, economism over theory, and idle reformism over revolutionary change. The next tide of revolution will not succumb to these illnesses.

Sources

[1] http://biography.jrank.org/pages/3418/Per-n-Juan-1895-1974-Former-Argentine-President-Began-Military-Training.html

[2] Rock, David. Argentina, 1516–1982. University of California Press, 1987

[3] Los mitos de la historia argentina 4. Buenos Aires: Editorial Planeta. Pg. 28

[4] American Jewish Yearbook, 2006. Pg. 266

[5] Mark Falcoff, Perón’s Nazi Ties, Time, November 9, 1998, vol 152

[6] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2033084/First-lady-Eva-Peron-allowed-Nazis-hide-Argentina-exchange-treasures-looted-rich-Jewish-families.html

[7] http://nuevomundo.revues.org/35983

[8] http://www.fabio.com.ar/verpost.php?id_noticia=1548

[9] Daniel Gutman, Tacuara. Historia de la primera guerrilla urbana argentina (Ediciones B Argentina, 2003, p.58)

[10] http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/1-51068-2005-05-15.html

[11] http://edant.clarin.com/diario/2004/04/12/g-04001.htm

Celebrating Genocide!

24 Nov

Wounded Knee, South Dakota- Armed Indians sit back to back supporting one another and keeping eye on all directions as members and supporters of the American Indian Movement (AIM) continue to hold this small village here. These armed militants are at a roadblock leading into Wounded Knee. March 19, 1973

Dan Brook

Many people annually get as stuffed as their turkeys in celebration of the Thanksgiving holiday. Thanksgiving is a quintessentially American holiday, so much so that it is not just a holiday, but really is (as the etymology implies) one of our Holy Days, almost universally celebrated by Americans. In its sacredness, families get together to (unintentionally?) celebrate one genocide (against Native Americans) by committing another (against turkeys). Can we celebrate in good faith and conscience?

On Thanksgiving Day, we give thanks. We give thanks for being the invader, the exploiter, the dominator, the greedy, the gluttonous, the colonizer, the thief, indeed the genocidaire, rather than on the other side of imperialism’s zero-sum murderous game. As Mark Twain points out in his War Prayer, wishing and being thankful for one’s own success and victory is, at the very same time, wishing and being thankful for another’s defeat and destruction. Do we want to make these kinds of wishes and give these kinds of thanks?

The Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran declared that “it is the honor of the murdered that they are not the murderers”. Perhaps, but it is a very difficult honor to uphold. Native Americans, at least those who have survived the over 500 year genocidal project, are the poorest ethnic group in the richest country of the world. Each year, a group of Native Americans gather at Plymouth Rock on Thanksgiving Day to mourn and fast in honor of their people and in memory of what is lost. What do we want to be honored for? What honors are Americans thankful for?

It was once earnestly asked by Native Americans, “Why do you take by force what you can have by love?” Christopher Columbus reports in his personal diary that when he arrived in the Americas he was amazed. The Arawaks, with curiosity and joy, came to greet the people coming off the ships from Europe. The Arawaks (whom Columbus mistakenly thought were Indians) were a peaceful people, by all accounts, willing to share anything they had, offering both emotional kindness and their physical objects. Columbus describes how remarkable these people were. So innocent of weapons and violence, Arawak people would initially reach out their hands to feel the strange, shiny objects called swords. The Arawaks would only “work” for a few hours a day, “spending” the rest of their time relaxing, socializing, and creating their culture in the ways that people most enjoy. Columbus also tells of how the Arawaks had no “shame”, being able to walk around naked or make love whenever they pleased. With the tiny amount of gold on their island, they fashioned jewelry to adorn themselves. As with many other pre-contact indigenous groups, the Arawaks essentially lived in Utopia. Can Americans be thankful for living in a utopian society? Are we thankful for having destroyed one? Should we be grateful for having so many deadly weapons? For being so greedy for gold, both actual and metaphorical?

As Kevin Danaher of Global Exchange is fond of pointing out, Columbus could have done one of a few different things after encountering the Arawaks of whom he was so impressed: (1) Columbus could have quit his travels and lived the rest of his days amongst this remarkable people. In fact, millions of people today spend thousands of dollars and their precious couple of weeks of vacation trying to experience modern conditions resembling these ancient ones. (2) Columbus could also have continued on his journeys, exploring other islands, encountering new peoples, and searching for India and elsewhere with which to trade. While doing so, he could have expanded and developed his writings, perhaps doing valuable ethnographic and comparative sociological research. (3) Another possibility is that Columbus could have rushed back to Europe, declaring the wonders of Arawak society and urging that the best minds of Europe go to visit and study the Arawaks. As a result of doing so, Europeans could have incorporated aspects of Arawak society into their own, if not emulating it altogether. Are we proud of and thankful for our hubris and ethnocentrism?

Of course, Columbus did none of these. Apparently, there was a fourth possibility. With grave implications, Columbus wrote in his diary that with fifty men he could enslave the entire population and capture all their gold. This was no empty boast. The “savage” Arawaks were enslaved, many were tortured, their labor exploited, and their wealth stolen and shipped off to Europe. During this process of imperialist superexploitation, men had their hands chopped off, women had their breasts sliced and their pregnant bellies cut open, babies were thrown into the air, sometimes crashing to the ground and other times being impaled on those strange, shiny swords, presumably all in the name of Christianity, Civilization, and, eventually, Capitalism. The Arawaks were literally exploited to death and they are now extinct, all of them having been killed off through virulent brutality, overwork, and disease. Are Americans thankful they weren’t Arawaks? Are we thankful for not being the dehumanized “Other”?

The Pilgrims later came to America to escape religious persecution from the British, apparently in order to commit ethnic and religious persecution against the Native Americans and, later on, others. And this they did, and we in fact continue to do, effectively and mercilessly. At the time of the first Thanksgiving in 1621, it was also the dawn of another type of genocide. 1619 marks the first year that human beings were brutally “imported” from Africa to become slaves in America, if they happened to survive the cruel capture and horrific Atlantic crossing. So while Africans were being heartlessly torn away from their homes and families, viciously enslaved and dehumanized, tortured and killed, Native Americans were being attacked and annihilated. By the time that President Lincoln re-invented and instituted the Thanksgiving Day tradition in the early 1860s, the US was fighting its civil war. The US Civil War may have been fought over slavery (and labor more generally), though it was certainly not fought for the slaves (or for laborers). Sadly, there is much, much more to the tragic history of genocide and US complicity. Is it for this legacy that Americans give thanks? Are Americans thankful for the results of racism and classism?

In Europe, during the 1930s and 1940s, various demographic groups were being systematically targeted by the Nazis, including leftists and unionists, people with physical and mental disabilities, Jews and Jehovah’s Witnesses, gays and lesbians, the Roma (so-called Gypsies) and the small number of Blacks, as well as other misfortunate minorities. Although we now know that the US had accurate aerial photographs of the rail lines leading to and from the death camps since 1941, among other pertinent information obtained even earlier, the US did not enter the war against fascist Germany until almost 1942, only after the US was physically attacked by Japan. Even then, however, the US neither bombed the rail lines or the death camps themselves, nor allowed in large numbers of refugees from fascism. Indeed, just like Haitians in the 1990s and Afghans in 2001, Jews in the 1940s were sometimes turned back to their respective Hell. Millions and millions of people died unnecessarily. Adding insult to injury, the US government even paid war reparations to US corporations, including General Motors, which were supplying the Nazi military with much-needed machinery and vehicles, for the damage done to their German factories due to the Allied bombing campaign. (The US government went further by guaranteeing safe passage for many Nazi officers and even employing a number of them, some of whom helped advance biological and chemical weaponry as well as death penalty technology in the US. Other Nazi officers were supported, especially in Europe and Latin America, as an oppositional force against real or suspected communism.) Likewise, the US was seemingly uninterested in Japan’s genocide against the Chinese in Nanking, and then did (and does) little to stop China’s genocide of the Tibetans since the 1950s. The US has also never been interested in the genocide against the Kurds or Armenians. The US was interested, however, in setting up concentration camps in 1942 for Japanese-Americans and, to a much lesser extent, Germans and Italians. Are Americans thankful for our hypocrisy and selective democracy?

In 1965, the US supported and facilitated genocide in Indonesia. Under the US-supported military dictatorship, half a million to a million communist-sympathizing peasants were killed in Indonesia. Their lives are considered so worthless that a more accurate number of those killed is nearly impossible. (A more recent example of this mentality is from the Gulf War, during which US bulldozing tanks buried an unknown number of slaughtered Iraqis in the desert. When asked how many were killed and buried in these mass unmarked graves, General Colin Powell coldly replied that he wasn’t interested and didn’t care. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright followed up that mentality by stating on TV that the hundreds of thousands of additional kids who have died since the war, due to sanctions, are a worthwhile price to pay. For whom?) The US supplied some 90% of the weapons and training to the Indonesian military, in addition to favorable trade and investment, but also provided logistics and specific names of Indonesian activists to be targeted for death. The Indonesian military gladly obliged, taking the US hit list and then accomplishing their task as best as possible. Since 1975, similarly, the US has sponsored and abetted genocide in Indonesian-occupied East Timor, culminating in the latest round of “newsworthy” massacres at the end of 1999. Nearly the same time that the modern Indonesian/East Timorese tragedy began, the US condoned genocide in Cambodia, after committing acts of genocide throughout South East Asia in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1980s, the US supported vicious and murderous wars in Central America, central Asia, and southern Africa, in which hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, were killed, with many more disabled, displaced, and disappeared. The US also sat idly by during the genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s, while almost totally ignoring slavery and genocide in Sudan throughout that entire decade. Furthermore, the US persists in continuously building, vigorously marketing, and violently employing chemical, biological, nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. Are Americans proud of US foreign policy? Of supporting murderous dictators and regimes? Of maintaining deadly double standards?

At the same time that the US has, by far, the most expensive and powerful military on Earth, it also has a high poverty rate, the largest prison population, a relatively high infant mortality rate, tremendous overconsumption and waste, a stingy and demeaning welfare program, an active capital punishment program, and almost as many privately owned guns as people. Are Americans proud of US domestic policy? Of supporting murderous policies and programs? Of maintaining deadly discriminatory standards?

There are many reasons to celebrate and Americans have a lot to be thankful for. Genocide should not be one of those things. What are we doing on Thanksgiving Day? We would be appropriately appalled if Germany or Austria were celebrating a Holocaust Memorial Day, where Germans and Austrians got together with their families for dinner on their official day off, joyously remembering the things that are important to them, just as American families get together for Thanksgiving Day and think of things to be thankful for. (Similar scenarios, just as ugly, could be constructed for white supremacists, rapists, and murderers.) Some activities and events are inappropriate just because of the context in which they occur and the history of suffering they represent. Thanksgiving Day is clearly part of that history. Are Americans thankful for forgetting their own history, for having collective cultural and political amnesia?

We do not have to feel guilty, but we do need to feel something. At the very least, we need to reflect on how and what we feel. We should also review our history and what it means to us and others, while we must rethink our adopted traditions, including our Thanksgiving High Holy Day. My personal (and therefore political!) resolution for the new year is to stop celebrating genocide. American Thanksgiving may be sacred to some, but it’s utterly profane to me.

Source

American Party of Labor Statement on the Killing of Muammar Gaddafi

23 Oct


No the Colonization of Libya!

With the victory of the NATO-backed rebels and the National Transitional Council, Libya has been colonized once again. Moammar Gaddafi, the leader of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, has been killed according to the country’s rebel government on October 20th, 2011. Gaddafi was murdered in his hometown of Sirte, a stronghold for his supporters.

From 1911 to 1943, Italy ruled Libya as a protectorate. Under the reign of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, the colonialists ruthlessly crushed any national resistance to fascism that would threaten Italy’s imperial interests over this oil-rich country. Now, in 2011, the country is once again under the control of foreign powers. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has states that the war against Libya is “over,” declaring the domination of Libya complete. Libya’s rich natural resources and enormous oil wealth, estimated to be among the greatest on earth, is once again to be siphoned by imperialism.

Gaddafi was executed on the spot in a brutal and arbitrary way, which raises questions about what sort of regime the Libyan “rebels” are going to build, as if the ethnic cleansing of black Libyans and foreign migrants from cities under their control, as well as their cozy relationship with the Western powers and NATO didn’t raise enough already.

A convoy of Gaddafi loyalists' vehicles is pictured destroyed by NATO bombs and littered with bodies near Sirte

Bodies of killed Gaddafi loyalists around the drain pipe where the Libyan leader was allegedly found

Gaddafi’s Execution

Gruesome images of Gaddafi’s bloody corpse have been telecast with glee by TV channels all over the world. The circumstances for his death are reprehensible – he had attempted to flee the bombing assault on Sirte in a military convoy when NATO hit two of the vehicles with a Hellfire missile. The rebel forces allegedly found him hiding in a drain pipe near Sirte. Badly wounded in both legs from the bombs, Gaddafi was captured and executed by rebels.

Photos and cell phone video footage of the event, released shortly after the story of the capture broke, show a wounded and injured Gaddafi with his face and shoulders awash in blood. He appeared to have a wound on his head.


The rebel forces that captured him then began their assault, dragging him from his hiding place and beating the former Libyan leader. Video footage clearly shows Gaddafi grimacing in pain, being humiliated, shoved, beaten and bludgeoned. A dazed Gaddafi is then paraded around in the streets of the city to the sound of the baying mob of rebels, shortly before being shot several times in the head and stomach. Some claim he was shouting, “Don’t shoot!” before he was killed, but no one has verified that claim.

Images from Al-Jazeera show his body being dragged on the ground and paraded through the streets before being taken to a morgue, where rebels flocked to take photographs of the body. Afterwards, his body was taken to Misrata, a rebel stronghold, to be displayed in a freezer. Most reports say he was shot in the head with a 9mm while helpless after being captured and severely beaten. News sources are now changing their story, saying Gaddafi was shot while trying to flee.

Gaddafi’s son Mutassim was given a similar treatment by the “freedom fighters” of Libya. The news is now claiming he was killed in a “firefight” in Sirte, but pictures and video have already emerged of Mutassim lying on a sofa, injured and bloodied after his capture but still alive. Pictures of his executed corpse emerged hours later. Gaddafi’s Defense Minister Abu Bakr Jaber Younes was also killed during the capture, as was Abdullah Senussi and about fifty others.

Mohammed el-Bibi, a 20-year-old rebel fighter who is reportedly the one who pulled the trigger, has been hailed as a “hero,” brandishing a gold-plated gun said to have been owned by Gaddafi. Fittingly, he also donned a baseball cap with the New York Yankees logo. After the shooting, he was hoisted up by rebels, who fired volleys of bullets into the air and loudly chanted, “Allah Akbar.”

Mohammed el-Bibi (right) and another rebel waving a golden pistol allegedly taken from Gaddafi

The barbaric condition of Gaddafi’s death is symbolic, showing the nature of the rebels and giving indications of what life for the Libyan people will be like under their regime. Widespread destruction, poverty, dependence and humiliation, not “freedom” or “democracy,” will be the result of this aggressive attack and occupation of Libya.

Rebels celebrating Gaddafi's death

Lies & Propaganda in the Attack on Libya

Much like other wars the United States and NATO have waged, particularly the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the war on Libya began with lies. Much like the media told us the war on Iraq was because Saddam Hussein was building weapons of mass destruction and was going to attack the U.S., they have insisted this is a war to protect innocent civilians. In fact, recent events have shown that the Libyan rebels are not nonviolent, unarmed civilians, and many of the stories of Gaddafi’s atrocities were highly exaggerated.

To begin with, the media ceaselessly compared the Gaddafi government’s actions to the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, where ethnic Hutu militia murdered hundreds of thousands of Tutsis. Since then they have accused Gaddafi of “genocide.” As if that was not enough, accusations of “war rape” and “mass rape” by troops loyal to Gaddafi were spread by mainstream news, backed up by frivolous stories of Gaddafi distributing Viagra to his soldiers to encourage them to rape women.


Months into the civil war and NATO’s campaign, no evidence of a governmentally-sanctioned campaign of genocide or mass rape has been found. In fact, Time Magazine printed a retraction of the Viagra story soon after, and many other news sources admitted there was no evidence of such an action – it was pure warmongering propaganda.

The imperialist coalition of NATO has violated all international laws by waging aggressive and destructive war for their own economic self-interests in the name of “humanitarianism,” as they did in Yugoslavia, as they did in Afghanistan and as they did in Iraq.

Libya and the Arab Spring

Western leaders have tried to say that the revolt in Libya is exactly like the ones happening across the Middle East, including the successful popular revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, seamlessly integrating the events in Libya into the “Arab Spring” of revolutions and uprisings throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

The uprisings of the “Arab Spring” began in Tunisia, where protests led to the overthrow of pro-US dictator Ben Ali after twenty-four years in power. In neighboring Algeria, the people also flared up in resistance. Soon after, protests erupted in Egypt against the autocratic neo-liberal Hosni Mubarak, who was ousted from office by the revolution. After these events, the “Arab Spring” expanded in the region, and none of the ruling governments could stop them. In this context, Gaddafi took an opportunist position, claiming that the revolts in Egypt were led by Mossad, the Zionist secret service, and announcing that if he were in Tunisia at the time of the revolt, he would have supported Ben Ali. Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen and many others have since been the scene of protests and riots by opposition groups.

In contrast to the various revolts however, it has become obvious since the NATO intervention that the revolt in Libya is not a popular revolution or progressive. It is primarily an attack by racist and reactionary elements of Libyan society against the government of the Libyan Jamahiriya. This uprising might have been legitimate at one point, but it has been hijacked by reactionary pro-imperialist factions.

The Gaddafi regime, before its destruction by the rebels, did promote such privatization and neo-liberal policies to the detriment of its people. However, the NTC has not arisen to combat this turn to the right, but to make Libya even more right-wing. Libya has one of the highest GDP per capita in Africa, as well as the highest Human Development Index. Libya under Gaddafi also had free education, as well as free studies abroad, free medical care, free water, almost free electricity and homes funded by the state. Libya under Gaddafi was the most developed nation in Africa and much of the Middle East.

The anti-Gaddafi forces formed a committee named the “National Transitional Council” on the 27th of February, consisting of defecting interior ministers, various neo-liberals and former justice minister Mustafa Abdul Jalil, who under the Gaddafi regime oversaw and promoted privatization and liberalization policies.

What really reveals the rebels as puppets of foreign powers however, is that they were completely unable to secure victory without the help of NATO. Up until March 7th of this year, the forces of Gaddafi held the rebellion at bay. On March 10th to March 19th, at the request of NTC leaders and with the approval of the Security Council of the United Nations, the imperialist powers imposed a “no-fly-zone” on Libya. As early as March 17th, the United Kingdom and France recognized the NTC as the legitimate government of Libya.

The events came to a head on March 22nd, when the United States, France and Britain deployed a major bombing force to attack pro-Gaddafi targets, afterwards involving all of NATO in the brutal bombing campaign. Since then, the Libyan “rebels” have shown themselves to be a dangerous, crazed hodgepodge of a mob at best, and a ruthless band of killers at worst. They have lynched black Libyans for their skin color and have ethnically cleansed entire cities, all the while waving monarchist flags. Recent reports have even suggested they are rounding up black Libyans and placing them in concentration camps, where widespread rape and executions have been reported.

Omar Mukhtar, led native resistance to Italian colonization of Libya for decades

History of Libya

Libya, a Saharan country located in the heart of North Africa which dared to defy the United States and the European powers, has a fascinating history that is not often reported in the media. The reason being that if they reported on Libya’s past, it would expose how Africa’s right to economic self-determination has continuously been taken away, politically and militarily.

The same NATO countries currently bombing Libya have a history of occupying the country. Libya was a colony of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. After its liberation from Ottoman forces, it became an Italian colony. By 1931, more than 750,000 Libyans had died fighting the Italian occupation. Ironically, both Turkey and Italy are NATO members participating in the attack against Libya.

During World War II, Winston Churchill sought rapprochement with Mussolini, whom he described as a “Roman genius,” claiming that he “rendered a service to the whole world,” calling him “the great law-giver among living men for his anti-Communist stand.”

King Idris the I of Libya

After the war, the Kingdom of Libya under King Idris the I proclaimed its independence on December 24, 1951. Libya became a pro-US and pro-British monarchy. During the reign of King Idris, the Allied powers of Britain, France and the United States (also current members of NATO) enjoyed de-facto control of Libya. The United States built its first air base in Africa, the Wheelus Air Base, on the outskirts of Tripoli for $100 million. The entire country was devastated by the Second World War, which had obliterated what little infrastructure there was in one of the poorest countries in the world. There was virtually no education system or medical care in the country, no stable government and no administrative services.

King Idris & Richard Nixon

In contrast, the West had unhindered access to Libya’s oil and resources. The Wheelus Air Base was used in the Korean War and became a strategic asset for the U.S. Libya was the only source of Middle Eastern oil that wasn’t shut down by the closure of the Suez Canal, and soon the country had hundreds of millions of dollars worth of foreign private investment.

Flag of the Kingdom of Libya under the King - the favorite flag of the rebels

The true nature of the rebellion is shown by the fact that they wave the flag of British and U.S. puppet King Idris the I. After years of poverty under the corrupt monarchy, which sapped the national wealth for the rulers of the Kingdom and not for the people, a bloodless coup was staged by the Free Unionist Officers on September 1, 1969, led by Muammar Gaddafi.

After the coup, the new government assumed full control over oil production and refused to renew licenses for foreign military bases in Libyan territory. 51% of foreign banks and 51% of all oil companies such as Shell, Exxon, Texaco, Socal and Mobil were nationalized by 1973. Oil prices were raised for crude oil when Libya insisted on setting its own prices, and soon agrarian reform and social programs funded by oil revenue helped Libya build itself into the most developed country in Africa. The Western powers have never forgiven the Gaddafi Jamahiriya government for overthrowing their puppet monarchy, and since then Libya has been labeled as one of the “bad Arab states,” with Gaddafi being the lead “bad Arab.”

Where is Libya Heading?

Despite criticisms one might have of the Gaddafi government, NATO has no concern for the Libyan people. Its only mission is the hunger for its world domination.United States Vice President Joe Biden told the press that this invasion will set the stage for future military attacks. “This is more of the prescription for how to deal with the world as we go forward than it has been in the past,” he said. With this statement, the brutal power of NATO to violate the sovereignty of states anywhere they want, and to make the law everywhere in the world as they see fit, is put plainly for all to see.

Gaddafi loyalists fight with the green flag standard of the Libyan Jamahiriya

The foreign policy of U.S. imperialism for years to come will be shaped by bloody invasions which back reactionary puppet governments and suit the Western power’s economic interests. Powers like the United States use humanitarian justifications like “human rights” and “democracy” to support local rebellions and portray them as democrats even if they are little more than terrorists, thugs, drug traffickers or worse. Foreign imperialist powers do not intervene in oil-rich countries for “humanitarian” reasons, for but self-interest, for territorial conquests, and to gain new access to markets and resources.

The fighters against reaction and domination, who struggle still against leaders backed by imperialism’s ambition, must now keep in mind that NATO is watching and waiting to strike. Imperialism is out for blood, out to restore the hegemony it has built all over the globe that enforcers like Ben Ali and Mubarak pushed onto their people for decades. This is imperialism’s response to cries for liberation.

The death of Gaddafi will no doubt have the West proclaiming its “victory” over the resistance, but the Libyan people’s heroic resistance to imperialist war has not been in vain, because the world has been watching and all the peoples of the world have learned from their example.

Review of “The Great Dictator”

17 Oct

Plot Summary

The Great Dictator, written and directed by Charlie Chaplin, who also stars, is a compelling movie. The film begins in a setting that resembles World War I. Charlie Chaplin plays a private in the Tomainian military, and also a barber. Charlie is startled by a cry of help from Schultz, the military commander. He successfully attempts to rescue the military commander. The two board Shultz’s airplane and fly off. Unfortunately, the plane crash lands into a nearby marsh. The two survive, but after being seen by a medical staff, they are told that Tomainia has lost the war.

Twenty years later, Adenoid Hynkel, (who is also played by Chaplin) the new dictator of Tomainia, has begun the persecution of the Jews. The focus then shifts the Charlie’s other character, the barber. He has been in the hospital recovering from memory loss inflicted from the plane crash. When the barber returns to his shop, which is located in a new Jewish Ghetto, he is surprised when storm troopers write “Jew” on the front of his shop. The barber is beaten by storm troopers when a resident of the ghetto named Hannah arrives and comes to his rescue. Then, as the barber is getting beaten for a second time, he is saved by Commander Shultz, who recognizes Charlie from World War I.

It becomes much more apparent that Hynkel is obsessed with world domination. This is shown in particular when Hynkel dances with a large globe. Hynkel plans to invade Osterlich, a neighboring town. He wishes for a loan to fund this invasion but is turned down. He continues his persecution of the Jews when he realizes the man who turned him down for a loan was Jewish.

Hynkel then invites Benzino Napaloni, who is the dictator of Bacteria, to Tomainia. They sign a treaty which establishes that Hynkel would not go through with the invasion. This treaty is immediately broken when Hynkel invades Osterlich anyway. One scene in the movie with great significance is the “great dictator” speech.

What eventually happens in the film is that Hynkel is on a hunting trip and is arrested due to his resemblance to the barber, and the barber who is wearing a Tomainian uniform is mistaken for Hynkel. He is then taken to the capital to give a speech. In the speech he calls for democracy and calls the government officials “Machine men, with Machine mind and Machine hearts.” This is the most moving part of the film.

Conclusions

The Great Dictator is one of the best movies ever made. There is a good mix of drama and comedy, and it gives a relatively accurate description of what happened up to World War II within the context of its humorous nature.  The film is one of great passion, especially expressed during the speech given by the barber in the Tomainian uniform as the “Great Dictator.” The speech was one that called for an end to injustice and one that would inspire people to rise against their exploiters. The film depicts a scenario in which an average man has the ability to speak with passion and compassion. For example, the barbar (dressed as the dictator Hynkel) states, “Power does not rest in one man or a group of men, but in all men, in you the people.” This film expresses passion, history, humor and progressivism. We here at the Red Phoenix recommend this film.

Main Cast
1. Barber + Hynkel – Charlie Chaplin
2. Commander Schultz – Reginald Gardiner
3. Garbitsch – Henry Daniell
4. Herring – Billy Gilbert
5. Hannah – Paulette Goddard

Pacifism: How to Do The Enemy’s Job For Them

11 Aug

“As an ex-Indian civil servant, it always makes me shout with laughter to hear, for instance, Gandhi named as an example of the success of non-violence. As long as twenty years ago it was cynically admitted in Anglo-Indian circles that Gandhi was very useful to the British government. So he will be to the Japanese if they get there. Despotic governments can stand ‘moral force’ till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force.” – George Orwell

In 1942, George Orwell wrote, “Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense.” At first glance, this sentence from Orwell’s essay “Pacifism and the War” appears to be an outrageous defamation, a provocative statement by a writer seeking attention. How on Earth could anyone equate pacifism – seemingly the expression of love for humankind, peace and harmony, relentless opponent of all forms of violence – with support for fascism – the most reactionary, chauvinist, militaristic and bloodthirsty form of bourgeois rule, which at that time waged a genocidal war? Furthermore, how could one go further and call such a label “elementary common sense?”

However, if we do not let our knee-jerk reaction have the best of us but have a closer look, we will realize that both statements are true. Orwell continues:

“If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, ‘he that is not with me is against me’. The idea that you can somehow remain aloof from and superior to the struggle [...] is a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security.”

He also points out that the Nazis actively spread pacifist propaganda in Great Britain and the USA. Whether we like the thought or not, it is the objective truth: in a war like World War II you had to choose sides, there was simply no way to remain neutral. Those who pretended to others and themselves to live in an ivory tower of peace and love for all of humanity while opposing all sides in the war were obviously blind to the enormous threat that the fascist Axis powers posed to the world.

“Well, that’s still a slanderous generalization”, a pacifist or sympathizer of non-violence philosophy might say, “World War II surely is a special case, and anybody who’d claim the same today as Orwell did in those days would be completely out of their mind. Today we aren’t in a total war over the future of humanity.” – Yes, we are! We are in class struggle against an enemy de-facto as merciless as the Nazis. Those propagating uncompromising non-violence, pretending to stand aloof from the mechanisms of society and condemning the mere thought of violent resistance must still be seen as “fascifists”.

In the following work we will see that the anti-pacifist statements above are also valid when applied to the class struggle. Instead of contributing successful tactics to the workers’ movement, pacifism hinders and hampers the struggle against the ruling class and this way effectively supports the latter.

The Class Base of Pacifism

Marxism-Leninism teaches that only the working class – because of its special place in the capitalist mode of production and the resulting role in bourgeois society – has a genuine interest in the socialist revolution and is solely capable of carrying it out, seizing the means of production, overcoming the class system together with it all exploitation of man by man. Therefore we have to examine the class base of pacifism. Is it a progressive expression of the class struggle, a tactic dictated by the needs and struggle of the oppressed and exploited, rooted in the working class movement? Does it pose a challenge, a threat to the existing class order, capitalism and the bourgeois rule?

On the contrary, pacifism is a product of the petty-bourgeoisie, the favorite of members of that class and liberal academics. We already saw that Orwell rightfully called it “a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security.” Realizing this origin, it is no longer surprising that pacifism often appears to be out of touch with reality, drenched with idealist notions. This and the refusal to recognize or grasp the essence of class struggle makes pacifism an obstacle to the working class movement and liberation struggles.

Class struggle is the driving force of history, inherent to class society. Marx and Engels showed that the bourgeoisie can only make profits at the expense of the working class while the working class can only advance its interests and better its situation at the expense of the bourgeoisie. In other words: the aims of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are diametrically opposed, their antagonistic class interests are irreconcilable.

If we understand this, we have to realize that violence is inherent to class struggle. History has yet to record a ruling class voluntarily giving up its power and privileges. It has never happened and it will never happen.

Of course the pacifist is either ignorant of this, or knowingly complicit. The petty-bourgeoisie is essentially a doomed class and torn between supporting the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Most of the time they are drawn toward the bourgeoisie, but in case they support the latter it is not out of understanding the objective necessity to abolish capitalism and thus the existence of classes. Instead, they are driven by either rebellious adventurism or, in case of pacifists, an emotional humanism.

For them, violence is, far from an unavoidable consequence. It is merely a personal choice, the product of an irrational and brutal mind. After all, the pacifist fairy tale goes, everybody can be convinced by rational arguments. So let us “speak truth to power,” appeal to the good will, the rational and emotional side of those with power, and let us remind them of their “moral responsibility.”

It should be obvious that this is a naïve and idealist approach requiring nothing short of a miracle: the bourgeoisie denying their class interests and acting contrary to them would mean ceasing to be the bourgeoisie.

In his valuable book How Nonviolence Protects the State, the American anarchist Peter Gelderloos reminds us:

“The elite cannot be persuaded by appeals to their conscience. Individuals who do change their minds and find a better morality will be fired, impeached, replaced, recalled, assassinated” ( Gelderloos 22).

If the ruling class cannot be swayed, maybe at least “the ordinary man” will see the truth behind our words and rationality will celebrate its triumph this way?

If there was any truth to the anti-materialist assumption that it is all about propagating “the right idea” and everybody will have to see its beauty and truth, then there is absolutely no way to explain why we in the West do not already live in a socialist society. We should also wonder why there is still so much wrong with the world, despite so many people speaking out against out various problems in the most rational and agreeable manner for decades. Public support requires that sympathetic attention is drawn to the cause. The most important factor in directing attention and building public support is undoubtedly the media.

Who controls the media again and therefore has a monopoly in opinion making? Ah, right, the corporate elite. Back at the idealist appeals to the mercy of the very people we struggle against.

“… an ostensibly revolutionary movement would have constrained itself to a horribly mismatched battle, trying to win hearts and minds without destroying the structures that have poisoned those hearts and minds” (Gelderloos 92).

Expecting otherwise means taking a step back to the days of the Utopian socialists who argued and expected the same. We should ask ourselves: what compels one to hold similar naïve views after Utopian socialism was succeeded by scientific socialism, that is after Marx and Engels gave socialism a scientific base?

The answer lies again in the class base of pacifism. The petty-bourgeoisie does not want to overcome capitalism as this would mean them putting their privileged position at risk!

The Racism of Pacifism

The color of your skin is another factor greatly contributing to a privileged or disadvantaged position in society. Although Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi are used as figureheads, the overwhelming majority of pacifist adherents and theoreticians are also white, which leads to an Euro-centric view and little attention for the institutionalized discrimination people of color have to face on a daily base.

“Besides the fact that the typical pacifist is quite clearly white and middle class [sic], pacifism as an ideology comes from a privileged context. It ignores that violence is already here; that violence is an unavoidable, structurally integral part of the current social hierarchy; and that it is people of color who are most affected by that violence” (Gelderloos 23).

Instead of taking into account the different circumstances of people less well-off, oppressed, discriminated and brutalized, of oppressed minorities at home and peoples threatened by imperialism worldwide, the typical pacifist will moralize that “violence can never be the answer.” Successfully they manage to overlook the fact that in almost all the time violent resistance is, in fact, an answer – to even more violence experienced on a regular base, directed against people who simply have no choice than to fight back if they want to live!

Gelderloos points out that this is essentially a different form of colonialist thinking (“white man’s burden”), the expression of an underlying racism:

“the idea that we are all part of the same homogeneous struggle and white people at the heart of the Empire can tell people of color and people in the (neo-) colonies the best way to resist” (28).

That this is not just a wild accusation but a valid observation, proven by the attempts of supporters of white supremacy to utilize pacifism in general and especially colored pacifists to keep their movements down.

“Perhaps the largest of the limited, if not hollow, victories of the civil rights movement came when black people demonstrated they would not remain peaceful forever” (Gelderloos 12).

The ruling class suddenly discovered their concern for the rights of black people when the latter was fed up with months of non-violent protests and started to fight back against police violence, like in Birmingham in 1963. To prevent further situations like this the FBI focused on tracing and “pacifying” potential troublemakers. Gelderloos quotes a FBI memo worried about the rise of a “black messiah” like Malcolm X could have been if he was still alive then. The document continues:

“Prevent violence on the part of black nationalist groups. This is of primary importance, and is, of course, a goal of our investigative activity; it should also be a goal of the Counterintelligence Program [in the original government lingo, that phrase refers to a specific operation, of which there were thousands, and not the overarching program]. Through counterintelligence it should be possible to pinpoint potential troublemakers and neutralize them before they exercise their potential for violence” (Gedlerloos 47).

What the FBI policy meant in practice was impressively illustrated by the “neutralization” of activists of the Black Panther Party, for example.

The majority of the petty-bourgeois is incapable of being radical, “going to the root,” as this would mean critically questioning and in all likelihood endangering their own privileged role in capitalist society. The “lower classes” and the “colored folks” claiming their rights sounds like a threat to those who benefit of the current power structure. Even if they give in to their more rebellious feelings, they still enjoy more leniency from the ruling class than working class militants or militants from an oppressed minority could ever expect. The moment that they genuinely join the ranks of one of the latter groups the lose their status in society.

The “Victories” of Pacifism

Bearing this in mind, we should deal with the notion that pacifism is a successful approach which accomplished several historical victories. Heroes of non-violent resistance like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi immediately come to mind.

Previous articles in The Red Phoenix have already dealt with their alleged single-handed struggle and historical triumph. Nevertheless, let us hear what Mr. Orwell has to say:

“As an ex-Indian civil servant, it always makes me shout with laughter to hear, for instance, Gandhi named as an example of the success of non-violence. As long as twenty years ago it was cynically admitted in Anglo-Indian circles that Gandhi was very useful to the British government. So he will be to the Japanese if they get there.”

Peter Gelderloos similarly challenges the notion that Gandhi accomplished anything else than ensuring comfort and safety for British imperialism. He shows that the British were faced with the death toll of both World Wars, the immense destruction the German Luftwaffe caused and with the armed struggles in their Arab colonies. No matter what pacifists and the mainstream view would like to have us believe, it was not Gandhi’s civil disobedience that worried and compelled the British to give up their “jewel in the crown of the Empire,” as India was called. The British, responsible for several devastating famines that killed millions, were struggling with more compelling reasons to withdraw from India than the possibility of Gandhi starving himself to death:

“As part of a disturbingly universal pattern, pacifists white out those other forms of resistance and help propagate the false history that Gandhi and his disciples were the lone masthead and rudder of Indian resistance. Ignored are important militant leaders such as Chandrasekhar Azad, who fought in armed struggle against the British colonizers, and revolutionaries such as Bhagat Singh, who won mass support for bombings and assassinations as part of a struggle to accomplish the ‘overthrow of both foreign and Indian capitalism’” (Gelderloos 8).

Clearly the latter aim was not accomplished and we have a right to wonder together with Gelderloos whether the liberation movement in India was really as successful as we are told:

“The liberation movement in India failed. The British were not forced to quit India. Rather, they chose to transfer the territory from direct colonial rule to neocolonial rule,” What kind of victory allows the losing side to dictate the time and manner of the victors’ ascendancy? The British authored the new constitution and turned power over to handpicked successors. They fanned the flames of religious and ethnic separatism so that India would be divided against itself, prevented from gaining peace and prosperity, and dependent on military aid and other support from Euro/American states.” India is still exploited by Euro/American corporations (though several new Indian corporations, mostly subsidiaries, have joined in the pillaging), and still provides resources and markets for the imperialist states. In many ways the poverty of its people has deepened and the exploitation has become more efficient“ (Gelderloos 9).

On to Martin Luther King Jr., the alleged champion of the American civil rights movement. Unsurprisingly we discover the same pattern again: the role of a pacifist figurehead is generously exaggerated, the “victory” of the movement is attribute to non-violent spokespersons and tactics alone. Ignored are militant groups like the Black Panther Party and individuals like Malcolm X, ignored is the immense influence they had among the black community and ignored are their successes.

“According to a 1970 Harris poll, 66 percent of African Americans said the activities of the Black Panther Party gave them pride, and 43 percent said the party represented their own views” (Gelderloos 11).

The ruling class, as we already saw, actively sought to isolate and pacify these groups and individuals by instrumentalizing people like Dr. King to this end. Again, the alleged victory is not as complete as it is portrayed:

“People of color still have lower average incomes, poorer access to housing and health care, and poorer health than white people. De facto segregation still exists. […] Other races have also been missed by the mythical fruits of civil rights. Latino and Asian immigrants are especially vulnerable to abuse, deportation, denial of social services they pay taxes for, and toxic and backbreaking labor in sweatshops or as migrant agricultural laborers. Muslims and Arabs are taking the brunt of the post-September 11 repression, while a society that has anointed itself “color-blind” evinces nary a twinge of hypocrisy. Native peoples are kept so low on the socioeconomic ladder as to remain invisible, except for the occasional symbolic manifestation of US multiculturalism-the stereotyped sporting mascot or hula-girl doll that obscures the reality of actual indigenous people” (Gelderloos 11).

The list goes on and on. Non-violent resistance did not stop the US wreaking havoc upon Indochina in general and Vietnam specifically — the violent resistance of the Indochinese and Vietnamese people did. After defending themselves for years against the imperialist aggression, including the largest bombing campaign known in history and further genocidal acts causing unimaginable suffering, the ruling elites came to the conclusion that the war could not be won. To make things even worse for them, the troops became increasingly “infected” with militant working class and black liberation views. More and more demoralized the troops refused to obey their orders, resorted to sabotage and even the killing of hated officers. Even after the American ground troops withdrew they continued to support their puppet, the military dictatorship in the south. The peace movement could do the same about it as before: absolutely nothing. Many did not even care anymore after the US troops were out.

Needless to say, the same applies to more recent wars. None of them were stopped by pacifist appeals and demonstrations. Rather, the armed resistance in attacked and occupied countries bothers imperialist leaders and results in increasing calls for reducing or withdrawing troops.

The Immorality of Pacifism

Why this “principled” condemnation of violence? Why completely rule out the possibility of violent resistance accomplishing anything? Why this insistence that everything else but non-violent tactics are doomed to fail? What is the pacifist justification? The answer is very simple, namely that “violence is never the answer,” “all violence is bad” or because “violence is violence” or even that “violence begets violence.”

Time to examine this profound wisdom. Thoroughly applying it enriches us with even deeper insights. Looking back to Orwell and his article on WW2 we have to condemn not only all armies but also partisan groups fighting the Nazis because “violence only breeds more violence.”

So after all, Gandhi was right in recommending the Jews to stop resisting the Nazis and instead “offer themselves to the butcher’s knife.”

What right did the Vietcong have to take up arms against the US invaders, knowing this would lead to a “spiral of violence?”

Suddenly we discover that Israel deserves our sympathy because if these nasty Palestinians would not constantly resort to violence the poor besieged Zionists probably would have never been forced into bombing the Gaza Strip and similar “defensive actions.” Even if the bombing would have occurred anyway, this apparently would not justify Palestinian violent resistance in the least. The Palestinians only lose their moral high ground because “violence is violence,” “violence is never the answer” and “violence begets violence.” They should probably have a few sit-ins and candlelight vigils, maybe stick flowers in Israeli rifles or speak truth to the Knesset!

“If the Palestinians hadn’t made the Israeli occupation and every successive aggression so costly, all the Palestinian land would be seized, except for a few reservations to hold the necessary number of surplus laborers to supplement the Israeli economy, and the Palestinians would be a distant memory in a long line of extinct peoples. Palestinian resistance, including suicide bombings, has helped ensure Palestinian survival against a far more powerful enemy” (Gelderloos 122).

Pacifists often argue that those who use violence as “the easy way out” are bad, ignorant, emotion-driven and overall immoral while pacifists are good, enlightened rational people who are morally vastly superior. Yet again we see the moral and “principled pacifist position” playing into the hands of the ruling class and imperialism. Not violent resistance but pacifism is in fact “the easy way out” and by working into the hands of deeply immoral people (accepting that ridiculous “the good ones vs. the evil ones” moralizer approach for a second) pacifism becomes their accomplice. The examples above should have illustrated this logical fact but in case there is need for more Peter Gelderloos provides this prospect:

“Nonviolence declares that the American Indians could have fought off Columbus, George Washington, and all the other genocidal butchers with sit-ins; that Crazy Horse, by using violent resistance, became part of the cycle of violence, and was “as bad as” Custer. Nonviolence declares that Africans could have stopped the slave trade with hunger strikes and petitions, and that those who mutinied were as bad as their captors; that mutiny, a form of violence, led to more violence, and, thus, resistance led to more enslavement” (24).

Whether the Russian proletariat rises up to end the imperialist war and the tsarist reaction or whether the Tsar orders his troops to shoot into an unarmed crowd of peaceful protestors (speaking truth to power) – it does not matter because “violence is violence.” The pacifist approach ignores concrete conditions and thus cannot grasp that not all violence is bad and that there are different “violences” in motivation, content, quality and quantity.

Pacifism does not care to differ, instead it throws around an over-simplified term evoking negative connotations. Instead of showing support for the liberation struggles of the oppressed, pacifism ends up at victim-blaming and advising them to wait for miracles to happen. Because apparently if we do not want to fall victim to an endless cycle of violence we have to ensure that only non-violent tactics are followed. Funny that we seem to have a free choice now to reject violence and embrace pacifism but are inevitable predestined to drown in blood if we dare take up arms. Why should people not be able to turn their backs to violence after their country was liberated from imperialism or after the revolution succeeded – if not it is so easy to reject violence once and for all?

“Pretending that all violence is the same is very convenient for supposedly anti-violence privileged people who benefit from the violence of the state and have much to lose from the violence of revolution” (Gelderloos 123).

The Tactics of Pacifism

The petty-bourgeois class interest can be observed not only in its ideological expression but also in the concrete tactics and aims. The preconditioned rejection of violence under any circumstances of course considerably narrows the pool of tactics available, such as sit-ins, candlelight vigils, chanting songs, etc. That is all fine and well, sure a lot of fun for everybody and clearly shows that those protesting are good people morally vastly superior to their corrupt opponents. But unfortunately we can conclude together with Orwell:

“Despotic governments can stand ‘moral force’ till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force.”

Gelderloos adds:

“Put simply, if a movement is not a threat, it cannot change a system based on centralized coercion and violence” (p. 22).

That is exactly what the state is — it not some neutral and benevolent entity worried for the well-being of society but an instrument of class rule eager to ensure its monopoly on violence. It does not do so out of an irrational savage instinct. On the contrary, centralizing and institutionalizing violence is vital for the survival of the ruling class. If this state monopoly is challenged the ruling class will react fiercely as a plain look at the news or a history book shows.

“At the absolute best, strategies of this type will lead to an oppositional but passive majority, which history has shown is easy for an armed minority to control (colonialism, for example)” (Gelderloos 92).

Insisting on exclusively non-violent tactics therefore only ensures that any chance for real progress is effectively wasted and that discontent is kept under control and directed into harmless channels. Thus we can say that pacifists, far from challenging the ruling power, actually consolidate it. While governments all over the world react more and more violently to protests questioning their policies we are told to disarm, to not even think about the mere possibility of resisting violently.

Gelderloos quotes another FBI memo to local police officers, explaining what constitutes an “extremist.” Their most outstanding, terrible and inexcusable characteristic is that “extremists may be prepared to defend themselves against law enforcement officials” (47).

The depravity of these “extremists” knows no end, listed are the wearing of sunglasses and scarves “to minimize the effects of tear gas and pepper spray,” using shields and body equipment for protection and they even may – Good God! – “use intimidation techniques such as videotaping and the swarming of police officers to hinder the arrest of other demonstrators!” Needless to say that under such grave circumstances “law enforcement officials should be alert to these possible indicators of protest activity and report any potentially illegal acts to the nearest FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force.”

Luckily the FBI and the law enforcement officials are not alone in their heroic struggle against these dangerous “extremists;” the strict adherents of non-violence come to our rescue! Their rationale goes like this: “Since all violence is bad and since extremists are obviously immoral people threatening the whole movement with their thirst for violence they have to be isolated, pacified, ousted and if necessary handed over to the police. If the movement demonstrates good-will to the state and its representatives and makes clear that it cannot tolerate any acts of violence under any circumstances it will surely be received far more sympathetic. Who can blame the police if they have to restore order after some irresponsible short-minded and -tempered brutes started rioting? All these violent people achieve is giving the state and the media a reason to go after us and crush the protest.” Apart from pondering why suddenly police violence would be “justified” while “violence is never justified” we should be realistic about this:

“The state is not a passive thing. If it wants to repress a movement or organization, it does not wait for an excuse, it manufactures one […] About such campaigns, the FBI says, “It is immaterial whether facts exist to substantiate the charge….[D]isruption [through the media] can be accomplished without facts to back it up” (Gelderloos 57).

After the uncompromising pacifists have thus succeeded in keeping discontent in acceptable, harmless forms and the people helpless and dependent on the sudden enlightenment after “speaking truth to power” they have to be rewarded. They can have their protest and their media coverage. Nobody really cares, nothing really changes, some liberals can feel like real rebels and most important, the facade of social peace, freedom of speech and democracy is kept up. Successfully the ruling class has prevented the possibility of violent resistance destroying the image of social peace, love and harmony.

“Permitting nonviolent protest improves the image of the state. Whether they mean to or not, nonviolent dissidents play the role of a loyal opposition in a performance that dramatizes dissent and creates the illusion that democratic government is not elitist or authoritarian. Pacifists paint the state as benign by giving authority the chance to tolerate a criticism that does not actually threaten its continued operation” (Gelderloos 53).

How can another phenomenon the pacifist movement likes to credit to itself, the so-called “non-violent revolutions,” be explained then? The state and the ruling class were challenged, maybe they used the police against protesters but no bloodshed worth speaking of occurred and definitely no civil war erupted. Yet these regimes collapsed and the people triumphed. What do we make of all that Velvet, Orange, Rose and other “Color Revolutions?”

It is sad and once again shows the naivety of the non-violent movement that you even have to answer such a question. Are they not self-explanatory? What was the result of all these “revolutions?” Did they really succeed? Did anything really change for the better? Do people in the countries where these “revolutions” occurred now live in pacifist wonderland?

“In its long history, this strategy type has not succeeded in causing the class of owners, managers, and enforcers to defect and be disobedient, because their interests are fundamentally opposed to the interests of those who participate in the disobedience. What disobedience strategies have succeeded in doing, time and time again, is forcing out particular government regimes, though these are always replaced by other regimes constituted from among the elite.

[...]

It is not even proper to say the old regimes are “forced out.” Faced with rising disobedience and the threat of real revolution, they choose to hand over power to new regimes that they trust to honor the basic frameworks of capitalism and state. When they do not have the option of a transfer of power, they take off the gloves and attempt to brutalize and dominate the movement, which cannot defend itself and survive without escalating tactics.” (Gelderloos 100 ).

Conclusion

As we have seen, pacifism:

“assumes a society without race and class hierarchy; without privileged, powerful, and violent elites; without a corporate media controlled by the interests of state and capital, ready to manage the perceptions of the citizenry. Such a society does not exist among any of the industrial, capitalist democracies” (Gelderloos 59).

Does this mean that all peaceful tactics are completely useless or that we should stay at home when non-violent protests and rallies take place and should rather seek to escalate violence whereever and whenever possible? Is throwing Molotov cocktails at every occasion what we have to do?

Of course not! Marxism-Leninism condemns individual terrorism and counter-productive inciting of violence. Such would indeed only alienate potential supporters and give the state a reason to increase its reactionary pressure. Agitation and propaganda are of utmost importance and both are non-violent tactics. Peaceful tactics can be a useful and effective mean for gaining attention, support and minor victories such as reforms. But we have to keep in mind that peaceful tactics never be more than means to achieve our final goal, socialist revolution, which will be necessarily violent. This article is directed against denial of the latter fact and an outright rejection of anything else than pacifist tactics, seen as an end within themselves.

There is no way around this fact and no matter how much we try to ignore it, no matter how safe we feel in our dream world and ivory tower, reality will catch up; hopefully it will not take us by surprise. When the time has come we both have to be prepared to defend ourselves and answer violent reaction by violent means as well as preparing and arming the proletariat in theory and practice for the inevitable violent showdown with the bourgeoisie, the revolution.

Everything else would mean to “give up militant revolution (which is to give up on revolution as a whole),” as Gelderloos correctly states (126). The ruling class will not go peacefully, they will not stand by and simply watch us taking the base of their power and wealth. If we do not want to work into the hands of our class enemy we have to realize that there is a war going on and that pacifism is still pro-fascist, pro-bourgeoisie and pro-imperialist.

“Privileged activists need to understand what the rest of the world’s people have known all too long: we are in the midst of a war, and neutrality is not possible. There is nothing in this world currently deserving of the name peace. Rather, it is a question of whose violence frightens us most, and on whose side we will stand” (Gelderloos 134).

“We must realistically accept that revolution is a social war, not because we like war, but because we recognize that the status quo is a low-intensity war and challenging the state results in an intensification of that warfare” (142).

To conclude, we might paraphrase Engels with an excerpt of his work Anti-Dühring:

“To [the pacifist] force is the absolute evil; the first act of force is to him the original sin; his whole exposition is a jeremiad on the contamination of all subsequent history consummated by this original sin; a jeremiad on the shameful perversion of all natural and social laws by this diabolical power, force. That force, however, plays yet another role in history, a revolutionary role; that, in the words of Marx, it is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one, that it is the instrument with the aid of which social movement forces its way through and shatters the dead, fossilised political forms — of this there is not a word in [the pacifist]. It is only with sighs and groans that he admits the possibility that force will perhaps be necessary for the overthrow of an economic system of exploitation — unfortunately, because all use of force demoralises the person who uses it. And this in spite of the immense moral and spiritual impetus which has been given by every victorious revolution! [...] And this parson’s mode of thought — dull, insipid and impotent — presumes to impose itself on the most revolutionary [class] that history has known!”

Sources

Engels, Frederick. Anti-Dühring. 1878.

Gelderloos, Peter. How Nonviolence Protects the State. South End Press, 2007.

Orwell, George. Pacifism and the War. London: 1942.

Hiroshima Day 2003: Secret Meeting on the Privatization of Nuclear War

8 Aug

by Michel Chossudovsky

At no point since the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945, has humanity been closer to the unthinkable – a nuclear holocaust which could potentially spread in terms of radioactive fallout over a large part of the Middle East.

All the safeguards of the Cold War era, which categorized the nuclear bomb as “a weapon of last resort”, have been scrapped. “Offensive” military actions using nuclear warheads are now described as acts of “self-defense”.

The casualties from the direct effects of blast, radioactivity, and fires resulting from the massive use of nuclear weapons by the superpowers [of the Cold War era] would be so catastrophic that we avoided such a tragedy for the first four decades after the invention of nuclear weapons.1

During the Cold War, the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) prevailed, namely that the use of nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union would result in “the destruction of both the attacker and the defender”. In the post Cold war era, US nuclear doctrine was redefined.

The dangers of nuclear weapons have been obfuscated. Tactical weapons have been upheld as distinct, in terms of their impact, from the strategic thermonuclear bombs of the Cold War era. Tactical nuclear weapons are identical to the strategic nuclear bombs. The only things that differentiates these two categories of nuclear bombs are:

1) their delivery system;
2) their explosive yield (measured in mass of trinitrotoluene (TNT), in kilotons or megatons.

The tactical nuclear weapon or low yield mini-nuke is described as a small nuclear bomb, delivered in the same way as the earth penetrating bunker buster bombs. Tactical nuclear weapons, in terms of in-theater delivery systems are comparable to the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

The Pentagon’s 2001 Nuclear Posture Review envisaged so-called “contingency plans” for an offensive “first strike use” of nuclear weapons, not only against “axis of evil” countries (including Iran and North Korea) but also against Russia and China.2

The adoption of the NPR by the US Congress in late 2002 provided a green light for carrying out the Pentagon’s pre-emptive nuclear war doctrine, both in terms of military planning as well as defense procurement and production. Congress not only rolled back its prohibition on low yield nuclear weapons, it also provided funding “to pursue work on so-called mini-nukes”. The financing was allocated to bunker buster (earth penetrator) tactical nuclear weapons as well as to the development of new nuclear weapons.3

Hiroshima Day 2003: Secret Meeting at Strategic Command Headquarters

On August 6, 2003, on Hiroshima Day, commemorating when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima (August 6 1945), a secret meeting was held behind closed doors at Strategic Command Headquarters at the Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.

Senior executives from the nuclear industry and the military industrial complex were in attendance. This mingling of defense contractors, scientists and policy-makers was not intended to commemorate Hiroshima. The meeting was intended to set the stage for the development of a new generation of “smaller”, “safer” and “more usable” nuclear weapons, to be used in the “in-theater nuclear wars” of the 21st Century.

In a cruel irony, the participants to this secret meeting, which excluded members of Congress, arrived on the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing and departed on the anniversary of the attack on Nagasaki. More than 150 military contractors, scientists from the weapons labs, and other government officials gathered at the headquarters of the US Strategic Command in Omaha, Nebraska to plot and plan for the possibility of “full-scale nuclear war”, calling for the production of a new generation of nuclear weapons – more “usable” so-called “mini-nukes” and earth penetrating “bunker busters” armed with atomic warheads.4

According to a leaked draft of the agenda, the secret meeting included discussions on “mini-nukes” and “bunker-buster” bombs with nuclear war heads “for possible use against rogue states”:

We need to change our nuclear strategy from the Cold War to one that can deal with emerging threats… The meeting will give some thought to how we guarantee the efficacy of the (nuclear) stockpile.5

The Privatization of Nuclear War: US Military Contractors Set the Stage

The post 9/11 nuclear weapons doctrine was in the making, with America’s major defense contractors directly involved in the decision-making process.

The Hiroshima Day 2003 meetings had set the stage for the “privatization of nuclear war”. Corporations not only reap multibillion-dollar profits from the production of nuclear bombs, they also have a direct voice in setting the agenda regarding the use and deployment of nuclear weapons.

The nuclear weapons industry, which includes the production of nuclear devices as well as the missile delivery systems, etc., is controlled by a handful of defense contractors with Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northrop Grunman, Raytheon and Boeing in the lead. It is worth noting that barely a week prior to the historic August 6, 2003 meeting, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) disbanded its advisory committee which provided an “independent oversight” on the US nuclear arsenal, including the testing and/or use of new nuclear devices.6

The above text is an excerpt from Michel Chossudovsky’s Towards a World War Three Scenario, The Dangers of Nuclear War.

E-Book Series No. 1.0
Global Research Publishers
Montreal, 2011,
ISBN 978-0-9737147-3-9

76 pages (8.5×11)
Tables, color photographs, maps, text boxes.
Active hyperlinks to major references in the text, hyperlinked footnotes.

Hitler’s First Anti-Semitic writing unveiled in New York

14 Jun

A letter by Adolf Hitler – said to be the earliest expression of his ideas on anti-Semitism – has been shown publicly for the first time in New York.

(NATIONAL) — A very famous letter written about Jews by a young Adolf Hitler has been put on display in New York’s Museum of Tolerance by the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles .

The center reportedly paid $150,000 for the letter from a private dealer.
.
Believed to be the first public expression of Hitler’s anti-Semitism, the four-page, hand-typed letter was composed in 1919, just after Germany’s defeat in the “Great War”.

In it Hitler calls for the “uncompromising removal” of Jews from German society.

Long known to scholars and historians as the “Gemlich letter,” Hitler was a 30-year old solider at the time with what seems to be a bitter hatred for members of the Jewish faith and society.

“To begin with, Judaism is definitely a racial and not a religious group. The result of which is that a non-German race lives among us with its own feelings, thoughts and aspirations, while having all the same rights as we do,” wrote the 30-year old Hitler.

The letter was written six years before the publication of the famous “Mein Kampf” manuscript and also demands that Jews be denied their rights. Hitler sent the letter to an army comrade who had asked him about the “Jewish peril.”

Hitler in World War I

In the letter Hitler outlined a plan for, “The uncompromising removal of the Jews altogether,” which he says can only be accomplished, “Under a government of National strength and never under a government of National impotence.”

Hitler also warns against an “emotional anti-Semitism which will always find its expression in the form of pogroms” and seeks rather “a legal … removal of the rights of the Jew.”

“What began as a private letter, one man’s opinion, twenty-two years later became the ‘Magna Carta’ of an entire nation and led to the nearly total extinction of the Jewish people. This is an important lesson for future generations,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, Wiesenthal Center Dean and Founder. “Demagogues mean what they say and given the opportunity, carry out what they promise,” he concluded.

“Twenty-two years later, he implemented everything that he wrote in that letter,”added Hier.

The document will be on permanent display at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles at the entrance to the Holocaust section, opening on July 11, 2011.

The Wiesenthal Center archives is one of the largest Holocaust collections holding over 50,000 artifacts and memorabilia including photographs, thousands of documents, diaries, letters, artwork, and rare books.

Source

Successful Conclusion to the Celebration of Victory over Nazi-Fascism Day!

5 Jun


Santiago, Chile, May 7, 2011

May 7, 2011 successfully concluded the series of events that the Communist Party of Chile (Proletarian Action) held in commemoration of the 66th Anniversary of the Victory over Nazi-Fascism. As part of the cultural celebrations, Party musicians and singers gave performances of high quality and interpretative content. We especially salute Comrades Alejandro, Enrique and Patricia who read with, with great emotion, Pablo Neruda’s poem Stalingrad. Likewise, we salute those comrades who prepared and screened historical videos about the Great Patriotic War and the defeat of Nazi-fascism.

A highlight of the evening, followed with great interest by all participants, was the main speech delivered by Comrade Eduardo Artes; whose speech was later published in pamphlet form, and distributed to the attendees.

A particularly emotional moment occurred when a participant of the evening’s events, Comrade Isaac Marquez approached the stand and presented Comrades Luis Aravena and Sanhueza Valdemar, of the Party leadership, a replica of the flag the Red Army hoisted in Berlin in 1945.

Comrades Edison Gutierrez of MAS-Chile; Vicente and Carlos of the Association of Peruvian Exiles in Chile; and Natalia of URRACAS de Emaus de San Bernardo were greeted with applause.

Below we reproduce Comrade Eduardo Artés speech and some pictures of the evening’s activities.

National Communications Commission of the Chilean Communist Party (Proletarian Action)

STATEMENT OF EDUARDO ARTÉS, First Secretary of the Chilean Communist Party (Proletarian Action).

Friends, comrades, and colleagues,

May 9th is a red letter day in the Soviet calendar and in the hearts of all communists and anti-fascists of the world, when the Nazi dream of “a thousand year Reich” falls and rolls in the dust. It is the day the red flag was raised by the Red Army in the heart of Berlin.

Today, as many in the West obscure the memory of May 9, 1945, insult socialism and seek to rehabilitate Nazi-fascist criminals, here in Latin America, in Chile, the Communists, the Chilean Communist Party (Proletarian Action) not only remembers this date, but studies those factors which brought it about. Far from a simple academic interest, we look to learn from it and thus make possible, in our own day, the overthrow of today’s imperialists; just as our comrades did with the brown beast, with Nazi-Fascism, in the Great Patriotic War, the anti-fascist struggle.

We must go to the root of the Soviet achievement — red, working class, and popular, as it was. For, it was certainly more than a simple victory; since attacked from all sides, many announced that the socialist state would be unable to withstand Hitler’s troops for even a month.

Many betted on the imminent defeat of the Soviet Union; in fact, openly proclaimed it. U.S. Congressman Martin Lice said, on June 24, 1941: “Within a month, Hitler will take over all of Russia“, and June 27th of that same year, the New York Post reported that “to save the reds from imminent defeat would require a miracle of biblical proportions.“

But there were not only propagandistic and overt pro Nazi-Fascists proclamations; within the “Allies”, Britain and the U.S., its reactionary circles, dreamed of destroying the Soviet Union. Winston Churchill, giving vent to his anti-communism, encouraged the fascists to destroy the USSR. He did not hesitate to call for “drowning the baby in its crib”; and in October 1942, before the Stalingrad counter-offensive said: “We have to stop these barbarians in the East, as far away as possible.” Of course, Churchill counted on the Nazi Germans to “stop” the Soviets, and not that the latter would resist, and then get to Berlin itself.

It is well known that both the U.S. and Britain, forced into alliance with the Soviet Union due to a broad world-wide democratic and anti-fascist movement, took thousands of petty little actions to hamper the resistance and the subsequent Soviet advance against Hitler’s troops. Among other criminal acts, the Western “allies” repeatedly withheld valuable intelligence that could have saved thousands of civilian lives, the destruction of hospitals, schools, housing, food crops, military material, and of course the arms and lives of thousands of Soviet soldiers.

In 1943, in the very midst of the war, the Western “allies” tried to reach an agreement with Nazi generals and redirect the war solely against the Soviet Union. Furthermore, at the end of the war, England, and particularly U.S., protected a large number of Nazi officials and war criminals, transferring many of them outside Germany, even to Latin America, where they directly or indirectly gave their criminal experience to reactionary and fascist regimes, among others, that of Pinochet in Chile.

The U.S. brought home more than 180 German scientists, including their families, who were developing nuclear weapons and missiles for the Nazis. Today, without much trouble, we can say that both the U.S. and England had as a principle reason for their late and half-hearted participation in the anti-fascist coalition, preventing most of post-war Europe from having socialist regimes. They intervened to snatch popular victory away from the partisans in Greece and Italy, and from the Maquis in France. That is to say, to paralyze and destroy the popular guerrilla movements, which, led by Communists, were installing peoples democracies and socialism.

At that time, the dream of the so-called “Western democracies” vanished. This dream was to see the young proletarian State, led by genuine communists defeated and destroyed at the hands of Nazi-fascism. The end of this dream brought on the class hatred of their wretched reactionary leaders.

That the imperialists, the U.S. and Britain, acted thusly was somewhat predictable. We need to remember this, so that no one gets lost when analyzing the behavior of imperialist powers. What can be said to have been surprising to some, and repulsive to all, was the similar behavior of someone who presented himself, in life, as an authentic proletarian revolutionary, but who as has been demonstrated, was only venting his anti-communist spleen – I mean the foolish actions and the miserable figure of Leon Trotsky.

Between 1938 and 1940, just when Soviet workers, peasants and patriots were preparing with great heroism and sacrifice to deal with the impending Nazi-fascist aggression, Trotsky argued that ” the defense of the country can only be ensured by destruction of the autocratic clique of saboteurs and usurpers” and the insisted that “only the overthrow of the Kremlin separatist group can restore the military strength of the USSR. All who, directly or indirectly support Stalinism, all those who exaggerate the strength of his army, are the greatest enemies of the socialist revolution and of oppressed peoples. ““Only the Soviet proletariat rising against shameful new parasitic tyranny can salvage what’s left of the social foundations of the gains of October”. Moreover, so that none doubt the help and assistance given by Trotsky to the Nazis, in the midst of conflict, he once again, called for an uprising against the General Staff of the Anti-fascist struggle. Trotsky said that “the gains of the October Revolution he can only serve the people if they can stir action against the Stalinist bureaucracy, as when acting against the Tsarist bureaucracy and bourgeoisie (…) this can only be achieved one way: through the rising of the workers, peasants and Red Army soldiers against the new breed of oppressors and parasites. To prepare a rising of this magnitude requires a new party, the Fourth International. “

Trotsky’s interests coincided well with that of the Nazis, he supported the cowards and opportunists who sought to bring the Soviet Union to its knees before the brown beast. What a shame for the reactionaries and fascists that Trotsky’s new party, the “Fourth International”, was not taken to by the working class in the Soviet Union, or by the working class in any country. If they had, perhaps the Great War could have been prevented, the Red Army would never have come to Berlin and the world today would be ruled by the Nazi-fascists!

The denial and negation of the USSR’s principal determinant contribution to the fight for freedom, democracy and socialism, was not heard yesterday, when it prosecuted the war against the Nazi-Fascist Axis, at a time when reactionaries the world over boycotted the USSR, but TODAY.

66 years after the glorious 9th of May, 1945, they continue to deny the fundamental role in the defeat of Nazi-fascism played by the Red Army of Workers and Farmers, guided by the its Bolshevik leadership with Comrade Joseph Stalin at the helm. But the truth cannot be hidden forever, on the contrary, this stands out, like it or not — it is revolutionary.

Who can deny that the Soviet Union, the Red Army destroyed 80% of the German Nazi army in unforgettable battles such as Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk, Belorussia or Berlin; that 8 out of 10 soldiers killed in the war by the Germans, occurred on the eastern front; that of all the dead soldiers and civilians around the world during and following the war, a total of 50 million, 27 million were Russians. That was the tremendous contribution and sacrifice the land of the Soviets gave towards the defeat of the brown beast. The hatred and resentment of reactionaries around the world is understandable!

It is necessary to take into account the starting point of the Soviet state in its fight the war Nazi-fascism. Among many the factors to consider: The earlier disaster for old Russia, of the First World War; the backwardness of the peoples and nations that formed the Soviet Union under the old regime, with all the obscurantism and autocratic feudal remnants of tsarism; the recent nature of the revolution and seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, at the head of the worker-peasant alliance; the war against the intervention of the imperialist powers, which sought and to restore tsarism and drown in blood and fire the newly formed socialist state, a war that caused death and destruction and delayed the needed economic and social reconstruction demanded by the new society; and the resulting continued class struggle under the conditions of socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Furthermore, a reactionary and imperialist subversion promoted by well-paid agents distributed throughout the vast Soviet territory, which, with the support of the overthrown classes, carried out terrorist attacks, which caused extensive damage to production, and even the assassination of important cadre of the proletarian state, and as a final millstone, the work of revisionist and opportunist saboteurs, not least of which was Trotskyism, which as had been proven, often acted in unity and coordination with reaction, and even with the Nazis.

How does one explain that, in those years, the Soviets defeated the destructive machinery of the world’s most devastating war? Reply, but say it loudly, proudly, like a Communist, so that the reactionaries’, imperialists’ and traitors’ ears rumble. Say that it was the patriotic and revolutionary determination of the working class, the peasants, and the Soviet peoples, resulting from the correct direction of the Communist Party with Comrade Stalin at the head; it was the result of the ironclad unity of the proletarian state, the Communist Party and the Soviets. There was no other, nor there another explanation for such a great feat!

Our commemoration of the defeat of Nazi-fascism would be incomplete if we do not recall the great ramifications, at all levels, which this victory had on the communist movement and revolutionary movements for democracy and freedom worldwide. For example, it brought the global struggle for decolonization to a new level, contributing significantly to the emergence, among others, of an independent India, the birth of the People’s Republic of China and the countries of Popular Democracy in Eastern Europe. The struggles for national liberation and sovereignty properly became part of the struggle for socialism, as these occur in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolutions.

As part of our tribute to the 66th anniversary of May 9, 1945, we believe that is absolutely necessary to highlight the line Popular Front line agreed to at the Seventh Congress of the Third International, or Comintern, held in Moscow in July 1935, and the formulations and Report approved there, the report of the outstanding communist Georgi Dimitrov.

The first thing that needs to be understood, in all its dimensions, is that it was a tactic which, together with supporting democratic regimes and uniting with anti-fascist forces, brought the fight against Nazism and fascism to a new level. It was a clear expression of the approach and progress to socialism, and this is because it was formulated by the Communist International, whose analysis was that of true socialism, scientific socialism, utilizing the existing Soviet experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The Popular Front policy permitted the overcoming of, among other deviations, the sectarian policy of the German Communist Party, which equally combated Social Democracy and fascism. Although that party cannot be said to be that is responsible for the triumph of Hitler in 1933, that mistaken policy facilitated his rise.

Popular Fronts were born and grew challenging the spread of reaction, and in the heat of battle against fascism. Fascism was already a reality during the global crisis of the 30′s. Fascism had consolidated its hold in Italy, then in Germany. The fascists were presented as saviors of “national values”, which were being destroyed by bourgeois democracy and Marxism. Fascism, based on the more conservative bourgeois layers, sought as its primary aim, curbing and destroying the progress of the struggle for socialism represented by the world’s communist parties and, especially, the example of the emerging Soviet Union and its Bolshevik leadership under Stalin, which was the natural orientation of workers and peoples, both in the developed capitalist countries, and in those of dependent capitalism.

This Popular Front line not only had to face the intense fascist reaction against which it was formed, but also against Trotskyism, that eternal ally of reaction, which accused the Popular Front of abandoning any independent political action of the proletarian class. The Trotskyites did not understand or did not want to understand, that the Popular Front policy came from the proletariat for the unity of all anti-fascist forces.

Soviet Soldiers in Stalingrad

We must bear in mind, that Trotskyism’s opportunistic criticism were supported by some revisionist practices, clear and specific deviations that were expressed in some communist parties, when implementing the Popular Front policy. A good example of this can be found in the old “Communist” Party of Chile, which made a strong shift towards the Right and towards revisionism, during the period of the Popular Front policy, falling squarely within the opportunist views, held in those years, by the Secretary General of the Communist Party USA, Earl R. Browder; who, as a result of this deviation, was expelled from the Communist movement, not only by the Third International, but by the Communist Party, USA itself.

One has to remember the efforts of Ricardo Fonseca to defend the proletarian revolutionary character of the Popular Front. He upheld the principles of Marxism-Leninism within the “Communist” Party of Chile, assumed the General Secretariat of the party, and defeated the former secretary general (forced to resign), Carlos Contreras Labarca, who was deeply committed to the ideological and practical deviations of the Browderist right. Luis Corvalan, who after the death of Ricardo Fonseca, on July 21, 1949, adopted the positions of Browderism and its ideological sibling, Khrushchevite revisionism – the greatest tragedy of the contemporary international communist movement. Moreover, during the defeat and slaughter that marked the fascist coup in Chile in 1973, Corvalan himself wrote that “Browderite revisionism made a dent in our party, weakening its ability to fight imperialism and weakening its role as vanguard of the working class in the struggle for its interests. Additionally, it tended to disarm the party ideologically in face of the immediate post-war struggles it would face.”

It is clear that, although there was no final victory, efforts were made within the “Communist” Party of Chile, by Marxist-Leninist to uphold the Third International and the Popular Front line. Therefore, the fraudulent efforts made by Trotskyites to present the Popular Front and its legal practices as a revisionist concept leading to the abandonment of the proletarian revolutionary path, are nothing but a hoax.

As an example, and in order to clear away some more of the lies put forward about the Popular Front policy, one should examine the program supported the Popular Front in Spain, which, as can seen, did NOT in any way entail “a waiver of class independence” : The Republican Party, Republican Left, Republican Union and the Socialist Party, General Workers Confederation, the National Federation of Young Socialists, the Communist Party, the Unionist Party, the Workers Party of Marxist Unification, while safeguarding their doctrinal principles, came to an understanding and a common political plan to strengthen its electoral lineup, and the standard of governance needed to develop the Republican left, with the support of labor, in the case of electoral victory. They publicly the bases and limits of their political consensus; and furthermore, they offered it consideration of the remaining Republican and labor organizations.

Today there is no longer a Soviet Union nor a strongly led world Communist movement, based on firm Marxist-Leninist positions, openly engaged in a multi-faceted battle against imperialism and reaction, against opportunism and revisionism — and their cousins, the Trotskyites. But, there are still communist parties and revolutionary organizations which adhere to the path of revolution and socialism. We seek to work to unite the revolutionary labor movement on a Marxist-Leninist, anti-imperialist and internationalist basis. These are the forward steps of today’s anti-fascist, democratic, popular and socialist struggles.

We are currently undergoing major mass protest movements among workers, peasants and youth, ranging across five continents. Lately, after the great workers’ demonstrations in Europe against unemployment and the capitalist crisis, we witnessed the uprising of the Arab peoples in the Middle East. The flags of freedom, against neo-liberalism, and for the revolution and socialism, are waving in the hands of millions, adding to the heroic and long Palestinian struggle against Zionism and imperialism.

Today there are societies that are undergoing a remarkable struggle for national sovereignty, for the right to the social development of their people. These are born and are driven forward by broad popular democratic mass movements, and within them, revolutionary and communist forces, with various levels of revolutionary development and proletarian political understanding. They are making efforts to properly address immediate tasks, while reaffirming the perspective of socialist revolution.

Bolivia and Venezuela, their governments, stand out in our Latin America, in opposition to imperialist and hegemonic designs, in demanding respect for their sovereignty. They join the heroic struggle that, for over half a century has inspired the Cuban Revolution. Elsewhere, in the same direction, we have the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Nepal, and Belarus; all of them are engaged in a broad movement for national and popular rights and against capitalist imperialism.

We are clear about what happens when one cuts or abandons the ideological struggle in the face of bourgeois enemies. We should not care how these may be disguised, whether in leftist or rightist garb, we must give battle. The fall of socialist regimes, though momentary, is the leading example of where betrayal and revisionism leads. However, the wheel of history will not stop, and these countries, including those who were part of the Lenin’s and Stalin’s USSR, will come back to the future, socialism.

In the present struggle against the imperialist powers we have the experience of fighting Nazism and Fascism, and the experience of the Popular Front. These, which we have commemorated today, are a rich source of lessons in seeking to resolve the principal contradiction of the period in which we live and in bringing about a broad, anti-capitalist, mass movement, and a socialist victory. That is why we must beware of petty-bourgeois attitudes and positions; falsely leftist, which prefer to shake hands with the most reactionary rightists. Instead, we must make alliances with those sectors which, although objectively not Marxist-Leninist, are anti-imperialist and progressive, are in contradiction to and oppose imperialist hegemony. Likewise, we must especially beware of those who get carried away by excessive enthusiasm or are simply dedicated to sowing confusion; those who see “socialism” everywhere, confusing the contradictory processes of the struggle for national sovereignty and popular rights as automatically being socialist; and, not seeing them for what they are — part of the general fight for the Revolution and Socialism.

Petty bourgeois radicalism plays at revolution by attacking all those who are not with their maximum “program”. Whether they call themselves Trotskyites or not, whether they realize it or not, they act just like Trotsky. These appear different from the Khrushchev revisionists and their submissive and conciliatory false Parliamentary roads; but they are brothers in sowing confusion, liquidationism, and betrayal. They are the fifth columns of reaction. Embedded in the labor and peoples’ movement, they boycott the anti-fascist struggle; they deny the victory of the workers and peoples; and they deny the exploits of the Red Army, with Comrade Stalin at the head, which in its day destroyed the reactionaries’ dream to impose Nazi-Fascism on all mankind.

Comrades, the workers and peasants, the people, the democratic and revolutionary forces, the Communists were yesterday able to defeat Nazi-fascism. Today, let us arise and defeat imperialism. Let us achieve socialism.

Long live May 9, 1945!

Long live the Red Army and Communist Party of Stalin!

Long live the correct, proletarian, and revolutionary Popular Front!

Long live proletarian internationalism!

Long live Marxism-Leninism

Workers and peoples of the world, unite!

Libya and the World of Oil

7 Apr

By Noam Chomsky

Last month, at the international tribunal on crimes during the civil war in Sierra Leone, the trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor came to an end.

The chief prosecutor, U.S. law professor David Crane, informed The Times of London that the case was incomplete: The prosecutors intended to charge Moammar Gadhafi, who, Crane said, “was ultimately responsible for the mutilation, maiming and/or murder of 1.2 million people.”

But the charge was not to be. The U.S., U.K. and others intervened to block it. Asked why, Crane said, “Welcome to the world of oil.”

Another recent Gadhafi casualty was Sir Howard Davies, the director of the London School of Economics, who resigned after revelations of the school’s links to the Libyan dictator.

In Cambridge, Mass., the Monitor Group, a consultancy firm founded by Harvard professors, was well paid for such services as a book to bring Gadhafi’s immortal words to the public “in conversation with renowned international experts,” along with other efforts “to enhance international appreciation of (Gadhafi’s) Libya.”

The world of oil is rarely far in the background in affairs concerning this region.

For example, as the dimensions of the U.S. defeat in Iraq could no longer be concealed, pretty rhetoric was displaced by honest announcement of policy goals. In November 2007 the White House issued a Declaration of Principles insisting that Iraq must grant indefinite access and privilege to American investors.

Two months later President Bush informed Congress that he would reject legislation that might limit the permanent stationing of U.S. armed forces in Iraq or “United States control of the oil resources of Iraq” – demands that the U.S. had to abandon shortly afterward in the face of Iraqi resistance.

The world of oil provides useful guidance for western reactions to the remarkable democracy uprisings in the Arab world. An oil-rich dictator who is a reliable client is granted virtual free rein. There was little reaction when Saudi Arabia declared on March 5, “Laws and regulations in the Kingdom totally prohibit all kinds of demonstrations, marches and sit-in protests as well as calling for them as they go against the principles of Shariah and Saudi customs and traditions.” The kingdom mobilized huge security forces that rigorously enforced the ban.

In Kuwait, small demonstrations were crushed. The mailed fist struck in Bahrain after Saudi-led military forces intervened to ensure that the minority Sunni monarchy would not be threatened by calls for democratic reforms.

Bahrain is sensitive not only because it hosts the U.S. Fifth Fleet but also because it borders Shiite areas of Saudi Arabia, the location of most of the kingdom’s oil. The world’s primary energy resources happen to be located near the northern Persian Gulf (or Arabian Gulf, as Arabs often call it), largely Shiite, a potential nightmare for Western planners.

In Egypt and Tunisia, the popular uprising has won impressive victories, but as the Carnegie Endowment reported, the regimes remain and are “seemingly determined to curb the pro-democracy momentum generated so far. A change in ruling elites and system of governance is still a distant goal” – and one that the West will seek to keep far removed. Libya is a different case, an oil-rich state run by a brutal dictator, who, however, is unreliable: A dependable client would be far preferable. When nonviolent protests erupted, Gadhafi moved quickly to crush them.

On March 22, as Gadhafi’s forces were converging on the rebel capital of Benghazi, top Obama Middle East adviser Dennis Ross warned that if there is a massacre, “everyone would blame us for it,” an unacceptable consequence.

And the West certainly didn’t want Gadhafi to enhance his power and independence by crushing the rebellion. The U.S. joined in the U.N. Security Council authorization of a “no-fly zone,” to be implemented by France, the U.K. and the U.S.

The intervention prevented a likely massacre but was interpreted by the coalition as authorizing direct support for the rebels. A cease-fire was imposed on Gadhafi’s forces, but the rebels were helped to advance to the West. In short order they conquered the major sources of Libya’s oil production, at least temporarily.

On March 28, the London-based Arab journal Al-Quds Al-Arabi warned that the intervention may leave Libya with “two states, a rebel-held, oil-rich East and a poverty-stricken, Gadhafi-led West. … Given that the oil wells have been secured, we may find ourselves facing a new Libyan oil emirate, sparsely inhabited, protected by the West and very similar to the Gulf’s emirate states.” Or the Western-backed rebellion might proceed all the way to eliminate the irritating dictator.

It is commonly argued that oil cannot be a motive for the intervention because the West had access to the prize under Gadhafi. True but irrelevant. The same could be said about Iraq under Saddam Hussein, or Iran and Cuba today.

What the West seeks is what Bush announced: control, or at least dependable clients, and in the case of Libya, access to vast unexplored areas expected to be rich in oil. U.S and British internal documents stress that the “virus of nationalism” is the greatest fear, since it might breed disobedience.

The intervention is being conducted by the three traditional imperial powers (though we may recall – Libyans presumably do – that, after World War I, Italy conducted genocide in eastern Libya).

The western powers are acting in virtual isolation. States in the region – Turkey and Egypt – want no part of it, nor does Africa. The Gulf dictators would be happy to see Gadhafi gone – but, even as they’re groaning under the weight of advanced weapons provided to them to recycle petrodollars and ensure obedience, they barely offer more than token participation. The same is true beyond: India, Brazil and even Germany.

The Arab Spring has deep roots. The region has been simmering for years. The first of the current wave of protests began last year in Western Sahara, the last African colony, invaded by Morocco in 1975 and illegally held since, in a manner similar to East Timor and the Israeli-occupied territories.

A nonviolent protest last November was crushed by Moroccan forces. France intervened to block a Security Council inquiry into the crimes of its client.

Then a flame ignited in Tunisia that has since spread into a conflagration.

© New York Times Syndicate

Images by the Red Phoenix

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