Today's Topics:
1. avtonom: Problems of the protest in Belarus [machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. pramen: Possibilities of pressure on the dictatorial regime
in Belarus (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
in Belarus (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group: THE TRUMP
PUTSCH by
ablokeimet (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
ablokeimet (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. France, Union Communiste Libertaire UCL AL #312 - Politics,
Statistics: Terrorism does not have the face we think (ca, de,
it, fr, pt)[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
Statistics: Terrorism does not have the face we think (ca, de,
it, fr, pt)[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
5. Australia, Brisbare, ac meanjin: MISSION STATEMENT
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
For the success of the people's political struggle, it is necessary not only to
fightagainst , but also to fightfor . It is not enough to overthrow even the
worst regime; you also need to build a better life on its ruins. Therefore,
people inevitably have the question of what will happen after the overthrow of
the government. If people do not have an understandingofwhat we are fighting for,
then the motivation to fight also decreases. And even if, despite this, victory
is achieved and the regime is overthrown, then provocateurs can easily take
advantage of the fruits of victory, and the life of the people will worsen.
At the initial stage of the protest in Belarus, a positive goal was to fight for
fair elections. Demanding the restoration of legality without revolutionary
changes. The problem with such a goal is that it is weak. If they did not succeed
immediately, then the demands of the protesters become more radical, and in order
to fightforit, an image of the future is needed, which will become achievable
after the overthrow of the Lukashenka regime.
The only political force that has an image of the future is Western liberals.
Therefore, it was they who led the protest. Other political forces, in particular
the left, do not have an image of the future, so they immediately found
themselves on the sidelines. The privatization of the protest by the liberals led
to the following. If the fight against Lukashenka and for fair elections was
supported by the majority of the population, then not all Belarusians share
Western values. Therefore, support for the protest began to fall.
A similar situation was in Russia in 2011. When electoral fraud also sparked
massive protests and the protest was led by liberals. After that, the protest
lost general support and gradually faded away. That opened the way for the
strengthening of the dictatorship and further fascization of the Russian government.
For the protest to remain popular, enjoy universal support and cannot be used by
provocateurs to worsen the life of the people, an image of the future is needed
that will be real, understandable and beneficial to the ordinary citizen. This
image of the future consists of specific requirements that people can use to
assess the usefulness of any government and any political forces - today,
tomorrow, revolutionary, post-revolutionary.
A hundred years ago, people fought for their specific rights and opportunities -
equality of all before the law, an 8-hour working day, paid leave, affordable
education and medicine, land and factories owned by peasants and workers, etc.
That political program is outdated - some of those requirements have been
fulfilled, some have lost their relevance. We need new specific requirements that
are relevant for today's citizens.
The key principle of a viable political program is the unity of legal and
material requirements:
"We know very well that even if we achieve land, income tax, universal compulsory
gratuitous training and the replacement of a standing army with a people's
militia, there will still be little sense, because the government can take it all
back from us. Therefore, we need a broad opportunity to protect our rights and
interests.To do this, we need to be given complete freedom to speak and write in
defense of our interests and to expose any untruths of the authorities and frauds
of the rich, freely organize meetings to discuss our needs, form alliances to
defend our rights. , we wish that no one in the state could be imprisoned at the
discretion of the authorities, could not be searched without the permission of
the court - in a word, that there was complete inviolability of the person and
home of all citizens.And for the judges to be fair, not to indulge the
authorities and to please them do not oppress citizens with searches and arrests,
we demand that they not be subject to the authorities: let them be chosen by the
whole people and let them be prosecuted for wrong deeds. "// Order Ivantsevsky
rural society of Lukoyanovskaya vol., Nizhny Novgorod province in the II State
Duma (April 1907) Kara-Murza Civil war.
Unfortunately, over the past century, political thought has degraded, and today
the majority of citizens do not understand the need to fight for their rights.
Waiting for the leader to come and take care of them. As long as this situation
continues, it is naive to count on the improvement of our life.
The most correct and good goal is useless until there is a subject who is
interested in achieving this goal. The oligarchy, the nomenklatura and the state
are not interested in improving the life of the people. Only citizens themselves
can force the state to take into account the interests of the people. And for
this we need to increase our political subjectivity. As long as the people are a
crowd of powerless individuals, the authorities will not act in the interests of
the people. Whatever slogans the power is covered with. Provocateurs, careerists
and self-seekers feel great under any slogans.
Today's left movement is terribly far from the people. To become a viable
political force again, the left must lead the citizens' struggle fortheircivil
rights. As it was a century ago. Without reliance on citizens' self-organization,
the leftist movement is an empty wrapper.
And activists need to know, apply and disseminate those anarcho-communist tools
that can increase the opportunities of people here and now. In particular:
Self-organizing principlesfor grassroots engagement.
A networked organizationfor political struggle.
Self-organizedor at least adelocraticenterprise for labor activities.
As long as citizens do not have an image of the future, consisting of specific
rights, opportunities and requirements, political struggle is pointless. You
cannot fight for all good and against all bad. Such a struggle is easily used by
oligarchic groups in their own interests, and the life of the people does not
change for the better.
Marx's mistake or the real path to communism
Join the groupFrom Self-Organization to Communism , dedicated to the introduction
of communist relations into our lives.
https://avtonom.org/freenews/problemy-protesta-belorussii
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Message: 2
Reflections not only on how to improve the situation of imprisoned anarchists in
so-called Belarus, but also on how to contribute to the fall of the local
dictatorship. ---- Recently, anarchists who already have extensive experience in
Lukashenko's regime repressions have been imprisoned. Dmitry Dubovsky, Igor
Olinevich, Sergei Romanov, Dmitry Rezanovich, Mikola Dziadok, Akihiro
Gaevsky-Hanada and others. The reason for their prosecution is obvious: they
resisted the dictatorship. The regime in Belarus is no different from other
dictatorships. It does not accept active resistance to one's own evil, even if it
is only the activity of individuals or small groups. The ruling class realizes
that after so many years of oppression, any resistance has great potential to
become richer until the regime overwhelms it and falls.
Repression by the structures defending the regime is growing as resistance
becomes massive. There are already thousands of people on the streets of
Belarusian cities seeking to overthrow the dictator. Most of them have no other
goal than to establish Western-style parliamentary democracy in the country. From
an anarchist perspective, this can be seen as an inconsistent attitude that does
not address the fundamental nature of the problem.
Nevertheless, two positive conclusions can be drawn from this.
The very pressure on the regime and the possible achievement of its collapse
can mean an improvement in the situation of imprisoned anarchists and other
prisoners. There may be a reduction in punishment, improved prison conditions, or
even release.
Any rebellion against oppression, however reformist it may be at first, has the
potential to later cling to revolutionary goals. The active participation of
revolutionary minorities can contribute to this by pushing for activities beyond
the limits of the bourgeois-democratic framework.
What is happening in so-called Belarus is not a social revolution as the
anarchists think. Let us not have any illusions, so that we do not have to deal
with the pain of disillusionment later. Let's not seek in events for what is not
there. But let's also not take the missing revolutionary content as a pretext to
passively set aside. It is necessary to be without illusions, but at the same
time to intervene in the situation in anarchist ways. Trying to reverse the
course of events in favor of anarchist goals.
Some anarchists in Belarus have had their sentences reduced as a result of
pressure from the international community, human rights organizations, diplomacy
and even members of the European Parliament. Some people now relate their hopes
to these realms. Although early release is a huge relief for comrades and their
loved ones, even here it is necessary to beware of illusions. If the Lukashenko
regime proceeds to loosen repressive measures under pressure from diplomacy or
ruling elites from other countries, this is not a sign of goodwill. It is not
selfless help. It is usually a strategic choice to make the regime more
legitimate in the eyes of foreign critics and thus ease international pressure.
The release of several prisoners gives the impression that the regime reflects
its mistakes and does not want to continue them. However, it is a cover-up
maneuver. The regime does not change at the core. It goes on the same tracks,
only with the support of official human rights defenders, who unknowingly help
from abroad to co-create a better picture of the regime than it really is.
Any improvement in the situation of imprisoned comrades is very positive news.
But let us not allow this to become an excuse to abandon the anarchist
perspective and the uncompromising negation of the authoritarian structures of
all states. Members of the European Parliament and government diplomats cannot be
celebrated uncritically. Although they sometimes advocates the release of
anarchists from prison, we are not associated with a partnership. We must not
look at them as hope, because their goals meant blocking and obstructing our goals.
Igor Olinevich, one of the imprisoned anarchists, expressed skepticism about the
help of governments and their institutions in his prison diary "I'm going to
Magadan" in 2011 when he wrote: "Belarus plays the role of a primary, most
environmentally polluted country economically through oil gas, the production of
plastics, food supplements, fertilizers, paper, cement, etc. In general, Europe
can adopt resolutions and carry out decorative maneuvers on democracy at will,
but in fact it does not mind such a state of affairs at all. `It is also possible
to trade with cannibals` - that is the essence of European politics."
This is not just an expression of distrust in official politics. It is also an
indication of where the revolutionary forces should go. European Union
governments and businessmen are primarily interested in smooth international
trade. If Lukashenko's regime does not prevent them from doing so, they have no
reason to push for his removal. As Igor Olinevich remarked well, "We have nowhere
to expect help from. No one will save us except ourselves. "
If we know that the stability of the Belarusian regime depends on trade with
neighboring countries, it follows that the blocking of these trades significantly
contributes to destabilization. Years ago, Igor outlined which economic sectors
are key in the country. Each of us has the ability to find out more about
individual economic actors and their position in the region in which we live. And
anyone, even with a minimum of resources, can make problems or stop their
operation. The Belarusian regime is not an isolated phenomenon closed between
national borders. His economic and political interests spread throughout the
world. Tracking and intervening makes more sense than relying on the maneuvers of
the powers.
Lukas Borl, december 2020
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Message: 3
The following statement was released by the Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group
on 10 January 2021. ---- It is important to call the events of Tuesday 6 January
in Washington DC in the US by their proper name. It was an attempted Fascist
putsch, consciously incited though not directed by Donald Trump. It was an
attempt to prevent the US Congress taking the final step to authorise the
inauguration of Joe Biden as President a fortnight later. It failed and we're
glad it did. ---- Capitalist media organisations are notoriously unreliable at
estimating numbers at political events, but it's clear that at least tens of
thousands of Trump supporters attended a demonstration in Washington under
Fascist leadership. Up to a couple of thousand people, including organised
Fascist groups and known Fascist identities, stormed the Capitol building (the US
Parliament House). The mob included not a few off-duty cops who were seen
flashing their IDs to the Capitol Police on the way in. The rioters disrupted the
proceedings, which were a certification of the results of the Electoral College,
and took over the meeting chambers and many other areas of the building.
Photographs have emerged from inside showing men in combat gear, carrying weapons
and zip ties for handling prisoners. Eventually, the rioters were forced to
leave. Congress resumed its session and recognised the result of the Electoral
College.
Police treatment of the Washington event was remarkably light, especially
considering that Fascists had been threatening for weeks to storm the Capitol and
that Black Lives Matter protestors have been met with overwhelming and aggressive
police violence. Leftist demonstrators would never have been given the
opportunity to reach the steps, let alone breach the doors and break windows.
Instead, several cops posed for selfies with members of the mob. At a later
point, a woman Trump supporter was shot dead by Capitol Police. Three other Trump
supporters died from "medical emergencies" (only one of which occurred inside the
Capitol) and a cop died the next day.
Trump incited his Fascist followers to storm the Capitol as a last ditch attempt
to prevent Biden's inauguration, following the refusal of Mike Pence (Trump's
Vice President) to prevent it by acting in his role of presiding over the Senate.
This was after a series of attempts by Trump to frustrate the inauguration of
Biden. He called rallies of his supporters outside counting centres; launched
dozens of court cases, losing on all but a handful of minor procedural points;
and tried to heavy various State governors and officials involved in the election
process. His phone call to the Georgia Secretary of State was recorded and
released on the Internet and showed just how desperate Trump was becoming.
The Trump putsch, if it had been successful, would have transformed the United
States into a Fascist dictatorship. Trump's private army would have swept away
the legislative branch of government. To make it stick, he would have been
compelled to sack and/or arrest thousands of public officials - including,
possibly, judges. But to carry through a putsch in defiance of a democratic
election, it's necessary to have plenty of friends in high places. Trump found he
didn't have nearly enough friends. He was beaten by the Deep State.
The failure of the putsch is a major blow to Trump. He has forced many Republican
politicians, including the Vice President, to break with him. Most of the rest of
the country is enraged. He has now been forced to promise a peaceful transfer of
power on 20 January. This is both an admission of defeat and a concession that
his conduct until now has contained an implicit threat of a coup.
There is no precise analogy from well-known history, but the closest one is Adolf
Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. A relatively small group of people attempted,
with daring action, to deliver the government of Germany into the hands of a
dictator. The failure of the putsch was a setback for the Nazis, but the Weimar
Republic treated the putschists with kid gloves. Hitler was sentenced to only
five years prison and was released after nine months. Worse, successive Weimar
governments eroded democratic rights with frequent states of emergency and left
Germany's social problems unresolved. Hitler was able to rebuild his political
credibility and then capitalise on the crisis created by the Depression. And we
all know what followed that.
The Beer Hall Putsch analogy contains a lesson. Trump has given his enemies an
opportunity to put him out of business, but the Democrats won't follow through.
The Fascists who stormed the Capitol building are being denounced by everyone,
including Trump, and will probably be hung out to dry, but the consequences for
Trump himself won't be anywhere near hard enough. And the way Biden governs will,
in due course, rehabilitate Trump. Left to their own devices, the Democrats will
pave the way for the revival of Trump's political fortunes.
Democrats will make their own assaults on democratic rights. Already, Biden has
called the people who stormed the Capitol "domestic terrorists" and Democrats
across the board have picked up on his cue. In using this term, Biden isn't
referring to the pipe bombs and the truck full of Molotov cocktails found in
Washington, which have hardly got a mention in the mainstream media. He also
wasn't speaking about the death of a cop, which occurred after his statement. The
"terrorism" he was denouncing was what was on everyone's TV screens - a mob
breaking windows, occupying the Capitol and disrupting a sitting of Congress.
Biden knows what he is doing. By denouncing Trump's foot soldiers as terrorists,
he is preparing for a broader crackdown on political activity outside accepted
political channels. Any new laws or police powers will apply as much to the Left
as to the Right. They will be used by the cops with glee against the Left and not
at all or hardly ever against the Right. And Democrats denouncing (with equal
parts ignorance and malice) the rioters in the Capitol as "anarchists" will have
real consequences for actual Anarchists.
Lessons
The first lesson to be drawn is that the US bourgeoisie have not given up on
capitalist democracy. It is their preferred form of rule, since there are too
many capitalists to fit inside a single palace. While the capitalists are
prepared to abandon democracy if it is necessary to preserve their power, they
fear that a dictator would rule in the interests of one faction of capital rather
than the capitalist class as a whole.
Secondly, there is nothing surprising about the events in Washington. Not the
Fascist mobs. Not Trump's incitement. Not the complicit approach of the cops. Not
the failure of the putsch. Not the Democrats' turn to "law and order". And not
the liberals' surprise at all of these things except the last.
The Democrats will handle the aftermath of the putsch in a way that will
strengthen the Right. They will pass yet more repressive laws. They will wax
lyrical about the precious institutions of capitalist democracy and vehemently
denounce the invaders of Congress. But when it comes to prosecuting and
sentencing, many of these invaders will get kid glove treatment.
Finally, we need to realise that liberals are not our friends. They are not
quietly on our side while we do the dangerous stuff. When push comes to shove,
liberals want the heavy hand of the State to suppress Right wing dissent. They do
not support working class counter-mobilisation. When the workers of the United
States make a revolution, they will disperse the liberals' precious Congress -
themselves - not to establish a dictatorship, but to allow the mass organs of
workers' democracy to take power. And they will need to be prepared to defend
themselves against a last-ditch violent reaction by the old regime, supported
whole-heartedly by the liberals.
Next
For the time being, Trump is badly wounded and the Republican Party is deeply
divided. The Fascists are demoralised because Trump is dumping on them to save
his own skin. The Democrats are angry and also feel vindicated.
Anarchists in the United States need to ensure that the organisers of the Trump
Putsch are clearly identified as Fascists for the world to see. Anarchists need
to seize the opportunity to break the links that have been developing between
them and the mainstream Right and calling the Fascists by their true name is an
essential part of that. And Anarchists need to run hard against the Democrats'
agenda of righteous "law and order" and neo-liberalism. Biden was always going to
be a bad President. The Trump Putsch means he'll be worse.
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment
AFTER TRUMP
Posted on 10 January, 2021 by ablokeimet
This article first appeared in The Anvil, Vol 9 No 6, published 31 Dec 2020.
The US Presidential election is over and Donald Trump has lost. While he has
convinced his hard core supporters than the election has been stolen from him, he
has failed to get sufficient backing from powerful actors to mount a coup. Joe
Biden will take office on 20 January.
Biden will have no honeymoon. The previous two Democratic Presidents faced a
massive Right wing reaction as soon as they took office, although they had no
opposition worth noting from the Left. The Republicans will try a third time to
mount a reactionary movement and Trump will probably lead it. Biden campaigned on
a platform of being a "normal President" - but "normal" politics is precisely
what led to the election of Trump in 2016. Left to his own devices, Biden will
bring the Washington establishment even further into disrepute and set the stage
for Trump to be re-elected in 2024 (health permitting). Biden will rule for Wall
Street, allow inequality to grow unchecked and confine progressive policies to
gestures that will infuriate the Right while not satisfying the burning needs of
the mass of workers in the US.
There is a new factor. Obama took office when the grassroots Left was small, weak
and inexperienced. As a result, there were massive illusions in him, something
that demobilised the Left for some years. Under Clinton back in 1992, the
situation was even worse. The Left was ideologically shattered by the collapse of
the USSR and its organisations were falling to pieces. The capitalists were
celebrating the "death of communism" and proclaiming "the end of history". Now
the grassroots left is confident and growing, having left full or partial
ideological dependence on the USSR behind. For the first time since LBJ, a
Democratic President will take office with a grassroots challenge from the Left.
The strategy
The social movement in the United States faces a fundamental strategic choice.
Either it works through the Democratic Party or against it. Every movement throws
up a layer of activists who use it to climb into Parliament, but the crucial
issue is whether the movement will follow them and divert itself into
Parliamentary channels. The moment the movement tones down its actions or demands
to suit the fortunes of Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, it's finished
as an independent force. It's not for nothing that the Democratic Party is known
in the US as the graveyard of political movements. It's happened so many times
before that activists have no excuse for not seeing it coming.
Anarchist communists in the United States need to avoid being distracted by the
siren call of demands to change the Democratic Party. The priority must be to
build the grassroots struggle, in whatever sphere it erupts, while engaging
patiently with those who think there is currently no alternative to the
Democrats. And the argument has to be that "We - the grassroots movement - are
the alternative to the Democrats. We're creating facts on the ground to which all
politicians must respond in some way, while the organisations we are building are
the new society within the shell of the old."
The struggle
Finally, we must consider the fields of struggle available. The struggle against
the police and their racist violence, the struggle for immigrants' rights and
against borders and the struggle to prevent rampant climate change have all
generated strong grassroots movements in recent years. The first of these
struggles is the one that has shaken the United States the most, because US
capitalism is founded on the legacy of slavery. The demand that the State merely
recognise that Black lives matter is enough to undermine the stability of its
order and send the cops into a frenzy of violence.
The militant demonstrations against the police murder of George Floyd, for
example, were entirely justified and spread like wildfire. Demonstrators can be
beaten off the streets, however, as eventually happened in Minneapolis,
Louisville, Atlanta, Portland and elsewhere. What would give this struggle, and
all other struggles, the social weight to win would be bringing it into the
workplace. If grassroots radicals were strong enough in the labour movement in
Minneapolis to force the staging of a one day general strike there, the
capitalists would have been hit where it really hurts. Cutting off the flow of
profits would achieve far more to defund police and change their behaviour than
any amount of reform pursued electorally.
The workplace is the source of the capitalists' power, so the struggle in that
location is decisive. It is the vehicle for fighting the economic inequality that
is driving down living standards for US workers for the first time since the
Great Depression and fuelling the growth of Fascism. It is, though, much more
than that. The struggle in the workplace can unite the multi-racial,
multicultural and gender diverse working class in the fight against all forms of
social oppression and build the solidarity needed to make the revolution to
overthrow capitalism as a whole.
After Trump, the fundamental task is the same as before.
BUILD THE CLASS STRUGGLE
https://melbacg.wordpress.com/2021/01/10/the-trump-putsch/
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Message: 4
While anti-terrorism laws follow one another in France and more widely in the
world, an Australian NGO specializing in statistical research on peace has
published its report on the terrorist phenomenon. Analysis. ---- Terrorism is on
the decline for the fifth consecutive year in the world. This is the first lesson
of a study produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace, an NGO
headquartered in AustraliaInstitute[1]. The terrorist attacks claimed the lives
of 13,826 people in 2019, down more than 15% from 2018. The peak of the
phenomenon coincides with the period of peak activity of the Islamic State in
Iraq and the Levant (ISIL , or Daesh) from 2014 to 2016. In 2019, terrorism
killed nearly 60% less than in 2014.
However, it is under the pretext of this intangible and permanent threat that the
government multiplies security laws, patrols the military in the streets, and
provides for the general arming of municipal police.
The study reminds us that the populations most affected by terrorism are by far
those who live in countries at war. Between 2002 and 2019, 95% of the victims
were in countries where armed conflict was taking place. Imperialism plays an
obvious role in the emergence and maintenance of terrorist violence. The two
countries most affected are Afghanistan and Iraq, both militarily occupied by the
United States, whose stated objective is "todestroy terrorism" and "torestore
democracy".
Syria (at 4 th in the world) is meanwhile the playground of foreign powers first
and foremost there is Russia, Turkey and Iran, but also the United States. In
Yemen (6 th ) a deadly war, the main actor is the Saudi monarchy, continues with
the blessing of the US and European arms dealers, including France. More
generally, it is in countries which are former protectorates or former colonies
that terrorism is rife.
Massacres in the Sahel
France plays its full part in this gloomy picture: Daesh is gradually shifting
its activities to the Sahel, where France has been carrying out military
operations for more than six years, and where it supports corrupt dictators at
arm's length. Burkina Faso, where the French army has set up a base of its
special forces, has seen the number of victims linked to terrorism increase by
nearly five in recent years.
The far-right attacks on the rise
From the Utøya massacre in Norway in 2011 to the Christchurch bombing in New
Zealand in 2019, far-right attacks are on the rise in the United States and its
advanced capitalist satellites.
Norwegian Anders Breivik (left): 77 victims in 2011 in Oslo and Utøya. Tunisian
Mohamed Lahouaiej- Bouhlel (right): 86 victims in 2016 in Nice.
In both cases, an individual fanaticism connected to a political movement:
ultranationalist for the first, jihadist for the second.
While far-right attacks accounted for only 14% of attacks between 2002 and 2014
in these states, this proportion skyrocketed to 40% in 2015, and reached 46% in
2019 . Far-right attacks were even responsible for 82% of deaths there in 2019.
The only exception: France, the country most affected in Europe by jihadist attacks.
The United States accounts for more than half of the attacks. There are many
reasons for this: on the breeding ground of racism whose legal foundations were
only finally abolished in the 1970s, the Trump presidency galvanized far-right
groups, from the Ku Klux Klan to the most reactionary fringes. of the Republican
Party. But Europe is also affected, in a context where the extreme right is on
the rise.
All over the continent, the capitalists do not hesitate to team up with it.
Bringing up identity, racist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic themes
is, for the wealthy, an admittedly old but still effective means of continuing to
play the division of the popular classes.
Gangrenous police and army
In this context, the police and the army act as an echo chamber for the zealots
of the extreme right. They serve as much inspiration (through equipment, virilist
codes, the use of violence) as they are permeable to fascist ideologies. In Italy
in 2019, an arsenal of war including even a missile was found among fascists,
while the government took refuge in embarrassed silence. The German government
had to resolve to dissolve this year an entire company out of the four that had
its special anti-terrorist forces (KSK), because it was made up of neo-Nazis.
In France, nearly seven out of ten police officers voted Le Pen in the first
round of the presidential elections in 2017. The case of Lille is emblematic.
When in the early 2010s the body of a known anti-fascist activist was recovered
from the Deule, the police concluded a suicide. It will take years of family
struggle to obtain an investigation, in favor of which will emerge the figure of
Claude Hermant, in connection with the suspects.
Former para, passed through the action service of the DGSE, he is a far-right
activist well known in Lille... and indic. Arms trafficker, he is accused by the
courts of having sold weapons used in the anti-Semitic Hyper Cacher attack in 2015.
Outlook
If the picture is worrying, it is necessary for the social movement to rise to
the occasion. With different but complementary angles, the demonstrations which
have been organized regularly for several months, despite the restrictions
imposed by the health precautions against Islamophobia, police violence, for
public freedoms, within the framework of very wide arcs give reasons to believe
that the balance of power may force the government to back down.
The massive demonstrations of December 2019 had for a time made far-right
politicians and columnists inaudible. In the period which is opening up and the
crisis which is looming, it is more urgent than ever for the libertarian
communists as for our whole social camp to rely on class solidarity.
Brendan (UCL Amiens)
Validate
[1]for Economics and Peace, Global Terrorism Index 2020. Measuring the Impact of
Terrorism .
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Statistique-Le-terrorisme-n-a-pas-le-visage-que-l-on-croit
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Message: 5
We are an organisation of revolutionaries who share a common vision of a new
world - an anarchist communist world - where people collectively control their
own workplaces, communities and land, where all needs are met and all people are
able to flourish. A world where power and decision-making flow from the bottom up
and society is organised for peoples' aspirations, passions, and needs rather
than profit, where we can live sustainability with the planet and where
oppressive social structures based on racism, imperialism, patriarchy and
heteronormativity are a thing of the past. ---- We believe that this vision can
only be brought about through the revolutionary power of the working class
organised in the workplaces, communities, schools, and streets in order to
overthrow the state and capitalism, thereby enacting a social revolution and
building a radically new world.
As those actively seeking to construct this vision we are inspired by the
traditions of anarchist-communism, Marxism, social ecology, especifismo,
platformism, women's liberation, queer liberation, decolonisation, abolitionism,
anti-racism and the history of global struggle for liberation. We are inspired by
a long tradition of struggle and by all the revolutionaries before us, whose
tireless work and commitment have laid the path we follow today. Most importantly
we acknowledge that First Nations Peoples fight against invasion and colonisation
is the longest ongoing struggle within So-Called Australia and is central to any
possibility of social change on this continent today.
We believe in the need for a political home from which to organise ourselves and
put forward our vision. We believe in the need to create spaces for the
development of new revolutionaries that allow the grouping together of similarly
minded militants in order to facilitate the development of all.
We see the need to build a specifically anarchist communist organisation united
around a common set of ideas, strategy, and practice. We believe that political
organisations should speak to the needs of our time, and act as a catalyst in
struggles to expand their revolutionary potential. Revolutionary organisation
should be a vehicle to build, contribute to, and learn from social struggles and
eventually act as the catalyst for social revolution.
The struggle for a new world has been a long one and has been contributed to by
countless individuals and organisations in that time. While the path often seems
long and sometimes hopeless we believe that a new world is not just possible, but
necessary for our survival. We hope that Anarchist Communists Meanjin like so
many before us can play a part in making this vision become reality.
https://acmeanjin.org/mission-statement/
------------------------------
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
For the success of the people's political struggle, it is necessary not only to
fightagainst , but also to fightfor . It is not enough to overthrow even the
worst regime; you also need to build a better life on its ruins. Therefore,
people inevitably have the question of what will happen after the overthrow of
the government. If people do not have an understandingofwhat we are fighting for,
then the motivation to fight also decreases. And even if, despite this, victory
is achieved and the regime is overthrown, then provocateurs can easily take
advantage of the fruits of victory, and the life of the people will worsen.
At the initial stage of the protest in Belarus, a positive goal was to fight for
fair elections. Demanding the restoration of legality without revolutionary
changes. The problem with such a goal is that it is weak. If they did not succeed
immediately, then the demands of the protesters become more radical, and in order
to fightforit, an image of the future is needed, which will become achievable
after the overthrow of the Lukashenka regime.
The only political force that has an image of the future is Western liberals.
Therefore, it was they who led the protest. Other political forces, in particular
the left, do not have an image of the future, so they immediately found
themselves on the sidelines. The privatization of the protest by the liberals led
to the following. If the fight against Lukashenka and for fair elections was
supported by the majority of the population, then not all Belarusians share
Western values. Therefore, support for the protest began to fall.
A similar situation was in Russia in 2011. When electoral fraud also sparked
massive protests and the protest was led by liberals. After that, the protest
lost general support and gradually faded away. That opened the way for the
strengthening of the dictatorship and further fascization of the Russian government.
For the protest to remain popular, enjoy universal support and cannot be used by
provocateurs to worsen the life of the people, an image of the future is needed
that will be real, understandable and beneficial to the ordinary citizen. This
image of the future consists of specific requirements that people can use to
assess the usefulness of any government and any political forces - today,
tomorrow, revolutionary, post-revolutionary.
A hundred years ago, people fought for their specific rights and opportunities -
equality of all before the law, an 8-hour working day, paid leave, affordable
education and medicine, land and factories owned by peasants and workers, etc.
That political program is outdated - some of those requirements have been
fulfilled, some have lost their relevance. We need new specific requirements that
are relevant for today's citizens.
The key principle of a viable political program is the unity of legal and
material requirements:
"We know very well that even if we achieve land, income tax, universal compulsory
gratuitous training and the replacement of a standing army with a people's
militia, there will still be little sense, because the government can take it all
back from us. Therefore, we need a broad opportunity to protect our rights and
interests.To do this, we need to be given complete freedom to speak and write in
defense of our interests and to expose any untruths of the authorities and frauds
of the rich, freely organize meetings to discuss our needs, form alliances to
defend our rights. , we wish that no one in the state could be imprisoned at the
discretion of the authorities, could not be searched without the permission of
the court - in a word, that there was complete inviolability of the person and
home of all citizens.And for the judges to be fair, not to indulge the
authorities and to please them do not oppress citizens with searches and arrests,
we demand that they not be subject to the authorities: let them be chosen by the
whole people and let them be prosecuted for wrong deeds. "// Order Ivantsevsky
rural society of Lukoyanovskaya vol., Nizhny Novgorod province in the II State
Duma (April 1907) Kara-Murza Civil war.
Unfortunately, over the past century, political thought has degraded, and today
the majority of citizens do not understand the need to fight for their rights.
Waiting for the leader to come and take care of them. As long as this situation
continues, it is naive to count on the improvement of our life.
The most correct and good goal is useless until there is a subject who is
interested in achieving this goal. The oligarchy, the nomenklatura and the state
are not interested in improving the life of the people. Only citizens themselves
can force the state to take into account the interests of the people. And for
this we need to increase our political subjectivity. As long as the people are a
crowd of powerless individuals, the authorities will not act in the interests of
the people. Whatever slogans the power is covered with. Provocateurs, careerists
and self-seekers feel great under any slogans.
Today's left movement is terribly far from the people. To become a viable
political force again, the left must lead the citizens' struggle fortheircivil
rights. As it was a century ago. Without reliance on citizens' self-organization,
the leftist movement is an empty wrapper.
And activists need to know, apply and disseminate those anarcho-communist tools
that can increase the opportunities of people here and now. In particular:
Self-organizing principlesfor grassroots engagement.
A networked organizationfor political struggle.
Self-organizedor at least adelocraticenterprise for labor activities.
As long as citizens do not have an image of the future, consisting of specific
rights, opportunities and requirements, political struggle is pointless. You
cannot fight for all good and against all bad. Such a struggle is easily used by
oligarchic groups in their own interests, and the life of the people does not
change for the better.
Marx's mistake or the real path to communism
Join the groupFrom Self-Organization to Communism , dedicated to the introduction
of communist relations into our lives.
https://avtonom.org/freenews/problemy-protesta-belorussii
------------------------------
Message: 2
Reflections not only on how to improve the situation of imprisoned anarchists in
so-called Belarus, but also on how to contribute to the fall of the local
dictatorship. ---- Recently, anarchists who already have extensive experience in
Lukashenko's regime repressions have been imprisoned. Dmitry Dubovsky, Igor
Olinevich, Sergei Romanov, Dmitry Rezanovich, Mikola Dziadok, Akihiro
Gaevsky-Hanada and others. The reason for their prosecution is obvious: they
resisted the dictatorship. The regime in Belarus is no different from other
dictatorships. It does not accept active resistance to one's own evil, even if it
is only the activity of individuals or small groups. The ruling class realizes
that after so many years of oppression, any resistance has great potential to
become richer until the regime overwhelms it and falls.
Repression by the structures defending the regime is growing as resistance
becomes massive. There are already thousands of people on the streets of
Belarusian cities seeking to overthrow the dictator. Most of them have no other
goal than to establish Western-style parliamentary democracy in the country. From
an anarchist perspective, this can be seen as an inconsistent attitude that does
not address the fundamental nature of the problem.
Nevertheless, two positive conclusions can be drawn from this.
The very pressure on the regime and the possible achievement of its collapse
can mean an improvement in the situation of imprisoned anarchists and other
prisoners. There may be a reduction in punishment, improved prison conditions, or
even release.
Any rebellion against oppression, however reformist it may be at first, has the
potential to later cling to revolutionary goals. The active participation of
revolutionary minorities can contribute to this by pushing for activities beyond
the limits of the bourgeois-democratic framework.
What is happening in so-called Belarus is not a social revolution as the
anarchists think. Let us not have any illusions, so that we do not have to deal
with the pain of disillusionment later. Let's not seek in events for what is not
there. But let's also not take the missing revolutionary content as a pretext to
passively set aside. It is necessary to be without illusions, but at the same
time to intervene in the situation in anarchist ways. Trying to reverse the
course of events in favor of anarchist goals.
Some anarchists in Belarus have had their sentences reduced as a result of
pressure from the international community, human rights organizations, diplomacy
and even members of the European Parliament. Some people now relate their hopes
to these realms. Although early release is a huge relief for comrades and their
loved ones, even here it is necessary to beware of illusions. If the Lukashenko
regime proceeds to loosen repressive measures under pressure from diplomacy or
ruling elites from other countries, this is not a sign of goodwill. It is not
selfless help. It is usually a strategic choice to make the regime more
legitimate in the eyes of foreign critics and thus ease international pressure.
The release of several prisoners gives the impression that the regime reflects
its mistakes and does not want to continue them. However, it is a cover-up
maneuver. The regime does not change at the core. It goes on the same tracks,
only with the support of official human rights defenders, who unknowingly help
from abroad to co-create a better picture of the regime than it really is.
Any improvement in the situation of imprisoned comrades is very positive news.
But let us not allow this to become an excuse to abandon the anarchist
perspective and the uncompromising negation of the authoritarian structures of
all states. Members of the European Parliament and government diplomats cannot be
celebrated uncritically. Although they sometimes advocates the release of
anarchists from prison, we are not associated with a partnership. We must not
look at them as hope, because their goals meant blocking and obstructing our goals.
Igor Olinevich, one of the imprisoned anarchists, expressed skepticism about the
help of governments and their institutions in his prison diary "I'm going to
Magadan" in 2011 when he wrote: "Belarus plays the role of a primary, most
environmentally polluted country economically through oil gas, the production of
plastics, food supplements, fertilizers, paper, cement, etc. In general, Europe
can adopt resolutions and carry out decorative maneuvers on democracy at will,
but in fact it does not mind such a state of affairs at all. `It is also possible
to trade with cannibals` - that is the essence of European politics."
This is not just an expression of distrust in official politics. It is also an
indication of where the revolutionary forces should go. European Union
governments and businessmen are primarily interested in smooth international
trade. If Lukashenko's regime does not prevent them from doing so, they have no
reason to push for his removal. As Igor Olinevich remarked well, "We have nowhere
to expect help from. No one will save us except ourselves. "
If we know that the stability of the Belarusian regime depends on trade with
neighboring countries, it follows that the blocking of these trades significantly
contributes to destabilization. Years ago, Igor outlined which economic sectors
are key in the country. Each of us has the ability to find out more about
individual economic actors and their position in the region in which we live. And
anyone, even with a minimum of resources, can make problems or stop their
operation. The Belarusian regime is not an isolated phenomenon closed between
national borders. His economic and political interests spread throughout the
world. Tracking and intervening makes more sense than relying on the maneuvers of
the powers.
Lukas Borl, december 2020
------------------------------
Message: 3
The following statement was released by the Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group
on 10 January 2021. ---- It is important to call the events of Tuesday 6 January
in Washington DC in the US by their proper name. It was an attempted Fascist
putsch, consciously incited though not directed by Donald Trump. It was an
attempt to prevent the US Congress taking the final step to authorise the
inauguration of Joe Biden as President a fortnight later. It failed and we're
glad it did. ---- Capitalist media organisations are notoriously unreliable at
estimating numbers at political events, but it's clear that at least tens of
thousands of Trump supporters attended a demonstration in Washington under
Fascist leadership. Up to a couple of thousand people, including organised
Fascist groups and known Fascist identities, stormed the Capitol building (the US
Parliament House). The mob included not a few off-duty cops who were seen
flashing their IDs to the Capitol Police on the way in. The rioters disrupted the
proceedings, which were a certification of the results of the Electoral College,
and took over the meeting chambers and many other areas of the building.
Photographs have emerged from inside showing men in combat gear, carrying weapons
and zip ties for handling prisoners. Eventually, the rioters were forced to
leave. Congress resumed its session and recognised the result of the Electoral
College.
Police treatment of the Washington event was remarkably light, especially
considering that Fascists had been threatening for weeks to storm the Capitol and
that Black Lives Matter protestors have been met with overwhelming and aggressive
police violence. Leftist demonstrators would never have been given the
opportunity to reach the steps, let alone breach the doors and break windows.
Instead, several cops posed for selfies with members of the mob. At a later
point, a woman Trump supporter was shot dead by Capitol Police. Three other Trump
supporters died from "medical emergencies" (only one of which occurred inside the
Capitol) and a cop died the next day.
Trump incited his Fascist followers to storm the Capitol as a last ditch attempt
to prevent Biden's inauguration, following the refusal of Mike Pence (Trump's
Vice President) to prevent it by acting in his role of presiding over the Senate.
This was after a series of attempts by Trump to frustrate the inauguration of
Biden. He called rallies of his supporters outside counting centres; launched
dozens of court cases, losing on all but a handful of minor procedural points;
and tried to heavy various State governors and officials involved in the election
process. His phone call to the Georgia Secretary of State was recorded and
released on the Internet and showed just how desperate Trump was becoming.
The Trump putsch, if it had been successful, would have transformed the United
States into a Fascist dictatorship. Trump's private army would have swept away
the legislative branch of government. To make it stick, he would have been
compelled to sack and/or arrest thousands of public officials - including,
possibly, judges. But to carry through a putsch in defiance of a democratic
election, it's necessary to have plenty of friends in high places. Trump found he
didn't have nearly enough friends. He was beaten by the Deep State.
The failure of the putsch is a major blow to Trump. He has forced many Republican
politicians, including the Vice President, to break with him. Most of the rest of
the country is enraged. He has now been forced to promise a peaceful transfer of
power on 20 January. This is both an admission of defeat and a concession that
his conduct until now has contained an implicit threat of a coup.
There is no precise analogy from well-known history, but the closest one is Adolf
Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. A relatively small group of people attempted,
with daring action, to deliver the government of Germany into the hands of a
dictator. The failure of the putsch was a setback for the Nazis, but the Weimar
Republic treated the putschists with kid gloves. Hitler was sentenced to only
five years prison and was released after nine months. Worse, successive Weimar
governments eroded democratic rights with frequent states of emergency and left
Germany's social problems unresolved. Hitler was able to rebuild his political
credibility and then capitalise on the crisis created by the Depression. And we
all know what followed that.
The Beer Hall Putsch analogy contains a lesson. Trump has given his enemies an
opportunity to put him out of business, but the Democrats won't follow through.
The Fascists who stormed the Capitol building are being denounced by everyone,
including Trump, and will probably be hung out to dry, but the consequences for
Trump himself won't be anywhere near hard enough. And the way Biden governs will,
in due course, rehabilitate Trump. Left to their own devices, the Democrats will
pave the way for the revival of Trump's political fortunes.
Democrats will make their own assaults on democratic rights. Already, Biden has
called the people who stormed the Capitol "domestic terrorists" and Democrats
across the board have picked up on his cue. In using this term, Biden isn't
referring to the pipe bombs and the truck full of Molotov cocktails found in
Washington, which have hardly got a mention in the mainstream media. He also
wasn't speaking about the death of a cop, which occurred after his statement. The
"terrorism" he was denouncing was what was on everyone's TV screens - a mob
breaking windows, occupying the Capitol and disrupting a sitting of Congress.
Biden knows what he is doing. By denouncing Trump's foot soldiers as terrorists,
he is preparing for a broader crackdown on political activity outside accepted
political channels. Any new laws or police powers will apply as much to the Left
as to the Right. They will be used by the cops with glee against the Left and not
at all or hardly ever against the Right. And Democrats denouncing (with equal
parts ignorance and malice) the rioters in the Capitol as "anarchists" will have
real consequences for actual Anarchists.
Lessons
The first lesson to be drawn is that the US bourgeoisie have not given up on
capitalist democracy. It is their preferred form of rule, since there are too
many capitalists to fit inside a single palace. While the capitalists are
prepared to abandon democracy if it is necessary to preserve their power, they
fear that a dictator would rule in the interests of one faction of capital rather
than the capitalist class as a whole.
Secondly, there is nothing surprising about the events in Washington. Not the
Fascist mobs. Not Trump's incitement. Not the complicit approach of the cops. Not
the failure of the putsch. Not the Democrats' turn to "law and order". And not
the liberals' surprise at all of these things except the last.
The Democrats will handle the aftermath of the putsch in a way that will
strengthen the Right. They will pass yet more repressive laws. They will wax
lyrical about the precious institutions of capitalist democracy and vehemently
denounce the invaders of Congress. But when it comes to prosecuting and
sentencing, many of these invaders will get kid glove treatment.
Finally, we need to realise that liberals are not our friends. They are not
quietly on our side while we do the dangerous stuff. When push comes to shove,
liberals want the heavy hand of the State to suppress Right wing dissent. They do
not support working class counter-mobilisation. When the workers of the United
States make a revolution, they will disperse the liberals' precious Congress -
themselves - not to establish a dictatorship, but to allow the mass organs of
workers' democracy to take power. And they will need to be prepared to defend
themselves against a last-ditch violent reaction by the old regime, supported
whole-heartedly by the liberals.
Next
For the time being, Trump is badly wounded and the Republican Party is deeply
divided. The Fascists are demoralised because Trump is dumping on them to save
his own skin. The Democrats are angry and also feel vindicated.
Anarchists in the United States need to ensure that the organisers of the Trump
Putsch are clearly identified as Fascists for the world to see. Anarchists need
to seize the opportunity to break the links that have been developing between
them and the mainstream Right and calling the Fascists by their true name is an
essential part of that. And Anarchists need to run hard against the Democrats'
agenda of righteous "law and order" and neo-liberalism. Biden was always going to
be a bad President. The Trump Putsch means he'll be worse.
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment
AFTER TRUMP
Posted on 10 January, 2021 by ablokeimet
This article first appeared in The Anvil, Vol 9 No 6, published 31 Dec 2020.
The US Presidential election is over and Donald Trump has lost. While he has
convinced his hard core supporters than the election has been stolen from him, he
has failed to get sufficient backing from powerful actors to mount a coup. Joe
Biden will take office on 20 January.
Biden will have no honeymoon. The previous two Democratic Presidents faced a
massive Right wing reaction as soon as they took office, although they had no
opposition worth noting from the Left. The Republicans will try a third time to
mount a reactionary movement and Trump will probably lead it. Biden campaigned on
a platform of being a "normal President" - but "normal" politics is precisely
what led to the election of Trump in 2016. Left to his own devices, Biden will
bring the Washington establishment even further into disrepute and set the stage
for Trump to be re-elected in 2024 (health permitting). Biden will rule for Wall
Street, allow inequality to grow unchecked and confine progressive policies to
gestures that will infuriate the Right while not satisfying the burning needs of
the mass of workers in the US.
There is a new factor. Obama took office when the grassroots Left was small, weak
and inexperienced. As a result, there were massive illusions in him, something
that demobilised the Left for some years. Under Clinton back in 1992, the
situation was even worse. The Left was ideologically shattered by the collapse of
the USSR and its organisations were falling to pieces. The capitalists were
celebrating the "death of communism" and proclaiming "the end of history". Now
the grassroots left is confident and growing, having left full or partial
ideological dependence on the USSR behind. For the first time since LBJ, a
Democratic President will take office with a grassroots challenge from the Left.
The strategy
The social movement in the United States faces a fundamental strategic choice.
Either it works through the Democratic Party or against it. Every movement throws
up a layer of activists who use it to climb into Parliament, but the crucial
issue is whether the movement will follow them and divert itself into
Parliamentary channels. The moment the movement tones down its actions or demands
to suit the fortunes of Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, it's finished
as an independent force. It's not for nothing that the Democratic Party is known
in the US as the graveyard of political movements. It's happened so many times
before that activists have no excuse for not seeing it coming.
Anarchist communists in the United States need to avoid being distracted by the
siren call of demands to change the Democratic Party. The priority must be to
build the grassroots struggle, in whatever sphere it erupts, while engaging
patiently with those who think there is currently no alternative to the
Democrats. And the argument has to be that "We - the grassroots movement - are
the alternative to the Democrats. We're creating facts on the ground to which all
politicians must respond in some way, while the organisations we are building are
the new society within the shell of the old."
The struggle
Finally, we must consider the fields of struggle available. The struggle against
the police and their racist violence, the struggle for immigrants' rights and
against borders and the struggle to prevent rampant climate change have all
generated strong grassroots movements in recent years. The first of these
struggles is the one that has shaken the United States the most, because US
capitalism is founded on the legacy of slavery. The demand that the State merely
recognise that Black lives matter is enough to undermine the stability of its
order and send the cops into a frenzy of violence.
The militant demonstrations against the police murder of George Floyd, for
example, were entirely justified and spread like wildfire. Demonstrators can be
beaten off the streets, however, as eventually happened in Minneapolis,
Louisville, Atlanta, Portland and elsewhere. What would give this struggle, and
all other struggles, the social weight to win would be bringing it into the
workplace. If grassroots radicals were strong enough in the labour movement in
Minneapolis to force the staging of a one day general strike there, the
capitalists would have been hit where it really hurts. Cutting off the flow of
profits would achieve far more to defund police and change their behaviour than
any amount of reform pursued electorally.
The workplace is the source of the capitalists' power, so the struggle in that
location is decisive. It is the vehicle for fighting the economic inequality that
is driving down living standards for US workers for the first time since the
Great Depression and fuelling the growth of Fascism. It is, though, much more
than that. The struggle in the workplace can unite the multi-racial,
multicultural and gender diverse working class in the fight against all forms of
social oppression and build the solidarity needed to make the revolution to
overthrow capitalism as a whole.
After Trump, the fundamental task is the same as before.
BUILD THE CLASS STRUGGLE
https://melbacg.wordpress.com/2021/01/10/the-trump-putsch/
------------------------------
Message: 4
While anti-terrorism laws follow one another in France and more widely in the
world, an Australian NGO specializing in statistical research on peace has
published its report on the terrorist phenomenon. Analysis. ---- Terrorism is on
the decline for the fifth consecutive year in the world. This is the first lesson
of a study produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace, an NGO
headquartered in AustraliaInstitute[1]. The terrorist attacks claimed the lives
of 13,826 people in 2019, down more than 15% from 2018. The peak of the
phenomenon coincides with the period of peak activity of the Islamic State in
Iraq and the Levant (ISIL , or Daesh) from 2014 to 2016. In 2019, terrorism
killed nearly 60% less than in 2014.
However, it is under the pretext of this intangible and permanent threat that the
government multiplies security laws, patrols the military in the streets, and
provides for the general arming of municipal police.
The study reminds us that the populations most affected by terrorism are by far
those who live in countries at war. Between 2002 and 2019, 95% of the victims
were in countries where armed conflict was taking place. Imperialism plays an
obvious role in the emergence and maintenance of terrorist violence. The two
countries most affected are Afghanistan and Iraq, both militarily occupied by the
United States, whose stated objective is "todestroy terrorism" and "torestore
democracy".
Syria (at 4 th in the world) is meanwhile the playground of foreign powers first
and foremost there is Russia, Turkey and Iran, but also the United States. In
Yemen (6 th ) a deadly war, the main actor is the Saudi monarchy, continues with
the blessing of the US and European arms dealers, including France. More
generally, it is in countries which are former protectorates or former colonies
that terrorism is rife.
Massacres in the Sahel
France plays its full part in this gloomy picture: Daesh is gradually shifting
its activities to the Sahel, where France has been carrying out military
operations for more than six years, and where it supports corrupt dictators at
arm's length. Burkina Faso, where the French army has set up a base of its
special forces, has seen the number of victims linked to terrorism increase by
nearly five in recent years.
The far-right attacks on the rise
From the Utøya massacre in Norway in 2011 to the Christchurch bombing in New
Zealand in 2019, far-right attacks are on the rise in the United States and its
advanced capitalist satellites.
Norwegian Anders Breivik (left): 77 victims in 2011 in Oslo and Utøya. Tunisian
Mohamed Lahouaiej- Bouhlel (right): 86 victims in 2016 in Nice.
In both cases, an individual fanaticism connected to a political movement:
ultranationalist for the first, jihadist for the second.
While far-right attacks accounted for only 14% of attacks between 2002 and 2014
in these states, this proportion skyrocketed to 40% in 2015, and reached 46% in
2019 . Far-right attacks were even responsible for 82% of deaths there in 2019.
The only exception: France, the country most affected in Europe by jihadist attacks.
The United States accounts for more than half of the attacks. There are many
reasons for this: on the breeding ground of racism whose legal foundations were
only finally abolished in the 1970s, the Trump presidency galvanized far-right
groups, from the Ku Klux Klan to the most reactionary fringes. of the Republican
Party. But Europe is also affected, in a context where the extreme right is on
the rise.
All over the continent, the capitalists do not hesitate to team up with it.
Bringing up identity, racist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic themes
is, for the wealthy, an admittedly old but still effective means of continuing to
play the division of the popular classes.
Gangrenous police and army
In this context, the police and the army act as an echo chamber for the zealots
of the extreme right. They serve as much inspiration (through equipment, virilist
codes, the use of violence) as they are permeable to fascist ideologies. In Italy
in 2019, an arsenal of war including even a missile was found among fascists,
while the government took refuge in embarrassed silence. The German government
had to resolve to dissolve this year an entire company out of the four that had
its special anti-terrorist forces (KSK), because it was made up of neo-Nazis.
In France, nearly seven out of ten police officers voted Le Pen in the first
round of the presidential elections in 2017. The case of Lille is emblematic.
When in the early 2010s the body of a known anti-fascist activist was recovered
from the Deule, the police concluded a suicide. It will take years of family
struggle to obtain an investigation, in favor of which will emerge the figure of
Claude Hermant, in connection with the suspects.
Former para, passed through the action service of the DGSE, he is a far-right
activist well known in Lille... and indic. Arms trafficker, he is accused by the
courts of having sold weapons used in the anti-Semitic Hyper Cacher attack in 2015.
Outlook
If the picture is worrying, it is necessary for the social movement to rise to
the occasion. With different but complementary angles, the demonstrations which
have been organized regularly for several months, despite the restrictions
imposed by the health precautions against Islamophobia, police violence, for
public freedoms, within the framework of very wide arcs give reasons to believe
that the balance of power may force the government to back down.
The massive demonstrations of December 2019 had for a time made far-right
politicians and columnists inaudible. In the period which is opening up and the
crisis which is looming, it is more urgent than ever for the libertarian
communists as for our whole social camp to rely on class solidarity.
Brendan (UCL Amiens)
Validate
[1]for Economics and Peace, Global Terrorism Index 2020. Measuring the Impact of
Terrorism .
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Statistique-Le-terrorisme-n-a-pas-le-visage-que-l-on-croit
------------------------------
Message: 5
We are an organisation of revolutionaries who share a common vision of a new
world - an anarchist communist world - where people collectively control their
own workplaces, communities and land, where all needs are met and all people are
able to flourish. A world where power and decision-making flow from the bottom up
and society is organised for peoples' aspirations, passions, and needs rather
than profit, where we can live sustainability with the planet and where
oppressive social structures based on racism, imperialism, patriarchy and
heteronormativity are a thing of the past. ---- We believe that this vision can
only be brought about through the revolutionary power of the working class
organised in the workplaces, communities, schools, and streets in order to
overthrow the state and capitalism, thereby enacting a social revolution and
building a radically new world.
As those actively seeking to construct this vision we are inspired by the
traditions of anarchist-communism, Marxism, social ecology, especifismo,
platformism, women's liberation, queer liberation, decolonisation, abolitionism,
anti-racism and the history of global struggle for liberation. We are inspired by
a long tradition of struggle and by all the revolutionaries before us, whose
tireless work and commitment have laid the path we follow today. Most importantly
we acknowledge that First Nations Peoples fight against invasion and colonisation
is the longest ongoing struggle within So-Called Australia and is central to any
possibility of social change on this continent today.
We believe in the need for a political home from which to organise ourselves and
put forward our vision. We believe in the need to create spaces for the
development of new revolutionaries that allow the grouping together of similarly
minded militants in order to facilitate the development of all.
We see the need to build a specifically anarchist communist organisation united
around a common set of ideas, strategy, and practice. We believe that political
organisations should speak to the needs of our time, and act as a catalyst in
struggles to expand their revolutionary potential. Revolutionary organisation
should be a vehicle to build, contribute to, and learn from social struggles and
eventually act as the catalyst for social revolution.
The struggle for a new world has been a long one and has been contributed to by
countless individuals and organisations in that time. While the path often seems
long and sometimes hopeless we believe that a new world is not just possible, but
necessary for our survival. We hope that Anarchist Communists Meanjin like so
many before us can play a part in making this vision become reality.
https://acmeanjin.org/mission-statement/
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