tirsdag, december 09, 2003
BAGGRUNDSARTIKLER - 11. SEPTEMBER
- On the September 11th attacks and the aggression against Afghanistan
"These attacks have nothing to do with anti-imperialism, not even a twisted anti-imperialism. The use of mass terror is an expression of reactionary politics and movements that oppose the fundamental rights of peoples. Fundamentalists of the Bin Laden type support capitalism and defend it. They are or have been linked to bourgeois fractions and to sectors of several reactionary state apparatuses, like the Saudi monarchy and the Pakistani and Sudanese dictatorships. These groups want to impose a discourse on Muslim populations that is fanatically religious, anti-Western rather than anti-imperialist, and anti-Semitic rather than anti-Zionist. They want to impose ultra-reactionary theocratic political regimes like the Taliban regime, and they use the Palestinian cause to disguise these reactionary objectives."
(4. Internationale 29.10.01)
- To the barbarism of terrorism and war, we pose the new society
"A two-fold disaster descended upon the world with the cruel and inhuman terrorist attack on New York and Washington, D.C. on Sept. 11. The first was the terrorist attack, which created a level of destruction and mayhem not seen in a U.S. city since the Civil War. The second is the Bush administration's response to it by declaring a "state of war" and engaging in total militarization, at home and abroad. As Marxist-Humanists, we oppose both sides of this disaster. Our ground is the absolute opposite of terrorism and statist militarism - the idea of freedom."
(News & Letters, October 2001)
- The World After September 11 (PDF)
"At opposing poles of this bloody conflict stand the two main international camps of terrorism, which have left their bloody mark on the lives of two generations. At one pole, there stands the most enormous machinery of state terrorism and international intimidation and blackmail. At the opposing pole, there stands Islamic terrorism and the reactionary and vile political Islam. These forces that were once created and nurtured by America and the West themselves during the Cold War as a means of organising indigenous reaction against the Left in Middle Eastern societies, have now become an active pole of international terrorism and one contender in the bourgeois power struggle in the Middle East."
(Worker-Communist Party of Iran 21.9.01-26.11.01)
- Fight imperialism, fight fundamentalism
"We have been clear from the very formation of our party that we will never have any sort of alliance with islamic fundamentalists. They represent a new form of fascism. It is more a matter of smashing them than having any of sort alliance with them or illusions about them. After September 11, these forces called for more jihad, more holy war. This didn't mean bringing masses of people into the street, but rather trying to destroy imperialism by terrorist force. This obviously has had the opposite effect - imperialism has been made stronger. So these fundamentalist forces looked like a type of 'anti-imperialism', but this was an illusion. At the core of their philosophy, these forces have the same type of ideology as imperialism itself: they defend private property; they have no regard for women's rights, for minority rights; they despise democracy; they are aspirant dictators."
(Labour Party Pakistan 31.1.02)
- The Pakistani socialists' stand against war and fundamentalism
"We see fundamentalists as a new sort of fascists who have to be opposed. There is nothing progressive, there is nothing anti-imperialist in the strategy of the fundamentalists against America. We have seen in practice that the fundamentalists are an outrightly extreme right wing, suppressive, anti-democratic force who have nothing in common with progressive ideas. Some left groups say that we should side with the fundamentalists because they are opposing American imperialism. But we in Pakistan have learned this lesson through hard realities."
(Labour Party Pakistan, 25.1.02)
- For democracy and international solidarity - against both imperialism and Islamic fundamentalism
"To preach distrust of US/UK militarism - that was and is still a basic and irreducible duty for socialists. Anti-imperialism in the name of the positive programme of democracy, socialism and international solidarity - which entails opposition to both the Taliban and a possibly-more-liberal US-sponsored replacement regime - that makes sense. An "anti-imperialism" based on one-sided Americanophobia, silent on or making excuses for the Taliban, and implying that we should mourn the Taliban's downfall as a "victory for imperialism" - that is nonsense, and now very obvious nonsense, both politically and morally."
(Alliance for Workers' Liberty 15.11.01)
- No to imperialism! No to fundamentalism! Stop the war!
"The central force that can defend civil liberties, defend the Muslim communities, and resist the war drive is the labour movement, with its ethic of solidarity. The more we can extend that ethic internationally, developing real solidarity with the labour movements, socialists and democrats of countries where the fundamentalists are strong, the more, also, we can create a real force against the evil of fundamentalism.
Solidarity with the victims of terror - in the USA and everywhere! Against fundamentalism, and against imperialism - workers of the world, unite!"
(Alliance for Workers' Liberty 28.9.01)
- Against the barbarism of the New York massacre. We fight for socialism
"Immediately, the New York massacre is not only a human disaster, but also a political disaster for the Palestinians. We stand in solidarity with the national rights of the Palestinian people, but we cannot be content with declaring merely "solidarity with the Palestinians". We have no solidarity with Islamic fundamentalists, Palestinian or otherwise, who might carry out attacks like the one in New York, and have carried out smaller similar attacks on Jewish people in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. [...]
Public opinion will lurch towards xenophobia. The basic democratic truths must be recalled: not all Arabs are Muslims, most Muslims are not Islamic fundamentalists, most of those who are Islamic-fundamentalist in their religious views do not support Islamic-fundamentalist militarism. To seek collective punishment against Muslims or Arabs is wrong. The first, and still the most-suffering, victims of Islamic fundamentalist militarism are the people, mostly Muslim, of the countries where the Islamicists are powerful.
In recent times Algeria has had more trade unionists murdered, as trade unionists, than any other country - many by their country's Islamic fundamentalists, though some also by the military regime which claims to fight the fundamentalists. The only way to defeat the Islamicists is by the action of the working class and the labour movement in such countries, aided by our solidarity."
(Alliance for Workers' Liberty 14.9.01)
- Trade Unionists Against War and Terror
"We oppose Islamic fundamentalism. Regimes such as those in Afghanistan and Iran have persecuted trade unionists and socialists, and are anti-democratic, anti-woman and anti-semitic. We recognise that most Muslims are not fundamentalists, and that the first victims of fundamentalist repression are ordinary Muslim people. We are alarmed by the rise in prejudice against Muslims, Arabs, immigrants and asylum-seekers - many of whom are fleeing from fundamentalist persecution. We have already seen increased racist attacks in our communities and workplaces and we will take a stand against this.
We also oppose the US government's drive towards a war of 'revenge'. This war will result in the slaughter of many innocent people. It will be accompanied by attacks on civil liberties and the repression of the workers' movement and of socialists. It will galvanise support for fundamentalists and other reactionaries. We as a trade union and labour movement must give no support to the USA's war drive."
(Alliance for Workers' Liberty 22.9.01)
