Against Crusade and Jihad!
For Class Struggle!
Leaflet by Some International Communists
The suicide attacks on September 11 against the World Trade
Center towers and the Pentagon have led to stupefaction, horror,
reprobation, but also created, among some, a satisfaction mixed
with joy before the spectacle of the first global power 'finally
paying in blood", for its imperialist policy, especially in the
Middle East and in Central Asia.
An attack against workers and class struggle
"Not laughing, nor crying, but understanding": it is important
not to give way to the effects of terror but to go on thinking far
outside the nationalist and religious schemes which the two camps
which are fighting have prepared for us. First, let us remind all
those who enjoyed the "american humiliation " a little bit too
quickly that the authors of the attacks have objectively
perpetrated a dramatic onslaught against the proletariat. In
fact, the World Trade Center towers were nothing other than giant
vertical factories where not only thousands of white-collar
employees were exploited but also thousands of cleaning,
maintenance, and catering workers, In those two huge "rabbit
warrens" there were also a large number of immigrants without ID
cards of various nationalities (Albanians, Colombians, Bengalis,
etc.) and religions, including many muslims. Those legally not
existing during their lives are today equally non-existent in
their deaths.
A gift from heaven for Mr Bush and the American economy
The authors of the attack, by striking the civilian population in
an indiscriminate way, far from weakening the American "Great
Satan " have allowed an unprecedented National Unity to be created
in the countjy, at the very moment where the new American
administration faced a deep economic crisis and was preparing to
impose a tremendous increase in mil~tary spending. In the name of
patriotism, National Unity has been able, up to no ' w, to
anaesthetise every class reaction from the American workers
confronted with hundreds thousands of redundancies and to create
the necessary basis for a national consensus for bigger military
deployment in the Middle East and Central Asia. Today, according
to the polls, more than 80% of Americans are for war, even with
American losses. National Unity also justifies the deployment of
a budgetary diversion (up to $135 billion, i.e. 1.3 % of GDP of
the USA) to support the american economy, steeped in one of the
most severe post-war cyclical crises of capital accumulation.
Western Hypocrisy
Of course, the calls for a crusade, to defend "the Free World,
defender ofhuman rights" are absolutely disgusting. Islamist
groups, in this case those who might belong to the Bin Laden
constellation, who today are depicted as mankind's enemies, have
benefited for years from Ameri can largesse via Pakistan and
Saudia Arabia when they fought against the USSR in Afghanistan.
Moreover, the alliance between the USA and political islam is a
very old story whose origins go back to agreements reached between
ultra-reactionary and racist wahhabite monarchy from Saudia Arabia
and American oil companies. This alliance, very useffil in the
fight against proSoviet Arab re6mes and for keevine a vigilant
watch over the area's oil fields, has never been recinded and was
sealed with blood during the war with Iraq in 1991 and the
dreadful embargo which kills thousands of Iraqi people every day.
For all these years, good western souls have found nothing to say
against that and the talibans of the Persian gulf and their
oppressive regime were never denounced. The American state cannot
then plead not guilty. The world's foremqst military and economic
power, it has played the part of the top sheriff only for its own
interests and without paying any attention to the needs of local
populations, mainly Palestinian and Kurdish, who have paid for
many decades the price of a regional order which has to guarantee
capital accumulation for ever on a world scale.
Political Islam: an absolute dead end for oppressed people
This situation contributed to the radicalization of certain parts
of the Middle East mid Central Asian populations and took the form
of a dissent more and more borrowing its weapons from Islamic
ideology. The story is that this utterly backwards ideology -
expression of the failure of the ruling classes of these areas to
create the economic and social conditions for modem capitalism -
far from supplying a well-fitted frame to the justified revolt of
the oppressed people, traps them in an outdated fight, whose true
goal is to subordinate the more mid more oppressed "faithful"
to the whole of the "Muslim" ruling classes. What is there in
common between the young unemployed in Gaza or Algiers and the
billionaires from the Gulf or ruling classes from the area's
states, except religious belonging? Obviously nothing. Islam is
used here only to create a fake community between "Muslim"
oppressors and oppressed which the area's proletariat never cease
to pay for. Political Islamism, as a substitute for the class
struggle, has also been chosen by minority fractions of inimigrant
youth in Europe (France and Belgium particulary). Here,
resentment has been fed by mass unemployment and racism and has
been made use of by some religious groups. The real revolt has
then been trapped in the reactionary ghetto of Islam, of the oumma
(Faithfull community), which has contributed, along with the
surrounding racism, to isolate these rebellious people from
working class people of European extraction. In the end this
plays the game of all those, from governments to bosses, who have
an interest in dividing exploited people.
During war, redundancies continue
Today then it is necessary to refuse recruitment whereever it
comes from. Should it be done in the name of Democracy and
supposed western supremacy or the community of the Faithfull.
Workers have absolutely -nothing to gain from that. We must
reject all calls for National Unity and economic patriotism at the
same time as the bosses lay us off with all our might; at the
same time as governments reinforce their repressive machine
(Vigipirate in France, european warrant for arrest). These
devices put in place by governments, from the "pluralist left" in
France' to the extreme right in Italy, are nothing but tools of
social control, threatening and repressing the proletariat as a
whole and its immigrant and/or without papers fraction in
particular.
Only the fight for the unity of proletarians, whatever their
origins, can stop anti-proletarian terror,, whether it is
disguised as a crusade or as a jihad. Political Islam and
Democracy are two banners which aim to recruit workers. We must
reject them without any hesitation.
Some internationalist communists
Bruceles, Paris 08 octobre 2001.
For all contacts write without mentioning any name to:
BP 1666, Centre Monnaie, Bruxeles, Belgium
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