International Secretariat, League for the Fifth International
Millions of people in France and worldwide were shocked when they heard of the murder of 129 people in Paris on the evening of November 13. The death toll may well rise since another 250 have been seriously injured.
This act was carried out with a brutal and barbaric precision. The explosions near the Stade de France, where a football match was in progress, the massacre of people taken hostage at a rock concert in Bataclan and of customers in nearby cafés, make it clear that the targets of these reactionary Islamist terrorists were ordinary civilians, whose sole “crime” was to be out for an evening’s entertainment or who just happened to be there at the time.
The horrific actions have been claimed by the so-called Islamic State, identifying it as a counterattack after the “crusaders” attacked them in Syria. IS has already shown its arch-reactionary character by making many thousands of ordinary civilians the main victims of their advances in Iraq, Syria, Libya or Western Africa.Their brutal repression is visited on innocent members of religious and ethnic communities – Yazidis, Christians, Kurds as well as women and youth who have liberated themselves from patriarchal oppression. Anyone, indeed, who they regard as enemies of their totalitarian and fascistic caliphate.
Clearly, all working class people will feel solidarity with the victims of this barbaric act, with their friends, relatives and colleagues at work.
At the same time, however, the working class movement, indeed all people who want to fight exploitation, oppression, social and political reaction, must ensure that the French and other imperialist governments cannot politically exploit the grief, the shock and the anger of ordinary people. The acts of the jihadists, inexcusable in any circumstances, would be incomprehensible outside of the context of the actions of the French government and its Nato allies and, for that matter, Russia, in the Middle East over the past fifteen years and more.
Reactionary jihadism was initially fostered in the 1980s by the US and its allies, like Saudi Arabia, as a weapon against the Afghan regime and its Soviet backers. Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban were a direct blowback against the US and its domination and exploitation of the region. We need to remember, too, that previous, inexcusable acts of individual terrorism, most importantly the attack on the twin towers in 2001, were used to start and legitimise an endless series of imperialist wars and occupations in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan.
The fact that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had nothing whatever to do with 9/11 revealed to millions around the world that the “War on Terror” was a fraudulent cover for increasing the imperialist domination of the oil-rich region and to break the slightest sign of independence by the states of the region. In reality, these wars were nothing but a pretext for terrorising, occupying, reordering and plundering these countries either by the imperialist powers themselves or their puppets. In Iraq alone, imperialist war and terror led to at least one million being killed. Across the region they have led to the devastation of whole countries and their infrastructure, undoing decades of economic development. ISIS is thus a genuine product of this externally imposed descent into barbarism.
French imperialism is no “innocent player” in all this. It is one of the most proactive, interventionist imperialist powers in the “Islamic world”. It intervenes in many African countries, like Mali, as if they were still colonies of its “empire”. It has been engaged in the bombing Libya and now in Syria.
The “Socialist” President, François Hollande, and the French government have already responded to the terrorist attack by calling for the use of the “utmost force”, characterising it as an “act of war”. He declared a state of emergency across the whole of France for the first time since the Algerian war of independence. He has mobilised the army and the national police. By decree, he has restricted a number of civic rights like the freedom of movement. Border controls have been re-established and the Schengen agreement has been suspended. The police can halt and search people without giving any reason.
It may well be the case that Hollande will call on NATO to declare support for France. Merkel and other leaders of the imperialist world have already offered support for any French “anti-terrorist” policy, offering support from the German secret services and the army. In a similar way, other leaders, be it Putin, Obama or Cameron, be it the Iranian, Israeli or Turkish leaders, have all declared their support and preparedness to join in another “War against Terror”.
The Syria conference, which will take place in Vienna this week, and the G20 meeting in Turkey, may indeed provide a framework for these imperialist and regional powers to orchestrate their interventions in the Middle East. They may perhaps push for joint political and military operations to impose an imperialist ordering of Syria and other parts of the region though, of course, this might well fall apart as a consequence of the diverging interests of these powers.
In France, and internationally, we are faced with a situation in which Hollande and other imperialist leaders will use the situation not only to restrict democratic rights in France –but to legitimise increased imperialist intervention, air attacks and maybe even troops on the ground in the Middle East and Africa.
In addition, it is clear that far right and conservative forces will use the situation to stir up racism against Muslim people and against refugees. Like the jihadists themselves, such forces see the terrorist attacks as part of a “war between civilisations”. The social-democratic leaders like Hollande, as well as mainstream conservatives like Merkel and Cameron, present their response as a “defence of democracy” and “our values”. Even some who regard themselves as on the left have increased the alienation of Muslims in France in the name of secularism, and even feminism, over issues like banning the wearing of the veil in public buildings such as courts and schools. Such a misguided defence of “republican values” can only injure the solidarity which is so important between racially oppressed communities and the French labour movement.
All these “reasons”, whether they are overtly racist or hypocritically “democratic”, are, ultimately, only a smokescreen for the real objectives pursued by all bourgeois forces, from the far right to the centre and including the overwhelming majority of the reformist leaders in the so-called Socialist and Communist parties.
What is actually under attack, what are they actually defending? It is the domination of France and other imperialist powers over the wealth of the countries of the Middle East and Africa, which they have plundered over centuries. They are not defenders of “democracy”, that is, rule by the people, as they claim, but of rule by imperialist finance capital.
Whether “democratic” or racist, all the French parliamentary parties, from the FN to the PCF, have declared that “national unity” must now be in the forefront, putting “the country”, that is, French imperialism, first.
The working class and the youth in France and worldwide must not follow this path. They must demand that their organisations and leaders, the unions, social-democratic and “left” parties reject any false “national” or “republican unity” with the French or other imperialist or regional power under the pretext of the “War on Terror”.
They must expose the fact that, unjustifiable as the terrorist murders of November 13 certainly are, they can only be understood as a reactionary response to French and other powers’ imperialist interventions and plunder. They can be understood only as the result of forcing whole generations of people in the Middle East, and immigrants in France, into a life without any hope. In France, they are targeted not only by the far right, but ghettoised and racially oppressed by the state. In the Arab and North African countries, increased exploitation and the global capitalist crisis have forced the youth in particular into a “future” of growing misery and mass unemployment, if not permanent reactionary wars.
Indeed, French imperialism and the other imperialist powers have long ago declared war on the exploited and oppressed. However, it is the weakness and, in many cases, the almost complete absence of working class and revolutionary forces, which could provide a strategy to overthrow imperialist rule and end capitalist exploitation, that has driven many of them to demoralisation or into the “radicalism” of despair.
Therefore, the working class has to take a stance completely independent of , and opposed to, all bourgeois and imperialist forces. It must not only reject the policy carried out by Hollande and supported by racists and bureaucratic leaders of the labour movement alike, it must fight these attacks.
– No to the state of emergency! Lift all suspensions of democratic rights and civic liberties immediately!
– No to a renewed “War on Terror”! No to any military or other intervention by French imperialism and NATO! All imperialist troops and regional powers out of Syria, Iraq, Libya, western Africa and other countries of the region!
– Defend migrant and Muslim communities from racist attacks by state forces, racists or fascists! For organised self-defence by the migrant communities and working class organisations!
– No border controls, no to fortress Europe! No restrictions on migration and the right to asylum! Open the borders and provide jobs and housing for all, paid for by the capitalists and the rich!
– Solidarity with the Kurdish and democratic forces of the Syrian revolution fighting the Islamic state and the reactionary regime of Assad! Solidarity with the Palestinian people!
Mass mobilisations, demonstrations and political strike action around such demands could not only stop Hollande’s call for an imperialist war of revenge, which would hit even more innocent civilians than were massacred in Paris. They could also demonstrate to millions and millions of workers, peasants and poor in Africa and worldwide that there is an alternative to the bitter choice between Islamist and imperialist reaction, it is the unity of the working class and all oppressed peoples! It is the joint struggle against the roots of all forms of reaction; the capitalist system and the exploitation of the world by a handful of imperialist powers. It is the joint struggle for a socialist revolution and a socialist world .