The reactionaries must condemn all terrorism, including their own

Written by: Nick G. on 10 December 2024

Current events in Syria, and the fire-bombing of a synagogue in Melbourne, have seen the label “terrorist” applied.  In particular, it is applied by people in the media and the government who have justified the genocidal terrorism of the Zionist occupation forces against Palestinian civilians, and Palestinian and international health workers, educators, journalists and aid workers. 

There are two ways to use the term “terrorist”. They are explored in the following statement from the Political Report to our 14th Congress in 2015.  It helps clarify the distinction between a Communist way of viewing what terrorism is, and the 'War on Terror' which was a pretext for all kinds of repression.

We agree that the rebadged al-Qaeda and al-Nusrah forces now operating as the Islamist HTS (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham) in Syria and likely to be its new government, were terrorists, and need to show cause why they should not continue to be called terrorists. We agree that ISIS forces attacking the democratic autonomous region of Rojava in North-East Syria were and still are terrorists. But equally, so are the US imperialists and the Israeli Zionists.

So too, for that matter, are persons committing arson against communities in Australia. So too, are young Australian Zionists being recruited into the Israeli Occupation Forces, knowing full well the extent of its terrorist activities in Gaza and the West Bank.

The extract from the Political Report follows:

Groups like ISIS have emerged as a type of international lumpen-proletariat.  In advanced capitalist countries the lumpen-proletariat consists of people who cannot or will not live as members of the working class, people broken in spirit by poverty, lack of education and opportunity, health failure, and drugs. Their escape route from all of this is criminal activity and criminal violence through which they seek to empower and enrich themselves.  They aspire to live like the idle rich they see at the top of society.  ISIS recruits come from all strata of society and include educated and articulate youths. They hate imperialism for its wanton random violence against the communities from which they come and for its failure to embrace the Prophet, but they are not conscious anti-imperialists.  They aspire to have an empire of their own, the Caliphate and murder and terrorise any who stand in their way.  Their open fighting is directed at armed opponents, including genuine anti-imperialists, but their terrorism is directed at non-combatants, at innocent civilians, including in the imperialist and developed capitalist countries.  Theirs is the personally brutal mirror image of the impersonal brutality of imperialist drone attacks and the rain of Zionist phosphorous bombs over Gaza.  Whether you behead the person next to you or simply feed coordinates to a drone from the safe distance of Pine Gap, you are equally a terrorist as far as your victims are concerned.

ISIS-inspired terrorist attacks in Australia, France, Britain and elsewhere give the ruling classes of those countries the excuse to intensify surveillance of all progressive politically active people. We have already seen a vast expansion of police and security powers in this regard. We are also seeing the roll-out of a campaign encouraging teachers to identify potentially “radicalised” youths.  A number of case studies are presented including a young girl who leaves her supportive family to become an environmental activist.  Of course, there is the obligatory case study of a Muslim youth, but the lumping together of people exercising legitimate democratic rights with those coming under the influence of ISIS shows how terrorism enables the ruling class to spread its repressive net ever more widely. The goal of “deradicalising” ISIS followers can never succeed so long as it denies the existence of imperialist violence and terror.

Marxists eschew terrorism. The terrorism of imperialism is the much greater and the more dangerous and perfidious of the two terrorisms we have discussed.  It will be directed at the revolutionary anti-imperialist movement when it develops to a particular level of influence in Australia.  It will come from the authorised state agencies of violence and it will come from fascist thugs to whom the state will turn a blind eye and encourage.  We will only be able to defend the advances we make in the development of the movement for independence from imperialism by countering the violence of the state with the organised resistance of the revolutionary movement.  Our activity will arise as a defensive measure and gradually assume an offensive capacity, but it will always be organised against identified agencies of the capitalist state and will never take the form of indiscriminate and random violence in which members of our own class become victims.  We will never practice terrorism or endorse terrorist activity.

Print Version - new window Email article

-----