Tuesday, February 17, 2009
DILEMMA OF THE LEFT
The world struggle to prevail has been reduced to three active players: the imperialists, the socialists and the Islamists. The Islamists have never been in the game. However, thanks to
Left is at the cross roads. It desperately needs legitimacy to team up with the Islamists. And the theoreticians are hard at work to find some common space to stand up against the imperialists.
However, the Islamists have their own agenda and they smell victories emanating from
The following speech is self-explanatory.
The Left and Support for Anti-Imperialist Islamist Resistance
Speech delivered by Nadine Rosa-Rosso at the The
By Nadine Rosa-Rosso
The massive demonstrations in European capitals and major cities in support of the people of Gaza highlighted once again the core problem: the vast majority of the Left, including communists, agrees in supporting the people of Gaza against Israeli aggression, but refuses to support its political expressions such as Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The Left not only refuses to support them, but also denounces them and fights against them. Support for the people of
Concerning Hamas and Hezbollah; the Left is mainly concerned with the support these groups have amongst the Arab masses, but are hardly interested in the fact that
This question arises not only for the Middle East but also in the European capitals because, today, the bulk of the demonstrators in Brussels, London and Paris are made up of people of North African origin, as well as South Asian Muslims in the case of London.
The reactions of the Left to these events are quite symptomatic. I will cite a few but there are dozens of examples. The headline of the French website 'Res Publica' following the mass demonstration in
Res Publica is neither Marxist nor communist, but one would be hard pressed to find even the most remotely positive words about Hamas on Marxist websites. One does find formulations such as "Whatever we think about Hamas, one thing is indisputable: the Palestinian people democratically elected Hamas to lead
I will return to the quotation of Res Publica, because it summarizes quite well the general attitude of the Left not only in relation to the Palestinian resistance, but also in regard to the Arab and Muslim presence in
At all the demonstrations I participated in
The problem is really in the parentheses: why do the Left and far Left mobilise such small numbers? And to be clear, are the Left and far Left still able to mobilize on these issues? The problem was already obvious when
One would find it difficult to state the problem more clearly.
I would like to briefly address two issues which literally paralyze the Left in its support to the Palestinian, Lebanese, and more generally to the Arab and Muslim resistance: religion and terrorism.
The Left and Religion
Perplexed by the religious feelings of people with an immigrant background, the Left, Marxist or not, continuously quotes the famous statement of Marx on religion:
"religion is the opium of the people".
With this they think everything that needs to be said has been said. It might be more useful to cite the fuller quote of Marx and perhaps give it more context. I do this not to hide behind an authority, but in the hope of provoking some thought amongst those who hold this over-simplified view,
"Religion is the general theory of this world, (…), its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. (…) The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion. Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."
(Translation of Prof. W. Banning, Life, Learning and Meaning, 1960, The Spectrum (p.62-63)
I have always been and remain an atheist, but the rise of religious feelings is hardly surprising. In today's world most politicians, including those on the Left, do little more then display their weakness on this issue: they do nothing against the military power of the US, they do nothing or almost nothing against financial speculation and the logic of profit that plunges billions of people on this Earth into poverty, hunger and death. All this is due we are told to "the invisible hand" or "divine intervention": where is the difference between this and religion? The only difference is that the theory of the "invisible hand" denies people the right to struggle for social and economical justice against this "divine intervention" that helps to maintain the status quo. Like it or not, we cannot look down on billions of people who may harbour religious feelings while wanting to ally with them.
The Left does exactly the same thing as what it accuses the Islamists of: it analyses the situation only in religious terms. It refuses to disclose the religious expressions as a "protest against misery", as a protest against Imperialism, colonialism, and neo-colonialism. It cuts itself off from a huge part of the masses. Gilad Atzmon expresses it best when he states: "Rather than imposing our beliefs upon others, we better learn to understand what others believe in". If we continue to refuse to learn, we will continue to lament the religious feelings of the masses instead of struggling with them for peace, independence and social and economic justice.
But there is more. The fate of Islam is very different from that of Christianity. I have never known the Left to hesitate when showing solidarity with the Latin American bishops, followers of liberation theology and the struggle against Yankee Imperialism in the 70s, or the Irish Catholic resistance to British Imperialism. Nor have I known the left to criticize Martin Luther King for his references to the Gospel, which was a powerful lever for the mobilisation of the Black American masses that did not have political, economic or social rights in the U.S in the sixties. This discriminatory treatment by the Left, this systematic mistrust of Muslims who are all without any distinction suspected of wanting to impose sharia law on us, can only be explained by colonialism that has profoundly marked our consciousness. We will not forget that the Communists, such as the Communist Party of
It was this kind of political education of workers by the Party which meant that there were hardly any protests from these Belgian workers influenced by the KPB when Patrice Lumumba, Pierre Mulele and many other African anti-imperialist leaders were assassinated. After all "our" Christian civilization is civilized, is it not? And democratic rights and freedoms can only "gradually" be assigned to the masses in the
On the basis of exactly the same political colonialist reasoning, the Left is rather regretful in having supported democratic elections in
If we would agree to stop staring blindly and with prejudice at the religious beliefs of people, we would perhaps "learn to understand" why the Arab and Muslim masses, who today demonstrate for
And if the Left would formulate the issue in these terms, would they not partly regain the support of the people that formerly gave the Left its strength?
Another cause of paralysis of the Left in the anti-imperialist struggle is the fear of being associated with terrorism.
On the 11th of January 2009, the president of the German Chamber of Representatives, Walter Momper, the head of the parliamentarian group of 'Die Grüne' (the German Greens), Franziska Eichstädt-Bohlig, a leader of 'Die Linke', Klaus Lederer, and others held a demonstration in Berlin with 3000 participants to support Israel under the slogan 'stop the terror of Hamas'. One must keep in mind that Die Linke are considered by many in
The entire history of colonisation and decolonisation is the history of land that has been stolen by military force and has been reclaimed by force. From
For Gilad Atzmon it is this context that constitutes the real significance of the barrage of rockets by Hamas and the other Palestinian resistance organizations: "This week we all learned more about the ballistic capability of Hamas. Evidently, Hamas was rather restrained with
What can be understood by an Israeli Jew, the European Left fails to understood, rather they find 'indefensible' the necessity to take by force what has been stolen by force.
Since 9/11, the use of force in the anti-colonial and the anti-imperialist struggle has been classified under the category of 'terrorism'; one cannot even discuss it any more. It is worth remembering that Hamas had been proscribed on the list of 'foreign terrorist organizations' by the
The capitulation on this question by a great part of the Western Left started after 9/11, after the launching of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) by the Bush administration. The fear of being classified 'terrorists' or apologists of terrorism has spread. This attitude of the Left is not only a political or ideological question; it is also inspired by the practical consequences linked to the GWOT. The European 'Council Framework Decision of 13 June 2002 on combating terrorism' and its attached terror list who was a copy-and-paste version of the American terror list that has been incorporated into European legislation, which allow the courts to prosecute those who are suspected of supporting terrorism. During an anti-war rally in
In conclusion I have a concrete suggestion to make: we must launch an appeal to remove Hamas from the terror lists. At the same time we must ensure that Hezbollah are not added to the terror list. It is the least we can do if we want to support the Palestinian, Lebanese and Arab resistance. It is the minimal democratic condition for supporting the resistance and it is the essential political condition for the Left to have a chance to be heard by the anti-imperialist masses.
I am fully aware of the fact that my political opinions are a minority in the Left, in particular amongst the European communists. This worries me profoundly, not because of my own fate, I am not more then a militant amongst others, but for the fate of the communist ideal of an end of exploitation of man by man, a struggle which can only happen through the abolition of the imperialist, colonial and neo-colonial system.
Nadine Rosa-Rosso is a Brussels-based independent Marxist. She has edited two books: "Rassembler les résistances" of the French-language journal 'Contradictions' and "Du bon usage de la laïcité", that argues for an open and democratic form of secularism. She can be contacted at nadinerr@gmail.com