Jean-Paul Batisse | Pole of Communist Revival in France (PRCF)
“Overseas we’re trying to stop terrorism
But we’ve got terrorists here livin’
In the USA, the big CIA
The Bloods and the Crips and the KKK”
(Black-Eyed Peas, Where is the Love?)
There is a clear difference between terror and terrorism.
‘Terror’ has sometimes been used to further revolutionary struggles (although the word was mostly used by right-wing opponents) in the sense of coercion targeting the class enemy, a derogatory term for the dictatorship of a class (in the French Revolution the bourgeoisie and in the USSR the proletariat). In these cases the state terror (often carried out by the people themselves) had so to speak a popular mandate and was only exerted for a limited amount of time (in Robespierre’s France in 1793-94) in order to counter counter-revolutionary violence threatening the people’s state.
However state terror is routinely carried out today in some parts of the world (Israel, Ukraine) against the country’s own population, and particularly targeting minorities (the Palestinians, the Russian-speaking community).
The USA has a record of supporting countries which practice state terror (the Latin American dictatorships and Indonesia in the late XXth century, today Israel and Ukraine). In the USA we cannot yet speak of state terror (although some recent phenomena like the ICE are clearly disquieting).
In contrast, terrorism refers to isolated violent attacks and attempts―which admittedly can be manifold, continuous and put together quite as destructive as state terror if not more so. In 1986 Andreï Grachev, Gorbatchev’s right-hand man, wrote a book entitled Politiceski Extremism in which he had the gall to assert that ‘right-wing and left-wing terrorism are one and the same’ (thus vindicating Mikhail Sergejvich’s centrist ‘social-democratic’ stance).
It is a fact that some resistance movements have sometimes resorted to terrorism in fighting an occupying force (Algeria’s FLN against France, the French resistance against the Nazis and today the Palestinians (Hamas) against the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West bank) that mainly targeted the occupiers. As the saying goes, ‘One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist’.
In contrast right-wing terrorism has other goals whose underpinning ideals are by far less lofty and methods which are overwhelmingly more destructive (causing innocent victims). After the Second World War, NATO set up the ‘Stay Behind’ networks which planned and orchestrated the Bologna bombing of 1986, the Brabant murders in Belgium in the 1980s, Aldo Moro’s murder and kidnapping of 1976, the umbrella murder of a Bulgarian Georgi Markov in London in 1978. NATO was also behind the failed assassination of Pope John Paul in 1983, and maybe even masterminded JF Kennedy’s murder and the plot to assassinate General De Gaulle. Many of these attacks were blamed on the socialist governments in Eastern Europe or, as part of a ‘Strategy of Terror’, on ultra-left groups in order to keep the Left out of power.
Zionist militias carry out terrorism against the local population on the Left Bank. In France itself there have been a number of terrorist attacks. Some of the terrorists are maybe not armed with the best intentions, but at least are motivated by some rationale. In 2015 the Bataclan night club where the shootings took place had previously hosted a benefit for the Israeli Army. The Kouachi brothers came from a poor one-parent family. The group who took hostages at a Jewish grocery store held classes to teach them about Palestine. But they were manipulated by terrorist Islamic groups themselves manipulated by imperialism as we shall see shortly. Just like the Red Brigades were manipulated by the Italian establishment in order to stop Aldo Moro from forming a government with the Italian Communist Party. France’s Action Directe were used by the Iranian Shah’s SAVAK to kidnap nuclear magnate Baron Empain’s to blackmail France into giving them the bomb. Terrorist attacks are also counter-productive in other respects. They alienate people from genuine causes because of the violence they involve. One example is Baader Meinhof who wanted to help the Palestinians but actually turned many against the noble cause. Secondly they detract from more pressing social issues thus preventing the forces of change from gathering support and taking power. Thirdly they enable right-wing governments to enact repressive legislation to use against the progressive movement and stifle public dissent. Bush’s ‘War ON terror was a war OF terror waged against the enemy without (Osama Bin Laden wanted the US Army out of the Holy lands of Islam) but also the enemy WITHIN (with repressive legislation like the Patriot Act).
As we know, the USSR, the GDR and Cuba were from their very inception subjected to countless terrorist attacks. Today, Western governments are behind the Islamist terrorist movements which toppled (or helped to topple) the anti-imperialist regimes of Libya and Syria (the head of government was part of the terrorist group that carried out the shooting in Paris ) and are aiming to do the same in Mali and Iran. The UK and US supported Islamic State and Daesh―Hilary Clinton admitted as much, as did recently Joe Kent, former head of US antiterrorism. French Constitutional Council president Laurent Fabius once said the Islamists in Syria were ‘doing a good job’. My neighbour works in logistical support for UN bases in Iraq. He told me that a US Navy seals base was located right in the middle of an ISIS-controlled area and there was never any bad blood between them. ISIS would only attack the UN base but not the American base. Interestingly, the only country that has never been attacked by Islamist terrorist groups is Israel! I could carry on with practically every area in the world. The French government supports the Rwanda-supported M-23 terrorists against Congo (in return, Rwanda guards Total facilities in Mozambique). Uigur terrorists were used against China (and have since been fighting in Syria and Ukraine). In the Sahel area islamist terror groups are used to destabilize progressive regimes (Burkina Faso and Niger).
In short, terrorism is used against every progressive, anti-imperialist country in the world that strives to achieve social change and self-development. Why so? The West is losing ground on the economic front with the rise of the BRICS (especially China). The West is also losing ground militarily (with Russia gaining the upper hand in Ukraine and Iran (at the time of writing) valiantly resisting foreign aggression. As the US hardly produces anything these days (apart from armaments) it has turned to destruction (thanks to its arms industry). Historically the military industrial complex has always profited from war. There is only one way out for (especially American) imperialism―brazen aggression left right and centre in desperation in the form of international terrorism. Covert action (soft power) once favoured by the CIA is increasingly giving way to physical attack flouting international law in the shape of all-out war. In this sense, international terrorism (as in Venezuela, Iran or on the high seas―in a recent speech Trump likened US forces seizing Iranian ships to pirates) is practised by the USA on a worldwide scale to cow whole countries into submission. When it cannot decapitate a country’s leadership (regime change) imperialism resorts to terrorism.
As I said, despite a number of high profile setbacks the forces of progress and independence are winning out. The problem is the West is prepared to do anything to keep its power―even destroy the whole world (The first mass extermination was that of the Native Americans. Today look at the genocide in Gaza and the starving to death of Cuba) and even sacrifice its own populations. That is what is called ‘exterminism’. It started with Ronald Reagan’s ‘better dead than red’ and is more than ever the order of the day with the Trump administration. That is why Russia and China are being so careful on the world stage to avoid the outbreak of World War Three―which would be a nuclear war and cause massive destruction in its wake.
In 1972 American communist Claude Lightfoot reflected on Hitler’s rise to, power. “If an American Hitler took power, would the democratic, freedom-loving forces be able to overthrow him as the allied powers had overthrown Hitler? On his way to the grave, Hitler was prepared to carry the whole German nation down to destruction. An American Hitler, on his way to the grave, would not hesitate to use nuclear power and attempt to destroy the entire human race?” Lightfoot’s prediction is now a harrowing prospect.
The progressive movement’s role today is to expose who is behind international terrorism (in the event, in the West, their own governments) and obviously to fight their own imperialist governments. Of course everyone on the Left loves to hate Trump―but the UK and the EU are even more aggressive on Ukraine, for instance, than the US itself. Still, that is for Section Two to sort out.