Version imprimableThe aim of terrorism is nothing but to create a permanent state of terror, hatred and mistrust generalized in the population. If the answer involves less freedom, less democracy and further attacks on human rights, then the terrorists will have succeeded in their goal. To respond to hatred with yet more hatred, and to terror with yet more terror means that the terrorists have won and have re-energized their barbarism.
Those who want to criminalize an entire social group for the simple fact of having a common geographical origin, common human features and common cultural roots, fall into the same blind schema of confrontation and clash of civilizations that the xenophobic right has developed. The misnamed Islamic state, which is neither a state nor Islamic, has nothing to do with the more than 1,500 million Muslims in the world and who, from the beginning, have condemned these attacks and many other similar ones. Today, attention is focused on Paris, but we must remember that the majority of victims of jihadist barbarism, in all its various versions and fractions, are also Muslims. Religious fanaticism of whatever kind is always an enemy of the people, as are imperialism and racist policies.
In the same way that we criticize the simplistic and automatic reactions, we criticize the mechanistic and one-sided analysis. Western imperialism is not the sole cause of religious fanaticism or of the attacks they carry out, although it definitely helps spin a deadly wheel of action / reaction and offers political cover to those who, on both sides, have an interest in supporting a world of closed blocks that clash with each other, dividing peoples and working classes. The jihadists are born in radicalized and minority mosques, but also in prisons, in neighbourhoods affected by unemployment and poverty, and in the rubble of the bombings.
External military interventions are added to the trade and economic policies that the great powers impose on the countries of the global South. This, along with the walls and the detention centres of Fortress Europe and racial integration by assimilation to the policies of austerity, has generated worldwide poverty, inequality and war. This is the breeding ground of fanaticism. Fighting it means getting rid of it and not adding more fuel on the fire.
Closing borders, suspending civil liberties, militarizing the public space, hardening the Penal Code and stirring racial hatred is the real agenda of terrorism. Perpetuating a state of emergency in which the so-called anti-terrorism agreements, which do not attack the cause but only the symptoms, are only cosmetic solutions being played for the gallery and contribute to the endless spiral of global terror. Solidarity is what can comfort the peoples, not the collusion with those who provoke horror and the feeding of the spiral of violence. For this, we are concerned at the idea that the answer to these attacks requires strengthening of values and practices these terrorists seek to establish. We are also concerned that this massacre is used to criminalize even more refugees arriving in Europe and specifically fleeing religious fundamentalism, and the hatred and death that it generates.
It does not depend on the final number of victims for the Paris bombings to become the " European 9/11", but on the reactions and political consequences that flow from this attacks. The cycle of permanent global war, reduced liberties and racist policies started in 2001, explain broadly the attacks in Paris and should be a lesson for this new challenge. There is still time. However, the main political forces in France, Spain and Europe are already talking about the "war of the 21st century" and respond in terms of national unity, police security and racial hatred. More than an answer, this seems to be an electoral program for a government of the most reactionary right. If we let the Le Pen and Sarkozy in each country lead the response against terror, we will always find yet more hatred and terror. The memory of the war in Iraq and the management of the 11March 2004 attacks in Madrid by the Aznar government should serve as a warning.
If the bombs manage to clear the streets and break the “living together”, then repression and hate will occupy the space. This is not a time for fear and to shut oneself up at home, leaving the field open to those who, on one or another, want to erect walls of mistrust between the popular classes. It is time for people to create living, open and supportive communities where solidarity exists. Where people are organized together, then fanaticism and hatred will not come, whether jihadist or neo-fascist. There is only one answer: more democracy, more rights, more “living together”. Our firm rejection of all forms of hatred and of those that feed this on all sides, is only comparable to our firmest solidarity and firmest support for those who suffer from them and those who fight them. Only the people can save the people. Only the peoples can save peoples.
Anticapitalistas, November 14, 2015
