war – Page 3 – Internationalist Perspective

November 19, 2023December 3, 2023

WARMONGERS LEFT AND RIGHT

The world watches in horror as one of the most advanced armies on earth is destroying a mostly defenseless enclosed urban zone, like shooting fish in a barrel. No wonder there is widespread outrage and a worldwide demand to stop this madness. But rather than to stop the war, many leftists want to continue it, on the side of Hamas. And they want us to ignore the violence against innocents committed by their side because it was done for a good cause. Was it?

The apologists of Hamas claim that its army are indigenous freedom fighters rising up against a colonial power and that the history of colonial wars shows that these conflicts are inevitably brutal, with many innocent victims on both sides. It is up to the ‘freedom fighters” to decide how they wage their struggle, they claim, and those who support the liberation of “the Palestinian people” should not question their methods. Especially not if they are white and living in countries which had colonies themselves. Shame about the past or present behavior of “their” countries should silence any critical thought on the tactics and goals of the “anti-colonial” struggle. They are not well placed “to hand out moral lessons to the resistance.”

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November 6, 2023November 7, 2023

EL MUNDO DE MUERTE DEL CAPITALISMO

En el primer día de la masacre sádica de Hamas, las autoridades israelíes tomaron los micrófonos para declarar al mundo que este era el 11 de septiembre de Israel. Y, de hecho, hay algunas similitudes notables. Entre las tácticas y objetivos de Al Qaeda y Hamas, así como entre las oportunidades imperialistas que sus acciones crearon para Estados Unidos e Israel.

Tanto Al Qaeda como Hamas atacaron a civiles indiscriminadamente. Ambos se guían por una ideología islamista ¹ basada en mitos de un pasado glorioso y un futuro aún mejor en el cielo, alimentándose de la ira y el resentimiento que la pobreza, la represión y la discriminación producen ampliamente. ¿Qué quieren? Un Estado real, un vasto territorio bajo su control, gobernado no por “el pueblo” sino por ellos mismos, un Estado que encarcela y tortura a cualquiera que se atreva a estar en desacuerdo (como hace Hamás en Gaza), alegando que su autoridad no puede ser desafiada porque está santificada por el dogma religioso. Tienen un desprecio absoluto por la vida humana, incluso a veces por la suya propia. Son una clara expresión de la cultura de la muerte que produce el capitalismo en esta época.

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October 22, 2023October 24, 2023

CAPITALISM’S DEATH WORLD

On the very first day of Hamas’ sadistic rampage, the Israeli authorities took to the microphones to declare to the world that this was Israel’s 9/11. And indeed, there are some striking similarities. Between the tactics and goals of Al Qaeda and Hamas, as well as between the imperialist opportunities their actions created for the US and Israel.

Both Al Qaeda and Hamas attacked civilians indiscriminately. Both are guided by an Islamist ideology¹, based on myths of a glorious past and an even better future in heaven, feeding on the anger and resentment that poverty, repression, and discrimination amply produce. What do they want? A real state, a vast territory under their control, ruled not by “the people” but by themselves, a state that imprisons and tortures anyone who dares to disagree (as Hamas does in Gaza), claiming their authority cannot be challenged because it is sanctified by religious dogma. They have utter contempt for human life, including sometimes their own. They are a clear expression of the death culture that capitalism in this epoch produces. They are racist, not in the strict sense of classifying people on the basis of skin color, but in the broader meaning of dehumanizing people on the basis of their “otherness”, the conditions under which they are born, like their ethnicity or culture.

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October 22, 2023October 22, 2023

NAUSEA

We publish below a text that originally appeared on the French website Lundimatin. Not because we agree with everything its author writes: we reject in particular her biological-determinist view “that perhaps the root of the problem, and of all the violence that shakes the world, is masculinity”. But we share the nausea she so passionately expresses. Her voice must be heard.

Nausea

The Israeli government is a shameful entity, a shameless colonial and imperialist power that has been committing heinous war crimes on a daily basis for 75 years. It kills, humiliates and arbitrarily imprisons children and civilians whose only crime is to dare to be Palestinian. Nausea at every demand of the government, its army and its fanatics. Anger and grief at every Palestinian death.

The Israeli government and the massacres it has committed since 1948 are the real enemy, the criminal – and therefore the one that must be destroyed. THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT.

Now I’m feeling sick again. The assimilation of an entire population, within which class struggle, racial discrimination and political differences exist, as they do in every country in the world, the assimilation of this entire population to its government, to its ethnic identity, is fascist, harmful and murderous thinking.

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October 3, 2023October 10, 2023

HOT AND COLD WAR

1. THE STARK PRESENT

The summer of 2023 has drawn to a close. The pandemic is in the lull, ‘normality’ has resumed but the grim atmosphere has not disappeared. The climate crisis is getting worse, disasters attributed to “Mother Nature” dominate the news. But the economic crisis also proliferates. What both crises have in common is that they affect people very unequally. They show that we live in a class society.

The Dow Jones, the so-called barometer of the US economy, has been doing quite well. Those with a lot of money can still make it grow. The rest of us are doing less well. Inflation is eroding wages. Millions of Americans are currently losing their health insurance. There are increasing numbers of homeless people. The gap between rich and poor is widening in every country, but globally, the gap is deepening between countries capable of playing a competitive role in the ultra-productive information economy and all the others.

Mass flight from poorer countries is the result. The information revolution has unified the global economy but at the same time it is expelling many. The deeper the global crisis sinks and the more the information technology increases productivity, the more ‘superfluous’ people there are.

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September 27, 2023September 27, 2023

An Anti-War Assembly in Milan

On September 15^th the Centro di Documentazione Contro la Guerra organized an open assembly called “La Guerra in Ucraina non va in Vacanza” (The war in Ukraine doesn’t go on holiday) to which IP participated. The venue was located in a central nerve of Milan at the COX 18, an occupied space since 1976, also home to the well known Calusca City Lights, now the Archivio Primo Moroni, an extensive archival project of leftist literature. The purpose of the assembly was to denounce the barbarism that is still underway in the Ukraine after 19 months from its inception, with still no end in sight.

The assembly lasted about two and a half hours and the format was very open: after a concise introduction given by the organizers, in which they restated their position of “revolutionary defeatism”¹, Sandro Moiso who writes for the journal Carmilla spoke for about 45 minutes delineating the current “world disorder”; afterwards, the floor was open to discussion.

Many people intervened without any formal restraints, stating their positions, adding nuances and posing questions. The tone was never academic and many voices were heard. According to the organizers the modest turnout of about 30 people was a bit disappointing since the aim was to open the discussion of the war to a wider audience and not only to “few experts who are already certain of everything ”.

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June 7, 2023June 7, 2023

Y LA GUERRA SE ALARGA

Han pasado 15 meses desde que los tanques rusos entraron en Ucrania y la guerra continúa. Cientos de miles de personas han muerto o han quedado mutiladas, ¿es suficiente? No, no es suficiente. No lo es para los capitalistas de ambos bandos en conflicto, encerrados en sus juegos de poder, enviando cruelmente a los hijos de la clase trabajadora a los campos de exterminio mientras revisan sus cuentas bancarias en el extranjero.

Esta guerra no tiene fin a la vista. Ambos bandos preparan una ofensiva de primavera. Parece que la matanza sólo puede terminar cuando una o ambas partes beligerantes se queden sin carne de cañón. Eso se está convirtiendo en un problema para ellos. Cientos de miles han huido de ambos países para evitar ser alistados a la fuerza. En Ucrania circulan aplicaciones especiales que avisan por dónde merodean los reclutadores. Rusia sigue teniendo cientos de miles de soldados en reserva, pero el Kremlin no confía en ellos. ¿Por qué, si no, no los envía a la batalla? ¿O es para mantener la ilusión de que no se trata de una guerra, sino de una “operación militar especial”? En lugar de utilizar estos batallones entrenados, se busca en las prisiones y todos aquellos dispuestos a unirse a los mercenarios y a los jóvenes reclutas (la mayoría de provincias lejanas) en el frente, obtienen una “tarjeta de salida de la cárcel”.

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April 16, 2023April 16, 2023

AND THE WAR DRAGS ON

15 months have passed since Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine and still the war drags on. Hundreds of thousands are killed or maimed, is that enough? No, it is not enough. Not for the capitalists of both sides in the conflict, locked in their power plays, callously sending the children of the working class to the killing fields while checking their overseas bank accounts.

There is no end in sight to this war. Both sides prepare a spring offensive. It seems the slaughter can only end when one or both warring parties run out of cannon fodder. That is becoming a problem for them. Hundreds of thousands have fled both countries to avoid being forcibly enlisted. In Ukraine there are special apps circulating which send warnings on where the recruiters are on the prowl. Russia still has hundreds of thousands of soldiers in reserve but the Kremlin doesn’t trust them. Why else is it not sending them to the battle? Or is it to maintain the illusion that this is not a war, just a “special military operation”? Instead of using these trained battalions, the prisons are skimmed and all those willing to join the mercenaries and the young recruits (most from distant provinces) at the front, get a ‘get out of jail free card’.

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