LET US FIGHT AND WIN, AGAINST IMPERIALISM AND ITS COLLABORATORS!
Yuruyus 70, June 10, 2018
On June 1-2, 2018, a meeting was held in the Greek capital city Athens on the theme “Let us build up the Anti-Imperialist Front”.
During the two-day meeting representatives from Spain, Italy, Bulgaria, Ireland and Greece took part. In the meeting, which was organised by the Anti-Imperialist Front in Greece, in which supporters of the People’s Front take part, there was discussion of methods of struggle against imperialism over the two days.
The decision was taken to found the Anti-Imperialist Front (AIF) in 2014, following on from the Eyup Bas International Symposium For Unity Of The Peoples Against Imperialist Aggression, which has come together every year since 2009 and announced opposition to imperialist aggressiveness. From that day it has been a persistent and joint work and basis for work by the People’s Front, with meetings being started every year on the theme of “Let us build up the Anti-Imperialist Front”. The first meeting happened in Turkey, the second in Lebanon and the third in Greece.
Despite representatives coming from different traditions of struggle and organisations, as well as ideological and cultural differences, the AIF is a position from which shoulder-to-shoulder struggle against imperialism is waged.
At the most recent meeting in Greece, it was discussed what can be done against imperialism, the common enemy of the peoples.
Over the two days, imperialism’s attacks and aims were discussed, as were the attacks of imperialism and Zionism in the Middle East and Palestine directed at the resisting peoples, and what the AIF is able to do. How there has to be an anti-imperialist struggle, how solidarity with political prisoners can be ensured, what can be done in the case of revolutionaries like Musa Asoglu, targeted by imperialism and put on terror lists, and how the AIF can be built up in the individual countries – all these subjects were dealt with.
Every organisation gave details of how the struggle is in practice in their individual countries. Concrete decisions were reached. There was discussion of what could be done to hold the Eyup Bas Symposium in Turkey.
There was also time at the meeting devoted to Grup Yorum and the attacks on it by imperialism and its collaborators. Why imperialism was attacking Grup Yorum and what can be done about it were also discussed.
Every step that brings the peoples to greater unity against imperialism and furthers joint struggle is of great importance. From the political point of view meetings of the Anti-Imperialist Front in this process that enable us to build a common barricade against imperialism are of great importance.
Imperialism pressures the whole world towards liquidation, surrender and destruction and has brought the FARC, ETA and the PKK into its orbit, while we are boosting, spreading and uniting anti-imperialist consciousness. For this reason, the discussions of the Anti-Imperialist Front held every year, and its decisions on imperialism which tries to isolate the peoples that resist and which attacks in order to liquidate the left constitute a victory.
The AIF announced its establishment in Turkey in 2014 in opposition to imperialism’s aggressiveness, and now it does not just act in Turkey but in the four corners of the earth.
At the meeting held in Greece by the AIF, three political structures within it carried out work. For the meeting they had come together over days, determined common themes, determined what needs there were and created solidarity.
On the first day of the meeting, the Anti-Imperialist Front in Greece organised a concert of Grup Yorum in solidarity with it in the face of all imperialist attacks on it, despite limited means the concert was attended by about 4,000 people.
Speeches were made at the concert in the name of the AIF. They stressed that the greatest strength of peoples comes from unity against imperialism and a call for such unity was made.
During the concert coming to it out of solidarity gave the most beautiful examples of this. They made several speeches calling for solidarity with Grup Yorum. Messages of greetings from the nine People’s Front supporters imprisoned in Greece were read out.
The AIF Represents Internationalism!
Internationalism is not only support and aid. It is thinking together, struggling against common problems and common enemies together, and organising together. By adding our strength to that of class brothers and sisters, we approach closer to victory over tyranny and oppression.
In particular after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, imperialism has increased its tyranny against all the people of the world. Using local collaborators, imperialism’s capitalists hold international capital in their hands, while the people are counselled to accept hunger, poverty and massacres.
Documents prepared by the UN clearly show that imperialism is responsible for the hunger and poverty of the peoples. According to these reports, every day 25,000 people die of hunger, 17,000 of them children.
Every year 18 million people die of hunger and 70 million of causes related to hunger. It would only cost 50 billion dollars to remove this hunger! That is not even the annual profit of one of the world monopolies!
While 50 billion dollars would completely eliminate world hunger, American imperialism alone spent 596 billion dollars on the military in 2015.
Today American imperialism alone has 10,000 nuclear warheads according to official figures and these suffice to destroy the world many times over.
That is, the existence of the monopolies is the reason for the hunger of the peoples. Imperialism is armed from top to toe to protect the existence of the monopolies.
Today imperialist aggression shows itself in every continent and country in different forms. The only source of imperialism’s strength today is the lack of organisation and hope among the peoples.
We are explaining once again the meaning of anti-imperialism and internationalism to left-wingers who even flee from the very name of imperialism and use worlds like neo-liberalism, colonialism etc. We place M-L concepts in consciousness and in the language.
“World conditions have changed!” “Nobody can stand up to imperialism” – such sophistry has undermined the resistance of the peoples. They want them to accept these thoughts, that impose US imperialism in particular on the world’s peoples, with theories produced in the name of the “left”, seeking to get the peoples to bow down to hunger, poverty and humiliation. The duty of revolutionaries is not to come up with theories of surrender but to organise the peoples for joint resistance and to organise unity.
Imperialism is a system doomed to destruction. But this will not come of its own accord. The basic element that will bring about its “end” is the unity, resistance and fight of the peoples.
Today there is no socialist bloc confronting imperialism; but the creative force for one is always in the hands of the oppressed peoples.
In the first and second imperialist wars, imperialism’s weakness against socialism was shown. After the first, Tsarism was torn down and the Soviet Union established.
In the second, legends of resistance were created and it was the socialists who resisted fascism. At the end of the war a third of the globe was under socialism, and imperialism was stopped. Together with the second war, institutions that sought to “ensure world peace” are now fully located in the imperialist countries – because today within these institutions there is not one country that will say it is on the side of the peoples.
The UN, NATO, the EU, IMF, CENTO and suchlike institutions were founded entirely to counter the threat of socialism. The imperialists founded dozens of organisations to ensure their security from the political, military and economic viewpoint, and despite the USSR’s dissolution these organisations continue to see the peoples of the world as a threat to themselves and they continue their pressure on the peoples.
The most basic unity established by socialists was the 1st International established by Marx and Engels in 1864, and the Paris Commune which raised its banner. The 2nd International was later established as part of the struggle for socialism of the world’s working class, but this was dissolved as a result of reformist politics.
The 3rd International became an important force ensuring that socialism spread throughout the world and in the 2nd Imperialist War it struck significant blows at imperialism and fascism. The 3rd International also created important traditions for the oppressed peoples of the world in the struggle of the working class. The solidarity by all the world’s socialists in the Spanish Civil War expressed with their blood, and the trial of Dimitrov in which he put fascism in the dock were important examples showing the strength of the world working class, militarily and politically.
The campaigns to build up the freedom struggles of the peoples of Vietnam and Cuba politically put the ruling classes in a corner, and gave important support to the resisters. However, as a result of the ideological instability created by Soviet revisionism, the socialist countries lost a good deal of their mutual unity, and both the impoverished peoples of the world and the socialist countries became isolated by the ideological, economic and military attacks conducted by imperialism.
If there were efforts to create unity based on various approaches and needs, none were successful and today, despite imperialism being much more aggressive, there is no International that can give direction to resistance. The world working class has been deprived of the compass that can give it direction in overcoming the bourgeoisie.
AS ITS CRISIS GROWS, IMPERIALISM, WHICH GETS ITS STRENGTH FROM THE FRAGMENTATION AND POWERLESSNESS OF POPULAR FORCES, IS STEPPING UP ITS AGGRESSION
Imperialism’s fear is so great that it does not just want to eliminate revolutionary organisations based on Marxism-Leninism, nor just the socialists, it even wants to eliminate bourgeois states that resist it, especially in the Middle East.
The peoples living in the Middle East, in Palestine, Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, Kurds, Arabs, Sunnis, Alevis, Shia, etc… for the sake of imperialism’s interests they are all continually embroiled in war aimed at dividing them! Events in Iraq and Libya are the most concrete results of imperialist policy in the Middle East. These countries have totally lost independence and have been partitioned, the peoples made enemies to one another. Finally the same policy was used in Syria but in a war that has lasted seven years, imperialism’s plans have been frustrated and it powerlessness in the face of resistance has been shown clearly.
Imperialism is in the midst of a very organised attack on the peoples on every continent, militarily, economically and politically. But its most basic attack is ideological, directed at getting minds to surrender, getting the left to attack the left, corrupting them with narcotics. For this reason the peoples of the world have to unite and fight against imperialism, now more than ever.
Because imperialism has not changed, from yesterday to today and its exploitation is only increasing. Ideological deviation by socialists and those in the peoples’ front, organisations fighting for socialism, are surrendering all their weapons under the name of “peace” to the UN which is steered by the imperialists, while organisations which struggle for their own peoples have reached the point where in return for money and weapons they become ground forces for imperialism. Today the peoples of the world are being left defenceless against imperialism, ideologically and organisationally.
WHAT IS THE DUTY AND MISSION OF THE AIF?
The Anti-Imperialist Front was established to oppose imperialism… A front created from uniting organisations of those struggling in different countries of the world, revolutionary, socialist, democratic… The aim is to unite all peoples’ forces against imperialism around certain principles, creating a barricade to imperialism.
“This war of life and death knows no limits. We cannot remain indifferent to events elsewhere in the world. Because wherever there is a victory over imperialism in the world, it is our victory too; in the same way, wherever there is a defeat in the world it is our defeat too. It is not just a duty to practise proletarian internationalism for the peoples fighting for a better future, it is also an inescapable necessity.” (Che)
The imperialists easily unite for their own interests to slaughter the peoples, in spite of all their mutual contradictions. It gets revolutionary organisations to sit down at the negotiating table in order to get them to surrender, the organisations it cannot liquidate are put on terrorism lists, it tries to get them to surrender by putting prices on the heads of their leaders.
That is, in opposing the risk that at any moment the peoples might rebel against imperialism’s exploitation, it steps up its attacks ideologically, economically and militarily. Imperialism uses dozens of tools to get the peoples to become pacifist, disorganised and to destroy their hopes.
As we have described above, imperialist aggression shows the power of revolutionaries, democrats and patriots uniting against imperialism and resisting. The responsibility for this duty is now on the shoulders of the AIF.
For years, imperialism has been working to liquidate the left in order to obtain its surrender and come under its control. Besides physical attacks, ideological ones are also used to bring the left under its control. So the police of getting the left to attack the left was used.
Depoliticisation in the 1980s, corruption in the 1990s and narcotics in the 2000s, these were policies they used to numb the left. And to a large degree they succeeded with the left.
But what looks like the successes of imperialism are not essentially its successes; it is more due to the inadequacies of socialists and revolutionaries. It is the failures of reformism and opportunism. The solution is to build up the revolutionary struggle and to repeatedly form new people’s organisations.
WE ARE THE ONLY ONES RESISTING IN THE WORLD!
We alone have not surrendered in the world. We have protected our ideological independence. Our agenda, our road is set by the peoples, not by the system. We alone have not deviated from the Marxist-Leninist route.
We alone are fighting in the world and the duty of the anti-imperialist flag is ours.
Today, the leadership of the world revolutionary movement, organising internationalism, will go to those who can re-organise the 3rd International. In this way the vanguard of the world revolutionary movement will be turned into a material force.
Today we are the ideological vanguard of the world revolutionary movement. To be anti-imperialist requires very great ideological strength, ideological independence. It requires great patriotism and love of the people.
To be internationalist is to be revolutionary. Only the revolutionaries can sacrifice themselves for the world’s peoples without thinking of their own interests.
To be internationalist means revolutionary politics. Only revolutionary organisations, expecting nothing in return, for the freedom of the peoples of the world, wherever in the world, support slogans of independence.
Today the most basic need of the peoples is ORGANISING AND FIGHTING AGAINST IMPERIALISM!
NOT GREAT WEAPONS, TONNES OF EXPLOSIVES, PROFESSIONAL ARMIES, BUT THOSE WHO HAVE ROCKS AND MOLOTOVS IN THEIR HANDS… BUT IT IS THOSE WHO FIGHT WITH THEIR OWN FORCES WHO WILL BRING THE PEOPLES TO VICTORY…
WE WILL NOT ALLOW IMPERIALISM TO BE THE EXECUTIONER OF THE PEOPLES!
WE ARE RIGHT, WE WILL WIN!
Some decisions taken after the meeting organised in Greece:
- We are on the side of the peoples resisting imperialist attacks.
- We must organise joint actions to build up our forces against imperialism.
- We must organise protests targeting imperialism and NATO.
- We must carry out joint actions in every country in support of the resistance of the Palestinian people.
- Work in connection with political prisoners must be continued and we must organise solidarity with prisoners under torture whose trials are at present in progress.
- We must continue to show solidarity with the music group Grup Yorum, targeted by imperialism and its collaborators, whose methods include putting a price on their heads.
- We must come up with an action programme against the terror lists and the anti-terror laws, and be in solidarity with the revolutionary prisoner Musa Asoglu, who has had a price put on his head.
- We must build up the Anti-Imperialist Front, opposing surrender to imperialism and liquidationist attacks.
