I publish the following article with the kind permission of the author. It has been published originally in Turkish on serdika.org. It has been translated into English by the author himself, Max Zirngast, and Baki Güney Işıkara.

I publish it because I think it is an important contribution towards a non-culturalist, socialist interpretation of the events that have shocked us all during the last few weeks, namely the brutal assassination of members of the editorial staff of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo.

In the heat of such events we should not forget that – especially in our current media-created world – such events do not bear a meaning within themselves but are always-already – despite their cruel real core – appropriated by mighty forces which use them in their interest. This simple truth seems to be completely forgotten in recent leftist discussions on this topic and especially Islam in general. The left is therefore (more than) endangered to fall prey to a massive counter-emancipatory strategy: The event „Charlie Hebdo“ is immediately used to enforce new „security“ measurement in order to secure capitalist dominance and to spread hate among the repressed. A „Jewish-Christian civilization“ has to be defended against „Islamic barbarians“. ¹⁾As if the term „Jewish-Christian“ was not an insult after millenias of Christian anti-Judaism (Christianity is from the beginning a mixture of 44 % anti-Jewish resentment, 44 % barbarian resentment against Roman-Greek civilization, possibly 2 % authententic godly inspiration [under the assumption that s/he exists] and – possibly – 10 % true resistance in the name of deepest solidarity – this last bit has been repressed however from the beginning!) and the Holocaust. On the other hand, with the same right one could talk about an „Abrahamitic civilization“ that would include also Islam, or a „Jewish-Muslim civilization“ that should defend civilization against these blonde barbarians from the North who eat pork.

This implies an ideological blackmail: Who does not follow this easy, all too easy logic is denounced as a „barbarian“ him-/herself.

However: What „civilization“ is to defend? The „civilization“ of neoliberal capitalism? Kayseriologlu shows convincingly that we there is one third option: To defend civilization against both neoliberalism and Islamism (which are not opponents from this point of view but equal twins).

The dishonesty of this whole „civilization“-spectacle is clearly shown by an akward incident: Photographies have been published that clearly prove that photographies which suggested that leading politicians (including among others Hollande, Merkel, Netanjahu, and Abbas) were at the spearhead of a huge solidarity demonstration in solidarity with the victims of the assassinations were faked; the photographies were in fact taken within a small separated area offside the demonstration. They are afraid of the masses that they claim to represent. ²⁾Cf.: link. This cheekiness is only topped by an ultra-orthodox Jewish newspaper who removed all women – including Merkel – from the main shot. (Link) The left-liberal German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung does not hesistate to give the ideological justification for this whole laughingstock: link

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Charlie Hebdo: cui bono?

by Alp KAYSERILIOĞLU
First, let me put it very clearly to begin with: What has been done to Charlie Hebdo is inacceptable and we have to defend the legacy of those murdered like Wolinski, who has been a staunch supporter of socialist Cuba and Charb, who has always been writing against anticommunism. In the light of this massacre we have to bring all persons responsible to book.
Revolutionaries have to be able to respond and defend themselves vis à vis such actions, as revolutionaries and the Kurdish Liberation Movement (KLM) do facing repeated attacks by the Islamic State (IS) in Kobane and elsewhere – also, let us be clear about that, most of those who are now shouting and whining „down with islamofascism!“, „long live the republic“, „long live the civilized world“ did not do much more than to utter a couple of nice words regarding the war in Kobane.
However – and this should not be a matter of discussion –, if people like Wolinski and Charb would have defended a different ideology, they nonetheless would have had all the rights to freely express their opinion as they pleased within the framework of democratic rights. They had those rights not only in today’s societies, but they will also indisputably have those rights in the socialist societies yet to come.
But that’s not the point.
It is not enough to focus on these matters which are actually indisputable. If the Left does not focus on explaining how power relations in the Capitalist World System are structured, and thus fails to analyze the dominant ideologies and strategies in this system, as well as who turns the Charlie Hebdo massacre into their own profit and how, then the Left will dig its own grave and unintentionally instrumentalize itself for the benefit of other social forces.

I. Whose lives are valuable, when are human rights violated?

Life is valuable and the dignity of humans and their physical integrity is inviolable; but in today’s world apparently some lives are more valuable and some people’s dignity and physical integrity more inviolable.
On 4th September 2009 the German officer Klein commanded an air raid in Afghanistan that allegedly targeted Taliban forces, but lead to the deaths of more than 100 civilian. It became known as the Kundus Massacre. Why weren’t hundred of thousands of people in Paris demonstrating back then, why didn’t Hollande declare 3 days of mourning, why didn’t Obama go to the consulate general of Afganistan to express his grief?
Well, because in this world, human rights do not apply to the Afghan people as they apply to Europeans or US-citizens. „This was an accident in a war situation“, „well these things happen in a war“. On top of that, Klein was not only not found guilty, he got a promotion not too long after the incident.
Let us also remember the hundreds of thousands or likely millions of deaths in Iraq since the beginning of the repeated US-led invasions, the consequences of which still have left the economy
and the whole civil life in shambles and helped generate a phenomenon like IS, which was created in 2003 and could only flourish in the situation of a completely destroyed country like Iraq.
In Libya, what was supposed to be help and assistance for a „democratic movement/insurrection“ led, after Qaddafi’s brutal murder, to Abdulhakim Belhadj, the head of Al Qaida’s Libyan branch, „Libyan Islamic Fighting Group“ becoming the chairman of the Tripoli Military Council. I guess I don’t have to mention that Belhadj figured very prominently on the CIA’s terror list. ³⁾http://www.globalresearch.ca/libya-coming-full-circle-when-a-deemed-conspiracy-theory-becomes-reality/5387468 I also guess that sinister man didn’t just miraculously transform into a „democrat“ over night. Again, tens of thousands of people died and all of Libya’s social and public wealth was destroyed in no time. That supposedly „democratic“ uprising proved to be rather very „Islamist“ and, in any case, not democrat at all.
Let me note in passing that it was France that was on the forefront of sending fighter jets to assist the „democratic uprising“ in Libya. In the case of Lybia, the “honor” of instigating the mass slaughter and consequential destruction fell to France.
Today Libya is an utterly devastated country: divided through power games and petty rivalry between a NATO-puppet pseudo-parliament with no popular support and a couple of dozens of „Islamist“ militias, warlords and wanna-be military dictators. A permanent civil war, to name the truth.
While Libya stumbled down that dark road, NATO and regional forces pathed the way for Al Nusra and IS in Syria and even openly and directly assisted them at various points. France, by the way, intervened in Mali as a follow-up to its Libyan adventure.
Actually, what was dubbed the „Middle/Near East“ by English (Officer Thomas Edward Gordon) and US-American (Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan) military and diplomatic circles towards the end of the 19th century and at beginning of the 20th century, has been on the same path since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the 1st Gulf War in the immediate aftermath.
Anybody even minimally opposed to the interests of Western imperialist states – like Qaddafi, who actually became quite a trustworthy partner for imperial interests in the years preceding his death – was eliminated with the now all too familiar chant of „democracy“ and „human rights“ ringing in our ears.
Of course, in this process of the destruction of entire states, the smoke of war was used to ransack and plunder the resources and natural wealth those states once possessed and after the smoke of war had evaporated, they were all – miraculously yet again – in the hands of Western companies. In Iraq for example it was the US-American governor Paul Bremer who oversaw thatad ransacking, which came to be known as the Bremer Shock.
However, at the same time, we were far, far away from „democratization“ and „human rights“ in those countries. On the contrary, countries like Iraq became known for massacres, civil wars and a system of torture prisons (Abu Ghraib being only the most famous) of such scale that made the massacres, civil wars and prison system of Saddam Hussein almost seem pleasant. In Afghanistan, we saw an upsurge of drug production, a dramatic increase of the suicide rate, poverty and – surprise! – we witnessed the Taliban rise to power yet again.

II. The Kouachi Brothers and the French state

Now let us have a look at the assassins in the Charlie Hebdo massacre.
Both were apparently well known to the secret services of the imperialist states: they were banned from traveling to the US and had their names on the terror list of the US known as TIDE. ⁴⁾http://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/08/europe/paris-charlie-hebdo-shooting-suspects/index.html
Especially the younger one of the brothers, Sherif Kouachi ⁵⁾For Sherif Kuachi check the following: http://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/08/europe/paris-charlie-hebdo-shootingsuspects/index.html ; http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/01/08/fran-j08.html (32), was very well known to the French state. In 2005, when he was 22 years old, he was trialed in court, being accused of planning to go to Iraq via Syria in order to fight the US. Back then, his lawyer Vincent Ollivier pointed out that Kouachi was actually more interested in drugs, alcohol and rap music and that he had a premarital relationship with a girl.
Let us add here that in 2005, one of the most rightiwing parties in France, the UMP, was in power and Sarkozy, a member of that party, was the Minister of Interior. In that very same year, growing anger among „blacks“ and „Muslims“ caused by unemployment, ghettoization and being exposed to constant police violence exploded into what became know as the 2005 French riots. Sarkozy referred to the protesters as „scum“ [racaille] and chose a zero tolerance approach.
The consequence was a sort of low level civil war in some quartiers in Paris. Similar uprisings, albeit smaller in scale, came to be known as the 2007 Villiers-le-Bel riots and in the 2009 French riots.
In 2008 Kouachi was on trial again. This time accused of facilitating the travel of French muslims to Iraq in order to fight the US. In his defense Kouachi pointed out that he chose to act like that after being exposed to pictures of the Abu Ghraib prison. Kouachi spent 18 months in prison as a consequence.
Concerning the older brother, Said Kouachi ⁶⁾http://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/08/europe/paris-charlie-hebdo-shooting-suspects/index.html (34), we don’t know too much, but we know something very important, which was also known to US and French intelligence. In 2011 he was in Yemen for a weapons training by Al Qaida’s Yemen branch.
Since 2008, both of the brothers have been under close surveillance by French intelligence. ⁷⁾http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/01/08/fran-j08.html On 8th January 2015, just one day after the massacre, French Minister of the Interior Bernard Cazeneuve admitted that both brothers were under surveillance, but that „there were no signs of a planned terrorist activity“. ⁸⁾http://www.faz.net/aktuell/live-blog-zum-terroranschlag-auf-charlie-hebdo-13357645.html
This means that two brothers who received a weapons training by Al Qaida and were under intelligence surveillance, were able to arm themselves with Kalashnikovs, RPG launchers and other military equipment, discover the secret ⁹⁾http://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/international/attentat-in-paris-die-blinden-flecken-dergeheimdienste/11208776.html location of the Charlie Hebdo office, which was especially well protected, plan and prepare a highly intricate assassination plot to be executed exactly at the time of the weekly editorial board meeting with a high number of writers and cartoonists present, carry the massacre out exactly in the envisioned way and be able to flee for at least some dozen hours and being brought down only after more people were killed. And intelligence agencies had no clue whatsoever about what was going to happen …..

III.The strategy of imperialism after the dissolution of the Soviet Union

Things are actually quite clear. The chaos in the Middle East is a product of the strategy imperialism is following since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
After a series of insurrections – at a time when the Soviet Union existed – a number of countries gained some relative national independence, such as Egypt, Libya and Syria and pursued a socialpopulist („socialist“ in their own words) path using the opportunities opened up by the fault lines of the hegemonial struggle by the two power blocs in order to advance their own goals.
In the wake of the process that began with Nasser’s defeat and Sadat’s rise to power and subsequently reached an important threshold with the dissolution of the SU, those countries had lost their independence (and, of course, their social-populist policies). Loosing all their trumps against the US and the EU, these countries were increasingly succumbed to the influence of the US and EU. Assad jr., for example, whom everybody wants to topple nowadays, was in fact a very close friend of the USA and the EU since the 2000s.
At the same time as the Nasserist and Baathist regimes were still firmly entrenched in their power positions, „Political Islam“, which didn’t play any major role in the Middle East besides in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, was heavily supported by Western powers. It were, for example, the British who supported the Muslim Brotherhood in its inception in the early 20th century. With the Nasserist and Baathist regimes loosing impetus and power, „Political Islam“ began to receive mass support from poverty stricken workers without proper perspective and from the ranks of students and the youth. The culmination of this trend saw the USA giving heavy arms and specialized guerilla tactics training to the Taliban and Mujaheddin against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
After the dissolution of the SU imperialism has simply gone wild. Under the leadership of the USA, imperialism aimed at reconfiguring the vast natural wealth and the important trade routes (Suez, the Gulf) of the Middle East to serve the needs of the West if not even for total control of the same. The process beginning with the First Gulf War was initiated.
The chief ideologues of imperialism (Fukuyama, Huntington,  Zbigniew Brzeziński) provided the necessary strategic and ideological framework:
According to them, we have reached the end of history which for them means the total success and sole domination of “liberal” capitalism; to reach that end (or rather more as an expression of the end of history), however, we had to undergo an inevitable „clash of civilizations“ – whereby those „civilizations“ formed themselves around religions. That meant that, first of all, Islam had to be thoroughly constructed and institutionalized, then demonized and at the end of that process we had to wage war against Islam. After loosing its main antagonism, imperialism chose to play the game with Islam, but in order to achieve that, “Islam” had to be rebuilt into such a form that served the needs and ends of the imperialist system.
On the other hand, the power vacuum resulting from the dissolution of the SU in the Far East had to be filled in the process of a war of hegemony with Russia and China aiming at the submission of Russia and China. These general strategic outlines of the USA’s foreign policy were to become known as the „Wolfowitz-doctrine“ – that is, the 2002 version of the National Security Strategy, the institutionalized formulation of US foreign policy.
Things worked out slightly different than planned. The 2001 Afghanistan War and the 2003 Iraq War made clear that the USA’s plan to be the sole global hegemon in the long run wouldn’t work out. So tactics now focused on „controlled chaos“.
According to those tactics, the USA and its allies weren’t planning to directly invade countries anymore. Through exploiting the differences between various religious denominations and instigating or instrumentalizing existing insurrections, states and regimes not absolutely in line with imperialism’s aims were to be engulfed in chaos, divided and destroyed. Those manifold forces that arose from the chaos, so it was envisioned, would have been in constant rivalry with each other as a result of which they were going to be dependent on foreign powers leading to absolute dependency and exploitation by imperialism.
The best means of imperialism to reach those ends became religious sectarianism and the fostering of „Political Islam“.
Those organizations of „Political Islam“ – such as Al Qaida, Al Nusra and IS – were to channel the extreme poverty and anger of the working masses deprived by the wars and the collaborating regimes in the Middle East into forms in which they could be made subservient to the needs of imperialism as a result of which the angry poor in the Middle East were to be organized in nondemocratic, non-revolutionary forms not representing the interests of the people.
Most recently it has been pointed out by CIA-specialist Graham Fuller ¹⁰⁾http://alternatifsiyaset.net/2015/01/06/eski-cia-uzmani-fuller-erdoganin-gucu-sarsilacak/, that these forces of „Political Islam“ are preferred precisely because their irrational political ideologies won’t allow for the development of modern, bourgeois, bureaucratic-rational states and a corresponding capitalist economy, which makes them less of a danger than such states and economies (let’s say p.ex. China). Organizations or pseudo-states such as the Islamic State will – due to that deficiency – always remain dependent on foreign powers and continue their miserable, oppressive and mostly terrorbased existence dancing on the thin line in between being and vanishing.
Dancing on that thin line, however, will lead to thousands killed and further fuel religious sectarianism leading to the reign of bestiality and death. A wall of rancor, hatred and cadavers is supposed to be erected in front of the peoples revolutionary-democrat alternative.

IV. Surplus-Lives and the Rise of Fascism in Imperalist Centers

The main strategic lines that I discussed in section III constitute imperialism’s “foreign” policy, which is, in turn, interconnected with its „domestic“ policy through an inherent dialectical relation.
Neoliberalism, which emerged already in the 1970s, but reached its peak following the collapse of the Soviet Union, entailed a fundamental redistribution of wealth in centers of the capitalistimperialist world system. All achievements of the working classes (such as social and public services, health insurances, improved working conditions, strong labor unions, and labor rights) that had been gained through historical class struggles and in the light of the systemic rivalry with the Soviet Union have been abolished and replaced by constantly spreading poverty and precarious working conditions.
Apart from that, a social strata at the very bottom of the working class emerged as a consequence of this policies and in continuation of colonialist and imperialist dominance and constitute what Max Zirngast has referred to as “surplus-lives”. ¹¹⁾See also Mike Davis: Planet of Slums, London 2006, p.174-198, who speaks of a „surplus humanity“. This strata consists of people devoid of any perspective who cannot find a job and most propably won’t do so the rest of their life. Thus, they can even be partially grasped as outside of the working class stepping into a barren, pitch-black area at the margins of life. These people are excluded from the society in any sense of the word, and oscillate between poverty and extreme poverty.
However, imperialism does make a distinction within those poor masses. In order to obscure that its abysmal exploitative politics hits literally all workers and laborers, it divides working masses into two blocks – just in the sense of Huntington: citizens and those who are not even capable of being a citizen, namely those who represent a threat for the system. The latter are the “foreigners” and Muslims of the metropolises.
Do we not witness these processes and its consequencesforced by capital all over the Western world?
The scenario is the same from Oury Jalloh and Christy Schwundeck in Germany to Michael Brown and Eric Garner in the US, from the 2005 French riots to the 2011 London/Tottenham riots:
Especially black and muslim youth who have been excluded from the society through racist policies and ghettoization are rising up in anger. Or, they are losing their lives due to police violence that they had to endure mostly because of those informal/illegal activities „in between the worlds“ they were forced into by the system.
It is precisely this inferno of surplus-lives and capital’s exploitation of it, which “Political Islam” is casting a shadow over:
“Political Islam” is channelling and articulating the rage of “foreign” and Muslim masses in a way that is against the interests of the people and anti-democratic in its core, in the same time blocking the possible formation of a democratic-revolutionary alternative amongst those masses.
Moreover, the existence of “Political Islam” and its brutality that grows out of the conditions created by imperalism lays the groundwork for the forces of capital to make use of it and promote fascism in their own imperialist centers.
These forces are well aware that the attention of their own “indigenous” and “western” workers and laborers, who also suffer from the outcomes of exploitative and impoverishing policies, must be diverted away from the system itself. This coincides with their goal of dismantling labor and social rights which had been achieved through democratic revolutions in the past, through establishing a Bonapartist-fascist state.
These tendencies led to a modification/reorganization of the state in the US after 9/11 towards a violent and unbridled secret service state.
It also lead to right-wing extremist-fascistic-bonapartist tendencies growing stronger in the periphery of the EU in the last years: under Orban, the extreme right-wing and fascists established a bonapartist regime in Hungary; the fascist Golden Dawn gained power in Greece; fascists and fascism itself became a constituting factor of the new state in Ukraine. In the center of the EU, on the other hand, right-wing populist and extreme right-wing parties and politicians such as Marine Le Pen, UKIP, AfD, and PEGIDA grew stronger and serve the bonapartist-fascist reconstruction by trying to establish mass support which until today is yet lacking in the core of the EU.
The event of Charlie Hebdo has to be understood precisely on these grounds.
Imperialism had already succeeded in crashing the formerly very strong opposition to the politics of plundering at home and seeking the enemy “abroad”, for instance in the Muslim world, by means of propaganda, manipulation, and despair. While millions took to the streets against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, people no longer cared about the occupation of Libya. Moreover, following the developments in Syria, Ukraine and regarding IS, people calling for the military intervention of the “West” were becoming commonplace even within the left. Obviously, the current crisis and upcoming global chaos creates fear and panic, and thereby helps maintain people within the order of capital, forcing them to seek security and their own privileges within the given framework dominated by capital.
We do not know if or to what extent the French state was directly involved in the planning of the Charlie Hebdo massacre. However, it is crystal clear that it turned a blind eye to the process leading up to the attack, and paved the way for it through racist policies such as the ones of Sarkozy.
And, what about the “civilized” left of these “civilized” countries?
These pseudo-left forces that show more concern for their own share of the imperialist plunder than the creation of alternative policies to imperialism, that are not in the slightest degree interested in poor people in the suburbs because these are not organized industrial workers but half-lumpen masses, because they are Muslim and not French (or Westerner in general), gave way to the degeneration and abuse as cannon fodder of thousands of poor and disoriented Muslim adolescents like Sherif and Said Kouachi by war lords and mickey mouse-caliphates.
Leaders of major imperialist states like Hollande, Valls and Obama made the best of this opportunity, and interpreted the massacre in a way appropriate to their own interests without losing time.
Hollande declared three days of national mourning and made an appeal to the rally on the weekend which he personally is going to attend. Obama visited the French Embassy and offered his condolences. We know very well, however, that none of them did the same thing for millions of people they (co-)murdered brutally in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya or Syria. Nor will they do so in the future. Because “they” are the common rabble, not Western, and of course, human rights don’t apply to “them”.
Obviously, imperialists are going to instrumentalize the Charlie Hebdo massacre for intensifying the exploitation and the further rise of fascism at home. Their aim is to manufacture massive consent for bonapartist-fascistic reconstruction and the removal of rights that had been achieved by democratic revolutions.
They want to gain the consent of intellectuals, adolescents, students, and “leftists” who still – partially though – resist the neo-fascist tendencies of capital by making use of this great opportunity, namely the murder of very popular left-wing / left-liberal intellectuals.
They are now going to instrumentalize the Charlie Hebdo massacre by pumping Islamophobia and creating popular consent for future wars. The fact that the French PM Valls declared “that France is now in the state of war on terror” ¹²⁾http://www.faz.net/aktuell/live-blog-zum-terroranschlag-auf-charlie-hebdo-13357645.html just like George W. Bush had done after 9/11, verifies this view.
The incomprehension of imperialism’s strategy that has been overtly formulated (Huntington) and implemented since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the overlooking of the fact that right-wing extremism and “Islamic terrorism” is on the rise precisely as a response to and as a part of this strategy, and the explanation of the Paris massacre as an action of a couple of “pervert Islamists”, or worse even, an analysis along the lines of “Islam orders this” is not advocating „human rights“ or „free media“. On the contrary, it means serving as the spokesperson and propagator of imperialism. Such a position would be the twilight of the left.

V. The twilight of liberals and leftists

Revolutionaries now have to take a precise and principled stance in the upcoming propaganda offensive and the consequential processes, so as to sharply distinguish themselves from degenerate liberals and of those social-chauvinists who appear in the guise of being „left“ or even „communist“. Revolutionaries now must, without falling prey to the dialectics of imperialism („our“ civilization vs. „their“ barbarism), bring to sharp relief their own dialectics (neither „civilization“ nor „barbarism“ but the peoples‘ and laborers‘ independent revolutionary-democrat perspective!).
What the degenerate liberals and the social-chauvinists are doing will, however, directly lead to their twilight and them entering a pitch-black night which will know no more sunrise.
A comment published in the German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), which is known for its affiliation with finance-capital but is following a liberal/liberal-coservative agenda, states that the Charlie Hebdo massacre is „a declaration of war against the entirety of free mankind“ and highlights that nobody should wonder if people now begin to fear Islam. ¹³⁾http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/kommentar-zum-anschlag-auf-satiremagazin-charlie-hebdo-13358326.html Another comment published in the same journal states, recalling exactly what I’ve being analyzing as the ideology emanating from Huntington as part of the strategy of imperialism: „Yes, this is some kind of a clash of civilizations [Kampf der Zivilisationen].“ ¹⁴⁾http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/ausland/europa/anschlag-auf-zeitschrift-das-massaker-von-paris-13357697.html
There is more.
The French liberal-conservative journal Le Figaro states the following: „War has been declared on us: Islamic fanaticism has declared war to the West, to Europe and to Democracy [!].“ The French liberal Libération had the following to say: „They’ve attacked Charlie and as such they’ve attacked tolerance, anti-fanaticism and anti-dogmatism.“ The English Independent demands the following: „All press organs, in the West as in the Arab world, have to recognize those murdered at Charlie Hebdo as martyrs.“ ¹⁵⁾For a compilation of the statements issued by different journals check the following: http://www.faz.net/aktuell/liveblog-zum-terroranschlag-auf-charlie-hebdo-13357645.html
A Turkish writer, Mehveş Evin ¹⁶⁾http://www.sendika.org/2015/01/hain-bati-mehves-evin-milliyet/, states the following: „Unfortunately those that identify themselves ‚primarily Muslim‘ fail to distance themselves from ‚fanatic Islamists‘.“
Is that so? Well then, dear madame Evin, would you be so kind to give me your telephone number? You know I’m just going to apply that very principle you proposed to yourself; and each time when the West or a weapon sold (to terrorists) by the West massacres a civilian, I’m going to call you – since you’re a ‚Westerner‘ too – and demand of you to distance yourself from those ‚fanatic Westerners‘. You know what: just scrap the phone, let’s start a permanent skype conference, otherwise I’ll have to call you by phone every other minute, I fear….
Dear madame, did you even sit down and think for a minute about what you’ve been demanding? Can’t you grasp at all what kind of totalitarian principle you’re imposing upon others? Can’t you see that it was the same totalitarian principle imposed on the venerable James Foley and Steven Sotloff when they were being vilely massacred by IS? – ‚You are Westerners, so you’re guilty of the Wests‘ crimes, so you also have to die!‘ God beware!
The following is even worse: „It will be better for everybody if Muslims stop to heap the ‚guilt‘ on the West and start asking themselves why Islam is being identified with terrorism.“ Great. So „they“ should „start asking themselves“ while we continue our beautiful life made possible through exploitation and condemn „Islamist terrorism“ while entirely disregarding the terror unleashed by imperialism onto the whole word.
On the other hand, the right-winger’s sun shone, having no alternative, on nothing new regarding the Charlie Hebdo massacre. They’re determined to instrumentalize the massacre for their own sinister ends.
Marine Le Pen ¹⁷⁾http://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article136151927/Le-Pen-fuer-Referendum-ueber-Todesstrafe.html demanded the reintroduction of the death penalty (welcome home, barbarism!), and the vice-president of the German rightist-populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), Alexander Gauland ¹⁸⁾http://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/deutschland/alexander-gauland-afd-vize-rechtfertigt-pegida-mit-paristerror/11198530.html, deemed the new and rising rightist-populist „Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of Europe“ (PEGIDA) in Germany legitimate in face of the Charlie Hebdo massacre.
However, I personally think the (for now) Greek Prime Minister Andonis Samaras is the one within the rightists to be awarded with the medal of ingenuity: „SYRIZA [the main and leftist opposition party] doesn’t live in this country. They want to give masses of illegal immigrants Greek citizenship, social security and access to our healthcare system […] In Paris there was a massacre today and here some are inviting illegal immigrants and distribute passports.” ¹⁹⁾http://revolution-news.com/paris-attack-je-ne-suis-pas-charlie/#prettyPhoto
So while we shouldn’t expect anything new coming from the conservative and far rightist community for they obviously exist to defend the strategy and ideology of imperialism, we have to label those liberals and liberal-conservatives arguing along the very same line as „degenerate“.
However, skip them, even the left is joining in this chorus!
In the so-called leftist German newspaper Die Tageszeitung the allegedly leftist Deniz Yücel ²⁰⁾http://www.taz.de/Kommentar-Je-suis-Charlie-Hebdo/!152463/ wrote, without being ashamed: „Equally unbearable is the formula, which is often employed, be it out of fear of a flaring-up of racism or for less honorable reasons, that those murders in Paris have nothing to do with Islam. That’s crap. The Islam does not exist, Islam is the sum of which those, who claim to rely on Islam, make out of it. And what a quite considerable part [!?] does make out of it, is barbarism […] The attacks and the murder in the end only came from one side: from Muslims. That is why this is a Muslim problem.“
As for the famous German feminist Alice Schwarzer, she declared, just like the rightwing-populist AfD politician Alexander Gauland, that she could perfectly understand those who join the PEGIDA marches and that she can understand the fears of those people who fear Islam. ²¹⁾http://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/deutschland/pegida-und-die-folgen-alice-schwarzer-zeigt-verstaendnis-fueranti-islam-demos/11195572.html
As I said, there was nothing else to expect from the far-right and the conservatives; but I invite those very “democratic”, very “civilized”, very “peaceful” liberals and leftists to ponder upon these questions:
Are you not aware that you humiliate and degrade yourself with your own will by becoming a part of the dialectics sketched out by Huntington and Brzeziński? Don’t you ever think that what you sketch out as valid only for the West is also valid for the other side, for the “Muslim World”?
Yes, when you think of all the massacres committed in the name of Islam and how the people in the West are afraid of Islam because of that, and even view it as their enemy, did it ever cross your mind that the predominantly Muslim population of the Middle East might also “fear” “democracy”, “modernity” and “civilization” or even “view it as their enemy”, in the light of all the hundreds of thousands of people murdered by bombs and invasions, and all the religious sectarianism and the network of the torture-prison system knit all over the Middle East in the name of “democracy”, “modernity”, and “civilization”?
Are you not aware that all of this has absolutely zilch to do with „democracy“ and „civilization“?
The discursive and strategic formation of imperialism is a system of dialectically interconnected extremes and positioning oneself within this diabolic dialectics will lead to the peoples of Europe and the peoples of the Middle East experiencing ever more violence, exploitation and death; are you not able to understand that even a little bit?
And isn’t it obvious that within this crushing situation, the sectarianism and sectarian wars in the Islamic World on the one hand and the bonapartist-fascistic states in Europe and the other centers of imperialism on the other hand are going to spread to everywhere?
Can’t you see that this situation will drive the world to an ever greater barbaric chaos which no one and specifically the left is not going to be able to control anymore and that the sole winning power of this process is going to be imperialism (which is at the moment in its weakest stage!) and those who collaborate with imperialism, like Sisi, and pathetic creature-chiefs/caliphs, pseudo-states as much as mickey mouse organizations?
Anyway, the declaration of the (allegedly communist, truly social-chauvinist) French Communist Party, PCF, capped it all off. In its declaration from 7th January 2015 ²²⁾http://news.dkp.suhail.uberspace.de/2015/01/charlie-hebdo-massaker-stellungnahme-der-franzoesischenkommunistischen-partei/ the PCF called for a „national unity“ of „all republican forces“ „against barbarism“.
What the PCF didn’t do when the imperialist French state blew Libya and Mali to bits and when the other imperialist countries made a bloody mess out of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, it proved „barbaric“ enough to do so when its own holy „Gaullist“ state which was setup by Charle de Gaulle who hated the heroic communist forces within the Resistance as much as the ’68-movement; and, as if that wasn’t more than enough of tailism, the PCF did so even defending that very same predatory and plundering Gaullist Burgeois Republic.
The PCF will excuse us, for we have to object.
In such a “national unity” it is impossible for all the republican forces to participate. Because the democratic-revolutionary and socialist republicans will never stay united in a front with socialchauvinist republicans.
While their slogan is “Long Live France (Germany, England, Austria, Poland….)! Long Live Europe and European Values! Long Live the Bourgeois Republic!” thus, if they want it or not, degrading themselves to the spokespeople of imperialism, the slogan of democratic-revolutionary and socialist republicans is a completely different one. Our slogan is: “Long Live the Democratic and Socialist Revolution! Long Live the Struggle of the Peoples and the Workers! Down with Imperialism and the Creatures produced by and played with by Imperialism!”
With this slogan we also take up Charlie Hebdo and their respectable legacy of which we are certainly more worthy than you, fighting for and defending all artists‘ and everyone’s right to speak and think freely whoever they may be and defending, against whatever enemy, that right but on grounds of our own independent-revolutionary identity refusing to be the spokespersons for the bandits and robbers; quite on the contrary, we will also not make any concessions regarding the ruthless displaying and damning of those very same bandits and robbers who play a part of this maddening scenario of barbarism.

VI. Following Charlie Hebdo editor Charb in raising an independent politics of the peoples and the workers

There are so many rightwing-populists, conservatives, liberal-conservatives and so-called leftists that now identify with Charlie Hebdo and the brutally murdered writers, cartoonists and editors. But none of them is able to follow the example of Charb regarding the analysis of the lines of struggle in the world today and none of them takes a clear position such as Charb within those struggles and, out of narrow-mindedness, will also never be able to do so yet alone understand it.
Greeting and defending the struggle of the Kurdish Liberation Movement and the internationalist revolutionaries, Charb penned this column in L’Humanité on 22nd October 2014:
„I am not a Kurd, I don’t speak Kurdish, I can’t even tell the name of a Kurdish writer. The Kurdish culture is unknown to me. […] Today, however, I am Kurdish, I think like a Kurd, I speak Kurdish, I sing Kurdish. I cry Kurdish. The Kurds under attack in Syria are not only Kurds, but humanity resisting against darkness. They protect their lives, their land and their children, but if they want or not, they are also the sole line of defense against ISIS. They are protecting all of us, not against an imagined Islam, which the Daesh terrorists do not represent, but against the most barbaric gangsterism.
How is the so-called coalition against the throat-cutters credible, if many of its members share, for various reasons, certain strategic, political and economic interests with them? Today it is the Kurds who stand against cynicism and death!“ ²³⁾http://www.humanite.fr/charb-les-kurdes-nous-defendent-tous-555350
That’s it!
In Kobane, separate from the „throat-cutters“ and the so-called „coalition“, it is only the Kurdish Freedom Movement – and, let me add, internationalist revolutionaries like Serkan Tosun, Suphi Nejat Ağırnaslı, Selahattin Adin, Kader Ortakaya or Oğuz Saruhan who fell in this struggle for humanity – that is protecting mankind today, and in fact strives to create and construct a new mankind.
The rightwing-populists, liberal-conservatives, liberals and so-called/pseudo-leftists who appropriate Charb and Charlie Hebdo are not in the slightest able to take up a clear attitude and a clearcut position such as their admired free-critical mind did. Just like Charb made abundantly clear, they are speaking, be it consciously or out of foolishness, in support of the „members of the so-called coalition“ that „share strategic, economic and political interests with the throat-cutters.“
We as democrats, socialists, revolutionaries, just like Charb, should be clear about not making the slightest concession to social-chauvinism.
We have to show how imperialism created only poverty, Bonapartism-fascism and creatures like alQaida and IS and nurtures itself from them. That’s not even enough, we have to defend and fight everywhere, in every regard on a revolutionary and independent basis for a front to unite all workers, peoples, faiths and sexual identities defending their own needs and interests, independent from all bourgeois alternatives and the interests of imperialism in an independent and principled manner aiming to put this common front into practice.
If we do not clearly distinguish us from bourgeois tailism and march towards our independent goals, then we might perish altogether in a not too distant future under the deathrays of a rising black sun after an endless dark night murmuring „Ah, how beautiful was life“ …

10.01.15