Messsage to the Congress of the Workers' Communist party of Tunisia by M-L group “Revolution”

Dear comrades of the Workers' Communist Party of Tunisia (PCOT)

After years of suppression, imprisonments, torture and martyrdoms of many courageous cadres, the PCOT has won ever more respect and authority among the Tunisian workers and youth. The party and its leadership, where comrade Hamma must be mentioned in particular, has played an important role in the Tunisian uprising and the ousting of dictator Ben Ali last winter. We are proud to belong to the same international movement as the PCOT.

Your Congress is taking place at a time when the Tunisian uprising is at a serious crossroad. The internal and external cronies of Ben Ali, the imperialists who backed the old regime, are desperately working to put an end to the revolutionary process and to bring things back to the imperialist and neocolonial «normality». The cowardly NATO-bombing of neighbouring Libya and the imperialists’ active infiltration and utilization of the Benghazi «rebels» is for sure a warning to the other peoples in Northern Africa, threatening them to obey the imperialist «New world order».

We hope and believe that the Tunisian workers, youth, women and peasants will not yield to the imperialist plots, and that they will continue and fulfil the revolutionary national and democratic process they have embarked upon. The stronger the influence and leadership of the PCOT, the more certain the victory will be.

If there is anything we can do in our country in the way of practical solidarity with the PCOT and the Tunisian revolt, we will respond as best we can with our very limited resources.

Wishing you all success in the proceedings of the congress, which most certainly will give new energy and mature guidance to the working peoples of Tunisia.

• Long live the Tunisian example!
• Long live the PCOT!
• Long live proletarian internationalism!

Our revolutionary fraternal greetings,

Marxist-Leninist Organization Revolusjon – Norway

Oslo, July 22nd 2011

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Fascist massacre in Norway

by M-L Organisation Revolusjon, member of the ICMLPO

Updated: 26.7.2011

The fascist onslaught in Norway has killed some 80-100 people, targeting the political activism and organization among progressive and democratic youth in particular.

Norway was on July 22nd 2011 site of the worst terrorist attack in the Nordic countries since the Second World War, perhaps the most systematic slaughter of young people ever in recent history.

A unified response. At least 150.000 people brought flowers and took to the streets in Oslo on 26 July. Similar rallies were held all over the country.

The death toll is so far estimated at around 80 people, out of which 68 are mainly youth who attended the summer camp of AUF (The youth organization of the Social Democratic Labour party).

Now we know that it was not fanatical Islamists, but the blonde, conservative westside boy, business founder, freemasoner and former Progress Party member Anders Behring Breivik (32) who was responsible for the bomb in Oslo and the massacre of 85 young AUF-ers on Utøya. A crime he has now confessed to have committed.

Even if it turns out that he has carried out the misdeed by himself or only with a few aides, Anders Behring Breivik is not an isolated and random vermin. This crime has been carefully planned for a long period of time, and neither the ideas nor the methods have been invented by Behring Brevik himself. His inspiration has evidently come from a series of bloody attacks carried out by the Christian-fascist terrorist groups in the United States, actions directed at federal buildings, abortion clinics, and school massacres carried out by individuals.

Islamophobia and fascism

More and more evidence supports the fact that he has been part of an extremely reactionary and islamophobic milieu who use the internet in general and a Norwegian web site, document.no, in particular as their main breeding grounds. Through sites of this type they have spread their hatred and incited one another, besides actively using discussion forums in the "serious" online media. Breivik, although he poses as anti-Nazi and pro-Zionist, is also reported to have been a bouncer for Nazi organizations and linked to the fascist EDP; English/European Defence League.

Apart from a savage racist hatred towards Muslims and all "Marxist-humanists" who defend immigrants and refugees, this environment has constructed a conspiratorial conception of the official ”political correctness” of Norway, represented by the country's political government, which supposedly acts as a compact majority in relation to the "national" and "patriotic" hate statements of Breivik and his likes.

Regarding the fact that the summer camp at Utøya (an island some 50 km off Oslo) was the main target, it is fairly obvious that this is related to the distinct anti-racist profile of the AUF [the largest and most influential political youth organization in Norway – translator’s note], alongside with the AUFs close ties to the political center of power.

A Templar against Islam and Marxism

Breivik has recently published his detailed plans on the web, according to (the daily newspaper) Dagbladet and TV2. Freemasoner member Breivik regards himself as a Templar Knight and crusader who is spearheading the struggle against Marxism and Islamism. Nevertheless -- or precisely for that reason? -- Breivik has never been on the radar of the police intelligence agency PST, which for years has been so tightly focused on the Islamist groups in Norway that the simmering racist networks have been more or less ignored. Police and military terror experts present the islamophobes as "something quite different" than the violent Nazi groups, claiming that the distance between Breivik hateful statements and actions he has committed was so great that there was no need to suspect him. That is an explanation that has little bearing, especially as everyone with minimal knowledge of these reactionary communities know that part of the Nazi community have restyled their appearance in order to make themselves more pallatable; they are even willing to "distance" themselves from Nazi ideology if deemed necessary in order to cooperate with or infiltrate other so-called "national" groups.

Although Breivik's views are on the most extreme side, it is also a sad fact that Norwegian "patriotism" and hateful statements about Muslims commonly are spewed out also amongst ”main street Norwegians", especially when in party mood after a number of pints. We should not cover up the fact that there exists a strong undercurrent of racist and xenophobic attitudes that systematically are amplified and inspired by the media and politicians from most parties. This has been the reality every day since the "war on terror" began in 2001. The pretty words of "inclusion" and "tolerance" are of little help when the reality shoes that particularly refugees, but also well-established immigrants, are encountered by the police and authorities by means of criminalization and harassment. For a number of refugees the ”tolerance” is experienced in form of forced displacement and expelment from the country, frequently in violation of UN humanitarian principles.

The attitudes of the Norwegian society is built more on what the political elite and its bureaucracy actually does in practice, than by what they say in their speeches and their formal addresses.

The massacre should be an awakening

Non-European immigrants and refugees in Norway can now breathe easier. During the afternoon of July 22nd, in the first hours after the explosion near the Government complex, but before the shooting on Utøya became publically known, an ominous atmosphere was mounting. In the media's editorial boards, the conclusion was already on the desk, but not yet printed, that this was a terrorist act committed by extreme Islamists. The spin-doctors of the Progress party (Fremskrittspartiet) were polishing their media strategy for how to sledgehammer asylum seekers and Muslims in general, and thus reverse their declining opinion polls. Hate messages directed against Muslims flourished in thousands on Twitter and Facebook throughout the afternoon this fateful Friday. We hope that these ”twitterers” are strangled by their own false words and are vomiting in shame of themselves.

Considering the fact that this unimaginable tragedy actually has happened, it is, after all, better that the misdeed was committed by a Christian, Norwegian fascist and racist rather than that some insane jihadists were the culprits. This might be an awakening call for ordinary people, a backlash for prejudice and everyday racism, and perhaps it can also provide the basis for a political pressure to finally ban these fascist groups and communities who camouflage their criminal racism as a "national ideology".

If racism and nazism are not crushed wherever they show their ugly face, the ground will continue to be fertilized for political fascist Templar Knights and mass murderers of Behring Breivik's caliber.

---

Revolusjon has in another article, and in a letter of condolance, expressed our sympathy with the AUF and the families who have lost so many of their young and loved ones. Today we stand beside AUF also because this is a direct attack on all political youth organizations, on all anti-racists and anti-fascists, on all young people who engage themselves politically and utilize their democratic rights and liberties to discuss and express themselves.

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The fatal 20th congress of the CPSU

In February 1956 – fifty years ago – the Communist party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) convened its first congress after the death of Stalin. This ill-famed 20th congress has since been deemed the symbol of the victory of the peaceful  counter-revolution in the USSR.

To this very day, the international communist movement, the working class and the peoples in the former socialist countries are suffering from the disastrous consequences. This victory of revisionism in the fifties systematically prepared the ground for the unveiled and complete counter-revolution that took place in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe around 1989-91.

In his memoirs The Khrushchevites, Enver Hoxha summarized as follows: “All the distortions of the major issues of principle, such as those about the character of our epoch, the roads of transition to socialism, peaceful coexistence, war and peace, the stand towards modern revisionism and towards imperialism, etc., etc., which later became the basis of the great, open polemic with modern revisionism, have their official beginning in Khrushchev's report to the 20th Congress.” ⁽¹⁾

This congress was to impel the split within the international communist movement. The fierce ideological polemic became quite open when the Party of Labour of Albania helmed the criticism of Khrushchev & Co. at the Moscow meeting of 81 communist parties in 1960. Reidar T. Larsen, who later became chairman of the Norwegian communist party (NKP), was present at the time. In his memoirs ‘Directed from Moscow?’ he confirms that Enver Hoxha spoke out against Khrushchev “so the sparks went flying”. The leaders of the Communist Party of China restrained themselves, according to Larsen: “In the plenary proceedings they left it to the Albanian leader Enver Hoxha to launch fiery attacks aimed at the Soviet leadership.” ⁽²⁾ The CPC did not enter into its “great polemic” until 1963.

Meanwhile, the old bolsheviks in the leadership of the CPSU, like Molotov and Kaganovich, had woken up from their daze and attempted to defeat Khrushchev from within the presidium of the CPSU. Khrushchev fell in minority, and was in fact removed in 1957. However, he mobilized his lojal marshals and used the majority he had ensured in the CC to topple the meeting of the presidium and to confront the ‘anti-party group’ with Molotov at the head.

The roots of the problem are not to be found in Khrushchev's personality

A mechanical and leftist dogmatic tendency argues that the 20th congress made the Soviet Union change colour more or less overnight. This is a subjectivist approach, reducing the counter-revolutionary process to a matter of rotten personalities and traitors. Khrushchev, originally a Trotskyite, was no doubt a rotten element, as can also be said about Mikoyan and other personalities in the leadership. But this does not explain how these elements could obtain support from the congress delegates and within few years put into effect a number of capitalist reforms that step by step undermined the economy and the socialist order in the USSR.
It is clear that these forces could count on a social base for their power, that they could exploit several unhealthy tendencies. Such tendencies would include the idea that “the leadership is always correct” and a self-satisfaction that grew strong in the aftermath of the victory over fascism in World War II. Adding to this were tendencies of reconciliation towards social democracy and initiatives to merge communist and social democratic parties in several countries, something that undoubtedly gave rise to different reformist ideas on “peaceful transition to socialism” even before Khrushchev laid this down as a general line at the 20th Congress. In East (Soviet occupied) Germany the Communist party of Germany after the war was amalgamated with the Social Democratic party under the name of the United Socialist Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands – SED). Both the Communist Party of Norway (which immediately after the anti-fascist war entered into negotiations with the Norwegian Labour Party) as well as the Communist Party of Britain laid down the thesis of peaceful transition to socialism in their programmes in 1953, that is to say three years prior to the 20th Congress of the CPSU. The efforts for economical reconstruction after the war gave room for different types of “productivity theories” in the economic area, to a certain degree in the USSR, and even more so in post-war Norway, theories that in practice had the effect that they underestimated and dwindled the importance of the ideological and political struggle.
The 19th Congress of the CPSU, the last Congress attended by Stalin, strongly warned against a number of these inclinations. Several precautions and motions in order to prevent bureaucratism were projected by the 19th Congress, but few, if any, of these were to be put into effect. It was in this unsound situation that the Khrushchev clique was able to mobilize and exploit these weaknesses, while they for a while pretended to cuddle for Stalin and shed crocodile tears when he died. When the 20th Congress was due, they had gained sufficient strength to consolidate the victory of revisionism.

Giving revisionism legitimacy

Enver Hoxha was present at the congress representing the PLA, together with Mehmet Shehu and Gogo Nushi. Below, he describes what came to pass on the final day of the Congress proceedings, where among other things the elections of the leading bodies took place, and the foreign delegations were not present.  On this occasion a second report was presented by Khrushchev.

“It was the notorious, so-called secret report against Stalin, but which had been sent in advance to the Yugoslav leaders [who had been condemned by the Cominform in 1948 – note by Revolusjon], and a few days later it fell into the hands of the bourgeoisie and reaction as a new ‘gift’ from Khrushchev and the Khrushchevites. After it was discussed by the delegates to the congress, this report was given to us and all the other foreign delegations to read. […] After we had read it we immediately returned the terrible report to its owners. We had no need for that package of filthy accusations which Khrushchev had concocted. It was other ‘communists’ who took it away to give to reaction and to sell by the ton in their book-stalls as a profitable business. […] Only a few days later the black smoke of the ideas of the 20th Congress began to spread everywhere.” (The Khrushchevites, p 183)

(1) Enver Hoxha: The Khrushchevites, Tirana 1980, Eng. ed. p 178.

(2) Reidar T. Larsen, Directed from Moscow?, Norw. ed. p 34.

First published in Revolusjon no 32 , April 2006

Published in Unity & Struggle, no 15, October 2007

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A provocation against the peoples of the world: NObama, NObel, NOway!

English – Articles / Skrevet av Redaksjonen

Friday, October 9 2009 23:17

By awarding the Nobel Prize to the Supreme Allied Commander of the bloody occupation army in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Norwegian Nobel committee yet again has contributed to the denigration of this medal.
Giving this year's peace prize to President Barack Obama made a whole world speechless, even the Americans shake their heads. The President himself agrees that he feels unworthy, but that has not prevented him from accepting.

Even the most enthusiastic USA-supporters, who have no objection whatsoever on the United States' "war on terror", ask what Obama indeed has done to promote peace. After only nine months in office, there has been much visionary rhetoric, but little action apart from the modification of the missile shield plans in Europe as well as airy wishful thinking about a world without nuclear weapons. Drive and forcefulness will, by contrast, be very obvious when the president shortly signs the order to send an additional 40,000 occupation troops to Afghanistan, as required by his military commander Stanley McChrystal. When Barack Obama ceremoniously receives the award in the heavily guarded city of Oslo, the United States consequently will have 113 000 solidiers on Afghan soil on assignment from the US president. In addition to these come 35 000 soldiers from other states, including Norway. Everything is set for a bizarre performance in Oslo City Hall.
Obama is in fact continuing the occupation politics of his predecessor Bush. Any President of the United States is under the thumb of the monopolies and the military-industrial complex. Giving an American President a peace prize is like spitting every single Iraqi, every Palestinian and every single Afghan in the face. No, it is even worse. It is as though the Nobel committee has engraved their death message on every bullet intended to penetrate the head or chest of any Afghan child, woman or man, who might come within firing range of the imperialists.

A less tail-wagging USA-poodle than the parliamentary Norwegian Nobel committee would at least have awaited what Obama actually might have achieved when his period expires in 2012. But in its eagerness to abuse the will of Nobel in order to underpin American foreign policy, this clique of cleared MPs have no inhibitions. Among the scandals on its record we could mention when the committee handed the prize to mass murderer Henry Kissinger in 1973, while the bombs still were falling over Viet Nam – only weeks after the same Kissinger had orchestrated the fascist putsch in Chile, or when the killer of Palestinians and terrorist Menachem Begin was awarded the prize in 1978. […]

[The Swedish industrialist] Alfred Nobel wanted the Parliament in Norway – which at the time was a young and progressive democracy preparing to liberate itself from union with Sweden – to handle the awardment of the peace prize, because he considered that this would mean less danger of political corruption. At the time of his death, in 1896, he probably was right in thinking so. But since then, Norway has grown to become a greedy imperialist power willing to bargain with and jeopardize its own sovereignty as well as that of other nations, a warmongering state and the world's largest exporter of arms, measured by population. Today, Mr. Nobel would probably rather have chosen for example the Faroe Islands or Åland, with the same justification. If the prize shall avoid complete defaming, it from now on ought to be handed out in Torshavn or Mariehamn.
Barack Obama is an intelligent man who perceives the way of thinking of his Norwegian bootlickers. As he put it in his first press statement: «I do not view it (the Peace Prize) as a recognition of my own accomplishments but rather an affirmation of American leadership».
Our remark would be: You've got it right, Mr. President. In the least as far as the Norwegian bourgeois class is concerned.
But significant portions of the Norwegian people are prepared to defy barbed wires and police repression as well as US leadership and «supremacy» when you arrive in Oslo on 10 December.

Slightly abbreviated. First published in Norwegian on Nettmagasinet Revolusjon on October 9th 2009.

NObama, NObel, NOway! av Nettmagasinet Revolusjon, Jan R. Steinholt er lisensiert under en Creative Commons Navngivelse-Ikkekommersiell-Ingen Bearbeidelse 3.0 Norge Lisens.
Based on original article on www.revolusjon.no.

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