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The Maoist-Third Worldists at Monkey Smashes Heaven have published their position on Ireland. We will respond to the MSH article at a later date.
On competing land claims of the oppressed nations
(monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com)
Bob Avakian
Imperialists often raise the issue of competing land claims among oppressed nations in order to undermine national liberation. Those in the White “left” often raise this bogey. For example, RCP is known to attack national liberation along these lines. This should not be surprising since RCP is the same organization that made a point of telling indigenous peoples that they eat their own shit. (1) RCP has a long, notorious history of racism. RCP is typical of the White “left.”
Around the time of its Draft Programme, RCP argued the following way: There are conflicting land claims between various oppressed nations in North America. Therefore, all land claims of should be rejected. This is an obvious non-sequitur. The imperialist borders should be opposed regardless. RCP’s approach is also a de facto justification of the current imperialist order. It is de facto White supremacist.
Our experience has been that the oppressed recognize that they have more in common with each other than they do with their oppressors. The oppressed of different nations often recognize that their struggle is, ultimately, one and the same. They exhibit a level proletarian internationalism due to where they stand within capitalist-imperialism. One of the founding documents of the national liberation struggle of occupied Mexico is the 1915 Plan of San Diego that conceived of itself not just as a plan to liberate Mexican populations, but also liberate and grant independence to other indigenous peoples, and Blacks and Asians who were subjugated by Whites. Similar internationalist sentiments have been expressed among the other indigenous peoples in North America. Defeating White imperialism will require a broad united front that goes beyond just the nations of Mexico and beyond just the nations within U$ borders.
Here are some points on competing land claims in North America:
1. The competing land claims issue is a bogey raised by imperialists to undermine the broad united front against imperialism.
Well intentioned narrow nationalists who raise the issue have an inadequate grasp of the principal contradiction. The principal contradiction, the main dynamic shaping our world, is between the exploited nations (and their oppressed nation allies) and imperialism. The main enemies of individual oppressed nations in North America are not other oppressed nations, even if there are historic border disputes. The main enemy is imperialism, especially U$ imperialism.
Lin Biao
2. Imperialists should not have any say on how oppressed nations settle their differences. Imperialists are enemies of the oppressed nations. The oppressed have more in common with each other than they do with the imperialists. Oppressed nations can work out their own disputes without paternalistic help. To fan the flames of conflict among oppressed nations aids the White occupation. Conflict among the oppressed nations only helps the imperialists. Revolutionaries will encourage unity and internationalism.
3. There is plenty of land to go around among the oppressed nations once Amerika is crushed. There is plenty of room for negotiation because there is so much land.
4. Utopian schemes to exactly restore the past are not the best approaches to redrawing the North American map. The best approach is one based on fairness, that balances the interests of many indigenous and other oppressed nations, but also takes the historic map into consideration.
We hope that this clarifies our line on this issue.
Notes.
1. Churchill, Ward. Marxism and Native Americans.
Onward Christian soldiers
The British Army marched triumphantly once more through an Irish city and the left who usually fall over themselves to promote anti-imperialist issues relating to Palestine and Iraq were not to be seen with the exception of the WSM picket. Palestine and Iraq are far-off places, it’s short term beneficial for the left to parade in keffiyeh scarves waving Hezbollah flags, meanwhile ignoring the murderous atrocities carried out by the British army in their own country. When the chickens come home to roost, the left run cowering behind imaginary slogans.
In 1968 as Agent Orange rained on Vietnam, members of the Amerikan armed forces marched through Belfast, senior members of the Communist Party of Ireland disrupted the procession by sitting on the road. Later that year, CPI member Betty Sinclair at the October 5th march in Derry publicly told people not to get involved in confrontations with the police as RUC batons came down on the heads of peaceful civil rights protesters.
The WSM called off their picket owing to ‘security concerns’, in other words, they were threatened by Loyalists. The slogans of working class unity were not received by the upwards of 30,000 who turned out to cheer on war criminals and the gangs of Loyalist youth who circled Belfast city center for hours after – presumably looking for “fenians”. Like all settlers from Africa, Palestine, Amerika to Ireland they have no interests in sharing their ill gotten gains with those they disposed and whose land they stole. These are the same people who put immigrants out of their homes and who cheered on the illegal Loyalist murder gangs, now they cheer for the legal murder gangs.
Loyalism’s mirror image
In another statement released prior to the march, WSM spokesperson Sean Matthews said:
“WSM have nothing in common with rival republican organisations seeking to ‘outgun’ each other over the reactionary mantle of nationalism. The WSM is equally opposed to the oppressive role of imperialism under the British Army and the blight of militarism still endured by working-class communities at the hands of paramilitary organisations” [1]
This is standard language from the left, who consistently fail to take a coherent and honest anti-imperialist position – the WSM choose to celebrate 150 RIR solders going AWOL, their poster coupled with a picture of a dog and a pint of Guinness. Life-style politics at the best.
In any case, what Matthews is saying is that Republicans and the Brits are as bad as each other. The argument is subjective, Republicans never carried out sectarian murders as part of a consistent campaign but they did of course kill Protestants, in some cases as a reaction to Loyalist sectarian attacks. The Republican armed campaign, whilst inniu is critical of it, was noble in its aim. Loyalist murder gangs, backed by the British Army, RUC, MI5 and all of the state infrastructure on the other hand, served no purpose other than murdering as many Catholics as possible.
The left should perhaps adopt the slogan ‘croppies lie down’ because they are part and parcel of the system of British rule here. They all, with a few exceptions, support Stormont, the status quo and the Good Friday Agreement, vis-à-vis British rule in Ireland. Others have gone further than this position and have openly toured UVF murderer Billy Hutchinson around Britain and Scotland as an ‘independent working class loyalist voice’. He is anything but. Hutchinson is a sectarian murderer who subsequently has been described as a ‘liberation theologian’ during his 2001 campaign against school children largely from Ardoyne attending a Catholic school in the Glenbyrne Loyalist area. During this campaign, balloons filled with piss, pipebombs and other material were thrown at school children as young as five years old by grown men, organised by in-part by Hutchinson’s organisation and defended by the state infrastructure – the DUP’s Nelson McCausland (who blamed the school children for the trouble) and RUC/PSNI.
The conclusion from Sunday’s events should be that the Irish people have become pacified. The speech delivered by Chairperson Brian Leeson at éirígí’s event spoke of ‘victory’, Leeson told us that we had won and made reference to the fact éirígí refused to use the parades commission. This is standard language that has been used to disguise defeat, most notably by the Provisionals who still talk of ‘victory’ but who ended up completely humiliated and defeated.
Working class unity?
The Provisionals for their part, have proven to be absolutely bound by the shackles of Stormont. Their protest was attacked and their response was to criticise the PSNI for not defending them. Why would the PSNI, successors to the RUC and the cogs of Britain’s war machine seek to protect the relatives of those people whose murders they were involved in? In any case, the delayed response of the PSNI avoided any major confrontation. On the other hand, it must be stated that the policy of British state apparatus has moved from a position confrontation to one of coercion.
Provisional Movement members see no contradiction in protesting against the RIR, amongst the other British military branches on parade and the Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Belfast laying a poppy wreath at the cenotaph at Belfast City Hall.
Éirígí essentially capitulated. Éirígí members has bolstered up Sunday’s event to be confrontation with the state, what was found was that éirígí waited until the PSNI had sealed the entrance to the city center before proceeding, then they had their own members stand between the crowd and the PSNI. This is hardly the defiance that éirígí spokesperson Seán MacBrádaigh warned of in the Andersonstown News and which Leeson claimed had happened on the day, the tactics and strategy of the day were completely at odds with Leeson’s speech.
inniu 