Individual “terrorism” as a concealment of State Terrorism: the non-governmental attempts (13)

Violence and Terrorism.- Their ideological mystification at the service of Imperialism

13 - Individual “terrorism” as a concealment of State Terrorism: the non-governmental attempts

Iñaki Aginaga and Felipe Campo

The imperialistic propaganda and psychological warfare of masses make of the non-governmental attempts (NGAs) an obsessive and all-pervading subject, and the trigger for socio-psycho-physiological conditioned reflexes of disgust and rejection, which the confusion induced in the defenceless Peoples makes even more harmful. All violence – or even all ideological-political opposition – of a subjugated People: whatever its purpose and extension may be, is now rated as “terrorist attempt” by the imperialistic-terrorist State that represses it; which thus avoids the recognition of civil or international “war”. (Cases of Algeria, Chechnya, Kurdistan, Palestine Tibet or Western Turkestan.) Even when the state of international war has been recognized, they are qualified as “terrorist attacks” a number of acts that cannot differ from war by the criteria of terror and extension.

Evidently, it’s the State Terrorism which worries the Peoples who suffer it; instead the NGAs, whose own disability makes them politically harmless, do only manage to exasperate the natural ferocity, irritation, impatience and xenophobic fury of the predator. The State Violence and Terrorism, of every kind, are, have always been and always will be incomparably more extensive, active and effective than the individual and collective NGAs, and it’s tautologically impossible that this be not so. Otherwise, State Violence and Terrorism would not be of State, nor would the NGAs be such individual attempts but then these ones would be the current political power, and not the infrastrategic opposition as they are.

Only the disparity in the respective capacity of actual and virtual Violence does differentiate the State from the opposition, in the positive international law. This is evidenced not only by the positive law and the facts but also by the formal logic. The State, by holding and wielding the monopoly of Violence, does not commit attempts; which, by definition, imply a monopoly of Violence against which to attempt. In the same way, and insofar as they are members or agencies of the State, the Secret – discreet or indiscreet – Services in the service of Governments, however much illeGAL they may be, do not commit attempts but under-cover acts of provocation. “Justifying” the NGAs as a response to the regime’s “illeGAL” actions: which is the explanation we have heard given to the purported “abertzale left” (as if these acts of provocation were the only Violence of the fascist régime), is the most insidious way of ignoring and admitting as non-existent the monopoly of criminal Violence and State Terrorism, as well as its crimes, which for centuries has constituted the current domination of French-Spanish imperialism over our People and State.

However, the dominant propaganda presents the NGAs as the only extant violence: “the dictatorship of violence and the most serious political issue of the State”, as they go so far as to claim. Even there agree with this appreciation the proponents and agents of the “individual terrorism” themselves; who, paradoxically, do usually refer themselves in this regard to a sui generis Marxism-Leninism of their own invention that contradicts all evidence.

In fact, and in the first place, a dictatorship consists by definition in the monopoly of criminal Violence and therefore it cannot commit attempts, since these ones imply the existence of a superior power against which to attempt, and in a dictatorship there is none. In our Country, the criminal French-Spanish régime of military occupation established on the Basque People and its State, the Kingdom of Nabarre, was founded and is maintained on the basis of constituent massacres, kidnappings and deportations of masses, incomparably greater than the NGAs. If the NGAs were really “the only violence that exists in this Country” or “the dictatorship of violence”: as the Pnv-Eta collaborationists-institutionalists, their satellites and the dominant fascist propaganda do in unison proclaim, in such a case they would not be “attempts” but would be the monopoly of real power. There are not and there cannot be any attempts without a previous order of monopolistic Violence against which to attempt.

That is to say, should things be as they say, then the perpetrators of those NGA would actually be the real political power, that is the State and therefore holders of the monopoly of Violence and Terrorism, and not the opposition and perpetrators of NGAs persecuted and repressed by the former, as they really are. And similarly, in such a case the armed forces of occupation: pursued and cornered by the new monopolist power, would perhaps commit “terrorist” attempts against it.

And finally, if the ruling classes were – as they claim to be – terrified and non-violent victims deprived of all freedom and all political power, then they would not be the State – as they really are – but would be the persecuted opposition and eventually the perpetrator of NGAs; yet, obviously, nono of this happens in reality but quite all the opposite.

Through the NGAs the losers are always those who, with means that are derisory, suicidal or of maximum risk – and increasingly obsolete and extemporaneous – do try to confront the monopolies of Violence and Terrorism of masses in their own ground; which turns out being a prelude to the cemeteries, the jails, and increasingly precarious exiles. Against the romantic versions naively held on revolutions (that otherwise do pretend), the States have never ceded the political field before the individual – internal or external – attempts. The NGAs are a false opposition or response to State Violence and Terrorism.

Only fools or hypocrites “denounce” the individual attempts while they hide, conceal, justify or practice the monopolistic Violence and Terrorism of State against the masses and Peoples. The individual NGAs are not a strategic problem, a danger or a threat to the imperialism and to the new worldwide imperial and hegemonic order or disorder. Their costs, in terms of human lives, are much lower than those caused by the production and transport. (The commercial or tourist transports cause daily and throughout the world continuous disasters: “necessary, unavoidable and exceptional” but structurally determined, concealed and protected by the political and economic powers. All this while their actual or virtual victims: “psychologically assisted” and duly conditioned, anaesthetized and stupefied to do so, accept them daily and support them without no more noticeable reaction than that of the lambs in the slaughterhouse, or with protests that are as individual as the NGAs themselves, and between a mixture of unconsciousness, stupefaction, fatalism and powerlessness.)

All those costs are infinitely more bearable than those of true wars: hecatombs that the Governments do prepare, lead and justify with deliberate infamy and lies; wars that, however, those same populations face with exultation or resignation, depending on how things are going.

It would be ridiculous – if it was not hypocritical – to quantitatively and qualitatively compare the respective results, to put in comparison the individual NGAs along with the wars or the mass terrorist bombings: conventional or atomic, which have caused millions of victims and are the foundation of the policy and law between States. The great States, in their wars – “imperialistic on one or both sides” – maintained to establish the distribution or redistribution of their areas of domination, have endured in a single day and in a single hour military and especially civilian losses incomparably greater than all those that, as a whole, have been inflicted by the NGAs since the world is world, and not because of that have they renounced to aggression, war, conquest and annexation. In one hour and one day they have caused fifty thousand military or one hundred sixty thousand civilians dead, with a final balance of sixty million dead in “only” two wars.

And yet, the international law does not condemn war but the NGAs, which it magnifies and distorts. And as a consequence, the masses: conditioned, intoxicated, terrified, and socially and mentally alienated, do not fear the war but the NGAs. Viewing and listening to the propaganda of the hegemonic Powers, one would say that they have never bombed a civilian population until their own populations have been touched; and that, compared to the “catastrophic” consequences of the “individual terrorism”, the Terror raids against the civilian populations of Abyssinia, Manchuria, Durango, Gernika, Coventry, London, Dresden, Berlin, Yokohama, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Viet Nam, Baghdad or Aleppo are only minor collateral damage.

The new hegemonic international law forbids the NGAs but not war. What’s more: it justifies waging war to combat the NGAs. Now then, presenting these ones as justification for war, mounting a war and kill a hundred thousand people by virtue of the self-proclaimed “preventive legitimate defence” against the NGAs, does outrightly qualify the propaganda of the dominant Powers. In the same way is still justified the conquest of the American Continent, and the destruction of races and civilizations of twenty million of locals because of the duty of ending with human sacrifices: advantageously replaced in Christian Europe by burning alive all those who did not find it clear either with respect to the Trinitarian hypostasis or the movement of the universe. As for “modern” colonialism, it is justified by the urgency of ending with slavery, female genital mutilation, or the burka; objectives that tries to achieve through methods such as the subjugation, exploitation and liquidation of the Aborigines by “virtue” of the civilization and Christian double moral of goodness, peace, love and all-out war against the Weak and the Helpless.

It's State Terrorism that creates the social conditions of oppression, underdevelopment, frustration and despair that make possible NGAs, which only exist as correlates of the monopolies of criminal Violence and Terrorism: without monopoly of criminal Violence, no attempts. The NGAs during the post-war period in the occupied territory to the Basque People were and are the consequence of the terrible defeat of 1937, and of the liquidation of the strategic opposition: a result of the abandonment and betrayal of the bureaucracy of the Pnv and its satellites. They are the belated and infantile reaction of a primitive subjugated People: culturally, ideologically and politically underdeveloped. They are a consequence of the closing of its political rights imposed by French-Spanish Imperialism and Fascism; and a manifestation of the strategic failure of the opposition. They are a symptom, an effect, a revealer, a reducer, a safety valve, and a cover for the fundamental political conflict of Imperialism and Fascism. They are a sign of identity, a subject of propaganda and agitation, a source of information, and a basis of provocation which Imperialism and Fascism are nourished from, that is: a means to provoke and intensify – and a pretext to feed, conceal and justify – the Repression and the real State Terrorism of Francespain. In short: the NGAs are an unpleasant but effective way of preventing the development of a Basque national policy of a strategic level; of decimating its active forces; and of ruining its material resources.

Without monopolies of criminal Violence and Terrorism there is neither fascist State nor NGAs, since there is no – nor there can be – attempts without a prior régime of monopolistic Violence against which to attempt. If putting an end to the NGAs was really the true, main and priority objective of their policy (an assertion already absurd in itself), the imperialistic and fascist States – which falsely do claim for it – could achieve it in a radical manner through the unilateral and immediate abandonment of State Violence and Terrorism, which are their cause, thus ending at the same time with the State itself and with the NGAs against it. But the hypocrite imperialistic and fascist Governments do not have the NGAs as real reason and true aim of their State Repression and Terrorism; their true and real reasons and objectives are the international conflicts involved in the liberation struggle of Peoples against Imperialism, Colonialism, and Fascism that they use as an instrument to achieve these ends.

The terrorist States, which hypocritically declare to be fighting against “violence and terrorism”, do not have as priority aim: nor mediate or immediate, the end of violence and terrorism but the consolidation and intensification of the State Violence and Terrorism put in the service of the oppression on the Peoples, with the genocide as a final solution of the conflicts. To defend themselves against it, all the Nations and States of the world put the legitimate defence as absolute condition of International Law.

For an imperialistic and fascist régime of military occupation: in full possession of the monopoly of criminal Violence, the NGAs are not a political problem of strategic level; and its damages are more limited than the NGAs causing them. Its real and unavowable political problem lies in the existence of the subjugated Peoples and their own legitimate States, and in their Resistance to imperialism. The latter’s propaganda uses the NGAs to hide and justify the State monopolistic Violence and Terrorism against the subjugated Peoples; and denies their national Resistance and their inherent right of legitimate self-defence: inseparable from national independence and from the right of self-determination.

The imperialism pursues and in fact denies the subjugated People itself; since, being the legitimate self-defence an inherent right to all the subjugated Peoples, if it succeeds in establishing the idea that there are no such Peoples (for which it begins by officially denying them, with the more or less declared support of the indigenous Renegades and Traitors), then there cannot be, “logically”, self-defence. In this way, the whole issue ceases to be a political one to be reduced to a mere problem of police in the face of “terrorist crime”, with demand for “its condemnation for the unjust damage caused”.

For its part, and in total complicity with it, the denial/condemnation that the indigenous Renegades and Traitors make of the right of legitimate self-defence of their own People, does correlatively imply the denial of their own People as a People on an equal footing with all the Peoples of the world, since they deny it the rights of self-determination and legitimate self-defence that all of them have, claim and maintain, and that constant Resolutions of the General Assembly of the United Nations do recognize.

Indeed, in an occupied Country there is no shortage of Renegades, Opportunists, Collaborationists, Traitors and Accomplices – stupid or corrupt – who are ready to serve both the intoxication of the imperialistic propaganda, and the occupation itself. The aboriginal Collaborationists and Accomplices of the French-Spanish imperialism do forget or exalt the massive and multi-centennial crimes that it has committed; they do so manifest their moral, political and economic solidarity with the imperialistic and fascist régime; ask for forgiveness and honour to its responsible representatives; and exalt and describe as workers – syndicated by themselves – the agents of the occupation and repression forces who are the material perpetrators of such acts, whom they compensate and indemnify at the expense of the taxpaying subjugated People.

This is the contribution that these “Basque” Collaborationists and Accomplices of the fascist French-Spanish régime, of military occupation over the Basque People and its State, have made to International Law and Policy: a never seen and never applied initiative by the subjugated Peoples throughout the History of Humankind. On the contrary, they have always maintained that, as such, the agents and beneficiaries of imperialism and fascism, repelled in exercise of the right of legitimate self-defence of the subjugated Peoples, are not victims of anything nor do they have any rights: neither electoral nor any other political right, let alone a right to be compensated by the Peoples that are victims of an imperialistic aggression. According to numerous United Nations’ General Assembly Resolutions (UNGAR):

“The General Assembly, [...] Reaffirming that the continuation of the colonialism in all its forms and manifestations, as noted in General Assembly resolution 2621 (XXV) of 12 October 1970, is a crime and that colonial peoples have the inherent right to struggle by all necessary means at their disposal against colonial Powers and alien domination in exercise of their right of self-determination recognized in the Charter of the United Nations [...], Solemnly proclaims the following basic principles of the legal status of the combatants struggling against colonial and alien domination and racist régimes without prejudice to their elaboration in future within the framework of the development of international law applying to the protection of human rights in armed conflicts: 1. The struggle of peoples under colonial and alien domination and racist régimes for the implementation of their right to self-determination and independence is legitimate and in full accordance with the principles of international law. 2. Any attempt to suppress the struggle against colonial and alien domination and racist régimes is incompatible with the Charter of the United Nations, the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples” etc. [UNGAR 3103 (1973).]

No free or liberated Country or State has ever persecuted its own nationals, perpetrators of attempts against the foreign forces of occupation (even though according to the right of the dominant States they might be considered criminals, pirates, bandits or terrorists), but has done just the opposite; as it has happened with all the “terrorists” and insurgents of history which founded or liberated their respective States. Not even the uncontrolled activists have been persecuted, although they may have been rejected by the “official” national liberation movements because of their strategic malfunctions, which caused terrible reprisals against the civilian population. Quite on the contrary, all of them have reaffirmed that only the agents of imperialism are criminals and that, as such, they have no rights.

The Spaniards do condemn the Moncloa executions, and magnify as patriotic heroes and martyrs the criminals, bandits and terrorists: beneficiaries, instruments and minions of the Inquisition, who did viciously attack the governmental French-Spanish army. However, by attempting against the Spanish Bourbon Government and the revolutionary French Protectorate during the Peninsular War (1807-14), those criminals were attacking the national and international positive law as established by the Governments of Spain and France in the Second Treaty of San Ildefonso (1796), the Treaty of Aranjuez (1801), and the secret Agreement of Fontainebleau (1807) for the occupation, annexation and partition of Portugal between France and Spain.

Similarly, the French do condemn the executions carried out by the German occupation forces against the French saboteurs and resistance fighters, despite the fact that those executions were nevertheless done in compliance with general international law and the agreements of the Armistice of 22-June-1940 proposed and accepted by the French Government; and they call “resistance fighters” those snipers: “officially” terrorists and gangs of delinquents that – infringing the international rules of war and the conditions of the Armistice – killed German soldiers in uniform who were quietly walking through Paris, at underground entrances or pavement cafés.

In any case, the perpetrators of those attacks were never persecuted by their Governments, and the victims: members of the French-Spanish Army or the Wehrmacht, were not assisted or compensated, nor were asked for forgiveness, nor had commemorating monuments and plaques dedicated by the new Government. In Germany, the crimes of war, against peace and against humanity perpetrated by the National-socialist leaders led to the gallows to some of their authors (not so in Italy to the makers of Fascism); but their families benefit from allowances and pensions of their own State. Meanwhile, the victims of those crimes in Durango and Gernika have still to wait – and sit – for obtaining some form of recognition, and do abjectly pretend “that the Government of Spain offers an apology” when it owes them full reparation, as to all the Basque People.

The reason for this humiliating anomaly is simple: Spaniards, French, Germans and Italians consider themselves different Nations and behave accordingly, in the face of the crimes committed against them by other Nations; whereas the Collaborationists and Accomplices of the French-Spanish imperialism in the occupied Country of the Basques do not believe their own hypocritical propaganda. In short, since they consider themselves Spaniards or French, they cannot even imagine that the aggressions of Spain and France against our People and its State are criminal acts and international aggressions: the same as “those that occur between the true nations”.

Thus, they show the abject subservience that they have reached to. In no occupied People – colonized or liberated – its purported representatives had fallen so low. The aboriginal Collaborators and Accomplices that accept so revolting a form of subservience declare thereby, once more, that they have adopted and recognized the occupying People and State as their own; that they do not believe in the reality of their own oppressed People and State; and that, in necessary consequence, they also deny their freedom and their rights of independence, self-determination and legitimate self-defence.

If they had any shame, or had left a shred of dignity, they would understand that it’s up to the fascist henchmen and their masters the obligation to ask for forgiveness. No People or State victim of aggression, occupation and colonization has ever condemned its own resistant fighters, even though they were persecuted as “terrorists” of international law by the occupying State: sole real perpetrator “of repressive and terrorist acts [done] by colonial, racist and alien régimes in denying peoples their legitimate right to self-determination and independence and other human rights and fundamental freedoms” etc. [UNGAR 32/147 (1977)]

Neither have those attacked Peoples and States ever compensated or asked for forgiveness from the occupying Peoples, States and forces, nor have they ever proceeded to contrition, reparations and indemnifications towards the occupying forces; not even when the NGAs against them: a consequence of the Despotism and Terrorism of the occupying State and of the consequent despair and political inability of the subjugated Peoples, did bring terrible reprisals against the civilian population. Quite differently, they have proceeded to do the opposite: they have exalted and rewarded the exploits – real or imagined – in favour of national liberation. (The corresponding reparations have always been in charge of the occupying State; which, after finally being defeated and convicted of some of its crimes, makes sure with its recognition and pensions to its agents’ widows and orphans the fidelity of its servers, and eventually the continuation of its future criminal enterprises.)

If the countless victims of the aggression and tyranny that in this Country were left murdered in the mountains, ditches, cemetery walls, prisons, ramparts or bullrings; and if their families: victims of hunger, cold, exclusion, discrimination and exile, had heard or read that the Basque People would be presented as the nationalist, imperialistic, fascist and terrorist aggressor and oppressor, while the Spanish people was shown as the non-nationalist and non-violent unarmed victim assaulted by the “peripheral imperialism”; if they all had known that the assassins who brought death, terror and destruction to this Country in the name and imposition of the Spanish Empire, “Nation” and imperialistic Nationalism, as well as their heirs and ideological continuators, would themselves put on the pretence of being peaceful and non-violent democrats and set up as accusers of their victims; and that these claims would be disseminated and backed – with all the consequences – by the cliques that call themselves “Basque democrats and patriotic Parties” and by the supposed ‘intelligentsia’ of this Country: ideologically colonized by the Spanish National-socialism and social-imperialism installed in the “Basque institutions”, they would undoubtedly have not believed that it could be possible.

The imperialistic propaganda and the democratic criticism do apparently “coincide” in their opposition to the NGAs. However, the fascist-imperialistic propaganda condemns the NGAs against the established power from the point of view of the imperialism and fascism; it does serve so both the denial of the national freedom and the rights of self-determination and of legitimate self-defence of all Peoples and of their States, as well as the continuity and development of the fascist-imperialistic domination and of its monopoly of criminal Violence.

On the contrary, the criticism of the strategic lack of the NGAs, made from the democratic point of view, is diametrically different from their condemnation from the point of view of the imperialism and fascism. This democratic criticism of the NGAs does appreciate them negatively from the point of view of freedom and fundamental human rights, namely: the right of self-determination of all Peoples and the right of legitimate self-defence that is inherent to them, and does therefore serve with it the strategic implementation of the opposition to Imperialism and Fascism.

(From ‘Violence and Terrorism.- Their ideological mystification at the service of Imperialism’.)