Indigenous Agents of the imperialistic Nationalism: Renegades and Traitors-Collaborationists (XIX)

EUSKAL HERRIA AND THE KINGDOM OF NABARRE, OR THE BASQUE PEOPLE AND ITS STATE, AGAINST FRENCH-SPANISH IMPERIALISM

XIX – Indigenous Agents of the imperialistic Nationalism: Renegades and Traitors-Collaborationists

Iñaki Aginaga and Felipe Campo

One of the most characteristic aberrations produced by the colonialist imperialism is the figure of the Renegade, that is: the native who denies his own dominated and colonized People and Country, and above all its right of self-determination or independence, so as – on the contrary – to get integrated into the imperialistic “people” and country that have subdued them, by supporting their domination at all costs. In addition, given the characteristics of the Kingdom of Nabarre and the Principality of Catalonia (States that were illegally and criminally dismembered, divided and annexed by Spain and France), the personality of the Renegade on a double basis, that is: of an indigenous person of those subjugated Countries who alternatively or simultaneously adopts the imperialistic Nationalism of Spain and of France (but never the Catalonian or Basque “nationalism”), is a pernicious variant and an interesting novelty whose possibility there theoretically existed and that therefore, as postulated by “Murphy’s law”, would end up being given.

This has effectively crystallized into two remarkable “Catalan” and “Basque” arrivist and Renegades: Manuel Valls and F. O. (to give just any example from our Country, where we could find a legion of them). The first one: an “ex-priest” from French politics (where they have had enough of him and of his lack of honesty), has provisionally reached port into Spanish politics; and once there and so as to make merits, he has immediately asked to enter the front line of fire against the Movement of Resistance and Independence of Catalonia. His contortions to make possible the “Sacred Union”, in whatever way that it can be, between imperialistic and fascist Spaniards of every kind against this Movement, are obscene: “It is time to make gestures of responsibility”, he read today [29-May-2019] before the cameras of television in a press conference. “We want to avoid, we’ve got to avoid, that the City [Barcelona] can have a pro-independence Lord Mayor.”

And the “Basque” Renegade F. O.: a reckless French Nationalist without complexes, has no problem in falsificating and sweeping away whatever is necessary. In this way, he goes to the impudence of presenting the Hispanic aggression against the Kingdom of Nabarre as a campaign to prevent the Basques from killing each other; just such as – he says – there would also happen tomorrow if we were free: “Tomorrow everything would start again, and a new ‘Ferdinand of Aragon’ would have to be called back to restore the order into the Basque family, exploded into divergent clans. I have sometimes a ‘DIRTY ASS’ and I don’t apologize..... I ACCEPT IT. France is not perfect, but I make myself comfortable, to develop my... superior ethnicity, in a determined and QUIET FORCE.”

[“Demain tout recommencerait et il faudrait faire appel à un nouveau ‘Ferdinand d’Aragon’ pour remettre de l’ordre dans la famille Basque éclatée de clans divergents.” “J’ai parfois le ‘CUL SALE’ et je ne m’en excuse pas.....J’ASSUME. La France n’est pas parfaite, mais je m’en accommode, pour développer mon appartenance ethnique... supérieure, dans une FORCE CALME et déterminée.” (F. O.)]

Thus, so as to illustrate the personality and urges that operate in the psychology of this type of characters, we bring here the exposition that has been made on this issue in Iparla Publications.

The contribution of the autochtonous Renegades (such as they were the “Russified allogeneous” which Lenin referred to when he wrote: “it is common knowledge that people of other nationalities whohave become Russified over-do this Russian frame of mind”), who are supposed to know the country and “make themselves noticed” in this regard, is also patent in all times and in all occupied Countries. Yet, these submissive and venal Converts, Neophytes and Renegades of all shapes and sizes go always still further than their teachers and models in the tasks assigned to them.

“The Russified allogeneous – Lenin continued to say of the criminal ‘Georgian communist’ tandem formed by Stalin/Ordzhonikidze that crushed the Caucasian Republics – does dismissively drop accusations of ‘nationalist-socialism’, when he is himself a real and true ‘nationalist-socialist’ and even a vulgar Great-Russian henchman”. And the Frenchified or Spanicized allogeneous does carelessly fling about accusations of “nationalism” against the nationals of the oppressed Nation, whereas he himself is not only a real, a true French or Spanish Nationalist but also a brutal oppressor in the service of the imperialistic Nationalism of those dominant Nations.

Contempt and hatred: completely natural in the case of the National-imperialists who devote themselves to dominating the oppressed Peoples, are even reinforced in the case of the Renegades, due to the grudge and the specific complexes and implexes of their own psychology. Passive contempt and self-contempt are the adaptation adopted by the colonized in the face of the colonizer’s contempt. For the imperialistic mentality, the “portrait of the colonized” is the “portrait of the colonizer” in negative, and the colonizer is the reverse positive of the colonized.

Now then, following Memmi: “The first attempt of the colonized is to change of condition by means of a change of skin. A tempting and very nearby model is offered and imposed to him: precisely that of the colonizer. [...] The first ambition of the colonized is to match this prestigious model, to be like him up to disappear in him. [...]. The love for the colonizer serves as a basis for a set of feelings ranging from shame to self-hatred. The excessiveness in this submission to the model is already revealing. [...] The colonized does not only seek to enrich himself with the virtues of the colonizer. On behalf of what he wants to become, he desperately persists in his impoverishment, in the uprooting of himself. [...] The crushing of the colonized is included in the colonizing values: when the colonized adopts these values, he adopts the inclusion of his own condemnation. In order to get liberated – leastways so does he believe it – he accepts his getting destroyed. The phenomenon is comparable to the Negro’s negro-phobia, or the Jew’s anti-semitism”. As a result of it all, there turn out “the stubborn effort of the colonized to overcome the contempt that there bring to him his own retardation, his weakness and – he finally does admit it – his alterity; the admiring subservience; and the careful concern applied in order to get confused with the colonizer, to dress like him, talk like him, behave like him”. (Albert Memmi; ‘Portrait du colonisé, précédé du portrait du colonisateur’, 1957.)

To his (or her) misfortune, and inevitably, the position of a Renegade is always incomparably more precarious than that of the imperialistic Colonizer. For this latter, to prevent the loss of the dominated Country that is implied in its independence is not an absolutely vital necessity, since he always has his own Country which he can return to; whereas the Renegade does absolutely need the submission-liquidation-destruction of his own Country, because its salvation through the independence will leave him completely without arguments with which to justify his treason, as well as without a place in the world where to move, in which he may not be forever a stranger and a Renegade.

The full-blooded Spanish or French Nationalist starts from a “positive” sentiment towards “the power and greatness” of his Country; which induces in him a negative feeling of contempt and hatred towards the dominated People, which he perceives as an obstacle or a resistant body against his “own development”. Instead, the Renegade starts from a negative feeling towards his Country of origin, from which derives a “positive” sentiment towards the “superior” People, capable of uprooting him from his miserable roots; also pulling up, for greater security, roots and earth.

The Nationalist of French or Spanish stock is in the first place French or Spaniard, and anti-Basque (or anti-Catalan etc.) by way of consequence. Instead, the Renegade is above all anti-Basque (or anti-Catalan etc.), and then Spaniard or French. In fact he would become anything else, provided that any Power would seem to him capable of destroying that Country of origin whose liquidation is to him a necessary condition of cultural, psychological and sociological normalization, justification and recuperation.

Hatred: so apparent and characteristic in the Renegades, is the result of resentments, disappointments, frustrations, Oedipal or other complexes which the Country of origin is made responsible of. “The physical aggression and the will to destroy are not the only answer to frustration but one of the possible answers, and perhaps the spontaneous one.” “There is a mechanism of behaviour quite different from aggression. It is hatred: that ugly little brother of the great love.” “Probably, it is not possible to really hate but there where one has loved and where, despite all the denials, one still loves.” “It’s a remarkable phenomenon, generally little known by laypersons, which is called ‘emotional ambivalence’. One of the manifestations of this ambivalence is represented by the very frequent coexistence, in the same person, of intense love and violent hatred. At this observation, the psychoanalysis adds that these two opposite feelings frequently rely on the same object.” “[T]he primitive psyche is in the strictest sense indestructible.” (S. Freud.)

 

“Gilbert Folliot, prudent: L’amitié du roi pour Thomas Becket est morte, Altesse?

“Le Roi: Soudainement, évêque. Une sorte d’arrêt du cœur.

“Gilbert Folliot: C’est un phénomène curieux, Altesse, mais fréquent.

“Le Roi, lui prend soudain le bras: Je hais Becket, évêque, maintenant. Entre cet homme et moi, il n’y a plus rien de commun que cette bête que me laboure le ventre. Je n’en puis plus. Il faut que je la lâche sur lui. Mais je suis le roi, [et] ce qu’il est convenu d’appeler ma grandeur m’embarrasse: j’ai besoin de quelqu’un. [...] On se trompe quelquefois sur les hommes, évêque. Moi, aussi, je me suis trompé. (Il crie soudain:) Ô mon Thomas!

“Gilbert Folliot, s’écrie: Vous l’aimez, Altesse! Vous l’aimez encore. Vous aimez ce porc mitré, cet imposteur, ce bâtard saxon, ce petit voyou!

“Le Roi, lui saute dessus, criant: Oui, je l’aime! Mais ça ne te regarde pas, curé. Je ne t’ai confié que ma haine. Je vais te payer pour m’en défaire, mais ne dis jamais du mal de lui!” Etc. (Jean Anouilh; ‘Becket, ou l'Honneur de Dieu’, 1959.)

 

(“Gilbert Folliot, cautious: The king’s friendship for Thomas Becket is dead, Highness?

“King Henry II: Suddenly, bishop. A kind of heart failure.

“Gilbert Folliot: This is a curious phenomenon, Highness, but frequent.

“King Henry II, suddenly takes his arm: I hate Becket, bishop, now. Between this man and me, there is nothing more in common than this beast ploughing at my belly. I can’t stand it anymore. I have to let go of it on him. But I am the king, [and] what has been agreed to call my greatness embarrasses me: I need someone. [...] We are sometimes wrong about men, bishop. I, too, have been wrong. (He suddenly screams:) O my Thomas!

“Gilbert Folliot, cries out: You love him, Highness! You still love him. You love this mitred pig, that impostor, this bastard Saxon, this little thug!

“King Henry II jumps on him, shouting: Yes, I love him! But that’s none of your business, priest. I have confided to you only my hatred. I'm going to pay you to get me rid of it, but do never tell me anything bad about him!” Etc.)

*

On the way towards that subservience typical of the Renegade, a more cloaked and insidious procedure is manifested in the adaptive mechanisms and alibis of those who, because of their own interest (which they conceal behind intellectual laziness or bad faith), seek an “amicable” comfort and accommodation in the imperialistic and fascist criminal régime, which they do perversely present, in an allegedly “aseptic” and nonchalant manner, as something “not that bad, when so many much worse tragedies occur in the world”. Thus, the dramas that the imperialism itself has caused and is causing are presented as an “argument” in order to exculpate the own imperialism.

“Today INDEPENDENCE...; tomorrow a war, as in Tito’s Yugoslavia. AUTONOMY (which we have) YES!!!!! Independence: synonymous with family wars... NONNNNN!!!!! (F. O.)

However, even though the observance of the Self-determination or Independence of Peoples does not ensure the observance of all fundamental human rights, yet its violation ensures the absenceof them. The affirmation of the subjugated Peoples’ right of self-determination allows, at times or on term, peace and coexistence between Nations and States; its denial does never allow them. It’s not the “balkanization” but the Empires – Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Turkish – and their expansionism, which have for centuries made the Balkans the tinderbox of Europe; just as it is the Continental or trans-Continental imperialistic Nationalism of the “great” imperial Nations of France and of Spain that has bloodied and butchered the World. Only the liberation – at times defective and faulty – of Peoples has enabled a principle, even though limited and precarious, of solution.

The shamefulness of these Renegades is the result of the ideological intoxication spread by the National-socialist and National-communist agents – very often native – of the Spanish and French imperialism, infiltrated among the subjugated Peoples. And this type of “naïve” Renegades, which actually are sneaky opportunists in search of a “justification” that can whiten their betrayal that theycould not face otherwise, need to believe those wiles (ignorance and bad faith go here hand on hand: they do not know because they do not want to know), which they end up accepting as authentic “socialism” or “progressivism”, when it is only vulgar and revolting French-Spanish imperialistic Nationalism: the eternal and rabid enemy of the freedom of the Peoples and their freely constituted States.

According to these Renegades, the attitude of the independence movement towards the French-Spanish imperialistic régime “should go in other directions [granting it]: political dialogue, equality, justice, fraternity, solidarity, honesty, harmony, helping the neighbours, common sense...” Virtues that are of course preached always to one-way direction: from the oppressed People towards the oppressor people and State, whose specific imperialistic and fascist nature, of undemocratic imposition, is refused or simply ignored. And so continues this Catalan Renegade:

“We are Catalans who feel immensely lazy about independence and everything that it implies. [...] The idea of Spaindoes not fascinate us, but it does not disgust us either. [...] We feel at home either in Olot, Orense or Oran, [...]. We believe that history is not a memorial of grievances but an instrument to learn from mistakes. [Well understood: the mistakes made by having even tried to regain independence and get rid of the imperialistic aggressor, instead of allowing it continue quietly in the conquered Country.] [...] We are so naïve that all we want is to live in a place no matter what its name is and what its flag can be, but in which justice does work unimpeded” etc. etc. (Isabel Coixet, in the monopoly press of Spanish fascism,11-September-2015.)

These are statements recently “released” by a well-known Catalan Renegade “film director”: a Spanish Nationalist pampered by the Spanish military occupation régime. And she has said it as if in Oran: an Algerian town but as French as Reims, according to French imperialism-colonialism, harmony and brotherhood between the Peoples had always flourished, and something called “the Algerian War of Independence” would have never taken place there. And as if “justice” was something that came down from the mountains written by God on stone boards, brought by the hand of France and of Spain: “firstborn daughter” the first one and bothof them “favourite daughters” of the Church.

That is, “mistakes” yet not crimes, and in reality idyllic situations of peace, tolerance, respect and “justice that works unimpeded”; realities that are possible, as it seems, under régimes and States of imperialistic domination such as those of Spain and of France. States that have been established through military and armed aggression and occupation, and maintained and preserved in this way for centuries through countless, horrendous and imprescriptible crimes! Crimes of war, crimes against the peace and security of legitimately and peacefully constituted Peoples and States, and crimes against Humanity: whose sanction, prevention and retribution is the object of International Law.

In this way and according to these Renegades, their own Peoples’ national independence is presented as something trivial and even annoying, which is certainly so for the colonialists; and the criminal violations of imperialism: through imprescriptible crimes against the laws of war, against the peace and security of the peoples and States attacked, and against humanity, as something directly non-existent. Colonialist and fascist imperialism is not imperialism; the countless and horrendous crimes committed for its establishment are not crimes; and the justice that requires the restoration of the violated rights – and the reversion of the benefits achieved through its violation – is not justice, simply because everything that hampers the comfortable adaptation of those “magnanimous and sympathetic intellectuals” of the subservience to fascism, at the expense of their own People’s blood, tears and the robbery, seems an incomprehensible extremist excess to them.

They don’t care at all about the immense sacrifices that many Peoples of the world have had to carry so as to be able to feel “at home” in their own Country, and not as foreigners after the plan that imperialism had designed for them. The only thing they care about is that the imperialistic cosmopolitanism allows them to feel “at home” in places where the French-Spanish imperialism imposes the Natives’ alienation.

And after the shameless cynicism they add hypocrisy, since as they say – with the pretense that we believe them – the situation does not excite them: “France is not perfect, but I make myself comfortable” (O.); “the idea of Spain does not fascinate us, but it does not disgust us either” (Coixet), say these Renegades with cynicism and devoid of any shame. They prefer their wretched “immense laziness” that hides their immense betrayal, which they intend to impose on everyone by means of demoralization and lies that they do spread through the great fascist monopolies of mass indoctrination at the service of the colonialist imperialism (always ready and willing to spread the ideological garbage of the Renegades), and behind the mask of a non-existent persecution or internal confrontation that reflects their bad conscience. They prefer this, rather than supporting the dignity of the free Peoples that resist against imperialism, which the Renegades confess does not disgust them. The moral abjection that lies behind these revolting alibis does exempt us from further considerations in this regard.

It is not but in an inappropriate manner that certain ones do with this regard use terms such as “collaboration-collaborationist”. Bonnard, Bousquet, Brasillach, Brinon, Bucard, Céline, Cousteau, Darlan, Darnand, Déat, Deloncle, Doriot, Drieu, Gaucher/Goguillot, Laval, Luchaire, Pétain, Rebatet, Suarez and many others have been collaborationists; and many of them, proud to be so, were intimately convinced that their politics were righteous. They have also legitimized and reinforced the foreign military occupation, and participated in the repression of their own Country; yet, they never claimed it to be a democratic, non-Nationalist and non-violent régime, nor did they ever try to dismember their Country for the benefit of neighbouring States, as the “Basque” Renegades do. They never wanted to annex it to the Reich. They thought and even said that they knew and could handle and mislead the occupants for the benefit of France, in order to preserve the French Empire under the German protectorate.

They never said that the French were Germans, or that the Germans were in France “French with a different sensibility”, nor did they say that their ‘National Socialist German Workers’ Party’ was in France a Party as French, legitimate and democratic as the others. They never qualified the German Language as Language of the (French) Republic, nor the French Dialect as a regional Language, part of German heritage. They never forced the children in schools to sing ‘Deutschland über alles’ in tribute to their ancestors the Teutons and before the monuments to the glory of the Wehrmacht. It would be to do them an affront to equate those French Collaborationists along with the “Basque” Traitors and Renegades who, in the occupied Territories of the Basque People, make a career by deliberately and with all consciousness striving in the pure and simple liquidation of their People of origin, and in the acceptance: as if they were their own ones, of the dominant Nations’ Peoples and Parties, like the indigenous members either of the liquidationist Pnv-Eta bureaucracy and its satellites, or of the French-Spanish National-imperialistic parties, are doing. There is no need to mix genres, putting in the same basket the Collaborationists together with the Traitors and the Renegades.

Unfortunately, in an occupied Country there is no shortage of Renegades, Traitors, Opportunists, Collaborationists and Accomplices – ignorant or corrupt – who are ready to serve both the intoxication of the imperialistic propaganda as well as the occupation itself. In this regard, the rotund firmness with which the Renegades and self-proclaimed Spaniards and French (members of the Francoism either in its traditional version or in the local National-socialist version of Phalanx-PsoE/Ugt with “Basque” or “Navarrese” labels, as well as their cronies of the French socialist Party-PsF); the way in which they all do publicly deny the right of self-determination of the Basque People and affirm the democratic nature of the French-Spanish occupation régime, has – apart from its strident obscenity – something of a mind-boggling show, typical of those who, after having already gone too farin the negation and denigration of this Country and in the support of the centennial imperialistic occupation over it, have also lost all sense of reality and self-preservation. These “Basque socialists” are the always-chosen endearing allies for the Pnv-ist bureaucrats, whose support the latter have from always sought in order to block the way to any democratic development of a Basque popular movement of Resistance. A development that, due to their corruption, these Pnv bureaucrats cannot and do not want to reach, as we will expound.

The anticipated denial of the existence of the own People of origin as a complete People and on an equal footing with all the Peoples of the World, that is: a People with its original, inherent and indefeasible right of self-determination or independence against any aggression or interference from imperialism, is the starting point or the forced contrivance that conditions the entire position of the Renegades in favour of the invading peoples. This position leads them to the most blatant extremisms and falsehoods; starting from the statement of their own People’s atomization in fragments that do purportedly exclude its constituent entirety, and falsely establishing then by begging the question the “spontaneous” and “happy” union of those parts: supposedly un-connected and refractory to each other, together with the “whole” of the criminal aggressor occupant which, now yes, it does have an identity without fissures that encompasses all the subjugated Peoples.

“The Spanish nation is the meeting of Spaniards of both hemispheres.” (Article 1 of the Spanish “Constitution” of 1812. Cuba, all South America and the Philippines were “Spain”.)

However, the “identity” of that false Spanish (and French) nation has been built on the bayonets and the horrendous crimes that have constructed it at the service of the French-Spanish imperialistic Nationalism; and it reaches all the subjugated Peoples which have not yet managed to free themselves from it. As it is known, now Algeria, Philippines or Cuba are not intrinsically constituent parts of France and of Spain, as at a certain time they were so in an “obvious” and “indisputable” form; a time when “the [formally] normal situation was during too long the [really] unheard-of”, using another Renegade’s words that we will comment on shortly.

Starting from their criminal and bloody constructivist dogmas, and in order to maintain their national-imperialistic categorical imperative, any trap – ridiculous though it may be – they have as permissible and do not step back from it. Their perpetrators will call themselves either “university professors”, or “parliamentary” of an imperial-colonialist political group, or still better both things at the same time; and this without the slightest fear that the incurable conflict between the two demands: the inescapable scientific honesty and impartiality, on the one hand, and the visceral imperialistic political partiality, on the other, seems to be too strident for them, before a patient population whose capacity to reject their imposture they visibly either despise, or have come to see as something “simply” non-existent.

“[...] Simply put, because the norm has been for too long the unheard-of. [...] It is customary that the children in the educational models in Basque Language be taught that Navarre is part of a whole with the Basque Provinces and the French Basque Country. [...] [It] will be quoted a text of Axular of 1643, where it is spoken of Euskal Herria and Navarre is included therein. [...] [They] manipulate Axular without even being aware of it. Axular did not write ‘Euskal Herria’, in capital letters, but ‘euskal herria’, in lowercase, while he did write ‘Nafarroa’ or ‘Araba’. It is not a nuance but an essential detail. The writer of Urdax [Axular] was not referring to a country, in the modern sense [...], nor even a ‘people’, as an ethnic collective.” Etc. (Iñaki Iriarte Lopez, professor at the so-called “University of the Basque Country”, and parlamentarian – for a Spanish National-imperialistic party – in the “autonomous parliament of Navarre”. Quotation taken from his article ‘Euskal Herria, lies and textbooks’; published in the local fascist press, 21-August-2016.)

However, no one in this Country manipulates Axular, unless he be who writes such things. Effectively Axular in 1643 wrote “euskal herria”, and he unquestionably refers with it – whatever its orthography may be (a convention that obviously affects only the written language and that at those times was far from being something well-fixed), to the Basque People and its Country: the Country of the Basques; indicating in addition all the political entities that formed it in those times and that, by the way, are the same ones that form it nowadays, including the present residuary Nabarre and “the French Basque Country” that professor Iriarte mentions.

(As a sign of the ridicule to which his anti-Basque sectarian extremism and ignorance have led professor Iriarte, we offer the reader a quotation taken from the dedication of his grammar that the author Elio Antonio de Lebrija presented in 1492 to Queen Isabella of Castile, in which he writes the word ‘españa’ with lower case on at least two occasions:

Ala mui alta y assi esclarecida princesa doña Isabel la tercera deste nombre Reina i señora natural de españa y las islas de nuestro mar […].

[...] I cierto assi es que no sola mente los enemigos de nuestra fe que tienen la necessidad de saber el lenguaje castellano: mas los vizcainos, navarros, franceses, italianos, y todos los otros que tienen algun trato y conversacion en españa y necessidad de nuestra lengua: si no vienen desde niños ala deprender por uso: podran la mas aina saber por esta mi obra. La qual con aquella verguença, acatamiento y temor quise dedicar a vuestra real majestad.)

But before Axular, also Juan Lopez del Lazarraga had recorded in 1564-1567 the term/reality “eusquel erria”, which occurs at least three times in a manuscript of that author. And Joannes de Leizarraga had also done so in 1571, with his “Heuscal-herria / heuscal-herria” that appears in both forms: with initial upper and lowercase letter, at least in two separate moments of his translation of the New Testament into Basque language. On the other hand, this immediate predecessor of Axular, in the bilingual dedication – French-Basque – of his work ‘New Testament of Our Lord Jesus Christ’, which he offered in 1571 to Queen Jeanne III of Nabarre (a work that the “romanist” priest Axular undoubtedly knew), provides the equivalence in French of these expressions: “Nevertheless, whilst being sure that we the Basques [les Basques / Heuscaldunac in the original], among all other nations [nations / natione in the original], are not as barbaric as to not recognize and praise God our Lord in our own language,” etc. And a little later he goes on saying: “that by this means the pure word of God should enter and accrue in the People or the Country of the Basques [au pays des Basques / Heuscal-herrian in the original],” etc. Thus, this text, to begin with, provides us with an incontestable example of that hyphenated nominal compound: Heuscal-herria / Basque People-Country, which, like the national adjective Heuscaldunac / the Basques, starts in uppercase and pre-dates by seventy-two years the Axular’s example aduced by the Spanish National-imperialistic “professor and parliamentarian” Iñaki  Iriarte.

But let’s leave the forms and go to the bottom. None of those authors (who, by the way, do all belong to the so-called Modern Age), in leaving a written record of the term/concept ‘Euskal Herria’, was not a victim of dementia or was writing about history-fiction, nor was he speaking of an invented Country or fantasy but, with that term, they all were designating an unquestionable sociological reality: the sociological and national reality of the Basque People. To say that when they used the term Eukal Herria “they did not refer to a country, in the modern sense", apart from venturing an untenable statement about the scope of the intentions and conceptions they had, is to debate against the windmills that one sees behind his own phobias or dementias: those of who, as a consequence of their Spanish National-imperialistic imperative, are forced to deny this reality. That’s why those negationists do need to accuse us that we manipulate those authors and that we are re-interpreting their words, in order to fight the ghosts that haunt them by reminding them of a reality that they wish did not exist. But the fact is that we neither do manipulate their words nor – what is more – need to do it; while they do need to manipulate reality in order to deny it.

To maintain today that a sociological reality does not exist, or that it is less reality for the simple fact that it is not politically formalized (let’s leave aside the grotesque “essential detail” of the lowercase, which in addition not even is always true), is to make a formalist and ridicule approach, perfectly predictable in the current negationists. But to pretend that also those authors did at that time participate in the same approach, which is strictly caused by the obsessions and hatred of these re-negationists adherent to the imperialistic and fascist French-Spanish status quo, is simply a gross and pathetic way of manipulating them without scruples. Because, even though those writers were certainly aware of the lack of political unity of their “eusquel erria / Heuscal-herria / euskal herria”, nevertheless this fact did not prevent them from naming the unquestionable sociological reality of the People/Country of the Basques, and from writing in an absolute laudatory way about it.

Undoubtedly, they had much closer than we have the memory of the independent Basque States: the Duchy of Vasconia, and the Kingdoms of Pamplona and of Nabarre, which had brought together all the Territories of the Basque People / Euskal Herria before the rapacity of the kingdoms of Franks and Hispanics harassed and annex them to their imperialistic States. Therefore, the term that Lazarraga, Leizarraga and Axular do document, and that in Euskara is exactly equivalent – word for word – to 'Basque People', not only did it have that meaning for them, which is undeniable, but it also had its correspondence with the politically institutionalized reality of our State, that is: with “a country, in the modern sense”; something that the Renegade "professor and parliamentarian" Spanish nationalist Iriarte is not willing to concede and that in fact denies without the slightest foundation. This on the one hand.

But, in addition, in no case has the lack of a pre-existing political formalization ever stopped the determination of an independent mind when, working in freedom, it is faced with the need to overcome a social reality that is felt as unacceptable, so as to project another superior or more advanced one in terms of defence of fundamental rights. This is how the lack of a political Entity that reflected the unity of the German People’s Territories, which amounted up to several hundred autonomous political bodies that – encompassed in the Holy Roman Empire – had never formed “a country in the modern sense” (as expressed by the Renegade “professor” Iriarte), did not prevent Martin Luther from writing in August 1520, in German and within the framework or his theological confrontation against the corruption and oppression existing under the Hierarchy of the Roman Church, the first revolutionary political manifesto in history disseminated by the printing press and addressed “To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation”: An den Christlichen Adel teutscher Nation.

Note that, in the obvious parallelism between Luther’s ‘teutscher Nation’, and Lazarraga/Axular’s ‘eusquel / euskal [h]erria’, both indicators of nationality: teutscher-euskal, appear written in lowercase. (As we have seen, in Leizarraga appears also in uppercase in the form Heuscal-herria.) As for the words ‘Nation-herria’, whether in upper or lowercase, both are equivalent and synonymnous with People. As it is known, in the reform/re-creation of the German language carried out by Luther all nouns – Nation in this case – are to be written with a first capital letter, which does not occur in other languages; that is the whole formal difference between the two expressions: Luther’s Germanic ‘teutscher Nation’, and Lazarraga/Axular’s Euskeric ‘eusquel / euskal [h]erria’. And that “[h]erria” means in Euskara both “country” and “nation/people”, that is something that Joannes of Leizarraga makes very clear: on the one hand, when placing the Basques on an equal basis “among all other nations” / berce natione gucien artean (Alabaina segur içanez ecen Heuscaldunac berce natione gucien artean ez garela hain bassa non gure lengoagez ecin eçagut eta lauda deçagun gure Iainco Iauna etc.); and on the other, when translating his ‘Heuscal-herrian’ into French as “au pays des Basques”.

However, as it seems, the “wise university professor” Iriarte knows very well that Axular “was not referring to a country, in the modern sense, not even to a ‘people’, as an ethnical collective”, when he wrote ‘euskal herria’. In good logic, neither was Luther referring to a country, in the modern sense, not even to a “people” as an ethnical collective, when he wrote ‘teutscher Nation one hundred and twenty-three years before Axular wrote the aforementioned expression? That is the good thing that, for these Renegades, has to be a “professor”: that they feel entitled to know what others thought in the sixteenth century, and to falsify and make them say the insane obsessions and hatreds that they maintain for unavowable reasons.

It is not at all to be excluded the inspiration or influence that this Luther’s work could have exercised on our classical writers, given its early translation to several languages and the deep impact that it had not only in Germany but in many places of Europe. And that impact and example would to be even greater from 1522, when Luther published his translation of the New Testament, after having created and fixed for this purpose the modern German language starting from its dialects; which Joannes de Leizarraga realized five decades later with the continental Basque dialects. (But we still have to endure the purported defence made “in favour” of the Euskara by some people who advocate that its literary unification is incompatible with the existence of its dialects. In reality, it is people who have never done anything for the dialects and who are only feigning to defend them, in the hope that the greater weakness of the parties will more easily lead to the destruction of the whole.)

Thus, Luther did not only create and fix the modern German language in order to be able to carry out his translation of the Bible; he was also perhaps the first one (or certainly one of the firsts) to use in writing the expression “German Nation”, which was made up of different and independent Stem Duchies (jüngere Stammesherzogtümer) of Bavaria, Franconia, Lotharingia, Saxony, Swabia etc. These duchies were the constituent parts of what was initially called Eastern Francia (Francia Orientalis) and later Kingdom of Germany (Deutsches Reich), which was the bulk of the Holy Roman Empire (Heiliges Römisches Reich) and that also included the Kingdom of Bohemia, the Kingdom of Burgundy, the Kingdom of Italy (a part of current Italy) and numerous other Nations.

Now, with hindsight, we find it clear that if anyone, at that time or later, had intended to ridicule or reduce the scope of Luther’s expression “german nation” by referring either to the fact that “this thing” did not exist at that time as a politically unified State (still in 1808 Johann G. Fichte considered it necessary to give his “Addresses to the German nation”: Reden an die deutsche Nation, not yet existing as a political entity), or to the fact that it had been written in initial lowercase letter, as do the current re-negationist/reductionist counterfeiters in our Country, would only have left a record of his own ridicule for posterity. And if, being himself a German, he had done so with the aim of preventing or weakening the perception of the German People’s own national identity and of consolidating thereby its subjugation under a foreign Power, the subsequent historical assessment would not have been limited only to pointing out his ridicule but also to underlining the criminal task of that Renegade.

Instead – how not – we must continue to endure today that these indigenous agents of French-Spanish imperialism: impostors who present themselves as “Navarrese democrats” and “professors of the University of the Basque Country” to boot, disseminate their anti-Basque and Spanish National-imperialistic intellectual and moral rubbish through a local newspaper, at the time instigator of the criminal fascist putsch of 1936 and apologist for Hitler’s Nazism; thus making it possible: through ideological stultification of the population, that the fascist norm remains being the unheard-of already for too long, as Iriarte does falsely say of others whilst he seems not to see the huge beam he has in his own eye.

Specifically, this is the maintenance of the criminal French-Spanish régime of imperialistic and fascist domination on the Basque People/Euskal Herria and its State, the Kingdom of Nabarre; a criminal régime that is being affirmed as democracy by these heirs and ideological successors of the murderers and Renegade “ditchers” of 1936. And in all this they are being comforted by the Traitors of the liquidationist bureaucracy Pnv-Eta and its satellites: Ea-EhBildu-Sortu-Geroa bai etc., components of the so-called “Basque political class”; who, for almost half a century and until today, are maintaining fundamentally the same tenets as the former and admitting them as “Navarrese democrats”.

(Incidentally, it should be noted here that, despite their total surrender to Spanish fascism, the gang of Renegades that form the bureaucracy of that “Navarrese and Spanish regionalist party” is not going to prevent the traditional Francoism of the Pp from trying to sweep them from the residual Nabarre by using all the enormous means at its disposal. Rome does not pay or trust traitors, even if they are Renegades and have proved their abject nature for a century. It is the inevitable fate that awaits the useful instruments that have become useless. So as to have a more complete approach to the question of the challenge posed to us by the Renegades and the indigenous Traitors with their Negationism of our People and State, we offer the reader the text ‘Reino de Nabarra del siglo XXI. Frente al “nuevo” discurso pseudo-nabarrista de los Renegados indígenas: Espíritu de la Defensa de Amaiur’, published on our blog on July 1, 2019.)

On another front, and in view of the intellectual contribution of these impostors, we can imagine the quality of their academic performance. If Humanity had had to depend for its general progress on such lackeys of the established totalitarian power, it is probable that they would likely still continue explaining us, with self-satisfied and “learned” ignorance, the epicycles and retrograde movements of the planets as were postulated by the geocentric official Ptolemaic model, dogmatically established through the “convincing argument” of torture and stake against those who rejected it.

The moral perversion inherent to the Nationalist-imperialistic and fascist propaganda is only surpassed by the abjection of the so-called representatives of the occupied People, when, yielding under the pressure of the fascist monopolies that disseminate intoxication, disrepute and slander, do forget or exalt the crimes of imperialism, and try to convince the oppressor that “the Basque people is a peaceful and hardworking people who should beg for forgiveness and repair the evil caused” to the imperialism, the fascism and their local agents. In no subjugated People: whether it be still colonized or already liberated, its purported representatives had fallen so low. No free Country has recognized – much less exalted – the material and ideological agents of a foreign imperialistic régime of military occupation, which violates the fundamental human rights. The fact that the indigenous Accomplices of French-Spanish imperialism and the Collaborationists have come to forget the massive and multi-centennial crimes against their Country of origin, and that they have asked for forgiveness, exalted, compensated and rewarded with public money to their perpetrators and material and ideological heirs, shows the degree of abject submission which can be reached down the path they have chosen.

In our Country, the indigenous Collaborationists and Accomplices of the French-Spanish imperialism forget or exalt the massive and multi-centennial crimes that it has committed. They manifest so 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 them – 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 of the Collaborationists and the Accomplices of that imperialistic and fascist régime of military occupation to the International Policy and Law. An initiative never seen and never applied by the occupied Peoples in the whole History of Humankind, which 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 have any rights, neither electoral nor any other political right; still less to be compensated by the Peoples that are victims of an imperialistic aggression. According to numerous Resolutions of the UN:

“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 colonialist Powers and alien domination in exercise of their right of self-determination recognized in the Charter of the United Nations and the Declaration of Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in accordance with 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 Peoples21 [Resolution 1514 (XV)], and constitutes a threat to international peace and security.” Etc. [UNGAR 3103 (1973)]

The Accomplices of imperialism and the aboriginal Collaborationists that accept such a revolting 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 a necessary consequence, they do also deny their freedom and their rights of independence, self-determination and legitimate 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 have 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 [carried out] 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)]

Nor have they ever compensated or apologized to the occupying peoples, States and forces, nor have ever proceeded to contrition, reparations and indemnifications towards the occupying forces; not even when the attempts against them: a consequence of the Despotism and Terrorism of the occupying State and of the consequent despair and political incapability of the subjugated Peoples, did bring terrible reprisals against the civilian population. Even in those cases, they have done just the opposite: they have exalted and rewarded the exploits – real or imagined – in favour of the national liberation. (The corresponding reparations towards the occupying forces 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 French-Spanish aggression and tyranny, which in this Country were left murdered in the mountains and ditches, against the walls of cemeteries, prisons and ramparts, or in the 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 French-Spanish Empire 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 which call themselves “Basque democrats, patriotic parties and govenment” and by the purported ‘intelligentsia’ of this Country: ideologically colonized all of them 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 fact that after eight centuries of conquest and occupation; after the fascist aggression to blood and fire; after the orgy of murders, deportations and imprisonments, oppression and repression of masses that once again ravaged this Country and founded the present totalitarian régime of absolute power, there can however be maintained publicly or induced upon anyone – no matter who – to believe that “policy and violence are incompatible”; that a State, whichever it may be, is opposed to violence; that its armed forces of land, sea and air are non-violent (which amounts to say that they do not exist and that there is no People they repress); that the problem of violence in this Country lies in the attempts and that the attempts are here the only violence and the only terrorism, without any constitutive correlation with the criminal Violence of the French-Spanish Terrorist State (a Violence they claim does not exist even if these States subsist); the mere possibility that all this is possible and is happening, we say, indicates the unlimited efficacy of the fascist monopolies of Violence, Terrorism, propaganda and ideological intoxication of masses of French-Spanish imperialism on the Basque People, the consequent collapse of the collective opinion and memory, and the conditioned criminalization and the induced moral frailty or degeneration of the People that suffers them.

The most serious, painful and shameful thing: perhaps surprising and unbelievable for those who do not know the score, is that the set of “Basque” corporations and bureaucracies Pnv-Eta and their satellites of the “institutional path and the armed struggle” do actively participate in the consolidation and the joint exploitation of the French-Spanish fascist monopoly of propaganda; deprive the popular forces of any ideological reference and resource; pursue the freedom of expression (which would highlight the destitution and true content of their propaganda and their institutional and armed “strategy”); assume and make redound upon the population the imperialistic and fascist version of “democracy”; deny the reality of French-Spanish imperialism and fascism; and nullify the international right of self-determination of the Basque People, whose very concept they falsify in order to be reconciled with their masters and lords and to obtain their good willingness.

Without the ideological participation of these Pnv-Eta bureaucracies and their satellites: Ea-EH Bildu-Sortu-Geroa bai etc., not even the declared agents of Spanish Nationalism would have believed it profitable or possible to take the imposture that far. Only the defection, the participation, the recuperation and the corruption of the purported Basque political class of opposition: which has exploited, led astray and betrayed the Resistance of the popular masses, have made it possible such an ideological fraud, never tried before by a totalitarian régime. The totalitarian ideology has got an invaluable ally in the contradictions and “critical” phantasmagoria of its local auxiliaries.

Statements made in Belgian-Congo at the eve of independence: “The ‘Congo’ has never been a nation, it is a conglomeration of tribes fighting each other, its linguistic unity is given through French, the colonial language, its economic and political unity is that of the colonial Administration, the black people are not prepared...” etc., cried the colonialist agents of the High Katanga Mining Union. Here is a reductive analysis of reality that hid a single truth: the existence of imperial-colonialist exploitation, and the right of the indigenous black population to self-government, to their own national independence.

Statements made in Algeria at the eve of independence: “Algeria is France; and from Flanders to the Congo, there remain the Law, a single Nation, and a single Parliament.” “The law is imposed everywhere, and it is French law. One Nation, only one Parliament: it’s the Constitution and it is our will”.

And in Algeria, while the war of liberation was taking place: “Algeria has not ever had a historic existence, it was a simple Turkish colony, there is no Algerian people but Arabs and Kabilias that hate and fight each other, their unity and progress are linked to the civilizing action of France, French is the only language of culture in the territory, their children have given the life thousand times for France, Algerian nationalists propose a political arbitrariness without roots in history, Muslims are ‘French’, in Algeria there are one million of ‘European’ French, there is no national cohesion...” etc. etc., cried on their turn the fascists of “French presence in Algeria”. That is: a reductive analysis of reality, for the benefit of the French upper orders, monopolies and landowners. All this, well understood, with the unconditional support of all the French social-colonialist “Left”: from Mitterrand to the P.c.F.

Angola, Kenya, Madagascar, Cuba, “French Indo-China”... etc., the long history of Imperialism. Always the same layout, the same analytical, pragmatist and colonialist theory; and always the same creator of that speech: the great international monopolistic capital. Without forgetting that to belong to this class it is not necessary to enjoy of its “dolce vita”; as, for example, is the case of the Katanga’s gendarmes, or Major Hoare and his black and white mercenaries.

The independence of their own subjugated Peoples is absolute evil for the Renegades. For this kind of persons, the least is what their Country of adoption will be: they will always take anyone, provided that it is in a position to guarantee them the domination and destruction of their own one, which they hate; which leads to the painful syndromes that come with imposture and self-hatred. The poet of “the Négritude”, Aimé Césaire, reminds us of this in those verses:

“[...]; ‘ne faites pas attention à ma peau noire: c’est le soleil qui m’a brûlé’. Et il y a le maquereau nègre, l’askari nègre ; et tous les zèbres se secouent à leur manière pour faire tomber leurs zébrures en une rosée de lait frais.” (Aimé Césaire;‘Cahier d’un retour au pays natal’.)

(“[...]; ‘do not pay attention to my black skin: it’s the Sun that has burned me’. And there is the Negro informer, the Negro [colonial] gendarme; and all the zebras do wallow to their own way, so as to get rid of their stripes in a dew of fresh milk.”)

(From ‘Euskal Herria and the Kingdom of Nabarre, or the Basque People and its State, against French-Spanish imperialism’.)