Imperialism, or the denial of Peoples’ Self-Determination or Independence (XIII)
XIII – Imperialism, or the denial of Peoples’ Self-Determination or Independence
Iñaki Aginaga and Felipe Campo
For the Roman invaders, the imperium – which in Latin means dominion, sovereignty – over the Peoples they did subjugate was the only title they needed to justify their appropriation and domination over them and their lands. Thus, empire/imperialism is to justify or exercise – in theory and/or in practice – domination over other Peoples and their States in "reason" of their conquest.
The Christian Church, having obtained the tolerance decreed by the Roman Emperors Constantine I and Licinius by the Edict of Milan (313), and finally transformed into the official religion of the Roman Empire – and even supposedly universal (katholikós) – by the Edict of Thessalonica of the year 380 addressed ‘To all the Peoples / Cunctos Populos’ by Emperor Theodosius, did then unequivocally establish the ideology of the legitimacy of the expansion and domination of that Empire over the world: obtained in all “naturalness” not through Christian charity but by means of horrendous and countless crimes and the violence of arms, and later those of its successors in Western Europe, beginning with the Carolingian Empire and then the “Holy Roman Empire”, provided that they accepted its own pre-eminence in all that political order thus established. (See, in this regard, Chapter 5: ‘The Roman-Vatican imperialism’, of our work ‘Notes on the History of the Basque People/Euskal Herria and its State: the Kingdom of Nabarre’.
Since then, and until the establishment of the doctrine of Peoples’ Self-Determination or Independence in the early twentieth century, this criminal and baneful disregard for the imprescriptible rights inherent to the Peoples subjugated by the Empires: rights and Peoples that were no only postponed but absolutely ignored by the arrogance of that Caesar-Papist political-theocratic conception enshrined by the marriage between the Roman Empire and its official Church of Rome, has poisoned for more than fifteen hundred years the mentality and the right conscience of the dominant Peoples and even of the dominated; in whose minds these powers have put as something natural the aberration of seeing empires as a benign and “civilized” form of social order, and the subjugated Peoples and their aspirations for freedom as an intolerable savagery that could and should be repressed with hypocrites and even cynical falsifications, both historical as well as ideological. The Dominican friar Francisco de Vitoria, the alleged father of classic “international law” of European/Western imperialism, put it this way:
“[...] For as the Indians themselves sometimes wage lawful wars with one another and the side which has suffered a wrong has the right to make war, they might summon the Hispanics to helpand share the rewards of victory with them. [...] For there is no doubt, as Cajetan also asserts (Secunda Secundae, qu. 40, art. 1), that the cause of allies and friends is a just cause of war, a State being quite properly able, as against foreign wrongdoers, to summon foreigners to punish its enemies. And this is confirmed by the fact that this was a method very much in vogue among the Romans for the extension of their Empire; that is, they brought aid to their allies and friends and so making a just war came, by right of war, into possession of fresh provinces. Yet the Roman Empire is approved by St. Augustine (De civitate Dei, bk. 5) and by St. Thomas (Opusculum 21) as a lawful one. [...] Now, there does not seem any other juridical title whereby the Romans came into possession of the world, save in right of war, and the most especial cause of their wars was the defence and protection of their friends.” (Francisco de Vitoria; ‘First Re-lection on the Indians lately discovered.On the lawful titles whereby the Barbarians of the New World could have come into the domination of the Hispanics’, 1538-39.)
(On the true meaning of European imperialistic “classical international law”, developed by the so-called "school of Salamanca", see, for example, Chapter 4, ‘Dominant morality and ideology: instruments of the dominant power’, of our text ‘Violence and Terrorism. – Their ideological mystification at the service of Imperialism’.)
Apart from establishing “the right of war, in order to came into possession of the world” (as we see, justified as “the most especial cause” by the false and cynical pretext of “the defence and protection of the allies and friends”), the ideological construction created in this regard by the Church of Rome established that the legitimacy of that power came from God and was invested in the Emperor and other princes by the Church and its Pope: representatives of God on Earth. This conception clashed with the concepts and customary law of our ancestors the Vascones; principles that, solidly based on the freedom of Peoples, did not recognize that they belonged to any king: the People was not of the king but the king was of the People.
Indeed, in the peri-Pyrenean Kingdom of the Vascones the kings were not anointed or crowned by the Church but they were raised on a large shield, while the king’s name was pronounced aloud. As is inevitable, the constant pressure of the Church of Rome to impose its own “divine-religious” conception on the relations of power/authority and submission, did always mean a threat against the indigenous institutions and the independence of our People. By working for the benefit of its own interests, this religious institution inevitably favoured at every moment the geo-politics of the great imperialist constructions of power, which it supported to so that they in turn would support it.
As is well known, it was the Church of Rome that “justified and blessed” the various aggressions of the Hispanic kingdoms – successor of the Visigoths – against the Vasconic Kingdom of Pamplona/Nabarre, as well as their final aggression in 1512, by handing over by means of a Bull the latter’s possession in favour of “those who after [that is, not before] the publication of these Letters have snatched it or will snatch it in any way in the future” (Pope Julius II; Bull ‘Exigit contumacium’, February 18, 1513); despite this being morally perverse and juridically illegal, as was evidenced shortly afterwards by Francisco de Vitoria and we are going to see..
On the other hand, what that Bull “authorized” – well understood, without having any power to do so – was in any case the dispossession of one royal dynasty in favour of another one but not the incorporation of the Kingdom of Nabarre within the crown of other foreign kingdoms: something absolutely inadmissible and that moreover the Church never authorized (nor did it condemn it, once it happened). But that is what the Hispanic conqueror did against all national and international legality, thus depriving the Basque People of the protection of its own independent State, and thus laying the foundations for its domination by the neighbouring kingdoms of Hispanics and Franks; a domination that reaches up to the present. (See, in our mentioned work, ‘Notes on the History of the Basque People/Eukal Herria’, its chapter 6: ‘Invasion and conquest of the Kingdom of Nabarre’.)
It was at that time when the establishment of the rudiments of an “international law” called “law of nations” (ius gentium = law of peoples or nations) there began, carried out by the Dominican friar of Alava origin Francisco de Vitoria. A law that, according to him, “either is natural law, or derives from natural law”. However, with the “natural law” there happens as with “natural” borders and other political data: everyone finds in them which he has put in advance as a premise. In this way, and for example, after having established as a “natural law” that supposedly the infidels had to be instructed in the Catholic religion, everything that led to the achievement of that end, including their domination by the Hispanic Empire, was of course “natural law”.
The development of this “law of nations” did not change things much, nor did it prevent the consolidation of the domination of the imperialistic States over the Peoples they could subjugate. It did not do so with respect to the appropriation of the territories and States of the pagans in the American Continent from 1492 onwards; nor in Europe, somewhat later, with respect to Christian Peoples and States, as is the case of the Basque People and its State the Kingdom of Nabarre, and the Kingdoms of the Crown of Aragon, annexed by “right of conquest” at the beginning of the eighteenth century. In any case, Vitoria argued against the alleged authority of the Emperor and the Pope so as to establish and grant the domination over Peoples and States:
“The first alleged title is that the Emperor is Master of the world. [...] Now, this contention is baseless. I reply as follows:
“1. Let my first conclusion, then, be that the Emperor is not the Master of the whole world. The proof of this is as follows: dominion (dominium) can exist only by natural law, divine law, or human law. But the Emperor is not master of the world by any of these. [...] Therefore the Emperor has never been the master of the whole world.
“2. Second conclusion: Granted that the Emperor were the lord of the world, still that fact would not entitle him to seize the provinces of the Indian aborigines and erect new lords there and put down the former ones or take taxes.” [...]
“A second alleged title to the lawful possession of these lands, and one which is vehemently asserted, is traced through the Supreme Pontiff. For it is claimed that the Pope is temporal monarch, too, over all the world and that he could consequently make the Kings of the Hispanics, the sovereign over the Barbarians in question and their regions, and that so it has been done. [...]
“3. Now, inasmuch as I have fully discussed the temporal power of the Pope, in my Relectio de Potestate Ecclesiastica, I will put my answer to the above into a few brief propositions:
“First proposition: The Pope is not civil or temporal lord of the whole world in the proper sense of the words “lordship” and “civil power”. [...] And the most learned Innocent admits, in the above-cited Per venerabilem chapter, X, 1, 6, 34, that he has not temporal power over the Kingdom of the Franks. [...]
“4. My second proposition is that, even if the Supreme Pontiff had such secular power over the whole world,he could not give it to secular princes. [...]
“6. Fourth proposition: The Pope has no temporal power over the Indian aborigines or over other unbelievers. This is clearly deduced from the first and third propositions. [...]
“7. The corollary follows that even if the barbarians refuse to recognize any lordship of the Pope, that fact furnishes no ground for making war on them and seizing their property. This is clear because he has no such lordship.” Etc. (Francisco de Vitoria; ‘First Re-lection on the Indians lately discovered. On the non-legitimate titles whereby the Barbarians of the New World could come into the domination of the Hispanics’, 1538-39. Emphasis in the original.)
As there can be seen, it is the alleged authority of the Supreme Pontiff and the Emperor over the whole world that is denied: not only of the Countries of the New World but also of Europe; thus invalidating the alleged power that the Pope claimed to have to hand over possession of the Kingdom of Nabarre to another prince or king, as he had done.
According to the theses maintained by Vitoria, “Every nation has the right to govern itself and can adopt the political regime it wants, even if it is not the best”. Likewise: “All the power of the king comes from the nation, because it is free from the beginning”. In any case, and as we have already indicated, this author ended up fulfilling his role as an ideologuist at the service of the imperialism of the Hispanic-Catholic Monarchy; and, in the Third Part of that work, he did provide it with a whole battery of contrived theoretical arguments and purported “legitimate titles” in order to justify the criminal occupation and exploitation of the New World.
These purported “legitimate titles” allowed in practice everything that their author had apparently denied initially; which meant that this “law of nations” he spoke about was first and foremost the law that the powerful European nations – and the Church of Rome as their inspirer and protector – had imposed over the weaker ones to force them to admit their faith and their standards, and finally to dominate them. It was the reaffirmation of the principle of imperialistic domination over that of independence of Peoples and their States.
Of course, the ecclesiastic Vitoria received pressure from the Emperor – and Hispanic king – Charles V through his superiors:
“On the occasion of the opinions of F. de Vitoria about the justice in the conquest of America, Charles V wrote a stiff letter to the prior of Saint Stephen’s Monastery [Salamanca], in the following terms: ‘I have been informed that some religious teachers in that house have made speeches and treated in their sermons and in re-lections, about the right that We have to the Indies, Islands and Main-Land [...] therefore, I order and command that at once, without delay, you are to call to your presence those mentioned religious teachers [...] and that ye shall receive an oath from them so that they declare in what moments and places and before what persons they have treated and stated as aforesaid, both in clean statements as in minutes and briefs’. Finally, the Emperor ordered that all manuscripts relating to such matters were collected and sent to the Court”. (Vid. article by Ramon J. Fernandez de Marcos Morales: ‘About some Re-lections of Francisco de Vitoria’. Quotation of L. Pereña; ‘The school of Salamanca: proceedings vs the conquest of America’.)
The concern of the almighty Emperor – called “the Caesar” by his sycophants – to prevent the theoretical criticism of a simple friar, who was capable of an autonomous theoretical production, is revealing. As with all the despots of all times, it becomes clear the concern of the Emperor in silencing the criticism and getting rid of the proofs that could reveal his tyranny. Undoubtedly, it was due to the fear to those pressures the reason why Vitoria did confine himself to giving the re-lections on his thesis only orally, and why he did not publish anything about his theories in his lifetime; which is quite understandable and respectable given the oppressive theocratic-ecclesiastical and despotic-Asiatic system established in the Hispanic-Catholic Monarchy, affecting him even more because of his clergy status. But, in any case, he contributed to the task of justifying the criminal occupation and exploitation of America: which is not at all respectable, by devising and developing for this purpose the ideological system of so-called “legitimate titles”; which, despite not being so at all, did nevertheless provide a legal fiction that allowed in practice the right to domination that the author had initially denied.
It is important to understand that, apart from the monopoly of criminal violence which it is based upon, for a despotic régime it is also vital the need to justify ideologically the rightness of its domination, and therefore to persecute and silence anyone who demonstrates and exposes its wrongfulness. The real and violent foundation of a régime of military occupation, and its original and permanent illegality, must be hidden behind a fiction of “legality and justice”, since otherwise that régime could not be sustained.
If a despotic régime does not obtain the voluntary collaboration of the dominated, and is instead forced at all times to maintain itself through the exercise of effective violence, and not only the threat of it (virtual violence), its situation is not sustainable. Hence the need for any strategic opposition to an imperialistic régime to be based on the denunciation of it as such imperialistic régime and on non-collaboration with it, without the slightest concession. On the contrary, any “opposition” that does not have this denunciation as a fundamental element is an infrastrategic opposition that gets lost in collaborationism and opportunism, that does not really disturb the establishment, and that is doomed to be inoperative for real liberation. A Country even unarmed, but determined to resist, to never collaborate nor to recognize the illegal ‘de facto’ power, and united around the objective of recovering its independence, cannot be stopped in its march towards emancipation.
Thus, this “law of peoples or nations”: presented as “natural law or derived from natural law”, did not prevent the appropriation, exploitation and destruction of Countries and Continents at the hands of imperialistic and colonialist Europe; and the ideologists at the service of that power did find the theoretical justifications that would allow them to do so with the appearance and pretence of “legality”. In their “quality” of invaders and oppressors, all the “great” Empires have always considered themselves and claimed to have the absolute right of independence for themselves, and of domination for others. This is how Empires: large organizations of thieves and murderers, have been founded and preserved.
From these theories of “just war”, “the right of conquest”, and “the doctrine of discovery”, the “great” Powers established and agreed on the rights of war, of war, and post-war – jus ad bellum, jus in bello, jus post bellum– to subjugate, plunder and eventually exterminate their neighbours and, finally, to the whole world. According to this “classic” version of the “international law”: gradually formulated by the ideologists of European imperialism in the face of the new claims and demands of other emerging Powers, with the “international law to war and conquest” it was intended to solve the conflicts that previous peace and status quocould not resolve. Thus, the “natural” thing was to ignore the rights of the dominated Peoples, always subordinated to the interests of the dominant ones and their empires.
Along this path, and after a whole era of exacerbation of colonialist imperialism, the European Powers arrived at the First World War: imperialistic on all sides. In it, the Church blessed and promised divine support to all armies; who, thus blessed, eviscerated their brethren in Christ from the opposing army without scruples and without the slightest awareness of being making any breach in Christian charity. The Archbishop of London, leaving it openly clear the rarefaction and oblivion of the Christian ideology of illusion – charity and universal brotherhood in Christ etc. – in the face of the urgent needs of the ideology of reality, addressed his flock this way at Christmas in 1914:
“You are the very defenders of civilization itself: the forces of Good against the forces of Evil. For this war is, indeed, a Crusade! A holy war to save the freedom of the world. In truth I tell you: the Germans do not act like us, neither do they think like us, for they are not, like us, children of God. Are those, who shell cities populated only by civilians, the children of God? Are those, who advance armed hiding behind women and children, the children of God? With God’s help you must kill the Germans: good or bad, young or old, kill every one of them so that it won’t have to be done again. The Lord be with you”.
Even before the end of the war, the principle of Peoples’ Self-Determination began to be proposed as a way to solve it; but the victorious Empires in the war rejected at the Versailles Peace Conference the principle of Self-Determination or Independence for their own colonies, and did only apply it to the defeated Empires, doing so also incongruously. (Armenia and Kurdistan, which initially obtained states recognized by the Ottoman Empire in the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, were eventually partitioned between Turkey and its neighbours by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. The Arabs were also betrayed by France and the U.K. through the secret Sykes-Picot agreement, and the Balfour Declaration. See Chapter 15: ‘Introduction to Imperialism’ of our mentioned text ‘Violence and Terrorism’.)
On the other hand, the very concept of Self-Determination: which unanimously consisted of the idea of having a plebiscite under the conditions of imperialism previously established ineach case, was rigged from its root; both because of the incomprehension of some, as well as because of the deliberate imperialistic interest in sabotaging and falsifying it of other. And, as is evident, it is impossible to implement correctly and usefully a principle that is falsified, that is not understood and that also is not wanted to be understood.
(As a simple anecdotal fact, all plebiscites held in East Prussia under the pre-existing imperialistic occupation and status quo resulted in overwhelming majorities in favor of continuing to belong to the German Empire, thus contributing to the general conditions that led to World War II. Today, all those territories are part of Poland, except those annexed by Russia after 1945 and re-named Kaliningrad, which do now pose the same problem as Germany once did in them, having received them as a criminal inheritance from the monastic State of the Teutonic Order. Who, in turn, due to his expansionist aspirations, had been hired by Conrad I of Mazovia to destroy the indigenous Prussian Baltic Peoples – which they did – and seize their territories, on the understanding that they would go to Poland. See this also in the aforementioned chapter 5: “The Roman-Vatican Imperialism”, of our cited work.)
Under these conditions, the result was the maintenance in the occupied Countries of the status quo imposed on them by the imperialistic States and Governments; and the ignorance of the subjugated Peoples that during four years of war had sacrificed their lives for freedom, now denied. On that rotten floor of the imperialistic status quo the League of Nations was built, and its end was what could be expected from those events.
Shortly after having come to power in Russia, and while that war was still going on, the new Soviet Government had proclaimed (November 15, 1917) “the right of the peoples ‘of Russia’ to self-determination, even to the point of separation and formation of an independent State”; whose immediate practical use was the Declaration of Independence of Finland on December 6th of that same year, and those of Lithuania and the other Baltic States in the following month of February, 1918.
However, it must be said that this initial democratic optimism “of Russia” was soon ended and was replaced by the usual Russian imperialism and despotism, but now under the disguise of the Soviet-Communist Government. This one, did from 1919-20 close in practice – mainly for Ukraine, whose Central Council had declared its independence in January 1918 by its IV Universal – that theoretical possibility of independence for the peoples “of Russia”, that is: the non-Russian Peoples of the Russian Empire, which had previously been tsarist and now was “Soviet”, but that remained Empire and Russian, and decided that the independences already recognized should be reversed.
Poland, officially independent from Russia since 1918 with the end of the First World War and the Treaty of Versailles, was spared in extremis from falling back into that empire because it managed to defeat Trotsky's “Red Army” in the Battle of Warsaw: “the Miracle of the Vistula”, in August-1920. As for Russia proper, the horrific blood-drowning of any grievance, including labour, which occurred in March-1921 in Kronstadt against the workers and sailors who had supported the revolution just four year before (a crime supported by all the leaders of the Communist Party from Lenin to Trotsky), had clearly shown what for fundamental human rights – and above all for the Peoples’ national independence and the workers’ freedom – was hidden behind the sinister dogma of the new fanaticism of the “Communist” religion, hypocritically called “Dictatorship of the Proletariat”.
(Let us be allowed to make a point here to remember that, “thanks” to that Dictatorship, the independence of Poland and the Baltic States was short-lived: through a secret protocol of the Non-Aggression Treaty signed between Hitler and Stalin on August 23, 1939, both Germanic-Nazi and Russian-“Communist” Empires established that Poland would be divided between them, and that the Baltic States and Finland and some other territories of Romania would be for the Russian-“Communist” Empire. The following September 1 began that operation, and with it the Second World War, with the Nazi aggression against Poland that naturally the “Soviet Union” did not condemn but did 16 days later imitate, launching its own invasion against Polandto annex its half part agreed in the aforementioned Repartition, the Fourth Repartition of Poland. Then Stalin “justified” his invasion with the cynical hoax that the Russians came to Poland in order to defend it from the German Nazis with whom he had divided it; and after that there followed the genocidal mass murder of the intelligentsia and officers of the Polish army, carried out in the forest of Katyn by order of Stalin, who always denied knowing anything about it. The Baltic States were also annexed by the Soviet-Russian Empire. Only Finland’s bravery and determination in fighting the “Red Army” – Winter War, 1939-40 – enabled it, at a heavy price, to maintain its independence.)
On the other side of the Atlantic, the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, after having presented (January 8, 1918) his proposal of the Fourteen Points to give a solution to the war, proclaimed a month later before the Congress of the USA the principle of Peoples’ self-Determination:
“Peoples are not to be handed about from one sovereignty to another by an international conference or an understanding between rivals and antagonists. National aspirations must be respected; Peoples may now be dominated and governed only by their own consent. ‘Self-determination’ is not a mere phrase. It is an imperativeprinciple of actions which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril. We cannot have general peace for the asking, or by the mere arrangements of a peace conference. It cannot be pieced together out of individual understandings between powerful states. [...] This war had its roots in the disregard of the rights of small nations and of nationalities, which lacked the union and the force to make good their claim to determine their own allegiances and their own forms of political life...” Etc.
These ideas of the President of the United States led him to establish as a dogma of all his international policy the principle that “the Peoples are theonlyones who have the right to dispose of their own destinies”; which excludes as its opposite the military occupation and any kind of foreign domination or interference against them.
Thus, the Self-Determination, Free disposition or Independence of Peoples – or Nations – is their capacity to freely dispose of themselves; to govern and develop as such Peoples peacefully in their own territory, according to their own will and without external interference or impositions of a foreign Power. To affirm “the imperative principle of the Peoples’Self-Determination” is to affirm the principle of their national Independence against all foreign conditioning and all colonial domination.
On the contrary, the imperialist Nationalism (Nationalism in its strong and strict sense) is founded on the “right” of the imperial-colonialist Nation to subjugate and annex the Territories and States of other Peoples, and to colonize and deny them as independent Peoples and States. Imperialism does therefore consist in ignorance and rejection of that “principle of imperative action” of Self-Determination or Free Disposition of all Peoples or Nations; just as slavery consists in the rejection of the principle of the freedom of the individual. That is, imperialism and slavery is the opposite of the Self-Determination or Independence of Peoples and individuals: if there is imperialism/slavery, there is no Self-Determination/Freedom. Therefore, if a People is subjected to the domination of a foreign military occupation, that is: to the imperialism of a foreign Power, this makes its Self-Determination impossible if its domination is not eliminated FIRST; Just as an individual subjected to slavery cannot be free without being FIRST freed from his chains.
The first condition for a subjugated People to be able to self-determine, to exercise its FREE Self-Determination, is the unconditional and immediate withdrawal of all the foreign occupying forces and the entire apparatus of imperial-colonialist subjugation of the occupying Power; that is: it must be previously placed in a situation of real national independence without external coercion. Without prior national independence from any foreign domination, the Self-Determination of a People is not possible; just as without the abolition of his slavery the freedom of his an individual is not possible.
Contrary to the falsifications promoted and disseminated by the ideologists of imperialism through their media monopolies (which are sometimes also adopted by representatives of the subjugated Peoples), for a People subjected under foreign domination, the Self-Determination does not consist in “voting and deciding [under the conditions established by the foreign military occupation in which it finds itself] among all possible options, all legitimate”; among which would be – as it is admitted – even the continuation of imperialism: “and if there comes out ‘No’ (to independence), we will conform”. With this falsification and this simulacrum of Self-Determination, consisting of “voting and deciding” under the conditions created by imperialism, any Power of a superior demography could annex a Country, flood it with its colonists and, after a “prudential” time (that is: centuries, so as to be able to colonize it and eliminate its national characters), organize a “referendum of self-determination” whose result would bless “legally and democratically”, as it is claimed, all the achievements obtained by imperialism and its crimes, namely, the non-existence of the annexed People and State, and its total identity with those of the occupying Power.
As is evident, the only decisive and real “argument” for imperialism: the ultima ratio of the aggressor, is to achieve and maintain the military occupation of the attacked People and State (Kingdom of Nabarre: 1188-1200, 1512,... 1936; Principality of Catalonia, 1714,... 1936), using all its capacity for criminal violence. This conquest: carried out against all national and international law, is the real and primary constitution of imperialism, and the basis on which is established its formal and secondary “Constitution”: an ideological mystification aimed at concealing the criminal and illegal genesis and nature of the real primary constitution, and at establishing the iniquitous imperialistic “legality”. Obviously, all this is unlawful and null and void.
From there, imperialism promotes the subjugation and alienation of the subjugated People; both by the destruction of its national characteristics, as well as by bringing of a colony of population from the metropolis. But fundamentally, imperialism, through its agents, ideologists and legists sometimes even indigenous of the subjugated People (who all of them do currently present themselves of course as “democrats” and even as “socialists”), is dedicated to hiding that its domination is based on criminal Violence, and to “justify” it with “arguments” of apparent theoretical solvency that fundamentally consist in denying that the subjugated Peoples and States are so,; or, at least, that they are Peoples in the strong and specific sense of the term, that is: distinct and separate from the occupier, and with their own international, inherent and imprescriptible right of self-determination, which is their right of unconditional and immediate independence.
The denial of the subjugated Peoples as Peoples distinct from the occupier, with their own law and in any case as Peoples with an international right of self-determination or independence; of their historical features, memory and continuity that shape them as Nations established on their own territory; eventually of their own States freely and historically constituted: occupied and annexed by means of aggression and violence; as well as of the crimes committed against them in the enterprise of terrorist and imperialistic expansion: all this is the characteristic of the totalitarian and fascist Imperialism, and the task of ideological-political falsification carried out by its legists and ideological agents.
Yet, obviously, without the military occupation and without the monopoly of criminal Violence which that occupation is based upon, which allows it to maintain its domination through extreme violence (which also includes the imprisonments provided for in the penal code of its formal “Constitution”, for those who fight that “constitutional order”), the theoretical “arguments” and “justifications” that imperialism uses to adorn itself, as well as its “political formations” in charge of maintaining such postulates, are simply smoke, a pile of nothing. Behind each of these ideological agents of imperialism, the subjugated People should see what there really is there: a member of the occupation forces, which make it possible for those camouflaged agents that they can spread without any challenge their ideological pigswill that they call “democracy”, “socialism” etc.; or that those who publicly denounce and oppose fascist imperialism can be taken to prison (in other times, before the firing squad).
The Spanish fascist régime of the Second Francoism: established almost half a century ago thanks to the complicity and betrayal of an alleged “Basque political class” ideologically and strategically ruined, formed by the Pnv-Eta bureaucracy and its satellites, retains and maintains since then all the achievements obtained by the First one and in particular its monopoly of criminal Violence. Thanks to that complicity, and to its fascist monopolies of Violence and propaganda, the Spanish imperialistic régime covers itself under the permanent deception of a false democracy admitted as such by the purported “opposition political class” formed by traitors, corrupt and incapable fools; and it continues to maintain repression on the subjugated Basque People, thus doomed to an irremediable frustration.
However, and as is undeniable, Democracy is the political power of the People and is constituted by the validity and respect of fundamental human rights (HR), which do not depend on the “game of majorities and minorities”. It is not Democracy that allows respect for HR; it is, on the contrary, the respect and validity of HR that founds, allows and constitutes Democracy. And the international right of self-determination of all Peoples is the first of HR and the precondition of all of them; therefore, where HR – and in particular the right of self-determination or independence of all Peoples – are violated or persecuted, there is not and cannot be Democracy; there is imperialism and fascism.
Thus, and in the first place, under a régime of military and foreign occupation, the “votations”, the “majorities” and the “referenda” (although they be – falsely – called “of self-determination”): which are the clumsy mechanisms that the agents and media monopolies of imperialism present as “democracy”, have the same nature as confessions under torture and their same value, that is: none. On the other hand, the continuation of imperialism: before, during and "eventually" after these “votations and referenda” (and if there comes out ‘No’, we will conform, as admitted by the liquidationist bureaucracy of the “Basque radicals and moderates”), is contradictory to Peoples’ Self-Determination or National Independence and to reason. The “voluntary” continuation of imperialism, like the voluntary continuation of slavery, not only IS NOT a democratic option but is also a logical and sociological absurdity; an aberration introduced by ideologists in the service of imperialism, because “All these questions fall within a man’s natural law, which he cannot abdicate even with his own consent”. (B. Spinoza; ‘A Theological-Political Treatise’, 1670.)
Far from the usual affirmation “to vote/decide democratically in order to be free”: posed in our country by the agents of French-Spanish imperialism who present themselves as “Basque political class” (a proposal that, raised under the conditions established by a colonial and foreign domination, is impossible and does also entail a logical absurdity), the only sensible and possible formulation, both logically and sociologically, is just the opposite: “first to be free, that is: independent of all foreign imperialistic and fascist domination, in order to be able to vote/decide democratically”. Imperialistic “democracy” is impossible and does also contain an absurdity, a contradiction in terms: it does not exist and cannot exist. But there happens that, for the agents of the liquidationist bureaucracy Pnv-Eta and its satellites: Ea-Ehbildu-Sortu-Geroa bai etc., for at least half a century now, the French-Spanish fascist imperialism is democracy; and its criminal State: imposed by arms and countless and horrendous imprescriptible crimes against the Basque People and its State, is “the State”: its own, legitimate and democratic.
Let’s see, to ask for a “votation” in the abstract – “we want to vote, we shall vote” – is to cling to a fetish that will not miraculously make disappear the conditions and the regime in which that votation is carried out; and it is that a votation does not lead and cannot leadto freedom. Indeed: if the regime is totalitarian and therefore there is no prior freedom, the votation is neither free nor valid and consequently cannot lead to freedom; and if from the begginning there is already prior freedom, then it is not the votation that has led to that prior freedom. Democracy does not lead to national Independence; it is national Independence that leads to Democracy: without PREVIOUS Freedom and national Independence there is not and cannot beDemocracy nor, consequently, free and democratic votes for that People.
In short, and as has been indicated from the header line of this chapter, Imperialism and denial of Self-Determination are one and the same thing. The abolition of imperialism, i.e. the unconditional and immediate withdrawal of the occupying forces of the occupying Power, and the placing of the occupied Country in the situation prior to its conquest/annexation, is the necessary precondition for genuine Self-Determination.
Naturally, imperialism: which by definition prevents and violates by its very existence the Self-Determination or National Independence of the subjugated People, does not retreat or fall back only before words, and continues to affirm and assert its “law” by the force of its army of occupation. Faced with this “right” of imperialism: which does not exist but is a crime of imperialism and also imprescriptible, arises and activates the right of self-determination (RSD) that does correlatively correspond to the subjugated People.
The RSD is the fundamental and imprescriptible right of unconditional and immediate independence that all Peoples subjugated under imperialistic domination have. The RSD inevitably opposes the (“right” of) imperialism, and does necessarily arise in front of it as its antagonist: if there is imperialism, there is RSD; if there is no imperialism, there is no RSD. The RSD of all Peoples is a necessary consequence of the existence of the crime of imperialism, and is implicated in the existence of distinct Peoples: each and every one of them with their respective right to live free in their own free territory, and not in the territory of others as a result of invasion/colonization.
The international right of independence, free disposition or self-determination of all Peoples is a fundamental human right which, since the creation of the UN in 1945 by ‘We, the Peoples of the United Nations’ (formula with which the San Francisco Charter begins), has been constantly recognized, not constituted, in the United Nations’ General Assembly Resolutions (UNGAR) as the first of fundamental human rights and the precondition of them all:
“The right of peoples and nations to self-determination. - “A – Whereas the right of peoples and nations to self-determination is a prerequisite to the full enjoyment of all fundamental human rights, [...], Whereas every Member of the United Nations, in conformity with the Charter, should respect the maintenance of the right of self-determination in other States, The General Assembly recommends that: 1. The States Members of the United Nations shall uphold the principle of self-determination of all peoples and nations;” etc. [UNGAR 637 A (1952)]
The demand of the RSD and its precondition: the unconditional and immediate withdrawal of the occupying forces and the entire apparatus of subjugation of the occupying imperialist régime, is the key strategic position around which the entire democratic opposition must be united like a fist, against the French-Spanish imperialistic and fascist régime of military occupation of the Basque People and its State. Obviously, whoever does not accept this fundamental principle, namely: the affirmation of the RSD of the Basque People, is, objectively, an agent at the service of imperialism and its military occupation of our People and our Country. The consequence of this strategic position is the rejection to any collaborationism with the established imperialistic régime: both to its “general elections, national institutions and parliaments” of Francespain, as well as to its ideological and political agents who support/do not condemn the militaruy occupation of our Country. The BOYCOTT of them all must be TOTAL.
In particular, to participate in the “Parliament” of the occupying country: an imperialistic juridical monopoly that affirms both the legitimacy of its domination to legislate over our Country and State as well as the non-existence of the indefeasible international rights of the Basque People to its national Independence and legitimate self-defence, on an equal footing with all the Peoples of the World, is to recognize the non-existence of the Basque Nation and State and its authentic national Institutions, and the legitimacy of their abolition by the French-Spanish imperialism after the annexation of our Country carried out through conquest and imprescriptible crimes. This is exactly the position maintained for almost half a century until today by the corrupt traitors who form the liquidationist bureaucracies Pnv-Eta and their satellites: Ea-EHG Bildu-Sortu-Geroa bai etc.
Another fundamental principle: a corollary of the previous one, is the continuity of the legitimate States that the Peoples have freely constituted in History on the principle of equal rights and Self-Determination of all Peoples:
“By virtue of the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, all peoples have the right freely to determine, without external interference, their political status and to pursue their economic, social and cultural development, and every State has the duty to respect this right in accordance with the provisions of the Charter”. [UNGAR 2625 (1970)]
Even if there is an act of free union with another State (for instance, to form a Federation or a composite State), given that Peoples’ Self-Determination/Independence is an original and imprescriptible right, that decision of free union with another State can always be immediately, unilaterally and unconditionally reversed if the circumstances that did at that time recommend the union cease to exist.
Of course, if that “act of union” was not free but it consisted of military occupation, as there occurs in our case, then the nullity and non-existence of that alleged “union” is total, and the occupied State remains in force and never ceases to exist; the only sufficient requirement needed for it being the vindication of its continuity – of the State and its Institutions – by a National Liberation Movement. The affirmation of the continuity and restoration of our own State, the Kingdom of Nabarre, internationally recognized for a thousand years, is revealed first and foremost as the restoration of the legitimate right criminally violated, and as a decisive lever to strengthen our international position against French-Spanish imperialism and its Terrorist States of military occupation over our Country.
As has also been established by the UN General Assembly, the States and Territories occupied and annexed by imperialism are not part of the imperialistic State:
“The territory of a colony or other Non-Self-Governing Territory has, under the Charter, a status separate and distinct from the territory of the State administering it; and such separate and distinct status under the Charter shall exist until the people of the colony or Non-Self-Governing Territory have exercised their right of self-determination in accordance with the Charter, and particularly its purposes and principles.” [UNGAR 2625 (1970)]
It follows that, in such cases, “secession” is impossible: where there has never been a legal union with the imperial whole, there can be no secession, separation or “separatism” from it, since that is a “whole” which the Colony has never been part of and from which, therefore, it cannot make separation/secession. A Colony, a People dominated by imperialism: whether it has had its own State or never has had one, is not part of the occupying imperialistic “State” and cannot, therefore, “separate” from it, since they have never been legally united because of their having maintained "a status separate and distinct from the territory administering it”. Under imperialism there is not and there cannot be “separatism”: there is a right of self-determination. And the first demand posed by the indefeasible RSD held by every People that is subject under an imperialistic régime of military occupation is the unconditional and immediate withdrawal of all the oc-cupying forces and the entire apparatus of subjugation of the occupying State.
Any entity – either individual or collective – that opposes this demand and advocates that the military-police-judicial forces of the occupying State must continue to be present in the Colony or the occupied State by imperialism, is clearly part of the imperialistic régime and, as such, cannot invoke any rights nor is possible to have the slightest relation or “dialogue” with it. The agents of an occupying imperialistic Power have no electoral or other rights in the occupied Country. To assert otherwise is not a simple matter of “electoral regulation”: it implies denying the entire foundation of the national question. In our case, everything depends on the answer given to the fundamental question of whether the Basque Country is a Nation, or two regions of Spain and France.
One cannot speak – as the official “Basque nationalist parties” do – of “Euskadi as a Nation”, and at the same time accept and defend that the Spanish and French Governments and Parties “have perfect and democratic right” to exercise political rights in the Territories of that Nation. Either they do not really believe themselves that this Nation is different from Spain and France; or else the “nation” they speak of is a joke nation. As with any other People of Europe and the World, the Basques are not at the same time part of another Nation: in particular, they are neither Spaniards nor French; and the Spaniards and the French are not Basques.
As is evident, if we do not affirm the international right of self-determination or independence of the Basque People; if we do not denounce the criminal offense and the illegality of the conquest of our Country and State, and therefore the nullity of the imperialistic “union” imposed by Spain and France on our Country when these Powers have criminally annexed the Territories of the Basque People, snatched from its legitimately constituted historical State: the Kingdom of Nabarre; if we ourselves do not believe in our own State which we have never renounced to, and do instead admit the occupying State that has been imposed on us by fire and sword as if it was our own, legitimate and democratic one: “the State”, as the “official Basque political class” of the liquidationist bureaucracy Pnv-Eta and its satellites (currently, Ea-Ehbildu-Sortu-Geroa bai etc.) have been doing for almost half a century now; and if – in short – we ourselves do not claim the continuity, validity, actuality and integrity of our own State: absolutely founded all of it on the principles of International Law, it is clear that no one will make – nor should have to do – these claims for us.
Imperialism is the denial of the subjugated Peoples’Self-Determination or Independence and their legitimately constituted States. Therefore, the opposition to Imperialism implies on the latter’s part the total rejection of Imperialism, starting from the affirmation of its original and permanent criminal illegitimacy and nullity, and not from its legitimate and democratic character; as in the Country of the Basques are doing the Pnv-Eta bureaucratic mafias and their satellites that act as its purported intelligentsia and political class: intellectually, morally and politically ruined. These local agents of the French-Spanish Imperialism do on the contrary hide, falsify and also deny the right of self-determination or unconditional and immediate independence of the Basque People, posing instead a false “right to decide” within the criminal legality and military occupation of that Imperialism; which not only is not denounced as such but is in addition accepted by them as legitimate and democratic.
The ideological recuperation of these bureaucracies by the French-Spanish Imperialism, and their betrayal of our People (see our work: ‘La burocracia Pnv-Eta, o “las familias políticas abertzales”. – Su evolución y degradación: desde concepciones erróneas e infrastratégicas, hasta su conversión en una mafia liquidacionista’), is the fundamental political data that has been operating in our Country for sixty years; which does necessarily condition and ruin our future, if we do not urgently adopt a healthy reaction of denunciation and rejection of these local auxiliary bureaucracies of that imperialism, and a consistent anti-imperialistic strategy.
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