Introduction to Imperialism (15)
Violence and Terrorism.- Their ideological mistification at the service of Imperialism
15 - Introduction to Imperialism
Iñaki Aginaga and Felipe Campo
According to the traditional metaphysics of international policy and law, “The Whole Orb [Totus Orbis], which in some ways forms a republic, has the power to enact just and suitable laws for the whole Humanity such as those of the law of nations [ius gentium]. And no nation can believe that it is less obliged by the ius gentium, because this law is given with the authority all over the Orb.” (Francisco de Vitoria; ‘De Potestate civili’)
The ius gentium is the right of all Peoples and Nations: “Ita de iure gentium dicimus quod quoddam factum est ex communi consensu omnium gentium et nationum.” (F. Vitoria; ‘De iustitia’.) “All nations have the right to govern themselves and can accept the political régime that it wants, even if it is not the best.” “It must be borne in mind that Princes [judges] have authority not only on their subjects but also on foreigners [= universal justice], so as to force them to refrain from making abuses, and this because of the law of nations and under the authority of all the Orb.” Etc. (F. Vitoria; ‘De iure belli’.)
As there can be seen, Vitoria considers the rulers of each nation as not only executive but judicial organs of an “international authority”, exercised over “The Whole Orb” in application of universal “first principles”. Thus, in its various and successive manifestations, the traditional metaphysics presents policy as founded in God’s will and grace; in right and law: whether they be divine, natural or artificial (positive); in the realm of reason and service of the commonwealth; or in the “free and democratic will in the absence of any violence”. In reality, such “universal juridical community” does not exist, it’s a myth or a utopia, in the worst sense of those words.
The relative scope of solidarity and political recognition that humanity is able to establish is limited, in fact, to the Nation and its close relationships. The Nation – as it was in olden times the horde, the tribe or the city – is currently the maximum limit of cohesion, the maximum scope of relative solidarity, morality and legality that Humanity has attained. Beyond the scope of the Nation, in a world that is already economically and politically closed and globalized (but too large and accelerated as to make possible instinctive or cultural inhibitions of intra-specific aggression, this is: that exercised within the own human species, for which the planet is an open field), the state of nature in which humans live determines international relations of structural antagonistic violence and permanent conflict between Nations and States, which are always in a position or disposition of “war of all against all”.
In their “capacity” as invaders and oppressors, all the great Empires have always considered and presented themselves as owners of the absolute right of independence for themselves, and domination for the others. The Great Powers established and agreed the rights to war, of war and of post war so as to subjugate, rob or exterminate their neighbours and, ultimately, the whole world. The Resistance against them: maintained in deeds or words, has to face Repression, which kills, imprisons, tortures, steals, excludes, threatens, pursues and gags those who dare to oppose or resist the dictates of the totalitarian power.
All imperialist or colonial régime rests on Violence and Terror, and on permanent armed forces of war and domination. The despotisms, dictatorships, totalitarianism, imperialism and fascism, if they want to reduce or liquidate the Peoples’ Resistance, cannot do without war of aggression and occupation, criminal Violence and Terrorism, unless they accept the self-destruction. Those who will not bow the knee will be brought before the deadly weapons, which for that are used; with which are effectively put to death in an immediate and systematic way the first opponent who resists or the first passer-by who will skip a “control” of roads. Reprisals, aggression, military occupation and pillage are incontestable customary rights of the occupying armies according to the “classical” international law of the European imperialism; but they are, above all, acts of total war that continue after the conquest under new adapted forms of political, economic, sexual and cultural oppression. Rape, as well as individual plunder, is the traditional natural privilege of the occupant; the nationalist and sexist instrument and demonstration of the victor over the vanquished, which later on are strengthened with the demographic and eugenic policy of the triumphant totalitarianism.
The Peoples – free or subjugated, primitive or evolved – did never accept the rights of aggression and conquest, nor the colonization of the aggressor empires. All the Peoples of the world assert their claim to live free and safe in their free homeland, with the territory and the resources that constitute it; to preserve and ensure their national freedom, rights and identity “by all available means” against the imperialistic and colonial aggression and occupation; and to maintain their own rights – if not those of the others – of self-determination and of legitimate self-defence.
In an international system of independent States, the Governments decide on their own about the “validity” of their policy of war and of peace. Each People imposes its national freedom and, if it can, its domination over other Peoples. But, as Dionisio Inca Yupanqui uttered in 1810, in his self-proclaimed condition of “Inca [Quechua], Indian and American” in the face of the Spanish imperialism that was preparing to formulate its “liberal” ideological mystifications in “the Cortes of Cádiz”: “a People that oppresses another cannot be free”. The subsequent debate that this originated among European economists and philosophers from the mid-nineteenth century led to the famous phrase: “A nation that enslaves another, forges its own chains.”
In a globalized world, the struggle for survival has immediately and necessarily a universal dimension. The critical distance between Peoples: which guarantees their mutual feel of security, has disappeared. “The Nations, driven by universal instincts, impulses, passions, purposes, conditions or determinants of domination and aggression, of offensive and defensive, of survival and resistance, do unilaterally and without external constraints make use of violence and terror of masses as means and foundations of international policy, and oppose necessarily among them.”
As it is intended by the advocates of realpolitik, the de facto situation constitutes the law: “Might is Right.” Yet, the “principle of effectiveness” is understood differently according to times and the agents/patients affected; the express or tacit point of discrepancy between them being placed – for purposes of establishing the applicability of that principle – in determining the level and the period of duration of criminal Violence that are considered necessary to constitute law and State.
The agents and beneficiaries of the conquest – through criminal, unilateral, original and eminent violence – uphold a principle of immediate and unconditional effectiveness for it. On the contrary, the defenders of national freedom and the right of self-determination or independence of Peoples maintain a principle of permanent effectiveness for them, according to which fundamental human rights and the crimes against them are imprescriptible: they do not depend on the date or the time-limit in which they occurred, nor are they limited either to a determined territorial extension, or a specific amplitude of the forces in conflict. This was confirmed in the Resolution on the case of Goa, occupied by Portugal for 451 years from 1510 to 1961, and which was resolved in favour of India by a vote of 90 to 3 (Portugal, Spain, South Africa), with the abstention of France and Bolivia. [UNGAR 1699 (XVI) of 19-December-1961.] (In the “Goa question” were theoretically and practically apparent the positions of Peoples, States and the United Nation on aggression, the right of conquest, the continuity of States, the right of self-determination of Peoples and the international right.)
According to the aforementioned conception of “real policy”, the acts against fundamental human rights and above all against the right of self-determination or independence of Peoples, the major offences or crimes of International Law, create the law. By “virtue” of this, the criminal individuals, Peoples and States which commit them and cover the Earth with blood; the great organizations of fanatics, malefactors, thieves and murderers which the Empires are, become subjects of international right if their crimes are successful and get to be turned into consummate facts and powers. While there will remain the prudence, fear and terror that – even when they have been defeated – their exactions inspire, the crimes of the “conquerors” are the best guarantee of the prominent or privileged place that supposedly corresponds to them in the international political hierarchy.
“His victories in Italy began the legend of his invincibility, immortalized in a series of romantic paintings: Bonaparte was not only a warrior; he was also a shrewd propagandist. From his first triumphs, Bonaparte understood that it was not enough to win victories. He uses images to make sure that his victories in Italy were widely publicized in France. He understood that art is also a means of propaganda. He orders a painting after a victory: he dictates the theme, the layout of the characters; he even orders the dimensions of the frame. From the very beginning, Napoleon gave himself an image. He created his own history. He created his own newspapers: ‘France and the Army of Italy’, and the ‘Newspaper of the Army of Italy’, which exalted his victories. Bonaparte himself actually wrote some articles. He himself wrote: ‘Bonaparte flies like lightning and strikes like a thunderbolt’. While Bonaparte’s fame grew in France, he was wearing out his welcome in Italy. When he met armed resistance, he ordered towns sacked, villages burned, rebels shot. Many Italians now began doubting the General who said he fought in the name of liberty but was sending convoys of gold and silver back to his Government in France, along with some of the great treasures of Italian art. Works by Michelangelo, Titian, Raphael, the four ancient bronze horses from St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice: all would soon find a home in a new museum in Paris that would one day be called the Louvre.” (D. Grubin; “Napoleon: Mastering Luck”.)
“It’s easy to criticize today the way in which Napoleon looted many of the artistic treasures of Italy. [Certainly there was a time when it was not easy to be critic about it, and the author seems to yearn for it. We’ve already been learned about the fate of the ‘rebels’!] And yes, he did it. He took paintings by Michelangelo, Leonardo, Titian and wonderful sculptures, and created a fantastic museum in Paris; but this is something that has always happened in History: all great conquerors practised the spoliation. The British Museum would not be the wonderful place that it is today, if it were not for the looted art treasures.” (A. Roberts; “Napoleon”.)
A real sincere confession of shameless, disgusting and criminal imperialism! Yet, defending such imperialistic views, or “the refreshing qualities of dictatorship” (Roberts) is not a sign of having “taken leave of one’s senses”, as someone once said; it is a mere reflection of the moral abjection to which imperialism leads its agents, beneficiaries and apologists.
“But it was Roberts’s remarks on the refreshing qualities of dictatorship that made me wonder if he had taken leave of his senses. ‘In a world where leadership is so circumscribedby opinion polls and focus groups, there is something liberating in seeing the example of a man who followed his own beliefs, his own destiny.’ No doubt Robert Mugabe and Kim Jong-un would heartily agree.” (Gerard O’Donovan; The Daily Telegraph; 17-Jun-2015.)
“Those in charge”, at the helm of the world under the objectives of imperialism and fascism, are not likely going to promote a different way of seeing things; yet, the words of the poet will survive, to the eternal ignominy of such criminals:
“And thus I prophesy: that many a thousand, / Which now mistrust no parcel of my fear, / And many an old man’s sigh, and many a widow’s, / And many an orphan’s water-standing eye, / Men for their sons’, wives for their husbands’, / And orphans for their parents’ timeless death, / Shall rue the hour that ever thou wast born.” (W. Shakespeare; ‘Henry VI, Pt. 3’, V, vi, 37/43.)
“The great conquerors” are the great criminals of History. Certainly, the world would not be today the same as it is, should they have not existed: it would probably be much better; certainly not worse. That they not only “practiced the spoliation” bur also destruction, that is something undeniable; without forgetting the countless crimes needed to carry out that spoliation. The novelty was now to use – so as to cover murder and spoliation – an ideological alibi developed by the French “revolution”, consisting in the falsification of the ideas of “freedom, human rights and nation”.
Although some European intellectuals and artists let themselves be dazzled for some time by that trickery, and did endorse it with their support (not to mention the fervour of the French People – which still remains – towards its imaginary “hero”, inflated by its nationalistic chauvinism and its need for real or fictitious victories at the expense of others, and conscientiously exploited by Napoleon’s propaganda), the Italian patriots and others, as already indicated before, could soon see the imposture that laid behind such invocations. As for the heroes of the independence and the abolition of slavery in Haiti, they also checked what was behind the “Republican values” that Napoleon entrusted to his brother-in-law, General Leclerc, to reinstate there: slavery, and genocide for those who did not submit, achieved with innovative methods such as the first gas chambers.
The “classical” version of the international law: a “realistic” reaction gradually formulated by the ideologists of Asiatic despotism and European absolutism, did merely took up the fundamentals of the policy and law that were in force before it, which did also continue in force afterwards until the present day. According to this formulation (‘ius ad bellum, ius in bello, ius post bellum’), the international law to war and conquest provides solutions to conflicts that peace and the status quo cannot resolve. With such a law also applied in war and conquest, its human and material cost are reduced. And with the international law of post-war and -conquest is put an end to the armed conflicts in course, avoided the anarchy and accelerated, extended or preserved the peace. A peace such that, obtained by means of war, can only be assured with the respective absolute victory-defeat of conquerors-conquered, without any prospect of a rematch. It was also intended that the consequences were a progress for all, even for the vanquished.
The purported superiority of Western civilization on the populations not yet civilized (an assumption of the conquest and colonization), is already patent in this differential criterion:
“The main difference between the savage nations of Europe and those of America is that while some American tribes have been entirely eaten up by their enemies, the Europeans know how to make better use of those they have defeated than merely making a meal of them. They would rather use them to increase the number of their own subjects, thereby augmenting their stock of instruments for conducting even more extensive wars.” (E. Kant; Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, 1795.)
Intelligence, not good feelings, “has taught them to use force in a more effective way than by this brutal manifestation of instinct”. “If the wars of the civilized nations are much less cruel and destructive than those of non-civilized nations, this is due to the social situation of these States; so much to the own one of each of them, as to the one dictating their mutual relations.” The attitude taken with war “does not depend on the degree of civilization but on the importance and duration of the inimical interests”.
Violence constitutes the international political relationships and organizations. All the traditional political powers, and particularly the revolutionaries, have always proclaimed their eminent capacity for violence: origin and foundation of the State, denying or lowering that of their adversaries. The own violence has never ceased to be displayed, exalted and of course exercised by the States and conservative or revolutionary movements, and by the military forces of war and occupation. War, subjugation, occupation, terrorism, repression, kidnappings, deportation, plunder, rape, extortion and public and “private”, legal and “illegal”, official and unofficial executions and tortures, are reinforced and stimulated with hard or “soft” violence shows, parades, manoeuvers, exhibitions, intimidations, remunerations, promotions, tributes, celebrations, commemorations and awards.
In policy, “good and evil” are not constituted for values distinct from the violence realized by the subjects that put them into effect. Strictly speaking, once these ones have been placed in their respective positions: either as dominant or as dominated, they are different terms for identical concepts. It’s enough to just assume this semantics and this reality, and then all the misleading or incomprehensible dominant ideology becomes transparent and coherent. In the reality of international relations, “good and evil” are immanent to the rapport of force between Nations.
As long as they don’t succeed in breaking the monopoly of criminal Violence established at their cost (thus accessing to an acceptable or considerable level of defensive violence or Resistance), the subjected Peoples are rejected, condemned and discriminated as undesirable offenders or criminals of international law. On the contrary, they are accepted, honoured and recognized as members of the international community only when they demonstrate a sufficient capacity for violence, policy and law; and when they have the capacity of sufficient violence to wage war, win it or even lose it. Also losing the war means a minimum of military capacity. The Peoples that lose the war remain being Nations and States if their liquidation or submission is not ensured. The subjected and submitted Peoples cease being Nations and States.
According to what is maintained by the “classical” system of international policy and law of the European imperialism, if it’s accepted, exercised or “attributed to the victor the right of life or death over the vanquished”, “this terrible right to kill”, monopoly of the State, “it’s rather logical to make derive from it the rights of stealing, setting fire, imprisoning, enslaving, torturing or raping” persons and Peoples; so much more insofar, with this, “everyone wins”. To murder, poison and execute the prisoners, to finish off the wounded, to bomb, shell and slaughter civilians without limitation of age or sex, to plunder, burn, ignite, steal and put to pillaging and extortion, to strip the dead, to imprison, enslave, deport, torture and rape (although the latter still remained being a sin), are natural rights of the victor that this international positive law considers to be progressive and necessary factors. Those criminal States have not deprived from exercising them, thus contributing – to its own way – to the peace and prosperity of humankind.
But in those places where imperialism violates the Peoples’ freedom and right of self-determination, it’s absurd to pretend that anything shall be respected. In its turn, it’s also “rather logical” to assume that these Peoples, whom freedom and fundamental rights are theoretically and practically denied, neither shall unilaterally respect and recognize “freedoms and rights” – general or individual – to those who do deny them.
The imperialism and totalitarianism use them in a manner not temporary or occasional but permanent and systematic, because they correspond to their objectives and resources, and to the needs inherent in their structure of domination. Peoples are not subjugated, oppressed, repressed and destroyed through gratification, persuasion, dialogue and respect for human rights, humanitarian norms, good feelings, piety and compassion but through Violence and Terror: through the bombing of civilian populations, torture, murder, threat, deportation, exclusion, kidnapping, taking and executing of hostages and extortion; much though their names are changed so as to make people believe that they are a different thing.
The international relations are established on conflicting political, geographical, demographic, economic, cultural and ideological bases; all of which makes it possible the imperialistic phenomenon. Contrary to what the agents, apologists, accessories, collaborationists and accomplices – either alien or aboriginal – do proclaim, the conflict between Nations, that is: imperialism, the recourse to war of aggression, the military occupation and the oppression and destruction of other Peoples by means of criminal Violence, are not eventual, atypical, temporary, marginal, accidental or exceptional activities but they correspond and are typical to the state of nature in which the Nations live. And contrary to what the dominant hypocrite moral claims, such activities have not been limited but enhanced by culture and civilization. They are the normal, permanent, necessary and constitutive behaviour of imperialism: from the initial or permanent aggression, to the perpetuation and putrefaction of the system. And they are practised systematically and in the face, eyes and awareness of everybody by the Governments, the Administration, the Armed Forces and “secret” Services. The States neither want nor can do anything against the organisations of violence that constitute them.
In the reality, the “supranational” political relations are relations between Nations, without any “superior” instance of order and power. The rapport of forces: relatively stable or changing, leads to offensive or defensive war, and to the political peace of balance or imbalance between the Nations; with the “international law” as a result. “The civilized Peoples know and understand between themselves so little that they avoid each other with hatred and horror.” The imperialistic Nationalism fears and despises all diversity and any differentiated entity: it is uniformitarian, exclusivist and “universalist”, by extension of the own Nation to the whole universe. Genocide is the consequent solution to international conflicts:
“It is, to be sure, a mystery why the collective units should in fact despise, hate and abhor one another – every nation against every other – and even in times of peace. I cannot tell why that is so. It is just as though when it becomes a question of a number of people, not to say millions, all individual moral acquisitions were obliterated, and only the most primitive, the oldest, the crudest mental attitudes were left.” Etc. (Sigmund Freud; ‘Reflections on War and Death’, 1915.)
“The sovereignty is the exclusive right to frighten the others.” For the law, whether it be domestic or international, only the Peoples able to impose themselves on others or to defend against them are active subjects of rights, that is: those who resist imperialism and colonialism. “For the mighty the power is the only rule, as it is for the weak the subservience.” The Peoples who do not have the strength to resist imperialism and colonialism: either by themselves – sometimes in the spaces or margins that leave the balance and the confrontation between the Great Powers – or with the alien assistance, protection or protectorate, those have no right to anything, do not exist but as an object of violence, policy and law. When the oppressed Peoples rebel themselves against the order of criminal Violence established upon them, the weak ones are delinquents and criminals because they are and while they are weak; and the strong ones escape all censorship because they are and while they are strong. Everything else is hypocrisy, charlatanism or heavenly music.
The imperialism is part and condition of the international political relations and of the international law. The imperialism does not exclude nor contradicts the international law, in the same way as the crime in general does not exclude nor contradicts the penal law: it is assumption, part and condition of the law in general. The policy of national liberation, and the rights of self-determination or independence and of legitimate self-defence of all the Peoples are politically the opposites of the imperialism. Now then, while being the opposites of it, nonetheless they are not mutually exclusionary or contradictory between themselves but their mutual and correlative constitutive condition, that is: they cannot exist without each other, and the disappearance of the ones implies the disappearance of the other.
Let us see: just as absolute victory in war is the end of combatants and of the war itself, so the absolute triumph of imperialism is the liquidation of the policy of national liberation and of the international rights of self-determination and of legitimate self-defence of the subjugated People, and, therefore, also of imperialism itself. Conversely, and correspondingly: the absolute triumph of the policy of national liberation and of the rights of self-determination and of legitimate self-defence is the end of the imperialism and, therefore, also of the policy of liberation and of the rightsof self-determination and of legitimate self-defence, which are no longer necessary.
There is no vindication of rights when no one violates them: if there is imperialism, there is right of self-determination, etc.; if there is no imperialism, there is no right of self-determination, etc., nor any need of it, either. International political relations, and international law, do result from the opposition between Nations, and disappear with it.
In imperialism, the economic or ideological domination can sometimes be accompanied by limited or moderate forms of violence, war, conquest and military occupation; or, otherwise, criminal Violence and Terrorism become decisive and unlimited because the Peoples do not allow to be destroyed or exploited in any other way.
Indeed, the imperialistic aggression and occupation, that is: the denial of the right of self-determination or independence of Peoples, do sometimes adopt purposes of limited war or political domination that involve negotiation, transaction or division of power, and then constitute the relative international political conflict. Proceeding from these circumstances in which imperialism and colonialism pursue limited ends of subjection, exploitation or pillage, such an original situation of limited or relativeimperialistic conflict may eventually either reach to a term of expiration, or become an absolute conflict by the transformation of means and ends, exorbitant of the “relative” conflict. The strategy of liquidation, destruction and genocide of the subjugated People arise in this case as a means of consolidating a previously established domination, but that is already costly, unstable and precarious, in the face of the supervening end towards an absolute imperialism.
A relative political domination could be extended for some time; yet, even the imperialisms of a relative type are forced to decide between the definitive abandonment of their conquests, or their own conversion into absolutes through the forced identification of their means with the ends of absolute imperialism. The culminating moment of the imperialistic offensive, and the turning point of this process, depend on the whole of material and moral factors of the particular case, and are relatively unforeseeable and indeterminable.
Generally, the surprised and exasperated frustration resulting from the eventual insufficiency of the imperialistic political action of a relative type, relaunches upwards the cycle, in the search – increasingly demanding – of the final solution. Protectorate, military occupation, and annexation, are political forms that institutionalize the transition from the relative political imperialism to the absolute one. Their establishment, or the eventual transition from one to the other, corresponds to the phases of either regression or expansion of imperialism, due to the variation of the general rapport of forces or of the mode of production and distribution; to the correlative formation of an international class structure; or to the consolidation and progress of the occupation and colonization.
So, the absolute imperialism can appear and establish itself as such either immediately, or by transformation of a relative imperialism. The relative imperialism – economic, cultural or political – is the limited form of international domination: it pursues limited ends of domination, exploitation or looting. The strategy of the relative imperialism admits moderate periods, forms and rhythms that anyway cannot be extended indefinitely, since the oppressed, occupied and colonized Peoples do finally end up regaining their national liberty, if they are given the space and time to do so.
Either to a longer or a shorter term, the imperialism has only one means of prevailing: to put an end to the Peoples themselves. In this way, the destruction of the dominated Peoples, and the genocide: characteristic of absolute imperialism, can be an end in themselves, or the means of consolidating the domination established by the relative imperialism. When the agents of a relative imperialism perceive the unstable and precarious nature of this one and want to perpetuate its domination, escaping the consequences of the depletion of the system and avoiding the emancipation on term of the dominated People and State, they are doomed to turn the relative imperialism into an absolute one, and to adopt the unlimited ends and means characteristic of the absolute imperialism, if the suitable political demographic, economic or ideological conditions are given for this purpose. According to the form these are given, the conversion is done in a more or less abrupt or gradual way.
A relative or limited imperialism, and the political domination that it involves, can last for some time; but the indefinite subjugation of a People with vital reserves, sense of its own identity, rooted national and State consciousness, and a resolute will, is always problematic. “The revolts against the colonial authorities throughout the world have shown to what extent civil disobedience, non-violent Resistance, terrorism and guerrilla are effective and costly for the occupying Power; which, unable to restore the order, is doomed to spend – for this never finished work – amounts exceeding those that revert to it from the exploitation of the subjugated People. It is enough that a People – even without weapons – be determined to make life impossible to the conqueror, and this one will discover little by little the vanity of conquests.”
That’s why, from the outset or in succession, a relative imperialism is doomed in a more or less long term – by the own and necessary logic of the political relationship that constitutes it – either to lose its domination, or, if it intends to perpetuate itself, to necessarily transform itself into an absolute one; whether it adopts the latter’s own ends by themselves, or sees in them the only means to preserve its imperial domination in the face of the supervening non-viability of its primitive form. The war of aggression, the exclusion, the military occupation and the colonization are not limited to oppression, repression or exploitation of the People who endure them; they finally conclude in the destruction of the People itself.
The absolute imperialism leads to a total imperialism. The absolute imperialism is defined by the unlimitedness of its ends: the destruction of the People that it attacks and its replacement by its own one; the total imperialism, by the unlimitedness of its means of action, which do not admit restraining rules. This one uses without limitation all available and useful ones so as to reach its goal of submitting and destroying the Peoples.
In opposition to the relative and partial imperialism, the absolute and total imperialism (supreme form and stage of the imperialism), whether original or derived, does not aim to the mere limited – temporary or permanent – subjugation, to the cultural or economic domination, and to the despoliation or exploitation of the attacked, occupied and dominated Peoples and States, because of their being contradictory to its conceptions. What it seeks is their destruction as Peoples, to the liquidation of their State and national, racial, linguistic and cultural alterity, identity and existence; and to their substitution by the invading People by means of the final solution and the genocide. It does not reject, pursue or try to reform the “nationalism” or some characteristics or objectives of the occupied Nation; it denies it and tries to put a definitive end with it.
The liquidation of the subjugated People is the objective of the absolute and total imperialism, which includes and presides over the political imperialism, which, in turn, comprehends and presides over the armed conflict. Such an imperialism does not leave any other alternative but the emancipation or the destruction of the subjected People; and in both cases the imperialism does also disappear, since there is no dominant Country if there is no a dominated one. In an absolute conflict, the dominated Nation puts the own existence itself at stake; and for the subjugated People it is an existential conflict: a struggle for survival that imperialism has imposed upon it without any possibility of avoiding it. The fight for survival does naturally select “the best” ones: in any case the best ones to survive; which can perfectly leave aside or ignore higher values of a spiritual nature.
If the “survivors” of the subjugated People themselves do not resolutely maintain their conviction about the values and culture that their People can bring to the concert of Nations; and, above all, if they are uncapable of understanding that this is impossible to achieve if they continue under imperialistic domination (which does inexcusably require from them to get rid of it), even much less will those values and culture have any meaning for others, whether they be Peoples or individuals. There are no higher or lower values that can be recognized to the Peoples that are excluded by imperialism from the “human community” of the free Peoples with their own independent State.
In order to end with the subjugated and annexed Nations, the strategic choice of means depends on the absolute or relative purposes of the imperialism; on the domination factors of geography, demographics, economy, policy, culture and ideology; and on the moment, the situation and the international context. The “moderate and progressive” ways of domination of Peoples are so completed, when possible, with faster and more effective procedures which ensure the complete and definitive victory of the imperialistic Nationalism of the aggressor, and allow – sometimes in a very short time – the irreversible and irreparable destruction of States and Civilizations, Nations and Races, Cultures and pluri-millennial Languages. Reason, humanism, utopias and baseless idealism – not to mention collaborationism in order to gain “the consideration” of the aggressor – can do nothing against it; they are, on the contrary, instruments of propaganda and psychological warfare at the service of the aggressor and dominant Powers.
Imperialistic Nationalism: Nationalism in the strict sense, naturally tends towards absolute Nationalism and Imperialism, to the monopoly, the domination and the elimination of all national otherness. The destruction of the others is its absolute, immanent and consequent objective “according to its essence”; which implies an irreducible conflict between the aggressor and dominant Nation, and the attacked and dominated Nation, which makes it impossible and illusory any compromise and every transaction that will bring it to an end. It is about the conflict between despotism, on the one hand; and freedom, human rights and democracy, on the other. He who still has not learned that, does not know or does not want to know which world he lives in, nor whom he is dealing with. For the imperial State, the People that resists is “the absolute enemy”. It is the absolute conflict: that of absolute imperialism with the absolute enemy.
A subjugated People attains sooner or later to independence; unless it is liquidated before that, in which case it can no longer achieve anything. There is only one mode of ending up with the political Resistance of the Peoples and of preventing their march to freedom, and the predators, the dominant Nations know it: ending up as soon as possible with the Peoples themselves by all means that the conditions and circumstances allow. Extermination, deportation and colonization are the most direct, fast, complete and sure. “Where the Conqueror has the possibility and will to undertake the destruction of the subjugated People, the conquests are not fatally vain.”
Criminal Violence, war of aggression and Terrorism of war and State, extermination, deportation and colonization of masses, are the more direct, fast, complete and assured means to end up with the subjugated Nations, and do naturally reach their fullness at the service of the absolute imperialism. To apply criminal Violence and Terrorism on the civilian population is easier, more effective and definitive than doing it on the armed forces, and the “international law of war” can do nothing against this practice carried out by the dominant and terrorist States. After the wars of balance, limited and civilized, “the real wars are wars of extermination”. Extermination and liquidation of the Peoples by means of criminal Violence is the most direct political form of genocide.
The Nations and States adopt political and ideological attitudes determined by their position in the rapport of geopolitical, demographic, economic, technological, political or military forces. “Morality and law” are what suits them depending on the circumstances.
In general terms, in the international political relations there are no naturally “good” Peoples, i.e. peaceful and harmless; or naturally “bad” Peoples, i.e. violent and aggressive. There are only, on the one hand, Peoples unable to criminal violence and war of aggression: small, weak, isolated, backward, unarmed, defenceless and peaceful because they cannot be anything else; and, on the other, Peoples capable of criminal violence and war of aggression: large ones or part of a vast whole, gifted and motivated for the expansion and domination, technically equipped and provided with armies of conquest and occupation, and of masses available for the colonization.
They fight against freedom and human rights those who do not need them; and they are supporters of freedom and human rights in general those who cannot dominate and destroy others, and fear or suffer from domination and destruction from them. With the eventual variation of the rapport of forces, the “innate” provisions and attitudes, and the “moral” sense that direct them are reversed. It is given therefore “an understandable tendency to a likely conclusion”, so as to affirm that “the distinction proclaimed in the Charter of the United Nations between ‘the peace-loving nations’ and the others exists only in the imagination and hypocrisy of the men of the victorious field”. In the same way, the religious communities are peaceful, supporters of freedom and mutual respect there where and when they are weak or fearful victims of the persecution from the others, to which they persecute, torture and murder as soon as they get the strength for this. (The confessional Nationalism – nationalistic and religious at the same time – accumulates the fanaticisms with all its consequences.)
The Empires are founded by means of war of aggression, conquest and occupation, annexation, repression and terrorism; but are not those ones the means which consolidate the empires and make irreversible their effects. These ones are only consolidated through genocide, extermination and expulsion of the natives; through deportation, colonization, exclusion and assimilation, repopulation, implantation and transplantation of populations: procedures jointly or successively applied. They are the most direct, fast, complete and safe means for it. Therefore, if it wants to perpetuate its domination, avoiding the liberation of the subjugated Peoples and States, the aggressor dominant State must seize the opportunity of the effective but limited advantage that gives it the military and administrative domination in order to change the social base of the occupied Country. “On condition of paying the price, making a full use of the strength of an army, it is not impossible, in the 20th century, to bring down a quasi-unanimous popular will of Resistance or Liberation.”
The unlimited and absolute political conflict includes the unlimited and absolute war of aggression, and aims at the destruction of the inimical political and armed forces, actual or virtual. The partial war becomes total. Destroy the social base of a People in order to win the aggressive war and put an end to its Resistance, or win the aggressive war and put an end to Resistance in order to destroy a People, are enterprises which involve each other. The need and the decision to end up by all means – with the utmost urgency and once and for all – with the political Resistance of the attacked People finally tend to the liquidation of the People itself, sociological base of the conflict. The imperialism does not seek “the peaceful and democratic resolution” of the conflict but to finish with the oppressed People. The presence of criminal Violence increases or decreases according to the entity and intensity of the social contradictions. It reaches its maximum in the acute conflicts – whether chronic or latent – typical of imperialism and totalitarianism.The question of the opportunity, organization and treatment of the concrete forms of Violence is a “simple” matter of strategy.
The limited war of aggression and political conflict are aimed not at the destruction of the attacked People but at its domination, exploitation and pillage; but when the partial or limited war of aggression becomes total, then its means do not admit rules nor constraints such as the right of the war or the Humanitarian Right, the reserved areas, prohibited weapons or protected populations. The extermination, the genocide, the liquidation of Peoples by political means is the most direct way to achieve the fixed objectives. The monopoly of criminal Violence: resulting from war of aggression and military occupation over a subjugated People or State, is also the basis that allows the substitution and liquidation of Nations through hunger and thirst, disease, assimilation, displacements and deportations, the programmed implantation of indigenous and colonial populations, and the direct or indirect sterilization. In the face of such situations, “the smallest aim that can be fixed is the pure and simple Resistance, that is: a fight devoid of positive intention.”
Just as the predator – once its prey has been secured – waits that this runs out of its strength in futile efforts before succumbing, thus also the imperialism in power awaits the destruction of the subjected People in a time that plays in favour of the aggressor. In this context, the formal modifications and adaptations of an imperialistic régime of political domination serve to its conservation and reinforcement: not ceding an inch of the real political power is the goal that informs such modifications. Imperialism and fascism can eventually undertake or accept tactical reforms, adaptations and concessions, whether formal or administrative; but their nature obeys the law of steel – or of marble – which fixes the insurmountable strategic limits: they will never proceed to any “devolution” or redistribution, total or partial, of the political power that they managed to monopolize through war of aggression, repression and terror. Only the local accomplices and collaborationists of imperialism, and its victims, can ignore it and keep illusions in this regard.
As it was stated in the Judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Trial of German Major War Criminals that followed World War II (Nüremberg, 30th September and 1st October, 1946; see: “The Common Plan or Conspiracy and Aggressive War”):
“The charges in the Indictment that the defendants planned and waged aggressive wars are charges of the utmost gravity. War [of aggression] is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent States alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”
Article 39 of the Charter of the United Nations’ Organization provides that its Security Council shall determine the existence of any act of aggression and “shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security”; always without prejudice to the right of legitimate self-defence of all the attacked Peoples:
“Article 51. Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.” (Charter of the United Nations; 1945.)
Yet, the Security Council is in the hands of the five “great” Powers that are permanent members of it and that have veto power based on their possession of nuclear weapons. In these circumstances, by being able to block any decision of the Council that is not in the interest of some of them, the UN’s own action is in fact also blocked and finally discredited, when many times it is the aggressors and actors of original criminal Violence who present themselves as attacked; and their aggression against the subsequent legitimate self-defence of the oppressed is presented with all cynicism as “genuine self-defence”. In the wake of the crisis in Syria, the United Nations’ High Commissioner for Human Rights strongly criticised the Security Council for its failure to prevent conflicts around the world:
“Conflict prevention is complex, but it can be achieved. [...] None of these crises erupted without warning. They built up over years – and sometimes decades – of human rights grievances: deficient or corrupt governance and judicial institutions, discrimination and exclusion, inequities in the development, exploitation and denial of the economic and social rights, and repression of the civil society and public freedoms.” (Ms. Navi Pillay, in her last Address to the Security Council; August 2014.)
However, in the relentless logic of the multi-centred international society, formed of “independent” States, the aggression, the total war, extermination, terrorism, torture, killings, deportation, deculturación, colonization, plunder and assimilation are strong and superior methods that give advantage to those who use them to a greater extent and ferocity, and that penalize to the others; which, as it was before pointed out, leads to their generalization among the contenders who can make use of the means to do it.
They are not love, altruism, philanthropy, solidarity, dialogue, freedom or respect for the Peoples and between the Peoples which constitute, arrange and disarrange the international policy, law and relations; if it were so, there would be no imperialistic policy or law, which have as necessary components war of aggression and repression, death, hatred, fear and terror, whose consequences do always suffer the weak and the helpless. “Whether we like it or not, so are things.”
Given this world’s reality, poisoned by the National-imperialistic priority, a Head of Government or of a political Party who “rejects violence as a means of doing policy” is a faker or a stupid politician, since defensive violence: constitutive of all legitimate State and implied in the international right of legitimate self-defence held by the democratic National Opposition or Resistance of an attacked or subjugated People, is the only means of opposing the criminal Violence of the aggressor imperialistic Nationalism.
Without constitutive violence not only there is no imperialism or fascism; also there is not policy, nor law, nor States, nor negotiation, nor democracy, nor rights in general, nor right of self-determination in particular: nor there is any need of it either. Those who conceal the criminal constitutive and constituent Violence of imperialism and fascism, do conceal the origin and nature of the régime of military occupation, and do in fact support the imperialistic totalitarian monopoly of criminal Violence along with all its crimes.
“The resistance is an activity aimed to destroy such a sum of force of the enemy that it will have to renounce their intentions.” Nobody feels nor will ever feel secure in a world where it is not possible to limit the discretionary power of Nationalist-imperialistic States. The perversion of their “logic of security” impels them towards the domination and the war of aggression, which they call “defensive and preventive”; and, jumping from security to security, towards the absolute domination and destruction of other States and Peoples. In such cases, the distinction between offensive and defensive policy is a conventional abstraction that the strategic globalization has definitely made obsolete. The defensive is the supreme engine of the offensive. The defensive is universal constituent of a fiduciary or effective offensive.
“It’s the so widespread feeling of fear to the neighbour that allows to interpret almost all conflicts, with a little bit of goodwill, as defensive wars.” Even in a theoretical absence of desire or need of domination, destruction or exploitation, the fear leads to the defensive war, and this one leads to the offensive war. The defensive attitude tends naturally to turn itself into an offensive one, because in the international reality the States are not nor do they ever consider themselves established on security if they lack of guarantees, safeguards and modifications that “logically” tend to the “preventive” elimination of all other economic, demographic, political or cultural Power different than themselves. “The source of all our mistakes is fear. [...] Out of fear, great Nations have been acting like cornered beasts, thinking only of survival. The common people of the world will not tolerate imperialism, even under the ‘enlightened’ anglo-saxon atomic bomb ‘auspices’. The destiny of the English-speaking people is to serve the world, not dominate it.” (Henry A. Wallace, in his address of 1946 April the 12th before the Memorial meeting in the first anniversary of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death.)
For the imperialism, the defensive and offensive policy and war are also confused concepts. There is no absolute defensive, there is only absolute offensive. Offensive and defensive are strategically and genetically inseparable, up to confusing themselves in the “preventive” war. The offensive is the first cause, but the defensive is a multiplier and a dominant cause. The aggressors are certainly less abundant, because the aggression is not within the reach of everyone; instead, the defensive is universal, and it is also the “decisive cause” of the permanent warlike attitude of the aggressor, who would prefer not to find opposition to his aggression.
Indeed, “The war rather has raison d’être for the defender than for the conqueror, because war does not begin until the invasion has given rise to the defence.” “Politically speaking, one of the two fields will necessarily be the aggressor, since defensive intentions on both sides can never lead to the war.” All the conquerors of the world have declared and do declare themselves lovers of peace, provided that their own version and conditions of “peace” are accepted, and condemn as enemies of peace all those who refuse to it. “A conqueror is always a friend of peace (as Bonaparte constantly said it of himself); he would willingly accept enter our State without opposition.”
The opposition between the imperialism and the struggle for national freedom is asymmetrical. The “dissymmetry of the pair colonizer-resistant” is general among both nationalisms (imperialistic and independentist): it is that way in their strategies, purposes, means, ideologies and demographic, economic and cultural conditions. “The inequality of resolution between the adversaries”, “the dissymmetry of will, of interest, of animosity in the warlike dialogue of conservatives and rebel warriors” is, at times, “more marked than the inequality of material forces”. The motivation of the side that struggles for national freedom is greater than that of the side which seeks to put an end to the national Resistance or the existence of the adversary. “The nationalists who claim their Nation’s independence – whether it has existed or not in the past, or whether it lives or not in the heart of the masses – are more passionate than the rulers of the colonial State. At least in our century, they believe in the sanctity of their cause more than their adversaries in the legitimacy of their rule.”
The modern monopolies of fascist propaganda – established by the monopolies of criminal Violence – know all of this too well, and develop huge additional campaigns to counteract this relative ideological inferiority:
“Worcester. For well you know we of the off’ring [challenging] side / Must keep aloof from strict arbitrement, / And stop all sight-holes, every loop from whence / The eye of reason may pry in upon us.” (W. Shakespeare, ‘King Henry IV, Pt 1’.)
“King. O piteous spectacle! O bloody times! / Whiles lions war and battle for their dens, / Poor harmless lambs abide their enmity.” (W. Shakespeare; ‘King Henry VI, Pt 3’.)
These confrontations within the offending side can momentarily lead to stop its expansion; but the imperialistic enterprise and solidarity against the Peoples to be dominated are immediately restored once the internal rivalries have been overcome, as it happened to the north-american Aborigines after the War Between the States, and in so many other moments in history.
“King. Now for our Irish wars. / We must supplant those rough rug-headed kerns, / Which live like venom where no venom else / But only they have privilege to live.” (W. Shakespeare; ‘King Richard II’.)
“King. [...] Therefore, friends, / As far as to the sepulchre of Christ, / –Whose soldier now, under whose blessed cross / We are impressed and engag’d to fight,–/ Forthwith a power of English shall we levy, / Whose arms were moulded in their mother’s womb / To chase these pagans in those holy fields / Over whose acres walk’d those blessed feet / [...].
“Westmoreland. My liege, this haste was hot in question, / And many limits of the charge set down / But yesternight; when all athwart there came / A post from Wales loaden with heavy news; / Whose worst was that the noble Mortimer, / Leading the men of Herefordshire to fight / Against the irregular and wild Glendower, / Was by the rude hands of that Welshman taken, / And a thousand of his people butchered; / Upon whose dead corpse’ there was such misuse, / Such beastly shameless transformation / By those Welshwomen done, as may not be / Without much shame re-told or spoken of.” (W. Shakespeare; ‘King Henry IV, Pt 1’.)
After having been affirmed the Holiness, nobility and courage of the imperialistic enterprise and agents, the National Resistance, no matter the way it may be realized, is presented by the ideology of the imperialistic service – of which literature has left us an invaluable witness – as intrinsically evil; and its actors: traditionally savages, criminals, bandits, thieves, murderers, fanatics, pagans, heretics, zoophiles and necrophiles (according to the times and the needs of modulating the defamation and slander, depending on the sensitivity and gullibility of the masses that were intended to be put under ideological conditioning), are now incorporated in the shapeless list: without an avowable concept or definition, of the new universal “terrorism”, absolute weapon of the contemporary totalitarian ideology.
Thus, the imperialistic Nationalism “updates” its technique of ideological intoxication and psychological warfare; and however huge its crimes of war, against peace and against humanity may be (as they indeed are), it presents itself on the contrary as a democratic, peaceful and non-violent movement of liberation and defence of fundamental human rights. And finally it tries to persuade the attacked, colonized and defenceless People that the aggressor and oppressor is itself.
“Each civilization and every language will fight, and inevitably there will be corpses because there is no place for all.” It’s the thesis of the living space of the imperialistic Nationalism: whether it be National-Darwinism, National-socialism/communism, or National-Catholicism, formulated by the humanists-nationalists where and when they feel themselves in a position of strength; in contrast with the sermons that they lavish when and where they feel in a situation of inferiority. It is a false thesis inasmuch it states that the lack of space for living and coexisting forces the Nations to fight to the death between them. It is realistic insofar as the imperialistic Nationalism, its national expansion to the entire universe, and the consequent domination and deletion of the other Peoples are affirmed as essential in the Nation historically constituted around the criminal national-imperialistic enterprise.
The Spanish and French imperialism in the occupied Historical Territories of the Basque People is an absolute imperialism. It involves the colonization, exclusion and assimilation of the Basque People; the destruction of all sign or foundation of its identity; and the theoretical and practical denial of its national freedom, of its international law on an equal footing with all the Peoples of the world, of all fundamental human rights, and above all of its right of self-determination or independence: first of human rights and prior condition of them all and inseparable from the inherent right of legitimate self-defence.
It is also a total imperialism: it uses without limitation all available means in order to submit and destroy the other Nations that it keeps subjugated. The National Resistance, in actions or in words, has to face up to the monopolistic criminal Violence and Terror of State, which does kill, imprison, torture, steal, exclude, persecute and gag those who dare to resist its dictates. “All conquerors, whether Mongols or Spaniards, have brought death and pillage” to the subjugated Peoples. The extermination and political liquidation of the subjugated Peoples through criminal Violence, is the most direct way to put an end to them.
The Spanish and French imperialistic Nationalism is, by nature, opposed to the international coexistence and concord; it considers no other outcome, for the absolute and total conflict that it has promoted against the Peoples, than the final solution. The liquidation of the oppressed Peoples is its fundamental and immutable aim. The beforehand denial of those Peoples’ identity, and of their very existence, serves ideologically to this objective of liquidation. It is the supreme expression of the essence of imperialistic Nationalism and racism: the scorn and denial of other Peoples.
The paradigmatic case of Algeria: “The apparent simplicity of the issue – independence or not – conceals the complexity of the situation. If the independence of the protectorate or of the colony were considered by the imperial State as an unmitigated evil, an irremediable defeat, it would be necessary to return to the elementary duality friend-foe. The nationalist – Tunisian, Moroccan, Algerian – would be the enemy: not occasional nor even permanent, resuming the terms we have defined above; it would be the absolute enemy, he with whom no reconciliation is possible, whose very existence is an aggression and who, consequently, if the logic were to be followed up to the end, had to be exterminated. Delenda est Carthago: the formula is that of the absolute enmity, the enmity of Rome and of Carthage; one of the two cities is de trop. If Algeria is to remain definitely French, the nationalists who want an independent Algeria must be eliminated without mercy. In order that millions of Muslims may become French, in the middle of the 20th century, it is necessary that they cannot even dream of an Algerian nation and forget the witnesses ‘who had their throats cut’.” (Raymond Aron, ‘Paix et guerre entre les nations’, 1962.)
The French forces of war and occupation in Algeria had clear their objective since the beginning of the conquest: “In one word, annihilate everything that does not grovel at our feet like dogs.” The official declaration for Algeria in 1858 expressed the problem and the final solution in an all-embracing view, in a broader perspective than the strict military or political views of war and occupation: “We are in the presence of an armed and vivacious nationality that is necessary to quench by assimilation”, by “the dislocation of the arab people and the fusion”. When the mad-dog is dead, the rabies is over. It is the absolute military, political and social conflict.
One century and a half of wars of aggression, conquest, occupation, terrorism, plundering and colonization had given to French imperialism the domain of Berber and “Arab” Maghreb. Once the “protectorates” of Tunisia and Morocco had been liberated, it remained to be “represented” the last act of the large overseas Empires in Algeria. The infamous colonial war of a “great European and civilized, developed and industrialized Nation”, against a small Country of peasants, kept at bay by means of repression, terror, torture, hunger, looting and redistribution of lands for the colonists, “free zones” (no-man’s-land of automatic execution), “regroupement” of peasant civilians into concentration camps (following the model of the genocidal Spanish invention in Cuba: the “Re-concentration” of peasants), exploitation, misery and ignorance. One million of colonists, implanted by a Government which ruled over fifty millions of metropolitans, maintained their domination over nine million of indigenous people. A modern army of occupation of 450,000 men was chasing 20,000 fellagha weakly armed and millions of unarmed people, with the full powers that the French National-socialists and National-communists had voted, and that their Government had granted to it.
This way, the transfer and the privileged installation of French immigrants: so that the French colony of population could balance or exceed the indigenous population, could be achieved without any restriction under the exclusive control of migratory flows maintained by the imperialist monopoly of criminal Violence. But this objective appeared – demographically and economically – more and more impossible, as well as the extermination by means of criminal Violence, hunger, deportation or disease. “The armed force of France allowed the conquest of Algeria but not the assimilation of the Algerians: the conquest was as futile as unfair, because this assimilation exceeded the forces of France.” Its international positions: despite the reserved recognition of the UN and the Great Powers, were being unceasingly weakened in a world in full movement of decolonization.
In such conditions, “the partisans are unable to beat the regular armies; but they make them costly the maintenance of the order, and impossible the pacification”. The supplies of cannon-fodder for the imperial and colonial wars had been closed; and although “the losses in human lives were ten or twenty times higher on the side of the Algerian nationalists than on the French side”: in an inverse proportion of the economic cost of the “pacification”, the lucrative colonial bargain had turned into a ruinous business. In these circumstances, the Fourth Republic had given way to the Fifth under the threat of the army of Africa, ready to jump on Paris – as it had jumped on Spain in 1936 – and make the metropolis pay its overseas crimes. The Algerian independence did also liberate France; instead, that of Cuba and Morocco could not prevent the landing of General Franco.
“The Statesmen, if they had reflected about the significance of these figures, would not have had doubts about the outcome.” They would so have spared the colonized, and also the colonists, many years of war, ruins, hatred and pain. But “if the statesmen had reflected” about something, the 20th century wars and many others would have not taken place. The “national interest” has its own reasons that the reason ignores; and if in general the Peoples are not rational (they rarely are reasonable), the military and bureaucratic castes that wield real power almost never are so. Imperialism is neither rational nor reasonable, except insofar as the reflection is compatible for serving the instinct of aggression, and the national-imperialistic affectivity and passion. The consequences are paid by all, including the predatory Peoples themselves.
The negation of the subjugated People and State, and its reduction to the “national unity” of the aggressor occupying State, did found the official ideology of the illusion in the service of imperialism, which was generously served by the representatives of the official “left”. According to that ideology, the Algerian “sedition” “was not political nor military: its actors were [French] compatriots and at the same time criminals, delinquents, bandits and terrorists” devoid of any rights. The war in Algeria was non-existent, “logically” absurd and impossible either in essence and in existence: there only was place for “police and pacification” operations (with a “police” force of 500,000 agents, as many as adult colonists, the equivalent of a bodyguard for each colonist).
“This is the very dogma of our policy: Algeria is France.” “The Departments of Algeria are French for some time.” [Sic] “Algeria is France, and not a foreign Country that we are protecting.” “Algeria is France, and France will not recognize in its house another authority different than its own.” “First of all, re-establish the rule of law.” “Algeria is part of France. And who of us would hesitate to use all means at our disposal to preserve France? The only possible negotiation is war.” “France cannot wage war to France.” “We cannot talk of negotiating with the rebels that, by the same extent of their misdeeds, may not expect but be exposed to the rigors of repression.” “It is not to be expected from us indulgence with the sedition, nor any compromise with it. There is no possible compromise when it comes to defending the inner peace of the Nation and the integrity of the Republic.” “Between Algeria and the metropolis there is no conceivable secession. This should be clear to everybody.” “Painful though it may be for us (because it’s about our compatriots), those who engage in the rebellion should know that the consequences for them will be terrible.” “All those who in one way or another try to create disorder and tend to the secession will be punished by all means that the law puts at our disposal.” “The pacification is nowadays assured, there is no one who can believe in the victory of the fellagha.” “What is the French Republic? It is, according to our Constitution, the territory of the Metropolis, they are the Departments of Algeria, and they are the overseas Departments and Territories.” Algeria “is located at the very centre, where forces gather”; “it must remain as the central pivot upon which the central power of the Republic must be exercised”. “The ties between France and Algeria are indissoluble.” “The Algerian nationalism is as dangerous as the Alsatian separatism.” Etc.
And finally, a sample of the speech of a “socialist”: “Algeria is France, [...]. From Flanders to the Congo, [...] everywhere the law is imposed, and this law is French law; it is the one you have voted for, because there is only one parliament and one nation, in the overseas territories as well as in the departments of Algeria as in the metropolis. This is our rule; not only because the Constitution requires it on us but because it is in accordance with our wishes. [...] The only negotiation is war.” (Speech by François Mitterrand, ‘Socialist’ Minister of the Interior in the Mendes-France Government, delivered from the rostrum of the French National Assembly, 12 November 1954.)
This way did the “left-wing” French Nationalists speak and act before and during the non-war of pacification, before and after the French National-socialists and National-communists had voted full powers for the army of occupation, and until the very eve of Algerian independence. The “legal” means: from the official executions up to the fields of “regroupement” of the civilian population, were accompanied by the “illegal” means by everybody known. The hypocritical denunciation of torture and other purported “excesses of the pacification”: expressed by the French Nationalist (purported humanists), allowed to conceal and safeguard the imperialistic and colonialist régime; of which those excesses are not an accessory but an inherent and necessary part.
Sixty years later, the ideology of French imperialism has not changed in the slightest: they maintain the same Nationalist delirium, the same presumptuous and arrogant conviction of its own superiority, the same contempt of the others (be it of their freedom or their rights), the cult of brute force as decisive means and only answer, and the immediate resource to unlimited criminal Violence, war of aggression, repression and Terrorism as solution of the problems that the imperialism produces and reproduces. France has always the monopoly on the nation, on policy, on law, and on “anti-terrorist” Terrorism.
The Spanish and French imperialism is the product of a long national history of conquest and domination, and of a permanent belief in the own linguistic, cultural and racial superiority. Their imperialistic Nationalism and “universalism” converge towards a final identification in an inherent destination, to govern and assimilate the whole world. If so ambitious and pretentious an enterprise has suffered some reductions, it has been due to the misunderstanding of the others, and to the surprising and close-minded refusal of the natives to merge into the civilization and progress provided by superior races.
A distinguished – albeit Nationalist – French historian did accuse an Occitan author, and the State monopoly of radio-television itself, not of falsifying the history of the French-Roman Crusade “against the Albigensians” but of spreading the truth about it, “even though they were thereby undermining the French unity”; which, “naturally”, is a value that must prevail over historical truth and the fundamental human rights. For its part, the French Ministry of the Interior: which took measures without possible defence or appeal against an Algerian journalist, did not accuse him of lying about the anti-Algerian repression but of telling the truth, being at that time a foreigner; which, having been “abandoned” shortly before the nationalist-fundamentalist principle “Algeria is France” (and the Algerians, French), placed the journalist in the legal position of a foreigner who, through the truth, was slandering France in France. The last straw, no doubt!
Telling the truth continued still endangering the security of the French Republic: “one and indivisible by petition of principle”; and the remaining French did not have it much easier to tell it than the outgoing ones. As for the Spaniards and their colonies, the Government imposed the forced adherence to the principles of the movement; and the fascist salute arm in the air (mandatory in all public places and entertainments), as well as the “Formation of the National Spirit” (compulsory in all educational institutions and communication centres), were condition of the right to the public and private life.
The “decolonisation” was, in North-America and Oceania, the triumph of the colonists over the natives and the metropolis, “united” sometimes these latter against the former. In Africa, the “decolonisation” was carried out by denying the reality of the Peoples, and replacing their right of self-determination or independence with the right to the continuity and the succession of States that had been artificially formed by the European colonialist Powers in function of their criminal design of exploitation and plunder.
In Meso-South America, “The cultured classes of the Inca or Aztec Empires were decimated by the invaders coming from Spain, and the Indian masses, deprived of their traditional culture, vegetated for centuries without reason to live, treated as sub-humans by the victors who became the privileged class of the colonial society”. “The conquerors destroyed civilizations that neither could nor did want to understand, without even being aware of committing a crime.” It was the culmination of the absolute Terror, of the cruelty without limits, of the gruesome crimes that have always characterized the baneful association of the Catholic Church with the Spanish State, of the clerical bigotry and the Spanish imperialistic Nationalism. Along with the Encomienda, the slavery, the exploitation, the forced labour, the mita, the Inquisition and the Autos-da-fé, were also imported the great epidemics.
After having caused twenty million deaths, the demographic problem was “solved” with another genocide: with Africans wrenched from their Countries, enslaved and carried to America; which consolidated the Spanish Empire of the Indies. “In less than one hundred years, the conquerors coming from Spain had liquidated the beautiful american races. No one will be able to imitate an ideal like that.” Still three centuries later, the last Depositaries of Inca legitimacy were persecuted throughout the world and killed by the assassins of the enlightened “King of Spain”, and this monarchical specialty has not been lost since then. The last Araucanian insurrection was reduced by the Chilean army in 1882. The Spanish Empire in Asia and Africa offered insurmountable demographic difficulties except in the Canary Islands enclosure, where “the fusion of Natives – Guanche – and Spaniards was carried out quickly”.
In North America, the strategic potentiality of the indigenous Resistance depended on the context of war and peace between the European metropolises and their colonies, and on that of the colonies between themselves (1763-1814). Wars and formal or unequal treaties neutralized the political base of the Native Americans’ Resistance; and the colonies of population of European origin, with a permanent military and civilian territorial administration, ended up with its social base. The last Aboriginal insurrection: the Apache Wars, was reduced in 1886. The Sandwich Islands preserved their independence in the frame of the expansion and the rivalry between the colonial Powers of the Pacific; but the multi-racial migration, the epidemics, the missionaries and the coup d’état of the colonists in 1893 led to the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands.
The Middle East was partitioned by means of infamous secret agreements (Sykes-Picot/Balfour), deliberately lying to all parties, establishing borders with ruler and set square (“I should like to draw a line from the ein Acre to the kin Kirkuk.” M. Sykes; 1915), and – there the same as in Africa and everywhere – leaving bags of inner imperialism and oppression for various Peoples. All of which has continued giving up to this day its tragic and inevitable consequences, in the form of wars that have caused and are causing hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of displaced persons; “humanitarian disasters” that were perfectly predictable, whose responsibility these Powers do not even contemplate or do it rather mildly, and that they hypocritically claim to regret.
Eighty-seven years later, in a 2002 interview with “The New Statesman”, the British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw observed: “A lot of the problems we are having to deal with now, I have to deal with now, are a consequence of our colonial past. [...] The Balfour Declaration [1917] and the contradictory assurances which were being given to Palestinians in private at the same time as they were being given to the Israelis – again, [is] an interesting history for us but not an entirely honourable one.” And from the moment in which these “interesting” views were given until today, things have done but worsen exponentially.
“If the self-determination of nationalities is to be the principle [to be followed, in that case] the interference of France in the selection of advisers by the Arab Government, and the suggestion by France of the Emirs to be selected by the Arabs in Mosul, Aleppo and Damascus, would seem utterly incompatible with our ideas of liberating the Arab nation and of establishing a free and independent Arab State. The British Government, in authorising the letters despatched to King Hussein [Sharif of Mecca] before the outbreak of the revolt by Sir Henry McMahon, would seem to raise a doubt, as to whether our pledges to King Hussein as head of the Arab nation are consistent with French intentions to make not only Syria but Upper Mesopotamia another Tunis.” Etc. (William Ormsby Gore, 1917.)
As to Palestine, the deliberate and silent systematic infiltration of Hebrew population into that area had been designed by the father of modern political Zionism, Theodor Herzl, at the end of the nineteenth century. In a letter addressed to Yusuf Al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem under Ottoman administration, dated March 19, 1899, Herzl points out the advantages that Jewish immigration would have for both the Ottoman Empire and the non-Hebrew population; and regarding his concerns about the non-Hebrew majority population of Palestine, Herzl reassures him by slyly saying: “[...] The Jews have no belligerent Power behind them, neither are they themselves of a warlike nature. They are a completely peaceful element, and very content if they are left in peace. Therefore, there is absolutely nothing to fear from their immigration. [...] You see another difficulty, Excellency, in the existence of the non-Jewish population in Palestine. But who would think of sending them away?”; and he concludes ambiguously his lettet saying that “if he (the Ottoman Sultan) will not accept it, we will search and, believe me, we will find elsewhere what we need.” As Rashid Khalidi points out, this sentiment was penned 4 years after Herzl had confided to his diary with these words the idea of spiriting the Arab population away to make way for Jews:
“We must expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our own country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.” (Rashid Khalidi; ‘The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017’, 2020.)
This was seen and described in real time like this: “For the last thirty years, alien immigrants have been forced upon us. Now, these immigrants, though still a minority, want to have a Jew State in our Country, in which we would become the minority.” (Jamal al-Husayni, Vice-President of the Arab Higher Committee and head of the Palestinian Delegation at the London Conference; from his speech delivered there in January-1947.) That is exactly what an unfortunate United Nations’ resolution ended up allowing:
“The majority proposal [of the UNO] is so manifestly unjust to the Arabs that it is difficult to see how – in Sir Alexander Cadogan’s words – ‘we could reconcile it with our conscience’.” (Comment by Ernest Bevin, British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, on the United Nations Plan for the Partition of Palestine into Two States, approved by the Resolution 181 [II] on 1947 November 29, by 33 votes in favour, 13 against, and 10 abstentions including the United Kingdom, which thus intended not to get its hands dirty in that disaster after having caused everything from the Balfour Declaration in 1917.) For the first time since the War, the United States and the Soviet Union voted in unison in the General Assembly in favour of the partition of Palestine.
In this way, an initial “Jewish” remnant of the 0.3% of the population of Palestine during the Ottoman Empire was turned – in that international context after the Second World War, favourable to the Hebrew exodus to Palestine, to its war terrorism and then State Terrorism of Zionist ideology, and to the implantation of its population colonies transplanted from abroad which did exclude and expel the autochthonous Semites of Palestine – into a local or relative “majority” that does currently hold the whole totalitarian power. A criminal and anti-Semitic power that, in consonance with the current semantic, moral and ideological corruption implemented under the protection of the hegemonic Power, they do at all hours and shamelessly call “a legitimate and democratic State”. (We refer the reader to the previous Chapter 4 – ‘Dominant morality and ideology: instruments of the dominant power’.)
In violation of all fundamental human rights and therefore of any genuine Democracy, that Zionist power: which counting on the venality or stupidity of Western “intellectuals” and propagandists has confiscated for its own and exclusive benefit the term/concept ‘anti-Semitism’ for any crfiticism that is directed against Zionism, consists in maintaining the cornering, suffocation and genocide of the autochthonous Palestinian Semites in the Gaza Strip, after having expelled them from their lands and homes; and in imposing their exclusion in the West Bank through a racist régime of apartheid and super-Bantustanization of their territory. (In contrast to the innumerable illegal “settlements” imposed by the Zionist régime in the West Bank, in South Africa and South West Africa – present-day Namibia – there “only” twenty Bantustans operated.)
“Our people will never forget the help that the Soviet Union offered us, nor its loyal support to Israel, in its struggle for independence in its historical cradle.” (From the letter of David Ben-Gurion, Prime Minister of Israel, to Stalin, thanking him for the support of the USSR and its satellites to Israel at the UNO, and for their rejection – even through the veto – of the Resolution 194, in December 1948, which recognized the right of the 750,000 Palestinians expelled from their homes and cities, as well as their descendant and heirs, to return to them. The United States and the United Kigdom voted in favour of the resolution.)
There are no special privileges for so-called “chosen peoples”, and all the Peoples of the World are to be treated equally. Therefore, they must be recognized and supported as persecuted, when they are persecuted; and denounced and fought as criminal aggressors and oppressors when they are aggressors; as is currently the Zionist entity, perpetrator of crimes of war, crimes against the peace and security of Peoples and their legitimate States, and crimes against Humanity.
The consolidation – even temporary – of the imperialistic domination implies some means that not all imperialism can or want to use. “The execution of the nationalist leaders, at the opportune moment, would have not stopped but certainly delayed considerably the Movements of National Liberation across the world.” “The execution of the responsible agents is an effective way to slow the march to freedom.”
The British reluctance to an unlimited use of criminal Violence in the Empire of India accelerated its inevitable march to independence. With it the freedom did well, and so did the United Kingdom too. The demographic, economic, political and cultural capacity of the small Great Island to preserve its amazing colonial rule had reached its natural limit. Also had the Second French Colonial Empire in Asia and Africa; but the obtuse belief of the French nation in its racial, linguistic and cultural superiority, and in its mission of – and ability to – dominate, assimilate and civilize the whole world, did not allow the same solution. The French Nationalism has always had the eyes, the nails and teeth bigger than the stomach.
The nationalist passion and the imperialistic racism blind their own agents. Result of centuries of despotism, the totalitarian idolatry of the immovable and all-mighty State: beginning and end of all moral, all policy and all law, condemns and blocks any progress, and puts oppressors and oppressed in tow or behind the history. The small-minded obstinacy of French and Spaniards in preserving, by means of out-and-out criminal Violence and Terrorism, the Empires that the criminal Violence and Terrorism at any cost allowed them to establish, has had consequences that only the nationalist fanaticism allows to ignore. Neither they nor anyone will lose time in regretting or in the implementation of futile alternatives. Everyone do what they can, and – in the case that is before us – Spanish and French imperialists and colonialists do the only thing they know to do.
All the past and present history of Spain and France is founded in the constant effort to exclude from human community the conquered Peoples, and even the dominated residual minorities. Basques, Jewish and Moorish, Guanche, American Indians, African black Aborigines, Tagalog, Arab, Berber or Vietnamese, know too well of their imperialistic and racist policy of war of aggression, discrimination, apartheid and ethnic cleansing. Countless historical examples: remote or recent, continental or overseas, have proven without a doubt that the Spanish and French imperialisms are radically uncapable to admit and recognize the reality, that is: the existence and the rights of independence of Peoples that they have occupied, annexed and colonized, while they have not exhausted up to the last extent all the resources of criminal Violence and Terrorism that they have, and even much later.
There is no doubt that Fascism, supreme and necessary form of imperialism, will continue using without restriction also here all the means of repression at its disposal in order to block the democratic forces’ way, and to once and permanently put an end with the Basque People and with its occupied State, the Kingdom of Nabarre.
(From: ‘Violence and Terrorism.- Their ideological mistification at the service of Imperialism’.)
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