“Non-violence, Freedom and Democracy”: ideological mystifications of contemporary Despotism (7)

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

7 – “Non-violence, Freedom and Democracy”: ideological mystifications of contemporary Despotism

Iñaki Aginaga and Felipe Campo

Today, the fear of violence and the demand for safety of the popular masses: scalded by the wars and revolutions of the 20th century, have by consequence, once again, the rise of Leviathan in the more reactionary forms that could be expected; but at the same time they determine the hypocritical propaganda of “peace and non-violence” of the totalitarian States themselves, armed to the teeth and protagonists of the greater hecatombs of History.

It is significant, with respect to the contemporary ideological drift, the fact that such totalitarian powers: which have been established and maintained by means of war of aggression and monopoly of criminal Violence, and that are holders of the greater means of destruction ever accumulated, pretend to be opponents of “all violence coming from where it may come”. Thus, the most remarkable ideological feature of modern and contemporary despotism, beginning with the “French revolution”, is that totalitarianism, dictatorship, terrorism, warmongering, aggression, imperialism and colonialism appear disguised and clad in “freedom, equality, pacifism, non-violence, human rights and democracy”.

More recently, the “democratic and pacifist” ideology universally proclaimed since the Second World War, does force any totalitarian régime to recuperate the name and the concept of democracy and its correlates, so as to cover up and justify itself with them: “The more reactionary, aggressive, violent, repressive and terrorist is the policy of the imperialistic States, the more does itself carefully camouflage behind pompous phrases about freedom, democracy and ‘the free world’ etc.”

“Non-violence, freedom and democracy” must appear in all cases as a reference and determining and essential factors of the historical and social constitution and legitimacy of the current régime of military occupation, and of the totalitarian political power. To do this, on the one hand, the imperialistic ideology falsifies the ideas of “non-violence, freedom and democracy”, so that they “correspond” to the régime which such ideology serves to. On the other, it falsifies the reality, origin, basis and nature of the established imperialistic political power, so that it may correspond to the ideas of reference. The dominant ideology hides and distorts the facts, conceals and falsifies sociology and history, and proceeds through contradiction in terms and begging the question (petitio principii), so as to make people believe that, in an “obvious and natural” manner, things are just as it suits to its domination.

All imperialistic and fascist Government does now proclaim itself democratic and non-violent at the same time. In the whole world, States that hold the greatest forces of violence of the planet, including weapons of mass destruction, condemn cynically or hypocritically “all violence”. In the new semantics fabricated by the ideology of the dominant totalitarian Powers, “violence and terrorism” designate the violence of others, incompatible with their own monopoly of criminal Violence and Terrorism of masses, which they do instead present as “democracy and non-violence”. The cases of Spain and France are paradigmatic.

However, the purportedly incorruptible and intransigent defenders of peace and non-violence that govern us have not established and maintained their power by non-violence, persuasion and dialogue but by the exclusive control of institutional, professional and permanent armed forces, and by the contempt and suppression of all historical and fundamental human rights of the Basque People. All of it, after having received the decisive aid of the first military and National-socialist Power of Europe, the subsequent unconditional support of the world’s first nuclear Power, and having always received the spiritual and material instigation, justification, blessing and collaboration of the first religious Institution of the Western World: the Church of Rome. This, and no other, is the reality that the official shamelessness of the foreign agents and the indigenous collaborators of the French-Spanish imperialistic and fascist régime of military occupation established over the Basque People and its State, the Kingdom of Nabarre, does describe as “democratic and non-violent” and “rule of law”.

Since the fall of primitive Fascism and National-Socialism, the ideologists of French-Spanish imperialism and totalitarianism invoke with all shamelessness “freedom, democracy, human rights and non-violence” that they claim to be defending; and, consequently, they do theoretically and practically condemn those who – having fought on the ground in our Country against Spanish and international Nazism and Fascism – are being persecuted for genuinely defending those causes. This cynical and shameless total reversal of the political terms is the most characteristic ideological aspect of current French-Spanish Imperialism and Fascism.

The agents of Spanish and French imperialistic Nationalism do call themselves all the time “non-violent democrats”, with the hope that, by dint of repeating it in the conditions of general alienation created by the totalitarian power they have established over our Country, the Basque People will believe it or make “as if” they believe it. But they are the same imperialists and fascists of always, even more dangerous than before. Meanwhile, being camouflaged and disguised its action (since it is comforted as “legitimate and democratic” by the stupid or bought support that the imperialist régime receives from the ‘intelligentsia’ and the “Basque political class” formed by the liquidationist bureaucracy Pnv-Eta and its satellites), the political practice of the established power goes on “transforming” the reality of the subjugated People. That is: it continues to liquidate our national characteristics (which it denies from the beginning, starting with our own and millenary language, the Euskara), in accordance with the real conscience and fundamental and constant objective of the French-Spanish imperialistic Nationalism. A transformation/liquidation that, achieved through fascist imposition and indoctrination, is in turn invoked a posteriori in order to legitimize the “new reality” thus achieved.

“In the world of realities we incessantly see by experience [...] that those same ones that, a few moments before, had preached the doctrine of ‘love in opposition to force’, do appeal a few minutes later to this same force.” To tell the truth, “in the world of realities”, the imperialistic hypocrites in office our Country – who “condemn all violence coming from where it may come” – do not wait a few minutes to appeal to force, because their behaviour and their propaganda are founded and exercised in the bosom of an order and disorder that they have in advance imposed and established by means of criminal Violence, war of aggression, repression and Terror against fundamental human rights.

Only hypocrites denounce individual “terrorism”, while they justify or practice mass Terrorism. The discourses and exhortations– either they be pious or hypocritical – that recognize, bless and support the established imperialistic and fascist power, or its war “righteous in one or in both sides”, do always move in the comfortable and politically marginal space in which that criminal power confines them; and, by proclaiming under those conditions the “sacred value” of human life, they fulfil the equivocal or complicit function assigned to them.

“What is the meaning of the principle of the sacredness of human life in practice, and in what does it differ from the Commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’? Kautsky does not explain. When a murderer raises his knife over a child, may one kill the murderer to save the child? Will not thereby the principle of the ‘sacredness of human life’ be infringed? May one kill the murderer to save oneself? Is an insurrection of oppressed slaves against their masters permissible? Is it permissible to purchase one’s freedom at the cost of the life of one’s jailers? [...] Kautsky simply does not realize the counter-revolutionary meaning of the ‘principle’ which he attempts to force upon us. Elsewhere we shall see that Kautsky accuses us of concluding the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk: in his opinion we ought to have continued war. But what then becomes of the sacredness of human life? Does life cease to be sacred when it is a question of people talking another language, or does Kautsky consider that mass murders organized on principles of strategy and tactics are not murders at all? Truly, it is difficult to put forward in our age a principle more hypocritical and more stupid.” (Leon Trotsky; ‘Dictatorship vs. Democracy’, 1920.)

In the upside-down world of the new hypocritical ideology characteristic of the totalitarian States and of their empires constituted by the monopoly of criminal Violence (established and preserved at the expense of mountains of corpses and rivers of blood by means of war of aggression, conquest, occupation, Terrorism of masses, continental and trans-continental genocide of Peoples and civilizations, and suppression of all fundamental human rights), which keep permanent armed forces that are monopoly of the State and that are equipped with lethal weapons of selective or massive destruction, which come into action at the slightest infraction; in such a situation, does however take place the amazing fact that such actors adopt the attitudes and recuperate the mask, clean hands and white gloves of immaculate, harmless, innocent, peaceful and non-violent victims deprived of their rights and their freedom.

With all shamelessness, such agents do at the same time pretend to be “democrats, defenders of human rights, contrary to all violence coming from where it may come and supporters of the right to life: first of human rights” etc. Those who in our Country do hold or – at the very least – support the French-Spanish power of military occupation over the Basque People and its State, founded by criminal Violence and Terror through a whole history of crimes of war, against peace and against humanity, do speak of terrorism (that of others’), of rights and victims where, if they had any shame, only could shut up and ask for forgiveness.

The imperialistic policy and the absolute and total war: as fascism and totalitarianism understand and practice them, do not recognize limitations or rules, nor do they rule out prohibited weapons or purposes. Thus, terrorism, crimes of war, against peace and against humanity, and the violation and repression of fundamental human rights are proper and normal behaviour of the actors of nationalist, imperialistic and fascist total Violence. And just in the same way, the psychological conditioning and warfare integrating that Violence are limitless: everything is lawful and valid for the “intelligence” and mass ideological poisoning services.

Arrogance, provocation, impudence and lack of shame; hypocrisy or cynicism in the falsifying, lying and defamation; absence of all sense of honour, honesty and decency, are inherent in their ideological nature, and are characteristic, normal and congenital qualities of their agents. Qualities that must be taken into account as simple objective data, without further reaction or indignation than the one needed for their effective treatment.

The hypocritical pacifism that disseminates the absurd and heretical statement of the supreme and absolute value of human life (“no cause, righteous though it may be, is worth a single drop of blood” etc., is constantly said by those who every day celebrate the liturgy of redeeming sacrifice as the supreme value), is alternated, when needed, with the condemnation of non-violence, from the Council of Arles until the 21st century. The silence or the approval do conceal or comfort the crimes of Phalangist, Carlist and Francoist military and clergy. “The fifth: ‘thou shalt not kill’, never and for no reason”, does not bind the mighty and the oppressors but the weak and the oppressed, whose sufferings are a just God’s punishment for attempting against the sacred unity of Spain and of France. The armed forces and the agents of conquest, repression and terror of Spain and of France – Favourite Daughters of the Church – have found and continue to find all the encouragement, justifications and ecclesiastical blessings they wanted.

The Churches, which have passed the – sacred – history exciting, blessing, celebrating, organizing and perpetrating sacrifices, Crusades, slaughters, conquests, plundering and genocides; torturing and burning alive their dissenters as an immediate anticipation of hell; and honouring and canonizing the most bloodthirsty despots (provided they would expect from these benefits and not detriments for their own direct or indirect power), do now preach forgiveness and brotherly love at the Peoples they massacred, without ever having recognized and condemned those monstrous crimes.

Popes, Bishops and their several henchmen, who drove through all the Christian Era countless continental and trans-continental massacres, crusades and wars of conquest: the greatest enterprises of criminal Violence and Terrorism, genocide, plunder and fanaticism of the history of Humanity; the instigators, actors and leaders of the National-Catholicism and of the Francoist Crusade who preach that “Killing is a sin, however it is not sin but virtue and obligation when it comes to serving God and Spain”, or that “May cannons be blessed, if in the breaches that they open does flourish the Gospel”, do present the Spanish imperialism as a “moral value”, do – heretically – condemn violence and bloodshed as absolute – but selectively attributed – sins, and qualify as “exaggerated nationalism” all that refers to the natural right of legitimate self-defence and self-determination of all Peoples subjugated by French-Spanish imperialism.

Instead, and without the least remorse, the fascist Bishops and Cardinals blessed the Italian National-Catholicism and the expeditionary troops that burned alive in the name of God the “violent” and defenceless – Christians – natives of Abyssinia; and the Cardinals and Bishops of the First Francoism blessed the crimes of Spanish Nationalism, reinforced then with African Muslims with license and recommendation to kill, steal and rape as much and as well as if they were good Spanish Catholics. For their part, the French Bishops proclaim the right and obligation of the French people and State to manufacture and, “if necessary” (doing so on a whim or for fun would be a sin), to use the atomic bomb: a terrorist weapon of mass and indiscriminate destruction, initially calculated and fabricated in order to burn alive at the first attack fifty million people of all sex and age, mostly civilians. Instead, they condemn the violence, terrorism, individual attempts and molotov cocktails of the poor, oppressed and homeless all around the world, because “manufacturing, transporting and setting a home-made explosive device is to kill”.

The Most Revd. French Bishop of Bayonne, Lescar and Oloron tears hypocritically his chasuble before an attempt “in my Department”. (As an official of the State that he is, appointed by the Ministry of the Interior, he is aware that it’s in his Department, not in his Diocese, as it exercises jurisdiction in Basque land.) Anti-Semitic clerics, Israelite rabbis, and Tibetan Buddhists have already joined the nazi, monarchist and republican politicians, and the national-socialists and national-communists (who did long ago abandon republic, socialism and communism to reveal themselves as monarchists and National-imperialists tout court), so as to give here the lessons of dialogue and non-violence that they apply the other way round in Iraq, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Tibet, Palestine and other privileged places where there reign the imperialistic peace and non-violent co-existence.

If we are to believe the monopolistic propaganda of totalitarian States, there are no more armies, or armed forces, or colonial troops of occupation, or ministries of war, or spies, actions of war, violence or terrorism; there are only missionaries left. That is to say: “non-violent professional pacifists and peacekeepers in missions of peace; missions for the strengthening of international peace and security; missions of advice and assistance in military matters, and joint actions in disarmament; specific military and civilian missions involving armed forces with a very light weaponry to attend to the self-defence and the separation of contenders, the surgical bombing carried out by surgeons-bombers, and the operations of prevention-stabilization of conflict and crisis management; missions of contribution to the fight against terrorism, with conventional and nuclear dissuasive weapons meant only to scare but that never are going to be used; ministries of war turned into ministries of defence, and armies whose job is peace” etc. They are the demonstration of the new spirit of love, concord and – above all – peace and non-violence which encourages the new international society.

It is obvious that, due to congenital or degenerate perversity of natives (who do always oppose by means of violence and terrorism to being given the benefits of civilization), it becomes necessary to resort to more effective means of persuasion but always without violence: through Sisters of Charity, teachers of humanism, humanitarianism and democracy, humanitarian interventions, fight (non-violent) against hunger, malaria and dysentery, actions for the protection of children and the rescue of hostages, and installation of hospitals and health services etc.

Naturally, the official negationism of criminal Violence of the imperialistic State, “the condemnation of all violence coming from where it may come”, and the postulated non-violence of its institutions, would be a mortal danger to the totalitarian system itself if its own “active members” believed what its ideologues do invent for to make others believe it. Its reckless distribution “for own consumption” would endanger the political régime; and its implementation would mean the radical and immediate end of the imperialistic policy and the suicide of imperialistic States that were to put it into practice. But although its ideologists may functionally toe out of the line when needed, however, its imperialistic bureaucracy and administration, until the last official, do know very well where they are and what for.

Actually, the mentioned negationism does not affect in the least to the monopoly of criminal Violence and Terror of masses or to the monopoly of propaganda that accompanies it; because, in the ideologically dominant social group, the ideology of illusion is always controlled, subordinate and kept at bay by the ideology of reality. That “illusionist” propaganda is reserved for the dominated and weakened social classes, whose capacity of criticism and spirit of Resistance did long ago disappear as a result of the terrorist repression and the mass psychological conditioning. But it is significant that the same rulers and officials of the imperial-totalitarian régime seem not to have a full or clear awareness of the functional nonsense they daily utter in this regard; which rather increases their efficiency, since no one gets to deceive the others better than he who deludes himself.

It could even be thought, a priori, that it would be an impossible task or mission to convince anyone that the armed forces (whose brute force has subjugated Peoples and that – before the eyes and at the expense of everybody – exert their constituent professional functions of repression and terror) do not exist, nor do the imperialistic State either. But if the propaganda monopolies take the trouble to spread these things it is, no doubt, because they work. And if they work it is, without a doubt, because the capacity of information and the rational and critical sense of the populations have disappeared due to imperialistic and fascist propaganda, reaching up to get that the social alienation is turned into mental alienation. All this, even though it undeniably presents some difficulties and cannot be achieved without a complex psychological and ideological operation, is nonetheless a stunning demonstration of the unlimited swindling capacity available for the State monopolies of violence and propaganda, which attain to exert an ideological brain washing and mental alienation over populations reduced to the situation of tele-phagic zombies.

Yet, without the collaboration of the auxiliary indigenous Services of imperialism, operating from within the subjugated Peoples, ideological by-products of such a despicable content would not have been  able to achieve even a minimal part of their goals. Indeed, these indigenous auxiliary Services of collaboration and complicity with Imperialism and Fascism are fundamental, since they the ones in charge of denying, disguising or reducing the reality of criminal Violence and Terrorism proper of such régimes, as well as the effects that they entail on Peoples which are their victims.

“Nonchalant” about the apology of the régime that it actually entails, these Collaborationists do only denounce the derived, accessory and marginal activities of the régime, namely: “the power that the Constitution attributes to the army”, “all violence, whether legalized or in response, of the régime”, the violence, terror and torture practiced in prisons and police stations, or “the excesses and states of emergency”; thereby denying all criminal Violence of the régime, whose “normal order” of domination and repression is thus recognized as non-violent, legitimate and democratic.

Undoubtedly, when the imperialistic Governments declare the state of emergency, they do so in order to remedy the repressive deficiencies of their normal political order. But the “Basque” Collaborators and Accomplices Pnv-Eta of Spanish imperialism come to “denounce” the state of emergency even when it does not exist, thus validating and accepting the “normal order” of that régime; a “normal order” that they do therefore recognize as legitimate and democratic. It is not – or it is not only – a matter of theoretical incapacity but of deliberate falsehood, bad faith or mystification by such accomplices, in the service of the totalitarian monopolies of violence and propaganda of French-Spanish imperialism. This attitude meets the need – which is theirs’ – of reducing and hiding the criminal Violence and State Terrorism as constituent, fundamental, original, primary and permanent realities of the States of France and Spain; in whose rapport, the capacity of violence involved in the individual attempts is simply left to a ridiculous level.

Once the constituent criminal Violence of the French-Spanish imperialistic and fascist régime has been hidden and denied, through the combined action of its agents and the indigenous Collaborationists of the Pnv-Eta bureaucracy and its satellites, the general idea of ‘violence’ is then transferred in charge of the opposition, and is in addition partially or completely identified with that of individual terrorism, which is perceived as a particularly sinister and catastrophic form of super-violence. Thus, an additional affective and emotional charge increases the ideological irrationality, confusion, distortion and mystification incorporated into the new idea of “terrorism”.

Unfortunately, the Peoples suffering the imperialistic occupation do regularly present the conditions of primitivism, naivety, good faith, gullibility and ideological-political underdevelopment that make them the relatively easy prey for predators. Their tendency to confuse the real ideological struggle with an imaginary dialogue with the imperialism, and to believe in the honesty and good will of the agents of its propaganda for keeping that imaginary dialogue, makes of them sure victims and scapegoats. However, that good faith and credulity of the People turns into a characterized bad faith in the indigenous Collaborationists – purported professional politicians and paid as such – when they, despite the historical experience and after having checked over and over again that the only dialogue offered by the imperialists is their relentless will to impose either submission or repression, refuse to accept this deliberate and resolute will of those undeniable imperialists, and do madly insist on presenting it as a “lack of democratic will” of them.

Thanks to the Collaborationists of the Pnv-Eta bureaucracy and its satellites, the imperialists are not qualified as the deliberate fascist criminals that they are but as a kind of “apathetic democrats”; something like if they would endeavour on considering a hardened, declared and widely recidivist rapist as a distracted and indecisive supporter of the sexual freedom or immunity of his victims. Because that alleged “lack of democratic will” is not such a thing but the deliberate criminal purpose of imperialism and fascism, consistent with its essence.

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