Dominant morality and ideology: instruments of the dominant power (4)
Violence and Terrorism.- Their ideological mystification at the service of Imperialism
4 – Dominant morality and ideology: instruments of the dominant power
Iñaki Aginaga and Felipe Campo
“[...] you ask, how it has happened that all Europe, has acted on the Principle ‘that Power was Right’. I know not what answer to give you but this: that Power always Sincerely, conscientiously, de trés bon Foi, believes itself Right. Power always thinks it has a great Soul, and vast Views, beyond the Comprehension of the Weak; and that it is doing God Service, when it is violating all his Laws.” (John Adams; from his letter to Thomas Jefferson, 1816, February the 2nd.)
With the shameless hypocrisy that characterizes it, the imperialistic ideology has always tried to present the struggle for freedom and the fundamental human rights of self-determination and legitimate self-defence of all Peoples – whether they be Indians, Abyssinians, Zulus, Arabs, Chechens, Cubans, Irish, Riffians, Tagalogs or Basques etc. – as a work of irretrievable, aggressive, savage and bloodthirsty bands to be suppressed by all means; while the war, conquest, occupation, repression, plunder and terrorism perpetrated and continued against them by the “great” empires have instead been always presented as an enterprise of peace, service to God, non-violence, civilization, progress etc.
In Western World, the notion of just or unjust war: a product of the European ideological and theological controversies, served to hide or justify the ongoing wars (always “just” those of oneself, and “unjust” those of others), as well as the imperialistic international law that the emerging Powers were formulating. And based on that notion, on the “doctrine of discovery” and the “right of conquest”, the probabilistic casuistry, the thesis and hypothesis developed by the ideologists of those Powers silenced the excessively scrupulous consciences. In reality, the States have never yielded to another justice different than their own one, and the Churches have never opposed war and violence; in fact they have promoted and blessed them, whenever they were for the benefit and not to the detriment of their own direct or indirect power. Civil or ecclesiastical double moral standards not only do sustain the effective “justice” of the systems of the Mighty and Oppressors, imposed through aggression and criminal Violence; they try at the same time to prevent, blame and condemn any resistance of the Weak, the Poor and the Oppressed.
For the Church, as well as for the Governments and ancient and modern law, killing is a sin and a crime if it is not done to serve God and one’s Country, in which case is religious and civic virtue. If the Church and the Governments deem it to be necessary, Christians and Peoples can wage war and gut each other without breaking any divine or human law, and indeed they are obliged to do so; which they haven’t ceased doing, willingly or by force, whenever they have had an occasion to do so. The Christians of the different imperialistic Nations and States killed each other with the encouragement and blessings of their respective clergy; stimulated their combative energies with rogations; and celebrated with solemn ceremonies of Thanksgiving their great victories: the slaughters of their beloved brethren in Christ, who did the same in the opposite direction. A new Commandment had been given unto them: “Love one another in peace, and rip one another in war.”
The cautious and well-timed adoption – if not invention – of the theory of the “just war in both sides”, saved the Church from having to put all its eggs in one same basket, when it came to supporting the Mighty; for, as there has been indicated, they all declared the sanctity of their cause and had God on their side. In such circumstances, the usual vague exhortations to love, peace and concord ensured the pacifist image of the Roman ecclesiastical multinational; and “praying for peace” was and remains the innocuous and hypocritical antidote that their pontiffs and prelates prescribe, while wars continue and they avoid condemning the guilty criminal aggressors.
The idea that a war should have a righteous, just cause was something that could not worry at all he who postulated himself as the representative of God on Earth, or those who considered themselves as faithful members of his Church, because all their wars against heretics, infidels or pagans were not only fair but peaceful. “In the Decretum Gratiani of the twelfth century, the following passage is quoted and ascribed to a lost work of Augustine’s entitled ‘De diversis ecclesiae observationibus’: ‘Among true worshippers of God, even wars themselves are peaceful, which are carried on not from cupidity or cruelty but with a strong desire for peace, in order that the wicked may be restrained and the good supported’.” (Arthur Cushman McGiffert; ‘Christianity and War: A Historical Sketch’. Source: The American Journal of Theology, Jul., 1915, Vol. 19, No. 3, pp. 323-345. Published by: The University of Chicago Press. Also quoted by Thomas Aquinas with reference to the Augustinian book ‘De verbis Dom’.)
On the basis of this theoretical precedent, in order to conquer the Holy Land and to the cry Deus vult (“God wills it”), there had begun (1095) and continued the Crusades: “holy” wars and “peaceful” wars in the best patristic tradition.
Concerning the use of terror and death as methods of ideological-doctrinal persecution against the Weaker, the Church – anticipating in many centuries to the present “free bar” in the matter – did soon eliminate scruples and consecrate its canonical proceedings of free rein in the business of war and repression against “heretics”, which in 1208 Pope Lotario di Segni – Innocent III: a loyal continuer of Augustine of Hippo in the use of the mechanism of distorting terms and concepts – called ‘Negotium Pacis et Fidei’, it is: “Business of Peace and Faith”. As we are going to see, nothing new has been invented by the protagonists of the current large-scale terrorist repression against fundamental freedoms, which they now call “war on terrorism”.
“But it will be the Council of Toulouse, taking place the year 1229, which under the authority of the [papal] Legate Romano di San Angelo is going to entrust bishops with the restoration of the Catholic faith, and to organize the pursuit for heretics and their punishments. The identity of the heretic continues being presented in an abstract way, without any reference to beliefs: ‘those who appoints the public opinion and those that will be reported by honourable and serious persons, as well as those who are qualified as such by the Bishop’.” [Vid. ‘La Inquisición contra los Albigenses en el Languedoc (1229-1329)’, by Pilar Jiménez Sánchez; published by Durango-Udala.net; Cap. 2.– ‘La creación de la Inquisición’. (MANSI: ‘Sacrorum Conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio’; vol. XXIII, cc. 194-204.)]
It’s known that twenty years before, another papal Legate: Arnaud Amalric, predecessor of Cardinal Romano, did not took the trouble to establish so many “guarantees” in the inquiry (inquisitio), when it came to separating “the wheat from the chaff”, and in 1209 the town of Béziers was entirely massacred with the inhibition of that Legate, if not with his historically attributed stimulation: “Kill them all, and let God sort them out”. In his letter to inform pope Innocent III about it, Arnaud Amalric was marvelled at his own success: “Divine vengeance has been wondrous. It was an unexpected and miraculous victory. Without regard to rank, sex or age, our men spared no one and put to the sword almost twenty thousand people. After this great slaughter, the whole city was despoiled and burnt”, he wrote.
Thus Pope Lotario could know first-hand the success of his “business of pacification”: “Every inhabitant in the town, from the grey-beard Perfect Cathar to the new-born Catholic baby, was put to death in the space of a morning. In the days before gunpowder, killing so many people in such a short time required a savage resolution that surpasses the imagination.” (Stephen O’Shea; ‘The Perfect Heresy’.)
But Arnaud did not lack imagination nor other things, and on 1211, May the 3rd – continuing with his “charitable” Christian involvement in that business – he took more than four hundred people to being burned alive together in Lavaur at the biggest bonfire of the Middle Ages, while a Te Deum was sung.
The terrorist fanaticism used by the Church of Rome was going to support since then the establishment in this world of the theocratic and imperialistic hell in general, and that of its Favourite Daughters: Spain and France, in particular. Massacres, torture and burning of live persons (and of dead ones, previously disinterred by “virtue” of post-mortem sentences); dispossession of their heirs even retroactively, denunciation of kith-and-kin, and moral abjection of those who were compelled to make such denunciations against their free will; relentless ideological-religious persecution, yellow stickers sewn on the clothes of jews and other persecuted people, and burning of books etc., were usual procedures in such “business”, which spread and created school in different totalitarian systems. After having turned prosperous regions into lands of renegades and collaborators by means of terror, “nobody was safe unless it did damage to his neighbours”. It was the same behaviour characteristic of the “Kingdoms of this world”: respect, support and blessings for the Mighty; Crusades, contempt, tortures and death against the Peoples without capacity to create problems to the Empire that had impounded and instrumentalized the faith for its benefit.
The learned canonist and Pope Innocent IV, that in 1252 promulgated the Bull ‘Ad extirpanda’ in which he legitimized and regulated the use of torture by the Inquisition as a means to obtain the confession of the heretics (who were to be treated as criminals and be forced to make disclosures “as thieves and robbers of material goods are made to accuse their accomplices and confess the crimes they have committed”), and that decreed death sentence for the relapsed heretics (who, hypocritically, were “delivered to the secular arm” for the execution of their murder, and so the Church kept its hands washed like Pilates), did also confirm that he, as Vicar of Christ, could make non-Christian Peoples accept his dominion, unless they submitted to the divine mandate of the papacy and received the preaching of the Gospel. This was the established ideological-mental context – theoretical yet very real – when the Council of Constance was convened, in whose varied agenda included the objective of putting an end to major conflicts, among which there was the one that the Teutonic Knights kept with Poland and Lithuania.
As it is well known, the Council of Constance (1414-1418) ordered the burning at the bonfire of Jan Huss together with his writings the 6th of July of 1415, and that of his disciple Jerome of Prague a year later, both previously “interrogated”, tortured and condemned as heresiarchs. But apart from this, during its sessions there occurred a fact of a great theoretical significance whose importance was to go unnoticed for that audience (beyond from causing probably its astonishment), and which consisted in the thesis presented to the Council by the representatives of Poland.
The eminent Polish jurist Paweł Włodkowic, who precisely since 1414 was rector of the University of Kraków, had been sent to the Council along with Stanisław of Skarbimierz – first rector of that university and author of the works ‘De bellis justis’ (“About the just war”: first work dedicated specifically to this issue), and ‘De rapina’ (“About looting”) – as members of the delegation charged of defending Poland’s interests, to the object of getting that an end was to be put both to the Crusades that the Monastic State of the Teutonic Order waged against Lithuania, allied of Poland, as well as to the forced conversions of the Baltic pagan Peoples. In the development of his mission before the Council, Włodkowic scandalized the audience by criticizing the Monastic State for its wars of conquest of native non-Christian Peoples in Prussia and Lithuania, and by therefore questioning the legitimacy of this policy of aggression that until then had been carried out with the blessings and Bulls of the Church.
A forerunner of modern theories of human rights, this polish author pioneered the notion of peaceful coexistence among Nations. In this regard, he delivered to the Council his thesis about the power of the Pope and the Emperor: his Tractatus de potestate papae et imperatoris respectu infidelium (Treatise on the Power of the Pope and the Emperor Respecting Infidels). In it he drew the thesis that Pagan and Christian Nations could and should coexist in peace, without aggression being justified on religious grounds. And facing him was raised the accusation – presented by the Teutonic Order – that Poland was harbouring and actively defending Pagans: a pretext for Teutonic expansionism on the indigenous Baltic Peoples of Prussia and Lithuania that, after the conversion to the Christianity of Jogaila of Lithuania in 1386 (hereinafter Władysław II Jaguellon of Poland), was formally false, although the Teutonic Knights continued to use it.
As a result, the Council did reject the Teutonic Knights’ request for a new Crusade, and thus the criminal interests of their Order were ignored. In fact, that meeting meant a point of inflection in the Teutonic aggressions. Not so much because the “council fathers” were convinced by the advanced theories of that representative of Poland (which naturally they could not and would not understand and much less accept, if they perchance did not deem them depraved enough as for making its author keep company with Jan Huss at the stake on that afternoon of July-1415) as because the fact that five years earlier , in 1410, Władysław II, at the head of a Lithuanian-Polish coalition, had inflicted on the Monastic State the tremendous and decisive defeat of Grunwald (or of Tannenberg, in German historiography), one of the greatest battles of medieval Europe, of which the Order could never recover; and therefore the Church was no longer so sure about who was going to win.
(Since Germanic historiography had named the defeat of 1410 as “Battle of Tannenberg”, which was one of the villages near the theatre of operations, when in 1914 the German Empire defeated the Russian in a major battle, fought in the outskirts of the city of Allenstein [Olsztyn] in East Prussia, the German military command did also name it “Battle of Tannenberg” for propaganda reasons [although this town is located about 30 kilometres to the west of Olsztyn], in order to erase the memory of that defeat of the Teutonic Order. It was a sign of continuity and identity with the criminal imperialistic enterprise of those “Crossed Knights”, which had started in 1226 with the Golden Bull of Rimini granted by the “Holy Roman Emperor” Frederick II, and with the aforementioned Golden Bull of Rieti, by which Pope Gregory IX did “forever and ever” confirm the conquests of the Teutonic Order in Prussia.)
Unfortunately, after his victory at Grunwald, Władysław II was delayed a few days in the pursuing of the vanquished and in the sieging of Marienburg: the capital and imposing stronghold of the Teutonic Knights, giving them time to reorganize, resist the siege, and prevent their total expulsion from those lands that they had usurped a hundred and eighty years earlier to the original Prussian and Lithuanian Peoples through Bulls, “crusades” and conquests east of the Elbe River under the pretext of the “conversion of those pagans”: the ‘Ostsiedlung’. In this way, the fundamental work: to expel the Teutonic armies and occupying forces, remained undone.
This allowed the Monastic State to consolidate, and that its colonization could continue under various Germanic political-military State structures that named themselves with the choronym of “Prussia”, borrowed from the indigenous Prussian Baltic Peoples that they had subdued and exterminated. These States were the Prussian Confederation, the Royal Prussia [West Prussia], and the Ducal Prussia/Kingdom of Prussia [East Prussia]; thus making it possible “in a natural” way that German settlers did not integrate into the Peoples they had settled among – mainly Poles and Lithuanians – but continued within them as refractory organized Germanic bodies. They did it firstly around Marienburg, and then – once in 1457 it was ceded to Poland in exchange for money during the Thirteen Years’ War – around Königsberg; which was a constant source of misfortune: of pretexts for wars and of wars that reach World War II.
The suffering that they caused to the Baltic Peoples they did assault, and that finally the successors of themselves received in Bohemia, Poland, and “Prussia”, by enduring after World War II the greatest ethnic cleansing in history, is unspeakable. Starting on 1945 May the 10th and with “the advent of peace”, between twelve and fourteen million Germanic settlers were expelled from those lands, which their ancestors had usurped with false and wicked titles that ceded them “to eternal and absolute ownership” (Golden Bull of Rieti: ‘Pietati proximum’, 1234). Stripped of everything overnight, more than half a million were killed simply for being Germans and speaking German in “wrong” places; all this under the “distracted” gaze of the Allied victors. Currently Königsberg and that so-called East Prussia “belong” to Russia. These are the misfortunes that colonialist imperialism does inevitably entail.
But, returning to Włodkowic, throughout his political, diplomatic and university career he expressed the view that a world guided by the principles of peace and mutual respect among Nations was possible, and that pagan Nations had a right to peace and to possession of their own lands without being besieged and invaded under the pretext of their paganism, as Lithuania – an ally to Poland – had been so at the hands of the Teutonic rapine. Unfortunately, the imperialism is not likely to be stopped only by well-intentioned theories, if in addition they do not involve real forces capable of an ideological and political – and eventually military – Resistance of a strategic level.
In those days, the refusal to admit any tolerance on different theological options (which is the meaning of hairesis, hairetikos: heretic; that is, the one who maintains another option) was total on the part of a hubristic and all-powerful Church. At that time, it could not even imagine that there would come a time when its totalitarian power would be questioned and evicted from entire Countries, and the Council of Constance proved it by burning at the stake anyone who had dared to oppose it through another theological or ecclesiological “option”: whether he was alive – Jan Huss and Jerome of Prague – or dead, as is the case of the ‘post mortem’ sentence to be burned at the stake, handed down against the remains of the English reformer John Wyclif, who had died thirty years earlier. It little mattered that this provoked uprisings and disasters: the five Crusades (1420-34) convened by Pope Martín V – appointed in 1417 by the Council of Constance – against the Hussites (the Czechs of Bohemia followers of Jan Huss), began shortly after the First Defenestration of Prague (1419); and, although they were subjected, the protest that they made – Protestatio Bohemorum – condemning the murder of their spiritual leader in the harshest terms, and the subsequent repression against them, would have a continuity in the Reformation that made the also known as Protestants, and in the wars of religion that ravaged Europe since 1524.
As is well known, the ideological-political instruments that the Church provided – Bulls, Excommunications etc. – were always intended to favour the position of the presumed winners, that is, the powerful aggressors who did support the Church itself: whether they be Teutonic/Germanic in Lithuania and Bohemia, or French/Spaniards in Occitania, Al-Andalus, America and Nabarre. For all of them, there were Bulls that justified and reinforced their domination over the weak, who were not even recognized as holders of rights and whom the Church helped to oppress under the pretext of heresies and even non-existent heresies, as in the case of the Kingdom of Nabarre and its monarchs.
Instead, those ideas of peaceful coexistence between the Nations – regardless of what their religion might be – which were advocated by the School of Krakow: impeccably Christian and presented to the Council of Constanza by Włodkowic-Skarbimierz, were simply ignored and forgotten. They would re-appear more than one century later, after Luther’s Reformation, as if they were original in the so-called “School of Salamanca”; but they would do so in form and content already recuperated by and made compatible for the Counter-Reformation of the Catholic Church, and for the power established on the dominated Peoples by its ally, the Hispanic-Catholic Monarchy.
Under such conditions, the so-called “law of Nations” (ius gentium), the “international law” and the concept of “cause of just war”, developed by that “school of Salamanca” (“there is a single and only just cause for commencing a war, namely, a wrong received, which is to be responded proportionately”; accordingly, a war was not lawful because of “diversity of religion” or for “the desire to widen the Empire”, said Francisco de Vitoria in De iure belli, 1539), did not at all alter the already established situation, nor did they make revise the null and void and wicked titles wielded by the ideologists of the Hispanic Monarchy for the conquest, looting, destruction and “incorporation” as of its property of the States that they had attacked: whether they be “infidels” like Al-Andalus and pagans like America (appropriated through the Bulls of Donation or “Alexandrine” of 1493 that the Pope granted at the request and convenience of that Monarchy), or Christians such as the Kingdom of Nabarre, appropriated through other Bulls granted in a similar manner in 1512-3 by Pope Julius II. Nor did they prevent either the continued exploitation, oppression, enslavement and genocide of their Peoples: the effective result that was attained, despite the label of progressivism that was attributed to that School.
In fact, the mission of the Dominican friar Francisco de Vitoria consisted in finding “arguments and titles” in favour of the Powers which he had a duty to: the Catholic Monarchy and the Church, so that the actions of them both on other States could be justified. Shameless, specious, pretentious, hypocritical and cynical arguments, based in intractable and self-interested Christian fanaticism, and in Hispanic-centric racism and superiority/holiness. Let’s look at some of those “lawful” titles of domination, according to Vitoria:
“I will now speak of the lawful and adequate titles whereby the Indians might have come under the sway of the Hispanics.
“1. The first title to be named is that of natural society and fellowship.
“2. And hereon, let my first proposition be: The Hispanics have a right to travel to the lands of the Indians and to sojourn there so long as they do no harm, and they cannot be prevented by the Indians. [...]
[He reasons next, with up to fourteen “arguments”, about this “first proposition on the first title”, starting from the wickedness of mistreating guests and pilgrims etc.; and thus, presenting crookedly: as if it were a state of weakness and necessity, the real superiority, aggression and greed of the conquerors, whom according to him are to be welcomed out of kindness and altruism.]
“Further, seventhly, there is the Poet's verses: Quod genus hoc hominum? Quaeve hunc tam barbara morem / permittit patria? Hospitio prohibemur harenae; / bella cient, primaque vetant consistere terra.” (Virgil; Aeneid, I, 539-41.)
[What manner of mankind is here? What land / Is this, to treat us in this barbarous way? / They grudge the very shelter of the sand, / And call to arms and bar our footsteps from the strand! (English verse translation by E. Fairfax Taylor, vv. 636-9.)]
3. Second proposition: The Hispanics may lawfully carry on trade among the native Indians, so long as they do no harm to their country, as, for instance, by importing thither wares which the natives lack and by exporting thence either gold or silver or other wares of which the natives have abundance. Neither may the native princes hinder their subjects from carrying on trade with the Hispanics; nor, on the other hand, may the princes of Hispania prevent commerce with the natives. This is proved by means of my first proposition.
“Firstly, because it is an apparent rule of the jus gentium that foreigners may carry on trade, provided they do no hurt to citizens.
[The delirium continues:] “Also, secondly, a similar proof lies in the fact that this is permitted by the divine law. Therefore, a law prohibiting it would undoubtedly not be reasonable.
“Also, thirdly, the sovereign of the Indians is bound by the law of nature to love the Hispanics. Therefore, the Indians may not causelessly prevent the Hispanics from making their profit where this can be done without injury to themselves.
“A fourth reason is that such conduct would be against the proverb: “Thou shall not do to another what thou wouldest not wish done to thyself.”
“And, in sum, it is certain that the aborigines can no more keep off the Hispanics from trade than Christians can keep off other Christians. Now, it is clear that if the Hispanics kept off the Franks from trade with the Hispanics, and this not for the good of Hispania, but in order to prevent the Franks from sharing in some advantage, that practice would offend against righteousness and charity. If, then, there can be no just legal ordinance to this effect, it also can not be accomplished in actual fact (for the injustice of a law consists solely in the execution of the law). And, as is said in Dig., 1, 1, 3, ‘Nature has established a bond of relationship between all men’; and so it is contrary to natural law for one man to dissociate himself from another without good reason. Since man is not a wolf to his fellow man, as Ovid says, but a man.
“4. Third proposition: If there are among the Barbarians any things which are treated as common both to citizens and to strangers, the Barbarians may not prevent the Hispanics from a communication and participation in them. [...]
“It is, however, to be noted that the Barbarians being timid by nature and in other respects dull and stupid, however much the Hispanics may desire to remove their fears and reassure them with regard to peaceful dealings with each other, they may very excusably continue afraid at the sight of men strange in garb and armed and much more powerful than themselves. And therefore, if, under the influence of these fears, they unite their efforts to drive out the Hispanics or even to slay them, the Hispanics might, indeed, defend themselves, [...]
“5. Fourth proposition: If children of any Spaniard be born there and they wish to acquire citizenship, it seems they can not be barred either from citizenship or from the advantages enjoyed by other citizens -– I refer to the case where the parents had their domicile there. [...]
“6. Fifth proposition: If the Indian natives wish to prevent the Hispanics from enjoying any of their above-named rights under the law of nations, for instance, trade or other above-named matter, the Hispanics ought in the first place to use reason and persuasion in order to remove scandal and ought to show in all possible methods that they do not come to the hurt of the natives, but wish to sojourn as peaceful guests and to travel without doing the natives any harm; and they ought to show this not only by word but also by reason, according to the saying, ‘It behoveth the prudent to make trial of everything by words first’. But if, after this recourse to reason, the barbarians decline to agree and propose to use force, the Hispanics can defend themselves and do all that consists with their own safety, it being lawful to repel force by force. And not only so, but, if safety cannot otherwise be had, they may build fortresses and defensive works, and, if they have sustained a wrong, they may follow it up with war on the authorization of their sovereign and may avail themselves of the other rights of war.
“The proof hereof lies in the fact that warding-off and avenging a wrong make a good cause of war, as said above, following St. Thomas (Secunda Secundæ, qu. 40). But when the Indians deny the Hispanics their rights under the law of nations they do them a wrong. Therefore, if it be necessary, in order to preserve their right, that they should go to war, they may lawfully do so. [...]
“7. Sixth proposition: If after recourse to alt other measures, the Hispanics are unable to obtain safety as regards the Barbarians, save by seizing their cities and reducing them to subjection, they may lawfully proceed to these extremities. The proof lies in the fact that ‘peace and safety are the end and aim of war’, as St. Augustine says, writing to Boniface. And since it is now lawful for the Hispanics, as has been said, to wage defensive war or even if necessary offensive war, therefore, everything necessary to secure the end and aim of war, namely, the obtaining of safety and peace, is lawful. [...]
“9. Another possible title [2nd] is by way of propagation of Christianity. In this connection let my first conclusion be: Christians have a right to preach and declare the Gospel in the lands of the Barbarians. This conclusion is in the first-place manifest from the passage: ‘Preach the Gospel to every creature,’ etc. (St. Mark, ch. 16, v. 15.) And also: ‘The word of the Lord is not bound’. (II Timothy, ch. 2) [...]
“Thirdly, because the natives would otherwise be outside the pale of salvation, if Hispanics were not allowed to go to them carrying the Gospel message. [...]
“10. Second conclusion: Although this is a task common and permitted to all, yet the Pope might entrust it to the Hispanics and forbid it to all others. [...]
“12. Fourth conclusion: If the Barbarians — whether it be their lords or the populace — prevent the Hispanics from freely preaching the Gospel, the Hispanics, after first reasoning with them in order to remove scandal, may preach it despite their unwillingness and devote themselves to the conversion of the people in question; and, if need be, they may then accept or even start war until they succeed in obtaining facilities and safety for preaching the Gospel. And the same pronouncement must be made in the case where they allow preaching, but hinder conversion either by killing or otherwise punishing those who have been converted to Christ, or by deterring others by threats and fears. [...]
“14. Another possible title [4th] is the following: Suppose a large part of the Barbarians were converted to Christianity, and this whether it were done lawfully or unlawfully, as by means of threats or terrors, or other improper procedure, so long as they really were Christians, the Pope might for a reasonable cause, either with or without a request from them, give them a Christian sovereign and depose their other unbelieving rulers. [...]
“16. Another possible title [6th] is by true and voluntary choice, as if the Barbarians, aware alike of the humanity and the prudent administration of the Hispanics, were of their own motion, both of nobles and the others, to accept the King of Hispania as their sovereign. [...]
“17. Another title [7th] may be found in the cause of allies and friends. For as the Indians themselves sometimes wage lawful wars with one another and the side which has suffered a wrong has the right to make war, they might summon the Hispanics to help and share the rewards of victory with them. [...] For there is no doubt, as Cajetan also asserts (Secunda Secundae, qu. 40, art. 1), that the cause of allies and friends is a just cause of war, a State being quite properly able, as against foreign wrongdoers, to summon foreigners to punish its enemies. And this is confirmed by the fact that this was a method very much in vogue among the Romans for the extension of their Empire; that is, they brought aid to their allies and friends and so making a just war came, by right of war, into possession of fresh provinces. Yet the Roman Empire is approved by St. Augustine (De civitate Dei, bk. 5) and by St. Thomas (Opusculum 21) as a lawful one. [...] Now, there does not seem any other juridical title whereby the Romans came into possession of the world, save in right of war, and the most especial cause of their wars was the defence and protection of their friends. [...]
“This seems to be the seventh and the last title whereby the Barbarians and their lands could have come or might come into the possession and lordship of the Hispanics.
“18. There is another title which can indeed not be asserted, but brought up for discussion, and some think it a lawful one. I dare not affirm it at all, nor do I entirely condemn it. It is this: Although the Barbarians in question are – as has been said above – not wholly unintelligent, yet they are little short of that condition, and so are unfit to found or administer a lawful State up to the standard required by human and civil claims. Accordingly, they have no proper laws nor magistrates, and are not even capable of controlling their family affairs; they are without any literature or arts, not only the liberal arts but the mechanical arts also; they have no careful agriculture and no artisans; and they lack many other conveniences, yet necessaries, of human life.
“It might, therefore, be maintained that in their own interests the sovereigns of Hispania might undertake the administration of their country, providing them with prefects and governors for their towns, and might even give them new lords, so long as this was clearly for their benefit.
“I say there would be some force in this contention; for if they were all wanting in intelligence, there is no doubt that this would not only be a permissible but also a highly proper course to take; nay, our sovereigns would be bound to take it, just as if the nativeswere infants. The same principle seems to apply here to them as to people of defective intelligence; and indeed they are no whit or little better than such so far as self-government is concerned, or even than the wild beasts, for their food is not more pleasant and hardly better than that of beasts. Therefore, their governance should in the same way be entrusted to people of intelligence.
“There is clear confirmation hereof, for if by some accident of fortune all their adults were to perish and there were to be left boys and youths in enjoyment, indeed, of a certain amount of reason, but of tender years and under the age of puberty, our sovereigns would certainly be justified in taking charge of them and governing them so long as they were in that condition. Now, this being admitted, it appears undeniable that the same could be done in the case of their barbarian parents, if they be supposed to be of that dullness of mind which is attributed to them by those who have been among them and which is reported to be more marked among them than even among the boys and youths of other nations.
“And surely this might be founded on the precept of charity, they being our neighbours and we being bound to look after their welfare. Let this, however, as I have already said, be put forward without dogmatism and subject also to the limitation that any such interposition be for the welfare and in the interests of the Barbarians and not merely for the profit of the Hispanics. For this is the respect in which all the danger to soul and salvation lies.
“And herein some help might be gotten from the consideration, referred to above, that some are by nature slaves, for all the Barbarians in question are of that type; and so they may in part be governed as slaves are.
“Now, it seems to follow from all this discussion that, if there be no force in any of the titles which have been put forward, so that the native Indians neither gave cause for just war nor wished for Hispanic rulers, etc., all the travel to, and trade with, those parts should be stopped, to the great loss of the Hispanics and also to the grave hurt of the royal treasury (a thing intolerable).” Etc. etc. (Francisco de Vitoria; ‘First Re-lection on the Indians lately discovered. On the lawful titles whereby the Barbarians could have come into the domination of the Hispanics’, 1538-39.)
“Boy: [...] They will steal any thing and call it purchase.” (W. Shakespeare; ‘King Henry V’.)
That is to say, it was very convenient that the Indians would oppose to the conquest: something completely lawful and natural as well as inevitable; because, should they do not so, then the Hispanics would have no justification to continue with the looting that he calls trade, “which would turn a thing intolerable”. Is it possible a greater cynicism? It is a revealing fact that the author himself did not even dare present the titles of domination on the subjected Peoples without a shadow of doubt, by writing in this way: “another possible title is”, “another title may be found “there is another title which can indeed not be asserted, but brought up for discussion” etc. And all this, moreover, in contradiction with the doubts about the justice of war that the author himself did pose in ‘Second Re-lection on the Indians, or on the right of war made by the Hispanics on the Barbarians’, examined from point 20 onwards and very especially in the 26:
“26. Fourth proposition: Nevertheless the proofs and tokens of the injustice of the war may be such that ignorance would be no excuse even to subjects of this sort who serve in it. This is clear, because such ignorance might be deliberate and adopted with evil intent towards the enemy. Also, were this otherwise, unbelievers would be excused when they follow their chieftains to war against Christians and it would be unlawful to kill them, it being certain that they deem themselves to have a just cause of war. Also, the soldiers who crucified Christ, ignorantly following Pilate’s order, would be excused. Also, the Jewish mob would be excused which was led by the elders to shout ‘Away with Him, crucify Him’.”
All this is exactly what the Hispanics and the Church did with the dominated Peoples throughout History.
Wars that are intended to be “peaceful”; bloody Crusades that are presented as a “business of peace and faith”; canonical and “legitimate” license for the imprisonment, torture and appalling execution – and finally massive murder and extermination – of those suspects of heresy; fabrication of “just wars” using pretexts in order to justify the imperialistic and colonialist occupation, exploitation and destruction of infidel, pagan and christian States by the Catholic Monarchy; propagation of Christianity “as by means of threats or terrors, or other improper procedure”; legitimate Empires over the whole world by right of war; hypocritical incitement to “charitable” genocides and widespread slavery of Peoples considered as livestock, so as to get the exploitation and destruction of whole Continents... The morality of the imperialistic established power is thus laid bare in all its hideous depravity.
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There is no contradiction but correspondence and identity between the policy, on the one hand, and the morality and the positive law of the totalitarian States and Powers, on the other. The dominant totalitarian Power, by virtue of the monopoly of criminal Violence that it wields (as well as of its auxiliary monopolies of indoctrination and ideological intoxication of masses, annexed to the monopoly of Violence), and in strict function on its objectives of domination, creates and dictates the moral and judicial norm, decides of good and evil, and appoints and sorts those whom it declares to be “good or bad, blessed or reprobate, honest citizens or criminals, non-violent or violent people, pacifists or terrorists”.
As we have indicated elsewhere, legitimate violence is that which is exercised in defence of fundamental human rights and, above all, of the right of self-determination or independence of subjugated Peoples; and against those who attack them; which imperialism and its agents carry out through war of aggression and criminal Violence. However, this distinction is conscientiously ignored by the agents of imperialism, and in fact they not only limit themselves to carrying out their aggressions against the subjugated Peoples and then falsifying, denying and mystifying that reality but, once the aggression of imperialism has been carried out, its charlatans and ideological mercenaries (supposedly and hypocritically “pacifist” and enemies “of all violence”, such as those who in our Country are dedicated to the service of French-Spanish imperialism against the Basque People), deny the attacked People the right to defend itself and the justice of its cause on the basis of false arguments; thus making it impossible for him to confront the aggression:
“War is always a crime; there is no just war. Once war has been unleashed, self-defence is never exercised proportionately: to speak of a war crime is a pleonasm.” (M. Izu; ‘Sadducean Politics’, Diario de Noticias, 15-X-23.)
The international morality is the morality of the dominant Peoples and States: they mount it all and they benefit from it. According to it, their opponents are – not only politically but also morally – delinquent and criminals because they are weak and as long as they are weak; whereas the mighty escape from moral censorship because they are mighty and as long as they are mighty. In international reality, the “human values” are reduced to the rapport of forces among Nations: “good, justice, freedom and truth” are constitutively consistent – and finally immanent or identical – with the violence of the strongest one. Correlatively, “evil, injustice, oppression and lie” are constitutively consistent – and finally immanent or identical – with the political incapacity of the weakest one. All distinction between political and moral justice having thus disappeared, it no longer has any sense to oppose the policy of the States to their interests, and their interests to their moral.
Once had been established in an indisputable form, as we have seen, the monopoly of morality, truth and holiness of the Church through unlimited terrorism, and counting on such excellent an example, the explicit or implicit morality of the very Christian European States – whether it arrives to be arisen – is simply an ideology that serves its interests and policy. In terms of morality, like in terms of legality, everyone manufactures what suits him: “it is moral and legal what there suits the German People”. “Hans Gerber, an academic jurist, described the new spirit of german law after 1933: ‘National Socialism insists that justice is not a system of abstract and autonomous values such as the various types of Natural Law systems.’ Each State – Gerber continued – ‘has its own concept of justice’.” (Richard Overy.)
The National Socialism and the Fascism were presumably defeated; yet only militarily, since their ideology does fully remain in the political reality of the imperialistic and totalitarian States. The supposed democratic States and international Organizations which did fight and replace them can only, either strengthen the democracy through the affirmation of its main and basic condition, namely: the respect for the fundamental human rights and in the first place for the right of self-determination or independence of all Peoples, “first of human rights and precondition of them all”; or, in the absence of such condition, scroll fatally towards totalitarianism down the slant plane of imperialism and fascism.
The “supreme, transcendent and immutable values” are those that the dominant group does produce, invent, replace and impose by means of social, economic and political pressure, psychological and ideological conditioning, intimidation and brute force. The moral and legal ideology of the imperialism and fascism is an inseparable product and instrument of its effective policy, as well as of the monopolies of criminal Violence, Terrorism and propaganda; policy and monopolies that such ideology, in its turn, does enhance and sustain.
The idealistic, utopian, metaphysical, theological, naturalistic, rationalistic, biological, romantic, humanist, humanitarist, altruistic or philanthropic versions of policy and law do always yield to the need for power and security of the Nations and their States, and nothing can do against it. Such versions are sometimes exercises of good will: well-intentioned contributions, previsions, illusions and projects; and other times, they are ill-intentioned manoeuvres to deceive the naive persons. Therefore, their proponents are sometimes saints or wise persons, and at other times they are ideological agents in the payroll of imperialism; but the propositions both of the former as well as the latter: whether they be critical or apologetic of the established power, are in no case policy and law and do not describe real policy and law. As long as they are presented as what they really are: fantasies or wishful thinking, their harmful effects are limited; but when they are intended to be policy and law, or description of actual, real and effective policy and law, then they are a part of the ideology that hides and distorts the reality of the political power, and become imperialistic instruments of propaganda and psychological warfare.
The traditional despotism imposed its ideology and repressed that of its adversaries. Instead, modern imperialism and fascism do fabricate, replace, incorporate, falsify, finance and spread the ideology of the purported opposition. In this way, the “Basque” indigenous collaborationists and accomplices of the French-Spanish imperialism: through propaganda or psychological warfare, mass brainwashing and ideological intoxication that they spread, keep the subjected Basque People in ideological underdevelopment and political incapability. In their “quality” of distinctly “indigenous” elements, these agents of the bureaucracy Pnv-Eta and its satellites do adopt, assimilate, transmit and disseminate the fundamental ideas of the imperialistic ideology, making them more “aseptic” in order to circumvent the natural distrust of its victims towards the official propaganda and propagandists – too obvious and direct – of imperialism and fascism. They do thus unreservedly join the monopolies of criminal Violence and propaganda in order to mislead the Peoples, to liquidate the information and free expression of ideas, and to achieve the suppression of the freedoms of thought and communication; conscious as they are that the freedom of expression, information and criticism would make it impossible that they could continue duping the defenceless populations that such indigenous agents claim to represent, while collaborating with imperialism in the dissemination of its ideological garbage.
Hypocrisy has always been a quality inseparable from despotism. Yet, it was the modern totalitarianism established with the “French revolution” which inaugurated Dictatorship and Terrorism with camouflage of freedom and human rights; French imperialistic Nationalism, under cover and falsification of universalism and right of self-determination of Peoples; warmongering, with pacifist rhetoric; deification of the State, on the pretext of secularism and civic moral; and colonialism, under disguise of humanism. Even so, with the new scenario open after the end of the duopoly of the two super-Powers, the shamelessness of the ruling classes has reached levels never before achieved.
The propaganda that seeks to reconcile pacifism and non-violence, along with the production and possession of “purely preventive and dissuasive – just to scare – weapons of mass destruction that never are going to be used”, constitutes a resource that is as hypocritical as formally contradictory; and it must necessarily be distributed with restraint and only among the most weakened social classes. And this because, in so far as such propaganda was going to succeed (that is, if it could convince its patients of what it says), it would destroy the virtual weapon and its deterrent role; for, in the absence of intention, resolution and willingness to use them, weapons are nothing, prevent nothing, and do not intimidate, save, or deter anyone. What counts here is not the real disposition to use them but the belief of the enemy in the disposition for doing so; which is, precisely, what the propaganda in question does logically – though not ideologically – destroy.
In reality, the “pacifist” propaganda of the “purely dissuasive weapons”: in itself formally contradictory, contains – as well as the general ideology on violence, or the national ideology of the imperialism – a double but ideologically unique consciousness, acting globally or sectorally, jointly or separately, in succession or simultaneously. Insofar as that “pacifist” propaganda does work, it succeeds in reassuring the scruples and provides a good conscience to its consumers; as long as it does not work with respect to its threatened patients, the current deterrent force preserves its necessary basis, which is the material and moral capacity and determination to really use weapons of mass destruction, the same as all the others.
According to the propaganda of the modern imperialism and fascism, the State and the laws have the aim of safeguarding security and freedom; and we are told that the services and activities of the armed forces consist of “saving lives and supplying health and humanitarian assistance, and preparing the introduction of democracy and the organization of elections”. The armies “have as their work the peace”, they say; and the armed operations of war and espionage are “missions of peace, liberation and prevention”. The forces of “interposition” of the United Nations (UN) are of course armed (without which they would not be forces of interposition nor of anything), “but with a very light armament”, they say; something like the honest maiden of good family who was a little pregnant of a very small child. The “lifesaving, humanitarian and peace missions” in charge of the armed forces are intended to hide their own and true function. The deliberate confusion of concepts, achieved by the said propaganda, does not change the nature of the arms and armies.
“The function of the weapons is to kill”; for something different than that, neither military nor weapons are not needed. And the function of the armed forces of imperialistic and totalitarian States is war of aggression, oppression, repression, intimidation, terrorism, espionage and looting: whatever their conditions of use and whatever their pursued or obtained indirect ends or results may be. “A free State is a State which is free towards its citizens, that is: a State of despotic government. It is perfectly absurd to speak of a free popular State: as long as the proletariat does still need the State, this is not for the freedom but rather to crush its enemies. And when it becomes possible to speak of freedom, the State ceases to exist as such.”
Neither does – as they pretend – the totalitarian State impose, extort or kidnap: activities and designations whose exclusive attribution is reserved for those who resist its State monopoly of criminal Violence. Official terms such as “taxation”, and the legal kidnapping which they call “compulsory military service”, or the “tax laws and Prisons Acts”, have taken on a “technical” meaning that makes the common root of words and concepts become forgotten; all this thanks to appropriate manoeuvring of ideological manipulation.
The dominant ideology of the French-Spanish imperialism over the Basque People and its State, the Kingdom of Nabarre, seeks therefore to hide the role of Violence in the fascist régime which that ideology serves; and to hide also that this established political régime – which its ideology presents as democratic and non-violent – has its origin, foundation and nature in war of aggression, occupation and terror of masses against our People and State. An imperialistic and fascist régime of military occupation that is being replaced in the corresponding ideological delirium by a social order without violence; not just as a utopian project that is aimed to but as a current, existing and effective one. So, those who have established their power by war of aggression, repression and terror do affirm to be opposed to all violence. The most disgusting terrorist practice of the fascist forces of repression is accompanied with the hypocritical and no less repulsive mask of “non-violence and rejection of all violence coming from where it may come”. Surprising though it may seem, these things work: otherwise nobody would lose time and money not even to give them a try.
But the bad faith, shamelessness and theoretical inability of the established French-Spanish imperialistic and fascist power (which are evident), together with its despotism, do not explain everything. The imperialistic régime established in our Country is what it is and makes the propaganda that suits it best; that is why it would not use such nonsense if it did not yield any result. And it wouldn’t yield any result if its victims had not lost the reason and the sense of the most immediate reality, as this is the case. In the end, there is no doubt that its propaganda would not have been able to achieve success in our Country if the political and ideological forces of the French-Spanish imperialistic and fascist régime of military occupation had not counted on the auxiliary services of the indigenous collaborationism of the Pnv-Eta bureaucracies and their satellites, from where we are indoctrinated with stupidities such as: “in high policy there is no place for violence”. (Joseba Egibar, ‘leader’ of the Pnv.)
Despite their discrepancies, the various components and agents that give support to the dominant ideology of the imperialistic criminal Violence need each other to validate or conceal their respective ideological fabrications, and to prevent the freedom of expression, information and criticism that would put them in evidence.
Without the complicity of the Pnv and of its armed or unarmed satellites, those products of propaganda – of so despicable a content – would have not been able to achieve even a fraction of their goals. But it has been already fifty years since the “the Basque armed and unarmed moderates and radicals” have destroyed all Resistance of a strategic and Government level; persecuted the freedom of expression and criticism, and taken part in the monopolies of fascist domination presented as “democracy”, which have been consolidated in this Country with their support.
Only hypocrite, fool or mad people can denounce the individual attempts while they ignore, conceal or justify the practice of the State Terrorism of masses. As we will see in other places, those who condemn “violence and terrorism in general, coming from wherever it may come”, are referring thus to the violence and terrorism of the others, not to the criminal Violence and Terrorism of State that they practice, justify, sanctify and hide at the same time, counterfeiting and confusing to this end the terms and concepts. Those who, in an imperialistic and fascist régime of military occupation such as the one that oppresses our Country under Francespain, advocate the abandonment of violence in order to “make policy with the ideas, the word and the votes etc., in this democratic régime that we have given ourselves”, are either the hypocrites that hold the monopoly of criminal Violence; or they are mentally alienated persons victims of the propaganda, the ideological mass intoxication, and the psychological warfare that the imperialistic Violence and Terrorism are imposing.
In a State or among States, “who has the right to the end, has it also to the means”. The question is, once again, to know what ends we are talking about, whether they be democratic: which are carried out through the establishment and validity of fundamental human rights and above all of the right of self-determination or independence of all Peoples; or totalitarian/imperialist, which are carried out through the violation and persecution of these rights.
However, the professional moralists and hypocrites of imperialism and fascism, who inflict us daily their insufferable ministry, proclaim with a virtuous satisfaction and according to a stale aphorism that “the end does not justify the means”. Of course it’s about the end and means of the others: always reprehensible, unacceptable and condemnable, but not of those that they themselves pursue and use, which are always laudable, acceptable and holy. The truth is that, apart from interested ideological misunderstandings, the end justifies always and necessarily the means; the judgments of a moral order have nothing to argue in a matter of pure and simple formal logic. “If the end is righteous, the means are also so: this is a tautological proposition.” And if the end is unfair, the means are also so. In any case, the ordination of the means to an end – either fair or reprehensible – is a simple matter of strategy, not morality.
The real political forces and Governments of imperialism and fascism do not condition the use of Violence to moral or legal justifications. On the contrary, they only see signs and factors of decadent weakness and submissive defencelessness in the persons or Peoples that present some remaining of such invalidating and lethal inhibitions; and, when it is about setting their own behaviour, they do not care, of course, about moral or legal rules. If there is one norm that they hold as essential, it is the one that dictates them to ensuring for themselves the greatest possible capacity of domination and destruction by means of criminal Violence and Terror, correspondingly reducing the others’.
It is known that an established political power, largely by the mere fact of being so, appears like evident, necessary and “natural”. Its political base and structure seem to be equipped with a social-geological and pre-political “reality” that “escapes” to the properly historical, sociological, political and juridical knowledge and analysis. In that context, the social sciences are presented as if they were natural sciences; therefore, the ideology of that power seeks to represent policy – as well as production – “as locked up in natural, eternal laws independent of history”.
“That is to say, the organs of authority – the organized power or violence – harmonise to such an extent with the (economic) laws governing men’s lives, or appear to them so overwhelmingly superior, that men experience them as natural forces, as the necessary environment for their existence. As a result they submit to them freely. (Which is not to say that they approve of them.) (G. Lukács; History and Class Consciousness.)
Sufficiently “conditioned”, the patient of this ideology of the power does “freely” undergo the dictates of the established power. In an imaginary “ideal” world, where “all violence coming from where it can come” was effectively and not hypocritically condemned, there would not be actual nor virtual violence, nor real political power, nor law, nor State.
Apart from illusions, hallucinations or ideological sleight of hands, the dominant imperialistic State “by no means constitutes ‘the natural environment of the human’ but merely a real fact whose effective power must be taken into account, but which cannot claim any intrinsic right to determine our actions”. “It should be treated, therefore, purely as a power structure which, on the one hand, has to be taken into account to the extent – and only to the extent – to which its actual power stretches. And, on the other hand, it should be subjected to the most painstaking and fearless examination in order to discover the points where this power can be weakened and undermined. This strong point, or rather weak point in the State, is the way in which it is reflected in the consciousness of people. Thus, the ideology [underpinning that imperialistic State] is in this case not merely a consequence of the economic structure of society but also the precondition of its smooth functioning.” (Georg Lukács; Legality and Illegality.)
With the end of Communism as an absolute and cardinal evil: supposed supreme enemy and source of all conflicts, Axis of Evil and of international fights, the permanent competition among the criminal totalitarian States and the subjugated Peoples or the ones subjugated-to-be needed a new adversary of a similar or superior entity. That’s how the imperialistic and fascist States have had to invent a new metaphysics and a new Axis of Evil in order to justify their crimes. In this sense, the new “terrorism”: shapeless, multiform and protean threat, was going to fulfil this need above any forecasts and expectations. Well understood: the cold war, its post-war and the new hegemonic Order have not invented the terrorism.
(From: ‘Violence and Terrorism. - Their ideological mystification at the service of Imperialism’.)
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