After the recent demonstrations aimed at falsifying the right of self-determination or independence of the Basque People, and at deluding/deceiving/exhausting it with a tricked lure they call “right to decide”, the reality of French-Spanish imperialism over our Country remains

After the recent demonstrations aimed at falsifying the right of self-determination or independence of the Basque People, and at deluding/deceiving/exhausting it with a tricked lure they call “right to decide”, the reality of French-Spanish imperialism over our Country remains

As there normally happens with all subjugated Peoples, the task of establishing a coherent, effective and socially integrated strategy: one that is capable of achieving the accumulation of the forces of freedom against those of imperialistic totalitarianism, is an arduous task and one that calls for the generous contribution of broad social layers of the subjugated People and of course of its intellectuals. However, in our case and since the very emergence of the National Movement of the Basque People for the achievement of our national Independence and the restoration of our own historical State, the Kingdom of Nabarre, a considerable part of the purported Basque ‘intelligentsia’ has moved between political incapacity and betrayal. Thus, from the beginning, the overcoming of the enormous strategic error that “Carlism” had meant for our national independence was done through the sectarian Hispanic-Ignatian, neo-Carlist and Catholic-Jelkidian movement of the Pnv; a party that finally, and for half a century now, has been integrated – together with the Eta and all their satellites – into the imperialistic and fascist régimes and States of Spain and France that do militarily occupy our Country. These are criminal régimes that, on the contrary, have been accepted by that entire official “Basque nationalist and patriotic political class” as non-Nationalist, non-violent, legitimate, democratic and “the States” of their own.

A strategy for the liberation of the Basque People from French-Spanish imperialism is impossible if the fundamental concepts to face this task have been systematically distorted. In this sense, the destruction of the concepts of Peoples’ Self-Determination and Democracy means the destruction of any possibility of resistance and liberation from Imperialism. For this reason, in the face of the redoubled campaigns of ideological falsification and manipulation of the international right of self-determination or independence of all Peoples (RSD): recently carried out by the liquidationist bureaucracies Pnv-Eta, their satellites and other local agents of Spanish imperialism such as ‘Gure esku’, we once again publish extracts from our texts of reference on this fundamental issue for the freedom of the Basque People:

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The international RSD of all Peoples: taken as the foundation of the democratic State and not as its result, is essential for the qualification of that democratic State, which must necessarily be constituted from its base by Peoples’ Self-Determination or Independence. Peoples’ Self-Determination or Independence and Democracy are contradictory concepts with the imperialistic régime. The supporters of this régime try to escape from that contradiction; but they can only disguise it through the “confusion” between the democratic system: founded on Peoples’ Self-Determination, and the imperialistic system, founded on the denial of Peoples’ Self-Determination or Independence.

This confusion implies the distortion and destruction of the cardinal terms and concepts of Democracy and Peoples’ Self-Determination; the denial of both the occupied Nation and State, as well as the correlative imperialistic reality that this does necessarily entail; the acceptance and recognition – de facto and de jure – of the imperialistic régime, constituted through war of aggression, conquest, military occupation, annexation and colonization onto the subdued Peoples and their legitimate States; the substitution of the unconditional and immediate independence from imperialism: which is THE SOLE AND NECESSARY CONTENT of the RSD, with the “eventual option of independence”, which is the denial of that right implied in the acceptance of the “eventual” continuity of imperialism; the shameful ideological counterfeiting and abandonment of the subjugated Peoples’ RSD or independence; and finally, the theoretical and practical liquidation of the real process of Resistance against imperialism: central task and objective for the worldwide imperialistic reaction. Such is the actual content of the ideological “adaptations” of the RSD, persistently disseminated by the transmission belts of the “autonomous communities” of Spanish imperialism. It is nothing other than that, what lies ahead and behind their faked and grotesque version of the RSD of all Peoples.

The denial of this right is the basis of imperialism: in itself a crime against the “Peoples’ fundamental right to peace and security” according to the contemporary International Law of the UN. The ideological attack on the RSD is carried out according to general lines that here we can only point. The three “common” ways of ideological denial of the right of national Freedom or Self-Determination of all Peoples are based on:

1/ full denial of the right;

2/ denial-reduction of its contents, through a limitation of its concept to a freedom and a right conditioned, subordinated or confined either to “autonomy, federation, association, integration” etc. but always within the occupying State; that is: a reduction of the means constitutive of all policy and all law, with the aim of achieving the reduction of that right to apparent “limited forms” of domination that in reality oppose the Peoples’ full independence; and

3/ denial of the Peoples that have the right of self-determination or national Independence of all Peoples, reduced to one or some of them (generally, the Peoples recognized as States), or to special cases; which empties the right of other Peoples against the occupying imperialistic States.

From among those ways of denying the RSD, the Spanish and French – military, civil or ecclesiastical – imperialism adopts preferably, of course, the most radical, namely: the denial of the very existence of the Peoples; a “solution” that excludes in itself all accessory question of freedom and rights. But, according to its usual ideological technique, it uses them all by accumulation: simultaneously or in succession, according to the time and occasion; without the formal contradictions inherent in this procedure harming it too much, in the face of populations curbed and stunned by the monopolies of criminal Violence and of ideologically determined information/disinformation.

For their part, the indigenous traitors and liquidationists who make up the alleged and official “Basque nationalist and patriotic class”, that is: the Pnv-Eta bureaucracy and its satellites Ea-Ehbildu-Sortu-Geroabai etc., speak of “Basque nation, self-determination and democracy”; but they recognize: with an unheard-of stubbornness, the fundamental “democratic and non-violent legitimacy” of the French-Spanish imperialistic and fascist régime of military occupation of our Country (in which “all means of coercion and communication are in the hands of the army”). And this despite the fact that the States built on that régime: Spain and France, are constitutionally, formally and really founded on the denial of the Basque People and its historical State, the Kingdom of Nabarre (the successor of the Kingdom of Pamplona), and on the absolute affirmation of the occupying Nations, Peoples and States as the only reality and basis of that “democratic and non-violent legitimacy”. 

Despite all their fake “democratic and patriotic” rhetoric, those bureaucratic “Basque nationalist” agents are unable of openly assuming – both theoretically and ideologically – the National and State reality and qualification of the subjugated Basque People, as well as the imperialistic and fascist character of the occupying States: officially founded “on the indissoluble unity of the Spanish Nation, common and indissoluble Fatherland of all Spaniards”, and “on the Spanish People, from which emanate all the powers of the State”, as well as “on the Nation and Republic one and indivisible, Fatherland of the French People”.

Through the working of the “Basque” Pnv-Eta liquidationist bureaucracies and their satellites: local accomplices of French-Spanish imperialism, the ideological negation/destruction of the RSD of all Peoples has now reached peaks of confusion and hypocrisy which before now were ignored or considered inaccessible by humans. They have thus destroyed or abandoned the very foundations of the oppressed Nation, of the right of FREE disposition of all Peoples, and of all democracy. The inevitable consequence is that the “right to self-determination” that they talk about is formally “the right of self-determination of the Peoples and Nations of Spain and France in order to determine the others”; which is an ideological falsification that implies the denial of the fundamental RSD of the subjugated Peoples. Their task consists of a constant reactionary effort both to hide that the RSD is the right of independence from imperialism (and that therefore the opposition against imperialism is the only strategic content of that right), as well as to deny the imperialistic character of the French-Spanish régime of military occupation of the Basque People and its State, the Kingdom of Nabarre.

On the other hand, the own “nation” – of which these “Basque” agents talk about – is not for them a reality and a political foundation, this is: an active subject and a starting point which the RSD or independence of the Basque People is based upon, but the empty expectation and object of rhetorical pretensions or aspirations, to be achieved within the framework of the French-Spanish imperialistic and fascist régime of military occupation of our Country; a framework that they have accepted, recognized and legitimized as legal, democratic and their own. The “right to decide/right to self-determination” that they talk about consists of an ideological falsification of the RSD that implies its denial; just as the “democracy” that they talk about is French-Spanish imperialistic fascism in power.

Unprecedentedly, they recognize the de facto French-Spanish régime as essentially democratic, peaceful, non-Nationalist and non-violent, all at the same time. “We should not abuse of words as serious as ‘fascism’, because in spite of everything France is yet a democracy. The French State, like any other, has a right to defend itself against violence, basically, it was made for that; but it does not always have a sense of measure.” (J-L Davant.)

So, after so many years of apologetics applied to the Eta “activism” (“the capital event in these last forty years is the development of ETA”, they say with the greatest tranquillity), the convert Davant does long ago approve the – according to him – “democratic” French State, at the service of maintaining its domination over our Country as it does it in the antipodes. And this, even recognizing that it was about repression against defendants who were acting “Euskal Herria libratu nahiz” [“seeking to free the Basque People”]. But here’s his explanation: “Horrekin ez dut erran nahi jujatu gabe uzten ahal zirela: bere burua zain dezake bai Estatuak, eta funtsez hortako egina da”. (“By this I do not mean to say that they could go without being tried: since the State [the French one, of course; Davant cannot think of any other] has a right to take care of itself, and basically it was made for this.”)

Now then (and to limit ourselves only to logic): how can one thing – the State or whatever else – have been made in order to look after itself? “I would like it was explained to me”, as he himself says. Because, in simple formal logic, if something does already exist, it cannot “have been made” to look after what already exists; and if it does not exist, it cannot be made so as to look after what does not exist; but imperialism and formal logic keep problematic relations, as we have been able to verify so many times.

Not only logic, but also the fundamental political and juridical affirmations have been denied and evacuated. In reality, the “moderate and radical Basque” institutionalists Pnv-Eta have long since abandoned the essential and decisive affirmation of the occupied Basque People, Nation and State, and of their rights of self-determination and legitimate self-defence; which, far from being the foundations of democratic policy and law, have been reduced for them to a vague objective or futile pretension. On the cardinal issue of determining the People, the Nation and the State, the aboriginal spokespersons for the broad and multiform institutionalist armed and unarmed Pnv-Eta conglomerate do: in use of the privileges of propaganda that the “new” Spanish fascist régime of the Second Francoism grants to those who in word or deed – partially or fully – recognize and legitimize it, say and do the same things that the law and the propaganda of imperialism establish, with some formal precautions. And above all, they accept and recognize as legitimate, democratic, non-Nationalist and non-violent the Spanish régime of military occupation of our Country, as well as the Francoism reformed by the Spanish intra-totalitarian transition.

Let’s see: they proclaim “the right of the Basque people to form a nation”, and they graphically announce that “We are a people with the right to form a nation. This country is in water breaking and you women know much of that: it will be a boy or it will be a girl, but a creature is coming. A new nation is going to be born”. (X. Arzalluz, president of the Pnv.)

Thus, in the ideology of the “moderate and radical Basque peripheral armed or unarmed nationalists-institutionalists” Pnv-Eta and their satellites, the Nation: as the foundation and agent of national freedom and its inherent right of all Peoples’ self-determination or independence (a fundamental principle affirmed by all States and all National Liberation Movements in the world), gives way to the “nation” that does only exist as an aspiration of a “nationalism without a nation”. With the vague aim or vain pretence – for that “nationalism without a nation” – to “form” or procreate the new nation IN AND FROM the same legal-institutional system that does totally and absolutely deny it; a system that even so those “Basque peripheral armed or unarmed nationalists-institutionalists” Pnv-Eta accept as legitimate, democratic and their own.

They do formally confirm with this that the Basque Nation does not exist as a previous reality (something of which we have historical evidence since theRomans called our ancestors Vascones); that the National Resistance cannot be based on it; that the National Independence of the Basque People is not a fundamental right but the more or less futuristic object of a secessionist project, aspiration, claim, “right” or perspective to be achieved within a State according to them fundamentally democratic from which that “nation” has to be born (which makes the RSD absolutely non-existent and inapplicable to that supposed “Basque nation”); and that therefore the RSD is only a so-called “right to decide” of the more or less viable or abortive foetus that “will be born”. But then it is about an inevitably abortive ‘nasciturus’, since, according to those “Basque nationalists-institutionalists”, it must be formed and born from the pregnant – although democratically virginal and immaculate – wombs and institutions of the bearing mother-countries, namely: the two “great” occupying nations, France and Spain; these ones not futuristic but quite actual and – albeit pregnant – quite determined to get rid as soon as possible and by all means of so annoying and undesirable spawn.

By keeping such positions, these Pnv-Eta “Basque nationalists-institutionalists” are but just confirming thereby the fundamental points of the formal and real constitutions of the States and régimes of military occupation of Francespain, which deny the very existence of the Basque Nation and State. This does not prevent them from recognizing the occupying States as “democratic with or without deficit” and as their own ones for half a century now. They do thus deny the reality of the French-Spanish imperialistic régime of military occupation of our Country; a régime accepted by them and turned into the “natural and democratic” framework for a purported “right to decide” or to be born of the nasciturus that the Pnv-Eta bureaucracy: in an attempt to affirm something that may be perfectly Spanish-compatible, calls “Basque citizenship” but never Basque People/Euskal Herria.

Along with the term/concept of Basque People/Euskal Herria, there do also disappear the policy of national freedom and the rights of self-determination and legitimate self-defence: principles that proclaim in words the UN and that, as far as they are concerned, claim all States and Movements of National Liberation in the world. Then, the only thing that there remains to be done is to close the shop that never should have been opened. Everything else is hollow and meaningless hot air: the speech and ravings of useful fools or lunatics, clinically ready to be locked up; or else the hypocritical palinode of the useful or useless scroungers of always.

If they now “discover” that “the Statute is dead” and even – what is more – that “the Statute was born dead”, there remains to know how long will it take the experts in social obstetrics and gynaecology of the group Pnv-Eta in perceiving the non-viability and the death of the foetus fathered or given birth by grace of the genetics of “self-determination” that they have launched. In it, the subjugated Nation: as the basis that it is of all defensive nationalism, gives way to the non-existent “nation” that is the objective or purpose of a “nationalism” without a nation. And the legitimate and universal nationalism: which is the way of being of every Nation, gives way to a “nationalism without a nation” that should produce the new “nation”. This is the “process” proposed by the “Basque nationalist” agents Pnv-Eta and their satellites; a process that is thus resolved in the apologia of the French-Spanish imperialistic and fascist régime of military occupation of our Country (legitimate and democratic régime and “the State” of their own, according to them), and that flows into the political “solution” proclaimed by the “hopeful and exciting” racket “process” of Lizarra-Garazi and its inevitable and logical consequences.

(On the question of nationalism, see in particular Chapter I – Peoples or Nations: the nationalism of this same work.)

Once again: a “Basque nationalism” that holds such principles and practices is sheer Spanish and French imperialistic Nationalism camouflaged; however much they play with the words so as to falsify and confuse the ideas. Starting from there, one may then wonder what is so much fuss and so much history about, how can be solved a problem that according to them does not even exist, and what is doing this administratively constituted greasy-pole “country”, apart from providing employment, salary and sinecures to the local auxiliary services of the “political class” in power.

Thus, this is how the aggressors of the occupied and colonized Territories of the Basque People, along with their “moderate and radical” armed and unarmed Pnv-Eta collaborationists and accomplices, understand the RSD of all Peoples: on the one hand, immediate and unconditional legitimization and recognition for Nationalism, Imperialism, aggression, conquest, military occupation, colonization and domination over the subjugated Peoples and their legitimate States; and on the other condemnations, conditions, obstacles, “referendums” under the conditions of centuries-old military occupation and colonization, and delays for the freedom, the defence or the restoration of the subjugated Nations and States. Only from mental alienation or bad faith can this be accepted as something natural.

The right of self-determination or independence of all Peoples is, like all democratic rights, a “reflection” of an obligation imposed by the political power that underpins International Law. The International Law is opposed to imperialism, and by that very Act it constitutes the same right of self-determination and independence of Peoples against imperialism. No additional Constitutive Act, on the part of the free or subjugated Peoples, makes any sense so as to constitute what is already constituted.

Etc.

(See the full text in Chapter XII - ‘Human rights and democracy (XII)’, of our general work ‘EUSKAL HERRIA AND THE KINGDOM OF NABARRE, OR THE BASQUE PEOPLE AND ITS STATE, AGAINST FRENCH-SPANISH IMPERIALISM’. See also, in particular, its Chapter XVIII – ‘“Contribution” of the Pnv-Eta group to the falsification of the right of self-determination of all Peoples and to the reactionary fraud: the “right to decide”’.)