The Murders in Paris and Those Rubbing Their Hands

The Real Barbarians

by KEMAL OKUYAN

Istanbul.

Progressive and courageous people were murdered in Paris. We are furious. Our anger against reactionaries is sharpening.

But we have to think…

There are hundreds of thousands people with divine convictions ready to volunteer for carrying out such a massacre. Therefore, I would not say “provocateurs did it and laid the blame on the Islamists”.

Throughout the history of imperialism there have been numerous similar dark, filthy and perfidious operations. Therefore I would not assume that “the jihadists bit the hands that have been feeding them and the imperialists are currently regretting what they have done.”

From this moment on, we are not interested in who planned the assault, instigate the assaulters or who permit it. It is better to focus on how to get the humanity out of this pit of hell.

On the day of the massacre there was a burst of fury against religious fundamentalism. In our country there were less people saying “but” to mitigate the crimes of the Islamists. This was good.

The attacks of the Islamic State against the Kurdish lands reminded the meaning of the “political Islam” to those, who had forgotten it. Now, a massacre that took place in the capital of an imperialist country induced the memory of some others. As we know, one of those deceased caricaturists paid his tribute to the resistance in Kobani only months ago. This alone shows that Paris has already been linked to the incidents in the Middle East.

‘There, eventually, all sides are gathering together against the monster!’ This is the common feeling now.

According to the official authorities from the other side of the Atlantic, this is an ongoing struggle against the barbarians and this struggle is now uniting the civilised world around a joint cause.

I don’t and can’t know the details of the Paris massacre. But I can easily say that there has been a very well planned perception operation carried out for quite a while.

The attack of 9/11 was a very costly production. Still, it worked and gave the pretext to the US to launch the invasion of two countries. But that scenario was rough.

The cost of the Islamic State is also certainly high. But it has been, in fact, proved to be very efficient and helpful as the leading actor of a scenario that is well written to give a kiss of life to the liberal paradigm in a very wide geography.

It is a great boon to the imperialist forces for disseminating the idea that ‘we are all in the same boat.’ Could not ask for more, especially, if that idea is powerful enough to get the left as well under its influence.

Some sections of the left in the world are already manipulated by the imperialist centres; some others lost their faith in revolution and are now obsessed with the idea of constituting the widest possible alliance.

It should not be too difficult to see which class would benefit most if the working classes of Europe, which have been impoverishing, unemployed and forced to work more for decades, take side in a polarisation appeared on a different axis, at a time when they are starting to develop an inclination of interrogating the existing social system.

There are signs of a new liberal assault. The opportunity the degraded EU has grasped to convince the people to be pleased of their conditions by pointing out the evil is one of those signs. The fact that in Europe they will pave the way for xenophobia and brutal anti-terror laws on one hand, while on the other there will be an increasing concern for the importance of liberal tolerance is the other sign of the liberal assault that we will be exposed to in the coming days.

It is now an explicit danger that in Turkey the political position against fundamentalism will be cleared off from anti-imperialism and the notion of public ownership. As we are always saying, this would not be the resurrection of secularism, which has been destroyed by the Islamist government, but would be the elimination of the working class progressiveness through narrowing down reactionarism to such extremes as the Islamic State.

I have to note herby that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) will be eliminated as well, if they cannot make strong manoeuvres to extend the government’s life. This note is important at a time when we observe that they are once again warming the idea that an alliance between the Republican People’s Party, the socialists and the Kurdish politics would overcome the Islamist government in Turkey.

What I call as ‘they’ in this article is a collective power. Under all conditions the immune, the winner, the force that sustains its hegemony is the capitalist class.

They feed the religious reactionaries to kill the leftists; they win.

They declare the religious reactionaries as the enemy; they win again.

These are the real barbarians.

I am asking: For how long will this costly feast of the wealthy classes last?

Kemal Okuyan is member of the Central Committee of Communist Party of Tukey and a columnist of daily news portal soL.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/16/the-murders-in-paris-and-those-rubbing-their-hands/