Brussels, after the terrorist suicide bomb attacks…

In the morning of Tuesday March 22nd two suicide bomb attacks took place at Brussels Airport and an Underground Station, leaving dozens of dead, hundreds of wounded and a population terrified. Both attacks were claimed by the Islamist State with the following message urging the public to demand from Belgian leaders that they withdraw their troops from the Middle East: “Withdraw and you will live in peace."

Campaign no. 1 national unity behind King and Flag

Immediately the media took advantage to call for national unity behind the Belgian flag and the king, calling for a “March against Fear” next Easter Sunday. Obviously they hoped for a same response as after the two terrorist attacks in Paris 2015 where hundreds of thousands hit the streets to let themselves be caught by … French nationalism. But Belgium is a state consisting of three nations divided by language, French, Flemish and a small German region, Brussels in fact the French speaking capital. This division is specially used to divert working class struggles, as it will be used in the near future. Because this appeal to the feeble national symbols of King and Flag didn’t work out as it did in Paris, even not after the Antwerp central railway station in the Flemish part of Belgium was closed ‘for security reasons’, the bourgeois media started another campaign. Finally the March against Fear was transformed into just a meeting on a square, surrounded by armed forces for ‘protection, and even this was finally abandoned ‘for security reasons’. Probably the workers, being confronted for months already by heavily armed cops and soldiers all over Brussels, had already come to the conclusion that the state had not been able to protect them against terrorist attacks. That’s why this element of a deep distrust in the Belgian state that popped up in workers’ consciousness is being used till today, also f.e. in the Netherlands, in a second campaign against the proletariat.

Campaign no. 2 the supposed weakness of the state is used to enforce repression

During this campaigns the public is bombarded with 'revelations' about the 'failure' of the security and intelligence services, f.e. that the terrorist Abdeslam was heard only one hour between his arrest and the attacks in Brussels; ‘after all, he was too weak after his injury during the arrest’. The so-called ’failure' of the security services - for the umpteenth time - is used to continuously expand these services and their powers. In the campaign on their failure workers are invited to think as an agent of the secret police, where later the workers will be the first victims of the "extended" interrogation techniques. By contrast, it is clear that expansion of the (digital) eavesdropping powers, that Guantanamo Bay, that the CIA outsourcing "interrogations" to Mubaraks (Egypt) and Assads (Syria) unscrupulous torturers, the "fight against terrorism" has only produced more terrorists attacks and more .... strengthening of repression.

This strengthening of repression now aims at eliminating all the autonomous workers' struggles in France under the state of emergency of the "socialist" Hollande. The latter shows the real aims of the bourgeoisie in its campaigns on terrorism. The economic crisis that announced itself on the financial markets and the slowing growth - if not collapse - of the BRIC-countries, urges Capital to frontally attack the working class, while at the same time all States fly forward into war.

Hidden background of the terrorist attacks: imperialist war

Remarkably little media report on the relationship between the war in Syria, Iraq and (mostly secretly) in Libya, and the attacks by IS all over the world, which the attacks in Turkey and Brussels make part of. Several European countries - including the Netherlands and Belgium - take the side of the Coalition in these wars. The ‘partners’ in this Coalition act all more or less against Islamist State and each of them for their own imperialist purposes. There is no enthusiastic support of the population, let alone the workers for this war. This applies to all Western countries. Therefore, the US would not send ground troops which would lead heavy losses and could evoke the same reaction from demonstrations and strike movements and the Vietnam war in the seventies.

The bombing of civilian targets is one of the most abhorrent features of the imperialist wars. Massive bombing of the civilian population by air forces had been developed to a true art form, from Guernica to Dresden and from Rotterdam to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By comparison, the self-made bombs of IS are child play. Mind you, I do not compare here - as often happens - as to then take sides, f.e. for the weaker side in imperialist war as Trotskyists, Maoists and some Anarchists do. Instead of several false choices for one of the imperialist sides, proletarian internationalism since 1914 is the choice of the world proletariat against imperialism as a whole, i.e. against all imperialisms, including those of all very national ‘liberation’ movements.

As after the terrorist suicide attacks in Ankara and Istanbul, by the Netherlands blog arbeidersstemmen.wordpress.com , with the feeble voice I have, I called workers to make their voices heard and to discuss with each other on the arguments above:
▪ Start discussions on the attacks with your colleagues, family members, friends, neighbours, fellow students or students.
▪ If the discussion become important, leave work or study leave for a time.
▪ Stop participating in minutes of silence for the victims led by those who brought us the war!
▪ Let's exchange an hour or so for our thoughts about these horrible events.
▪ Workers, we have a world to win!

The internationalist milieu and Brussels

Two smaller and less known groups of the former Communist Left immediately published a leaflet in English language. Such haste in taking position is meritorious when it is not at the expense of clarity. However, apart from some minor weaknesses (1), these two groups have defended working class struggles against efforts to divide the class:
▪ the International Group of the Communist Left (IGCL) has denounced efforts “to regroup and to unite behind the governments and the democratic state, all united, exploiters and exploited, and thus to give up any resistance to capitalism and any opposition to the economic attacks against our living and working conditions”: http://igcl.org/plugins-dist/medias/prive/vignettes/pdf.png
▪ Mouvement Communiste has furthermore pointed out that the misery and discrimination of the muslim population in Brussels forms a breeding ground for terrorism, while at the same time denouncing terrorism as a means of struggle of the bourgeoisie: http://mouvement-communiste.com/documents/MC/Leaflets/TR_Bruxelles%20160322_VFEN.pdf. So the latter group has even been capable to highlighted an important reference in the actual situation in Belgium.

This attitude is contrasted by the silence till now of three other groupings with a presence in Belgium:

• the International Communist Current (ICC) http://en.internationalism.org
• its long time split Internationalist Perspectives (IP) http://internationalist-perspective.org
• a Forum of individuals that more recently split form the ICC, Controversies http://www.leftcommunism.org/?lang=en

May be these three groupings believe it is better not to spend attention to the terrorist attacks because they already have taken position after the terrorist attacks in Paris January 11th at Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket, followed in November 13th 2015 by attacks at Bataclan/Stade de France. These positions can be found on their web sites. At the site of the Internationalist Communist Tendency (ICT) http://www.leftcom.org/en , a group without presence in Belgium, we could neither find a position on the most recent terrorist attack in Belgium.

The Italian (and main) section of Programma Communista ( http://www.partitocomunistainternazionale.org ) has the merit to declare openly they have nothing to add "to what we have already supported, said, written and spread over the deca des", meaning that we have to "work to strengthen the international communist party ". "There is no other way."

The point I would like to make that if revolutionaries consider themselves as elements in the process of consciousness in the proletariat, they should not only hold on to internationalist positions when confronted with new ideological campaigns, but they also should be able to discern what is new in these campaigns and the way the population and specially the working class responds to these campaigns. Of course the feeble internationalist forces may need some time to reflect recent events, campaigns and their impact, a reflection I hope to have contributed with this short blog entry.

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(1) See critical footnotes to a blog in Dutch in which I tried to comment events and campaigns for four days: https://arbeidersstemmen.wordpress.com/2016/03/24/terroristische-aanslagen-in-brussel/