the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Jul 18, 2016
These articles are the response by the revolutionary workers group Lutte Ouvrière to the terrorist attack in Nice, France on July 14.
Horror has struck again this night in Nice. In propelling his truck into the crowd to hit women, men, children, the murderer tried to kill as many as possible. It is a vile act and we express our emotions and all our solidarity with the victims and those close to them.
Whether he was a “lone wolf” more or less mad, or part of a terrorist network, the killer has sown terror like the jihadists have done in Iraq, in Syria, in Turkey, or in Pakistan. These “crazies of God” use religion to carve out a domain where they can, in their turn, oppress the population. They are the enemies of the workers and impose their yoke on the poorest people.
To cover up his impotence, [French President] Hollande announced the prolongation of the state of emergency, even though the killings in Nice prove that it doesn’t prevent anything. He above all announced the intensification of bombing in Syria and Iraq.
The emotion of the event must not make us complicit with the policies of Hollande and the French state. Without waiting to find out who the killer was and how he was connected to ISIS, Hollande announced the intensification of air strikes in the Middle East. Because there was a massacre perpetuated by an individual in Nice, dozens, hundreds, thousands of inhabitants of these regions already ravaged by war will be bombed. We condemn this policy that adds the barbarism of bombings to that of the dictatorship of armed bands under which the populations suffer.
And the horror of the attacks is multiplied by the repugnant proposals of those who search to link terrorism, Islam, immigrants, and migrants. At Nice, the terrorist struck indiscriminately, without asking either the religion or the origin of those who were in his path. The migrants who today flee the Middle East are looking to escape just the type of terror that we denounce here.
The terrorism of jihadism is the rotten fruit of the pillage of the Middle East by the great powers and their imperialist maneuvers. In pursuing the same policies, the French leaders, behind the United States, don’t defend peace or security in the world. They aggravate the injustice, the poverty, the hate, and the obscurantism that form the breeding ground of terrorism.
This is why Lutte Ouvrière will continue to condemn terrorism and fight against the imperialist policies of France and the lies of the political caste that wants to use these hideous acts to set one part of the population against another.