Comrade,
Fascism as a movement is that of a petty-bourgeoisie facing ruin and
threatened with being thrown into the ranks of the working class, and all
those standing in hostility to a strengthening working class movement, which
is absolutely crushed under fascism. It is a movement which serves to
facilitate the rule of finance capital in particular, but as a hireling is a
bureaucracy that often spits in the face of its bourgeois masters. All
elements of proletarian democracy within bourgeois society are rooted out
and crushed - and as far as I am aware, there are trade unions functioning
as is normal under a bourgeois democracy in Turkey. Indeed, since the
Thatcher regime, which was extraordinarily reactionary and crushed the
workers' movement which it will not recover from for years to come, though
was not fascist, our own trade union laws are the worst in what can be
termed the West other than Turkey, from what I have been told. But,
regardless of what some of the more eccentric species of the Trotskyist
movement once said here, Britain is not a fascist state, and to suggest it
is would be using fascism as a meaningless swearword.
There is an extreme chauvinist and perhaps "quasi-fascist" party in the
Turkish coalition. Alas, there is one in Serbia also, called the Serbian
Radical Party, led by Votislav Sesijl, a party very similar to the one you
speak of, with its own lumpenproletarian militia. It openly speaks of a
"Greater Serbia" and indeed this is the name of one of their journals, its
leader has made colourful statements including "cut the Croats' necks with
rusty knives", it was formerly called the Chetnik Movement - a thoroughly
unpalatable group of thugs. But Serbia is in no way a fascist state.
Indeed, it is not even sufficient to have a fascist party in a bourgeois
government to make the character of that state fascist. Before the Nazis had
set up a fascist state apparatus, they were members of a coalition. That in
itself, even if the true character of the "Greater Turkey" party of which
you speak is fascist, does not mean Turkey is a fascist state whose working
class has been atomised. Turkey is probably more democratic than countries
such as Russia and Serbia which have much more dysfunctional forms of
bourgeois democracy.
The fact that the bourgeois state cracks down on its working class enemies
neither makes it fascist. An open reactionary dictatorship such as that of
Augusto Pinochet was not fascist, even though it murdered thousands of
socialists in cold blood and tortured dozens of thousands more, whilst
viciously clamping down on the Chilean workers' movement in general.
The guerrilla wing of the Serbian Radical Party was the worst of the Serb
extra-military lumpen gangs. They kicked to death pregnant Bosnian Muslim
women and burnt houses down with children inside. Their atrocities ranked
alongside the worst of the Croatian quasi-fascist lumpen gangs. So the fact
you have a party partly in power with such a wing does not change a thing.
Yes it must be very painful to have so many of your comrades locked up and
often facing death. Yet as intense as the emotion is towards your oppressor
because of their oppression, you must prevent this clouding your judgement.
Describing "your" state in your propaganda as "fascist" merely serves to
discredit other potentially vital information by painting you as hysteric
and other undesirable things.
When I speak of individual terrorism, I am not talking about it in the way
our ruling class uses it, e.g. barbaric terrorists killing innocent people,
and so on. Individual terrorism crops in the works of the most prominent
20th Century communist leaders and writers, from Luxemburg to Lenin to
Trotsky. Their conclusions were the same. I do not object to individual
terrorism from a moralistic point of view, but from a tactical point of view
- it does not ever lead to the overthrow of the ruling class, and indeed
harms the revolution, often disastrously. Individual terrorism is something
to be avoided by all working class revolutionaries. It is not for nothing
that there is a history of reactionaries and disgruntled members of the
ruling class committing acts of individual terrorism whilst pretending to be
communists, in order to provoke a crackdown or even military coup against
the workers' movement in general. For example, I have almost no doubt
whatsoever that the Greek "November 17" group is actually run by the secret
services.
I have not protested against the Turkish regime in a direct sense, I must
admit. Unfortunately there is so much oppression in the world I am really
"spoilt" for choice, both in Britain and abroad. Due to the limitations of
space-time there is a certain amount I can protest about. If I protest the
war against Yugoslavia, I may be condemned by those fighting against
imperialist intervention in Colombia for not spending time in their
campaign. This is inevitable, but I do my best.
And I think a demonstration on behalf of Ceaucescu is really pretty
disgusting. The regime of which he was the figurehead went as far as to ban
typewriters. It was a regime that the working class of Romania
overwhelmingly, and undeniably, was hostile towards. The even wackier tone
than usual of this Stalinist regime was due in no small part to the relative
cultural backwardness of Romania reflecting on to the ruling bureaucracy.
This is not an experience I hope you wish to emulate.
I must also point out that you must win vital support from the working
class movements of the West, such as Britain in which you live, and
demonstrations on behalf of Nicolae Ceaucescu of all people is not going to
get the British proletariat on your side; indeed, the most revolutionary
section is that most hostile to such regimes.
I hope this is food for thought. I hope I do not get denounced as Adolf
Hitler because of anything I have said!
Cheers
Owen
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