Among the Marxist Revolutionary left are idealistic people
who are extremely critical of people and groups, such as the Workers World
Party, who support anti-imperialist, by supporting repressive governments. They
use the term “tankies” to describe these folks. The term tankie probably goes
back the picture of the Chinese protester who stood in front of a tank prior to
the Tiananmen Square massacre. Some Marxist did support the Chinese crackdown
on Tiananmen Square. But the tankie label is put on the support of any
government the anti-tankies deem unacceptable and that actually includes almost
all of them in the world today.
Today the most common target of the anti-tankies are people
or groups who support Bashar Hafez al-Assad,(بشار
حافظ
الأسد)
the President of Syria, the Islamic Republic of Iran and Kim Jong Un (김정은) and his Democratic People’s Republic of (North) Korea.
I found the following argument on a facebook page:
Kaitlin
Ulyanov “We
should support the working class struggles within countries which are targets
of imperialism. The best way, ultimately the only way to fight imperialism is
though class struggle. In countries where there isn't a coherent or effective
left advocate independent working class politics and demands, such as Ukraine
(the Ukrainian CP are pro-Russian, voted against allowing protests, I don't
know much about Borotba, what I hear they don't sound much better) we can raise
the slogan of independent working class politics as a nucleus to build a
movement.”
There are all kinds of problems with that quote. One is to
imply that a country that has no working class movement needs someone outside
their country to advocate “independent working class politics and demands,” How
do we know what the working class in these countries really want? In both Syria
and Iran there are communist organizations that try to raise worker demands.
But in Syria the Syrian
Communist Party is supporting the Assad Regime because of both
agreements they made with that government to protect them and they have been
attacked by the Free
Syrian Army (FSA), the government’s main paramilitary opposition. For this
working class party it is a matter of survival to support the Regime. Most of
us on the left don’t admire or respect Assad. He is not progressive or
socialist and he has used outright murder to keep down opposition to his rule.
While he is being attacked by US imperialism at present he has made deals with
imperialists in the past.
However his opposition, the FSA is extremely
reactionary and strives to work as an agent of US and European Imperialism.
There are a few anti-tankies that take opposition to Assad so far as to support
the FSA. Such a policy is very destructive to the anti-imperialist movements.
An organization cannot be anti-imperialist and support such groups as the FSA.
There is also the problem that even the most anti-Assad activist
has to realize they can’t oppose the FSA and in a round-about way be supporting
Assad. After all opposing US aid to the FSA aids him no matter what we say. We
can avoid the “standing
in solidarity” crowd who believe we must stand with every government that
is attacked by the US. But there are times when we must support unsavory characters
for strategic reasons only. So there is a slim line between outright support of
a bad regime and opposing the attacks leveled at them from the US or other
imperialist agents.
In the case of Iran there is leftist opposition and that
government has clamped down hard on its internal left. The Communist Party of Iran (Marxist–Leninist–Maoist) and The Communist Party
of Iran are both active and opposed to the Islamic republic. Also active is
the once pro-Soviet Tudeh Party of Iran. That party suffered a
setback after the government tried to liquidate it. The Fedayeen Marxist
guerrillas where also the target of liquidation. A Maoist group called Peykar was liquidated completely
a few years after the revolution. With this kind of repression against the left
it would be irresponsible for a leftist group to “stand in solidarity” with
this regime.
There are leftist who do that. They include the Socialist
Workers Party,
who
at least in the 1980s, supported the Iranian Revolution.
Another example is the Workers World Party. Here is Workers World Supporter Defends its Position on
Iran–
Greg Butterfield,
It is not WWP,
with its opposition to imperialism, “who think the world is stuck 50 years
ago,” as Rowland Robinson of the blog “By Any Means
Necessary” claims. Rather, it is those who think that they can
take a shortcut around the hard road of fighting imperialism that are living 30
– 50 – really, at least 70 years — in the past – back to the time of Max
Shachtman and James Burnham, who elaborated the views later taken over by
“Trotskyists” and “Maoists” of various types.
In fact, the
position elaborated by these Western “revolutionaries” against Iran’s
government (or China, or North Korea, or Hamas, etc.) is essentially identical
to the doctrine of “Soviet social-imperialism” so popular with U.S. Maoists in
the 1970s and 1980s. This amounted to drawing an equal sign between U.S.
imperialism and the Soviet Union (or worse, calling the Soviet workers’ state
the “main danger”) and thereby abandoning their anti-imperialist
responsibilities toward Angola, Cuba, Ethiopia, Vietnam, etc., ad nauseum.
Who, in this
crisis, is asking the fundamental questions about the role of U.S. imperialism?
About who stands to benefit from a collapse of the Ahmadinejad government in
the current situation? About what the collapse of the Iranian regime under
these conditions will mean not only for the people of Iran, but for occupied
Iraq and Afghanistan? For Palestine and Lebanon? Venezuela and Nepal? About how
far a U.S. oil grab in Iran would set back the struggle in the Middle East, and
here?
Even those who do not support Iran have opposed the US
efforts in helping the so called "democracy" movement. We know that the US will
use this as an opening and create another puppet regime as they have in Iraq
and Afghanistan. We also oppose this country’s belligerence against Iran for
developing nuclear power. It is not up to the US to make this decision and we
should speak out against such interference into Iran’s internal affairs.
The Anti-tankies are hard on those they consider tankies and
that includes them using a lot of ridicule. There is a site called “Shit Tankies Say.” It’s one thing to disagree with someone’s
position—it is another thing to attack them more than imperialism itself. It
becomes a kind of “Infantile disorder” and it becomes just waste a lot of time
that could be better spent on real enemies.
It is also easy to attack complicated positions by using
arguments that are simple. They may seem obvious. But when it comes to
international politics we have to be careful of what we say.
The next article will be on the Democratic People’s Republic
of North Korea. Continued…
-សតិវ អតុ
Pix from: www.quickmeme.com
And m.zero.facebook.com.
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