Peru and the US are threatened by ideas—such as by Maoism and Gonzaloism

"All great ideas are dangerous" - Oscar Wilde

Frank Zappa once warned that censorship means that we are afraid of ideas—that ideas are dangerous. But that ship has sailed. In the US our government has made it clear that those in other countries who believe in things outside our bourgeois democracy, are dangerous and those who believe in them need to be eradicated, eliminated, and destroyed. There is no room for negotiations or room for their ideas in US occupied countries for such groups as the Islamic State (IS). That includes ignoring the many Iraqis that preferred IS to their US occupiers and we are going to try "deprogramming" those who want to go to the Middle-east to join with IS.

But we can look at Peru to see how an imperialist lackey and bourgeois democracy, based on the US, is attacking political parties because their "ideas are too dangerous."

Since 1980, Peru has been a country besieged by members of the Communist Party of Peru (known in the press as Shining Path).

In several reports the government is bragging that they have successfully beaten Shining Path (from here on out I will refer to them with the official letters of their name PCP) militarily:

"Three months later, the December 9, 2013 arrest of Alexander Dimas Huaman (a.k.a. Héctor), Artemio’s successor, led the head of Peru’s national drug police to declare that Shining Path had disappeared from the upper Huallaga Valley and that the region had been pacified (El Comercio [Lima], December 9, 2013)."

That means that the government believes they have beaten PCP once and for all. But are they breaking out Champaign or resending all the draconian police state actions that came a result of being challenged by an armed group—NOT AT ALL.

A lot of young Maoist have joined with ex-PCP people in forming a new political party around the idea of pushing for amnesty for all political prisoners including all those captured guerillas of the PCP, including Chairman Gonzalo (Abimael Guzmán). This new party, MOVADEF (Movimiento Por Amnistia Y Derechos Fundamentales/Movements for Amnesty and Fundamental Rights) has tried to register as a legal political party. The government has treated them as if they are just another formation of the PCP guerillas. In other words—it was not just the violence the government opposed—it was the ideas.

For example:

"...MOVADEF’s increased efforts to gain political legitimacy, as MOVADEF filed papers with Peru’s Jurado Nacional de Elecciones (JNE – National Jury of Elections) seeking registration as a legitimate political party and describing its ideology as “Marxism-Leninism-Gonzalo thought.” The latter element refers to the personal ideology of Abimael Guzmán.

On January 20, 2012, the JNE rejected the application for a second time because it did not comply with requirements. Among the points that JNE cited for rejecting the application was MOVADEF’s lack of commitment to democracy and their failure to break with their previous subversive activities. Further proof of MOVADEF’s lack of objectivity and their ongoing commitment to Shining Path ideology was in the appeal that MOVADEF presented to the JNE for an amnesty for Guzmán, corrected in Guzmán’s own handwriting, along with other documents captured from Shining Path members (El Comercio [Lima], April 27)."

In other words— MOVADEF still believe in  “Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and Gonzalo thought." They didn't denounce Gonzalo. They said nothing of committing violence or justifying violence and yet they were turned down as if there were trying to restart another "people's war."

So once again we see that this is a case of fearing an idea. And how does the US fit into all of this?

"The United States government saluted Peru on its arrest of almost 30 members of a political group that had close ties to the Shining Path rebels.

In a statement, the U.S. State Department said it “congratulates the Government of Peru for last week’s arrests of at least 28 leaders and members of a front organization for the Shining Path terrorist group.”

“Under the leadership of President Humala, this successful effort exemplifies an admirable commitment to respect for the rule of law and human rights, to patient and persistent criminal investigation work, and an effective ‘whole of government’ approach featuring coordination among judicial, police, armed forces and intelligence elements,” the state department said."

Let's not forget what our government said" " admirable commitment to respect for the rule of law and human rights." So that is human rights and rule of law in the same sentence as congratulating our Peruvian friends for suppressing a political party and arresting its members over their ideas.

So the US government has supported and justified this government's paranoid suppression of an attempt at legal status over their ideas.

If it weren't bad enough that an imperialist lackey government and the great and mighty US Empire attacked this group and their ideas, a group known as Patria Roja, has gone out of its way to defend an imperialist lackey government and they claim they are "leftists."

"There was an interesting debate on television a couple weeks ago. Augusto Alvarez Rodrich had student representatives from MOVADEF and Patria Roja (Communist Party of Peru- Red Fatherland) onto his show, and he basically gave them free rein to have at one another. MOVADEF, as we know, is an organization advocating for the release of all of the imprisoned Shining Path terrorists, while Patria Roja is a small communist party operating within the democratic system.

What was interesting, however, was how the representative from Patria Roja obliterated MOVADEF’s arguments more thoroughly than I had ever heard before. The coup de grace was when the young Patria Roja leader asked his counterpart, “For you, is the terrorist Abimael Guzman capable of being wrong?” The leader from MOVADEF could not answer. He stammered and tried to change the subject."

It is interesting that a Marxist Leninist party can work so hard on a TV show to do the work of their imperialist government. It is not hard to see why this party was attacked by the PCP.

The whole attempt to find a link between a non-existent guerilla movement (at least that is what the Peruvian government has bragged about) and MOVADEF is simply just a witch hunt to get rid of anyone who has the idea that the imperialist government an all its systems are NOT legitimate and deserving of support by the country's population.

The Peruvian government has gone as far as to try and pass a law the forbids anyone from saying that the CPC was NOT responsible for the civil war. They want everyone to agree that there was no justification to taking on and fighting the Peruvian government and those who disagree could face REAL jail time.

"...It has proposed a terrorism denial bill that would outlaw the expression of MOVADEF’s ideological underpinning: that what happened in the 1980s and 1990s was a legitimate civil war, not terrorism. The government has also proposed laws that would empower universities to suspend or expel students who are advocates of MOVADEF."

Once again we are talking about the free flow of ideas and Peru's government's attempts at cutting off those ideas—even jailing people for expressing and believing in those ideas. They claim that the PCP is dogmatic and not open to other people's ideas...their solution is to use a heavy hand and make those ideas completely illegal.

YES THE GOVERMENT OF PERU FEARS OTHER PEOPEL'S IDEAS!

-សតិវ​ អតុ