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J. Posadas. Photo: Russian Wikipedia CC BY SA 4.0

Posadas (19121981) is one of the most famous and ridiculed of Trotskyists, notorious both for the cults he named after himself and his claim that UFOs were evidence of communist societies in other galaxies. Together with his belief that nuclear war might hasten the advent of communism (and his hopes that dolphins could be integrated into the new society), Posadass xenophilia has in recent years fed his legendarisation by countless meme pages, or even outright LARPing in the form of the Posadist Caucus in the Democratic Socialists of America.

For A.M. Gittlitz, author of a new book on J. Posadas, this ironic veneration of the Argentinian Trotskyist also has something to say about our political moment. In times in which its hard to believe in the future, Posadass wild optimism appears as a caricature of an earnestness and sheer sense of belief now almost lost to us. In his richly researchedI Want to Believe: Posadism, UFOs and Apocalypse Communism, Gittlitz documents the more serious side of Posadass activism in postwar Latin American Trotskyism, while suggesting that even his strangest claims were not so detached from the UFOlogy of the time.

David Broder is the translator of J. PosadassFlying saucers, the process of matter and energy, science, the revolutionary and working-class struggle and the socialist future of mankind. He spoke to Gittlitz about Posadass interest in the extraterrestrial, his comrades involvement in the Cuban Revolution, and how he became an online legend.

First, lets talk about Posadas the man. Some of the comments cited in the book notably, his prediction that jokes would be unnecessary under communism cast him as an intensely ascetic figure, yet this also seems linked to his projection of militant commitment and seriousness. What kind of formative experiences took Posadas toward his vision of organisation and revolutionary morality?

His asceticism came from a certain interpretation of Lenin and Leon Trotskys conception of a disciplined vanguard party, widespread in the Latin American Bureau of the Fourth International. But a lot of the more cultish aspects and bizarre utopian visions came from his own idiosyncrasies.

Posadas, born Homero Cristalli, grew up in intense poverty with (at least) nine siblings in working-class Buenos Aires in the 1910s and 1920s. After the premature death of their mother, they had to beg neighbours for eggs, work odd jobs for pennies, and sometimes subsisted on green bananas for days on end. The malnutrition left him with both permanent health problems and a belief that we need to consume much less than what is normal under capitalism.

In his twenties, his tireless work distributing newspapers for the Socialist Youth drew the attention of Buenos Airess small proto-Trotskyist milieu, and he was recruited as a union organiser. Although he was not an intellectual, his diligent attention to the tasks assigned to him made him a valuable asset among the fractured field of anti-Stalinist communists. It was only in the 1950s, when he had risen to the position of Secretary of the Latin American Bureau (BLA), when some in the movement reported Posadas was manic. He demanded that his militants conform to his own lifestyle of lite sleep and the endless production, translation, and distribution of texts.

When he was denied leadership of the Fourth International in 1961, and the BLA broke into its own International, he made revolutionary morality central to the movement. Non-procreative sex, especially between militants who werent married, was prohibited. Posadas hoped sexual desire would fade away under communism, and perhaps technology would replace sex altogether. This, too, reflects Posadass own sexless marriage.

By the early 1970s, Posadass harsh authoritarian monolithism, his increasingly strange texts, and the major repression of his movement in Latin America led most of the youth and working-class base to leave the International. Then came the expulsions of the remaining intellectual core of the movement serious Marxists like Guillermo Almeyra and Adolfo Gilly. The only ones left were young militants who entered socialism through the texts of Posadas alone and had barely even read Marx or Trotsky.

He believed his movements small size and inexperience was a virtue for these militants could be perfectly harmonised as transmitters of his ideas to the leaders of the workers states that would, he thought, build communist society after the expected World War III. The communal living, submission to a charismatic leader, doomsday predictions, abusive self-criticism sessions, escalating spirals of commitment, separation of militants from their partners and families, and taking young militants as sex partners, make it fair to qualify Posadism as a cult. But compared to dozens of other postwar Leninist organisations of various sizes, these features were by no means unique.

Posadas played an important role in Latin American Trotskyism and particularly in the period of the Cuban Revolution. Yet his followers entered into open conflict with Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. Can you tell us about the role they played, the place the guerrilla struggle had in Posadass thinking, and why that relationship fell apart?

Trotskyists internationally were skeptical of Castros revolution throughout the 1950s, but the small circle of Cuban Trotskyists were enthusiastic supporters. Some fought in the sierras of Guantanamo, and one was a close comrade of Castro, sailing with him on theGranma in 1956. After the revolution, they quickly formed the Partido Obrero Revolucionario (Trotskista) (POR(T)) under Posadass BLA, and were allowed to use state radio to organise their first congress. They began to organise a strong network throughout the Cuban working class, pushing for the formation of Soviets, the nationalisation of industry, and expulsion of the Guantanamo military base.

The Soviet-aligned Partido Socialista Popular (PSP) quickly identified the POR(T) as a threat to the revolution. The USSR hoped that Cuba would follow its policy of peaceful coexistence with the US. But on many issues Castro and Guevara tended closer to the POR(T)s own radicalism, defying the US by nationalising dozens of industries and utilities in 1960.

Early attempts to suppress the Trotskyists by PSP agents were thwarted by Guevara. But after the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and the missile crisis of 1962, the POR(T) continued pushing bellicose rhetoric, against the Soviet Unions policy of dtente. Castro thus gave the PSP a free hand to clamp down on the Trotskyists until nearly every member was arrested.

Even then, the Posadists internationally supported Castro but above all, they supported Guevara. Adolfo Gilly wrote in the Monthly Review that Guevaras policies as minister of industry were properly anticapitalist, relying on a disciplined workforce motivated by revolutionary enthusiasm instead of the capitalistic workers self-management initiatives pushed by the PSP-run Ministry of Agriculture. When it came to confrontation, the Posadists were impressed that Guevara often stated that nuclear war might be a necessary evil to defeat imperialism and saw his conception of thefocoguerrilla cell as a third-world variant of the Soviet workers council. Posadas experimented with this idea in Guatemala, where he became the ideological figurehead of the MR-13 rebels, pushing them to form armed revolutionary peasant councils wherever they went.

When Guevara resigned from the government and disappeared, the Posadists wrote that Castro, under pressure from the Soviets, had killed him. This, along with the guerrilla war in Guatemala devolving into a genocidal counterinsurgency, infuriated Castro enough that he denounced Posadas and Trotskyism in general at the 1966 Tricontinental Congress. When Guevara was finally killed by the Bolivian army the following year, Posadas called the photo of his corpse a forgery.

Posadas is probably most famous for his comments on UFOs as harbingers of a more developed and thus postcapitalist society. You quote his son Lon Cristalli playing down this focus, remarking When Carl Sagan says it its fine, but when Posadas said it he was a planetary madman. The interesting thing here is the suggestion that what Posadas wrote about was drawn from a wider cultural phenomenon, the UFOlogy of the 1950s-60s and also Bolshevik cosmism. What precisely was new about Posadass intervention on this theme?

Cristalli is correct to defend this aspect of his fathers work in this way. Sagan was a pioneer of the astrobiological, and, in my opinion, political science of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Along with Soviet astrophysicist Iosif Shklovsky, Sagan represented the most optimistic pole within SETI, initiating projects like the Allen Telescope Array and the Voyager Gold Record on premises very similar to the main logic behind Posadass UFO essay. That is, if contemporaneous communicable alien civilisations do exist, they will have had to sustain themselves for thousands of millennia. They must, then, have overcome or avoided entirely our own imperialist and self-destructive impulses and so if we have the ability to contact them, we should do so without fear. Shklovsky even wrote that it was Marxism that would deliver humanity to this higher-level longevity. Sagan kept his leftist sympathies close to his chest, but he didnt exactly disagree.

But Posadass 1968 essay on UFOs was not so much a matter of committing his movement to UFOlogy, or restoring the cosmist tradition to communism, as of settling an internal debate within the movements intellectual core over the reality and significance of UFOs. Yes, the phenomenon is real, he said, and if we can contact them, we should. But he added that his comrades shouldnt focus too much on trying to do that or speculating what UFOs are doing here or what their society is like for we have everything we need to create a sustainable utopia on Earth right now. He remained a believer, but never publicly wrote on the subject again.

A key figure here is Dante Minazzoli. Can you tell us about his interest in UFOlogy and what his comrades thought of this? Was there a certain point at which Posadism became mainly famous among other Trotskyist groups precisely because of this focus?

Dante Minazzoli and Homero Cristalli founded theGrupo Cuarta Internacional(GCI) in the mid-1940s as a small circle of proletarian militants committed to Trotskys vision of establishing the Fourth International as a world revolutionary vanguard. At that point,Posadaswas just a collective pen name, and since Cristalli was not much of a writer, Minazzoli likely wrote a lot of what was published under the name J. Posadas. In some ways, Minazzoli was as much Posadas as Posadas himself; although it was a speech by Posadas that became the famous UFO essay, its content was based on Minazzolis long-held extraterrestrial hypotheses.

In 1947, after Kenneth Arnolds story of flying saucers and news of the Roswell incident spread through tabloids worldwide, there was a flap of UFO sightings around Argentina. Influenced at a young age by science fiction and the cosmist literature of Camille Flammarion, Minazzoli believed humans are just one species among many in the universe, and our destiny is to meet and fraternise with them. He urged his comrades in the GCI to analyse the phenomenon, but they prohibited him from talking about it.

Two decades later, when the Posadist Internationals leadership believed themselves to be the legitimate successors to Trotsky and Lenin, and thus the intellectual vanguard of world revolution, Minazzoli brought up his thesis again in the context of a reading group on Friedrich EngelssAnti-Dhringand LeninsMaterialism and Empirio-Criticism.He made a dialectical materialist argument for the existence of extraterrestrial life, and a political argument that the UFOs were here to observe us as we achieved socialism so we could be welcomed into the galactic community. He was probably not alone in this belief, but other International leaders, like Guillermo Almeyra, urged him to cut it out.

But Minazzolis insistence on the topic moved Posadas to comment. The transcribed speech was published in a few of the Posadist newspapers worldwide. Militants from other Trotskyist groups already read the Posadist press for its bizarre conspiracy theories, predictions, and screeds on revolutionary morality. The UFO essay became a cult classic among them. Rumours of it spread through the fractured Trotskyist movement as evidence that their rivals were truly mad and that they had chosen sects correctly.

You tell us that Posadas returned to attention or perhaps, neo-Posadism emerged in an unprecedented way in the 2010s thanks to meme pages like the Intergalactic Workers League Posadist, focusing on both his catastrophist hopes in nuclear war and his unreal vision of a new society where man would commune with dolphin. In your account, this isnt just because Posadas is funny, but because ironic veneration of his extreme revolutionary optimism somehow fits the mood of our time. Could you explain this a bit more?

Although a handful of Posadists continued, and still continue, their militancy, the movement largely faded from even its small relevance within Trotskyism after Posadass death in 1981. But the UFO essay and his enthusiasm for nuclear war remained legendary among Trotskyists and train-spotters of small revolutionary left sects. Among these wasMatthew Salusbury, an intern for a magazine of the paranormal, theFortean Times. He pitched an article that the British Posadists of the Revolutionary Workers Party were a Trotskyist UFO cult.

Although it hyperbolically leaned into the UFO angle, and unearthed, for the first time, Posadass late-life obsession with dolphins, it became the main referent for Posadass Wikipedia page, piquing many imaginative discussions on leftist message boards. In 2012, you translated the UFO essay into English for Marxists.org, which showed his interest in aliens was more than just a legend. Then, in 2016, as the insanity of the US and UK elections radicalised bizarre corners of the internet, Aaron Bastanis concept of Fully Automated Luxury Communism took off as a leftist meme.

Space was added to the schema, and a cartoonish Posadas alongside mushroom clouds, whizzing flying saucers, and dolphins leaping into space naturally followed. The Intergalactic Workers League Posadist was probably the most successful spin-off meme page. To date, its produced hundreds of memes, earned tens of thousands of followers, and its administrators occasionally venture out to a May Day parade or leftist event in character.

As a result of the memes, Posadas has become (in the Anglosphere, at least) one of the most notorious names in the pantheon in the history of revolutionary socialism outpacing his rivals and, at times, even overtaking Trotsky himself in terms of Google searches. Some have criticised the enthusiasm as cruel, citing a false rumor that Posadas was driven mad through torture, or that the Posadas memes do not take seriously the history of a movement that made heroic contributions to the South American labor movement and saw dozens of its militants killed and tortured.

Its a fair point, and thats part of why the bulk of my book offers a sober history of the Posadist Internationals origins and politics. But I also see a side of that is more positive. Young leftists today find themselves in between a century of counterrevolution and a future that seems destined to continue slowly sinking into dystopia. Posadas, who came to prominence in the 1950s as the spread of colonial revolution made it common for revolutionaries to believe a nuclear third world war was imminent, was the most extreme catastrophist thinker believing the war was both necessary and desirable, and that utopia was on the other side.

So, one way to read the Posadist memes, in absence of a potential world war between communism and capitalism, is that were fucked, drop the nukes, get it over with already. But theres also openness to another possibility that something strange and unexpected could happen, the emergence of a new Lenin, a mass, religious-like awakening of the working class, or a disaster that devastates the dominant order leaving the working class to rebuild the world on our own terms. Essentially, anyone who believes communist revolution is possible thinks something like this, even though to most people thats as ridiculous as waiting for the aliens.

It also seems that the veneration of Posadism has coincided with the collapse of other self-styled revolutionary organisations in recent years indeed, in Britain this was also expressed by meme pages like Proletarian Democracy, which called for a Seventh International and asked readers to crowdfund a workers bomb. Is mocking Posadas a way of dealing with our disappointment in Leninism? Or just an easy scapegoat?

For decades, Posadas was like a funhouse mirror at which sectarian leftists would laugh at their own distorted image. The humor around Posadas today is totally different. The people who are into the memes (a few ex-Trots among them, but by and large the demographic is young people who have never engaged in militancy) arent mocking a strange sect of Trotskyism, or Trotskyism in general, or Leninism in general, but the entirety of the failed revolutionary socialist tradition.

Ironically though, its not a critical mocking. Its more ironic and absurd. I think at the bottom of it is a curiosity about those who once believed inanythingso strongly that they would fight and die for it. Theres a respect for it. It comes from a place of wanting to be a part of something like that, but not really being able to believe in it.

As well as exploring Posadisms stranger ideas, this is a richly textured biography of the man himself. Can you tell us a bit about why you wanted to write this book and how you went about piecing the story together?

I wanted to write a science fiction story, something like a communistIlluminatus! Trilogy, with Posadism as a main part. But as I researched, I became far more interested in the actual history little of which has been written about in English.

I visited the major archives of the movements internal documents in Amsterdam and London, and found additional materials in Paris, Stanford University, Mexico City, Montevideo, and Argentina. While in Buenos Aires I knocked on the door of Len Cristalli, now secretary of the small International, but he refused to talk to me. Later I heard he bragged about rebuffing an imperialist agent from theNew York Times. The secretary of the Uruguayan section was also reluctant to talk to me, but was so friendly he couldnt help himself, and we ended up chatting off the record for a couple hours. I was also fortunate to meet an original Cuban Posadist at the Trotsky conference last May in Havana. Although most veteran Trotskyists I met described Posadas with little more than nasty jokes, they all had a lot of respect for the original militants of the BLA.

Through Sebastian Budgen I talked to an ex-militant of the Italian section, Luciano Dondero, who alluded to particularly intriguing untold parts of the story, like the sex scandal that served as a pretext to the expulsion of the intellectual core, and the daughter that Posadas had late in life, groomed to be his messianic heir. Other personal details of Posadass life, from his earliest memory witnessing the near-revolutionarySemana Trgica of 1919 unfold from his window in Buenos Aires, to his direct support for guerrilla insurrections in Algeria, Cuba, and Guatemala, his failure to recognise the importance of the 68 uprisings, the movements repression in the Operation Condor dictatorships, and the sad demise as a marginal authoritarian cult, served as a poignant story an example corresponding to the arc of revolutionary socialisms failure in the twentieth century.

At the same time, I became fascinated with Trotskyism which I had never really taken seriously before. Their conception of militancy was far different from what I was used to growing up in the anti-authoritarian anti-globalisation milieu. I found that commitment to program a really admirable tradition my generation lacks. It also seems obvious that the dozens of global uprisings weve seen in the past years would be stronger with some level of international coordination, and a guiding conception of what it means to be anticapitalist, how the working class can take power, and what to do afterward.

This is not to say a resurgent Fourth International or FORA (the anarcho-communist union of which the parents of Posadas and Minazzoli were part), or any new attempt at an old model, would work. But it is important to understand what they were trying to achieve, why they were established, and why they failed. In the18th Brumaire,Marx wrote about how revolutionaries who find themselves in hopeless situations look to conjure figures from the past in hopes of coming up with new ways to move forward. It is ironic enough to resurrect Lenin, Stalin, or Mao for this purpose, and Trotskyism always had this strange tone of self-defeatism. With Posadas, at least, there is no mistaking the irony inherent in the necessary task of creating something radically new from the ruins of history.

A.M. Gittlitz is author ofI Want to Believe: Posadism, UFOs and Apocalypse Communism.

This article was first published on Jacobin.

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J. Posadas, the Trotskyist Who Believed in Intergalactic Communism - The Wire Science

GILFORD Four months ago, Chloe Bourgeois organized a march and rally for racial justice after her Black Lives Matter signs were torn from telephone poles, a racist post was placed on Facebook and someone complaining about the signs called the police to her house.

Over the weekend, she and other participants in the march were heartened to see the presidential race called in favor of Joe Biden, who has vowed to fight systemic racism, and Kamala Harris, the first woman and the first person of color to be elected vice president. Harris is Black and Asian-American.

I was really excited to hear it, said Bourgeois, who is Black. Any step away from Donald Trump is a step in the right direction and something to celebrate.

Bourgeois, 21, said she doesnt agree with all of Bidens moderate views, but greatly appreciates the respect he shows for others and was astounded to see Harris ascend to the No. 2 spot on the presidential ticket.

It reminds me of when I was 8 years old, and I said, Wow, a Black man can be the president.' That opened a door in my brain. Now Im saying, Wow, a Black woman can do this.

Its an empowering feeling for young girls and young girls of color.

Jaylin Tulley, of Gilmanton, who recalled at the rally being called the n-word by a white man at age 7, said shes been watching highlights of some of the weekend news coverage.

Its refreshing to have people holding these positions who speak for the people as opposed to themselves and their self-serving purposes, she said.

Tulley said she is hopeful Bidens policies will help working people and that his attitudes could encourage tolerance.

He and Kamala bring hope and justice to marginalized groups, she said. We as a country have a lot of reckoning to do. A lot of people like to blame Trump, but he is a product of a good chunk of America that does not believe Black people and women are equal to others.

Samm Johnson, who helped organize the march and rally, said she is beyond ecstatic.

This is the first time in four years that I am proud to say Im impressed with Americas democracy, she said. In these last few days, the entire country rallied together and chose love over hate. I think Kamala Harris is the most inspiring woman in the entire world.

Joe Biden isnt quite as progressive as I would like, but I am just glad, even if a lot of things don't change, we will have a president in office who will believe scientists and not take away the rights of minorities and women.

I'm excited to see how our relations with the rest of the world will improve over the next four years.

Bourgeois, Tulley and Johnson were among 424,937 New Hampshire residents who supported Biden, while 365,660 backed Trump. Biden carried all New Hampshire counties except Coos (8,617-7,640) and Belknap (20,899-16,894), according to the secretary of states office.

A question posed on the Facebook page of The Laconia Daily Sun on Thursday asked people how the election would affect their life.

Most of the respondents predicted either little change or a change for the worse, with several comments about the potential for socialism or communism during a Biden administration.

The Democrats are pushing communism so thats how itll impact our lives...and if they get into office, they will make millions of illegal immigrants citizens to ensure they stay in power, Katie Hill wrote.

Guy Giunta III posted, We will become socialist and our economy will be done for.

On the other hand, Suzanne Morrissey said she felt Biden would protect her health care.

Knowing Obamacare is going to be protected and expanded will impact me immeasurably, starting with relieving the heart-crushing stress and worry that a job loss would lead to bankruptcy or worse because Id lose my health insurance.

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Organizers of racial justice rally buoyed by election results - The Laconia Daily Sun

This year, like most election years, Florida is a crucial state in the national vote. President Donald Trump knows this, and for the past two years has flooded media outlets and the Facebook feeds of Latino Floridians with the horrors of socialism and communism. He seems to have persuaded some voters that a political system is the reason they fled their native countries. It is not. As Latinos with roots in Latin America, its time we level with each other for the primary reason we actually fled our failed states.

Trump seems to have persuaded some voters that a political system is the reason they fled their native countries. It is not.

Whether it was under the guise of Cubas communism, Venezuelas socialism, Colombias democracy or Chiles dictatorship, these propped-up government regimes peddled ideologies that masked the true culprit that ravages these countries even today. Because that true culprit is the widespread corruption, from the top of the highest office down to the cable guy. It was, and is, the insecurity and fear of retribution caused by voicing government dissent.

I was born in Colombia. I have first-hand, real-world experience of what a near-failed state looks like, because my family fled one. In the Colombia where I was born, if you ran a small business like my husband does today, unless you were in favor with the ruling party or greasing the palm of someone in power, your small business would be out of business. Corruption was so universal from the top in Bogot down to state and local governments across the country that it served as an additional tax on the people, one that few could afford to pay.

Tired of a corrupt, broken system they knew would fail and afraid to speak freely about what they believed, my family left Colombia. It was the first step in my journey where I started translating and navigating the American culture for my immigrant family from a young age.

Trumps America has all the trappings of what millions of us fled.

When I was 16, my mother and I were sitting on the cement step to our backyard with the sun streaming down. She asked me what I wanted to do with my life. I said, I like government. My mother stopped her gardening and stared straight into my eyes: Remember what we left behind, she said evenly. Government is not for the people. Its too dangerous for you.

Watching Trump support unlawful strong-arm tactics in Portland this summer as people shoved protestors into unmarked vans was more reminiscent of Latin American governments fearful of transparency of injustice than the right to peacefully protest, which is protected in America. Trumps America has all the trappings of what millions of us fled: censoring reporters, firing civil servants as a price of dissent, forking over big fat government contracts like his trumped-up wall to his cronies, exacting unimaginable torture by sterilizing migrant women seeking a shot at a better life, and deporting 545 childrens parents and leaving those children abandoned.

Once Trump realized that the majority of Covid-19 casualties were Black and brown, it appeared he ceased his daily briefings. Since the Covid-19 pandemic began, half of all Latinos have been laid off or had our hours reduced, yet just 18 percent of Latino-owned businesses received Paycheck Protection Program loans to help save many of those lost hours and jobs. Twenty percent of Latino workers, including American citizens, were shut out from relief in the CARES Act. Another report on essential workers showed that many were not being protected by basic health and safety measures and that some had died of Covid-19 as a result.

In peddling division and racism, this president telegraphs his true intentions, going so far as to create a denaturalization task force in his Department of Justice under Attorney General William Barr. As a naturalized citizen, this offends me and it should also offend the one-in-10 voters who chose the United States as their country.

All the policies Trump claims hes advanced instead send our community back decades. Latinos lead in small business creation, and Trump touts the payroll tax to seduce us into thinking were getting a tax break. In reality, that same tax funds Social Security and Medicare, programs that are supplemental income later in life for many, but that are very real and critical retirement and healthcare plans for people like my mother.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic began, half of all Latinos have been laid off or had our hours reduced, yet just 18 percent of Latino-owned businesses received Paycheck Protection Program loans.

This election is so personal and so important to me because my family fled a failed democracy underwritten by corruption. Dont be hoodwinked. If re-elected, Trump will continue acting in his own self-interest, including continuing to damage our institutions and exploit our resources for himself, his family, and his friends. America is the ultimate democratic example because we can speak freely, assemble safely, and our institutions arent ravaged by the cancer that is corruption. But for the last four years, Trump has stress-tested our press, our institutions, our law enforcement, our judicial system our very own American identity and if elected, the next four will see much worse.

Today is the last day to vote in our country. Most voters are already decided, and an unprecedented number have already cast their ballots. But the effort to sway the Latino vote under false claims of thwarting political evils isnt new, and were likely to see the pattern continue, whether with Trump or another candidate. This is still a moment to acknowledge whats really happening in this country. As citizens, we must protect our nation against what so many millions fled, and it starts with taking a look at the disparity between what Trump has promised, and what he has wrought.

Mara Teresa Kumar is an MSNBC columnist, contributor and the president and CEO of Voto Latino, a digital-first organization dedicated to educating, engaging and empowering the Latinx community to register to vote and make its voice heard at the polls.

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Latinos fled corruption at home to come to the U.S. Trump seems to think we forgot that. - MSNBC

Historically, Western governments prefer liberal values and principles in their foreign relations only when they enjoy a competitive advantage. When the governments experience crises and find themselves in a disadvantaged position, hatred, alienization and otherization increases. This has been the case recently with the Western world knee-deep in political, social and economic crises.

As a result, they hold others responsible and accountable for the problems they face, just like when they blamed Jews in the first half of the 20th century. If they do not face a real threat, Western governments will construct one or at least the illusion of one.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and communism, the Western perspective of Islam has increasingly become negative. There are many reasons for vilifying Islam and Muslims over the past several decades. In this text, I will mention some of these factors.

First, the West needs a political enemy to survive. For decades, dominant Western countries fought fascism, with the main representative being Germany's Adolf Hitler, during the first half of the 20th century and communism, mainly represented by the Soviet Union, during the second half of the 20th century. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West replaced the "red menace" communism with the green menace, Islam.

Even though Muslims do not constitute a real political or military threat to the world, i.e. the West, Western countries continue to politicize Islam and Muslims as their main opponent. In the past, they considered fascism or communism a threat to their way of life; nowadays, they claim the same thing for Islam.

Second, using an anti-Islam and Islamic terrorism jargon is one of the easiest ways to assert dominance over governments in the Muslim world. The West does not prefer independent governments to manage the Muslim world. Colonial powers want to maintain their direct and indirect control over these countries.

France, in particular, has been exploiting the resources of African Muslim countries such as Mali, Niger, Senegal, Chad, Gambia and Mauritania. For instance, today France and some other Western countries prefer putschist Gen. Khalifa Haftar, who is determined to preserve French interests, to rule Libya.

Third, the cost of using anti-Islam rhetoric is quite low. Western countries could not and cannot otherize other countries like India or China. The interdependence of the West and China or Russia is stronger than that between the West and Muslim countries, making the cost for Western global powers' rifts with Beijing and Moscow quite high.

Therefore, the otherization of Islam is more practical. It is easier to mobilize the world behind Islamophobia, since China, Russia and especially India, which host Muslim minorities and control historically Muslim-majority territories, have a traditional enmity against Muslim countries.

On the other hand, controlling the Muslim world will determine the global rivalry between the West and others. Whoever controls the Muslim-dominated regions such as the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Central Asia and South Asia will gain the advantage and become superior.

Fourth, the governments in the Muslim world have strong political discourse and a wide reach. With devoted followers all over the world, Islam is a global phenomenon and has the potential to unite influential countries across the globe. Muslims constitute the second-largest religious group, and Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the world. Therefore, Western countries feel threatened by Islam and Muslims. It has become the second-largest faith in many European countries, including Belgium and the Netherlands.

Today the number of Muslims living in the European countries exceeds 20 million, and their presence in the West grows every year in the continent's streets. Muslims have begun to shore up different sectors of European societies. Likewise, the refugee wave continues from the Muslim world, heading toward Western Europe. That is, the number of Muslims living there will only increase.

Last but not least, Western governments, most of which have no respect for religions, do not respect sacred figures, including Jesus, who plays a central role in Christianity. Many Western media platforms have no redline in terms of respecting religions and faiths; therefore, they draw cartoons even insulting Jesus. If this is the case, we cannot expect someone who does not respect their own sacred personalities to respect the sacred personalities of other people.

By targeting Prophet Muhammad, they contribute to the radicalization of some Muslim groups who are ready to react to these insulting moves in the West. The more governments pursue anti-Islamic policies, the more it contributes to the polarization; and the more polarization, the more social and political tension will rise in Western countries. Islam and Muslims are not outsiders in Europe and the West; they are a part of it.

Since otherization and alienation of Islam and Muslims will sooner or later lead to the destabilization of Western societies and states, the current anti-Islamic policies will be counterproductive. That is, Islamophobic policies are a lose-lose strategy; Western politicians such as French President Emmanuel Macron may save the day but not the future of the West.

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Despite the pandemic, the PCF began this weekend to get down to its next congress. By statute, it was already to be held in 2021 and the global and national situation, in many historical respects, the makes it all the more essential , emphasizes Christian Picquet. Responsible for the movement of ideas pole, he was in charge of presenting, during the national training council, this Saturday, the Four major themes of debate proposed on the agenda of the future meeting.

On the menu of this 39th congress of the PCF, must therefore figure, among the substantive issues, The crisis of civilization on an international scale totally revealed by the Covid-19 epidemic. This one Is articulated with a crisis of capitalist globalization generating political and ideological chaos, in which Communism is more than ever a horizon of the future, details Christian Picquet. Analysis of The tangle in France of health, economic, social and political crises, to which no progressive response is neither up to nor credible, will also be at the heart of the discussions at the congress, which should equally focus on An innovative project for France opposed the PCF .

Just like the roadmap to build a Stronger and more established Communist Party, the question of the presidential and legislative elections will be another major axis. A subject that had created lively debates during the previous meeting in 2018, until the non-renewal of the outgoing management. Our party must decide how it translates what was the mandate of the previous congress. Namely a communist candidacy for the presidential election and to bring an offer of comprehensive and in-depth reconstruction of the left , sums up Christian Picquet, for whom the question remains opened and must involve as many Communists as possible. Which is not without its difficulties. On the one hand, confinement makes the normal functioning of a party very complicated and therefore a fortiori the preparation of a congress, on the other the upheaval of the electoral calendar (the regional and departmental scheduled for March could be postponed to June, or even beyond Editors note) disrupts the agenda we had planned with a final meeting in June , explains the member of the national executive committee. In these circumstances, the training directorate opened a consultation with its federations on the method to be adopted. One of the assumptions on the table would be to Decoupling the decisions on the presidential and legislative elections from the holding of the congress. A decision must be made at an upcoming national council on December 12.

Until then, a platform must be set up to welcome the first contributions from members. And it is also for the Communists to remain turned to action. Health crisis, attacks More than ever, there is a need for a horizon of hope, a project to break with the great capitalist disorder. This is where a party like ours, carrying the perspective of communism, has an irreplaceable role to play at this time , thus argued, Saturday, the national secretary of the PCF, Fabien Roussel. Lashing out a Very liberal confinement, An unbearable guilt of our fellow citizens and Decisions taken by a very isolated executive, the deputy from the North notably called for Limit work to essential economic and cultural activities, at Implement job security and training and the mobilization so that it is no longer Spared the responsibility of capital and current leaders in this crisis.

Read more from the original source:
Left. The PCF launches the work of its congress - Pledge Times