Trotskyists and Syria

[freepalestine]

Trotskyists on Syria

The stance of Middle Eastern and Western Trotskyists is baffling a bit: they are serving as cheerleaders and propagandists for Free Syrian Army and Islamists armed groups.
I was wondering to myself: if those Trotskyists were to live under the rule of those folks, they would be beheaded, literally. ..

http://angryarab.blogspot.gr/2012/12/trotskyists-on-syria.html

[Ilyich]

Trotskyists on Syria

The stance of Middle Eastern and Western Trotskyists is baffling a bit: they are serving as cheerleaders and propagandists for Free Syrian Army and Islamists armed groups.
I was wondering to myself: if those Trotskyists were to live under the rule of those folks, they would be beheaded, literally. ..

http://angryarab.blogspot.gr/2012/12/trotskyists-on-syria.html

Every single Trotskyist in the world is serving as a cheerleader and/or propagandist for the rebels? And, yes, they probably would be beheaded though I can't imagine they'd fair much better under Assad.

[Ostrinski]

What the fuck? Who is cheerleading the FSA?

[Let's Get Free]

And people like you serve as unpaid propagandists for shitty dictators.

[Let's Get Free]

Both

[Ostrinski]

I imagine he's referring to anyone who defends the Assad regime.

[hetz]

There must be some Trotskist parties that are pro-Assad.

[GoddessCleoLover]

There must be some Trotskist parties that are pro-Assad.

There are. The Left is fairly divided on this issue. What about the latest news concerning a national unity government from which Assad might be excluded?

[Sir Comradical]

This is not true of all Trotskyists. The Sparts and SEP have a sensible position on Syria - that is to support the military defense of Syria while offering no political support for the regime. The Trotskyists supporting the FSA are the degenerate cliffites.

[Rusty Shackleford]

And people like you serve as unpaid propagandists for shitty dictators.

and yet there are some who are trying to cover the ass of the FSA

Edit: i really didnt need to post this, and no gladiator, im not accusing you of anything. I'm "Just saying."

[Let's Get Free]

and yet there are some who are trying to cover the ass of the FSA

Edit: i really didnt need to post this, and no gladiator, im not accusing you of anything. I'm "Just saying."

I do not support nor condemn the FSA as they are fighting a war that they were provoked into fighting. Let's not forget that the regime bears full responsibility for starting this mess to begin with. Also, there's more to the revolt than the FSA; there is also the LCC, building community resistance.

[l'Enfermé]

^The Syria provoked the FSA into launching a jihad against it? No more than New York provoked Al-Qaida to fly hijacked planes into a couple of skyscrapers. I guess the Alawites also provoked the FSA into butchering them by being apostates.

[Luís Henrique]

^The Syria provoked the FSA into launching a jihad against it? No more than New York provoked Al-Qaida to fly hijacked planes into a couple of skyscrapers.

That would be no more than "a lot". Or weren't American policies towards the Middle East any kind of provocation?


I guess the Alawites also provoked the FSA into butchering them by being apostates.

How about they provoked the Syrian people by imposing a dictatorship on them?

Luís Henrique

[l'Enfermé]

That would be no more than "a lot". Or weren't American policies towards the Middle East any kind of provocation?

How many people in those towers that died actually had anything to do with that?


How about they provoked the Syrian people by imposing a dictatorship on them?
If FSA death squads cared in the least about Syrian people they wouldn't be butchering more civilians than the bloody dictatorship.

[GerrardWinstanley]

I do not support nor condemn the FSA as they are fighting a war that they were provoked into fighting. Let's not forget that the regime bears full responsibility for starting this mess to begin with. Also, there's more to the revolt than the FSA; there is also the LCC, building community resistance.You mean the LCC's who are actually a faction of (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/03/world/middleeast/anti-assad-dissidents-form-syrian-national-council.html?_r=0) the long since discredited Syrian National Council? The same Syrian National Council formed in Istanbul, composed primarily of expats and who pleaded with the United States to intervene?

[GerrardWinstanley]

This is not true of all Trotskyists. The Sparts and SEP have a sensible position on Syria - that is to support the military defense of Syria while offering no political support for the regime. The Trotskyists supporting the FSA are the degenerate cliffites.Not all Cliffites. Counterfire (ie John Rees, Lindsey German and co) are convinced it has gotten to the stage of covert imperialist intervention (http://www.counterfire.org/index.php/articles/200-imperialism/16197-syrian-endgame-threat-of-military-intervention-grows) now. They're looking at it as more of a revolution hijacked than a proxy war though.

[Sir Comradical]

Not all Cliffites. Counterfire (ie John Rees, Lindsey German and co) are convinced it has gotten to the stage of covert imperialist intervention (http://www.counterfire.org/index.php/articles/200-imperialism/16197-syrian-endgame-threat-of-military-intervention-grows) now. They're looking at it as more of a revolution hijacked than a proxy war though.

Ahh yes, I forgot about that dude.

[cynicles]

How about they provoked the Syrian people by imposing a dictatorship on them?

Luís Henrique


There is so much ignorance in this statement I don't even know where to begin.

[Sir Comradical]

How about they provoked the Syrian people by imposing a dictatorship on them?

Luís Henrique

The Alawites provoked the Syrian people by imposing a dictatorship on them?

[Geiseric]

The Ba'athists are capitalists, and crushed the palestinian uprising themselves. Fuck assad and fuck th "rebels," they're both murderers who support different capitalists. Let's hope these bougeois armies don't kill half the country before their goddamn war is over. Anybody who thinks Assad is anything close to a socialist needs to look at the mass rapes and murders his bulldogs are doing to the population, who basically wanted a higher standard of living and more democratic rights, but are truly paying the price.
Edit: By alawites I meant Assad's government, the ba'ath party, and I changed it.

[Jack]

The alawites are capitalists, and crushed the palestinian uprising themselves.

I just......I just don't even know what the fuck to say to any of this.

Like I never thought someone could make a statement so fucking divorced from reality and be serious about it. As for the rest of your post....just wow.

[Let's Get Free]

^The Syria provoked the FSA into launching a jihad against it? No more than New York provoked Al-Qaida to fly hijacked planes into a couple of skyscrapers. I guess the Alawites also provoked the FSA into butchering them by being apostates.

The FSA emerged because Assad's forces were murdering protestors in large numbers. It was the regime that militarized the struggle and there is a direct line of causation here.

[Killer Enigma]

A lot of writers online have taken on the Trotskyites on Syria.

"Appalling as it may be, The North Star’s position is simply a more honest rendering of the same opportunist position taken by the ISO. It approaches the Syrian question not from a perspective of dialectical materialism, but from a perspective of craven idealism. The opportunists in the US left cannot view the Syrian rebellion in any terms other than a metaphysical struggle against tyranny. They buy wholesale the reports of retaliatory violence by the Syrian security forces in order to characterize Assad as a tyrant, and in doing so, they confound the central contradiction facing the Syrian people: the contradiction between imperialism and national liberation.

Ironically, Leon Trotsky – the ideological godfather of the ISO – may have put it best in a 1938 interview, when he said, “Truly, one must have an empty head to reduce world antagonisms and military conflicts to the struggle between fascism and democracy. Under all masks one must know how to distinguish exploiters, slave-owners, and robbers!” (9) It’s a testament to the absurdity of the US left’s opportunism that we now say, in this particular moment, D’Amato and Sustar could learn a lot from reading Trotsky!"

[Source (http://return2source.wordpress.com/2012/12/10/syria-anti-imperialism/)]

[Geiseric]

I just......I just don't even know what the fuck to say to any of this.

Like I never thought someone could make a statement so fucking divorced from reality and be serious about it. As for the rest of your post....just wow.

Ask palestinians who went through the syrian occupation of lebanon, they'll tell you how socialist the Ba'ath party is.

[Rusty Shackleford]

The Ba'ath party is not socialist.

[Jack]

Ask palestinians who went through the syrian occupation of lebanon, they'll tell you how socialist the Ba'ath party is.

I was referring mostly to you calling Alawites, a religious sect, Capitalists.

[Geiseric]

I meant the government which fashions itself as alawite in the same way scots irish fashion themselves prodestant. I was being sarcastic Rusty. Sorry I should of been clearer.

[cynicles]

I meant the government which fashions itself as alawite in the same way scots irish fashion themselves prodestant. I was being sarcastic Rusty. Sorry I should of been clearer.

How does the regime fashion itself alawi? The regimes biggest supporters a bourgeios Christians and Sunnis and the only ones using sectarian denominations thus far are the jihadis and western media. Repressive and neoliberal the regime is, sectarian it is not.

[Luís Henrique]

How many people in those towers that died actually had anything to do with that?

Probably none, and certainly no more than a few. But that certainly you don't deny that American policies regarding the Middle East are strongly correlated with the attacks?

Just because they killed innocent people it doesn't mean that they didn't have real grievances, nor that those innocent people were in some way (even if only by living in the same country as the actual perpetrators) related to such grievances.


If FSA death squads cared in the least about Syrian people they wouldn't be butchering more civilians than the bloody dictatorship.

I don't think they care, at all; no more than Assad's regime, in any case. But this is not the point, is it?

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

There is so much ignorance in this statement I don't even know where to begin.

So Assad's regime isn't a dictatorship?

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

The Alawites provoked the Syrian people by imposing a dictatorship on them?

Assad's Baath party, perhaps? What is with these idea of mistaking clearly political strife as sectarian fight?

Luís Henrique

[Let's Get Free]

If FSA death squads cared in the least about Syrian people they wouldn't be butchering more civilians than the bloody dictatorship.

The vast majority of the human rights abuses are coming from the regime, not the FSA. There have been reports that some rebels are also responsible for war crimes such as executions and torture, but these are isolated incidents, unlike the Syrian government whose actions indicate a clear policy of torture and attacks on civilians.

[cynicles]

So Assad's regime isn't a dictatorship?

Luís Henrique

Yes that's exactly what I meant dipshit. I wasn't referring at all to your anti-alawi bigotry, I was in lala land with all the stalinoids making believe Assad represents the people of Syria.

[Devrim]

The alawites are capitalists,

Edit: By alawites I meant Assad's government, the ba'ath party, and I changed it.

If somebody had said this about, for example, the Jews, people would be jumping up and down screaming anti-semitism by now.

It is good that you have changed it, but it was an absolutely shocking thing to say. Try substituting the term 'the blacks' here and think about how it sounds.


I meant the government which fashions itself as alawite in the same way scots irish fashion themselves prodestant. I was being sarcastic Rusty. Sorry I should of been clearer.

It doesn't at all. The Syrian state has tried to play the Alawite thing down for years, and certainly hasn't fashioned itself like that in any way.

Devrim

[hetz]

Can't agree more with Devrim. Would have given + rep but I've already given too much in the last 24 hours.
A slip of some kind perhaps? :laugh:

[Geiseric]

If somebody had said this about, for example, the Jews, people would be jumping up and down screaming anti-semitism by now.

It is good that you have changed it, but it was an absolutely shocking thing to say. Try substituting the term 'the blacks' here and think about how it sounds.



It doesn't at all. The Syrian state has tried to play the Alawite thing down for years, and certainly hasn't fashioned itself like that in any way.

Devrim

Wow well sorry, I honestly meat the ba'ath party, and I held the misconception that alawites were on an economically privelaged position, like the scots irish or afrikaners were. I cleared it up, and I know it was a dumb misake.

[Devrim]

Wow well sorry, I honestly meat the ba'ath party, and I held the misconception that alawites were on an economically privelaged position, like the scots irish or afrikaners were. I cleared it up, and I know it was a dumb misake.

Of course people can make mistakes. I am 100% sure that you didn't mean to say something that racist, and I don't believe in any way that you are a racist.

There is of course something to be said for understanding what you are talking about before you make great pronouncements on it.

Devrim

[Android]

Excuse the brief derail:

scots irish
I do not recall anyone referring to people in the Protestant, i.e. unionist, community in Northern Ireland as 'Scots Irish' before. I have heard members on the slightly weird cultural side of that community refer to themselves as 'Ulster Scots' though.

Techncally the term is not incorrect just is not in common use at all as far as I can tell.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Excuse the brief derail:

I do not recall anyone referring to people in the Protestant, i.e. unionist, community in Northern Ireland as 'Scots Irish' before. I have heard members on the slightly weird cultural side of that community refer to themselves as 'Ulster Scots' though.

Techncally the term is not incorrect just is not in common use at all as far as I can tell.

It is a term used in the United States. Scots Irish or an older version Scotch Irish.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

Between Assad and the rebels is a political fight, but one in which Marxist revolutionaries do not take a side. Those who reflexively take the side of the rebels against "tyranny" and call themselves Trotskyists are not. The ISO is not a Trotskyist party, whether or not they sometimes like to pretend that they are.

[Luís Henrique]

Yes that's exactly what I meant dipshit. I wasn't referring at all to your anti-alawi bigotry, I was in lala land with all the stalinoids making believe Assad represents the people of Syria.

Listen, I have never met an Alawi person in my life; I have absolutely nothing against (or for) them.

The discussion here is systematically distorted into making the civil war in Syria look like a religious war, which clearly is not; and this is the line of the Stalinoid defenders of Butcher Assad: that the Syrian rebels are massacring poor innocent Alawite civilians for no other reason that they are Alawite. That is an evident lie; whether the Syrian opposition is any better, the same, or worse, than Butcher Assad, is irrelevant: what causes the civil war is the existence of Assad's dictatorship, not the sectarian differences between Muslim sects and subsects.

Luís Henrique

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Listen, I have never met an Alawi person in my life; I have absolutely nothing against (or for) them.

The discussion here is systematically distorted into making the civil war in Syria look like a religious war, which clearly is not; and this is the line of the Stalinoid defenders of Butcher Assad: that the Syrian rebels are massacring poor innocent Alawite civilians for no other reason that they are Alawite. That is an evident lie; whether the Syrian opposition is any better, the same, or worse, than Butcher Assad, is irrelevant: what causes the civil war is the existence of Assad's dictatorship, not the sectarian differences between Muslim sects and subsects.


Actually, what causes the FSA to be so popular is that they, like every other bloody Islamist movement in the past fifty years, have hijacked the alienated and are using fresh violent youths to further their own despotic goals. This does not translate into the moronic 'anti-imperialist' support for Assad's dictatorship, but if anyone seriously believes that the FSA is actually better than them must be either ignorant, in denial or downright insane. These are conservative religious militants, people. Conservative religious militants. How downright shocking it is to see how incredibly hypocritical some people are.

And yes, there is plenty of fucking evidence of the monstrous 'rebels' absolutely genocidal tendencies and objectives. I can send you some videos of EDIT: Shia muslims being beheaded and hacked to pieces by them, if you'd like - they aren't bloody hard to find.

Oh, and look! Gladiator's at it again with his double standards! While the evil dictator over the Proletariat, Lenin, must be shunned at all costs, racialist nationalist far-right movements that seek to separate ethnic groups and put the population under some of the most tyrranical legislation that has ever been filed must be cool, coz' ya know; they're 'rebellin' against da systemz'!

EDIT: Shia, not Sunni.

[Luís Henrique]

if anyone seriously believes that the FSA is actually better than them must be either ignorant, in denial or downright insane.


whether the Syrian opposition is any better, the same, or worse, than Butcher Assad, is irrelevant

Luís Henrique

[kashkin]

The ISO is not a Trotskyist party, whether or not they sometimes like to pretend that they are.

How so?

Anyway, I'm no fan of the FSA, but they can't be used as a catch all term for all the military resistance to Assad, and the FSA itself is not some homogeneous group.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

How so?

Anyway, I'm no fan of the FSA, but they can't be used as a catch all term for all the military resistance to Assad, and the FSA itself is not some homogeneous group.
Well, they originated out of the Shachtmanite movement in the US, and never broke with the "third camp" position. That is that the USSR was every bit as bad as the US. This led to such atrocities as supporting the Afghan mullahs against the Soviet troops, and supporting Khomeini in Iraq. Today it leads to soft positions on the "Arab Spring." There is an old thread where much of this stuff is hashed out between me and a couple of ISO supporters. I pissed them off by saying that the ISO and the British SWP are reformist outfits. I still believe that -- however, they certainly begged to differ. I will try and find a link to it if you want more info. And btw, those comrades, for the most part are serious and decent fellows. However, I do disagree with their versions of modern Trotskyism.

[Luís Henrique]

what does this mean "massacring poor innocent Alawite civilians" are you implying that alawites/"nusayris" are not innocent ..

No; I am saying what I am saying: that they are not being killed merely for being Alawite.


theres a religious aspect for why the jihadists hate alawites also.apart from sectarianist excuses.

And that is?

Luís Henrique

[Devrim]

The discussion here is systematically distorted into making the civil war in Syria look like a religious war, which clearly is not; and this is the line of the Stalinoid defenders of Butcher Assad: that the Syrian rebels are massacring poor innocent Alawite civilians for no other reason that they are Alawite. That is an evident lie; whether the Syrian opposition is any better, the same, or worse, than Butcher Assad, is irrelevant: what causes the civil war is the existence of Assad's dictatorship, not the sectarian differences between Muslim sects and subsects.

I don't think that this is an evident lie. As you know, I am not a supporter of Assad in any way. However, I think that sectarian murders are occurring in the war in Syria. People are being murdered for no other reason than that they are Alawites. I am not saying that this applies to every Alawite killed. Some of course are killed because of their support for the state, but some are also killed because they were born into the wrong religious sect.

Devrim

[Grenzer]

Between Assad and the rebels is a political fight, but one in which Marxist revolutionaries do not take a side. Those who reflexively take the side of the rebels against "tyranny" and call themselves Trotskyists are not. The ISO is not a Trotskyist party, whether or not they sometimes like to pretend that they are.

Why are you singling out the ISO? The Spartacoid obsession with the ISO is getting pretty fucking ridiculous.. There are plenty of "orthodox" Trotskyist groups that are just as bad.

[Luís Henrique]

'not merely for being alawite'-your use of language is amazing.so why are they being killed, because they are kufar,sorcerors,believe in crazy religious ideas or because they all support the assad govt, that they are all part of the ruling elite?

Quite probably because they are incorrectly seen as members of the ruling elite, or because in the ruling elite's composition they are a bigger proportion than in the general population?


do you need more reason to say why "they desrve what they get"?!!

Eh? I by no means condone these killings.

Luís Henrique

[Devrim]

Quite probably because they are incorrectly seen as members of the ruling elite, or because in the ruling elite's composition they are a bigger proportion than in the general population.

Perhaps in some cases this may be true. Though killing somebody because their particular religious grouping comprises a bigger proportion of the ruling elite is, in my opinion, sectarian.

That still doesn't mean though that there are no sectarian murders motivated purely by sectarian hatred. I believe that there are.

Devrim

[Devrim]

This is not true of all Trotskyists. The Sparts and SEP have a sensible position on Syria - that is to support the military defense of Syria while offering no political support for the regime. The Trotskyists supporting the FSA are the degenerate cliffites.

I have always been utterly amazed by this phrase mongering. The Spartacist League are in no way offering military support. The support they offer is entirely political.

Devrim

[Devrim]

The ISO is not a Trotskyist party, whether or not they sometimes like to pretend that they are. How so?


I suppose it depends oh how you define it, but the Cliff groups are not orthodox Trotskyists, and I I think it is quite understandable to see them as not being Trotskyists at all.

Essentially they broke from Trotskyism with the theory that the Soviet Union was state capitalist, as opposed to being a degenerated workers' state as Trotskyist theory holds.

Devrim

[black magick hustla]

I sometimes wonder if the sects ever think a bit about how people outside them would perceive their "positions". The only military support the sparts are capable of giving is defending their newspaper stands, which they don't even need to defend cuz' most people get creeped out by them anyway. (Had the unpleasant experience of meeting some of them when I lived in Michigan.)

Why do leftists, especially the ones that have no leverage over the state love to play geopolitical roleplaying games? When the sects talk about supporting this state or the other, it reminds me of my days in model UN when I was in junior high school.

[Geiseric]

All we can do, in reality, in a transitional demand to bring togather more people than "leftists," I mean working class people who can be persuaded to support this, would be to command the U.S. government not to send any aid, or trade at all with the FSA, the Islamists in Tunisia, Libya, or Egypt, nor Israel, outside of medical supplies and food. If we wage a campaign for non intervention, with a platform saying "money should go to schools, not jihadists," I don't see how many working class people who have some measure of class consciousness can disagree.

[Luís Henrique]

I have always been utterly amazed by this phrase mongering. The Spartacist League are in no way offering military support. The support they offer is entirely political.

Didn't they recruit people to fight in Afghanistan along with the Red Army? Or was that just a scam?

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Why do leftists, especially the ones that have no leverage over the state love to play geopolitical roleplaying games?

Probably because they still could not get over the demise of the Soviet Union.

Or because the Russian Federation, while abandoning any socialist pretentions, has kept some of the geopolitical interests of its forerunners, and find it easy to contact the same groups the SU supported in the past to do their propaganda?

Luís Henrique

[Android]

Didn't they recruit people to fight in Afghanistan along with the Red Army? Or was that just a scam?

Luís Henrique

Various people have told me something similar about the Sparts and Afghanistan. That they offered to organise and send an international brigade, to support the Red Army. But the offer was turned down, at least that is what I have been told.

Pretty comical really.

Speaking of this kind of stuff. I remember during the civil war in Libya recently, an orthodox Trotskyist in UK who was fanatically pro-Gaddafi wanted to send an International Brigade to Libya! Needless to say it never materialised.

[Geiseric]

That isn't orthodox trotskyism... Trotsky and the fourth international never supported dictators in imperialized countries, which is why they were kicked out of the fSU, because when it comes down to it the goals of the Stalinist bureaucracy which was in charge of the fSU were the same goals that Ghadaffi, Assad, or any other state bureaucracy with considerable control over the economy had, namely staying power, at all costs, even if it means supporting Imperialist actions such as disarmament in central and eastern europe before WW2, or in Ghadaffis case, supporting the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which puts him on the same pitiful level as the Sauds.

[Android]

That isn't orthodox trotskyism... Trotsky and the fourth international never supported dictators in imperialized countries, which is why they were kicked out of the fSU, because when it comes down to it the goals of the Stalinist bureaucracy which was in charge of the fSU were the same goals that Ghadaffi, Assad, or any other state bureaucracy with considerable control over the economy had, namely staying power, at all costs, even if it means supporting Imperialist actions such as disarmament in central and eastern europe before WW2, or in Ghadaffis case, supporting the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which puts him on the same pitiful level as the Sauds.

Didn't Trotsky write that revolutionaries were obliged to support 'fascist' Brazil against 'democratic' Britain in the event of any war or conflict?

[Luís Henrique]

Didn't Trotsky write that revolutionaries were obliged to support 'fascist' Brazil against 'democratic' Britain in the event of any war or conflict?

He did something similar. His argument was that a British occupied Brazil wouldn't be better than an "independent" dictatorial Brazil (I don't know if he made the mistake of considering Vargas' dictatorship "fascist"). This has been extensively argued by Argentinian defencist Trotskyists, for instance, in support of their position on the Malvinas (missing the point that Trotsky was not talking about "any war", but about an all-out British-Brazilian war resulting in recolonisation or at least in regime change, while the Malvinas war was merely boundary strife).

He was wrong anyway, because an anti-popular dictatorship is the first obstacle to be surpassed in national defence. Those dictatorships fear the people and consequently won't arm it, relying instead in conventional warfare, where the technological superiority of the imperialist power will always win the day.

Luís Henrique

[Killer Enigma]

Trotsky would be called a "Stalinist" by most of the modern day Western Trotskyites. It's telling of how opportunist and national chauvanist many of these groups truly are when Trotsky has a better line than they do. And it's frankly embarrassing to them. Trotsky's words in the famed 1938 interview should be widely publicized in this period to discredit the left-opportunists who implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) support imperialist aggression towards Syria. If there's any doubt that Trotsky would have supported Assad, let it all be removed now.


I will take the most simple and obvious example. In Brazil there now reigns a semifascist regime that every revolutionary can only view with hatred. Let us assume, however, that on the morrow England enters into a military conflict with Brazil. I ask you on whose side of the conflict will the working class be? I will answer for myself personally—in this case I will be on the side of “fascist” Brazil against “democratic” Great Britain. Why? Because in the conflict between them it will not be a question of democracy or fascism. If England should be victorious, she will put another fascist in Rio de Janeiro and will place double chains on Brazil. If Brazil on the contrary should be victorious, it will give a mighty impulse to national and democratic consciousness of the country and will lead to the overthrow of the Vargas dictatorship. The defeat of England will at the same time deliver a blow to British imperialism and will give an impulse to the revolutionary movement of the British proletariat. Truly, one must have an empty head to reduce world antagonisms and military conflicts to the struggle between fascism and democracy. Under all masks one must know how to distinguish exploiters, slave-owners, and robbers!

Source (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/09/liberation.htm).

[Luís Henrique]

Trotsky's words in the famed 1938 interview should be widely publicized in this period to discredit the left-opportunists who implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) support imperialist aggression towards Syria. If there's any doubt that Trotsky would have supported Assad, let it all be removed now.

So let's take a look at Trotsky's words.


I will take the most simple and obvious example. In Brazil there now reigns a semifascist regime that every revolutionary can only view with hatred.

Indeed. In 1938, Vargas' dictatorship in Brazil could only be viewed as reactionary and repressive, though the caracterisation as "semi-fascist" is lazy an imprecise, as most caracterisations that include the prefix "semi". Seven years later, the Brazilian left would make a U-turn on this, and start bootlicking Vargas, something that only came to an actual end in the 80s, with the creation of an actual working class party. And something that is unhappily becoming fashionable again, with people "reevaluating populism", which is in my opinion a good road to disaster.

However, there is a huge difference between 1938 Brazil and 2012 Syria. Despicable as Vargas' regime was, it was not bombshelling Brazilian cities as Assad is doing in Syria.


Let us assume, however, that on the morrow England enters into a military conflict with Brazil. I ask you on whose side of the conflict will the working class be? I will answer for myself personally—in this case I will be on the side of “fascist” Brazil against “democratic” Great Britain.

This is deeply mistaken, as it ignores class struggle. It is as if nothing else would be happening, besides a military conflict between two States - as if there wasn't a conflict between the British bourgeoisie and the British proletariat, and a conflict between the Brazilian bourgeoisie and the Brazilian proletariat. To further his positions, he would have had to argue that, in the precise historical moment in which Britain attacked Brazil - or Brazil attacked Britain, who knows - it would be in the best interests of the British working class to oppose the British bourgeoisie, but conversely, it would be in the best interests of the Brazilian working class to support and line behind the Brazilian bourgeoisie.

Of course, Trotsky has the excuse that he is thinking in terms that a revolution in Britain would be more important and promising than a revolution in Brazil, so it would be more important to defeat the British bourgeoisie than the Brazilian one.

An excuse, evidently, that Stalinists, third-worldists, and stageists in general don't have, because they reason that a place like Brazil is much more the locus of revolution than Britain.


Why? Because in the conflict between them it will not be a question of democracy or fascism. If England should be victorious, she will put another fascist in Rio de Janeiro and will place double chains on Brazil.

But since there wasn't any actual probability that Britain would attack Brazil, or conversely, Trotsky's reasoning is doomed to remain an abstraction - and so he cannot actually make any actual analysis of it besides merely pointing that it wouldn't be a question of "democracy or fascism". Which we can easily see in context: if he was talking in 1942 instead of 1938, talking about a military conflict between Brazil and Britain in the context of WWII and German aggression against the Soviet Union, he would have to frame his position in a completely different way - because to the Left Opposition it would be exactly "a question of democracy or fascism", or rather of fascism and anti-fascism.

And this is not the only a-historical abstraction Trotsky indulges in here; what would the aims and goals of each Brazilian and British States be is ignored. Would be Britain attacking Brazil to promote regime change there or merely to, say, conquer Trindade Island as a strategic position in the middle of the Atlantic? In a context of a civil war in Brazil, or out of the blue? Or would it be Brazil attacking Britain, in concert with Hitler's foreign policies? Or Brazil attacking, say, Argentina, to annex it, and Britain rushing to the defence of its client?

Without such context, it is impossible to actually decide anything about who we should support in an hypothetic conflict. What does Marx say about this? Ah - the concrete analysis of the concrete case. Without this, it is merely "Hiftory" what Trotsky was making.

To explain it a little better, let's suppose that Brazil militarily attacked Uruguay. What should the Brazilian working class do? In my opinion, completely oppose such brutal folly, if possible escalating to an all-out insurrection against a government that was trying to impose us a mindless war of aggression. (And what should be the Uruguayan working class reaction? Well, it depends - If Brazil was attacking Uruguay to change the boundaries a few kilometers to the south, or to obtain some kind of privileged access to the port of Montevideo, then they probably should also oppose defencist efforts by the Uruguayan State. If on the other hand Brazil was attacking Uruguay to annex the whole territory, make Portuguese the official language, and send Spanish-speakers into concentration camps to gas them to death, then it would quite probably wiser to oppose the invasion arms in hands, probably toppling the Uruguayan government in the process to avoid it butchering the people by sending them into conventional warfare against a much stronger military.)

But now let's suppose that such a brutal and unprovoked Brazilian aggression against a small nation was countered by Britain sinking the Brazilian Navy, blockading Brazilian seaports, seizing Trindade and Fernando de Noronha, invading Northern Brazil from Guyana, and sending troops to Montevideo to help the Uruguayans counter the invasion. Should us, Brazilian workers, who had in the first moment raised our voices, and perhaps our arms, against "our own" government make a U-turn and start supporting our dictatorial government against British imperialism?

I'd vote "nay"!


If Brazil on the contrary should be victorious, it will give a mighty impulse to national and democratic consciousness of the country and will lead to the overthrow of the Vargas dictatorship.

Maybe in 1938 the Brazilian Army and Navy would stand some chance of beating British Navy and Army, though I doubt it. In 2012? Pft. How would, however, a conventional military victory over Britain weaken Vargas' dictatorship? The man would become a semi-God, more than he did without that.

On the contrary, toppling Vargas' dictatorship would be the only chance Brazilians would have to counter a "total war" British attack intended to conquer the country. And the toppling of the dictatorship would be the logical consequence of a defeat in limited warfare, as quite obviously shown in 1982, in the Malvinas War, when the utter defeat of the Argentinian military at the hand of the British resulted, almost immediately, in the toppling of the quite monstruous Argentinian military dictatorship.


The defeat of England will at the same time deliver a blow to British imperialism and will give an impulse to the revolutionary movement of the British proletariat.

True - but even in 1938, and much more in 2012, the Brazilian military would be completely incapable to achieve such a feat and deliver such a blow to British imperialism. The only hope for a British defeat in the context of a purely British-Brazilian war would be the British working class raising against Britain's imperial adventure; the working class in the imperialist center cannot count on third world reactionary and repressive regimes to do its job. The British left hoping that the Argentinian junta could somehow secure the Malvinas against the much superior British military power just show how deep the degeneration of the British left is.


Truly, one must have an empty head to reduce world antagonisms and military conflicts to the struggle between fascism and democracy. Under all masks one must know how to distinguish exploiters, slave-owners, and robbers!
Sure. But in fact, while I wouldn't certainly call Trotsky - who was in fact one of the most intelligent and farsighted revolutionaries of the 20th century - an "empty head", the fact is that reducing world antagonisms and military conflicts to only one, limited, aspect, is ineffective analysis, even if that one, limited, aspect, is more important and relevant than the struggle between fascism and democracy.

Or in other words, even the clearest minds do eventually say stupid things.

Luís Henrique

[Geiseric]

The brazillian workers are defending themselves against the british, using guns given to them by Vargas, who they would then turn against Vargas as soon as the war ended in that situation. Vargas's defeat means exploitation, but if brazilians want to overthrow him, they would need the resources available from an anti british campaign. Like how bolsheviks recruited ex tsarist soldiers, who fought against germany, its the same thing.

[Luís Henrique]

The brazillian workers are defending themselves against the british, using guns given to them by Vargas, who they would then turn against Vargas as soon as the war ended in that situation. Vargas's defeat means exploitation, but if brazilians want to overthrow him, they would need the resources available from an anti british campaign. Like how bolsheviks recruited ex tsarist soldiers, who fought against germany, its the same thing.

Erm, no. The Bolsheviks opposed war against Germany from day one. They were not in favour of it until the populace got armed, and then turned against it.

Anyway, if Vargas somehow - I can't fathom the idea, but it is necessary for the sake of argument, since Trotsky argues about a Brazilian victory - managed to defeat the British, all chances are that no one, not even the workers, would want to depose him. He would become - and deservedly, I would say - a national hero. Turning against the government requires a military defeat (like in 1917 in Russia, as you know), not a military victory.

Luís Henrique