[NE-anarchists-an] Gotenborg - (Somewhat condescending) MS of support from Sparts

[Eric Laursen]

-----Original Message-----
From: J. Brown [mailto:j__brown at lineone.net]
Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2001 3:51 PM
To: september26collective at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [september26collective] ICL Protest Statement on Goteborg


Protest by the International Communist League
 Lethal Cop Violence Against Leftist Protesters in Sweden

 The International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) vehemently
protests the brutal attack by Swedish police--shooting into crowds and
savaging demonstrators with attack dogs--during the European Union (EU)
summit in Göteborg! We demand the immediate release of all arrested
protesters!

 This is the first time in memory that cops in any West European country
have fired live ammunition at demonstrators. One young protester was
critically wounded and may die. Those bullets that struck anarchist youth
were aimed at the working class of Europe, which increasingly is combatting
through strikes and protests the all-sided effort to eliminate jobs and
social services. The shootings in Göteborg were a deadly message by the
European Union to the workers of Europe.

 To a man, the social-democratic heads of state gathered in Göteborg saluted
the cop attack and denounced the young protesters. Taking hypocrisy to new
heights, British Labour prime minister Tony Blair denounced the "thuggery"
of the protesters. German Social Democratic chancellor Gerhard Schröder
railed, "We have to pursue these rioters with all the might of the law."
Their law is to protect their capitalist order and their whole system of
exploitation and injustice.

 The mask is off--this is the real face of "social Europe." After this, who
can believe the lies pushed by the labor misleaders and reformist leftists
who peddle illusions in this gang of murderers and thieves? The blood on the
streets of Göteborg reveals what the masses of the semicolonial world and
ethnic minorities in the imperialist metropolises experience all the time.
Now it is increasingly becoming the norm for cop assaults on
"anti-globalization" protesters. With international economic recession
looming, what's necessary is to mobilize the labor movement in defense of
its own class interests and the interests of all of the oppressed against
the rapacious capitalist rulers.

 The bloody attack on anarchist youth came only a day after U.S. president
George Bush visited Göteborg to push his crazed plans for nuclear first
strike capability through a "national missile defense." The Bush visit
underlined the growing divisions between U.S. imperialism and its would-be
EU imperialist rivals. Goran Persson, the Swedish prime minister and current
EU president, stated, "The EU is the only counterweight against the raw game
of market forces and the world domination of the U.S.A."

 The ICL solidarizes with the protests against imperialist warmonger Bush.
However, workers and youth must be won to the consciousness that the main
enemy is at home--their own ruling class! The counterrevolutionary
destruction of the Soviet workers state has ushered in sharpened competition
among these imperialist powers for markets and spheres of exploitation which
is driving the world toward nuclear war. Already we have seen, in the NATO
onslaught against Serbia (and the continuing occupation of the Balkans), the
first war on European soil since 1945.

 The youthful anarchist protesters who lashed out against the symbols of
capitalist exploitation in Göteborg have their hearts in the right place. We
understand all too clearly such acts of outrage and frustration against this
brutal system. All our sympathies are with the self-sacrificing protesters,
even though we do not share the same political perspective. A single
isolated hero cannot replace the mass struggle.

 We revolutionary Marxists seek to mobilize the power of the multiethnic
proletariat in class struggle, not just to protest the capitalist system but
to eradicate it. We fight to forge the Leninist vanguard parties needed to
lead the working class to sweep away the capitalist exploiters and their
state and to build a workers state and an egalitarian socialist society.

16 June 2001

Contact the Spartacist League/Britain at,
WorkersHammer at compuserve.com
+44 020 7281 5504



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