From A World to Win News Service:

“Trump = War”—Paris Protests Confront Imperialist War Makers at World War 1 “Peacefest”

November 19, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

November 16, 2018. A World to Win News Service. November 11 marked the commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the end of World War 1. In Paris more than 70 heads of state and government invited by French President Emmanuel Macron memorialized one of history’s worst crimes against humanity—a war among imperialists whose purpose was to forcibly resolve great power rivalries over zones of influence and colonies. Macron’s hypocritical plan to drape the weekend in talk of peace while honoring the imperialist war machine that ended in the slaughter of ten million soldiers, and featuring Donald Trump as the honored guest, triggered a call to protest.

Coming together under the overall slogan “Trump means war,” a coalition initiated by anti-Trump Americans living in Paris, a number of women’s networks and anti-war collectives brought together Palestinian activists, a local theatre troupe, “anti-fa,” anti-racists, pro-immigrant groups, AIDS and climate activists, Brazilian feminists, Kurds, local Sans Papiers activists and migrant associations, as well as by supporters in Europe of Refuse Fascism in the U.S. On the 11th, 2500 people came out in pouring rain to protest not just Trump, but also Macron, Israel’s Netanyahu, Putin, Turkey’s Erdoğan, the Islamic Republic of Iran and others. One particular target was the monstrous regional wars fomented by these states that are now killing millions in Syria, Yemen, Palestine, Libya and elsewhere. Many protesters saw these wars as part of a war on different sections of humanity, and how the rise of fascism in different parts of the world was threatening far worse. As supporters of Refuse Fascism in Europe put it, “Trump is a danger to humanity! The rise of Trump and the Christian fascist Pence is not just an American dilemma of the moment that elections and patience will wear down or reverse. Not only is Trump a 21st century American Hitler, he has nukes—imagine the repercussions for the rest of the world!”

A multinational group of supporters of Bob Avakian’s new communism from around Europe handed out thousands of leaflets, bringing out the need to drive out the fascist Trump-Pence regime in the U.S. and fight the rise of fascist forces throughout Europe while sweeping away the capitalist-imperialist system in its entirety through revolution. They were joined by supporters of the Communist Party of Iran (MLM). They put out a call to attend a showing of Avakian’s new video presentation on Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution.

Another group of protesters targeted the African neocolonial “dictators” operating within France’s still powerful zone of influence in Africa who were attending the imperialist peacefest, while thousands in their countries are caught in the cross-fire of local and regional conflicts and millions of others displaced.

Earlier, three women from the radical group Femen burst through security lines to confront the heads of state, and notably Trump’s armored car, on their way to a military ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe. The women had the words “Fake peacemakers, real dictators,” “Hypocrisy parade” and “Gangsta party” emblazoned on their naked torsos and held signs saying “Welcome war criminals.”

Despite frequent sharp criticism and even mockery of Trump, the French media were particularly complicit with the state and its police, who cancelled the protest’s right to march at the last moment, and issued repeated warnings that 10,000 security forces were deployed and evoked lurid tales of potential violence by anti-fascist black bloc protestors in order to discourage broader participation.

Many in France who look to the left parliamentary parties to stop the increasingly reactionary atmosphere in the country and the rise of the fascist National Front, led by Marine Le Pen, were bitterly disappointed that these forces essentially boycotted the protest. Like the reformist socialists in WW1 who called on the masses of their countries to go into the trenches to slaughter the oppressed of other nations, their leaders too showed their loyalty to the fatherland—after all, how could they protest the commemoration when “their nation” France had been on the winning side in the war! This shameful display should not be forgotten.

The commemoration was marked by sharpening disputes among world leaders. The fraught relationship between Macron and Trump during the weekend has to be understood for what it really is: mounting friction among imperialist thieves and murderers. What Macron lauds as “multilateralism,” in contrast to what he has called Trump’s “nationalism,” is the continued alliance among the Western great powers at the end of WW2. This refers to the joint effort by the Western imperialist powers to dominate the world, in which the U.S. operated in partnership with other countries who in turn acknowledged its hegemony, even as each maneuvered within this partnership to secure its own imperial interests. Trump is both a symptom and a major driver of increasing turmoil among established allies, with words and actions meant to reconfigure and/or overturn the prevailing order in favor of his more aggressive pursuit of U.S. imperialist interests even if this means sidelining or antagonizing some of these close European allies. The same basic workings of the capitalist-imperialist system and competition among the states and blocs of capital over the wealth produced by the world’s people continue to underlie today’s sharply escalating political, military and trade conflicts.

On March 17, 2017, A World to Win News Service (AWTWNS) announced its transformation into a more thorough-going tool for revolution based on Bob Avakian’s new synthesis of communism. Read its “Editorial: Introducing a transformed AWTWNS” here.