For Your Information

Imperialism and terrorism

Since the September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, imperialist powers around the world have seized on the U.S.-led “war against terror” as justification for their brutal attacks against the people of the world and the increasing fascization of life within their own countries. Within hours of the September 11 attacks, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was trying to justify the 37-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip as necessary for the struggle against terrorism. Most recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin justified the use of assassination, unlawful search and seizure and the restriction on civil liberties of all Russians as an unfortunate but necessary spinoff of the war against Chechen rebels.

At the same time, there are also those trying to create confusion about the actual nature of terrorism. As brutal scenes of carnage unfold, they wring their hands and say “yes, but…”, as if the deliberate targeting of civilian populations is a legitimate form of revolutionary resistance. They try to suggest that those who commit terrorist acts are oppressed by imperialism and have no other way of resisting imperialist oppression. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The truth is that terrorism is a tool of imperialism which it uses in various ways to perpetuate its oppression of peoples around the world. It is no accident that the origins of many of the terrorist organizations in existence today can be traced back to the various imperialist powers, particularly the CIA, the KGB, Mossad and other imperialist agencies. The CIA helped to establish the Al Q’aeda terrorist network to carry out attacks against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan. The CIA and Mossad established the Palestinian terrorist organizations Hamas and Islamic Jihad in order to undermine the legitimate struggle of the Palestinian people for national liberation. Furthermore, despite the propaganda churned out by the imperialists claiming that they are combatting terrorism, the fact remains that the terrorists are still serving the interests of their creators.

Terrorism is used by the imperialists to discredit the revolutionary and progressive forces in the eyes of the people, who, quite rightly, despise violence against civilians. It is also used to dehumanize and demonize those who are struggling for national and social liberation, to destabilize entire societies and to justify the most draconian anti-people measures in the name of “security”. In this series on imperialism and terrorism, Modern Communism will examine how different imperialists have used terrorism to achieve their own objectives.

Part I: Terrorism as a means to crush revolutionary struggles

The term terrorist was first coined by Edmund Burke, an ardent monarchist who described the French Revolution as the work of “terrorists”. However, the word did not really come into common usage until the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, when different anarchist groups adopted tactics that they described as “terrorist”, including assassinating members of royal families, kidnappings and bombings.

In a number of these high profile cases, those instigating the terrorist acts turned out to be police agents, working under orders to create the pretext for violent crackdowns against revolutionary and progressive forces. These groups came on the scene at the same time that tens of thousands of workers around the world were gravitating towards revolution, inspired by the communists’ call for workers to unite against the capitalist system.

One infamous example of this was the Haymarket bombing in Chicago in 1886. Workers there began a strike on May first as part of the struggle for the eight-hour day. As workers were listening to speeches in Haymarket Square, police opened fire on the crowd, killing four people. In response, strike organizers called for a mass public meeting to protest the next day.

Strike leaders were giving speeches at the protest meeting when police arrived; a bomb was tossed into the crowd of police officers, killing eight and wounding dozens. As soon as the bomb exploded police, obviously well prepared, started attacking the crowd. Meanwhile, workers surrounded Rudolph Schnaubelt, the person they had seen throwing the bomb. He was arrested but later released without charge by the Chicago police. Schnaubelt was a police agent, reportedly working for Pinkerton Security. Newspaper reports openly highlighted the work of Pinkerton security agents who had infiltrated the groups organizing the strike.

At the same time police arrested seven strike leaders, who were tried for inciting the violence and found guilty by a jury specifically chosen by a special bailiff. Five of the defendants were executed while the other two received life sentences. According to the court record, the State’s Attorney told the jury “convict these men, make examples of them, hang them, and you save our institutions.

Using the excuse of the Haymarket incident, the U.S. state proceeded to crack down on the revolutionary and progressive movement, rounding up dozens of socialists and trade union organizers. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the American and European imperialists had perfected the use of terrorism and agents provocateurs to justify attacks of the progressive forces, as well as to sort out contradictions among themselves. In subsequent articles we will examine the history of such tactics during the past century.

Back to Modern Communism