Editorial from KP13, June 23, 2001
June 22, 1941, was a world historic day: It was the day when Hitler let his
armies attack the socialist Soviet Union. But it was also the day when the struggle
for defeating fascism and Nazism was initiated. First and foremost, it was the
Red Army of Stalin, which defeated Hitler, crushing his dreams of a new European
order and a new world order in Nazi chains.
More than 25 million Soviet citizens were killed in this gigantic war crime.
More than 50 million people lost their lives during the war.
June 22, 1941, exactly 60 years ago, was also the beginning of the hounding
of communists in Denmark. Breaking the constitution, the Communist Party of
Denmark (DKP) was banned by the Danish government and a unanimous parliament,
with the exception of the DKP itself, of course. Danish police carried out a
well-prepared action, imprisoning and sending hundreds of communists to concentration
camps, sufferings and death.
But this historic turning point was also the signal for the initiation of increasing
armed resistance in Denmark and many other countries.
The veterans of the Great War are quickly leaving us. But their message about
the necessity of fighting for democracy and liberty, for a world order of the
peoples, and not of imperialism, fascism and reaction, is still alive. Their
dreams are still alive, and their experience is and must be part of the necessary
luggage of today's combatant youth.
Everything is being done to repress the hard-earned experience of the working
class and the peoples, which has been paid with streams of blood. When George
W. Bush, today's representative of the power which took over the dream of world
hegemony of Hitler fascism after the Second World War, held a big speech about
his "visions for Europe" last week in Warsaw, Poland, he compared
the treacherous Munich Agreement, into which the Western Powers entered with
Hitler, who provoked the Second World War, with the Yalta Agreement of the victorious
anti-Nazi coalition, consisting of the Soviet Union, England and the US, which
laid the foundations for the European order of the post-war period. To Bush,
the Yalta Agreement means treachery and defeat - to the people, it not only
meant the defeat of Nazism, but also that socialism was acknowledged as a decisive
global factor.
But the Yalta Agreement did not mean that imperialism called off its fight against
socialism. Headed by the US, imperialism pulled down the iron curtain in Europe,
and in the following decades it was trying to "roll back socialism"
and stop the anti-imperialist and socialist revolutions. By virtue of the world
historic treachery of modern revisionism after the death of Stalin, the strategy
of the imperialists could triumph, and the reactionary "New World Order"
- the barbaric global system of imperialism and the monopolies, proclaimed by
Bush Sr. as US president - could be established.
Last week, it was demonstrated that a new chapter of the struggle for global
hegemony is about to be written. By his European tour, Bush confirmed that US
imperialism fears the challengers to its role as world ruler and endeavours
to maintain the alliance with the EU, the rising superpower. But also China
and the hard-pressed supercapitalist Russia, establishing the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization (SCO), which is the world's biggest regional organization of cooperation
and a counterpart of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and the EU,
are entering the imperialist competition of redistributing the world.
These contradictions between old and new imperialist powers will mark the world
for many years to come, meaning dangers, slavery and wars to the peoples.
But the reactions of the peoples were not to misunderstand either. Wherever
Bush went on his European tour, he was received by protests and demonstrations
against the missile defence shield and the countless other imperialist crimes.
The coming superpower, the EU, has felt the popular opposition: first the Danish
No to the euro and then the Irish No to the Nice Treaty. The EU could see the
opposition on the streets of Nice and Gothenburg. And all these protests are
only the tip of the iceberg: the smouldering revolutionary anger of the working
class and the peoples are everywhere, carrying the peoples' dream of a new just
world order in itself - the revolutionary world order for people and not profit.
June 19, 2001