First Published: Frontline, Vol. 3, No. 9, October 28, 1985.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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The chain of events set off when a small group of Palestinians hijacked an Italian cruise ship, subsequently killing an elderly U.S. hostage, has triggered a new round of self-righteous denunciations of terrorism by U.S. government officials and their political supporters. The anti-imperialist movement has a responsibility to expose the hypocrisy and national chauvinism behind these diatribes no matter how much such a stance requires going against the prevailing political winds. Most immediately, this is a time to reaffirm – not back away from – the position that the Palestinian people’s fight for national self-determination is a legitimate one that deserves the support of all who believe in peace and justice.
At the same time, the new round of attention to terrorism is a good occasion for some plain speaking among left and progressive forces on a topic that many would like to shy away from.
Reluctance to criticize those labelled “terrorists” by the likes of Ronald Reagan or Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres is, of course, understandable. Both Reagan and Peres preside over systems of oppression which are founded on and ruled by terror. In so far as terrorism is concerned, their governments have no peers; they practice state terrorism virtually every day. Their bloody records from Vietnam and Central America to the West Bank and Lebanon are bibles of terrorism. They are, as well, the financiers and supporters of the terrorism practiced by the apartheid regime in South Africa, the blood-stained Pinochet government in Chile and the brutal Marcos gang in the Philippines – to cite only a few of their more infamous clients.
There is another reason why some on the left tend to avoid criticizing “terrorism”: namely, that all too often the critique of “terrorism” or particular “terrorist” actions has become a pretext for characterizing any form of armed struggle as inappropriate and unjustified.
Under these circumstances, it is tempting to rest content in the belief that any action taken in opposition to imperialism in general – but especially to the policies of the U.S. and Israel – is legitimate and justified.
But, as the incident of the ship hijacking makes clear, politics is not all that simple.
To be sure, the daily violence of Israeli occupation of Palestinian land – the ultimate cause of the Achille Lauro incident – cries out for daily and urgent resistance. And more immediately, Tel Aviv’s bombing of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) offices in Tunis – in which more than 60 people including women, children and Tunisian civilians were killed – more than deserves a forceful response.
But not all responses push forward even the most just of causes. Certainly the Achille Lauro fiasco has only served to weaken the fight against Israeli aggression and obscure the real source of terrorism in the Middle East.
The hijacking as it took place appears to be the result of improvisation after the ship’s crew saw the Palestinians with a secret weapons cache. The original plan apparently envisaged a different scenario, but it still rested on commandeering an Italian ship, when Italy is one of the Western European countries most sympathetic to Palestinian rights. And whatever the four armed men’s original intention, the outcome included the brutal killing of a 69-year-old, wheelchair-bound, U.S. passenger who can only be described as an innocent bystander.
It was the very nature of these actions which made it possible for the U.S. to think that it could get away with its subsequent hijacking of an Egyptian airliner and which also made it impossible for those who could normally be expected to support the PLO politically to defend its actions in this case.
The history of the revolutionary movement is replete with cases of ill-conceived tactics – and not only the injudicious use of violence – proving counterproductive. Certainly individual acts of armed assault, no matter how heroic in intent and execution, have rarely advanced the struggle against imperialism unless they were part of and closely coordinated with the political activity of the masses. Nor will arbitrary acts of violence against innocent bystanders engender the political enthusiasm of the masses or their respect for a leadership which organizes and countenances such actions. Indeed, they should not; as they run directly counter to the profound concern for humanity and human rights that lie at the core of any successful revolutionary movement.
Granted, generalizations as to the political legitimacy of various forms of revolutionary violence are difficult to sustain. There is no easy formula by which one form of violence can be seen as legitimate and another proscribed. Under one set of circumstances, a kidnapping (Napoleon Duarte’s daughter) or the hijacking of an airplane may serve a useful political purpose. (At one point in the Palestinian struggle, for example, hijacking served to put the question of Palestine before a world that largely wanted to pretend this nation did not exist.) Under other conditions, the very same action could be counterproductive.
In short, we believe that it is politically irresponsible to support – actively or by silent acquiescence – every act of armed terror solely on the grounds that it is motivated by the struggle against imperialism or any of its political adjuncts.
So far we have spoken only of the need to make a concrete political evaluation of particular incidents or actions. But there is a much broader question involved as well-the question of terrorism as a political strategy. And let us mince no words. Here we are talking about groups like the Red Brigades in Italy and the Weather Underground in the U.S. who viewed anti-imperialist politics principally through the prism of “armed propaganda” – that is, violent attacks on institutions and individuals of the ruling class.
We communists stand resolutely opposed to all such outlooks. In our view, the central task of all revolutionary work is the political mobilization of the masses. Such a task requires a comprehensive political program and focused political objectives which the masses can comprehend and support. It requires the forging of alliances among diverse political forces within the working class and broad fronts that run across class lines. It requires serious propaganda capable of explaining every twist and turn in the motion of politics. And it requires political work in all the key arenas in which the class struggle gets most concentrated: electoral politics, the trade unions, the anti-racist movement, the women’s movement, the movements of immigrant and undocumented workers, the struggle for peace and others.
A political strategy based primarily on armed terror will have neither the capacity nor the resources to take responsibility for such all-sided revolutionary activity.
What is true is that at a certain stage in the maturation of the class struggle, the likelihood is that the masses will have to take actions that go beyond the bounds of bourgeois legality if for no other reason than that the ruling class will itself use armed force to suppress their political motion. The ideological preparation for that stage of the class struggle is a task that no serious political force can dare avoid.
But all this only underscores the need for a forthright criticism of terrorist actions or terrorism as a revolutionary strategy – even as we direct our main fire at Ronald Reagan, Shimon Peres and all those who rule by state terrorism.