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Is the Naxal the New Vanguard of Antifascism?

Internationalist Observer | 29.05.2013 20:34 | Analysis | Globalisation | World

With the guerilla attack on a convoy of career politicians in India last week, this has suddenly turned from a big issue into a big question, not so much in the Hindu state itself as in smaller nations whose regimes, due to its sheer size, are eying the most populous one of the Asian subcontinents like a moon in order to exploit as much as of its gravity as they can for their local dominance. The Naxal, the Marxist rebel network within that entity, has escalated the insurrection against the Delhi regime to the level of the 20th century resistance against the first wave of fascism under Japanese occupation reaching the Indian ocean. The Delhi regime has reacted with a statement calling the attack "a Holocaust", which puts forward the question why Indian internal affairs would be gravitating around German history. Obviously it is not the case that the Naxal was entrapping an entire tribal subculture to feed them to the hellfire and rewrite history accordingly, like the Nazis, and if any comparison had been made between the Chhattisgarh attack and the Jewish insurrection in the Warsaw ghetto there would probably have been widespread cautioning against such analogy as in the case of the Palestinians a while ago. Scientific experience suggests that the small entity rotates around the big one and not the other way round, so what does such an inversion of circumstances tell about the Naxal?

First of all, in contrast to the Syrian opposition, which has a hard time shielding itself against the penetration attempts of all kinds of regimes, the Naxal is standing firm on both its tribal and its communist legs, and even more than that it now seems to have become aware that this quality might get lost in imperialist assimilation as it did in other struggles around the world where the destructive forces of capitalism had worse effects already. Second, it means that the paths to such political breakthroughs like land reform and sovereignty rights that are prescribed by Hindu tradition to prevent exchanges of violence are entirely clogged by corporate corruption, and the unresolved issues cry for solutions to arise from outside the dysfunctional system. Third, it is pointing to the fact that in the global village of false flag capitalism the so-called "soft power" of the Hindu state is something like the American currency was in economy at the height of its era: Since its role as a reference point outside its explicitly claimed area is exceeding the local one by far, its continuity or discontinuity is of interest even to those without an interest in its content.

It should be an eye opener that India is frontally colliding with Godwin´s Law when the legitimacy of the parliamentary system and the state apparatus covered by it is being tested. Should someone who argues on fascism and democracy not be aware of the current relationship of the two? When the motherland of democracy is under economic occupation by the motherland of fascism at an extent the Nazis of the 20th century had failed to achieve by military means, can the two be seen as independent from each other? Certainly the authoritarian vassal state in Greece cannot count as an ideal of state theory. But since fascism or whatever remains of it is the patron of democracy or whatever is left of that, what intention does it reveal to reject an apparent attack against career politicians in India as fascist when it obviously is not, as the contrast to actual fascist groups in Greece makes obvious? Is this an attack of these reactionaries in the state apparatus feeling most threatened by communism against an unaware majority, or is it an attack on these reactionaries posing the biggest threat to tribal interests by an aware minority? And what does it tell about those reactionaries when they talk about these tribes like the Nazis did about their victims, namely that it was all in their best interest, that all these opining otherwise were monstrous usurpers, while their own ideology deserved blind faith without actually fulfilling its promises? Is the dialectics of democracy and fascism as enshrined in the paradox situation of Greece under German currency dictatorship already affecting the internal affairs of India, and the silly statement of the Delhi regime an entrapment ideology in the same sense as antisemitism, fabricated with the sinister purpose to pursue just what one is warning against, like Hitler did? And if that is so, does it mandate Antifascist resistance on the level of the axis years?

Maybe clues to some answers can be found in the Greek word democracy itself, meaning a regime over the people or by the people, depending on grammatical interpretation. This central ambiguity has come to be decisive for the practical use of the term since somehow the alleged ideal is never met. Quite the contrary, when the meaning of the word people is derived from democracy it becomes cynical as in the saying the people have the government they deserve. The democratic career politicians want everybody to be like they say but when everybody becomes like they do then they do not like it. This cynicism is what has been the actual target of the attack. As democracy is incapable to ensure the absence of fascism but instead becomes the carrier to introduce it, no meaningful ethical distinction between the two can be made. Both result in a totalitarian state of destructive nature with a slightly different ideological cover. Only the absence of any regime over the people can ensure the impossibility of fascism. But the word anarchy is being used like an ideological trashcan where anyone can put their toxic waste in, hoping for it to go away just like the state.

So is the Chhattisgarh attack a gateway into a suicidal war of attrition, as the criticism by democratic communists within India suggests? In that case the same would have to be said about the Greek insurrection, because no social movement can ever succeed against a state with unlimited economic resources. Yet it is also true that no social movement can succeed with such a state, because any totalitarianism, democratic or otherwise, will rather rename its failure into everybody´s success than accept pondering the issue of its own expendability. Ever since the Russian revolution, the probability of regime change by another capitalist power with no intention of interference in the results has decreased, and it is very unlikely for the Delhi regime to be deposed that way, which makes waiting for this to happen an unsuitable strategy. It appears more likely for the opposition in Germany to break through the ideological siege of the fascist police state and organise a mass movement on the level of Greece. In this sense the Naxal has joined an Antifascist consensus that the world cannot wait any longer for capitalism and its ideological pretexts to end. If that is dangerous, then what is reliance upon the current system? Does the argument that escalation always makes it all worse than it already is carry a meaningful tactical experience or a fundamental strategic error?

Such as when India is being compared with Unitedstates it is relevant to mention that both are suffering cultural imperialism from within by means of a hegemonial and monopolistic culture industry, in the case of India and Germany the common denominator is the corruption of the state by the cellphone industry and an open cast mining scam masquerading as in the best interest of land conservation. There is a "green" narrative spun around a big lie, such as there was a "brown" one in the 20th century, embodied by replacements of closed atomic power stations with green-painted coal burning stations in the name of a destructive development ideology, and political decisions to pay corporations for energy from offshore windmill harps even when the wires happen to fail (like the Nazis believed they could use coal and gas to entirely abstain from oil). The assumption of an "axis" with differently sized wheels would be a farce though, but such as fascism has grown more evil from dissociating with the personality of Hitler and associating with the Washington regime, it might again do so from dissociating with Unitedstates and associating with the Delhi regime.

In the worst case - which would rubberstamp the use of the political analogy with the approval of material historical continuity, the historical revisionism was a prelude to a military deal and the local tribes might have to face the successor models of the German tanks that devastated Greek or Italian villages in the 20th century, or are now being faced by Kurdish and Bahreini civilians and many others (and delivered with the most sophisticated human right policy camouflage so the prestigious charities won´t complain). Yet such a suicidal step of the Delhi regime could not be blamed on the Naxal, just as little as the assassination of Kishenji can be blamed on his alleged suicidal tendencies, moves or behaviours but resulted from a worldwide eliminatory impulse among fascist regimes that also took the life of Alfonso Cano in Columbia, among others. It marked a turning point when these regimes which had publicly rejected assassinations of dissidents were no longer able to hide their practice of sham assassinations from other regimes, and at this point for some reason yet to be revealed India chose to brutalise itself and assassinate Kishenji.

So it would be a shortened or short-sighted analysis to say that the Naxal had escalated the conflict when it escalated the resistance. This does not mean that such fallacy should not be expected of a regime gravitating towards fascism, but that it carries in itself the genetically messed seeds of defeat. As the anarchist theory of social war points out, no war can be survived in the true sense of the word by pretending it was not happening. In the best case, by rejecting the attack as anarchist the critics mean too audacious and short-sighted with regard to a symmetric war of attrition. Of course this is only true if the conflict is such a symmetric war, like e. g. the one Spain and Unitedstates once fought to leave the Guantanamo Bay territory in its current diplomatic status. When the old system, be it called fascism or democracy or any grey scale in between, is in the condition of a burning house being looted by the landlords, it is not necessary to wait for proof that they also did the arson. The intensity of state terror does not, or merely as an instrument of torture, depend on the degree of activity of the oppressed, since the local state and its terror complex is not a closed system but only one of many sections of a self-destructive capitalist globalisation.

Maybe the way out of so much internal confusion can begin with a look at the larvae stadium of fascism in order to recognise it before it permeates everything. In the Weimar republic, the Nazis have been building an industry-sponsored private army from the surplus population released by capitalism to neutralise any opposition and rearrange the worst elements of the crisis-damaged state according to external gravity. Once the new regime was installed and done with the opposition, this private army was dismantled by new special forces. But does that take any responsibility away from those who constructed the oppressive system which crushed its architects together with these it was targeted against? While the obvious principle to apply at this would be to follow the money (with the eyes, not the belly), the purpose of doing so would be to exclude any possible repetition of the pattern. If there is an industry-sponsored private army, it could be the catalyst of a totalitarian transformation of a failed state. Is the Naxal such a commercial army, or does or did it have to face one, and if so how can it be made sure that such a situation can never repeat? There is a point at which Antifascism ceases to be revenge, and that point is being reached once a repeat of the fascist pattern is at stake. In regard to the Chhattisgarh attack this means once an argument can be sustained that the targets were pursuing fascism the action against them is lifted from the level of mere revenge to that of avantgarde.

It is basic Marxist analysis that fascism exploits the dysfunctional nature of capitalism to prolong as much of the worst of it as it can. Hitler very quickly became stuck on an economy of war which depended on conquests and militarism because that was what had financed his early campaigns. While he promised to restore tribal roots, development and construction even in the civilian sector deliberately had the opposite effect. Although the two were not identical but merely closely attached to each other, the ruling system could hardly be targeted without targeting Hitler, which was done by anarchists early and by renegade generals late in his reign, while communist parties played no active role. It is here where the ethics of murdering the oppressor has its tribal background, best being expressed by the fact that the individual who got closest to take Hitlers life, Georg Elser, came from a region where everybody had to use the same single big water source. When a ruling system poses an existential threat to all, it can only be targeted by targeting these most advanced at maintaining it. It is such as if the drone terror cannot cease by means of popular instruction these with the most central roles in it become legitimate targets, and one could argue whether the President of Unitedstates requires to be killed for it to end (his drone fleet itself is, by the way, no suitable instrument for murdering an oppressor, since it is built to be used more than once - yet the core element of the ethics of murdering the oppressor is that success includes self-disarmament, as success is defined as the end of the oppression not just of a specific oppressor). Maybe the Indian politicians targeted in Chhattisgarh were in a similar role, having had all the truth thrown at them but still clinging to investments and intrusions? Is the Naxal anarchist enough to make something forward-looking of that? Revenge is an allegation easily cited for lighting somebody else´s candle of nonviolence, but how can capitalism, the seemingly endless war of these who sell themselves to it against the tribes of this all too vulnerable planet which has forgotten its own origins, finally end in the most fundamental sense of all, so that it will never resume?


Recommended readings:

Outlook India: Naxal Attack was a Holocaust: Ramesh

CPI(ML) Condemns the 25th May Attack of Maoists on Congress Rally

Alex Trocchi: Theory of social war

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