(The following is the text of a letter dated September 14 sent by Ernest Mandel from Brussels to the editors of Newsweek in New York, protesting their publication of lies about him and the Fourth International. For more details about the Newsweek article see "'Newsweek' and the Real 'Terrorist International'" in the September 25 issue of Intercontinental Press.]
In your Sept. 18, 1972, issue you devote two whole paragraphs on page 34 to the movement I am part of, the Fourth International, and to myself. •The only trouble with these paragraphs is that they do not contain a single word of truth.
The Fourth International was not founded two years ago in Brussels, but thirty-four years ago in Paris. It is not a terrorist organization but has always rejected the philosophy and methods of terrorism, opposed to the Marxist principles it stands for. The Brussels conference* issued no call to "shoot" on any scale. More modestly, it tried to coordinate the struggle of radical workers, students and intellectuals against the take-over of Europe by a few hundred multinational corporations, either American or European. The call it issued was for a Socialist United States of Europe, based upon social ownership of the means of production administered not by any top-heavy bureaucracy or state apparatus, but by democratically elected councils of producers, under a multiparty system.
The sentence you attribute to me, reproduced between quotation marks, was never spoken by me, neither at that conference nor anywhere else. On the contrary, foreseeing this type of misrepresentation, I explicitly stated in my conference report that we do not fight by means of dynamite, bombs or the like.
Your attempt to picture us as a "Terrorist International" can therefore only be characterized as a total distortion of the truth.
Equally scandalous is the assertion that "Trotskyites see themselves as the catalysts provoking governments into ever harsher repressive measures. ever This, they believe, will encourage Fascism and, in turn, produce more radical fanatics and more cracks in established society."
Anybody doing his elementary homework before writing an article could easily have found out that one of the great intellectual and political achievements of Leon Trotsky was that he understood - nearly alone- as early as 1930 the mortal threat fascism represented to the German people. He desperately sought to unite Communists, Social Democrats, and unionists by the millions-and not just a few "fanatics"-to prevent a fascist take-over of that key country. His followers ever since have acted in the same spirit, and are rightly considered by fascists the world over as their most implacable enemies. To accuse such a movement of deliberately wanting to "provoke" the development of fascism is again a complete and unadulterated lie.
It is true that in addition to its above-mentioned basic goals, the Fourth International firmly supports, in a spirit of solidarity with all victims of oppression and exploitation, popular mass resistance movements against oppressors, even if the rulers of these countries leave them no other avenue open for struggle but armed struggle. A similar position of support to such movements, e.g., in the Portuguese colonies, has recently been adopted by the World Council of Churches and the Swedish Social Democracy. You don't taint them with the brush of being "terrorist organizations" for that support. There is no reason to taint us with that brush either.
As a matter of fact, even the editors of Newsweek fully identify with at least armed resistance movement one against oppression, called the American War of Independence. Have they therefore adopted the philosophy of terrorism? It would also be interesting to know how they characterize the resistance movements which sprangup all through Europe against Nazi oppression, e.g., the Warsaw ghetto uprising. To my knowledge, there is only one movement which slandered these heroes as being "bandits" and "criminals": the movement of Hitler and his henchmen.
Nobody should be surprised that terrorists who happen to wield state power and, in that position, pursue their political goals by murdering thousands of innocent people- Hitler was only the most extreme example of them, and by no means the only one-call their opponents "criminal terrorists." The political function of this linguistic trick is obviously to facilitate justify in advance mass reand pression, mass persecution, mass torture and, if necessary, mass killing of political opponents.
In the 1870s, an obscure terrorist made an attempt upon the life of the German Emperor William I; Bismark used the occasion to outlaw the Social Democracy for fifteen years. In 1934, the no less obscure Nikolaev murdered the local boss of Leningrad, Kirov; Stalin used that occasion to arrest, and subsequently murder, practically all his political opponents in the Communist movement of the USSR. Neither the German Social Democrats nor the Soviet Trotskyists had actually committed a single act of violence against the regimes of Emperor William I or Joseph Stalin. They were convinced that they could best further their goals under the circumstances through mass education, mass organization, and mass struggle of the working class. This, those terrorist rulers feared much more than desperate and inefficient acts of individual terrorism. Therefore they used the first occasion to suppress these political opposition movements under the pretext of "fighting terrorism."
Today, especially since May 1968, the Fourth International enjoys growing influence among revolutionary youth and workers in many countries. It tries to centralize their generous efforts at social change towards concrete and realizable political goals. This is seen by the rulers as a threat against their rule. So they attempt to organize a growing repression against us. F'or that purpose, a frameup on the occasion of some terrorist incident is a welcome opportunity.
Police informers and other professionals in the noble art of curtailing freedom of thought, speech, organization, and travel the world over are experts in this type of frame-up. They cannot understand this simple truth: that society can only be changed through the efforts of millions, of broad social forces, and that it is ridiculous to attribute to Marxists the wish to "conspire" and to build socialism without the conscious resolution of the majority of the toilers. This is typical of the police or James Bondtype mind. But it is a disgrace to free journalism that newspapermen cooperate in such endeavors, deliberately or through sheer ignorance.
Rev. Cornelio Lagerway, a Dutch Roman Catholic priest and an editor of Catholic publications." (New York Times, September 29.)
A strict censorship has been imposed. New regulations bar publication of editorial comment, political advertising, or any "materials that tend to incite or inflame people against the Government or its constituted authorities, and materials that undermine the faith and confidence of the people in the Government or any of its arms...
Notes
* The reference is to a congress of European Trotskyist groups held in Brussels in November 1970 at which Ernest Mandel gave a report. For details see "3,500 Young Revolutionaries at Brussels 'Congress" in Intercontinental Press, December 7, 1970, р. 1051. - IP 080|