Perspective
October 2024 – Kaldıraç Issue 279
The ruling class, the class that holds the apparatus of force, the class that owns the state, rules not only through oppression and violence, not only by force. It also establishes an ideological hegemony based on thousands of years of blind faiths, habits, superstitions and beliefs, with which it combines and fuses. This ideological hegemony is, in fact, a mechanism for producing “consent”. Religion and education are involved in this process. Discourses such as seeing the state as the “father”, the acceptance of the criminalization of the use of weapons by anyone other than the state, obedience to the legal system set by the ruling class, the idea that taxes are returned in the form of “roads, water, electricity”, the patriotic-national literature, the lie of national interest, the need for national security, the independence of the judiciary, are actually the daily expressions of this production of consent.
Surely, the hegemon, with its religion, press, entertainment industry, movies, other cultural tools, social media, digital channels, etc., can and does manipulate anything to produce social consent.
For instance, in the aftermath of the Second World War, they immediately launched an organized war against the working class, against the quest for freedom and equality, against the peoples of the world, against the socialist countries, especially the USSR, under the rhetoric of a “free world”, pretending to be defenders of democracy. And this war was actually called the war for “democracy”. The anti-communist struggle was disguised as “democracy”, despite the many violations of rights, witch hunts and unbelievable judicial comedies.
More recently, they have been trying to crush almost every opposition movement with the accusation of “terror” and “terrorist”. If you talk about the freedom of the Kurdish people, you are a terrorist; if you talk about the Palestinian people, you are a terrorist; if you demand the implementation of the 8-hour working day policy, you are a terrorist; if you oppose the plunder of nature, who are you, if anything, a terrorist.
The many murders committed by the state, the organized massacres carried out by the states, all kinds of attacks by the states, are “the protection of democracy”, while opposing these attacks, or even defending an ordinary economic-democratic right, is outright terrorism.
In September, the US-Israeli front carried out an attack in Lebanon. According to the information that has emerged, the attack was carried out by detonating radios and pagers. More than 2,000 explosions are mentioned. The death toll seems to be around 30 and the number of wounded is over 150.
As the saying goes, a coward is always a coward, but he often gets the title of “hero”. Those who carried out this attack, the Israeli and US front, in fact seem to have demonstrated a kind of “heroism”. They think so. It shouldn’t be too difficult for a state to put a bomb inside these devices, say 3,000 devices, by paying a little more to the manufacturer. Or, for example, it would be possible to gather the devices in one place and have a technical staff do this task by paying, for example, 1000 dollars per device. Even if they spent 300 thousand dollars, this would not be a big expenditure for any state. The point is to sell these devices as the ones requested and ordered by Lebanon. And achieving this should be possible with a slightly lower price offer. Therefore, it should not be too difficult for the US and Israel to fulfill an import order from Lebanon in this way.
If you are scared of the state, of the power of the state, this operation can actually make you even more terrified.
Then, when we are scared, we don’t necessarily have to be attacked by a strong figure, one can also be scared by the attack of a coward.
Attacks by cowards are perhaps even more frightening.
Among some people in our leftist milieu in Turkey, who are heading towards being “hanged up their boots”, the idea is like this: Wow, these men are great, you can’t handle them, look what they have done!
From top to bottom this is a wrong way of thinking.
As we have pointed out, the possibility of such an operation is feasible for all states. Especially for the US-Israel line, it is a very easy operation, just costing a little more money. Cowardly it is. After all, one can never know who the dead are.
For sure, this is state terrorism.
It is similar to Israeli officials call for “ killing the children” when it comes to the Palestinian people. Some so-called state leaders, so-called writers, so-called artists, so-called litterateurs, are able to say without hesitation, “Kill the children because they will grow up to be Palestinian terrorists”. Those who consider themselves entitled to kill children because they will grow up to be Palestinian resistance fighters are, of course, murderers. And these murderers are militant defenders of the state terror.
They are the ones who see the detonation of the devices in Lebanon as a “heroic” act.
And certainly the “leftists” who do not intend to fight against the sovereign, against the bourgeois state, who are simply terrified but cannot even admit it to themselves, are frightened by this action and quickly come to the conclusion that fighting against this sovereign would be pointless.
Cowardly it is.
These attacks are just a further continuation of the policy of massacres.
Also, it should be clear how “heroic” the Berlin police in Germany were in chasing and arresting a 10-year-old boy for holding a Palestinian flag. We presume that not since the Hitler era has the police force of Germany, this rare representative of the democratic world, the free world, carried out such a heroic act.
Yes, the state murders.
Increasingly, this becomes the function of the state. Collects taxes, oppresses the people, and kills those who rebel. Here is your democracy!
In the world of monopolies, the state kills more explicitly, more often, more “heroically”.
In the world of monopoly ruling, the state attacks with its paramilitary forces, its law enforcement agencies, and these attacks become massacres, genocides.
In the world of monopolies, this is what democracy is.
There is no hesitation to call this state terrorism and it is legitimate and obligatory to resist against this state by all ways and means.
In Lebanon, a genocide of sorts is being attempted.
States or big corporations have the means to carry out more of these massacres. Apple, for one, can blow up all its phones if it feels like it, if it sees fit. In any case, the battery, the power supply of the phone cannot be removed.
We are well aware that anyone and everyone who carries these phones, the so-called smart phones, can be bugged and monitored at will. Don’t bother questioning how tapping billions of cell phones will help them. Don’t, because you are not in their shoes and information that is unnecessary for you may be considered very necessary or important for them.
The cell phone is rightly described as the “modern leash”. Namely, leashes on animals to identify who owns it. Even though animals are not utilized in production, as they were in ancient times, it is “important” to reveal who owns them. After all, we live in a world of property. Everything must be owned. Even an idea, even a poem. Water has already been claimed as property, as the shade of a tree and the air will one day be claimed as property, if capitalism survives. Therefore, capitalism needs to be overthrown immediately, “in due time” as Fikret Başkaya puts it.
The modern leash is not given to anyone by “open force”. Some companies, of course, exercise their “right” to be the owner of the cell phone. But everyone feels some kind of obligation to own a cell phone. Life without a cell phone is considered to be “primitive” and not only that, which brand of leash, excuse me, which brand of cell phone is more prestigious is also an issue. Just put it this way, a dog does not have the right to choose the leash it is collared with. A modern leashed human being has a choice in this regard.
Yet the difference is not limited to this. The cost of a sheep’s leash is borne by the sheep’s owner. Whereas the cost of a human leash is borne by each individual human being.
So, in fact, at any time we can be subjected to the mass assassination that has already occurred in Lebanon. No obstacle stands in the way of this.
State terrorism has reached a new level. Like those games played with electronic devices, a new level has emerged.
Now, many states are comparing their terrorist practices with the attack in Lebanon, and it would not be an exaggeration to assume that they are saying “bravo”. So far, apart from Russia and China, hardly any country has condemned this cowardly act of state terrorism in Lebanon. Let’s not overstate it, but in the Western world, not a single country has condemned this act. Hence, the “free world” will come up with new practices in this regard.
Imagine, if this act had been committed inside Israel, for example, the entire Western world would not hesitate for a second to condemn it as a clear act of terrorism. But when Lebanon is the target, that is not the case.
Soon there will also be acts of car explosions. The world’s dominant powers, the monopolies, have begun to show what they have at their disposal. What else they can do is not difficult to imagine. Yet even all this does not guarantee their victory; on the contrary, it reveals and is revealing their fears.
This is the distinguishing point of state terror. A state attacking the people out in the open is not terrorism, whereas if the people stand up to it, then it is an act of terrorism.
Now, did Israel achieve a great victory in Lebanon by this?
Of course not.
But Israel and the USA are blatantly declaring that in this war they do not and will not recognize any limits.
The war ongoing around the world is now without rules and boundaries.
And, of course, this war will find its reflection within the countries that are waging it. Every war is a civil war. Therefore, in fact, it is necessary for the world proletariat to take the field with its organized actions, to appear on the fields of action, to use its power from production. Apart from this, nothing else can prevent such a war.
The cause of the war is capitalist-imperialist hegemony on the face of the earth. The desire of the monopolies for domination. It cannot be expected from them to end this war. On the contrary, only the rising up of the world working class in order to overthrow their domination can stop this war.
Apparently, until the struggle of the forces of revolution and socialism rises, we will see many more bizarre, cowardly practices of state terror.
