In
his article Manifesto
of the Third Camp, Anthony McIntyre recycles
the odious garbage of Samuel Huntington’s The
Clash of Civilizations, directing liberals outside
the ranks of the “Irrelevant Left” to
enlist in the crusade for Western secular and enlightenment
values against savage, fanatical Islam. His commentary
provides further evidence of the Third Camp’s
bullet-like trajectory towards the First Camp.
Much
of the article consists of platitudes and truisms,
such as calling for the defence of “liberties
and rights that citizens in Western societies have
gained and enjoy” from “US and Islamic
authoritarian expansionism”. Accompanying this
is a call for the expulsion of Iran from the so-called
“international community”. If McIntyre
were consistent in his opposition to both U.S militarism
and political Islam, then why doesn’t he call
for the expulsion of the U.S from the “international
community” also?
The
answer is simple. The “international community”
is just another buzz word coined by some spin doctor
in the White House in need of snappy generalisation
to describe the US and its “coalition of the
willing”. Anthony McIntyre might argue however
that the term is a reference to the United Nations.
But the UN is not a benign or neutral force, as
the people of Iraq and the Middle East know only
too well. In Iraq, it was the UN who committed genocide
by sustaining sanctions on the Iraqi people for
13 years and in Palestine they are widely seen as
an instrument of the US.
Anthony
McIntyre’s flawed analysis of imperialism is
embarrassing in its lack of rigour. The main threat
to all our liberty comes not from political Islam,
but trigger-happy US imperialism intent on military
invasion and occupation in pursuit of profit and
international hegemony. Marxists and anti-imperialists
in the US and Europe should be concerned with exposing
the so-called “war on terror” and the
other military interventions US imperialism have
been threatening from Syria to North Korea to Venezuela.
And it’s in the name of this “war against
terror” that governments across Europe, not
the dark hordes from the East, are eroding basic
civil liberties whilst especially targeting Muslim
and immigrant populations.
The
article also contains denunciations of unspecified
left groups for supposedly betraying the democratic
ideals that the authors of the Manifesto of the
Third Camp claim to uphold. But it is McIntyre and
his fellow travellers in the Third Camp who demonstrate
real flexibility with regard to democratic values.
One
of the most basic tenets of consistent democracy
is solidarity with mass-based rebellions against
occupation, national oppression and colonial rule
when they actually occur. However, the Third Camp’s
abject refusal to support the colonial uprising
against imperialism in Iraq at best signifies political
abstentionism and at worst back-handed support for
imperialists, disguising their social chauvinism
with “socialist” slogans. The hypocrisy
of the Irish republican signatories of the Manifesto
is particularly nauseating.
The
biggest obstacle to US domination of Iraq and the
Middle East has become the armed resistance to the
US military occupation of Iraq. This is a very positive
development in terms of the interests of the world’s
oppressed because any success for the US in its
current "war on terrorism" will strengthen
their arrogance. One need not lend political support
to the Islamic-led armed resistance in Iraq in order
to call for their military victory against the occupying
forces. Without that resistance, US imperialism
might well now be preparing troops for a full-scale
invasion of Iran.
It’s
to the detriment of the Iraqi working class that
the collaborationist Iraqi Communist Party and the
Worker-communist Party of Iraq - backed by McIntyre
and his comrades in the social-chauvinist Third
Camp - have chosen to position themselves against
the growing movement challenging US imperialism
arms in hand at a time when revolutionary Marxism
is most urgently needed.
