Whose side should we take? The western newspapers who have published crass cartoons of Mohammed? Or the Islamic demonstrators who parade the streets calling for a repeat of the 9/11 and 7/7 massacres against ‘Britain’ or ‘Europe’? For us – communists, internationalists, partisans of the class struggle – the answer is neither. The ‘clash of civilisations’ is a clash inside one single civilisation: capitalism. And this civilisation is everywhere in its decadent stage.

All sorts of political animals label themselves as anarchists. They can range from leftists who are hardly distinguishable from Trotskyists, except perhaps for their antipathy for the idea of a political party, to real internationalists who are seriously trying to defend the interests of the working class. An example of the latter is the KRAS group in Russia. At several political conferences in Russia, when the subject of the ‘Great Patriotic War’ came up, the comrades of the KRAS had no hesitation about ranging themselves alongside the marxists of the ICC in denouncing the various justifications for this war from Stalinists, Trotskyists, and anarchists, all of whom used the slogan of anti-fascism to justify support for the ‘democratic’ (and Stalinist) camp.

Le Pen’s score in the first round of the presidential elections was an event of historic and international proportions. For the first time, the Front National is posing a threat to French ‘democracy’.

The Austrian Freedom Party is one of those populist parties which are emerging all over Europe in response to a general discontent. Fuelled by the crisis and social decomposition, their whole programme boils down to racist and xenophobic hysteria and the rejection of the traditional party machines. In Andalusia (against the Moroccans), in France with Le Pen, we h), in France with Le Pen, we have seen similar xenophobic mobilisations...

ICC Introduction

Anti-fascism is a tough nut. With the campaign for the extradition of Pinochet in full swing, the "democratic" sections of the ruling class (in other words almost all of them) unleashed a new campaign on the anti-fascist theme, this time against the arrival in the Austrian government of Georg Haider’s FPÖ. During the European Union summit in Lisbon on 23rd March, the heads of state and government of fourteen countries agreed on the sanctions to be applied to Austria, as long as the representatives of Haider’s party remained in the government. Everybody was out to win the prize for most vigorous denouncer of the "xenophobic, anti-democratic, fascist danger". We had the French President Chirac, the leader of the French right, vigorously condemning what was going on in Austria, at the same time as the publication of an opinion poll showing that half the population of France is xenophobic. Not to be left out, all the organisations of the left, starting with the Trotskyists, warned loudly about the "fascist menace" which is supposed to be a serious threat to the working class, and organised endless demonstrations against the "Haider scandal".