European Parliament launches anti-communist crusade

In this photo taken on Thursday, Dec. 10, 2015, a damaged statue of Vladimir Lenin stands in Debaltseve, Ukraine. The Ukrainian Army shot up the statue for target practice while it occupied the town. The European Parliament is now launching an anti-communist crusade across the continent. | Evgeniy Maloletka / AP

Communists and left organizations have hit out at a reactionary “ahistorical” motion passed by the European Parliament last month which equates communism with “the monster of fascism.”

The European Communist Initiative condemned the “outrageous” resolution tabled by the right-wing European People’s Party group and warned of the escalating anti-communism of the European Union (EU). The motion recognized the importance of “remembrance” for the future of Europe but equates communism with the barbarity of Nazism. It also called for the erasure of all memorials of “totalitarianism” across Europe, including memorials dedicated to the Red Army.

While it states that World War II was “the most devastating conflict in the history of Europe,” the resolution claimed that it was “the immediate consequence of the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Treaty of August 23, 1939, also known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.”

But progressives and communist parties warned that adoption of the motion was merely an extension of the EU’s anti-communist agenda and a reactionary falsification of history.

Communists are under attack in Ukraine, where a 2014 EU-backed coup known as the “EuroMaidan” helped fascists enter the country’s parliament. It has since passed a series of anti-communist laws prohibiting communist symbols and positive descriptions of the Soviet Union. In 2015, Kiev moved to ban the Communist Party of Ukraine.

Socialist newspaper Rabochaya Gazeta (Worker’s Newspaper) was banned in the spring of this year for publishing articles quoting Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin—deemed to be a breach of the law.

It was also attacked for publishing pieces critical of the rehabilitation of Nazi collaborators in Stepan Bandera’s Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).

The OUN organized massacres of hundreds of thousands of Jews and Poles during the Nazi occupation of Ukraine. Denying the “heroism” of the OUN is also now illegal.

While Ukraine continues to rehabilitate fascist war criminals, it removed all 1,320 statues of Lenin and renamed streets to erase Ukraine’s socialist past.

The Communist Party of Greece branded the EU resolution a “reactionary monstrosity” aimed at legalizing bans on communist parties and symbols imposed in a number of member states.

It warned of an attempt to normalize the criminalization of communist ideology and people’s movements across the world that are resisting “the anti-people policies of the EU and the growing trend of fascism.”

And the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) said: “The text now approved in the EU Parliament promotes the most reactionary conceptions and falsifications of modern history in a deplorable attempt to equate fascism and communism, minimizing and justifying the crimes of Nazi-fascism and silencing the collusive responsibilities of the great capitalist powers—like the United Kingdom and France—who paved the way to the beginning of World War II in the hope of pushing the Nazi hordes upon the USSR.”

With respect to the singling out of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, “disregarding its historical context, the resolution adopted by the majority of the European Parliament omits how the great capitalist powers tolerated, colluded, and aligned with the ascent of fascism in several European countries, motivated by the battle against the communist ideal and the enormous economic and social achievements of the workers and peoples of the USSR,” the PCP said.

The European Communist Initiative denounced the distortion of history and the “well-paid EU anti-communist events funding program ‘Europe for Citizens.’”

But it added that “anti-communism will not pass.

“All persecutions of the communists, bans on communist parties, destructions of monuments must stop. The truth will shine through and the people, especially the youth with their struggle, will conquer it and throw such constructions of capital and its organizations into the dustbin of history.”

Morning Star

---

CONTRIBUTOR

Steve Sweeney

Steve Sweeney writes for Morning Star, the socialist daily newspaper published in Great Britain. He is also a People's Assembly National Committee member, patron of the Peace in Kurdistan campaign, and a proud trade unionist. Steve Sweeney escribe para Morning Star, el diario socialista publicado en Gran Bretaña. También es miembro del Comité Nacional de la Asamblea Popular, patrocinador de la campaña Paz en Kurdistán y un orgulloso sindicalista.