One of these things is quite like the other...

In Ireland, the United Left Alliance (ULA) was caught out practising Stalinist falsification against the Stalinists when they issued the poster reprinted on the left to advertise an October event featuring a Greek MP from Syriza (the Coalition of the Radical Left), Yiannis Stathas. The photo on the right shows the banner that appears on the ULA poster as it actually is, with the hammer and sickle and the signature of the KKE (Greek Communist Party) that were edited out of the ULA poster. The ULA should hardly have expected to get away with it — as the KKE pointed out in a 24 October internet posting, “This photograph became one of the most recognizable images from the struggle of the Greek people during the crisis, both at a European and global level.”

In contrast to the KKE, a mass workers party with a reformist programme, Syriza was catapulted into prominence as an electoral lash-up. As the KKE put it, “We understand that SYRIZA does not possess an image from a similar initiative or action and it could not do as it is absent from the organization and development of the people’s struggle which has a class orientation and content. This however does not justify its attempt to appropriate the initiatives of the KKE in order to promote its non-existent militant profile to an audience which is not aware of its role and stance in Greece” (inter.kke.gr).

Actually, it’s no accident that the ULA ripped off this particular KKE banner. The ULA was hardly going to photoshop in one of the KKE’s banners against the European Union, and Syriza is pro-EU. As for the fake Trotskyists involved with the United Left Alliance — the Socialist Party, affiliates of the Committee for a Workers’ International, and the Socialist Workers Party, affiliates of the International Socialist Tendency — their rush to embrace Syriza shows how hollow their protestations against EU austerity are. On the other hand, the KKE, the ULA and Syriza can all agree on empty slogans that promote the idea of a classless “people” with a common national interest, like the one on the banner.