Nice, France: On the Criminal Attack

The following is a translation of a July 15 statement issued by the Ligue Trotskyste de France, section of the International Communist League. On July 20, the French parliament voted to extend for a further six months the state of emergency, which had been instituted in the aftermath of the 13 November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris.

The Ligue Trotskyste condemns the horrific killing of 84 people, including children, in Nice yesterday; more than 200 people were wounded. We do not know what the killer’s motives were or if his act was simply the work of a psychopath not driven by ideology. However, the government was quick to seize the opportunity to rekindle the “war on terror,” declaring that the way this crime was carried out was reminiscent of attacks by the Islamic State. [President François] Hollande is extending the state of emergency for three more months. He activated the reserve forces of the cops and military police—more than 10,000 additional cops—and he will probably beef up the widespread police surveillance measures already decided upon.

To get these racist terror measures—primarily targeting Muslims—passed, the government goes on ad nauseam about national unity of workers and bosses behind the capitalist government; this in the face of significant working-class mobilizations against the Valls-El Khomri anti-union law in recent months [see WV No. 1087, 8 April 2016]. During these mobilizations, we have continually stressed the need to oppose the racist government measures that pit non-Muslims and Muslims against each other in the name of “secularism” and the “war on terror.” Such divisions in the working class, aided by the complicit silence of the reformists and union bureaucrats, pave the way for attacking the entire labor movement, regardless of religion or skin color.

The state of emergency and other police-state measures are ultimately aimed at the working class. In recent months, we have seen how these measures supposedly directed against jihad have in fact been used to target labor mobilizations. For the first time since the Algerian War [for independence, 1954-62], the government even considered banning mass union demonstrations. Down with the state of emergency! Down with Vigipirate and Sentinelle! [racist police/army “anti-terror” operations] Down with police anti-terrorist laws!

Also in the name of the “war on terror,” François Hollande had already announced that France would step up its military intervention in Iraq, where over 300 special forces are already stationed. Meanwhile, in Syria, France has openly set up a military base in Kobani, in the Kurdish sector, for the first time since 1946 (when French colonialism was driven out of Syria). We demand the immediate withdrawal from these countries of all French and U.S. forces, as well as all the other imperialist and regional powers involved. Syria and Iraq have been devastated for years by a bloody civil war fueled at every step by the imperialists. In these countries, attacks killing over 100 civilians are routinely carried out by Islamic State and other reactionary forces. French troops out of the Near East, Mali and Libya! Down with the “war on terror”!

The imperialists are the biggest and deadliest terrorists on this planet. Even without counting the millions killed in colonial wars (Algeria, Madagascar, Indochina...), or the thousands of refugees drowned each year in the Mediterranean, it is the unspeakable crimes and machinations of the imperialists—in the Near East and Africa in particular—that drive some youth into the arms of Islamic reaction. Thus, as we stated in the wake of the November 13 attacks, any blow against the imperialist forces in the Near East and their auxiliaries on the ground (including the Kurdish militias integrated into the imperialist military apparatus in Kobani) serves the interests of the international working class, even if these blows come from forces as repugnant as the Islamic State, to which we give no political support and whose horrific crimes we condemn.

The attack in Nice and the government’s bellicose response give a measure of the decay of this capitalist society. By subjecting young and not-so-young people from the former colonies of French imperialism to chronic unemployment and relentless racist discrimination in all aspects of social life, capitalism produces monsters like the one who struck yesterday in Nice. It is necessary to build a revolutionary workers party in order to overthrow this capitalist system through a socialist revolution, which will sweep away the capitalist state apparatus and replace it with a workers state. Such a revolution will expropriate the capitalists and build a new social order that will guarantee well-being and justice for all and put an end once and for all to this decaying system.