Ben Tóth: The Long March Of New China

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Ben Tóth
I am sharing an essay by Ben Tóth, which pleads not to repeat the error of de-communizing, which has returned fascism to Europe.—Luciana Bohne


How do we, at large, NOT de-communize?

By supporting the remaining socialist countries against the attacks by the fascist imperialist core. [That means solidarity with] China, Cuba, DPRK, Laos, and Vietnam, and all those countries and groups standing up to the fascist imperialists: Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Syria, Hezbollah, Palestine, etc.

Meanwhile this is what I add to Ben's profoundly experienced and felt advice. Europe was not de-Nazified after 1945, except for East Germany, but it was de-communized after 1989. As a result, the Nazis are back in different shirts and symbols, and the first place they tore apart, wrecked, bombed was Yugoslavia. On 24 March 1999, they bombed Belgrade, a capital in Europe, after racializing the land in the 90s along ethno-religious lines: Catholic, Muslim and Orthodox. What the new Nazis gained from this mayhem was US Army Camp Bondsteel in Ferizaj, Kosovo. It was built by Kellogg, Brown, and Root Corporation (KBR). As a matter of fact, KBR also owns the rights for this place, although it is a private company.

Camp Bondsteel even enjoys "massage offices" "run by professional Thai women." Even comfort women! Read more from this link:: https://militarybases.com/overseas/kosovo/camp-bondsteel/

"Able to host more than 7000 troops on site, Camp Bondsteel is currently the largest and widest base run by the United States of America in the Balkans. Since the lifestyle there is different than what the troops are used to, the authorities provide a wide variety of facilities to make them feel like home. The post exchange located on site is currently the largest in the eastern part of Europe. It is hosted in two large buildings and includes anything you can think of, from furniture, clothes, books and DVDs to TVs, phones, computers and food. The officials also claim to host the most advanced hospital in Kosovo, although most natives doubt about it. Other than that, the recreational options are widely diversified – a gym, a theater, two recreational facilities with pool tables, Internet and video games, a local chapel, dining facilities, as well as fire and police stations. The troops hosted at Camp Bondsteel can always relax in the restaurants, bars and pubs around, not to mention about the Thai massage offices run by professional Thai women."

SMRT FASIZMU; SLOBODA NARUDU, indeed.—LB

LIKBEZ / ЛИКБЕ́З

SF-SN!
SMRT FASIZMU; SLOBODA NARUDU!
(Death to f*scism, Freedom to the People!)

After reading up about the unfolding crisis in Kosovo - where I see the same hand at work as during the late 1990s - I feel I have to write a follow-up to my previous news column, and provide - with heavy emotions - some context to the region, loosely following two threads I have come across : Aleksandar Pavic's Op-Ed on RT, and my comrade Yugopnik's recent video who has every right to speak authoritatively of his home region, both linked under sources.

I am an Eastern European - honorary - slav myself, my family name literally means Slav, so it should come as no surprise that I consider the people across what used to be called South - Yugo - Slavia my brothers and sisters, branches from the tree of the same root. And both our peoples have seen more than their fair share of blood across the centuries, giving our Pókliliom - Spider Lily, which usually grows white flowers - its blood-red color across the battlefields of old. I have witnessed our people becoming less and less "Gastarbeitern" - German for foreign worker - and more "white European" in the Brussels halls of power only a few years after we played the role of monstrous oppressor, or the oppressed for their cameras.

What the United States managed to achieve on this beautiful soil is as remarkable as it is heartbreaking. Turning families, seemingly indistinguishable cultures into sworn enemies overnight, following the only tactic it has known since the days of Rome : Divide Et Impera. Divide and Conquer. It was in play during World War Two - with the Reich offering each local Quisling and monarchist group protections and guarantees under N*zi rule, amplifying small divisions and carving up the land between what we call Croats, Serbs and Slovenes, and Bosniaks today. It led to horrific atrocities on all sides before Tito. This shtick was so successful - even while the most successful socialist resistance in Europe rose to crush it - it leads to one of the only true repeats of history I know of in 1999, which in turn coined the phrase Balkanization, when Belgrade was bombed for 78 days straight by the NATO "defensive" Alliance.

Marshall Tito and his top aides at the Yugoslav partisans HQ (Tito is first on the right)

With the total and absolute defeat of N*zi Germany in 1945 by the Soviet Union, there was a most glorious sunrise in Yugoslavia, with the remnants of such criminal collaborationist gangs scattered and isolated, made illegal and then swept up by Partisans of Josip Broz Tito, one of the best-dressed revolutionaries in human history. I wrote about this before, and feel absolutely free to call me revisionist or Titoist or whatever you prefer, I will always stand up for each of our greatest leaders based on their own merit, and I don't care which new label it earns me. Uz Maršala Tita - With Marshal Tito, not even Hell can stop us, the song goes. These Ustaše, Chetniki and other scum's statues were torn down, their offices closed, and their graves made anonymous. It was in fact the very first true case of Den*zification in Europe.


Yugoslav partisans. "This rabble" as many Nazis called it, defeated them in the field, through extreme valor and intelligence.

 
I was fortunate enough to visit the SFR ( Socialist Federal Republic ) of Yugoslavia as a child, and I felt their motto in every word uttered : Bratstva i Jedinstva : Friendship and Unity. Under sources, you will see this motto visualized around the phrase : Protect Yugoslavia, from as far back as 1934. It was a strong, wise and beautiful ideological current. The Economic System underpinning it was perhaps the best echo for Yugoslavia's position between East and West in the World, perhaps in some ways inferior to the Soviet Industrial model, but Socialism nonetheless, called Worker Self Management.

It has had its fair share of critics over the years from both East and West for either being too revisionist, too capitalist or too socialist, but what I witnessed in her people was the exact same socialism that my people stood for. Much like the People's Republic of Hungary, Tito's SFRJ managed to turn a war-torn region in utter ruin, into one of the most rapidly developing countries of the world. It was a uniquely beautiful, perhaps almost even naive local experiment where muslim, orthodox and catholic people shared not only a meal together but the right to manage their workplace and their collective destiny.

While Yugoslavia lived past the days of the Soviet Union, it did not survive the death of Tito, and it seemed like the dream was over as former friends and family once again - encouraged by similar external guarantees, promises of superiority - started to fight each other again. The day that Internationalism - seemingly - died, my heart bled. Class antagonisms were reborn, which we know when left in the hands of market economies always lead to armed conflict.

The fall began when it abandoned these beautiful principles that once built the Federation in the first place. Brotherhood and Unity. To oversimplify it - echoing Yugopnik - after the War ended, the Yugoslavian Socialist model was born, which gave each republic relative power to chart their own economic plan, instead of a general, federal one. It in turn gave them not only cultural but a degree of economic independence from one another, and with the death of Tito, and an emerging worldwide economic crisis, people felt real pain, especially the people of Yugoslavia.

The rest, as they say, is history. The kind and benevolent International Monetary Fund - an organization with the main task was and is upholding US hegemony and the capitalist mode of production - jumped in to offer "help" in exchange for certain "market reforms", in other words massive privatization drives. Ante Marković - far from being the only culprit - privatized the country's assets to such an extent that even the loosest definition of Socialism could no longer apply.

This was - to my mind - the moment the SFR died, even if the actual fighting came later. Much like in Hungary after Kádár, new financial elites formed as a cluster of private businessmen flush with foreign capital, old party functionaries squabbled for the loot switching sides overnight and the results were devastating for the people. Organized crime, homelessness, joblessness, and drugs were new imports to our lands, but none of these solved the economic crisis.

And as the country was born in an act of Den*zification, so it was murdered in an act of Decommunization, or as the old adage goes : When a liberal bleeds, a f*scist is born. These new economic elites needed to explain away the hurt that everyone was feeling without solving the underlying structural crisis. They turned - as they always do - to old rivalries, grievances and the new Bogeyman : Communism, or the Despicable Reds. Everything is their fault! Serbian Chetnik monarchists became the good guys again, as both Draža Mihailović - WWII Collaborationist leader - and Hungary's Cardinal Mindszenty - rabid anticommunist collaborationist - were reinstated as national heroes. Ustase war crimes were not just whitewashed but completely denied in order to revive ideas of Croatian cultural and dare I say racial superiority, and our grand Marshal became the universal symbol of poverty, destruction and anti-patriotic utopianism.

Decommunization is not only a process in which history is rewritten and new folklore for nation states is built, it is a continuous process of any land to blame its own shortcomings - poverty, war, economic hardship - on the go-to patsy : It is the fault of the communists. This in turn leads to ethnocentrism, and the central tenet of far-right ideologies : A Dream of Former Glory, lost because of the communists that must be restored, and usually at the expense of another group.

It was a free-for-all, a thrift shop for the new National Economic Elites vying to gobble up as many state assets as possible, and to push out their competitors. And as in Hungary, it was largely the work of foreign injected capital who pushed their new ideas onto a starving people : a greater Serbia, a clean Croatia, a Muslim Bosnia and autonomous Albania. And the people bought into it, as heartbreakingly as the Hungarians bought into our former "glory" when - in their minds - Hungary ruled Austria and all surrounding lands.

Our tragedies mirror each other in such a heart-wrenching way, I could not rest before writing this article. So today I urge all of you to learn from our failures, and never allow such horror to be visited on your land, or even worse : To repeat for the third time. The n*zi scum in Budapest during the 1956 "revolution" cut our national emblem from the middle of our flag, just as you cut your beautiful six torches from yours, symbolizing the six peoples united in brotherhood. My heart is with all my post-Yugoslav friends.

Remember : the process of decommunization does not end even after decades of there not being any communists around to blame, and when these people run out of scapegoats, begins the Othering. Someone always has to be blamed and the cycle never ends, because there is no capitalism without war, and no Peace without Internationalism.

The sooner we understand this, the sooner we stop dying for colorful cloth and national song. Do not forget the words of your ancestors who died for the land. Do not forget the final words of Stevo Filipović, uttered with the Chetnik noose literally around his neck : Smrt fašizmu, sloboda narodu! Death to f*scism, Freedom to the People. Do not let this happen again.

PS : I do not agree with Yugopnik's assessment about Ukraine and Russia, but that is a minor point today - I think you will agree - whereas the main body of content I completely support.
If you've made it this far, thank you for reading.

Peace, Land and Bread.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ben Toth, a highly original geopolitical analyst, studied IT Engineering at PTE-PMMK • Went to PTE Babits Mihály Gyakorló Gimnázium és Szakközépiskola • Went to Pécsi Tudományegyetem Babits Mihály Gyakorló Gimnázium és Szakközépiskola • Lives in Pécs, Hungary.

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The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important and valid enough to be transmitted to the widest possible audience.

 
Our special gratitude to our comrade Luciana Bohne for introducing us to Ben Toth.

 

 

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