Das Massaker von Paris

Abstract

In the light of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, this essay seeks to analyse and understand the objective conditions and power relations within the capitalist world system as they have unfolded since the end of the Soviet Union. Its specific point is to understand the role of the leading strategies and practices of imperialism and of socalled „political Islam“within these conditions and power relations. The main strategies aim at fostering bonapartist, fascist and right-wing ideologies at home, in the dominant imperialist countries that is, and structurally reactionary/„Islamist“ ideologies in the periphery to, both, strengthen the leading factions of capital in the imperialist centres. The essay claims that the only viable option for the left is to remain independent of and in active opposition to the strategies of imperialism. Furthermore the left will have to take up the fight against creatures such as the Islamic State that were provided a fertile ground and nurtured by imperialism. It also concludes that the left has to defend and engage its own independent democratic and socialist perspective countering both the powers of imperialism in the centres and reaction in the periphery.