Oscar DíazTranslation from Castilian Spanish by D.Breatnach
(Reading time main piece: 10 mins.)

1. What is Herri Ekimena?

Herri Ekimena is an initiative that emerged in March 2022. A series of organizations began to get together due to concern about the offensive of Atlanticist imperialism in Ukraine, in addition to the blatant manipulation of the media to get us to support their war strategy.

We also observed that, in a context of capitalist crisis and with the excuse of the war against Russia, economic measures were being imposed that resulted in greater impoverishment of the working class.

That is why we took to the streets at that time with the slogan “NATO and the EU condemn us to war and misery”, to turn the official discourse around a little and point to these two organizations as the main ones responsible for the increase in international tensions, as well as for the oppression of the working classes of the imperialist bloc itself.

Also in the month of June of that 2022 we called a demonstration in Bilbo, “against the imperialism of NATO and the EU” and calling for the end of the Russophobia that is still being promoted.

In parallel to the NATO summit that was held in Madrid, we also carried out a 48-hour poster campaign in Gernika, a city with great anti-fascist symbolism that the Ukrainian Nazis tried to appropriate, citing it in a speech before the Spanish Parliament by Zelensky himself.

After a short break, we resumed the fight in the streets at the end of the year, with the “Free Euskal Herria out of NATO and the EU” campaign. In March we held a massive demonstration in Bilbo, together with Askapena¹ and the Bardenas Ya² collective.

This demonstration was exciting to us as we saw that the work that had been done was already bearing fruit and that the anti-imperialist spirit that has historically characterized Euskal Herria was projected in the streets.

We are currently in a restructuring process in order to be more effective, and give new impetus to the anti-imperialist struggle in the streets, which is where this game is truly played.

2. Why combine anti-fascist and anti-imperialist slogans?

The imperialist offensive, which has to do with the systemic crisis of capitalism and the rise of new economic powers, is being accompanied by a general reduction of rights and freedoms.

Those in power fear popular revolts, like those that have been taking place in the French State in recent months.

In Euskal Herria we know well what emergency laws or illegal practices are employed to put an end to dissent, but these types of measures are spreading and becoming normalized throughout Europe. Concentration camps for migrants, deportations without any type of legal guarantee, electronic anklet tags are also normalized…

And also in the case of the countries bordering Russia, imperialism is responsible for waving old supremacist and anti-Slavic flags, such as is happening in Ukraine or Poland.

We see therefore that capitalism, in its most decadent phase, has little scruple when it comes to reactivating liberticidal policies or inciting openly Nazi military and paramilitary shock forces.

So in effect, we believe that the anti-imperialist struggle and the anti-fascist struggle are inseparable parts of the same struggle for our rights and freedoms.

3. A few years ago one could see Donbass flags in the stands of Atlethic³. Why mix football and politics?

Through various institutions, including football clubs, they want to force down our throats the supposed “depoliticization of public spaces.” It is false, because they are the first to try to control absolutely all areas of our lives that we may become submissive and uncritical people.

The media bombardment is constant, generating false debates among humble people about insecurity, occupying empty properties… They thus try to legitimize, by action or omission, measures of social control and police repression that are very, very worrying.

So when someone puts a poster on the street to denounce any injustice, or puts up a banner, or paints graffiti… They are calling into question that false normality that they want to impose on us.

It is sad — but this situation also reflects the weakness of the system in terms of political legitimacy. Who explicitly supports them? Who is not fed up with everything that is happening? So they are afraid of the flame that starts a prairie fire.

Sports venues do not escape this logic of imposing false normality, even if the laws have to be twisted or passed directly through the triumphal arch.

A Donetsk flag, for example, ruins their photo and calls into question the story that people agree with what they do. So they impose fines of €3,000 just for displaying the flag of a People’s Republic.

Let’s hope that in not many years we will be able to analyze all this as the blows of a dying regime, but for now it is up to us to organize the response and popular solidarity. Repression should not be normalized, nor should people who step forward feel alone.

4. Is EH Bildu⁴ being favorable to NATO?

We do not believe that the social base of EH Bildu is in favor of NATO. That is, if we asked EH Bildu voters if they were in favor of NATO, surely 99% would say no. The problem is that, for its leaders, opposing Atlanticist imperialism is not currently on the list of priorities.

Regarding the issue of the war in Ukraine, Arnaldo Otegi⁵ has openly positioned himself in favor of Ukrainian “sovereignty” and against the Russian “occupation.” Is Ukraine now a sovereign state? Or is it rather a puppet of NATO in its offensive against Russia?

Doesn’t Russia have the right to defend itself from NATO attacks? What about the thousands of people killed in Donbass since 2014? Should Russia have been obliged to watch this genocide impassively?

Have the self-determination processes in Donetsk, in Lugansk, in Crimea … not been practical exercises of sovereignty? In this context, we can say that the speech of some EH Bildu leaders has favored and continues to favor the interests of NATO.

Their support for the State Budget deserves special mention, which includes a 25% increase in military spending. A measure imposed precisely by NATO to approach 2% of GDP in 2029, which is truly outrageous.

So… perhaps it is harsh to say that EH Bildu is in favor of NATO so let us put it another way: What is EH Bildu doing to make Euskal Herria break with NATO? What teaching are they carrying out among their social base and at a public level to create a truly anti-imperialist consciousness?

Very little or nothing, we believe, that is the reality.

5. Will it be possible to continue to see reliable information about Ukraine in the Basque Country and the Spanish state now that military juntas have been formed in African countries that have expelled French embassies? They are very different countries and thousands of kilometers away…

The events that are taking place in the SAHEL area are complex processes, and surely have many sides that make it difficult for us to equate them with the decolonization processes that we have known historically.

But we would be committing a mistake if, due to these supposed “imperfections” with respect to the theoretical manual, we stopped supporting countries that are fighting for nothing less than to expel their occupiers (since those are true occupiers who try to impose themselves by force of weapons thousands of kilometers from their borders) and also to gain control of their enormous natural resources.

How can it be that in extraordinarily rich countries, like Niger or Gabon, the majority of the population survives in absolute poverty? We will have to carefully observe all these processes, but in anti-imperialist Euskal Herria we can only rejoice and tell them that they are not alone.

In this land that, to a degree, also knows what it is to fight against armed occupiers and various collaborators, we know very well that solidarity is the love between people.

Regarding the quality of the information that we are able to receive in Euskal Herria or in the Spanish state, we believe that right now it is below minimum.

It is pathetic to see how, every time an event occurs that could undermine the hegemony of Atlantic imperialism, the mainstream media wait to receive instructions before even reporting the event.

The control of capital over the big media is a reality, so we must promote and support alternative means of information and communication. And also to fight openly in the streets, so that they have no choice but to report our demands.

6. Couldn’t the creation of a multipolar world be dangerous on a war level?

Yes, in fact it already is. We had been talking for years about the end of Yankee hegemony and the economic rise of countries like Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, the so-called BRICS.

Perhaps we thought that this change of orientation of world hegemony was going to be a calm process, without any surprises…

But nothing could be further from the truth. While it is true that Yankee imperialism is mortally injured (which we believe it is), the truth is that it seems willing to kill as it dies.

Currently it has restructured NATO in a few months, has de facto absorbed the European Union and is reconfiguring its alliance policy on a global scale. It is increasingly easier to identify “which side” the different states are on, which can be the prelude to a conflict on a planetary scale.

We have been able to verify this recently with Morocco. NATO and the EU buy Morocco and abandon the Sahara to its fate.⁶ What should the Sahrawis do if Algeria, Russia or China offer them help to win their rights and survive as a people?

Of course there may be geopolitical interests in this aid from emerging powers, but it is necessary to analyze whether the agreements, commercial exchanges, donations and aid are produced with mutual respect for sovereignty and benefit the currently oppressed nations.

Of course, from a revolutionary point of view we have to be exacting, and not give a blank cheque to these emerging powers.

In this entire process of multipolarity, whether we like it or not, which is already making its mark upon world geopolitics, there is a class struggle that we must not ignore.

But this critical stance cannot lead us to fall into ninism and evade our own historical responsibility: to combat Atlanticist imperialism from the very heart of the beast.

7. You say “Euskal Herria free from NATO.” And what about the rest of the Spanish state?

We say Euskal Herria should be free outside NATO, but also outside the EU. We believe that this contribution is important, since for many years consideration of leaving the EU has been a kind of taboo, also in Euskal Herria.

Some thought that the EU might even support a possible independence process in Euskal Herria, just as was thought in Catalonia.

But the EU has definitively been revealed as a capitalist lobby, as an instrument at the service of elites with a more than dubious past, even with regard to their support for Nazism.

Úrsula von der Leyen, Josep Borrell… are faithful representatives of the EU of Capital, authoritarian and totally committed to the interests of the US. That is why we say that neither the nation nor as a class have a future within the EU.

We make this statement from Euskal Herria, which is our area of struggle. But of course it extends to the entire Spanish State, as well as to the French State and all the peoples of Europe.

A future in freedom is not possible belonging to these criminal organizations, neither in Euskal Herria nor anywhere else.

8. What do you think of the military administration by Margarita Robles of the PSOE/UP government?⁷

Margarita Robles is a pit bull of Spanish politics, a woman who knows perfectly the ins and outs of the State from the offices to the sewers. Not for nothing has she been in positions of power for more than 30 years, originally in the shadow of Belloch, later of Rubalcaba…

At first it may have been surprising to see her at the head of a Ministry like the Defense Ministry, she who comes from the judiciary and who, even in relation to the conflict between Euskal Herria and the Spanish State, had adopted a dialogue profile at certain times.

We are missing a lot of information (I wish that we in Herri Ekimena knew what was going on in the Ministry of Defense, haha), but Margarita Robles is probably dedicating herself to doing in the Spanish military what she also did in her day in the Ministry of Justice and Interior.

That was to send the most archaic elements to the refrigerator in a non-traumatic way to perfectly adapt to the current standards and guidelines of NATO and the EU. Change a minimum so that everything remains absolutely the same.

Can anyone imagine Spanish generals standing up for Spanish national sovereignty in the face of Atlanticist imposition? This could happen in the French State, in fact it would not be unreasonable for something like this to happen.

In the Spanish State it is much more unlikely, but it is the responsibility of politicians like Mrs. Robles that nothing should deviate from the script written by Washington and Brussels.

In this regard, it is worth highlighting the role of the PSOE in what has been the process of integration of the Spanish State into imperialist structures. In addition to Felipe González, we could mention Javier Solana (who became Secretary General of NATO), Josep Borrell⁸…

Whether it is a matter of affinity, or a matter of pragmatism, the truth is that it appears that the PSOE generates a lot more trust among the imperialist powers than any other political party at the level of the State.

9. There were elections this past July 23, 2023. Did any of the political forces propose the departure of NATO from the Spanish state?

We are not aware that this was the case. As we have said before, this government is responsible for the largest increase in military spending in history, and faithfully complies with NATO and EU mandates.

Vice President Yolanda Díaz has publicly supported sending weapons to Ukraine and, as far as we know, no party that supports the government has opposed these shipments as a matter of principle.

We remember that these are weapons that are being used by Nazi soldiers to bomb and murder, not alone Russian soldiers but also the civilian population of Donbass. So we have to organize and fight in the streets, because if we don’t, things will remain exactly the same or worse.

This is the reason for existence of Herri Ekimena, to activate the popular struggle against the imperialism of NATO and the EU. We are working at it and, if all goes well, there will be good news in this regard in the coming weeks.

SOURCE

http://oscar-elbloquedeleste.blogspot.com/

FOOTNOTES

1Askapena was the internationalist solidarity arm of the broad Basque national liberation organisation but split from it many years ago in concern at the deviation from the path of resistance by the leadership under Arnaldo Otegi.

2Bardenas Ya is an organisation campaiging against the military installation in Bardenas, Nafarroa (Navarre).

3Athletic Bilbao FC, whose fans and many of its players have a strong anti-fascist and pro-Basque independence tradition.

4EH Bildu is the political party of the current compliant ‘official’ leadership of the Basque national movement, replacing the Herri Batasuna of the past.

5Leader of EH Bildu who has led the party into what many consider its collaborationist current stance.

6Western Sahara was a Spanish colonial possession and it abandoned it without decolonisation, which allowed Morocco and Mauritania to invade and occupy it against the wishes of the Saharawi people. As a result of the national liberation struggle of the Polisario Front, Mauritania withdrew but Morocco remained in occupation and carrying out repression against the resistance. Shortly before Trump’s departure from the USA’s presidency, he agreed to endorse Moroccan defiance of the UN-recognised Sahawarwi resistance to occupation in exchange for Morocco reversing its long anti-Zionist policy and formally recognising the Zionist occupation of Palestine, which the Moroccan Kingdom has done.

7The recent coalition Government of the Spanish State, the social-democratic PSOE with the Left-social democratic alliance of Unidas Podemos. Currently, the PSOE is endeavouring to form a government in coalition with a somewhat reconfigured Left-social democratic coalition called Sumar.

8All three have been PSOE politicians, Felipe González a prime minister and widely believed head of the GAL anti-Basque terrorist gang. Borrell was President of the European Parliament (2004-2007) and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Spanish Government from 2018 to 2019. He attacked Catalan self-determination which he characterised as part of a disease, despite his own Catalan origin and he is now the Foreign Minister of the European Union.