The Cobas’ crazy theories on Israel and NATO for the general strike
Closeness to Hamas, opposition to NATO and appeals to Russian proletarians: theses and thoughts of Cobas for the general strike of 23 February. Cazzola's comment
Next February 23rd, another general strike will warm our hearts, this time also promoted on Friday. To proclaim, for an entire day, the abstention from work in the public and private sectors (the methods and exclusions are detailed in a press release) is the SI-Cobas (in the company of a string of acronyms similar to a tapeworm) which , if we have understood correctly, is a sort of confederation of grassroots radical trade unionism.
THE COBAS STRIKE… AGAINST ISRAEL
The reasons for the strike do not pertain to the typical claimsism of these trade union organizations (a mix between the defense of old privileges in the public sector and a somewhat forced populism in the new ones where they have taken root such as logistics). This time Italian workers are called to strike to stop "the Genocide in Gaza and Zionist colonialism" and support "the resistance of the Palestinian masses".
We know that evoking the word "resistance" is like making use of the translation of the word Hamas, especially since even the massacres of 7 October – rather than being explicitly condemned – are automatically enlisted in the action of resistance to the oppressor. After all, why blame them when they hold the same opinions as UN officials?
Anyone who is interested in discovering the abysses into which the human mind can fall and searches for the copious literature produced on these topics will discover, first of all, that it will not be the first time for grassroots trade unionism. “Already last October 20 – we read in their press release – SI Cobas called a general strike together with other grassroots trade union groups against the war and the war economy, which was followed on November 17 by a national strike in the entire private sector against the massacre underway in the Gaza Strip, which in both cases was followed by demonstrations in the immediately following days, respectively in Ghedi, near the military base, and in Bologna; initiatives that involved – they assure – thousands of workers, activists and solidarity workers.
We hadn't noticed it, so it's best not to lose sight of this part of humanity – which we feel is so distant from us – to realize whether there is a limit to the worst. And if we have achieved it.
THE “NATO-RUSSIA CONFLICT”, ACCORDING TO COBAS
The strike on February 23rd is a preliminary action to what will take place the following day in Milan: an international demonstration for the same objectives. The fact is that the date of February 24th marks an anniversary that does not escape the organisers. Two years will have passed since the start of "the NATO-Russia conflict in Ukraine". It's not a mistake. It is written exactly like this: according to Cobas, on 24 February 2022, Russia's aggression against a neighboring sovereign state did not take place – in the form of a special military operation, but Ukraine was chosen as a neutral pitch for a Champions League match played with weapons rather than the ball.
Some might think that in reality the authors of the document (written a few months after the start of the war, but reconfirmed without modifications because it was still considered valid in the context of the Milan demonstration) were referring to a Risk challenge conducted between comrades the previous evening . No. They are truly convinced that this is how things happened, even if there is no trace of NATO troops in Ukraine.
Let's delve into the wide-ranging analysis of international politics, divided into more than twenty points, so definitive that no reply is possible. As already mentioned, the war in Ukraine is not taking place between Russia and Ukraine; but between NATO and Russia on Ukrainian territory, occupied militarily by NATO and politically by the United States and the EU first, and then invaded by Russia. A war between powerful capitalist states, fought for the purpose of domination, which marks the official reopening of the struggle for the division of the world, as the hegemony of the West on the world market, politics and culture has entered into crisis. The responsibility for the outbreak of war lies with both parties in the conflict, and – ultimately – with the social system of which they are part.
Questioning ourselves – here is the crux of the analysis – about offense and defense would make no sense, as we are dealing with large states that coagulate capitalist interests and, not finding compromises on an economic and political level, move on to military conflict. NATO did not need to fire because it had already taken the Ukrainian land economically and politically and with its own war settlements, completely ignoring the Minsk agreements. Russia could only contest the spoils, or part of the spoils, by military means, and that is what it did. In turn, the Ukrainian bourgeoisie, in particular Zelensky's rented nationalism, has the unforgivable guilt of having made its territory available to NATO's war plans, throwing its population into the abyss of a bloody and destructive war, in the interest of the Western overlords and of a handful of Ukrainian profiteers – and of having exercised violent armed oppression on the population of Donbass with many thousands of deaths.
Through some other astonishing leaps of logic we arrive at the central thesis: the war in Ukraine, for what it is and for what it prepares, is a war against the Ukrainian proletarians and against the Russian proletarians, against the proletariat of all countries. Because it is a slaughterhouse of proletarians, and because it imposes a paroxysmal leap in quality in competition, exploitation and oppression of the proletariat even outside Ukraine and Russia. The commanders of the two warring sides incite the Ukrainian proletarians and the Russian proletarians to turn against each other, to be their cannon fodder. For proletarian internationalism the opposite is true: defeatism on both sides of the front against the oligarchs and generals of NATO and Ukraine, against the oligarchs and generals of Russia and its allies. The fact is that the Russian proletariat has not yet realized its historic mission, also because – as we have seen in recent hours on the occasion of the popular acts and initiatives of protest for the assassination of Alexei Naval'nyj – the repression of the regime is careful and severe even with those who limit themselves to bringing a flower or lighting a candle in front of a photo of Navalny.
In essence, there are two invisible protagonists in the conflict: the first is NATO, of whose troops there is no trace in that unfortunate country, already guaranteed in its territorial integrity by the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, signed by all the great powers, Russia included; the second is the Russian proletariat which evidently has not yet realized that it is being exploited by a capitalist regime and has not understood that the real enemy is not the Ukrainians who have also been deceived by the West, but that authoritarian power that they find in their homeland.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/cobas-sciopero-israele-nato-ucraina/ on Tue, 20 Feb 2024 06:39:32 +0000.