(In The New Flag, Vol. 3, Number 1, July 1996, p. 58, we published a critical letter from a Brazilian reader. Here is our response.)
Dear reader:
Thank you for the summary of events in Peru and your observations regarding the posters published in the NF (Vol. 2, No. 3). Only a small part of your criticism can be accepted. First, in relation to the poster "in the middle of the newsletter" which has various slogans extracted from the Party documents, including the one you distort ("en la cara llevas la victoria...") stating that it does not "provide a strategic direction." You claim that the slogan "you carry victory in your face..." lacks real meaning for the masses" and that it is "only a harangue." Well, the Party document (Instructions) explicitly says that in struggling and supporting the cause, one must "carry victory in the face, not defeat."
(Note: it is not "victory SMILES in your face," an obvious translation error.) The Party's call is a call for enthusiasm, to spread optimism and defeat pessimism, because -- in synthesis -- after much effort, victory is certain. When considering the protracted nature of the People's War, it becomes obvious that enthusiasm is essential for the masses' struggles. The class morale must stay high to overcome difficult moments and to solve new problems with enthusiastic, disciplined and creative hard work. Thus, the expression "you carry victory in your face..." has to do with boosting class morale, and morale in warfare is crucial. Of what use is a "strategic direction" if an army is completely demoralized? People are the most important force in warfare, not technology nor any other sophistry. Your claim that the call lacks "real meaning for the masses" and "neither does it provide a strategic direction" is rather unfounded, confusing and reflects subjective idealism. What does it mean "to provide a strategic direction"?
In essence, the poster clearly calls to CONSTRUCT THE CONQUEST OF POWER (a real strategic objective) and a lot more; it also aims at boosting class morale, because it is impossible to separate these two. Technology and politics, science and art, weapons and morale are contradictions, unities of opposites, and when applying the ideology of the proletariat, a scientific class ideology (Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought), one cannot ignore inspiration, enthusiasm, morale, creativity, passion, imagination, etc., all of which are part of people's daily lives, of class struggle; a part of material reality reflected through our minds.
It is true that "PCP slogans have a clear political content" that serve to organize and lead the masses' struggles to conquer and exercise Power nationwide. However, you portray this fact as "express the movement of the masses." What does this mean? Nice sounding words. Next time please provide at least a brief concrete explanation. Further, your comment that "there are things that according to the revolutionary interests would tend to disappear or are to be consolidated" needs clarification. To consider "revolutionary interests" in the abstract amounts to a bourgeois idealist distortion. Without the struggle of the working class masses, without a leading Communist Party and a guiding ideology, we would have bourgeois sophist "interests". Even the financial oligarchy has "revolutionary interests" for its "neoliberal revolution"(!). The class character is principal.
As a supporter of the people's revolution in Peru, please help us improve the work of The New Flag. We encourage you to create a poster yourself for publication, to express yourself in practice, and match your words with deeds.
Regards. The Editors.
AFRICAN PRISONER WRITES FROM SPAIN
Dear editor,
I am a 30 year old Ghanian (Ghana, West Africa). As a supporter of the PCP, words could not easily express my joy, when I received the latest issue of The New Flag (NF) from a GRAPO friend in a Spanish maximum security prison. It's not just because I am from a country colonized by the British and NF is written in English, but the context therein has touched me most. The NF has convinced me that the political situation and economic situation in Peru is very similar to most of the African countries. And it is a pity that the hands of the imperialists are too long, to reach everywhere to loot and kill. Bertoldt Brecht said in his days that there are too many ways to kill: stabbing someone in the stomach, taking away bread or to strip off anything from him/her, not healing his sickness, living in a bad house, making him die at work, sending him to an unjust war... etc. Little of all these are banned in our days. The European net of anti-racist United for Intercultural Action informed us that the imperialists have added one more method of killing: since 1993, 330 people died trying to surpass the walls of the Europeans' fortitude or as the result of their expulsion. And our people live in a world characterized by misery, which is triggered by an unjust economy along with a series of belligerent conflicts to protect their interests. There is a need for a correct ideology which must inevitably lead to the launching of the People's War.
After spending 6 years here, I'll be released soon and return to the struggle outside. I am in total agreement with President Gonzalo (PG): "failures and defeats are relative; what is absolute is struggle." As such, my objective now is to go back home and contribute to organizing a Communist Party. Here in Europe, oppressed people and/or immigrants have no legal rights, and the resistance to the oppressors is falling apart. Therefore, I have decided to struggle at home just like PG taught us: "the best way to support the People's War is to make revolution in your own country."
Comradely, D.A.K.
NORTH CAROLINA-USA.
Although I am inspired by anarchist theories, I will not deny the influence of Marx, Lenin, Mao, and as I read more by him, of Chairman Gonzalo on the formation of my political consciousness. I will gladly distribute copies of The New Flag in my area. However, I must warn you that this is an imperialist country with low political education of the masses, where many people still embrace their Christian God, mom, John Wayne, and apple pie. I doubt that they even understand the workings of this unjust economic/political/social system which punishes them daily! But they are part of the masses and we must penetrate them, perhaps as a part of what Chairman Gonzalo calls "an expression of the mass democracy." What are the possibilities of traveling to Peru to aid in the struggle?
DICTATORSHIP REQUESTS INTERNET SERVER TO CENSOR THE NEW FLAG.
From: "SSE. Armando Ludena Lopez - DGAM" <dgam03@rree.gob.pe>
Organization: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores
Ministry of Foreign Relations
To: postmaster@blythe.org
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 1996 12:29:28 -500
Subject: Terrorism published by Blythe
Sirs: Blythe Manager
Please be informed that a person who has an account in BLYTHE has been posting -- along the past months -- several messages in the Peru interest list (managed by San Francisco State University) promoting terrorism and other acts of violence in my country.
The members (nearly 500) have comdemned those postings since we refuse the use of Internet to divulgate such crimes which badly affects my country during the 80-90s, but -- at the same time -- we oppose to censor him [Editor--Members of the list are opposed to censoring The New Flag] because of our democratic beliefs.
I wish to let you know the behaviour of that terrorist (whose alleged name is Luis Quispe). I am
confident that BLYTHE.ORG does not allow the use of Internet to promote terrorism, even if it
will not be commited in U.S. soil. But I am sure you can have some sympathy for our position.
Regards,
Armando Ludena
aludena@rree.gob.pe
NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems
Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us
339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012
http://www.blythe.org
e-mail: nyt@blythe.org
Reply from NY Transfer (Nov., 23, 1996)
This dude (Ed.--Fujimori's officer) has a boring job... writing the same letter over and over again to people trying to convince them to censor Peru's opposition. Apparently they are unaware that our answer was to post their prior note all over the Internet. Fujimori's poor benighted government employees are being "protected" so well from "terrorist" information that they're completely ignorant about the very things that so concern them. Meanwhile, the opposition's information is traveling all over the planet, along with copies of these pathetic contributions from the Peru's Foreign Relations Ministry.
Well, there STILL are no masked judges or anonymous kangeroo courts on the Internet. And we are STILL not going to censor any of our subscribers for the sake of a "democracy" like Fujimori's where apparently speech = "terrorism." Terrorism indeed. Tell it to Lori Berenson.
UNDERCOVER YANKEE GANG "MIM" POSES AS "PERUVIAN EXILES" AND JOINS FUJIMORI TO CENSOR THE NEW FLAG.
For months MIM has been requesting censorship of The New Flag in the Internet. In several messages to our server, NY Transfer (which MIM also used until recently) MIM rumbles that this publication is a "police plot." Since MIM is a laughable sect and nobody takes its nonsense seriously, MIM left in frustration. MIM told NY Transfer: "since you are not choosing either side among Peruvian exiles [Editor: MIM vs. MPP!] our reasons for leaving your service concerns what we think is your too-open policy of allowing The New Flag the space and legitimacy... MIM offers legitimacy to the MPP by sharing the same server (sic)." Since May, poor MIM has wasted plenty of paper, ink and bandwidth to carry out its campaign against the Peruvian Maoists in the U.S., but no one has given them any credence. The "legitimacy" of MIM is a joke. What is MIM? It is an extremely tiny gang -- so small that you can hardly find them -- of 4 young white piglets (MC-1 thru MC-4) and their bald-headed leader in Ann Arbor, Michigan (MC-5.) These caricatures of "Maoists" even give themselves ministerial titles. A young fellow who calls himself "The Minister on Peru," (the alleged MC-3), is the most infantile of all... he is the one who screams in the net: "MPP police plot!" Who can believe anything these fruitcakes say?