Identity Politics and White Supremacy

 I heard on the radio today that Nicky Haley will run against identity politics in her 2024 presidential campaign. I doubt that she will oppose the most pernicious and dangerous form of identity politics: white supremacy. It seems that people who self-identify as "white"--I certainly don't--believe that their lighter skin tones entitle them to special treatment compared to everyone else. Haley was governor of South Carolina, which is one of the strongest bastions of white supremacy anywhere. I once went to a barbecue in Columbia with my cousin when she was living there. She cautioned me not to talk politics there since it could be dangerous.

I hope Haley will be confronted about this issue. The false notion of white identity, which was created by English settlers to create and maintain majority control and to justify brutal oppression of everyone not included, is one of the cornerstones of our very sick society. People of Irish or Italian descent, for example, were not originally classified as white. None of us comes from Whiteland. There is no such thing as white ethnicity or nationality. White culture is an absurd notion. It is long past time to completely scrap the notion of whiteness along with white skin privilege.

The absurdity of the idea of whiteness was very clear in Apartheid South Africa. I used to receive a publication summarizing the South African press from the African National Congress of South Africa. One article has stuck in my memory for decades. There was an annual report on racial classifications in South Africa, which defined many races. For example, Asian was a race, though Japanese were honorary whites for economic reasons. The key sentences from the report gave the number of people classified white from colored, colored from white, black from colored and colored from black. However, the number classified from white to black or black to white was zero. Sometimes, two siblings with the same parents were classified in different races.

The notion of race is scientific nonsense, of course. All humans originated in Africa, and nothing in our DNA corresponds with racial distinctions in use. However, it derives its power precisely from its use in deciding who gets privileges and who does not. I learned a lot about race from South African scholar Fred Dube. He explained that racial definitions are completely arbitrary, as the previous paragraph illustrates. In apartheid Israel, race is defined by whether you are Jewish or not.

An otherwise progressive rabbi once told me that I could not be Jewish because I don't believe in the existence of a supreme being or practice the religion. That definition makes about 85 percent of Jewish people not Jews. Indeed Jews are not a coherent grouping in any way. We speak different languages, live in different countries, and have very little in common. I used to know a Moroccan Jew who had come to study at UC Berkeley. We used to joke that the only things we had in common were that both of us spoke English and both of supported Palestinians.

When I describe myself as Jewish, I mean that my ancestors were eastern European Jews. Three of my grandparents spoke Yiddish, though one did not. Only one of my grandparents believed in a god, and she died before I was born. When I asked my mother in my teens why I had been sent for religious training and bar mitzvah, she replied that she wanted me to know what I would be rejecting. That was an excellent strategy.

We Must Admit that Elements of the US Left Have Aided the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

 I am afraid that this blog will have an element of "I Told You So" because I have been arguing this point for eight years, but telling the truth is unavoidable and that is what I intend to do. Before I start, I want to make one observation. Ukraine has had absolutely no role in the eastward expansion of NATO; therefore, that can never be any part of an explanation, let alone a justification, for Putin's invasions of Ukraine. I am absolutely in favor of dissolving NATO, and its expansion is certainly a crime. But I repeat that Ukraine had nothing to do with it.

I want to begin by focusing on a Democracy Now! interview this morning (Feb. 25, 2022) with a Ukrainian journalist who has covered the Donbass from the Donbass. She made a statement which I am afraid will be ignored by many left pundits who have been spouting nonsense about Ukraine for the past 8 years. She said that Russia has been in the Donbass since 2014 even though they pretended not to be there. Russian citizens, Russian mercenaries, and Russian soldiers have been there since 2014. In other words the so-called Lukansk and Donetsk republics (LPR and DPR) are Russian creations, not the creation of Ukrainian citizens, though I am certain that some Ukrainian quislings have participated in them. There has been plenty of evidence of that, not least, the repatriation of dead uniformed Russian soldiers to Russia from Ukraine. In Russia, they were buried without fanfare or acknowledgment; This has been a Russian invasion since 2014.

It must be stated, however, that the Ukrainian government has played into this Russian ploy in a few ways which have alienated the Ukrainian people in the Donbass. First of all, their conduct of the war has endangered civilians, and that, of course, generates tremendous anger. I have a friend from the Donbass who was very supportive of the popular uprising in 2014, but now, she is so angry at the Ukrainian government that she has abandoned those views.

Second, it was simply idiotic to pass laws making Ukrainian the only official language when about half of Ukrainian citizens are Russian speakers, though many Ukrainians are, of course, bilingual. They haven't made it illegal to speak Russian, as some mistakenly charge, but all official documents are in Ukrainian only, and even movie theaters are no longer allowed to show films in Russian.

Third, Ukrainian citizens from the Russian-occupied Donbass have different identity papers from other Ukrainian citizens. When they present those, they are often greeted with hostility and a lack of cooperation. When you fight a foreign invasion, you must be very careful not to fight your own citizens.

The next point is the total swallowing by many on the left of the Russian propaganda about the influence of fascists in Ukraine. I heard a very interesting interview on KPFA this morning with an expert on Eastern Europe who debunked that fiction. He said that there were fascist elements in the Ukrainian military in 2014-15 but not since then. There are two fascist political parties in Ukraine, and they received a combined 3 percent of the vote in the 2015 presidential elections. Ukraine is not a fascist country, and its government, however inept it has been, is not a fascist government. Those who kept trumpeting false Russian propaganda about fascist Ukraine have a lot to answer for.

Next is the totally false characterization of the 2014 popular uprising as a US-supported coup. Yes, US officials tried their best to make use of the uprising, but they did not start it and it had overwhelming support in most of Ukraine because it was an uprising against massive corruption, oligarchs, and a dysfunctional economy much like the 2004 uprising. To call that uprising a "coup" is an insult to the Ukrainian people. To make this point clear, would you call the US revolution a coup? Would you call the French revolution a coup? What about the Russian, Chinese, and Cuban revolutions? Those were all popular uprisings which removed existing governments. In the case of Ukraine, President Yanukovich took the advice of Vladimir Putin and stationed snipers on rooftops from which they shot and killed protesters. He then fled the country and was replaced by the elected parliament. Those facts are not the facts of a coup. And let me add that the Ukrainian parliament unanimously impeached Yanukovich; does that constitute a coup?

In my view, there are many grounds for self-criticism about the conduct and statements of what I call the chauvinist left who swallowed blatant Russian propaganda hook, line, and sinker and spread it as widely as they could. Unfortunately, I doubt that they will be self-critical. I call them chauvinist because of their servile acceptance of even the most absurd Russian propaganda.

At the bottom of all this is their failure to perceive Ukraine as a country of people with legitimate aspirations independent of great power conflict over Ukraine. I heard one commentator, the publisher of the Nation, admit on the air that she knew nothing of what was going on inside Ukraine, which she demonstrated over and over again. I heard people talk about a "civil war" in Ukraine when there is no civil war, no east/west divide. In 2014, I heard one of the experts on Ukrainian history, Prof. Paul Robert Magocsi (I read his 700-page history of Ukraine when I was in Ukraine in 2010) debunk this on NPR. He said there was what he called a young/old divide, which accords more with the Ukraine I know and with Ukraine as reflected in public opinion polls.

I urged various people at KPFA and also Democracy Now! to interview Prof, Magocsi, who heads Ukrainian studies at the University of Toronto. None of them did so. When I suggested that recently to Dennis Bernstein and criticized the misinformation and lies his guests were presenting, he responded very defensively by accusing me of name calling and attacking them rather than addressing any of the issues I raised. To be an expert on Russia is not necessarily to be an expert on Ukraine, and the commentators I have heard on these radio shows have demonstrated that over and over again.

My interest in Ukraine was kindled first by the fact that two of my grandparents were born in Ukraine (one was born in Odessa when it was a Russian city). Then I met Ukrainians and decided to visit the country in 2010, including a week's vacation in Crimea. I don't pretend that I am an expert on Ukraine, only that I know enough to be able to detect nonsense when I hear it. My primary expertise is on the Middle East (I was a founder and the first national chair of the Palestine Solidarity Committee in the 1980s) and southern Africa, and I visited socialist Yemen (a country which no longer exists) in 1979 and Palestine, Jordan, and Syria in 1986. In the 1970s, I also worked actively with the Gulf Committee, which supported progressive movements in Oman and Bahrain.

My goal is justice for Ukraine and Ukrainians and acknowledging their history and present accurately is a first step toward achieving that. Unfortunately, huge swathes of the US left have done the opposite,

Occupied Palestine: August 1986

 This poem was published in Compages, Number 19, San Francisco, California Spring 1988 (also translated into Italian)

In Jericho

the dates hang heavily from the branches.

Are they symbols of the rejoicing of the harvest ...

    or of tears waiting to fall?

In Hebron,

the barbed wire divides downtown like a cancerous carbuncle

splits the flesh of an otherwise healthy organism.

The people bustle past, seemingly oblivious.

The guards at Abraham's mosque,* Israeli soldiers,

    smile and fondle their rifles.

*Abraham's mosque, the tomb where the patriarch Abraham, founder of the Jewish religion, is buried, has been converted into a synagogue, with only one room remaining for Muslims.

In Bethlehem,

the tourists descend the staircase where a gold star

marks the manger's spot.

In Dheisheh,

down the road, concrete barriers block the entrances

to roads patrolled by

Israeli soldiers with purple berets

when they do not sit in their tent

on the barren hillside in the scorching sun.

The dust drifts down into Dheisheh refugee camp

from the neighboring cement plant.

Can it be an accident that this neighbor moved in next door?

Dheisheh's stories--each one a stanza of an epic,

and this is only one refugee camp--

   Can this really be refuge?

In Nablus

city in a deep ravine,

Bassam Shaka'a smiles and rubs his knees;

the ends of his legs were blown off by settler assassins.

"There is Jnaid" he points,

the high-tech prison

built into the shell of a hospital on the hillside.**

Below, towers of ivory olive oil soap dry in the Shaka'a soap factory.

An old white-haired man intently wraps each bar with a paper label.

He turns and smiles, the camera flashes.

    Can this, too, be resistance?

**Jnaid opened as a hospital a few days before the 1967 war. the Israelis turned it into a prison.

In Gaza,

the lawyer is not permitted to practice law.

the doctor is not permitted to practice medicine,

the artist is imprisoned for painting a picture,

the fishing boats lie abandoned on the shore,

    confiscated by the police,

    the fishermen are not allowed to fish.

The trade union is not allowed to organize.

One large prison, Gaza,

    but have the Israelis not heard

    that the prisons are schools of resistance?

Across the street from Gaza prison,

a guard in a watchtower peers through a window,

where we photograph prisoner's paintings

on pillowcases and handkerchiefs,

smuggled out of the prisons.

In Gaza town,

the soldiers sweep their Galils,

prepared to fire.

A few blocks away, the money changers finger rolls of shekels

in their open-air, drive-in bank.

At the beach, Israel's future Hawaii,

Sultan Ibraham,*** the little fish with the long name,

fries fragrantly in the pan.

***Sultan Ibrahim is the name of a small fish found in the Mediterranean off the Gazan coast.

In Ramallah,

the workers play ping pong in the union hall

while El-Haq's**** computers record the latest violations of civil rights.

****El-Haq, Law in the Service of Man, documents human-rights abuses in the West Bank.

In Beit Hanina,

the editor of a literary journal

holds up an article

and points to the mark of the censor.

In Jerusalem,

Israelis break down the door of the electric company,

close Al-Mithaq newspaper

build their new hotels,

    the new Hyatt on the hill

    overlooks the veil of tears.

In the old city,

vendors sell Palestine t-shirts and another which says,

"Visit Israel before Israel visits you."

A tourist pushes through the crowded alley

followed closely by a bodyguard with an Uzi.

Back in San Francisco,

the images blur and then resolve.

I have not seen everything

but I have seen enough.

    How long can occupation last?

Until we end it.

--Steve Goldfield

Rumblings in Lebanon

Today, I was again a talking head on Lebanese television. They wanted to talk about Biden's renewal of a security finding that describes Hezbolleh as a national security risk to the United States, about skirmishes on the Lebanon-Israel border, and about spying on telephones of people in the Lebanese government using spyware from the Israeli company, Pegasus. I prepared what follows to gather my thoughts.

Context: The world is still in crisis because of the Covid pandemic and the related economic collapse. In the broader context, global capitalism is in decline, especially in the United States, which is losing its economic hegemony but trying to maintain its military hegemony. That underlies the US campaign against China, which is growing economically but not militarily.

In the Middle East, Syria is still suffering the massive violence and displacement of the wars of the last decade. Lebanon is in a very weak state because of the pandemic, the economic collapse, and the reverberations of the Beirut port explosion. The Lebanese government has collapsed with few prospects for a solution. The political isolation of Israel is growing, and its new government is very unstable. The Israeli assault on Palestinians continues to escalate. Sanctions against Iran persist, but Iran is still a significant factor in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and to a much smaller extent in Gaza and Yemen.

Until now, Israel had not attacked Lebanon militarily since 2006 when Hezbolleh defeated the Israeli military and drove them out. The military strength of Hezbolleh is acknowledged by Israel and credible threats of retaliation kept Israel from further attacks until now. Israel alleges that two missiles were fired toward Israel from Lebanon. They claim to have destroyed one, and they say that the other fell in an open field. Such Israeli claims have little credibility, and it is certainly very unlikely that Hezbolleh fired missiles at Israel. Israel shelled Lebanon.

Both Israel and the United States have new governments, but there are no significant changes in either with regard to Middle East policy. It is possible that these new governments have decided to test the ability of Lebanon, and especially Hezbolleh, to respond. However, it is also possible that this conflict will fail to grow bigger. The Israelis know that the Lebanese resistance, led by Hezbolleh, has the capability to inflict far more damage than missiles from Gaza

At the same time, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE have been using Israeli spy software to hack into the phones of people in about 50 countries, including Lebanon. Even French president Macron's phone was hacked earlier this year when he visited Lebanon. Many repressive regimes are using Israeli software to target journalists, dissidents, and critics through their phones. The Lebanese see this as an attack on their sovereignty.

Not much attention is being paid to all these events in the US media, but it is not surprising that people in Lebanon are apprehensive.

Where is the Biden administration in all this? They continue to strongly assert their uncritical support for Israel, whether in Gaza, the West Bank, or in pogroms against Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship. Biden's latest statement affirms his support for Israel in any confrontation with Lebanon. One of the keys will be how the Biden administration addresses the defunct nuclear agreement with Iran. It is clear that they want to extend that agreement to prevent Iran from playing its regional role of supporting resistance to US, Israeli, and Saudi hegemony.

All these lead to the inescapable conclusion that the region is once again a powder keg which could be set off by any of a number of large sparks. The biggest danger is US and Israeli adventurism in which they use the many pandemic and economic weaknesses to try to destroy any opposition and reassert their domination over the region.

Interview with Johnny Makatini of the African National Congress in 1983

Interview with Mfanafuthi (Johnny) Makatini, director of International Affairs Department and Chief Representative to the United Nations of the African National Congress of South Africa (ANC). Interviewed by Steve Goldfield of Palestine Focus at the International Conference on the Question of Palestine in Geneva, Switzerland in September 1983

SG: How does the ANC view the relationship between Israel and South Africa?

MM: The South African regime, presently led by people who were active collaborators with Nazi Germany and, therefore, strongly anti-Semitic, has now become the closest ally of Zionist Israel. This is a strange alliance. But, as David Ben-Gurion said in 1969, they justify it on the basis of so-called comradeship between two regimes under peril.

One thing that brings them together is their total opposition to the right to self-determination for the indigenous people of South Africa and for the Palestinian people. Of course, there are other parallels: the use of religion as a basis, or spiritual rock, for the denial of the right of self-determination to indigenous peoples; the claim of predestination, or divine right, and the view of Palestine and South Africa as “promised lands.”

The first statesman to visit Israel after the proclamation of Israel was Dr. Malan, then prime minister of South Africa. A number of people who ended up as officials in Israel are South African-born. I could mention [former Foreign Minister] Abba Eban, [former President] Chaim Herzog, and many others. Financial regulations are relaxed whenever Israel is in serious trouble; a lot of money gets shipped off from South Africa.

Now, this collaboration has reached a very high level in the field of economics, in the field of military and nuclear collaboration, and both these regimes, of course, enjoy the support and alliance with the United States. They enjoy the protection of the United States whenever the international community seeks to impose punitive measures for their acts of aggression.

Both the Israeli Zionist regime and the South African regime play a complementary role; both serve as permanent bases of aggression. The role of Israel has been to destabilize and foment insecurity in the Middle East in addition to the oppression of the Palestinian people. Israel engages in total aggression against the Arab countries and operates as the regional gendarme in the service of the United States, international imperialism, whereas Israel extends a carrot to the African countries south of the equator. This is part of the strategy to divide the continent of Africa.

The apartheid regime engages in total aggression against the immediate African countries, i.e., the front-line states that are supporting our struggle, while it seeks to neutralize the Arab countries, since they are the only source where it can get oil which helps to fuel the machinery of oppression and aggression.

This strategy is a pincer movement, and we believe that every Israeli official in Africa, even a technician, is an extension of the South African intelligence service. Therefore, it is out of the question that African countries can have relations with Israel. We welcomed the severance of diplomatic relations in 1973, not just because Israel was occupying Egyptian soil, an African country. For us, it is because Israel is an enemy of the continent of Africa. We deplore the role that Israel is playing—for example, the visit by Sharon to Namibia, to the bases there, making public statements literally calling on the international community to put an end to the arms embargo against South Africa.

Israel's training of Savimbi's forces is an act of hostility to the supreme objectives of the Organization of African Unity because the African countries are all supportive of the struggle for the liberation of Namibia and they are all against the destabilization policies carried out by South Africa against Angola. When Israel seeks to establish diplomatic relations with African countries, it is a matter of a trojan horse, playing the role of a friend, but, in fact, a total enemy of the continent of Africa. We can go on and on insofar as this collaboration is concerned; the list is very long.

SG: What is the significance of Israel's special relations with the Bantustans, such as the Ciskei?

MM: First and foremost, it is important to recall that the so-called Ciskei is a tribal entity created by the apartheid regime as part of its policy of Bantustanization, or tribal fragmentation of South Africa. This policy aims to prevent the exercise of self-determination of the indigenous people in South Africa. The international community rejected this policy in 1976 when the first Bantustan, the Transkei, was proclaimed. The General Assembly condemned this as null and void and called on all governments not to recognize or to have any contact whatsoever with this tribal entity. Therefore, any regime or government that establishes contact, direct or indirect, with such entities is acting in a hostile manner.

So far, these tribal entities have only been recognized by the apartheid regime, the creator of the problem The second closest recognition that has come so far is from Israel. There have been visits to Israel by some of these tribal puppets, and there have been promises of assistance and even granting of assistance, including a private plane to the Ciskei puppets. This scheme derives from the collusion between South Africa and the Israeli zionist regime and also the United States In other words, we are witnessing an attempt to prepare the ground for the eventual recognition of these tribal creations.

And this takes place at a time when the regime in South Africa has embarked on massive forced removals of the African people who are being taken out of the cities in their millions and dumped in these Bantustans. Already 3.5 million have been removed, and another 2 million are scheduled to be removed pretty soon. This double-pronged approach—the removals and the offensive to win some recognition from certain countries—is aimed at bringing about a situation where the African people can be totally deprived of South African nationhood. Not one African, not one black is to be recognized as South African. In other words, Israel is now in the forefront in policies which are tantamount to total hostility to every position adopted by the Organization of African Unity.

SG: What dangers do you see in the joint Israeli/South African/Taiwanese development of nuclear weapons and cruise missiles which has been exposed since about 1980?

MM: These three—South Africa, Israel, and Taiwan—are all pariah states, regimes that are totally isolated internationally. The United States, in pursuit of its so-called global strategy, uses these pariah regimes as regional gendarmes in order to foment instability in certain areas. South Africa is playing that role in southern Africa, creating, training, financing, and equipping dissidents or counterrevolutionaries, such as the Savimbi elements the LNA in Lesotho, the so-call Mozambican armed resistance, and the Selous Scouts in Zimbabwe.

These counterrevolutionaries have the role of destabilizing the legitimate governments through the destruction of the economic and social infrastructures. Anything done to strengthen the position of these pariah states is part of that strategy We have seen nuclear collaboration between the United States and South Africa, between the United States and Israel, as far back as the sixties. But this now includes Taiwan.

Taiwan and Israel have also served as conduits for the arming of South Africa. But now, the biggest danger posed to world peace and international security is that these three pariah states have achieved nuclear capacity thanks to the collaboration between them and some of these western countries.

What dangers do we see? Yes, we see the danger of them being a nuisance. The whole purpose is to try and intimidate international opinion into capitulation. It is intended to bring about a situation whereby the third world or the nonaligned countries can be intimidated into abandoning support of the struggle of the Palestinian people or the South African people. But nothing of that sort will happen. Nothing is going to deter the struggles in both Palestine and in South Africa and Namibia, despite the fact that Israel and South Africa have this nuclear capacity.

It is very important, however, to focus on the role played by Taiwan because this has tended to escape the notice of a number of countries. Taiwan has friendly relations with some Arab states who are unaware of the role that Taiwan is playing. We are absolutely convinced that once this role is publicized, the Taiwan regime is going to run into serious problems to the point of relations being cut.

Otherwise, the danger is nothing special. We know we are dealing with desperate regimes which are not even signatories to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, but when you take up arms, nothing can deter you, not even the threat of the use of nuclear weapons.

[A few explanatory notes: Jonas Savimbi led UNITA, an Angolan organization supported by the CIA, which militarily attacked the Angolan government, led by the MPLA. In 1979, a joint nuclear test was conducted by Israel and South Africa off the coast of South Africa. In 1976, South African prime minister Vorster visited Israel and signed an agreement by which South Africa supplied uranium to Israel while Israel aided South Africa in counterinsurgency and in other ways. We should also mention that South Africa invaded Angola after independence in 1975 but was defeated by the Angolan army with logistical support from Cuba.]

On Race and Class

I  heard a very interesting discussion today on the current political situation in France, particularly of greatly increased government repression. It appears that French leftists are making the same sorts of mistakes that American and South African leftists have made historically in which they assert that to raise issues of race and caste is to divide the oppressed class when the reality is exactly the opposite. If a class is divided by different degrees of oppression then those differences must be addressed in order to unify and strengthen the class.

The South African case was very stark, and it is no surprise that they figured it out first. When the new South African Communist Party was formed a century ago, it had the bizarre slogan, "Blacks and Whites Unite for a White Republic." Naturally very few Black South Africans joined such a party. The Comintern sent Gene Dennis, later a chair of the CPUSA, to South Africa. He got the party to change that line and to recruit Black members. The party grew tremendously and played a critical role in defeating Apartheid.

In the USA, the CPUSA often played a leading role in the civil rights movement. However, in the labor movement, they often failed to challenge more conservative and racist labor leaders who opposed organizing African-American workers. In my brother Mike's recent book, "The Southern Key," he describes and explains how that happened. One of the results was that efforts to organize in the South in the 1930s and 1940s failed, and all of us have paid a huge price for that.

We are still trying to learn that lesson in 2021. I'm thinking, for example, of the pejorative term "identity politics" which attempts to deny that the issue is different degrees of oppression rather than simply of identity. Instead, the correct way to view this is that a class for itself, i.e., one conscious that it is a class and working to advance its interests, must be concerned by uniting itself by addressing all the issues that face it. Thus, to acknowledge that workers of color are the most oppressed is necessary for the unification of the class, and that must not only be acknowledged but fought by the entire class.

In an era of Neo-Liberalism and global capitalism, classes are no longer simply national entities. To unite the international working class, we must also acknowledge and fight the unequal degrees of oppression around the world. The last 50 years have seen the almost complete draining of well-paid industrial jobs from the United States. The primary cause for that is the extreme inequality in which workers in some countries earn so much less than in others. Thus international solidarity is vital to raising those workers up.

Until we learn these lessons, there is little hope for far-reaching progressive change.

Interview with José Ramos-Horta of East Timor in 1978

 

Interview with José Ramos Horta

I have interviewed many people over the years. I have interviewed musicians such as Alan Jabbour and Frank George. I interviewed Edward Said and Noam Chomsky and many others. I interviewed three people who later became presidents of their countries: Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Sam Nujoma of Namibia, and José Ramos-Horta from East Timor. I just got my hands on that last interview and decided to make it available online.

José won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996 for his work in settling the conflict between Indonesia and East Timor. He was foreign minister and prime minister, and he was elected president of East Timor in 2007. He was shot during an assassination attempt in 2008, but he continued as president until 2012. I interviewed him in Oakland, California while he was passing through in February 1978, and the interview was published in the Winter 1978 edition of LSM News. I met him a second time in Mozambique in early 1979, where he was then based. I have slightly edited the original text to fix spelling and punctuation only.

“The War Is a Tremendous School for Everyone”

Interview with José Ramos-Horta of Fretilin

In 1970, a thin young man with a bushy head of hair impulsively rose to speak at a large party in Dili, capital of East Timor. The Eastern part of the island was then controlled by the Portuguese, whose dreaded secret police, the PIDE, had informants everywhere. In a long, rambling speech, José Ramos-Horta denounced Portuguese rule and predicted that East Timor would soon have a liberation movement like those in Angola, Moçambique, and Guiné-Bissau. Horta was slightly drunk and so he did not notice the steady stream of people leaving until he was suddenly aware that he was speaking to an empty room.

The fears of the party-going East Timorese were well-founded. The day after the party, Horta was called in by the PIDE who had a transcript of his remarks. Horta was exiled for two years in Moçambique.

Despite the PIDE, Horta and his comrades build a liberation movement. Starting as a discussion group, they formed the Association of Social Democrats of Timor (ASDT) of which Horta was Secretary-General. The ASDT began by organizing strikes and sending Horta abroad to seek international support for independence from Portugal. Horta's activities led to a second exile order, but before he had time to leave, the 1974 Portuguese coup intervened and dealt a death blow to Portuguese colonialism.

In September 1974, the ASDT became FRETILIN and rapidly won the support of the East Timorese people with its firm stand for independence. On November 28, 1975, FRETILIN declared the independence of the Democratic Republic of East Timor. José Ramos-Horta became one of three Central Committee representatives functioning outside the country. Today he serves as FRETILIN's permanent United Nations representative.

LSM interviewed José Ramos-Horta during a visit to the West Coast in February 1978. José is unafraid to speak and act on his convictions, but when he does speak it is with a modesty and lack of ego rarely encountered in the United States.

Horta's father was a Portuguese democrat deported to Timor in the 1930s. José's Timorese mother belongs to the Mambai ethnic group which has resisted Portuguese domination for almost 500 years. José grew up among the peasants in the mountains near Dili.

At the age of 14, Horta chose his career; he became a journalist with the Portuguese government newspaper. After his return from exile in 1972, he went to work for the government radio station but was fired because of his Timorese accent. In frustration, he wrote an article, “Open Letter to My Brother Maubere,” which closed: “Maubere, my brother, the sun is rising; it's time to get up.”

Fretilin's Unique Philosophy

LSM: What is Mauberism?

HORTA: Among the Mambai people of East Timor, individuals have just one personal name of which the most common is Maubere. The Mambai are the largest ethnic group in the country, some 80,000 people spread the central highlands. This area has been a center of traditional resistance to colonial domination for centuries. The culture, tradition, and religion of the Mambai people are uninfluenced by the Portuguese. Because the Mambai opposed all forms of cultural domination, the urban elite called them stubborn and ignorant.

Because the name Maubere is so common, the Dili elite began to call everybody who was ignorant and poor, “Maubere.” The name became an insult. For instance, if I, an educated man from Dili, did something wrong, my boss would say, “You are Maubere.”

But who are the Maubere people? They are the peasants who constitute 95 percent of the East Timorese population. They are those who cannot read and write. They are those with no access to medical assistance, those who suffer from malnutrition. They are exploited by the coffee plantation owners, by the cattle ranchers, by the government, which forced them to working building roads, bridges, and houses without pay. They were forced to pay annual taxes which did not benefit them or help develop the countryside.

We of FRETILIN thought that a genuine East Timorese liberation movement must respond to these problems felt in the flesh, in the daily lives of the Maubere people. In order to mobilize the people, we had to work out a philosophy, a theory that they could easily understand.

If we talked in terms of complicated Marxist-Leninist theories, they would not understand. Our people want revolution, but people do not fight for empty slogans. They fight to improve life in their villages. They want schools where their children can learn to read and write. They want medical assistance, clean water, better housing.

Mauberism, then, according to our definition is social, cultural, economic development of the countryside with strict adherence to the traditional cultural values of the people. It may sound very simple to sophisticated Western theoreticians, but from Mauberism we can go on to explain complicated economic matters.

Mauberism Means Socialism

We say that the Maubere suffer; they are hungry and lack education. We must explain why, that it is the result of a decadent, colonial, capitalism system. So, Mauberism cannot tolerate a colonial, capitalist system which is based on private ownership of land, of enormous herds of cattle, of coffee plantations, and so on.

In order to solve the problems of hunger and inequality in East Timorese society and respond to the aspirations of the Maubere people, these fundamental steps must be taken: expropriation of private ownership of cattle, of land, of every source of wealth in East Timor and their redistribution throughout the country.

And how will we redistribute them? You get a buffalo; you eat it for a month but what then? We have to have a plan, a substitute for the existing system. Property must be redistributed to the villages, but the people must be organized to produce and increase with it. So we established joint ownership of land and cattle and cooperative production.

LSM: How do your cooperatives compare with traditional methods of farming.

HORTA: Cooperatives are not new. For centuries people worked together in the traditional way which included common ownership of land. No individual owned land in a village.

There was one exception. In the region near Viqueque, where in the past fifty years the traditional joint ownership of land was interrupted by the establishment of coffee plantations and the influx of Portuguese settlers who took over the land and disrupted the lives of the people.

We still have some difficulties in solving this problem near Viqueque. A very strong individualistic feeling persists; everyone wants their own piece of land, their own crop.

This is a very rich area, well-developed with good fields; it could completely feed East Timor. It is also strongly Catholic with some feudal relations. Chiefs were very powerful there. For this reason the Apodeti party* had some influence. (*Apodeti, led by a former World War II collaborator with the Japanese, is a pro-Indonesian party. It has failed to win much support in East Timor.)

FRETILIN's solution was to establish cooperatives in the areas surrounding Viqueque. Slowly the people of the region saw the benefits. Before, the great majority of the people had not benefited from the wealth of the area. Through the peasants' experiences, the situation slowly changed.

The issues quickly clarified when the landlords supported the Indonesian occupation. We still hage some problems in Viqueque, but Mauberism now extends to most of East Timor

Timorese Women's Liberation

LSM: Within that philosophy, how do you struggle with negative aspects of tradition?

HORTA: The principal negative aspect of tradition is the role of women. Through East Timor, women had a very important role in production; but they had no control of production, profit, or income.

Women were considered double slaves: slaves of the settlers, the colonial power, and slaves of the men, their own husbands and other relatives. They had to look after children and cook and during the day they also went to the fields to work. Men worked in the fields, too, but that was all they did. It was a frequent sight to see a woman with a child on her back bent over the ground planting or weeding. Women had no voice in the decision-making process in villages, in solving problems, in elections.

How were we to solve this problem? In peaceful times, many years of political education would be required to make men realize that women are human beings who must have an equal share in the political process, in the economic and social sphere, and so on.

The war is a tremendous school for everyone. In our two years of fighting, there are already valiant women, heroines of the armed struggle.

Women run most of our schools. Since the war started, the illiteracy rate has been lowered from 95 percent to 70 percent. Women also participate I campaigns of health, hygiene, and nutrition.

Women are especially active in fighting. Even before the Central Committee decided to set up a women's army, one hundred women near the border went to a representative of the Central Committee in the region and demanded weapons. They said, “We do not need training We just want weapons.” Their first operation was successful; they captured the first Indonesian soldiers I that region. Now there are about 3,000 women fighters with their own officers.

Of the 519 members of our People's Congress, about 230 women were elected. In the Central Committee, 30 of the 67 members are women. In the near future we will have even more women cadres because we have a lot of women students abroad in Portugal and Southeast Asia.

LSM: How would you compare the consciousness of East Timorese women and men to the women's movement in North America?

HORTA: The struggle for women's liberation in capitalist countries, the United States, is much more difficult than the struggle in East Timor. For instance, what are the priorities here? Equal pay, equal opportunities for jobs, problems of abortion, divorce: these things do not exist in East Timor.

In East Timor we don't have the complexity of the capitalist system. Colonialism has been dismantled, broken up by the war. We know our enemies and our friends; the situation is clear-cut. So, it's very difficult to compare. Women make up about 55 percent of East Timor's population. And it's a small country so its easier to solve such problems.

LSM: Sometimes gains made by women during the armed struggle are eroded later. How deeply rooted are these changes?

HORTA: During the armed struggle, women can impose themselves by force of arms. Not that they threaten to shoot the men; they have weapons and are also defending the country. So, men are forced by reality to learn to respect them and to give them equal voice in political affairs.

If during the armed struggle there had not been continuous parallel political education, there might be setbacks after the war. It is always easier to solve problems when everybody is concentrating on the enemy.

After the armed struggle, a lot of problems will surface again There will be crises over ideology, political line, the course of economic development, emphasis, and this question of men/women's relationship will inevitably come out.

So long as class contradictions persist, there will be class conflict and there will certainly be conflict over the question of women's emancipation. This conflict can only finally solved when the question of class is solved. Some setbacks are expected, but there is no way we will return to the old ways.

Sidebar: A Woman Versus a Chief

The enclave Oecusse is a FRETILIN stronghold. The other parties had only a half dozen followers. But the chief was very powerful. He was strongly backed by the Portuguese and had a lot of support from the Indonesians. Nobody dared expose him as a feudalist or a corrupt leader.

One day in March 1975, we held a big rally in Oecusse attended by several thousand people. A 24-year-old woman took the floor. She was illiterate. Nobody knew where she was from, but she was known in the village as a prostitute.

She spoke for about two hours denouncing the chief. She explained how the people of Oecusse were exploited. They had to grow rice and give 70 percent to the chief. She told them that she herself had been raped by the chief.

When she was through, the people marched to the Portuguese headquarters and demanded the replacement of the chief. The Portuguese had to fly in paratroopers from Dili.

Later, the chief was replaced; they elected a new one. But if it hadn't been for that single woman, the people would not have been mobilized. They were aware of their suffering. But it was necessary for someone from their own ranks, a peasant, a woman, to articulate for them what they felt.

LSM: How does FRETILIN conduct political education?

HORTA: In each of the over 400 villages in East Timor, someone leads a dynamization cell. Political education occurs every day through discussions of texts distributed by FRETILIN's political committee on various issues: agriculture, health, the role of the army, women. These are short texts, a page or so, written in very simple language.

We have a weekly newspaper, East Timor, printed in the countryside. We have complete printing facilities which we stole from the Portuguese. Some regional committees have mimeo machines to produce daily bulletins. Since the illiteracy rate is still high, the political commissar reads the newspaper aloud in the villages and discusses its contents. Our papers are printed in Tetum and Portuguese.

Our best means of political education is radio. Radio Maubere broadcasts three times a week. We have a broadcast in English for Australia and local broadcasts in Tetum and several other dialects such as Mambai. We also have radio programs in the Indonesian language aimed at West Timor and at Indonesian soldiers.

On our radio programs we not only have political education but also information about health, short programs to teach people the importance of keeping clean, how to prevent malaria and other diseases, how to look after babies.

We also have what we call revolutionary brigades, groups of five to sixty young men and women, mainly high school students, twelve to eighteen years old, who conduct political education, work with villagers in the fields, and help them build schools and houses. This is one way of overcoming the differences between peasants and students.

Not only students do this. Our president, Nicolau Lobato, along with our other leaders, is all over the country working barefoot in the rice fields alongside the peasants.

Even after liberation, it is FRETILIN's program that, once a year, our president will have to travel around the country to live as the peasants live. He must not sit in a palace in the capital and forget that there are peasants in the countryside who fought for independence and still go barefoot. The cadres, members of the Central Committee, will do the same.

Our program also states that we will never have salaries for members of the Central Committee and members of the government. They will have enough food to eat and plain housing supplied by the state but are not entitled to luxurious housing of their own. The former Portuguese governor's palace in Dili will become a cultural center or hospital.

We don't advocate a return to primitive ways; but, if I am an engineer, I have to work in a proper place but with no unnecessary luxuries, no special privileges. If I need a car to get to my workplace, I can use one, but, after work, the car returns to the garage.

We explain these decisions to the people; they will remember after liberation. If the leadership falls short, the people will know that they are corrupted with power.

Over 100,000 people have already been killed; women and children die every day for our country. They follow the leaders. If, after liberation, the leaders start driving a Mercedes in the capital, live in nice houses, or wear nice shoes while thousands of people are still recovering from the wounds of war, this will be an outrage. But only when the people are educated and mobilized can they prevent this from happening.

LSM: What is the present stage of the armed struggle? Do you still use guerrilla tactics? How much territory do you control?

HORTA: We can report, with figures confirmed by the Indonesians, that about 90 percent of the population live in our liberated areas. You must understand that the majority of our people are subsistence farmers who never lived in urban centers. The city names on the map are just small concentrations of a few thousand people at most. During peacetime, the people would come to the towns only for marketing.

East Timor is a mostly mountainous country with peaks over 10,000 feet high. The entire territory controlled by FRETILIN amounts to about 85 percent of the country. The Indonesians, for instance, control the town of Maubisse but don't go out more than one or two miles from there. They control Dili, the capital, but not the surrounding villages. From Liquiça to Dili, both of which are on the coast, they cannot move by land. They have to take a helicopter or travel by boat.

In general, we use small guerrilla groups. But sometimes we are able to put columns of 100 to 500 fighters into the field. These larger units are becoming more standard. We have a well-trained mobile army of 15,000 which operates throughout the country.

We also have a people's militia, between 20,000 and 30,000, not so well-equipped. They use World War II rifles, mausers, and even some World War I rifles.

LSM: Is Dili under siege?

HORTA: Our forces attack Dili regularly, but it's hit and run. They have been able to destroy tanks inside the town. In fact, one of our best military commanders was recently killed in a six-hour battle in Dili. But our strategy is first to have complete control of the countryside, better weapons, operating schools and production; then we will have the final assault.

We have to be sure that once we attack Dili, we can hold it. The city is in a narrow valley surrounded by mountains on three sides. The Indonesians can only escape by sea. If they do not escape or surrender, they must be annihilated. This is some time off, but not very long. Once we have better equipment, a good group of saboteurs....