World Hegemony - Past and Present

Editorial from KP, No. 13, June 23, 2001

June 22, 1941, was a world historic day: It was the day when Hitler let his armies attack the socialist Soviet Union. But it was also the day when the struggle for defeating fascism and Nazism was initiated. First and foremost, it was the Red Army of Stalin, which defeated Hitler, crushing his dreams of a new European order and a new world order in Nazi chains.

More than 25 million Soviet citizens were killed in this gigantic war crime. More than 50 million people lost their lives during the war.

June 22, 1941, exactly 60 years ago, was also the beginning of the hounding of communists in Denmark. Breaking the constitution, the Communist Party of Denmark (DKP) was banned by the Danish government and a unanimous parliament, with the exception of the DKP itself, of course. Danish police carried out a well-prepared action, imprisoning and sending hundreds of communists to concentration camps, sufferings and death.

But this historic turning point was also the signal for the initiation of increasing armed resistance in Denmark and many other countries.

The veterans of the Great War are quickly leaving us. But their message about the necessity of fighting for democracy and liberty, for a world order of the peoples, and not of imperialism, fascism and reaction, is still alive. Their dreams are still alive, and their experience is and must be part of the necessary luggage of today's combatant youth.

Everything is being done to repress the hard-earned experience of the working class and the peoples, which has been paid with streams of blood. When George W. Bush, today's representative of the power which took over the dream of world hegemony of Hitler fascism after the Second World War, held a big speech about his "visions for Europe" last week in Warsaw, Poland, he compared the treacherous Munich Agreement, into which the Western Powers entered with Hitler, who provoked the Second World War, with the Yalta Agreement of the victorious anti-Nazi coalition, consisting of the Soviet Union, England and the US, which laid the foundations for the European order of the post-war period. To Bush, the Yalta Agreement means treachery and defeat - to the people, it not only meant the defeat of Nazism, but also that socialism was acknowledged as a decisive global factor.

But the Yalta Agreement did not mean that imperialism called off its fight against socialism. Headed by the US, imperialism pulled down the iron curtain in Europe, and in the following decades it was trying to "roll back socialism" and stop the anti-imperialist and socialist revolutions. By virtue of the world historic treachery of modern revisionism after the death of Stalin, the strategy of the imperialists could triumph, and the reactionary "New World Order" - the barbaric global system of imperialism and the monopolies, proclaimed by Bush Sr. as US president - could be established.

Last week, it was demonstrated that a new chapter of the struggle for global hegemony is about to be written. By his European tour, Bush confirmed that US imperialism fears the challengers to its role as world ruler and endeavours to maintain the alliance with the EU, the rising super power. But also China and the hard-pressed super capitalist Russia, establishing the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which is the world's biggest regional organization of cooperation and a counterpart of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and the EU, are entering the imperialist competition of redistributing the world.

These contradictions between old and new imperialist powers will mark the world for many years to come, meaning dangers, slavery and wars to the peoples.

But the reactions of the peoples were not to misunderstand either. Wherever Bush went on his European tour, he was received by protests and demonstrations against the missile defence shield and the countless other imperialist crimes. The coming super power, the EU, has felt the popular opposition: first the Danish No to the euro and then the Irish No to the Nice Treaty. The EU could see the opposition on the streets of Nice and Gothenburg. And all these protests are only the top of the iceberg: the smouldering revolutionary anger of the working class and the peoples are everywhere, carrying the peoples' dream of a new just world order in itself - the revolutionary world order for people and not profit.

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