Gelsenkirchen, 8 September 2017

Dear comrades,

today we would like to inform you about an aggravated campaign against the MLPD up to applications for a ban – not only in Germany but in an international debate from Israel via the USA to Germany. For that purpose articles were published in online media reaching millions of readers, in the print media mainly in the rightist press in Israel and a news report of the Trump channel Fox News. Culmination firstly is the claim it would collaborate with foreign terrorist organizations like the PFLP and secondly the claim of the proto-fascist AfD head Frauke Petry to ban the International List/MLPD as “criminal, Marxist-Leninist excrescence”. This was preceded by Volker Beck, member of the Bundestag (German parliament) of the party Bündnis 90/Die Grünen who questioned the legality of the International List/MLPD because of its support for a “Palestinian terror organization”. You find attached the statement of the CC of 2 September 2017. This polarization in the middle of the election campaign is our theater, at the same time we are facing this situation vigilantly. We are offensively attacking the deepening of the shift to the right of the government and are mobilizing the democratic, progressive and revolutionary counter potential among the masses and are strengthening the party, REBELL and the International Alliance. You can get up-to-date information on www.rf-news.de, also numerous voices against these attacks.

We would be happy if you sent us a short statement on these occurrences!

Warmest revolutionary greetings

Monika Gärtner-Engel

Responsible person for internationalism

The lines are clear in the election campaign: Internationalist List/MLPD – With our slogan 'Protest is left' WE are the clear counterpole to AfD and all forces that have swung to the right

Following yesterday’s reports in German and Israeli media and in the European media, the discussion continues:

The lines are clear in the election campaign: Internationalist List/MLPD – With our slogan ‘Protest is left’ WE are the clear counterpole to AfD and all forces that have swung to the right

On the reactionary demand of Frauke Petry (AfD) to ban the Internationalist List/MLPD

“This polarization in the election campaign shows where the divide lies,” says Gabi Fechtner, MLPD Party Chairperson and lead candidate of the Internationalist List/MLPD for the federal elections. “With our slogan ‘Protest is left’ WE are the clear counterpole to AfD and all forces that have swung to the right.” AfD ‘Alternative for Germany’ leader Frauke Petry called on her Facebook page yesterday for the ban of the Internationalist List/MLPD as ‘criminal Marxist-Leninist aberration’.

Gabi Fechtner: “With Petry’s demand to ban the Internationalist List/MLPD the AfD shows its true face. It does not at all direct its main thrust at the Establishment, but aggressively and with anticommunist motives targets mainly internationalism, the working-class movement, the international revolutionary liberation struggle, and any anticapitalist alternative.

The grounds for the AfD’s attempt to criminalize the Internationalist List/MLPD is its solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle. Progressive Palestinian forces stand as candidates on the lists of the Internationalist List/MLPD; sympathizers of the PFLP and the Demokratischer Kongress Palästina are a part of our alliance. The alleged Green Party model democrat Volker Beck raised the demand on this occasion for the ban of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and questioned the legality of the Internationalist List/MLPD. That he is very much in agreement with the AfD on this point shows what reactionary ideology he is following.

The AfD as groundbreaker for fascism wants to defame and suppress any solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle and so takes the side of the state terror of the imperialist Netanjahu government of Israel, which has shifted to the right and with which the Merkel/Gabriel government works closely together.

Criticism of the government of Israel, on the other hand, has nothing to do with antisemitism, from which we clearly distance ourselves in our election program. We clearly state in contrast that we fight any imperialist aggression – which includes criticizing the brutal policy of bleeding the Palestinian autonomous areas and building settlements there; includes criticizing the Palestinians’ lack of rights and the treatment of the Palestinian people as prisoners in their own territory. This is why the Internationalist List/MLPD demands ‘Freedom for Palestine!’. Anyone who thinks this is right should join our Internationalist Alliance. For the opponents of this slogan the defense of the imperialist state of Israel is more important.

Incidentally, the PFLP was the third strongest force in the 2006 elections of the joint national government of the West Bank and Gaza strip, getting more than four percent of the votes, and is one of the strongest forces within the PLO, after Fatah.

The Internationalist Alliance and the MLPD are the counterpole to the ultrareactionary and protofascist AfD, but also to the bourgeois parties that have shifted to the right.

Marxist-Leninist – the MLPD is that, and we are proud to be representatives of the communist freedom ideology. It is typical of such protofascist organizations that they take particular exception to this. The attack of the AfD against democratic and revolutionary organizations warns once again: Resist the beginnings!

Protest is left, internationalist and revolutionary!”

As a side note, the failed ultrareactionary Pegida movement once was started in reaction to the solidarity with the Kurdish liberation struggle, especially from the MLPD.
(See article Rote Fahne News)

Sixteen organizations already cooperate in the Internationalist Alliance, and to date it is supported by 17,000 individuals. Internationalist – class-militant – antifascist – revolutionary – ecological: that is the alliance’s profile. The alliance has a very broad base.

Voices of protest from the Internationalist Alliance and further reports at www.rf-news.de