'Black Ribbon Day': more lies from the bourgeois camp!

By Nikos Mottas

The European Union  once again resorts to hideous anti-communism on the occasion of the so-called ‘European Day of Remembrance for victims of Stalinism and Nazism’ (known as ‘Black Ribbon Day’), which is observed annually on 23rd August.
    In a joint statement, the vice-president of the EU Commission Vera Jourova and the EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders reproduce the same old anti-communist slanders about the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Without any respect for history, the EU officials repeat the blatant lie about the supposed “alliance between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany”.
    In their statement, Jourova and Reynders shamelessly write that the Molotov–Ribbentrop non-aggression Pact “plunged Europe into darkness” and “led to the violation of the fundamental rights of millions of Europeans and it claimed the lives of millions more”.
    Once again the EU proves that anti-communism is a core part of its official ideology. The above statement by EU officials distorts history in order to vilify the Soviet Union and communism.
    Vera Jourova and Didier Reynders hide the fact that the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact followed the 1938 Munich Agreement between Nazi Germany, Italy, Britain and France. The apologists of imperialism try to downgrade the significance of the 1938 Munich Agreement; however, it had a tremendous impact as an act of appeasement towards the Nazis. Following the agreement, Nazi Germany annexed Czechoslovakia and intensified their expansionist aggression towards Eastern Europe.
    The EU deliberately hides the fact that long before the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop non-aggression Pact, the Soviet Union tried many times to reach a defensive deal with Britain and France. Even a few months before the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, on 23rd July 1939, the Soviets proposed the formation of a defence plan to Britain and France in case of a German attack; they refused, as long as the British had been secretly negotiating in London a non-aggression pact with Hitler’s representatives.
    What the EU and its bourgeois governments and parties are trying to do is to sow the seeds of anti-communism in the younger generations. That is why they blatantly distort history by shamelessly equating Communism with Nazism.
    The EU establishes “memorial days against totalitarianism” in order to hide that the only existing totalitarianism is the one of capitalist barbarity. Behind the rhetoric about “democracy” and “human rights”, the EU hides its participation in imperialist crimes, wars and interventions.
    But what kind of ‘democracy’ exists in Poland or the Baltic States where the communist parties face persecution, where communist symbols are banned, where the communists are being imprisoned?
    What ‘human rights’ does the EU defend when it participates in imperialist wars against the people of other countries (such as Yugoslavia, Libya, Iraq and Syria), or when it promotes and sponsors openly fascist coups such as the one in Ukraine?
    The people of Europe must draw conclusions. The EU’s anti-communism goes hand-in-hand with the intensification of the attack against workers’ rights; it is connected to the strengthening of repression mechanisms in every member-state.
    Let the EU imperialists and their stooges – conservative, social democratic or liberals alike – be aware: Anti-communism shall not pass!