STATEMENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST TENDENCY ON THE PARIS SHOOTINGS
Thursday 22nd January 2015

1- The shootings in Paris at the offices of Charlie Hebdo on 7 January, followed by the killing of four shoppers at a kosher supermarket in Vincennes two days later, have attracted almost universal condemnation. And of course it is right to condemn them. But the typical manner of this condemnation – as barbarous and irrational acts that violate traditional Western liberties – both refuses to confront the historical context in which the killings took place and serves to underwrite a policy of imperialist war and domestic repression.
2- Ever since 9/11, we have seen the same cycle in which imperialist war in the Muslim world provokes jihadi terrorist atrocities that are in turn used to justify more wars that in turn provoke more atrocities … The Paris shootings are the latest turn in this cycle. The reaction to them has been stronger because they occurred against the ...