Easter and Global Revolution
I was very moved to
read the holiday wishes and cards sent to the StopTheWar Coalition by
our Palestinian and Nepalese friends, allies and comrades (copies
below)."Who cares about religion?" one might say. There's some truth to that objection. But there is a deeper, more significant truth in embracing the spiritual and social yearnings of the People. When revolutionaries embrace, cultivate and defend the best and most beautiful elements of our Peoples' cultures and yearnings, the People in return find more direct and clear motives to embrace, cultivate and defend the Revolution itself.
Freedom fighters who emerge from actual struggle in the various active fronts of the global Liberation Movement have an instinctual understanding of this. It's not "just politeness", "policy", or "diplomacy" as some clever supposedly emancipated secularists might say to dismiss our comrades' sentiments. There's something essential about easter references to the Resurrection of the Soul and Revolution.
"But why? What is the meaning of all this?"
Our comrades from Nepal, Palestine, Kurdistan, Lebanon, have a direct and inner awareness that the true culture of the people, which includes the peoples' spiritual life in its pure forms, separate from the distortions it manifests when it is dominated by the authoritarian church and other pseudo-religious institutions, is the moral and cultural foundation of liberation which, married to the realities of a freed up production, common ownership and people's power applied to direct democracy can generate a whole new world.
"But isn't it just backwards and reactionary religionism?"
It is precisely the opposite. The shocking truth of our people's true culture resides actively within our own words and is wholy embedded within our hidden semi-subconscious culture. This truth even survives in the international language, english:
o~ The words for Strike (Στάσις), Revolution (Επανάστασις), and Resurrection (Ανάστασις) are all slight variations of each other in meaning, in sound and reference. They are also conjoined at the root in conveying process and condition, expressing variations of a particular state of being.
This unity of concepts, spread out through the millennia as our culture helped to sculpt significant parts of modern civilization still survives in english: there is a close relation between Insurrection and Resurrection.
Who wants more? The unity between Communion and Communism?
In the hellenic/greek language,
o~ The word for Communion and Society is the same: Κοινωνία (Koinwnia).
o~ The phrase for a self-governed body of citizens is the same as the word for church: Εκκλησία του Δήμου (Ecclesia).
The domination of our peoples' lives by Capital and the State is matched equally by the domination of our culture by the authoritarian Church. There's no way to strive for, or even to perceive of, a local and global Liberation without paying attention to the efforts aimed at affirming, nurturing and freeing up our true culture from the claws of the Church demons who hold it hostage with superstition, mystification and moral perversion.
An awareness of the spiritual, emotional and moral significance of political events is an essential part of popular Consciousness. Every person with a Conscience in the western world perceives Palestine as the enduring Crucifixion. Bleeding, tormented, screaming and dying on the cross erected by the global Empire, Palestine is perceived by the western world in precisely those terms; this is the true essence of the peoples' culture expressing itself through its primeval archetypes.
And totally appropriate. Modern Palestine writhing on the Crucifix is located exactly where the easter references place it geographically: in the gateway to the Middle East, in the center of the Holy Lands. No matter how strongly the western Churches allied to Capital and Empire try to erase this from awareness, people in the West still connect to the idea and to the emotions related to Palestine through this archetype. Easter and Palestine on the Crucifix are an integral part of the moral~spiritual landscape within the awareness of most people in the West.
Let's say it again: An awareness of the spiritual, emotional and moral significance of political events is an essential part of popular Consciousness.
The Revolution unfolding recently and securing itself in Nepal is a Resurrection of the collective Soul. Both society and the person are becoming reborn through it with the pains, the joys and the awareness of an old/new Soul becoming re-established within existence, re-anchoring itself to the here and now.
Rebirth of Consciousness - Resurrection - is built into the very essence of all cultures in countries of the East; both the secular and the spiritual elements of eastern culture are embedded with ideas and concepts entirely filled with those archetypes. Is there anyone in the eastern countries who does not perceive social and personal revolution that way?
It's not a coincidence that in many countries of the East where the language is related to Sanskrit or Hindi, a political slogan is called a "mantra".
It's not a coincidence that two of most important and universal principles of Socialism are embedded within the theology and organization of Islam:
o~ Both Socialism and Islam affirm a social organization and management of resources aimed at the fulfillment of the needs of the people, stemming "from each according to one's ability, to each according to one's need";
o~ Both Socialism and Islam affirm a universal identity articulated by the Islamic concept of Fitrah, according to which all people without exception are born as embodiments of The All, Allah, and that each one of us only realizes (becomes aware and actualizes) Universal Consciousness according to the realities our collective and personal circumstances as experienced by the influences and conflict of class, religion, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, gender and sexual identities.
We say "it's not a coincidence", in order to underline the fact that there is continuum of ideas, concepts, emotions and factual realities ranging from objective to the subjective and the metaphysical, from the global peoples' spiritual cultures to the political struggles of the revolutionary global liberation process and all the way to the objective tenets and self-evident truths of Scientific Socialism.
As we move forward in the 21st century we recognize more clearly that social institutions that used to be progressive at one point in history are now reactionary chains holding us back: we move to seize back social production and resources from the claws of Capital; we move to seize back social administration, defence and justice from the claws of the State; and we move to seize back our own spiritual and cultural lives from the claws of the authoritarian Church.
In Cyprus, torn up and destroyed by the global Imperial State and Capital with the collusion of the local ruling class, both in the north and the south the leaders of the progressive political forces and those who pretend to be leading Patriots, Socialists and Freedom lovers have entirely betrayed both Socialism and the need to defend, protect and liberate the Motherland. They have joined themselves with the vultures of the global Imperial State to directly rule over, manage and oversee the exploitation of their own people and have joined in with the suppression of our people's own true native spirituality and culture. Their treason and byzantine intrigues have brought our indigenous culture and spirituality to the brink of extinction.
Additionally, they portray themselves as secularists, supposedly free from "religious superstition". At the same time they constantly pose in public at every opportunity with leaders of authoritarian Religion, reinforcing the most sick and oppressive connections between State, Religion and Capital. The people are left defenseless and without guidance. How do we wrestle back from their claws what is ours? Our spiritual and cultural treasures? Our country's social production and natural resources? Our communities' administration and the management of our own affairs?
When the leaders abandon the people, how are supposed to act? In what direction?
Meanwhile, when the leadership is truly immersed in the struggle and embraces the people's culture and its spiritual traditions, miraculous achievements become feasible and placed on the table of possibilities:
o~ the Vietnamese revolutionary forces embraced the religious and traditional Lunar~Solar New Year in 1968 with passion for freedom and military organization, initiating the Tet Offensive which led to the spreading of the revolutionary People's War everywhere in the country, leading the avalanche that finally defeated the greatest imperial country in the world's history. The US Empire is still yelping from that injury.
Class struggle, national liberation, collective and personal spiritual emancipation go hand in hand. Our comrades from countries where the struggle is active and where the Liberation Movement has not abandoned its basic principles, understand this reality intuitively. But in Cyprus, it seems, another heaven and another hell must pass before we are able to shake off the numbness induced by shopping and television in order to remember how and why to live. And die.
Petros Evdokas
http://petros-evdokas.cyprus-org.net/Another-sort-of-Introduction.html
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From: NEPAL <nepalimitra@gmail.com>
The Nepalese Equality Partner Association for Liberty, NEPAL wish you all the best on the occasion of Happy Easter!
With warm regards;
Durja Man Tamang
--
Nepalese Equality Partner Association for Liberty
(NEPAL),
Nicosia, Cyprus
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From: belal.abdelhai@gmail.com
Η ΠΑΛΑΙΣΤΙΝΙΑΚΗ ΠΑΡΟΙΚΙΑ ΣΑΣ ΕΥΧΕΤΑΙ ΚΑΛΟ ΠΑΣΧΑ
The Palestinian Community in Cyprus wish you a Happy Easter
الجالية الفلسطينية في قبرص تتمنى لجميع الاخوة المسيحيين فصح سعيد
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The Definition of Fitrah
By Yasien Mohamed
http://www.missionislam.com/knowledge/DefinitionFitrah.htm
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