[fse-esf] Stalinist banner at the European Social Forum

[Martin Neulicher]

Stalinist banner at the European Social Forum
Where admission of political parties can lead to

The charter of Porto Alegre, formulating the principles of the
World Social Forum, excludes political parties and military
organisations from the social forums - their members of course are welcome
as individuals.

This years' European Social Forum in Athens unfortunately did not follow
these principle of the charter of Porto Alegre: political parties have been
admitted, and mainly dogmatic-communist ones came. They presented their
slogans all over the forum. At one stall one could buy T-shirts with Stalin.
This development culminated in a big banner of the Turkish MLKP, that one
could not oversee: it hung above an entrance of the three main buildings.

The banner showed potraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, and
Stalin's was the biggest. To go to the workshops and seminars of the ESF
under Stalin's portrait caused very bad feelings. Stalin was a mass
murderer, who let murder tens of millions of people and who also made a
treaty with Hitler, when it served to save his power. At latest with stalin,
the emancipatory goal of the left has lost its innocence. Since then, it is
a challenge of every emancipatory movement to have a close look and to
oppose any kind of exploitation and terror, whoever causes these.

Unfortunately, at the ESF 2006, there has not been the opportunity yet to
discuss this development in a broader way. The organisation office replied
to complaints concerning the Stalin banner: "every party is admitted, hence
also Stalinist parties". For human beings that take human emancipation
seriously, the consequence can only be to exclude parties from future
forums, and re-install the charter from Porto Alegre. Only without parties,
the European Social Forum can remain an open space for the globalization
critique movement!

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