Multiple threats to democracy

Millions of citizens demonstrated across France on January 11 in solidarity with the victims of related terrorist attacks on the weekly Charlie Hebdo and on shoppers in a kosher market. Unions called on their members and on citizens to rally in support of the 'republican values' of freedom, equality, fraternity, and were very much in evidence. In the face of such attacks, these are the right slogans. Terrorism in all its varieties is a frontal attack on the democratic values of the labour movement.

Millions marched under the slogan 'I am Charlie', but as the general secretary of Reporters without Borders remarked on the participation of many international political leaders in the Paris demonstration, "We must demonstrate our solidarity with Charlie Hebdo without forgetting all the world's other Charlies. It would be unacceptable if representatives of countries that silence journalists were to take advantage of the current outpouring of emotion to try to improve their international image and then continue their repressive policies when they return home."

He might have added that many of the countries represented in Paris have equally negative records on a full range of other issues involving civil, political and social rights. We cannot forget the other Charlies, nor can we forget the other victims of terrorism. In the week before the Paris attacks, an estimated 2,000 civilians were murdered by terrorists in northern Nigeria; international media, and the 'world leaders' gathered in Paris, paid scant attention.

Terrorism is indisputably on the rise, and effectively makes use of sophisticated techniques which boost its appeal and its deadly potential. Organized racism and xenophobia are also growing and thriving. Both must be firmly combatted, but not with a replay of Bush's disastrous 'War on Terror' and a further growth of the surveillance state. To defend the 'republican values' of liberty equality and fraternity we must restore their relevance in a world which has, for many, drained them of meaning. We won't defeat fanaticism and intolerance by "uniting" behind a status quo which is undermining democracy and generating poverty and inequality on a grand scale. Contrary to what 'world leaders' have been telling us for decades, there is an alternative to the status quo, and we build it by fighting for real freedom and solidarity.