Political position
The main contradiction driving world history today is the contradiction between the imperialist states and the oppressed nations.
It is right to rebel. There are 2 types of political violence: 1) The reactionary political violence of the impreialists against the proletariat and working masses, and 2) The progressive revolutionary violence of the proletariat and the working masses against all imperialism and their lackies, all reaction, and semi-feudal institutions and conditions upheld by the imperialists and their servants.
Situation in Denmark
Today, there is no unity between anti-imperialist organisations in Denmark and therefore no common anti-imperialists front to lead the Pro-Palestine movement.
Because of this weakness of the progressive forces the movement is dominated by the petty bourgeoisie and intellectuals.
The political demands of the petty bourgeoisie go no further than begging the parliament to support a cease fire and boycott of weapon trade with Israel.
This is because the movement largely is not a solidarity movement, but a sympathy movement. The driving force of the movement is not proletarian internationalism and solidarity for the struggle of the oppressed peoples of the world to rise up in struggle against imperialist exploitation, but instead a so called “humanitarian” sympathy for those who are suffering and being killed by the IDF.
In this perspective the ceasefire, the immediate yet inevitably temporary pausing of the bombing and direct killing is an end onto itself.
Instead of marching and supporting the actual armed struggle for the national liberation of all of Palestine, the petty bourgeoisie, fearing losing their cozy jobs, fancy political positions and fine standing in bourgeois intellectual circles, limit themselves to protest for the pausing of both Israels terror and the Palestinian armed resistance struggle, which only in the end means the continuation of the State of Israel.
In this way the dominance of the petty bourgeoisie over the movement serves, in the end, the world imperialist system. This we, as anti-imperialists, cannot just sit back and accept. We must unite the anti-imperialists forces, both internationally, but also inside each of our countries, and form a common anti-imperialist front. This we fight for with everything we got and therefor we support the founding of the international organisation “The Anti-Imperialist League”, which is having its founding congress this summer in a yet to be announced Latin American country.
We hope that all the comrades here today share our perspective that we must struggle to achieve a higher unity between anti-imperialist organisations and build a movement better equipped to mobilise the masses to fight imperialism in all it forms, everywhere.
Now again, because of the petty bourgeois dominance over the movement in Denmark, when it comes to which actions they are willing to take to achieve their very limited demands, the movement has largely limited itself to demonstrations and cultural events and workshops. These all have in common that they exist entirely within the tolerances of the imperialist Danish state and can therefor safely be ignored by the security forces and other reactionaries.
At the demonstrations in most cities, speeches are almost exclusively allowed to be performed by bourgeois social democratic politicians and pacifist intellectuals, and it is not allowed to hand political flyers out or carry flags or banners with organizational logos or symbols on.
This has all resulted in a pacifist and fundamentally petty bourgeois political line to dominate the pro-Palestine movement in the entire country of Denmark, except for the city of Aalborg. This is why I am giving this presentation today. Because in Aalborg we have built the pro-Palestine movement to be a genuine anti-imperialist proletarian solidarity movement. I will now tell you about how this happened.
Early after 7/10
In Aalborg over the years there have been many pro-palestine movements. Usually when the struggle in Palestine intensifies they form and when a cease fire then is reached they collapse again, because they have all only been sympathy movements, not solidarity movements. The only Palestinian organisation that has continued is the local culture club, which organise a local social and cultural network for people of Palestinian descent. This cultural club strays away from all political activities because it relies on the support and goodwill of the local government to be able to continue its cultural events.
Right after the 7th of October 2023, a group of young Palestinians who where angry that the culture club didn’t want to organise solidarity and activism, broke away from the culture club and formed the group “Palestine North Jutland”. These young Palestinians where mainly small business owners in their 30s and their Arab friends and families.
Because of their lack of experience with organising solidarity work and their petty bourgeois class background, they did not form an organisation with a solid structure, but instead a loose activist group formed around a Facebook group where everyone could join and post.
They did not hold any structured meetings or made any plans or arranging any events to mobilise and organise the broader masses. They only did demonstrations and only announced them inside the Facebook group. They did not go out any form of masswork or activism in the proletarian neighbourhoods and over time got more and more angry that only the same people from the Facebook group showed up to the demonstrations. Beceus of the horizontal and basically anarchist structure of “Palestine North Jutland” all its activities were centred around individual leading activist and their personal drive and enthusiasm. This was a clear recipe for disaster as it risked to overburden a small handful of super active people and completely burn them out, instead of spreading the work over many more activists and build up a movement.
We saw early that although there were many problems in this young movement, there was a huge potential in Aalborg.
Aalborg is one of the largest cities in Denmark and has historically been a large centre of industry in the country with a strong tradition of strong proletarian organizing. It is also one of only 5 cities in Denmark with a university, so it also has a very large population of young progressives.
The work begins
We started working with “Palestine North Jutland” in December 2023 began helping with the demonstrations and holding speeches about the anti-imperialist character of the Palestinian armed resistance struggle. Though this early work we formed tighter bonds of trust and respect with the organisers and the masses, came to see us as principled and strong anti-imperialists who contributed with a much needed political perspective to the movement.
To try and help “Palestine North Jutland” form a more stable structure we began holding regular meetings with their leading group of activists where we talked about anti-imperialism and how we together could strengthen the movement through masswork in the proletarian neighbourhoods. We began doing united activities such as graffiti, hanging up posters for the demonstrations and putting up stickers around the proletarian neighbourhoods.
Through this we developed the movement and helped bring more proletarian elements into the movement. A stronger political understanding developed and and we reached the point where there were a lot of people wanted to be organised as activists, but the existing anarchic and loose structure of “Palestine North Jutland” could not accommodate this. Therefor we help form a new organisation called “Friends of Palestine” that from the beginning had a clear organisational structure and anti-imperial political foundation.
This strengthened the movement and allowed it to both grow bigger while developing a stronger proletarian political consciousness. To strengthen the bond between “Palestine North Jutland” and “Friends of Palestine” a common platform was created, called “The Palestine committee of Aalborg” where both organisations could coordinate their work and invite more organisations to become part of the movement. A common political program for The Palestine Committee was agreed on that had a strong anti-imperialist character and served to scare away the worst revisionist, opportunists and other bourgeois elements from infiltrating.
One of the biggest and most important events was the October 7th 2024 demonstration in Aalborg. All over Denmark all the petty bourgours lead movements had agreed that no one should hold demonstraations on the 7th of October because it should be very clear that they only supported peace and not the resistance struggle, and feared that the reactionary newspapers would smear them if they did demonstrate on the 7th
In Aalborg we fought hard for holding a big united demonstration on the 7th so that we did not just allow the Zionist movement to make October 7th into a Zionist day of sorrow or a Zionist 9/11.
Convinced all the organisations and the Palestine Committee organised the biggest Palestine demonstration in Aalborg that had been all the year.
All over the country there were held Zionist demonstrations and manifestations, and the media and news tried to extensively cover them, but had to cut the news over to Aalborg where we, as the only city in the whole country, were holding a pro-palestine demonstration bigger than all the Zionist manifestations in the country combined.
This spread the news of our movement in Aalborg to all of Denmark and immediately reactionaries and bourgeois politicians started harassing activists and threatening to jail the people involved. These attacks made a small handful of petty-bourgeois elements capitulate, but the rest of the movement hardened and grew much much stronger.
Ever since we have kept building the movement in Aalborg and it has kept growing and getting better organised. We many types of events, peoples schools and study circles and demonstrations. And always on a clear and revolutionary anti-imperialist basis and under strong proletarian leadership. We expand our operations in the proletarian neighbourhoods and new parts of town. We also hope to in the future to establish a student wing under the organisation “Friends of Palestine” and this summer we are working on a series of barbeque and soccer tournaments in multiple neighbourhoods, and a charity concert to create a legal fund for Palestine activists in Aalborg who get arrested or charged with legal fees.
I hope that this has given some insight into the process of developing masswork and the importance of strengthening the proletarian character and leadership of the solidarity movements.
