Response to a Vile Slander

Statement of the Internationalist Communist Party (Battaglia Comunista)

We have decided to denounce a very serious and disgusting campaign carried out by some former militants of our Party.

Their scheme has been to circulate disparaging rumours about some of our members, particularly the most prominent comrades. They have spared us nothing in their senseless accusations: fear, cowardice, betrayal, opportunism of individuals, up to accusations of links with forces of the bourgeois state. These slanders were circulated among militants of other communist organisations, in the "movement" and even in the international relations of the Internationalist Communist Tendency (TCI).

It has been a real smear campaign, studiously systematic, characterised by two "methodological criteria":

  1. The vile allegations have never been made public, exposed to the light of day. Knowing that they lie, the defamers preferred the more subtle and murky method of whispered gossip.
  2. They have never produced a shred of evidence. But since those who make accusations have the burden of producing evidence, the very absence of concrete evidence is evidence of the iniquity of these individuals and their manoeuvres.

It is also significant to note that these vile calumnies only appeared *after these elements left the organisation*. It now seems that, after having left our organisation, some of these ex-comrades hateful attacks against the Internationalist Communist Party (and against all the ICT) has become their main focus of their politics, if not their lives.

It is, in short, the politics of the clique which we have always despised: instead of confirming the validity of their own practice in the real world they prefer - in the absence of anything deeper – to give themselves legitimacy by throwing mud on us and on our militants, motivated by continuing grudges and their own political and human misery.

In the history of our Party a thing just as bad had its counterpart – in a much more serious form – only during the Second World War, when internationalist militants were targeted by Togliatti’s thugs, who justified their campaign of persecution right up to assassination, by accusing us of being "in the service of the Gestapo."

This our denunciation, publicly and in the light of day, of a manoeuvre that bears all the signs of a political provocation in order to create suspicion, and to create difficulties for – if not to sabotage – our political work.

The Internationalist Communist Party rejects by all means possible even this slander from those who prefer to swim in the murky sea of provocation rather than clarify their political intentions, and as always we will continue our work for the construction of the revolutionary and communist alternative to this system and for the construction of the revolutionary class party.

The militants of the Internationalist *Communist Party (Battaglia Comunista)*

Sunday, April 12, 2015

Translated as an act of solidarity with our Italian comrades by the Communist Workers’ Organisation

Wednesday April 15, 2015

Thursday, April 16, 2015

Comments

Cleishbotham wrote:

“This is an attack on BC by some of its ex-members (three at most). It is not an attack on the ICT as whole or any other organisation and don't make it part of a paranoid agenda.”

It’s quite clear from the statement that the PCInt thinks this is an attack on the ICT:

“These slanders were circulated among militants of other communist organisations, in the “movement” and even in the international relations of the Internationalist Communist Tendency (TCI).”

And it may be just a few ex-members, but the PCInt describes it as the most serious attack on them since Togliatti’s thugs threatened its militants during WW2!

I fail to see where the “paranoid agenda” is here. On the contrary you appear to be under-stating what is firmly denounced in the PCInt’s statement as "a political provocation in order to create suspicion".

The paranoid agenda is in the heads of the ICC and their delirium that everybody who disagrees with them (especially ex-members) is working for the bourgeoisie. We are not having the work of a few disgruntled ex-members who having failed to do anything themselves have turned to telling fairy stories made into something it is not. There is no evidence that these stories circulate anywhere outside Italy but we cannot be sure. And this is not the "most serious" (your words not theirs) campaign of denigration the PCInt has had to put up with since 1945 - it is the only one (that is if we discount the slanders of the early ICC who told the CWO that the PCInt were "Bordigists" and "sclerotic"). This is our final word on the question.

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