The police-like methods of the 'IFICC'

The parasitic group which calls itself the 'Internal Fraction of the ICC', formed around the individual Jonas who was expelled from the ICC for behaviour unworthy of a communist militant (see our communique in WR 252), is now openly revealing its true nature. The method of informers

On its website, the IFICC has published two texts which tell us a great deal about the destructive activities of this so-called 'Fraction'.

The first text is the letter which the ICC's section in Mexico sent to the four members of the 'Fraction' living in that country. The publication of the content of this letter is not a problem for us. But what is a problem for us (and should be for all the groups of the communist left) is the fact that the IFICC has published in advance the date of an internal meeting of the ICC (the territorial conference of our Mexican section). In this letter, the ICC's section in Mexico gave the members of the 'Fraction' the date of this conference in order to allow them to defend themselves at it and make an appeal to it (which they have refused to do).

By publishing the whole of this letter on its website, the clique around Jonas deliberately put at the disposal of all the world's cops the date on which our conference in Mexico was being held, with the participation of militants from other countries (since as our press has always noted, international delegations always take part in these kind of meetings). This meant that the police organs concerned with such matters could strengthen their surveillance at the airports and borders. This disgraceful action by the IFICC, which facilitates the work of the repressive forces of the bourgeois state against revolutionary militants, is all the more shameful in that the members of the IFICC know perfectly well that certain of our comrades have already, in the past, been direct victims of repression and in some cases have had to flee their country of origin (note 1).

But the police-like methods of this parasitic group don't stop there.

In number 14 of the 'Internal Bulletin' of the IFICC, published on its website, our readers can also find a text entitled 'Une ultime mise au point' which has the pretension (and above all the hypocrisy) to try to defend the PCI (Le Proletaire) against the "incredible attack" supposedly launched against this group by the ICC. In fact, our readers can see for themselves that this text is not at all a defence of the PCI, given the total absence of arguments to refute the elements we have published in our press about this incident (see WRs 260 and 261).

The IFICC's text is really devoted to hurling the worst kind of slanders against two of our comrades (and thus against all the militants of the ICC, who are accused of being in the pocket of "the person who runs the ICC" and his partner, about whom Jonas spread the rumour in the ICC that she was a "cop"). In doing so it exposes the abject methods of the friends of Jonas.

The real "political disagreements" of the friends of Jonas

In this 'Ultime mise au point', the IFICC begins by asserting that "we have always remained on a strictly political terrain". Our readers can make up their own minds about this by examining the IFICC's 'political' arguments aimed at showing its 'fundamental disagreements' with the ICC, disagreements which are supposed to justify the formation of an 'Internal Fraction' in continuity with all the left fractions of the workers' movement from the Spartacus League to the Italian left. Here we will only cite one small extract from these arguments. Readers can judge whether they prove that the IFICC has always remained "on a strictly political terrain":

"This text is written by CG, alias Peter, as can be seen from the style and above all the somewhat fantastical reference to a lamentable operation of recuperation carried out under his direction. This same Peter is the person who runs the ICC and who, after having excluded or pushed out the majority of the founding members of the ICC, claims to be the sole heir of MC. But it should also be known that if Peter is leading this hate-filled cabal against our comrade Jonas, it's for the very simple reason that Louise (alias Avril), the militant about whom Jonas has clearly expressed his doubts, is none other than the partner of the chief" (note 2).

On the fallacious pretext of taking up the defence of the PCI, the Jonas camarilla is exposing the real colour of its money and the "strictly political" disagreements upon which this so-called Fraction has been founded: the ICC is led by a little Stalin ("the chief") manipulated by "the chief's partner" who is a dubious element ( a "cop", to use Jonas' term).

As we have already underlined in an article in WR 252 ('The struggle of revolutionary organisations against provocation and slander'), the workers' movement has always insisted that introducing suspicion into an organisation in order to destroy confidence between militants is precisely the method used by agents provocateurs (notably the GPU in the Trotskyist movement in the 1930s).

Today through this 'Ultime mise au point' the Jonas camarilla is carrying on outside the ICC the dirty work it did inside it, with the aim of sowing suspicion throughout the proletarian political milieu. It is clear that, having failed to convince the militants of the ICC of the necessity to exclude the "chief" and the "chief's partner", this parasitic grouplet is now trying to draw other groups of the communist left behind its slanders in order to erect a cordon sanitaire around the ICC and to discredit it (as can already be seen from reading the press of the PCI).

The method of blackmailers

But the IFICC shows the police-like nature of its activities most clearly by its insistence on the initials of the "chief" ("this text is written by CG, alias Peter"). What "strictly political" interest do Jonas and his friends have in putting the initials of a militant in public? Apart from the fact that this really is worthy of an informer, in the same way as publishing the date of our territorial conference in Mexico, this is also the method of blackmailers, aimed at intimidating militants. By publishing on the internet the real initials of one of our comrades (when will they include the complete name and address?), Jonas and his pals are trying to deliver the following message: whoever dares to support the ICC will be denounced to the police. This is one of the main reasons why the address list of militants and subscribers was stolen from the ICC several months before the formation of the IFICC: apart from the fact that this theft allowed them to inundate our militants and subscribers with its squalid denigrations of the ICC, it also allows the IFICC to permanently intimidate them. How else can we explain the fact that the IFICC, even though its bulletins are now on the internet, continues to send its bulletins by post, including to those who have explicitly asked the IFICC to stop sending them? (note 3).

Furthermore, what political interest does the IFICC have in shouting from the rooftops that "this text is written by CG, alias Peter, as can be seen from its style"? From the proletarian point of view, what interests the serious reader is above all the political content of our articles and not which individual is behind such and such a signature or such and such a "style". On the other hand, it is true that thanks to the analysis of "style", the bourgeois state's repressive forces can indeed try to identify those who write for the revolutionary press (even if, as is the case with the ICC, the articles published in our press are discussed and edited collectively). This enables the bourgeoisie, in periods of repression, to try to paralyse the publication of the revolutionary press by arresting and imprisoning militants whose "style" they have, or believe to have, recognised.

With such methods, worthy of the work of police spies, this 'final' mise au point is in fact a 'final' threat: if the ICC continues to warn the proletarian milieu against the manoeuvres of Jonas and his friends (as we did in our article in reply to the PCI), the IFICC will publish the famous 'documents' which purport to prove that the "chief's partner" is a dubious element, with the aim of convincing the proletarian milieu about this. As the IFICC's article says "Comrade Jonas is by no means the only one to have reasons for doubting this militant: here again numerous documents written by the ICC, which we have in our possession, prove this".

We are only too familiar with this threat. The IFICC is now carrying on outside the ICC the same blackmail which it carried on for a year and a half inside the ICC in order to try to force us to accept its permanent violation of our statutes and the thuggish behaviour of the members of the 'Fraction' (theft of the ICC's documents and money, slanders against militants spread through secret correspondence and meetings, etc).

This method of blackmail and insinuation, of spreading calumnies against two of our comrades, of proclaiming loud and clear that "once again we have the documents which prove what we are saying" is not new from the IFICC. When its members were still in the ICC they behaved in the same way with regard to a document called 'The history of the IS' ((International Secretariat, permanent commission of the ICC's central organ). They circulated this in a selective manner and presented it as the proof of their accusations against certain of our comrades, particularly Louise and Peter. Despite the importance which they attributed to this document (which they described as "historic"), they always refused to place it in the hands of the organisation, including those of the Investigation Commission nominated by the 14th Congress of the ICC to shed light on these problems. Finally, this document was published in no. 10 of the IFICC Bulletin, after its members had deliberately placed themselves outside the organisation. At the express request of the central organ of the ICC, it was read by all our comrades who read the French language. All the sections and all the comrades were nauseated by the avalanche of lies contained in this document, as well as by the repulsive way it made use of comrades' private lives.

This is the kind of document that the IFICC is threatening to make public!

The organisations of the workers' movement have often been confronted by this kind of blackmail: "We have the documents which prove our accusations". Faced with these methods, the attitude of proletarian organisations has always been to demand the publication of these famous documents so that they can be publicly refuted. As for those which the IFICC goes on about, it's clear that the ICC is perfectly capable of refuting them as well. However, these documents deal with the details of the functioning of our organisation and the private life of its militants, and their publication could only be a gift to the police. This said, the ICC is perfectly willing for this document to be made available to a commission made up of trusted militants of the organisations of the communist left and to be discussed in this framework.

The ICC has nothing to fear from the truth because the truth can only

• demonstrate the fact that our organisation, both at the level of its positions and of its principles of functioning, remains totally loyal to its past experience as well to the experience of the communist left;
• reveal the consciously destructive and anti-proletarian character of Jonas and his supporters, as the publication of no. 14 and in particular the text 'Ultime mise au point' have once again shown.

ICC, February 2003.

(1) We often read or hear that the special organs of the bourgeois state have no interest in a small organisation like ours and that today the ruling class is unaware of the role that the communist left is destined to play in a future revolutionary movement. Such ideas express an enormous naivete, as can be seen for example by the 'anti-revisionist' campaigns which aimed to put into the same bag the groups of the left communist current who denounced anti-fascism and the extreme anti-semitic right. The whole history of the workers' movement attests to the fact that the special services of the bourgeois state never underestimate the potential danger represented by revolutionary groups, however small they might be, however little influence they may have in the working class at a given moment. Furthermore, despite the fact that for the moment the 'democratic' state does not generally use open repression against the groups of the communist left, the latter have already suffered from acts of repression (such as the raids on the PCI in the 1970s). The ICC itself has not been spared since certain of our militants, including in the most 'democratic' countries, have been subjected to raids, surveillance aimed at intimidation, prolonged interrogation at the frontier, and commando actions by armed elements probably mixed up with the state. The members of the IFICC know this perfectly well. Back

(2)) MC is our comrade Mark Chirik, who died in 1990. He lived through the revolution of 1917 in his native town of Kishinev in Moldavia. A member of the Communist Party of Palestine at the age of 13, expelled from the PCF in 1928, he carried on the struggle for the defence of revolutionary positions in different organisations of the communist left, notably the Italian Fraction which he joined in 1938 and the Gauche Communiste de France from 1945 onwards. From 1964 in Venezuela and 1968 in France, MC played a decisive role in the formation of the first groups who were to be at the origins of the ICC, giving the political and organisational experience he had acquired in the various communist organisations he had belonged to. You can find out more about the political biography of our comrade in our French-language pamphlet The Communist Left of France and in the articles in International Review 65 and 66, written at the time of his death. As for the ridiculous claim that Peter aims to be the "sole heir of MC" (completed by a note exclaiming "this shows the conception he has of the revolutionary organisation"), the members of the IFICC will have a hard time proving it. This shows the sick imagination and stupid spite of the members of the IFICC, as well as their own warped view of the organisation. Back

(3) In its Bulletin no. 11, the IFICC published a reply to a letter that we sent to each of its members asking them to return the internal documents in their possession. In its reply, the IFICC writes: "As for the copy of the subscribers' list, it is to say the least striking that you are claiming, like a shopkeeper jealous of his clients, a 'property' of people�But perhaps your concern is the security of these documents which could fall into 'indelicate' hands? We can assure you that they are being well looked after, and it will be difficult, not to say impossible, for 'indelicate people' to get their hands on them". After the IFICC's recent informer-like behaviour, we have an idea of how much confidence we can place in them! Back