Calls to ban the controversial cartoons are reactionary and should be vigorously opposed.

The thrust of such demands, and the character of the campaign to promote them by capitalist regimes in the Middle East and elsewhere, are lending a hand to the imperialist powers worldwide. Washington and the bourgeoisies across Europe are having a heyday with this controversy.

What a help to Washington’s efforts to solidify support in Europe—from Copenhagen to Amsterdam and Warsaw, from London, to Paris, Madrid, and Rome—for military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. What a help to their escalating threats against Iran, which is in greater danger from imperialist assault now than at any time since the 1979 popular revolution that overthrew the U.S.-backed regime of the shah.

What a boost to efforts by the rulers across the imperialist world to try to win popular backing, to sow confusion, as they press step by step to encroach on the political rights of working people and the oppressed to speak, publish, organize, and act.

Working people have no interest in supporting censorship laws of any kind, whether they are purportedly directed against pornography, so-called hate literature, blasphemy, or slandering the socialist state. Making Holocaust denial a legal offense—which has spread across Europe—is also an example of rationalizing new crimes as “politically correct” that is becoming rampant in the capitalist world. The main targets of all such laws are ultimately workers, farmers, and their organizations.

Demands to enforce censorship strengthen the hand of the capitalist ruling class to boost domestic spying on phone calls and e-mail, to expand the power of cop agencies to demand libraries hand over lists of individuals based on what they read, or to undermine the right to privacy.

In a recent column, Patrick Buchanan, an incipient fascist politician in the United States, claimed that “Muslims are simply more devout and resolute in defense of their faith than the milquetoast Christians of modernity” and they don’t believe “freedom of speech and the press should protect those who blaspheme their God or prophet.”

The opposite is true. Muslims, like other believers, are divided into classes. Among the swelling ranks of working people—from the Middle East to North America, from Europe to Africa, Asia, and the Pacific—there is a growing convergence among those who recognize the need to safeguard and extend democratic rights in order to defend the life and limb of the working class and its allies, and to fight for a world without class exploitation, national oppression, or sex discrimination.
 
 
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Imperialist powers use reactionary demands on banning Danish cartoons to attack rights, boost support for war  
 
 
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