COMMUNISTS and left organisations have hit out at a reactionary “ahistorical” motion passed by the European Parliament last month, which equates communism with “the monster of fascism.”

The European Communist Initiative condemned the “outrageous” resolution tabled by the right-wing European People’s Party group and warned of the escalating anti-communism of the European Union (EU).

The motion recognised the importance of “remembrance” for the future of Europe, but equates communism with the barbarity of nazism. It also called for the erasure all memorials of “totalitarianism” across Europe, including memorials dedicated to the Red Army. 

While it states that the second world war was “the most devastating conflict in the history of Europe,” the resolution claimed that it was “the immediate consequence of the German-Soviet non-aggression treaty of August 23 1939, also known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.”

But progressives and communist parties warned that adoption of the motion was merely an extension of EU anti-communist agenda and a reactionary falsification of history.

Communists are under attack in Ukraine where a 2014 EU-backed coup known as the EuroMaidan helped fascists enter the country’s parliament.

It has since passed a series of anti-communist laws prohibiting communist symbols and positive descriptions of the Soviet Union. In 2015 Kiev moved to ban the Communist Party of Ukraine.

Socialist newspaper Rabochaya Gazeta (Worker’s Newspaper) was banned in spring of this year for publishing articles quoting Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin – deemed to be a breach of the law.

It was also attacked for publishing pieces critical of the rehabilitation of nazi collaborators in Stepan Bandera’s Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).

The OUN organised massacres of hundreds of thousands of Jews and Poles during the nazi occupation of Ukraine. Denying the “heroism” of the OUN is also now illegal.

While Ukraine continues to rehabilitate fascist war criminals, it removed all 1,320 statues of Lenin and renamed streets to erase Ukraine’s socialist past.

The Communist Party of Greece branded the EU resolution a “reactionary monstrosity” aimed at legalising bans on communist parties and symbols imposed in a number of member states.

 It warned of an attempt to normalise the criminalisation of communist ideology and people’s movements across the world that are resisting “the anti-people policies of the EU and the growing trend of fascism.”

And the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) said: “The text now approved in the EU Parliament promotes the most reactionary conceptions and falsifications of modern history in a deplorable attempt to equate fascism and communism, minimising and justifying the crimes of nazi-fascism and silencing the collusive responsibilities of the great capitalist powers — like the United Kingdom and France — who paved the way to the beginning of world war [two] in the hope of pushing the nazi hordes upon the USSR.”

With respect to the singling out of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, “disregarding its historical context, the resolution adopted by the majority of the European Parliament omits how the great capitalist powers tolerated, colluded and aligned with the ascent of fascism in several European countries, motivated by the battle against the communist ideal and the enormous economic and social achievements of the workers and peoples of the USSR,” the PCP said.

The European Communist Initiative denounced the distortion of history and the “well-paid EU anti-communist events funding program [sic] ‘Europe for Citizens.’”

But it added that “anti-communism will not pass.

“All persecutions of the communists, bans on communist parties, destructions of monuments must stop. The truth will shine through and the people, especially the youth with their struggle, will conquer it and throw such constructions of capital and its organisations into the dustbin of history.”