ABSTRACT: Is it too much to expect the computer industry to consider the introduction of new codes for information exchange as a replacement for the American code?

Is it too much to expect the problem of international linguistic democracy to be treated, in European and international assemblies, as one of the most important issues of our age?

(THE PARTY NEW - N. 5 - FEBRUARY 1992)

If we pay a bit of attention to the computers that are used more and more frequently all over the world, we notice that they adopt the numerical codes of the American Standard Code for Information Interchange, known as the ASCII code, to define the letters used in our own languages.

The letters and other features of many languages are not covered by the American code. The reaction of many people has been to modify their own languages in order to adapt them to the American code, or even to make them similar, from the point of view of letters and accents, to English.

Is it too much to expect the computer industry to consider the introduction of different codes? A "world code", for example, perhaps under the auspices or with the financial backing of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization.

The problem is that too often bodies like the United Nations or UNESCO fail to carry out the role which they should play. Many people by now think that "world" is a synonym of "American". What has happened in the computer industry with the ASCII codes is also happening in communication between people from different countries, which usually involves the use of English. The most important data banks in the world, for example, only accept data in English, and the same thing is true of the major press and television agencies around the world. However, although the new 16- or 32-bit computers, which allow a wider range of codes, may save writing in our own languages, what is now happening with relation to instruments of communication is that only those who possess the most powerful instruments have the right to information.

One of the cornerstones of democracy is the need for knowledge as a basis for decision-making, and the current situation undermines the chances of achieving world democracy and international federalism. Moreover, the conquest of greater and greater areas by the dominant language is upsetting the cultural balances of the world.

Today our countries must come to terms not only with the environmental pollution of the planet, but also with cultural pollution. The strength of English, based on American supremacy, threatens to destroy the other languages and cultures in the space of a few generations, even more quickly than Latin in ancient Europe or Spanish in Central and South American.

The world, by now a "global village", undoubtedly requires dialogue and comprehension among all its inhabitants, but this will not be achieved by the violent and destructive action of an imperial language which absorbs all others. What is needed is a linguistic federalism capable, like u2e. political federalism, of creating a level of communication that is truly supernational - belonging to no single nation or culture, therefore - and of protecting and promoting, rather than destroying, the languages and the cultures of all peoples. The adoption, therefore, of a language that lives all over the world, an ethical rather than an ethnical language.

Esperantists believe that Esperanto has always been a form of human brotherhood, a brotherhood beyond races, languages and nationalities, beyond traditional internationalism and pacifism, which tend to make relations between nations easier but create nothing that can be placed above them. This explains, Esperantists believe, why they have always been persecuted and offended, both by dictators such as Stalin and Hitler and by nationalistic or "closed-shop" democrats. It also explains why the relationship with inter-nationalistic organizations such as the UN or UNESCO - which has actually approved two Resolutions in favour of Esperanto, in 1954 and 1985 - is unsatifactory and inadequate for the ideas and the needs of Esperantists.

In order to bring the question of international linguistic democracy to the attention of the world of politics, Esperantists aim to move forward through the achievement of partial aims:

1. We must create an awareness of the inevitability, as things stand, of the triumph of the powerful (in this case of English);

2. We must call attention to the "linguistic and cultural genocide" and the destruction of the world's linguistic ecosystem which the triumph of English will lead to;

3. Until such time as a supernational political power - the European Federation and then the world government - is able to choose Esperanto, we must prepare the ground for widespread knowledge of the language, based in particular on two immediate possibilities: the use of Esperanto as a foundation for the learning of other languages, and the creation of "anti-trust" laws to allow the free market and the free choice of all languages, including Esperanto.

The Radical Party offers Esperantists all over the world a practical forum for political action, a direct-membership, transnational and multi-parliamentary force beyond the control of national governments; a forum in which people are considered as such, and not on the basis of their linguistic or ethnic background; a forum which considers the planet to be the single homeland of the whole of humanity.