South Korea: The workers’ mobilization that stopped the coup and the never-ending crisis of the US puppet regime

The political crisis is exhausting the options available to the vassal bourgeois regime. President Yoon Seok Yeol tried to save himself by imposing a military coup (3/12) and hastened his downfall. Acting Prime Minister Han Duck-soo protected Yeol and was impeached. Now, the finance minister, committed to Yeol’s economic policy, is the hot topic. The role of the US on 3 December, to harden the regime against its own people and against North Korea, China and Russia.

We reproduce below the Second Declaration on the Struggle to Overthrow the December 3 Coup, published by the Bolshevik Group of South Korea on December 27, 2024

The December 3 military coup orchestrated by Yoon Seok-yeol, which abruptly froze our normal lives, has been thwarted for now. This was due to the swift actions of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) on the front line, together with the courageous workers and citizens who rushed to the National Assembly to confront the martial law forces. They stopped heavily armored vehicles equipped with machine guns with their bare hands and engaged in physical confrontation with special forces armed with firearms and various lethal equipment. These heroic actions eventually created a situation of overwhelming resistance, leading to the National Assembly’s resolution to lift the emergency martial law.

Sweeping away the embers of conspiracy and the forces that support it

*Page of the South Korean Bolshevik Group, with the original article. In the titles:*
*Punish Yoon Seok-yeol’s conspiracy*
*Eradicate the civil war against!*
*The United States must clearly indicate whether it intervened in advance of the conspiracy!*

However, the flames of the conspiracy have not been fully extinguished. Although some of the main perpetrators of the coup have been arrested, its leader, Yoon Seok-yeol, still formally retains his position in the presidential office. Many of the plot’s masterminds, participants, and accomplices remain in their positions in the military leadership, the cabinet, the prosecutor’s office, the police, and the Corruption Investigation Office. Furthermore, reports (MBC, December 24) indicate that dozens of special agents mobilized for the coup have not been disarmed and have not yet returned to their bases.

To prevent a recurrence of the coup and ensure peace in our society, those who participated in the conspiracy using brutal weapons must be severely punished. Even Cho Gab-je, former editor-in-chief of Monthly Chosun and a mentor of the far right, stated, “The highest leader must receive the maximum punishment to prevent this from happening again.” This task is clear.

However, some are resisting the effort to fully reveal and punish the details of the coup. Some are passively delaying the process and trying to complicate matters in a critical manner. Others are actively obstructing the punishment of the coup participants, claiming that the legalist coup was a “legitimate act for governability.” A prime example is the People’s Power Party, a far-right party rooted in extreme regional disputes that has been exploited as an instrument of governance since the Park Chung-hee regime.

The strength of pro-democracy protesters

This is why we cannot be optimistic about the current situation. This is why we must go to the protest sites. In the 20 days since the coup, the number of protesters demanding punishment for the perpetrators of the plot has already exceeded several million. Protesters are braving the bitter cold, with temperatures dropping to minus 10 degrees Celsius, to participate in demonstrations. On the 22nd, they even stayed up all night in Namtaeryeong, where freezing winds bit their skin, to show solidarity with the farmer protesters who came on tractors.

*Yoon Seok-yeol, the former president (centre), was removed from office after the attempted military coup.*

The political atmosphere is tense and solemn, but the protesters are bright and energetic. The protests, dominated by teenagers and people in their thirties, are full of energy. Sometimes solemn, but usually upbeat. K-pop, protest songs, candles and glow sticks of fandom come together in harmony, uniting as one. Most of the protesters were ordinary workers who lived their daily lives before the coup. Participants who enjoyed work, leisure, hobbies of “idol revival, games, etc.” and socializing were shocked by the crazy coup. They were outraged by how martial law suppressed their daily lives colored with dull steel gray. They gathered in the streets to protect their way of life. Ordinary people temporarily reserved their leisure time to courageously face the brutal violence that threatens social peace.

This force will not be broken. When the overwhelming majority of society comes together with this determination, the fight will never be lost. Even the most foolish will understand this.

Those who seek to tame the current of democracy

They seek to slow down the social ascension of the population against the coup and the regime that engineered it. Their aim is to tame the political current. A strong current could destroy the surface and reveal the true causes of social suffering. It could even reach the heart of power and wealth, long considered untouchable. Their mission, therefore, is to tame the current, slow it down and drain its energy. Their aim is to extend the course of the current and channel it into a path of their choosing in order to control it. This is how the massive candlelight protests of 2016-17 were finally controlled by the impeachment of March.

“We cannot oppose the direction of punishing treacherous criminals, including Yoon Suk-yeol, but we will minimize and restrict the scope and severity of punishment, to prepare for the future and protect our power and wealth intact.” This reflects the mindset of the coup plotters, accomplices and sympathizers.

Currently, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo appears to be at the forefront of this process of trying to control the current. After the impeachment of Yoon Suk-yeol was approved by the National Assembly, Han, who is serving as acting president, has been delaying proceedings to hold the coup leaders accountable. Yeongnam’s far-right People’s Power Party (PPP) is protecting him.

Protesters hold a banner showing images of impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol, right, and then-acting (now impeached) President Han Duck-soo during a rally demanding Yoon’s arrest in Seoul, South Korea. (Source: Associated Press)

The role of the United States

It is not just the People’s Power Party that is seeking to tame the current using Han Duck-soo. The United States is also involved. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said at an Asia-Pacific press conference in Washington, DC, on the 19th, “We support the transitional role of Acting President and Prime Minister Han Duck-soo.” US President Joe Biden also reportedly told Acting President Han in a phone call on the 15th, “I know you very well and I trust you completely.” (Chosun Ilbo, December 21, 2024)

This intention was soon communicated to the Korean political sphere. U.S. Ambassador Goldberg met with Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung and People Power Party leader Kweon Seong-dong on the 23rd to convey the message. Ambassador Goldberg stated, “The common goals of the United States and South Korea will be prioritized in collaboration with Acting President and Prime Minister Han Duck-soo and the Korean government.” This statement came at a time when efforts to impeach the sitting president were underway. Sitting humbly like a classroom monitor summoned to the teacher’s office, Lee Jae-myung bowed his head, stating:

“Not only South Korea-U.S. relations continue, but also cooperation between South Korea, the U.S. and Japan.”

Thus the human current slowed as if the brakes had been applied. On the 24th, the Democratic Party, which declared:

“The investigation into the coup cannot be compromised. Acting President Han’s remarks are aimed at prolonging the coup. We will immediately initiate impeachment proceedings against him,”

changed his position, stating:

“We have decided to be patient and see if the appointment of the Constitutional Court judges on the 26th and our demands are met, taking into account the feelings of the people.”

What sentiments did the Democratic Party consider? Although it is not clear whose heart they had in mind, it is certain that the US and the People Power Party intend to slow down the current.

Where is the Democratic Party headed?

The Democratic Party is caught between two opposing forces in the aftermath of the December 3 coup. On the left, there is pressure from tens or hundreds of thousands of citizens and workers who are demanding the punishment of Yoon Suk-yeol and other coup participants, while also advocating the National Assembly resolution to lift martial law. On the right, there is pressure from US imperialism, which holds hegemony over the capitalist system in South Korea, together with local capital and its far-right proxy, the People’s Power Party (PPP).

On December 16, the Democratic Party balked, stating:

“We will not proceed with the impeachment of Premier Han. We will establish a National Stability Advisory Body.”

However, so far it has been driven largely by strong pressure from the left to move towards “repelling the coup and defending democracy”.

However, the expansion of democracy ultimately threatens the dictatorship of capital. Thus, the Democratic Party will ultimately stop the democratic struggle. This will betray the cause of democracy.

On December 27, at 4:30 p.m., the Democratic Party voted to impeach incumbent President Han Duck-soo. This was the result of giving in to pressure from millions of protesters. With this, the fight to repel the December 3 coup has advanced one step further.

At the Top of the Food Chain: US Imperialism

The relationship between South Korea and the United States is not one of equals; it is hierarchical. The United States defeated Japan during World War II, a war of imperialist rivalry, and became the ruler of South Korea. With its role and influence in South Korea’s economy, establishment and control of the military, networks of political elites, and British-centered cultural dominance, imperialist America sits at the apex of the food chain in South Korean society.

The US extracts huge surplus profits from South Korea, as was clearly demonstrated during the 1997 IMF crisis. In addition, South Korea serves as a front line against Russia (the former Soviet Union), North Korea, and China. Along with Japan and Taiwan, it is a strategic stronghold of US imperialism. Pyeongtaek hosts the largest US military base in the world, and the commander of US Forces Korea also serves as the commander of the Korea-US Combined Forces Command, which has military operational authority. Through various channels such as the embassy, the CIA, and NGOs, the US maintains a dense network of relationships, gathering information in real time. With this power, it exerts decisive influence not only on the economy and the military, but also on politics, education, the media, and culture.

Pyeongtaek, South Korea: The largest US military base in the world. The commander of US Forces in South Korea is also the commander of the South Korean Armed Forces, which makes it unbelievable that any military mobilization, especially for a military coup, could occur without the US being aware of it.

Didn’t the US know about the conspiracy and execution of martial law?

*President Donald Trump poses for a group photo at the Eighth Army Operational Command Center at Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2017. Andrew Harnik/AP*

The US claims to have had no involvement in the December 3 martial law declared by Yoon Seok-yeol and his faction, saying that they only became aware of the incident after it occurred. This is a claim that is hard to believe. The highest command of the South Korean military is the Combined Forces Command, and the US holds wartime operational command through it, overseeing the Army, Navy and Air Force. Through its embassy and the CIA, the US also collects information from South Korean intelligence agencies and political circles. It is even said that the US is conducting surveillance on key institutions, including the Presidential Office. Furthermore, this martial law was planned a year in advance, with the plotters lining up their intentions. At least four months before, there were warnings about the coup plot in the political sphere. Furthermore, this coup was not limited to a few units – known participants included the Defense Security Command, the National Intelligence Service, the Defense Security Command, the Special Warfare Command, along with their subordinate units such as the 707th Special Mission Group, airborne units, and tank units, all of which were extensively involved.

US military bases in South Korea. The US has almost 30,000 military and intelligence officers to control not only South Korea, but also spy on all countries in the region, China, Russia, North Korea and also allies such as Japan. However, with all this intelligence and military apparatus, the US says it was not behind and knew nothing about the military coup d’état staged by the South Korean government.

But didn’t the US know? Are we to believe that this plan was hidden for almost a year, avoiding detection by the extensive US networks and information channels? And that it was done by ignorant fools relying on superstition? We find this hard to accept.

We believe that the relationship with the US should be included in the investigation of the coup and uprising. Did the US really not know? How could it not know? If it knew in advance, why did it not prevent it? Could it have been involved in the conspiracy, or perhaps knowing the plans, it simply let everything happen, turning a blind eye? This must be clarified. This is a crucial task to identify the origins of the current situation and prevent future recurrences. After all, the US has historically been involved in military coups in colonies, including those of Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan, ever since the US gained global hegemonic power.

– The working class must take the lead and immediately remove and punish the coup leader Yoon Seok-yeol and his entire faction!

– Even if we have to make the same mistake again, we will force Yoon Seok-yeol to resign!

– Politicians, including those from the Democratic Party, are not the solution to the problem, but just another set of figures responsible for changing roles. We must reject any illusions about capitalist politicians!

– Let us be careful with the brakes that the Democratic Party is putting on the flow of the fight for democracy!

– The US must clearly clarify whether it knew in advance about the December 3 coup!

– The root of the problem is ultimately capitalism. Let’s establish a workers’ government!

Imperialism’s Barbarism Against Palestine and Russia: Genocide is here, World War 3 Threatens!

We need a new Communist International! For Russian Victory in Ukraine!

For an armed anti-imperialist united front to stop the Zionist genocide!

International Workers Revolution is the Only Road to Peace!

Joint statement of LCFI and ClassConscious

Capitalist-imperialist barbarism is staring humanity in the face. US imperialism’s internal contradictions and desperation to hang onto its world hegemony has led to an immediate threat of nuclear war, as close as if not closer than anything that happened in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The NATO expansion drive through the proxy war in Ukraine now means Russia is being bombed by the United States and Britain with US and British-controlled medium range Cruise Missiles (Storm Shadow and ATACMS). These missiles are being controlled directly by the imperialists, and their use constitutes direct acts of war by the US and Britain, since Ukraine does not have the personnel or the technological means to operate them autonomously. This has been engineered by the lame-duck Biden administration since they lost the presidential election to Donald Trump. Biden is too mentally feeble to be in control – it is functionaries of the liberal-militarist US establishment and likely the military themselves who are calling the shots here, trying by means of escalation to pre-empt what Trump might be inclined to do about Ukraine from 21^st January when he takes office.

In response, on 21^st November, Russia battle-tested a new ‘game changing’ weapon against a Ukrainian missile and armaments facility near Dnipro, a mid-range hypersonic, multi-warheaded missile. Its speed, Mach 10 (10 times the speed of sound) means it travels at 3 kilometres per second, considerably faster than the interception capacity of all the missile defence facilities of Europe‘s imperialist nations and the various East European US clients, which are simply defenceless before it. The new missile, Oreshnik (Hazel Tree) can carry both conventional and nuclear warheads, and if the imperialists were rational, ought to be sufficient several times over to make them back off from attacking Russia. Whether they are rational enough to take note of the lesson remains to be seen.

The genocide in Gaza, livestreamed on social media even in the imperialist countries (though suppressed insofar as is possible by the pro-Zionist bourgeois mainstream media), has found a judicial expression with the indictments of Netanyahu and Gallant by the International Criminal Court for “crimes against humanity” and “using starvation as a weapon of war”. Which barely scratches the surface of Zionism’s crimes. The ICC is a phoney court that was originally set up by the imperialists to arraign the leaders of disobedient countries outside the Western imperialist club. One of its first actions was to condemn Serbia in the NATO war against Yugoslavia. Slobodan Milosevic, the leader of the Balkan country, was arbitrarily convicted and imprisoned by the imperialist tribunal, despite Yugoslavia not recognizing the jurisdiction of this tribunal over the country. Transferred to The Hague, without even having his extradition approved, as required by Yugoslav criminal law, Milosevic was unjustly tried and convicted of genocide. He was found dead in his cell under suspicion of a heart attack deliberately induced by the tribunal. Numerous African leaders have been charged by the ICC, but their most prominent targets include Vladmir Putin, as part of the West’s fraudulent casting of resistance to NATO expansion in Ukraine as somehow criminal.

But the exposure of Israel’s depraved extermination of helpless Palestinian civilians, including women and children, medical staff, journalists, aid workers, even hospital patients, produced mass pressure on this stooge body to act and indict Israeli leaders. Even then, the cowards had to indict a Hamas leader for ‘balance’, even though the individual they indicted has almost certainly himself been murdered by Israel. The Zionists objected and delayed the indictment for months. They appear to have been instrumental in injecting sexual allegations against the ICC prosecutor to try to sabotage the indictment. But the pressure from below was too much, and now the indictments are issued. It puts European politicians, whose countries for the most part endorse the court, in legal jeopardy for their arming Israel to carry out these crimes.

The United States does not endorse the court – despite its stooge nature, they understand that US forces routinely commit terrible crimes around the globe and even a formal affiliation can put its forces at risk if the ICC comes under sustained mass pressure over some US atrocity, as has happened to Israel over the Zionist holocaust. The US has a law, known popularly as the ‘Hague Invasion Act’, which mandates that US governments should use military force against the ICC should it arrest any US politicians or operatives.

Trump’s New Rise to Power

Trump’s election on November 5^th, the defeat of Harris acting as second string for the incapacitated, senile Biden, has brought to the fore the contradictions within the US as its world imperialist hegemony slips away. Trump is basically a fascist in the US context, but there sometimes appears to be an element of rhetorical US isolationism in his attitude to the Ukrainian war. His wing of the US ruling class sees China, not Russia, as the main challenger to US imperialism because of its greater productive capacity and economic power.

Their likely objective is to do a deal with Russia and back off from the Ukraine conflict, hoping to drive a wedge between Russia and China. In fact, so single-mindedly are they focussed on China that at least some of them are inclined to dump NATO and Europe as a waste of resources that the US is far too ‘generous’ to. They demand that European capitalism, not the US, pays for NATO. Though going by some of Trump’s picks for his incoming administration, some of this may be more rhetoric than reality. Trump has appointed Sebastian Gorka, a hawk who has attacked ‘isolationism’ over Ukraine, as his chief of ‘Counterterrorism’ and ‘Special Assistant’. Also among his picks for his new administration are the most virulent Zionists imaginable. Christian Zionist Mike Huckabee, who will be US Ambassador to Israel, says there are no such things as Palestinians, no West Bank, and no occupation.

Trump’s people are even more single-mindedly focussed on support for Israel than the Biden administration was, as Huckabee’s appointment shows. Trump criticised ‘Genocide Joe’ for being insufficiently supportive of Netanyahu’s attempted extermination of Gazans – he said directly that Israel should be supported to “finish the job” of extermination. Republican senators such as Lindsay Graham call for ‘sanctions’ against the ICC, and even against other nations who cooperate with the ICC over Netanyahu and Gallant – this could easily include Britain, France and Germany, who have placed themselves under its jurisdiction years ago. Though Germany says that it would not arrest Israeli leaders supposedly because of its own history of Nazism, that stance could cause them legal problems.

These tactical differences are sharply expressed now, as the large, putatively ‘liberal’ wing of the US ruling class that still gravitates around Biden and Harris sees Ukraine as just as paramount as support for Israel if not more so. This nuance implicitly is about whether the Israel lobby calls the shots in US politics, or the presumed interests of the US itself, as well as whether China is more important as an enemy than Russia in global geopolitics. With the rise of BRICS, and the consolidation of Russia-China cooperation, they appear much too late with this. The US is far weaker, and Russia/China/BRICS are far stronger, than in Trump’s first presidency.

Trump is a pro-Zionist fascist, who denounces his liberal-imperialist opponents such as Harris and the rest of the Democratic Party as ‘communists’ and ‘Marxists’. He promises massive deportations of undocumented workers, up to 13 million by some counts, as well as to use the US military to ‘deal with’ his political opponents among the bourgeois establishment, Democratic and Republican, and to crush left-wing and pro-Palestine demonstrations and mobilisations more generally.

Trump has been one of the key authors of a years-long, accelerating coup in US bourgeois politics. It had its precursors with the end of all restrictions on corporate funding in politics in 2010 (Citizens United). But having come to power in 2016 with massive funding from Sheldon Adelson of Likud, despite not even winning the popular vote (and in fact losing by 3 million votes), Trump proceeded to replace enough Supreme Court judges during his first term of office (2017-2021) to create a far-right supermajority on the Supreme Court. While he was out of office, during Biden’s presidency, this supermajority declared that a President in office had virtually unlimited power to carry out acts ‘in his/her official capacity’ that for anyone else would mean prosecution and jail. So, the feeble attempts by elements of the US state to hold him criminally responsible for his attempted putsch on January 6, 2021, were ruled out by ‘his’ Supreme Court supermajority.

Trump and his wing of the ruling class now have control over all branches of the US executive. In addition, Trump has been cultivating an extra-parliamentary wing to his fascist movement based like all fascist movements on animating the most reactionary layers of the petty bourgeoisie. We saw the utilisation of these heavily armed layers both to help confront the Black Lives Matter protests and most obviously in the attempted putsch of January the 6th. These layers which are animated by white supremacy and Christian nationalism are an extra resource for advancing fascism in the US if Trump finds the methods of the state insufficient in the face of mass working class resistance.

Ukraine War Crushed Biden/Harris

The loss of US hegemony is accelerating and what politically crushed the Biden-Harris regime was mainly the inflationary wave that the Ukraine war sanctions against Russian oil sent through the West, and the enormous amounts the US and NATO countries vainly spent trying to defeat Russia in Ukraine. They have not succeeded in inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia; but NATO is now close to defeat itself in Ukraine. They are desperate to stave this off and have been resorting to increasingly desperate means as defeat got closer and closer over the last few months. The threat to target Russia with Western guided missiles from Ukraine was one such tactic – Putin warned on September 10^th that such actions could produce a Russian nuclear response, which caused Biden to back off from the idea at that time. And the failing attempt to create another Maidan-style ‘colour revolution’ in Georgia, and similar activities in Moldova, represent attempts to open up yet another front to attack Russia, in Moldova particularly through a potential attack on the mainly Russian-speaking region of Transnistria, which is close to mainly Russian-speaking Odessa within Ukraine, another disputed territory that no doubt would join Russia if it got the chance in the context of a Russian victory in Ukraine.

The economic strains on the US population from the US bourgeoisie’s Ukraine war caused the collapse of the Biden administration’s electoral base, with Harris getting seven million less votes than Biden managed in 2020, whereas Trump won the popular vote this time with around two and a half million more votes than he did in 2020. This time, Trump won the popular vote by around that margin, two and a half million votes. The complaints that he was the victim of a fraudulent election system in 2020 stand discredited by this, but he managed to gain power anyway. Mainly because the Ukraine war and its economic consequences caused large amounts of suffering to working-class people in the US, and his promises to end the war resonated with that population. And Harris’s clear endorsement of all the actions of Biden’s administration in funding, arming and politically supporting Israel’s year-long genocide in Gaza and now its bloody rampage against the population of Lebanon also discredited the Democrats among their base among class conscious workers, particularly those from oppressed minorities.

The virtually open shift to the US and NATO powers firing longer-range missiles into Russia and Ukraine makes it very clear that Ukraine has all along been simply a Western puppet – this is not a war for ‘national liberation’ or against ‘Russian imperialism’ as social-imperialists putatively on the left like the majority of the so-called United Secretariat of the Fourth International, or the Revolutionary Communist Internationalist Tendency, like to pretend. This is a Western-initiated proxy war, barely hidden behind clouds of imperialist camouflage rhetoric, aimed at defeating and dismembering Russia, and nothing whatsoever to do with any putative rights of Ukrainians. The Russian Federation does not have any project of oppressing Ukrainians – that is why their war over the past two-and-a-half years had been so painstaking – a war of attrition with high Ukrainian military casualties but kept minimal for civilians. Russia clearly has the armed capacity to wage a blitzkrieg-type war, bomb the hell out of Ukraine and take territory rapidly, if it wanted to. But that kind of war would cause massive civilian casualties, and today’s Russian politicians do not seek such bloodshed. Ukrainians are regarded as a fraternal people, not targets for indiscriminate terror. It is the West that is inflicting civilian casualties in this war by using petal mines, depleted Uranium weapons and now openly supplying anti-personnel landmines to attack civilians in the newly Russian territories.

Zionist barbarism. Hospital patients in Gaza forced onto death march by Israeli troop captors.

The Need for a New Communist International

Those on the Trotskyist left who claim to be consistent defencists of struggles against imperialism but have not yet unequivocally taken a side with Russia against imperialism, instead engaging in third-campist rhetoric about how Russian and Ukrainian workers should unite against Putin and NATO, ought to be forced to re-assess their wrong position by recent events involving Storm Shadow and ATACMS. The new Spartacists have been the prime example of supposedly orthodox Communists/Trotskyists who have been promoting these erroneous views recently. But the idea that this is in any way a national war between Ukraine and Russia ought to be completely blown away by these events. Even the most dull-witted should be able to discern that the Ukraine conflict is now, and always was, fundamentally a defensive and progressive war by Russia aimed at defending this non-imperialist, ex-workers’ state against imperialist-planned dismemberment.

World War III is very much on the horizon. Some may even argue that it is already underway. That is a matter of interpretation at this point. Trotsky’s remarks about the leadup to World War II make sobering reading today:

“Under the increasing tension of capitalist disintegration, imperialist antagonisms reach an impasse at the height of which separate clashes and bloody local disturbances (Ethiopia, Spain, the Far East, Central Europe) must inevitably coalesce into a conflagration of world dimensions. The bourgeoisie, of course, is aware of the mortal danger to its domination represented by a new war. But that class is now immeasurably less capable of averting war than on the eve of 1914.” (Transitional Programme, 1938)

Though today we are in a different situation, as we are not facing an inter-imperialist conflict, but the threat of a war by NATO imperialism to maintain US/Western hegemony against a loose alliance of remaining workers states, non-imperialist ex-workers states (retaining significant elements of previous post-capitalist productive and state apparatus as major deformations on a weak restored capitalism), and more classically semi-colonial countries seeking to escape imperialist domination and dictat. But the West does not tolerate this kind of insubordination, and the threat of a world war to restore US hegemony and imperialist domination is very real. All these insurgent countries must be defended against imperialism as a matter of principle by the workers’ movements of the world.

Communists need to be providing revolutionary leadership in this situation, advocating anti-imperialist united fronts to deal with these barbarities. The problem of Zionism and its genocidal aggression against the Arab peoples needs to be resolved by an anti-imperialist united front. We must demand that Russia and China throw their full economic and military resources into fighting the Zionist genocide and defeating Israel in this life-and-death struggle for the Arab peoples. We advocate the independent mass mobilisation of workers wherever it is feasible. Previously we have advocated a ‘coalition of the willing’ to intervene militarily to stop the Zionist slaughter wherever it is happening – the recent Iranian retaliatory actions against Israel also underline that this is feasible.

But in the end, even an anti-imperialist united front is not completely adequate. Every such united front needs a consciously revolutionary, working-class component to make it effective and viable. The only permanent road to peace, the only solution to all the deadly problems that beset humanity in this situation, from the threat of nuclear annihilation to disaster through the capitalist-induced destruction of the biosphere, is through the creation of a mass Communist Movement internationally. We need a new world party of socialist revolution to unite all subjective communists, all consistent anti-imperialists, under one banner based on free discussion of differences, but unity in action, in pursuit of international socialism. For workers revolution is the only road to real peace!

Trump cannot “Make America Great Again” – the ship has sailed!

Here is an interesting commentary on the election of the fascist demagogue Donald Trump from the Facebook page of Mike Gimbel, a lifelong Communist from the United States.

Many good people are, for good reasons, horrified by the election, yesterday, in the US, of Donald Trump as President.

Donald Trump is just as arrogant, racist and Misogynist today, as when he was elected US President, in 2016.

However, there is a huge difference economically, politically and militarily for US imperialism, in 2024, from 2016.

The world has changed!

That is why we need to be confident that our working class and oppressed comrades should be optimistic!

In 2016 the US was able to intimidate and threaten every nation on the globe, with economic sanctions and military threats.

In 2016, every nation on the globe, even including China and Russia, had to measure very carefully, their actions and their words, in terms of how US-led imperialism would react.

US-led imperialism acted with confidence and arrogance, as WORLD HEGEMON, in 2016.

Today, in 2024, US-led imperialism is in the process of seeing its hegemony evaporate before the eyes of the people of the entire world and has become the object of hatred over its leading role in the genocide in Gaza.

When Donald Trump takes the oath of office, as US President, on January 20, 2025, he will face the world with his usual arrogance limited greatly, because he will be the leader of a hugely weakened world power.

Donald Trump’s arrogance and anger, therefore, can logically only be utilized WITHIN the USA, not externally against Russia and China, no matter how much he may wish to.

However, Logic is not Donald Trump’s greatest asset! We will have to wait and see whether the neocons around him will lead Trump into a stupid military misadventure, which will only ACCELERATE US-led imperialism’s collapse!

For now, it appears that Trump is determined to avoid such a war and, instead, to try to fight an economic trade war, not only with China, but with much of the nations of the globe! Not a wise move!

This economic trade war will further destroy the economic well-being of the US population, as an inflationary spiral would result from that trade war.

The Tariffs imposed on foreign goods, by Trump’s proposed economic policies, would have to be paid for by the working class at the checkout counters in the retail establishments, because most of the goods purchased in the US, will be of foreign production.

How will that strengthen US imperialism? It cannot and will not! It will just further weaken the economy as the purchasing power of the US population will decline drastically, forcing thousands of US businesses into bankruptcy, for lack of customers!

Trump’s election triumph will, at first, make his fascist followers ‘heady’ with hopes that CANNOT BE FULFILLED!

Trump’s slogan: “Make America Great Again” cannot be made a reality. That ‘ship’ has sailed!

US imperialism faces a hard reality:

IT IS $36 TRILLION IN DEBT!

US imperialism’s economy is being strangled by those 850 foreign military bases, which serve only TODAY, as ‘easy targets’, no longer as a projection of actual military power!

The monstrous cost to the US budget and the US economy, for maintenance of those foreign bases, will quickly become a dividing issue withing the capitalist ruling classes, within the USA, once the realization of the loss of effectiveness of those military bases, for demonstrating US imperialism’s military power, becomes apparent.

The US military Industrial Complex (MIC) is not the center of control of US capitalist rule, no matter how much some on the left may believe it.

What is a MIC used for?

It is the “WORLD POLICE FORCE” to protect US imperialist profits and the US capitalist ruling classes!

The MIC is just like your local police force, which is designed to intimidate the internal class enemy, whereas the MIC is the US POLICE FORCE for intimidating the EXTERNAL class enemy.

The Middle East Oil and Gas is the greatest source of profit for US-led imperialism and its capitalist ruling classes.

In the Middle East, the MIC is the imperialist protection force for that oil and gas predation of the Middle East.

The Zionist entity was set up as an imperialist MILITARY OUTPOST, for the MIC, to protect US-led imperialism’s predatory profits, against any attempt by nations in the region’s attempts to nationalize their oil and gas production facilities.

Donald Trump, in other words, is taking control of the leadership of US imperialism, with few, if any, ‘cards’ to play because the MIC, after losing wars in the Ukraine and in Palestine, is now draining the power of US imperialism, not the other way around!

In other words, Donald Trump cannot “Make America Great Again”!

His followers will be quickly disappointed!

Yes, the maniacal fascist ‘core’ of Trump’s supporters will ignore reality and are likely to try to smash everything and everyone to their left, when Trump is unable to fulfill their furtive dreams, but the mass of the population will move strongly to the left, in order to defend their standard of living, under the coming harsh economic austerity that Trump will be forced to implement.

AGAIN, I REPEAT:

DONALD TRUMP HAS NO ANSWERS FOR WHAT IS COMING!

THIS IS NOT THE GERMANY OF WWI AND WWII.

In WWI and WWII, Germany was a rising imperialist power, with a huge industrial base. In both wars, Germany could hope to challenge US imperialism for world dominance, if it was able to place the entire European industrial base under its military control. (see my linked video, below, for historical background)

The US is not the Germany of those two wars!

Germany was an industrial power! The US de-industrialized!

The New York Stock Exchange cannot fight a war! It produces nothing!

Donald Trump’s confusion also comes from the fact that his wealth comes from completely outside of the industrial and manufacturing and mining sectors.

Trump is a ‘Real Estate Baron’.

Trump is just a BIG LANDLORD, the very epitome of a ‘rentier’ capitalist!

Capitalism is based upon production of goods, whereas a LANDLORD is a relic of FEUDALISM.

LANDLORD’s serve no purpose in capitalist production! They are the ultimate ‘bloodsuckers’.

In every revolution, the first target of the outraged masses, is the LANDLORD!

Donald Trump knows how to ‘Buy and Sell’, which is a relic of a long bygone era, but has little knowledge of CAPITALIST PRODUCTION! That is why Trump focuses on TRADE, not PRODUCTION, as the solution to the US imperialist economic problems!

Putting tariffs on goods entering the country, trying to force foreign capitalist to relocate their factories to the USA, in order to sell into the massive US market, is folly.

The massive rise in inflation, due to the cost created by those very tariffs, will be a huge disincentive to that investment, as it will cause the US market to shrink, simply because the US masses will not have the money to buy those goods!

As such, Donald Trump can be, and likely will remain, the ‘bull in the China shop’, breaking all the dishes. He can’t help himself. He doesn’t understand the economic system that he is the leader of. He has no vital connection, in his experience, to its CAPITALIST economic base.

The Democratic Party, representing the core of the US capitalist ruling classes, has decades of experience leading US CAPITALISM.

Donald Trump, however, is likely to make US-led imperialism go even quicker into decline simply because he has far less experience and far less necessary connections to experienced ruling class leaders needed to do the job. US imperialism has hired a veritable “Mob Boss” as its leader! A “Mob Boss” only knows how to run a ‘protection racket’, not an economy!

Yes, the near future, for the US working classes and oppressed peoples, may likely be made difficult, perhaps even in bloody confrontations, but that difficulty comes with an optimistic outcome a little farther ‘down the road’.

JUST BE PATIENT AND READY TO STRUGGLE, COMRADES!

GET READY!

ORGANIZE!

COMMUNISM WILL WIN!

US Elections – Vote PSL, No Votes for Harris or Trump. United Front Action to oppose any Far-Right Putsch!

Joint Statement of LCFI and ClassConscious.org

As Marxists, we can never give support to outright bourgeois, imperialist parties like the Democrats and Republicans in the United States. This is certainly true in the current US election to take place on November 5^th, when the fascist-Republican Donald Trump squares off against the Democratic Party nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris. Both parties represent different factions of the bourgeoisie, both pitch for support from different sections of the working class. The purpose being to chain those sections of the masses to thoroughly bourgeois politics, and in Trump’s case, to try to mobilise the most backward elements to try to bludgeon his way back to power irrespective of the popular vote of the US American people.

We seek to find a way to draw a class line in this election against the imperialist parties, who are up to their necks in support to Israel’s genocidal campaign to destroy the Palestinian people, which is now spreading genocidal Zionist terrorism and massacres of civilians throughout the West Asia/Middle East region. The Biden administration is also up to its neck in the US proxy war in Ukraine, as part of a new Cold War against Russia and China, non-imperialist adversaries that have put themselves at the head of a bloc of ex-colonial countries, workers states and former workers states resisting imperialist hegemony.

We call upon all socialists, anti-racists and class-conscious workers to vote for the ticket of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), and its Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates, Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia. Though there is much in the campaign of the PSL that represents left-liberal sentiment – in particular their material on Ukraine is weak – nevertheless by counterposing a socialist campaign to the two main bourgeois parties, they are drawing a class line in this election in an elemental manner. In quite a few places, the bourgeois parties, particularly the Democrats, are trying hard to marginalise them by keeping them off the ballot.

PSL Candiates Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia, and a guide to how to vote for them for US readers. See https://votesocialist2024.com/ for more information.

Such basic class politics is particularly crucial today, as US bourgeois politics has reached a stage of decay so deep that it seems likely that the outcome of this election could bring about something close to civil war, and the Trump/Republican side openly threatens both bourgeois and left-wing political opponents with imprisonment, violence, and the use of the US military to crush the so-called ‘enemy within’.

Trump can only move forward with this threat of a coup d’état and second American civil war, and this time go beyond his 2021 Beer Hall Putsch if Trumpism manages to divide the national repressive apparatus and the ‘deep state’: Pentagon, National Guard, CIA, FBI, making them bear the cost of war. Without this, Trump does not have the military strength and intelligence to even start a civil war or consistently blackmail the Democrats.

Trump’s rise to office for his first term from 2016 to 2020 was fuelled in large measure by popular disillusionment with neoliberal politics and economics, privatisation, deregulation and attacks on the living standards of the working class. The decline of US manufacturing industry, parallelling what happened in Britain and other places, was part of the neoliberal strategy of engineering the decline of the working class at home through the export of unionised, decent-paying jobs to lower wage countries in the Global Rest, including China. Over time, this undermined support from such unionised workers for the Democrats and produced Trumpism, which mobilised angry sections of increasingly impoverished, under-employed workers behind Trump’s call to ‘Make America Great Again’.

Many of Trump’s working-class supporters in 2016 were under the illusion that he was on their side against such things. His racism and anti-Muslim vitriol and abuses, and rampant support for Zionists (who provided him with many millions of dollars of funding), was used to fuel a nationalist protectionism and the illusion that his anti-immigration brutality and chauvinist hostility to China, his racist contempt for blacks and his hatred of the Black Lives Matter movement went hand-in-hand with a programme to revive US manufacturing, that this was the real concept behind ‘MAGA’ (“Make America Great Again”).

There is also the illusion that Trump was in some way anti-war, even that he was supported by Putin’s Russia, which has fuelled illusions among some anti-imperialist activists. The liberals “Russiagate” delusion was an effort to use the factional split in the US ruling class to further whip up war hysteria against Russia by casting Trump as a tool of the “all powerful Putin”. The Democrats represent the faction of the US ruling class who wanted to crush Russia first before moving onto war with China. It was also an act of projection to divert attention from Trump being fully backed by Zionist forces rather than Russia.

Trump was far from pro-worker: virtually the first thing he did when he took office in January 2017 was to institute a massive tax-cut, mainly for the very rich. His far-right appointments to the Supreme Court did what they were meant to do – they abolished a woman’s right to abortion on a federal level, giving every backward state the right to deny basic rights to women.

And far from being a peacemaker in power, one of his most virulent, warmongering actions was that in 2019 he tore up the Reagan-Gorbachev Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty of 1987, that resulted in the removal of Cruise and Pershing Missiles from Europe, that in the1980s were a potent threat of nuclear first-strike against the USSR. His anti-Russian warmongering was of such intensity that his first Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, was so outraged and frightened by his intensity, that he notoriously lost his temper and called Trump a ‘fucking moron’. Trump also personally ordered the murder of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps Qasem Soleimani in January 2020, a notorious act of war against Iran. The went together with Trump’s tearing up of Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, which is what he was paid to do by the Likudnik casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson. He did much else for the Zionists – he moved the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and recognised Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights from Syria. This laid the basis for overt US support to the current genocide – all such capitulations and favours to Israel then put the lobby in a stronger position over the next President to continue them, which Biden duly did.

And while there may be illusions about Trump supposedly being set to stop US support for Ukraine, it should be recalled that it was under Trump’s presidency that Zelensky was groomed as Jewish camouflage for the Nazi-dominated US puppet regime that has waged a proxy war against the people of the Donbass and Crimea on behalf of the US and NATO. In February 2022 this became a proxy war against Russia itself, as Russia intervened in the East of Ukraine to protect the people of the Donbass from a massive US-funded offensive that began 10 days before Putin finally kicked off the Special Military Operation.

Harris appears like a younger copy of Biden. Her early history as a reactionary District Attorney and then Attorney General in California put her on the same wing of the Democratic Party as Bill Clinton and Biden, with their ‘Effective Death Penalty’ Act that tried to out-Reagan the Republican Party themselves. In California she could not be as virulent as that, but she both professed to oppose, and enforced, the Death Penalty as Attorney General. She was notorious for seeking to keep imprisoned men, many of whom were black, in jail even beyond nominal release dates, to engage in prison work, which caused her to be strongly disliked among many black people, even now as she poses a champion of the rights of minorities against Trump’s overt racism. She has slightly distanced herself from Netanyahu’s most bloodthirsty actions during the current genocidal rampage against Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere, calling sporadically for ceasefires etc, but the murder of Hassan Nasrallah, the Israeli attempt to invade Lebanon, the recent Israeli attack on Iran, etc have had her leaping to attention, seeking the approval of the Lobby.

Harris is not a lesser evil in electoral terms. Judging by the opinion polls, she still has the edge in terms of the likely popular vote, but that is not always what decides US presidential elections. Rather, it is the fate of around 7 swing states that often decide, and if those go the opposite way to the popular vote, they can still provide the second placed candidate overall with enough votes in the state-by-state Electoral College to win the presidency, even against the popular vote. Both Trump in 2016, and George W Bush in 2000, won the presidency against the popular vote.

This is what Trump is hoping will happen again. It happened in 2016, and when it failed to happen again in 2020, he launched his ‘Beer Halll Putsch’ – the 6 Jan attack on the Capitol. It is highly likely that something similar will happen if Harris manages to win the popular vote, and some of the swing states become violently contested – there will likely be an attempt by Trump and his supporters to seize the presidency by forcibly seizing control of the Electoral College, hoping no doubt that his appointed Supreme Court judges will back him up. One factor against that is that the same judges have ruled that the President is effectively above the law, immune from prosecution “In his/Her official capacity”, and being as Trump is not the incumbent, the Biden-Harris administration could use that as a license to act ruthlessly in putting down a renewed Trump putsch. But that could in turn trigger the outbreak of civil war.

Though the workers movement has no interest in supporting either bourgeois candidate in this election, but rather an interest in supporting the independent PSL, nevertheless if there is an attempt to negate formal democracy, we do have a class interest in defeating that. So, there would be a principled ground, and class imperative, for a united front with Harris and the Democrats against such a Trump putsch. A defence of the right of the elected president to take office is in the interest of the working class as a matter of elementary self-defence, particularly as Trump has openly stated his intention to use the US military to suppress and take revenge against liberal and left-wing political opponents.

This is not a minor question – it may loom very large after 5^th November. But at the same time, our interest is in the maximum class-based vote for the PSL.

The ICC, Western Imperialism and hypocritical double standards

By Kalliste Hill

The ICC, in the person of Karim Khan, finally announced after 7 months they will ask for the arrest of 2 Israeli ministers, Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defence Minister Galant and 3 Hamas leaders, Sinwar, Al-Masri and Hanayeh, after the conspicuous leaks and hysterical outbursts of the Zionist lobby in the US, UK and Israel at the very thought that they might be treated like “African leaders and thugs like Putin”.

However, underneath the hysteria, the mafia-like threats from US congressmen against the ICC prosecutor to sanction not only him, his family and the members of the entire ICC office, including the Judges, lies yet another unbalanced, disingenuous litany of false allegations against the real targets of this action, the Palestinian leadership, while reserving the spotlight of public opinion and victim-waving for the Israelis.

The long list of “crimes” against the Palestinian targets include the chief negotiator as well as the prime Palestinian target marked out assassination by Netanyahu and the Israeli UN ambassador in public and on the floor of the UN.

It’s almost as if the ICC, far from any real intention to actually drag Netanyahu into the dock, is actually reinforcing the ludicrous and demonstrably false allegations made by Israel against Hamas, which excuses they’ve used to commit genocide against the Palestinian people for the past 76 years. They are reciting yet again the reasons why Israel will continue to pursue its policy of political assassinations and fomenting regime change for those who already support the Zionist cause while creating more panic and fear amongst those who see the existence of the state of Israel, even anapartheid, ethno-fascist state, as it is at the moment, as existential, when the reality is that it should go the way of White South Africa, to be replaced by a secular state based on equality and social justice.

After all, the US has already passed laws that ensure no US citizen, or now any proxy under their protection, will be protected from prosecution by the ICC in perpetuity. What do Netanyahu and Galant really have to fear? Whereas all Palestinians, and especially their political leaders have every reason to know that they, their family members and all who work with them, are under sentence of death at the hands of the Zionists who rule Israel, and control our Empire of Lies.

Presentation on Zionism and Gaza Situation – 12th May 2024

Zionists plan another massacre at Rafah, threatening these makeshift refugee camps with carnage seen earlier.

The presentation and discussion at our forum this afternoon can also be heard here as a podcast

We are now witnessing the brutal forced evacuation of East and Central Rafah, the Southernmost city in the Gaza Strip, adjoining Egypt, to a tiny coastal enclave.

This is going to be another, even more brutal massacre that those that have taken place previously further North. Because the population has nowhere really to flee to

So far, Israel has not been able order them to leave Gaza for Sinai/Egypt.

That is significant and a product of their being outmaneuvered by Hamas, who jointly put together a plan to end the Israeli massacre with Qatar and Egypt.

It had implicit US support, arguably, as both Qatar and Egypt are strong US allies.

But Israel rejected the plan.

It would have been a defeat for them.

A permanent ceasefire means a defeat for Israel.

The US and Israel’s other imperialist allies know that a permanent ceasefire means Israeli defeat.

That is why the demand for it is like trying to get blood out of a stone.

But Israel is now over-extended both militarily and politically, and under enormous pressure.

Rafah is the last fig leaf to disguise Israeli defeat.

They can again kill many civilians, but they have no chance to wipe out Hamas. They will take casualties here also.

The attempt to divert attention from this by aggression against Iran has failed.

So, we are back at the sharp edge of the genocide again.

They were resuming demands for evacuations in Gaza City yesterday, Dropping leaflets telling people to flee, so they can ‘deal with’ Hamas.

Déjà vu. They are supposed to have won that months ago. But no.

The Biden administration is desperately trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. They are desperate for this carnage to end, not because of any humanitarian motive.

But because it is radicalizing their population and upsetting Biden’s election campaign.

It should be clear now that in the seven months of wanton slaughter than have gone on since 7/10 they have no qualms about the Israelis massacring Palestinian civilians.–

As long as they thought it might win them something.

But now it is clear that Israel is not going to defeat, let alone ‘eliminate’ Hamas.

Their bloodthirsty, barbaric, racist army, the most cowardly and immoral in the world, can butcher tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of civilians, in the most rapid slaughter since Rwanda in 1994, but they cannot defeat the Palestinian resistance.

What is happening instead is that the young population of the West is being radicalized.

From being exposed to this butchery and genocide.

The US ruling class is trying to ban TikTok because it has kept US youth informed of the crimes Israel is carrying out in Gaza, and indeed the accelerating repression in the West Bank as well.

But it is too late. The cat is out of the bag already, Once people see what Israel is doing, they cannot un-see it. The Zionists complain of youth being ‘radicalised’ by their crimes and ridiculously compare the results of their own work with 1930s anti-semitism.

Totally insulting to the most basic intelligence since Zionist barbarism is similar to Nazi barbarism.

Student youth are organising protest camps in hundreds of Unis and Colleges in the US.

Pitched battles are taking place with violent cops, acting under orders from Zionist and White Supremacist politicians the length and breadth of imperialist North America, from Colombia University in New York to UCLA on the West Coast, from Texas to Canada.

There are Gaza protest encampments in Harvard and Yale, the US’ most elite universities. They all demand divestments of University assets from Israel and Zionist companies, and an end to the frequent military-academic collaboration that regularly goes on.

This has spread to Europe. In France and Germany, there have been pitched battles between students and the cops.

In Spain, 76 universities have acted collectively to suspend ties with ‘complicit’ Israeli universities via the Conference of University Rectors.

In Britain, student protests and encampments are likewise spreading throughout the country. Protests are underway at Oxbridge universities, among other places.

Sunak is complaining and trying to incite repression here also.

Oxford and Cambridge, Sorbonne, Harvard and Yale, as well as less salubrious universities are heavily involved. The elite – this is destabilitising the youth of the bourgeoiisie’s most treasured.

Student protests are still continuing though the imperialist world and spreading even though repressed quite savagely.

Young people are prepared to risk their futures, because they are less and less convinced that they have a future in a society dominated by genocidaires and corporate climate deniers.

This is evidently a global student movement. It has been compared to the student movements around the Vietnam war. I think it may prove even more significant than that!

But it is misleading, and misreading, the situation to see it as simply a student protest movement.

It is a movement of the intelligentsia that prefigures what society itself is thinking, in its depths.

This is actually confirmed by many public opinion polls in the advanced countries, Israel’s allies, sponsors, and lackeys, where clear majorities strongly disapprove of Israel’s genocidal onslaught, and consider it to be a genocide,

The decision in January of the International Court of Justice, to state publicly that there is a plausible, prima facie case to accuse Israel of genocide, was a reflection of that popular pressure, months before the student movements took off.

This is a very bourgeois institution, designed from the start as a kind of safety switch for imperialism so it can amnesty itself, indict its opponents and excuse its allies.

The ICJ’s ‘provisional measures’ were and are a joke, responding to South Africa’s indictment by calling on Israel to stop what they are doing and protect the civilian population they would like to dispose of.

Fat chance – if they were remotely inclined to any of that, this issue would not exist in the first place.

So is the International Criminal Court, for that matter, which has threatened to indict Netanyahu, Gallant and others.

Their usual activity is in trying to indict the West’s opponents, like Putin, Milosevic, and various black African leaders.

They have not (yet) actually indicted Netanyahu and may indeed back off under pressure.

But the possibility is real, as shown by the letter of 10 GOP senators threatening the ICC with military sanctions if they do.

However, the fact that the bodies feel compelled to say anything remotely in the right ball part if a reflection of the mass sentiment.

Not just the overwhelming sentiment in the global South, over which South Africa has made the running politically, and very strongly in terms of perceived ‘morality’, which should not be dismissed.

But in terms of the knowledge that the ruling classes in general, in the imperialist West, have about the huge damage that is being done to their moral authority over the masses at home.

Mass student protest movements are often the harbinger of much more convulsive social and political movements.

I could go through a long list, from the role of ferment among students and intelligentsia in influencing the masses and leading to the growth of a mass communist movement in Russia in the late 19^th/early 20^th century,

There is the huge role of students in assembling the intellectual forces for anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements throughout the world.

And in a more recent time frame, there is the role of the mass student movement in France in the late 1960s, the student radicals who fought the CRS in Paris and other places, in a mixture of home-grown social discontent and anti-imperialist radicalism centred again on Vietnam.

This student movement managed to coalesce with a mass movement of working-class discontent, and the working class anger in France burst out in a huge outburst, a general strike, that forced Charles De Gaulle himself to flee the country.

Until the dependable forces of the French Communist Party were able to restore order and get the working class to return to work.

This activity led to the discredit of the very reformist CP at the time and the growth of large organisations of the far left in France in the 1970s.

That is not the subject of this forum, we are in very different circumstances today. What we are faced with now is understanding where we are at now, and what to fight for.

What is possible, and likely, is major working-class movements akin to May 1968 with revolutionary implications, from this crisis.

We must be alert and participate in them to the best of our ability when that happens, as communists.

We are a very different situation now. The US achieved full world hegemony after the destruction of the USSR, and Zionist power in the world was massively enhanced through its factions within the US and European imperialist ruling classes.

As long as the USSR existed, the bipolar world, Zionist power was somewhat overshadowed by the need for the US to concentrate on its own offensive against the workers states.

When the USSR collapsed, we had the situation of the unipolar world, where the US’s world hegemony appeared unchallenged.

We had the situation beginning in the early 1990s when Israel appeared to be able to get the United States to fight its wars for it.

There was an element about that in the 1991 Iraq war; Israel had a definite interest in cutting Iraq down to size and given the US’ own recent alliance with Iraq, the manner in which Hussein was lured into Iraq by the US ambassador April Glaspie was suspicious, to say the least.

The second Iraq war, however, in 2003, the successful US/UK invasion and then failed occupation of Iraq, has Zionism and necons written all over it.

It was always Israeli policy to find ways to prevent any successful regional power from emerging that could challenge their ‘right’ to dispossess the Palestinians.

This drove all their wars, but finding a sympathetic hegemon to wage them was not so simple.

It proved not so simple in 1956, when the US and USSR united against Britain and France to put them back in their box.

They had more luck in 1967, still with tactic French support, but seemingly acting alone to defeat Nasser, Assad and the King of Jordan.

But the ambiguity of the relationship with the US was shown by the USS Liberty

In 1973 they were threatened with reversal of 1967 by forces that were still seen as Soviet allied: Nixon saw Israel for the first time as a strategic ally and put US forces on alert to stop them being defeated.

But the 1990s until the mid-20-teens were the heyday of Zionism, coinciding with the ‘unipolar world’, when the world appeared to be Israel’s oyster and the US would fight its wars for them.

Those days are over. Because the unipolar world is ending. The ‘Arab Spring’, that inchoate upsurge of mass ‘democratic’ struggle in the Arab world, exploited by imperialism, also showed the beginning of the end for this hegemony.

The destruction of Libya followed the pattern of Iraq.

But the failure in Syria was because Russia reasserted its power, against the US, the neocons and the Zionists, and refused to allow them to destroy Syria, which would have been a major triumph for the Zionists.

We do know the evidence that Israel gave material help, and medical help, to the mercenary jihadists in this war. The destruction of the Assads was always a key priority of Zionism. No Sinai type deal was possible over Golan for this reason.

This is a key reason why the struggle against Zionism, and the struggle against the NATO war in Ukraine, have proved interdependent.

It is the demise of US Hegemony which is leading to the decline of Zionism also.

There is the ideological overlap between the Ukrainian proxy of the US, and Israel.

Zelensky is a Zionist who was carefully groomed to camouflage the Nazi character of the Maidan regime in Ukraine after 2014.

Zelensky expressed his solidarity with Israel after 7 Oct.

Ihor Kolmoisky, the Israeli-Ukrainian oligarch who stumped up the funds to found the notorious Nazi Avov Brigade.

Whose original symbol was the Wolfsangel, which was the symbol of the Das Reich division of the SS that committed atrocities in occupied France, among other places.

This confluence between Nazism and Zionism has a long history, and goes back to the 1930s and then WWII, with Zionists collaboration with the Nazis in order gain approval for their state project in Palestine.

Tony Greenstein, who I have had many disagreements with on Zionism and Anti-Semitism, wrote a worthwhile and serious book on this, Zionism and the Holocaust. It is reviewed on our website, I recommend the book and the review.

So, what is behind Zionism’s apparent strength?

The secret of its power is that part of the Israeli ruling class lives outside its borders, in the US, in West Europe, and is organised as an imperialist faction primarily loyal to Israel.

Israel effectively has an extra-territorial citizenship law which makes that possible.

It’s an imperialist formation, and its presence makes Israel an imperialist power of medium strength.

If this external faction did not exist it would be a minor imperialist power like Denmark. But it’s more powerful than that.

The power of this formation came from the top-heavy social structure of the mainly Askenazi Jewish population in Europe, as a medieval trading class.

See Abram Leon, The Jewish Question – a Marxist Interpretation.

This trading class became obsolete under late feudalism. The Jewish population was marked by it, an obsolete class whose remnants were subjected to religious persecution.

But they were emancipated by the bourgeois revolutions.

Under capitalism this population was naturally more intellectual and bourgeois than the mainstream populations that did not have that class legacy.

So, Jews were disproportionately intellectuals, who having experience of persecution, played an important progressive role in democratic, socialist and working-class movements.

But another layer of Jews was disproportionately successful in business.

And disproportionate capitalist property gives disproportionate social power in a capitalist society where the chief social power is the bourgeoisie.

In my view the Jewish Question is a legacy of a European pre-capitalist phenomenon involving this trading/middleman class, that spilled over into the epoch of progressive capitalism.

When capitalism ceased to be progressive and became imperialist, its interaction with imperialism gave rise to two complementary imperialist movements.

Racial anti-Semitism and Zionism, both of which proved ultimately genocidal.

Both logically sought to dispose of whole populations that were unwanted in their respective imperialist projects.

We saw the genocidal proclivities of racial anti-semitism against the Jews themselves, played out in the Second World War. as Gemany lost its own bid for world imperialist hegemony.

Now, as US imperialism, Zionism’s ‘host’ so-to-speak, is in the process of losing its world hegemony, we are seeing Zionism’s genocidal proclivities played out.

The Palestinian Arab population of what claims to be ‘Israel’ is equally unwanted. They are still the majority in historic Palestine.

If the right to return of those driven out since 1948 were won, they would be the substantial majority. The Israeli rulers wants this demographic threat eliminated.

Fortunately, they are losing. But it is not clear just how destructive they are prepared to be as they face defeat.

Will they commit suicide, as per Masada? Or will they try to destroy humanity as they fall – Samson option. It’s an open question.

Is Israel trying to provoke WWIII to stave off Gaza genocide defeat?

Support Iran’s right to self-defence!

Defend the Axis of Resistance, against Zionist/US/NATO bloc!

Joint statement of LCFI and ClassConscious.org

In the early hours of Sunday, 14^th April, Iran fired, in three waves, more than 300 drones, missiles and finally more sophisticated, possibly hypersonic ballistic missiles at Israel. Most of them appear to have been intercepted by Israel’s air defences or those of its imperialist allies, the US, France and Britain, except for the third wave, which significantly damaged Nevatim and Ramon airbases in the Negev area, and an intelligence centre in the Golan Heights area, all of which were instrumental in Israel’s earlier act of aggression against Iran’s mission in Syria.

This retaliation was for the Israeli air attack on an Iranian diplomatic building in Damascus, Syria on 1^st April, an annex of the Iranian Embassy itself. By the Vienna Convention, embassy buildings are regarded throughout the world as being part of the territory of the state the embassy serves. Israel’s attack on the Damascus building was thus regarded by the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran as an attack on Iranian territory itself. It was an overt act of war and bound at some point to provoke some kind of Iranian military attack on Israeli territory.

The building Israel destroyed contained seven members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRCG), including the commander of its Quds force, Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, and his deputy, Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi. All-in-all 16 were killed by Israel. The presence of the senior IRCG figures was part of Iran’s military-political relationship with the Lebanese government, which includes the Shi’a resistance organisation Hizbullah, which has twice defeated near-genocidal Israeli invasions of Lebanon which massacred Palestinians and Lebanese Shia, going back as far as 1978. The Israelis scream that the presence of the highly efficient IRCG meant that the building was “not an embassy”, but every significant power in the world that has allies that it seeks to defend from third party attack uses diplomatic premises to further military collaboration with such allies.

Everyone knows that the CIA and Mossad habitually use US and Israeli Embassy buildings around the world to further their aims in terms of both military objectives and espionage. The criteria Israel tries to use to excuse attacking the Damascus Iranian Embassy could be used equally well to justify attacking every single US and Israeli Embassy on the planet. The Iranian military presence was part of the ‘Axis of Resistance’ to Israeli activities in West Asia, activities in pursuit of its aim of a Greater Israel though conquest and genocide of the Palestinian people and more besides, with some renderings of Greater Israel encompassing the whole of Jordan, most of Syria, Iraq up to the River Euphrates and Egypt up to the Nile.

In the case of Syria, everyone knows that Iran and Hizbullah not only defend Syria against direct US and Israeli aggression, but also have played a major role over more than a decade, along with Russia, in thwarting attempts by pro-imperialist jihadist proxies trying to reproduce the destruction of Libya by such proxies, and actual US, British and French intervention forces, in 2011 and after. It is now quite well known that Al Qaeda and ISIS reactionary jihadists have when wounded been given medical treatment by Israel. The Israeli Islamophobic propaganda offensive against Hamas, accusing them of being akin to Daesh/IS, that they have waged since Oct 7^th at the very least, can be defined according to the traditional Jewish term chutzpah, a classic rendering of which is the story of the man who murdered both his parents and then attempted to plead for mercy because he was now an orphan.

The Israeli attack was part not only of its current genocidal campaign against the people of Gaza, but also of this attempt to destabilise and destroy Syria. Iran is now de-facto an ally of Russia and China, both implicitly through its membership of the BRICS bloc, which it joined in January, but also though its membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Council. In that sense, this in turn carries echoes of not merely an anti-Iran agenda from the Zionist genocidaire regime, but also of an anti-Russian, anti-Chinese agenda that merges with the Zionist regime’s more traditional hatreds and obsessions, of Palestinians – of Muslim, Christian and other creeds — other local Arab peoples, and Arabs and other Muslim peoples more generally. Attacks on both Mosques and Churches during the genocide in Gaza, most notably the Al Aqsa Mosque itself, certainly indicate that. All these reactionary missions merge into one in terms of Israel’s attacks on Iran’s presence in Syria. And these occurrences, though they have some autonomy, fit in with the wider drive towards generalised conflict between the forces loyal to the US, seeking to preserve its worldwide imperialist hegemony, and those forces led by Russia and China seeking to reduce the US to just one part of a ‘multipolar world’.

Zionism Facing Defeat

The real nature of Israel is eminently visible in the genocidal murder of over 40,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since the prison breakout of 7^th October, the deliberate creation of a deadly famine through the blocking of food, water and fuel to Gaza, publicly announced in advance by the Israeli regime, by the destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure, healthcare, education facilities, etc., and the deliberate displacement through mass terrorisation of the overwhelming majority of its 2.3 million people. As well as the creeping extension of the methods Israel is using in Gaza to the West Bank and the massive wave of arrests, detentions, settler and state killings and ethnic cleansing that is escalating there also.

But the problem is that for all the genocidal slaughter it has carried out over the last six months, Israel is not winning in Gaza. It has failed to eliminate and defeat Hamas, instead its cowardly army has contented itself with massacring defenceless civilians, while absurdly claiming that it has no choice because Hamas supposedly hides among them as ‘human shields’. This has been the most reported and documented genocidal slaughter in history, even though Israel has murdered many journalists to try to suppress the news coming out. They have been unable to do so because of the ubiquity of social media and camera/mobile phone technology. Israel itself is not stable: there have been huge protests against Netanyahu’s overt corruption, his handling of the ‘hostage’ crisis, and the far-right nature of his regime over the last few months, even though much of it is on a chauvinist basis and does not touch the oppression of the Palestinian people. But the genocidal outrages in Gaza have given rise to the biggest worldwide protest movement in history, with many millions on the streets in countries worldwide, and billions behind them, in the Muslim world from the Maghreb to Indonesia, wider in East Asia, in Latin America, and in the imperialist countries of Western Europe and North America.

Huge Palestine Solidarity march to Israeli Embassy in London, February 2024

In some places these have led to workers’ solidarity actions, in other places, such as Yemen and now Iran, the mass solidarity of millions has had a military counterpart as armed actions have been taken against Israel by governments driven by solidarity with the Palestinians. The Houthi blockade of the Red Sea has cost Israel, and Western companies and governments who trade with Israel, many billions of dollars in lost revenue. The prison breakout on October 7^th forced Israel to evacuate many of its civilians from a wide area near Gaza. So-far sporadic hostilities with Hizbullah forces in the North have also forced large-scale evacuation of the Northern strip of Israel, near the Lebanese border. Netanyahu gambled on the attack on the Damascus Iranian consulate to escalate the war in order to hide the failures of the IDF forces in Gaza, but the result of this action appears to have forced the withdrawal of most of the IDF forces from the Gaza strip, apart from a smaller contingent that splits the strip in two and prevents those driven into the South of Gaza by the earlier bombardment and mass slaughter returning to the North.

The attack on the Damascus Embassy caused a major problem for both US imperialism, and its Biden administration on the one hand, and Israel and the Netanyahu fragile war coalition on the other. The US ruling class is divided about how to handle Iran, and that division has been evident for several years. Obama’s Iran deal, which placed limitations on Iran’s development of nuclear power technology, supposedly to stop its development of nuclear weapons, in exchange for a lifting of long-standing US sanctions, is one manifestation of this. Netanyahu and the Israel lobby played a major role in agitating in US bourgeois politics against this deal: recall Netanyahu’s address attacking Obama’s deal to a joint session of Congress in 2015 where the conduct of US politicians was described by the eminent anti-Zionist US Jewish commentator Norman Finkelstein as like “demented Jack-in-the-Boxes”. They gave Netanyahu something like 26 standing ovations!

Trump’s far-right election campaign in 2016 was bankrolled by Likud through the gambling magnate Sheldon Adelson, who was Trump’s biggest funder. As Likud wanted, Trump tore up Obama’s Iran deal and implemented the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act. This had been pushed through by the Israel lobby more than 20 years earlier but kicked into the long grass by Clinton, Bush and Obama because it was irrational from the standpoint of US imperialism. He also formally recognised Israel’s annexation of Golan, the Jordan Valley, and East Jerusalem, which again previous US administrations had refrained from because they had no particular interest in doing so. The Trump administration thus gave a major boost to the power of the already-very-powerful Zionist lobby in the US. Though Trump was defeated by Biden’s Democrats in 2020, the cowardly and reactionary nature of the Democrats mean that they hardly dared challenge what Trump had done.

Though there has been a half-hearted attempt to revive Obama’s Iran deal, nothing else has changed in that regard, and Biden is still trying to shaft the Palestinians by completing Trump’s ‘Abraham Accords’ to supposedly ‘normalise’ Israeli relations with conservative Arab states like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. It is the massive exposure of the Gaza genocide and the mass rage this has generated in the whole Arab world, and wider developments such as the growth of BRICS, which Saudi Arabia and the UAE joined this year, which have made this problematic, not anything Biden has done to break with Trump’s far-right Zionism.

US Imperialism Wavers

However, the Gaza genocide and its massive exposure has caused massive political damage to the US, and the Biden administration is facing elections in the Autumn. As things stand, Biden is massively losing support from liberal and labor-inclined elements who traditionally support the Democrats, even though the way the deeply undemocratic US electoral system is designed makes it extremely difficult, in fact at present impossible, for a new political force to get on ballots to oppose both foul parties. Nevertheless, this makes the Democrats likely to lose to Trump, a mess of their own making, and that of the US ruling class, whose world imperialist hegemony is collapsing.

It is not clear whether the pullout of the bulk of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip is the result of US pressure on Israel, or of Israeli fears of facing Iran with most of its military bogged down in a quagmire. But it is clear that this diversionary escalation tactic in fact is bringing Israeli defeat in Gaza closer because Israel does not have the resources to carry on in Gaza and take on Iran, Hizbullah, etc. Palestinians have been quoted as saying that the night Israel had to deal with Iran’s retaliatory strikes was the first night since October 7^th when they have not had to contend with massive Israeli air attacks on them. It has also been reported that the single night of Iranian retaliatory strike not only was the largest drone strike in history (so far), but also cost Israel over $1 billion dollars to deal with.

In a statement issued on the day, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, in welcoming the Iranian action, wrote that:

“…the legitimate Iranian response broke the prestige of the Zionist entity, revealing its fragility and inability to defend itself or restore its deterrence power. At the same time, it confirmed the ability of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the resistance factions to deliver painful strikes to the Zionist entity, deepening its internal crisis due to its inability to achieve any of its goals in eliminating the resistance in the Gaza Strip or stopping the strikes directed at it by the resistance in Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq.

“…the rush of the American administration and its partners in Britain, France, Germany, and some of their Arab tails in the region to use all their defensive weapons to try to protect the Zionist entity from the Iranian missiles and drones confirms the involvement of these parties in the Zionist crimes in the region, especially in Gaza. It also reveals that this Zionist entity has suffered a strategic defeat, has become humiliated and weak, and is unable to protect itself, now imploring its allies to take on this role.

“… the unprecedented Iranian strikes, the first of their kind in history against the Zionist entity, represent an important turning point in the battle of the Al-Aqsa Flood and in favour of the resistance factions. The repercussions of this strike will have pressing effects on the Zionist entity to stop its genocidal war on the Gaza Strip after the American administration and its allies realized that any escalation in the region would lead to a regional war where their bases and interests will not be safe, nor will the Zionist entity be able to defend itself after the collapse of its deterrence power and its humiliating defeat in front of the resistance in Gaza and other fronts.
https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2024/04/14/pflp-unprecedented-iranian-strikes-on-israel-signal-turning-point-in-al-aqsa-battle/

The Israeli gamble on trying to provoke a regional, or world war, to negate its defeat in Gaza, may well be forlorn. The US is losing its world hegemony, and that is clear in other conflicts apart from those in West Asia. Particularly in Ukraine, where their proxy Ukrainian client is facing imminent collapse, and the strains on NATO resulting from this are such that European imperialist powers, fearing a collapse in US commitment to NATO under a Trump presidency due to isolationism, are fantasising about intervening in Ukraine on a bilateral basis, effectively outside the NATO framework. The Zionist lobby have in the past congratulated themselves in getting the US to fight its wars for it, but at this point the US seems to be somewhat paralysed. It was prepared to use its technological resources to prevent Israel’s own Iron Dome defence system being overwhelmed by a combined assault from the Axis of Resistance, but hesitates to participate in an actual Israeli attack on Iran.

And it certainly does not appear keen on the wilder ambitions for world war and the ‘Masada Complex’ that may well be harboured by Netanyahu and his even more far-right cohorts, like Smotrich or Ben Gvir, to use nuclear weapons against its opponents in West Asia, with Iran a particularly hated potential target. It is worth noting that Scott Ritter, the former UN weapons inspector who is now a particularly enlightened commentator on geopolitics and the Russia question, has surmised that even though Iran does not possess nuclear weapons (by religious conviction, according to Ayatollah Khamenei), it nevertheless is now able to shelter under the Russian/Chinese nuclear umbrella by virtue of its membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Council, and equally importantly, its provision of drone technology to Russia for use in defending the Donbass. This may well blunt the temptation for the US to act on Israel’s behalf against Iran even more. It is still possible that Israel’s nuclear arsenal may be used in such a conflict, but if so, they really could not expect impunity either.

There appears to have been a considerable exodus from Israel by parts of the Jewish population who have lost confidence in the stability and ability to prevail of Israel against the native people of the Levant. The October 7^th action by Hamas was a huge defeat for Israel, not in strictly military terms, as they regained control of ‘their’ territory within a few days and forced the insurgents to flee back to the Gaza Strip. But it was a political defeat, as the division between Gaza and the adjacent areas of Israel is artificial and purely a product of ethnic cleaning and previous atrocities and massacres of the Arab civilian population. The vaunted stability of the Zionist colonisation was exposed as being built on sand. The only solution that the Zionists could envisage for that political problem was a genocidal one – the extermination of the ‘uppity’ population that had dared to defy the place allocated to it by the colonisers.

But that in turn has exposed the nature of Zionism to the whole world, and irrevocably destroyed its political reputation. The only justification that the Jewish-Zionist bourgeoisie and its camp followers were able to propagate for the increasingly visible crimes of their state was that Israel was in some way an atonement for the Nazi genocide of Jews. The element of racist injustice that Arabs, entirely outside the European continent where the genocide took place, should have to supposedly pay for the crimes of Europeans against the mainly Ashkenazi European Jewish population, was passed over in silence by the same Jewish-Zionist bourgeoisie and its European and North American camp followers and cult worshippers, in the last three quarters of a century or so. But the decisive exposure of the genocidal nature of the Zionist project by the Gaza genocide witnessed by the world over the last 6^th months is an irrevocable defeat. Never again, as the perpetrator of genocide itself, will it be able to trade on the bastardisastion of the Nazi genocide to excuse its crimes. That ship has sailed. The developing exodus of Jewish colonists from Israel could well, as Ritter has pointed out, point to a coming collapse of the settler entity as to make the democratic demand for a single polity based on full political equality, a democratic demand capable of being implemented in practice.

A major defeat for Zionism and Western imperialism, particularly US imperialism, is taking shape. However, the strategic goals of these forces have not changed, and the working class needs to be on its guard for further reckless and destructive actions from these forces, and above all to struggle for the full liberation of the Palestinian people from Zionist genocidal oppression.

Defeat Zionism. Defend Iran and the Axis of Resistance from Lebanon to Iraq to Yemen. Destroy the Zionist State – for full equality and democratic rights for all in a workers Palestine. For permanent revolution across West Asia – for working class power!

US/British/French/EU imperialists – out of West Asia!