Joint statement of classconscious.org and the Liaison Committee for the Fourth International (LCFI)

The US is trying to protect the genocide carried out by Israel against the Palestinians by threatening to include Yemen in the massacre through Operation Prosperity Guardian. And what is the crime of the Yemenis? Standing up actively, courageously and militarily in defence of the Palestinians, which is what all lovers of humanity and defenders of innocent lives should do at this moment. Since the beginning of the massacre in Gaza, the largest and fastest extermination of civilians and children since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Yemeni guerrillas have been attacking ships serving Israel in the Red Sea, an operation that, however heroic it may be, is nowhere near as effective as the criminal blockade imposed by Israel against the Palestinian population.

As Communists and proletarian internationalists, we salute the armed action of the Ansarallah (supporters of God) movement, better known as the Houthi, which holds power in much of Yemen, for instituting an armed blockade of Israel by seizing and attacking Israeli-owned shipping, and now threatening the same against all Israel-bound maritime traffic. The motive for this is completely straightforward and laudable, as they told Al Jazeera:

“If Gaza does not receive the food and medicines it needs, all ships in the Red Sea bound for Israeli ports, regardless of their nationality, will become a target for our armed forces.”

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/9/yemens-houthis-warn-they-will-target-all-israel-bound-ships-in-red-sea

This has already been delivered to a considerable extent. It has caused big problems for major shipping lines, many of whom use the Red Sea, where 10% of world trade (https://www.infomoney.com.br/mundo/risco-de-ataques-faz-bp-redirecionar-transporte-maritimo-e-evitar-o-mar-vermelho/) is carried out,  to supply Israel, and to and pass through the Suez Canal to other destinations. Up to 11 of them have suspended their use of the Red Sea route. According to the International Business Times:

“Shipping firms MSC, Maersk, CMA CGM and Haag-Lloyd and have all suspended operations, already diverting over $35 billion in Red Sea cargo. At least 103 ships have been redirected from the Red Sea this week, adding thousands of miles around the Cape of Good Hope to voyages and complicating last-minute holiday shipments between Asia and Europe.

Oil major British Petroleum (BP) announced Monday that it has paused all shipments through the Suez Canal due to ‘deteriorating security’; Equinor told CNBC on Monday that it had rerouted a number of oil and gas shipments but had yet to take a decision on pausing future ones.”

https://www.ibtimes.com/oil-prices-rebound-after-houthi-attacks-red-sea-bp-equinor-pause-shipping-through-suez-3721010

This has cost Israel billions of dollars already, and is both a military and a financial pressure. It has also raised the price of oil internationally, and could conceivably result in a new burst of global inflation. Yet this is not the Houthi’s doing – they are simply fighting for basic humanity, as they see it, in part driven by humane motives derived from their form of Shi’a Islam. The Houthi have made clear that they are not targeting shipping generally, but only Israeli shipping in response to the genocidal mass murder currently going on in Gaza and Palestine. They have explicitly stated that their particular aim is “complete closure of the shipping route for any vessels destined to dock at the port of Eilat” (https://swentr.site/news/589534-us-israel-gaza-houthis/).

Outside of that context, they have been conciliatory. They told Al Jazeera that they would halt their attacks if Israel’s “crimes in Gaza stop and food, medicines and fuel are allowed to reach its besieged population.” (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/19/yemens-houthis-will-not-stop-red-sea-attacks-until-israel-stops-gaza-war) They are pointedly not targeting non-Israeli shipping, and have made that particularly clear regarding Russian maritime traffic. As with Gaza, it is the US that is insisting on escalating this situation.

The Biden administration has put together a supposed ‘international coalition’ of ‘partners’ who are supposed to send naval forces to threaten the Houthi and ostensibly safeguard maritime traffic. Its title, Operation Prosperity Guardian, actually indicates the callous and genocidal nature of the threats against Yemen in support of the holocaust of Palestinians in Gaza. For the Biden administration, like the Zionists, the Palestinian victims of genocide are untermenschen. (subhuman). What counts is ‘prosperity’, i.e., the profits of imperialist capital. Rarely has the ideological link between profits and genocide been laid out so baldly by a US imperialist administration which has claimed in the past to be motivated by ‘liberal’ and ‘humanitarian’ motives in its armed actions. That pretence is now utterly destroyed by the US’ open support for the genocide in Gaza.

The supposed ‘coalition of the willing’ that the US has put together to face down the Houthi, has not proved very willing at all. The US hoped that Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt would join with them in this, but all three have refused to get involved. That is a major blow to its credibility. Spain’s government has said it is thinking with the “utmost prudence” before deciding whether to join the coalition. Australia opted to send a small number of troops to support the operation, rather than send a warship, as initially requested by the US.

The only Gulf State that is part of it is Bahrain, whose population is mainly Shi’a but whose sectarian royal elite are Sunni – and extremely repressive to, and at war with, Bahrain’s 70% Shi’a majority. Saudi Arabia, as a close US and Israeli ally over the last decades, itself fought a near-genocidal war, supplied by both the US and Israel – and failed to dislodge the Houthi, whose base of support in Yemen is deep-going and proved unbreakable. It became clear in that conflict, that if it had gone on, the Houthi had the armed capacity to destroy Saudi Arabia’s oil production facilities. So, the Houthi are not exactly scared of US imperialism, and are confident that if attacked they will inflict similar defeats on them.

The refusal of Saudi/UAE/Egypt to get involved is a serious blow to the US, they were all were formerly staunch client states. The failure of the US-led proxy war to defeat Russia in Ukraine has produced a major shift in geopolitics. One manifestation of that is the Saudi-Iran rapprochement in early 2023, brokered by China, which seems to have begun a chain of events leading to Saudi, the UAE and Egypt (along with Iran itself) agreeing to join BRICS, which will formally take place on Jan 1^st 2024. Fear of the Houthi, as well as this shift against the US internationally seem to have combined with the extremely negative impact of the US support for genocide in Gaza and the huge wave of rage in the Global South at this, causing the US-led anti-Houthi coalition to substantially collapse pretty much before it has got off the ground. As Sputnik reported:

“…apart from the ships of US Task Force 153, which includes between three and five US destroyers, the British HMS Diamond missile destroyer and a Greek Navy frigate, the coalition is shaping up to include only a handful of troops from US-allied countries, including the Netherlands (which is sending two officers), Norway (10 officers), Australia (11 troops), Canada (three officers), and Denmark (one officer). France and Italy have each indicated that any naval forces they have in the region will remain under national command, while Spain said it will not take part in any military operation unless it is under the direction of NATO or the EU.”

https://sputnikglobe.com/20231223/houthis-brush-off-us-threats-vow-to-intensify-anti-israeli-ops-if-gaza-conflict-not-halted-1115767590.html

This is not a formidable force, and will not have the Houthi quaking in their boots at the power of the US-led coalition. In any case, as internationalist communists and defenders of the very lives, as well as the elementary rights of Palestinians, Yemenis, and all the peoples of the Middle East, the defeat of Israel and the US, and the victory of the Palestinian and Yemeni forces fighting against them, is very much in the interest of the world working class. It is that which we as communists stand for, as part of our fight for world socialist revolution.

For an immediate and unconditional ceasefire!

For the release of all Palestinian and Arab prisoners from Israel’s dungeons!

For the right of return of all refugees from Nabka!

For the end of the Nazi-Zionist State!

For a socialist and multi-ethnic Palestinian State!

For the victory of the Resistance axis over imperialism!

For the socialist federation of the peoples of West Asia!

Fake ‘Anti-Terrorism’ Arrests and Charges Against Opponents of Gaza Holocaust!

The recent arrests on fake ‘anti-terrorism’ charges of Tony Greenstein, who is a long-time defender of Palestinian rights, was one of the founders of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), and is a leading member of the Socialist Labour Network (SLN), and of Mick Napier, a leading figure of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC) are transparently fraudulent. They are a deliberate, premeditated attack on democratic rights of opponents of the rampant Israeli genocide of Palestinians.

The accusations against them, of giving support to a ‘proscribed organisation’ (Mick Napier has actually been charged with this) are in both cases insulting to anyone of normal intelligence. Both of these individuals are long-time labour movement and socialist activists and the supposition that either of them is in some way a supporter of either the political or military wing of Hamas (a nationalist organisation with a dominant Islamic religious ideology), both of which are proscribed by the British government, is obviously a complete fabrication.

Both have had imposed on them outrageous bail conditions aimed at stopping them from campaigning for the Palestinians, from using the internet and social media and even mobile phones (without police surveillance), and in Tony’s case from staying overnight away from his home, which affects personal arrangements for the care of his disabled child. In Mick’s case, he has been banned from the centre of his native Glasgow, and from all protests. Tony has similar bans from protests, even though he has not actually been charged. Furthermore, since recently he was given a suspended sentence after being convicted in an earlier rigged trial for ‘criminal damage’ against the criminal armourer of Israeli genocide, Elbit Systems (an Israeli arms company which operates in Britain), as part of Palestine Action, this fraudulent potential charge puts his freedom at risk.

The attempt at suppressing public political protest and dissent is transparent here. This has nothing whatsoever to do with ‘terrorism’ and makes a complete mockery of the concept even in bourgeois terms.

What they are actually being attacked for is expressing support to the Palestinian people in their just struggle against Zionist oppression, ethnic cleansing and mass extermination. This struggle is under the leadership, in part, of Hamas as well as other trends within the Palestinian body politic, from secular nationalists such as the principled wing of Fatah, bourgeois democrats like the Palestinian National Initiative, to communist-inclined trends such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, as well as other religious trends like the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Its laughable that Mick Napier and Tony Greenstein are being associated with supporting Hamas as a political trend; such allegations could only be made by conscious liars and wannabe perjurers. There are plenty of such people in the Friends of Israel factions of all the major bourgeois parties, and no doubt senior police officers who inhabit the same ruling class milieux. The fact that such crooked cops and the politicians giving them their marching orders cannot escape from, is that under bourgeois ‘international law’ even, the right of an oppressed and occupied people to resist their oppressors is explicitly legal and indeed sanctified – provided it can be enforced against big money, and the power of capital, Zionism and imperialism to subvert even elementary formal democratic rights under (bourgeois) democracy.

Obviously, where the Western ruling classes are using a law against a particular organisation (characterised as ‘terrorist’) to try to justify the mass terrorism and murder of their own ally, the Israeli racist ethnocracy, statements made in support of the Palestinian people which proceed under the leadership of trends like Hamas, can be mendaciously distorted and taken out of context in order falsely accuse activists of giving support to a particular trend. The ruling class resorts to such mendacity because it does not (yet) dare to proscribe support for the Palestinian people tout court, renouncing bourgeois international law, and thereby openly embrace Nazi-like genocide. Though it is doing this by stealth on behalf of the current Israeli regime, which includes open fascists like Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, who outflank the prolific mass murderer Netanyahu from the far right, that is really what they are trying to do.

The other thing these lowlifes are doing is falsely accusing Palestine solidarity activists of ‘anti-Semitism’, for noting the similarity of Israel’s genocidal slaughter with Hitler’s extermination of the Jews. But the problem is that the resemblance is strictly factual, so they end up arresting people for saying things that anyone with any basic humanity who is not blinded by bigoted pro-Zionist racist prejudice should say. Thus Ranjeet Brar, a leading member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist Leninist) was arrested a few weeks ago for selling a clearly anti-racist, anti-Zionist pamphlet whose cover equates the Zionist use of the Star of David with the Nazi use of the Swastika.

Of course, both were originally pure religious symbols, the Swastika for Hinduism and some forms of Buddhism, the Star of David for Judaism, but their dominant contemporary meaning is genocidal. The police have put out ‘wanted’ posters for other protesters making similar points about Israel’s Nazi-like practice. The earlier police arrest of Yael Khan, a Jewish woman many of whose family were murdered in the Nazi holocaust, for alleged ‘anti-Semitism’ for talking about the ‘Gaza Holocaust’, completely backfired – charging such a person with racism against themselves was a complete non-starter legally – she was released without charge or any bail conditions.

The obvious mendacity and indeed rampant stupidity of these arrests are really manifestations of gutter-level anti-Arab racism by the cops and the far-right politicians, like Sunak, Cleverly, Braverman (who went too far in trying to ban mass pro-Palestine demonstrations and had to be sacked) as well as similar genocidal racists like Starmer in the Labour Party who back them up.

The racist Zionists in the government and its lackeys in the Starmer leadership of the Labour Party are hysterical about the popular antipathy for their support for genocide in Gaza. Both the government and Starmer publicly supported the ‘right’ of Israel to wage war on the population of Gaza using starvation as a weapon of war, as Human Rights Watch belated said about Israel’s blitzkrieg. Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant publicly announced Israel’s intention to deprive the population of Gaza, who he described as ‘human animals’, of food, fuel and even drinking water.

This is as clearly exterminationist as the Nazi use of gas chambers in Auschwitz and similar places, and the pathetic apologias put forward by mendacious apologists in the media, like Julia Hartley-Brewer and similar genocidaire hacks, that Gallant was talking about Hamas and not the population of Gaza, do not hold water at all. Hamas evidently have their own military supplies as any minimally efficient military force would.  He was clearly talking about the population of Gaza itself.

Many Zionist political monsters have corroborated this including Netanyahu himself, who in a nationwide address cited the Biblical ‘Amalek’ tale where the ancient Israelites are supposed to have slaughtered the entire ‘enemy’ population, including women, children, babies and even owned animals, to motivate what Israel is doing in Gaza. Other leading politicians, such as Israel President Herzog and former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett have mocked the idea that there are any ‘innocent’ civilians in Gaza, even babies. As is well known, over 10,000 children, including numerous babies, have been brutally slaughtered in less than three months of this demented genocidal massacre. The rate of child murder in what has now become the Gaza extermination camp has actually outpaced the average rate of child murder in Auschwitz in the four years of its operation from 1941-5.

But that didn’t stop the Sunak government, Cleverly, etc ad nauseum, from backing Gallant, Netanyahu, etc to the hilt, using grossly exaggerated claims of Hamas atrocities and brutality on 7^th October as an alibi for supporting this genocide. Keir Starmer, questioned by Nick Ferrari at the beginning of Israel’s onslaught, clearly stated that Israel “has that right”, i.e., the right to deprive Palestinian civilians of food, fuel and drinking water – as noted, a clear act of genocidal intent. Fabricated blood libels about supposed mass rape, beheading and cooking babies, etc, were levelled against Hamas by these genocidaires to justify Israel’s slaughter.

The falsity of these claims has increasingly been exposed: many of the claims of rape and baby murder were fabricated by a racist outfit, ZAKA, founded by a notorious, convicted serial rapist (of victims of both sexes), and extremist Orthodox Jewish/Zionist fanatic, Yehuda Meshi Zahav. As the falsity of these claims was exposed, their current leader, Yossi Laudau, stated that anyone who questions ZAKA’s version of these events ‘should be killed’. The claims that Hamas massacred over a thousand civilians (in fact a third of the deaths on Oct 7^th were from the Israeli military) have been exposed as fake given the now-proven mass application of Israel’s Hannibal Directive, the deliberate killing of their own troops and even civilians to prevent them being captured by an enemy. A number of accounts by Israeli survivors of the Oct 7^th action have exposed how many of the civilians who died were killed by Israeli tank shells and Hellfire missiles. Much of the extensive damage done to cars and buildings around the kibbutzim and the music festival from which hostages were taken by Hamas show that heavy weapons were responsible which Hamas simply don’t have, but the IDF are armed to the teeth with. The most that can be said about the Hamas operation is that some non-Hamas elements followed them through the demolished Gaza fence and sought their own revenge on ordinary Israelis for previous barbarities committed against Gaza people. But compared to the mass Hannibal perpetrated by the IDF, this was a small proportion of what happened. This is what the evidence points to, and is becoming clearer as more evidence emerges as to what happened.

Not only should all charges be dropped against Tony Greenstein, Mick Napier, Ranjeet Brar et al, but those politicians from the Tory government, the bourgeois parties including Labour, who support repression against Palestine defenders, are complicit and guilty of aiding and abetting this genocide. We need an organised workers’ militia, millions strong, based on mass trade unions, to combat the bourgeois police, give them a “bloody good hiding”, in the words of Bernie Grant, and replace their socially useful functions. We need a workers’ government counterposed to all these despicable, racist, murderous parties which, far from criminalising opponents of genocide, will criminalise its supporters and subject them to revolutionary workers’ justice. These far right, murderous genocidal scum need to get what the fascist Russian Black Hundreds got from the revolutionary Cheka after 1917, or what Nazi human garbage (who failed to commit suicide) like Streicher and Frick got from the Nuremburg Trials.

In the camp of Venezuela, against Exxon Mobil and Anglo-Yankee imperialism!

Communist Party (Brazil)

Bolshevik Militant Tendency (Argentina)

Essequiba Guyana, also known as Essequibo territory, historically belongs to Venezuela. It has an area of ​​159,542 km² that the Cooperative Republic of Guyana administers as its own, but whose sovereignty is claimed by the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela based on the Geneva Agreement of February 17, 1966.

Guyana Essequiba has been part of Venezuelan territory since the time of the Captaincy General of Venezuela. It was seized in 1899, through a fraudulent arbitration award established between the United States and Great Britain, which also took over a large part of the territory of Venezuela (it also took even a part of the territory of Brazil) which ceded the territory of Venezuela to Great Britain.

“The Venezuelan position was based on the fact that the border should be the midline of the Essequibo River, by virtue of the principle Uti possidetis iure (as you possessed, you will continue to possess) by which it corresponded to the territories of the former Captaincy General of Venezuela at the time of its independence in 1810, which, it is alleged, had the Essequibo River as its eastern boundary…” the United Kingdom’s position had “as its greatest aspiration to reach as far as the mouth of the Orinoco River and control its navigation”.

Wikipedia: Arbitration Report of Paris, report on the Guayana Esequiba in the XIX century

The territory of Guyana Essequiba was part of a territorial dispute that Venezuela historically had with the United Kingdom at the time when Guyana was formally part of the British colonial empire. Today, behind the siege on Guyana are American and British interests.

“Venezuela’s claim has intensified since the discovery of oil in the Essequibo by ExxonMobil in 2015. Guyana last month announced another major discovery that adds at least 10 billion barrels to the country’s reserves, making them larger than those of Kuwait or the United Arab Emirates. Guyana, therefore, has the largest per capita oil reserves in the world and Venezuela, the largest proven reserves on the planet.”

Latin American Center for Strategic Analysis, Esequibo: sovereignty, petroleum… and Exxon Mobil, 12/02/2023

In 2011, Guyana unilaterally decided to make modifications to its maritime continental shelf for oil exploration, affecting Venezuela’s territorial sea, without prior notice from Guyana to the Venezuelan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In March 2015, tension rose again between Guyana  and Venezuela , following Guyana’s announcement that it would sanction oil exploration in the waters of the Stabroek Block by the North American company Exxon Mobil.  This company is a corporation resulting from the process of maxi-concentration of imperialist capital, from the merger of the companies Exxon, Mobil and Esso, all from the USA. It is one of the “four sisters” global cartel of multinational oil companies, formerly known as the criminal “seven sisters” of the 1960s. The other three are Chevron-Texaco, Shell and BP. The concern arises because the Stabroek Block is located in disputed waters with Venezuela.

Therefore, we are more than anything else in a dispute between Venezuela and the imperialist oil corporations, in this case Exxon Mobil.

According to the Association of Petrobrás Engineers, AEPET,

“The small South American state, Guyana, has recently emerged as what is being described as the world’s hottest offshore oil frontier. A consortium led by ExxonMobil controls the prolific 6.6 million-acre Stabroek block offshore Guyana, where more than 30 world-class oil discoveries have been made and is at the centre of the former British colony’s burgeoning oil boom. Exxon, the operator of Stabroek, which holds a 45% stake, with 30% held by partner Hess and the remaining 25% by Beijing-based CNOOC, is ideally positioned to be the biggest beneficiary of Guyana’s oil boom. The consortium guaranteed especially favourable conditions for the Stabroek Block, making it an especially profitable venture, particularly for Exxon, becoming a key driver of production and profit growth.”

AEPET: Exxon is the biggest winner of the epic oil boom in Guyana, Success in Guyana shows the importance of researching the Brazilian Equatorial Margin, 09/19/2023

On December 1, the international court of justice, like all so-called multilateral organizations, dominated by imperialism, asked Venezuela not to take decisions that would alter control over the territory in dispute with Guyana, in clear reference to the referendum in Venezuela on the topic in question.

(See https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/en-espanol/noticias/story/2023-12-01/cij-emitira-fallo-sobre-referendo-de-venezuela-respecto-a-disputa-con-guyana)

Maduro’s government won the non-binding referendum on the annexation of Essequibo, in dispute with Guyana, this Sunday, 3, with more than 90% of the votes and a participation of almost 50%, according to the National Electoral Center (CNE).

(See https://elpais.com/america/2023-12-04/el-chavismo-gana-el-referendum-para-la-anexion-del-esequibo-y-eleva-la-tension-con-guyana.html)

“The five questions that would be asked to the citizens, the people’s response being as follows:

1) Do you agree to reject, by all means, in accordance with the law, the line fraudulently imposed by the Paris arbitration award of 1899 which seeks to deprive us of our Essequiba Guyana? 97.83% of people answered “Yes” and 2.17% answered “No”.

2) Do you support the 1966 Geneva Agreement as the only valid legal instrument to reach a practical and satisfactory solution for Venezuela and Guyana with regard to the dispute over the territory of Guyana Essequiba? 98.11% responded “Yes” and 1.8% responded “No”.

3) Do you agree with Venezuela’s historical position of not recognizing the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice to resolve the territorial dispute over Guiana Essequiba? 95.40% responded “Yes” and 4.10% responded “No”.

4) Do you agree to oppose, by all means, in accordance with the law, Guyana’s claim to unilaterally dispose of a pending sea to be delimited, illegally and in violation of international law? 95.94% responded “Yes” and 4.06% responded “No”.

5) You agree to the creation of the state of Guayana Esequiba and the development of an accelerated plan for the comprehensive care of the current and future population of that territory, which includes, among others, the granting of Venezuelan citizenship and identity cards, in accordance with the Geneva Agreement and International Law, consequently incorporating the State on the map of Venezuelan territory? 95.93% responded “Yes” and 4.07% responded “No”.

The Anglo-Saxon imperialist media, replicated by its parrot agencies in Latin America, tries to sell the version that Venezuela wants to invade poor Guyana to take its recently discovered oil, but the historical reality is the opposite.

The reconquest of this territory, or at least the demand for it, corresponds not only to a brake on the historically oppressed country, Venezuela, in the face of imperialism’s rapacious expansionist aspirations, but it is also another symptom of the decline of imperialism in its courtyard. back, which allows the oppressed Venezuelan nation to dispute what was stolen from it at the birth of the imperialist era of capitalism.

Who is interested in a conflict in this region?

This region, like all of Latin America, is of interest to imperialism. Therefore, it is not something as simple as “returning to Venezuela what rightfully belongs to it”. A conflict in the region could lead to yet another proxy war that will serve imperialist interests in the sale of weapons and ammunition and also a possible intervention by US imperialism in the region.

The threat of a war in Latin America is an integral part of the wars between Anglo-Saxon-EU imperialism and the oppressed peoples ongoing in Ukraine and Palestine. Also, in these other hot conflicts of the current cold war between NATO and the BRICS, there are disputes for control of the main energy matrix of the imperialist era, oil. In Ukraine, the war, intentionally provoked by the USA, was to abort the process of supplying Russian gas to Europe. In Palestine, the Zionist enclave of Israel seeks not only to evacuate Palestinians from their land but also to seize rich Palestinian gas and oil reserves. And, strategically, there is the geopolitics of an imperialism that has been trying to carry out a successful coup d’état in Venezuela for 20 years, losing space in global control.

For some time now, the presence of US troops carrying out training in the Amazon has been reported in the alternative media. This catches our attention even more. It may be that they are not just in training, but preparing for the moment of attack. “Troops with more than 60 United States military personnel arrived at Belém Air Base to participate, for the first time, in special training with the Brazilian Army in the Amazon.” (G1 – For the first time, US troops arrive in the Amazon for training with the Brazilian Army; VIDEO).

If they are preparing for an invasion, they are probably doing all the necessary research to organize it.

Venezuela’s mobilization, both political and military, is defensive and fair from a historical point of view and even more so from the point of view of Latin America’s sovereignty in relation to imperialism and its multinationals. Maduro is reacting, carrying out a counter-offensive, as Hamas and other Palestinian organizations have also done, as Russia did against NATO’s expansionism towards Eastern Europe. All these counter-offensives are symptoms of a historical moment of external and internal weakening of US imperialism and its system of global geopolitical domination. It is imperialism that is pursuing the war, because it wants both the natural and energy riches of the region as a reason to militarily attack Venezuela, and as a way to win the commercial-diplomatic dispute with China over Guyana.

Diálogo Chino: China extends its reach Guyana, 28/01/2019

The conflict, still political and diplomatic for now, is a time bomb. The following factors conspire for the explosion to occur: the recent discoveries of a lot of oil in an area historically in dispute, the concern of imperialism with the region where the Cuban workers’ state is located, the greatest enemy of the USA since 1961, aggravated by the rise of nationalism of the Chavista left in Venezuela in the 21st century, the internal ethno-political differences not resolved in Guyana itself, which in turn also did not complete its political independence in relation to imperialism, that is, the country cannot even be classified as a semi-colony. (International Context, CINT: Guyana: Oil, Internal Disputes, the USA and Venezuela, Jan/April 2023).

We defend the political, social and military mobilization of Venezuela. We fight for “Out with Exxon-Mobil!, Out with Anglo-Saxon imperialism!”, for the joint exploitation of the wealth of Essequiba for the benefit of the people of Venezuela and Guyana, like the Itaipu and Yacireta Hydroelectric Power Plants, binational plants. The first belongs to Brazil and Paraguay. The second, respectively, to Paraguay and Argentina. When it was completed, Itaipu was the largest dam in the world, a title it held for 21 years until the construction of the Three Gorges Hydroelectric Plant in China in 2003. The Itaipu Binacional plant continues to be the world leader in clean and renewable energy production. An anti-imperialist unity between Venezuela and Guyana against imperialism and its parasitic monopolies would benefit both nations and could result in a binational enterprise superior to that of Itaipu, based on more fraternal ties of wealth distribution.

This does not seem to be the interest of the government of Irfaan Ali, president of Guyana of the   People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C), a party that was born in 1950 as a labour-type party but today is a vassal of the USA, an agent of Exxon-Mobil, against Venezuela, economically and militarily, and for the exploitation of energy resources in lands and waters stolen from Venezuela. “Exxon “captured” Guyana “without firing a shot”. It is increasingly difficult to determine where the company ends and the government of the South American country begins.” (Intercept, How Exxon Captured a Country Without Firing a Shot, 06/18/2023).

Intercept reporter Amy Westervelt  draws attention to a decision by a Guyanese court against the country’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Exxon – strangely, co-defendants in the case:

“Two Guyanese citizens have accused the EPA of never demanding a guarantee from Exxon that the company would cover all costs related to a possible oil spill. The oil company’s assessments indicate that such a disaster could send oil to the beaches of 14 different islands in Guyana. Caribbean – and all could hold Guyana liable for damages. The costs would be astronomical, which is why licenses for  offshore drilling  require not only a liability insurance policy independent of Exxon, but also an unlimited financial guarantee to cover costs in excess of those covered for insurance. What the oil company didn’t do and continues to not do. Exxon executives join the president of Guyana in his suite at cricket matches, and the vice president regularly holds press conferences to defend the company. Vincent Adams , a petroleum engineer from Guyana and former head of the country’s EPA, said he planned to have monitors on board Exxon platforms. “All of that has been cancelled. Even Exxon’s files and authorizations, which used to be in the document center with everyone else, are under lock and key in the director’s office,” he said. “There is no oversight going on because Exxon doesn’t want oversight…”

idem

In addition to all this, controlling the country, its resources and its governments, Exxon-Mobil, which also controls an important fraction of imperialism, intends to drag Venezuela into a war and perhaps realize the dream that British imperialism had, to conquer all the Orinoco basin, today predominantly Venezuelan. If this requires using the Guyanese people as cannon fodder, imperialism and its multinational will not hesitate, after all:

“Guyana needs money to lift its people out of poverty,  [but is now] going through another cycle of what development economists call ‘the resource curse’ – the phenomenon of countries with an abundance of natural resources ending up with less growth economy, democracy or development – ​​go do it. ‘Where is the gold money?  Where is the bauxite money?  Where is the diamond money?  Where is the sugar money?  Where is the agriculture money?  Where is the money of fishing, etc.?  The list is almost endless because we are full of wealth,’ she said.  ‘And yet the people in this country are poor.’

idem

During the Trump period, when new oil reserves were discovered in the region, the colonization of Guyana by the USA was accentuated. Using, once again, the lame justification of the “War on Drugs”, imperialism expanded the tentacles of its repressive apparatus on the continent and the siege on Venezuela and Cuba.

Irfaan Ali with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, September 2020:

“In September 2020, in a joint statement with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, President Irfaan Ali said the two countries would begin joint maritime patrols aimed at drug interdiction near Guyana’s disputed border with Venezuela, plagued by crisis. The deal came as US oil major Exxon Mobil Corp, as part of a consortium with Hess Corp, increased crude oil production from Guyana’s massive Stabroek offshore block , a large portion of which is in waters claimed by Venezuela. Pompeo and Ali added that ‘greater security, greater ability to understand its border space, what is happening within its Exclusive Economic Zone – these are all things that give Guyana sovereignty.’ “

Wikipedia: Guyana–United States relations

The Guyanese president who preceded Irfaan Ali, David A. Granger, advocated the establishment of organic US ties with Guyana, which should become a US territory or enter its Commonwealth similar to Puerto Rico. In other words, Guyana would go back from being an almost semi-colony to openly assuming the status of a US colony, like Puerto Rico. The unity of the Latin American peoples presupposes their independence from imperialism, in this case, from the government of Guyana, today, the new battering ram of imperialism against Caracas, after the failure of coups d’état, blockades, military invasions, Guidós, etc.

And the working class?

Workers are not interested in the conflict, much less the interference of US imperialism. Workers know that the existing wealth in the region, regardless of the state flag, must be used to provide better living conditions for everyone.

The unity of workers in Latin America and the Caribbean, including Venezuelans and Guyanese, is necessary against the offensive of imperialism, in this case by the Anglo-Saxon bloc, against the oppressed peoples of the region.

At this moment, we communists defend the unity of workers in the region, in defence of the great local wealth and that the interests of the respective states are never above the interests of the workers.

We must take advantage of the moment to debate the real way out for the working class in Latin America, that is, to create new, larger Cubas, without imperialist blockades, from the perspective of creating the Federation of Socialist States of Latin America.

• The case of Israeli Nazi-Zionism
• A fascist government is not yet a fascist state
• What about Russia, China and Belarus?
• Statist fascism, ultraliberal neo-fascism
• Opportunism frustrates and sectarianism divides the working class, favouring the path of reaction

By Humberto Rodrigues

Milei (Argentina), Wilders (Netherlands), Abascal (Spain), Zelensky (Ukraine), Meloni (Italy), Bolsonaro and Trump and the brutality of the Nazi-Zionist genocide are complementary manifestations of the same trend that has been infecting the bloc of nations that make up the imperialist system in the West. To a lesser or greater degree, everyone defends a policy of radicalization of neoliberalism, or ultraliberalism, a policy of complete work at the service of finance capital and imperialism.

Despite the differences between Nazism and fascism, such as the fact that Nazism involves the racist component in a more blatant way, for example, now we will not deal with the disputes between these two phenomena, but rather the similarities and differences between Nazi-fascism of the first generation, manifested between the years 1920 and 1945, and of the current one, relating to movements and governments identified with Nazi-fascist traits in the 21st century.

Deindustrialization and imperialist decay

Despite the various local particularities and differences between them, common aspects, all these contemporary phenomena are associated with the deindustrialization of the West, with the migration of industries to the East, observed in the last 50 years and, therefore, with the disarticulation of the industrial proletariat in the western countries. It should be noted that the phenomenon occurs with much less intensity in Asia, which is going through an uneven process of industrialization, and where the extreme right is only growing marginally.

The exception would be in India. Modi, leader of the most populous country in the world, is far right and India is one of the most industrializing countries. But Modi does not have enough strength to make the Indian state more fascist than it already is. Fascists aspire to stifle unions and the right to strike. The largest general strikes in history were carried out against the Modi government in 2016 (180 million workers stopped) and 2020 (250 million).

So far, fascist governments have failed to transform states into fascist states. Most of them do not last more than one term nor do they elect a successor, a phenomenon that could gain greater solidity in the coming generations if the trend is not contained and defeated.

It is quite true that for the most exploited and oppressed fractions of the proletariat, especially for blacks and Latinos in the USA, for blacks in Brazil and immigrants in almost all countries, notably in Europe, the terror of the capitalist State imposes itself in a brutal, fascist-like and independent of governments, as it has become a permanent state policy of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat in the 21st century.

The case of Israeli Nazi-Zionism

Israel did not become a Nazi State with the coming to power of an extreme right-wing government, it was already created as a Nazi State against the Palestinian population. Regardless of whether Tel Aviv is governed by Labor or Likud, Nazi-Zionist brutality has been the same for 76 years. The State of Israel was born as an artificial creature of imperialism, deforming the Jewish question in favour of big capital, representing an enclave of this system in Western Asia.

40 years ago, US Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig, appointed by then President Ronald Reagan, coined the following definition about the Middle Eastern ally: “Israel is the largest American aircraft carrier, it is unsinkable, it carries no soldiers American and is located in a region critical to US national security.” (BBC: Why does the US support Israel?).

The function of the Zionist entity created in 1948 is to be an extension of Anglo-Saxon imperialist policy in the region that concentrates most of the planet’s oil. So, Israel did not become fascist with the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, it was born as a Nazi state, given its racist component, segregation, apartheid and maintenance of refugee concentration camps for many decades longer than the experiences of Hitler (12 years old) and Mussolini (21 years old).

The Zionist entity is the longest-lasting expression of imperialist Nazism. Israel became what it is, under the same magic that made Nazism rise imposingly in Germany, after the humiliating German defeat in the first war and the even more humiliating Treaty of Versailles, thanks to the heavy investments of Western imperialism as a whole. At that time, to suffocate the Russian revolution and the European revolutionary processes, today, it stops to expel the Palestinians and steal their lands, rich in gas, oil and geopolitically strategic.

A fascist government is not yet a fascist state

In 1932, when theorizing about the elements indicative of the fascistisation of a State, the Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky wrote:

” From fascism the bourgeoisie demands a thorough job; once it has resorted to methods of civil war, it insists on having peace for a period of years. And the fascist agency, by utilizing the petty bourgeoisie as a battering ram, by overwhelming all obstacles in its path, does a thorough job. After fascism is victorious, finance capital directly and immediately gathers into its hands, as in a vice of steel, all the organs and institutions of sovereignty, the executive administrative, and educational powers of the state: the entire state apparatus together with the army, the municipalities, the universities, the schools, the press, the trade unions, and the co-operatives. When a state turns fascist, it does not mean only that the forms and methods of government are changed in accordance the patterns set by Mussolini – the changes in this sphere ultimately play a minor role – but it means first of all for the most part that the workers’ organizations are annihilated; that the proletariat is reduced to an amorphous state; and that a system of administration is created which penetrates deeply into the masses and which serves to frustrate the independent crystallization of the proletariat. Therein precisely is the gist of fascism …”

How Mussolini Triumphed. From What Next? Vital Question for the German Proletariat, 1932

This formulation by Trotsky referred to the reality of Mussolini’s Italy, in a process of recent and late unification and industrialization, when the imperialist bourgeoisie needed to contain the powerful force of the proletariat and its organizations through annihilation, in order to reduce it to a state amorphous in order to then create a system of administration and social control that would curtail all proletarian opposition to the fascist regime.

The governments of the political leaders mentioned in the opening paragraph of this text have clear fascist aspirations, but the conversion of their states into complete fascist states, along the lines of Mussolini, is something that we have not seen even in the mercenary and fascist Ukraine of Poroshenko and Zelensky, where unions were physically crushed and political opposition and communism were banned. However, it may be that in the future, a new generation of rulers representing an even more decayed and desperate imperialist system will convert the States into fascist States. The most grotesque manifestations of imperialism are not things of the distant past. In the last 20 years, imperialism has gathered dozens of old, rehashed and new atrocities in its toolbox, just to list the most popular: torture in Iraq and the concentration camp in Guantánamo; armed and sponsored DAESH terrorism against Syria; bloodthirsty military occupations such as in Libya and Afghanistan; murder of hundreds of civilians with drones in various parts of the world; dozens of bacteriological weapons laboratories, explosions of gas pipelines, bridges and Nazi mercenaries in Ukraine; kidnapping, torture and murder of women and children, bombing with white phosphorus, ethnic cleansing and hospital explosions in the Gaza Strip and many coups d’état against the governments of oppressed countries. As the great geopolitical scientist Moniz Bandeira warned us: ” Empires are more dangerous when they decline “.

What about Russia, China and Belarus?

Wouldn’t the governments of China, Russia and Belarus, which also curb internal opposition and where there are almost no independent unions, also be fascist? We believe that the rise of these governments is also part of the phenomenon of the decline of the imperialist system, but as its contradiction, its antagonistic complement within the capitalist world market, expressing the resistance of oppressed and oppressing national bourgeoisies, as seen in the new cold war. Identifying the phenomenon merely by its form, divorcing it from its structural content, artificially separating it from the fact that they are instruments of imperialism is the liberal method, of capital theorists like Hannah Arendt, the theory of the two demons, etc.

Fascism is a form of government by finance capital and the imperialist system against oppressed countries and workers. Currently, the hegemonic policy of all countries subordinate to the imperialist world system is neoliberal or ultraliberal policy. These economic policies predominate in Ukraine, Italy, the USA and during Bolsonaro’s Brazil, but not in Russia, China and Belarus.

We must update concepts and enrich them with the new determinations of reality in motion. An equal sign should not be placed between the phenomena that are instruments of imperialism and those that oppose imperialism. Workers’ organizations and the political opposition also suffered persecution under Stalinism and no one thought of calling the USSR a fascist state. Russia, China and Belarus are not capitalist countries like the others, they have the historical intersection of having gone through proletarian dictatorships, they do not have anti-communist regimes nor have they deindustrialized like the West, where Nazi tendencies have grown again. We characterize that the contradictions of capitalist restoration in countries that had expropriated the bourgeoisie as a class, combined with the decline of imperialism, promoted the rise in Russia and China of a non-imperialist capitalism, deformed by decades of non-capitalist development. (Communist Party – LCFI: Marxism and the Post-Counterrevolution Cold War).

Statist fascism, ultraliberal neo-fascism

Another difference between current Nazi-fascists and those of the first generation is the relationship between nationalization and privatization of the national economy. Although Mussolini’s “corporate state” was nothing more than a thuggish agent of big capital and did not own companies, in the spirit of that time, the USSR and Keynesianism, Mussolini took advantage of the fact that “three quarters of the Italian economy, industrial and agricultural, are in the hands of the State” (Popollo d’Italia, May 26, 1934).

In a phase of deindustrialization also called post-Fordist, the factory proletariat, strictly speaking, and the unions, in general, weakened, the bourgeoisie does not see it necessary to pay the political cost of crushing them in order to contain the organized resistance of the proletariat.

Therefore, the new Nazi fascisms are incomplete movements, but relatively effective in terrorizing and removing historical rights from the proletariat, thus allowing the advancement of so-called ultraliberalism. And this advance on the rights of the proletariat, the expansion of exploitation, the over-spoliation, are what interests big capital most, hence the usefulness of neo-fascists.

But this new wave is also an expression of the decay of the imperialist world system, which increasingly needs to replace soft-power with far-right governments in order to maintain social control with repressive policies and co-opt a discontented fraction of the population into a kind of reactionary rebellion against traditional politicians.

Opportunism frustrates and sectarianism divides the working class, favouring the path of reaction

This political form is not only a product of imperialist decay, but also of the decay of opportunist reformism, incapable of meeting the minimum demands for survival of the working population in the midst of imperialist decay, favouring the creation of resentment within the proletariat, feeding counter-revolutionary prejudices and anti-communism. Social democracy paves the way for Nazism.

Also dogmatism, sectarianism of Trotskyist or Stalinist origin, failed to present alternatives in the face of imperialist decay. Both fractions of the communist movement that did not derail towards opportunism, fell into the opposite vice, sectarianism, the belief that capitalism is going through its terminal crisis, that we live in a pre-revolutionary situation, that it is not necessary to build united fronts against imperialism and against fascism, that the dispute between NATO and BRICS, being capitalist blocs, is a matter of indifferent to the working class. Sectarianism fragments and weakens the fight against reaction.

Add to this deindustrialization, the lack of life prospects for young people and the political apathy of new generations of the working class (which means that activists over 50 years old predominate in left-wing meetings) after almost half a century of the last proletarian revolutionary victory (Vietnam, 1975), and three decades of historic defeats such as the end of the USSR (1991), and we are faced with a situation that is conjuncturally unfavourable to the left and favourable to the political organization of the right.

All these movements are temporary and even the current revolutionary ebb that favours the rise of new Nazi-fascisms is momentary. Our time, the time of this revolutionary reflux, is also the time of the greatest social mobilizations in history, the biggest general strike in the history of Brazil (2017), the biggest general strike of the working class (India, 2020); the largest wave of anti-racist protests in the USA (2020); the largest global mobilization for the Palestinian cause in Israel’s 76 years of existence (2023).

All these great movements achieve important partial achievements, they are colossal and unprecedented demonstrations of the history of the class struggle, but they do not solve the problem that generated them because, to achieve this, it is necessary, in addition to these struggles, the conquest of power by the working class, organized into communist parties.

The demand for the Nazi way of doing politics in favour of the accumulation of capital also generates, contradictorily, for the sake of survival, the need to overcome class collaboration, quietism, anti-communism within the left, sectarianism against front-line tactics only. All this must be combined with the fight against neoliberal deindustrialization, against imperialism and for the construction of new communist and revolutionary parties that unify and organize resistance to the rise of the right, but also that penetrate the mass movement with a program to mobilize the working class against immediate barbarism and also for its strategic interests.

STATEMENT FROM THE TMB – ARGENTINA

What did Milei win?

The electoral victory of fascism had the support of the Trumpist faction of imperialism, sectors of the big world bourgeoisie, such as Elon Musk, the fascist movements of Brazil and Spain, such as Bolsonarism and VOX, the anti-Peronist right and, socially, mass sectors of the Argentine middle class. Thus, he won with around 55% of the vote.

The economic crisis provoked by the imperialist encirclement of the IMF creditors was one of the most important instruments of finance capital against Argentina. The inflationary escalation in Argentina of 142% so far this year, inflation that is generated in the periodic devaluations demanded by the IMF, was what precipitated Massa’s defeat in the elections and Milei’s victory.

The Decline of Peronism

These were external factors that led to the defeat of the ruling party’s candidacy. Nor can we forget the internal factors, the social policy of Fernandez-Massa, a last-minute welfarist, but not structural even for a social welfare state, because in the final analysis, they are a capitalist government of vassals to imperialism, which did not break with the IMF, which transferred to the working people the payment of the debt taken by Macri. They were also a cowardly government, trying at all times to reconcile between NATO and the BRICS, a decadent and typical representative of the parasitic bourgeoisie against the working people. Added to this is the political betrayal of sectors of the ruling party in several provinces and municipalities that considered that their political positions were already assured with the results of the first round.

Why did Milei win?

Despite Massa being one of the Peronist politicians closest to the White House, Biden did not support him directly because the primary interest of imperialism is to get Argentina out of BRICS, in this, Biden and Trump surely agree. The White House still did not support Milei because in the dispute over Argentina in world geopolitics, the US Democrats were not interested in winning over a Trumpist who would aim for Trump’s victory or that of another Republican in the 2024 US presidential elections. So, getting Argentina out of BRICS is Milei’s most important task for the imperialist bourgeoisie.

With this strategy, the NATO mainstream media supported Milei and tried to camouflage him as a mere exotic outsider, an anarcho-capitalist still necessary to get Argentina out of the economic crisis. Hence, each faction of the big world bourgeoisie had its own interest in Milei’s victory. Elon Munsk, for example, interested in Argentinian lithium, tried to support the facho, as he did in the 2019 coup in Bolivia. The right-wing opposition to the current Peronist government, deeply demoralized since the collapse of the Macri government, joined Milei as a way to defeat Massa and move forward with an adjustment program, such as the already announced privatization of YPF and nationalised radio and television media.

A government that is ready to carry out shock measures against the current geopolitical tendencies of Argentina, and against its proletariat

Milei aims for radical reaction in all lines in its economic program and in the role of Argentina in the world capitalist market. In addition to the break with BRICS,  and with the tendency towards the end of Argentina’s historical dependence on the IMF, as indicated by the recent agreements with China in this regard, Milei also came to abort Argentina’s rapprochement with the trend of the world economy towards de-dollarization, pointing to a new and suicidal dollarization of the economy.  As Menem did in the 1990s with convertibility as a form of dollarization; he was responsible for the qualitative leap of the neoliberal dependence of the economy. The middle class, which now supports Milei, will soon be hit by the far-right’s austerity measures. Milei can bring together the worst of Menem with the worst of Macri.

At the time of the 1917 Revolution, Lenin considered absolute control of the Central Bank by the Soviet state as the first measure for the construction of national sovereignty and socialism in the USSR. The elimination of the Central Bank, as Milei announces, or the simple autonomy of the Central Bank, as Bolsonaro did in Brazil, in Argentina would mean the end of monetary sovereignty in Argentina, and a free hand for financial-speculative capital to circulate unhindered in its offensives.

The government of Milei, a lover of the Argentine military dictatorship, threatens to apply measures typical of Pinochet-style shock treatment, which will take the current economy from crisis to collapse.

“What is at stake goes far beyond domestic interests and the economy. Milei is being supported directly by big capitalists like Elon Musk, interested in lithium, and by multinationals, and indirectly, by the White House, all to get Argentina out of the BRICS. The destruction of the country would be a detail “to think ahead” (like Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya). Like the logic by which the U.S. sacrificed Europe in the war in Ukraine: “the European Union!” (Victoria Nuland, Undersecretary for Political Affairs of the European Union) And the U.S. shows no concern with the future consequences of its policies even with its main imperialist partners, much less with the Argentine semi-colony.”

(TMB, Monday, October 23, 2023, BETWEEN IMPERIALISM AND THE BRICS, A materialist balance of the Argentine elections). https://tmb1917.blogspot.com/2023/10/entre-el-imperialismo-y-los-brics.html

The fragility of the fascist Milei

Milei does not have a political base of its own, he will be supported by Macri’s PRO, especially the wing of Macri and Patricia Bulrrich and hard-line anti-Kichnerism sectors of the UCR, such as the UCR of the province of Mendoza. If compared to historical parties and movements such as Peronism and the UCR, Milei also does not have a party even like the PRO with any territorial construction. If Milei moves forward with his plan to break with China, taking Argentina out of BRICS, he will be in contradiction with agribusiness and its political and parliamentary representatives (since agribusiness has China as its main market) and sectors of the rural middle class.

Also in his plan of mega-devaluation and raising of tariffs and fuel, he will clash with the working population and the strong union political apparatuses, hegemonized by Peronism. It remains to be seen to what extent if during the transition Alberto Fernández would not assume the political cost of devaluation and tariff adjustment measures. In addition, the fiscal adjustment that he is going to undertake will lead him to enter into a harsh contradiction with the political apparatuses at the head of the provincial states and with the working-class population of those provinces, to the extent that the financing of the provincial states themselves is cut.

The Catholic Church did not officially declare itself against Milei in the elections, but its majority is part of those who oppose him. A significant section of the evangelical churches spoke out against Milei’s proposed measures, while another sector remained neutral towards Milei. https://www.lanacion.com.ar/politica/elecciones-2023-las-iglesias-evangelicas-le-responden-a-un-sector-dentro-del-credo-que-se-pronuncio-nid12112023/ . If there was a sector of pastors of Pentecostal evangelical churches who supported him slightly in the face of his measures of attrition, they will return to apoliticism.

In short, Milei’s government will be a weak government, without important support from the ideological, political and economic trends of bourgeois society and that will clash with important sectors of the population, and its Pinochet-style shock adjustment measures will lead it to rapid decline.

The working class, and oppressed and exploited people need to take stock of the inability of Peronism to defend them from this fate and to prepare its independent organization, in the unions, the neighborhoods, schools, and a new, communist and revolutionary party to confront fascism, imperialism and its agents.

For a period, we have been holding semi-public Zoom educational meetings on some of the basic politics of revolutionary Marxism, on alternate Sunday afternoons. These are on a semi-open, invitation only basis at this point, though we may make them more public at a future point.

So as to share some of this to a wider audience, we have created a new page for educational materials on this site, which can be found here.

At the moment we are publishing transcripts/notes of the presentations for these events. We do hope to be putting regular podcasts up in the not-too-distant future, which will of course be announced when we do this.

Gaza Genocidal Siege is like Hitler’s Siege of Leningrad

We Need a Unified Struggle Against Imperialism: Palestine and Ukraine

(This leaflet was published by IUAFS on 11 November 2023. A PDF of it can be downloaded by clicking on the IUAFS banner image above)

The most overtly racist regime on the planet is slaughtering Palestinians like the murder machine it is. More than 10,000 are dead already, with thousands more buried under the rubble. Half are children, since half of Gaza’s population are under 18. Israel’s terror-bombing and starvation of the Palestinians, stopping all essential supplies including fuel for hospital generators, medicine, food and even drinking water, is driven by racism similar to Nazism. Netanyahu’s defence minister Gallant justified this by saying that Palestinians are ‘human animals.’ This is the politics of genocide; they would like to see the deaths of a couple of million people. Or at least the fear of this causing a mass flight of an entire ‘unwanted’ population. They are also preparing similar crimes on the West Bank, over a hundred are already dead at the hands of their bloodthirsty settlers and troops.

A huge wave of protests and rage at these crimes traverses the globe. Earlier, the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, fighting a war against US-backed Nazis in Ukraine, correctly compared the Israeli siege of Gaza with Hitler’s siege of Leningrad. Governments including Jordan, Turkey, Chile, Venezuela, Spain, Iran, Iraq and Colombia have rightly condemned it as genocide, and nine countries have broken diplomatic relations with Israel.  Biden, with Sunak’s support has moved warships into the Eastern Mediterranean to threaten Hezbollah in Lebanon, Syria and Iran – protecting Israel and threatening any nations inclined to help Gaza militarily. The United States and its allies own this genocidal slaughter.

The Zionists hope to use this butchery to induce any survivors to flee and be ethnically cleansed. Netanyahu openly stated that he wants Gazans to flee to Egypt. This is how they are attempting another Nakba in Gaza, underlining the close kinship between Zionism and Nazism. The original 1948 Nakba was a similar monstrous crime.

Sunak’s vile government defends this. It has tried motivating cops to attack the rights of Palestine Solidarity supporters to demonstrate, implying that they are supporters of Hamas. Hamas are popular among Palestinians because they are seen as incorruptible and militant fighters, but they are just one, militantly Islamic ideological trend – many other trends, some secular and leftist, support and/or are involved in the struggle. The stories in the imperialist media about “beheaded babies” and “rape” by Hamas are discredited lies. Evidence has now emerged that many if not most of the October 7 victims were slaughtered by Israeli forces, under Israel’s ‘Hannibal Directive’ which mandates that they slaughter their own troops and even civilians to prevent them being captured.

We must support the struggles of the Palestinian people for liberation no matter who leads them. The government’s attacks show that the pro-Zionists in government, neoliberal mercenaries all, have genocidal views.  Braverman suggests that carrying Palestinian flags is grounds to arrest people. She expresses racialised hatred of Palestinians – a dangerous extremist herself.  Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party was destroyed by Zionist destabilisation, much of it organised by the Israeli Embassy. The neoliberal wing worked closely with Zionism. All these parties are dominated by ‘Friends of Israel’ and critics of Zionism face witch-hunting. Including the Tories’ attempts to ban solidarity marches.

Yet there are many millions of people in this country who are familiar with the genocidal oppression of Palestinians. Racist, anti-working-class bigotry which is dragging politics to the far-right is bound up with vile attitudes to Palestinians and Muslims, just as before WWII Hitlerian Jew-hate poisoned political life.

Similar politics are behind the war in Ukraine, where the West has peddled the most incredible series of lies, about Russian’s supposedly raping women, killing babies and engaging in ‘genocide’. Almost exactly the same lies as about the Palestinians. In fact, the deaths of civilians killed by both sides since the beginning of Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO) in February 2022, over 500 days ago, are considerably less than the more than the likely 15,000 (or more!) deaths Israel has inflicted on Gaza in just over a month.

There are considerable similarities between what Western imperialism is trying to do in Ukraine and what the Zionists are doing in Palestine. In 2014, the US spent $10 billion organising the Maidan coup that brought Nazi Banderaists to power as part of their programme of NATO expansion, aiming to get Ukraine into NATO to threaten Russia with US strategic weapons from close quarters. As part of this, the Nazi regime abolished the legal equality that previously existed between languages, and began persecuting Russian speakers, who are close to half the population, particularly centred in the Donbass region in the South Eastern half of Ukraine. In Crimea, where the majority is actually Russian, they voted to join Russia at that time.

This came to a head at the beginning of 2022 when the Nazi regime, with its US backers led by Biden, planned a much bigger offensive to re-conquer the Donbass. Russia intervened in the Donbass region to stop this ethnic cleansing and genocide taking place. Given the chance, this oppressed population voted to join Russia. Russia is not denying the right of Ukrainians to their own state, and there are no Russian troops in the Ukrainian-speaking West of Ukraine. US-UK-EU Imperialism falsely accuse Russia of annexation of Ukraine to cover up their grand-scale policy of annexation in Palestine.

This was recently exposed in Canada when in unison with the stooge Zelensky, a Zionist who vows to make Ukraine a ‘big Israel’ through the expulsion or killing of Russian-speaking people, the Canadian neo-liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, was seen publicly saluting a 98-year-old veteran of Hitler’s SS. The West’s support for Zionist Israel, as well as their support for Nazi Ukraine, are really signs of the rehabilitation of fascist barbarism that is taking place in Western politics. This understanding, about the lies of imperialism about Ukraine, needs to become as widely known as the facts about Palestine and Gaza: we need a unified struggle against imperialism. In Palestine and Ukraine, one side right, one side wrong! Solidarity with the Palestinians! Solidarity with the Donbass and Crimea!

The Liaison Committee of the Fourth International, together with the comrades of ClassConscious based in Australia and the United States, and a number of our joint allies in the Marxists Speak Out Network (MSO), though not as yet MSO itself, agreed to criticially endorse the declaration of the Rome Peace Conference held on October 27-28. We endorsed with reservations, which are stated in the Open Letter which we sent to the Conference during its meeting. But despite these reservations, we agreed to endorse the declaration itself, as there is much good material in it, despite the flaws, and we consider the bringing together of such an international gathering of anti-war activists, clearly standing for the defeat of NATO and defence of the peoples of Donbass and Crimea, to be a step foward towards the creation of a new Communist International, a key part of our immediate aims.

Stop the Third World War – for a true and a just peace

The clash between Russia and Ukraine, due to the direct involvement of NATO, threatens to unleash a third world war.

The Euro-Atlanticist elites justify their direct support for the puppet regime in Kiev as “necessary to repel Russian aggression”.

Actually, the real aggressor is the US-NATO-EU coalition, which took advantage of the Soviet Union’s dissolution to economically and politically subdue all of Eastern Europe in order to encircle and defeat Russia. The final step in this strategy would be the definitive annexation of Ukraine to NATO and the European Union, and regime change in Moscow.

Only the foolish and forgetful can believe that the blockade led by the United States of America has triggered this war to defend the principles of democracy and the self-determination of peoples. The truth is that this blockade, after supporting the Euromaidan coup, financed and armed the Ukrainian army and neo-Nazi groups to hurl them against the Donbass republics and Russia itself. The truth is that the US-NATO-EU bloc uses the Ukrainian people as cannon fodder to establish its supremacy thus preventing a multipolar order based on respect for the peoples and the sovereignty of nations from coming into being. If this blockade succeeds in subduing Russia, the doors will be wide open for war against China.

Preventing the third world war is the first duty of all those who have the good of humanity at heart. It is therefore necessary to build a great/ strong international coalition for peace and brotherhood among nations.

Such an alliance must be able to set in motion the different souls fighting against militarism and imperialism in all their forms. To start this process, we invite you to join the European Peace Conference that will take place in Rome on 27 and 28 October 2023.

As signatories of this Appeal we ask for:

• the immediate halt of arms shipments to Ukraine;
• an end to the sanctions on Russia as well as the Russophobic campaign;
• the invalidation of the statement condemning Russia as a terrorist state;
• an armistice between the belligerent forces;
• a truly neutral and democratic Ukraine;
• the stop to the arms race and the dissolution of NATO.

Finally, we call upon the peoples to fight against all forms of imperialism, and nationalist chauvinism and we advocate the advent of a multipolar world based on respect for every people and all nationalities.

FOR A TRUE PEACE, FOR A JUST PEACE!

Divided We are nothing, united we can do everything.

The Palestinian prison breakout from Gaza has given rise to a new wave of bloodthirsty racist hysteria in the imperialist media. The racism is obvious when you consider one salient fact: the Hamas surprise attack on Israeli forces and parts of the nearby settler population appears to have inflicted a similar level of deaths and injuries that have been inflicted on Palestinians many times since 2007, when the Israeli organised coup against Hamas’s 2005 election by the Palestinian in a free vote, overthrew the movement in the West Bank and confined it to Gaza. To Israel, killing 1000-2000 Palestinians in periodic massacres was regularly dignified by the disgusting phrase “mowing the lawn”. And indeed, one recurrent and even well-publicised phenomenon during such atrocities as Operation Cast Lead (2009) and Operation Protective Edge (2014), which both killed thousands of Palestinians, was to see Israelis camped out on high ground overlooking the Gaza Strip, cheering and drinking in celebration of the bombs falling.

Those fulminating at the supposed ‘barbarism’ of the Hamas militants who led the breakout, from what even former British Prime Minister David Cameron acknowledged in 2010 is a “prison camp”, for alleged killing of Israelis in the vicinity of Gaza, never had any problem with this. Such phenomena are a symptom of the fact that Israel is not a normal state. Its adult population in the surrounding area is recent armed settlers who are direct beneficiaries of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population to Gaza. There is a considerable popular awareness that they live on land taken from the Palestinian population, and fear and loathing of that population. Hence the bloodthirsty celebrations, and the fear of revenge if there was ever a break out.

Some apparent evidence that seems to suggest that the political Hamas cadre were at pains not to ill-treat the prisoners that they took. Amid the fog of war, it has already come to light that many of the claims made by Israel are false; like the grotesque one about ‘beheaded babies’ that Biden lied that he had seen photographs of, but now the Israeli military say they don’t have any evidence. Many more of these claims are likely to be shown up as false. The claim of a massacre at a ‘rave’ that was taking place near to the Gaza fence at the time of the breakout also looks very suspicious – such lies go around the world but then it turns out there is no actual evidence for them. Apparently in one case a picture of suffering, injured children was posted online with the claim that they were Israeli children, only to emerge later that the image was of Palestinian children (!!). The same kind of lying and falsification has been legion over Ukraine.

Their purpose is to whip up and enhance racist hysteria. There is no concern for human life in this hysteria, but rather the demonisation of the ‘other’: Arabs and Muslims. That is the purpose of the fatuous comparisons with 9/11 that are being bandied around. the truth is that the Palestinian people have suffered many ‘9/11s’ at the hands of Zionism since 1948, and arguably since Britain issued the Balfour Declaration in 1917, promising their homeland to a third-party, racist colonial movement.

Now we see an attempt by the ruling class to extend the criminalisation of dissent that we have already seen over Ukraine, to the issue of Palestine. This now extends to criminalisation of support for the Palestinians per se – though they will have problems with that, as the Palestinians have literally millions of sympathisers in Britain today.  The racist sociopath Home Secretary Braverman is blatantly inciting the cops to arrest people for carrying Palestinian flags, on the supposed ground that the display of the flag is some sort of ‘harassment’ of Jews. This is blatant, and premeditated racist harassment and thuggery by the government and cops. a reflection in reality of the genocidal politics of Zionists in all the major bourgeois and pro-capitalist political parties. They have no problem with a genocide of the population of Gaza. This has already led to the arrest of one young Asian man in Manchester simply for carrying a Palestinian flag, prime facie a racist arrest in itself.

The Labour Party itself is led by vicious racists, with Keir Starmer as the bigot-in-chief. He was put into office as the result of a prolonged dirty-tricks scam campaign against Labour’s former left-wing leader, Jeremy Corbyn, led by the Zionist lobby, which the Blairite right-wing eagerly followed after they previously failed to discredit Corbyn with more conventional reactionary smears than the ‘anti-Semitism’ scam they finally settled on. But what is very visible now is the racist nature of that scam, as encapsulated in the genocidal politics of Keir Starmer himself. This culminated in Starmer’s endorsement, in an interview with LBC’s right-wing ‘shock jock’ Nick Ferrari (11 October) of the plan by the Israeli Defence Minister fascistic Likud thug Yoav Gallant, for a complete siege of Gaza. Evidently modelled on Hitler’s siege of Leningrad, the civilian population are being, as we speak, deprived of all fuel, food and water, with mass starvation and dying of thirst, patients dying from lack of power for hospital care, etc. This atrocity is as premeditatedly murderous as Auschwitz. But Starmer endorsed it, and said that Israel has the right to do it.

This is what was always behind the Zionist witchhunt in Labour; the drive to transform Labour from the ‘broad church’ the social-democratic left fatuously wanted, into a bourgeois body run from above by neoliberals and neoconservatives, funded by corporate donations. The completion of the Blair project. The Ukraine war has been a watershed in the transformation of Labour into something capable of rivalling the Tories for extreme reaction, as both main parties united to defend the West funding Nazis in Ukraine. Only a few weeks ago this was given substantial exposure, on an international level, as Zelensky, in cahoots with Canada’s Liberal president Justin Trudeau, a figure who Starmer would no doubt want to emulate, led two standing ovations for a 98-year old SS Veteran in the Canadian Parliament. This was a major international political scandal that did a lot to expose the real nature of the imperialist proxy war in Ukraine. But Starmer’s Labour Party is unfazed about supporting genocidal Nazis who want to slaughter Russians. And he has now dotted the I’s and crosses the T’s on support for Zionists aiming at genocide and/or ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. That was the truly sinister objective of the ‘anti-Semitism’ scam in Labour under Corbyn, it is now clear.

By Leon Collis

This is a short opinion piece based on personal experience and conversations with comrades: Much has been in the bourgeois media recently about proposed changes to disability benefits. We really should stop calling them benefits: They are social security entitlements!

There are two main social security allowances many disabled people are entitled to claim: Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and Personal Independence Payment (PIP). ESA is for people who are unable to work or have limited capacity to work due to their disability. PIP is for disabled people who have care and transport needs.

Under the last Labour government, the ruling class decided that too many disabled people were claiming the social security allowances of: Incapacity Benefit (ESA’s forerunner) and Disability Living allowance (DLA) (PIP’s forerunner)

The ruling class decided that in order get around this problem as they saw it, they would scrap those particular allowances and replace them with new ones.  Hence the introduction of ESA and PIP.

These new social security entitlements go beyond filling in a claimant form: they require a full on physical assessment.  What’s more, the assessment process is run by the private sector.  The ruling class issue these companies with targets to deny a certain number claimants access to these allowances. Many of which are overturned on appeal. The government deny the existence of these targets. To make matters worse, many disabled people are constantly having to undergo reassessment despite no change in their condition.

Imagine the fear that one feels every time one gets a letter from the DWP.  This is because at first glance, its not possible to know whether it is just an annual rate change or a letter informing you that you are about to be reassessed.  Where you get a new form as if you are a new claimant.

New legislation has been introduced that means that those of us who are in the full support group of ESA will now be expected to seek work or face sanctions.  Disabled people in the support group of ESA until now had not been expected to work due to the nature of their disability or illness.

Some of us prematurely breathed a sigh of relief on hearing that the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) will be scrapped (this is the physical assessment for claiming ESA).  However, that is not until 2026/27.

So the government is obviously attempting another push to strip disabled people of their entitlements before the scrapping of the WCA. There has long been talk of merging the assessment process for PIP and ESA.  Currently they are two different assessments.

The ruling class always introduce these changes under the guise of helping disabled people.  In reality, it is a wealth transfer!

These constant changes lead to more ableism: Actions, attitudes and use of language that constitute prejudice towards disabled people. For example: The ruling class have long been pushing the idea that there is someone out there who is faking their disability.

Another example: In the environmental movement the rush to ban cars from our towns and cities fails to take into account that many disabled people do not feel able to use public transport for various reasons. This is a form of exclusion.

Finally, not introducing hybrid meetings (In-person and online participants) where people cannot get to an in-person meeting because of disability or illness is also a form of exclusion and therefore a form of ableism.