The False Promise of ISIS

Why are millions in the Middle East, Europe and North America attracted to the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL or Daesh)?  Part of the answer lies in the defeat of the old communist movement, which left a vacuum to be filled by rotten capitalist ideologies. One such ideology is radical Islam. Alienated young people have no alternative vision, no objective explanation for the horrors of capitalism, no organization to lead the fight for a better life.
Failure of the Old Movement
Through much of the 20th century, throughout the Middle East, there were large, pro-Soviet parties. In the early 1950s, Iran had the world’s largest non-ruling phony “communist” party.  In the 1960s, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser inspired—and misled—millions with his denunciations of imperialism and capitalist greed. He also attacked what he called “feudal reactionary” Islam, while praising his fellow nationalist capitalists and “anti-imperialist” Muslim clerics.  Throughout the 1970s, governments in Syria, Iraq, Algeria, and Libya, among others, all claimed to be socialist and anti-imperialist. They denounced Nasser’s successor, Anwar Sadat, for tilting in favor of U.S. imperialism.  In the 1980s, workers across the Middle East were attracted to movements that claimed to be more leftist than the ruling “socialists.”  In Iran, Turkey and Palestine, these movements had millions of followers.
With the reversion of the Soviet Union and China to capitalism, even the pretense of progressive politics in the Middle East disintegrated. Ruling classes across the region peddled the lie that “communism failed.” In fact, what had failed was socialism and nationalism. What had failed were leaders who claimed they could reform their way to a better world—without violent revolution and real communist ideas. That is why PLP fights as one international working class to smash all borders with an armed revolution that leads directly to communism.
Today, in the absence of a mass communist movement, capitalist rulers see less need to channel angry workers into reform movements. Instead, they rely primarily on repression. From the U.S. to Saudi Arabia and Israel, the capitalists’ “war on terror” labels any who resist ruling-class oppression as terrorists.
The misleaders in the Middle East are oil-thirsty capitalists dressed as religious fundamentalists.  Each group is worse than the last, from the Salafist Saudi rulers to Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda to ISIS. Each year these reactionary forces grow more extreme and sexist.  The Saudi Salafis prohibit women from driving. The Taliban bans secular education and forces women to cover themselves head to toe. ISIS kidnaps women for forced marriage as it sings the praises of slavery and the beheading non-believers.
Racist ISIS Illusions Broken
ISIS has drawn heavily from Saddam Hussein’s old army, and it knows how to organize.  It offers:
An analysis of Western imperialism that can be superficially appealing but at best incomplete.
A vision of “true Islam” and restoration of an Islamic “caliphate.” In reality, ISIS has no more to do with early Islam than the Pope and his band of Vatican thieves relate to early Christianity.  It is a standard, top-down, capitalist dictatorship, run for the benefit of a small group at the top.  
An organization that welcomes and incorporates recruits into a tight structure, even those who may not be particularly religious at first.  With the aid of social media, ISIS is adept at spreading its ideology in the face of intense repression. (By contrast, Al-Qaeda offers no comparable vision, and its paranoia prevents it from welcoming most potential recruits.) But despite Its emphasis on “the Muslim community” and its disdain for national borders, ISIS is both nationalist and racist. Ninety percent of its top posts are held by Iraqis, while African recruits are paid less and assigned worse jobs than Europeans.
The more ISIS advances, the more brutal it has become. Its rule relies on terror, nationalism, and oppression of women rather than winning mass support.
For the millions of unemployed, alienated youth searching for an answer, the solution is communism. The job of Progressive Labor Party is to redouble our efforts to ensure that the next generations of angry workers turn not to religious fanaticism or any other capitalist ideology, but instead to revolutionary communism. This means fighting racism and sexism head-on! We are building a movement where women are militant mass leaders, not targets of sexist violence. It is our responsibility to win more people to our analysis, our communist vision, and an organization that empowers workers rather than enslaving them.