Anti-semitism toxic for multiracial fightback

Anti-Jewish racism and attacks are on the rise across the U.S. Most recently Ye (formerly Kanye West) and Kyrie Irving threw fuel on the fire by launching anti-Jewish racist attacks on Twitter. Both Ye and Irving are spewing a particular toxic ideology of the Black Hebrew Israelites that reflects a reactionary, nationalist, and anti-class outlook. The Black Hebrew Israelites are a group of sects that espouse that Black people are the original Hebrews and were supplanted by modern day Jewish people. Many, if not all, of the groups push anti-Jewish racism in a twist on the replacement theory of the Trump racists by claiming they have been replaced from their rightful place by modern Jewish people.

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RED EYE ON THE NEWS ... November 30, 2022

Turkey demands Sweden and Finland sell out Kurds as price for joining NATO France24, 11/4–Turkey will not formally approve Finland and Sweden's membership of NATO until the two countries take the necessary "steps" Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told alliance chief Jens Stoltenberg Friday. Ankara has accused the two Nordic nations of providing a safe haven for outlawed Kurdish militants it deems "terrorists" and held back on ratifying their NATO membership despite an agreement in June. Finland and Sweden dropped decades of military non-alignment and scrambled to become NATO members in May, after Russia invaded Ukraine.

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Letters ... November 30, 2022

Profit system treats children as dispensable Several Progressive Labor Party (PLP) comrades joined a coalition of housing groups on November 3 to protest child homelessness in NYC. More than 104,000 public school children in NYC are homeless, 55,000 of whom are without shelter. As we gathered in a primary schoolyard we saw a teacher explaining to her students why we were there. Young people led the rally and one speaker reported that while she’s not homeless herself she was protesting in solidarity with her peers who are homeless.

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U.K. Rishi Sunak, face of fascism for a system in crisis

Amid runaway inflation and surging worker fightback, Britain's chaotic ruling-class merry-go-round has turned--for the moment--to filthy-rich Rishi Sunak, the UK's third prime minister in six weeks. Britain's instability reflects the international crisis of capitalism: a looming worldwide recession/depression, the implosion of the old U.S.-led liberal world order, the bosses' escalating attacks on the international working class, and the global volatility that will lead U.S. rulers—Democrats and Republicans alike—to full-blown fascism and world war with China and Russia.

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CUNY Fightback: Students, workers turn up the heat

BRONX, November 2–“Take a hand warmer. You’ll need it” Last week a dozen students and educational workers rallied in front of Bronx Community College due to of lack heat in the entire campus. We gave out hundreds of hand warmers and fliers calling on students, staff, and faculty to challenge racist austerity policies at City College of New York (CUNY) and to join our group that is building a strike movement. This rally was held just a week after we demonstrated a few miles south, at Hostos Community College, where the student cafeteria has been closed for over two years, vending machines and elevators are constantly out of order, and the outdoor spaces have been closed to students. The righteous anger of students and workers at the racist conditions that we’re forced to endure was on display, as people eagerly respond to our fightback message.

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Robeson, Davis, and Du Bois knew: To fight racism, fight capitalism

The principled stance taken by three of the greatest Black communist leaders of the 20th century — Paul Robeson, Benjamin Davis and William E. B. Du Bois, showed through their practice that to fight racism you have to fight the bosses. They understood that racism was created by capitalism to both divide and weaken the working class as well as to net the bosses hundreds of billions in super-profits from the lower pay forced on Black and Latin workers.

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Don’t vote, revolt! LA workers reject elections, embrace confidence in working class

LOS ANGELES, November 2–Antiracist fighters have united across Los Angeles County for weeks to stand up against anti-Black and anti-indigenous racism. A recently revealed leaked audio tape exposed a top labor leader and three members of the LA city council, including the first Latin woman president of the council, Nury Martinez, using vile, racist language. They were discussing how to redistrict LA so that the voter population best benefits them. This redistricting also intentionally disadvantages their fellow Black council people. They are modeling themselves off of the big imperialist powers as they carve up the city for their gain. As the Democrats struggle to maintain the appearance of liberalism, calls for the council members’ resignations have gone up the chain as high as President Joe Biden.

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Only workers can save workers: Pakistan floods prove need for revolution!

ince June, a third of Pakistan has come under water resulting in over two thousand deaths and upwards of 20 million displaced, revealing the complete failure of the capitalist Pakistani government in particular and ineffective capacity for capitalism globally to solve the problems endemic to the climate crisis. In 2022 alone, famines, floods and catastrophes wrought by climate change have laid bare to workers from East Africa to Pakistan two facts of this profit-driven system: first, that international “aid” is often a smokescreen for imperialist aggression; second, that local government neglect and corruption leaves millions around the world starving and tens of thousands dead—often women, children and the most vulnerable. Take Haiti where, after the 2010 earthquake and ensuing cholera outbreak, mafioso agencies diverted needed goods to the poor to line the pockets of greasy Haitian elites via either the black market or for personal use.

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The red wrecking ball, communists vs capitalist housing, Part 2: “This is the comrade party; the others are the boss parties.”

The following is part two of a seven-part series reprinted and lightly edited from the communist newspaper Daily Worker in September-October, 1932, written by famous communist Mike Gold. Workers here are referred to as Black instead of the original “Negro” to reflect our antiracist priniciples as well as the linguistic shifts that occurred over decades of antiracist class struggle. Communists have a long history of fighting against racist attacks on our class. One such fight was against landlords and evictions.

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Death of a Salesman: In life and art, Black capitalism is still capitalism

The all-Black leading actors who are cast in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, now playing on Broadway in New York City, pay tremendous homage to a well-known play by pro-communist writer Arthur Miller. It’s about the deep alienation that results from the commodification of not only human labor but also human ideals and potential. But this production inevitably feeds into the current trend in bourgeois capitalist culture–on television, in media and in film and theater–of presenting Black workers in fundamentally pro-capitalist spaces as “progressive,” when, in fact, the primary function of such representation feeds the illusion that material conditions for the masses are improved by virtue of some stars “making it.”

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