Letters - 31 March 2010
Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 4:32PM ‘Human Rights’ Panelists Spout Bosses’ Line
The Roosevelt House is the Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, the largest college in the CUNY system in New York City.
Last month, a class of mine went to an all-day forum on the New Deal (Roosevelt’s attempt to save capitalism by making concessions to the working class in the 1930s) and how its policies have held up more than half a century later.
The specific section we attended was an analysis of how Barack Obama has dealt with “human rights issues” within his first year of his U.S. presidency. Human Rights Watch’s Executive Director, Kenneth Roth, and several Hunter College faculty gave the analysis. It also appears in the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs, a newsmagazine published by the Council on Foreign Relations – one of the bosses’ main think-tanks.
Not only did Roth not address the inevitable and indefinite occupation of Haiti (see CHALLENGE editorial, March 3), but his suggestions for Obama were solutions for the oppressive ruling class to adopt certain “policies,” not for workers around the world to demand their “rights” (…or take power?). The most potent of Roth’s suggestions was to stand up to inter-imperialist rivals Russia and China, a rivalry PLP has consistently said is the main contradiction in the world today.
If the oppression of workers is fought by giving money to international aid, fighting for policy through crap NGOs, or by voting for this president or that, then workers around the world will continue to suffer.
Pointing out these contradictions in the ruling class is important for building May Day, 2010. Obama and his cohorts are no class friends of ours, and we need to continue the fight for international workers’ power, the real struggle for
human rights!
Red Student
9/11 Truth Movement: A Right-Wing Creation
Responding to letters in CHALLENGE regarding the 9/11 Truth Movement: After having dealt with people in this Movement for six years, certain things have become clear.
The Truth Movement (TM) is not just about denying Al-Quaeda’s role in the 9/11 attacks, but is about bringing an elaborate and reactionary conspiracy theory into the mainstream. Immediately after “proving” that 9/11 didn’t happen as the government said it did, a counter-story was needed to explain these events.
This story, largely provided by Alex Jones and his modest media empire in Austin, TX, doesn’t focus on important details the press omitted, like the U.S. role in the Soviet/Afghan War or the U.S. occupation of Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War. Rather it recasts the tired, old Protocols of Zion myth, designed to attack the Russian Left prior to the Russian Revolution, with a new façade featuring Illuminati, “Socialist” bankers and “Globalists.” The further you dig into this ideology the more the “Zionist conspiracy” myth begins to show its ugly head again.
Borrowing heavily from the Protocols and from the racist novel “The Turner Diaries” (regarding the fantasy of a Globalist-inspired U.S./Mexico border war among other things), it’s no surprise that these “Truther” websites have become favorite hangout spots for Holocaust deniers, John Birch Society members and other right-wing nuts. There is no good, bad, and ugly side of the TM, only an ugly and uglier side with many innocent people caught in the middle.
Another side to the TM is that 9/11 was “an inside job.” Like those who claim a Roosevelt conspiracy in the Pearl Harbor attacks, the need seems to come from an underlying belief in U.S. invincibility. People in the TM constantly state that it’s inconceivable for the military to have been caught off guard, unable to scramble fighter planes to the defense, or that it’s crazy to believe U.S. intelligence agencies could be outwitted by Arab terrorists.
But we’ve learned from the past decade that the U.S. military really isn’t the invincible fighting machine Hollywood would have us believe, and U.S. intelligence agencies really aren’t all that efficient.
Fortunately for a communist party that believes in revolution, the U.S. is not run by an omniscient X-Files-style cabal of men in the shadows able to maintain a decade-long conspiracy of silence involving thousands of people. Rather these are mortal men and women who, because of their own internal weaknesses, were caught with their pants down that day. Promoting the idea of an invincible, omniscient ruling class can only breed cynicism and is not historically accurate or scientifically sound.
In CHALLENGE (3/17), a letter noted there was no longer a debate over 9/11 because “reputable experts” have claimed the events could not have happened as described. This is a misleading, unscientific approach to this event. The author fails to note that while a few people adopt this view, the vast majority of experts agree with the official version of events: planes flown by terrorists brought down the Twin Towers and crashed into the Pentagon. Evidence of this is in the “Popular Mechanics” book, “Debunking 9/11 Myths” as well as in a shorter article on their website and in the internet film “Screw Loose Change: Not Freakin’ Again Edition.” It’s available on a google video debunking the TM internet film “Loose Change.”
Yes, there are some experts who question the 9/11 story, but there are also some scientists who deny global warming, some historians who deny the Holocaust and some doctors who deny smoking is bad for you. In all of these cases, these “experts” represent an extreme minority and should be treated with a bit more skepticism.
While there are some honest people caught up in the TM, we should recognize that the TM is not your standard social movement with a right, left and center. Rather it’s a group overrun, and led, by right-wing extremists with an agenda to act as a Trojan Horse to bring their ideas into the mainstream. Their front group represents a minefield of potential pitfalls for anybody seeking to get involved and should be approached with only the clearest sense of what these people are about and how they operate.
Red Beard
Unite to Fight Charter School Attack
The son of one of our comrades has had a basically good experience at his elementary school which is now being taken over by a charter school that’s been given space in the same building. Our student’s school has less and less space now: Each class is confined to one room all day. There’s no room for private special-ed sessions. The guidance counselor is forced to work in a closet. Children only get phys-ed one day a week; the gym teacher has been excessed. Class size is already rising — 30 students per teacher in one room.
Non-charter schools are being forced to compete with the charters for resources that are shrinking because of massive budget cuts. Teachers and parents are taking the lead in outreach to keep enrollment high to prevent closings. This unity is good, but this strategy takes the heat off the system. The bosses fear that city-wide parent-teacher unity could lead to general demonstrations and a strike that could end the Department of Education’s union-busting, divide-and-conquer strategy.
Three of our comrades are working with 12 other parents and two teachers. We will help, with open houses for new students and outreach to current families for a rally backing the school. But the most important thing we are doing is sharing CHALLENGE one-to--one, especially the article indicting charter schools as a racist strategy to enforce cutbacks for most students and to train a small elite in the technological skills needed by expanding U.S. imperialism.
We want to win parents, teachers, and students to an outlook of city-wide struggle against all closings and a fight for resources to meet all children’s needs. But the main victory will be to get to know as many parents and teachers as possible, sharpen political discussion with them, and bring many of our new friends to May Day. This will help them see more of the big picture, of how communist revolution is the only way to ever meet the needs and aspirations of all the world’s workers.
A Comrade
‘DREAM Act’ A Trap for Immigrant Youth
In a further effort to build support against fascist attacks on undocumented workers, I attended a screening of the documentary “Papers.” It is about students who are in high school, or have graduated high school, without documents. They arrived here at a young age with their parents, who were hoping to create a better life for themselves and their children, but now the students can’t apply for federal loans or get a legal, good-paying job. They graduate from high school and have no place to go.
Unfortunately, the conclusion of the movie is to fight for the DREAM Act, which includes the fast track to U.S. citizenship of having students go into the military and fight the bosses’ wars. A neat way for the bosses to trap young immigrants into their war machine!
About 30 people attended the screening. I passed out fliers, “Stop Racist Attacks on Immigrant Workers with Multiracial Unity,” to those in attendance.
The documentary was made by Graham Street productions (www.grahamstreetproductions.com). I think we should look out for these types of movies. We could easily give a short speech, and pass out fliers or CHALLENGES to the audience before the show starts. These days there are no ushers and the screens are very isolated from each other. These types of movies will generally attract a group of people who will mostly be pro-immigrant and against racism.
D.C. Red
Reader Comments (1)
Red Beard Refuses to Discuss the Evidence
The Party could clearly benefit from being a part of this movement even if everything Red Beard says is true. It's amazing that he believes Alex Jones is somehow the orchestrator of the entire movement which certainly *does* include right wing elements. His voice and organization however is just one of many.
The Loose Change documentary is valuable in understanding the lengths to which the ruling class will go to keep it's empire. The evidence presented in Loose Change is compelling and only someone who refuses to look, or worse, joins a chorus of flag waving conspiracy "debunker's" would misrepresent the 9/11 Truth Movement as akin to "holocaust deniers."
Does Red Beard think Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK or that anyone who questions this is also promoting an "underlying belief in U.S. invincibility?" Hardly, such a belief is evidence that a person is demonstrating a *healthy tendency* willing to question the official boss version of events.
The point is if workers are forming a movement anywhere that questions the ruling class we ought to be a part of it and understand it. The extent to which 9/11 Truth Movement is *not* a left wing movement is directly proportional to the left's and our Party's unwillingness to participate in it and provide our *own analysis* of the events of that day.