letters of November 2

9/11 Theories ‘Do More Harm Than Good’

In the October 5 edition of CHALLENGE the writers of the “Hart-Rudman 9/11 Plan Fell Short” editorial speculate that the 9/11 attacks may have been planned and carried out by the U.S. bosses in order to ensure their Hart-Rudman plan.  While it is important to remind readers of the bosses’ past and current long-term goals for maintaining U.S. hegemony, it is a mistake to put forward and speculate on conspiracy theories that have been used to mislead the working class.

This theory has done little to educate anyone about the actual causes and consequences of 9/11 and has instead directed the attention of workers’ and youth away from class struggle and toward the racism and nationalism of Alex Jones. For the past 10 years the “9/11-was-an-inside-job” conspiracy theory has been pushed by Alex Jones and his “9/11 Truth” followers. Further, Alex Jones and his website “Infowars” have ties to many Neo-nazi and holocaust denial groups.

The effects of 10 years of Alex Jones’ lies are evident in my classroom. In several classes of high school seniors asked to talk about what they know now about 9/11, Iraq and Afghanistan compared to what they knew 10 years ago, hardly any knew more about 9/11 or the wars than they knew when they were 8. The only “new” thing that students could recount that they have learned since was that maybe the U.S. government actually blew up the twin towers. Clearly the working class is in need of a clear analysis of 9/11 and the post-9/11 world that puts inter-imperialist rivalries front and center. Putting forward 9/11 conspiracy theories does more harm than good and doesn’t bring the working class toward any greater understanding of capitalism or imperialism.

A Reader

‘Truther’ Myths Do Not Advance Class Struggle

The October 5th editorial in CHALLENGE seemed to endorse the 9/11 Truth Movement with its assertion that the U.S. ruling class either had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks and chose not to act or actively planned the attacks. This line of logic is troubling for several reasons.

The most obvious reason is that Truther [a term used to describe adherents to the 9/11 Truth Movement — Ed.] myths are just that, myths. Not one piece of Truther “evidence” that 9/11 was an “inside job” can stand up to even the most modest logic and reasoning. These myths are debunked in a variety of places, the best being the book, Debunking 9/11 Myths, by the editors of Popular Mechanics magazine.

The less obvious problem regarding the Truth Movement is its internal politics. If Truthers have no logical reason to believe the inside-job myth then the myth’s origin must lie elsewhere. In this case it springs from hyper-nationalism and racism. Truthers find it inconceivable that the U.S. could ever be challenged by any competitor. Therefore any attack against the U.S. has to be an inside job.

Since hyper-nationalism insists that the U.S. military is invincible and the intelligence services omnipotent, then any blow against the U.S. empire must be the result of a shadowy conspiracy within the U.S. establishment itself. This is a common and universal belief in nationalist circles. For example, Germany’s defeat in World War I led to the quick proliferation of conspiracy theories involving German Jews “betraying” Germany and causing the defeat. Truther myths operate in the same vein.

Truther myths also have healthy doses of racism embedded in them. Truthers are quick to claim that the 9/11 attacks could not have been carried out by “Arabs living in caves.” This argument is even made in the conclusion of the seminal Truther film Loose Change. Due to internalization of decades of anti-Arab racist attacks on the part of the capitalist media, Truthers find it inconceivable that Arabs could strike a blow, no matter how small, against the U.S. empire.

This racism is evident when one examines who dwells in the Truther swamp. Prominent Truthers include Christopher Bollyn, Henry Makow, and Kurt Nimmo, three of the most prominent Holocaust deniers in the U.S. Truther publications are quick to cite and quote from the American Free Press, a journal run by the neo-Nazi Willis Carto. Given the origin of Truther myths it is not surprising that many contain vile anti-Semitic slanders such as the myth that no Jewish people died in the 9/11 attacks (implying they had forewarning).

We are not advancing the fight for communism by wading into the Truther swamp. 9/11 and its aftermath require a communist analysis that places inter-imperialist rivalry as the primary contradiction driving struggle in the world today. We know that many honest people are swayed by the Truther mythology which is why CHALLENGE needs to expose the realities of inter-imperialist struggle and capitalist crisis and consign the Truth Movement to the dustbin of history.

Red Beard

CHALLENGE Response:

We agree that “trutherism” represents a diversion from the life-and-death issues that confront the working class in today’s period of rising fascism. The editorial noted that “the true story” about 9/11 may well never be known. At the same time, questions about possible U.S. ruling class complicity (either passive or active) in 9-11 are not confined to fringe right-wingers and obscure conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones. Many honest workers in the U.S. — and many more internationally, who have seen firsthand the mass-murdering ways of U.S. imperialism — understand that the bosses will stop at nothing to protect their interests.

History is studded with deceptions by the U.S. ruling class to trigger or escalate its imperialist conflicts. In 1898, after a coal bin explosion sank the USS Maine, President William McKinley blamed a Spanish mine and launched the Spanish American War. In 1941, to beat back domestic isolationists (the Tea Partiers of their day), President Franklin Roosevelt provoked Japan into the bombing of Pearl Harbor — a “surprise” attack that was decoded in advance by U.S. intercept stations. In 1964, after a phantom torpedo “attack” on U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, President Lyndon Johnson used the lie to begin open warfare against North Vietnam.

In sum, there is no line the U.S. bosses will not cross to consolidate their Middle East oil resources. Our role as communists, however, is not to ferret out “the truth” about 9-11. Our task is to organize the working class and debunk the most dangerous lie of all: that capitalist “democracy” can ever serve workers’ needs.

Weaving Workers’ Struggles into Mystery Series

“Slim to None” is Timothy Sheard’s fourth novel in the mystery series about a working-class person named Lenny Moss. Based on the real-life experiences of a friend who was a union shop steward and maintenance man in an urban hospital, this novel confronts working-class issues, such as union-busting, scams on gym memberships for employees’ health care, and inadequate staffing. 

Lenny is hard working and cares about patients and coworkers alike.  He has a healthy distrust of bosses and cops.  Instead he relies on his friends and coworkers throughout the hospital to organize against administration abuses and this murder mystery.  Lenny Moss is a definite threat to the bosses’ intimidation and cutbacks.  So anytime there is a “problem” employee, Lenny will be defending him/her and usually win. 

There are two major themes in the novel.  The mystery revolves around the body of a hospital worker found dumped in the woods. A multiracial crew from the pharmacy, nursing, radiology, morgue and even sympathetic doctors work together to solve the crime.  Another theme is trying to unionize workers at the hospital’s gym.

This is the only mystery series I know of that is written about workers and their struggles in an open, honest way, warts and all. Solidarity, collectivity, and militant fight-back are the watchwords for this novel. This novel can be used to discuss anti-racist and anti-sexist politics with our friends, and relate the struggles in the novel to organize against the cutbacks at work and school.

A Comrade

Capitalism: Racism, Exploitation First, Last and Always

Capitalists love it when workers lack rights, forcing them into lower-wage jobs with no work-rules or overtime pay. Millions work off the clock. From all this capitalists reap super-profits. When workers in one country lack rights, bosses in competing capitalist countries drive workers down to work for still less.

Throughout most of the history of the original 13 colonies and their successor as the new United States, immigrants, women and children, and especially black workers (including black women and children) were the most oppressed; black workers were enslaved and, after the Civil War, controlled by the vicious system of southern penal servitude and Jim Crow racism.

The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s ended some of the old Jim Crow forms of control, but capitalism works better for the bosses when workers lack rights, so following those struggles the bosses created new forms of racism. Their task was urgent because, as the most farsighted U.S. capitalists realized in the late 1960s, the system was in decline and had to sharpen attacks on workers. Three U.S. government initiatives developed new laws to enforce racism: 

     • In 1996, the old welfare system Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) was replaced by Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). Decades of racist slurs about people on welfare prepared for this change. This forced at least three million women into the labor force without welfare as an alternative (as a back-up); this lack of alternative often coerces workers to submit to sexual degradation, crippling conditions of work, or other sexist and racist brutalization and super-exploitation.

     • Changes in immigration laws and in the world economy defined over 12 million people as “illegal,” that is, living in the U.S. without legal authorization to do so and subject to deportations — 8.25 million are in the labor force reaping super-profits for the capitalists.

     • Changes in laws and their enforcement have put 2.3 million in jail or prison (the rate of incarceration is five times the rate in 1973). Another five million are on probation or parole. Meanwhile, another 13 million are labeled as ex-felons (one in every three black men over twenty years old) and enter the labor force as vulnerable workers. 

These laws and changes have produced at least 32 million workers who must work but are under: either direct government control (prison, probation or parole); government terror (undocumented immigrants); government coercion to work despite lacking child care for their children; or the government-created stigma of being labeled ex-felons. Black and Latino workers are disproportionately represented among workers under TANF control and discipline and among those controlled or stigmatized by the penal system. Workers from Mexico are by far the largest single group of undocumented workers. This is the “new racism.”

All these workers are the most vulnerable and among the more easily coerced workers. U.S. capitalists enforce this because it makes U.S. capitalism more competitive, creating low-wage, pliable workers who feel forced to bend to the bosses’ will. 

These workers are then used to discipline the rest of the working class, especially other black and Latino workers as well as white workers. The boss reminds workers, “millions would love to have your job and would do it without complaining.” Now the few remaining workers with some rights — teachers, transit, hospital and other government workers — are under attack. Here again the bosses’ racism targets particularly black and Latino workers but sweeps many white workers along as well.

Our response must be to unite our class by fighting racism and winning those who are not directly in the most exploited groups to see that these are our class brothers and sisters and their super-exploitation is setting the stage to drive us down. We must remember that every previous struggle against racism has seen new forms emerge. Capitalism needs racism to make maximum profits. Only destroying capitalism and its profit motive will end racism. That’s PLP’s goal.

Red