workers vanguard no 852 - 05 august 2005

7/29/2019 Workers Vanguard No 852 - 05 August 2005

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WfJliNEIiS "NfilJ'lilJ oNo. 852 ~ E i ; > C ' 7 0 1 -------------------------------------------------==-------------------- 5 August 2005- - - - - -

Down With "War on Terror"Government Repression!

' ~ , . ."W t " . t t f .. . AP Read/NY Timesar on error IS pre ex. or government attack on CIvil liberties. New York City: Cops terrorize five British tourists of South Asian descent on July 24 (left)search bags of s u b _ ~ a y nders. 'U.S./British Troops Out of Iraq Now!~ - \ l ) ( r l } S T ~ ~ T h t ' ! ~ q r ; ' i f : ~ ' tc;-:"or bornhings of the London subway and bus ~ , ) , . ; -tems have provided yet adother pretext forthe capitalist rulers in the U.S. as well asBritain and elsewhere to expand their murderous "war on terror," further curtailingdemocratic rights. Two weeks after theJuly 7 bombing, a failed bombing anemptagainst the London transit system occurredon July 21. Two days later, on July 23. theEgyptian Red Sea re:.;ort town ofSharm el Sheik was hit by bombs.with over 200 wounded and 64 peopledead, including many Egyptian workers. Like those who bombed theWorld Trade Center in 200 I and theMadrid commuter trains in 2004.whoever \\ as r e s p l l ~ l s i h l e for thesenew :ttrncities shares the viciousmindset of the imperialist rulers. identifying tbe \vorh.ing class and thepopuL!ti'l!l , ! ~ a \\ bo k \-\ ith their brutal capitalh I rule,'".

Fl'r the ruling ~ ' i J " ' . "uch terroristaPacb ' " . " : ; ~ I h t , ~ ; \ i l i a n , provide anoppnn.::lily to V.ilip the frighknedpupuLlcC: ill[ll an : lnt ! - f ( IT"1 h : ~ t ( ' ! " i a in order to \ ~ b l l . \ c:\pand t he "tate'sdeadly pm, er" of repre,,,ion. ParticLllarly ~ i n c c : ,hc' September I ! atlad.:s.the c a p i : ~ l ; ; ,I 'uicr' :1Cl\ e been passing legi,L\Lilil, i"uin.s: c.\ecuti\Corder, Jnd \ 'l{orcillt: policing measures that ha\ e mar"ed a qualitativediminution in d c n w ' ~ r a t i c righh. Andwith e\ cr) neil terror attack. they . ~ e e an opportunity to squelch more democratic. right s. The capitalist rulers want thepopulace to accept as "normal"' what onlya few years ago would have been seen asa gross violation of people's rights.

In London. cops have been givenshoot-to-kill orders against suspected

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' t e r r ( l r i s t s " ~ Tr.:- ~ ~ : : l ; ; 1 n g of t r i ~ [,-')1ieywas sl1(1'.'n by tne brClt-lj ki!11l1)! .Jf Je,mC h a r l e ~ ue Menezes, a 27-year-old electrician. On July 22, plainclothes copschased and gunned down the young Brazilian immigrant. He had had a recentccnfrontation with a gang. and horrifiedeyewitncs,es said he looked teITified ashe was pushed to the subway floor by thecops. He was shot seven times in the head

and once in the shoulder. The police thennearly killed the driver of the train onwhich Menezes was killed. The driverwa" tackled by police and a gun put tohis head. despite the fact that he was inuniform.In May 2002. American citizen JosePadilla ,vas seized at a Chicago airportand has since been detained by thegowrnment withL)ut charge-i.e., di,appeared. The Spartacist League and Partisan Defense Committee filed an amiciclIriut' (friends of the court) brief onbehalf of Padilla. noting. "Padilla could

have been


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Free Leonard Peltier Now!On June 30, with no advance warning tohis family or lawyers, Native Americanclass-war prisoner Leonard Peltier wastransported from the federal prison at Leavenworth, Kansas to the federal prison atTerre Haute, Indiana. He is being held insolitary; all his privileges-telephone,visitation, even painting and the right topractice his religion-were suspended.Currently, his medication, which was running dangerously low, has been refilled; hehas been visited by his lawyer and isallowed one phone call per month. At sixtyyears old, Peltier suffers from diabetes,

arthritis, bone spurs and he recently suffered a stroke. The authorities' line is thatthe treatment meted out to Peltier is "normal" for transferred prisoners. The realityis that this cruel and vicious treatment-a"domestic version of rendition" in thewords of Russ Redner, executive directorof the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee--endangers Peltier's failing health andpossibly even his life. We urge WorkersVanguard readers to send protest letters to:Warden Mark Bezy, USP Terre Haute,U.S. Penitentiary, 4700 Bureau RoadSouth, Terre Haute, IN 47802.

TROTSKY

Germany 1933: Nazism and theBetrayals of StalinismThis year marks the 60th anlli\'ersan ()fthe end of World Wa.r II when the Red Army.despite Stalin, de{eated Hitler's Na:,i regime.Writing in i933. Bolshn'ik leader Leon Trot-sky outlined the spectacular faillire o{ theGerman COll1l11l1nist Party (KPD) and the

Communist international under Stalin tolead the struggle against Hitler's rise topower earlier that yew: Central to this wasthe sectarian refilsal hy the KPD to engagein u n i t e d ~ { r o n t a n t i ~ f a s c i s t actions H'ith the

LENINre/'ormist Social Democr atic Part\,. which the KPD eq uated with fhe fascists and la-h ~ l e d "social fa.\:cist." Slich u nited acti ons were necessar y not only to stop the fascistgangs in the streets hut also to win Social Democratic workers to thefightfor socialistrevolution. The Stalinists' cynical idiocy in Germany and the utter silence of the entireCommunist International in theface of Stalin 's disastrous policy led Trotsky to callfora new, Fourth International.

The point of departure of the German Communist Party was that there is nothingbut a mere division of labor between the Social Democracy and fascism; that theirinterests are similar. if not identical. Instead of helping to aggravate the discordbetween Communism's principal political adversary and its mortal foe-for which itwould have been sufficient to proclaim the truth aloud instead of violating i t - theCommunist International convinced the reformists and the fascists that they weretwins; it predicted their conciliation, embittered and repulsed the Social Democraticworkers, and consolidated their reformist leaders. Worse yet: in every case where,despite the obstacles presented by the leadership, local unity committees for workers'defense were created, the bureaucracy forced its representatives to withdraw underthreat of expulsion. It displayed persistency and perseverance only in sabotaging theunited front, from above as well as from below. All this it did, to be sure, with the bestof intentions.

No policy of the Communist Party could, of course, have transformed the SocialDemocracy into a party of the revolution. But neither was that the aim. It was necessaryto exploit to the limit the contradiction between reformism and fascism-in order toweaken fascism, at the same time weakening reformism by exposing to the workersthe incapacity of the Social Democratic leadership. These two tasks fused naturallyinto one. The policy of the Comintern bureaucracy led to the opposite result: thecapitulation of the reformists served the interests of fascism and not of Communism;the Social Democratic workers remained with their leaders; the Communist workerslost faith in themselves and in the leadership.The masses wanted to fight, but they were obstinately prevented from doing so bythe leaders. Tension, uneasiness, and finally disorientation disrupted the proletariat fromwithin. It is dangerous to keep molten metal too long on the fire; it is still more dangerous to keep society too long in a state of revolutionary crisis. The petty bourgeoisieswung over in its overwhelming majority to the side of National Socialism only becausethe proletariat, paralyzed from above, proved powerless to lead it along a different road.The ahsence of resistance on the part of the workers heightened the self-assurance offasCism and diminished the fear of the big bourgeoisie confronted by the risk of civilwar. The inevitable demoralization of the Communist detachment, increasingly isolated'from the proletariat. rendered impossible even a partial resistance. Thus the triumphalprocession 'of Hitler over the bones of the proletarian organizations was assured.

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-Leon Trotsky, "The German Catastrophe: The Responsibility of the Leadership"(May 1933)

! . I ! ! ! ' f . . ! } ! l l . f ! f ! L ! ~ I ! . 1 ! . IRECTOR OF PARTY PUBLICATIONS: Ray Bishop

EDITOR: Alan WildeEDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Rosemary PalenqueCIRCULATION MANAGER: Susan FullerEDITORIAL BOARD: Kathleen Harris (managing editor), Helene Brosius (letters editor).Linda Jarreau (production manager). Bruce Andre, Jon Brule, Helen Cantor. Paul Cone,George Foster, Walter Jennings. James Robertson. Joseph Seymour, Alison SpencerThe Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League(Fourth Internationalist).Workers Vanguard (ISSN 0276-0746) published biweekly except skipping three alternate Issues In June. July andAugust (beginning with omitting the second Issue in June) and skiPPing the last issue In December, by the SpartacistPublishing Co . 299 Broadway. SUite 318. New York. NY 10007 T elephone (212) 7327862 (EditOrial). (212) 7327861(BUSiness) Addre ss all correspondence to: Box 1377 GPO. New York, NY 1C116. E-mail address: vanguard@tlac net.Domestic SUbScriptions. $10.00,21 issues. Periodicals postage paid at New York. NY POSTMASTER' Send addresschanges to Workers Vanguard. Box 1377 GPO. New York. NY 10116.Opinions etpressed in signed articles or fetters do not necessarily express the editorial ViewpointThe closing date for news in this issue is 2 August.

No. 852 5 August 2005

. -It has b.een 30 years since FBI andBureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) agents,along with local vigilantes, attackedAmerican Indian Movement (AIM) militants and their supporters on the Pine RidgeReservation in South Dakota. Two FBIagents died in the firefight, and an international manhunt was launched againstAIM leader Leonard Peltier and threeother activists. It's been 28 years sincePeltier was convicted in a frame-up trial,characterized by coerced, false affidavits,doctored ballistics reports and suppressedevidence. On I June 1977, he was sentenced to two consecutive life terms for acrime the government knows he did notcommit (see "Free Leonard Peltier!" WVNo. 847, 29 April). A judge later ruledthat the original jury might well haveacquitted Peltier had they heard the evidence improperly withheld from thedefense. This case is one of those thatdefine the vindictiveness with which thisgovernment tries to destroy its opponents.Peltier and his lawyers have been battling for the release of tens of thousandsof pages of FBI tiles from the 1970s, documenting surveillance of. and COINTELPRO activity against. AIM and Peltier. Theenormity of Peltier's frame-up becomeseven clearer with the revelation that at thetime of the 1977 trial. the prosecutorsgave only some 3.500 pages of materialto Peltier's defense team, claiming thiswas all they had. But Michael Kuzma,one of Peltier's lawyers, has stated thatthe FBI has 142,579 pages. He knows thisonly because in 2001, after years of FBIstonewalling, attorneys working for Peltiersent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)requests to every single FBI field officein the country, and followed up with twolawsuits in federal court!On paper, the FOIA assures publicaccess to government records, and, supposedly, documents are automaticallydeclassified after 25 years. Yet, at everyturn, Peltier's lawyers have had to engagein painstaking and expensive legal battlesto pry any documents out of the FBI. Andthe courts routinely rule in favor of everyFBI maneuver. Just a few examples: theBuffalo FBI field office released 797pages but claimed an exeJl1ption for 15that Peltier's lawyers believe would provide evidence of government attempts toplace sources near Peltier's original legalteam. On March 31 of this year, the judgeruled in the FBI's favor. The Minneapolisoffice that ran the original investigationi ~ t o the killings has 90,000 pages ofdocuments. But an AP article posted onApril 26 (www.twincities.com) stated thatU.S. District judge Donovan Frank had

Ben Corbettrejected Peltier's lawyers' request forimmediate release and upheld a previousruling allowing the FBI to prolong the process until December 2005. Meanwhile. theFBI office in Manhattan has been '"lookingfor" its Peltier files for three years'Going up against the full resources ofthe U.S. government is a daunting taskthat requires lots of money. Just recently.on July 22, Peltier suffered another setback when U.S. District judge RalphErickson rejected his appeal. which arguedthat the U.S. government did not have theright to try him for alleged crimes thattook place on land belonging to NativeAmericans. not the United States. Notonly does Peltier's defense committeeneed money for these battles, but the entiredefense operation is in the process of beingmoved from Kansas to Indiana to stayclose to Peltier. We urge readers of WV todonate generously to the Leonard PeltierDefense Committee, c/o Toni Zeidan,2626 N. Mesa #132, El Paso, TX 79902.

We have no illusions that the courts areneutral. They are part of the capitaliststate with its apparatus of repressionalong with the police, the prison systemand the military. We place our full confidence in the social power of the workingclass at the head of the poor and oppressedto struggle against the capitalists and their"justice" system. At the same time, nolegal avenue to free this innocent manshould be left untried, and Peltier's lawyers need the resources to carryon themost powerful legal defense possible.Leonard Peltier said at his sentencing28 years ago: "No, I'm not the guilty onehere; I'm not the one who should be calleda criminal. ... " In fact, the racist, capitalist government is punishing Peltier forbeing an implacable opponent of its genocidal policies against Native Americans.Free Leonard Peltier!Even though he is in solitary, write tohim; make sure the authorities know he isnot forgotten. Leonard Peltier #89637-132, USP-Terre Haute. P.O. Box 12015,Terre Haute, IN 47801 . --- SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S.--Local Directory and Public Offices

Web site: www.icl-fi.orgo E-mail address:[email protected] Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 (212) 732-7860

BostonBox 390840, Central Sta.Cambridge, MA 02139(617) [email protected] 6441, Main POChicago, IL 60680(312) [email protected] Office:Sat. 2-5 p.m.222 S. Morgan(Buzzer 23)

Los AngelesBox 29574, Los Feliz Sta.Los Angeles, CA 90029(213) [email protected] Office: Sat. 2-5 p.m.3806 Beverly Blvd., Room 215New YorkBox 3381, Church St. Sta.New York, NY 10008(212) [email protected] Office:Sat. 1-4 p.m.299 Broadway. Suite 318

OaklandBox 29497Oakland. CA 94604(510) [email protected] Office:Sat. 1-5 p.m.1634 Telegraph3rd FloorSan FranciscoBox 77494San Francisco. CA [email protected]

TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA/LiGUE TROTSKYSTE DU CANADAToronto VancouverBox 7198, Station AToronto, ON M5W 1X8 Box 2717. Main P.O.Vancouver, BC V6B 3X2(604) [email protected](416) 593-4138 [email protected]

WORKERS VANGUARD


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German Trotskyists on World War IIMay 1945: .lIed ArmySmashed Nazi Regime!We print helm\' an article, ahridged

and tmnslatedjimn Spartakist No. 158,Spring 2005, l1ell'spaper ()j'the Sparta-kist yj,(Hkers Party o f Gerlll(lIlY, sectiollofthc Illtemarionaf COlI/lIlullist Le ague(Fourth Intemationafist).fi :tr1J"3 i IJ

May 8th of this year marks the(')()th anni\ersary of the liberationfrom the Nazis' reign of terror by theRed Army. Twenty-eight millionSoviet citizens ga\'e their liws tosmash the Third Reich of Germanimperialism. The Red Arm) put anend to the Holocaust. the industrialmurder of six million Jews. of Romaand Sinti [Gypsies]. communish.Red Army soldiers. homosexuals andcountless others. It liberated Europefrom the enslavement and bloodyoppression of the Nazis. May 8th is aday of celebration for the work(ngclass and all oppressed worldwide.World War II provided a bloodydemonstration of the necessity ofoverthrowing the capitalist system ofexploitation-it's socialism or barbarism.Ii was from this standpoint that Trotskyists fought internationally for workersrevolution. In December 1941, shortlyafter the entry of the U.S. into the war,James P. Cannon, the leader of our predecessor organization, the then-TrotskyistSocialist Workers Party (SWP), presentedthe revolutionary position on the Second World War (while President Roose-

Yevgeni KhaldeiSoviet soldiers raise red flag over Berlin's Retchstag, 1945. Red Army smashedHitler's Third Reich and freed Europe from scourge of Nazism.

Ost [Foreign Armies East. a militaryintelligence agency directed againstthe Soviet Union] was turned intothe Bllndesl1({chrichtendicns/ [Federal Intelligence Service. Germancounterpart of the CIA]. By 1945. acircle of Nazi generals was alreadycooperating \\ith the Western Alliesin a meticulous evaluation of the Second World War and planning therebuilding of the West German army.Like its predecessor. the Wehmlllc/zr.the BlIIulc.\\\'e/z,. was a tank-supported.land-based arm) - this time supported by tactical nuclear weapon,aimed at smashing the Soviet Union.The so-called "rat line" was set up b)the CIA and Vatican to funnel Naziwar criminals out of German). Theywere provided with new identitiesand brought to Latin America andother countries. where they then usedtheir murderous experience to set upand preserve the bloody local military dictatorships. Much of this isdealt with quite well in Jorg Friedrich's Di e Kalte Amnestie [The ColdAmnesty] (1984). At the same time

Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, 1944.veIT,' using the Smith Act, was makingpreparations to jail Cannon and otherSWP l e a d e r ~ ) :

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"The considerations which determinedour attitude toward the war up to the outbreak of hostilities between the UnitedStates and the Axis powers retain theirvalidity in the new situation."We considered the war upon the partof all the capitalist powers involvedGermany and France. Italy and GreatBritain-as an imperialist war.'This characterization of the war wasdetermined for us bv the character of thestate powers involved in it. They were allcapitalist states in the epoch of imperialism; themselves imperiali,t-oppressingother nation, or peoples-or satellites ofimperialist powers. The extemion of the\\ar to the Pacific and the formal entrY ofthe Cnited State, and Japan change noth-1 l 1 ~ in thi, tw,ic anah sis ......fhis characterizati(;n of the \\ ar doesnot appl) to the \\ ar of the 50\ iet Cninnagain,t German imperiali,m. \Ye makea fundamental distinction het\\een theSmiet Cnion and its 'democratic' allie,.We deiend the Soviet L'nion. The Sovietlin on is a \\orkers' "tate. although degenerated under the totalitarian-political ruleof the Kremlin bureaucracy. Only traitorscan deny support to the Soviet workers'state in its war against fascist Germany.To defend the Soviet Union. in spite ofStalin and against Stalin, is to defend

the nationalized property established bythe October Revolution. That is a pro-gressive war."- "A Statement on the U.S. Entryinto World War II" (22 December1941), first published in FourthInternational (January 1942)Today the Social Democratic/Green

government is exploiting the various memorial celebrations to advance the interests of German imperialism vis-a.-vis its

imperialist rivals and its own citizens.The goal is to enable German imperialism, despite its history of unspeakablecrimes, to play the role of a world power.Chancellor SchrOder showed himself satisfied with the results so far of how thegovernment has "come to terms with thepast": "And this is recognized-I learnedthis last June, when I was invited to thecelebrations of the sixtieth anniversary of

the invasion of Normandy, or when Ispoke recently in Berlin for the sixtiethanniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Those who matter in the worldknow that the political, cultural and economic elites in this country don't want thepast to be forgotten" '(Welt am Sonntag,13 February). Centrally what is beingpreached is the fairy tale that the Germanbourgeoisie and their state have made aclean break with the Nazi past. [ForeignMinister Joschka] Fischer encapsulatedthis in his 24 January speech to the UNGeneral Assembly on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz: "Thenew, democratic Germany has drawn thelessons from this. It has been molded bythe historical-moral responsibility forAuschwitz."In reality, the Federal Republic of Germany is the self-proclaimed successorstate to the Third Reich. It was built up bythe U.S. following World War II as a bulwark against the Soviet Union. By theearly' 50s at the latest. the last capitalistswho had supported and financed Hitlerand brought him to power were out ofjail and back at the levers of power. Itwas with Nazi cadres that the WestGerman capitalist state was constructedthe judges who, as members of [Roland]Freisler's People's Court of Justice [acourt established by Hitler to prosecutepolitical offenses], had earlier sent communists and oppositionists to concentration camps and their deaths were nowenforcing the "free, democratic" constitution. It was SS killers and Gestapo torturemasters who constructed the police andthe BUl1deskriminalamt [Federal CriminalOffice, German counterpart of the FBI].[Reinhard] Gehlen's Nazi Fremde Heere

the U.S. imperialists, who had not forgotten the indispensable services of the German Social Democratic Party [SPD] inmaintaining the capitalist order in Germany following the First World War, werehelping to rebuild the Social Democracy. Their aim was to use it as an antiCommunist bulwark within the West German working class to beat back theinfluence of the Stalinist KPD [GermanCommunist Party] and purge the unions ofCommunists.

Fearing that the Soviet working massescould be inspired to overthrow the Sovietbureaucracy, the last thing Stalin wantedwas workers revolution in Germany andEurope. He was striving for a neutral,capitalist Germany as a buffer state. Butthe imperialists were not interested in adeal and preferred. as [German Chancellor Konrad] Adenauer expressed it, toget half a Germany completely ratherthan the reverse. Therefore. in 1948 theKremlin established a deformed workersstate and expropriated the German bourgeoisie in eastern Germany. The DDR[German Democratic Republic] was constructed on the model of the Soviet workers state following its decades of Stalinist degeneration. Thereby. in contrast toWest Germany. fascism was deprived ofits social basis, capitalism. The greaterpart of the cadre who built up the DDRcame directly from the Nazi concentration camps or from exile.Schroder's Commemoration ofthe Soviet Sacrifice: Hypocrisyfor Imperialist Cooperation

As part of the anti-Communist consensus of the Cold War against the Sovietcontinued on page 10

Left: German troops outside Kosovo, 1999. SPD/Green government joined U.S./NATO imperialist war against Serbia.Right: Cops unleashed by SPD/PDS Berlin city government shield Nazis, brutalize leftist protesters, 1 May 2004.WORKERS VANGUARD


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Preachers of "Collective Guilt" JustifyU.S./British War Crimes .;German Nationalism and

the Bombing of DresdenWe print below a translation of anarticle from Spartakist No. 158, Spring2005, newspaper of the Spartakist Work- .ers Party of Germany (SpAD), section

of the International Communist League(Fourth Internationalist).

S P A R T A K I S T c ~ The 60th anniversary of the bombing

of Dresden [in World War II by theAmericans and British] has polarized theentire country, with the question of how, to deal with today's Nazis of the NPD[National Democratic Party] dominating.The NPD had cynically made a motionin the [state of] Saxony parliament proposing a minute of silence on January 21for the victims of the bombing. Following this, the NPD launched revanchisttirades that attempted to use the vjctims

of the Dresden bombiflg in the serviceof their gen89idal program by speaking ofa "Holocaust by Bombing." The socialdemocratic PDS [Party of DemocraticSocialism], the SPD [Social DemocraticParty of Gennany] and the petty-bourgeoisGreens had nothing with which to counterthis. Spiegel online (11 February) headlined "Uprising of the Clueless;' explaining: "They [the Nazis] have modernizedtheir tenninology. The Holocaust is nolonger denied; it is integrated into theirown argumentation. Instead of saying,as earlier: there was no Holocaust, nowthey say: the Holocaust was against theGennans. We weren't the perpetrators,we were the victims." The reason for thebourgeois-democratic cIuelessness is thatNazi revanchism and liberal collectivegUilt complement one another, for bothequate the populace with the Nazi rulersand the Genna n bourgeoisie. To the Nazidemagoguery of a "victim people," theliberals oppose the "collective guilt" lieof a ~ ' p e r p e t r a t o r people." Thereby theliberals whitewash the Gennan bourgeoisie and play into the hands of Nazidemagoguery.

In World War II, we Trotskyistsoffered unconditional military defense tothe Soviet degenerated workers state. Inthe war among the imperialist powersbetween Gennany and Japan on the oneside, the U.S. and Britain on the otherwe took no side, since these powers werefighting only over redividing the worldso as to exploit it more intensively. Thestrategy of Allied saturation bombingwas one of consciously targeting theGennan working class:"In its 'Area Bombing Directive' of 14February 1942, the [British] Aviation Ministry set as Bomber Command's future'main goal' destroying 'the morale of theopposing civil population, especially theindustrial workforce' through saturationbombing. To avoid misunderstandings,the Ministry added 'that the target pointsshould be settled areas and not, forexample, shipyards or aircraft industry.This must be made very clear' "- S p i ~ g e l Special No. 1/2003

In early 1943 at the latest. with the victoryof the Red Army at Stalingrad, it w,asdear that German imperialism would loseagainst the Soviet Union. One of the central motivations for the bombing of German \\iorkers' quarters was the fear thatthe German v,;orking class might overthrow capitalism-and turn all Europered-as it had already attempted 10 do atthe end of World War I, but this time withthe aid of a victorious Red Army. Stopping the Red Anny and preventing workers revolution were also the only reasonsfor the haste in suddenly opening the sec-5 AUGUST 2005

try. Hence we must abandon the formula of the 'innocent city'." Only, thebombing of Dresden didn' t target the armaments factories, which were situated onthe outskirts! These were barely hit, asTaylor himself honestly admits in hisbook, Dresden: Tuesday, 13 February,1945, which is well worth reading.Because of the favorable weather conditions and a b ~ o l u t e lack of flak, the bombers were able to take precise aim ai theirtarget, the Dresden inner c i ~ (where therewas scarcely a plant, let alone annamentsfactories), murdering 25,000 to 40,000Dresden civilians and refugees, above allwomen, the elderly and children. Thiswas a war crime.

Firebombing of Dresden, February 1945. American and British imperialistsslaughtered tens of thousands.ofcivilians.

A feature article in the FrankfurterRundschau (14 February) justifies theincineratiQn of Dresden with the argumentthat some of the few remaining DresdenJews were thereby able to escape deportation to Auschwitz: "The Saving Inferno-The Destruction of Dresden in February1945 Protected 20-year-old Henny Wolffrom the Concentration Camp." One can,of course, only rejoice over every singleperson who, through whatever fortunatecircumstances, was able to escape alivefrom the Nazi machinery of genocide.Henny Wolf had incredible luck in notbeing blown to bits by a British bomb orengulfed by the firestonn. This is alsoindirectly stated in the FR article: "Sometime in the middle of the night, in a narrow alley, the suction from the fire seizedpeople. 'My mother suddenly floated intothe air. We all held each other's hands'."What the article attempts to conceal is thatthe fate of the European Jews was a matter of total indifference to the British andAmerican Allies.

ond front in Nonnandy [France] in June1944. Churchill and Roosevelthad earlierbeen in no hurry to open a second front asthey had assured Stalin they would in1942 and again in 1943. They were hoping Gennany and the Soviet Union wouldbleed one another w.hite, and that theywould get to laugh from the sidelines.In fact, coal liquefaction factories"where fuel essential to Hitler's tanks wasproduced, were hardly bombed until1944. Der Spiegel wrote:"Only 1.1 percent of all bombs dropped...: ~ ~ = ~ ~ ~ ~ J : t ; ' clattering through Russia. Speculations[why this was the case] range from thesuggestion that the plants were built inpart with Anglo-American capital, e.g.,Standard Oil of New Jersey and the British .Royal Dutch Shell, to the musings ofthe Berlin historian Groehler that itmight have been in the interests of theWestern Allies for the German tanks onthe Eastern Front to have enough fuel tokeep the Russians far from Germany aslong as possible-long enough anywayfor the Anglo-American invaders toadvance far enough to be able to limitCommunist influence in postwar Europe."

Groehler is absolutely right. Regardingthe bombing of Dresden, it was evenexplicitly stated [in January 1945] in thedaily orders of the Royal Air Force thatthis should also constitute a warning to"the Russians": ."The intentions of the attack are to .hitthe enemy where he will feel it most,behind an already partially collapsedfront, to prevent the use of the city in theway of further advance, and incidentallyto show the Russians when they arrivewhat Bomber Command can do."- Die Welt, 20 February 2004

, : r h e ' C ~ . ,lJ.s.AiWm bombing ofHiroshima and N agasaIci in the summerof 1945 had the same aim-intimidatingthe Soviet Union and demoralizing theworking class [see article below].Dresden mayor Ingolf Rossberg (FDP[Free Democratic Party]) utilized thearguments of the British historianFrederick Taylor, who, while criticizingChurchill's bombing of Dresden as inhumane, claims nevertheless that it wascompletely justified militarily: " In February 1945, Dresden was the largest extantcenter of the Gennan annaments indus-

A Spiegel interview (29 October 2001)with Gerhart Riegner, who infonned theWorld Jewish Congress of the Holocaustin 1942, encapsulates the bitter truthabout U.S. and British imperialism:"Riegner: The will to save [the Jews]was lacking. The Americans told us incontinued on page 11

Hiroshima, Nagasaki:U.S. Imperialist Mass MurderThis A.ugust marks the 60th anniversary of one of history's greatest crimes:the atomic bombing of the Japanese cities

of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by U.S.imperialism. Over 200,000 civilians werekilled by the atom bombs dropped onAugust 6 and 9, and tens of thousandsmore continue to suffer from horrific illnesses and- genetic defects. The racistrulers of imperialist America used Japanas a human testing ground to show theworld-and above all the Soviet degenerated workers state-that they wouldstop at nothing in their drive for globaldomination.The deliberate targeting of Japanesecivilians"reflected the deep-seated antiAsian racism of America's rulers. U.S.war propagana depicted Japanese assubhuman "yellow monkeys:' In 1945. theU.S. launched a massive terror-bombingcampaign against Japan, destroyisg 58cities by August. On the night of March9-10 alone, the American firebombing ofTokyo killed some 100,000 people. Inthe U.S., Democratic president Franklin

'"

D. Roosevelt ordered 120,000 JapaneseAmericans in the western United Statesto be rounded up beginning in February 1942, put them into concentrationcamps located in the barren desert and

forced many to harvest the fields as slavelaborers.Apologists for the war crimes of U.S.imperialism claim that the atom bombingcontinued on page 11

, lMuseumThe "Atomic Bomb Dome," at center of August 1945 Hiroshima A-bomb blast,is now a memorial to victims of this heinous U.S. war crime.5


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The Lynching of Emmett Ti II and..the Fight for Black Liberation"Before Emmett Till's murder. I hadknown the fear of hunger, hell. and theDevil. But now there was a new fearknown to me-the fear of being killedjust because I was black. This was theworst of my fears .... I didn't know whatone had to do or not do as a Negro not tobe killed. Probably just being a Negroperiod was enough, I thought."

50 Years Later-Anne Moody, StudentNon-Violent CoordinatingCommittee Organizer. 14 yearsold in 1955, in Coming of Age

in Mississippi (1968)Fifty years ago this month the nameEmmett Louis Till became synonymouswith the brutal American tradition oflynching. Till was only 14 years old that

summer when he left his home in Chicago to join his cousin on a trip to staywith relatives in Mississippi. Within daysof his arrival, young Emmett was kidnapped, tortured and brutally murderedfor allegedly whistling at a white woman.Till's gruesome murder, and his mother'scourageous campaign to ensure that theworld saw at first hand the stark reality ofrace-terror by displaying her son's mutilated body at his funeral, provoked horrorand outrage against racist oppression inAmerica. The lynching of Emmett Till,along with Rosa Parks' defiant stand inMontgomery, Alabama in December ofthat same year, were key in galvanizingmany thousands to join the burgeoningcivil rights movement.Today, a half-century later, black people still sit in the cross hairs of thisbloody capitalist ruling class. T h ~ explosive struggles of the civil rights movement smashed Jim Crow segregation inthe South and broke the back of the antiCommunist McCarthy era. But the socialreality remains-black oppression is thecornerstone of capitalist class rule inAmerica. Contrary to assertions that theworst abuses against black people are athing of the past, a quick survey of themassive prison popUlation, unemployment, miserable ghetto conditions, poverty, deteriorating health care and increasingly segregated schools proves theopposite, not only in the South butthroughout the country.The current federal investigation ofthe Emmett Till atrocity is one of a handful of decades-old cases reopened beginning with the 1994 conviction of ByronDe La Beckwith for the 1963 assassination of Mississippi civil rights leaderMedgar Evers. One reason these casesare being opened is to polish the tarnished ima"ge of the South. But unionbusting "right to work" laws, attacks onblack voting rights, Ku Klux Klan terrorlike the cross-burnings in Durham, NorthCarolina this May along with Confederate flags, monuments and Dixie anthemsstill mark the landscape of the "NewSouth." Meanwhile, Northern ghettostrap black people into holding pens, andFlorence Mars Collection

If't .----------------..:Emmett Till with hismother, Mamie.Chicago, 1955:Emmett Till's funeraldrew as many as250,000 people toRoberts TempleChurch.

kill-crazy cops stalk the streets.


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plants. When the soldiers returned. theywere determined to have a better life.The end of the war ushered in the beginning of the Cold War against the SovietUnion. the preparation for ne'.'. imperialist wars to "roll back Communism"everywhere on the planet. Most blackpeople were concerned about the "cottoncurtain:' the iron grip of the racist Southern police state here at home. and wereless likely to buy into or embrace theAmerican bourgeoisie's propaganda aboutan "lron Curtain" Soviet threat.

The response of the racist SouthernDemocrats (the Dixiecrats) to the Br()\\'Ilruling was one of organized terror anddefiance from the highest-ranking otficials on doyvn. Francis M. Wilhoit described the role of the Democratic Partyin The Politics ofMassil'e Resistallce:

"For it was, after all. the region's political parties-particularly the dominantDemocrats-that bore the chief responsibility for politicizing the segregationistmasses and getting them to the polls onelection day to vote for anti-integrationcandidates. Furthermore, since membership in Southern parties overlapped withmembership in the Klan. the Councils,and other resistance groups. it appeared.for a time that the segregationistswould get a stranglehold on policy making in the racial area, and prevent eventokenism,"White Citizens' Councils. the suit-andtie incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan,

formed to terrorize blacks through vigilante violence and uphold Jim Crowsegregation. flourished throughout Mississippi. These councils, claiming a membership of 60.000. were headquartered inthe very county that Emmett was preparing to visit. In May that year in Belzoni,Mississippi, Reverend George Lee. localNAACP organizer. was shot to deathfrom a passing car. Just days prior toTill's arrival. WW II veteran Lamar Smithwas gunned down in broad daylight on acrowded courthouse lawn in Brookhaven,Mississippi for urging black people tovote. This was the murderous atmospherethat a lively, self-confident teenager fromthe North journeyed into that fatefulAugust.

On August 24, after picking cotton allmorning, Emmett, his cousins and somefriends drove into Money, Mississippi topurchase some candy and sodas atthe local grocery store that serviced theblack population. The white owner. RoyBryant. was out of town and his youngwife, Carolyn, was teliding the store.There are conflicting stories of what happened at the store. Did he whistle? Washe trying to control his stutter? Did hespeak up? The only thing that happenedthat day at the store for sure is thatEmmett Till was seen as having "steppedout of line," ignoring "the customs of theSouth" in the presence of a white womanwhere this was punishable by death. OnAugust 28, Roy Bryant and his halfbrother, J. W. Milam, came looking forEmmett at his relatives' home, kidnapping him in the dead of night. Three dayslater the hideously battered corpse ofEmmett Till was found in the TallahatchieRiver with a 75-pound cotton gin fan tiedaround his neck with barbed wire. MoseWright, Emmett's great uncle, was able toidentify his body only by a ring b e l o n g ~ ing to his father that the child wore on hisfinger.

For the vast majority of unnamed lynchmob victims that have filled Americanhistory, the story would end here andwould have also for Emmett Till if not forthe courage and determination of hismother and family. Mamie Till-Mobleyimmediately alerted the press upon hearing that her son was missing. She foughtto have her son's body returned to Chicago after the local sheriff hastily tried tobury the evidence-literally. She defiedthe Mississippi authorities by opening thepadlocked and sealed casket. Most courageously, she insisted that the casket bedisplayed openly for the world to see, andensured that graphic photos circulatedinternationally. An estimated 100,000-250,000 people waited in line for hours atChicago's Roberts Temple Church of Godin Christ to view the open casket. So5 AUGUST 2005

, .I .Library of Cong ressNYC: NAACP flew this flag outside itsheadquarters to announce reports oflynchings in 1930s. Right: Excerptfrom NAACP chronicle of lynchings.shocking was Emmett's horrifically mutilated body that an estimated one ou t ofevery five individuals needed assistanceou t of the building. Emmett's death wastransformed from "just another lynching"into an internationally known scandal.Although there had been thousands ofSouthern black men, women and children

, that met such horrible deaths, this wasone that would spark a generation intoaction.Mamie Till-Mobley set the tone by

immediately demanding an investigationand publicizing the case. Although President Eisenhower and FBI chief 1. EdgarHoover stonewalled her requests for aninvestigation. she persisted in bringing

Dec. 14-Rock Springs, Wyo.-Wade Hampton, hanged; annoying whitewomen.Dec. IS-Matter, Ga.-Claxton Deckle, hanged; killing in quarrel.1 9 1 8

Jan. I7-Hazelhurst, Miss.-Sam Edwards, burned to death; charged withmurder of Bera Willes, seventeen-year-old white girl.Jan. 26-Benton, La.-Jim Hudson, hanged; living with a white woman.Feb. 7-Fayetteville, Ga.-"Bud" Cosby, hanged; intent to rob and kidnap.Feb. 12-Estill Springs, Tenn,-Jim McIllheron, burned; accused of shoot.ing to death two white men. G. W. Lych, who hid McIllheron,was shot to death.Feb. 23-Fairfax, S. C.-Walter Best, hanged; accused of murder.Feb. 26-Rayville, La.-Jim Lewis, Jim Jones, and Will Powell, twohanged and one shot to death; accused of stealing hogs, In thefray one white man and one Negro were killed.Feb. 26-Willacoochee, Ga.-Ed. Dansy, shot; he had killed two white offi.cers and wounded three others.Mar. 16-Monroe, La.-George McNeel and John Richards, hanged; alleged attack upon a white woman.Mar. 22-Crawfordsville, Ga.-Spencer Evans, hanged; convicted of criminal assault upon a colored woman at the February term of courtand sentenced to be hanged, but a mob took him from jail andlynched him.Mar. 26-Lewiston, N. C.-Peter Bazemore; alleged attack upon a whitewoman.April 4-Collinsville, Ill.-Robert P. Praeger (White) hanged; accused ofmaking disloyal remarks.

down upon arriving in Illinois. It took atremendous amount of courage for theseblack witnesses to stand up to whiteracists in Mississippi. knowing theymight not live to see another day, knowing that the only way to save themselves from the lynch rope was to leaveeverything behind and escape North.Their actions were not unlike slaves fleeing on the Underground Railroad nearlyone hundred years earlier.

At this time, Medgar Evers. a Mississippi NAACP organizer, gained nationalattention. Evers understood that the only

The American Labor Year Book 19191920town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi,helped organize and contribut ed to pay thecosts of the investigation and relocation ofthe witnesses. He also was eventuallyforced to flee North. He made speakingtours of the country to expose the reign ofterror in Mississippi. For the smallestshred of hope that justice might be served,these people put their lives on the line.

But that smallest shred was really noshred at all in the mid' 50s in the Mississippi Delta. The ensuing murder trial ofBryant and Milam was exactly what onewould expect. All five lawyers in thecounty joined the defense team so thatnone could be appointed special prosecuto r in the case. Neither of the defendantsdenied kidnapping Emmett. The jurycame back with a verdict of not guilty injust over an hour. It took them "that long"because they stopped to get a soda. hoping to stretch the time for appearance'ssake. The jury came up with the lie thatthe bloated, rotting body that was draggedout of the Tallahatchie River might not beEmmett at all. but a body planted by hismother and the NAACP. Emmett wassupposedly alive and well in Detroit,according to the Southern racists. A grandjury would not even indict them on kidnapping charges. Then, just months afterthe acquittal. Look magazine published aconfession by Bryant and Milam boastingof their lynching of Till.

wvAtlanta, 21 January 1989: POC-initiated 3,500-strong mobilization met Klanprovocation with show of labor/black defiance.

A campaign orchestrated by plantation owner. arch-segregationist Mississippi Senator. James O. Eastland. tried tosmear Emmett Till and his' dead fatherLouis as rapists. The U.S. army had executed Louis Till in 1945. While servingin Italy, he was charged with raping twowhite women and killing another,charges that many who served with himstated were lies. The same man, DwightD. Eisenhower, who as a general signedthe execution order of the elder Till, satas U.S. president and refused to investigate the lynching of the son. When Eastland managed to secure the army deathrecords of Louis Till-the same recordsthat Mamie Till-Mobley had been denied-and leaked them to the press, the

national attention to her son's lynching.Till-Mobley, her father and her cousinRayfield Mooty, an Inland Steel worker,traveled to Sumner, Mississippi for thetrial of Emmett's murderers and braved agauntlet of white racists each morning asthey entered the courthouse. Her uncle,Mose Wright, who had pleaded withBryant and Milam not to take hisnephew, did what virtually no black manin Mississippi had dared to do for nearlya century. He stood up in court and identified the two white men as the kidnappers. According to Wright's son. Simeon.who was in the same bed when Emmettwas dragged away, Mose Wright wasdetermined to testify. Knowing full wellthat he was risking the same fate asEmmett. he told his family that he didn'tknow if he would live or die, but heknew for sure that he was going to testify. Before Wright testified, the rest ofhis family had to be spirited away toChicago. He joined them immediatelyfollowing his testimony. Similarly an 18-year-old field hand, Willie Reed, cameforward as a surprise witness for theprosecution to testify that he had heardEmmett's screams coming from Milam'sbarn. As soon as Reed stepped off thestand, he went directly to the train station and left for Chicago, rightly fearingfor his life. He suffered a nervous break-

way a case would be built against Bryantand Milam was if he took it into hisown hands and mobilized his forces. TheNAACP recruited volunteers to dressas sharecroppers and sent them out togather information. These brave individuals knew full well what lay in store forthem should they be detected. Civil rightslawyer Conrad Lynn worked on the caseand identified others involved in the killing, but they were never prosecuted. Dr.T. R. M. Howard, leader of the all-black continued on page 8

Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist Leagueo $10/21 issues of Workers Vanguard 0 New 0 Renewal

(includes English-language Spartacist and Black History and the Class Struggle)international rates: $25/21 issues-Airmail $10/21 issues-Seamailo $2/6 introdtlctory issues of Workers Vanguard (includes English-language Spartacist)o $2/4 issues of Espartaco (en espanol) (includes Spanish-language Spartacist)Name _________________________________________________________Address Apt. # ____City __________ State ____ Zip ____Phone (__ _______ E-mail ____________

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Emmett Till ..(continued from page 7)NAACP took a step back from the case,concerned to maintain their image of"respectability."Louis Till was not the only man tobe executed or "disappear" under suchdubious circumstances during WorldWar II. In her autobiography, MamieTill-Mobley spoke to the chilling storiesshe heard from other black soldiers andfriends of Louis Till of the "problem thatfollowed them overseas from the UnitedStates'" She described 3 a.m. line-ups ofblack soldiers by racist white officersand Military Police. A woman would bebrought in t.o identify one of the soldiersand the "black soldiers who got pointedout at three in the morning were alwaystaken away. They were not broughtback." As Mamie Till-Mobley astutelypointed out."It seemed that the army really didn'tneed much more proof than a late-nightidentification to take black soldiers out.But based on what Louis's friends toldme. it seemed the real offense wasn'talways against white women. Often, itwas really against white men. A number'of women in those late-night lineups, itseems, were only identifying the menwho slept with them. not men they were

accusing of rape .... But for many of thewhite officers and soldiers from theSouth, there also was a custom aboutthat sort of thing ... Louis died before hecould see what would happen to his son.Bo [Emmett's nickname] died before hecould learn about what had happened tohis father. Yet they were connected inways that ran as deep as their heritage,as long as their bloodline.... MaybeEmmett did wind up like his father, anecho of what had happened ten yearsearlier. Maybe they were both lynched."Lynching-"As American asBaseball and Church Suppers"

In 1924, a young Communist fromIndochina named Nguyen Ai Quoclater known as Ho Chi Minh-wrote:"It is well known that the Black race isthe most oppressed and the most exploitedof the human family. It is well knownthat the spread of capitalism and the discovery of the New World had as animmediate result the rebirth of slavery.which was for centuries a scourge of theNegroes and a bitter disgrace for mankind. What everyone does npt perhapsknow is that after sixty-five years of socalled emancipation, American Negroesstill endure atrocious moral and materialsufferings, of which the most cruel andhorrible is the custom of lynching."The story of Emmett Till lays bare theharsh reality of black life in a country builton human bondage. The fight for genuineblack equality remains an unfinished task

of the American Civil War. The 200,000ex-slaves and Northern blacks who foughtin that war helped turn the tide of the warin favor of the Union Army, but the victorious Northern capitalists betrayed thepromise of equality. Radical Reconstruction was the most democratic period inU.S. history. But the Northern capitalistslooked at the devastated South and sawopportunity-not for building radicaldemocracy, but for profitably exploitingSouthern resources and the freedmen.With the "Compromise of 1877," the lastof the Northern troops were pulled fromthe South and Reconstruction came to anend. Freed blacks were disenfranchised,

8

Black Historyand the Class StruggleNo.18Black History is sent to allWorkers Vanguard subscribers.$1 (48 pages)Order from:Spartacist Publishing Co.Box 1377 GPONew York, NY 10116

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Don Alexander, New York Labor Black League for Social DefenseNEW YORK CITY Thursday, September 15, 7 p.m.Community Church of New York, 40 East 35th Street(between Madison Avenue and Park Avenue South)

Sponsored by the Partisan Defense Committee For more information: (212) 406-4252politically expropriated and kept segregated at the bottom of society. The institution of Jim Crow segregation began totake shape. marked by strict racial codes,returning the black population to a position of complete subservience. enforcedby violence. How or when to addresswhites, where to live, eat, sit, shop, washyour hands, or take a drink of water wereall strictly regulated and backed upthrough a system of race terror-theomnipresent threat of the lynch rope.In the period following Reconstruction.in the late 19th century, lynching reachedits height. Lynching is rightfully equatedwith the summary torture and executionof black people. But this was not alwaysthe case. The term "lynch law" is believedto have come from Judge Charles Lynch,

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a patriot in the American RevolutionaryWar. Upon discovery of a Tory conspiracyin 1780, Lynch was said to have presidedover an extralegal court that meted outsummary punishment to the pro-BritishLoyalists. Such methods were given freerein in a burgeoning young country witha vast frontier and a roughly establishedlegal system. The evolution of lynchinginto an act of race terror is organicallylinked to the history of black chattelslavery. Lynching became a form of sadistic black subjugation in reaction tothe rise of the anti-slavery abolitionmovement. developing into a widespreadsocial phenomenon in the wake of thedefeat of Reconstruction. By the end ofthe 19th century. "Iynch law" had a specific meaning. At its heig ht in the 18805and 1890s, as many as two to three blackpeople were lynched per week. Sociologist John Dollard wrote in 1937: "EveryNegro in the South knows that he isunder a kind of sentence of death: hedoes not know when his turn will come.it may never come. but it may also beany time."American historian Leon F. Litwackhas found that of the thousands ofrecorded lynchings, about 640 involved"accusations of a sexual nature"-themost notorious and hysteria-inducingaccusation. The targets of the race terrorists were often those who owned competitive businesses and farms. the man whomanaged to acquire some property andwas deemed by the racists to not haveenough humility. the man who challengedthe system. the man who was educatedand/or prosperous. W. E. B. Dubois put it

this way: 'There was one thing that thewhite South feared more than Negro dishonesty, ignorance and incompetency,and that was Negro honesty. knowledge.and efficiency" (Leon F. Litwack. Troubleill Mind: Black Southerners in the Ag e ofJim Crow [1998]).

In many cases, lynchings were notspontaneous mob violence but plannedand advertised events bringing trainloadsof specta tors from near. and far. Thesewere ordinary, "church-going, upstanding" citizens. drawn together in a grotesque racist ritual. The "pillars of thecommunity" were often directly involvedor had prior knowledge. and they alwaysapproved afterward. "Lynching was anundeniable part of daily life. as distinctlyAmerican as baseball and church suppers. Men brought their wives and children along to the events. posed for commemorative photographs. and purchasedsouvenirs of the occasion as if they hadbeen at a company picnic" (Philip Dray.At The Ffallds of Persolls Unknowll[2002]). Celebratory postcards of mutilated and charred bodies were sentthrough the U.S. mail to friends and relatives. James Baldwin noted on seeing thered clay hills of Georgia for the firsttime. "I could not suppress the thoughtthat this earth had acquired its color fromthe blood that had dripped down fromthese trees."The Civil Rights Movement

As Mamie Till-Mobley remarked ina TV documentary. "When people sawwhat had happened to my son. menstood up who had never stood up before.WORKERS VANGUARD


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People became vocal who had nevervocalized before. Emmet t's death was theopening of the civil rights movement."Ten thousand people rallied in Harlem theSunday following the acquittal. Thousands packed meeting halls and overflowed into the streets to hear Mamiespeak around the country. Labor ralliesand demonstrations were held to protestthe lynching of Emmett Till and raceterror in Mississippi. The CIO Steelworkers Union to which Till's grandfatherbelonged wired the Mississippi governordemanding justice.In the convulsive years that followed.social protest exploded into the civilrights movement. Eventually. Jim Crow.the poll taxes and sham rules that prevented black people from voting wereabolished. and segregated schools andother public facilities were formallyopened up. However. the civil rightsmovement was stopped cold when itcame North and confronted the hardenedeconomic foundations of black oppression. rooted in American capitalism. Theheroic struggles of many thousands ofblack and white activists were betrayedby the liberal perspective of the leader-'ship of the civil rights movement. Muchas the organizers of the demonstrationsagainst Till's murder appealed to Eisenhower, the strategy of the liberal-led civilrights movement was based on appealsto a section of the American bourgeoisieto right the historic wrongs done againstblack people, as though black freedomcould be attained under the capitalistsystem.There were important exceptions tothis, exemplified by militant black leaders such as Robert F. Williams, the headof the NAACP branch in Monroe, NorthCarolina, which heavily recruited fromthe black working class of the area. Williams, who was denounced by liberal civilrights leaders like Martin Luther King,put forward a program of armed selfdefense to fight race-terror as opposed to

SNCC activists stage sit-in at segregated diner in Atlanta in early 1960s.reliance on the capitalist state and its politicians. This earned him the enmity of theliberal NAACP, which disowned him, asthe FBI hounded him out of the country.Williams found refuge in Cuba in 1961and then China, before returning to theU.S. in 1969. In 1965, the Louisianabased Deacons for Defense and Justiceorganized patrols to protect blacks andcivil rights workers. At about the sametime, in Gulfport, Mississippi, the blacklongshoremen's union threatened to closethe port down if civil rights activists wereinjured or arrested.But despite determined struggle to fulfill the unfinished promise of the CivilWar-the promise of black freedomthe civil rights movement could only goso far. The Democratic Party co-optedmany of the black leaders into theirranks. They and their political heirstoday sit on Capitol Hill, in the state-

houses and city halls, administering thissystem which is based on racial injusticeand class oppression, while posing asdefenders of black and working people.For Black Liberation ThroughSocialist Revolution!

The lynching of Emmett Till was notan aberration. Such inhuman acts of violence were part of the fabric of theAmerican Jim Crow South-a systemthat could only be enforced through violence. Nor did the smashing of Jim Crowmark the end of racial oppression in theU.S., in the North or the South. The lawsenforcing segregation may be abolished,but segregation and inequality remain asfacts. The death penalty represents thelynch rope as the ultimate form of institutionalized state terror, backed in thestreets by racist cops who carry out theirown summary executions. The continued

oppression of black people some 40years after the inauguration of formal,legal equality demonstrates that blackoppression is an intrinsic component ofthe capitalist order in the U.S.The capitalist rulers promote the poison of racism to keep the working classdivided-to pi t white workers againstblack workers-in order to more easilymaintain their rule. Bu t black people arenot simply victims. Black workers represent a large component of the organizedlabor mo\'ement. The way forward lies inmultiracial class struggle. A key obstacleto this perspective is the pro-capitalisttrade-union bureaucracy. which ties theworking class to its exploiters. partiClIlarly by promoting illusions in theDemocratic Party a "friend" of laborand blacks.The road to black freedom lies in thestruggle to shatter t h i ~ racist c a p i t a l i ~ t system through proletari:l.l1 socialist rc\ 0-lution, and the power to do that lies withthe working class. But this power cannotand will not be realized unless a c1assstruggle labor movement actively champions the cause of black liberation. Thekey to unlocking the chains tqat shacklelabor to its exploiters is the politicalstruggle to build a revolutionary internationalist leadership of the working class.At the time of the Civil War, KarlMarx, the founder of modern communism, captured a fundamental truth ofAmerican society in his statement that"labor cannot emancipate itself in thewhite skin where in the black it isbranded." The Spartacist League fights tobuild a multiracial revolutionary workersparty that will wrest the tremendous productive resources of this country out ofthe hands of the capitalist owners andput these resources into the hands of theworking class, those who produce thewealth of this society. Only then willracial oppression be a thing of the past.Finish the Civil War! For black liberation through socialist revolution!.

r - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ~ - - - - - - - - - - - - ~ - . - - v . __Join the Spartacus Youth ClublThe Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene

into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program ofMarx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We workto mobili:e youth in struggle as partisansof he working-class, championing the liberation of black people, women and al lthe oppressed. The SYCs fight to winyouth to the p e r s p e c t i ~ ' e of building theLeninist vanguard party that will lead theworking class in socialist revolution, laying the basis fo r ({ world free of capitalist exploitation and imperia list slaughtCl:

1Mobilize students behind the socialpower of the multiracial working class'Picket lines mean don't cross' For unionrun minority job recruitment and trainingprograms! For union hiring halls' Downwith union-busting "workfare" schemes'Jobs for all at union wages! Organize theunorganized! Unionize the South! Downwith multi-tier wages, which pit youngerand older workers against each other!Cops, prison guards. security guards outof the unions! Keep the bosses' government and courts out of the unions!2 Black oppression is the bedrock ofracist American capitalism. Finish theCivil War! For black liberation throughsocialist revolution! For mass labor/blackmobilizations to stop the fascists andrace-ten'orists! No to gun control' For theright of armed selfcdefense! No relianceon the capitalist courts or politicians! Fascist terror is not a question of "freespeech." Stop the Nazis! Stop the KKK!5 AUGUST 2005

SYC Ten Point Program3 For free, quality, integrated publiceducation for all' Nationalize the privateuniversities! Down with the racist purgeof higher education-defend affirmativeaction. no to tuition hikes! No to budgetcuts! For an end to tracking! For openadmissions, no tuition and a state-paidliving stipend for all students! Abolish the administration-the universitiesshould be run by those who work andstudy there' Down with police occupation of public schools' Cops off campus!4 For women's liberation through socialist revolution! For mass, labor-backedmobilizations to defend abortion clinics!Down with parental consent laws and"squeal rules"! For free abortion ondemand' For free, quality 24-hour childcare! For free, quality health care for all!Equal pay for equal work! Down withanti-gay laws! Down with reactionaryage of consent laws! Full democraticrights for homosexuals! Government outof the bedroom! Down with the anti-sexwitchhunt! Down with all laws againstconsensual activities, called "crimes without victims," like pornography. gambling,drug use, prostitution and "statutory rape'"5 Down with racist anti-immigrantlaws! Full citizenship rights for all immigrants! Organize foreign-born workersinto the unions' No deportations! Noto racist "English only" laws' Downwith anti-Hispanic. anti-Arab. anti-Asian.anti-Semitic and all racist bigotry'

6 Down with the "war on terror," whichis a war aimed at immigrants, labor, theleft and minorities! Free all the detainees! Abolish the racist death penalty!Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! Free all classwar prisoners! There is no justice in thecapitalist courts' Defend victims ofracist cop terror and police frame-up!No illusions in civilian review boards or"community control" of the police! Forlabor mobi lizations against racist copterror! Down with the "war on drugs," aracist war by the ruling class againstblack and Hispanic youth! The capitalist state-at its core consisting of thecops, courts, prisons-is the executivecommittee of the ruling class, an instrument of organized violence by the capitalists against the workers and theoppressed. It must be smashed throughworkers revolution!7 Defend separation of church and state'Defend science against superstition andmysticism' Keep religion out of theschools! No prayer in the schools! Downwith the teaching of creationism! For theteaching of evolution! No governmentfunding for religious. private or "charter"schools!8 Defeat U.S. imperialism throughworkers revolution' U.S. and alliedforces out of Iraq now! Down with thecolonial occupation! For class struggleagainst U.S. capitalist rulers at home! Noillusions in the UN-a den of imperialist

thieves, their victims and their lackeysAll U.S./UN/NATO troops out of theBalkans, Afghanistan, Haiti' For theright of independence for Puerto Rico!U.S. troops out of Puerto Rico and theCaribbean! U.S. imperialist butchers:hands off the world! No to the draft! Notone man, not one penny for the imperialist military! Drive ROTC, CIA andpolice recruiters off the campuses'9 For international working-class solidarity! Down with the chauvinist poisonof protectionism! Workers of the world,unite! For unconditional military defenseof the deformed workers states of Cuba,Vietnam, China and North Korea againstcapitalist counterrevolution and imperialist attack! For workers political revolution to oust the Stalinist bureaucrats andestablish regimes of workers democracy,based on the power of workers councils.and revolutionary internationalism!

10 Break with the racist. warmongering Democratic and Republican partiesof capitalism! For a revolutionary. multiracial workers party that fights forsocialist revolution! Look to the exampleof the heroic. Bolshevik-led workers of1917 Russia! For new October Revolutions' For the international rule of theworking class!

The Spa rtaClIS Youth Clubs are theyouth groups ( ~ r t h e , . e ~ o l u t i O / w r \ ' Man-ist Spartacist League/U.S . section of theInternational Communist League (Fourthfme rnational st).

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May 1945 ...(continued from page 4)Union, the U.S. imperialists assisted theirGerman ally generously in deeply burying the history of Nazi crimes. Since thedestruction of the Soviet Union in 1991-92, interimperialist rivalries between theU.S. and Germany. France. etc., haveincreased, a fact reflected in the memorialcelebrations. Thus. when French president Jacques Chirac im'ited Schroder tothe 60th anniversary memorial celebration of the Allied landing in Normandylast year, he was the first chancellor soinvited. 'The invitation." said [government spokesman] Steg (2 January 2004),"is a sign of the new form of cooperationwith our French partners and of the factthat times have indeed changed:'This "new form of cooperation" cameinto being above all via the joint opposition of Germany, France and Russia tothe U.S.-led war against Iraq. This opposition had absolutely nothing to do withany kind of love of peace, as the imperialist deployment of the Bundeswehr inKosovo and Afghanistan or the Frencharmy in Sierra Leone show. Rather, German imperialism is pursuing its own'interests and is attempting to check U.S.claims to sole world domination. For itspart, with the Iraq war and its "unilateral-World Publishing

ism." U.S. imperialism is seeking to putits rivals in their place. As our comradesof the Spartacist League/U.S. explained(WV No. 843,4 March):"The unchallenged global hegemony ofthe U.S. stands in sharp contrast toits declining economic base .... Havingpresided over the deindustrialization ofthe country and driven by the pursuit ofgreater profit margins exacted from thelabor of workers abroad. the Americancapitalist class cannot now easily reverseits industrial decline. This is the material basis for the rabid behavior of theBush administration. Its outlook brings

to mind the siege mentality of the Afrikaners in South Africa, the Ulster Protestants in Northern Ireland and the Zionists in the Near East."With a GNP about one-third that of theU.S., Germany is necessarily forced torely on imperialist partners. Hence itsefforts to transform the EU [EuropeanUnion], an imperialist trade bloc, into aninstrument for its ambitions of politicaldominance. However, as the Iraq waronce again clearly illustrated, the EU istorn apart by counterposed imperialistinterests, including differences betweenFrance and Germany. In order to evenapproach the military and technologicallevel of the U.S., the German bourgeoisie would have to massively increase itsmilitary budget: this can be financedonly by drastically raising the rate ofexploitation of the working class. Andthus the German bourgeoisie's plans forbecoming a world power depend to agreat extent on the course of class struggle in their own country.Like Chirac, Russian president [Vladimir] Putin also invited Schroder to the60th anniversary festivities. Gernot Erler,foreign policy spokesman for the SPDparliamentary fraction, commented:

10

"The day will be one of remembrance ofthe 30 million victims of the war in theSoviet Union and of the desolationHitler's armies left behind. But the.memorial celebrations-that's the wishof the hosts-should also send a signalfor European reconciliation. For the firsttime, the head of the German government is invited to participate. And the

SpartakistJanuary 1990, East Berlin: Spartacists initiated 250,000-strong rally againstNazi desecration of Treptow Park memorial to Red Army liberators.

Alternative. affiliate of Peter Taaffe'sCommittee for a Workers International]and Linksruck [affiliate of the International Socialist Tendency], to WorkersPower [affiliate of the League for theFifth International]. talk big today aboutthe fight against fascism and attempt topaper over their reformism with Trotskyquotes. But they all actively supportedcapitalist reunification in 1990. therebydoing their bit for the strengthening ofthe Nazis. In order to defeat fascism. itis necessary to understand that it is generated by capitalism. The German bourgeoisie wanted Hit ler in power and in the early. 30s cast its weight-money. power andcountless connections-onto the scales.The German bourgeoisie set its hopes onthe fascists because it-saw its rule as beingthreatened by the working class.The recent electoral gains of the fascistNPD are a result of the social attacks bythe SPD/Green government (and the Berlin SPD/PDS-run Senate is not one iotabetter) like Agenda 2010 or Hartz IV [thatslash pensions and welfare and devastateunemployment benefits]. These intensified assaults have especially catastrophiceffects in eastern Germany, which hasbeen de industrialized as a consequence ofcapitalist reunification. Simultaneously,the racist "war on terror," directed againstMuslim immigrants, puts wind in thesails of the Nazis. As Trotsky stated in1929, the social democracy, which iscommitted to capitalism, is not an obstacle to the Nazis but rather paves theirwav:

very next day. the EU-Russia summit inMoscow will meet and direct its gaze tothe future."-Frankfurter Rum/schall.12 MarchPutin used his 27 January Auschwitzspeech to justify the "war on terror," inwhose name Russia is carrying out itsgenocidal colonial war against Chechnya: "We also must be clear that moderncivilization today is confronted with anew and no less horrific threat. Terroristshave taken over the role of the hangmen

::looCDQ.""

Anti-Soviet Cold Warrehabilitated Naziwar criminals.Fo"owing World War II,General ReinhardGehlen (far left inNazi uniform) workedfor U.S. intelligence andjoined West Germany'sintelligence service.Near left: Gehlen fetedat Yale University.

in their black [SS] uniforms." The Russian army of today is a capitalist armythat stands in the tradition of the tsaristarmy. It no longer has anything to dowith the Red Army, army of the Sovietworkers state, that Trotsky founded. Forthe sake of an alliance with capitalistRussia-which with complete injusticecrowns itself with the laurels of theheroic victory of the Soviet Red Armythe rabidly anti-Communist SPD thatfought the Soviet Union for the wholeterm of its existence today cries crocodile tears for the Red Army and the sacrifices made by the Soviet working class.

Putin's invitation for May 9 has ledto a controversy with the conservativeCDUlCSU [Christian Democratic parties]. They reject the SPD/Green government's strategy of acting more independently of the U.S. in coalition with Franceand Russia. They believe that Germaninterests are more readily realizable ifGermany follows more closely in thewake of the U.S. Not the least thingthey're worried about is too great a dependence of Germany on Russia, whichthey find neither so reliable nor stable.with concomitant possible internationalisolation. For example. the CDU/CSUparliamentary fraction's foreign policyspokesman, Friedbert Pfluger. warned:"Germany is presently dependent onRussian gas for about 47 percent [ofits requirementsl. some of the new EU

states like Slovakia for 100 percent.An accidental or intentional deliverv fail-ure would have great consequences. Asimportant and sensible as Germany'senergy alliance with Russia is. it cannotignore the fact that Russia sees its tradein energy as a potential means of pressure on dependent states:'-www.friedbert-pflueger.de.9 MarchPfluger accordingly solidarized with thedisgusting anti-communist hue and cryof the Baltic governments, who termedPutin's invitation for May 9th an "insult"and warned SchrOder he should "promulgate the historical truth": "In the Balticstates, May 9 stands not only for the end

of the National Socialist dictatorship,but rather 'today much more for thecontinued occupation by the totalitarianSoviet Union'" (3 March). The same ruling elite of the Baltic states that railsagainst the former Soviet Union honorsthe former Baltic SS troops, which carried out frightful crimes against Jews andCommunists during the Nazi occupation.For a RevolutionaryWorkers Party!

Internally, the politics of the memorialceremonies are dominated by the issue ofthe NPD [neo-Nazi party]. It is a bitterresult of Germany's capitalist reunification that the Nazi filth can dare to attemptto march through the Brandenburg Gateon May 8, the 60th anniversary of liberation from Hitlerite fascism. We Trotskyists intervened with all the forces of ourinternational in the fall of 1989-90 in theunfolding proletarian political revolutionin the DDR. Against capitalist Anschluss[annexation]. we fought for the revolutionary reunification of Germany-forthe overthrow of the Stalinist bureaucracythrough political revolution in the DDRand for the overthrow of the bourgeoisieand its expropriation through socialistrevolution in the West. We called for a redGermany of workers councils.A high point of our intervention wasthe 3 January 1990 workers united-frontprotest we initiated against the Nazi deseccration of the memorial in Berlin's Treptow Park, where the Soviet soldiers whogave their lives in the battl e for the liberation of Berlin from the Nazis rest and arehonored. In our protest call 'we warned:"Resurgent fascism is still an extremist fringe phenomenon. It would againthreaten all mankind. as soon as the firstcrises in a reunified Greater Germanyappear. Today. however. the SPD/SDP isthe chief instrument to bring about such aGreater Germany." Speaking before thequarter-million working people who cameto this pro-socialist, pro-Soviet, antifascist protest, we called for the foundingand rule of workers and soldiers councils.As we warned, counterrevolution hasled to mass unemployment, a massiveincrease in institutionalized racism, and,encouraged by these, Nazi terror. Thefake Trotskyists, from the SAV [Socialist

"In Austria as in all other countries.fascism appears as a necessary supplement to the Social Democracy. livesoff of it and comes to power with itshelp .... Fascism nourishes itself from theSocial Democracy. but it must smash itsskull to ,come to power. The AustrianSocial Democracy doe, what it can. tomake this surgical operation easy forthem."Today. when the destruction of the

DDR and the Soviet Union' has cast backthe consciousness of the working class,and the bourgeoisie does not see its ruleas being threatened, it holds the Nazis inreserve. utilizing them both as a means ofpolitical pressure and for terrorizing leftists and immigrants. Thus the growingstrength of the NPD finds expressionabove all in an increase of its murderousterror in the streets. To organize the fightagainst the slashing of benefits, againstracist oppression by the state and againstNazi terror, it is necessary to wage anuncompromising struggle against theSocial-Democratic misleaders and theirfake-leftist water boys. We must fight toconstruct a party capable of breakingthe working-class base from the socialdemocracy, both of the SPD and the PDS.These parties are, as Lenin explained.bourgeois workers parties, i.e., they reston a proletarian base but have a fullybourgeois program. Forging a politicalinstrument with which to do battle, arevolutionary multiethnic workers party,is urgently necessary. We Spartacists havecommitted ourselves to the struggle tobuild such a party. For the reforging ofthe Fourth International, world party ofproletarian revolution!.

Action PressGerman workers protest against SPD/Green government economic austerityplan, 2004.WORKERS VANGUARD


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Dresden ...(colltil1l1edjimn page 5)

June 19-1-1 that they couldn't bombAuschwitz. It wa\ too far away. th


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Mexico... '( continued from page 16)the day the postage stamps with theMemfn Pingufn illustration were put onsale, crowds of people lined up to buythem despite, or rather because of, thescandal over the racist illustrations (theedition of 750,000 stamps has sold out!).Obscenely, a new edition of the comicstrip was just launched.The capitalist rulers push the hypocritical ideology of nationalism-that we areall Mexicans and our interests are common-as a smokescreen that covers classdistinctions and the counterposed interests of workers to the bosses, glorifyingthe most backward and openly racistaspects of "Mexicanity" and "popularculture." Thus, racist stereotypes of indigenous people as lazy and ignorant are alsoeveryday occurrences. Anti-Semitism isso widespread that Mein Kampf is oneof the most "popular" and easily obtainable books, available at nearly every bookkiosk in downtown Mexico City. In aparticularly grotesque example of blindness to racist oppression, the cartoonistRogelio Naranjo said: "In the U.S. dis-'plays of racism are different from thosein Mexico. Here, poor people, not races,are discriminated against. Here, indigenous people are discriminated against notfor belonging to another race, but forbeing poor" (La Jornada, 1 -July). Tellthat to the Zapatistas and the ten millionindigenous people- in the country! TheZapatista uprising in 1994 called theattention of people around th,e world tothe reality of racist Mexican capitalism,which adds racial oppression to capitalistexploitation.The denunciations of racism in MemfnPingufn by the imperialist Bush government-that a large part of the Mexicanpopulation rightly views as the most racistand immoral murderer of peoples in theworld-are thoroughly hypocritical. Theimperialists condemn the black population to the ghettos, prisons, unemployment, misery and police brutality. Theyalso terrorize Mexican and - CentralAmerican immigrants, unleashing thebrutal migra and, as in the case of "governator" Schwarzenegger, supporting thefascist, paramilitary "Minutemen." At thesame time, they whip up racism throughderogatory stereotypes of these immigrants. Racism occupies a privilegedplace among the points of ideological

Deep Throat...( continued from page 3)powers 10 suppress domestic dissent.

After the June 1972 break-in of theDemocratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate compltx inWashington was linked to Nixon's Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP,appropriately pronounced Creep), the Senate convene!1 public hearings in 1973 asan exercise in damage control. Undermounting pressure to leave office, Nixonacted in characteristic f ~ s h i o n , like a cornered rat, firing subordinates left andright and suppressing evidence includingtapes of his efforts.to get the CIA to stopthe investigation. On 8 August 1974, withthe House of Representatives clearly moving toward impeachment, he resigned.Nixon's violation of bourgeois democracy disturbed his masters mainly because it was aimed against one of theirown political institutions, the DemocraticParty. and not representatives of the classenemy-the left. labor movement and

NOTICEWorkers Vanguard skipsalternate issues in June,Ji.lly and August.Our next issue willbe dated September 2.

The following leaflet was issuedjointly by the Bay Area Labor BlackLeague for Social .Defense and thenewly founded Los Angeles Labor BlackLeague for Social Defense on 30 July.Images borrowed from the U.S.legacy of slavery and Jim Crow segregation are featured in the Mexican PostOffice's recently issued series of stampswith" racist depictions of Sambo-likecartoon character Memin Pinguin. JesseJackson has called on President Bushto pressure Mexico to withdraw thestamps from the market, saying they"insult people around the world." TheWhite House, the chief purveyor ofviolence against non-white people globally, responded: "Racial stereotypes areoffensive no matter what their origin."The hypocrisy of the racist Americanruling class and its government, Republican and Democrat alike, is boundless.When Mexican president Vicente Foxmade his ~ o m m e n t in May, that superexploited Mexican migrants would dojobs that "not even blacks want to do inthe United States," he was describingthe U.S. rulers' own social policy. TheBush administration wagged a finger

at Fox while Jackson and Al Sharpton grandstanded as "black leaders,"demanding Fox's apology for the benefit of the media. Not so long ago Attorney General John Ashcroft, an admirer,of the slaveholding Confederacy, guidedefforts in drafting repressive legislationagainst workers and minorities like the"Patriot Act" recently extended by a bipartisan vote in Congress.In America, the exploitation of, laboris wrapped in the envelope of rawracism. Today the desperate conditionsof life for blacks, a race-color castesegregated at the bottom of capitalistsociety, and non-white immigrants areincreasingly the reality for all American workers. U.S. imperialism has historically exported the practice of.racialsegregation along with its ideologicalprops to the exploited semicolonialworld. Mexico's anti-black racism sharesthis common origin which finds resonance with its native and pervasiveanti-Indigenous racism.

But black workers in the U.S. are apowerful component of the trade-unionmovement; while Latino workers are adynamic sector forming a human bridge

affinity between the Mexican and Ameri- simultaneously for immigrants and work-can rulers. ers to take up the struggle for black eman-Capitalism, in Mexico as well as in cipation as their own.the U.S., is inherently racist. Capitali st As-a legacy of slavery, black people inparasites, who live by exploiting the work the U.S. suffer from special oppression, asof the population, see a danger to their a race-color caste relegated to the bottomregime in the joint struggle of workers of society. This oppression has histori-that overcomes national and racial di- cally been the cornerstone of Americanvides, and for that reason they foment capitalism. At the same time, blacks areracism every day as a means of keeping integrated into key sectors of the workingthe workers divided by stupid prejudices. class. Due to their position as the mostThose who want to take part in the strug- oppressed, but also the most consciousgle"1br . .OIkets' t l l t e M ~ nMst&!eM'ea"" a d 4 ~ i e n c e ( h e c t o r of ile proletariat,battle to the end against these stupid revolutionary black workers are calledprejudices. Our comrades in the Sparta- on to play a leading role in the comingcist League/U.S. fight to break down the' American socialist revolution. That's whydivisions between black people and - for Marxists the struggle for black eman-Mexican immigrants pushed by the impe- cipation in the U.S. is absolutely central.rialist rulers; they fight to mobilize the The Mexican exploited and oppressedentire working class to demand full citi- will find n'o better ally in the struggle forzerisnip rights for all immigrants, and their emancipation than the powerful,

1969: Ct'licagopolice and FBIbrutally killedBlack Pantherleaders FredHampton (inset)and Mark Clark.Bloodsoakedmattress onwhich Hamptonwas sleeping.

oppressed. Nixon's second crime in theireyes was to get caught. The "law andorder" presidency was exposed as a gangof petty crooks. This brought discrediton the Republican Party as well as.the"Washington Establishment," somethingthe rulers seek to prevent.The working c l a s ~ is certainly not indifferent to questions of political democracy. While e x p o ~ i n g the corruption.machinations ::md state violence of thecapitalist rulers, we demand the fullestpossible democratic rights to allow theworking class to organize itself around itsown class interests and program. While itwas necessary "for the working classto support Nixon's impeachment, we proclaimed: "Impeachment Is Not Enough!"(WV No. 31, 26 October 1973). Water-.1./r

cJ1

gate-i.e., Nixon's crimes against his ownclass-pales before his crimes against theworld's working class. We stated at thetime that his saturation bombing of the.workers and peasants of Indochina earnedhim a place beside the worst Nazi warcriminals at the Nuremberg trials..Impeachment. like Nixon's resignation,only provided for the orderly transfer ofpower to the equally reactionary Vice President Gerald Ford. And the Senate hearings on Watergate in no \vay curtailed U.S.sabotage and subversion abroad, demonstrated by its all-sided support, at thesame time, to Pinochet's bloody 1973 military coup in Chile. The worst excesses ofdomestic covert and COINTELPRO subversion may have been reined in, but thosealready ensnared or targeted by COIN-

to the toiling masses of Central and SouthAmerica. The social power of organizedlabor must be mobilized against our common foe, U.S. imperialism, to championthe cause of all the oppressed aroundkey demands such as full citizenshiprights for all immigrants.There will be no effective resistanceto the exploitation of working people onboth sides of the border without theunity in struggle between the tradeunions and the black and Mexican poor.This united struggle would be the goal

of a revolutionary, multiracial workersparty fighting for working-class interestindependent of and in opposition tothe capitalist parties, Republican andDemocrat. The Labor Black League forSocial Defense, in fraternal alliance withthe Marxist Spartacist League, seeks tobuild such a party. We are joined in thiseffort by our Mexican comrades, GrupoEspartaquista de Mexico, who wrote ina July 15 protest statement, "We call onworkers to repudiate racist propagandalike Memfn Pingufn and its officialendorsement by the Fox government.For socialist revolution from the Yukonto the Yucatan!"

multiracial American proletariat, especially its black component. Unlike whatnationalist ideologues assert, it is not withtheir exploiting "fellow countrymen," butwith their class brothers and sisters, theexploited of the world, that workers sharea fundamental interest: to put an end tothis system of exploitation and oppression and replace it with the internationalrule of the workers.The communists of the Grupo Espartaquista de Mexico are proud to share withour comrades of the Spattacist Leaguel .U.S. the Marxist struggle against imperialism and racism, for the world workerscommune. We call on workers to repudiate racist propaganda like Memfn Pingufnand its official endorsement by the Foxgovernment. For socialist revolution fromthe Yukon to the Yucatan! Workers of theworld, unite!.

TELPRO continued to rot1.n' Americandungeons. For .,example, Panther leaderGeronimo ji Jaga (Pratt) was imprisonedfor almost three decades with full government knowledge of his innocence.By 1983, the FBI had adopted theDomestic SecurityITerrorism Guidelines,which equated left-wing political activity with terrorism and organized crime.We called this "McCarthyism with adrawn gun." What the FBI had done insecret an


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London...(continued jimn page 1)

The Bush and Blair administrations areusing the London terror attacks to greasethe skids for even more repressive laws.many of which have been in the worksfor some time. In the U.S .. the September11 attack led to the authoritarian. antiimmigrant. deeply sinister USA-PatriotAct. It was supposed to be ..temporary:'but just a few days ago the U.S. Congress.

workers vanguard no 852 - 05 august 2005

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