State terrorist Israel invades Lebanon. The capitalist rulers of Iran launch hundreds of missiles at Israel. The U.S., the biggest terrorist of them all, rushes warships and thousands of more troops to the Middle East. Days before the one-year mark of the Zionist genocide in Gaza, an all-out regional war looks more likely by the hour. Inter-imperialist conflict seems headed for a breaking point.
As the international crisis of capitalism spirals out of the top imperialist bosses’ control, their life-and-death competition is sparking a rise of fascism in the U.S. and Europe, where the bosses have lost ground to more open fascists in China and Russia. With Russia grinding down Ukraine and China laying claim to the South China Sea, capitalist politicians and media are sounding alarms of global conflagration. A South African online publication led with this headline: “Top 12 Safest Countries to Live Should World War III Break Out” (South African, 9/24).
But there is no safe place for the working class under capitalism. We can never be secure as long as the bosses are free to value their profits over workers’ lives. Only communist revolution can end the rulers’ reign of terror. Only a mass communist movement, led by the international Progressive Labor Party, can build a world free of genocide. The challenge is great and urgent. Join us!
Zionist onslaught in Lebanon
Not content with murdering more than 41,000 workers and children in Gaza with missiles and bombs, and likely tens of thousands more from starvation, disease, and the obliteration of hospitals (Lancet, 7/8), Israel’s monstrous rulers have turned their sights on Lebanon. Seeking to liquidate Hezbollah, the Islamist militia spawned by Israel’s occupation in the 1980s, Benjamin Netanyahu’s Zionist regime exploded household pagers and launched “one of the most intense air raids in contemporary warfare” (New York Times, 9/24). Then they assassinated Hezbollah’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, with an airstrike in Beirut that leveled six apartment buildings and killed or wounded nearly one hundred people (apnews.com, 9/28). As Netanyahu and his nazi coalition celebrated “days of greatness,” more than one thousand women, men, and children in Lebanon have been killed with Biden’s blessing and made-in-U.S. 2,000-pound bombs (cbsnews.com, 9/30). Hundreds of thousands have fled in panic from their homes. Under capitalism, the bosses’ capacity for horror is unlimited.
As Israel methodically broadens its bloodbath, the misleaders of Hezbollah and the rest of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” are also sending workers to early graves. As a lapdog proxy funded by Iran, the regional imperialist allied with Russia and China, Hezbollah has for decades waged a fight against U.S.-sponsored Israel. It’s a pawn in the inter-imperialist game to control the region’s oil and gas. Hezbollah’s rotten nationalist ideas are so many bricks in the slaughterhouse the capitalists are building for our class.
Now, more than ever, we need to channel our grief and anger at capitalist destruction into building the only movement that can turn the guns around and take the bosses down: communism! Once we replace capitalist rule with a dictatorship of the working class, the only mass graves will be dug for the parasitic bosses who destroy everything they touch.
Unhappy marriage: the U.S. and Israel
Israel’s escalating carnage has put its loyal patron at a crossroads. For the U.S., Israel is a vital linchpin for projecting military power in the Middle East. But it’s also an apartheid pariah state, and the Zionists’ gutter racism and talent for mass murder has reinforced the global perception of U.S. complicity. On September 26, with Genocide Joe Biden and his possible successor, Kamala Harris, cheerleading Israel’s right to “defend” itself, the Zionists welcomed another $8.7 billion in U.S. aid “to support ongoing military efforts” (The Hill, 9/26).
Even before Iran’s strike upped the ante, Biden’s appeals to pause hostilities fell on deaf ears. The airstrike that killed Nasrallah caught the U.S. by surprise as it worked to ink a 21-day ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah (NBC, 9/28). Defiant terrorist Netanyahu has made it clear he’ll stop at nothing to stay in power and avoid prison on corruption charges. He needs to placate the most racist hyper-nationalists and religious extremists in his governing coalition, making a ceasefire a non-starter (New York Times, 6/3). Sad to say, Israel’s latest siege of carpet bombing and baby-killing has only made Netanyahu and his annexationist Likud party more popular (Times of Israel, 9/29). In both Israel and the U.S., too many workers have been infected by the poison of nationalism and the deadly false solution of a “Jewish state.”
With Israel gone rogue, China is exploiting U.S. disarray by pivoting to the Middle East and signing deals to provide missile technology to Iran (mirror.co.uk, 10/1). Both China and Russia are using the BRIC infrastructure investment program to challenge the dominance of the U.S dollar (nasdaq.com, 7/8). Even if Kamala Harris and the Democrats were willing to pay the political price, they can’t afford to press Netanyahu too hard, much less tear up their blank check for mass destruction. Any U.S. move to rein in the Jewish-supremacist regime would open the regional door to their imperialist rivals.
U.S moves toward fascism
U.S rulers also must contend with rising resistance within the bosses’ own borders. More than a hundred cities, including Atlanta, Detroit, and St. Louis, have pushed for local resolutions to demand a ceasefire (NPR, 4/18). College students across the nation have turned the seats of imperialist ideology into sites of anti-imperialist protest. Unions too have joined the call, adding their weight to the growing forces of opposition (Guardian, 7/23).
To stave off widespread fightback, the U.S. ruling class has no choice but to jettison the old rules of liberal democracy and turn toward fascism. One ominous development is the growing push to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Jewish racism. At Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania, a tenured Jewish professor was fired for accusing the Zionists of genocide (insidehighered.com, 10/2). At Cornell University, a student faces deportation for joining campus protests (Newsweek, 9/28). As the U.S. rulers strain to defend their position in their never-ending battle for world supremacy, it exposes the illusion of “free” speech under capitalism.
At the same time, the bosses are using voting to pacify workers’ righteous anger and enlist support for their imperialist death machine. With the U.S. presidential election around the corner, both Democrats and Republicans are working overtime to convince workers that capitalism works in their best interests–and that genocide is an acceptable price to pay to fend off “our” enemies. But the fact remains: Top cop Harris and nazi Donald Trump serve one set of imperialist masters or another. Choosing either one means more death for the working class. Choosing either Israel or Hezbollah or Hamas is the same losing proposition.
Turn anti-imperialist actions into communist revolution
Communism will erase all borders and stop the lethal competition for maximum profit. Communist revolution will end nationalism, racism, sexism, and imperialist war. Campus protests and anti-genocide resolutions are important, but they cannot smash a system that relies on money soaked in the blood of the working class. The bosses will never let us vote them out of business. PLP calls on all students, workers, and soldiers to turn reform struggles into the fight for communism. Every new comrade brings the world closer to real peace. Every new comrade hammers another nail into the coffin of capitalism. Join us! We have a world to win!
