In a period of escalating inter-imperialist competition, the capitalist ruling class will seize on every opportunity to use racism to divide workers—and to enlist them into the next big war.
The latest tragedy came on Dec. 2, when 14 workers were killed and 21 injured in San Bernadino, California. The two shooters, whose motives remain unclear, had apparently proclaimed allegiance to the Islamic State, or ISIS. The U.S. bosses quickly used their government and media to sensationalize the crime and whip up anti-Muslim racism. Beyond trivializing the deaths, the rulers are exploiting workers’ fears to gain support for more fascist police repression against Muslim, Black, and immigrant workers—and for the inevitable, global military conflict to defend U.S. imperialism and its declining empire.
Terrorism and Religion: Twin Dangers to the Working Class
Terrorist violence is a political tactic to strike fear and panic. The biggest death toll—by far—comes from state terror waged by the U.S. and its powerful allies or imperialist rivals, from drone strikes and bombing campaigns to racist police murders. Smaller regional imperialists like ISIS, skimming Middle East oil profits under the veil of religion, are just following the big bosses’ lead.
But regardless of where it stems from, terrorist violence is always anti-working class. The communist antidote and alternative is mass, revolutionary, working-class violence to seize power from the capitalist class and build an egalitarian, internationalist world. The Progressive Labor Party is organizing a movement to create such a world—a society run by workers to serve workers’ needs, a society without profit or wage slavery or any form of exploitation.
The bosses’ media pushes the racist idea that Muslims are inherently dangerous to their fellow workers. In fact, all religious movements are dangerous to workers. All of them divert workers’ natural anti-capitalist anger into the false and divisive unity of nations or religious creeds. Whether Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, or Muslim, from Pope Francis to the Ayatollah Khamenei, the cynical leaders of these movements work hand-in-hand with mass-murdering capitalist rulers to preserve the profit system.
Workers respond to aspects of religion that speak to their deepest aspirations—their need for hope and comfort inside the brutal nightmare of capitalism, their desire to alleviate others’ suffering, their vision for a society where all are truly equal. But no mythical supreme being can make those aspirations a reality. Only the international working class can create an egalitarian world. That is our fight to win, in the here and now, alongside our class sisters and brothers.
Religious Appearance, Capitalist Essence
The ISIS bosses consists mainly of former higher-ups in Saddam Hussein’s old regime, striving to regain and expand control over the oil wealth of the Middle East. These moguls twisted the California killers—among many other confused workers—with phony, pious propaganda. Quoted in the industry journal OilPrice.com (11/29/15), Texas-based Robert Bensh, “managing director at Pelicourt, a Western-owned oil and gas company navigating tricky conflict zones,” noted how religious faith is manipulated to serve profit:  
Every modern day conflict—even if not immediately evident—has at its heart control over resources from oil and gas to water. Religion is but a symptom; a tool used to consolidate opinions, cement power and lure in new recruits.... ISIS is trying to build a nation here—a fully functional state with its own oil and gas resources.
High Stakes = Boots on the Ground
The rise of ISIS is a direct challenge to U.S., British, and French control over Iraqi oilfields—control won at a cost of millions of working-class lives over decades of bombings, occupation, and U.S.-sponsored genocide. For these partners in crime, the solution is a wider war that an ISIS attack on U.S. soil could mobilize. On Dec. 2, hours before the San Bernardino shootings, Congress heard prophetic testimony from Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the policy think tank funded by ExxonMobil and the dominant, finance capital wing of the U.S. ruling class:
The existence of the Islamic State is a clear and pressing danger to the security of the United States and that of our allies. This threat must be confronted and destroyed before ISIS operatives attack us right here in Washington and in other American cities.
The day after Defense Secretary Ashton Carter notified Congress that 200 Special Operations forces would be sent to spearhead the fight against ISIS, Boot called for many more boots, U.S. and allied, on Iraqi ground:
I believe we will need a force of 20,000 to 30,000 … including a substantial Special Operations task force…to galvanize and support a Sunni uprising in Iraq and Syria. If we make such a commitment, allies such as France, Britain, and Egypt are likely to step forward as well.
U.S. v. Russia…
In another Dec. 2 development, U.S.-dominated NATO extended a formal invitation for membership to Montenegro, historically a Russian satellite in the Balkans—a once and future flashpoint for U.S.-Russia conflict. Representing ExxonMobil’s interests, Boot seemed to be inviting an open conflict with Russia, despite U.S. bosses’ lack of readiness [see box]. Here is how the CFR analyst assessed a likely U.S. escalation:
Against these benefits must be weighed the potential risk of confrontation with Russia, whose air force is already bombing U.S.-supported rebels in Syria. This is a very real concern… Make it clear to Russia that…its forces will challenge ours at their own peril....The Turkish shoot-down of a Russian jet has exposed Putin’s bluster and is likely to make him think twice about confronting NATO forces in Syria.
In its “ISIS War Games III” report (12/3/15), the Atlantic Council, another policy-formulation group backed by the biggest Exxon-tied U.S. financiers and industrialists, goes one step further:
Should ...the transnational threat of ISIS reach alarming levels, the United States might be left with the least desirable of all options: military occupation akin to the U.S. presence in Iraq from 2003 to 2011.
…And Bringing the War Home
In response to San Bernadino, Barack Obama issued an appeal to intensify the enlistment of Muslim community “leaders” into networks of informers—a modern take on Hitler’s Judenrat, the Jewish Council leaders enlisted by the Nazis to organize the deportation of European Jews to the death camps. The ruling-class Times (12/6/15) approved: “[T]he authorities may have to rely more on encouraging Americans to watch one another and report suspicions. Federal and local governments already have programs urging friends, families and neighbors to identify people targeted for [ISIS] recruitment.”
Turn Imperialist War Into Revolutionary War!
As German poet and communist Bertolt Brecht wrote: “General, man is very useful. He can fly and he can kill. But he has one defect: he can think.” The capitalist bosses, driven by their competition for maximum profit, will never stop plotting for war to redivide the world’s resources. But their grand plans will go nowhere unless they win the international working class to fight willingly for imperialism—or, at the very least, to be terrorized into submission and obedience.
The revolutionary communist PLP is building an international movement in 28 countries—and counting—to smash the entire capitalist system. The bosses may start their next global showdown, but organized communists can finish it—by organizing fightbacks against racism and imperialism, and winning millions of workers to join the fight for a world without capitalism. We need all workers to stand and become leaders in this struggle. Join us!

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To help ready the U.S. for a broader conflict with rival Russian or Chinese imperialists, Barack Obama has successfully pushed the U.S. Defense Department to open all military combat jobs to women—and may soon force somen to register for the draft. The rulers’ leading mouthpiece, the New York Times, cloaked this move toward global war as a victory for egalitarianism, one that will both “make the military stronger and… narrow America’s gender equality gap” (12/6/15). As to “whether women should now be required to register in the Selective Service System,” the Times answered its own question: “It could be done easily.”
Our party stands for the absolute equality of all workers. But doubling the number of those eligible to kill and die for the bosses’ profits is no triumph for working-class women and men. . All military recruits, men and women both, must be organized to turn the guns around—and turn imperialist war into communist revolution!