Martin Luther King’s call to civil rights action, “the fierce urgency of now,” animated political action on Gaza at the January 2024 convention of the Modern Language Association (MLA). The MLA Radical Caucus—including core organizers from the Progressive Labor Party (PLP)—felt it was absolutely necessary to act in the MLA, the largest professional organization of academics in the humanities. But we could not call for a ceasefire and an end to the Gaza genocide, as comrades and friends had just successfully done at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association (Democracy Now, Nov. 20, 2023).
Why? Because the MLA has made it very difficult to pass any resolution critical of Israel and its U.S. support. They stifled a 2017 resolution for BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions on Israel), for instance. This repression of dissent shows how liberal officials, in a pre-fascist period, are preparing the ground for fascism in the universities. Barnard College, for example, has banned ALL political posters on campus (New York Times, 1/24).
Organizing against fascist attacks on students and workers
So we brought an emergency motion for the MLA Executive Council to call on university administrators to defend pro-Palestinian campus organizers from attack by politicians, pro-Israel rightist, and universities themselves. Recent attacks, including the sacking of the Harvard and Penn presidents for not being sufficiently pro-Israel, made this idea appeal to the vast majority of MLA delegates.
On January 6, by a margin of 12-1, they passed the Radical Caucus motion. The delegates spoke up for international solidarity, against the silence and complicity the ruling class would like to normalize among faculty and students. We will pressure the MLA Executive Council to act on the motion at their February meeting.
Our action unfolded in a somber atmosphere as Gaza was being reduced to rubble with every passing day. We did not know what response we would get; MLA administrators were discouraging from the start; our core group was small. But we had reached out earlier to some of the MLA Forums (sub-fields in which MLA members organize themselves, like Arab and Arab-American Studies, Global Francophone Studies, or Caribbean Studies). Leaders from the thirteen forums who signed on to the Radical Caucus motion swelled our numbers and joined in planning the campaign. We were gathering momentum! We also picked up support from members of the Marxist Literary Group, where PLP has a presence.
At the Open Hearing on motions, to which our flyers and conversations had drawn a hundred people, our new friends quickly took the lead in speaking for the motion. Palestinian colleagues described death threats they had received for speaking out. Black radical members drew parallels between the colonialist cruelty of the Israeli Defence Forces and the racism of American police. Others pointed to the need for particular defense of pro-Palestinian free speech, the need not to hide behind the slogan of academic freedom for all, which one speaker compared to the slogan “All Lives Matter.” By the end of that meeting we thought we might have the momentum we needed, and it seems the MLA officials realized the same thing. They didn’t block our motion and put it in a good place on the agenda for the Delegate Assembly the next day.
That night 16 people crowded into a hotel room for the Radical Caucus annual meeting. By now, after our success at the Open Hearing, we were getting to know one another and gaining confidence. That afternoon we attended a Palestinian poetry of resistance reading organized by a younger group of organizers, MLA for Palestine, fresh from the street rallies in support of Gaza. The poetry brought the Palestinian resistance right there into our convention hotel, and we took that spirit into the night planning meeting.
Solidarity with workers in Gaza
During the meeting we discussed a PLP flyer, urging the need for the Party so that struggles like this could lead to revolution. One long-time Radical Caucus member said he agreed one hundred percent with that even though he was not a Party member. Someone we’d just met said that our Party had gained legitimacy in this action and we could build on that. We spoke of the imperialist context of Gaza, the communist critique of nationalism in the liberation struggle, the problems of united fronts.
Then we came down to tactics for the next day’s Delegate Assembly. A veteran union leader pulled out Roberts' Rules of Order manual so we would be up to speed about parliamentary procedure, necessary in these fights, and we lined up speakers and talking points. Palestinian, Jewish, Afro-descended, Indo-Caribbean, Euro-descended, in our twenties or in our eighties, mainly women-led: we were ready to stand together for workers in Gaza.
At the Assembly, speaker after speaker for the motion took the floor. Some we knew, like the chair of a union academic freedom committee, but most were new to us, like the speaker from African-American Studies who urged solidarity between freedom struggles in the Middle East and North America. In the back of the room, we had brought fifty supporters who were MLA members but not delegates, and five of us were able to speak before the final vote. Working against the MLA’s repressive limits, we had won a small, significant victory for international solidarity.
How did this help resistance, or even survival, in Gaza? Indirectly, it may give a little more protection here to advocates of an end to genocide, colonial occupation and capitalist exploitation in Palestine. More directly, we learned that press outlets in Gaza itself reported the MLA vote as a welcome sign of solidarity, giving them some moral support. Our solidarity is in line with the Jan. 18 ceasefire demonstration in Tel Aviv by Jewish and Arab Israelis in the Standing Together group (Haaretz, 1/18). A letter to Jewish ceasefire campaigners around the world from the One Democratic State Initiative signed by 14, 432 Palestinians, responds to this international solidarity: “Amidst this stillness, your voices, your cries…have moved our hearts.” Though reform-oriented, actions like these revive the (minority) tradition of Arab-Jewish working-class solidarity in historic Palestine.
Bringing revolutionary politics to MLA caucuses
When “now” is so clearly a becoming-fascist moment in the capitalist state (U.S., Israel, Ukraine, India…), the urgency of global anti-fascist resistance must strike every communist and leftist. Gaza, like Ukraine, is a foretaste of global war and fascism. Workers in Palestine fighting and trying to survive Israeli fascism need to feel that they are not alone. The Radical Caucus is not a single-issue organization like the BDS campaign; we took this on as part of working-class liberation everywhere, as indeed the best forces in the movement have always understood the call for Palestinian liberation: “From Palestine to Mexico—All the walls have got to go!” For communists, there is more: our urgency is to build not just an anti-fascist resistance, but a revolutionary movement to strike at the roots of 21st-century fascism and war, the rule of capital. Let Gaza resistance and our solidarity with it be a beginning!
Ecuador, January 31—Workers in Ecuador have found themselves caught between a turf war between drug gangs led by Jose Adolfo Macias, known by the alias “Fito” and the Ecuadorian state headed by new president Daniel Noboa. Workers of course have been the victims of the attacks by both sides of this fight. Gunmen hired by the Cartels have taken hundreds of hostages. They have also taken over a TV station during a live broadcast (an event which has been widely viewed over the internet), killing at least 14 people, and threatening to execute more workers and soldiers.
In response, the government has the country on lockdown, has instituted a curfew, and seeks to have workers in Ecuador pay for these wars (Reuters, 1/12). All this, while terrible economic conditions wreak havoc on Ecuadoran workers. Twenty-five percent of Ecuadorian children lack access to proper nutrition (Institute for Human Rights, 7/9/23).
Ecuador gangs a symptom of capitalism in crisis
The appearance of the government defending its citizens from gangs hides the true essence of the conflict: bosses vying for control of decreasing profits during a crisis of capitalism. Ecuador’s oil-dependent economy is on the decline and its government, like many of the countries who do not benefit as much from imperialist plunder, is not powerful enough to defeat rival non-state capitalists such as the drug gangs. That will not stop capitalist governments like the one in Ecuador from trying to institute higher levels of fascism, while exposing workers to more violence.
In fact, Ecuador’s plans to build new high-security prisons and institute harsher legal penalties for drug possession were inspired by El Salvador’s own recent war on drugs. That war on workers has resulted in 60,000 people being imprisoned in a country of six million, with one in six estimated to be innocent (San Fernando Sun, 3/22/23).
Bosses in the Philippines have waged their own “war on drugs” since 2016 which resulted in the deaths of 12,000 mostly poor urban workers.
This conflict also shows how the United States and Europe are struggling to maintain order in the countries under their sphere of influence. U.S. ally Ukraine has failed to repel the Russian attacks despite billions of dollars in weapons, Israel continues its genocide of workers in Palestine despite a weak U.S. pressure to reign in the conflict. Recently, China has surpassed the United States as Ecuador’s top trading partner (Al Jazeera 12/19/22).
Communsim is the only solution to imperialist war and violence
As crises of capitalism such as drug violence continue to get worse, and the inter-imperialist rivalry between the United States and China heats up, workers will continue to be exposed to more violence and fascism at the hands of their bosses. The only thing that will save all workers from drug gangs, state gangs and imperialist war is communism, where workers not capitalist war-mongerers actually run society. Join the Progressive Labor Party and let's lead this revolution together!
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“Call of Duty”—Reject Imperialist Propaganda and Embrace Communism
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- 03 February 2024 791 hits
Late last year, the U.S. imperialist propaganda machine cranked out another “game” Call of Duty Modern Warfare III to encourage young workers to enlist in their bloodsoaked military and die for oil profits. The U.S. imperialists know that they are facing ever increasing competition and in fact are already deeply engaged in the wars in Israel/Palestine and Ukraine/Russia. Just as Russia, Ukraine, and Israel are desperately attempting to recruit or coerce youth to join their militaries, so too does the U.S. military as it leverages video games to boost its dismal recruiting as it prepares for further, more expansive wars.
For 20 years, Activision Blizzard has launched new versions of Call of Duty (CoD) “ripped from the headlines” video games mimicking U.S. imperialists’ actions globally. One version of CoD replicated the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, leader of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, while another duplicated U.S. bombing of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
Call of Duty: propaganda in service of U.S. imeprialism
The veil all but disappears, as the Marine Corps Entertainment Media Liaison Office is credited as a consultant and Activision Blizzard consistently credits the Marines across the franchise. CoD is not just profitable war fan-fiction, (earning $27 billion from 2013 to 2020), it is tied insidiously to the U.S. military. Activision Blizzard is infested with U.S. State Department and Defense Department personnel, making CoD military propaganda. With over 90 percent of American children playing video games, the military is deepening its reach to Twitch and Discord gamers, to lure prospective soldiers. Such blatant activity has prompted Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (still a misleader for workers) to sponsor a House amendment to ban the military from such activities. CoD is intended to manipulate the working class to fight for the bosses’ wars, accept U.S.imperialism, and join the military.
Who are the imperialist agents in Activision Blizzard?
Chief among these is Frances Townsend, Activision Blizzard’s senior counsel and executive vice president until September 2022 when AB merged with Microsoft. She was Assistant Commandant for Intelligence for the United States Coast Guard, counter-terrorism deputy for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and a member of the National Security Council under President George Bush. She serves as trustee of the Atlantic Council, which actively strategizes how NATO can manage foreign affairs and, she also serves on the boards of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the International Republican Institute. These are all bosses’ think tanks strategizing on how to promote U.S. imperialism.
Another Activision capitalist agent is Brian Joseph Bulatao who is their current chief administrative officer. He previously was appointed to be the CIA’s Chief Operating Officer by CIA Director Mike Pompeo.
Grant Dixton is Activision’s Chief Legal Counsel. He previously was a law clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court and the senior vice president of Boeing, a military aerospace company. As loyal servants of the U.S. empire, Bulatao and Dixton make CoD military propaganda and reflect the intimate connection between video game media and military production for war.
Promoting nationalism and war crimes with historical lies
To help increase support for U.S. imperialism, CoD revises history portraying the U.S. as the hero, promoting the notion that war crimes like torture are necessary, and desensitizes players to atrocities.
One such alteration of history includes the “Highway of Death” which was a real event following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait where the U.S. military bombed the retreating Iraqi army along with innocent civilians and refugees. However, in the Modern Warfare version, the attack is carried out by the Russians. The player’s assignment in Modern Warfare II is to kill a 'fictional' Iranian General “Ghorbrani.” He even has a white beard and similar attire as Qassem Soleimani who in 2020 was actually assassinated by a drone strike ordered by former President Donald Trump.
In the 2019 edition of CoD, the player executes no-knock raids in the middle of the night, killing anyone whose reasonable response is to shoot back. For example, a fictional mother reaching for a firearm to protect her child is shot. While players can't engage in friendly fire in the game a baby can be killed, either in cold blood or for leverage against parents in the interrogation room.
Modern Warfare 2's “Borderline” mission takes place in the U.S./Mexico border. The player navigates an alley in a residential area until reaching one of the houses, barging in and "de-escalating" by aiming at the civilians. If the player fails to do this, the fictional civilians kill the player.
Also from Modern Warfare 2, in the mission "Hardpoint," participants pilot a helicopter providing air support to ground teams in the fictional region of Las Almas, Mexico. In the process of fighting off cartel members, the player destroys a school, church, restaurant, gas station and market!
In the first game of the Call of Duty: Black Ops series the player is tasked with killing Fidel Castro during the Bay of Pigs, a failed CIA-backed coup.
Overall, Call of Duty promotes imperialism and fascist myths that U.S. intervention saves lives, torture gets results, and "we get dirty, so the world stays clean." This encourages capitalist war, imperialism, racism and implicates Activision Blizzard as part of the sprawling military industrial complex.
COD recruiting youth to kill and die for U.S imperialism
The U.S. military has never shied away from exploring any relationship, charity or otherwise which promotes soldier recruitment. The U.S. Armed Forces have recently started Twitch channels on which actual soldiers stream games online where viewers can donate and be convinced to join. Twitch viewers in the Army’s channel are repeatedly assaulted with chat prompts to “win a Xbox Elite Series 2 controller” The link simultaneously opens a recruiting form with no additional mention of the contest. These solicitations are aimed at kids as young as 12, who line up to be contacted by the U.S. military once they reach 16, the minimum age at which recruiters may legally contact someone in the United States. In 2022, the U.S. Army spent millions of dollars to host tournaments with high profile streamers, targeting Gen-z youth, especially Black, Latin, and young women close to recruitment age (Vice News, 12/1/22)
Our response to the imperialists’ murderous “Call of Duty” must be one of our own – Let’s embrace our “call of duty” to smash racism, sexism, and capitalism with communist revolution as part of an international process to destroy the roots of exploitation and imperialist war. This “call of duty” is not a game, it is reality.
World military situation mirrors 1930s
Foreign Affairs, 1/26–World War II began as a trio of loosely connected contests for primacy in key regions stretching from Europe to the Asia-Pacific—contests that eventually climaxed and coalesced in globally consuming ways. The history…illustrates uncomfortable parallels to the situation Washington currently confronts…with wars in eastern Europe and the Middle East already raging, and ties between revisionist states becoming more pronounced, all it would take is a clash in the contested western Pacific to bring about another awful scenario—one in which intense, interrelated regional struggles overwhelm the international system and create a crisis of global security unlike anything since 1945. A world at risk could become a world at war.
The parallels between this earlier era and the present are striking. Today, as in the 1930s, the international system is facing three sharp regional challenges…Russia and China are drawing closer through their “no limits” strategic partnership, which features arms sales, deepening defense-technological cooperation, and displays of geopolitical solidarity such as military exercises in global hot spots…the Sino-Russian partnership has pacified what was once the world’s most militarized border and enabled both countries to focus on their contests with Washington and its friends.
Preparing soldiers to fight in nuclear war
Business Insider, 1/26–Russian scientists have created a new simulator to train Moscow's troops on how to operate in the event of a nuclear explosion…The simulator… is set to be used in military exercises to prepare Russian ground forces for post-explosion combat missions, the state-run Tass news agency reported on Tuesday. State media said the simulator would also instruct chemical, biological, and radiation reconnaissance teams on how to find the epicenter and determine the characteristics of a blast.
"The purpose of the model is to simulate what a nuclear strike looks like — the shock effect, flash of light and mushroom cloud of a ground-based nuclear explosion," the description of the simulator's patent says, according to Tass.
The US is working toward upgrading its silo-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, building new bombers, and developing ballistic-missile submarines. In October, the Pentagon announced that it would pursue a new variant of the B61 nuclear gravity bomb, an air-launched weapon to be designated the B61-13, pending approval from lawmakers.
Farmers aim to shut down Paris
France24, 1/28–Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin on Sunday tasked law enforcement officials with putting into place "extensive security measures" to prevent farmers from blocking Paris area airports or its Rungis market and “to prohibit any entry into Paris”. The leaders of two of France's largest farming unions said Saturday that members from the regions around Paris "will begin an indefinite siege of the capital" on Monday. "All the major roads leading to the capital will be occupied by farmers," they said, announcing their intention to blockade the massive Rungis wholesale food market south of the capital. French farmers are furious at what they say is a squeeze on purchase prices for produce by supermarket and industrial buyers, as well as complex environmental regulations. But the last straw for many was the phasing-out of a tax break on diesel fuel for farm equipment.
West African nations move further away from French control
Al Jazeera, 1/28–Three military-led West African nations have announced their immediate withdrawal from regional bloc ECOWAS, accusing the body of becoming a threat to its members. Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso “decide in complete sovereignty on the immediate withdrawal” from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), read a joint statement published on Sunday. ECOWAS “under the influence of foreign powers, betraying its founding principles, has become a threat to its member states and its population”, read the statement…“There is bad faith within this organization,” lamented Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine, Niger’s army-appointed prime minister…The three countries have cut military ties with France, the former colonial power. France once had a strong presence across the Sahel, but announced the withdrawal of its troops from the three countries after the coups.
Felt ‘urgency and emotional rawness’
I was impressed by the seriousness of the comrades at the recent cadre school. The school was proof the Party is developing young, working-class, Black and Latin, women leadership to lead the working class to power.
The discussions were advanced, focused, and honest. People shared their questions and disagreements, and we struggled for everyone to be heard. People came from different walks of life, but we were united in our commitment to study the world and fight for a communist future.
We contemplated some of the most complicated issues we face in the class struggle, like the need to confront nationalism and fight for internationalism, the need to fight directly for communism, the necessity of armed struggle and revolutionary violence to defeat the capitalist class once and for all.
You could feel the urgency and emotional rawness in the voices of the comrades in the room: the fate of the international working class is on our shoulders! I came away feeling fortified to apply myself more resolutely to struggling in my neighborhood to win my friends and neighbors to the Progressive Labor Party.
- East Africa: Hell to Zionist ideology, long live working-class unity
- This is what liberal fascism looks like: 5-year-old Jean Carlos killed in Chicago’s concentration camp
- Colombia: Ruling-class divisions over imperialist U.S.-Israel
- Argentina: Pro-U.S. Milei attack our class, caught between imperialists
