Inter-imperialist rivalry has reignited genocide in the Horn of Africa. Workers in Sudan, Ethiopia, and Eritrea are trapped in nationalist conflicts that are stealing their homes, their future, and their lives. Spurred  by inter-imperialist rivalry, these hostilities have descended into genocide, the systematic destruction of an identified group of workers. The working class has no stake in these ruling class dogfights. As Progressive Labor Party says: “No war but class war!”

The rulers’ age-old myth is that workers can better their lives  by uniting with bosses based on geography, religion, ethnicity, or the phony concept of race. It’s a myth because those bosses are driven only by their hunger to grab ever bigger pieces of the capitalist pie. As we’re seeing in Russia and Ukraine, they appeal to “loyalty to the nation” to pit workers against their class brothers and sisters in murderous wars for profit.
Beginning with our criticism of Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnamese leadership in the 1960s, our Party has consistently attacked nationalism as poison for the international working class (see PLP’s Road to Revolution 3, 1971). Without exception, every national liberation struggle–from Vietnam to South Africa to Haiti–has betrayed the courageous workers who threw off their imperialist oppressors. Every single one has replaced one set of bloodsucking bosses with another. We’re seeing the same tragedy play out today in Palestine. In reality, there are no “one-state” or “two-state” solutions to the contradictions of capitalism. The only solution is communist revolution–a world where all capitalist states are smashed, all national borders erased, and all bosses kicked to the curb. That solution will come when workers flung into the rulers’ bloodbaths are organized to turn the guns around and create a new society run by and for our class: communism.

Horn of Africa: inter-imperialist flashpoint
As the worldwide crisis of capitalism intensifies, the imperialist bosses of the U.S., Russia, and China are sharpening their competition over the world’s labor and resources. By stoking racism and nationalism to a fever pitch, capitalists seek to deflect workers’ legitimate rage over the profit system and scapegoat other workers. Genocide is the inevitable result. From Gaza to the Horn of Africa and beyond, it’s how capitalism consigns workers to mass graves.

Africa is the world’s most mineral-rich continent and boasts two-thirds of the planet’s arable land (Forbes, 5/25). China has invested heavily in African economies, while Russia and the U.S. have stationed thousands of troops across the continent (Foreign Policy, 9/20). The Horn of Africa is a geopolitical flashpoint because it lies along the Red Sea, an essential shipping lane for oil from the Middle East. The imperialists who gain control of the Red Sea and access to the Indian Ocean through the Bab el-Mandeb strait will gain a huge strategic advantage over their rivals.

Sudan’s latest genocide
Ever since 1956, when Sudan won its independence from its colonial overlords in Britain and Egypt, local bosses have used nationalism as a weapon in their feuds over land, water, and oil. At every turn, they have sowed divisions between the mostly Arabic-speaking, Muslim population in northern Sudan and the mostly English-speaking, Christian population to the south.

In 2019, the U.S.  ruling class saw an opportunity when two Sudanese generals, Abdel Fatahl al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan "Hemedti" Dagalo, co-opted an uprising against China-backed strongman Omar al-Bashir. Both Burhan and Hemedti are mass murderers who were deeply implicated in the original Darfur genocide of the early 2000’s, a slaughter of at least 200,000 people that grew out of the Second Sudanese Civil War. But these monsters’ criminal history was no obstacle for the ruthless U.S. imperialists. For the bosses, workers’ lives are cheap.

As CHALLENGE warned earlier this year (5/11),workers in Sudan fell into a trap by tying their aspirations to the new military junta and waiting for elections instead of seizing power by force. The U.S. bosses looked the other way as Burham and Hemedti slaughtered protestors, postponed elections, and broke promises to hand the country over to civilian leadership. The U.S. rulers’ priority was to normalize relations between Sudan and Israel, which is why they forced their new puppets to shut down the local branch of Hamas and seize the group’s assets (Reuters, 9/23/21).

Not long after, Burhan and Hemedti turned on one another, resulting in a new civil war that has killed more than nine thousand and displaced more than five million. It has fanned the flames of genocide in the ethnically diverse region of Darfur in western Sudan, including the racist mass rape and massacre of non-Arab workers and children–in particular of the Masalit people who were also targeted twenty years ago. Russia has heightened the conflict by sending arms and mercenaries to support Hemedti, hoping he will reward them with a naval base in Port Sudan (Foreign Affairs, 9/20).

Imperialism brings war to Ethiopia and Eritrea
Across the border in Ethiopia, two years of brutal warfare have ended in an encirclement of the Tigray region by Ethiopian troops from the south and Eritrean forces from the north. The results: widespread starvation, brutal ethnic cleansing, and the deaths of 600,000 people (Al Jazeera, 11/2). The independence movement that broke Eritrea away from long-time U.S. client state Ethiopia in 1993 received funding and training by the Chinese bosses. The leader of that insurgency, Isaias Afwerki, has ruled Eritrea ever since as a vicious capitalist exploiter, profiting off the nation's mineral wealth while workers starve.

Once Eritrea seceded, Ethiopia lost all access to its ports on the Red Sea. It now appears that the bosses backing Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed plan to retake parts of Eritrea’s coastline (Foreign Policy, 11/8). Even after the recent Ethiopia-Tigray peace deal, Eritrean soldiers still occupy large parts of the region and continue to engage in ethnic cleansing (Al Jazeera, 11/2). Meanwhile, relations between the U.S. and Ethiopia have frayed, opening the door for Chinese imperialists (U.S. Institute for Peace, 1/19/22).

Capitalist gangsters, imperialist masters
During the original Darfur genocide of the mid-2000s, the Janjaweed militia raped and murdered over 300,000 people. Nationalist misleaders pushed for the creation of South Sudan as a solution. In a parallel struggle in Ethiopia, nationalists pushed for an independent Eritrea.  Today, the impoverished workers of South Sudan face “staggering levels of localized violence” and rampant corruption by the local elite (United Nations, 9/3/21). An independent Eritrea is notorious for mass roundups, arbitrary detentions, forced labor, military conscription of high school students, and a poverty rate verging on 40 percent (Human Rights Watch World Report, 2021). All over the world, workers have fought and bled to escape the yoke of European colonialism, only to find themselves ruled by blood-soaked national capitalists and their imperialist backers.

Even now, Hamas, the capitalist leadership in Gaza, is peddling the old lie that Palestinian nationalism is the answer to the Israeli bosses’ genocide. But all Hamas can offer is endless bloodshed and exploitation by the ruling classes of Iran and China.

Ultimately, all of these capitalist gangsters and their imperialist masters will send millions of us to die in the killing fields of World War Three. Whichever side wins, our class loses. But as the Russian communists showed in World War One and the Chinese communists showed after World War Two, workers hold the power to turn imperialist war into class war. Though both of these revolutions turned back to capitalism, they proved that workers can seize state power by rejecting nationalism and its rotten tentpoles of racism and sexism. With a mass, international party led by PLP, workers of the world can destroy capitalism for good. We’ll replace it with a society where all resources are shared based on need, and where war is a thing of the past. Join us!

NOVEMBER 29, ATLANTA, GA – This year's American Public Health Association (APHA) annual conference was held in Atlanta, a hotbed of ongoing class struggle against the expansion of the ruling class’s racist police state and environmental pollution and deforestation, called “Stop Cop City.” This is a prime example of the role of liberal bosses, their Democratic Party, and their Black misleaders paving the way toward fascism.

For several months, the national health collective and friends of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP), with decades of experience organizing against racism in medicine, from health determinants to the shackling of patients in hospitals to imperialist war, met virtually in preparation. Building off our ties working within our mass organizations, we joined nurses and public health organizers and were able to connect with health organizers on the ground involved in the militant “Stop Cop City” fightback.  

A comrade and friend from Los Angeles co-presented on a panel with Atlanta healthcare workers involved in the Stop Cop City campaign. We were joined by an organizer in the Santa Marta struggle against the fascist state and mining bosses. Workers there are organizing to protect hard-fought wins to keep foreign mining companies out of El Salvador. Comrades from Chicago also co-presented with the Atlanta healthcare organizers in a session on Decarceration and Abolition.  

Together, we wrote and distributed a brochure explaining Stop Cop City through a public health lens, distributed it at sessions throughout the conference, and coordinated a rally and press conference outside.The PLP contingent also guaranteed that our communist, antiracist, and anti-imperialist message was disseminated through our APHA CHALLENGE and in our speeches at the rally.  

Indeed, even the leadership of APHA did us a favor.  About a week before the conference, after nearly a month of genocidal attacks on workers in Palestine and widespread protests, the APHA’s Executive Director, Dr. Georges C. Benjamin, released a statement supporting  “peace” and “Israel’s right to exist.” This incited massive anger from many public health workers and students who were attending. Then, after discovering that we were planning the protest outside, conference organizers sent a warning, including the date and time of our protest to all 12,000 attendees of the conference.  We thank them for the mass invitation and for showing their true fascist colors!

Two protests: against racist cops and racist genocide
This resulted in two simultaneous actions; our Stop KKKop City rally planned with local Atlanta organizers and the other protest that grew out of the visceral anger of public health workers at the conference itself. We divided our forces as about 100 healthcare workers held a silent protest inside the governing council meeting urging the passage of a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire and end of the occupation. 

On the outside, comrades linked the fascist attacks on workers in Gaza to the fascist attacks in Atlanta, including violent attacks on protestors just one day prior at the proposed “Cop City '' – the same site where environmental activist Tortugita was murdered.   

A comrade started his speech by saying, “If there was a chant that connected the fightback against Kkkop City and racist mass incarceration here to the open-air prison and genocidal attacks in Gaza, it’s booming in protests in cities across the world, with ‘Biden, Biden you can’t hide, We charge you with Genocide!’” The crowd outside began chanting it as well.  After a few rounds of chanting he asked, “But how many of us voted for him?”

This created a pause and some snaps in the back. He then explained not just Biden’s role in the five-decades-long racist wars on crime/drugs and mass incarceration but explained how this was made possible through our class’s illusions in the so-called Civil Rights “wins” of former organizers turned Democratic Party politicians.

Across the U.S., from Atlanta to DC, Detroit to LA, these politicians became servants of the ruling class and supported the expansion and militarization of the police for decades as a solution to deindustrialization and racist unemployment. Cop City isn’t new, the comrade said; the ruling class and the liberal politicians are doubling down and tripling down on this decades-long fascist build-up. He explained how Chicago and Baltimore have already constructed Cop Cities.  

Voting is a dead end, fight for workers power: communism
In Los Angeles, where this comrade is from, the  entire city council voted to expand the  police size and budget, even though it already takes more than half the city budget and has long been home to the largest jail on the planet — despite the presence of the city’s first Black woman mayor, Karen Bass. So we shouldn’t be surprised when in Atlanta, the current Black mayor supports the destruction of forests so they can build a training center for urban warfare. Speaking in solidarity, the comrade  said, “We can’t continue to make the same mistakes,” referring to illusions that the bosses' state and politicians can ever serve our class interests. They’re arming themselves and terrorizing our class because they are preparing for world war and are afraid of our class.  From Gaza to Atlanta, we must arm ourselves with revolutionary communist class consciousness and turn the guns around on the bosses and their state.   

This speech was well received by the rally participants including two friends from LA in the crowd. Our APHA CHALLENGE was distributed and after the rally and silent protest, about two dozen joined us in a debrief where we further discussed our line in addition to planning for future efforts leading up to next year’s conference.

In the night, when the nazi Israeli military viciously bombed Gaza’s largest hospital-turned-shelter, they forced 60,000 displaced workers and children to flee. This is just one atrocity in what can only be described as a genocide of the working class in occupied Gaza.

Since declaring war on Hamas, the Palestinian nationalist bosses who massacred more than a thousand Jewish and Arab workers, the Israeli capitalist rulers have killed a child every ten minutes in Gaza (Reuters, 11/10). In an area smaller than the city of Detroit, Israel has rained 25,000 tons of bombs, 1.5 times the force of the atomic bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima in World War II (Anadolu Agency, 1/11). Israel redoubled its murderous efforts by cutting off water, food, fuel, and electricity to 2.3 million people.

Genocide is the natural outgrowth of a system of vicious competition for profits. The global crisis of capitalism is driving the carnage of workers in Sudan, Ethiopia, Congo, and Armenia, as well as in the Gaza Strip. The bosses solve their contradictions with small wars that inevitably lead to world war. Progressive Labor Party calls for no war but class war! Let’s build an international movement from East to West, North to South, for communist revolution—our only solution.

U.S.’s entanglements amid decay
The instability in the world today reflects a dramatic shift in imperialist competition, with the U.S. in sharp decline and Chinese finance capital rapidly ascending to challenge for worldwide supremacy. The genocide now underway in Gaza was spurred by a move by Saudi Arabia and Israel to “normalize” their relations, a deal that threatened to further isolate Iran and Hamas (Egmont Institute, 10/11). It also reflects the fight to control Middle East oil and the U.S. “pivot” to Asia, a desperate attempt to contain China. This left traditional U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia feeling abandoned and the Middle East open for business with U.S. rivals—again, mainly China.

The U.S. may soon face a three-front war it can’t win: in the Middle East, against a Russia-backed Iran; in Eastern Europe via the Ukraine-Russia war; and in the South China Sea and Taiwan in a battle over shipping routes, naval dominance, and semiconductors. Tensions are growing between the U.S. and its NATO allies and the BRICS alliance of emerging economies, which includes Brazil, India, and South Africa as well as China and Russia.

Since its founding in 1948, Israel has played a big role as a junior partner of U.S. imperialism—first as a counterweight to Russian influence in the region, then to counter Iran. In return, the U.S. has armed the brutal Israeli bosses to the teeth and financed their fascist occupation of Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Now, as children in Gaza are dismembered and premature babies in incubators die for lack of electricity, the U.S. is sending an additional $320 million in weapons to the Israeli killing machine (New York Times, 11/6).
Meanwhile, once-solid alliances seem more fragile by the day. Regional rulers make lukewarm calls for a cease-fire. Turkey and Colombia, formerly staunch U.S. allies, have pulled their ambassadors from Israel. Iran, the chief U.S. rival in the region, has exploited this volatility to its advantage. The chief funder of Hamas, Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen (Vox, 10/14),  Iran has encouraged their attacks on U.S. installations. Iranian-backed militias recently attacked two U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria.

As a deterrent, the U.S. has shifted additional warships, missile systems, and 2,000 Marines to the Middle East (Reuters, 10/21). But now they’re worried they’ll be spread too thin to prepare for the coming war with China and Russia (NY Times, 11/9).

Despite the beginning of a global transition to renewable energy, oil will remain the lifeblood of capitalism for the foreseeable future. China gets half of its oil from the Middle East. Through its Belt and Road Initiative, it has gained a foothold in port cities that link the Persian Gulf to the Arabian, Red, and Mediterranean Seas. China’s real agenda is “increasing military cooperation and exporting…surveillance technologies to countries under BRI” (Arab Center DC, 1/13/21).

Between the Abraham Accords,  a 2020 peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, and the proposed Saudi-Israeli peace agreement, Iran was confronted with the prospect of “U.S.-centered” alliances controlling “the maritime choke points of the Straits of Hormuz, the Suez Canal, and the Straits of Bab Al Mandab” ((Egmont Institute, 10/11). That was an existential threat to the Iranian bosses. To disrupt the deal between Israel and the Saudi bosses, Iran is widely speculated to have pushed Hamas to conduct its October 7 slaughter.

It’s important to note that workers shouldn’t be fooled by peace deals and promises of “normalization.” At best, these agreements only delay the eventual inter-imperialist war to determine which capitalists will reign supreme. Workers have only two choices: to accept war and fascism, or to build a revolutionary communist party.

Nationalism is deadly
Hamas, like all junior capitalists, is driven by profit, not the needs of workers and children of Gaza. The group’s nationalism undermines the essential unity of Arab and Jewish workers. To paraphrase a PLP document, “Nationalism Hurts the Palestinian Struggle” (1974), the task is not to determine who is the rightful owner of the land of Palestine/Israel. Rather, it is to fight for communism—for the collective ownership of all means of production by the working class.

No matter how militant they may seem, nationalist movements are counter-revolutionary. Consider Haiti, the world’s first “free” Black republic. Enslaved by debt to French bankers, occupied mercilessly by U.S. and UN forces, it has become a workers’ hell run by local capitalist gangsters. Or consider South Africa, where a courageous struggle wound up replacing white bosses with Black rulers who happily worked with the same white bosses—as long as they could steal their share of the spoils. Today South Africa is one of the most unequal countries in the world, with the wealth gap between white and Black workers unchanged since apartheid (Time Magazine, 8/5/21).

These national liberation movements, and too many more, show what happens when fights against imperialism fail to fight for international communist liberation. We must reject both Zionism and Palestinian nationalism, both anti-Muslim racism and anti-Jewish racism. The workers united will never be defeated!

Workers charge bosses with genocide
We can’t fall into the trap of backing any bosses–not the ruthless gangsters of Hamas, not the genocidal state terrorists of Israel. We must win workers, youth, and soldiers to the idea that an attack on one is an attack on all. When the capitalist system resorts to violence, to remain silent is to fall in line with the bosses’ war agenda.

What we choose to do matters. We need to look no further than the anti-Vietnam War movement started by Progressive Labor Party in the 1960s. Though it was later co-opted by the liberal bosses, the movement inspired millions of workers worldwide to fight back against U.S. imperialist genocide and support the heroic workers in Vietnam—who later were themselves betrayed by their own nationalist rulers.

Today, wherever we look, we see sparks of working-class rage against the Israeli bosses’ genocide. From Britain and Barcelona, Spain to Tacoma, Washington, and Oakland, California, antiracist dockworkers and protesters are blocking shipments of arms and Israel-bound warships.

No ruling class of the world can stop the international working class. If you agree, let’s make these small victories last by building an international communist party. We need to arm millions upon millions with the most powerful weapon in the world: communist ideas. Only then can the working class smash the capitalists’ borders and end their terror for all time. Join us!

ATLANTA, GA, November 12—“Ho Ho, Hey Hey, Biden, how many kids have you killed today?” yelled the masked public health students as they descended, forty strong, on the Emory School of Public Health Dean’s Alumni Reception.  The protesting students were all wearing clear latex gloves painted red to represent the blood everyone has on their hands by staying silent while the imperialist U.S. government continued to send billions to fund the fascist Israeli government’s genocide of Palestinians.   

The gathering of public health alumni at the Rollins School of Public Health was being held Sunday evening to celebrate the American Public Health Association (APHA) annual meeting taking place in Atlanta.  While attendees of the reception drank wine and ate cheese as a live band played, the contrast between the masked, militant students with signs calling out genocide and chanting into bullhorns in the middle of this reception was stark.  

The students are furious at the silence of the School of Public Health administration regarding the ongoing genocide of Palestinian workers in Gaza.  The protest was multiracial; most of the protesters were Arab and Black students, but there were also Asian and white students present. They were united in their anger at the school’s unwillingness to call for a ceasefire. After marching through the reception and disrupting it, they went outside and stood at the windows with ongoing chanting. Two women from the reception left and came out to join the protest. They told demonstrators, “We couldn’t stay in there after you all came in, we would be on the wrong side.”  

Private universities often have ties to Israel, as does Emory. Emory’s Institute for the Study of Modern Israel is one way that they fund students and faculty to participate in this ongoing imperialist project. Just this year, Emory boasted about strengthening their ties with Tel Aviv University (8/11). On October 11th, following Hamas’ attack on Israel, Emory University President Fenves declared support for Israel while acknowledging his Jewish heritage, but remained silent about the loss of Palestinian life and discrimination that Muslim students were facing on campus (10/11). It’s not surprising considering their financial ties – and personal ones with Emory Alum serving in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) (10/10). President Fenves encouraged respectful disagreement; the focus on “respect” and “professionalism” that liberal universities resort to in instances like these shows their true nature. Professionalism has no place during ethnic cleansing.

Public health “professionals” often tout the line that evidence-based strategies are the most important for healthy populations. However, it was clear here that evidence crumbles when there are financial incentives. One Emory student got on the bullhorn and said, “I learned in this very building that war and violence have detrimental effects on health.” They continued by explaining we know that a ceasefire is the answer for the health of the Palestinian people, but Emory doesn’t care because of their financial ties to Israel. Other students echoed this call: they learned at the School of Public Health that racism is a social determinant of health, yet the University is showing its true racist nature.

As Progressive Labor Party (PLP)members who had heard of this action from a friend and made the 5-mile trip out to the reception site from the APHA conference to participate in solidarity with the students, we were impressed by their multiracial, well-organized militancy.  The students were very serious in their organizing and security—they had planned the rally in secret and when we arrived at the reception, it was clear that no one knew the protest was coming. They had sent in advance scouts into the reception and communicated via secure text messages to coordinate. Almost every single person was wearing an N95 or KN95 mask and others took additional measures to conceal their identity, wearing sunglasses and head scarves. Many of the students were dressed almost completely in black.   

Once we were outside, there were speeches and we were invited to speak on the mic too.  Making connections between racism here and imperialism abroad was a point that was well-received by the students.  This point was made even clearer when a person from Emory University’s “Open Expression Committee” came to tell us that we were in violation of the school’s free speech policies! She said we had to either move the rally or stop using the bullhorn.  If we didn’t, we would be at risk of arrest by the Atlanta Police Department (APD).  The students called out the racism of siccing the police on Black and Brown students protesting racist genocide.  
The concept of “free speech” under capitalism is laughable. It is a liberal performance, tricking working-class people into thinking they have “freedom” in this system. It’s clear that the APD had no interest in supporting protestors’ freedoms of any kind. The students saw right through this. The rally ended safely and those of us in PLP were inspired by the internationalism, anti-racism, anti-imperialism, and sharp, confrontational nature of this action. Power to the working class!