A terrorist killed 22 young concertgoers in Manchester, England. Three more terrorists killed 6 civilians in the next attack on London Bridge, England. Another killed one and injured others in Finsbury Park, London. Don’t mourn Manchester or London unless you also mourn Mosul, Iraq, where hundreds of kids are killed (terrorized) by US bombs. Don’t mourn Mosul unless you also mourn Aleppo or Raqqa and other cities in Syria, where hundreds more are killed by Russian bombs, Kurdish or ISIS guns. Don’t mourn Aleppo or Raqqa unless you also mourn Sanaa in Yemen.
We could go on, but you get the picture. Each massacre is mourned in a dangerous way. Cameras focus on the intense grief of a parent or an orphan. This state of heightened emotion especially impresses the young. It builds nationalism.
It recruits the next NATO bomber pilot vowing revenge, or the next van-driving white fascist as we saw in Finsbury Park, or the next suicide bomber. They are being recruited into a widening war which the New York Times suggests has “far more geopolitical import and risk.” It’s a war for control of the Middle East. They say communism is a dream. We say capitalism is a nightmare!
Need Communist Agitation
Communism is a revolutionary movement that aims to change the world we live in today. How can we, still a small organization, change the world today?
We can begin to counter the lie that today’s uneven wars are a clash of cultures between “backward” Islamic fundamentalism and “progressive democracy.” They are wars among capitalists with regional powers (Iran and Saudi Arabia) backed by opposing imperialist powers USA, China, Russia).
Aleppo in Syria, for example, is the site of mass murder because two pipelines cross there, carrying oil and gas to the European market. Each pipeline brings profits to a different set of capitalists, while the oil workers get nothing but bloody war and a shrinking paycheck.
Workers of the World, Unite!
Capitalism is a violent system based on exploitation. Workers are forced to work for wages so that capitalists can pocket profits. Since workers create all the value, why should we work for their private profit? Better we abolish capitalism and its wage system and work directly to meet our social needs.
At least since World War I, capitalist war is total war. The rulers’ armies target factories, schools, hospitals, neighborhoods as well as military assets. What group of workers would wantonly kill kids to protect their wages? When workers organize politically in their own interest, we make revolution, not wars.
Terrorism is a capitalist tactic. But it can be defeated. Before the Grenfell Tower disaster capitalist media had spent weeks sowing divisions by talking ominously of the dangers supposedly lurking in Muslim communities. But the huge multi-racial outpouring of support for the survivors (many of them Muslim immigrants) marginalized the domestic fascists. Intentionally or not, the anti-Muslim terrorism in Finsbury Park attempted to regain some momentum for the fascists. It shows us how entrenched the racist forces are – and not just in England. It also shows how urgent it is to advance an anti-racist fight for communist revolution.
The way these massacres are mourned builds nationalism and support for bigger capitalist wars. We must oppose them. How? By supporting Red Flag: writing, translating, distributing the paper. By contributing money to publish communist literature and for ICWP’s international work. By organizing discussion groups at work. By reaching out, especially to soldiers and sailors.
Don’t mourn unless you mourn for all our class brothers and sisters who are victims of racist capitalism. And after you mourn, organize for the International Communist Workers Party!
Front page of this issue
