Battleship Potemkin here ♦ What is Happening on the USS Lincoln here ♦
Letter: From the Battleship Potemkin to the USS Abraham Lincoln
If you’ve never seen Sergei Eisenstein’s amazing 1925 silent movie Battleship Potemkin, this would be a great time. Or to see it again. I got to watch it recently at a small theater that was premiering a new soundtrack (live).
This inspiring Soviet film dramatizes an actual mutiny that occurred during the 1905 revolution. The crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin was infuriated by rotten meat and harsh discipline. Led by communist sailors, they rebelled against their officers and took control of the ship. Workers in the port city of Odessa, already on a general strike, rallied to their side. Would other ships in the fleet fire on the Potemkin rebels?
The president of the theater’s Board of Directors introduced the film. This gentleman surprised me by making a connection with the terrible conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln today. Of course, I had been thinking about that all along. If there were communists on board the USS Abraham Lincoln, could there be a mutiny today?
That’s why this is a perfect time to watch the movie with friends. You can watch it free online. And talk about how we can help build a communist movement uniting workers with soldiers, sailors, and Marines.
—Comrade in Los Angeles (USA)
Letter: What is happening on the USS Abraham Lincoln?
This is a leaflet we distributed at a Boeing plant in Seattle (USA). We want to add that the Lincoln’s problems started on the first day of the US-Iran war. The US destroyed a girls’ school in Minab while Iran devastated the key US Navy base in the Persian Gulf (Naval Support Activity Bahrain). This forced the Abraham Lincoln to rely on supplies from Diego Garcia, over two thousand miles away.
The Abraham Lincoln is a Nimitz class aircraft carrier whose home port is San Diego. Normally located in the Pacific, it was redirected to the Middle East in November 2025.
The crew of 5,000 sailors has been deployed for more than 250 days without a port of call break. Communications with family members and loved ones have revealed terrible conditions, such as lack of fresh water, a shortage of food and basic supplies, faulty plumbing, and decreasing mental health of the crew, including possible suicide attempts. At least one distraught sailor jumped overboard, and others have threatened to do the same.
Trump and his fascist cronies have repeatedly lied about the situation in the Strait of Hormuz. And now they are saying the situation on the Abraham Lincoln is “fake news”. This is a slap in the face to the family members who have spoken out about the conditions.
Of course, these warmongers don’t care about the sailors who are risking their lives so that the capitalist bosses get their oil. They know that rebellion among the troops means that they will not win this war, just like they lost the Vietnam war.
Capitalism cannot exist without the working class, no matter how many robots they create. Boeing cannot make a decent plane when the workers strike or refuse to accept unsafe working conditions and speedup.
Any reforms that we may win won’t last. The capitalists must always exploit the working class to ensure they make a profit. And when they need certain resources (like oil) or they see a chance to get cheaper labor in another country, they will go to war to get it.
The ICWP is distributing our newspaper, Red Flag, to industrial workers because we believe that only a communist revolution can get rid of capitalism all over the world.
We want a world without wars, racism, sexism, borders, and banks. With production for need, rather than profit. We want to meet you and hear what you think about what is going on right now.
—Comrades in Seattle (USA)
Read Soldiers, Sailors, Marines: Crucial to Communist Workers’ Revolution here
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