No. 20, September 2023 Table of Contents Selected articles linked  Newspaper of the Revolutionary Internationalist Youth, youth section of the Internationalist Group (U.S. section of the League for the Fourth International), and CUNY students from the Internationalist Clubs, for the program of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky. Click on image to left for pdf version of complete issue.

 

Imperialist War Criminals Meet at Hiroshima Only Socialist Revolution Can Defeat U.S. Imperialism’s Drive To WWIII This past May, the leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) leading imperialist powers, headed by U.S. president Biden, held a summit meeting, in Hiroshima, Japan. The NATO military alliance and its Asian allies grotesquely used the occasion to plan an escalation of imperialist proxy war in Ukraine and to send “a strong signal ... to Russia and China” from “the site of the first atomic bomb attack,” as Washington's official propaganda channel, Voice of America, menacingly put it. The United States remains the only country to have used atomic bombs in war. In 1945, its cold-blooded murder of hundreds of thousands at Hiroshima and Nagasaki sent the message that the atomic bomb was ready for use against the Soviets and all who might stand in the way of American imperialism’s drive for world domination. In 2023, the mad bombers in the White House and Pentagon are driving toward a thermonuclear Third World War. In this and other articles in this issue of Revolution, we draw out the connection between U.S. imperialism’s calculated mass murder then and the escalating threat it poses now. The key lesson: the only way to prevent the cataclysm is the revolutionary overthrow of this long outlived and deadly system, by the world’s working class. Imperialist War Criminals Meet at Hiroshima, Only Socialist Revolution Can Defeat U.S. Imperialism’s Drive To WWIII (September 2023)

A Review of Oppenheimer: Socialism or Nuclear Armageddon The film Oppenheimer was this summer’s biggest blockbuster. The fear of nuclear war is certainly one reason many have been flocking to see the film. Oppenheimer poses issues of great importance, notably the fact that the horrific weapon was not used to “save American lives,” as is still taught in the schools today. Japan was already defeated, as U.S. rulers knew. Instead, dropping the atomic bomb was a threat directed against the USSR: it was the first blast of the anti-Soviet Cold War. A central theme of Oppenheimer is the anti-communist witch hunt in the postwar United States. Kicked off by Democrats, this led to thousands of people losing jobs and passports, being blacklisted, censored and jailed. For the film’s director, as for so many liberals then and now, the problem with the red scare was that it unfairly besmirched those “innocent” of actually being communists. Yet genuinely communist revolutionaries – Trotskyists – are what is urgently needed to lead the struggle to overthrow the capitalist-imperialist rulers before they turn the planet into a ball of thermonuclear fire, and instead bring about a socialist world fit for all of humanity. Oppenheimer Review: Socialism or Nuclear Armageddon (September 2023)

Some Things They Don’t Teach Us About Hiroshima and U.S. Imperialism Today An essay on the 75th anniversary of the August 1945 atom-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by Australian journalist and filmmaker John Pilger pierces the lies and silences about this horrific U.S. imperialist war crime. It is all the more as Washington escalates its anti-China war drive, in which the U.S./NATO proxy war against Russia is a way station and a testing ground on the road to a thermonucler Third World War. Some Things They Don’t Teach Us About Hiroshima and U.S. Imperialism Today (September 2023)

From Portland, Oregon Workers Solidarity Against the Anti-Trans Onslaught Working-class militants brought a bold message to this year’s Pride march in Portland, Oregon: a striking banner reading “Defend Transgender People,” signed by and bearing the logo of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) Local 10.  This labor defense of the rights of trans people is an example of what class-struggle unionism looks like, at a time when these rights are under major attack. The contingent was initiated by activists from the building trades, stage hands (IATSE) and other unions who are supporters of Class Struggle Workers – Portland (CSWP), who a few years earlier had initiated a union-sponsored “Hard Hats for Gay Rights” contingent. In numerous parts of the United States, racist groups are often prominent among those inciting anti-trans bigotry. Thus the fight to defend gay and trans rights must go together with mobilizing workers' power to stop racist and fascist terror. And it requires a break with all the capitalist parties to build a class-struggle workers party fighting for the emancipation of all.  Portland: Workers Solidarity against the Anti-Trans Onslaught (September 2023)

Hands Off Students’ Rights – Abolish the Board of Trustees! CUNY Administration Joins with Racist NY Post in McCarthyite Witch Hunt – Again The witch-hunting spirit of Joseph McCarthy is alive and well in the administration of the City University of New York. With a decades-long record of attacks on CUNY students and faculty, the CUNY tops jumped on the bandwagon when the New York Post and Democratic machine politicians launched yet another lurid campaign. Their target: an immigrant student leader from the CUNY School of Law chosen by her classmates to give a commencement speech for the graduating class. The commencement made news when students turned their backs on New York’s pro-police Democratic mayor Eric Adams. But what most drew the ire of the witch hunters was when the speaker, Fatima Mohammed, referred to CUNY Law students’ defense of the Palestinian people and alluded to the renewed bombing of Gaza that Israel had launched that week. The day after the Post published its front-page smear, the CUNY Board of Trustees and chancellor outrageously accused her of hate speech! The CUNY Internationalist Clubs and Revolutionary Internationalist Youth defend Fatima Mohammed and the right of students to protest racism and repression, and call to abolish the administration and Board of Trustees, replacing them with elected councils of students, faculty and staff. CUNY Administration Joins with Racist NY Post in McCarthyite Witch Hunt – Again (September 2023)

For Open Admissions, No Tuition! Supreme Court Axes Affirmative Action On June 29, by a vote of 6 to 3, the Supreme Court of the United States declared affirmative action programs in college admissions unconstitutional, in a racist ruling tossing out the last scraps of these already minimal measures. This will undoubtedly mean a sharp drop in African American and Latino enrollment at elite American universities, public and private. The shredding of basic rights, partial reforms and even tokenistic steps like college affirmative action plans is a symptom of capitalism’s advanced state of decay. U.S. schools today are more segregated than they were in the civil rights era. As part of the Marxist program of revolutionary integrationism in all spheres of social life, we fight to throw open the doors of the universities to all. To make quality higher education genuinely available, we call for open admissions to all institutions of higher education, the abolition of tuition, and state-paid living stipends for students.  Supreme Court Axes Affirmative Action (September 2023)

Biden/“Squad” vs. Workers’ Most Basic Right AOC and the Democratic Strikebreakers of America Last December, after working three years without a contract, some 115,000 railroad workers represented by 12 unions were poised to go on a national strike for crucial demands, including the right to paid sick days. But they were stopped, by legislation  engineered by Democratic president Joe Biden (who calls himself the most pro-labor president ever) and Democrats in both houses of Congress that banned a strike. Among those who voted for and played an important role in ramming through this strikebreaking law were House “progressives,” including stars of the Democratic Socialists of America like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Now AOC says that Biden has “done quite well.” AOC and the Democratic Strikebreakers of America (September 2023)

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