D2. Socialism

Driving around the metro Detroit area, whether for business or pleasure, I often pass by the Shrine of the Little Flower in Royal Oak, on 12 Mile and Woodward. The Shrine was infamously the home parish of Michigan’s second most prominent Nazi sympathizer, “Radio Priest” Charles Coughlin. The most prominent is still Henry Ford. Indeed, it would be difficult for anyone to be more pro-Nazi than the auto tycoon, recipient of the Nazi Grand Cross of the German Eagle, although Coughlin certainly tried.

Father Charles Coughlin served as parish priest of the Shrine from 1925-1966. The church gained early notoriety when Coughlin reported in 1926 that the Ku Klux Klan left a burning cross on church grounds. This would not be a fantastic occurrence. The Klan was very popular in Metro Detroit and almost succeeded in electing their candidate, Charles Bowles, as mayor in 1925. It was only due to thousands of disqualified write-in votes that Bowles lost. However, Coughlin biographer Donald Warren casts doubt on the cross-burning story. When he was writing Radio Priest: Charles Coughlin, The Father of Hate Radio, a collector of Coughlin memorabilia presented him with the alleged burned cross. It showed no signs of being even singed.

Regardless of the veracity of the story, it showed Coughlin’s talent for drumming up publicity. He made skillful use of media to get his message out. Beginning in 1926, Coughlin broadcast his Sunday sermons on the CBS radio network. The network then dropped him in 1931 when Coughlin began addressing controversial political topics during the worsening Great Depression. Coughlin’s show was picked up by the Detroit radio station WJR, which became the key station of Coughlin’s independent network. The network grew, claiming 26 stations by October 1932 and 58 by January 1938. Coughlin’s talks were mass media. It’s estimated that at the height of his popularity, a third of the country listened to his broadcasts. Hollywood offered to fictionalize his biography in the unmade film The Fighting Priest, with Coughlin playing himself.

Coughlin began as a staunch supporter of Franklin Roosevelt. He coined the phrases “Roosevelt or Ruin” and “The New Deal is Christ’s Deal.” Soon, Coughlin began to break with the President on issues like U.S. membership in the World Court, coining silver currency, and recognition of the Soviet Union. In 1934, he created his own political organization: The National Union for Social Justice. The National Union’s sixteen-point platform was inspired by the papal encyclicals Rerum novarum and Quadragesimo anno calling for government regulation of business, the right of workers to form unions, and a progressive income tax. Notably absent was any defense of civil liberties or a democratic government.

The National Union supported and was supported by various politicians. One of the biggest boosters was Cleveland Democrat Congressperson Martin L. Sweeney. Sweeney led a colorful life in office, including allegedly using his influence to protect his cousin Francis Sweeney, a prime suspect in the still unsolved Cleveland Torso Murders, and opposing the appointment of Jews to the federal bench. Other supporters included Representatives William Lemke, Thomas O’Malley, and William Connery plus Senators William Nye and Elmer Thomas, all of whom sent congratulatory letters to the 1935 National Union convention. Detroit area Coughlin supporters included former Detroit mayor Frank Murphy and Congressperson John Dingell Sr.

In light of Coughlin’s later explicit fascist sympathies, some of his pronouncements at this time take on a sinister tinge. When Coughlin gave his preference for “gentile silver” over gold, he was criticized for dabbling in antisemitism. Coughlin’s 1931 sermon “Prosperity” attacking the Treaty of Versailles was informed by information provided by Congressperson Louis T. McFadden, one of the earliest Congressional supporters of Adolf Hitler. During a Fall 1930 broadcast against communism, Coughlin despaired at “the anarchy, the atheism, and the treachery preached by the German Hebrew, Karl Marx.” He regularly attacked “international bankers,” often emphasizing their Jewish surnames. Despite this, Coughlin continued to find support from some Jewish leaders both in Detroit and nationally.

In 1936, Coughlin launched a full frontal assault on Roosevelt through the Union Party, an organization also supported by old age pension advocate Francis Townsend and Gerald L.K. Smith, who was in the process of devolving from the late Senator Huey Long’s lieutenant to “America’s No. 1 Fascist.” The three had difficulty collaborating, with Socialist Party presidential candidate Norman Thomas, deriding the Union Party as a creature of “two and a half rival messiahs.” The Party nominated North Dakota Congressperson William Lemke for President and former Boston district attorney Thomas O’Brien for Vice President. Their platform was essentially identical to the National Union of Social Justice platform. It was around this time that Coughlin launched the newspaper Social Justice as another avenue for his message.

During the 1936 election, Coughlin’s remarks about Roosevelt grew increasingly vituperative. At times it seemed like he and Smith were competing over who could hurl the most invective at the President. Smith exclaimed, “We’re going to get that cripple out of the White House!” At the Townsend Club Convention, Coughlin, not to be outdone, called Roosevelt a “betrayer“ and a “liar” and dubbed him “Franklin Double-crossing Roosevelt.” Even if Coughlin had been forced by clerical superiors to apologize for these remarks, he soon outdid them. At one rally he warned, “When an upstart dictator in the United States succeeds in making this a one-party form of government, when the ballot is useless, I shall have the courage to stand up and advocate the use of bullets.” At another, this one in Rhode Island, Coughlin promised “more bullet holes in the White House than you could count with an adding machine” if Roosevelt were to be reelected.

All this blood and thunder was for naught. Roosevelt won a landslide reelection and the Union Party got less than two percent of the vote. As small as this share was, it was still larger than that of the Socialist, Communist, and Socialist Labor Parties combined. The party failed to attract supporters of other electoral reformists such as the Wisconsin Progressive Party, the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party, and End Poverty in California, who all backed Roosevelt. The reasons for the party’s failure are numerous. It wasn’t on the ballot in over a dozen states, the demagoguery of Smith and Coughlin likely repelled voters, and Lemke was a much less charismatic candidate than Roosevelt. Smith described Lemke, his own candidate, as “a complete composite of unattractiveness.”

During a Fall 1930 broadcast against communism, Coughlin despaired at “the anarchy, the atheism, and the treachery preached by the German Hebrew, Karl Marx.” He regularly attacked “international bankers,” often emphasizing their Jewish surnames. Despite this, Coughlin continued to find support from some Jewish leaders both in Detroit and nationally.

During a Fall 1930 broadcast against communism, Coughlin despaired at “the anarchy, the atheism, and the treachery preached by the German Hebrew, Karl Marx.” He regularly attacked “international bankers,” often emphasizing their Jewish surnames. Despite this, Coughlin continued to find support from some Jewish leaders both in Detroit and nationally.

Although Coughlin promised to retire from broadcasting if Lemke received fewer than nine million votes, he was soon back on the air. His relationships with several groups changed when he returned. Previously, Coughlin had supported and received support from what could be termed the American labor aristocracy. AFL President William Green suggested sending a delegate to the National Union’s 1935 convention. James L. Ryan, president of a New York metalworkers union stated, “Father Coughlin is a messenger of God, donated to the American people for the purpose of rectifying the outrageous mistakes that have been made in the past.” Coughlin played a leading role in the Detroit-area Automotive Industrial Workers Association, one of several competing auto workers unions before the rise of the UAW.

Yet, Coughlin strongly attacked the growing CIO. He viewed it as Communist-dominated, saying in an interview that “the C.I.O. is pretty well contaminated with leaders who are Red in thought and action.” Social Justice preached that “Catholicism was as incompatible with the CIO as Catholicism was incompatible with Mohammedanism.” In The Shrine of the Silver Dollar, John L. Spivak reports both that Coughlin attempted to form a “company union” at Ford (the Workers Council for Social Justice) and that the priest offered a bribe to UAW president Homer Martin, on behalf of Ford, to split the CIO. In 1939, Coughlin attacked an International Ladies Garment Workers Union resolution to set up an anti-fascist defense guard.

Even more apparent than Coughlin’s shift on labor was his overt antisemitism. If Coughlin had any plausible deniability before, it was soon dispelled. In a radio broadcast after Kristallnacht, Coughlin minimized the Nazi persecution of Jews, saying “Jewish persecution only followed after Christians first were persecuted.” During the latter half of 1938, Social Justice reprinted the antisemitic forgery the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. At a 1938 speech in the Bronx Coughlin crowed “When we get through with the Jews in America, they’ll think the treatment they received in Germany was nothing.” The books sold in the Shrine reflected this as well. One of the titles was Rulers of Russia by Irish Priest Dennis Fahey, which Coughlin had the exclusive right to reprint. Fahey’s book explained that “The real forces behind Bolshevism in Russia are Jewish forces, and Bolshevism is really an instrument in the hands of the Jews for the establishment of their future Messianic kingdom.”

As early as 1936, sensing Lemke’s imminent defeat, Coughlin expressed sympathy for fascism: “Democracy is doomed. This is our last election. It is fascism or communism. We are at the crossroads-I take the road to fascism.” These sympathies continued throughout the rest of his time in public life. Like nearly all Catholic officials, Coughlin supported Franco’s forces in the Spanish Civil War, despite or even because of their reign of “White Terror.” In 1939, he proclaimed, “Practically all of the sixteen principles of Social Justice are being put into practice in [Fascist] Italy and [Nazi] Germany.”

It’s interesting to note that after Coughlin’s antisemitic and pro-Nazi utterances, federal elected officials continued to contribute articles to Social Justice. One was isolationist Senator William Borah. Borah’s anti-war feelings may have had a monetary source. When novelist Gore Vidal asked his grandfather, Senator Thomas P. Gore, about the source of several hundred thousand dollars found in Borah’s safety deposit box after his death, Gore said the money was from “[t]he Nazis. To keep us out of the war.” Another was Congressperson George Dondero, who actually had Coughlin as a constituent. Dondero served as Mayor of Royal Oak, Michigan for a spell and later defended the Nazi war criminals of I.G. Farben. The current Royal Oak Middle School used to be named after him. A third contributor was Minnesota Senator Ernest Lundeen, himself basically a Nazi propaganda agent.

Coughlin’s efforts also were championed by some from the world of arts. Architect Phillip Johnson went on to design the Museum of Modern Art in New York, but in the 1930s and 1940s, he was a reporter for Social Justice. Johnson joined the Wehrmacht in their invasion of Poland and described the burning of Warsaw as “stirring.” Poet Ezra Pound, a resident of fascist Italy, was another Coughlin supporter declaring, “Coughlin has the great gift of simplifying vital issues to a point where the populace can understand their main factor if not the technical detail.” Novelist Hillarie Belloc, a definite anti-Semite, was a contributor of articles to Social Justice.

A man selling newspaper copies of Father Coughlin’s Social Justice in the 1930s in New York City. Photo Credit: Library of Congress.

The last organization Coughlin was affiliated with, after the demise of the National Union and the Union Party, was the clerical fascist Christian Front. The Front was particularly strong in New York and Boston. After Kristallnacht, New York’s WMCA refused to carry Coughlin’s program. Fronters picketed outside with signs saying “Buy Christian; vote Christian,” and “Send Jews back where they came from-in leaky boats.” In The Nation, James Weschler described the Front’s tactics for selling Social Justice in New York: “Throughout the week the salesmen are located at strategic, crowded points throughout the city, screaming antisemitic slogans…” Weschler described how Fronters assailed theaters that promoted the film Confessions of a Nazi Spy and how even children were conscripted to sell Social Justice. Boys were instructed to start crying that “A big Jew hit me!” to help drum up sales and sympathy.

The Christian Front was most infamous for the trial of the so-called “Brooklyn Boys,” seventeen men tried for attempting to overthrow the government. Although they were acquitted by a sympathetic jury, FBI files revealed that they were in possession of rifles pilfered from the National Guard and had engaged in military drilling for their planned coup. Frances Moran, head of the Boston Front was recruited as a German agent and the Boston Front continued its activities throughout World War II.

By this point, many who had earlier aided Coughlin were fed up. The National Association of Broadcasters, representing 428 radio stations, pulled the plug on his radio network in 1939. The next year, his voice could only be heard on two radio stations, and his ecclesiastical superiors ordered him to retire to the pulpit and cease his political activities. Social Justice continued to run with Coughlin’s assistance, although it was barred from the mail after Pearl Harbor due to its sympathy for Hitler and Mussolini. Coughlin’s shrill, hateful voice was finally silenced.

There were numerous questions raised as to whether Coughlin was being paid off by the Nazis during his career. He certainly had his share of foreign entanglements. Decorated General Smedley Butler, author of the classic pamphlet War is a Racket, passed along to the FBI that he received a phone call from Coughlin urging him to lead an army to overthrow Mexico’s government. Coughlin believed that the secular, nationalist regime of Lazaro Cardenas was pro-Communist and was persecuting Catholics. Coughlin wrote on several occasions to Benito Mussolini, offering Social Justice as a forum for the dictator. Warren’s biography does support the contention that Coughlin received funds from Germany, from the Foreign Office, the Detroit Consul, and other sources. It’s also true that Coughlin’s listeners were very generous in supporting his activities so how much of a difference Nazi funding made is unknown.

Coughlin’s influence can be later seen in right-wing talk radio and somewhat in the careers of Protestant televangelists like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. Even after his death in 1979, he remained a hero of the U.S. far right.

Although Coughlin was ordered to cease involvement in politics, the subject maintained his interest. Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, an opponent of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, had a strong supporter og Coughlin when he ran for President as the Republican candidate in 1964. In his 1969 book Bishops Versus Pope, he inveighed against “loud-mouthed clerical advocates of arson, riot, and draft-card burning. They are swingers who suffer so terribly from an inferiority complex that they reach madly for the brass ring of popular recognition which dangles on the merry-go-round of secularism.” Readers might be surprised to learn that, per Coughlin biographer Sheldon Machus, the priest purchased $500 worth of Israeli bonds in 1955. The bonds were to prop up a nation he considered a bulwark against communism. This instance is further evidence that support for Israel can easily coincide with anti-Semitism.

Coughlin’s influence can be later seen in right-wing talk radio and somewhat in the careers of Protestant televangelists like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. Even after his death in 1979, he remained a hero of the U.S. far right. Willis Carto of the antisemitic Liberty Lobby lauded Coughlin in his 1982 book Profiles in Populism. One of the clearest heirs to Coughlin is the Ferndale-based anti-LGBTQ hate group Church Militant. In a 2019 article, the group sang Coughlin’s praises as an opponent of the welfare state and Communism. They avoided the swastika-covered elephant in the room of Coughlin’s fascist sympathies. The group has also recommended Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes to members and gave a fawning interview to avowed Christian nationalist Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. The conspiracism, xenophobia, and antisemitism of Coughlin can now all be found within Church Militant. In this sense, perhaps the Radio Priest never died after all.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”

Featured image credit: Library of Congress; modified by Tempest.

Sean Larson has written a long response to our short article in which we criticized author Jonah ben Avraham for his denunciation of those who, while organizing against Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians, also condemned Hamas’s attacks on civilians on October 7. Larson’s response is unfortunately as problematic as the piece we criticized.

Larson charges that we “forefront” criticism of Hamas. On the contrary, in almost everything we have done in the past three months we have in fact “forefronted” the horror being faced by the people of Gaza. Larson’s objection is actually not to our “forefronting” criticism of Hamas, but to our mentioning it at all. We only wrote our initial article on ben Avraham because he suggested that to criticize Hamas atrocities in any way was to be “pro-settler.”

Larson suggests that we are moral monsters who, had we lived in earlier times, would have supported slavery and colonialism. He puts us in the current conflict on the side of Israel and the United States and against the liberation of the Palestinians. We are excoriated for having had the temerity to raise criticisms of Hamas while writing “from the imperial core.”

In almost everything we have done in the past three months we have in fact “forefronted” the horror being faced by the people of Gaza. Larson’s objection is actually not to our “forefronting” criticism of Hamas, but to our mentioning it at all.

Perhaps we ought to introduce into this discussion an element of realism. What do we and Larson actually do here in the imperial core? As activists on the Left we write, speak, and demonstrate demanding a ceasefire, opposing U.S. military aid to Israel, and expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people. The one difference is that we—but not Larson—also criticize Hamas for its reactionary politics and its murder of civilians, though this in no way inhibits our participation in the current movement. Perhaps Larson and ben Avraham should tone down their accusations of people being “pro-settler” or pro-colonial.

We know that Tempest agrees with us that one can support the victims of U.S. imperialism without blindly endorsing their politics. Tempest shares our criticisms of the Soviet Union during the Cold War and Russia and China today and disagrees with those whose justified defense of the oppressed led to vicariously identifying with and adopting the politics of Third World revolutionaries to the extent of sometimes setting aside the Left’s historic demands for democracy and for humane values even in the course of revolution. Tempest also agrees with us that the enemies of our enemy are not automatically our friends, an unfortunate tendency that led to a reluctance to criticize the crimes of Stalin during the Cold War or Russia, China, or Iran today. We and Tempest both support movements from below, without blindly endorsing all who challenge Washington or its allies. We support progressive forces from below, not reactionary or fundamentalist ones. But ben Avraham and Larson, in their denunciation of any who criticize Hamas, seem to have lost their way, abandoning this tradition and replacing it with uncritical support for reactionary leaders and groups.

Larson writes that perhaps our “most egregious assumption … is that socialists in the United States are the proper referees of anticolonial movements the world over.” What we actually believe is that socialists everywhere, while showing solidarity, also retain the right to critical thinking. As Marx put it: “Doubt all.” We claim no special role, but believe like other socialists of the last two centuries that we should not remain silent in the face of atrocities that violate socialist values. At one point, Larson describes the horrible crimes carried out against Indigenous people in North America and tells us that some of the responses involved atrocities.

He writes: “In the view of La Botz and Shalom, should socialists condemn the Dakota and other brave Indigenous warriors and insist on the use of the “legitimate means” of peaceful protest and moral appeal during the ethnic cleansing of Turtle Island?”

Larson here implies that we equate “legitimate means” with “peaceful protest and moral appeal.” But these terms are not at all equivalent. We are not pacifists, and we believe violence can be justified in the struggle for freedom from oppression. (As we said in our article: “Palestinians, like all oppressed people, have the right to resist, including by armed force, by all legitimate means.”) But that’s not the same as claiming that all violence is justified. Violence in and of itself is not illegitimate. Killing noncombatants is.

We are not pacifists, and we believe violence can be justified in the struggle for freedom from oppression…But that’s not the same as claiming that all violence is justified. Violence in and of itself is not illegitimate. Killing noncombatants is.

Our difference is that he and ben Avraham think the way to build support for a ceasefire is to  insist we don’t care about the means used by Hamas and that those who condemn the killing of civilians are “pro-settler.” We, on the other hand, believe that appealing to people’s humanity is one of the best ways to convince them to oppose Israel’s ongoing massacre. We also believe it is important to demonstrate that Hamas’ action have not been in the best long-term interests of Palestinians. Larson says we are wrong to suggest that Israel is winning the war (though we said no such thing), but in any case, the war has been catastrophic for Palestine, and should it become a regional war, it would be disastrous for the entire World.

Does condemning Hamas’s crimes mean that we are enabling Israel’s ongoing mass murder in Gaza? Not at all. We believe that just as it is wrong to kill Israeli civilians because of the crimes of their government, so too it is wrong to massacre tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians because of Hamas’s crimes. By urging silence on Hamas’s immoral behavior, Larson and others are sending the implicit message that they worry that Israel’s murderous response would be justified if Hamas had engaged in war crimes. No. Nothing justifies Israel’s onslaught. Some of our comrades have told us that they think we were too dismissive of the slogan “by any means necessary,” because, they say, since it is never necessary to kill children and other noncombatants, adherence to the slogan would preclude what happened on October 7. Point taken. But for Larson and some others, what is really meant by the slogan “by any means necessary” is “by any means at all.” Killing hundreds of people at a rave meets neither the “legitimate means” standard of international humanitarian law nor the standard of necessity, let alone the standard of morality.

Larson argues that one must take into account the context of the Hamas attacks. We fully agree. History didn’t begin on October 7. One needs to understand the long history of ethnic cleansing, dispossession, apartheid, and dehumanization to appreciate what brought Palestinians to this point. But understanding context is not the same as refusing to criticize. Consider the behavior of Zionists in 1947-48. The context for the atrocities they carried out during the Nakba was the fact that Jews had just come through the Holocaust. We understand that, and are even sympathetic, but we nevertheless believe that it is appropriate—indeed necessary—to condemn their horrific treatment of Palestinians. Understanding and justification are not the same. We in the Palestine support movement have been warning for years that Israel’s policy would lead to an explosion. But we can’t ignore the agency of Hamas’s leaders in choosing the policies they did.

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Monument; photo by Yuval Madar.

Larson analogizes Hamas’s attack to the resistance of the Warsaw ghetto, because it seems members of the latter once threw grenades into a lounge and a coffee shop (his source doesn’t report any casualties). If we don’t condemn the Warsaw fighters, says Larson, how can we condemn Hamas? But what an awful analogy. The scale of the killings and the balance of victims matter. The Warsaw resistance overwhelmingly aimed its weapons at soldiers, while most of Hamas’s targets were civilians. The scale of slaughter, on a larger scale, is also what makes Israel’s assault on Gaza so horrific: it isn’t a civilian here or there who is being killed, but a pace of civilian deaths with “few precedents in this century” (New York Times). We will not win popular support for a ceasefire, let alone for our more long-term aspirations for justice in the Middle East, by betraying the humane values that have always inspired the Left.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”

Featured image credit: Wikimedia Commons; modified by Tempest.

I found the article “What would it take to win in Palestine?” by David Camfield and Charlie Post a real missed opportunity to discuss the current conjuncture. In many ways, it reads as if it could have been written forty or fifty years ago.

I don’t see a possibility of breaking any section of the Israeli Jewish working class from the Zionist order, any more than it was possible to win over sections of the white working class in South Africa. While you acknowledge that in the article, the piece does still quote Moshe Machover approvingly that Zionism cannot be overthrown without the participation and consent of a section of Jewish workers. How do you square this circle?

I also worry about the notion that Palestinians should avoid harming Jewish Israeli non-combatants. These non-combatants are settlers in Palestine ‘48 (Israel) and in the occupied territories, serve in the Israeli occupation force; thus, they  are part of the state machine involved in committing genocide. They are hardly civilians. In fact, the one major group not involved in the colonial armed forces are Orthodox Jews, whose leaders call for the expulsion of all Palestinians (and worse).

Clearly, you are correct in arguing for a regional revolutionary strategy, and, yes, the role of the Arab working class in Egypt and elsewhere is crucial, but Marxists have argued that for years. Moreover, it is likely that renewed working class struggle in the Arab metropolises will shift opinion among the settler community even further to the right rather than leading to a fracturing of the settler working class.

We are currently in the midst of the largest popular movement in my political lifetime, at least in Britain, at the center of which are hundreds of thousands of young people and in which Palestinians and people of color, particularly young women, are playing a leadership role. Yet the article has no Palestinian voices, other than from the past. There is no engagement with the debates in the current movement about the way forward, no sense of the anger and passion on the streets and the role this movement can play in weakening the resolve of the rulers of the imperial heartlands who are backing genocide.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”

In early December, the Los Angeles branch of Tempest Collective co-organized a Palestine teach-in at All Saints’ Church with Pasadena City College’s Anti-War Club, Middle East and North African Students’ association, and other campus and community allies. The event drew around 70 attendees at its height, featuring presentations from Tempest members, Anti-War Club students, and a local Palestinian community member who came from Gaza. We publish here an edited transcript of Tempest LA member Denée Jackson’s speech on centering solidarity with Palestine from the position of intersecting identities.

I want to begin by sharing my identities to position myself in this conversation. I’m biracial—Black and white—queer, Jewish, working-class, and a woman. Intersectional solidarity is important to me. It’s life for me and for my people who identify with multiple marginalized identities. Many of these identities, as some of you may know already, have been weaponized by Zionists in their propaganda to support the genocide of Palestinians. So, what I’m going to be talking about today is solidarity, and I will begin by talking about Black solidarity with Palestine.

In the 1960s, Black liberation struggles were fighting for basic human dignity, which Black folks have never had in the United States. There were many movements going on at the time, such as the Civil Rights Movement.

I want to quote Martin Luther King Jr., who has been weaponized by Zionists to say that he supports Israel. And indeed, he was once in support of the State of Israel and had a trip scheduled with a delegation to the Holy Land. It was interrupted by the Six-Day War, and so he canceled his trip. Later he was quoted in an interview saying that Israel should “give up the land” back to the Palestinians. Today, we have all kinds of social media to figure out what is happening on the ground in Palestine. In 1967, that wasn’t the case. But once he learned about what was happening and raised his political consciousness, King knew better. He knew that solidarity with Palestinians meant land back. Also, the Black Panthers used an image of Leila Khaled, who was a fighter for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. I highly recommend reading her biography. The Panthers used her image to articulate their politics around the global struggle against colonial powers, because they knew that it was the same colonial powers that oppressed folks all over the world.

I also want to share a victorious example of Black-Palestinian solidarity. In Detroit in the early 1970s, Palestinians and other Arab Americans took inspiration from the League of Revolutionary Black Workers to create their own organization. In 1973, they went on strike to pressure the United Auto Workers (UAW) to divest from Israeli state bonds. Today, the UAW is the largest union to sign on to a ceasefire resolution, building on this legacy of workers’ solidarity for Palestine.

We know Black folks in the United States were stolen from their ancestral lands, just as Palestinians have been displaced from theirs. Neither group has ever been given equal opportunities in life, and similar structures of oppression are shared between Black and Palestinian peoples. So, I want to talk about abolition as a step toward liberation led by Black people in the United States, which also means applying abolitionist principles to a free Palestine.

I want to call in a couple of books that have really helped to define my identity as a pro-Palestine abolitionist: Mariame Kaba’s We Do This ’Til We Free Us and Angela Davis’ Freedom Is a Constant Struggle.

So, first, what is abolition today? Abolition is completely eliminating systems of surveillance, policing, and imprisonment. It’s not just “don’t give them any more funding,” but completely destroying them because we know that policing and prison are death-making institutions and they serve to reproduce violence, even though we’re taught that they are supposed to promote safety.

Surveillance companies and punitive tactics in the United States operate the same as those in Israel. Israel is central to the militarization of police forces globally, and in the United States, police chiefs to campus police have been trained by Israeli forces.

Solidarity is the principle that I want life for myself, I want my basic needs met and safety, and maybe I even want to thrive. And therefore I want that for every single human because I know that my liberation is completely bound to theirs.

We also know that reformist alternatives to prisons don’t work: house arrests and probation-these are not unlike the harsh carceral systems in Gaza that also limit life. So, again, we need complete elimination. This is one aspect of abolition, but the other important piece is building up new institutions with love. We advocate for safe housing, youth programming, training up street medics, first responders, and transformative justice practitioners. We create these things at the same time as we abolish those things. And a lot of the time it’s trial and error. We try and fail, and we try again, because we know that anything is better than this current system that we have right now.

So when we apply this to Palestine, we need to remember that we are fighting not just for a ceasefire and an end to the ongoing violence. We are fighting for Palestinian liberation. It’s about building the structures that would support life in Palestine, too. And this is what differentiates our vision—the abolitionist vision—from the Democrats’ vision, which waters down what ceasefire means (if they even talk about ceasefire at all). We’re talking about liberation.

As a Black Jewish person, I also want to make a connection to Jewish solidarity with Palestine, and how Zionists are not for Jewish liberation, whether for Jews in Israel, Jews in the diaspora, and especially for those of us with multiple marginalized identities. I want to draw one parallel to pull in why we will never win liberation under capitalism and colonialism. In the United States, settlers armed white folks to protect property, particularly human property—enslaved Africans—and then created the police force to also protect their property and therefore their capital. And after the Holocaust, when Zionists settled in occupied Palestine, Israel also armed Jews to massacre Palestinians—thus committing atrocities that they themselves had experienced only a few years earlier.

They militarized Israelis to first steal property with lethal force and then protect their property with lethal force. And today they’re arming settlers in the West Bank to shoot and displace Palestinians. Zionists turned Jews into murderers and said you can only be free if you oppress and kill other people. That is not liberation. Anti-Zionist Jews today are crying “Not in our name.” Not in our names should Zionists have ever been allowed to steal Palestinian land and murder Palestinians. As a Black person with ancestors who were enslaved in the United States and a Jewish person with ancestors who came to New York to survive the Holocaust, I will absolutely never support genocide against any humans in my name.

A note about solidarity in general: Solidarity is not transactional. It’s not showing up for someone just because they showed up for you, or showing up for someone with the expectation that they must show up for you in the future. Solidarity is the principle that I want life for myself, I want my basic needs met and safety, and maybe I even want to thrive. And therefore I want that for every single human because I know that my liberation is completely bound to theirs.

James Baldwin wrote to Angela Davis, “If they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.” History teaches us this is true. This is what imperialism, colonialism, and capitalism do: they create hierarchies of life and dispose of people who are at the lower rungs of these hierarchies, particularly poor people, people with disabilities, people of color, and people who live in places where capitalists want to extract natural resources.

I would like to end with hope. Mariame Kaba says, “Hope is a discipline.” We have to practice it, especially when it’s not easy at the moment. We have to have hope that change is possible. We have to build independent grassroots organizations, which I see us doing—and we can do more. We have to divest from this two-party system. Democrats will never win us liberation. We have to boycott and divest from U.S. corporate entities that support Israeli occupation. And we have to have hope that we will free Palestine.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”

Featured image credit: “Palestine sunbird standing on a fence,” Wikimedia Commons; modified by Tempest.

It has been a little over three years since the beginning of the George Floyd protests in the summer of 2020. Given the intense conservative backlash in the wake of the movement, 2020 in some ways feels like a distant, foggy memory. Since those protests, and especially more recently, I’ve found myself thinking about that summer—both struggling to remember what it felt like and asking myself a number of questions: How did it feel to be out on the streets? How open was the political moment for a more radical social transformation? What did we think was possible? What were the greatest strengths and weaknesses of the movement? What impact were the protests going to have moving forward, and how were things going to change?

With the benefit of hindsight, we perhaps have partial answers to some of these questions. There is still much that the Left has to discuss in order to make sense of what happened; in a way, it feels like this momentous, historic series of events took place, and then things just returned to “normal,” if we understand normal to be the dystopian times in which we are living. Although the opening created by the movement that summer has closed for now, things will undoubtedly never be the same. Whatever shortcomings they contained, the protests altered the discourse, logic, and trajectory of American society.

For there to be an anthology of essays, many of which were written in real time during the uprising, is invaluable. The discussions we can have as a result of these contributions and how they help us tap back into our own individual and collective experiences of this time period cannot be overlooked.

For these reasons, The George Floyd Uprising edited by Vortex Group represents a significant contribution to our collective memory, understanding, and experience of the summer of 2020. The collection brings together numerous accounts from and about the uprising, ranging from June 2020 to May 2021. As the editors acknowledge, the contributions are far from homogeneous: “in spite of a shared commitment … [the] authors diverge around a number of key political, social, and strategic questions,” including those of “race and identity, abolitionism and reform, the role of weapons and ethics,” and more (5-6).

For there to be an anthology of essays, many of which were written in real time during the uprising, is invaluable. The discussions we can have as a result of these contributions and how they help us tap back into our own individual and collective experiences of this time period cannot be overlooked. At the same time, knowing what we know now, it is clear that some of the contributions were overly optimistic about the potential for the protests to mark a revolutionary moment. “At the risk of sounding naive,” writes Idris Robinson, “I sincerely believe that the riots that we have all witnessed and hopefully participated in this summer have opened the window to insurrection and even a full blown revolution” (76). Additionally, a number of the political and strategic conclusions lend themselves to criticism.

The authors of the book provide analyses and first hand accounts from New York City, Portland, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Kenosha, and Louisville, and engage with topics including tactics and strategy, the role of identity, race, and class, the cooptation and repression faced by the uprising, the absence of the organized Left from the struggle, the question of organizational forms, and more. There is so much we have yet to discuss and learn from what happened in the summer of 2020, and this book represents an important resource for doing so.

Political Conclusions from the Struggle Context

As noted above, the authors of the various contributions approach the events of the summer from a number of different perspectives based on where they were, in what capacity they participated, and the distinct political views they brought with them into those experiences. That said, there are a number of shared observations and conclusions that authors draw throughout the anthology. These political conclusions imply, or rather highlight, an element of universality across the struggles (despite the differences between each place) and are worth examining in some detail.

An important starting point is the larger context in which this uprising occurred. While the uprising itself was specifically a response to racist police violence and inequality, it was also about “class, capitalism, COVID 19, Trump, and much more” (26). At the end of May 2020, when the protests first erupted after the murder of George Floyd, the country had been in lockdown for over two months. At least 36 million Americans were on some type of unemployment, “essential workers” were risking their lives daily to provide essential services and to increase the profits for the capitalist class, and millions were facing eviction due to their inability to pay rent. Many people faced or experienced precarity in a way they had never before, creating a situation in which the contradictions and shortcomings of the capitalist system—which prioritizes profits over human need—became more apparent to increasingly large portions of the population (41). It was this larger context that created an even more combustible terrain on which the uprising would unfold.

Healthcare workers join a march for Black Lives in Seattle on June 9, 2020. Photo by Backbone Campaign. A Black-led, multiracial uprising

A number of authors make two related and important observations about the nature of the uprisings: It was the Black proletariat that initiated and sparked them and served as their most militant element. In these ways, it provided leadership to the movement. At the same time, however, the uprising was multiethnic/multiracial, and it would be inaccurate to say it was simply a Black rebellion or Black uprising.

The fact that the uprising was Black-led and also deeply multiracial is important for several reasons. First, it highlights the fact that in the United States, “the Black struggle has served a singular role in American radical politics, often acting as the igniting element that sets wider layers of society into motion” (6). Crucially, though, while “the Black proletariat is the most revolutionary of the US proletariat … it can’t defeat capitalism on its own” (210). It is imperative for anyone interested in overthrowing and dismantling capitalism to “respect and support the autonomy of the Black revolutionary struggle” in order to ensure that the desire for multiracial solidarity does not “come at the expense of Black liberation” (29). In other words, it will be necessary to simultaneously respect and support the uniqueness of the struggle for Black liberation, born of the foundational role of anti-Blackness in this country, while also connecting that struggle to larger struggles that aim to move beyond capitalism.

A crowd gathers before a mural by Peyton Scott Russell the evening after George Floyd’s memorial service. Photo by Lorie Shaull.

Some of the authors note that while it is easy to draw parallels between the George Floyd uprising and the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements of the 1960s, they are qualitatively different in several important ways. First, “white workers were largely absent from the urban rebellions that took place” in the 1960s. While this isn’t necessarily to say that white workers, or workers as organized workers, participated in the George Floyd uprisings en masse, it was “a multiracial proletariat that rebelled” this time, making “comparisons of this rebellion to 1968 wrong” (29).

Furthermore, today, unlike the 1960s, there are a number of Black mayors, police commissioners, and district attorneys throughout the country. We have also seen the proliferation of NGOs and nonprofits, a number of which are Black-led. In other words, the struggles of the 1960s gave rise to new obstacles and contradictions that played an important role in the summer of 2020 and that were not present in 1968 or the 1960s more generally.

Repression, cooptation, and other challenges

It was in the interest of various groups and actors to crush the uprising. While these groups had a range of politics and deployed a variety of methods to defang, demobilize, and/or extinguish the uprising, they all set out to ensure the movement was as contained and limited as possible.

Of course, the far right, the state, the police, and similar actors set out to crush the movement as swiftly as possible, often opting for more openly violent forms of repression, including murder. The authors highlight the fact, however, that the reformist/progressive Left—including NGOs, nonprofits, the Black Lives Matter Foundation, and the Black middle class, and many if not most local politicians and community/religious leaders tied to those organizations—also played a central role in demobilizing the uprising.

“Black NGOs, including the Black Lives Matter Foundation,” write Shemon and Arturo,

hardly had any relationship to the militant phase of the rebellion. In fact, such organizations tended to play a reactionary role, often preventing riots from escalating and spreading. Black NGOs were the spearhead of the forces dividing the movement into “good” and “bad” protestors. The social base of Black NGOs is not the Black proletariat but the Black middle class and, most importantly, a segment of the radicalizing white middle class. (26)

Other authors also note that the Black middle class played a particularly reactionary role in the uprising, writing that it “uses Black proletarian struggle to advance its own cause” and arguing that a “Black led rebellion could only be crushed by a Black led counterinsurgency program” (187).

The Black middle class, though, is far from the only group which sought to limit the possibilities of the uprising and steer its achievements towards its own—less radical—ends.

Building on the false distinction between good and bad protestors, in which ‘good’ protestors were ‘peaceful’ and ‘bad’ protestors were ‘rioters’ who engaged in looting and property destruction (80-81, 84), the state and media widely spread lies about the “outside agitator” in what one author describes as “a phase of advanced misinformation.” This narrative aimed to further divide the uprising by race and identity. The media “simultaneously claim[ed] the movement had been ‘hijacked’ by white people, ‘antifa,’ and ‘insurrectionary anarchists,’ as well as by undercover white supremacists” (93). Not only were the participants, therefore, necessarily extremists, they were also white and coming in from the outside to sow and exacerbate discontent. Accordingly, Nevada writes that “the state used the fictional or exaggerated figure of the ‘white supremacist agitator’ to perpetuate anti-blackness and capitalist property relations” (103).

The “outside agitator” narrative also implied that Black people themselves were either not engaged in the protests or were not supportive of more militant tactics and forms of protest. This narrative has deep racist roots in this country’s history and “first began to take shape during the era of Black chattel slavery. The old racist story goes that slaves were happy until white abolitionists from the North excited them to revolt” (207).

“A counterinsurgency campaign has fundamentally altered the course of the movement,” writes Shemon, highlighting the fact that we cannot understand the waning of the uprising without analyzing the repression and cooptation that occurred (186).

Tactics (means and ends)

Throughout the book, various authors put forth analyses of a number of tactics and questions ranging from looting, property destruction, and the use of arms/weapons to how to engage with race and identity. The authors ask what constitutes abolition and how to actually win it.

All of the contributors who discussed looting supported it as a tactic, identifying “social” looting (80) and the caravans of looting in particular as requiring a high degree of “coordination, organization, and boldness of initiative” (181). On the question of property destruction, Nevada cites Idris Robinson when they write that “whenever property is protected, it is protected for white supremacist ends” (109), going on to argue that we should understand “every act of property destruction or looting as an expression of a grievance” (107).

A police car burns not far from Philadelphia’s City Hall on May 31, 2020.

On the question of arms/weapons, several authors argue that the use of arms represented a shortcoming, or mistake, from a strategic perspective. These questions were particularly relevant at the Wendy’s occupation in Atlanta, but were also pertinent in places like Kenosha and Louisville, as well. They argued that “the strength of the movement will depend on broad social support more than on purely military victories” (159) and that armed struggle alone is not terrain that we will be able to win on (153). Importantly, it wasn’t that arms in and of themselves were the issue, but rather the fact that the use of arms “tended to specialize itself, resulting in a form of social closure” and that

the more that armed violence detaches itself from other forms of struggle, the more it becomes something we treat as a specialized technical problem…[and] the more it will tend to become divorced from the intelligence and confidence of the crowd. (216)

Abolition is not a central topic the authors take up, but some raise questions around what constitutes abolition, as well as criticisms of “defund” as it relates to abolition. Shemon argues that revolutionary abolition was largely displaced by reformist abolition after the first week of the uprising. They write that reformist abolitionism is characterized by

the activity and politics of professional activists, NGOs, lawyers, and politicians and concerned primarily with “defunding,” policy, and legislative shifts … [and that] proposals to “defund” amount to little more than a monetary displacement from one section of the state to another. (190)

As it relates to the content of abolition itself, one author argues that, “Each structure fire contributed to the material abolition of the existing state of things” (22), whereas another argues that the “rebellion began not as an abolitionist politics centered on policy changes but as a viral contagion of demolitionist desire” (224), citing the burning of the 3rd Precinct in Minneapolis as an example of demolitionist and not abolitionist practice (231). Nevada argues that the neighborhood watch and citizen patrol groups that emerged in Minneapolis “cloak[ed themselves] in the language of police abolition,” but rather than prefiguring what would replace the Minneapolis Police Department, instead “assum[ed] the enforcement of the very same legal order here and now,” only with nicer faces (108-109).

The absence of the organized Left: lessons from the 2020 uprising

The role of the Left in the 2020 uprisings is generally underexplored throughout the book, which is revealing. There is widespread agreement amongst the authors that the organized Left—including socialist and other revolutionary organizations—played little to no role in the emergence, development, or deepening of the uprising. Shemon and Arturo write that the uprisings “transformed an entire generation [and] it is not the NGOs or the left, not even the revolutionary left, that has done this. It is thousands of brave young people acting on their own initiative …” (211).

I agree with the assessment that the organized/revolutionary Left played a negligible role in the uprisings; members of the organized Left did participate, but as individuals or small groupings rather than as part of an organized left as such. The anti-organizational conclusions that various authors draw, however, are a major weakness of the book.

The organized Left and revolutionary organizations are weak and, accordingly, played no significant role in the uprising … [but] the authors who argue that revolutionaries must adapt to these conditions by adopting their logic are confusing the symptoms of the problem for its cure.

One author argues that we must “embrac[e] a model of decentralization” because “the implosion of mediating institutions [is a] basic feature of our chaotic times” (139-140), while another writes that:

Twentieth-century proletarian revolution, [which] was imagined as a process whereby the working class would grow exponentially up to a crucial threshold, at which point it would become politically hegemonic, take power, and produce a new world out of the shell of the old … is no longer conceivable. (160)

Another author argues that our ability to

fac[e] the organizational problem with an understanding of fragmentation as a condition rather than a shortcoming will be crucial to allowing our movements to flourish—rather than decay—under the mark of leaderlessness. (149)

Several authors also question and problematize the role of class as both a framework of analysis and potential revolutionary subject. One author writes that the “crowd,” rather than class, is a more effective framework for understanding the uprising (12, 19).

Adrian Wohlleben takes this further, arguing that

it is difficult to imagine an insurrection in the USA today taking the form of a disciplined consolidation of marginal social groups—e.g., a crystallization of crowds into “classes” through solidarity … (230).

They argue that focusing on the sphere of production represents a strain of “ultraleft thought” (244), pointing instead to the Yellow Vest movement as an example of a contemporary uprising that put forth a new and potentially revolutionary logic. Namely, it focused on a “leading gesture” (in this case, putting on the yellow vest) which “becomes a vessel into which a broad swath of singular antagonists feel invited to pour their outrage, aggression, and ferocious joy” (227-228). Additionally, such movements “allow individuals to move alongside one another, while preserving their own respective reasons for fighting, thereby inviting each of us to trust in our own singular evaluation of the situation” (229). Rejecting class and notions of mass revolutionary parties, they argue that “it is considerably easier to imagine a viral contagion of actions that respond intelligently to their moment escalating into mass experiments in communist sharing on a variety of scales” (230).

I agree with the authors that the current conjecture is characterized by fragmentation, decentralization, and a lack of leadership. The organized Left and revolutionary organizations are weak and, accordingly, played no significant role in the uprising. That said, the authors who argue that revolutionaries must adapt to these conditions by adopting their logic are confusing the symptoms of the problem for its cure. This is not to say that we should simply attempt to reproduce or copy examples from the twentieth century. Today’s terrain is different and experimentation will undoubtedly be necessary as we work to rebuild a revolutionary movement. However, as we take stock of past successes and failures and examine them in light of today’s conditions, it would be a massive mistake for the Left to reject the importance of class, production, labor, and revolutionary organizations.

Importantly, several authors note that the absence of an organized Left had a negative impact on the uprising. In New York City, the riots and the more radical elements of the uprising melted away only a week or so after beginning. The New York Post-Left writes that the movement found itself “unable to develop new tactics in order to stay dynamic,” and therefore at “something of an impasse [that] currently lacks direction.” They continue, “pro-revolutionaries need to be durably organized to sustain their capacity through the valley to prepare for the next peak” (82).

Echoing this, another author writes that “there was no legible pro-revolutionary pole in the streets,” and that “the role of a revolutionary minority, those who help build the capacity and collective confidence of revolt, may become more important. In this sense the absence of a pro-revolutionary pole was felt” (174-175). Last, Shemon writes that “on the whole [proletarians] lack the mechanisms or institutions in racial capitalism to develop [proletarian multiracial] unity,” concluding that “without fetishizing organizations, some organizational forms will be needed to crystallize and concentrate this alliance” (193-194).

We need to highlight the conclusions that stem from these important observations—namely, that decentralization, a lack of leadership, and the absence of organizations limited coordination, tactical creativity, strategic clarity, and ultimately the potential of the uprising, rather than furthering or bolstering it.

One author argues that operating effectively in the current political moment requires “giv[ing] up politics” (101), but I would argue that the uprising taught us the exact opposite—we need explicitly revolutionary politics now more than ever. Depoliticization will only lead to further fragmentation, which will limit rather than foster our ability to build power and develop the knowledge, practices, and forms necessary to destroy capitalism.

Since the uprising, the Left, oppressed groups, and working people generally have been on the backfoot. In many ways, we have struggled to translate the uprising into tangible changes or power, at least in the short term. The powers that be, on the other hand, have responded with a highly organized offensive, and while there has been resistance to these attacks, the Left has been unable to meaningfully propose a clear alternative, let alone implement it.

It would have felt unthinkable in the summer of 2020 that just a year later, New York City would end up with a law-and-order, tough-on-crime, Black former-cop as mayor. The absence of an organized Left, though, has allowed Adams to carry out his anti-migrant, anti-tenant/homeless, pro-cop, anti-worker agenda. A revolutionary organized Left is deeply necessary to articulate and develop a real alternative to what’s currently on offer. A decentralized, leaderless, fragmented Left will not be able to meet the needs of the moment.

The 2020 uprisings were historic insofar as Black proletarians led a multiracial uprising that shook the country to its core in the midst of COVID-19 lockdowns, unemployment, evictions, and a social and economic crisis. Developing an organized revolutionary Left will be necessary in order to ensure that the next uprising is able to go further than that of 2020.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”

Featured image credit: Lorie Shaull; modified by Tempest.

The Russian occupation of parts of Ukraine in 2014, and its full-scale war against Ukraine in 2022, led to many fissures on the Left in the United States and internationally.

As a member of the Ukraine Solidarity Network, an author of an early article about the struggles in Ukraine in 2014 (which I  recently updated), and as someone who has worked with Ukrainian and Russian public health researchers around HIV/AIDS and related issues for much of this century, I have been frustrated by the lack of a good books to ask others to read. It is therefore a pleasure to read Paul Le Blanc’s Making Sense of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine, which is very short and can easily be read in ebook format.

Unlike such earlier books, such as War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict by Medea Benjamin and Nicholas Davies (reviewed critically on this site), Le Blanc’s study gives respectful consideration to the views of people who disagree with the author. Of particular note, Le Blanc (unlike Benjamin and Davies and most other commentators who support Russia in its war) presents the views of both Russians and Ukrainians. In this, he is in accord with the “nothing about us without us” principle that any analysis of an oppressed or otherwise suffering group of people needs to include their views. As anyone who has looked carefully at the history of Ukraine over the last few centuries knows, Ukraine has a long history of being oppressed by the rulers of Russia. The current attempt by Russia to seize the country is one of the most horrible, though still less destructive than the massive starvation that Russia’s so-called Communist rulers imposed on Ukraine and other parts of the USSR in the 1930s.

Le Blanc makes his position on the war clear from the outset. As he puts it:

• I favor the defeat of [Vladimir] Putin’s invasion and victory for Ukrainian self-determination.
• I oppose imperialism in all its forms—including Putin’s invasion, including NATO.
• I oppose capitalism and favor its replacement with genuine political and economic democracy everywhere: the United States, Ukraine, Russia, etc.

Le Blanc discusses the argument that the expansion of NATO instigated the attack. In doing so, he does conclude that Putin may have seen this expansion as threatening, but also points to other reasons for the invasion that were more important: the need of Putin and the capitalist Russian to deflect growing opposition within Russia and lay the basis for the repression of opposition by attacking a neighboring country; the “Greater Russia” imperialist mindset of much of the Russian ruling class (which in some ways analogous to the “Manifest Destiny” beliefs of U.S. rulers in the 1800s and since); and the principled anti-revolutionism that Putin widely expressed in supporting Bashar al-Assad’s attacks on Syrian revolutionaries and in opposing the Maidan uprisings in Ukraine in 2014.

Le Blanc’s discussion of the Maidan uprisings is perhaps too short. He points out that this uprising in no way attacked capitalism, which is true. He does not discuss, and perhaps does not fully understand, the extent to which it led to important reforms, including greatly reducing the ability of police to exact bribes from citizens in everyday encounters. He also does not note that, like other movements, such as the U.S. Civil Rights Movement during the first part of the 1960s, the Maidan movement had many possibilities within it in 2014. It did indeed include right-wingers, even some fascists, as the campists have fetishized, but it also included many socialists, anarchists, feminists, social democrats (who looked to German or other Western European welfare states), and others. I anticipated at the time that many of its participants might well have turned sharply to the left when the nearly inevitable financial crackdown by the International Monetary Fund and others hit in the spring of 2014, but Putin’s seizure of Ukraine foreclosed that possibility (as he probably intended) by strengthening Ukrainian militarism.

Le Blanc discusses the arguments that the anti-Ukrainian Left makes about Ukrainian reactionary fascism. In doing this, he confronts myths with realities. The fascist right wing has little support in Ukraine, there is a fairly strong fascist movement in Russia, and Putin and his allies are in many ways a pole of attraction for rightwing ultra-nationalism globally. He also, and rightly, describes the strongly neoliberal beliefs and actions of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government—and documents the struggles of Ukrainian socialists and unions against this.

In presenting these arguments, Making Sense of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine uses a number of long quotes from Russian and Ukrainian socialists who make many insightful observations about how the war is hurting both Russian and Ukrainian workers and about the necessity of supporting Ukrainians in their struggle against Russian oppression and destruction. Le Blanc ties this analysis to classic discussions among Marxists such as V. I. Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg about the right of self-determination and the role of socialists in such struggles.

Finally, Le Blanc discusses the issue of the Ukrainians’ asking for and relying on weapons from Western imperialist powers in their war of self-defense. Many on the Left who say they oppose the Russian assault have called for an end to arming the Ukrainians, and have argued that this dependency makes the Ukrainians tools of imperialism. Le Blanc presents useful historical background on this debate, including the fact that the Left globally was largely united in arguing that the Western powers should arm the Republicans in Spain against the Spanish fascists in 1936 and after—and that they should also send weapons to the Chinese nationalist forces under the leadership of Chiang Kai-Shek when Japan invaded China during this same period. I would add that the Left also supported providing arms to the reactionary government of Ethiopia when Italian fascism invaded that country.

The point Le Blanc makes is straightforward: Failing to support arming a people defending its right to exist is to make a mockery of saying you oppose the oppressors in their invasion. This clear argument is denied by much of the Left today when they call for ending arms shipments in order to further “negotiations” by the great imperialist powers to impose a settlement on the Ukrainians.

Le Blanc’s Making Sense of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine is useful both for our own education and as a way to help educate others.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”

Featured image credit: World at Large News; modified by Tempest.