New York City—With some key organizing by Progressive Labor Party (PLP) comrades, the Radical Caucus of the MLA (the Modern Language Association, the largest organization of literature professors in the world) held an online conference: “KEYWORDS: GAZA— Responding to the Genocide.” The focus was on how U.S. imperialism was enabling Israeli genocide with arms, money and diplomacy. We targeted “the mass disinformation campaign” by Israel and the U.S. government about the genocide in Gaza. Seventy-eight faculty and students came together to organize solidarity against this genocide.
The mini-conference took place amid the doxxing, menacing and firing of campus militants just days before the explosion of Gaza protest encampments on over 100 U.S. campuses and in a dozen other countries (Aljazeera.com, 4/29). This was an important effort to stand against the rising fascism of U.S. rulers. PLP members pointed toward a world where students were not only organizing encampments, but workers and students were organizing the world - that’s communism.
Capitalist state monopoly of violence
How cynical are these college administrators, arresting, beating, suspending and expelling students who dare to put up a tent on campus to protest Israel’s forced expulsion of more than a million workers in Gaza. Yesterday’s liberal deans are today’s law-and-order enforcers. Behind the prattle about academic freedom we now see brutes in riot gear. Recently we fought for and won a MLA motion urging university administrators to defend student protestors. The administrators have done nothing. We must now convince our colleagues and students that the real enemy is capitalist state violence, partnering with the U.S. bourgeois university to repress anti-genocide students, all while Israel has deliberately destroyed all twelve universities in Gaza.
Political debates about Gaza
The speakers debated how to fight the Gaza genocide, from tacit support of the right-wing leadership of Hamas to aspirations for communist revolution in the region. The opening and closing speakers—a well-known Marxist theorist of globalized capitalism and a PLP comrade—both attacked U.S. imperialism, seeing the crackdown on college campuses as the result of the breakdown of U.S. dominance. Any serious undermining of Israel, the U.S. garrison state in the Middle East, is a real threat that will be met by state violence here in the university as well in the ruins of Gaza.
The PLP speaker focused first on Israel’s role in the Middle East as the enforcer for U.S. imperialism. But he also criticized the nationalism of Hamas and the Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation and genocide. Our comrade strongly criticized national liberation politics. National liberation “liberates” one group of capitalists against another. It does not liberate any workers or students. They get to fight and die for one boss or another (See excerpt in Box)
William I. Robinson argued that the U.S. has lost the battle for world legitimacy. The Hamas attack has undermined U.S. plans for expansion. There is a crisis of global capitalism and the fascist response to it. What is urgently needed is to build an alliance of the campus left with workers and unions. A professor of Middle East Studies cited examples of economic trends in higher education: drastic cuts in funding, rising tuition, escalating student debt.
Two graduate students in Comparative Literature described how they gained political understanding of the larger global stakes in the Pro-Palestinian movement. One from the University of Minnesota told how defending a Gender Studies professor on her campus led to a larger campaign for divestment from Israel. The firing of a professor at Hobart Smith College led her to see the limitations of academic freedom. “I disagree with what you say but defend your right to say it”—is inadequate to confront the real genocidal violence of colonialism.
From all the rivers to all the seas workers must unite
Several participants reaffirmed that the task is to turn students’ struggle for a free Palestine into a struggle for all workers and students to be free of imperialism. This event certainly showed, as have the encampments, that this is precisely the mood of many taking strong action now; “Palestine speaks for everyone,” as a newly-banned U.S. professor proclaimed in a widely read article. PLP believes that this movement can indeed thrive and grow if it overcomes racism and nationalism so that the workers of the world unite, “from all the rivers to all the seas,” as the banner at PLP’s May Day march declared. The MLA Radical Caucus is a fertile site of political struggle over such ideas. Join PLP to bring communist thinking into leadership of this inspiring mass movement and link it to anti-imperialist struggles everywhere.
Box - Israel and the U.S.: Ironclad
The following is an excerpt from the talk given by a PLP comrade at the Gaza mini-conference. See full text at https://multiracialunity.org/2024/04/21/israel-and-the-us-ironclad/
The massive movement in the U.S. and around the world against Israel’s genocide has been inspiring in its breadth and militancy. It has played an important role in exposing this atrocity to millions in the U.S. who see very little on American media. This movement has also exposed the close relations between universities, Zionism and the U.S. government. We must give kudos to the students who are fighting the new McCarthyism at Columbia and Yale, among many others, and who have suffered arrests and suspensions. Some politicians have been pressured to at least express distaste at Israel’s brutality. However, it would be a mistake to think that there is any chance that the U.S. will divorce from Israel or limit its military support, no matter which party is in office, even if it would prefer that Israel mitigate its behavior. . . .
This region remains of paramount importance to the U.S. empire. It is still the source of much of the world’s petroleum, both flowing and unexplored. Yemen is thought to contain the world’s greatest unexplored oil deposits. The shipping lanes through the Red Sea and Persian Gulf … are vital. 20 percent of the world’s petroleum passes through the Persian Gulf. 40 percent of all Asia to Europe trade passes through the Suez Canal, including 12 percent of all international trade, 12 percent of seaborne oil, and 8 percent of liquefied gas …
In the overall picture of inter-imperialist rivalry, China is the biggest competitor of the U.S. China now gets 40 percent of its oil from the Gulf and is Iran’s biggest customer, invests in Saudi energy, and has interest in building a pipeline through Iran. … China is massively extending its worldwide influence through the Belt and Road initiative to boost trade, diplomatic relations and exports. Its worldwide meeting in 2023 involved 0ver 130 countries, including Egypt, and 18 other countries in the Middle East and North Africa. . .
The question is what can we do…We must organize our fellow students and workers to fight against imperialist wars, against racism, against deficiencies in social services. That could mean professional society resolutions, bans on investments or military support by universities, fighting racism and police brutality, demanding better wages and social services – in whatever way we can unite, build leadership from below, expose the nature of capitalism and ready ourselves to lead the eventual struggle to end capitalism, with our fellow students and workers around the world. We have many ongoing and recent struggles to inspire us and a world that needs to be won
