The majority of the people within the imperial center have become opposed towards what “Israel” is doing. Surveys began showing most U.S. citizens to be against the Zionist state’s actions months ago, and with Zionism’s latest war crime, the public’s hostility towards “Israel” can only grow. Everyone besides the most heartless and dishonest partisans for Zionism recognize that this week’s bombing of Rafah civilians was indefensible, because the video evidence of the horror is right there for all to see. The rage against the evils of the “Israeli” colonial project has reached its widest extent yet, and I don’t believe it’s peaked, because Washington is determined to allow the settler state to continue these atrocities. The question is whether we’ll be able to navigate our conditions so that the tacit enablers of the genocide, who actually quite outnumber the hardcore bloodthirsty fanatics, can keep letting the fanatics slaughter Palestinians.
Our task of seizing control from the enablers depends on expanding the amount of people who’ve advanced beyond the stage of merely hating what “Israel” is doing, or of merely supporting Palestine. To overcome Zionism’s institutional power, we have to strike against the broader system which Zionism is based within: imperialism. And to strike against imperialism, we must deepen the consciousness of these social elements which have begun to understand how vile U.S. foreign policy is. We have to bring the antiwar-minded individuals towards supporting Palestine in particular, as well as towards supporting the wider anti-imperialist struggle.
This need to educationally lift up the masses applies to every part of our struggle. Wrote Lenin: “every effort must be made to raise the level of the consciousness of the workers in general; it is necessary that the workers do not confine themselves to the artificially restricted limits of ‘literature for workers’ but that they learn to an increasing degree to master general literature. It would be even truer to say ‘are not confined’, instead of ‘do not confine themselves’, because the workers themselves wish to read and do read all that is written for the intelligentsia, and only a few (bad) intellectuals believe that it is enough ‘for workers’ to be told a few things about factory conditions and to have repeated to them over and over again what has long been known.’”
We can’t give absolutely everyone a comprehensive revolutionary education until after we’ve overthrown the capitalist state. What we can do at this stage, though, is expand the number of Palestine supporters, while furthering their knowledge so they can advance the fight against U.S. hegemony. This means taking the pro-Palestine struggle to a stage beyond the one it’s in at this moment, where it’s overwhelmingly concentrated within the students and the established leftist groups.
The next stage is one where the struggle has come to be primarily based within the wider working class, as the struggle will be diverse enough that it no longer relies upon students or the preexisting activist circles. This stage will also have to involve these Palestine supporters coming to support not just Palestine, but also Iran, China, Russia, and the other forces which are weakening Washington’s global hold.
To carry out such a mass educational project, we’ll need to bring our outreach efforts into the biggest parts of the masses which share anti-imperialist impulses. Leftists are just one of these elements, and many leftists are obstinately hostile towards the counter-hegemonic actions Washington’s challengers are carrying out. Libertarians and MAGA represent much larger elements than the ones the established left orgs represent, and there’s evidence that these conservative-leaning types are willing to oppose wars even when Trump is the one carrying them out. These antiwar-minded constituencies are important to reach, because they’re some of the biggest elements that have already developed a proto anti-imperialist consciousness.
This doesn’t mean we need to forsake all efforts at reaching Democrats who are against the “Israel” proxy war, because Democrat voters have been shown to be against the genocide in the highest numbers. It means we need to think bigger than appealing to liberals, and not compromise on anti-imperialism just to win over the liberals who’ve invested in Russiagate. No Palestine supporter should disavow Russia’s anti-fascist Ukraine action just because they’re worried this will alienate a Democrat.
Escaping the confines of left-liberalism enables us to also reach an even larger demographic: politically unaffiliated Americans, who represent the country’s largest ideological group by default. There’s a reason why “didn’t vote” is the candidate that massively wins every U.S. presidential election: a plurality of the country’s workers are too alienated from their government to feel like engaging in politics is worth their time. The only way they’ll ever become politically active is if somebody presents them with a way to advance their material interests. Which is why though plenty of them are already disgusted by the Zionist state’s actions, they can’t simply be brought into the struggle by showing them evidence of Zionist crimes.
Such righteous moral appeals are enough to mobilize students, but these non-student workers are operating under different circumstances which are conducive to different motivations. Even though most of them don’t like what “Israel” is doing, they won’t join a revolt until it’s clear this revolt is capable of defeating their class enemies. The way to mobilize them is by presenting this issue as not just a fight for liberation by a colonized people; but also as a fight between the USA’s workers, and a ruling class that’s sacrificing the wellbeing of working families for unjustifiable wars.
Students have always been especially compelled to action by moral arguments; they were among the main ones who sacrificed themselves to combat the war effort in Vietnam at a time when the U.S. labor aristocracy was still massive, and most Americans were too comfortable to want to revolt. Unsurprisingly, the students have manifested the initial stage of the pro-Palestine struggle. But under today’s conditions, where the labor aristocracy has greatly shrunk and most Americans now have a class interest in proletarian revolution, we have an opportunity to mobilize the wider masses as well.
To do this, we need to fuse the pro-Palestine struggle with the class struggle. The synthesis between the two is the wider anti-imperialist struggle, which encompasses both the fight by oppressed peoples abroad and our own fight against the USA’s capitalist dictatorship. Wrote Gus Hall on why the opportunists within the left oppose effective strategies like this one: “The very essence of capitalism is class exploitation. It is exploitation of people, again in mass. The essence of any struggle is the class struggle. The central moving force is the exploited class–the working class. Concepts of struggle not based on the above reality will sooner or later come into conflict with it. The advocates of petty-bourgeois radicalism try to by-pass this reality. They believe they can avoid the necessary and unavoidable consistent and sustained work, the work of organizing, educating, mobilizing and leading people in mass, of leading people on the level of their understanding, of their own self-interest, and in this sense reflecting the objective processes leading to a revolutionary struggle against capitalism.”
This is the reality we need to take into account while we try to expand the participants in the anti-Zionist cause. The vast majority of the people are not students, and therefore won’t be persuaded to take action through the same messages which have persuaded the students to do so. An analysis of the settler-colonial situation within Palestine, and efforts to raise awareness of Zionism’s crimes, are of course essential. They’re not all we must put forth, though, if we want to win this fight. We have to also show the workers why it’s in their interests to join this struggle. Which means making the antiwar alliances necessary for gaining access to these broader masses, and presenting these masses with an analysis on how the imperialist system is harming them.
————————————————————————
If you appreciate my work, I hope you become a one-time or regular donor to my Patreon account. Like most of us, I’m feeling the economic pressures amid late-stage capitalism, and I need money to keep fighting for a new system that works for all of us. Go to my Patreon here.
To keep this platform effective amid the censorship against dissenting voices, join my Telegram channel.
