Hello comrades. To preface my question, first let me give some brief context as to what led me here. I have been doing lots of reading of newer and older texts ranging from classic theory, history, civil rights, etc etc, in preparation for a book I intend to write in the future. However, as I have grown a bit tired of blowing through dense economic texts and academic material, I decided to try and find some communist newspapers to subscribe to and receive and read in the mail as a more of a literary appetizer and to see what said organizations have to say about modern happenings. I have become aware of Peace Land and Bread by Iskra(https://www.peacelandbread.org/journal), but the only other ones I see that aren’t digital only are two sources. That being Socialist Revolution (https://socialistrevolution.org/) and The Militant (https://themilitant.com/) However I have noticed something worrying about The Militant. I did some light googling, found they have been around a long time, and are a Trotskyist paper.
While I myself am not a Trotskyist, I still value other opinions from comrades and wanted to receive as wide of range of leftist reporting as possible. However I noticed their newest publications seem VERY pro Isreal and anti Palestinian liberation. This is confusing to me for what I think are obvious reasons. However I did some googling to see what their views were when you turn back the clock. This is a source from their page published in Oct 30th, 2000. (https://www.themilitant.com/2000/6441/index.shtml) Here, they are talking about the Palestinian struggle in a way that is a stark difference from their new stuff that seems aggressively pro Isreal.
My question has two parts. 1. What happened to the militant between 2000 and 2023? 2. What in the hell makes a COMMUNIST NEWSPAPER PRO ISREAL? Is there some sect of socialist thought I am unaware of that is somehow pro isreal? If so, why? What is going through their heads? What’s the thought process? I know many westerners struggle separating anti-Zionism with antisemitism in their heads, (which is a whole other mind numbing conversation) but I was under the OBVIOUSLY mistaken impression that Marxist are generally able to comprehend these kinds of socioeconomic nuances. I’m not sure how well known these papers are in the modern era, but that’s why I am reaching out and posting this as many places of relevance I can. Somewhere, is some nerd that knows much, much more about socialist print history, the people behind them, and that whole specific ‘scene’ that just hasn’t come up yet in my current state of research/education. So, if that fellow nerd is out there, I would love some in-depth explanations on this phenomenon.
As for everyone else, I ask everyone to see what we can find about the MODERN people currently running the Militant, as that information is surprisingly hard to come by. I may be bad at ‘googling,’ but this seems very evasive which tends to raise my brow. I feel this could be an important problem for us to pay attention to as communist, for if this is a recent trend, or imperial propaganda is out right taking over socialist and communist outlets, which given the history of The Militant, makes me worry. They have been historically targeted by COINTELPRO and harassed, infiltrated, and so on and so on, the things we all know happened in that era. It could just be a stray string of renegade marxism, or, if it IS an intelligence operation, we need to know. With the rise of anti-isreal sentiment in America, the rise of leftism as well, it seems like something certain 3 letter agencies would be motivated to squash. I should also mention, I am not a ‘conspiratorial’ person, I find the trend of conspiracy in America to be dangerous and actively undermining our ‘democracy.’ This change in rhetoric is proof of nothing more than something, sometime, changed. It is up to us marxist to find out what, and how this happened. Thank you for your time comrades.
From what I understand of Trotskyist theory, Palestinian resistance seems like something their doctrine would HIGHLY support, even more so than ‘Stalinists’ or other Marxists, because of their ‘endless revolution’ line. That’s kind of their whole thing, pretty central to trotskyists, their interpretation of endless revolution. Also to clarify, I am not trotskyist, but I did do some digging into it and into their own talking points, interpretations, and conclusions. I feel understanding most doctrines fairly in depth is important.
This point here, that from what I understand of Trotskyist theory, one of the longest standing trotskyist-communist newspapers in the U.S, with a history of being mostly based, becoming targeted by COINTELPRO itself, that this swing to a pro zionist stance is especially contrarian to their interpretation of theory. As a matter of fact, from what I’ve seen, it seems counter to the very most central parts of their theory. This is what strikes me as especially strange.
At the end of the day for most political organizations doctrine and theory matters less than the bias of the members and the org’s overall geopolitical alignment. So while it may seem confusing when you try and make sense of the contradiction between actions and theory, this contradiction gets resolved when you understand what their real allegiance and purpose is. And the nature of Trotskyism, regardless of the sincere beliefs of some of its adherents to the contrary, is ultimately counter-revolutionary.
You may need to search or ask for a theory deep dive into Trotskyism to fully understand this rather large and complex topic, but i think the place for that is a theory com like GenZhou.
Trotskyites believe in two major things:
1: “real” socialism has never been tried (that would be Trotskyism that they consider the “real” socialism)
2: Stalin is the worst person ever and perverted the true ideals of socialism. They will happily accept any US/CIA claims about him (and about other socialist leaders too) in order to reinforce this idea.
Trots are idealist. It doesn’t matter what kind of theory they believe in. As idealists, they are “correct” and material reality is “incorrect” therefore they can twist their ideas to support anything they want, as their ideas do not rely on material reality. This makes them incredibly easy to manipulate and infiltrate, which is why trot orgs tend to be amongst the longest lasting and most influential communist orgs in the west, because they are ineffectual idealists.