Three comrades attended the XXVI International Democratic, Anti-fascist and Anti-Imperialist Youth Camp held in Mexico City from July 31st to August 5th of this year.  They made the following presentation on behalf of the American Party of Labor:

Good morning, comrades! The fight against imperialism and for social emancipation takes on a special character in the heart of the leading imperialist country in the world, deeply entrenched in growing militarism. The national crises involving rising fascism, xenophobic immigration policies, police brutality, women’s rights, and many more, are all intimately related to the United States’ imperialist history and present. The solutions lie in continuing to build an authentic socialist movement which exposes Chinese and Russian imperialist efforts abroad, alongside its struggle against United States’. It is these topics—rising fascism, Russian imperialism and Chinese social imperialism abroad and its support within the American left, and the nature of militarism in the political culture of the United States—that we will be discussing today. These questions are increasingly important in our fast developing era, in which U.S. imperialism is shifting on a seemingly daily basis with new tariffs against China, warmer relations with Russia, and a growing rivalry with the EU.

First, there is no question that U.S. imperialism is the leading imperialist power on the planet, and has now begun its inevitable march toward fascism. The latent fascism in society has been provoked by the victory of Trump, and soon the far-right in our country will control all three branches of government. Recent legislation against labor unions and the images of separation of immigrant families, which shocked the world, attest to this. Amid mass protest and horror, the Trump regime passed an executive order claiming to stop the policy, but in reality only paved the way for families to be detained indefinitely together. U.S. aggression continues abroad with its wars in Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria, and its backing of the Saudi genocide in Yemen. Meanwhile at home fascist terror has begun, with the police murdering without accountability, the military being given a $700 billion budget while underemployment skyrockets, systemic racial discrimination goes unchecked, the gap widens between the rich and poor, and serious infringement of civil and voting rights have meant the curtailing of U.S-style democracy. The American Party of Labor stands against fascism in all its forms, against the Trump regime, and upholds the line, “No Platform for Fascists!” We state our full commitment to the popular struggle against fascism, reaction, national oppression, police murder, and poverty, and stand with the working classes of other countries exploited by U.S. imperialism in this way.

Chinese social-imperialism is also on the march in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, opening its first foreign naval base in Djibouti last year and now annexing territory from Sri Lanka in order to secure payment of its debts. China continued to ensnare other countries in Asia, Latin America, and Africa through debt-trap imperialism, plundering their natural resources, crushing workers’ rights, and arming reactionary regimes, all the while posing as the “great liberator” of oppressed nations. The peoples of the world know that capitalism is being built in China, not socialism. The reforms initiated by Deng Xiaoping were never intended as temporary concessions but as a permanent shift back to capitalism, which has long since become fully re-established in all but name, as over a billion people continue to suffer in conditions comparable to those in other capitalist countries. In his new year’s speech, Xi Jinping pledged his commitment to Deng’s reforms, and as we speak, he is travelling through the Middle-East and Africa, signing new trade deals, and even signing a lucrative deal with Israel. Many Marxist-Leninist parties in the United States still maintain support for China and Russia as counter-measures to U.S. imperialism, but the American Party of Labor, given the information highlighted here, stands opposed to all imperialism, including Chinese social-imperialism, and Russian imperialism.

Adding to the confusion among the North American ‘Left’; Russia poses as an anti-imperialist power even as it practices imperialism itself, intervening in the conflicts in Syria and the Ukraine. Backing the Assad regime against the heroic Kurdish struggle; acting in the false name of fighting ISIS. Waging a proxy war in eastern Ukraine, following their illegal military annexation of Crimea – mercilessly invading and acting as though they are a savior, inflating their own violent nationalism. Russia also extends its reach by backing far-right parties and candidates in European countries, like Marine Le Pen and her National Front Party in France, Jobbik in Hungary, Golden Dawn in Greece, the Freedom Party in Austria and others. All in hopes of destabilizing the countries to bring more autocratic right-wing regimes sympathetic to Moscow to power. The American Party of Labor stands in unflinching solidarity with the rights of those nations oppressed by American, European, Chinese, and Russian imperialism.

The way U.S. imperialism asserts itself at home is particularly insidious, mainly through ever-increasing militarism that seeks to trivialize all social protest and movements for emancipation to a question of supporting the military industrial complex. Since the Reagan era, the military has become popularly off limits to criticism as an effect from the swelling nationalism, it’s a revered third position in the United States. “I don’t support the war, but I support the troops” has become the common way of stating “My country, right or wrong.” The decidedly toxic trend of paying tribute to the military in every possible facet of consumerism and pop culture is rampant; this pro-military sentiment is frequently used to marginalize any modes of resistance. As “Americans” we cannot go to a sporting event, even at our colleges, without being pressured into supporting soldiers, the wars they fight in, and the corporations that profit from them. A humble high school football game often features a pep rally and words from a ‘veteran’ of imperialist wars. A display of patriotism is demanded of anyone who would so much as enter a gas station, or turn on a radio. If we are to fight imperialism abroad as American Communists, we must attack militarism at home, and fight to establish the notion that many soldiers are exploited working class people, coerced into service for advertised benefits such as free higher education; while others are arch-reactionary fascists who revel in not only the militarism, but the blatant atrocity; as we saw many times in Iraq and Afghanistan – it is our task to raise understanding that not all soldiers are heroes – the workers are who earned celebration, and only incidentally alongside military endeavors. And above all, in the words of Sartre, and as confirmed by the experience of people in the United States since Vietnam: “When the rich make war, it’s the poor that die.”

To finish up, comrades, communists in the U.S. are tremendously inspired by the struggles against U.S. imperialism across Latin America, Southeast Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and beyond. Our fight against all kinds of imperialism plays a central role in our organizing, and as with so much of our other work as communists, we understand that only a socialist revolution in the United States can truly rid the world of the blight of U.S. imperialism—and only an international socialist movement bound by international solidarity, the kind which are building in this very room, can rid the world of imperialism of all kinds. Solidarity to all youth and university students fighting against imperialism and fascist brutality, solidarity to all currently engaged in anti-imperialist struggles from Kurdistan to the Philippines, and towards the democratization and equal access of our schools and workplaces for all working people.

All Power To Working People!

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