The Center For Political Innovation would like to extend its resolute and unshakeable solidarity to our comrades in the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) and condemn the brutal attacks they have faced at the hands of the British state, simply for standing with the people of Palestine. 

As the whole world stares in shock and horror at the crimes of US Imperialism’s puppet state in Tel Aviv, the junior imperialists in London want to make it clear exactly whose interests they represent. The very same people who cloak their bloodlust in the language of “human rights,” and “western values” when confronted with the reality that the people of Britain, indeed have a conscience, and will not sit idly by as their government enables a genocide against the Palestinian people, can respond only with a ridiculous crackdown on freedom of speech.

These attacks began just one week before our own National Convention, when on November 25th,  comrades from the CPGB-ML including Ranjeet Brar were placed under arrest for distributing anti-Zionist literature, under the pretense that Zionism: A Racist, Anti-Semetic Tool of Imperialism, is hate speech, and its distribution tantamount to an “incitement of racial hatred”. Before they could be released on bail, the homes of those arrested were raided, with police seizing various electronics, records and literature.  These attacks escalated, when members of the CPGB-ML attended a demonstration in solidarity with the Palestinian and Yemeni people in London. They were again arrested this time justified on “anti-terrorism” legislation and again their homes were raided.

Imperialism in Decay

This sort of behavior by London represents a trend of outlandish response on behalf of Western Imperialism, towards the blowback from their own social engineering. To help establish a pattern of behavior we might find another example in the treatment of the People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement here at home. The treatment of the Black community in the United States, and in particular, the racist attitudes and brutality of our policing system, have long been a fringe issue in mainstream political culture. For years police brutality was discussed only among communist circles, and of course in the communities affected by it. If you were to ask the average American about the existence of racial discrimination in policing, or police brutality in general, they would likely brush it off as a non-issue. 

But beginning in 2014, protests and riots sparked by the killing of Michael Brown erupted in Ferguson, Missouri. This moment is seen by many as the “push,” that allowed for the growth of what we now know as the Black Lives Matter movement. Like many color revolutions, the ruling class gave expression to a real frustration, in a manner that could be easily manipulated through apparatus like social media towards their own ends.  During the Obama administration Black Lives Matter existed as a pressure valve, for the black community, that could steer young radicals frustrated with their mistreatment at the hands of the capitalist state, towards meaningless twitter hashtags and milk-toast liberal intellectuals like Dr. Cornel West. 

But the face of Black Lives Matter began to change in the transition between the Obama administration and the Trump administration. Between 2016 and 2019 an alarming number of working class organizers, known for their participation in the uprisings in Ferguson began to meet untimely ends, in strange ways. Darren Seals for example was shot, and then placed in a burning car in 2016. And in 2019 four other prominent activists were found dead, in cases that were ruled by local authorities to be suicides. Slowly what surely what we now know as Black Lives Matter Incorporated, began to form. This time the anger and frustration of the black community was to be directed towards driving out the Trump administration. And their consciousness was to be filtered through an endless string of NGOs focused more on combating “white skin privilege” than any meaningful attempt at alleviating the suffering of black Americans. 

But amidst all the looting and destruction. All the anger and frustration being consciously manipulated by intelligence, there was the People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement or InPDUM. InPDUM, an organization founded in 1991, takes up the legacy of people like Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton or Fred Hampton. That is, an expression of the black liberation movement tied to the building of community and “dual and contending power,” that empowers ordinary people to understand their place in a broader working class struggle. Where BLM inc. offers a place to vent anger and confusion, InPDUM offers a clear ideology, that both exposes the root of the problem and gives people something tangible, constructive and actionable. InPDUM played precisely the role a communist should during such an uprising. A communist with their revolutionary ideology provides a scientific understanding that can give expression to the frustrations of the masses in a manner that is productive and emboldens them to begin the process of struggle.

It is precisely this sort of progressive consciousness that is so dangerous to the ruling class. In order for their color revolutions to be successful they must be an expression of genuine frustration. But if the working class movement is able to give consciousness to this frustration and direct it towards something productive they risk their hold on power. This risk in combination with the grudge that the Obama wing of the State Dept. likely has on Uhuru for interrupting his rally in St Petersburg, Florida resulted in the backlash they received. In July of 2022, their homes were raided and much of their leadership charged with being “Russian Agents”.

The Tides Turn on Israel

With this in mind we can begin to think about the situation in Palestine. For years, the existence of the State of Israel and its position as the sugar baby of US Imperialism was never held in question by the majority of the US population. In communist circles, certain segments of the black community, and Muslim Americans, you might hear murmurs of Israel’s crimes, but to the majority of Americans such talk was simply anti-semitism.  Israel was after all a shining beacon of democracy amongst a hoard of oriental despots in the middle east.  But this began to change and to understand why it takes a little understanding of the different faces of Zionism in Israel. We can divide Zionism into two camps. On the one hand you have the hardliners represented by people like Benjamin Netanyahu. This camp tends to be far more militaristic, they commonly make openly racist statements about the Palestinian people, and tend to believe that Israel would be better off without the US “holding them back” so to speak. In their mind the colonial project of Israel is not able to be as genocidal as they would like because they are still to some degree or other dependent on the US. On the other hand we have what we might call “moderate Zionism,” which tends to represent the majority of zionists, in the first place. While this faction does believe in Israel’s right to exist, and though they may even advocate further expansion of settlements, their chauvinism towards Arabs is often shrouded in paternalistic language, and a strange victim complex. In their mind, the genocide of the Palestinian people, is not an end in and of itself, its a necessary evil to shield Jewish people from the rest of the world, that all secretly want to kill them. 

In 2021, we began to see similar rumblings as to what happened in 2014 for police brutality, and for the issue of Palestine. Suddenly it became acceptable, encouraged in fact, to stand with the Palestinian people, and mainstream outlets that would previously have heaped scorn on Pro-Palestine rallies were suddenly lauding them, as heroes standing for the oppressed. This of course, corresponded to protests on behalf of the moderate wing of Zionism against, as Netanyahu’s right wing faction struggled to form a government, in the elections of that year. This provided an opportunity for US Imperialism to drive out the hardline faction, that put simply, makes them look bad. American Imperialism needs a foothold in the middle east from which to operate, and to attempt to keep control of the region. In the words of President Joe Biden “If Israel didn’t exist, we’d have to invent one,” but the country that dresses its aggression in the language of freedom and democracy can’t exactly have its military outpost be the most openly genocidal regimes on the face of the planet. It’s simply bad PR, so intelligence began to foster these types of protests, again giving expression to a real injustice, in a manner that can be controlled and manipulated.

Fast forward to 2023 and we see this cultivated consciousness begin to backfire. The attacks by Hamas on October 7th, dealt a serious moral blow to the Israeli puppet state, and their subsequent response left the whole world horrified. In this situation, where US Imperialism is vulnerable, they needed to be able to rely on their foot soldiers to stabilize society, but a terrible miscalculation was made. Just two years earlier they had mobilized, the very same people, who are now needed to defend Israel, in their color revolution to overthrow Netanyahu. Though these people were misguided, and likely saw the conflict as no more than a hashtag to virtue signal with, the broad masses of the people, stood up and begged their government to stop funding Israel’s crimes. Moreover a small communist group, called the CPGB-ML appeared at rallies in Britain, lending the frustration of the masses a scientific character with their revolutionary ideology. Should these people however hyped up and misguided acquire a scientific understanding, should they develop consciousness. And should that consciousness be given a productive expression by a revolutionary organization, it would spell the end of the British State, and so their response was a knee-jerk crackdown. 

These types of outlandish responses by both the British and American states, in response to their own failures, should obviously be opposed. These crackdowns on speech and assembly are disgusting displays of who actually hold the power in Western democracies, and who our governments are truly accountable to. But the fact that the powers that be deem such attacks prudent in the first place exposes a profound weakness. More and more the ruling class, are losing control of their instruments of control and small groups like InPDUM and the CPGB-ML are able to lend conscious expression to the frustrations of ordinary people. Ordinary people are fed up with the direction of the country, with the prolonged crisis of overproduction capitalist society has faced since the 2008. Every disproportionate crackdown represents a chink in the armor; reveals slowly the imperialist state to be a cornered animal lashing out at whatever it can reach. At the same time we must stand in solidarity with those who have been attacked we must also recognize the growing reality of the impending victory of progressive forces. We should follow the examples of both these organizations currently under attack, dare the people to rise in struggle and fight for their rights. Dare the people to win. 

Read the report from CPGB-ML here.