The post-Covid generation’s break from Kamala Harris over Gaza must precipitate a break from AOC over all of her pro-imperialist positions. Waging this ideological struggle is critical to defending Palestine, Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, and all other places whose people are under attack from Washington’s expanding aggressions. It’s how we defeat a psyop that the ruling class views as critical towards enabling this offensive; the psyop where the Democratic Party plans to sell AOC, or some other faux-radical candidate, as the leader who’s supposedly broken from the Biden administration’s genocidal legacy.
It isn’t too difficult to expose AOC over the most obvious ways she’s harmed international solidarity. AOC’s complicity in the Iron Dome, and loyalty to the Democratic candidates who’ve directly perpetuated Gaza’s holocaust, are things that can easily shake the trust of the average Gen Z member. The post-Covid generation have already advanced in consciousness to the point where they reject “progressive” Zionism’s insidious rationalizations, where someone can claim to be pro-Palestine while still supporting “defense” against Palestinian “terrorism.” Two-thirds of Gen Z support Hamas over the Zionist occupier, which is why the architects of Zionist manipulation have decided they need to give up the pretense of democracy.
The Heritage Foundation’s plan to purge institutions of pro-Palestine individuals is what will win out within ruling-class politics; the purpose AOC serves is to lead the pro-Palestine movement into a dead-end. The way we rescue the movement from this trap is by both combating the justifications for “soft” Zionism, and bringing the discourse towards solidarity with the other peoples Washington seeks to crush.
Something Marxists can contribute within this discourse is a defense of socialist Korea, the country that’s done the most to assist Palestine’s liberation struggle. We must show how the DPRK’s economic system is not the backward kleptocracy that the social fascists portray it as. In reality, this system is the Korean people’s means for self-defense against the starvation sanctions that Washington is subjecting many other countries to, and that the DPRK used to be much more severely impacted by.
Since the brutal shock that came with losing the Soviet Union’s assistance, the DPRK has carried out development that is spectacular. The DPRK ally Dermot Hudson reported about these achievements this year:
Rather than “everyone starving,” we saw no homeless or beggars on the streets and the guide for another delegation said that people received free housing and food that only costs 30 cents per month. Now the construction of the 4th stage of Hwasong Street is under way; I saw it with my own eyes. This rapid development is being carried out under conditions of intense sanctions by the imperialists as well as natural disasters and the DPRK’s border being closed for four years due to the global health crisis. It is a miracle of self-reliance and shows what a socialist country can do when it relies on its own resources and believes in itself…In recent years a new trope of anti-DPRK propaganda has emerged, namely, that the DPRK “abandoned Marxism-Leninism” or “deleted reference to Marxism-Leninism” but clearly, from what we saw, such assertions did not fit reality. Based on what I saw with my own eyes in the DPRK, the sanctions policy of the U.S. and its allies is a flop, a pathetic failure.
Resources like this one are so important to bring into the conversation around AOC because even though AOC’s hypocrisy is obvious, the false “socialism” that AOC represents depends on ignorance about these realities. It depends on the success of narratives like “the DPRK has abandoned socialism,” which are there to keep the people in the dark about what socialism actually means and who our true allies are as workers. For our purposes as international solidarity organizers in America, combating these myths is one of the most important things we can do.
When we defeat the anti-DPRK propaganda, the Uyghur genocide lie, and the other psychological weapons of communism’s enemies, we’ll be in place to take our solidarity movements to the next phase. A phase where we’ve escaped the cycle of stagnation and burnout that’s afflicted our movements for so many decades.
The pro-Palestine movement has thus far failed to stop Gaza’s holocaust for the same reason that America’s left has long been trapped in inertia. Part of this failure comes from lack of consistent solidarity; for instance, the bulk of the left “supports” Palestine, yet is against Palestine’s greatest ally the DPRK. There has been a deeper reason for the inertia, though, which is that up until very recently American “socialism” was really just talk. There have been plenty of figures and orgs that claim the “socialist” label, but they haven’t had the will or the means to take on a real role within the global class war. Then in 2022, when Russia launched its intervention to stop Kiev’s genocide against the Donbass, these forces came across an actual opportunity to test their aptitude within the historical struggle.
The initial test was about whether you, as a socialist, were willing to get behind this new anti-fascist war. And this test has remained relevant, but it’s since become just one part of a larger test, made more demanding due to the accelerated geopolitical developments we’ve experienced in recent years. Russia’s action helped inspire Palestine’s resistance to launch the Al Aqsa Flood operation. This victory for the liberation forces, and the U.S. empire’s genocidal response to it, demanded that we all keep Palestine solidarity at the core of our practice. Which would prove to be a challenge, because there have been numerous opportunistic forces which seek to lead us away from focusing on the genocide. There’s been Trump 2.0, with its false promises of “peace deals,” as well as social democracy, with its lies about being able to defeat the Zionist establishment through reforms.
Social democracy can’t defeat Zionism because it’s a Zionist tendency itself. This is the contradiction that Gen Z are encountering when it comes to AOC, and now Mamdani: no path within the Democratic Party can offer an authentic anti-Zionist politics, because the Democratic Party is where movements go to die. The next step is to discover what real socialist politics look like, as demonstrated by China, the DPRK, and the other existing or historic workers states; as well as understand the why behind the achievements of these socialist projects. They’ve succeeded in lifting up the living standards of their people because of popular struggle, combined with a commitment to investigating reality and testing out social practice. This is the essence of dialectical materialism.
The growing attention upon Cuba, prompted by Washington’s genocidal starvation campaign against it, can serve as a way to familiarize Americans with the dialectical model behind Cuba’s governance. And such mass education will be able to rescue Cuba’s people, if we do our utmost to organize these Americans towards sabotaging the blockade. Key to doing so is seeing how we got to this point in history, and what exactly the role of the working-class movement must be under today’s circumstances.
Washington has taken the blockade this far because it’s gotten away with so much in Gaza, it’s decided to start applying the same policy of “submit or starve” to every other people who it can starve. Cuba isn’t yet in position to circumvent the effects of Washington’s economic warfare like the DPRK can. But it will become that strong, as will Palestine and all other imperial victims, when the revolutionary struggle has advanced enough. As Americans, our part in this right now is to break the power of the social fascists, and bring millions into a version of the communist movement which understands its role within the global conflict that’s taking place.
It is looking like the next phase in this conflict will be for Washington to start war with Iran. When this happens, the only way forward for our movement will be to connect with the wide range of Americans who’ve already turned against the deep state, and will be radicalized by the next big war. We must build a coalition between the disillusioned Gen Z socialists, the disillusioned MAGA supporters, and the others who seek an end to their government’s offensive. This is the mandate history has given us.
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