Above: in 2024, protesters shame AOC for the “antisemitism” panel where she affirmed rhetoric vilifying the boycott of pro-Israel institutions.
Among the most important tasks for today’s American Marxists is to expose AOC as a tool for capital before she can rebrand U.S. imperialism as “progressive.” If the “democratic socialist” wing of the Democratic Party replaces the present regime, the anti-imperialist cause will be dealing with a threat that’s more dangerous than the Zionist right, or the neoliberal wing of the Democrats. The socdems pose such a unique threat because they’re willing to center their platforms around economic populism, and thereby draw a large proportion of the workers into pro-imperialist ideology. They’re the force within ruling-class politics that offers the American people substantial social benefits, which at this stage is something which will attract U.S. workers from all across the ideological spectrum.
We have yet to see whether the socdem wing will succeed in rebuilding the American aristocracy of labor, or merely serve as a tool for falsely promising the people such living standard improvements. Whether they do rebuild the labor aristocracy may depend on whether they can sell AOC, who as of now has no peer which could be the socdem candidate for 2028. The socdems may try to run someone like Zohran for the presidency at a later time, but it’s best that we focus on the most urgent battles. And one of these battles is the fight against pro-AOC Zionist whitewashing; against the effort to convince Gen Z, which just turned against the Democrats for the Gaza genocide, that AOC represents a turn towards anti-Zionism.
Part of how we discredit this narrative is by clarifying Zionism’s true meaning. Zionism is not a vibe; it’s not “being outwardly racist towards Arabs,” like false Palestine allies treat it as being. Zionism is the position that Jewish people should have a state of their own, which always and necessarily equates to supporting racial supremacy. This is why Zohran is a Zionist for taking the position that so-called “Israel” should continue to exist, and it’s why AOC is a Zionist as well. When these leaders have refused to side with the struggle for decolonizing Palestine, it follows that they’ll side with the Zionist project whenever they’re met with the most critical choices on Palestine.
AOC has revealed this by stating that even though she won’t vote for the Iron Dome funding bill, this is only because that particular bill isn’t necessary to fund Israel’s “defense,” which is covered by preexisting U.S. foreign aid policies. Every sign indicates that a president AOC would keep backing the project to colonize Palestine. The problem we are facing with AOC is that within the left, we have a large element which is willing to rationalize this.
The arguing strategy from this obstinate pro-AOC camp is to repeat AOC’s pro-Zionist statements, wherein she’s justified the Iron Dome as being morally imperative for defending innocent civilians. We know that AOC will never be brought away from this pro-Zionist framework, because the best that pro-Palestine activists have been able to do with AOC is pressure her towards not assisting in the Iron Dome at this particular time. No one who seeks the Democratic Party’s support will break from the positions that “Israel” needs to be defended, that the Palestinian resistance needs to be fought, and that the settlers surrounding Gaza are “innocent” actors.
The opportunism of AOC and these other “progressives” couldn’t be more obvious, but there is a section of the left that doesn’t care about this opportunism. And this part of the population is apathetic towards socdem opportunism for a very troubling reason: they’re willing to support imperialism in exchange for the material relief that socdems would bring them.
Decline in living standards does not necessarily bring someone towards revolutionary consciousness. When the bourgeoisie offer a struggling individual a way out of their hardship, and the working-class movement doesn’t offer them an alternative, the logical outcome is that they’ll take a reactionary path. And many within Gen Z have the potential to fall down such a path.
Gen Z, as a rule, tends not to care about idealistic concepts in the ways that past generations do. A generation that was raised after the 2008 depression, and came of after during Covid, is not going to be compelled by the intentions behind what somebody is doing; what they’re concerned with are the material results.
For one example of what this looks like: Gen Z’s materialism has translated to a part of our generation being apathetic about climate politics, which doesn’t offer them the immediate material relief that they’re looking for. The Gen Z-ers who were part of the original 2010s teen climate movement, and who continued to believe in the cause, have since escaped the pro-imperialist liberal idealism which had tricked them in the past. Greta Thunberg’s refocusing towards Gaza represents the revolutionary advancement that this minority within Gen Z have undergone. Most of Gen Z, though, are still in danger of being either driven towards apathy or brought to a pro-imperialist position. And the way that our ruling class could turn them pro-imperialist, even though Gen Z has become radicalized on Palestine, is by using Palestine as a tool to advance Washington’s wars. By cultivating a “pro-Palestine” politics that analogizes Palestinians to Ukrainians, Uyghurs, and every other people who the U.S. weaponizes against its targets.
The perfect way for the ruling class to bring Gen Z to this place would be by turning the majority of them into labor aristocrats. This is the most rational path for the capitalists to take. However, we can’t yet be sure if the capitalists will act in such a rational way. In the absence of being able to predict things to that extent, we must look to what history has already taught us. One of these lessons is that when we go beyond the most privileged strata, and build our organizational presence into the deeper mass elements, we’ll succeed. This is apparent from how the Bolsheviks followed such a route, as explained by Lenin:
Neither we nor anyone else can calculate precisely what portion of the proletariat is following and will follow the social-chauvinists and opportunists. This will be revealed only by the struggle, it will be definitely decided only by the socialist revolution. But we know for certain that the “defenders of the fatherland” in the imperialist war represent only a minority. And it is therefore our duty, if we wish to remain socialists to go down lower and deeper, to the real masses; this is the whole meaning and the whole purport of the struggle against opportunism. By exposing the fact that the opportunists and social-chauvinists are in reality betraying and selling the interests of the masses, that they are defending the temporary privileges of a minority of the workers, that they are the vehicles of bourgeois ideas and influences, that they are really allies and agents of the bourgeoisie, we teach the masses to appreciate their true political interests, to fight for socialism and for the revolution through all the long and painful vicissitudes of imperialist wars and imperialist armistices.
The secondary danger posed by the socdems is that through bribing more Americans into becoming pro-imperialist, they’ll drive anti-imperialists into ultra-leftism, and instill in them an attitude of hostility towards the masses. We can avoid such a direction for our movement by going lower and deeper into the masses, and by doing it right now. Not by waiting for a future time where the circumstances may be better, not by entertaining the Democratic Party out of “pragmatism”; by doing all of the work that we can to bring in the workers, as fast as we can. This is our only option. When we have this clarity, we can fight to the best of our abilities.
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