No. 472 "~)X.'23 3 March 1989

No More PATCOs! To Hell with the Labor Boards! ----_..... _-

•

wv Machinists march against lAM Lodge 1018 meeting, Lorenzo in Atlanta, April 1988. Strike Eastern, February 23. Spread the Strike, Shut Down the Airports I FEBRUARY 27-The International called on Bush to put an end to the insulted, harassed and fired by Lorenzo asked Bush to impose another 60-day Association of Machinists (lAM) is "appeasement" of the unions at East­ and his arrogant yuppie managers since "cooling off" period; this will be more preparing to go into battle at midnight, ern! Just as the Reagan years opened up the corporate raider took over, are of the same slow death that has wiped March 3, against labor-hater Frank with the campaign to "roll back" Com­ ready to fight. There are plenty of air­ out the jobs of thousands of Eastern Lorenzo and Eastern Airlines. Lorenzo munism and "roll back" the unions, line workers, fed up with two-tier wages workers. To win, Machinists and their has ordered wages slashed by half. His today the ruling.class wants to use the and givebacks, who want to join them. allies must forge a new leadership in real aim is to destroy the union. The fight at Eastern to go after the entire But the labor tops, who fear class strug­ struggle, one that will use the workers' future of a key section of the organized labor movement. They are out to give gle like the plague, are preaching faith social power to take on Lorenzo, the labor movement is now on the line. That the lAM the "PATCO treatment" and in "mediation" through Bush's labor bosses' politicians and the bosses' mouthpiece of American capitalism, the labor must make a stand: All out with boards and the Democrats in Congress, courts. Don't bow to the labor boards­ New York Times, editorialized that the lAM-Shut down the airports! who are no friends of labor. The Strike big to win big! "Labor Threatens the President" and The ranks of the lAM, who have been National Mediation Board has just continued on page 8

RICO to prosecute the sale of books and videos with sexual content as "racketeering. " Salman Rushdie The German Jewish radical poet Heinrich Heine's apt warning is now poignantly displayed at the memorial to the victims of Hitler's Dachau con­ centration camp: "Once they burn 'Must Not Be Silenced I books, they will end up burning peo­ ple." To preserve a social system which The following statement was issued 17th-century defense of freedom of CIA-backed "freedom fighters" skin had outlived its progressive mission by the Partisan Defense Committee conscience and press, Areopagitica, alive schoolteachers for teaching girls even before the dawn of this century, and the Spartacist League / u. S. on "but he who destroys a good book kills and women to read. Pursuing its policy the capitalist ruling classes are com­ February 22. reason itself." of conciliation with the mullahs, the pelled to revive religious obscur­ Using the jihad against Rushdie, Afghan government just banned the antism, superstition and terror; the Ayatollah Khomeini promises heav­ Iran's rulers manipulate passions in book also! pogrom is industrialized, the Inquisi­ en and $5.2 million to the assassins order to divert concern for the millions But the exploitation of religious' tion goes high tech, and Armageddon of noted author Salman Rushdie as who died in the pointless war with bigotry tn the. service of political tyr­ is nuclear. The defense of the social, punishment for writing The Satanic Iraq, and from a shattered economy anny is by no means the monopoly of scientific and cultural achievements of Verses. Demonstrations of Islamic and endless repression. The Shi'ite the Islamic world. In the name of the Renaissance, the great bourgeois­ fanatics against the book in Pakistan theocracy launched its holy war "national security" Nixon tried to sup­ democratic revolutions including the and India killed eight. In New York against The Satanic Verses after ex­ press the Pentagon Papers; Thatcher American Civil War, and the con­ Cardinal O'Connor chose Sunday ecuting thousands of leftists and other attempted the same with Spycatcher. quests of the proletarian October morning mass to denounce The Satan­ dissidents, seeking to drown every Crying "blasphemy," Christian fun­ Revolution in Russia-from free­ ic Verses. Three major U.S. bookstore manifestation of social discontent in damentalists together with assorted dom of conscience to freedom from chains controlling 2,400 outlets or­ rivers of blood. The so-called "com­ fascist scum have launched a crusade exploitation-is inseparable. In de­ dered the book off their shelves. Rac­ munity of civilized nations" watched against Martin Scorcese's film The fense of the fundamental democratic ist South Africa joined the Islamic the mounting wall of corpses in total Last Temptation of Christ. Book­ rights and elemental human decency world in banning the book altogether silence, while the New York Tiines burners in white sheets and black robes we demand: Let The Satanic Verses while French and West German pub­ applauded the "liberalization" of ira­ have tried to ban Darwin and even Be Read! lishers suspended their translations. nian society. Khomeini's Iran is a Goldilocks from public and school "Who kills a man kills a reasonable foretaste of what a mujahedin victory libraries. Following Ed Meese's porn See article on page four. creature," wrote Milton in his eloquent would mean in Afghanistan, where tile commission, the government uses S.F. Labor: Defend Greg Wiggins!

~ SAN FRANCISCO, February 24-The if he would find the presence of 30 or 40 frame-up trial of black Muni bus driver Muni drivers in the courtroom in­ Greg Wiggins ended its fourth day today timidating! TWU Local 250-A gave a with officer Eugene Yoshii on the wit­ trial update in the union newsletter of ness stand, the third cop to testify. Last 23 February, saying, "The strong show October, while Wiggins was driving his of support & solidarity from our mem­ bus he was beaten viciously by four cops bers is very much appreciated." The screaming racist insults. He is on trial drivers are standing solid behind' Greg now on trumped-up charges of battery because they know these racist labor­ on a police officer, resisting arrest and hating cops. Almost every driver has his more. In addition to severe injuries to own story of harassment or worse at his neck, back and throat, Wiggins has a their hands. Tito Torres, Wiggins' attor­ fractured hip that keeps him in con­ ney, told the San Francisco Chronicle stant pain. (24 February), "They had no reason to As in the January 12 pretrial hearing, even arrest him. They come in here "inconsistencies" keep cropping up in like choirboys, as if they did nothing the testimony of the cops. Their story wrong." stinks; it won't hold together because The Chronicle article, headlined they have too much to cover up. Yoshii "Contradictory Versions of Assault is the cop who's being sued by his former Case Told," also referred to support for rookie partner, who says he raped her in Wiggins from other unions. Telegrams March 1987. In his testimony Yoshii and letters to the D.A. have been sent by also admitted he shot an unarmed man officials from Bay Area unions in­ in the face during an arrest last Decem­ cluding Machinists Local 739, Amal­ ber. Y oshii revealed that some of the Greg Wiggins (center, with cane) and supporters from TWU Local 2S0-A in gamated Transit Local 1555 (BART other cops present at that brutal shoot­ front of the courthouse. workers), AFGE Local 1457 (Presidio ing were the same ones involved in beat­ workers), Teamsters Local 315 and ing and arresting Wiggins. out the word about the frame-up. A leaf­ the bus barns. Before the trial began, more, responding to the Partisan For several months Wiggins' fellow let calling for the membership to stand some 2,000 copies of a 10 February leaf­ Defense Committee's call for union sol­ drivers in Transport Workers Union behind Wiggins was signed by 89 driv­ let with an update on the case were idarity on behalf of Wiggins. In New (TWU) Local 250-A have worked to get ers last December and circulated in all distributed among the drivers, calling York, 107 transit workers from TWU for "a big continuous show of union Local 100 signed a letter to the SF support to send a message to the court, district attorney demanding the charges the cops and the racist city officials from be dropped. The Bay Area Labor Black Capitalist Offensive Agnos down, that labor won't tolerate League for Social Defense has called on racist police terror!" the labor movement to defend Brother and Labor Revolt Each day in court Muni drivers in uni­ Wiggins. As the February LBL news­ During the depths of the Great Depres­ form have turned out, many coming for letter, distributed among Muni and sion in 1931, as the working class was as much time as they can between split other SF workers, says, "S.F. is a taking it on the chin, American Trotskyist shifts. Their presence has not gone labor town! Let's use that strength to leader James P. Cannon insisted that unnoticed: during jury selection the win a big victory for Greg Wiggins and American workers would again show their prosecutor asked one prospective juror all of us.". fighting capacity. Within three years work­ ers in three cities had undertaken general strikes, launching what became the might­ TROTSKY iest labor upsurge in American history. But LENIN that upsurge was ultimately channeled into the arms of the Democratic Party by the reformist misleaders of labor. Today, after a decade of wage-cutting and union-busting-notably the smashing of the PA TCO air traffic controllers union in 1981-American workers arefed up. The key • "Trotskyist PoliCies on the to victory in the upcoming battles lies inforging a revolutionary leadership in polit­ Second Imperialist War­ ical opposition to the giveback bureaucrats and their reliance on the two capitalist· Then and in Hindsight," parties of union-busting, war and racism. an introduction by the International Wage cutting began with the first manifestations of the, crisis and has been Executive Committee proceeding ever since at a continually accelerated pace. For quite a while this practice of the international Documents was masked by denials and all kinds of subterfuges .... Spartacist tendency on the But now the process of beating down the living standards of the workers has • SWP 1940 Resolution on reached a new stage. The figures on wage cuts are accumulating in such a volume that "Proletarian Military Policy" "Proletarian the facts can no longer be hidden or denied. And there is no point in it, for the • Max Shachtman's exploiters, emboldened by the practical absence oflabor resistance, have begun a real 1940-41 Polemics Military Policy" assault on the wage scales. They are coming out in the open with this policy .... • Britain: Resolutions from Will the workers fight back? Will they take up the defensive struggle on a wide Founding Conference of RCP, March 1944 front within the year? .. The figures alone take no account of the accumulation of With Introduction by grievance and discontent as yet unexpressed and therefore unspent. It is by no means • France: Material from the Internationa, Executive Committee the Bulletin Mensuel de 01 the assured that the new encroachments will pass unchallenged. On the contrary, they international Spartacist tendency are more apt to bring matters to the combustion point. la JVe Internationale The capitalists, bent on loading the burden of the crisis onto the backs of the (zone libre), April 1941 workers, are preparing thereby the necessary conditions for a labor revolt. In this way • Bibliography: Material they will convince the workers, as propaganda has been unable to convince them, by Trotsky and Cannon on the P.M.P. that there is' no way out but to fight. Under such conditions the prospect of a series of stormy battles, of which the American workers have many times shown themselves 102 pages capable, is by no means unreasonable. In that event the communists would get a 1I!hnH ,"00 US$9.00 £5.00 L9£W PROMETHEUS RESEARCH LIBRARY F"''"''I ,911<, hearing the like of which has not been granted before. FF58 A$11.50 ~1vI" -James P. Cannon, "The Capitalist Offensive" (July 1931) (includes postage)

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Complete Bnd accurate English translation of !!!l!l!!,!!"J!.~l!!..t'l..~IJ.~.s~ " Guidelines on the 1921 CI Resolution from final German text. DIRECTOR OF PARTY PUBLICATIONS: Liz Gordon Organizational Structure Includes, for the first time in English, the reports on and discussion of the Resolution at EDITOR: Jan Norden of communist Parties. on the Methods and Content the Third Congress. With introduction by PRODUCTION MANAGER: Jorge Ramirez Prometheus Research Library staff. CIRCULATION MANAGER: Jon Lawrence of Their work EDITORIAL BOARD: George Foster, Liz Gordon, Frank Hunter, Jane Kerrigan, Ref,OhJtlO" at tM 94 pages Len Meyers, Jan Norden, Jorge Ramirez, James Robertson, Reuben Samuels, Ttlltd eongreU 01 the CommtJ"lSt Intel'natlOMl t2 July tl2\ US$6.00 £3.50 FF35 A$8.50 Joseph Seymour, Alison Spencer, Marjorie Stamberg, Noah Wilner Nie'II' Tr.nslatlOn 01 tn. FInal GeJn'I*" t.1lt 1f\Cludn''I9 ~n. and OIteul$lOfllrom tM CongreM (includes postage) Workers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) published biweekly, except 2nd issue August and with 3-week interval December, WIth ,ntrodUCtlOl' and Mot" by the Spartacist Publishing Co., 41 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007. Telephone: 732-7862 (Editorial), 732-7861 (BUSiness). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. Domestic subscriptions: $7.00/24 issues. Second-class postage paid at New York, NY. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Workers Vanguard, Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. Order from/make checks payable to: Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. UnltedSlalt.. Brlteln France Austrelle Spartacist Publishing Co. Spartacist Publications BolcMvik Spartacist ANZ Publishing Co. Box 1377 GPO PO Box 1041 B.P.135-1O GPO Box 3473 No. 472 3 March 1989 New York, NY 10116 London NW5 3EU 75463 Paris Cedex 10 Sydney 2001

2 WORKERS VANGUARD . . .. ~ . • ~ I I . ,.. • Louisiana Racists Vote for KKK Terror

~ The election of "ex-" Nazi and KKKer stench of the gas ovens that are the stuff David Duke to the Louisiana state of his dreams. legislature from the lily-white New urN:> Orleans suburb of Metairie last week is '1< Finish the Civil War­ an invitation to racist terror by embold­ Smash Klan Terror! ened Klan nightriders, Nazi and skin­ THE ~ The white-flight New Orleans suburb head scum and racist killer cops. While of Metairie that is sending Duke to the he now appears in three-piece suits state house is in eastern Jefferson instead of white sheets, Duke is still. Parish, divided from integrated New the fascist he always was. His phone (HICAQJ7. Orleans by the 17th Street canal. "Peo­ number is the same as that of the local ple here describe their district as though KKK chapter and he heads up the they were boasting of the purity of a bar sinister "National Association for the of soap-99.6 percent white," noted the Advancement of White People," whose Washington Post (14 February). Jeffer­ activities include selling tapes of George son Parish is infamous for its racist sher­ Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the Amer­ iff, Harry Lee (himself a Chinese Amer­ ican Nazi Party. kLAN ican), who in 1986 ordered deputies to Duke's run for office as a Republican stop blacks traveling through the lily­ is the deadly "natural child" of the BOROl white area. Metairie became notorious bipartisan war on blacks and minorities R when it erected a barrier across a main in America as both capitalist parties '~~ artery connecting it to New Orleans to scramble for the white racist vote. keep blacks out! This prompted the New His campaign brought sanctimonious Orleans black mayor to send a crew of disavowals from Klan-endorsed ex­ ~ city workers to tear it down. Times UPI/Beltmann president Reagan as well as Bush cam­ Southern Louisiana is one of the most paign architect and now Republican Fascist David Duke: as Nazi stormtrooper in 1970, organizing KKK anti­ immigrant patrol on Mexican border in 1977. backward areas of the country, where Party chairman Lee Atwater, author sheriffs run their parishes (counties) like of the infamous Willie Horton rape feudal fiefdoms, ruling over poor whites ads and former aide to Dixiecrat idential campaign. graduated in 1974 to become the slick, and blacks alike with an iron hand. Senator Strom Thurmond of South Moreover, many of the racist themes media-sharp "Imperial Wizard" of the Bible-thumping bigots chose Louisiana Carolina, one of the biggest opponents of Duke's campaign are part and parcel Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which as the test case for state-mandated of civil rights in the South from the of the bipartisan war on minorities and grew rapidly, expanding from Louisi­ teaching of the religious obscurantist, 1940s on. the poor by the twin parties of prop­ ana into the rest of the South and into anti-scientific doctrine of "creation­ The fascist Duke says that the differ­ erty. The fascist Duke railed against the New York, Connecticut and California. ism" in the public schools. In 1986 ence between him and Atwater is that "threat" of the "rising underclass" with Duke attracted and then spun off the Spartacist League and Partisan "David Duke has said openly and loud­ the "illegitimate welfare birthrate." But Tom Metzger, who is now notorious Defense Committee joined as amici ly what a lot of the other RepUblicans these longtime battle cries of the Rea­ for racist cable TV shows and as a guru curiae ("friends of the court") in argu­ have not been willing to talk about on ganite right have been taken up by the for the Nazi-loving, violent skinheads ments before the Supreme Court against the campaign trail" (New York Times, Democrats as well, as Congress last fall organized by his son John. Duke also this attempt to fill the minds of school­ 20 February). Indeed, Duke's lips were overwhelmingly passed the genocidal recruited Bill Wilkinson, who 're­ children with the superstitions and big­ saying much the same thing as George "workfare" law which will cut off nounced Duke's "mod" cover, flaunt­ otry of the Dark Ages. Bush's, from "no new taxes" to attack­ millions of single mothers on welfare ing the Klan's racist violence. Duke's But there is another tradition in ing affirmative action programs. and leave them on the streets to starve. successor, Don Black, called a 27 No- Louisiana, of black and labor power. The largest slave revolt in American his­ tory, inspired by the Haitian Revolu­ tion, t<'ok place there in 1811. Some of the first black troops to fight on the Union side in the Civil War were raised from the free black popUlation of New Orleans. During the civil rights move­ ment of the 1960s, the Deacons for Defense and Justice, organized by a group of black veterans in Bogalusa and Jonesboro, used armed self-defense to protect CORE voter registration workers. And while unions are weak in the "open shop" South, New Orleans longshoremen demonstrated integrated class unity in the militant wildcat strike of 1973. New Orleans dock workers will have a leading role to play in preventing Klan river rats emboldened by David Duke'~ election from terrorizing the streets of the Crescent City. Atlanta: Spartacists picketed KKKer Duke's radio talk in 1987 (left). Three thousand turn out in response to Partisan In Atlanta this January the Partisan Defense Committee call for labor/black mobilization to stop the KKK, January 21 (right). Defense Committee together with the Spartacist League initiated a labor/ vember 1982 KKK march in Wash­ Duke's opponent, John Treen, was The ominous election of a KKIter black mobilization which brought out heavily backed as the "respectable" ington, D.C. But though the Klan had in Louisiana has gotten nationwide over 3,000 anti-Klan protesters in a Republican candidate by the party tops, been given the green light by the White pUblicity. Meanwhile, in Connecticut militant, integrated demonstration un­ with staff and sound bites from Bush House, this provocation against black and elsewhere other "Klandidates" are der the banner "Act Now! Stop the and Reagan. Who is Treen? According appearing. In the 1920s, the Klan was Washington was stopped by 5,000 KKK!" Only because 2,000 riot cops blacks and unionists in a Spartacist­ to longtime New Orleans civil rights able to elect hundreds of local officials and National Guardsmen turned down-·' as it grew to an estimated three to five initiated Labor/Black Mobilization. activist Llewellyn Soniat, John Treen town Atlanta into an armed camp is a former member of the fascist million members. Along with the KKK's Duke is also rabidly anti-immigrant. were the seven KKKers and skinhead States Rights Party, whose race-hate political clout came tar-and-featherings In 1977 he organized a "Klan Border thugs who showed up that day able to and lynchings of blacks, Jews and Watch" in Southern California. When rag Thunderbolt sported swastikas and slither through town. As we wrote about whose co-chairman was Birmingham immigrants, and anti-union terror. he ran as the Populist Party candidate Atlanta: church-bomber J.B. Stoner. for president last year, Duke presented a But the hooded fascists are widely "The January 21 labor/black mobiliza­ The RepUblicans have certainly been despised. Racist and fascist terror must prograrrt to seal U.S. borders, railing tion can be a beacon for the black and chasing after the Southern racist vote. be crushed in .the egg, through mass that "the alien presence in this country working people of the Deep South, and But the Democrats are the classic party mobilization oflabor, minorities and all affects the welfare system, the quality of for the oppressed throughout racist of Klan terror and Jim Crow segrega­ the fascists' intended victims! education, the crime rate." America. That giant, the power of labor, united in defense of its real inter­ tion in the South, from the overthrow of When Duke came to Atlanta to ests, must uproot the fascist scourge black Reconstruction to "massive resis­ Once a Fascist, Always a Fascist announce his presidential candidacy in once and for all through proletarian tance" to school integration and up to David Duke got his start as a June 1987, the Spartacist League or­ revolution." today. Former "Imperial Wizard" Duke swastika-clad Hitler-lover at Louisiana ganized a picket of a radio talk this fas­ - WV No. 470, 3 February and ex-"Grand Dragon" Tom Metzger State University, where he was known cist used as a platform for his "program" Labor and black struggle, to finish in California ran for office as KKK as "The Nazi of L.S.U." In 1970 he of genocide. SL supporters carried a the Civil War by smashing Klan terror Democrats. And with its "Southern disrupted a speech by noted civil rights sign proclaiming: "What Does Free and opening the road to workers revo­ strategy" and "win back the Reagan lawyer William Kunstler at Tulane Uni­ Speech Mean for David Duke, Klaus lution, must be the answer of New Democrats" campaign, the Democratic versity, dressing as a stormtrooper and Barbie, Charles Manson? Murder!" Orleans labor and blacks to David Duke Party engaged in an obscene competi­ carrying a sign that read "Gas the Make no mistake: Duke's magnolia­ and his night riding buddies in and out of tion for racist support in the '88 pres- Chicago 7" New Left radicals. Duke scented media message barely covers the their white sheets!.

3 MARCH 1989 3 Khomeini's Blood Terror Targets Author

. ma Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini calls for Bloodthirsty Teheran mob (left) assassination· of author Salman demands death to Satanic Verses Rushdie. author. --

When Ayatollah Khomeini issued his the stranglehold of theocratic censor­ decree of death against novelist Salman ship over society and asserting the Rushdie and the Viking/Penguin pub­ separation of church and state. lishers of his Satanic Verses, a shudder Censorship by Assassination Liberalism and Chauvinism spread around the world. Here was the ultimate statement of theocratic totali­ Now that Khomeini has extended his tarianism: not only must the book be nian radio, that Rushdie and "all those who declared history to be the work writ to London and New York, dictat­ banned, but its author must be executed involved in its publication who were of the devil, and unleashed his fury ing who is to read what, people around for the "crime" of having written it. It aware of its' contents, are sentenced to against "the greatest of the lies-prog­ the world are shocked by the medieval was a throwback to the days when death." Khomeini called on "all Mus­ ress, science, rights." brutality of his "Islamic republic." But heretics were burned at the stake and lims to execute them quickly wherever The initial reaction in the imperialist when the mullahs first took power in witches boiled in oil. As Rushdie's book they are found so that no others dare to West, whose governments habitually 1979, their Islamic "revolution" was was removed by the largest bookstore do such a thing." As though to under­ rant against "terrorism" whenever they supported by most of the Western left, chains, suddenly the dark past of the score the seriousness of the threat, want to terrorize some defenseless peo­ who hailed Khomeini's theocracy as Inquisition was no further away than the regime executed 70 people that ple, was breathtaking in its silence. "anti-imperialist" and denounced our B. Dalton's at the local mall. There it day for "drug smuggling." Assuring Rushdie's friend and fellow writer slogan: "Down with the shah! Down was, the benighted superstition of the any assassin killed in the attempt that Christopher Hitchens remarked causti­ with the mullahs! Workers to power!" Middle Ages in the middle of the Com­ he "will be regarded as a martyr and cally: "I observed that the normally And from the fake-left to the pro­ puter Age. will go directly to heaven," the ayatol­ vociferous 'anti-terrorist' lobby is un­ imperialist liberals of PEN, they all fell From the moment it was published lah added a more earthly reward of usually cautious in its choice of terms, into step behind Carter's "human last September, RHshdie's Satanic $3 million for Rushdie's head ($1 mil­ and that the spokesmen for the godly rights" outcry against the Soviet inter­ Verses drove Islamic fundamentalists lion if the killer happened to be are uncharacteristically silent." Hitchens vention in Afghanistan, where a gang around the world into a frenzy, leading an infidel), which was then raised to also noted that the Jewish talk show of CIA-backed cutthroat mujahedin to its banning by one government after $5.2 million. host "Alan Berg was murdered in cold were carrying out Khomeini's program another. In Rushdie's own country of Rushdie and his wife, the novelist blood in Colorado by Nazi Christians of torture and terror against Afghan Britain, protests and book-burnings Marianne Wiggins,' immediately went for failing to shut up, and in this very women and leftists. swept through the sizable Muslim com­ into hiding. When Iranian president decade in America there are book burn­ Even when the Iranian regime re­ munities in the inner cities, as recounted Khamenei offered to lift the death threat ers ready to muster" (New York Times, cently executed thousands of women, in the article "Let Satanic Verses Be if Rushdie apologized, the writer issued 17 February). national minorities and leftist political Read!" reprinted on the next page from a cautious statement expressing regret Rushdie's American tour was can­ prisoners in a massive blood purge, Workers Hammer (February 1989), over distress the book had caused. The celed. The country's largest book dis­ much of the bourgeois press main­ newspaper of the Spartacist League/ Iranian regime first accepted Rushdie's tributor, Waldenbooks, pulled Satanic tained a stony silence and most of the Britain. Then, on February 12, the furor statement, then repudiated it later the Verses off the shelves, followed by the Western left refused to lift a finger. In became deadly as six people were killed same day. Even if Rushdie had become second largest, B. Dalton. Canada contrast, the Partisan Defense Commit­ in Islamabad, Pakistan when police "the most pious man of time," the banned imports of the book with the line tee and international Spartacist tenden­ fired into a crowd of thousands protest­ Imam declaimed, "it is incumbent on that it might be "hate material." The cy organized an emergency worldwide ing publication of the book in the U.S. every Muslim ... to send him to hell." Spanisl,1, French and West German pub­ campaign of protest demonstrations Fifteen more have since died in protests Khamenei immediately fell into line, lishers with translation rights decided to to demand: Stop the Executions! On in Kashmir and Bombay in India. declaring: "an arrow has been shot to­ suspend publication. In England, the February 22, the PDC and Spartacist On February 14, the Shi'ite theoc­ ward its target." The Imam in Qum Archbishop of Canterbury, head of the League/V.S. issued a statement solida­ racy's wali !aqih (Supreme Leader) acted as if to confirm Rushdie's por­ established church, called for extension rizing with Rushdie (see page one). And issued his edIct to the world over Ira- trayal of the imam in Satanic Verses of Britain's blasphemy laws to cover we warned that outrage against Kho­ religions other than the Church of meini's death threat could fuel nativist England-so that the next time a backlash targeting all Muslims in Amer­ Rushdie comes along he can be nailed ica and Europe. with the more "refined" methods of At the PEN reading from Rushdie's English jurisprudence. book in New York, Professor Edward On February 22 in New York, some Said, a member of the Palestine N ation­ 1,000 people, mostly writers, demon­ al Council who has himself in the past strated outside the Iranian mission to been targeted for assassination by ultra­ the United Nations behind a banner of Zionists, hailed Satanic Verses as "a the National Writers Union quoting deliberately transgressive work of nose­ George Bernard Shaw: "Assassination thumbing daring." Said also recalled Is the Extreme Form of Censorship." that "Israel bans hundreds of books in Speaking to an overflow crowd at a occupied Palestinian territories, and reading from Rushdie's book spon­ Palestinian writers are jailed without sored by PEN later that day, Leon trial; where are the protesting voices of Wieseltier, an editor at the New Repub­ Western writers' and intellectuals?" lic, said: "Europe, too, was once a theo­ When Muslim counterdemonstra­ cratic society that burned books and tors at the UN protest waved signs ~ini's Death Threat people. We know all about the debt that reading "Satanic Verses Is Satanic," one democracy owes to heresy.... It was of the "civil libertarian" types carrying a ;ALMON RUSHDIE blasphemy that made us free. Two placard that said "Let Freedom Roar" - . cheers today for blasphemy." Indeed the shouted back "Deport them-Deport New York City, February 22: Writers protest book chains' suppression of great bourgeois revolutions of the 17th- those who call for murder!" More­ Satanic Verses. 18th centuries were aimed at breaking righteous-than-thou Western liberals 4 WORKERS VANGUARD would do well to recall that there meini's death edict against Rushdie was is nothing unique about Islamic in­ of a piece with their unperturbed silence tolerance. The Old Testament book over the recent bloodbath of political of Leviticus decrees, "Whoever blas­ prisoners in Iran. U.S. president Bush phemes the name of the Lord shall be finally declared that the order to kill the \ \..~ \fi l~)\}'\' put to the death." And the first code author was "deeply offensive"; State , of law in the colony of Virginia' in Department sources explained that any­ ls 1611 prescribed death for blasphem­ thing more would serve the interests of \ ~,I:? O~\}}) r " ing Christianity and the trinity. The those "who are using the book affair as a ) ) original settlements were theocratic to way of bringing a halt to the trend in ;\. 1UJ.-}\ the core-anyone who didn't agree recent months of Iran improving rela­ " ""NnTUrcritC with the supreme Jaqih of Plymouth tions with the West" (New York Times, .~~ ~)m~JfV~ colony had to leave, or else. Remem­ 22 February). The Common Market ber the Salem witch trials? countries pulled their diplomats out of Of course, there .have been some Iran when Khomeini made it clear that advances since then, such as are embod­ no "apology" would do. As Washington ied in the Bill of Rights. By the time of learned earlier (remember the Iran/ the robber barons, John D. Rockefeller contra fiasco) Khomeini is a fundamen­ Sr. could go around saying "God gave talist zealot for whom "normal" state me my money"-and nobody ever tried relations with infidels don't count for to get him for blasphemy. Even the much. Mormon church, which believes in The growth of Islamic fundamen­ blood atonement and comes as close as talism in recent years is in no small you can get under the U.S. Consti­ measure a by-product of the billions of New York City, January 19: Partisan Defense Committee and Spartacist tution to running a theocracy in Utah, dollars lavished on the fanatically reac­ tendency called worldwide emergency protests against Khomeini's mass doesn't execute people for blasphemy. tionary and anti-Communist Afghan executions in Iran. But in 1978, when Larry Flynt ran a "freedom fighters" and the billions more drawing in Hustler magazine of Pres­ funneled to maintain Zia/ Bhutto's model because she lived 14 centuries the country is at stake-has actually ident Jimmy Carter's mother Lillian in Islamic regime in Pakistan as a staging ago, Khomeini decreed that she-and banned Satanic Verses in its continuing the nude with Jesus Christ, he was area for the anti-Soviet insurgency in the program's producers-be shot. suicidal attempt to appease the mullah threatened with jail and then shot by a Afghanistan. A small taste of what Af­ Consistent with its treacherous pull­ cutthroats. The battle line for elemen­ white vigilante and almost killed while ghan women have in store, should the out from Afghanistan, the Gorbachev tary freedoms and social progress walking to court in a small Georgia mujahedin win in the face of the Gorba­ regime and its pro-glasnost intelligent­ against Islamic fundamentalism is today town. chev regime's criminal withdrawal, was sia have not even dared issue a verbal drawn in beleaguered Afghanistan. provided by a recent example in Tehe­ protest in defense of Salman Rushdie Those who back the feudalistic muja­ Afghanistan: ran. When a woman interviewed on for fear of offending Khomeini. Mean­ hedin "freedom fighters" would do well Defeat Islamic Reaction! Teheran Radio had the audacity to say while, the Kabul regime, which is now to remember that, next time they feel The initial tepid reaction of the West­ that the prophet Mohammed's daugh­ facing a fight to the death-while the life like reading a "heretical" novel, not to ern imperialist "democracies" to Kho- ter Fatima was not relevant as a role of every leftist and unveiled woman in mention looking at Playboy.

The following article is reprinted ment of Rajiv Gandhi, threatened by from Workers Hammer No. 104, Feb­ even more communalist rivals, hopes to ruary 1989, newspaper of the Spartacist Let Satanic Verses Be Read! pick up the Muslim vote. At the same League I Britain. time the Congress Party vies with its On 14 January, 1500 Muslim fanat­ ities alike. Down with religious obscur­ swing by the judges (who numbered communalist rivals by fomenting anti­ ics gathered in front of the town hall in antism! Let Satanic Verses be read! among them Home Secretary Douglas Muslim and anti-Sikh Hindu commu­ Bradford, West Yorkshire and burnt Published last September, Satanic Hurd) ensured the "public peace" and nalism. The Gandhi family and Con­ copies of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses is largely a novel about the Asian voted for someone less controversial. gress took the opportunity to get back at Verses. It grotesquely recalled the immigrant's experience in "Mrs. Tor­ Rushdie and his publishers Penguin/ Rushdie for his irreverent and scathing medieval Christian Inquisition and ture's" Britain. It strongly indicts all Viking ha~e been deluged with threat­ allegorical reference to the Gandhi book-burning orgies of Hitler's storm­ forms of bigotry-racial, sexual, relig­ ening letters and phone calls. Several dynasty in his book, the 1981 Booker troopers. Confirming the controversial ious-across the world. When it was well-known "left" Labour MPs noted Prize winner, Midnight's Children. Sim­ novel's characterisation of the funda­ first published the British tabloid press for their "constituency demagoguery"­ ilarly in Pakistan Islamic fundamental­ mentalist motto "Burn the books and fulminated against Rushdie's attack on including Tottenham's Bernie Grant ists denounced his book, Shame, which trust the Book," the protesters accused racism in Britain. Rushdie's unsparing and Bradford's Max Madden-are dished out unkindly treatment to Gen­ Rushdie's latest book of blasphemy. attack on religious fanaticism and stoking this dangerous fire; piling in eral Zia and the Bhuttos. The Congress Leading them all was an unholy alli­ fundamentalism targets the Islamic behind Lancashire Tory Ken Har­ of South African Writers was forced to ance of Bradford's Council of Mosques variety-particularly the harsh relig­ greave's early day motion deploring the withdraw its invitation to Rushdie to and prominent Labour Party council­ ious and social sanctions for the publication of Satanic Verses, these speak against apartheid, with sections of lors, including ex-mayor Mohammed oppression of women under the Sharia Labourite censors are calling for the the Muslim population suicidally lining Ajeeb. One book-burner vowed, "Our (laws). Born into an Indian Muslim extension of the Victorian blasphemy up with the butcher Botha to threaten next move will be to ensure the book is family, Rushdie made a special study of laws to all rel,igions. These laws were last Rushdie. The title of Rushdie's aborted banned in the whole world. If he Islamic history while at Cambridge resurrected in 1977 when the notorious lecture echoed the 19th-century Ger­ [Rushdie] comes here, I tell you he will University in the sixties. He won the Mary Whitehouse prosecuted Gay man Jewish radical poet Heinrich be dead" (Independent, 21 January). 1981 Booker Prize with his widely News for publishing James Kirkup's Heine's apt warning, now poignantly Another demonstration in London two acclaimed Midnight's Children and the poem about Christ, "The Love That displayed at the memorial to the vic­ weeks later brought out large numbers 1988 Whitbread Fiction Prize with Dares to Speak Its Name." Meanwhile, tims of Hitler's Dachau concentration of Muslims-reportedly overwhelm­ Satanic Verses. The latter novel was also the Koran-thumping crusaders talk of camp: "Once they burn books, they will ingly male-to protest the book. This nominated for the 1988 Booker Prize prosecuting Rushdie under the Public end up burning people." frenzy of Islamic fundamentalism could and was the eleven-to-eight favourite to Order and Race Relations Acts. As the Rushdie admirably remains defiant: provoke a wider racist backlash engulf­ win the £20,000 overall Whitbread Lit­ disgusted Rushdie bitterly observed, "They are not going to stop in a hurry, ing fundamentalist and secular minor- erary Prize for 1989 until a last-minute "Any old Act will do." and so the struggle against them has to The anti-civilisation jihad by these be continued. I am girding my loins for Khomeiniites of the second mobilisa­ the fray" (Sunday Times,22 January). No 36 SPRING 1989 tion has already managed to cow quite a The fundamentalists charge that Rush­ International few nominally secularist establishments. die's book is pornographic and racist and insults their holy book,the Koran, Wom~n's Day 1989 Following threats of violence, Britain's Womenand~ , largest bookstore chain W. H. Smith as well as their prophet/founder Mo­ dived for cover, sweeping Satanic hammed. The frequently Rabelaisian Revolution Satanic Verses derives its title from two or til!" Wa"'en, LO"""'~::.'un O! thE' Spartdust League :=:., Verses off their Bradford shelves and in JUST OUT! $100 the process hinting at a "similar" puri­ verses said to have been originally pti Women and [2 fjWi.ijil, lj1.JjjMtM\i1@k h fication of their other 400-odd outlets. accepted by Mohammed as god-given Revolution However, the divine power of mammon truth and later excised from the Koran by him, on the grounds that they were in Spring 1989, No. 36 Labor Must Defend prevailed and the devilish offender will $1,00 (32 pages) stay on the shelves. British sales of the fact inspired by the devil masquerading Abortion Rights! hardback alone, currently being reprint- . as the archangel Gabriel. To the mul­ • Labor Must Defend WOMEN'S LI8ERATION lahs' charges, Rushdie responds: "Intel­ Abortion Rights! - <1"<>u9I> __ _. ed, already exceed 42,000 copies; 50,000 are due"to hit the U.S. market--despite lectual dissent is neither pornographic • Interview with Bill Baird SOCIAUST REVOLUTION! bomb and assassination threats; and the nor racist. I have tried to give a secular, • West Germany: humanist vision of the birth of a great Anti-Abortion Witchhunt paperback will not be out until later this world religion." • Soviet Women year. Combat Pilots Fought Rushdie's book is already banned in We Marxist secular humanists wel­ Nazi Germany Pakistan, Malaysia, Egypt, Saudi Ara­ come such visions. It is neither sup­ • Battle for Afghanistan bia, [Persian] Gulf States, India and posed pornography nor racism that • Black Freedom, South Africa. The Islamic fanatics have really got the zealots' goat. As Rushdie Women's Rights and vowed to get all Penguin books banned pointed out: the Civil War from Muslim countries if Satanic Verses "Nowadays ... a powerful tribe of cler­ West Germany: Hundreds Pilloried in Anti·Abortion Wltchhunt ...... ••...... 14 ics has taken over Islam. These are the 4-issue subscription $2.00 is not withdrawn. When the Indian gov­ Night Witches: Soviet Women Combat Pilots Fought Nazi Germany ...... 26 contemporary Thought Police .... One Make checks payable/mail to: Smash Islamic Reaction! No to the Veil! BatHe for Afghani ...... 32 ernment banned the book in October may not discuss the growth ofIslam as a Spartacist Publishing Co. i Rushdie noted "This is about votes, not historical phenomenon, as an ideology Box 1377 GPO ';jfflii4 .Mt8\1,I,lMMMti1ir,.llfjiiftj'\ltMi:' New York. NY 10116 literature" (India Today, 31 October born out of its time. These are the 1988). Indeed the Congress govern- continued on page 9 3 MARCH 1989 5 IDght-Wing "Minutemen" Target Leftists, Blacks, Gay Students Defend the Anti-Klan 31 On February 9, an integrated polit­ ously threatened to hunt down with a The stage was set for the UMasscam­ terrorists: "Ben Linder was a com­ ical meeting of Amherst students be­ "death squad." A defense committee has pus brownshirts with the 1986 World munist killed by anti-communists­ came the target of a premeditated, been formed for the Anti-Klan 3 who Series race riot against black students. what's wrong with that?" (Minuteman, violent assault by a gang of racist are themselves pressing charges of Since then, the Minuteman thugs have 8 September 1987). Rothman and his right-wingers. A dozen thugs from the assault and battery against six of the attacked black students, gays and left­ cronies sport the slogan, "I shot Ben College Republicans and Conservative violent racists: W. Greg Rothman, Paul ists with impunity. This crew is charac­ Linder!" Violence is the political "pro­ Alliance (grouped around the Minute­ McGonnigal, Doug Dratch, Ken Rudy, terized by psychotic, obsessive homo­ gram" they recruit to. The back page of man) attempted to bust up a Spartacus Brian Darling and Scott Kramer. phobia. These nuts feel their manhood the Minuteman (11 February 1988) fea­ Youth Club public forum. The forum Even now these thugs continue to run sharply kneed with every advance by tures a full-page drawing of Sandinista featured a video of the successful 5 amok. On February 21 College Repub­ leftists and minorities. They rant against leader Daniel Ortega with a target November 1988 mobilization which licans tried to bust up a student meeting what they call "oppression studies" (any superimposed on his face and the stopped the KKK and skinhead fascists in defense of the Anti-Klan 3-and from rallying for white-supremacist again they failed. In a letter to the Col­ FR(J\f genocide in Philadelphia. Enraged that legian, five people, including members OtlfILI"~i" 8Il00K1. YN their friends in white sheets were of the student government, the Radical stopped by a united front of more Student Union and the Friends of the ,{'1I11 TO than 1,000 trade unionists, black activ­ Spartacus Youth Club, state: "Republi­ .:.tIt 1" "'lIt SOWErO- ists, gays, socialists and students, the can Club members came to the office "Minutemen" staged a provocation, and began screaming insults, malicious­ 4t;~I:'OC attempting to censor anti-racist views ly banging on the door and windows, through physical terror on the Amherst and attempting to photograph those .1~~1 campus. They did not succeed, thanks to attending the meeting ... it was Ted the determination of the Spartacus Chambers [student government] who Youth Club members and others­ called the Campus Police, stating that including members of the Radical Stu­ the RepUblican Club members posed a dent Union, the student government clear and present threat to the safety of and a reporter from the Collegian-to himself and everyone present." Quite a defend this socialist meeting. few people at Amherst have had it with The Minuteman cabal admits their taking abuse from these creeps. planned provocation, advertising that The university administration has the Republican Club "only tolerates outrageously banned the Spartacus right of center views." Despite repeated Youth Club from holding meetings or warnings, they refused to abide by the distributing literature in the campus democratic discussiorr rules of our meet­ center, carrying out through adminis­ _MUST AllY WITH ing, physically attacked participants in trative fiat what the Minuteman thugs the meeting and were removed. One of tried to achieve through physical vio- . the thugs picked up a chair and shouted, lence. If you're a UMass student, the >',~LABOR ...... Young Spartacus "I'm going to kill you!" Then they called university has just squashed your right Philadelphia, 5 November 1988: We stopped the Klan! Now UMass Amherst in the cops, who shut down the meet­ to politically assoCiate with whomever "Minutemen" ,try to bust up Spartacist meeting on this important anti-racist ing. The "Minutemen" have now resort­ you choose. We intend to muster every victory. ed to malicious prosecution, pressing legal and political resource at our dis­ false charges with sentences of up to ten posal to fight for our rights, and in so course that deals with women and slogan: "Come join the Minuteman and years against the victims, three socialist doing, will fight on behalf of everyone blacks). They hail the Confederate flag take a shot at a communist." anti-Klan activists, including a His­ targeted by this right-wing terror squad of slavery. They published a "word puz­ Rothman is the Amherst liaison for panic SYC supporter they had previ- at UMass. zle" whose clues spelled out a death the ultraright "Accuracy in Academia" threat to Jay Festa, former president of (AlA), a nationwide network dedicated 'U CD the campus Lesbian, Bisexual and Gay to McCarthyite purges of all radical ~ Alliance. Allied with the Christian fun­ and even liberal academics from the al iii damentalist "Students for America," universjties. With its parent group 7C .zCD they are violently opposed to abortion "Accuracy in Media," AlA is allied rights, like the "Right to Life" terrorists with the Moonies and the World Right-wing shock who bomb clinics coast to coast. "Never Anti-Communist League, a global web troops on the home Again-A Communist Student Gov­ of death squads and aging Nazis that front: College ernment President!" is the slogan of "advise" and deliver extra parliamentary Republicans ,their ongoing vendetta against Jason terror for right-wing regimes. AlA lead­ demolish anti­ apartheid shanties Rabinowitz, the duly elected student er Les Csorba spent an all-ex pense­ on the Dartmouth body president who is also a member of paid "vacation" in EI Salvador on a Green, laud killer the Communist Party's youth group, the search-and-destroy mission with the contra scum in Young Communist League (YCL). kill-crazy Atlacatl brigade. The Min­ Nicaragua. Enough! As one of the Anti-Klan 3, uteman's godfathers in the Institute for SYC supporter Tom Daley, says: "It's Educational Affairs (lEA) have funded high time for a broad, political mobi­ trips for young right-wing "journalists" lization of all of their intended victims to to act as pUblicity men for the muja­ drive these reactionary shock troops hedin in Afghanistan, for Nicaraguan back under the rocks they crawled contra leader Edgar Chamorro and for out from." No illusions in the univer­ Salvadoran ARENA death squads of sity administration! Drop the charges "Blowtorch Bob" D'Aubuisson. against the Anti-Klan 3! Rescind the The Minuteman is one of a host of apartheid-style ban against the Sparta­ reactionary sheets funded by the lEA, a cus Youth Club! creature of William Simon and Irving Kristol, who was exposed as an "indi­ Not Just Campus Contras rect" recipient of CIA monies. Formed The Minuteman/College Republi­ in 1978, the lEA fuses ultrarightist cans/Conservative Alliance groove on youth with big business, channeling politics by assassination as practiced by moolah from the labor-hating beer mag­ the international contra scum. W. Greg nate Adolph Coors, Dow Chemical, Rothman of the Conservative Alliance Pfizer, Chase Manhattan Bank (to says of a courageous American volun­ name just a few) to underwrite "news­ teer in Nicaragua assassinated by contra papers" that function as ideological hit 6 WORKERS VANGUARD The University of California/ Berke­ is attested to by someone who knew a ley Spartacus Youth Club held a mil­ hell of a lot more about them than itant protest on February 23 outside UC Berkeley Protest David Irving, namely the commandant the International House where Nazi of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoess: propagandist David Irving was giving a "I commanded Auschwitz until 1st fascist speech. Some 40 protesters DAVID .~ December 1943, and estimate that at picketed, chanting, "Remember Ausch­ least 2,500,000 victims were executed there by gassing and burning, and at witz! Smash Nazi scum!" and "Down IRVJN(J -- least another naif-million succumbed to with the hoods, off with the sheets­ starvation and disease, making a total Sweep the Nazis off the streets!" Pro­ NAZI dead of about 3,000,000 .... testers carried signs including "David "The 'final solution' of the Jewish f\tOL06/ST question meant the complete extermi­ Irving Has Never Met a Nazi He Didn't ~ nation of all the Jews in Europe .... " Like!" One protester carried a sign -quoted in Burton C. Andrus, which read "David Duke Makes Me The Infamous at Nuremberg Puke!" referring to the "former" KKK (1969) Grand Dragon who was recently elected Hoess noted that at Treblinka, an as a Republican to the Louisiana legis­ earlier concentration camp, they used lature. Students from the campus Hillel carbon monoxide. He didn't think this Foundation and a Jewish fraternity also was "very efficient," so "when I set up gathered in protest, some of them pick­ the extermination building at Ausch­ ing up our placards. witz, I used Cyclon B." Poison gases Three Bay Area TV channels covered like carbon monoxide and Cyclon B the event and showed the footage on dissipate rapidly into the air, which is the II p.m. news that night. The 24 why no traces of them were later found February Daily Californian quoted in the camp sites. Spartacus Youth Club pickets fascist propagandist at University of California Spartacist League spokesman Martha at Berkeley, February 23. In fact, the first acts of the Holocaust Phillips: "The purpose of this demon­ did not involve gas chambers, but were stration is clear. David Irving is not an mass shootings conducted by the Ein­ urbane professor, but a fascist .... He satzgruppen with the German invasion has been active in calling for fascist of the Soviet Union. The tens of organization." The protest concluded thousands of bodies of victims at hun­ with a short speech from Phillips, who dreds of locations, like Babi Yar in the said, "What is needed in America is a David Irving-­ Ukraine, were put there with bullets, third American. revolution, a workers lots of bullets, that don't evaporate like revolution, and that is what will once carbon monoxide and Cyclon B. and for all sweep the fascists off the David Irving is . not just an idio­ streets!" We reprint below the leaflet syncratic historian, a loony right-wing distributed by the Spartacus Youth professor. He is a fascist propagandist. Club on campus. Nazi Apologist • In 1979 Irving addressed a meeting of the Clarendon Club about founding apologist for fascist genocide. apologists, Hitler never publicly talked a new right-wing party in Britain. The Nazi propaganda mllllster Joseph Hitler innocent and ignorant of the or wrote about the Holocaust. Of audience consisted mainly of members Goebbels called it the Big Lie. His disci­ Holocaust? The destruction of the Jews course, he didn't. No less an authority of the fascist League of St. George. ple David Irving, who is speaking this was always the stated goal of Nazism, than Heinrich Himmler insisted that the • In 1981 Irving launched the Focus evening at International House, is well spelled out clearly in Hitler's Mein death camps must remain secret: Policy Study Group. Its journal, Focal practiced in this art. Hitler, he says, Kampf in the 1920s. When Nazi Ger­ "Among us it should be discussed com­ Point, carried advertisements for a wide didn't know about the Holocaust, it was many started to lose World War II, the pletely openly, and nonetheless we shall range of racist and pro-Nazi groups. all Himmler's doing. And maybe it extermination of the European Jews never speak of it publicly.... I am • In 1983 Irving spoke to a meeting of didn't even happen. While Irving poses became the substitute war aim. Hitler speaking now of the evacuation of the Jews, the eradication of the Jewish activists of the fascist British National as an urbane historian, he is closely was a totalitarian dictator who knew the people." Party. associated with fascist outfits in Britain location of every military company on • The same year he was the star and the U.S. whose program is racist the Eastern Front. He was constantly Yesterday the Daily Cal reported that attraction at a conference of the Insti­ terror against Jews, blacks, Asians, His­ giving tactical battlefield orders to his Irving "is convinced that gas chambers tute for Historical Review (IHR) in panics-in short, all "non-Aryans." The generals. Yet we are supposed to believe never existed in the concentration Anaheim, California. This year again he Berkeley Spartacus Youth Club calls on he was unaware of the massive mobi­ camps because studies at the sites failed was the main speaker for this Institute, all students, working people and minor­ lization to exterminate the Jews. to find toxins there." That gas cham­ which through its parent corporation is ities to protest militantly against this But, say David Irving and other Nazi bers existed in the concentration camps associated with outright Klan and Nazi Universal Pictorial propaganda. The main beliefs of the IHR are: -that the Jews and not Germany started the Second World War. -that Hitler was only an anti­ communist defending European civ­ ilization against Bolshevism. -that the Holocaust is a hoax. -that the United States was dragged into the war by the Jews. Joseph Goebbels once wrote that the Nazis could easily have been crushed in the mid-1920s when they were still weak. We must crush the likes of David Irving and his friends now, when they are still weak, before they have an opportunity to wreak another Holocaust, this time maybe a nuclear holocaust destroying all mankind. Hitler look-alike David Irving (left) whitewashes Hitler's mons'trous crimes. Slain victims in Nazi Berkeley Spartacus Youth Club death camp at Nordhausen, 1945. 23 February 1989

squads on the campuses. Their flagship would like to employ on the home front. the meaning of the word libel. A similar (Nation, 3 April 1982). These young journal is the infamous Dartmouth They see the Trotskyist Spartacus violence-baiting slander was retailed by RepUblicans call themselves "the New Review-a very upper-crust and deeply Youth Club-with our forthright de­ the Minutemal1's "Accuracy in Aca­ Right" but their style and program racist gang that acts like young prep­ fense of the Soviet Union, our cam­ demia" cohorts-they were forced to imitates the Third Reich whose storm­ pie masters of the universe, donning paign to raise material aid for Nicara­ prominently run a retraction of that troopers turned German universities their Brooks Brothers best to heave gua against the CIA's contras, our smear. Given the Minuteman's direct into fascist recruiting grounds in the sledgehammers against occupied anti­ labor/black mobilizations against rac­ membership~overlap with AlA, it is '30s. People had better recall the words apartheid shanties on the Dartmouth ist terror-as convenient "surrogates" impossible that they don't know it. The of Martin Niemoller: green. The Minuteman calls the Dart­ to target. Unable to convince people of point of the Big Lie however is not that it "First they came for the communists, mouth Review crowd "our brothers to their views, the Minuteman cabal be true, but that it be repeated enough in but since I was not a communist I did the north" and is cut from the very tat­ aims to coerce the student popUlation the hope that someone will start believ­ not protest. Then they came for the Jews, but since I was not a Jew I did not tered end of the same cloth. The low IQ through thuggery and endless legal ing it. Unfortunately for the campus protest. Then they came for the Catho­ "southern brothers" at Amherst are harassment. They also resort to a contras at UMass, they have about as lics, but since I was not a Catholic I did more reminiscent of the dangerous method perfected by Goebbels: the Big much credibility with the popUlation as not protest. When they came for me, backwoods idiots depicted in the film Lie. In the March issue of the Minute­ a Texas savings and loan. there was no one left to protest." Deliverance. Their role models are run man, they retail the deadly lie that the The campus contras have cut such a as front-page Minuteman pinups: espe­ "Sparticist [ sic] League advocates the YCl: Which Side Are You On? wide swath at UMass that a broad mobi­ cially Contragate criminal Ollie North. violent overthrow of the United States lization against them could be as popu­ "N eutralizing" political opponents Government. " The Dartmouth Review says, "Geno­ lar as it is necessary. Many stud~nts and through terror is the method these thugs A day in court might teach these thugs cide is never having to say you're sorry" continued on page 10 3 MARCH 1989 7 They threaten not only the livelihood of other unionists turned out for two try to stay here. It is also crucial that Eastern ... their workers but the very lives of their lunchtime demonstrations at Miami labor fight for union-run training and (continued from page 1) passengers. To cut costs, they are not airport. apprenticeship programs to provide only driving down wages but keeping In New York, workers in La Guardia jobs for black youth, imprisoned in the After a decade of union-busting and old planes in the air, overworking pilots lAM Lodge I 0 I 8 met on February 23 to Miami ghetto as they watch successive bleeding the poor and working people of and generally degrading safeJy stan­ plan strike activities. The local issued a waves of immigrants pass them by. And America, there is a lot of anger. For dards. As Business Week (16 January) leaflet "to all airline workers and all strikers must convince potential strike­ Teamsters targeted by the: feds' RICO put it recently: "Terrorism is scary. But other workers" explaining that "Wheth­ breakers that scabbing is dangerous to witchhunt, for the black popUlation of the rattletrap U.S. air fleet is even scar­ er you are a mechanic at Butler A via­ your health. Miami under the guns of the racist ier." Last week a gaping hole ripped tion, a cleaner at United Airlines or an police, for all workers and minori­ open in the fuselage of a 19-year-old unemployed worker you have a stake in Wimpy's Trap ties, the battle at Eastern is a chance Boeing 747, and nine passengers on this the battle at Eastern." One Machinist As Lorenzo has been sucking East­ to draw the line-and strike back. At United flight were sucked out over the reported that air freight facility truck ern dry through various financial the airports, every union-Machinists, Pacific to their death. drivers, members of the Teamsters schemes which funnel cash. into Con­ Teamsters, Transport Workers, Flight Frank "Darth Vader" Lorenzo is union, have promised to honor lAM tinental Airlines and his Texas Air Attendants-must seal off the fuel, the the most notorious union-busting cut­ picket lines. The meeting adjourned to empire, the Machinists have been tied food, the buses and trains, everything. throat capitalist in the United States. picket a nearby hotel, where Eastern has up in the courts and labor boards by And that includes the Eastern Shuttle When he took over Eastern in 1986, he set up a scab recruiting office. lAM president William "Wimpy" Win­ which mega-landlord Donald Trump·is was determined to smash the union, On February 24, the executive board pisinger and District 100 chairman buying from Lorenzo. Machinists must even if it meant destroying the com­ of Transport Workers Union (TWU) Charles Bryan. All this time labor has paralyze lAM-organized aviation serv­ pany. Lorenzo is eager to provoke a Local 553, representing 7,000 Eastern been eating it at Eastern-thousands ice outfits like Hudson-General and Machinists strike because he expects flight attendants, voted to request "that laid off, hundreds of the best union Butler Aviation which are recruiting that the full power of the capitalist state each of its members not cross lAM militants fired, and the remaining scabs. The cowardly union tops will hide will be used to break it. Certainly the picket lines." Local 553 president Mary workers forced to work massive over­ time under the observation of "se­ curity" cameras installed by manage­ ment. Endless union appeals to the bosses' courts and labor boards have come to naught. In February, the courts ruled in favor of the company's "atten­ dance control" harassment program and allowed forced overtime. Now Winpisinger is blustering that he will call upon his 500,000-member union to carry out sympathy strikes at railroads and other airlines. President Lane Kirkland and the AFL-CIO executive board, taking time out from their winter meeting in Bal Harbour, Florida, promised "the fullest possible support." The New York Times (24 February) quickly called Kirkland to order, saying he "threatens the public with ... sympathy strikes against the Corporate raider Lorenzo (left) stares down pilots; now he's going all out to break Eastern unions. lAM chief railroads." Like a dog coming to heel, Winpisinger (with Dukakis at right) pleads with Bush and Kirkland sent the Times a cringing letter Democrats to impose contract. the next day, vowing "I did not say or even suggest that," and "I do not have, behind "no-strike clauses" and court Times and other rabid labor-haters Jane Barry said that "We realize if nor do I desire, that power" to call injunctions-but any union leader who would like to see Bush deal with an air­ Lorenzo destroys the lAM workers' sympathy strikes. isn't willing to risk going to jail is in the line Machinists strike the same way livelihood, we are his next target." East­ The real strategy of the Winpisinger wrong line of work. Reagan dealt with P A TCO-court ern flight attendants know all too well and Bryan "team," to pressure Bush to Massive picket lines, including thou­ injunctions, police scab herding, the jail­ what another corporate raider, Carl appoint an "emergency board" and have sands of other unionists and the un­ ing of union officials. A strike at East­ lcahn, did to the Independent Federa­ Congress impose a contract, is a strategy employed, must ring the hangars and ern will be class war. The workers can tion of Flight Attendants (lFFA) at of defeat. The Democrats are among the terminals-nobody crosses! For the defeat Lorenzo/Bush, but only if they TWA. Hung out to dry while other staunchest Lorenzo backers, and they unions at Eastern it's fight or die-and use all of their weapons (e.g., secondary unions, including the lAM, crossed were the ones who drew up the govern­ we better stand with them. This is not a strikes) and fight with courage ~nd their lines, three years later over 1,400 ment plan, later implemented by Rea­ case of isolated, militant strikers like determination. Labor's gotta play hard­ IFFA members still have not been gan, to crush PA TCO. But this hasn't Local P-9 at Hormel, left to go it alone ball to win this one! recalled to work. It is crucial that TWU stopped Winpisinger from sitting on the against the National Guard. From day flight attendants be brought out injoint Democratic Party's National Commit­ one, labor action to shut down the key "A Fight for All Labor" strike actiqn with the lAM. tee. Both the partner parties of capital­ air transportation hubs on the East Lorenzo is counting on the pilots to ism are enemies of the working class. Coast will electrify workers across the As the strike deadline approaches, scab, as they did in the last two lAM The road to betrayal of the lAM country. It will also bring a response Lorenzo has been running amok-fir­ strikes against Eastern in 1958 and 1966 strike is already well paved. Kirkland from the government, as in any major ing and suspending hundreds of union and repeatedly in strikes in the '80s. was careful to promise only "the maxi­ class battle-like the 1978 coal strike. members and stewards and recruiting On February 14, the Air Line Pilots mum degree of support that is legally Democrat Jimmy Carter repeatedly scabs up and down the East Coast. In Association (ALP A) Master Executive possible" (our emphasis). As soon as tried to break that strike with Taft­ Miami, after workers wildcatted Febru­ Council met and voted that "it was in some judge issues the inevitable injunc­ Hartley injunctions, but the miners tore ary 7 in a dramatic march off the base in the pilots' best interest to respect the tion against sympathy strikes Wimpy them up. What happens at Eastern will protest over forced overtime, Eastern picket lines." But a week later, ALPA will capitulate. He has already sent out shape upcoming labor fights, starting disciplined over 1,000 workers. lAM secretary-treasurer Rick Chapman said the' "Don't Fly Eastern" signs and with the tens of thousands of airline and members have pic.keted the scab recruit­ pilots will cross lAM picket lines "if they bumper stickers, setting up strikers for a aerospace workers whose contracts ing centers, and militantly protested [Eastern management] make it worth toothless consumer boycott, sinking the expire in '89. when Lorenzo brought scabs onto the our while" (Washington Post, 23 Febru­ lAM just like they sunk PA TCO. Miami base for training on the Wash­ ary). lp exchange for a "fence agree­ Machinist locals have been instructed to Gutting Safety, ington's birthday holiday. One chief picket travel agents and downtown Gutting the Unions ment" with Lorenzo, "guaranteeing" the steward told WV that lAM member~ pilots' jobs, some of the ALP A tops are company offices. This is a diversion Lorenzo and the other airline bosses were itching to strike on the spot. And willing to stab the Machinists in the from the key task: Shut down the personify unbridled capitalist greed. last week, thousands of Machinists and back. But playing hardball on the picket airports! line can convince potential scabs that it At Bal Harbour, Kirkland lavished wouldn't be smart. And if there are no praise on Elizabeth Dole, Bush's labor fueleni and no mechanics, then any secretary: "I count her as a personal pilots who throw in their lot with friend." Dole, who was Reagan's trans­ Lorenzo can just sit on the runway with portation secretary, helped make air travel what it is today. Adding insult to Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist league him. In Miami, Eastern is counting on injury, when Kirkland made his "soli­ expl01ting race, color and national darity" appearance at the February 23 o $7/24 issues of Workers Vanguard o $3/3 issues of divisions to crack the solid union hatred rally outside Eastern's Miami head­ (includes English-language Spartacist) Women and Revolution for Lorenzo. In this "contra capital," quarters, a plane flew overhead trailing D New D Renewal $2/10 introductory issues the banner "Eastern Airlines, official International rates: o where Cuban immigrants are pitted $25/24 issues-Airmail $7/24 issues-Seam ail of Workers Vanguard against blacks born in the U.S., who are airline of the AFL-CIO." (Obscenely, (includes English-language the AFL-CIO tops contracted with 0$2/4 issues of Spartacist (edicion en espanal) Spartacist) in turn set against Haitians, Eastern is hiring scabs for $3.85 per hour from Lorenzo's airline to fly them to Florida's Name ______among Nicaraguan refugees paroled beaches.) Address ______from la migra's holding pens in Texas. Junk Bonds and Flying Jalopies The integrated lAM local 702 at East­ ______Apt. # Phone (_) ______ern's Miami base has appealed to these The battle at Eastern has repercus­ City State Zip ______-.,= recent immigrants on Spanish-language sions throughout corporate America, 472 radio stations not to scab. The lAM for the airline industry exemplifies Make checks payable/mail to: Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 must defend the right of foreign-born American capitalism in the '80s-the workers who have made it to this coun- Reagan years. Corporate raiders, fi-

8 WORKERS VANGtJ~RD ident," the ruling-class mouthpiece calls for breaking the lAM: "Mr. Reagan stood firm against a strike by air traffic controllers that could have grounded civil aviation. The question now is whether Mr. Bush will stand up with equal courage .... "The cost of appeasement could be enormous." The Times added, "Mr. Kirkland is probably bluffing." The ruling class has thrown down the gauntlet. They want to see if labor's bluffing, so let's show them some real power-shut down the airports! 1'0 win, the Eastern strikers must forge a new leadership with the determination and strategy to fight. The strike must be taken out of the hands of Kirkland and Winpisinger through elected strike com­ Oakland airport, August 1981: Spartacists join PATCO demonstration, demanding "Labor: Shut down the airports!" mittees which must appeal to all the air­ line unions. The battle against Lorenzo nanced by junk bonds, have taken over up 20 percent of the top Fortune 500 list! fly on commercial airlines. They don't must be extended into an industrywide and looted the ai!"lines while smashing To payoff the junk bond holders, all use private or company planes. Last strike, fighting for a single union of all the unions, driving down wages and Lorenzo has attempted to drive down fall, the Wall Street Journal (19 Septem­ airline workers-pilots, Machinists, scrapping safety standards. It is no acci­ the wages of this highly skilled work­ ber 1988), no less, ran an article titled, flight attendants, air traffic controllers, dent that the popular film Wall Street force to sweatshop levels. When he took "Some Airlines Narrow Their Safety ramp servicemen-with standard wage centers around a villainous corporate over Continental in 1983, he declared Margins, Seeking to Cut Costs." The and benefits scales across the industry. raider (Icahn? Lorenzo?) taking over an bankruptcy, tore up all union contracts Journal exposed all manner of danger­ At stake in this strike in a key section airline. But Machinists better not for­ and cut wages nearly in half. When he ous conditions and practices-an aging of American industry is the right of get that it was under Borman's "Eastern bought Eastern in 1986, he declared "I fleet of planes, constantly switching organized labor to exist. The defense of family" that Charles Bryan forked over don't meet with union leaders." Lorenzo pilots from one model to another, cut­ a half century of union gains, and the millions in givebacks to buy a seat on the "made no secret of his intentions: to ting back on pilot training. The article opening up of a future cleansed of cor­ board of directors. slash labor costs using all available quoted one pilot for Lorenzo's Conti­ porate parasites like Lorenzo, requires Lorenzo cOl).trols the biggest airline means," reported Business Week (II nental Airlines: "Years ago, the airlines the forging of a class-struggle leader­ operation in the Western world with July 1988). At the same time, he has were expected to do better than the min­ ship. While Winpisinger, who calls him­ total assets of $8 billion. Yet he himself looted Eastern-selling off its assets dirt imum standards. Now, the attitude is, self a "seat-of-the-pants socialist," looks owns less than one percent of the stock cheap, charging exorbitant fees for so­ 'As long as it's legal. ... '" to the Democratic Party in Congress to of this corporate empire centered on called services provided by Texas Air But while the capitalist class may impose a contract, what we need is a the Texas Air holding company. How and Continental. worry about deteriorating airline safety, fighting workers party to unite labor does he do it? By borrowing. Lorenzo's Driving down costs in the debt-laden they stand behind Lorenzo 100 percent and its allies to impose the interests of airline empire owes $5.5 billion in airlines industry also means driving in his war against labor. those whose labor produces the enor­ debt. In 1987 the interest payments down safety standards. And even the mous profits that the Lorenzos and alone amounted to $600,000,000. This is rest of the American capitalist class is Bust the Union-Busters! Icahns and their bankers are looting. greater than the total revenue of many becoming nervous about that. After all, In the New York Times 24 February No more PATCOs! Victory to the large U.S. corporations, firms making their relatives, friends and executives do editorial, "Labor Threatens the Pres- lAM! Shut down the airports!.

have been joined by the blanket ban on backbsh. Anthony Murphy, chairman Muslims are driven back into the arms Rushdie ... Sinn Fein and even the musical group of Bradford South Conservative Club, of the most reactionary elements of their (continued/rom page 5) Pogues' song about the demonstrably is distributing leaflets calling for an end traditional society. innocent Birmingham Six. Fortu­ to all immigration: "I don't think you There is an established church in this taboos against which The Satanic nately, the reactionary Christian cler­ could impose sterilisation, but we must country and ominous moves to further Verses' has transgressed (these and one icals in this country couldn't deprive educate them. The indigenous popula­ erode secular education threaten every­ other; I also tried to write about the people of the right to see the movie, The tion see the take-over as a recipe for place of women in Islamic society, and one. The Tories' Education Reform in the Koran)." Last Temptation of Christ. But fascists disaster" (Independent, 21 January). attacks the educational rights of all -Observer, 22 January linked with Catholic fundamentalism The sheer disproportion in the rela­ working people and is a particular Epitomised by the horrible conditions were able to terrorise theatres through­ tionship of forces between the white affront to minorities. The government is under Khomeini's Islamic regime in out France from screening the movie in Christian majority and the Muslims insisting that religious education in Iran and those which the CIA-backed various areas outside Paris. The ruling would suggest that Islamic fundamen­ schools be implemented and that it be Afghan "freedom fighters" wish to im­ class in this country has a long tradition talist frenzy is contrary to the objective essentially Christian. This has fuelled pose, Islamic fundamentalism reserves of class-biased hypocrisy backed up interests of the Muslim communities as the Islamic fundamentalists' drive to special horrors for women. From the with state sanctions. lmitating the worst well as other minorities. The funda­ establish single-sex schools for girls stifling and dehumanising chador (veil) characteristics of the bourgeois rulers mentalists are centred in the mosques of and force young women into purdah. to the pervasive and humiliating segre­ are the weepy liberals and "leftists" the most deprived inner-city areas such The growing pressure for separate (and gation in society (purdah) advocated by who think that Paul Simon's Graceland as Bradford and East London. In this single-sex) schools coming from a small Islamic fundamentalists, a key question album ought to be banned and his vile racist society the mosque offers but loud bunch of Muslim fanatics only dividing communists and the elders of concerts picketed because he worked some pie-in-the-sky solace to the com­ plays into the hands of white segrega­ the mosques is the liberation of women with South African black musicians or munity'S most oppressed. Faced with tionist outfits like the Parental Alliance from such barbaric subjugation. that Jim Allen's anti-Zionist Perdition unemployment or toiling in the satanic for Choice in Education in Dewsbury. Ominously the white racists and anti­ should not be allowed to play. mills of Bradford-not to mention the These people do not seem to know what immigrant fascists in Britain might well Less sanctimonious are the right­ sweatshops run by the petty capitalists country tqey, and their followers, live in. see a chance to peddle genocidal poison wing forces busying themselves on the who are the mullahs' closest sup­ We demand free secular education for against all Asians in the aftermath of ground, preparing the way for a racist porters-some of the oppressed Asian all, including the teaching of minority the Muslim fanatics' drive. In a letter to languages such as Bengali and Urdu. the Guardian (22 January) one Dipak Keep the mullahs, nuns; priests and Nandy writes: above all the reverends of the estab­ "The reaction of the Muslim commu­ lished Anglican church out of the nity to Satanic Verses is a profound schools! strategic error. Britain in 1989 is an Of the party that presided over the intolerant, illiberal society anyway. By joining forces with those who have British-engineered partition bloodbath made it so, Muslims in Britain seem to in India, the racist Labour Party that be, with unbelievable naivety, forging brought you virginity tests for Asian the conditions in which their own right women seeking immigration to Britain, to exist and practise their faith will be Rushdie notes "the true conservatives of extinguished. "I write as one who grew up as a Britain are now the Labour party" and boy amidst the communal massacres that "It is very sad to see this alliance of which accompanied the partition of the left and the mullahs, for heaven's India and for whom the ugly, unaccept­ sake" (Sunday Times, 22 January). able face of religion-and particularly of religious fundamentalism-is etched Indeed, Labour's "party of the people" in memories of dead, disfigured bodies talk is a pro-capitalist fraud-from its littering the streets-and of screams in longstanding bloc with the Catholic the night." church in places like Glasgow based on The . bourgeois mouthpieces have protecting religious schools, to the already waxed mealy-mouthed about Gypsy bans in Islington to Bernie the glorious "British traditions" of Grant's appeal to the Victorian values of "tolerance" and "democracy," trying to the blasphemy laws. Britain needs a rev­ bury the long history of state censor­ olutionary Bolshevik party, a true trib­ ship. Oscar Wilde was jailed for openly une of the oppressed, built by splitting defying official bourgeois sexual hypoc­ the Labour Party in the struggle for risy, D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's socialist revolution. Having thus gotten Lover was banned for decades. Recently Asadour rid of all the old crap, we can then enjoy the frenzied attempts to ban Spycatcher Bradford, England: Muslim fundamentalists torch Salman Rushdie's book. Satanic Verses in peace .• 3. MARCH 198.9 .,' ". " 9 Army chief of staff. These gung ho field EI Salvador ... Death squad murder on the rise: officers argue that they are getting Air force paratroopers (right), whipped on the battlefield because of (continued from page 12) another victim found restrictions imposed by civilian politi­ revolution, pose the struggle in broad­ on road (below). cians and the U.S. strategy of "low­ er terms. The liberation of the Central intensity conflict." Ponce wants to "dry American masses requires a fight for Photos: Hinterlang/J.B. Pictures up the sea" by "draining" the peasants workers revolution throu'ghout the re­ out of areas where the guerrillas oper­ gion, extending to the Mexican pro­ ate. Instead of "low-intensity conflict," letariat and above all waging sharp the tandona advocates the strategy of class struggle in the heart of Yankee "total war." One of their godfathers in imperialism. ARENA told a human rights delega­ tion that in order to win the war it will be Civil War Escalates necessary to kill perhaps 1{)0,000 peo­ ple. "We could do it in 10 years or in one The front-runner in the Salvadoran year. . .. I would prefer to get it over presidential election is Alfredo (Freddy) within one year." Cristiani, the Georgetown-educated . millionaire coffee baron and industrial­ War of the Mayors ist. Cristiani was chosen to present a cleaned-up image of ARENA, made One of the FMlN's most effective infamous by D'Aubuisson, the former tactics in establishing dual power in the head of Army intelligence who person­ countryside has been to issue threats to ally ordered the 1980 assassination of the local mayors, telling them to resign Archbishop Oscar Romero. Yet Cris­ or be executed. As of February it was tiani complains about a "human-rights reported that over 50 mayors have psychosis" crippling the war against resigned, and an equal number have fled leftist guerrillas. In the Frontline (14 to the departmental capitals, so that June 1988) TV program on "Our For­ there are no functioning local author­ gotten War," the ARENA standard­ ities in one-third of El Salvador. Even bearer was asked: the mayor of Usulutan, El Salvador's Frontline: What country in Latin third-largest city, resigned. Mayor Mar­ America would you point to as the sort ta Gomez de Melendez of Cojutepeque, of system that you think would work for who is the head of ARENA in Cusca­ El Salvador? tian department, was the 45th mayor to Alfredo Cristiani: Chile. quit. After receiving a letter from the The independent Salvador Human vador ... has taken on the trappings nango for the third time in five years, FMlN ordering her to quit in 72 hours Rights Commission reported on De­ of an armed camp.... Heavily armed causing hundreds of casualties. or "face popular justice," Gomez read cember 29 that 1,741 civilians were troops now man roadblocks through­ Most recently, on February 21, the her resignation on national TV: killed in El Salvador in the first eleven out the city, and most days low flying rebels staged an attack in San Salvador "The army promised to protect me, but months of 1988. helicopters buzz residential zones." The on the headquarters of the 4,000-man those soldiers can't even protect them­ Ironically, the Arias "peace plan" has most spectacular of the FMlN's strikes First Brigade, the country's most impor­ selves, can't even shoot straight. How meant a resurgence of death squad ter­ was the broad daylight attack on the tant military installation. Simulta­ could they protect me?" If I had soldiers walking behind me, the people ror. After the U.S. Congress made a fuss Ministry of Defense and General Staff neously the rebels attacked an army would say, 'There goes Dona Marta and about "human rights," they cut down on headquarters in the middle of San Sal­ engineering base at Zacatecoluca. A her death squad'." the mass killings for fear of losing U.S. vador on December 23. It was the first­ U.S. "adviser" stationed at the base Newsday (16 January) quoted a West­ dollars. They figured the urban popula­ ever assault on the army high command reported to the U.S. Military Group ern military adviser as saying, "It is a tion was sufficiently terrorized anyway. in eight years of civil war'and put 14 high commanders in the capital: "The shit's brilliant strategy destroying govern­ But under the Esquipulas agreements, officials out of action. The FMlN, used hitting the fan pretty bad out here .... ment attempts to deliver goods and serv­ the government is supposed to allow at imaginative tactics, launching explo­ I'm bailing out of here. I'm getting out of ices to the people." But there has been an least the appearance of a political sives over the 20-foot-high wall 'of the here ...." outcry from liberals, "human rights" opposition. The military was furious compound by use of a catapult. While full-time guerrilla forces have groups in the U.S. and even Ruben that FDR leaders Guillermo Ungo and Earlier, on December 20, urban com­ been reduced because of the govern­ Zamora of the FDR, who claims that by Ruben Zamora were allowed to return, mandos of the FMlN exploded two car ment's control of the air, meaning that killing or threatening "civilians" the and that Ungo is running in the pres­ bombs in front of the headquarters of mass attacks must take place at night, guerrillas are violating the Geneva Con­ idential elections on the Convergencia the Air Force at Ilopango, on the out­ the areas under FMlN control have vention on warfare. To begin with, the Democnitica ticket. So with the leftist skirts of the capital. On December 5, expanded to a third of the country. And mayors are hardly "civilians." In this opposition active in tife streets and with they launched an attack on the head­ in the urban areas, the FMlN has civil war situation, they are local repre­ guerrilla actions mUltiplying in the heart quarters of the Third Infantry Brigade organized militias and "insurrectional sentatives of the bloody regime which of San Salvador, the right has re­ and the elite Arce Battalion in San detachments" which they claim now has killed more than 70,000 Salvado­ sponded by revving up its Murder Inc. Miguel. Before that, on November 1, the number 40,000 men, women and rans. They were selected in gunpoint After the defeat of the leftist rebels' FMlN "welcomed" incoming army youths. "The rebels are showing they're "elections" in which no leftists could "Final Offensive" in 1981, it was mili­ chief of staff Rene Emilio Ponce with an the only order in many parts of the run. And the eight mayors who were tarily pretty quiet in the capital even as attack on National Guard headquar­ country," a Salvadoran analyst said. killed by the guerrillas last year were all fighting was heavy in the countryside. ters which destroyed half the installa­ But now a new group of officers have members of ARENA,the fascistic party But in the last year the FMlN has tion. And on September 13, an FMlN taken power in the military-the tando­ of the death squads. brought the war to San Salvador. News­ attack hit the heavily fortified El na, the "big class" of 1966, whose leader Moreover, the mayors are directly in day (16 January) writes that "San Sal- Paraiso military barracks in Chalate- is Colonel Rene Emilio Ponce, the new the pay of U.S. AID, as an integral part of the CIA's Vietnam-style "counterin­ surgency" program. Each municipality but the YCl called the cops against assault on the Spartacus Youth Club's now receives $55,000 for projects under Spartacus Youth Club members who anti-Klan meeting! the control of the mayors. Among these Amherst ... projects promoted by the mayors to (continued from page 7) stood outside the meeting distributing Well, Stalin tried a pact with Hitler Workers Vanguard and a press release too, and that didn't work out so well. "win the hearts and minds" of villagers organizations have responded positively about the attack on our comrades. Was The YCl's shameful sectarianism will are the paramilitary patrols known as to our appeal for support to defend the it the YCl the next night who called backfire against them. Stalinist refor­ "civil defense," some of the most notori­ Anti-Klan 3, recognizing an oppor­ campus cops again to stop SYC sup­ mism renders the YCl incapable of ous killers in the rural areas. EI Salva­ tunity to defeat their own enemies and porters from distributing literatur~ politically fighting repression. In order dor correspondent Chris Norton quoted defend themselves. But not the Young outside a talk by Chip Berlet on the dan­ to prove its loyalty to the ruling class from a study done for the U.S. embassy Communist league. On February 22, ger of the far right on American cam­ during World War II, the Communist on the AID "Municipalities" program: College RepUblicans were admitted to a puses? The Minuteman (March 1989) Party (CP) hailed the prosecution of the '''It is often overlooked that Munici­ Smith Act against its first victims, the palities in Action is a counterinsur­ publicly advertised YCl event featur­ even peddles a violence-baiting slander gency strategy,' says the study. 'Indeed, ing a People's Daily World columnist, from the YCl to justify the right-wing American Trotskyists, only to discover we will argue that in EI Salvador it later that the Smith Act became the cen­ is the most effective counterinsurgency terpiece of the government's Cold War strategy.' witchhunt against the CP itself. In con­ "But in forcing the mass resignations WHAT YOU CAN DO charges against the Anti-Klan 3 to: of the country's mayors, the guerrillas Clerk of the Court, Northamp­ trast, we Trotskyists stand firmly in the have undercut the program, frustrating By prosecuting three Spartacus ton District Court, 15 Gothic St., tradition of non-sectarian, united-front the government's ability to project itself Youth Club supporters who defend­ Northampton, MA 01060. Send let­ defertse of every victimized member of in the countryside, especially in the ed an anti-racist meeting against ters demanding that UMass rescind the workers movement, regardless of most trouble-plagued zones where the our political disagreements. last year, government most needed to assert its a premeditated violent assault, the the ban against the Spartacus Youth presence." Minuteman crowd hopes for a court Club to: Office of the Chancel­ we went to bat for the CP when they -San Francisco Examiner, declaration of open season against lor, 374 Whitmore Building, UMass were attacked by the same Minuteman 13 January leftists, black activists, gays, fighters Amherst, Amherst, MA 01003. Pack crowd at Amherst (see "Campus Con­ Yes, the guerrillas' "war of the may­ for women's rights, defenders of civil the Northampton District Court tras Assault Gus Hall Meeting," Work­ ors" is based on terror. But in a civil war, liberties. Don't let them get away March 23 in solidarity with the ers Vanguard, 1 January 1988) and in which the government forces spread with it! Anti-Klan 3! we defend the right of the reformist indiscriminate terror through bomb­ Defense of the Anti-Klan 3 is in Court battles are costly. Please Rabinowitz to take office. ings, massacres and death squad assas­ the urgent interest of everyone tar­ help-send a check to: Partisan De­ Like the Wobblies used to say: An sinations, revolutionary struggle may geted by the Minuteman thugs. Send fense Committee, P.O. Box 99, Canal injury to one is an injury to all! Put the require such tactics. Leon Trotsky, the letters demanding the dropping of Street Station, New York, NY 10013. "Minutemen" on the run! Defend the organizer of the Bolshevik Red Army, Anti-Klan 3!- wrote in Terrorism and Communism

10 WORKERS VANGUARD (1920), his polemic against the Kautsky­ which attracted more than 60 organiza­ ites who denounced the Bolsheviks' "red tions, mainly unions, and all political terror," necessary to defend the young parties except ARENA. The "debate" Soviet power in the Civil War against the approved a platform calling for a "polit­ tsarist White Guards and the expedi­ ical solution" to the war and a "govern­ tionary forces of 14 imperialist armies: ment of national consensus." When the "War, like revolution, is founded upon Organization of American States came intimidation. A victorious war, gener­ to San Salvador in mid-November, ally speaking, destroys only ad insignif­ 70,000 people came out for a "peace" icant part of the conquered army, intim­ march called by the organizers of the idating the remainder and breaking "Blowtorch Bob" their will. The revolution works in the National Debate. But a "national con­ O'Aubuisson and same way: it kills individuals and sensus" in this deeply class-divided soci­ intimidates thousands." coffee baron ety and a negotiated peace to end the "Freddy" war in EI Salvador, which has already Cristiani, two Class War in San Salvador lasted three times as long as the Spanish faces of fascistic Not only is the war in the countryside Civil War, is utterly utopian. The choice ARENA party. going badly for the government, San in Salvador is revolution or death. Salvador is seething with protest. In an For a Trotskyist Party! article titled "Things Fall Apart: Trou­ ble Ahead in EI Salvador" (World In "The Guns of Salvador," Times­ oppose. And in an interview specially In 1979-80, hundreds of thousands of Policy Journal, Winter 1988-89), Mor­ man LeMoyne writes of the "class­ directed at the Bush administration, the Salvadoran working people took to the ris Blachman and Kenneth Sharpe note saturated war that Marxist rebel lead­ FMLN's top military leader, Joaquin streets to repudiate the "human rights" that there is "an increase in strikes, ers date not from 1979 but from 1932," Villalobos, pledges that they "represent junta, installed with the blessing of marches, petitions, demonstrations, and the first communist-led insurrection no danger to the United States" and the Democratic Carter administration, land takeovers" and an explosion of in the Americas. The insurrectionary would "avoid confrontation with the which gunned down strikers and "protests and demonstrations by fed­ forces were headed by Farabundo United States" (Foreign Policy, Spring blocked even minimal democratic re­ erations or confederations of unions Marti, an admirer of Trotsky and inter­ 1989). forms. Three general strikes shut down and other organizations to demand that nationalist to the core, who broke with This program for negotiating their the country. The moment cried out for a the government lift decrees restricting the courageous Nicaraguan guerrilla "incorporation" into the present Salva­ revolutionary party to place itself at the union activity and political rights, end Augusto Sandino over the latter's doran political system is directly coun­ head of the mass uprising and lead it in a disappearances and jailings of mem­ nationalism. The uprising was drowned terposed to an insurrection and to the struggle for workers power. But the bers and undertake a dialogue with the in blood as the government slaughtered revolutionary change for which the petty-bourgeois nationalist leftists like FDR-FMLN to end the war." 30,000 peasants and workers, haughtily insurgent masses have been fighting. Villalobos refused to call for insur­ A year ago in March, 50,000 govern-. rejecting offers of aid from U.S. and The FDR-FMLN leaders are acting as rection until they could get bourgeois ment employees held work stoppages Canadian warships which stood by off- firemen, consciously seeking to damp support for a popular front tying the Salvadoran masses to their exploiters. And when they called for the January 1981 general offensive, urban insurrec­ tion failed because the masses had been abandoned and defeated. Today once again the possibility for insurrection is posed in EI Salvador. After years of civil war, government ter­ ror, starvation wages and 50 percent unemployment, plus an earthquake that left hundreds of thousands homeless; with a third of the country in guerrilla hands, a divided regime led by a dying president, the ultrarightists growing and a new administration in Washington which has not defined its policy in Cen­ tral America-now is a moment ofdeci­ FMLN leaders Ana Guadalupe Martinez and sion, the time to strike for power. But Salvador Samayoa in Mexico City (left), guerrilla the petty-bourgeois nationalist/refor­ detachment (right). "Peace" plan with death mist leaders are doing everything squad regime spells bloody murder for Salvado­ possible to avoid this. As we wrote ran masses. earlier in "Workers Revolution vs. the Guerrilla Road," (WV No. 325, II demanding higher pay and an end to the shore. The outlook of the Salvadoran social struggle. Thus Villalobos tells March 1983), the "guerrilla road could war. When the head of the UNTS oligarchy, the famous Fourteen Fami­ Washington, "With this proposal the not lead to socialist revolution ... (National Unity of Salvadoran Work­ lies, and its army was expressed by one FMLN is making a final effort to pre­ because it is not based on the mobiliza­ ers), H umberto Centeno, was seized and Colonel MarceliQ,o, Galdamez, who vent a social explosion." Leonel Gon­ tion of the revolutionary class, the severely beaten by government troops, declared: zalez warns that the Salvadoran work­ proletariat": he was quickly freed as militant work­ "Communism is like a tree shaken by ing class and poor are a '''powder keg' the wind. The moving tree causes the "What is needed is above all a com­ ers marched through the· capital and which could be set off without the will of munist vanguard to lead it at the head of emergency protests were launched inter­ seeds to fall; the same wind carries the any specific political force, including the seed to other places. The seed falls on the urban and rural masses, to carry out nationally (including by the Partisan fertile soil. To be done with Com­ FMLN." The guerrilla comandantes are a proletarian insurrection establishing a Defense Committee). Then the day after munism it is necessary to make the trying to repeat the role they played workers and peasants government and a bomb ripped UNTS offices, 60,000 ground sterile." extending the revolution internation­ during the last pre-insurrectionary ally. That can only be a Trotskyist party workers, peasants, students and pro­ -quoted in Thomas P. situation a decade ago, as a brake on Anderson, Matanza (1971) following the road of October 1917, the fessionals marched on May Day in the revolutionary mobilization. road of permanent revolution.". face of a massive army presence. On This is the same view as that of a July 21, after a three-week power work­ Colonel Rene Emilio Ponce, who today ers strike which blacked out much of the speaks of "drying up the sea" in which SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY country, 20,000 workers protested a new the guerrillas move, of an ARENA strikebreaking "emergency law." which calls for "total war," only this National Office: New York As mobilizations of the workers and time with 100,000 dead. And the nation­ Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 Box 444, Canal st. Sta. poor mounted, even "moderate" sec­ alist FDR-FMLN want to negotiate a (212) 732-7860 New York, NY 10013 tors of the Salvadoran ruling class "political solution" leaving state power (212) 267-1025 began to worry about things getting out in the hands of this bloodthirsty bour­ of hand. So in August the Catholic geoisie and their military guard dogs! At Atlanta Detroit Norfolk church sponsored a "National Debate" the moment when leftist rebels are hit­ Box 4012 Box 441794 Box 1972, Main PO ting government forces hard, week after Atlanta, GA 30302 Detroit, MI 48244 Norfolk, VA 23501 "'\ week, even in their previously secure Boston Ithaca Oakland redoubts, the FMLN general command Box 840, Central Sta. Box 6767 Box 32552 Spartacist League announces that "the offensive launched Cambridge, MA 02139 Ithaca, NY 14850 Oakland, CA 94604 Public Offices by our forces ... doesn't contradict our (617) 492-3928 (415) 839-0851 will for a political solution to the con­ Chicago~ Los Angeles San Francisco -MARXIST LlTERATURE­ flict" (Venceremos, November 1988). Box 6441, Main PO Box 29574, Los Feliz Sta. Box 5712 Bay Area FMLN comandante Ferman Cien­ Chicago, IL 60680 Los Angeles, CA 90029 San Francisco, CA 94101 Thurs.: 5:30-8:00 p.m., Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p.m. fuegos declares, "It's an offensive aimed (312) 663-0715 (213) 380-8239 ( 415) 863-6963 1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street) at negotiation" (Chicago Tribune, 6 De­ Oakland, California Phone: (415) 839-0851 Cleveland Madison cember 1988). And the rebel leaders are Washington, D.C. Chicago going all out to show what "reason­ Box 91037 Box 2074 Box 75073 Cleveland, OH 44101 Madison, WI 53701 Washington, D.C. 20013 Tues.: 5:00-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 11 :00 a.m.-2:00 p.m. able" negotiating partners they are. In 161 W. Harrison St., 10th Floor (216) 781-7500 (608) 255-8068 (202) 636-3537 Chicago, Illinois Phone: (312) 663-0715 an interview with the Mexican daily La Jornada (13 November 1988), another New York City FMLN comandante, Leone! Gonzalez, Toronto Tues.: 6:00-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p.m. 41 Warren St. (one block below outlined a "Salvadoran model" seeking TROTSKYIST LEAGUE Box 7198, Station A Chambers St. near Church St.) the "modernization of capitalism," a OF CANADA Toronto, Ontario M5W 1X8 New York, N.Y. Phone: (212) 267-1025 project which only the "most back­ (416) 593-4138 \... .J ward" elements of the oligarchy could

3 MARCH 1989 11 WfJlINEIiS ".''''111)

For Workers Revolution! No N~gotiated Sellout!

_ Pictures Defiant Salvadoran workers protest Duarte (at left) with some of his officers­ strikebreaking law, arrest of union leader. EI Salvador: their regime is tottering. • • omen o eCISlon

Under Ronald Reagan, Central supposed to be Washington's model ance (ARENA) led by notorious killer sharing," so long as the vote was post­ America was declared to be no longer "democracy." They replaced the junta Roberto D' Aubuisson, is expected to poned by six months. In February, this the back yard but the "front yard" of with a civilian fa~ade to disguise army win. Since last September, the leftist was followed up with an offer to call off U.S. imperialism. This was where his rule. They held five elections in seven rebels of the Farabundo Marti National the war and respect the election results if first Secretary of State, General Haig, years, albeit at gunpoint and paid for by Liberation Front (FMLN) have been on the armed forces are pared down to vowed within days of taking office to the Americans. This was a laboratory an offensive that has pounded the army 12,000, the level they were at eight years "draw the line" against Communism. It for "low-intensity conflict," the Penta­ throughout the country. Guerrillas have ago. Duarte first denounced the FM LN was supposed to be an easy win on home gon's latest counterinsurgency fad. The landed blows against every major gov­ offer, but after the U.S. twisted his arm, turf, undoing the "Vietnam syndrome" army was quintupled in size to 60,000 ernment military 9bjective in the coun­ on February 26 the Salvadoran pres­ and settin~ the U.S. on the road to top­ men, supplied with all the weaponry, try, including the HQ of the joint chiefs ident went on TV offering a cease-fire pling the "evil empire" headquartered in helicopters and planes they could of staff. "They're driving the Army and postponement of the vote. We Moscow. But it didn't turn out that handle. And yet, by last spring a report. absolutely orazy," said a Western mili­ warn: if the guerrillas should lay down way. The CIA's contras were beaten by from four U.S. Army colonels con­ tary specialist. "The rebel attacks are their arms in any such negotiated sell­ the besieged left-nationalist Sandinista cluded, "By most estimates, the war in making the Armed Forces run from one out of the struggle, it would be fatal for regime in Nicaragua. And in EI Salva­ EI Salvador is stuck. Unhappily, the end of the country to the other like the Salvadoran masses. dor, Washington's Christian Demo­ U.S. finds itself stuck with the war." A chickens with their heads cut off" (New In a wrap-up article on his stint in cratic regime is going down the tubes few months later a State Department of­ York Times, 16 December 1988). Central America, titled "The Guns of with Duarte dying of cancer, his party ficial declared dismally, "Things are Yet at the same time the FMLN has Salvador," the New York Times' yup­ split by internal feuds and battered by going to hell in a hand basket down been escalating its offers to give up pie contra symp James LeMoyne writes leftist guerrillas as fascistic rightists gain there." battlefield gains at the bargaining table that if the guerrilla proposal comes to strength. It's all coming to a head with the in the name of a mythical negotiated naught, "some [rebel] commanders are Now George Bush is facing his first presidential elections, scheduled for settlement of this bitter civil war. In reported to support a Tet-style offen­ foreign policy test as the "forgotten war" March 19, which the party of the death January they caused a stir by offering to sive to break American and Govern­ in EI Salvador heats up. This was squads, the National Republican Alli- take part in elections without "power ment morale" (New York Times Maga­ zine, 5 February). Indeed, the FMLN's » year-end balance sheet highlights the a:~ "explosion of the war in the cities, where CD a popular insurrection is brewing." And ~ Q the guerrilla front's latest offensive is a: named "The Whole People to Prepare the Insurrection!" Yet such an uprising would be popular-frontist in character, to install a reform bourgeois regime, rather than a proletarian revolution led by the combative Salvadoran workers. As petty-bourgeois nationalists, the FMLN guerrillas and their popular­ front allies of the Revolutionary Dem­ San Salvador, 23 ocratic Front (FDR) see no alternative December 1988- to seeking "peace" with the U.S. Before FMLN commandos' dramatic daylight them is the example of Sandinista Nica­ attack on joint ragua, ravaged by nearly a decade of chiefs of staff HQ contra war and economic strangulation shook army brass. orchestrated from Washington. And now that Gorbachev is turning his back on Third World struggles from Af­ ghanistan to southern Africa, they see no prospect for Soviet aid to an embattled Salvadoran revolution. But Trotskyists, fighting on the proletarian internationalist program of permanent continued on page 10

12 ~ 3 MARCH 1989