Ashley
Smith recently wrote an essay (Anti-imperialism
and the Syrian Revolution)
ostensibly about Syria and imperialism but more properly understood
as a rekindling and re-statement of anti-Communist “leftism.”
Smith, an ideologue of the International Socialist Organization,
unveils his true target when he inveighs against the “Stalinists”:
“Stalinist groups like the Workers World Party, Party for Socialism
and Liberation, and Freedom Road Socialist Organization…”
Not
content with these examples, Smith, in McCarthy-like fashion, feels
the necessity to name further names. He sees the UK’s Stop the War
coalition as also duped by the Stalinists, along with the US United
National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC). Jill Stein of the Green Party and
her Vice Presidential partner, Ajamu Baraka, are similarly infected
with the “Stalinist” virus.
Laughably,
he ominously links the recent bold, fact-finding mission to Syria
organized by the US Peace Council to the “American Communist
Party,” an association meant to conjure up the specter of Stalin;
but it is an untenable association with a moribund CPUSA that has
long distanced itself from “Stalinism” and the Soviet legacy with
a fervor equal to the US Trotskyist groups.
Without
re-visiting the old ideological wars (Trotsky has been dead for 76
years, Stalin for 63 years, and the Soviet Union for 25 years), it is
nonetheless useful to point out a common characteristic shared by US
Trotskyist organizations: they invariable live and breathe
anti-Communism. Since the Cold War began, they traded on their
distance from the “enemies” of Western Imperialism. The grip that
these groups often had on middle class youth was predicated on the
denial of Red connections. For a university student, the McCarthyite
stigma of Communism could be evaded by joining an anti-Communist
organization that proclaimed that its anti-Communism was even more
radical than Communism!
US
Trotskyism is part of the “Yes,
but…” left. Yes,
Communism, Stalinism, Maoism, Marxism-Leninism, etc. etc. are bad,
but
we’re not like that! Like you, we’re against them, too! We’re
the unthreatening, friendly advocates for change… In the Cold War
period and after, this was a safe tactic to appear radical without
poking the bear of repression. Of course it didn’t always fool
those entrusted with thwarting even the most lame rejection of
capitalism.
Communists
victimized by Cold War repression often joked that a US socialist was
someone without the guts to be a Communist. The easy assimilation of
much of the Trotskyist intellectual apparatus into the anti-Communist
hierarchy and the subsequent entry of many into ruling circles
certainly underscores the opportunism of this tactic.
Since
the demise of the Soviet Union, US Trotskyism has been in crisis.
With the departure of a foil of sheer evil, the appeal of
anti-Communist radicalism has lost its punch. Apart from the
intellectual Neanderthals serving Eastern European reaction
(sponsored by the New York Review of
Books, The
Washington Post, and a few other
inveterate anti-Communist organs), the epithet “Stalinist!” means
little in current discourse.
Ashley
Smith hopes to revive its relevance for the twenty-first century. He
sets out to buttress Trotskyism as a thin and tortured alternative to
the anti-imperialism of the “Stalinists.” As with his Cold War
predecessors, Smith hopes to trade on distancing Trotskyism from the
rivals or antagonists of US and European Imperialism. In the absence
of a Soviet Union, capitalist Russia will suffice as the source of
evil. And Syria’s Assad will play the role of the bloodthirsty
despot-- a mini-Stalin-- in this Trotskyist fantasy. Smith offers an
unvarnished choice: “Which side are you on? Do you support the
popular struggle against dictatorship and for democracy? Or are you
with Bashar al-Assad’s brutal regime, his imperial backer Russia,
his regional ally Iran and iran’s proxies like Hezbollah from
Lebanon?”
It
is breathtaking how simplistically, but presumptuously Smith
characterizes the Syrian tragedy. It is equally astonishing to
recognize how wrong he gets it.
To
be so blind to sources of information apart from Western reporters in
Beirut, Amman, and Ankara, to rely principally upon a London-based,
unfiltered, and non-independent anecdote collector like the Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights, and to credit US and European sponsored
“revolutionaries” implies an indifference to the pursuit of
truth.
Whatever
grievances Syrians may have had against Assad, it is hardly credible
to hail an armed struggle that began literally weeks after the
alleged peaceful demonstrations that Smith praises. No insurrection
has ever proceeded so swiftly and effectively against security
services and a modern army without outside assistance. We now know
from revelations exposed by the US media’s fixation on the Benghazi
fiasco that the CIA was vigorously engaged in shipping weaponry to
Syria from stockpiles snatched from its Libyan venture. We know that
regimes on the Arabian Peninsula were equally vigorous in supplying
military equipment and recruiting volunteers.
Even
US and Western European sources concede that the most numerous and
most effective anti-Assad fighters are not democrats or reformists,
but radical fundamentalists driven by religious fervor and feudal
ideology, hardly the idealistic revolutionaries portrayed by Smith.
In fact, US and European advisors complain of the difficulties of
vetting anti-Assad forces sufficiently credible to receive advanced
weapons. The few recipients of US supplied anti-tank missiles have
displayed a troubling propensity to pass them on to the worst of the
worse jihadist.
Smith
shows an enormous conceit, from his secure perch, joining Western
politicians in intuiting the sentiment of the Syrian people.
Cavalierly dismissing the Syrian elections, he-- along with the
Western media-- somehow divines that most Syrians hate Assad and that
the opposition overflows with democratic, progressive sentiment.
Where we have evidence of an independent
vote-- for example, the May, 2014 national election vote of Syrian
refugees in Lebanon-- the Washington
Post’s rabid anti-Assad reporter,
Liz Sly, conceded that uncoerced refugees supported Assad.
One
has to notice that, unlike previous chapters of the so-called “Arab
Spring,” there are no embedded Western reporters recording the
march of democracy or the defeat of tyranny. Cannot CNN find any
democrats in the Syrian opposition? Are there no freedom-loving
fighters for NBC reporters to interview?
Of
course the Assad regime’s invitation to allow Western reporters
goes cynically unaccepted. To find on-the-spot reporting from Syrian
battle zones, one has to turn to Lizzie Phelan, an independent UK
journalist whose frequent front line footage appears most often on RT
(her recent 20-minute cab ride through Aleppo gives a decidedly
different picture of the city from that rendered by Western media
reporting a Syrian “Stalingrad” from afar).
Smith
does not hesitate to embrace the Libyan debacle as a pro-democracy
revolution as well. One would think that the disastrous
destabilization of Libya would serve as a sobering tonic for Smith’s
fantasies. As with Syria, the pro-democracy revolutionaries were
largely a figment of the imagination of US and European politicians
and journalists, a group that our erstwhile “socialist” seems
happy to join. But that is not just my opinion or the opinion of
other “Stalinists.” On Wednesday, September 14, the UK
parliament’s cross-party Foreign Affairs Committee released a
report on the UK’s 2011 intervention in Libya. According to The
Wall Street Journal, the committee
found that the engagement was “based on ‘serious erroneous
assumptions and an incomplete understanding’... [and] failed to
identify that the rebels included a
significant Islamist element and
that the [Gadhafi] threat to civilians was overstated.” (my
italics) It is striking that the UK government can shed its
illusions, but Ashley Smith clings to his.
It
is no accident that Ashley Smith’s long essay makes only a passing
mention of workers or class. Like most US Trotskyist organizations,
ISO draws support significantly from the petty-bourgeoisie. Thus, the
question of workers and their fate never arises in his argument.
There is no notice taken of the Syrian General Federation of Trade
Unions, a supporter of Assad, an opponent of class collaboration, a
leader in Arab trade unionism, and a pillar of the class struggle
trade unionism of the World Federation of Trade Unions. There is no
attention to either the opinions of workers or the effect of a
violent insurrection upon the working class. These issues are of
little count for one who calls for all to “collaborate with Syrian
revolutionaries” who exist only in the minds of political
romantics.
Rather
than concern himself with the fate of Syria’s working class, Smith
prefers to repeat the US and European media’s obsession with
civilian-targeted barrel bombs and poison gasses, claims that have
defied objective verification. But he exceeds Western fear-mongering
by attributing the entire
UN estimate of 400,000 deaths in the war to “Assad’s massacre.”
Recently,
a delegation organized by the US Peace Council visited Syria and met
with a number of Syrians, their organizations, and even
oppositionists. They left the US with the notion that Syrians should
decide the fate of Syria. They returned with the same notion, but
even more strongly felt. But, in addition, they returned with the
view that events in Syria are far more complicated than the
simplistic picture presented by the US State Department. They
returned with the idea that peace in Syria would not be secured
through the intervention of foreign powers or by supporting
media-manufactured fantasies. Unfortunately, many on the left like
Ashley Smith and some in the more conservative peace groups do not
want to hear the Peace Council report, preferring to embrace the
self-serving constructions of the regime-changers.
Zoltan
Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com