DSA warned to Combat anti-communism

By  សតិវ ​អតុ

Many of the people who read this blog have nothing but contempt for Democratic Socialist of America, or any democratic socialist group. Some hate democratic socialist as much as I hate the Republican Party. I attended a camp out for DSA, this weekend and listened to some speakers they had on Saturday. I liked this speech and found it very relevant. This attitude should be adopted by most of the DSA chapters around the country.

Combating anti-communism

Report on Phil Brown's, Omaha, Nebraska speech.

"Anti-communism is part of the US ideology," Brown said. "At every level of our culture anti-communism is pervasive. It's Orthodox American ideology. Communism is featured as an evil force. A threat to the American way of life, to the American dream."

Brown explained how the US created this climate of anti-communism which was obvious during the red scare years, but also pushed in more subtle ways.

" Leftist Groups have distanced themselves from communism," Brown continued. "They stress they are not communist. None of those attempts worked. If you challenge the bourgeoisie they will label you a communist.  A democratic socialist runs for office, he is labelled a communist. Red baiting doesn't help us. "

Much of Brown's speech was about all the ways the corporate leaders of this country have associated any challenge to their authority as communism.

"Even Medicaid could be labelled communism," Brown added.

He pointed out some of the absurdities of anti-communism.

"Many Americans see themselves as millionaires who are temporarily removed from that class by the fact that they just don't have their money yet," he added.

All of this creates the kind of class confusion that has protected the wealthy classes from the working class. It has created a kind of hostility to working class ideas while not being hostile to the upper classes.

Brown said that  anti-communism is a form of intervention and some leftists take part in it.

" Intervention in Korea, Vietnam, Latin America, Central America, regardless of what we think of these other countries some progress is made," he added.

Brown pointed out that most of the countries that have been labelled as authoritarian, un-democratic and anti-freedom, (common catch phrases) may fall short of the progressive values moderate leftists wanted to see, yet they  began as movements that people supported for legitimate reasons. He used the fall of the Soviet Union as an example of a cause that many leftist supported, but in the end that support worked against a lot of them.

" If we are pressing for social change it doesn't help us too be red baiting," Brown added. "It makes a liberal or progressive agenda easy to shoot down."