Vol. 75/No. 27      July 25, 2011

The anti-Catholic, “birther”-inspired lawsuit and conspiracy mongering reported on page 10 are a symptom of today’s deep going capitalist crisis, which is bringing growing unemployment, evictions and foreclosures, wars, and insecurity into the lives of tens of millions of workers, farmers, and worse-off layers of the middle classes.

With the exception of New York Board of Elections members and the 2008 Democratic, Republican, and Socialist Workers Party presidential nominees, the majority of individuals targeted by the suit are either Jesuit clergy or capitalist politicians who are known Catholics, such as Joseph Biden and Nancy Pelosi. These defendants, says plaintiff Christopher-Earl Strunk, are all part of a vast plot to establish world domination by “the final Pope of Rome.”

The right wing in bourgeois politics today has no monopoly on conspiracy bombast. The middle-class left, too, is rife with supporters of “9/11 truth brigades,” Kennedy assassination buffs, AIDS-origins hucksters, and more. All these forces are a danger to the working-class and labor movement.

By peddling the false notion that wars and social breakdowns have their roots in secret plots, conspiracy demagogues seek to divert the eyes of workers and farmers from the real cause: the capitalist system and the bourgeois political parties and state—its cops, courts, and armed forces—that serve and protect that profit-driven system.

What’s more, an obsession with the “mysterious” source of social crises inevitably calls out for scapegoats. It raises, in sinister tones, the question “Who?”

Whether the answer is “the Jews,” “the foreigners,” or, as in Strunk’s lawsuit, “the Catholics,” a dagger is thrust through the heart of working-class solidarity, confidence, political consciousness, and determination to fight.

As the world capitalist crisis accelerates, and as workers defend ourselves on picket lines and in the streets, our class enemies will resort to bigotry and conspiracy rhetoric more and more.

But there are no mysteries. The causes of today’s capitalist crisis can be understood and explained. Most importantly, so can the political course needed to combat the worsening consequences of the dictatorship of capital for the lives, livelihoods, and rights of the oppressed and exploited—to advance along the road of the revolutionary working-class struggle for power.
 
 
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Anti-Catholic demagogy underlies lawsuit  
 
 
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