Vol. 81/No. 17      May 1, 2017

 

25, 50 and 75 Years Ago

 
May 1, 1992
James Warren and Estelle DeBates, the Socialist Workers candidates for U.S. president and vice-president, have just visited North Korea.

“It is important to visit Korea,” said Warren, “because it is the target of a campaign by U.S. imperialism, to hang the nuclear weapons frame around the neck of the Korean people and use it to justify war moves.”

The main thing the socialist candidates will be taking to the Korean people “is our solidarity with their fight for national sovereignty,” Warren said, “and our pledge to maintain our struggle against Washington’s plans to prevent the people of Korea from uniting their country.” The Korean peninsula was divided by the United States and the Soviet Union after World War II.

May 1, 1967
Che Guevara’s article about the war in Vietnam speaks bluntly. The “United States of North America” is the most mortal enemy faced by mankind. There is only one recourse and that is to struggle for socialist revolution.

If two or three or more Vietnams could be created this could make a decisive difference in the conflict. His appeal for action deals with the intolerable way in which “the two big powers in the socialist camp” have permitted the Vietnamese to stand alone.

What about the people of the United States? We can assure revolutionary fighters like Guevara that the American people are growing more impatient with this war. The first signs were the teach-ins that began after Johnson escalated the war in February 1965.

May 2, 1942
Attorney-General Biddle has taken steps to ban Coughlin’s Social Justice and some other fascist sheets from the mails. The steps taken will no more crush the native fascists than did the similar steps of Hitler’s predecessors in Germany, and the “democratic” government that preceded Mussolini.

No capitalist government can be depended upon to destroy the fascists because today’s “democratic” capitalists will be ready tomorrow to back the fascists in order to crush the labor movement.

Workers can only depend on themselves. Those lessons must become part of the consciousness of the American working class. Above all, no illusions about the real character of the “anti-fascist” activities of the Department of Justice!  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home