Below is an excerpt on the poison of Jew-hatred in the working class and fights for national liberation from the introduction by Socialist Workers Party leader Norton Sandler to Is Socialist Revolution in the US Possible?Copyright © 2016 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.
Early in the forum, a speaker who said he was visiting from Panama declared from the floor that Jews “have all the money” and control everything from the international banking system to powerful imperialist media conglomerates. In addition, “Jews” control and direct US foreign policy, especially policy toward the Middle East. This myth, infecting growing layers of middle-class liberals and radicals in the United States and other imperialist countries today, is also widely advanced throughout Latin America, including among those who identify themselves as anti-imperialists.
These bigoted, conspiracy-spinning allegations … conceal the plain truth of how capitalism works. Above all, they deprive working people of the knowledge and confidence that we can be the makers of history — that our own conscious, revolutionary action, and only that, can remove the capitalist ruling families from power and prevent them from blowing up the world.
Following the initial remarks in the discussion period about the rich and all-powerful Jews, I took the floor to point out that Jew-hatred remains one of the most virulent anti-working-class weapons of the ruling classes, as it has been since the birth of the modern workers movement a century and a half ago. Recalling its ghastly consequences in the hands of Germany’s imperialist rulers in the 1930s and ’40s, I underlined the deadly threat to the workers movement of refusing to intransigently combat any and all targeting of Jews, Latinos, Blacks, gypsies, whites, or any other national, religious or ethnic grouping.