Letter

June 17, 2024

Pleased to learn about the Socialist Workers Party

I recently subscribed to the Militant, and I am pleased to discover the existence of the Socialist Workers Party. The open antisemitism of the (Stalinist) CPUSA drove me away from it, when people I had considered friends and fellow travellers suddenly decided to distance themselves from me because I am openly Jewish. The CPUSA’s flagship publication regularly publishes articles promoting false stories that play into old and discredited antisemitic conspiracy theories, such as the spurious notion that Jewish “financiers” profited from the 10/7 attacks. I finally had enough of that organization and resigned my membership, though I had hitherto been very much involved with them.

Stalin sadly was said to have followed the old adage of “antisemitism as the socialism of fools,” that is to say, he knew that uneducated people often fell into the bourgeois conspiracy theory of antisemitism (promoted by capitalist classes to distract people from their real problems, as, of course, happened in 1920s Germany), and so Stalin too apparently decided he could use antisemitism to his benefit (by falsely associating Russian Jews with the excesses of capitalism). Unfortunately, in our era, the CPUSA, the Stalinist flagship in the United States, took this wrong lesson to heart, and also evidently hopes to promote itself by purposely fanning the flames of antisemitism.

Antisemitism is a scourge from the bourgeois classes, and serves them ultimately. Socialists must reject this and all other forms of hatred that divide working people and distract them from the long twilight struggle against oppression. I wish to thank the Militant and the Socialist Workers Party for understanding this important fact and for providing a safe space for socialist Jews here in the United States who have been ostracized by the American Left in the wake of the unprovoked 10/7 attacks on Levantine Jews.

Francis Erdman
New Haven, Connecticut