Clarity on the questions posed by Tyler Robinson’s killing of Trump supporter Charlie Kirk are critical for the working class. The article in last week’s Militant, “‘Woke’ left hails violent attacks to shut political opponents down” by Terry Evans, was an important contribution to this discussion. But we should have said it was a correction to the article the week before, “Years of liberals demonizing Trump led to the killing of Charlie Kirk.”
It was years of the petty-bourgeois “woke” left promoting and utilizing violence to “cancel” those they disagree with that led to the killing. Instead of being the source of the violence, the liberals adapt to the left and its thuggery, making excuses for it.
When we make a correction, it’s important the Militant says so explicitly. It helps focus on the real questions workers confront, and clarify the road forward.
The first article described how “liberals have targeted Trump and his supporters with venom for years.” While that’s true, it does nothing to explain the normalization of violence in recent years. Its origins lie in the course of the anti-working-class radical left, especially those trained in the Stalinist movement.
Many Democrats and the liberal press condemned Kirk’s killing, on their way to attacking his views and trying to paint Donald Trump as the biggest danger. And for years they’ve adapted themselves to the spread of violence to settle political differences.
Neither article developed enough of an explanation of the liberals’ adaptation to the forces who champion “cancel culture” — the shutting down of political opponents — and their woke explanation of politics through the lens of race and sex. This obscures the real foundation of all politics — the class divisions that underlie capitalist exploitation and oppression.
The liberals and radical left are deeply integrated into the same social layer, the middle-class meritocracy, which has grown in recent decades.
These trends mushroomed in 2020, when Black Lives Matter leaders, antifa and others led weeks of rioting and looting following the death of George Floyd in Minnesota. The Democrats who controlled the major cities where the violence was worst disassociated themselves from it, but said they “understood” why it was happening and left it largely unchecked.
After the George Floyd protests broke out, Seattle Democratic Mayor Jenny Durkan posed as an opponent of police brutality. She withdrew the cops from a six-block area, letting radical armed thugs take over. This led to the shooting death of two Black teenagers. No one was arrested. After three weeks of mayhem, Durkan ordered cops to dismantle the “protest.”
After Kirk was killed, Oberlin College student Julia Xu spoke out, saying, “We need to bring back political assassinations.” She said she came to this conclusion after studying Mao Tse-tung.
Oberlin’s liberal president, Carmen Twillie Ambar, jumped in to cover for her, claiming the college “promotes thoughtful civil dialogue” and a desire to “do good in this world.”
But a few years earlier the college had organized students to target, boycott and attack Gibson’s Bakery, a long-standing shop in the town, claiming the owners were “racist” when a student shoplifter who happened to be Black was arrested. No “dialogue” there.
Among working people, there’s growing interest in discussing a road forward independent of the bosses’ two main parties. That’s especially true in the face of today’s deepening world capitalist crisis and the imperialist rulers escalating drive to World War III.
More workers are open to discussing why fights to end national oppression, Jew-hatred and women’s second-class status are inextricably tied to ending capitalist exploitation. And why advancing these struggles depends on the unconditional defense of freedom of speech, assembly and other constitutional protections.
But the working class has no class-struggle leadership today, let alone a mass party of its own. Middle-class radical forces operate in this vacuum with deadly consequences. And the liberals adapt to them, letting them run wild.
In contrast to the increasing use of thuggery to target political opponents, the Socialist Workers Party fights for the widest possible discussion and debate. That’s necessary to clarify political issues and the working-class road forward. The SWP’s aim is to construct a party that can lead the working class to take political power and build a new world.