Assaults against Jews have spread worldwide since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, pogrom in Israel, underscoring the fact that Jew-hatred is an integral feature of the imperialist epoch we live in.
These attacks show the necessity of the working class and our unions championing the fight against all expressions of Jew-hatred and taking the lead in defending Jews from assault. The civil rights movement that smashed Jim Crow segregation led to a historic advance for the working class as a whole, breaking down barriers the employers and their government had used to divide and divert us from common struggle for decades. One consequence is the broad opposition among workers to Jew-hatred.
In contrast, Jew-hatred is growing among layers of the middle class. This is expressed not only in support for Hamas on the left, but by more open and direct hostility toward Jews. As the crisis of capitalism deepens, insecurity grips layers of the middle class who increasingly see their position coming apart. They fear being ruined and driven down into the working class and look for someone to blame.
As these crises grow, fascist forces will find support from sections of the ruling class that fear rising revolutionary struggles threaten their rule. They will unleash fascist thugs not only to target Jews, but working-class fighters and communists. This is what happened in Germany in the 1930s.
Workers can defeat fascist gangs
But with class-struggle leadership, workers can organize to defend ourselves. We can decisively defeat the fascist gangs, attract broader social layers to our side, and open the door to making a socialist revolution and doing away with the brutality of capitalism once and for all.
On the other side of the class divide, supporters of Hamas who call themselves “socialist” will find themselves drawn toward Jew-hatred and fascist forces, as also happened in Germany.
The U.S. imperialist rulers have never protected Jews from persecution. They never will. As World War II loomed, they closed their doors to Jews, as did almost all other capitalist governments.
You can see this today in Washington’s war in the Middle East. Their goal is to advance their domination and plunder of the region, not to protect Jews or Israel’s right to exist as a refuge.
Tehran and its proxies, especially Hamas and Hezbollah, have not backed off one inch from their long stated goal of slaughtering Jews and wiping out Israel. The fight to prevent them from carrying out a new Holocaust lies in the hands of the working class, in the Middle East and worldwide.
Jew-hatred is a permanent feature of capitalist rule. But working people have proven capitalism can be replaced. In Russia in 1917, led by V.I. Lenin and the Bolsheviks, and in Cuba in 1959, led by Fidel Castro and the July 26 Movement, workers and farmers took political power, opening the door to a new world — a socialist future.
From its founding, the Bolshevik Party made the fight against Jew-hatred central to its activity. “When the accursed tsarist monarchy was living its last days it tried to incite ignorant workers and peasants against the Jews,” Lenin explained in March 1919 on a record the Bolsheviks took all across the country. “It is not the Jews who are the enemies of the working people. The enemies of the people are the capitalists of all countries.”
“Shame on accursed tsarism, which tortured and persecuted the Jews,” he said. “Long live the fraternal trust and fighting alliance of the workers of all nations in the struggle to overthrow capital.”
The course of the Bolsheviks is central to the continuity of the Socialist Workers Party. Only by building a proletarian party to emulate their example can working people chart a course to end Jew-hatred for all time. To be part of that struggle, campaign with and join the Socialist Workers Party.