The scourge of Jew-hatred has confronted the working class worldwide with full force since the unfolding of the imperialist epoch, exploding with unthinkable consequences in the Nazi Holocaust in World War II. It has accelerated again since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, pogrom. Deadly terror attacks against Jews, assaults on synagogues and attempts to “boycott” Jews and drive them from public life are growing in the U.S. and worldwide.
This is fed by efforts of the middle-class left to target Israel, the one country that provides Jews with an unconditional refuge. These forces lie about Oct. 7, the worst single act of violence against Jews since Hitler’s Holocaust. They blame Israel for today’s wars in the Middle East. Israel, in fact, is fighting a defensive war to maintain its existence from the threats of Tehran, Hamas, Hezbollah and other terror groups that are determined to wipe it out and slaughter the Jews.
Israel also has to defend itself from the U.S. rulers, whose goal is to use the Jewish state as a poker chip in extending their plunder of the region. For the vast majority of working people, Jew-hating assaults are repugnant. The roots of these attacks lie in the nature of imperialism, as rival ruling classes are driven to redivide the world in search of resources, markets and labor power, making social crises and new wars inevitable. Under these conditions, ruined middle-class layers make easy targets for Jew-haters looking to recruit thugs, as are some workers who lose confidence and become demoralized. When the capitalist crisis grows deep enough, the big capitalist families turn to fascist demagogues, financing their growth and brutality. This is what led to the rise of Hitler’s Nazi Party.
Against this, millions of workers look to the unions and struggle against capitalist tyranny in its death agony, along with its foul antisemitism. The imperialist epoch is also an epoch of socialist revolution.
A resolution adopted by the Socialist Workers Party at its founding convention in 1938 explained the party “has the duty of exposing the real aims of the capitalists, hidden behind the smokescreen of anti-Semitism and thereby inoculating the masses against the poison; it has also the special task of mobilizing the real defense of persecuted Jews, a defense of necessity based on the might of the organized working class.” The party has acted on this ever since.
The SWP’s political continuity is rooted in the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Under the leadership of V.I. Lenin, a proletarian party was forged that stood in the forefront of the defense of Jews amid czarist-inspired pogroms. That party proved capable of leading hundreds of millions to take state power and end capitalist exploitation, as it led working people to eradicate Jew-hatred and all forms of national oppression.
That is the kind of party the SWP is building in the course of today’s working-class struggles. Join us!