'Against the Current' Celebrates 200 Issues

Against the Current (ATC) is the bi-monthly publication of Solidarity, which split from the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) a few years after I left the movement. The group is a breath of fresh air because they've disavowed the "vanguard party" formalism, becoming instead a much more open, flexible movement on the larger Left, albeit with some very Trotskyist core principles. Accordingly their magazine offers more than most publications on my beat, and despite their infrequent publication schedule, I've posted 22 articles under the Solidarity label. I note that my pieces are among my best, but only because the articles I comment on are similarly thought-provoking.

Against the Current is a serious publication and is worth reading.

So it is appropriate that the paper, founded in 1986, celebrates its 200th issue this month. An article entitled ATC Turns 200 (issues)! (by The Editors) summarizes what's changed and what hasn't over the past quarter century.

I'll begin my critique with a caveat. 

Solidarity is not just ideological (like me), but also partisan. Marx understood the concept: the partisan's goal is to change the world, not merely to interpret it. Me--I'm satisfied with interpretation--I've given up trying to change anything. I am not a partisan, which gives me the luxury to be more reserved and thoughtful. Unlike me, Solidarity has to rally the troops.

President Trump is a partisan, and as such he's a famous teller of tall tales. The difference between a "tall tale" and a "lie" is the teller doesn't expect you to actually believe him--it's just an applause line. Most famously, nobody in his audience ever believed the tall tale ...and Mexico will pay for it, which is why he suffers no political damage now when he can't deliver. His political opponents embarrassed themselves by awarding him Pinocchio's for lying.

The Editors tell their own tall tales, and it's my duty now to point some of them out.

"Back then, the Reagan administration was knee-deep in bloody genocidal counterinsurgency wars in Central America..." "Genocidal" is a gross exaggeration in this context. The word means "relating to or involving the deliberate killing of a large group of people of a particular nation or ethnic group." There was no attempt on either side to wipe out an entire ethnic group. "Genocide" is a tall tale.

More important is the consequence of decades-long imperialist ravages in Central America, bringing tens of thousands of refugees and desperate asylum seekers today to the U.S.-Mexico border, where they’re subjected to world-class atrocities by U.S. border patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The claim is that today's refugee crisis on our southern border is a result of the Contra war in Nicaragua that ended in 1990. The premise is that if the US had not supported the Contras, Nicaragua would today be a modern, prosperous nation from which people would not flee. This beggars belief. Much more likely--had the Sandinistas remained in power--is that Nicaragua would at best look like Cuba (now tightly rationing food staples), and at worst like Venezuela (the complete destruction of a country). In both cases the waves of refugees would have been both much larger and come much sooner.

The notion that ICE is committing "world-class atrocities" is a world-class tall tale.

The Editors correctly note the decline of the American labor movement since 1986, but then suggest the trend is turning around.

The decline of organized labor has also been largely continuous, with defeats vastly outnumbering victories. Yet just when things looked bleakest for working class America, a spreading strike wave by teachers has breathed new life into what looked like a dying labor movement....

The teachers’ strike wave has been for higher wages, certainly, but even more about dignity and decent working conditions, supporting students and building alliances with communities. Here again, the processes that capital unleashed have led to today’s profound social crisis – but also to a popular reaction, and none too soon!

They overstate the importance of the teachers' strikes. First, they are public employees and are striking against middle class taxpayers, not the bourgeoisie. Then (at least in Kentucky) the strike was a futile protest against the bankrupt pension plan promised them by their union. And finally, the whole thing was a flash in the plan.

And then,

...resulting from this cascading disaster, from the “birther” backlash against the Obama presidency and from the cesspool of the Trump presidency, there’s been a massive growth of white-nationalist organizing and violence, Islamophobia on both government policy and popular levels, and a general rise in racism.

Trump’s Muslim travel ban, like the murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Virginia, the massacres at the African American church in Charleston, South Carolina and the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh – these are symptoms and symbols of the times we live in now.

Here, too, everything is exaggerated. There has been no "massive growth of white-nationalist organizing and violence." The neo-Nazis organized a once-off, international "Unite the Right" rally intending to show off their strength--all they could muster was about 500 people. By comparison, the NAACP convention draws 10,000 people every year. Even some Trotskyist-sponsored events pull a larger crowd. The whole thing was a dud.

Mass shootings, unfortunately, are a fact of life. If anything, they've become less common under Trump than under Obama, The Editors' anecdotes notwithstanding.

So all of these exaggerations are tall tales, intended to rouse the passions of the already-converted. The article is not addressed to me. While in a more sober frame of mind our editors realize that this is all over the top, nevertheless they are not lying. They can say all of this and more, and I'll still take them seriously.

But on one issue I do find moral fault. Like most Trotskyists (excepting only the SWP) Solidarity is deeply antisemitic. Now they will deny that, claiming to be merely anti-Zionist. And surely it is possible to be anti-Zionist without being antisemitic--again, see the SWP as an example. But it is impossible to support BDS or Hamas and still pretend that it is merely political anti-Zionism.

Another article in ATC by Julia Kassem illustrates the point--her very language betrays her. She refers to Jews as "occupiers." Apparently Jews living in Tel Aviv pollute the very ground they walk on with their filthy footsteps--"occupying" otherwise sacred ground. BDS will prohibit any Israeli Jew from speaking--regardless of topic--just because they're Jewish.

And settlements in the West Bank are intolerable because Jews live there--and for no other reason. That's antisemitism. Now I don't belittle the settlement problem--the land dispute is real. But that can be solved financially. The problem anti-Semites have is not about land, but rather with the very idea that Jews are living there.

Antisemitism isn't a problem of tall tales or partisan exaggeration. No--it really is a problem. On this issue my friends in Solidarity cease to be enthusiastic partisans with a worthy (if hopeless) cause, and instead become evil.

Further Reading:

• "Primacy of the Working Class"
• A Leftist Criticizes the Left on Immigration
• Democratic Centralism