1040 Trots 'Socialism Conference' blends Gender, Regime-Change & collaboration with CIATrots 'Socialism Conference' blends Gender, Regime-Change & collaboration with CIA

Trots 'Socialism Conference' blends Gender, Regime-Change &
collaboration with CIA

Newsletter published on July 19, 2019

(1) Trots call themselves 'Socialist' but 'Anti-Communist'
(2) Trots 'Socialism Conference' blends Gender, Regime-Change &
collaboration with CIA
(3) Trots' Socialism Conference: 'No Borders, No Bosses, No Binaries'
(4) Trots' Main Target Is Destroying The Family
(5) Candace Owens, a Black conservative commentator, turns Hate
allegations back on Dems
(6) Berkeley City Council votes to replace gendered names, including
'he,' 'she,' 'him,' and 'her'

(1) Trots call themselves 'Socialist' but 'Anti-Communist'
- by Peter Myers, July 19, 2019
Deception rules! As Confucios said, the first place to start is
correcting the language.

These 'Socialists but Anti-Communists' are in fact Trotskyists, with a
few Anarchistic fellow-travellers. But they're not real Anarchists like
Bakunin, because they support repressive laws against 'Hate' speech.
They're just Trots.

They are, in fact, Communists; by 'Socialism' they mean the Communism of
the early Soviet Union, before Stalin overthrew Trotsky.

They say that they are 'Anti-Communist', but this simply means
'Anti-Stalin'.

I now accept that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes is a Trotskyist; I was wrong
about her. But I still think that Sanders is not a Trotskyist, and
electable.

The media keeps calling Trots 'Socialists', as if there is no other kind
of Socialism. But postwar Britain and Australia were Socialist -
Christian Socialist. We had public ownership of much of the economy, and
full employment, but with Christian social values.

These Trots belong to the faction of Max Shachtman; other factions of
Trots do NOT collaborate with the CIA.

(2) Trots 'Socialism Conference' blends Gender, Regime-Change &
collaboration with CIA

https://thegrayzone.com/2019/07/06/dsa-jacobin-iso-socialism-conference-us-funded-regime-change/

DSA/Jacobin/Haymarket-sponsored ‘Socialism’ conference features US
gov-funded regime-change activists

The 2019 Socialism Conference, sponsored by American leftist juggernauts
the DSA, Jacobin magazine, and ISO’s Haymarket Books, features
regime-change activists from multiple US government-funded NGOs.

By Ben Norton and Max Blumenthal

Socialism is now apparently brought to you by the US State Department.

 From July 4 to 7, thousands of left-wing activists from across the
United States are gathering in Chicago for the 2019 Socialism Conference.

At this event, some of the most powerful institutions on the American
socialist — but avowedly anti-communist — left have brought together a
motley crew of regime-change activists to demonize Official Enemies of
Washington.

One anti-China panel at the conference features speakers from two
different organizations that are both bankrolled by the US government’s
soft-power arm the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a group
founded out of Ronald Reagan’s CIA in the 1980s to grease the wheels of
right-wing regime-change efforts and promote "free markets" across the
planet.

Another longtime ally who has spoken at every single annual Socialism
Conference since 2009, Anand Gopal, works at a liberal foundation that
is directly funded by the US State Department. He is headlining a panel
this year to provide "A Socialist View of the Arab Spring."

Yet another 2019 conference panel rails against the socialist
governments of Nicaragua and Cuba — two-thirds of John Bolton’s "troika
of tyranny" — with outspoken proponents of regime change. One of the
speakers, Dan La Botz, hosted an event in 2018 that featured right-wing
Nicaraguan activists wearing masks and disguised as students, who were
junketed to meet with Republican lawmakers in Washington by the US
government-funded right-wing organization Freedom House.

The Socialism Conference’s regime-change lobbying "Nicaragua expert" La
Botz has admitted in leaked emails obtained by The Grayzone that "there
is virtually no left among the opposition" to Nicaragua’s democratically
elected socialist government.

La Botz, a leader within Democratic Socialists of America, likewise
acknowledged in these emails that there is "little likelihood of an
outcome to the rebellion that goes beyond a more democratic capitalist
regime." But he has still vociferously lobbied for Nicaragua’s
Sandinista government to be overthrown by US government-backed
insurgents — and is using his platform at the biggest socialist
conference in the United States to do it.

Merging of largest US socialist organizations

The 2019 Socialism Conference is advertised under the catchy slogan: "No
borders, no bosses, no binaries."

Each ticket comes in at a neat $105 per person (or a $250 "solidarity
rate," for the hardcore supporters) — and this doesn’t include the rate
for the rooms at the hotel where it’s held.

For years, the Socialism Conference functioned as a platform for the
International Socialist Organization (ISO), a small group steeped in the
tradition of sectarian American Trotskyite politics, which pushed a
hardline anti-communism and attacked virtually all socialist governments
in history as "not truly socialist."

Founded in 1977 after a long line of sectarian splits, the ISO never
became a significant political force. It was mostly relegated to
recruiting young impressionable students on liberal arts college campuses.

As an avowedly anti-communist organization, the ISO eschewed symbols
long associated with the communist left, like hammers and sickles and
red flags. Instead, it chose a clenched fist — one eerily similar to the
symbol used by the US government-funded Serbian activist group Otpor and
similar offshoots in Eastern Europe, which carried out Washington-backed
neoliberal "color revolutions" in the years following the collapse of
the Soviet Union and the restoration of capitalism.

ISO Otpor fist symbols

The ISO claimed to be anti-war, but its leaders spent a disproportionate
percentage of their time and resources attacking the anti-imperialist
left. They could more accurately be referred to as the
anti-anti-imperialist left.

This March, the ISO voted to dissolve — in a decision some former
members joked was the most democratic act ever undertaken by the
organization, which had been dominated by an unelected leadership of
veteran Trotskyite activists.

The dissolution was prompted by evidence that the ISO’s steering
committee mishandled sexual assault allegations. It also came as the
ISO’s membership was shrinking and rapidly being absorbed by a newly
burgeoning anti-communist organization, the Democratic Socialists of
America, or DSA.

Now that the ISO has dissolved, some of its past prominent members have
entered the ranks of the DSA, burrowing from within to inject their
anti-anti-imperialist politics into the group.

Because Trotskyites are so sectarian and notoriously incapable of
holding together organizations, they are infamous for infiltrating
larger, more popular groups and trying to take them over, in a tactic
known as entryism.

This is precisely the strategy being used by former members of the ISO —
and by another tiny US Trotskyite organization, Solidarity, which was
led by anti-Nicaragua regime-change activist and Socialism Conference
speaker Dan La Botz, now a leader in DSA.

Democratic Socialists of America is the largest self-described socialist
organization in the United States, with more than 60,000 card-carrying
members. It is also very heterogeneous, with many internal
contradictions and conflicting political views.

In 2019, for the first time, the organizers of the Socialism Conference
— including many holdovers from the ISO leadership — joined together
with two new sponsors: DSA, and the closely DSA-allied Jacobin magazine,
another platform for anti-communist and anti-anti-imperialist politics.

At the bottom of the Socialism conference website, a note reads,
"Brought to you by Haymarket, Jacobin, and the Democratic Socialists of
America." Haymarket is the book publishing arm of the now defunct ISO,
and its editorial board features some of the group’s former leaders.

Socialism 2019 sponsors Haymarket Jacobin DSA

Top speakers at the conference include Democracy Now host Amy Goodman,
Jacobin magazine founder and editor Bhaskar Sunkara, and journalist
Naomi Klein, the inaugural Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media,
Culture and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University. Klein was chosen to
head the final plenary, titled "Care and Repair: The Revolutionary,
Democratic Power of a Global Green New Deal."

The 2019 Socialism Conference, like its annual predecessors, combines
calls for radical economic democratic transformation and progressive
social progress with the demonization of independent foreign governments
that are targeted by the US government for regime change, such as
Nicaragua, Cuba, Syria, Iran, China, and Russia.

The schedule of panels on foreign policy and international issues
features a veritable who’s who of leftist regime-change activists. There
is even a talk devoted specifically to demonizing the anti-imperialist left.

Curiously, the 2019 Socialism Conference has no panels devoted
specifically to Venezuela, which since this January has endured a US-led
right-wing coup attempt, and which is suffering under suffocating
sanctions that amount to a de facto economic blockade. In the past, the
ISO has harshly criticized Venezuela’s democratically elected socialist
government, condemning Presidents Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro for not
being radical enough and for not supposedly implementing the vague
concept of "socialism from below."

In this way, the 2019 Socialism Conference also stands out as a sign of
the effective political merging of what had previously been two distinct
political trends: the Cliffite Trotskyites of the International
Socialist Organization and the anti-communist social democrats of the
Democratic Socialists of America.

Anti-China ‘workers’ rights’ groups funded by anti-labor US government

One of the most eyebrow-raising panels at the 2019 Socialism Conference
is entitled "China and the US: Inter-Imperial Rivalry or Class Struggle
and Solidarity?" The panel portrays the US and China as equally
malicious imperialist powers, downplaying and whitewashing the uniquely
destructive nature of Washington’s foreign wars and corporate domination.

The panel features three speakers, two of whom work for anti-China
groups that are funded by the US government’s regime-change arm, the
National Endowment for Democracy. The third speaker is Ashley Smith, a
former leader of the ISO who has spent the past eight years
romanticizing foreign-backed, far-right sectarian Islamist "moderate
rebels" in Syria.

Socialism 2019 China US inter-imperial rivalry panel

The first speaker listed on the panel is Elaine Lu, the program officer
at China Labor Watch. This group is described by the Socialism
conference website simply as "a New York-based NGO advocating for
workers’ rights in China."

What Socialism Conference sponsors DSA, Jacobin, and Haymarket did not
disclose is that its speaker’s employer is funded by the National
Endowment for Democracy.

The NED states without qualification that its goals include supporting
"free markets" abroad. At the top of the about page on its website is a
video of right-wing cold warrior Ronald Reagan inaugurating the US
government-funded body.

NED Ronald Reagan free markets

The National Endowment for Democracy’s 990 tax forms show how
Washington’s regime-change arm has bankrolled China Labor Watch for
years. Substantial NED funding goes back to at least 2009.

According to the NED’s 2015 form 990, China Labor Watch received a
$150,000 grant that year. On the NED’s 2013 tax form, it lists another
$110,000 grant for China Labor Watch.

China Labor Watch NED funding 2015

In 2014, China Labor Watch got $150,000 from the NED. According to the
group’s annual report that year, its total revenues for all of 2014 was
$238,003, meaning 63 percent, or nearly two-thirds of its funding came
from the US government.

China Labor Watch’s other major donor is the Tides Foundation, a liberal
organization that also happened to be one of the main financial
sponsor’s of the ISO’s parent non-profit. In 2014, Tides gave $40,645 to
China Labor Watch, another 17 percent of its budget that year.

Joining Elaine Lu as the other main speaker on the Socialism
Conference’s anti-China panel is Kevin Lin, who coordinates the China
program at the Washington, DC-based NGO the International Labor Rights
Forum.

The Socialism Conference once again failed to mention that this group is
also bankrolled by the National Endowment for Democracy.

International Labor Rights Forum NED funding 2016

According to the NED’s 2016 form 990, the US government’s regime-change
arm gave the International Labor Rights Forum $150,000 that year alone.

The International Labor Rights Forum likewise received $96,590 from the
NED in 2015, and $62,500 in 2014.

The Socialism Conference also identified Kevin Lin as a co-editor of the
Made in China journal, which focuses on labor rights. A disclaimer at
the bottom of the publication’s swanky website notes that it is funded
by the European Union’s Horizon 2020, a neoliberal business program
which the European Commission describes as "the financial instrument
implementing the Innovation Union, a Europe 2020 flagship initiative
aimed at securing Europe’s global competitiveness."

Made in China funding European Union

These are the financiers behind the speakers that the Socialism
Conference and its sponsors the DSA, Jacobin, and Haymarket brought
together to explain why China is a malevolent imperialist power.

Some of these groups may seem progressive, but they operate in effect as
vehicles for US government soft power, exploiting the cause of human
rights or labor rights to undermine and destabilize foreign governments
that Washington has targeted for regime change.

China Labor Watch and the International Labor Rights Forum are far from
the only ostensibly progressive anti-China groups funded by the US
government.

Other China-related NED grantees include "human rights" organizations
like the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, Human Rights in
China, China Aid, China Change, and China Rights in Action (another
Tides grantee), along with the New York-based Chinese Feminist
Collective and news websites like China Digital Times.

China Labour Bulletin, which maintains a map of strikes going on across
the gigantic country, is likewise frequently cited by left-wing websites
in the US. While its slogan is "Supporting the Workers’ Movement in
China," China Labour Bulletin (CLB) is actually based in Hong Kong, and
it is funded by the US government.

CLB notes on its website that it "receives grants from a wide range of
government or quasi-government bodies, trade unions and private
foundations, all of which are based outside of China." For decades,
CLB’s founder and executive director Han Dongfang broadcasted anti-China
programming on Radio Free Asia, a US government-funded propaganda outlet
that was founded by the CIA to push anti-communist disinformation. Han’s
work is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, and he was a
leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

The ISO’s newspaper Socialist Worker has praised Han Dongfang as a
leftist hero, without ever disclosing his extensive links to the US
government’s regime-change machinery. Socialist Worker has repeatedly
drawn on the work of China Labour Bulletin, over more than a decade. The
ISO’s journal the International Socialist Review has also relied on the
US government-funded organization’s research, and Jacobin magazine has
noted CLB’s "roots go back to the Tiananmen Square protests."

Human Rights Watch, another key part of the regime-change lobby, has
lionized Han, happily noting that his show on the US government’s Radio
Free Asia "is one of the network’s most popular programs."

China is just one of the countries where the US government’s soft-power
arm funds such putative progressive groups. The NED likewise funds many
liberal anti-Cuba organizations, such as the Foundation for Human Rights
in Cuba, Center for a Free Cuba, the Cuban Institute for the Freedom of
Expression and Press, and the news website CubaNet. Or there are
NED-funded groups pushing regime change against Syria and Iran, like the
Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies and Human Rights Activists in Iran.

While the United States has one of the lowest rates of unionization in
the industrialized world, a bloody history of worker repression and
anti-labor laws, and historically weak unions among those that still do
exist, its regime-change arm the NED has funded workers’ rights groups
to promote a progressive image of America abroad.

For decades, for instance, the NED has bankrolled the international
Solidarity Center of the major union federation the AFL-CIO. The center
receives tens of millions of dollars from the US government’s
regime-change arm annually, and returns the favor by avoiding topics
that would anger the US State Department and bite the hand that feeds it.

Throughout the Cold War, the AFL-CIO remained a reliably anti-communist
union that received funding from US government agencies, including the
CIA, in order to combat and ultimately try to eliminate communist
influence in the American labor movement. It was a textbook example of a
controlled opposition.

This is not to say that NED-funded groups cannot at times have a
positive impact on the lives of average people in repressive
environments. But their work is always part of a larger agenda, with
ulterior imperial motives guiding them along the way. A controlled
opposition can make some changes, but it always remains controlled.

US State Department-funded speaker providing ‘socialist’ take on ‘Arab
Spring’ Yet another speaker at the 2019 Socialism Conference works for a
liberal foundation directly funded by the US government.

Journalist Anand Gopal, who has been a close ally of the ISO for a
decade, has a panel all to himself this year: "A Socialist View of the
Arab Spring."

The Socialism Conference website did not provide a bio for Gopal, yet
alone disclose that his employer is funded by the US government. It
simply described him as a "Pulitzer-Prize nominated journalist," and
said he will explain how to understand "the lessons of the protests,
uprisings, rebellions, and wars that shook the Arab world beginning in
2011."

Left unmentioned is that Gopal serves as a "fellow with the
International Security Program" at the New America Foundation. This
foundation’s website makes it very clear that it is directly funded by
the US State Department, along with massive corporations and banks —
clearly institutions that are invested in advancing the revolutionary
socialist cause.

New America Foundation funding US State Department

Anand Gopal has harshly attacked the anti-imperialist left for opposing
the international proxy war on Syria. He strongly supported the Syrian
opposition, which is dominated by Salafi-jihadists, but which Gopal has
consistently whitewashed and portrayed as a supposedly progressive force.

Gopal likewise reported inside al-Qaeda-occupied territory, which The
New Yorker euphemistically described as "Syria’s Last Bastion of
Freedom." And he has constantly downplayed the billions of dollars of
funding and weapons from the US, Europe, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey,
and Qatar that kept the Syrian opposition afloat, fueling the brutal war
for years.

Going back to at least 2009, Gopal has spoken at every single one of the
ISO’s Socialism Conferences — in 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013,
2012, 2011, and 2010.

Gopal has also done more than a dozen extensive interviews for the ISO’s
newspaper Socialist Worker and journal the International Socialist
Review, blaming the rise of ISIS on Official Enemies and spreading the
conspiracy theory that the US is actually "helping the regime" of Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad, not truly trying to overthrow it.

‘Socialist’ lobbying for US-backed right-wing coup in Nicaragua Another
noteworthy 2019 Socialism Conference panel, called "Problems of the US
Left: The Cases of Cuba and Nicaragua," is led by Dan La Botz and Samuel
Farber, veteran Trotskyite activists and outspoken proponents of regime
change in the two respective countries.

The speakers’ problem with the US left appears to be that it has
demonstrated too much solidarity with socialist governments in Havana
and Managua, which, in their view from inside the United States, "rely
more on bureaucracy than democracy."

Farber is a Cuban exile who left the country for unspecified reasons in
1958 – a year before its revolution – and spent the rest of his life as
a professional critic of its socialist government. Today, he contributes
regular attacks on the Cuban Revolution to journals from Jacobin to New
Politics to In These Times, where he published a trenchant denunciation
of Fidel Castro upon his death in 2016.

Farber accuses Castro of developing a model of "state capitalism,"
wielding a term Trotskyite ideologues routinely fling at any
revolutionary government that is insufficiently pure. He calls for "a
revolutionary democratic alternative… through socialist resistance from
below."

The concept of regime change "from below" is also central to the
rhetoric of exile groups like the People’s MEK, a US- and Saudi-backed
cult of personality that calls for toppling Iran’s government through
"indigenous regime change."

Dan La Botz, for his part, has risen to prominence as a full-time
opponent of another member of the Trump administration’s "troika of
tyranny": the socialist government of Nicaragua, and the Sandinista
movement that it represents.

La Botz has published an anti-Sandinista manifesto with ISO publisher
Haymarket Books, which is advertised as a survey of "the failures of the
Nicaraguan Revolution, by one of the most important Marxist-historians
of Latin America."

In June 2018, as a US-backed, violent regime-change attempt surged
across Nicaragua, threatening the rule of democratically elected
President Daniel Ortega, La Botz attempted to mobilize left-wing US
support for the anti-Sandinista opposition. That month, he joined an
anti-Sandinista event — co-sponsored by DSA’s New York branch,
Haymarket, the academic journal NACLA, and the Marxist Education Project
— at Saint Peter’s Church in New York City, to drum up local support for
the coup.

The event featured speeches by several Nicaraguan anti-Sandinista
activists who were involved in the regime-change attempt, including
self-described students who wore masks on stage, concealing their
identities from the audience.

Dan La Botz Nicaragua coup event masks

The Grayzone has obtained internal DSA email reports authored by La Botz
which revealed that, days after the event at Saint Peter’s Church, those
same students met with right-wing Republican legislators on Capitol
Hill, including neoconservative Senators Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

The students beamed with pride, appearing without masks in photo ops
with the avowedly anti-socialist members of Congress. Their trip was
financed by Freedom House, a right-wing soft-power organization that is
funded almost entirely by the US government.

Senator Ted Cruz ? @SenTedCruz

Humbled to meet with Nicaraguan student leaders who are risking their
lives fighting for freedom. Their bravery and perseverance will overcome
the Ortega dictatorship’s tyranny. #SOSNicaragua

The students’ US-backed delegation included Victor Cuadras, a fanatical
right-wing activist who openly supported Donald Trump’s agenda for Latin
America and blamed the governments of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua for
the caravan of desperate asylum seekers on the US-Mexico border.

Max Blumenthal ? @MaxBlumenthal

Victor Cuadras (@AndinoCuadras), the Nicaraguan student coup leader who
was flown to DC by US govt @freedomhouse to drum up regime change,
echoes and endorses Donald Trump's anti-migrant fanaticism against the
#Caravan

On June 15, 2018, Dan La Botz sent an email report to DSA leadership,
reflecting on the event. He acknowledged that "the Nicaraguans both on
the panel and in the public had virtually no political analysis and no
vision or program for the future of their country."

Then in a follow-up email report sent to DSA leadership on July 24, La
Botz defended the students’ collaboration with neoconservative
politicians like Rubio and Cruz.

"The students, ages 21 to 24 or so, who spoke on our panel then went off
to speak with Republican legislators, guided by a rightwing foundation,"
he wrote. "While, of course, we do not think that this is a good
strategy, this is perfectly understandable given that the Republicans
are in power and have the ability to do something about Nicaragua."

While marketing the anti-Sandinista activists as grassroots youth
deserving of left-wing solidarity, La Botz admitted in his internal DSA
report, "Nicaraguan opponents of the regime in the United States hold a
wide variety of political views, though there is virtually no left among
the opposition here that I am aware of."

And while publicly framing the regime-change operation in Nicaragua as a
progressive uprising, La Botz privately conceded, "There is, however,
little likelihood of an outcome to the rebellion that goes beyond a more
democratic capitalist regime."

An excerpt from an email report on Nicaragua to DSA leadership, written
by Dan La Botz

As The Grayzone reported in 2018, the US government’s regime-change arm
the National Endowment for Democracy boasted of spending millions on
anti-Sandinista civil society and media outfits "to lay the groundwork
for insurrection" in the years and months ahead of the coup.

While the coup attempt in Nicaragua was portrayed as a peaceful people’s
uprising by figures like La Botz, it was in fact a violent putsch that
saw armed elements erect roadblocks across the country, holding up
ambulances, torturing, brutalizing, kidnapping, and murdering supporters
of the Sandinistas.

Anti-Sandinista insurgents dragged an unarmed, on-leave police officer
to death from a truck and then burnt his corpse at a roadblock. They
raped a 10-year-old girl at a roadblock and burnt the homes of local
Sandinista legislators. They occupied and ransacked a public university
campus, wrecked a women’s health center, and torched a daycare center.

The armed opposition wreaked this havoc while attacking police stations
with mortars and gunfire, during a national dialogue in which the police
were ordered to remain in their barracks. In the end, Nicaragua’s
opposition caused the deaths of over 60 innocent people, while grinding
the country’s previously productive economy to a halt.

Once the coup was extinguished, the US Congress passed the Nica Act
without debate, imposing harsh sanctions on Nicaragua’s economy that
emulated those already leveled against Venezuela and Iran.

On January 9, Dan La Botz appeared at a meeting of the New York City DSA
Anti-War Working Group to amp up the attack on Nicaragua’s socialist
government. There, he was challenged by Gunar Olsen, a contributor to
The Grayzone, about the event he organized last year with masked
right-wing Nicaraguan students sponsored by Freedom House.

La Botz claimed that the event had originally been planned as a
discussion of his book, but that "somebody said, these students were
coming through. And I said, that sounds great."

He continued: "My view is, they came from their country because someone
gave em some money, and they can come to the United States and they
wanted to talk to somebody who might be able to help their country… It
may have been though that there were some conservative political forces
working with them and the Republicans, it may have been that there was
some of those four students that was more hip than the others but it
wasn’t my impression."

La Botz concluded by telling Olsen and the DSA crowd, "I don’t feel at
all bad, I don’t think it was a terrible thing. I think they were four
young people coming to this country that wanted to speak there. We
didn’t know they were going there, we didn’t know where they were
heading, I didn’t know they were gonna speak there. Would I do it again?
If I knew what was going to happen I’d probably say, let’s see if we can
find some other students."

However, in his private email assessment of the event to DSA leadership,
La Botz had defended the students’ subsequent meetings with right-wing
Republicans as "perfectly understandable."

In his internal DSA report, La Botz went on to characterize those in the
US left that opposed the coup in Nicaragua as "foreign leftists" who are
"backers of Putin, Assad, Iran, Hamas, and now Ortega."

La Botz did not respond to several attempts to reach him by phone.

‘Revolutionary socialists’ funded by the non-profit industrial complex
The force behind the annual Socialism Conference, the International
Socialist Organization marketed itself as a radical, even revolutionary
movement supporting "socialism from below." But it was deeply embedded
in the non-profit industrial complex.

The ISO operated legally through its parent non-profit organization the
Center for Economic Research and Social Change. A tax-exempt 501(c)(3)
organization, CERSC received huge grants from the Tides Foundation.

The Tides Foundation is well known for funding progressive groups, but
only as long as they do not rock the boat too much.

A Canadian environmental activist who has participated in projects
funded by Tides told The Grayzone that the foundation funded a trip to
the 2011 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South
Africa, but eventually pulled funding for their environmental group’s
excursion to the 2012 UN conference in Doha, Qatar, because the
foundation was afraid the activists would carry out peaceful forms of
civil disobedience.

"They funded some people — those who wouldn’t rock the boat because they
didn’t want people engaging in civil disobedience," the Canadian
environmental activist told The Grayzone.

Another activist published a "whistleblower’s open letter to Canadians"
explaining that the Tides Foundation, which funded many
environmentalists in the country, was "too afraid of reprisals from the
government to act," after the office of right-wing Prime Minister
Stephen Harper threatened to challenge the foundation’s charitable status.

Why a milquetoast liberal foundation would fund the ISO, a supposedly
revolutionary socialist organization, raises serious questions about
that group’s agenda.

In fact, while the Tides Foundation was serving as one of the biggest
financiers of the ISO, it was also funding Democratic Party-aligned
organizations and even pro-Israel groups like J Street and the New
Israel Fund, which actively campaign against the Palestinian call for
BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel) and support the
preservation of a settler-colonialist ethnically exclusivist state.

Haymarket Books, blending important literature with regime change
propaganda While the ISO was marginal during its existence, it punched
above its weight through front organizations and prominent members who
worked in the mainstream media and academia.

The ISO’s publishing arm, Haymarket Books, has been especially
influential. Haymarket describes itself as a "radical, independent,
nonprofit book publisher based in Chicago," which had been the base for
the ISO.

Haymarket has indeed published many important books on pressing issues.
However, it has supplemented these works with anti-anti-imperialist
screeds that echo the US State Department’s rhetoric, but framed as
"from the left."

Among Haymarket’s most aggressively marketed releases of 2018 was "The
Impossible Revolution," a collection of essays by the Syrian exiled
writer Yassin al-Haj Saleh, who now lives in Turkey and functions as a
lodestar to self-styled left-wing supporters of regime change in Syria.

Al-Haj Saleh’s book was blurbed by Charles Lister, a former functionary
of the UK’s Conservative Party who became a top lobbyist for arming
Salafi-jihadist insurgents in Syria at the Gulf monarchy-funded Middle
East Institute in Washington, DC.

State Department cables exposed by WikiLeaks indicate that Yassin al-Haj
Saleh was a US government informant in regular correspondence with
American officials in Damascus. One such memo, dated April 24, 2006,
features advice by al-Haj Saleh apparently delivered to US officials in
the country to use Islamism as a weapon against the government of Bashar
al-Assad.

Yassin al-Haj Saleh WikiLeaks cable Islamists

Haymarket has also recently published "Indefensible," a book-length
denunciation of the anti-imperialist left by the writer Rohini Hensman.

The manifesto features ham-fisted attacks on journalists Julian Assange,
John Pilger, and Seymour Hersh, along with unqualified support for
virtually every US and NATO military intervention in the past 30 years,
as well as the dirty war on Syria and the Maidan coup in Ukraine.

Anand Gopal, the longtime ISO ally who speaks at the Socialism
Conference every year, while working for a liberal foundation funded by
the US State Department, praised Hensman’s book as a guide to "how to be
a principled internationalist in the era of imperialism."

More recently, Hensman took to the DSA’s official website to attack The
Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal, Seymour Hersh, and Robert Fisk as
"neo-Stalinists" engaged in a "convergence" with neo-Nazis. No evidence
was provided to support the extreme claim.

Ashley Smith, an ideologue of the now-defunct ISO, says he is currently
writing another anti-anti-imperialist book for Haymarket entitled
"Socialism and Anti-Imperialism."

Tiny, irrelevant Trotskyite groups, from South to North America

Trotskyite groups are notorious throughout the world for their extreme
sectarian tendencies. The organizations rarely last long, frequently
splintering into tiny groupuscules over political disagreements.

Unsurprisingly, then, the so-called "left" opposition in Nicaragua,
Venezuela, and Cuba — which is celebrated by Trotskyite groups like the
ISO — is in fact infinitesimal and insignificant.

Nils McCune, a socialist and environmental activist who has lived in
Nicaragua for years, explained in an interview on our podcast Moderate
Rebels that one of these parties, the Movement for the Renovation of
Sandinismo (MRS) is a tiny group that is irrelevant in the country.
Unable to mobilize popular support, this "left" opposition can only
lobby the US government for regime change.

As Blumenthal, a co-author of this article, revealed in MintPress News,
the MRS has received direct support from the US government in its
campaign to prevent the election of Daniel Ortega as president, and
lobbied for sanctions against Nicaragua after he was elected.

Similarly, in Venezuela the ostensible left opposition has offered
"critical support" to Washington’s regime change efforts.

This February, a leader of the marginal Venezuelan Trotskyite group
Marea Socialista held a friendly meeting with Juan Guaidó, the
US-appointed right-wing coup leader.

On February 5, Guaidó tweeted a photo of a meeting with Marea
Socialista’s Nicmer Evans.

Juan Guaidó hails from the far-right party Voluntad Popular, which was
practically founded by the US government and has been deeply involved in
street violence throughout Venezuela.

Jesus Rodriguez Espinoza, a Chavista who lives in Venezuela and is
editor of the independent news website, the Orinoco Tribune, told The
Grayzone when we reported in the country in February that Marea
Socialista is "tiny" and has "no power." He was genuinely surprised at
how much coverage these minuscule groups have received in the US
progressive media, because inside Venezuela they have negligible influence.

Yet the Trotskyite organization has constantly been given a platform by
the ISO’s newspaper Socialist Worker (Marea Socialista even enjoys its
own tag on the website). Jacobin Magazine, the self-declared "leading
voice of the American left," has also given a huge platform to Marea
Socialista operatives to push for what they call a "Chavismo from below"
— despite the fact that the Trotskyite group is virtually unknown to
average Venezuelans, including to millions of poor and working-class
Chavistas.

Also featured in the February 5 photo of the meeting with US-backed coup
leader Juan Guaidó was the anti-Maduro liberal intellectual Edgardo
Lander, who is popular in anti-communist left-wing circles in the US but
almost unknown inside Venezuela. Like Marea Socialista, Lander has
enjoyed very positive coverage in the progressive Anglo press.

Democracy Now, which has advanced regime-change propaganda on Syria on
repeated occasions, offered its platform to Lander this May. Hosts Amy
Goodman and Nermeen Sheikh lobbed softball questions at the
intellectual, and failed to disclose that he met with Guaidó.

In his Democracy Now segment, Lander admitted that his outfit is a
"small collective," whereas the Chavista movement he criticizes is
massively popular in working-class barrios across the country.

The International Socialist Organization has played a similar role in
the US, with little visibility outside the left and almost no grassroots
base.

Now that the ISO has disbanded, its veterans can reach into the rapidly
growing ideologically diffuse world of Democratic Socialists of America,
using platforms like Socialism 2019 to infect DSA’s youthful core with
the imperial politics of regime change – but always "from the left," and
always "from below."

By Ben Norton and Max Blumenthal

Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several
books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty
One Day War, and The Management of Savagery. He has produced print
articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and several
documentaries, including Killing Gaza. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone
in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America’s state of perpetual
war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.

Ben Norton Ben Norton is a journalist and writer. He is a reporter for
The Grayzone, and the producer of the Moderate Rebels podcast, which he
co-hosts with Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com, and he
tweets at @BenjaminNorton.

https://bennorton.com

(3) Trots' Socialism Conference: 'No Borders, No Bosses, No Binaries'

https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/07/15/i-went-to-a-socialism-conference-here-are-my-6-observations/

I Went to a Socialism Conference. Here Are My 6 Observations.

Jarrett Stepman

/ @JarrettStepman / July 15, 2019

While you were enjoying your Fourth of July weekend, I was attending a
national conference on socialism.

Why? Because socialism is having its moment on the left.

Since there’s often confusion as to what socialism really is, I decided
to attend the Socialism 2019 conference at the Hyatt Hotel in Chicago
over the Fourth of July weekend.

The conference, which had the tag line "No Borders, No Bosses, No
Binaries," contained a cross-section of the most pertinent hard-left
thought in America. Among the sponsors were the Democratic Socialists of
America and Jacobin, a quarterly socialist magazine.

The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American
values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more

The walls of the various conference rooms were adorned with posters of
Karl Marx and various depictions of socialist thinkers and causes.

Most of the conference attendees appeared to be white, but identity
politics were a major theme throughout—especially in regard to gender.

At the registration desk, attendees were given the option of attaching a
"preferred pronoun" sticker on their name tags.

In addition, the multiple-occupancy men’s and women’s restrooms were
relabeled as "gender neutral," and men and women were using both.
Interestingly enough, the signs above the doors were still labeled with
the traditional "men’s" and "women’s" signs until they were covered over
with home-made labels.

One of the paper labels read: "This bathroom has been liberated from the
gender binary!"

While the panelists and attendees were certainly radical, and often
expressed contempt for the Democratic Party establishment, it was
nevertheless clear how seamlessly they blended traditional Marxist
thought with the agenda of what’s becoming the mainstream left.

They did so by weaving their views with the identity politics that now
dominate on college campuses and in the media and popular entertainment.
The culture war is being used as a launching point for genuinely
socialist ideas, many of which are re-emerging in the 21st century.

Here are six takeaways from the conference:

(i) Serious About Socialism

A common line from those on the modern left is that they embrace
"democratic socialism," rather than the brutal, totalitarian socialism
of the former Soviet Union or modern North Korea and Venezuela. Sweden
is usually cited as their guide for what it means in practice, though
the reality is that these best-case situations show the limits of
socialism, not its success.

It’s odd, too, for those who insist that "diversity is our strength" to
point to the culturally homogenous Nordic countries as ideal models anyway.

It’s clear, however, that while many socialists insist that their ideas
don’t align with or condone authoritarian societies, their actual
ideology—certainly that of those speaking at the conference—is in no
sense distinct.

Of the panels I attended, all featured speakers who made paeans to
traditional communist theories quoted Marx, and bought into the ideology
that formed the basis of those regimes.

Mainstream politicians may dance around the meaning of the word
"socialist," but the intellectuals and activists who attended Socialism
2019 could have few doubts about the fact that Marxism formed the core
of their beliefs.

Some sought to dodge the issue. One was David Duhalde, the former
political director of Our Revolution, an activist group that supports
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and that was an offshoot of Sanders’ 2016
presidential campaign.

Duhalde said that Sanders is a creation of the socialist movement—having
had direct ties to the Socialist Party of America in his youth—but
hasn’t maintained an official connection to socialist political
organizations throughout his political career.

Sanders’ position, according to Duhalde, is "anti-totalitarian" and that
he favors a model based on "neither Moscow, nor the United States, at
least in this formation."

It’s a convenient way of condemning capitalist-oriented societies while
avoiding connections to obviously tyrannical ones.

It was also difficult to mistake the sea of red shirts and posters of
Marx that adorned the walls at the conference—or the occasional use of
the word "comrades"—as anything other than an embrace of genuine
socialism, but with a uniquely modern twist.

(ii) Gender and Identity Politics Are Ascendant

Transgenderism, gender nonconformity, and abolishing traditional family
structures were huge issues at Socialism 2019.

One panel, "Social Reproduction Theory and Gender Liberation," addressed
how the traditional family structure reinforced capitalism and contended
that the answer was to simply abolish families.

Corrie Westing, a self-described "queer socialist feminist activist
based in Chicago working as a home-birth midwife," argued that
traditional family structures propped up oppression and that the modern
transgender movement plays a critical part in achieving true
"reproductive justice."

Society is in a moment of "tremendous political crisis," one that
"really demands a Marxism that’s up to the par of explaining why our
socialist project is leading to ending oppression," she said, "and we
need a Marxism that can win generations of folks that can be radicalized
by this moment."

That has broad implications for feminism, according to Westing, who said
that it’s important to fight for transgender rights as essential to the
whole feminist project—seemingly in a direct shot at
transgender-exclusionary radical feminists, who at a Heritage Foundation
event in January argued that sex is biological, not a societal
construct, and that transgenderism is at odds with a genuine feminism.

She contended that economics is the basis of what she called
"heteronormativity."

Pregnancy becomes a tool of oppression, she said, as women who get
pregnant and then engage in child rearing are taken out of the workforce
at prime productive ages and then are taken care of by an economic provider.

Thus, the gender binary is reinforced, Westing said.

She insisted that the answer to such problems is to "abolish the
family." The way to get to that point, she said, is by "getting rid of
capitalism" and reorganizing society around what she called "queer
social reproduction."

"When we’re talking about revolution, we’re really connecting the issues
of gender justice as integral to economic and social justice," Westing said.

She then quoted a writer, Sophie Lewis, who in a new book, "Full
Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family," embraced "open-sourced, fully
collaborative gestation."

(iii) Open Borders Is Becoming a Litmus Test

It’s perhaps not surprising that socialists embrace open borders. After
all, that’s becoming a much more mainstream position on the left in general.

The AFL-CIO used to support immigration restrictions until it flipped in
2000 and called for illegal immigrants to be granted citizenship.

As recently as 2015, Sanders rejected the idea of open borders as a ploy
to impoverish Americans.

But Justin Akers-Chacon, a socialist activist, argued on a panel, "A
Socialist Case for Open Borders," that open borders are not only a
socialist idea, but vital to the movement.

Akers-Chacon said that while capital has moved freely between the United
States and Central and South America, labor has been contained and
restricted.

He said that while working-class people have difficulty moving across
borders, high-skilled labor and "the 1%" are able to move freely to
other countries.

South of the border, especially in Mexico and Honduras, Akers-Chacon
said, there’s a stronger "class-consciousness, as part of cultural and
historical memory exists in the working class."

"My experiences in Mexico and my experiences working with immigrant
workers, and my experiences with people from different parts of this
region, socialist politics are much more deeply rooted," he said.

That has implications for the labor movement.

Despite past attempts to exclude immigrants, Akers-Chacon said, it’s
important for organized labor to embrace them. He didn’t distinguish
between legal and illegal immigrants.

For instance, he said one of the biggest benefits of the Immigration
Reform and Control Act of 1986 was that there was a brief boost in union
membership amid a more general decline in unionism.

Besides simply boosting unions, the influx "changed the whole AFL-CIO
position on immigrants, [which was] still backwards, restrictive,
anti-immigrant," Akers-Chacon said.

"So, there’s a correlation between expanding rights for immigrants and
the growth, and confidence, and militancy of the labor movement as a
whole," he said.

(iv) ‘Clickbait’ Communism Is Being Used to Propagandize Young Americans

The magazine Teen Vogue has come under fire recently for flattering
profiles of Karl Marx and promoting prostitution as a career choice,
among other controversial pieces.

It would be easy to write these articles off as mere "clickbait," but
it’s clear that the far-left nature of its editorials—and its attempt to
reach young people with these views—is genuine.

Teen Vogue hosted a panel at Socialism 2019, "System Change, Not Climate
Change: Youth Climate Activists in Conversation with Teen Vogue." ...

The panel moderator was Lucy Diavolo, news and politics editor at the
publication, who is transgender.

"I know there’s maybe a contradiction in inviting Teen Vogue to a
socialism conference … especially because the youth spinoff brand is a
magazine so associated with capitalist excess," Diavolo said. "If you’re
not familiar with our work, I encourage you to read Teen Vogue’s
coverage of social justice issues, capitalism, revolutionary theory, and
Karl Marx, or you can check out the right-wing op-eds that accuse me of
‘clickbait communism’ and teaching your daughters Marxism and revolution."

The panel attendees responded enthusiastically.

"Suffice to say, the barbarians are beyond the gates. We are in the
tower," Diavolo boasted.

(v) The Green Movement Is Red

It’s perhaps no surprise that an openly socialist member of Congress is
pushing for the Green New Deal—which would essentially turn the U.S.
into a command-and-control economy reminiscent of the Soviet Union.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti
recently said, according to The Washington Post: "The interesting thing
about the Green New Deal is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all."

"Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?" Chakrabarti asked Sam
Ricketts, climate director for Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who is
running for president in the Democratic primary. "Because we really
think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing."

Economic transformation barely disguised as a way to address
environmental concerns appears to be the main point.

One of the speakers on the Teen Vogue climate panel, Sally Taylor, is a
member of the Sunrise Movement, a youth-oriented environmental activist
group that made headlines in February when several elementary school-age
members of the group confronted Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., about
her lack of support for the Green New Deal.

The other speaker on the Teen Vogue climate panel was Haven Coleman, a
13-year-old environmental activist who has received favorable coverage
for leading the U.S. Youth Climate Strike in March. She was open about
the system change she was aiming for to address climate change.

She noted during her remarks that she was receiving cues from her
mother, who she said was in attendance.

Haven said the answer to the climate change problem was moving on from
our "capitalistic society" to something "other than capitalism."

Interestingly, none of the glowing media profiles of Haven or the
Climate Strike mentioned a link to socialism or abolishing capitalism.

6. Socialism Can’t Be Ignored as a Rising Ethos on the Left

According to a recent Gallup survey, 4 in 10 Americans have a positive
view of socialism. Support among Democrats is even higher than among the
general population, with a majority of Democrats saying they prefer
socialism to capitalism.

But many who say they want socialism rather than capitalism struggle to
define what those terms mean and change their views once asked about
specific policies.

As another Gallup poll from 2018 indicated, many associate socialism
with vague notions of "equality," rather than as government control over
the means of production in the economy.

What’s clear from my observations at Socialism 2019 is that traditional
Marxists have successfully melded their ideology with the identity
politics and culture war issues that animate modern liberalism—despite
still being quite far from the beliefs of the average citizen.

Socialists at the conference focused more on social change, rather than
electoral politics, but there were still many core public policy issues
that animated them; notably, "Medicare for All" and government
run-health care, some kind of Green New Deal to stop global warming (and
more importantly, abolish capitalism), open borders to increase class
consciousness and promote transnational solidarity, removing all
restrictions on—and publicly funding—abortion, and breaking down social
and legal distinctions between the sexes.

They were particularly able to weave their issues together through the
thread of "oppressor versus oppressed" class conflict—for instance,
supporting government-run health care meant also unquestioningly
supporting unfettered abortion and transgender rights.

Though their analyses typically leaned more heavily on economic class
struggle and determinism than what one would expect from more mainstream
progressives, there wasn’t a wide gap between what was being discussed
at Socialism 2019 and the ideas emerging from a growing segment of the
American left.

(4) Trots' Main Target Is Destroying The Family

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/timothymeads/2019/07/16/socialists-main-target-is-destroying-the-family-n2550084

Socialists' Main Target Is Destroying The Family

Timothy Meads | @Timothy__Meads |Posted: Jul 16, 2019 4:05 PM

The ever intrepid Jared Stepman spent his Fourth of July weekend
attending the "Socialism 2019" conference in Chicago to get a firsthand
look at the far-left base of the Democratic Party. The conference had
the tagline "No Borders, No Bosses, No Binaries," and was sponsored by
the Democratic Socialists of America and Jacobin magazine. The event was
pretty much exactly what you expected it to be. However, perhaps the
most surprising thing was the explicit honesty the speakers had for
their disdain of the traditional American family and why things like
abortion, transgender issues, and even Teenvogue were so crucial to
their fight to destroy capitalism.

The panel titled "Social Reproduction Theory and Gender Liberation"
focused specifically on how destroying the traditional family means
getting rid of gender roles.

Corrie Westing, a self-described queer socialist feminist activist based
in Chicago working as a home-birth midwife, argued that traditional
family structures propped up oppression and that the modern transgender
movement plays a critical part in achieving true "reproductive justice."

Society is in a moment of "tremendous political crisis," one that
"really demands a Marxism that’s up to the par of explaining why our
socialist project is leading to ending oppression," she said, "and we
need a Marxism that can win generations of folks that can be radicalized
by this moment."She contended that economics is the basis of what she
called "heteronormativity." [...]

Pregnancy becomes a tool of oppression, she said, as women who get
pregnant and then engage in child rearing are taken out of the workforce
at prime productive ages and then are taken care of by an economic provider.

Thus, for Westing, getting rid of capitalism would usher in a new
society organized around "queer social reproduction."

"When we’re talking about revolution, we’re really connecting the issues
of gender justice as integral to economic and social justice," Westing said.

An easy way of getting more on board with this line of thinking, another
panel determined, was through "clickbait communism."

"I know there’s maybe a contradiction in inviting Teen Vogue to a
socialism conference...especially because the youth spinoff brand is a
magazine so associated with capitalist excess," Lucy Diavolo, the
outlet's transgender news and politics editor said. "If you’re not
familiar with our work, I encourage you to read Teen Vogue’s coverage of
social justice issues, capitalism, revolutionary theory, and Karl Marx,
or you can check out the right-wing op-eds that accuse me of ‘clickbait
communism’ and teaching your daughters Marxism and revolution."

The panel discussed how the outlet actually does quite well with young
people. For this reason and others, as Stepman noted, these ideas cannot
be cast off or ignored anymore. They are slowly seeping into the
Democratic Party.

"What’s clear from my observations at Socialism 2019 is that traditional
Marxists have successfully melded their ideology with the identity
politics and culture war issues that animate modern liberalism—despite
still being quite far from the beliefs of the average citizen," Stepman
remarked.

(5) Candace Owens, a Black conservative commentator, turns Hate
allegations back on Dems

From: JUDY schuchmann <judyschuchmann1@gmail.com>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCxYexboSAY

Candace Owens - Rep. Buck - 9 April 2019
286,011 views

Red Times

Published on 10 Apr 2019

House Judiciary Committee Hearing on Hate Crimes

The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing to examine and discuss how
to combat white nationalism and hate crimes.

Facebook and Google outlined what their companies are doing to identify
and remove hate speech and content.

Candace Owens, a Black conservative commentator, turned the tables,
stating that Leftists had repeatedly tried to stop her addressing
audiences. She rejects Black Lives Matter, and says that, under Trump,
Blacks are getting off welfare and into jobs.

(6) Berkeley City Council votes to replace gendered names, including
'he,' 'she,' 'him,' and 'her'
"policeman," "policewoman," "chairwoman," and "chairman" will be
changed, as will "he," "she," "him," and "her.

City Of Berkeley Bans Gendered Words Like ‘Manhole’ And ‘Manpower’ From
Code Book

https://dailycaller.com/2019/07/18/berkeley-manhole-gender-neutral/

July 18, 2019 11:46 AM ET

One of California’s most liberal cities voted Tuesday to revamp its city
code book by replacing terms like "manhole" and "manpower" with
gender-neutral terms.

The Berkeley City Council voted to replace around three dozen terms
found in the municipal code. Terms like "policeman," "policewoman,"
"chairwoman" and "chairman" will be changed, as will "he," "she," "him"
and "her."

Rigel Robinson, the Democratic city council member who wrote the
ordinance, said the change is necessary because a "male-centric" city
code is "inaccurate and not reflective of our reality."

"Women and non-binary individuals are just as entitled to accurate
representation. Our laws are for everyone, and our municipal code should
reflect that," ...