Someone suggests that when I run as an independent socialist candidate for president in 2020 that I not “get all bogged down in international issues.” It isn’t that we’re “all bogged down” with Palestine, Kashmir, Burma, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Libya, the Philippines, or anywhere else. It’s the US government, whether run by a Democrat or Republican, & the very nature of neoliberal capitalism that involves us in international politics through its military-industrial complex & arms deals, its wars, occupations, & support for genocide.
The stagnation of American working class politics is that many are provincial, even nationalist, & don’t recognize their affinities with working people in other countries & are, quite frankly, racist up to their eyeballs. The way to address that political failing is not to create false harmony by compromising with it but to work tirelessly to elaborate the affinities we share with other human beings & the commitment we have to end US aggressions of every kind against other peoples. Solidarity is the iron law of social transformation & American workers are not exempted from that reality. It would be a concession to white supremacy & American exceptionalism & that is absolutely excluded in principled politics.
There are no transformational politics possible in the US or anywhere else without being rooted in a commitment to justice & equality everywhere in this world. Nationalism is not our schtick. No human being is alien to us. Palestinians, Rohingyas, Syrians, Kashmiris, & others are not “international issues” to us. They are our brothers & sisters working with us to make this world suitable for children to come of age in, for human beings to live & love in. Amen.