More on Fascism in Ukraine & the ISO

Ukraine’s neo-Nazi opposition marching with a banner of Stepan Bandera, a Nazi collaborator of Ukraine during World War II and vicious anti-Semite.

Just hours after Return to the Source published Beer Hall Putsch Leftism: Ukraine & the ISO, America’s least favorite Trotskyite organization double-dipped and released another article about the Euromaiden protests in Ukraine that recently drove President Viktor Yanukovich from power. This time, International Socialist Organization (ISO) member Sean Larson was joined by Trotskyite relic Alan Maass in an equally backwards piece, A political earthquake in Ukraine.

I don’t want to rehash the critique because all of the points made in yesterday’s essay still stand. I also want to be clear that Larson and Maass’ article was not a response to the essay on Return to the Source, given they were probably written concurrently. Instead, I want to add a few points more to the original critique based on some of the differences I noticed between the ISO’s original piece and the new one.

Beer Hall Putsch Leftism: Ukraine & the ISO

First, an admission: After three years of writing Return to the Source sporadically, I’m getting tired of roasting the International Socialist Organization (ISO) and tearing apart their positions. The criticisms of their social chauvinist lines on Libya, Syria, China, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and other countries targeted by imperialism seem to be popular with readers, evidenced by the hundreds of hits this blog still gets despite a long period of inactivity.

At the same time, all signs point towards the ISO discrediting itself and losing ground with leftists around the country. For instance, it’s hard for me to believe that anyone, except the most die-hard cruise missile ISO member, reads Gilbert Achcar’s recent article, What remains of the Arab Spring? and thinks anything besides, “This is a sad, irrelevant man who can’t recognize reality.” The ISO’s bizarre brand of social imperialism is still dangerous, but it’s discredited itself, most notably with regards to Syria.

I preface with that admission before rounding up all of the evidence necessary to totally dismantle the ISO’s closet support for fascism in Ukraine because I don’t want readers to think I’ll be doing this a lot more. At times, though, the US Trotskyites take a position so egregious that it begs for engagement, if for no other reason than to provide a resource to those actual Marxists around the world committed to battling social imperialists in the people’s movement.

The DPRK Did Not “Vow Nuclear Attack on Washington”: On Preemptive Strikes

Former Chicago Bulls Forward Dennis Rodman became the first US citizen to meet DRK Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Il, and in doing so, he set a standard for international solidarity that the US Left should learn from.

Fox News, CNN, the BBC, and a host of other Western news outlets were aflame yesterday – no pun intended – after a representative from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) said that their country would launch a preemptive strike against US aggression. The sensationalist headlines kicked into high-gear, with Fox News reporting, “‘North Korea vows nuclear attack on US, saying Washington will be ‘engulfed in a sea of fire.'” Almost 60 years after the armistice that ended the Korean war, the US media seems more eager than ever to make people believe that a nuclear strike by a small, partitioned nation is likely.

For all of the venom the Western press has spilled over the DPRK’s latest comments, it’s incredibly difficult to find the full quote or the context of such a statement. Also absent from any of the reporting is a real definition of the term “preemptive strike,” compared to a “preventative strike.”

University of Chicago Professor of Korean History Bruce Cumings famously said that reading the DPRK’s official news network gives you a better understanding of the truth in the Korean Peninsula than reading the South Korean or US press. This is indeed the case.