This short statement written by Steven Strauss for the Freedom Socialist Party was submitted by invitation to the forthcoming first publication of the Red Republicans caucus (named after an organization of French socialists during the 1848 revolution) of the Democratic Socialists of America. A longer article on the same subject will appear in the August-September Freedom Socialist. Click here to subscribe.
The recent anti-Trotsky tweeting by certain leaders and members of Democratic Socialists of America needs to be roundly condemned by all who are serious about the urgent need for socialism in today’s world. These juvenile “ice pick” tweets cannot be dismissed as a harmless joke, unless siding with Stalin’s terror, not just against Trotsky, but against millions of workers and fighters, is also a joke. As opposed to the joint action and mutual defense needed right now among all currents on the left, some DSA leaders thought it acceptable to glorify violence in the workers’ movement. This was politically shameful and irresponsible.
Radicals need to vigorously resist all manifestations of violence within the left, and that includes tweets which betray a lack of seriousness about what we are all trying to accomplish. At a time when the menace of the right wing is increasing, the various parts of our movement need more than ever to find areas of agreement around which we can build strong united fronts – the kind that Trotsky himself agitated for in the fight against fascism. The Freedom Socialist Party is a revolutionary socialist feminist party which agrees with basic Trotskyist principles and is involved in regroupment efforts with Latin American socialists through the Committee for Revolutionary International Regroupment. FSP calls on members of DSA to repudiate the anti-socialist message of the tweeters whose actions were, at bottom, nothing less than an unprincipled betrayal of the working class.
