La Marx International
A real insurrection of the student movement in support of the struggle of the Palestinian people is shaking the United States and the world. Protests and occupation camps in solidarity with the 3rd Intifada of the Palestinian people have spread to 60 universities in the United States, and the protests have spread to high schools and high schools in Washington.
This movement is globalizing and becoming international with protests that extend to the student movement of other countries such as the Sorbonne in Paris, the Institute of Political Studies Sciences-Po also in France; the University of Valencia in Spain; the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom; Sydney and Melbourne, Australia; and Sapienza, in Italy, to name a few.
The Biden administration has responded with a harsh repression against students with more than 500 arrested in recent days, but the repression has failed to stop a movement that is hitting hard the imperialist government of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party that has been supporting the Nazi state of Israel militarily and economically. The hatred of the people of the United States for the Biden administration’s actions in support of Israel has led to the president being given the nickname “Genocide Joe.” This whole process makes it clear that the3rd Palestinian Intifada is a global mass revolution of national liberation struggle of the Palestinian people that has its epicenter in Gaza, but is accompanied by mobilizations of support around the world and the struggles of the peoples in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, etc.
The Beginning of the Movement
It is impossible to analyze the movement of occupations of the U.S. Universities separately and detached from the 3rd Palestinian Intifada, which, by confronting Israel and the imperialist apparatus in the Middle East, constitutes a single global mass movement against imperialism and capitalism. After the triumph of Palestinian militias in the battle of Gaza that forced the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza on April 7, 2024, the movement broke out 10 days later in the United States Universities that began at Columbia University in New York to demand the withdrawal of investments in companies and institutions that benefit from Israel’s occupation.
The students set up the “Gaza Solidarity Camp” on the central garden of the university, after which the university principal called on the police to crack down on the camp on 18 April. When police cracked down and arrested more than 100 students, university officials hoped this would put an end to the protest, but it produced the opposite effect: The crackdown at Columbia sparked an outpouring of support for the students, and an extension of the movement to every college in the country in solidarity.
The crackdown at Columbia University sparked widespread outrage over the restriction of the right to protest, adding to solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinian people. The number of new occupations began to grow every day, and the tenacity, determination and deep solidarity of the students with the Palestinian people, willing to be arrested risking their lives and futures in pursuit of internationalist solidarity, moved the entire American society. The student camps hit hard “Genocide Joe” who has collapsed in popular support due to the widespread discontent among the American people due to the growth of poverty, the fall in wages, unemployment, and the sinister role of the Biden Administration that despite presenting itself as a “progressive” government showed the imperialist character with the support for Netanyahu and the horrible massacre of Palestinians in Gaza.
Biden’s re-election is in crisis in the capitalist elections called against Donald Trump, and the 3rd Intifada “sneaked” into the primary elections, in the strongholds of the Democratic Party and the swing states in which “uncommitted” or “blank ballot” campaigns appeared in states across the country, in which voters were against supporting Biden. This mass action of the American people forced the Biden administration to distance itself from the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, which has been defeated by the 3rd Intifada, and is suffering a brutal internal crisis with millions of Israelis who repudiated him for his failure in the battle of Gaza.
The camps at the universities represent the return of the anti-imperialist betrayal of the American people that developed in the wars of Vietnam and Iraq, spreading to Columbia University and Barnard College, the University of Minnesota, Yale University; New York University, University of Texas-Austin, Emory University in Georgia, Emerson College in Boston. New York University professors joined the protest and UT-Austin professors have organized a 24-hour work stoppage in protest of repression on their campus, defying laws that prevent them from organizing.
An activism that radicalizes and raises positions close to Marxism
In the early hours of April 30, a group of about 60 Columbia University students seized the central building of Hamilton Hall and renamed it Hind Hall in memory of Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old girl who was killed in Gaza. This action was a deepening, and escalating against the university administration’s threats against the protesters. The occupation unfolded in parallel with protests to occupied buildings at Princeton, Portland State University, and California Humboldt State Polytechnic University. The students demand amnesty for those who have been punished with suspensions, but also express the radicalization of the activists who participate in the movement.
In the actions of the students in the United States, a characteristic of the 3rd Intifada is developed, which is thedevelopment and emergence of a huge breed of activists, thousands of thousands who take up the flag of Palestine and carry it forward as part of their struggle, among them the youngest. Asignificant part of this global vanguard of activists is progressively radicalizing, and evolving towards more anti-capitalist positions, close to Marxism and confronting the policies of the capitalist parties, the UN, or the Progressive International of “Ceasefire”, “Against Genocide”, or “For Peace”.
Students signs say: “The Intifada is revolution”
Another, more radicalized current is emerging, raising slogans such as “Free Palestine”, “Globalizing the Intifada” or the slogan “From the river to the sea”, which is a popularization of the slogan “For a secular, democratic and non-racist Palestinian state” that we raise from Marxism. “From the river to the sea” means from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, which implies the destruction of the State of Israel, as proposed by Marxism.
This implies a slap in the face of the left-wing reformist groups that adhere to the policy of the Progressive International (PI) headed by Bernie Sanders, who limit themselves to raising the slogan “against genocide”, but refuse to raise any slogan of support for the Palestinian militias, to place themselves in the military trench of the armed militias. refusing to support the Palestinians’ military triumph with the excuse that it means “supporting Hamas.”
This position of the 99% of the reformist world left places an equal sign between the Palestinian armed militias and the army of the Nazi state of Israel, that is, an equal sign between the army of the oppressive state and the oppressed state. It is a reactionary stance, which is functional to Israel. Support for any National Liberation army, whether armed militias or the army of an oppressed nation, does not mean political support for the government of the oppressed state or the heads of the national liberation army. Thus, we Marxists were on the side of the National Liberation Army against the U.S. army in Vietnam. In the U.S., in Iraq on the side of the trench of the Iraqi national liberation army against NATO, in the Falklands War on the side of Argentina against England, in the Ukrainian War on the side of Ukraine against Putin’s invasion, always on the side of the oppressed nation or state, without providing any kind of political support to the bourgeois governments or military leaders or defenders of capitalism of those nations.
At the same time, the emergence of this increasingly radicalized activism provokes a crisis throughout the left in the United States, and further aggravates the crisis ofthe 99% of the reformist, campist, evasionist, Stalinist left that carries out the “For Peace” policy of the progressive International. Bernie Sanders’ declarations in favor of the state of Israel have introduced a serious crisis in the DSA and Syriza, the organizations that are the base of the Progressive International, and drag down the organizations of the global left that are supporting the “Two States” policy.
The 3rd Intifada, and this new chapter of the student insurrection in the United States, strikes at the standard-bearers of reformism such as Jacobin Magazine, organ of the DSA (Democratic Socialist of America) whose leaders raise a treacherous policy of support for the Democratic Party, which has led the DSA towards a serious crisis.
DSA suffers a collapse of its membership, the collapse of its finances, and a wave of layoffs of leaders and paid political cadres. The crisis in DSA drags down all the opportunist currents that have joined it such as Solidarity which responds to Mandelism, Socialist Alternative (SA) headed by Seattle councillor Kshama Sawant, Tempest, Red Star, Bread and Roses, Reform & Revolution, Marxist Unity Group, the Socialist Majority, etc. All these sectors betray the American people by supporting the imperialist Biden government, and capitulate to U.S. imperialism. They lie to activism by presenting themselves as “Marxists.”
The Crisis of the U.S. Left Opens the Door to Marxism
The student insurrection in the U.S., part of the 3rd Intifada, underscores that the U.S. is the epicenter of the revolutionary process shaking the world. This explains why several of the most important global movements against capitalism have been born in the United States such as Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, the “Me Too” movement, the mass unionization movement, and now the student movement supporting Palestine. The “American Revolution of the 21st Century” is the engine of the global revolutionary process.
At the same time, the crisis of the reformist left provoked by the insurrection of the students in the United States opens the doors to Marxists. Those thousands of young people who raise slogans and programs typical of Marxism, do so for the most part spontaneously. It is a question of uniting the program and slogans of the sectors that in this student insurrection are unconsciously advancing towards Marxism, advancing in the regroupment and organization of revolutionaries. From Marx International we support the insurrection of the students of the United States and the 3rd Intifada, on the road to the battle for Global Socialism.
