The Party for Socialism and Liberation plays a key role in the ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism). Many people are opposed to both war and racism as separate social problems, but for socialists the name expresses both a political argument and a strategy for the anti-war movement.
There is no way to effectively challenge war abroad without challenging the racism that often serves at the core of pro-war propaganda and ideology. Both in U.S. history and today, the concept of “national security”—the way it has been promoted, the presentation of the “enemies of the state,” foreign and domestic, and the creation of the flip side portrait of the “real America”—has been bound up with racist images and stereotypes.
This dates as far back as the first British settlements in North America, when racism was used to justify wars to expel and exclude Native peoples. While power changed hands in the American Revolution, this logic of war and expansion—with its promotion of virulent racism—only accelerated. This process was at the foundation of U.S. “democracy.”
This same pattern played out as the U.S. government turned its expansionism outward. Countless wars and interventions—from the Spanish-American War to today’s Afghanistan occupation— were waged with the justification that other peoples were either dangerously irrational, making them a threat, or uncivilized and thus in need of protection.
This is not to say that racism is the source of imperialist war; financial and political goals always reign supreme, and the U.S. has no qualms about attacking and demonizing the European peoples who get in their way, too. But this tactic—of converting the targeted people into an inferior “race”—has long been the essence of imperialist ideology.
In the media, feature films and video games, in politicians’ speeches and pundits’ commentaries, we receive the message that peoples under occupation or air assault are subhuman, and their lives are worth less. Military officers pound racist messages into the heads of rank-and-file soldiers to psychologically prepare them for unspeakable acts of brutality against “the enemy.”
The wars abroad have always resounded at home. During World War II, over 100,000 Japanese Americans were forcibly relocated into internment camps. In the 1960s, the FBI labeled the Black Panther Party as the “greatest threat to national security,” instructing the rest of the country to fear the growth of organizations among urban Black communities by falsely portraying them as trigger-happy domestic terrorists.
Most recently, the Patriot Act, which violates six of the 10 amendments in the Bill of Rights, was passed on the grounds of “national security” and built on a racist image of the “enemy within.” Its first targets were immigrants from Muslim countries, as the authorities ordered young men to “voluntarily” present themselves to be questioned, fingerprinted, photographed and assigned a registration number. More than 14,000 of the 83,000 men who complied with the order were deported, and forced to leave their families behind—all without generating a single charge of terrorism. Since then, the same “national security” rhetoric has been used to justify the deportation of millions of Latin American immigrants and the militarization of the border. It has expanded to target political dissidents and anti-war activists.
By exposing racism, the anti-war movement can cut to the heart of the war-makers’ propaganda. It also provides a path for us to bring down, once and for all, this system that is addicted to war. The fight against racist oppression in the United States has historically been decisive in unleashing movements that have the potential to truly transform society, and it remains so today. For the anti-war movement to become a real threat to the Pentagon—the 1 percent in uniform—it must also fight economic inequality, mass incarceration and police brutality. By organizing among those communities most under the gun in the United States, we can build a steadfast movement that targets the twin evils of racism and war.
