Iso socialist conference

In , for the first time, the organizers of the Socialism Conference — including many holdovers from the ISO leadership — joined together with two new sponsors: DSA, and the closely DSA-allied Jacobin magazine, another platform for anti-communist and anti-anti-imperialist politics. The Socialism Conference, like its annual predecessors, combines calls for radical economic democratic transformation and progressive social progress with the demonization of independent foreign governments that are targeted by the US government for regime change, such as Nicaragua, Cuba, Syria, Iran, China, and Russia.

There is even a talk devoted specifically to demonizing the anti-imperialist left. Curiously, the Socialism Conference has no panels devoted specifically to Venezuela , which since this January has endured a US-led right-wing coup attempt, and which is suffering under suffocating sanctions that amount to a de facto economic blockade.

In this way, the Socialism Conference also stands out as a sign of the effective political merging of what had previously been two distinct political trends: the Cliffite Trotskyites of the International Socialist Organization and the anti-communist social democrats of the Democratic Socialists of America.

At the top of the about page on its website is a video of right-wing cold warrior Ronald Reagan inaugurating the US government-funded body. Substantial NED funding goes back to at least The Socialism Conference once again failed to mention that this group is also bankrolled by the National Endowment for Democracy.

The Socialism Conference also identified Kevin Lin as a co-editor of the Made in China journal , which focuses on labor rights. These are the financiers behind the speakers that the Socialism Conference and its sponsors the DSA, Jacobin, and Haymarket brought together to explain why China is a malevolent imperialist power. Some of these groups may seem progressive, but they operate in effect as vehicles for US government soft power, exploiting the cause of human rights or labor rights to undermine and destabilize foreign governments that Washington has targeted for regime change.

China Labour Bulletin, which maintains a map of strikes going on across the gigantic country, is likewise frequently cited by left-wing websites in the US. Socialist Worker has repeatedly drawn on the work of China Labour Bulletin, over more than a decade.

It was a textbook example of a controlled opposition. This is not to say that NED-funded groups cannot at times have a positive impact on the lives of average people; but their work is always part of a larger agenda, with ulterior imperial motives guiding them along the way.

A controlled opposition can make some changes, but it always remains controlled. Yet another speaker at the Socialism Conference works for a liberal foundation directly funded by the US government. The Socialism Conference website did not provide a bio for Gopal, yet alone disclose that his employer is funded by the US government. Anand Gopal has harshly attacked the anti-imperialist left for opposing the international proxy war on Syria.

He strongly supported the Syrian opposition, which is dominated by Salafi-jihadists, but which Gopal has consistently whitewashed and portrayed as a supposedly progressive force. Farber is a Cuban exile whose family left the country for unspecified reasons when he was a child in — a year before its revolution — and has spent the rest of his life as a professional critic of its socialist government.

Today, he contributes regular attacks on the Cuban Revolution to journals from Jacobin to New Politics to In These Times, where he published a trenchant denunciation of Fidel Castro upon his death in In June , as a US-backed, violent regime-change attempt surged across Nicaragua , threatening the rule of democratically elected President Daniel Ortega, La Botz attempted to mobilize left-wing US support for the anti-Sandinista opposition. At several sessions dedicated to geo-political developments, ISO speakers presented positions that differed little, if any, from those of the US State Department.

China was challenging the US economically and militarily throughout the world, Smith asserted. After several audience members expressed concern that the military aggressiveness of the US could lead to a clash with China or Russia and the danger of nuclear war, Smith did everything to downplay the danger and sow complacency. The first half of has covered more political ground than decades before it.

From the end of the Bernie Sanders campaign, to the onset of a global pandemic and the catastrophic federal response to it, to the outbreak of a long-simmering rebellion against racism and police brutality, this year marks the beginning of a new period. Socialists must navigate new terrain, new challenges, and rethink old strategies, particularly when it comes to the role of political organization and the capitalist state in the 21st century United States.

What have we learned? What strategies should be pursued? And what do we have yet to discover? While this is event is freely available the Socialism Conference organizers ask that those who are able make a solidarity donation in support of our continuing to do this important work and cover the costs of putting on the event.

Would I do it again? He was till then an authentic voice of the young people of Nicaragua. The Tides Foundation is well known for funding progressive groups, but only as long as they do not rock the boat too much. In fact, while the Tides Foundation was serving as one of the biggest financiers of the ISO, it was also funding Democratic Party-aligned organizations and even pro-Israel groups like J Street and the New Israel Fund, which actively campaign against the Palestinian call for BDS Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel and support the preservation of a settler-colonialist ethnically exclusivist state.

While the ISO was marginal during its existence, it punched above its weight through front organizations and prominent members who worked in the mainstream media and academia. Haymarket has indeed published many important books on pressing issues. One such memo, dated April 24, , features advice by al-Haj Saleh apparently delivered to US officials in the country to use Islamism as a weapon against the government of Bashar al-Assad.

The manifesto features ham-fisted attacks on journalists Julian Assange , John Pilger, and Seymour Hersh, along with unqualified support for virtually every US and NATO military intervention in the past 30 years, as well as the dirty war on Syria and the Maidan coup in Ukraine. No evidence was provided to support the extreme claim.

Trotskyite groups are notorious throughout the world for their extreme sectarian tendencies. The organizations rarely last long, frequently splintering into tiny groupuscules over political disagreements. Nils McCune, a socialist and environmental activist who has lived in Nicaragua for years, explained in an interview on our podcast Moderate Rebels that one of these parties, the Movement for the Renovation of Sandinismo MRS is a tiny group that is irrelevant in the country.

As Blumenthal, a co-author of this article, revealed in MintPress News , the MRS has received direct support from the US government in its campaign to prevent the election of Daniel Ortega as president, and lobbied for sanctions against Nicaragua after he was elected. Escuchamos sus planteamientos, y coincidimos en la necesidad de resolver los problemas de los venezolanos. Seguimos trabajando y escuchando a todos los sectores que quieren un cambio VamosBien pic.

Like Marea Socialista, Lander has enjoyed very positive coverage in the progressive Anglo press. Democracy Now , which has advanced regime-change propaganda on Syria on repeated occasions, offered its platform to Lander this May. The International Socialist Organization has played a similar role in the US, with little visibility outside the left and almost no grassroots base.