Zionists Distort Worker Interview

Opinion | Tommy Johnson

“Protect our Campus”, a Zionist-US imperialist and genocide-endorsing website, has referenced a recent interview published on The Worker. While we have no illusions that their hysterical and reactionary views will change, their tirade is useful to expose their ideological methods.

“Protect our Campus” hides their support for genocide behind pseudo-progressive sounding postmodern rhetoric. They boast of fighting for “an inclusive environment” through conducting police work with what is popularly called call-out culture, stating their mission is to “expose students, professors, and wider faculty that are plaguing university campuses with extremism and hostility.” This is one of postmodernism’s mainstays: to use non-violence as a ploy to support imperialist ruling class violence by subjecting students, intellectuals, and workers to capitalist and state retaliation—jailing, expulsion, and the loss of jobs and income—all in the name of being inclusive by isolating those with conviction against genocide, reaction, and imperialism.

The method described above has been embraced wholesale not only by thinly-concealed Zionists but also in left activism itself as The Worker has detailed in previous articles. We promote a zero tolerance standpoint towards all manifestations of police work.

In the “Protect our Campus” tirade titled “Radicalization on Campus: Protesters Now Admit Armed Violence is Next”, they distort our interview, as predicted, following a second principle of postmodernism, that is, sensationalist embellishment to use fear and hysteria for political gain. They refer to our interview as “chilling” and pick quotes with obvious trimming, hoping their desired audience lacks basic critical thinking skills.

They quote the interview: “Most in the student movement now understand the necessity of armed struggle… We have seen violent resistance proven to be primary again and again,” using this to indicate that the activists anticipate the students themselves plan to carry out armed confrontation regardless of their conditions. This relies on cutting out what was actually said—which specified what was being talked about. The complete paragraph reads as follows:

“After Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, there were many contradictions among the people. Some rejected violence entirely. Over time, through political education and witnessing the horrors of Israel’s occupation and genocide, most in the student movement now understand the necessity of armed struggle. There have been conversations about different methods of resisting, but we have seen violent resistance proven to be primary again and again. Most of us understand the heroism behind Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and the resistance that has thrived in Palestine for over a century.”

The armed struggle carried out by the Palestinian people to secure their right to self-determination is what is being talked about, not tactics appropriate in the current conditions of university students. Palestine will be liberated by Palestinians, gun in hand, and not by acts of adventurism on US campuses. Nonetheless, armed struggle is a necessity for revolution anywhere in the world, and this is an objective law. This does not mean that it is appropriate at all times in all circumstances; one has to have an army with mass support to carry it out, and this must be led by a party if it is to be successful.

Support for the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination is unquestionable and irretractable for us and this means understanding why their armed struggle is justified, why it is a historic necessity. It means proclaiming it as heroic without shame or reservation. The maturation of the student movement on this question fills the Zionists with dread and this too is just. Their flagrant and stupid attempts to create a panic only show off their utter decrepitude.

Armed struggle is not next, but it is universally necessary to transform the root of the social problem and, in fact, it is inevitably provoked by the problem itself. It is just as Karl Marx insisted, “Violence is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one”.

Image: A Palestinian flag hangs in Columbia’s Butler Library during the May 7 demonstration. On the table is written “This is for Hind” in reference to Hind Rajab, a 6 year-old Palestinian girl assassinated in 2024 by the IDF along with members of her family in Gaza in targeted strikes.

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