As Israel Attacks Iran - Our Enemy Is At Home

The genocidal Israeli state is now bombing Iran. Of course the mainstream media is rattling on about Iran and the possibility of the development of nuclear weapons, nevermind the fact that Israel has shown it’s murderous capabilities and has an estimated 90 to 300 nukes.

But you see genocidal Israel is a proxy for the West in the Middle East. Originally set up by the British Empire to establish what they called “a loyal little Ulster” in the region, sponsorship of the Apartheid regime then switched to the USA.

Israel is part of a network of imperial control in the region with countries like Egypt being the second biggest recipient of US cash. Of course Israel wouldn’t be bombing Iran without the green light from the Trump Whitehouse.

Trump made a big song and dance about how many wars the Democrats had supported (which is true!) but once in power the orange billionaire slotted into the mechanisms of the US imperialist state, as all Democrat or Republican Presidents do.

Changing the mask doesn’t change the machine. The Pentagon might be upset with Trump over tactics in Ukraine but they’re fine with his attitude to Israel and to China.

“We are not seeing individual crises across various geographies,” said former Nixon adviser Henry Kissinger before his death, “the traditional patterns of great power politics are returning.”

War is no accident but is built into the very DNA of the competitive capitalist system. The great war theorist Carl von Clausewitz once wrote that:

“War is a mere continuation of policy by other means. We see, therefore, that War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means.”

And policy under capitalism is mostly political puppets of the rich acting in the interests of giant corporations. These corporations have operations in dozens of countries but they only have the military protection of their home state.

This contradiction between world spanning production and nation states leads to conflict. Who else but the US military is going to secure a resource for some US corporation in Africa? And aren’t the French doing the same?

Make no mistake - the move to an EU army is about French and German capitalists chaining the fate of the working class of Ireland to their corporate interests. That’s why we have to defend neutrality.

“The main enemy of every people is in their own country!” so wrote the German socialist Karl Liebnecht in 1915. But this isn’t just a political position of immense value - it’s also a practical call to arms.

What else can the working class of each nation do except overthrow their own state and pull down the supporting pillars of imperialism one by one, starting with their own?

The main enemy of the working class is at home. That’s a political orientation and a call to practical work. There are those that recognise the growing war on many fronts but don’t understand that unless the left builds a base in the working class talk of pulling down any government is empty rhetoric.

To really overthrow our “enemy at home” we need to get into workplaces and estates and build on the key issues that matter to working class people. It’s on the basis of that deep organising that we can actually build a lever strong enough to overturn the Irish state.

We need to combine campaigning on neutrality with campaiging on housing. We need to combine agitation and propaganda on imperialism with protesting on every issue that impacts ordinary workers.

If we’re serious about living in a world free from war then we have to get serious about merging the fighting left with the working class. The hands that make the machine work are the hands that can shut it down.

We need to remind our class of the immense world changing power that lies in its hands. We’re a long way away from that. But the work starts now. Join us.