Jaruzelski's kapos

Time to defend the deformed workers state, boys!

The IBT is a small Trotskyist group with supporters in the United States, Britain, New Zealand and elsewhere. Other Trotskyists regard the IBT as "Stalinophile" or pro-Stalinist, which is not far from the truth. The tendency supported Jaruzelski's military coup in Poland in 1981, and Yanayev's attempted coup in Moscow in 1991.

This issue of their magazine "1917" is also available from the group's website. The main article is an extended and frankly hypocritical attack on the State of Israel. The rhetoric is extreme. Israel is denounced as an apartheid state who wants to perpetrate a holocaust on the Palestinians. Fatah are written off as Israel's "quislings" and "kapos". Note the weird, rundabout way in which the IBT compares Jews to Nazis, by calling Fatah Nazi collaborators! Yet, when the chips are down, the IBT really have a left-Zionist position: both Israelis and Palestinians have the right of national self-determination, and the goal is to build a bi-national Leninist party to lead a struggle "class against class", not Jew against Arab.

The IBT originated as a split from the Spartacist League, a group that was neutral during the Arab-Israeli wars, and even took the position that support for Israel in 1948 would have been necessary, if the Jews had risked being defeated. I'm pretty "left-Zionist" myself, but for goodness sake, why doesn't these tough guys come clean and say what is? The IBT's position is just a more sectarian and demagogical version of the "Shachtmanite" or "Grantite" position.

The rest of "1917" consist of articles on various workers' struggles around the world, and the usual polemics with various leftist groups, including a statement lecturing an Irish group on not being sufficiently anti-imperialist. I suppose I *could* disclose the IBT's position on Ireland, but I have lingered to long...

Only one star to this ridiculous rag that refuses to "tell what is".