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<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class="cb-fis clearfix no-par cover-1 hero-24 hero-wrap mask-loaded"><div class="hero"><img src="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Socialism-Conference-2019-anti-imperialists.jpg?fit=2150%2C1350&ssl=1" class="flipboard-image wp-post-image" alt="Socialism Conference 2019 anti-imperialists" srcset="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Socialism-Conference-2019-anti-imperialists.jpg?w=2150&ssl=1 2150w, https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Socialism-Conference-2019-anti-imperialists.jpg?resize=300%2C188&ssl=1 300w, https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Socialism-Conference-2019-anti-imperialists.jpg?resize=768%2C482&ssl=1 768w, https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Socialism-Conference-2019-anti-imperialists.jpg?resize=1024%2C643&ssl=1 1024w, https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Socialism-Conference-2019-anti-imperialists.jpg?resize=150%2C94&ssl=1 150w" sizes="(max-width: 2150px) 100vw, 2150px" data-attachment-id="12023" data-permalink="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/07/06/dsa-jacobin-iso-socialism-conference-us-funded-regime-change/socialism-conference-2019-anti-imperialists/" data-orig-file="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Socialism-Conference-2019-anti-imperialists.jpg?fit=2150%2C1350&ssl=1" data-orig-size="2150,1350" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"1"}" data-image-title="Socialism Conference 2019 anti-imperialists" data-image-description="<p>Socialism Conference 2019 anti-imperialists</p>
" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Socialism-Conference-2019-anti-imperialists.jpg?fit=300%2C188&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Socialism-Conference-2019-anti-imperialists.jpg?fit=1024%2C643&ssl=1" width="2150" height="1350"></div></div><div class="clearfix tipi-l-typo meta-wrap wrap hero-meta elements-design-1 content-bg"><div class="meta"><div class="title-wrap"><h1 class="entry-title title flipboard-title">DSA/Jacobin/Haymarket-sponsored ‘Socialism’ conference features US gov-funded regime-change activists</h1></div><div class="byline-3 cb-byline byline"><span class="byline-part author-avatar flipboard-author with-name"><a href="https://thegrayzone.com/author/ben-norton/" class="author-avatar"><img alt="" src="https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/40ad4a64a080721dc49904ef8ff87138?s=50&d=blank&r=g" srcset="https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/40ad4a64a080721dc49904ef8ff87138?s=100&d=blank&r=g 2x" class="avatar avatar-50 photo" width="50" height="50"></a></span><span class="author byline-part"><a href="https://thegrayzone.com/author/ben-norton/" title="Posts by Ben Norton" class="url author fn" rel="author">Ben Norton</a> and <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/author/max-blumenthal/" title="Posts by Max Blumenthal" class="url author fn" rel="author">Max Blumenthal</a></span><span class="separator-date separator byline-part">·</span><span class="cb-date date byline-part">July 6, 2019</span></div></div></div> <div class="clearfix contents-wrap side-spacing wrap single-content content-bg article-layout-51">
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<div class="heateorSssClear"></div><div class="heateor_sss_horizontal_sharing heateor_sss_sharing_container" heateor-sss-data-href="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/07/06/dsa-jacobin-iso-socialism-conference-us-funded-regime-change/"><div class="heateor_sss_sharing_title" style="font-weight:bold"></div><ul class="heateor_sss_sharing_ul"><li class="heateorSssSharingRound"><i style="width:75px;height:50px;border-radius:5px;" alt="Facebook" title="Facebook" class="heateorSssSharing heateorSssFacebookBackground"><ss style="display:block;" class="heateorSssFacebookSvg heateorSssSharingSvg"></ss></i></li><li class="heateorSssSharingRound"><i style="width:75px;height:50px;border-radius:5px;" alt="Twitter" title="Twitter" class="heateorSssSharing heateorSssTwitterBackground"><ss style="display:block;" class="heateorSssTwitterSvg heateorSssSharingSvg"></ss></i></li><li class="heateorSssSharingRound"><i style="width:75px;height:50px;border-radius:5px;" alt="Whatsapp" title="Whatsapp" class="heateorSssSharing heateorSssWhatsappBackground"><ss style="display:block" class="heateorSssWhatsappSvg heateorSssSharingSvg"></ss></i></li><li class="heateorSssSharingRound"><i style="width:75px;height:50px;border-radius:5px;" alt="Email" title="Email" class="heateorSssSharing heateorSssEmailBackground"><ss style="display:block" class="heateorSssEmailSvg heateorSssSharingSvg"></ss></i></li></ul><div class="heateorSssClear"></div></div><div class="heateorSssClear"></div><br class=""><h4 class="">The
2019 Socialism Conference, sponsored by American leftist juggernauts
the DSA, Jacobin magazine, and ISO’s Haymarket Books, features
regime-change activists from multiple US government-funded NGOs.</h4>
<h4 class="">(<a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/08/19/conferencia-socialismo-golpistas-financiados-gobierno-de-eeuu/" class="">Puede leer este artículo en español aquí</a>)</h4>
<hr class="">
<p class="">Socialism is now apparently brought to you by the US State Department.</p>
<p class="">From July 4 to 7, thousands of left-wing activists from across the United States are gathering in Chicago for the <a href="http://archive.fo/GbmTo" class="">2019 Socialism Conference</a>.</p>
<p class="">At this event, some of the most powerful institutions on the American
socialist — but avowedly anti-communist — left have brought together a
motley crew of regime-change activists to demonize Official Enemies of
Washington.</p>
<p class="">One anti-China panel at the conference features speakers from two
different organizations that are both bankrolled by the US government’s
soft-power arm the <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2018/08/20/inside-americas-meddling-machine-the-us-funded-group-that-interferes-in-elections-around-the-globe/" class="">National Endowment for Democracy (NED)</a>,
a group founded out of Ronald Reagan’s CIA in the 1980s to grease the
wheels of right-wing regime-change efforts and promote “free markets”
across the planet.</p>
<p class="">Another longtime ally who has spoken at every single annual Socialism
Conference since 2009, Anand Gopal, works at a liberal foundation that
is directly funded by the US State Department. He is headlining a panel
this year to provide “A Socialist View of the Arab Spring.”</p>
<p class="">Yet another 2019 conference panel rails against the socialist
governments of Nicaragua and Cuba — two-thirds of John Bolton’s “troika
of tyranny” — with outspoken proponents of regime change. One of the
speakers, Dan La Botz, hosted an event in 2018 that featured <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2018/06/19/ned-nicaragua-protests-us-government/" class="">right-wing Nicaraguan activists</a>
wearing masks and disguised as students, who were junketed to meet with
Republican lawmakers in Washington by the US government-funded
right-wing organization Freedom House.</p>
<p class="">The Socialism Conference’s regime-change lobbying “Nicaragua expert”
La Botz has admitted in leaked emails obtained by The Grayzone that
“there is virtually no left among the opposition” to Nicaragua’s
democratically elected socialist government.</p>
<p class="">La Botz, a leader within Democratic Socialists of America, likewise
acknowledged in these emails that there is “little likelihood of an
outcome to the rebellion that goes beyond a more democratic capitalist
regime.” But he has still vociferously lobbied for Nicaragua’s
Sandinista government to be overthrown by US government-backed
insurgents — and is using his platform at the biggest socialist
conference in the United States to do it.</p>
<h3 class="">Merging of largest US socialist organizations</h3>
<p class="">The 2019 Socialism Conference is advertised under the catchy slogan: “No borders, no bosses, no binaries.”</p>
<p class="">Each ticket comes in at a neat $105 per person (or a $250 “solidarity
rate,” for the hardcore supporters) — and this doesn’t include the rate
for the rooms at the hotel where it’s held.</p>
<p class="">For years, the Socialism Conference functioned as a platform for the
International Socialist Organization (ISO), a small group steeped in the
tradition of sectarian American Trotskyite politics, which pushed a
hardline anti-communism and attacked virtually all socialist governments
in history as “not truly socialist.”</p>
<p class="">Founded in 1977 after a long line of sectarian splits, the ISO never
became a significant political force. It was mostly relegated to
recruiting young impressionable students on liberal arts college
campuses.</p>
<p class="">As an avowedly anti-communist organization, the ISO eschewed symbols
long associated with the communist left, like hammers and sickles and
red flags. Instead, it chose a clenched fist — one eerily similar to the
symbol used by the <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/03/11/us-regime-change-blueprint-proposed-venezuelan-electricity-blackouts-as-watershed-event-for-galvanizing-public-unrest/" class="">US government-funded Serbian activist group Otpor</a>
and similar offshoots in Eastern Europe, which carried out
Washington-backed neoliberal “color revolutions” in the years following
the collapse of the Soviet Union and the restoration of capitalism.</p>
<p class=""><img data-attachment-id="11994" data-permalink="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/07/06/dsa-jacobin-iso-socialism-conference-us-funded-regime-change/iso-otpor-fist-symbols/" data-orig-file="https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/ISO-Otpor-fist-symbols.jpg?fit=610%2C330&ssl=1" data-orig-size="610,330" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"1"}" data-image-title="ISO Otpor fist symbols" data-image-description="<p>ISO Otpor fist symbols</p>
" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/ISO-Otpor-fist-symbols.jpg?fit=300%2C162&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/ISO-Otpor-fist-symbols.jpg?fit=610%2C330&ssl=1" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-11994" src="https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/ISO-Otpor-fist-symbols.jpg?resize=610%2C330&ssl=1" alt="ISO Otpor fist symbols" srcset="https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/ISO-Otpor-fist-symbols.jpg?w=610&ssl=1 610w, https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/ISO-Otpor-fist-symbols.jpg?resize=300%2C162&ssl=1 300w, https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/ISO-Otpor-fist-symbols.jpg?resize=150%2C81&ssl=1 150w" sizes="(max-width: 610px) 100vw, 610px" width="610" height="330"></p>
<p class="">The ISO claimed to be anti-war, but its leaders spent a
disproportionate percentage of their time and resources attacking the
anti-imperialist left. They could more accurately be referred to as the
anti-anti-imperialist left.</p>
<p class="">This March, the <a href="http://socialistworker.org/2019/04/02/the-isos-vote-to-dissolve-and-what-comes-next" class="">ISO voted to dissolve</a>
— in a decision some former members joked was the most democratic act
ever undertaken by the organization, which had been dominated by an
unelected leadership of veteran Trotskyite activists.</p>
<p class="">The dissolution was prompted by evidence that the ISO’s steering
committee mishandled sexual assault allegations. It also came as the
ISO’s membership was shrinking and rapidly being absorbed by a newly
burgeoning anti-communist organization, the Democratic Socialists of
America, or DSA.</p>
<p class="">Now that the ISO has dissolved, some of its past prominent members
have entered the ranks of the DSA, burrowing from within to inject their
anti-anti-imperialist politics into the group.</p>
<p class="">Because Trotskyites are so sectarian and notoriously incapable of
holding together organizations, they are infamous for infiltrating
larger, more popular groups and trying to take them over, in a tactic
known as entryism.</p>
<p class="">This is precisely the strategy being used by former members of the ISO — and by another tiny US Trotskyite organization, <a href="https://solidarity-us.org/" class="">Solidarity</a>, which was led by anti-Nicaragua regime-change activist and Socialism Conference speaker Dan La Botz, now a leader in DSA.</p>
<p class="">Democratic Socialists of America is the largest self-described
socialist organization in the United States, with more than 60,000
card-carrying members. It is also very heterogeneous, with many internal
contradictions and conflicting political views.</p>
<p class="">In 2019, 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.</p>
<p class="">At the bottom of the <a href="https://socialismconference.org/" class="">Socialism conference website</a>,
a note reads, “Brought to you by Haymarket, Jacobin, and the Democratic
Socialists of America.” Haymarket is the book publishing arm of the now
defunct ISO, and its editorial board features some of the group’s
former leaders.</p>
<p class=""><img data-attachment-id="11987" data-permalink="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/07/06/dsa-jacobin-iso-socialism-conference-us-funded-regime-change/socialism-2019-sponsors-haymarket-jacobin-dsa/" data-orig-file="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Socialism-2019-sponsors-Haymarket-Jacobin-DSA.png?fit=1846%2C500&ssl=1" data-orig-size="1846,500" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="Socialism 2019 sponsors Haymarket Jacobin DSA" data-image-description="<p>Socialism 2019 sponsors Haymarket Jacobin DSA</p>
" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Socialism-2019-sponsors-Haymarket-Jacobin-DSA.png?fit=300%2C81&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Socialism-2019-sponsors-Haymarket-Jacobin-DSA.png?fit=1024%2C277&ssl=1" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-11987" src="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Socialism-2019-sponsors-Haymarket-Jacobin-DSA.png?resize=1170%2C317&ssl=1" alt="Socialism 2019 sponsors Haymarket Jacobin DSA" srcset="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Socialism-2019-sponsors-Haymarket-Jacobin-DSA.png?w=1846&ssl=1 1846w, https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Socialism-2019-sponsors-Haymarket-Jacobin-DSA.png?resize=300%2C81&ssl=1 300w, https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Socialism-2019-sponsors-Haymarket-Jacobin-DSA.png?resize=768%2C208&ssl=1 768w, https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Socialism-2019-sponsors-Haymarket-Jacobin-DSA.png?resize=1024%2C277&ssl=1 1024w, https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Socialism-2019-sponsors-Haymarket-Jacobin-DSA.png?resize=150%2C41&ssl=1 150w" sizes="(max-width: 1170px) 100vw, 1170px" width="1140" height="309"></p>
<p class="">Top speakers at the conference include Democracy Now host Amy
Goodman, Jacobin magazine founder and editor Bhaskar Sunkara, and
journalist Naomi Klein, the inaugural <a href="https://comminfo.rutgers.edu/about/gloria-steinem-endowed-chair-media-culture-and-feminist-studies" class="">Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies</a> at Rutgers University. Klein was chosen to head the final plenary, titled “<a href="http://archive.fo/ZqZ0j" class="">Care and Repair</a>: The Revolutionary, Democratic Power of a Global Green New Deal.”</p>
<p class="">The 2019 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.</p>
<p class="">The <a href="http://archive.fo/Oobbj" class="">schedule of panels</a> on
foreign policy and international issues features a veritable who’s who
of leftist regime-change activists. There is even a talk devoted
specifically to <a href="http://archive.fo/GW8Qj" class="">demonizing the anti-imperialist left</a>.</p>
<p class="">Curiously, the 2019 Socialism Conference has no panels devoted specifically to <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/category/venezuela/" class="">Venezuela</a>,
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 the past, the ISO has harshly criticized
Venezuela’s democratically elected socialist government, condemning
Presidents Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro for not being radical enough
and for not supposedly implementing the vague concept of “socialism from
below.”</p>
<p class="">In this way, the 2019 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.</p>
<h3 class="">Anti-China ‘workers’ rights’ groups funded by anti-labor US government</h3>
<p class="">One of the most eyebrow-raising panels at the 2019 Socialism Conference is entitled “<a href="http://archive.fo/JJaB2" class="">China and the US</a>:
Inter-Imperial Rivalry or Class Struggle and Solidarity?” The panel
portrays the US and China as equally malicious imperialist powers,
downplaying and whitewashing the uniquely destructive nature of
Washington’s foreign wars and corporate domination.</p>
<p class="">The panel features three speakers, two of whom work for anti-China
groups that are funded by the US government’s regime-change arm, the
National Endowment for Democracy. The third speaker is Ashley Smith, a
former leader of the ISO who has spent the past eight years
romanticizing foreign-backed, far-right sectarian Islamist “<a href="https://moderaterebels.com/syria-cia-al-qaeda-episode-2-show-notes/" class="">moderate rebels</a>” in Syria.</p>
<p class=""><img data-attachment-id="11967" data-permalink="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/07/06/dsa-jacobin-iso-socialism-conference-us-funded-regime-change/socialism-2019-china-us-inter-imperial-rivalry-panel/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Socialism-2019-China-US-inter-imperial-rivalry-panel.png?fit=1166%2C1064&ssl=1" data-orig-size="1166,1064" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="Socialism 2019 China US inter-imperial rivalry panel" data-image-description="<p>Socialism 2019 China US inter-imperial rivalry panel</p>
" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Socialism-2019-China-US-inter-imperial-rivalry-panel.png?fit=300%2C274&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Socialism-2019-China-US-inter-imperial-rivalry-panel.png?fit=1024%2C934&ssl=1" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-11967" src="https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Socialism-2019-China-US-inter-imperial-rivalry-panel.png?resize=1166%2C1064&ssl=1" alt="Socialism 2019 China US inter-imperial rivalry panel" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Socialism-2019-China-US-inter-imperial-rivalry-panel.png?w=1166&ssl=1 1166w, https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Socialism-2019-China-US-inter-imperial-rivalry-panel.png?resize=300%2C274&ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Socialism-2019-China-US-inter-imperial-rivalry-panel.png?resize=768%2C701&ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Socialism-2019-China-US-inter-imperial-rivalry-panel.png?resize=1024%2C934&ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Socialism-2019-China-US-inter-imperial-rivalry-panel.png?resize=150%2C137&ssl=1 150w" sizes="(max-width: 1166px) 100vw, 1166px" width="1140" height="1040"></p>
<p class="">The first speaker listed on the panel is <a href="http://archive.fo/tU0aU" class="">Elaine Lu</a>,
the program officer at China Labor Watch. This group is described by
the Socialism conference website simply as “a New York-based NGO
advocating for workers’ rights in China.”</p>
<p class="">What Socialism Conference sponsors DSA, Jacobin, and Haymarket did
not disclose is that its speaker’s employer is funded by the National
Endowment for Democracy.</p>
<p class="">The NED states without qualification that its goals include
supporting “free markets” abroad. 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.</p>
<p class=""><img data-attachment-id="11965" data-permalink="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/07/06/dsa-jacobin-iso-socialism-conference-us-funded-regime-change/ned-ronald-reagan-free-markets/" data-orig-file="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/NED-Ronald-Reagan-free-markets.png?fit=1074%2C934&ssl=1" data-orig-size="1074,934" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="NED Ronald Reagan free markets" data-image-description="<p>NED Ronald Reagan free markets</p>
" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/NED-Ronald-Reagan-free-markets.png?fit=300%2C261&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/NED-Ronald-Reagan-free-markets.png?fit=1024%2C891&ssl=1" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-11965" src="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/NED-Ronald-Reagan-free-markets.png?resize=1074%2C934&ssl=1" alt="NED Ronald Reagan free markets" srcset="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/NED-Ronald-Reagan-free-markets.png?w=1074&ssl=1 1074w, https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/NED-Ronald-Reagan-free-markets.png?resize=300%2C261&ssl=1 300w, https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/NED-Ronald-Reagan-free-markets.png?resize=768%2C668&ssl=1 768w, https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/NED-Ronald-Reagan-free-markets.png?resize=1024%2C891&ssl=1 1024w, https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/NED-Ronald-Reagan-free-markets.png?resize=150%2C130&ssl=1 150w" sizes="(max-width: 1074px) 100vw, 1074px" width="1074" height="934"></p>
<p class="">The <a href="https://archive.org/details/NED990" class="">National Endowment for Democracy’s 990 tax forms</a>
show how Washington’s regime-change arm has bankrolled China Labor
Watch for years. Substantial NED funding goes back to at least <a href="https://archive.org/stream/NED990/NED_Form990_2010#page/n27/mode/2up" class="">2009</a>.</p>
<p class="">According to the <a href="https://pdf.guidestar.org/PDF_Images/2016/521/344/2016-521344831-0e541065-9.pdf" class="">NED’s 2015 form 990</a>, China Labor Watch received a $150,000 grant that year. On the NED’s <a href="http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/521/521344831/521344831_201409_990.pdf" class="">2013</a> tax form, it lists another <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/China-Labor-Watch-NED-funding-2013.png" class="">$110,000 grant</a> for China Labor Watch.</p>
<p class=""><img data-attachment-id="11949" data-permalink="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/07/06/dsa-jacobin-iso-socialism-conference-us-funded-regime-change/china-labor-watch-ned-funding-2015/" data-orig-file="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/China-Labor-Watch-NED-funding-2015.png?fit=1560%2C416&ssl=1" data-orig-size="1560,416" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="China Labor Watch NED funding 2015" data-image-description="<p>China Labor Watch NED funding 2015</p>
" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/China-Labor-Watch-NED-funding-2015.png?fit=300%2C80&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/China-Labor-Watch-NED-funding-2015.png?fit=1024%2C273&ssl=1" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-11949" src="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/China-Labor-Watch-NED-funding-2015.png?resize=1170%2C312&ssl=1" alt="China Labor Watch NED funding 2015" srcset="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/China-Labor-Watch-NED-funding-2015.png?w=1560&ssl=1 1560w, https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/China-Labor-Watch-NED-funding-2015.png?resize=300%2C80&ssl=1 300w, https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/China-Labor-Watch-NED-funding-2015.png?resize=768%2C205&ssl=1 768w, https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/China-Labor-Watch-NED-funding-2015.png?resize=1024%2C273&ssl=1 1024w, https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/China-Labor-Watch-NED-funding-2015.png?resize=150%2C40&ssl=1 150w" sizes="(max-width: 1170px) 100vw, 1170px" width="1140" height="304"></p>
<p class="">In <a href="https://archive.org/stream/NED990/NED_Form990_2015#page/n285/mode/2up" class="">2014</a>, China Labor Watch got <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/China-Labor-Watch-NED-funding-2014.png" class="">$150,000 from the NED</a>. According to the group’s <a href="http://chinalaborwatch.org/2014%20CLW%20Annual%20Report%20-%20EN%20---FINAL.pdf" class="">annual report that year</a>,
its total revenues for all of 2014 was $238,003, meaning 63 percent, or
nearly two-thirds of its funding came from the US government.</p>
<p class="">China Labor Watch’s other major donor is the Tides Foundation, a
liberal organization that also happened to be one of the main financial
sponsor’s of the ISO’s parent non-profit. In 2014, <a href="https://www.tides.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Tides-Foundation-2014-Federal-990-Pub-Disc-Copy.pdf" class="">Tides gave $40,645</a> to China Labor Watch, another 17 percent of its budget that year.</p>
<p class="">Joining Elaine Lu as the other main speaker on the Socialism Conference’s anti-China panel is <a href="http://archive.fo/GJFnA" class="">Kevin Lin</a>, who coordinates the China program at the Washington, DC-based NGO the International Labor Rights Forum.</p>
<p class="">The Socialism Conference once again failed to mention that this group
is also bankrolled by the National Endowment for Democracy.</p>
<p class=""><img data-attachment-id="11973" data-permalink="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/07/06/dsa-jacobin-iso-socialism-conference-us-funded-regime-change/international-labor-rights-forum-ned-funding-2016/" data-orig-file="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/International-Labor-Rights-Forum-NED-funding-2016.png?fit=1554%2C316&ssl=1" data-orig-size="1554,316" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="International Labor Rights Forum NED funding 2016" data-image-description="<p>International Labor Rights Forum NED funding 2016</p>
" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/International-Labor-Rights-Forum-NED-funding-2016.png?fit=300%2C61&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/International-Labor-Rights-Forum-NED-funding-2016.png?fit=1024%2C208&ssl=1" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-11973" src="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/International-Labor-Rights-Forum-NED-funding-2016.png?resize=1170%2C238&ssl=1" alt="International Labor Rights Forum NED funding 2016" srcset="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/International-Labor-Rights-Forum-NED-funding-2016.png?w=1554&ssl=1 1554w, https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/International-Labor-Rights-Forum-NED-funding-2016.png?resize=300%2C61&ssl=1 300w, https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/International-Labor-Rights-Forum-NED-funding-2016.png?resize=768%2C156&ssl=1 768w, https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/International-Labor-Rights-Forum-NED-funding-2016.png?resize=1024%2C208&ssl=1 1024w, https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/International-Labor-Rights-Forum-NED-funding-2016.png?resize=150%2C31&ssl=1 150w" sizes="(max-width: 1170px) 100vw, 1170px" width="1140" height="232"></p>
<p class="">According to the <a href="https://pdf.guidestar.org/PDF_Images/2017/521/344/2017-521344831-0fb44a26-9.pdf" class="">NED’s 2016 form 990</a>, the US government’s regime-change arm gave the International Labor Rights Forum $150,000 that year alone.</p>
<p class="">The International Labor Rights Forum likewise received <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/International-Labor-Rights-Forum-NED-funding-2015.png" class="">$96,590</a> from the NED in 2015, and <a href="https://archive.org/stream/NED990/NED_Form990_2015#page/n299/mode/2up" class="">$62,500</a> in 2014.</p>
<p class="">The Socialism Conference also identified Kevin Lin as a co-editor of the <a href="https://madeinchinajournal.com/" class="">Made in China journal</a>, which focuses on labor rights. A <a href="https://madeinchinajournal.com/about-us/" class="">disclaimer</a> at the bottom of the publication’s swanky website notes that it is funded by the <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/what-horizon-2020" class="">European Union’s Horizon 2020</a>,
a neoliberal business program which the European Commission describes
as “the financial instrument implementing the Innovation Union, a Europe
2020 flagship initiative aimed at securing Europe’s global
competitiveness.”</p>
<p class=""><img data-attachment-id="11981" data-permalink="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/07/06/dsa-jacobin-iso-socialism-conference-us-funded-regime-change/made-in-china-funding-european-union/" data-orig-file="https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Made-in-China-funding-European-Union.png?fit=1500%2C582&ssl=1" data-orig-size="1500,582" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="Made in China funding European Union" data-image-description="<p>Made in China funding European Union</p>
" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Made-in-China-funding-European-Union.png?fit=300%2C116&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Made-in-China-funding-European-Union.png?fit=1024%2C397&ssl=1" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-11981" src="https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Made-in-China-funding-European-Union.png?resize=1170%2C454&ssl=1" alt="Made in China funding European Union" srcset="https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Made-in-China-funding-European-Union.png?w=1500&ssl=1 1500w, https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Made-in-China-funding-European-Union.png?resize=300%2C116&ssl=1 300w, https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Made-in-China-funding-European-Union.png?resize=768%2C298&ssl=1 768w, https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Made-in-China-funding-European-Union.png?resize=1024%2C397&ssl=1 1024w, https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Made-in-China-funding-European-Union.png?resize=150%2C58&ssl=1 150w" sizes="(max-width: 1170px) 100vw, 1170px" width="1140" height="442"></p>
<p class="">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.</p>
<p class="">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.</p>
<p class="">China Labor Watch and the International Labor Rights Forum are far
from the only ostensibly progressive anti-China groups funded by the US
government.</p>
<p class="">Other China-related NED grantees include “human rights” organizations like the <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2018/08/23/un-did-not-report-china-internment-camps-uighur-muslims/" class="">Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders</a>, <a href="https://www.hrichina.org/en" class="">Human Rights in China</a>, <a href="https://www.chinaaid.org/" class="">China Aid</a>, <a href="https://chinachange.org/about/" class="">China Change</a>, and <a href="https://www.tides.org/project/china-rights-in-action-inc/" class="">China Rights in Action</a> (another Tides grantee), along with the New York-based <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Chinese-Feminist-Collective-NED-funding.png" class="">Chinese Feminist Collective</a> and news websites like <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/" class="">China Digital Times</a>.</p>
<p class="">China Labour Bulletin, which maintains a <a href="https://maps.clb.org.hk/strikes/en" class="">map of strikes</a>
going on across the gigantic country, is likewise frequently cited by
left-wing websites in the US. While its slogan is “Supporting the
Workers’ Movement in China,” <a href="https://clb.org.hk/" class="">China Labour Bulletin</a> (CLB) is not based in the mainland but rather in Hong Kong — and it is funded by the US government.</p>
<p class="">CLB notes on its website that it “receives <a href="https://clb.org.hk/content/aboutus#aboutus-4" class="">grants from a wide range of government</a>
or quasi-government bodies, trade unions and private foundations, all
of which are based outside of China.” For decades, CLB’s founder and
executive director Han Dongfang broadcasted anti-China programming on <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1977/12/26/archives/worldwide-propaganda-network-built-by-the-cia-a-worldwide-network.html" class="">Radio Free Asia</a>,
a US government-funded propaganda outlet that was founded by the CIA to
push anti-communist disinformation. Han’s work is funded by the
National Endowment for Democracy, and he was a leader of the 1989
Tiananmen Square protests.</p>
<p class="">The ISO’s newspaper Socialist Worker has <a href="https://socialistworker.org/2010/07/27/a-giant-stirs-in-china" class="">praised Han Dongfang</a>
as a leftist hero, without ever disclosing his extensive links to the
US government’s regime-change machinery. Socialist Worker has <a href="https://socialistworker.org/blog/critical-reading/2010/06/03/class-struggle-china?quicktabs_sw-recent-articles=6-20" class="">repeatedly</a> drawn on the <a href="https://socialistworker.org/2015/07/21/bubbles-bounces-and-busts-in-china" class="">work</a> of China Labour Bulletin, over more than a <a href="http://socialistworker.org/2004-2/524/524_05_China.php" class="">decade</a>. The ISO’s journal the <a href="https://isreview.org/issue/95/chinas-changing-working-class" class="">International Socialist Review</a> has also relied on the US government-funded organization’s research, and Jacobin magazine has noted <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2010/09/weekly-sisyphus-1" class="">CLB’s “roots</a> go back to the Tiananmen Square protests.”</p>
<p class="">Human Rights Watch, another key part of the regime-change lobby, has
lionized Han, happily noting that his show on the US government’s Radio
Free Asia “is one of the network’s <a href="https://www.hrw.org/legacy/campaigns/china/scholars/t15/handongfang.htm" class="">most popular programs</a>.”</p>
<p class="">China is just one of the countries where the US government’s
soft-power arm funds such putative progressive groups. The NED likewise
funds many liberal anti-Cuba organizations, such as the Foundation for
Human Rights in Cuba, Center for a Free Cuba, the Cuban Institute for
the Freedom of Expression and Press, and the news website <a href="https://www.cubanet.org/" class="">CubaNet</a>. Or there are NED-funded groups pushing regime change against Syria and Iran, like the <a href="http://dchrs.org/" class="">Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies</a> and <a href="http://www.hra-iran.org/en/" class="">Human Rights Activists in Iran</a>.</p>
<p class="">While the United States has one of the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/06/20/which-countries-have-the-highest-levels-of-labor-union-membership-infographic/#a10495e33c04" class="">lowest rates of unionization</a>
in the industrialized world, a bloody history of worker repression and
anti-labor laws, and historically weak unions among those that still do
exist, its regime-change arm the NED has funded workers’ rights groups
to promote a progressive image of America abroad.</p>
<p class="">For decades, for instance, the NED has bankrolled the international
Solidarity Center of the major union federation the AFL-CIO. The center
receives tens of millions of dollars from the US government’s
regime-change arm annually, and returns the favor by avoiding topics
that would anger the US State Department and bite the hand that feeds
it.</p>
<p class="">Throughout the Cold War, the AFL-CIO remained a reliably
anti-communist union that received funding from US government agencies,
including the CIA, in order to combat and ultimately try to eliminate
communist influence in the American labor movement. It was a textbook
example of a controlled opposition.</p>
<p class="">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.</p>
<h3 class="">US State Department-funded speaker providing ‘socialist’ take on ‘Arab Spring’</h3>
<p class="">Yet another speaker at the 2019 Socialism Conference works for a liberal foundation directly funded by the US government.</p>
<p class="">Journalist Anand Gopal, who has been a close ally of the ISO for a decade, has a panel all to himself this year: “<a href="http://archive.fo/8869Z" class="">A Socialist View of the Arab Spring</a>.”</p>
<p class="">The Socialism Conference website did not provide a bio for Gopal, yet
alone disclose that his employer is funded by the US government. It
simply described him as a “Pulitzer-Prize nominated journalist,” and
said he will explain how to understand “the lessons of the protests,
uprisings, rebellions, and wars that shook the Arab world beginning in
2011.”</p>
<p class="">Left unmentioned is that Gopal serves as a “<a href="https://www.newamerica.org/our-people/anand-gopal/" class="">fellow with the International Security Program</a>” at the New America Foundation. This foundation’s website makes it very clear that it is directly <a href="https://www.newamerica.org/our-funding/" class="">funded by the US State Department</a>,
along with massive corporations and banks — clearly institutions that
are invested in advancing the revolutionary socialist cause.</p>
<p class=""><img data-attachment-id="12125" data-permalink="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/07/06/dsa-jacobin-iso-socialism-conference-us-funded-regime-change/new-america-foundation-funding-us-state-department/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/New-America-Foundation-funding-US-State-Department.png?fit=940%2C696&ssl=1" data-orig-size="940,696" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="New America Foundation funding US State Department" data-image-description="<p>New America Foundation funding US State Department</p>
" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/New-America-Foundation-funding-US-State-Department.png?fit=300%2C222&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/New-America-Foundation-funding-US-State-Department.png?fit=940%2C696&ssl=1" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-12125" src="https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/New-America-Foundation-funding-US-State-Department.png?resize=940%2C696&ssl=1" alt="New America Foundation funding US State Department" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/New-America-Foundation-funding-US-State-Department.png?w=940&ssl=1 940w, https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/New-America-Foundation-funding-US-State-Department.png?resize=300%2C222&ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/New-America-Foundation-funding-US-State-Department.png?resize=768%2C569&ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/New-America-Foundation-funding-US-State-Department.png?resize=150%2C111&ssl=1 150w" sizes="(max-width: 940px) 100vw, 940px" width="940" height="696"></p>
<p class=""><a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/10/17/inte-o17.html" class="">Anand Gopal</a> has harshly <a href="http://archive.fo/khTKa" class="">attacked the anti-imperialist left</a>
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 <a href="https://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/05/how-anand-gopal-recruited-for-isis-and-shills-for-regime-change-in-syria-.html" class="">whitewashed and portrayed as a supposedly progressive force</a>.</p>
<p class="">Gopal likewise reported inside <a href="https://twitter.com/anand_gopal_/status/1069697959800000514?lang=en" class="">al-Qaeda-occupied territory</a>, which The New Yorker euphemistically described as “<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/10/syrias-last-bastion-of-freedom" class="">Syria’s Last Bastion of Freedom</a>.” And he has constantly downplayed the <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2018/02/09/us-ambassador-robert-ford-billions-spent-regime-change-syria-obama/" class="">billions of dollars of funding and weapons</a>
from the US, Europe, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar that kept
the Syrian opposition afloat, fueling the brutal war for years.</p>
<p class="">Going back to at least <a href="https://wearemany.org/a/2009/06/afghanistan-obamas-vietnam" class="">2009</a>, Gopal has spoken at every single one of the ISO’s Socialism Conferences — in <a href="https://socialistworker.org/2018/04/10/why-you-need-to-be-at-socialism-2018" class="">2018</a>, <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20190220065358/https://socialism2017.sched.com/" class="">2017</a>, <a href="https://socialism2016.sched.com/directory/speakers" class="">2016</a>, <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20150603152117/http://www.socialismconference.org/" class="">2015</a>, <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20150703172847/http://www.socialismconference.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/S14_FullProgram_WebVersion.pdf" class="">2014</a>, <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20130528223423/http://www.socialismconference.org/speakers" class="">2013</a>, <a href="http://publici.ucimc.org/2012/05/socialism-2012-iso-annual-conference/" class="">2012</a>, <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20120203105958/http://www.socialismconference.org/talks" class="">2011</a>, and <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20100616030333/http://www.socialismconference.org/" class="">2010</a>.</p>
<p class="">Gopal has also done more than a <a href="http://socialistworker.org/author/anand-gopal" class="">dozen extensive interviews</a> for the ISO’s newspaper Socialist Worker and journal <a href="https://isreview.org/person/anand-gopal" class="">the International Socialist Review</a>, blaming the <a href="https://isreview.org/issue/102/roots-isis" class="">rise of ISIS</a> on Official Enemies and spreading the conspiracy theory that the US is actually “<a href="http://socialistworker.org/2017/04/26/does-the-us-want-regime-change-in-syria" class="">helping the regime</a>” of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, not truly trying to overthrow it.</p>
<h3 class="">‘Socialist’ lobbying for US-backed right-wing coup in Nicaragua</h3>
<p class="">Another noteworthy 2019 Socialism Conference panel, called “Problems of the US Left: <a href="http://archive.fo/W7f9W" class="">The Cases of Cuba and Nicaragua</a>,”
is led by Dan La Botz and Samuel Farber, veteran Trotskyite activists
and outspoken proponents of regime change in the two respective
countries.</p>
<p class="">The speakers’ problem with the US left appears to be that it has
demonstrated too much solidarity with socialist governments in Havana
and Managua, which, in their view from inside the United States, “rely
more on bureaucracy than democracy.”</p>
<p class="">Farber is a Cuban exile whose family left the country for unspecified reasons when he was a child <a href="https://havanatimes.org/features/cuba-since-1959-a-critical-assessment/" class="">in 1958</a>
– 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 <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/04/cuba-1968-fidel-castro-revolution-repression" class="">Jacobin</a> to <a href="https://newpol.org/alternative-cuba/" class="">New Politics</a> to In These Times, where he published a <a href="http://inthesetimes.com/article/19672/fidel-castro-1926-2016-death-history-communist-party" class="">trenchant denunciation</a> of Fidel Castro upon his death in 2016.</p>
<p class="">Farber accuses Castro of developing a model of “state capitalism,”
wielding a term Trotskyite ideologues routinely fling at any
revolutionary government that is insufficiently pure. He <a href="https://havanatimes.org/features/cuba-since-1959-a-critical-assessment/" class="">calls for</a> “a revolutionary democratic alternative… through socialist resistance from below.”</p>
<p class="">The concept of regime change “from below” is also central to the rhetoric of exile groups like <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/06/27/us-officials-iranian-cult-mek-regime-change/" class="">the People’s MEK</a>, a US- and Saudi-backed cult of personality that calls for toppling Iran’s government through “indigenous regime change.”</p>
<p class="">Dan La Botz, for his part, has risen to prominence as a full-time
opponent of another member of the Trump administration’s “troika of
tyranny”: the socialist government of Nicaragua, and the Sandinista
movement that it represents.</p>
<p class="">La Botz has published an anti-Sandinista manifesto with ISO publisher Haymarket Books, which is <a href="https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1121-what-went-wrong-the-nicaraguan-revolution" class="">advertised</a> as a survey of “the failures of the Nicaraguan Revolution, by one of the most important Marxist-historians of Latin America.”</p>
<p class="">In June 2018, as a <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2018/07/30/how-washington-and-soft-power-ngos-manipulated-nicaraguas-death-toll-to-drive-regime-change-and-sanctions/" class="">US-backed, violent regime-change attempt surged across Nicaragua</a>,
threatening the rule of democratically elected President Daniel Ortega,
La Botz attempted to mobilize left-wing US support for the
anti-Sandinista opposition. That month, he joined an <a href="https://www.facebook.com/SionSaintPeters/videos/1891011874264117/" class="">anti-Sandinista event</a>
— co-sponsored by DSA’s New York branch, Haymarket, the academic
journal NACLA, and the Marxist Education Project — at Saint Peter’s
Church in New York City, to drum up local support for the coup.</p>
<p class="">The event featured speeches by several Nicaraguan anti-Sandinista
activists who were involved in the regime-change attempt, including
self-described students who wore masks on stage, concealing their
identities from the audience.</p>
<p class=""><img data-attachment-id="12031" data-permalink="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/07/06/dsa-jacobin-iso-socialism-conference-us-funded-regime-change/dan-la-botz-nicaragua-coup-event-masks/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Dan-La-Botz-Nicaragua-coup-event-masks.jpg?fit=1920%2C1080&ssl=1" data-orig-size="1920,1080" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"1"}" data-image-title="Dan La Botz Nicaragua coup event masks" data-image-description="<p>Dan La Botz Nicaragua coup event masks</p>
" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Dan-La-Botz-Nicaragua-coup-event-masks.jpg?fit=300%2C169&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Dan-La-Botz-Nicaragua-coup-event-masks.jpg?fit=1024%2C576&ssl=1" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-12031" src="https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Dan-La-Botz-Nicaragua-coup-event-masks.jpg?resize=1170%2C658&ssl=1" alt="Dan La Botz Nicaragua coup event masks" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Dan-La-Botz-Nicaragua-coup-event-masks.jpg?w=1920&ssl=1 1920w, https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Dan-La-Botz-Nicaragua-coup-event-masks.jpg?resize=300%2C169&ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Dan-La-Botz-Nicaragua-coup-event-masks.jpg?resize=768%2C432&ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Dan-La-Botz-Nicaragua-coup-event-masks.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Dan-La-Botz-Nicaragua-coup-event-masks.jpg?resize=150%2C84&ssl=1 150w" sizes="(max-width: 1170px) 100vw, 1170px" width="1140" height="641"></p>
<p class="">The Grayzone has obtained internal DSA email reports authored by La
Botz which revealed that, days after the event at Saint Peter’s Church,
those same students met with right-wing Republican legislators on
Capitol Hill, including neoconservative Senators Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz,
and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.</p>
<p class="">The students beamed with pride, appearing without masks in photo ops
with the avowedly anti-socialist members of Congress. Their trip was <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2018/06/19/ned-nicaragua-protests-us-government/" class="">financed by Freedom House</a>, a right-wing soft-power organization that is funded almost entirely by the US government.</p>
<div class="twitter-tweet twitter-tweet-rendered" style="display: flex; max-width: 550px; width: 100%; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><iframe id="twitter-widget-0" scrolling="no" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen="true" class="" style="position: static; visibility: visible; width: 550px; height: 697px; display: block; flex-grow: 1;" title="Twitter Tweet" src="https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?creatorScreenName=BenjaminNorton&dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X2hvcml6b25fdHdlZXRfZW1iZWRfOTU1NSI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJodGUiLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3NwYWNlX2NhcmQiOnsiYnVja2V0Ijoib2ZmIiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH19&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1004437789050658816&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fthegrayzone.com%2F2019%2F07%2F06%2Fdsa-jacobin-iso-socialism-conference-us-funded-regime-change%2F&sessionId=e6298cf5e7eaa1e919e1a380e38f724cabbbafaa&siteScreenName=TheGrayzoneNews&theme=light&widgetsVersion=1890d59c%3A1627936082797&width=550px" data-tweet-id="1004437789050658816" frameborder="0"></iframe></div>
<p class=""></p>
<p class="">The students’ US-backed delegation included Victor Cuadras, a fanatical right-wing activist who <a href="https://twitter.com/AndinoCuadras/status/1110620957368999938" class="">openly supported</a>
Donald Trump’s agenda for Latin America and blamed the governments of
Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua for the caravan of desperate asylum
seekers on the US-Mexico border.</p>
<div class="twitter-tweet twitter-tweet-rendered" style="display: flex; max-width: 550px; width: 100%; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><iframe id="twitter-widget-1" scrolling="no" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen="true" class="" style="position: static; visibility: visible; width: 550px; height: 624px; display: block; flex-grow: 1;" title="Twitter Tweet" src="https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?creatorScreenName=BenjaminNorton&dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-1&features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X2hvcml6b25fdHdlZXRfZW1iZWRfOTU1NSI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJodGUiLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3NwYWNlX2NhcmQiOnsiYnVja2V0Ijoib2ZmIiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH19&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1059711729905614848&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fthegrayzone.com%2F2019%2F07%2F06%2Fdsa-jacobin-iso-socialism-conference-us-funded-regime-change%2F&sessionId=e6298cf5e7eaa1e919e1a380e38f724cabbbafaa&siteScreenName=TheGrayzoneNews&theme=light&widgetsVersion=1890d59c%3A1627936082797&width=550px" data-tweet-id="1059711729905614848" frameborder="0"></iframe></div>
<p class=""></p>
<p class="">On June 15, 2018, Dan La Botz sent an email report to DSA leadership,
reflecting on the event. He acknowledged that “the Nicaraguans both on
the panel and in the public had virtually no political analysis and no
vision or program for the future of their country.”</p>
<p class="">Then in a follow-up email report sent to DSA leadership on July 24,
La Botz defended the students’ collaboration with neoconservative
politicians like Rubio and Cruz.</p>
<p class="">“The students, ages 21 to 24 or so, who spoke on our panel then went
off to speak with Republican legislators, guided by a rightwing
foundation,” he wrote. “While, of course, we do not think that this is a
good strategy, this is perfectly understandable given that the
Republicans are in power and have the ability to do something about
Nicaragua.”</p>
<p class="">While marketing the anti-Sandinista activists as grassroots youth
deserving of left-wing solidarity, La Botz admitted in his internal DSA
report, “Nicaraguan opponents of the regime in the United States hold a
wide variety of political views, though there is virtually no left among
the opposition here that I am aware of.”</p>
<p class="">And while publicly framing the regime-change operation in Nicaragua
as a progressive uprising, La Botz privately conceded, “There is,
however, little likelihood of an outcome to the rebellion that goes
beyond a more democratic capitalist regime.”</p>
<figure id="attachment_12034" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-12034" style="width: 1470px" class="aligncenter wp-caption"><img data-attachment-id="12034" data-permalink="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/07/06/dsa-jacobin-iso-socialism-conference-us-funded-regime-change/dan-la-botz-nicaragua-email/" data-orig-file="https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Dan-La-Botz-Nicaragua-email.png?fit=1470%2C834&ssl=1" data-orig-size="1470,834" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="Dan La Botz Nicaragua email" data-image-description="<p>An excerpt from an email report on Nicaragua to DSA leadership, by Dan La Botz</p>
" data-image-caption="<p>An excerpt from an email report on Nicaragua to DSA leadership, by Dan La Botz</p>
" data-medium-file="https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Dan-La-Botz-Nicaragua-email.png?fit=300%2C170&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Dan-La-Botz-Nicaragua-email.png?fit=1024%2C581&ssl=1" class="size-full wp-image-12034" src="https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Dan-La-Botz-Nicaragua-email.png?resize=1170%2C664&ssl=1" alt="Dan La Botz Nicaragua email" srcset="https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Dan-La-Botz-Nicaragua-email.png?w=1470&ssl=1 1470w, https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Dan-La-Botz-Nicaragua-email.png?resize=300%2C170&ssl=1 300w, https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Dan-La-Botz-Nicaragua-email.png?resize=768%2C436&ssl=1 768w, https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Dan-La-Botz-Nicaragua-email.png?resize=1024%2C581&ssl=1 1024w, https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Dan-La-Botz-Nicaragua-email.png?resize=150%2C85&ssl=1 150w" sizes="(max-width: 1170px) 100vw, 1170px" width="1140" height="647"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-12034" class="wp-caption-text">An excerpt from an email report on Nicaragua to DSA leadership, written by Dan La Botz</figcaption></figure>
<p class="">As The Grayzone reported in 2018, the US government’s regime-change
arm the National Endowment for Democracy boasted of spending <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2018/06/19/ned-nicaragua-protests-us-government/" class="">millions on anti-Sandinista civil society and media outfits “to lay the groundwork for insurrection”</a> in the years and months ahead of the coup.</p>
<p class="">While the coup attempt in Nicaragua was portrayed as a peaceful
people’s uprising by figures like La Botz, it was in fact a violent
putsch that saw armed elements erect roadblocks across the country, <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2018/07/30/how-washington-and-soft-power-ngos-manipulated-nicaraguas-death-toll-to-drive-regime-change-and-sanctions/" class="">holding up</a> ambulances, <a href="https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1021930885279571968" class="">torturing</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1020930881656061952" class="">brutalizing</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1040110998085152768" class="">kidnapping, and murdering</a> supporters of the Sandinistas.</p>
<p class="">Anti-Sandinista insurgents dragged an unarmed, on-leave police officer to death from a truck and then <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=c3ap2Hgn4P0" class="">burnt his corpse</a> at a roadblock. They <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ArNPlM6zMo" class="">raped a 10-year-old girl</a> at a roadblock and <a href="https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1025546351516499968" class="">burnt the homes</a> of local Sandinista legislators. They occupied and <a href="https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1020910512429821954" class="">ransacked a public university campus</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1020916732859469824" class="">wrecked a women’s health center</a>, and <a href="https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1020910512429821954" class="">torched a daycare center</a>.</p>
<p class="">The armed opposition wreaked this havoc while <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnRSNIznjzU" class="">attacking police stations</a> with mortars and gunfire, during a national dialogue in which the police were ordered to remain in their barracks. In the end, <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2018/07/30/how-washington-and-soft-power-ngos-manipulated-nicaraguas-death-toll-to-drive-regime-change-and-sanctions/" class="">Nicaragua’s opposition caused the deaths of over 60 innocent people</a>, while grinding the country’s previously productive economy to a halt.</p>
<p class="">Once the coup was extinguished, the US <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2018/12/14/congress-sanctions-nicaragua-nica-act/" class="">Congress passed the Nica Act without debate</a>, imposing harsh sanctions on Nicaragua’s economy that emulated those already leveled against Venezuela and Iran.</p>
<p class="">On January 9, Dan La Botz appeared at a meeting of the New York City
DSA Anti-War Working Group to amp up the attack on Nicaragua’s socialist
government. There, he was challenged by <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/author/gunar-olsen/" class="">Gunar Olsen</a>,
a contributor to The Grayzone, about the event he organized last year
with masked right-wing Nicaraguan students sponsored by Freedom House.</p>
<p class="">La Botz claimed that the event had originally been planned as a
discussion of his book, but that “somebody said, these students were
coming through. And I said, that sounds great.”</p>
<p class="">He continued: “My view is, they came from their country because
someone gave em some money, and they can come to the United States and
they wanted to talk to somebody who might be able to help their country…
It may have been though that there were some conservative political
forces working with them and the Republicans, it may have been that
there was some of those four students that was more hip than the others
but it wasn’t my impression.”</p>
<p class="">La Botz concluded by telling Olsen and the DSA crowd, “I don’t feel
at all bad, I don’t think it was a terrible thing. I think they were
four young people coming to this country that wanted to speak there. We
didn’t know they were going there, we didn’t know where they were
heading, I didn’t know they were gonna speak there. Would I do it again?
If I knew what was going to happen I’d probably say, let’s see if we
can find some other students.”</p>
<p class="">However, in his private email assessment of the event to DSA
leadership, La Botz had defended the students’ subsequent meetings with
right-wing Republicans as “perfectly understandable.”</p><p class=""></p>
<p class="">In his internal DSA report, La Botz went on to characterize those in
the US left that opposed the coup in Nicaragua as “foreign leftists” who
are “backers of Putin, Assad, Iran, Hamas, and now Ortega.”</p>
<p class="">La Botz did not respond to several attempts to reach him by phone.</p>
<h3 class=""><strong class="">Update (August 19): </strong></h3>
<p class="">After this article was published, an activist notified The Grayzone
of a Facebook conversation in which Dan La Botz admitted he invited a
US-backed right-wing Evangelical opposition leader to speak at a panel
on Nicaragua, and praised the coup-supporting conservative as “an
authentic voice of the young people of Nicaragua.”</p>
<p class="">On Facebook, the activist noted that, at La Botz’s panel, opposition
leader Lesther Alemán “was portrayed as a leader of the nicaraguan
student left.” In reality, he is a right-wing Evangelical Christian.</p>
<p class=""><img data-attachment-id="13649" data-permalink="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/07/06/dsa-jacobin-iso-socialism-conference-us-funded-regime-change/dan-la-botz-lesther-aleman-facebook/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/dan-la-botz-lesther-aleman-facebook.png?fit=780%2C1035&ssl=1" data-orig-size="780,1035" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="dan la botz lesther aleman facebook" data-image-description="<p>dan la botz lesther aleman facebook</p>
" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/dan-la-botz-lesther-aleman-facebook.png?fit=226%2C300&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/dan-la-botz-lesther-aleman-facebook.png?fit=772%2C1024&ssl=1" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-13649" src="https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/dan-la-botz-lesther-aleman-facebook.png?resize=780%2C1035&ssl=1" alt="dan la botz lesther aleman facebook" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/dan-la-botz-lesther-aleman-facebook.png?w=780&ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/dan-la-botz-lesther-aleman-facebook.png?resize=226%2C300&ssl=1 226w, https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/dan-la-botz-lesther-aleman-facebook.png?resize=768%2C1019&ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/dan-la-botz-lesther-aleman-facebook.png?resize=772%2C1024&ssl=1 772w, https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/dan-la-botz-lesther-aleman-facebook.png?resize=113%2C150&ssl=1 113w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" width="780" height="1035"></p>
<p class="">Alemán now lives in exile in the United States, where he regularly collaborates with the government of Donald Trump.</p>
<p class="">In July, Alemán attended the State Department’s <a href="https://www.state.gov/ministerial-to-advance-religious-freedom-schedule-of-events/" class="">Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom</a>, a soft-power event that demonizes adversaries of the US government using the language of religious freedom.</p>
<p class="">In an interview with the <a href="http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/exiled-nicaraguan-activist-christians-are-united-in-protest-against-governm" class="">National Catholic Register</a>, Alemán called for the US State Department to provide more support to the Nicaraguan opposition.</p>
<p class="">“It saddens me also that here in the United States we have
encountered severe opposition from American leftist groups,” Alemán said
in the interview. “[We] are not engaged in an ideological struggle.”</p>
<p class="">Asked if he supports sanctions on his former country, Alemán
declared, “of course I support these measures.” He called for the US
government to continue pressuring the Nicaraguan government and imposing
more sanctions.</p>
<p class="">In response to this, La Botz wrote on Facebook, “Lester Alemán’s
decision to participate in a State Department event and his support for
U.S. sanctions is in my opinion unfortunate.”</p>
<p class="">But, like usual, La Botz pointed the finger at the government of
Nicaragua’s democratically elected president: “That he and other young
people would take such a course is a result of Daniel Ortega and his
government having closed democratic options in Nicaragua,” La Botz
claimed. “When Lester Aleman spoke at our meeting, he had not yet come
to these conclusions. He was till then an authentic voice of the young
people of Nicaragua.”</p>
<h3 class="">‘Revolutionary socialists’ funded by the non-profit industrial complex</h3>
<p class="">The force behind the annual Socialism Conference, the International
Socialist Organization marketed itself as a radical, even revolutionary
movement supporting “socialism from below.” But it was deeply embedded
in the non-profit industrial complex.</p>
<p class="">The ISO operated legally through its parent non-profit organization the <a href="https://cersc.org/" class="">Center for Economic Research and Social Change</a>. A tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization, CERSC received huge grants from the Tides Foundation.</p>
<p class="">The Tides Foundation is well known for funding progressive groups, but only as long as they do not rock the boat too much.</p>
<p class="">A Canadian environmental activist who has participated in projects
funded by Tides told The Grayzone that the foundation funded a trip to
the 2011 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South
Africa, but eventually pulled funding for their environmental group’s
excursion to the 2012 UN conference in Doha, Qatar, because the
foundation was afraid the activists would carry out peaceful forms of
civil disobedience.</p>
<p class="">“They funded some people — those who wouldn’t rock the boat because
they didn’t want people engaging in civil disobedience,” the Canadian
environmental activist told The Grayzone.</p>
<p class="">Another activist published a “<a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/79228736/Whistleblower-s-Open-Letter-to-Canadians" class="">whistleblower’s open letter to Canadians</a>”
explaining that the Tides Foundation, which funded many
environmentalists in the country, was “too afraid of reprisals from the
government to act,” after the office of right-wing Prime Minister
Stephen Harper threatened to challenge the foundation’s charitable
status.</p>
<p class="">Why a milquetoast liberal foundation would fund the ISO, a supposedly
revolutionary socialist organization, raises serious questions about
that group’s agenda.</p>
<p class="">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.</p>
<h3 class="">Haymarket Books, blending important literature with regime change propaganda</h3>
<p class="">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.</p>
<p class="">The ISO’s publishing arm, Haymarket Books, has been especially
influential. Haymarket describes itself as a “radical, independent,
nonprofit book publisher based in Chicago,” which had been the base for
the ISO.</p>
<p class="">Haymarket has indeed published many important books on pressing
issues. However, it has supplemented these works with
anti-anti-imperialist screeds that echo the US State Department’s
rhetoric, but framed as “from the left.”</p>
<p class="">Among Haymarket’s most aggressively marketed releases of 2018 was
“The Impossible Revolution,” a collection of essays by the Syrian exiled
writer Yassin al-Haj Saleh, who now lives in Turkey and functions as a
lodestar to self-styled left-wing supporters of regime change in Syria.</p>
<p class="">Al-Haj Saleh’s book was blurbed by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJuMbIXk7iQ" class="">Charles Lister</a>,
a former functionary of the UK’s Conservative Party who became a top
lobbyist for arming Salafi-jihadist insurgents in Syria at the <a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/08/09/gulf-government-gave-secret-20-million-gift-to-d-c-think-tank/" class="">Gulf monarchy-funded</a> Middle East Institute in Washington, DC.</p>
<p class="">State Department cables exposed by WikiLeaks indicate that <a href="https://search.wikileaks.org/?q=yassin+haj+saleh" class="">Yassin al-Haj Saleh was a US government informant</a> in regular correspondence with American officials in Damascus. One such memo, dated <a href="https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06DAMASCUS1848_a.html" class="">April 24, 2006</a>,
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.</p>
<p class=""><img data-attachment-id="12036" data-permalink="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/07/06/dsa-jacobin-iso-socialism-conference-us-funded-regime-change/yassin-al-haj-saleh-wikileaks-cable-islamists/" data-orig-file="https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Yassin-al-Haj-Saleh-WikiLeaks-cable-Islamists.png?fit=1384%2C816&ssl=1" data-orig-size="1384,816" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="Yassin al-Haj Saleh WikiLeaks cable Islamists" data-image-description="<p>Yassin al-Haj Saleh WikiLeaks cable Islamists</p>
" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Yassin-al-Haj-Saleh-WikiLeaks-cable-Islamists.png?fit=300%2C177&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Yassin-al-Haj-Saleh-WikiLeaks-cable-Islamists.png?fit=1024%2C604&ssl=1" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-12036" src="https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Yassin-al-Haj-Saleh-WikiLeaks-cable-Islamists.png?resize=1170%2C690&ssl=1" alt="Yassin al-Haj Saleh WikiLeaks cable Islamists" srcset="https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Yassin-al-Haj-Saleh-WikiLeaks-cable-Islamists.png?w=1384&ssl=1 1384w, https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Yassin-al-Haj-Saleh-WikiLeaks-cable-Islamists.png?resize=300%2C177&ssl=1 300w, https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Yassin-al-Haj-Saleh-WikiLeaks-cable-Islamists.png?resize=768%2C453&ssl=1 768w, https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Yassin-al-Haj-Saleh-WikiLeaks-cable-Islamists.png?resize=1024%2C604&ssl=1 1024w, https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Yassin-al-Haj-Saleh-WikiLeaks-cable-Islamists.png?resize=150%2C88&ssl=1 150w" sizes="(max-width: 1170px) 100vw, 1170px" width="1140" height="672"></p>
<p class="">Haymarket has also recently published “Indefensible,” a <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/12/14/hens-d14.html" class="">book-length denunciation</a> of the anti-imperialist left by the writer Rohini Hensman.</p>
<p class="">The manifesto features ham-fisted attacks on journalists <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/05/24/trump-charges-assange-press-freedoms-media-obama/" class="">Julian Assange</a>,
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 <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/category/syria/" class="">dirty war on Syria</a> and the Maidan coup in Ukraine.</p>
<p class="">Anand Gopal, the longtime ISO ally who speaks at the Socialism
Conference every year, while working for a liberal foundation funded by
the US State Department, <a href="https://www.roamagency.com/isbn9781608469116/" class="">praised Hensman’s book</a> as a guide to “how to be a principled internationalist in the era of imperialism.”</p>
<p class="">More recently, Hensman <a href="https://www.dsausa.org/democratic-left/the-enemys-enemy-is-not-your-friend/" class="">took to the DSA’s official website</a>
to attack The Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal, Seymour Hersh, and Robert
Fisk as “neo-Stalinists” engaged in a “convergence” with neo-Nazis. No
evidence was provided to support the extreme claim.</p>
<p class=""><a href="http://archive.fo/3e0KR" class="">Ashley Smith</a>, an ideologue of
the now-defunct ISO, says he is currently writing another
anti-anti-imperialist book for Haymarket entitled “Socialism and
Anti-Imperialism.”</p>
<h3 class="">Tiny, irrelevant Trotskyite groups, from South to North America</h3>
<p class="">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.</p>
<p class="">Unsurprisingly, then, the so-called “left” opposition in Nicaragua,
Venezuela, and Cuba — which is celebrated by Trotskyite groups like the
ISO — is in fact infinitesimal and insignificant.</p>
<p class="">Nils McCune, a socialist and environmental activist who has lived in Nicaragua for years, explained in an <a href="https://soundcloud.com/moderaterebels/nicaragua-right-wing-us-coup-managua-episode-22" class="">interview on our podcast Moderate Rebels</a> that one of these parties, the <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2018/08/15/how-nicaraguas-left-wing-opposition-mrs-are-ngo-opportunists-lobbying-the-west-for-regime-change/" class="">Movement for the Renovation of Sandinismo (MRS) is a tiny group that is irrelevant</a> in the country. Unable to mobilize popular support, this “left” opposition can only lobby the US government for regime change.</p>
<p class="">As Blumenthal, a co-author of this article, <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/how-an-american-anthropologist-tied-to-us-regime-change-proxies-became-the-msms-man-in-nicaragua/249868/" class="">revealed in MintPress News</a>,
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.</p>
<p class="">Similarly, in Venezuela the ostensible left opposition has offered “critical support” to Washington’s regime change efforts.</p>
<p class="">This February, a leader of the marginal Venezuelan Trotskyite group <a href="https://orinocotribune.com/critic-chavismo-met-with-guaido" class="">Marea Socialista held a friendly meeting with Juan Guaidó</a>, the US-appointed right-wing coup leader.</p>
<p class="">On February 5, Guaidó tweeted a photo of a meeting with Marea Socialista’s Nicmer Evans.</p>
<p class=""><a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/01/29/the-making-of-juan-guaido-how-the-us-regime-change-laboratory-created-venezuelas-coup-leader/" class="">Juan Guaidó</a> hails from the far-right party <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/06/18/exxon-ambassador-carlos-vecchio-venezuela-coup-lobbyist/" class="">Voluntad Popular</a>, which was practically founded by the US government and has been deeply involved in street violence throughout Venezuela.</p>
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<p class=""></p>
<p class="">Jesus Rodriguez Espinoza, a Chavista who lives in Venezuela and is editor of the independent news website, the <a href="https://orinocotribune.com" class="">Orinoco Tribune</a>,
told The Grayzone when we reported in the country in February that
Marea Socialista is “tiny” and has “no power.” He was genuinely
surprised at <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6d7SR1GwBg" class="">how much coverage</a> these minuscule groups have received in the US progressive media, because inside Venezuela they have negligible influence.</p>
<p class="">Yet the Trotskyite organization has constantly been given a <a href="https://socialistworker.org/2019/02/06/socialists-and-the-fight-for-democracy-in-venezuela" class="">platform</a> by the ISO’s newspaper Socialist Worker (Marea Socialista even enjoys its own <a href="https://socialistworker.org/author/marea-socialista" class="">tag on the website</a>). Jacobin Magazine, the self-declared “leading voice of the American left,” has also given a <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/04/chavez-maduro-venezuela-mud-psuv" class="">huge platform</a>
to Marea Socialista operatives to push for what they call a “Chavismo
from below” — despite the fact that the Trotskyite group is virtually
unknown to average Venezuelans, including to millions of poor and
working-class Chavistas.</p>
<p class="">Also featured in the February 5 photo of the meeting with US-backed
coup leader Juan Guaidó was the anti-Maduro liberal intellectual <a href="https://www.tni.org/en/profile/edgardo-lander" class="">Edgardo Lander</a>,
who is popular in anti-communist left-wing circles in the US but almost
unknown inside Venezuela. Like Marea Socialista, Lander has enjoyed
very positive coverage in the progressive Anglo press.</p>
<p class=""><a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2019/5/2/a_debate_on_maduro_two_venezuelans" class="">Democracy Now</a>, which has advanced <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/06/14/syrian-network-for-human-rights-opposition-snhr/" class="">regime-change propaganda</a> on <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/06/19/commission-for-international-justice-and-accountability-cija-syria-al-qaeda/" class="">Syria</a>
on repeated occasions, offered its platform to Lander this May. Hosts
Amy Goodman and Nermeen Sheikh lobbed softball questions at the
intellectual, and failed to disclose that he met with Guaidó.</p>
<p class="">In his Democracy Now segment, Lander admitted that his outfit is a
“small collective,” whereas the Chavista movement he criticizes is
massively popular in working-class barrios across the country.</p>
<p class="">The International Socialist Organization has played a similar role in
the US, with little visibility outside the left and almost no
grassroots base.</p>
<p class="">Now that the ISO has disbanded, its veterans can reach into the
rapidly growing ideologically diffuse world of Democratic Socialists of
America, using platforms like Socialism 2019 to infect DSA’s youthful
core with the imperial politics of regime change – but always “from the
left,” and always “from below.”</p>
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