Yossi Schwartz, ISL the section of the RCIT in Israel/Occupied Palestine, 19.10.2021
The Journalist Jean Daniel Bensaid was interviewing Fidel Castro in Havana as news came through of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He wrote:
“During this nocturnal discussion, Castro had delivered himself of a relentless indictment of U.S. policy, adding that in the recent past Washington had had ample opportunity to normalize its relations with Cuba, but that instead it had tolerated a CIA program of training, equipping and organizing a counter-revolution. He had told me that he wasn’t in the least fearful of his life, since danger was his natural milieu, and if he were to become a victim of the United States this would simply enhance his radius of influence in Latin America as well as throughout the socialist world. He was speaking, he said, from the viewpoint of the interests of peace in both the American continents. To achieve this goal, a leader would have to arise in the United States capable of understanding the explosive realities of Latin America and of meeting them halfway. Then, suddenly, he had taken a less hostile tack: “Kennedy could still be this man. He still has the possibility of becoming, in the eyes of history, the greatest President of the United States, the leader who may at last understand that there can be coexistence between capitalists and socialists, even in the Americas. He would then be an even greater President than Lincoln… Then Fidel had added with a broad and boyish grin: “If you see him again, you can tell him that I’m willing to declare Goldwater my friend if that will guarantee Kennedy’s re-election!” [1]
Thus, for the Cuban Stalinist Kennedy was a great man and his death was a lost chance for co-existence between imperialism and Stalinism rather than an enemy of the working class.
The American SWP that was a right-wing centrist by the time Kennedy was murdered on December 2 1963 issued a statement in which Farrell Dobbs the national secretary expressed political sympathy for Kennedy’s wife and their children.” [2]
In the real world In April 1961, Kennedy authorized an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro in the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion. During his presidency, Kennedy provided political, economic, and military support to the reactionary governments of South Korea and South Vietnam. In 1961, he was responsible for the Strategic Hamlet Program. It involved some forced relocation, village internment, and segregation of rural South Vietnamese into new communities where the peasantry would be isolated from Communist insurgents. He was responsible for the American war in Vietnam.
Thus, while we do not support political assassinations unlike the reformists and centrists, we do not have any tears for Kennedy or any other imperialist butchers.
It is not a widely known fact but during the slavery of black people in North America, there were a few black slave owners who supported the slavery of black people and some black people even participated in the genocide of the Indians.
Not all black people were great people who fought against slavery like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. They were able to escape from southern plantations and live in freedom in the North and from there fought for the freedom of the black people. There were few others, for example “in Baton Rouge, St. Landry Parish, and the Natchitoches area, where some were plantation owners and slaveholders“. [3]
There were some black people who joined the American army during the war against the Indians.
“Buffalo soldiers were African American soldiers who mainly served on the Western frontier following the American Civil War. In 1866, six all-Black cavalry and infantry regiments were created after Congress passed the Army Organization Act. Their main tasks were to help control the Native Americans of the Plains, capture cattle rustlers and thieves and protect settlers, stagecoaches, wagon trains and railroad crews along the Western front“. [4] In simple words they killed many Native Americans, old people, women and children. They were instruments of the mainly white capitalist class.
Thus, not the color of the skin is the exterminating factor in history but membership in a class and what class a person serves.
Colin Powell was a true servant of American imperialism. He was not a simple soldier serving in the army to find employment like the Buffalo soldiers. He was a four-star general responsible for many of the crimes of the American ruling class. “Powell was instrumental in shaping the foreign policy of Republican presidential administrations for decades. He was in top posts during the fall of the Berlin Wall, the 1989 US invasion of Panama, the 1991 Gulf War, the September 11 attacks, and the US invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003“. [5]
In Vietnam: “He was assigned to investigate a letter from a serving soldier that reinforced allegations of a massacre at My Lai in March 1968, in which US soldiers killed hundreds of civilians, including children.
Powell’s conclusion, that “in direct refutation of this portrayal, relations between American soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent”, flew in the face of growing evidence of brutal treatment of civilians by US forces.
He was later accused of “whitewashing” the news of the massacre, details of which did not finally become public until 1970.” [6]
Thus, we do not have a single tear for this mass murderer. We do not believe in hell in the sky but if there was hell he would be sent there as he was a person who helped to create hell on earth. Colin Powell went a long way from working in a demeaning shabbos goy position [7], and he should be treated for what he became and not where he started. Many politicians like to talk about their “working class origins” – but it is just that, their origins, not their present class position.
References:
[1] https://newrepublic.com/article/120460/fidel-castro-reaction-kennedy-assassination-cuba
[2] https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2018/124-10173-10381.pdf
[3] https://lib.lsu.edu/sites/all/files/sc/fpoc/history.html
[4] https://www.history.com/topics/westward-expansion/buffalo-soldiers
[5]https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/18/colin-powel-former-us-secretary-of-state-dies-of-covid
[6] https://news.yahoo.com/obituary-colin-powell-121812125.html
[7] https://www.timesofisrael.com/obama-elvis-and-5-other-famous-shabbos-goys/