From July 4 to 7, a large number of left-wing activists from across the United States gathered in Chicago in order to participate in the so-called "2019 Socialism Conference".
The event was sponsored by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Jacobin magazine and the trotskyite publisher Haymarket Books.
In an article published in thegrayzone.com, Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton present some very interesting aspects of the conference, such as the participation of regime-change activists from multiple US-government funded NGOs.
"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" points out the article of "The Gray Zone".
One anti-China panel at the conference features speakers from two different organizations that are both bankrolled by the notorious National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which was founded by the CIA in the 1980s "to grease the wheels of right-wing regime change efforts and promote "free markets" across the planet".
Another 2019 conference panel rails against the socialist governments of Nicaragua and Cuba with outspoken proponents of regime change. Two characteristic examples are Dan La Botz, a leader within Democratic Socialists of America and Samuel Farber, a veteran trotskyite activist and fervent opponent of the revolutionary Cuban government.
A big question arises about the actual motives — and funders — of the conference's organizers who misleadingly use the word "Socialism" in order to promote anti-communism and function as a trojan horse of imperialist policies.
The article of Norton and Blumenthal provides some noteworthy infomation:
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| Trotskyites and social democrats are the conference's major sponsors. |
"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” [...]
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 US government-funded Serbian activist group Otpor 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.
After the dissolution of ISO last March, some of its promiment members have entered the ranks of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA which is the largest self-described socialist organization in the United States, with more than 60,000 card-carrying members.
It must be noted that among the featured speakers at the "2019 Socialism Conference" was the much-celebrated journalist and writer Naomi Klein, the host of Democracy Now Amy Goodman and the founder and editor of Jacobin magazine Bhaskar Sunkara.
