[Heres how to oppose Cold War rhetoric and still be an
internationalist who supports democracy and human rights. ]
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WE OPPOSE MCCARTHYISM AND APOLOGIZING FOR CHINA  
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Dan La Botz and Stephen R. Shalom
August 15, 2023
Foreign Policy in Focus
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_ Here's how to oppose Cold War rhetoric and still be an
internationalist who supports democracy and human rights. _

The red scare, UC Berkeley and The Magnes after the exhibition 'Saved
by The Bay' , by spagnoloacht (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

 

A petition titled “McCarthyism Is Back—Together We Can Stop It”
is currently being circulated by a number of organizations and
individuals on the left. It is motivated by a recent _New York
Times _
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describes relationships between the multi-millionaire Roy Singham and
a variety of left organizations (particularly the ones circulating the
petition). Much of the information in the _Times _article had been
discussed previously in the award-winning, left-of-center _New
Lines _
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but the _Times_ provided additional reporting. The South African
left journal amaBhungane
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previously discussed Singham’s role. The petition accuses
the _Times _and the media in general of encouraging a new Cold War,
engendering racism toward Chinese Americans, shutting down critics of
U.S. foreign policy, and menacing the left and society in general with
a new period of McCarthyism.

The essence of the reporting is that Singham, a long-time Maoist who
supports the Chinese government, uses his fortune to influence and
sometimes to control other organizations. Singham, who doesn’t need
or, as far as is known, receive Chinese government funding, gives his
money to other organizations that share his support for China and
pro-Chinese policies. As in other cases where the rich provide
financial backing to politicians or political parties, it is not
obvious whether the money caused a change in political position on the
part of the recipient. But either way, the money increases the
political weight of views aligned with the donor, in ways
unaccountable to the progressive community or anyone else. What
Singham has been doing seems a mirror image of U.S global
disinformation and media manipulations over the decades.

Though we object to the lack of transparency and accountability of
Singham’s largesse, our principal objection is to his politics. That
is, we oppose his uncritical support for China. And this is not
because we support a new Cold War.

Although Cold War rhetoric in the United States has indeed increased
among both Republicans and Democrats, the deeper problem is the rising
tension caused by a new period of imperialism driven principally by
the competition among the United States, the European Union, China,
and Russia, as well as other great and lesser powers. The resulting
tensions and conflicts now drive the world toward war. As often
happens, these external conflicts also contribute to racism towards
the Chinese and others in America. The militarism, war, and racism of
the United States must all be condemned in the strongest terms, as the
left has always done.

But Chinese policies must also be denounced. China is one of those
great imperial powers, with a highly authoritarian state that
represses the Chinese working class, the Uyghurs, the Tibetans, and
the Hong Kong democracy movement. China also threatens war with
Taiwan, carries out bullying in the South China Sea, and, in classic
imperialist style, makes loans and investments worth tens of billions
of dollars in nations of the global South, gaining increasing
influence over their governments. China’s policies resemble, without
having yet equaled, those of Great Britain and France in the
nineteenth century and the United States in the twentieth. As
socialists, we oppose the Chinese government’s repression of
democratic and social justice movements at home and its use of
economic leverage to pressure governments abroad. Yes, China has
accomplished commendable poverty alleviation, but this no more makes
it socialist
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economic growth in Taiwan or South Korea make them socialist.

Singham’s generosity and his politics have helped to promote an
unfortunate ideological current on the left: campism. In the name of
anti-imperialism, campists oppose the camp of the United States and
reflexively support governments in the opposite camp, no matter how
authoritarian and repressive they may be. During the original Cold
War, some allowed their rejection of Western imperialism to blind them
to the evils of the Soviet Union. All too many on the pro-Soviet left
denied the existence of the gulags or excused Soviet intervention in
Hungary or Czechoslovakia because of the crimes of the West.
Unfortunately, a similar dynamic is seen today. The campists praise
China despite its wretched record on political and civil rights. They
back Iran and Nicaragua as opponents of U.S. imperialism, though these
regimes trample on women’s rights and basic democratic rights. They
soft-peddle Russia’s violations of international and humanitarian
law in Ukraine and are silent about its increasingly dictatorial
regime with viciously anti-LGBTQ+ policies. And some campists have
even joined with the far-right
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what has been called the red-brown alliance
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The _New York Times _or _New Lines _articles are not McCarthyism.
The _Times _of course is a major instrument of the U.S. elite that
often promotes rotten policies and colludes with the government. But
that doesn’t mean that everything it reports is false. McCarthyism,
while it involved the collaboration of the media, was based in state
power. In the late 1940s and 1950s, presidents Harry Truman and
Dwight D. Eisenhower along with Senator Joseph McCarthy enacted laws
and conducted investigations aimed at discrediting and repressing the
Communist Party. Many on the far left in that period—not just CP
members, but anarchists, Trotskyists, and some socialists—opposed
McCarthyism, and rightly so.

Recently Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) called on the Department of
Justice to investigate China’s ties to Code Pink and other groups on
the left. This should be opposed. The left should defend anybody
facing state repression of their democratic rights. But honest
investigations and reporting on money that both rich people and
governments spend to influence policy and politics should be welcomed.
Investigative journalism exposing obscure financial connections
shouldn’t be confused with McCarthyism.

The left should oppose Cold War rhetoric and actions as well as
anti-Chinese racism or any other sort of discrimination or bias. At
the same time, the left should be internationalist in the sense of
supporting movements for democracy, for labor unions, for feminism or
LGBT rights whether in the United States, Russia, China, Nicaragua,
Iran, or Uganda. The best weapon for countering a new Cold War,
imperialism, and racism is a democratic and internationalist foreign
policy.

_Dan La Botz [[link removed]] and Stephen R.
Shalom [[link removed]] are members of
the New Politics editorial board and of Internationalism from
Below._

_Foreign Policy in Focus [[link removed]] (FPIF) is a
“Think Tank Without Walls” connecting the research and action of
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