"Socialists" put ideological purity before saving lives

 


Members of the Kurdish and Yazadi community marched in London today against ISIS. As expected it was ignored by the anti-imperialist left, and the only visible left wing groups were those from within the Kurdish community.

The event was much smaller than those marching in support of Hamas over recent weeks as the anti-imperialists remain seemingly opposed to any intervention to save the lives of Christians in Iraq as we have previously seen in the appalling analysis and articles published by the Stop the War Coalition.

So what about the rest of the left? The Socialist Workers Party managed to dig up an unnamed Iraqi Socialist who mused:

“The US and Western media are again shedding crocodile tears and using a humanitarian catastrophe in Iraq to realise imperialist objectives and pour petrol on the fire.”

The SWP (who usually tail end Islamists like Hamas) are forced to admit that ISIS are barbaric:

The Islamic State’s tactics are brutal and sectarian. It has massacred prisoners, and sent thousands of refugees fleeing its advance.

However they offer no immediate solution on how to help the Christian and other minorities fleeing these brutal Islamists.

The Socialist Party (nee Militant Tendency) also takes a similar view in a lengthy article published on their in an article Iraq: Only united action can stop sectarian war. They advise the Kurds not to accept any help from imperialists and muse that:

The key to stopping the unfolding sectarian war is building a resistance amongst working people, a resistance that fights against the sectarian attacks by forces like ISIS and the Shia death squads operating in and around Baghdad while, at the same time, defending the rights of peoples like the Kurds to self-determination.

This can only be based upon building democratically-run, non-sectarian bodies as the basis for popular defence, which would be able to appeal to those Sunnis who have rallied to ISIS as a means of defending themselves from sectarian Shia attack.

How the Socialist Party intends to carry this out (given it has neither the means nor the munitions to do so) is not explained. But they do have advice for those facing immediate destitution and possible death:

However, military setbacks or defeats for ISIS will not be the end of the crisis gripping both Iraq and Syria. In both countries the fight against oppression, dictatorship and poverty requires the creation of a movement of working people. Only such movements can struggle for democratic rights (including full freedom for religious and non-religious alike), oppose further imperialist intervention and fight for governments led by genuine representatives of the working people and poor, which are prepared to break with the capitalist system that has failed the peoples of the Middle East and begin the socialist transformation of the region.

So there you have it. Refuse aid and armaments from those in the West trying to help, become a socialist and all will be well.

Except it obviously won't.

These "comrades" have shown how deluded they really are.

And frankly dangerous.