Workers viewpoint [1979-12-10]

              WORKERS VIEWPOINT. December 10,1979, Page 5
DEATH TO THE KLAN!
Klan's Bloody History-Buying Time for the Bourgeoisie
The murders of the Communist
Workers Party Five by the KKK/Nazis
and FBI has concentrated the anti-Klan
sentiment in the U.S. Opposition to
the Ku Klux Klan is at an all time high.
In the midst of the deepest economic
crisis in history, the American people
are   beating these  racist  dogs back.
In Vineland, NJ., the whole town
from the mayor on down fought the
KKK. The mayor sent the sheriff out
and busted the Klan scum hours before
they were to march through town. Anti-
racist youth spraypainted the biggest
billboard in town with KKK IS SHIT!
tThe windows of the local Klan leader
were smashed up good, and he was
beaten to a pulp in broad daylight.
While the mayor called a rally in a
waves of terror at election time to drive
the masses away from the polls. In
Vicksburg, Mississippi, over 200 blacks
were murdered the week before the city
elections of 1874. The KKK was the
chief means to defeat reconstruction,
with the support of Southern plantation
owners and Northern capitalists. The
defeat of reconstruction opened the
door for the monopoly capitalists to
consolidate their rule over the South
and the rest of the country. Blacks were
re-enslaved as sharecroppers to the
southern plantation owners and Jim
Crow subjugation, while white small
farmers were driven off their land and
turned into wage slaves to the monopoly capitalists.
In the 1890's populist revolts swept
local high school, 200 people waited in
Vineland's Landis Park to whip their ass.
When the KKK tried to show its face in
Seaview, Texas, the community passed
a resolution banning them from marching. Under the leadership of the Communist Workers Party this sentiment
will be organized to beat back the Klan
attacks, unite the U.S. people and direct
their anger at the secret backers of the
KKK (who are promoting the Klan in
the middle of this economic crisis to
split the working class, diverting the
masses' anger to get themselves off the
hpok.)This two-part series on the Klan
will show their bloody history is precisely to serve the capitalist class, and every
time they rear their heads is to serve the
scapegoat politics of the bourgeoisie.,
*   *   *   *
The KKK was organized by Confederate generals after the Civil War to
restore the rule of the defeated southern
plantation owners. They lynched, flogged and burned their way across the
Black Belt South to defeat the reconstruction governments. The armed,
fighting mass organizations with black
arid white' locals and the black militia
were the main targets of these murderous reactionaries.   The Klan launched
the country. Black and white farmers
fought side by side with workers to
oppose the monopoly robber barons.
The monopoly capitalists were forcing
the costs of industrialization onto the
backs of the small farmers with sky-
high railroad costs and low prices for
their crops. To weaken the movement
against the monopoly capitalists, the
Klan stepped up lynchings and castrations again, and the poisonous white
supremacist propaganda. The racist
pressure of the KKK helped push the
petty bourgeois leadership of the populist movement to drop the demands
of the Afro-American people, weakening the resistance of the entire move-,
ment. In the end the populist movement
was co-opted by the bourgeoisie, and
many more white farmers were driven
off their lands, laying the basis for the
industrial proletariat in the South.
Bourgeoisie Promotes KKK
To Get Out of Post-War Crisis
During and after World War I,
it was the first time around in a chance
for the proletariat to seize state power.
The bourgeoisie was faced with an international economic and political crisis.
Industrial production fell by 25% and
U.S. exports fell by half from 1919-
1922. More than 1 million Afro-Ameri
can fanners, driven from their land in
the South, flocked into the key industries in the North. Millions of immigrants from Southern and Eastern
Europe were imported to work in the
mines and mills, bringing with them the
revolutionary spirit seething in Europe
and the influence of the Great October
Socialist Revolution in Russia. The
Communist Party, U.S.A. was formed in
1919, with immigrant workers a large
part of the membership.
The hardships of the war focused
the masses' anger. Ten million workers
went on strike from 1919 to 1922. In
1919 alone, general strikes hit Seattle
and Winnipeg, Manitoba, while hundreds of thousands of workers fought
long and bitter strikes in railroad, steel,
mining and meatpacking.
The monopoly capitalists were desperate to stop the rising revolutionary
tide. The Deportation Act of 1919,
called for the deportation of any
immigrant who advocated overthrowing
the government. The leadership of the
U.S. people was attacked as 10,000
communists were rounded up in one
night in the Palmer Raids. Sacco'and
Vanzetti, Italian born socialists were
arrested, framed for murder, and
executed as examples to the working
class. Vicious attacks by police and
state troopers were launched against the
big strikes.
To split up the working class the
bourgeoisie promoted the KKK all over
the country. It was no accident that ,
precisely this period, when the bourgeoisie was faced with a deep crisis,
was called the "Golden Age of the
Klan." To serve their masters in this
new situation, the KKK switched its line
from white supremacy alone to "100%
Americanism" and "against Bolshevism."
The Klan lynched blacks all over the
Black Belt South. Italian immigrants
were run out of towns in Illinois, and
attacked in New Jersey. Members of
the IWW (Industrial Workers of the
World) were lynched in West Virginia,
for being radicals.
The viciously racist KKK recruiting movie Birth of a Nation was personally endorsed by the ruling class
to build up the KKK. President Wilson,
his whole Cabinet, and the Chief Justice
of the Supreme Court all watched a
special White House showing of the
movie and backed it. Rockefeller offered millions to promote the book that
the movie was based on and it became
a bestseller. As a result, membership in
the   KKK went  up to  four million.
Masses Fight Handcuffed
By Void in Correct Leadership
The Klan attacks were fought
heroically, as the United Mine
Workers in Oklahoma took up rifles
to drive out the Klan, and Italian
immigrants whipped the KKK in the
streets of Vineland, NJ. But the subjective factor was not strong enough to
Continued on page 7
Detroit on Edge**
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Industrial Workers
Confront Klan Murders
DETROIT, Mi.-The assassinations of the Communist Workers
Party Five hit a raw nerve in the
people of Detroit. Many Afro-
Americans came here from the South
within the last fifteen years. The
majority of U.S.-born whites came
from the coal country. Most have
had some direct experience with the
Klan and Klan terror.
Unemployment is very high.
Wayne County is going broke and the
city of Detroit just laid off another
500 city workers. It is no surprise
Mayor Coleman Young said soon
after the Communist Workers Party
murders that the city was like a
powder keg, and forbade demonstrations for or against the Klan.
In 1963 when Sheriff "Bull"
Conners opened up the dogs and
fire hydrants on civil "rights marchers
in Birmingham,, auto workers in
Detroit led a march of between
150,000 to 300,000 militant Afro-
Americans in June'of that year. In
1967 Detroit workers and Afro-
Americans joined the wave of uprisings across the country and rebelled
for six days, firing not at blacks or
whites, but at the police. In a show
of multinational unity, whites fired
some, of, the first .shots against,the
pigs. Mayor Young feared that in
1979 in this city, in the heart of the
industrial proletariat, they might
take to the streets again.
When a general foreman and
foreman  paraded  around  in KKK I
hoods in October at the Ford Rouge
Complex, thousands of workers j
signed a petition demanding they be |
fired. The company was forced to act
by first firing the foremen to diffuse [
the workers' anger, and then quietly
reassigned them to different plants.
The bourgeoisie knows that the
woridag class is the unshakable,
bulwark opposing the KKK/Nazis
as it was in Nazi Germany. So they're \ !
trying to clean up the Klan's image \ \
or promote other organizations,;
which would "speak up for whites" j
-a line which was pushed in the
racist Weber Supreme Court case.
This dangerous new twist pro- '
motes the scum Klan trying to fill
the void in leadership many white
workers   feel.   By promoting Klan
burnings  of decadent   and  pornographic books, the bourgeoisie tries ;        |
to  portray the Klan as defenders !
of the family and morality. This was
true also in Nazi Germany, where
the Nazis tried to appeal to the pro- j
letarian instinct to defend the family
while the bourgeoisie, supporters of
the Nazis, wallowed in the decadence
of the Weimar Republic. D j