The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) in Sri Lanka are holding an online meeting entitled “Oppose imperialist war!” on Thursday, May 23, at 7pm.
In announcing the recent International May Day Rally, David North, chairman of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site, warned, “A third world war is not a distant possibility. The opening stages of this war are already underway.”
Israel’s genocide in Gaza against Palestinians and its US-backed attacks against Iran are just one front in a rapidly emerging world war involving nuclear armed powers. US imperialism and its allies are already engaged in a war against Russia in Ukraine and are making advanced preparations for a catastrophic conflict with China.
The imperialist leaders as well as various media pundits now casually refer to a nuclear war as an acceptable strategic option, despite the grave threat it poses to the existence of humanity.
The Biden administration, along with other NATO powers, have repeatedly crossed the “red lines” in Ukraine which they previously accepted as necessary to prevent nuclear war.
One might consider that the imperialist leaders—Biden, Sunak, Macron and Scholz—are criminally insane as they drag the planet towards nuclear conflagration. However, their policies are not simply the product of deranged individuals but of the profound crisis of world capitalism for which they have no rational, progressive solution and see a global war for domination as the only way out.
War is being accompanied by savage repression against any opposition as the terrible, continued persecution of Julian Assange for exposing the crimes of US imperialism graphically demonstrates.
Our comrade Bogdan Syrotiuk of the Young Guard of Bolshevik Leninists has been detained by the fascistic Zelensky government in Ukraine earlier this month on false accusations of being a Russian agent. Bogdan has courageously opposed the war in Ukraine, along with his comrades in Russia, denounced both the Ukrainian and Russian regimes and fought for the unity of the Ukrainian and Russian working class.
In the US and other imperialist countries, brutal police crackdowns are taking place against protesters opposing the Gaza genocide with thousands of arrests including of students.
The ongoing anti-war protests in universities and cities are significant, but on their own are incapable of halting the bloodbath. For seven months, the Zionist regime and its imperialist backers have not only ignored protests by millions around the world, but they are also turning to police repression.
The only social force capable of halting the drive to world war is the international working class which is coming into struggle in Sri Lanka and around the world in opposition to the austerity program of the ruling classes. As governments engage in, support and prepare for war, it is workers who are forced to bear the burden.
A struggle against war requires the building of a unified anti-war movement of the working class based on a socialist program, exposing the futility of protest politics and all the apologists for imperialism. Appeals to capitalist governments are bankrupt. The independent mobilisation of workers on this basis needs to take up the fight to free Assange and Syrotiuk as well.
The burning need is for a new revolutionary leadership in the working class based on socialist internationalism to abolish the source of militarism, austerity, authoritarianism and all sorts of social misery—the capitalist system.
We invite you to participate in this important meeting. You can register for the online Zoom meeting using the link below.
https://us04web.zoom.us/meeting/register/upYrfuGgrzovHdwsh0kw_cmGXQh_D1H27Gwi