MARTHA ROSS—The Playboy interview occurred when Wayne was in his 60s and fresh off his Oscar win for “True Grit.” In the lengthy interview, Wayne discussed a range of topics, from working in Hollywood to race and sex. He voiced his support for white supremacy during a discussion about Black political activist and academic Angela Davis.
Socialists wholeheartedly support the pulling down of statues like Colston and Rhodes. This form of mass direct action is not merely symbolic, but can also have a powerful effect on consciousness, giving workers and youth the confidence to trust in themselves and take bold action. It shows concretely that militancy pays.
GLEN FORD—Although there is no intrinsic contradiction between the three most-voiced demands of the current movement — community control of police, defunding the police, and abolition of policing as we know it – only proposals for community control of the police directly confront the issue of power in the here and now, and also address demands for direct democracy and Black self-determination.
In an interview with Jimmy Dore, Chris hedges warns that the faux left (i.e., the center right corporatist Democrats who call themselves “the left”) is playing with fire by cheering on censorship, but that only the REAL left will pay for that. Meantime, as the frustration and pent-up anger grows across America, conservative Americans, many armed vigilante types, duly incited by Trump and rightwing media, are liable to cross the line and initiate a reign of unrestricted violence.
T.P. WILKINSON—[Looking at it from a Chinese perspective] the counter-revolution of 1776 was fought by people naturally closer to the KMT under Chiang. They waged war to protect wealth and slavery and the right to conquer North America without sharing it with the British ruling class.
Contrast the Russian and especially the Chinese revolutions both of which aimed to create decent lives for the mass of the population. They also succeeded, as did the Cuban revolution. The Soviet Union was defeated in part by collaborators like Gorbachev and due to compromises forced by its proximity to the Western peninsula and NATO. However there is still no doubt that the Soviet Union made Putin’s Russia what it is today.