The Heart of the Revolution

This afternoon I stumbled across a website called Well Red Books, which proved to be a treasure trove of information on today’s Trotskyite Left. As a card-carrying member of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, I clicked through the site’s links in dread fascination, wondering what gargoyle I might find waiting for me around the next virtual corner.

The organization behind the site is the Workers International League (apparently not to be confused by a body of the same name that existed in the 1930s), and its flagship publication is called Socialist Appeal. The magazine doesn’t seem to have an online version, so I can’t tell you much about it. However, Well Red Books engages in a significant amount of revolutionary commerce, selling, besides books and magazines, such attractive accessories as can be seen at the top of this post.

When I was a teenager in England my brother was a student at the University of York. During his final year he had the privilege of squiring around some visiting students from the Soviet Union, and for his efforts he came home with a few rubles in Soviet coinage and a pocketful of Lenin pins, hammer-and-sickle buttons, and so on. We both wish he still had the stuff, because people will actually pay money for such items these days.

I have seen Soviet nostalgia merchandise marketed ironically, for the hip, cool, up-to-the minute youth of today. But this is the first time I’ve seen Young Lenin pins being sold in earnest, in order to further the cause of the Revolution. These people are serious; they’re hoping that red star buttons and Karl Marx key chains will inspire people to join their cause.

Meanwhile, they have shopping carts, a PayPal link, and rafts of merchandise to sell, generally behaving like your typical exploitative capitalist pig website.

But this, as far as I can determine, is their mission statement:

	Make a Donation to the Socialist Appeal Press Fund!
	Help us continue our work of spreading the ideas of Marxism and building a genuine revolutionary force among workers and youth in the U.S. and internationally! We rely solely on our members and sympathizers for financial support, so if you like what you see, please donate to our fighting fund, and help us expand our work! Enter the amount you wish to contribute in the field below.

Comrades, open up your hearts and your wallets and lay down the filthy capitalist lucre for a good cause!

The most chilling link I saw led me to Hands Off Venezuela, a British site whose basic principles are:

solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution opposition to imperialist intervention in Venezuela building direct links with the revolutionary and trade union movement in Venezuela

You know that the Revolution is really on the rocks when it has to align itself with Hugo Chávez’ bands of armed thugs trade union movement.

One of the news items listed is this:

	Venezuela: Eyewitness report from the heart of the revolution
	By Ramon Samblas
	Wednesday, 07 September 2005
	This summer up to 17,000 young internationalists from 144 countries gathered in Caracas for one week to attend the World Festival of Youth and Students. Ramon Samblas who was there from Britain gives his impression of the festival and the general mood in Venezuela.

And here’s another one:

	Motion in Pakistan Parliament against threats to assassinate Chavez
	By Hands Off Venezuela Pakistan
	Tuesday, 13 September 2005
	A group of Pakistani MPs has moved a motion condemning threats on Chavez’s life. At the same time the HOV campaign is being launched in a big way all across Pakistan together with the publication of the Urdu edition of Alan Woods’ book, The Venezuelan evolution.
	Read more...

No, I don’t think I will. This material is just a little too rich for my blood.

The Great Islamic Jihad and the Marxist World Revolution are slowly but inexorably converging. When the Revolution is complete, when the Mujahideen and the Red Brigade lock arms in fraternal solidarity to raise high the Hammer & Sickle & Crescent & Star banner over the smoking ruins of the world’s great infidel capitalist cities, what will happen next? When they turn on each other, whose boot will end up resting on whose neck?

Or, more accurately, whose hand will raise high whose severed head?

Fortunately, I won’t be around to learn the answer.