Rapper Lowkey on Israel, Colonialism, War Crimes & The Global Far Right

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

As I have said before, feeling somewhat down or a little depressed is not an unnatural response to the state of the world we are living in; particularly as there seems to be no unified powerful international movement that speaks for all workers. But he is right to be optimistic, movements do not come ready made, they go through births and rebirths and ebbs and flows.  There is no such thing as prophets, we cannot predict with certainly how the situation will develop. But I am convinced the international working class will rise to the task that history has set for us. But nothing is guaranteed; we are all responsible.

Lowkey is an English rapper and I am not familiar with his music but his comments should be shared far and wide. I recently had a post a removed from a Facebook page I'm on. It was a pro-Palestinian statement from an American Jewish teacher with relatives in Jerusalem.  The monitors of the group decided that posts about the Zionist assaults of recent days was upsetting some other members. They want peace at all costs.

Lowkey is right to call out the unions (technically it is the leadership his call should be directed at) for their refusal to mobilize their members to refuse to shut down the forces of production that allow, in his case British capitalism, to arm its colonial Zionist ally. Here in the US, the trade union leaders are complicit in their silence on this genocide being committed by the Zionist regime in Israel. They are terrified of using the power of their members, of workers to change the situation because such power unleashed would mean the end of the road for them as all the issues facing working class people would emerge and be confronted with this power.

Such a process inevitably opens the door, as Malcolm X did with his statement that you can't have capitalism without racism, to the building of a democratic socialist society and a global federation of democratic socialist states. Only the international working class can solve this problem and offer not only Palestinians, but Israeli Jews a secure and safe future.

It is the responsibility of all rank and file union members to build that movement, to challenge the complicity of their leaders in their support of their pro-market polices internationally and also at home. It is an unfortunate struggle we are forced to engage in, the removal of the right wing pro-capitalist clique that have control of our organizations that were built through tremendous struggle and sacrifice but confront it we must whether we like it or not.