From The Militant, Vol 6 No. 5, 31 January 1942, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
The GPU is on the move. Its press and kindred newspaper writers have initiated a serious slander campaign against the militant workers of revolutionary tendencies. The forward march order was given by Juan Comorera from the magazine of the Spanish Stalinists. Following this the non-party forces have bean mobilized, commissioned with giving the campaign a non-GPU appearance.
See, for example, the dispatches sent to Excelsior from Washington by one John Willes. Ostensibly he is just another correspondent. But the impudence with which this individual lies and slanders is unmistakably of GPU brand. He headlines his story of the 15th, Joint Action Against the Spies. The miserable scribbler says the following:
“Since agents of German, Italian or Japanese origin are easily discovered by the police, the Gestapo favors the Falangist organizations and pseudo-revolutionaries in order to better mask its maneuvers. Blows against the Spanish Falange are being dealt plentifully in the United States as well as in other republics of our Continent, but those which attract more attention at this time are the ones dealt the false revolutionaries. The celebrated trial in Minneapolis against the leaders of the false Socialist Workers Party brought out the intimate connection that existed between them, headed by the successors of Leon Trotsky and earlier by the latter himself, and the agents of the German Gestapo.”
Observe that the object of this paragraph is not to intensify the struggle against the Spanish Falange and the fascists in general, but rather against the Trotskyist movement. With what proofs, or even suggestions of proofs? What the Minneapolis trial has shown is that the Trotskyist party in question, in the words of the federal indictment, “wanted to make a revolution in the United States like that led by Lenin and Trotsky in Russia in 1917.” The sentences pronounced on some of the leaders of that party are based on their revolutionary activities; a connection with the Gestapo never having been even spoken of during the trial. Let the GPU order its mercenary John Willes to publish the indictment against the Socialist Workers Party and the verdict of the jury! Under no conditions will it do that.
Corrupt Stalinism speaks of collusion between the Trotskyists and the Gestapo while in Paris the Gestapo shoots the Trotskyist Jean Meichler, and jails and sends others to the concentration camps; while the Vichy Government condemns the Spanish Trotskyist and POUM militants to five, eight and ten years of hard labor; while German pressure forces the suppression of our organizations in Switzerland. And it says that – after everyone has seen Stalinism collaborate with Hitler up until the attack on the Soviet Union. Those who slander us are the same who approved, tacitly or explicitly, Molotov’s words: “A strong Germany is indispensable for the establishment of a solid peace in Europe.”
Playing the trombone in the same orchestra, a few Mexican deputies, misled btythe known Stalinist, Carlos Zapata Vela, accuse V. Serge, M. Pivert, J. Gorkin and myself of Fifth Columnism. The three aforementioned persons are not trotskyist militants, but their company is much more honorable than that of any Stalinist; the accusations that are made against them are infamous and slanderous. The deputies’ document, published fully in El Popular, gives as proof some words from a manifesto by the Fourth International in which it is proclaimed that the imperialist allies of the USSR are not our allies. The fact that the same document advises the German workers and soldiers to disorganize the Hitler rearguard and to go over to the Red Army with arms and equipment is deliberately omitted. In reality, this is merely a question of persecuting us for remaining loyal to the leading ideas of the Bolshevik revolution. After liquidating this revolution almost completely, Stalinism, like the Bonapartists of the French Revolution, wants to liquidate the representatives of the revolutionary ideas.
What is the object of all this campaign? We already know of a similar one against Trotsky. The Mexican “Communist” Party convoked a Congress against Trotskyism. From El Popular and the Stalinist press gushed forth the slanders: Trotsky is an agent of Yankee imperialism, of the petroleum companies; that was the overture of the play. The campaign culminated in the assault of the 24th of May, 1940, the assassinations of Sheldon Harte and of Trotsky himself. Some of the assailants personally participated in the preparatory campaign by means of articles and caricatures.
The object of the GPU is the same now: the assassination of the slandered men – fomenting the political atmosphere beforehand in order to permit the assassins’ escape afterward – or to urge some deceived Mexican youths to commit such murders. Among the Spanish Stalinists it is already being discussed publicly that we must be “liquidated.” Let us remember that when Trotsky predicted that the campaign against him had as its object his assassination, the GPU stooges ironically accused him of even seeing the GPU in his soup. They will say the same thing now. And let us remember also that the GPU has murdered nine of Trotsky’s secretaries, has murdered the Trotskyists Wolf, Moulin and others in Spain, Ignace Reiss in Switzerland, Klement in France and other honest worker militants such as Nin, Berneri, Barbieri, Landau. In Spain Stalinism took advantage of the influence flowing from control of the arms supply to assassinate its adversaries on the left. In Mexico it tries to do the same thing, taking advantage of the prestige from the victories heroically gained by the Soviet people in spite of Stalin.
For my part, I declare publicly that any “accident” or assassination that may befall me, should be attributed to the GPU and morally to the instigators of its infamous campaign. As to the accusation by the Messrs. Deputies, it is not even necessary to take it seriously; it destroys itself. The quoted paragraphs only prove that we are worker militants determined not to abandon class independence. If they will agree to renounce parliamentary immunity, we are disposed to demonstrate this before the courts.
Mexico, D.F.
January 17, 1942
Last updated on 3 June 2021