The DSA Voted Against Zionism — But Will It Break from the Democrats?Every rupture carries its shadow. In Chicago, the same convention that declared support for anti-Zionism also codified loyalty to the very party arming Israel. Resolution 7, “Principles for Party-Building,” reaffirmed DSA’s surrogate strategy, stating outright that an independent ballot line “is not the primary goal or an indication of political independence.” Resolution 18, adopted unanimously, pledged a massive push in the 2026 midterms on the Democratic ballot line and even created a committee to explore a DSA-backed campaign for the 2028 Democratic presidential primaries. This is no longer inertia about the “dirty break” — which is the term used to describe the DSA’s self-evidently “dirty” decision to stay in the Democratic Party for now and break at some undetermined point in the future. What was once justified as a temporary tactic has now hardened into the DSA’s long-term strategy — a consolidation made explicit in Resolution 18, which commits the organization to remain within the Democrats through 2028. The contradiction could not be sharper: even as the convention voted to strip Zionism from the organization’s politics, the leadership secured resolutions that bound the DSA more tightly to the very party financing genocide. Today, some sectors of the DSA’s leadership wrap themselves in more radical, anti-imperialist rhetoric than in 2023 — but beneath the new language lies the same reformist strategy: to keep the socialist Left tethered to the Democratic Party, one of the main pillars of imperialism. This debate over strategy isn’t abstract — it’s unfolding through real campaigns and real figures. Nowhere is that clearer than in the phenomenon of Zohran Mamdani. His mayoral campaign in New York electrified millions. For the first time in decades, a Democrat running for high office said “Free Palestine,” called Israel an apartheid state, and endorsed boycotts against Israel. And crucially, his campaign showed that Palestine is not separate from so-called “bread-and-butter” issues. People rallied to him because his campaign has fused the fight against genocide abroad with the fight against skyrocketing rents, precarity, and exploitation at home. The link is not rhetorical but material: the same state that sends billions to fund Israel’s bombs is the one slashing housing, healthcare, and education; the same ruling class that justifies ethnic cleansing abroad enforces austerity, police violence, and xenophobia at home.
https://www.leftvoice.org/the-dsa-voted-against-zionism-but-will-it-break-from-the-democrats/Azerbaijan's expanding footprint in the Middle EastOn 8 August, the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a joint declaration in Washington, committing to end more than three decades of conflict with US backing. While still short of a final peace treaty, the agreement represented a major breakthrough for Baku, which secured one of its long-standing goals: establishing an unimpeded transit link between mainland Azerbaijan and its Nakhchivan exclave. Although the 27-mile transit route will formally remain under Armenian sovereignty, contrary to Baku’s initial demand, it will be leased and administered by US and other international contractors. The passage, running along Armenia’s southern border with Iran, has been dubbed the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity. Following its military victories in 2020 and 2023, the Washington declaration has been widely hailed as another success in Baku. At the same time, other key regional powers - Russia and Iran - have expressed mixed reactions. While cautiously welcoming the step toward peace and stability, both have voiced concern over the expanding US footprint in the South Caucasus. Nonetheless, for Baku, the accord offers more than territorial connectivity: it provides an opening to reposition itself in Washington, shifting the conversation beyond the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict towards a wider regional role, particularly in light of its growing engagement in the Middle East. Azerbaijan’s engagement with the region has long been shaped by its controversial partnership with Israel. Supplying the bulk of Israel’s oil needs - and even substantially increasing exports during the genocide in Gaza - Baku has cultivated a reputation as one of Israel’s reliable friends in the Muslim world. Notably, in March 2025, its state-owned energy giant SOCAR was granted licenses to explore natural gas fields in the Eastern Mediterranean, further anchoring its presence in the region’s energy market.
https://www.newarab.com/analysis/azerbaijans-expanding-footprint-middle-eastAgainst "Third Worldism", the False Anti-ImperialismThis article is a commentary to the LLCO «answer» and a commentary to the Third Worldist standpoint in general. My claim is that Third Worldism is another variant of revisionism, and that it breaks fundamentally with Marxism. It therefore represents not a «friend with flaws» or a theory within Maoism, but is a variation of the hostile and bourgeois revisionism. Here in Norway, this direction, even if it is extremely limited, has caused greater damage than its small size would suggest. And I think that the biggest problem with it is that it appeals to a lack of initiative and passivity. It legitimizes young revolutionaries withdrawing from the struggle, or opting for «internet activism» above the class struggle. It is a very «comfortable» standpoint to take for young revolutionaries in Western countries: that building communist parties here is impossible. It opens the door for complete capitulation and retreat. Against this, we must place Lenin’s condition that the real internationalism – the real solidarity – is not only to give practical support to the struggles in the oppressed countries, but to raise the revolutionary struggle in one’s own country. This also applies to those who live in «the first world», in the imperialist states, where the material living conditions among the majority is much better than those living in the third world. To wage revolutionary struggle in the West can, in both form and context, differentiate itself dramatically from the struggle in the third world, but the struggle is within its contents all the same. And here as well, the struggle demands discipline, sacrifice, and active organizing from all revolutionaries. There is a dangerous potential in the Third Worldist thinking that short put entails that all in the first world (rich imperialist countries), including the proletariat of these countries, are one single corrupt and parasitic unity – and that therefore there only exists true revolutionary potential in the third world. Their conclusion is that communist parties in the first world will only be chauvinists and social democrats, because there is no objective, material basis for revolutionary struggle here. This makes them a revisionist and in practice anti-communist direction, as the logical conclusion of their thinking taken in its entirety. To conclude this introduction, I must underscore that this is by no means a condemnation of each individual that takes the Third Worldist standpoint. There are good revolutionaries and honest comrades who fully or partially come to the same conclusions as this direction. Third Worldists take the most important contradiction in world society (between imperialist states and the world’s oppressed peoples and nations) as a starting point, and point out the screeching inequality and unfairness that follows from imperialism. It is not unnatural that people might draw conclusions similar to that of Third Worldism with this as a background.
https://tjen-folket.no/2019/08/30/against-third-worldism-the-false-anti-imperialism/#Introduction