Brian Becker: How the State Attacked Socialism in the US: Infiltration, Violence, Deportation

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Dandelion Salad

BreakThrough News on Aug 25, 2022

Welcome to a special crossover of Dispatches with Rania Khalek and The Socialist Program with Brian Becker!

The U.S. Left is often smeared and mocked, accused of being weak, ineffective, unserious, fractured, obsessed with identity issues and prone to destructive infighting. While capitalist media has a stake in portraying the Left in this way, the organized US Left is rebuilding and growing stronger. Still, it is weaker today than it was many decades ago and that’s no accident.

To discuss the history of repression against the US Left and how it relates to the challenges we face today, Rania Khalek was joined by Brian Becker, host of The Socialist Program, which you can watch every Wednesday right here on Breakthrough News.

0:00 Intro
2:44 1920s persecution of the left
6:58 Great Depression, WW2, the left grows
10:17 How the left gave us The New Deal
16:22 1950s Cold War, Korean War, Rosenbergs, Purges
28:24 Fierce repression of the Black liberation movement
44:29 Splits in the antiwar movement
1:01:05 Right tries to co-opt the left
1:13:20 Why did Covid split the left?
1:29:34 How to get offline and involved

From the archives:

The Chris Hedges Report: The Unrelentingly Radical Life of Paul Robeson, with Gerald Horne

Federal Bureau of Intimidation, by Howard Zinn

Caleb Maupin: Martin Luther King Was A Socialist!

Chris Hedges: The Young Lords: A Radical History

The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

The War at Home: Part 2: Blacklist

Plutocracy I-V (must-see)

The War at Home: Part 1: Rebellion

What Is COINTELPRO? by The Anti-Social Socialist

Howard Zinn: Hidden History of The American Working Class

Abby Martin: Capitalism–America’s Unofficial Religion + Understanding Marxism and Socialism

The Black Panthers and the Assassination of Fred Hampton