El Paso - We are all people - We belong together

In El Paso, Texas, it appears from early information that a white supremacist slaughtered twenty people. His “manifesto” said the motivation for his gun attack was “a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas”. It expressed a hatred of race-mixing, and suggested that the United States should be separated into different territories for different races. Was the killer inspired by the racial slurs in Trump's tweets? Who knows? There were racists before Trump became president and there will be racists after he is gone. Certainly, the number of hate groups in the US has risen during Trump's tenure in office.

The basic cause of racism is not the false racial myths spread by the white supremacists. Rather, the cause of racism is the competitive, strife-ridden, class-divided capitalist system of society under which we live, and under which we desperately attempt to survive. Poor whites are taught not to dissent at their own poverty but are told to resent other poor people to express their hatred not against the system that exploits them but to target minorities and migrants who share their suffering. Race prejudice is one of the most insidious devices ever invented to keep working people divided and fighting each other.

Racial hatreds have been of great service to the capitalist class. The fact that politicians like Trump and Fox News can stir up workers against other workers is proof of the immaturity of the working class. It is a proof that up to now the workers are without a true understanding of their position in capitalist society. They are still ready to consider their own interests identical to those of their master class. The exploitation of black and brown fellow-workers ensured that whatever your station in life, there was always someone lower to look down upon and who could be exploited further. Knowing that the workers are not yet wise enough to see through their game, the capitalists are prepared to go to any length to prevent their enlightenment.

 The World Socialist Party of the United States (WSPUS) sympathise with the suffering of our fellow-workers of whichever ethnicity and we ask them all to set aside their nationalism, their religious bigotry, their ethnic hatred and racism and to join together to put an end to the real problem – capitalism and the oppression it causes everywhere. Socialists are engaged in the enormous task of persuasion and organisation to build a powerful world-wide movement for democratic revolution. Trump fosters those nativist, racist, vindictive and angry whitemen who take others down to build themselves up.

Fighting racism means fighting the system which produces the conditions for it to fester, namely capitalism. The World Socialist Party is fully conscious of the humiliation and sufferings of our fellow-workers. We fully share with them their yearnings for a better life. But candour and honesty compel us to point out that only the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of socialism can put an end to race prejudice and establish the kaleidoscope of mankind.