News Brief: Marxists Decry Israeli Policy

The white board of a Science Center classroom was covered not with equations, but with hand-written signs bearing neo-Leninist and anti-Israel slogans Saturday as it hosted a small gathering of local communists to listen to a speech condemning Israel’s leaders.

Speaking to a group of less than 20 people, Len Meyers of the “proletarian, revolutionary and internationalist” organization the Sparticist League, compared Israeli leaders to “Nazis” and “terrorists” and said the solution to the region’s conflicts was for workers to revolt.

“You need to get rid of the capitalist regimes in the region and that can only be done by creating socialist revolutions in the Middle East,” Meyers said.

Meyers gave a revisionist account of the history of Zionism and the state of Israel, in which he painted the founders of the state of Israel as enemies of workers—and even of Jews.

He decried American support of Israel, saying support is largely due to a belief by right-wing Christian leaders that the Jews returning to a homeland in Israel is “one step closer to Armageddon and the return of their Lord.”

Meyers defended his interpretation of history and his call for workers’ revolutions against mainstream politics.

“Capitalist politicians lie, cheat and steal,” Meyers said. “Communist politicians work to change the world by educating people, and for that you can’t lie.”

The Boston Sparticist League, which is named after the 1919 Germany Communist workers uprising, and says their goal is October revolutions all over the world, also holds a summer lecture series on “basic Marxism” every Saturday afternoon in Loker Commons.

The organization has no Harvard affiliation, and it paid to rent the space in the Science Center.