Society of violence

(The following appeared in the June 6, 1968, edition of Pravda and has been translated and condensed from the Russian.)

Sen. Robert Kennedy, a contender for the U.S. presidency, lies in a Los Angeles hospital with a gunshot wound in his head. He was the victim of another act of political terrorism.

Why was Senator Kennedy shot?

No one plotted an attempt on his life when, at the beginning of his political career, he served as counsel to the inquisitorial committee of the infamous Sen. Joseph McCarthy. No one aimed a gun at him when he faithfully served the ruling class in the post of attorney general.

The atmosphere of hate in the camp of extreme ultras arose around Robert Kennedy only when, under the pressure of public sentiment, he took a step, a rather unsure one, toward realism: He criticized the most aggressive and reckless aspects of the U.S. foreign policy course and condemned the escalation of the dirty war in Vietnam, but without demanding unconditional withdrawal of the interventionist troops from Indochina. He was and remained a member of the "moderates" in the elite of the Democratic Party. However, even this moderation aroused paroxysms of malice in the camp of Black Hundred reaction. William Buckley, a "theorist" of the ultras, publicly damned Kennedy for "moving to the left." Even before the senator's announcement of his candidacy in the election, numerous pamphlets appeared describing him as a "dangerous radical and troublemaker." The racists of the South paid Kennedy back in ferocious malice for "catering" to the Negroes. "His name is anathema to many Southerners," the weekly magazine TIME stated.

Political assassination and attempts at it are an integral nature of the American way of life. In this country of "developed democracy," assassination has become the same sort of political method for the ruling classes as bribery and blackmail of the voters and pre-election demagoguery. Upon learning of the attempt on Kennedy, Senator Yarborough exclaimed: "The horror of all this is that political assassination attempts are becoming commonplace in our country."

A belated admission. A string of terrorist acts and violence stretches across the entire history of the U.S.A. The assassination of President Abraham Lincoln is an indelible bloodstain on America. The remains of thousands of lynched Negroes rot away in American soil. Many sons of the U.S. working class perished at the hands of killers hired by capitalists.

The establishment of monopoly capitalism sharply intensified the U.S. social system's traditional tendency toward reactionary violence.

Mass and individual terrorism against progressive people, against workers and against activists in democratic movements has become an everyday tool of the U.S. ruling classes. As a rule, efforts are even made to eliminate a bourgeois leader from political life if he deviates the least millimeter from the general line of imperialism.

But if members of the Washington elite cannot feel safe, then the real champions of the people's interests live constantly under the threat of reprisals.

Obscurantists regularly raid the buildings of the U.S. Communist Party and other progressive organizations. The New York building that houses the progressive newspaper The Worker is periodically shaken by explosions of dynamite hurled by militant anti-communists. These bandit raids supplement the long-standing campaign of legal persecution of the Communist Party and progressive forces.

Many states -- Southern and Northern -- are enmeshed in a web of pogromist organizations that go unpunished for preaching and practicing terrorism against supporters of freedom and democracy. The "invisible empire" of the Ku Klux Klan encompasses dozens of states. The white-robed killers have been caught many times. But they have invariably slipped unharmed from the grasp of the all forgiving American Themis.

"The terrorist violence committed by the Ku Klux Klan is a proven fact. Murders, arson and bomb-throwing are committed by the Klan in many areas," FBI director Edgar Hoover has stated. But the secret police chief has not brought one assassin to the electric chair.

No wonder that the list of the Obscurantists' victims has grown longer from year to year.

Every Negro disturbance is accompanied by bloody reprisals against hundreds of poor people. Vice President Humphrey admits: "Those who live in the explosive slums are the chief victims of violence." Martin Luther King, shortly before his death, sent the Justice Department a message emphasizing the sadistic nature of the mass murders of Negro students: "The evidence offered by eyewitnesses in Orangeburg (South Carolina) shows that all the students were killed by shots in the back and that many were wounded while they were lying on the ground."

In Los Angeles, where Robert Kennedy was shot, the authorities created special military police groups for reprisals against Negroes.

The legislators under the dome of the Capitol urge that the "valuable" experience of these Los Angeles police groups be circulated throughout the country. Numerous cases confirm that lily-white America is arming itself to fight "urban wars" against the poor.

The evil deed done in Los Angeles is a fresh and extremely convincing example of this dreadful gangster "democracy." The United Lynching States, Mark Twain called his country. Today this devastating definition is as true as ever.