Stephen Zunes |
A crowd of would-be revolutionaries gathered last month at Revolution Books in Berkeley to hear Stephen Zunes—chair of the program in Middle Eastern studies and professor of politics and international studies at the University of San Francisco—speak on a panel with the improbable title, “U.S.-Israeli Assault on Iran Escalates: The Danger of War Grows.” The title originated with an article by co-panelist Larry Everest, author and correspondent for Revolution, the newspaper for the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, an organization whose cult of personality revolves around well-known Stalinist Bob Avakian. Fittingly, event posters on the walls sported slogans such as “Re-visioning Socialism” and “Another World is Possible,” and the shelves were filled with books by Avakian and other communists.
. . . All who entered were handed a copy of Revolution along with a flier for International A.N.S.W.E.R.'s then-forthcoming “national day of action” in San Francisco, which trumpeted the do-nothing rallying cry, “No War on Iran, No Sanctions, No Interventions, No Assassinations!” Like the rally to come, the atmosphere at Revolution Books was fiercely anti-American, anti-Israel, and apologetic towards, even supportive of, the Iranian regime.
