I’ve been grappling with and trying to get a deeper understanding of the significance of what has been unleashed by Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, what this has to do with seizing on this rare time when revolution has become more possible, and what necessities—and potential freedom—this poses for revolutionaries. 

I’ve been out with others at protests against Israel’s monstrous atrocities, on campuses and around the city, getting out materials from Bob Avakian and the revcoms. But I felt the need to get with others to “pull back the lens” and take a more overarching view of things. Just how explosive is this situation—politically, socially, ideologically? How broadly and deeply are people agonizing over the horrific, escalating slaughter? How are people making sense of what's driving this and what do they think it will take to stop it? And how does all this connect with the challenge of rapidly bringing forward the thousands to lead millions and making this pivotal year a year of revolution?

Genocide in Gaza and This Rare Time

In his REVOLUTION Number Nine social media post, the revolutionary leader and author of the new communism Bob Avakian (BA) analyzes:

Society is being torn apart. The “stability of daily life”—a stability full of horrors for masses of people—will be repeatedly disrupted and increasingly shattered. Things cannot stay the same as they have been—there will be a radical change one way or the other. Everything that is going on now is heading toward, and could soon become, an all-out crisis in this country, with the very nature of society, and how it is governed, being directly battled out in a way that hasn’t happened since the Civil War in the 1860s.

This picture is truer by the day, and as part of that, I’m feeling the genocide in Gaza is sending out shockwaves in deeper, more profound, and broader ways than I’d appreciated. 

BA talks about “the stability of daily life” being “increasingly shattered.” Just look at the campuses, where people used to have at least some space to express themselves. Now you sign a statement against Israel and you might see a truck parading your picture and personal information all over town. Your whole future maybe turned upside down when your future—or current—employers come under pressure not to hire you or to fire you. 

Now even the presidents of top universities can be brought before Congress, humiliated, and then bounced out of office in a hot minute if they don’t “get with the new program” of suppressing any and all opposition to Israel and its genocidal war.

Think about “the very nature of society and how it’s governed”…. Suddenly what people long took for granted looks very different, shaking core beliefs.

Israel, supposedly formed to prevent another Holocaust, is now blatantly carrying out one of its own. What was once broad, often unquestioned, support has, as a former U.S. ambassador to Israel put it, turned into condemnation of Israel by international public opinion, which is unprecedented in breadth and depth, and which has spread to the United States.

The Democrats, who the vast majority of liberal/progressive people have counted on as the “lesser evil,” or the only realistic pathway to progress, have been exposed as direct enablers of war crimes and genocide in Gaza, and are increasingly hated by millions, throwing traditional electoral calculations into disarray.

“Esteemed” international institutions such as the United Nations have now proven totally incapable of stopping the kind of blatant, text-book case of genocide they were supposedly formed to prevent.

If the Revolutionaries Rise to the Challenge…

Stepping back, it’s clearer that this situation has the potential to significantly contribute to a repolarization of society and the real chance to overthrow this monstrous system and open a whole new, liberating chapter for humanity. 

But as BA stresses in REVOLUTION Number Nine, that potential will only be realized—no matter how obscene the atrocities this system is driven to commit—if and only if revolutionaries are out among the people working every day to bring forward the thousands now who will be the organized force to lead millions to actually make the revolution that is urgently needed:

In all that we are doing, all the struggle we are waging, we are applying the overall approach of Fight the Power, and Transform the People—for Revolution, with the aim of achieving the three prepares: prepare the ground (the situation in society), prepare masses of people, and prepare the leadership, for the all-out revolutionary struggle.

We are uniting with and mobilizing people to stand up against the injustices and outrages constantly perpetrated by this system, defending people from attacks on their rights and their lives, and waging fierce struggle to break people out of the bullshit ways of thinking and acting that they are caught up in, winning them to become revolutionary emancipators of humanity.

The urgent need for that last part: “waging fierce struggle to break people out of the bullshit ways of thinking and acting that they are caught up in” is very, very striking right now. This includes the need to be struggling mightily with those standing up against the U.S.-Israeli genocide. To take one example, an organizer for Jewish Voice for Peace lamented to the New York Times that “People have done everything they can possibly think of to try to convince the U.S. government to end its complicity in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians, from the train stations to the bridges to the halls of Congress” (referring to past protests) “and yet they won’t listen.” 

That’s true! But the conclusion the group reaches is not that this illustrates the dictatorial nature and unreformability of the capitalist-imperialist system and its political structures. Their answer is to focus on exposing the lobbying group AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee). They think this can pressure Congresspeople not to accept their large campaign contributions, as if these contributions are what’s causing virtually the entire U.S. ruling class to staunchly support Israel. 

While getting in there, and really uniting with the determined mass protests taking place, as well as working to make them broader—I feel there’s a real need for the forces for revolution to be contending more sharply, concretely, and substantively ... struggling against the illusions and dead ends being put forward by various forces with a scientific understanding of the real problem—this system of capitalism-imperialism—and the need for a real revolution to overthrow this system. And people need to know there is leadership for this revolution being provided by BA.

@BobAvakianOfficial on Social Media – A Key Tool, Right Now, for Breaking Through the Fog and Bringing Forward Thousands

In his social media posts, especially numbers Four through Seven, BA digs deeply, clearly, and concisely into the questions being debated among millions of people around Israel’s atrocities in Gaza, and struggling with them over the wrong paths people are caught up in, including: Why should people in this country care about the Palestinian people? What is the real nature and history of the state of Israel? Why is Biden supporting Israel so staunchly, even if it might cost him the election? Why treating the crimes committed by Hamas on October 7 as an excuse for Israel’s genocide—as the U.S. and Israel constantly do—is utter bullshit. And in stark contrast to what the U.S. and Israel as well as Hamas put forward, what the real path for emancipating the Palestinian people actually is. 

These and all BA’s posts are part of the invaluable leadership he’s providing in preparing for and being able to actually make a real revolution. As he says in his REVOLUTION Number Eight social media post:

This is not a time to be siding with one group of oppressors or another. This is a rare time—a very rare opening—a chance that may come only once in a lifetime—a chance to take advantage of the deep divisions among the ruling oppressors and go after their whole system, with the aim of bringing the whole thing down, and putting something much better in its place.

This rare time must not be squandered—wasted and thrown away. It must be actively and urgently seized on—to bring about a truly emancipating revolution.

With everything very likely coming to a head and coming up for grabs soon, the outcome of this rare time can’t be left to the brutal enforcers of this system, in one camp or another—or to any force which cannot, or will not, look beyond and lead people beyond the confines of an oppressive system, in one form or another. There must be—and there can be—an organized force of thousands, in a position to lead millions, to take this where it needs to go—to an actual, emancipating revolution.

With such an organized revolutionary force, it is possible to have a growing impact on all of society, changing the terms of how masses of people see things, and how every institution has to respond.

Spreading @BobAvakianOfficial along with the Bob Avakian Interviews far and wide is a crucial way, right now, to bring forward the thousands needed to lead millions!