After sidling into mealy-mouthed defence of Al Qaeda and its allies in Mali (9 February), Socialist Worker of 23 February attempts a sort-of-defence of the North Korean regime.
SW says that North Korea's nuclear weapons tests have "nothing to do with anti-imperialism or socialism".
However, it declares the North Korean government not to blame for those tests. All the blame lies with the US and its allies.
SW says that North Korea is "a nuclear bogeyman created by the US". SW cannot mean to say that North Korea really has no nuclear weapons (i.e. the story that it has them has been manufactured by the US). It cannot mean to say that the North Korean government is controlled by the US, and carrying out nuclear tests only because the US tells it to.
It seems to mean that the US is so aggressive towards North Korea that North Korea somehow has no choice but to stage nuclear tests. "North Korea’s third nuclear test was a direct result of bullying by South Korea, the US and Japan".
The UN Security Council had increased sanctions against North Korea because of a previous rocket launch. The US and South Korean government had warned of further action.
This allegedly means that: "North Korea's nuclear weapons and rockets are 'monsters' created by US imperialism".
How? Let's concede that the US has adopted an aggressive tone towards North Korea. It's mild stuff compared to what the US has done over the decades in central America. If North Korea has developed nuclear weapons, and the central American countries haven't, it is a matter of the North Korean government's choice, not of compulsion.
SW's argument here seems like their argument that Islamist terrorism, though not exactly what SWP members would want to see in their own front rooms, is an inevitable response to US misdeeds in the Middle East, so inevitable that people like those who bombed the World Trade Centre should not be condemned.
Why then haven't the peoples of Central America been "forced" into Catholic-fundamentalist terrorism? For that matter, why haven't workers in the US itself been "forced" into systematic bombing of civilian targets by the exploitation to which US bosses subject them?
SW continues: "The US demonisation of North Korea is part of its strategy to maintain hegemony in East Asia... There is even talk of supporting regime change in North Korea".
The US State Department declares officially that "outstanding problems includ[e] the North's attempts to develop a nuclear program and human rights abuses". Facts about North Korea do not cease to be facts if the US government repeats them.
The SW article nowhere mentions the totalitarian and exploitative regime in North Korea, or its denial of all workers' rights.
The issue on which the forerunners of the SWP first separated from other Trotskyists was that in 1950 they refused to considered the Korean war as just an attack by the US on innocent North Korea, and insisted that Stalinism was also playing an imperialistic role in Korea.
At that time the Stalinist regime in North Korea (as far as can be guessed) had sizeable popular support. Why rally to the defence of its raddled and corrupt successor in 2013?
