Message from Barnestown: “Our Line’s Been Changed Again”

In mid November, a letter (see above) went out from the editor of the Militant, newspaper of Jack Barnes’ Socialist Workers Party (SWP), asking subscribers to junk the 28 November issue of their press. To be thrown into the dustbin of history was the front-­page article headlined, “What Does Trump Election Mean?—Not Very Much.” This was replaced by a new article headlined, “2016: Most Impor­tant US Election in 100 Years.” Quite a switch! In March, the SWP denounced a Chicago protest against a Trump rally as a “blow to free speech” while enthusing that Trump supporters at the rally were “finding interest in what the Socialist Workers Party has to say” (12 March statement, “Breakup of Trump Rally Sets Back Working Class”). Far be it from us—much less the membership of the SWP, whose politics are divined by its ultimate leader Jack Barnes—to know what this is all about. To paraphrase a 1930s song parodying the abrupt about-­faces of Earl Browder’s Communist Party, “I knows it Barnes, Our line’s been changed again.”