Professional right-wing agitator Dinesh D’Souza blessed our campus with his presence on Monday evening, and the strangest thing happened. The truth was revealed! No, I’m not talking about the idea that it’s virtuous to be ridiculously wealthy and unconcerned while 36 million people die annually of hunger, or the comfortable proposition that other people’s suffering at your expense is good for them.

I’m referring to those who realized the degree to which representatives of the American ruling class will prostitute knowledge, rationality, history and facts, all in the interest of defending the status quo.

This man was not here with a pedagogical agenda, but with a political one: to fool people into thinking that colonialism was good, and that, yes, as an American, you are a “superior human being,” thus dulling the rational processes of people with the opiate of patriotism and preparing them for a new bout of US colonialism from Iraq to North Korea.

What surprised me at this Republican pep-rally was not that D’Souza was being paid to lie through his teeth. It was that sections of the crowd ate it up!

Even as one insane D’Souza-lover stood up and shouted, “Death to the Left!” the applause continued! This was Republicanism at its finest.

His entire presentation flew in the face of reality: “colonialism benefited those colonized.” Well, if you force millions of workers to direct their labor towards the aggrandizement of a colonizing society (on threat of torture), when that labor could have gone towards the betterment of their own, this is clearly not good for them! And surely the indigenous people of the Americas (40 million of whom were killed by Western colonizers), were better off before the Trail of Tears, manifest destiny and forced labor.

Under British colonialism, most Indians were materially setback, while tens of millions starved from exorbitant taxes, rent and the expropriation of commodities. Similar irreparably negative consequences are evidenced under US colonialism in the Dominican Republic, Cuba, the Philippines, Grenada, Puerto Rico and Guam.

Moreover, the reality is that the few lauded things we have in America, freedom of speech (of sorts), opulence (for some), etc., were fought for tooth and nail by oppressed people and American workers. Indeed, many of us would not be at this university if not for the deaths of socialist fighting for better wages and social security.

At every step we have seen a minority, parasitic class in this country, attempting to repress and impoverish the people as much as possible, while benefiting from their labor. And it has only been through the resistance of the oppressed and working majority against these parasites, that the people have been able to get back even a portion of that wealth and luxury which they created!

Now, with a Republican majority in Congress, despite the fact that 65% of people think a Republican-controlled Congress is harmful, the onus is once again on the people to beat back the Right’s attack, and pose an alternative to the ‘play dead’ tactics of the Democrats.

If you are interested in discussing strategies, tactics or ideas concerning the fight against racism, sexism and homophobia, within the context of a Republican ‘mandate,’ come to the next meeting of the International Socialist Organization, Wednesday, 11/20, at 7:30pm in Lafayette 100, UVM.