Speech by Comrade Anlin Wang member of DSA , on the First Day of the Zenko Conference – July 26, 2025, Sagamihara in Japan
Good afternoon,
I am honored at the invitation to join and be here among comrades in Japan, thank you to ZENKO and Movement for Democratic Socialism for organizing. I am a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, DSA, a socialist organization in the United States. The reasons for our meeting today come from the crises that unite us. I will speak today about two of them, genocide in Palestine, and looming war in the Pacific. People of conscience around the world, across all range of political, identity, and social backgrounds, all stand against genocide and with Palestine. As the US ruling class has shown itself to be willing to harm even their core interests to advance the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, we must consider that they may be willing to do the same over the Pacific Ocean as well. In this light, it has become even more essential and urgent for us to unite around the globe.
While this current genocide in Palestine was initiated under the previous Biden administration, the new Trump White House has become even more brutal, repressive, and willing to sacrifice long term ruling class interests to satisfy immediate ideological pursuits, in particular prioritizing stamping out dissent and opposition to its goals not just in the United States, but everywhere across the world, even going so far as to sanction the ICC. Previous US administrations paid lip service to supporting human rights and civil liberties, this administration is explicit that their only goals are to extract wealth and resources from anybody and everybody in service of enriching the Trump-supporting US ruling class, and to reshape US society towards an explicit white supremacist hierarchy.
Only in that context do the Trump administration’s actions make sense. Deporting immigrants and students en masse does nothing positive for the US working class, while even restricting the low wage labor pool for the US business class. Signing a trade deal with Japan for $500 billion dollars in investment, while announcing an exaggerated false number of $550 billion dollars in investment, does nothing to actually compel Japan to invest another $50 billion, but the deliberate disrespect and bullying serves the administration’s goal of appearing to be able to “boss other countries around.”
Unsurprisingly, as the largest socialist organization in the United States, DSA is a target for the Trump administration’s crackdowns on dissent, support for Palestine, and immigrants. Withholding critical research funding from universities to demand they suppress student organizing is a direct attack on DSA student organizing. More directly, the Trump administration and Republican Party representatives have even publicly threatened the deportation of one of our members running for Mayor of New York City, State Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani.
Comrade Zohran Mamdani recently won the primary election to serve as the Democratic Party nominee for Mayor of New York City. This is an historic achievement for DSA, but also speaks to the crises that bring us here today. For all the domestic and global repression by the US to advance the genocide in Palestine, Mamdani’s election represents a gaping crack in the US ruling class’s armor of bravado. Comrade Mamdani is a proud anti-zionist who comes from a family tradition of anti-colonial organizers, and continued this tradition as State Assembly Member, where he introduced a bill to end public funding for Israeli settler organizations. Traditional mainstream political thought in the US was that such anti-zionism could never win a majority of New York voters. But not only did Mamdani win the Democratic primary by a large margin in the face of non-stop mainstream smears of antisemitism, a majority of Jewish Democrats voted for him as well.
This result is not only the outcome of the current livestreamed genocide, but also a stepping stone built upon years of hard campaigning from the grassroots. It’s the result of students campaigning to stop school cafeteria purchases of Israeli produced hummus, sit-ins to disrupt the operations of weapons suppliers, municipal government resolutions to denounce apartheid, many of which were led or supported by DSA chapters. What started as small meetings 10 years ago have resulted in real material gains today. Recently, our Denver chapter announced that after months of campaigning, the biggest marathon race in Colorado dropped Chevron as a sponsor over their support for Israel. Just last year, I’m proud to say our Austin Texas chapter successfully campaigned for an artist boycott of the South by Southwest conference to demand they drop the US military as a sponsor.
The US ruling class will continue to posture that Americans support Israel, but they know they cannot escape the reality that the people stand against genocide. In response, the Trump and Israeli regimes are now accelerating the genocide of Palestine to try and complete the ethnic cleansing project before it’s too late for them, making our uniting and collaborating even more urgent than ever before. To that end, DSA commends the efforts of our ZENKO comrades in campaigning for FANUC to cease its supplying components in the Israeli military’s supply chain, I look forward to discussing how we can be of support from the US as well, perhaps reaching out to FANUC clients in the US.
But what’s happening in Palestine is inextricably connected with our struggle for peace in the Pacific as well. Colombian President Gustavo Petro said last year, “The EU, the UK… the US, they all support dropping bombs on people because they want to teach a lesson to the entirety of humanity. They are telling us: Look at our military power. What happens to Palestine can happen to any of you if you dare to make changes without our permission.”
As the US escalates its drive for war in the Pacific, likely over Taiwan or North Korea, we must do everything in our power to stop this incoming atrocity. We must not fall into the trap of believing that simply because a war with China hurts the US, that this can safeguard us from the threat of another US war in the Pacific. Previously, US analysts mostly believed the US would never go to war with Iran, but this current administration has proven willing to sacrifice our global reputation and its long term interests just to try and suppress any deviations from its current ideological lines. In that context, we must consider the likely possibility of future US war with China, especially as the US continues escalating the militarization of the Pacific in preparation for war.
Japan is especially crucial to US war aims. Across dozens of US military and think tank war game simulations of US war with China over Taiwan, the only scenarios in which the US “wins” such a war are where Japan directly joins the war efforts against China, so the Trump administration is sure to attempt to strongarm and bully Japan into once again bringing the Japanese people into military conflict with China. But this time, China is much more prepared and militarily powerful, with missile response capability able to reach as far as Guam, to say nothing of the Japanese archipelago.
For these reasons, DSA is deeply grateful to MDS and ZENKO for collaborating to oppose the further US militarization of Okinawa, but as the US drive for war grows, so must our efforts as well. This year, I hope we can form a US civil society coalition against further US militarization of Okinawa and the Japanese mainland with support from the ZENKO Henoko Anti Base Project (ZHAP) to identify federal legislators and political champions to do whatever it takes to stop more military violence from not just Japan, but the entire Pacific. Our people have suffered enough through WWII, we can never afford to repeat the same mistakes, the costs are too high.
This makes ZENKO’s project to form international solidarity among peace lovers and working class people of paramount importance to the world. MDS has taken a leading role in this project, and for reason we in DSA hope to see MDS, our partner organization in Japan fighting for democratic socialism, grow so that this work and the political reach of democratic socialism can continue to spread. Only together can we build a stronger, more united movement for peace and socialism across both Japan and the US.
To our Japanese comrades in the audience, if you are not already a member of MDS, please join them so we can join hands in solidarity together across the world.
You can join Movement for Democratic Socialism at http://www.mdsweb.jp/n/membership
Thank you.