by the Permanent Revolution Editorial Board
We
beg our readers’ indulgence concerning the lengthy polemical exchange that has
erupted between Permanent Revolution
and the World Socialist Web Site. The ICFI (full name: International Committee
for the Fourth International), which publishes the WSWS, is well known for both
its bulldog tenacity and its loose approach to the facts, not to mention its
paranoid worldview. So it’s hard not to
get dragged into the ICFI labyrinth.
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| Gerry Healy, who falsely accused David North of being a "CIA agent". |
In
the past couple of weeks we have been bombarded with several iterations of
increasingly bizarre conspiracy theories in response to the fact that we mistakenly
published a letter alleging a security lapse on the part of the ICFI. When we learned that the information we
published was false, we immediately took down the letter and issued an apology. Ever since, the WSWS has been
tossing accusations our way, escalating the level of slander with each
iteration, while at the same time hiding some very significant facts from their
readers.
It’s
worth pointing out that the website’s latest contribution, “Alex Steiner’s tangled web of
political deceit,”
contains an important admission with regard to Dan Reznik, the ex-ICFI
associate who triggered the controversy by accusing the International Committee
of a major security lapse concerning Bogdan Syrotiuk, the Trotskyist who is
currently on trial on entirely spurious charges of “high treason” to the
Ukrainian state.
The admission concerns the ICFI
accuser’s political identity. As we
noted on Feb. 7 (“Scurrilous libel from the WSWS”), we now believe that Reznik was
spreading false tales because he had been left “demoralized like so many others have
been over the years after falling foul of the ICFI leadership” and was therefore
taking revenge. Since we know how the
ICFI chews such people up and spits them out, we believe that was the case in this instance as
well. It is still our best understanding
of how this incident arose.
But now, after nearly two weeks of silence, WSWS has finally come
up with its own explanation for Reznik’s behavior. Rather than someone who was angry and upset,
it now seems that he was “an agent-provocateur, who most
likely was working on behalf of the Ukrainian state.”
The WSWS elaborates:
Reznik is an agent provocateur, adopting
and deleting identities in accordance with whatever operation he is engaged in.
In 2022 he wrote to the WSWS, declaring
full support for the ICFI and offering to translate articles into
Serbo-Croat. There are many individuals
who contact the WSWS and offer assistance for translations. As is now evident, Reznik,’ aka Daniel
Bukvasevic, was attempting to infiltrate the ICFI. His activities serve as a warning of the need
for vigilance against the activities of state agents. Reznik was
unsuccessful. He was never a member of a
section of the International Committee or any party organization. Reznik never held a personal meeting with a
single party member. His association
with the party was limited to occasional online discussions and the exchange of
emails.
This account is a significant distortion. As we noted on Feb. 7, Reznik, used the
handle “@DanReznikWSWS,” published voluminously on Twitter/X and contributed
regularly to the r/Trotskyism Reddit
page. We published a screenshot of his
Reddit page in which he identifies himself as a “a member of the International
Committee for the Fourth International” and lists more than 1,300 posts. Yet not only did the ICFI make no attempt to
correct what it now says is a misrepresentation, but prominent members regularly “liked” and re-tweeted his
posts. The ICFI gave every impression
that he was an active and prominent member of the organization.
But now the long-time ICFI internet warrior turns out to be a
Ukrainian agent. The WSWS says it sensed
something was amiss when Reznik tweeted in support of a
Stalinist assassination of a Croat nationalist writer in 1978. “The ICFI was attentive to
signs of Reznik’s political instability,” its latest article declares.
Therefore, Alex Lantier, a leader of the
ICFI’s French section, wrote to Reznik demanding that he take the tweet down. According to the WSWS, Lantier wrote:
This tweet is not Trotskyist. The Trotskyist perspective for the
‘extinction’ of the nation-state system is a world socialist revolution by the
international working class. It is not
for the physical extermination of everyone who, at one or other point in time,
supports the nation-state system or his or her nation-state. Nor do Trotskyists outsource the political
struggle against nationalism to the murderers in the Stalinist intelligence
services, which were staffed by virulent nationalists. If you have any question about this, you can
read Stalin’s Gangsters by Trotsky.
Lantier added that he was “concerned about you tweeting what will
be seen as an endorsement of the Stalinist assassination of a literary figure”
and for that reason “insisted that Reznik delete his tweet.”
But that was in October. While accusing him of a political blunder,
Lantier said nothing about Reznik serving as an agent-provocateur on behalf of
the Ukrainian state for the better part of two years. There is nothing
in the WSWS
account indicating the slightest suspicion in this regard.
The ICFI allowed itself to be
duped. Unlike David North and his
collaborators, we are not in the habit of tossing about charges of bourgeois
intelligence activities without proper evidence. But if the WSWS’s suspicions are correct,
then, by its own standards, it is guilty of a significant security lapse. From early 2022 until October 2024, it
entered into an active relationship with a hostile agent. It promoted his internet posts, supported his
views, and allowed him to pass himself off as a bona fide member – even though
they now say that he was an enemy agent
attempting to penetrate its ranks.
To be sure, Reznik misled us
as well. But where we have taken
responsibility, the WSWS has not. Rather
than conducting a thorough inquiry into how it supposedly fell victim to a
hostile intelligence operation, it has sought to minimize and conceal its
role. This is yet another example of
the ICFI school of historical falsification that has made the ICFI a byword for
mendacity in international socialist ranks.
The ICFI engages in other distortions
that, while less serious, are still worthy of attention.
Alex Steiner, a member of the Permanent
Revolution editorial board, stated in his original article that he emailed
David North twice seeking a comment on Reznik’s allegations prior to
publication. On Feb. 4, the WSWS accused
Steiner of lying on the grounds that no email was ever sent. “The WSWS has conducted a search
of all its email addresses, as well as those of David North,” it declared. “No such letter was received.”
But now it says Steiner was merely
guilty of using an email address that was out of date: “The
email address used by North is not located on the WSWS server. Due to technical problems, North ceased using
it well over a year ago.” So did the
website conduct a search of all its
email addresses as it originally stated or not?
After two weeks of saying that it did, it now appears that it did not.
The latest
WSWS article further states that Steiner “received what he claims to have been
an anonymous communication ... on December 17,” but then goes on to say that it
was “not an anonymous communication” because “[i]t bears the name
“danielbukvasevic” and the email address danielbukvasevic@proton.me.” But all Steiner said was that he received an unsolicited letter from someone “who wished to remain
anonymous.” So what is the point?
Indeed, a WSWS contact form that North helpfully reproduces
in his latest article assures individuals writing to the website that “[w]e
will protect your anonymity.” North
seems to be confused about the difference between an anonymous letter and one
written by someone wishing to have his or her name withheld.
The article goes on to make other bizarre accusations. It
would be a fool’s errand to deal with all of them. But to cite one example, the author of the article – likely David North
himself – states that Steiner was lying when saying that he had no previous acquaintance
with the author of the letter - that Steiner must have had a long-standing relationship
of “familiarity” with the letter-writer because the person addressing Steiner
wrote “Dear Alex” in the salutation portion of an email. Needless to say even a six-year-old can
unravel the stupidity of such an inference.
Elsewhere North says of Sam Tissot that he “was expelled from
the French section of the ICFI last year for refusing to respect the
confidentiality of internal party communications.” But as Tissot made clear on this
website last September, in the official account provided by the ICFI
at the time, he was expelled for “denying the historical continuity of Trotskyism,”. In fact
he was actually expelled for doing nothing more than raising questions within
the leadership of the French section about policies and practices of the ICFI
and asking for a discussion on those issues. So this claim from North is false
as well.
The WSWS
article concludes with a 630-word disquisition on the
“major investigation” that the ICFI has conducted since 1975
concerning,
…the
death of its founder Leon Trotsky in 1940, the infiltration of his household by
agents of the GPU, and the subsequent infiltration of the Trotskyist movement
and in particular the American Socialist Workers Party, by agents of
imperialism.
The investigation has already
produced irrefutable evidence of such infiltration,
the article adds.
Bravo!
But then how come they could not
discover that someone who was publicly representing them for over two years was
in fact, according to them, “an agent-provocateur,
who most likely was working on behalf of the Ukrainian state”?
And why did they hide this
information for more than two weeks after we made public the identity of Dan
Reznik?
And why do they even now try to whitewash
his past deep involvement with the ICFI?
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