https://iclfi.org/spartacist/en/69/bt
In a 13 January 2024 statement distributed at the ICL debate with the League for the Fourth International (LFI) in New York, the Bolshevik Tendency (BT) challenged us to retract slanders leveled by our tendency against their organization, pointing to these examples:
“The whole tone of the BT recalls nothing so much as the insinuating style associated with the FBI’s infamous COINTELPRO.”
—Workers Vanguard No. 428, 15 May 1987
“As for the BT’s own political positions, besides hatred of the Soviet Union, these highly dubious provocateurs appear to dislike American blacks, are solicitous of Zionism and praise the [indiscriminate] mass killings of Americans. Of the state agencies in the world, only the Mossad, the Israeli secret police, has similar appetites.”
—Trotskyism: What It Isn’t and What It Is! (February 1990)
In fact, as early as the 1987 article cited above, which was titled “Garbage Doesn’t Walk By Itself—What Makes BT Run?”, we insinuated that the “sinister” BT was backed by capitalist state agencies while offering not a shred of proof to back this up. The ICL retracts that slander and all others of the same ilk. This destructive practice served to silence criticism, harden organizational divisions on the left and damage both the BT and our own membership.
The ICL’s mudslinging reflected political disorientation and an inability in certain instances to answer the BT’s criticisms. In contrast, our recent approach has been to engage the BT and the International Bolshevik Tendency in clarifying programmatic debate. We believe that we have shown that they, like the LFI, are stuck in sterility and dogmatism, with no answers as to what constitutes the tasks for revolutionaries today. Slander is poison to such necessary debate and discussion, and is contrary to the tradition on which our organization was built.
