William Z. Foster: THE DEEPENING of the crisis and the growing revolutionization of the masses is accompanied by a strong development of radical phrase-mongering on the part of many groups of open and covert defenders of capitalism. This demagogy is part of the capitalist offensive against the workers. Its aim is to delude the workers with promises of drastic relief, while at the same time holding them tied in practical policy to the basic capitalist program of exploitation. It is a means to prevent the masses from following the leadership of the Communists. Of such demagogues the Fascists are outstanding examples. Before Mussolini seized power his program was extremely “radical,” containing demands for a republic, suppression of all chambers of commerce and stock companies, confiscation of church properties, nationalization of the war industries, etc., all of which he completely repudiated in practice. At the present time Hitler is trying to carry out the same Mussolini strategy, to deceive the German masses with pretenses of radicalism as a screen for the naked capitalist dictatorship and exploitation he has in store for them. The new-found radicalism of the Roosevelts, Pinchots, LaFollettes, Murphys, Father Coxes, etc., is of essentially the same stripe in this country, so much empty demagogy to win a mass following of the discontented. The Social Fascists are still more dangerous masters at this demagogic art. As we have seen they have, under pretense of fighting for Socialism, backed up every plan that capitalism has put forward for saving itself and more intensely exploiting the toilers. Under the fig-leaf of Socialism they supported the World War, the Versailles Treaty, the Dawes and Young Plans, the Kellogg Pact, the Chinese butcher, Chang Kai Shek, and the Indian faker, Gandhi. Even as these lines are being written, they are working together with the Spanish coalition government to shoot down the heroic revolt of the Spanish workers, (Daily Worker, Jan. 23, 1932). Nor are the Greens and Wolls anything lacking in demagogic ability, with their blather about the 5-hour day, their vague talk of “revolution if something is not done,” etc. But the most insidious and dangerous to the workers of all this crop of demagogues are the so-called “left” Social Fascists. The substance of their activities is, while giving practical support to the right Social Fascists, to criticize them in the name of the revolution. They are the radical phrase-mongers par excellence. Their objective task is the confusion of the most advanced elements of the workers and therefore the breaking up of serious movements against the capitalists and their reactionary labor henchmen. Throughout the Second International there are such groupings, including the Maxtonites in Great Britain, the “left” Social Democrats in Germany, the various renegade Communist grouplets, etc. Trotzky belongs to this general category. The harm of such elements is typically illustrated by Trotzky’s present denial of an immediate war danger between Japan and the U.S.S.R., while at the same time he poses as an ultra-revolutionist. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote4760