Historian Victoria Bynum, author of The Long Shadow of the Civil War: Southern Dissent and Its Legacies (University of North Carolina Press, 2010), The Free State of Jones: Mississippi’s Longest Civil War (University of North Carolina Press, 2001) and Unruly Women: The Politics of Social and Sexual Control in the Old South (University of North Carolina Press, 1992), issued the following statement demanding the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) repudiate and apologize for the leadership’s coordinated celebration of the assassination of Leon Trotsky and discipline those responsible.

On May 18, the WSWS posted a report detailing the highly coordinated character of this campaign. On May 22, WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North issued an open letter to DSA National Director Maria Svart demanding the organization repudiate this campaign. The open letter has not been answered.

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Dear Maria Svart,

In hopes of seeing class issues addressed on Twitter, I began following both the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) some time ago. In truth, it now seems, the DSA merely provides cynical cover for the decrepit Democratic Party. Nothing made that clearer than a number of its members’ recent jokes about the brutal murder of socialist leader, Leon Trotsky, a true revolutionary advocate for the working class. How could the leaders of your organization tolerate such behavior from within? At the very least, those members should be punished, and an apology rendered to readers who have a right to expect better from an organization that calls itself “Socialist.”

Sincerely,
Vikki Bynum