Why do we call them goons?

Workers all over the world have names for the people who do the bosses’ dirty work. In the US for example we call people who cross picket lines during strikes scabs.

Why do we call them scabs? Scabs have one-track minds - all they think about is how to promote themselves. They have no scruples. They’ll take your job and reap the pay and benefits that took decades of union struggle to win, destroying the union in the process. Honest, hard-working people can’t talk any sense with scabs. The only way we can act toward them is with vengeance. If we treat them with kindness they multiply like vermin. We have to ostracize them. Calling them scabs is a proven effective way to discourage the spread of scabbery.

Similarly we call the police pigs. We call them pigs because they beat and shoot our working class brothers and sisters for no justifiable reasons. By calling them pigs we are ostracizing them. We want them to know that we don’t approve of their brutality.

Ostracizing the traitors and enemies of the working class by calling them derogatory names can serve as a powerful political lever, particularly when the use of the names become widespread. To be clear here, we’re not talking about name-calling for the sake of revenge or entertainment; we’re talking about the use of derogatory names as a means to persuade our political enemies and class traitors to stop their assault against working people.

Of course they have names for us. But their reasons for calling us names have nothing to do with social and economic justice. They call us names to oppress us, to divide us as a class along skin color, ethnicity, religion, gender, creed, class, etc. lines. In short they call us names to keep us in chains as wage slaves while we call them names in our struggle against wage slavery. This is the main difference between our use of derogatory names and theirs.

Consider the names that US troops call the people they slaughter. They call Koreans and Vietnamese people “gooks”. They call Iraqis “rag heads”. They call people of color such names to dehumanize them so they can slaughter them without feeling any remorse.

Would it not be appropriate to call these stone cold killers a name that fits their character?

Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines the word goon as: 1) a stupid person; 2) a man hired to terrorize or eliminate opponents.

Goon is a befitting name for the US troops, especially in these times. Yanqui goons are the world’s biggest thugs. And it goes without being said that they are stupid. They join the military to promote themselves, i.e., a career, college, learn some skills, etc. No body forces them to join. The so-called poverty draft is a lame excuse that was dreamed up by goon sympathizers.

Even if yanqui goons were “forced to join” nobody forced them to go to Iraq and Afghanistan to participate in the illegal occupations of those countries and murder, rape, torture, maim, rob and displace hundreds of thousands of people. Nobody forced them to have such a rotten conscience.

Yanqui goons are like scabs and pigs. They are like pigs because they kill poor people of color without remorse, but on a much bigger scale. They are like scabs except that instead of crossing picket lines to take workers’ jobs they cross international borders to take workers’ lives. Actually, what am I saying? They are worse than scabs and pigs.

Imagine holding up a sign on a picket line during a strike that reads: “Support Our Scabs”. Or imagine holding up a sign at an anti-police brutality demonstration that reads: “Support Our Pigs”. It’s preposterous, yet there are those who call themselves anti-war activists, who do just that for the yanqui goons - with signs that read: “Support Our Troops”.

Worse than scabs and worse than pigs, the only people who outdo yanqui goons are the rich pig rulers of the US. Should we treat yanqui goons as blameless victims as many in the anti-war movement would have it? Are scabs blameless victims? Are the police who shoot our working class brothers and sisters for fun blameless victims?

We call them goons because that’s what they are. If they decide to resist, disobey orders, rebel, etc, i.e., if they start acting like human beings then we should treat them as such.

To treat them as blameless victims, as they willingly murder their way about in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, is a tremendous injustice toward our working class brothers and sisters of the third world, who are the real victims of US imperialist aggression.

Such “peace activists” are but a tool of yanqui imperialism. History will judge them as it did the “Good Germans”. No unconditional support for yanqui goons. Call a scab a scab, a pig a pig, a goon a goon and military resister a human being!