Leon Trotsky, born Len Bronstein, in Bereslavka, Ukraine in 1879, was, like several other Comrades of Vladimir Lenin, a Jew. After the Revolution Trotsky organized the Red Army. While Jewish, he was an anti-nationalist and an anti-Zionist.

When Lenin died Joseph Stalin took power and subsequently forced Trotsky into exile. In 1940, Ramon Mercader, a Spanish Communist and an agent of the Soviet NKVD, tracked Trotsky down in Mexico City, Mexico and brutally murdered him; stabbing him over and over with an ice pick.

If Trotsky had been a Zionist and had gone to the land of Israel, with or without Lenin’s blessing, he could have helped Ben Gurion, a Socialist Zionist, organize the Histadrut labor coalition, the Mapai political party, and the Haganah, the Jewish self-defense forces. He could have helped fight off Arab terrorists and British colonial occupation forces. He could have fought the Nazis within the Jewish Brigade in Europe, and subsequently fought against the armies of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria in 1948.

While Stalin may have wanted Trotsky dead he would have been out of reach in the Land of Israel, both during the period of British Mandate rule and after Israel declared independence. Trotsky would also have been valuable as a potential Soviet ally in a British colony in the Middle East and, after independence, in the Jewish state.

While the British too may have wanted him dead or out of the way they would have had to arrest him first and put him on trial. Trotsky’s incarceration by the British would have inspired Zionists from the Socialists of Mapai led by Ben Gurion and Golda Meir to the revisionists of Betar led by Ze’ev Jabotinsky and Menahem Begin to free him or exact revenge.

Trotsky might have rotted in a British prison, been killed in action in WW II or the Israeli war of independence. Although at 61 in 1940 and 69 in 1947 it is more likely that he would have lived out his days on a Kibbutz.

Regardless of which of the above had been his fate, he would have gone down in history as a Zionist pioneer. Instead he was a Marxist revolutionary who was brutally murdered at 61 on orders of his former comrade and yet somehow managed to inspire tens of thousands of members in the hundreds of Trotskyite “Fourth International” networks.

Stalin also killed eight other prominent Jewish Bolsheviks in the Trial of 16 in August 1936: Lev Kimenev, Grigory Zinoviev, Isak Reingold, Eduard Holtzman, Ilya-David Krugljanski, Moussei Lurye, and Kenan Berman-Yurin.

Hold that thought.

In Iran in the 1970’s communists and other leftists joined with Islamists led by Ayatollah Khomenie to topple the Shah and declare the “Islamic Republic of Iran.” Upon taking power the Islamists murdered the communists and the leftists and have ruthlessly and mercilessly suppressed women, gays, Kurds, others. To be fair, had they taken power, the communists may also have murdered the Islamists.

So Progressives,

Especially Progressive Jews, gays, and women, here’s the question:

In supporting AOC, el Sayed, Mamdani and others are you following Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, and all the Jews killed by the Soviets to your deaths at the hands of a Stalin or a Khomenie?