Reflecting on the forty years since the Russian Revolution that the American government has been vilifying socialism as a conspiracy against the United States. In spite of a temporary alliance during the Second World War, the United States proceeded immediately after the war to promote a program of containment of socialism that has lead to numerous conflicts abroad like the Korean War as well as the suppression of domestic socialism that has lead to witch hunts and the curtailing of civil rights for all. Meanwhile, African Americans, who had experienced a decrease in segregation int he fighting of World War II, have begun to vocally demand expanded rights in education, labor opportunities and voting. The United States faces the dilemma of the contradiction of publicly extolling the virtues of American democracy abroad when African Americans are widely disenfranchised. Du Bois sees the expansion of socialism as inevitable, and desires that African Americans have the ability to participate in these efforts. He enumerates several rights that African Americans must demand, including the right to learn about socialism, to travel the world, to protest racism, and to vote for third parties to break the hold of a two-party system that benefits business interests while "neglecting education, science and moral decency."
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