Today in Labor History November 16, 1938: José Saramago was born. He was a Portuguese libertarian communist, novelist, and winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature for his "parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony [with which he] continually enables us once again to apprehend an illusory reality." He criticized the Catholic Church, the European Union, the IMF, and other oppressive institutions. He joined the Portuguese Communist Party in 1969, when the country was still under a fascist dictatorship, and remained a member throughout his life. In 2002, during the 2nd Intifada, he visited Ramallah and wrote critically of the Israeli government, saying that "what is happening in Palestine is a crime we can put on the same plane as what happened at Auschwitz.” Not surprisingly, he was pilloried by Zionists as being antisemitic.

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