SIRATYST (Stuff I Read and Thought You Should Too) --
“To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.”
(Calgacus, as quoted by Tacitus, Agricola 30-31)"
The second and fourth tracks, “Two Suns in the Sunset” and “The Gunner’s Dream” are from the 1983 Pink Floyd album The Final Cut, one of the most powerful antiwar rock music albums ever produced. The first of these contemplates the end of the world with a sunset in the west while another fire ball is illuminating the sky in the east, as Waters sings, “Two suns in the sunset / Could be the human race is run.”
The second of these two numbers has Waters playing piano and telling the story of the thoughts of a World War II airman gunner as he is falling to his death after having been shot down. Like Martin Luther King Jr., the gunner repeats “I had a dream, I had a dream,” and then he offers a vision of the possible future of society:
A place to stay, enough to eat Somewhere, old heroes shuffle safely down the street Where you can speak out loud about your doubts and fears And what’s more, no one ever disappears You never hear their standard issue kicking in your door You can relax on both sides of the tracks And maniacs don’t blow holes in bandsmen by remote control And everyone has recourse to the law And no one kills the children anymore No one kills the children anymore
Writing about the original recording on the 30th anniversary of The Final Cut’s release in 2013, Rachel Mann of The Quietus commented that “The Gunner’s Dream” was the “centrepiece of the album.” Mann observed that the track “tenderly imagines the lost hopes and expectations of a bomber gunner shot down and falling to his death over Berlin” and that “Waters’ voice is beautifully matched to words whose understatement adds to the power.” This “beautiful match” is even more pronounced on the new version.
The massive surge across the southern border, with more than 2.4 million immigrants detained by the US authorities over the past two years, is due to the heightened crisis of world capitalism, not to any warmer welcome from Biden compared to Trump.
Worsening poverty and oppression in Central America and Haiti, oppressed and exploited for more than a century by American imperialism, are major driving forces. An additional factor this year is a huge influx of refugees from Venezuela and now Nicaragua, under the impact of US economic sanctions which have targeted the two regimes (and which do not have repatriation agreements with Washington, a legal requirement for using Title 42 against asylum seekers).
The same factors are at work in Europe, where refugees from Africa and the Middle East, fleeing imperialist wars and the resulting collapse of entire societies, are seeking refuge. These include millions from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and other countries targeted by American bombs and missiles and US or US-proxy troops, along with similar victims of British and French imperialism.
In the United States, Republican state governors are exploiting the border crisis, seeking to whip up fear and hatred of immigrants as part of the further shift of the Republican Party in the direction of fascism. They are exploiting the border crisis both to undermine the Biden administration politically and to assert the authority of their states in a way that flagrantly challenges the US Constitution, under which border policy and its enforcement are reserved for the federal government.
"This post was unpublished because it violates Blogger Community Guidelines. To republish, please update the content to adhere to guidelines."
The post they "unpublished" was one about Gloria Steinem discussing her association with the Central Intelligence Agency. In case you weren't aware of this association, I suggest you google it and find out about it.
I do believe we should all be on the lookout for more and more of this as the U.S. government has more and more to cover up and deflect from.
Be skeptical. Read WSWS.org for evidence-based coverage of the world.
I’ve also come to the conclusion that we will not successfully mitigate science denial of the sort that has resulted in millions of potentially avoidable deaths from COVID-19 until we are able to understand conspiracy theories and develop effective strategies for countering them because, even if you do not accept the proposition that all science denial is a form of conspiracy theory, it is without a doubt true that all science denial relies at least in part on conspiracy theories to support it. As we’ve seen in the COVID-19 pandemic, the conspiracy theory of science denial can have deadly consequences, consequences that, once the pandemic finally abates, will become apparent as the earth’s climate continues to warm due to human activity.
"[A] toll many would have considered inconceivable in the modern era"
What was inconceivable is that global public health institutions, including WHO and CDC (at the behest of their capitalist overlords) would deceive the earth's population about the fact that COVID-19 was spread through aerosol emission. And that most (eventually all) global governments would adopt herd immunity as the solution, another deadly mistake. See the fatal results below.
WSWS.org has made the case for zero covid since the very beginning of the pandemic. Public health under capitalism is an oxymoron. Help build a socialist response to the pandemics abounding now: never-ending COVID, never-ending imperial wars, never-ending budding of fascism... Read WSWS.org and join the Socialist Equality Party.
The leading representatives of world capitalism—the heads of the World Bank (WB), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Trade Organization (WTO)—have assembled in China this week for their “1+6 summit,” where the CCP has officially pledged that China is reopening for business and will no longer impose lockdowns or other public health measures to stop the spread of COVID-19.
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The Western media presents the lifting of Zero-COVID in China as a response to recent anti-lockdown protests, which were centered among layers of the affluent middle class at universities. The CCP, the Western propagandists claim, frightened by the specter of mass opposition to its deeply unpopular COVID-19 policy, is at long last lifting its draconian controls. Not a word of this narrative is true.
A survey conducted in Shanghai in October and November and published by the China Data Lab at UC San Diego found that only 11.9 percent of the population favored “large-scale adjustment” of the country’s Zero-COVID policy. More than twice this number, 24.4 percent, stated that Zero-COVID “must be upheld without adjustment.” The majority of those surveyed, 58.5 percent, stated that Zero-COVID needed “adjustment on specifics” but did not call for “large-scale adjustment.” The policy of Zero-COVID retains immense popular support, and fully 83 percent of those surveyed want it to be continued.
The fact that the China Data Lab survey was conducted in Shanghai is particularly significant. A city of 25 million people, economically vital and with a mass working class population, Shanghai lived through multiple extended lockdowns over the past two and half years. If one believed the accounts in the Western media, no city would have more widespread anti-Zero-COVID sentiment than Shanghai. Yet when popular opinion is scientifically surveyed, one finds overwhelming support for the continuation of the necessary public health measures to prevent the spread of the pandemic.
The protests cited by the Western media were small, numbering in the hundreds in a nation of 1.4 billion people, and based almost exclusively among upper middle class students at the country’s elite universities. The protests were staged not with an eye not to rousing the sentiment of the broad Chinese population but to providing photo ops for Western journalists. The protesters issued invitations to all the major international news outlets, who photographed the blank pieces of paper held up in the rallies and wrote ecstatic editorials on the birth of “freedom” in China.
As the WSWS has documented, the moves by the CCP to scrap Zero-COVID predate the protests. In the final analysis, the protests served the social function of legitimizing the policies adopted by the CCP, presenting the opening to the pandemic as an outgrowth of popular demand, as if the Chinese people were clamoring to be infected.
The demand for mass infection in China comes not from the Chinese people but from world capitalism. The Wall Street Journal wrote today that “disruptions to businesses [are] threatening the country’s status as the world’s factory floor.” Terry Guo, the founder of Foxconn Technology Group, the company responsible for the mass production of Apple’s iPhone in China and is now facing a shortage of workers in the Foxconn assembly plants, wrote a letter at the beginning of November to the CCP government warning that “strict COVID controls would threaten China’s central position in global supply chains.” Apple signaled that it was thinking of moving production elsewhere. There were similar rumblings from Samsung, Nike, Volkswagen and other major international firms.
China’s Zero-COVID policy saved millions of lives and prevented the virus from ravaging the country. It was not a top-down imposition on society, but the planned and coordinated mobilization of vast collective efforts. The Chinese people sacrificed and worked together to ensure the nation’s public health.
Indeed, some UAW locals with thousands of members saw turnout of 1 percent or less, while numerous other locals saw turnout of less than 10 percent.
According to the UAW Monitor, UAW Local 4123, with over 11,000 members at the California State University System, returned just 29 ballots—a turnout of just 0.26 percent. Lehman won 24 percent of the votes in this local.
UAW Local 4121, with approximately 9,000 members at the University of Washington, submitted just 72 ballots, a turnout of 0.8 percent. Lehman won 23 percent of the votes cast in this local.
UAW Local 5810 was sent 6,000 ballots to post-docs and academic researchers at the University of California system, where workers are currently on strike. The local reportedly returned just 328 ballots, a turnout of 5.5 percent. Lehman won 13 percent of votes cast in this local.
UAW Local 2865—also on strike—was sent 30,138 ballots but only 921 votes were cast. Lehman won 15 percent of this vote. There is no explanation for why only 36,000 ballots were sent to the 48,000 striking UC workers.
The number of ballots tallied by the Monitor fell by nearly 30 percent, by approximately 40,000 votes, compared to the national referendum last year, in which workers voted to implement direct elections. Roughly 143,000 members voted in the referendum.
On Tuesday, the Detroit News published a letter by United Auto Workers presidential candidate Will Lehman exposing the undemocratic character of the UAW’s first-ever membership vote for top union officers.
Published under the headline,“‘Democratic’ UAW election is really anything but,” the letter states that the UAW apparatus did as little as possible to inform workers about the election, leading to a turnout of only 10 percent of the eligible voters.
The full letter is reprinted below.
Will Lehman with Warren Stamping workers in August 2022 [Photo: WSWS]
The United Auto Workers (UAW) election ended this week, with a Monday deadline for ballots to be received by mail. This is the first direct leadership election in the history of the UAW, which up to now has had all its top officials appointed by the bureaucracy at its annual conventions.
A direct election is the result of corruption in the apparatus, with the union’s recent leadership thrown in jail and charged with accepting bribes.
Despite its unprecedented character, the way the election is being carried out is a travesty. Out of 1 million UAW members (workers and retirees), 900,000 (90 percent) have not voted. This is not because workers are apathetic, but because most workers don’t even know that there is an election. UAW leadership has done as little as possible to inform workers of their rights and ensure that they can vote.
This is why I filed a lawsuit last month in Detroit, at the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, asking for a 30-day extension to voting deadlines and for the court-appointed monitor to take measures to ensure that all UAW members are properly informed. As part of the lawsuit, I submitted affidavits from workers who said that they had not been notified about the election or did not receive a ballot.
In response, the UAW, the monitor and the Biden administration all lined up against extending the deadline. They all said they are not concerned about what the court itself called an “anemic” turnout. As far as they were concerned, the election was proceeding just as they intended.
Regrettably, the court evaded the central democratic issues and chose to dismiss my lawsuit on the narrowest technical grounds, claiming that since I personally had received a ballot, I did not have standing to file a complaint. This creates an impossible Catch-22 situation: Only workers who do not know about the election can file a lawsuit, but these workers would not file a lawsuit because they did not know about the election.
This rationale ignored my right, as well as the right of all workers in the UAW, to an election that is conducted in a democratic manner to ensure a leadership that represents the views of the entire membership.
One of the main arguments given by the UAW’s attorneys for opposing a delay is that it would undermine the Bargaining Convention in March, that the union needs “stability.” As a matter of fact, the blatantly undemocratic character of the election will leave union leadership without any credibility in the rank and file.
My campaign has been about workers on the shop floor. Workers all agree on is that current conditions of life are impossible. Prices are rising far beyond the minuscule wage increases negotiated by the UAW. Many of our coworkers have died from the pandemic. Meanwhile, corporate profits are skyrocketing and inequality gets worse and worse.
My campaign has won powerful support from rank-and-file workers who are looking for a way to advocate for themselves. And we will continue to do so.
Will Lehman, UAW 2022 presidential candidate, works at Mack Trucks in Macungie, Pennsylvania
Steven Rice captured an incredible sight in the Salish Sea Wednesday afternoon as a large group of endangered southern resident killer whales stunned onlookers on shore near Seattle.
Moments later, Rice captured the pod moving slowly alongside a paddleboarder. He says he’s never seen so many orcas in one spot for so long.
“It’s just amazing to see them so close together kind of slowly drifting, kind of like a raft or a slumber party for orcas, I guess,” the Seattle resident said.
And an even larger group has been spotted in the area recently. A ‘superpod,’ more than 70 whales from all three southern resident pods, was spotted hanging out for several days in central Puget Sound.
The lifting of Zero-COVID is a political question which confronts the entire world’s population. Allowing the virus to spread in this immunologically naive population could provide it with over 1 billion new hosts in which it could further mutate and spawn new variants. This reactionary policy change in China thus poses the need for workers internationally to renew their struggle against the policies of their own governments and to unify across national boundaries.
As the World Socialist Web Site has continuously stressed, the only way forward to stop the pandemic is for the international working class to take matters into its own hands and fight for a Zero-COVID global elimination strategy. This entails the simultaneous deployment of every public health measure available, as well as the modernization of infrastructure to ensure that every public space is free of harmful viruses and bacteria. The fight for this program is indissolubly connected to the fight for world socialism, based on the prioritization of human needs above private profit.
An Australian television program yesterday revealed advanced plans for the US to station B-52 bombers in northern Australia. The deployment of the nuclear-capable bombers, which are crucial to US strike capabilities, marks a significant escalation of the militarisation of Australia, the Indo-Pacific region and the world.
The target is clear. The representatives of pro-war think tanks who spoke on last night’s episode of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s “Four Corners” program, and those who have commented in the press since, have openly stated that the bombers are being dispatched to prepare for a war with China that would threaten a global nuclear catastrophe.
In other words, even as the US and its allies are continuously escalating their war with Russia over Ukraine, they are transforming the entire Indo-Pacific into a powder keg that could erupt at any point.
B-52 bomber flies over Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, South Korea. The US is preparing to deploy up to six nuclear-capable B-52 bombers in northern Australia. [AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon, File]
For the strategists of American imperialism, the war that is already underway against Russia is the necessary prelude to war against China, the chief threat to US global dominance. This was spelled out in the latest US National Security Strategy, released last month, which proclaimed a “decisive decade” of “geopolitical conflict between the major powers.” China, it stated, was “the only competitor with both the intent and, increasingly, the capability to reshape the international order,” something the US would combat with everything at its disposal.
The stationing of the bombers points to the disastrous implications of this program, driven by the long-term decline of American imperialism and the deepening crisis of the entire global capitalist system.
“Four Corners” revealed that the US is preparing to build a “squadron operations facility” at the Tindal air force base in northern Australia. It will include a vast hangar and logistical facilities that can equip six B-52 bombers, which will be rotated out of the facility, likely being based there during the tropical dry season. The US will construct jet fuel tanks at Tindal and an ammunition base. An Australian “upgrade” of the facility is expanding its runways and other capabilities.
Meanwhile, the US is building eleven giant jet fuel tanks in Darwin.
The US air force confirmed the plans, declaring: “The ability to deploy US Air Force bombers to Australia sends a strong message to adversaries about our ability to project lethal air power.”
“Four Corners” also reported a major expansion of the joint US-Australian Pine Gap facility in Central Australia. The military-intelligence facility plays a central role in the technical planning and waging of US military operations throughout Eurasia. The Nautilus Institute has found that the number of its super-powerful satellite antennas has increased from 33 in 2015 to 45 today. The quantitative expansion has been accompanied by the deployment of increasingly sophisticated equipment.
Becca Wasser, of the hawkish Centre for New American Security, told “Four Corners” that “having bombers that could range and potentially attack mainland China could be very important in sending a signal to China that any of its actions over Taiwan could also expand further.” She blithely declared that the deployment would ensure that Tindal and Darwin, with a population of 150,000 people, would inevitably be a target in any US war between China and Australia.
Greg Sheridan, foreign editor of the Murdoch-owned Australian newspaper, who has close ties to US and Australian military and intelligence circles, wrote this morning that the B-52 deployment heralded a “growing ‘pre-war’ environment,” adding: “The drumbeats of potential war are sounding across the world. This is not alarmist, it’s reality.”
Sheridan bluntly stated: “The B-52 bombers will have the ability to deliver powerful strategic strikes on Chinese bases and assets in the South China Sea, and indeed in the South Pacific should any ever be developed there. They could also fly from the Northern Territory to mainland China itself, unleash a payload and fly back.”
A Chinese spokesman warned this morning that the deployment was part of a broader US drive which “increased regional tensions, seriously undermined regional peace and stability, and may trigger a regional arms race.”
The dispatch of the fighters to northern Australia is part of a US program to diversify its strike capabilities and to align regional allies ever more closely with the war preparations. Northern Australia has been earmarked to play a particularly crucial role. Unlike the US base on Guam, where the B-52s are often located, Australia is out of reach of most conventional Chinese missiles, though not of its intercontinental ballistic missiles.
In justifying the deployment, various pro-war commentators and the “Four Corners” program itself have claimed that the dispatch of the B-52 bombers is a defensive response to the threat of a war triggered by a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
This, however, is a lie. It is the US that has deliberately transformed Taiwan into a major flashpoint of war. Successive US administrations have undermined the decades-long norm, under which the American government and the international community de facto recognised the Chinese Communist Party regime as the legitimate government of all China, including Taiwan. The US has greatly boosted its arms sales to Taipei, along with military trainers, stoked Taiwanese separatism and conducted one provocative diplomatic visit after another.
This has nothing to do with a newfound concern for “little Taiwan.” Instead, the territory, located just 160 kilometres off the Chinese mainland, is to play a parallel role to Ukraine that the US exploited to provoke war with Russia. The aim is to goad China into an invasion, which would be used as the pretext for open war waged by the US.
The militarisation of northern Australia gives the lie to the claims that the heightened US aggression is a response to the recent developments relating to Taiwan.
In 2011, the then Labor government signed on to the US “pivot to Asia,” a vast military build-up throughout the Asia-Pacific, directed against China. That included the establishment of a new US base in Darwin, which now hosts more than 2,000 marines and other measures integrating Australia into the US war machine.
Under the Pentagon’s “Air-Sea Battle” strategy, sketched out when the “pivot” was launched, Australia and its north is to play a decisive role as a “southern anchor” during war with China. It is to be a launching point for US and allied war planes and the staging ground for imposing a blockade of the key shipping routes in the region, which China is dependent upon for most of its raw materials and trade.
The deployment of the B-52s is a warning that these long-running plans are now being activated.
This, along with the entire US-led program of global war, takes the form of a conspiracy against the population. The plans to dispatch the B-52s have never been debated in the Australian parliament, much less publicly-announced. Instead, they have been hatched in closed-door discussions between the US and Australian governments, militaries and intelligence agencies. They were found by “Four Corners” in US tender documents.
In the case of the B-52s, this secrecy is particularly significant. While the aircraft and other nuclear-capable strikers have previously stopped over in Australia, they have never been based in that country, which is officially a non-nuclear state. Yet, the US, as a matter of policy, refuses to confirm or deny whether any of its nuclear-capable war planes and warships are carrying nuclear payloads.
In other words, Australia’s status as a non-nuclear state has effectively been overturned without any public discussion. Significantly, the project, which appears to have begun under the previous Liberal-National government, is being completed by the current Labor administration.
It is likewise pressing ahead with AUKUS, the militarist alliance with Britain and the US, unveiled in September 2021. Under the pact, Australia is acquiring nuclear-powered submarines and has also been earmarked as a launch site for new era hypersonic missiles.
This militarist program is conducted under a veil of secrecy, in Australia and internationally, because the governments know that workers and young people oppose war and want peace.
The advanced preparations for a conflict that could rapidly involve nuclear weapons demonstrates that this sentiment must be developed into a conscious political movement of the international working class, aimed at halting the catastrophe that capitalism is preparing. The basis for such a movement exists in the mass hostility to war and in the resurgence of the class struggle, in the US, Britain, Australia and around the world.
Supporters of my [Will Lehman'scampaign recently visited CNH workers on the picket lines in Burlington, Iowa, and spoke with them about the issues which have driven them to remain on strike for nearly six months. In September, I issued a statement calling on workers to mobilize in defense of the CNH strikers: https://www.willforuawpresident.org/s...
Maggie Fox: Welcome. I'm Maggie Fox, consulting editor to WebMD and Medscape. I'm here with Dr Eric Topol, editor-in-chief at Medscape. We're talking about long COVID, which affects at least 13% of people after they've been infected with COVID, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That adds up to millions of people who could be affected by severe fatigue, heart symptoms, brain symptoms (known commonly as brain fog), and a range of other problems.
There's no specific treatment, and it's not clear how long some of these people will be sick. Yet, Americans in general appear to have largely given up on protecting themselves from COVID. Dr Topol, I wanted to talk to you about that. Is that something people should be thinking about when they're deciding what their own risks are?
Eric J. Topol, MD:Well, first, Maggie, it's great to be with you, particularly on this important topic. Long COVID is not getting nearly enough regard of its importance and, as you mentioned, the lack of any treatment. It's a really vexing situation where we have millions of people, and we don't have anything to offer except supportive type things. The real issue here is that at the moment, we aren't doing enough to give the recognition to these people that this is a serious matter that we want to avoid.
The only way to avoid long COVID is to not get infected, or, if you've had COVID, to not get infected again because there's still risk even if you've had a prior infection. Why should you go all out to keep yourself protected? Because you don't want to get this, and the problem is that it's unpredictable.
It chiefly affects people with mild to moderate COVID. People in their 30s and 40s are the group that are showing up with these protracted symptoms. They can be quite debilitating. There's only one surefire way of preventing it, which is not getting infected. The vaccine and boosters provide some protection, but it's not entirely clear whether it's 50% (more or less). But there is some protection, and that's another reason to stay up with vaccines and boosters.
Donald Trump declared Sunday morning that American Jews should “get their act together” and provide him greater support than his current dismal standing in the polls among Jewish voters. The would-be dictator claimed that while he had been a staunch ally of Israel during his four years in the White House: “Our wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of this than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the US.”
This statement published on his Truth Social platform ended with the scarcely disguised warning that Jews should convert to the Trump camp “Before it is too late!” Prominent Jewish spokesmen in both Israel and the United States denounced what one called “a former US president using threatening language about American Jews at a time when antisemitism is on a global rise.”
Right-wing demonstrators walk into the entrance of Lee Park surrounded by counter demonstrators in Charlottesville, Va., Saturday, Aug. 12, 2017. (AP Photo/Steve Helber) [AP Photo]
Trump was speaking, not just for himself, but for the fascist elements who now dominate the Republican Party. Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene embraced the neo-Nazi “Great Replacement” theory at a recent pro-Trump rally in Arizona, condemning the Biden administration for alleged plans to “replace” white, Christian Americans with black and brown immigrants.
Doug Mastriano, candidate for governor of Pennsylvania, blasted his Democratic opponent, state attorney general Josh Shapiro, labelling him an elitist who had attended “privileged, exclusive, elite” schools and had “disdain for people like us.” The anti-Semitism was clear in context, since Shapiro attended a Hebrew Academy in the suburbs of Philadelphia, the Jewish counterpart of a Catholic high school.
These statements are just the crudest and most open in a much broader trend. Republican campaign ads and speeches in 2022 attack Jewish billionaire George Soros nearly as often as Joe Biden. Soros is a major financial supporter of the Democratic Party as well as an anticommunist who has funded “color revolutions” across Eastern Europe in conjunction with the State Department.
Republican candidates have long used the name of Soros, who escaped the Holocaust in Hungary as a child, as an anti-Semitic dog whistle. Among Republican-aligned white supremacist circles, the “Great Replacement” is presented as a Jewish conspiracy with Soros as its main backer. That was the premise of the neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017.
The rise of anti-Semitism in the United States is not limited to and cannot be explained solely by the increasingly fascistic politics of the Republican Party. The Democratic Party has participated in the redefinition of American politics and history largely in racial terms. While the Republicans seek to appeal to rural and suburban whites, the Democrats seek to combine racial minorities and sections of the white upper middle class, particularly women and gays, through identity politics.
The Democrats have sought in every way to suppress the consciousness of the common class interests of working people of every race, nationality and gender.
The Biden administration has been notably slow to condemn the remarks of Trump, Greene and Mastriano, among many others, waiting 24 hours after Trump’s online warning to “US Jews” before saying anything. And this was only in answer to a question asked of White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in the routine daily press briefing Monday. There was no public statement and Biden himself said nothing.
Even this muted opposition to anti-Semitism has an entirely hypocritical and opportunist character. The Democrats condemn the anti-Semitism of Trump, but cover it up when it serves their own purposes, particularly when it comes to US foreign policy, whose main focus is the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian government has elevated the Nazi collaborator and mass murderer Stepan Bandera to the level of a “founding father,” erecting monuments throughout the country. This is not just an ideological embrace; the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which marches with the icons of the Waffen SS, has been integrated into the Ukrainian army and hailed as national heroes for their role in the war with Russia. Leading Democrats, including Representative Adam Schiff, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, met with the Azov Battalion during a recent visit to Ukraine.
The question of anti-Semitism has deep historical resonance. It is not merely a survival of the primitive, medieval bigotry rooted in the Christian churches and in rural prejudice towards a population found mainly in the towns. Modern anti-Semitism arose in the late 19th century, particularly in Europe, as a weapon of the capitalist class aimed at diverting class tensions and providing a convenient scapegoat for mass anger over deteriorating social conditions.
This urban anti-Semitism fused with the older, traditional version, under conditions of the collapse of capitalism in the Great Depression. Combined with violent hostility to socialism and the workers’ movement, it became the ideological foundation for Hitler’s Nazi Party. With the backing of the capitalist class, the Nazis took power in Germany to suppress the threat of working-class revolution. Commanding the resources of the strongest imperialist state in Europe, they carried out the most monstrous crimes in human history.
Anti-Semitism assumes a particularly toxic character during times of extreme social and economic crisis, emerging in explosions of violence, like the 2018 attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, directly inspired by Trump, in which 11 people were killed by a fascist gunman, and in countless lesser incidents. This is a trend not only in the United States, but throughout Europe, including in Germany.
Anti-Semitism cannot be fought on the basis of moral appeals to the conscience or on vain hopes that in the 21st century such prejudice has been made obsolete by progress or growing tolerance. Anti-Semitism is fueled by the contradictions of the world capitalist system, and these contradictions have become more rather than less acute with the development of technology and the increasing global interconnectedness of humanity.
Still less can anti-Semitism be fought on the basis of Zionism, that bankrupt embrace of the outmoded and reactionary framework of the national state. In this historical period, globalization makes every national state—let alone a tiny one based on the expulsion or suppression of the previous inhabitants—a trap for its population.
It must be pointed out that the oppressive policies of the state of Israel towards the Palestinian people, including the provocative actions of fascistic “settler” groups on the West Bank, weaken the global sympathy for the Jewish people that was a legacy of the Holocaust.
In addition, the persistent campaign to smear any defense of the Palestinian people and opposition to Zionism as anti-Semitism, waged with particular force in Britain and the United States, undermines resistance to bigotry and cultivates an element of cynicism towards that issue.
Particularly pernicious is the manufacture of the myth of “left-wing anti-Semitism,” which seeks to separate the Jewish people from the socialist and working-class movement which has always been their foremost defender and ally, and their hope for the future.
The Fourth International, the world Trotskyist movement, has always stood at the forefront of the global struggle against anti-Semitism. As Leon Trotsky wrote, in our founding program:
Before exhausting or drowning mankind in blood, capitalism befouls the world atmosphere with the poisonous vapors of national and race hatred. Anti-Semitism today is one of the most malignant convulsions of capitalism’s death agony.
An uncompromising disclosure of the roots of race prejudice and all forms and shades of national arrogance and chauvinism, particularly anti-Semitism, should become part of the daily work of all sections of the Fourth International, as the most important part of the struggle against imperialism and war. Our basic slogan remains: Workers of the World Unite!
In the midst of World War II, when the Roosevelt administration was turning a blind eye to the Nazi death camps, blocking entry of Jewish refugees and rejecting appeals to bomb the train tracks leading into Auschwitz, the Executive Committee of the Fourth International declared:
The Fourth International, leader of the workers in the struggle for world socialism, welcomes the Jewish toilers into its ranks. Only by world socialism can the Jews, above all the Jewish workers, and all the oppressed nations and races be saved from the terrible fate world capitalism has inflicted on them and the even worse fate it has in store for ever-increasing numbers of them. Only in world socialism will human brotherhood become a reality and anti-Semitism a hideous memory.
These statements remain the basis of a principled struggle against anti-Semitism, which requires the political mobilization of the working class fighting for socialism and internationalism. Only the overthrow of capitalism on a world scale can put an end to anti-Semitism and provide genuine freedom and security for the Jewish people.
Another worker with 12 years told campaigners, “We don’t have a union here, management has one. We just learned that the local is collecting more than half a million dollars in dues from us every month. At the last meeting, the Local 551 officials had the nerve to ask us to approve increasing the expense accounts for their cell phones and other things.
“We just came off temporary layoff, and we’re going to be down again. The union is leaving us completely in the dark. In all my years, I’ve never been laid off so much. It’s been at least six times this year. Every time it happens, you’ve got to move your bills around. We’ve got families.
“The UAW is not defending us. A lot of workers are thinking of getting out of the industry. I’m 51. Am I just going to leave and get a job at Walmart?
“We sacrificed and worked through the pandemic. They said bring your butts to work; we don’t care if you get sick. But we want a safe place to work, and we want to come home to our families at night.”
Less than one week after US President Joe Biden warned that the US conflict with Russia could trigger a nuclear “Armageddon,” the White House published a national security strategy pledging to “win” American global hegemony through military violence.
The document pledged to expand the US military, “integrate” economic life with war-making, and “win the competition for the 21st century” in what it called the “decisive decade.”
Embracing in all fundamentals the 2018 national defense strategy published by the fascist would-be dictator Donald Trump, Biden’s national security strategy affirms that the United States is locked in an existential national conflict with Russia and, most of all, China.
“We are now in the early years of a decisive decade for America and the world,” declares Biden’s personal introduction to the document. “The terms of geopolitical competition between the major powers will be set.”
These opening remarks echo Biden’s declaration in March that the world is on the brink of a “new world order,” and that “we’ve got to lead it.”
Biden’s strategy, like Trump’s 2018 national security strategy, is violently nationalistic, declaring that the United States acts not in the interests of humanity or of its allies, but fundamentally to preserve its selfish interests. “Our strategy is rooted in our national interests,” Biden declares.
“Our military power continues to grow,” the document menaced, pledging to “Modernize and strengthen our military so it is equipped for the era of strategic competition.”
For these reasons, the document threatens, “nations are seeing once again why it’s never a good bet to bet against the United States of America.”
“Nuclear deterrence remains a top priority for the Nation,” and is “foundational” to the US’s strategy.
War, Biden says in his introduction, will be a source of national rejuvenation: “the United States has a tradition of transforming…foreign challenges into opportunities to spur… rejuvenation at home.”
The document sets forth the concept of “integrated deterrence,” developing key concepts in Trump’s 2018 national defense strategy, which pledged that “long-term strategic competition requires the seamless integration of multiple elements of national power—diplomacy, information, economics, finance, intelligence, law enforcement, and military.”
Similarly, the new national security strategy declares, “We will leverage all elements of our national power to outcompete our strategic competitors”
It adds, “Our National Defense Strategy relies on integrated deterrence: the seamless combination of capabilities to convince potential adversaries that the costs of their hostile activities outweigh their benefits. It entails: Integration across domains, recognizing that our competitors’ strategies operate across military…and non-military (economic, technological, and information) domains—and we must too.”
In perhaps the most chilling passage, the document declares that “The Biden-Harris Administration has broken down the dividing line between domestic and foreign policy.”
These concepts, pioneered under the Trump administration that openly drew inspiration from the Third Reich, echo the infamous “total war” manifesto of Alfred Jodl, chief of the German High Command during World War II, which declared that “Only the singleness and unity of state, armed forces, and people can assure success in war.”
Noting the continuity with Trump’s fascist “America first” ideology, New York Times reporter David Sanger observed that “The president took some unusual positions, especially for a Democrat,” noting that “he took a dark view of the benefits of globalization, describing at length how it has fueled pandemics and disinformation and contributed to supply chain shortages.”
The central target of the United States is China. The document asserts, “We will effectively compete with the People’s Republic of China, which is the only competitor with both the intent and, increasingly, the capability to reshape the international order.”
So single-minded is the focus on China, that the war in Ukraine is not even mentioned a single time in the White House’s fact sheet or document. Despite the Biden administration’s claims that the world would bloom like a garden were it not for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the strategy does not predicate the US military buildup and preparations for war on the actions of the Russian president.
Rather, the US struggle to “win” the 21st century is predicated on the fact that the “post-Cold War era is definitively over and a competition is underway between the major powers to shape what comes next.”
Even as the national security strategy set its sights on China, the US continued to massively escalate the war with Russia. Speaking at a meeting of the U.S.-led Ukraine Defense Contact Group, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin made clear that the US has instructed its Ukrainian proxy forces to continue their offensive through the winter.
“I expect that Ukraine will continue to do everything it can throughout the winter to regain its territory and to be effective on the battlefield, and we’re going to do everything we can to make sure that they have what’s required to be effective,” Austin said.
Ahead of this week’s NATO summit, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg made clear that the US and its allies will respond to Russia’s threats to use nuclear weapons in the conflict with its own nuclear saber-rattling.
Stoltenberg announced, “Next week, NATO will hold its long-planned deterrence exercise, Steadfast Noon,” announcing his intention to launch a training mission for nuclear-capable bombers in Southern Europe.
Under conditions in which Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has called on NATO to wage preemptive strikes on Russia, and Russia has threatened to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the NATO training exercise threatens to further escalate the war.
Viewing the present conflict within the context of Biden’s national security strategy, it is clear that the strategists of US imperialism see the war in Ukraine, horrific and bloody as it is, as just the opening skirmish of an even greater and more disastrous global conflict.
The audio of the meeting makes clear that identity politics has nothing to do with improving the conditions of workers. It is about weaponizing identity to enrich the affluent upper middle class. The Los Angeles Democrats’ racist comments took place in the context of proposing ways to use racial identity to win patronage over government contracts and secure domination of various union locals so as to gain access to dues money and staffing positions.
It is not accidental that the racist conversation included the head of the county AFL-CIO, and it took place at its headquarters. Over the same period that the Democratic Party has made identity politics the axis of its operations, the trade unions have overseen massive losses in jobs and wages on behalf of American corporations, blaming foreign workers and promoting nationalism. De Leon and Cedillo were both longtime union bureaucrats before running for office, De Leon with the California Teachers Association and Cedillo with the Service Employees International Union.
Two of the figures exposed in the audio have close ties to the pseudo-left, which has long promoted nationalism and identity politics within the Democratic Party. In the audio, Cedillo talks about his former membership in the Stalinist Communist Party USA alongside previous Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. De Leon, for his part, spoke at a DSA-Los Angeles event in 2017. The Ventura County DSA hosted a “meet the candidate” event in 2018 to promote de Leon’s run for the US Senate.
Though the leaked audio exposes the racism of leading Latino Democrats, the Democratic Party is steeped in racialist politics. African American Democrat Stacey Abrams declared in 2018 that there are “inherent racial differences.” The New York Times’ 1619 Project is devoted to a racialist reinterpretation of history, presenting the past as well as the present as characterized by irreconcilable racial conflict.
The audio proves the Democrats’ racial politics and the open racism of the increasingly fascist Republican Party are only two sides of the same coin. Reading the transcript of the Los Angeles Democrats’ conversation on redistricting, one would hardly know that the slurs and jokes did not come out of the mouth of Trump himself.
Identity politics has greatly enriched the wealthiest minority of each racial group, but it has been a disaster for the working class of all races and nationalities. Nowhere is this truer than Los Angeles, where there are over 50 billionaires and 70,000 homeless people, where the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $2,800 and gas costs $6 a gallon, where public transit is in shambles and 96,000 Angelenos have died of the coronavirus. Masses of undocumented immigrants confront daily the threat of deportation.
The depraved incident shows that racial and identity politics have nothing to do with the interests of the working class. A powerful movement of the global working class is emerging across every continent, and the task of socialists is to unite the working class across all racial, national, gender and ethnic lines into one movement for social equality. This means turning to class politics based on the real, economic divisions in society. It means waging a ruthless struggle against identity politics in all forms.
