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  • The Trumpist Coup, Fascism U.S.-Style in an Era of Capitalist Decline, and Some Loci of Resistance

    The Trumpist Coup, Fascism U.S.-Style in an Era of Capitalist Decline, and Some Loci of Resistance

    What We Are Facing in Winter 2025

    In a veritable blitzkrieg, the Trumpist fascists have changed U.S. and global society irrevocably in a matter of weeks.

    They have already carried out the following, without any real chance of reversal in the courts or Congress in the immediate future, as these actions seem to lie within the “prerogatives” of the imperial U.S. presidency:

    • Begun a massive racist, militarized crackdown on migrants, sure to be ratcheted up. This has spread an atmosphere of fear to millions of people, as thousands of members of the U.S. working class are being dragged away and deported in chains. They have also targeted refugees from Latin America, including Haiti and Venezuela, with Ukrainians also under threat.
    • Freed 1,500 hardened fascists who participated in the January 6, 2021, coup attempt.
    • Pulled out of the World Health Organization and placed anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Of all of their measures, these will cost the most lives, both in the United States and abroad.
    • Pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement and upended hundreds of U.S. environmental rules, assuring that environmental destruction will escalate. Over time, this could be even more damaging than their undermining of public health.
    • Eradicated all federal rules supporting or allowing transgender rights.
    • Eradicated thousands of federal rules supporting racial or gender justice as part of their attack on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI, in some institutions DEIA, including “accessibility” rights for people with disabilities). Large corporations like Disney and General Motors and scientific organizations like the National Academy of Sciences have hurried to eliminate DEI in anticipatory obedience, undermining decades of hard-won gains.
    • Enacted or threatened punitive tariffs on longstanding friendly nations, starting with Canada and Mexico, amid demagogic assertions that this will create jobs at home. Clearly, the era of neoliberal “free trade” capitalism is over.
    • Engaged in new types of territorial imperialism, making specific threats to seize both Greenland and the Panama Canal by military action, and vaguer ones to absorb Canada. Here, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was surely a precedent.
    • With Trump’s plan to “remove” all Palestinians from Gaza, extended and deepened the U.S.-supported genocide of the past 15 months, at the very least giving Israel the green light to carry out a total ethnic cleansing and land seizure in Gaza.
    • Pulled back support for Ukraine’s struggle against Russian imperialism in favor of a forced settlement dismembering the country.

    The Trumpist fascists have also carried out these additional measures, which could be reversed or seriously modified in the courts or in other ways, but may not be, especially as they are threatening not to obey adverse court decisions:

    • Attempted to abolish birthright citizenship, a right won during the Civil War by Black and white liberation soldiers at the cost of 360,000 of their lives and enshrined in the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
    • Shut down government agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the U.S. Agency for International Development, including the latter’s massive global public health programs.
    • Taken over the federal payroll system, threatened wholesale dismissal of hundreds of thousands of civil servants, and fired hundreds of those suspected of support for DEI or racial/gender justice, or simply not kowtowing to the Trumpist fascists and their minions.

    The above constitute only the most serious actions that have taken place during the first weeks of the Trump administration.

    Every day brings new chaos and more attacks on the democratic order. Their sheer volume sows confusion, something that is in fact a Trumpist goal.  Because of this, it is important to keep in mind the most serious actions – as opposed to pure distractions like abolishing the penny – as well as their likelihood of going forward unimpeded.

    Another Trumpist goal is to shackle or dismantle those parts of the state apparatus that actually serve human needs, even if in alienated form.

    Yet another goal is to block state mechanisms that protect the rights of people of color, women, trans people, and the working class.

    While what remains of the oppositional liberal media, itself capitalist to the core, does not emphasize workers’ rights, workers with even a modicum of class consciousness can recognize in the multi-billionaire oligarch Elon Musk and his minions their own bosses, especially the new ones that come in speaking of “reorganization” or in Silicon Valley speak, “breaking things.”  Firing longtime employees at a moment’s notice, threatening others to make them quit, turning around workers’ lives by ordering them to suddenly come into the workplace after years of remote or hybrid work no matter how that will disrupt childcare, elder care, or simple human dignity, are all part of the playbook. It is as if Musk is carrying out a takeover of a company he intends to wring out like a dishrag.

    At another level, these purges – and that is what they are – echo aspects of what we have seen in the Stalinist and Maoist ones of the past. One notable feature here is the public humiliation of former leaders, like Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Linda Fagan, the only woman to lead a service branch, who was fired for “excessive focus” on DEI on day one. Originally given sixty days to find new housing, on Feb. 4, Fagan was suddenly told to vacate her home on three hours’ notice, not even enough time to grab her personal effects. Of course, removing such leaders from the military apparatus, and replacing them with fascist-inclined or at least more reactionary ones, also helps bring about the transition from a somewhat constitutional military to a fascist one loyal to the leader. Moreover, such treatment of high officials is intended to intimidate the population as a whole.

    But the most high-pitched viciousness so far has emerged in the immigration raids. When asked about family separation, the most brutal feature of the first Trump administration, Trump officials like Stephen Miller or Tom Homan state with barely muffled glee that they won’t separate families again. Rather, they’ll just deport the citizen children born in the U.S. along with their families. The use of Guantanamo Bay as a holding area, articulated by Trump himself, has no rational basis in terms of logistics. But it does associate these new immigrant detentions with the torture inflicted on the September 11 terrorists, something Trump not only endorses but is proud to have associated with his immigrant roundups.  It is performative cruelty, pure and simple.

    How Did We Get Here?

    Trumpism burst on the scene in 2015 and has ebbed and flowed since then. To be sure, it grew out of the soil of U.S. racism and slavery, as seen in the outright authoritarianism based on racial terror that existed in the Deep South until the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964-65. Thus, the U.S. has been a political democracy even in the formal sense not for 250 but 60 years, except for the revolutionary period of Reconstruction, 1865-76.  And ever since 1965, conservative forces have appealed to veiled racism, starting with Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy,” something centrist liberals have often engaged in as well, even as they “support our police.” In recent years, reactionaries have been able to restrict voting rights in many states.

    Trumpism also grew out of deep-seated sexism, misogyny, heterosexism, and transphobia. These have been stoked for years by a growing Christian Right that has attacked abortion rights and other gains of the past five decades.

    Trumpism also fed off the legacy of political repression in the United States, especially the McCarthyite witch hunts and Richard Nixon’s attempts to create an overtly authoritarian state before he was forced to resign the presidency in 1974.

    Trumpism has continued and deepened the rightwing assault on any kind of environmental protection, in conjunction with fossil fuel interests both at home and abroad.

    All of the above have been staples of rightwing, reactionary politics since the 1970s-1980s, if not earlier.

    What then is new in Trumpist fascism?

    First, it became an outright fascism by 2020-21. It did so by deepening and radicalizing all of the above, as seen most notably its willingness to engage in a violent coup attempt in January 2021. This was followed by its success in getting the entire Republican Party to acquiescence – or at least to remain silent – with respect to the coup attempt, something achieved gradually since 2021.

    Second, Trumpism stoked and then grew from anti-immigrant hatred, something less prominent in the United States than in Western Europe until relatively recently. This is a key indicator of the extent to which Trumpism has managed to change both elite and mass public opinion.

    Third, Trumpism has embraced and then extended all kinds of anti-public health measures, starting with the anti-vax movement under COVID-19, couched in terms of individual liberty. This is a new element not even present in 2015-16, one that has brought new layers of the population to Trumpism, even as its propaganda has expanded those layers.

    Fourth and most important in electoral terms comes Trumpist protectionism through tariffs and its talk of reviving coal and steel production inside the United States. This, combined with anti-migrant nativism, has broken away sections of the working class and lower middle class – including some Latinx and Black workers — from trade union and Democratic Party politics.  These sectors are outraged by decades of economic stagnation under neoliberalism and especially since the Great Recession of 2008, in which Democrats as well as Republicans have been instrumental, beginning with the “Reagan light” Clinton administration of the 1990s.

    Fifth, and most recently, Trumpist fascism of 2024-25 has won over a much larger than before portion of the dominant classes, particularly the tech billionaires, as exemplified by but not limited to Musk.  Moreover, it has won at least the neutrality of major liberal institutions, from the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times to Harvard University. Almost all established media organs have ceased to use the word fascism, which many of them were using with growing urgency in the period leading up to the 2024 election.

    A sixth new feature is the targeting of all who oppose it, North as well as South, and including those at the highest levels of wealth and status, with violent rhetoric and precipitous actions that echo McCarthyism, or worse, lynch law.

    A lot of ink has been spilled over how Trumpist fascism has managed to win over much of the white working class, and in 2024, of the Latinx population, especially men. Yet we also need to look more closely at what has happened with the dominant classes and their shift toward Trump.  What are the key factors here?

    One, at the economic level, profit rates have been stagnant or declining for decades. The mirage of neoliberal prosperity dissipated in 2008. This has led capital into increasingly desperate efforts to shore up the profit rate, but to no avail. Why not at least try fascism then, especially in the utterly venal and corrupt Trumpist form, where one can loot the state revenues and gain something even as society itself is falling apart? The après moi le deluge mentality of these elites, which has become more widespread than ever, was captured well in the 2021 satirical film, “Don’t Look Up.” Decidedly, this is not a capitalism confident of its ascendancy.

    Second, a new kind of toxic masculinity has penetrated the highest levels of the corporate elite. Again, Musk is the standard-bearer here, but Mark Zuckerberg is not far behind with his description of Trump’s fortitude after the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania as “badass.” This is linked to a kind of hyper-individualism that resents both public health restrictions and DEI or “Me Too” initiatives that call for changes in personal behavior. It should not be forgotten that these same elites welcomed Obama in 2008 and in many cases supported at least moderate attempts at racial/gender justice reform in the wake of the Movement for Black Lives of 2020-21 and Me Too. The point here is that these people from the top layers of the capitalist class have changed under the impact of Trumpist fascism, as much or more than have sections of the working and middle classes.

    A third element that moved parts of the dominant classes toward Trump was Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the massive worldwide protest movements it has sparked. Liberal politicians, leaders of universities and foundations, and the liberal media have all tended to side with Israel, just as did the Trumpist fascists. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party lost out in two ways. Sections of the youth, people of color, and the intellectuals — not to speak of Arab and Muslim Americans in Michigan — deserted the Biden presidency and then the Kamala Harris campaign. At the same time, the centrist Democrats who lead the Party, among them many members of the dominant classes, saw that the rank-and-file has turned against Israel, while the Trumpist fascists have not. This too was a factor in bringing members of these elites if not to Trumpism, at least in the direction of neutrality toward it after the election. The latter applies more to media moguls and foundation leaders than politicians holding office.

    What to Do? How to Resist? How to Fight for a New Humanist Society Amid the Carnage?

    First, we need to admit that this is a big defeat for us. It will not have positive elements for the working class, as some class-reductionist radicals are proclaiming even as they join the bandwagon vs. DEI.

    Second, we need to assess which parts of the ruling classes, especially under pressure from the left, from the streets, could spark a deepening of the kind of internal split that is a precondition of real change. Here it should be noted that some giant media institutions like the New York Times have bent but not yet buckled under the pressure and continue to hold that it is Trump vs. the Constitution. This is also true of some corporations and university officials, as well as the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.

    Third, the Black Church (and the smaller but still important liberal Protestant ones) remain crucial here. Thus, it was not a coincidence that on Inauguration Day the only protest voice that penetrated amid the noise of Trumpism was that of Bishop Mariann Budde’s warning about oppression of the people. Black Churches are, as always, already on the move, as are progressive Muslim, Jewish, and other religious organizations. The Catholic Church will give us some support too, as Pope Francis has just done on immigrant rights. But their poisonous stance on gender and sexuality cannot be ignored. Nevertheless, all this will at least open up some space for the resistance to Trumpist fascism.

    Fourth, and here moving away from the middle classes, let alone the elites, another large institution that can help us even more is the trade union movement, which has already organized demonstrations in support of the federal government workers. While far more needs to happen on this front, these actions are at least beginning. Moreover, it is notable that trade unions, as well as religious organizations, depend mainly on dues from their own members, which gives them a certain degree of independence from the state, corporate capitalism, or liberal foundations. This forms a contrast with universities and other cultural institutions, which have already shown cowardice in the face of the Israel Lobby and are so far refusing to confront Trumpist fascism openly.  However, the trade unions will have to deal with noxious elements like Teamster leader Sean O’Brien, let alone their aging bureaucracies that in many cases confine themselves to supporting political candidates and will need to be replaced by a more militant leadership, as has happened with the UAW.

    Fifth and most important, resistance has to come from the streets, from the left and from the movements of Black and Latinx liberation, the rank-and-file labor movement, the feminist and women’s liberation movement, the LGBTQ movement, the environmental movement, and above all, the youth. Not surprisingly, it was thousands of Latinx working class youth, many of them of high school age, who tied up downtown LA on February 2 and the next day, as a leading part of the first real resistance on the streets to protest Trumpist fascism’s mass deportations. But the trade unions and larger immigrant rights organizations need to come out now and not wait until May 1, which is when Latinx and pro-immigrant groups intend to launch a giant series of strikes and demonstrations. It should also be noted that massive resistance is occurring in the everyday actions of the people, who are refusing to cooperate with ICE, who are stoking the “know your rights” initiatives, slowing down their racist raids on members of the working class whom the Trumpist criminals dare to label “illegal.” Here, the ongoing, persistent, and courageous Palestine support movement will also be a key factor.

    While the United States is facing its greatest crisis in decades, if not more than a century, we also need to note and learn from how, in some parts of the world, our movement is going forward. This is the case in Syria, where despite the contradictions, a real political opening is occurring after a half-century of a dictatorship that unconscionably gained the support of the worldwide campist left. It is also the case in Serbia, where a corrupt nationalist government is under huge pressure from a student movement that has persisted over the past several months.  It is true in Sri Lanka, where a pro-feminist leftwing government has been elected. It is also true in Germany, where hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets and, at least for now, blocked the political normalization of the far right.

    As the above remarks suggest, we need a leftwing network of resistance to Trumpist fascism that, while firmly anti-capitalist, avoids the pitfalls of both campism and class reductionism. Under such a banner, we can join the larger resistance movements while retaining our political independence, not least our fight for a humanist alternative to capitalism.

  • The Musk “Salutes” and the Treachery of the Jewish Establishment

    The Musk “Salutes” and the Treachery of the Jewish Establishment

    OK, we get it.  The Jewish Federations, the Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, most Jewish journals and top rabbis are passionately devoted to Israel.  Israel, right or wrong, Israel drunk or sober.  But when an incredibly important man gives Nazi-like salutes at the inauguration party for Trump 2.0 you’d think these luminaries would raise a gshrey (Yiddish for “scream”).  Nope, barely a whimper.

    Immediately after Musk did his gesticulation, observers compared it to a Nazi salute.  Here’s the Jerusalem Post headline “Did Elon Musk Sieg Heil at Trump’s inauguration?”  (the Nazi slogan “Sieg Heil”, meaning “Hail to Victory”. )  The venerable Jewish Telegraph Agency wrote on its site, “Elon Musk’s straight-armed gesture at inauguration event ignites comparisons to Nazi salute”  Jerry Nadler, the Jewish Democratic congressperson from Manhattan, called the gesture antisemitic and said other officials should condemn it.  “I never imagined we would see the day when what appears to be a Heil Hitler salute would be made behind the Presidential seal,” he remarked in a tweet. “This abhorrent gesture has no place in our society and belongs in the darkest chapters of human history. I urge all of my colleagues to unite in condemning this hateful gesture for what it is: antisemitism.”

    But then the Anti-Defamation League, the ADL, which calls itself the world leading expert on antisemitism and which has appointed itself the leading group combatting that prejudice denied Musk had done anything wrong.  Just a few hours after the inauguration party the ADL tweeted that “It seems that @elonmusk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, but not a Nazi salute.”

    The big Jewish organization sites who respond with rage when someone scrawls “Free Palestine” on a wall reacted extremely mildly to Musk’s arm thrusts or were simply silent.    The Simon Wiesenthal Center wrote, “It would be appropriate for him to clarify or apologize for today’s gesture and focus his energy on tackling the critical challenges ahead.”  Then they dropped the matter.  The American Jewish Congress?  Nothing at all about Musk’s salute. The Zionist Organization of America, nada.

    Search for “salute” on the site of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and you see a piece condemning Nazi salutes, but the article is from 2016.  Then they were up in arms about Richard Spencer’ supporters doing straight-arm salutes inside a federal building.  One can barely remember that event. Somehow Musk’s arm-thrust before millions seems more significant.

    How about Deborah Lipstadt? This historian served as the Biden administration’s Special Envoy Combating Global Antisemitism.  She downplayed the Musk Nazi-looking salutes and told the Jewish Telegraph Agency that essentially there were bigger fish to fry.  She also said that she agreed with the ADL that it was merely an “awkward” gesture

    Randi Weingarten is the long-time president of the American Federation of Teachers and is also active on Jewish issues.  To be fair on the 20th she did retweet Abe Foxman’s calling out Musk for his “Nazi salute.”  On the other hand, Weingarten was on a panel with Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the ADL in Davos, Switzerland on January 25 along with former Harvard president Larry Summers.  The topic was “Confronting Antisemitism and Polarization”.   After witnessing Musk’s arm-thrust, arguably the biggest neo-Nazi signal on international media since the Second World War, no one made any mention of it.  The panel only discussed antisemitism in terms of Palestine.  There was no mention even of the January 6 riot and the pardon of many rioters who were open about their hatred of Jews.  Weingarten did take time to brag that at the AFT national convention last year she was able to defeat all the “extremist” resolutions on Palestine.

    Getting down to the state level the “Southern New England Jewish Ledger” has made no mention of Musk’s gesture.  When you search for the word “Musk” on its webpage there’s a piece about Musk in Jerusalem in 2023 and an article “Antisemite of the Week.”  But that article is not about Musk, it’ piece originally from “Stop Antisemitism” which had given that designation to actor John Cusack .   Looking further at that site you find that other “winners” included Jewish writer Nathan Thrall and activist Greta Thunberg.  There’s no mention of Musk’s salute on “Stop Antisemitism.”

    The Washington Jewish Week told its readers to look at the video “What we saw was an exuberant Musk, emotionally, and yes, awkwardly, trying to connect with his adoring crowd.”  Funny, when you show love to your fans you usually do it with a smile and not a grimace as Musk did at Trump’s party.  But maybe it’s a DC thing.

    Jews in Congress?  We quoted Nadler’s call earlier asking for all his colleagues to condemn “this hateful gesture.”  AOC responded and tore the ADL a new one.  Among the 34 Jewish members of Congress, Dan Goldman, Ron Wyden and Jan Schakowsky responded positively to the appeal. From Chuck Schumer, nothing.  Richard Blumenthal, nothing, John Ossoff, nothing. Astonishing.

    There were, of course, many Jews who completely sided with Musk.  I’ll mention just one.  Jeff Donetz of the Jewish Press issued a condemnation, but it wasn’t of Musk.  He lambasted AOC.  His dubious reasoning was that Musk’s gesture wasn’t a Nazi salute because it would dumb for an owner of a car company to make a Nazi salute. “Even if he were a Nazi (which he isn’t), Musk would have to be such an imbecile, even dumber than AOC, to ‘out’ himself on national television.”  Not really.  There was once this auto giant named Henry Ford who was not at all afraid to “out” himself as an antisemite.

    Then Netanyahu completely koshered Musk.  Not mentioning the salutes at all, the self-styled leader of all Jews, Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted, “@elonmusk is being falsely smeared. Elon is a great friend of Israel.” And on and on about Musk’s pro-Israel bona fides.

    Not all were so sanguine.  Bend the Arc: Jewish Action was rightfully furious.  It immediately replied sarcastically to the ADL on Twitter. “19 year old student says ‘Free Palestine’  Antisemitic!  Musk backs Germany’s AfD and antisemitic replacement theories.  Buys Twitter so Nazis load at the top.  Sieg Heils multiple times.  Give him the benefit of the doubt.”

    The prestigious Lemkin institute for Genocide Prevention issued several tweets. In the first it noted Musk’s “clear use of the Nazi salute” and abhorred him for sending the “antisemitic genocidal signal”.  Two days later it returned to Musk and implored that Americans “take Nazi and ‘alt-right’ symbolism very seriously.”

    The political editor of the major German paper Die Zeit entitled his article “Ein Hitlergruss ist ein Hitlergruss ist ein Hitlergruss”  Hitlergruss means “Hitler Salute”.  MSN translated the whole article.

    What about those in the U.S. who are happy to describe themselves as far-right or neo-Nazis? They think Musk was speaking to them.  Rolling Stone explains they were ecstatic.  For instance, “The Proud Boys Ohio chapter posted to(sic) a clip of the Musk video to its Telegram channel with the text, “Hail Trump!”

    But what did Elon Musk say about his salute?  He sure didn’t apologize or explain his “gesture.”   He promptly replied to the ADL tweet with just two words, “Thanks guys.”  In another tweet he said criticism of what he did at the inauguration was simply “dirty tricks.”   He responded to Netanyahu’s “great friend” post with a tweet  “The radical leftists are really upset that they had to take time out of their busy day praising Hamas to call me a Nazi.”

    Now if this gesture was a one-off, we might bend credulity and maybe believe that it was an innocent expression of love to the Trump crowd of 20,000.  But Musk has a record.  After he bought Twitter, he allowed all kinds of hard-right haters and insurrectionists back and antisemitic posts skyrocketed.  In June 2023 he reposted a Q claim that Hollywood elites were harvesting a substance from children to extend the lives of the elites. The original tweet included the words, “You can do the adrenochrome or you can hate the Js.” Five months later he reposted a claim that Jewish communities were flooding the U.S. with minorities and added the comment “You have said the actual truth” to his then 170 million followers.  He campaigns for the furthest far-right party in Germany, the AfD against which thousands demonstrated in 2024 when it was learned leaders had met with neo-Nazis.  Only a fool or a knave would give Musk the benefit of the doubt.

    Musk showed his contempt for critics and his Jewish lickspittle supporters on January 23 by tweeting Nazi themed puns, like “Stop Gőring your enemies!” and other jokes using the names of Nazi war criminals. A few days later Musk’s face was projected on a giant screen in Germany as he told AFD supporters that children shouldn’t be guilty for what their “fathers” or “great-grandfathers” did.  It was a wink, wink to those in Germany who want to forget the Nazi horrors of World War II.

    Besides what people said, what did they do or not do to counteract Musk?  Congress  bloviates frequently on claims of antisemitism there but no member introduced a resolution.  There are no online petitions from mainline Jewish organizations nor did any  propose an action to protest Musk.

    However, two protests should be noted.  In Berlin Germany an activist group with the interesting name “Led by Donkeys” used a projector to put a display on a Tesla building.  It showed video of Musk doing his salute along with images of Musk supporting the far-right all over Europe.  It also projected the words “Heil” next to the name “Tesla” on a massive factory wall and then projected the word “Boycott” next to “Tesla”.

    In the USA a Milwaukee TV weather reporter named Sam Kuffel denounced Musk on her personal Instagram page.  The post was private, but someone must have ratted her out.  She was fired by channel CBS 58.  A petition was launched in her defense. A billboard that was rented by the Minocqua Beer Super PAC facing the building of CBS 58 depicts Musk’s salute and has the words, “Stand with Sam Kuffel, Boycott CBS 58, Don’t ‘Obey in Advance’.“

    By deeming the Nazi-like salutes no big thing, the big machers (translation “doers”) are failing in their basic duty, to protect the interests of U.S. Jews.  Certainly, they know the history of fascist persecution of Jews, but they think this time they can join with the persecutors and the Jews (or at least the big shots and their friends) will be spared.  It’s a thickheaded treacherous strategy.  The leaders of all these big Jewish institutions should be scorned, shamed, opposed, ousted and replaced.

     

  • The Sean O’Brien Show: Take Two

    The Sean O’Brien Show: Take Two

    From as far back as 2012, Sean O’Brien wanted the media spotlight. That year he was the subject of a television pilot for a proposed A&E reality show titled The Teamsters, to be produced by Mark Wahlberg. Wahlberg, along with the Afflecks (longtime O’Brien friends), seem attracted to a certain image of the working class: white, male, and macho, the same image idolized by the American right.  The series never aired and in 2014, O’Brien’s Local 25 was in the news not as the subjects of a reality show, but for yelling racial slurs and threats at the star of one, Padma Lakshmi of Top Chef.

    That was back when O’Brien was a big fish in a small pond, the President of Local 25 and a member of the union’s international executive board. Now, as general president, he can afford to hire a staff to produce his own show. That podcast, Better Bad Ideas With Sean O’Brien, debuted January 15th with left-leaning Twitch streamer Hasan Piker as a guest. The second featured a discussion with Christian nationalist U.S. Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri.

    The interview was nothing more than a love fest. This isn’t surprising. Last year O’Brien posted on Twitter that Hawley’s article assailing corporate America for “using [their] profits to push diversity, equity, and inclusion and the religion of the trans flag” was “100% on point.” O’Brien wrote his own piece for Compact, the publication Hawley’s diatribe ran in. It’s worth noting that the senior editor of Compact had to resign last year due to her promotion of antisemitic conspiracy theories and Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

    O’Brien spent much of the interview gushing over Hawley. He runs through the man’s career as Missouri Attorney General and in the Senate like a devotee in thrall to a movie star. Under O’Brien, the Teamsters gave $5,000 to Hawley’s 2024 Senate campaign, despite his opposition to the Butch-Lewis Act that bailed out Teamster pensions and his 11% lifetime score from the AFL-CIO. “I’m a big fan,” he said, as if listeners couldn’t pick up on that fact. O’Brien expressed optimism over Trump’s victory, saying for Teamsters “there seems to be a sense of hope out there that didn’t exist prior to this election, regardless of the result that happened.” Hawley, who denies that Trump fairly lost the 2020 Presidential election, couldn’t agree more.

    The two find further common ground discussing immigration. “I think the biggest problem,” O’ Brien said, “is people are trying to protect illegal aliens that come over here and commit crimes.” He continued, “Social issues are all well and good, but protecting illegal immigrants that come into our country to commit crimes and steal jobs, that’s a tough pill to swallow.” O’Brien’s professed distaste for criminals is laughable due to his own history of threatening Teamsters and his local’s past as a jobs program for the Boston mob.

    O’Brien’s xenophobia is part and parcel of a recent turn towards Teamsters solipsism. In a social media post opposing flag burning he declared #usagainsteverybody. One wonders how Canadian Teamsters feel about that one. The Teamsters have begun selling merchandise boasting “Teamsters vs. Everybody.” “Everybody” includes the International Association of Machinists. The Teamsters ended a no raid agreement with them last year.

    O’Brien’s comments are miles away from a true giant of the Irish labor movement, James Connolly. “Let no Irishman throw a stone at the foreigner; he may hit his own clansman. Let no foreigner revile the Irish; he may be vilifying his own stock.” O’Brien’s anti-immigrant rhetoric is no “better bad idea.” Stirring up nativism is a boon to the rich and multinationals, particularly as the Teamsters try to unionize the heavily immigrant Amazon workforce. At the JFK 8 Amazon workforce in Staten Island, the first unionized Amazon warehouse in the country, 50% of the workers are immigrants.

    What is the purpose of Better Bad Ideas? Given the presence of advertising for blinds.com, the ABC cop drama The Rookie, and others, it seems like a moneymaking venture. But if it is meant to further expose Sean O’Brien to the wider public, there are problems. The debut episode with Piker notched over 100,000 views. By contrast, the follow up with Hawley, as of this writing, is stuck below 5,000. This viewership for the president of a union with over a million members. Clearly, it doesn’t seem like O’Brien is much of a draw.

    This lack of viewership may have been a gift to O’Brien, since when people actually heard what he was saying the response was swift and negative. Teamsters Mobilize, a rank and file movement within the union, put out a statement saying O’Brien’s words are “an insult to everyone, especially all Teamsters and children of immigrants. There is no room for nationalism and xenophobia in the Teamsters.” Several Teamsters called into the Valley Labor Report taking him further to task for his statements. Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) the reform movement of old released their own statement that the Teamsters fight “for the rights of all Teamsters regardless of their immigration status.”

    Yet TDU have maintained their “see no evil, hear no evil” attitude as O’Brien has further ingratiated himself with the Trumpian right. Their statement does not mention him. They put out no statements on O’Brien’s speech to the RNC, his promotion of Hawley’s transphobia, or his piece for a far-right publication generously funded by plutocrat Peter Thiel.

    What all of this has made abundantly clear is that O’Brien has not fundamentally changed from the man who took over his local union in 2006 as an anti-reform candidate. He is still following the same script. “We needed to go back to our old-school values,” he thundered. The Teamster reform movement, then, needs to go back to its own old school values and drop a bigot like O’Brien.

  • No! Where are you really from?

    No! Where are you really from?

    Looking back at the last sixty odd years, at different times and different places, I have to say I have been asked that question about once every year. Mostly by suspicious white folks. Take away the “no” and the “really” parts then it’s a question of curiosity. I mean, “no” implies I was answering the wrong question and “really” means, I was giving the wrong answer.

    Occasionally, the question is accompanied by some curiosity about my “accent” and sometimes, when aggression is the better part of valor, followed by “Why don’t you go back to where you came from?” My answers have been different depending on the situation, the context, and then I recovered this article from The Guardian—with a direct reference to our master’s voice.

    In Buckingham Palace and outside it, we know what it means when people ask ‘where are you from’

    I realized too that like Malcom X’s “house negro” many among us deny hearing that voice. So, I thought further review and elaboration may be in order.

    In the beginning was the word! About a month after I got to the US, (that would be midway between the Birmingham church bombing and JFK assassination) I was invited to a super-rich stockbroker’s house, with a kidney-shaped swimming pool and a museum-like kitchen. And with lots of guests with champagne glasses. At the end of the evening, as I was waiting for my hostess in that kitchen, birthplace of colossal shrimp, for a ride home, she arrived with a model-like woman, glistening and bejeweled. My hostess said to me, “This is our friend Sally, who’s in real estate,” and to Sally, “this is one of our student friends from India.” Sally’s smile was wide, welcoming and sexy. She lowered her voice and spoke thus: “you must be wondering why I didn’t speak to you earlier.” (I had noticed her stunning appearance of course, but also the shunning attitude.)

    Sally continued, “I avoided you ’cause I thought you were Mexican.” I was dumbfounded now. “Oh, I have nothing against Mexicans,” Sally lowered her voice some more and added, “But you must admit they are kind of filthy.” On the way home, my hostess said, “Oh that Sally is a good soul. She owns several apartment buildings and sometimes her tenants are unruly!”

    That was my first lesson about origins. I felt ashamed for being spineless and speechless, but learned that in 1960s California, a rare Indian was kinda okay, but Mexicans of all hues, not so much! Of course, the narrative has changed as more and more Indians have shown up in America, specially the rich ones, but by then I was not ready to go back. We had a war to resist.

    About the other Indian. Years later, once when I was visiting the Taos Pueblo, evening arrived suddenly and the Pueblo, lit only by petromax-kerosene lamps looked like a ghost town. It felt a little eerie in a huge space with a “chiaroscuro” ambiance. Anyway, I entered a store to check out some artifacts and saw there wasn’t anyone at the counter, but a strong scent of ganja filled the air. I looked around and noticed a panel with various currency notes pinned very neatly behind the glass. The British Pound, Swiss Franc, Brazilian Real, Swedish Krona, Deutschemark, Japanese Yen, Mexican Peso… were all represented, but I couldn’t see any Indian Rupee. Then I heard a voice from the depths, “What d’ya think of my display, eh?”

    I peered into the darkness and said, “It’s fine but I don’t see my currency there.”

    “What’s that?” The voice asked.

    “The Indian Rupee,” I answered.

    “You from India?” The voice again.

    “Yes.” Said I and there followed a long pause.

    Suddenly a man leaped over the counter and stood in front of me. A man with shiny skin and long hair. He then gave me the warmest, most welcome hug I have ever got.

    “You are the real Indian man, if it wasn’t for that fuckin’ Columbus and other assholes, I’d be called just Taos man or sumphin’ like that.”

    This led to a soul-searching discussion of Indian history. Both kinds. In the end, my friend said with a lot of pain, only slightly alleviated by marijuana, “We were here first, you know. But our story has been wiped out forever.”

    I have never forgotten that encounter, and over the years have had to contend with the various aspects of being, and occasionally of nothingness too. But the contradictions in a contemporary immigrant identity in the U.S., fostered yet denigrated by structural racism in the Western world, I understand best through an example from the twenty-first century.

    One day, when I was driving in Bucks County, near Newtown, PA an aggressive van driver swung from my right to my left directly in front of me, causing me and other drivers to brake suddenly and honk horns. Then the van driver, now on my left slowed down a bit until I came alongside. A woman rolled down the passenger’s side window and tried to speak to me. So, I too rolled down mine. She shouted after a few tries, “Why don’t you go back to where you came from!” Said with much vehemence I should add. I caught a glimpse of her young white driver-companion as well.

    Those days, I was teaching at Bucks County Community College in Newtown. About a week later, me and two colleagues were introducing ourselves and our team-taught course on “The Culture of Affluence” in an auditorium classroom that could hold about 200 students. As was my practice, I stood scanning the student faces when I noticed a familiar countenance around the tenth row. Our eyes met for a second. The student was the driver of the van, companion of the woman who wanted me to go back! The young man lowered his head and kept it lowered throughout the session. After that, we never saw him again. My colleagues thought this was good riddance. I thought the student, victim of false consciousness, might have learned something from a critique of the consumerist trap in America.

  • Indigenous migrants in the US fight renewed segregation

    Indigenous migrants in the US fight renewed segregation

    The beginning of Donald Trump’s second presidential term on January 20 was a crucial day in international politics and for Indigenous migrant communities in the United States.

    The inauguration took place in the wake of the brutal fires in Los Angeles that began on January 5, devouring more than 37,000 acres, including large parts of Pacific Palisades, Altadena, and Pasadena.

    The fires destroyed more than 12,000 structures, including homes, schools, churches and businesses, but they impacted far more than buildings alone. They killed at least 29 people, exacerbated the already existing housing crisis in the city and will likely worsen unemployment. 

    Comunidades Indígenas en Liderazgo (CIELO) set up food pantries and distributed masks to Indigenous migrants affected by the fires. This enabled them to appreciate that the fires will have a vast impact on people’s lives, given that countless jobs no longer exist: dishwashers; waiters; cooks; plumbers; window cleaners; house cleaners; gardeners and caregivers for children, the elderly and pets among other essential jobs. 

    To a great extent, Indigenous migrants from Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, the Philippines and elsewhere do this work. Many have had to migrate because of the effects of structural adjustment or after extractivist policies displaced them from their territories. 

    Structural adjustment policies or extractivist policies that displaced them from their territories forced many to migrate, and Indigenous communal lifeways have long been antagonistic to the capitalist economic system. 

    Upon arrival in the United States, Indigenous migrants work two or three shifts, while also facing structural racism. Among Los Angeles’s large population of Indigenous migrants, Zapotec, Q’anjobal and K’iche peoples are the majority, according to a census that CIELO conducted in 2024. The survey also details the main areas in which Indigenous migrants from Mexico and Central America are employed. This includes restaurant, domestic, and janitorial work. They typically work in the most exploitative sectors and, because few have papers and many do not speak colonial languages, they have limited possibilities of career advancement and often face long periods of  unemployment. 

     On the first day of his second term, Trump initiated a package of presidential actions against immigrants, enabling mass deportations and allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to enter schools, child care centers, shelters and churches. He declared a national emergency on the U.S.-Mexico border, threatened family separation, and called for the elimination of birthright citizenship. These are just some of the actions that the white supremacist billionaires now running the country have implemented.

    Disciplinary strategies

    Discipline involves imposing norms and rules on social behavior in order to compel obedience and facilitate  maximum exploitation. What migrants in the US are experiencing today is another phase of disciplinary anti-immigrant policy.

    For the last three years, I have been in Los Angeles researching a new book titled No es por el sueño americano, es por el despojo [It’s not the American dream, it’s dispossession]. The book includes a series of interviews with Odilia Romero, a Zapotec woman who directs CIELO. I spoke with Romero the day after Trump’s inauguration, and she shared reflections on the impacts of the state of terror among migrants. 

    “The government’s announcement that immigration agents will be entering schools, hospitals and churches has sparked fear among undocumented Indigenous migrants and the children of migrant families, and has caused many migrants to stop going to work,” she said. This strategy of disciplining migrants is part of the scaffolding of migration governance: a political system that puts lives on a hierarchy, creating a system of differentiation and racialization among migrants, differentiating between those who are undocumented and those who are not. 

    Various people are among those considered undocumented: people who have work permits and those who do not, people awaiting an asylum or refugee claim, those who already have refugee or asylum status, and other categorizations that divide and fragment. In the lexicon of migration, undocumented people are a complicated and heterogeneous population. 

    According to Romero, there are several mechanisms for containing and disciplining migrants, but they have precedents in U.S. immigration policy. They are not new. “Anti-immigrant policies have always worked, and in fact, several deportation flights that took off on the day Trump took office were the result of processes initiated by the previous administration,” said Romero. “This was also true of the approval of the bill to deport undocumented immigrants who commit minor crimes.”

    According to Romero, there is a continuum of anti-immigrant policies, although they will intensify in the Republican era.

    Indigenous migrant communities in the US

    It has been several decades since one could say that Mayan, Otomanguean or Quechua Indigenous communities live exclusively in Mesoamerica or the Andes. Today there are K’iche’, Zapotec, Mixtec, Miskito, Lenca, Kichwa, Garifuna and Ixil communities, among hundreds of others, in the U.S. They work in construction, agriculture and restaurants, in caregiving, delivery and many other industries across the country. Guatemalan consular records indicate that Guatemalans live in 50 states, including Hawai’i. 

    The Guatemalan Consular Network indicates that 3,256,047 Guatemalans live in the U.S. Of them, 1,152,699 live in Los Angeles, with the K’anjobal, Mam, K’iche’ and Kaqchikel peoples being the predominant among Indigenous peoples. With Guatemala’s population at 14.9 million, 21 percent live in the U.S. 

    Thus, K’iche’ people no longer only live in Momostenago, Totonicapán or Nahualá, in the western Guatemala, but also in Los Angeles, New York, Texas and Boston. Likewise, Chuj, Akateko and Q’anjob’al people live in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, Kentucky, Chicago and New York. This is true of several other peoples, including the Garifuna, Miskito and Kichwa. 

    Information compiled by CIELO allows us to build a more complete vision of how these communities contribute to the economic stability of the places they’re from, where improved access to health, education and local living conditions are overseen by communally organized political systems. To do so, remittances from migrants are vital.

    “Indigenous migrants do more than contribute to their communities of origin. They sustained the city before the fires and during the pandemic and they are the ones who will rebuild Los Angeles,” Romero said.

    A time for reorganization

    Migrant workers have responded to the persecution and terror in different ways.

    Notably, agricultural workers in California, Florida and Texas have taken direct action by refusing to show up for work. There are poultry workers who did not go to their workplaces out of fear of raids. Worried about their parents’ arrests, children stayed home from school. Religious services have been moved online for the same reason.

    “We should learn from the struggles of the African-American communities in the United States, who with their strength and organization managed to break the country’s segregationist system, because we are entering a new regime of segregation,” said Romero. “There is a precedent for this, because in 2022 our African-American comrades fought alongside us against racist and anti-Indigenous policies, when LA City Council members made statements against Indigenous migrants from Oaxaca.”

    Mam, Ixil, Mixe and other Indigenous migrants from across the continent have, despite devastation, displacement and injustice, shaped our world. With their remittances and their knowledge they have supported their families, the defense of their territory, and the creation of important communal festivities and gatherings. In doing so, they have sustained the economies of their countries of origin.

    It is urgent that we focus our attention on the struggle and strategies of resistance of migrant Indigenous communities, heed the call to learn from the history of people of African descent, support potential alliances and think beyond the terror and inter-elite disputes so that we can imagine the actions we want to take.

    It is up to all of us to break the system of segregation and institutional racism.

    First published in Ojala.

  • Elon Musk Is Leading an Electronic Coup D’État

    Elon Musk Is Leading an Electronic Coup D’État

    Elon Musk, the multibillionaire and advisor to President Donald Trump who now heads a team called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has been taking over U.S. government agencies—the Treasury Department, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), General Services Administration (GSA), and the United States Agency for International Development, and perhaps others—a process that at least in some cases appear to be illegal. Where officials have resisted, Trump has removed them from their positions. Musk’s take-over is tantamount to a coup, and far more effective, serious, and dangerous than the insurrection that Trump organized on January 6, 2021.

    Controlling the executive branch, both houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court, Trump apparently believes that he and Musk have the power to carry out a coup with impunity. With Trump having purged the Justice Department, the FBI, the Inspectors General, there is, in fact, no one to call out and stop these attacks on the government bureaucracy from within. The Democrats and groups such as the ACLU have been filing suit in various courts with some success, but if they end up at the Supreme Court, given that the Supreme Court ruled in July 2024 that the U.S. presidents have absolute immunity for their official actions and broad immunity for most other actions, Trump is likely to win.

    Trump and Musk, who have been calling for reducing the size and cost of government, now have the power with the push of a computer key to stop the two trillion dollars in payments made by Treasury each year affecting tens of millions of people from children to the disabled to the elderly, local and state governments, and private contractors. They now have their hands on the computers at OPM that handles the records of virtually all 2.5 million government employees. And have taken over the computers at the GSA oversees government real estate, land and buildings. Musk’s team now had its hands on computer that mange almost $43 billion in foreign aid for foreign economies, education, and health, such as for HIV programs.Trump and his pliant Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth already control the U.S. military’s $820 billion budget.

    We are witnessing a tech coup d’état. The Democratic Party has failed to stop Trump and Musk, and at the moment has no plan to do so. The social movements and the left are too weak and distant from power to do anything immediately and are only likely to develop a strategy when Trump’s attack on the lives of millions of Americans forces them to act.

     

     

     

     

  • Trump’s Illegal, Brutal, Callous Attack on Working People; And an E-Coup by Musk?

    Trump’s Illegal, Brutal, Callous Attack on Working People; And an E-Coup by Musk?

    In his first two week in office, President Donald Trump has violated the Constitution and broken the law to carry out measures that threaten millions working peoples’ jobs and the health, education, and social welfare programs of the elderly, children and the poor. Blocked at various points by the courts, Trump has given his advisor billionaire Elon Musk, now head of the team called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), power to take over government computer systems in a move that looks like an electronic coup. The president is acting with the unanimous support of the Republican Party, while Democrats dither and fail to oppose him.

    Trump’s actions are mind-boggling.

    • He attempted to impose a spending freeze on all government grants and loans that would have affected 20 million children who depend on school lunch programs, 2 million elderly people who receive meals-on-wheels at their home, 79 million Medicare recipients and 93 million who receive Medicaid and Children’s health insurance, and others. Two federal judges blocked Trump. But Musk and his team have taken control of the Treasury Department’s computer systems and could block payments. Is this a kind of e-coup?
    • Trump sent over two million federal government employees the “Fork in the Road” email—a virtual copy of Musk’s November 2022 emails to Twitter/X employees—telling them they can resign now and continue to work from home to receive pay, and benefits until September 30, 2025. If they choose not to resign, they must return to working in their offices, but have no guarantee that they will keep their jobs. One need only reply to the email with the word “Resign.” Depending on how many resign, this could result in depopulating various government agencies.
    • Trump plans to launch a trade war against Mexico, Canada, and China, imposing 25 percent tariffs on products from Mexico and Canada, and an additional 10 percent tariff on China. They are America’s three largest trading partners. Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum have already announced that their countries will respond in kind. Given the integration of North American industrial production, these tariffs could, for example, lead to the shutdown of auto plants in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. The tariffs will also make more expensive the importation of lumber to the American construction industry.
    • Trump has begun the roundup and deportation of undocumented immigrants using military planes, only several hundred so far, but promising to deport all of them, which he estimates at 20 million though experts say there are 11 million. Many immigrants are now afraid to go to work, school, the hospital, or to their church or temple.

    All of this forms part of Trump’s goal of reducing the size and cost of the federal government and ending the welfare state.

    Trump has fired 17 inspectors general whose job was to stop fraud, abuse, and corruption, so there is little effective opposition within the bureaucracy. So far, the political opposition is using the courts to try to block Trump, with some success, but ultimately court cases will go to the conservative Supreme Court which has tended to support Trump.

    The Democrats have failed to speak out in a unified and clear voice and have not been able to slow Trump’s onslaught. Progressive Democrats have called upon the party to reassert its historic claim to represent the working class which dates back to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s. But the party just elected as its president Ken Martin, who talks about reaching the working-class, but is fundamentally a moderate apparatchik.

    Because Trump’s attack has been so fast, so far reaching, and so intense, there is so far no mass response from below. Unions, Black and Latino organizations, women’s, LGBT groups, and the left are discussing and planning, but do not yet have a strategy.

    This article was written for L’Anticapitaliste, the newspaper of the New Anticapitalist Party of France and will also appear on the website of International Viewpoint.

     

  • Trump’s New Cuba Policy: Bad for Cuba and Migrants

    Trump’s New Cuba Policy: Bad for Cuba and Migrants

    On his return to the presidency on January 20, Donald Trump rescinded his predecessor Joe Biden’s short-lived removal of Cuba from the State Sponsor of Terrorism (SSOT) designation. The SSOT designation will further isolate Cuba diplomatically and economically.

    Biden only removed Cuba on January 14. Cuba was originally designated as SSOT in 1982. As the U.S. State Department explains, “Cuba was designated as a State Sponsor of Terrorism in 1982 because of its long history of providing advice, safe haven, communications, training, and financial support to guerrilla groups and individual terrorists.” Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Fidel Castro and the Cuban government offered support to young revolutionaries fighting against reactionary governments, civilian dictators, and military juntas—so long as those groups reciprocated by adhering to Cuba’s political line.

    The Cuban Revolution of 1959 had inspired revolutionary guerrilla groups throughout Latin America, and the Argentine-Cuban revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara and the Cuban government of Fidel Castro encouraged and supported them. French intellectual Regis Debray popularized the concept of guerrilla warfare in Europe and beyond. Within a decade, however, the guerrilla movements had been crushed by military coups in Chile (1973), Uruguay (1973), and Argentina (1976), and in the 1970s in the Central American nations of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras dictators and military juntas defeated the guerrillas there. Only Nicaragua’s Sandinistas were victorious, and only for a few years. Idealism and heroism were not enough to win. The guerrilla organizations generally had no base among the working class or the peasantry and their violent tactics often alienated the rest of society. Debray himself criticized the guerrilla warfare idea and listed its faults in his later book Critique of Arms. The moment passed and in the 1990s, Cuba stopped supporting guerrilla groups and hasn’t done so now for over 30 years. In any case these guerrilla organizations weren’t terrorists if terrorism means the use of political violence against non-combatant bystanders either deliberately or as a result of gross negligence. In general, they fought oppressive states and their military and police.

    There was another issue, however, a big one. The U.S. government’s opposition to Cuba from the early 1960s to the 1990s was also once motivated by Cuba’s alliance with the Soviet Union and the Communist Eastern Bloc. In May of 1962, Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev and Cuban leader Castro agreed to placing nuclear missiles in Cuba, leading to the Cuban missile crisis. While the missiles were withdrawn, Cuban and Soviet ties grew stronger. By the 1970s Cuba had been completely structurally and politically assimilated to the Soviet Union, a totalitarian one-party state controlled everything and secret police who rotted out opponents. Cuba supported the repression of the Czechoslovak Prague Spring, a movement for democratic socialism, in 1968. And it also backed the Polish Communist government’s crackdown on the Solidarity union movement of 1980 that was also fighting for democracy. The United States supported all sorts of other dictatorships in Latin America and elsewhere, but Cuba’s alliance with the Soviet Union justified a variety of embargos, trade restrictions, and other measures, including attempted assassinations of Castro. But of course, the Soviet Union fell in 1991, and the Communist Bloc disintegrated and are not an issue today.

    The U.S. government also keeps Cuba on the SSOT list because of Cuba’s “subversion of U.S. justice.” This refers to Cuba having given sanctuary to a number of Black radicals of the 1960s and 70s, some of them Black Panthers, who were involved in violent incidents that included murder, among them Assata Shakur, Ismael La Beet, and Charles Lee Hill, all now in their late 70s and 80s. Some felt they could not get a fair trial in the United States. The U.S. suspects or criminals being harbored in Cuba include some CIA agents who defected. Cuba no longer has political relationships to groups like the Panthers, and these individuals no longer pose any threat to the United States. Certainly, Cuba’s having offered them refuge 30 or 40 years ago has nothing to do with supporting terrorism then and there is no such issue today.

    Just before Trump came to power, the Cuban government, negotiating with Pope Francis, but also implicitly with the Biden administration in its last days, agreed to the release of 553 prisoners. Most had been arrested in July 2021 in the massive marches of thousands protesting high prices and, in some cases, demanding democratic rights and an end to Communist rule. Apparently 100 have already been released, but given Trump’s hardline on Cuba, what will happen to this amnesty now? Neither Trump nor the Cuban government can be trusted to see to their freedom, and Pope Francis has only moral suasion. As Stalin once remarked cynically, “How many divisions does the Pope have?”

    Ironically, another U.S.-Cuban relationship is developing. Trump ordered the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security to prepare the U.S. base and prison at Guantanamo, Cuba (Gitmo) to receive 30,000 migrant prisoners. It was at Gitmo that the United States imprisoned 780 people, most from Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan, and Algeria, and tortured many of them. This does not augur well. The location of the immigrant prison on a military base in Cuba but not Cuban territory, will make it difficult to monitor their conditions and provide them legal representation.

    Finally, Cuban immigrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti who were living in the United States under a temporary humanitarian parole program set up by the Biden administration that allowed them to live and work here for two years, are being targeted for deportation as revealed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) document that became public last week. Cubans had once been a privileged and protect immigrant population, but no more. Now they are just “illegals” like the others—though obviously no human being should be called “illegal” and treated as a pariah.

    Terrorism is a problem, state terrorism that is, and Trump is the terrorist.

    Thanks to my good friend Samuel Farber for his suggestions.

     

     

  • After the Fall: Hope Amid the Ruins of Post-Assad Syria

    After the Fall: Hope Amid the Ruins of Post-Assad Syria

    A few weeks after the epochal fall of the Assad dictatorship, Syria remains in flux. It could not be otherwise after 53 years of the strangulation of civil and political life under one of the world’s most murderous regimes. Nonetheless, some broad outlines of where Syria is going can be discerned.

    But before entering into that, it is necessary to savor the moment.  First, the fall of Bashar al-Assad (who ruled from 2000-2024, succeeding his father Hafez Assad, 1971-2000), constitutes a major historical turning point for the region and even the world.  It shows above all that the spirit and reality of the Arab revolutions of 2011 have been smoldering underground all these years.  This should give no comfort to local rulers who have snuffed out the 2011 revolutions in their societies, especially those in Egypt and Tunisia.

    Second, the sudden collapse of the Syrian regime, within a matter of days, shows the fragile and brittle character of political class domination in general. Marxists have often repeated that, despite its unprecedented accumulation of wealth, capitalism is inherently unstable, a system where “all that is solid melts into air,” as Marx and Engels once wrote (Communist Manifesto, MECW 6, p. 487). We saw this in the 2008 economic collapse. But this is equally true of the capitalist state, no matter how solid and impregnable it might appear in a particular context, even in our era of state-capitalism. We saw this in 2011 in the Arab world, when the Tunisian and Egyptian governments fell to revolutionary youth and workers in a matter of days, and we have seen it in Syria today. (In 2023, we saw how another “strong” state, Israel, was taken by surprise not by a mass uprising but by a determined attack across one of the world’s most closely guarded borders.)

    CLR James stressed, based upon a passage in Lenin’s Philosophical Notebooks, that radical change is characterized by “leaps” and breaks rather than gradualness (Notes on Dialectics: Hegel-Marx-Lenin, Westport: Lawrence Hill, 1986 [1948], p. 99). The years 2023-25 in the Middle East certainly exemplify that. But this is only part of the truth, for both the state and capital have a deep, structural existence, and such moments of collapse or breaks are rare enough. For as Marx intoned after the old order reasserted itself with a vengeance once the 1848 revolutions had met their defeat: “The tradition of all the dead generations lays like a nightmare upon the brains of the living” (Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 104).

    The Unfolding of the New

    Keeping all this in mind, let us look at what is new in post-Assad Syria. Few noticed a year-and-a-half ago when the Syrian people surged into the streets for the first time in years with anti-regime, pro-revolution slogans as they targeted economic catastrophe and corruption. Notably, the predominantly Druze town of Suweida joined in in August 2023, breaking with the regime tactic of pitting ethno-religious minorities against the Sunni Arab majority. Demonstrators chanted, “One, one, one, the Syrian people are one.” Across a number of towns and cities, “the flags of the Druze and Kurdish communities were raised alongside the [2011] revolution flag. And there were numerous displays of solidarity with the Ukrainian resistance” (Leila Al-Shami’s blog, “Syria: Revolution reborn,” Aug. 29, 2023).

    As late as last summer, many EU countries, among them Italy, Denmark, Poland, and Austria, were seeking to end the boycott of the Assad regime, to reopen relations with it, and, above all, to force out the hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees who had streamed out of the country during the suppression of the revolution. These EU countries called for “a more realistic” policy, given that “Bashar al-Assad remains firmly it the saddle” (Jean-Baptiste Chastand, “Plusiers pays de l’UE veulent renouer avec la Syrie,” Le Monde, July 25, 2024).

    Jumping to December 2024, when the 53-year-old regime tumbled after a six-day offensive spearheaded by a small Islamist-led force from the northern opposition enclave of Idlib, many have noted the almost complete failure of the large, well-armed regime forces to fight back. According to Middle East scholar Stephen Zunes:

    “While it was the advancing military forces of Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) who marched into Damascus as Assad and his family fled, there are indications that it was unarmed civil resistance led by the resurgent popular committees and local councils, which initially came to the fore in the early nonviolent phase of the revolution back in 2011, that actually wrested control of much of the local governance from the regime, particularly in Daraa and Suweida provinces in the south” (Daniel Falcone: interview with Stephen Zunes, “The Ousting of the Brutal Assad Regime Brings Euphoria and More Questions,” Counterpunch, Dec. 11, 2024).

    In the town of Daraa, where the revolutionary uprising began in 2011, joy and sadness were mixed as crowds gathered to welcome home exiled revolutionaries. These included Sheikh Ahmad Al-Sayasna, whose sermon had helped galvanize the March 18, 2011, “Friday of anger” after local youths were imprisoned, tortured, and murdered. Too old and frail to give a full speech, he declared in just a few words, “We are a great people who deserve freedom and who know not hatred.” A young woman in the crowd cried out, “Syria is retrieving all its colors.” Another young woman who also experienced exile stated: “The Westerners are worried, but they need to understand that this is the first time decisions are in the hands of the Syrian people” (Eliott Brachet, “À Deraa, l’étincelle ravivée de la révolution syrienne,” Le Monde, Jan. 9, 2025).

    In early January, the people of Suweida remained on revolutionary alert, holding onto the weapons they had wielded in December as the regime began to fall. As the Assad regime suffered territorial losses under the blows of HTS-led forces from the north, Suweida also rose up.  Its armed networks, which had survived underground, reopened contact with a coalition of rebels from southern Syria, the region where the 2011 uprising first spread widely. “It was coordinated in secret. Once Aleppo fell, we formed the Operations Network [Chambre] of the South. Then, on December 7, we liberated our region as our allies marched on the capital,” stated a commander of the Druze Mountain Brigade, which claimed a force of 7,000 under arms. Also in Suweida, Druze, Christians, and Muslims gathered around a Christmas tree amid revolutionary slogans, especially, “A free, united, civic, and democratic Syria” (Eliott Brachet, “En Syrie, la circonspection des Druzes,” Le Monde, Jan. 7, 2025).

    In Damascus, there was a pervasive sense of picking up where things had left off in 2011. At a December 12 funeral procession for a young revolutionary murdered in prison during the last days of the regime, one participant declared, “It is very moving to march again all together with citizens of Syria from all four corners of the country, on the same route that we took at the beginning of the revolution” (Hélène Sallon, “A Damas, les poignantes obsèques de l’opposant Mazen Al-Hamada,” Le Monde, Dec. 14, 2024).

    In newly liberated Syria, as the poet Samar Yazbek has observed, the main slogan repeated incessantly by the joyous crowds was, “Syria is one and indivisible, it belongs to all Syrians, and everyone is entitled to the same rights.” She saw this as a clear repudiation of the Assad regime’s divide-and-conquer strategy and also of efforts by Israel, Türkiye, and other outside powers that are seeking to dominate the new Syria, even as others like Russia and Iran were exiting the scene (“Bashar al-Assad est tombé, mais la véritable révolution des Syriens ne fait que commencer,” Le Monde, Dec. 24, 2024).

    These revolutionary crowds also entered en masse the regime’s notorious prisons, vile dungeons where tens of thousands met their deaths over the decades, this in addition to the 500,000 Assad and his allies killed in their repression of the 2011 revolution. In December 2024, the people freed those remaining and searched desperately for other survivors or evidence of what had happened to all those who disappeared into these houses of torture.

    Summing up upon his return from exile, the noted Syrian intellectual Yassin al-Haj Saleh observed concerning the rapid collapse of the regime, “It’s the best thing that could have happened and it took place in the best way possible, without destruction, without massacres, without a great deal of human suffering” (Hélène Sallon, “Le retour doux-amer de Yassin al-Haj Saleh en Syrie,” Le Monde, Jan. 3, 2025).

    Some Syrian Arab intellectuals have also begun to speak out more strongly in defense of the large Kurdish minority (10% of the population) than their earlier counterparts like Saleh. During the civil war the largely Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) established the progressive, pro-feminist autonomous zone of Rojava, now under threat from the Türkiye-funded Syrian National Army (SNA), which has been allied to HTS. As the young Marxist analyst Joseph Daher writes, “The uprising in 2011 allowed an unprecedented emergence of a deep Kurdish national dynamic in the history of Syria. The Kurdish question raises many other issues about the country’s future, including the potential for a pluralist identity not solely based on Arabness or Islam, as well as the nature of the state and its social model. Ultimately, these are all challenges that are intrinsically connected to the desire for true emancipation of Syria’s popular classes” (“The Kurdish Struggle Is Central to Syria’s Future,” New Arab, Dec. 29, 2024).

    Internal Contradictions

    Many in the Western media have noted the relative tolerance of minority religious communities on the part of the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), whose quite small armed forces – probably less than 20,000 in a country of some 25 million – drove down from Idlib in the north to Damascus amid only token opposition, as the Assad regime and its military forces simply collapsed. Given that HTS originated as part of the ultra-fundamentalist Al Qaeda network, although those ties were severed about eight years ago, there is much apprehension about its agenda as it has begun to take over the state. This is especially the case within more secular, leftwing, and feminist sectors of the Syrian population. As Al-Haj Saleh asked upon his return from exile, “Who will be oppressed? People like us, democrats, liberals, people on the left.” He added that so far, there has been “a type of religious and cultural inclusivity but not a political one. I fear they may not accept political pluralism,” noting that HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa has surrounded himself with like-minded people in his administration (Sallon, “Le retour”).

    In the new Syria, the negative role of HTS and other radical Islamist groups during the 2011-13 civil war continues to be noted, even as they seem to have moderated their perspectives somewhat. As Shireen Akram-Boshar noted recently: “Syrians within Syria and in the diaspora are wary of HTS. Syrian activists have long described Nusra and other Islamist groups as a second pole in the counterrevolution, after the Assad regime. Syrian activists for years have lifted the stories of Razan Zeitouneh, Wael Hamada, Samira Khalil and Nazem Hammadi — four democratic activists who opposed the Assad regime as well as the Islamist groups, and were kidnapped and disappeared at the end of 2013, most likely by another, similar Islamist militia” (“As Assad Regime Falls, Syrians Celebrate — and Brace for an Uncertain Future, Truthout, Dec. 11, 2024). This connects to one of Raya Dunayevskaya’s key dialectical insights, wherein “the discernment of the counter-revolution within the revolution became pivotal” (Philosophy and Revolution: From Hegel to Sartre and from Marx to Mao, p. 106).

    HTS rule over the rebel enclave of Idlib over the past seven years, while not redolent of Taliban-style reactionary policies, is hardly reassuring. Funded to an extent by Türkiye, HTS developed an authoritarian system in which women’s rights were restricted, open sale of alcohol prohibited, and dissidents imprisoned and tortured.  After protests in 2021 against repression, HTS loosened controls somewhat.

    Now in control of Damascus, HTS has appointed an old Assad regime bureaucrat as chief of the national police and has tried to confiscate arms from the people, especially the youth. HTS has moved decisively to take control of the legal system, dispatching eleven of its minions from Idlib to take charge of the central body of Syrian attorneys. In response, a petition signed by 400 Syrians, 130 of them lawyers, has demanded that the legitimate purges taking place of corrupt and repressive Assad legal officials does not result in their replacement “by others also lacking any electoral legitimacy” (Hélène Sallon, “En Syrie, des avocats s’inquiètent de la mainmise du pouvoir sur le barreau,” Le Monde, Jan. 20, 2025).

    Syrian women have also expressed grave concerns about the future. In Aleppo in December, a women’s demonstration was called off after threatening messages were received by organizers. The HTS-led government has also sent out mixed signals. After an HTS spokesman said in late December that women’s leadership roles would have to be limited to “functions that correspond to their nature and biology,” protest demonstrations broke out in several cities. HTS leader al-Sharaa has expressed a somewhat different line publicly, naming human rights leader Aisha al-Dibs to a bureau of women’s affairs, but the latter has denounced feminism and called for a society based upon Islamic law (Céline Pierce-Magnani, “En Syrie, la méfiance des femmes face au nouveau pouvoir,” Le Monde, Dec. 30, 2024).

    The strongest worries about the new Syria have been expressed by the Kurds, who have come under pressure from the Turkish-backed SNA as well as the Turkish military and air force.  Kurds have already been forced out of some areas. The town of Kobane, where the SDF and its women’s units held off ISIS in 2014 in a legendary battle that broke the back of those Islamist reactionaries, is again in danger from SNA and Turkish forces. Recently, Commander-in-Chief of the Kurdish SDF’s People’s Protection Forces (YPJ), Rohilat Afrin, expressed concern about the direction of the new Syria, in terms of both Kurdish autonomy and women’s rights: “We believe that the war in Kobane was a war for humanity; a war to protect all women and land. We are confident that a state of public alert on a global scale will be raised and solidarity will be provided should Kobane be attacked again…. The mindset entrenched within the new government makes it clear that there is no place for women there — or only a place where women must accept to cover their heads and adopt a patriarchal mindset. Avoiding the above will require a great deal of organization and struggle. This is a serious danger that we need to recognize” (Rojava Information Center, “Syria: ‘We cannot hand over our weapons while attacks on women and our territories continue’ — An interview with YPJ Commander-in-Chief Rohilat Afrin,” Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal, Jan. 12, 2025).

    Imperialist and Subimperialist Threats… and Syria’s Future

    The fact that the Assad regime since the 2011 uprising has been propped up by Russia, Iran, and the Iran-aligned Hezbollah militias from Lebanon, was shown in how quickly this five-decade-old edifice collapsed once these outside powers began to withdraw in late 2024. Russia pulled out most of its forces by then and refused to do what it had done a decade earlier, conduct indiscriminate air attacks on Syrian rebels and civilians. Here the determined resistance of the Ukrainian people played no small role in weakening Russian imperialism, while Ukraine’s drones gave actual material support. Hezbollah, weakened by Israel’s attacks in the fall of 2024, which had caught its leadership off guard, assassinating them in one swoop, was in no position to aid the regime either. And Iran, reeling from Israeli air attacks and expecting more especially with Trump’s election in the US, also refused to do anything for Assad.

    It should also be noted that Russia and Israel had a tacit understanding under Assad, allowing Israel to attack Syria at will. In addition, after the fall of Assad and the weakening of Hezbollah and Iran, some in the Israeli and US governments are under the dangerous illusion that they can now move on to re-order the region by toppling the Iran regime from without.

    But even as various imperialist and subimperialist powers – Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah – were leaving the scene, new ones were appearing, or at least appearing with greater force. Türkiye, whose President Recep Tayyip Erdogan harbors neo-Ottomanist ambitions for the whole region, not only backed HTS and its “own” SNA, but has also exercised huge direct influence on the new government. Erdogan wants the new Syrian government to leave the Kurds to him and the SNA, but here he comes up against other forces, not least the Kurds themselves, but also their tacit backers in the US military, who have seen SDF as a bulwark against the resurgence of ISIS.

    Israel has intervened in post-Assad Syria in several ways, sinking the small Syrian navy out of the water, destroying from the air many military bases, and taking over a considerably expanded territory around the Golan Heights, which it already occupies illegally. The Israelis have given their usual alibi for their war crimes: fighting “terrorism.”

    All of these powers, and others, are seeking to take advantage of Syria’s economic weakness, born of years of civil war and the exploitation of the country by the Assad family amid epochal levels of corruption. These powers are seeking to dismember or divide Syria into regions and enclaves they hope to dominate. Hence, the constant call by Syrians today for the unity of the country.

    Some on the left, especially campists, have gone so far as to say that the collapse of the regime was orchestrated by Israel and the US and that all this serves imperialism and reaction, with little or no liberatory content to be seen. This logic is extremely questionable. For as longtime Marxist analyst of the region Gilbert Achcar observed in the wake of Assad’s fall, “There are those who believe that any local actor is but the puppet of some external actor. Such people can’t acknowledge any agency for local actors. That’s, of course, a very poor way of perceiving the situation” (Stephen R. Shalom, “The Collapse of the Assad Regime: An Interview on Syria with Gilbert Achcar, New Politics Online, Dec. 13, 2024).

    Such a logic also fails at the human level. Who can defend, excuse, or minimize the brutality of a regime that turned the whole country into a giant torture chamber and death camp? Who can forget the regime’s watchword during the uprising and civil war, “Bashar or we burn the country”? When the time came, in December 2024, the long-suffering Syrian people shook off the regime, with the armed forces melting away as the leaders slinked off to Moscow.

    The people of Syria now have an opening, of a type not seen since the early, heady days of 2011. Let us hope that they can make something positive out of this, not only for Syria, but also for the region and the world, which is in such great need of hope at a time when authoritarianism and fascism are descending on us in so many parts of the world. Let us also salute the persistence and the resilience of the Syrian people, who never gave up in the years since 2011, whether inside the country or in exile, and who continue on today amid myriad obstacles. Let that be a lesson for all of us, everywhere.

     

  • Book Bans & Erasure of History Are Weapons of Authoritarians & Fascists

    Book Bans & Erasure of History Are Weapons of Authoritarians & Fascists

    The greatest weapon which fascist thinkers have in their arsenal starts with misinformation and disinformation.  That is an attack upon the mind by way of erasing historic memory.

    (more…)

  • The Only Path to Peace in Palestine: One Democratic State

    The Only Path to Peace in Palestine: One Democratic State

    A mural near Emeryville Shellmound, the burial site of the native Ohlone people in California | Peg Hunter/Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)

    A previous version of this article appeared in India Forum on December 29th.

    Introduction

    On 15 January 2025, Qatar’s prime minister announced that Israel and Hamas had agreed to a three-phase Gaza ceasefire deal including an exchange of hostages and prisoners, and it would take effect on 19 January. As Israel’s bombing of Gaza continued unabated and the Israeli cabinet delayed ratifying the deal, well-informed commentators predicted that Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist allies would make sure that the ceasefire would collapse after the first phase.i Indeed, ‘Netanyahu stressed that the ceasefire was “temporary” and Israel reserved the right to resume strikes in Gaza’.ii Despite such uncertainties, however, the ceasefire deal could provide an opportunity to move towards a just and peaceful future.

    On 25 October 2024, Forensic Architecture released an interactive cartographic platform entitled ‘A Cartography of Genocide’ along with an 827-page text report entitled ‘A spatial analysis of the Israeli military’s conduct in Gaza since October 2023,’ providing conclusive forensic evidence of genocide in Gaza.iii On 5 December 2024, Amnesty International released a report which concluded that the Israeli state was committing genocide in Gaza in the strict legal sense of the term.iv On 19 December 2024, Human Rights Watch released a report on the Israeli state’s intentional deprivation of access to water, a necessity of life, from the population of Gaza, and concluded that this amounts to an act of genocide.v These reports confirm analyses by dozens of Holocaust and genocide scholars, the South African government’s testimony before the International Court of Justice, and the court’s own rulings.

    In fact, what we have been seeing in Gaza is the inevitable consequence of the model of European colonialism chosen by the original Zionists: not just occupying a colony and dominating it, not even the apartheid form of settler-colonialism that needed the indigenous people’s labor, but the model of settler-colonialism that wanted the land without the people, as in the Americas and Australia. Their plan to create an ethno-religious Jewish state in a land where only 8 percent of the population was Jewish in 1914 required the remaining 92 percent of Palestinians to lose their homeland.vi

    Raphael Lemkin, who lost 49 members of his family in the Nazi Holocaust and who coined the term ‘genocide,’ had studied the phenomenon historically, and found that settler-colonialism which engaged in what was then called forced displacement and is now called ethnic cleansing inevitably entailed genocide. Because how do you clear the land of the people living in it? By massacres and the threat of massacres, by taking away people’s homes and livelihoods and herding them into ghettos, by subjecting them to conditions that make life impossible, and finally by killing those who remain: exactly what has been happening in Palestine since 1948.vii

    The ‘two-state solution’

    Britain handed over the mess it had created by promising a Jewish national home in Palestine, which resulted in ‘an organized campaign of lawlessness, terror and sabotage’ by Zionist terrorist groups since the beginning of 1945, to the UN General Assembly in 1947. The UNGA accepted the Jewish Agency’s request to be heard, despite the fact that non-governmental organizations had not previously been allowed to present their positions. The Palestinian delegation withdrew from the proceedings in protest against being relegated to a position inferior to that of the Jewish Agency; their position was ‘The destiny of Palestine cannot be decided by outsiders. It is against the Charter. The destiny of Palestine shall be decided by its own people…’ The Palestinian viewpoint was thereafter represented by the Arab delegations, which deplored the deletion of references to a Palestinian state in the terms of reference of the Special Committee set up to look into the issue, while David Ben-Gurion stated the Zionist view that the whole of Palestine belonged to the Zionists.viii

    The Special Committee was unable to agree on recommendations, with the majority of it in favor of partition (the two-state solution), a minority in favor of an independent federal state of Palestine. When the two plans were placed before the UNGA in August 1947, there was strong opposition to partition, and not only from Arab delegates. Rabbi Judah Leon Magnes, a leader of Reform Judaism and President of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, wrote prophetically that ‘partition would not stop the terrorist activities of Jewish groups, and that having secured partition through terror, they would attempt to secure the rest of the country for the Jews in the same way’. The Pakistan delegate said, ‘In effect, the proposal before the United Nations General Assembly says that we shall decide – not the people of Palestine, with no provision for the self-determination, no provision for the consent of the governed…’ Thirteen delegations spoke against partition and only eleven in favour. Yet in the final vote on 29 November 1947, there were 33 votes in favour including the USSR and other Soviet Socialist Republics, 13 against, and 10 abstentions.ix

    How was this result obtained? ‘Chaim Weizmann, the senior Zionist figure in London and Washington, asked Truman to intervene. “I am aware of how much abstaining delegations would be swayed by your counsel and the influence of your government,” he told the president. “I refer to China, Honduras, Colombia, Mexico, Liberia, Ethiopia, Greece. I beg and pray for your decisive intervention at this decisive hour.” The Philippines, Cuba, Haiti, and even France were also on the list of countries that needed a push. “We went for it”, Clark Clifford, Truman’s special counsel, said later. “It was because the White House was for it that it went through. I kept the ramrod up the State Department’s butt.” Herschel Johnson, the deputy head of the US mission at the UN, cried in frustration while speaking to Loy Henderson, a senior diplomat, head of the State Department’s Office of Near Eastern Affairs and strong opponent of the establishment of a Zionist settler state in Palestine. “Loy, forgive me for breaking down like this,” Johnson said, “but Dave Niles called us here a couple of days ago and said that the president had instructed him to tell us that, by God, he wanted us to get busy and get all the votes that we possibly could, that there would be hell if the voting went the other way.”’x

    This is how the Philippine delegate ended up voting for partition after having earlier strongly rejected the partition proposal, saying, ‘The Philippine Government has come to the conclusion that it cannot give its support to any proposal for the political disunion and the territorial dismemberment of Palestine. We have assessed the legal arguments and found that they are not the decisive factors in shaping a just and practical solution. Whatever the weight we might choose to assign to the arguments of the one side or the other, it is clear to the Philippine Government that the rights conferred by mandatory power, even if subsequently confirmed by an international agreement, do not vitiate the primordial right of a people to determine the political future and to preserve the territorial integrity of its native land.’ The Lebanese government protested vehemently against the tactics being used to arm-twist delegates into voting against their conscience, and pressed its delegate to resist them: ‘I can also imagine how you have resisted all these attempts in order to preserve what we hold dearest and most sacred in the United Nations, to keep intact the principles of the Charter, and to safeguard democracy and the democratic methods of our Organization. My friends, think of these democratic methods, of the freedom in voting which is sacred to each of our delegations. If we were to abandon this for the tyrannical system of tackling each delegation in hotel rooms, in bed, in corridors and ante-rooms, to threaten them with economic sanctions or to bribe them with promises in order to compel them to vote one way or another, think of what our Organization would become in the future. Should we be a democratic organization? Should we be an organization worthy of respect in the eyes of the world? At this supreme juncture, I beg you to think for a moment of the far-reaching consequences which might result from such manoeuvres, especially if we yielded to them …”’xi

    Indeed, far from stemming the violence, the UNGA resolution to partition Palestine, achieved by corruption and sordid self-interest, merely provided a fig-leaf for escalating violence that has led inexorably to genocide. Despite widespread references to the so-called ‘two-state solution’ even today, it was evident from the beginning, as David Ben-Gurion made clear at the UN partition discussion referred to above, that the Zionists had no intention of allowing a Palestinian state to be established on even a small fraction of Palestinian territory. The goal of establishing the Israeli state over the entirety of Palestine has been expressed more openly in recent years, with Benjamin Netanyahu displaying a map of the region in the UN in September 2023 with no vestige of Palestine.xii The ‘two-state solution’ was finally laid to rest by Israel’s Knesset voting overwhelmingly (68:9) on 18 July 2024 that Palestinian statehood would pose ‘an existential danger to the State of Israel,’ making it clear that so long as the Israeli state exists, there will be no Palestinian state.xiii Indeed, according to Finance Minister Belazel Smotrich, the Israeli state should encompass not just Palestine but also extend into Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.xiv

    Given that around 95 percent of the land controlled by Israel has been acquired through the forcible expulsion of the original Palestinian population, it is not surprising that it rejects both international law and UN principles, which would rule out such a course of action. The participation and complicity of Western leaders in such violations enabled the descent of ethnic cleansing into genocide. For example, while the Israeli bombardment of Gaza after the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023 was targeting civilians and slaughtering thousands of children, these leaders justified it by citing ‘Israel’s right to defend itself,’ trying to provide credibility to the flagrant lie that Hamas was the only target. In any case, ‘To suggest that the thief has any kind of “right” to “defend” stolen property is ludicrous. The right belongs to the person fighting for its return, as the Palestinians have been doing every day since 1948. Beyond the 5-6 percent the Zionist land purchasing agencies actually bought before 1948, the Israelis are living on and in stolen property. They will defend it but they have no “right” to defend what by any legal, moral, historical or cultural measure belongs to someone else.’xv

    The only just and moral solution: one democratic state

    So long as the Israeli state exists, its attempts to eliminate Palestine will continue, and so will its bombing, invasion and occupation of neighboring states like Lebanon and Syria. The war with Hamas will also continue, because resistance to genocidal settler-colonialism is inevitable, and if non-violent resistance is crushed, there will be violent resistance. Israel has murdered peaceful demonstrators in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza,xvi and Zionists in powerful positions in other countries have tried to shut down the non-violent BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement.xvii They have arrested and beaten peaceful pro-Palestine demonstrators including Jews, and punished people expressing support for Palestine by taking away their jobs or university places. In their zeal to crush non-violent support for Palestine, Zionists have teamed up with neo-Nazis like the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD, Alternative for Germany), putting Jews in danger of their antisemitic violence.xviii

    Israel has never been a democracy; no ethno-religious or ethnic state – whether Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist or other – can be a democracy, because those who do not belong to the dominant group will not have equal rights. At best it will be an apartheid state, at worst a genocidal one. In the past, however, Jewish citizens of Israel enjoyed a fair range of democratic rights, but these have been drastically eroded as Israel descended from ethnic cleansing to genocide. Ofer Cassif, the only Jewish Member of the Knesset from the left-wing Hadash Party, says, ‘alongside genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, atrocities, occupation, and persecution of Palestinians in their territories, there’s also fascism growing stronger in Israel by legislation and by the persecution of citizens, arresting people, beating people, etc. Israel is on the verge of a full-fledged fascist regime.’xix The Israeli state has become a menace even to its own Jewish citizens.

    The solution proposed by the One Democratic State Initiative (ODSI) is a democratic, inclusive Palestinian state in the whole of Palestine, ‘from the river to the sea,’ in which all citizens would have equal rights regardless of ethnic or religious identity.xx ‘By identifying Zionism’s politicization of identity and Israel’s nature as a state exclusive to Jews as the root issue of the suffering and injustice in Palestine, the “One Democratic State” solution clearly defines liberation as the dismantling of the apartheid, settler-colonial state and the establishment of one democratic state in its stead.’ It thus identifies its twin goals as decolonization and democratization.

    Why should it be called a ‘Palestinian’ state? ‘For the same reason why Theodor Herzl, Arthur Balfour, the World Zionist Organization, the British Mandate and the League of Nations called it Palestine, why the “Jewish Agency for Israel” was originally called the “Jewish Agency for Palestine”, why they considered naming the Jewish state “Palestine” (and only dropped it in anticipation of partition), and why Shimon Perez and Golda Meir held Palestinian citizenship: Because “Palestine” has been the land’s name for over 2500 years. Unlike the Hebrew word “Israel”, which is exclusive to Judaism and therefore exclusive of non-Jews, “Palestine” refers, not to an Arabic or Islamic identity, but to the geographical area where a democratic state can treat all its citizens equally, regardless of how they choose to identify.’

    Wouldn’t this mean the ethnic cleansing or genocide of Israeli Jews? Not at all. ‘Although there is no universal consensus on the conditions that define one’s belonging to a society, the principles of jus soli (“right of soil”, the right of an individual born in a territory to be a citizen of its state) and jus sanguinis (“right of blood”, the right of an individual to hold their parents’ citizenship) are commonly applied… In accordance with the above, …Palestinian citizenship will be extended to all native Palestinians, including all who were expelled over the past century and their descendants.’ The new state would also extend ‘Palestinian citizenship to all Jews who have broken free from Zionism and who wish to remain in it as Palestinians.’ In other words, Israeli Jews who wish to remain in Palestine as Palestinian citizens would have the right to be citizens of the new democratic state on the basis of equal rights.

    Doesn’t the state of Israel have the right to exist? ‘The Zionist project has disregarded the basic democratic rights of the (Jewish and non-Jewish) population of Palestine by effecting, with essential British colonial help, the mass immigration of non-Palestinians to Palestine prior to 1948 and by establishing a “state exclusive to Jews” in Palestine in 1948 with no democratic mandate to do so. The continued existence of a state exclusive to Jews rather than a democratic state of all its citizens means that the trampling of these democratic human rights is ongoing and is therefore not “right”. A transition to a democratic state of all its citizens would right this century-old wrong and would be a historic step in achieving just and lasting peace in Palestine and the Middle East.’ Not even members of an oppressed community have a ‘right’ to oppress others, and the existence of the state of Israel is premised on its supposed ‘right’ to oppress Palestinians.

    In addition, this would be:

    A democratic state, a state for all its citizens with no discrimination on the basis of religion, ethnicity, culture, language, sex or gender, thus preserving the distinctiveness of the Palestinian heritage in its cultural, religious, and ethnic diversity; not a duplicate of capitalist colonial models, but a state, i.e. a functional administrative tool, whose society actively takes part in politics and through which its society expresses its political will and chooses how to administer its affairs.

    A secular state, that separates religion from politics, claims no religious legitimacy, safeguards the freedom of belief, the right to profess and practice religion, and all fundamental rights, and refuses to grant or deny rights on the basis of one’s religious, ideological or cultural background, in full rupture with Zionism and its sectarian nature.

    A socially just state, whose institutions are built on the principle of economic and social equality between segments of society and that builds a pluralistic, free and progressive society as an aspect of liberation. A state that frees popular classes from poverty, unemployment and marginalization and guarantees free quality education, social security and workers’ rights.

    Is the establishment of a democratic state in place of Israel antisemitic? ‘Claiming that a democratic solution is antisemitic implies that Judaism is antidemocratic, and that is antisemitic… Zionism has used Judaism to justify its settler colonial project… and has effectively conflated Judaism and Jewishness with colonialism in the eyes of Jews and non-Jews alike. It is noteworthy that although Zionism is the only ideology to have succeeded at establishing a state for one identity over others in Palestine, the ODS solution does not single it out as the sole ideology to aim at doing so, and is also opposed to the creation of a state exclusive to Arabs, Muslims, or any other identity.’ This is an important clarification: ODS is as much opposed to an Arab or Muslim state as it is to a Jewish state.

    Indeed, none of what has been suggested above is antisemitic according to the definition proposed by hundreds of Jewish scholars in the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, provided that ‘the same norms of debate that apply to other states and to other conflicts over national self-determination apply in the case of Israel and Palestine.’xxi Thus, for example, one would have to apply the same norms of debate that apply to Ukraine’s struggle against Russia for self-determination to Palestine’s struggle against Israel for self-determination.

    ODSI suggests that supporters of Palestine carry on doing what they are already doing – taking part in demonstrations, educating themselves and others about what has been happening in Palestine for over a century, participating in the BDS movement, and so on – but, in addition, emphasise that One Democratic State is the goal, and coordinate their efforts with others who share that goal.xxii Among them is the Palestinian National Initiative (Al-Mubadara) led by Mustafa Barghouti, which is trying to unify Palestinians around the goal of decolonization and the establishment of a democratic Palestinian state.xxiii

    Moving towards justice and peace

    Anti-Zionist Jews who live in Israel need to retain Israeli citizenship in order to continue their struggle, but those who live in other countries have found another way: renouncing their Israeli citizenship. In the words of Nadav Gazit, ‘Modern Zionism, which emerged in the 1800s, is an unethical, immoral, and evil settler-colonial project, held together by lies, racism, propaganda, and the support of world superpowers with their own interests in the resource-rich region. It cannot provide a “safe haven” for Jews, and Zionism is antithetical to Jewish values… Every moral and ethical part of my bones, flesh, and soul leaves me with only one viable option: to unequivocally renounce my Israeli citizenship.’ He also said he was moved to tears after posting his letter of renunciation on social media, when he ‘received heartfelt messages from Palestinians inviting me to their homes and families,’xxiv reminding us that among the admirable qualities displayed by Palestinians in this dark time is their incredible generosity.

    Another renouncer, Avi Steinberg, explains, ‘Citizenship, of the kind I hold, has been a material piece of a long-standing genocidal process. The Israeli state, from its inception, has relied on the normalization of ethnically determined supremacist laws to bolster a military regime whose clear colonial goal is the elimination of Palestine.’ He criticizes his parents, who ‘managed to become both American liberals who opposed the U.S. invasion of Vietnam, while also acting as armed settlers of another people’s land,’ and for being proponents of ‘a “peace” in which the original sin of the state, the ongoing process of ethnic cleansing, would remain firmly in place’. He believes that Jewish liberation is inseparable from broad social movements, and says that ‘As a traditional Jew, I believe the Torah is radical in its contention that Jewish people, or any people, have no right at all to any land, but rather are bound by rigorous ethical responsibilities… The only entity with sovereign rights, according to the Torah, is the God of justice, the God who despises the usurper and the occupier. Zionism has nothing to do with Judaism or Jewish history… Zionist colonization cannot be reformed or liberalized: Its existential identity, as expressed in its citizenship laws and repeated openly by those citizens, amounts to a commitment to genocide.’ Hence, decolonization is ‘both the path and the destination.’xxv

    Preventing and punishing Israel’s genocide in Palestine is a priority right now; the sadistic cruelty of what the Israeli state has been doing constitutes an assault not only on the human rights of Palestinians, but also on the whole edifice of international law, and on humanity itself. 153 countries have ratified the Genocide Convention but it is considered to be binding even on those countries which have not done so, and political leaders in all of them are under an obligation to prevent Israel from resuming the genocide by imposing full sanctions on it, and punish all those involved in it, from the Israeli political and military leadership down to every soldier. Failing this, they would be guilty of complicity with genocide, which is also a crime under the Genocide Convention.xxvi Countries which have been colluding with Israel’s genocide owe reparations to the Palestinians, including compensation to the families of those who have been killed, payment for medical treatment and rehabilitation to those who have been injured, trauma counselling for all survivors, especially children, and rebuilding of all infrastructure and buildings that have been destroyed or damaged, along with re-equipment of hospitals, schools, universities, etc.

    It is worth pointing out that although the United States and most Western countries have been most obviously supportive of Israel in its genocidal onslaught on Palestine, the BRICS+ countries, especially China, Russia, India and the UEA, have also been collaborating with it. Brazil and even South Africa, which has taken the commendable step of bringing the genocide case against Israel to the ICJ, have continued to supply oil and coal to Israel.xxvii Therefore we, the peoples of all these countries, who have been watching in anguish the carnage which Holocaust survivor Gabor Maté compared to Auschwitz,xxviii are under an obligation to put maximum pressure on our political leaders to abide by the Genocide Convention, while campaigning for boycott of and divestment from not just Western companies but all companies which have been colluding with the genocide, including China’s Hikvision and India’s Adani. Crucial to a just peace is an alternative vision of the ultimate goal in Palestine: From the river to the sea, freedom and democracy.

     

    Notes

    i Gideon Levy and Mouin Rabbani on Ceasefire: “Netanyahu Will Do Everything Possible” to Kill It Later, 2025, Democracy Now. https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/17/israel_ceasefire_gideon_levy_mouin_rabbani

    ii Tom McArthur, ‘Netanyahu issues warning ahead of Gaza ceasefire,’ BBC News, 19 January 2025. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp8qyq24qljo

    iii Forensic Architecture, 2024, ‘A Cartography of Genocide: Israel’s Conduct in Gaza Since October 2023.’ https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/a-cartography-of-genocide

    iv Amnesty International, 2024, ‘Amnesty International investigation concludes Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.’ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/12/amnesty-international-concludes-israel-is-committing-genocide-against-palestinians-in-gaza/

    v Human Rights Watch, 2024, ‘Extermination and Acts of Genocide: Israel Deliberately Depriving Palestinians in Gaza of Water.’ https://www.hrw.org/report/2024/12/19/extermination-and-acts-genocide/israel-deliberately-depriving-palestinians-gaza

    vi Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question, ‘Demography and the Palestine Question (I).’ https://www.palquest.org/en/highlight/294/demography-and-palestine-question-i ; Rohini Hensman, 2023, ‘The Political and Legal Underpinnings of the Palestine-Israel Conflict,’ New Politics. https://newpol.org/the-political-and-legal-underpinnings-of-the-palestine-israel-conflict/

    vii Rohini Hensman, 2023, ‘South Africa is Right to Invoke the Genocide Convention Against Israel’s War on Gaza,’ Jacobin. https://jacobin.com/2023/12/biden-administration-israel-gaza-war-ethnic-cleansing-genocide-convention ; Michael A McDonnell and A Dirk Moses, ‘Raphael Lemkin as historian of genocide in the Americas,’ Journal of Genocide Research 7(4), 2005, pp.501-529

    viii United Nations, ‘Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem: Part II (1947-1977)’ https://www.un.org/unispal/history2/origins-and-evolution-of-the-palestine-problem/part-ii-1947-1977/

    ix United Nations, ‘Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem: Part II (1947-1977)’ https://www.un.org/unispal/history2/origins-and-evolution-of-the-palestine-problem/part-ii-1947-1977/ The final vote was as follows: In favour: Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, Canada, Costa Rica, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, France, Guatemala, Haiti, Iceland, Liberia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Sweden, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Union of South Africa, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, United States of America, Uruguay, Venezuela.Against: Afghanistan, Cuba, Egypt, Greece, India, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Yemen.

    Abstained: Argentina, Chile, China, Colombia, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Honduras, Mexico, United Kingdom, Yugoslavia.

    x Jeremy Salt, 2024, ‘Not October 7 or any other date – This is all about 1948 now,’ Palestine Chronicle. https://www.palestinechronicle.com/not-october-7-or-any-other-date-this-is-all-about-1948-now/

    xi United Nations, ‘Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem: Part II (1947-1977)’.

    xii Brett Wilkins, 2023, ‘Netanyahu shows map of “New Middle East – without Palestine – to UN General Assembly’. https://www.commondreams.org/news/netanyahu-map

    xiii Al Jazeera, 2024, ‘Israel’s Knesset votes to reject Palestinian statehood.’ https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/18/israels-knesset-votes-to-reject-palestinian-statehood

    xiv The New Arab, 2024, ‘Israel’s Smotrich calls for Israeli conquest of Middle East “bit by bit” from Jerusalem to Damascus.’ https://www.newarab.com/news/smotrich-calls-bit-bit-israeli-expansion-damascus

    xv Salt, ‘Not October 7 or any other date – This is all about 1948 now’.

    xvi UN Human Rights Council, 2019, ‘Report of the international commission of inquiry on the protests in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.’ https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/CoIOPT/A_HRC_40_74.pdf

    xvii BDS movement, ‘What is BDS?’ https://bdsmovement.net/what-is-bds

    xviii ‘In a first, Germany criminalizes BDS (Boycott, Disinvest and Sanction) Movement against Israel, says its “Anti-Semitic”’, in Latest Laws, 19 May 2019. https://www.latestlaws.com/international-news/germany-criminalizes-boycott-disinvest-and-sanction-movement-against-israel ; Lena Obermaier, ‘Far-Right Parties in Europe Have Become Zionism’s Greatest Backers,’ Jacobin, 8 September 2021. https://jacobin.com/2021/09/germany-afd-zionism-antisemitism-israel-nationalism

    xix Ofer Cassif, interviewed by Marcus Barnett, 2024, ‘Anti-Zionist Israeli MP: “I Will Never Surrender,”’ Tribune. https://tribunemag.co.uk/2024/11/anti-zionist-israeli-mp-i-will-never-surrender

    xx One Democratic State Initiative, ‘One Democratic Palestine, From the River to the Sea.’ (The quotations that follow are from https://odsi.co/en/#faqR and https://odsi.co/en/statements/declaration-tomorrows-palestine/ )

    xxi The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism. https://jerusalemdeclaration.org/

    xxii ODSI, ‘A call to Action’. https://odsi.co/en/call-to-action/

    xxiii People’s Dispatch, ‘The unity of our struggle: Mustafa Barghouti on the role of the Palestinian diaspora in the struggle for liberation,’ 25 May, 2024. https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/05/25/the-unity-of-our-struggle-mustafa-barghouti-on-the-role-of-the-palestinian-diaspora-in-the-struggle-for-liberation/ ; Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestinian Question, ‘The Palestinian National Initiative Movement – Al-Mubadara, 2002-present.’ https://www.palquest.org/en/highlight/31163/palestinian-national-initiative-movement-al-mubadara

    xxiv Nadav Gazit, 2023, ‘Why I am renouncing my Israeli citizenship,’ Prism, https://prismreports.org/2023/11/30/why-i-am-renouncing-my-israeli-citizenship/

    xxv Avi Steinberg, 2024, ‘Israeli Citizenship has Always Been a Tool of Genocide – So I’m Renouncing Mine,’ Truthout. https://truthout.org/articles/israeli-citizenship-has-always-been-a-tool-of-genocide-so-i-renounced-mine/

    xxvii Shireen Akram-Boshar, 2024, ‘China’s ties with Israel are Hindering the Palestinian Struggle for Freedom,’ Truthout. https://truthout.org/articles/chinas-ties-with-israel-are-hindering-the-palestinian-struggle-for-freedom/

    xxviii Gabor Maté, ‘It’s like we’re watching Auschwitz on TikTok,’ Middle East Eye. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFOTBAiTHZA

  • A Complete Unknown: Film Review

    A Complete Unknown: Film Review

    In 1965, then a 19-year-old sophomore at UC Berkeley, I invited my boyfriend to see Bob Dylan live at the Berkeley Community Theater.  I had been a fan of Dylan’s since my senior year in high school and was full of anticipation and excitement.  I wasn’t sure what my boyfriend would feel about the music; he knew of Dylan but would not have called himself a fan. Finally Dylan came on stage and immediately went into full electric “Like a Rolling Stone.” There were loud boos from the audience, and I was horrified. Not about the electric sound—I was fine with that.  But the booing! What would this new boyfriend think?

    Now, some 60 years later, I remembered that moment, among many memories, as I watched the new film, A Complete Unknown, directed by James Mangold, written by Mangold and Jay Cocks with my grandson, a 19-year-old sophomore in college.  The film, based on Elijah Wald’s 2015 book, Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night that Split the Sixties,  is about Dylan’s early years, 1961-1965, and his move from folk music to electric rock.  And if you are looking for an enjoyable film experience, you will not be disappointed. It is entertaining, with the images and sounds of the early sixties.  Iconic images of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Civil Rights Movement, and the anti-war movement, are effectively shown with actual newsreels shown on black and white television images.  My grandson, like many of the young people who are seeing this film, was fascinated and excited by the times as well as the introduction to Dylan’s music.  He was especially thrilled by Masters of War. I, like many of my generation, was pleasantly coddled by the nostalgia evoked by the film—the music, the politics, the emergence of Bob Dylan as the great songwriter and musician that he was and is.  The world of Sixties Greenwich Village comes alive, and we see characters we knew or have heard of, running across the screen, Pete Seeger, well played by Edward Norton, Dave Van Ronk, Johnny Cash, Joan Baez.   It is fun to watch. It is fun to see Dylan, here played by Timothee Chalamet, pick up a whistle on a street corner, the whistle that went on to open “Highway 61 Revisited”, and fun to see how the young Al Kooper provided the organ music that starts “Like a Rolling Stone”.    The climax of the film is the uproar at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, when Dylan went electric, and drove the fans and folk purists to near apoplexy.

    Dylan’s relationships with Suze Rotolo, called Sylvia Russo at the request of Dylan, and Joan Baez, are depicted as manipulating and cold, really not so different from many relationships of the 60’s, before the women’s movement, when men were “cool” and women were “chicks.”  Both these women, strong and highly accomplished in their own rights, are portrayed shallowly, neither given the heft that they carried in real life.  Neither of the actresses, Elle Fanning as Sylvie Russo, and Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez was given much to work with, and neither came anywhere near capturing the people they portrayed.  Dylan is portrayed by Timothee Chalomet, who has received lots of attention and Oscar noise for his role, who plays his own guitar and sings the songs in a decent facsimile of the real thing.  But, as I told my grandson, why accept the ersatz when you can listen to the real Dylan so easily.  Of Timothee Chalumet’s depiction, Dylan says, “I’m sure he’s going to be completely believable as me. Or a younger me. Or some other me.” (1)

    Here is my problem with the film.  While enjoyable, it is not a great film.  It is pure one-dimensional fiction, a story about a character, perhaps based on Dylan, but in no way capturing the depth of the artist.  It is a film of cliches, which is why it is so seductively enjoyable.  There is the cliché of the brilliant artist who tramples over people, especially adoring women, on his way to fulfilling his unfettered ambition. It gives us cliches of women, clichés of those adoring women. It is sad to see the spirited and multi-faceted Suze Rotolo, an artist in her own right, deeply involved in civil rights politics, a Red Diaper baby of Italian Communists, but not Stalinists, as she points out in her own memoir (2), reduced to a simpering and pallid wisp of a woman.  Similarly, Joan Baez is portrayed without much depth, important only as the troubled partner of Dylan, given only a few spunky remarks and some sarcasm, with a pretty voice that cannot rise to the exquisite heights of Joan Baez’s voice.

    What is missing in this film, and what makes it derivative rather than art, is that there is no challenge to the viewer.  There is nothing that compels viewers to look at themselves and ask the hard questions like, what is the meaning of this music in my life, then and now.  What has it been about Dylan that so captured our souls?  What is the meaning of the intense resistance to Dylan’s going electric? What did that have to say about the rigidity, the artistic straight jackets fans and purists were putting on artistic expression?  Was this a new historic iteration of the Stalinist insistence on the purity of “proletarian art”?  Did we, his fan base, become “Maggie’s Farm”?  Today, in an era of social media, how do fans control artistic expression? None of these questions are posed by the film. The film is refined, pasteurized, and spoon fed.

    As a fan, I’ve had to ask myself these questions.  While I understood Dylan’s need to transcend the folk world, I must admit I, too, was caught in the desire to keep Dylan the way I wanted him.  I saw him live in Chicago in the 1980’s.  I couldn’t wait for him to sing some of my favorite oldies.  He did sing them, but in a way I didn’t recognize, the rhythm was different, the tone was different, and I was very disappointed.  It wasn’t until years later, when reading his memoir, Chronicles , that I understood why he did what he did: “By combining certain elements of technique which ignite each other I could shift levels of perception, time-frame structures and systems of rhythm which would give my songs a brighter countenance, call them up from the grave—stretch out the stiffness in their bodies and straighten them out.” (3)  He wanted to challenge our entrenched and comfortable perceptions of his music.

    Dylan himself, self-aware as always, believes in the responsibility of an artist to challenge through his or her art.  He was initially drawn to folksongs because “folksongs transcended the immediate culture.” When that transcendence stopped, his music had to explore elsewhere.  In a wonderful, almost Hegelian way, he says, “Opportunities may come along for you to convert something—something that exists into something that didn’t yet.” “You have to show people a side of themselves that they didn’t know is there.”  “Art”, he says in The Philosophy of Modern Song (4) is disagreement.”

    In the end, it is the words and the songs that matter most to Dylan. This film does not help us, regardless of our generation, look at our own lives in any way deeper than comforting nostalgia and the trivial, though enchanting, mythology of the times.   As Dylan points out in The Philosophy of Modern Song, “Knowing a singer’s life story doesn’t particularly help your understanding of a song.  Frank Sinatra’s feelings over Ava Gardner allegedly inform “I’m a Fool to Want You,” but that’s just trivia.  It’s what the song makes you feel about your own life that’s important.”

    For all these years, Dylan has never stopped his genius ability, in words and music, to speak deeply to my soul.  The old man, now 83, still has what it takes.  But the thrilling enigma of Bob Dylan cannot so easily be captured in a film—it’s like trying to paint the wind.  However, after all this, do see this film, see how you feel and what you think about it.  And other films to consider: Scorsese’s Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story , 2019,(Netflix), and I’m Not There, 2007, (Amazon Prime) directed by Todd Hayes, with six actors portraying different aspects of Dylan’s life, none of whom are named Bob Dylan.  Both these films challenge and stimulate in ways that this new film cannot.

    “ Well, I try my best

    To be just like I am

    But everybody wants you

    To be just like them” (5)

     

    Notes:

    1. In The Downey Patriot, Alistair Hunter Jan 5, 2025.
    2. Suze Rotolo, A Freewheelin’ Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties, Broadway Books, New York, 2008.
    3. Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Vol.1 (there is no Vol 2), Simon and Schuster, New York, 2004.
    4. Bob Dylan, The Philosophy of Modern Song, New York, 2022. Brilliantly written, this book shows the depth of Dylan’s understanding of music, and his deep appreciation of other artists, as well as his profound sociological and philosophic analysis of American culture.
    5. “Maggie’s Farm,” Bob Dylan, on Bob Dylan Bringing It All Back Home, 1965.
  • #StopCopCity ‘Day of the Forest Defender’ webinar on Saturday

    #StopCopCity ‘Day of the Forest Defender’ webinar on Saturday

     

    Register at pepeace.org. Whether or not you can make it on Saturday at 4 pm ET, your donation goes to Community Movement Builders, Atlanta’s “collective of black people creating sustainable, self-determining communities.”

    Though city authorities planned for the militarized training center to open in 2023, fierce resistance – ranging from canvassing and petitions to tree sits and arson – delayed deforestation and Cop City’s construction. Defense of the Weelaunee Forest continued despite severe repression including the assassination of eco-campaigner Manuel Terán who went by Tortuguita. Way behind schedule, the facility is finally built and will reportedly open soon.

    This Saturday’s the Day of the Forest Defender, the anniversary of Tortuguita’s 2023 assassination.

    Saturday’s webinar’s an opportunity to hear from organizers of the Stop Cop City struggle. Speakers are Mariposas Rebeldes’ co-founder Abundia Alvarado and Community Movement Builders’ founder Kamau Franklin, with Plant the Land co-founder Laura Schleifer as moderator. Atlanta’s lessons will be critical for all involved in struggles for decolonization, abolition, and ecology, and especially stopping planned Cop Cities. Here’s Stanley Heller‘s interview with Alvarado in preparation for the webinar.

     

  • After Assad Falls, Campists Sing Same Song

    After Assad Falls, Campists Sing Same Song

    A video “pinned” proudly to the top to the Top of the “Bronx Anti-War Coalition” Twitter feed shows a march for Palestine with a large two-star Assadist banner waving behind the main banner. This was December 15, 2024 a full week after the collapse of the regime and the liberation of the political prisons. It was no mistake. If you hold your nose and take a look at the feed you see multiple tweets mourning the demise of the “Forever” Assad kleptocracy.

    Was this die-hard embrace of the King of Sednaya an outlier? Unfortunately, the U.S. Left has been dominated by campist thinking, opposing the U.S. “camp” and then supporting the other camps, i.e. any state or movement that was in the bad graces of the U.S. empire. Call it a stunted, deformed anti-imperialism or better an “Anti-Imperialism of the Fools”.

    Campism is a mutation of principled socialist thinking. Instead of standing with the working classes of all nations against exploiters and tyrants, campism says we should oppose the strongest group of capitalists but act in solidarity with nations run by governments shunned by the most powerful clique of billionaires. That those in the “out-group” may be vicious exploiters, religious extremists, beastly torturers or hereditary despots makes no difference to campist thinking. “Hands off them.” Elaborate geopolitical gamesmanship comes to the fore. Solidarity of all the mistreated and cheated classes gets mere lip service.

    Last fall the Syrian HTS started an offensive. Assad’s Torture/Capitgon Empire was so rotten it fell without any significant battles. Did that wake up the campists? Short answer, not at all. If we can quickly and mercilessly expose their analysis they’re going to fade and class conscious ecosocialist thought can prevail

    Here’s a brief survey of campist responses post-Assad.

     

    Start things off with the United Anti-War Coalition of the U.S. 

    Their response to Assad’s fall was to hold a conference “A Regime Change Operation & Israeli Occupation of Syria”. They’ve actually toned down their home page. Right after the regime’s demise the UNAC page was filled with links to articles show their “anti-imperialist” views about Syria.  Each article was worse than the last.

     

    Black Agenda Report

    Its article can be summed up with this quote from it, “The forceful overthrow of the government in Syria represents a colossal defeat to the Pan-Arabists in the region and those who center the Palestinian national liberation cause.” Nothing about Syrians, of course, not even the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Syria.

     

    George Galloway

    “The Arab World Is Dead To Me – Gaza Is Done For. Netanyahu Wins” That was the episode of his so-called “Mother of all Talk Shows”  MOATS with George Galloway His remarks are actually breathtaking. He called the recent events an ISIS-Alqaeda takeover of Syria and said, “There were only 25,000 fighters in Golani’s army and 5,000 of those were Chinamen. Chinamen, Uighurs, who don’t even speak Arabic don’t even know who the Arab music stars whose albums they’re burning right now, don’t even know who they are, never tasted Syrian humus or Shakshura, don’t care for it, they eat rice for their breakfast. You see 5,000 out of 25,000 are Chinamen.” Where to begin? “Chinamen” he says three times. Who in the last 50 years uses that term without being a racist? Does he know anything about all about Uighurs? Does he assume all one billion Chinese only eat rice? As the Uighurs (or Tukistani as some call themselves) are being forced to give up their religion and adopt Han Chinese ways on pain of torture isn’t the whole matter in bad taste? And who is Galloway to bring up the question of “foreigners” coming from Idlib? Do the Russians eat humus? Do the Iranians (mostly Persians) eat Shakshura?

    One would think after that rant leftists would drop Galloway like a hot stone, but on December 17 Chris Hedges appeared. He said, “Yeah, the regime was corrupt, its human rights abuses were real, but at the same time this [attack on Assad] was a Zionist project long in the making and that’s why the Israelis have embraced the fall of Assad.” He says “I worked in Syria during Hafez al-Assad. I don’t want to pretend it was a flourishing democracy but at the same time I see what’s happening as catastrophic for the Palestinians and for the region.” What about for the Syrians? Hedges says “its human rights abuses were real”. Wow, that’s like saying, “Admittedly Hitler didn’t like Jews.” In the whole episode Hedges never talks about what Assad meant for Syrians, his totalitarian state, his prison gulag, his use of every weapon imaginable against protesters.

    CodePink

    In its statement after Damascus was conquered CODEPINK acted like they always supported liberation. A Palestinian staffer named Nour wrote, “Over the last few days, I’ve seen Syrian political prisoners run freely through the streets for the first time in decades as people celebrate the end of the Assad regime. Syrians in exile talk about returning home for the first time. I can’t help but feel joyful with them. How can I not, when the right of return is something I wish for my people every day?”

    But then CodePink rationalized the fall of Assad by sponsoring an hour with their “anti-imperialist” go-to person … Vijay Prashad. He’s a former Trinity professor and now a fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China who for years has excused away crimes of non-Western empires and countries. Prashad says we shouldn’t start understanding Syria by looking at the prisoners and prisoners. Instead, he says we need to go back to the U.S. war against Iraq and he starts a long geopolitical lecture. His description of 2011 in Syria? There are small groups that protest in Dera’a, the governor there acts “extremely harshly,” Assad apologizes and replaces the governor, the US ambassador comes out into the street in support of the uprising, and al-Qaeda sends Jolani to Syria to set up a branch. For Prashad that sums up 2011.

    At 35:13 Prashad says, “Netanyahu made a decision to go and pummel all the Syrian military bases along road number M5 that’s the road that goes from Damascus all the way up to um basically to Aleppo through Hama, Homs and by bombing all these military bases, by bombing Iranian bases, by bombing logistical depots they basically destroyed the Syrian military effectively. The Israeli Air Force provided um air support for the former Al-Qaeda fellows that came down south and just walked into Damascus. It was a cakewalk.”

    As description that’s rubbish. The Israeli Air Force has been bombing Iranian militias and Iranian troops and supply lines in Syria for years, but they it did not attack Assad’s Syrian Army or bases. Only after the success of the HTS and other forces and the fall of Damascus did Israel destroy the Syrian navy and facilities all around the country. By featuring Prashad’s mush, CodePink ignores the millions of Syrians hoping for liberation, and joins with other campists pushing the conspiracy theory that the overthrow of Assad was an Israeli, U.S., Turkish plot.

     

    Stop the War UK

    Stop the War UK had diminished over the years after its anti-Iraq war glories. It refused to be supportive of Syrians or Ukrainians. The genocide in Gaza has revived it.

    This quote from a piece on its site from several years ago is instructive. “Nevertheless, it was clear quite early on in the war that some of the violence attributed to Assad was being deliberately exaggerated by the regime’s opponents – both Syrian and non-Syrian, in order to justify another ‘humanitarian intervention’.” Yeah, Sednaya was just an exaggeration.

    On Dec. 13 of 2024 it put out this statement called Israel, Syria and the peace movement: we must not be divided. It made no comment about the monstrous regime that had disintegrated, merely recognizing there were “differences” among the Left about Syria. “[British imperialism’s] aim to exploit differences over events in Syria and the nature of the forces which have overthrown its state to split left opposition to imperialism and war….Our response must be to maintain our unity. Palestine is still the issue. British imperialism is still the enemy. We must not be divided.” Syria is never the issue for these peace lovers.

    Communist Party (USA)

    On December 13 published an article entitled “Peace and self-determination for the people of Syria.” It illustrated the piece with children holding two-star flags of the Assad regime. From the piece, “Beginning with the public demonstrations against the Assad government in 2011, NATO and the United States have continuously interfered in the affairs of the Syrian people…. These efforts culminated in the displacement of millions of Syrians…Brought about by sectarian and jihadist forces, many of which are under the influence of U.S. and NATO imperialism, the collapse of the Assad government will not resolve …” So according to the CP it was the US that caused the mass displacement. Assad had no role.

     

    Democratic Socialists of America

    In 21018 on its “Democratic Left” site there’s a piece entitled “DSA Must Reject Regime Change Rhetoric in Syria” during a debate over a resolution professing opposition to Assad. It’s unclear if any resolution on Syria was passed. In 2020 the site did recommend a couple of good books for “further reading.” That seems to be it on Syria for a group who international view on Ukraine and Venezuela is notoriously campist.

     

    Green Party USA

    During Trump’s first term the GP USA did comment on Syria. After Trump sent missiles after an Assad chemical attack the GP launched a petition that started with these words, “Far too often, the victims of US military intervention have been innocent civilians.  Already, over 400,000 have been killed and millions more have been displaced in one of the worst humanitarian crises since World War II.” Staggering. We’re to believe the US and not Assad was responsible for the killing.

    It also called for an “impartial probe of the Idlib gas attacks and emergency negotiations are necessary to stop further bloodshed.” It deliberately ignored the fact that the UN’s OPCW was an impartial agency and constantly did investigations. Not a bit of sympathy for Syrians being ground under Assad’s boot.

    The Green Party USA apparently hasn’t made any comment since the fall of Assad.

     

    Veterans for Peace

    There doesn’t seem to be any statement since 2017. In that year their resolution included this gem:

    Working with Russia in Syria, President Obama secured an agreement where the Syrian government willingly gave up its stockpile of mustard gas and nerve agents, a task that was completed in the summer of 2014. Syria also signed the international Chemical Weapons Convention. Diplomacy can work.” Realize they wrote this resolution four years after the sarin gas attack in Ghouta which killed 1,300 people.

    In 2016 VFP Vice-President Gerry Condon took part in delegation to Syria where he and some Peace Council members and others met with Bashar Assad. Upon returning he said, “Almost everything we read about Syria in the media is wrong, the reality is that the U.S. government is supporting armed extremist groups who are terrorizing the Syrian people and trying to destroy Syria’s secular state.” In August 2018 Condon, then VFP President ,said “There is no proof yet of a Syrian government gas attack, only a video made by a fundamentalist rebel group that wants more U.S. intervention.” Except that the UN’s Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons had found that the Syrian army had used chemicals months earlier.

    Condon remains on the VFP Executive Board.

     

    Jonathan Cook

    He writes, “The narrative of Syria’s ‘liberation’ currently dominates western coverage. But so far the takeover of Damascus by HTS appears only to have liberated Israel, leaving it freer to bully and terrorise its neighbours into submission.” So there were no prisoners liberated? No families were free to try to find out what happened to the hundreds of thousands of missing? No chance for democratic politics opened up? Tens or hundreds of thousands of refugees aren’t on their way home?

     

    Common Dreams

    There was a notable article on the Common Dreams site about Syria entitled: “How the US and Israel Destroyed Syria and Called it Peace”. It was written by one Jeffrey Sachs (whose “shock therapy” gave us the Russian depopulation of the 1990’s).

    In the article “The fall of Syria this week is the culmination of the Israel-U.S. campaign against Syria that goes back to 1996 with Netanyahu’s arrival to office as Prime Minister.”

    “Fall of Syria”?? How awful. It fell to its own people.

     

    The Nation magazine

    The post-Assad The Nation magazine had a piece about Syria. No Syrian was asked to write the column, instead a former US diplomat Chas Freeman and Pascal Lottaz penned it.

    It was named “The Fall of Syria Changes Everything.” Once again with “The Fall of Syria.” The writers say, “Basically, the big winner from this is Israel and the Netanyahu government.” That’s a completely wrong analysis. The big winners were the Syrian people who overthrew a grotesque government which had killed and tortured them for 50 years.

     

    Tariq Ali

    In his New Left Review geopolitical speculation Ali writes, “We are witnessing in Syria today is a huge defeat, a mini 1967 for the Arab world.” The “Axis of Resistance” is mourned. It never occurs to him that Hezbollah (and Palestinians) might have been much stronger if Hezbollah had never joined in the ransacking of Syria. About the magnificent liberation of the thousands of prisoners Ali sniffs, “Even if the rebels have freed some of Assad’s prisoners, they will soon replace them with their own.” Not one bit of hope that Syrians freed from Assad’s boot might revive the democratic impulses of 2011. Not one mention of “class” from this New Left Marxist.

     

    The Grayzone Syndicate

    Twitter influencer Dan Cohen 3000 is a Max Blumenthal associate with tens of thousands of human and bot followers. He writes, “There is no evidence of mass graves in Syria, let alone the outrageous ‘estimate’ of 100,00 to 150,000 human remains, as I’ve already demonstrated … This is how fake narratives are created by a cottage industry of NATO-friendly ‘genocide experts.’” He says, “It’s absolutely fascinating how the pro-Palestine crowd that supports the Syrian “revolution” is completely ignoring this video exposing their beloved “rebels” as tools for Israel. They’ll sympathize with Gaza but are objectively allied with Israel.

    Speaking about the White Helmets he writes, “This is the group that is participating in exhuming bodies from alleged mass graves in Syria. They’re funded by the US, UK and Qatar, and have long worked with Al-Qaeda and ISIS. Do you trust them?”

    On another day he wrote:

    In the coming hours and days, we will be subjected to horrific images of bones and skeletons dug up from graves of all sizes in Syria. All of it will be pinned on the former regime, and little to none will be attributed to HTS (Al-Qaeda), ISIS, or the other numerous militant factions armed to the teeth by the West, Turkey and the GCC that terrorized the country

    About him Idrees Ahmed tweeted:

    It’s hard to even get angry at these losers any more. But just because they are pathetic doesn’t meant they aren’t harmful. When my friends were under siege in Easter Ghouta, this douche used his Russia Today platform to try to get them killed by planting false stories about them

     

    Aaron Mate also of the Grayzone

    As of December 24, Aaron Mate was still maintaining that Assad did not use chemicals on “his” people.

    He writes, “Three medical workers are now claiming that the Syrian government pressured them to say that there was no chemical attack in Douma in April 2018. Let’s assume they’re being truthful that the Syrian gov’t tried to coerce them. That doesn’t change the fact that, as leaked documents prove, the OPCW’s own investigation of Douma did not find evidence of a chemical attack – and was censored.”

    If you want to go into the weeds on this, one or two chemical weapons UN researchers doubted whether Assad forces used poison gas in Douma in 2018. Their views were considered by the OPCW and were not found persuasive. Mate/Blumenthal and the rest of the Grayzone crew have been whining about this minority view ever since as some incredible coverup that their masterful skills revealed.

     

    Roger Waters

    Roger Waters hasn’t said boo about Syria since the fall of Assad. He supports Palestinian rights but only between the river and the sea. About the Palestinians in Syria he’s never said anything, but he said plenty about Syria, dismissing and slandering anti-Assad forces.

    Do remember his hideous FB post on May 16, 2019 about the chemical attack mentioned above. It included these words: “The White Helmets probably murdered 34 women and children to dress the scene that sorry day in Douma, and …[he mentions writers and governments who protested what was done in Douma] who bought into the White Helmets callous and murderous fairytale are suitably haunted by the indelible images of those lost innocent Syrian lives. How do they sleep?”

     

    Scott Ritter

    At the bottom of the heap is Scott Ritter, a former military officer who had a few years of deserved glory opposing Bush’s Iraq invasion but who for decades now has been an apologist for Iran, Russia and Assad. On Dec. 11 he tweeted, “For all the Palestinians and their supporters who are crowing about how Assad betrayed your cause, understand that Assad’s Syria was the linchpin that held the Axis of Resistance—the only support of consequence your cause had—together. Assad’s downfall is, therefore, your downfall, once again underscoring the reality that the greatest threat to a Palestinian state are the Palestinians themselves.”

    Here Ritter echoes the Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban’s nasty quip of yore, “The Arabs never lose an opportunity to lose and opportunity.”

    In a reply to Ritter “Assaf_MD” responds: Palestinians don’t need Syrians living under the boot of a deranged leader to achieve freedom. Ritter replied:

    Talk to me in three years. When Gaza has been depopulated. The West Bank cleared of Palestinians. When Greater Israel is re-embraced by those ‘friends of Palestine’ who proclaim their support today. When Iran has been pushed by geopolitics in a direction that does not include Palestine. I’ll repeat myself: Palestinians are their own worst enemy.

    Finally on December 29 Ritter in a tweet called for the mass murder of thousands of Muslims, in fact all Muslims who support “what is going on in Syria today.” Ritter, a non-Muslim, declared them “kafir” and said they were “Apostates who should be eradicated with extreme prejudice. And the non-Muslim world should line up to help in this extermination.” Deranged.

    All in all a pretty dismal swamp. Since it’s free let me quote Talleyrand, “They learned nothing and forgot nothing.”

    But there is a bright spot [so far], Democracy Now!  It’s not been uniformly campist but it’s been decidedly mixed over the years.  It had on excellent Syrian voices like Razan Zeitouneh, Zaher Sahloul and Yasser Munif, but it also featured the analysis of Medea Benjamin, Vijay Prashad, Patrick Cockburn, Seymour Hersh and Stephen Cohen.  Since December 8, DN! had on mostly Syrians to talk about Syria, notably the excellent Yassin Al-Haj Saleh and Joseph Daher.  Hopefully they’ll continue down that path.  Why not make suggestions to them for Syrians and others to interview.  Write to them at producers@democracynow.org.

    With the campists going down with the ship we the fully anti-imperialist Left have a big opportunity.  Let’s work with the remnants of the Syrian Left in exile or on their way home. Publicize and join in solidarity with the democratic struggles that are sure to come, like the rights of Syrian Kurds, separation of religious and state, equality for women, LGBTQ, union struggles and the need for abandonment of neoliberalism in favor of ecosocialism.  Push the US and the “West” to revoke the sanctions and expedite string-free aid.

    This winter, push for a new ecosocialist “spring”.

     

     

     

     

  • Jimmy Carter: the False Savior

    Jimmy Carter: the False Savior

    President Jimmy Carter sits casually with his feet on the table at the Resolute desk in the Oval Office of the White House on April 18, 1978 (Public Domain)

    A pious Sunday school teacher confessing to lust in his heart but swearing never to lie, he came to Washington to reestablish public faith in government just when popular disgust at monstrous U.S. crimes in Indochina had reached unprecedented heights. The big business agenda during his term in office (1977-1981) was to roll back the welfare state, break the power of unions, fan the flames of the Cold War to increase military spending, engineer tax breaks for wealthy corporate interests, and repeal government regulation of business. While portraying himself as a peanut-farming populist, Carter delivered the goods for Wall Street.

    Having run as a Washington “outsider,” he immediately filled his administration with Trilateral Commission members, hoping that a coterie of Rockefeller internationalists could resurrect the confidence of American leaders and enrich business relations between Japan and the United States.

    His Secretary of State was Cyrus Vance, a Wall Street lawyer and former planner of the Vietnam slaughter. Secretary of Defense Harold Brown was Lyndon Johnson’s Air Force Secretary and a leading proponent of saturation bombing in Vietnam. Secretary of the Treasury Michael Blumenthal was the standard rich corporation president. Attorney General Griffen Bell was a segregationist judge who disclosed that he would request “inactive” status as a member of Atlanta clubs closed to blacks and Jews [Carter himself stated that housing should be segregated]. Energy coordinator James Schlesinger was a proponent of winnable nuclear war. Transportation Secretary Brock Adams was a staunch proponent of Lockheed’s supersonic transport. National security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski was an anti-Soviet fanatic who said in an interview with the New Yorker that it was “egocentric” to worry that a nuclear war between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. would entail “the end of the human race.” Since it was unlikely that every last human being would perish in such event, Brzezinski recommended that critics of U.S. nuclear policy abstain from narcissistic concern for the mere hundreds of millions of people who would.

    In what William Greider, author of Secrets of the Temple (a study of the Federal Reserve Bank), called his most important appointment, Carter named Paul Volcker to chair the Federal Reserve Bank. Stuart Eizenstat, Carter’s assistant for domestic affairs said that, “Volcker was selected because he was the candidate of Wall Street.” The Wall Street agenda became clear when Volcker contracted the money supply and declared, “the standard of living of the average American has to decline.”

    Wealth was funneled upward and wages and production declined. Unemployment and bankruptcy rose, unions shriveled and disappeared, Pentagon spending soared. For the first time ever American white collar families couldn’t save money. With urban housing costs zooming, workers fled to remote suburbs, but the increased commute expenses tended to cancel out cheaper mortgages. Moonlighting and overtime work increased, but added income disappeared in eating out, second commutes, and hired child care. As the cost of necessities outpaced wage gains, only credit cards could fill the widening gap. Hamburger stands and nursing homes proliferated while well-paid manufacturing jobs fled to the Third World. The workforce of the future was said to be a generation of superefficient robots.

    Carter’s populist assurances simply whetted the public appetite for this kind of dismal anticlimax. While making a few listless gestures towards blacks and the poor, he spent the bulk of his energy promoting corporate profits and building up a huge military machine that drained away public wealth in defense of a far-flung network of repressive “friends” of American business.

    The heaviest applause line in his Inaugural Address was his promise “to move this year a step towards our ultimate goal – the elimination of all nuclear weapons from this Earth.” But after his beguiling rhetoric faded away, he embarked on a program of building two to three nuclear bombs every day. Although he had promised to cut military spending by $5 to $7 billion, he decided to increase it after just six months in office, and his 5% proposed spending increases in each of his last two years in office were identical to those first proposed by Ronald Reagan. Furthermore, having pledged to reduce foreign arms sales, he ended up raising them to new highs, and after speaking of helping the needy, he proposed cutbacks in summer youth jobs, child nutrition programs, and other popular projects serving important social needs. Similarly, though he had campaigned as a friend of labor, he refused a request to increase the minimum wage and opposed most of organized labor’s legislative agenda while handing out huge subsidies to big business. He made much ado about “human rights,” but returned Haiti’s fleeing boat people to the tender care of “Baby Doc” Duvalier, and when a member of the American delegation to the U.N. Human Rights Commission spoke of his “profoundest regrets” for the C.I.A.’s role in General Pinochet’s bloodbath in Chile, Carter scolded him, insisting that the C.I.A.’s actions were “not illegal or improper.”

    Carter came to Washington proclaiming his desire for a comprehensive Middle East peace, including a solution to the Palestinian question “in all its aspects.” Yet at Camp David he failed to grasp the root of the problem, let alone propose a mature way of dealing with it. He assumed that Palestinians were anonymous refugees whose nationalist aspirations could be safely ignored. He supposed a peace treaty could be signed in the absence of the PLO, world recognized as the Palestinians’ “sole legitimate representative.” He offered no apologies for negotiating an agreement that failed even to mention Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights. He did not protest Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s presentation of the Accords before the Israeli Knesset as a “deal,” one much more favorable to Israel than to “the Arabs.” He pretended not to notice that corralling Palestinians into Bantustans was not simply a tactic of war, but constituted Israel’s boasted final product of “peace”! Finally, his much praised Camp David accords were the death warrant for Lebanon, as Israel, its southern border secure with the removal of Egypt from the Arab military alliance, was freed to concentrate undivided attention on a long-planned invasion across its northern border. It was this invasion (June 1982) that convinced Osama bin Laden that only mass murder of Americans could ever change U.S. foreign policy.

    Carter was effusive in his praise and blind support of the Shah of Iran, who was deeply unpopular in his country due to policies of supermilitarization, forced modernization, and systematic torture. By the time Carter arrived in the White House the Shah’s throne sat atop a veritable powder keg. Iranian cities were hideously unlivable with fifteen percent of the entire country crowded around Teheran in shanty dwellings lacking sewage or other water facilities. The nation’s incalculable oil wealth reached few hands and a restless student generation had no prospects. The country’s bloated bureaucracy was totally corrupt. While Shiite leaders rallied popular support, the Shah’s secret police threw tens of thousands of Iranians into jail, the economy gagged on billions of dollars of Western arms imports (mostly from Washington), and Amnesty International speculated that Iran had achieved the worst human rights record on the planet. Meanwhile, Carter declared that “human rights is the soul of our foreign policy,” though he added the following day that he thought the Shah might not survive in power, a strange expectation if indeed the U.S. stood for human rights around the world.

    After the Shah was overthrown, Carter could not conceive of U.S. responsibility for the actions of enraged Iranian students who seized 66 Americans and held them hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Teheran, demanding the return of “the criminal Shah.” (He had admitted the Shah to the U.S. for emergency medical treatment for cancer, thus precipitating the “hostage crisis.”) To Carter, Americans were by definition innocent, outside history, and he dismissed Iranian grievances against the U.S. as ancient history, refusing to discuss them. In his distorted mind, Iranians were terrorists by nature, and Iran had always been a potentially terrorist nation, regardless of what they had suffered at U.S. hands. In short, without the Shah, Carter regarded Iran as a land of swarthy and crazed medievalists, what Washington today calls a “rogue state.”

    Having “lost” Iran, a key U.S. ally in the Middle East, along with military outposts and electronic eavesdropping stations used against the Soviet Union, the Carter administration began supporting Afghan Islamic fundamentalists, not making an issue of their having kidnapped the American ambassador in Kabul that year (1979), which resulted in his death in a rescue attempt. While U.S. officials condemned Islamic militants in Iran as terrorists, they praised them as freedom fighters in Afghanistan, though both groups drew inspiration from the Ayatollah Khomeini, who was, in the eyes of official Washington, the Devil incarnate. In a 1998 interview Carter’s national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski admitted that the U.S. had begun giving military assistance to the Islamic fundamentalist moujahedeen in Afghanistan six months before the U.S.S.R. invaded the country, even though he was convinced – as he told Carter – that “this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.” Among the consequences of that policy were a decade-and-a-half of war that claimed the lives of a million Afghans, moujahedeen torture that U.S. government officials called “indescribable horror,” half the Afghan population either dead, crippled, or homeless, and the creation of thousands of Islamic fundamentalist warriors dedicated to unleashing spectacularly violent attacks in countries throughout the world.

    The list of disastrous policies can go on. For example, Carter continued the Ford Administration’s policy of backing Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor, which killed tens of thousands of Timorese during Carter’s years in office, and roughly a third of the Timorese population overall between 1975 and 1979. In 1977-1978 while Indonesia engaged in wholesale destruction in the form of massive bombardment, wiping out of villages and crops, and relocation of populations to concentration camps, the Carter Administration extended the military and diplomatic support necessary to make it all possible. In late 1977 Washington replenished Indonesia’s depleted supplies with a sharp increase in the flow of military equipment (Jakarta used U.S.-supplied OV-10 Broncos, planes designed for counterinsurgency operations) encouraging the ferocious attacks that reduced East Timor to the level of Pol Pot’s Cambodia. In a 1979 interview with the New York Times Father Leoneto Vieira do Rego, a Portuguese priest who spent three years in the mountains of East Timor between 1976 and 1979, said that “the genocide and starvation was the result of the full-scale incendiary bombing . . . I personally witnessed – while running to protected areas, going from tribe to tribe – the great massacre from bombardment and people dying from starvation.” In May 1980 Brian Eads reported for the London Observer that “malnutrition and disease are still more widespread than in ravaged Cambodia.” Relating the comments of an official recently back from a visit to Cambodia, Eads added that “by the criteria of distended bellies, intestinal disease and brachial parameter – the measurement of the upper arm – the East Timorese are in a worse state than the Khmers.” Another stellar achievement of the “Human Rights” administration.

    Furthermore, during Carter’s brief reign he ordered production of the neutron bomb (which his administration praised for “only” destroying people while leaving property intact), endorsed “flexible response” and “limited” nuclear war, lobbied for the radar-evading cruise missile, developed a rapid deployment force for instant intervention anywhere, enacted selective service registration in peacetime, and advocated the construction of first-strike MX missiles for use in a nuclear shell game along an elaborate system of underground railroad tracks proposed for the Utah desert. While lecturing the Soviets on human rights, he escalated state terror in El Salvador, crushed democracy in South Korea, gave full support to Indonesia’s near genocide in East Timor, and maintained or increased funding for the Shah, Somoza, Marcos, Brazil’s neo-Nazi Generals, and the dictatorships of Guatemala, Nicaragua, Indonesia, Bolivia, and Zaire. He refused to heed Archbishop Romero’s desperate plea to cut off U.S. aid to the blood drenched Salvadoran junta, and Romero was promptly assassinated. Furthermore, he said nothing at all when the London Sunday Times revealed that the torture of Arabs implicated “all of Israel’s security forces” and was so “systematic that it cannot be dismissed as a handful of ‘rogue cops’ exceeding orders.” And though he presented himself as sympathetic to those who had opposed the Vietnam war, he refused to pay reconstruction aid on the grounds that during the devastating U.S. attack on the tiny country, “the destruction was mutual.” (Try arguing that the Nazi invasion of Poland wasn’t a crime because “destruction was mutual.”)

    Carter turned domestic policy over to Wall Street, refusing to increase the minimum wage and telling his Cabinet that increasing social spending “is something we just can’t do.” According to Peter Bourne, special assistant to the president in the Carter White House, he “did not see health care as every citizen’s right,” though every other industrial state in the world except apartheid South Africa disagreed with him. He understood that liberals desired it, but, Bourne notes, “he never really accepted it.” Instead, “he preferred to talk movingly of his deep and genuine empathy for those who suffered for lack of health care, as though the depth of his compassion could be a substitute for a major new and expensive government solution for the problem.” In point of fact, money can be saved under a government funded plan, but Carter was uninterested. He insisted on controlling business costs rather than providing universal coverage, neglecting to note that under Medicare – universal insurance for the elderly – administrative costs were a fraction of those charged under private HMOs.

    Carter simply could not comprehend the vast unmet social needs that existed (and exist) in the United States. He thought there was a way to maintain a global military presence, balance the budget, and keep business costs low while adequately meeting social welfare needs via reorganizing programs. When his Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, Joe Califano informed him that without increased funding many welfare recipients would be worse off after any reorganization than before, Carter erupted: “Are you telling me that there is no way to improve the present welfare system except by spending billions of dollars? In that case, to hell with it!” In response to a comment that his denial of federal funding for poor people’s abortions was unfair, Carter summed up the political philosophy that rendered him hopelessly un-progressive: “Well, as you know, there are many things in life that are not fair, that wealthy people can afford and poor people cannot.”

    Like political candidates who do their bidding.

    Sources.

    Lawrence S. Wittner, Cold War America: From Hiroshima to Watergate, (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1978)

    Laurence H. Shoup, The Carter Presidency and Beyond, (Ramparts, 1980)

    Samuel Bowles et al, After The Waste Land: A Democratic Economics For The Year 2000, (M.E. Sharpe, 1990)

    Peter G. Bourne, Jimmy Carter – A Comprehensive Biography from Plains to Postpresidency, (Scribner, 1997)

    Doug Dowd, Blues For America – A Critique, A Lament, And Some Memories, (Monthly Review, 1997)

    William Blum, Rogue State – A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, (Common Courage, 2000)

    William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II, (Common Courage, 1995)

    Edward W. Said, Covering Islam – How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World, (Vintage, 1997)

    Edward W. Said, The Question of Palestine, (Vintage, 1979)

    Robert Fisk, The Great War For Civilisation – The Conquest of the Middle East, (Knopf, 2005)

    Helen Caldicott, Missile Envy: The Arms Race and Nuclear War, (Bantam, 1986)

    Noam Chomsky, Radical Priorities, (Black Rose, 1981)

    Noam Chomsky, The New Military Humanism – Lessons From Kosovo, (Common Courage, 1999)

    Noam Chomsky, Towards a New Cold War – Essays on the Current Crisis and How We Got There, (Pantheon, 1973-82)

    Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, (Harper, 1995)

    Michael Parenti, Land of Idols – Political Mythology in America, (St. Martin’s 1994)

    Michael Parenti, Democracy For the Few, Sixth Edition, (St. Martin’s, 1995)

    Walter LaFeber, The American Age – United States Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad since 1750, (Norton, 1989)

    William Mandel, Saying No To Power – Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, (Creative Arts: 1999)

    First posted at CounterPunch.

  • Understanding Trump’s Reelection

    Understanding Trump’s Reelection

    Why did Trump win? What did Harris and the Democrats do wrong?

    Ignoring the advice of luminaries ranging from Sun Tzu, the Chinese general and philosopher to Star Trek’s Captain Kirk who recommended going on the offensive as the best defense, Kamala Harris ran a presidential campaign that was overwhelmingly defensive if not altogether in flight from the enemy.  But it was not only Kamala. Democratic candidates for high office throughout the United States as in the cases of Montana, Ohio and Maine were more than defensive running away and openly disassociated themselves from Kamala’s and Walz’s presidential campaign.

    These are just symptoms of the decline of the Democratic party as the supposed party representing the working class and social progress. In part this has been due to the party looking to the upper middle class, college educated section of the population as their new electoral audience. This strategy was put forward by Charles Schumer, the current Democratic leader of the Senate when he proclaimed in 2016 that “for every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio, and Illinois and Wisconsin.”  Rather than attempt to win over the large number of Trump sympathizers who are not hard right-wingers, Hillary Clinton dismissed them all as “deplorables.” Since then, major states like Ohio and Florida that were considered competitive have become unambiguously Republican, while Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan are becoming harder to maintain in the Democratic column. Finally Democratic advances in states like Virginia and Georgia are far from being fully consolidated.

    One sector of the population that the Democrats are very active and anxious to recruit are the richest capitalists. Bernie Sanders, who seems to be reexamining his support for the Democratic Party responded to The Nation’s John Nichols as to whether the Democratic leadership will learn the lessons of their defeat and stand with the working class against the powerful interests that dominate our society, that such a change was “highly unlikely. They are much too wedded to the billionaires and corporate interests that fund their campaigns.” (The Nation, November 26, 2024) In this context, not much has been said about Tony West, Kamala’s brother-in-law and a major campaign adviser who is a senior vice president and chief legal counsel of Uber from which company he took a leave of absence to work for his sister-in-law’s presidential campaign. As we know, Uber has been involved in an extensive international campaign to make sure that its employees are considered contractors and not workers entitled to all the rights and protections of labor law.

    The issue was placed on the California ballot in 2020 as Proposition 22 that if approved would have denied labor rights to all Uber workers. At the head of the campaign in favor of the proposition as Uber’s paid organizer was Laphonza Butler, a Black and LGTBQ former union organizer as well as former head of the California Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Proposition 22 won and Ms. Butler, aside from her victory in favor of the proposition got a big tribute when the Democratic governor of California Gavin Newsom appointed her as Dianne Feinstein’s replacement in the U.S. Senate in October of 2023. She will have served for well over a year as an unelected office holder, until Adam Schiff, the newly elected Democratic Senator, takes office in January of 2025. Besides being an insult to the California and U.S. labor movements, actions such as these put into great question the supposed Democratic loyalty to unions, let alone the capacity of the Democratic Party, who enthusiastically joined the neoliberal bandwagon decades ago, to recover the support of American workers.

    The only important policy issue in which Kamala unambiguously held a progressive stand in her presidential campaign was to support women’s right to abortion. Otherwise, she ditched the traditional liberal (and left) opposition to fracking, leading inevitably to the greater production and consumption of oil and gas with their detrimental effect on the environment. On gun control, she made a big point of declaring that she owned a gun and was willing to use it against any intruders while in a much less prominent note restated her support for a ban on assault weapons and for a more thorough background checks on gun purchasers.  The Economist, a journal critical of Trump but not known for its leftism predicted in its October 10, 2024, article “The Trumpification of American Policy” that “whoever gets to 270 electoral college votes on November 5th, Mr. Trump’s ideas will win. He, not Mrs. Harris, has set the terms of this contest, American policy has become thoroughly Trumpified.”  As the journal further explained, on trade policy, Harris would have kept most of the tariffs Trump imposed in his first term.  On taxes, she moved to the right of President Biden with her support of most of the cuts benefitting well off Americans signed by Trump in 2017 while promising to raise rates only for those earning over $400,000 a year. The Economist also pointed out that her immigration policy was to endorse the most conservative bipartisan reform proposal this century including shutting down asylum applications when the flow of irregular immigrants is high.

    However, while The Economist was correct in its brief description of Harris immigration policy, it did not grasp the enormity of Harris and the Democratic Party’s betrayal of undocumented immigrants. We only need to consider Trump’s singling out of undocumented immigrants as one of the principal targets of his campaign, farcically accusing them of eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, and as being criminals and rapists, very much in line with his long-standing rhetoric degrading and dehumanizing immigrant populations. Despite her obvious distaste of Trump’s comments about immigrants during their only debate, neither Harris, her vice-presidential candidate Walz, nor any other prominent Democrat defended undocumented immigrants or challenged the veracity of Trump’s entirely false charges about the supposed criminality or economic parasitism of undocumented immigrants. These charges expressed Trump’s willingness to propagate big lies in the tradition of Dr. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister.

    Thus, for example, it has been known for quite some time that in fact the offending rate for undocumented immigrants is lower than the rate for U.S. born citizens. The reputable National Institute of Justice whose motto is “advancing justice through science” published a study on September 12, 2024 analyzing arrest records in the state of Texas, not a state likely to  overlook suspected law-breaking on the part of documented or undocumented immigrants, that showed that during the period of 2012 to 2018 undocumented immigrants in that state were arrested at less than half the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent and drug crimes and a quarter of the rate for native born citizens for property crimes, according to the National Institute of Justice.

    Moreover, the notion that immigrants, whether documented or not, constitute an economic burden on the country ignores that wide sectors of the economy such as agriculture (where more than half of its workers are estimated to be undocumented), construction and a whole series of services provided by hotels, restaurants, cleaning, care services and the delivery of all kinds of documents and objects depend to a considerable degree on immigrant labor, much of it undocumented. Nevertheless, the consensus among professional economists is that immigration has a small impact on the state of the economy as a whole although some economists have actually maintained that immigration may increase the GDP of the nation thereby helping to create employment for others besides themselves.  Even the more “reasonable” expectation that immigration may have a negative effect on specific industries and localities even if it has little effect on the total nation’s labor force has been challenged by economists such as the Canadian American David Card. Card took advantage of the “natural experiment” provided by the large-scale entry of Cubans into the South Florida labor market during and shortly after the “Mariel” exodus in the spring of 1980 to find that it had no measurable effect on wage levels in the area.

    The Rise of inflation as the Number 1 Issue

    Throughout the 2024 presidential campaign the number 1 issue in the minds of a substantial section of the electorate was the high inflation that characterized the economic crisis affecting the country. It is worth noting that, at the national level, 39 percent of voters mentioned the economy and jobs as their most important issue, almost double the rate for voter concern with immigration, the second most important issue affecting 20 percent of the electorate.

    The economic historian Adam Tooze has explained that the substantial increase in food and energy prices in 2021 and 2022 was worse than the inflation caused by the oil embargo caused by the 1973 Arab Israeli war and was only surpassed in recent decades by the effect of the Iran crisis of 1979. As Arun Gupta summed it up (Jacobin, November 19, 2024) from 2021 to 2023, auto-loan delinquencies surged 50 percent for households in the bottom half of income distribution, and credit card delinquencies rose 34 percent from the eve of invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 to October 2024 for the total population. In addition, gasoline prices rose from $3.41 in January 2022 to $5.03 a gallon by June of the same year. Many fast-food items have risen by 50 to 100 percent from 2021 to 2024, and grocery bills rose by 22 percent.  Considering this truly disastrous situation, liberal commentators such as Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman greatly emphasized in his New York Times columns the decline of inflation’s rate of growth without taking at least equal notice of the stubborn consolidation, and its terrible effects, of the recently established high degree of inflation. It is hardly surprising that Krugman followed this analytical road because of his defense of the Biden/Harris presidential campaigns and at a deeper level, because of his unwillingness to advocate radical measures to reduce the class impact of the existing level of inflation such as indexing all wages and salaries and taxing the super profits feeding inflation.

    The Mirage of Trump’s Capitalist Success

    As consistently as inflation remained the top issue in the 2024 presidential campaign, so did Trump maintain a clear advantage over both Biden and Harris in public opinion polls as the candidate most likely to succeed in handling economic affairs presumably because as a multimillionaire investor he was most qualified to succeed in this area. Thus, for example, a working-class citizen of Latin American origin interviewed on television, expressed many reservations and objections about Trump but quickly concluded that he would nevertheless vote for him by uttering two words, namely “the economy.”

    This political phenomenon calls for analysis on several levels. At the simplest, most obvious level, it is not the case that Trump was an unqualified success as a capitalist, let alone an American model of capitalist achievement. As I pointed out six years ago in my article “Donald Trump. Lumpen Capitalist” (Jacobin, October 19, 2018) Trump had declared bankruptcy no less than six times, five times for his casino investments and once for his stake in the New York Plaza Hotel. In the same article, I cited business historian Gwenda Blair in her account of the numerous difficulties that Trump faced in the nineties in negotiating his huge bank debts, so much so that as John Feffer noted in his article “Trump’s Dirty Money” there was only one bank left, the Deutsche Bank, then noted for its highly questionable legal and ethical behavior, willing to give him credit.

    It was precisely Trump’s serious difficulties functioning as a relatively “normal” big capitalist in addition to his strong Lumpen inclinations going back to his close relationship with McCarthyite attorney Roy Cohn, a model specimen of amorality and cynicism, that led Trump straight to his shyster ways of making money such as his fraudulent Trump University and Trump Foundation, and more recently to promote and make money on trading cards, self-promotional materials, very expensive Bibles and $100,000 watches as well as becoming involved in crypto currency enterprises. We only need to imagine the reaction of many U.S. media organs if such activities had been undertaken by a woman candidate, or a politician with a Black or Latin American background. Finally, even as President of the United States, Trump engaged in corrupt practices to benefit himself and his family. As the Washington Post columnist John Rogin tells us in his book Chaos Under Heaven, Trump’s son in law Jared Kushner often sided with the Wall Street wing of the administration represented by Steven Mnuchin and Gary Cohn who were generally opposed to tariffs. At Trump’s first summit meeting with Chinese leader Xi in April of 2017, the threat of tariffs was put off and Trump desisted from his campaign promise to formally brand China as a currency manipulator. Xi had not yet left the summit meeting when the Chinese government approved three provisional trademarks for Ivanka Trump’s (Jared Kushner’s wife) company, allowing her to sell jewelry, handbags, and spa services in China. (Cited in Robert Kuttner, “The Import of Exports,” The New York Review of Books, December 19, 2024, 72)  

    Class Optics and Class Action

    On a more complex, and less than obvious level, what if Trump had been something hard to imagine, an exemplary, flawless and clean big capitalist? Would it have then been appropriate to see such an ideal person elected as President on the grounds that it would be good for the economy? No, that notion would be equally groundless. Even the “best and nicest” big individual capitalist will tend to look at social reality through a capitalist ideological and political lens which will exclude some possible solutions to problems and include those “solutions” that are compatible with their capitalist ideological and political outlook. Thus, for example, raising interest rates to combat inflation is not merely the “neutral and technical” government measure often portrayed by the press. Although certainly complicated in its causes and effects, there is a class kernel, invisible to many, in that this apparently “neutral” measure can cool the economy in a way which is much more likely to increase unemployment and more generally depress working class living standards.

    Thus, economic “solutions” must be compatible with capitalist class interests, and the outlook of big capitalists are generally rooted in the social circles (social clubs, trade associations, etc.) to which the individual capitalist belongs and from which he or she draws not only ideas and ways of life but also personal loyalties and even emotional support. In other words, the capitalist in question inhabits a different material (and psychological) world from that occupied by, for example, an industrial or white-collar worker.

    It would be a mistake to think that the issue we are presently discussing resides in that Americans who think that Trump would be good for the economy may be ignorant or naïve. That may be so, but it misses the crucial issue of the hegemonic political culture in the country at large.  Outside of the right wing and especially the extreme right of the political spectrum there is no oppositional culture in the U.S. except perhaps among the Black and other racial and ethnic communities and for a left that has grown since the end of the Cold War but is not yet a major, important force by itself. In the meantime, however, those who think that Trump “will fix the economy” are not significantly influenced by any progressive oppositional culture, which would almost “instinctively” reject the notion that multimillionaires could have the people’s interests at heart. In many other capitalist countries that lack the individualist background of U.S. political culture, the prevalence of an oppositional culture would lead most people to the opposite conclusion; namely, precisely because the candidate is a capitalist, he or she would not be good for the economy.

    Of course, this is not a rigid and static situation but subject to change especially when crisis occurs, and movements develop that leave an ideological and political legacy behind them such as was the case, for example, with the millions of Americans who came of age during the Depression. This generation of Americans tended to be strongly guided by economic issues, especially economic security against uncontrolled greed and to “instinctively” reject and distrust those that even FDR himself referred to as “economic royalists.” In contrast, the sixties generation was more concerned with anti-imperialism, peace and rebellion against domestic authoritarianism than with the excesses of great economic power.

    Finally, the very notion that presidential administrations are the principal or primary reason for a good or a bad economy is highly questionable. Under capitalism, profit making and capitalist accumulation are the primary objectives of the capitalist class and the great majority of its members, both at the national and, especially at the international level. It is true that the federal government has several tools at its disposal to have some effect on economic behavior such as monetary, fiscal and the economically relevant activity of the government itself such as arms spending, and public works among others. However, the power of those tools does not rise to the level of matching the national and international forces unleashed by the dynamic of business cycles and capitalist crises emerging from international capitalist accumulation and competition as witness depressions and recessions such as the great recession of 2007 to 2009.

    Nevertheless, the capitalists and their media allies have a vested interest in greatly exaggerating the importance of government intervention particularly in regard to business regulation and taxation, where their immediate self-interest is most evident. Interestingly, a plain-spoken investor such as Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway has declared that investors should not make investment decisions based on taxes and that holding an investment just to avoid paying taxes does not make a lot of sense. This sentiment is probably privately shared by many capitalists, although fewer would have agreed with Buffett that rich people are under taxed compared to the general population. Of course, Buffett’s frankness on these questions does not mean that he would be similarly unorthodox when it comes to other matters such as the undemocratic power conferred by business concentration exemplified in Berkshire Hathaway, jU.S.t to mention one obvious example.

    In addition, the powers of government are politically and constitutionally limited in addressing serious economic crises. Thus, in a private economy that is still fundamentally separated from the public realm, the federal government, despite the wishes of the president, is unable to intervene in the actual investment and economic decision-making processes of capitalist businesses. This has been put to the legal test in many instances. One such critical instance involved President Harry Truman’s decision to nationalize the steel industry shortly before the steel workers’ union began a strike scheduled to start on April 9, 1952. In response, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer that the President lacked the authority to seize the steel mills. It must be noted that Truman was not interested in seizing the steel industry per se, except as a clearly temporary means to prevent the announced strike.

    The Attack on Democracy and How to Defend It

    As many observers have maintained, there is no doubt that Trump’s program is substantially oriented to attacking democratic practices and institutions as expressed in its repeated threats to avenge media organs that have dared to criticize him. The declarations made by his key appointees such as Kash Patel as the new head of the FBI are even more shocking in their crude threats against political freedoms such as press freedom.  Missing in Mr. Patel’s pronouncements are even a hypocritical promise to enforce the rule of law, something J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI for fifty years, had no qualms to verbally articulate even as he proceeded to persecute Martin Luther King Jr., the Black Panther Party and thousands of American radicals and fighters for equality and justice. Even so, in light of the existing political climate, that unfavorably compares to the situation in January 2017 when Trump first took office, Patel constitutes a bigger threat than Hoover ever did.

    If so, how can most people defend democracy in this country? Educating ourselves in what democracy is and is not – and to study the imperiled institution and the social and political gains facilitated by it, can certainly help. But it is the political struggle to defend and extend democracy that will mobilize people to actually do something about it. It is here again, that the best defense is to take the offensive. And as it happens, there is plenty that needs to be changed to make this a more democratic country.

    We can start by examining the United States’ claim to be the oldest democracy in the world. In fact, one can argue that while the American system is indeed old, it is arguably the least democratic (as well as having the least generous “welfare state”) among the democratic economically developed countries whether in Western Europe or elsewhere. Thus, the way the Electoral College is structured ensures that a successful presidential candidate can be elected with a minority of the popular vote as has occurred several times in recent history. This in turn is closely related to the fact that Wyoming, the least populated state in the country, has as much power in the U.S. Senate as California, the most populated state. For its part, the Senate has more power than the more popularly based House of Representatives with, for example, its exclusive right to approve the nomination of members of the Supreme Court and all other federal judges, a power the House lacks. In addition, the Senate allows a minority of senators, using the filibuster, to stop legislation they oppose.

    Even the relatively more democratic House of Representatives must confront the phenomenon of redistricting, i.e., eliminating representatives, especially those representing Blacks and other racial minority groups, by changing the racial, social and political composition of their districts. The U.S. Supreme Court has declared that racial discrimination is not a legally valid reason for redistricting, but at the same time, it has considerably weakened the ability to remove racial bias in declaring unconstitutional important sections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In addition to gerrymandering districts, there are frequent efforts to limit the minority vote through eliminating people from the voting rolls using the flimsiest excuses, preventing former felons who have completed their sentences from voting, making it difficult to register to vote, and diminishing the number of voting locations forcing people to stay in line for hours thus encouraging them to give up and leave.

    Finally, it is extraordinarily difficult to amend the U.S. Constitution. Since the first ten amendments (the Bill of Rights) were approved in 1791, only 17 additional amendments have been approved in the next 233 years, and some of these had become almost non-controversial, as in the case of the 26th amendment approved in 1971 that reduced to 18 years the age for exercising the right to vote.

    It was precisely these long-established features of the U.S. political system that prevented the extension of democracy especially to Black people during the long struggle for civil rights that rose to a qualitatively new level in the decades of the fifties and sixties. Going as far back as Franklin D. Roosevelt refusal to support an anti-lynching bill in Congress during his presidency, many pro civil rights bills were introduced in Congress where they were sure to perish at the hands of the block of Southern Democratic Senators that were always eager to filibuster against such legislative proposals. Contrary to a widely disseminated mythology, it was not the efforts of John and Robert Kennedy that brought about the momentous Civil Rights Act of 1964, but the disruptions provoked by militant Civil Rights activism that accomplished that goal. In fact, Robert Kennedy tried to pacify the Civil Rights Movement by promising Foundation money to civil rights activists if they stayed off the streets and concentrated on voter registration. Civil rights groups like the militant Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) rejected Bobby Kennedy’s offer outright.

    Instead, it was the movement that greatly increased its political strength and activity starting with the southern sit-in movement in 1960 and culminating in the bombings and riots in  Birmingham in May and June of 1963, that brought the contemporary civil  rights struggle – which in the meantime had spread from the South to the U.S. as a whole – to a new pitch and intensity raising the specter of chaos and ungovernability in the then current imaginary of a highly stable United States of America. As a matter of fact, it was this concern, and the possibility of making inroads into the Black vote, that influenced the Republican Party whose Senate leader Everett Dirksen agreed to join Democratic liberals to break the Southern Democratic filibuster. It is important to note that when Martin Luther King Jr. led the Montgomery Movement for integration in December of 1955 marking the beginning of the contemporary Civil Rights Movement nobody would anticipate that in just 10 years dramatic victories would be achieved against racial segregation and for the right to vote. Unfortunately, civil rights groups did not develop long lasting organizations that would provide the continuity and strength to the development of successful long-term strategies of protest and change. Such was the case of SNCC – that was in reality an organizing committee – as well as of the very impressive Black Lives Matter movement of 2020. Unfortunately, neither movement left behind stable and enduring membership organizations to continue the struggle on an ongoing and regular basis.

    The great breach opened by Civil Rights militancy in turn facilitated the surge of other movements to defend and extend democracy in this country such as the movement for women’s rights and somewhat later for ecological and gay rights that established the foundation for today’s LGBTQ movement. I should underline the fact that the very large movement against the Vietnam War was part of this historical process although it was not a democratic “rights” movement as such.

    Moreover, the conservative reaction against the victories achieved by these movements was one of the principal factors bringing about the rebirth of the Right in the United States. Somewhat later neoliberalism became predominant as a response to increased competition from European and Asian capitalism. These developments, including a decline in the rate of profit in the late sixties, placed huge new pressures on U.S. corporations which translated themselves into new anti-labor offensives through increased productivity schemes, often at the cost of deteriorating working conditions, and the export of jobs abroad. These developments led in turn to a major decline in union strength.

    Trump’s New Course

    Trump begins his second term with a new approach. He has gotten rid of the conservative but respectable politicians such as Mike Pence and of respected high-up career military officers such as Jim Mattis, John Kelly and H.R. McMaster to install in their place cabinet members who will not stand in his way and create obstacles to the exercise of his executive powers. For that purpose, he has assembled a coalition of hard right wingers such as the richest man in the world Elon Musk, who recently expressed his support for the AFD, Germany’s neo Nazis, and big capitalists such as Howard Lutnick, the head of the Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald, with a more visible number of lumpen politicians such as Kash Patel, Putin’s friend Tulsi Gabbard and Matt Gaetz, whose scandalous life as a sexual abuser, forced him to quit even before there was a congressional hearing to confirm him. If there is anything that seems to unite these various individuals and gangs is the cult of Bitcoin, a typically adventurist investment that major respectable banks and investment house refuse to touch. Whether Trump will succeed remains to be seen, although the recent clash among his leading supporters about allowing highly skilled foreigners to immigrate to the United States is not a good omen for Trump. Nevertheless, he does not have much to worry about as long as his liberal and left opposition remains as quiet as it has been since the November elections. Fortunately, Trump’s excesses will surely bring an end to that lamentable passivity.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Reflections on the 2024 U.S. Elections from an African American Worker

    Reflections on the 2024 U.S. Elections from an African American Worker

    I don’t think the election of Trump runs straight along the lines of White racism alone. It reflects racism, sexism and self-hate that includes Black, Brown and Women that voted for Trump.

    (more…)

  • Nicaragua needs a new revolution

    Nicaragua needs a new revolution

    Nicaraguan Revolution 1979

    Mónica Baltodano was a guerrilla commander in Nicaragua’s Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) and participated in the country’s 1979 Revolution. She has a powerful presence and a gentle demeanor, she speaks quietly and with conviction. She describes herself as “in love with popular power.” 

    Baltodano joined the FSLN in 1972 and, in 1974, she went underground and participated clandestinely in the armed struggle. Five years later, when the Sandinistas triumphed over dictator Anastasio Somoza, she was named a “guerrilla commander” of the FSLN. She worked on building the revolutionary state in the 1980s and won election to Managua’s city council in 1990 and to congress in 1994. She also wrote a four-volume history of the Sandinista struggle. 

    Voters ousted the Sandinistas from government in 1990. For Baltodano, this was less a consequence of the failures of the young militants then running for office than of Ronald Reagan’s support for the Contras, the right-wing opposition. But scandals, such as the Piñata Sandinista affair in which party leaders—including Daniel Ortega—took for themselves properties and goods acquired through expropriation when they left office, created a legitimacy crisis for the FSLN.

    “When Eduardo Galeano learned about all of that, he said that he was surprised that young people who had once been willing to die for the cause now lived in terror of losing what they’d acquired,” Baltodano told me over lunch in Quito, Ecuador in October. By the 1990s, Ortega, she said, was using social organizations focused on land reclamation to consolidate his power and wealth, creating what she calls a “red and black bourgeoisie” (these are the colors of Sandinismo).

    She participated in the massive uprisings in 2018, during which police and paramilitaries killed at least 355 people. Over the following years, smaller protests have continued despite the fact that authorities have annulled the freedom of speech and assembly. Baltodano fled Nicaragua clandestinely in August 2021.

    Her commitment to her ideals has never wavered and she continues fighting for her country, though today she does so from exile in Costa Rica. She is one of nearly 500 Nicaraguans whom the Ortega regime formally stripped of their nationality.

    This fall I had the chance to sit down with Baltodano in a café bursting with leafy plants. Our conversation has been translated and edited for length and clarity.

    DMP: I’d like to start with the Sandinista Revolution and the Contra war against it.

    MB: We began the struggle convinced that Nicaragua as we knew it had to change. Nicaragua had an extreme concentration of wealth and land, it was the second poorest country in Latin America, with high illiteracy rates. The early years of the Revolution focused on that. I would say that we were a happy generation, being able to realize dreams that we had fought for with weapon in hand.

    The revolution captured the imagination of the global left because we were not copying examples from actually existing socialism at the time. We supported a mixed economy, political pluralism and non-alignment. We would often say “social property and private property must coexist,” with limits, of course. We did not want a single party or to align with one of the blocs in the Cold War. Unfortunately the war forced us toward the socialist bloc, so that we could get weapons, wheat, and other necessities.

    There was no Fidel or Raúl [Castro]. There wasn’t one person. There were nine commanders and a Sandinista Assembly made up of around 120 members. All the guerrilla commanders participated and we made decisions together. It became more of a consultative body in the 1980s, but it still had a lot of influence.

    Unfortunately, our revolution triumphed just as Ronald Reagan took office in the US. He came with the Santa Fe Committee, which aimed to destroy any possible advance of socialism. We faced an army made up of as many as 20,000 soldiers fighting for the counterrevolution and armed by the United States. They filled the ports with landmines. They really blockaded us.

    After the [electoral] defeat in 1990, Daniel Ortega began to take control of the Sandinista Front, undermining shared leadership and building a path for himself to the top of the party as a caudillo with unilateral power.

    DMP: Can you tell us more about when the Sandinistas returned to power in 2007, this time with Ortega at the helm?

    MB: Two very important events occurred in 1998. First, Zoilamérica [Ortega’s stepdaughter and the child of his wife, Rosario Murillo, who is currently co-president] declared that Ortega had raped her when she was a child. Murillo took Ortega’s side and that marked the beginning of her rise to power. 

    Second, there was a [Sandinista] congress in which Daniel Ortega achieved total control. At that same congress, he unilaterally announced negotiations for an agreement with then-President Arnoldo Alemán, one of the most corrupt presidents that Nicaragua has ever had. This was essentially a bipartisan power sharing agreement.

    When Ortega returned to power [in 2007], there was no longer a transformative project. Their message was completely vacuous: they called for “love, peace and reconciliation.” There was absolutely nothing about the economy.

    Ortega began to govern through clientelistic networks and to orient the economy toward big capital, especially financial capital, and to consolidate his own fortune. There are studies showing that capital has never done better in Nicaragua than under Daniel Ortega. Then came the surrender of territory for the inter-oceanic canal, for mining concessions, and all of that.

    DMP: And what happened in 2018?

    MB: Nobody could have predicted what was going to happen. There were two catalysts: the first was a forest fire. There was a degree of environmental awareness among students and, when a reserve called Indio Maíz began to burn, they demanded that the government react. At almost the same time, legislators passed a law cutting Social Security.

    But it was the killings that fueled the uprising. Before that, during protests, the government would send shock troops to beat us, but this time they also shot at us. They killed two on the first day, 20 on the third and 30 the fourth day. On the fifth day, people began to set up barricades.

    The massacre set the country on fire. There were dozens of barricades, in all the departments. Ortega called for dialogue but only to buy time so that he could organize paramilitary groups with the police to regain control. They killed over 300 people.

    Since then, the government has outlawed organizing. It has suspended all of our constitutional guarantees—all of them. You can’t express your opinion or mobilize or meet. There is no independent media. Nothing!

    DMP: And many people were incarcerated, even the leaders of the revolution, including Ortega’s former comrades.

    MB: How can it be that they jailed the heroes of the struggle against the Somoza dictatorship, like Hugo Torres, and left them to die in jail? Similar things have happened to Dora María Téllez and Sergio Ramírez. The government stripped almost 500 people of their nationality and took it from many others de facto by denying them passports, birth certificates and the right to live in Nicaragua.

    DMP: What’s the situation in Nicaragua today?

    MB: This dictatorship is worse than it was under Somoza. In 1978–1979, Somoza bombed popular insurrections, the cities and the civilian population, but he had to contend with an armed guerrilla movement. Ortega faces a totally unarmed population. When Somoza was in power, we could mobilize, we could organize to defend our rights. That’s impossible now.

    Today conditions have to be created in which Ortega and Murillo are removed from power and a transition process is generated that allows us to recover a minimum level of democracy.

    We are in a difficult situation. We know that we’re not going to displace Ortega through the construction of a leftist project or movement, because he has taken over the words, he has taken over the ideology. Being on the side of the people in the struggle against dictatorship is the main task of the left with regards to Nicaragua.

    First published by Ojalá.

  • The Collapse of the Assad Regime: An Interview on Syria with Gilbert Achcar

    The Collapse of the Assad Regime: An Interview on Syria with Gilbert Achcar

    [Gilbert Achcar has been a major left commentator on international affairs for many years. He grew up in Lebanon and has lived and taught in Paris, Berlin, and London. He is just retiring as professor of Development Studies and International Relations at SOAS, University of London. His many books include The Clash of Barbarisms (2002, 2006); Perilous Power: The Middle East and US Foreign Policy, co-authored with Noam Chomsky (2007); The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives (2010); Marxism, Orientalism, Cosmopolitanism (2013); The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising (2013, 2022); Morbid Symptoms: Relapse in the Arab Uprising (2016); and The New Cold War: The United States, Russia and China from Kosovo to Ukraine (2023). His new book on Gaza will be coming out from the University of California Press in the summer. He was interviewed Dec. 9 online by Stephen R. Shalom of the New Politics editorial board.]

    Stephen R. Shalom: So, this has been quite an extraordinary week!

    Gilbert Achcar: You could even say quite an extraordinary weekend.

    SRS: Indeed.

    Let me begin by asking about the role of Israel and the United States.

    In the last few days, we’ve seen Israeli troops cross the border from the occupied Golan and seize further Syrian territory. This has led some analysts to say that this shows that Israel—and its main backer the United States—were the main driving forces in what’s happened in Syria in the last two weeks.

    GA: That’s a very skewed interpretation of things, since if it shows anything, it is that Israel is very cautious about what is happening. If it is forcibly seizing the buffer zone which was created in 1974 as a result of the 1973 war, that’s to prevent those new forces that are now coming to the fore in Syria from getting closer to the border of the annexed Syrian territory, the part of the Golan Heights that was occupied by Israel in 1967. This territory was formally annexed by Israel in 1981, an annexation that Donald Trump, during his first term in office, recognized officially for the first time of any US president. So that’s what the Israelis are doing.

    They’re also bombing the military capabilities of the old regime, some apparently related to the production of chemical weapons, to prevent the rebels from seizing them. By behaving in this way, Israel is actually creating conditions that are not conducive to good relations with any future government in Syria, if ever that possibility existed.

    And as for the United States, Washington has been observing and monitoring developments with caution. They, like Israel, are happy that Iran has been dealt a severe blow, with the downfall of the Assad regime. But, like everyone, they have a big, big question mark about what will come next. They have worries about how the main rebel force, Hay’at Tahrir al Sham (HTS) will behave if it manages to control this big swath of territory that fell into its hands. And they are even worried that ISIS could seize the opportunity to launch a new offensive in the Northeast of Syria.

    There are those who believe that any local actor is but the puppet of some external actor. Such people can’t acknowledge any agency for local actors. That’s, of course, a very poor way of perceiving the situation.

    SRS: But surely the condition of Iran and Hezbollah and Russia—forces outside of Syria, external actors—did play a big role in the collapse of Assad.

    GA: Of course. That’s beyond any doubt. And it is a powerful rebuttal to all those who claimed for so many years that Assad was a real popular leader, that the Syrian population was very supportive of the Assad family’s regime, and that that’s why this regime managed to survive. Well, now we have proof that the Assad regime fully owed its survival first to Iran’s intervention, which prevented its collapse in 2013—that was when Hezbollah entered Syria at the behest of Iran, sending thousands of fighters to prop up the regime. And even with Iran’s support, the regime was again on the brink of collapse two years later, which led Moscow to intervene in September 2015. Russia dramatically added to a key superiority that the regime already had, namely, the monopoly of the skies. It benefitted from this monopoly courtesy of the U.S. government, which under Barack Obama vetoed any delivery of anti-aircraft weapons to the Syrian opposition. This is why you never heard even of helicopters being shut down, let alone fighter jets. The opposition was unable even to counter helicopters. The regime extensively used its fleet of helicopters to drop barrel bombs—these were very barbaric, indiscriminate attacks on urban zones killing a huge number of people And the Syrian opposition fighters could do nothing. They didn’t have any anti-aircraft weapons; they didn’t have MANPADs, i.e. portable anti-aircraft weapons. The United States didn’t provide any and none of the countries neighboring Syria that were allied to the United States were allowed to send that kind of weapon. That includes Turkey, which actually produces these weapons. Recall the famous Stinger missiles that the United States provided to the Afghanistan Mujahideen when they were fighting the Soviet occupation? These are produced in Turkey under US license, but Turkey didn’t have the right to deliver a single one of them to the Syrian opposition.

    So, Russia’s intervention in 2015 was the second time the regime was rescued by a foreign actor—first Iran, then Russia. And it survived with the combined support of Russia and Iran. Russia’s contribution was mainly its air force, with also a few troops there. And Iran’s was mainly troops from Lebanon, from Iraq, from Iran itself even including Afghan troops based in Iran. And that’s how the regime survived. For a long time, one could joke about Bashar Assad that the only territory upon which he had some sovereignty was his presidential palace. Beyond his palace, the Syrian regime’s territory was either under Russian or Iranian dominance. What happened in the recent period is that Russia had to remove most of its air force from Syria. According to Israeli sources, there were only some 15 Russian planes left there.

    So very little was available to support Assad, since Iran’s main force in support of the Syrian regime, which was Hezbollah, was dealt a very heavy blow in Lebanon. It was no longer really in a position to rescue the regime. And that’s when HTS decided to seize the opportunity. They were preparing for it. They saw a window of opportunity in light of the Russian withdrawal and the severe setback that Hezbollah was experiencing starting in September. They therefore began preparing themselves. And once the ceasefire was concluded in Lebanon, they attacked. Of course, they did not want to attack while the war was going on in Lebanon, because that would have appeared as if they were joining Israel in combat. So, they waited until it was over and then attacked. Having been deprived of foreign support, the regime collapsed just like the U.S. puppet regime in Afghanistan in 2021. It was exactly the same kind of collapse.

    We are against both American imperialism and Russian imperialism as well as Iran’s reactionary intervention abroad. And the result of foreign domination is always similar. Whether the puppet master is Russia or the United States, puppet regimes are puppet regimes. And the Assad regime had become one for a very long time, except that it was a puppet with two competing masters, giving it a little bit of space. All this has collapsed and is over now.

    SRS: Previously, it seemed like Israel and Russia had an understanding that despite Russia’s backing of Syria, it would allow Israel to attack certain targets in Syria, without deploying its anti-aircraft systems against the attacking Israeli planes.

    GA: Yes, that has been going on for several years. Israel has been quite frequently bombing Syrian territory—more specifically, Iranian concentrations or pro-Iran concentrations, like Hezbollah forces, within Syrian territory—without Russia, of course, intercepting any of these planes or firing any of the anti-aircraft missiles that it has deployed over Syrian territory. There was obviously an agreement between the two countries, Israel and Russia. This also explains why Israel did not take a position on the Ukraine war. It did not come out in support of the Ukrainians, like the Western bloc. Israel adopted a sort of neutral attitude towards the war because of this deal that existed between Israel and Russia. Now, of course, this is over because Russia’s presence in Syria has been very much reduced. Moscow is no longer in a position to greenlight or not any action by Israel on Syrian territory. And I wouldn’t bet on Russia being able to keep its two bases—air and naval—in Syria for long. Or else that would be almost like Guantanamo, where you maintain a base in a country with which you don’t have any friendly relations. The Syrian opposition can’t have friendly relations with Moscow, who’s got a lot of Syrian blood on its hands. That would be quite awkward.

    SRS: Does Russia still physically have anti-aircraft missiles in Syria?

    GA: Yes, it has, of course, if only to protect its bases. Any of their forces that were deployed in other parts of the territory I presume have been redeployed or brought back to the bases that they have in the coastal area. I can’t see them keeping isolated forces anywhere else. And likewise, the Iranians completely withdrew their troops into Iraq and from Iraq back into Iran. Hezbollah fighters that were still in Syria went back to Lebanon. And that’s it. Lots of articles in the media have been explaining that this is a huge defeat for Iran and its so-called axis of resistance. Well, that’s an accurate description of what happened. No possible question about that.

    SRS: In terms of the victorious forces in Syria, aside from HTS, can you describe some of the significant players?

    GA: Syria today is a patchwork, a full political-military patchwork. First, you have several foreign forces. Iran withdrew its forces, but you still have Russian forces there. Then you have Turkish forces on the northern border occupying bits of Syrian territory. You have U.S. forces, deployed in the northeast to back the Kurdish forces, which are dominant in a big part of the country. It’s a quite sizable part—one quarter of the Syrian territory. You have an area in the south  on the Jordanian border dominated by opposition forces that are linked to the United States. And you have a genuine popular uprising in the Druze area of the south, Suwayda—the province of Suwayda, around the city of Suwayda—that linked up with local forces in Daraa province.

    And, of course, there was the region in the northwest that was under HTS control. HTS forces have now spread to other parts of the country where the regime collapsed. However, HTS’s army is not large enough to control all the territory that fell into its hands. What happened is that the regime collapsed, exactly like you had in Afghanistan, except that HTS does not have the same force that the Taliban had. It’s smaller, weaker than what the Taliban were. And it would be hard for them to impose themselves on the Kurds, just as it would be hard for them to really get rid of those Syrian opposition forces that are completely dominated by Turkey, which are in the north. Likewise, I can’t see them managing to really exert full control over Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, and Hama and all these cities. Nor over the coastal area where you still have Russian forces. HTS has not really spread everywhere, although the state has collapsed everywhere.

    There are areas where the state has collapsed and a vacuum was created. And this is related to the nature of the state. It’s of a kind of state akin to that of Libya or that of Iraq under Saddam Hussein which are states that are really family ruled, family owned—I call them, along with the monarchies in the region, patrimonial states. They function like monarchies, actually. The state apparatus is so much linked organically to the ruling family that when the regime collapses, it’s not only the regime, it’s the whole state. What we have witnessed in recent days in Syria is not a regime collapse. It’s a state collapse. The whole state collapsed, and any idea that there might be some smooth transition process is just an illusion.

    It is just impossible, given the situation of the country and the number of occupation forces on its soil. The worst, of course, is the Israeli occupation. Israel is now in a very hegemonic position in the region after what they did starting from Gaza, then Lebanon, then Syria, and they are now planning to strike at Iran.

    Let me be clear. I fully share the joy of the tens of thousands of people who got freed from jail, from the chains of the Assad regime. It is a huge relief that this carceral regime has ended, that so many people are able to go back to their cities, to their homes, that refugees can go back to their homeland. But this is not a revolution. This is the collapse of a regime that hasn’t been replaced by any form of popular democratic organization. And therefore, from a left-wing perspective, we should also be worried about the future.

    At the very least, we must be very cautious and not fall into the kind of euphoria that led some people to characterize the events as the resumption of the Syrian revolution. The Syrian revolution, the one that started in 2011, has been dead for a long time unfortunately. The only possibility for a resumption of that uprising, was seen in 2020 in Suwayda, in this regime-controlled Druze area that I mentioned, where you now have some kind of popular power. There you had repeated popular uprisings against the regime since 2020, renewing the slogans of the 2011 popular uprising. They briefly spread to other parts of Syria, but there was no form of organization able to generalize this popular uprising to the whole country—or at least the whole Arab-majority territory of Syria because the Kurdish-majority part belongs to a different political category. So, unfortunately the Suwayda uprising did not spread, and the regime repressed it, quite harshly as usual. But now, with the collapse of the regime, they have revived their movement. But it is limited to only one part, one province of Syria.

    There are progressives in other parts of the country who are trying to organize something at the level of civil society, from below, to fight for rights, democracy, and social demands. How far they will manage to do something is hampered by the fact that the regime has been such a terrible tyranny that little potential is left. Most of the opposition-minded people left the country. There has been a huge exodus from Syria over the years. One quarter of the population has left the country, if not more. Not to mention those that were internally displaced who represent close to one third.

    There is little ground for optimism, I’m afraid. But there is still some ground for hope.

  • China’s Ties With Israel Are Hindering the Palestinian Struggle for Freedom

    China’s Ties With Israel Are Hindering the Palestinian Struggle for Freedom

    Throughout the past year of Israel’s war on Gaza, China has repeatedly called for a return to the peace process and the implementation of the long-discussed two-state solution. But this rhetoric is far from signaling opposition to and defiance of Israel. Such calls are hardly very radical: They seek a return to a U.S.-led peace process and a two-state solution traditionally championed by the U.S. Both the peace process and the two-state solution have been sharply criticized by Palestinians and the Palestine solidarity movement globally as mechanisms that preclude the Palestinian right to return and take as their starting point the theft of the majority of Palestinian land. Nonetheless, China’s moderated criticism of Israel has not been matched by any efforts to advance such a flawed process.

    Eli Friedman, a Cornell University professor who focuses on labor and development in China, explained some of the dynamics between China and Palestine in a recent webinar. It must be understood, he said, that “China is not responsible for the genocide” in Gaza; responsibility lies with Israel and the U.S., followed by other European powers. “The idea, though, that China is interested in the liberation of Palestine is also extremely problematic,” he added. “China is Israel’s second biggest trading partner after the United States, and actually not too far behind.” In particular, Israel and China cooperate extensively in technology and military sectors. “When the U.S. after 1989 in Tiananmen Square was saying, we can’t sell military equipment to China, Israel kept selling [them] military equipment — Israel is kind of a back door, and they’ve had a lot of cooperation in that respect.”

    “China wants economic influence in the region,” he continued. “They want the system to continue to function smoothly.” Israel is a key player in the region that China wants to be able to relate to, therefore China “want[s] Israel to be able to continue to persist more or less as it is. Now, they also want an end to the occupation. China’s official stated position on Israel is a two-state solution … but they’re not going to do anything to fundamentally disrupt” economic relations with Israel.

    Friedman explained that this is because China has much to lose economically if it does so.

    “Chinese state-owned companies operate the port of Haifa, and they’re leading a big expansion of the port in Ashdod, which is just to the north of Gaza. They’re building an expansion of the Tel Aviv light rail system. So Chinese state capital is heavily invested in the literal infrastructure of genocide. If tomorrow, the Chinese companies said, ‘We’re going to shut down the port of Haifa and we’re not going to allow any weapons or materials to support the genocide,’ that would have an enormous impact on the development of things in Gaza. And they are not doing that. I think it’s important to note that, because there’s not a genuine, solidaristic interest in the liberation of Palestine.”

    Indeed, the Chinese state has prohibited basic demonstrations of solidarity with Palestine, confiscating Palestinian flags displayed publicly and preventing mobilizations in support of Gaza.

    Some have pointed to a decline in trade between China and Israel in 2023 as evidence that the relationship between the two has hit a turning point, if not a breaking point. But while the dip in 2023 was real, and likely due to a variety of factors, it is unlikely to mark a rupture in the relationship, which has been steadily growing. China’s collaboration with Israel in fields like technology, AI and energy have drastically expanded in recent decades. In 2020, China became Israel’s second largest trading partner globally, and its largest in Asia. Recently, Chinese-Israeli trade hit a record of $20 billion dollars per year. Chinese and Indian companies have privatized Israel’s Haifa port — which Netanyahu allowed against the wishes of the U.S. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), begun in 2013, encouraged more Chinese companies to invest in Israel or set up research and development centers in Israel. In 2014, Tel Aviv University and Tsinghua University of Beijing set up a $300 million-dollar research center. In 2015, Peking University and Tel Aviv University signed a memorandum of understanding to establish a joint research institute. That same year, Shantou University and Israel’s Technion Institute of Technology established the Guangdong-Technion Institute of Technology. As Chinese activists in solidarity with Palestine explained, “These collaborations are some examples of Chinese university students engaging with Israeli institutions as if they were neutral, without recognizing that Israeli universities are complicit in the ongoing genocide, occupation, and oppression of the Palestinian people.”

    These same activists have outlined some of the collaborations between Israel and China on surveillance technology. In particular, the Chinese state-backed company, Hikvision, is complicit in policing and surveillance in Palestine, China and even the U.S. Israel uses Hikvision technology to surveil Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, logging the information in a database monitoring Palestinians in the West Bank specifically; Hikvision also provides technology to surveil and police the Uyghur Muslim population in the Xinjiang region of China; and Hikvision cameras are used in numerous other countries including the U.S. — by the NYPD, among others — despite federal bans of the technology in the U.S.

    As Friedman pointed out, China is interested in playing a larger role in the Middle East region. It has been working to increasingly insert itself in the region following the Abraham Accords, and has maneuvered to take advantage of Israel’s genocide in Gaza to increase its influence.

    China benefited from the normalization process that began in 2020, allowing it to further its influence and investments in the Middle East. With Israel integrated into economic cooperation more openly across the region, China became increasingly able to expand projects that encompassed both Israel and the Gulf region. The normalization process has opened up possibilities for the extension of China’s BRI project into the region, for example. And since the start of normalization, China, the UAE and Israel have all increased their collaboration in tech sectors including in AI research — bringing together, for example, China’s Beijing Genomics Institute and Abu Dhabi’s G42, both of which are also building labs and offices in Israel — as well as in energy and development. The normalization process and the thawing of Israel’s relationship with the UAE offers more economic openings for China, which has in recent years deepened its relationships with reactionary actors across the region including Saudi Arabia, the UAE and most recently Sudan’s army general. Clearly, the priority is stability for business, rather than justice for Palestinians or any beleaguered group in the region.

    But China is also cognizant that, across the Middle East region, general opinion of the U.S. is extremely poor since it is — rightly — understood as responsible for the continuance of the genocide in Gaza. China hopes to use this crisis as an opportunity to portray itself as an alternative to the U.S., one more trustworthy to the Arab states and to countries in the Global South more broadly. In July, China brought various Palestinian factions together in Beijing to move towards “national unity” and to hash out differences between Fatah and Hamas. While it may have been largely symbolic, the event was part of China’s attempt to increase its status and role in the region. Many have praised China for facilitating this convening, but little has come as a result of it. Even before October 7, China established a “strategic partnership” with the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its president, Mahmoud Abbas, with whom it had been nurturing a relationship for years. The Palestinian Authority is also widely criticized by the Palestinian left and others across Palestinian society for its security coordination and collaboration with the Israeli occupation. China’s currying of favor with the PA also points to its goal of increasing its influence in the region rather than a sincere desire for justice for Palestinians.

    In a similar vein, China mediated normalization between Saudi Arabia and Iran in early 2023, demonstrating its interest in both economic stability for its own gain across the region as well as an increased desire to hold the reigns in political negotiations — and perhaps to take the place of the U.S. in doing so. China clearly sees itself as a key player in a new, post-2011 status quo across the Middle East region, with more emboldened reactionary states looking to better interstate relationships for their economic benefit at the expense of the wider populations.

    China’s position on Palestine is, in many ways, representative of much of the BRICS+ organization member countries. BRICS+ — representing Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Iran, Egypt, the UAE, and other states — claims to represent an alternative possibility, a bulwark against the U.S., and a defense of countries throughout the Global South. However, as in the case of China, BRICS+ countries often rhetorically support Palestinians and champion the two-state solution, while simultaneously furthering their investments and collaborations with Israel. This is most obvious in the case of India, the fifth largest trading partner with Israel globally, and which has actively supported Israel in its genocide on Gaza with arms sales and increased its partnerships with Israeli universities complicit in the genocide, after decades of nurturing close ties with Israel — going back at least to the 1980s and ‘90s — and championing similarly right-wing, violent Islamophobia. Russia, too, has strong economic relations with Israel, and has continued to provide coal to Israel throughout the duration of the genocide. Brazil and even South Africa — the country that brought Israel to the International Court of Justice — have refused to stop their coal and oil sales to Israel. To be clear, this approach is contrary to that advocated by the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement. By cooperating with Israel rather than isolating it amid a genocide, these states — and their state-backed corporations and tech companies — are an obstacle to Palestinian liberation, rather than part of the solution.

    First published by Truthout.

  • Understanding the Rebellion in Syria

    Understanding the Rebellion in Syria

    The rebellion in Syria has taken the world by surprise and led to the fall of the Assad family dictatorship, which has ruled Syria since Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez, took power in a coup d’état 54 years ago. Neither the regime’s military forces nor its imperial sponsor, Russia, and its regional backer, Iran, were able to defend it. Cities under the regime’s control have been freed, thousands of political prisoners liberated from its notorious dungeons, and space opened for a new fight for a free, inclusive, and democratic Syria for the first time in decades.

    At the same time, most Syrians know that such a struggle faces enormous challenges, beginning with the two key rebel forces, Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) and the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA). While they spearheaded the military victory, they are authoritarian and have a history of religious and ethnic sectarianism. Some on the Left have claimed without foundation that their rebellion was orchestrated by the U.S. and Israel. Others have uncritically romanticized these rebel forces as rekindling the original popular revolution that nearly overthrew Assad’s regime in 2011. Neither captures the complex dynamics unfolding in Syria today. 

    In this interview, conducted amidst a rapidly changing situation in Syria, Tempest asks Swiss Syrian socialist Joseph Daher about the process that led to the fall of Assad’s rule, the prospects for progressive forces, and the challenges they face in fighting for a truly liberated country that serves the interests of all its peoples and popular classes.

    Tempest: How are Syrians feeling after the fall of the regime?

    Joseph Daher: The happiness is unbelievable. It is a historic day. 54 years of tyranny of Assad’s family is gone. We saw videos of popular demonstrations throughout the country, from Damascus, Tartous, Homs, Hama, Aleppo, Qamichli, Suwaida, etc. of all religious sects and ethnicities, destroying statues and symbols of the Assad’s family.

    And of course, there is great happiness for the liberation of political prisoners from the regime’s prisons, particularly Sednaya prison, known as the “human slaughterhouse” which could contain 10,000-20,000 prisoners. Some of them had been detained since the 1980s. Similarly, people, who had been displaced in 2016 or earlier, from Aleppo and other cities, have been able to return to their homes and neighborhoods, seeing their families for the first time in years.

    At the same time, in the first days following the military offensive, popular reactions were initially mixed and confused, reflecting the diversity of political opinion in Syrian society, both within and outside the country. Some sections were very happy with the conquest of these territories and the weakening of the regime, and now its potential fall.

    But, some sectors of the population were, and are still, also fearful of HTS and SNA. They are worried about the authoritarian and reactionary nature of these forces and their political project.

    And some are worried about what will happen in the new situation. In particular, wide sections of Kurds as well as others, while happy for the fall of the dictatorship of Assad, have issued condemnations of the SNA’s forced displacement and assassinations of people.

    Tempest: Can you recount the sequence of events, especially the rebel advance, that defeated Assad’s military forces and led to his downfall? What has happened?

    JD: Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) and Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) launched a military campaign on November 27, 2024 against the Syrian regime’s forces, scoring stunning victories. In less than a week, HTS and SNA took control of most of Aleppo and Idlib governorates. Then, the city Hama, located 210 kilometers north of Damascus, fell into the hands of HTS and SNA following intense military confrontations between them and regime forces supported by the Russian air force. Following Hama, HTS took control of Homs.

    Initially, the Syrian regime sent reinforcements to Hama and Homs, and then, with the support of the Russian air force, bombed the cities of Idlib and Aleppo and its surroundings. On December 1 and 2, more than 50 airstrikes hit Idlib, at least four health facilities, four school facilities, two displacement camps, and a water station were impacted. The airstrikes have displaced over 48,000 people and severely disrupted services and aid delivery. The dictator Bashar al-Assad had promised defeat to his enemies and stated that “terrorism only understands the discourse of force.” But his regime was already crumbling from everywhere.

    While the regime was losing town after town, the southern governorates of Suweida and Daraa liberated themselves; their popular and local armed opposition forces, separate and distinct from HTS and SNA, seized control. Regime forces then withdrew from localities about ten kilometers from Damascus, and abandoned their positions in the province of Quneitra, which borders the Golan Heights, which is occupied by Israel.

    As different opposition armed forces, again not HTS nor SNA, approached the capital Damascus, regime’s forces just crumbled and withdrew, while demonstrations and the burning of all symbols of Bashar al-Assad multiplied in the various suburbs of Damascus. On the night of December 7 and 8, it was announced that Damascus was liberated. The exact fate and location of Bashar al-Assad was initially unknown, but some information indicated that he was in Russia under the protection of Moscow.

    The fall of the regime proved its structural weakness, militarily, economically, and politically. It collapsed like a house of cards. This is hardly surprising because it seemed clear that the soldiers were not going to fight for the Assad regime, given their poor wages and conditions. They preferred to flee or just not fight rather than defend a regime for which they have very little sympathy, especially because a lot of them had been forcefully conscripted.

    Alongside these dynamics in the south, others have occurred in different parts of the country since the start of the rebels’ offensive. First, the SNA led attacks on territories controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northern Aleppo, and then announced the beginning of a new offensive against the northern city of Manbij, which is under the domination of the SDF. On Sunday December 8, with the support of the Turkish army, airforce, and artillery, the SNA entered the city.

    Second, the SDF has captured most of Deir-ez-Zor governorate formerly controlled by Syrian regime forces and pro-Iran militias, after they had withdrawn to redeploy in other areas to fight against HTS and SNA. SDF then extended their control over vast swaths of the northeast previously under the regime’s domination.

    Tempest: Who are the rebel forces and in particular the main rebel formation HTS and SNA? What are their politics, program, and project? What do the popular classes think of them?

    JD: The successful seizure of Aleppo, Hama, Homs and of other territories in a military campaign led by HTS reflects in many ways the evolution of this movement over several years into a more disciplined and more structured organization, both politically and militarily. It now can produce drones and runs a military academy. HTS has been able to impose its hegemony on a certain number of military groups, through both repression and inclusion in the past few years. Based on these developments, it positioned itself to launch this attack.

    It has become a quasi-state actor in the areas it controls. It has established a government, the Syrian Salvation Government (SSG), which acts as HTS’ civil administration and provides services. There has been a clear willingness by HTS and SSG in the past few years to present themselves as a rational force to regional and international powers in order to normalize its rule. This has notably resulted in more and more space for some NGOs to operate in key sectors such as education and healthcare, in which SSG lacks financial resources and expertise.

    This does not mean that no corruption exists in areas under its rule. It has enforced its rule through authoritarian measures and policing. HTS has notably repressed or limited activities it considers as contrary to its ideology. For instance, HTS stopped several projects supporting women, particularly camp residents, under the pretext that these cultivated ideas of gender equality that were hostile to its rule. HTS has also targeted and detained political opponents, journalists, activists, and people it viewed as critics or opponents.

    HTS—which is still categorized as a terrorist organization by many powers including the U.S.—has also been trying to project a more moderate image of itself, trying to win recognition that it is now a rational and responsible actor. This evolution dates back to the rupture of its ties with al-Qaeda in 2016 and its reframing of its political objectives in the Syrian national framework. It has also repressed individuals and groups connected to Al-Qaida and the so-called Islamic State.

    In February 2021, for his first interview with an U.S.journalist, its leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, or Ahmed al-Sharaa (his real name), declared that the region he controlled “does not represent a threat to the security of Europe and America,” asserting that areas under its rule would not become a base for operations abroad.

    In this attempt to define himself as a legitimate interlocutor on the international scene, he emphasized the group’s role in fighting against terrorism. As part of this makeover, it has allowed the return of Christians and Druze in some areas and established contacts with some leaders from these communities.

    Following the capture of Aleppo, HTS continued to present itself as a responsible actor. HTS fighters for instance immediately posted videos in front of banks, offering assurances that they wanted to protect private property and assets. They also promised to protect civilians and minority religious communities, particularly Christians, because they know that the fate of this community is closely scrutinized abroad.

    Similarly, HTS has made numerous statements promising similar protection of Kurds and Islamic minorities such as Ismaelis and Druzes. It also issued a statement regarding Alawites that called on them to break with the regime, without however suggesting that HTS would protect them or saying anything clear about their future. In this statement, HTS describes the Alawite community as an instrument of the regime against the Syrian people.

    Finally, the leader of HTS, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, has stated that the city of Aleppo will be managed by a local authority, and all military forces, including those of HTS, will fully withdraw from the city in the coming weeks. It is clear that al-Jolani wants to actively engage with local, regional, and international powers.

    However, it is still an open question as to whether HTS will follow through on these statements. The  organization has been an authoritarian and reactionary organization with an Islamic fundamentalist ideology, and still has foreign fighters within its ranks. Many popular demonstrations in the past few years have occurred in Idlib against its rule and violations of political freedoms and human rights, including assassinations and torture of opponents.

    It is not enough to tolerate religious or ethnic minorities or allow them to pray. The key issue is recognizing their rights as equal citizens participating in deciding the future of the country.

    It is not enough to tolerate religious or ethnic minorities or allow them to pray. The key issue is recognizing their rights as equal citizens participating in deciding the future of the country. More generally, statements by the head of HTS, al-Jolani, such as “people who fear Islamic governance either have seen incorrect implementations of it or do not understand it properly,” are definitely not reassuring, but quite the opposite.

    Regarding the Turkish-backed SNA, it is a coalition of armed groups mostly with Islamic conservative politics. It has a very bad reputation and is guilty of numerous human rights violations especially against Kurdish populations in areas under their control. They have notably participated in the Turkish-led military campaign to occupy Afrin in 2018, leading to the forced displacement of around 150,000 civilians, the vast majority of them Kurds.

    In the current military campaign, once again SNA serves mainly Turkish objectives in targeting areas controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) and with large Kurdish populations. The SNA has, for instance, captured the  city of Tal Rifaat and Shahba area in northern Aleppo, previously under the governance of the SDF, leading to the forced displacement of more than 150,000 civilians and many violations of human rights against Kurdish individuals, including assassinations and kidnappings. The SNA then announced a military offensive, supported by the Turkish army on the city of Manbij, home to 100,000 civilians, and controlled by the SDF.

    There are, therefore, differences between HTS and SNA. The HTS has a relative autonomy from Turkey in contrast to the SNA, which is controlled by Turkey and serves its interests. The two forces are different, pursue distinct goals, and have conflicts between them, although for the moment these have been kept under wraps. For instance, HTS is currently not seeking to confront the SDF. In addition to this, the SNA published a critical statement against HTS for their “aggressive behavior” against SNA members, while HTS reportedly blamed SNA fighters for looting.

    Tempest: For many who have not been paying attention to Syria, this came out of the blue. What are the roots of this situation in Syria’s revolution, counter-revolution, and civil war? What has happened inside the country over the recent period that triggered the military offensive? What are the regional and international dynamics that opened space for the rebel advances?

    JD: Initially, HTS launched the military campaign as a reaction to the escalation of attacks and bombing of its northwestern territory by Assad’s regime and Russia. It also aimed to recapture areas that the regime had conquered, violating the de-escalation zones agreed upon in a March 2020 deal, negotiated by Moscow and Tehran. With their surprising success, however, they expanded their ambitions and openly called for the overthrow of the regime, which they and others have now accomplished.

    The HTS and SNA have been so successful because of the weakening of the regime’s main allies. Russia, Assad’s key international sponsor, has diverted its forces and resources to its imperialist war against Ukraine. As a result, its involvement in Syria has been significantly more limited than in similar military operations in previous years.

    Because of all its structural weaknesses, lack of support from the population it rules, unreliability of its own troops, and without international and regional support, [the Assad regime] proved unable to withstand the rebel forces advances and in city after city and its rule over them has collapsed like a house of cards.

    Its other two key allies, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iran, have been dramatically weakened by Israel since October 7, 2023. Tel Aviv has carried out assassinations of Hezbollah’s leadership, including Hassan Nasrallah, decimated its cadre with the pager attacks, and bombed its forces in Lebanon. Hezbollah is definitely facing its greatest challenge since its foundation. Israel has also launched waves of strikes against Iran, exposing its vulnerabilities. It has also increased bombing of Iranian and Hezbollah positions in Syria in the past few months.

    With its main backers preoccupied and weakened, Assad’s dictatorship was in a vulnerable position. Because of all its structural weaknesses, lack of support from the population it rules, unreliability of its own troops, and without international and regional support, it proved unable to withstand the rebel forces advances and in city after city and its rule over them has collapsed like a house of cards.

    Tempest: How had the regime’s allies initially responded? What are their interests in Syria?

    JD: Both Russia and Iran initially pledged to support the regime and also pressured it to fight the HTS and SNA. In the first days of the offensive, Russia called on the Syrian regime to pull itself together and “put order in Aleppo,” which seems to indicate that it was hoping for Damascus to counter-attack.

    Iran called for “coordination” with Moscow in the face of this offensive. It has claimed that the U.S. and Israel are behind the rebel’s offensive against the Syrian regime’s attempt to destabilize it and divert attention from Israel’s war in Palestine and Lebanon. Iranian officials declared their full support for the Syrian regime and confirmed their intentions to maintain and even increase the presence of their “military advisers” in Syria to support its army. Teheran also promised to provide missiles and drones to the Syrian regime and even deploy its own troops.

    But this clearly did not work. Despite Russian bombing of areas outside of the control of the regime, the rebels’ advance was undeterred.

    Both powers have a lot to lose in Syria. For Iran, Syria is crucial for the transfer of weapons to, and logistic coordination with, Hezbollah. It was actually rumoured before the fall of the regime that the Lebanese party has sent a small number of “supervisory forces” to Homs in order to assist regime’s military forces and 2000 soldiers in the city of Qusayr, one of its strongholds in Syria near the border with Lebanon, to defend it in the event of an attack by the rebels. As the regime was falling, it withdrew its forces.

    On its side, Russia’s Hmeimim airbase in Syria’s Latakia province, and its naval facility at Tartous on the coast, have been important sites for Russia to assert its geopolitical clout in the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and Africa. Loss of these bases would undermine Russia’s status as its intervention in Syria has been used as an example of how it can use military force to shape events outside of its borders and compete with western states.

    Tempest: What role have other regional and imperial powers, particularly Turkey, Israel, and the U.S. played in this scenario? What are their ambitions in the situation?

    JD: Despite Turkey’s normalization with Syria, Ankara has grown frustrated with Damascus. So, it encouraged, or at least gave the green light to, the military offensive and assisted it one way or another. Ankara’s objective was initially to improve its position in future negotiations with the Syrian regime, but also with Iran and Russia.

    Now with the fall of the regime, Turkey’s influence is even more important in Syria and probably makes it the key regional actor in the country. Ankara is also seeking to use the SNA to weaken the SDF, which is dominated by the armed wing of the Kurdish party PYD, a sister organization of Turkey’s Kurdish party PKK, which is designated as terrorist by Ankara, the U.S., and the E.U..

    Turkey has two other main objectives. First, they aim to carry out the forced return of Syrian refugees in Turkey back to Syria. Second, they want to deny Kurdish aspirations for autonomy and more specifically undermine the Kurdish-led administration in northeast Syria, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES, also called Rojava), which would set a precedent for Kurdish self-determination in Turkey, a threat to the regime as it is currently constituted.

    With the fall of the regime, Turkey’s influence is even more important in Syria and probably makes it the key regional actor in the country. Ankara is also seeking to use the SNA to weaken the SDF…Turkey has two other main objectives. First, they aim to carry out the forced return of Syrian refugees in Turkey back to Syria. Second, they want to deny Kurdish aspirations for autonomy…

    Neither the U.S.nor Israel had a hand in these events. In fact, the opposite is the case. The U.S. were worried that the overthrow of the regime could create more instability in the region. U.S. officials initially declared that the “Assad regime’s ongoing refusal to engage in the political process outlined in UNSCR 2254, and its reliance on Russia and Iran, created the conditions now unfolding, including the collapse of Assad regime lines in northwest Syria.”

    It also declared that it had  “nothing to do with this offensive, which is led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a designated terrorist organization.” Following a visit to Turkey, Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for de-escalation in Syria. After the fall of the regime, U.S. officials declared that they will maintain their presence in eastern Syria, around 900 soldiers, and will take measures necessary to prevent a resurgence of Islamic State.

    For their part, Israeli officials declared that the “collapse of the Assad regime would likely create chaos in which military threats against Israel would develop.” Moreover, Israel has never really supported the overthrow of the Syrian regime all the way back to the attempted revolution in 2011. In July 2018 Netanyahu did not object to Assad taking back control of the country and stabilizing his power.

    Netanyahu said Israel would only act against perceived threats, such as Iran and Hezbollah’s forces and influence, explaining, “We haven’t had a problem with the Assad regime, for 40 years not a single bullet was fired on the Golan Heights.” A few hours after the announcement of the fall of the regime, the Israeli occupation army took control of the Syrian side of Mount Hermon in the Golan Heights in order to prevent rebels from taking it over the area on Sunday. Earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had ordered the Israeli occupation army to “take control” of the Golan buffer zone and “adjacent strategic positions.”

    Tempest: Many campists have come to the defense of Assad yet again, this time contending that a defeat for Assad would be a setback for the Palestinian liberation struggle. What do you make of that argument? What will it mean for Palestine?

    JD: Yes, campists have argued that this military offensive is led by “Al-Qaeda and other terrorists” and that it is a western-imperialist plot against the Syrian regime intended to weaken the so-called “Axis of Resistance” led by Iran and Hezbollah. Since this Axis claims to be in support of the Palestinians, the campists claim that the fall of Assad weakens it and therefore undermines the struggle for the liberation of Palestine.

    Alongside ignoring any agency to local Syrian actors, the main problem with the argument promoted by the supporters of the so-called “Axis of Resistance” is their assumption that the liberation of Palestine will come from above, from these states or other forces, regardless of their reactionary and authoritarian nature, and their neoliberal economic policies. That strategy has failed in the past and will do so again today. In fact, rather than advancing the struggle for the liberation of Palestine, the Middle East’s authoritarian and despotic states, whether aligned with the West or opposed to it, have repeatedly betrayed the Palestinians and even repressed them.

    Moreover, the campists ignore the fact that Iran and Syria’s main objectives are not the liberation of Palestine but preservation of their states and their economic and geopolitical interests. They will put those before Palestine every single time. Syria, in particular, as Netanyahu has made abundantly clear in the quote I just cited, has not lifted a finger against Israel for decades.

    The campists ignore the fact that Iran and Syria’s main objectives are not the liberation of Palestine but preservation of their states and their economic and geopolitical interests. They will put those before Palestine every single time. Syria, in particular, as Netanyahu has made abundantly clear…has not lifted a finger against Israel for decades.

    For its part, Iran has rhetorically supported the Palestinian cause and funded Hamas. But since October 7, 2023, its main goal has been to improve its standing in the region so as to be in the best position for future political and economic negotiations with the U.S. Iran wishes to guarantee its political and security interests and therefore has been keen to avoid any direct war with Israel.

    Its main geopolitical objective in relation to the Palestinians is not to liberate them, but to use them as leverage, particularly in its relations with the United States. Similarly, Iran’s passive response to Israel’s assassination of Nasrallah, decimation of Hezbollah’s cadres, and its brutal war against Lebanon demonstrate that its first priority is protecting itself and its interests. It was not willing to sacrifice these and come to the defense of its key non-state ally.

    Similarly, Iran has proved itself, as at best,  a fickle ally of Hamas. It has reduced its funding for Hamas when their interests did not coincide. It cut its financial assistance to Hamas after the Syrian Revolution in 2011, when the Palestinian movement refused to support the Syrian regime’s murderous repression of Syrian protesters.

    In the case of the Syrian regime, the argument against their supposed support for Palestine is airtight. It has not come to the defense of Palestine over the last year of Israel’s genocidal war. Despite Israel’s bombardment of Syria, before and after October 7, the regime has not responded. This is in line with the regime’s policy since 1974 of trying to avoid any significant and direct confrontation with Israel.

    On top of that the regime has repeatedly repressed Palestinians in Syria, including the killing of several thousands of them since 2011, laying waste to the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus.  They have also attacked the Palestinian national movement itself. For example, in 1976 Hafez al-Assad, father of his heir and just-deposed dictator Bashar al-Assad, intervened in Lebanon and supported far-right Lebanese parties against left-wing Palestinian and Lebanese organizations.

    It also carried out military operations against Palestinian camps in Beirut in 1985 and 1986. In 1990 approximately 2,500 Palestinian political prisoners were detained in Syrian prisons.

    Given this history, it is a mistake for the Palestine solidarity movement to defend and align itself  with imperialist or sub-imperialist states that put their interests before solidarity with Palestine, compete for geopolitical gain, and exploit their countries’ workers and resources. Of course, U.S. imperialism remains the region’s main enemy with its exceptional history of war, plunder, and political domination.

    In the case of the Syrian regime, the argument against their supposed support for Palestine is airtight. It has not come to the defense of Palestine over the last year of Israel’s genocidal war…This is in line with the regime’s policy since 1974 of trying to avoid any significant and direct confrontation with Israel.

    But it makes no sense to look reactionary regional powers and other imperialist states like Russia or China as allies of Palestine or its solidarity movement. There is simply no evidence to substantiate that position. To choose one imperialism over another is to guarantee the stability of the capitalist system and the exploitation of popular classes. Similarly, to support authoritarian and despotic regimes in pursuit of the objective of liberating Palestine is not only morally wrong but also has proved itself a failed strategy.

    Instead, the Palestinian solidarity movement must see the liberation of Palestine as bound up not with the region’s states but with the liberation of its popular classes. These identify with Palestine and see their own battles for democracy and equality as intimately tied to the Palestinian’s struggle for liberation. When Palestinians fight, it tends to trigger the regional movement for liberation, and the regional movement feeds back into the one in occupied Palestine.

    These struggles are dialectically connected; they are mutual struggles for collective liberation. Far-right Israeli minister Avigdor Lieberman recognized the danger that regional popular uprisings posed to Israel in 2011 when he said that the Egyptian revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak and opened the door to a period of democratic opening in the country was a greater threat to Israel than Iran.

    The Palestinian solidarity movement must see the liberation of Palestine as bound up not with the region’s states but with the liberation of its popular classes.

    This is not to deny the right of resistance of Palestinians and Lebanese to Israel’s brutal wars, but to understand that the united revolt of Palestinian and regional’s popular classes alone have the power to transform the entire Middle East and North Africa, toppling authoritarian regimes, expelling the U.S. and other imperialist powers. International anti-imperialist solidarity with Palestine and the region’s popular classes is essential, because they face not just Israel and the MENA’s reactionary regimes, but also their imperialist backers.

    The main task of the Palestine solidarity movement, particularly in the West, is to denounce the complicit role of our ruling classes in supporting not only the racist settler-colonial apartheid state of Israel and its genocidal war against the Palestinians, but also Israel’s attacks on other countries in the region such as Lebanon. The movement must pressure those ruling classes to break off any political, economic, and military relations with Tel Aviv.

    In that way, the solidarity movement can challenge and weaken international and regional support for Israel, opening the space for Palestinians to free themselves along with the popular classes in the region.

    Tempest: Will the rebels advance in Syria open space for progressive forces to renew the revolutionary struggle and provide an alternative to both the regime and Islamic fundamentalism?

    JD: There are no obvious answers except more questions. Will struggle from below and self-organization be possible in the areas in which the regime has been expelled? Will civil society’s organizations (not narrowly defined as NGOs but in a Gramscian sense of popular mass formations outside of the state) and alternative political structures with democratic and progressive politics be able to establish themselves, organize, and constitute a political and social alternative to HTS and SNA? Will the stretching of HTS and SNA forces allow space to organize locally?

    These are the key questions, in my opinion, without clear answers. Looking at HTS and SNA’s policies in the past, they have not encouraged a democratic space to develop, but quite the opposite. They have been authoritarian. No trust should be accorded to such forces. Only the self-organization of popular classes fighting for democratic and progressive demands will create that space and open a path toward actual liberation. TThis will depend on overcoming many obstacles from war fatigue to repression, poverty, and social dislocation.

    No trust should be accorded to [HTS and SNA]. Only the self-organization of popular classes fighting for democratic and progressive demands will create that space and open a path toward actual liberation. This will depend on overcoming many obstacles from war fatigue to repression, poverty, and social dislocation.

    The main obstacle has been, is, and will be the authoritarian actors, previously the regime, but now many of the opposition forces, especially the  HTS and SNA; their rule and the military clashes between them have suffocated the space for democratic and progressive forces to democratically determine their future. Even in the spaces freed from regime control we have yet to see popular campaigns of democratic and progressive resistance. And, where the SNA has conquered Kurdish areas, it violated Kurd’s rights, repressed them with violence, and forcefully displaced large numbers of them.

    We have to face the hard fact that there is a glaring absence of an independent democratic and progressive bloc that is able to organize and clearly oppose the Syrian regime and Islamic fundamentalist forces. Building this bloc will take time. It will have to combine struggles against autocracy, exploitation, and all forms of oppression. It will need to raise demands for democracy, equality, Kurdish self-determination, and women’s liberation in order to build solidarity among the country’s exploited and oppressed.

    To advance such demands, that progressive bloc will have to build and rebuild popular organizations from unions to feminist organizations, community organizations, and national structures to bring them together. That will require collaboration between democratic and progressive actors throughout society.

    This said, there is hope, while the key dynamics was initially military and led by HTS and SNA, in the past few days, we saw growing popular demonstrations and people coming out in the streets throughout the country. They are not following any orders of HTS, SNA or any other armed opposition groups. There is a space now, with its contradictions and challenges as mentioned above, for Syrians to try to rebuild civilian popular resistance from below and alternative structures of power.

    In addition to this, one of the key tasks will be to tackle the country’s central ethnic division, the one between Arab and Kurds. Progressive forces must wage a clear struggle against Arab chauvinism to overcome this division and forge solidarity between these populations. This has been a challenge from the start of the Syrian revolution in 2011 and will have to be confronted and resolved in a progressive manner in order for the country’s people to be truly liberated.

    There is a desperate need to return to the original aspirations of the Syrian Revolution for democracy, social justice and equality—and in a fashion that upholds Kurdish self-determination. While the Kurdish PYD can be criticized for its mistakes and form of rule, it is not the main obstacle to such solidarity between Kurds and Arabs. That has been the belligerent and chauvinist positions and policies of Arab opposition forces in Syria—beginning with the Arab-dominated  Syrian National Coalition followed by the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, the main opposition bodies in exile supported by the West and regional countries, that tried to lead the Syrian Revolution in its early years—and today those of the two key military forces, the HTS and SNA.

    There is a desperate need to return to the original aspirations of the Syrian Revolution for democracy, social justice and equality—and in a fashion that upholds Kurdish self-determination.

    In this context, progressive forces must pursue collaboration between Syrian Arabs and Kurds, including the AANES. The AANES project and its political institutions represent large sections of the Kurdish population and have protected it against various local and external threats.

    That said, it too has faults and must not be supported uncritically. The PYD and AANES have used force and repression against political activists and groups challenging its power. And it has also violated the human rights of civilians. Nonetheless, it has scored some important achievements, in particular its increase of women’s participation in all levels in society, as well as the codification of secular laws and a greater inclusion of religious and ethnic minorities. However, on socio-economic issues, it has not broken with capitalism and has not adequately addressed the grievances of the popular classes.

    Whatever criticisms progressives may have of the PYD and the AANES, we must reject and oppose Arab chauvinist descriptions of it as “the devil” and a “separatist” ethno-nationalist project. But in rejecting such bigotry, we must not uncritically romanticize the AANES, as some western anarchists and leftists have done, misrepresenting it as a new form of democratic power from below.

    There has already been some collaboration between Syrian Arab democrats and progressives and AANES and institutions connected to it, and that must be built on and expanded. But, as in any kind of collaboration, this should not be done uncritically.

    While it is important to remind everyone that Bashar al-Assad’s regime and its allies are the first responsible for the mass killing  of hundreds of thousands of civilians, mass destructions, deepening impoverishment and the current situation in Syria, the objective of the Syrian revolution goes beyond what HTS leader, al-Jolani, said in his interview with CNN. It is not only to overthrow this regime, but to build a society characterized by democracy, equality, and full rights for oppressed groups. Otherwise, we are only replacing one evil with another.

    Tempest: What impact will the fall of the regime have on the region and the imperial powers? What position should the international Left take in this situation?

    JD: Following the fall of the regime, HTS leader al-Jolani, stated that Syrian state institutions will be supervised by former regime’s Prime Minister Mohammed Jalali until they are handed over to a new government with full executive powers,  following elections, signalling efforts to secure an orderly transition. Syrian telecommunications minister Eyad al-Khatib agreed to collaborate with HTS’s representatives to ensure that telecoms and the internet would continue to function.

    These are clear indications that HTS wants to carry out a controlled transition of power in order to appease foreign fears, establish contacts with regional and international powers, and win recognition as a legitimate force that can be negotiated with. An obstacle to such normalization is the fact that HTS is still considered as a terrorist organisation, while Syria is under sanctions.

    A period of instability is nevertheless to be expected in the country. In Damascus, on the day after the fall of the regime, some chaos in the streets could be seen, the central bank was for example looted.

    It is still hard to tell what impact the regime’s fall will have on the regional and imperial powers. For the U.S. and western states, the main objective is now damage control to prevent chaos extending into the region. Regional states are clearly not satisfied with the current situation, as they had entered a normalization process with the regime in the past few years. Regarding Turkey, its main objective will be to consolidate its power and influence in Syria and get rid of the Kurdish-led AANES in the northeast. Turkey’s top diplomat actually said on Sunday that the Turkish state was in contact with rebels in Syria to ensure that the Islamic State and specifically the “PKK” do not take advantage of the fall of the Damascus regime to extend their influence.

    [The Left] must avoid the twin traps of romanticization and defeatism. Instead, we must pursue a strategy of critical, progressive, international solidarity among popular forces in the region and throughout the world.

    The different powers have, however, a common objective: to impose a form of authoritarian stability in Syria and the region. That, of course, does not mean unity between the regional and imperial powers. They each have their own, and often antagonistic, interests, but they do not want the destabilization of the Middle East and North Africa, especially any kind of instability that would disrupt the flow of oil to global capitalism.

    The international Left must not side with the remnants of the regime or the local, regional and international forces of counter-revolution. Instead, the political compass of revolutionaries should be the principle of solidarity with popular and progressive struggles from below. This means supporting groups and individuals organizing and fighting for a progressive and inclusive Syria and building solidarity between them and the region’s popular classes.

    Amidst a volatile moment in Syria, the Middle East, and North Africa we must avoid the twin traps of romanticization and defeatism. Instead, we must pursue a strategy of critical, progressive, international solidarity among popular forces in the region and throughout the world. This is the Left’s crucial task and responsibility, especially in these very complex times.

    This article was originally published in Tempest.