Compatriots: We arrive at the 65th anniversary of the triumph of our socialist Revolution. Many have been the challenges we have had to face to reach this point; but it has been worth it, the work of the Revolution and its social achievements, even in the midst of difficulties, corroborate this. For Fidel has been the first thought of Cubans in this historic commemoration, especially here, in the heroic city of Santiago de Cuba that treasures his immortal remains, and also for all those who have fallen in the noble purpose of achieving and preserving the independence of the homeland. We are gathered in the same place where Fidel proclaimed on January 1, 1959, the triumph of the only Revolution that has ever existed in Cuba, initiated on October 10, 1868 by Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, the Father of the Homeland, whose name this square bears. By paradoxes of history, the then nascent Yankee empire consummated the military occupation of Cuba on January 1, 1899, therefore, its total domination over our island lasted exactly 60 years. One of the most shameful and outrageous acts of the occupier in those days was to prevent the entry into the city of the troops of the Liberation Army commanded by Major General Calixto Garcia, without whose action there is no doubt that the Spaniards would have defeated those arrogant, but quite inept invaders all along the line. That is why Fidel, when he was at the gates of Santiago, said in his speech on Radio Rebelde: “This time the Mambises will enter Santiago de Cuba […] The history of ’95 will not be repeated”, he concluded. I remember that memorable night of January 1st, 1959. As many know, by decision of the Commander in Chief I had arrived hours earlier in Santiago with the mission of consolidating the surrender of the garrison of the Moncada Barracks, some 5,000 men who were in this city, in addition to the main force of the Navy, and I was, as one more, among the crowd that filled this square. Fidel, upon seeing me, ordered me to go up to the tribune and speak to those present, I only said a few brief words that have not been preserved, but that is not important. The words of Fidel, who on that occasion warned us: “The Revolution begins now; the Revolution will not be an easy task, the Revolution will be a hard enterprise full of dangers”. Eight days later, after his triumphal entry into the capital, he insisted on this, when he said: “The joy is immense. And yet, there is still much to be done. Let us not fool ourselves into believing that everything will be easy in the future; perhaps everything will be more difficult in the future,” he said. It was his early warning not to overestimate successes and to prepare to face the most difficult option, and life proved him right. The road we have traveled has not been easy, we have had to face the permanent and perverse aggressiveness of the enemy, which has even resorted to military invasion, terrorism and a ruthless and cruel blockade, condemned by the overwhelming majority of the nations of the world, in its failed attempt to destroy our Revolution and erase its inspiring example for other peoples, that it is possible to build a just and humane society, with equal opportunities for all. The policy of permanent hostility and blockade of the United States Government is the main cause of the difficulties of our economy. There is no doubt about this reality, even though the enemy invests millions of dollars and much effort to hide it. It is seconded by some who act against their own homeland, either out of a desire for profit or simply out of the spirit of serfs. Others allow themselves to be misled by his lies, and in a certain way unconsciously play along with him, overwhelmed by daily difficulties. With the latter we cannot lose patience, we must listen to them, explain to them until we convince them with the powerful weapon of truth, which is on our side. This does not mean in any way that we are unaware of our shortcomings and errors, which have never been of principle. The leadership of the Revolution has been characterized, throughout these 65 years, by its transparency and self-critical spirit, by discussing with the people any insufficiency, aware that only together we will be able to eradicate them. On the unknown road of building socialism in a poor country subjected to constant aggressions, we have been forced to create our own ways of doing things, evidence that the Cuban revolutionary process has always been characterized by an immense creative capacity. Today we can say with healthy pride that neither external aggressions, nor the blows of nature, nor our own mistakes have prevented us from reaching this 65th anniversary. Here we are and here we will be! (Applause.) This has been possible, in the first place, because of the proven resistance and self-confidence of our heroic people; because of the wise leadership of the Commander-in-Chief of the Cuban Revolution Fidel Castro Ruz; because of the existence of a Party that has become a worthy heir to the trust placed by the people in its leader, and because of the unity of the nation. Comrade Díaz-Canel referred a few moments ago to this trajectory in his review of the epic lived by the Cubans during these 65 years, which extends to the difficult and unforgettable moments of the Moncada, the Granma and the struggle in the Sierra and the plains, until reaching the true triumph, a day like today. And the greater the difficulties and dangers, the greater the demands, discipline and unity required. Not a unity achieved at any price, but one based on the principles so accurately defined by Fidel in his reflection of January 22, 2008, and I quote: “Unity means sharing the struggle, the risks, the sacrifices, the objectives, ideas, concepts and strategies, arrived at through debates and analysis. Unity means the common struggle against annexionists, sellouts and corrupt people who have nothing to do with a revolutionary militant”. And he added another essential idea: “We must avoid that, in the enormous sea of tactical criteria, the strategic lines are diluted and we imagine non-existent situations”. Such is our unity, which did not arise by magic, which we have patiently built among all of us, brick by brick. In the Cuban Revolution there has been room for every sincere patriot, with the only requirement of being willing to confront injustice and oppression, to work for the good of the people and to defend their conquests. In that forge of action and thought our Party was forged, alien to authoritarianism and impositions, listening and debating the different criteria and giving participation to all those willing to join in the work. Modesty, honesty, adherence to the truth, loyalty and commitment have been the key. In socialism and its work, in unity and revolutionary ideology, our capacity to resist and win is sustained (Applause). Unity is our main strategic weapon; it has allowed this small island to succeed in every challenge; it sustains the internationalist vocation of our people and its prowess in other lands of the world, following Marti’s maxim that homeland is humanity. Let us take care of unity more than the apple of our eye! I have no doubt that this will be so. I am convinced that the Pinos Nuevos, our combative youth, will guarantee it. The unity formed by the Party, the Government, the mass organizations and all our people, and as part of this the combatants of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and the Ministry of the Interior, is the shield against which will crash, once again, all the subversive plans of the enemy, which include from the systematic use of lies to terrorism. Today I can state with satisfaction that the Cuban Revolution, after 65 years of existence, far from weakening, is getting stronger (Applause), and as I already said a decade ago, on a day like today and in this very place, with no commitments to anyone at all, only to the people (Applause). Compañeras and compañeros: I know that I express the sentiment of the Historic Generation in ratifying the confidence in those who today occupy leadership responsibilities in our Party and Government, and in the other organizations and institutions of our society, from the highest positions to the tens of thousands of grassroots leaders who are in the front line of combat. In very difficult circumstances, the vast majority of them have been demonstrating with their actions the necessary revolutionary firmness and will to overcome the current difficulties and move forward together with our people. Those who, due to insufficient capacity, lack of preparation or simply because they are tired, are not up to the level demanded by the moment, should give their place to another comrade willing to assume the task. I call on all our cadres to meditate every day on what more can be done to justify the trust and exemplary support of our compatriots, even in the midst of so many needs, not to be naïve or triumphalist, to avoid bureaucratic responses and any manifestation of routine and insensitivity, to find realistic solutions with what we have, without dreaming that something will fall from the sky. Likewise, within the many daily tasks and challenges, find time to overcome, knowledge has always been an essential weapon, and even more so in the present. If the current challenges and difficulties are great, greater is the work of the Revolution, which constitutes its best and irrefutable defense against the infamies of the enemy, a palpable work in any corner of Cuba in the material and spiritual order. The Revolution dignified Cuba and Cubans. The very concept of power took on a new dimension when politics ceased to be the fiefdom of an elite and all the people became the protagonists of their destiny. That is why we have to defend and carry forward this Revolution of the humble, by the humble and for the humble. History has taught us where resignation and defeatism lead to. Let us not limit ourselves to resist. Let us get out of these difficulties, as we have always done, by fighting! (Applause), with the same determination of Baraguá, of Moncada, of Granma, of Girón and with the firm convictions instilled in us by the Commander in Chief. This translates today into working harder and, above all, doing it well. This is our commitment to the glorious history of the homeland and the best tribute to the fallen. As the Prime Minister, comrade Manuel Marrero, explained in a clear way just a few days ago in the National Assembly of People’s Power, in the complex and unpostponable economic battle it is imperative to advance in productivity, order and efficiency, even if it implies some sacrifices to create the conditions that will allow us to get out of the current situation and develop. Finding an answer to these difficulties is an unavoidable duty of all Cuban revolutionaries. On such a significant date, I ask our people to join consciously and responsibly, as we are accustomed to, in this endeavor that the homeland demands today. I reiterate a conviction that I expressed in the Cuban Parliament on August 1, 2010: “We, Cuban revolutionaries, difficulties do not keep us awake at night, our only path is to continue the struggle with optimism and unshakable faith in victory” (Applause). In this supreme endeavor, the Revolutionary Armed Forces and the Ministry of the Interior, faithful and sure guardians of the Revolution, will participate decisively. If yesterday from the victorious arms of the Rebel Army emerged free, beautiful, powerful and invincible the new homeland, today I can affirm that in the face of any threat or weakness its combatants will not renounce to continue being, together with the Party, the soul of the Revolution (Applause). Dear compatriots: As the Commander-in-Chief stated in his message upon the formation of the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution, thirty years ago: “…There are no generational contradictions in the Revolution for one simple reason: because there is no envy or craving for power among its sons. “None of us old fighters cling to positions nor do we consider ourselves creditors of the homeland for having rendered it a service, and as long as we have strength left we will be in the post assigned to us, however modest it may be.” So much for Fidel’s words, which seem to have been spoken today. On this date of such significance I can affirm that our greatest pride and satisfaction is to have been with Fidel in every moment of joy, indignation or sadness; to have learned from him the decisive importance of unity; not to lose serenity and confidence in triumph no matter how insurmountable the powerful obstacles of the enemies or how great the dangers may seem; to learn and draw strength from every setback until transforming it into victory. Faithful to his teachings and his example, here we are, and from the heroic Santiago de Cuba we ratify that we remain with our foot in the stirrup and ready to charge with the machete, together with the people and as one more combatant (Applause), against the enemy and our own mistakes, certain that the Mambi cry will always resound in this land: Viva Cuba libre! (Exclamations of: “Viva!”) (Ovation) -Source: Cubadebate, unofficial translation by Resumen Latinoamericano – English http://www.cubadebate.cu/autor/raul-castro-ruz/ AuthorRaul Castro. This article was produced by Marxism-Leninism Today. Archives January 2024
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1/7/2024 SUCCESS OF FAR-RIGHT PARTIES HIGHLIGHTS THE DEAD END OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY By: Kevin FulmerRead NowThe far-right, anti-immigrant party Alternative for Germany (AfD) surged in the Bavaria’s state election in October, coming third with just under 2 million votes and gaining 10 seats in the state legislature. This follows a trend of electoral success for AfD, which is now polling at around 20 percent across all of Germany. Interestingly, the far right enjoys large support in the formerly socialist east German states where until recently the working class largely supported the democratic socialist party Die Linke (“The Left”). In contrast to this electoral success of the AfD, Die Linke has slipped in the polls, and is now fracturing apart. Following the annexation of the German Democratic Republic by the capitalist West German state and the imposition of capitalism on the formerly socialist section of Germany, many socialist parties in the east moved toward “democratic socialism,” a version of social democracy. These groups soon merged into Die Linke, Germany’s main left-wing electoralist party. While some factions of Die Linke have weakly defended the legacy of German socialism that existed in the GDR, it is firmly a party of class collaborationism, rejecting real class struggle as “authoritarian” and going no further than meekly asking for reforms. In practice, Die Linke often aligns with the liberal political establishment. Die Linke has for years counted on the formerly socialist regions of Germany for most of its support, having little electoral success in the west. This support has come from workers whose lives were plunged into poverty by the imposition of capitalism – the five major states that made up the GDR are all well below the economic average of the German states. These workers are aware of the failures and false promises of liberal capitalism and for years saw in Die Linke a left-wing option. After decades of loyalty to Die Linke however, the working class is no better off. The party has participated in coalitions with liberals including the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) and is not willing to be a real threat to the economic establishment. This is a common feature of social democratic parties and movements around the world, including those that describe themselves as “democratic socialist.” Partially in fear of being seen as communist, Die Linke and its party elite have forsaken socialism in favour of reformism and right-opportunism. This political approach rejects real class struggle and is therefore more palatable to the capitalist ruling class and media. The party has largely denounced the peace movement’s opposition to sending weapons to Ukraine, describing those organizations as “right-wing” along with the rest of the German political establishment. This has all led to the steady decline of Die Linke’s electoral success in the five formerly socialist states in the east over the past few elections, in addition to the federal Bundestag election of 2021 where they lost almost half their seats. As it becomes clearer that Die Linke is not a real threat to the political and economic establishment, many disillusioned working people in Germany – especially in the east – have turned to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) which exploits discontent by offering easy solutions and targets, such as immigrants. This is similar to much of Donald Trump’s voter base in the US, which are being fooled by right-wing rhetoric that seems anti-establishment by targeting liberal democracy, but which really just doubles down on capitalism in its most reactionary form. This political shift in the east, and throughout all Germany, has caused a major fracture within Die Linke. Following the recent electoral success of the AfD and Die Linke’s own decline, the party’s farther left faction – led by Sahra Wagenknecht – has decided to break away and create a new party which they say will focus more on what working people demand. In the statement declaring her faction’s departure, Wagenknecht said “The history of [Die Linke] since the European elections in 2019 is the history of political failure. The respective party leadership and the officials supporting them at the state level were determined not to discuss this failure critically under any circumstances. No responsibility was taken for this, nor were any substantive consequences drawn from it.” Wagenknecht then brought up the threat posed by the AfD and Die Linke’s responsibility for allowing the far right to steal traditionally left-wing supporters, saying “…opposition to [economic upheaval and conflict escalation] is increasingly being sanctioned and pilloried in public discussion. But democracy needs diversity of opinions and open debates. The government’s inability to deal with the crises of our time and the narrowing of the accepted corridor of opinion have pushed the AfD to the top.” Pointing out that the watered down left is not even viewed by workers as anti-establishment anymore, she noted that “many people simply no longer know how to express their protest any other way. In this situation, [Die Linke] no longer appears as a clearly recognizable opposition.” The political shift in Germany is by no means a one-off – parties that champion neutered versions of socialism, like social democracy and “democratic socialist” variant, have seen no success in Canada or in the rest of the capitalist west. As capitalism decays and working people’s economic situations deteriorate, many turn towards any anti-establishment outlet that provides them with an explanation and a way out of their worsening conditions. Since the social democratic parties of America and Europe seem more concerned with denouncing real socialism and being palatable to the ruling elite than they are with solving the problems of working people, they will see no real support or success in any meaningful way. This provides an opportunity for right-wing populism to pretend to address people’s concerns, and parties like the AfD in Germany or figures like Pierre Poilievre in Canada gain traction. Progressive people all around the world need to see this and stop being afraid of taking a stand for real socialism out of fear of being labelled too radical by the mainstream press, politicians and other tools of the ruling class. Watering down our message will only hinder the working-class movement and provide fertile ground for right-wing populism. AuthorKevin Fulmer This article was produced by Marxism- Leninism Today. Archives January 2024 I am writing to flag a truly important document that should be widely circulated and read carefully by anyone interested in the ongoing Gaza War. Specifically, I am referring to the 84-page “application” that South Africa filed with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 29 December 2023, accusing Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.1 It maintains that Israel’s actions since the war began on 7 October 2023 “are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnic … group in the Gaza Strip.” (1) That charge fits clearly under the definition of genocide in the Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a signatory.2 The application is a superb description of what Israel is doing in Gaza. It is comprehensive, well-written, well-argued, and thoroughly documented. The application has three main components. First, it describes in detail the horrors that the IDF has inflicted on the Palestinians since 7 October 2023 and explains why much more death and destruction is in store for them. Second, the application provides a substantial body of evidence showing that Israeli leaders have genocidal intent toward the Palestinians. (59-69) Indeed, the comments of Israeli leaders – all scrupulously documented – are shocking. One is reminded of how the Nazis talked about dealing with Jews when reading how Israelis in “positions of the highest responsibility” talk about dealing with the Palestinians. (59) In essence, the document argues that Israel’s actions in Gaza, combined with its leaders’ statements of intent, make it clear that Israeli policy is “calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza.” (39) Third, the document goes to considerable lengths to put the Gaza war in a broader historical context, making it clear that Israel has treated the Palestinians in Gaza like caged animals for many years. It quotes from numerous UN reports detailing Israel’s cruel treatment of the Palestinians. In short, the application makes clear that what the Israelis have done in Gaza since 7 October is a more extreme version of what they were doing well before 7 October. There is no question that many of the facts described in the South African document have previously been reported in the media. What makes the application so important, however, is that it brings all those facts together in one place and provides an overarching and thoroughly supported description of the Israeli genocide. In other words, it provides the big picture while not neglecting the details. Unsurprisingly, the Israeli government has labelled the charges a “blood libel” that “has no factual and judicial basis.” Moreover, Israel claims that “South Africa is collaborating with a terror group that calls for the destruction of the state of Israel.”3 A close reading of the document, however, makes it clear that there is no basis for these assertions. In fact, it is hard to see how Israel will be able to defend itself in a rational-legal way when the proceedings begin. After all, brute facts are hard to dispute. Let me offer a few additional observations regarding the South African charges. First, the document emphasizes that genocide Is distinct from other war crimes and crimes against humanity, although “there is often a close connection between all such acts.” (1) For example, targeting a civilian population to help win a war – as occurred when Britain and the United States bombed German and Japanese cities in World War II – is a war crime, but not genocide. Britain and the United States were not trying to destroy “a substantial part” of, or all the people in those targeted states. Ethnic cleansing underpinned by selective violence is also a war crime, although it is also not genocide, an action that Omer Bartov, the Israeli-born Holocaust expert, calls “the crime of all crimes.”4 For the record, I believed Israel was guilty of serious war crimes--but not genocide—during the first two months of the war, even though there was growing evidence of what Bartov has called “genocidal intent” on the part of Israeli leaders.5 But it became clear to me after the 24-30 November 2023 truce ended and Israel went back on the offensive, that Israeli leaders were in fact seeking to physically destroy a substantial portion of Gaza’s Palestinian population. Second, even though the South African application focuses on Israel, it has huge implications for the United States, especially President Biden and his principal lieutenants. Why? Because there is little doubt that the Biden administration is complicitous in Israel’s genocide, which is also a punishable act according to the Genocide Convention. Despite his admission that Israel is engaged in “indiscriminate bombing,” President Biden has also stated that “we’re not going to do a damn thing other than protect Israel. Not a single thing.”6 He has been true to his word, going so far as to bypass Congress twice to quickly get additional armaments to Israel. Leaving aside the legal implications of his behavior, Biden’s name – and America’s name – will be forever associated with what is likely to become one of the textbook cases of attempted genocide. Third, I never imagined I would see the day when Israel, a country filled with Holocaust survivors and their descendants, would face a serious charge of genocide. Regardless of how this case plays out in the ICJ – and here I am fully aware of the maneuvers that the United States and Israel will employ to avoid a fair trial – in the future Israel will be widely regarded as principally responsible for one of the canonical cases of genocide. Fourth, the South African document emphasizes that there is no reason to think this genocide is going to end soon, unless the ICJ successfully intervenes. It twice quotes the words of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on 25 December 2023 to drive that point home: “We are not stopping, we are continuing to fight, and we are deepening the fighting in the coming days, and this will be a long battle and it is not close to being over.” (8, 82) Let us hope South Africa and the IJC bring a halt to the fighting, but in the final analysis the power of international courts to coerce countries like Israel and the United States is extremely limited. Finally, the United States is a liberal democracy that is filled with intellectuals, newspaper editors, policymakers, pundits, and scholars who routinely proclaim their deep commitment to protecting human rights around the world. They tend to be highly vocal when countries commit war crimes, especially if the United States or any of its allies are involved. In the case of Israel’s genocide, however, most of the human rights mavens in the liberal mainstream have said little about Israel’s savage actions in Gaza or the genocidal rhetoric of its leaders. Hopefully, they will explain their disturbing silence at some point. Regardless, history will not be kind to them, as they said hardly a word while their country was complicit in a horrible crime, perpetrated right out in the open for all to see. 1 https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20231228-app-01-00-en.pdf 2.https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf 3 https://www.timesofisrael.com/blood-libel-israel-slams-south-africa-for-filing-icj-genocide-motion-over-gaza-war/ 4 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/10/opinion/israel-gaza-genocide-war.html 5 https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/death-and-destruction-in-gaza 6 https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/12/how-joe-biden-became-americas-top-israel-hawk/ AuthorJohn J. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1982. This article was produced by John J. Mearsheimer. Archives January 2024 1/6/2024 Absolute and Triple Exploitation: Capital Accumulation in the Information Age. By: Carlos L. GarridoRead NowAs the technological revolution (and especially the recent developments in artificial intelligence) progresses, the discussions surrounding its dystopic potential are abundant. However, there is a desert of analysis as to how these developments have influenced capitalist exploitation, specifically in the data-selling industries worth hundreds of billions of dollars. In this short essay I will introduce the concepts of absolute and triple exploitation to account for the billions of profits made in the selling of data produced by internet users, and how such new form of exploitation warrants understanding contemporary capitalist exploitations in a triad of forms (triple exploitation). Along with this, I will explore how these developments affect identity formation in our age of profilicity. Absolute Exploitation in our Leisure Time A few years ago, Harvard Business Review noted that “collecting and selling data about people is estimated to be a $200 billion business, and all signs point to continued growth of the data-brokerage business.” What exactly is being sold? Data. But, where does it come from? It is the data we produced in our leisure time that is sold – realizing massive profits for the data-gathering companies. What else can this be called if not the intensification of the ‘rate of exploitation’ (as Marxism refers to it) to the absolute maximum? Is what we are producing when we curate our profile-identities and surf the web not capital? Is it not something produced out of the combination of human action (or labor) and machinery (in this case, phones or computers)? Is this not variable and fixed capital being put to work for capital accumulation – in one of the most essential forms it takes today? What is the rate of exploitation when the denominator is 0? Undefined? Is it even worth speaking of this exploitation in terms of rates? Is this not absolute (or pure) exploitation, where those who create the surplus value realized into profit (i.e., the data) aren’t even paid for doing so? Is the opposite not the case? Aren’t the data producers the ones having to pay for producing the data by having to purchase Wi-Fi, the technology, various paywalls to sites, etc. Can the labor that produced the data even be considered a commodity if it was never bought (at least not from the producer nor before what they produced was already sold)? And if it was never bought, in what terms can we best describe the data-gathering capitalist’s sale of it? This intensifies the character of surplus value magically appearing as a “creation out of nothing” for the capitalist – a phenomenon Marx had already explained in Capital Vol. I. Let us recall Marx’s reply: “What Lucretius says is self-evident; “nil posse creari de nihilo,” out of nothing, nothing can be created. Creation of value is transformation of labour-power into labour. Labour-power itself is energy transferred to a human organism by means of nourishing matter.” The 200+ billion in profits of data-gathering companies is not created out of nothing, it is, instead, rooted in the absolute exploitation of the data producers. This is a society of exploited people[1] (i.e., unpaid surplus value creators) who, for the first time in history, are exploited through their leisurely consumption. The veiled character of the exploitation is even deeper than regular wage labor. The wage laborer knows he is working, and on that basis, can eventually understand his exploitation. The data producer, on the other hand, thinks they’re resting, enjoying a good death scroll on their phones. They do not even know they are producing, much less that they are paying to be exploited. Triple Exploitation Exploitation today, therefore, exists in a triad form – triple exploitation: 1) We continue to be exploited in the usual moment of production. This is the traditional “primary exploitation” scientifically explained by Marx in volume I of Capital (and concretized in volumes II and III). 2) With the generalization of crippling debt weighing down on working people unable to pay for their basic necessities, debt as what Marx called “secondary exploitation” becomes the norm. As he writes in Capital Vol III, this secondary exploitation “runs parallel to the primary exploitation taking place in the production process itself.” 3) Lastly, we have (to follow Marx) tertiary exploitation: what I have called the absolute exploitation occurring through the sale of data produced by people who do not even know they are producing surplus value. This is an unprecedented amount of capitalist exploitation forms. This is bourgeois parasitism achieving an unparalleled stage, concomitant with the system’s moribundity. Another Dystopian Component – The Profilic Dimension We live in a time of profiles. Who we are, our identity, is deeply embedded in the curation of our profiles for general peers, those ‘users’ who validate our content through various interactive means (likes, shares, retweets, etc.). Our future posts are influenced by the reaction of previous posts. Those which tend to do good are repeated, those which don’t are not (often these are deleted outright). The dialectical interdependency of the individual and the social obtains a new form in the age of profilicity. Through these ‘social validation feedback loops’ (termed as such by Facebook president Sean Parker) we adjust our content to the reception of the general peer. Our identity is crafted with an eye to how we are ‘seen as being seen’. Second order observation becomes the norm; all judgement is subject to some degree of mediation by how the thing judged is seen by the general peer. These are some of the central insights of Hans Georg Moeller and Paul D’Ambrosio’s book, You and Your Profile: Identity After Authenticity. While it does have some blind spots (which I have hoped to bring light to in my work), it is without a doubt an essential text for understanding the dominant mode of identity technology in our day. Is it not our identities, then, which are being sold by data collecting companies to companies that can sell us their products? In this massive data gathering from our profiles and online activities, these companies have come to know us better than our most intimate friends and families could. For all the sharing we do to our best friends, they will never have the predictive capacity of our future behavior like the data-gathering companies do. As they have become essential for modern capitalist life, these companies have come to own access to our deepest selves. Their knowledge of ‘us’ is unmatched. Today we are not only triply exploited workers, but utterly alienated from any semblance of basic human privacy and intimacy in our identities. Data-gathering capitalists have conquered and sold the private dimension of the self. These companies have the power to watch us in our moments of leisure, a power unmatched in the history of class society. No despot of any ruling class in history has ever penetrated the lives of the exploited and oppressed with such profundity. Unlike in the old days, the security state (some call it the ‘deep state’) no longer needs to come within any proximity of your cellphone (the device through which now we curate our identities) to tap it. The security state doesn’t even need to come into your home to place cameras to spy on you, as has been shown through various studies, advanced artificial intelligence is capable of ‘turning routers into cameras that see through walls’. The dystopian novels of the last century are no match for the reality of 21st century capitalism. Barbarism is here. Only socialism can dig us out of it. Notes [1] Since all classes produce this data, it is as if society at large (everyone) undergoes this exploitation on the part of the data-selling capitalists. Author: Carlos L. Garrido is a Cuban American philosophy instructor at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. He is the director of the Midwestern Marx Institute and the author of The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism (2023), Marxism and the Dialectical Materialist Worldview (2022), and the forthcoming Hegel, Marxism, and Dialectics (2024). He has written for dozens of scholarly and popular publications around the world and runs various live-broadcast shows for the Midwestern Marx Institute YouTube. You can subscribe to his Philosophy in Crisis Substack HERE. Archives January 2024 1/4/2024 We Are Entirely Too Close To Another Major War In The Middle East By: Caitlin JohnstoneRead Now
The US and its allies have published a joint statement warning Yemen’s Houthis to cease the attacks they’ve been making on commercial vessels in the Red Sea. The Houthis, officially known as Ansarallah, have successfully slashed Israeli port activity by an extremely massive margin with their maritime tactics in response to Israel’s ongoing massacre in Gaza.
The statement asserts that the Yemeni attacks “are a direct threat to the freedom of navigation that serves as the bedrock of global trade in one of the world’s most critical waterways,” complaining that they are “adding significant cost and weeks of delay to the delivery of goods,” and ultimately threatens that the Houthis will “bear the responsibility of the consequences” should these attacks continue. Many critics have been pointing out the irony of the western power alliance threatening military intervention to protect shipping containers and corporate profits while actual human beings are being butchered by Israeli airstrikes and starved by Israeli siege warfare with nothing but friendly support from these same powers. “Palestinians would really love to get the same amount of attention and protection as shipping containers,” tweeted Palestinian-Canadian journalist Yasmine El-Sawabi.
That the US and its allies would go to war against the people who are trying to stop an active genocide tells you everything you need to know about them. The fact that they’d do it for corporate profit margins tells you even more, and the fact that they’d do it to a nation they’ve already helped inflict unfathomable horrors upon in recent years tells you more still.
And that’s just one of the potential wars looming on the horizon in connection with the Israeli onslaught in Gaza. As Trita Parsi recently explained in The Nation, there are three other fronts along which wars could also erupt in the region apart from a western conflict with the Houthis: in Iraq and Syria where US forces have been repeatedly under attack by militants in response to the Gaza assault, in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah, and the absolute nightmare scenario of a full-scale war with Iran. “That risk exists on four fronts: Between Israel and the Lebanese Hezbollah, in Syria and Iraq due to attacks on US troops by militias aligned with Iran, the Red Sea between the Houthis and the US Navy, and between Israel and Iran following both the assassination of an Iranian general in Syria and the explosion in Kerman today at the commemoration of the death of General Qassem Soleimani that has killed more than 100,” Parsi writes.
It is a potentially ominous sign that Israel has begun focusing on ramping up aggressions against Iran and Hezbollah while simultaneously withdrawing thousands of troops from Gaza. Some analysts argue that we are seeing an attempt by Israel to pull the US into a direct war with Hezbollah, which is something US officials have reportedly been worried would happen ever since the Gaza assault began.
There are entirely too many fronts along which a new horrific war in the middle east could potentially erupt, and things are entirely too close to the brink on all of them. And all for land, money and geostrategic control, same as always. The sooner the US-centralized power structure crumbles, the better it will be for humanity. Author
This article was produced by Caitlin Johnstone.
ArchivesJanuary 2024 IMPERIALIST hegemony over the third world is exercised not just through arms and economic might but also through the hegemony of ideas, by making the victims see the world the way imperialism wants them to see it. A pre-requisite for freedom in the third world therefore is to shake off this colonisation of the mind, and to seek truth beyond the distortions of imperialism. The anti-colonial struggle was aware of this; in fact the struggle begins with the dawning of this awareness. And since the imperialist project does not come to an end with formal political decolonisation, the education system in the newly independent ex-colonies must continuously aim to go beyond the falsehoods of imperialism. This requires that the course contents and syllabi in Indian educational institutions must be different from those in metropolitan institutions. This is obvious in the case of humanities and social sciences where it is impossible to understand the present of the country without reckoning with its colonised past; and metropolitan universities scrupulously avoid making this connection, attributing the current state of underdevelopment of the country to all sorts of extraneous factors like laziness, lack of enterprise, superstition, and, above all, excessive population growth. But even in the case of natural sciences, the syllabi and course contents in third world universities cannot be identical with those in metropolitan universities, not because Einstein’s theory or quantum physics have any imperialist ideology in them, but because the range of scientific concerns in the third world is not necessarily the same as in the metropolitan countries. In fact, this was the view of JD Bernal, the British scientist and Marxist intellectual, one of the great figures of the twentieth century. To believe that the syllabi and course contents in third world universities should be identical with those in metropolitan universities is itself a symptom of being hegemonised by imperialism. Education policy in the dirigiste period in India was aware of this; despite the obvious failings of the education system the education policy of that period could not be faulted for having a wrong vision. With neo-liberalism however things begin to change, as the Indian big bourgeoisie gets integrated with globalised finance capital, as the Indian upper middle class youth looks for employment in multinational corporations, as the nation’s development is made dependent upon exporting goods to foreign markets and attracting foreign finance and foreign direct investment to the country. Significantly, even top functionaries of the government start talking of reinviting the East India Company back to India. Since the era of neo-liberalism entails the hegemony of globalised finance capital, and since this capital requires a globalised (or at least a homogeneous) technocracy, the emphasis shifts to having a homogeneous education system internationally to train such a technocracy; and obviously such a system necessarily has to be one that emanates from the metropolis. This means an education system not for decolonising minds but for recolonising minds. To this end, the UPA government earlier had invited several well-known foreign universities to set up branches in India, and even to “adopt’ some Indian universities that could be developed in their own image. Oxford, Harvard and Cambridge were obviously invited under this scheme not to follow in India the syllabi and course contents prepared within India, but to replicate what they follow back home. The idea was to start a process whereby there would be a uniformity of course contents and syllabi between the Indian and metropolitan universities, that is, to roll back the attempt made earlier towards a decolonisation of minds in Indian universities. In fact an Indian Human Resource Development minister had openly stated in parliament that his objective was to provide a Harvard education within India so that Indian students did not have to go abroad for it. The NDA government has carried forward to a very great extent what the UPA government had started; and the National Education Policy it has enacted gives an official imprimatur to this idea of a uniform education system between India and the metropolis, which necessarily means the adoption of common curricula, course contents and syllabi between Indian and metropolitan universities. Towards this uniformity it has taken two decisive steps: one is the destruction of those universities in India that were providing a counter to the imperialist discourse, and that had, for this very reason, attracted world-wide attention; the obvious examples here are the Jawaharlal Nehru University, the Hyderabad Central University, Jadavpur University, and others. The other is the carrying out of negotiations under the pressure of the University Grants Commission between individual Indian universities and foreign universities to make the course contents in various disciplines in the former clones of those in the latter. The only caveat here is that the UGC insists on having some material on subjects like Vedic Mathematics included in the course contents of Indian universities which the foreign universities do not always agree with. No doubt some accord will be reached on these issues in due course, in which case the Indian universities would be having curricula and course contents that represent an admixture of the demands of neo-liberalism and the demands of the Hindutva elements. It would be a colonisation of minds with a veneer of “how great our country was in ancient times”. Imperialism should not have any problem with that. As long as imperialism, which is a modern phenomenon that has emerged with the development of capitalism, is painted not as an exploitative system but as a benevolent civilising mission for countries like India, as long as the present state of underdevelopment of these countries is not in any way linked to the phenomenon of imperialism, which it would not be if there is uniformity of course contents with metropolitan universities, then what had happened in ancient times is not of much concern to imperialism, at least to the liberal imperialist viewpoint, as distinct from the extreme right which favours a white supremacist discourse. An alternative tendency with the same consequence, of recolonising minds, is to do away with the social sciences and humanities altogether, or to reduce them to inconsequential subjects, and substitute them with courses that are exclusively“job-oriented” and do no ask questions about society, like management and cost accountancy. In fact both the Hindutva elements and the corporates have a vested interest in this, since both are keen to have students who are exclusively self-centred and do not ask questions about the trajectory of social development. This tendency too is gathering momentum at present. An education system that recolonises minds is the counterpart of the corporate-Hindutva alliance that has acquired political hegemony in the country. Such a recolonisation is what the corporates want; and the Hindutva elements that were never associated with the anti-colonial struggle, that never understood the meaning of nation-building, that do not understand the role and significance of imperialism, and hence of the need for decolonising minds, are quite content as long as lip service is paid to the greatness of ancient India. An education system that purveys the imperialist ideology with some vedic seasoning is good enough for them. This is exactly the education system that the country is now in the process of building. The corporate- Hindutva alliance however is a response to the crisis of neo-liberalism, when corporate capital feels the need to ally itself with the Hindutva elements to maintain its hegemony in the face of the crisis. The National Education Policy likewise is not for carrying the nation forward but for managing the crisis by destroying thought, by preventing people from asking questions and seeking the truth. The “job orientation” that this policy prides itself on is only for a handful of persons; in fact the crisis of neo-liberalism means fewer jobs overall. In sync with this, the education system excludes large numbers of persons; their minds are to be filled instead with communal poison within an altered discourse that by-passes issues of material life, and makes them potential low-wage recruits for fascistic thug-squads. This education policy therefore can only be transitory, until the youth starts asking questions about the unemployment and distress that has become its fate. And as an alternative development trajectory beyond neo-liberal capitalism is explored, the quest for an education system beyond what the NDA government is seeking to introduce will also begin; and decolonisation of the mind will again come on to the agenda, as it had done during the anti-colonial struggle. AuthorPrabhat Patnaik is an Indian political economist and political commentator. His books include Accumulation and Stability Under Capitalism (1997), The Value of Money (2009), and Re-envisioning Socialism (2011). This article was produced by Monthly Review. Archives January 2024 A bright star in the firmament of justice has gone out. One of the greatest journalists of our era has passed away. John Pilger was always on the side of the oppressed. He denounced Imperialism and all its violent predations—war, genocide, exploitation—as well as its endless lies and propaganda. Till his death, he fought tirelessly for the freedom of Julian Assange, and his last article was a call to solidarity. John gave voice to the invisible and the voiceless: the hungry, the poor, the handicapped, the conscripted, the sanctioned & bombed, the dispossessed, refugees, the chemically experimented on, the structurally adjusted, the coup’ed, the famine-expendable, the colonized, the genocided, the silenced, shining a light in the hidden, dark recesses of the hell of Empire and Capital. He denounced and fought racism, war, privatization, neocolonialism, neoliberalism, globalization, propaganda,advertising, nuclear madness, and US coups. His filmography and writing is a rap sheet of the unceasing criminality of Empire. Arguably giving him the best homage it could render, the British Television Authority described him as “A threat to Western Civilization” John was also prophetic: in 1970, he chronicled the insurrection of troops against the Vietnam war in The Quiet Mutiny. In 1974, and again in 2002, he spoke out that “Palestine was still the Issue“, demanding that “the occupation of Palestine should end now”. He warned about Japanese militarism and revisionism. In 2014, he warned that Ukraine, a “CIA theme park”, was preparing “a Nato-run guerrilla war that is likely to spill into Russia itself”. Seven years ago, when only a few were aware, and even fewer were speaking out—in short words and articles—he released a full-length, full-throated documentary warning the world that the US was escalating catastrophically to War with China. John was not only a powerful critical journalist and world-changing filmmaker—”Cambodia Year Zero” is considered one of the most influential documentaries of the 20th century. He was also a craftsman, a poet, artist—he understood the power of language but also understood that in a medium restricted by word counts, what it meant to make every word count. But it was John’s rich, resonant delivery—like a Shakespearean actor—that always struck me. It contained the unmistakable, unimpeachable courage of moral integrity: a voice that knows it is speaking the truth. You will hear many things about him in the days to come—as we speak, the MSM are retrieving their pre-written, canned obituaries from the deep freeze—but John’s own words are most insightful. On the form of journalism: In all these forms the aim should be to find out as many facts and as much of the truth as possible. There’s no mystery. Yes, we all bring a personal perspective to work; that’s our human right. Mine is to be skeptical of those who seek to control us, indeed of all authority that isn’t accountable, and not to accept “official truths”, which are often lies. Journalism is or ought to be the agent of people, not power: the view from the ground. On making a difference: ….the aim of good journalism is or ought to be to give people the power of information – without which they cannot claim certain freedoms. It’s as straightforward as that. Now and then you do see the effects of a particular documentary or series of reports. In Cambodia, more than $50 million were given by the public, entirely unsolicited, following my first film; and my colleagues and I were able to use this to buy medical supplies, food and clothing. Several governments changed their policies as a result. Something similar happened following the showing of my documentary on East Timor – filmed, most of it, in secret… Did it affect the situation in East Timor? No, but it did contribute to the long years of tireless work by people all over the world. On Social Media: Ironically, they can separate us even further from each other: enclose us in a bubble-world of smartphones and fragmented information, and magpie commentary. Thinking is more fun, I think On US Foreign Policy: I seldom use the almost respectable term, US foreign policy; US designs for the world is the correct term, surely. These designs have been running along a straight line since 1944 when the Bretton Woods conference ordained the US as the number one imperial power. The line has known occasional interruptions such as the retreat from Saigon and the triumph of the Sandinistas, but the designs have never changed. They are to dominate humanity. What has changed is that they are often disguised by the modern power of public relations, a term Edward Bernays invented during the first world war because “the Germans have given propaganda a bad name”. On the economy: With every administration, it seems, the aims are “spun” further into the realm of fantasy while becoming more and more extreme. Bill Clinton, still known by the terminally naive as a “progressive”, actually upped the ante on the Reagan administration, with the iniquities of NAFTA and assorted killing around the world. What is especially dangerous today is that the US’s wilfully and criminally collapsed economy (collapsed for ordinary people) and the unchallenged pre-eminence of the parasitical “defence” industries have followed a familiar logic that leads to greater militarism, bloodshed and economic hardship. On peace activism: The current spoiling for a fight with China is a symptom of this, as is the invasion of Africa….I find it remarkable that I have lived my life without having been blown to bits in a nuclear holocaust ignited by Washington. What this tells me is that popular resistance across the rest of the world is potent and much feared by the bully – look at the hysterical pursuit of WikiLeaks. Or if not feared, it’s disorientating for the master. That’s why those of us who regard peace as a normal state of human affairs are in for a long haul, and faltering along the way is not an option, really. On the future: I’m confident that if we remain silent while the US war state, now rampant, continues on its bloody path, we bequeath to our children and grandchildren a world with an apocalyptic climate, broken dreams of a better life for all and, as the unlamented General Petraeus put it, a state of “perpetual war”. Do we accept that or do we fight back? John Pilger, Presente! AuthorK.J. Noh is a scholar and peace activist focused on the geopolitics of the Asian continent. He writes for Counterpunch and Dissident voice, and reports for local and international media. This article was produced by Monthly Review. Archives January 2024 A radical is no more than this: he who goes to the roots. Let him who fails to arrive at the bottom of things call himself not a radical; nor let him who fails to help other men obtain security and happiness call himself a man.”- Jose Marti The self-proclaimed ‘radical American magazine’ Compact Mag just published an article from Alan Dershowitz making the argument that Israel has not committed war crimes and that Hamas, on the other hand, has. What world are these people living in? Do you not see the tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, women, children, and elderly indiscriminately killed by US taxpayer funded bombs? Do you not see the unprecedently dangerous situation for journalists, 77 of whom have been killed (as of Dec 31st, 2023), for United Nations workers, 100+ killed by Zionist crimes against humanity? Has collective punishment suddenly been removed from the list of war crimes under international law? Has using white phosphorus been removed from that list too? Are apartheid states no longer in violation of international law? Is keeping people in an ‘open air prison,’ as even conservative UK prime minister David Cameron called it (including Amnesty international and other global human rights organizations), suddenly acceptable by international law? Does international law now accept concentration camps as legal, the largest of which is the one Gazans are enclosed in according to Hebrew University sociologist, Baruch Kimmerling? Is international law now acceptant of genocidal rhetoric (a rhetoric backed up by actions) on the part of prominent state leaders? Is it acceptable, under international law, to keep a population of 2.3 (densely packed) million blockaded without sufficient water, food, and fuel? Is it acceptable to have leaders of a state refer to the people they’re ethnically cleansing from the land (since 1948) as ‘animals’ and ‘not humans?’ Does international law accept the indiscriminate bombing of schools, hospitals, ambulances, places of worship, ‘escape routes,’ and other civilian packed locations? Whole volumes would have to be written to comprehensively document the crimes of the Zionist state, and the last few months would have a volume of its own. How much of the Israeli atrocity propaganda from October 7th, propaganda essential in stirring emotions, dehumanizing the Palestinian anti-colonial liberation forces, and manufacturing consent, has been shown to be utterly baseless? 40 beheaded babies? Worse than ISIS? Hamas using Palestinians as human shields? Mass rapes (claims rooted in the comments of an admittingly ‘proud racist’)? Hamas blew up al-Ahli hospital? These and many more stomach-turning atrocity propaganda stories have been spun by Zionist media without a shred of verifiable or credible evidence. In fact, in most instances it is purely based on imperialist projection. It is Israel, not Hamas, who is using Palestinians as human shields. It is Israel who is indiscriminately killing babies and haunting the algorithms with their dismembered bodies (these images, which disgust most regular human beings, are celebrated by blood-thirsty genocidal Zionists in carnivalesque digital forums resembling the lynching spectacles of the apartheid US south). It is leading Israeli military rabbis, not ‘Hamas,’ who defend the rape of enemy women and the killing of babies on the basis of their religious fundamentalism. “To be radical is to grasp the root of the matter,” as a young Marx once wrote. Compact Mag, by publishing pro-genocide garbage, is as far as it possibly could be from being ‘radical.’[1] An actual ‘radical’ understanding of Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people is forced to see it within the context of the capitalist-imperialist system which birthed that wretched supremacist state and which continues to use it as a colonial outpost to wage its wars upon the Middle East – a region the imperialists have always thirsted over because of its wealth of resources and global strategic location as a midpoint in the Eurasian world. An actual ‘radical’ position (which is to say, a Marxist position rooted in a comprehensive understanding of imperialism and geopolitical economy) is forced to see Israel’s actions since October 7th as those of not only a fascist, but a Nazi, genocidal state – as Dr. Anthony Monteiro notes. Those states in the West which have supported this genocide, or have turned a blind eye to it, are in violation of the Geneva Convention which holds that “the duty of prevention clearly obliges states parties to do everything they can whenever genocide is committed by whomever, i.e., regardless of whether the person acts as a private individual or qua state official.” Far from being radical, publications such as this one and others show that Compact Mag (like many other so called ‘radical’ publications in the US and West) is simply an institution of the compatible left. Its job (whether cognizant of it or not) is to provide a ‘leftist’ or ‘radical’ veneer to the defense of the imperialist’s agenda. Any struggle against imperialism, whether socialist in character or not, is subject to radical sounding condemnations from the pro-imperialist ‘radicals.’ The Dershowitz publication is simply one the most blatant one of these. This is a practice that is essential for the ruling elite, who have been systematically propping up compatible ‘lefts’ since at least the mid-20th century anti-communist Congress for Cultural Freedom. It finances, creates, and promotes institutions which can crank out various flavors of radical recuperators, as Gabriel Rockhill calls them. When these are given a superficial “Marxist” veneer, condemning people’s struggles as ‘not real socialism,’ or ‘not really anti-colonial,’ because of said struggle’s ‘impurities,’ they operate within the lifeless outlook I have termed the purity fetish. Since October 7th, as I have previously written, many on the US left have shown (on the basis of their purity fetish) their affinity with the ruling elite they claim to oppose (see my critique of Jacobin editor Meagan Day’s ridiculous condemnation of Palestinian resistance). But the tides are well into turning. The world has come out to condemn the US funded Israeli genocide of the Palestinians. The Israeli Occupational Forces, although successful killing babies, women, and the elderly, have been unable to beat Hamas in actual conflict. Yemen’s Ansarallah is intensifying the pressure against the Nazi-Zionist state, as Pepe Escobar notes, with its “stunning and carefully targeted blockade of the Red Sea.” In two key fronts – actual fighting and the information war – the forces of humanity are winning. Advanced imperialist weaponry and technology is no match for a people determined to be free – as the US’s defeat in Vietnam, Cuba, etc. showed. As I have argued before: [Palestinian’s] struggle for freedom is not limited to Palestinians. A defeat of Israel, the US empire’s outpost in the so-called Middle East - the “baby child of imperialism in the Middle East” as Kwame Ture said - would be a victory for all of humanity. A defeat of empire in any corner of the earth, as Che Guevara noted, must be celebrated cheerfully by every communist, every person driven by a deep love of humanity. The imperialists hate humanity; their capitalist system undermines, as Marx had noted, the “original sources of all wealth – the soil and the worker.” The Palestinian struggle against the racist Israeli colonial US-outpost is a struggle for humanity - for the exploited and oppressed across the earth. It is a struggle for life, a struggle against the Israeli imperialist death machine. As is evident by the role Jewish Voices for Peace, If Not Now, and orthodox Jews have played in calling for a ceasefire and condemning the Zionist entity, more and more Jewish people around the world are rejecting the crimes the Zionist state is committing in their name. Many are even coming to reject the supremacist ideology of Zionism itself, fervently combatting the anti-Jewish equating of Zionism with Judaism (something both the Zionists and actual Anti-Semites agree on). Jewish people, especially in the US, are saying NO to the Zionist lies the elites have attempted to indoctrinate them with. Now more than ever Jewish people (especially younger ones) are coming to Katie Halper’s correct position: “As a Jew, I want to say that Israel does not make me safe. Israel makes me sick, and Israel makes me less safe, because they are committing crimes against humanity in the name of Jews.” As US imperial power shows its moribund state globally, the forces it once held captive are jumping ship. A new world is coming into being, whether we want to call it ‘multipolarity’ (most common usage), ‘pluripolarity’ (Hugo Chavez’s term), ‘the Afro-Asiatic reconstitution of the world’ (Dr. Monteiro’s term), ‘post-hegemonic world’ (Mexican Economist Oscar Rojas’s term), or the Post-Colombian, Post-1492 world (the term I use in The Purity Fetish). As material conditions decline at unprecedented rates in the imperial core, the base of the last centuries bourgeoisified proletariat (and labor aristocracy) is dying. They are being, as Noah Khrachvik notes, reproletarianized. There is no longer an incentive for working people to look away from their imperialist government’s crimes when it is using OUR tax dollars to fund genocide while we lack healthcare, are in crippling debt, and are struggling to pay the bills at the end of the month. The United Automobile Workers, one of the nation’s largest unions, has been outspoken in its calls for a ceasefire and has connected this internationalism to the struggle of the union against the US’s imperialist war in Vietnam. A crisis of legitimacy, consent, authority (whatever you want to call it) is in the works – both globally and within the US itself. As we say in the US, something has got to give! The weeks where decades happen, as Lenin’s dictum goes, are approaching us in the months and years to come. The pro-imperialist compatible left is no challenge for the real movement of working and oppressed peoples. Along with the imperialists themselves, they will be left in the dustbins of history. Because this great humanity has said: Enough! and has started walking. And their march of giants will no longer stop until they achieve true independence, for which they have already died more than once in vain. Now, in any case, those who will die, will die like those of Cuba, those of Playa Girón, will die for their only, true, inalienable independence! – Che Guevara If I am unable to return and live in freedom in Palestine, my children will return. – Leila Khaled Notes [1] In a sane society, stooges of imperialism and US power like Alan Dershowitz would find it hard to place their garbage anywhere. But it is too much to ask for sanity from a deeply irrational mode of life. Author: Carlos L. Garrido is a Cuban American philosophy instructor at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. He is the director of the Midwestern Marx Institute and the author of The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism (2023), Marxism and the Dialectical Materialist Worldview (2022), and the forthcoming Hegel, Marxism, and Dialectics (2024). He has written for dozens of scholarly and popular publications around the world and runs various live-broadcast shows for the Midwestern Marx Institute YouTube. You can subscribe to his Philosophy in Crisis Substack HERE. Archives January 2024 On December 18 and 19, 141 members of the two houses of India’s Parliament were suspended, as of December 19, by the Speaker of the lower house, Om Birla. Each of these members belongs to the parties that oppose the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its leader, Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The government said that these elected members were suspended for “unruly behavior.” The opposition had shaped itself into the INDIA bloc, which included almost every party not affiliated with the BJP. They responded to this action by calling it the “murder of democracy” and alleging that the BJP government has installed an “extreme level of dictatorship” in India. This act comes after a range of attempts to undermine India’s elected opposition. Meanwhile, on December 18, the popular Indian news website Newsclick announced that India’s Income Tax (IT) department “has virtually frozen our accounts.” Newsclick can no longer make payments to its employees, which means that this news media portal is now close to being silenced. The editors at Newsclick said that this action by the IT department is “a continuation of the administrative-legal siege” that began with the Enforcement Directorate raids in February 2021, was deepened by the IT department survey in September 2021, and the large-scale raids of October 3, 2023, that resulted in the arrest of Newsclick’s founder Prabir Purkayastha and its administrative officer Amit Chakraborty. Both remain in prison. Organs of Indian Democracy In February 2022, the Economist noted that “the organs of India’s democracy are decaying.” Two years before that assessment, India’s leading economist and Nobel Prize laureate Amartya Sen said that “democracy is government by discussion, and, if you make discussion fearful, you are not going to get a democracy, no matter how you count the votes. And that is massively true now. People are afraid now. I have never seen this before.” India’s most respected journalist, N. Ram (former editor of the Hindu), wrote in the Prospect in August 2023 about this “decaying” of Indian democracy and the fear of discussion in the context of the attack on Newsclick. This attack, he wrote, “marks a new low for press freedom in my country, which has been caught-up in a decade-long trend of uninterrupted down sliding in the ‘new India’ of Narendra Modi. We have witnessed a state-engineered McCarthyite campaign of disinformation, scaremongering, and vilification against Newsclick.” The world, he wrote, “should be watching in horror.” In May 2022, 10 organizations—including Amnesty International, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and Reporters Without Borders—released a strong statement, saying that the Indian “authorities should stop targeting, prosecuting journalists and online critics.” This statement documented how the Indian government has used laws against counterterrorism and sedition to silence the media, when it has been critical of government policies. Use of technology—such as Pegasus—has allowed the government to spy on reporters and to use their private communications for legal action against them. Journalists have been physically attacked and intimidated (with special focus on Muslim journalists, journalists who cover Jammu and Kashmir, and journalists who covered the farmer protests of 2021-22). When the government began to target Newsclick, it was part of this broad assault on the media. That broader attack prepared the journalist associations to respond clearly when the Delhi Police arrested Purkayastha and Chakraborty. The Press Club of India noted that its reporters were “deeply concerned” about the events, while the Editor’s Guild of India said that the government must “not create a general atmosphere of intimidation under the shadow of draconian laws.” Role of the New York Times In April 2020, the New York Times ran a story with a strong headline about the situation of press freedom in India: “Under Modi, India’s Press Is Not So Free Anymore.” In that story, the reporters showed how Modi met with owners of the major media houses in March 2020 to tell them to publish “inspiring and positive stories.” When the Indian media began to report the government’s catastrophic response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Modi’s government went to the Supreme Court to argue that all Indian media must “publish the official version.” The Court denied the government’s request that the media must only publish the government’s view but instead said that the media must publish the government’s view alongside other interpretations. Siddharth Varadarajan, editor of the Wire, said that the court’s order was “unfortunate,” and that it could be seen as “giving sanction for prior censorship of content in the media.” The Indian government’s “administrative-legal siege” on Newsclick began a few months later because the website had offered independent reporting not only on the COVID-19 pandemic but also on the movement to defend India’s constitution and on the movement of the farmers. Despite repeated searches and interrogations, the various agencies of the Indian government could not find any illegality in the operations of Newsclick. Vague suggestions about the impropriety of funding from overseas fell flat since Newsclick said that it followed Indian law in its receipt of funds. When the case against Newsclick appeared to go cold, the New York Times—in August 2023—published an enormously speculative and disparaging article against the foundations that provided some of Newsclick’s funds. The day after the story appeared, high officials of the Indian government went on a rampage against Newsclick, using the story as “evidence” of a crime. The New York Times had been warned previously that this kind of story would be used by the Indian government to suppress press freedom. Indeed, the story by the New York Times provided the Indian government with the credibility to try and shut down Newsclick, which is what they are now doing with the IT department’s decision. Upside Down World The 141 members of Parliament are accused of trying to justify a breach of the parliament building that took place on December 13. Two men jumped from the press gallery into the hall and released smoke canisters to protest the failure of the elected officials to debate issues of inflation, unemployment, and ethnic violence in Manipur. The men received passes to enter parliament from Pratap Simha, a parliamentarian of the BJP. He has not been suspended. The BJP used this incident to suspend the opposition parliamentarians because they either did not condemn the incident, or they came out in defense of colleagues who were suspended. Neither of the people who threw the smoke bombs into parliament nor those who planned that action have a political background, let alone any linkage to the opposition. Manoranjan D lost his job in an internet firm and had to return to assist his family work their farm; Sagar Sharma drove a taxi after he had to drop out of school due to financial problems at home. Azad had an MA, an MEd, and an MPhil, but could not find a job. These are young people frustrated with Modi’s India, but with no political connections. They tried to use normal democratic means to be heard but were not successful. Their act is one of desperation, a symptom of a broader social crisis; the suspension of the parliamentarians and the attack at Newsclick’s finances are also symptoms of that crisis: the suffocation of democracy in India. AuthorVijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism and (with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power. This article was produced by Globetrotter. Archives January 2024 1/3/2024 THE PROTESTS OF VIOLENCE:NAVIGATING MORALITY IN ACTIVISM AND REVOLUTIONS By: Marnina(Avirup)Read Now"Where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence.... I prefer to use arms in defense of honor rather than remain the vile witness of dishonor" This is a quote by perhaps the most popular, if not rigid, advocate of non-violence and pacifism. It might make some uncomfortable while others might derive validation from it and that somehow reflects the debate surrounding violence, or particularly Political Violence. The debate is definitely not new; rather it is perhaps one of the oldest debates of political philosophy, dating back to Ancient Greece. The events that occurred on and since October 7th have shaken the whole world as we witnessed the heights of Palestinian resilience and Israeli brutality. As Operation Al Aqsa Flood began, Liberals and Pacifists around the world were suddenly reminded of the ills of violence or the involvement of violence in politics. Palestinians were being lectured about their methods of resistance, of course none of these champions of non-violence had considered the conditions in which Palestinians lived and resisted(they have been dishonest about it, like most Zionists). A lot is being said and a lot is to be said about the genocide being committed by Israel but I would rather focus on a more general question that has taken precedence in various circles after the events of Al-Aqsa Flood. The Israeli atrocities have made some "firm Pacifists'' question the utility of non-violence as a political tool, while many still remain steadfast in their positions. Thus, through this article, I'd like to investigate the moral and ideological virtues of Political Violence, its relationship with protests or movements, how successful it can be as a tool of resistance and how Pacifists could engage with Political Violence without letting go of their pacifist values. To draw a concrete analysis I would also look at particular movements such as the French and American Revolutions to understand their relationship with political violence and the results it bore. CAKE, TEA AND REVOLUTIONS: Two of the most popular and influential political movements of the 19th Century have to be the French and American Revolutions. In pre-revolutionary France, an Absolute Monarchy prevailed, with the King, Nobility, and Clergy controlling the state. Economic crises fueled political instability, leading to the French Revolution. Unfair taxation, burdening peasants and favoring the elite, also sparked discontent. Attempts at reform within the Estates General failed due to its biased representation and mechanisms. The masses originally tried to reform society through peaceful means of resistance but it proved to be futile. Hence, exhausted by the futility of peaceful means the masses resorted to violence, beheading King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. This symbolized the culmination of societal grievances and the transformation of “revolutionary potential” into revolutionary action. But this revolution(the head-chopping was a French idea)was greatly inspired by a previous, similar revolution— The American Revolution. The discovery of the Americas triggered a colonization race among European powers, leading to English, French, and Spanish dominance in North America. The aftermath of the Seven Years' War left England in debt, prompting heavy taxation laws in the American colonies, sparking protests. Despite repealing most taxes, tensions persisted. England's increased control, military presence, and direct rule over Boston intensified colonial resistance. Colonies sought autonomy, not outright revolution(yet). The British Monarchy still refused to negotiate, escalating the conflict. In 1776, Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" catalyzed the shift towards total independence. Until then, most colonies aimed for a return to the original status, denied by Britain. The American War of Independence began as a struggle for autonomy and tax reduction, evolving into a demand for complete independence as revolutionary ideas gained momentum. A detailed and contextual reading of the French and American revolutions will bring light to a pattern— both these movements were sparked by a very particular problem but later evolved into a revolt against oppressive social relations. These movements also did not begin as a radical armed rebellion or revolution. Instead these movements did not take up the character of an armed rebellion until all avenues of peaceful change or non-violent resistance proved to be futile. Neither the French nor the Americans chose violent and radical resistance as their ideal methods. Violent methods were imposed on them by rulers who were unwilling to reform society or let go of power. This is a hypothesis that I would investigate further through some more examples. THE JUSTICE OF DACOITS AND DECOLONISATION: “Revolutionaries didn't choose armed struggle as the best path, it's the path the oppressors imposed on the people. And so the people only have two choices: to suffer, or to fight." – Fidel Castro, 1967 This Castro quote is perhaps the best summation of the aforementioned proposition on the use of violence by resistance movements. But this idea could be further solidified by looking into the life of India's most famous dacoit— Phoolan Devi. Phoolan Devi was born in 1963 into a poor, lower-caste family in rural India, she faced discrimination and abuse from an early age. At age 12 she was married off to a 38 year old man and consequently sexually abused by him (a practice still very common in India). Phoolan, resilient as always, tried to approach the local police station but instead she was brutally assaulted by the police too. After this incident Phoolan Devi joined a gang of dacoits and with the help of that gang she nearly killed her ex-husband and threatened to kill any man who married a child. Later when she was assaulted by some Upper Caste men of her gang, she formed her own faction to kill them and villagers who had aided her abusers. She embarked on a spree of violent retribution and in one such incident she killed 20 men who were aiding her assaulters. Phoolan Devi’s actions were not just fueled by personal vendettas, but also represented a broader context of violent rebellion against Brahmanism [Note 1: Brahmanism is defined as the socio-economic and ideological structure that maintains the Caste system] and Patriarchy. This helps us engage with the concept of violence on a deeper level because in this case not only is Phoolan Devi denied justice by the State apparatus, which forced her to take up arms, but it will also help us engage with the definition of violence in a more concrete manner which would not have possible with the examples of some social movement. Phoolan Devi resisted Brahmanism and Patriarchy through violence when she was denied justice by the State; her actions are no doubt violent, if not bloodthirsty. But the actions that led her to this murderous path, the trauma she faced because of her caste and gender identity were also bloodthirsty, violent and disturbingly heinous. Similarly, while the French and American Revolutions were violent, the British colonial rule and the French monarchy too were quite violent; rather in the case of Phoolan Devi or any marginalised group for that matter, from African-Americans to Palestinians, from Queer people around the world to Dalits and Adivasis in India, one could argue that every day of their life they face immeasurable amounts of violence. Frantz Fanon makes a similar argument when he states “Colonialism is not a thinking machine, nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties. It is violence in its natural state, and it will only yield when confronted with greater violence.” —Frantz Fanon, Wretched Of The Earth Fanon’s argument might be targeted towards Colonialism only, but we can agree that it can very easily be extended to Caste, Racism, Patriarchy, etc. The exploitation of land, resources and labour and the physical and ideological state apparatus used to maintain the system of colonialism are not very dissimilar to the relationship of exploitation and coercion used to maintain systems of Brahmanical Patriarchy. As one would have guessed that these relationships and the complimentary apparatuses are themselves violent by nature. By only calling the resistance movements violent and condemning them for their violence whenever they make any advances, one erases the violence that is legitimised by the ruling class’s hegemony and sanctioned by the State. Whenever talking about the violence of resistance, we must bear in mind that we live in an extremely violent society which unleashes violence on marginalised group on a daily basis; violence that is not just physical but also “racial and cultural” to quote Fanon again. Fanon has explored the psychological impact of violence on its victims too. He proposes that colonisation doesn't just physically and economically assault colonised societies but also unleashes a cultural and ideological attack that morphs the psychological make-up of said societies. This is done by imposing a Colonial Hegemony over the culture of colonised societies; historically this has been done by altering the system of education, exercising control over new mediums of communication and media, legislation, etc.[Note 2: It should be pointed out that while these policies were only intended to further imperialist interests, in some cases they had a progressive effect too (mostly by accident). Eg: the education and recruitment policies of the British, did help marginalised castes gain some mobility. But the same Britishers did practically nothing to stop practices like untouchability or the Devdasi system. No special protections were provided for peasants (majority of whom belonged to marginalised castes) who suffered under the British Zamindari/Landlord system or who died from starvation caused by the artificial famines which were a direct result of British agricultural practices. Thus it is safe to say that these rare and occasional reforms were either mere accidents or just a byproduct of British interests. Nonetheless, these reforms should be mentioned to counter notions, propounded by certain Post-Colonial theorists, that the Pre-Colonial systems and values were somehow inherently better and should be praised uncritically; the British policies were certainly brutal and racist but that does not excuse the brutality of the Mediaeval Indians systems.] Similarly one could draw a parallel between the cultural hegemony of colonial powers and the Brahmanical hegemony over Indian culture; the former was used to mold culture, and by extension the psychological makeup, of the colonised society to suit the interests of the colonisers whereas the latter was used for similar purposes, except that it benefitted the Upper Castes by making the marginalised castes believe that they were inferior. The Savarna[Note 3: Savarna is a term used to collectively refer to the communities that belong to any one of the four varnas, ie, Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra] hegemony over education and religion was the greatest tool in this case which not only provided religious-ideological justification to the subjugation of the marginalised castes but also made them believe in their so-called inferiority. Fanon argues that the oppressed must also wage an intense struggle against Colonial culture and ideology; a cultural and ideological struggle which must also be violent to some extent, ie, (i) the violent rejection of the culture imposed by the oppressors and adoption of an alternative culture which does not psychologically subjugate the oppressed. Eg: Dr. B.R.Ambedkar’s rejection of Hinduism and conversion to Buddhism. [Note 4: Such ideological or cultural struggle can only have a long-lasting impact if they are accompanied with strong material resistance movements and changes in the social relationships. This is why, while Dr. Ambedkar's conversion holds huge significance in history, conversion to Buddhism has not really been an effective strategy to combat Caste.] (ii) Violence itself could have a huge cultural impact on the oppressed groups. Eg: the victory of the Japanese against Russians in 1910 inspired radical anti-colonial movements around the world. But that still leaves one last question, does the violence of the oppressor justify the violence of the oppressed? Do the atrocities that Phoolan Devi faced justify her retaliation? That brings me to the next section of this article. SASUKE, MANDELA AND CONTEXT: “If anyone who criticises my way of life were to come forward, I'd turn and kill every single one of their loved ones so that they too could grasp what it is like to experience this hatred of mine.” —Sasuke, Naruto Although Sasuke[Note 5: Sasuke is a character from the popular anime series Naruto] is not a philosopher of any kind (even though the idea of a Jacobin ninja is quite enticing), this statement provides us some ground to begin engaging with the question of whether a violent action justifies a violent response, particularly because Sasuke doesn't even try to justify the response through a preceding action; he contextualises it. Sasuke lost all his loved ones and went out to seek revenge, when confronted about his methods, he does not try to justify his actions, almost in a sort of intellectual maneuver he defies the premise of the argument; he instead tries to wants them to judge him after having felt his pain or being in his shoes. Nelson Mandela makes a similar point when he says-- "Choose peace rather than confrontation... Except in cases where we cannot get, where we cannot proceed, or we cannot move forward. Then if the only alternative is violence, we will use violence.” —Nelson Mandela in Gaza(1999) Here Mandela does not justify violence of the oppressed on a moral basis by focusing solely on the context of violence nor does he condemn violence by focusing on the action and erasing the context. Zizek has defined violence as “the relationship between an action and the context in which it takes place”; since violence, as a quality, cannot exist on its own. It must be ascribed to some action and that action will always require observers to consider the context of said actions; the action and the context are two dialectical halves of violence in which the context is the primary aspect since it is the context or preceding action(colonial, racist or caste violence) that leads to the formation of this relationship and dictates its terms. [Note 6: This dialectical relationship is a reflection of the social dialectical relationship where the oppressor or ruling class is the primary aspect of society]. And that leads me to the final part, a personal address to pacifists. A LETTER TO PACIFISTS: Since October 7th many pacifists from India and beyond, have either joined the global movement against Zionism and sincerely contributed to the movement or are extremely disgusted by the Zionist state but are also hesitant about supporting the methods of Palestinian resistance. While pacifism is certainly not a practical strategy of resistance, this 5000 year old debate is not getting settled anytime soon and it is more important, now more than ever, to aid the Palestinian resistance than to spend our energies on this debate. Hence in this I will try to provide a sort of middle-ground for pacifists. As we've seen, it is the oppressor who dictates the terms of violence and oppression in our society whereas the oppressed mostly respond to it; unless the resistance of the oppressed is strong enough to defy the diktat of the oppressor and set its own rules. It is obvious that revolutionary resistance groups such as PFLP and other groups born of the struggle like Hamas are working towards that goal but Pacifists can also play a progressive role(at least more progressive than being silent bystanders or both sideists) by creating pressure on their own governments to stop supporting Israel. You can boycott corporations that fund Israel, hold protests in public places and threaten elected representatives or governments(with votes) to stop funding or buying weapons from Israel until Palestine gets an equal position on the negotiation table. History has shown that resistance or oppressed groups will opt for peaceful options if possible(particularly because these groups bear the brunt of the violence). Hence the immediate first step towards establishing peace in the region is to get Palestine an avenue of fair negotiations(emphasis on the term ‘fair’) to put forth their demands, to create a situation where non-violent methods can actually work or succeed, to create an environment where non-violent Palestinian protests won't be gunned down[Note 7: The Great March of Return]. This will negate the need for violence by the resistance groups; hence allowing pacifists to not be silent bystanders of genocide while also holding on to their pacifist principles. AuthorMarnina(Avirup) is a Marxist-Leninist writer from West Bengal, India. They write on both international and Indian issues(or their corelation). Most of their work is on Political Theory, Comparative Politics, Political History and Philosophy from a Marxist-Leninist perspective Archives January 2024 Never Again and Again and Again - by Mr. Fish Israel’s lebensraum master plan for Gaza, borrowed from the Nazi’s depopulation of Jewish ghettos, is clear. Destroy infrastructure, medical facilities and sanitation, including access to clean water. Block shipments of food and fuel. Unleash indiscriminate industrial violence to kill and wound hundreds a day. Let starvation — the U.N. estimates that more than half a million people are already starving — and epidemics of infectious diseases, along with the daily massacres and the displacement of Palestinians from their homes, turn Gaza into a mortuary. The Palestinians are being forced to choose between death from bombs, disease, exposure or starvation or being driven from their homeland. There will soon reach a point where death will be so ubiquitous that deportation - for those who want to live - will be the only option. Danny Danon, Israel's former Ambassador to the U.N. and a close ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told Israel’s Kan Bet radio that he has been contacted by “countries in Latin America and Africa that are willing to absorb refugees from the Gaza Strip.” “We have to make it easier for Gazans to leave for other countries,” he said. “I'm talking about voluntary migration by Palestinians who want to leave.” The problem for now “is countries that are willing to absorb them, and we're working on this,” Netanyahu told Likud Knesset members. In the Warsaw Ghetto, the Germans handed out three kilograms of bread and one kilogram of marmalade to anyone who “voluntarily” registered for deportation. “There were times when hundreds of people had to wait in line for several hours to be ‘deported,’” Marek Edelman, one of the commanders of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, writes in “The Ghetto Fights.” “The number of people anxious to obtain three kilograms of bread was such that the transports, now leaving twice daily with 12,000 people, could not accommodate them all.” The Nazis shipped their victims to death camps. The Israelis will ship their victims to squalid refugee camps in countries outside of Israel. Israeli leaders are also cynically advertising the proposed ethnic cleansing as voluntary and a humanitarian gesture to solve the catastrophe they created. This is the plan. No one, especially the Biden administration, intends to stop it. The most disturbing lesson I learned while covering armed conflicts for two decades is that we all have the capacity, with little prodding, to become willing executioners. The line between the victim and the victimizer is razor thin. The dark lusts of racial and ethnic supremacy, of vengeance and hate, of the eradication of those we condemn as embodying evil, are poisons that are not circumscribed by race, nationality, ethnicity or religion. We can all become Nazis. It takes very little. And if we do not stand in eternal vigilance over evil — our evil — we become, like those carrying out the mass killing in Gaza, monsters. The cries of those expiring under the rubble in Gaza are the cries of the boys and men executed by the Bosnian Serbs at Srebrenica, the over 1.5 million Cambodians killed by the Khmer Rouge, the thousands of Tutsi families burned alive in churches and the tens of thousands of Jews executed by the Einsatzgruppen at Babi Yar in Ukraine. The Holocaust is not an historical relic. It lives, lurking in the shadows, waiting to ignite its vicious contagion. We were warned. Raul Hilberg. Primo Levi. Bruno Bettelheim. Hannah Arendt. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. They understood the dark recesses of the human spirit. But this truth is bitter and hard to confront. We prefer the myth. We prefer to see in our own kind, our own race, our own ethnicity, our own nation, our own religion, superior virtues. We prefer to sanctify our hatred. Some of those who bore witness to this awful truth, including Levi, Bettelheim, Jean Améry, the author of “At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities,” and Tadeusz Borowski, who wrote “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen,” committed suicide. The German playwright and revolutionary Ernst Toller, unable to rouse an indifferent world to assist victims and refugees from the Spanish Civil War, hanged himself in 1939 in a room at the Mayflower Hotel in New York City. On his hotel desk were photos of dead Spanish children. “Most people have no imagination,” Toller writes. “If they could imagine the sufferings of others, they would not make them suffer so. What separated a German mother from a French mother? Slogans which deafened us so that we could not hear the truth.” Primo Levi railed against the false, morally uplifting narrative of the Holocaust that culminates in the creation of the state of Israel — a narrative embraced by the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. The contemporary history of the Third Reich, he writes, could be “reread as a war against memory, an Orwellian falsification of memory, falsification of reality, negation of reality.” He wonders if “we who have returned” have “been able to understand and make others understand our experience.” Levi saw us reflected in Chaim Rumkowski, the Nazi collaborator and tyrannical leader of the Łódź Ghetto. Rumkowski sold out his fellow Jews for privilege and power, although he was sent to Auschwitz on the final transport where Jewish Sonderkommando — prisoners forced to help herd victims into the gas chambers and dispose of their bodies — in an act of vengeance reportedly beat him to death outside a crematorium. “We are all mirrored in Rumkowski,” Levi reminds us. “His ambiguity is ours, it is our second nature, we hybrids molded from clay and spirit. His fever is ours, the fever of Western civilization, that ‘descends into hell with trumpets and drums,’ and its miserable adornments are the distorting image of our symbols of social prestige.” We, like Rumkowski, “are so dazzled by power and prestige as to forget our essential fragility. Willingly or not we come to terms with power, forgetting that we are all in the ghetto, that the ghetto is walled in, that outside the ghetto reign the lords of death, and that close by the train is waiting.” Levi insists that the camps “could not be reduced to the two blocks of victims and persecutors.” He argues, “It is naive, absurd, and historically false to believe that an infernal system such as National Socialism sanctifies its victims; on the contrary; it degrades them, it makes them resemble itself.” He chronicles what he called the “gray zone” between corruption and collaboration. The world, he writes, is not black and white, “but a vast zone of gray consciences that stands between the great men of evil and the pure victims.” We all inhabit this gray zone. We all can be induced to become part of the apparatus of death for trivial reasons and paltry rewards. This is the terrifying truth of the Holocaust. It is hard not to be cynical about the plethora of university courses about the Holocaust given the censorship and banning of groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voices for Peace, imposed by university administrations. What is the point of studying the Holocaust if not to understand its fundamental lesson — when you have the capacity to stop genocide and you do not, you are culpable? It is hard not to be cynical about the “humanitarian interventionists” — Barack Obama, Tony Blair, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Samantha Power — who talk in sanctimonious rhymes about the “Responsibility to Protect” but are silent about war crimes when speaking out would threaten their status and careers. None of the “humanitarian interventions” they championed, from Bosnia to Libya, come close to replicating the suffering and slaughter in Gaza. But there is a cost to defending Palestinians, a cost they do not intend to pay. There is nothing moral about denouncing slavery, the Holocaust or dictatorial regimes that oppose the United States. All it means is you champion the dominant narrative. The moral universe has been turned upside down. Those who oppose genocide are accused of advocating it. Those who carry out genocide are said to have the right to “defend” themselves. Vetoing ceasefires and providing 2,000-pound bombs to Israel that throw out metal fragments for thousands of feet is the road to peace. Refusing to negotiate with Hamas will free the hostages. Bombing hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, ambulances and refugee camps, along with killing three former Israeli hostages, stripped to the waist, waving an improvised white flag and calling out for help in Hebrew, are routine acts of war. Killing over 21,300 people, including more than 7,700 children, injuring over 55,000 and rendering nearly all of the 2.3 million people in Gaza homeless, is a way to “deradicalize” Palestinians. None of this makes sense, as protesters around the world realize. A new world is being born. It is a world where the old rules, more often honored in the breach than the observance, no longer matter. It is a world where vast bureaucratic structures and technologically advanced systems carry out in public view vast killing projects. The industrialized nations, weakened, fearful of global chaos, are sending an ominous message to the Global South and anyone who might think of revolt — we will kill you without restraint. One day, we will all be Palestinians. “I fear that we live in a world in which war and racism are ubiquitous, in which the powers of government mobilization and legitimization are powerful and increasing, in which a sense of personal responsibility is increasingly attenuated by specialization and bureaucratization, and in which the peer group exerts tremendous pressures on behavior and sets moral norms,” Christopher R. Browning writes in Ordinary Men, about a German reserve police battalion in World War Two that was ultimately responsible for the murder of 83,000 Jews. “In such a world, I fear, modern governments that wish to commit mass murder will seldom fail in their efforts for being unable to induce ‘ordinary men’ to become their ‘willing executioners.’” Evil is protean. It mutates. It finds new forms and new expressions. Germany orchestrated the murder of six million Jews, as well as over six million Gypsies, Poles, homosexuals, communists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Freemasons, artists, journalists, Soviet prisoners of war, people with physical and intellectual disabilities and political opponents. It immediately set out after the war to expiate itself for its crimes. It deftly transferred its racism and demonization to Muslims, with racial supremacy remaining firmly rooted in the German psyche. At the same time, Germany and the U.S. rehabilitated thousands of former Nazis, especially from the intelligence services and the scientific community, and did little to prosecute those who directed Nazi war crimes. Germany today is Israel’s second largest arms supplier following the U.S. The supposed campaign against anti-Semitism, interpreted as any statement that is critical of the State of Israel or denounces the genocide, is in fact the championing of White Power. It is why the German state, which has effectively criminalized support for the Palestinians, and the most retrograde white supremists in the United States, justify the carnage. Germany’s long relationship with Israel, including paying over $90 billion since 1945 in reparations to Holocaust survivors and their heirs, is not about atonement, as the Israeli historian Ilan Pappé writes, but blackmail. “The argument for a Jewish state as compensation for the Holocaust was a powerful argument, so powerful that nobody listened to the outright rejection of the U.N. solution by the overwhelming majority of the people of Palestine,” Pappé writes. “What comes out clearly is a European wish to atone. The basic and natural rights of the Palestinians should be sidelined, dwarfed and forgotten altogether for the sake of the forgiveness that Europe was seeking from the newly formed Jewish state. It was much easier to rectify the Nazi evil vis-à -vis a Zionist movement than facing the Jews of the world in general. It was less complex and, more importantly, it did not involve facing the victims of the Holocaust themselves, but rather a state that claimed to represent them. The price for this more convenient atonement was robbing the Palestinians of every basic and natural right they had and allowing the Zionist movement to ethnically cleanse them without fear of any rebuke or condemnation.” The Holocaust was weaponized from almost the moment Israel was founded. It was bastardized to serve the apartheid state. If we forget the lessons of the Holocaust, we forget who we are and what we are capable of becoming. We seek our moral worth in the past, rather than the present. We condemn others, including the Palestinians, to an endless cycle of slaughter. We become the evil we abhor. We consecrate the horror. AuthorChris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning author and journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times. This article was produced by Chris Hedges. Archives January 2024 1/2/2024 I Don't Care What Religion The Genocidal Child Murderers Are By: Caitlin JohnstoneRead Now
Unfuckingbelievable. It is un fucking believable that it’s 2024 and the US-sponsored incineration of Gaza is still going on.
They’re just looking us dead in the eye and doing the worst things humans could possibly do, right in front of us. Against all laws. Against all opposition. ❖ The other day Tony Blinken posted an astonishingly obnoxious tweet fretting about how “This has been an extraordinarily dangerous year for press around the world,” as though his own administration had not directly facilitated the lion’s share of the deadly attacks on journalists in 2023. The utter gall of these freaks still surprises me sometimes.
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Very frightened and upset by the alarming increase in anti-semitism* we’ve seen in the last three months. [*Pro-Palestine demonstrations, pro-Palestine political slogans, pro-Palestine tweets and TikTok videos, criticism of the Israeli government, people saying it’s wrong to murder thousands of children] ❖ All this “anti-semitism” gibberish is so fucking stupid. It’s like if every time we wanted to criticize the Iraq invasion we had to do a whole big song and dance swearing on our lives that we weren’t racist toward Texans. I don’t give a fuck if you’re Jewish. I don’t care what religion you are. If you’re murdering thousands of children, the very least significant thing about that situation is what religion you happen to be. I think the overwhelming majority of people on my side see it this way. ❖ Actually what fuels antisemitism is murdering children by the thousands under the banner of the Star of David while adamantly insisting that your actions are inseparable from all Jews and the totality of Judaism. ❖
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Step 1: Deliberately make Gaza uninhabitable Step 2: Leave Gazans no choice but to migrate elsewhere Step 3: Call this forced migration “voluntary” and “humanitarian” Step 4: Turn the entire Gaza Strip into a giant Israeli settlement ❖ Don’t worry, Israel will be at peace once it defeats Hamas. Well, first it’ll need to conquer Syria, eliminate Hezbollah and Ansarallah, achieve regime change in Iran, and defeat all the new enemies these military campaigns will create along the way. But THEN there will be peace! ❖ It’s crazy how there’s mountains of evidence that Israeli higher-ups allowed October 7 to happen in order to advance ethnic cleansing agendas in Gaza, but you’ll never be allowed to say this blatantly obvious thing happened without being branded an anti-semitic conspiracy kook.
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It is right and good to aggressively scrutinize claims about mass rape on October 7, but it’s also important to stress that even if every single one of those claims was true it would not justify anything Israel has been doing in Gaza. ❖ No matter how many times you bleat the phrase “Blame Hamas”, it will never magically erase Israel’s guilt in raining military explosives on a giant concentration camp full of children. No matter how many times you accuse Israel’s critics of being anti-semitic, it will never magically erase Israel’s guilt in raining military explosives on a giant concentration camp full of children. No matter how many times you mention October 7, it will never magically erase Israel’s guilt in raining military explosives on a giant concentration camp full of children. ❖ Older generations, for the love of God stop telling the young generation “It’s terrible, but that’s just the way it is.” That may have been true in our youth, but our children are networked in an unprecedented way which has already resulted in massive social changes. They changed the way we think about gender pretty much overnight; you think a tiny old war machine is going to get in their way? Stop trying to indoctrinate them with your learned helplessness. Next time a young person gets angry about the way the world is, please don’t chuck the sand of pre-emptive disappointment in their eyes with your somnolent words of status-quo enforcing “pragmatism”. Simply say “I am with you all the way. Tell me where to next.” Author
This article was produced by Caitlin Johnstone.
ArchivesJanuary 2024 1/2/2024 Russia is on a path to becoming socialist again. In anticipation of this, we must unite the globe’s anti-imperialist forces By: Rainer SheaRead NowThe way that we interpret Russia’s special military operation, and the events surrounding it, is going to determine how we wage the class struggle throughout the post-Ukraine war era. There’s a pessimistic view of these developments, and an optimistic one, with the latter being what we need in order to prevail. The pessimistic interpretation has been adopted by those who Parenti called the “pure” socialists, the ones who apply standards to anti-imperialists which can’t be met. They say that Russia’s decision to defy the U.S. empire represents nothing besides a loss for the international proletarian movement, because the government that undertook the operation in Ukraine is a capitalist one. They focuse entirely on the ways in which the imperialist countries have reacted to Russia’s actions, directing attention towards the increased arming of Europe, the harm the conflict has brought upon working people, and the expansion of NATO. Those are essentially the only accurate observations the pure socialists make about the issue; often they put forth claims that aren’t even based in fact. Many of them try to argue that Russia is an imperialist power, which is an idea too unsound for serious Marxists to accept. For this reason, the most effective among these anti-Russian leftists have not tried to make that argument, and merely made more broad statements about how war is bad. The optimistic interpretation is one that provides the context which the pessimistic left ignores. It recognizes that on the geopolitical chessboard, the side of the imperialists has only been able to take a couple pawns during the last two years, while the side of the anti-imperialists has been able to take several crucial pieces. As the world has been forced by this operation to choose between Washington and the Russia/China/Iran bloc, the vast majority of countries have in effect embraced the latter. The rise of the Belt and Road Initiative, de-dollarization, and the alienation of the Global South from Washington have been accelerated by this great catalyzing event. This has made the hegemon’s challengers better equipped to build an economy that’s independent from the imperialist bloc. At the same time, the internal collapse of the imperialist countries has been sped up by the sanctions blowback. The trend is undeniable: whereas the monopoly capitalists are seeing their economic order come closer to its death because of Russia’s action, the states which seek to construct a new world have become safer from the sanctions the monopolists place on them. Aside from the imperative which existed for Russia to stop the ethnic cleansing efforts of the Ukrainian fascists, this is reason enough for anti-imperialists to back what Russia has been doing. While the depletion of Ukraine’s manpower has come ever closer to the point where Kiev can’t keep fighting in the same way, and it’s become even more apparent that Ukraine won’t ever achieve its goal of taking back the eastern territories, another aspect of this story has gotten clearer. An aspect that gives us a reason to view these developments as not only a win for anti-imperialism, but an indication that communism is getting closer to making up for its great loss over thirty years ago. This is the recent story in which Russia’s economy has come to better resemble a socialist one. As more time passes since the start of the operation, and the old Yelstin neoliberal model becomes untenable, this trend gets more pronounced. The thinking of the country’s leadership on nationalization has been changing in ways that we likely couldn’t have anticipated during the operation’s initial months. For example: whereas in 2022, Russian officials said they lacked desire to nationalize the foreign firms, in 2023 they did exactly that. This is only an addition to the nationalizations the country had begun undergoing at a much faster pace right after February 2022. And the implications of this trend shouldn’t be dismissed, like the pessimistic left wants us to do. These nationalizations mean that there’s a practical mandate for Russia to reverse the neoliberal restructuring which the Soviet Union’s dissolution brought upon the country. And that if the bourgeois government doesn’t do a good enough job of reversing the harms created by that great catastrophe, the country will be forced into a new stage within its anti-imperialist journey. For the moment, the country’s ruling class is maneuvering to make it so that the nationalizations go along with measures to advance their own material interests. This ironically involves privatization in areas other than Russia’s primary sectors; as analyst Ekaterina Kurbangaleeva observes, it’s an attempt to stabilize Russian capitalism by giving the middle class greater benefits: “The middle layer of Russia’s social structure will be shaped by the redistribution of assets among those well-off Russians forced to focus on the domestic market by international sanctions. In return for their loyalty, they will receive high-quality assets at a significant discount, which may turn them into a pillar of the regime and a source of patriotic optimism and even radicalism. There could even be a ‘people’s privatization,’ in which the wealthy are awarded minority stakes in state companies. Much will depend on the avoidance of catastrophe on the Ukrainian front, the continued apathy of the public sector, and the success of Russia’s pivot to Asia. Yet the effect could be to extend the regime’s lifespan—and it may well even enable a transition of power down the road.” The pessimistic leftists see this, and interpret it as meaning that assisting the transition to multipolarity has no value for the class struggle. That’s the position we see being advanced by all the socialist formations which have opposed the special operation: because Russia’s present government acts upon the class interests of the bourgeoisie, supposedly all of Russia’s contributions towards weakening U.S. hegemony are lacking in any value. This view is based within the unserious vision which these strains of leftism have for what revolution looks like. Whether in Russia or elsewhere, they don’t want any country’s revolutionary process to have contradictions. They don’t want it to involve people who aren’t necessarily communists, or who are part of the old government, or who have a bourgeois class background. It’s ironic that these same idealistically minded people often at the same time support Chinese socialism. Because China was only able to become socialist after undergoing a revolution that involved all of those ideological impurities. That’s how all of history’s workers revolutions have been to varying degrees. To succeed, they’ve needed to include the same kinds of individuals Russia is cultivating: people who have special leverage over history due to their positions, and who’ve become radicalized in a way which makes them revolutionary-compatible. When the next moment of regime transition in Russia comes, doesn’t it seem plausible that those radical elements of the middle class will work towards shifting the country in a more revolutionary direction? This is the only direction things can now realistically go for Russia, because following the Ukraine operation, it’s had to commit to anti-imperialism out of self-preservation. With how intense the sanctions have become, if Russia were to betray China it wouldn’t be able to survive. The Russian pivot to Asia is permanent, and is a crucial part of Russia’s path back to socialism. The ultra-lefts who oppose the progress that Russia is making want revolutions to conform to their idealistic, or rather unrealistic, idea of what it means to win the class war. They believe that the communist movement can win in America, while exclusively trying to build a base among left-liberals. And they make the equivalent mistake while interpreting the conditions of Russia. Of course the ultras don’t believe the Russian social forces that have been driving the special operation are valuable to the country’s class struggle. Of course they don’t see the country’s pivot to Asia as representing any kind of progress. For every country, the revolutionary diagnoses they come up with aren’t based within a realistic assessment of the given conditions. They come from a desire for ideological purity that renders somebody unable to have a meaningful effect on history. To achieve victory for socialism, we in the empire’s core must reject such dogmatic opportunism. We must reach everyone in our society who’s revolution-compatible, while uniting with all the peoples abroad who are contributing to the anti-imperialist struggle. AuthorRainer Shea This article was produced by Rainer Shea. Archives January 2024 In December 1978 the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) made a momentous decision to open a new program of economic development. Over the first three decades of the People's Republic of China, a foundation for a modern socialist system had been built, but this had been an arduous process, with advances and retreats, successes and failures, and much contention about how best to pursue the goals of enhancing production in industry and agriculture and of improving the material conditions and the livelihoods of the Chinese people. Slow but steady growth in the economy had modestly exceeded population growth, so that while there had been significant improvements in life expectancy and public health, housing provision, education, and other social services, in 1978 China remained a poor country. China had achieved a kind of egalitarianism of poverty, but this was not the goal of the revolution. Socialism is a society of shared prosperity, based upon the equitable distribution of the wealth produced by social labor, wealth which should be abundant enough to meet not only basic needs but to allow all people to pursue their self-development, to fulfill their potential as human beings and members of society. To achieve this, China's leaders understood that this required bold new measures and a radical will to experiment. Deng Xiaoping and others formulated new policies designed to utilize the mechanisms of the market to develop the productive economy. Marxists have long recognized the historical role of markets in the rise of the capitalist system, including the massive expansion and enhancement if productive capacities. The aim of the new policies, which came to be labeled as reform and opening-up, was to revise the organization and operation of Chinese enterprises and to open the country to foreign capital in order to drive a process of development which would give China the capacity to produce goods and services in much greater volume and at much lower costs. This would not happen overnight, and it would entail certain risks and challenges. Markets can generate growth and development, but they also generate contradictions. The Chinese leadership understood this, and recognized that the key to success, the key to survival and flourishing of the socialist project, would be the guiding role of the CPC. They anticipated that rapid development using market mechanisms could create contradictions involving inequality, corruption, environmental stresses, as well as other problems. If the markets and foreign capital were simply allowed to run unregulated these could overwhelm the country and lead to the end of the socialist venture and the abandonment of the goals of the revolution. They understood that all of this would take time, that, as Deng Xiaoping famously said, some people would get rich first, and make accommodations with the global capitalist system in order to acquire the capital, technology and other resources needed to advance along the path of development. As China marks the 45th anniversary of the reform era, we can see that much has been achieved. China has reached the primary stage of socialism, a society of modest prosperity, in which more than 800 million people have been lifted out of absolute poverty, in which health, education and social services have been dramatically improved. China has become a world leader in innovation and creativity, and is at the forefront of the fight to save the planet from the menace of climate change through the development of alternative energy and the building of an ecological civilization. China is playing a central role in improving the lives of people in developing countries around the world through its Belt and Road Initiative and other efforts to support the flourishing of a multipolar world with a future of shared prosperity. All of this has been possible because of the leadership of the CPC. Over the past decade under General Secretary Xi Jinping, the CPC has managed the complexities of policy and practice, guiding the processes of development and the intricate dialectic between the socialist core and the private sector, remaining committed to the original goals of the revolution, and navigating China's re-emergence as a significant participant in global affairs. There is much work to be done. The contradictions of development remain as factors which must be carefully attended to, and the tensions in global geopolitics as the world goes through an era of structural transformation and some long-established powers find it difficult to embrace the newly emerging realities pose serious challenges. It is time to celebrate what has been accomplished, and to reaffirm commitment to the tasks which lie ahead. Guided by the insights of Marxist theory and the deep historical experience of China's ancient civilization, and with the ongoing leadership of the CPC, the road ahead is one of hope. AuthorKen Hammond is a professor of East Asian and global history at New Mexico State University. [email protected] This article was produced by Global Times. Archives January 2024 Birth of a New Nation - by Mr. Fish Settler colonial states have a terminal shelf life. Israel is no exception. Israel will appear triumphant after it finishes its genocidal campaign in Gaza and the West Bank. Backed by the United States, it will achieve its demented goal. Its murderous rampages and genocidal violence will exterminate or ethnically cleanse Palestinians. Its dream of a state exclusively for Jews, with any Palestinians who remain stripped of basic rights, will be realized. It will revel in its blood-soaked victory. It will celebrate its war criminals. Its genocide will be erased from public consciousness and tossed into Israel’s huge black hole of historical amnesia. Those with a conscience in Israel will be silenced and persecuted. But by the time Israel achieves its decimation of Gaza — Israel is talking about months of warfare — it will have signed its own death sentence. Its facade of civility, its supposed vaunted respect for the rule of law and democracy, its mythical story of the courageous Israeli military and miraculous birth of the Jewish nation, will lie in ash heaps. Israel’s social capital will be spent. It will be revealed as an ugly, repressive, hate-filled apartheid regime, alienating younger generations of American Jews. Its patron, the United States, as new generations come into power, will distance itself from Israel the way it is distancing itself from Ukraine. Its popular support, already eroded in the U.S., will come from America’s Christianized fascists who see Israel’s domination of ancient Biblical land as a harbinger of the Second Coming and in its subjugation of Arabs a kindred racism and white supremacy. Palestinian blood and suffering — 10 times the number of children have been killed in Gaza as in two years of war in Ukraine — will pave the road to Israel’s oblivion. The tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of ghosts will have their revenge. Israel will become synonymous with its victims the way Turks are synonymous with the Armenians, Germans are with the Namibians and later the Jews, and Serbs are with the Bosniaks. Israel’s cultural, artistic, journalistic and intellectual life will be exterminated. Israel will be a stagnant nation where the religious fanatics, bigots and Jewish extremists who have seized power will dominate public discourse. It will find its allies among other despotic regimes. Israel’s repugnant racial and religious supremacy will be its defining attribute, which is why the most retrograde white supremists in the U.S. and Europe, including philo-semites such as John Hagee, Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene, fervently back Israel. The vaunted fight against anti-Semitism is a thinly disguised celebration of White Power. Despotisms can exist long after their past due date. But they are terminal. You don’t have to be a Biblical scholar to see that Israel’s lust for rivers of blood is antithetical to the core values of Judaism. The cynical weaponization of the Holocaust, including branding Palestinians as Nazis, has little efficacy when you carry out a live streamed genocide against 2.3 million people trapped in a concentration camp. Nations need more than force to survive. They need a mystique. This mystique provides purpose, civility and even nobility to inspire citizens to sacrifice for the nation. The mystique offers hope for the future. It provides meaning. It provides national identity. When mystiques implode, when they are exposed as lies, a central foundation of state power collapses. I reported on the death of the communist mystiques in 1989 during the revolutions in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania. The police and the military decided there was nothing left to defend. Israel’s decay will engender the same lassitude and apathy. It will not be able to recruit indigenous collaborators, such as Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority — reviled by most Palestinians — to do the bidding of the colonizers. The historian Ronald Robinson cites the inability to recruit indigenous allies by the British Empire as the point at which collaboration inverted into noncooperation, a defining moment for the start of decolonization. Once noncooperation by native elites morphs into active opposition, Robinson explains, the Empire’s “rapid retreat” is assured. All Israel has left is escalating violence, including torture, which accelerates the decline. This wholesale violence works in the short term, as it did in the war waged by the French in Algeria, the Dirty War waged by Argentina’s military dictatorship and during Britain’s conflict in Northern Ireland. But in the long term it is suicidal. “You might say that the battle of Algiers was won through the use of torture,” the British historian Alistair Horne observed, “but that the war, the Algerian war, was lost.” The genocide in Gaza has turned Hamas fighters into heroes in the Muslim world and the Global South. Israel may wipe out the Hamas leadership. But the past — and current — assassinations of scores of Palestinian leaders has done little to blunt resistance. The siege and genocide in Gaza has produced a new generation of deeply traumatized and enraged young men and women whose families have been killed and whose communities have been obliterated. They are prepared to take the place of martyred leaders. Israel has sent the stock of its adversary into the stratosphere. Israel was at war with itself before Oct. 7. Israelis were protesting to prevent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s abolition of judicial independence. Its religious bigots and fanatics, currently in power, had mounted a determined attack on Israeli secularism. Israel’s unity since the attacks is precarious. It is a negative unity. It is held together by hatred. And even this hatred is not enough to keep protestors from decrying the government’s abandonment of Israeli hostages in Gaza. Hatred is a dangerous political commodity. Once finished with one enemy, those who stoke hatred go in search of another. The Palestinian “human animals,” when eradicated or subdued, will be replaced by Jewish apostates and traitors. The demonized group can never be redeemed or cured. A politics of hatred creates a permanent instability that is exploited by those seeking the destruction of civil society. Israel was far down this road on Oct. 7 when it promulgated a series of discriminatory laws against non-Jews that resemble the racist Nuremberg Laws that disenfranchised Jews in Nazi Germany. The Communities Acceptance Law permits exclusively Jewish settlements to bar applicants for residency on the basis of “suitability to the community’s fundamental outlook.” Many of Israel’s best educated and young have left the country to places like Canada, Australia and the U.K., with as many as one million moving to the United States. Even Germany has seen an influx of around 20,000 Israelis in the first two decades of this century. Around 470,000 Israelis have left the country since Oct. 7. Within Israel, human rights campaigners, intellectuals and journalists — Israeli and Palestinian — are attacked as traitors in government-sponsored smear campaigns, placed under state surveillance and subjected to arbitrary arrests. The Israeli educational system is an indoctrination machine for the military. The Israeli scholar Yeshayahu Leibowitz warned that if Israel did not separate church and state and end its occupation of the Palestinians, it would give rise to a corrupt Rabbinate that would warp Judaism into a fascistic cult. “Israel,” he said, “would not deserve to exist, and it will not be worthwhile to preserve it.” The global mystique of the U.S., after two decades of disastrous wars in the Middle East and the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, is as contaminated as its Israeli ally. The Biden administration, in its fervor to unconditionally support Israel and appease the powerful Israel lobby, has bypassed the congressional review process with the Department of State to approve the transfer of 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition to Israel. Secretary of State Antony Blinken argued that “an emergency exists that requires the immediate sale.” At the same time he has cynically called on Israel to minimize civilian casualties. Israel has no intention of minimizing civilian casualties. It has already killed 18,800 Palestinians, 0.82 percent of the Gazan population — the equivalent of around 2.7 million Americans. Another 51,000 have been wounded. Half of Gaza’s population is starving, according to the U.N. All Palestinian institutions and services that sustain life — hospitals (only 11 out of 36 hospitals in Gaza are still “partially functioning”), water treatment plants, power grids, sewer systems, housing, schools, government buildings, cultural centers, telecommunications systems, mosques, churches, U.N. food distribution points — have been destroyed. Israel has assassinated at least 80 Palestinian journalists alongside dozens of their family members and over 130 U.N. aid workers along with members of their families. Civilian casualties are the point. This is not a war against Hamas. It is a war against the Palestinians. The objective is to kill or remove 2.3 million Palestinians from Gaza. The shooting dead of three Israeli hostages who apparently escaped their captors and approached Israeli forces with their shirts off, waving a white flag and calling out for help in Hebrew is not only tragic, but a glimpse of Israel’s rules of engagement in Gaza. These rules are — kill anything that moves. As the retired Israeli Major General Giora Eiland, who formerly headed the Israeli National Security Council, wrote in Yedioth Ahronoth, “[T]he State of Israel has no choice but to turn Gaza into a place that is temporarily or permanently impossible to live in…Creating a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza is a necessary means to achieve the goal.” “Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist,” he wrote. Major General Ghassan Alian declared that in Gaza, “there will be no electricity and no water, there will only be destruction. You wanted hell; you will get hell.” Settler colonial states that endure, including the United States, exterminate through diseases and violence nearly the entirety of their indigenous populations. Infectious diseases brought by the colonizers to the Americas, such as smallpox, killed an estimated 56 million indigenous people over about 100 years in South, Central and North America. By 1600 less than a tenth of the original population remained. Israel cannot kill on this scale, with nearly 5.5 million Palestinians living under occupation and another 9 million in the diaspora. The Biden presidency, which ironically may have signed its own political death certificate, is tethered to Israel’s genocide. It will try to distance itself rhetorically, but at the same time it will funnel the billions of dollars of weapons demanded by Israel — including $14.3 billion in supplemental military aid to augment the $3.8 billion in annual aid — to “finish the job.” It is a full partner in Israel’s genocide project. Israel is a pariah state. This was publically on display on Dec. 12 when 153 member states at the U.N. General Assembly voted for a ceasefire, with only 10 — including the U.S. and Israel — opposed and 23 abstaining. Israel’s scorched earth campaign in Gaza means there will be no peace. There will be no two state solution. Apartheid and genocide will define Israel. This presages a long, long conflict, one the Jewish State cannot ultimately win. AuthorChris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning author and journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times. This article was produced by Chris Hedges. Archives December 2023 |
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