​The topic of election interference remains contentious from every side of the fence. However in the case of Sarkozy, the allegations do indeed seem to carry weight. For almost two decades, Sarkozy has been battling allegations and court cases dealing with this very issue. The case of January 2025 is the latest in these. Sarkozy is charged with accepting millions of Euros from the Libyan government. An unspecified amount, starting as low as 5 Million, to as high as 50 million euros. The charge suggests that the funding was meant to incentivize France to assist Libya in it’s reproachment with the west. However according to the son of Muammar Gaddafi, the reasons indeed go much deeper. 

In a secretly recorded meeting, former professor Danny Shaw admitted that his public claims that journalists Dan Cohen and Kim Ives as well as American Communist Party (ACP) executive committee members Haz Al-Din and Kyle Pettis plotted to traffic weapons to Haiti were “not 100% truthful” and were intended to harm their reputations.
​
“I was definitely trying to take them out, I just fucked up. I just didn’t do it artfully and 100% truthful, and that looked very bad,” Shaw said.

​ACP member Zachariah Primiano recorded the meeting under the direction of the party’s Director of Personnel Kyle Pettis. It not only fully debunks Shaw’s slanderous allegations against Cohen, Ives, Al-Din, and Pettis but is clear evidence of the disgraced former professor’s deceit and intent to defame them in a COINTELPRO-style smear campaign aimed at destroying the ACP from within. The meeting was held at former ACP and Midwestern Marx member Daniel Gutierrez’s apartment in Queens, NY on January 21, and was also attended by Christopher Prewitt and Shuvu Bhattarai.

On January 17, Shaw published on X (formerly known as Twitter), Instagram, and his personal website a series of written articles and a video resigning from the ACP. While Shaw spends the majority of the 43-minute video denouncing Haz Al-Din and doxxing him by revealing his true identity (Ali Hammoud), he alleges that he witnessed, on a Zoom call, his then-comrades Al-Din and Pettis with his former colleagues Cohen and Ives, discussing plans to traffic weapons to armed groups in Haiti, particularly to Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier, leader of the Viv Ansanm Political Party, whom Cohen and Ives have repeatedly interviewed and profiled in their written and video reports and in their documentary series Another Vision: Inside Haiti’s Uprising.

“Ali, Kyle, Dan Cohen, and Kim Ives began to coordinate arms trafficking with sketchy foreign actors and oligarchs to the paramilitary factions in Haiti,” Shaw said.

In another post titled “On the Cultishness and Liberalism of Ali “Haz” Hammoud & the ACP Executive Board”, Shaw alleges that “On November 1st, I was tricked into coming to a sit-down with Dan Cohen and Kim Ives so they could send more guns to Haiti through Haz.”

Far from being ambushed, Shaw had been pressuring Cohen for a public debate while rebuffing numerous requests from his ACP comrades to participate in a private meeting with Cohen and Ives to clarify and resolve his political differences with them.

Shaw speculates that Hammoud and Pettis are working on behalf of the U.S. government. “I felt deceived and trapped. The question that went through my head was: Are these federal agents or just ultra leftists who do the bidding of the federal government?” Shaw wrote.

Shaw also falsely claims that Cohen, Ives, Al-Din, and Pettis disparaged the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) and that he repeatedly objected to such deprecation, but that the four men just ridiculed him.

“I raised every objection. They laughed and laughed at me, at the PSL, at Black Alliance For Peace & other groups who they said were ‘liberals’ and ‘humanitarians’ like me and actually cared about the masses. Why would Cohen and Ives take advantage of someone like Ali Hammoud, who has zero experience as a leader? I was forced to contact my lawyers and submit a sworn affidavit of this reckless adventurism that put me and the entire party at risk,” he wrote.

As he gorged himself on mango chicken and banana fritters, washed down by beet and celery juice, Shaw vacillated between overconfidence, bitterness, and spinning out more lies to his fellow plotters. By the end, he was audibly worried that his plot against his former comrades and colleagues had failed and there would be fallout.

Shaw’s allegations were an attempt to mount a coup against the ACP leadership.

The smear job was coordinated with Brianna “Bree” Barry, who resigned from the party on December 7, and John Molera, who was the party’s official attorney until he publicly resigned on the same day as Shaw. Shaw confesses that Molera helped co-write his articles, in which he doxxed Al-Din’s legal name. This violates legal confidence and could get Molera disbarred.

The allegations were uncritically promoted by professors Daniel Tutt and Colin Bodayle. Tutt is a George Washington University lecturer who is affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America, an unofficial affiliate of the Democratic Party, and brands himself as a “public critic” of the ACP. Bodayle is a graduate assistant at Villanova University.
​
Shaw’s hit job was also cheered on by Jonathan Meade, who uses the X account @jonnysocialism, and Andrew Saturn, both of whom are members of the Socialist Party of America. Saturn describes himself in his X bio as a “federal appointee.”

​Molera, a licensed attorney, had begun investigating Meade and Saturn for potential links to intelligence agencies, according to ACP leadership, but began to receive online harassment and death threats. He then suddenly turned against the ACP, culminating in his public resignation, which he coordinated with Shaw. Molera has since deactivated his X account and left DDGeopolitics, a channel where he had planned to launch a show.

Tutt told Cohen in a January 24 phone call that he suspected that Saturn is a federal agent. When Cohen asked Tutt why he objectively allies with people he suspects to be operating on the U.S. government’s behalf against the ACP, Tutt insisted that his criticism is different from theirs. He also stated that the ACP is worse than the Democratic Party.

Alternative media personality Fiorella Isabel of The Convo Couch also promoted the defamation, privately insisting to Cohen that ACP Executive Board member Jackson Hinkle is an FBI agent, although providing no evidence.

Back at the meeting, asked for evidence of the weapons trafficking allegations, Shaw admitted that he has none.
​
“The most I have is screenshots of Ali Hamoud preparing for the meeting, but it would have been him and Dan Cohen [who] were back channeling. I can't access that. The Zoom recording Ali Hamoud promised me.”

On January 21, the ACP sent a cease and desist letter to Shaw.
​
That evening, Shaw published a second video claiming to offer a “clarification and apology” but repeating the same allegations against Cohen, Ives, Al-Din, and Pettis. Shaw insisted that a recording of the November 1 meeting be made public and called for all parties to be subjected to polygraph tests, visibly smirking at his own suggestion, while reiterating the lie that the other men plotted to traffic guns through “Russian contacts.”

In the meeting at Gutierrez’ house, Shaw boasts that his “apology” was “mad slick.”

Even as he boasted of his duplicitous behavior, Shaw was aware that his smear campaign had backfired, although still posturing as a victim.

“These two journalists have completely mistreated me and the Haitian people, so I’ve tried to take them down too, but I just… I bit off more than I can chew.”

“My biggest mistake, right, like I told the comrades yesterday – any victory, small victories are ours – any mistakes, I take full responsibility. By dragging in the two journalists with the gun thing, it’s spiraled out of control,” he repeated, explaining that “it’s distracted from the work at hand” of destroying the ACP.

However, Shaw hoped to use Tutt as an intermediary to negotiate with with Cohen and Ives in order to isolate the ACP.

Tutt called Shaw during the meeting, suggesting that he fully retract his posts and accusations, based on the advice of a “lawyer” he had consulted.

When Cohen asked Tutt who the “lawyer” is, Tutt insisted that he is “a buddy of mine from college” who “doesn't even practice law.”
​
In the phone call with Tutt, Shaw remained defiant and insisted that he separate his conflict with ACP executives Al-Din and Pettis from that with Cohen and Ives.

“I think Daniel Tutt is in for a rude awakening. I don’t think they [Cohen and Ives] really want to talk to me,” Shaw concluded.

“Cross your fingers though,” interrupted Gutteierez.

“Oh God!” Shaw prayed. “If I can get out of this one. Heavenly Father, oh Mother. I’ll join the Christian church if I can get out of this one. Oh God!”

Earlier in the meeting, Shaw implied that he is planning to blackmail the PSL, which he belonged to until 2018, when he was expelled.

“You know the PSL leadership is sitting back like ‘ah, we hope Danny doesn’t come for us next.’ You better toss me some bone, motherfuckers,” Shaw chides. “I’ll expose the shit out of those petit-bourgeois fools.”

Nonetheless, Shaw indicated that he was pleased that journalist Ben Norton called to congratulate him for his attack against the ACP, Cohen, and Ives.

Norton was fired in 2021 from The Grayzone for violations of his contract and then seized the Moderate Rebels podcast and its associated Patreon page from Grayzone editor and podcast co-host Max Blumenthal, who described Norton as a “criminal mind.” Now relocated to China, Norton co-founded the Geopolitical Economy Report website.

A history of lies

Shaw has a history of misrepresenting his experience on the ground in Haiti to advance his career. He has often claimed to have interviewed “thousands” of Haitians, whom he depicts as having a clear and unified position against Jimmy Cherizier.

In a March 7, 2024 interview with the Dominican outlet VISIONRDN entitled “Terrible gringo reveals - what Barbecue told him in Haiti”, the interviewer repeatedly and incorrectly stated as fact that Shaw had met and interviewed Cherizier, but Shaw did not correct the misinformation and stated that Cherizier was a “mercenary” and “death squad” leader.

Shaw’s attacks are the latest in a broader campaign of incitement against Cohen and Ives, a phenomenon that might be described as “Barbecue Derangement Syndrome.”

In the recording, Shaw boasts that he is “the principal voice of the anti-gang perspective,” a position which aligns with the U.S. State Department’s calls to “hunt down” Cherizier, which the French and Canadian governments also support.

In recent months, Shaw has platformed two of the most vociferous counterrevolutionary Haitian voices – Jean St. Vil aka Jafrikayiti and Dahoud André – who have dedicated themselves to smearing Cohen, Ives, and Haiti Liberté for their reporting and analysis on Haiti’s national liberation struggle.

The ACP was not the only organization deceived by Shaw. Numerous English and Spanish-language publications and channels have published his tirades too, including The Jimmy Dore Show, The Grayzone, Venezuelan-state media outlet TeleSUR, Truthout, NACLA, and the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), among others.

Even as Shaw’s plot spirals out of control, he insisted he will do it again.

“Won’t be making any mistake like that in the next campaign,” Shaw says. “Nothing like a mistake to teach you in life.”

A COINTELPRO operation?

However amateurish, Shaw’s libelous smear campaign bears the hallmarks of a COINTELPRO operation, which U.S. intelligence agencies have long used to disrupt parties and organizations that they see as a threat.

It is notable that Shaw alleged that Cohen, Ives, Al-Din, and Pettis disparaged both the PSL and BAP, which is not only false but a typical COINTELPRO tactic to create or exacerbate acrimony between like-minded groups.

Whether or not U.S. intelligences agencies were involved in Shaw’s ill-conceived and sloppily executed attempt to sabotage the ACP from within and smear Ives and Cohen, the false accusations objectively aim to accomplish the same thing as any COINTELPRO operation: sow division, confusion, fear, and distrust. It is a cautionary tale of how progressive, anti-imperialist organizations and media outlets can be bamboozled by malicious actors that exploit good faith or naivete to advance a nefarious, imperialist agenda.

“In a Communist Party as young as ours, and which shows so much potential, wreckers and infiltrators like Shaw and Molera are to be expected,” said the ACP’s Chairman Haz Al-Din. “However, after their plot to subvert our Party’s constitution and depose me failed, their latest attempt to defame the Party has massively backfired, and our Party has emerged out of this stronger than ever.”
​
“Shaw has exposed his duplicitous and bankrupt moral character for the entire world to see,” Al-Din concluded. “Meanwhile, we will move forward with even greater resolve to meet the challenges of forming a united and independent party of the American working class.”

​Communists are dedicated to the conquest of political dictatorship by the proletariat, and to its defense.
 
Historically the best way to do this has been through a Leninist vanguard party, a Communist Party. This should not be controversial for Marxist–Leninists, but the necessity for a unified Leninist party will be elaborated on later anyway.
 
In times and places where there is no Communist Party, it is the task of Marxist–Leninists to work to build one. Historically, party-building has meant getting in touch with other Marxists, studying together, engaging in social investigation, building media organs and polemicizing in defense of Marxism–Leninism, joining mass organizations, producing and sharpening theoretical insights based on their shared experience and combat with ideological rivals, and learning to depend on each other, on each person in their collective, in order to be productive. That is, becoming trusted comrades that engage in their common work as a collective and assess and direct such work together.
 
Then once many of these practical collectives arise and connect with each other in a given country, they may aggregate themselves into a properly central Communist Party.
 
So far this is just history — in fact, many successful Communist Parties were founded by collectives with even less experience than I indicate and more so with faith and conviction, though often with help from the Comintern, but I digress.
 
If the process sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Infrared and Midwestern Marx, for example, began as study collectives and then media collectives, publicizing knowledge and polemics and attracting others to their worldview. These other people then organized themselves with people around them or people they met through these outlets, worked together, and came to trust and be accountable to one another when facing challenges that would either be dealt with or destroy their work.
 
This was the case particularly for those who went through taqiyya in the CPUSA for 3 years.
 
Only out of this process was the ACP able to be reconstituted.
 
Here is why the Party itself is so important:
 
If there is no national collective body able to aggregate and assess the practical experience of its members (from the Latin word membrum, which means "limb" or "body part"), then practical errors can’t be systematically corrected, successes can’t be replicated, and revolutionary theory commensurate with real national conditions cannot be developed to guide work. Without such a body, revolutionary work could not be directed and concerted, and would instead consist of the weak, blind, spontaneous, and disconnected whims of people here and there — groping in the dark, as Stalin said.
 
A Communist’s allegiance to the people is impossible without allegiance to the Party. Not to this and that personality in the Party, not to this and that plank of the Party, but to the body and form of the Party itself. If you renege on the need for a strong body of revolutionary leadership, you are leaving the American people kneecapped and defenseless. A people without a party is like a body without a nervous system — senseless.
 
Unfortunately, not everyone who ended up joining the ACP had experience in party-building. Many joined simply because they agreed with ACP ideologically. Many were waiting for a party to come along that suited their tastes.
 
Instead, they decided to do whatever personally interested them at the time. That’s fine for them, but it’s hard to pretend to be an authority on Marxist–Leninist praxis if you do that.
 
Why is such an attitude petty-bourgeois?
 
To think of it intuitively:
 
Because it is an approach to politics based on the isolated “handicraft” or work of an individual, based in that person’s individual sense of what is right and what they and others should do, as individuals. “Thinking for yourself” is a common refrain. This is how they make their living, so this is how they behave.
 
This type of attitude is prevalent among small business types and independent professionals, if you have experience with them politically. They can’t get very far with such a mindset, but it’s fine as far as they’re concerned. And it’s preferable to the similar-but-distinct type of groupthink that prevails over institutional professionals and public or private bureaucrats. But neither are proletarian.
 
If any such petty-bourgeois people were brought into a Communist Party, they must be humbled to the level of the “proletarian work ethic,” so to speak, or else their presence petty-bourgeoisifies the Party, which has been a historical pitfall of Communist Parties. Marxism–Leninism teaches us the petty-bourgeoisie must be won over, but from the basis of proletarian political independence, not capitulation.
 
So what is a proletarian attitude?
 
Think, again intuitively, of how it works in a factory. The workers do small, repetitive, often tedious tasks, contributing small parts to a greater whole. Proletarians par excellence have nothing else than the ability to do just such work. If one proletarian wants to advance himself, as proletarian, he cannot do it alone but must help transform all the scattered workers in the factory into one clenched fist aimed directly at the boss. Anyone who breaks that fist, who “thinks for himself,” who tries to get ahead individually, is maligned as a traitorous scab. These workers take no shit because all they have is themselves. Those who are held as the best among them are selfless leaders, those workers who do their work plus helping others with theirs, who bolster the unity between them all, who stand up for their common dignity and assert the authority of the united workers against the authority of the boss.
 
Deindustrialization, deproletarianization, and the petty-bourgeoisification of Communism have wreaked havoc the past few decades. We must be conscious and vigilant of the dangerous revisionism that tempts people to forget the need for a unified party, to supplant iron proletarian discipline and commitment to the necessities of the situation with the fickle whims and fancies of individuals. If we are not vigilant, we ensure the eventual disintegration of the American people’s best hope, the Communist Party.
 
The proletarian line must be upheld and petty-bourgeois revisionism must be smashed, always.

For many years, it seemed to me that the classic Marxist concept of the working class at the vanguard of socialist revolution is not consistent with U.S. realities and conditions. In the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it was middle class students who were in the vanguard of the anti-war movement and an incipient anti-imperialist formulation. In contrast, most workers supported the war in Vietnam and possessed an aggressive and ethnocentric attitude with respect to other nations. In addition, the union movement emphasized wages and benefits, rather than a comprehensive critique that would point the way toward the expansion and development of national industry.

However, since that time, academics and activists, largely of the middle class, have failed to develop the anti-imperialist impulse of the late 1960s. To be sure, they have rejected Reaganism, neoliberalism, and neoconservatism, and they have been advocates for blacks, Latinos, women, gays, and ecological consciousness. However, they failed to personally encounter and take seriously the insights of the people’s movements of the Global South, which would have liberated them for constructive participation in the rapidly maturing worldwide anti-imperialist movement for a more just, democratic, sustainable, and multipolar world order. And which would have provided important lessons with respect to the role of the state in the economy, in which the state directs the economy in cooperation with big corporations, and where the public and private sectors work together in expanding national production and developing the national economy. Public-private cooperation has been the emerging practice of the socialist and progressive states of the Global South and East of the last half century, and appreciation of this important global tendency would have enabled U.S. public debate to move beyond the simplistic Big Government/laisse faire dichotomy and political division.

Compounding this historic failure of the U.S. middle class since the 1970s, academics and activists during the last decade have turned to a form of cultural Marxism that is not Marxist. Guided by post-modern assumptions, cultural Marxism constructs ahistorical and anti-empirical narratives with respect to race, ignoring the historic and permanent gains forged by the African-American movement from 1917 to 1988, and paying no more than superficial attention to the insights of its principal leaders. And it constructs narratives with respect to gender and sexual identity that ignore nature, and that depart from the equal rights agenda of the women’s movement in its earlier waves. Moreover, it has combined these theoretically dubious tendencies with intolerant authoritarianism that attacks with incivility all who raise reasonable common-sense objection. Such tendencies were an important factor, as nearly all commentators have observed, in the disproportionate support of the working class for Trump and the Republican Party in the 2024 elections.

Academics and activists tend to say that Trump supporters are racist and sexist, lacking the sophistication necessary for our times. But blinded by their own assumptions, academics and activists have not carefully observed, and therefore they do not understand, the MAGA phenomenon. Although it lacks consistent anti-imperialist consciousness, the MAGA movement reasonably and correctly responds to the American economic, political, and moral decline.

A first critical step in the U.S. spiral of decline was during the Truman administration, when the U.S. government launched the Cold War and failed to take steps toward the construction of a post-neocolonial world order, which was the best option of the historic moment, taking into account the worldwide rise of anti-colonial and anti-neocolonial movements, and taking into account the arrival of the world-system to its geographical and ecological limits. Subsequently, when the negative consequences of the Cold War became manifest, the American political establishment turned to neoliberalism, reducing the capacity of states throughout the world to take modest measures in defense of their peoples and their sovereignty. After that, the American political establishment turned to neoconservatism and imperialist overreach, embroiling the nation in costly endless wars that did little to promote American interests. Neoliberalism and neoconservatism, inasmuch as they are attacks on the states and peoples of the world, provoked a mass migration to the regions of the advanced economies, which the political establishment made little effort to control, in part because they themselves lacked national identity, and in part because some were positioned to benefit from the cheaper labor that undocumented immigrants provide. During all this time, the American political establishment made little effort to attend to the long-term development of the productive capacities of the nation, which would have been of great benefit to the working and middle classes; it was more oriented to short-term profits and financial speculation. When these dynamics are fully understood, it can be seen that the American political establishment has betrayed the nation and the American people.

If we look carefully at the MAGA program, rather than dismissing it out of hand, we can see that it responds to the various dimensions of the American decline, even though it lacks a consistent anti-imperialism. The MAGA platform proposes: effective regulation of immigration; development of the nation’s economy through economic nationalism; avoiding dysfunctional entanglements in other nations; and leaving divisive wokism behind. The disproportionate support of the working class for MAGA can be understood as an expression of working-class consciousness, where the working class is acting in defense of itself, in reaction to attacks on workers’ wellbeing, imposed by a bureaucratic state that has institutionalized the agenda of the political establishment and its middle class, academic, and activist allies.
​
In this new political context, it makes sense to invoke the classic Marxist concept of a working-class vanguard, of a movement for the taking of political power that derives its force from the support and active participation of workers. Carlos Garrido, Director of the Midwestern Marx Institute and Secretary of Education of the recently formed American Communist Party, suggested to me a formulation of a vanguard constituted by the working class and all class forces that have an antagonistic relation with monopoly capitalism, such that the taking of political power by the working class would make possible a state that acts decisively in defense of all sectors of the people, including not only workers but also professionals and small businesspersons.

​§

The partisan and the MAGA movement

Haz Al-Din maintains that the critiques of the Left are dissociated from actual political struggle and contestations for political power, and therefore they are revolutionary only in appearance. He writes that leftists have disdain for the people; in their view, “people are too reactionary, too fascist, too immoral, or too stupid to accept the supposedly universal values of leftism.” Leftists have “a vicious, savage inhumanity toward all those who fall outside their own discursive community.”1

Invoking Carl Schmitt’s theory of the partisan, Al-Din maintains that the partisan, in contrast to leftists, actually contests for political power. Partisans go down to the people in order to establish a real experiential foundation for their premises. The partisan displaces the left-right ideological distinction by occupying an entirely new counterhegemonic space, which seeks to construct a new order that is based in the people and in commitment to eternal principles of social justice.

For Al-Din, the real political conflict in the United States today is not between the left and right but between leftism and partisanship. And in addition, he maintains, the MAGA movement is the only political space where partisanship exists, where there is a contestation for power rooted in the personal and concrete struggles and aspirations of the people. Therefore, Al-Din calls upon communists to go to the MAGA movement, seeking to transform its diverse earthly formulations into a more mature historical and political conceptualization.2 The MAGA Movement must be educated concerning the true characteristics of communism as formulated by Marx, Engels, and Lenin and the true characteristics of socialism as developed in practice in the Soviet Union and China.

I support this call, although I would give emphasis to Cuba and China, and I would stress the need to raise consciousness with respect to the nations that are attempting to construct socialism in the context of bourgeois political structures, such as Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia. And I would seek to educate the people with respect to the worldwide anti-imperialist process of constructing in practice a more just and pluripolar world, in which socialist and progressive countries of the Global South and East are playing a leading role.

§

Further considerations

The MAGA movement has a fundamental legitimacy, in that it is rooted in the working class and in middle America. It has attained an understanding of the unsustainability of endless wars and imperialist overreach, adopting the slogan “peace through strength,” which advocates a strong military that functions primarily as a deterrent and not as a force that intervenes everywhere. We must seek to educate MAGA toward a consistent anti-imperialism, in which it arrives to understand that the strengthening of the productive capacities of the nation can only be attained through cooperation and mutually beneficial trade with all the nations and regions of the world, as is persistently proclaimed by the leading socialist, progressive, and anti-imperialist states of the world.

The Trump-led MAGA movement has adopted a strategy of taking control of the Republican Party, rather than establishing a new political party. The MAGA movement has attained control of the Republican Party through Trump’s successes in the Republican Party primaries for three consecutive presidential elections from 2016 through 2024. It has won the presidency in the general elections of 2024, and Trump is effectively forming a cabinet in accordance with the MAGA agenda. It can count on the support of the majority of the Supreme Court on most issues, thanks to conservative Trump appointments during his first administration. And it controls state governments in many red states.

However, the MAGA movement has not attained full political power. The MAGA-controlled Republican Party has attained only narrow majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate, and not all Republicans are MAGA. And the MAGA movement does not have control of the federal state bureaucracy and its numerous departments. In addition, the MAGA movement does not have control of the media, think tanks, foundations, and higher education, although it has a minority institutional presence in all these areas.

The extent to which the MAGA movement will move toward full political power will depend in large part on the extent to which the second Trump administration can deliver on its promises. If the Trump administration has success in renewing the productive capacity of the American economy, its support among the people will grow, enabling the consolidation of its power in national institutions and in red and swing states.

The possible consolidation of political power by the MAGA movement should not be viewed as something sinister. MAGA’s emergence as a dominant political force in American institutions would be a good thing, if MAGA in conditions of partial political power acts in defense of the nation and the people. During the next four years, political analysts should assess the extent to which the second Trump administration promotes the long-term interests of the nation and the people, basing their analyses on careful empirical observation and not outdated ideological conceptions, distortions, and prejudices.

Having entered the Lancashire cotton mills at the age of eight, Sam Fielden commented: ‘I think that if the devil had a particular enemy whom he wished to unmercifully torture, the best thing for him to do would be to put his soul into the body of a Lancashire factory child and keep him as a child in a factory the rest of his days.’ This willingness to sap the lifeblood of its workers, no matter their age or sex, in the pursuit of profit is what has characterised capital from its earliest inception until today.
​

Repost with thanks from CPGB-ML

May Day, the day of annual celebration of the international working-class movement, originated in the United States, where it was particularly associated with the struggle for the working day to be reduced to eight hours.

Especially militant were the workers of Chicago, whose militancy struck such terror into the hearts of the exploiters that the military were called out to try to suppress them. On 3 May 1886, at the McCormick Reaper works, striking workers were fired on, leaving six killed and many others wounded. A public protest meeting was called at short notice for the following day in an area of the city called the Haymarket.

Although it was an entirely peaceful meeting, with a relatively modest attendance of only some 3,000 because of the short notice, as it was reaching its conclusion the police moved in to demand – quite unnecessarily as most people had drifted away because of the late hour and bad weather – that all participants should immediately disperse.

While the speaker on the platform, the socialist Samuel Fielden, was reassuring police that the meeting was peaceful and would shortly come to an end anyway, some unknown person detonated a bomb among the police ranks, causing a number of deaths.

Although it was never established who had thrown the bomb, and it had certainly been done without the knowledge or consent of the organisers or speakers, the US authorities, as crude and brutal then as they are now, arrested eight people associated with calling the meeting or speaking at it (Albert Parsons, August Spies, Samuel Fielden, Oscar Neebe, Michael Schwab, George Engel, Adolph Fischer and Louis Lingg).

They were all leading members of the International Working People’s Association, an organisation very popular among America’s hard-pressed workers, who had in the previous few years been subjected to two economic recessions causing widespread indigence and despair. The organisation was extremely active in organising many very effective strikes, so the American bourgeoisie moved to destroy it.

Despite a complete lack of evidence, all eight of the leaders were convicted, by a jury made up entirely of employers, and sentenced to death. On 11 November 1887, after many failed appeals, Parsons, Spies, Engel and Fisher were executed by hanging. Louis Lingg committed suicide in prison.
​
The egregious injustice of the convictions, however, gave rise to major protests. Six years later the protests finally secured the release of the three surviving prisoners, one of whom was the only born Briton among the eight – the Lancastrian Samuel Fielden of Todmorden.

Autobiography of Samuel Fielden​

We reproduce here extracts from a letter written by Samuel Fielden, which illustrate the dire conditions that impelled the working masses towards socialism in the latter part of the 19th century, in Britain as much as in America, as well as recounting his eye witness account of the Haymarket events that led to the establishment of May Day as International Workers’ Day.

I was born in the town of Todmorden, part of which is in the West Riding of Yorkshire and part in the East Riding of Lancashire, England. I was born in the Lancashire part. The town is like all towns in Lancashire – a manufacturing one.

It lies in a beautiful valley, and on the hillsides are small farms; back about a mile are the moorlands, which could be made into fine farms, as the topography of the moors is more level generally than the enclosed land.

But though thousands of starving Englishmen would be very glad to work them, they must be kept for the grouse and the gamekeeper and the gentry. Grouse sport for the privileged classes being esteemed of more importance than the happiness of thousands of human beings.

The enclosed lands rent for about £2 an acre (about $10). The farms are small, running from 10 acres to 60 acres, hardly any being larger than the latter figure. The farms are all dairy, the milk all being sold in town. There are numerous large mills in the town, Fielden Bros being the largest; it contains about 2,000 looms.

Parents

Here I was born in the year 1847, on the 25th day of February. My father’s name was Abram Fielden, he was one of a family of four sons and three daughters. They were of very powerful physique; my father stood nearly six feet in height; they were a family of hand-loom weavers, until the application of steam to weaving.

This occurred when my father was hardly out of teens, and then they became steam-loom workers. My father became a foreman when quite young in the mill of Fielden Bros, where he worked until incapacitated by infirmities and age. He was a man of more than ordinary intelligence, and was generally acknowledged ‘to know a thing or two’ …

My father was a peculiarly eloquent conversationalist, and the recital of the most ordinary incident from his lips bore the charm of romance. When the ten-hour movement was being agitated in England my father was on the committee of agitation in my native town, and I have heard him tell of sitting on the platform with Earl Shaftesbury, John Fielden, Richard Otler, and other advocates of that cause.

I always thought he put a little sarcasm into the word earl, at any rate he had but little respect for aristocracy and royalty. He was also a Chartist, and I have heard him tell of many incidents connected with the Chartist agitation and movement …

If he ever had studied socialism I believe his strict sense of justice would have led him to adopt it; as it was he was a hater of all forms of affectation, deceit and hypocrisy; in politics of late years he was ostensibly a liberal – in reality a republican.

He took a great deal of interest in the political agitations which have been going on, and having a fairly good memory he could discuss intelligently the political problems that have agitated his country during his lifetime. He was always a staunch supporter of every measure for the relief of the Irish peasantry from the greed of the foreign bloodsucker – the English landlord …

Of my mother I cannot remember so much, as she died when I was a child of ten years of age. I can remember her as small of stature, with dark eyes and hair, and with pleasing and regular features. I remember in the later years of her life she was a very devoted member of the primitive Methodist church.

Her maiden name was Alice Jackson; the family to which she belonged was very poor, and I have often heard her and father tell on the cold winter nights, when the wind would shriek around the corners of the house, of the first meeting of herself and father. How that she was walking in her bare feet through the snow, carrying a basket which contained sand, which she was trying to sell to the poor people to sprinkle upon their stoneflag floors.

You can imagine how poor a family must be when I tell you that this sand was sold for one-halfpenny (1 cent) a quart, and how much a child could carry in a basket, but they were compelled to put their children to this means of earning a few cents …

Child labourer

When I arrived at the mature age of eight years I, as was usual with the poor people’s children in Lancashire, went to work in a cotton mill, and if there is any of the exuberance of childhood about the life of a Lancashire mill-hand’s child it is in spite of his surroundings and conditions, and not in consequence of it.

As I look back at my experience at the tender age I am filled with admiration at the wonderful vitality of these children. I think that if the devil had a particular enemy whom he wished to unmercifully torture, the best thing for him to do would be to put his soul into the body of a Lancashire factory child and keep him as a child in a factory the rest of his days. I think that would satisfy the love of cruelty of his satanic majesty.

The mill into which I was put was the mill established by John Fielden MP, who fought so valiantly in the ten-hour movement. It was then and is now conducted by his sons, Samual, John and Joshua. The last was for some time member of parliament for the West Riding of Yorkshire.

I have read of John Fielden’s description of the treatment of the pauper children that were shipped into the Lancashire mills from the unions of the large cities when Lancashire received its first great impetus as a cotton manufacturing centre. And, horrible as it reads, it was hardly any worse than the treatment that was meted out to the innocents when I became acquainted with the sober side of life as a factory child.

The infants, when first introduced to these abodes of torture, are put at stripping the full spools from the spinning jennies and replacing them with empty spools. They are put to work in a long room where there are about 20 machines. Each child is furnished with a little stool on which to sit. There will be from eight to ten children on each side of the machine. They begin at one end of the room and strip the full spool off, then from there to the next machine, and so on until they get to the other end of the room. When they get there the machine at which they started will be full again.

The spindles are apportioned to each child, and woe be to the child who shall be behind in doing its allotted work. The machine will be started and the poor child’s fingers will be bruised and skinned with the revolving spools. While the children try to catch up to their comrades by doing their work with the speed of the machine running, the brutal overlooker will frequently beat them unmercifully, and I have frequently seen them strike the children, knocking them off their stools and sending them spinning several feet on the greasy floor.

Hell, or the Spanish inquisition, never witnessed more heartless barbarity than is practised upon these poor innocents. It is a pitiful sight to see these children, as they rush from one machine to another trying to recover their lost ground, the tears streaming down their cheeks and sobbing as though their little hearts would break; a sight one would think that would melt the heart of a savage; and all that these children have done to merit this is to be born poor.

Such is the penalty of poverty in Lancashire.

I toiled at this work enduring all its horrors and barbarities for about two years. About that time, being about ten years of age, I was out to tending the elevator, my work being to take the spools that came up from the carding room to the machines on the floor on which I worked, and to take the full spools, after they had undergone the process of being spun into a condition for the warpers to take them and make the warps of them for the weavers, and load them onto the elevator car and send them up to the warpers.

This was heavy work for a boy, but as I was thought a stout boy I was put to this, and, notwithstanding that it was heavier work, I liked it better, and I worked at it till I was 18 years of age, when I became, according to law, a full-timer. The children under that age at that time not being allowed to work had a half a day at the mill and were compelled to go to school the other half.

The factory act of England compels each employer of half-timers to keep a school for them to go to the other half day; they are very strict about this; so much so that no child could stay away from school a half-day without being compelled to lose a half-day in the mill also. This, when you take in consideration the importance that the child’s wages are to the family, is practically compulsory education.

For this work we used to get from one shilling and six pence (36 cents) to two shillings and six pence (60 cents) a week.

If I remember rightly, when I first became a full-timer, I received six shillings ($1.50) per week. At this time I was given work in the warehouse or filling-room, where the weavers received their filling. I worked here two years, when I went to learn to weave.

I learned to weave under my father. I worked at this branch of factory-work until I became 20 years of age, when I went to work as a beamer. That is, I wound warps onto beams, and at this I continued until I came to the United States, at the age of 21, in 1868 …

On slavery

There had appeared in my native town at different times, several coloured lecturers who spoke on the slavery question in America. I went frequently to hear them describe the inhumanity of that horrible system, sometimes with my father, and at other times with my sister.

One of these gentlemen called himself Henry Box Brown; this gentlemen brought with him a panorama, by means of which he described places and incidents in his slave life, and also the means of his escape. He used to march through the streets in front of a brass band, clad in a highly-coloured and fantastic garb, with an immense drawn sword in his hand.

He claimed that he had been boxed up in a large box in which were stowed an amount of provisions, the box having holes bored in the top for air, and marked “This side up with care”. Thus he was shipped to Philadelphia via the underground railroad, to friends there, and this was why he called himself Henry Box Brown. He was a very good speaker and his entertainment was very interesting.

Another one of these gentlemen was called, if I remember right, Henry Green; he was a very fiery orator. I heard him very often. These lectures had a very great effect on my mind, and I could hardly divest myself of their impressions, and I used to frequently find myself among my playmates dilating much upon the horrors of slavery.

I read much of the system from the books of travellers. I remember to have read at a very early age the travels of Harriet Martineau. I also read ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’. When the American civil war broke out I was an enthusiastic champion among my fellows of the cause of the north, and, in fact, so were all the family, my sister not being undone by any of us.

During all that terrible struggle intense interest was manifested by the people of Lancashire, and all during the summer months every night in the week there would be seen groups of men collected in the streets, and at the prominent corners, discussing the latest news and forecasting the next, and in these groups there was always to be heard the advocates and champions of both sides. I used to listen to these orators with a great deal of interest …

But the struggle [against slavery in America] continued, and its effect upon the people became more and more apparent. Mills began to run short time, then no time at all. Then when they could get a little Surat cotton from India, they would run a few days a week. This Surat cotton was terrible stuff to weave; it was full of little chips, and the threads were always breaking, so that the weavers were compelled to have all their looms stopped at once, until they could get time to go from one loom to the other to tie up the threads.

How the people prayed for the “war to cease”. Famine, gaunt and fierce, stalked abroad in the land, and in many cases brought death to end the sufferings of the wretched Lancashire operative. The finances of the relief system was exhausted, private charity was taxed until it could expend no more.

Tramps filled the streets and highways, young women went from town to town, and when they would come to some town they would walk slowly over the streets, holding each other by the hand, and singing some song, which it was hoped would bring some gift of succour to appease their hunger and preserve their weary lives. Many in their desperation were compelled to barter their honour for their lives. Such is the penalty of poverty.

During the panic, as we called it, the mill in which I, my father, sister and brother worked, shut down entirely several times. I went to work assisting to drain some land on which one of my employers has since built a magnificent castle, which is called Dobroyd castle.

I was put to work carrying tiles to the men who laid them; it was in the winter time, and I had to pick the tiles up out of the ice and water. One day I became chilled to the marrow; I began to grow dizzy, then it grew dark and I fell to the ground insensible. I was carried home and thawed out, and the next day I had to go out to the same work again.

My elder brother had for some time been working as undergardener for one of our employers. He was a young man of more than ordinary intelligence, and much of the information which I was enabled to pick up I gleaned from his books. He was also quite radical in his views, and therefore it was a constant torment to him to have to debase himself before his master as lackeys were compelled to do in England.

Now one of these means of debasement was being compelled to put his hand to his cap, in fact, to bow down to Gasler. He endured this as long as he could bear it, when one day he met his master in the town accompanied by his brother. My brother walked past him, pretending not to see him, and therefore did not pay his obedience to his master.

The next day, as he was working in the garden, his master came to him and asked him if he had met him the night before on the street and why he had not made his manners to him. My brother told him that he did not think of it. His highness then fixed his eye upon him and replied, “I thought of it, and so did others,” meaning his brother, and added, “you must be a boor.”

This was too much; and my brother telling me about it after we had retired at night, said he would never humble himself before him again, as it would be harder than ever to do it after what had occurred. He soon after left Mr Fielden’s employment.

Thus must the proletariat bow the knee to the bourgeoisie or starve, and some people call this liberty of contract. There was no work to be had in the town, and he was compelled to go on a tramp.

Having heard that there were fine gardens about Edinburgh, Scotland, he tried to work his way thither, walking all the way and trying to get work on the road; sometimes he would get a little to do; sometimes he had to ask for bread; sometimes he had to apply to the town authorities for lodging, for which he had to break stone on the turnpike to pay for it.

Arriving at Edinburgh he found it impossible to get work there; off again he pursued his fruitless search, until one morning he found himself within 40 miles of home. He felt that he must make home that day or die. He therefore with the resolution of despair set out at night.

He came into the house emaciated, hungry and sick, a mere shadow of himself. After eating his supper he tried to make his way to bed, but his legs refused to carry him. The next morning a violent fever had taken possession of him; for weeks he lay between life and death, and this was the penalty of refusing to bow the knee to Gesler.

All these horrors we suffered, as did thousands of others, and be it remembered the Lancashire operatives never passed a resolution to recognise the south as a belligerent, never dreamed of interfering in any way, morally or otherwise, though they were the only sufferers, and those who did in England were those who were placed above the possibility of being affected by the war.

But the war at last came to a close, and New Orleans cotton arrived. It was a time of thanksgiving, and remarkable scenes were witnessed in some of the Lancashire towns when the first instalment of cotton arrived. The operatives gathered about the depots, brass bands were in readiness, and men with patched clothes and thin features, and women with haggard looks and draggled garments, holding their children in their arms or leading them by the hand, according to their size, crowded around.

Eyes that seemed but a short time before had lost their lustre, now beamed with a light which had seemed to have left them forever but a short time before; forms whose every motion had seemed for months to speak of despair, were now animated by elasticity and eager hope had come again to the despairing, and work would now be had; and this was the open sesame to heaven and earth. At least the gates of the yards are thrown open and large lumbering draught horses are seen moving slowly toward the gates, while piled high into the air behind is seen that which to those poor starving people meant the staff of life-cotton, American cotton.

A shout goes up which is almost enough to shake the bales from their foundations; men shake each other’s hands; the tears of gladness are seen in the eyes of the women; such hilarity, such congratulation, such quaint jokes are thrown around when amidst the confusion the band strikes up an air which had become as familiar in England as in America – John Brown’s body lies mouldering in the grave, but his soul goes marching on.

The men joined in, the women joined in, and the children joined in, while the players tried in vain to make themselves heard except at intervals. And thus they marched in front of the great loads of cotton to the mills. Work immediately became more plentiful, and as nothing prospers when workingmen are poor, so everybody soon became happy and comparatively prosperous …

Departure for America

I had frequently talked to my father of my desire to come to America. My father had tried to dissuade me from doing so, but seeing that I was determined to go, he told me that when I became of age, that is 21 years of age, he would have no more control over me, but until then he refused to give me consent to leave the parental roof.

I accordingly remained until the month of July 1868 … I arrived in New York in the latter part of July 1868, with £3 in my pocket.

A stint of work in the south

I worked [for a time] in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas, and I took every opportunity I could get to learn about the condition of the negro, and I learned that in many cases he was as much a bondsman as ever he was, and in many cases worse.

I inquired particularly into the share system, which took the place of the much dreamed of ten acres and a mule, which [the former slave] had so confidently looked forward to possessing after his emancipation. I found that this system was nothing more or less than a species of robbery, and that by its means the negro was held in as absolute bondage as he was before the war.

The share system operated in this wise: It is well known that the result of the rebellion left the southern planter generally stripped of everything in the shape of property but his land. That property which he had held in human beings had been taken from him by a strong arm of force. It also left the negro without a master, and the first thing [the latter] had to do was find a master, and the first thing the former slave owner had to do was to turn the only means in his possession to some account, and he might possibly have thought that it was worth the considering how he should get possession of the property which had been taken away from him, and the brilliant idea may have entered his head that the remaining property might be utilised for that purpose.

Be that as it may, if he did not think of this then it certainly occurred to him afterward and he did not fail to take advantage of it in the near future, but at the present the old master or his residuary legatees had the land, but had no slaves to work it whereby it might be made to support its owner in idleness, the southern slaveholder having constitutionally as much of an objection to work as Harry L Gilmer has of the truth.

[The former slave] had the necessary qualification, that is a willingness to work, but he had nothing to work with or upon. Thus it came that the old master said to [the former slave], how would you like to rent ten acres of land from me and raise a crop of cotton for yourself? [The former slave] thought he saw visions of a condition beside which the ten acres and a mule faded into insignificance.

Arrangements were at once entered into, and [the former slave] being furnished with a mule, and having agreed that half of the crop of cotton should pay for the use of the land, and that he should have a certain amount of rations advanced for his support and the mule’s, and that out of his share of the proceeds of the experiment he should reimburse the landlord for the advance of rations to himself, family and mule, a careful account of which should be kept by his benefactor, the landlord.

These things having all been satisfactorily arranged, especially to the satisfaction of the landlord, [the former slave] started the mule and started on the road to fortune and glory. All through the hot summer he worked with a light heart and visions of future greatness before him, on into the fall when the bolls of cotton plant burst open, and before the eyes of the delighted [former slave] is exposed the realisation of all his dreams.

The cotton is picked and baled, and to the nearest market or landing is the cotton hauled, in many cases [the former slave] taking all the family in his enthusiasm. … [He] is delighted when he is told that his share amounts to $150 or $200. He immediately begins to think about buying the old master out, but he whistles on the other side of his mouth when the little bill which the master presents for advanced rations and the loan of the mule is brought forward, and which amounts to more than his share of the crop.

There is a terrible disappointment but there is no getting over it. The master having pocketed all the share of the same, and having realised as he had foreseen that it has been a profitable arrangement, has another scheme ready for this emergency. He has a large tract of timber land, which, if he can get cut up into cord wood, will furnish him with fuel and also bring in some money at the adjacent landing, and seeing the despondent attitude of [the former slave], he magnanimously comes forward with a proposition to allow him the privilege of paying his indebtedness to his kind benefactor by clearing this land.

This scheme and others of a similar character have been played very successfully upon the so-called freedmen of the south. In cases where the unfortunate victim has tried to escape this form of slavery by attempting to leave the country, he has been arrested and imprisoned, and sometimes as a prisoner of the county he has been hired out to planters or contractors.

Thus did the latter kind of slavery becomes worse than the former. I have received in every state that I visited in the south incontrovertible proof that this prevailed, not only from the statements of the victims themselves, but I have heard the perpetrators boast of it, and this was the chief cause of the exodus of the negro from the south to the west and north.

The south has been blessed by nature with a soil that is calculated to support a vaster population than would or could settle in it for the next hundred years if it were not for the blighting curse of human avarice which there, as everywhere else, makes the bounteous gifts of nature to her children to produce, instead of happiness and comfort, which they are naturally calculated to produce, in their stead misery, want, degradation and crime.

Return to Chicago

After my return to Chicago in May I worked upon the dredge I had worked upon the year before, and which was finishing up the deepening of the canal at Sagbridge. I worked there until the work was all finished. Soon after that three west parks were commenced, Douglas, Central and Humboldt parks …

I pass over the next few years as containing but little that would be of interest to the average reader. During those years I worked almost entirely in stone yards up to 1879. I worked at all kinds of work in these yards, including driving team.

During those years I was somewhat studious in my habits. I spent a considerable part of my spare time in the reading room of the public library. I attended quite a number of lectures, hearing Mr Bradlaugh, the English reformer and freethinker, Tilton, Bayard Taylor, Robert Collier, James Freeman Clarke, Joaquin Miller, Robert Ingersoll, James Parton and many others.

Marriage

In the fall of 1879 I paid a visit to England. I had intended for years to visit my native home, but financial embarrassments had interposed insurmountable obstacles. My principal reason for going was to fulfill a matrimonial engagement which I had entered into 11 years before …

I fulfilled the engagement referred to above and returned to the United States in February 1880. The fruit of my marriage has been two children, one a girl of two and a half years age, the other a boy who has been born since my imprisonment …

About this time, in the fall of 1880, I was informed of the calling of a meeting for the reorganisation of the Liberal League, the principal object of which organisation was the total separation of church and state. I attended the meeting at 54 West Lake Street, and after listening to the proceedings and the statement of the objects of the proposed society, I joined the society then and there.

A hall was rented at the corner of Halsted and Madison streets, and the society entered upon its mission. Lectures and discussions were the feature of the exercises. Theology, science, philosophy of every quantity and quality; political economy, social economy, domestic economy and, in fact, every kind of economy, and perhaps a little extravagance thrown in once in a while as a condiment, the diet being of a rather heavy character.

However, I became acquainted with a very intelligent, as well, I believe, as a very conscientious class of people. I took part in the discussions and became more or less prominent in the society, being elected financial secretary, vice-president and delegate to the national congress held at Milwaukee in the fall of 1889, which I attended, taking part in the proceedings and supporting the adoption of a labour plank in the platform or constitution of the society.

During the year 1883 labour meetings were held on the lake front and I was invited to speak there. I hesitated and asked what was the object. The person who asked me replied, “You are not afraid to speak in the cause of labour, are you?” I replied “No!” and I accordingly spoke there several times that fall, as well as at other parts of the city in the open air.

I had not at that time any preference for any labour organisation but thought the subject of labour offered a broad enough field for agitation. I spoke on the general question of the wrongs of labour. I continued my connection with the Liberal League.

In the following summer, having become a socialist by conviction, through listening to and taking part in the discussions at the Labor League, I became connected with the International Working People’s Association … I was a member of the American group, which held meetings in different halls in the city for the discussion of social and industrial economy …

May Day

I worked all … day … the 4th of May, taking a load of stone to Waldheim cemetery, which is a day’s work. I returned home, getting to the stable about half-past five in the evening, when I took care of my horses and went home to my supper, intending to go to [a] meeting at 368 West Twelfth Street.

Just before going into the house I brought an Evening News, and looking over the announcement column, I saw that there was a call there for the American group to meet at 107 Fifth Avenue. I hardly knew what to do. I knew that I ought to attend the American group, as I was treasurer of the group, and it was the period for election of officers, and I also knew that if it was a meeting that would require any money I ought to be there. I finally concluded to go there.

I left home about 7:20 … [and] it was close to 8 o’clock .., and yet at that time I did not know that there was going to be, or had been, a meeting called at the Haymarket that night … I found out after entering the room that the meeting had been called for the purpose of considering whether the American group should attempt the organisation of the sewing girls of the city, whose wages were pitilessly low.

[A] Mr and Mrs Parsons had anticipated that the group would vote in the affirmative and had taken the responsibility of having a number of hand-bills printed, which hand-bills were present at the meeting, or some of them. On asking what the meeting was called for, I was shown one of these bills, and was told that was what the meeting was called for … I therefore sat down and waited until Mr and Mrs Parsons should come.

After waiting some time they came, and we decided to try to organise the sewing girls of the city. Mr Parsons made a motion that the treasurer should pay over to the ladies the sum of $5, which should pay for the bills which had been printed, $4, and the other dollar should go for the car-fare and incidental expenses in looking around for halls, etc. This was agreed to. I paid the money and received a receipt for the same …

About this time [a] Mr Rau came in and said that he had been over to the Haymarket and there was a large crowd over there and no one to address them but [a] Mr Spies, and that he wanted Mr Parsons and I to go over there and assist him. We went over there, and Mr Spies, who was speaking, stopped in a short time after we arrived and introduced Mr Parsons. Mr Parsons spoke at considerable length, as has been reported.

When I was introduced by Mr Spies, the audience was getting smaller and I had told Mr Spies that it was hardly worth while for me to speak. He said I might make a short speech. I spoke for about fifteen to twenty minutes, when, without the slightest intimation or thought of such a thing, on turning my face to the south, I saw the police approaching.

They were, in fact, very close to me when I first saw them. I stopped talking and was undecided what to do. The meeting had been a more than ordinarily peaceable one, and had been getting smaller and more quiet up to that time, so that there were not more than two or three hundred at the most, in my opinion, when the police arrived.

A few minutes before this the weather had become somewhat threatening; a very large black cloud had rolled up from the north, causing quite a stampede. On this account Mr Parsons called out from the crowd that the meeting had better adjourn to Zepfs hall on the next corner. Someone replied that this hall was occupied, and then I said to the audience that I would be through in a minute or two and we would all go home.

I then began to draw my remarks to a close. Before I could do this, however, the meeting was invaded by the police, and Captain Ward, in a very loud voice cried out: “In the name of the people of the state of Illinois I command this meeting to peaceably disperse.”

Whatever had been my doubts at the intention of the police, they were at once removed and I at once thought that I would try to prevent any trouble between the meeting and the police. This was my object in staying on the wagon after I saw the police on the ground, and as Captain Ward uttered the above expression I stepped down toward him and replied: “Why captain, this is a peaceable meeting.”

I did this for the purpose, more than anything else, of trying to allay the excitement and nervousness under which he was labouring, and thus, by this conciliatory manner, showing to him that we were not disposed to be quarrelsome. Had the captain at the time met me in the same manner, even though he had still insisted on the dispersal of the meeting, I myself would have dispersed it, and believe all would have been well, but the captain, in a very violent manner, altogether ignoring my pacific attitude, turned to the police, saying as near as I can remember: “I command this meeting to disperse, and I call on you to disperse it now.” …

[As] the captain began to give the second command, I stepped from the wagon, leaping down at the south end of the wagon. As soon as I reached the ground I said: “All right, we’ll go,” or “Well then; we’ll go,” and walked towards the sidewalk. I think I had just stepped on the sidewalk when I saw the flash in the middle of the street and heard the explosion of the bomb. Almost if not entirely simultaneously with this explosion the police began to fire into the crowd.

The crowd ran in every direction. I happened to have my face turned to the south at the time of the explosion, and I ran in that direction. Immediately after the explosion, I was struck in the knee by a bullet, which after striking the bone, travelled upward and slightly across, and then came out making two holes. I felt the blow, but did not know what it was.

I continued … running as fast as I could, for the crowd who were falling down and crawling on the sidewalk, and calling: “O, God! O, God! Save us,” while volley after volley of bullets were poured into the wildly flying and unresisting mass. I finally reached the corner and ran east.

As soon as I felt myself safe I felt of my knee and found that my knee was wet. I knew that I was wounded. After going over to the south side to look for some of my companions of the evening, being anxious to discover what had become of them, I went and had my knee dressed.

The next morning I was arrested. On the afternoon of the same day, 5th of May, without having had an opportunity of seeing a friend or a lawyer, I, with A Parsons, A Spies, and Mr Schwab, was railroaded through a coroner’s jury, at which jury the assistant state’s attorney stood between the coroner and the several witnesses and, in whispers, prompted them what to say …

Of my subsequent trial and conviction the public are aware.

This is a truthful narrative of my life and my connection with the Haymarket affair, for which I am held as accessory to the act of a person with whom I have no connection or knowledge, and with whom no witness had ever during the whole of this trial, stated that I knew of his existence, and, as far as this record goes, who is as much a stranger to me as he is to Judge Gary or the state’s attorney.

Hoping the reader of this will calmly and dispassionately consider those facts, and feeling sure that whoever does so will feel that if any person can be connected and convicted as accessory to the act of some person unknown to the accused, the innocence of a crime is no shield or security to any member of society.

If this conviction is just, then whenever any crime is committed all that is necessary for the authorities to do is to find some persons obnoxious to them, present them to the jury and tell the jury that though they may not have committed the crime they are charged with, yet it is the opinion of the prosecution that it will be a good thing to get rid of them anyway, and this is the handy way of doing it.

Patient reader, I remain faithfully yours, Samuel Fielden.

T​he last week has shocked American lawmakers as their efforts to ban the Singaporean app, TikTok, under the auspices of being used by the Chinese to surveil Americans, has backfired terribly.

Millions of Americans marched to the App Store this week to download the Chinese equivalent of Instagram, Rednote, which translates to Little Red Book, an homage to the famous cultural revolution pocketbook of Chairman Mao’s Quotations.

​Is this not a clear case of a process turning a thing into its opposite, as the monumental German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel repeatedly describes it in the various moments of the Concept’s development in his Logic?

The American political class, unable to tame the contradictions of its decaying society, is forced to externalize onto a boogeyman ‘other’ the faults for the wretched conditions its system has put its people in. China is today’s boogeyman, the entity onto which all blame is placed.

It is not the U.S.’s decades long covert involvement in the drug trade, used to fund the contras and destroy poor communities at home, which has led to the fentanyl crisis of today. No, according to the fanciful imagination of the ideologues of empire, it is the Chinese who are to blame!

It is not the fault of massive monopolistic investment firms like Blackrock, Vanguard, and State Street for buying up property and farmland for speculation. No, it is the Chinese! You know, the country whose president quite literally emphasized that ‘houses are for living in, not for speculation,’ which is leading the speculation effort in the American housing market.

American propagandists turn the world on its head as a way to cope with the fact that it is the decaying, highly financialized capitalist system that has produced these outcomes for the people, not a foreign boogeyman.

The war on TikTok is but one part of an all-out assault on China by the American ruling class.

The irrationality of this attack could not be any clearer once one realizes that TikTok in the U.S. was forced to hand control over its servers from ByteDance to Oracle, a Texas-based company that quickly hired a litany of NATO and state department officials to do ‘content moderation’ on the app: a code word for censoring discourse that challenges their narratives, and proliferating those which defend it.

Our accounts at the Midwestern Marx Institute, the largest Marxist-Leninist think tank in the U.S. would get banned seven times, including our first account which amassed nearly half a million followers in less than a year.

But even with all the censorship on the American version of the app, this was not enough. Their control was tubular, and leakages to their censorship edifice became evident.

Videos showing the truth about key geopolitical events, especially the barbarity of the Zionist entity’s genocidal assault on Gaza, would continue to go viral, reaching millions of Americans. Such a disavowal of the ‘official narratives’ of the U.S. empire could not go unpunished. Banning the app completely was the only ‘solution’ the elite could come up with.

These are the actions of a desperate empire in the midst of a deep crisis of legitimacy.

As could have been expected, the intent to censor the truth by banning TikTok turned into its opposite, into the great migration onto the Little Red Book app by millions of American ‘refugees.’

Videos are now going viral of American creators saying quite explicitly that they will rather give their data to Xi Jinping than the U.S. government. The propaganda, clearly, is no longer working on a population struggling with paying bills and drowning in debt.

The development of the crisis of capitalism has turned the American dream into its opposite, into the American nightmare. This is an era of nodal points, where radical leaps into opposites are evident all over.

The TikTok ban is a clear case of an action whose intended result produces an opposite effect.

The hope to curb ‘Chinese surveillance of Americans’ on a Singaporean app backfired into a mass exodus to a Chinese app.

As we say in Cuba, le salió el tiro por la culata.

Belarus is set to hold its national elections on January 26, 2025, in a climate fraught with geopolitical tension. As the Russian Special Military Operation (SMO) continues unabated and Russian-EU-NATO relations plunge to historic lows, the spotlight is on Belarus, a nation also known as "White Russia." Its steadfast alliance with the Russian Federation, and the state's consolidation of major industries, have made it a focal point of criticism from liberal regimes within the EU-NATO.

The elections come at a particularly volatile moment for the Eastern European and Central Asian regions. Recent developments include the controversial annulment of Calin Georgescu's election by Romania's Constitutional Court—Georgescu being a vocal critic of NATO and Western liberal democracies. Meanwhile, Georgia is grappling with a burgeoning "color revolution" targeting Mikhail Kavalashvili, the Georgian President of the Georgia Dream Party. Both Georgescu and Kavalashvili have been labeled by their detractors as agents of Russian President Vladimir Putin, further inflaming anti-Russian rhetoric among pro-EU liberals.
​
Against this backdrop, the Belarusian elections are shaping up to be not just a domestic affair but a key event in the broader struggle for influence in the region, with global implications for the emergence of a multipolar world.

​Opposition figure and self-proclaimed "President-in-Exile," Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, has called on her supporters to boycott the vote, which bears striking similarities to strategies previously employed by pro-NATO factions in nations like Georgia, Ukraine, and Venezuela. This recurring tactic involves urging electoral boycotts, preemptively declaring fraud in the face of likely defeat, and orchestrating widespread protests to challenge the legitimacy of the elected government. The earliest examples of this included the Western backed, funded, and trained Otpor (later CANVAS) in Yugoslavia in the 1990s. This approach highlights a well-documented pattern utilized by leaders aligned with Western interests to undermine opposing regimes. The use of the National Endowment of Democracy by the United States to facilitate regime change was even documented by the Chinese government.

To fully comprehend the likely criticisms that will emerge from the opposition following the election, one must first examine the structural framework of Belarus’s government and the operational mechanics of its electoral process, which in turn helps to shed light on the narratives likely to dominate the post-election discourse.

Understanding Belarus’s Government Structure

The President
 
Often described as the "last Soviet-style republic," Belarus has retained many of the centralized processes it inherited from the Soviet era, with a strong emphasis on executive authority. Its political system, defined by the 1994 Constitution and subsequently amended through referenda, combines executive, legislative, and judicial elements. However, the presidency remains the central force in Belarusian governance.
 
The President oversees the implementation of domestic and foreign policy and acts as the guarantor of the Constitution, national independence, and territorial integrity. The role allows for some legislative oversight, allowing the holder to issue decrees and edicts that, under certain conditions, hold the force of law. The President can also appoint key officials, including the Prime Minister (with parliamentary approval), judges of the Supreme and Constitutional Courts, and members of the Central Election Commission. And of course, the President is the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, which gives an incredible amount of power due to the Union State with Russia.
 
This is why the West will be frothing at the mouth to bring Belarus to its knees, for its institutional links with the Russian Federation, Russian Military, and now hosting Russian nuclear weapons.
 
The National Assembly
 
The National Assembly of Belarus is a bicameral legislature consisting of the Council of the Republic and the House of Representatives, which have 64 and 110 representatives, respectively.
 
The House of Representatives - the lower chamber - is responsible for drafting and adopting laws; reviewing the annual state budget; ratifying the international treaties; and approving or denying the Prime Minister appointed by the President.
 
The Council of the Republic on the other hand consists of six members appointed by the president, with another 56 deputies that are elected by the regional councils across the six regions of across the country. It is this body that is empowered to approve or veto any of the laws that have been drafted by the House of Representatives. This body also reviews international treaties and any constitutional amendments that are made. It is also empowered to execute an impeachment process against the President.
 
The breakdown of the parties within the national assembly from the February 2024 House of Representative elections are as follows:
 
1. Belarusian Party “Belaya Rus” (White Russia): 46.4% (51 seats)
2. Republican Party of Labour and Justice: 7.3% (8 seats)
3. Communist Party of Belarus: 6.4% (7 seats)
4. Liberal Democratic Party: 3.6% (4 seats)
5. Independents: 36.3% (40 seats)
 
While independents are not officially affiliated with a particular party, many maintain close ties to established political groups, effectively extending the influence of major factions within the assembly.
 
The Council of Ministers
 
Operating under the leadership of the Prime Minister, the Council of Ministers functions as the executive branch, governing administrative matters and policy implementation, with cabinet members of the Prime Minister overseeing various departments such as defense, foreign affairs, the economy, and so forth. As such, they are the ones responsible for the development of the national economic, social, and other cultural policies; while also creating plans for the execution of laws and decrees as well as drafting the state budget.
 
The Judiciary Branch
 
Judicial appointments are selected by the President, however are entrusted to retain a level of independence in which their orders adhere to the laws of the republic and the constitution. It is divided by the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court.
 
With 12 judges in its body, the Constitutional Court reviews the laws passed by the National Assembly in their compliance with the 1994 constitution. Of the 12 judges, six are appointed directly by the President whereas the other six are appointed by the Council of the Republic.
 
The Supreme Court is regarded as the highest judicial body for civil, criminal, and administrative cases; it serves to provide uniform application of the law and advisory for the lower courts.
 
The President also appoints the Prosecutor General to oversee the application of the law through the law enforcement bodies.
 
Local Councils and Executive Committees
 
Belarus is divided into six regions and the capital city of Minsk, each governed by regional councils and executive committees. While these entities manage local administrative matters, they are largely subordinate to the central government, a very Soviet-esque style.
 
Members of the local councils are elected by the citizens in their respective regions to deal with the nitty-gritty of their day-to-day life such as overseeing local budgets and administrative issues. They deal with the concerns of the average Belarusian citizen directly. The Executive Committee members are appointed directly by the President, simply to ensure the process of delegating the national policies at the regional and local levels runs smoothly as directed.
 
As seen, the Belarusian system emphasizes the role of the government in maintaining national unity, economic stability, and social cohesion, protecting Belarus from Maidan-style interference and anarchy.
Belarus hasn’t just held onto its Soviet-style government—it’s also preserved much of its economic framework from that era. Key industries like manufacturing, energy, and agriculture remain under significant state control, reflecting a centralized approach to economic management.

At the same time, Belarus is undergoing a technological transformation, boasting one of the most advanced tech sectors in Eastern Europe. Yet, despite these strides, the country’s economy is still firmly rooted in its industrial foundation, remaining a highly productive, manufacturing-driven nation.

A Soviet Legacy with Modern Adaptations

Manufacturing
 
Under the ownership of the national government, manufacturing hails as the backbone of the Belarusian economy, accounting for nearly 20% of GDP and employing approximately 25% of the workforce - predominately working on heavy machinery, automotive, industrial equipment, and chemical production.
 
BelAZ, or the Belarusian Automobile Plant, in Zhodino, is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of large dump trucks, especially in areas of construction and mining. On October 7th, 2024, the company announced it would begin the process of deploying universal robots to assist in the production.
 
According to Belarus Today, despite the international sanctions on the company as a result of the Russian SMO, in 2023 BelAZ sold 963 mining dump trucks to 19 different countries. Though the company did take a hard financial hit preventing profits, it was able to preserve its team without layoffs, survive the hit, and is now able to implement innovative projects for future production.
 
The revenue drawn from companies like BelAZ, Minsk Automobile Plant, and Minsk Tractor Works is accounted for in the state budget to further national interests.
 
Energy

Belarus’s energy sector, though far smaller in scale than those of its Russian and Ukrainian neighbors, plays a critical role in the country’s economy. Contributing to 10% of the country’s total GDP, the industry focuses on oil refining, natural gas distribution, and electricity generation, with 80% of its energy resources imported from Russia. Belarus refines Russian crude oil both for domestic use and export, creating a mutually beneficial economic relationship between the two nations.

Once a vital transit route for Russian energy to Western Europe, Belarus’s trade with the EU has sharply declined in recent years, largely due to European sanctions imposed after the disputed 2020 presidential election where Western countries refused to acknowledge President Lukashenko’s re-election. Despite these tensions—and even amid the construction of a dual-sided border wall—Belarus and Poland remain surprisingly interlinked. Poland continues to be Belarus’s largest trading partner within the EU, highlighting the complexities of their economic ties in a politically charged environment.

The Mozyr Oil Refinery operates under a joint ownership structure. The Belarusian government controls 43% of the refinery, while the remaining shares are held by Russian entities, including Slavneft—a collaboration between two energy giants, Rosneft and Gazprom Neft.

As of 2005, the refinery employed around 3,781 workers. The Mozyr Oil Refinery Workers Association (MNPZ) bolstered its workforce, which included 2,235 active employees and 700 retirees at the time. The Naftan Oil Refinery, located in the northeastern city of Novopolotsk, operates under full state ownership, with the Belarusian government maintaining control.

Together, these refineries highlight the intricate blend of state and Russian collaboration that defines Belarus’s energy infrastructure, illustrating the close economic ties between the two nations while cementing Belarus’s position as a key player in regional energy markets.

Agriculture

Remaining a cornerstone of the Belarusian economy well after the Soviet dissolution, agriculture plays a vital role in both employment and GDP contribution. Approximately 9% of the workforce is employed in the sector, which accounts for around 7% of the nation’s GDP.

Belarus’s fertile lands produce a range of essential goods, with grain, potatoes, dairy, and meat standing out as the sector’s primary outputs. The country is renowned for its dairy products, ranking among the world’s top exporters. Belarusian meat, cheese, butter, and milk products find eager markets abroad, especially in Russia and China, where they are hailed for their quality and competitive pricing.

While collective farming—a hallmark of the Soviet era—has largely declined, the state still maintains significant ownership over agricultural enterprises.

Per the 2023 Belarusian state census report, roughly 50% of Belarus’s workforce is employed by state-owned enterprises, reflecting the enduring influence of centralized economic planning in the country's post-Soviet structure. Meanwhile, around 45% of workers contribute to the private sector, which includes the service industry and a rapidly expanding IT sector. Belarus has positioned itself as a hub for technological innovation in Eastern Europe, with thriving software development and tech services industries that attract foreign clients, particularly in the EU and Russia.

Belarusian Hi-Tech Park

Often referred to as the “Silicon Valley of Eastern Europe”, the Hi-Tech Park (HTP) in the capital city of Minsk was established in 2005 as part of a strategic initiative by the Belarusian government to diversify the economy and attract foreign investment. This was an effort led by Valeriy Tsepkalo, a former advisor to President Lukashenko and a candidate in the 2020 Presidential elections.

The idea of HTP emerged as the government sought to capitalize on the growing global demand for IT services and software development. President Lukashenko signed Presidential Decree No. 12, which created a legal framework for the park. This decree granted companies within HTP significant tax exemptions and special legal conditions, making it an attractive and competitive destination for IT businesses.

The state played a crucial role in providing the initial funding, regulatory support, and infrastructure necessary for HTP's development. The state also retains ownership of the park, with its administration directly overseen by the Ministry of Communications and Informatization of Belarus.

HTP’s growth was remarkable, with the number of resident companies rising from a handful in its early years to over 1,000 by 2023. The park shapes its focus from traditional IT outsourcing to advanced fields like AI, blockchain, gaming, and cybersecurity.

The park's exports surged, reaching $3.2 billion in 2021, with the majority of products and services targeting markets in the EU, the U.S., and Russia. By 2023, HTP employed more than 60,000 professionals.

Despite its success, HTP faces challenges, particularly in the aftermath of the 2020 EU sanction package and the 2022 sanctions package for Belarus’s participation in the SMO.

Nonetheless, HTP is full of growth potential, especially considering Belarus’s ascension to the BRICS economic alliance which will take effect on January 1st, 2025, just weeks before the upcoming presidential elections.

Belarus’s economic and political framework—rooted in its Soviet heritage—has not only ensured stability since the dissolution of the USSR but has also shielded the nation from the economic upheaval experienced in Russia and Ukraine under Western-imposed shock therapy, namely the chaos of drug and sex cartels. This continuity has enabled Belarus to achieve economic growth despite its estrangement from the so-called rules-based international order.

The Belarusian people remain central to their nation’s economic sovereignty, reaping direct benefits from a model designed to prioritize collective prosperity and national independence. This stands in stark contrast to the U.S., where the unchecked forces of corporatism have eroded the living standards of the working class in favor of profit-driven oligarchies.

Yet, the very industries that empower Belarus’s populace and reinforce its sovereignty are perceived by Washington and NATO allies as ripe for subjugation. The prospect of dismantling Belarus’s self-reliant system in favor of submission to transnational corporate interests mirrors the devastation wrought in Ukraine, where entities like BlackRock have entrenched foreign control under the guise of reconstruction and reform.

In the face of NATO escalation of the conflict in Ukraine, it should come as no surprise that the forces that sought to lead a color revolution in 2020 will be more emboldened—possibly having learned from past mistakes to return with a much bigger bite as the stakes have only become much more precarious—for both the pro-NATO and pro-multipolarity forces.

The Belarusian Opposition: The Trite Romance of Liberal-Nationalism

When Lukashenko was announced as the winner of the 2020 presidential elections, the country erupted into unprecedented, historic protests. What was represented to be spontaneous mass discontent with electoral results quickly devolved into a state of emergency.

Three main oppositional figures were leading the anti-Lukashenko movement: Maria Kalesnikova, Veronika Tsepkalo (wife of Valeriy Tsepkalo), and Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. The three sought to craft a facade of the “liberal, progressive women united against the old Soviet dictator” to garner sympathy from international audiences, drenching their image entirely in a Hollywood-style trope of light versus dark; free pro-democracy against dark Soviet authoritarianism. At the forefront of this alliance was Svetlana Tikhanovskaya.

Tikhanovskaya emerged as the beacon of the Belarusian liberal-nationalist movement when her husband, Sergei Tikhanovsky—a popular YouTube blogger and vocal critic of Lukashenko—had been jailed for 15 days after participating in an unsanctioned protest against the Victory Day Parade. The event, deeply rooted in the Belarusian national identity, commemorates the country's liberation from Nazi Germany during WWII. With Tikhanovsky detained, Tikhanovskaya entered into the spotlight, registering as a presidential candidate and becoming the face of the opposition movement.

Hoping to unseat Lukashenko, a diverse coalition of pro-NATO political figures, civil society groups, and international supporters emerged and coalesced around Tikhanovskaya, using their connections to international contacts in the West to ensure her victory, whether by the ballot box or by a Maidan-style coup.

Tikhanovskaya largely remained vague about her plans to re-invent Belarus to the public, however, her campaign website featured a link to the Reanimation Package of Reforms for Belarus, created by the same NGOs that wrote the reforms package for Ukraine under Maidan. Her team had removed the link once critics highlighted the connections to Ukraine’s Maidan reforms, but Historic.ly’s Esha Krishnaswamy managed to archive the site on the Wayback Machine just before it was taken down.

The reforms sought to reshape Belarusian society by pivoting decisively toward the West, emphasizing integration into institutions like the EU and NATO. Central to this vision was reducing Russian influences, both culturally and politically. The measures proposed banning Russian media and curtailing other perceived Kremlin-aligned forces, including removing Russian as an official language—a significant shift given that an estimated 75% of Belarusians identify Russian as their native tongue. This pro-NATO agenda aimed to re-invent Belarus’s identity, creating an idea of Europeanness while distancing it from its historical ties to Moscow.

Perhaps most controversially, the reforms offered the overhaul of Belarus's economy by privatizing its vast state-owned industries in a bid to attract foreign investment. It went further to demand the reduction of Belarus's reliance on Russian energy imports, setting a cap on the Russian share and instead turning to the more costly alternative of U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG), much like what has been laid out for Ukraine. Of course, Tikhanovskaya’s public-facing campaign slogans centered on “human rights” and “democratic values”, while little was spoken of the neoliberal economic reforms planned.

Then on August 9th, 2020, the presidential elections were held, where the incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko, in power since 1994, was officially declared the winner with around 80% of the vote. Soon after, coordinated protests broke out in the capital city of Minsk. Thousands poured out onto the streets demanding that Lukashenko step down and for new elections to be announced, a demand the opposition called for on August 8th, 2020, before the elections even took place.

The government responded with a harsh crackdown: security forces used tear gas, rubber bullets, and stun grenades to disperse protesters. Thousands were arrested as the government found evidence of Western meddling, and the events drew widespread condemnation, particularly from the US-EU-NATO axis.

The protestors adorned the symbols of the Belarusian nationalist movement, the Pahonia white-red-white flag with roots from Belarus’s occupation by first the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and then the German Nazi occupation which installed the Belarusian Central Rada puppet government, comprised of Nazi-selected Belarusian ultra-nationalists. Many were unaware of the roots of this flag, particularly the liberal youth from the capital who have long forgotten their history.

​However, while plastered across timelines on social media, the protestors proved to be a loud, but small minority. Pro-government supporters also took to the streets, waving the flag of their nation with its roots from the Soviet period and chanting “za Belarus” (to Belarus) as a retort to the opposition’s chant “zhivye Belarus” (long live Belarus). And though the opposition tried to manufacture a feminist image of themselves, it was Belarusian women who organized many of the pro-government demonstrations—another group welcoming President Lukashenko to the 2020 Women’s Forum.

There was a clear divide among the population to the responses of the protests. Much of the proponents of the opposition’s campaigns were young, middle class city university students while the government’s supporters were older, former Soviet workers - many of whom condemned the protests for waving the symbols of the Nazi-installed occupational government of the Belarusian Central Rada.

​Soon after the protests began, the Coordination Council for Tikhanovskaya’s campaign was formed to force Lukashenko out by manufacturing civil unrest and seeking recognition from the EU as the legitimate transitional government.

Lithuania was the first to formally recognize Tikhanovskaya as the elected leader of the country, offering her official diplomatic status where she remains based today. Soon after, the Czech Republic and Poland followed suit, where Poland then built a border wall in the forest connecting Belarus and Poland. Additionally, the European Parliament and the Council of Europe had been vocal in recognizing Tikhanovskaya’s claim of leadership of the Belarusian people, despite that even US-backed Zubr ‘Bizon’ and Chestniye Lyudi election monitoring groups reported from exit polls that Lukashenko won with at least 61.7% of the vote.

While Tikhanovskaya claims leadership over her home country from abroad, a trial was held against her in absentia in Minsk where she was sentenced to 15 years in jail for high treason and conspiracy to seize power. She has also faced scrutiny from some of her own former supporters after it was revealed on ONT TV that her campaign had embezzled funds intended for the jailed protestors and their families, to which they had not received the intended financial assistance as advertised. With her reputation tarnished outside of the eyes of pro-EU extremists, Tikhanovskaya relies primarily on the support of NATO governments for any legitimacy.

On May 28th, 2024 Belarusian Radio Racyja, financed by the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the U.S. Embassy in Poland, reported that 6,700 Belarusian citizens participated in the Coordination Council’s elections where Pavel Latushko, former Minister of Culture, was declared the Deputy Head of the United Transitional Cabinet of Belarus, led by Tikhanovskaya. Latushka has taken to social media (x.com/@PavelLatushka) to urge EU leaders to oppose the Belarusian government and lend words of support to the Ukrainian Army, which is currently engaged in the killing of Belarusian soldiers.

The Belarusian Nationalist Movement: Collaborationists in the 21st Century

More than just re-adopting the symbols of the day, the Belarusian nationalist movement continues its struggle to the 21st century through a marriage with European liberalism —reinventing itself to be more digestible to the European liberal of today, while still carrying over its central ideological values.

Founded in 1943, the German Nazi-backed political entity known as the Belarusian Central Rada (BCR) projected itself as the legitimate Belarusian government, rejecting Soviet authority, albeit subordinate to the shadow of occupation forces; parallel to Tikhanovskaya and Europe’s assertion of its legitimacy today over the Lukashenko government.

The BCR was led by Radaslau Astrouski, who believed through aligning the Belarusian nationalist movement with its German fascist counterparts, they would be supported in creating an independent Belarusian republic.

The nationalists framed their collaboration with the Germans as a necessary tactic to fend off communism and Soviet authority, sharing German values of anti-Russian sentiment. Nonetheless, the Germans still greatly limited their ability to express their own national symbols and rhetoric, only going so far as to allow anti-Soviet policies and repression.

With the German retreat in 1944, the BCR dissolved, and its leaders fled to the West. In exile, they worked to maintain their vision of Belarusian nationalism, leveraging platforms such as Radio Free Europe to oppose the Soviet Union. However, their collaborationist history tarnished their reputation within Belarus, where they were widely discredited.

Nonetheless, in the sanctuary of the West, they were allowed to work against the Soviet Union through media apparatuses like Radio Free Europe and pro-NATO civil society. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, organizations like the Belarusian Democracy Movement and the Belarusian National Front Party continue the legacy of the Belarusian Central Rada, under great restriction due to Belarus’s laws against the promotion and rehabilitation of Nazism.

Established in October 1988, the Belarusian National Front Party (BNF) became the first oppositional party in the country, emerging as a response to the chaos within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

It was the first party since the German occupation to use the Pahonia flag and consolidate the forces of pro-European liberals and Catholic, anti-communist nationalists. The party had little relevance and success until the August 2020 protests, in which the party affiliate media channel NEXTA gained notoriety as it covered the events in Belarus, including organizing protest meeting locations and promoting oppositional figures.

NEXTA was formed out of Poland in 2015 by Stepan Putilo, a Belarusian national who relocated for university studies. An ardent critic of Lukashenko’s government, Putilo used the digital space to spread his message to other young, university-aged Belarusians much like the Belarusian nationalists before him had done with Radio Free Europe, creating more alternative, pro-NATO media. In 2020, journalist Armen Gasparyan claimed that Putilo’s great-grandfather was a collaborationist by the name of A.G. Putilo during the 1941 German occupation of the country. As a result of Putilo’s digital participation in the 2020 color revolution attempt, he has been labeled a terrorist with an outstanding warrant for his arrest.

​While Putilo remains active, his former colleague Roman Protasevich met a starkly different fate. Protasevich, who between 2014 and 2015 served in the ultranationalist Azov Battalion during the conflict in the Donbass region, was arrested in May 2021 after Belarusian authorities forcibly diverted a Ryanair flight he was aboard to Minsk, citing a bomb threat. The global reaction was swift, with widespread condemnation and sanctions against Belarus. Ryanair’s CEO, Michael O’Leary, denounced the incident as “state-sponsored piracy.”

The likes of ultra-nationalists like Stepan Putilo and Roman Protasevich are among the many who Tikhanovskaya calls political prisoners while omitting insights into the nature of their crimes.  Tikhanovskaya decried the arrest of former Azov Battalion member Protasevich, calling Belarus “North Korea in the middle of Europe,” and demanded an investigation into the landing with stricter sanctions to be imposed on Belarus, a call that borderlines treason.

But while having minimal political history herself, Tikhanovskaya is well embedded with, and led by, key figures in the Belarusian nationalist movement. Sitting as her chief advisor is Franak Viacorka, who served previously as the Creative Director for the Minsk bureau of the CIA-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and is currently a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council, the pro-NATO think tank. Viacorka’s father, Vincuk Viacorka, was a foundational member of the far-right BNF party and a key player in Belarusian nationalist movements since the 1970s.

As the liberal-nationalist forces united together in a campaign to isolate and balkanize Russia, fanning the flames of the conflict of NATO aggression against Russia, the Belarusian opposition braces itself for a renewed campaign to seize power in the Eastern European country as they have prematurely condemned the electoral process altogether.

Belarus Joins BRICS: A Step Towards Multipolarity and Sovereignty

In a significant geopolitical move, on January 1st, Belarus formally joined the BRICS alliance, signaling its intent to deepen ties with the emerging multipolar world order. The timing is pivotal. With elections on the horizon, the move bolsters President Alexander Lukashenko's pursuit of sovereignty and resistance to Western sanctions, particularly as the US-EU-NATO wages its proxy war in Ukraine.

For ordinary Belarusians, the impact could manifest in the form of increased trade opportunities and investments, much of which has been stagnant since the 2020 and 2022 sanctions package. The emerging alliance that has challenged the rules-based-order is still precarious and has yet to fully form, but for Belarus the BRICS alliance offers a role in the rise of sovereign civilizational states and a lifeline outside of Euro-Atlantic hegemony.

With its ascension to BRICS as well as its position in the Union State with Russia, eroding Belarusian sovereignty with a Maidan style coup becomes all the more essential in the broader campaign against Russia. As such, the opposition at the service of NATO governments have to be all the more emboldened to undermine the country’s sovereignty. The pushback and media campaign that will ensue in the lead up to the elections will be inorganic, perfectly crafted political theater. Time will tell if the small country can once again withhold its own Maidan from brewing.

The same forces that seek to undermine Belarusian sovereignty, reducing it to a vassal in the broader conflict against Russia, are those who simultaneously exploit the livelihoods of everyday Americans. The Biden administration’s policies have already plunged Ukraine into turmoil, marking a somber chapter in the region's history. Meanwhile, American taxpayers are drained of resources desperately needed for their own communities, diverted instead to fuel the profits of the military-industrial complex and line the pockets of Ukraine’s corrupt comprador elite.

As Belarus stands firm against globalist efforts to subjugate its independence, Americans might find a shared struggle in this defiance. The same adversaries that assail Belarus also erode the well-being of the American people, plundering both nations in their pursuit of unchecked power.

In late August, I traveled to Doha, Qatar, to meet and interview Hamas political bureau members Dr. Basem Naim and Osama Hamdan. After nearly four months of planning and coordinating, I was finally approved to come and conduct the interview at their diplomatic headquarters in Qatar. Given the security situation, the details were carefully orchestrated.

My arrival needed to be precise. Locations and instructions were provided to me mere minutes before I was supposed to arrive. After arriving, my passport and credentials were checked, I was screened for weapons and communication devices, and escorted through the complex to the diplomatic reception room. My cameraman, Mahmoud Dakhil and I set up and started the meeting right on time. What was scheduled for an hour turned into a nearly three-hour meeting that explored various aspects of the ongoing negotiations, the history, and the complex realities on the ground in Gaza, in the other areas of Palestine, and beyond.

Due to the complexity and sensitivity of the then ongoing cease-fire negotiations, I decided to hold off publishing the transcript until a cease-fire deal was reached. Now with a tentative deal in place which I provide more details of below, I have published an edited transcript of our conversation below.

Dr. Basem Naim is a member of the Politburo of Hamas and served as the Minister of Health during the Palestinian Authority Government of March 2006 (popularly known as the First Haniyeh Government) and later as Minister of Youth and Sports in the Palestinian National Unity Government of March 2007 (popularly known as the Second Haniyeh Government). He represented Hamas during negotiations in Moscow in 2023.

Osama Hamdan is a member of the Politburo of Hamas and served as the Representative of Hamas in Tehran, Iran, from 1992 to 1998 and as the Representative of Hamas in Lebanon from 1998 to 2009. Since then, Osama Hamdan continues his diplomatic and political work for Hamas.

Christopher Helali: First, I would like to extend my deepest condolences and profound sympathies to you, to all of the members and supporters of Hamas, and to the Palestinian people on the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh and all the martyrs and innocent lives lost during this brutal genocide in Gaza. Given that we are 11 months into this brutal and horrific genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza, what can you tell us about the status of cease-fire negotiations and the possibility of achieving a durable and lasting peace to end the suffering of the people of Gaza?  

Dr. Basem Naim: Thank you very much for your visit. It is really appreciated from the movement, from our people in Palestine in general, in Gaza in particular, for a U.S. citizen to come here to show his solidarity and sympathy with the just cause of the Palestinian people. We believe that this is the real spirit of most of the people around the world, including the United States.

We believe that the American policies are not representing the wish and the will of most of the Americans, because any human being who believes in justice and peace, he will stand on the right side of history to support the oppressed people and the just cause of the Palestinian people.

What we are struggling for and what we are fighting for now for 75 years or more is how to get rid of the occupation. How to live like any other people in peace and security. How to secure a better and prosperous future for our children. How the Palestinian people who are really very ambitious can participate with other people, other nations around the world, for the goodwill of all people around the world.

We have offered at different stages a political solution to this conflict, but unfortunately the Zionist regime, not only this Zionist fascist regime led by Netanyahu, unfortunately supported by the American administrations, all the time they have undermined these chances hoping that day after day the Palestinians will become fatigued and give up their hopes of independence, freedom, self-determination, and right of return. Then they can implement their dreams, which is a nightmare for us, how to annihilate the Palestinian people, how to terminate the Palestinian existence on their own land, and how to build the greater state of Israel on the corpse, not only of the Palestinians, but of a lot of people here in the region.

I have here also to emphasize that our struggle is only against the occupation, regardless of its nationality, or religion, or political faith. We are fighting only against the occupation, someone who is driving a tank, or to attack our people, to destroy our houses. We have never had any problems with people of other religions, in particular here, in this case, with Jews or Judaism. On the contrary, we have a lot of friends who are Jews and who are good friends of us who are supporting our cause.

By the way, when Jewish communities in Europe and the West, in different countries, even before the Holocaust, were persecuted and attacked from different regimes in Europe, since the 19th century, they were welcomed in all Arab and Islamic countries, including in Palestine. They have lived in peace with our people for decades. The problem was serious only when they started to convert this humanitarian situation of the Jewish people who were persecuted in different countries in Europe into a political project on the corpses of the Palestinian people. Those who have offered them space in a house and accommodation, they have to leave the country based on some beliefs and tools from religious books.

Our struggle is only for freedom, dignity, independence, peace, and prosperity, a better future for all people. But again, we are not ready to give up or surrender under any kind of violence or massacres or from any party, not only the Israeli party. Therefore, we hope that the American people can understand the real story on the ground. It is a fight of people who are looking for freedom and dignity against oppression.

​Unfortunately, we have always asked journalists, politicians, and diplomats only to tell the people, the ordinary people everywhere, including in the United States, the reality on the ground, what they have seen with their own eyes.

We are not asking anyone to fabricate stories or to lie on behalf of the Palestinians, only to reflect the reality. Can you imagine that the Gaza Strip, for example, 2.3 million Palestinians living now for more than 17 years under a suffocating siege?

So that a lot of international human rights organizations, including, by the way, some Israeli organizations, they have considered the Gaza Strip as the biggest open-air prison and one of the concentration camps of the 21st century with 70% of those 2.3 million people being children and minors with no hopes, no future, no horizon. This has led to the moment we are living now.

Again, what we are calling for is only to implement what humanity has agreed upon in international law and international humanitarian law, that all people have the right to their freedom, dignity, independence, and sovereignty.

When we have resorted to armed resistance, it is not only based on a historical reading of the conflicts everywhere in Vietnam, Algeria, and South Africa, but it is also based on international humanitarian law and international law that all people under occupation have the right to resist their occupation by all means, including armed resistance.

But this happened after we have given all the chances for a political solution and we have failed. No, we didn’t fail. The international community has failed.

Unfortunately, with the support of the United States, Israel has behaved as a rogue state, as a state above the law. Therefore, what we are calling for once again is to implement the international resolutions which are guaranteeing the Palestinians all the rights to an independent self-sovereign state. Palestinians have the right to a better future, the right of return, and also the right of resistance.

Welcome again and we hope to see the American people in the streets, the universities and everywhere supporting our just cause. We were really very proud of observing and watching thousands and thousands of Americans in the streets, in the railway stations, at the universities, protesting and demonstrating for the just cause of Palestine and against the genocide and massacres committed by the Israeli regime against our people. By the way this is not our description of the case, this is the ICJ description of the situation on the ground that it is a genocide and it has to be stopped. The children and people of Palestine have the right of a better future. Thank you very much.

Christopher Helali: Thank you very much, Dr. Naim.

Dr. Basem Naim: Before asking brother Osama to talk a little bit about the latest when it comes to the negotiations, I have to say that we Palestinians we believe, yes, we are paying a very, very, high price, a very precious price for this struggle to achieve our goals, but we believe we are on the right way and we will sooner or later achieve our goals. This is the history of a lot of people around the world in Vietnam, in Algeria, in South Africa and other countries.

Unfortunately, we didn’t resort to armed resistance because we are for violence, but they have obliged us when they have blocked any chance for a political solution, they have undermined any chance to reach a solution for this conflict.

But we believe sooner or later we will achieve our goals and we are enjoying enough strength and commitment and we have enough dreams to fulfill in the future. Therefore, inshaAllah [God willing], we will with you celebrate our victory and freedom and independence and self-sovereignty and right of return in Jerusalem, the capital of the free state of Palestine.

Osama Hamdan: When what’s called in Europe the Crusades came to Palestine, we don’t call it a crusade, we call it “the foreigners war,” this is in our books, when they came to Jerusalem, they killed in the first days around 30,000 Palestinians who were living in Jerusalem.

They did not differentiate between a Muslim and a Christian. Christians were killed at the same time. Here is new information that may be shocking for most of the people. The keys of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre are in the hands of a Muslim family for more than 1,000 years. They do not differentiate between Muslims and Christians, so they trust each other.

Even the Jewish people, when they came to Palestine in the 18th century, they were not kicked out, they were not treated badly, they were welcomed. We used the word Hawajah; it’s a kind of respect for them, but when they tend to be part of the Zionist strategy as a project, that creates problems, and that happened under the occupation of the British Empire at that time.

Going back to the negotiations, or, what’s called the negotiations, it’s a long period of negotiations, it’s around six months, more than six months, started in fact before even the Paris meeting in February.

But I have to say through that process, we were committed to the main principles which were declared in the Paris meeting: the cease-fire, the complete withdrawal from Gaza, sending the needed aid for the Palestinians, the reconstruction, and to lift the siege on Gaza.

Then we were talking about prisoner’s exchange. Through that process, it was clear that whenever the mediators sent some ideas, the Israelis’ reaction was either to commit new massacres to undermine the process or to add more conditions which maybe were not negotiated before or either negotiated and agreed upon before.

​I don’t want to talk about the whole process, we are preparing a paper about that, so I think our brother, Dr. Basem, will send it for you. But we have at least two important steps. The first one, the mediators have sent a proposal at the 5th of May.

We discussed that proposal on the level of the leadership, and we agreed on that. The next day we informed the mediators that it’s okay, we accept the proposal as it is. We have, you know, you can’t have a complete 100% proposal, but at least we felt it’s a good proposal.

The reaction of the Israelis the next day, the 7th of May, was to invade Rafah. They went to Philadelphi, and they put their hands on the crossing point of Rafah. That means a complete siege on Gaza, nothing coming in or getting out of Gaza.

They committed a massacre in Khan Yunis. After three weeks of that, the Israelis sent a new paper with a lot of changes. They said that was their answer for the proposal. Anyway, that was on the 27th of May.

Four days later, President Biden reacted in his famous public speech. He has his own initiative, based on their paper, in fact, more than anything else. But he concentrated on the same principles which we have talked about.

Then there was the International Resolution at the Security Council on the 10th of June. Although we have some problems with some sentences, in general, we felt that it’s a good chance to achieve the goals.

The Israelis did not react. On the 24th of June, the Americans sent a paper, a proposal, through the mediators, based on a Biden initiative and the International Security Council Resolution, and mostly on the Israeli paper.

We discussed the proposal with them, and there were guarantees if we accept some ideas, they will have an acceptance or an agreement from the Israeli side. In general, it was an accepted proposal from Hamas, so we declared our acceptance on the 2nd of July.

What was the reaction of the Israelis? They committed the massacre of al-Mawasi [July 13, 2024]. They claimed that brother Mohammed Deif was there, he wasn’t there, and they knew that they were lying. More than 75 [90] Palestinians were killed.

Al-Mawasi was announced as a safe zone in Gaza, so they killed 75 [90] Palestinians and more than 200 were injured. Then they committed another massacre in Khan Yunis, around 30 Palestinians were killed, and then they assassinated brother Ismail Haniyeh.

They expected that we would say we are not participating in the negotiations anymore. Our reaction, which was told to the mediators, was that, although it was a heavy price, but it was made from the blood of the Palestinians. Brother Ismail Haniyeh is a leader, but we don’t differentiate between Brother Ismail Haniyeh and any Palestinian leader and the people of Palestine. We are still committed, but we want to implement what we have agreed on. It’s your proposal, and we are ready to implement that directly.

On the 8th of August, they had the declaration from President Biden, Sheikh Tamim, and President Sisi. The next day within a few hours, they committed the massacre at the Al-Tabaeen school. They knew that there were no militants, no leaders from Hamas, no senior officials from the Palestinian Authority, but they wanted to sabotage everything.

In this massacre, they killed directly 100 Palestinians. Now the number is around 130, because some people passed away after a few days, and more than 250 Palestinians were injured. No one said anything.

Then they said that they would have a meeting on the 15th of August. Our position was clear. We told the mediators there is no need for more negotiations. We have achieved at least twice a good proposal introduced by the mediators, and each time the Israelis are sabotaging that.

If we follow that process, they will sabotage any proposal at any time. They don’t want to have a cease-fire. They want to continue the genocide. So, it’s your turn as a mediator, not just to provide ideas. You have to make the needed pressure to implement those ideas, especially since there is a side who’s saying, “okay,” and they say “okay,” and then they move to sabotage that on the ground.

​What happened? Our expectation, when they started talking to the Israelis, they added the new conditions, and they said “no” for something they had previously said “yes” to. For example, in the old proposal, the Israelis agreed to withdraw from Gaza, including the Netzarim axis.

This time they said they wanted to stay on Netzarim axis, and they added it. They wanted to check all the Palestinians who had to go through the Netzarim to the northern part. They said that they would stay in Philadelphi. They would not move.

Under pressure the Israelis said, we can do some changes, but we will keep Philadelphi in our hands. They will not leave the Rafah crossing point. Even the prisoner exchange, they have changed the things which they have agreed on.

All the prisoners who are supposed to be released, at least 150 of them, they have to be deported from Palestine, which is something which we can’t accept. He may make as a person his choice to leave, but you can’t agree as a leadership in Palestine to deport any Palestinian.

We want our people to come back, not to send them out. So, the mediators understand that they are facing new ideas, so they postpone that in order to move discussions. They came to us, we’ve told them, we have told you before that we don’t consider ourselves part of this period of the process. You have to solve it by yourselves. In fact, instead of solving that, we saw what happened with Blinken. He came to Palestine and he said in public that Netanyahu accepted all the ideas.

No one knows what the ideas were. Then Netanyahu declared that he accepted the modified proposal. No one knows what the modifications were. Then he talked in public that he would not withdraw from Netzarim, he would not withdraw from Philadelphi. He would not allow even the [humanitarian] aid to come as the Palestinians want.

He connected that by the acceptance of the Palestinians. So, it’s part of the genocide, even sending the aid to the Palestinians. I know that Blinken is criticized now from senior American officials, but it seems to me that what we were expecting is happening now.

The big question was what will happen next. As Palestinians, we are seeking to protect our people. We are seeking to stop the bloodshed in Gaza. But if the Israelis continue the genocide, we have to continue our way to resist the occupation.

We have to continue resisting this genocide. We have to call on all the free people all over the world to support us, maybe by more action against the Israeli genocide, against the governments who are protecting and supporting Israel, to change their positions.

I believe just if someone said in the United States in charge that we will not send more weapons to Israel, that will be enough pressure to stop the whole genocide. If they said we will not support the economy of Israel, that will stop the genocide.

We are not dreaming that the United States will launch a war in order to protect the Palestinians. In fact, the [U.S.] administration was part of the genocide. I know this is against the will of maybe more than 90% of the Americans, but this is the fact.

They were part of the genocide. They will not launch a war. At least they are supposed to say “enough is enough.” We hope that can happen. We believe that what had happened in the universities was very important, because it shows the will of the new generation. A generation who can’t be controlled by the media, who can’t be controlled just by emotions, a generation who understands the things, understands the situation, and the issues. They have their own beliefs and their own ideas based on the justice for all the people. We hope that can be continued and can be effective.

Thank you very much.

Dr. Basem Naim: If you allow me to add some points. First of all, from day one when we were contacted by the mediators after Israel launched this war against our people, we have shown clear commitment to protect our people and to have an end to this aggression.

Therefore, we have shown the maximum positivity and being constructive in order to find a way how to reach a cease-fire agreement. Second, from the first week we have discussed with the mediators and this political vision of three phases was handed over to the mediators and also to other countries like Russia, China, Turkiye, even the Americans, that yes, we don’t believe that it has started on October 7th and as Mr. Guterres has said, October 7th didn’t come from a vacuum. We are talking about a long-standing conflict for 75 years. Therefore, it is not only about a cease-fire, it is about how to solve this conflict.

​Therefore, we have from the first week offered a three-phase conflict resolution proposal. Phase one was to talk about a cease-fire; lifting the siege, ending the occupation in Gaza Strip and so on and so on.

Phase two is to achieve a Palestinian-Palestinian reconciliation and Palestinian unity, ending the division by forming a Palestinian unity government representing all Palestinians. We are not eager to be part of this government but we are interested to have a government which is representing all Palestinians because we know that, or we knew that, in most of the stages, the reconciliation process was blocked or undermined because of the American and Israeli interference and conditions.

Phase three—all the Palestinians together as a leadership can engage with the international community about how to find the final solution for this conflict based on the related international resolutions when it comes to the independence, self-sovereignty, right of return, and so on. I think this has been offered in the first week.

What I mean is that, despite this horrific aggression, all these massacres, we were still committed to a political solution. We didn’t think within the context of revenge. Therefore, we are considering October 7th as an act of defense.

We didn’t initiate the process of violence. We were the victims of state terrorism for 75 years. The third point is this unlimited U.S. support for the Zionist regime as a political entity and also to give them all the impunity they need to behave as a rogue state, as a state above the law.

Only during this conflict, Israel has enjoyed—three or four times—a veto used by the Americans to protect them at the international level as well as all kinds of military support and billions of dollars in economic support.

Beyond this stage of the conflict, which is still confined within the Palestinian borders, if the Americans think of the security, stability and prosperity of the whole region for the whole world, because this is a region which is a connection point for all the people around the world, this is not the way to secure stability, security and prosperity for the region.

On the contrary, Netanyahu from day one was planning how to widen this conflict beyond the Palestinian borders into a regional war. Therefore, if the Americans think really of their strategic interests and how to keep this region calm, how to secure stability here, they have to say a clear word: “Enough!” We cannot continue giving you this unlimited support. We believe that the Americans have more interest, strategic interest, with the nations here than with this Zionist fascist regime.

By the way, if they think that they might be able to break down or to defeat the people of Gaza, or to defeat Hamas, or to defeat or to annihilate the resistance, now they are creating new generations of young people, not only in Palestine, all over the region, who are so angry, desperate, and full of willingness for revenge that I am sure within the next two, three decades, they are paving the way for instability and violence in the region.

This is not the way to create peace or the way to create stability or security, not only for us. We are ready and we are committed for our cause. We are ready to pay the price. But it’s also the security and the peace for other nations, including the Americans.

The third one, how can I understand that the Secretary of State of the United States, Antony Blinken, yesterday, when someone asked him about the humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza, what was his response?

Instead of talking loudly that international humanitarian law is obliging Israel to allow, even during the war, all the humanitarian aid to come into Gaza or to influx into Gaza, he said the shortest way is Hamas to sign the proposed agreement. Hamas to accept the offered deal from Israel.

It means he is blackmailing the Palestinian people by their food, medicine, and basic rights, politically to serve Israel. I think when the people, when humanity created or wrote this international humanitarian law, the idea was that sometimes we are not able to avoid wars.

But if it has to happen, we have to have some rules and regulations to secure innocent people, to secure civilians. During this war, with the support of the Americans, all the lines when it comes to international humanitarian law were crossed.

Hospitals destroyed, mosques destroyed, shelters destroyed, UN headquarters, aid workers, international aid workers killed with the support of the Americans. Yes, I mean, Israel is doing this because Antony Blinken in a press conference said yes, if we want to transport aid into Gaza, Hamas has to accept the offered deal. This is not politics which is coping with international law and international humanitarian law.

I think this is a war crime in itself and this is a direct participation in genocide. This is the blackmailing of innocent civilians who are not part of this direct military conflict by their basic rights, food and medicine.

Therefore, I think Americans have to bring him to accountability. You are talking on behalf of millions of Americans that you are ready to besiege and to suffocate millions of innocent people in order to serve Israeli politics.

I mean this is adding to the participation by weapons and money. Therefore, I think we are expecting from people who are looking for peace, security and stability, who are loving freedom and dignity for all people to stand up and to say “enough is enough.”

I cannot imagine that any American Muslim can come to Palestine and say, I am here to support you as a Muslim, not as an American. This is essentially what Blinken said in the first day when he came to the region.

Again, we are still committed to the brokered deal of July 2, but we are not ready to accept all these added conditions because it means we are accepting the re-occupation of the Gaza Strip, the continuation of the siege on the Gaza Strip, the restrictions and the control of the movement inside the Gaza Strip, regardless of the price which we are going to pay.

Thank you very much.

Early in the morning on Wednesday, January 15th, I received pictures and scans of the cease-fire agreement that I have included below from Dr. Basem Naim. The Press Statement that was released on January 15, 2025, from Hamas was titled “On the Announcement of the Cease-fire in Gaza Agreement” and listed four main aspects of the agreement.

One: The cease-fire agreement is the result of the legendary resilience of our great Palestinian people and our valiant resistance in the Gaza Strip over more than 15 months. 

Two: The agreement to stop the aggression on Gaza is an achievement for our people, our resistance, the Ummah [Islamic nation], and the free world. The agreement is a milestone in the conflict with the enemy, on the path to achieving our people’s goals of liberation and return.

Three: This agreement is driven by our responsibility toward our steadfast people in the Gaza Strip to stop the Zionist aggression against them and halt the bloodbath, massacres and genocidal war to which they are being subjected. 

Four: We express our gratitude and appreciation for all honorable official and popular stances at the Arab, Islamic and international levels that voiced solidarity with Gaza, stood with our people, and contributed to exposing the occupation and halting the aggression. We extend special thanks to the mediator brothers, who exerted great efforts to reach this agreement, especially Qatar and Egypt. 

On January 16th, I received the following word document of the agreement with a message from Dr. Basem Naim which stated, “This is the text of the proposed agreement from May 2024, announced by President Biden and adopted as part of UN Security Council Resolution 2735. It is the same agreement reached yesterday, along with annexes detailing the mechanisms for implementing the agreement and the humanitarian protocol for aiding the people of Gaza.”

This below is the exact text of that word document that was sent to me:
​
Basic Principles for an Agreement Between the Israeli and Palestinian Sides in Gaza on Prisoner and Detainee Exchange and Sustainable Calm
Israeli Response to the Proposal Dated May 6, 2024
The following framework aims to secure the release of all Israeli detainees in the Gaza Strip, including civilians and soldiers, regardless of their condition—alive or deceased—and irrespective of the time or duration of their detention. This will be in exchange for an agreed-upon number of prisoners held in Israeli prisons, alongside achieving sustainable calm through a permanent cease-fire, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, reconstruction of Gaza, and lifting the blockade, including opening all border crossings and allowing unrestricted movement of people and goods.
The framework agreement consists of three phases, as outlined below:
Phase One (42 Days):

1. Both sides will cease military operations temporarily. Israeli forces will withdraw eastward, away from densely populated areas, and reposition along the Gaza border, including the Gaza Valley (Netsarim Axis and Kuwait Roundabout) as detailed below.
2. Daily suspension of aerial military and reconnaissance operations in Gaza for 10 hours, extended to 12 hours on days designated for prisoner exchanges.
3. Return of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and Gaza Valley Withdrawal (Netsarim Axis and Kuwait Roundabout).
   1. On the seventh day (following the release of seven female detainees), Israeli forces will withdraw entirely from Al-Rashid Street eastward to Salah Al-Din Street. Military sites and installations in the area will be completely dismantled. Internally displaced persons will begin returning to their homes (without bearing arms during their return). Freedom of movement for residents will be restored across the Gaza Strip, and humanitarian aid will begin flowing into the area through Al-Rashid Street from day one without restrictions.
   2. On the 22nd day, Israeli forces will withdraw from the central sector (especially the Al-Shuhada Netsarim Axis and the Kuwait Roundabout Axis) east of Salah Al-Din Street to areas along the border. All military sites and installations will be fully dismantled. IDPs in northern Gaza will continue returning to their homes (without bearing arms during their return). Freedom of movement for residents across the Gaza Strip will remain unrestricted.
   3. From day one, intensive and adequate humanitarian aid, relief materials, and fuel (600 trucks, including 50 fuel trucks, with 300 trucks allocated to the north) will enter Gaza. This includes fuel for operating the power plant, trade, debris removal equipment, and the rehabilitation and operation of hospitals, health centers, and bakeries across Gaza. This flow will continue throughout all phases of the agreement.

4. Exchange of Detainees and Prisoners Between Both Sides:
During this first phase, Hamas will release 33 Israeli detainees (alive and deceased remains), including women (civilians and soldiers), children (under 19 years old and not enlisted), the elderly (over 50 years old), and sick and injured civilians, in exchange for an agreed-upon number of prisoners held in Israeli prisons and detention centers, as follows:

1. Hamas will release all living Israeli detainees who are civilian women and children (under 19 years old and not enlisted), in exchange for Israel releasing 30 children and women prisoners for each Israeli detainee released. This will be based on lists submitted by Hamas, prioritizing those with the longest periods of detention.
2. Hamas will release all living Israeli detainees who are elderly (over 50 years old), sick, or injured civilians, in exchange for Israel releasing 30 elderly prisoners (over 50 years old) and sick prisoners (provided they have less than 15 years remaining of their sentence), for each Israeli detainee. This will be based on lists submitted by Hamas, prioritizing those with the longest periods of detention.
3. Hamas will release all detained Israeli female soldiers who are alive, in exchange for Israel releasing 50 prisoners for each female soldier released (30 serving life sentences and 20 with sentences not exceeding 15 years remaining). This will be based on lists submitted by Hamas, excluding a number (at least 100) to be negotiated in the second phase. An agreed-upon number of prisoners (at least 50) sentenced to life imprisonment will be released to locations outside Gaza or within Gaza.

5. Mechanism for the Exchange of Detainees and Prisoners During Phase One:

1. On the first day, Hamas will release three Israeli civilian female detainees. On the seventh day, Hamas will release four additional Israeli civilian female detainees. Subsequently, Hamas will release three Israeli detainees every seven days, prioritizing women (civilians and soldiers) and all living detainees to be released under this phase. The remains of the deceased will be handed over after all living detainees have been released. During the sixth week, Hamas will release all remaining detainees covered under this phase, while Israel will release the agreed number of prisoners based on lists submitted by Hamas.
2. By the seventh day, Hamas will provide information on the number of Israeli detainees to be released during this phase.
3. In the sixth week (after the release of Hisham Al-Sayed and Avera Mengistu, who are among the 33 detainees agreed to be released during this phase), the Israeli side will release 47 prisoners from the Shalit deal who were re-arrested.
4. If the number of Israeli detainees to be released in this phase does not reach 33, the number will be supplemented by remains of the deceased from the same categories covered in this phase. In return, Israel will release all women and children (under 19 years old and not enlisted) detained from Gaza after October 7, 2023, during the sixth week.
5. The exchange process is contingent upon adherence to the agreement’s terms, including halting military operations by both sides, Israeli troop withdrawal, the return of IDPs, and the entry of humanitarian aid.

6. Released Palestinian prisoners will not be re-arrested on the same charges for which they were previously imprisoned. Additionally, the Israeli side will not require released Palestinian prisoners to serve the remainder of their original sentences or sign any documents as a condition for their release.
7. The exchange terms for detainees and prisoners in this first phase will not serve as a basis for negotiations in the second phase.
8. No later than the 16th day, indirect negotiations will commence between the two sides to agree on the terms of the second phase, including the exchange terms for detainees and prisoners (soldiers and remaining men). This agreement must be finalized before the end of the fifth week of this phase.
9. The United Nations, its agencies, and other organizations will provide humanitarian services across all areas of the Gaza Strip throughout all phases of the agreement.
10. Infrastructure rehabilitation (electricity, water, sanitation, telecommunications, and roads) will begin across Gaza. Agreed quantities of equipment for civil defense, debris removal, and rubble clearance will be delivered, with such efforts continuing throughout all phases of the agreement.
11. Facilitate the entry of necessary supplies and requirements to shelter internally displaced persons (IDPs) who lost their homes during the war. This includes no less than 60,000 temporary housing units (caravans) and 200,000 tents.
12. After the release of all Israeli female soldiers, an agreed-upon number of injured military personnel will be allowed to travel through the Rafah crossing for medical treatment. Additionally, the number of travelers, patients, and injured individuals allowed through the Rafah crossing will be increased, restrictions on travel will be lifted, and the movement of goods and trade will resume.
13. Arrangements and plans will commence for the comprehensive reconstruction of homes, civilian facilities, and civil infrastructure destroyed during the war. Support for affected areas under this clause will be provided under the supervision of several states and organizations, including Egypt, Qatar, and the United Nations.
14. All measures related to this phase—including the temporary suspension of military operations by both sides, efforts to provide aid and shelter, troop withdrawal, etc.—will continue into the second phase as long as discussions regarding the terms of the second phase remain ongoing. The guarantors of this agreement will make every effort to ensure that these indirect discussions continue until both sides reach an agreement on the terms of the second phase.  
Phase Two (42 Days)15. A declaration of sustainable calm (a permanent cessation of military and hostile activities) will take effect before the exchange of detainees and prisoners between the two sides begins. This includes the release of all remaining Israeli male detainees who are alive (civilians and soldiers) in exchange for a number of prisoners in Israeli prisons and detainees in Israeli detention centers, alongside the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip.  
Phase Three (42 Days)16. The exchange of all remains of the deceased held by both sides will be carried out after identification and verification.
17. Implementation of the Gaza Strip reconstruction plan will commence over a period of three to five years. This includes rebuilding homes, civilian facilities, and civil infrastructure, with support for all affected areas under this clause provided under the supervision of several states and organizations, including Egypt, Qatar, and the United Nations.
18. Border crossings will be opened, facilitating the movement of people and goods.  
Guarantors of This Agreement  
Qatar, Egypt, and the United States. 

​There are many critics of the Infrared Collective led by my comrade Haz Al-Din, but among them, Daniel Tutt stands out as my favorite.

To be clear, I strongly disagree with most of the conclusions in his recent article about MAGA Communism, which I believe are grounded in both a lack of evidence and Tutt's personal desire to mitigate criticism within "leftist" circles.

This criticism likely stems from his decision to engage in a conversation with Haz on his live stream, and for allowing his work to be publishing in the Midwestern Marx Institute's Journal of American Socialist Studies.

These actions, I'm sure, subjected him to backlash--similar to what I faced when my organization (Midwestern Marx) began collaborating with the Infrared Collective.

However, unlike the majority of the ACP's detractors, Tutt demonstrates a genuine understanding of what the Infrared Collective represents and why it resonates with so many alienated young Americans living under neoliberal capitalism.

I want to take this opportunity to respond to Tutt's recent piece on Infrared and MAGA Communism because, unlike the vast majority of attacks on the ACP, I believe his critique was written in good faith.

This makes it an excellent opportunity to explain why I chose to help Haz Al-Din found the American Communist Party, rather than simply taking the more traditional path of Western leftists by joining an organization like PSL, which explicitly promotes liberal cultural or "culture war" values alongside socialist and anti-imperialist politics.

An approach which has been the norm in the U.S. since the CIA's Congress for Cultural Freedom program began its work in the early 1950's.*

Let us begin with the parts of Tutt's essay that are simply incorrect or based on incomplete information.

First, he claims that Infrared's position on productive labor and baristas stems from an effort to pander to conservative culture war leanings, stating,

"Most detrimentally, this culture war pandering to the right leads Infrared to adopt a narrow empirical definition of what constitutes the working class, leading them to deny, for example, that service workers or baristas are part of the proletariat."

This is entirely incorrect, and I'm disappointed to see Tutt jump to such baseless conclusions without citing any evidence for his claim that Infrared's position is rooted in a desire to cater to culture war-obsessed conservatives.

The debate over what constitutes productive labor is as old as the labor theory of value itself--a question Marx frequently grappled with throughout his work.

A valuable insight into the nature of the service industry and productive labor comes from Marx's Capital, Volume III, chapter 16, on commercial capital--a point I have frequently raised in this debate.

I will give Tutt the benefit of the doubt and assume he has either not read my analysis or that of the ACP. In this chapter, Marx states:

"Commercial capital is, therefore, nothing but the producer's commodity capital--capital which has to undergo the process of conversion into money to perform its function as commodity capital on the market--the only difference being that instead of representing an incidental function of the producer, it is now the exclusive operation of a special kind of capitalist, the merchant, and is set apart as the business of a special investment of capital."

Here, Marx describes merchants who, rather than adding value to commodities through productive labor, solely facilitate the realization of commodity value through sale on the market.

This distinction is essential to understanding the role of service labor within Marxist economic theory.

In Marx's time, this function was carried out primarily by merchants who, as the sales and service industries had not yet expanded to the massive scale we see today under modern capitalism, where nearly 80% of the American workforce is employed in the service sector.

Most service and sales workers do not add value to commodities through labor but instead facilitate their sale on the market, accelerating the circulation and realization of capital value.

Meanwhile, the shareholders who control these industries derive the majority of their money from rents, speculation, and the value added to their products during production--long before this value is realized through its sale on the market.

Do Starbucks baristas add something to the product when they grind and pour the coffee? I would say yes.

However, this does not mean they hold the same economic power as workers who grow and harvest the coffee beans or transport them across the globe.

The labor involved in growing, harvesting, and transporting coffee beans represents the core of productive labor that drives the economy, whereas Starbucks baristas operate at capitalism's surface.

Their role is to help realize the value created during production by facilitating the sale of coffee to consumers.

This is not a moralistic judgment but a scientific and strategic assessment.

We fully support Starbucks workers in their efforts to organize; however, it is a reality that a strike by largely commercial laborers, such as Starbucks baristas, would not wield the same level of economic power as a strike by productive workers, like those in the rail industry.

For example, in 2022, Joe Biden and the Democrats went to great lengths to prevent a potential rail strike, even using the power of the state to intervene, while showing minimal concern about the unionization efforts at Starbucks in recent years.

Another critique Haz made of the Starbucks baristas is their pursuit of a craft union rather than an industrial union. A craft union, being narrower in scope, often fosters class collaboration between the company and the union's rank and file.

The ACP would fully support the creation of a coffee workers' union encompassing the entire industry, including major chains like Dunkin' Donuts or Tim Hortons up in maple leaf land.

However, history has shown that a craft union limited exclusively to Starbucks workplaces is likely to result in class collaborationism.

This is a dynamic that Walter Reuther and the UAW understood very well during the height of their power.

To characterize the critiques I've just outlined as mere "pandering to conservative culture warriors" is, at best, incorrect and, at worst, deeply dishonest.

This reflects a broader tendency within modern left-wing scholarship to sidestep the most complex and challenging debates of the Marxist tradition by dismissing those with opposing views as reactionaries.

Unfortunately, this is a pattern Daniel Tutt sometimes falls into, despite his apparent efforts to critique in good faith.

I'd like to assume that his assessment was based on incomplete information and hope that he will revise his understanding of the ACP's position in light of the arguments I've presented above.

Tutt makes two additional claims in his article that I believe are factually, or even objectively, incorrect.

These are the assertions that Infrared is inflaming the bourgeois culture war by promoting conservative cultural positions and that Infrared usually finds itself in a position of tailing the Republican Party.

Unfortunately, Tutt offers very little evidence to substantiate these claims or to identify specific positions taken by Infrared or the ACP that align with the Republican Party or its culture war agenda.

This lack of evidence makes it difficult to understand why Tutt believes Infrared is playing such a role.

He writes, "This idea that inside the onion of the Trump MAGA movement is the beating heart of the American proletariat leads Infrared to positions that effectively tail the Republican Party."

However, he fails to provide any concrete examples of these allegedly right-wing positions, apart from the previously addressed claim regarding baristas as unproductive laborers--a point we have already examined in detail.

As a Midwestern Communist, I don't disagree with the notion that the working class sections of Donald J. Trump's MAGA base, in many ways, represent the beating heart of the American proletariat.

I often revisit the 2016 Republican primary debates, where Trump galvanized widespread support by contrasting himself with Republican elites like Jeb Bush, repeatedly criticizing Bush for his brother's role in lying America into the Iraq war.

Trump captured the hearts and minds of many American workers by presenting himself as an antidote to the establishment politics of both parties--a system that most working class Americans are thoroughly disillusioned with.

Even more than the 2016 debates, though, my understanding of the MAGA phenomenon is shaped by my everyday interactions with the people who see themselves as MAGA--such as my beloved wrestling coach, who protested peacefully outside the White House on January 6th, while other Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, seemingly encouraged by a handful of federal agents.**

As I explained in detail in my article defending the MAGA Communism strategy, I was somewhat surprised to find that, during my political conversations with this coach, our positions overlapped far more than they contradicted.

He sees Trump as a sort of revolutionary figure--a redeemer fighting on behalf of the impoverished and indebted masses against a corrupt political establishment which he correctly believes has been exploiting working class Americans for years.

He also frequently criticized modern culture wars as a new weapon of the ruling class to keep Americans divided, now that the old weapon of racism had lost so much of its edge.

Notably, both my Trump-supporting and liberal coaches and teammates alike have been supportive of my work with the ACP in general.

From my perspective here in Iowa, the Infrared Collective was among the first on the Marxist left to accurately grasp the Trump phenomenon and understand why he resonated so strongly with the American proletariat--something I believe Daniel Tutt also recognizes to some extent.

Trump's rhetoric about bringing jobs back, controlling unregulated immigration that undercuts labor markets, and ending the endless wars was far more appealing to American workers than his more bigoted remarks or infamous Twitter tirades.

In fact, a common sentiment among Trump supporters all over the Midwest is that they like Trump but wish the Secret Service would take his Twitter account away.

It was Trump's populist and anti-imperialist messaging that flipped so many former Obama voters to his side--not his brash and inflammatory comments about various ethnic groups.

One of the things many leftists fail to grasp about MAGA workers in areas like the Midwest is that it would be entirely ineffective to suggest they listen to a more "traditional" western leftist like Hasan Piker.

The liberal culture war positions Hasan espouses in nearly every stream are off-putting to much of the Midwestern proletariat, who tend to hold more conservative cultural views.

Similarly, a thinker like Daniel Tutt would not resonate with many of the working class people I interact with here in Iowa--not only because of the academic tone of his writing, but also due to the liberal cultural values he both supports and expects all other socialists to openly and explicitly endorse.

The online Communist political personality I most often recommend to working class Iowans is Jackson Hinkle.

This isn't because I think Jackson is perfect or agree with everything he has ever posted, but because his tone and stance on social issues are unlikely to alienate them.

This doesn't mean I believe everyone needs to emulate Jackson's style or adopt his cultural positions, but I do see him as an incredibly effective figure for guiding conservative Americans who are eager to challenge the establishment toward a Communist perspective--one that frames class struggle as the solution, rather than relying on the demagoguery of Trump, who claims to oppose the owning class that he himself belongs to.

Haz Al-Din has used the revered culinary institution known as McDonald's as a metaphor to describe the MAGA Communism strategy, famously stating, "We are here for the burger - not the clown."

In other words, the goal is to connect with working class Trump supporters through Communism and Marxist ideology, not to follow Trump and support his every move.

Jackson Hinkle has exemplified this approach by being one of Trump's most vocal critics among influencers who maintain a large MAGA audience, openly criticizing Trump for appointing figures like Marco Rubio to shape his foreign policy.

I believe Tutt is overestimating the extent to which Haz and Jackson are inflaming the culture war while underestimating how he and other leftists contribute to it, exacerbating these divisions within the working class by insistently demanding that everyone adopt their liberal cultural values.

In his conversation with Haz, Tutt recounted a story about a transgender friend who called him in tears after seeing a meme they said was anti-trans posted by a member of the Infrared Community.

Tutt argued that such rhetoric harms the socialist movement, prompting Haz to discourage his audience from engaging in similarly divisive rhetoric.

While I agree that posting genuinely hateful memes is unnecessary and can create divisions within the working class and its movement for liberation, I also believe that it is entirely legitimate to critique modern gender ideology and the ways in which the LGBTQ+ movement and its symbolism have been co-opted and used as tools of the ruling class.

For example, corporations like Raytheon and Boeing now participate in Pride Parades and wave rainbow flags to signal their alignment with liberal culture war values--an act of performative solidarity that serves to obscure their role in imperialism and exploitation, implicitly pushing class collaboration based in identity over everything else.

It is both anti-Marxist and unfair to dismiss criticism of this phenomenon by claiming that your friend found something offensive or was crying about something.

What inflames the culture war more than anything is the insistence that all socialists must adopt the same positions as Raytheon on these issues--or else risk being stripped of their "socialism card" and labeled as a reactionary.

The use of woke-ism to promote imperialism and capitalism is a pressing issue that cannot be dismissed simply because some LGBTQ+ individuals may find such critiques offensive or emotionally distressing on an individual level.

Marxism is a materialist ideology rooted in the ruthless criticism of all that exists.

Declaring certain topics off-limits because they may upset someone is pure bourgeois moralism and individualism, which ultimately serves to alienate working class people from the movement.

While Tutt and the academic liberal left milieu he represents assert that all socialists must adopt liberal cultural positions, the ACP strives to find the "Golden Stalinist Center."

Although Tutt also criticizes the ACP's admiration of Stalin--an objection I can only roll my eyes at, as it likely stems from his position within the American academy, where praising Stalin is almost as taboo as rejecting liberal culture war positions.

The ACP does not expect all members to align with Jackson Hinkle's cultural views or Daniel Tutt's; instead, we advocate a position of tolerance.

This means we don't care about your sexual orientation or gender identity so long as you are committed to fighting for the working class and against the capitalist class.

Our position extends tolerance not only towards individuals' sexuality and gender identity but also towards those who critically examine the LGBTQ+ movement and its role in upholding bourgeois ideology.

Or perhaps those workers who feel these ideas are being pushed on their children at too young an age.

We are not inflaming the culture war; we are transcending it through practical action--a task made more challenging by figures like Tutt, who perpetuate culture war divisions by demanding that all socialists conform to the cultural views and values imposed on the American left by the CIA's Congress for Cultural Freedom.

To Tutt's credit, he understands what so many Western academic Marxists fail to grasp about Infrared and the nature of the internet itself.

He recognizes that, in the modern era, the internet and profile-building are dominant forms of communication, and that political ideologies often incubate online before manifesting more concretely in the real world.

Tutt's decision to write such an article reflects the fact that he takes the Infrared community and the American Communist Party seriously as a growing political movement.

This sets him apart from many would-be critics, who without reason dismiss us as terminally online fascists seeking power for its own sake or as participants in some far-fetched conspiracy to destroy the American left, as if it hasn't already been thoroughly co-opted and controlled by institutions like the CIA for decades.

I look forward to engaging further with Tutt's ideas and hope he continues to follow the work of the Party with an open mind about how Marxists in modern-day America can best navigate the culture war.

I also noticed that Tutt refrained from criticizing my organization, Midwestern Marx, which has taken a more tempered approach to critiquing the dominance of liberal cultural values within the left.

Interestingly, Tutt compares Haz to the self-help guru Jordan Peterson, rather than drawing parallels to me, even though my work is far more aligned with a "Communist Jordan Peterson" approach--focusing on self-help and the development of a socialist virtue ethic more than anything produced by the Infrared Collective.

But if Midwestern Marx and Infrared are unified in pursuing shared political goals under the program and constitution of the American Communist Party, does it make sense to criticize one while ignoring the other simply because we have differences in tone or our approach to analyzing the culture war from a Marxist perspective?

I believe that, in time, more and more people will come to understand what we at Midwestern Marx have always prioritized: advancing the class struggle and the cause of anti-imperialism, beyond the distractions of the culture war.

These are objectives that I can say with absolute certainty are deeply held by my comrades Haz Al-Din and Jackson Hinkle.

We are not here to attack individuals or exacerbate culture war divisions.

Our mission is to embed ourselves in our communities and workplaces, educate the masses on Marxist ideology, and advance the class struggle to transform America from a decaying capitalist empire into a socialist republic--one that cares for its people and respects the sovereignty of all nations.

To this end, we are making remarkable process. If you'd like to join us in this fight, visit acp dot us today!

Citations/Footnotes:
* Rockhill, Gabriel. "Article in Counterpunch: 'Lessons from January 6th: An inside job.'" Counterpunch, 18 Feb. 2022

** Smith, Edward Liger. "In Defense of the MAGA Communism Strategy." Midwestern Marx Institute, 25 May 2024

We live in an unprecedented era of politics. Today, every political faction needs to present itself as a radical alternative to the dominant order. Even the most “centrist” liberals are forced to construct an existential scenario where their “normality” has been highjacked by conservatives ushering in a “threat to democracy” they must radically challenge. Today the struggle to sustain the ruling class’s hegemony takes the form of an apparent loss of it; to sustain hegemony it is necessary to make hegemony seem counter hegemonic.

In the past I have ventured to call the forms this takes in Western “Marxism” “controlled counter hegemony.” However, what I have failed to note is how hegemony itself – not just one component of it – purports itself to be counter-hegemonic. The ruling ideas of our era enunciate themselves as contenders. It is like a boxing champion who sustains his title not through mandatory defenses, but as a mandatory challenger. The ideas upheld by dominant institutions of capital are simultaneously presented as a marginalized locus of subaltern thought.

This is, ultimately, a culmination of the purportedly “post-ideological” age the West enters into in the 1990s, with the so-called “end of history.” As Slavoj Žižek has noted, it is precisely when we think we have escaped or overcome ideology that we are the deepest within it. Is it not the case that, likewise, those who present themselves as the ultimate underdogs today – whether the liberals, the conservatives, or the leftists – are precisely in the same club of ideological frontrunners… all playing various essential roles for the ‘team’ as a whole?

The need to present all politics – even the politics which seeks to sustain the dominant political parameters – as revolutionary and radical, is often expressed through the metaphorical invocation of the film which captured and reproduced the paradoxical zeitgeist of the “post-ideological” age itself: The Matrix. Is not The Matrix a clear example of an ideological notion of how one could “escape” ideology? Taking the “red pill,” today, is precisely how we most efficiently receive the effect of the blue pill, that is, it is through the idea that taking a red pill will help us escape the world of the blue pill that we precisely anchor ourselves, knowingly or not, in the world of the blue pill.

The Tate brothers are perhaps one of the best examples of this. Their whole persona and brand (or profile) is centered around helping people “escape the matrix.” But how is that done, exactly? What is the path out of the matrix? The answer couldn’t be more rooted in “the matrix” itself: get together with your core group of friends and find ways to get rich. But is this ‘get rich’ mentality not precisely what the dominant ideology of the U.S. has been since its inception? Is it not precisely the stereotypical jargon about the “land of opportunities,” where, irrespective of background, hard work and discipline could make you rich? W. E. B. Du Bois would see nothing but a good ole return to the “American assumption” in this purported path to escape the matrix.

Today Plato’s cave can be rewritten as a labyrinth, where once one escapes and sees the sun, what one is actually in is another cave, one that is more complex and tangled. One stays in the cave precisely by thinking they have escaped. It is like that Peter Kay skit, "Max and Paddy Go to Prison,” where the prisoner is building a tunnel to escape his cell. The only small problem is that he’s digging into the cell next door. Today many of the attempts which purport themselves as pathways to leaving the ideological prison of the contemporary capitalist order, in reality simply lead us into the cell next door.

This does not mean, necessarily, that all hopes of escape are really – deep down – ways of remaining trapped. In fact, the abstract generalization of such false escapes into an ontological condition for our age its itself a form of controlled counter hegemony… what Keti Chuckrov called the “radicalization of the impossibility of exit.” It is archetypical of the postmodern condition to suspend oneself to the objective recognition of universal entrapment. It is its own form of epistemological escape which serves entrapment itself.

Escape is possible, but we must constantly reflect on whether we too fall into the escape routes which further entrap. While we should not be nihilists to the possibility of genuine escapes, we should be realists in the face of how ‘escaping the matrix’ has itself become an industry which serves to reinforce it further.

​SIGN UP NOW FOR MY NEW SEMINAR ON MARXISM-LENINISM (part 2). LIMITED SEATS AVAILABLE!
​https://midwesternmarxpublishingpress.sellfy.store/p/marxism-school-seminar-on-marxism-leninism-part-2-winter-2025-carlos-l-garrido/

By censoring voices that critique capitalism, question class divisions, or expose corporate malfeasance, the ruling class prevents the dissemination of ideas that could mobilize opposition. Dissenting voices, socialist literature, and revolutionary thought are thus labeled as "subversive" or "dangerous," enabling the ruling class to maintain a cultural monopoly that reinforces capitalist ideology.
​
The Revolution Report media outlet was recently forced to significantly reduce its operations due to escalating U.S. government actions against the Russian media outlet RT, the employer of TRR editor-in-chief, Donald Courter. These actions included sanctions, criminal charges, and allegations of covert propaganda. 

As a result, individuals associated with RT have faced raids, harassment, and legal threats, prompting many, including Courter, to flee the country. Under these pressures, The Revolution Report has since ceased operating as a formal entity and transitioned into a personal project led by Courter.

This tactic has been applied many times by capitalists to discredit leaders of the American Communist Party, including Jackson Hinkle, Haz al-Din, and others.

Canceling Livelihood

Canceling an individual’s livelihood is another weapon in the ruling class's arsenal. Workers who organize, speak out, or challenge the capitalist structure often face job loss, expulsion from institutions, or blacklisting within industries. In a capitalist society, where the means of survival are commodified, removing an individual’s access to these means effectively disciplines both the punished person and the broader workforce by demonstrating the risks of resistance.

This tactic underscores Karl Marx’s theory of the "reserve army of labor." By creating precarity among workers, the ruling class ensures that job security remains a privilege rather than a right. Fear of economic destitution becomes a powerful motivator for conformity, compelling workers to accept substandard conditions rather than risk reprisal. Canceling livelihood, therefore, is not merely about punishing dissenters but about reminding the working class of their dependence on capital owners, perpetuating the capitalist mode of production.

In recent days, Palestine advocates have faced significant challenges in expressing their views. After 18 years of teaching Latinx Studies and International Affairs at CUNY’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Danny Shaw was fired in April. He never received a clear explanation for his dismissal or evidence of any policy violation. Shaw believes the issue originated from his personal social media posts. He endured doxxing and threats for his solidarity with other terminated academics, including Lisa Hofman Kurda from CUNY, as well as Jairo Funez-Flores and Shellyne Rodriguez from Texas Tech University. ​

In the heart of one of America's most MAGA states lies an unexpected legacy of socialist experimentation that continues to influence life in North Dakota today. While contemporary political discourse might portray socialism as foreign to American values, North Dakota's unique history tells a different story—one of pragmatic farmers who embraced socialist solutions to combat economic exploitation and built institutions that persist today.

The roots of North Dakota's socialist movement run deep. The first North Dakota "socialist club" was established in 1900, born from the frustrations of farmworkers seeking economic justice. This wasn't the academic socialism of urban intellectuals but a homegrown movement emerging from the harsh realities of agricultural life on the northern plains. These early socialist organizers laid the groundwork for one of the most successful experiments in American socialism.

The movement's defining moment came in 1915 with the Nonpartisan League (NPL) formation. Founded by Arthur C. Townley, a former Socialist Party organizer, the NPL transformed North Dakota's political landscape by uniting progressives, reformers, and radicals behind a platform of state ownership of key economic institutions. Townley's genius lay in repackaging socialist ideas in a way that appealed to North Dakota's pragmatic farmers, focusing on concrete solutions rather than ideological purity.

The NPL's rise to power was meteoric. By 1919, the organization had gained control of North Dakota's state government and began implementing its ambitious agenda. Their crowning achievements included the establishment of two institutions that would have been unthinkable in most American states: the Bank of North Dakota (BND), which opened its doors on July 28, 1919, and the North Dakota State Mill and Elevator, the only state-owned milling facility in the United States. 

These institutions directly challenged the out-of-state banks and grain monopolies that North Dakota farmers correctly believed were exploiting them. The Bank of North Dakota, in particular, stands as a remarkable testament to the movement's success—it remains the only government-owned general-service bank in the United States, a "socialist" institution that has survived and thrived in a deep MAGA state.

Perhaps most surprisingly, North Dakota's socialist experiment has demonstrated remarkable staying power. The Bank of North Dakota has evolved from a 'controversial socialist enterprise' into a widely respected financial institution. As noted in recent assessments, the bank's success has inspired other states to consider similar public banking initiatives, particularly during financial crises that have shaken confidence in private banking institutions.

The State Mill and Elevator tell a similar story. What began as a socialist experiment authorized by the 1919 state legislature has become an integral part of North Dakota's agricultural economy. Today, it stands as the largest flour mill in the United States, proving that state ownership can thrive in our country. 

The North Dakota experience suggests that ideological labels matter less than practical results.

"Israel is our greatest ally." This phrase is commonly used by many in the American political establishment in instances in which tensions between Israel and its neighbors flare up to justify the large amounts of military aid the United States gives to Israel without addressing the reasons why America has the relationship with Israel that it does. Addressing such a topic would risk exposing inconvenient truths regarding the partnership between Washington and Tel Aviv.

Historical context is important to understand both why Israeli-American relations are the way they are and the consequences that have emerged due to such relations. After all, the United States and Israel didn't always have such a special relationship. The current relationship between the United States and Israel is the product of numerous events and decisions made over decades to bring about such a state of affairs.

​In 1896, Austro-Hungarian Jewish political activist Theodor Herzl published Der Judenstaat, in which he argued that the solution to the anti-Semitic sentiment faced by Jews in Europe was the establishment of a Jewish state. This idea of Herzl's was known as political Zionism. 1897 would see the World Zionist Organization founded and the First Zionist Congress proclaim its objective of establishing a nation for the Jewish people in the land known as Palestine.

However, it wasn't until after the Second World War that the Zionists achieved their objective. The genocide carried out against European Jews by the Third Reich caused many to flee to Palestine despite limits placed on Jewish immigration to the region by the British who administrated the area at the time. Eventually, conflict broke out between Zionist militias, Palestinian Arab fighters, and British troops.

In 1947, Britain announced that it would terminate its Mandate for Palestine and requested that the United Nations General Assembly handle the question of Palestine. That same year, the United Nations voted to partition Palestine. According to the partition plan, a little over half of Palestine was to make up the territory of the Jewish state, and the territory not allotted to the Jewish state would be considered the Arab nation of Palestine.

The United Nations failed to address how the new Zionist nation could be a Jewish state when half of its inhabitants were Palestinians. Unsurprisingly, the Palestinians and the Arab world, in general, rejected the partition plan. The Zionists, for their part, saw opportunities present themselves.

The British withdrawal from Palestine meant that there would be no one to stop the Zionists from seizing more territory than the United Nations had given them. It wouldn't be long until Zionist militias engaged in acts of terrorism, such as the use of car bombs and the launching of attacks on Palestinian villages to drive Palestinians out of their communities. By the time Britain terminated its Mandate for Palestine, nearly a quarter of a million Palestinians had fled.

The day before Britain terminated its Mandate for Palestine, Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion declared the founding of the State of Israel, the nation that emerged from the territory allotted to the Zionists and the territory that the Zionists seized from the Palestinians. Though President Harry S. Truman recognized the State of Israel, American policymakers took a moderate approach to relations with Israel for fear of alienating Arab nations. It wasn't until the Kennedy administration that the first large-scale arms shipment to Israel was authorized.

J.J. Goldberg, editor emeritus of the newspaper for Jewish-American audiences known as The Forward, states in his book, Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment, "Zionist influence increased exponentially during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations because the affluence and influence of Jews in American society had increased. Jews had become vital donors to the Democratic Party; they were key figures in the organized labor movement, which was essential to the Democratic Party; they were major figures in liberal intellectual, cultural, and academic circles. More than any of their predecessors in the Oval Office, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson counted numerous Jews among their close advisers, donors, and personal friends.” With this, one could say that the shift toward a more explicitly pro-Israel foreign policy where Middle Eastern affairs are concerned came about as a consequence of the rising influence of the Israel lobby in liberal politics.

Israel's victory in the 1967 Six-Day War saw American military aid to Israel increase to unprecedented levels. Before that conflict, American officials believed Israel was too weak to be used to counter Soviet influence. However, Israel's military victories were beginning to prove otherwise. Following the Six-Day War, American aid to Israel increased rapidly.

By 1971, American aid to Israel surpassed half a billion dollars a year, with eighty-five percent of that being pure military aid. This amount quintupled after the 1973 Yom Kippur War. By 1976, Israel had become the largest recipient of American foreign aid, a status that it has maintained into the present day as of the writing of this article.

Over the years, Congress has granted Israel certain privileges to receive more aid and more expediently than other nations. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt explain in their book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, "Most recipients of American foreign aid get their money in quarterly installments, but since 1982, the annual foreign aid bill has included a special clause specifying that Israel is to receive its entire annual appropriation in the first thirty days of the fiscal year." In other words, the official policy of the American government is for Israel to receive special treatment.

What's more, the Foreign Military Financing program usually requires recipients of American military assistance to spend all of the money in the United States to help maintain the employment of American defense workers. However, Congress grants Israel a special exemption that authorizes it to use approximately one in every four American military aid dollars to subsidize its defense industry. In addition, a 2006 report for the Congressional Research Service noted that no other recipient of American military assistance had received this benefit, while a 2005 Congressional Research Service Report noted that due to American economic aid is given to Israel as direct government-to-government budgetary support without specific project accounting and the money is fungible, there is no way to tell for sure how Israel uses American aid.

With this, one might arrive at the question of why Israel receives this special treatment. Ultimately, this comes down to the influence of the Israel lobby. The Israel lobby is a term used to describe the coalition of individuals and organizations that work to shape American foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction.

The most important organization within the Israel lobby is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee or AIPAC. Part of what makes AIPAC such a powerful organization is its practice of grooming congressional candidates. According to former AIPAC president Howard Friedman, "AIPAC meets with every candidate running for Congress. These candidates receive in-depth briefings to help them completely understand the complexities of Israel's predicament and that of the Middle East as a whole. We even ask each candidate to author a 'position paper' on their views of the U.S.-Israel relationship so it's clear where they stand on the subject."

Another reason why AIPAC is such a powerful organization is its ability to punish those who stand in the way of its objectives. When President Ford's attempts at securing peace between Israel and Egypt stalled due to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's refusal to cede strategic passes in the Sinai as well as oil fields which provided Israel with more than half of its oil, Ford sent Rabin a letter informing him that Washington would reassess its relationship with Tel Aviv. In response, seventy-six senators signed a letter opposing the reassessment of Israeli-American relations. After the letter, Senator Henry Jackson added an amendment to a defense procurement bill that allowed Israel to receive American weaponry at low interest rates. Not only did AIPAC mobilize policymakers to come out in defense of Israel by applying pressure on the administration, but they also managed to secure for Israel an arguably more advantageous position where American military aid to Israel was concerned.

Furthermore, the power of organizations like AIPAC is not limited to merely pushing the American government to give Israel special treatment. These organizations have demonstrated their capacity to drive the American government to sacrifice American citizens on Israel's behalf. In particular, the role of the Israel lobby was just as important as the American government's desire to maintain the hegemony of the U.S. dollar in pushing the United States to invade Iraq in 2003. To understand the role of the Israel lobby in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, one must have historical context. In particular, it is helpful to examine Iraq-Israel relations before 2003.

From Israel's beginning, Iraq had been a thorn in Tel Aviv's side. Immediately following the declaration of the State of Israel, Arab forces, including Iraqi forces, intervened against Israel. Following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Iraq remained the only Arab nation not to have signed a ceasefire agreement with Israel. Over the years, Iraq would play a crucial role in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Iraq participated in both the 1967 Six-Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

During Saddam Hussein's rule over Iraq, tensions increased between Israel and Iraq as multiple clashes between the two nations occurred throughout the 1980s and 1990s. These clashes include the instance in which Israel bombed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 to stifle Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons development program and the incident that occurred during the Persian Gulf War in which Saddam Hussein fired Scud missiles into Israel in the hopes that Israeli entry into the conflict against Iraq might jeopardize the American-led coalition since the coalition included an assortment of nations that had complicated relations with Israel. To prevent the alliance from being jeopardized, the United States pressured Israel into not retaliating against provocations from Iraq. To satisfy Israel, coalition leaders sent special operations forces to seek out and destroy the mobile Scud launchers. During these decades, Israel regarded Iraq as a serious threat, and they longed for regime change in Iraq.

The opportunity for regime change in Iraq arrived following the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. Not long after the towers came down, the administration of President George W. Bush falsely linked al-Qaeda, the terrorist network that carried out the attacks, to Saddam Hussein's regime. The political faction which led the Bush administration was known as the neoconservatives. Neoconservatism was born out of a sense of disenchantment that many foreign policy hawks felt with the political left during the rise of the counterculture of the 1960s. Neoconservatives favored using American might to reshape politically sensitive areas of the world.

Under the administration of President George H.W. Bush, some neoconservatives held high-ranking positions. Among the most defining moments of the one-term presidency was the Persian Gulf War. During that conflict, George H.W. Bush's administration decided against marching into Baghdad and overthrowing Saddam Hussein's regime, as doing so would have run the risk of destabilizing Iraq. Though the United States achieved victory in the Persian Gulf War, some of the neoconservatives within George H.W. Bush's administration, such as Paul Wolfowitz in particular, felt that by leaving Saddam Hussein in power, the administration didn't go far enough in waging war against Iraq. These neoconservatives would spend the 1990s advocating for regime change in Baghdad even before the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001.

It was under the administration of George H.W. Bush's son, George W. Bush, that regime change would come to Iraq. Some of the neoconservatives who held positions in George H.W. Bush's administration would hold positions in his son's administration. It would come as no surprise then that these neoconservatives would be among the leading voices calling for regime change in Iraq. Among the most prominent ways in which they pushed for regime change was the use of propaganda to drum up support for military intervention in Iraq. The terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001 provided neoconservatives the opportunity to feed the panicked American people propaganda, which falsely linked the terrorist network that conducted the attack to Saddam Hussein's regime.

Another untruth told to sell military intervention in Iraq was the myth of Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. Following the end of the Persian Gulf War, Iraq accepted the terms of United Nations Security Council Resolution 687. This resolution set the terms with which Iraq was to comply after losing the war. The resolution forbade Iraq from developing, possessing, or using chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. The United Nations Special Commission, or UNSCOM, was an inspection regime established to ensure Iraq's compliance with the destruction of their weapons of mass destruction.

Scott Ritter is a former United States Marine Corps intelligence officer who joined UNSCOM as an inspector. In 1999, he noted that Iraq no longer possessed a meaningful weapons of mass destruction capability. August of 1998 saw the Iraqis suspend cooperation with the inspectors entirely out of concern that the inspectors were collecting intelligence on behalf of the United States, an accusation that turned out to be true. The enactment of the Iraq Liberation Act in October 1998 made the removal of Saddam Hussein from power official American foreign policy. This act provided nearly a hundred million dollars for opposition groups in Iraq.

During the 2000 United States presidential election, the Republican Party's platform called for the full implementation of the Iraq Liberation Act. Running for the Republican Party was none other than George W. Bush. The Bush administration would get its chance to implement the Iraq Liberation Act in full following the September 11th terrorist attacks when it launched a propaganda campaign to motivate the American public to support a military intervention in Iraq. President Bush laid some of the groundwork for an eventual invasion of Iraq in his January 2002 State of the Union Address, in which he called Iraq a member of a so-called "axis of evil" along with Iran and North Korea and accused Iraq of pursuing weapons of mass destruction. Bush began formally making a case to the international community for an invasion of Iraq in an address he delivered to the United Nations Security Council on September 12th, 2002.

Before Bush's address to the United Nations Security Council, a September 5th report from Major General Glen Shaffer revealed that America based its assessments regarding Iraq and weapons of mass destruction on imprecise intelligence and assumptions rather than hard evidence. What's more, is that the British government was also unable to find hard evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. America's ally, Britain, agreed with America's hawkish stance toward Iraq, while others, such as France and Germany, argued instead for diplomacy and more weapons inspections.

After much debate, the United Nations Security Council adopted a compromise solution, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441, which authorized the resuming of weapons inspections and warned of dire consequences for non-compliance. France and Russia, members of the United Nations Security Council, made it known that they did not consider these dire consequences to include the use of military force to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime, to which the American and British ambassadors to the United Nations publicly confirmed this interpretation of the resolution.

Despite the compromise resolution, in October 2002, Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002, which authorized the president to "use any means necessary" against Iraq. While the United States was preparing to use military force against Iraq, Saddam Hussein agreed to United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441 on November 13th, and weapons inspectors returned to Iraq under the direction of lead United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix. On February 5th, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell appeared before the United Nations to present evidence that Iraq was hiding weapons. In his presentation, Powell included information from a defector from Iraq whom British and German intelligence had already deemed untrustworthy, and Powell also made sensational claims accusing Iraq of harboring and supporting al-Qaeda terrorists and alleging that al-Qaeda had been attempting to acquire weapons of mass destruction from Iraq. In March 2003, Blix stated that the weapons inspectors found no evidence of Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction.

As it became increasingly clear that most of the United Nations Security Council members would not support a resolution that would lead to a war with Iraq, the United States and its "coalition of the willing" began preparing to invade Iraq without authorization from the United Nations. On March 17th, 2003, President Bush made an address in which he stated that Saddam Hussein and his sons would have two days to leave Iraq. After this deadline passed, the invasion commenced. Baghdad fell to American forces in April 2003, but Saddam Hussein wasn't until December 13th, 2003, that American troops captured Saddam Hussein. His execution took place on December 30th, 2006.

The invasion resulted in the destabilization of Iraq, thereby allowing Iran to exert influence over its Arab neighbor, America becoming locked in a nearly decade-long conflict that cost the lives of five hundred thousand to a million people in a nation with complicated internal politics without a proper exit strategy, and the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant whose rapid takeover of areas of Iraq and Syria caused the return of American troops to Iraq. And there were no weapons of mass destruction found after the invasion. That was because Iraq no longer possessed them by 2003. The rationale for the war offered by the American political establishment was a pack of lies. And such as the case with most lies throughout history, one might ask who benefitted from the lies told.

As it turned out, it was Israel who benefitted from the lies that formed the basis for the invasion of Iraq. The fact of the matter is that the United States invaded Iraq in part to safeguard Israel's security. After all, Israel wanted Saddam Hussein's regime overthrown due to the security threat that they believed Iraq posed. The neoconservatives, who are staunch supporters of Israel, also wished to see Saddam Hussein's regime overthrown to safeguard Israel's security as well as other reasons. In this regard, the neoconservatives were doing the bidding of Israel.

The notion that Israel was a leading factor in the decision to invade Iraq has been controversial, and many have asked the question of how Israel could have been a leading factor in the decision to invade Iraq when the mention of Israel was often absent from the words of Bush administration officials in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Evidence of Israel being a leading factor in the decision to invade Iraq exists not in the rhetoric of Bush administration officials but in the rhetoric of Israeli officials at that time and the methods used by the Israel lobby to prevent the American people from perceiving the war as being driven by Israeli interests. In the run-up to the invasion, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon praised President Bush for pursuing a war with Iraq while also attempting to disavow Israeli involvement. The Israel lobby sought to protect Israel's standing in American public opinion while the Bush administration pursued war with Iraq. An example of this is the way the Israel Project sent a memo urging pro-Israel leaders to keep silent on Iraq so that public perception wouldn't be that of Israel instigating the war with Iraq.

In addition, multiple Bush administration officials held membership in pro-Israel think tanks. John Bolton, who would serve as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, had been a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and an advisor to the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. Furthermore, Bush's vice president Dick Cheney and former director of central intelligence James Woolsey have also served on the advisory board of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. There are many more examples of key figures from Bush's presidency having affiliations with pro-Israel organizations that collectively make up the Israel lobby. America's decision to invade Iraq at Israel's behest was the ultimate show of their loyalty to Israel.

Another pro-Israel organization that played a notable role in America's decision to invade Iraq was AIPAC. Though some claim that AIPAC did not advocate for war with Iraq, evidence to the contrary exists. Former AIPAC executive director Howard Kohr described in a 2003 interview with the New York Sun 'quietly' lobbying Congress to approve the use of force against Iraq as one of AIPAC's successes over that past year. Additionally, Jeffrey Goldberg of The New Yorker reported in a profile of Steven J. Rosen, AIPAC's policy director during the run-up to the Iraq War, that AIPAC lobbied Congress in favor of going to war with Iraq. It's also worth mentioning the fact that AIPAC generally supports what Israel wants; Israel wanted the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime.

In summary, the American government sacrificed the lives of brave men and women serving in uniform and destabilized Iraq over the security concerns of Israel. The Israel lobby had the power to do this. Some might write this off as a product of the past, unable to affect us in the present. Others might ask why they should care about this in the present. The fact of the matter is that the current relationship that exists between Washington and Tel Aviv threatens to bring about future disasters comparable to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

As of the writing of this article, the Biden administration has announced plans to send a billion dollars in weapons to Israel as Israel continues its fight against Hamas, even though current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had previously propped up Hamas with Qatari money as a divide-and-conquer strategy and evidence has since come to light pointing to Israeli intelligence having ignored warnings about the attacks launched by Hamas which acted as the catalyst for the ongoing conflict in Gaza. It's also worth noting that Israel has been committing a series of atrocities against the people of Gaza, including the bombing of homes, mosques, schools, and hospitals in keeping with the Dahiya doctrine, a terrorist tactic employed by Israel in which the Israel Defense Forces disproportionally attack civilian areas in response to rocket attacks to terrorize Palestinian civil society into putting pressure on Hamas, the blocking of the delivery of water, food, and fuel to Gazans, the razing of agricultural land to deprive Gazans of food, the forced displacement of Gazan civilians by bombing their homes, and the punishing of families of alleged attackers with forcible transfers and home demolitions among other means of collective punishment. Even with the International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, having applied for an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, President Biden continues to defend the Israeli prime minister, describing the move as "outrageous" and claiming there to be no equivalence between Israel and Hamas. In addition to aiding Israel materially, the United States remains militarily engaged in the Middle East, often finding itself in confrontations with Israel's enemies. Now is the time for the American public to be made aware of the kind of influence that the Israel lobby holds over our leaders so they can equip themselves to tell Washington that the time has come for America to unshackle itself from the chains of Tel Aviv's interests and this unshackling may be a necessary stepping stone to a future in which the people of Palestine may enjoy the same level of sovereignty as the people of Israel.

Nicholas Reed

Dec 25, 2024

On December 23rd 2024, the American Communist Party (ACP) in joint effort with the Communist Party
of the Russian Federation (KPRF), sent a Humanitarian Convoy to Donbass. The American Communist Party considers it a patriotic duty to assist the people of Donbass in their time of need. People who have been humiliated by the criminal kleptocratic regime in Kiev. The sendoff point was at the V.I Lenin State Farm. Thousands of festive New Year’s gifts addressed to the children of Donetsk and Lugansk were included, along with warm winter clothing, footwear, pertinent medical supplies and of course much needed foodstuff.

​The American Communist Party collected donations from anonymous contributors and party members in the United States of America. The ACP is made up of mostly young members, some even as young as
twenty-one. Young patriots who wish to do their part, for what they see as standing up for freedom, liberty and the American way. Leading the effort was Jackson Hinkle, in cooperation with members of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, fifty-five boxes of humanitarian aid was prepared. Including canned meat, condensed milk, medical aid and toys for the people of Donbass. Comrade Jackson Hinkle made a statement upon disembarking at the state farm named after Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

“The American Communist Party donated a ton of humanitarian aid to the people of Donbass, along with the KPRF (Communist Party of the Russian Federation) we sent fifty-five boxes of condensed milk, canned meat, medical supplies and toys for kids this new years. There’s a lot of people here, a lot of supplies, I’ve never seen anything like this. The good people of Russia are winning, with this (humanitarian supplies) they will continue to be victorious.”