Wicked Leaks, Part 1: How The Media Quarantined Evidence On Nord Stream Sabotage

by Media Lens / October 26th, 2022

Last week, Alex Nunns, author of The Candidate – Jeremy Corbyn’s Improbable Path To Power and former Corbyn speechwriter, described the current assault on democracy within the Labour Party:

‘What’s happening in the Labour Party is new. The Labour right, having had the shock of their lives in 2015, are now intent on eradicating the left entirely. This isn’t how their predecessors thought. It’s a new departure in Labour history that’ll have long term consequences.’

So why the change?

‘Previous generations of Labour right bureaucrats accommodated the left not because they were nicer than the current lot but because 1) the left was part of a power bloc which they needed to advance their own ends & 2) they were confident in containing the left within that bloc.

‘This generation of Labour right bureaucrats acts differently because 2) has changed, but 1) hasn’t. Their predecessors weren’t all stupid, so there will be a long-term cost.’

In other words, the Labour right is ‘eradicating the left entirely’ because, as the Corbyn near-miss in 2017 showed, the level of public support for left policies is now so high that it threatens to surge uncontrollably through any window of opportunity.

This rings true, and not just for the Labour Party. What we have often called the ‘corporate media’, but which in truth is a state-corporate media system, has followed essentially the same path for the same reasons.

Where once the likes of John Pilger, Robert Fisk and Peter Oborne were granted regular columns in national newspaper and magazines, and even space for prime-time documentaries, their brand of rational, compassionate dissent has been all but banished. Pilger commented recently:

‘In recent years, some of the best journalists have been eased out of the mainstream. “Defenestrated” is the word used. The spaces once open to mavericks, to journalists who went against the grain, truth-tellers, have closed.’

In October 2019, Peter Oborne published an article on ‘the way Boris Johnson was debauching Downing Street by using the power of his office to spread propaganda and fake news’.¹. The media response:

‘This article marked the end of my thirty-year-long career as a writer and broadcaster in the mainstream British press and media. I had been a regular presenter on Radio 4’s The Week in Westminster for more than two decades. It ceased to use me, without explanation. I parted company on reasonably friendly terms with the Daily Mail after our disagreement…

‘The mainstream British press and media is to all intents and purposes barred to me.’ (p. 132 and p. 133)

As with the Labour Party, the reason is that the game – and it always was a game – has changed. In the age of internet-based citizen journalism – heavily filtered by algorithms and ‘shadow-banning’ though it is – elite interests can no longer be sure that the truth can be contained by the ‘free press’ and its obedient ranks of ‘client journalists’.

In our media alert of 26 July 2002, we wrote:

‘This does not mean that there is no dissent in the mainstream; on the contrary the system strongly requires the appearance of openness. In an ostensibly democratic society, a propaganda system must incorporate occasional instances of dissent. Like vaccines, these small doses of truth inoculate the public against awareness of the rigid limits of media freedom.’

That was true two decades ago when we started Media Lens. But, now, the state-corporate media system relies less on inoculation and more on quarantine: inconvenient facts, indeed whole issues, are simply kept from public awareness. We have moved far closer to a totalitarian system depending on outright censorship.

An example was provided by a remarkable leading article in the Observer, titled, ‘The Observer view on the global escalation of Russia’s war on Ukraine’. The title notwithstanding, this October 9 article made no mention at all of the terrorist attacks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines just two weeks earlier, on September 26. But why?

The pipelines are multi-national projects operated by Swiss-based Nord Stream AG, with each intended to supply around 55 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually from Russia to Europe through pipelines laid beneath the Baltic Sea connecting to a German hub. Completed a decade ago, Russian gas giant, Gazprom, has a 51 percent stake in the project that cost around $15 billion to build. US media watch site, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), made the key point:

‘Any serious coverage of the Nord Stream attack should acknowledge that opposition to the pipeline has been a centerpiece of the US grand strategy in Europe. The long-term goal has been to keep Russia isolated and disjointed from Europe, and to keep the countries of Europe tied to US markets. Ever since German and Russian energy companies signed a deal to begin development on Nord Stream 2, the entire machinery of Washington has been working overtime to scuttle it.’

The evidence for this is simply overwhelming. For example, FAIR noted that during his confirmation hearings in 2021, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken told Congress he was ‘determined to do whatever I can to prevent’ Nord Stream 2 from being completed. Months later, the US State Department reiterated that ‘any entity involved in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline risks US sanctions and should immediately abandon work on the pipeline’.

If that doesn’t make US hostility to the pipelines clear enough, President Joe Biden told reporters in February:

‘If Russia invades…then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.’

Asked by a reporter how the US intended to end a project that was, after all, under German control, Biden responded:

‘I promise you, we will be able to do that.’

No surprise, then, that, following the attack, Blinken described the destruction of the pipelines as a ‘tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy,’ adding that this ‘offers tremendous strategic opportunity for years to come’.

Former UN weapons inspector and political analyst Scott Ritter commented:

‘Intent, motive and means: People serving life sentences in U.S. prisons have been convicted on weaker grounds than the circumstantial evidence against Washington for the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines.’

In a rare moment of ‘mainstream’ dissent echoing Ritter’s conclusion, Columbia University economist, Jeffrey Sachs, surprised his interviewer by saying:

‘I know it runs counter to our narrative, you’re not allowed to say these things in the West, but the fact of the matter is, all over the world when I talk to people, they think the US did it. Even reporters on our papers that are involved tell me, “Of course [the US is responsible],” but it doesn’t show up in our media.’

Sachs added: ‘there’s direct radar evidence that US helicopters, military helicopters that are normally based in Gdansk were circling over this area’.

Despite all of this, FAIR reported of US corporate media coverage:

‘Much of the media cast their suspicions towards Russia, including Bloomberg (9/27/22), Vox (9/29/22), Associated Press (9/30/22) and much of cable news. With few exceptions, speculation on US involvement has seemingly been deemed an intellectual no-fly-zone.’

Thus, the possibility of US involvement has been intellectually quarantined. Instead, US media have been tying themselves in knots trying to find alternative explanations. The New York Times wrote:

‘It is unclear why Moscow would seek to damage installations that cost Gazprom billions of dollars to build and maintain. The leaks are expected to delay any possibility of receiving revenue from fuel going through the pipes.’

In Britain, the Guardian affected similar confusion:

‘Nord Stream has been at the heart of a standoff between Russia and Europe over energy supplies since the start of the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, but it is not immediately clear who stands to benefit from the destruction of the gas infrastructure.’

If not ‘immediately clear’, it surely becomes clear after a moment’s honest reflection. Another Guardian report commented:

‘Ukraine, Poland, the Baltic states and the US – including its former president Donald Trump – have been fierce critics of the Nord Stream pipeline, and Germany has announced its intention to wean itself off Russian gas completely and Gazprom has wound down deliveries to almost zero.

‘For a Nato ally to have carried out an act of sabotage on a piece of infrastructure part-owned by European companies would have meant much political risk for little gain, but for Russia to destroy its own material and political asset would also seem to defy logic.’

The risk is not, in fact, that great in a world where politicians and media like the Guardian refuse to point the finger of blame at the world’s sole superpower. As we have seen, the assertion that an attack by a Nato ally would be ‘for little gain’ was publicly contradicted by Blinken’s own comment that the destruction of the pipelines ‘offers tremendous strategic opportunity for years to come.’

The Guardian added:

‘Some European politicians suggested Russia could have carried out the blasts with the aim of causing further havoc with gas prices or demonstrating its ability to damage Europe’s energy infrastructure.’

But as the Guardian acknowledged, this ‘logic’ seemed ‘to defy logic’ and suggested journalists were burying their heads in the sand at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. A further Guardian report noted:

‘A senior Ukrainian official also called it a Russian attack to destabilise Europe, without giving proof.’

Or any reasoning. The report continued:

‘British sources said they believed it may not be possible to determine what occurred with certainty.’

How convenient. The Telegraph reported:

‘Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, said that if it was confirmed it was an act of sabotage by Russia it would be “in nobody’s interest”.’

Again, a statement directly contradicted by Blinken himself. His ‘in nobody’s interest’ comment was the main focus of most media coverage.

FAIR discussed a tweet from a Polish member of the European Parliament, Radek Sikorski – a one-time Polish defence minister as well as a former American Enterprise Institute fellow, who was named one of the ‘Top 100 Global Thinkers’ in 2012 by Foreign Policy. FAIR reported:

‘Sikorski tweeted a picture of the methane leak in the ocean, along with the caption, “As we say in Polish, a small thing, but so much joy.” He later tweeted, “Thank you, USA,” with the same picture.’

These comments were occasionally reported in the UK press, but Sikorski later tweeted against the pipeline, noting:

‘Nord Stream’s only logic was for Putin to be able to blackmail or wage war on Eastern Europe with impunity.’

He added:

‘Now $20 billion of scrap metal lies at the bottom of the sea, another cost to Russia of its criminal decision to invade Ukraine. Someone…did a special maintenance operation.’

This was clearly an ironic reference to the term ‘special military operation’ used by Russia to describe its illegal invasion of Ukraine.

Significantly, the Telegraph reported some but not all of this:

‘Sikorski posted a photo of the Nord Stream methane bubbling to the Baltic’s surface, with the brief message: “Thank you, USA.”

‘Sikorski has since deleted his tweet, and has not since elaborated on it… [but] it was widely seized upon by pro-Russian media seeking to make the case for American sabotage.’

But as we have seen, Sikorski certainly had elaborated on it; and media didn’t need to be ‘pro-Russian’ to believe the comments pointed towards Western sabotage.

The Daily Mail also struggled to understand:

‘On Twitter Radoslaw Sikorski posted a picture of a massive methane gas spill on the surface of the Baltic Sea with the comment: “Thank You USA”. The hawkish MEP later tweeted that if Russia wants to continue supplying gas to Europe it must “talk to the countries controlling the gas pipelines”.

‘Whatever did he mean?’

In fact, Sikorski had been very clear about what he meant.

In a single, casual comment in the Mail on Sunday, Peter Hitchens may be the only ‘mainstream’ journalist to actually affirm the likely significance of Sikorski’s comments:

‘Radek Sikorski may have given the game away. First, he tweeted “Thank you, USA” with a picture of the gas bubbling up into the Baltic. Then, when lots of people noticed, he deleted it. That made me think he was on to something.’ ²

Curiously, non-corporate journalists like Jonathan Cook, Caitlin Johnstone, Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Maté, Bryce Green, even hippy Russell Brand, were able to find all the evidence and arguments omitted by ‘mainstream’ journalists supported by far greater resources.

And this makes the point with which we began this alert: there is now so much high-quality journalism exposing the establishment outside the state-corporate ‘mainstream’, that the task of the ‘mainstream’ now is to protect the establishment by acting as a buffer blocking citizen journalism from public awareness.

The Observer editorial which failed to even mention this major terror attack on civilian infrastructure talked of a ‘Putin plague’, describing the Russian leader as ‘a pestilence whose spread threatens the entire world. Ukraine is not its only victim’. That’s the Bad Guy. So who are the Good Guys in this fairy-tale? The editors added:

‘In this developing confrontation, much more is at stake than Ukraine’s sovereignty. On life support, it seems, is the entire postwar consensus underpinning global security, nuclear non-proliferation, free trade and international law.’

It is easy to understand why the Observer would prefer to quarantine the possibility of US involvement in a terror attack that would make a nonsense of the editors’ lofty rhetoric about a ‘postwar consensus’ based on ‘international law’.

Also no surprise, the Observer once again found answers in the favoured, fix-all solution beloved of the Western press – regime change:

‘If the Putin plague is ever to be eradicated, if the war is ever to end, such developments inside Russia, presaging a change of leadership, full military withdrawal from Ukraine and a fresh start, represent the best hope of a cure.’

• Part 2 to follow shortly.

1. Peter Oborne, The Assault on Truth, Simon & Schuster, 2021, p. 130 []
2. Hitchens, ‘How could I know…’ Mail on Sunday, 2 October 2022. [FacebookTwitter

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Media Lens is a UK-based media watchdog group headed by David Edwards and David Cromwell. The most recent Media Lens book, Propaganda Blitz by David Edwards and David Cromwell, was published in 2018 by Pluto Press. Read other articles by Media Lens, or visit Media Lens's website.

Battle Royal: Robots, Transhumans, and Humans

by Allen Forrest / October 27th, 2022

Amazing robot sci-fi stories from the 1960s that spell out what we are about to go through with transhumanism and robotics. The Creation of the Humanoids

Isaac Asimov’s
Little Lost Robot

Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot by BBC Radio 4Facebook

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Allen Forrest is a writer, painter, graphic artist and activist. He has created covers and illustrations for literary publications and books, is the winner of the Leslie Jacoby Honor for Art at San Jose State University's Reed Magazine for 2015, and his Bel Red landscape paintings are part of the Bellevue College Foundation's permanent art collection in Bellevue, WA. He lives in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Read other articles by Allen, or visit Allen's website.

“Free-Market” Education Is Ineffective and Discredited

by Shawgi Tell / October 28th, 2022

Education and other public services and social programs have been under attack by major owners of capital and “free market” ideologues for several decades. To be sure, the privatization of all spheres and sectors continues at a brisk rate at home and abroad. Public-private “partnerships” and other pay-the-rich schemes carried out under the veneer of high ideals are multiplying rapidly and intensifying problems everywhere. Few countries are unaffected.

Charter schools and vouchers are the two main forms of privatization in the sphere of American education. Both have wreaked havoc on public education and the public interest for decades. Together they have lowered the level of culture and education, misled parents and the public, greatly enriched a handful of people along the way, and damaged the economy. These privatized education arrangements have not served the national interest in any way.

Extensive information and analysis of school privatization in its various forms can be found in many places, including at the Network for Public Education, Tultican, In The Public Interest, Common Dreams, and Truthout. Hundreds of scholarly peer-reviewed articles and books also expose many serious problems with school privatization.

The main theory behind the privatization and deregulation of public education is “free-market” theory, which maintains that treating education as a commodity, as a business, as an exchange phenomenon in a dog-eat-dog world where everyone fends-for-themselves, is the best of all worlds and the most effective, civilized, and fair way to save children, the economy, society, and the nation.

“Free-market” theory openly promotes a survival-of-the-fittest ethos for schools, families, and individuals, which ends up consolidating inequality and reinforcing a system of winners and losers. In practice, “school choice” leaves many children and families behind. In this connection, it is important to appreciate the segregationist origins of “school choice”.

Such a dog-eat-dog system is anachronistic and negates arrangements based on the affirmation of basic human rights that belong to all by virtue of being human. In the “free market” you may end up in a great school or you may not, which is often the case. It is on you alone to find a school that serves the needs of your children, and to do so in an environment that is increasingly complex and confusing. And “buyer beware” because when your school closes, often without warning, there is no way to secure redress. You have to live and die by the “free market.” Nothing is guaranteed.

Indeed, privately-operated charter schools close every week, leaving many low-income black and brown families feeling violated. A recent example of this disaster comes from Philadelphia (August 26, 2022) where a news headline reads: Families left scrambling after 2 Philadelphia charter schools announce closure days before start of school. Many Philly families say that they are shocked and at a loss for what to do. Another recent example (September 24, 2022) comes from Florida: ‘Devastated’: Weeks after opening, Red Hills Academy charter school set to close. Financial malfeasance, mismanagement, and poor academic performance are the three most common reasons privately-operated charter schools close every week.

Such upheavals and chaos are common in the crisis-prone charter school sector. They are a salient feature, not just a bug, of charter school arrangements. In some cases parents receive only a short cold email from charter school operators informing them that their charter school is closing abruptly—and at the worst possible time. It is an irresponsible approach to education in a modern society. And with no sense of irony, “free market” ideologues present such “churn” and disorder as a good and normal thing, as the way things are supposed to be.

Charter schools now have a 31-year record of failure, corruption, fraud, controversy, scandal, and closure. So do vouchers. Poor accountability and low transparency are hallmarks of the crisis-prone charter school sector. However, none of this has stopped charter school promoters from working tirelessly to oversell and prettify charter schools. Charter schools have become notorious for over-promising and under-delivering. Intense advertising and marketing are central to this business-centric drive. The nation’s 100,000 public schools, on the other hand, spend nothing on advertising and marketing because they are not businesses or promoters of consumerism, competition, and the “law of the jungle.” They do not view students and parents as customers shopping for a school. Education is not seen as a commodity or as something provided to society by private interests obsessed with maximizing profit as fast as possible.

“Free-market” theory does not recognize education as a modern human social responsibility. It does not view education as a collective responsibility in the 21st century. It does not consider education to be a basic human right that government must guarantee in practice. It does not accept that public schools in a society based on mass industrial production need to be universal, well-organized, world-class, fully-funded, integrated, locally-controlled by elected individuals accountable to the public, and available for free in every neighborhood.

Education in a complex society such as ours cannot be left to chance and a fend-for-yourself outlook. Such an orientation is at odds with contemporary conditions and requirements. The “law of the jungle” is not fit for human beings. For centuries, humans have needed and wanted a society fit for all, not a society for “the fittest.”

If private schools wish to exist—and thousands do in America—that is perfectly fine. They simply should not have access to any public funds, assets, facilities, services, or resources because these belong legitimately and wholly to the public alone and no one else. Only schools that are public in the proper sense of the word should receive public funds. Calling charter schools “public” 50 times a day does not automatically make charter schools public. Over the years courts in many jurisdictions have even ruled that charter schools are not public schools. Unlike public schools, charter schools are not state agencies. There is ultimately no justification for funneling public wealth to deregulated charter schools run by unelected private persons. The private sector has no valid or legitimate claim to public funds and resources produced by working people.

Public and private are antonyms and should not be mixed up. They are different categories with distinct characteristics. The public sphere and the private domain have different features and embrace different aims, roles, and agendas, which is why they cannot be reconciled. They are also governed by different laws. The rich and their representatives continually blur the critical distinction between these different realms for self-serving reasons. For example, if they can get away with calling privately-operated deregulated charter schools “public schools,” then they can lay false claim to public funds and resources, which is really nothing more than private parasitic expropriation of public property under the banner of high ideals. Such self-serving claims make the rich richer while wrecking public education and the public interest.

According to “free market” theory, anything other than “free-market” arrangements leads to “special interests,” “politics,” “inefficiency,” “economic distortions,” “government tyranny,” and more. Government is typically the bogeyman in “free market” theory. Government is automatically and permanently evil in “free market” theory, which is ironic because government today actively imposes the neoliberal outlook and agenda of the rich on everyone and everything, leading to greater inequalities and tragedies at all levels. Like the welfare state, the neoliberal state ensures that the rich keep getting much richer. This is all consistent with the theory of private property expounded by political philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, David Hume, and Adam Smith. They argued that government’s main role is to protect private property rights, which means, among other things, prioritizing individualism over the general interests of society. To be sure, states and governments intervene regularly in the “free market” to privilege big business. The rich seem to have no issues or concerns when government guarantees them even more benefits denied to others. The rich, in reality, do not like to live and die by the “free market.” They want the state and government to guarantee them profit at all times, regardless of how damaging this is to the natural and social environment.

Private property, it should be recalled, means that only one individual can use said property. All others are excluded from use of said property; the legal individual owner has the exclusive right to use it as he or she sees fit and no one else is allowed to benefit from this property. Private property is about exclusion.¹

Further, any notion of consciously planning an economy to secure stability, sustainability, and growth for all is rashly rejected as irrational by “free market” ideologues. They maintain that it is absurd and impossible to plan for the needs of all humans in a deliberate and conscious way that ensures that all parts of the economy operate in a harmonious pro-social manner. “Things are too complex or too big to be controlled or planned” say “free market” ideologues. In this way, uncertainty, chaos, instability, individualism, consumerism, and a fend-for-yourself lifestyle are normalized.

According to “free market” ideologues, if everything were just left to the “free market” we would supposedly have the best of all worlds where “the best and brightest,” “the winners,” and “the most meritorious” would rise to the top, lead, and make everything better for everyone. Talent, ability, and initiative would be properly rewarded, according to “free market” theory. All the chips would land fairly and correctly in their proper place if everyone just played by the rules of “free market” theory. “Free market” ideologues claim that everything would be high quality if we just upheld “free market” ideas.

This ahistorical and apolitical approach ignores 50 things, including the unequal distribution and control of economic and political power in a class-divided society, that is, who is already-advantaged and who is already-disadvantaged. It ignores inherited wealth, unequal access to information, differing levels of literacy, uneven cultural capital, the exploitation of workers by owners of capital, and much more. The game, as they say, is already rigged, which is why “might makes right” and “winner takes all” prevail in the “free market.” After all, since “not everyone can be excellent” in the “free market,” then not everyone can be “a winner.” Only the “fittest survive” in this obsolete set-up. Many have to fail. Put differently, competition in the “free market” is already heavily pre-conditioned by economic and other considerations.

Mountain States Policy Center

The newest entity to enter the “free market education” foray is a “nonprofit” group called the Mountain States Policy Center. According to Idaho Ed News, the Mountain States Policy Center:

advertises itself as a nonpartisan research group. Its goal is to promote the free market, individual liberty and limited government in Washington, Montana, Wyoming and Idaho.

We are also told that, “Education is one of the group’s top concerns.” Indeed, “school choice” is the group’s “top education priority,” which means more school privatization (e.g., charter schools and vouchers).

The group is led by committed long-standing “free market” ideologues and claims to be “above” politics and rhetoric, even though it is heavily involved in both. Chris Cargill is the co-founder, President, and CEO of Mountain States Policy Center. He “spent the last 13 years with the Washington Policy Center, a similar free-market think tank headquartered in Seattle.”

In an ideological sleight of hand, the Mountain States Policy Center explicitly equates the “free market’ with “the people.” This is a particularly dark form of disinformation because the “free market” and “the people” are not the same. They are different categories with different qualities. The “free market” is the way commodities are exchanged in a society based on individualism, commodity production, exchange relations, and private property. It is a set-up based on profit-maximization, not one based on meeting social needs. This is why there are six vacant homes for every homeless person in the U.S. The people, on the other hand, refers to the modern polity made up of citizens with equal rights and duties. There is no necessary or automatic connection between the “free market” and “the people.”

People have lived and worked in many periods that did not have a “free market.” Entrepreneurialism, for instance, did not exist in most economic formations; it is specific to capitalism and serves as a euphemism for “rugged individualism,” fend-for-yourself, and survival-of-the-fittest. Promoters of entrepreneurialism also try to equate it with “innovation.” It should also be noted that the concept of “the people” did not exist in periods prior to the rise of capitalism. Under slavery and feudalism many humans were not even part of “the people.”

The “free market,” it should be stressed, rests on instability, uncertainty, chaos, anarchy, competition, consumerism, possessive individualism, and private property. It fosters turmoil (“creative destruction”) and blocks the rise of a self-reliant, diverse, and balanced economy whose parts work together in harmony to meet the needs of all. Humans, however, do not need or want instability, uncertainty, and insecurity in the 21st century. People in a modern society based on mass industrial production need and want a society that ensures stability, peace, security, and prosperity for all on a planned, conscious, sustainable basis. Constantly lurching from one economic crisis to another is inhumane and avoidable.

The aim of conflating the “free market” with “the people” is designed to make it seem like the “free market” is somehow pro-social and human-centered when, in fact, it stresses possessive individualism and denies the existence of society and the social relationship between individuals. “Free market” theory does not see individuals as social beings but rather as self-interested, disconnected, isolated (“independent”) beings that just want to be left alone while they “make their way” in this dog-eat-dog world that perpetuates many inequalities and tragedies. The “free market” essentially ignores social responsibility and lionizes individualism and individual responsibility. It has no dialectical conception of the relationship between individuals and society.

The Mountain States Policy Center also creates a false dichotomy between government and “the people.” This is done in an attempt to de-link “the people” from the government, even though no civilized society can exist without government. Such disinformation is meant to foster the idea that government is not and cannot be an arrangement that actually represents and serves people. Indeed, government is seen as a big nuisance. “People” for “free market” ideologues really means capitalists, entrepreneurs, business people, stakeholders, and consumers. It does not mean humans and citizens with rights that belong to them by virtue of their being and which must be upheld by a modern government. “Free market” ideologues never distinguish between a human-centered government versus a capital-centered government. They do not recognize that a government that upholds a public authority worthy of the name differs from a government that puts the narrow interests of big business in first place all the time.

The neoliberal character of the Mountain States Policy Center comes out again in this statement: “We believe that parents should have the right to use the dollars that they put into the public school system to educate their children as best as they see fit.” This is one of many versions of the worn-out neoliberal disinformation to funnel public money into private hands. The statement combines “parents” and “choice” in a way that makes it seem like the Mountain States Policy Center is simply defending some sort of benign choice and rights, when they are really promoting consumerism, individualism, a fend-for-yourself mentality, and the commodification of education. It also ignores the fact that public school funds do not belong to parents or students, per se. Public school funds are not “portable” and free for any individual to use as they wish whenever and wherever they want. This is not the premise, purpose, and function of public school money in the U.S.

It is worth recalling that charter means contract, that contracts are part of private law, and that charter schools are contract schools. Contracts are the quintessential market category; they make markets ‘work’. Contracts are the expression of exchange relations in a society based on commodity production and the social division of labor and private property underlying such an economy. Individualism, competition, utilitarianism, and consumerism are the companion ideologies of such an outdated set-up. The link between private property and charter schools cannot be overlooked, especially because such a connection negates the oft-repeated irrational claim that charter schools are public schools. In practice, the concept and practice of charter schools forsakes public control and benefit. This is why charter schools are not, in fact, open to all students and do cherry-pick their students using many different methods.

Further, like private businesses, charter schools treat teachers as “at-will” employees, which means that they can be hired and fired at any time for any reason. In addition, many states allow charter school teachers to teach without a license or certificate. This is on top of the fact that charter school teachers, on average, are paid less, are less experienced, and work longer days and years than their public school counterparts.

Moreover, widespread fraud and corruption are perhaps the most striking features of cyber charter schools and brick-and-mortar charter schools. Not a day goes by where there is not some sort of scandal, crime, or controversy in the charter school sector. Arrests, indictments, and incarceration of charter school employees are commonplace.

Charter school owners and operators are also known for manipulating student waiting list numbers to create the illusion that most, or all, charter schools have long student waiting lists, which is supposed to “prove” and signal to the public that charter schools are popular and a superior alternative to the public schools that educate 90% of America’s youth. Apparently, parents and students are clamoring to escape “dreadful” public schools as fast as possible, just to get into a privately-operated, deregulated, segregated charter school governed by unelected private persons focused on the bottom line. In reality, countless charter schools manipulate their waiting lists and many cannot meet their own enrollment targets. This is besides the never-ending problem of high student (and teacher and principal) turnover rates in charter schools. Every week, many students are pushed out of charter schools in one way or another and dumped back into the “dreadful” public schools that accept all students at all times. But, as researcher Jeff Bryant notes, No Matter What the Charter School Movement Says, Parents Like Their Public Schools (October 5, 2022).

The list of problems plaguing the charter school sector, along with the damage that this sector is doing to education, society, the economy, and the national interest is lengthy, damning, and indicting.

Today, a robust and growing body of unassailable evidence documents many serious problems in the crisis-prone charter school sector. This has had the effect of steadily and methodically strengthening the ideological, theoretical, educational, and political battle against neoliberal educational ideas, policies, and arrangements.

After two generations of failure and scandal, privatizers and neoliberals continue to push aggressively for more school privatization in order to transfer as much public wealth away from the public and into the hands of narrow private interests seeking new sources of profit in an economy that is tapped out and steadily collapsing.

Working people, students, parents, educators, public education advocates, and others have an objective interest in ending privatization in all its forms and defending the public interest. Neoliberals, privatizers, and “free market” ideologues determined to further wreck public education, society, the economy, and the national interest under the banner of high ideals can and must be stopped.

1. Private property and personal property are not the same. []FacebookTwitteRedditEmail

Shawgi Tell is author of the book Charter School Report Card. He can be reached at stell5@naz.edu.. Read other articles by Shawgi.

Haiti: The “Gardeners” are Coming Back to the “Jungle”

by Daniel Espinosa / October 27th, 2022

Coups-d’etat, U.N. “humanitarian” massacres, a President assassinated by U.S.-trained, Colombian mercenaries, earthquakes, cholera… and even the “aid” of the Clinton Foundation! Now, the country ravaged by decades of natural and man-made disasters braces itself for a new “humanitarian” military invasion.

*****

In a recent speech, Josep Borrel, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, explained to the world how “Europe is a garden”, while the rest of the world is a “jungle” that “could invade the garden”. This is his solution:

…gardeners have to go to the jungle. Europeans have to be much more engaged with the rest of the world. Otherwise, the rest of the world will invade us, by different ways and means.

In reality, racist “gardeners” have been invading the “jungle” for centuries, plundering and scheming genocidal massacres, and Haiti knows it better than most countries. Their “gardening” has also ensured that the so-called jungle remains underdeveloped.

In another recent speech, this time at the United Nations General Assembly, Colombian president Gustavo Petro apologized to Haiti. The first leftist head of state of the South American country – also ravaged by decades of hypocritical U.S. “war on drugs”– was referring to the assassination of Jovenel Moise during a July 2021 attack, perpetrated by a group of mostly Colombian ex-soldiers. It also included 2 Haitian-Americans. The foreign gang, trained in part by the U.S. Army, posed as a team of DEA officers to gain entry to the presidential compound.

Since then, social unrest has severely increased all over the country, and there’s an almost complete breakdown of the rule of law and many basic social services. The Haitian elite — including its U.S.-approved, de facto President, Ariel Henry — is calling for another foreign “humanitarian intervention” (a.k.a. “gardening”). Western corporate media argue that Haiti is calling for such an intervention. By “Haiti”, they mean its corrupted and U.S.-aligned political and oligarchic elite. What many people on the streets of the convulsed country really demand — besides the ousting of Henry — is that foreign forces stay the hell out of Haiti.

Regarding Western (U.S. and vassal states) support for Henry, who already received armored vehicles, let’s read what the U.S. representative to Haiti said after renouncing his post on September 22, 2021:

Last week, the U.S. and other embassies in Port-au-Prince issued another public statement of support for the unelected, de facto President Dr. Ariel Henry as interim leader of Haiti, and have continued to tout his ‘political agreement’ over another broader, earlier accord shepherded by civil society.

The embassies referred to in his quote, as Canadian writer Yves Engler explains, compose the U.N.-approved Core Group, “made up of ambassadors from Germany, Brazil, Canada, Spain, the United States, France, and the European Union.” The group, he adds:

…has heavily shaped Haitian affairs ever since American, French and Canadian troops assisted in the overthrow of the country’s elected government in 2004 and installed a United Nations occupation force.

What President Henry, himself a suspect in the killing of Moise, intend is for a foreign military or U.N. “peace-keeping” mission to enter the country and neutralize the gangs, particularly those not armed and directed by the government itself, as they currently control parts of the country and, most importantly, many vital highways and a sequestered oil refinery. Haitian gangs kidnap people to ask for ransom money, which then finances their criminal exploits, including the illegal trafficking of arms manufactured in the U.S. They have turned Haiti into the new kidnapping capital of the world. Murder and rape are widespread as well (more detail below).

Despite the many suspects arrested so far, the situation surrounding Moise’s killing remains obscure: there’s still no mastermind identified as responsible for ordering the assassination.

From the Brazilian Favelas to the Haitian Shantytowns

The United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH, 2004-2017) was purportedly intended to ameliorate the chaos that overtook the country after the aftermath of the foreign coup against the first democratically elected President of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, which happened in February 2004, two hundred years after Haiti’s heroic independence from France. In 2004, as mentioned above, the U.S., Canada, and France collaborated in the ousting of the popular leftist politician and priest from the Fanmi Lavalas party.

Conveniently, a group of Brazilian Army generals, many of them tied to the dictatorship that controlled their country until 1985, were placed in command of the U.N. mission, which was quickly associated with a handful of civilian massacres, particularly in the overpopulated slums of Cité Soleil, in Port-au-Prince, where around 300,000 people live in extremely precarious conditions. Cité Soleil is also where thousands of Fanmi Lavalas Party supporters live. These criminal raids resembled police and military incursions into many Sao Paulo and Rio favelas. There, under the cover of fighting criminal gangs, racist state actors killed innocent civilians, including boys, and unleashed terror over thousands of mostly black men, women, and children.

While the Haitian massacres were occurring, as documents released through the Freedom of Information Act attest, the U.S. and its intelligence services were aware of the brutality being unleashed over Cité Soleil. On their part, the most important human rights organizations –like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Organization of American States– “remained conspicuously disinterested and silent about the evidence”.

Some of the pictures of the chaos and murderous actions of the MINUSTAH –comprised of soldiers from 13 countries– are too explicit to be shown here, but the reader can visit HaitiAction.net to understand the extent of the cruelty exerted by these “peace-keepers”, who didn’t care to shoot at women and children with high caliber guns, even from helicopters, another terrorist tactic used by Brazilian police and military over the favelas.

The idea behind raiding Cité Soleil and other shantytowns around Port-au-Prince in reality was to eliminate and terrorize Aristide supporters, rightly infuriated by the 2004 brazen postcolonial coup d’etat ordained and executed by the usual “gardeners”. They demanded the return of their democratically elected President, forcefully exiled to Africa. Those demands would be a regular feature for many years after the coup.

Only between July 8 and July 17 of this year, 209 people were murdered in Cité Soleil. Half of them were innocent bystanders, without ties to any gang, and the rest, according to the BBC, were gang members “or people with links” to them (whatever that means). Other sources refer to many of these gangs as “paramilitary forces”, a regular feature when the Western “gardeners” control a puppet third-world government immersed in violent conflict. Between January and March of this year, 225 persons were kidnapped, 58% more than during the same three months of 2021.

The U.N. mission in Haiti was also accused of unleashing a plague of cholera by dumping infected waste into the tributary of an important river, killing more than 10,000 people. The U.N. blue helmets also stand accused of raping Haitian girls and women –or trading food for sex– leaving behind many “petit-MINUSTAH” as their abandoned offspring is often referred to.

The Montana Accord

Last September 29, in line with the Western “gardener” tradition, U.S. ambassador Pamela A. White said before the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, referring to Haiti, that her country must put “boots on the ground right now!”

If history offers any kind of lesson, her declaration should be more than enough to understand that nothing good is coming toward Haiti in the next months or years of foreign occupation, now a very probable outcome as the U.N. Security Council has unanimously adopted a resolution “demanding an immediate end to violence and criminal activity in Haiti and imposing sanctions on individuals and groups threatening peace and stability in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation — starting with a powerful gang leader.”

The gang leader referred to is the former police officer and “G9” gang boss Jimmy Cherizier, sanctioned by the U.S. and, now, also by the U.N. Despite the presence of many other gangs and their leaders, Cherizier, linked to various human rights violations he denies, is the only one to receive such sanctions so far. He is also the gang leader calling for revolution against the Henry regime.

The U.N. Security Council resolution (October 21) opens the door for a second resolution, already in the making by the U.S. and Mexico, to authorize a “non-U.N. International Security Assistance Mission”, which is what the “gardeners” are desperately pushing for.

The Washington Post Editorial Board, on its part, recently stated that the Montana Accord is “the right move for Haiti”. To be clear, the boots on the ground “right now!” option, in the form of a non-U.N. security mission, doesn’t exclude the Montana Accord, an assortment of Haitian political groups that include some shady characters. In fact, they are probably meant to work together, hand in glove.

The putative leader of the Montana Accord is Magali Comeau-Denis, Minister of Culture under Gerard Latortue, de facto President of Haiti from 2004 to 2006 (right after the coup that ousted Aristide). As Haiti Liberté reported, she was harshly criticized for starting unilateral negotiations –after the U.S. pressured her to do so– with Ariel Henry, which led to other participants leaving the Montana Accord. According to the leader of the Movement for Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity (MOLEGHAF), a revolutionary and progressive party from Port-au-Prince that left the coalition:

MOLEGHAF agreed to sign and join the Montana Accord because we were supposed to find this ‘Haitian solution,’ without bowing to the dictates of (then U.S. Chargé d’Affaires) Kenneth Merten, (and former) U.S. State Department officer and current head of the U.N. Office in Haiti, Helen La Lime, or the French, Canadian, and U.S. Embassies.

In other words, the accord supported by the Washington Post, a mouthpiece in the service of Western elites, marches on behind the façade of a “Haitian-led” solution but is nothing of the sort.

Certainly, the Haitian gangs –some of them substantially supported by the Haitian government as a way to control society, and armed with guns that the U.S. seems surprisingly incapable of controlling– must be stopped. But thinking that the way to achieve this is by allowing another occupation of the country goes stubbornly (and disingenuously) against, at least, a few hundred years of recorded history. The racist and colonial mentality of the “gardeners” imply that Haiti cannot rule itself, so it must be controlled from Washington.

Daniel Espinosa is a Peruvian writer and journalist. He is a columnist for Hildebrandt en sus trece, an independent Peruvian news weekly, and is the author of Propaganda Pura y Dura, his first book (in Spanish). You can follow him at: https://danielespinosawinenglish.substack.com Read other articles by Daniel.

Solution to Foreign Control Mess in Haiti is Not More Colonialism

by Yves Engler / October 25th, 2022

“The only way to save Haiti is to put it under UN control,” noted a recent Globe and Mail headline. Robert Rotberg, founding director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Program on Intrastate Conflict, demonstrates a scarcity of imagination and knowledge in making his colonialist appeal.

Highlighting an openly colonial streak in Canadian politics, prominent voices have repeatedly promoted “protectorate” status for Haiti. In 2014 right-wing Quebec City radio host, Sylvain Bouchard, told listeners, “I would transform Haiti into a colony. The UN must colonize Haiti.” During the 2003 “Ottawa initiative on Haiti” conference to plan the ouster of elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide US, French and Canadian officials discussed putting the country under UN trusteeship while a 2005 Canadian Military Journal article was titled “The case for international trusteeship in Haiti”.

In a Canadianized variation of the protectorate theme, constitutional law professor Richard Albert penned a 2017 Boston Globe opinion titled “Haiti should relinquish its sovereignty”. The Boston College professor wrote, “the new Haitian Constitution should do something virtually unprecedented: renounce the power of self-governance and assign it for a term of years, say 50, to a country that can be trusted to act in Haiti’s long-term interests.” According to the Canadian law professor his native land, which Albert called “one of Haiti’s most loyal friends”, should administer the Caribbean island nation.

In a similar vein, L’Actualité editor-in-chief, Carole Beaulieu, suggested Haiti become the eleventh Canadian province. In an article just after the 2004 coup titled “Et si on annexait Haïti?”, she wrote “Canada should annex Haiti to make it a little tropical paradise.”

At the less sophisticated conservative end of the political spectrum André Arthur, a former member of Parliament, labeled Haiti a “hopeless” and “sexually deviant” country populated by thieves and prostitutes that should be taken over by France as in the “heyday of colonial Haiti” (“belle époque de l’Haïti colonial”). “There is no hope in Haiti until the country is placed under trusteeship”, bellowed the Quebec City radio host in 2016. “We will never dare to do it, political correctness, it would be racism to say: So you say to France: … ‘For the next thirty years, you are the owner of Haiti, put it right. Kick the asses that need to be kicked.”

In his Globe commentary Rotberg displays a startling level of ignorance about Haitian affairs. While writing that “Haiti needs to become a ward of the United Nations”, Rotberg fails to recognize that the UN and foreign powers have dominated Haiti over the past 18 years. Haitians widely view the head of the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH), Helen LaLime, a US diplomat, as colonial overseer. In 2019 BINUH replaced the United Nations Mission for Justice Support in Haiti (MINUJUSTH), which replaced La Mission des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation en Haïti (MINUSTAH) in 2017.

MINUSTAH was responsible for countless abuses during its 13-year occupation, which consisted of 8,000 foreign troops and 2,000 police. After helping oust thousands of elected officials in 2004, 500 Canadian soldiers were incorporated into MINUSTAH as it backed up a coup government’s violent crackdown against pro-democracy protesters between March 2004 and May 2006. The UN force also killed dozens of civilians directly when it pacified Cité Soleil, a bastion of support for Aristide. The UN force was responsible for innumerable sexual abuses. The foreign forces had sex with minors, sodomized boys, raped young girls and left many single mothers to struggle with stigma and poverty after departing the country.

Aside from sexual abuse and political repression, the UN’s disregard for Haitian life caused a major cholera outbreak, which left over 10,000 dead and one million sick.

The 2004 coup and UN occupation introduced a form of multilateral colonial oversight to Haiti. The April 2004 Security Council resolution that replaced the two-month-old US, France and Canada Multinational Interim Force with MINUSTAH established the Core Group. (Unofficially, the Core Group traces its roots to the 2003 “Ottawa Initiative on Haiti” meeting where US, French, OAS and Canadian officials discussed overthrowing Haiti’s elected government and putting the country under UN trusteeship.) The Core Group, which includes representatives of the US, Canada, France, Spain, Brazil, OAS, EU and UN, periodically releases collective statements on Haitian affairs and meet among themselves and with Haitian officials. It’s a flagrantly colonial alliance. After President Jovenel Moise was killed 15 months ago, for instance, the Core Group effectively appointed Ariel Henry prime minister through a press release. Implicated in Moise’s assassination, Henry has overseen the country’s descent in chaos.

Those calling for foreign control of Haiti ignore its loss of sovereignty since the 2004 coup. By what standards was the usurpation of Haitian sovereignty successful? By basically any metric, 18 years of US/Canada, UN, Core Group influence in Haiti has been a disaster. But imperialists don’t simply ignore the damaging impact of foreign intervention. In a stark demonstration of how power affects ideology, the more Haitian sovereignty is undercut the more forthright the calls to usurp Haitian sovereignty.

As has been said, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

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Yves Engler is the author of 12 books. His latest book is Stand on Guard for Whom?: A People's History of the Canadian Military . Read other articles by Yves.

TOI INVESTIGATES

ISRAELI FASCISM
Ben Gvir’s policy goals: Going to extremes even Europe’s far right won’t touch

Moves advocated by Otzma Yehudit, such as deporting ‘disloyal’ citizens, go far beyond those of the continent’s ascendant nationalists and into areas where only neo-fascists tread

By JEREMY SHARON

The Times of Israel

Today,

Workers hang a large election campaign poster of Otzma Yehudit head Itamar Ben Gvir and take down a poster of Arab MK Ahmad Tibi, in Jerusalem on September 29, 2022. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

On September 25, 2017, Europe and the world woke up to a reality in which the radical right-wing Alternative for Germany party had secured 13 percent of the vote in federal elections and become the country’s third-largest party.

With the Holocaust still in living memory, the result sparked alarmed handwringing over the apparent resurgence of political extremism; both the international and domestic press were swiftly awash with concerns about the renewed rise of racism, xenophobia and even Nazi ideology in Germany.

In France, similar concerns bubbled to the surface earlier this year when Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Rally party, surged in polls ahead of a presidential election, finishing just five percentage points behind Emmanuel Macron in the first round of the election.

The Guardian newspaper warned of the “authoritarian” and “xenophobic” nature of Le Pen’s party ahead of the run-off election while The New York Times decried National Rally as “far right,” and op-eds abounded about the danger Le Pen posed to France of bolstering extremism.

On November 2, Israel may well wake up to a reality in which its own far-right outfit, Religious Zionism — which includes the ultra-nationalist Otzma Yehudit party — manages to secure around half a million votes, winning a tenth or more of the Knesset’s 120 seats. Such an outcome would make it the country’s third-largest party — and possibly a core component of a Benjamin Netanyahu-led coalition.

On some critical issues, Otzma Yehudit appears to have staked positions even more extreme than the far-right parties troubling Europe, though Israel’s unique milieu limit direct comparisons.

Party leader Itamar Ben Gvir first entered the Knesset last year on a joint slate with Religious Zionism, but it was not until the current election cycle that the firebrand has taken center stage.

Both surging poll numbers and a propensity by opponents from across the aisle to use him as an example of the dangers of extreme nationalism have helped propel Ben Gvir from the fringes of the political conversation into a household name in Israel.

A wellspring of support, and a public softening of some of Otzma Yehudit’s most extreme positions, have allowed Ben Gvir to shed some of his previous status as a political pariah.

Just three years ago, Netanyahu’s decision to cut a deal that could have resulted in him entering the Knesset was so alarming that even the normally tight-lipped pro-Israel lobby AIPAC weighed in against it. By early 2021, the Likud leader was courting Ben Gvir’s support for his right-religious alliance, while also branding him as “not fit” for ministerial office.

Itamar Ben Gvir, center, visits Hatikva Market in Tel Aviv on Oct. 21, 2022. (AP/Oded Balilty)

With Israelis set to go to the polls in less than a week, Netanyahu has now begun publicly promising to appoint Ben Gvir to a ministerial position in any government he might form after the election, an acknowledgment of Otzma Yehudit’s soaring political clout, and a red flag to those who see the former follower of late outlawed rabbi Meir Kahane as a fundamental danger to the state.

A lawyer by profession, Ben Gvir is thought to covet the public security minister role, which would give him authority over the police. Religious Zionism leader Bezalel Smotrich has said the alliance is eyeing higher prizes such as the Defense, Justice and Interior ministries.

Ultimately, even if Otzma Yehudit does become the Likud’s senior political partner in a right-wing, religious coalition, it is unlikely that the party would be able to enact its most extreme policies for an array of reasons.

But with Religious Zionism consistently polling at up to 14 Knesset seats, with much of that forecast support tied to Otzma Yehudit itself, it appears that there is a large swath of the public potentially willing to back the party’s far-right positions, shining a light on a right-wing shift that may raise profound concerns.
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Undefined enemies

Among the most prominent policy positions laid out by Ben Gvir and Otzma Yehudit, either in the party’s manifesto or verbally, include encouraging Arab citizens of Israel to emigrate; annexing the West Bank without affording Palestinians the right to vote or other civil rights; imposing the death penalty for terrorists; using live fire against Palestinian rioters; immunity from prosecution for IDF soldiers for military actions they carry out; overhauling the legal system, crimping the High Court’s ability to strike down legislation and giving the government the ability to pack the bench with ideological compatriots.

In the 2019 and 2020 elections for the 22nd and 23rd Knessets, respectively, Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit issued a political manifesto, which was posted on the party website. Since taken down, though not replaced, it provides more details of the party’s goals.

While Ben Gvir claims to have moderated his positions in recent months, some have seen the shift as a campaign ploy. In September, video leaked of a party member describing the softened rhetoric as a “Trojan horse.”

Among the 13 specific policy areas listed in the platform, three are crucial to understanding Otzma Yehudit and Ben Gvir’s political outlook and agenda.

In a section on “The enemies of Israel,” the manifesto declares that “the war against the enemies of Israel is total,” and that Otzma’s goal is “to extend [Israeli] sovereignty to all parts of the Land of Israel which were liberated in the Six Day War and arrange the status of the enemies of Israel in the Arab countries surrounding us.”

The next related policy goal is on encouraging the emigration of Arab citizens of Israel.

“Out of a desire for true peace, Otzma Yehudit will work toward removing the enemies of Israel from our land. A national agency for emigration will be created to encourage emigration.”

The manifesto, barely two pages long and short on detail, does not lay out who the “enemies” are. (The Times of Israel made several requests to Ben Gvir’s office for an interview to elaborate further on the party’s goals but these requests were refused. A response sent by Ben Gvir to written questions posed to him appears at the bottom of this article.)

In an interview with The Jerusalem Post in 2019, Ben Gvir defined an enemy of Israel as, among other things “someone who doesn’t want a Jewish state.”

Baruch Marzel, a founding member of Otzma, said in the same year that he believes “the majority” of Arab citizens of Israel are enemies, “but not all of them.”

Head of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, Itamar Ben Gvir (C) with Bentzi Gopstein (R) and Baruch Marzel (L) at the launch of the party’s campaign, ahead of the Israeli elections, in Jerusalem on February 15, 2020. (Sindel/Flash90)

In comments published this week, Ben Gvir told The New York Times that “I have no problem, of course, with the minorities here. But whoever is a terrorist, whoever commits terror — and anyone who wants jihad and to annihilate Jews, and not only that, also hurts Arabs — I have a problem with him.”

In August, the Otzma leader told Channel 13’s Hatzinor program that all Arabs would not be automatically targeted by his emigration agency.

“I’m not going to get a truck and expel everyone. It’s not democratic.” As for who would be the first targets for his emigration ministry, he declared: “Whoever is not loyal, whoever hates, I will encourage to emigrate.”

Asked about the threshold for loyalty to the state of Israel, Ben Gvir replied, “Someone who throws stones, I know is not loyal. Someone who throws a fire bomb, I know is not loyal… You don’t need any test for that.”

However, he added that those convicted of such crimes would not be encouraged to leave but rather forcibly deported after serving their sentence.

In an interview with Channel 12 news earlier this week, Ben Gvir refused to label Jewish nationalist violence as terrorism and said such people should be imprisoned but not expelled.

“Someone who acts against the state, that is the test,” he added.

The MK also told Channel 13 that if in power he would annex the West Bank and abolish the Palestinian Authority, which administers the autonomous Palestinian areas of the territory. At the same time, he would deny Palestinian residents of the West Bank the right to obtain Israeli citizenship, essentially rewinding Israeli policy to before the Oslo Peace Accords.

He sharpened the plan in an interview with Kan in October, saying that Palestinians would have no ability to vote for the Knesset or their own representation, would pay taxes to Israel but not receive health insurance and would have no right to live in areas inside the Green Line.

The plan would in effect enshrine a regime of legal discrimination on an ethnic or national basis inside one enlarged state, now including the West Bank, in which Palestinians are denied the right to vote and denied civil rights.

Israel currently expends much energy on fending off attempts by international organizations and others to paint it as a revival of Apartheid South Africa or the Jim Crow American South. Ben Gvir’s plan would give saliency to those accusations, potentially turning Israel into an international pariah.

Activists protest against an election campaign conference of MK Itamar Ben Gvir, head of the Otzma Yehudit political party, in Tel Aviv, October 23, 2022. 

(Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)

Though the MK now claims to eschew the wholesale expulsion of Arabs advocated by Kahane, Otzma Yehudit’s proposals may be aimed at achieving a similar result.

The scheme would place large numbers of Arab Israelis and Palestinians, who have either taken part in low-level violent activity against Israel’s security services or are considered insufficiently committed to Israel as a Jewish state, at risk of forcible transfer or campaigns aimed at encouraging them to move abroad.

By defining loyalty as a commitment to Israel as a Jewish state, Ben Gvir’s emigration agency would target a broad segment of Arab society, including many law-abiding citizens who may not identify with the Jewish characteristics of the state, such as the national anthem.

According to a study by the Israel Democracy Institute in 2019, fully 77 percent of Arab citizens do not believe that Israel should be defined as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

Ben Gvir declined to respond to a request for comment from the Times of Israel asking what means his ministry would use to encourage emigration and achieve its goal, or towards who specifically the ministry would direct its efforts.
Beyond Europe’s far-right

Ben Gvir’s proposals for Arab Israeli emigration would appear to put him even beyond the pale of far-right counterparts in Europe.

In Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is often described as on the radical or far-right of the political spectrum.

Alice Weidel, co-leader of the Alternative for Germany party (AfD), delivers a speech during an election campaign event of the AfD in front of the Charlottenburg palace in Berlin, Germany, Friday, Sept. 24, 2021. (AP/Michael Sohn)

The party rose to prominence on a harsh anti-immigrant platform accompanied by caustic rhetoric, and an agenda heavy on German nationalism. Numerous senior officials have made antisemitic, racist, or extremist comments.

And yet, even the AfD does not advocate for the emigration of ethnic minority German citizens and the establishment of a government ministry to facilitate it, as Ben Gvir and Otzma Yehudit do for Arab citizens of Israel.

The AfD pushes for strict limits on immigration, the overhaul of asylum laws and the repatriation of illegal immigrants, but nowhere mentions policies aimed at the emigration of ethnic minority German citizens.

The Freedom Party of Austria (FPO), whose founders were Nazi SS officers, is another European political party that has widely been described as radical or on the far right due to its xenophobia, anti-immigrant stances, and the association of numerous party officials with racist or antisemitic groups.

Yet the furthest the FPO goes is to call for strong restrictions on immigration and harsh standards on naturalization. The party’s manifesto says nothing about encouraging the emigration of ethnic minorities and neither have senior party officials or leaders.

It is only at the very outer reaches of the European far-right political spectrum, among neo-Nazis and fascists, where one finds factions advocating for policies similar to those sought by Otzma Yehudit.

The Nordic Resistance Movement, a neo-Nazi pan-Scandinavian movement that has a political party in Sweden, is one such outfit.

Members of the far-right Nordic Resistance Movement march through the town of Ludvika, central Sweden, on May 1, 2018. (Ulf Palm/AFP via Getty Images)

The NRM proudly describes itself as “a National Socialist organization.” As a neo-Nazi movement, it opposes democracy as a form of government and is viciously racist, antisemitic and homophobic.

The NRM glorifies violence and has been responsible for numerous acts of violence against anti-racism campaigners, and LGBT activists, as well as vandalism attacks against synagogues and the Israeli embassy in Finland.

Among its various racist policies, the NRM advocates for the forced repatriation of “the majority of all non-ethnic Northern Europeans” including citizens of Scandinavian countries, a goal which would be achieved through the establishment of a “state institute” for repatriation.

NRM is far more extreme than Otzma Yehudit in numerous ways and its policy of repatriation does not even pretend to be voluntary, whereas Otzma and Ben Gvir deny they will engage in mass forced transfer.

One party whose policy is very close to that of Otzma Yehudit is the British National Party (BNP), a far-right group with roots originating in the British fascist and neo-Nazi movements of the 1960s.

A manifesto for the BNP states that the party would encourage emigration by “offer[ing] generous grants to those of foreign descent who are resident here and who wish to leave permanently” due to perceived threats to “the fundamental culture and identity of the indigenous peoples of the British Isles.”

Illustrative: British National Party (BNP) former leader Nick Griffin, center, talks to his supporters during a demonstration in central London, June 1, 2013. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

The BNP also advocates for discrimination in favor of “local people” for the purposes of allocating subsidized housing, and would ban religious animal slaughter practiced by Jews and Muslims.

Similar to Otzma Yehudit’s policy of expelling Arabs and Palestinians who engage in violence, the BNP explicitly calls for the revocation of citizenship “for anyone who gives aid and comfort to enemies of Britain.”

It’s worth noting, however, that the comparisons are only so useful, as Israel’s challenges and situation differ radically from those faced by Europe’s far-right parties.

Ongoing Palestinian terrorism, which has spiked significantly over the last ten months, drives fear and heightens nationalist sentiment, creating fertile ground for radical parties.

And the May 2021 riots in which thousands of Arab Israeli citizens participated in violent demonstrations in cities across Israel and which witnessed mob beatings and the arson and looting of synagogues and Jewish property is likely a proximate cause for the recent groundswell of support for Israel’s radical and far-right parties.
Democracy for the majority

Where Otzma Yehudit does line up with “mainstream” European far-right parties is on its socially conservative stances against abortion and LGBT rights, alongside advocacy for higher birth rates.

The Alternative for Germany, Freedom Party of Austria and the Nordic Resistance Movement all have specific policy platforms either promoting higher fertility rates, advocating against abortion, opposing homosexuality, or some combination of these positions.

Bentzi Gopstein (right), head of the racist Lehava organization and a former Knesset candidate for Otzma Yehudit until he was disqualified from running due to incitement to racism, stages a protest against the annual Gay Pride parade in central Jerusalem, June 6, 2019.(Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Otzma Yehudit’s support for discriminatory policies based on religious and ethnic “values” along with hostility to the tenets of liberal democracy also typify radical and far-right parties.

The party’s manifesto states specifically that the values of the state will be according to “Jewish ethics” and constitute a regime of “Jewish democracy,” which will “protect the interests of the Jewish nation-state as a value which supersedes any universal value.”

The policy statement adds: “We do not want to lose the Jewish state in any way, not through war, not in peace, and also not through the means of Western democracy.”

Otzma Yehudit and Ben Gvir’s full-throated support for measures that would strip the judicial system’s independence and place it under the government’s thumb would remove key bulwarks of “Western democracy” in Israel meant to protect minorities from the so-called tyranny of the majority and place civil rights at risk.

Such positions align Otzma, as well as the Likud and the rest of the right-wing, religious political bloc, with the illiberal, right-wing governing parties of Hungary and Poland, Fidesz and Law and Order.

Both those parties have hobbled the independence of their countries’ courts, including constitutional courts, as part of a wider effort to ensure that potentially illegal laws on asylum, LGBT rights and media freedoms can be enacted.

In Israel, Otzma Yehduit and Religious Zionism have the rights of asylum seekers in their crosshairs, as well as limitations on the ability of the state to seize private Palestinian land in the West Bank. The High Court has struck down right-wing legislation on both issues in recent years.

MK Itamar Ben Gvir, head of the Otzma Yehudit political party, and activists, protest in support of the deportation of asylum seekers in southern Tel Aviv, on October 12, 2022. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash90)

Ben Gvir’s recent call to use live fire against Palestinian rioters throwing stones or petrol bombs at security personnel, as well as rhetoric calling for the execution of terrorists by electric chair, and indeed the MK’s proclivity for brandishing his sidearm in confrontations with Arabs and Palestinians, are all reminiscent of the authoritarian approach to law and order issues advocated by far-right parties across Europe.

The world has raised alarm bells over the rise of the far-right in Europe, fearing the dangers posed to Western liberal democracy and what the growing appeal of political extremism could mean for the future of the European continent.

With forecasts showing up to 10% of Israel’s voting population poised to cast ballots for a party harboring an agenda even more drastic than those of Europe’s far-right, the klaxons may blare louder still.

A response from Ben Gvir

Ben Gvir declined to be interviewed for this article. In response to questions put to him in writing by the Times of Israel regarding Otzma Yehudit’s policies, Ben Gvir stated: “The people running the Palestinian Authority are supporters of terrorism, people who want the murder of Jews. The Palestinian Authority gives money to anyone who kills Jews. We need a strong hand against Hamas and against the Palestinian Authority. They cannot incite against us, call for murder, and harm us. We have a war with them, but not with all the Arabs in Judea and Samaria. Someone who wants to live there and understands that this is the State of Israel — they’re welcome.

“My vision is that there is a proud and secure Jewish state here. There can for sure be minorities in this country, I have no problem with Arabs as Arabs, but I do have a problem with people who are violent against the police, with people who throw petrol bombs, people who call to murder Jews and people who want to take control of this country and turn it into an Islamic state.

“In my vision, Jews and Arabs can live together but the State of Israel is the master of the house. We returned here after 2,000 years of exile, the Bible teaches us that Jews were present here on every part of the land and every field, not just in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem but first of all in Hebron and Nablus. Our forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Kind David were here. I am not a racist, I don’t hate Arabs, I hate terrorists and those who want to hurt us and there I do want a hard hand.”