The Observer Billy Bragg  Interview

Billy Bragg: ‘There’s nothing like going out there singing your truth. That ain’t changed’

The singer-songwriter’s brand of stubborn protest songs with a strain of tenderness has kept him relevant for 40 years. Here he talks about why he’s fighting for trans rights, his late-night tweeting habit and his forthcoming tour – with his son


Tim Adams
Sun 28 Apr 2024 

Recently, Billy Bragg showed his two young granddaughters a little promo film he put together celebrating his 40 years of making records. The girls were nonplussed by the early scenes on picket lines and spiky festival stages, but towards the end, recognising an avuncular white-bearded bloke with a guitar, they brightened: “Look, it’s Grandad Bill!” they chorused. “It was actually all Grandad Bill,” their father pointed out, but they weren’t having any of it.

Meeting Bragg at the station car park in Weymouth – not far from where he lives along the Dorset coast – and heading up to a cafe on the headland overlooking the sweep of the bay, I sympathise a little bit with their sentiment. The first time I saw the singer in the flesh was sometime late in 1984, when he was giving it his full “one-man Clash” performance on student stages at miners’ benefits. Even at the time that felt like it might be a hard act to grow old with; yet here he is in the seaside retirement resort, still fighting the good fight.

View image in fullscreenOn stage at Victoria Palace theatre, London, 1984. 

Photograph: Peter Brooker/Shutterstock

You could never claim he has not put in the hard yards. As his old friend and former NME editor Neil Spencer says of their days together in Red Wedge, the mid-80s attempt to build youth opposition to the Thatcher government: “Billy was always first on the bus.” Bragg’s doing some concerts this summer, supported by his son, Jack Valero, also a singer-songwriter, to celebrate 20 years of the anti-Nazi collective Hope Not Hate. The promotion for those gigs gives a flavour of his commitment: “Bill’s words and actions have galvanised thousands of anti-fascists across the country,” the blurb states, going on to say: “During a difficult campaign against the fascist British National party in 2010, Billy delivered refreshments to hungry and tired activists – before performing a storming set on the eve of the elections. Barking and Dagenham was liberated, and the fascists were finally sent packing.”

Such billing brings pressures, not least that ever-present danger on the British left of looking like a 1980s tribute act. Bragg tells me he no longer plays what is perhaps his most easily parodied song of that era, Between the Wars: “I started to feel that my audience were becoming a bit nostalgic for the miners’ strike and Arthur Scargill and Margaret Thatcher. I wasn’t comfortable with that.”

Since his initial activist days, Bragg has found a solid international audience, particularly in the US and Australia. This began with his appearance at a Woody Guthrie tribute concert in Central Park in New York in 1992. After that performance, Guthrie’s daughter Nora approached Bragg to put music to some of her father’s unrecorded lyrics, which in turn led to a Grammy-nominated album of “new” Guthrie songs, Mermaid Avenue, performed by Bragg and the American rock band Wilco. Bragg remains the unofficial keeper of Guthrie’s radical flame; Nora gave him a Navajo blanket to sleep under in Dorset. He had a T-shirt bearing the question: “What would Woody do?” and you imagine it is a question that is never that far from his mind.
Some people sing about love, some about war, some about a better world to come. Well, I sing about all three


His most recent album, 2021’s The Million Things That Never Happened, featured the song Mid-Century Modern, a pointed attack on any complacency in his fans and himself:


It’s hard to get your bearings in a world that doesn’t care
Positions I took long ago feel comfy as an old armchair
But the kids that pull the statues down they challenge me to see
The gap between the man I am and the man I want to be

As he says: “If you are going to ask your audience to raise their fist in solidarity, you’ve also got to challenge them now and then.”

His own challenge is the restless motivation to keep finding the edge of political relevance. In recent years this has led him to various campaigning positions – on the train down to Dorset, I’ve been reading his thoughtful manifesto for reclaiming English nationalism from the right, The Progressive Patriot.

That desire for relevance also encouraged his response to Oliver Anthony’s viral folk song Rich Men North of Richmond, the adopted anthem of Donald Trump’s Republicans. Bragg wrote a quick version, Rich Men Earning North of a Million, to counter the way in which Oliver “shamefully punched down on people on welfare”.

View image in fullscreenBragg and Paul Weller promote Red Wedge, 1985. 

Photograph: Steve Rapport/Getty Images

And, of course, that need to be on the latest contested frontline has expressed itself in Bragg becoming a prominent late-night warrior in that most fevered of all contemporary arenas: tweets on X about trans rights. (His first forays into these debates so enraged gender-critical feminists that several adopted his name as an ironic moniker.) Though he might speak to me of the need for compromise, he is not temperamentally inclined to take a step back from that fray.


If “Which side are you on, boys?” intransigence were Bragg’s only trait, he would probably be crankily insufferable after four decades. Listening to that adult lifetime of music, however, the vehemence of the ballads of working-class anger is in tension with the strain of vulnerable tenderness that has always been a feature of his writing. “Some people sing about love, some people sing about war, some people sing about a better world to come. Well, I sing about all three,” he says. Or to quote perhaps his most famous lines: “I don’t want to change the world / I’m not looking for a new England / I’m just looking for another girl.”


How we made: Billy Bragg’s A New England

Read more

The rasping Bragg voice still has the capacity – like any Ken Loach film – to make a grown man’s lip tremble. This happened most recently in his pair of songs for his “sweetheart and life partner”, Juliet De Valero Wills, who was being treated for breast cancer during lockdown: I Will Be Your Shield – a poignant reference both to his and the NHS’s encircling care – and The Fourteenth of February, a beautiful little acoustic hymn to their 30 years together.

He’s chosen this cafe because it’s at one end of a favourite cliff walk that he and Juliet do (in answer to my question about her health, he says happily: “She’s doing well now, thanks”). I’d originally asked if we might meet at his home, but he declined because he didn’t want it identified (I suspect he also may be wary of the seafront villa backdrop complicating his image). Anyhow, sitting down, the first thing we talk about is the impossibility of the fact that he has been doing this stuff for so long. Could he have imagined it?


“I was in New York last week and I was talking to someone about [the American folk legend] Pete Seeger,” he says. “They’re doing a biopic. I realised I first met Pete at the Festival of Political Songs in East Berlin in 1986. I thought he was like the ancient old man of the mountains. He was 66.” He laughs. “Same fucking age as I am now.”

Bragg has lost none of his Essex accent in his singing, and in conversation little of it has been softened by a quarter-century in proximity to West Country vowels. Sitting in the cafe’s windswept conservatory eating bubble and squeak and a fried egg – in homage to a favourite from his childhood – he occasionally attracts alarmed glances from retired couples in anoraks when talking in suitably robust terms about, say, the scandal of the Rwanda flights. He unashamedly closes his concerts with the same line he always used: “My name is Billy Bragg. I’m from Barking, Essex,” and he insists that it feels as true to him now as it ever did.
There’s a rural union tradition in this country as well as an industrial one. Why Labour has little to say to this part of the world I have no idea

I wonder how that line is understood by audiences in Austin or Adelaide? “As a sort of useful explanation for everything you’ve just heard,” he says. “Particularly if you are sitting there thinking: ‘What the hell was that?’” But the line is also a kind of political shorthand for the brand of identity he advocates. “I’ve never bought into this whole bullshit divide between ‘people of somewhere’ and ‘people of nowhere’,” he says, referencing David Goodhart’s explanation of the Brexity attractions of populism in a globalist world. “You can be a person who both has a cosmopolitan view of things, but who also has a strong sense of belonging to this particular group in this particular place.”

With this in mind, one of his lockdown projects was to put together an internet book of family history for his cousins and nephews.

View image in fullscreenBilly Bragg with his father in 1960 in Barking. 

Photograph: Courtesy Billy Bragg

He gives me a quick potted history of the family tree. The Bragg side of things was mostly contained in a box of old pictures handed down from his great-grandfather, who ran a pub on Barking quay. His mum’s people were Italian immigrants, ice-cream sellers, who first settled on Cable Street in London’s East End, scene of the battle against Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts. “The D’Ursos were all modern people, listening to Radio Luxembourg and all that. But the Braggs in Barking were stubbornly Victorian. My dad’s aunt was born in 1876, she lived round the corner from us; she still had gas lighting in her house when I was a kid.”

When he moved out of London in the millennium year, it might have looked as if he was distancing himself from some of his past, even selling out (that mortal fear of 1980s rebels), but that’s not how he viewed it.


“It was a commitment to spend more time with Juliet and Jack. And I’m glad I did it. It gave me a different perspective on this country. But I’m still a Londoner – I’ll always be a Londoner.”

Anyhow, he suggests, wherever you are in the world, you are never far from one frontline or another. He points to the fact that the Bibby Stockholm barge of asylum seekers is moored just around the bay. And that Richard Drax, whose £150m fortune originates in part from the family legacy in the slave trade, is the local MP. And that’s before you get to “the farmers and rural communities who have been sold down the river by Brexit”.

“We are a few miles down the road from Tolpuddle here, where it all started,” Bragg says. “There is a rural union tradition in this country, as well as an industrial one. Why Labour has little to say to this part of the world I have no idea.”

In this election year, Bragg has (once again) cut ties with the Labour party. What caused him to cut up his card on this occasion?

“All that ‘Israel has a right to defend itself,’” he says. “And to be fair, I felt I had put up with a lot. I voted for [Keir] Starmer as leader and I’ve still got on my desk his list of pledges. The nationalisation of utilities, the green New Deal, doing something on proportional representation. Those pledges suggested to me that Starmer was a development on [Jeremy] Corbyn, who was very much a 20th-century politician. And then you watch him just get rid of those pledges one after the other. The position on Gaza was the last straw for me.”skip past newsletter promotion

Bragg in 1985, watched by then Labour leader Neil Kinnock. The singer has recently cut ties with the party. Photograph: Richard Young/Rex Features


We briefly talk through that checklist of reasons not to be at all cheerful: Ukraine, Trump, the climate crisis. But he insists, despite everything, he is – raising his mineral water – a glass-half-full person. There’s a simple reason for that: “Because when I get depressed or cynical, I have the privilege of being able to go out in the dark and sing my songs, and when everyone claps, I don’t feel so bad. What I hope to do in my gigs is for the audience to feel like that too. That at least there’s this roomful of people in their town who do give a shit. Music can’t change the world, but it can do that.”

There is an entertaining authorised biography of Bragg, Still Suitable for Miners, by the journalist Andrew Collins, which details his steps towards his vocation. Born Stephen Bragg, he was badly bullied at school, he lost his dad when he was 18 and briefly joined the army before strapping on his guitar and finding other battles.

“The first Rock Against Racism concert [in 1978] was the spark for me,” he says now. “It was all there ready, but I needed to see those 80,000 kids just like me in Victoria Park [in east London]. On that day, my generation found our issue, as the previous generations had with Vietnam and CND. And it was to end discrimination of all kinds. Not just racism, but homophobia – we would be the generation that defeated apartheid and supported Pride.”
This isn’t something that comes from Twitter. [Being trans] is something that people feel inside

And he could immediately see a role for himself in that generational campaign? He smiles. “One thing was I had never met an out gay man until then. I’m sure I had met gay men in Barking but none of them were out. And then on stage Tom Robinson starting up with (Sing If You’re) Glad to Be Gay and all around me these blokes started kissing each other. I thought: ‘Fucking hell, what’s this?’ But it didn’t take me long to realise that it was a common cause – that the fascists are after anyone who is different, any minority. But you need those experiences to discover that solidarity.”

It’s a memory of that moment, I think, that has prompted his partisan anger on the issue of trans rights, his opposition to feminists such as JK Rowling, who argue for biological women’s right to their own protected spaces.

Speaking to the self-styled “luxury communist” Ash Sarkar earlier this year, Bragg suggested he was embarrassed to have come to the issue fairly late. His instincts went back to old ties of solidarity against discrimination. In particular, remembering the role that the campaigning group had played in gay and lesbian liberation during the 80s: “I wanted to start by saying it’s not a good idea to bring down Stonewall.”

The day we meet is the day after the Cass report on NHS gender identity services for children and young people has been published, which at the very least seems to offer sensible checks and balances to the position that the current incarnation of Stonewall has promoted and to the online and real-world efforts to cancel those who refuse it.


Bragg tells me he welcomes Dr Hilary Cass’s findings, at least up to a point: “I’m 100% behind a holistic approach to supporting kids,” he says. But he considers Cass to put too strong an emphasis on social media. “That’s just victim blaming,” he says.

A Stop the War demonstration in London, 21 January 1991, with Emma Thompson (far left), Jeremy Corbyn (third from left) and Ken Livingston and Billy Bragg (centre). Photograph: Mirrorpix/Getty Images

Though he recognises the potential harm of early medical intervention in dysmorphia cases, he fears that the report will give strength to those who “say that trans kids don’t exist. They tried to do that with section 28 with gays and lesbians. But this isn’t something that comes from Twitter. This is something that people feel inside. This is a serious problem that people need help with. And when we say trans kids, we mean people up to the age of 16; not – as Cass weirdly seems to say – people up to age 25.”

There are plenty of voices out there that rebut that latter interpretation, and a subsequent Q&A between Cass and LGBTQ+ groups clarified some of those contentions. My own strongest feeling, I tell him – I reported on the cultish-seeming evangelism of the Mermaids group lobbying for the untested certainties of hormone treatment way back in 2016 – was that if ever there was an issue that social media is ill-equipped to debate, it is this one. I haven’t seen evidence for Bragg’s assertion that his most prominent opponents are “saying that trans people don’t exist”. Surely it is more the case that we are talking about different complex views in a genuine conflict of rights.

“My problem with people like Rowling, like Julie Bindel, is really who they are lined up with,” he says. “[Rowling and Bindel] are people who I agree with about women’s rights. I agree with them about abortion. But we don’t agree on this. It reminds me of a TV debate I did back with Red Wedge; on one side of the table was me, Jerry Dammers and Clare Short, and on the other Stewart Copeland, a Tory MP called Greg Knight and Chris Dean from the Redskins. Now, me and Chris had toured during the miners’ strike, but I looked at Chris, and pointed to who he was sitting with, and told him he was on the wrong side of the table. And that’s what I see with Rowling and the others: they are on the wrong side of the table.”

His argument is that some of his opponents on the issue appear to be giving strength to anti-trans campaigns on the fundamentalist religious right in the US and elsewhere – that if any ground is given “the next thing will be an assault on equal marriage and abortion”. But of course there is no suggestion at all that Rowling or Bindel have any sympathy with those groups so, again, isn’t that a problem of social media platforms themselves, which are engineered to promote simple binaries over nuanced argument, and which reinforce “which side are you on” tribalism.

He seems to agree, when we talk, that it might be better to aim fire at those extremist reactionary groups but reserves his right to defend his corner if “people are spitting at him” on X. We go around the houses on this for a while, before finding a bit of neutral ground in the idea that it is partly the job of our generation to “get out of the way” and let the young find their solutions. Subsequently, he sends me one or two extreme tweets (not from any of his prominent “opponents”) that confirm his view that there are people out there who argue trans children do not exist. Last week he was still firing off threads – all rigorously refuted – that cast doubt on Cass’s conclusions.


In our interview, though, talk of future generations brings us off the subject and on to discussing how he feels about performing alongside his son, Jack, on his forthcoming mini tour. I ask what advice he’s given him about following in the family trade?

Billy Bragg with his son, Jack Valero, who goes on tour with him in May. Photograph: Jill Furmanovsky

“I wouldn’t dare to tell him how to write songs – that’s not my place at all,” he says. “And he learned to play guitar by playing Guitar Hero. What he doesn’t have is any illusions. I came into this job with lots of fabulous preconceptions about limousines and playing Wembley stadium. Jack’s grown up seeing what it’s like behind the curtain. It’s a very different landscape now. But still there’s nothing better than going out there singing your truth. That ain’t changed.”

We talk a bit about the challenges faced by that generation in terms of mental health – how social media has fractured collective identities.

“The thing is,” Bragg says, “my therapy group was me and my friends sitting around playing guitars in my mum’s back room. Not only did they save me from getting my arse kicked in Barking, it also gave me the confidence to express myself. And going out on stage on my own, not as Stephen Bragg but as Billy, was my final proof to myself that I wasn’t afraid of anything.”

He regrets not standing up a bit more to bullies as a kid, but he’d like to think he’s made up for that since.

“Stephen Bragg was this sad guy I went to school with,” he says. “I feel so sorry for him when I see photographs of him – he was a good lad and he didn’t stand a fucking chance. I like to think Billy Bragg put his arm around him and said: ‘Listen, stick with the guitar player; we’re gonna be OK.’ I sort of think they are two completely different people, but my old friends would probably disagree. They’d say: ‘It’s just that these days’” – as his granddaughters understand – “‘one of them’s got grey hair and a beard.’”

Billy Bragg is on tour from 8 May

Canadians Promoting Genocide

by Yves Engler / April 29th, 2024

In the name of protecting Canadian Jews many are promoting the cultural and physical erasure of a faraway people.

Recently there’s been a push to suppress a traditional Palestinian garment. To the delight of many, the speaker of the Ontario legislature banned kaffiyehs from the provincial assembly. In a sign of support for this racist policy, prominent ‘progressive’ doctor and Ottawa-Carleton District School Board trustee, Nili Kaplan-Myrth, recently bemoaned a fellow trustee who “put on a keffiyeh”, making it “not safe for Jews”. Similarly, author Dahlia Kurtz posted about a friend who panicked when a worker at her child’s daycare had on a kaffiyeh and a similar thing happened when the president of a Canadian Union of Public Employees local wore the garment while addressing members. In a particularly odious expression of this thinking, right-wing X account Love My 7 Wood quote tweeted a picture of a member of the Alberta legislature wearing a kaffiyeh noting, “She and her NDP colleagues wear that for one reason and one reason only. To intimidate Jews.” (To which I replied “All Palestinian culture exists for one reason and one reason only. To intimidate Jews.”)

Others have sought to erase Palestinian poetry. B’nai Brith recently gloated that they got a Toronto library branch to remove prominent poet Refaat Alareer’s “If I Must Die” from a display. Four months ago Alareer and five family members were wiped out by the Israeli military and on Friday they killed his daugher, her husband and their infant child.

Not content with suppressing Palestinian poetry and garments, many express their ethnicity/religion by seeking to suppress Palestinian history. Recently, there was a push to stop the Peel District School Board from marking the Palestinian catastrophe, which saw over 700,000 ethnically cleansed from their homeland in 1947/48. To the chagrin of some, the suburban Toronto school board adopted Nakba Remembrance Day’ as one of over 20 similar historic or cultural days. A Canadian Jewish News headline explained “Peel school board’s move to add ‘Nakba Remembrance Day’ to its calendar spurs objections from Jewish parents—and the Ontario education ministry”. The story reported that the Jewish Educators and Family Association of Canada “launched an online campaign from within the Jewish community, encouraging people to write to [education minister Stephen] Lecce protesting the addition of Naqba (or Nakba) Remembrance Day.”

A similar campaign was instigated after the British Columbia Teachers Federation called for education on the Nakba last month. The founder of Nonviolent Opposition Against Hate, Masha Kleiner, instigated a petition to oppose it.

Alongside the push to erase Palestinian history and art, there’s a bid to starve Palestinians. The advocacy agent of Canada’s Jewish Federations, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), is boasting that they filed suit against Ottawa for funding the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. They want the Federal Court to order the government to block assistance to refugees in Gaza even though the International Court of Justice has twice ruled that humanitarian assistance must be delivered to Gaza.

The federations, CIJA, B’nai Brith, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Honest Reporting Canada and other organizations have supported the slaughter of 40,000 Palestinians over the past six months. CIJA’s director in Israel David M. Weinberg calls Palestinians in Gaza “the enemy population” and pushed “to reduce Gaza neighborhoods from which Hamas operated to rubble (as a matter of principle and not just for military advantage – and no, this is not a war crime).” In December the mayor of Hampstead, who boasts about leading “one of the most concentrated Jewish populations outside of Israel”, expressed his support for wiping out all Palestinian children. Jeremy Levi told me he would continue supporting Israel even if they killed 100,000 or more Palestinian kids since “good needs to prevail over evil”.

Many within the Jewish community are, of course, appalled by this supremacist, genocidal thinking. Jews Say No to Genocide has become an important organizing force in Toronto and in Montreal a contingent of Hasidic Jews have participated in many anti-genocide demonstrations in recent months. Independent Jewish Voices has also organized a slew of events against genocide.

Still, it’s remarkable how many Canadians’ religious/ethnic identity is expressed by seeking to erase a people 8,000 kilometers away. As I’ve detailed, the political forces at play are multifaceted, but part of it is a network of Jewish Zionist organizations that actively promote this type of thinking. There are numerous private schools, summer camps, community centres, synagogues and other organizations that push people into worshiping a violent faraway state that oppresses millions.

This elaborate genocidal network is rarely scrutinized. But, for those of us who believe in human rights for all it’s necessary to disrupt the institutions seeking to erase Palestinians.Facebook

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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.

Why I Wrote the Song, “I’m A Better Anarchist Than You”

Listen to this song, and take the red pill, friends.

By David Rovics

April 27, 2024

Source: This Week with David Rovics



While I spend most of my waking hours banging my head against a wall, figuratively speaking, occasionally I get reflective. I’ve noticed that reflection can occasionally be useful in helping us figure out how to bang our heads against the wall more effectively.

I suppose the most depressing thing about being a middle-aged radical approaching senior citizenship is coming to terms with the reality that despite my efforts to build a movement that would lead to an anti-capitalist, internationalist revolution, things generally just keep on getting worse, and the movement I’ve dreamed of for my entire adult life is very far from happening.

To paraphrase my friend Pol Mac Adaim, the best thing we can do is to leave behind bread crumbs that point the way forward, so future generations might benefit from them. That’s the mind frame I’m in, as I write now — and often on other occasions as well.

So in the name of reflection, I find myself taking a little survey of what I’ve been trying to do, and how that’s been going. Mainly, how I’ve applied my time and effort has been through writing and recording songs, and playing them for audiences. The last reflection on a song I wrote was about “St Patrick Battalion,” a song about international solidarity and against imperialism, which is pretty clearly the song I’ve written that’s gotten out there the most, been covered the most, and overall, the one that’s been heard the most.

But a close competitor with that one, and my most popular song on Spotify, is “I’m A Better Anarchist Than You,” which I wrote sometime around 2007.

The song is a satirical statement mocking sectarianism, in some — but far from all — of its familiar forms. If the main topic is sectarianism generally, the subtopic is a critique of what political punks when I was young called “lifestylism” — or in today’s lingo, the kind of orientation that would fall into the category of “virtue-signaling.”

Given its pithy nature, it’s hard to say whether “I’m A Better Anarchist Than You” is a particularly well-written song, although by my standard measure of audience reaction, it apparently is — each verse tends to elicit knowing laughter, often along with furtive glances in the direction of someone in the room the verse might somehow apply to. Generally, the people you might most visibly associate with the group I’m making fun of in a particular verse is the group that will tend to react most effusively, and positively, to it.

The fact that this song is one of the most popular ones I’ve written is itself a tremendous source of optimism for me, and I hope for some others, too.

The experience I have at shows where I sing the song is mirrored in a vague, statistical way at least, on Spotify and YouTube. On both of these platforms, my audience is primarily young. This is also true of my physical audiences, in many parts of the world. We can probably assume the young folks listening to this music online are basically the people I’m playing for live — just that online there are more of them.

If this assumption is accurate, what does the popularity of this particular song among my youthful and leftwing audience tell us? And to slightly complicate the question, if this cohort of largely young radicals is the same cohort that has made “St Patrick Battalion” my other most popular song — and by my observation at shows, measuring by how many people sing along with which songs, it is — what does that tell us?

Add to these observations of audiences and analysis of online statistics a mental survey of the sorts of conversations I have with these same young people before and after shows and even online, my conclusions are inescapable. Which is, “I’m A Better Anarchist Than You” is popular in my circles because in my circles people tend to feel very strongly that sectarianism, arrogance, and virtue-signaling suck and instead what we need is real broad-based, inclusive organizing. And “St Patrick Battalion” is popular in my circles because people think imperialism sucks and solidarity and empathy are beautiful and admirable — especially the kind of solidarity that puts your own life on the line to oppose a war of aggression, and/or to support the cause of freedom and justice and things like that.

In a world where there seems to be a lot more nationalism than internationalism manifesting, and in a society like the US, that seems to be so characterized by division much more than by common ground or common vision, these qualities in my audience seem very positive indeed. If internationalism and inclusivity represent where people in my youthful leftwing circles are coming from, perhaps there are a lot more people out there who feel like that.

I sure hope so, because I have increasingly come to believe that internationalism and inclusivity are the two most important orientations for any person or people who harbor any real hopes for creating a better world. These are also the two perspectives that seem to be most under attack by those forces in society who seek to maintain their power and control over the rest of us.

In a world where a relative handful of people own most of the wealth, leaving the vast majority of the rest of us to squabble over the scraps, the plutocrats in control are completely dependent on successfully keeping us divided, at each other’s throats. History demonstrates amply that as soon as we stop fighting each other, only the most extreme forms of violent repression can keep a disenfranchised population like ours from holding the banks and billionaires responsible for their actions.

By the time I wrote “I’m A Better Anarchist Than You,” I was just about 40 years old. I had already been touring and playing for various gatherings of radicals for well over a decade — and it had been a very long and busy decade. When I was in my twenties, if I had had the idea for this song, I probably wouldn’t have written it, because I was still pretty sectarian myself. By the time I wrote it I had developed a much more ecumenical orientation politically, but even so, I was really worried I was going to alienate a lot of friends and fans with this song. And it has been so heartening to find that even if I did alienate a few sectarian-oriented people in my social circles, the song energized and basically had the opposite effect of alienation for many more people.

The things I thought, said, and did during my most sectarian phase, in my early twenties, can be pretty horrifying to recall.

Many people seem to be just realizing that there are people with some really bizarre ideas out there, and they’re realizing this because of the internet, and social media in particular. But prior to social media being around to amplify the rantings of anyone with a Facebook or TikTok account, I can tell you that the little group of fellow hippies and punks in my little milieu of radical youth when I was one of them had a lot of crazy ideas that we shared among each other. Thankfully, we didn’t often get around to trying to communicate these ideas beyond our little clique, unless it was to contribute to a zine or something, in which case there was often some kind of collective effort involving some form of curation, much like the Indymedia Centers that were all the rave among radical online youth prior to Facebook, which tended towards improving statements and making them less sectarian in nature.

Because of the way social media can serve as a means of amplifying the most sectarian, divisive, condescending and bizarre notions that any idiot might manage to get algorithmic traction with, there’s something very reassuring about seeing how the stats break down in terms of my audience’s demographics and musical preferences. But recalling my youth, there’s no doubt that none of this is new — whether we’re talking about sectarianism or the widespread desire to move past it.

And then, taking the longer historical view, for me at least it all becomes abundantly more obvious that successful social movements are always inclusive and broad-based. They fall apart when they take a sectarian turn. And the forces of control in our society — and the algorithms and other technologies of division and control that they increasingly employ — are always working hard to make sure to emphasize the internal contradictions that cause social movements to turn inward and drive away potential participants and supporters.

Looking at the past, everything tends to seem more obvious. Like how the internationalist, radical labor movement of the early twentieth century was derailed by the nationalism of World War 1, and the opportunity this gave the capitalist class to repress the forces of internationalism and labor militancy.

Or how the same ruling class and its mouthpieces in the tabloid press stoked divisions back then between the supposedly radical, brick-throwing immigrants who were allegedly behind all the labor organizing, and the supposedly law-abiding Americans who had no interest in such socialist, communist or anarchist ideas.

Looking at more recent times, like the times I’ve lived through, seeing what’s happening with regards to the efforts of the ruling class to maintain docile tranquility, making sense of what’s going on seems much murkier and prone to misunderstanding. But the pattern that repeats itself seems to do so with more and more predictability. Every time an inclusive movement is building, a controversy — or many of them — develops, calling into question whether some segment of the movement belongs in it, or is taking up too much space within it, or “centering themselves” too much, or causing problems for other people within the movement. These controversies then do their daily, grinding work, in collaboration with the algorithms of control, to erode and destroy the movement, one after another.

A hundred years ago they were telling the native-born workers to be suspicious of the foreign-born workers, and for the whites to be suspicious of the Blacks. And that kind of messaging stuck with us, and continues to be one of the major factors hampering the kind of class-based movements that have led to such prosperity in so many European countries.

But then we can add to that kind of ruling class divide-and-conquer messaging around race and nationality the many other ways we are so chronically divided. When I was young and organized left groups and parties were more commonplace, it was a wonder if you’d ever see members of different parties amicably talking with one another at the same demo. As inclusive as the 1960’s New Left tended to be, there was the impact of the propaganda that was to some extent successfully promulgated among the general population that the youth had the answers, and the older generation were just hopelessly stuck in a repressed worldview.

Bizarrely, two generations later, this patently fake, corporate, generational breakdown of who has power and responsibility to make changes in society is still ever-present, a cult of youth that permeates social media. Two generations after it was used to confuse the Baby Boomers, the same divide-and-conquer strategy still works like a charm, perhaps better than ever, making sure the younger generations are well-prepared to reject any wisdom that might have been there to build on from older generations of radicals.

In so many ways, social movements have followed a pattern of coming into existence and growing because of the horrendous situation at hand — be it a movement centered around opposing a genocidal war, stopping climate change, ending police brutality or many other examples — and then the forces and factors that tend towards division and dissension seek to dominate the discourse and collapse the movement in question.

It seems like a statement of the obvious to many, but to others the idea is shocking, that the movements that are able to be mass movements that can sustain themselves and have a real impact tend to exhibit the kinds of inclusive qualities typical of any modern labor union. Not only can people of different races, genders, nationalities and religions be part of the same labor union, but even if some of the members believe in the right to abortion and others think abortion should be illegal, they can still be in the same union. Even if some members believe their race or their nationality or their religion is superior to others in the group, even if some of the workers support Trump, others support Sanders, and others want to violently overthrow the capitalist system and replace it with a dictatorship of the proletariat, if they all believe in equal pay for equal work and other basic principles all the union members need to adhere to, the successful union finds a way to work with such a disparate membership. Some may be trans and others may believe all LGBTQ people are going to hell. But they can still be in the same union.

Why? Because of the basic reality that with the alternative of shunning large segments of the working class because of their perceived impurities of one kind or another, these shunned people aren’t going to disappear. They’ll be the strikebreakers you encounter, next time you really need the solidarity of the entire working class, and you won’t have it. That’s a divided and conquered people right there in a nutshell.

What if we had a union where our priority was not on organizing the working class, but on having a safe space that only union members who fit certain qualifications could be part of? Our workforce has lots of immigrants and people of color in it, so we can’t have any Trump supporters, they’re not safe. There goes half the membership. Our workforce has ardent supporters of Israel in it who think the pro-Palestine people are antisemites. We’ll have to keep out those genocide-supporters. Our workforce has people in it who support sending billions of our tax dollars to pay for Ukraine’s war against Russia, so we’ll have to keep out those militaristic NATO-supporters. Or do we keep out those authoritarian Putin-supporters? Maybe both…?

I first became a sectarian thinker as a teenager, and went in deep. I embodied every cliche in the song. I barely tolerated the existence of meat-eaters in my circle of friends, and had to harangue them regularly for their sins. I believed in the necessity for some kind of violent revolution, and I thought pacifism was the gateway to fascism or something like that. I had no interest in unions because I had grown to believe in the Maoist theories of the labor aristocracy, or at least my warped understanding of them as a clueless teenager.

As I thankfully emerged from this pit of black-and-white thinking by my mid-twenties, it was plain to see the impact of others who were struggling with this kind of sectarian thinking amid the ranks of the environmental movement and later in the ranks of the global justice movement, the movement against the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, in the Palestine solidarity movement circa 2000 onward, and later in an even more pervasive way in what the media called the racial justice movement, and in other movements rooted in the completely dysfunctional arena of miscommunication that we call “socials” nowadays.

What personal perspective as well as historical perspective and direct observation and participation in social movements over the past 45 years or so has taught me, beyond any doubt, is the way forward is inclusive and all about finding common ground and organizing to achieve it together. And this way forward means that our focus needs to be on dwelling on the things that unite us, and not so much on the things that divide us. It means solidarity and empathy between people, rather than competition for who has the sharpest analysis, who has the healthiest lifestyle, who has the deepest understanding of intersectionality, who is using the right or wrong vocabulary, who is more oppressed by whatever measure, or any of the other similar intellectual rabbit holes that can get a movement lost.

As time goes on, the matrix of control led by the gigantic tech corporations and their government minders seems more and more like the movie, the Matrix, to me. Humanity, particularly in the more obsessively-“connected” societies like this one, seems more and more disconnected, atomized and alienated.

I often reflect at shows before I sing “I’m A Better Anarchist Than You” that I wrote the song before X/Twitter existed, before most people were on Facebook, before the corporate control over our means of communication became completely hegemonic, to paraphrase the late Glen Ford. Now, with the extent of anonymous trolling culture and antagonistic behavior being so much the norm on so much of social media — that is, where we live and communicate — the song seems to have an innocence about it, like it’s from another age, and, truly, it is.

It’s from an age when it was still a great challenge to communicate and find common ground, where the forces of division were very active in all kinds of arenas, from the schools to the TV to Hollywood to the Counterintelligence Program that heroic activists exposed when they raided the FBI offices in Pennsylvania back in 1971 — a program which has undoubtedly continued to this day, a claim for which copious evidence exists.

But it’s from an age before Indymedia was hijacked by “social media,” before the commons of the free internet was replaced by the online equivalent of hanging out at the mall, before we basically moved into the Matrix, continuing to think we’re having real conversations with each other, while actually just feeding the algorithms of conflict, control, division, and addiction.

As I write, the movement against the genocide in Gaza is gaining steam in this country and around the world. The future of this movement, as with the future generally, is unknown. But if it or any other movement has a chance, it will come from engaging with the broader society to join us, in the real world, such as with the campus occupations cropping up everywhere, rather than in having ideological arguments inside of the Matrix about who among us is Jewish enough or Muslim enough or ideologically pure enough to speak (or sing) at a rally.

    

Trump, Genocide, and Profit Seeking Suicide – The Devil Is No Longer In Disguise

By Michael Albert

April 26, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.




What to do. What to do. Consider our times. Do you feel, like I feel, massive confusion at what is happening out there. Even if I confine myself to considering perhaps the three largest current instances of mind madness, confusion abounds.

The three are the Orange Trumpist or fascist onslaught in the U.S. and elsewhere; the still raging and even spreading genocidal violence in the Mideast; and the steady ecological devolution of survival prospects worldwide.

I am sorry that all that horribleness is center staged in this essay, but at least the confusions addressed here are about potential corrections.

So what’s with the title, The Devil Is No Longer In Disguise.

Well, it is either clickbait and I got ya, or by undisguised devil I simply mean the evil of these three issues are not hidden. The rot is not even trying to hide. You can’t avoid the horrific details. The perpetrators brag more than they try to hide.

Okay, so for the first topic, I came across a description of Trump by a British writer Nate White, who I otherwise know absolutely zero about. It was in an online dialog like cyber platform program, put there by someone else. I hope Nate won’t mind my also quoting him at length. I usually hate over focusing on Trump, but this is to go to not share:

“Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?

“A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.

“Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.

“Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.

“There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.

“And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.

“So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.
You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.

“This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum.

“God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.

“And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?’

It would seem the British writer, Nate White, whoever he is, can certainly turn a phrase. You might wonder, however, why there isn’t any reference to Trump’s actual views. But wonder not. I would guess Nate’s point is that beyond what is offered, Trump’s views don’t actually exist. They are mere noise, not his essence.

At any rate, I am here, in America. And I look around, mostly on Youtube, at interviews of Trumpers and at descriptions or quotes of his current utterances, and at his talks, and what all else, and I find myself confused about the same concern as this Britisher.

Why does a third of the U.S. population support Trump in any way at all, and why does some subset of that group support him to the point of what appears to be worship? Trump to my eyes is Oxycodone incarnate. An addiction which, once it’s got you ravages you or your brain, at any rate. But that isn’t much of an answer to why, so what is? And what can one do to reduce and reverse the support?

Before trying to answer, however, let’s name the second and third top stories that confuse me and confuse many others.

Israel goose steps bombs across Gaza to demolish hospitals, homes, and pretty much everything else. As if punctuating that, Israel starves people as overt policy, and acknowledges that death is the aim. So, as with Trump worship, I wonder, how can we understand such baffling as well as nauseating assessments of Israel’s genocidal policies. How does one confront that?

And my third focus of confusion is the trajectory of the world that is currently right out in the open displayed for all to see in the world’s steadily worsening ecological dissolution, and, again, how do we explain people’s reactions to that?

So, our topics here, how is it possible for so many people to support Trump? And then, two, how is it possible for the vast bulk of otherwise sane Israeli souls to support Massacre and Mayhem that even calls itself, well, revenge unto death, and also, how is it possible for so many otherwise presumably caring sensible souls in the U.S. to also support genocide and be horrified by and even repressive toward growing support for Palestine? And finally, three, how is it possible for an incredibly large number of sentient humans to effectively ignore or tut-tut the suicidal trajectory of the planet they inhabit?

A hard rain is falling and yet so many ignore or even run from but don’t rise up against the already raging and everywhere impending floods?

In a nutshell, on these scores, what’s going on in peoples’ heads? It feels to me like one has to have a feel for that to impact where we are all headed.

In a book titled Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut has a passage where a character tries to address the same underlying question as is vexing me, though far more creatively than I can muster.

The character comments:

“I have never seen a more sublime demonstration of the totalitarian mind, a mind which might be linked unto a system of gears where teeth have been filed off at random. Such snaggle-toothed thought machine, driven by a standard or even by a substandard libido, whirls with the jerky, noisy, gaudy pointlessness of a cuckoo clock in Hell.


“The boss G-man concluded wrongly that there were no teeth on the gears in the mind of Jones. ‘You’re completely crazy,’ he said.


“Jones wasn’t completely crazy. The dismaying thing about classic totalitarian mind is that any given gear, thought mutilated, will have at its circumference unbroken sequences of teeth that are immaculately maintained, that are exquisitely machined.


“Hence the cuckoo clock in Hell – keeping perfect time for eight minutes and twenty-three seconds, jumping ahead fourteen minutes, keeping perfect time for six seconds, jumping ahead two seconds, keeping perfect time for two hours and one second, then jumping ahead a year.


“The missing teeth, of course, are simple, obvious truths, truths available and comprehensible even to ten-year-olds, in most cases.


“The wilful filling off a gear teeth, the wilful doing without certain obvious pieces of information – That was how a household as contradictory as one composed of Jones, Father Keeley, Vice-Bundesfuehrer Krapptauer, and the Black Fuehrer could exist in relative harmony –


“That was how my father-in-law could contain in one mind an indifference toward slave women and love fora a blue vase.


“That was how Rudolf Hess, Commandant of Auschwitz, could alternate over the loudspeakers of Auschwitz great music and calls for corpse-carriers –


“That was how Nazi Germany sense no important difference between civilization and hydrophobia.


“That is the closest I can come to explaining the legions, the nations of lunatics I’ve seen in my time.”

So that is Vonnegut’s attempt. But what does that moving dismissal say one should do when a great many one hears of, works with, or even lives with seem to have in their heads one or another cuckoo clock in Hell—or when one fears there may be willfully missing truths in one’s own head as well.

My answer is, I can only guess. I am not sure. I am confused. But I think how we answer matters for a host of reasons.

First, to prevent fascism, curb wars, and preserve planetary habitability is going to require that many who currently favor or ignore insanity, injustice, and or social suicide change views. Second, whatever allows people to take otherwise absurd, self-denying, other-denying, reason-ignoring, and even suicidal stances in these three cases that I have mentioned occurs in countless other domains as well, albeit perhaps less screamingly visibly. Here are some: guns, immigration, AI, vaccines, health generally, abortion, salaries, incentives, book banning, and all kinds of fundamentalism including sectarianism, and sexism, racism, and classism in all their forms.

So back to our topics, first, why do folks like or even purport to love Trump?

I think we can confidently answer only for a very few. For example, the rich and powerful who support him typically expect largesse in return. No confusion about that. And I suppose a connected or ancillary explanation is that those who anticipate him re-occupying the Oval Office comes the election don’t want to be on his enemies list. This is also not confusing, albeit grossly cowardly.

A second oft-touted explanation is that a subset of Trump’s supporters are literally, even genetically, little Trumps who he has released from hiding their vile side by his parading his violent side. This explanation says Trump’s vulgar racist and sexist outbreaks, wherein the Devil struts about in all his grotesque perversion, has freed others from making believe they aren’t racist and sexist to now let go and openly strut like their pied piper. Then the question of course arises, why do however many of these folks exist have these inclinations in the first place, but it is in any case a plausible explanation for some of Trump’s support.

So one group supports him as a lackey to serve their interests or so he won’t punish them. A second group supports him as a pied piper who legitimates their preferred inclinations.

Next there are what folks looking on who say his followers are ignorant and deceived. So, they explain, some Trump supporters actually believe Biden stole the election and believe Trump cares about them. Some supporters, that is, have fallen down the rabbit hole of Fox reporting, and once down there they protect themselves from others who lie about their buddy.

Finally, we also have two more groups or perhaps it is two components of one group. This whole constituency can see that Trump is a horrible person. For one part of them, however, he is also a wrench in society’s works. He is not same-old same-old but is instead so wildly berserk that he just might upset existing norms and habits enough for things to get better. So these folks support Trump literally because he is off the rails. And they hope for good to come from the messes that he creates. The other half of those who can see he is a horrible person, ironically, support him as the lesser evil. That is, these folks quite reasonably trust very little that comes out of any politician’s mouth. They rightly know they are hurting. They feel it. feel that the country is going to hell in a hand cart. They don’t really know what another Trump regime will mean but they do feel that they know what another Biden regime will mean. It will mean more of what they have suffered. So, for them Biden is just business as usual, and they tend to think that nothing replacing business as usual could be worse than business as usual. So for them the Orange man is the lesser evil. Imagine that. And since politics is sleight of hand anyhow, why not at least beat the system.

We could stop there, and most who think about Trump’s support do, I think, but why even guess at what yields support for Trump, for for fascism? It ought to be to ask, how can we constructively address Trump supporters?

So, okay, how about talking to the rich who want to get richer? We know that will go nowhere. Power alone will affect them. We get that. We have to pressure them. Raise costs for them until they relent. And finally, remove them. It is lesson one of activism.

How about the previously closeted or out in the open but significantly restrained racists and sexists who now happily follow Trump’s bombastic lead? Can we address them with evidence, reason, and even empathy? Maybe, sometimes, that might work. For us to say no, don’t bother—is that wisdom or is it evidence of a clock in our heads with a very nasty flaw?

What about the group who thinks Trump will do less harm—in that case, evidence and reason should matter. Such Trump supporters dislike things worth disliking. They just think that with Trump there is more chance those ills will be muted or stopped. They don’t know the error that involves, and so to make a case that reveals that error seems worth undertaking. Indeed, it seems essential.

I know that lots of people think that supporting Trump, and especially that workers supporting Trump is the really inexplicable mindset of our times. They chalk it up to untouchable broken gears. I am not one who thinks that. I agree there is some ignorance and myth involved, but whose fault is that? The stacked system is at fault, of course, but, beyond that, aren’t activists like me and you who have known otherwise but who in fifty years haven’t communicated sufficiently well with working people for them to even be immunized against supporting a billionaire buffoon, also at fault.

And before throwing rocks at Trump’s working class male, female, white, and black supporters, consider the upside down views of the non-Trump millions who think that attacking our government is vile. Who think hating politicians is vile. Who think rage at doctors who push drugs, at lawyers who plea bargain lives into prisons, and at teachers who purport to know more but actually know less and teach inanities, are vile.

So yes, of course, there are Trumpers who are now out of their minds, who were drawn slowly into a cult-like defense of their prior support for Orange man, and who now manifest grotesquely deep racism and sexism, but I actually think most of the support for Trump is no more peculiar, given the facts, than actual positive support felt by many for Genocide Joe.

I certainly want Biden to win, absolutely, because Trump is an outright megalomaniacal egomaniacal fascist lunatic and as horrible as new liberalism is, fascism is a helluva lot worse—really, it is—but to feel literally positively for a guy who has armed, rationalized, and even cheered on Israel’s brazenly open extermination policies? Does that evidence a clock in good order?

And that brings us to our second example.

How do we explain much less relate to support for such visibly, undeniably, genocidal policies as perpetrated in Gaza? Consider a subset of the Jewish community in the U.S.

They video-saw Hamas horribly kill Israelis. They assessed and presumably decided right off, or later, that decades of open air imprisonment, random deaths, colonial occupation, denial and indignity, and being deemed vermin, didn’t justify that. It was Terror.

But then those same people who have themselves also suffered through history Hitler imposed denigration, death, more death, unto genocide—decided to unleash their own American emblazoned military might in unyielding assault. They do unto others what had been done unto them. They announce it, they prepare it, they do it, they celebrate it, they sing praises to it, they admire their intentionally aimed bombs blasting everything—homes, hospitals, limbs, and souls—until there is nowhere for Palestinians to run that isn’t bursting with death and destruction because Hamas’s actions justify it. In that case, what do Israel’s actions justify?

Well, some in my country think Israel’s actions warrant praise. Some think they warrant support. Some think that to oppose Israel’s genocidal, planned, praised actions and U.S. support for them is anti-Semitic and such protesters should be silenced. And those people don’t bow and pray to Trump but, well, what would Vonnegut who described Nazi cuckoo clock mind’s say about this horrible reversal?

So, two down, and what have I offered. Maybe just a little clarity along with a whole lot of confusion. My apologies that I don’t have better for you. And so we come to our third focus.

Outside your window, every window. The world faces fire, faces ice, faces flooding, faces starving. High water rising.

On the one hand, mired in the rat race, fancy captains of industry clutch at profit to enrich themselves and, one would think, their off-spring, even while they simultaneously pursue the oil-drenched death of everything that breathes, including their off-spring. Is that Cuckoo clock brains at work, or it just just profit-seeking identities wedged into perpetual self aggrandizement, even unto death?

And on the other hand, so many other heads just look away. Don’t look. See only what you want to see. Is that fear? Is it ignorance? Is it surrender? Is it being too busy? Are we going over the edge because, well, that’s where the mob is going? What do you say to that if you would like to try to help save everything?

Dylan in a different time but distraught at what he saw It’s Alright Ma. When I heard that, I turned left. Hard Left. Dylan didn’t. A pity that. But maybe give it a listen.

Dylan’s a poet but It’s Alright Ma isn’t meant to be read, but I present it as text anyhow. The whole thing. So sue me, and see in it whatever you want, which is, I hope less like what Dylan saw, and more like, dare I suggest it, what I saw.

Darkness at the break of noon

Shadows even the silver spoon

The handmade blade, the child’s balloon

Eclipses both the sun and moon

To understand you know too soon

There is no sense in trying

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn

Suicide remarks are torn

From the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn

Plays wasted words, proves to warn

That he not busy being born is busy dying

Temptation’s page flies out the door

You follow, find yourself at war

Watch waterfalls of pity roar

You feel to moan but unlike before

You discover that you’d just be one more

Person crying

So don’t fear if you hear

A foreign sound to your ear

It’s alright, Ma, I’m only sighing

As some warn victory, some downfall

Private reasons great or small

Can be seen in the eyes of those that call

To make all that should be killed to crawl

While others say don’t hate nothing at all

Except hatred

Disillusioned words like bullets bark

As human gods aim for their mark

Make everything from toy guns that spark

To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark

It’s easy to see without looking too far

That not much is really sacred

While preachers preach of evil fates

Teachers teach that knowledge waits

Can lead to hundred-dollar plates

Goodness hides behind its gates

But even the president of the United States

Sometimes must have to stand naked

An’ though the rules of the road have been lodged

It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge

And it’s alright, Ma, I can make it

Advertising signs they con

You into thinking you’re the one

That can do what’s never been done

That can win what’s never been won

Meantime life outside goes on

All around you

You lose yourself, you reappear

You suddenly find you got nothing to fear

Alone you stand with nobody near

When a trembling distant voice, unclear

Startles your sleeping ears to hear

That somebody thinks they really found you

A question in your nerves is lit

Yet you know there is no answer fit

To satisfy, insure you not to quit

To keep it in your mind and not forget

That it is not he or she or them or it

That you belong to

Although the masters make the rules

For the wise men and the fools

I got nothing, Ma, to live up to

For them that must obey authority

That they do not respect in any degree

Who despise their jobs, their destinies

Speak jealously of them that are free

Cultivate their flowers to be

Nothing more than something they invest in

While some on principles baptized

To strict party platform ties

Social clubs in drag disguise

Outsiders they can freely criticize

Tell nothing except who to idolize

And then say God bless him

While one who sings with his tongue on fire

Gargles in the rat race choir

Bent out of shape from society’s pliers

Cares not to come up any higher

But rather get you down in the hole

That he’s in

But I mean no harm nor put fault

On anyone that lives in a vault

But it’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please him

Old lady judges watch people in pairs

Limited in sex, they dare

To push fake morals, insult and stare

While money doesn’t talk, it swears

Obscenity, who really cares

Propaganda, all is phony

While them that defend what they cannot see

With a killer’s pride, security

It blows the minds most bitterly

For them that think death’s honesty

Won’t fall upon them naturally

Life sometimes must get lonely

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed

Graveyards, false gods, I scuff

At pettiness which plays so rough

Walk upside-down inside handcuffs

Kick my legs to crash it off

Say okay, I have had enough

what else can you show me?

And if my thought-dreams could be seen

They’d probably put my head in a guillotine

But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only

What can I say? Fuck the Devil in disguise and also the one who parades unbidden. And keep kicking.



Michael Albert
Michael Albert`s radicalization occurred during the 1960s. His political involvements, starting then and continuing to the present, have ranged from local, regional, and national organizing projects and campaigns to co-founding South End Press, Z Magazine, the Z Media Institute, and ZNet, and to working on all these projects, writing for various publications and publishers, giving public talks, etc. His personal interests, outside the political realm, focus on general science reading (with an emphasis on physics, math, and matters of evolution and cognitive science), computers, mystery and thriller/adventure novels, sea kayaking, and the more sedentary but no less challenging game of GO. Albert is the author of 21 books which include: No Bosses: A New Economy for a Better World; Fanfare for the Future; Remembering Tomorrow; Realizing Hope; and Parecon: Life After Capitalism. Michael is currently host of the podcast Revolution Z and is a Friend of ZNetwork.

Should Harming Mother Earth Be a Crime? The Case for Ecocide

By Reynard Loki ***

April 26, 2024
Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.


Stop Ecocide International logo



The destruction of nature might one day become a criminal offense adjudicated by the International Criminal Court.

On December 3, 2019, the Pacific island state of Vanuatu made an audacious proposal: Make ecocide—the destruction of nature—an international crime. “An amendment of the Rome Statute could criminalize acts that amount to Ecocide,” stated Ambassador of Vanuatu John Licht at the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) annual Assembly of States Parties in the Hague. He was speaking on behalf of his government at the assembly’s full plenary session. “We believe this radical idea merits serious discussion.”

Since then, the idea has become less radical: Amid the intensifying global climate emergency, interest has been mounting among nations and diverse stakeholders—spanning international bodies, grassroots organizations, and businesses—that ecocide be formally recognized as an international crime, joining the ranks of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes of aggression, which are the four core international crimes established by the Rome Statute of the ICC. These crimes are not subject to any statute of limitations.

Environmental activists are pushing to elevate the concept of ecocide—literally, the “killing of the ecosystem”—as the fifth international crime to be adjudicated by the ICC. If it becomes a reality, those who commit environmental destruction could be liable to arrest, prosecution, and punishment—by a fine, imprisonment, or both.

The European Union, in February 2024, took a step in the direction of criminalizing cases that lead to environmental destruction and “voted in a new directive” that makes these crimes comparable to ecocide, according to Grist. “The new law holds people liable for environmental destruction if they acted with knowledge of the damage their actions would cause.” The article adds that environmental crime is the “fourth most lucrative illegal activity in the world, worth an estimated $258 billion annually,” according to Interpol, and is only growing with each passing year.

Ecocide proponents want laws being pushed across various international organizations and government agencies to cover the most egregious crimes against nature, which could ultimately include massive abuses to the living environment, such as oil spills, illegal deforestation, deep-sea mining, mountaintop removal mining, Arctic oil exploration and extraction, tar sand extraction, and factory farming. British barrister and environmental lobbyist Polly Higgins defined ecocide as “extensive damage… to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been or will be severely diminished.”

Ecosystem Services: Existential and Economic Value

Healthy, functioning ecosystems provide a wide range of services to humanity and all life on Earth that are essential for the sustainable management and conservation of natural resources. These services can be categorized into four broad categories.

Provisioning Services: Healthy ecosystems provide food and water for humans and nonhuman animals, timber for building, and fiber for clothing and other industries.

Regulating Services: These services control conditions and processes, such as climate regulation, water purification, and pollination. Wetlands, for instance, purify water by filtering out pollutants, while forests help regulate climate by absorbing carbon dioxide.

Supporting Services: These services are necessary to produce all other ecosystem services. Examples include nutrient cycling, soil formation, and primary production. Soil organisms contribute to nutrient cycling, and the soil supports plant growth.

Cultural Services: Humanity obtains numerous non-material benefits from healthy ecosystems, including spiritual enrichment, cognitive development, reflection, recreation, and aesthetic experiences. Parks, beaches, and natural landscapes provide opportunities for recreation and relaxation, while cultural heritage sites offer historical and spiritual connections.

Ecosystem services are crucial for human well-being, economic prosperity, and societal development. To ensure that we continue to enjoy these services, we must protect ecosystems from the destructive harm of unsustainable exploitation. Ecocide laws can provide this protection.

War in Ukraine: Ecocide by Russia

Ukraine is seen as a “trailblazer” in pushing for recognizing ecocide crimes “within the realm of justice.” This thinking has especially gained momentum since Russia’s attack on the nation in February 2022, leading to the war on Ukraine being seen as a site of ecocide. On April 16, 2024, environmental, climate, and energy experts gathered at Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest in Middlebury, Vermont, for a panel discussion titled “Criminalizing Ecocide: Lessons From Ukraine in Addressing Global Environmental Challenges.” The event centered on the significant ramifications of Russia’s environmental transgressions in Ukraine within the broader scope of global environmental justice.

The panelists—including Marjukka Porvali from the European Commission (a specialist in environmental policy with a focus on Ukraine); Jojo Mehta, the co-founder of Stop Ecocide; Bart Gruyaert, project director at Neo-Eco Ukraine; and Anna Ackermann, a climate and energy policy analyst—discussed establishing legal precedents to prosecute the gravest offenses against nature, promoting a cultural shift toward taking environmental issues seriously, and navigating a fair transition—while responsibly utilizing critical resources for reconstruction.

The Ukrainian government “has [also] argued for using…[international criminalization of ecocide] as a tool to hold individuals accountable for environmental destruction in wartime.” Their call increased in the summer of 2023 when Russia destroyed the Kakhovka Dam, which not only killed people but also caused the spread of chemical pollution in the area.

Protecting the Future of Life on Earth

In 2017, Higgins and Mehta founded the Stop Ecocide campaign. Overseen by the Stop Ecocide Foundation, a charitable organization based in the Netherlands, the campaign is the only global effort to exclusively focus on the establishment of ecocide as an international crime to prevent further devastation to the Earth’s ecosystems. “Protecting the future of life on Earth means stopping the mass damage and destruction of ecosystems taking place globally,” states the Stop Ecocide Facebook page. “And right now, in most of the world, no one is held responsible.”

Vanuatu’s bold proposition was the first time a state representative made an official call for the criminalization of ecocide on the international stage since 1972 when then-Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme made the argument during his keynote address at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm.

“The immense destruction brought about by indiscriminate bombing, by large-scale use of bulldozers and herbicides is an outrage sometimes described as ecocide, which requires urgent international attention,” said Palme in his address. “It is shocking that only preliminary discussions of this matter have been possible so far in the United Nations and at the conferences of the International Committee of the Red Cross, where it has been taken up by my country and others. We fear that the active use of these methods is coupled by a passive resistance to discuss them.”

The Failure of the Paris Climate Agreement

That passive resistance to discussing the immense destruction of nature at the hands of humanity has largely continued. Though nearly 200 nations signed the Paris Agreement in 2015—designed to avoid irreversible climate change by limiting global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius—the countries’ commitments are not nearly enough. As they stand, the promises put the Earth on course to heat up between 3 and 4 degrees Celsius above the historic baseline by 2100.

Although the Paris Agreement mandates the monitoring and reporting of carbon emissions, it lacks the authority to compel any nation to decrease its emissions. Considering this shortcoming, the landmark agreement has been a failure. This failure inspired more than 11,000 scientists from 153 countries to sign a “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency” declaration in January 2020. Another 2,100 scientists have signed it as of April 9, 2021.“An immense increase of scale in endeavors to conserve our biosphere is needed to avoid untold suffering due to the climate crisis,” the scientists warned.

Society did not heed the warning: Two years later, in 2022, worldwide carbon dioxide emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels reached a record high.

“A 100 countries say they are aiming for net-zero or carbon neutrality by 2050, yet just 14 have enacted such targets into law,” Carter Dillard, policy director of the nonprofit Fair Start Movement and author of Justice as a Fair Start in Life: Understanding the Right to Have Children, wrote in the Hill in April 2022.

“[T]he Paris Agreement, which itself allowed for widespread ecological destruction, is failing,” said Dillard, whose organization supports the emergence of smaller families not only to tackle environmental degradation but also to establish “fair starts” for the children born today who have to face the prospect of growing up on a rapidly deteriorating planet. “Meanwhile, in real-time, global warming is already killing and sickening people and damaging fetal and infant health worldwide,” Dillard wrote. “Maybe it’s time for a rethink and a deeper approach.”

A Broken Legal Framework

One deeper approach would be to protect the natural environment through the legal system since, as the Paris Agreement has shown, non-binding commitments that are not subject to possible punishment and remain unfulfilled are ultimately meaningless.

Higgins pointed out the illogical state of our current legal system, which shields perpetrators of crimes against nature: “We have laws that are protecting dangerous industrial activities, such as fracking, despite the fact that there is an abundance of evidence that it is hugely harmful in terms of carbon emissions, biodiversity loss, and the catastrophic trauma it can cause communities that are impacted by it.”

“The rules of our world are laws, and they can be changed,” she said in 2015. “Laws can restrict, or they can enable. What matters is what they serve. Many of the laws in our world serve property—they are based on ownership. But imagine a law that has a higher moral authority… a law that puts people and planet first. Imagine a law that starts from first do no harm, that stops this dangerous game and takes us to a place of safety.”

Ecocide Movement Growing

While the ecocide movement was dealt a blow when Higgins died in 2019 after a battle with cancer, it picked up speed, aided not only by Vanuatu’s proposal but also by high-profile supporters like French President Emmanuel Macron, who said, “The mother of all battles is international: to ensure that this term is enshrined in international law so that leaders… are accountable before the International Criminal Court.”

Environmental protection is becoming more of a concern among the general public, many of whom take a dim view of elected leaders’ inaction. According to a 2024 CBS News poll, 70 percent of Americans favor government action to address climate change. Half of Americans believe that it is a crisis that must be addressed immediately. Almost a quarter of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions come from the industrialized destruction of natural landscapes to support agriculture, forestry, and other uses to support human society. By criminalizing widespread environmental destruction with no remediation, ecocide laws can be a vital tool in dealing with the climate crisis.

A 2024 Conservation in the West poll revealed a deep-seated worry about the environment’s future among two-thirds of voters across eight Western U.S. states. Their concerns ranged from low river water levels and loss of wildlife habitat to air and water pollution. Interestingly, the survey found that 80 percent or more of these voters support the idea of energy companies bearing the costs of cleaning up extraction sites and restoring the land after drilling activities. This view is not far from the belief that environmental destruction should be treated as a criminal offense.

Meanwhile, three-quarters want the U.S. to generate all of its electricity from renewable sources within 15 years, according to a poll conducted by the Guardian and Vice in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election. In December 2020, as world leaders marked the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement, UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged every country to declare a “climate emergency.”

The general public is warming to the idea of criminalizing the destruction of nature, with more than 99 percent of the French “citizens’ climate assembly”—a group of 150 people randomly selected to help guide the nation’s climate policy—voting to make ecocide a crime in June 2020.

“If something’s a crime, we place it below a moral red line. At the moment, you can still go to the government and get a permit to frack or mine or drill for oil, whereas you can’t just get a permit to kill people because it’s criminal,” said Mehta. “Once you set that parameter in place, you shift the cultural mindset as well as the legal reality.”

“The air we breathe is not the property of any one nation—we share it,” Palme said in his 1972 address. “The big oceans are not divided by national frontiers—they are our common property. … In the field of human environment there is no individual future, neither for humans nor for nations. Our future is common. We must share it together. We must shape it together.”

Greta Thunberg called for a shift in our legal system regarding the environment. “We will not save the world by playing by the rules,” said Thunberg, who has become the face of the international youth climate movement. “We need to change the rules.”

Ecocide Laws Moving Through European Parliaments

In February 2024, the Belgian parliament passed a revised penal code endorsing the punishment of ecocide at national and international levels. This landmark decision makes Belgium the first European nation to acknowledge ecocide within the realm of international law.

“Belgium is now at the forefront of a truly global conversation around criminalizing the most severe harms to nature and must continue to advocate for the recognition of ecocide at the International Criminal Court, alongside genocide,” said Patricia Willocq, director of Stop Ecocide Belgium. “In order to fully protect nature, it is necessary that those that would willfully destroy vast swaths of the natural world, in turn causing untold human harm, should be criminalized.”

Scotland may follow suit. On November 8, 2023, Labour Member of the Scottish Parliament Monica Lennon introduced a proposed ecocide bill in the Scottish Parliament that could lead to substantial penalties for those found guilty of the large-scale destruction of the environment, potentially resulting in up to 20 years of imprisonment. If passed, it would establish Scotland as the first country in the United Kingdom to implement strict consequences for environmental damage.

Lennon initiated a consultation that was set to conclude in February 2024. The government responded by confirming that Circular Economy Minister Lorna Slater would discuss the proposed measures with Lennon. Following the conclusion of the consultation phase on February 9, 2024, the bill now needs the backing of at least 18 parliamentary members to advance to the next stage.

“Thousands of overwhelmingly supportive submissions have been received from members of the public and institutions in the space of just four months and Greens Biodiversity Minister Lorna Slater has now written indicating her government’s support,” reported John Ferguson, political editor of the Sunday Mail, on March 24, 2024.

“This is a promising development and I welcome the Scottish Government’s support,” said Lennon. “Ecocide law is emerging around the world in a bid to prevent and punish the most serious crimes against nature. My proposed bill to stop ecocide in Scotland is gaining widespread support, and this encouraging update from the Scottish Government is a boost to the campaign.”

The Case for Ecocide Laws

If implemented, ecocide laws would protect ecosystems and preserve biodiversity, an essential element for maintaining healthy ecosystems that support all life forms, including humans. These laws would safeguard natural habitats, reduce environmental damage, and significantly mitigate climate change by preserving carbon sinks like forests and curbing greenhouse gas emissions from industrial activities.

Critically, enshrining ecocide as a crime would hold individuals and corporations accountable for environmental harm, promoting a sense of justice and responsibility in interacting with the natural world. Enforcing laws against ecocide also encourages sustainable practices and resource management, fostering a more harmonious relationship between human activities and the environment over the long term.

Together, these reasons reflect broader efforts that stretch across disciplines and activist frontlines—from environmentalism and nature rights to social justice and the law—toward sustainable development, conservation, and responsible stewardship of the planet for current and future generations. Part of that stewardship is eradicating “institutional speciesism,” cultivating ecocentrism, and seeing our place in the natural world in the context of the entire planetary ecosystem—as one species among a multitude of interdependent species.

Philippe Sands, a lawyer who is a member of a panel launched in November 2020 to draft a definition of ecocide and who has appeared before the ICC and the European Court of Justice, told the Economist in 2021, “My sense is that there is a broad recognition that the old anthropocentric assumptions may well have to be cast to one side if justice is truly to be done, and the environment given a fair degree of protection.”

This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

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