It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, July 16, 2024
The Right Way to Politicize This
Yes, after the Donald Trump shooting, now is a good time to talk about the need for better gun laws.
Former president Donald Trump is rushed offstage after being grazed by a bullet during a rally on July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania. (Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)
Donald Trump was a reality TV host before he was president, and whatever else he is, he’s a consummate showman. On Saturday, he was shot at a rally. The bullet grazed his ear. A few inches off, and he would be dead. Showing a presence of mind, as he was getting whisked from the stage, he mouthed the word “fight” three times to the crowd while pumping his fist. The audience responded with chants of “USA! USA!”
The pictures of Trump pumping his fist as blood ran down his face became instantly iconic. While only time will tell, many despondent progressives concluded that the election was essentially over.
The attempted assassination of a former president — and the leading candidate in this year’s election — was a shocking act of political violence. Conspiracy theories quickly proliferated in some corners of the internet, since this is America in 2024 and online conspiracy theories rapidly proliferate about any shocking high-profile political event. At one point. “Staged” was trending on Twitter.
The assassination attempt was instantly and correctly condemned by figures like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, just as it was by leading voices across the rest of the political spectrum. I have seen lots of people point out that, for example, more sympathy has been expressed for Donald Trump — a grotesque figure on any reasonable accounting — than for the tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians murdered in Gaza in the last nine months, and this is true, but it shouldn’t stop us from recognizing that these figures were correct to condemn the attempted assassination. Focusing on our ideological enemies’ hypocrisy is often tempting precisely because it lets us off the hook from having to figure out our own principles and values. And I’d argue that, in this case, those principles should be relatively clear.
You don’t have to be an absolute pacifist, or anything like one, to understand that normalizing this kind of violence would be a disastrous direction for our society to go down. Violence in general should require a high threshold of moral justification, and nothing remotely good would come from this kind of assassination — which would, if anything, further radicalize Trump’s supporters and be used to justify waves of extreme political repression. Stochastic Terrorism?
Senator J. D. Vance (R-OH) immediately responded to the assassination attempt by blaming the White House — tweeting that the attempt was not just an “isolated incident” but a reflection of the Biden campaign’s core themes about Trump’s threat to democracy. In effect, conservatives like Vance are appropriating the idea, long put forward by some liberals, that overheated political rhetoric is itself a form of violence. The theory of “stochastic terrorism” holds that over-the-top rhetoric about a targeted individual or group has the effect of encouraging “lone-wolf” political violence — that is to say, political violence carried out by individuals on their own initiative rather than terrorist organizations — and that this makes the purveyors of the rhetoric responsible for the violence.
I’ve never seen anyone consistently apply this theory. Invariably, overheated rhetoric that you find unfair or irresponsible is blamed for violence against the targets of that rhetoric. Equally white-hot rhetoric you agree with, or which is put forward by factions to which you’re basically sympathetic, is given a more nuanced treatment, and (appropriate) skepticism is applied to the chain of causation.
If you’re an antiabortionist who calls abortion murder, you might still think this doesn’t justify the murderers of abortion doctors taking the law into their own hands. If you’re a left-liberal who believes Trump is literally a fascist, you might point out that it hardly follows from this that shooting him would diminish the fascist threat. In all cases, I’d argue that the “stochastic terrorism” theory dangerously undermines free-speech norms by blurring the line between speech and violence. Let’s not go down that road. 341 Million People and 393 Million Guns
In any case, the attempted assassin — Thomas Matthew Crooks — was likely not motivated by progressive outrage against Trump. We’re still very much in a “fog of war” situation where many facts remain to be sorted out, but current reports show that he seems to be a registered Republican. Someone with the same name and zip code donated to a Democratic PAC a few years ago. People who engage in lone-wolf political violence often seem to be mentally unstable individuals with ideologically incoherent mishmashes of political views. Even when a killer leaves a manifesto, sorting through their ravings to find evidence of ideological influences often renders confusing results.
Trump himself, of course, is a bubbling fountain of overheated political rhetoric who tried to overturn a democratic election and often spreads incendiary and dehumanizing rhetoric about liberals, the media, undocumented immigrants, and so on. The attempted assassination should not be excused, but it’s unsurprising that a figure like that would inspire extreme reactions, and unsurprising that some unstable people might be inspired to do something dangerous and stupid.
If we’re serious about diminishing the incidence of lone-wolf political violence in the United States, lecturing people to tone down the way they talk about figures like Donald Trump is unlikely to be an effective strategy. A more fruitful area to focus on is America’s gun laws, which are bizarrely permissive by the standards of other advanced democracies. Three hundred and forty-one million and change people live in this country, and we have about three-hundred and ninety-three million guns. If you want fewer political shootings, and fewer shootings in general, it’s long past time to do something about that.
CONTRIBUTOR Ben Burgis is a Jacobin columnist, an adjunct philosophy professor at Rutgers University, and the host of the YouTube show and podcast Give Them An Argument. He’s the author of several books, most recently Christopher Hitchens: What He Got Right, How He Went Wrong, and Why He Still Matters.
The Only Kind of “Political Violence” All U.S. Politicians Oppose
The Trump rally shooting reveals a bipartisan consensus about what constitutes political violence — and who should wield it.
Campaign Against Militarism protest, 1994 | Image: Murray McDonald
A bipartisan sampling of the world’s greatest perpetrators and enablers of political violence has rushed to condemn political violence following the shooting attempt on former President Donald Trump on Saturday.
Politicians swiftly coalesced around the language of “political violence,” rather than terrorism, to describe the assassination attempt, carried out by Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was shot dead at the Western Pennsylvania rally. Taken together, the outpourings of condemnations betray a clear agreement on what constitutes political violence, and in whose hands the monopoly on violence should remain.
“The idea that there’s political violence … in America like this, is just unheard of, it’s just not appropriate,” said President Joe Biden, the backer of Israel’s genocidal war against Palestine, with a death toll that researchers believe could reach 186,000 Palestinians. Biden’s narrower point was correct, though: Deadly attacks on the American ruling class are vanishingly rare these days. Political violence that is not “like this” — the political violence of organized abandonment, poverty, militarized borders, police brutality, incarceration, and deportation — is commonplace.
“Everybody must condemn it,” Biden said of the assassination attempt.
And condemn it, most everyone in the Democratic political establishment has: “Political violence is absolutely unacceptable,” wrote Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on X. “There is absolutely no place for political violence in our democracy,” tweeted former President Barack Obama, who oversaw war efforts and military strikes against Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan with massive civilian death tolls; Obama added that we should “use this moment to recommit ourselves to civility and respect in our politics.” “There is no place for political violence, including the horrific incident we just witnessed in Pennsylvania,” wrote Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.
The chorus of condemnation was predictable and not in itself a problem: There’s nothing wrong with desiring a world without stochastic assassination attempts, even against political opponents. But when you have Israel’s minister of foreign affairs, Israel Katz of the fascistic ruling Likud Party, tweeting, “Violence can never ever be part of politics,” the very concept of “political violence” is evacuated of meaning.
The problem is not so much one of hypocrisy or insincerity — vices so common in politics that they hardly merit mention. The issue, rather, is what picture of “political violence” this messaging serves: To say that “political violence” has “no place” in a society organized by political violence at home and abroad is to acquiesce to the normalization of that violence, so long as it is state and capitalist monopolized.
As author Ben Ehrenreich noted on X, “There is no place for political violence against rich, white men. It is antithetical to everything America stands for.”
Trump and his Republican Party will no doubt remain committed to a political imaginary of apocalyptic race war and paranoid tribalism, which the assassination attempt will likely only feed. Democrats are welcome to perform civility toward the man who has consistently called for their violent overthrow, but they cannot help themselves to the pretense that their well wishes to Trump actually constitute calls for an end to political violence.
Democratic leaders will call for civility and continue to fill the coffers of police departments nationwide, while sending billions of condition-free dollars and bombs to Israel. Within the U.S., these condemnations of political violence now set the scene for even greater violent repression and policing of protest movements and dissent.
“We will not tolerate this attack from the left,” said Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., who was present at the rally. Little is known about the suspected gunman’s ideology; he was reportedly a registered Republican who once donated to a Democratic PAC on Biden’s inauguration day.
Other Republicans meanwhile blamed Democrats for simply telling the truth about Trump’s far-right extremism. “Today is not just some isolated incident,” Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance wrote on X. “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”
If centrist Democrats stating the obvious about Trump can be slammed by Republicans as irresponsible, it bodes ill for any actual leftists organizing against fascist forces going forward — especially at a time when left-wing and pro-Palestinian protest movements are readily criminalized by both Democratic and Republican leaders. This is what peace means in a world where the only event to invoke a bipartisan chorus decrying “violence” is an attack on a fascistic former (and potentially future) world leader.
A Bloodied, Defiant Trump Could Become the Defining Image of the US Election
The shots fired at Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday are being investigated as an assassination attempt of the former president and current Republican presidential nominee.
Assassination attempts on presidents and presidential nominees are littered throughout American history. What happened in Pennsylvania is horrifying, but sadly not surprising.
I’ve been really struck by how many senior political figures in the United States came out after the shooting and said political violence has no place in America. US President Joe Biden said violence of this kind is “unheard of” in the US.
That is pretty astounding. The United States was founded on political violence, and incidents of political violence mark its entire history.
In fact, Biden began his political career framing himself as the political heir to the murdered Kennedy brothers – President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963, and Robert F. Kennedy, assassinated in 1968.
However, for this incident to occur in this moment, given the volatile nature of the presidential campaign so far and the deep divisions in the United States, is deeply concerning.
The way the shooting has been weaponised on social media so quickly – with conspiracy theories unfolding in real time – means the potential for this kind of violence to escalate is very high.
You only have to look at the insurrection of the US Capitol on January 6 2021 to see how quickly political violence can explode in the US.
This is due, at least in part, to the way violent rhetoric has been cultivated quite deliberately by elements of the far right in recent years. In particular, undercurrents of political violence have simmered at Trump rallies since the beginning of his first run for the presidency in 2016.
The threat of violence has become central to Trump’s political image, to his appeal and to his supporter base. You only have to watch a few moments of every Trump rally and every Trump speech to hear him speak about violence, often in graphic detail and with great relish.
This is a feature, not a bug, of the Trump campaign and the movement behind him.
And it has a real-world impact. A nationwide review conducted by ABC News (the US media organisation) in 2020 identified 54 criminal cases in which Trump himself had been invoked in “direct connection with violent acts, threats of violence or allegations of assault”.
Just a couple of weeks ago, Kevin Roberts, the president of the right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation (the architect of the Project 2025 plan to overhaul the US government under a second Trump presidency), talked about a “second American Revolution” that would “remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
Given how ever-present this threat of violence has become, it’s perhaps more surprising that an incident of this magnitude doesn’t happen more often, or hasn’t happened already.
A campaign-defining image
It’s also striking what a master of the political image Trump is. You can see this in the footage of the shooting in Pennsylvania: after Trump stands up, he raises his fist defiantly to have that image captured.
That image is of course going to define this moment, if not Trump’s entire presidential campaign.
There have been a series of tipping points in this campaign so far, and this may well be the decisive one. It could turn Trump from a martyr to a saint in the eyes of his supporters.
Watching how Trump, his campaign and the people around him use this narrative will be so important, especially in advance of the Republican National Convention, which is scheduled to start in Wisconsin in the coming days.
Former President Donald Trump is rushed off stage by secret service after an incident during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. David Maxwell/EPA
You can already see elements on the right – particularly among Trump’s supporters – attempting to use the assassination attempt to foster conspiracy theories as a rallying point for the former president.
Given the fall-out from Biden’s debate performance in recent weeks, a contrasting image of the two candidates is also emerging and could solidify further – even if it doesn’t reflect them accurately.
That image of Trump, bloodied with a raised fist, could certainly come to frame his entire campaign and rally support behind him.
It is entirely possible, then, that this becomes the moment when Trump won the election.
On an unusually busy news day, did the assassination attempt’s aftermath change the media tone?
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump and Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, attend the first day of the Republican National Convention, Monday, July 15, 2024, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) Video camera operators rehearse their shots in the Fiserv Forum ahead of the 2024 Republican National Convention, Friday, July 12, 2024, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) President Joe Biden walks from Air Force One as he arrives at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, Monday, July 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
If this were a typical presidential campaign, Donald Trump’s selection of J.D. Vance as his running mate on the Republican ticket would have likely dominated media discussions for a week or two.
This is not a typical presidential campaign.
On Monday, that choice was just part of the mix. On the opening day of the Republican convention two days after an assassination attempt on Trump, news organizations juggled several major stories and grappled with the uncertainty of whether political violence would change the tone of their coverage.
Would a lowering of volume on political combat that some, including President Joe Biden, had called for in the wake of Saturday’s shooting be evident at news outlets that many say live for the fight? Digging into seismic events, hoping for some wisdom
Coming from a man known for his understanding of political theater, Trump’s rollout of his Vance selection on Monday afternoon was understated. First, news organizations were fed word that two men thought to be on his short list — Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum — had been told they had not been chosen.
Shortly thereafter, Trump announced the choice of the Ohio senator in a post on his Truth Social outlet. Vance was later seen on the floor of the GOP convention in Milwaukee, accepting handshakes and hugs of congratulation.
As she spoke with politicians at the convention, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins put the question to a handful of interview subjects: How would the assassination attempt change the tone of the Republican gathering?
There was an obvious sadness, U.S. Sen. Katie Britt answered. But the conversation then turned to an accusation against the media.
“I really wish the media would do a better job of covering it when we do work together,” Britt said.
There was a bitter exchange earlier between the former president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., and MSNBC reporter Jacob Soboroff on the convention floor when the reporter asked for specifics about what Trump’s father would do on the immigrant issue.
“I expect nothing less from you clowns even today,” Trump said. “Even 48 hours later, you couldn’t wait. You couldn’t wait with your lies and with your nonsense. So just get out of here.”
Unusual day for MSNBC
It was an eventful, and odd, day for MSNBC. The network had pre-empted its opinion programming on Sunday for an NBC News Now straight news simulcast of news surrounding the assassination attempt.
But it was noticed Monday when MSNBC did not air its “Morning Joe” program, which is often filled with anti-Trump commentary from the husband-and-wife team of Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, and their colleagues. The network denied a CNN report that executives were concerned that someone on the show might make an inappropriate remark, and said “Morning Joe” would be back on Tuesday.
It didn’t take long for MSNBC’s opinionated programming to make its return on Monday.
The network opened its convention coverage with Rachel Maddow reciting a lengthy list of unflattering things Vance had said about Trump during the former president’s early years in politics. The network’s five-woman anchor team — Maddow, Joy Reid, Jen Psaki, Nicolle Wallace and Alex Wagner — assailed Vance’s views on abortion.
“The pick of J.D. Vance is saying to women, go to hell,” Reid said.
Biden makes an appearance
Over on Fox News Channel, Brit Hume predicted Vance would “run rings” around Vice President Kamala Harris in a debate. Jessica Tarlov and Greg Gutfeld battled over which party was more guilty of inflammatory rhetoric.
Both NBC and MSNBC set aside programming for 20 minutes at 9 p.m. Eastern to air an interview Lester Holt conducted with President Biden earlier in the day — one where the anchor was forced to revamp his list of questions since it was arranged last week.
Holt asked Biden about his phone call to Trump after the shooting and confronted the president about whether a statement he had made last week was too provocative. Biden had told donors that after the presidential debate, “it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye” and said Monday that was a mistake. Holt asked about Vance’s choice and a judge’s decision Monday to throw out a case against Trump for taking classified documents.
Questions about whether or not Biden would stay in the race following a poor performance in the debate against Trump — which thoroughly dominated last week’s news cycle — didn’t come up until past the halfway point in the interview.
Even then, the president flashed annoyance, suggesting the spotlight should instead be on Trump for things the Republican said in the debate that were untrue. He disputed Holt’s statement that Trump had been called out for false comments.
“Sometime come and talk to me about what we should be talking about — the issues,” Biden told Holt. ___
Online posts falsely claims sharpshooter was told not to fire on suspect in Trump shooting
Within minutes of the gunfire, the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump spawned a vast sea of claims reflecting the frightening uncertainties of the moment as well as America’s fevered, polarized political climate.
BY DAVID KLEPPER July 15, 2024
CLAIM: A law enforcement sniper assigned to former President Donald Trump’s rally Saturday in Butler, Penn., says the head of the Secret Service ordered him not to shoot the suspect accused of attempting to assassinate Trump.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. Snipers killed the suspected shooter moments after he opened fire on the former president, bloodying Trump’s ear, killing one rally attendee and injuring two. The Secret Service and the Butler Police Department say they have no agents, officers or employees with the name of the person claiming to be the sharpshooter.
THE FACTS: Following Saturday’s attempt on Trump’s life, a poster on the online message board 4chan wrote that they were a sniper assigned to the rally, and that they can be seen in a photo of two law enforcement officers on the roof at the rally.
“My name is Jonathan Willis,” the poster wrote. “I came here to inform the public that I had the assassin in my sights for at least 3 minutes, but the head of the secret service refused to give the order to take out the perp. 100% the top brass prevented me from killing the assassin before he took the shots at president Trump,” the post claimed.
But there is no agent or officer by the name of Jonathan Willis working for the Secret Service or the Butler police, and no internet records of such an officer could be located.
A spokesman for the Secret Service said snipers are trained and instructed to act whenever they see a threat, and do not await instructions before taking a shot to neutralize a suspect. He said he couldn’t discuss the specifics of agency communication or the details of the ongoing investigation but said the post was false.
Witnesses at the rally alerted law enforcement to the suspect, identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, after they saw him perched atop a nearby roof. A local law enforcement officer climbed to the roof and found Crooks, who pointed the rifle at the officer. The officer retreated down the ladder, and the gunman quickly fired toward Trump, the officials said. That’s when U.S. Secret Service gunmen shot him, officials have said. ___ This is part of the AP’s effort to address widely shared false and misleading information that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.
FACT FOCUS:
A look at false claims around the assassination attempt on former President Trump
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is surrounded by U.S. Secret Service at a campaign event in Butler, Pa., on Saturday, July 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
BY MELISSA GOLDIN AND DAVID KLEPPER July 15, 2024 The assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, who is running for reelection, is fueling a range of false claims and conspiracy theories as authorities seek information about the 20-year-old shooter’s background and motive, how he obtained the AR-style rifle he fired at Trump and security at the venue that failed to stop the shooting.
CLAIM: A law enforcement sniper assigned to Trump’s rally Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania, says the head of the Secret Service ordered him not to shoot the suspect accused of attempting to assassinate Trump.
THE FACTS: No such order was made. Snipers killed the suspected shooter moments after he opened fire on the former president, bloodying Trump’s ear, killing one rally attendee and injuring two. The Secret Service and the Butler Police Department say they have no agents, officers or employees with the name of the person claiming to be the sharpshooter.
Following Saturday’s attempt on Trump’s life, a poster on the online message board 4chan wrote that they were a sniper assigned to the rally, and that they can be seen in a photo of two law enforcement officers on the roof at the rally.
“My name is Jonathan Willis,” the poster wrote. “I came here to inform the public that I had the assassin in my sights for at least 3 minutes, but the head of the secret service refused to give the order to take out the perp. 100% the top brass prevented me from killing the assassin before he took the shots at president Trump,” the post claimed.
But there is no agent or officer by the name of Jonathan Willis working for the Secret Service or the Butler police, and no internet records of such an officer could be located.
A spokesman for the Secret Service said snipers are trained and instructed to act whenever they see a threat, and do not await instructions before taking a shot to neutralize a suspect. He said he couldn’t discuss the specifics of agency communication or the details of the ongoing investigation, but said the post was false.
Witnesses at the rally alerted law enforcement to the suspect, identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, after they saw him perched atop a nearby roof. A local law enforcement officer climbed to the roof and found Crooks, who pointed the rifle at the officer. The officer retreated down the ladder, and the gunman quickly fired toward Trump, the officials said. That’s when U.S. Secret Service gunmen shot him, officials have said.
Crooks, a nursing-home employee from suburban Pittsburgh, fired multiple shots at Trump with an AR-style rifle. A spectator was killed and two others were critically injured.
Authorities said the shooting was an attempted assassination, but haven’t yet determined what motivated Crooks to try to kill Trump, the AP has reported. ___
CLAIM: A photo shows a bullet hole in Trump’s suit jacket, proving that he was shot in the chest during the attempted assassination.
THE FACTS: The photo actually shows a fold in the suit jacket of a Secret Service agent protecting Trump. Another Associated Press image taken moments before clearly shows there is no hole in Trump’s jacket. What appears to be a hole can be seen diminishing as the agent moves in video of the shooting’s aftermath.
Social media users are sharing the photo from the assassination attempt to claim that the former president was shot in the chest. Some posts suggest he survived because he was wearing a bulletproof vest.
In the image, what seems to be a small hole appears inches below Trump’s right underarm. Many posts use a zoomed-in version of the photo that has a circle around the supposed hole to emphasize the hard-to-notice detail.
“#Trump was also shot in the chest,” reads one X post. “The bulletproof vest saved him #We support Trump.
Another X post similarly reads, “It appears that Trump was shot in the chest, as the bullet seem to have pierced his suit; he was wearing a bulletproof vest.”
But the apparent hole is actually a fold in the sleeve of the Secret Service agent’s jacket, not the aftermath of a bullet.
The photo taken by an AP photographer shows the agent bending over as she protects Trump, her jacket appearing slightly darker than the former president’s. The fold can be seen by following the edge of the agent’s jacket from her neck to just below her left shoulder.
Moreover, another AP image taken moments before the one with the supposed hole clearly shows the right side of Trump’s jacket as he raises his fist. No hole can be seen in the jacket.
Trump wrote on his social media platform that he was “shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear.” Photos and video from the rally show blood on his right ear and on the right side of his face.
The Secret Service declined to comment on details of the shooting, including where the bullets hit, and did not respond to a follow-up inquiry about whether Trump was wearing a bulletproof vest. Trump’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
CLAIM: A photo from the attempted assassination of Trump shows Secret Service agents smiling as they surround him after the shooting.
THE FACTS: The photo was edited to make it appear the agents were smiling. In the original, taken by an Associated Press photographer, the same agents can be seen with neutral expressions.
After the shooting, social media users shared the altered image, with some suggesting it was evidence that the assassination attempt had been staged.
The photo shows Trump with blood on his face and ear, pumping his fist in front of an American flag while Secret Service agents surround him. Three agents whose faces are visible seem to be grinning as they protect the former president.
“Why are all 3 Secret Service agents smiling, at least that is how it appears to me,” reads one post on X. “Do to the seriousness of the situation, I would think their expressions would be grim + determined. Now, if it was a staged event, these expressions would make more sense.”
But the agents were not smiling at that moment. The photo was edited to make it appear otherwise.
The original image shows the same three agents with neutral expressions. One man is positioned behind Trump, a second man stands by his left shoulder and a woman is bent over on his right side, beneath his raised arm. ___
Posts misrepresent photo to claim Trump was shot in the chest and saved by a bulletproof vest
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is surround by U.S. Secret Service agents at a campaign rally, Saturday, July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pa. Social media users are misrepresenting this photo to claim that Trump was shot in the chest and save by a bulletproof vest. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
CLAIM: A photo shows a bullet hole in former President Donald Trump’s suit jacket, proving that he was shot in the chest during an attempted assassination on Saturday.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The photo actually shows a fold in the suit jacket of a Secret Service agent protecting Trump. Another Associated Press image taken moments before clearly shows that there is no hole in Trump’s jacket. What appears to be a hole can be seen diminishing as the agent moves in video of the shooting’s aftermath.
THE FACTS: Social media users are sharing the photo from the assassination attempt at Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, to claim that the former president was shot in the chest. Some posts suggest he survived because he was wearing a bulletproof vest.
In the image, what seems to be a small hole appears inches below Trump’s right underarm. Many posts use a zoomed in version of the photo that has a circle around the supposed hole to emphasize the hard-to-notice detail.
“#Trump was also shot in the chest,” reads one X post. “The bulletproof vest saved him #We support Trump.
Another X post similarly reads: “It appears that Trump was shot in the chest, as the bullet seem to have pierced his suit; he was wearing a bulletproof vest.”
But the apparent hole is actually a fold in the sleeve of a Secret Service agent’s jacket, not the aftermath of a bullet.
The photo, taken by an AP photographer, shows the agent bending over as she protects Trump, her jacket appearing slightly darker than the former president’s. The fold can be seen by following the edge of the agent’s jacket from her neck to just below her left shoulder. It is also visible in video of the shooting’s aftermath, where it can be seen diminishing as the agent moves.
Moreover, another AP image taken moments before the one with the supposed hole clearly shows the right side of Trump’s jacket as he raises his fist. No hole can be seen in the jacket.
Trump wrote on his social media platform that he was “shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear.” Photos and video of the assassination attempt show blood on his right ear and on the right side of his face.
The Secret Service declined to comment on details of the shooting, including where the bullets hit, and did not respond to a follow-up inquiry about whether Trump was wearing a bulletproof vest. Trump’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old nursing-home employee from suburban Pittsburgh, fired multiple shots at Trump with an AR-style rifle from a nearby roof at a rally for the Republican nominee on Saturday. He was killed by Secret Service personnel, officials said. A spectator was killed and two others were critically injured.
Authorities said the shooting was an attempted assassination, but haven’t yet determined what motivated Crooks to try to kill Trump, the AP has reported. ___ This is part of the AP’s effort to address widely shared false and misleading information that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.
Photo edited to make it appear Secret Service agents were smiling after attempt on Trump’s life
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is surrounded by U.S. Secret Service agents at a campaign rally, Saturday, July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pa. Social media users are sharing an edited version of this photo that makes it appear the agents were smiling. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
CLAIM: A photo from the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on Saturday shows Secret Service agents smiling as they surround him after the shooting.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The photo was edited to make it seem as though the agents were smiling. In the original, taken by an Associated Press photographer, the same agents can be seen with neutral expressions.
THE FACTS: After the shooting at Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, social media users shared the altered image, with some suggesting that it was evidence that the assassination attempt had been staged.
The photo shows Trump with blood on his face and ear, pumping his fist in front of an American flag while Secret Service agents surround him. Three agents whose faces are visible seem to be grinning as they protect the former president.
“Why are all 3 Secret Service agents smiling, at least that is how it appears to me,” reads one post on X. “Do to the seriousness of the situation, I would think their expressions would be grim + determined. Now, if it was a staged event, these expressions would make more sense.”
But the agents were not smiling at that moment. The photo was edited to make it appear otherwise.
The original image, which was taken by an AP photographer, shows the same three agents with neutral expressions. One man is positioned behind Trump, a second man stands by his left shoulder and a woman is bent over on his right side, beneath his raised arm.
Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old nursing-home employee from suburban Pittsburgh, fired multiple shots at Trump with an AR-style rifle from a nearby roof at a rally for the presumptive Republican nominee on Saturday. He was killed by Secret Service personnel, officials said. Trump was bloodied and wrote on his social media platform that he was “shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear.” A spectator was killed and two others were critically injured.
Authorities said the shooting was an attempted assassination, but haven’t yet determined what motivated Crooks to try to kill Trump, the AP has reported. ___ This is part of the AP’s effort to address widely shared false and misleading information that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.
MELISSA GOLDIN Goldin debunks, analyzes and tracks misinformation for The Associated Press. She is based in New York.
It began with Aaron Bushnell and a visceral response of mine: Why would anyone do such a thing?
Bushnell was the 25-year-old active-duty airman who set himself ablaze on February 25th in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., to protest that country’s brutal war in Gaza. The first question was tough enough, but his dramatic and deadly action also brought to mind other questions that have occupied my thinking, research, and writing in these last several years: What spurs someone to such an unyielding, ultimate commitment to a cause? What kind of political action is actually effective?
When the campus protests over the bloodbath in Gaza exploded shortly after Bushnell’s act, those questions came to seem even more pressing to me.
And not only was I not alone in my interest in Bushnell’s act, he wasn’t even the first American to self-immolate over the fate of the Palestinians. Last December, an unidentified woman set herself on fire outside the Israeli consulate in Atlanta, apparently in a similar protest. She survived, just barely. (In April, a man who self-immolated across from the courthouse in Manhattan where Donald Trump was on trial for illegally trying to influence the 2016 election seemed aggrieved about other things.)
Three incidents, of course, do not an epidemic make, but they do attract attention. So, the phenomenon of self-immolation stayed in the news for a while.
Bushnell live-streamed his action, which was quickly posted on the social media platform Twitch (though that video was soon taken down there). As of this writing, however, it’s still up at Reddit. It opens on the early afternoon of a clear February day, with Bushnell in combat fatigues walking resolutely toward the Israeli embassy. He had emailed some independent news outlets about his protest and, as he walks, he says, “I am an active-duty member of the U.S. Air Force, and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all.”
He then props up his cell phone on the pavement, pours some flammable liquid over his head, pulls his cap down, and flicks a lighter on around his ankles. When his uniform doesn’t ignite, he lights the pool of liquid surrounding him. It erupts into flames, which climb his body. Yelling “Free Palestine,” he bucks and moans in what must be unbearable pain before collapsing on the ground. Police and Secret Service agents rush over with fire extinguishers. One points a gun at the crumpled, still-flaming body and yells at him to get on the ground. Off-camera, another responds, “I don’t need guns, I need fire extinguishers!” After the video ends, Bushnell will be loaded into an ambulance and taken to a hospital, where he will soon die. In its only response, it seems, the Israeli embassy will report that none of its staff were injured.
In the following weeks, third-party presidential candidates Cornel West and Jill Stein will express solidarity with Bushnell; vigils honoring him will be held in several American cities, including Portland, Oregon, where members of the antiwar veterans group About Face will burn their uniforms in his memory; the Palestinian town of Jericho will name a street after him; another active-duty airman will be inspired to stage a hunger strike in front of the White House and, when he’s ordered back to his base in Spain, two fellow members of Veterans For Peace will begin a hunger strike in his stead.
Admirable? Unhinged?
The initial media coverage of Bushnell’s action was straightforward enough, though often giving as much space to the history of self-immolation as to the politics of his protest. A notable exception was a Washington Post column by Shadi Hamid, who considered Bushnell’s position on the U.S. government’s support for Israel and concluded that while his act might have been unreasonable, his sense of powerlessness was not.
It didn’t take long, however, for the focus to shift to the psychology of self-immolation, then to Bushnell’s background and the implication that he was distinctly damaged. About six weeks after the event, the Boston Globe ran a feature on the Community of Jesus, a monastic community on Cape Cod, where the young Bushnell was raised and home-schooled. The story relied heavily on disgruntled former members — one characterized it as a cult — who recalled harsh, group-enforced discipline, practices meant to undermine family bonds, humiliations, and verbal assaults. The article did include a disclaimer toward the end – “It’s unclear what, if any, connection Bushnell’s upbringing had on his final protest.” – but all too clear was a striking skepticism about his psychological stability.
The need to understand and explain (or explain away) such an extreme, self-abnegating act is anything but unusual, nor is the linking of self-immolation to mental disturbance. Bushnell was explicit about his distress over the situation in Gaza and it sounded as if he was also dealing with a sense of moral injury, a malady of the heart as much as the head, but none of that was proof of derangement. Setting yourself on fire for whatever reason is inarguably an act of suicide, yet the mental state of someone at that moment is ultimately unknowable since such suicides almost invariably take their secrets to the grave. When it comes to self-immolation, I’m inclined to take people at their word. Apparently, that puts me in the minority.
“I won’t speculate on the dead man’s mental health,” wrote Graeme Wood in a snotty op-ed for The Atlantic. “He grew up in a cult, described himself as an anarchist, and generally eschewed what Buddhists might call ‘the middle way,’ a life of mindful moderation, in favor of extreme spiritual and political practice.” Fanaticism, he suggested, was Bushnell’s “default setting.”
It wasn’t just those who were unsympathetic to Bushnell’s act for whom the state of his psyche took precedence over the purpose of the protest. It may, in fact, be a particular genius of American democracy that it can absorb dissent and, in that way, blunt revolt, but that seemingly benign tolerance can push activists to ever more radical acts in a bid to focus attention on their cause. Sadly enough, though, when a dissident’s striking (even, in Bushnell’s case, ultimate) political act is reduced to a set of personal maladies, his or her message can be all too easily massaged away.
Probably More Than You Want to Know About Self-Immolation
Self-immolation is a low-cost, low-tech, readily documentable act that’s easy to do without significant planning, assistance, or much forethought. Of course, “easy” might be the wrong word for it, and self-immolation is an exceedingly rare, singular, and extreme form of political protest. Unlike marches or strikes, it involves only one person. Unlike suicide missions, the harm is intended to be inflicted only on yourself. Unlike the slow, wasting away of a hunger strike, it’s seldom reversible and usually fatal. Unlike most public protest, it doesn’t rely on an authority’s response to have an effect. And while most people wouldn’t consider it an option, to those who would set themselves aflame, sooner or later it becomes the only option.
Self-immolation is also heart-stoppingly dramatic, capturing the public’s attention, emotions, and imagination despite, or maybe because of its inherent contradictions. It is at once an act of despair and of defiance, of purity and of bravado. Above all, it defies any idea of acceptable risk. Moreover, as a form of nonviolent protest, it’s shockingly violent, and though our normal urge as humans is to look away from such suffering, the image remains irrepressible.
As it happens, self-immolation as protest has an ancient history. It appears in Hindu tales, Greco-Roman myths, the early Christian era, fourth-century China, and seventeenth-century Russia. It’s happened in protests against America’s war in Vietnam; against the Soviet, Indian, and Sri Lankan governments, as well as Chinese policies in Tibet; and recently in the U.S. over climate change.
According to Michael Biggs, a sociologist who conducted an extensive study of the subject, the motivations and rationales of self-immolators range from the selfless and strategic to the psychological and egocentric. Such an array of reasons is on display in The Self-Immolators, testimony compiled from protesters around the world who set themselves on fire between 1963 and 2013. It makes for sad reading: so many lives, so much anguish, so little effect.
Historically, the effectiveness of such awe-inspiring protest is, at best, unclear. There were certainly cases that did gain widespread attention and so influenced events and policies. As a threesome, consider Thich Quang Duc, the Vietnamese monk in the iconic photograph, who self-immolated to protest his government’s mistreatment of Buddhists; Norman Morrison, the American Quaker who self-immolated under then-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara’s Pentagon window to protest America’s war in Vietnam (McNamara was reportedly “horrified,” while President John F. Kennedy exclaimed, “Jesus Christ!”); and Mohamed Bouazizi, the street vendor in Tunisia, whose self-immolation protesting corruption was considered a catalyst for the Arab Spring uprising.
Sadly, however, Bushnell’s action, far more typically, didn’t make a dent in Israel’s belligerence or limit the weaponry and intelligence his country still sends Israel. And the shock of the act, of the image of him burning to death seemed, if anything, to blot out the purpose. Maybe witnessing someone dying in flames, even online, is simply too disturbing to let witnesses easily absorb its intended message. Or maybe the intensity of Bushnell’s moral obligation shamed those who agreed with him and did nothing for those who didn’t.
Too Bad for Words
While it’s hardly burning yourself to death, all those students who camped out last spring, erecting tents on university lawns, defying administrators, and dominating the news narrative for weeks, also faced risks. Though no student protestors died, by demanding institutional responses to Israel’s war in Gaza, some were barred from graduating, denied job offers, summarily kicked out of their housing, physically attacked, and arrested.
And then, as with Aaron Bushnell, we changed the subject. The issue wasn’t this country’s, or any individual university’s role in the war in Gaza — so insisted school authorities, opportunistic politicians, and an obliging media — but free speech and the function of higher education.
In contrast to self-immolation, which is always about the image, language was all-important in those campus protests and became a minefield. The hotly debated meaning of terms and slogans, the name-calling that stopped discussion, the debate over who controlled the debate, the mutual misunderstandings, and the alarming tolerance of intolerance were all exacerbated in the self-enclosed, pressure-cooker communities that college campuses generally are.
Quickly, the “sides” were slotted into pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian categories, flattening any nuance among the protesters, even though a range of sentiments, perspectives, demands, and goals were apparent. That reduction also undermined the prospect for critical analysis, any true exchange of views, or the possibility of minds being changed — everything, in other words, that’s supposed to underpin a liberal education. And whatever happened to the idea of being pro-peace? I don’t remember that label ever being applied to the protests, although the one area most protestors agreed on was the need for a ceasefire in Gaza.
In his keynote speech at MIT’s graduation, entrepreneur Noubar Afeyan acknowledged the students’ pain over the tragic Israeli-Palestinian conflict and rued his own lack of answers on the subject, concluding, “But I do know this: having conviction should not be confused with having all the answers.”
I have a certain sympathy for that sentiment, though I doubt I did when I was a student with my own set of demands over a different tragic conflict, which leaves me sympathetic to the student activists, too. After all, you don’t need answers to pinpoint a problem accurately or to believe peace is a precondition for finding such answers. Protest isn’t supposed to be nice. Dissent courts the heterodox. The point of a political action is to get in people’s faces, disturb complacency, and command a response. Protest that doesn’t challenge our norms, or at least get people to think about other possibilities, is just spectacle.
Of course, dissent also threatens authority, and the kneejerk reaction of authorities fearing that they’re losing control is to try to take ever more control. Insisting that the students and their organizations were being punished not for their speech but for breaking the rules, university administrators suspended anti-Zionist groups, breached principles of academic freedom, opened the way for violence by ushering the police onto campus, and caved to financial pressure from donors and alumni. And what to make of the suggestion of a Harvard dean, who, “look[ing] forward to calmer times on campus,” argued that the solution was for faculty members to just shut up?
You’d think such beleaguered university administrators would learn. Clampdowns usually backfire and severe punishments hardly make for calmer campuses. The repression, in fact, succeeded mainly in turning the conversation from core issues like war and human rights to an assessment of free speech and the very nature of academia — not to mention good old American anti-intellectualism. Educational leaders were called before Congress to confess; university presidents were fired; hate speech codes, mostly moribund in this century, got renewed attention; and the crisis became focused on campuses riven by incivility and bad words.
Dissension at educational institutions over what kinds of expression are acceptable, no less desirable, has a long history and merits periodic revisiting. I suspect, though, that there’s another reason what we say has bested what we do as the issue du jour: that is, a lot of Americans find it easier to champion the idea of free speech than to demand that Israel get out of Gaza or that the Biden administration rethink its military aid policies.
About 20 years ago, when I wrote a book about free expression controversies, I saw repeatedly how words make convenient scapegoats. Arguments over language are often a way to avoid arguments we’d prefer not to have, even if working through those very arguments could produce the resolutions we want to reach. As paramount as free speech is to me in the pantheon of human rights, I wish in this case — and in Aaron Bushnell’s memory — we hadn’t relegated war to just a background hum but had assessed the validity of the protesters’ demands and dealt with them, as fraught and frightening, involved and painful as that process would inevitably have been.
Green Class Struggle: Workers and the Just Transition
In 2023, when Europe was blasted by a record-breaking heatwave named after Cerberus (the three-headed hound of Hades), workers organised to demand protection from the extreme heat. In Athens, employees at the Acropolis and other historical sites went on strike for four hours each day. In Rome, refuse collectors threatened to strike if they were forced to work during periods of peak heat. Elsewhere in Italy, public transport workers demanded air-conditioned vehicles, and workers at a battery plant in Abruzzo issued a strike threat in protest at the imposition of working in “asphyxiating heat”.
One could almost say that the Ancient Greeks foretold today’s climate crisis when they euphemistically referred to Hades, god of the dead, as “Plouton” (giver of wealth). The reference is to the materials – in their day, silver, in ours, fossil fuels and critical minerals – that, after extraction from the Underworld, line the pockets of plutocrats. Modern society’s plutocratic structure explains the astonishingly sluggish response to climate breakdown. The much-touted green transition is barely taking place, at least if the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases is taken as a yardstick. These continue to rise, even accelerate, and likewise the rate of global heating. The transition remains in the grip of powerful and wealthy institutions that – even if we leave aside motivations of avarice or greed for status – are systemically constrained to put the accumulation of capital above the habitability of the planet.
Against this backdrop, the politics of transition is class struggle beyond that of workers defending themselves and their communities against weather emergencies. That is part of the picture, of course. But class struggle is, above all, evident in the liberal establishment seeking to displace transition costs onto the masses, even as it presides over ever crasser wealth polarisation. From this, resistance inevitably flows. The question is, what form will it take?
Some takes the form of an anti-environmental backlash, instigated or colonised by conservative and far-right forces. While posing as allies of “working families”, they denigrate the most fundamental of workers’ needs: for a habitable planet. Some takes a progressive form, the classic case being the gilets jaunes in France. When Emmanuel Macron’s government hiked “green taxes” on fossil fuels as a signal for consumers to buy more fuel-efficient cars, the rural working poor and lower-middle classes, unable to afford the switch, donned yellow safety vests and rose in revolt. Although France’s labour-movement radicals joined the cause, they were unable to cohere into a political force capable of offering alternative solutions to the social and environmental crises.
Surveying forms of climate-class struggle, movements, and events provides a glimpse into how the green transition might be redirected along social, worker-led lines. “Class struggle” is used in broad terms here to include questions of ecology alongside social reproduction, sexuality, identity, racism, and the like – all of which concern quality of life and are of as much interest to “labour” as are pay and conditions. Only from the vantage point of capital, or on a narrowly-drawn negotiating table, do workers’ needs appear reducible to ledgers of hours and pennies. Tony Mazzocchi, the US labour leader who coined the term “just transition”, provides a valuable counterpoint. As an activist, Mazzocchi was critical of the post-war social contract whereby union leaders surrendered input into decisions on the production process in exchange for improved wages. His red-green radicalism grew from the insistence that the health and wellbeing of workers requires transformation across the full spectrum of workplace and social life.
Workers’ resistance
Climate breakdown is increasingly making its mark on all forms of class struggle. Across the world, climate hazards become embedded within labour struggles, forming a new basis of mobilisation, and on union safety committee agendas, emergency preparedness has been climbing the priority ladder. Freya Newman and Elizabeth Humphrys’ research on construction workers in Sydney explores how workers understand heat stress as a class issue. “Our bosses never come out of their air-conditioned offices on stinking hot days,” grumbled one interviewee, even as they “make us work in horrible places with crazy high temperatures.” In regions where class consciousness is greater and unions had retained relative strength despite a general weakening trend during the neoliberal era, the researchers found that pressure from workers had secured the greatest improvements in climate-related health and safety conditions.
Protests demanding better protection against weather hazards, such as those in Athens, Rome, and Abruzzo, represent the close association of labour struggles with climate breakdown and ecological collapse. Another response is resistance against “indirect” effects. The scope here is vast and includes the 2010- 12 revolutionary risings across the Middle East and North Africa, where meteorological volatility caused soaring food prices, and, more recently, the farmers’ protests in India. It includes, too, industrial action in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic (if, as appears likely, SARS-CoV-2 entered human society as a result of environmental degradation).
Climate-related class struggle is not restricted to organising against the immediate effects of climate breakdown. As New York socialist Alyssa Battistoni states, it is present “in the rhythms of daily life”, in “nursing homes and schools, on the bus, and in the street”, affecting those in “pink-collar” jobs: teachers, care workers, and other service workers. For society to rapidly dial down emissions whilst adapting to the effects of climate chaos, social solidarity and egalitarianism will be indispensable, pivoting on the self-organisation of workers across the range of “collars”: not just pink but also blue and white, as well as black and green.
Decarbonising jobs
When we look for signs of a transition, the spotlight shines on sectors shifting work from blackto green-collar jobs: notably the automotive industry. For the transition to be experienced as even minimally just, jobs must be secure and satisfying. Yet corporations at the forefront of the decarbonisation programme – most notably Tesla – show scant regard for workers’ rights. In 2023, industrial action at the Tesla plant in Gränna, Sweden, accompanied by solidarity action across Scandinavia, pushed back against the Musk company’s anti-union stance and associated low pay and workplace injuries.
The transition, such as it is, is being driven by state policies. And, wherever green jobs are at stake, political demands will follow. Recall, for example, the protest at the Vestas wind turbine factory on the Isle of Wight in 2009. In response to its advertised closure, workers occupied the facility’s administrative buildings. Their action was primarily a challenge to planned redundancies, but this took on wider meaning within the context of wind power’s role in the energy transition. The occupiers pointed out that a closure of the plant would contravene the British government’s decarbonisation commitments. Saving jobs, they argued, was synonymous with saving the planet.
Many recent examples carry the same lesson. The alliance in Germany between ver.di, one of Europe’s largest trade unions in the public transport sector, and the climate protest movement Fridays for Future (FFF) is one such instance. Under the slogan #WirFahrenZusammen (we’re travelling together), ver.di took industrial action to demand better working conditions and FFF organised demonstrations in over 100 cities, collectively pressing the political case that any successful transition will need a colossal investment in public transport.
“Red” redundancies going “green”
Given that electric vehicles (EVs), renewables, and public transport are indeed critical to the green transition, where does that leave workers in the most polluting sectors? Some of the most inspirational transition stories come from the automobile and arms sectors. In the early 1970s, working-class militants and unions around the world were taking up environmental concerns: the “red” and the “green” were finding a common tongue. In the USA, for example, the United Automobile Workers union leader Walter Reuther, who was not a radical by any means, declared that “the environmental crisis has reached such catastrophic proportions that the labour movement is now obligated to raise this question at the bargaining table in any industry that is in a measurable way contributing to man’s deteriorating living environment.”
In Britain, the workers at Lucas Aerospace, a British arms manufacturer, did precisely that. Citing automation and falling government orders, the company’s management was laying off staff. In response, workers set up an unofficial union body, known as the Combine, representing employees from across the company’s 17 factories. Their central objective was to staunch job haemorrhaging by pushing the Labour government to invest in equipment for life rather than death. In 1974 they drew up a 1200-page document that detailed ideas for redeploying their skills and equipment towards socially-useful production, including kidney dialysis machines but also wind turbines, solar panels, hybrid vehicle engines, and lightweight trains – decarbonisation technologies that were virtually unknown at the time. The plan was beaten away by the Labour government of the day and the company’s management, who dismissed its authors as the “brown bread and sandals brigade”. However, the Combine story remains influential.
More recent threats of fossil-fuel-sector redundancies have also prompted action. A group of workers from Maflow made headlines in 2018, for example, when they occupied the premises of the company’s automotive components plant in Milan, Italy, and set up a cooperative, which they called RiMaflow, after owners began to relocate equipment to Poland. The workers developed a variety of “circular economy” projects, including the repair of electronic equipment and bicycles, as well as recycling wallpaper – all the while defending the occupied space against intrusion from police and courts.
In 2021-22, a flurry of such occupations occurred against the backdrop of a turn to state intervention in pandemic-afflicted economies. In Munich, at a Bosch engine components plant, workers were confronted with the threat of layoffs. Management blamed the decision on the shift to EVs, although in fact production was to be transferred to countries with lower wages. FFF activists teamed up with the union IG Metall (IGM) to resist the redundancies. Together, IGM and FFF pressed for a plant-level green transition, backed by state investment. The demand, published as a petition, was signed by a large majority of the workforce.
Following its purchase by Melrose Industries, a multinational asset-stripper, in 2021, GKN, another key player in the automotive industry, announced the closure of plants manufacturing components for automobile drivelines in Florence and Birmingham. Over 500 workers from the British factory responded with a vote for strike action. They demanded that the plant switch to producing components for EVs. In the words of the Unite union convenor Frank Duffy: “We realised that if we want to see a green future for the UK car industry and save our skilled jobs, we couldn’t leave it to our bosses and had to take matters into our own hands.” In conscious echo of the Lucas Plan, he added, “we put together a 90-page alternative plan detailing how we could reorganise production” to secure jobs and expedite the transition to electromotive transport.
At the sister plant at Campi Bisenzio in Italy, transition-from-below went further. Having previously organised themselves into a democratic factory council (collettivo di fabbrica), workers were already in a strong position. They occupied the factory, and security guards, who had been ordered in, were sent packing. Together with climate justice activists and academics, the workers drew up a conversion plan for sustainable public transport and pressed for its adoption.
In a sustained series of mobilisations, tens of thousands repeatedly went out onto the streets with the backing of trade unions and local communities, as well as environmental groups such as Extinction Rebellion (XR) and FFF. Now in its third year, the Campi Bisenzio occupation is Italy’s longest ever. Having failed to force Melrose to reverse the plant closure, the workers shifted tack to form a cooperative that now produces cargo bikes, maintaining a segment of the original workforce in secure employment, providing a glimpse of how worker-led decarbonisation programmes might begin.
Aeronautic transitioning
In these automotive industry examples, the path of transition appears straightforward, at least in material terms. A plant producing, say, components for cars with internal combustion engines (ICE) can be converted to one producing EVs, public transport, or bicycles. What, though, of such industries as aviation, for which no viable alternative technologies exist? As the scale of the environmental crisis grows more daunting, even moderate voices, such as the Cambridge “FIRES” group of engineers, recognise that aviation will have to be cut to virtually zero over the next two to three decades. How should workers in these industries respond?
In Britain, at the height of the Covid-19 crisis, some small but brave proposals emerged. The Green New Deal for Leeds, for example, presented an alternative to the expansion plans for Leeds Bradford Airport. And workers at London Gatwick, Britain’s second-busiest airport, developed an important Green New Deal for Gatwick (GND). The initiative, convened by eco-socialists and union officials from the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), took shape early in the pandemic when aviation workers were threatened with redundancies. I asked Robert Magowan, one of the proposal’s instigators, what lay behind the deal: “We know that aviation must degrow,” he replied, “and it was degrowing during the pandemic, but this must not come at the cost of workers. The pandemic response showed what governments can do when pressure is on – especially when the Broughton manufacturing site of Airbus was retooled to produce ventilators. That gave us inspiration, much as Lucas Aerospace had done decades before.”
Magowan and the GND team mapped out the many ways in which the various categories of Gatwick workers’ skills sets could be adapted to jobs elsewhere in decarbonising industries. With PCS backing, they found support among the workforce, including a pilot whose words eloquently sum up what is at stake:
It has been my lifelong dream to fly. To face up to losing this massive part of our lives is incredibly scary; to lose our job is like losing a part of ourselves. But as pilots, we use our skills to identify this existential threat to the natural world and our lives. If this was an emergency in flight, we would have diverted to a safe destination long ago. We can’t just fly blindly to the planned destination as the flight deck fills with smoke. Our industry’s impact on global emissions is irrefutable. The so-called solutions to ‘green’ the industry at its current scale are decades away and are not globally or ecologically just. With environmental consciousness rising, the aviation sector will either shrink by design, through a ‘Just Transition’ for workers, or by disaster. We must find a way to put workers at the forefront of the green revolution, to ensure we have the option to be retrained into the green jobs of the future.
In its first incarnation, the green revolution at Gatwick failed to take off. Yet it provided a sense of possibility. During the “emergency” phase of the pandemic, when government intervention was the order of the day, the Gatwick GND connected to other workers’ initiatives such as the call by ver.di to replace short-haul aviation with ground-transport alternatives, opening up the horizons of a radical worker-led transition and reminding us of what is at stake.
Class-struggle environmentalism
The class struggles that unfold this century will define Earth’s habitability for millennia to come. We can find inspiration in struggles that unite climate activists and labour unions. We find it, too, in school strikes over climate change, which have introduced a new generation to the concept of strike action.
Yet we should also heed the fact that standout examples of red-green militancy happened half a century ago. This is no accident. The 1960s and early 1970s witnessed a worldwide revolutionary conjuncture, with surging labour militancy and social movements challenging oppression, injustice, and war. This was the soil in which the alliance of environmentalism and labour radicalism could grow, exemplified in the Lucas plan and Mazzocchi’s ecosocialist activism, as well as other pathbreaking initiatives such as green bans, where environmental goals were fought for through strike action.
In any renewed wave of class struggle, we can expect questions of climate breakdown and just transition to move centre stage in multiple forms. These will include reactionary backlashes but also progressive movements, as groups of workers move beyond seeing climate politics as the playground of distant elites to a field in which their collective action can be decisive.
Mawasi Massacre: Over 90 Killed in Israeli Airstrikes on Tent Camp in Gaza “Safe Zone”
The Israeli military carried out one of its deadliest attacks in weeks when it bombed al-Mawasi in Khan Younis — designated as a “safe zone” — killing at least 90 Palestinians and injuring hundreds more on Saturday. Israel claimed it was targeting Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif, but the group denied that Deif had been hit. Israel also struck a makeshift mosque during noon prayer in the Shati refugee camp in west Gaza City, killing 20, and a United Nations school sheltering thousands of displaced Palestinians in the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing 22. Democracy Now! speaks with writer and analyst Muhammad Shehada, chief of communications at Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, who says, “We’ve got a situation where Israel is being told, ‘You can do whatever you want, anything you want at all.’”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, broadcasting from the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Israeli warplanes and drones continue to bombard areas across the Gaza Strip, killing over 80 Palestinians in the last 24 hours. The continued assault comes in the wake of Israel’s attack on Saturday on al-Mawasi, an area in Khan Younis designated as a safe zone, that killed at least 90 Palestinians, half of them women and children, and injured over 300 in one of the deadliest attacks in Gaza in weeks. The U.N. and several countries condemned the bombing, which targeted thousands of displaced Palestinians crowded in tents.
The Israeli military claimed, without evidence, that it was targeting Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif; however, Hamas denies that Deif was killed. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a televised news conference Saturday it wasn’t clear whether he had been killed. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant nevertheless praised the attack, saying Hamas was losing its ability to organize, arm itself or care for the wounded.
Also on Saturday, the Israeli military struck a makeshift mosque during noon prayer in the Shati refugee camp in west Gaza City, killing at least 20 Palestinians. Then, on Sunday, Israeli airstrikes on a United Nations school sheltering thousands of displaced Palestinians in the Nuseirat refugee camp killed at least 22 and injured over a hundred people.
Meanwhile, rescue workers say they found at least 60 bodies under the rubble of the Shuja’iyya neighborhood of Gaza City following Israel’s withdrawal from the area last week, after leaving it in ruins.
This weekend, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres told a donor’s conference for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, quote, “Just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse in Gaza — somehow, appallingly, civilians are being pushed into ever deeper circles of hell,” he said.
For more, we go to Muhammad Shehada, a writer and analyst from Gaza, chief of communications at Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, columnist for The Forward newspaper, a Jewish weekly in New York. He’s joining us from Copenhagen, Denmark.
Muhammad, welcome back to Democracy Now! First of all, talk about this safe zone that Israel struck on Saturday, killing 90, injuring hundreds of others.
MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: Thanks so much for having me, Amy.
Well, the first thing is that this is not the first time where they conduct such an atrocity, such a carnage, a bloodbath, with immense magnitude, and then claim there was a Hamas leader there, to cover it up. It was done dozens and dozens and dozens of times in Gaza. So, a few weeks ago — couple of weeks ago, Israel pounded an entire residential block in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City and claimed that Raed Saad, a commander of the Qassam Brigades, was there. We never heard any updates about that ever since, not even a confirmation or an allegation that he was killed. So, this has been done repeatedly.
The way the carnage unfolded is atrocious on every single level possible. So, Israel used what they call “fire belts,” which is almost like carpet bombing. They drop simultaneously about five bombs — each is about 2,000 pounds — on top of what they have designated themselves as Gaza’s only humanitarian safe zone. Now, they’ve been crowding hundreds of thousands of people there by force, and then bomb them to kill and wound over 400 people.
So, it didn’t stop even there. After the carnage unfolded, as soon as ambulances and firefighters came to the area, Israel started to bomb and target those, as well. They killed multiple firefighters and attacked ambulance crews to delay the rescue mission in that area.
What this reminds me of is, basically, if you remember in 2002, Israel assassinated Hamas’s top most wanted, most dangerous militant commander, Salah Shehade, the founder of the Qassam Brigades. Back then, the airstrike killed about 14 civilians. Seven of them were children. The Bush administration, George W. Bush, he came out and condemned Israel in unprecedented terms and said, “This is heavy-handed, and this impedes and prevents peace.” That was George Bush at the time. Now we are in a situation where it’s so insane that Biden was not only silent, dead silent, not a word on this, but he’s the one that provided all the weaponry, all the bombs that Israel very gladly obliged and rained down on the refugee humanitarian safe zone. You also had — at that time, you had about 27 Israeli pilots in 2002 that declared they will not participate anymore in reserve service in the IDF because of the human casualties, the high death toll — seven children. Only seven. At this point, what you have is near unanimity in the Israeli political and defense establishment of saying this was more than justified, this was a great operation, although they cannot until now confirm or provide any evidence that al-Deif, the commander of the Qassam Brigades, was even there.
So, we’ve got to a situation where Israel is being told, “You can do whatever you want, anything you want at all.” That’s basically the message they’re getting from the Biden administration and from the European Union, as well, from European member states. The only red line that Biden is implementing — and that’s something that I keep hearing from sources close to the White House — is that, just don’t engage in a regional conflict that involves Iran and Lebanon and bogs the United States down into that war; otherwise, carry on with whatever you want. We heard a lot of red lines about Rafah from Biden in May. And as soon as Israel went in, turned Rafah into what humanitarian workers are now calling a wasteland — nothing is left there. Almost virtually nothing is standing. They burned, destroyed homes on their way systematically, left dozens of bodies to rot and decompose and get eaten by dogs and cats on the street, and sometimes they scoop it with bulldozers and bury it with the rubble, if there’s a humanitarian mission coming in. We saw unimaginable, unique, unprecedented ugliness that violate every norm not only of international law, but of common humanity. And Biden is unwilling to put down a foot and say, “You violated any of my red lines.”
It’s the same message they’re getting from Europe. So, I was recently at a meeting with a top European official. He gave us his tablet, circled it around the table and showed us satellite imagery of Gaza before and after, the EU has been gathering. And he said, “Look at this. What Israel is doing, they are wiping out the place.” And he said, quote, “Their goal is to make Gaza unlivable, uninhabitable, so if the war ends, nobody can live there anymore. People have to leave” — so, in other words, to finish the Gaza question, take it out of the equation completely. So, those European officials, they know. But the same official said that he doesn’t have much to — that he’s incapable of doing much, because about 80% of European governments just want Israel to carry on and do whatever they want, without sort of stopping them or challenging this atrocity or genocide that’s unfolding. The only thing that they’ve been asking for — so, for instance, the German foreign minister went to Tel Aviv or Israel about eight times. The only thing she asked for was: Continue the killing, just kill fewer people. Spread the killing across time so it does not look spectacular. Occasionally, Israel violates that and kills over a hundred people. But as long as they keep it about a hundred people per day — again, I cannot imagine that this number is acceptable. A hundred people per day, this is OK for European and capitals in Western governments.
AMY GOODMAN: Muhammad Shehada, we’re here in Milwaukee covering the Republican National Convention. Can you talk about President Trump’s policy when it comes to Israel? Talk about his relationship with Netanyahu. Talk about what happened during the Great March of Return, moving the embassy, etc.
MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: Well, basically, Trump is — his second term is a nightmare for people in Gaza, because he’s been very clear during the Biden-Trump debate, the presidential debate, that Israel wants to carry on and continue this war indefinitely, and he’s willing to indulge in that, to let them finish the job, as he said. That is basically — when I talk to people in Gaza, they react with immense fear about a second term for [inaudible] for sure is that he’s going to empower every fundamentalist lunatic, extremist right-wing hawk, to put them in charge of Middle East peace, as he did during his first term. He put a messianic Israeli American settler, David Friedman, from Bet El — he put him as the American ambassador to Israel to take what was termed at the time the sledgehammer policy: destroy everything that would be there to enable a Palestinian state to be established, expand settlements, recognize settlements as not necessarily illegal under international law, remove the labeling of settlement products, recognize Jerusalem as —
AMY GOODMAN: Muhammad, we have 10 seconds.
MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: — and defund hospitals. But the problem is that Biden administration hasn’t been any better in many ways. The last three years have been the deadliest there is in Palestinian-Israeli relations since records began in 2005.
AMY GOODMAN: Muhammad Shehada, I want to thank you for being with us, writer and analyst from Gaza, chief of communications at Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, columnist for The Forward newspaper, a Jewish weekly in New York.
