Why Are More Tech Leaders Pivoting to Trump? Follow the Crypto.

Crypto may well be the most salient factor in Silicon Valley elite’s new willingness to endorse the right.

By Tyler Walicek

August 4, 2024

Source: TruthOut





The last few weeks have seen a spate of leading technology entrepreneurs, investors and other key figures publicly endorsing Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign to regain the presidency. Among them are elite representatives of PayPal, Tesla, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and Palantir. Until rather recently, such a heel turn would have been considered anathema in Silicon Valley. In 2016 and 2020, tech workers to tech billionaire elites channeled the vast majority of donations and endorsements to Democrats — save for some notable exceptions, like Oracle founder Larry Ellison. Now, a political schism may be developing between the pro-business liberal leanings of the California-based industry and a new willingness among certain major figures to welcome reactionaries into the fold.

In truth, the rank and file of Silicon Valley — the programmers and other workers who actually staff the companies and build the products — have in all likelihood not wavered in their decidedly liberal orientation, if political donations are any indicator. Though there are certainly still elements among the elite sympathetic to Democrats, the rarefied air of tech leadership is now echoing with purportedly newfound right-wing sympathies. Inevitably, their reactionary pivot seems poised to open the doors to more widespread social acceptability of Republican alliances in the industry.

Whether or not the new posture trickles down, tech leadership’s stance can, unsurprisingly, be traced to class interest. The game has changed in the intervening years. the rise of cryptocurrency as a vast engine of speculation and wealth, and Biden administration agencies’ attempts to regulate it, have proffered a strong incentive for capital’s elite to do what they characteristically do: place the interests of profit and personal gain above whatever vestiges of moral principle they may harbor.
Tacit Alignments

Tech leaders seemed to reveal their endorsements of Trump en masse in July — even if their real sentiments have been stewing in private for far longer. First, a survey of the figures involved: The standard-bearer for tech’s new right-wing posture, is, of course, the humiliating public spectacle of Elon Musk. (Venture capitalist Peter Thiel could probably be considered Musk’s co-figurehead, but his fascist orientation is nothing new; Thiel has been waiting in the wings for this moment.) Musk’s full-throated backing of Trump, of course, comes as no surprise, given that he has been publicly wriggling around in the reactionary slop trough for some time. His endorsement came immediately in the wake of the assassination attempt on Trump, which seemed to supply an advantageous media moment.

Other self-declared Trump backers in tech include billionaire investor David Sacks (who previously said that Trump was “disqualified” as a candidate after January 6, 2021) and venture capitalist Doug Leone of Sequoia Capital. (Though a longtime Republican, Leone also rescinded, then reconfirmed his support.) Some of these key players have committed major financial resources to a prominent pro-Trump political action committee, America PAC, which has seen massive investment from across the sector. Musk pledged, and then reneged, on a monthly $45 million. Other major America PAC donors include Joe Lonsdale, a founder of Palantir, the Facebook-investor twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, and members of the so-called “PayPal mafia,”along with aTesla board member and another Sequoia Capital investor named Shaun Maguire.

This summer, David Sacks and venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya, both former Democratic donors, hosted a major fundraiser for Trump, attended by some major names: among them the aforementioned Winklevoss twins and vice presidential hopeful J.D. Vance. Bloomberg quoted Sacks as saying, “I’ve been very critical of Biden’s performance over the last four years, and I would like for him not to win another term. I’ve been looking at all the alternatives and getting to know the alternatives.” That’s one way of saying he’s rallying millionaire donors to elect Trump.

And in July, one of the more notable heel turns took place when the investor duo behind the eponymous firm Andreessen Horowitz apologetically justified their support for Trump on their podcast, claiming opposition to Democratic regulatory policies. They’ve also pledged to donate to America PAC.

It’s not surprising that Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz felt the need to proffer some hesitant, mewling explanations. For years the tech industry attempted to burnish its image: a certain variety of milquetoast liberalism and nominally “progressive” values, part of its public relations quest to portray itself as “making the world a better place,” in the infamous and much-mocked formulation. The failed vision of “tech humanism” has led to some backtracking and second thoughts among tech’s former boosters.

But of course, in practice, there have always been strong covert and overt ideological alignments between tech and the right — their shared interest in laissez-faire regulatory and tax policy and sanctification of entrepreneurial capitalists makes them natural bedfellows. Liberal contingents of the tech elite certainly remain, but they share certain right-libertarian leanings; Silicon Valley has its own California-inflected pseudoutopian flavor of pro-business ideology. While this latest pivot has been called a “mask-off moment” for tech elites, they never really wore a convincing disguise in the first place.

Nevertheless, after a yearslong onslaught of revelations about the corruption, predatory behavior, surveillance and privacy issues, racist and sexist workplace environments, threats to democracy, and other serious issues rife within the industry, there’s an unmistakable sense that any residue of tech’s utopian sheen is long gone, and the PR gambit to present as socially benevolent has been a dismal failure. Perhaps, with that pretense discarded, some see a right-wing allegiance as the next self-evident step.

Truthout reached out to Molly White, a tech critic, cryptocurrency researcher and commentator, software engineer and campaign finance watchdog to learn more about tech leaders’ motivations. White agreed that some in tech may just now be gaining the confidence to publicly embrace their self-interest, with less fear of censure. “It’s becoming more socially acceptable to be right-wing in tech,” she said. “We’ve certainly seen that happening the last handful of years, though the Peter Thiels of the world have been around longer than that.”


While this latest pivot has been called a “mask-off moment” for tech elites, they never really wore a convincing disguise in the first place.

Some of it could also be put down to a churlish kneejerk reaction — as White said, “The so-called techlash has been taken somewhat personally by some of these powerful people, who are reacting to that in a sense.” Still, for leading venture capitalists and CEOs to shrug off the stigma of a Republican endorsement — which even fairly recently would have been considered a third rail — would require a more pressing incentive.

A telling moment came when the vice presidential candidate was announced on the Trump ticket: J.D. Vance, the onetime Thiel employee and tech investor turned limply pandering blood-and-soil reactionary. Some in tech were reportedly giddy at his pick. Whether or not the Vance pick was the real inspiration for any endorsements, his appointment did not hurt tech leaders’ interest because Vance is considered a major ally of cryptocurrency, having declared his sympathies with crypto before, despite a stated opposition to “Big Tech.” Vance, as an Ohio Republican senator, also drafted legislation that would have drastically altered the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) and other agencies’ oversight of the field.
The Crypto-Fascist Influence

As White explained to Truthout, crypto may well be the most salient factor in Silicon Valley elite’s new willingness to endorse the right. A widespread need among tech elites to protect their crypto investments appears a highly compelling consideration, which is spurring endorsement of Trump.

It’s clear that Trump holds major appeal for crypto interests — the candidate himself has played up his affinity, claiming in a speech to a Bitcoin conference, in typically bombastic form, that he will make the U.S. the “crypto capital of the world.”

“A lot of these big figures who are spending a lot of money in politics have substantial crypto holdings,” she said. “A good example of that would be the Winklevoss twins, who hold a substantial amount of Bitcoin. And then there’s the investor class.” White founded the site Follow the Crypto, which tracks the considerable amounts of money animating crypto political advocacy.

“It comes down to the fact that [crypto investors and executives] really have a lot to lose,” White continued. “They stand to gain a lot in the coming few years if they can achieve some change in a federal stance towards crypto.… They’re hoping to install politicians at the congressional level and in the presidential race who would reduce the degree of regulation.”

The capricious and poorly regulated cryptocurrency field has made and crushed innumerable fortunes in recent times. As White pointed out, the highest echelon of tech investors and executives all have major crypto holdings, in both the currencies themselves and the firms that run as, effectively, unregulated securities exchanges. The Biden administration’s SEC under Chairman Gary Gensler has embarked on efforts to regulate and rein in the industry — so far, with some success. Gensler has spoken out about the “frauds and scams” within crypto, and has justified his enforcement actions as cracking down on the “risk of non-compliance with U.S. law.” Democratic lawmakers have shared in his desire to regulate the industry.

Recently, major crypto-investing billionaire Mark Cuban and other industry interests met with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California), Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York), senior Biden adviser Anita Dunn, and other leading Democrats to lodge complaints about SEC oversight. Gensler’s SEC has brought dozens of enforcement actions against crypto firms, charging them with everything from unregistered securities trading to operating full-fledged pyramid and Ponzi schemes — the industry being highly prone to (some might say fully constituted by) massive fraudulence. Gensler has sought to force crypto exchanges to register as trading platforms with the SEC, which would make the space less of the wild casino that it presently is. Speculation is the raison d’etre of crypto, going hand in hand with predatory behavior and outright fraud.

The SEC has already sanctioned the concept of cryptocurrency exchanges, legitimizing the industry and raising concerns of another speculative bubble that could lead to financial crisis. Yet this is not enough for crypto acolytes — they want to be able to speculate without even the vaguest specter of oversight. Naturally, the proverbial house, which would like to keep winning, has taken issue with the SEC’s approach. (Trump, seeing an opportunity to please donors, made a crowd of cheering crypto fans a promise to fire Gensler.)

The power of the crypto cartel is exemplified by the elite status of its very own special interest political action committee. As Follow the Crypto has documented, vast sums of money have flowed into the top crypto super PAC, called Fairshake, to the tune of $160 million. Top crypto companies like Coinbase and Ripple, plus venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, account for the vast majority of that sum; the Winklevoss twins and other crypto companies made up the rest.

Of that staggering income, Fairshake has spent around $15 million — making it, at present, the eighth-largest super PAC for expenditures and the fourth-largest for total fundraising. The Fairshake site describes the PAC’s aims as “Providing blockchain innovators the ability to develop their networks under a clearer regulatory and legal framework.” It is safe to surmise that regulatory “clarity” is not the only variable they wish to tweak when it comes to financial oversight.

Fairshake, intriguingly, channels money to two other PACs. One, called Defend American Jobs, promotes conservative candidates and causes; the other, Protect Progress, does the same for liberals. These parallel groups exist to, in essence, launder Fairshake money and obscure one PAC’s donations from the other, so as not to upset any Fairshake donors with particular leanings. What could better illustrate the industry’s amoral self-interest? This attempt to play both sides of the aisle is reminiscent of disgraced FTX crypto exchange founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s bipartisan double-dealing, noted White.

The leaders of Silicon Valley, meanwhile, “have substantial investments in [crypto] that do strongly color their motivations when it comes to the political end of things,” she added. “Certainly, those people have spoken out — particularly Andreessen and Horowitz have spoken out — and have funded very crypto-specific political movements,” with Fairshake being the most trenchant example.

White also pointed out that there has been an unconvincing effort by its acolytes to portray support for crypto as a grassroots effort cheered by a wide swath of Americans. Stand with Crypto — a group operating both a PAC and a 501(c)(4) under that name — claims that it has received nearly $180 million in donations from 1.3 million “crypto advocates.” However, as White has discovered in the course of her investigative work, the majority of the money Stand with Crypto claims to have raised came from either the wealthy and venture capital donations to Fairshake, or otherwise to MoonPay, a crypto company. The PAC’s individual donations amount to “about $13,000 from seven people, two of whom work for the crypto PAC, and two of whom work for Coinbase,” she said.

In other words, like so much associated with cryptocurrency, the industry’s political influence effort is hollow and fraudulent, representing nothing but the avaricious concerns of a segment of elite hustlers, and almost no one else. Yet, thanks to its overflowing coffers, the crypto lobby is able to exert undue influence on the political system.

It’s not like Democratic Party tech donors haven’t displayed similar tendencies: Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn and a Microsoft board member, seems to be conditioning his support of Kamala Harris on her firing of Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, who has advocated for better regulation of cryptocurrency; Hoffman is a crypto holder who was an early investor in Coinbase. His opposition to Khan, though, seems to have more to do with her seeking antitrust enforcement against Microsoft regarding its acquisition of Inflection AI, which Hoffman co-founded. His fellow billionaire and Harris donor Barry Diller has echoed Hoffman’s call to fire Khan. (Interestingly, J.D. Vance has spoken positively of Khan and antitrust in the past — it remains to be seen whether he will flip on the matter.)

It also appears that a pivot from Democrats on crypto, antitrust, or other tech concerns is not impossible, as former businesswoman and venture capitalist, Gina Raimondo, the secretary of commerce under Biden who is widely perceived as pro-tech, is reportedly being vetted for the vice presidential candidacy.

Venture capitalists are also not, of course, totally unanimous in their support for Trump. Reid Hoffman, along with investor Vinod Khosla and 100 other figures, have come together as “VCs for Kamala,” representing the Democratic donor base in tech. Meanwhile, a report in the Financial Times seemed to indicate that, for their part, the Harris campaign has sought a “reset,” making overtures to crypto companies — though White pointed out that the sourcing on that news item is hazy — and it wouldn’t be the first time that crypto interests have exaggerated their sway with Harris.

Regardless of the direction Biden’s replacement takes towards crypto, the issue of the distorting influence of crypto, tech investors and donors in general is a bipartisan one — elites are able to deploy their wealth and power to exert disproportionate interest over the political system that governs us all. If any meaningful number of average Americans are concerned in the slightest with crypto, it’s likely only because its false promises robbed them of their meager savings. The industry preys widely on the poor with dubious enticements to buy in, including by the use of Bitcoin ATMs that target poor areas. To jack up coin values and inflate the asset bubble, the industry needs buyers to prop up its speculative schemes. The major holders get rich, while those who bought in, lured by promises of quick wealth, lose their savings and are left holding the bag.

And yet the perpetrators of these and other schemes are given pride of place in consideration by political candidates. The nation’s most vaunted technological entrepreneurs have made it clear that they will willingly cross the reactionary Rubicon, electing an aspiring dictator and placing their desire to enrich their already perversely bloated fortunes over all else. That valorization of self-interest — which at heart has always been the animating principle of Silicon Valley entrepreneurialism — would seem to indicate that tech leaders will likely get along just marvelously with their new reactionary allies.

One in 11 People Went Hungry Last Year. Climate Change Is a Big Reason Why.

Hunger and food insecurity are no longer merely benchmarks of public health. They are symptoms of a warming world.

By Ayurella Horn-Muller

August 4, 2024

Source: Grist

Free public domain CC0 photo.



One in 11 people worldwide went hungry last year, while one in three struggled to afford a healthy diet. These numbers underscore the fact that governments not only have little shot at achieving a goal, set in 2015, of eradicating hunger, but progress toward expanding food access is backsliding.

The data, included in a United Nations report released Wednesday, also reveals something surprising: As global crises continue to deepen, issues like hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition no longer stand alone as isolated benchmarks of public health. In the eyes of the intergovernmental organizations and humanitarian institutions tracking these challenges, access to food is increasingly entangled with the impacts of a warming world.

“The agrifood system is working under risk and uncertainties, and these risks and uncertainties are being accelerated because of climate [change] and the frequency of climate events,” Máximo Torero Cullen, chief economist of the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, or FAO, said in a briefing. It is a “problem that will continue to increase,” he said, adding that the mounting effects of warming on global food systems create a human rights issue.

Torero calls the crisis “an unacceptable situation that we cannot afford, both in terms of our society, in terms of our moral beliefs, but also in terms of our economic returns.”

Of the 733 million or so people who went hungry last year, there were roughly 152 million more facing chronic undernourishment than were recorded in 2019. (All told, around 2.8 billion people could not afford a healthy diet.) This is comparable to what was seen in 2008 and 2009, a period widely considered the last major global food crisis, and effectively sets the goal of equitable food access back 15 years. This insecurity remains most acute in low-income nations, where 71.5 percent of residents struggled to buy enough nutritious food — compared to just 6.3 percent in wealthy countries.

Climate change is second only to conflict in having the greatest impact on global hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition, according to the FAO. That’s because planetary warming does more than disrupt food production and supply chains through extreme weather events like droughts. It promotes the spread of diseases and pests, which affects livestock and crop yields. And it increasingly causes people to migrate as they flee areas ravaged by rising seas and devastating storms, which, in turn, can fuel conflict that then drives more migration in a vicious cycle.

“What happens if we don’t act, and we don’t respond?” said Torero. “You have more migration … it will empower more conflicts, because people in hunger have a higher probability to be in conflict, because they need to survive. And that will trigger also a bigger frequency of conflicts.”

Earlier this year, the African countries of Zambia and Zimbabwe declared a state of disaster because of an ongoing drought. Mercy Lung’aho, a food research scientist at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, said she witnessed long lines of people waiting to buy food, with quotas on how much they could buy. “Imagine not being able to know when, or if, you will eat. That’s the impact of climate change,” said Lung’aho.

Although governments, nonprofits, and other organizations spend vast sums each year to solve these problems, no one can offer anything more than inconsistent estimates of just how much is spent or what impact it is having. One reason for that, the U.N. report notes, is because there is little clarity into how this money is used, or even how these funding strategies are defined. (That also is true of multinational funding pledges to address these issues.) The authors of the report call for adopting a universal definition of financing for food security and nutrition that includes public and private resources aimed at not just eradicating hunger, but everything from strengthening agrifood systems to mitigating drivers like climate shocks.

As it stands, the world is assuredly not on track to reach all seven global nutrition targets governments set for 2030 under the Sustainable Development Goals they adopted in 2015. But experts on the issue have long argued that such measures have always been more naive than realistic, with “over-ambitious and impossible” targets that include the eradication of hunger and malnutrition for all people, and doubling the agricultural productivity and income of small-scale producers, among other goals.

Nemat Hajeebhoy is the chief of nutrition for UNICEF Nigeria, which has the second-largest population of malnourished children in the world. Unless governments, NGOs, and the private sector come together to address the underlying causes of hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition, she said, vulnerable women and children worldwide will bear the brunt of that inaction. “What keeps me up at night is the numbers I’m seeing,” said Hajeebhoy. “As human beings, we have to eat to live. And if we cannot eat, then the consequence is sickness and death.”

How Sinclair Sneaks Right-Wing Spin Into Millions of Households

By Pete Tucker

August 4, 2024

Source: FAIR


A video collage of dozens of Sinclair anchors reading a script warning that “some members of the media use their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda.”

With the presidential contest in full swing, the Sinclair Broadcast Group appears to be ramping up its right-wing propaganda again.

While millions of Americans are subjected to the TV network’s electioneering, few know it. That’s because, like a chameleon, Sinclair blends into the woodwork.

Turn on your local news and you may well be watching a Sinclair station, even though it appears on your screen under the imprimatur of a major network like CBS, NBC or Fox.

Here in the DC area, I occasionally tune into the local ABC affiliate, WJLA. Its newscasters are personable, and I like the weather forecasts. But then I remember that WJLA is owned by Sinclair.

I know this only because I’m a weirdo who follows Sinclair, not because there’s any obvious on-air sign the network owns WJLA—there isn’t. That’s why Sinclair’s propaganda is so hard to detect.
Hijacking trust

A video collage of dozens of Sinclair anchors reading a script warning that “some members of the media use their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda.”

While trust in the media has cratered in recent years, there’s a notable exception. “Seventy-six percent of Americans say that they still trust their local news stations—more than the percentage professing to trust their family or friends,” the New Yorker (10/15/18) reported.

Smartly, Sinclair leaves its affiliates alone long enough for them to develop a rapport with their audience. “In a way, the fact that it looks normal most of the time is part of the problem,” said Margaret Sullivan (CJR, 4/11/18), former public editor of the New York Times. “What Sinclair is cynically doing is trading on the trust that develops among local news people and their local audience.”

By hijacking this trusting relationship, Sinclair is able to sneak its propaganda into millions of American homes, including in presidential swing states where Sinclair owns more stations than any other network.

Sinclair does this by requiring its affiliates to air the right-wing stories it sends them. Because these segments are introduced or delivered by trusted local hosts, they gain credibility.

Mostly Sinclair’s sleight of hand goes undetected. But in 2018, the network pushed its luck by requiring anchors at stations across the country to read from the same Trump-like anti-media script. A video compilation of dozens if not hundreds of Sinclair anchors voicing the same “Orwellian” commentary went viral.

Despite the occasional brush up, Sinclair carries on largely under-the-radar, quietly gobbling up stations, mainly in cheaper markets. “We’re forever expanding—like the universe,” said longtime leader David Smith, who’s turned Sinclair into the country’s second-largest TV network. (See FAIR.org, 5/13/24.)

An anchor jumps ship

Popular Information (7/23/24) reported that Sinclair anchor Eugene Ramirez quit in part over a requirement that he air at least three stories from the network’s “Rapid Response Team” nightly. “The RRT has produced 147 stories this year that portray Democrats in a negative light,” Popular Information found, “and just seven stories that portray Democrats positively.”

Of the 294 TV stations that Sinclair owns or operates, at least 70 of them air Sinclair’s in-house national evening news broadcast. For a year and a half, this broadcast was anchored by Eugene Ramirez, but he resigned in January, and it’s not hard to see why.

Each night Ramirez was given a list of four stories produced out of Sinclair’s Maryland’s headquarters. From these, Ramirez had to select at least three to air. Often these stories were little more than writeups of press releases from right-wing politicians and groups, as Judd Legum and Rebecca Crosby report at Popular Information (7/23/24). One recent headline read, “Trump PAC Launches New Ad Hitting Democrats on Border: ‘Joe Biden Does Nothing.’”

Sinclair frequently booked far-right guests to appear on Ramirez’s broadcast, and he was “instructed not to interrupt them,” according to Popular Information. “Many of Sinclair‘s affiliates were not in big cities,” Ramirez was told, “and the content of the broadcast had to reflect the sensitivities of those viewers.” Progressive guests rarely if ever appeared.

Legum and Crosby also found that Sinclair requires around 200 of its affiliates to air its “Question of the Day,” which has included gems like, “Do you think former House Speaker Pelosi deserves some of the blame for January 6 riot?” But other questions are less obviously biased.

It’s one thing when a blowhard on Fox News asks, “Are you concerned violent criminals are crossing the border?” But it’s quite another when the same question is asked by a familiar and trusted local anchor.

The power of Sinclair is that questions like these are being posed not just by one trusted anchor, but by a small army of them in communities across the country every day. Elections are won and lost on less.

Methane Emissions “Fastest in Decades”

By Robert Hunziker

August 4, 2024

Source: Pressenza


A region of enhanced methane is visible near Modesto, California. This version of the data visualization includes location label. Wikimedia Commons.

A new study shows methane (CH4) emissions behaving like a sprinter on speed, setting decadal records. This is bad news. It’s 80 times more powerful than CO2 at trapping heat.

“Global emissions of methane, a powerful planet-heating gas, are ‘rising rapidly’ at the fastest rate in decades, requiring immediate action to help avert a dangerous escalation in the climate crisis, a new study has warned.” (Source: Global Methane Emissions Rising at Fastest Rate in Decades, Scientists Warn, The Guardian, July 30, 2024)

The new study by Drew Shindell, et al, The Methane Imperative, Frontiers in Science, July 29, 2024 discusses the methane issue and steps that must be taken to mitigate methane emissions. These steps are considered critical to meet well-advertised goals to limit global warming, which has not been limited nearly enough to count. On the contrary, it’s getting hotter by the year, every year.

Another new study underscores failures to tackle the methane problem: “New comprehensive aerial measurements show oil and natural gas producers across the U.S. are emitting methane into the atmosphere at over four times the rates estimated by the Environmental Protection Agency for those same areas based on industry-reported data.

The results also show that operators are exceeding their own widely touted emissions goals eightfold.” (Source: New Data Show U.S. Oil & Gas Methane Emissions Over Four Times Higher Than EPA Estimates, Eight Times Greater Than Industry Target, Environmental Defense Fund, July 31, 2024)

“Regardless of the reasons, the emission rates are way too high. New, long-anticipated EPA rules finalized earlier this year by the Biden-Harris administration that leverage widely available, cost-effective solutions, along with methane reduction incentives included in the Inflation Reduction Act, are vital to bringing the numbers down. It is essential that states and EPA move forward with swiftly implementing these protective standards,” Ibid.

Trump has publicly stated he will destroy Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and let producers off the hook and institute policies that increase greenhouse gases. In that regard, according to Bloomberg News: “The White House’s policies have fueled plans for more than $200 billion in cleantech manufacturing investments mostly (ed. $161B) in districts with Republican lawmakers opposed (ed. all of them opposed it) to the agenda.” (Bloomberg News d/d June 20, 2024)

The past two years of heat on top of more record-setting heat is a sure sign of failure to control human-generated greenhouse gases like CH4, but more troubling yet, slowly but steadily self-reinforcing permafrost melt as well as glacial melt contribute to increasing levels of CH4 as if on automatic pilot, feeding on global warming it creates, releasing CH4. This is real danger, and it’s flashing red. Controlling CH4 emissions wherever humanly possible cannot be done soon enough. Global warming is not waiting around.

This could get real messy real soon unless the brakes are put on emissions. With global news already covering widespread overheating of the planet, which is caused by excessive levels of greenhouse gases, new news that methane (CH4) has gone ballistic should make bolder headlines because, more insidiously than CO2, it turns up the thermostat, causing all kinds of problems for human survival. Already, several regions of the world were/are on the ropes, feeling dangerous levels of heat. “The human body can only accommodate temperatures above 95 degrees with high humidity for short periods of time.” (Source: Americares)

Humans lose 80% of body heat through sweating. When both humidity and heat combined are too high, sweating becomes harder and harder until impossible to shed heat. According to a study at Arizona State University, a healthy young adult could die after six hours of 92°F with 50% humidity. (Source: Hottest Survivable Temperatures Are Lower Than Expected, Scientific American, December 12, 2023)

According to Global Methane Tracker 2024: “The concentration of methane in the atmosphere is now over two-and-a-half times greater than the pre-industrial levels. The increase has accelerated in recent years and preliminary data indicates that there was another significant annual increase in 2023.”

Earth System Research Laboratories (as of July 5, 2024)
Global CH4 Monthly Means:
March 2024 1930.75 ppb
March 1983 1645.00 ppb (when official measurements started)

The Shindell study clearly points to fossil fuels, primarily oil and gas production, and increased decomposition rates from wetlands because of global warming, which, of course, accelerates excessive levels of CH4, meaning, it’s self-reinforcing. This is evident across the vastness of Arctic permafrost covering roughly 20% of the Northern Hemisphere. It’s a time bomb that’s already ticking. And it is enormous.

Hopefully, nations of the world hurry mitigation measures because the methane curse is not just oil and gas production and wetlands in specific easily accessed regions. Several studies have exposed threats heretofore ignored where CH4 is cocked and loaded and ready to accelerate. e.g., (1) a recent study found migrating methane gas under the base of permafrost in Svalbard, Norway which has “significant implications for climate change.” (2) Arctic News d/d January 14, 2024 reported the impact of rising Northern Hemisphere ocean temperatures “… threatens to cause rapid destabilization of methane hydrates at the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean and lead to explosive eruptions of methane, as its volume increases 160 to 180-fold when leaving the hydrate.”

According to some studies, triggering a climate catastrophe that slams humanity down onto the mat is within the range of possibilities: “Methane bombs – gas fields where leakage alone from the full exploitation of the resources would result in emissions equivalent to at least a billion tonnes of CO2 – represent a huge threat to the climate and have the potential to release methane levels equivalent to three decades of all US greenhouse gas emissions, a new investigation by The Guardian has revealed.” (Source: Methane Bombs’ Release 30 Years Equivalent of US Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Risk Triggering Climate Catastrophe, Earth.org, March 8, 2023)

Underscoring these recent studies is a haunting incomprehensible undertone of human failure to address the risks of human extinction. Once the signs become more apparent, it’ll be too late. In fact, there are some rumblings that “too late” may be right around the corner, but that’s too pessimistic, or is it? Regardless, the offset to pessimism about climate change is nobody really knows for sure when what will happen, but trends tell a story, such as radical changes in ecosystems like tens of thousands of thermokarst lakes emitting CH4 suddenly appearing in Arctic permafrost regions of Siberia and Alaska as undeniably factual and impossible to accurately measure but rapidly surfacing methane bubbles up and away into the atmosphere, defining a cloudy uncertain future.

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Robert Hunziker

Robert Hunziker (MA, economic history, DePaul University) is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and appeared in over 50 journals, magazines, and sites worldwide, like Z magazine, European Project on Ocean Acidification, Ecosocialism Canada, Climate Himalaya, Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, Comite Valmy, and UK Progressive. He has been interviewed about climate change on Pacifica Radio, KPFK, FM90.7, Indymedia On Air and World View Show/UK.

It’s Time to Organize or Die

By Kim Scipes

August 4, 2024

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


PARC’s one-year anniversary, as shown by the Herald Dispatch (Smith, 2018)

I saw a message from a veteran friend of mine recently: he had just received a picture of a dog eating a dead baby in Gaza.

Revulsion, anger, sadness, rage: of course, at the Israelis for their genocide in Gaza and everything they have done in Gaza and on the West Bank against Palestinians, and for the Biden Administration for encouraging and enabling such atrocities.

But, also, revulsion, anger, sadness, and rage against the left, particularly in the United States, but also around the world: we could not stop this shit, nor the US Government from supplying the weapons and political support to allow it to happen.

And revulsion, anger, sadness, and rage against the left, again particularly in the United States, but also around the world for being unable to stop the impending climate catastrophe already happening.

Etc., etc., etc. And, unfortunately, in my mind, this is all connected.

—

Let me regress. I am a strong leftist and especially anti-imperialist/anti-capitalist. I’ve been a political activist since “turning around” while in the US Marine Corps over 50 years ago and joining the anti-Vietnam war movement inside the US military. I’m a socialist of sorts but belong to no established organization because my approach differs: I am a leftist despite the left, not because of it. I have researched, written, and published around the world. Although I’ve lived most of my life in the United States, I don’t see the world through an “American” lens; I see the world through a global lens.

And what I see—and this will probably piss off many in the left, however defined—is failure: we have failed to build organizations that can force social change while radically altering power relations. Yes, we have forced changes, but they have been short-term at best: we have failed to build long-standing, POWERFUL organizations that can force social change. And most of us don’t even realize this.

One of the most profound understandings by the late Jane McAlevey, developed in her book , No Shortcuts, is that she delineated between advocacy, mobilization, and organization. Advocacy was speaking up for someone else, such as lawyers for clients in a case. Mobilization was motivating people to stand up to fight a civil injustice, such as the murder of George Floyd, but it generally depended on relying on the same good foot soldiers, again and again until they burn out. And then, there was organization: building on-going organizations that would engage people on an on-going basis and educating them and reaching out to those still unengaged so as to build power. In other words, the idea of organizing was to BUILD POWER by developing, maintaining, and expanding our organizations, and seeking engagement by more and more people in our respective areas and training them to become leaders.

But, within this, there needs to be the understanding that leadership exists within groups; it doesn’t emerge only with the presence of outsiders. In fact, as McAlevey recognizes, we need to build on, develop, and help refine the leadership that always exists among groups of people; we must work with and build upon existing leadership, not ignoring or replacing it: this is key to facilitating organizational development.

We—in general—have failed to adopt McAlevey’s understanding of the need to organize, and that is immobilizing us. And this failure has been keeping us incapacitated and helpless. And ineffectual.

Yes, we can analyze things on a sophisticated basis. Yes, we can recompose history with dedicated archival work. Yes, we can snivel about “injustices” anywhere in the world. But we cannot do a damn thing about them because we refuse to organize to build power from the bottom of society upward.

I live in Michigan City, Indiana, on Lake Michigan. This is a city of about 30,000 people, in the rust belt, and with the majority of people (53%) living month-to-month. It’s a city that’s generally about two-thirds white, one-third African American, although race relations seem pretty relaxed; not perfect, but generally people at least tolerate each other, especially at the same economic status level. Our recently elected mayor is an African American woman, the first to win the position.

Now, Indiana is not a progressive powerhouse, to say to least: it is controlled by Republicans at the state level (governor), and Republicans control a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate.

We live in what’s considered “Northwest Indiana,” which is an area dominated by the steel industry and its (conservative) union; other than in Indianapolis, we’re the only area that votes consistently Democratic. Nonetheless, it’s a conservative Democratic area.

Yet we are living in an area that has been under economic and political assault for somewhere around 40 years. In this period, a number of steel mills have been closed, many union locals busted, and a lot of ancillary jobs destroyed. In turn, this has decimated many of smaller companies that serviced the mills and their workers. We live in a state where today’s minimum wage, like the Federal minimum wage, is $7.25 an hour; trying raising a family on that! And tipped minimum wage is $2.13 an hour! And where fast food is a major industry!

What can progressives do in such an area? It’s a long-standing question that I think needs to be addressed across the country; I think lessons from our work might be helpful for folks living in many areas of the country, whether in a “blue” or “red” state. I think recounting some of our experiences might provide some ideas…. (And I hope others will share their experiences as well!)

Although retired now, for 18 ½ years and after getting my PhD at age 51, I taught at a local four year university called Purdue University North Central (PNC), later changed to Purdue University Northwest (PNW) ; a part of the Purdue University system. (Purdue is the land grant university in Indiana.) This is a four-year university located in a rural area, 4 ½ miles out of the two stoplight town of Westville.

My primary teaching responsibility as a sociologist was to teach a course on “Race and Ethnic Diversity,” and over the years, I eventually taught 57 sections of this course at a university roughly 87% white and generally conservative. What frustrated me was that we had no established social organizations or networks for students to plug into once they got a taste of what was really going on in the world and wanted to stay engaged after graduation.

Fortunately, that changed. A student named Vince Emanuele came to campus. Emanuele was a Marine veteran of the Iraq War, and he was trying to recover from the war, a difficult journey, I assure you: he had survived some vicious combat. We hit it off: I was a Marine veteran of the Vietnam War, although I had lucked out and had stayed in the States for all four years of my enlistment. Nonetheless, we bonded. And over time, we talked about and thought through many of the problems of our area, and he decided he wanted to do something about this.

Emanuele, after participating in a number of social movements—Occupy Wall Street, Obama, Bernie, environmental, antiwar—was also dissatisfied with the “left.” He knew the state of our region, knew the state of the left, and wanted to do something about it.

Somewhere around 2015-16, Sergio Kochergin came to town; Kochergin had been a platoon-mate of Emanuele’s in Iraq; they were inseparable, both helping the other recover from their wartime experiences. They, along with a couple of other people from this area, journeyed to Standing Rock to support efforts there.

The idea that emerged from hours of conversations along the trip, following multiple conversations beforehand between Emanuele and me, was that they decided to establish a community cultural center in town. Michigan City really has no place for people to relax and enjoy themselves together without having to pay money, and they wanted to set up a site where people could socialize that didn’t require money but where people could meet freely and get to know each other. At the same time, Emanuele and Kochergin also wanted a space to explore political ideas and community-based organizing in an area such as Michigan City. Eventually, they found a storefront that they rented, and they established PARC, which stands for Politics, Art, Roots, and Culture, in 2017.

PARC was an amazing place. Both Emanuele and Kochergin made folks feel welcome; they painted the place, gathered couches and chairs, established a large lending library, established a performance space, and always had a pot of coffee on. Other than when alcohol was served at evening events, when you had to be 21 or older to enter, there were no limits on who could join activities on site.

They welcomed everyone in the community. Interestingly, in a city largely self-segregated, they invited African Americans to come and share their spoken word poetry and to produce other events directed to African American audiences; some nights, the audience was 95% African American, which is very unusual for a “white” space. Yet, they also had heavy metal bands perform, as well as folk singers.

Eventually, different community-based groups used PARC as a meeting place. This included the West Side Little League, the NAACP, as well as some progressive pastors in the city. I think there were one or two weddings at PARC.

PARC also had family-focused events: most important was “Friendsgiving Day,” instead of Thanksgiving; we all brought food and shared, while the kids ran around and drew pictures on paper on the floor. They also held family game nights, sponsored art installations, welcomed hip hop events, initiated electoral candidate roundtables, etc.

Along with this, PARC showed political movies and provided political speakers: along with my colleague, Lee Artz, I spoke on the then-current situation in Venezuela (which is still being attacked by the US Government today). They had other guest speakers, in person and via Zoom.

But PARC also featured sporting events—both Emanuele and Kochergin were fans of boxing and mixed martial arts, and some of us were pro football fans. They got a big screen TV for engagees. Everybody was welcome at PARC!

Ultimately, PARC was trying to find ways to mix cultures and races, seeking to unify across established social barriers instead of just merely “tolerating” the existence of others.

Over time, and what we hoped for, was that a few people came around and wanted to do something to improve their city. Some of them had joined together previously and had been active. They created OUR MC, which stood for Organized and United Residents of Michigan City, and we worked together to create a social justice group that would fight for the betterment of the city. (Accordingly, there was an overlap between the people of PARC and OUR MC.)

OUR MC got involved in a number of campaigns. We fought lead poisoning in the city—a very big problem in the formerly industrialized rust belt cities, as industry did not clean up the environment they had poisoned during their operations after they abandoned the area. We fought an effort to establish a development along the last remaining sand dune along Lake Michigan in the area. We fought the gratuitous development of a downtown plaza with taxpayer money, although it was intended to be used by those visiting only during the summer. And we mobilized over around a thousand city residents for a couple mile protest march down a main street in town, protesting the killing of George Floyd and declaring that “black lives matter!”

Yet, we were more than just an “action group.” We wanted to develop the consciousness and understanding of OUR MC members, of which many did not have a more complete understanding. We knew that key to the survival and expansion of OUR MC over time was leadership development; we wanted to develop every person willing to take our proposed courses, as ultimately, it was expected that Emanuele and Kochergin would bow out. We asked people what they wanted to learn.

We initiated classes at PARC that anyone was free to join. Most important, I believe, were our classes on SWOT, which stood for “strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.” SWOT analyses help illustrate our strengths and show where we could have the greatest social impact in the local political/economic scene, and where our greatest threats might come from. We were also seeking to develop a structure that would facilitate our political program.

So, we combined a social movement approach toward issues based on broad mobilization (as mentioned above) with electoral work; rejecting a sole focus on electoral politics, what appears to be a common approach with many left groups.

The local mayoral race in 2019 was one of the places we intervened. After interviewing a number of progressive candidates, we backed an elderly African American female candidate, and really went to work for her. Michigan City has about 30,000 homes, and in one day, we talked with residents or left literature about our candidate’s campaign on doors of over 10,000 of them! There was no other candidate with this kind of support. Unfortunately, we found out that our chosen candidate had escalating mental health problems, and we decided we could not continue to support her; we felt it unethical to tell the community that she could handle the job when, clearly, she could not. Still, she lost by only 200 or so votes.

So, OUR MC—and PARC—were seen as a growing power base for the people by the “powers that be.” There was pressure put on our landlord to no longer rent to PARC. That probably could have been overcome, but we had some internal problems that were not handled well.

This, too, might have been overcome, especially over time. But the COVID-19 pandemic hit this area in the Spring of 2020, and that had a terrible effect on the region and on relations between people in it. (The demise of Bernie’s second presidential campaign probably contributed as well, but I don’t remember that folks were that enthusiastic about his second run.) We simply did not have the organization consolidated sufficiently to survive the social turmoil.

Nonetheless, there needs to be some analysis of PARC/OUR MC, and their strengths and weaknesses. Understand that these are my personal comments, and probably would be disputed by at least some of the participants. Yet, as an older, more experienced activist than others—so I should not be considered a “regular member”—these are things that I think need to be drawn out for continued discussion.

There was a gruesome set of internal conflicts that were ugly, that occurred with both organizations, and which I do not want to repeat. The long and short of it—and what needs to be learned from—is that we never provided for handling internal conflict that might emerge throughout the course of the organizational history, and this was, in my opinion, a MAJOR failure; it led to the destruction of an incredibly innovative and successful community organization project.

There are two main lessons. First of all, EVERY organization—no matter how well intended, no matter how well initiated—needs to be prepared to handle internal conflict, and to be able to do so in a way that does not destroy the organization nor force people away. We had run into a thing where this approach—deemed “touchy-feely”—was denigrated from the beginning: it basically prevented us from addressing emotional issues among members. However, the greater the diversity of those involved—and we want the greatest diversity possible—the greater the chance of emotional issues emerging among members; and cross-class memberships seem particularly vulnerable to this. (The violence that many working class people are subjected to—at work, in their neighborhoods, and in their daily lives—differs qualitatively from that experienced by more upper middle class folks, and resulting tensions can be explosive. But other issues such as gender, race, sexual orientation, etc., as well as experience levels are all potential flashpoints.) This must be expected and prepared for! We did not, and when the crisis happened in 2021, PARC/OUR MC exploded and burned out. An amazing project—especially in a “red” state such as Indiana—fell apart and disintegrated.

But tied to that must be another understanding: internal conflict, while not desirable, is almost unavoidable over time. Sometimes, it even energizes organizations, at least at first, forcing them to find new ways to be creative, to reach new people, etc. As stated above, its likelihood increases as the organization gets more internally diverse. But in any case, it is all but inevitable over time. (Unfortunately, I speak with a lot of experience with this.)

Key to resolving this, I believe, is to think clearly about what is going on in advance of the conflict. Absolutely the central question: is this conflict internal, among members, or is it external, such as an attack from competing or outside organizations? This is an important detail for every organization, which should be prepared to handle both should either raise its ugly head. The key thing to understand, however, is that we should treat internal conflict among members differently than conflict with external organizations.

We have to develop processes that treat members with respect, and try to work these problems out amicably, if at all possible. The goal is to overcome the conflict and restore the health of the organization so good political/cultural work can be continued!

(There may be situations where this cannot be done and the individual or individuals must be expelled; but the goal should be to intervene before it gets to this level, and this should be avoided if at all possible; yet expulsion of some members is ultimately more important than allowing the organization to be destroyed. The expulsion process should be developed early on, with due process procedures included for all concerned from the beginning: you want to be clear and transparent, as other people and organizations will be watching, and you want to assure these outsiders that you’ve handled this as carefully and as humanely as possible; you don’t want to be denigrated for mishandling internal conflict by others. And this problem intensifies as the problem continues over time; “friends” get involved, and often make things much worse, which argues for a clear, expeditious, and clean handling of internal conflict as quickly as possible.)

External conflict is another thing. You want to train your members, so everyone understands what the organization is seeking to accomplish, and to be able to identify “friends” and “foes.” This is why ongoing organizational educational efforts are important because with greater and more solid organization, you are better able to defend and maintain your organization.

The goal over time is to build an organization that can develop and carry out a program that is strategically based on clear analysis and understanding of the social-political-cultural fields your organization is operating within. You want to build a stronger, better educated group of people who will work together in solidarity to better your respective community. You want to develop and achieve goals that have been commonly agreed on by the largest collection of people possible. You want to expand your membership numbers. And, along with all of these organizational goals, you want to develop leadership within your organization, helping each person desiring such training to advance and get as much development as possible, and then using them to further develop the organization. (And should they leave, for whatever reason, you want them to have the skills -and confidence to develop solid organizations wherever they land!)

You also want to develop processes by which you can decide—assuming there are compatible groups in the area—who you want to work with, and who you do not. Ideally, organizations join in coalition with others seeking the same results, building community-based power and expanding further outward.

Also, there is one more thing I learned that needs to be remarked upon. Just because you build a wonderful community cultural center that brings people together, you cannot assume these people want to become activists or will self-organize. The reason, as we discovered in our work in Michigan City, is that people are not just waiting to be asked to join. In fact, most have been trained over decades by social and political leaders to be passive, to not want to get involved.

What is the message generally shared: let the politicians handle it! (Oftentimes, a recipe for disaster!) No, people have been trained for generations that they should vote every 2, 4, 6 years, and then to get back on their respective couches and go back to sleep until the next election. (It’s why we need to engage people between elections….) The individualism produced by contemporary culture has been reinforced by self-serving politicians, and we’ve got to recreate cultures of solidarity.

We have always to remember that progressives, however defined or however they have defined themselves, have been subjected to this same immobilizing message as everyone else. This cannot be ignored and must be directly confronted. Besides talking about it and trying to understand how it has affected each person in the organization, exercises such as public speaker training, door-to-door canvassing, and general assertiveness training can all help challenge those previous messages, and even better is engaging in on-going social movement campaigns.

In other words, organizations do not simply emerge: they must be constructed with care, consciousness, and concern for the well-being of everyone. We may not get it right every time, but we damn sure should learn from the past, so we don’t make the same mistakes over again.

Now, admittedly, there’s no certainty that without the Pandemic that PARC/OUR MC would have survived, either partially or together. No organization is guaranteed success. The larger social/political/economic environment that has affected the left overall—the past 40 years of neo-liberal economics, the demise of Occupy, failure of Bernie’s campaigns, killings of African Americans, attacks on the Black Lives Matter movement, the lack of trust of traditional politicians, the rise of the Tea Party and then the MAGA movements—affected us as well. But having been a member of a number of activist organizations over the years in different parts of the country, I believe PARC/OUR MC came further than most.

After all, our goal is not to analyze the world, it is to change it. This can only be done through building organization: I can see no alternative. We need to get to it! And now!

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For more on PARC, including pictures, see an article by Kayla Vasilko, “Building a Network of Compassion in a World Waiting to be United,” about Scipes’ work in the Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement (Vol. 9, 2022), at https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1336&context=pjsl: 43-45.

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Kim Scipes, PhD, has been a labor and political activist for over 50 years, and has published widely in the US and around the world. A list of his books and articles is on-line for free—many with links to original articles—at https://www.pnw.edu/personal-faculty-pages/kim-scipes-ph-d/publications.


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A Story Within a Story: the Making and Unmaking of Ethiopia’s Imperial Messiah

This unauthorised biography of Abiy Ahmed is a nuanced, unsparing examination of a leader trying to hold together a republic being undone by its imperial legacy.

By Soreti B. Kadir, Eyasped Tesfaye 

August 5, 2024

Source: African Arguments


Hand-on-heart rule. Courtesy: Abiy Ahmed Ali social media.



Tom Gardner’s The Abiy Project transcends a mere examination of Abiy Ahmed’s influence over Ethiopia and his future ambitions, nor is it confined to critiquing his misguided “messianic mission”.

Instead, it delves deeply into the making of Abiy himself. What forces moulded Abiy Ahmed? What socio-political context gave rise to his leadership? The book explores the distant past and recent events that have intricately shaped Abiy’s character and leadership.

Gardner meticulously dissects the political history of modern Ethiopia, tracing power and ethnic dynamics from their origins to contemporary times. He investigates the era before Abiy’s birth, illustrating the political landscape, key players, and the potential impacts on Abiy’s childhood, including his very name. In a manner resembling observational psychoanalysis, Gardner examines Abiy’s upbringing, identifying pivotal junctures in his early life. What influenced him the most? Was he affected by his ancestral lineage or subjected to alienation? What significant events occurred in the small town of Beshasha during his formative years?

Gardner’s exploration is surprisingly resource-rich, bolstered by hundreds of interviews and a rigorous engagement with numerous academic sources. He not only elucidates how Abiy has accentuated the Ethiopian state’s structural contradictions but also how these contradictions have, in turn, shaped Abiy. Thus, Abiy emerges as both the focal point and a peripheral element in this comprehensive narrative. It offers a nuanced understanding of Abiy as both a product and a shaper of his environment.

In his quest to explain the Abiy phenomonon, Gardner delves into the deepest valleys of Ethiopia’s political history, untangling the intricate web of power and ethnic dynamics from the distant past to recent times. The narrative is rich and textured, offering insights not only into Abiy’s life but also into the broader socio-political environment that shaped him. The author goes beyond merely addressing Abiy’s biography; he contextualizes it within the larger framework of Ethiopia’s tumultuous history.

The author’s exegesis of the major events from the past decade, particularly from 2010 to the “reform” of 2018 and the subsequent years, is remarkably detailed and accurate. As someone intimately familiar with Ethiopian politics, I couldn’t recall any significant event that was omitted from the book. These events were not merely included to maintain a chronological order; each one is accompanied by a thorough analysis by the author. This approach provides readers with a comprehensive macro view of the last decade’s developments

.

It is an understatement to say that this book is arguably the most detailed account of the period between 2010 and 2024. From popular protest to “reform” and from “reform” to a civil war, these years have been particularly eventful for Ethiopia, encapsulating a time when, as Lenin famously said, “there are weeks where decades happen”. Recalling every major event, providing detailed analyses, and synthesizing them to portray the larger picture was undoubtedly a daunting task, yet Gardner has accomplished this with great skill.

The uniquely intimate insight that this book provides into some of the most pivotal moments of modern Ethiopia’s political history, allows readers into the minds of key figures and into the heart of the political rollercoaster that has defined Ethiopia for over three decades. It is a must-read for every political analyst, activist, organiser, community leader or person otherwise invested through their time, energy and work in the complexity of Ethiopian political reality.

The Abiy Project does not do anybody any favours; rather, the read is sobering in affect. Even if the references made are disputed or inaccurate notably in their perspective of victim and perpetrators, to bear witness to over 30 years of carnage, in a chronicling that appears to have left few episodes unattended, is a journey that all of us – those intimately familiar with it, as well as those invested in the future of the people in Ethiopia – should experience.

Though there are a handful of references made to Ethiopia’s history and the role its various interpretations have played in shaping its evolution, the text is not an introduction to understanding the state’s origins, a story that holds different meaning for every group living within the country’s borders.

One of the most disputed narratives surrounding Ethiopia is its relationship to the West. The popular version portrays the country as an ancient vanguard against colonialism. From the perspective of those in historic resistance to the state, the country’s leadership across the ages has been a tool and beneficiary of Western imperialism. The Abiy Project provides generous attention to the role of both Western and Eastern foreign actors in the Ethiopian state, revealing truths that are starkly at odds with the narrative suggesting that Abiy’s administration has ever taken a considerable stance against imperialism.

On the contrary, The Abiy Project portrays just how deeply seated the bid for foreign validation – paradoxically coupled with tropes of Ethiopian exceptionalism – is buried in Ethiopia’s political culture. At the same time, Gardner astutely observes, the political motivations driving even the most seemingly benevolent gestures of the global North are invariably masques for whatever moral depravity it must perform to protect its long term geopolitical interests.

The book also provides a compelling testimony of how the Western diplomatic community consistently gets it wrong, highlighting the frequent flaws in its analyses. It reveals its reluctance to take advice from those on the ground and how swiftly logistical decisions are made – often when information is scanty or entirely absent – for regions such as western Oromia. Furthermore, Gardner astutely depicts the Western expatriates susceptibility to official lip service – as long as terms like “liberalism” and “democracy” are superficially invoked.

Almost all of the story focuses on the triangular relations of the three political heavyweights in Ethiopia, the Oromo, Amhara, and Tegaru, with sporadic reference to others, including the Qimant, Gedeo, Wolaita, Sidamo, Irob, and Somali, of which only the Somali picture was provided with some historical context. Although justifiable – these three groups are the most dominant political actors, especially as they relate to the story of Abiy Ahmed’s political life – it must be said that understanding the contradictions and complexities of the state-building project in Ethiopia requires widening the scope considerably.

One example is the absence of the Agew-Amhara and Agew-Tegaru dynamics in Temban and Ofla in Tigray and Belesa, Abnat, and Lalibela in Amhara where Agew activists consider much of their society lost to the assimilative effects of both Amharaness and Tegaruness, or the 20 districts and more administered zonally by ethnic Agew in both Gojam and Lasta (known better as Wollo).

This oversight is consequential. The TDF, in many important battlefield moments during the Tigray Genocide, fought side by side with the then Agew Democratic Movement, even sharing one-third of all captured weaponry with ADM, with no expectation made of the ADM to do the same, a clear acknowledgment of Agew political sovereignty in their respective territories. In every nook and cranny of Ethiopia, there is a story within a story and a dynamic within a dynamic, which is important to understanding when wrestling with many of the questions The Abiy Question, directly and indirectly, poses regarding the future of the Ethiopian state.

As one political activist who has been engaged in political life as it pertains to Ethiopia for over a decade, and having been raised within the political culture of nationalism and resistance, this was not a comfortable book to read. I cannot say I [Soreti] didn’t know, but I can say that consuming this information in the form of the narrative presented by The Abiy Project, even with my skepticism and biases, forced me to wonder if what I offer as approaches for political engagement and political thought will see actually drive change. My answer may very well be yes, but the text has struck deeply enough for me to question my own assumptions.

The energy of Gardner’s writing is infectious. Especially for those that will read the book with their own lived experiences colouring in the many moments the text explores, the storytelling practically creates a motion picture in your head.

As Ethiopia’s national dialogue commission is currently ongoing, heavily criticised for being just another performative political stunt free of any real opposition to Abiy and his ruling party, even as the war in Oromia intensifies off the back of two failed negotiations and in the face of increasing state violence in the region; as Abiy seems to be simultaneously fighting and colluding with Amhara political and armed forces; as the question of transitional justice and freedom from occupation still hangs in the air for Tigray – this book will certainly trigger emotions. If it achieves only one thing, and is likely to resonate differently across the political spectrum, it will help us understand the mindset of the man at the helm of power in Ethiopia, answering questions so many have about his role in the crisis the country faces today.

J.D. Vance, MAGA Friendly Leftists and Fraudulent Populism

By Chris Green

August 5, 2024

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


Sunrise Movement activists rally to protest J.D. Vance’s ties to Big Oil outside his office in Washington on Monday. (Photo: Adah Crandall)

Last month, when Donald Trump picked Ohio US Senator J.D. Vance as his vice-presidential running mate, corporate media labeled Vance as an authentic economic populist. The Economist described Vance as a crusader against Big Tech and wrote that he was “staunchly anti-establishment, attacking what he saw as business elites benefitting from moving factories abroad and paying low wages at home.” The New York Times noted that, in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention (RNC), Vance “cast Wall Street’s titans as villains.” Vance thundered that the Republican Party was “done catering to Wall Street.” Major Republican donors like the hedge fund mogul Ken Griffith were reportedly upset by the nomination of Vance, a populist demagogue “openly hostile to Wall Street” in the words of the Times.

Among those excited by Vance’s nomination were multiple writers and activists that have sometimes been called “post-left.” Many of these brethren are notable for holding conventional anti-corporate and anti-war left wing views; at the same time, they align with MAGA on issues like immigration, Covid vaccine mandates and “woke” identity politics (especially trans issues). Many of them are notable for arguing that there are many positive aspects to MAGA populism that align with the anti-corporate progressivism of Bernie Sanders.

One notable “post left” thinker is Glenn Greenwald. Greenwald is known for his former position as an investigative journalist at the radical left publication The Intercept and for his involvement in landmark whistleblower cases involving Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden. In more recent years, he has been known for his numerous friendly appearances on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program, his defense of Alex Jones and his breathtakingly bizarre efforts to prove that MAGA aligns with traditional left wing anti-war and anti-corporate values. In 2021, he told the Daily Caller podcast that he considered Carlson and Steve Bannon to be socialists–and that Trump ran as a socialist for president in 2016. Yes he actually said that Trump ran as a socialist in 2016.

It is no surprise that Greenwald has been deeply impressed by the populist figure presented by J.D. Vance. He was pleased when no less an authority than Teamsters president Sean O’Brien spoke to the RNC last month and attested that Vance was a true friend of the working class. In a tweet on X, Greenwald noted excitedly that O’Brien praised Vance–and his fellow senate Republican populist Josh Hawley–for engaging in what Greenwald called “relentless pro-labor acts.”.Regarding Vance, Greenwald described O’Brien as “gushing over how much he’s done for workers.” Indeed, O’Brien told the RNC delegates that Vance “has been right there” in supporting organized labor’s point of view “on all our issues.” .

Like Greenwald, Lee Fang and Zaid Jilani are former investigative journalists at The Intercept. While not embracing MAGA in the extreme manner of Greenwald, both share some of his MAGA friendly “post left” views. Last month, Fang–in an article on his Substack page–and Jilani–in an article for Compact magazine and in an appearance on Democracy Now!–echoed Greenwald’s celebration of Vance for what Fang called the Ohio senator’s “populist, anti-corporate record.” Both cited a nearly identical list of Vance’s progressive accomplishments. The relatively short list featured a number of legislative bills Vance introduced or cosponsored with Democratic colleagues, all of which have stalled in the senate. The list includes bills to: reduce swipe fees imposed on merchants by credit card companies; to cap out of pocket insulin expenses under private health insurance at $35; to tighten regulations on freight rail carriers carrying toxic chemicals after a February 2023 train derailment heavily contaminated the community of East Palestine, Ohio; and to increase capital gains taxes on shares acquired in large corporate mergers.

Jiliani was somewhat nuanced and cautious in his praise of Vance, compared to the mindless cheerleading on the latter’s behalf by Fang and Greenwald. In his Democracy Now! appearance, Jilani noted that Vance would never support Medicare for All; he conceded that Vance opposes the proposed legislation known as the PRO Act, which is designed to make it easier for workers to organize unions. Vance, after all, said Jilani, is a conservative populist, not a democratic socialist. But Jiliani insisted that Vance represented a sincerely populist faction within the Republican Party. This faction represents the view that the promotion of conservative family values requires good paying jobs; the creation of those jobs requires modest governmental intervention in some areas of the economy to regulate the excesses of unfettered capitalism. Jilani noted that Vance’s populist stance is a small minority within a Republican Party which still largely hews to an orthodox big business agenda of tax cuts and deregulation.

Meanwhile Fang laid particular emphasis on Vance’s praise of Lina Khan, Biden’s chair of the Federal Trade Commission, as proof of his populist bonafides. Vance has supported Khan’s vigorous fight for antitrust measures, particularly against Big Tech. Fang noted that Vance quietly filed an amicus brief in a recent Ohio court case in which he argued that Google should be regulated as a common carrier.

Vance’s Record: The Reality

Some have questioned the sincerity of Vance’s populist stance. After all, it wasn’t that long ago when he was an orthodox pro-business Republican who professed disdain for Trump and his voters. Critics have speculated, not implausibly, that once Vance observed Trump’s success, he decided to reverse himself and follow the political winds, becoming a fierce MAGA partisan. Also, as the independent journalist Ken Silverstein observed, there is the fact that while Vance poses as the champion of ordinary people against Wall Street and Big Tech, his top campaign contributors are….Wall Street elites and Silicon Valley billionaires. Vance himself made millions as a venture capitalist. There is plenty of evidence belying Vance’s claim to be a fighter on behalf of ordinary people.

Whether or not he sincerely believes in the above mentioned progressive legislative bills cited by Fang and Jilani, he has shown a vulnerability to backtrack in his support of them under the influence of corporate lobbyists. For example, credit card industry lobbyists recently reported that Vance had backed off on his support of proposed legislation to cap fees for merchants on credit card swipes.

Vance has also worked to dilute the railroad safety legislation he introduced with Ohio’s other US Senator, Democrat Sherrod Brown, in the wake of the 2023 East Palestine, Ohio train derailment. This disaster occurred in Vance’s home state, an extreme act of corporate malfeasance occurring in broad daylight. Even here, as Lever News reported in June 2023, Vance quietly agreed with railroad lobbyist requests to amend his legislation to move back the required date that the rail industry must adopt safer tank cars carrying hazardous materials from 2025 to 2029.

It was profoundly false of Sean O’Brien to say in his RNC speech that Vance was aligned with organized labor on “all” its issues . (Why O’Brien made this statement or spoke at the RNC in the first place is a subject beyond the scope of this article). It is true that Vance opposes Right to Work laws and made a 2023 photo op appearance on a United Auto Workers picket line. However, Vance, as noted above, opposes the PRO Act. One reason he has given for objecting to it is because he wants to institute European style “sectoral” collective bargaining in the US; he falsely claimed that the PRO Act would prevent this. He also criticized it because, as he told Politico, it would “hand over a lot of power to a union leadership that is aggressively anti-Republican.”

As he objected to the PRO Act, he also cosponsored the Team for Employees and Managers Act of 2024 (TEAM). Like previous versions introduced by congressional Republicans in 2022 and 1995, this proposed legislation would reinstitute company unions, which were banned nationwide by the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. Company unions, of course, are not genuine collective bargaining institutions: they are workplace organizations entirely funded by the employer (which can dissolve the organizations at their own will at any time). Republicans have marketed the TEAM Act as populist in the sense that it supposedly would enhance “worker voice” at companies. The TEAM Act is apparently the brainchild of Oren Cass’s think tank American Compass, an institution which has had considerable influence on Vance’s policy proposals. Like Vance, Cass has evolved from an orthodox business friendly Republican–he was Domestic Policy Director of Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign–into a so-called right wing populist. Cass’s mission has been to come up with “populist” ideas to give a pro-worker sheen to the generally anti-worker Republican Party. Besides such drivel as the Team Act, Cass has advised Republicans to drop their support for Right to Work laws and to scapegoat immigrants as a cause for depressed wages among native born Americans.

Speaking to the Claremont Institute in December 2023, Vance outlined a distinction between “good unions” and “bad unions.” His example of a “good union” was the Fraternal Order of Police. An example of a “bad” one was the Starbucks baristas union. He denounced the latter for attacking Israel. He said “if your politics lead you to defend the baristas union as they defend Hamas, then you should have a different politics.” The baristas, of course, were not actually defending Hamas but objecting to genocidal Israeli war crimes in the Gaza Strip–crimes which Vance has wholeheartedly supported.

There are other cases belying the claims of Sean O’Brien that Vance has been “right there” with labor on issues affecting working people. For example, Vance voted against legislation codifying into law the joint-employer rule of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The rule–before it was rejected by a federal court–established that companies must participate in unfair labor practice complaints filed with the NLRB against companies they employ as contractors. The rule was supposed to help hold companies accountable for participation in labor abuses by preventing them from shielding themselves behind contracting companies. Meanwhile, using talking points used by steel industry lobbyists, in late 2023 Vance successfully lobbied the Environmental Protection Agency to substantially weaken one of its rules limiting carcinogenic emissions from the manufacture of coke, a component of the steelmaking process. Such emissions have had serious negative public health consequences for steelworker communities.

Politico noted that Vance, in opposing the PRO Act, was “in the awkward spot of trying to position himself as [a] ‘pro-worker conservative’ while simultaneously seeking to contain the political power of organized labor, the only entities in American society that reflect–however imperfectly–the actual will of workers.”

Vance’s Actual Constituency

Vance’s pose as the champion of ordinary people should not be taken seriously. Underneath his populist veneer, Vance, like Donald Trump, is devoted to enhancing the ability of economic elites to exploit ordinary people. His “populist” rhetoric inciting racism against Latino immigrants, Islamophobia and transphobia only serves to divide the US working class and strengthen ruling elites.

Vance’s primary constituency is clearly not ordinary people. An informative Washington Post report of July 28th described his real constituency: a network of Silicon Valley venture capitalists centering around Peter Thiel–the latter helped Vance himself get started as a venture capitalist in the early 2010s. These oligarchs provided the financial backing for Vance’s meteoric political rise. Thiel and David Sacks (another prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist) both reportedly personally lobbied Trump to choose Vance as his running mate. Elon Musk is also known as a strong supporter of Vance.

Specific objections of members of the Thiel network to Biden administration policy–amplified by their messenger boy Vance–were outlined by progressive populist Matt Stoller (research director at the American Economic Liberties Project think tank) in an article on his Substack page last month. In the article and in other writings, Stoller has seemed to take too much at face value Vance’s pretense of being an authentic populist. This is not surprising as Stoller has been noted for problematically collaborating with Oren Cass in trying to find common ground between right wing populists and progressives on economic issues. Nonetheless his Substack analysis of Vance’s financial backers is intelligent, well informed and worth reading.

Stoller noted that Peter Thiel, a billionaire, views himself as an underdog, representing “little tech” fighting against Big Tech monopolies. Thiel invests in startups in industries often dominated by a few companies. Stoller wrote that Vance experienced similar conditions as a venture capitalist: in the mid-2010s, he observed multiple digital advertising startups. These were quality companies, Vance believed, but they would die quickly because they could not compete with Google’s dominance in the online advertising industry. This is the root of Vance’s support for the antitrust actions against companies like Google and Facebook by Lina Khan, Biden’s FTC chair. It is an example of the true nature of Vance’s populist pose which has so impressed the likes of Lee Fang and Zaid Jiliani: he is for the “little guy” i.e. billionaires funding startups who are battling against other billionaires controlling more established companies.

Stoller wrote of a particularly interesting case: the prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist partners Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. After Vance became Trump’s running mate, the billionaire duo pivoted to supporting the Trump/Vance ticket after primarily funding Democratic candidates for years. Last month, Andreessen and Horowitz filmed a podcast episode where the two discussed their objections to Biden administration policy. Their objections, as laid out by Stoller, are interesting because they are illustrative of the nature of the particular elements of the capitalist class that Vance represents.

First the two objected to Biden’s proposed “unrealized gains” tax on investments, which they claimed would destroy the venture capital industry. Second, they denounced the tight regulation of cryptocurrency and the blockchain in general(in which they are significant investors) by Biden’s Securities and Exchange Commission. Third, Biden’s FTC prevented the sale of one of the duo’s companies (Maze Therapeutics)–which possessed an experimental treatment for a condition called Pompe disease-to the pharmaceutical company Sanofi. Horowitz claimed that the FTC’s blocking of the sale had effectively strangled all venture capital investments in US biotechnology.

Stoller observed that the duo had left out some important details in their complaining about Democratic policy. For example, Stoller noted that “at no point in their praise of the blockchain do they bring up that large swaths of crypto, if not the entire apparatus, turned out to be a giant scam.” The fraudulent nature of so much cryptocurrency is why the FTC has been regulating it and blockchain networks. As far as the blocked sale of Maze Therapeutics, Stoller noted that the pair left out a few important facts:

“The FTC stopped Sanofi from buying Maze Therapeutics not for no reason, but because Sanofi was engaged in an illegal scheme of trying to kill a rival treatment for Pompe disease so it could preserve its ability to charge $750,000 for an annual course. And Maze Therapeutics quickly found a different company to buy their treatment, for the exact same price.”

Stoller observed that–echoing Andreessen and Horowitz–Vance also denounced the Biden SEC’s regulation of blockchain, claiming that SEC chairman Gary Gensler was a “candidate for worst person” in the Biden administration. Vance said he worried whether “a lot of the crypto stuff is fundamentally fake” but argued that it needed to be deregulated in order to fight Big Tech monopolies. Stoller observed that “that’s exactly how Andreessen and Horowitz pitch crypto, its ‘little tech’ challenging the big guys”

The Bottom Line

The truth is that politicians–ranging from a highly dubious reactionary opportunist like J.D. Vance to a much more serious populist like Bernie Sanders–are limited in their ability to pursue progressive economic reform. When powerful economic interests dislike a particular legislative proposal they are able to utilize enormous resources to defeat it: campaign contributions to politicians, enormous armies of corporate lobbyists, legal challenges in the courts, paid advertising on corporate media (where many commentators share a point of view with business). There are innumerable examples of this dynamic at work. For example, Kamala Harris–when she first ran for president in 2019–backtracked on her initial support for Medicare for All after a campaign funded by wealthy financial interests was launched against it (primarily targeting Bernie Sanders). After much flailing around and incoherence, she settled on a reform proposal that left private health insurance in the driver’s seat of US health care.

If business–particularly the financial industry–is upset by governmental policies they can always engage in capital flight: a mass sell-off of assets and withdrawal of investment capital from a country. Liz Truss (who has adopted a right wing populist pose not dissimilar to that of Donald Trump) faced this when she became British Prime Minister in 2022. British financial markets strongly objected to Truss’s proposed fiscal policy of combining tax cuts with energy subsidies for British consumers. The financial markets crashed the British economy and Truss was forced to resign after a month and a half in favor of Rishi Sunak, a more conventional business friendly conservative.

Short of overthrowing the capitalist system, the only hope for serious redistribution of power in favor of ordinary people in the United States is mass social movements that exert overwhelming pressure on ruling class politicians in favor of progressive reform. In the meantime, some of us really need to stop being so credulous about ruling class politicians who adopt populist poses.


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