The Precarious Precariat and the Garrison State

Jonah Raskin

November 21, 2024
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Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

If the Garrison State isn’t already here, it’s sure to be here very soon. Wait and watch and observe the arrival of a suped-up American political and economic system buttressed anew by the military. True, all eyes, or at least a great many of them across the US and around the world, have been focused on Washington D.C., the White House and Trump’s controversial appointees to cabinet positions.

But those eyes will soon shift to the 1,951-mile border that separates the US from Mexico and that’s said to be the busiest in the world. Millions cross it every year. Ever since Donald Trump’s arrival on the political scene, it has been one of the most hotly contested borders on the planet.

On Monday November 18, Trump confirmed that he intends to declare a national emergency and use U.S. troops to assist the mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. Sounds like neo-fascism to me. Immigrants are the scapegoats, the persecuted and members of the precariat.

Of course, the border along the Rio Grande has been a political hot spot ever since the so-called Mexican-American War of 1846-1848, when the U.S. invaded and occupied Mexico, and Mexico ceded to the US for $15 million a vast territory that now belongs to California, Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona and parts of Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas and Wyoming. It was one of the biggest land grabs in modern history. In three words, “Mexico was robbed.”

Now, one wonders how precisely and how exactly Donald Trump will make good on his campaign promise to deport millions of migrants who entered the US illegally. Will there be mass round-ups in the dead of night, concentration-camp-like detention centers with barbed wire and armed guards? Along with military operations that will violate human rights and civil liberties and that will send truck loads of Mexicans and other Latinos across the border to poverty, chaos, drug traffickers, violence, hunger and homelessness.

If one believes that Trump is a fascist that course of action seems inevitable. Or, will Trump make a last minute deal with Mexican authorities and with members of the Republican party and the supporters who elected him because they loved his lies, racist comments and real or manufactured hatred of immigrants.

It’s hard to imagine how Trump will execute his threat. After all, the US is dependent on Latino laborers who work in agriculture and in hotels and restaurants and who usually perform the jobs that whites refuse to do and at or below the minimum wage. A popular 2004 movie titled A Day Without a Mexican, imagined a California with no Mexican laborers. Not surprisingly, the whole economy collapses. Will capitalist America go along with the Garrison State? It might not have a say in the matter, and make no mistake about it we’ll all be impacted. The U.S. will resemble those military dictatorships around the world.

The movie fantasy of a day without a Mexican will likely become a reality. UC Berkeley Professor Stephanie L. Canizales knows that. The daughter of immigrants from El Salvador, as well as the Faculty Director of the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative and the author of the new book, Sin Padres, Ni Papeles, Canizales recently interviewed some of the many young people who entered the US without their parents and without legal documents that would prove they have a right to be here.

No sooner do they arrive then those teenage and twenty something migrants quickly fall into the social class at the bottom of the economic ladder where they do not have secure jobs, or secure living situations and who are in danger  every day of arrests, detentions and deportations. The class is known as the precariat and it’s among the most vulnerable demographic in the Garrison State.

Canizales was able to develop trusting relationships with the teens and the twenty something migrants because she grew up in L.A., knew the community and because her parents entered the US illegally, though they never talked about that experience when she was growing up. Perhaps they viewed it as something shameful, something to be hidden. Canizales had a smattering of Spanish when she began her interviews; she became increasingly fluent and learned the words and expressions the migrants used. She originally titled her book, “Without Parents and Without Papers.” She changed it to Sin Padres, Ni Papeles to honor the language that the Latino youth used.

“History tells us that mass round-ups and deportations rarely go well,” she told me. “It’s true that anti-immigrant racism is a powerful force, but can our society really function without undocumented labor? That’s not clear.” Canizales says that migrants who have legal documents now carry them on their persons all the time. Also, some of them attempt to be invisible and to blend into non-Latino communities of color, wear clothes that don’t make them stand out and drive vehicles that reduce their vulnerability.

“To blame Haitians and other immigrant groups for the economic woes Americans are facing is to be greatly misinformed,” she explained. Canizales says that for many of the Latino youth who enter theUS illegally the psychological and emotional burdens weigh on them as heavily as their economic burdens.

If they were French and had read the classics of existentialism they might say they feel alienated. But they’re children of the Catholic Church and Mexico’s labyrinth of social inequalities and injustices. At home they had their families close to them. In Los Angeles they’re sin padres and lonelier and more isolated than they imagined they would be.

“They say that they’re in perdition, a condition in which they inhabit a place of loss and damnation,” Canizales told me. “They feel like they’re drowning.” She added, “they want to undrown themselves, and to learn what they need to learn to survive in the place of perdition they inhabit. Many of them initially blame themselves for their condition. Then, when they meet others in their generation and in the same or in similar situations they’re released from feeling like failures and gain the energy to keep going.”  They heal themselves and their friends.

They’re like the 1930s Dust Bowl refugees in the US who faulted themselves for their precarious situations and who gradually learned that the system was responsible.

Woody Guthrie sang about the members of the precariat in his own day and age in his timeless song “Deportees” recorded first in 1948 : “some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,/ Our work contract’s out and we have to move on;/ Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,/ They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.”

Jonah Raskin is the author of Beat Blues, San Francisco, 1955.

 

'A vision of benevolence': Why Chilean poet Pablo Neruda’s legacy endures in France

EXPLAINER

Europe

French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to Pablo Neruda at the poet’s former home in Santiago during his visit to Chile on Wednesday, highlighting the enduring bond between the Nobel laureate and France. This connection, which began more than 80 years ago, was both literary and political, with France serving as both a refuge and a platform for Neruda’s voice during crucial moments in his life.

Issued on: 20/11/2024 By:Anaelle JONAH

Chilean writer, poet and diplomat Pablo Neruda, then ambassador in France, answers journalists' questions on October 21, 1971 next to his wife at the Chilean embassy in Paris after being awarded the 1971 Nobel Literature Prize. © AFP

President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte paid tribute to Pablo Neruda during a private visit to La Chascona, the poet’s historic home in Santiago, Chile, on Wednesday. This visit, part of Macron’s Latin American tour, highlighted the profound bond between Neruda and France, a nation that continues to honour the poet's influence through schools, libraries, and cultural institutions bearing his name.

Nearly a century ago, Pablo Neruda arrived in Paris, a city that shaped his poetic and political journey. Stéphanie Decante, a professor of Hispanic literature at the University of Nanterre who translated and edited Neruda’s works, said that France had been the ultimate symbol of intellectual freedom for many Latin American writers.

“For Latin America, France was the City of Light, the centre of culture, in contrast to Spain, which was politically and culturally tainted by colonialism,” she said.

Literary awakening

Neruda’s fascination with French literature began early. While studying at the University of Chile, he immersed himself in the works of French poets such as Arthur Rimbaud and Victor Hugo, initially intending to become a French teacher.

Early acclaim for his poetry brought him respect among Chilean intellectuals, but Europe’s cultural dominance made Paris the ultimate aspiration. "What are you doing here? You must go to Paris," he recalled strangers asking him in his memoirs.

When Neruda first encountered Paris in the 1920s, he joined a wave of Latin American writers drawn to its avant-garde scene, such as Peruvian poet and writer César Vallejo. In the 1930s, Neruda formed lasting friendships with French poets Paul Éluard and Louis Aragon, whose influence expanded his literary horizons.

Aragon in particular played a pivotal role in introducing Neruda to French audiences, facilitating the publication of "L’Espagne au cœur" (Spain in the Heart) in 1938. This collection, published within Communist circles, positioned Neruda as a politically committed poet. In later decades, his work would be published by the prestigious Gallimard publishing house.

“He moved from a politically charged framework tied to the Communist Party to being represented by a publishing house that transformed him into a more universal poet”, Decante explained.

Read morePrix Goncourt: Kamel Daoud wins France's literary prize for Algerian Civil War novel ‘Houris’

From poet to rescuer

Pablo Neruda was deeply affected by the Spanish Civil War (1936 to 1939), a brutal conflict between the Republican government and Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces that led to the Franco dictatorship. This pivotal struggle became a central focus of Neruda’s political and literary efforts. 

In Paris, he collaborated with British writer Nancy Cunard to co-found the literary review "Les Poètes du Monde Défendent le Peuple Espagnol" (Poets of the World Defend the Spanish People). Proceeds from the publication funded humanitarian aid for those suffering under Franco's regime, exemplifying Neruda’s conviction that poetry and politics could unite to serve justice and humanity.

In 1939, Neruda’s commitment took a historic turn as nearly 500,000 Spanish Republicans, including soldiers and civilians, crossed the French border following the fall of Catalonia. With France ill-prepared for such a large influx, the refugees found themselves in dire conditions, many being forced into internment camps.

As Chile’s consul for Spanish immigration, Neruda spearheaded a bold rescue mission, arranging the voyage of over 2,000 Spanish Republicans to Chile aboard a ship named "Winnipeg". He later described this effort as both “the noblest mission (he had) ever undertaken” and his “most beautiful poem".

French exit

Neruda’s ties with France deepened during his exile. In 1948, Chile’s right-wing government, led by President Gabriel González Videla, accused him of subversion due to his Communist affiliations. Forced to flee, Neruda embarked on a harrowing but poetic journey through the Andes to Argentina and ultimately to France. 

In Paris, he re-emerged as a symbol of resistance. Neruda's arrival at the World Congress of Peace Forces caused a stir when he appeared unprompted, book in hand, to read one of his poems.

“Many thought I was dead,” he later wrote in his memoirs. “They couldn’t imagine how I had dodged the relentless persecution of Chilean police.”

The Chilean authorities quickly denied his escape, claiming there was no way that Neruda had left the country. The poet was undeterred.

“Say that I am not Pablo Neruda, but another Chilean who writes poetry, fights for freedom, and is also called Pablo Neruda,” he quipped to the French press.

During his exile, Neruda was embraced by the international community. Figures like Pablo Picasso and Louis Aragon provided him with protection and assistance, helping him navigate the complexities of French bureaucracy.

A lasting legacy

By 1952, political tides in Chile shifted, allowing Neruda to return home. However, his ties to France endured. From 1970 to 1973, he served as Chile’s ambassador to France under President Salvador Allende, further cementing the bond with the country that had offered him refuge during his years of exile.

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1971, Neruda seized the opportunity to celebrate French culture once again, quoting Rimbaud: “Only with a burning patience can we conquer the splendid City which will give light, justice, and dignity to all mankind.”

Read moreHan Kang wins South Korea's first Nobel Prize in Literature

His legacy remains deeply embedded in French culture. Dozens of schools and public institutions across France bear his name, and his works are integral to the study of Spanish and poetry in classrooms. The Chilean Embassy in Paris features a commemorative plaque honouring Neruda’s time there.

A plaque commemorates Pablo Neruda's time at the Chilean Embassy in Paris. © Wikimedia Commons

“Neruda embodies a vision of benevolence, education, and culture for all," the University of Nanterre's Decante said. "His political influence and democratic engagement resonate through the years and will continue to do so.”

Hezbollah demystified

Despite relentless Israeli attempts to misrepresent and dismantle Hezbollah, the organization has endured. A look at the group's history and goals explains its enduring power and shows how much of what’s said in Western media is not true.

By Qassam Muaddi 

 November 15, 2024 

MONDOWEISS
A Palestinian man waves Hezbollah’ flag during a rally in Gaza city on January 28, 2015, after two Israeli soldiers and a Spanish peacekeeper were killed in an exchange of fire between Hezbollah and Israel. The soldiers were killed when Hezbollah fired a missile at a convoy of Israeli military vehicles on the frontier with Lebanon. (Photo: Ashraf Amra/APA Images)


Hezbollah, Arabic for “The Party of God”, also named “The Islamic Resistance of Lebanon,” has been increasingly making headlines in recent months, as Israel continues its war on Lebanon. Earlier this week, Israel’s new war minister Yizrael Katz announced the “defeat” of Hezbollah. The group responded with unprecedented rocket barrages and more drone attacks on Haifa and Tel Aviv, showcasing its fighting capacity.

In early October, Israel started its offensive on Lebanon with the pager explosion attacks that killed dozens of Lebanese, mostly civilians. The attacks were followed by a series of assassinations of Hezbollah’s top military leaders, culminating with the assassination of Hezbollah’s secretary general Hasan Nasrallah, and then of the strongest candidate to succeed him, Hezbollah’s executive council chief, Hashem Safiyyudin. Israel then began a massive bombing campaign on the south of Lebanon, which expanded to the Beqaa Valley and Mount Lebanon, allegedly targeting Hezbollah’s rocket arsenals.

But Hezbollah didn’t collapse. On the contrary, it has been increasing its military action on a daily basis, introducing farther-reaching and heavier rockets to the fight, and offering a stiff resistance to Israeli incursion attempts in the south.

As during the ten-year-long Syrian war, in which Hezbollah played a major role, and as in 2006, when Hezbollah fought off another Israeli offensive on Lebanon, the group has become the object of speculations, curiosity and contradictory narratives about it. So, who is Hezbollah? What does it want? How does it work? And how much of what is said about it in the West and the media is true?
Lebanese, Shia, or pro-Palestinian?

In a way, Hezbollah is the product of the crossing of political, sectarian, class, and regional conflicts in Lebanon in the 1980s. The group was born as a response to Israel’s invasion and occupation of Lebanon in 1982, but its roots go back to the Shia movement that started as a social protest movement. Most of the founders of Hezbollah had made their first steps as activists in the ranks of the ‘Movement of the deprived’, started by the Iranian-Lebanese cleric and social leader Mousa Sadr in the mid 1970s, when the Shia were among the most marginalized and impoverished communities in Lebanon.

As Israel repeatedly attacked Lebanon to counter Palestinian resistance fighters based in the south of the country, Mousa Sadr was among the first to call for organized Lebanese resistance, and founded the ‘Legions of Lebanese Resistance’, which acronym in Arabic reads ‘Amal’, that also means ‘Hope’. The group soon became the Shia militia engaged in the civil war, especially after Sadr’s disappearance in 1978.

After Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and occupation of Beirut in 1982, the Lebanese communist party launched the ‘Lebanese National Resistance Front’ that was joined by other leftist and nationalist parties, and became the main resistance force to Israel. It is then that several Islamic activists from Amal, other Shia groups, charities, mosques, and neighborhood associations met in Al-Muntazar Islamic religious school in the city of Baalbek, and decided that they needed an Islamic force dedicated only to resist Israeli occupation. They named it ‘Hezbollah’, in reference to verse 56 of the surat 5 of the Quran, which says that “The partisans of [or those loyal to] God will be victorious.”

The founding group had two things in common: the priority of resistance to Israel, putting aside all other political differences, and their agreement on who their religious reference should be. The ‘religious reference’ is a centuries-old Shia tradition, where every community chooses a religious scholar that meets certain qualifications, and they accept their religious judgment in major issues in which the community can’t reach agreement. The founding members of Hezbollah who met in Baalbek agreed that they accepted, as religious reference, the Iranian cleric and leader, Ayatollah Khomeini.
“Iranian proxy”?

Hezbollah’s relationship to Iran has always been a contentious topic, as the group has been accused of being Iran’s proxy in Lebanon and in the region. However, the relationship between Hezbollah’s roots and Iran is older than the establishment of the current Iranian regime and more complex than it is often presented. In fact, it was Lebanese religious scholars, mystics, and preachers from Mount Amel, known today as the south of Lebanon, who introduced Shiism to Iran in the 17th century. The bond between Shiites in both countries continued, exchanging religious leaders, scholars and students, and forming family links. But in 1982, that relationship took on a new level.

As Israeli forces besieged Beirut, the recently-established Islamic republic of Iran sent members of its revolutionary guard to nearby Syria and offered the Syrian government to help fight the Israeli invasion. That Iranian force later changed its mission, after it became clear that Israel was not planning to invade Syria, and began to offer training to any Lebanese who wanted to resist the occupation. The newborn organization, Hezbollah, became the main recruiter of volunteers, and the main organizer of the newly trained fighters, and thus was able to grow its militant body in a short time. That relationship between the Lebanese group and the Iranian revolutionary guard grew, and continued to this day.

However, Hezbollah’s late leader Hasan Nasrallah explained multiple times in media interviews the distinction between the group’s relationship to the Iranian state and to its supreme leader. According to Nasrallah, Hezbollah considers Iran as a country a ”friend and ally”, while it considers the supreme leader, Khomeini and his successor Khamenei, its “religious reference” to whom it goes back only in matters that require a religious ruling to decide. This distinction remains blurry to many, as the supreme leader is also the head of the state in Iran, and because on the ideological level, he is also the “religious reference” of the Iranian state. However, other Lebanese parties have more unbalanced, dependent, and explicit relations to foreign countries. One example is the relation between Saudi Arabia and the ‘Future’ party of the assassinated Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, which competes to represent the Sunni community. Another is the far-right anti-Palestinian Lebanese Phalanges party, who monopolized the representation of Maronite Christians during the civil war, and its relations with the US, France, and even Israel itself during the 1982 invasion. A complex context which makes Hezbollah’s relationship to Iran far from strange in the Lebanese political culture.
Hezbollah in politics

In its forty-two years of existence so far, Hezbollah has evolved as a major political force in Lebanon. It remained only a resistance movement until 1995, when it ran for parliamentary elections for the first time. At the time, the Lebanese civil war had just ended, and the new generation of Lebanese youth were looking for something new to believe in and to be united around, and the battle for the occupied south provided them that, increasing Hezbollah’s popularity. The group had also begun to develop social programs to assist the families of its fallen fighters, like health care institutions and schools, which also provided help for poor Lebanese.

This popularity increased even more after Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in the year 2000, which marked the first unconditional liberation of an occupied Arab territory. Hezbollah continued to score successes in elections, maintaining a growing presence in the Lebanese parliament and in many municipalities, especially in Shia areas like the south and the Beqaa, forging alliances with other Lebanese parties.

In 2008, Hezbollah struck an alliance agreement with the emergent new Christian force, the ‘Free Patriotic Movement’, led by the veteran former army general Michael Aoun, who ironically had built his heroic image in the 1980s for standing up against Syrian military presence in Lebanon. The unusual Shia-Christian alliance gave Hezbollah unprecedented leverage in Lebanese politics when Aoun became president of Lebanon in 2016. The president in Lebanon’s constitution must be a Maronite Christian, and Hezbollah suddenly had a powerful ally who made it to the presidential Baabda palace, with Hezbollah’s support. This, among other things, like the military capacity of Hezbollah to start or prevent war with Israel, earned it the accusation of controlling the Lebanese state.

However, Hezbollah has never been the only party with such an influence in Lebanese politics, and the overall position of the Lebanese state is unmovable on several issues, against the position of Hezbollah. For instance, Lebanon never accepted Hezbollah’s proposals to seek Iranian assistance to modernize and strengthen the Lebanese army, or to buy fuel from Iran to solve the fuel crisis in the country in 2021. Most importantly, Hezbollah only accessed state offices that can be reached through elections, in the parliament or municipalities, but it was never given any key administrative position in the government agencies, or in the judicial system. This is due, according to Hezbollah and its allies, to external pressure on Lebanon, mostly from western countries, who consider Hezbollah a terrorist organization.

More than a militant group

A designation of “terrorism” that has put Hezbollah in the crosshairs of successive US administrations, who have systematically given unconditional support to every Israeli war aimed at destroying Hezbollah, even if it caused destruction to the rest of Lebanon. In the latest ongoing attempt, Israel has tried its best by targeting the head of Hezbollah’s pyramid, Nasrallah, and several key leaders surrounding him. However, the Lebanese party’s capacity to sustain the blows and continue the fight, without wavering, has demonstrated that contrary to popular belief about Arab and Middle Eastern organizations, Hezbollah is not an ideological cult led by one or a few charismatic men. In fact, Nasrallah himself said multiple times that Hezbollah did not have a leader, but a “leadership system”, run by institutions, with a continuous process of forming new leaders, ready to step in whenever there is a vacancy.

But the most important aspect of Hezbollah, and the most overlooked too, is that it is far more than a militant group with a cause and guns. Hezbollah represents the tradition and the decades-long struggle of a key component of Lebanese society. It is also the strongest representative, today, of the political choice of resistance to the US and Israel in Lebanon, which is much older and much more diverse than Hezbollah itself. It is also a social force with a strong presence in all fields of Lebanese public life, from politics, to education, to charity, to art and culture. And in times of war, it represents the feelings of large parts of the Lebanese society, that extend beyond the limits of religious communities or political sectarianism.

Israel and the U.S. are interfering in Lebanese politics to oust Hezbollah — here’s why it won’t work

Israel and the U.S. are trying to install an anti-Hezbollah leader as president of Lebanon, hoping to eliminate the military presence of the resistance in southern Lebanon. But it's not the first time Israel has interfered in Lebanese politics.

By Qassam Muaddi 

 November 12, 2024 
MONDOWEISS
Hezbollah supporters attend a mass rally and a televised speech by Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, to mark the third anniversary of the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, January 3, 2023. (Photo: Marwan Naamani/dpa via ZUMA Press/APA Images)


In his first speech as Secretary General, the new leader of Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, said that the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon had been meeting leaders of Lebanese political parties opposed to Hezbollah. According to Qassem, the ambassador was trying to convince them that Hezbollah’s collapse in the face of Israel’s offensive was imminent, urging the Lebanese parties to oppose Hezbollah.

“You will never see our defeat,” Qassem said, addressing the ambassador, Lisa A. Johnson, directly and ignoring the Lebanese parties in question.

Two weeks earlier, a group of anti-Hezbollah parties gathered in the town of Maarab in Mount Lebanon, the headquarters of the Lebanese Forces — a far-right Christian party headed by its chairman, Samir Geagea. The parties in attendance issued a joint statement that indirectly blamed Iran for pushing Lebanon into a war it had no stake in, hijacking the decision of peace and war in Lebanon, and recruiting Lebanese citizens and using them as soldiers and “human shields.” The latter phrase was a veiled reference to Hezbollah, its social support base, and the people of southern Lebanon in general. The parties in Maarab also called for the election of a new president to the country.

Heading the meeting was Samir Geagea, a Maronite Christian known for his brutal suppression of Palestinian and Lebanese adversaries, including Christian rivals, during the Lebanese Civil War that took place between 1975 and 1989. He is also known for his collaboration with Israeli occupation forces in Lebanon after 1982 and for having spent 12 years in a Syrian prison on charges of collaboration with Israel.

Geagea has also been openly voicing his will to run for president of Lebanon, which under the Lebanese constitution must be held by a Christian Maronite. The president’s chair has been vacant for two years now, as the opposing political forces have failed to agree on a candidate. The president in Lebanon is elected by the parliament and thus needs a degree of consensus between represented parties, which has been absent since the latest president, Michel Aoun, finished his term in October 2022.

Aoun was an ally of Hezbollah and represented an important trend of Christian support for the resistance group in Lebanese politics since 2008. During his presidency, Hezbollah’s adversaries in Lebanon, like Geagea, continued to accuse the resistance group of taking over the state, especially during the height of the Syrian Civil War, in which Hezbollah was actively involved in defending the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Asad. After Aoun’s presidency, several political parties were unwilling to accept a president who would be close to Hezbollah and its allies. This presidential vacancy has extended to the current day.

Why the Lebanese presidency is important for Israel

When Israel began its offensive on Lebanon with the exploding pager and electronics attacks in mid-September, some Lebanese politicians seemed to have sensed that the influential role of Hezbollah in Lebanese politics was approaching its end. Calls to elect a new president increased, as the U.S. envoy, Amos Hochstein, brought his plan for a ceasefire.

Hochstein’s proposal included the retreat of Hezbollah’s fighting units north of the Litani River, essentially clearing Hezbollah’s stronghold in the south, and deploying more Lebanese army forces along the provisional border between Israel and Lebanon.

Hochstein’s plan, however, included another component — he called for electing a new president for Lebanon, even considering it a priority before a ceasefire with Israel.

The president in Lebanon is also the commander-in-chief of the army, which is why many many army chiefs of staff were elected to the presidency in the past. Historically, the president’s relationship with the army’s command influenced the role played by the armed forces, and this relationship has been especially crucial in the case of Hezbollah.

In the last years of Hezbollah’s guerrilla campaign against the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon between 1998 and 2000, the Lebanese army played a role in covering safe routes for Hezbollah’s fighters in and out of the occupied area and in holding key positions. This support by the army to Hezbollah’s resistance was the result of the direction and influence of the country’s president, Emile Lahoud, who had served as chief of staff of the army a few years earlier and refused to obey orders to clash with and disarm Hezbollah’s fighters.

The position of the Lebanese president, his influence on the army’s performance, and his relationship with the resistance have always been at the heart of Israeli and U.S. attempts to intervene in Lebanese politics. It is not the first time that the U.S. and Israel have pressured for the election of a new Lebanese president as it is under Israeli attack. The presidency ploy is a worn U.S. tool for attempting to change Lebanon’s political landscape and to make it more Israel-friendly.

When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and occupied its capital, Beirut, after the withdrawal of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Lebanese parliament met to elect a new president — quite literally, under the watchful eye of Israeli tanks. The parliament building was non-functional, and the Lebanese representatives had to meet with an incomplete quorum in the building of the military school to elect Bashir Gemayel as president.

Gemayel was the leader of the far-right anti-Palestinian Phalange party, or Kataeb. The Phalangists had helped Israel plan the invasion of Lebanon and fought on Israel’s side in the 1982 war. Gemayel had traveled to Israel several times to meet with Israeli leaders and committed to signing a peace treaty with Israel as soon as he became president.

Gemayel was the strongman of the anti-Palestinian Lebanese right, and he was the only leader with enough support and force to carry out Israel’s strategy in Lebanon. His assassination 22 days after his election and before he was sworn in was one of the most devastating blows to Israel’s plans to bring Lebanon under Israeli influence. In revenge for Gemayel’s death, the Phalangist militias entered the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in the periphery of Beirut under Israeli cover. There, they committed the now infamous Sabra and Shatilla Massacre, slaughtering between 2,000 and 3,500 Palestinian refugees.

Following the end of the Lebanese Civil War in 1989, the parties who had fought against each other entered into a power-sharing arrangement. Meanwhile, the nascent Lebanese resistance group, Hezbollah — which started as an offshoot of the Shiite Amal militia during an episode of violence called the War of the Camps — increased its popularity and political influence. This influence grew exponentially after Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied Lebanese south, which marked the first victory of an Arab resistance force against Israeli occupation. By the beginning of the 2000s, Hezbollah had become a political party that ran for elections, secured parliamentary representation, and forged alliances with other Lebanese forces. Political divisions in Lebanon began to appear once again on both sides of the question of the resistance, often assimilated by its antagonists to Syrian, and later Iranian, influence in the region.

The identity of Lebanon’s president became a central issue again, especially after the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon, during which Emile Lahoud’s presidency provided strong political support for Hezbollah. Lahoud finished his term the following year amid strong political division. The state of fragmentation in Lebanese politics was so endemic that the president’s chair remained vacant for an entire year. The crisis was partially resolved with the election of the army’s chief of staff, Michael Suleiman, in 2008, who remained neutral.

Forty-two years after the first election of a Lebanese president at the behest of Israel, not much has changed. Lebanon is again under attack, and the resistance continues to be a central point of division over the future of the country and its position in the broader region. Although Hezbollah insists that its resistance is tied to the genocidal Israeli war on Gaza, both Israel and the U.S. continue to look for ways to neutralize Lebanon through internal divisions and political disagreements.

As Israeli army officials begin to voice their demands to end the war — a war that is hitting a wall in the villages and mountains of southern Lebanon — it seems that Hezbollah’s adversaries continue to bet on Israel’s military capacity to bring about a “day after Hezbollah.” Perhaps more confidently than Israel itself.

Black people’s resistance to fascism—interview with Bill Mullen

Bill Mullen is the co-author with Jeanelle K Hope of The Black Antifascist Tradition: Fighting Back from Anti-Lynching to Abolition. He spoke to Judy Cox about anti-blackness, fascism and resistance.

By Judy Cox
Friday 15 November 2024

SOCIALIST WORKER Issue
Anti-racism

The Black Anti-Fascist Tradition

In our book, Jeanelle and I wanted to show the history of black anti-fascism in the United States and globally.

The black anti-fascist tradition connects every important black movement of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Black people have often been the first and most deeply injured by fascism, whether it’s Italian fascism in north Africa, American Nazis attacking civil rights marchers or white supremacist groups targeting Black Lives Matter activists.

Black resistance to the Italian fascist invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 was visible in London, the Caribbean and New York, led by black communists like George Padmore.

Over 100 black people from the US fought against General Franco during the Spanish Civil War by joining the Lincoln Brigades.

For young black men growing up in the South, fighting fascism was an internationalisation of the black struggle for freedom.

Black leader W.E.B. Du Bois was in Germany in the 1930s, writing articles that analysed and warned against the Nazis.

The Black Panther Party organised a United Front Against Fascism conference in 1969. Some 5,000 activists turned up. They developed a black power anti-fascism.

Each of these moments helped to generate new ideas and a new awareness of the threat posed by fascism.

Today, fascists target abolitionists and Black Lives Matter groups.

That is crucial to understanding Trumpism and the rise of the far right since the Charlottesville protests and the murder of Heather Heyer in 2017.

There is a pernicious racist and far right history of the US, and globally there is the rise of ­neo-fascism and authoritarian parties. We need to recover that black radical tradition to fight back.

We also show that anti-blackness is a key element of fascism. Walter Rodney and Aime Cesaire both wrote about how fascism emerged out of European colonialism in Africa.

Cesaire argued that the tactics used against black populations in Africa came home to roost with fascist movements in Europe.

The Nazis banned Jews from interracial marriages, restricted their right to use public facilities, legalised discrimination at work and stripped them of their right to vote.

This was all taken from the Jim Crow laws that enforced segregation in the US South.

The erasure of Native Americans was also a huge inspiration to the Nazis.

The whole idea of lebensraum—a Nazi term for military expansionism—was Hitler’s version of this ethnic cleansing.

This was enabled by laws that allowed the theft of land, the suppression of rights, the tearing up of treaties and betrayal of the idea of legality itself.

The slave codes of the 18th century enshrined anti-blackness in the law. Enslaved people were not allowed to grow food, learn to read or earn money. Slavery played a founding role in establishing race laws and influenced fascism globally.

After slavery, new laws sanctioned white supremacy, backed up by racial terrorism and lynchings.

To understand fascism, you have to look beyond inter-war Europe and recentre Africa and North America.

Whatever fascism is and has been, it will always be a white supremacist and nativist movement. Contemporary white power movements in the US all made the Black Lives Matter movement their target.

A few weeks before the January riots at Capitol Hill, the same people were marching through Washington DC, a predominantly black area.

They went to a church associated with Frederick Douglass, the great abolitionist activist. They tore down and burnt BLM signs.

Trump is the embodiment of white supremacy and far right politics.

Anti-blackness is intimately linked to the history of colonialism and they both generate fascism. That’s why we have Fortress Europe. Closing the borders on former colonial subjects is central to the new far right. Anti-black sentiment feeds into anti-Muslim ideas and Islamophobia. It targets our darker brothers and sisters.

In France, anti-black fascism draws on the history of north Africa and Algeria in particular. It is the fear of return of the colonial repressed. The rhetoric is about dark people coming in and raping our wives and mothers. Ideas like those are rooted deep in histories of colonialism and slavery.

There are consistent ingredients of fascism, like hostility to mixed race relationships, nativism and attacking the working class—and anti-black sentiment is another essential ingredient.

In 1951, a group of black radicals in the Civil Rights Congress organised the We Charge Genocide petition.

It applied the newly minted United Nations definition of human rights to the US treatment of black people—slavery, police violence, lynching—which they argued constituted a “slow genocide” or “premature death”.

The Civil Rights Congress emerged out of Communist Party groups and was led by black activists like Du Bois and Claudia Jones.

In 2013, a small group of black radical activists in Chicago wanted to draw attention to police torture in their city. They also named their group We Charge Genocide.

Now we have the genocide charges against Israel from the International Court of Justice. We think the original We Charge Genocide petition helps people understand the value of these charges, especially as they come from South Africa, an epicentre of anti-blackness in the 20th century.

Cedric Robinson argued that living under and resisting racial capitalism made black radicals “prematurely” aware of ­fascism’s history.

So, Ida B Wells—who was active from the late 19th ­century—was “prematurely anti-fascist” when she linked lynching in the southern states of the US with pogroms against Jews in Europe. She predicted the political future of racist violence.

Anti-blackness has always played an important part in fascist movements.

Historically, fascism aimed to destroy working class organisations. Racism means that black people have always been more likely to have working class jobs. So it follows that many of the most important figures in the black anti-fascist tradition were socialists and communists who wanted to smash the hierarchies of both race and class.

Back in the 1970s, Angela Davis and Bettina Aptheker argued that fascism is ­counterrevolution that aims to preempt a socialist transformation of society.

The rise of fascism is not a single event, a coup d’etat, it is a drawn-out social process.

Fascism feeds on the state repression of black, Puerto Rican and Chicano communities. It feeds on racial ­capitalism and the incarceration of countless hundreds of black and brown workers and on anti-immigrant racism.

Ukrainian refugees were welcomed in the US. At the same time Trump gave a speech opposing immigration from what he called “shithole” countries, meaning the Global South. He told the crowd, “We should have more people coming from Norway.” He stopped just short of saying “Nordic Aryans”.

Our book focuses on how the black anti-fascist tradition developed strategies for resisance, revolution and survival. It is a tradition of life-making in opposition to fascism’s march to genocide.

The black anti-fascist ­tradition is about contesting fascism and about building and sustaining radical forms of solidarity and to create new ways of living.

The Democratic Party has been an enormous enabler of the right. For the last ten to fifteen years it has stood by as white supremacists have built up their power. It made peace with Trumpism during Trump’s first term.

Kamala Harris was a leading voice for genocide. She helped enable racial terror and state violence in Palestine. Her support for the genocide is a significant reason she lost.

The Republican Party has a fascist current in it. It is trying to win hegemony.

Trump did not act like a fascist during his first term. But he is a master of dog whistling to fascist and neo-fascists to bring them into his movement.

Trumpism is a very successful right wing social movement. It wants to kick down the door as far as possible to authoritarian rule. Anti-fascists must now be prepared to hit the streets again.

The law won’t save you from fascism. Germany and Italy had sophisticated legal structures. But the courts side with the ruling class.

The Supreme Court is on Trump’s side. It is possible he will try to implement a legal-bureaucratic grab for power. One thing we can say, fascism is anti-democratic at its core and Trump is highly anti-democratic.

Now that Trump has won, we will also see new layers of people who will feel disengaged from official politics and look to the left.

No-one is going to come save us. We have to save ourselves.

Bill Mullen is Emeritus Professor of American Studies at Purdue University in the United States. He is a member of the revolutionary socialist organisation Socialist Horizon and the US Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.

Vote For The Candidates Endorsed By The Peoples’ Socialist Caucus of The Republican Party

By Phil Wilson

November 15, 2024

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




The Democrats and those who inhabit the DNC orbit have been in a rush to skip all five stages of grief.

My Email inbox has more pieces titled, “resist,” “fight back,” “organize” than at any time since Tim Berners-Lee invented the Internet. Those five stages of grief, elucidated by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The patient has died. We peeled off the oozing bandages on November 5th and we all witnessed the worms, maggots and gangrene. We stared at the shriveled carcass and breathed in the odor of death. And yet I am asked to donate to the DNC, not for a coffin, but for the naked principle of Three Stooges style absurdity – James Carville wants money that I don’t have to fund something that doesn’t exist.

Do these DNC functionaries really have the temerity to beg me for cash – after I have drained my life savings for Bob Casey, Colin Allred, and Jon Tester? What did those donations get me? That’s obviously a rhetorical question – but to be transparent, I didn’t give a dime to any of these people running on the “Titanic Ticket.” But some of you did. The “Iceberg Collision Party” – the one owned by big tech, big pharma, big bombs, and Wall Street – died like a beached jelly fish due, perhaps, to my unwillingness to part with the price of a Cumberland Farms cup of coffee in a plastic cup. Nancy Pelosi emailed me again – “with your donation we can go back into the past and time-travel our way to defeat Trump last week.”

I wasted roughly six months of my sad, elderly life clicking the delete button on every Email from the DNC, the Congressional Black Caucus, and a million surrogate entities that shilled for the Biden/Harris/Walz/Weimar ticket.

The emails I get (by the thousands) proposing that we build a better, more progressive Democratic Party should not be seen as merely the garden-variety denial of Kubler-Ross – rather, we should see such expansiveness as the mirror reflection of MAGA. Both capitalist parties have become psychotic, with members drifting into a perpetually hallucinating state of paranoid fantasy. “Stop the steal” or resurrect the Democratic Party – both of these unhinged notions beg for a national shot of Thorazine.

The Democratic Party is dead – as in decomposing flesh and rigor mortis. Hold a stethoscope to the blue heart. You will hear a living Elvis singing “Jailhouse Rock” before you detect a Democratic Party pulse. If you laid the Five Hundred Meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (the world’s largest radio telescope) on the chest of that decomposing donkey, the silence would make a Buster Keaton Film seem like a primal scream. One can easily argue that the Democratic Party died decades ago, and only a collective and uniquely American variety of mass psychosis has held reality at bay.

The first act of the aspiring progressive movement has to be a funeral. The Democratic Party needs to be put in a cheap pinewood coffin (after driving a wooden stake through its heart as an act of caution), and then interred. Perhaps Liz Cheney, Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi can be made to deliver the eulogies. Once that coffin is lowered deep in a suitable crevice (I am fond of the San Andreas Fault) then those of us concerned about corporate crimes, environmental collapse and human rights need to get the fuck out of the earth quake zone, fast! But where do we go?

Is there a home somewhere for people who want to transform the fetid wasteland that is the USA into something at least marginally better? Any Marxist will tell you that you go to the working class, the proletariat, the people who work three jobs to pay rent and get no vacation or sick time, and pay through the nose for private medical insurance with more holes than swiss cheese. Those working people – the ones who we haven’t seen in the Democratic base since Ronald Reagan went brain-dead and the gods of capital resurrected him as Bill Clinton – hold the key to a renewed left wing. There is no other way.

And where will you find working people in vast numbers? Uh, that may seem like a trick question, but it really isn’t. The working class is being held in custody by the Republican Party. Why are they there? you ask. Because they have been offered something to distract themselves from the empty, meaningless, tedious anomie of US life – racism, cruelty and political theatrics. Working people would rather have affordable housing, free dental care, job security, a reduced work week, sick leave, child care, a living wage and paid vacation – but no one is offering them that. When one party offers racism and the other offers nothing at all it is an easy choice. Something is always better than nothing.

And another thing that is absolutely critical – Trump told the truth on the most important issue there is – he correctly opined that life in the US sucks. He may have put that truth in fascist terms, blaming suffering on dark skinned foreigners and trans people, but the Democrats never acknowledge the basic truth. Life in the US, for many working people, teeters on the edge of a self-inflicted gunshot to the skull. On the deepest level, Trump is more honest than most all Democrats.

Some of us think of racism as a terminal, irredeemable affliction. I have an anecdote to address that idea:

In the early nineties, I worked in a group home for teens in Hayward, California. One day I did an intake on a kid I will call Tom. Tom, a white kid, began by telling me his most essential value: “I am hecka racial and if you make me live with a bunch of n*s, I am going to run away.”

Well, Tom was true to his word – he ran away that night, but he didn’t run alone. He ran off with Tony, one of our most defiant residents. The Police found Tom and Tony walking together in downtown Hayward a few days later, and brought them back. We had provided a description – a small, skinny blond kid with a tattoo of a snake winding around his wrist and a heavy set Black teen with low slung pants hanging below his boxers in the style of that era. Tom informed me brashly that he and Tony were “brothers” and that, therefore, he was no longer ‘racial.’ Tom said that Tony had told him just how badly “this place” sucked, and that he and Tony would run again. Both wound up in different programs, and I hadn’t really even thought about them until now. The point is childishly obvious. Racism, for most bigots, hangs by an ephemeral thread.

Let me restate my points thus far:

1) Racism is a place holder for the things working people really want – to be given human rights – housing, nutritious food, medical care, decent wages, security and free time.

2) The Democratic Party of college educated, comfortable suburbanites is as dead as any skunk crossing I – 95 in rush hour.

3) If progressives want to have a meaningful voice they have to migrate to the place inhabited by the working class and join forces with poor and working people.

4) The working class – much of it – can be found at the so called GOP.

5) The GOP/fascist party is an echo chamber with no access to nuance, or basic reality

Therefore????

It may seem counterintuitive to suggest that fighting fascism is contingent on a massive influx of progressive voices joining the GOP. After all, the GOP, like the Democratic Party, is owned, shaped and exploited by corporate power. If progressives gained no traction in the Democratic Party, why would they be heard in the Republican/fascist Party?

That question has no good answer – we are tossing a hail Mary – but the Republican Party has just undergone a hostile takeover from without. The neocons gave way to the fascist zombies. The idea that the “establishment” is dirty, vile and profane has been stolen from the left. We have, in some vague form, a rhetorical precedent to exploit. This was never the case inside the dead and departed Democratic Party. The Republican/fascists have torn the wrapper off of America’s secret. Those in power are indeed scoundrels and murderers, but not for allowing a few victimized asylum seekers to sneak in, but for pouring a fortune into weapons, fossil fuels and political lobbying. In the process, the elites have robbed working people to the point of suicidal despair.

Allow me to provide a caveat to my argument that racists – in droves – are eagerly waiting to be humanized, before we go further. The US is a racist nation with more racist politicians dog whistling for white votes than fish in the ocean (these days), but institutional racism and human hearts are not inevitably in sync. The racism that thrives in the human heart needs to be watered by bigoted, fear mongering media like FOX and Newsmax. These propaganda juggernauts have become the driving force of Republican fascism, and they have the ear of the working class. You might argue that the left needs its own counterattacking media sphere, but corporate money will always prevent rational ideas from being platformed on anything larger than “The Young Turks.”.

I am arguing that the most crucial task of a progressive coalition – as we reach the juncture where fascism, the climate apocalypse and nuclear war merge into a sort of narrative certainty – is to go into the mosh pit of fascism and speak to “Zombies” as if they were human beings.

Now it is time to disrupt the Republican echo chamber. Trump and his billionaire pals talk a populist anti-corporate line – Trump accused Hillary Clinton (rightly so) of being a Wall Street stooge, and the Republican choir nodded along. So let us expand the choir – imagine the Republican ranks swollen with me and you. Envision union members, communists, social democrats, Bernie Sanders, Ralph Nader, Chris Hedges and tens of millions more of us all suddenly becoming registered Republicans. We need people – passionate Republicans, of course – who can elaborate in detail about what it means to be anti-corporate, anti-establishment and opposed to the deep state. Who is putting flesh on the bones of the concept of “the deep state?” Who tells the zombified masses being held hostage in the MAGA Empire that Exxon, Tesla, Amazon, The Heritage Foundation, The New York Times, Facebook, RTX Corporation, FOX News and CNN all sit at the table of the deep state?

Imagine MAGA candidates running in Republican primaries against candidates vowing to fight for a $25 dollar minimum wage. These same anti-MAGA radical Republicans will promise a Draconian reduction in military spending, and the end to corporate campaign lobbying and spending – and how about a fierce vow to pass anti-trust legislation, and universal healthcare. We have always had a one party system – the Dog-on-a-Leash Corporate Party – but now we can have an eclectic party that questions political obedience. We will have a one party system with the complex discourse forbidden in our alleged (now rotten) two party system to date. After all, what the fuck is Trump but a symbol of disobedience – even if Trump’s disobedience is empty and merely a ruse to hide his slavish corporate fidelity.

The position we newly radicalized “Republicans” take will have to be simple, direct and focused on working class aspirations. Do we define disobedience as being nothing more than being a greedy, crass asshole, or does disobedience mean civil disobedience, with the aim of arresting and jailing those who commit environmental crimes, and extort the working class?

I am Phil Wilson and I am running for a senate seat in Massachusetts on the “Republican” ticket with the following platform – a $35 dollar minimum wage, six weeks paid vacation, universal health care, a deal with China to import low cost EV’s to be offered to working families at reduced prices via subsidies. Who will pay for it? The savings from all the bombs, drones and planes that won’t be sent to Israel and Ukraine will be given to working people. Okay, I am not cut out for the senate, but someone else will do it and I’ll knock on doors. Picture every blue state without a single Democratic official, but with “red” replacements – in the rather forgotten shade of red that terrified Joe McCarthy 75 years ago.

The “Republican” candidate that I’ll be supporting will also be introducing the idea of replacing the senate altogether with a “citizen’s assembly.” This would put decision making in the hands of ordinary people like you and me. It ought to play well on the populist right who – now that everyone is a Republican – will be forced to confront life outside of the Trumpian vacuum.

If history is a guide, being anti-capitalist inside of a fascist party will be extremely dangerous. Ask Ernst Rohm what happened to the Nazis who wanted to carry out a socialist revolution. But Rohm’s SA had a confused identity, muddied with all the eugenic nonsense that percolated in every faction of the Nazi movement. As a professional thug specializing in street violence, Rohm had no useful role to play once the Nazis came to power. It may be a stretch to compare the Nazi SA to the US progressive movement, but history provides an imperfect roadmap for political strategy. The radical faction of the Republican Party will have to do what a limited thinker like Ernst Rohm could not do – engage the erstwhile fascist masses in a peaceful, civil dialogue about populism, capitalism and the power of the working class.


Phil Wilson also writes at Nobody’s Voice.

For more on this topic, consider Lonnie Ray Atkinson’s series, Don’t Think of a Republican: : How I Won A Republican Primary As A Lefty Progressive And You Can Too.


Phil Wilson  is a retired mental health worker and union member. His writing has been published in ZNetwork.org, Current Affairs, Counterpunch, Resilience, Mother Pelican, Common Dreams, The Hampshire Gazette, The Common Ground Review, The Future Fire and other publications. Phil's writings are posted regularly at Nobody's Voice https://philmeow.substack.com/

Don’t Follow Sanders Back into the Democratic Party

Sanders is a carnival barker at the graveyard of social movements. He’s spent years cheerleading for Biden — what good is his recent criticism?


Nathaniel Flakin and Otto Fors

November 15, 2024

LEFT VOICE

Photo: Jonathan Ernst

The day after Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders put out a withering statement placing the blame for that loss squarely on the Democratic Party:


It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them … While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change.

He asks if “the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party” will ever “understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing.” He wonders if they will take on the “increasingly powerful Oligarchy,” concluding “Probably not.” He finally announces that “very serious discussions” will take place, and ends with an open-ended: “Stay tuned.”

This is the Bernie Sanders people remember from his 2016 and 2020 primary campaigns, who mobilized millions of young people disaffected by the misery wrought by decades of neoliberalism. His language will resonate with the millions of people who did not vote for Harris, and the millions more who cast a ballot while holding their noses, because she ran a campaign in defense of the status quo.

Yet does Sanders think we can just forget the last four years, and everything he said until the day after the election?
Sanders: Biden and the Democrats’ Most Enthusiastic Cheerleader

Just a few months ago, after Biden’s catastrophic performance at the presidential debate, Sanders published a full-throated endorsement of Biden, calling him “the most effective president in the modern history of our country.” Sanders called on Democrats to “stop the bickering and nit-picking” and rally behind their candidate.

Was this just a momentary slip up in the final stretch of a campaign, when the Vermont senator was terrified by the prospect of a Trump presidency? Far from it: Sanders has been an integral part of the Biden administration, first as chair of the Senate Budget Committee, then as chair of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. Every time Biden and the Democrats threw workers and the oppressed under the bus, Sanders was there putting his leftist rubber stamp on Biden’s policies. He wrote no scathing rebukes when the Biden administration ran to Trump’s right on immigration, abandoned demands like a $15 minimum wage, ramped up fossil fuel production, and voted to break the railway strike. In fact, Sanders, with his reputation for saying it like it is, repeatedly lies about the president’s supposedly pro-labor record, claiming that “Biden wants to make it easier for workers to form unions.”

But that’s not all: Sanders, along with other progressive Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Ortez, was a Biden dead-ender, standing with him even as more and more Democrats called on him to step down. When Biden finally left the stage, Sanders praised him as “the most pro-working class president in modern American history.”

When Kamala Harris replaced Biden on the ticket, she cozied up to billionaires and made clear that she lacked even Biden’s purely rhetorical commitment to the labor movement. Yet Sanders remained a loyal cheerleader.

In a delusional search for votes from “moderate” Republicans, Harris began campaigning with the anti-Trump Republican Liz Cheney. Her father Dick Cheney was the principal architect of the Iraq War, a cynical intriguer whose company was raking in billions from forever wars that killed millions of people. The Cheneys might be the most bloodthirsty war hawks in the rogue’s gallery of U.S. imperialism. And Sanders? He stood with the war hawk — “I applaud the Cheneys for their courage in defending democracy,” allowing Donald Trump, a first-rate imperialist, to present himself as an anti-war candidate.
The Democrats Have Never Been on Our Side

The Intercept has claimed that “Bernie would have won,” given his “credibility” from “spending decades consistently fighting doggedly for the working class.” This is, unfortunately, pure amnesia, as Sanders spent the last four years defending an administration attacking the working class. And he has been plainly dishonest. Was Biden a champion of the working class, as Sanders claimed just half a year ago? Or did the Democrats abandon workers, as Sanders says now?

The Democratic Party has always been a party of the bourgeoisie, and Sanders has been part of it for almost 50 years, even while formally an independent. Despite his left-wing credentials, he has a long track record of supporting almost every U.S. imperialist intervention, while voting for trillions of dollars for weapons. Sanders is nothing but a social democratic fig leaf for a capitalist political machine. He is a carnival barker at the entrance to the graveyard of social movements.

You might also be interested in: Trump is President. Which Way Forward for the Labor Movement?

The tragedy of Sanders campaigns is that he indeed inspired millions of working-class and young people with progressive demands — and then led them into a party that could only betray them. We see Sanders channeling the movement for Palestine into working with the imperialist state as well. Across the country, leftists are rallying Democrats to support Sanders’s arms embargo measure — as if the institutions of the imperialist state could deliver an end to the genocide in Gaza. This is just a microcosm of Sanders’s role in the Democratic party, and how he works to keep outrage from developing into a serious challenge to the system.

Given the astounding failure of the Democratic Party (it’s actually kind of impressive that they managed to convince millions of workers that Donald Trump was less hostile to working people!), huge swaths of people realize we need a political alternative. Unfortunately, many will follow Sanders’s advice, and continue to try to change a party run by billionaires.

It’s not that Democrats lost their connection to working-class voters — the Democrats have never been on our side. Even in the supposed glory days of FDR, the Democratic Party was trying to save capitalism. Sanders, as a more or less official democrat, is part of the problem — even if he founded his own party, it would be a party loyal to U.S. imperialism. Workers in the United States need our own party — one completely independent of billionaires, war hawks, and all their political hacks.



Nathaniel Flakin

Nathaniel is a freelance journalist and historian from Berlin. He is on the editorial board of Left Voice and our German sister site Klasse Gegen Klasse. Nathaniel, also known by the nickname Wladek, has written a biography of Martin Monath, a Trotskyist resistance fighter in France during World War II, which has appeared in German, in English, and in French, and in Spanish. He has also written an anticapitalist guide book called Revolutionary Berlin. He is on the autism spectrum.

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Otto Fors

Otto is a college professor in the New York area.