Oh Look, Police Reforms Didn’t Work

BY SONALI KOLHATKAR

 DECEMBER 19, 2023

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

The nation’s biggest investment in the past decade to fix police abuses has failed. The New York Times, in collaboration with ProPublica conducted an extensive 6-month-long investigation into the use of body cameras on police officers and found that it has done little to stop police killings. Reformists ought to be shocked—however, they may be too busy concocting yet another expensive scheme to pour money into policing rather than out—but abolitionists are hoarse from saying, “We told you it wouldn’t work.”

When 18-year-old Mike Brown, newly graduated from high school, was gunned down in 2014 in cold blood by officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, his killing sparked one of the early waves of the Black Lives Matter movement. The New York Times rightly faced protest as well for referring to Brown as “no angel,” a familiar media post-mortem of Black police victims that paints them as deserving of death.

And, as Ferguson burned with rage, academics and politicians declared the staid solution to such killings: body cameras worn by police officers to capture them in the act of killing.

Well, okay, police reformists hoped that the body cameras would dissuade police officers from killing rather than merely catching them in the act of doing so. Or, if the cameras failed to restrain police, they would capture evidence to hold police accountable. But such faith in the armed enforcers of racial capitalism was naive at best. At worst, it was a measure of the ardent belief that officers are actually trying to keep people safe. Liberals have been as guilty as conservatives in their unquestioning belief in the sanctity of policing. It was a Democrat, President Barack Obama, who in 2014 asked Congress to authorize spending $263 million of taxpayer funds to outfit cops with cameras.

The price of liberal naivete was on full display in 2020 when Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin slowly and brutally choked George Floyd to death in full view of bystander Darnella Frazier’s phone camera while he knelt on Floyd’s neck. Chauvin had been outfitted with a body camera that fell off him while he killed Floyd. In 2017, Chauvin had been caught at least twice using the same tactic of kneeling on top of a person’s neck while wearing a body camera. The city paid out more than $1 million to settle with the victims, who were lucky enough to survive. Chauvin then went on to kill Floyd three years later.

When Chauvin was ultimately convicted, it was no thanks to his body camera. Massive public pressure from the largest protests in the nation’s history, and Frazier’s testimony and recording, helped to indict him for Floyd’s murder.

The fact that police departments themselves supported the use of body cameras when they were initially proposed ought to have warned us that the project was doomed to failure. What the New York Times/ProPublica investigation found is that police have used body camera footage to actually justify their killings. In the 2017 fatal shooting of a man named Miguel Richards, the New York Police Department used selective footage from officers’ cameras to absolve them, not hold them accountable. It is frequently the police themselves, depending on the city, who get to decide whether or not to release body camera footage. Body cameras did not deliver accountability; they were just new weapons to help police in the war they have been waging on the public.

Decades of police reforms have sucked up hundreds of millions of dollars, and have kicked the can of accountability down the road, maintained police dominance of city budgets, and ultimately failed to curb the killings. Even the Washington Post called it “an ongoing exercise in reform that never ends.”

The police kill at least 1,000 people a year, with 2022 being the deadliest year ever recorded. And it appears as though 2023 may surpass it. In other words, police fatalities rose after body cameras were deployed (it’s true, correlation does not necessarily mean causation). A deeper look at the data shows that Black people are the most likely to die at the hands of police and are twice as likely to be killed than whites, despite being a much smaller racial group. And, younger Black people are the most vulnerable to bloodthirsty cops.

So, what would actually keep police from killing? The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), in conjunction with GenForward at the University of Chicago, asked the group most victimized by violent police—Black Americans—what their opinions were on moving money out of policing and into the things that have been proven to foster safety (housing, health care, education, and other social services). The extensive survey, called Perspectives on Community Safety from Black America, found high levels of fear toward police among Black Americans. Younger Black people were the most fearful. This is not surprising given that they are the most targeted by police.

More importantly, the survey found broad support for an “Invest/Divest” approach to public safety. Specifically, this means, “86 [percent] of Black people support creating a new agency of first responders who specialize in de-escalating violence and providing mental-health support and other social services that would take over these responsibilities from police.” The survey also found that “78 [percent] support a process whereby city officials promote public safety by investing in solutions that do not rely on incarceration.”

Dr. Amara Enyia, M4BL’s Policy and Research Director, told me in an interview on YES! Presents: Rising Up With Sonali, “When people say reform, so often it’s this tweaking around the edges of police and policing. It’s things that we know don’t really get to the root causes of harm that come from the policing system.”

Enyia questions the reliance on policing altogether, especially in scenarios where the presence of armed officers often makes things worse. “Why should armed police be pulling people over for traffic violations?” she asks. “Or why should police be giving bicyclists tickets for riding their bike on the sidewalk, for example? Why should individuals who are having a mental health crisis, why should armed police be called to the scene?”

There are no good answers to these questions. And body cameras do nothing to discourage police from killing in such scenarios because they merely validate policing as a tool for safety. Police are enforcers of order, not safety.

Safety does not enter the equation except for those members of society who rely on the strict maintenance of the existing order: well-off white Americans for example, who enjoy the greatest economic benefits from generational wealth and, not coincidentally, experience the least harm from police. Rethinking the role of policing in society needs to go hand in hand with rethinking our economy as a whole.

M4BL asks a stark question in the report on its survey results that ought to form the basis of any changes to policing: “Can you imagine a world where policing is obsolete and everyone has what they need to thrive?”

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Sonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV (Dish Network, DirecTV, Roku) and Pacifica stations KPFK, KPFA, and affiliates. 

GEMOLOGY

EU takes aim at Russia's diamond trade in latest round of sanctions

Sector estimated to be worth about $4.5 billion a year

Russian President Vladimir Putin. Russia is now prohibited from directly and indirectly importing, purchasing or transferring diamonds, the EU said. 

Soraya Ebrahimi
Dec 18, 2023

The European Council has adopted a new package of Russia sanctions that focus on the country's diamond trade, which involves import and export bans as well as measures to combat sanctions circumvention.

The European Commission announced the 12th package of sanctions against Russia on Monday after Austria gave its final approval at the weekend.

Russia is now prohibited from directly and indirectly importing, purchasing or transferring diamonds, the EU said in a statement.

It is also subject to a new import ban on liquefied petroleum gas, which will affect annual imports worth $1.09 billion.

The EU estimates the diamond sector to be worth about $4.5 billion a year to Moscow.
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Putin press conference: Russia's leader vows no peace until Ukraine goals achieved


The new round of sanctions also obliges EU companies to prohibit in their contracts the export of certain goods so buyers cannot sell them on to Russia – particularly “sensitive goods and technology” that could be used by the Russian armed forces in Ukraine.

Additional chemicals, lithium batteries, thermostats, certain electric motors that could be used in the manufacture of drones, and some machine tools and parts have been put on the EU’s list of items banned for export to Russia.

Imports into the EU of some goods that generate significant revenue for Russia also were tightened, including copper and aluminium wire, foil, quantities of tubes and pipes above a certain limit, and liquefied propane.

The package also added 140 additional people and entities as subject to asset freezes, including figures in the Russian military, the defence industry, private military companies and the IT sector.

The EU said the latest measures would “deliver a further blow to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s ability to wage war by targeting high-value sectors of the Russian economy and making it more difficult to circumvent EU sanctions”.

While the European Council announced the adoption of the package last week, Austria did not give its formal approval until its major bank Raiffeisen was suspended from a Ukrainian list called “international sponsors of war”.

The Ukrainian blacklist temporarily removed the bank pending discussions with the European Commission. The commission declined to comment on the matter on Monday.

Hungary and Greece similarly delayed the previous package of sanctions to have some of their companies removed. Two Greek shipping companies are still in the suspension phase on the website.

The 27 EU countries will now consider imposing sanctions on people who benefit from the seizure of European assets or parts of companies in Russia.

The member states will also come under tighter control to ensure they are actively tracing the assets of sanctioned people.

Updated: December 18, 2023, 10:31 PM

How Putin’s “Traditional Values” Rhetoric Against LGBTQ+ Groups Won Him Far-Right Fans Abroad

BY SARAH RICCARDI-SWARTZ

 DECEMBER 19, 2023

With LGBTQ+ rights continuing to expand across much of the world, Vladimir Putin’s Russia has doubled down on restricting them – and a new ruling has made the future even more uncertain for Russian LGBTQ+ groups and individuals.

The LGBTQ+ “movement” is “extremist,” and its activities will be banned beginning in 2024, according to a ruling a justice of the Russian Supreme Court handed down at the close of November 2023.

This newest decision builds on 10 years of legislation pushed forward by President Vladimir Putin’s government in the name of “family values,” largely focused on limiting LGBTQ+ activism and same-sex unions. With theological support from the Russian Orthodox Church, Putin and his supporters portray Russia as a bulwark of “traditional values.” This trend is poised to only increase in 2024, with Putin’s decree that it is the “year of the family.”

That vision appeals deeply to many conservative Christians outside Russia, as well. As an anthropologist, I have spent years studying Russia’s family values rhetoric and its appeal to allies abroad – particularly Russian Orthodox converts in Appalachia.

Traditional values have become a fixture in far-right movements around the world, some of which see Russia as a model of the future they desire. In Russia and beyond, many conservative Christians in these movements have focused on LGBTQ+ populations, whom they portray as threats to their vision for society – and are not deterred by antidemocratic politics, if its figures voice support for their social goals.

Church and state

In Russia, traditional family values have historically been linked to patriotism, Russian ethnic identity and service to country. These ideas were supported from the 1970s onward by writings from a young priest-monk named Kirill Gundyaev, who became head of the Russian Orthodox Church, or ROC, in 2009.

Though three-quarters of Russians say they attend church services once a year or less, the ROC remains culturally influential. During Putin’s nearly 25 years in power, he has often tapped into the church’s rhetoric about traditional values to advance his social and political goals. In particular, Russian leaders often portray much of Europe and the U.S. as threats to the traditional family.

Attempting to justify the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, for example, Putin and Kirill have both appealed to conservative ideas about religion and gender, arguing that Russia’s offensive stems from a need to protect itself from liberal values.

The West has “been aggressively imposing on their countries, attitudes that are directly leading to degradation and degeneration, because they are contrary to human nature,” Putin said in a February 2022 speech about the war. Kirill, meanwhile, has portrayed the invasion as a spiritual battle.

Beyond borders

Many of Putin’s ideas about tradition resonate with far-right American Christians, including the Appalachian Orthodox converts’ communities I worked with, who think they are being persecuted for their views about gender and sexuality.

While the language of family values resonated with right-wing voters during and since the Trump presidency, values rhetoric has a much longer history among the American Christian right. During the 20th century, anthropologist Sophie Bjork-James has noted, these arguments took off among white Protestants over fears about race, economic instability and feminism.

After World War II, as Americans grappled with the looming threat of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, family values became a key part of patriotic rhetoric that contrasted the “red threat” of the Soviet Union with a supposedly God-fearing, blessed America. Family values politics inspired the creation of conservative groups like the Moral Majority and the Family Research Council as reproductive rights and fledgling gay rights intensified their concerns.

Though focused on promoting American Christian values, the movement looked abroad for connections and support. Relationships forged between the Roman Catholic Church and the ROC, as well as the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and the ROC in the early 2010s, helped spur on the types of traditional values movements seen around the world today. Increasingly, these groups have focused on LGBTQ+ populations, portraying them as alien to traditional values.

Russian political figures and the ROC have participated in local and global organizations that promote traditional family values, including the World Congress of Families and some home-schooling networks formed in the U.S. Some far-right figures involved in such groups promote “traditionalism”: an anti-modern philosophy that focuses on social, sexual and racial purity.

From culture to authoritarianism

Cold War-style language that U.S. politicians once used to criticize the Soviet Union has now been inverted: Many right-wing American Christians who believe their country has lost its traditional religious heritage and is headed toward Marxism see the West as the new “red scare.” For some who criticize the West as “woke,” contemporary Russia is a better social model and an arbiter of traditional morality.

Yet anti-LGBTQ+ policies, family values rhetoric and the notion that Russia is “traditional” are not simply part of the new global culture wars. Rather, they are part of what I call reactive world-building: radicalized groups working toward what they see as a Christian, pro-family future with authoritarian politics at the helm.

The language of the Christian right has consistently emphasized obedience to hierarchical authority. In my own work on far-right American converts to Orthodox Christianity, I have met people who support antidemocratic politics if they believe it can deliver the kind of culture they want to see – and even individuals who call themselves fascist. Some express interest in moving to Russia, with American Orthodox convert priest Rev. Joseph Gleason offering a public example.

Under Putin, family values are used as a way to advance post-Soviet Russian power and control globally. That might come as a shock for American allies – although given some far-right compatriots’ interest in moving there, perhaps not.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Sarah Riccardi-Swartz is an Assistant Professor of Religion and Anthropology at Northeastern University.

A New Hope: The UAW Victory and Beyond

BY JOSEPH GROSSO

DECEMBER 19, 2023
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Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain

If there has been a constant theme to Left discourse in the U.S. it has been that a labor revival is always just around the corner. While this has proved to be quite elusive, it can be said that this year has put workers rights squarely in the spotlight. There has been the continuing organizing campaigns at Starbucks and the strikes of the writers and actors unions in Hollywood. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that as of October the number of days lost to work stoppages this year is at a four decade high. 

Most prominently however, was the successful United Autoworkers (UAW) strike against the Big Three car companies (Ford, GM, Chrysler). The union, through strategically targeted strikes, achieved a 25 percent raise over the four and a half year contract, including 11 percent for the first year along with a $5000 bonus. The contract also restores an annual cost-of-living increase that was eliminated during the 2008 financial crisis. Just as significant, the new contract eliminates worker tiers and codifies a right to strike over plant closures. 

The contract is a shot in the arm for a union that was sorely in need of one. The UAW reached its peak in 1979 with 1.5 million members. Right around that time the U.S. south, with its lower wages and land costs, not to mention anti-union environment, began looming as larger for the industry, especially for emerging companies from Japan and Korea. Nissan opened a plant in Smyrna, Tennessee in 1983, BMW in Spartanburg, South Carolina in 1994, Mercedes-Benz in Vance, Alabama in 1997. Honda moved into Lincoln, Alabama in 2001. By now, 30 percent of automotive jobs are in the south, double the number since 1990. The number of UAW members plunged to 383,000. In recent times the union lost several high profile union votes at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee and the Nissan plant in Canton, Mississippi. Yet this contract offers hope for a revival and obvious proof that strikes work. The strike even had a strong effect for nonunion autoworkers as in the aftermath Toyota announced a 9 percent raise. Honda an 11 percent raise, and Hyundai 14 percent (25 percent by 2028). 

Of course, the specter of electric vehicles (EVs) hovers over the industry. Recent headlines have fretted about an EV slump in the U.S. Growth has slowed after doubling in each of the last two years. This year’s sales growth has been about 48 percent even with the $7500 tax credit that resulted from the Inflation Reduction Act. When President Biden signed the act into law last year, he set the ambitious goal of making half of all new cars sold in the U.S. fully electric by 2030. Measuring by today’s sales that would mean roughly 7 million EVs a year. About 1 million EVs have been sold this year. Dealerships are reporting a large backlog of EVs in showrooms amid concerns about price and the range of chargers. Sales are still concentrated in only a few states. Overall there are 282 million registered vehicles in the U.S.

At the moment, just about 8 percent of new car sales in the U.S. are EVs. Not much when compared to places like Norway (almost 90 percent), Iceland (41 percent), Sweden (32 percent), or China (25 percent). China has more EVs than the rest of the world combined and, thanks to companies like BYD (BYD is a vertically integrated monster. It started as a battery maker and still makes its own batteries in addition to now making its own semiconductors, now the most profitable parts of cars, and even its own ships to ship cars internationally) has overtaken Japan as the world’s largest car exporter. Ford has actually announced plans to cut planned production of its all electric F-150 Lighting pickup in half next year along with lower production plans for its Mustang Mach-E (in the 3^rd quarter of this year the company reported an operating loss of $1.3 billion for its EV division, translating into a loss of $62,016 for each EV it sold). GM announced in October it will delay production of electric pickup trucks in Michigan’s Orion Township by a year to late 2025 and the rollout of its GMC Hummer EV has been slower than projected. According to the National Automotive Dealers Association, pickups and SUVs make up 80 percent of all new passenger vehicle sales in the U.S. market.

Still the EV market will grow in the U.S. and presents a necessary target for the UAW. Obviously, EVs need batteries. Perhaps the most significant achievement of the UAW contract is GM’s concession to include EV and battery workers in the master agreement. Workers at the Ultium Cell battery plant in Lordstown, voted overwhelming in November to join the agreement. When the plant opened in 2022, workers were paid $16.50 an hour — barely half of what UAW members had been earning at a shuttered GM assembly plant nearby.

Thanks to billons worth of government loans, grants, and tax credits, a building boom is in the works. Ultium Cells is a joint venture between GM and LG Energy Solution, GM originally fought to exempt the plant from the union contract on the basis that the plant was a joint venture and would therefore need its own agreement. The UAW held firm and won. 

The joint venture model is being used by other companies as well. Ford created one with South Korea SK called BlueOval SK. BlueOval SK is building two plants in Kentucky and hiring five thousand workers. Ford is also contracting with Chinese battery-maker CATL for a lithium iron phosphate plant in Marshall, Michigan. There should be enough momentum for these plants to be covered by the contract.    

There are also plenty of nonunion companies getting into the battery frenzy and much like car production much of it centers in the south: BMW is investing in a battery plant in South Carolina, Hyundai (Georgia), Mercedes-Benz (Alabama), Toyota (North Carolina), Volvo (South Carolina). Not just car companies. Battery makers are obviously building as well. Japanese company AESC (Tennessee, Kentucky, South Carolina), Panasonic (Kansas), South Korea SK Battery America (Georgia). 

In the aftermath of the strike, the UAW has announced a major organizing effort. Tesla has to be a main target. Tesla is still by far the largest player making up over half the U.S. EV market. It is currently the most valuable car company in the world and the only major American car company not unionized. It is estimated that Tesla workers earn on average about $55 an hour in wages and benefits, compared to $66 to $71 an hour at Detroit’s Big Three. In addition to Tesla the push targets two other EV startups, Lucid and Rivian, and ten foreign-owned automakers. According to the union, collectively the companies employ 150,000 workers across 13 states.   

A union drive against Tesla surely will be an uphill fight. A 2016 organizing attempt apparently ended amid workers getting fired. Ironically, Elon Musk recently proclaimed at an event in New York that he didn’t like the idea of unions “[because] I just don’t like anything which creates a lords and peasants sort of thing.” Yet what is happening now in Sweden clearly reveals a path forward. On October 27^th 130 Tesla mechanics walked off the job over Tesla’s refusal to sign a collective agreement that the union IF Metall has tried negotiating for five years. It wasn’t long before union dockworkers refused to unload Tesla cargo at Swedish ports. Then the Swedish Building Maintenance Workers’ Union joined in and the 50 or so members who clean Tesla showrooms and services centers stopped cleaning. On November 20^th postal workers stopped delivering mail, including license plates (Tesla sued and initially won the right to pick-up plates directly from Sweden’s Transport agency but a court paused that until a final ruling is made). Now it is reported that the Transport Workers’ Union will refuse to pick up waste at the company’s workshops starting December 24th. Even Sweden’s pension funds are applying pressure. All this in a country where Tesla doesn’t even make cars (its ‘Gigafactories’ are in Fremont, Sparks, Buffalo, Austin, Berlin, and Shanghai). 

In other words: solidarity. For now Tesla is digging in, no doubt out of fear of the damn bursting everywhere. Yet with solidarity the peasants always have a chance at winning, perhaps even here in the U.S.

Joseph Grosso is a librarian and writer in New York City. He is the author of Emerald City: How Capital Transformed New York (Zer0 Books).

War Crimes and Genocide: Legal  

Accountability

BY L. MICHAEL HAGER

DECEMBER 19, 2023

The Battle of Solferino, by Adolphe Yvon

When Swiss businessman Henri Dunant witnessed the bloody outcome of the Battle of Solferino in 1859, he was struck by the unaided suffering of the wounded. His observations, recounted in his 1862 A Memory of Solferino led to the founding of the International Red Cross.  Thereafter, the 1864 Geneva Convention marked the beginning of an international legal process that governs not only duties toward the wounded but also the protection of civilians in the conduct of war.

When we in the public viewed recorded episodes of the October 7 massacre of Israeli civilians, we were all Henri Dunant; appalled by the barbarous atrocities committed by Hamas militants.  International Humanitarian Law, as codified in the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, protects civilians in times of war and treats as war crimes the murder of civilians, torture, rape, and hostage-taking. The individual militants and Hamas leadership should be prosecuted for such beastly crimes.

In the more than two months after Israel’s declaration of war on Hamas, we are also appalled by the killing of Palestinian civilians.  The death and destruction unfolding before us on TV screens and reported in the print media are more shocking than the battle scenes at Solferino.

Israel’s declared war of retribution against Hamas has become instead a war against all Palestinians in Gaza. Not counting the bodies that lie beneath the rubble, the death toll now exceeds 18,000, mostly women and children.

While the laws of war allow combatants to target enemy soldiers found in the proximity of civilians, such attacks must be carefully limited in scope to minimize the risk of “collateral damage.” Despite IDF protestations to the contrary, its indiscriminate bombing and shelling of residences, mosques, churches, schools, and hospitals; its forced evacuations of residents; and its Strip-wide siege to cut off water, food, and other life necessities, constitute not only war crimes and ethnic-cleansing, but also genocide.  How could such actions be otherwise given the population density?

As defined in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide means specified acts committed with intent to destroy “a national ethnical, racial or religious group.”  Such acts include “killing members of the group” and “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

Article IV provides that  “persons committing genocide …shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals.”  Prime Minister Netanyahu, his war cabinet, and individual IDF soldiers and commanders should be held accountable for genocide.

In his provision of offensive weapons to Israel and in his steadfast refusal to join other nations in calling for a ceasefire, President Biden has made the U.S. complicit in Israel’s genocide.  He has also made himself a potential subject for prosecution by his “direct and public incitement to commit genocide.”

Referring to a  U.S. war crime charge against Russia for the torture of an American in Ukraine, F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray said “We’re resolved to hold war criminals accountable no matter where they are or how long it takes.”

Will Wray’s remarks be applied to Israel’s war on Gaza? Not likely, but nations around the world are outraged by America’s sole veto of a Security Council resolution on December 8. That resolution would have demanded “an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.” Will any of the U.N. member states (Russia included)  bring charges against Biden for aiding and abetting the Israeli genocide?

Israel currently receives $3.8 billion a year for U.S. weaponry (often battle-tested in wars against Gazans).  Yet Biden seeks to provide an additional $ 14.3 billion in arms to Israel, weapons that would likely be used to kill more Palestinians in the Strip.  Now the State Department has approved a $106 million sale of tank ammo to Israel.  Will voters accept that such transfers make them more secure?  Or will they begin to doubt the wisdom of our intelligence “experts.”

A December 3 news article by The Intercept, quoting “a bombshell new report” in the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom describes a Netanyahu proposal to “thin” the Palestinian population in Gaza “to a minimum” by relocating the Palestinians to other Arab countries and/or opening up sea routes to allow a mass escape to European and African countries. Israel Today has reported a plan being pushed by members of Congress that would condition U.S. aid to Arab countries on their willingness to accept Palestinian refugees.  Given the inhospitable conditions of the devasted Gaza Strip, such plans seem not as farfetched and immoral as they should be.

If Henri Dunant were alive today, looking down on a devasted and bloodied Gaza, he would certainly lament the failure of law to protect civilians.  Only accountability can redeem such a failure and restore respect for international law.

L. Michael Hager is cofounder and former Director General, International Development Law Organization, Rome.

Israel and the New McCarthyism

BY HARRY BLAIN

DECEMBER 19, 2023Facebook

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The “New McCarthyism” has been announced so many times that it is at risk of losing real meaning. But the campus “anti-Semitism” investigations being conducted by the U.S. House of Representatives are remarkably reminiscent of the legislative smear campaigns that destroyed thousands of careers and livelihoods across the country during the early Cold War.

While these investigations claim to be concerned with the serious and very real problem of anti-Semitism, they have been led by congressional Republicans who have displayed no interest in exposing the growing anti-Semitism on the right. Their real goal is to discredit constitutionally protected criticism of the Israeli government.

What is McCarthyism? 

“McCarthyism” is an indirect form of censorship — when an opinion is not necessarily criminalized, but is so emphatically ostracized that the professional and personal costs of expressing it become almost intolerable. The peak era of McCarthyism — between roughly 1946 and 1956 — was orchestrated by congressional committees in the House of Representatives and the Senate, various state-level copycats, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the American Chamber of Commerce, the American Legion, the Catholic Church, and, much more reluctantly, the Truman White House.

The targets were varied: Communist Party leaders, civil rights activists who associated with Communists, State Department officials who questioned the wisdom of U.S. support for the losing side in the Chinese Civil War, union leaders, Puerto Rican independence activists, school teachers, and college professors. Some — especially the Communist Party leaders, along with lower-level party members — were criminally prosecuted under the 1940 Smith Act. Others were left unemployed and unemployable after being publicly accused of disloyalty.

Senator Joseph McCarthy himself is not remembered for any legislative achievements, because he didn’t really have any. Instead, he and his like-minded counterparts in the House of Representatives succeeded in creating an atmosphere of widespread conformity and fear primarily through the investigative tools of the U.S. Congress.

These tools are formidable. Congressional committees can demand written or oral testimony from anyone under penalty of a contempt of Congress citation and prosecution, so long as the demand is tied to a “valid legislative purpose.”

Witnesses can, of course, fight congressional subpoenas with their Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, but prolonged confrontations with Congress — either in Congress or in court — are financially and reputationally damaging, while the U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted Congress’s contempt power very generously.

For a witness, the costs of defiance tend to outweigh the costs of cooperation, including during testimony — when they cannot appeal to a judge when they face an objectionable line of questioning, summon witnesses in their defense, cross-examine the other side, or sue members of Congress for any libelous statements made during a hearing.

Rep. Elise Stefanik: A Fitting Heiress to McCarthy

The far-reaching ability of Congress to compel testimony can be an essential part of the legislative process. But it can also be a license to slander, defame, and intimidate — as the House Committee on Education and the Workforce has been demonstrating in its recent investigations of anti-Semitism on college campuses.

Although the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania all agreed to testify before the committee voluntarily, they were subsequently subjected to a classic McCarthyite routine by a fitting 21st Century version of Joseph McCarthy: New York Republican Congresswoman, Elise Stefanik.

Stefanik’s political ideology, like McCarthy’s, seems to be rooted in opportunism above all else. Several Jewish politicians and public figures were uneasy about Stefanik’s apparent transformation into a warrior against anti-Semitism in recent weeks given her past willingness to tolerate anti-Semitic tropes within the Republican Party.

Nevertheless, Stefanik has been widely praised for precipitating the resignation of the President of the University of Pennsylvania, Liz Magill, on December 9. In response to Stefanik’s questions about whether advocacy of genocide against Jews would violate Penn’s code of conduct, Magill said the answer is “context specific.”

This is basically what the First Amendment requires: vague advocacy of an abhorrent idea is constitutionally protected, but when such an idea is put into action or part of a campaign of targeted harassment, it can and should be prohibited.

If the First Amendment were not so strict, some of Stefanik’s colleagues might be in legal trouble — such as Senator Lindsey Graham, who has encouraged Israel to “level” Gaza, or Congressman Max Miller, who has fantasized over turning all of the Palestinian territories into a “parking lot,” or even Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who said back in 2010 that the people of Gaza needed to be “economically strangled” until they were forced to recognize that “Israel is here to stay.”

Although President Magill was doing little more than educating Stefanik on the Constitution that the Congresswoman is oath-bound to uphold, Magill was accused of evasiveness and obfuscation, including by a prospective $100 million donor to Penn’s Wharton School of Business, who said he couldn’t in good conscience support an institution that was turning a blind eye to anti-Semitism. After Magill’s resignation, Stefanik promised that the presidents of Harvard and MIT would be next.

No one should be particularly worried about the livelihoods of these college presidents: Magill is returning to the faculty at Penn, tenured, and still very well paid.

Nor should anyone be particularly impressed with their testimony, which included Harvard President Claudine Gay uncritically condemning the use of the term “intifada,” just as she earlier condemned the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” By accepting the ludicrous assumption that these slogans are inherently either hateful or genocidal, Gay played Stefanik’s game, and gave more ammunition to those who want to discredit advocacy for Palestine. Real martyrs for Palestinian advocacy exist in American academia — such as Professors Norman Finkelstein and Steven Salaita. Liz Magill does not belong in such distinguished company.

Still, the fact that a college president can be forced to resign for failing to publicly defy the First Amendment is not a positive development. Nor is it particularly surprising, given what appears to be an increasingly aggressive campaign against constitutionally protected Palestinian activism on American college campuses — a campaign that has been supported by members of Congress, state governors, the Anti-Defamation League and the Brandeis Center (who jointly called for investigations of Students for Justice in Palestine under the federal material support for terrorism statute), as well as a handful of Big Tech executives.

Thankfully, the First Amendment prohibits the outright criminalization of political activism in this country. But censorship through more devious means is an old and enduring American tradition — one that can only be fought through collective courage, integrity, and defiance on a national scale.

This originally appeared on FPIF.