Want Socialism? Try the US Military
Some of our top brass denounce socialism, but they run the most socialist organization on earth.


For officers, particularly those with experience in weapons acquisition, the gravy train doesn't end with retirement. (Photo: Scott Nelson/Getty Images)


MIKE LOFGREN

June 10, 2021

America's love affair with lunacy continues undimmed. Along with flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers, and fans of perpetual motion, according to a May 21 Ipsos poll, 53 percent of Republicans now assert that Donald Trump is the current president of the United States.

There is a tendency in the reality-based community to regard these folks as obscure lunatics who yell at their TVs in trailer parks when they're not ruining a relative's Thanksgiving dinner. Unfortunately, this epidemic of delusional belief embraces a more exalted layer of the social spectrum, a group on which the maintenance of our democracy—deeply flawed as it is—may hinge.

This May, 124 retired generals and admirals published an open letter claiming that President Joe Biden stole the election. Traditionally, this letter would have been unthinkable, but a sizable contingent of former flag officers—people whose decisions once held lives in the balance—has gone full QAnon, writing: "Under a Democrat Congress and the Current Administration our Country has taken a hard left turn toward Socialism and a Marxist form of tyrannical government which must be countered now by electing congressional and presidential candidates who will always act to defend our Constitutional Republic."

(A small but telling note: the letter employs the phrase "Democrat Congress," a grammatical barbarism that has done duty as a rhetorical device for Republican operatives for at least 40 years, demonstrating that the signatories are rabid political partisans rather than constitutional scholars).

The screed goes on, asserting that "we are in a fight for our survival as a Constitutional Republic like no other time since our founding in 1776," a claim that makes us wonder how the signers ever graduated from their service academies, since a little incident called the American Civil War is an important part of the academies' military history curricula.

They also question "the mental and physical condition of the Commander in Chief." Given the endorsement of the letter by a raving lunatic like Lieutenant General William Boykin and convicted Iran-Contra criminal Vice Admiral John Poindexter, one just might infer a degree of psychological projection on the part of the signers.

The letter garnered condemnation from other retired officers and military analysts, but also a surprising complacency from former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, who noted that no retired four-stars signed it and only a handful of three-stars: "It's not very senior… In our world it's not very significant in terms of people."

It may be cold comfort that there are "only" retired three-stars on the letter, but what about those officers who are still serving?

It turns out that the same month the letter appeared, a lieutenant colonel was removed from his command after appearing on a conservative podcast touting his book Irresistible Revolution: Marxism's Goal of Conquest & the Unmaking of the American Military, which claims that Marxist ideologies have infiltrated the military.

It is noteworthy that he was only cashiered after the podcast, whereas the book already was in print. Previously, it would have been inconceivable that a military officer could even receive permission to write an ideological screed like that. Ordinarily, they are allowed to write freely on military or technical topics, but political diatribes are strictly off-limits. Someone in the command structure was very lax.


All these self-styled guardians of the Republic, whether retired flag officers luxuriating in their beach-front homes in San Diego, or active-duty military vandalizing the capitol building, are beneficiaries of socialism.

Nevertheless, it was predictable that the Right would see him as a persecuted member of the military who fell afoul of political correctness. And sure enough, Matt Gaetz came through.

There is considerable irony in the fact that both the letter and the colonel's rant denounce "socialism," the premier bugaboo of right-wingers everywhere. At one level, it is of course the usual childish nonsense that has been disseminated for decades by the kind of mentality that once denounced fluoridation as a Bolshevik plot. Yet in a sense that is quite the opposite of what they intend, these people might have a point about socialism infiltrating the military.

All these self-styled guardians of the Republic, whether retired flag officers luxuriating in their beach-front homes in San Diego, or active-duty military vandalizing the capitol building, are beneficiaries of socialism. Their profession has a 20-year retirement, free lifetime health care for retirees, housing allowances, food allowances, privileges at heavily-subsidized commissaries and PXs (which, fittingly, somewhat resemble the special stores the old Soviet nomenklatura had), free fitness centers, golf courses, and the list goes on.

With the demise of the Soviet Union and the capitalist transformation of nominally "Red" China, socialism as a hegemonic political system is confined to backwaters like North Korea. The U.S. military is now the biggest socialist enterprise remaining on earth.

For officers, particularly those with experience in weapons acquisition, the gravy train doesn't end with retirement. Aside from their retirement pay and other continuing benefits, they can snag a job with a defense contractor to peddle influence with their former colleagues. Far from being private enterprise, defense firms like Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumman are hothouse plants, sustained only by the contracts the military steers to them; they would wither and die if subjected to the cold winds of actual market competition.

Proof of this is the F-35 fighter. The most expensive weapons program in history, the plane has been a snake-bitten fiasco from its inception, and it demonstrates that nothing succeeds like failure—as long as it's too big to fail. As an engineering disaster, the F-35 ranks with the Soviet reversal of the flow of rivers into the Aral Sea.

No one can seriously argue that those who bear the brunt of battle should not be adequately compensated and granted all necessary benefits. The problem is that the vast majority of combat casualties are enlisted personnel, and only a small percentage of these will serve long enough to receive retirement pay, whereas colonels and generals by definition have enough service to receive retired pay as well as all the other benefits.

It doesn't end there. Congress usually appropriates an annual military pay raise. The brass, of course, insist that these be across-the-board. Let's say the pay raise is 3 percent. That means a buck private at $21,420 per year base pay gets a modest increase—$643—while a lieutenant general, at $199,296 base pay, receives almost $6,000. It amounts to socialism for the better-off, and it is curiously just like all the tax cuts of the last four decades: a windfall for the rich, crumbs for the working stiff. Each succeeding year of military pay raises will only increase the disparity.

The rationale for across-the-board pay raises is as an incentive in hold onto those with valuable skills. While this makes sense to keep a jet engine mechanic for whose talents a commercial airline will pay a premium, I am unaware that we have any difficulty retaining generals. In the case of my hypothetical lieutenant general, he also will likely be provided with a representational house, complete with an enlisted cook and driver, in order to ease the strain of command.

We can be rather safe in assuming that those 124 retired flag officers who wrote the letter decrying socialism knew whereof they spoke from their own deep personal experience: at the commissaries where they shop, and from the free health care they receive to the cut-price gin fizzes they drink at the local officers' club.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Mike Lofgren is a former congressional staff member who served on both the House and Senate budget committees. His books include: "The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government" (2016) and "The Party is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted" (2013).

 

How Disney Accidentally Made A Socialist Masterpiece With ‘Mary Poppins’

by JOSEPH EARP  2 JULY 2021

Partway through Mary Poppins, a piece of mass-market entertainment created and distributed by one of the biggest media conglomerates in the world, a young boy demonstrates the fragile nature of global capitalism.

His name is Michael Banks, and he is the film’s cherubic hero, a well-meaning but chaotic lad who finds himself in possession of a tuppence. He wants to spend the money on a bag of seed to feed to the pigeons, but his father, the stern Mr Banks, has other ideas, and takes him to the bank at which he works. There, Mr Banks says, the boy will learn the importance of saving, of interest, and of the financial concerns that keep the wheels of the British Empire turning.

But the bank is no shining example of the British spirit. As depicted by director Robert Stevenson, the place is a kind of bureaucratic hell, populated by powerful old men who are virtually indistinguishable from one another. The oldest and most powerful of the men, Mr Dawes, played under heavy prosthetics by Dick Van Dyke, can barely support himself without the aid of a cane. When his attention is called to the Banks boy’s tuppence, he becomes obsessed by it, snatching the coin from his hands.

In his age, and in his greed, Dawes is capitalism. And, like capitalism, his power is illusory. When he is challenged by the young Banks boy, he has no method of recourse — as Michael begs for his coin back, other bank customers hear him. Fearing that the system of the bank is failing, they desperately begin to withdraw their money, prompting a mass bank run, in turn actualising the very failure that they feared. The once clean and sterile world of the bank becomes a mass of screaming customers, papers flying, notes fluttering to the floor.

The financial system of the bank dissipates not through force. It dissipates because people stop believing in it. In that way, the scene calls to mind the words of anarchist David Graeber: that the secret truth of the world is that we have made it, and can remake it however we want. All it takes to unpick a system that has become so ubiquitous to seem totally lacking in alternatives is one young boy, begging for the return of his tuppence.

Class Consciousness And Spoonfuls of Sugar

The scene is not an anomaly. A similarly subversive piece of social commentary occurs early on, when we meet Mrs Banks, the film’s matriarch and an active member of the women’s liberation movement. Dressed in a sash, singing about the activism of Emmeline Pankhurst, she claims to love men “individually”, but to distrust their power structurally.

The depiction of Mrs Banks’ activism alone is a daring position for a film to have taken in 1964, but Mary Poppins goes further. Though devoted to the cause of liberation, Mrs Banks still relies on housekeepers, a team of maids and cooks. When she convinces them to sing along with her about the need to further equality, they roll their eyes. They understand, as the film does, that Mrs Banks’ activism lacks class consciousness.

THE DEPICTION OF MRS BANKS’ ACTIVISM ALONE IS A DARING POSITION FOR A FILM TO HAVE TAKEN IN 1964.

Her calls for equality are narrow in scope — she wants the vote, but she has not yet analysed her own role in the systems that oppress and undermine authority. Singing is all well and good, but it means nothing if it isn’t backed up with an understanding of the way capital subjugates. And when the song is over, Mrs Banks triumphant, the cause seemingly furthered, the ignored maids scuttle back to the kitchen, their needs not considered, let alone met.

The End Of The Ideological Blockbuster

Of course, Mary Poppins is an imperfect film, at least ideologically. Though the titular hero teaches Mr Banks that work isn’t everything, she still believes that it is something — her call is for one of balance, not the destruction of the systems of power that subjugate. The film ends on a note of unity, yes, but the unity of the nuclear family, one still deeply coded with the values of the patriarchy and the capitalistic work ethic.

And yet there is still something miraculous about Mary Poppins‘ social messaging, even if it comes through only in fits and bursts. Indeed, it is not clear how the social subtext of Mary Poppins got past Disney at all; one gets the sense that the big-wigs may have simply failed to notice it.

What is clear is that in the years since the film’s release, the conglomerate has issued something of a course correction. Mary Poppins Returns, the ill-received sequel starring Emily Blunt, contains nothing in the way of the original’s class consciousness.

In the film, the bank is still a symbol of insidious power — Returns opens with the Banks family learning that they are in significant debt, and that their house may soon be repossessed — but this power is never challenged. Indeed, the film ends with the bank’s needs being fulfilled — not the Banks’ — as the house is saved by the very tuppence that young Michael invested all those years ago in the original film — the subversive coin that undid an entire system is now propping it back up.

Saving Mr Banks, a film about the making of Mary Poppins, goes even further. In that film, Walt Disney is depicted as a kindly benefactor. He is as rich as Mr Dawes, and as powerful, but there are no cracks in his suit of armour — only kindness. The systems of capital that he lords over are disguised as neon-tinted dreams of stardom and success.

Nor are Mary Poppins Returns and Saving Mr Banks anomalies. Fearing social backlash, Hollywood has become less adventurous in its social messaging. One need only look at the process of de-politicisation that takes place when Marvel comics are adapted for the screen; the stripping away of the subversive subtext of comic book writers like Grant Morrison or Alan Moore. Captain Marvel, a vision of Utopic equality, is now an advert for the American air force. Villains are now grand, uncomplicated titans, their roles in vast systems of capital and control rarely analysed.

Cinema doesn’t have to be like this. If Mary Poppins proves anything, it’s that mass-entertainment and ideological critique do not need to be pulled apart; that we can take our socially-conscious subversion with, if necessary, a spoonful of sugar to help it go down.

---

Joseph Earp is a staff writer at Junkee. He tweets @JosephOEarp.

Opinion: Missouri politicians said COVID fight was socialism. 

Now the state is No. 1 in new cases

The Kansas City Star Editorial Board

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson.Missouri Governor's Office

The COVID-19 crisis isn’t over, and we shouldn’t act as if it is.

Yes, yes, we’re tired of masks and social distancing. Crowds at the Truman Sports Complex, in the 18th & Vine Jazz District and at the neighborhood pool reflect the hunger for normalcy. At the grocery store, the movie theater, churches and synagogues, masks are gone and grins are back.

Yet the latest numbers in Missouri suggest such overconfidence can be dangerous, or even deadly. The state has led the nation in its rate of new COVID-19 cases over the past week, worrisome evidence that the viral disease is still a problem.

The outbreak is especially concerning in rural areas, where vaccination and isolation are far less common. The new COVID-19 cases include the so-called delta variant, a highly contagious mutation first found in India.

“It is clear that the variant has become prevalent in communities throughout Missouri,” the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services said last week. The viral load found in recent wastewater surveys — a marker for the extent of community spread — has increased dramatically in southwest Missouri, including Springfield and Joplin.

There have been spikes in the Kansas City region as well.

Some of this can be easily blamed on relaxed regulations in cities and in the state. While we would not suggest mayors and Gov. Mike Parson reinstate all previous restrictions, the government must review the new data and be ready in case a partial shutdown is needed.

Missouri’s state of emergency remains in effect until the end of August. Parson should focus on the lingering challenge of the pandemic this summer, instead of engaging in foolish photo ops to endorse anti-constitutional folderol.

But governments can only do so much, particularly since Republican lawmakers have spent the year linking COVID-19 abatement with predatory socialism.

The plain fact is going back to widespread masks and enforceable quarantines is politically impossible in Missouri and other Midwestern states.

That means individuals must take responsibility for protecting themselves. Vaccinated Missourians should be cautious as the new variant spreads — masks can be worn, and contact limited, particularly with the elderly and very young.

But the biggest single step Missourians could take to quash this COVID-19 upturn — and avoid more drastic restrictions — is to get a full round of vaccination against the virus.

To date, just 38% of Missourians are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus. That’s far below the vaccination rate in Virginia, Colorado or California. It’s below the national rate. It’s below the rate needed to protect the state against the upsurge in COVID-19 cases.

In Pemiscot County, in Missouri’s Bootheel, fewer than 20% of residents age 12 or older are fully vaccinated.

“Vaccinations are the best way to stop this virus in its tracks,” said a statement from Robert Knodell, acting director of Missouri DHSS.

To date, Missouri has not offered blanket incentives, such as money or gifts, for those who get vaccinated. At some point, the state may want to provide those incentives. Sadly, for some residents, protection against a deadly disease apparently isn’t incentive enough.

There is simply no good reason to remain unvaccinated. The shot is free, and now widely available. It has proved remarkably effective. For most, there are no serious side effects. And a fully vaccinated population is the best way to slow the spread of new variants.

The COVID-19 crisis is now more than a year old. Life is slowly returning to normal, but it will never be normal unless all of us do what we can to stop the spread of the virus.

That means diligence, caution — and getting the damn shot.

Ron Johnson called Joe Biden 'a liberal, progressive, socialist, Marxist.' Can someone be all those things?

Bill Glauber

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson has been serving up opinions and quotes in various forums the last few weeks, including TV interviews, a virtual press conference and a telephone town hall meeting.

He has said a lot of things as he ponders whether to run for reelection next year.

But perhaps Johnson's most unusual statement came at the beginning of an interview Thursday night with Sean Hannity on Fox News.

Johnson was asked about recent Biden administration moves to block the Keystone pipeline, waive sanctions on the company behind Russia's Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, and drop a Trump administration order targeting Tik Tok.

Johnson replied: "Because he's weak. And don't ask me to get inside the mind of a liberal, progressive, socialist, Marxist like President Biden."

That's a lot of political ideology heaped on one political figure, let alone Biden, who has been in national politics for nearly a half-century.

RELATED:Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson suspended for a week from YouTube after Milwaukee Press Club event

RELATED:Ron Johnson says Capitol attackers 'love this country' but he would have felt unsafe if Black Lives Matter stormed building instead

When asked by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to elaborate on his comments Friday, Johnson didn't go for the big four: liberal, progressive, socialist, Marxist.

In a statement released by his office, Johnson said: “President Biden is exacerbating the problems facing this nation. Border crisis, national debt, international weakness. Who knows what label to apply to these policy catastrophes, but we certainly know he’s no moderate.”

He later tweeted the response.

Let's define the words

Liberal and progressive are often used interchangeably to describe those who believe in using government to back social and political change.

Franklin Roosevelt and the Kennedy brothers were liberals. "Fighting Bob" La Follette was a Wisconsin progressive and leader in an era of social activism and political reform.

Socialist often refers to those believe in socialism, where the state takes responsibility for the health and welfare of their citizenry.

A Marxist refers to those who support the political, social and economic theories of German philosopher Karl Marx, who sought to overturn capitalism.

Joe Biden: 'left liberal' 

Kennan Ferguson, at UW-Milwaukee political science professor, said: "I don't think anybody can be all those things. Certainly the last three are like nesting dolls. Almost all Marxists are socialists and many socialists are progressives. But liberalism in the United States was developed as an anti-Marxist political theory."

Ferguson said by his usage of the words, "Johnson means them all as epithets rather than ideological descriptors. You can see that in that he doesn't know the differences between them."

Richard Avramenko, a UW-Madison political scientist and director for the Center for the Study of Liberal Democracy, said Johnson would have been more accurate to describe Biden as a "left liberal."

RELATED:Ron Johnson disputes scientific consensus on the effectiveness of masks in preventing spread of COVID-19

RELATED:Meet the five Democrats already running for Ron Johnson's seat in Wisconsin's 2022 Senate race

"Liberals, socialists and Marxists are, by definition, progressives," Avramenko said in an email. "But Biden is not a 'classical liberal' (i.e., libertarian) — he’s a 'left liberal.' "

Avramenko added, "If he said, 'Don't ask me to get inside the mind of a liberal, progressive, socialist, Marxist — whatever you want to label him — like President Biden' it would have been less questionable."

So, what's really going on here?

Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette University Law School Poll, said that "for folks on the right, at this point those labels have become more or less synonymous regardless of what their dictionary meanings are. From my point of view it represents the blending together of these terms without much care or concern for the actual substantial differences in meaning in those four words."

"But from Senator Johnson's point of view they're kind of indistinguishable from one another and therefore stringing them together in one label is not that stunning," Franklin said.

RED SCARE 2.0
FLORIDA

DeSantis signs education bills that target communism, socialists

By RICHARD TRIBOU
ORLANDO SENTINEL 
JUN 22, 2021

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed three education bills championed by the Republican Legislature and governor that they say aim to increase civics understanding among Florida students.

Appearing at a press conference at a Fort Myers middle school on Tuesday, he signed House Bill 5 that directs the state Department of Education to come up with a curriculum that educates students on the evils of communism and totalitarian regimes like Venezuela and Nicaragua.

DeSantis decried how some educators will praise people like Mao Zedong, who helped create communist China and Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara.

“This guy was a total communist thug,” DeSantis said. “We’re going to be pushing back on a lot of the whitewashing that’s been done.”

Also signed were Senate Bill 1108 that aims bridge civics education between high school and secondary schools, and House Bill 233, which aims to require colleges and universities to conduct annual assessments on intellectual freedom.

DeSantis complained current higher education institutions in the United States have become repressive environments in which “other viewpoints are shunned or even suppressed.”

DeSantis also pointed out how he had led a movement recently by the State Board of Education to ban the teaching of critical race theory, which DeSantis has said is too critical of American history because of the ways it address racism. Among things banned by the board would be using The New York Times’ 1619 Project, which puts slavery at the center of the story of how the country was founded. The project faced fierce criticism from former President Donald Trump and some historians.

“We do not want false history like you see in the 1619 project,” DeSantis said.

THE NEW MCARTHYISM

Florida governor signs anti-socialist education bills, requiring students and professors to register political views

Alex Johnson
25 June 2021

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law this week several reactionary education bills aimed at vilifying socialism within schools. The legislation targets civics education courses in K-12 schools and penalizes state universities that do not bolster right-wing conversative ideology on campuses.

Ron Desantis speaking at the 2018 Student Action Summit hosted by Turning Point USA at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida (Photo: Gage Skidmore)

At a signing event for the three bills, held at a middle school in Fort Myers, the governor invoked fascistic and anti-communist rhetoric. He amalgamated communist and left-wing movements with “totalitarian governments” while smearing them as “evil” ideologies.

DeSantis’ denounced governments in countries such as Cuba and Nicaragua. “Why would somebody flee across shark infested waters, say leaving from Cuba, to come to southern Florida?” DeSantis asked. “Why would somebody leave a place like Vietnam...and risk their life to be able to come here?”

DeSantis complained of some educators praising figures such as the Chinese Stalinist Mao Zedong and Che Guevara. He denounced Guevara as a “total communist thug” before proclaiming that he was going to push back against the “whitewashing that’s been done.”

Two of the bills are directed towards restructuring “civics education” in K-12 curriculums with the purpose of promulgating nationalism and militarism. The laws will require schools to develop “portraits in patriotism” within civic courses, which are meant to tell stories and “first-person accounts” of victims of ostensibly communist governments which are then compared with the more supposedly democratic US.

The laws will mandate that state universities teach similar chauvinistic and anti-communist courses, with college students now required to pass a “civic literacy” assessment exam and take a course on civic literacy to graduate. High school students will also have to take a new civic literacy assessment exam. If high school students pass that exam, the university civics requirements will be waived.

The final bill is fraudulently presented as a measure to protect “free speech” rights at state universities. In justifying this bill, DeSantis declared that schools will not be able to prevent students from encountering political and ideological views they find “uncomfortable, unwelcome, disagreeable, or offensive.” He claimed that right-wing ideas are being “shunned” and “suppressed” on campuses that have turned into “intellectually repressive environments.”

Hidden in this bill is a requirement that college students and professors register political views with the state, an unprecedented and provocative encroachment on political expression.

Public universities will be required to survey both faculty and students on their political beliefs, and they will risk losing their funding if the responses do not satisfy the fascistic orientation of the state’s Republican-dominated legislature.

An article in Salon notes, “Based on the bill's language, survey responses will not necessarily be anonymous — sparking worries among many professors and other university staff that they may be targeted, held back in their careers or even fired for their beliefs.”

At a meeting of the state university system’s Board of Governors Tuesday, Florida Senate President Wilton Simpson called the public universities “socialism factories.” Neither DeSantis, Simpson, or any of the other fascistic Republicans provided any evidence or details on what specifically about schools caused them to be disproportionately left-wing.

The Miami Herald released an interview it conducted with Barney Bishop, one of the top lobbyists pushing the bill in Florida’s legislature, pointing to the real motivations behind the raft of fascistic laws, saying that they are aimed less at promoting “intellectual diversity” and more about boosting conservative Christian orthodoxy and other right-wing ideology.

Bishop complained of students “being indoctrinated from an early age,” and that the education system unfairly leans “toward liberal ideology and also secularism,” which were “not the values our country was founded upon.”

The Republicans are likewise seeking to preempt any growth of opposition against the status quo, under conditions where the capitalist system is being massively discredited due the ruling-class’ murderous pandemic policies, which have led to more than 610,000 deaths in the US, and the growth of staggering levels of social inequality which have left many college students and younger workers impoverished.

The campaign to condemn and demonize socialist, communist, or otherwise left-wing perspectives is a massive anti-democratic assault on public education. The laws in Florida are part of a far broader move of the far-right nationwide that sees schools as a battleground for waging attacks against any ideology that may pose a political challenge to social inequality, political repression, and war.

These education laws have been passed following the efforts of several Republican-led states, including Florida, to implement legislation that bans the teaching of “divisive concepts” relating to race, sex and class in public schools. Florida was one of the first states in early June that banned the teaching of Critical Race Theory. In giving right-wing cover for this blatant act of censorship, DeSantis said the banning of CRT was necessary to prevent children from thinking that “the country is rotten and that our institutions are illegitimate.”

While the media and Democrats have focused on the Republicans’ attack on CRT, the bills are in fact a sweeping assault on democratic rights. Their aim is to ban any left-wing critique of capitalist society, under conditions of a growing political radicalization of workers and particularly young people.

WSWS.ORG

Right-wing think tank walks back absurd critical race theory advisory

Fernando Ramirez

July 1, 2021

The werewolves at the Texas Public Policy Foundation got a good look at the moon Wednesday and revealed a little too much about themselves. 

In a since-deleted tweet, the conservative think tank shared a guide for how to spot critical race theory in the classroom. They warn parents that their children may be victims of critical race theory if buzzworthy terms such as “equity” or “anti-racism” are tossed around at school:

Critical race theory is a four-decade movement in academia that examines how racism affects legal, social, and political institutions. 

Today, the phrase has become a boogeyman for all things that might make a rightwing person uncomfortable — power structures, prejudice, Black lives matter, and many of the other things listed above in the encyclopedia of wrong-thought, brought to you by the folks that worship individual liberty (liberation, by the way, is one of the no-no words too). 

One of the dangerous terms is “colonialism.” Another is “racial hierarchies.” Good luck teaching Texas history without them. 

The Texas Public Policy Foundation deleted the tweet after facing sharp criticism throughout much of the day. 

“Thank you to the party of free speech for this list of words I’m not allowed to say,” wrote one Twitter user. 

Another user amusingly converted the list into a menu at the Cheesecake Factory.

The incident is part of a larger effort by rightwing conversatives to convince Americans that their children are being indoctrinated or brainwashed at school. 

In June, Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill into law codifying the moral panic behind critical race theory. The legislation came about after Republicans lawmakers raised concerns about a Dallas area elementary school recommending a picture book about racism and white privilege.  

So far, Texas is among 26 states in the nation that have seen lawmakers introduce legislation to restrict the teaching of critical race theory.

 

Op-Ed: Socialism isn’t scaring away Latinos, it’s uniting us.

Benjamin Salinas

June 7, 2021

Another election has passed with another Republican victory in South Texas. Political pundits and the media are convinced that the once Democratic stronghold of South Texas is turning more and more Republican because of socialism. That couldn’t be further from the truth.

As a native South Texan, I grew up around these people. They were my neighbors, classmates, and community members you’d always see at the Friday night football games. They love their families, God, and this country, but that doesn’t make them Republicans.

Many pundits will point to these values as to why Texas Latinos are becoming more “conservative,” but we’ve always had these values! From as young as I can remember, my grandma would always explain to me which values were important to her. Among them were family, community, and honesty. These values don’t inherently mean that Latinos are more likely to vote Republican, because Latinos, like other working class people, also care about economic issues.

Growing up in South Texas, I was no stranger to poverty or homeslessness. According to the 2010 Census, the counties that border Mexico are among the poorest in the state and country. This lack of economic opportunity is a prime motivator for election turnout.

The growing wealth gap is even more extreme among Latinos, meaning that we’re often paid less for work than our white colleagues, in an era where we are already experiencing record-breaking wealth inequality. What Democrats need at this moment is an economic message that resonates with these people. So far, Democrats haven’t had a coherent message and that’s what has driven more Latino voters to the Republicans, because at least Republicans can pretend to be economically populist.

The 2020 Democratic Primary proves that a strong economic populist message can resonate with Latinos, not just in Texas but across the country. Look at Bernie’s early performance before the other candidates dropped out. Bernie blew all the other candidates out of the water with his Nevada performance, which has a large Latino population. Then look at the Texas primary results, Joe Biden may have won after the rest of the field dropped out and endorsed him, but despite that, Bernie dominated with Latinos in South Texas.

Furthermore, Latinos have a strong history and relationship with socialism. Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), a member of Socialist International, ruled the country for over 70 years. Right now in Mexico, the ruling party is a big-tent left-wing party known as MORENA. Not to mention the many historic and current socialist governments elsewhere in Latin America.

What more proof do you need that this type of economic populism is a winning campaign strategy? Whether you’re a Latino in South Texas or a Latino in Los Angeles, economic populism resonates with them. Bernie wasn’t crazy, he was right. The people are demanding action to improve their material conditions; it’s about time Democrats returned to their FDR roots and took a more left-wing approach to economic issues. You’d be surprised at the things we could accomplish with an economic message that resonates across ethnic, racial, religious, and geographic barriers.

Socialism was never the problem, but it could be our solution and path to political dominance.

Benjamin Salinas is Texas Signal’s social media manager, former Campus Leader for the Bernie 2020 campaign, and a native of Alice, Texas.

Why America’s most high profile socialist lawmaker is fighting for her political life

Capitalists will be ‘emboldened’ if she loses recall battle, Seattle’s Kshama Sawant tells Andrew Buncombe

Thursday 24 June 2021

The former software engineer was first elected to Seattle City Council in 2013
(Getty)

Put in her own words, what is happening amounts to one of the “worst attacks on America’s left in decades”. It is perhaps not quite as high profile or significant as the 2016 undertaking by the Democratic establishment to undermine the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders. But it is similar, “a full frontal assault on the idea that the working class can fight back”.

Furthermore, warns Kshama Sawant, if her opponents are successful, then “the right wing and the ruling class and the capitalists will be even more emboldened to carry out further attacks on the left”.


We are sitting outside a coffee shop in Seattle’s Central District, and the warm afternoon air is suddenly peppered with the language of Marxist rebellion – of elites and workers, of unions and rights, of people coming together and fighting for a revolution

Sawant, 47, represents ward three on Seattle City Council and, as a member of the Socialist Alternative party, is by many assessments the most long-serving and highest-profile socialist politician in the country.

Buffalo is on the cusp of electing its first socialist, female mayor

While Sanders, 79, and the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 31, may support some socialist policies, both campaigned for the Democratic Party, which despite the wild-eyed claims of Donald Trump and some other Republicans, is not a socialist organisation. (Sanders remains an independent, though he invariably votes with the Democrats.)

By contrast, Sawant’s Socialist Alternative describes itself as Marxist, and seeks to create a mass workers movement that would support free health care and education and lead an “international struggle against the failed system” of capitalism.

Yet, Sawant’s time may be up. The threat she has been talking about is an an attempt to oust her from the council by means of a so-called recall election.


In essence, if her opponents manage to collect the signatures of a little more than 10,000 residents of ward three, an election will be held in which her constituents will be asked if they want to hold onto her as their council member, or have her replaced.

Sawant and her supporters claim the recall is an undemocratic undertaking, backed and supported by “millionaires and billionaires” angered by her pro-working class agenda. Those behind the recall allege Sawant broke the law last summer, during the protests for racial justice that swept the country after the murder of George Floyd.

In particular they allege she improperly opened the buildings of the council chamber to host 1,000 protesters during a Covid lockdown, and led demonstrators to the home of the city’s mayor, Jenny Durkan, where she had called for her impeachment.

]

Signs for and against the recall are popping up in Seattle’s ward three
(Andrew Buncombe)

Durkan had for several years demanded to keep her address confidential, and out of the public record, citing safety issues because of her previous work as a senior federal prosecutor. “We demand action now,” Sawant had said outside Durkan’s home.

In the days that followed, Durkan accused Sawant of putting people’s safety at risk, and called for her to be to be kicked from the council.

Sawant defended her actions, saying: “This is an attack on working people’s movements, and everything we are fighting for, by a corporate politician desperately looking to distract from her failures of leadership and politically bankrupt administration.”

When Sawant was first elected in 2013, she was the first socialist on the Seattle city council since Anna Louise Strong, a celebrated journalist and activist, won a seat on the school board in 1916. At the time she was the only elected socialist in the nation.

What’s more, the policies she was pushing, in particular for a $15-per hour minimum wage, were out of touch with much of the country.

Barely a decade later, even centrists such as Joe Biden back the “fight for $15”, while younger generation of politicians, including not only Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, but Cori Bush and Janeese Lewis George, have embraced the term “socialism” without fear of an electoral backlash.

This week, India Walton, a socialist and activist, won the Democratic primary to be mayor of Buffalo, and will likely become the first socialist mayor of a major city since 1960.

Police attack protesters with pepper spray in Seattle

All have joined the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), a political organisation rather than a party, even if they are still members of the Democratic Party.

Sawant welcomes no longer being a lone torchbearer.

“[The fact] a lot of elected officials refer to themselves as socialists, I see as an extremely positive development. We showed in 2013, you can be a self-described socialist and that won't be a barrier to you being elected,” she says

“The fact so many socialists have been elected in the United States shows we are in a completely new period – we’re not in the Cold War era anymore. The younger generation has no negative baggage related to socialism. In fact, it's a very positive connotation.”

Sawant pays much credit to Bernie Sanders for never shying away from the word socialist. Yet, she claims the revolution Sanders says the nation needs cannot be secured from working inside the Democratic Party.

“Because at the end of the day, the Democratic Party, while it may have differences with the Republican Party, still represents the interests of Wall Street, of the capitalists,” she says.

Seattle was the first major US city to pass a $15-per hour minimum wage, doing so by a unanimous vote in 2014, a year after Sawant’s election. She won ward three, which includes the Capitol Hill neighbourhood, part of which last summer was ceded to protesters who for a month established a theoretically autonomous zone, known as the Chop (Capitol Hill Occupied Protest), until it was cleared by police.

John Nichols, national affairs correspondent of The Nation, a progressive magazine, credits Sawant with helping ensure such issues as the minimum wage received national attention.

“She broke through in the doldrums of American socialism, before Bernie had run for president, before the DSA had its explosive growth,” says Nichols, author of The S Word: A Short History of an American Tradition – Socialism. “Her victory was a shock, it was a wake up call.”

Nichols says Sawant’s victory had much to do with what was happening in Seattle, a city that was rapidly undergoing the gentrification and economic transformation that has impacted other cities. Her win particularly excited progressives, he says, because of the unabashed nature of her positions, and because she had such “clear politics, [and a] clear set of policies”

.
Henry Bridger II says politicians must be held accountable
(Andrew Buncombe)

In addition to her push for a $15-per hour minimum wage, as a member of the city council Sawant backed a move, known as the head tax, that would have levied a charge on big employers such as Amazon, to fund services for the homeless. The measure was passed, before being repealed after opposition from the business community. (A subsequent version, known as the “JumpStart tax” was later passed.)

In 2019, Amazon controversially threw itself into Seattle city politics, spending $1.5m in support of a number of candidates for the city council it considered “pro-business”, including a challenger to Sawant. Despite its efforts, she was re-elected for a third term.

Sawant, who has been vocal in her opposition to the US’s support of Israel as well as supportive of measures such as rent control and protection against eviction, claims the region’s “corporate elite” is now backing the recall petition in an effort to get rid of her. Among the donors to the recall effort are Doug Herrington, a senior vice president at Amazon, David Stephenson, the chief financial officer at Airbnb, and Jeannie Nordstrom, a member of a department store empire, though the maximum any business or person can contribute by law is $1,000. (The Airbnb official donated just $150, records suggest, while Herrington and Nordstrom gave $1,000.)

Sawant claims her donors, by contrast, are baristas, teachers, and healthcare workers, the “whole gamut of the working class”.

“I don’t have a crystal ball,” she adds. “But I will tell you exactly what is going to happen if the recall succeeds – there will be a stunning attempt to roll back many of the victories we have won. But more than that, it will be a chilling effect on social movements.”

Airbnb had no comment about its CFO’s contribution, a Nordstrom spokesperson also declined to comment, while an Amazon spokesperson, Glenn Kuper, asked about Herrington’s donation, said: “As engaged residents and voters, our employees are welcome to support or oppose any issue or candidate they wish to in their personal capacity.”

Henry Bridger II is chair of the Recall Sawant campaign. A longtime Seattle resident, he says he voted for Sawant in 2013, though has not done so since.]
Sawant joined protesters outside a Seattle police station during last year’s racial justice demonstrations
(Getty)

He claims, however, the effort to recall Sawant is not driven by any political differences he and others may have with her, but that she broke the law. The recall campaign alleges that in addition to leading a march to the mayor’s house and hosting a protest inside city hall, in early 2020 she misused city council resources to push a ballot initiative.

(Sawant has claimed she did nothing wrong in regard to any of the allegations. However, in May she admitted misusing official resources for a ballot measure before a city ethics commission. At the time she said she “did not wilfully disregard any ethics rules”.)

Bridger insists the allegations levelled at Sawant are serious issues, and says the campaign is supported by a broad swathe of voters. He rejects assertions it is being backed by millionaires and billionaires.

“I care about any politician who breaks the law. I really do, because they impact us,” he says. “She broke the law, and we’ve already seen what happened with Trump, and how nothing sticks … It has to be done. Somebody has to step up.”

Does he equate Sawant’s alleged actions with Trump’s actions ahead of the 6 January storming of the US Capitol by his supporters?

“Absolutely. It’s the same thing,” he says. “At city hall, she endangered employees who were there by bringing in hundreds of people in the middle of a pandemic. You don’t do that, you don’t break the law, just because you feel doing it is going to get you what you want.”

Bridger, 55, who is currently unemployed, says the campaign is already more than halfway to reaching the 10,739 signatures it needs, a figure that represents 25 per cent of the total votes votes for the seat in 2019. If it gets to that figure, a recall election would proceed later this year, and people would decide whether to keep Sawant or oust her. If she loses her seat, the council will appoint a replacement.

In April, Washington state’s highest court dismissed an appeal by Sawant and ruled the petition process could move forward. It set campaigners a 180-day deadline to get the required signatures.

In the weeks since then, the fight on both sides has taken on a fresh intensity, with volunteers taking to the streets, to collect names, both for the recall, and in support of Sawant.

As spring arrived in the city, lighting up ward three in fruit and flower blossoms, posters for both sides – red, white and blue for the recall, and red and white for her solidarity campaign – have filled people’s windows, lawns or gardens, sometimes mingling with the roses and azaleas.

A middle-aged woman, tending to her garden on the east of the Capitol Hill district, says she supports the recall. “I would like her to represent the neighbourhood better, rather than seeking media attention,” she says.

The woman, who asks not to be named, admits the neighbourhood has changed, but says that Sawant is not interested in representing the tax-paying middle classes.

“She acts as if it is 30 years ago,” she says.

A short walk away, another woman, Lola Rogers, 56, says she is against the recall and has voted for Sawant. She says her opponents are most likely angry because of her staunch support of policies such as the $15-per hour minimum wage.

“Her goal is to spread socialist ideology,” says Rogers, who works as literary translator, specialising in Finnish.

Rogers says Sawant may not be everybody’s taste, but that she has worked hard in ward three.

“I might not want to hang out with her, or be her friend,” she says. “But I like her being on the council.”

This article was amended on 29 June 2021 to include the fact that in May this year Ms Sawant admitted having misused official resources for a ballot measure, but that at the time she said she had not wilfully disregarded any ethics rules.

From Eugene Debs to Bernie Sanders: America’s most famous socialists

Many may be surprised US history is dotted with socialists

Andrew Buncombe
Seattle@AndrewBuncombe
Thursday 24 June 2021

There was a time in the United States – especially at the height of the Cold War – when the label “socialist” or “communist” was so toxic it could get you ostracised or worse.

Yet, from the very early days of the nation, including the ideas of founding father Tom Paine, such ideas have flourished.

In the 1920s and 1930s, socialists running for office received huge numbers of votes, and many held elected offices.

Author John Nichols says that after Kshama Sawant was elected to Seattle City Council and he was asked by the media for his analysis, he often had to correct interviewers that she was in no way the first socialist voted in by electors.

But she was the first for many years, and the first on Seattle city’s council for a century.

“She's actually a sort of a renewal in many ways, of something that we saw a lot of a century ago,” Mr Nichols, author of The S Word: A Short History of an American Tradition - Socialism, told The Independent. “You used to have a lot of elected socialists all over.”

He added: “She was a new iteration.”

And just this week, India Walton, a socialist and activist, who had never before held office, won the Democratic primary for the mayor of Buffalo, all but ensuring her of victory, given the New York city has not had a Republican mayor for decades.

Given the rich tradition of socialism in the country, a fact that may surprise some, there are a lot of individuals who would fit the label “socialist”, even if if some of them would require a caveat, or footnote. Here are some of the most well known:


Eugene V Debs

Eugene Debs of the Socialist Party of the USA made five bids for the US presidency
(Getty Images)

Debs, born in 1855, was an activist, orator, trade union member and politician. Initially, he was a member of the Democratic Party and was elected to the Indiana state legislature in 1884. After becoming more interested in the trades union movement, establishing the American Railway Union, his views shifted to the the left. He help found three socialist political parties, the Social Democracy of America, the Social Democratic Party of America, and the Socialist Party of America.

He made five bids for the presidency as a socialist, one of them from a jail cell, having been sentenced for his role in a strike. He had declared: “As a revolutionist I can have no respect for capitalist property laws, nor the least scruple about violating them.

“I hold all such laws to have been enacted through chicanery, fraud and corruption, with the sole end in view of dispossessing, robbing and enslaving the working class.”

His most successful bid was in 1912, when he received 6 per cent of the total vote. He died in 1926, at the age of 70.


Norman Thomas

Norman Thomas ran six times for president as a socialist
(Getty Images)

Thomas, a church minister and pacifist who was born in Ohio in 1884, made bids for governor, mayor and the US senate as candidate for the Socialist Party of America. More famously, he also made six bids for the presidency, his first following the death in 1926 of fellow socialist Eugene Debs.

His first bid was in 1932, which saw a massive landslide for Democratic challenger Franklin Delano Roosevelt over the Republican incumbent, Herbert Hoover.

Thomas bagged 2.2 per cent of the popular vote. When he tried again in 1936, he only managed less than half-a-percentage point.

Thomas, who died in 1968 at the age of 84, once told Republican Barry Goldwater: “We are socialists because we believe this income which we all cooperate in making isn’t divided as it ought to be.”

Anna Louise Strong

Strong, who was born in Nebraska in 1885, packed in much to a life that broke down barriers, and pushed the envelope for women.

In 1916 she was elected as a member of the Seattle school board as a socialist, where she worked for the interests of poor children and their families. The daughter of Christian activists, she later became a journalist and wrote in support of the Seattle General Strike of 1919, saying: “We are undertaking the most tremendous move ever made by labor in this country, a move which will lead—NO ONE KNOWS WHERE!”

She spent much of time visiting the Soviet Union and China, where she interviewed Joseph Stalin, and founded the Moscow News, the city’s first English-language newspaper. She also interviewed many leading Chinese leaders, including Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong.

In 1949, she was expelled from the USSR amid allegations she was a spy. She returned to the US where she faced investigation from the CIA, and her passport was taken. When it was returned, in 1958, she returned to China where she befriended Mao, and where she would spend the rest of her life. She died in 1970 at the age of 84.

Bernie Sanders
Bernie Sanders has never shied away from word ‘socialism’
(Getty Images)

The former mayor of Burlington, Vermont, has always described himself a democratic socialist, rather than a Marxist or communist.

Yet, throughout his career, he has never shied away from the word socialism, and his policies have always put the needs of working people at their core. Elected to Congress and then the Senate as an independent, he has invariably caucused and voted with the Democrats.

In 2016 and 2020 he sought the party’s presidential nomination, exciting millions of progressives with his enthusiasm. He helped make a number of policies – such a higher minimum wage, free healthcare, higher taxes for the rich – more mainstream than they ever had been.

Sanders, 79, also inspired inspired a new generation of progressive and socialist politicians, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.

Angela Davis


Angela Davis investigated US prison system in one of her ten books
(AFP via Getty Images)

Born in 1944, Davis is a writer, academic, and life-long communist.

Having been born in Birmingham, Alabama, she studied French, before moving to Germany where she studied philosophy and political science. When she returned to the US she became increasingly involved in socialist activism, and twice was the vice presidential candidate for the Communist Party USA, which was formed in 1919.

She once said: “The American judicial system is bankrupt. In so far as black people are concerned, it has proven itself to be one more arm of a system carrying out the systematic oppression of our people. We are the victims, not the recipients of justice.”

Davis has written more than 10 books, including an investigation into what she termed the US’s prison–industrial complex.

Now aged 77, Davis is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

In 1991, she helped establish a new socialist party, the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, and has been a member ever since.

Kshama Sawant

Kshama Sawant was first elected to Seattle City Council in 2013
(AFP via Getty Images)

The 47-year-old former software engineer was elected to Seattle City Council in 2013, as a member of the Socialist Alternative, a Marxist party seeking worldwide revolution.

She immediately began pressing for policies such as a $15-per hour minimum wage, and a year after her election, Seattle became the first major city in the US to pass such legislation. She has been re-elected twice.

Sawant has frequently denounced the impact of major companies such as Amazon on Seattle, saying they have helped speed up the pace of gentrification and pushed up the cost of affordable housing. 
She is currently trying to defend herself against the prospect of a recall election, organised by critics who claim she broke the law when the let protesters into city hall last summer.

She has denied any wrong doing and told The Independent: “I don't have a crystal ball. But I will tell you exactly what is going to happen if the recall succeeds – there will be a stunning attempt to roll back many of the victories we have won. But more than that, it will be a chilling effect on social movements.”

India Walton

(The Buffalo News via AP)

India Walton, a nurse and activist, had never held office before. But she recently won the Democratic primary for the mayor of Buffalo, New York, running as a socialist.

If she wins in the general election later this year, as she is expected to do, she would be the first socialist mayor of a major US city since Frank Zeidler, who was mayor of Milwaukee until 1960.

Backed by both the Working Families Party and the Democratic Socialists of America, the 38-year-old told the New York Times she was keen to avoid labels.

“I don’t think reality has completely sunk in yet,” she told the newspaper. “I’m India from down the way, little poor Black girl who, statistically speaking, shouldn’t have amounted to much, yet here I am. This is proof that Black women and women belong everywhere in positions of power and positions of leadership, and I’m just super-excited.”