Socialists are used to having a lot of mud flung at us. To be a socialist is to be accused of being totalitarian, utopian, delusional, and even anti-American. One learns to brush this stuff off and move on. Critics of socialism usually do not try to understand the actual positions of socialists. They have done little reading on the subject and demonstrate almost no familiarity with the literature of the left. They attribute to us positions we do not hold, and then explain why those invented positions are ridiculous. Instead of treating socialists as useful citizens, which we are, critics treat us as the enemies of reason. This has been going on for as long as socialism has existed, the tactics the same from generation to generation.The contemporary American right, always in need of useful bogeymen to terrify the public in order to maintain the economic status quo, has declared that socialism is a hostile internal enemy to be destroyed.1

To attempt to respond to every bit of nonsense said against socialism would be a full-time job. I have done my best to address the major arguments in my books Why You Should Be a Socialist and Responding to the Right (forthcoming, pre-order now!) as well as in articles like this 9,000 word response to the National Reviews special socialism issue, this 16,000-word review of Rand Pauls The Case Against Socialism, this 6,000-word review of Dinesh DSouzas United States of Socialism, and other response pieces. In a society governed by reason, my patient refutations would have settled the matter. Yet attacks on socialism persist, and I am reluctantly forced to the conclusion that reason may play only a limited role in American political discourse.

The latest broadside against the socialist worldview comes from economics blogger Noah Smith, who has written an article called The American socialist worldview is totally broken. Smith attacks socialists over both their foreign policy analysis and their domestic policy agenda, and suggests that the American socialist movement is embracing ridiculous and reprehensible positions that will lead us to be a marginalized kooky fringe forever. The charge is a serious one, so let us deal with it carefully.

Smith begins his argument by attacking eminent linguist and foreign policy analyst Noam Chomsky over comments Chomsky recently made about the war in Ukraine on the Current Affairs podcast. Chomsky argued that the U.S. is not doing enough to bring about peace in Ukraine, and said that this country should be pushing for a diplomatic settlement. Chomsky said that it appears the U.S. government might even wish to prolong the war in Ukraine, because a never-ending quagmire would weaken Russia. He cited Zbignew Brzezinskis admission that the U.S. tried to draw the Soviet Union into Afghanistan to give it a Vietnam-like disastrous war, and noted recent comments from Hillary Clinton indicating that some U.S. policy-makers may be hoping for something similar in Ukraine. Chomsky said that the humane alternative is for the U.S. to try to broker peace as soon as possible.

Many people on Twitter got upset about Chomskys comments, to the point where his Current Affairs interview was even a trending topic on the platform. A number of commentators, including Smith, voiced outrage at Chomskys comments, saying that he was instructing Ukraine to surrender. In his article attacking socialism, Smith elaborates:

The arrogance of this kind of armchair quarterbacking is breathtaking an American public intellectual dictating territorial and diplomatic concessions to Ukraine. Chomsky uses the word we to describe the parties that he imagines will make these concessions to Russia, but the first person pronoun is totally unwarranted it is 100% Ukraines decision how much of their territory and their people to surrender to an invader who is engaging in mass murder, mass rape, and mass removal to concentration camps in the areas it has conquered. It is 0% Noam Chomskys decision.

As Ben Burgis explains at The Daily Beast, the idea that Chomsky was advocating for Ukraine to surrender is absurd. Nor does he take Putins side in the conflict, which he called an act of aggressive war and criminal stupidity that serves nobodys interests (except maybe those of U.S. weapons companies). Chomsky explicitly praised Ukrainian president Zelensky and the Ukrainian resistance to Russian aggression, and has endorsed U.S. material support for Ukraine. What he argued is that the war could drag out interminably, like the war in Vietnam or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, or it could end with a negotiated settlement, and like any settlement of a conflict it will probably involve some unsatisfying concessions.

We should be able to agree, then, that Chomskys substantive point about the possible paths the war can take is perfectly reasonable. But the other objection that Smith and many others made is that Chomsky is making Ukraines decisions for them. It is not the place of Americans to say how the conflict ought to be resolved. They are not our concessions to make, for this is not our war.

But there is simply no avoiding the fact that the United States is already making policy choices that are deliberately calculated to influence the course of the war in Ukraine. We are spending billons of dollars funneling weapons into this war to influence its outcome. As socialist writer Freddie deBoer wrote in a blistering response to Smith, calls for the United States to deepen its involvement in this conflict are definitionally the business of each and every American. Veteran U.S. diplomat Chas Freeman explained that the U.S. has made a choice not to be part of any effort to end the fighting or to attempt mediation, preferring weapons aid. (A policy that U.S. weapons companies are thrilled by, incidentally.) Chomskys critique is that we appear to be making our current policy choice not just because we want to help Ukraine, but also because, from our self-interested perspective, ending the war is not a priority.

In fact, a long war may be preferable to a short one because it would further weaken Russia, which the U.S. has openly admitted is one of its goals. The Biden administration has declared that we want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it cant do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine, which the Guardian notes suggest[s] that even if Russian forces withdrew or were expelled from the Ukrainian territory they have occupied since 24 February, the US and its allies would seek to maintain sanctions with the aim of stopping Russia reconstituting its forces. This strategy shift means the Biden administration wants to go beyond ending the war in Ukraine and appears to want to use the war to hobble Russias military power entirely, an extreme goal that the New York Times says is bound to reinforce President Vladimir V. Putins oft-stated belief that the war is really about the Wests desire to choke off Russian power and destabilize his government and means the U.S. government is becoming more explicit about the future they see: years of continuous contest for power and influence with Moscow that in some ways resembles what President John F. Kennedy termed the long twilight struggle of the Cold War. The Times notes that this strategy of deliberately turning the war in Ukraine into a broader power struggle with Russia carries some risks, something of an understatement given that even the administration admits a U.S.-Russia war would be World War III.

Indeed, an extraordinary article in the Washington Post reports the awkward reality that for some in NATO, its better for the Ukrainians to keep fighting, and dying, than to achieve a peace that comes too early or at too high a cost to Kyiv and the rest of Europe. (emphasis added) The article notes that NATO countries do not think it is purely up to Ukraine to decide when and how to end the war. Indeed, the headline is: NATO says Ukraine to decide on peace deal with Russiawithin limits. (Again, emphasis added.) In other words, how and when to end the war is completely Ukraines choiceunless they make the wrong choice.2 This is because some NATO allies are especially cautious about ceding Ukrainian territory to Russia and giving Russian President Vladimir Putin any semblance of victory. But why is it NATO allies who should determine what concessions Ukraine ought to make?

The ugly truth, noted by Chomsky, is that the United States does not care about Ukraine out of a principled belief in standing up for the worlds victims against aggression. We ourselves claim the right to invade and destroy any country we like, with immense civilian casualties that simply go ignored in this country. We have a long, long history of wreaking violent havoc and doing nothing to repair the damage or compensate the victims, and could not care less about Palestinian or Yemeni victims of terror. We support Ukraine because it has been attacked by Russia, a rival power. This does not mean that weapons aid to Ukraine shouldnt be given, but it does mean that the U.S. has an interest in helping Ukraine that goes beyond simply caring about human lives, namely the interest in weakening a strategic competitor. Undermining rival powers is explicitly part of U.S. national policy. James Mattis, in delivering the 2018 National Defense Strategy, stated directly that great power competitionnot terrorismis now the primary focus of U.S. national security and the Defense Departments principal priorities are long-term strategic competitions with China and Russia.

Anyone who thinks the Chomsky point pays insufficient attention to Ukraines needs and desires, then, has it completely backwards. The argument is precisely that we should act in the interests of Ukraine rather than using Ukraine for our own geostrategic ends. Chomsky quotes Chas Freeman saying our present policy is that we are willing to fight to the last Ukrainian, i.e. we will not try to end the war, but we also will not fight it. We could be proposing a peace framework to try to minimize damage to Ukraine. Instead, we are making it more difficult to achieve a negotiated peace by being coy about the conditions under which sanctions on Russia would be lifted. As James Acton of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace noted, this ambiguity is dangerous because it risks obscuring the existence of an off-ramp for Putin. If the U.S. wont lift sanctions until Putin stands trial for war crimes in the Hague (war crimes trials, like helping victims of aggression, are something else that we suddenly believe in solely because believing in them has become convenient), then we are disincentivizing Putin from ending the war, by making it clear that punitive sanctions will probably remain in place regardless of whether he withdraws or not.

Smith believes that the socialist take on foreign policy is that the worlds wars are caused by U.S. imperialism driven by manufactured consent and the greedy military-industrial complex. This caricature is based on a misunderstanding of our position, though it is an easy mistake to make if you dont care to spend any time understanding that position. (For a thoughtful introduction to the basic left foreign policy stance, one can read this Jacobin conversation between two of the millennial lefts foremost foreign policy thinkers, Bernie Sanders adviser Matt Duss and foreign relations historian Daniel Bessner. The late Michael Brooks was also an intelligent and valuable commentator on foreign affairs whose insight is much missed.) Critics of the left call us things like the Blame America First crowd or say we attribute all the evil in the world to the U.S., or we deny the agency of other actors on the global stage. But this is not the case. First, the reason U.S. leftists talk primarily about the responsibilities and crimes of the U.S. is the same reason that Russian dissidents talk about the crimes of Russia: its our country, and is the one whose policies we have some measure of say over. This was a point that Chomsky once tried patiently to explain to a young David Frum, who thought Chomsky didnt care about the misdeeds of other countries. It was not that Chomsky thought other countries did not perpetrate evils, but that our own evils are the ones we are especially responsible for.

The worlds wars have many causes. But the United States, as the country whose economic and military power remains unmatched by any other global actor, has a major effect on what happens in the world, and we are frequently oblivious to how our actions look through the eyes of others. Nor does the U.S. media pay nearly as much attention to victims of U.S. crimes and the crimes of our allies as it does to the crimes of rivals and enemies. Interestingly, this is the point Chomsky was making in a quote Smith cites to discredit him, in which Chomsky critiqued the U.S. media for emphasizing alleged Khmer Rouge atrocities and downplaying or ignoring the crucial U.S. role, direct and indirect, in the torment that Cambodia has suffered. Smith criticizes Chomsky for playing down the Khmer Rouges culpability in the Cambodian Genocide. Its true that Chomsky was too slow to recognize the full extent of the Khmer Rouge horror, but what Smith leaves out is that a far worse and longer act of Cambodian genocide denial was perpetrated by the U.S. government itself. Zbignew Brzezinski said that while the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime was in power, the U.S. encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot and winked, semi-publicly at Chinese and Thai aid to the Khmer Rouge. Henry Kissinger said when the Khmer Rouge came to power we will be friends with them. They are murderous thugs, but we wont let that stand in our way. After the Pol Pot regime was overthrown and the scale of the atrocities became undeniable, the U.S. still backed the Khmer Rouge for a seat at the UN, the U.S. opposed efforts to investigate or indict the Khmer Rouge for genocide or other crimes against humanity, and until 1989 all attempts even to describe the Khmer Rouge regime as genocidal were rejected by the United States as counterproductive to finding peace. This was entirely for ruthlessly strategic reasons: the U.S. saw the Khmer Rouge as convenient allies because they were opposed to the government of Vietnam, which had ousted them from power.

This is all separate from the fact that the only reason the Khmer Rouge came to power in the first place was that the relentless U.S. bombing campaign against Cambodia (never called a genocide, because genocide is what others do, and our motives are pure) drove victims to support the Khmer Rouge. As genocide historian Ben Kiernan notes, Pol Pots revolution would not have won power without U.S. economic and military destabilization of Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge used the bombings devastation and massacre of civilians as recruitment propaganda and as an excuse for its brutal, radical policies. Kiernan, who extensively documents the human toll of US bombing, says the carpet bombing of Cambodias countryside by American B-52s was probably the most important single factor in Pol Pots rise. The point Chomsky makes in the quote Smith cites is that the American press is interested in what the Khmer Rouge did but not in the catastrophic human suffering wrought by our own bombs, or our own role in bringing the situation about (or in supporting the Khmer Rouge after they fell).

This is history Americans are not taught, and its appalling. So if socialists are often heard talking about U.S. crimes, it is because people here do not understand how their country uses its power and what the human consequences of that use of power are. Smith, bizarrely, charges that left foreign policy critiques are an attractive wedge issue that socialists can use to denounce establishment Democrats. I, for one, do not see foreign policy as an attractive issue at allin fact, its almost impossible to get Americans to care about it. We talk about it because the U.S. claims to decide foreign policy on the basis of enlightened liberal humanitarian concerns, but in fact largely decides it on the basis of self-interest, and the results are often devastating for those whose lives are inconvenient or irrelevant to U.S. self-interest. This is not an argument that other countries do not have agency. To say that the U.S. bears some responsibility for the present situation in Ukraine does not diminish Putins own responsibility.3 The lefts critiques of U.S. foreign policy are grounded in facts about the record of U.S. actions, and its telling that instead of refuting those facts, our opponents make silly, emotionally-charged accusations like telling us we want Ukraine to surrender. Smith says that the left believes anyone who opposes America cant be all that bad, even if its a rightist dictator like Putin, even though socialists he cites like myself and Chomsky have said nothing in defense of the Russian government, and we loathe autocrats and gangsters like Putin.

I grew up in the Bush years when critics of U.S. actions were persistently accused of Hating America or wanting the enemy to win. If you criticized the U.S., you must believe Saddam Hussein ought to be in power. That sort of brainless rhetoric corroded our ability to have a sensible conversation then, as it does today.4

Smiths problems with socialists extend into the domestic realm. He agrees that there are good reasons why in our deeply unequal country we need an egalitarian political movement. But he says socialists are peddling fantasies.

Take, for instance, Medicare For All. Smith says that the nation was not in the mood for this dramatic and extreme plan, hauling out a familiar dishonest talking point: the argument that when the specifics of the plan [are] explained, public support for it drops. Explaining the specifics always means something like framing it as terrifying and radical. It does not consist of explaining carefully the benefits people would get, the costs they would pay, and showing them how similar systems work. It consists of things like saying private health insurance would be abolished, without showing people the ways in which private health insurance is fleecing them. Smith calls Medicare for All extreme, which it is not. Even the British system of fully nationalized hospitals is not extreme, since government provision of free medical services is akin to government provision of police and fire serviceswhich are never spoken of as extreme. Smith does not respond to any of the clear arguments for why Medicare For All is a good policy, such as those laid out by health policy experts Abdul El-Sayed and Micah Johnson in Medicare For All: A Citizens Guide (which as far as I can tell, has barely been reviewed anywhere, because Very Serious Policy Types are uninterested in engaging with a very serious policy argument if its made in favor of something extreme). Nor does he explain why our current system, which makes human sacrifices to preserve corporate profits, should not itself be considered extreme. As usual, the substantive policy issues are ignored in favor of cheap talking points and empty rhetoric.

Smith also attacks the left over housing policy, lumping many of us into a category he calls Left NIMBYism. NIMBY, of course, stands for Not in My Backyard, and refers to those who oppose important building projects for their communities for reasons of narrow self-interest. Smith says that socialists are NIMBYs because we have embraced the theory that building more housing increases rents and causes gentrification. He says this idea is silly because if you dont build houses for people, they wont have anywhere to live. Indeed, it would be a silly idea to say that nobody should build houses, which is why Ive never heard a socialist say this (and why Smith quotes no socialists saying it). In fact, if you turn to socialist policy writers, what you in fact see is plans to build more housingexcept with an emphasis on houses that working people can afford, rather than hideous, wasteful new luxury condo towers, opposition to which does not make you a NIMBY. (Smith also takes a swipe at my argument that we should consider building new cities, calling it farcical, but surely my belief that we should build entire new cities proves Smith is wrong to say socialists oppose building houses, since cities are known to contain houses.)5

What we have so far on the domestic front, then, are two classic anti-socialist techniques: (1) presenting a reasonable, popular policy as extreme, unworkable, and beyond the boundaries of what the public wants and (2) distorting the socialist position to imply it is something different to what it is (building houses is bad). The remaining attacks are of similar poor quality. Smith goes after the idea of degrowth as an example of the lefts tendency to embrace faddish intellectual cults offering magical solutions. He does not attempt to prove his case, but does say that degrowth means we must address climate change by radically curtailing living standards. Elsewhere he has said that degrowth means people in rich countries must accept absolutely catastrophic declines in their living standards. Now, I am no scholar of degrowth, but I reviewed a book on it once by a leading degrowth proponent, Jason Hickel, and he was at pains to debunk this misconception, and show that the degrowth agenda was actually about improving living standards for all people, by making sure that the worlds resources are not wasted and are put toward improving lives through, say, building hospitals, rather than toward worthless economic activity like mining cryptocurrency and building mega-yachts. The argument laid out in Hickels book Less Is More was that conflating living standards with growth was a mistake, and that what we should measure is quality of life. This, then, appears to be a case of failing to engage with the literature one is critiquing, which we can also see in Smiths comment that he is pessimistic about the degrowth movement switching to a Green New Deal sort of investment-oriented framework. It is hard for me to reconcile that with Hickels statement that we absolutely need a Green New Deal, to mobilize a rapid rollout of renewable energy and put an end to fossil fuels.

Smith has a few more claims against socialists, including arguing that, contrary to the lefts analysis, the U.S. is not an oligarchy. Given that the worlds richest man, a demented megalomaniac, has just single-handedly bought the 21st century public square, and this insane, petulant, autocratic individuals whims will now determine who speaksand how much, I see this as too laughable to even merit further refutation.If complete individual dictatorial ownership over the means of public speech does not mean one lives in an oligarchy, it strains the imagination to picture the kind of dystopia it would take to qualify as one.

Critics of socialism pose as serious and pragmatic analysts, but they consistently decline to do much reading or engage us charitably. Convinced they understand our positions, they attack the cartoon socialist who lives in their head. They tell their audiences the most egregious lies about our positions, and they ignore facts inconvenient to their narratives. This has been the same for as long as socialists have been around making our devastating and rational criticisms of capitalist society.

These vicious, unfair attacks on the socialist position are abhorrent because socialists are doing work that is vital to securing a safe future for humanity. It is the socialists who are most vocally pushing for serious climate action while Democrats dither, and who are always pointing out that half-measures are simply not enough. It is the socialists who are trying to get the U.S. not to lapse into war fever once again, and to take us off the path toward a Third World War. It is the socialists who are proposing serious plans for how to fix American healthcare, and build social housing. All around the country, socialists in elected office are doing important work improving their communities, and instead of calling them kooks and fantasists, and trying to discredit them, one should appreciate their hard work and cheer them on. If humanity is going to have a chance of making it, were going to need socialists.

PHOTO: From the Associated Press: Democratic Socialists of New York and Climate Activists Hold Mass Climate Rally. Holding a sign calling on Governor Hochul to include the Build Public Renewables Act in the executive budget, newly-elected councilmember and Democratic Socialist Tiffany Cabn joins a climate mass rally outside the governors office in New York, NY, on Jan. 13, 2022. An example of the kind of political action that is vital to securing a livable future, which socialists are at the forefront of. The critics of socialism ignore this essential work and do not participate in it, preferring to explain to the left why we are kooky.

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Socialist Politics are More Necessary Than Ever Current Affairs - Current Affairs

In a shock announcement, Russias foreign minister Sergei Lavrov recently told Russian state media: NATO, in essence, is engaged in a war with Russia through a proxy and is arming that proxy.

In an uncharacteristically angry tone, he accused NATO of fighting a proxy war by supplying military aid to Ukraine, just at a time when western defence ministers have gathered in Germany for US-hosted talks on supporting Ukraine through what one US general called a very critical few weeks.

The chief aim of the US-sponsored talks was to coordinate mounting security assistance to Kyiv that includes heavy weaponry, such as howitzers, as well as armed drones and ammunition.

The next several weeks will be very, very critical, Milley said. They need continued support in order to be successful on the battlefield. And thats really the purpose of this conference.

This would mark a significant intensification of the war in Ukraine, which explains the fury with which it has been met in Moscow.

When asked about the importance of avoiding a third world war, Lavrov said: I would not want to elevate those risks artificially. Many would like that. The danger is serious, real. And we must not underestimate it.

But the Zelensky clique in Kyiv was jubilant. Ukraines foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said that this showed Moscow had lost its last hope to scare the world off supporting Ukraine.

War means war, Lavrov warned.

In reality, the measures already taken by the Americans against Russia would at any time in the past have been seen as acts of war. The imposition of sanctions was intended to cripple the Russian economy.

Clausewitz said that war is only the continuation of politics by other means. Washington has a new variant on this idea. Nowadays, economics is only a continuation of war.

US imperialism has turned trade into a weapon of war. In the good old days, when the British Empire had a problem, they sent a battleship. Nowadays, the Americans send a letter from the Department of Trade.

But their much-vaunted sanctions have failed to bring the Russian economy to its knees and have had no effect whatsoever on Putins war plans.

Insofar as it has had any effect, it has been to push most Russians behind Putin and the war. When one young woman in Moscow was asked who was responsible for rising prices, she answered without hesitation: Those who imposed the sanctions.

Moreover, sanctions are a double-edged weapon. They have already done very serious damage to the fragile fabric of world trade, disrupting supply chains, causing shortages of many key products, and driving up prices.

Naturally, the Americans are supremely indifferent to the shortage of oil and gas in Europe. They have their own not inconsiderable supplies. But others are not in the same comfortable situation.

The USA is putting heavy pressure on countries like Germany to end its dependence on Russian oil and gas. But despite all the claims to the contrary, Germany cannot find suitable alternative sources at sustainable prices.

And, as we know, principles are principles, but business is business. As for renouncing all use of Russian oil and gas, Germanys reply brings to mind the celebrated words of Saint Augustine: Lord, make me chaste but not yet

Meanwhile, the war is not going well for Ukraine. The Russians are concentrating their forces for an all-out offensive in the Donbass, and Mariupol has effectively fallen.

Not long ago, the imperialist propaganda machine was insisting that Ukraine was winning the war on all fronts. But the facts point in a different direction.

If Russia wins the battle of the Donbass, it would be a decisive blow for Ukraine. That is why Zelensky continually puts demands on his friends in NATO for more weapons, including tanks, heavy artillery, and even modern fighter jets.

What he would really like (he has repeated this many times) is for NATO to intervene directly: either by sending troops to fight alongside his army, or at least to establish what is known as a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

The beleaguered Ukrainian president is increasingly indignant at the fact that his friends in Washington are prepared to fight to the last drop of Ukrainian blood, without engaging in any fighting themselves.

And his frustration is increasingly finding a public expression in his speeches, in which he constantly repeats his desire to speak directly to Vladimir Putin (the only man who can stop the war).

Finally, Joe Biden has decided to act. He is determined to show strong leadership, irrespective of the consequences.

US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin was dispatched to Kyiv where he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other top officials. On Monday, speaking in Poland, he assured everyone that the US wants to see Ukraine remain a sovereign country, a democratic country able to protect its sovereign territory, which is very nice.

But he also said rather more than he intended concerning the real war aims of US imperialism, that is: We want to see Russia weakened to the point where it cant do things like invade Ukraine.

The first step in winning is believing that you can win, and both the US and the Ukrainians believe that we they can win, if they have the right equipment, the right support, he said; and we're going to do everything we can and continue to do everything we can.

One notes with interest the Freudian slip, immediately corrected by the US Defence Secretary. He said it was important that both the US and the Ukrainians believe that we they can win.

The word we clearly refers to the US, while the Ukrainians are added as an afterthought. And there can be no doubt whatsoever as to which thought was uppermost in Mr. Lloyd Austins mind.

It is all very clear. At bottom, this is not a war between Russia and Ukraine. It is a proxy war between Russia and the USA.

Issues like democracy, human rights and national sovereignty are not of the slightest interest to the imperialists, except as cheap propaganda points. But they are very interested in prolonging the war, irrespective of all the human suffering, since they hope that it will serve to weaken Russia.

Unlike the imperialist hypocrites, the working class in the West feels genuine sympathy for the terrible sufferings of millions of poor people in Ukraine. They donate money, clothes and food, which they cannot afford, to help the victims of war. They open their houses and share whatever they have with homeless refugees. And this is to their credit.

But it is one thing to express solidarity with the victims of war. And it is another thing altogether different to support, directly or indirectly, the cynical policy of imperialism, which is exploiting the misery of millions of men, women and children, deliberately prolonging the conflict for its own selfish interests.

The key element in the argument of the pacifist warmongers is that we must defend the sovereignty of Ukraine, that is to say its right to self-determination. Since that is the usual excuse for backing Ukraine in the present war, we will deal with that first.

The matter is presented in the following way: The Ukrainian people have the right to self-determination. Ukraine is a sovereign state. Its sovereignty has been violated by a brutal invasion launched by a powerful and aggressive neighbour. We must therefore take the side of the victim against the aggressor.

The question is posed as a simple black and white issue. It is furthermore backed up by repeated references to alleged war crimes and atrocities.

But for Marx, Engels and Lenin, the national question was never a panacea a sort of blank cheque that could be cashed in by anybody under any circumstances.

What is the Marxist attitude to self-determination? The writings of Lenin deal with this important issue in great detail, and still provide us with a sound foundation to deal with this most complicated question.

Lenins arguments are generally known. But as Hegel once remarked, what is known is not necessarily on that account understood. In fact, the most well-known propositions are frequently misunderstood on account of the very fact that they are so familiar that their real content has been completely overlooked.

As Hegel pointed out, and as Lenin often quoted, the truth is always concrete.

The first mistake is to imagine that we must defend self-determination in all circumstances, as a fixed and immutable principle. But such an idea has nothing in common with Marxism and it makes two fundamental mistakes.

The right of nations to self-determination is a democratic demand, and Marxists support it, as we support any other democratic demand. But the support for democratic demands in general has never been considered by Marxists as some kind of Categorical Imperative.

Democratic demands are always subordinate to the general interests of the working class and the struggle for socialism.

It is always necessary to evaluate the concrete conditions and to learn to distinguish between what is progressive and what is reactionary in any given movement.

The national question can have either a progressive or a reactionary content, depending on the concrete circumstances, the international context, and the implications it has for the class-conscious workers and the relations between the classes.

All these concrete factors must be carefully considered before we can take a position regarding a particular national struggle. Such struggles can, of course, play a progressive role as was the case of the struggle of the Polish and Irish people for independence in the 19th century, or the fight for the independence of the enslaved colonies in more recent times.

But not every national struggle has a progressive character. And very frequently, the national question can be used as a cover for the most reactionary purposes.

In contrast to people like Proudhon, Marx and Engels gave due consideration to the national question, however, they always considered it as subordinate to the labour question. That is, they always considered it exclusively from the point of view of the working class and the socialist revolution.

Thus, while they gave support to the struggle of the Polish people for independence, since that struck a blow against Russian tsarism, the main bulwark of European reaction, Marx and Engels refused to support the national struggle of the South Slavs and Czechs, precisely because they saw behind them the hand of Saint Petersburg.

Like Marx, Lenin had a very flexible position on the national question, which he always approached from the standpoint of the general interests of the proletariat and the international revolution.

Lenins writings on war and the national question set forth the basic Marxist position on this subject, which he developed in a very rich, all-sided and dialectical manner.

Yet even the slightest glance at the literature of groups that today lay claim to the heritage of Lenin is enough to convince oneself that nobody reads Lenin any more; and if they do read his articles, they do not understand a single word.

Dialectics, as Lenin explained many times, deals with phenomena in an all-sided way. To abstract a single element in a complex equation, and to counterpose it to all the other elements in that equation, is a childish misuse of dialectics, known to the history of philosophy as sophism.

Such abuses lead to errors of the crassest type in logic. And in politics, and particularly the politics of the national question, they lead directly to the defence of reactionary positions and the complete abandonment of socialism.

This is shown very clearly by the war in Ukraine. Here we see how the complete failure of so-called Marxists to understand the Marxist attitude towards war has led them to abandon the class position altogether.

But the attitude of Marxists to war cannot be determined by sentimental considerations, much less by the hysterical propaganda by which the imperialists seek to conceal their real aims.

There is one specific case where Lenin makes it clear that you do not support the right of nations to self-determination: He regarded the demand to support self-determination (even if it was justified in and of itself) as a monstrous suggestion if it meant dragging the big powers into a war.

In 1916, he recommended to the Poles that they subordinate their struggle for self-determination to the perspective of revolution in Russia and Germany:

To raise the question of Poland's independence today, he wrote, under the existing relations of the neighbouring imperialist powers, it is really to chase after a utopia, to descend to narrow-minded nationalism and forget that a necessary premise is an all-European or at least the Russian and German revolutions. (LCW, The Discussion on Self-determination Summed Up, vol. 22, p. 350, my emphasis AW.)

Did that advice sound abstract and utopian to many people at the time? No doubt it did. But history showed that Lenin was one hundred percent correct. It was only the Russian Revolution that created the conditions for the establishment of an independent Polish state, whereas every other attempt had ended in disaster.

Likewise, in relation to the struggle of the Serbs against Austria during World War One, Lenin wrote the following:

In the present war the national element is represented only by Serbias war against Austria (which, by the way, was noted in the resolution of our Partys Berne Conference). It is only in Serbia and among the Serbs that we can find a national-liberation movement of long standing, embracing millions, the masses of the people, a movement of which the present war of Serbia against Austria is a continuation. If this war were an isolated one, i.e., if it were not connected with the general European war, with the selfish and predatory aims of Britain, Russia, etc., it would have been the duty of all socialists to desire the success of the Serbian bourgeoisie as this is the only correct and absolutely inevitable conclusion to be drawn from the national element in the present war. However, it is this conclusion that the sophist Kautsky, who is now in the service of the Austrian bourgeoisie, clericals, and militarists, has failed to draw.

Further, Marxist dialectics, as the last word in the scientific-evolutionary method, excludes any isolated examination of an object, i.e., one that is one-sided and monstrously distorted. The national element in the Serbo-Austrian war is not, and cannot be, of any serious significance in the general European war. If Germany wins, she will throttle Belgium, one more part of Poland, perhaps part of France, etc. If Russia wins, she will throttle Galicia, one more part of Poland, Armenia, etc. If the war ends in a draw, the old national oppression will remain. To Serbia, i.e., to perhaps one per cent or so of the participants in the present war, the war is a continuation of the politics of the bourgeois-liberation movement. To the other ninety-nine per cent, the war is a continuation of the politics of imperialism, i.e., of the decrepit bourgeoisie, which is capable only of raping nations, not freeing them. The Triple Entente, which is liberating Serbia, is selling the interests of Serbian liberty to Italian imperialism in return for the latters aid in robbing Austria.

This is quite clear. If we take the struggle of the Serbian people for self-determination against Austrian imperialism in isolation from the general international context, we would have to support the Serbs.

But in the context of a European war, which reduces itself to a fight between different groups of imperialist robbers, and in which small nations become merely the small change of this or that imperialism, we cannot give support.

In particular, we should remember what Lenin said about the impermissibility of supporting the struggle for self-determination if that meant dragging the workers of Europe into a general war.

And at the present moment in history, in what way could the extension of the Ukrainian conflict into a general European conflagration or even a world war possibly serve the interests of the workers of Europe and the world socialist revolution?

We leave that to our readers to decide. The truth is always concrete.

Do we support Ukrainian self-determination? Of course, we do. Do the Ukrainian people have the right to decide their own future as an independent state? We answer unequivocally: Yes, they do have such a right. They have proved their right to exist as a separate state for a long time.

But that does not exhaust the question. Let us now ask another question. Do the Ukrainians have the right to oppress people of other nationalities who live on their national territory? For example, do they have the right to impose discriminatory laws against the many people in Ukraine who speak Russian as their first language? To that question we answer equally emphatically in the negative.

Let us remind ourselves that one of the first measures adopted by the nationalist Ukrainian regime that came to power after the Maidan coup was to impose all manner of discriminatory laws directed against Russian speakers. It was this, more than anything else, that led to the uprising in Donbass, which ended in the breakaway of the two rebel areas in the east.

The rapid rise of fascist and other extreme Ukrainian nationalist movements also caused alarm in Crimea, where the majority consists of Russian speaking people, who do not feel any particular affinity to Ukraine.

That ended in the breakaway of Crimea, which, despite all the propaganda about Russian annexation, was supported by the great majority of the inhabitants of that region and approved subsequently in a referendum.

Thus, the victory of nationalism in Ukraine immediately had the effect of the loss of a significant part of its territory. They later attempted to regain the lost lands in the east by a vicious campaign of shelling that killed thousands of people. This fact has long been ignored or downplayed by the western media, but it has played a significant role in detonating the present invasion.

It is difficult to say how the war is progressing. The information of the military situation in the media is so sparse as to be almost non-existent. And the constant predictions of Russian defeats must be regarded with caution.

The latest shipment of arms, including modern weaponry from the US may provide some relief to the Ukrainian side, but it will scarcely make up for the crushing superiority of the Russian forces that are now concentrated in Donbass. The outlook for the Ukrainian forces there is not very bright.

But war is a struggle of living forces. And in a broader sense, the Russian side may be facing more serious difficulties. In the final analysis, the weight of Russia, its great industrial strength and bigger population must eventually prevail. But war is never a simple question, and there can be yet many complicating elements.

The question of morale can play a crucial role. According to all the available evidence, the war has the support of the big majority of people in Russia. For the present, at least, Putins position seems secure.

However, according to my sources in Russia, the highest levels of support are to be found among the older layers of the population, whereas support among young people is only about 30 to 40 percent. But it is among that layer that the future conscripts will have to be found to fight in Ukraine.

For all these reasons, Putin may have to settle for the conquest of a large slice of territory in the Donbass and along the coastal region. That may be considered a success of sorts, but it will fall short of a complete victory, and it will have negative consequences for the working class of both countries.

Terrible damage will have been done to the centuries-old sense of brotherhood and solidarity between the Russian people and the people of Ukraine. The moods of mutual mistrust, bitterness and suspicion will not be easy to eradicate. And on such poisonous soil, the extreme chauvinists on both sides can draw new strength and become even more aggressive and arrogant.

Those are the reasons why we oppose this war. Whatever the final result, the balance sheet from the standpoint of the working class and the socialist revolution will be negative.

Nevertheless, all history shows that the fog of war will eventually lift. The class question will again come to the fore, creating favourable conditions for the re-emergence of the class struggle in both Russia and Ukraine.

The reactionary nature of Putins regime is quite clear. But that of the Ukrainian side has been systematically concealed by the propaganda machine. The fascist bandits of the Azov brigade, who Washington not long ago wanted to put on the list of terrorist organisations, are now being presented as heroic freedom fighters and even defenders of democracy.

As for the so-called Ukrainian democracy: that is more apparent than real. Let us remind ourselves that one of the reasons why NATO delayed accepting Ukrainian membership was because of a democratic deficit.

And the sovereignty of Ukraine? That too is a myth. The war has shown clearly that the Zelensky regime is entirely dependent on foreign masters. The Americans pay the bills and supply the weapons by which they hope that the Ukrainians will fight to the last drop of their blood to defend the interests of US imperialism against its enemy, Russia. And who pays the piper will always call the tune.

The present regime in Kyiv is entirely at the mercy of US imperialism. For all his bravado and bold speeches, Zelensky can do nothing and decide nothing except what is dictated to him from Washington. And Washington has decided that it is better for Ukraine to continue to bleed to death in order to weaken its principal adversary, Russia. The lives and suffering of the Ukrainian people simply do not feature in its calculations.

This is a power struggle between US imperialism and Russia. Only a fool or a rogue could ever deny that. Sadly, there are not a few of both kinds especially in what used to be called the Left.

The clear deterioration of Ukraines position on the eastern front means that Zelensky continues to press his demands, seemingly oblivious to the consequences for the rest of the world. As Lenin once said, a man standing on the edge of a precipice does not reason.

The risk of an all-out war in Europe is something which the Americans and their European allies have, up until now, found too terrifying to contemplate. At this point, the interests of western imperialism and the Zelensky regime were beginning to drift apart.

For all the hypocritical propaganda and crocodile tears about the sufferings of the poor Ukrainian people (very genuine sufferings, of course), they had (and still have) no intention of putting themselves at risk.

Let us remind ourselves of the fundamentals. The capitalists do not wage war for patriotism, democracy, or any other high-sounding principles. They wage war for profit, to capture foreign markets, sources of raw material (such as oil), and to expand spheres of influence.

A nuclear war would signify none of these things, but only the mutual destruction of both sides. They have even coined a phrase to describe this: MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). This is a matter that ought to sober up even the most deluded minds.

But some minds seem to be more deluded than others. Joe Biden never the sharpest brain in Washington appears to be suffering from some of the symptoms of advanced senile decay. He is evidently haunted by the vision of ex-President Trump, whose megalomania habitually expressed itself in bouts of macho-man assertiveness to the evident horror of his advisers.

Bidens attempt to step into his predecessors outsized shoes do not look particularly convincing from the PR point of view. But the words spoken by the President of the worlds most powerful nation will inevitably have far-reaching effects and not all of them foreseen by the man who uttered them.

To accuse the President of the Russian Federation of being a war criminal was not quite in the acceptable tradition of diplomacy or presidential good manners. After all, sooner or later, Uncle Joe will have to sit down at a negotiating table with the very man he has accused of being a criminal.

Read more:

Ukraine crisis: Biden fans the flames of war - Socialist Appeal

I cant tell you where Joe Rogans studio is his guest information sheet specifies that I have to keep that part confidential. I can tell you that when I showed up for my interview, I was greeted by a friendly and talkative nurse who was there to give a COVID test to everyone who walks in the door. While we waited for Joe to show up, I chatted with her for a while about everything from what my book is about to how she met her husband. I also talked for a while with a couple of guys I think Ive since seen referred to in the press as elite security guards. One of them told me he likes to watch Cobra Kai in the morning while he exercises.

I was fairly nervous. Just to start with, Id been watching Rogan on screens since the late 1990s when I was a regular viewer of Newsradio. (Im very old.) For another, its a massive platform and if I said anything dumb millions of people would hear it. Finally, I knew there were a good number of people on the Left who wouldnt like that I went on his show and talked to him. They might be OK with my decision to go on the show if I was planning to yell and denounce him, but I had no interest in doing that I wanted to have a conversation where I pushed the kind of egalitarian political agenda that I deeply care about.

When Joe did show up, the conversation was worth the wait. I got to tell his giant audience about Medicare for All, about why the better working conditions teachers unions fight for are also better learning conditions for your kids, why the US Postal Service is important, why I support Bernie Sanderss proposal to expand the postal service by offering basic banking services at the Post Office, why Im so sure that Bernie Sanders would have won the 2016 election, why I dont think the United States should play imperial world policeman having a role in diplomatic standoffs everywhere from South America to Ukraine, why economic inequality is bad in principle and bad for democracy, how the Mondragon federation of worker cooperatives work, and why wed be better off in an economy where the norm was that businesses would be organized more like Mondragon than Amazon. And we got to spend a minute paying homage to my friend Michael Brooks.

Put that together with the fact that getting to spend three hours drinking bourbon and talking politics with the dude from Newsradio is just a very good time, and it was an afternoon well spent.

It wasnt what I would consider a perfect conversation. There were times, especially in the second half of the discussion, when it would have been productive to either question assumptions that I disagreed with or at least refocus the conversation elsewhere. When the conversation did veer for a bit to hot-button social issues, it was more of a mixed bag. But there were still some great moments for example he seemed to enthusiastically co-sign my argument that antiCritical Race Theory laws are an unconscionable assault on free speech.

The bottom line: millions of people got to hear me and the worlds most popular podcaster spend at least an hour talking about core socialist policies.

In general, I tried to approach the conversation with Joe (and, through him, all the people who listen to him and see politics they way he does) the way Id encourage everyone reading this to talk about politics with their coworker or cousin or brother-in-law who likely has ideological impulses we dislike on some issues, but whos also open to appeals on material issues and is at least willing to hear us out on everything else.

If you dont know at least three people who fit that profile, you really need to talk to more people. Dont yell at them or denounce them. Dont pretend that you know everything. Own it when your fellow leftists do things that are silly or misguided or counterproductive instead of dying on the hill of defending our most indefensible moments.

Talk to them like theyre a person, emphasize the points you think theyd be most receptive to, and even on the most sensitive areas of disagreement, if they truly do seem open-minded and not to be coming from a hateful place, listen carefully to what theyre saying and explain in a friendly way why you see things differently.

Dont expect that theyll change their mind about everything in one conversation but do nudge them in our direction. I dont know how the Left can win a single strike or union certification vote or City Council election, never mind remake our entire society in a more just and egalitarian direction, if we dont use this kind of rhetorical strategy as our default.

I know that some of my friends and comrades would have rather I didnt have this particular conversation at all. There are people who consider themselves leftists or in some cases even socialists who want Spotify to censor Rogan for disinformation a combination of views that seems wildly misguided to me for many reasons. For one thing, weakening free speech norms on platforms like Spotify will not go well for us in the long run. The billionaire CEOs that run such platforms are going to be implacable enemies of any even mildly redistributive economic agenda. They also have every incentive to maintain good relations with the national security state. The Left, meanwhile, wants to restore pre-9/11 civil liberties, end Americas overseas empire, redirect those resources to fulfill social needs at home, take away the wealth and power of economic elites, and empower the working class.

Why on earth would we think new censorship rules wont primarily be weaponized against us unless were so comfortable with our own irrelevance we dont think well ever be enough of a threat to the powers that be for them to bother censoring us?

I see Joe Rogan as a person whos right about some things and wrong about others and who should book a lot more socialists on his show. But even with the Lefts actual enemies, there are excellent reasons for us to lean into the value of free speech and open debate instead of always trying to find a hall monitor to shut them up for us.

Even beyond the pragmatic reasons Ive already suggested, theres a deeper reason having to do with core socialist values. Dont get me wrong: criminal law should include prohibitions on incitement and defamation, and Twitter is right to try to stop doxing and harassment. But ideologically, our very strong instinct should be to distrust any new proposals to weaken free speech norms.

If socialism means not just state ownership but the extension of democracy to the economic realm, if we really believe with C. L. R. James that every cook can govern, we need to trust ordinary people to read or view or listen to whatever they want and make their own determinations about whats true. If we dont believe that, we dont really believe that every cook can govern. We believe that benevolent technocrats should govern. And thats just not my politics.

My appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience happened during the last days of February. A couple weeks later, on St Patricks Day, I was bar-hopping in Atlanta with my friend Ryan Lake. The last place we went to that night is the kind of bar that makes you feel like youve stepped into a time portal to 2005 (and not just because Georgia is one of the only states left in the union where its still legal to smoke in bars). The dcor was a schlocky hodgepodge of often dated pop culture. The arcade machine had all but spiderwebs.

I sat with Ryan at the bar drinking Jameson. Its a long circular bar, and the guy facing us from a few yards away starting squinting at us and then called out, Were you on Rogan a couple weeks ago?

The Joe Rogan fan ended up coming over and buying a round. He works in construction, called himself a born and raised redneck, and thinks of himself as a fiscal conservative although after wed talked for a few minutes I started to wonder what that combination of words means to him. He said that Id said like and yknow too many times (fair enough), but he enjoyed the appearance. It was a good conversation. He knows I work for what he called a liberal magazine (Jacobin), but I still seemed like someone he could talk to which we did for nearly half an hour.

Unsurprisingly, we didnt reach complete agreement in that time. He disagreed with me about how taxes should work, and he expressed deep discomfort with abortion. When asked what he wanted to do about it, though, he wasnt sure he certainly wasnt prepared to send any women or their doctors to prison. Eventually, he agreed that the best solution was to provide more financial support for young mothers. I also got him on board with Medicare for All and universal pre-K and, in a surprising twist, open borders. He said hes all for people coming over when they do it the right way; we got into the obstacles facing most people who want to do that, and hed agreed in the end that the rules should be liberalized to the point where pretty much any nonviolent person who just wants a shot at a better life would be allowed to come in legally.

Im under no illusions that we can debate our way to a better society. Even the most modest of the changes we want are only going to be achieved by an organized working class over the course of a long and hard struggle. But if were going to expand the tent a little, never mind mobilize millions to fight for the things we want, were going to have to learn to talk to people like that guy at the bar and Joe Rogan.

Original post:

I Went on Joe Rogan's Show, and I Don't Regret It - Jacobin magazine

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced Tuesday that almost 60 percent of the US population has been infected with COVID-19 at least one time by the end of February 2022, when the most recent Omicron BA.2 wave ebbed. Even this staggering figure was outstripped by the 75 percent of all children and adolescents who were infected at least once by the same point.

This is a public health catastrophe unprecedented in American history. It is not a natural disaster but the product of a deliberate policy of mass infection, carried out first by the Trump administration and now by the Biden administration. The Republican Party and then the Democratic Party have demonstrated their class character, as they sacrificed a million livesand countingin order to maintain the operations of corporate business and ensure the uninterrupted flow of profits to the American capitalist oligarchy.

During the same period that COVID-19 killed 1 million people and infected 200 million, the stock market roared to record heights and the fortunes of the financial aristocracy swelled to unimaginable proportions. The wealth of US billionaires rose by more than 70 percent, to over $5 trillion. These two outcomesmass death and unprecedented wealthare inextricably linked. Wall Streets Midas touch has turned mass suffering and death into gold.

And SARS-CoV-2 has not finished its deadly work. Far from it. Thanks to the effective end of all mitigation measures, the resumption of normal life in terms of workplaces, schools, shopping centers, social gatherings, mass travel and mass arena events, and the ending of masking and other limited forms of protection, the virus is being furnished with a virtually unlimited supply of new victims and new opportunities for mutation.

There are 100 million Americans who are entirely unvaccinated, 130 million vaccinated but not boosted, and a further 100 million whose boosters are waning rapidly in effectiveness. These large and varied pools of potential victims provide optimal conditions for a virus that mutates quickly in response to changed conditions. SARS-CoV2 has been given an invitation, not merely to entrench itself as a permanent factor in human life, but to develop new variants that are more infectious, more vaccine-resistant and more lethal.

A particularly cruel element of the policy of allowing the virus free rein is its impact on children and adolescents. The 75 percent infection rate demonstrates that the reopening of schools to in-person instruction turned the education system into a main driver in the spread of the pandemic, as the WSWS and many rank-and-file teachers warned. Children are not unlikely to contract COVID-19as both Trump and Biden falsely claimedbut are equally or perhaps even more susceptible to the deadly disease.

Over 1,500 children in the US have already died from COVID-19. The pandemic has only entered its third year, and already there are estimates that Long COVIDthe umbrella term for continuing consequences of infection, including damage to the brain, heart, lungs and other vital organsmay be as high as 30 percent. Who authorized the government to conduct a medical experiment of such dreadful proportions on innocent children?

The CDC report noted the phenomenal acceleration of the infection during the Omicron surge. During the Delta wave, which began a year ago and reached its peak in the fall, new infections in the United States averaged 1 to 2 percent of the US population per month (3.3 million to 6.6 million cases). But during the three months ending in February 2022, there were some 80 million new cases, more than 25 million cases per month. An estimated 21 million children were among those newly infected.

Despite attempts to characterize the Omicron subvariant as mild, Omicron already accounts for almost 1 in 5 of total COVID-19 deaths. And now that the original Omicron BA.1 variant has been supplanted by BA.2, which is more infectious and potentially more virulent, a new surge in the pandemic is on the horizon. Infection with BA.1 apparently incurs little or no immunity from a repeat infection by BA.2.

In the face of these grim figures, the Biden administration is pushing ahead with the policy of mass infection, which was once described under the Trump administration as herd immunity and now goes by a different labelendemicity, or living with the virus. While Trump advocated quack remedies like ivermectin and hydrochloroquine, the Biden White House has simply dropped any pretense that COVID-19 can or should be prevented.

Dr. Ashish Jha, the newly installed White House pandemic coordinator, declared this openly at his first press briefing Tuesday, saying, It is going to be hard to ensure that no one gets COVID in America.Thats not even a policy goal. No one in the White House press corps questioned that assertion, since the corporate media accepts the premise that prevention is impossible, and even undesirable.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, Bidens chief adviser on the pandemic, said the same day that the United States is now out of the pandemic phase, hailing the decline in daily deaths from 3,000 in January to an average of 300 last week. I believe that were transitioning into endemicity, he said, using a term which implies that COVID-19 has become a permanent, and acceptable, feature of American life.

In a further step in the campaign to normalize COVID-19, Biden himself appears to be deliberately courting infection, knowing that with the immense medical resources available to the White House, including Paxlovid and other therapeutics, he faces little personal danger. After Vice President Kamala Harris tested positive, there was no change in Bidens schedule, and White House aides went out of their way to suggest that they were not unduly concerned over the possible impact of infection on the 79-year-old president.

Biden delivered a eulogy to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at a memorial service Wednesday at the National Cathedral, packed with official mourners. The president is also scheduled to attend the White House Correspondents Association annual dinner on Saturday night, along with about 2,600 officials, journalists and others in a basement hotel ballroom. Last months similar but smaller Gridiron Club dinner resulted in more than 1 in 10 attendees contracting COVID-19.

The United States leads the world in COVID-19 deaths, despite being the richest country in the world and preeminent in medical technology, because the American population has fewer social benefits, including access to health care, than any other industrialized society, and the ruling class has fewer limits. But the recklessness and criminality of the American financial oligarchys response to the COVID-19 pandemic have only set the pace for capitalist ruling classes all over the world.

The COVID-19 death toll in Europe is approaching 2 million. Some 1.7 million have died in Latin America, where the death rates in Mexico, Brazil, Peru and other countries rival or exceed those in the US. Uncounted millions have died in the Indian subcontinent, disguised only by the refusal of right-wing governments, like that of Narendra Modi in New Delhi, even to tally the victims. There are huge new outbreaks in Indonesia, South Korea and Australia. South Africa has seen mass casualties, and the pandemic is spreading through that continent as well.

Only in China has there been a serious effort to carry out a scientifically based Zero-COVID policy, with the result that there have been fewer than 5,000 deaths in a country of 1.4 billion people since the pandemic began in December 2019. Most of these occurred in the first four months, before the nature of the infection was fully understood.

COVID-19 has occasionally been compared to the influenza epidemic after World War I, which took more lives, some 50 million, than that appalling slaughter. The current pandemic may well precede the outbreak of global war, rather than follow it. But there is a clear connection: The same ruling class that accepts and even encourages millions of dead in the pandemic will not shrink from World War III because of the prospect that millions, or even tens and hundreds of millions of people, may die in a nuclear exchange.

The latest milestone in the coronavirus pandemic comes only days before the May Day rally called by the WSWS and the International Committee of the Fourth International, and it underscores the basis of that rally. The working class is facing a globally interconnected struggle for its democratic and social rights and even its physical survival. This can only go forward as a consciously revolutionary struggle for socialism and the overthrow of the capitalist system, the underlying cause of war, disease and all other social ills.

May Day 2022: For working class unity against imperialist war!

David North, chairman of the WSWS International Editorial Board, issues call for May Day online rally: The fate of humanity must not be left in the hands of a money-mad and war-mongering ruling class.

View post:

Half of all Americans infected with COVID-19, three-quarters of children - WSWS

The World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) recently spoke to workers across Australia who explained why they are joining the International May Day Online Rally this weekend.

The global event will be addressed by leaders of the International Committee of the Fourth International, the world Trotskyist movement. They will present the socialist and internationalist program required for workers to fight the escalating threat of world war, the turn by governments to authoritarianism and the onslaught on the social rights of the working class.

The rally is being held amid a reemergence of working-class struggle, with mass opposition, including in Australia, to soaring inflation, stagnant or declining wages and the official let it rip COVID policies.

Layers of workers and young people internationally have issued video and written statements on why they are taking part in the rally. Use the hashtag #MayDay2022 to share your own statement on social media.

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The WSWS spoke to Sam, a health worker in pathology from Victoria, who said: Ive seen my colleagues become affected by COVID, some of them are casual workers who have had their income disrupted. One of them had a close friend who died from COVID. She was in hospital for a month. And my friend had COVID herself as well, so she was off for a few weeks. Personally, Ive had friends who have lost family members to COVID, very suddenly. Its very distressing for everyone whos involved in it.

The impact of let it rip is that were constantly short of staff due to sick leave. The hospitals are all full, surgeries are delayed, you name it. Youve got people getting sick, people dying, when it can be prevented. The herd immunity allows infections to keep growing with no end in sight.

An international fight is required to bring COVID to zero. Since the outbreak in 2020, there is no government,outside of China, that has been consistently committed to Zero COVID from start to finish. At an earlier stage of the pandemic, some governments, in Australia and New Zealand for instance, tried to contain the virus and it did work. Now the same governments are allowing the virus to spread, while abandoning testing, contact tracing, and so on.

The working class are the majority of those who are affected by COVID. They are the class that needs to take the struggle for Zero COVID forward internationally. Theyre the ones at the front line, theyre the ones getting sick, theyre forced to go to work for financial reasons. They dont have the luxury of being able to stay home and avoid getting COVID. Theyre sending their kids to school, who then get infected and bring it home. The struggle for Zero COVID is essential.

May Day has always been a symbol for the unity of the working class internationally. I think this year it takes on a bigger significance. The fight against COVID must be a struggle to unify the working class internationally. It is affecting every country, killing thousands of workers.

I urge all workers to attend. It is the only way forward, against the virus and against war. Everyone is aware of whats taking place in Ukraine. This has sparked an escalating conflict between the United States and Russia, and it could easily end in a third world war, which has the potential to kill billions of people. Come to the May Day Online Rally!

Michael, a young IT worker in Brisbane, urged other youth and workers in his industry worldwide to join the rally.

Why are we made to live in fear of nuclear war, pandemics, climate change and other threats to human existence? Why are workers being denied the fair share of the fruits of their labour while their paymasters live in obscene luxury?

Why are todays workers and youth being condemned to a precarious existence in a world dominated by danger, crisis and uncertainty, instead of a world of fairness, progress and opportunity as those same people rightfully deserve?

It is because of all this that I am attending this years May Day rally. Not only should my generation not have to put up with all these issues, but they should also be encouraged to fight for an alternative to the systemthe capitalist systemthat is the source of those same issues.

And there is an alternative, validated by sound scientific theory and immense historical experience, in the form of world socialism. Please attend the rally and join the struggle for a better world.

The WSWS spoke to Helen and her husband Paul. Helen is a disability support worker in Victoria whose husband was trapped in South Sudan during the pandemic. She said, My job is very hard. Sometimes we were sent to a client who had COVID. You are afraid for your family, yet you want to go to work, because your life is based on working. You have to work. Your client might have COVID, but you cant say no, you have no choice.

My husband was trapped overseas for 15 months. I had to manage with my five children by myself. Every morning I woke up and dressed my children at six in the morning. I let my little ones go to family day care and the three eldest ones go to school, and then I had to leave for work. I tried in the lockdown to bring my husband back, but the ticket cost $6,500 and I couldnt afford it, so I had to just leave him and focus on how to survive with our children.

Paul said, It was terrible. She tried very hard to bring me back to my family. I tried to convince her saying: Look its a waste of money, we are not able to find that amount. Lets focus on how to manage our family. That is the way we agreed.

COVID is in South Sudan but the people are not aware of how to protect themselves, there is a lack of education and there are a lot of cases. My life was based on the support from my wife. Every fortnight she sent me $50 or $100. Apart from that, I have siblings and relatives there.

With the virus and then war, it will be very hard for the world. It is not a Ukrainian war, it is really worldwide. If it continues the way it has been, it will mean that the world will not be the same again. The same way as we saw with the virus, a lot of refugees will be coming globally, not only Ukrainians.

Workers should come to the May Day rally, because workers should be gathering globally, not only based on Australia. I wish all the workers of the world can raise their voice and it might be heard all over the world.

Keith, a school security guard in Brisbane, said workers needed to unite globally to fight the soaring cost of living, capitalisms COVID-19 disaster and the threat of another world war.

Like in Sri Lanka, protests are happening all around the world over the intensity of the food and fuel crisis, but we just dont hear about most of them. Inflation was everywhere, even before the US-NATO war in Ukraine. There is non-stop inflation because of the pouring of trillions of dollars into the financial markets in the pandemic.

Its just lies that inflation was only 3.5 percent and now 1.5 percent in Australia. It is at least 15 percent for rent, food and consumables for families.

Keith explained that he was still recovering after a week of being laid low by COVID. I thought it would be mild, like hay fever for 48 hours, but its much worse. I had a hyperactive body reaction, elevated heart rates, extreme dehydration and horrendous cramps.

By opening everything up, the governments are making it worse. It will keep spreading and mutating. The cases will go through the roof with all the super-spreader events over Easter and the change of season to colder weather.

Keith blamed US imperialism for the war in Ukraine. The US is determined to get its hands on the oil, gas and other resources of Russia, plus the Black Sea. This is the beginning of a new world war. People have to look through the humanitarian claims. This is about the oligarchs and corporates seeking profits, not human rights in Ukraine.

Jenny, a personal carer in Brisbane, said: I will be attending the online May Day rally because the Socialist Equality Party is the only international political party which has an actionable plan out of the catastrophic mess capitalism has made of the world, both socially and environmentally.

When you watch the mainstream media, all you hear lately is world leaders gunning for warwhether it be by grovelling to join or support NATO against Russia or by proudly announcing new funds for their national armories. It looks and sounds like a military frenzy in the making and its impossible not to take seriously.

Meanwhile, those same leaders worldwide have set COVID-19 loose on their populations by dropping mandates and decimating medical facilities. Nurses and doctors are exhausted when people need them the most.

If a system of social organisation is supposed to look after its people, capitalism has failed as miserably as slavery and feudalism.

We need a political party and movement that is conscious of the necessity of abolishing this outdated system and replacing it with genuine socialism. People are already being driven to protest on every continent, and the May Day rally is being held by the SEP leadership for the struggles ahead.

Contact the SEP:Phone:(02) 8218 3222Email:sep@sep.org.auFacebook:SocialistEqualityPartyAustraliaTwitter:@SEP_AustraliaInstagram:socialistequalityparty_auTikTok:@SEP_Australia

Authorised by Cheryl Crisp for the Socialist Equality Party, Suite 906, 185 Elizabeth Street, Sydney, NSW, 2000.

Join the SEP campaign against anti-democratic electoral laws!

The working class must have a political voice, which the Australian ruling class is seeking to stifle with this legislation.

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Australian workers explain why they are attending the International May Day Online Rally - WSWS

Nazism had peculiarly German roots. It can be partly traced to the Prussian tradition as developed under Frederick William I (16881740), Frederick the Great (171268), and Otto von Bismarck (181598), which regarded the militant spirit and the discipline of the Prussian army as the model for all individual and civic life. To it was added the tradition of political romanticism, with its sharp hostility to rationalism and to the principles underlying the French Revolution, its emphasis on instinct and the past, and its proclamation of the rights of Friedrich Nietzsches exceptional individual (the bermensch [Superman]) over all universal law and rules. These two traditions were later reinforced by the 19th-century adoration of science and of the laws of nature, which seemed to operate independently of all concepts of good and evil. Further reinforcements came from such 19th-century intellectual figures as the comte de Gobineau (181682), Richard Wagner (181383), and Houston Stewart Chamberlain (18551927), all of whom greatly influenced early Nazism with their claims of the racial and cultural superiority of the Nordic (Germanic) peoples over all other Europeans and all other races.

Hitlers intellectual viewpoint was influenced during his youth not only by these currents in the German tradition but also by specific Austrian movements that professed various political sentiments, notably those of pan-Germanic expansionism and anti-Semitism. Hitlers ferocious nationalism, his contempt of Slavs, and his hatred of Jews can largely be explained by his bitter experiences as an unsuccessful artist living a threadbare existence on the streets of Vienna, the capital of the multiethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Adolf Hitler (third from right) participating in a Nazi parade in Munich, c. 1930s.

This intellectual preparation would probably not have been sufficient for the growth of Nazism in Germany but for that countrys defeat in World War I. The defeat and the resulting disillusionment, pauperization, and frustrationparticularly among the lower middle classespaved the way for the success of the propaganda of Hitler and the Nazis. The Treaty of Versailles (1919), the formal settlement of World War I drafted without German participation, alienated many Germans with its imposition of harsh monetary and territorial reparations. The significant resentment expressed toward the peace treaty gave Hitler a starting point. Because German representatives (branded the November criminals by Nazis) agreed to cease hostilities and did not unconditionally surrender in the armistice of November 11, 1918, there was a widespread feelingparticularly in the militarythat Germanys defeat had been orchestrated by diplomats at the Versailles meetings. From the beginning, Hitlers propaganda of revenge for this traitorous act, through which the German people had been stabbed in the back, and his call for rearmament had strong appeal within military circles, which regarded the peace only as a temporary setback in Germanys expansionist program. The ruinous inflation of the German currency in 1923 wiped out the savings of many middle-class households and led to further public alienation and dissatisfaction.

Learn about the rise of Adolf Hitler, the Nazi Party, and the anti-Semitism they fomented in pre-WWII Germany

In 1933 Adolf Hitler's National Socialists were voted into power, and the campaign of terror began. From The Second World War: Prelude to Conflict (1963).

Hitler added to Pan-Germanic aspirations the almost mystical fanaticism of a faith in the mission of the German race and the fervour of a social revolutionary gospel. This gospel was most fully expressed in Hitlers personal testament Mein Kampf (192527; My Struggle), in which he outlined both his practical aims and his theories of race and propaganda.

Posing as a bulwark against communism, Hitler exploited the fears aroused in Germany and worldwide by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the consolidation of communist power in the Soviet Union. Thus, he was able to secure the support of many conservative elements that misunderstood the totalitarian character of his movement.

Hitlers most important individual contribution to the theory and practice of Nazism was his deep understanding of mass psychology and mass propaganda. He stressed the fact that all propaganda must hold its intellectual level at the capacity of the least intelligent of those at whom it is directed and that its truthfulness is much less important than its success. According to Hitler:

It is part of a great leaders genius to make even widely separated adversaries appear as if they belonged to but one category, because among weakly and undecided characters the recognition of various enemies all too easily marks the beginning of doubt of ones own rightness.

Hitler found this common denominator in the Jewish people, whom he identified with both Bolshevism and a kind of cosmic evil. Jews were to be discriminated against not according to their religion but according to their race. Nazism declared Jewswhatever their educational and social achievementsto be forever fundamentally different from and inimical to Germans.

Nazism attempted to reconcile conservative, nationalist ideology with a socially radical doctrine. In so doing, it became a profoundly revolutionary movementalbeit a largely negative one. Rejecting rationalism, liberalism, democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and all movements of international cooperation and peace, it stressed instinct, the subordination of the individual to the state, and the necessity of blind and unswerving obedience to leaders appointed from above. It also emphasized the inequality of humans and races and the right of the strong to rule the weak; sought to purge or suppress competing political, religious, and social institutions; advanced an ethic of hardness and ferocity; and partly destroyed class distinctions by drawing into the movement misfits and failures from all social classes. Although socialism was traditionally an internationalist creed, the radical wing of Nazism knew that a mass base existed for policies that were simultaneously anticapitalist and nationalist. However, after Hitler secured power, this radical strain was eliminated.

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Nazism | Definition, Leaders, Ideology, & History | Britannica

Political party in Austria

Austrian Nazism or Austrian National Socialism was a pan-German movement that was formed at the beginning of the 20th century. The movement took a concrete form on 15 November 1903 when the German Worker's Party (DAP) was established in Austria with its secretariat stationed in the town of Aussig (now st nad Labem in the Czech Republic). It was suppressed under the rule of Engelbert Dollfuss (193234), with its political organization, the DNSAP ("German National Socialist Workers' Party") banned in early 1933, but revived and made part of the German Nazi Party after the German annexation of Austria in 1938.[14]

Franko Stein, from the town of Eger (now Cheb, Czech Republic) and an apprentice bookbinder Ludwig Vogel, from the town of Brx (now Most, Czech Republic), organised the Deutschnationaler Arbeiterbund (German National Workers' League) in 1893. It was a collection of laborers, apprentices, and trade unionists from the railroads, mines, and textile industries, who upheld nationalism as a result of their conflicts with the non-German speaking portions of the workforce, especially in the railway systems. In 1899, Stein was able to convene a workers' congress in Eger and promulgated a 25-point program.

Another convention was called in April 1902, under the title of "German-Political Workers' Association for Austria" (German: Deutschpolitischer Arbeiterverein fr sterreich), in Saaz. In Aussig, on 15 November 1903, they reorganized under the name of the "German Workers' Party in Austria" (German: Deutsche Arbeiterpartei in sterreich). At further party congresses, Hans Knirsch proposed to call themselves the "Nationalsozialistische" (National-Socialist) or "Deutsch-soziale" (German-social) Workers' Party. The proposal was blocked by the Bohemian groups, who did not want to copy the name of the Czech National Social Party. An early member of this group is Ferdinand Burschowsky, a printer from Hohenstadt (Moravia), who was active in writing and publishing.

At a party congress in Vienna in May 1918, the DAP changed its name to the Deutsche Nationalsozialistische Arbeiterpartei (DNSAP) and produced a National Socialist Program, which is thought to have influenced the later German Nazi manifesto.[citation needed]

The Austrian DNSAP split into two factions in 1923, the Deutschsozialen Verein (German-Social Association) led by Dr. Walter Riehl, and the Schulz-Gruppe. After 1930, most former DNSAP members became supporters of the German NSDAP led by Austrian-born Adolf Hitler, and were one of the chief elements leading the pro-Nazi coup in 1938 that brought about the Anschluss of Austria with Germany.

Leaders of the party, who were dubbed Landesleiter due to the recognition of Hitler as overall Fhrer, included Alfred Proksch (193133), Hermann Neubacher (1935) and Josef Leopold (193638), although real power frequently lay with Theodor Habicht, a German sent by Hitler to oversee Nazi activity in Austria.

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Austrian Nazism - Wikipedia

Political ideology combining extreme nationalism and communism

National Bolshevism (Russian: -, romanized:Natsional-bol'shevizm, German: Nationalbolschewismus), whose supporters are known as National Bolsheviks (Russian: -, romanized:Natsional-bol'sheviki) or NazBols (Russian: , romanized:Natsboly),[1] is a radical political movement that combines ultranationalism (or alternatively fascism in some cases) and communism.[2][3]

Notable historical proponents of National Bolshevism in Germany included Ernst Niekisch (18891967), Heinrich Laufenberg (18721932), and Karl Otto Paetel (19061975). In Russia, Nikolay Ustryalov (18901937) and his followers, the Smenovekhovtsy, used the term.

Notable modern advocates of the movement include Aleksandr Dugin and Eduard Limonov, who led the unregistered and banned National Bolshevik Party (NBP) in the Russian Federation.[4]

National Bolshevism as a term was first used to describe a current in the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and then the Communist Workers' Party of Germany (KAPD) which wanted to ally the insurgent communist movement with dissident nationalist groups in the German army who rejected the Treaty of Versailles.[5] They were led by Heinrich Laufenberg and Fritz Wolffheim and were based in Hamburg. Their expulsion from the KAPD was one of the conditions that Karl Radek explained was necessary if the KAPD was to be welcomed to the Third Congress of the Third International. However, the demand that they withdraw from the KAPD would probably have happened anyway. Radek had dismissed the pair as National Bolsheviks, the first recorded use of the term in a German context.[6]

Radek subsequently courted some of the radical nationalists he had met in prison to unite with the Bolsheviks in the name of National Bolshevism. He saw in a revival of National Bolshevism a way to "remove the capitalist isolation" of the Soviet Union.[3]

During the 1920s, a number of German intellectuals began a dialogue which created a synthesis between radical nationalism (typically referencing Prussianism) and Bolshevism as it existed in the Soviet Union. The main figure in this was Ernst Niekisch of the Old Social Democratic Party of Germany, who edited the Widerstand journal.[7]

A National Bolshevik tendency also existed with the German Youth Movement, led by Karl Otto Paetel. Paetel had been a supporter of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), but became disillusioned with them as he did not feel they were truly committed to revolutionary activity or socialist economics. His 1930-formed movement, the Group of Social Revolutionary Nationalists, sought to forge a third way between the NSDAP and the KPD, emphasising both nationalism and socialist economics.[8] He was especially active in a largely unsuccessful attempt to win over a section of the Hitler Youth to his cause.[9]

Although members of the NSDAP under Adolf Hitler did not take part in Niekisch's National Bolshevik project and usually presented Bolshevism in exclusively negative terms as a Jewish conspiracy, in the early 1930s there was a parallel tendency within the NSDAP which advocated similar views. This was represented by what has come to be known as Strasserism. A group led by Hermann Ehrhardt, Otto Strasser and Walther Stennes broke away in 1930 to found the Combat League of Revolutionary National Socialists, commonly known as the Black Front.[10]

After the Second World War, the Socialist Reich Party was established, which combined neo-Nazi ideology with a foreign policy critical of the United States and supportive of the Soviet Union, which funded the party.[11][12]

As the Russian Civil War dragged on, a number of prominent Whites switched to the Bolshevik side because they saw it as the only hope for restoring greatness to Russia. Amongst these was Professor Nikolai Ustrialov, initially an anti-communist, who came to believe that Bolshevism could be modified to serve nationalistic purposes. His followers, the Smenovekhovtsy (named after a series of articles he published in 1921) Smena vekh (Russian: change of milestones), came to regard themselves as National Bolsheviks, borrowing the term from Niekisch.[13]

Similar ideas were expressed by the Evraziitsi movement and writers such as D. S. Mirsky, and the pro-monarchist Mladorossi. Joseph Stalin's idea of socialism in one country was interpreted as a victory by the National Bolsheviks.[13] Vladimir Lenin, who did not use the term National Bolshevism, identified the Smenovekhovtsy as a tendency of the old Constitutional Democratic Party who saw Russian communism as just an evolution in the process of Russian aggrandisement. He further added that they were a class enemy and warned against communists believing them to be allies.[14]

Ustryalov and others sympathetic to the Smenovekhovtsy cause, such as Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy and Ilya Ehrenburg, were eventually able to return to the Soviet Union and following the co-option of aspects of nationalism by Stalin and his ideologue Andrei Zhdanov enjoyed membership of the intellectual elite under the designation non-party Bolsheviks.[15][16] Similarly, B. D. Grekov's National Bolshevik school of historiography, a frequent target under Lenin, was officially recognised and even promoted under Stalin, albeit after accepting the main tenets of Stalinism.[17]It has been argued that National Bolshevism was the main impetus for the revival of patriotism as an official part of state ideology in the 1930s.[18][19] Although many of the original proponents of National Bolshevism such as Ustryalov and members of the Smenovekhovtsy were suppressed and executed during the Great Purge for national chauvinism, anti-Soviet agitation and other counter-revolutionary activities.[20][21]

The term National Bolshevism has sometimes been applied to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and his brand of anti-communism.[22] However, Geoffrey Hosking argues in his History of the Soviet Union that Solzhenitsyn cannot be labelled a National Bolshevik since he was thoroughly anti-Stalinist and wished a revival of Russian culture that would see a greater role for the Russian Orthodox Church, a withdrawal of Russia from its role overseas and a state of international isolationism.[22] Solzhenitsyn and his followers, known as vozrozhdentsy (revivalists), differed from the National Bolsheviks, who were not religious in tone (although not completely hostile to religion) and who felt that involvement overseas was important for the prestige and power of Russia.[22]

There was open hostility between Solzhenitsyn and Eduard Limonov, the head of Russia's unregistered National Bolshevik Party. Solzhenitsyn had described Limonov as "a little insect who writes pornography" and Limonov described Solzhenitsyn as a traitor to his homeland who contributed to the downfall of the Soviet Union. In The Oak and the Calf, Solzhenitsyn openly attacked the notions that the Russians were "the noblest in the world" and that "tsarism and Bolshevism [...] [were] equally irreproachable", defining this as the core of the National Bolshevism to which he was opposed.[23]

The current National Bolshevik Party (NBP) was founded in 1992 as the National Bolshevik Front, an amalgamation of six minor groups.[25] The party has always been led by Eduard Limonov. Limonov and Dugin sought to unite far-left and far-right radicals on the same platform.[26] With Dugin viewing national-bolsheviks as a point between communist and fascists, and forced to act in the peripheries of each group.[citation needed] The group's early policies and actions show some alignment and sympathy with radical nationalist groups, albeit while still holding to the tenets of a form of Marxism that Dugin defined as "Marx minus Feuerbach, i. e. minus evolutionism and sometimes appearing inertial humanism.", but a split occurred in the 2000s which changed this to an extent. This led to the party moving further left in Russia's political spectrum, and led to members of the party denouncing Dugin and his group as fascists.[27] Dugin subsequently developed close ties to the Kremlin and served as an adviser to senior Russian official Sergey Naryshkin.[28][29]

Initially opposed to Vladimir Putin, Limonov at first somewhat liberalized the NBP and joined forces with leftist and liberal groups in Garry Kasparov's United Civil Front to fight Putin.[30] However, he later expressed more supportive views of Putin following the 2014 pro-Russian unrest in Ukraine.[31][32][33]

The Franco-Belgian Parti Communautaire National-Europen shares National Bolshevism's desire for the creation of a united Europe as well as many of the NBP's economic ideas. French political figure Christian Bouchet has also been influenced by the idea.[34]

In 1944, Indian nationalist leader Subhas Chandra Bose called for "a synthesis between National Socialism and communism" to take root in India.[35]

That same year, the new leadership of the Israeli paramilitary organization Lehi declared its support for National Bolshevism, a break from the group's fascist outlook under its previous leader Avraham Stern.[36]

Some have described the Serbian Radical Party, the Bulgarian Attack party, the Slovenian National Party and the Greater Romania Party as "National Bolshevik" for blending much of their respective countries' far-right rhetoric with traditional left-wing stances such as socialised economies, anti-imperialism and defense of historical communist rule.[citation needed] The Serbian Radical Party in particular has given support to leaders such as Muammar Gaddafi,[37] Saddam Hussein[38] and current Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.[39] The Greater Romania Party on the other hand was founded by Corneliu Vadim Tudor, described as the "Court Poet of Nicolae Ceauescu",[40] and has been seen as a continuation of the latter's ideology with a right-wing veneer.

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National Bolshevism - Wikipedia

In The Indian Struggle, Subhas Chandra Bose had outlined the reasons why he foresaw that communism would never be adopted in India. Firstly, he wrote, communism had no sympathy with nationalism, whereas the freedom movement was a national movement. Lenins thesis on the relation between nationalism and communism had been sidestepped after the failure of the Chinese revolution. The second reason was Russias disinterest in sparking a world revolution, with its focus on internal affairs and a decline in its prestige due to its pacts with capitalist countries and the joining of the League of Nations. Thirdly, the anti-religious and atheistic character of Russian communism would not fit into the Indian environment, where a national awakening is in most cases heralded by a religious reformation and a cultural renaissance. The fifth reason, he felt, was that although communist theory had made certain remarkable contributions in the domain of economics such as state planning, it was weak in other aspects Bose. Later, however, he retracted his argument about the conflict between nationalism and communism at an interview with Rajani Palme Dutt in January 1938, where he said:

I should point out also that Communism, as it appeared to be demonstrated by many of those who were supposed to stand for it in India, seemed to me anti-national, and this impression was further strengthened in view of the hostile attitude which several among them exhibited towards the Indian National Congress. It is clear, however, that the position today has fundamentally altered. I should add that I have always understood and am quite satisfied that Communism, as it has been expressed in the writings of Marx and Lenin and in the official statements of policy of the Communist International, gives full support to the struggle for national independence and recognises this as an integral part of its world outlook.

His later utterances, however, indicate that this statement was more a tactical retreat than a change in belief.

Subhas had urged Jawaharlal to preside over the All-Bengal Students Conference in Calcutta, held on 22 September 1928. Like Subhas, Jawaharlal too sang paeans to the youth, and had similar things to say about empowering different disadvantaged groups in the society, but the thrust of his message was very different. His was a message of socialism in contrast to nationalism. I have placed before you the ideals of internationalism and socialism as the only ideals worthy of the fine temper of the youth, he told them. As far as his attitude to communism was concerned, he said that:

. . . though personally I do not agree with many of the methods of the communists and I am by no means sure to what extent communism can suit the present conditions in India, I do believe communism as an ideal of society. For essentially it is socialism, and socialism I think is the only way if the world is to escape disaster.

Speaking at the same conference, Subhas outlined where he differed with Jawaharlal in the sphere of ideas. He too believed in internationalism, but not in the form which obliterated distinctive characteristics of different nations. The expression of nationalism by Chittaranjan, a humanist, poet, essayist, thinker and a politician fiercely proud about his Bengali heritage rolled into one, was in stark contrast to the critique of nationalism by Tagore. In their quarrel, Subhas was completely on his political mentors side. From Mandalay Jail, he had criticized the shallow internationalism in life and literature of Tagore and his school which did not realize the fundamental truth in nationalism. He would touch upon the topic now and then, but his speeches and writings lacked the lyrical exuberance of his guru. While speaking at the Maharashtra Provincial Conference, Subhas responded to the charge of nationalism being narrow, selfish and aggressive from the perspective of cultural internationalism: his response was more in the nature of a political project that he envisioned rather than at an abstract, conceptual level. He pointed out that Indian nationalism, far from being any of these, was inspired by the highest ideals of the human race, viz., Satyam (the true), Shivam (the good), Sundaram (the beautiful):

Nationalism in India has instilled into us truthfulness, honesty, manliness and the spirit of service and sacrifice. What is more, it has roused the creative faculties which for centuries had been lying dormant in our people and, as a result, we are experiences a renaissance in the domain of Indian art.

In fact, he would return to the philosophical aspects of the independence movement repeatedly in his speeches around this time. Organizing the movement was the immediate problem, but equally important was to impart a character to it. Subhas was not yet advocating a particular form of political and social organization for independent India. Rather, he focused on defining the components which would make up the whole, and wished to lay the ground for post-independence reconstruction. He was preoccupied with questions such as: What was the most desirable political system for Indias development? What were the roles of the students and the youth? How should India balance nationalism and internationalism?

The ideal of the youth was to break the shackles of all oppression, injustices, and malpractices to create a new nation, he told a youth conference at Pabna. Creation of a new order had to follow the destruction of status quo. Subhas invoked Krishnas stern castigation of Arjun in the battlefield of Kurukshetra Klaivyam masma gamah Partha as the message which contained the essence of immortal youth. The youth movement, just like the national movement, was not merely a political movement. It had to weave together varying strands of art, literature, philosophy, science, commerce, and sports for the development of national life.

He refused to stand behind any particular ism at this point. No ism (he referred to anarchism, socialism, communism, Bolshevism, syndicalism, republicanism, constitutional monarchy, and fascism) was adequate to lift humanity out of misery unless individual characters were strengthened. Indians, he said, had every quality except tenacity of purposewhat was needed, therefore, was the ability to sacrifice everything for the sake of an idea. As Vivekananda had pointed out, the basis of nation formation as well as of establishing an effective ism was to create good human beings first. Whatever ism India chose for itself, it had to be moulded in accordance with its traditions and had to answer well to the requirements of present conditions. It was equally important to pay attention to the nationalist aspect of the movement as to the internationalist aspect. The latter was required to be the foundation of lasting global peace based on common understanding, development and exchange of knowledge, and the emphasis on the latter was critical to be able to create a nation based on new ideals. The responsibility for this regeneration was on the shoulders of the youth.

The national awakening would not take place unless the foundations of Indian society were shaken up. For most people, as he pointed out, social oppression was a greater reality than political oppression. The never-changing aim was complete freedom social, economic and political. Most people could relate more immediately to social oppression than to state-led oppression, and it was futile to expect the oppressed sections to join in the political movement. He said that the hypocrisy that is going on in the name of society, religion and state must be crushed ruthlessly. Therefore, Privileges based on birth, caste or creed should go, and equal opportunities should be thrown open to all irrespective of caste, creed or religion.

If it was important to break out of the restrictive traditions of the past, it was equally important to remain connected with the achievements of the past and be proud of ones heritage. The politics of nation-making did not take away anything from his consciousness of being a Bengali. In his presidential address the 1929 Bengal Provincial Conference at Rangpur in North Bengal (now in Bangladesh), Subhas took his audience through the history of the province, stressing its tradition of rebelliousness, the unique identity the region maintained in ancient times, the vivacity of the Bengalis leading to experimentations with social and political forms and their achievements in spreading ideas in other countries, the syncretic culture during the Muslim rule, the reform movements, and lastly the emergence of the nationalist movement. Aware of the increasing influence of Marxist thought, especially amongst the revolutionary groups, he reiterated his conception of Indias traditional forms of socialism. Vivekananda and Deshbandhu were the icons of his variant of socialism, who struggled throughout their lives to uplift the downtrodden. Again, he voiced his opposition to accepting any ism as a package. Every ism had elements of truth what was good in socialism should be accepted; but accepting tenets of socialism did not mean that the discipline, organisation and obedience of fascism were to be disregarded. He referred to how the Soviet Union had to implement the New Economic Policy in contravention to the orthodox communist philosophy to suit its unique needs. He argued that if an ism is imposed on a country by disregarding its history and its present conditions, it would either lead to a revolution or give rise to a contrary ideology like fascism. Most important, however, was the development of personality. No ism could succeed without good human beings.

He was only too aware of the barriers to building up that mass movement in the form of caste and religious divisions, the position of women in the society and the tentative links between the Congress and the industrial labour and peasants. Throughout this period, these themes kept resonating in his speeches as the basis of attaining social, economic and political freedom.

(Excerpt from Bose: The Untold Story of An Inconvenient Nationalist by Chandrachur Ghose, with permission from Penguin Random House)

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Netaji Believed Indian Nationalism Was All About The Highest Ideals Of Human Race - Outlook India

This week I met a ghost. Not some movie caricature of a risen spirit but something far more ghoulish and real: the resurrected corpse of tyranny, fundamentalism, and sheer hatred.

Im a columnist for the Toronto Star, one of Canadas largest newspapers and very much the voice of the countrys liberal conscience. On Monday 17 January I wrote about the anti-vaccination movement. Not a deep analysis or a thorough exploration, but a personal account the story of my great-aunt from Eastern Europe, who would care for me when I was a child, and of the death camp numbers tattooed onto her arm, and the slaughter by the Nazis of many of her, and my, family.

How, I asked, could the opponents of the vital and compassionate Covid vaccination programme compare themselves to people ripped from their homes, tortured, humiliated, and murdered? How dare they parade the yellow star at their demonstrations and on their social media platforms, try to hijack the Holocaust, and compare their privileged and self-imposed experience to genocide? It was the world turned upside down, the denial of reality, the desecration of memory and loss.

Thats when the ghost came out to play. The column was intensely personal, difficult to write, and there were numerous people who championed it. But not the anti-vaxx militants, whom I now realise move in dark and fierce regiments.

The tweets and emails began within moments of the column being published. Im an old hand at this sort of thing and have been attacked by all sorts of nutters and nasties over the years, some of them highly motivated and belligerent. But never, ever anything like this. In 48 hours there had been thousands of attacks. Many of them were, of course, bot accounts, meant to destabilise and polarise, and theyre obvious by their style and appearance. But most appeared to be from real people.

As Im a priest, dozens of them alleged that I was a child abuser, a paedophile. They varied in their explicit and gross nature. Then there were the hundreds convinced that I was a Satanist, a devil-worshipper. One had me as a Son of Satin. Hey, its lovely material.

They posted pictures of my body with a twisted, grotesque face, they told downright lies about my life and work, superimposed my face on pictures of Hitler and Goebbels, and libeled members of my family. And they threatened me, some demanding that I be hanged. (Well, they said hung but what does one expect?) Friendly voices recommended contacting the police, but while they meant well they didnt appreciate how pointless this usually is. Unless there is evidence of who is behind such threats, the cops are largely powerless. I made sure the doors were locked, paid more attention to my surroundings, comforted myself that it was all bombast.

They found my website of course, and obtained my personal email. None of this is hidden, and as a cleric who deals with pastoral emergencies and hospital visits my details are out there. I wish I could say it didnt matter and that I didnt care but that would be untrue. Putting on a brave face isnt the same as having no feelings. Eventually it will fade and they will move on to another target but the sobering aspect, the thought that rests permanently in the mind, is that in the end theres actually not very much one can do about it.

So who are they, these acidic warriors in the fight against vaccinations, masks, and lockdowns? Various people, naturally, but broadly speaking hyper libertarians, religious mostly Christian fundamentalists, conspiracy theorists, and the weak and gullible. Its a dangerous brew, as were seeing increasingly in acts of violence and civil disobedience. In North America the situation is more acute, more concerning. The mob that stormed the Capitol Building in Washington, DC on 6 January 2021 was composed of precisely the sort of people Ive just listed. Since then theyve become more radicalised, feel more marginalised, and are certainly more organised.

This jarring disconnect, this politicised mass psychosis, may have its origins in the US but has been replicated internationally; not always as large, and thank God not as well-armed, but its there, like a toxin of hysteria and ignorance pumped into the bloodstream of the body politic. Or even ironically a potentially deadly virus. Most of us find it all somewhat difficult to comprehend, because the belief system behind it is downright deranged, and can so easily be proven wrong. But the same can be said of fascism and racism. The same could be said, was said, but sometimes and with ghastly consequences still failed to win the day.

If the gutter press could influence millions in the 1930s, social media and Fox News can do so just as efficiently almost a century later. As many others have said before, the lie told convincingly and frequently becomes the truth, the fiction becomes the fact. I wasnt attacked by people who thought they were bad, I was attacked by people who knew I was. Unless we grasp this we can never understand the problem.

Contrary to what several thousand people told me in the past few days, the Covid vaccine isnt designed to control world population, sterilise us, or make us instantly identifiable to the new world order. Its not the sign of the beast, not connected to some eschatological fantasy, and President Joe Biden isnt dead and being played in public by a Moscow-trained actor. And no, Im not the anti-Christ.

It all seems so bizarre, so ridiculous, even so irrelevant. Until it isnt.

My bubba, about whom I wrote that column, thought that National Socialism was a circus of inadequate malcontents and that civilized, noble Germany would come to its senses. So we should be moderate in our response but be informed and aware. What is a campaign against vaccinations today could wear a different uniform tomorrow. I wish I could say otherwise, but the people and the beliefs Ive encountered this week arent simply going to disappear.

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What it's like to be targeted by anti-vaxxers - The New Statesman

This statement will be distributed by the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) club members to students and young people around Australia as universities resume for the 2022 academic year.

The start of 2022 has brought young people around Australia face to face with the cruel reality of the ruling elites criminal policies amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Australia was once hailed around the world as a success story for keeping case numbers and deaths low relative to countries like the US, Brazil, and those in western Europe. The country is now experiencing 100,000 daily infections spurred on by the highly transmissible Omicron variant. Fatality records are being broken multiple times a week, with 398 deaths in the last seven days alone.

The vertical spike in Australian COVID infections is a result of the murderous live with the virus program promoted by governments and the corporate media around the world. Australian federal and state governmentsLiberal-National Coalition and Labor alikehave proceeded amid the surge in cases with the pro-business reopening of business, schools, and universities in the interests of the profits of the financial oligarchy, no matter the impact on the lives of ordinary people.

Young people and students must take up a fight against this homicidal profit-driven drive!

Youth are being placed on the frontlines of the governments ghoulish experiment on the population. As part of the campaign to reopen, universities and schools plan to return to in-person teaching. Cramming students around the country into crowded classrooms and lecture theatres will cause an uncontrolled spread of the deadly virus, resulting in further mass death and suffering.

The death earlier this month of fit, young, healthy, double-vaccinated James Kondilios in Sydney underscores that young people are not safe from the virus. It cuts across this government-media lieused to justify the profit-driven campaign to live with the virusthat youth are invulnerable to the effects of COVID-19. Child hospitalisations amid the Omicron surge are at record levels in almost every country. Unmentioned in the mainstream media as well are the effects of Long COVID, which are not yet fully understood. What is known, however, is that suffering can persist for many months after initial infection.

Despite the staggering case numbers, and record hospitalisations and deaths due to COVID-19, university campuses around the country are marching in lockstep with the calls by big business to resume face-to-face teaching.

Monash University in Melbourne announced that it will reopen its campus on January 27, while the University of Melbourne will have a blended online and on-campus model for onshore students. Sydneys University of New South Wales is also planning a return to campus for the first term of 2022.

University workers at Melbournes Victoria Universitywhich has a large working-class and immigrant student populationwere advised before Christmas that summer courses would resume in person despite COVID-19 case numbers spiraling out of control.

This reopening has gone ahead with the full support of the pro-business trade unions. National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) Assistant National Secretary Gabe Gooding penned an article in the unions magazine, Advocate, on November 8, 2021, entitled Reflections on leaving lockdown and the road ahead. While the current surge due to the spread of Omicron had not yet begun, daily case numbers nationally at the time were over 1,000. In the article, Gooding wrote: This period as we transition out of lockdowns is the point where we must seize the moment and ensure that we dont transition back, but instead transition forward.

The NTEU has not written a word since on the exponential rise of cases around the country, let alone opposed the drive to reopen universities. The National Union of Students has similarly remained silent on the reopening of university campuses amid mass infections.

Australian children are being herded into unsafe classrooms. No longer is there any pretence that it is safe for children or their teachers or in the interests of their education. It is to force their parents back to work to produce profits for the financial elite. This is occurring under conditions in which many under 12-years-old remain unvaccinated. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison insisted emphatically last week: Our objective is go back, stay back, day one term one.

Young workers employed in hospitality, retail, warehousing, delivery services, and other industries are on the frontline of the dangerous spread of the virus. They often have to work multiple jobs and living in cramped accommodation in order to pay for rent, food, bills, education, and other living expenses. In these sectors, youth are being pressured by bosses and their financial situation to return to work despite the dangers amid mass transmission.

In recent interviews published on the World Socialist Web Site, young workers exposed their unsafe work conditions and the indifference of government and business policies to the dangers that workers confront amid the live with the virus campaign.

But a shift is underway. Young people, students, and workers are not going to sit back and allow this mass death and misery to continue. Internationally, there is a growing movement of the working class against the homicidal big business policy of herd immunity and mass infection.

Teachers aroundtheworldarespeakingout in opposition to the murderous plans to return to face-to-face teaching. In France, an estimated 75 percent of teachers participated in a national strike. In Chicago, 25,000 teachers took part in a powerful protest against the school reopening policies pursued by the Democratic Party on behalf of big business. There is also growing opposition among high school students in Australia to school reopenings while infections continue to rise. Educators and their supporters organised outside the politically bankrupt trade union apparatus in rank-and-file committees in Sri Lanka, Germany, Australia, the UK, Canada and elsewhere have discussed the need to stop reckless reopening of schools during the pandemic.

Internationally, there have been similar developments among autoworkers, postal workers, transport workers, and in other industries. It is to this social forcethe international working classthat young people and students must turn in order to end the pandemic and save lives.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a symptom of a much more terminal diseasethe decaying capitalist system. The pandemic crisis was predicted by modern science, and scientific knowledge also shows that it was entirely preventable and can still be ended. The suppressionofthevirusinChina since the initial outbreak shows that scientifically-determined public health measures taken togetherstrict lockdowns, mask mandates, proper quarantining facilities, mass vaccination programs, and adequate contact tracingcan eliminate COVID-19. But this cannot be maintained in a single country. The eradication of COVID-19 requires an internationally-coordinated program of elimination.

However, this scientific program has been rejected by the tiny, wealthy minority as the closure of businesses would cut across their ability to make profits through the exploitation of the working class. The financial oligarchy in every country have continued to engorge themselves while workers, their families, small businesses and whole societies made to suffer. The drive to reopen the economy, including the resumption of in-person teaching in schools and universities, is an exercise in social murder at the expense of capitalist profits.

The World Socialist Web Site, published by the world Trotskyist movement of which the IYSSE is the global youth and student movement, has characterised the pandemic as a trigger event in world history, akin to the First World War, which will have a profound impact on social consciousness. Millions of workers and youth internationally are gaining an education outside of schools and universities. That lesson is in the abject criminality of the capitalist system which places profits over lives.

The International Youth and Students for Social Equality insists that the pandemic raises centrally the question of political program. Capitalism has not only produced the COVID-19 pandemic crisis but is also the cause of all the dire social problems confronting humanity: the drive to another catastrophic world war, environmental destruction, growing social inequality, and the threat of fascism.

The latest Oxfam briefing on inequality summed up the state of class relations in the world today. A new billionaire has been created every 26 hours, since the beginning of the pandemic in early 2020 it stated. The report continued: The worlds 10 richest men have doubled their fortunes, while over 160 million people are projected to have been pushed into poverty. Meanwhile, an estimated 17 million people have died from COVID-19a scale of loss not seen since the Second World War.

If the capitalist system cannot prevent misery and mass death for the worlds population, then it must be overthrown and replaced with a socialist system to address the pressing needs of humankind.

As the only genuinely socialist revolutionary club on campus, the IYSSE will fight to mobilise youth and students against the criminal response of capitalism to the pandemic, and for an international revolutionary movement of the working class for socialism. We urge you to take your place in this struggle today by joining the IYSSE club or by forming one at your school or university. Contact the IYSSE to find out more.

Join the fight to defend public education! No unsafe return to schools!

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Oppose the dangerous reopening of universities! Students and youth must take up a fight against the pandemic! - WSWS

Every day we must remember the heroes and martyrs, our founders, referents and paradigms, Palacios specified when making the conclusions of the central act for the 33rd anniversary of the movement, held in the Principal Theater, one of the architectural jewels of the city .

Thanks to Sancti Spritus for what it has done all this time, which is why it is the venue for this act, he said, and recognized that being a Martian is feeling his work, loving it and applying it.

He conveyed congratulations on behalf of the National Directorate of the MJM, the National Bureau of the Union of Young Communists (UJC) and the Office of the Mart Program, for being this province the most outstanding in the work of the aforementioned movement for two consecutive years.

He highlighted the importance of showing a true character, which according to his own words goes through ethics, the vocation of justice and being worthy.

That is what Mart calls us to do, he specified, indicating that the 169th anniversary of the birth of the Apostle of independence, the most universal of all Cubans, will be celebrated on the 28th.

He recalled the close friendship that united Mart and the Hero of the three Cuban wars of independence against Spanish colonialism, Serafn Snchez born in Sancti Spiritus.

Cuba must continue to be a headlight, because we are committed to socialism, social justice and equality, with everyone and for the good of all, as Mart expressed, he argued.

The Provincial Council of said movement, with the approval of the UJC Bureau in the territory, awarded the Abdala prize -a dramatic poem written by Mart- to outstanding educational and cultural institutions, and to Arley Rodrguez, a doctor at the Gaviota Complex.

Other institutions were recognized, such as the branch of the Jos Mart Cultural Society, and La Colmena Espirituana Dueos de la Felicidad, as well as the venue for the national act received by Orlando Ernesto Prez, president of the MJM in the province.

Also attending the national event were Deivy Prez, member of the Central Committee of the Party and first secretary in the territory, Teresita Romero, governor of Sancti Spritus, and Alicia Alonso, deputy minister of Higher Education.

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Marti's thoughts applied to daily life keeps him alive in Cuba - Prensa Latina

Republican lawmakers introduced additions to a Cold War-era statute that bans educators from advocating for communism in schools to the House committee on Thursday. The statute dates back to 1949.Rep. Alicia Lekas, R-Hudson was looking to add Marxism and socialism to the ban, as well as any idea that the United States was founded on racism.Lekas said the intent of House Bill 1255 is to ensure teachers are educating and not indoctrinating."When I only accept an answer that says that my political beliefs are right and your beliefs are wrong, thats indoctrination, Lekas said.The intention here is to make certain that in our schools our teachers are doing what has happened for a long time teaching how to think not what to think, said Rep. Erica Layon, R-Derry.People opposed to the bill say teachers will be silenced and scared to cover certain topics in the classroom for fear of punishment."Critical thinking isnt being allowed because theyre afraid theyre going to be reported for something, National Education Association New Hampshire President Megan Tuttle said."The idea that I show up to work every day for low wages in unsafe conditions and Im not loyal I would love to know what your definition of loyalty is if its not that, history teacher Jennifer Given said. The sponsor of the bill said she did not have time to properly draft the bill and she is currently working on an amendment.

Republican lawmakers introduced additions to a Cold War-era statute that bans educators from advocating for communism in schools to the House committee on Thursday.

The statute dates back to 1949.

Rep. Alicia Lekas, R-Hudson was looking to add Marxism and socialism to the ban, as well as any idea that the United States was founded on racism.

Lekas said the intent of House Bill 1255 is to ensure teachers are educating and not indoctrinating.

"When I only accept an answer that says that my political beliefs are right and your beliefs are wrong, thats indoctrination, Lekas said.

The intention here is to make certain that in our schools our teachers are doing what has happened for a long time teaching how to think not what to think, said Rep. Erica Layon, R-Derry.

People opposed to the bill say teachers will be silenced and scared to cover certain topics in the classroom for fear of punishment.

"Critical thinking isnt being allowed because theyre afraid theyre going to be reported for something, National Education Association New Hampshire President Megan Tuttle said.

"The idea that I show up to work every day for low wages in unsafe conditions and Im not loyal I would love to know what your definition of loyalty is if its not that, history teacher Jennifer Given said.

The sponsor of the bill said she did not have time to properly draft the bill and she is currently working on an amendment.

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NH teachers react to proposed bill adding to Cold War-era 'Teachers' Loyalty' law - WMUR Manchester

Opening statements were heard on Monday in the federal trial of three former Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) officers charged with deprivation of civil rights for refusing to stop Derek Chauvin from killing George Floyd by kneeling on his neck on Memorial Day 2020.

The trial of J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane, and Tou Thao is being presided over by Judge Paul Magnuson of the U.S. District Court in St. Paul, Minnesota.

The three men were charged, along with Chauvin, in an indictment by a federal grand jury in Minnesota nearly one year after the killing of Floyd. The charges of deprivation of civil rights were applied in three counts: the first against Chauvin for keeping his knee on George Floyd after he became unresponsive, the second against Thao and Kueng for willingly failing to intervene to stop Chauvin from using unreasonable force, and the third against all four of the former officers for willfully failing to provide aid to Floyd and acting with deliberate indifference when he was in distress and dying.

Chauvinwho was convicted of murdering Floyd in a state trial on April 10 and is now serving a 22.5-year prison sentencepleaded guilty on December 15 to the federal civil right charges against him. He is expected to receive an additional 2.5 years of prison time for the federal offense.

A jury of five men, seven womenwith an even number of white and non-white jurorsand six alternates was selected from across the state of Minnesota last Thursday. Judge Magnuson repeatedly stressed that the conviction of Chauvin on state murder charges and his guilty plea on federal charges must not influence the proceedings against the trial of the other three. Kueng, Lane and Thao also face a state criminal trial of their own that is scheduled to begin on June 13.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Samantha Trepel opened the prosecutions case saying that the three officers did not lift a finger to help George Floyd even though he said 25 times that he could not breathe. Speaking to the defendants directly, she said that Floyd was in your custody, in your care and then read from the MPDs policy about how people are to be treated once taken into police custody.

Using still images from a city surveillance camera, the prosecutor described the actions of each of the defendants as they made the conscious choice over and over again not to act to protect a man they had in handcuffs and pinned to the pavement. Protecting those in custody is not just a moral responsibility, its what the law requires under the U.S. Constitution, Trepel said.

Trepel singled out the actions of Thao, 36, who was a veteran officer and Chauvins partner. She showed in a bystander video how Thao was trying to keep at bay the angry crowd that was witnessing the murder and demanding that Chauvin get off George Floyds neck. Instead of trying to stop Chauvin from killing Floyd, she explained, Thao cynically told the witnesses, This is why you dont do drugs, kids.

The prosecutor acknowledged that both Kueng and Lane were rookie officers but said this was no excuse for their actions. She said even though it can be awkward and uncomfortable to criticize a fellow officer, the two had received extensive training for 1-1/2 years that use of force and the duty to intervene should have been fresh in their minds. Among the training that Trepel mentioned was the obligation to turn a subject on his/her side when they are having trouble breathing.

As to the third charge, the prosecutor said that the officers were trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation but took no action to help save George Floyds life as he was rendered unconscious and lost a pulse. Here on May 25, 2020, for second after second, minute after minute, these three CPR-trained defendants stood or knelt next to Officer Chauvin as he slowly killed George Floyd right in front of them, she said.

In conclusion the Assistant US Attorney told the jury, We will ask you to hold these men accountable for choosing to do nothing and watch a man die.

Following the prosecutions opening statement, the attorney for Kueng, Thomas Plunkett, made a motion for a mistrial on the grounds that Trepels presentation to the jury was more argumentative than based on the evidence the prosecutors were planning to use during the trial. Judge Magnuson denied the motion.

In his opening statement of defense, Robert Paule, the attorney for Thao, attempted to blame George Floyd for his own death by saying it was a tragedy but a tragedy is not a crime. Paule told the jury to look beyond the video and see that Floyd was acting erratically and appeared to be on drugs when the officers attempted to arrest him.

According to a report in the New York Times, the defense appeared to be outlining a defense built on several pillars: That by initially resisting arrest, Mr. Floyds actions justified the aggressive police response; that Mr. Lane and Mr. Kueng were rookies, and that Mr. Chauvin was a training officer; and that Mr. Thao was busy keeping bystanders at bay, acting in the words of Mr. Paule as a human traffic cone.

Plunkett also suggested that he would try to blame the MPD for insufficient training of the rookie Kueng, and Earl Gray, attorney for Lane, was also pointing a finger at the city police department for keeping Chauvin on the force when he had a history of abuse and misconduct. Gray said that Lane had been told by superior officers that Chauvin was an excellent field training officer. Attorney Gray also said that his client intended to testify in his own defense, the only one of the three to do so, and said that Lane had two times tried to get Chauvin to roll George Floyd onto his side.

Legal experts have said that obtaining a conviction in the federal trial of Kueng, Lane and Thao is difficult because the prosecution must prove that the defendants are guilty of willingly violating George Floyds constitutional rights by not acting in his in defense rather than doing something directly to him.

The behavior of the then-Minneapolis officers is hardly unknown to working class and poor people in the US or other countries around the world. The actions of Kueng, Lane and Thao is part of an unstated law enforcement code of conduct where extreme brutality is followed by the victim being left unconscious or dying as officers mill around at the scene discussing how they will cover up their crime.

The only thing that is different in the death of George Floydand other similar cases recently, such as the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery in Glynn County, Georgiais the presence of the smartphone phone video shot by Darnella Frazier that was then viewed millions of times, triggering mass protests against police violence which swept across the US and internationally during the summer of 2020.

Additionally, the case of the three officers who cooperated with Derek Chauvin in killing George Floyd shoots a hole in the racialist presentation of police violence as purely a matter of blacks being killed by white police officers. The fact that Kueng is black, Lane is white, and Thao is Asian American makes clear that police violence is rooted in class society and capitalism, and the only way to stop it is by unifying the working class across all national, ethnic, racial and language barriers in the struggle for socialism.

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Jury hears opening statements in federal trial of three former cops involved in the murder of George Floyd - WSWS

Most of the opinions circulating about the July 11 protests in Cuba, particularly those that reject disorder and violence, as well as those that interpret and propose solutions to the conflict, must be right. Many reflect civic concern and commitment to issues that go beyond personal interest. Seen like this, they would be a sign of social glue, of citizen participation and consensus. At the same time, they are the mirror of a significant conflictiveness.

In this brief space, I will avoid discussing good or bad intentioned interpretations, experiences lived, read or heard, recommendations to the government, etc. I only propose to take a step back, to coldly examine some basic problems, among the many that lie ahead.

What do the protests mean?

If we were to ask mile Durkheim, one of the founders of Sociology, what is the nature of these protests, he could answer that it is a classic case of anomie. Anomie defines a situation where previously established norms and values disintegrate; a typical reaction of periods of drastic and rapid changes in the social, economic or political structures of society. Social groups that experience anomic reactions may feel disconnected, as if they do not belong to their society, and as if their society does not value their identity. Anomie can cause purposelessness, hopelessness, and encourage deviance and crime. I have intentionally underlined a few keywords in this classic definition, which is the ABCs of sociology.

In Cuba, we have been going through a transition process for more than two decades, characterized by profound changes in the social structures and in the economic life of the people, but also in the relations between civil society and political power. Among other changes, lets say, there is the very idea of socialism, which now incorporates conceptions different from those defended for half a century, as well as unprecedented policies. This transition has made visible a crisis of norms and values, widely debated in various public spaces and media. Likewise, the weakening of the sense of belonging has been pointed out; and the reproduction of marginality and its typical behaviors, within subordinate neighborhoods and social groups, but also the proliferation of crime in other social and institutional spaces, where corruption grows. As for despair, the art and literature disseminated on the island are a good mirror.

In other words, what is happening in Cuba is an anomie that should not catch us by surprise, because its factors and manifestations have not remained hidden or muzzled, as anyone can see without having to read social networks or anti-government newspapers. It has been there, in front of everyone, analyzed and discussed for too long, to ask ourselves now where the protests come from, as if they were thunder in a clear sky. Rather, one should ask why they have not happened before.

How is it that the Cuban opposition, on the island and in Miami, using the fashionable unconventional war manuals, and the CIA itself, have not managed to unleash something like this until now? And why precisely now? Durkheim would resort to another concept shared by social sciences and civil engineering: fatigue. After a year and a half of COVID-19 and six months of queues to buy basic products as Dr. Durn would say we are all more vulnerable.

What is happening to the new government?

I have pointed out before that the consensus has become more heterogeneous and contradictory in Cuba, that it has incorporated dissent, and that the Cuban government knows it. Before taking office as president, Ral recognized that the leadership of the founder of the Revolution, Fidel, was not inherited. Daz-Canel, who was already in the Political Bureau in Fidels time, was also able to know this; and in any case, he has experienced it firsthand since he took office in 2018. In fact, continuity has entailed different ways than the historical ones did before. Circumstances, which are the benchmark of politics, had already been imposed on them before they retired.

I underline what I say about a new government, because if it is postulated that this is the same Cuba as Fidel and Ral, witty literary metaphors can be constructed, but the countrys political and social process is difficult to understand. This government has sought to build its own consensus from the beginning, instead of resting on what some call the political capital of the Revolution. However, the yardstick to measure change is already another.

In effect, the new government has proposed unprecedented reforms since 1960, beginning with a new Constitution, which admits a mixed economy, with markets and the private sector, and which grants unprecedented autonomy to local powers. Its new style, learned by holding leadership positions in the provinces, emphasizes the interaction between the central and local level; and it has ministers under the age of 60 explaining problems and answering questions on television. Unlike previous periods, citizens can identify them by their names, judge them, praise them or openly mock them.

There has never been a moment like this before in terms of freedom to criticize the government, on social networks, but neither in public media, nor to access information from very diverse sources, including those of the opposition; nor is there greater freedom to enter and leave the country. Article 56 of the Constitution approved in 2019 establishes the right of association and public demonstration. In fact, a demonstration law was scheduled in the legislative calendar for October 2020 postponed, along with a dozen other bills due to the coronavirus. Regardless, the prevailing yardstick dictates that this government has done far less than it should. According to that rod, its glass would be almost empty.

As if that were not enough, after a year and a half focused on a formidable global human security crisis called a pandemic, without resources or protective alliances like those of yesteryear, this government has had to deal with the largest manifestations of discontent that occurred since 1959 Going down the streets of San Antonio de los Baos, President Daz-Canel must have remembered, like all of us who lived the summer of 1994, Fidel followed by a sea of people, going down San Lzaro street, to control that outbreak of anomie on the Malecn, without weapons or specialized forces to deal with riots. In a certain way, he did exactly the same thing as Fidel: to appear at the scene of the events, and summon the revolutionaries to take to the streets and face violence, by force, if necessary.

The same media, however, may produce different results in other circumstances. It took him a few hours to realize it. But his first slogan was carried out to the letter, not only by the police, but by the summoned organizations, first of all, the Party. Across the street, the opposition, as on November 27, 2020, capitalized on the discontent and increased the tensions. The classic escalation of violence studied by experts in conflict resolution1 was immediate.

A more complicated scenario could not be imagined to maintain the route outlined in the 8th Party Congress, just 90 days ago.

What violence and how?

In a model country for many in terms of stability, citizen respect and internal order, such as Japan, protests against police brutality against foreigners or racism are not uncommon. A group of foreign (that is, Korean) protesters can gather around them a cloud of police officers dressed as characters from Star Wars, with polycarbonate helmets and armor, armored shields and tonfas.

We are used to seeing images of violent demonstrations in other countries. Those who throw stones are part of the people, who rebel against injustice; those who shoot jets of water from riot control vehicles, tear gas, rubber bullets, or real ones, are the repressive forces. These global images do not discriminate between countries such as Chile, South Africa, Kyrgyzstan or the United States, with hundreds of wounded and dozens of deaths that are their balance.

The photos and videos that circulate in the media such as BBC Mundo above all suspicion of collusion with the Cuban regime reveal that neither the National Revolutionary Police (PNR), which here in Cuba is the only police institution, nor the special troops from the Ministry of the Interior (MININT) or the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) deploy those resources. Surely the Institute of Police Sciences of the MININT teaches how to face violent scenarios. But no class or exercise is equivalent to dealing with 700 angry people marching down the street under the summer sun or doing it by force if necessary even if its instructions say to avoid injuring them or using lethal means.

This is not a technical or circumstantial detail. Among the images of the protests that went viral on social networks, a dozen protesters turned police cars upside down, and even other vehicles, jumped on them and destroyed them. Compared to any capital in Latin America, there are no forces that prevent these attacks on authority, and that repress them at that time. At the same time, some police officers and civilians, summoned to mobilize in the theater of the confrontation, incurred excesses.

Among the few data available to measure physical violence is the looting of stores, in freely convertible currency and in Cuban pesos. There were none in San Antonio de los Baos; nor in Havana until after the television appearance of President Daz-Canel (4:30 pm). Of the 28 assaults registered up to that time, 68% (19) occurred in Matanzas, the province most affected by the pandemic; almost all of them in Crdenas (13), where the combination of the drop in tourism in Varadero plus the quarantine has hit a relatively higher standard of living than in other places in the province. In that period, there was only significant looting (4) in Coln (Matanzas), and Gines (Mayabeque); and others scattered in Holgun, Bayamo, Gira (1). After the Presidents intervention, 13 stores were raided, including 4 in Havana.

The social polarization that this violence shows is inversely proportional to unity, that is, to the construction of consensus. In addition, it has a negative impact on the image of the country, which works in favor of the cornerstone of U.S. policy: isolation. Preventing the battle won at the UN from being lost in the streets of Crdenas or Paseo del Prado is also a national interest.

After having tried everything with Fidel and Ral, and 25 years after the end of the Cold War, Barack Obama and his government considered that this policy was ineffective, according to their national interest. However, although Joseph Biden, vice president of that government, supported normalization, things have changed for them. What if Daz-Canel, without the wisdom and experience of the Castros, were not able to deal, at this moment of vulnerability, with the Cuban crisis? They might reason that it is better not to lower the heat on the blockade right now, but to let it continue to simmer the island. As you would say in Cuban: whats the rush?

The protests are lessons for all who want to read them. They could teach some economists that the success of the reforms does not depend only on technically solving planning, the market, the socialist state enterprise or the private sector, but on tackling problems such as income redistribution, consumption stratification, the adjoining economically brilliant or dark spaces, the inequalities and territorial and local setbacks, the state of the productive forces called workers. They have also shown politicians that the problem of national unity is that of consensus, and that it is not solved only with summoning mobilizations of revolutionaries, but through sustained dialogue with all citizens. They have shown the Party apparatuses, once again, that the effectiveness of a public media system is not ideological, but political, and that it is measured by its credibility and capacity to convince (the unconvinced, of course). They have confirmed that law enforcement agencies can provide first aid to outbreaks of violence, but at the cost of other damage, and that it is not they who should deal with the social and political problems where dissent takes root. Finally, it has shown U.S. politicians that its alliances with this bellicose opposition reinforces the hard line on both sides, and damages the real exercise of freedom and human rights in Cuba.

The common denominator of these lessons is Cuban society, with its lights and shadows. Knowing how to decipher its present, without bipolar roadmaps, will decide what will come.

Note:

1 Violencia y solucin de conflictos, in Temas magazine # 53, January-March, 2008.

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Conflict, consensus, crisis. Three minimum notes on the protests - OnCubaNews

This book details the result of the 2020 elections, the impact of the pandemic, the implosion of the leadership class, and the new coalition being built on the right.

MARION, Iowa (PRWEB) January 24, 2022

Author Tom Donelson offers his solution to pulling America out of the dark in America At The Abyss: Will America Survive? ($16.99, paperback, 9781662836725; $26.99, hard cover, 9781662836732; $7.99, e-book, 9781662836749).

Donelson sees a dark future for America if it continues its current trajectory, but he also believes there is hope. In this book, he explores solutions such as a new GOP coalition of rural Americans, and combining Trump populism with classical conservatism.

This book details the result of the 2020 elections, the impact of the pandemic, the implosion of the leadership class, and the new coalition being built on the right, said Donelson.

Tom Donelson has authored eight books including his most recent book, the Rise of National Populism and Democratic Socialism. Presently Mr. Donelson is the chief political strategist of Americas PAC and research associate and project director of Americas Majority Foundation. He has contributed for the past four decades to various publications, websites and blogs.

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Liberty Hill Publishing, a division of Salem Media Group, is a leader in the print-on-demand, self-publishing industry. America At The Abyss is available online through amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.

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Amidst Political Turmoil and Global Hardship, What Path Remains for Conservative Americans? - PR Web

Earlier this week, a pair of right-libertarian journalists announced the launch of their new site, BASEDPolitics. All hell promptly broke loose on right-wing Twitter.In the first editorial for their new site, co-founders Brad Polumbo and Hannah Cox define 'based' as 'upfront, on point, or rooted in true principles.' That fits pretty well with my understanding of the term, but it leaves something out.

That 'something' accounts for the pushback they received from the post-liberal, national conservative crowd. According to them, libertarians like Polumbo and Cox are nothing more than Koch-funded shills who fight for tax cuts and weaker antitrust laws while drag queens read to our children. They are not 'based' and have no right to refer to themselves as such.

'Our culture is not your costume,' one popular right-wing Twitter personality quipped. Sohrab Ahmari, an American Conservative editor who advocates for 'political Catholicism,'tweeted'Im never using based again, now that these corporate schmucks have appropriated it.'

Ahmari also threw in some disparaging comments about Polumbos 'gigantic' head and Coxs 'tackily overspilling dcolletage' as they appeared in the announcement graphic.

I asked Polumbo (full disclosure: he and I are both affiliated with Young Voices) whether he expected this kind of reaction. Heres what he had to say:

Oh yeah, we anticipated pushback from the very-online nationalist crowd. Im not particularly bothered by it, although some of it has been ad-hominem and juvenile, and thats pretty pathetic, fan behaviour. We wont stoop to that. But the pushback is kind of the point. The nationalists want to redefine what it means to be conservative so that it resembles big government, socially conservative Elizabeth Warren economics more than Ronald Reagan. We still believe the future of the Right should be rooted in free markets, individual liberty, the Constitution, (and)limited government.

The term 'based' originated as slang for being high on crack. Perhaps theres some connection with 'freebasing', or smoking cocaine. From there, the terms definition expanded to cover all the strange and erratic behaviours typically associated with 'crackheads'. A modern equivalent might be to say someone is 'trippin' or 'tweakin'. These dont necessarily mean the person is under the influence of psychedelics or meth, only that theyre acting like it. 'Youre crazy,' spoken either with total dismissiveness or with a hint of admiration, would convey the same meaning.

'Based' began to take on its current connotation with rapper Lil B the Based God, who released his first album, Based Boys, in 2007. According to Lil B, 'Based means being yourself. Not being scared of what people think about you. Not being afraid to do what you wanna do.'

According to one online dictionary, the term, now a 'signal of power and swagger,' became associated with the online right in the 2010s as a synonym for 'politically incorrect'. Donald Trump was 'based' because he was willing to say things that annoyed the libs and then laugh at their outrage.

'Can you believe OrangeMan said X?!' the outraged soycuck shrieks. 'Lol, based,' the gigachad responds.

It seems to me that at this point, an earlier definition of 'based' unrelated to West Coast drug culture began to influence the terms use by the new right. 'Based' retained its sense of the manic, un-self-conscious energy of Trumps Twitter, but it also took on the the sense of being 'based on' or 'based in' something older and sturdier than the endless flux of liquid modernity. ric Zemmour is based. So is Viktor Orbn. Jailing pornographers, seizing the assets of the Ford Foundation, and going to Latin Mass with your nine kids and tradwife are all based. On the darker corners of right-wing Twitter, Rhodesia, Mussolini and overt expressions of sexism are also 'based'.

The prevailing definition of 'based' sits somewhere near the intersection of troll and trad.

Polumbo told me hes fully aware that hes going against the usual meaning of the term:

'While not our only mission, a crucial part of our project is to explicitly combat the nationalist conservative movement in a substantive and ideas-based way. We are redefining what it means to be based, whether they like it or not. Freedom is based. Catholic integralism and other forms of lite-theocracy are authoritarian and un-American.'

The post-liberal response, of course, would be that right-libertarianism, like progressivism, is a dominant ideology masquerading as a scrappy resistance. They are two faces of the same beast called liberalism. They divide the world between them: freedom in the boardroom and freedom in the bedroom.

Im not nearly the libertarian Polumbo is, but Im not a fully convinced post-liberal yet either. I think wokeness is a far greater threat than socialism. At the same time, I worry that any sort of post-liberal political project could lead to tyranny. The levels of social conservatism and, frankly, religiosity it demands simply dont have enough buy-in to win national elections.

Imagine the average Joe Rogan listener. Not the alt-right white nationalist monster sketched out in thinkpiece after thinkpiece, but the representative of the American median, the 'barstool conservative'.Hes economically agnostic, an admirer of entrepreneurship who distrusts large corporations. Socially, hes slightly to the left of centre. The idea of giving puberty blockers to kids freaks him out, but he has no interest in outlawing gay marriage or no-fault divorce. Hed be more likely than Polumbo to support trade protectionism and breaking up big tech, but Ahmari would have a hard time selling him on porn bans and blue laws.

Polumbo and Cox are betting that this voting bloc will be more open to Friedrich Hayek than to Thomas Aquinas. Their plan seems to be to stan capitalism while casting wokeness as a collectivist distortion of individual liberty rather than its natural outgrowth. Its possible, they promise, to combat the excesses of progressivism to be 'based' without throwing out many of the fundamental assumptions of American politics and culture.

It might work. If their attempt to reclaim 'based' succeeds, well know it has.

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Who will win the battle for 'based'? - Spectator.co.uk

A common refrain in the Trump era was that despite all of Donald Trumps racist, xenophobic ambitions, he was too incompetent to carry out a wholescale remaking of U.S. society. Theres no question his four years in office had a profound, disastrous effect on the people and communities his administration targeted immigrants, Muslims and trans people, just to name a few. Plus, his openly fascist rhetoric and sometimes actions significantly emboldened the far right. However, both his legislative agenda, and to a lesser extent his exercise of executive authority, were likely hampered by his lack of experience in elected office and overall laziness, lack of discipline and inattention to detail.

Many advocates understandably fear that Trumps eventual Republican presidential successor, whoever they are, could combine the most toxic elements of Trumpism with a greater degree of technocratic skill. A more-competent Trump could do even greater damage to U.S. political infrastructure, like the refugee resettlement system that Trump dismantled, that could take decades to rebuild. A more-competent Trump could also potentially shepherd through a legislative agenda that far exceeded Trumps, which consisted primarily of a standard-fare Republican tax cut for the wealthy.

Currently, the most likely GOP successor to Trump seems to be Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who regularly ranks as Republicans top choice in the 2024 presidential primary if Trump declines to run. Trumps polling lead over DeSantis appears to be narrowing in recent months, though any surveys this far out should be taken with a grain of salt. Everything in DeSantiss public record suggests that he poses a serious threat to democracy, the working class and marginalized communities. DeSantis recently signed into law some of the nations most stringent anti-critical race theory legislation, and ordered a review of the states university system to determine if professors were indoctrinating students into a stale ideology, clearly a reference to ideas ranging from anti-racism to socialism. Hes also pushing a bill that would prevent teachers and private businesses from making white people feel discomfort when learning about the history of racist oppression in the United States.

DeSantis has also recently staked out his position as more anti-vaccine, anti-booster than Trump himself. In December, the Florida governor refused to say if hed gotten a COVID booster when asked by Fox Newss Maria Bartiromo. Ive done whatever I did, the normal shot, DeSantis said. DeSantis got the Johnson & Johnson single dose in April, and stonewalled in October when asked if he would get a booster.

These statements, as well as DeSantiss rising stature in the national Republican Party, seem to have rankled Trump. In comments that were widely understood to be directed at DeSantis, Trump criticized politicians who wouldnt say if they had gotten a COVID booster shot. Many Republican politicians had in fact gotten the booster, but they dont want to say it. Because theyre gutless, Trump said on the far right One America News Network. You gotta say it whether you had it or not. (At a rally in December, Trump told the crowd that hed gotten the booster. They booed him in response.)

Several days later, Axios reported Trump has been calling DeSantis a dull personality in private meetings. Also, in that report, Trump aides claimed the former president was angry that DeSantis hasnt pledged not to challenge Trump in the 2024 GOP primary, should he run again. The New York Timess Maggie Haberman tweeted that shed heard similar frustrations from those in Trump world, who said Trump thought DeSantis should be showing him more deference.

DeSantis, for his part, has taken shots at Trump as well. On the conservative Ruthless podcast, the governor said one of his biggest regrets since taking office was not being much louder in opposing Trumps calls for soft lockdowns as COVID initially spread throughout the country and world.

DeSantis also appears to be shoring up support from conservative media stars to build a parallel track of public support, separate from his standing with Trump. On the anniversary of the January 6 storming of the Capitol, the Florida governor gathered nine prominent social media stars in Tallahassee, Politico reported. Blaze TVs Sara Gonzales told Politico it would be a mistake for DeSantis not to run, and that many conservatives were hungry for someone with the guts to speak for them without fear of repercussions, but also without the obvious baggage that Trump carries.

However, despite the simmering tensions between the two men, neither appears eager to engage in an all-out attack on the other. Last week, Trump told reporters that he has a very good relationship with DeSantis. He reminded them of his early support for the Florida politician when he was a relatively unknown congressman making a longshot bid for governor. DeSantis won the [gubernatorial] election the day I announced that I was going to give him my endorsement, Trump said on the call. He made similar comments to New York Times reporter Jeremy Peters in a forthcoming book, underscoring the degree to which Trump believes hes responsible for DeSantiss success. Look, I helped Ron DeSantis at a level that nobodys ever seen before, Trump told Peters.

Despite the emerging personal rivalry between DeSantis and Trump, the two are ideologically nearly identical, and also govern in a similar manner. DeSantis reportedly rules Florida with an iron fist and demands total fealty and loyalty, just as Trump does. Ron DeSantis is essentially the speaker of the House, the president of the Senate and the chief justice of the Supreme Court right now, one Republican legislator recently told Politico. Another GOP state legislator said in the same report that its well known you cant go against him. If you cross him once, youre dead.

In another clear echo of Trumpism, DeSantis is pushing for the creation of a new, so-called election police force. The new sub-agency, whose proposed official name is the Office of Election Crimes and Security, would operate under the Department of State, which is controlled by the governor. Voting rights advocates are understandably alarmed, citing the extremely low levels of deliberate voter fraud and arguing that the goal of the new sub-agency is to depress turnout, particularly among Black voters and other groups historically targeted for harassment.

Also worrisome is a new proposed congressional district map released by DeSantiss office, an incredibly rare phenomenon. DeSantis map would cut in half the number of African American districts from four on current proposed congressional maps to two, while boosting the number of seats Donald Trump would have won in 2020 to 18 from the 16 on the map currently being considered by the GOP-led Florida Senate, Politico reported.

The 2024 primary will semi-officially start this year, after the November midterms. Trump hasnt announced whether hell run, but all signs suggest that he will. DeSantis is a young, popular, far-right politician who doesnt command the base of the party like Trump does, but comes closer than any other potential challenger at the moment. Ever since Trumps upset victory in 2016, those on both the right and the left have wondered what Trumpism without Trump might look like. In DeSantis, we could be seeing an answer.

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Is Ron DeSantis Shaping Up to Be Trump 2.0 in 2024? - Truthout

For two weeks, all over the country, German flags fluttered on cars, on balconies, and in allotment gardens. They were a visible expression of cheerful patriotism, and they lasted from the German national team's first defeat by France until its last, by England. As Italy and England face off Sunday in the final of the European Championships and Germany having bowed out, the flag and the face paint have both been stowed away most likely until next year's World Cup, as long as Germany qualifies.

It was another soccer tournament, the 2006 World Cup in Germany, that marked a turning point in the way Germans related to their flag. "A time to make friends" was the official motto of the championship, and it was the first time the Germans waved their national flag en masse.

"If you compare the stadium crowds [at the World Cups in Germany] in 1974 and in 2006, you can see a huge difference. In 1974, a few people had flags.In 2006, almost everyone had a flag. This was the moment when Germans acknowledged their flag and were happy to wave it," said Harald Biermann, communications director of the Haus der Geschichte in Bonn, a museum that focuses on contemporary German history.

The German flag was highly visible during the 2006 World Cup but quickly disappeared after the tournament

Of course, the national flag is not simply merchandise, as the website of the German Bundestag points out: "Germans identify with these colors as they seldom have before in their eventful history, and this is expressed in many places, not just at soccer World Cups." Is this really the case, or is it wishful thinking on the part of national lawmakers?

The relationship of its citizens to their own flag is more complicated in Germany than in almost any other country in the world, Biermann told DW. He emphasized that this makes Germany a "total exception" among the industrialized developed nations where national flags daily fly in front of government buildings and even people's front lawns.

Each society has its own unique way of dealing with national symbols, and, at first, outsiders often find these peculiarities hard to understand. Something people in other countries may take for granted, such as wearing a T-shirt with the slogan "Vive la France!" or "God bless America!" doesn't transfer easily to Germany. The same is true of the way people view the German flag. But why is this?

Though ubiquitous across the US, German flags seldom fly outside a person's home

Biermann explains it as a consequence of recent history. "Basically, it must be said that Germans have a difficult relationship with national feelings, and the colors black-red-gold are associated with those feelings. Because of the history of National Socialism, many people struggle with their attitude to the nation and to national feelings. This burden still weighs on people, and it takes a toll on our relationship to the nation."

Enrico Brissa is the author of the book "Flagge zeigen! Warum wir gerade jetzt Schwarz-Rot-Gold brauchen" [Show your colors! Why we need black-red-gold right now]. "The way we deal with state and national symbols is characterized by mistakes and confusion because our relationship to our state and nation has not been a consistent one; furthermore, it is one that has been, and is still, repeatedly brought up for discussion," he said.

Many symbols from the National Socialist era are banned by German law. The use of symbols of unconstitutional organizations is punishable by up to three years in prison. These symbols include things like the swastika and the Nazi salute. The use of such symbols that have not beendeclared illegal is also widely avoided by general society.

But Biermann said black-red-gold has nothing to do with either National Socialism or dictatorship: "Quite the opposite. Black-red-gold wasn't used under National Socialism. Instead, the swastika flag became the national symbol."

The German national colors first appeared as a combination in the 1813-1815 "Wars of Liberation" against Napoleon. They were used as uniform colors by the Ltzow Free Corps, a volunteer unit of the Prussian army, whose uniform consisted of black fabric, red piping, and gold buttons. Over the years that followed, the colors became more widely used, and in 1848 the Frankfurt National Assembly designated a flag with these three colors the official flag of the German Confederation.

The choice of black, red and gold goes back hundreds of years

Black, red and gold, it said, were the colors of the flag "under which liberals and democrats joined together to found a common state through the national movement," after which, in the Weimar Republic of 1919, it was "established as the flag of the first German democracy."

But this flag was rescinded by the Nazis when they seized power. "In that sense, black-red-gold really is completely untainted in every respect," Biermann said.

But even if the Nazis were less interested in the colors of today's German flag, right-wing extremists have flocked to them.

"Since the autumn of 2014, we have also been dealing with an insidious reinterpretation of our national colors," Brissa said. "The joy over the World Cup victory in Brazil had not yet faded when, a few months later, the [far-right, anti-Islam] PEGIDA demonstrations began in Dresden. Since then, black-red-gold has become a constant, highly visible accompaniment to right-wing protests 'against the system.' The big presence of these colors on the streets has been surpassed by their even bigger presence on social media. Since then, too many of our citizens believe that black-red-gold is a symbol of the extreme right which, of course, is nonsense."

Despite the flag's lack of connection to the Nazi regime, neo-Nazis and the far-right have latched to the colors

In a speech in November 2020, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier warned that the German flag should not be abandoned by society and left to the right-wing extremists.

"Black, red, gold these are the colors of our democratic history," he said. "We must not allow them to be appropriated and misused by those who want to ignite fresh nationalist hatred."

According to Biermann, one of the reasons for people's uneasy relationship with the German flag is a lack of knowledge about the history and significance of the three colors.

"Many Germans simply don't know what the symbol black-red-gold actually stands for. It must be said that this is a failure on the part of schools," he says. Consequently, people are not sure what Germany's national colors actually mean.

Brissa is committed to raising awareness about black-red-gold: "The aim is to persuade more people to develop positive feelings for the symbols of our state, and to connect with thembecause they have a better understanding of their meaning and content."

This article has been translated from German.

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The Germans and the flag: 'It's complicated' - DW (English)

If a history professor asserted that black holes dont exist, would anyone pay any attention to him? What about an English professor who advocates Lamarckian evolutionary theory over Darwin? How about a sociologist who believes in alchemy?

What if these folks didnt just have weird beliefs, what if they taught these ideas in their classes? What if they wrote articles and books and gave public speeches extoling them?

The answer is obvious. They would be dismissed as kooks.

And much more. On a typical university campus, the physics department would probably demand that the history professor stop spouting fake physics or be fired. The biology department would react the same way to the espousal of fake biology.

In fact, on most campuses almost every academic discipline would try to protect its turf a well as the scientific integrity of its discipline.

With one exception: economics.

Over my long experience with the academic world, I have often marveled at the fact that people who had never had a course in economics, had never read a book on the subject, who wouldnt know what to do with a supply and a demand curve if they saw themnonetheless feel free to speak with authority on economic topics.

If you search the economics departments of our nations colleges and universities you would be hard pressed to find a real socialist. Thats because economists know a lot aboutsocialism. They have been studying it and thinking about it for over a hundred years.

Outside economics departments, things are different. It has often been humorously estimated that there are more Marxists on the faculty of American universities than there are in Russia or China today.

How is that possible? I blame the economists.

Economists have not only documented the failure of socialism in the Soviet Union and China, they know why the Cuban, North Korean, and Venezuelan economies are basket cases. It isnt complicated. When people at the top design a plan in which everybody who is needed to carry it out has an economic self-interest in not doing so, the plan never succeeds.Good economics is often plain common sense.

Serious scholars have also documented the human costs of concentrating economic and political power. Socialist hellholes have produced imprisonment, torture, starvation and mass murder on a scale never before imagined in human history. In the 20th century, almost170 million peoplewere killed by their own governments. These people were not killed in wars. They were the victims of genocidal murder.

The vast majority were murdered by socialist governments. The Russian communists were the worst (62 million) followed by the Chinese communists (35 million) and then the Nazi national socialists (20 million).

Although socialists claim that workers are exploited under capitalism, no greedy capitalist has ever begun to match what socialists have done.

Josef Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Fidel Castro and Hugo Chvezlived like kings and accumulated vast fortuneswhile their own people often faced starvation. Kim Jong-un and the current rulers in Cuba and Venezuela are following in their footsteps

Chinese communist leader Mao Tse-tung was the greatest mass murderer in world history, causing at least45 million peopleto be worked, starved or beaten to death. When he died, he was worth an estimated$1 billion.

The worlds second greatest mass murderer, Josef Stalin,killed 20 million, many by forced starvation. Some regard him as one ofthe wealthiest people of all time.

Fidel Castros former bodyguardJuan Reinaldo Snchezsays that the communist leader lived like a king and ran the country the country like a cross between medieval overlord and Louis XV. While ordinary Cubans stood in breadlines, Castro had his own private yacht and his own private island. In Havana, he lived in an immense estate with a rooftop bowling alley, a basketball court and fully equipped medical center.

The puzzle is: Why arent these facts better known? The answer seems to be: In the classes where students should be learning them, the teachers arent doing their jobs.

While students are getting a daily dose of socialist propaganda from economic know-nothings in the other social science departments, what have the economists been saying about the subject in their classes? Nothing. Well, almost nothing.

Pick up just about any introductory economics textbook and you will find very little about socialism. And what you do find will never be front and center. It will be stuck at the back of the book in case the instructor has time to cover it at the end of the semester.

The reason for this is understandable. Most economics teachers consider socialism to be so completely dysfunctional, they see no reason to spend any time on it.

Here is what the economics departments are missing. Given the economic nonsense that is being spewed out all over the rest of the campus, the first things students need to study in introductory economics is socialism. In fact, I believe the entire first semester should be devoted to socialism.

What starts on the campuses doesnt take long to spread. Jane Fonda, Barbra Streisand and other Hollywood celebrities dont think they need to know anything about economics in order to have strong opinions on the subject.

When is the last time you heard Streisand quote Paul Samuelson or Milton Friedman or any economist? With increasing frequency, in a very large part of the national public policy conversation, professional economists are considered completely irrelevant.

To use a military analogy, the economists have left the battlefield, leaving the students behind to fend for themselves. The nation is paying a heavy price for that less-than-honorable retreat.

This article was also published inTownhall

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Where Have All The Economists Gone? (Socialism) OpEd - Eurasia Review