< Back SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE WAR OF POSITIONS Carlos L. Garrido 20 февр. 2024 г. Historical Materialist View of Ideas The collections of ideas we hold are historically conditioned by the mode of life we exist in. They reflect, in the realm of ideas, the limitations and possibilities of the mode of social life that dominates the era – of the forms of social intercourse which pervade our everyday lives. A feudal peasant cannot concern themselves with their social media profiles – with the likes their posts get, the shares it receives, and the subscribers or followers they have accumulated. These are, however, central concerns for most people today. We live in the era of profilicity as the dominant identity technology. As is evident, all the collections of ideas, concerns, aesthetic experiences, desires, beliefs, etc. which are tied to the profile-based mode of identity curation are dependent and grounded in the technological developments our era has achieved. In Marxist terms, these developments at the level of how we think (about ourselves and others) presuppose developments in the forces of production. Likewise, in most of the Western world, no youngsters would concern themselves with who their families will arrange them in marriage with. These preoccupations belong to an era that has passed – to a mode of social intercourse humanity has overcome. This is a central component of historical materialism – the “law of development of human history” which Engels’s eulogy tells us Marx discovers. It is pithily formulated in the famous 1859 preface to Marx’s A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy , where he writes that : "The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness." [1] Ideological Institutions and False Consciousness The ideas that come to dominate a form of life do not exist in a transcendental realm. They are, instead, embodied materially through institutions and people. The influence these institutions hold varies. Their purpose, however, is the same: to sustain the consent of the masses (the subaltern) for the dominant order. They are tasked with ensuring the smooth reproduction of the current mode of life. In being the dominant institutions that pervade people’s everyday lives, they don’t simply get us to consent (which implies a conscious act of acceptance) but shape our spontaneous and common-sense worldviews to such an extent that we are unable to recognize, with the exception of those grand moments of rupture called ‘ events ’ in the history of philosophy, the conditioned and implanted character of our thoughts. Like the slaves in Plato’s allegory of the cave , we are deeply unaware of the structures which contain the horizon of how we view reality. Plato could not have been more correct in emphasizing the painful character of the hypothetical cave’s escapee. It is not easy to have our notions of reality so easily overturned – to have our desires, beliefs, aesthetic experiences, etc. demolished. Like the escaped slave, who painfully needs to readjust their eyes, the overcoming of bourgeois ideology is a painful process – not a spontaneous and immediate ‘moment’. When our conditions of life are so systematically pervaded by lies and manipulations, all aimed at preventing us from rocking the boat, truth is painful. Truth is dangerous. The quest for truth has always had, as W. E. B. Dubois notes , “an element of danger and revolution, of dissatisfaction and discontent, [but] nevertheless, men strive to know.” From the killing of Socrates to the killing of King, class society has shown its proclivity to fight back viciously when threatened by the truth tellers. This was, once again, already prophetically described by Plato’s allegory. Capitalism "is a social order that necessitates the general acceptance of an inverted understanding of itself... Reality [needs to be] turned on its head. But this is not, as Vanessa Wills notes , a problem of “epistemic hygiene”. The root of the ‘error’ is not in our minds, that is, in our reflection of the objective phenomena at hand. As I’ve argued previously , “it is much deeper than this; the inversion or ‘mistake’ is in the world itself… This world reflects itself through an upside-down appearance, and it must necessarily do so to continuously reproduce itself.” As Marx and Engels noted long ago, “If in all ideology men and their relations appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.” Capitalist ideology is as capable of accepting truth as vampires are of consuming garlic. Truth, which almost always stands on the side of the masses, is its Achilles heel. Shift in the Dominant Ideological Apparatuses The institutions that disseminate and enculturate us into bourgeois ideology, however, don’t all play an equal role. Some are far more influential than others. In the medieval world the church was, without a doubt, the “ dominant Ideological State Apparatus ” (ISA). In the transition to the modern world, as Louis Althusser notes , “the Ideological State Apparatus which has been installed in the dominant position in mature capitalist social formations as a result of a violent political and ideological class struggle against the old dominant Ideological State Apparatus, is the educational ideological apparatus. ” Schools would come to replace the church as the institutional cornerstone of bourgeois ideology – the most dominant force for the reproduction of bourgeois hegemony. ​ In some ways this is still the case. It is in the universities, for instance, where the ideas trafficked by popular culture are first developed in their utmost coherence. It is impossible to conceive of ‘ wokeism ’, today’s dominant form of liberal cultural intercourse, without the laying of its ideological foundations decades ago in the academy with the CIA manufactured compatible left . The ‘identity politics’ and ‘cancel culture’ so popularly debated in TV late-night roundtable discussions is far from being rooted in the communist tradition. Quite the opposite, that which today is called communism by the rightist pundits was explicitly produced to challenge Marxism. They were tasked with the role of being ‘radical recuperators,’ as Gabriel Rockhill calls them . Their job was (and is) to recuperate dissenting attitudes in the masses, especially young people, into the pro-imperialist anti-communist fold. As Michael Parenti correctly observed , these ABC (Anything But Class) theorists are tasked with developing “conceptual schemas that mute Marxism’s class analysis.” However, in the last decade a new ideological terrain has obtained the dominant position within bourgeois hegemony: social media. The average American today spends around two to three hours on social media. While for a select few it might just be filled with innocent pictures of cute cats, for the vast majority of people social media plays a role akin to a technological polis – a place where the battle of ideas, or better yet, the dissemination of the dominant ideas, occurs. While schools might still create the ideological foundation people are enculturated into, they often find themselves unable to comment on pressing issues of the day (with the exception, of course, of universities). Through social media, on the other hand, one encounters nonstop active manipulation on on-going events, with its scope and consistency far outweighing the influence university discussions on political affairs might have. Its impact, however, cannot simply be understood through quantitative metrics. Qualitatively, these social medias have revolutionized how we create our identities. As I have previously written , "We live in a time of profiles. Who we are, our identity, is deeply embedded in the curation of our profiles for general peers, those ‘users’ who validate our content through various interactive means (likes, shares, retweets, etc.). Our future posts are influenced by the reaction of previous posts. Those which tend to do good are repeated, those which don’t are not (often these are deleted outright). The dialectical interdependency of the individual and the social obtains a new form in the age of profilicity. Through these ‘social validation feedback loops’ ( termed as such by Facebook president Sean Parker) we adjust our content to the reception of the general peer. Our identity is crafted with an eye to how we are ‘seen as being seen’. Second order observation becomes the norm; all judgement is subject to some degree of mediation by how the thing judged is seen by the general peer. These are some of the central insights of Hans Georg Moeller and Paul D’Ambrosio’s book, You and Your Profile: Identity After Authenticity . While it does have some blind spots (which I have hoped to bring light to in my work ), it is without a doubt an essential text for understanding the dominant mode of identity technology in our day." Social Media, Profilicity, and Ideological Manipulation The potential for ideological manipulation brought about by the emergence of profilicity is, in some ways, far more potent than ever before. Following the 2019 coup in Bolivia, when 68 thousand bot accounts were used to make the imperialist narrative viral on twitter, I did a case study of how social media manipulation was used to legitimize the coup. I wrote: "The imperialist usage of bots and fake accounts engender an artificial general peer which functions as the condition for the possibility of imperialism’s control of a real one. This is because, at a certain nodal point, when the fake accounts and booster bots make something trend, the artificiality of the general peer’s reaction loses its artificial character, a real-people composed general peer picks up the baton from there and glazes the reaction with an ‘organic’ and ‘spontaneous’ vestment. In the age of profilicity, imperialism’s ability to control general peers is an indispensable tool for the attainment of its ends." Regardless of how powerful the armed forces of an empire are, if it is not able to hegemonize the discourse on historical and contemporary events, its legitimacy – both nationally and internationally – will totter and make it susceptible to being overthrown. Firms like CLS Strategies, along with the complicit Silicon Valley social media monopolies, function as indispensable tools of capitalist-imperialism in the age of profilicity. At a time when identity is constructed through the curation of profiles mediated by second-order observation and general peer powered social validation feedback loops, the ability to manipulate general peers amounts to the unprecedented capacity of capital and the state to control what people think. Additionally, the abstract character of this general peer conceals the manipulation itself. People construct their profile identities on the basis of how they would like to be seen as being seen, but the general peer doing the seeing has its eyes filtered through parental control imperialist glasses. How an event will be seen is determined by them – fake accounts will be made and boosted, dissenting accounts will be censored. This condition is depicted well in an old Soviet joke where a Russian and an American diplomat meet: the American asks “what are you here for,” the Russian replies “to learn about American propaganda techniques,” the American says, “what propaganda,” and the Russian replies “exactly.” Censorship is an integral component working in conjunction with controlling what is seen through the usage of bots and other forms of boosting pro-establishment narratives. On all major social media platforms (yes, even on Elon Musk’s so-called free speech loving ‘X’), those accounts with substantial following that challenge the imperialist narrative on key issues are often outright banned. [2] It is a very interestingly functioning tech-polis, where certain speakers are given a microphone to speak over others, others are muted or lowered to a virtually inaudible volume, while others are poof, disappeared completely. The Institute I work for is not unacquainted with these censorship tactics. Seven of our tiktok accounts, the platform we received hundreds of thousands of followers and millions of views in, have been outright banned. As Edward Smith, Noah Khrachvik, and myself have previously noted , "Those who keep our people misinformed and ignorant, who have made their life’s purpose to attack truth-tellers, do so under the insidiously categorized guise of ‘combating misinformation.’ In their topsy-turvy invented reality , as Michael Parenti called it, they posit themselves as the champions of truth and free speech—a paradox as laughable as a vegan butcher…" [In the capitalist-imperialist mode of life], the freedom of speech and media is, therefore, actually the freedom of pro-capitalist speech and media. V. I. Lenin’s description of the media in capitalist society rings truer than ever in the 2020s, it is dominated by an “atmosphere of lies and deception in the name of the ‘freedom and equality’ of capital, equality of the starved and the overfed.” Any absolute statements about the freedom of the press must be followed by the Leninist question : “freedom of the press… for which class?” The capitalist media’s freedom to deceive the masses in their defense of the existing order is in contradiction to the masses’ interests in searching for and publicizing the truth. The power to control the flow of ideas through these various means makes social media, as the dominant (or, at least, one of the dominant) ideological terrains of our day, virtually (pun intended) unmatched. What Should Communists Do? Some on the communist left often denigrate the role of social media work. ‘It’s just online, it has no bearing in reality,’ is a frequently expressed sentiment. Sometimes online ideological work is contrasted dis-favorably to protesting in the streets. Those in the streets are said to be actually doing something, while those who are online are not. There is a rational kernel to this overall incorrect sentiment. It is true that the anti-social characteristics of the ‘identity socialists’ (as I call them in The Purity Fetish ), those which spend all their days online starting twitter beefs and splits, calls for a spiritual rekindling with reality. They must ‘touch grass,’ as the expression goes. But it is incorrect, on this basis, to denigrate online work as a whole, or to consider it ‘unreal’ in relationship to protests. Social media has, as I argued previously, developed itself into one of the most important ideological terrains of our day. It is a field where, as Gramsci would say, the war of position must be waged. No matter how much censorship, shadow banning, and manipulation occurs in this ideological field, it is still one of the most important places communists must participate in, waging the fight for the hearts and minds of the people. To ignore online work today is the equivalent of the French revolutionaries ignoring the institution of the church in their struggles against feudal absolutism. There is a key difference here, of course. Whereas the church in its heyday as the dominant ideological apparatus had to be fought from without, today social media, as the dominant ideological terrain, presents an internal field of struggle. The war of position on social media, necessary though it might be, is, of course, not sufficient. If every twitter (excuse me, ‘X’) account followed the Midwestern Marx Institute, or any other organization on the communist left, that does not mean we are anywhere near to grabbing power. Real, in-life organizing cannot be avoided. Organizing in your workplaces and communities continues to be the most important thing one can do. It is that baseline work that Silicon Valley cannot ‘ban’ you from. To wage a successful war of positions on social media requires mediums through which the people convinced to our side online can get involved in organizing in their communities. People must be ‘shuffled’ from simply agreeing with these ideas online to helping build organizations on the ground – to building working class, counterhegemonic institutions. The war of positions online must be conjoined with preparing the material and institutional foundations (i.e., parties and mass organizations) for the war of maneuver on the ground. Of course, just because these organizations would be ‘on the ground’ does not permit them to avoid the war of positions online. Online War of Positions What is the best way to wage the war of positions online? Is condemning everyone we don’t perfectly agree with as being whatever buzzword is popular the way to go? Clearly, this purity fetish mode of engagement, as I have argued before, leaves you surrounded only by those whom you already agree with. You reduce the pedagogic and recruiting tasks of the communist to someone who just sings to the choir. The battle of ideas, the war of positions, is fundamentally rooted in convincing . You cannot shame someone into agreeing with you. Talking down to working people with middle class patronizing attitudes is quite literally the opposite of what a successful war of positions looks like. You do not want the HR or DEI managerial departments to be the first thing someone thinks of when they speak to you. Quite the opposite. We live under a moribund capitalist mode of life. That will be reflected in some of the spontaneous common-sense worldviews of the people this mode of life produces. We must be patient and flexible, not snappy and rigid. Our goal is to convince . To win the hearts and minds of people. The first thing which must be recognized, then, is that any ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach will fail. The starting point (i.e., the spontaneous worldview) people have differs – often more or less depending on certain regional, generational, and other differences. We must take these into account in all conversations. But how should we start? What should we look for? Well, Gramsci is here perhaps our most important teacher. If I want to get from A to B, I cannot simply teleport directly from A to B. Maybe the technology will come around one day that allows me to do so. For now, if I want to get from A to B, I need to find a point of contact, a road, or series of roads, that when connected in my passage allows me to arrive to my destination. The process of convincing is no different. If there is no point of contact, there can be no ‘winning over’ of someone to our side. The process of ‘winning over,’ like the process of getting from A to B, is a voyage , an undertaking , or, in short, a process . It does not happen instantaneously. It takes time. In order for this process to begin, the point of contact must be found. Every spontaneous worldview the masses hold, deeply though they might be entrenched in various forms of bourgeois ideology, must nonetheless contain some rational kernels, ‘points of contact’ we can locate and start the voyage through. This is, for Gramsci, the essence of the war of positions. The task for communists, for the intellectual leadership of the working class movement, is finding, in the incoherent, ambiguous and spontaneous common-sense understandings and feelings of the masses, those rational kernels which can be disarticulated from their current worldview, and rearticulated towards Marxism. (See my chapter with J.P. Reed in the Elgars anthology on Gramsci for more). Concretely, how does this look? Well, for instance, in the U.S., the vast majority of people agree with the values of the Declaration of Independence. However, the values of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, right to revolution, etc., have been unrealized for the mass of people under the dominant order. How can these egalitarian and emancipatory values be actualized under a system that produces, on the one hand, enormous wealth controlled by the few, and on the other, immense misery, debt, and oppression for the many? It is impossible. The universal ideals of the capitalist class have always been limited to their class – it has never been, from the start, anything more than the liberty of capital to exploit, and the sham ‘democracy’ of the capitalists to pick the political puppets that rule over the mass of people. This is why, as I have noted before , "In the face of growing inequalities and disparities, [in the 1820s and 30s] thinkers like Langdon Byllesby, Cornelius Blatchley, William Maclure, Thomas Skidmore and others, developed the Jeffersonian ideals of the Declaration of Independence into socialism, what they considered to be its practical and logical conclusion… Throughout the ages, generations of American socialists have appealed to the Declaration of Independence to argue for socialism in a way that connects with the American people’s common sense. Leading historians and theoreticians of the American socialist tradition, thinkers like Staughton Lynd, Herbert Aptheker, W.E.B. Dubois, Eugene Debs, William Z. Foster and others, have elaborated on the subject, noting that regardless of the limitations encountered in the founding of the American experiment, it was a historically progressive event, whose spirit [can only] be carried forth today by socialists and communists." So, here we have an example of a point of contact, a rational kernel, within our people’s common sense that can, and has historically been attempted to be, disarticulated from its bourgeois worldview origins, and rearticulated towards various socialist ones. This is an example that has been used since the 1820s. But, how, in the age of profilicity, can we specifically do this through social media? The essential elements remain the same. Find the individuals and institutions which play the most influential roles in shaping the common sense of various sections of the American masses. Within the worldviews they craft, find the rational kernels, the points of contact, you can establish a common ground with in discussions with working class viewers and readers of these ideologues. Always start the discussions with those points of contact – the ideas within their worldviews that can be dislocated from the worldview itself and used as a pathway for the new outlook. These rational kernels, of course, will differ with different sources. For instance, some weeks ago I commented on a video from Andrew Tate, the man that was once the most viral person on the internet. This is someone which holds great ideological influence in our societies, specifically in the youth, which embodies the future of any revolutionary project. The video I comment on is one where Tate describes wage labor as a form of wage slavery. This is, for Marxists, clearly a point of contact, a ‘rational kernel’ within the Tateian worldview. On the basis of this point of contact, I develop upon the often politically ambiguous history of the critique of wage slavery (for instance, while being a pillar of the socialist critique of capitalism, it was also a central component of the southern planter’s defense of chattel slavery, which they held was less evil and nefarious than wage slavery). Then, on the basis of the agreement with Tate of the slavish character of wage labor, I develop a critique of how this understanding is stifled by the Tateian worldview that had just formulated it. For Tate, the critique of wage slavery and the ‘matrix’ is not the basis for a collective emancipatory project. It is not rooted in a scientific, Marxist understanding of capitalist political economy. Hence, it is completely unaware of the internal laws of motion and contradictions which push the system towards its own destruction. He is unaware of the proletariat’s role as the gravedigger of the mode of life that produced them as a class. Perhaps it is less of a question of ignorance on Tate’s part, and more one of an awareness of his class interests as a part of the (often mocked) new bourgeoisie. Either way, the result is the same, a stifled understanding of that phenomenon we have gravitated to as a ‘point of contact,’ and an individualized formulation of ‘escaping the matrix’ through getting rich yourself (a gig that through ‘Hustlers University’ he greatly profits from). Tate did not create this form of radical recuperation, and neither is he the only one that preaches it today. It is central to what Dubois called the American Assumption, the notion that through hard work one can lift themselves up and become rich. The difference is that in the 19 th and 20 th century this ideology occurred within the confines of a direct apologetics of US capitalism. Post-1848 capitalism enters a distinctly reactionary stage, where even the veneer of progressivism that dominated the previous period is undone. In this post-1848 world, As Georg Lukács long ago noted , the defense of capitalism has to, in one form or another, present itself as an “indirect apologetics”. The superficial and culturalist critique of an often misidentified ‘capitalism’ (or matrix) has become an essential component for acquiescence to the system the critique takes as its object of critique. What has occurred in the Tate commentary is precisely what Gramsci expects of us in the war of positions. We located the rational kernel and, on the basis of a superior understanding of the phenomenon, dislocated it from the Tateian worldview and towards a Marxist one. In the process we showed the role Tate plays as a radical recuperador for the ‘matrix’ he, in a very sophist-like manner, charges people to help ‘escape’. After this video came out hordes of the liberals who think a hammer and sickle in their social media bios makes them communists came after us for ‘platforming’ Tate and lending credence to his ideas. This criticism, of course, is devoid of any semblance of the Marxist understanding of the war of positions. Neither the convincing of Tate himself, nor the sharing of his ideas, were the purpose of the video. What the video achieves (or at least attempts to), is quite literally the opposite – to be as efficient as possible in bringing people away from Tate and towards Marxism. One can argue that I failed in this enterprise, that a better job could have been done. But not deny, however, that this is the best route for combatting ideological opponents. It produces a double whammy, a removal of a follower to your opponent and an addition of a follower to your revolutionary project. This is the same double effect the black proletariat’s general strike during the Civil War had (removing the productive base of the Southern economy while adding soldiered, spies, and workers to the Northern forces), allowing them to win the battle for the forces of human liberation. Tate is far from being the only individual we ought to be doing this with. At the Institute, every major pundit of the bourgeoisie, even those who present themselves as ‘anti-establishment’ and ‘anti-Deep state’, receive this treatment. We have commented in like manner on figures all across the American bourgeois political spectrum, from David Packman to Ben Shapiro to Jordan Peterson. In each case we attempt, again, to find the point of contact (rational kernels) that can be dislocated from these worldviews and rearticulated towards Marxism. Engaging with these figures is also an excellent source for overcoming the algorithmic insularity that structures online spaces. People who wouldn’t encounter Marxist positions in their algorithms are opened to the possibility of this encounter when we discuss the ideologues that denizen their algorithms. People naturally want to make sense of the world around them. “All men by nature,” as Aristotle long ago noted , “desire to know.” No worldview is better capable of understanding the world, of helping people make sense of it, than Marxism. This is a task, therefore, which is often quite fruitful. That doesn’t mean, of course, that one doesn’t encounter zealots who religiously buy into these worldviews in dogmatic ways. But they are often the exception, especially amongst the youth. Most people are willing, if approached correctly, to accept the transition towards an outlook that helps them understand their surroundings a lot better – an outlook that, as the great Henry Winston teaches us , gives us vision even when our sight is lost. To succeed in this task requires getting our hands dirty; having the willingness to engage with some of the scummiest of the bourgeois ideologues in hopes, not of convincing them, but their working class listeners, that an alternative is not only possible, but necessary. This is the task at hand for communists willing to wage the war of positions on social media – one of the most important and influential ideological fields in the contemporary world. NOTES [1] My article on how this relationship of determination is not fatalistic: ‘ Critique of the Misunderstanding Concerning Marx’s Base-Superstructure Spatial Metaphor ’. [2] One of the ways to work around it is through mass reporting, such as we have seen over the last few months from the anti-genocide, pro-Palestine movement. Without a doubt these forces have won the information war – largely thanks to the flood of stomach-twisting videos telling the truth about the Israeli genocidal campaign against Gaza. Like the banks we were told were ‘too big to fail,’ these imperialist narrative-challenging images were too popular and widespread to censor. While Silicon Valley has definitely censored the leading voices speaking out for Palestine, they have not succeeded in censoring the millions of relatively smaller accounts who have taken it upon themselves to document the truth and expose the elite’s lies. Author Carlos L. Garrido is a Cuban American philosophy instructor at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. He is the director of the Midwestern Marx Institute and the author of The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism (2023), Marxism and the Dialectical Materialist Worldview (2022), and the forthcoming Hegel, Marxism, and Dialectics (2024). He has written for dozens of scholarly and popular publications around the world and runs various live-broadcast shows for the Midwestern Marx Institute YouTube . You can subscribe to his Philosophy in Crisis Substack HERE . Previous Next

< Back CUBAN HEALTH WORKERS VOW TO FACE DOWN THE GENOCIDAL US BLOCKADE Proletarian writers - CPGB-ML 17 февр. 2024 г. Solidarity must move on from the charitable aid mentality and work for the destruction of the imperialist system. Much is presented in western corporate media regarding the parlous state of Cuba – its economy, food shortages, the flow of skilled, especially young workers overseas, shortages of every conceivable commodity – fuel, cement, medicines, educational materials etc – that is essential to the building of a civilised life. Little is said of the cause of this economic genocide. The cause is simply the illegal, criminal and ongoing US embargo, which for over 65 years has attempted to suffocate socialism, independence and national aspirations in Cuba. The economics of genocide are exactly what the USA applies to Cuba. There may not be overt military intervention at this moment, but the attempted destruction and extinction of the people is without question. For one who has been a regular visitor to Cuba since the end of the ‘special period’ in the late 1990s to the present day of Joe Biden ’s presidency (which has built on every previous US regime’s attacks on the Caribbean nation), participation in ongoing blockade breaching, ensuring solidarity and support from British workers to Cuban workers and their trade unions has been the order of the day. An honourable order of the day carried out not for plaudits, medals or kudos, but simply because Cuba’s survival as a socialist beacon is essential to us all . Much has been done worldwide by innumerable trade unions to support Cuba, but we need to go beyond a mindset of providing aid . Cuba’s health union: 50 years of service to the people Having been one of the foreign guests to the recent national conference of the National Union of Health Workers (SNTS – Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Salud), celebrating the 50th anniversary of the founding of the union, a union which represents over 500,000 health workers, it was a pleasure to see working-class democracy in action. No factionalism. No pursuit of diversion or sectional pettiness. No elevation of a part over the whole. But frank and sharp debate and discussion over how to resolve the chronic shortages (brought about by the blockade). How to enhance medical staffs’ wages to prevent either underemployment or migration overseas. How to strengthen the innovation and invention so essential to circumventing the blockade and keeping the full range of medical provision from polyclinics to world-class hospital provision functioning. How to ensure that the health workers continue being a cadre force within the wider community, keeping not only the community physically well but ideologically strong. How to learn the lessons of the Covid plague and its impact on health provision structures, both positive and negative. Besides all this, there was discussion of the need to enhance Cuban medicinal (vaccines and medicines) and production innovation to circumvent critical shortages that have been brought about by the blockade and the actions of pharmaceutical monopolies worldwide. The need to strengthen political education was also highlighted – being the best doctor is commendable, but being the best doctor with political clarity is better still. And the call to strengthen recruitment to the Cuban Communist party was reinforced, coupled with renewed emphasis on ensuring that the revolution’s historical legacy is guaranteed by unbreakable bonds with present and future generations of Cuban people. The conference was themed around unity and compromise in the service of the health of the people, and this was clearly demonstrated in the enthusiasm of the delegates (approximately 2,000 of them), the election of a new national executive (predominantly women), and the significant presence of younger workers throughout. A British guest addressing the first day of the conference, attended by core workplace cadres and leaders from Cuba’s health sector, made the simple point that “All the expressions of solidarity and cheering from afar are really pious and patronising. If British workers really want to demonstrate solidarity with Cuba then delivering the British revolution has to be the only task.” A point well received by the audience. A genocidal blockade The evil and insidious nature of the blockade is demonstrated clearly by the shortages of vehicle fuel. A four-hour mile-long queue (orderly and polite) for fuel is the norm right now, as are rolling power cuts in homes around the country. The sheer viciousness of the US mindset is evident in its blocking of the purchase of software for scanners used in the treatment of cancer and its buying and closing of companies that used to provide basic health materials such as syringes to Cuba. Being blocked from the world capitalist banking system makes taking care of the Cuban people ever more difficult, circuitous and challenging, since the country has to purchase all such goods with hard foreign currency not credit. The resulting rationing of food has put the basic family shopping basket under siege. Black marketeers and spivs have resurrected themselves as a result of this crisis. While they are challenged daily by the National Revolutionary Police, shortages of essential goods and the drip feed of remittances from Cuban exiles in the USA feed this canker. The blocking of tourist ships and the limiting of flights by the USA has similarly impacted on the resurrection of the economy. The outrageous decision by former US president Donald Trump and maintained by the regime of Joe Biden to put and keep Cuba on the illegal USA list of alleged ‘states sponsoring terrorism’ has further crippled Cuba’s commerce worldwide. Cuba was placed on this ‘list’ after hosting peace talks between the combatants in Colombia, which it did at the request of the USA, the United Nations and other third-party peace brokers. Just one more example of US duplicity and treachery. Likewise, the decision by Spain to welcome any Cuban (and effectively any Latin-American citizen from what was the 19th century Spanish empire ) whose grandparents originated from Spain as a Spanish citizen has exacerbated migration. In effect, Spain has adopted a policy aimed at stealing the brightest young people from Cuba to fill the labour shortages it is experiencing as a result of internal migration within the European Union. Meanwhile, all that is honourable, valiant, inspirational, decent and precious in the human condition is reflected in Cuba’s internal building of socialism for the Cuban people, and by its international humanitarian mission of health and education provision to the world. Previous Next

< Back COUNTDOWN TO DAY X: ASSANGE'S RIGHT TO A FAIR TRIAL Kevin Gosztola 19 февр. 2024 г. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's legal team has asked the British High Court of Justice to reassess the risks that extradition poses to his right to a fair trial. Editor’s Note: Ahead of a major appeal hearing before the British High Court of Justice on February 20 and 21, the “ Countdown To Day X ” series highlights key aspects of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s appeal against extradition to the United States. District Judge Vanessa Baraitser unequivocally stated in her decision on the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange that she had “no reason to doubt that the usual constitutional and procedural protections” would be applied by the United States government so that Assange “receives a fair trial.”However, Assange’s defense rejects the court’s conclusion. During the February 20 hearing, they have asked the British High Court of Justice to reassess the risks that extradition poses to Assange’s right to a fair trial.Attorneys for Assange are concerned that in the Eastern District of Virginia, where he was charged, a jury will be “drawn from a pool that has a high concentration of defense and intelligence employees and ex-employees, contractors, and their relatives.” The largest employer in Alexandria, Virginia, where the Eastern District courthouse is located, is the U.S. Defense Department.Gordon Kromberg, the assistant U.S. attorney for the district, claimed [ PDF ] Assange has nothing to worry about because a district judge will thoroughly question “potential jurors, in the presence of attorneys for both the government and the defendant, to ensure that selection of a fair and impartial jury that is able to set aside any preconceived notions regarding this case.” But the fact is, as described by the Office of the Director for National Intelligence (ODNI), a National Insider Threat Task Force (NITTF) was established after Assange and WikiLeaks published “thousands of classified documents through the global media and internet.” The task force developed policy, standards, guidance, and training that singled out WikiLeaks as a site that “insider threats” or so-called adversaries would use to harm or injure the U.S. government. The “thousands of classified documents” that spurred the establishment of this task force are the same documents that Assange has been criminalized for publishing. Given that there are anywhere from two to three million people in government with security clearances, it is hard to believe that anyone who has or has had access to classified information could impartially consider the charges against Assange. According to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), which represents the U.S. government in the extradition proceedings, “the relevant test” for whether a requested person would have their rights violated is “whether the American courts would be bound to conclude that a fair trial is not possible.” Yet that seems rather convoluted. Extraditions typically are rendered under a treaty or agreement between the U.S. and another nation. If a requested person is extradited to the U.S., then a U.S. court is unlikely to block a trial after a court in a country with such an agreement has approved of the case.Particularly, the U.S. and the United Kingdom have an extradition treaty. The U.K. has an extradition law that the treaty largely reflects. The U.K. courts review extradition requests with case law and guidance based on the European Convention on Human Rights, and that directs the courts to assess the U.S. court system to ensure that there are no trends, which would infringe upon a person’s right to a fair trial.Assange’s defense points to the potential for “coercive plea bargaining” and the public denunciations from high-ranking U.S. officials a part of their claim that the WikiLeaks founder would not receive a fair trial. Certainly, it is bothersome that Joe Biden previously called Assange a “high-tech terrorist” and now he is president of the country that is requesting extradition. Guidance on the right to a fair trial under the European Convention on Human Rights [ PDF ] mentions that “the choice of words by public officials in their statements before a person has been tried and found guilty of an offense” are important. Even more troubling is the lack of a public interest defense for defendants accused of violating the Espionage Act. Recent prosecutions that have targeted whistleblowers have barred them from speaking to a judge or jury about why they disclosed information. In this first-of-its-kind prosecution, Assange will likely face a similar restriction that undermines his right to a fair trial by grossly limiting what may be said about why he published documents to WikiLeaks. Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg described for the district judge how had not told the public why he released documents to the press that exposed lies around the Vietnam War. He believed he would be able to testify at his trial about his motives. In 1973, while on trial, Ellsberg’s lawyer asked why he had copied the Pentagon Papers. The prosecution immediately objected. Each time his lawyer tried to rephrase the question, the court refused to permit him to tell the jury "why he had done what he'd done."Federal courts continue to handle Espionage Act cases in the same manner. "The notion of motive or extenuating circumstances is irrelevant," Ellsberg told the British court. "The meaning of which is I did not get a fair trial, despite a very intelligent and conscientious judge."It is also worth acknowledging that the right to a fair trial includes the right to effective legal assistance, and that right is dependent upon “the accused’s right to communicate with his lawyer in private.” As Baraitser recounted, "The U.S. requested his provisional arrest on 22 December 2017 and an English arrest warrant was issued on the same date. Before that date, he was under no obligation to attend at a police station or court in response to summonses or as a condition of bail.”The Spanish security company UC Global, which spied on Assange’s meetings with his lawyers and then allegedly shared audio and video with the CIA, was in charge of security at Ecuador’s embassy from 2012 to 2018. For several months while attorney-client privileged conversations were under surveillance, Assange was a defendant. This type of activity, which allegedly had U.S. intelligence support, is not inconsequential to Assange. It is not reasonable that this issue can be resolved by walling off evidence from spying so that prosecutors do not use this evidence in the case. Prosecutors may employ " parallel construction " to circumvent this supposed wall. The CIA is allowed to provide input to the U.S. attorney general to help determine the harshness of Assange’s detention. If convicted, they can influence how he is imprisoned. Assange’s mental and physical health is poor, and depending on the abusive nature of his confinement, extradition could mean that he dies in U.S. Republished from Thedissenter with thanks Previous Next

< Back GAZA: AUTHORITIES WARN OF FAMINE AMONG CIVILIANS teleSUR/ OSG 21 февр. 2024 г. Deliveries resumed on Sunday after a three-week suspension following the Israeli attack on a truck loaded with vital commodities and due to the absence of a functioning humanitarian reporting system. At least 700,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are suffering from a critical shortage of food, which could lead to their death, Gaza authorities warned Wednesday. Speaking to Al Jazeera television, the head of the Government Information Office in Gaza, Ismail Al-Thawabta, said that residents of the coastal enclave have entered a stage of famine. Al-Thawabta accused the Israeli army of pursuing a deliberate policy to starve the population in the north, where humanitarian aid is almost impossible to enter due to the blockade and military attacks. He called on the World Food Program (WFP) to retract its decision taken the day before to suspend food deliveries to the north. The WFP announced the suspension "until conditions are in place to allow for safe distribution." Such a decision was not taken lightly, because we know that more people are at risk of starvation, but safety must be ensured to deliver critical food aid, the organization said in a statement. The institution recalled that deliveries resumed on Sunday after a three-week suspension following the Israeli attack on a truck loaded with vital commodities and due to the absence of a functioning humanitarian reporting system. On that day the convoy was surrounded by crowds of hungry people near the Wadi Gaza checkpoint and on Monday another caravan faced complete chaos and violence due to the collapse of civil order, he stressed. Last December, an Integrated Phase Classification report compiled by 15 agencies, including WFP, warned of the risk of famine in northern Gaza by May unless conditions there improved decisively. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization's deputy director-general, Beth Bechdol, warned a week ago of famine in Gaza. In terms of emergency, crisis and catastrophe classifications, "Gaza's 2.2 million people can be considered to fall into all three categories," she said. Previous Next

< Back ASSANGE, GAZA, AND THE UGLY REALITY OF WAR CRIMES Caitlin Johnstone 21 февр. 2024 г. Mixed media piece I did while nervously awaiting the resolution of the latest Assange hearing: Text: If Gaza taught me anything, it’s taught me what war crimes really look like. War crimes are cruel power abuses where soldiers with bombs and guns prey on babies and moms and grandpas and shop owners. War crimes are not abstract to me anymore. War crimes are brutal. War crimes are flesh-from-bones. War crimes are kids crying in the freezing rain because they can’t find any family. War crimes are snipers picking off patients through hospital windows. War crimes are moms starving to death very slowly under a grave of rubble because no one can rescue them. War crimes are little girls with blown-out eyes from being run over by a tank while she slept in her bed. And who showed us all this? Journalists. Journalists documenting war crimes. If the US succeeds in extraditing Assange today, they will set a precedent that any journalist anywhere in the world can be snatched up and taken to the US and locked away for the rest of their lives just for embarrassing the US with evidence of their war crimes. So I’m not gonna lie, I’ve been pacing around like a nervous Pervis through this latest extradition hearing. So I thought I’d do another painting of Assange, but this time in the blue press helmet made famous by those other courageous journalists from Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Assange. Free the world. Previous Next

< Back EXCLUSIVE: ADL PUSHED BMG TO DROP ROGER WATERS BY THREATENING TO WEAPONIZE COMPANY’S NAZI PAST MAX BLUMENTHAL 20 февр. 2024 г. The Grayzone has obtained a private letter authored by ADL director Jonathan Greenblatt threatening to weaponize the Nazi past of the BMG music company unless executives terminated a major deal with Roger Waters. BMG has publicly denied Israel lobby influence on its decision to nix Waters’ contract. When the Berlin-based BMG music company terminated its business relationship with Roger Waters, the Pink Floyd co-founder claimed the decision was spurred by a concerted Israel lobby-directed campaign to financially retaliate against his outspoken support for Palestine. The Grayzone has obtained a threatening private letter sent by Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt to BMG executives which confirms the musician’s accusation. “Given the fact that your parent company, Bertelsmann Group, has made laudable and necessary efforts to repair its Nazi past,” the ADL director warned in his June 16, 2023 letter, “it would be deeply unfortunate to have those efforts continue to be tarnished by such hurtful and injurious conduct.” In an interview with The Grayzone, Waters described the ADL’s menacing missive as the culmination of a months-long intimidation campaign which began well before the October 7 attacks in Israel. The ADL’s push resulted not only in the termination of the company’s deal to release the new 50th anniversary recording of “The Dark Side of the Moon,” he said, but in the departure of BMG’s CEO as well. “As far as attacks on me by the ADL and and all the rest of the lobby are concerned, the jury has been out for a long time, but it’s not out anymore,” Waters commented to The Grayzone. “The contention that I’m an antisemite because I’ve stood up against the attempted genocide of the indigenous people of Palestine is dead in the water. The people of the world have seen through the wall of hatred and tissue of lies.” ADL threat refutes BMG’s denial of Israel lobby influence To this point, BMG has officially denied any outside influence on its decision to terminate its deal with Waters, while mainstream media has generally downplayed the Israel lobby’s influence on the move. Reporting on BMG’s move this January, the corporate entertainment trade publication Variety painted Waters as paranoid for alleging Israel lobby role in sabotaging his contract, accusing him of spouting “conspiracies against him publicizing his beliefs.” Meanwhile, a company source denied any outside pressure influenced BMG’s decision, insisting to Variety that “BMG does not agree with Waters’ version of events.” The source added that the firm’s CEO, Thomas Coesfeld, “certainly would have made the decision on his own.” Citing sources inside BMG, Variety further claimed that Coesfeld “nixed” a deal to release a newly recorded version of Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon” immediately “after taking up his new post on July 1, 2023.” Yet Variety was apparently unaware of the threatening letter which ADL director Jonathan Greenblatt fired off on June 19, 2023 to Hartwig Masuch, then the CEO of BMG, and Thomas Rabe, the chairman of the board of BMG’s parent company, Bertelsmann. Greenblatt opened his missive with a litany of dubious allegations of antisemitism towards Waters, almost all based on his public advocacy for Palestinian liberation. The ADL director then laid his demands on the table: “we believe it would be prudent for BMG Music to reconsider your ongoing business relationship with Mr. Waters and representing his catalog of music.” Greenblatt concluded with a veiled, mafia don-like threat invoking the most sensitive – and potentially damaging – aspect of the publishing company’s history: “Given the fact that your parent company, Bertelsmann Group, has made laudable and necessary efforts to repair from its Nazi past, it would be deeply unfortunate to have those efforts continue to be tarnished by such hurtful and injurious conduct.” Greenblatt did not respond to an email from The Grayzone requesting comment on his lobbying campaign. ADL targets Bertelsmann’s Nazi past, recent relationship to Kanye West During World War Two, Heinrich Mohn leveraged close relationships with Nazi officials to transform his Bertelsmann printing press from a small producer of religious tracts into a national publishing powerhouse. Though not a member of the Nazi Party himself, Mohn donated handsome sums to the SS corps of Hitler’s military machine. Thomas Coesfeld, the current CEO of BMG, is the great-grandson of Heinrich Mohn and grandson of Reinhard Mohn, who ran Bertlesmann from the post-war era until his death in 2009. Rabe, for his part, is no stranger to ADL pressure campaigns. In his role as supervisory chairman of Adidas, Rabe faced charges that he had moved too slowly to contain the damage when the company’s star endorser, Kanye “Ye” West, launched a series of tirades against what he called “the Jewish underground media mafia.” On October 20, 2022, the ADL’s Greenblatt called out Rabe and Adidas CEO Kasper Rorsted in a public letter . “We are surprised and concerned that Adidas – a brand that supports inclusion and diversity – continues not only to support the Ye product line, but to release new products even as he continues to espouse hateful antisemitic ideas to his 31 million Twitter followers,” Greenblatt complained. Adidas dropped Ye within five days of Greenblatt’s statement. The following month, Rorsted was ousted as CEO. As Waters geared up to Germany for his European tour, the ADL’s Greenblatt sensed another opportunity to extract major concessions from Bertelsmann. As BMG prepares to sign, Israel lobbyists strike On January 25, 2023, BMG CEO Hartwig Masuch travelled to Gstaad, Switzerland to personally attend the 50th anniversary recording of “The Dark Side Of The Moon,” which would be called “DSOTM REDUX.” “Hartwig loved the album,” Waters told The Grayzone. “And he told me, ‘Yes we at BMG definitely want to put this record out and do a deal with you.'” With Waters set to mix the album the following month, his management team informed Masuch that “DSOTM REDUX” would premier at London’s famed Roundhouse music venue that June. But trouble struck on February 3, when German media reported that Frankfurt, Germany, city magistrates ordered a local venue to cancel Waters’ show on the grounds that he was “one of the most widely known antisemites in the world.” The accusation was not based on any public statements by Waters, but on the German state’s semi-official policy of supporting Israel as a form of Holocaust reparations, which has led Berlin to conflate any and all statements of Palestine solidarity with antisemitism. Waters immediately initiated legal proceedings to fight the Frankfurt cancelation. Meanwhile, pro-Israel elements homed in on a part of Waters’ performance drawn from Pink Floyd’s famous rock opera, “The Wall,” in which Waters appears as the protagonist “Pink Floyd” in the grip of hallucinatory madness, dressed in a Nazi-like uniform and barking delirious orders at the audience. While anyone familiar with “The Wall” would recognize the shtick as mockery of an authoritarian demagogue – a clearly anti-fascist theatrical statement – Israel lobbyists cynically twisted the imagery to demonize Waters in the eyes of suggestible German authorities. Israel lobby organizations similarly attempted to distort a visual presentation that appeared during Waters’ show which paid tribute to women killed by repressive political entities. Because Waters featured Shireen Abu-Akleh, the Palestinian journalist killed by Israeli occupation forces in Jenin in 2022, alongside numerous female martyrs including Anne Frank, the Dutch Jewish girl murdered by Nazi occupation authorities, Israel lobbyists accused him of “denigrating” Frank’s death. (Waters’ presentation also memorialized Sophie Scholl , the young German woman beheaded in 1943 by the Nazi regime for organizing resistance against Hitler’s rule). By late April, Waters had secured his legal right to perform in Frankfurt. However, the Israel lobby was just beginning to turn the screws on BMG. “He’s been gotten at by Jonathan Greenblatt at the ADL” On May 3, BMG’s Masuch flew to Paris for the first of two Waters shows at The Accord Arena. The following day, he met Waters to deliver some troubling news: Bertelsmann CEO Thomas Rabe had not yet approved the $5 million advance for “ DSOTM REDUX .” “When I asked [Masuch] why they were delaying, he told me Rabe had been gotten at by Jonathan Greenblatt at the ADL,” Waters recounted to The Grayzone. “So Rabe wasn’t just doing this out of nowhere; they were threatening him by holding the whole imbroglio with Adidas and Kanye over his head. They were basically telling him, ‘You fucked up with Kanye at Adidas, but you can make it better by nixing Roger’s record deal.'” On May 17, Masuch abruptly vacated his position at BMG and was replaced by Coesfeld . According to the publicly disclosed terms of Masuch’s contract, he was scheduled to pass the baton to Coesfeld seven months later, on January 1, 2024. According to a carefully worded BMG press release , “due to his personal plans for the future, Hartwig Masuch had requested an earlier departure.” Waters praised Masuch as “a stand-up guy” who had made a valiant attempt to resist the inertia of Israel lobby pressure. The date of Masuch’s departure coincided with Water’s arrival in Berlin for a series of concerts. Israeli and pro-Israel media outlets met his appearance with a flood of clearly coordinated smears . The Israeli Foreign Ministry chimed in a week later, declaring on Twitter, “Good morning to everyone except Roger Waters.” On June 16, the ADL escalated its sabotage operation with Greenblatt’s letter to Masuch and Rabe. The letter confirmed that Greenblatt was seeking to blackmail Bertelsmann with threats to resurface the company’s Nazi past. Later that day, Waters learned that Masuch spoke on the phone to Greenblatt, and that Greenblatt proposed that the Pink Floyd co-founder join him for lunch in New York City. To Waters, the ADL chief’s proposal suggested a shakedown scheme was in the works – the kind of tactic the ADL has employed in the past to extract hefty donations from wealthy celebrities caught in the organization’s crosshairs. “Even now,” Waters reflected ruefully, “I’m shaking my head in disbelief that this Israel lobbyist was licking his lips at nixing my contracts with BMG while he entertained the prospect of personally shaking me down over lunch. You couldn’t make this shit up.” Previous Next

< Back THE ‘GUARDIAN’ EXPOSES HOW CNN SLANTS THE GAZA NEWS JAMES NORTH 19 февр. 2024 г. The British Guardian has just published an extraordinary, thorough confirmation of what we already suspected — that CNN’s bias about reporting Israel’s war on Gaza is no accident, but a conscious and complex policy directed from the very top of the network. The Guardian ’s long report should be entered in every prize competition possible. Chris McGreal got six network insiders in multiple CNN newsrooms to talk. He also got his hands on “more than a dozen internal memos and emails.” The report — the Guardian does not have a paywall — runs on for 16 printed pages. Here is its lead sentence: “CNN is facing a backlash from its own staff over editorial policies they say have led to a regurgitation of Israeli propaganda and the censoring of Palestinian perspectives in the network’s coverage of the war in Gaza.” You get the impression that CNN spends just as much time distorting the news as it does actually gathering it. Here’s a quick summary: Advertisement “. . . daily news decisions are set by a flow of directives from the CNN headquarters in Atlanta that have set strict guidelines on coverage. “They include tight restrictions on quoting Hamas and reporting other Palestinian perspectives while Israel government statements are taken at face value.” Then, even more extraordinary: “In addition, every story on the conflict must be cleared by the Jerusalem bureau before broadcast or publication.” This is exactly how authoritarian regimes control their news output. The CNN insiders told McGreal that the network’s bias “resulted, particularly in the early weeks of the war, in a greater focus on Israeli suffering and the Israeli narrative of the war as a hunt for Hamas and its tunnels, and an insufficient focus on the scale of Palestinian civilian deaths and destruction in Gaza. McGreal’s informants said “the tone of coverage is set at the top by its new editor in chief and CEO, Mark Thompson.” The CNN insiders pointed to Thompson’s track record in his previous 2004-2012 tenure at the head of the BBC, where “. . . he was accused of bowing to Israeli government pressure on a number of occasions, including the demand to remove one of the corporation’s most prominent correspondents from her post in Jerusalem in 2005.” (That veteran BBC correspondent, Orla Guerin, continues to report from just about every frontline crisis on the planet, and is arguably the British network’s most accomplished foreign correspondent. Yet you will rarely see her broadcasting in Jerusalem.) McGreal unearthed a revealing two-page memo, openly called “an instruction from Mark,” that said that “. . . while CNN would report the human consequences of the Israeli assault and the historical context of the story, ‘we must continue always to remind our audiences of the immediate cause of this current conflict , namely the Hamas attack and mass murder and kidnap of civilians.’ McGreal’s excellent report did leave out a key fact about Mark Thompson. After Thompson left the BBC, he went on to be president and CEO of the New York Times , from 2012 to 2020. Those of us who have spent years trying to explain the NYT’s chronic bias on Israel/Palestine may have just found one of the smoking guns. Let’s see how much follow-up this remarkable Guardian investigation generates in the U.S. media. Mark Thompson’s phone should already be ringing off the hook, as American reporters ask for his reaction to these serious charges. Jake Tapper, Dana Bash, and Wolf Blitzer, among others, should also be approached for comment. Of course, they probably won’t talk. But Chris McGreal has already shown that there are CNN staffers who are willing to go off the record. What’s more, why not also surreptitiously approach people at MSNBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post ? What about National Public Radio, arguably the most timid of them all? Let’s hope it is only be a matter of time before we learn more. Republished from Mondoweiss with thanks Previous Next

< Back A LETTER TO MY GAZAN PALESTINIAN SON Hebh Jamal 18 февр. 2024 г. I am sitting here in bed with you in my arms. It is 11:59 PM, and you are fast asleep. Did you know you sleep talk? Yes at 21 months, you sleep talk. Sometimes you just chuckle and then roll to the other side, and other times you manage to touch my face and say “mama” while your eyes are closed. I am looking up at the ceiling fan and it’s lying perfectly still. Our vases are on the shelves- we’re not afraid of them falling. The windows are closed when we sleep. It gets chilly at night. Then you wake up to the sound of birds chirping at our window on our clean white sheets. We don’t hear anything except the birds here. You open your eyes and I am the first thing you see. If I am not there, you don’t panic, you just come to the living room and give me a hug. I couldn’t fall asleep like you, however. I was too busy holding you, and thinking of those who look like you, breathe like you, related to you. You are from a place where 21 month olds never sleep with messy hair. Your cousin told me he likes to comb it in case he never wakes up. “I want to die while looking nice” he said. You are from a place where 21 month olds do not sleep talk. They wake up multiple times at night afraid that the ceiling fan falls on them. You are from a place where no house has vases and the windows at night are always open. Leaving them closed will guarantee shattered glass. You are from a place where 21 month olds do not sleep on clean white sheets. Instead, they are buried in them. You are from a place where if 21 month olds wake up and do not find their mothers next to them- it is most likely they will never see her again. I do not know why I felt the need to tell you this. You won’t read this letter for a decade or two. But I wanted to remind you that the place you are from, despite the proximity of death, is a place worth remembering, worth loving, worth being proud of. To be from Gaza means that you are a child of extreme creativity. Did you know your older cousins can power a generator using just cooking oil? And your cousin Shahd knows how to crotchet the most beautiful dolls for you. A few weeks ago she made you a rabbit with overalls. You loved it. To be from Gaza means you know how to live life, oftentimes because it is not guaranteed. It means you feel the beauty of our waters, and don’t mind sleeping on the fine hot sand. Children from Gaza don’t put on sunscreen- they don’t mind feeling the sun’s touch. ​To be from Gaza means seeing those who look like you perish in an instant. It means hearing the country where you live tell you that they deserve it. It means seeing the number of thousands of Palestinian children dead- and growing numb to it since we don’t hear their stories, know their names or see their photo collages on our screens. Instead, we just see them wrapped in bloody white sheets if they are lucky enough to even be whole when they die. But, my love, being from Gaza means you can understand deep love and deep hatred better than others. You understand that the talking heads’ hatred of you is not a reflection of you. Your humanity is intact and your faith even stronger. Theirs is the one that is so deeply lost. Being from Gaza means you understand that the success of the Palestinian people, of your people, means the success of the down-trotted everywhere. From Ferguson to Mexico, to Palestine- being from Gaza means you know that justice is the most important human pursuit a person can have. Even if they dehumanize you like they do to all other Black and brown folks, being from Gaza means you know that all walls and empires fall. Eventually. Our resilience is stronger than their hatred. Remember Gaza, for being from such a marvelous, beautiful, creative place means you understand that it is worth fighting for. Such a place can never die. I love you. Sincerely, Your mother Previous Next

< Back ISRAEL REJECTS TWO STATES SOLUTION AMID INTERNATIONAL PRESSURE teleSUR/ACJ 18 февр. 2024 г. While the death toll in Gaza exceeds 28,000, Israel continues to refuse profoundly the legitimate international demand to recognize the creation of a Palestinian State as the only solution to the conflict. The Israeli cabinet unanimously rejected international pressure to create a Palestinian state as a solution to the regional conflict, arguing that doing so after the attack by the Islamist group Hamas on Octuber 7, 2023, would represent "an enormous reward for terrorism", while genocide continues in Gaza. RELATED: A communiqué from the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that "the Government unanimously approved the declaratory decision on Israel’s opposition to international dictates," referring to the petition of several countries and the global pressure to recognize and legitimize the Palestinian nation. "Israel roundly rejects international dictates on a permanent agreement with the Palestinians. The agreement, to the extent it is reached, will be made only through direct negotiations between the parties, without preconditions", reads the communiqué. The statement adds that Israel will continue to oppose the recognition of a Palestinian state, arguing that such recognition, after the Hamas attack that unleashed the war on 7 October and left some 1,200 dead and 250 kidnapped in Israel, while Israel doesn't recognizes the killed in Gaza by the Zionist occupation forces whose exceed 28,600. On the other hand the Palestinian Prime Minister, Mohamed Shtayeh, assured this Sunday that the Palestinian Authority "does not have a partner in Israel with whom to sit and talk" and for this reason the intervention of the European Union is necessary, the UN, the United States or the Arab countries for the creation of the Palestinian state. In turn Shtayeh highlighted that Israel "do not want to see us, neither as a state, nor as an Authority, this is the problem, for the first time we do not have a partner in Israel with whom we can sit and talk and when there is no partner, there can be no process, This is why a third party intervention is needed, which could be Europe, the UN, the United States or the Arab countries". "Land confiscation; 755,000 Jewish settlers living in the Palestinian territory, mostly armed settlers; 700 checkpoints (Israeli military), a wall surrounding Jerusalem separating Palestinians from Palestinians and deducting a substantial amount of our taxes he collects from us," Shtayeh concluded. Previous Next

< Back WHY REIMAGINE SOVIET GEORGIA? Sopiko Japaridze 12 февр. 2024 г. “If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” – Malcolm X A couple of years ago, I was hanging out with friends and decided to play a game. It resembled Mafia night but involved “Who is Hitler?” cards. We deal the cards, someone receives the Hitler card, and we have to figure out their identity through conversation. It’s a spin on the classic ‘Mafia’ game popular in Georgia . The ‘good guys’ were the ‘liberals’, featuring a crest reminiscent of the Soviet Union – minus the hammer and sickle, which was replaced by a dove. The game pitted the liberals against the villainous fascists . None of the young participants knew about the Soviet Union’s central role in the defeat of fascism in the second world war . Rewriting history This game, along with various forms of large and subtle propaganda, contributes to the distortion and rewriting of Soviet history since the collapse of the USSR. This narrative is reinforced through influential individuals, stories, narratives, holidays, books, films and non-governmental organisations, among others. I too had been influenced by anticommunist history. The Soviet Union had been often depicted as an immense, inhumane state, indifferent to its citizens – a portrayal reminiscent of the dystopian novels ingrained in our education since middle school in the United States. In addition, I had been ‘trained’ in anticommunist socialist circles in the United States and understood the USSR as a failed project (each tendency I was a part of marked different years as the betrayal of the revolution). However, upon returning to Georgia from the United States, where I had migrated during the wars and violence in the 1990s, I discovered a different perspective. Health and safety, then and now Georgian locals everywhere emphasised how the current state neglects its people, contrasting it with the care during the Soviet Union era. Even anticommunist liberals would reference Soviet standards and studies to oppose incessant construction and environmental damage during protests I attended. They recalled how, during the Soviet Union, constructing buildings higher than a certain level was deemed detrimental to people’s health, emphasising factors like sunlight and stable ground. Stringent regulations were in place to protect citizens. My exploration of mining towns in Georgia revealed a stark reality. Residents showed me apartments covered in burned coal, children inhaling ashes on playgrounds. Initially, I was tempted to connect this to a perception of Soviet neglect for people in favour of industrial output, but the residents vehemently objected. In the USSR, they explained, strict regulations prevented coal-burning near residential areas, and today’s common practice of open storage was illegal back then. They insisted that the current problems were nonexistent in the Soviet period. Tragically, many preventable deaths have been caused by post-Soviet mining practices. Multiple mine explosions have taken lives, and interviews with miners have revealed a disturbing truth. The specific area witnessing frequent explosions in recent years was sealed off during the 1970s under the USSR, following a prior explosion. No mining was allowed there because it was deemed too dangerous. However, the private company that owns it today unsealed the area, leading to fatal consequences. These deaths were entirely preventable – a result of negligence in pursuit of easy access to coal. In the gold-mining town of Kazreti, residents painted a grim picture of their current life. At first, I assumed that the town’s status as a mining hub from the USSR era might explain their sense of boredom, overwork and exposure to high pollution , but the locals described life as more vibrant during the Soviet Union. They reminisced about lively nightlife, abundant sporting events, and the ability to travel affordably to Tbilisi and across the Soviet Union. Sports held a significant place in their community, with various events constantly taking place – from small towns to large cities. Technical colleges in these towns brought diversity and additional residents, creating a dynamic social fabric. According to the residents, people were not only socially active but also physically healthier and stronger during the Soviet era. They highlighted the provision of extra food and nutrients to each worker, acknowledging the challenges of mining on the body. Food and nutrition were paramount concerns, with dedicated efforts to ensure proper nourishment for both workers and children. This contrast between the past and present underscored the significant changes in the town’s quality of life over time. In the manganese-mining town, miners endure exhausting 12-hour shifts, in contrast to the Soviet era, where stringent regulations limited work to seven hours, recognising the adverse impact on the body after extended periods in the mines. This protective measure aimed to prioritise the wellbeing of the workers is undermined today and the quota system incentivises long working days. One miner’s wife said: “They want us to meet the quotas like in the Soviet Union but they don’t give us any perks and benefits of the Soviet Union.” One worker who is responsible for detonating the coal mines recounted a traumatic incident that cost him an arm. He revealed the painfully slow response time of paramedics, who took a whole hour to arrive. The subsequent journey to the nearest hospital, now distantly located owing to hospital closures linked to privatisation, extended the ordeal by additional hours. The erosion of occupational health and safety standards during post-Soviet liberalisation emerged as another distressing pattern in my conversations. This formerly vibrant town has now morphed into a landscape of unsafe mining, pollution, and a community forced into desperate measures. Residents are resorting to manganese drilling in their own backyards, underscoring the dire economic circumstances and the degree of pollution. The collapse of other once-thriving industries besides mining has left the town grappling with the consequences of unbridled privatisation , profoundly impacting the wellbeing and safety of its inhabitants. The role of occupational disease specialists has been reduced to being merely symbolic since the radical liberalisation of the 2000s. This period is marked by the total destruction of labour and social institutes, bans on progressive taxation, and criminalisation of communism and communist symbols. During the Soviet Union, approximately 200 diagnoses of occupational illnesses were made each year. However, in recent years, there have been no diagnoses. The director of the last remnants of the Institute of Occupational Specialists revealed that she made two diagnoses a few years ago and faced threats from the company for doing so. This once-vital institution, now defunct, holds decades of research on labour safety and conditions, unable to share its old findings, conduct new research, or diagnose people. The director candidly stated: “You are going to think I’m crazy, but the best occupational health and safety was under communism.” I reassured her that I didn’t consider her crazy. Soviet memories refuse to die Struggling with the loss of their professional purpose and fueled by a connection to their identity through work, these specialists gather in a dilapidated building to drink coffee and talk about the past. But there are those with a different view of history of Georgia and the Soviet past, both locals and foreigners who engage in nuanced, evidence-based conversations about the Soviet Union. Primarily, they came to address history projects triggered by exaggerated hypernationalist narratives . Unfortunately, these discussions struggle to penetrate the dominant communication channels, even though the population is willing and ready for more nuanced discussions about the USSR. A significant number, if not the majority, of those who grew up in the Soviet Union harbour a positive, if not outright affectionate, view of this past. Yet these sentiments are often marginalised and dismissed by prevailing propaganda in Georgia. Whenever someone attempts to share positive aspects of the Soviet Union, they cautiously glance around to ensure their words don’t attract unwanted attention. Over the decades, individuals expressing such sentiments have endured criticism from liberals and conservatives united in anticommunism who dismiss their feelings as mere ‘nostalgia’, treating them like naive children. The prevailing anti-Soviet narrative in Georgia acts like an enchanting spell, affecting everyone, with nuances and facts seemingly reserved for the professionals or the marginalised population who are locked apart. Meanwhile, experts and academics possess the potential to counter the destructive hypernationalist narratives, particularly in the context of current Georgia. Given that the propaganda is supported by institutions, grant funds, state-sponsored memory politics, international and regional organisations, among others, it is understandable that they are reluctant to jeopardise their status in this enchanted circle. Let’s face it: academics aren’t renowned for their bravery. This is where we, as socialists, must step up to the challenge. While it has been common for western socialists to publicly distance themselves from the Soviet Union (‘No, we aren’t those kinds of socialists!’), the critical task of updating Soviet Union history based on both old and new realities persists. It is also important to analyse the experiences of people who lived through it, as well as the ramifications that followed, rather than just the cherry-picked memoirs weaponised during the cold war. The Soviet Union posed the biggest danger to capitalism because it symbolised a real-life, evangelising vision of another world being possible – a concept that now frequently feels like an empty protest slogan. Even if the initiative failed in the USSR at various points, its existence inspired even more audacious utopian projects elsewhere. The Soviet Union was a major material sponsor of decolonisation, and its disappearance is felt around the world. Today, the dominant development narrative provides no alternative, reinforcing a duality of core and periphery in relationships. This gap affects literature, art, music and interpersonal relationships, as well as geopolitics. Former Soviet citizens are separated, with no opportunities or means to reconnect, and the third world no longer overlaps with the once-dominant Soviet presence. The current scenario sees post-Soviet elites connected only to Europe, cleaving themselves from the rest of the common people. There are countless successful experiments within the USSR that are worth revisiting and reviewing despite the reduction of the Soviet experiment to violence and repression in the popular imagination. It is only fitting that the memory of the Soviet Union is increasingly demonised and distorted, evident in newly coined days like Black Ribbon Day and the unjust comparisons to fascism throughout Europe. Importantly, the countless fighters – like my grandfathers – who sacrificed their lives to defeat fascism are being wrongly equated to fascists themselves. Fascism, which originally emerged as an opposition to socialism, has paradoxically been reframed to be historically opposed to liberalism instead of its bedfellow. The reduction of discussions about the Soviet Union to mere nostalgia is a consequence of a deeper issue. More robust and nuanced discussions about the USSR are unfortunately now confined to the realm of experts. When individuals find themselves unable to leverage their wealth of knowledge and to contribute to the reconstruction of a new society – perceived as relics from the past waiting to fade away – the only refuge becomes private conversations with friends and colleagues. This isolation from active participation in shaping the future leaves them confined to sharing memories and insights in smaller, more personal circles. It reflects a broader challenge of integrating the wisdom and experiences of the past into the ongoing narrative of societal progress. In response to their marginalisation, Soviet nostalgists – the often-disenfranchised members of society – resist through the private preservation of the USSR’s memory. With their knowledge and experiences pushed to the sidelines, this becomes a subtle act of defiance. It is a way to uphold a vision of the past that holds more than mere nostalgia; it is a quiet protest against being relegated to the fringes of society. It is their unspoken assertion of value in shaping the narrative, even if confined to the interpersonal. Countless Facebook groups and pages are dedicated to reminiscing about the better times in the USSR. A sentiment often echoed is ‘Tbilisi used to be a relationship’, capturing the essence of the compassion between people in the capital of Soviet Georgia. It wasn’t just a geographical location; it was a genuine and caring connection, a stark contrast to the present day. People often surrender their power by believing they possess none. The fear of communism and its potential to mobilise people for a transformative world is evident in the continuous enactment of anticommunist laws during the capitalist restoration. Despite 30 years of efforts to bury and vilify its memory, the resilience of communism remains undefeated. The enduring struggle reflects the underlying apprehension among proponents of capitalist ideologies who recognise the enduring power and appeal of a vision that challenges the status quo. Socialists shouldn’t dismiss the entire Soviet experiment as a failure. Recognising the imperative to redefine Soviet Georgia beyond mere nostalgia, Bryan Gigantino and I launched the Reimagining Soviet Georgia podcast. Our goal is not to consign Soviet Georgia to the past but to invigorate it, making it a dynamic force in shaping new visions for the world. The podcast seeks to inspire, rescuing the Soviet era from vilification and unfounded associations with fascism. We advocate for a shift beyond academic discussions and adding another front besides reminiscing about the Soviet past solely around the dinner table. —————————— Sopiko Japaridze is the chair of Solidarity Network, a health and care worker union in Georgia, and host of the history podcast Reimagining Soviet Georgia. Reproduced from Monthly Review , with thanks. Previous Next

< Back NEW ISRAELI REPORT ALLEDGING ‘SYSTEMATIC AND INTENTIONAL RAPE’ BY HAMAS RELIES ON DEBUNKED WESTERN MEDIA REPORTS Max Blumenthal 23 февр. 2024 г. The contents of the Israeli Association of Rape Crisis Center’s paper alleging “systematic” Hamas rape derive largely from discredited second-hand testimonies and debunked media reports. Among its most heavily cited sources is a dubious NY Times article that triggered a staff revolt at the paper. Western media outlets are hyping a new report by the Israeli government-affiliated “Association of Rape Crisis Centers” (ARCC) which maintains that Hamas combatants carried out a campaign of “systematic and intentional” rape on October 7. “Israeli report finds evidence of ‘systematic’ rape and abuse during 7 October attack,” a Guardian headline blared . “Report shows systematic rapes, murder of women in Israel on October 7,” Germany’s DPA screamed . Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Post shrieked , “Hamas terrorists forced families to watch loved ones get raped at gunpoint.” Despite the AP’s acknowledgment that the report “did not specify the number of cases it had documented or identify any victims, even anonymously” and that its authors “declined to say whether they had spoken to victims,” dozens of mainstream outlets have presented its findings as incontrovertible fact . Yet a close examination of the ARCC report reveals that the paper is short on new research, absent of hard evidence, and reliant instead on clips from factually-challenged articles by the same Western outlets promoting its publication. Among the paper’s most frequently cited sources is an infamously shoddy New York Times report by Jeffrey Gettleman purporting to detail “How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on October 7.” Following an internal staff uproar prompted by a series of Grayzone exposés which highlighted major inconsistencies and demonstrable falsehoods by the paper’s sources, the Times canceled an episode of its “Daily” podcast about the article. Despite the controversy surrounding the Times’ report, the ARCC cites it twelve times in its own paper, while sourcing testimony second-hand from many of the same discredited Israelis as the Times. The ARCC also relies substantially on testimony from ZAKA , the ultra-Orthodox “rescue” group which introduced false allegations that Hamas beheaded babies, cut fetuses from pregnant women, and had lunch in an Israeli family’s home after killing and mutilating them. ZAKA has been lambasted in Israeli media for serially mishandling evidence from the October 7 attacks and even staging atrocity scenes for fundraising purposes. At least one quarter of citations in the ARCC’s paper are drawn from the widely panned New York Times article and credibility-strained ZAKA volunteers. The rest of the paper relies on dubious self-proclaimed witnesses like the Israeli army reservist Shari Mendes, who falsely claimed that Hamas not only cut a fetus from a pregnant Israeli woman, but beheaded its mother. Discredited sources, debunked articles form backbone of new “Hamas rape” report In citing the NY Times to demonstrate systematic rape by Hamas on October 7, the ARCC points to “a video posted on social media” which shows “a woman in a torn dress, without underwear, injured and with her face burned. Police investigators ruled that she had been raped.” This section refers to Gal Abdush, a young woman killed on October 7 who features as a central character in the NY Times article. As The Grayzone reported , Abdush’s sister and brother-in-law both publicly denied that she was raped, with the former accusing the Times of manipulating her family into participating by misleading them about their editorial angle. The ARCC later cites a NY Times account of “an IDF paramedic” who claimed to have entered a room in Kibbutz Beeri “where the bodies of two girls were found, one of whom was found with her pants rolled down and the remains of semen on her back.” The Grayzone has exposed this source as well, revealing him as a reservist paramedic from Israeli Air Force Special Tactics rescue unit 669 who identifies himself to the media only as “G,” but whose real name is Guy Melamed . As we explained, no girls were found on Kibbutz Beeri in a condition remotely similar to Melamed’s description. The closest match to the paramedic’s account were two teenage residents of Beeri, Yahel and Noiya Sharabi, who were killed on October 7. But according to the Times of Israel , the girls’ bodies were “found in an embrace” with their mother, and not “alone, separated from the rest of the family.” Israeli media has also reported , “Lianne and Yahel [Sharabi] could only be identified through DNA samples. Noiya was identified through her teeth only two days ago.” So how was Melamed able to find semen on one of the girls, and bruises on the other, and view their states of undress, if their bodies had been burned beyond recognition? The only answer is that he fabricated the entire scenario. Before Melamed cooked up atrocities for the NY Times, which were later reheated by the ARCC, he appeared on a right-wing Indian news channel to invent an account of discovering a dead baby discarded into a trash can by Hamas. Given that only one baby was killed on October 7 – a one year old accidentally shot by a Hamas militant – the paramedic’s story could not have possibly been true. Melamed was just one character among a motley collection of self-styled Israeli rescuers who fabricated October 7 atrocity tales to gain notoriety in the Western press. The most prolific fabulists emerged from an ultra-Orthodox Israeli state-affiliated group called ZAKA. This was the outfit responsible for “confirming” the bogus story of Hamas beheading babies on October 7 and spinning out the tale of a Palestinian militant slashing a fetus from a pregnant Jewish woman. As The Grayzone reported , ZAKA is an infamously corrupt organization founded by a prolific sexual abuser. Before October 7, the group was nearly insolvent, but since it attracted international attention the lurid lies its volunteers spun out, it has raked in millions from wealthy Jewish diaspora donors including Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg. Yossi Landau, the ZAKA “commander” who invented an array of debunked October 7 horror stories, has said that those who question his credibility “should be killed.” The Israeli publication Haaretz subsequently revealed numerous instances of ZAKA volunteers with no coronary credentials mishandling corpses, mixing up body parts, and making fundraising calls with dead bodies nearby. In one case, the volunteers placed a corpse next to themselves as “part of a staged setting – an exhibit designed to attract donors, just when the race against time to gather and remove the bodies of victims of the [October 7] massacre was most urgent.” The ARCC paper cites ZAKA volunteers no less than 14 times. The ZAKA testimonies referenced in the paper include one volunteer’s claim to the BBC to have found a woman with a knife lodged in her genitals. No forensic or photographic evidence exists to support this lurid recollection, however. In fact, there is no forensic proof to support any single Israeli claim of sexual abuse by Palestinian militants on October 7. The ARCC also relies on the hallucinatory recollections of “Sapir,” the supposed “star witness” of the Israeli police, who spun out scenes to the New York Times that were so outrageously obscene, they defied belief. The anonymous character claimed that after being shot in the back at the Nova Electronic Music Festival, she witnessed Hamas militants simultaneously gang rape and stab a woman, then slice her breast off with a box cutter before passing it around and playing with it. “Sapir” went on to allege the militants cut off the woman’s face, Hannibal Lecter-style, then decapitated three other women in her presence. According to Haaretz , “investigators were unable to identify the women who, according to the testimony of [Sapir] and other eyewitnesses, were raped and murdered.” Israeli Police Superintendent Adi Edry told the paper, “I have circumstantial evidence, but ultimately my duty is to find evidence that supports her testimony and to find the victims’ identity. At this stage I don’t have those specific corpses.” Another prominent October 7 fabulist, Israeli military reservist Shari Mendes, is cited six times in the ARCC paper. At one point, ARCC quotes Mendes asserting that Hamas militants had raped babies and the elderly on October 7. “We saw genitals cut off, heads cut off, babies – hands, feet, no reason,” she claimed . On another occasion, Mendes falsely insisted , “A baby was cut out of a pregnant woman and beheaded, and then the mother was beheaded.” The ARCC rounds out its report with recycled testimony from Raz Cohen, the October 7 attack survivor who told the NY Times he witnessed a Palestinian gang rape of Israeli women at the Nova Electronic Music Festival. As The Grayzone revealed , Cohen never mentioned witnessing any such scenes in his initial interviews about the attacks, and repeatedly changed his story thereafter, adding sensationalistic details as time went on. After appearing in a bizarre October 7-themed fashion show in Tel Aviv, Cohen refused a follow-up interview with the NY Times to address questions about his credibility. ARCC paper paid for by Israel lobby bigwigs behind “10/7 Project” PR operation Though released by an association seemingly dedicated to supporting sexual assault survivors in Israel, the ARCC’s paper alleging “systematic” rape by Hamas was paid for by Zionist pressure groups in the US. Its top sponsors include the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, which has donated millions to AIPAC-related initiatives, and the Jewish Federations of Greater Miami. AIPAC and the Jewish Federations are also key pillars in the coalition of Israel lobby outfits behind a new propaganda initiative called the “10/7 Project.” According to Axios , the 10/7 Project comprises “a centralized communications operation that aims to provide newsrooms and policymakers with fact-based information on the [Gaza] war.” In its bid to justify Israel’s blood-spattered assault on the Gaza Strip, which has left nearly 30,000 dead in over 130 days – most of them women and children – the 10/7 Project has contracted high-powered Democratic Party PR firms like SKDK to, in its words, “retell the story about the butchery of the Oct 7 attack and make outcasts of 10/7 deniers.” Whether or not the 10/7 Project is responsible for the publicity blitz surrounding the ARCC’s new paper on “systematic” Hamas rape, it is clear Western media has become a laundromat for Israeli propaganda about October 7, recycling discredited allegations through a seemingly endless series of dodgy dossiers, and hyping each one as freshly obtained evidence of Palestinian savagery. 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< Back WHY MARXISTS ARE PRO-IMMIGRANT, BUT AGAINST OPEN BORDERS Slava the Ukrainian Socialist 11 февр. 2024 г. The border problem has long been a divisive issue in the United States. Hundreds of thousands of people from various parts of the world are arriving in the heart of the empire that caused their suffering to begin with. Cities like Chicago and New York have declared themselves as "sanctuary cities" and claim to welcome asylum seekers. Yet shelters are overwhelmed, leading many migrants to live in makeshift tent settlements near law enforcement facilities. Inadequate care and resources have resulted in tragic losses, including the deaths of children . While the movement of people predates the emergence of capitalism, the latter has played a pivotal role in shaping migration because it compels people to sell what Marx called their labor power, forcing people to work far from their places of origin. In the past century, with the rise of imperialism, a stage of capitalism marked by global exploitation, increasing numbers of people have sought opportunities for a better life, especially for their children. As an immigrant myself, I've frequently pondered the contentious issue of Open Borders and considered how it can be analyzed through a Marxist perspective. How Marxists Approach the Immigration Question There's a common misconception, especially prevalent in the US, that immigrants come here out of love for America. This notion is as flawed as suggesting that nineteenth-century Irish immigrants harbored affection for England, as Marx observed in his 1870 letter to Kugelmann . The primary driver for most migrants is economic necessity, and the vast majority would prefer improved opportunities in their homeland, surrounded by family and friends. US capitalism thrives on cheap labor, making immigrants the perfect source. By employing lower-wage migrants, capitalists are able to divide the working class. Instead of directing their frustrations towards the government, American citizens often scapegoat immigrants, and vice versa. Democrats are typically seen as pro-immigrant, while Republicans position themselves as pro-citizen. However, in reality, neither party genuinely prioritizes the people; they merely feign concern. Marxists don't subscribe to abstract moralism, welcoming migrants in an act of charity and to score cheap political points; instead, seek to they explain the underlying causes of migration. From a Marxist perspective, individuals across nations are collectively oppressed by imperialism. Therefore, the emancipation of people from this condition is critical to addressing mass migration. Karl Marx argued that the influx of low-paid Irish immigrants into England created detrimental competition with English workers. He saw this as a component of an exploitative system that not only fractured the working class but also extended the reach of the colonial system. Marx's insights on this are articulated in his letter to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt, found in "Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Selected Correspondence," Progress Publishers, 1975. Let's examine why immigration poses challenges for both migrants and the countries they come from. Immigration Is Tragic Despite Trump's disparaging remarks about "shithole countries" that are "not sending their best," in fact the "brain drain" induced by migration negatively impacts developing economies. According to 2018 data from the Pew Research Center, approximately 51 percent of migrants who have relocated to the United States are college educated, and many hold advanced degrees. Developing nations grapple with retaining their skilled and professionally trained citizens, often nurtured at significant public expense. This struggle arises because dominant and affluent economies in the global market have the resources to attract and absorb them. For example, Mexico ranks among the world's major contributors of educated professionals, leading to a persistent "qualified employment deficit" that adversely affects its economy. The immigration journey is never simple. It exacts a significant toll on the physical and mental well-being of migrants. Even upon successfully reaching their destination without incident, many challenges await in their new home. Adapting to unfamiliar cultures and customs, and mastering a new language are formidable tasks. Enduring prejudice and stereotyping only compounds the difficulties. It can be a daunting experience to navigate. What Can We Do? In contrast to Trump, advocates of open borders and many mainstream commentators argue that "there is no migrant crisis." However, this simply ignores reality. Mass migration indeed presents significant challenges, and the moralizing by the upper-middle class on this issue is a farce. While the ultra-wealthy might have the means to live in the borderless world they advocate, the majority of people rely on and aspire to a unified, sovereign political entity that protects their rights as citizens. Being a Marxist and advocating for open borders are two incompatible positions that do not cohere. Open border policies reinforce capitalist exploitation and perpetuate systemic inequalities. Denying entry to immigrants or stripping them of their humanity by categorizing them as "illegal aliens" and withholding their rights only compounds this injustice. But maintaining open borders alone is not a comprehensive solution. Immigrants require assistance with paperwork, housing, and medical care, a prerequisite for which is proper legal documentation. Furthermore, providing free housing and medical care for immigrants should coincide with equal opportunities for low-income and homeless Americans. It's understandable why economically disadvantaged citizens may feel neglected when immigrants seemingly receive preferential treatment. However, this disparity is often intentional. The occasional assistance immigrants receive may serve as a talking point for Democrats, but it does not address the underlying systemic issues facing working-class immigrants and American citizens alike. Our main attention should be directed towards tackling the systemic exploitation that underlies mass migration. At the same time, we should fight for all working-class people’s rights to housing, education, and medical care. So why is the border issue coming up now, right before the elections? Is it because both parties use and abuse immigrants in their campaigns? We explore this in our next article. Previous Next