“People like the idea of freedom of speech until they hear something they don’t like. When people say, ‘He crossed the line,’ I say, ‘I didn’t draw a line, you did.’ It’s relative. It’s subjective.”
-Ricky Gervais, quoted in CNN’s “Golden Globes reunion with host Ricky Gervais has a whiff of desperation.”
We hit 100,000 views a few days ago, and to celebrate (if that’s the right word) we’re listing the best posts we’ve published over the years, divided by category. Here’s the second installment. The third will be the first of the Humor installments, and it’ll focus purely on jokes.
Civil Liberties
Economics
Gardening
Interviews
Journalism
(We ran two earlier, considerably shorter versions of this post in years past under the title “Nazi Germany and the U.S.A.” As you might have noticed, things have changed a bit lately, hence this update.)
* * *
REFERENCES TO FASCISM abound in American political discourse. Unfortunately, most of those using the term wouldn’t recognize fascism if it bit ’em on the butt, and use it as a catch-all pejorative for anything or anyone they dislike. But the term does have a specific meaning.
Very briefly, as exemplified in Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy, fascism is an extreme right-wing, phony-populist ideology and political-economic system (which Mussolini dubbed “the corporate state”), the key features of which are strident nationalism, militarism and military worship, a one-party state, a dictatorial leader with a personality cult, a capitalist economic system integrated with state institutions (to the mutual benefit of capitalists and fascist politicians), suppression of independent unions, government use of media as a propaganda instrument, suppression of civil liberties and all forms of political opposition, and an aggressive, expansionist foreign policy.
The racism, racial scapegoating, and racial persecution that permeated German fascism are not part of fascism per se, unless one wants to classify extreme nationalism as racism. There’s a case to be made for that, but for now let’s consider them as separate maladies. But since the topic of this post is the comparison of Nazi Germany to the U.S.A., we will consider racism as well as fascism in the following comparisons.
Getting to the headline topic, just how similar is the present-day U.S. to Nazi Germany? Let’s look at specifics:
Nationalism
Corporate Capitalist Domination
Of late, Trump’s slavishness to the interests of the big corporations has become blindingly obvious with his dismantling of clean air and water regulations (which safeguard public health while impeding corporate profits), his attempts to open millions of acres of federal lands (including national monuments) to desecration by mining and fossil fuels corporations, his (and other Republicans’) attempts to restrict access to Medicaid, to allow the insurance industry to discriminate against those with pre-existing conditions, and his refusal to do anything about the obscene price of prescription drugs and the obscene profits of the drug companies. (Trump’s “plan” to reduce drug costs was complete bullshit designed only to string along the gullible while providing cover for the continued gouging of the public by big pharma. The fact that pharma stocks spiked immediately after Trump released the details of his “plan” tells you all you need to know about it.)
Militarism
Military Worship
Military worship is almost a state religion in the United States. Tune in to almost any baseball broadcast for abundant examples; this worship even extends to those on what passes for the left in the United States: Michael Moore, Stephen Colbert, Rachel Maddow.
Military Aggression
Misuse and Misrepresentation of Science
Currently, the most serious such assault on science is corporate-funded climate change denial. It’s been obvious for decades that climate change is real and a deadly threat, and over 95% of climate scientists agree — and have agreed for decades — that it is. Yet the fossil fuels corporations have funded and promoted the work of a very few contrarians (whose work doesn’t, upon examination, hold up) to cast doubt on climate change science so that they can wring every last dollar from coal, oil, and natural gas.
Now, official U.S. policy is based on climate change denial pseudoscience. Trump has filled his administration with science deniers, especially climate change deniers, notably Scott Pruitt at the EPA, who are busy undoing clean air and water regulations, are doing their best to promote use of dirty fossil fuels, and are discouraging the use of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. Trump has even proposed public subsidies for money-losing coal-fired power plants that utilities are planning to close.
As in Nazi Germany, government policy is based on willful ignorance of science. Millions upon millions will almost certainly die as a result, unless the government drastically reverses its course and implements evidence-based policies based on the work of climate scientists.
(For more on all this, see Corrupted Science: Fraud, Ideology, and Politics in Science [revised & expanded], by John Grant. Full disclosure: See Sharp Press published Corrupted Science.)
Incarceration and Slave Labor
Justice System
Obama’s “Justice” Department never even investigated the largest financial fraud in world history that led to the 2008 crash, let alone charged those responsible. Prosecutors routinely pile on charges against average citizens to blackmail them into plea bargaining and pleading guilty to charges of which they’re not guilty; it’s no accident that America’s prisons are filled with poor people, especially blacks and hispanics who can’t afford bail and good legal representation; at the same time cops routinely get away with murder of blacks, hispanics, and poor whites.
Suppression of Unions
Free Speech
Trump routinely attacks journalists who report anything even slightly embarrassing to him, or who point out any of his almost innumerable lies. Of late, he’s upped the ante by attacking the press as the “enemy of the American people” in a transparent attempt to intimidate the press and provoke the anger of his worshippers.
As well, Trump routinely lies about damn near everything, great and small — Politifact clasifies 69% of his statements as being “mostly false” or worse — counting on the fact that the press (e.g., New York Times) is reluctant to label his lies as lies, allowing Trump to muddy the waters and mislead the public.
Fortunately, Trump doesn’t have complete control of the media. But he does have the sycophantic tools at Fox “News,” Breitbart, InfoWars, and the rest of the right-wing echo chamber. Almost worse, 67% of Americans get at least some of their news from social media sites such as Facebook, with an unknown percentage getting all of their news from these platforms (predominantly Facebook). What makes this dangerous is that Facebook feeds them news reports that, based on their previous “likes” and other use, reinforces their existing beliefs and prejudices.
Add that to Trump’s denigration of the free press and you end up with a significant part of the population that’s woefully misinformed.
Other Civil Liberties
Spying Upon Citizens
Free Elections
Racism
As well, the Republican Party’s longtime “southern strategy” — and its largely successful attempts to disenfranchise black voters — was and still is designed to appeal to racists.
Donald Trump’s hateful rhetoric and racial scapegoating of Mexicans and other hispanics is merely the cherry atop this merde sundae.
Victimhood
Personality Cult
Yes, there still are significant differences between Nazi Germany and the U.S.A. But they grow smaller with every passing day.
(Note: I’m doing this translation on the fly — just sitting here reading and typing away. Don’t expect a great translation: I’m wiped and am posting this without revising it. For those interested and who can read Spanish, the original is included at the end of this translation.)
* * *
The rhetoric of Chavismo [refers to the personality cult of Hugo Chávez and his followers, especially now-dictator Nicolás Maduro], replete with the standard pet phrases of the Latin American left, created for many years expectations among those who searched for a more humane and just alternative [to the capitalist hell of U.S. subservience and exploitation].
Despite the degradation of the army to the Chavista state, and the obvious evidence of the general impoverishment of the population and the regimentation of daily life of Venezuelans, the phantasm [of “Bolivarian” revolution] hasn’t yet totally evaporated.
The unsuspecting, innocents, and political operatives of all stripes, but without the drive they had in the days of the Supreme Commander, continue to defend the regime of Nicolás Maduro repeating the empty phrases “economic war” and citing the Constituent Assembly [the illegal body created by Maduro to supplant the elected congress].
Every time we have to explain the Venezuelan situation outside of our borders, we need to overcome the echos of authoritarian propaganda [sanctifying Chávez and Maduro]. To neutralize the views of those who live in other lands, but who consider themselves better informed than those of us living here, I’ll cite personal histories, personal histories of those of us living here in Venezuela.
I’ll begin with the story of Juan Pedro Lares.
Juan Pedro is a young man of 23, who on the 30th of June, the date of the election for Maduro’s [illegal] constituent assembly, was arrested in his home in the municipality of Campo Elías in the state of Mérida by SEBIN [Servicio Boliviariano de Inteligencia Nacional — the state intelligence service]. They were looking for his father, Omar Lares, the town’s mayor. Most of the family fled through the rear, but uniformed cops arrested Juan Pedro.
There was no arrest warrant for him and he was committing no crime — the two reasons under the law that would permit arrest. But they arrested him anyway.
Meanwhile, his father fled to Colombia to avoid being arrested in the wave of repression directed against [opposition] mayors. And his mother Ramona went to Caracas to try to find out what happened to Juan Pablo.
Despite going several times to the Helicoide prison, the authorities denied repeatedly that he was there. He was.
Both Juan Pedro and his mother Ramona are Colombian citizens, and thanks to the Colombian embassy she was able to visit him in Helicoide, the headquarter of SEBIN, four times over the coming months.
The illegal detention, the violation of due process, and the negation of the rights due any prisoner — visits by family and access to attorneys — weren’t the only violations of Juan Pedro’s rights. He was never brought before a judge during the first 48 hours to be informed of the charges brought against him. He was never brought before a judge during the first six months of his captivity.
We repeat: No state attorney has accused the young man of committing a crime. Therefore, his detention consists of, nothing more and nothing less, a kidnapping by the state. In this manner, the Maduro government, with the complicity of the human rights figures [within it, apparently — I don’t know enough about the matter to extrapolate from the context] Tarek William Saab and Alfredo Ruiz to blackmail Juan Pedro’s father to return from exile and be imprisoned.
What do you call the type of government that would do such a thing?
The case of Juan Pedro discredits ever more the international mouthpieces of Chavismo [presently, Madurismo]. If the governments of Macri (Argentina) or Piñera (Chile) had violated due process and incarcerated someone for political purposes, there would be a regional campaign against this on social networks. But no.
The case of Juan Pedro Lares is not unique.
We’ll continue, while we still have a voice, to continue to paint such portraits of infamy.
* * *
El discurso del chavismo, repleto de lugares comunes y las muletillas de la izquierda latinoamericana, generó durante mucho tiempo expectativas entre quienes buscaban una alternativa, más humana y justa, para la humanidad. A pesar de la degradación del ejercicio de poder bolivariano y todas las evidencias sobre el empobrecimiento general de la población y la estatización de la vida cotidiana de los venezolanos, dicho espejismo no se ha evaporado del todo. Incautos, ingenios y operadores políticos de todo pelaje, con menos empuje que en los días en vida del Comandante Supremo, siguen defendiendo la gestión de Nicolás Maduro, repitiendo los desiertos de la “guerra económica” y la Constituyente.
Cada vez que hemos tenido que explicar la situación venezolana fuera de sus fronteras, tenemos que vencer los ecos de la propaganda del autoritarismo. Para neutralizar auditorios que a pesar de no vivir en el país creen estar mejor informados que tú, he recurrido a la estrategia de contar historias que, dramáticamente, hablen por sí solas. Cuando he querido neutralizar las intervenciones de quienes desean refutar que entre nosotros existe una dictadura, empiezo mi intervención relatando la historia de Juan Pedro Lares.
Juan Pedro es un adolescente de 23 años que el pasado 30 de julio, fecha de las elecciones a la Asamblea Constituyente madurista, fue detenido en su domicilio ubicado en el Municipio Campo Elías del estado Mérida. Un comando del SEBIN y la policía fueron a buscar a su padre, Omar Lares, que en ese momento ejercía el cargo de Alcalde de Ejido. La familia huye por el patio trasero, pero Juan Pedro queda atrás y es capturado por los uniformados. No había ninguna orden de aprehensión en su contra y no estaba cometiendo en ese momento delito alguno, los dos causales, que según la ley, permiten la privación de libertad. Inmediatamente fue trasladado a Caracas. Mientras su padre huía a Colombia, para evitar ser parte de los alcaldes detenidos ilegalmente, su madre Ramona comienza la peregrinación en la capital para conocer el paradero de su hijo. A pesar de haber ido varias veces a El Helicoide, las autoridades negaban que se encontrara ahí. Tanto Ramona como Juan Pedro tienen nacionalidad colombiana, por lo que fue por intermediación de la Cancillería que, semanas después, corroboraron que se encontraba en la sede del Sebin y le permitieron una primera visita, que hasta el día de hoy sólo suman 4. La detención ilegal y la negación de los derechos de cualquier preso (ser visitado por abogados y familiares de manera periódica) no son la única violación del debido proceso. La más escandalosa es que durante los 6 meses que Juan Pedro ha estado recluido en El Helicoide en ningún momento, ni en las 48 horas que dice la ley ni después, ha sido trasladado a tribunales para que un juez sea formalmente informado de los delitos que se le imputan. Repetimos: Ningún fiscal ha acusado al joven de haber cometido acto fuera de la ley, por lo que su detención constituye, nada más y nada menos, que un secuestro por parte del Estado. De esta manera el gobierno madurista, con la complicidad de los próceres de los DDHH Tarek William Saab y Alfredo Ruiz, intenta obligar a Omar Lares a entregarse. ¿Cómo se llama un gobierno que actúa de esta manera?
El relato sobre el caso Juan Pedro Lares enmudece a los, cada vez menos, altavoces internacionales del chavismo. Si el gobierno de Macri o de Piñera, por decir dos nombres, violara el debido proceso de una sola persona encarcelada por razones políticas, tendríamos a la progresía regional haciendo movilizaciones y campañas por redes sociales. Pero el caso Lares no es el único. Debemos continuar, mientras tengamos voz, relatando sus historias para continuar dibujando el rostro de la ignominia. @fanzinero (Publicado en Tal Cual)
Alt-country player Al Perry’s song and video, “Jukebox Jihad,” has evidently fallen victim to the PC police — outraged by, what else?, “islamophobia” — and has been taken down by Youtube. (We put “censored” in quotes in the headline, because it’s within Youtube’s rights to only host what they want; but the political intent, the desire to restrict political speech, is obvious.)
Here’s the takedown notice:
If you haven’t heard the song, “Jukebox Jihad” is a rockabilly tune, light, funny mockery (admittedly in questionable taste) of the murderous religious fanatics who have slaughtered and enslaved tens, probably hundreds, of thousands of people, most of whom were/are their fellow Muslims.
We loathe attacks on free speech. We loathe anything smacking of censorship. And we loathe those who think they know what others should be allowed to see and hear.
So, we’ve just put up the “Jukebox Jihad” video on the See Sharp Press web site. I spoke with Al earlier this evening, and he encourages others to download “Jukebox Jihad” and put it up on their own sites.
Without further ado, here’s the link to “Jukebox Jihad.”
Over the last week, we’ve seen several violent clashes between Nazis and counterprotesters. (Nazis might call themselves “alt-right,” “white separatists,” etc. Rather than give any credence to such rebranding, we’re calling them what they are: Nazis.)
It’s necessary to resist these losers, these tools of the powers that be. Violent defense of self and others is perfectly justified to repel physical attack.
But physically attacking people who are merely exercising free speech, no matter how loathsome, is never justified.
Last night, I saw a video of antifa protesters physically attacking Nazi organizer Richard Spencer, who was standing before microphones answering reporters’ questions. I was horrified on several counts:
Another antifa protestor provided exactly the justification you’d expect for the assault on free speech, labeling it “violent speech,” saying that it was too “dangerous” to be allowed. (Speech is speech. Violence — physical attack on people or animals — is violence. These two wildly different things are not the same, and mere conflation of the two is not a convincing argument that they are.)
This is a broken record, the same rationale cited by every thug and bully since time immemorial who wants to deny others the right to free speech.
To bolster their position, one half expects antifas to begin citing the ancient half-witticism by authoritarian jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. concerning “yelling fire in a crowded theater.” (Again, political speech is political speech; yelling fire isn’t — short of transubstantiation, it’s impossible to make the two identical.)
Beyond that, there’s the simple matter of optics.
As others have pointed out, such assaults give the moral high ground to the Nazis — the only moral high ground they can claim. Those who attacked Spencer achieved the near impossible: making a Nazi appear sympathetic.
In a related matter, I saw an interview with an antifa protestor blithely talking about deliberate property destruction during demonstrations. Yes, yes, yes, property is just property, vandalism and sabotage are not violence because they’re directed against things, not people or animals. Agreed.
But again, don’t they understand the optics?
When people see protesters smashing in the windows of, for instance, a Starbucks, it’s a fair bet that a good majority of them won’t say to themselves, “Another inspiring blow against global capitalism!” It seems more likely that they’ll say, “Why the tantrum? Why don’t they just grow up?”
An important matter here that no one seems to be talking about is that such property destruction is not a sign of strength; not a sign of good planning; not a sign of the organization necessary to the free, egalitarian reorganization of society.
Rather, wanton property destruction is a sign of weakness.
Real revolutionary change involves taking over existing structures (including physical structures) and transforming them, not wantonly trashing them — which is a sign that you’re letting off steam because you have no idea of how to get from here to there, no idea of how to get from this authoritarian, racist, sexist, exploitative society to the the society that you say you want.
Again — and it shouldn’t be necessary to say this — defending yourself and others from violent assault from fascists is completely justified.
But don’t confuse that with suppressing free speech.
Please realize that the ends do not justify the means. Means determine ends.
(We ran an earlier, considerably shorter version of this post in September 2013. As you might have noticed, things have changed a bit since then.)
* * *
REFERENCES TO FASCISM abound in American political discourse. Unfortunately, most of those using the term wouldn’t recognize fascism if it bit ’em on the butt, and use it as a catch-all pejorative for anything or anyone they dislike. But the term does have a specific meaning.
Very briefly, as exemplified in Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy, fascism is an extreme right political-economic system (which Mussolini dubbed “the corporate state”), the key features of which are strident nationalism, militarism and military worship, a one-party state, a dictatorial leader with a personality cult, a capitalist economic system integrated with state institutions (to the mutual benefit of capitalists and fascist politicians), suppression of independent unions, suppression of civil liberties and all forms of political opposition, and an aggressive, expansionist foreign policy.
The racism, racial scapegoating, and racial persecution that permeated German fascism are not part of fascism per se, unless one wants to classify extreme nationalism as racism. There’s a case to be made for that, but for now let’s consider them as separate maladies. As well, since the topic of this post is the comparison of Nazi Germany to the U.S.A., we will consider racism as well as fascism in the comparisons.
Getting to the headline topic, just how similar is the present-day U.S. to Nazi Germany? Let’s look at specifics:
Nationalism
Corporate Capitalist Domination
Militarism
Military Worship
Military Aggression
Incarceration Rates
Justice System
Suppression of Unions
Free Speech
Other Civil Liberties
Government Spying
Free Elections
Racism
Personality Cult
Yes, there are very significant differences between Nazi Germany and the U.S. But they seem to grow smaller with every passing day.
(With the 72nd anniversary of the Hiroshima atrocity fast approaching, and with U.S. military spending at an all time high — nearly half of world military spending — please consider what Keith McHenry has to say about how America treats its poorest and most helpless citizens, and about a fitting way to commemorate the Hiroshima civilian massacre.)
San Jose bans free meals in St. James Park. We’ll protest by providing a free vegan meal on Hiroshima Day, August 6
by Keith McHenry, co-founder of Food Not Bombs
Please consider helping us distribute free food without a permit — a possible misdemeanor — at St. James Park in San Jose at 2:00 PM on August 6, the 72nd anniversary of America’s nuclear bombing of Hiroshima.
Food Not Bombs has been sharing free vegan meals at the park for more than 15 years, and is just one of many groups that have been sharing meals there with the hungry.
“We believe that it’s a church’s right to be able to feed the poor,” said Pastor Scott Wagers of CHAM Ministries, which has been sharing meals with the hungry in St James Park for 20 years. “That’s an extension of our religious freedom, and the bottom line is we’ll fight for this.”
Matt Cano, assistant parks and recreation director, in an attempt to justify the ban, told the San Jose Mercury News that “Everybody is really focused on making sure that the daily experience of everybody using the park, whether it’s a resident who lives near there or someone doing business near there, is a great experience. We are trying to reactivate the park, with things like yoga, movies at night, running clubs. We all need great open spaces.”
Councilman Raul Peralez wrote a letter to homeless advocates — again attempting to justify the ban — saying, “Feeding our homeless must be done in a manner that is consistent and combined with the other wrap-around services that our homeless neighbors need to get back on their feet.”
Councilman Peralez is advancing the failed theory that “street feeding” enables the homeless to stay homeless[!] and that they would have access to recovery programs and jobs if they where unable to get meals on the streets and were forced to eat indoors at “established” programs.
Why are they doing this now? Participants in the social networking site Nextdoor generated e-mails to city officials urging them to stop the sharing of meals at St. James Park. This e-mail campaign might not have reflected the true feelings of many in the community and may have been inspired by the police and business interests. [Editors’ Note: Nextdoor is largely populated by the type of busybodies who infest neighborhood associations.]
Fortune magazine reported in July 2014 that “Nextdoor had formed more than 170 partnerships with police departments and agencies, add[ing] new cities at a much faster clip, potentially leading to a new phase of growth for the site.”
“I view Nextdoor as neighborhood watch for the 21st century,” says Lt. Chris Bolton of the Oakland Police Department, who helped pilot his department’s partnership with Nextdoor in April 2014.
So, that’s in part where the impetus for the new law came from.
Over 70 American cities have passed laws banning or limiting the sharing of free food outside in public spaces. So far in the first seven months of this year, authorities arrested Food Not Bombs volunteers in Tampa, told Miami Food Not Bombs volunteers they couldn’t share food, and have introduced a new ordinance against sharing meals outside in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
Police told Food Not Bombs they had to stop sharing meals in Buffalo, New York, Eureka, California, and sent health department officials to interfere with Food Not Bombs in Champaign Urbana, Illinois. The struggle for the right of Food Not Bombs to share meals outside in Houston, Texas is also heating up, and anti-homeless advocates in Santa Cruz, California continue their attempts to close the twice weekly Food Not Bombs meal.
Public outcry against these efforts to stop people from providing free food for with the hungry has inspired the creation of the myth mentioned above about the dangers of “street feeding,” claiming meals shared on the streets “enable the homeless” and discourage them from seeking recovery services. This theory is being adopted by cities all across the United States as justification for laws banning free meals.
Robert Marbut, a consultant hired by cities to address homelessness, is likely the most prominent advocate of this theory, and has been hired as a highly paid consultant by several cities.
NPR’s Rachel Martin interviewed Marbut in 2014 after the City of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida generated headlines about the arrest of 90-year-old Arnold Abbott and Food Not Bombs volunteers for sharing food outside the downtown library. Said Marbut, “[I]f you give food on the street, you end up in a very convoluted way, but still an important way, you end up preventing people from going into 24/7 programming.”
Marbut’s “The Seven Guiding Principles of Homeless Transformation — Moving from Enablement to Engagement” states, in principle 6, “Street feeding programs without comprehensive services actually increase and promote homelessness.”
[Editor’s Note: Yes, it’s not sky-high rents and lack of decent-paying jobs that drive people into homelessness, it’s the yummy free food.]
Marbut’s model program is the 37-acre Haven for Hope campus that opened in the summer of 2010 in his home town of San Antonio, Texas. Local media welcomed the opening: “Comprehensive services like those provided at Haven For Hope are typically only available in state prisons.” The campus has 550 closed-circuit television cameras and a staff of 40 security guards.
The San Antonio Express published an article in 2015 titled “Street feeding causing headaches” It read in part: “When Haven opened in 2010, the city made street feeding of the homeless illegal, unless it’s done by licensed kitchens.” The only high profile enforcement of this law was against a licensed kitchen. Chef Joan Cheever, owner of Chow Train, was cited and threatened with a $2,000 fine for sharing food with the hungry at Maverick Park in April of 2015.
But sending people to Haven For Hope, and the law against sharing food with the hungry on the streets, has failed to force the homeless out of sight. Sixteen years after outlawing “street feeding” in San Antonio, the Rivard Report reported on the Department of Public Works and Haven For Hope’s program of periodic cleanups of homeless camps: “Dozens of homeless camps are hiding in plain sight throughout downtown San Antonio.”
San Antonio is not the only city to witness the failure of programs based on Marbut’s theory. Fort Smith, Arkansas, Placer County and Fresno, California, Daytona Beach, Ft. Lauderdale, Key West, Sarasota, St. Petersburg and Pensacola, Florida are among the cities that tried Marbut’s program only to find hundreds of people still forced to live in the streets.
St Petersburg, Florida hired Marbut, and at his suggestion opened The Pinellas Safe Harbor facility in the old county jail. According to sheriff’s department data collected from 2011 through 2013, just 7% of those leaving the facility found permanent housing, while 3% went to another shelter or to a friend or relative. Most returned to the streets within a month.
The effort to make it more difficult for people to have access to food (“street feeding” — as if they were animals) comes at time when the federal government is drafting legislation that would cut food stamps, Meals on Wheels, and other aid to the poorest Americans, while redirecting those tax dollars to an increase in military spending and tax breaks for corporations and the 1%.
Trump’s 2018 budget asks for $192 billion in cuts to food stamps over the next decade. He intends to cut funding for after-school programs that help provide food to 1.6 million children, and he is asking for changes that would cut millions of dollars from Meals on Wheels.
Over 13% of the American population currently receive SNAP food stamp benefits, including low income families, the elderly, people with disabilities, and those who have recently lost their job. They receive an average of about $4.17 per day or $1.39 per meal. Nearly half of SNAP recipients are children. That’s 20 million kids or 1 in 4 Americans under the age of 18.
The US Congress just passed a huge increase in military spending exceeding Trump’s proposed “defense” budget request by $18.5 billion. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) would spend $696 billion on the military in fiscal year 2018, beyond President Trump’s requested budget — a budget the White House boosted as a “historic increase in defense spending.” The NDAA received bipartisan support, with 117 House Democrats and all but eight Republicans voting in favor.
There has never been a more important time to support more food and fewer bombs. If you cannot join Food Not Bombs in San Jose on August 6th, please consider organizing a solidarity meal that weekend in your own community. Make a sign or banner supporting San Jose Food Not Bombs and share photos of your action with menu@foodnotbombs.net. Invite local media to report on your solidarity meal.
You can also write San Jose’s mayor Sam Liccardo at mayoremail@sanjoseca.gov and council member Raul Peralez at district3@sanjoseca.gov and tell them to support the right to share meals with the hungry at St James Park.
Food Not Bombs, and the hungry people we serve, would appreciate it.
(For the last few months we’ve been running the best posts from years past, posts that will be new to most of our subscribers. This one is from 2013. We’ll be posting more blasts from the past for the next several months, and will intersperse them with new material.)
* * *
Yesterday I was talking with a friend, one of my band mates, and mentioned that the (Tucson) cops had beaten my neighbor across the street, arrested him, and charged him with assaulting an officer and resisting arrest. (Why, yes, how did you guess? I don’t live in a gated community.)
My friend then mentioned that Tucson cops had beaten one of his coworkers so badly a few weeks ago that the guy ended up with traumatic brain injury and a speech impediment. (And, yes, now that you ask, the coworker is Mexican.)
He lived in an apartment on the south side, and heard his next door neighbor beating his girlfriend. He intervened and got in a fight with the neighbor. At that point, the cops arrived, and the beaten neighbor woman claimed my friend’s coworker had assaulted her and her boyfriend. This enraged my friend’s coworker, he went verbally ballistic, and out came the truncheons. Following the beating the cops gave him, they charged him with assaulting an officer (no cops were injured, of course) and resisting arrest.
Because of the brain injury he sustained, my pal’s beaten coworker is now suing the police and the city. This incident could cost the city (meaning the city’s taxpayers) hundreds of thousands and perhaps over a million bucks.
But this is nothing new. Back in the 1970s, eight Tucson cops beat a political-activist friend of mine and charged him with — ta-da — assaulting an officer, resisting arrest, and aggravated assault. (None of the cops were injured, of course, and the only evidence was the testimony of the cops.) The county attorney brought the case to trial, and all of the cops perjured themselves. Fortunately, the victim had a good attorney who picked apart the cops’ testimony revealing numerous irreconcilable inconsistencies, and he was acquitted. The victim never received any compensation, and none of the cops were ever charged with perjury or conspiracy.
While I lived in San Francisco in the 1980s, a friend of mine who was carrying her one-year-old baby encountered two SF cops beating a guy, who was down on the ground, with truncheons near the entrance to the 24th Street BART station. She yelled at them to stop, and they maced her and the baby. You can guess what they charged her with.
In the same city in 1992, another friend of mine–Keith McHenry, a well known activist, who was under surveillance by the cops–was beaten so badly at a demonstration that he needed reconstructive facial surgery. Again, it’s not hard to guess who got charged–my friend or the cop who smashed in his face–and with what.
How do cops get away with such brutal crap? There are several reasons. The first is that they have all the resources of the state behind them, while their victims are usually poor. The second is that the cops are normally buddy-buddy with prosecutors. The third is that witnesses are often afraid of the cops and reluctant to come forward. (Here in Tucson, some witnesses and victims are undocumented immigrants, who for good reason rarely come forward.) The fourth reason is related to the third–that the only witnesses to beating incidents who testify are very often only the cops themselves. A fifth reason is that police routinely perjure themselves. (Nobody has less respect for the law than cops. Even “good cops” routinely perjure themselves to protect their brutal colleagues, because of peer pressure.) And a sixth reason is that juries tend to skew toward older white people — in other words, people who are likely to believe cops and are not likely to be sympathetic to black, brown, or poor white beating victims — and the state’s attorneys always do their best to get such juries. As a defense attorney once told a friend, prosecutors always try to get “Mormons and morons” seated on juries in police beating cases–people gullible enough to believe the testimony of cops.
Because of all this, it’s very difficult for victims to win police brutality cases. A few years ago an attorney who sometimes handles such cases showed me a large blow-up photo he had used in court. It showed the swollen, battered face of one of his clients. The police had beaten him with a long (D-cell) metal flashlight so badly that they caved in one of the victim’s eye sockets and then charged him with (Do I even need to mention this?) assaulting an officer and resisting arrest. The victim lost the brutality case.
I’ve seen proposals recently that cops wear helmet cameras to record everything they do. This is being sold as a crime-fighting move. It’s a good idea, but I doubt that it will have any effect on crime other than reducing crime committed by the cops themselves. And then only if there’s no way for the cops to turn the cameras off. But even if supposedly constant-recording helmet cams become standard, how much do you want to bet that they won’t many, many times “malfunction” in assaulting-an-officer / resisting-arrest cases?
(For the last couple of months we’ve been running the best posts from years past, posts that will be new to most of our subscribers. We’re just starting to run blasts from the past from 2014 — this is the first — and will be posting them for the next few months; we’ll intersperse them with new material.)
Anarchism: What It Is and What It Isn’t
(from the new [2015] Anarchist Cookbook, by Keith McHenry with Chaz Bufe, Introduction by Chris Hedges)
by Chaz Bufe
There are many popular misconceptions about anarchism, and because of them a great many people dismiss anarchists and anarchism out of hand.
Misconceptions abound in the mass media, where the term “anarchy” is commonly used as a synonym for “chaos,” and where terrorists, no matter what their political beliefs or affiliations, are often referred to as “anarchists.” As well, when anarchism is mentioned, it’s invariably presented as merely a particularly mindless form of youthful rebellion. These misconceptions are, of course, also widespread in the general public, which by and large allows the mass media to do what passes for its thinking.
Worse, some who call themselves “anarchists” don’t even know the meaning of the term. These people fall, in general, into two classes. The first, as the great Italian anarchist Luigi Fabbri pointed out nearly a century ago in Influencias burguesas sobre el anarquismo, consists of those who are attracted to the lies in the mass media. By and large, these people are simply looking for a glamorous label for selfish, antisocial behavior. The good news is that most of them eventually mature and abandon what they consider “anarchism.” The bad news is that while they’re around they tend to give anarchism a very bad name. As Fabbri put it:
[These are] persons who are not repelled by the absurd, but who, on the contrary, engage in it. They are attracted to projects and ideas precisely because they are absurd; and so anarchism comes to be known precisely for the illogical character and ridiculousness which ignorance and bourgeois calumny have attributed to anarchist doctrines.1
The second class consists of those who equate anarchism with some pet ideology having essentially nothing to do with anarchism. In modern times, the most prominent of these mislabeled beliefs have been primitivism and amoral egoism. Again, the identification of such beliefs with anarchism tends to give anarchism a bad name, because of, on the one hand, the absurdity of primitivism and, on the other, the obvious antisocial nature of amoral egotism. To put this another way, the identification of anarchism with chaos, mindless rebellion, absurdities (such as primitivism), and antisocial attitudes and behaviors (such as amoral egoism) has three primary undesirable effects: 1) it allows people to easily dismiss anarchism and anarchists; 2) it makes it much more difficult to explain anarchism to them, because they already think that they know what it is and have rejected it; and 3) it attracts a fair number of what Fabbri calls “empty headed and frivolous types,” and occasionally outright sociopaths, whose words and actions tend to further discredit anarchism.
So, if we’re ever to get anywhere, we need to make plain what anarchism is and what it isn’t. First, let’s deal with the misconceptions.
What Anarchism Isn’t
Anarchism is not terrorism. An overwhelming majority of anarchists have always rejected terrorism, because they’ve been intelligent enough to realize that means determine ends, that terrorism is inherently vanguardist, and that even when “successful” it almost always leads to bad results. The anonymous authors of You Can’t Blow Up a Social Relationship: The Anarchist Case Against Terrorism put it like this:
You can’t blow up a social relationship. The total collapse of this society would provide no guarantee about what replaced it. Unless a majority of people had the ideas and organization sufficient for the creation of an alternative society, we would see the old world reassert itself because it is what people would be used to, what they believed in, what existed unchallenged in their own personalities.
Proponents of terrorism and guerrillaism are to be opposed because their actions are vanguardist and authoritarian, because their ideas, to the extent that they are substantial, are wrong or unrelated to the results of their actions (especially when they call themselves libertarians or anarchists), because their killing cannot be justified, and finally because their actions produce either repression with nothing in return, or an authoritarian regime.2
Decades of government and corporate slander cannot alter this reality: the overwhelming majority of anarchists reject terrorism for both practical and ethical reasons. In the late 1990s, Time magazine called Ted Kaczynski “the king of the anarchists”; but that doesn’t make it so. Time‘s words are just another typical, perhaps deliberately dishonest, attempt to tar all anarchists with the terrorist brush.
This is not to say that armed resistance is never appropriate. Clearly there are situations in which one has little choice, as when facing a dictatorship that suppresses civil liberties and prevents one from acting openly, which has happened repeatedly in many countries. Even then, armed resistance should be undertaken reluctantly and as a last resort, because violence is inherently undesirable due to the suffering it causes; because it provides repressive regimes excuses for further repression; because it provides them with the opportunity to commit atrocities against civilians and to blame those atrocities on their “terrorist” opponents; and because, as history has shown, the chances of success are very low.
Even though armed resistance may sometimes be called for in repressive situations, it’s a far different matter to succumb to the romance of the gun and to engage in urban guerrilla warfare in relatively open societies in which civil liberties are largely intact and in which one does not have mass popular support at the start of one’s violent campaign. Violence in such situations does little but drive the public into the “protective” arms of the government; narrow political dialogue (tending to polarize the populace into pro- and anti-guerrilla factions); turn politics into a spectator sport for the vast majority of people3; provide the government with the excuse to suppress civil liberties; and induce the onset of repressive regimes “better” able to handle the “terrorist” problem than their more tolerant predecessors. It’s also worth mentioning that the chances of success of such violent, vanguardist campaigns are microscopic. They are simply arrogant, ill-thought-out roads to disaster.4
Anarchism is not primitivism. In recent decades, groups of quasi-religious mystics have begun equating the primitivism they advocate (rejection of science, rationality, and technology—often lumped together under the blanket term, “technology”) with anarchism.5 In reality, the two have nothing to do with each other, as we’ll see when we consider what anarchism actually is—a set of philosophical/ethical precepts and organizational principles designed to maximize human freedom. For now, suffice it to say that the elimination of technology advocated by primitivist groups would inevitably entail the deaths of literally billions of human beings in a world utterly dependent upon interlocking technologies for everything from food production/delivery to communications to medical treatment. This fervently desired outcome, the elimination of technology, could only come about through means which are the absolute antithesis of anarchism: the use of coercion and violence on a mass scale, as it’s inconceivable that a majority of human beings would voluntarily give up such things as running water, sewer systems, modern medicine, electric lights, and warm houses in the winter.6
Anarchism is not chaos; Anarchism is not rejection of organization. This is another popular misconception, repeated ad nauseam by the mass media and by anarchism’s political foes. Even a brief look at the works of anarchism’s leading theoreticians and writers confirms that this belief is in error. Over and over in the writings of Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Rocker, Ward, Bookchin, et al., one finds not a rejection of organization, but rather a preoccupation with it—a preoccupation with how society should be organized in accord with the anarchist principles of individual freedom and social justice. For a century and a half now, anarchists have been arguing that coercive, hierarchical organization (as embodied in government and corporations) is not equivalent to organization per se (which they regard as necessary), and that coercive organization should be replaced by decentralized, nonhierarchical organization based on voluntary cooperation and mutual aid. This is hardly a rejection of organization.
Anarchism is not amoral egoism. As does any avant garde social movement, anarchism attracts more than its share of flakes, parasites, and outright sociopaths, persons simply looking for a glamorous label to cover their often-pathological selfishness, their disregard for the rights and dignity of others, and their pathetic desire to be the center of attention. These individuals tend to give anarchism a bad name, because even though they have very little in common with actual anarchists—that is, persons concerned with ethical behavior, social justice, and the rights of both themselves and others—they’re often quite exhibitionistic, and their disreputable actions sometimes come into the public eye. To make matters worse, these exhibitionists sometimes publish their self-glorifying views and deliberately misidentify those views as “anarchist.” To cite an example, the publisher of a pretentiously (sub)titled American “anarchist” journal recently published a book by a fellow egoist consisting primarily of ad hominem attacks on actual anarchists, knowing full well that the “anarchist” author of the book is a notorious police narcotics informant who has on a number of occasions ratted out those he’s had disputes with to government agencies. This police informer’s actions—which, revealingly, he’s attempted to hide—are completely in line with his ideology of amoral egoism (“post-left anarchism”), but they have nothing to do with actual anarchism. Such amoral egoists may (mis)use the label, but they’re no more anarchists than the now-defunct German Democratic Republic (East Germany) was democratic or a republic.
The full absurdity of identifying amoral egoism—essentially “I’ll do what I damn well please and fuck everybody else”—with anarchism will become apparent in short order when we’ll consider what anarchism actually is.
Anarchism is not “Libertarianism.” Until relatively recently, the very useful term “libertarian” was used worldwide as a synonym for “anarchist.” Indeed, it was used exclusively in this sense until the 1970s when, in the United States, it was appropriated by the grossly misnamed Libertarian Party.
This party has almost nothing to do with anarchist concepts of liberty, especially the concepts of equal freedom and positive freedom—that is, access to the resources necessary to the freedom to act. (Equal freedom and positive freedom are discussed in the following section of this essay.) Instead, this “Libertarian” party concerns itself exclusively with the negative freedoms, pretending that liberty exists only in the negative sense, while it simultaneously revels in the denial of equal positive freedom to the vast majority of the world’s people.
These “Libertarians” not only glorify capitalism, the mechanism that denies both equal freedom and positive freedom to the vast majority, but they also wish to retain the coercive apparatus of the state while eliminating its social welfare functions—hence widening the rift between rich and poor, and increasing the freedom of the rich by diminishing that of the poor (while keeping the boot of the state firmly on their necks). Thus, in the United States, the once exceedingly useful term “libertarian” has been hijacked by egotists who are in fact enemies of liberty in the full sense of the word, and who have very little in common with anarchists.
This is what anarchism isn’t.
What Anarchism Is
In its narrowest sense, anarchism is simply the rejection of the state, the rejection of coercive government. Under this extremely narrow definition, even such apparent absurdities as “anarcho-capitalism” and religious anarchism are possible.7
But most anarchists use the term “anarchism” in a much broader sense, defining it as the rejection of coercion and domination in all forms. So, most anarchists reject not only coercive government, but also religion and capitalism, which they see as other forms of the twin evils, domination and coercion. They reject religion because they see it as the ultimate form of domination, in which a supposedly all-powerful god hands down “thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots” to its “flock.” They likewise reject capitalism because it’s designed to produce rich and poor and because it’s designed to produce a system of domination in which some give orders and others have little choice but to take them. For similar reasons, on a personal level almost all anarchists reject sexism, racism, and homophobia—all of which produce artificial inequality, and thus domination.
To put this another way, anarchists believe in freedom in both its negative and positive senses. In this country, freedom is routinely presented only in its negative sense, that of being free from restraint. Hence most people equate freedom only with such things as freedom of speech, freedom of association, and freedom of (or from) religion. But there’s also a positive aspect of freedom, an aspect which anarchists almost alone insist on.8
That positive aspect is what Emma Goldman called “the freedom to.” And that freedom, the freedom of action, the freedom to enjoy or use, is highly dependent upon access to the world’s resources. Because of this the rich are in a very real sense free to a much greater degree than the rest of us. To cite an example in the area of free speech, Bill Gates could easily buy dozens of daily newspapers or television stations to propagate his views and influence public opinion. How many working people could do the same? How many working people could afford to buy a single daily newspaper or a single television station? The answer is obvious. Working people cannot do such things; instead, we’re reduced to producing ‘zines with a readership of a few hundred persons or putting up pages on the Internet in our relatively few hours of free time.
Examples of the greater freedom of the rich abound in daily life. To put this in general terms, because they do not have to work, the rich not only have far more money (that is, access to resources) but also far more time to pursue their interests, pleasures, and desires than do the rest of us. To cite a concrete example, the rich are free to send their children to the best colleges employing the best instructors, which the rest of us simply can’t afford to do; if we can afford college at all, we make do with community and state colleges employing slave-labor “adjunct faculty” and overworked, underpaid graduate students. Once in college, the children of the rich are entirely free to pursue their studies, while most other students must work at least part time to support themselves, which deprives them of many hours which could be devoted to study. If you think about it, you can easily find additional examples of the greater freedom of the rich in the areas of medical care, housing, nutrition, travel, etc., etc.—in fact, in virtually every area of life.
This greater freedom of action for the rich comes at the expense of everyone else, through the diminishment of everyone else’s freedom of action. There is no way around this, given that freedom of action is to a great extent determined by access to finite resources. Anatole France well illustrated the differences between the restrictions placed upon the rich and the poor when he wrote, “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”
Because the primary goal of anarchism is the greatest possible amount of freedom for all, anarchists insist on equal freedom in both its negative and positive aspects—that, in the negative sense, individuals be free to do whatever they wish as long as they do not harm or directly intrude upon others; and, in the positive sense, that all individuals have equal freedom to act, that they have equal access to the world’s resources.
Anarchists recognize that absolute freedom is an impossibility, that amoral egoism ignoring the rights of others would quickly devolve into a war of all against all. What we argue for is that everyone have equal freedom from restraint (limited only by respect for the rights of others) and that everyone have as nearly as possible equal access to resources, thus ensuring equal (or near-equal) freedom to act.
This is anarchism in its theoretical sense.
In Spain, Cuba, and a few other countries there have been serious attempts to make this theory reality through the movement known as anarcho-syndicalism. The primary purpose of anarcho-syndicalism is the replacement of coercive government by voluntary cooperation in the form of worker-controlled unions coordinating the entire economy. This would not only eliminate the primary restraint on the negative freedoms (government), but would also be a huge step toward achieving positive freedom. The nearest this vision came to fruition was in the Spanish Revolution, 1936–1939, when huge areas of Spain, including its most heavily industrialized region, came under the control of the anarcho-syndicalist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo. George Orwell describes this achievement in Homage to Catalonia:
The anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the revolution was in full swing. . . . the aspect of Barcelona was something startling and overwhelming. It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags or with the red and black flag of the anarchists; . . . Every shop and café had an inscription saying it had been collectivized; even the bootblacks had been collectivized and their boxes painted red and black. Waiters and shop-workers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. . . . The revolutionary posters were everywhere, flaming from the walls in clean reds and blues that made the few remaining advertisements look like daubs of mud. . . . All this was queer and moving. There was much in it that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for.
This is anarchism. And Orwell was right—it is worth fighting for.9
1. Bourgeois Influences on Anarchism, by Luigi Fabbri. Tucson, AZ: See Sharp Press, 2001, p. 16.
2. You Can’t Blow Up a Social Relationship. Tucson, AZ: See Sharp Press, 1998, p. 20.
3. It may be that now due to apathy, but in violent/repressive situations other options are cut off for almost everyone not directly involved in armed resistance.
4. For further discussion of this matter, see You Can’t Blow Up a Social Relationship: The Anarchist Case Against Terrorism and Bourgeois Influences on Anarchism.
5. Ted Kaczynski is in some ways quite typical of this breed of romantic. He differs from most of them in that he acted on his beliefs (albeit in a cowardly, violent manner) and that he actually lived a relatively primitive existence in the backwoods of Montana—unlike most of his co-religionists, who live comfortably in urban areas and employ the technologies they profess to loathe.
6. For further discussion of this topic, see Anarchism vs. Primitivism, by Brian Oliver Sheppard. Tucson, AZ: See Sharp Press, 2003. See also the “Primitive Thought” appendix to Listen Anarchist!, by Chaz Bufe. Tucson, AZ: See Sharp Press, 1998.
7. Indeed, there have been a fairly large number of admirable religious anarchists, individuals such as Leo Tolstoy and Dorothy Day (and the members of her Catholic Worker groups, such as Ammon Hennacy), though to most anarchists the advocacy of freedom on Earth while bowing to a heavenly tyrant (no matter how imaginary) seems an insupportable contradiction.
To the best of my knowledge there have been no such shining examples of anarcho-capitalists other than Karl Hess.
8. To be fair, marxists also tend to emphasize positive freedom, but for the most part they’re also curiously insensitive, and often downright hostile, to “negative” freedom—the freedom from restraint (especially when they have the guns and goons to do the restraining).
9. Of course, this discussion of anarchism is necessarily schematic, given that this pamphlet is intended as an introductory 10-minute read. For elaboration upon these themes, see Anarchism and Anarcho-syndicalism, by Rudolf Rocker; What Is Communist Anarchism?, by Alexander Berkman (republished by AK Press as What Is Anarchism?); Fields, Factories and Workshops Tomorrow, by Peter Kropotkin; and Anarchy in Action, by Colin Ward.
It’s official. Donald Trump is now, undeniably, in bed with radical Islamists: the Saudi government. That government is essentially ISIS with oil. (Not incidentally, rich Saudis, including members of the Saudi royal family, provided essential funding to ISIS during its initial years.)
Following his love fest with Turkish president and Islamo-fascist thug Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Donald Trump just approved one of the biggest arms deals in history with the Saudi Islamo-fascists. He just approved a $110 billion arms deal with the Saudi regime.
So, what will the arms be used for, what purposes? Exactly what kind of policies does our “ally”pursue?
Under Saudi Sharia law, Human Rights Watch reports that “adult women must obtain permission from a male guardian—usually a husband, father, brother, or son—to travel, marry, or exit prison.” Under the Saudi regime, women couldn’t even drive until very recently.
Of course, given the regime’s radical Islamist (Wahabi) orientation, there is no freedom of speech in Saudi Arabia; mere criticism of the theo-fascist regime can, and does, land people in prison for more than a decade.
Nor is there freedom of conscience in Saudi Arabia. Merely being an atheist is grounds for execution, though the more usual punishments are imprisonment and/or torture (flogging) that can result in permanent physical damage.
And, yes, Saudi Arabia judicially murders a large number of people; it has one of the highest execution rates in the world.
Saudi crimes extend beyond Saudi Arabia’s borders. In addition to helping to finance ISIS and providing 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers, the Saudis currently commit war crimes in Yemen, including bombing funerals, hospitals, and other civilian targets, and “double tap” bombing, in which the Saudis bomb the same target shortly after first hitting it, in order to kill and maim rescue workers.
These are the Islamist monsters Trump just armed to the teeth.
Actions speak louder than words, and despite Trump’s anti-Islamist rhetoric, his actions betray him. He’ll stir up hatred against powerless refugees, but he kisses the cheeks (both kinds) of oil-rich Islamists.
If you oppose radical Islam, you oppose it. And you support those who Islamists oppress. You don’t sell $110 billion in arms to one of the worst Islamist human rights violators on earth.
Donald Trump is an utter hypocrite.
(Of course, all recent U.S. presidents and their administrations have been equally hypocritical. Here’s a rogues gallery of some of the guilty.)
Barack Obama, who sold the Saudis $60 billion worth of arms.
George W. Bush, who allowed approximately 50 members of the Bin Laden family to leave the U.S. immediately after 9/11, without allowing the FBI to question them.
Bill Clinton, whose foundation received more than $10 million of Saudi money.
There seem to be two explanations for Donald Trump’s attacks on the courts, media, and objective reality: 1) He’s a whining, self-pitying baby who simply can’t stand it when he doesn’t immediately get his own way; 2) He wants to pull a full-Stalin by undermining the institutions that stand in his way — the judiciary and free press — and by creating a false reality in which his followers simply accept his bald-faced lies and self-contradictory statements while ignoring abundant and immediately presented contradictory evidence.
These two explanations are not mutually exclusive; both are probably correct.
So, what do we have to look forward to from Trump and his Republican enablers?
by Chaz Bufe, publisher See Sharp Press
It’s time to speak ill of the dead. It’s been time for nearly a century. Since 1918, the left in both the U.S. and Europe has had a dictator-worship problem. First it was Lenin; then it was (yes) Stalin; then Mao; most recently the dictator of choice has been Fidel Castro.
To illustrate the depth and nature of this problem, let me recount an incident from Cuba in the 1960s. In the 1970s, a maoist friend told me about his experiences there as part of a Venceremos Brigade a decade earlier. (Venceremos Brigades were bands of American leftists who traveled to Cuba to work in the cane fields in support of “the revolution.”) At one point, Fidel himself showed up where they were working in the fields. My friend told me that the reaction of his fellow brigadistas was like that of 14-year-olds at a Beatles concert.
Since then, the American left in large part has continued to idolize Castro and his Stalin-admirer cohort, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, overlooking their crimes. We’ll get to those crimes shortly, but let’s first speak of Castro’s, and his “revolution’s,” achievements. During his half-century reign, Fidel Castro and the Cuban Communist Party achieved the following:
Doesn’t sound too bad, does it? Well, consider this:
Since Castro’s death last week, the American left has, by and large, continued to sing Fidel Castro’s praises. To cite but one example, a few days ago Amy Goodman, on her generally excellent “Democracy Now” broadcast, devoted a full hour (bar the first few minutes devoted to news) to Castro. There were a few seconds (considerably under a minute) near the start devoted to generalized mention of the repressive nature of the regime, but there was no mention whatsoever in the rest of the hour of any of the crimes listed above. It was largely a love letter to Castro.
One might mention that many antiauthoritarian Latin American leftists and anarchists deeply resent the largely uncritical support given Castro (and until his death Hugo Chávez in Venezuela) by the American left. They see it as a betrayal of principles — and themselves — and consider it utterly hypocritical, especially when coming from those who loudly proclaim their allegiance to human freedom, human rights — in the United States, but not Cuba (or Venezuela). They believe that the typical leftist refrain, “Well, we wouldn’t want that repressive system here, but the Cuban people are better off for it,” is grossly patronizing to those who are the victims of repression and those who struggle against it.
They have a point. If you believe in human freedom, in civil liberties, you believe in them everywhere, and you support all those struggling against repression. You’re either for freedom of speech or against it. You don’t make excuses for repressive regimes because you know “what’s best” for the people in those countries, because you know better than the Cubans (or Venezuelans) struggling against repression. If you make excuses for authoritarian regimes, if you don’t stand against repression everywhere, please don’t pretend that you have principles, please don’t pretend that you’re anything but a political apologist, a political hack.
If you think a one-party state, suppression of civil liberties, government control of the media, suppression of independent unions, replacement of capitalist bosses by “Communist” bosses, secret police, prisons, executions, a network of neighborhood informers, militarism, and a personality cult are a good tradeoff for the Cuban people in exchange for free health care, free higher education, and a guaranteed low-paying job, by all means support the Cuban dictatorship, and continue to sing Fidel Castro’s praises.
Sharp and Pointed 