Dirty Break or Destruction: The Peculiar Politics of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)

By Youhanna Haddad

Perhaps the critics were right.

The Democratic Socialists of America is the largest socialist organization in the United States. Founded in 1982 by a cadre of social democrats, the group has since swelled to roughly 100,000 official members. Virtually all of that growth occurred after Senator Bernie Sanders launched his first presidential run, which mainstreamed socialism in America. What was once a marginal bunch now regularly makes headlines and even has members in Congress.

Yet the Democratic Socialists of America is hardly uncontroversial on the American Left. A longstanding critique is that it’s too reformist and cozy with a Democratic Party it should be trying to destroy. Rather than mobilizing to build independent institutions, leftist critics believe the organization siphons socialist energy into the duopoly’s lesser evil. That is arguably counterrevolutionary as it may further lock us into a capitalist political system which only serves the elite.

Naturally, members forcefully resist this characterization of their organization. But recent events seem to have vindicated the critics in many ways. On August 6th, the Democratic Socialists of America’s official Twitter account posted the following:

“[Vice President Kamala] Harris choosing [Minnesota governor Tim] Walz as a running mate has shown the world that DSA and our allies on the left are a force that cannot be ignored. Through collective action… DSA members… organized… to support Palestinian liberation… and… pressured the Democratic establishment into… backing down from a potential VP with direct ties to the IDF and who would have ferociously supported the ongoing genocide in Palestine.”

The DSA seemingly believes Walz is a solid choice and that Democrats caved to leftist activists in choosing him. A closer look at Walz, however, reveals that he is no progressive. He is, at best, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Although much of his worse escapades have been so brazen that Walz is really a wolf in wolf’s clothing.

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For example, he regularly speaks before the Minnesota Israel lobby. The Jewish Community Relations Council has applauded the governor’s “pro-Israel record.” Days after October 7th, Walz addressed the Council “in solidarity with Israel against the terrorism of Hamas.” In the speech, Walz made it clear that he stands “firmly with the state of Israel and the righteousness of the cause.” That cause, recall, is apartheid and ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinians.

But that’s not all. When Palestinian constituents who lost family members in the Gaza genocide wanted to meet with Walz, he refused. The Minnesota governor originally agreed to the meeting under the belief that these Palestinians would merely share their stories. When they informed Walz of their intention to discuss divestment and other material policy, he ordered his staff to cancel.

At a conference of the extremist Zionist American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Walz called Israel “our truest and closest ally.” He touted the apartheid state’s supposed “commitment to values of personal freedoms and liberties.” As a federal congressman, Walz voted to condemn a United Nations resolution declaring Israel’s West Bank settlements illegal. This placed Walz to the right of longstanding State Department policy, overturned by Donald Trump, that considered the incursions illegitimate.

It’s clear where Walz’s sympathies lie — with the Zionists and against the innocent men, women, and children they’re slaughtering. So it appears the Democratic Socialists of America were wrong. The Democrats didn’t respond to their calls for a free Palestine. Instead, they installed another stooge who will gleefully abet the ongoing holocaust in Gaza.

Democrats aren’t listening to socialist organizers. Pretending they are sells false hope, and enables liberal politicians to take leftist votes and run. Throughout their careers, Harris and Walz have made it abundantly clear where they stand.

Neither has any real commitment to working people at home or abroad. Their lack of such commitment is precisely what allows them to thrive in the fundamentally irredeemable Democratic Party. Despite the DSA’s official line, many members understand this. Within the organization exists a robust movement for a “dirty break” from the Democrats. One member described the strategy as follows

In the short term, the DSA should keep “run[ning] candidates on the Democratic… ballot line.” But the crux of the dirty break is that, concurrently, the DSA should begin building an independent working-class party. Upon assembling a sufficient infrastructure and voter base, the DSA should abandon the Democrats and run candidates under its banner.

One thing the DSA could do to facilitate a dirty break is further broaden its big tent. Currently, the DSA’s constitution essentially bans members of “democratic-centralist organizations” from joining. This excludes many Leninists, who are some of the biggest advocates for an independent working-class party. And while there are numerous Marxist-Leninist organizations that already exist as an alternative to groups like the DSA — with the most recent iteration coming from academic Carlos Garrido, who is involved in building such a party — it would make sense for the DSA to welcome the inclusion of this radical energy, rather than continuing to buffer it. As DSA members have yet to make much progress toward a dirty break, they could use such vigor. 

While not all DSA members support a dirty break, the vision is there. That alone may help many DSAers avoid the Democratic ruse of courting progressives for their votes before summarily abandoning them. Historically, stumbling into this trap seems to be the DSA’s modus operandi. But it won’t lead anywhere good.

The organization should instead empower its dirty breakers and channel the energy the DSA undeniably possesses into independent institutions which challenge — not serve — imperialist hegemony. And if the DSA doesn’t do that, other groups should emerge to supplant it.

Youhanna Haddad is a North American Marxist of the Arab diaspora. Through his writing, he seeks to combat the Western liberal dogmas that uphold racial capitalism. You can contact him at youhannahaddad@gmail.com.

Groveling at the Feet of Greed: How U.S. Politicians Sacrifice Lives for Profit and Power

By Peter S. Baron

U.S. foreign policy has consistently exposed the cowardly and self-serving opportunism of our political leaders, who are driven by the interests of their corporate elite overlords. From the earliest days of the Republic, American interventions abroad have prioritized the elite class’s accumulation and consolidation of profit and power over human rights and international stability. Politicians, ever ready to serve corporate interests, have implemented policies designed to expand market access, control vital resources, and maintain global dominance, all while cloaking their actions in the rhetoric of democracy and security.

American politicians, as executors of this foreign policy, perpetuate wars, coups, and economic sanctions, ensuring a steady stream of blood money to their elite patrons. They manipulate public sentiment and suppress dissent to create a facade of national interest that conceals the true beneficiaries of these policies. The cumulative devastation from the African Slave Trade to the genocide in Gaza exposes the moral bankruptcy of a foreign policy rooted in murder and torture for profit and power. This grotesque complicity demands a radical rethinking of America's role in the world, prioritizing human dignity over corporate greed.

A History of Exploitation: From Slavery to Modern Conflicts

The pattern of exploitation, intrinsic to American capitalism and imperialism, traces back to our earliest days as a new nation. Understanding this continuum helps explain ongoing atrocities in places like Gaza, where marginalized lives remain collateral damage in the pursuit of profit and power.

The African Slave Trade, beginning in the 16th century, was an era of unparalleled brutality that resulted in the deaths of approximately 1.5 to 3 million African people. This brutal chapter in history was propelled by European powers and elite colonists, whose capitalist ambitions demanded a massive labor force to produce surpluses of profitable crops like sugar, cotton, and tobacco. Africans were enslaved and forcibly torn from their homes, families, and cultures, then transported across the Atlantic under the most inhumane conditions imaginable. Packed like cargo in the filthy holds of ships, many died from disease, malnutrition, and abuse. Those who survived the harrowing journey were sold like cattle, treated as mere property, stripped of their humanity, and forced to toil under relentless, brutal conditions.

The dehumanization and commodification of millions of men, women, and children generated immense wealth for European and American economies, laying the very foundation for modern capitalism.

In what is now the contiguous United States, the Indigenous population was decimated from over 5 million before European contact to fewer than 238,000 by the late 19th century, a near-total annihilation that subjected indigenous communities to unimaginable horrors—relentless warfare, violent displacement, and the deliberate introduction of diseases to which they had no immunity. The forced removal and extermination of Indigenous peoples was justified by U.S. expansionist policies under the guise of "Manifest Destiny." Americans were supposedly destined to occupy and control the land across the American continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Driven by a relentless capitalist hunger for land and resources, the U.S. government and settlers aggressively seized vast territories for agriculture, mining, and real estate ventures in a calculated effort to pave the way for capitalist development.

The American Revolutionary War resulted in approximately 25,000 American deaths, around 24,000 British deaths, and about 7,500 Hessian (German) mercenary deaths, totaling approximately 56,500 fatalities. British trade policies were designed to keep the colonies economically dependent on Britain, restricting their ability to trade freely and forcing them to benefit the British economy. These policies included excessive taxation, which disproportionately burdened the lower classes in the colonies, fueling their anger towards both the elite in the UK and their colonial counterparts.

However, as the revolution progressed, the colonial elite seized control of the revolutionary committees and assemblies. This allowed them to hijack the grassroots demands for liberty and self-determination, twisting the revolutionary fervor to serve their own selfish economic interests. The common colonists were thrust into a violent and bloody struggle, duped into believing they were fighting for genuine freedom. However, the revolution ultimately served only to enrich and empower the wealthy American elite, betraying the common people and stripping them of the promised economic and social gains.

Elite leaders such as Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Madison ensured the founding documents would usher in a political structure that safeguarded the interests of property owners and the wealthy. The original Constitution included mechanisms like the Electoral College and the Senate, which diluted the direct influence of the popular vote and ensured that power remained concentrated among the elite.

In essence, the rich leaders of the revolution, like George Washington who was one of the wealthiest men in the colonies, sought to dismantle British control to establish a capitalist economy where private property and free enterprise reigned supreme. Washington, often lauded for his prudence in declining to rule as King, certainly did not forgo the opportunity to live like one. He paid himself a Presidential salary that amounted to 2% of the total budget of the newly established American nation.

The US Civil War, which claimed between 620,000 and 850,000 lives, was fundamentally a battle between the Southern elites' agrarian economy based on slavery and the Northern elites' industrial economy based on wage labor. Southern landowners accumulated wealth through the brutal exploitation of enslaved people on plantations that produced cash crops like cotton and tobacco. The relentless drive for profit under capitalism pushed these enslavers to seek expansion into new American territories, a practice that Abraham Lincoln aimed to halt.

Northern elites, driven by the same capitalist commitment, were invested in expanding industrial capitalism, which relied on wage labor. They saw slavery as an economic hindrance to their vision of a more profitable and adaptable workforce. Wage labor allowed Northern industrialists to exploit workers without the legal and logistical constraints of slavery, offering a more scalable and flexible labor force for factories and industries. Workers could be hired and fired based on demand, paid only when needed, and subjected to poor working conditions without the need for lifelong ownership.

The North's victory dismantled the Southern slave-based economy, ending the agrarian capitalist model and paving the way for industrial capitalism to dominate. This shift facilitated rapid industrial growth and infrastructure development, promoting a capitalist economy based on wage labor. After approximately a decade of Reconstruction efforts, Northern industrial powers strengthened their influence over key economic sectors such as manufacturing, railroads, and finance. Subsequently, they withdrew their support for Reconstruction, allowing the South to effectively reinstitute slavery through the systems of sharecropping and convict leasing.

The Spanish-American War of 1898, which led to approximately 60,000 Spanish deaths and 3,200 American deaths, was driven by the U.S. desire to expand its influence and open new markets for American goods. The war was partly fueled by the sensationalist journalism of the time, which drummed up public support for intervention in Cuba's struggle for independence from Spain. However, underlying this public sentiment were strong economic motivations. The U.S. sought to protect its investments in Cuba and to gain control of other Spanish colonies like Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. The acquisition of these territories allowed the U.S. to expand its reach into new markets, securing strategic locations for military and trade purposes, thereby furthering American capitalists’ economic and strategic interests.

The US-Philippine War, which occurred from 1899 to 1902, caused around 220,000 Filipino deaths. This war was driven by the U.S.'s desire to establish a foothold in Asia, opening up new markets and resources for American businesses under the guise of "civilizing" and democratizing the region. Following the Spanish-American War, the U.S. took control of the Philippines, facing resistance from Filipino nationalists who sought independence. The brutal suppression of the Filipino independence movement demonstrated the lengths to which the U.S. would go to maintain its new colonial possessions.

During World War I, the federal government registered about half a million "enemy alien" civilians, monitored many of them, and sent around 6,000 German Nationals and German-American men and a few women to internment camps. The camps were harsh and inhumane, with poor living conditions, inadequate food, and rampant disease. Internees were subjected to forced labor and constant surveillance, stripped of their freedoms under the guise of protecting the nation. Perhaps, more strikingly, the government seized vast amounts of private property, often with dubious connections to the war effort, amassing assets worth over half a billion dollars—nearly the entire federal budget before the war.

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By seizing the businesses and properties of German Americans, the American elite removed economic competition and consolidated control. Xenophobia was used as a tactic to create an ideological construct where the German American community was scapegoated, symbolizing both external and internal threats. This strategy reinforced national cohesion by projecting fears onto a racialized other, uniting the nation against a common enemy.

Following the Pearl Harbor attack, American elites and their obedient politicians deflected public anger away from their own profit-driven actions that had escalated tensions with Japan. The greedy capitalist elite, desperate to control vital resources like oil and rubber from Southeast Asia, had imposed crippling economic sanctions on Japan. A State Department memorandum a year before Pearl Harbor laid bare their true motives: fear of losing access to lucrative markets and essential materials in Asia. These ruthless measures posed a clear and potent threat to Japan's very existence, intentionally provoking them into war. Instead of holding these capitalist vultures accountable, the government cowardly redirected blame onto Japanese Americans, shielding the true culprits behind this manufactured conflict.

Thus, echoing the strategic motivations behind the internment of German Americans during World War I, the U.S. government initiated the internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. These camps were dehumanizing, with families torn from their homes and businesses, stripped of their rights, and confined in remote, desolate locations. The deplorable conditions lacked adequate shelter, food, and medical care. People lived in overcrowded barracks, surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards, enduring extreme weather and a constant sense of fear and uncertainty.

The Korean War, which raged from 1950 to 1953, was a horrific conflict that resulted in approximately 2.5 million deaths, leaving the Korean peninsula in ruins and its people devastated. This war, driven by the U.S. aim to contain Soviet influence and protect global capitalist interests, reveals that the Cold War was essentially a series of hot wars, with Soviet and American elites fighting proxy battles around the world. After World War II, Korea was divided into two zones, with the North under Soviet influence and the South under American control. The American aim was to establish a capitalist South Korea that could serve as a bulwark against Soviet influence, ensuring a market-friendly environment beneficial to American economic interests. The war saw relentless bombings, mass executions, and widespread atrocities. Entire cities were leveled, and countless civilians were caught in the crossfire, subjected to unimaginable suffering.

In Guatemala in 1954, the U.S.-backed coup of Jacobo Árbenz set the stage for decades of brutal conflict and repression, including the Guatemalan Civil War, that led to the deaths of between 140,000 and 200,000 people. The overthrow of President Jacobo Árbenz was a direct response to his land reform policies that aimed to redistribute land to impoverished peasants, which threatened American corporate interests, particularly those of the United Fruit Company.

The US-backed Indonesian genocide from 1965 to 1966 resulted in the deaths of between 500,000 and 1 million people. The U.S. supported General Suharto's rise to power as part of a broader strategy to eliminate communist influences in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-majority country and a region of significant geopolitical importance. Suharto's regime, with U.S. backing, targeted members of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) and suspected leftists, resulting in mass killings and widespread atrocities. The elimination of communist influences in Indonesia helped to secure a stable and capitalist-friendly regime that ensured a favorable environment for American economic interests and multinational corporations in Southeast Asia.

The Vietnam War, from 1955 to 1975, resulted in approximately 2 million deaths. The U.S. intervened to prevent the spread of communist influence in Southeast Asia, crucial for protecting global capitalist interests. The Domino Theory suggested that if one country fell to communism, others in the region would follow, threatening capitalist markets and investments.

The war was characterized by extensive bombing, chemical warfare, and brutal ground battles, leading to immense destruction and loss of life. The U.S. aimed to support a non-communist government in South Vietnam to maintain a strategic and economic foothold. Th U.S. government installed Ngo Dinh Diem as the leader of South Vietnam in 1954, a man who aided the French colonizers in rounding up independence fighters during Vietnam’s revolution and who was living in Lakewood, New Jersey prior to being installed as President of South Vietnam. Villages were razed, civilians massacred, and entire regions devastated by napalm and Agent Orange.

As part of the Vietnam War, the U.S. bombing campaigns in Cambodia and Laos from 1969 to 1973 resulted in 500,000 deaths. These, known as Operation Menu and Operation Freedom Deal, were aimed at destroying North Vietnamese supply routes, particularly the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which ran through these countries. The campaigns involved extensive use of carpet bombing and chemical defoliants, causing widespread civilian casualties and long-term environmental harm. In total, U.S. dropped 2,756,941 tons of bombs, more than all of the bombs dropped by the Allies in World War II.

The Bangladesh famine of 1974, which claimed up to 1.5 million lives, was tragically induced by U.S. policies that prioritized geopolitical interests over human suffering. During the Bangladesh Liberation War, the U.S., driven to uphold global capitalism through their Cold War alliances, supported the Pakistani government with aid and arms, enabling Pakistan to brutally suppress the independence movement in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh.

The conflict ravaged the region, leading to widespread devastation and economic collapse. When Bangladesh finally achieved independence, it was left in ruins, its infrastructure destroyed, and its economy in shambles. The newly formed government struggled desperately to address the famine that followed. Fields lay barren, markets were empty, and the people starved. During the height of the famine, the U.S. withheld 2.2 million tons of food aid as a means to pressure the Bangladeshi government into aligning with American political and economic interests.

The haunting images of skeletal children did nothing to stir the cold, calculating hearts of American politicians, who shamelessly grovel at the feet of greed. As expected, their consciences, deeply buried beneath their unwavering service to those who relentlessly pursue profit, remained impervious to the suffering they inflicted. The elite relied on their unwavering commitment to corporate profit and control over the global order, and these politicians met those expectations without hesitation.

The $8 trillion U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, part of the broader War on Terrorism, has resulted in over 900,000 deaths over the ensuing years. Initially justified as a response to the September 11 attacks, aimed at dismantling Al-Qaeda and toppling the Taliban, this intervention was heavily influenced by imperialist strategic interests. Afghanistan's critical location in Central Asia made it a prime target for projecting U.S. power and influence, surrounded by key nations like Iran, Pakistan, China, and the Central Asian republics. Establishing a foothold in Afghanistan provided the U.S. a strategic base to manipulate regional dynamics and counterbalance rivals such as Iran and China. Additionally, the prolonged military occupation and reconstruction efforts were a boon for American corporations involved in defense, security, and infrastructure, including then Vice President Dick Cheney's Halliburton.

The U.S. interventions in Iraq, including the Gulf War in 1991 and the Iraq War in 2003, resulted in catastrophic human losses, with approximately 100,000 deaths the Gulf War and 600,000 deaths from the Iraq War. These interventions were driven by strategic interests in Iraq's vast oil resources, with the U.S. aiming to control and secure these assets for capitalist benefits. The Gulf War was initiated to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait, a key oil-producing country, thereby protecting U.S. allies and ensuring the stability of global oil supplies. The 2003 invasion of Iraq, under the pretext of eliminating weapons of mass destruction, was similarly motivated by the desire to gain control over Iraq's oil fields and to establish a compliant government that would favor U.S. economic interests. Here too, the Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, Halliburton, made a staggering $39.5 billion from contracts related to the Iraq War, many of which were awarded without competitive bidding.

The devastation caused by these wars was immense: infrastructure was obliterated, cities were reduced to rubble, and millions of civilians were caught in the crossfire or suffered from the resulting chaos and instability, with 5 million displaced. The prolonged occupation and the dismantling of its military and governmental structures created a power vacuum and widespread chaos. This environment facilitated the rise of extremist groups, with ISIS eventually forming from the remnants of al-Qaeda in Iraq and other militant factions.

The NATO intervention in Libya in 2011, which led to approximately 22,000 deaths, was officially framed as a humanitarian effort to protect civilians during the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi's regime. However, beneath this veneer of humanitarianism lay significant strategic and economic interests, particularly related to Libya's vast oil reserves. Libya, boasting the largest proven oil reserves in Africa, was a crucial supplier of oil to Europe. The NATO-led intervention resulted in the overthrow of Gaddafi but also plunged the country into chaos, leading to prolonged instability and conflict. This destabilization allowed multinational corporations easier access to invest in and exploit Libya's oil resources. Moreover, the intervention had dire consequences for the social fabric of Libya. The power vacuum and ensuing chaos led to the re-emergence of open-air slave markets, where human beings are being bought and sold like commodities for as little as $400.

The ongoing genocide in Gaza is simply another manifestation of the capitalist ethos that permeated the violence described above. The U.S. government's complicity in perpetuating violence and destruction is driven by economic and geopolitical imperatives just like those we have discussed above. American taxpayer-funded military aid to Israel supports a relentless campaign against Palestinians, masked as a security measure but fundamentally rooted in capitalist and strategic interests. This alliance between American and Israeli elites consolidates control over critical resources and trade routes, enriching defense contractors and entrenching regional dominance. Innocent civilians bear the true cost: tens of thousands killed, homes and infrastructure decimated, and entire communities obliterated.

Collective Disengagement: Standing Up to Oppression and Building a New Future

The elite sustain this centuries long pattern of calculated violence by manipulating our collective psychology. They justify their acts of violence and war, while those who denounce such atrocities and propose new ways of organizing society are marginalized and discredited. Public sentiment is meticulously crafted through propaganda that narrows the range of acceptable discourse and paints revolutionary voices as unrealistic, insane, or dangerous.

Their fearmongering is particularly effective because it exploits our vulnerable position in a systemically competitive society. Those who have the least are warned they can't afford to join the courageous revolutionaries and risk losing what little they have, even though they stand to gain the most. Meanwhile, those with some financial security are told that embracing revolutionary ideals would plunge them into the struggles faced by those below them. The truth is, these revolutionary ideals would remove us from the cutthroat competition that characterizes the current world order. Such actionable ideals promise a world where no one has to live in insecurity or fear of losing everything. By fostering cooperation instead, we can create a society where everyone's needs are met, and the constant anxiety of survival is abolished.

The elite's hostility towards so-called 'radical' ideas is not simply a matter of ideological disagreement. They are acutely aware of the power, practicality, and rapid spread of these revolutionary concepts, and they fear how quickly they can be implemented. Thus, they ensure such dissent is systematically suppressed through state-sanctioned violence, creating a climate of acquiescence. This dual approach of bounded discourse and suppressed dissent ensures that transformational ideas are marginalized and genuine social change is hindered. Through this method, the ruling class engineers a grotesque charade where the only permissible political stances are those fundamentally devoted to perpetuating corporate dominance and expanding capitalism.

But their manipulation runs deeper—they sell us these contrived choices! They cleverly associate being a Democrat with specific cultural values and being a Republican with others. Glossy advertisements and sleek marketing campaigns flaunt both celebrities and everyday people who embody these fabricated values, pushing products that supposedly define liberal or conservative lifestyles, along with their various subcultures.

Every purchase we make, whether it's a hybrid car adorned with progressive bumper stickers or a pickup truck flaunting patriotic decals, feeds into this fabricated dichotomy. We're not just voting with our wallets; we're being coerced into aligning our self-worth and identity with these consumer choices. It's a grand illusion where both sides, despite their apparent differences, funnel us into the same exploitative system.

We’re bombarded with slogans and images that blend politics with consumerism. "Vote blue, buy green." "Real Americans wear red." It's a relentless cycle where we are implored to buy products that signify our 'values'—values crafted in boardrooms to serve corporate interests.

Every vote, every purchase, every piece of cultural paraphernalia we adorn ourselves with is a cog in their profit machine. The elites sit back, watching us dance to their tune, our dissent muted, our choices orchestrated, our lives commodified. This is a profound violation of our autonomy and dignity, a testament to the insidious power of corporate hegemony.

It’s time we reject the individuals who are “leading” our country, recognizing them as the spineless and avaricious opportunists they repeatedly prove themselves to be. They do not look out for “American interests.” They look out for elite interests. The elite are fully aware of the destruction and death they cause. They wield force not just because it’s effective but because it sends a chilling message to those of us who see through their charades. They know that some of us can see their justifications for war—drenched in pompous, misleading rhetoric of spreading democracy or protecting American interests—for the sham that it is. They want us to understand that if we challenge them, they can and will bring hell upon earth. They will kill without hesitation.

Yet, they have a vulnerability. To oppress and kill, they need us to do their bidding. They need us to ship the bombs, to provide political support, to play their rigged game. They require vast numbers of soldiers to sign up, commit these atrocities, suffer from PTSD, and then be discarded when they return and seek help. It's time we stand together and refuse to be pawns in their murderous schemes. We must take this stand for ourselves and for humanity. By building networks of mutual aid and supporting each other, we can create the solidarity needed to resist their exploitation and implement new, just ways of organizing society.

Our collective power lies in our ability to say no. By refusing to participate in their wars, by resisting their propaganda, we can dismantle their power. The elites rely on our complicity, our labor, and our silence to maintain their dominion.

Imagine we chose to serve each other instead! Picture the strength of a unified populace, rejecting the exploitation and brutality inflicted in our name. We must rise together, in defiance of the so-called leaders who have sacrificed their integrity on the altar of capitalism. For every life shattered by their betrayal, for every dream crushed under the weight of their gluttony, we must unite. It is our duty to reclaim the values they have perverted, the future they threaten, and the planet they are setting aflame with their endless pursuit of profit. We owe it to ourselves and to the world to disrupt this cycle of violence and build a new social order that values human dignity over capital. Now is the time to come together and take action.

Peter S. Baron is the author of “If Only We Knew: How Ignorance Creates and Amplifies the Greatest Risks Facing Society” (https://www.ifonlyweknewbook.com) and is currently pursuing a J.D. and M.A. in Philosophy at Georgetown University.

Debunking Myths About Venezuela: What's Really Going On?

[Photo Credit: MIGUEL GUTIERREZ/EPA/Shutterstock]

By Eli Morey

Republished from Liberation Center.

Nicolás Maduro, the leader of Venezuela’s socialist movement, won the July 28 Venezuela presidential election by a wide margin. In a near-repeat of 2019,  the Biden administration  immediately declared the election illegitimate and recognized their preferred—but badly defeated–candidate as the winner, Edmundo González as the winner, just as they supported Juan Guaido’s pitiful attempt to take power in 2019-2020. Similarly, the U.S. is fully supporting current right-wing violence in Venezuela to set the stage for another coup against the legitimate and widely popular government.

None of this appears in the corporate media, of course. Instead, we only encounter accusations of “corruption” and “illegitimate” elections.

What about the polls that showed Maduro losing?

Headlines in the U.S. cite polls as evidence of fraud in the 2024 elections. According to some polls, Maduro trailed the opposition by a wide margin in the lead-up to election day. A closer look reveals that these polls are not a reliable source of information about Venezuelan voter preferences. 

In fact, each of the four polls cited by Western media were run by organizations with a clear conflict of interest:

1. The Encuestadora Meganálisis poll is openly affiliated with the opposition, as their Facebook page filled with videos denouncing Madruo and the Bolivarian Revolution.

2. The Caracas-based Delphos poll is directed by Felix Seijas Rodriguez, an outspoken member of the Venezuelan opposition who has authored numerous articles attacking Maduro and even discussing U.S. military intervention against Venezuela.

3. OCR Consultores is a “consultancy” group whose Director, Oswaldo Ramirez Colina, lives in Miami, where the group is headquartered. Colina studied “Terrorism and Counterterrorism” at Georgetown University, which is notoriously cozy with the CIA. He has appeared on news segments and podcast episodes criticizing Maduro and questioning the legitimacy of Venezuela’s electoral processes.

4. Edison Research, whose exit poll claimed Maduro’s loss, has “top clients [that] include CIA-linked US government propaganda outlets Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, all of which are operated by the US Agency for Global Media, a Washington-based organ that is used to spread disinformation against US adversaries.”

Are elections in Venezuela free and fair?

While western media consistently accuses Maduro of rigging elections, there is zero evidence to support this claim. In both the 2018 and 2024 elections, thousands of international observers were present at polling stations across Venezuela. 

In fact, even mainstream liberal organizations like the Carter foundation have praised Venezuela’s electoral system. In 2012, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter said that “as a matter of fact, of the 92 elections that we’ve monitored, I would say the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.”

Who are the leaders of the opposition?

Maduro’s primary opponent in the elections, Edmundo Gonzalez Urritia, was not a big figure in Venezuelan politics until this most recent election cycle. He is primarily serving as a stand-in for Maria Corina Machado, who is the true face of Venezuela’s opposition. 

Machado is on the far right. Her policies would undermine Venezuela’s sovereignty by privatizing national assets and selling off Venezuela’s oil reserves to western corporations. 

She is also a proud and open Zionist. In fact, in 2018 she wrote a letter directly to Benjamin Netanyahu asking Israel to intervene militarily in Venezuela to conduct a “regime change” operation in order to overthrow its democratically elected government. In 2020, she signed a cooperation agreement with Netanyahu’s Likud party stating that they were in agreement on “political, ideological, and social issues” and “issues related to strategy, geopolitics and security.”

The right-wing’s violence is particularly directed against Afro-Venezuelans and the indigenous populations because the Revolution has greatly benefitted the sectors of society who have historically been excluded and oppressed. In 2014, a right-wing group beat a law student named William Muñoz, and doused him in gasoline. Fortunately, an ambulance rescued Muñoz before the mob could ignite the gasoline. In 2017, the right-wing went on a rampage targeting darker-skinned Venezuelans, setting them on fire and even lynching them.

Why and how does the U.S. try to overthrow the Venezuelan government?

It is not only the domestic reactionaries that constantly threaten the Revolution. Particularly since 2005, the U.S. has deployed numerous strategies to reverse the revolutionary gains of Venezuela.

A few years after the presidential election of Hugo Chávez, representing the Fifth Republic Movement, the U.S. ruling class started openly working to destroy Venezuela’’s socialist government since the Bolivarian Revolution began with the 1998 election of Hugo Chávez, who ran as the Fifth Republic Movement’s candidate.’s government. Under Chávez’s leadership, Venezuela’s democratic processes expanded quickly and rapidly. In 1999, Venezuela adopted a new constitution that created a constituent assembly, bringing the people into positions of power to pass laws in their interests. Land was redistributed and social goods like housing and education were prioritized thanks to the massive oil reserves of the country.

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What became known as the Bolivarian Revolution, led by the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV)—which formed in 2007—was a spark that set off a “pink tide” throughout Latin America. Progressive governments came to power in Brazil and Bolivia, and people’s movements surged across the continent. With state power, progressives and socialists formed new alliances to challenge U.S. domination and imperialism, including notably ALBA, or the Alliance for the People’s of Our America. Founded in 2004, ALBA enables Latin American and other countries to engage in non-exploitative trade and other inter-state projects and agreements.

Sanctions were the first tactic the U.S. deployed against the Revolution. By depriving the government of the ability to fund social programs, the intent was and is to create widespread poverty and misery to foment dissent and blaming the results of the sanctions on the policies of the Venezuelan government.

If Venezuela’s socialist government was allowed to engaged in “free trade,” they could make even more impressive advances for their people and inspire other countries to follow in their path. As a result, Venezuela is one of the most heavily sanctioned countries in the world, with over 900 unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States alone. The U.S. has actively worked for over a decade to destabilize the Venezuelan economy specifically by targeting its oil industry and its financial sector.

However, undermining the Venezuelan economy is just one element of the U.S. hybrid war on Venezuela. There have also been multiple coup attempts with links to the U.S. Here are a few:

• 2002: Socialist president Hugo Chavez was kidnapped and removed from power by military coup plotters connected to Venezuelan big business. After two days, huge protests in support of Chavez forced the coup government out of power and restored the constitutional order. Chavez was freed and returned to the presidency.

• 2019: In 2018 the opposition boycotted the elections, and as a result their candidates lost by a huge margin. In spite of this, they then declared opposition figurehead Juan Guaidó—who had not even run in the elections and won 0 votes—the new interim president of Venezuela. The United States immediately recognized Guaidó as the president of Venezuela. The following year Guaidó led a failed coup attempt against Maduro. 

• 2020: “Operation Gideon,” an armed invasion of Venezuela led by a former member of the U.S. Army special forces, was defeated by the Venezuelan military.

Why are so many immigrants leaving Venezuela?

Millions of people have left Venezuela in the last 10 years. While the U.S. media often portrays these people as political refugees fleeing a dictatorship, the reality is quite different. 

Global oil prices dropped drastically in the mid 2010s. Oil is a key component of Venezuela’s economy. This would not have been a problem if Venezuela was able to take out loans to cover shortfalls until the price of oil rebounded. Oil-dependent countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE are able to get cheap loans when oil prices decline because they are allies of the U.S. and EU. In Venezuela’s case, the U.S. did everything it could to undermine the Venezuelan economy in a moment of crisis, and prevent its economy from rebuilding in the wake of disaster. 

Most of Venezuela’s immigrants are in fact victims of the U.S’s harsh sanctions regime, which has damaged Venezuela’s economy and prevented it from accessing key goods including food and medicine. 

Why do I see posts on social media calling Maduro a dictator?

After every election there are outspoken people who are upset about the outcome. If you were to look on social media or talk to random people on the street after the 2016 or 2020 elections in the U.S, you would certainly find people angry or confused about the results. You would probably also encounter people claiming that the election was rigged. This does not amount to evidence of election fraud. 

In the U.S. and on western social media platforms, the anti-Maduro position is over-represented because of the number of expats living in the United States. Venezuelans living here have, for the most part, left Venezuela either because they had the money to leave when the economy took a downturn, or they left out of desperation when the economy was at its lowest point. These are the segments of the population most likely to be critical of Maduro, most likely to speak English, and most likely to be on American social media pages and platforms.

Alternatively, the social base of the Bolivarian revolution is in the working class, poor, and indigenous people living in the barrios and rural villages of Venezuela. These people are significantly less likely to speak English, have smartphones, or be active on social media platforms like Instagram. Their voices are never centered in conventional media like TV and radio in the United States, which is largely run by corporations with a vested interest in demonizing socialism.

What is the Bolivarian Revolution and why do the masses support it?

Under the leadership of Chavez and later Maduro, notable achievements were made in spite of ongoing attempts by the U.S. to sabotage Venezuela’s socialist project. The main vehicles for these achievements has been the mobilization of the working class and the misiones, or “missions,” which are long-term economic and social development programs. The Bolivarian government has built over 4 million new homes for poor people living in substandard housing as part of the Misión Habitat. Over 10 million poor Venezuelans have benefited from subsidized food under a program called Misión Mercal. Another program known as Mision Barrio Adentro built thousands of clinics and community centers in an effort to provide free healthcare and dental care to Venezuela’s poorest people.

A massive literacy campaign in the 2000s helped over a million people to read and write. In spite of economic hardships due to the oil crisis and U.S. sanctions, millions of Venezuelans continue to support the Maduro government because of the tangible benefits it provides in their day-to-day lives. This is even more understandable given the ruthless nature of the racist right-wing opposition.

Big Government is the Answer

By Sudip Bhattacharya

Having been on Medicaid, I understand that state power is not inherently unjust. Government overreach does exist and must always be countered. Yet the notion that state power can only be a vehicle of repression and violence is an extremely conservative one, even when uttered by those of us on the Left. It is politically naïve and reductive.  

Not only has government power been a positive for many oppressed and marginalized groups, including working people; its ability to use force and coercion has been a necessary tool in shifting power away from the entrenched few. Taxing the rich, regulating major corporations, and redistributing land are all necessary forms of government coercion to raise living standards for the masses. These are all things that government has done in the United States and elsewhere.

In Black Reconstruction, W.E.B. Du Bois’s classic work examining the Reconstruction era following the demise of chattel slavery in America, Du Bois wrote of federal government intervention in the former Confederacy and its benefits. Through its direct military occupation of the South, the federal government created space for civic and political groups organized by white progressives and African Americans for the first time in the region’s modern history. There was also the creation of federal bureaucracies, such as the Freedmen’s Bureau, that Du Bois cited as being historic. For the first time, a majority of African Americans and poor whites were finally being provided free universal schooling and healthcare.

“The Freedmen’s Bureau was the most extraordinary and far-reaching institution of social uplift that America has ever attempted,” Du Bois stated. “It was a government guardianship for the relief and guidance of white and black labor from a feudal agrarianism to modern farming and industry.”

Du Bois himself published his work on Reconstruction politics while living through the New Deal, another era that saw the federal government playing a greater role in providing resources and rights for a larger share of the American populace. It was under the New Deal that social welfare programs were finally created to offset the precarity that people faced existing in a so-called free market world where companies could hire and fire whomever and whenever they wanted. It was also through the New Deal that the right to unionize was protected against corporate zealotry and overreach.

Social security and unemployment insurance were created, followed by a more emboldened Internal Revenue Service focusing on corporate returns. Not to mention the federal government decades later, pushed by grassroots efforts, to take a more serious interventionist role in protecting the rights and freedoms of African Americans and other marginalized groups against white terror. One could argue more coercive means should’ve been used, with more Klansmen being arrested and disappeared, as well as white supremacists who chose to wear suits rather than robes to their meetings. The prison system should’ve been filled with racists and their sympathizers.

Why is it so important to have this broader view of government power and its benefits? Because this view enriches us, providing a clearer analysis of how to generate power and change for the working masses. It also reminds us that the era we’re in remains an era of narrowed political interests and horizons. Biden or Trump, government functions as a vehicle for private capitalist interests to grow fat and ever more looming over the rest of society.

The Biden administration has been more open to ideas such as the right to unionize, and yet, it still resists any real attempts at utilizing government institutions, which it could, to seize more power from the major capitalists that render our society a swamp for their own profit motive and greed. In a capitalist society such as ours, state power includes that of capitalist institutions, along with civic associations and groups. Government competes with capitalists who concentrate the distribution of goods and services within their grasp. After all, when wanting more housing or healthcare, where do we turn to? The government? Perhaps when we need some kind of reprieve. But usually, we are dependent upon the private insurance company or landlord for our salvation, for what we need to live. We depend on a job to access scraps and crumbs.

As Kevin Young, Michael Schwartz, and Tarun Banerjee state, “Capitalists routinely exert leverage over governments by withholding the resources — jobs, credit, goods, and services — upon which society depends.” During the Obama administration, even when tepid reforms and regulations were pushed ahead, major businesses responded by withholding critical investments that would cause the economy to become far more precarious for a growing segment of the population because they had the power to do so. “The ‘capital strike’ might take the form of layoffs, offshoring jobs and money, denying loans, or just a credible threat to do those things, along with a promise to relent once government delivers the desired policy changes,” Young, Schwartz, and Bannerjee add.

When COVID became our enduring reality, the medical industry had been caught flat-footed. In a saner society, not one dominated by profit-hungry entities called companies, there would’ve been a stockpile of masks and other medical resources in case of emergency, especially as pandemics become more commonplace.

However, most major companies were uninterested in having an excess of masks, depreciating assets whose value was only speculative. Money is far more important than saving lives, of course.

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“But executives in the medical supply industry said that while they are rushing to accelerate their output of face masks, it could take months to ramp up,” it was reported at the time, as body bags lined the streets of Manhattan, as the medical industry staggered through the crisis to meet critical demand at basically the last second, leading to countless needless infections and deaths. Imagine if the healthcare industry was not an industry at all but rather part of a national system. Imagine the experts who could’ve predicted the need for a stockpile of masks. Imagine that stockpile being available the moment people start feeling their chests get muddy, their breathing cut short.

As Donald Cohen and Aillen Mikaelian note in their dissection of neoliberal privatization, the government, especially at the federal level, could and should step in, not just in terms of regulating major industries but providing an actual public option of many goods and services that people need. Why keep such important goods, like housing and health, in the supposed care of a select few major corporations, and landlords? These are things that all people need, not the same as choosing between what cereal or TV show to purchase/binge.

“If we take back control of our public goods — if we reject what political philosopher Michael Sandel calls ‘a market society’ — we will gain an incredible opportunity to build instead a society based on public values and a commitment to ensuring that public goods are available to all,” they explain in The Privatization of Everything, adding, “We’re all better off when we limit privatization and market competition over things we all need — things including public health, key infrastructure, water, education, and democracy itself.”

After the Russian Civil War, which saw an army of proto-fascists and fanatics unleashed onto the Russian working classes and peasantry, Vladimir Lenin, the great theoretician of the “state,” believed that having some level of government bureaucracy was necessary in forging the transition from a country ruined by war and capitalism toward something more oriented toward the needs and interests of the masses. Of course, the government bureaucrats would be accountable to the various levels of revolutionary pressure, from the Bolshevik party to members of the working class and peasantry who understood their historic role inside the country.

Nevertheless, much like Du Bois, Lenin embraced the realpolitik of government institutions being capable and willing to coerce the ruling elite and to forge a society that finally abolished class distinctions itself.  There was much work to be done, according to him.

“Our society is one which has left the rails of capitalism, but has not yet got on to new rails,” he stated in an essay collected in The Day after the Revolution, “The state in this society is not ruled by the bourgeoisie, but by the proletariat. We refuse to understand that when we say ‘state’ we mean ourselves, the proletariat, the vanguard of the working class.”

People can certainly exist in a future society in which they care for each other and check in on those around them in terms of what neighbors might need. People have that capacity to perform mutual aid. However, none of that individual or hyper-local level of care negate the fact that a society still needs major institutions to function for people to truly feel liberated, from the maintenance of hospitals (no longer run for profit) to schooling (also free and universal) to, of course, such institutions filled with a level of expertise, whether its medical or educational or the ability to maintain the traffic lights at the nearest intersection, that not everyone should be expected to have. Is it really a liberated society in which everyone, regardless of their interests or capacity, is expected to produce and provide asthma inhalers and other types of medicine for those around them? Is it liberation for everyone to have to spend every day gathering food and other resources so that everyone can survive?

This is where Big Government intervenes, cultivating people and institutions that respond to our needs so that we’re truly free and less burdened overall. Or, as Jodi Dean has said regarding the masses and the party form, channeling and developing peoples’ skills and energies far higher than simply being obsessed with the extremely local. We need a world that’s free. We are against capitalist forces imposing their nightmare upon us — a nightmare that’s global in reach.

Now, questions do remain of how to create that government we so desperately need. One could argue somehow that all we must do is run candidates, possibly independent of major parties, and for them to simply “take over” existing institutions. To some degree, this is indeed important — at least in the short term when it means providing and tweaking policies that could improve peoples’ lives, such as appointing officials sympathetic to labor to the NLRB or hiring more IRS officials to pursue white-collar tax dodging, or at a more visceral level, providing free money to people during a pandemic.

And yet, Lenin’s insight that the state or particularly government power doesn’t automatically change simply because there’s an immediate changing of the guard also holds true. In the United States, even as the government is reoriented to be more perhaps, “sympathetic”, toward interests beyond the elite, it remains a network of institutions situated to sustain capitalism, and other forms of oppression. Even the New Deal itself, as much as it curried favor and improved peoples’ lives tremendously, was itself a “compromise” between workers and their employes, and hence, sought a friendlier version of capitalism, well-regulated of course, to survive, which it did until more extremist elements of the capitalist class demanded more in terms of government largesse and power.

There will need to be a dramatic break with how government is currently oriented to truly meet the political aspirations and dreams of most people. It will be a government that does more than just tax the wealthy but abolishes them. It will be a government that does more than create programs to achieve balance but rather completely redistributes land and wealth, completely addresses historical wrongs from the dispossession of indigenous groups to the ghosts of enslavement, to paying money and making amends to the recent victims of the War on Drugs, and militarized policing.

This break necessitates revolution, always. There still is a need for a revolutionary party to break through the white noise of our status quo politics, and gather our forces to confront and challenge, and reinvent. There is still that need for more than just simply running candidates for re-election, no matter how radical platforms may seem.

But one can’t sustain without the other. Shorter-term needs get met, and longer-term horizons expand. People become emboldened as they win, not when they lose everything, including their sense of self and sanity.

Whatever the path toward political synergy might be, it cannot be wedded to an analysis of government and state power that is not only reductive, but stinks of political immaturity and a form of libertarian analysis that only sees government as somehow oppressive and all forms of “independence” from it as liberatory.“One reads the truer deeper facts of Reconstruction with a great despair,” Du Bois had written regarding the violent defeat and the shutting down of progress at the tail end of the Reconstruction period. Similarly, as much as people are being immiserated and, in some instances, compelled to take on a more radical opposition or critique, we also have seen a rise in rightwing violence and a predilection amongst the capitalist classes to express antipathy and throwing obstacles against any form of progressive reform even. Both the Democratic and Republican parties, with different levels of intensity, are very much against the cries of the oppressed and the dreams of the politically voiceless. The working classes who envision a socialist world have no real political home, let alone political momentum at this point.  

Crises beget more crises, which beget the oppressed and exploited being overwhelmed and politically confused. Big Government is an answer, and yet, who or what will spread the gospel and make it heaven on earth before the waters rise above our knees?

Echoes of Resistance: From 1968 to Gaza, the Unyielding Voices of Student Protests

[Pictured: Anti-genocide student protestors face a line of law enforcement during a demonstration at UT-Austin. Credit: Julius Shieh for The Texas Tribune]

By Peter S. Baron

As students continue to gather in protest, standing up for the humanity of Gazans being slaughtered by a maniacally genocidal coalition of ruling elites obsessed with profit and geopolitical maneuvering, it's insightful to reflect on the history of student protests. Understanding the impact of past movements can help gauge the potential of today's collective awakening.

A History of Student Resistance

In 1968, the air in France was charged with rebellion. It all started at the University of Nanterre, where students kicked against the strict, outdated rules of their university and the deeper issues of government authoritarianism and the Vietnam War. The authorities shut the university down on May 2, which only pushed the students to take their protests to the Sorbonne in Paris.

The situation escalated quickly.

The police clamped down hard on the protests at the Sorbonne, using force on students. This reaction sparked a massive response not just from other students but from workers across the country. Seeing their own struggles in the students’ fight, France’s major trade unions called a one-day general strike on May 13. What started as a protest became a nationwide shutdown.

The movement exploded. By the end of May, about 10 million workers—that's two-thirds of the French workforce—had stopped working. Factories, universities, and public services ground to a halt. Workers and students gathered in occupied spaces, debating and planning what France should become. They didn’t just want better wages or conditions; they were calling for a whole new way of running the country.

This was too much for President Charles de Gaulle, who saw his control slipping away. In a stunning move, he secretly fled to West Germany to meet with a loyal general, possibly to discuss using the military to regain control. This moment of panic highlighted just how serious things had become.

Despite the revolutionary fervor, the crisis did not culminate in a revolution. De Gaulle returned to France, dissolved the National Assembly, and called for new elections. This move, combined with negotiations that led to substantial wage increases and improved working conditions, caused the momentum of the protests to dissipate. In the June elections, de Gaulle’s party won a significant majority, reflecting a conservative backlash against the upheaval.

The initial response to the student protests in 1968 involved shutting down universities and deploying aggressive police tactics, much like what we're witnessing on college campuses today. These actions were clear attempts by the state to clamp down on dissent and regain control. However, as the movement expanded beyond students and began to mobilize the broader working class, the tactics of the state and capitalist interests evolved. Faced with a growing and powerful movement, they shifted towards strategies of co-optation and superficial reform, aiming to dilute the movement's momentum by seemingly addressing some grievances while preserving the underlying capitalist structure.

The concessions offered by President Charles de Gaulle—wage increases, improved working conditions, and the promise of educational reforms—should be seen as strategic moves to quell dissent. These reforms were significant enough to placate the immediate economic grievances of the working class and to demonstrate a responsiveness by the government, thereby splitting the coalition between students and workers. By integrating demands that did not threaten the core of capitalist structures, de Gaulle's administration managed to dissipate revolutionary momentum, demonstrating that state apparatuses function to reproduce the conditions of production favorable to the capitalist mode.

The resolution of the May 1968 events through electoral politics and limited social reforms highlights the function of the capitalist state as a mediator in class struggle, which subtly shifts societal alignments to favor the elite. This outcome exemplifies the stabilizing mechanisms of capitalist societies, which, through reformist policies, manage to integrate and neutralize opposition without addressing the underlying dynamics of capitalist accumulation and exploitation.

Lessons in Solidarity

The broader implication of these events teaches us that reformist policies are primarily implemented to address the immediate, most visible problems of social unrest, with the ultimate goal of maintaining the underlying capitalist structure. This dynamic ensures that while capitalism might appear more humane after reforms, its fundamental drives—primarily the accumulation of capital at the expense of mass labor—are left intact. This approach allows the capitalist framework to persist largely unchanged, as it continues to benefit those in power while giving the appearance of responsiveness and concern for social issues. As evidenced by the aftermath of the 1968 protests, this malicious strategy serves to delay or diffuse the revolutionary potential of mass movements, channeling grievances into reforms that do not alter the basic relations of power and production.

Thus, the 1968 student protests in France not only reveal the power of grassroots movements to enact significant changes but also highlight the complexities and limitations of such changes within the capitalist framework. The episode serves as a reminder of the enduring challenge for revolutionary movements: to navigate the delicate balance between achieving immediate improvements and maintaining the momentum necessary for profound systemic change.

Today, we must remain unyieldingly vigilant as guardians against those forces eager to co-opt the energy and direction of the student movement. We should criticize how figures touted as progressives, such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have positioned themselves near the forefront, claiming solidarity with the students. Their actions betray their words. A genuine ally would not endorse and actively campaign for Joe Biden, who recently authorized an additional $26 billion in aid to Israel, amid ongoing reports of atrocities. Biden’s and the Democrats’ support of Israeli rulers continues nearly seven months into what can only be described as a genocide, with horrifying discoveries of mass graves that include hundreds of children and medical professionals, identified by their scrubs, executed with their hands bound and bullet wounds in their skulls. This is the same Israeli leadership that vilifies Gazans with dehumanizing rhetoric, labeling them as "human animals" and "monsters." Ask yourself, would a genuine ally funnel $260,000, collected from grassroots progressives, into the coffers of the DNC (as AOC has done)—the very organization backing the continued financial support of these atrocities?

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This supposed alliance comes as nearly 40,000 lives, including those of 15,000 children, have been extinguished. Hospitals, schools, churches, and mosques crumble under bombs, while essential humanitarian aid is obstructed, leaving millions to the brink of dehydration and starvation, with many forced to drink and bathe in dirty water while they eat grass to survive. Amid this barbarity, the cruel decision to cut electricity in Gaza inflicts unspeakable suffering, forcing children, their bodies crushed by the rubble of their own homes, to endure the brutal procedure of amputations without any anesthesia.

These acts of sheer inhumanity lay bare the merciless nature of the assault, exposing the vulnerable to unimaginable pain in their most desperate moments. These are not the acts of allies but of political actors playing their roles in a theater of cruelty and betrayal. We must reject these charades and build our movements away from the shadows of such treacherous alliances.

These so-called progressive politicians masquerade as the vanguards of change, yet their true motive is to herd our collective outrage by transforming it into campaign donations that serve as financial fuel for those who steadfastly maintain the oppressive status quo. The genocide unfolding before our eyes is not a mere clash of ideologies or religions, nor is it simply about backing allies. It's the direct result of a rapacious economic and political system driven by profit at any cost. Our leaders, slaves to their own ambition for power, prostrate themselves before their corporate masters. Their support for Israel isn't just about lobbying dollars from groups like AIPAC; it's fundamentally about the benefits the U.S. capitalist regime derives from Israel's strategic position. Indeed, as Joe Biden once starkly noted, “Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel.”

The U.S.'s backing of Israel is intricately linked to the military-industrial complex, the control of oil, and the militarization of key global trade routes. This alliance fuels massive arms sales and defense contracts, enriching U.S. corporations and bolstering the military-industrial complex. By aligning with Israel, strategically located near pivotal oil-producing nations, the U.S. ensures its grip on crucial Middle Eastern oil reserves, a vital resource in the global economy. This geopolitical strategy extends to controlling vital trade routes, securing economic and military advantages by keeping these critical channels under Western dominance.

In a system incentivizing the corporate chase for monopolized total control, war becomes a necessity, serving as a means to redistribute and further concentrate the world's resources among the global elite while feeding the insatiable profit motives of the weapons industry. Inevitably, capitalism leaves destruction in its wake, whether it was the Vietnamese in 1968 or the Gazans today, bearing the brutal consequences of capitalism's genocidal tendencies.

A New Vision

Despite its shortcomings, the events of May 1968 changed France. They didn’t overthrow the government, but they broke through old barriers, changing laws and attitudes, especially in education and labor. The spirit of those weeks, when it seemed like anything was possible, still lights up the imagination of people fighting for a better world. The 1968 protests showed that when people come together, they can shake the foundations of power, even if they don’t knock them down completely.

Today, we must heed the lessons of 1968. In the spirit of a grassroots revolution, the transformation from student protests into a comprehensive movement built on the principles of disengagement from corrupted institutions and the establishment of mutual aid and free agreement begins with a profound collective realization. This realization is that the existing structures—be they educational, governmental, or corporate—are not only failing to address but are complicit in systemic injustices.

Our emerging movement starts as a series of interconnected local actions, where students and workers come together, recognizing their shared plight and common goals. As they gather, initially stirred by the desire to protest, they begin to form more structured groups—collective councils—comprising representatives from various student organizations, local labor unions, and community advocates. These councils serve as the initial scaffolding for a new kind of governance, one that operates on consensus and inclusivity, eschewing the hierarchical models they aim to dismantle.

Skill-sharing emerges as a fundamental activity within these groups, not just as a means to empower and educate, but as a cornerstone of building self-sufficiency. Workshops on urban agriculture, basic healthcare, community safety, and renewable energy initiatives are organized, utilizing occupied spaces such as unused university buildings or public parks, transforming them into hubs of learning and operation.

As the councils gain more traction, a general strike becomes the first major coordinated action, signaling the movement's seriousness and unity to a broader audience. This strike isn't just a cessation of work; it's a powerful act of reclaiming spaces and redirecting resources towards the newly forming mutual aid systems. These spaces become centers where resources—food, medical supplies, educational materials—are distributed not based on the ability to pay, but on need, a principle central to the philosophy of mutual aid.

Parallel to these practical endeavors, the movement begins to redefine education. It distances itself from traditional curricula that often perpetuate the dominant ideologies of the state and capitalism, and instead fosters a curriculum that includes critical pedagogy, decolonial studies, and practical skills for community and personal development. These classes are open to all, free of charge, and are taught by a rotating group of community members, each sharing their specific knowledge and skills.

Community defense groups also form, not as militias, but as protective bodies to ensure the safety of the spaces and their occupants. These groups practice non-violent tactics and community conflict resolution, embodying the principles of defense without aggression.

As these new systems begin to take root, they do not exist in isolation. The movement actively documents its processes and outcomes, creating detailed guides and resources that are shared widely with other groups nationally and internationally. This documentation is crucial, not just for transparency and learning, but also as a blueprint for others who wish to replicate the model in their own communities.

Networking with other similar movements creates a tapestry of resistance and mutual aid that spans borders, each node learning from and supporting others. Regular assemblies are held where experiences and ideas are exchanged, ensuring the movement remains dynamic and responsive to the needs of its participants.

Through all these phases, the guiding principles remain clear: a steadfast commitment to disengaging from and dismantling corrupted institutions; the establishment of mutual aid as a fundamental economic and social principle; and the adherence to free agreement, ensuring that every participant's voice is heard and valued in the decision-making process.

We must believe in this vision. This movement, guided by the principles of mutual aid and free agreement, will naturally take its own course, shaped by the specific needs and conditions of each community it touches. Our diversity will be our power, enhancing our resilience by fueling our capacity to innovate and effectively tackle challenges across our decentralized network. This is an organic, evolving revolution, grounded not just in the desire to protest, but to create viable, sustainable alternatives to the systems that have failed so many. Through these efforts, what begins as a series of local protests can evolve into a profound transformation of society, embodying the change that was once only dared imagined. As Ursula Le Guin reminded us in her groundbreaking novel The Dispossessed, all we have is solidarity with each other. Fortunately, that is all we need.

Peter S. Baron is the author of “If Only We Knew: How Ignorance Creates and Amplifies the Greatest Risks Facing Society” (https://www.ifonlyweknewbook.com) and is currently pursuing a J.D. and M.A. in Philosophy at Georgetown University.

How Israel Copied the USA

By Youhanna Haddad

Though Zionism has found a home in Palestine, the movement didn’t originate there. It was an exported ideology and only gained a foothold in the Middle East thanks to British patronage. Theodor Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, was a secular Austrian Jew who didn’t use theology to argue for his colonial ambitions. Rather, he argued that Jews couldn’t live freely in Gentile nations and needed their own state to escape antisemitism. 

Herzl’s magnum opus, Der Judenstaat (“The Jewish State”), repeats frequently that the establishment of this state is a colonial endeavor. His colonial strategy revolved around the idea of a “Jewish chartered company,” similar to the infamous East India Company that plundered trillions of dollars from South Asia for the benefit of English capitalists. 

Herzl did not mince words. He used “colony” and “colonist” to describe his ambitions over 10 times in Der Judenstaat. He said the poorest Jewish settlers would become the “most vigorous conquerors, because a little despair is indispensable to the formation of a great undertaking,”. Herzl even believed European Jews would not come to Palestine without the guarantee that they would be legally superior to the indigenous Arab population:

“Immigration is consequently futile unless based on assured supremacy.”

Herzl also directly compared Zionist settlements to the “occupation of newly opened territory” in the United States. There are also uncanny rhetorical analogies. Both Zionists and Euro-American settlers claim supremacy to justify the conquering, displacement, and elimination of natives. The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro, for example, justified Israel’s violent West Bank settlement campaign in supremacist terms:

“Israelis like to build. Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage. This is not a difficult issue. #settlementsrock”

Shapiro’s rhetoric mirrors that of Enlightenment thinker John Locke, who believed God created land only for “the industrious and rational.” Euro-American settlers cited Locke to justify their own violent displacement of natives. This violence is inseparable from colonialism.

Zionists could not build their state without subjugating the Palestinians. And Palestinians could not maintain their sovereignty and cultural identity under the boot of a Zionist state. So began Palestine’s struggle for national liberation, and the steady loss of Palestinian land has continued to this day.

Every nation has a right to self-determination and freedom from imperialist aggression. The Zionist entity is one of the last standing apartheid states in the world, fully backed by Western Imperialist liberal democracies. Israel and its allies are more than willing to use violence to enforce their will in the region. We therefore cannot be blinded by the fantasy of a pure, perfectly nonviolent path to self-determination for the Palestinian people. 

As Malcolm X explained, “concerning nonviolence: it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.” Who could he be speaking to if not the Palestinians? There is no moral equivalence between the colonial violence of the Zionist state and the right of the Palestinians to defend themselves. The oppressed have an undeniable right to resist those who openly seek to destroy them. Just as the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto valiantly resisted the Nazis hellbent on eliminating them, the Palestinians are resisting the Zionist forces that seek their elimination.

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Like the Zionists of today, American leaders have a long tradition of slandering indigenous resistance. The supposedly progressive president Theodore Roosevelt proudly spewed such lies to justify his conquest of the American West, saying:

“I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indian is the dead Indian, but I believe nine out of every ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth. The most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than the average Indian.” 

Clearly, Roosevelt had little regard for the original inhabitants of the United States. When he spoke on the United States military’s unprovoked slaughter of Cheyenne and Arapaho women and children at Sandy Creek, he proclaimed it was “as righteous and beneficial a deed as ever took place on the frontier.” In his book The Winning of the West, Roosevelt ridiculed any sort of sympathy for victims of indigenous genocide:

‘‘All men of sane and wholesome thought must dismiss with impatient contempt the plea that these continents should be reserved for the use of scattered savage tribes…The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages … American and Indian, Boer and Zulu, Cossack and Tartar, New Zealander and Maori — in each case the victor, horrible though many of his deeds are, has laid deep the foundations for the future greatness of a mighty people.” 

It is no surprise that Roosevelt was a staunch Zionist. His belief in white people’s inherent right to violently expropriate colored lands fits perfectly with the Zionist mission. Israel’s founders held no illusions over what was necessary to create their ethnostate: total elimination of the Arab population. David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, did not accuse Arab states of acting irrationally against the Zionist project. He knew the Zionist mission was directly at odds with Palestinian and Arab survival in the region: 

“Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country.”

While modern Zionists blame “far too many Palestinians… intent on massacring Jews” for resistance against Zionism, Ben-Gurion didn’t entertain this delusion: 

“If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but… [o]ur God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?”

Ben-Gurion’s own words shatter the lie that Israel-Palestine is “complicated.” It’s theft and genocide — plain and simple. And Zionists justify these crimes by dehumanizing the victims — much like Euro-American colonists dehumanized Native Americans. Zionism is thus undoubtedly a settler-colonial and racially supremacist ideology. We must reject it.

While corporate media continues to pump out tropes of the “Arab barbarian,” we cannot forget that all indigenous liberation movements throughout history have been smeared in the same fashion. For the moment, the establishment will smear those who stand with Palestine as antisemites and terrorist sympathizers. But history will remember us fondly, once the Zionist chapter is far behind us. 

Youhanna Haddad is a North American Marxist of the Arab diaspora. Through his writing, he seeks to combat the Western liberal dogmas that uphold racial capitalism.

The Mask Has Slipped. Don't Let Them Put It Back On.

By Harry Z

In December 1964, in a fiery speech to the United Nations, Che Guevara undressed the hypocrisy of those who were attempting (unsuccessfully) to overthrow the Cuban Revolution: 

‘Western civilization’ disguises behind its showy facade a picture of hyenas and jackals … it must be clearly established that the government of the United States is not the champion of freedom, but rather the perpetrator of exploitation and oppression of the peoples of the world, and of a large part of its own population.

James Baldwin echoed Che, just a few years later:

All of the Western nations have been caught in a lie, the lie of their pretended humanism; this means that their history has no moral justification, and that the West has no moral authority.

The zionist assault on Palestine has once again exposed the dark underbelly of the west’s so-called free and democratic values. Their cynical idealism melts into hypocrisy with each American-made missile that obliterates a Palestinian neighborhood.

This hypocrisy proclaims the importance of the press while massacring scores of Palestinian journalists; extolls sovereignty in Ukraine while arming settlers in Israel; opportunistically “defends” women's rights in Afghanistan while bombing schools and hospitals in Gaza; cynically vetoes ceasefire resolutions supported by the vast majority of the world while supporting those who openly proclaim their desire to erase the Palestinian people from history.

The same self-righteous liberals who dutifully cheer on wars of aggression, from Iraq to Grenada, under the pretense of ”defending democratic values” — the same Americans who celebrate the slavers and perpetrators of a genocide who fought the British in a “Revolutionary War” — these hypocrites chastise the Palestinian people for resisting extermination with a revolutionary counter-violence of their own.

In their surrealist calculus, mass theft of land, concentration camp conditions, kidnapping and torture of political dissidents — these are valid, state-sanctioned violences.

But to throw a rock at a tank, to kill a settler, to dare protect your own dignity and humanity with violence of your own — that is terrorism.

A Yemeni blockade in support of a people on the brink of extermination is an unacceptable violation of international law, a terroristic campaign — yet the decades-long, murderously cruel blockades imposed on Cuba and Gaza, against the will of nearly all nations on earth, are barely worth a mention.

In these moments of heightened political consciousness, the empire stands naked, cowed, on trial before the world’s watchful masses. The stubbornness of the resistance brings an anxious sweat to their brow, the weight of a thousand genocidal lies forces their head to bow, and once again the mask slips.

In June of 2020, the empire and its domestic foot soldiers, the police, were similarly unable to hide behind their usual pretenses. In the face of a mass uprising which threatened their very existence, the police could only respond by brutalizing, kidnapping and denigrating the very people they claim to “protect and serve.” For a brief moment, it was eminently clear to all pragmatic observers that the police were not acting out — they were fulfilling their function, as they always have, of protecting capitalist property and disciplining the poor and racialized populations who resist the quotidian (and spectacular) horrors of racial capitalism.

But while it burned bright, this moment of radical possibility was crushed, co-opted and liberalized almost immediately. Five months after George Floyd was lynched by the state, millions of the same people who flooded the streets in June took to the polls to vote for one of the chief architects of mass incarceration and the war on drugs. The revolutionary horizon of abolition, initially propelled by the justified rage of the Black masses, was sanitized and co-opted by liberal politicians, artists and opportunists. Corporate diversity seminars and police “reform” bills took center stage. In most places, police budgets increased after the uprising.

Similarly, in the 1960s and 1970s, the FBI and local police departments mobilized in a previously unheard of manner to infiltrate and sabotage Black and brown revolutionary organizations — and to kidnap, torture, harass, stalk and assassinate their leaders. It’s always telling which movements face the most severe state repression, for those are the movements which threaten the very foundations of empire. 

These organizations posed an existential threat — as Hoover famously wrote, “the Black Panther Party, without question, represents the greatest threat to internal security of the country” — not only because of their commitment to domestic revolutionary practice, but because they viewed their work as deeply interconnected with the global third world struggle against imperialism. They understood that the capitalist and colonial imperatives which cripple the dreams and life chances of poor, racialized communities in the United States are the same forces which maintain apartheid states like Israel. The violent techniques of repression and eviction we’ve witnessed in Sheikh Jarrah and in the West Bank settlements are the same forces (police and property) viciously gentrifying our cities. Palestinians and Black Americans are victims of the same fascist techniques of police brutality, torture and incarceration. It’s no accident that revolutionaries like George Jackson found inspiration and common cause with the Palestinian struggle.

To make these connections and to organize on their basis is to strike at the very foundations of empire. When the leaders of the Black power movement aligned themselves with the leaders of socialist anti-colonial struggles across the Americas, Africa and Asia, they marked themselves for destruction. Faced with this existential threat, the US police state did not hesitate to reveal its fascistic character.

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In both of these moments, the mask slipped. The state could not hide its true function as the violent organizing institution of racial capitalism.

But, due to a combination of factors, chiefly state repression and careful ideological maneuvering, the mask was re-made — often incorporating crass representation of the groups it sought to repress and shallow nods to the symbolism of the movements it had just ruthlessly crushed — and donned once more. Black power came to be more closely associated with Black capitalism than revolutionary political practice. Nixon invoked the specter of Black nationalism and communism to rally southern whites around his revanchist political project. As Fred Hampton’s blood stiffened in his mattress, the long arc of neoliberalism, white power and mass incarceration took its vengeance. 

Armed with this history, we confirm that the death cult of empire is irreconcilable with our dreams of a just world. Its lofty ideals are no more than a charade, its claims to world leadership as fragile as Henry Kissinger’s rotting skeleton. 

With every stone, bullet and improvised bomb that the Palestinians hurl back at the occupying forces, with every market in Gaza that defiantly opens in the brief moments of quiet, with every doctor that works in the dark, against impossible odds, bandaging and stitching and mending while the occupation closes in, with every child that draws breath, in defiance of the wishes of the most powerful armies on earth —

With their humanity, their naked, honest humanity, the Palestinian people confirm that they — not the blood-soaked bureaucrats in Washington, nor the shameless journalists at the oh-so-revered New York Times, nor the murderous foot soldiers of global capitalism at NATO — are the true humanists, the real “leaders of the free world.” 

In Gaza, the empire faces its gravediggers.

And in each act of the resistance, a new world is born, kicking and screaming, fragile yet determined, beyond doubt, to survive. We don’t know what shape this world will take, or when it will mature, but we know that it will not emerge from Washington, London or Tel Aviv. Our new world will be nursed at a thousand sites of resistance, fed with the fruits of our labor which once swoll the bellies of our blood-sucking bosses, raised by freedom fighters in every corner of the world.

We owe it to the struggling masses of Palestine, of the Congo, of those in a thousand sites of resistance to the long tentacles of the US empire — and we owe it ourselves, to our domestic struggles for liberation — to never let those hyenas and jackals hide behind their false humanism again.

Before the forces of liberalism capture this moment, we must concretize our ideology, and hammer home that there is no reforming this beast which we are uniquely positioned to destroy. There is no humanistic mission to the US empire. There are no “mistakes” as we so often call our genocidal ventures into Vietnam or Iraq. 

To paraphrase the great Du Bois: This is not the United States gone mad; this is not aberration nor insanity; this is the United States; this is the real soul of empire — naked, drenched in blood, built by blood money; honest, for once.

The empire’s actions in Gaza are not tragedies or missteps but rather the predictable and historically consistent behavior of empire, from Wounded Knee to Jakarta, from My Lai to Attica — and with a Democratic president and “socialist” legislators in virtual lockstep with Israel’s genocide, we would be remarkably naive to pretend that the institutions of empire possess any capacity for reform. 

As just one example: we cannot return to a world in which The New York Times is regarded as the unbiased paper of record. The zionist mythology is nurtured and legitimized in their pages: the colonizer morphed into the victim, the colonized morphed into, at best, a historyless people, and at worst, a nation of terrorists. The ongoing Nakba — that ethnic cleansing by the Zionists, that cataclysm for the Palestinian people — erased from history, replaced with a collective amnesia about the violent foundations and maintenance of the Israeli state. And it doesn’t stop there:

From Korea and Guatemala in the 1950s, to Vietnam and Indonesia in the 60s, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile and Grenada in the 70s and 80s, Iraq, Afghanistan and the former USSR in the 90s and 2000s, Libya and Yemen in the 2010s — that deified rag has consistently ginned up support for US aggression and justified the tremendous violence we inflict on the rest of the world — crusade-like, in the name of anti-communism, democracy, human rights, “American interests” or whatever smoke screen our leaders and their loyal accomplices in the press concoct to distract us from the violence’s true function: the disciplining arm of global imperialism, the massacres, rivers of blood, tortures, loyally installed fascist dictators, carefully trained death squads, psychological warfare and sexual violence which puts anti-colonial, anti-capitalist movements to the sword for daring to challenge the profits and hegemony of Western multinational corporations.

These understandings have serious tactical implications. Our tactics must not, cannot stop with politicking and marches. As we have learned — including through the example of the Yemeni blockade — the cold heart of capitalist empire responds only to organized, frontal attacks on its economic organs and central nervous system. 

We cannot shame empire into a humanism it has never and will never possess. We cannot appeal to the conscience of a state which has none.

But we are uniquely positioned to strike at the soft underbelly of the beast. Israeli bombs, guns and tanks are designed by American engineers, who are trained in our schools and universities. These weapons are built by American workers, with American tax dollars, shipped through American ports and accrue huge profits to American capitalists. America’s vampiric financial institutions — Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street, namely — provide the blood money which fuels the US-Israeli war machine. It goes without saying that the Israeli Occupation Forces maintain bone-deep ties to both local American police forces and national intelligence agencies.. If we aren’t positioned to resist the American transnational war machine, who is? Our capacity to resist is a question of will, not opportunity.

And if we are to resist, if we are to truly call ourselves anti-imperialists, freedom fighters, workers and tenants and students in solidarity with the peoples of the third world — whatever our lofty aspirations may be — that must mean, we must accept, that we are not working to reform empire — we are at war with it.

The United States, as we know it, must die for the world to live.

Charter Schools Will Desert and Violate Thousands In 2024

By Shawgi Tell

Privately-operated charter schools have been around for 32 years. They fail and close every week, abandoning and harming hundreds of parents, students, teachers, education support staff, and principals. Neoliberals cynically call this “free-market accountability.”

These closures, moreover, are often sudden and abrupt, revealing deep problems and instability in the charter-school sector. Parents, students, teachers, education support staff, and principals often report being blindsided by such closures and how they have to anxiously scramble to find new schools for students.

Officially, 2,315 charter schools failed and closed between 2010-11 and 2021-22 alone (an 11-year period). On average, that is 210 privately-operated charter school failures and closures per year, or four charter school failures and closures per week. The real number is likely higher. Over the course of 30+ years more than 4,000 privately-operated charter schools have failed and closed. That is a high number given the fact that there are under 8,000 privately-operated charter schools in the country today.

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The top four reasons privately-operated charter schools fail and close every week include low enrollment, poor academic performance, financial malfeasance, and mismanagement. Thus, for example, every week the mainstream media is filled with articles on fraud, corruption, nepotism, and embezzlement in the charter school sector. Not surprisingly, arrests and indictments of charter school employees, trustees, and owners are common.

While fraud, corruption, nepotism, embezzlement, and scandal pervade many institutions, sectors, and spheres in America, such problems are more common and intense in the charter-school sector.

Despite all this, a dishonest neoliberal narrative keeps insisting that these privately-operated schools are superior to the public schools that have been defunded and demonized by neoliberals for more than 40 years. The public is constantly under top-down pressure to ignore or trivialize persistent charter school failures and problems.

In this context, the public should reject relentless neoliberal disinformation that public schools are a commodity or some sort of “free market” phenomenon. It should discard the idea that parents and students are consumers who should fend-for-themselves while “shopping” for a school. The law of the jungle has no place in a modern society. Such a ruthless survival-of-the-fittest approach to individuals, education, and society is outmoded, guarantees winners and losers, perpetuates inequality, and increases stress for everyone.

The public should defend the principle that education in a modern society is a social human responsibility and a basic human right, not a commodity or consumer good that people have to compete for. A companion principle is that public funds belong only to public schools governed by a public authority worthy of the name.

Charter schools are not public schools. They are privatized education arrangements, which means that they should not have access to any public funds that belong to public schools. Public funds should not be funneled to private interests. School privatization violates the right to education.

Currently, about 3.7 million students are enrolled in roughly 7,800 privately-operated charter schools across the country. The U.S. public education system, on the other hand, has been around for more than 150 years and educates about 45 million students in nearly 100,000 schools.

Shawgi Tell, PhD, is author of the book “Charter School Report Card.” His main research interests include charter schools, neoliberal education policy, privatization and political economy. He can be reached at stell5@naz.edu.

Muddled Interventions: Haiti, the UN, and Resolution 2699

By Binoy Kampmark

A country broken by constant foreign interventions, its tyrannical regimes propped up by the back brace of the United States (when it wasn’t intervening to adjust it), marred by appalling natural disasters, tells a sad tale of the crippled Haitian state. Haiti’s political existence is the stuff and stuffing of pornographic violence, the crutch upon which moralists can always point to as the end — doom and despair that needs change. Every conundrum needs its intrusive deliverer, even though that deliverer is bound to make things worse.

Lately, those stale themes have now percolated through the corridors of the United Nations to renewed interest. The staleness is evident in the menu: servings of failed state canapes; vicious, murderous, raping, pillaging gangs as the mains; collapse of civic institutions as the dessert. It’s the sort of menu to rile and aggravate any mission or charity. 

Since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021, the constant theme in reporting from Haiti is that of rampant, freely operating gangs. Sophie Hills, a staff writer for The Christian Science Monitor, offered this description last October:

“Armed gangs have immobilized the capital, Port-au-Prince, shutting down the already troubled economy and creating fear among citizens to even walk the streets.”

October 23rd, 2023, the United Nations special envoy to Haiti, María Isabel Salvador, reported to the Security Council that the situation had continued “to deteriorate as growing gang violence plunge[s] the lives of the people of Haiti into disarray and major crimes are rising sharply to new record highs.” These included killings and sexual violence — the latter marked by instances of rape and mutilation.  

To further complexify the situation, vigilante groups such as the “Bwa Kale” movement have responded with lynchings (395 alleged gang members are said to have perished in that gruesome way between April 24th and September 30th).  

Moïse’s opportunistic replacement, Ariel Henry, has served as acting prime minister, persistently calling for foreign intervention to right the worn vessel he is steering into a sunset oblivion. The last presidential election was in 2016, but Henry has opted not to schedule another, preferring the bureaucratic formula of a High Transition Council (HTC) tasked with eventually achieving that goal. When the announcement establishing the body was made in February, Henry loftily claimed that this was “the beginning of the end of dysfunction in our democratic institutions.” 

That rhetoric has not translated into credible change on the ground. The contempt for the HTC was when gang members posing as cops kidnapped its Secretary General.

In September, Henry addressed the United Nations hoping to add some mettle to the Haitian National Police, urging the Security Council to adopt measures under Chapter VII of the UN Charter to “authorize the deployment of a multinational support mission to underpin the security of Haiti.”

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The measure can be read as a stalling measure to keep Henry and his Haitian Tèt Kale Party (PHTK) ensconced by using an external intervention to shore up a shaky regime. This is certainly the view of the National Haitian-American Elected Officials Network (NHAEON) and the Family Action Network Movement (FANM). In their September letter to President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the organizations warned that “[a]ny military intervention supporting Haiti’s corrupt, repressive, unelected regime will likely exacerbate the current political crisis to a catastrophic one.” The move would “further entrench the regime, deepening Haiti’s political crisis while generating significant civilian casualties and migration pressure.” 

In its eternal wisdom, the United Nations Security Council felt that an intervention force consisting of Kenyan police, supplemented by assistance from other states, would be required for this mission. Resolution 2699, establishing a Multinational Security Support Mission led by Kenya, received a vote of 13 in favor, with Russia and China abstaining, citing traditional concerns about Chapter VII’s scope in permitting the use of force. “In previous practices,” remarked Zhang Jun, China’s permanent representative to the United Nations, “there have been precedents of abusing Chapter VII authorization.”

Resolution 2699 would entail a co-deployment with Haitian personnel who have melted before the marauding gangs. Thus, in the words of Mark Twain, history continues to rhyme (the US occupation, 1915–1934 and the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti [MINUSTAH] from 2004–2017).  

Armed gangs feature as a demonic presence in United Nations deliberations, regularly paired with such opaque terms as “a multidimensional crisis.” It is telling that the cliché reasons for that crisis never focus on how the gang phenomenon took root — not least those mouldering state institutions that have failed to protect the populace. Little wonder then that the Russian representative Vassily Nebenzia felt sending in armed elements was “an extreme measure” that unnecessarily invoked the provisions of Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations.

Undeterred by such views, the United States representative Jeffrey Delaurentis noted that the mission would require the “inclusion of dedicated expertise in anti-gang operations, community-oriented policing, and children and women’s protection.” That Washington approved the measure can be put down to endorsing a policy which might discourage — if only in the short term — the arrival of Haitian asylum seekers which have been turned away en masse.  

Despite claiming a different tack from his predecessor in approaching the troubled Caribbean state, President Biden has sought to restrict the influx of Haitian applications using, for instance, Title 42 — a Trump policy put in place to deport individuals who pose a COVID risk, despite any asylum credentials they might have. Within 12 months, the Biden administration expelled more than 20,000 Haitians — or as many as the past three presidents combined.

Resolution 2699 also suffers from another glaring flaw. Kenya’s dominant contribution to the exercise has raised searching questions back home. Opposition politician Ekuru Aukot, himself a lawyer who had aided in drafting Kenya’s revised 2010 constitution, saw no legal basis for the government to authorize the Haitian deployment. In his view, the deployment was unconstitutional, lacking any legal backbone.  

In granting Aukot an interim injunction, this point was considered by the Nairobi High Court worthy of resolution. Judge Enock Mwita was “satisfied that the application and petition raise[d] substantial issues of national importance and public interest and require[d] urgent consideration.” The judge accordingly issued a conservatory order “restraining the respondents from deploying police officers to Haiti or any other country until 24th October 2023.”  

On October 24th, Judge Mwita extended the duration of the interim order until November 9th, when an open session is scheduled for the petition to be argued. “This court became seized of this matter earlier than everyone else and it would not make sense for it to set aside or allow the interim orders to lapse.” The whole operation risks being scuttled even before it sets sail.  

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. You can email him at bkampmark@gmail.com.

It's Not a Hamas-Israeli Conflict: It's an Israeli War Against Every Palestinian

By Ramzy Baroud

Republished from MintPress News.

At one time, the ‘Arab-Israeli Conflict’ was Arab and Israeli. Over many years, however, it was rebranded. The media is now telling us it is a ‘Hamas-Israeli conflict.’

But what went wrong? Israel simply became too powerful.

The supposedly astounding Israeli victories over the years against Arab armies have emboldened Israel to the extent that it came to view itself not as a regional superpower but as a global power. Israel, per its own definition, became ‘invincible.’

Such terminology was not a mere scare tactic aimed at breaking the spirit of Palestinians and Arabs alike. Israel believed this.

The ‘Israeli miracle victory’ against Arab armies in 1967 was a watershed moment. Then, Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Abba Eban, declared in a speech that “from the podium of the UN, I proclaimed the glorious triumph of the IDF and the redemption of Jerusalem.”

In his thinking, this could only mean one thing: “Never before has Israel stood more honored and revered by the nations of the world.”

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The sentiment in Eban’s words echoed throughout Israel. Even those who doubted their government’s ability to prevail over the Arabs completely joined the chorus: Israel is unvanquishable.

Little rational discussion took place back then about the actual reasons why Israel had won and if that victory would have been possible without Washington’s complete backing and the West’s willingness to support Israel at any cost.

Israel was never a graceful winner. As the size of territories controlled by the triumphant little state increased three-fold, Israel began entrenching its military occupation over whatever remained of historic Palestine. It even started building settlements in newly occupied Arab territories, in Sinai, the Golan Heights and all the rest.

Fifty years ago, in October 1973, Arab armies attempted to reverse Israel’s massive gains by launching a surprise attack. They initially succeeded, then failed when the US moved quickly to bolster Israeli defenses and intelligence.

It was not a complete victory for the Arabs, nor a total defeat for Israel. The latter was severely bruised, though. But Tel Aviv remained convinced that the fundamental relationship it had established with the Arabs in 1967 had not been altered.

And, with time, the ‘conflict’ became less Arab-Israeli and more Palestinian-Israeli. Other Arab countries, like Lebanon, paid a heavy price for the fragmentation of the Arab front.

This changing reality meant that Israel could invade South Lebanon in March 1978 and then sign the Camp David Peace Accords with Egypt six months later.

While the Israeli occupation of Palestine grew more violent, with an insatiable appetite for more land, the West turned the Palestinian struggle for freedom into a ‘conflict’ to be managed by words, never by deeds.

Many Palestinian intellectuals argue that “this is not a conflict” and that military occupation is not a political dispute but governed by clearly defined international laws and boundaries. And that it must be resolved according to international justice.

That is yet to happen. Neither was justice delivered nor an inch of Palestine retrieved, despite the countless international conferences, resolutions, statements, investigations, recommendations, and special reports. Without actual enforcement, international law is mere ink.

But did the Arab people abandon Palestine? The anger, the anguish, and the passionate chants by endless streams of people who took to the streets throughout the Middle East to protest the annihilation of Gaza by the Israeli army did not seem to think that Palestine is alone–or, at least, should be left fighting on its own.

The isolation of Palestine from its regional context has proven disastrous.

When the ‘conflict’ is only with the Palestinians, Israel determines the context and scope of the so-called conflict, what is allowed at the ‘negotiations table,’ and what is to be excluded. This is how the Oslo Accords squandered Palestinian rights.

The more Israel succeeds in isolating Palestinians from their regional environs, the more it invests in their division.

It is even more dangerous when the conflict becomes between Hamas and Israel. The outcome is a whole different conversation that is superimposed on the truly urgent understanding of what is taking place in Gaza, in the whole of Palestine at the moment.

In Israel’s version of events, the war began on October 7, when Hamas fighters attacked Israeli military bases, settlements, and towns in the south of Israel.

No other date or event before the Hamas attack seems to matter to Israel, the West and corporate media covering the war with so much concern for the plight of Israelis and complete disregard for the Gaza inferno.

No other context is allowed to spoil the perfect Israeli narrative of ISIS-like Palestinians disturbing the peace and tranquility of Israel and its people.

Palestinian voices that insist on discussing the Gaza war within proper historical contexts–the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948, the occupation of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, the siege on Gaza in 2007, all the bloody wars before and after–are denied platforms.

The pro-Israel media simply does not want to listen. Even if Israel did not make unfounded claims about decapitated babies, the media would have remained committed to the Israeli narrative, anyway.

Yet, suppose Israel continues to define the narratives of war, historical contexts of ‘conflicts,’ and the political discourses that shape the West’s view of Palestine and the Middle East. In that case, it will continue to obtain all the blank checks necessary to remain committed to its military occupation of Palestine.

In turn, this will fuel yet more conflicts, more wars and more deception regarding the roots of the violence.

For this vicious cycle to break, Palestine must, once more, become an issue that concerns all Arabs, the whole region. The Israeli narrative must be countered, western bias confronted, and a new, collective strategy formed.

In other words, Palestine cannot be left alone anymore.