The Leninist Theory of Imperialism and Misconceptions of the "Imperialist Pyramid" Theory

[Photo: Paolo Gasparini/PHotoESPAÑA Press]

By Gabriel Gonçalves Martinez

Currently, one of the great debates going on within the international communist movement is the debate about how to characterize contemporary imperialism . In order to have a correct understanding of the subject, it is necessary that we demarcate the field with “leftist” and rightist interpretations that, unfortunately, enjoy a certain popularity. Having a correct understanding of what contemporary imperialism is will help us to fight US imperialism, the main enemy of the people, more correctly. In this article, in addition to presenting in general terms the central elements of the Leninist theory of imperialism, I will also present a brief critique of the conceptions that are being developed by the Communist Party of Greece about the existence of a call “imperialist pyramid”. This article is a modified and expanded version of an article originally written in 2014 and published in the Brazilian marxist magazine Nova Cultura.

Imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism

The Leninist theory of imperialism, distorted by revisionists of the most varied shades, constitutes a great contribution by Vladimir Ilich Lenin to the development of scientific socialism. The main work in which the Russian revolutionary addresses the problem is the book Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism. Making extensive use of general data provided by bourgeois statistics and statements by bourgeois intellectuals from the main capitalist countries, Lenin presents an “overall picture” of the capitalist world economy on the eve of the first world war. In this book, Lenin demonstrates how the world conflict of 1914-1918 was an imperialist war, which would be the wars of conquest, plunder and robbery. A “ warfor the partition of the world, for the division and redistribution of colonies, of the “spheres of influence of financial capital, etc”.

According to Lenin, capitalism has become a universal system of colonial subjugation and financial strangulation of the immense majority of the planet's population by a handful of 'advanced' countries. The world is shared by “ three rapacious powers, armed to the teeth”, which at the time would be the United States, England and Japan. This movement on the part of these three imperialist powers would drag the entire planet into their war for the sharing of their loot. In economic terms, the old competitive phase of capitalism gave way to monopoly. The growth of industry and the concentration of production become one of the most characteristic features of capitalism. Big monopoly capital exercises its dominion in the economic, political and ideological spheres. The concentration of capital rises to a gigantic level, giving rise to monopolies. Imperialism is seen by Lenin as the “last stage of capitalism”; it is dying, decaying capitalism and the threshold of the socialist revolution.

In Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, Lenin determines the main economic traits of imperialism. They are: 1st ) Concentration of production and capital reach such a high level that they give rise to monopolies, which play a decisive role in economic life. 2nd ) The fusion of banking and industrial capital gives rise to finance capital and the financial oligarchy. 3 ) The export of capital, unlike the export of goods, acquires special importance. 4th) International monopoly groups are formed that divide up the world among themselves. 5th ) It culminates the process of territorial distribution of the world among the capitalist powers.

Contrary to what some theorists said, imperialism is not a system apart from capitalism, but preserves all the foundations of such a regime. The general bases of the capitalist economy continue to exist. The means of production belong to a handful of capitalists, and the working masses continue to be exploited and oppressed. Profit is still the main objective of the capitalists and the anarchy of production continues to exist under the influence of spontaneous economic laws. The law of surplus value continues to operate under imperialism. As the title of the Lenin’s book in question suggests, imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism. Lenin also characterizes imperialism as parasitic capitalism or decaying capitalism. In imperialism, where the monopolies that pursue high monopoly profits dominate, there is a tendency towards the stagnation and decay of capitalism. Monopolies are no longer interested in the application of technical innovations in production, keeping important scientific discoveries secret by controlling the patents of such inventions. Even though this is a tendency of imperialism, it does not mean that in certain periods and sectors of the economy there is no type of development and growth of technology. Thus, in imperialism two opposite tendencies inevitably prevail: the tendency towards the growth of production and technical progress and the tendency towards the putrefaction of the economy and the containment of technical progress. According to Lenin: “ It would be a mistake to think that this tendency to putrefaction precludes the rapid growth of imperialism; in certain branches of industry, certain strata of the bourgeoisie, certain countries manifest, in the epoch of imperialism, with greater or lesser force, now one, now another, of these tendencies ”. Under imperialism, the development of technique and capitalist production proceed in an uneven and contradictory manner, causing an ever greater delay in relation to the possibilities generated by modern science. A clear militarist orientation develops in the imperialist states.

Parasitism, rentiers and militarism

In imperialism, capitalism acquires a clear parasitic character . Parasitism is one of the greatest expressions of the decomposition of the capitalist system. Under imperialism, capitalists increasingly lose ties with the production process. The vast majority of the bourgeoisie and landowners become rentiers, who are nothing more than capitalists who live off the income generated by share securities. The growth of parasitic consumption by the exploiting classes grows exponentially. The export of capital becomes an ever-increasing part of the national wealth of imperialist countries and of the profits made by the ruling classes. In the imperialist phase, the bourgeois countries become rentier states, which, through leonine loans, extort the enormous income of the debtor countries, which end up submitting themselves economically and politically to the imperialist countries. The exploitation of dominated and dependent countries is one of the main sources of obtaining high monopoly profit. A handful of capitalist countries parasitize the bodies of oppressed peoples.

Imperialist countries allocate an ever increasing part of their national income to support huge armies whose objective is to conduct imperialist wars. Militarism is a clear expression of the parasitic nature of capitalism. Imperialist wars are one of the main means that imperialist countries use to continue maintaining their high monopoly profits. The exponential growth of gigantic masses of men, who separate themselves from socially useful work to engage in the service of the exploiting classes, in the state apparatus and in the inflated sphere of circulation, is also a great demonstration of the parasitism. In imperialist countries, the dominant classes use the profits obtained by exploiting dependent countries, they systematically use bribery and the payment of high wages to corrupt a small layer of workers, qualified workers, giving rise to a bourgeoisie working aristocracy, the support base of opportunism within the working- class movement.

The division of the world in the age of imperialism

We cannot understand the Leninist theory of imperialism without understanding that at this stage of development, the world inevitably divides into a handful of oppressive nations and the vast majority of nations remain under the reins of dependence on these oppressors imperialist countries. Lenin asserted that imperialism meant the overcoming, by capital, of the milestones of national States, as well as an expansion and aggravation of the national yoke on a new historical basis. It is true that the Great October Socialist Revolution spurred a huge wave of anti-colonial struggle. Under the influence of the October ideas, millions of men and women in the dominated countries rose up to overthrow imperialist oppression. This bloody struggle for the freedom of the popular masses culminated in the emergence of popular democratic regimes in Eastern Europe and Asia , which later moved towards socialism, the Chinese Revolution being the most emblematic case. The disintegration of the colonial system also occurs and several national liberation movements, especially in Africa, had a Marxist -Leninist orientation.

Even with the end of the colonial system and the advance of the anti-imperialist struggle, at no time did the dominant capitalist countries stop attacking the people. They used all possible means in order to defeat the socialist countries, promoting the counterrevolution. Finally, they achieved an enormous victory with the dissolution of the USSR and the disappearance of the socialist regimes in Eastern Europe, which were eroded and destroyed thanks to the sabotage activity carried out by the revisionists who led the communist parties of such countries. The world would enter a new period of imperialist struggle for the partition of the world. The African countries that had gained independence fell into the clutches of neocolonialism and imperialism also intensified its offensive against Latin America and even against Russia after the dissolution of the USSR.

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It is good to remember that the countries of Latin America, with the honorable exception of Cuba, never obtained genuine national independence, even though they were no longer colonies, as was the case of African countries. After the emergence of imperialism, Latin American countries were subjected to the domination of imperialist monopolies and lost their precarious national independence. The dominance of imperialism deformed the development of dependent countries, making the emergence of an “autonomous capitalism ” unfeasible. For example, American imperialism, from 1930 onwards, intensifies its action in Brazil; it came to control – and still controls today – the main branches of the country's economy . Even if there are still some sectors that are free from its total control, given the reactionary and pro - imperialist character of the State and the ruling classes, as well as the influence of neoliberalism, little by little, such sectors being definitively controlled by the imperialist monopolies. In general terms, even though the country has recently experienced government experiences that tried to break with this trend, Brazil continues to be a dependent country.

Some misconceptions about imperialism

There is a very popular misconception about imperialism, which identifies it as something different from capitalism. Imperialism would be a “new” system that distorts the foundations of “ true capitalism”, putting the economy at the service of banks and businessmen and promoting wars. It is true that these are also characteristics of imperialism, but we can by no means claim that imperialism is something different from capitalism. All the disastrous phenomena that manifest themselves in our days and give rise to economic crises, wars, etc., are consequences of the very development of the capitalist system. The forces that defend such conceptions generally tend to deceive people by boasting about the possibility of building a “humanized capitalism” or a “ popular capitalism”. At the present time, a party that represents this trend is the Podemos of Spain and Syriza in Greece. In Brazil, there are also leftist political forces that defend similar concepts, among them, the ruling tendencies of the Workers Party of Brazil (PT) and the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL).

On the opposite side, there are those misconceptions that refuse to recognize that the main representative of imperialism in our time is US imperialism. I will use more space in the text to address this type of deviation. The parties that defend this conception argue that imperialism is a world system – an assertion that is not wrong – but reach the conclusion that all countries are imperialist, since they form part of the “imperialist pyramid”. The world chain of imperialism, which inevitably engenders the existence of oppressive and oppressed nations, is interpreted as just an opposition between “ strong capitalisms ” and “weak capitalisms”. Among those who defend such a conception are the comrades of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE). The KKE is a party with combative revolutionary traditions, which even after the counterrevolution that overthrew the socialist countries, continued to affirm Marxism-Leninism. It is one of the largest Communist Parties in Europe and one of the only European communist organizations that play a prominent role in the country in which it operates. While not the only communist and Marxist-Leninist organization in Greece, it is certainly the largest and most significant.

Let us take as a starting point for our analysis the text The KKE's Leninist Approach to Imperialism and the Imperialist Pyramid , published originally on the official website of the party, written by the International Relations Section of the Central Committee of the KKE. The KKE criticizes the mistaken use of the term “imperialism” by some right-wing opportunist organizations of European social democracy. KKE draw attention to the ability of these social-democratic parties to feed illusions among workers and other groups of the popular masses. When we make an objective analysis of the theses and conceptions of the European social-democratic parties of their most different tendencies - and here we also include parties and groups that emerged in a more recent period, initially promoting a discourse "anti-capitalist ” and “ anti-neoliberal” - we cannot but agree with certain aspects of the KKE theses. The big problem is that, despite making a more or less correct diagnosis of the erroneous nature of the positions of these parties, the conclusions reached by the Greek communists are also wrong. For the KKE, opportunism, by repeating outdated positions, “identifies imperialism as military aggression against another country, with the policy of military interventions, blockades, with the effort to revive the old colonial policy”. It is true that reducing imperialism to these positions is something too one-sided, which can engender certain misunderstandings. However, the KKE's criticism is extremely superficial, since the party forgets to point out that the opposite is also true, that is, failing to recognize that wars of aggression are intrinsic to the imperialism is also an opportunistic and dangerous position. To briefly illustrate, the KKE criticizes opportunist parties that consider Germany a danger, while labeling the Obama administration as “progressive ”. The KKE, at first, is not wrong to criticize parties that think in this way. The problem is that from this position, the KKE seems to set aside and completely abandon the problem of the existence of imperialist control by Germany in other European countries, underestimating the problem of the intensification of imperialist control about various countries , including Greece itself. Here, it is natural that the attacks of the Greek communists are aimed at the new social democracy, represented by the petty-bourgeois party, Syriza. According to KKE:

“The troika of representatives of the EU, ECB and IMF, which oversees and determines the management of internal and external debt and fiscal deficits, is seen as the main enemy, in addition to Germany itself (…) They accuse the country's bourgeois class and governing parties of being traitors, unpatriotic, subordinate and subservient to Germany, creditors and bankers. Of course, now that SYRIZA, as the new social-democratic force, has taken over the government, there is no problem in negotiating with the troika, Germany and signing new anti-people agreements.”

The problem with the above conception is not that it condemns SYRIZA 's social democracy, but rather the arguments used to condemn the reformist organization. Now, it is clear that the troika (European Commission , ECB and IMF) supervises and determines debt management. It is also evident that the Greek big bourgeoisie, allied with imperialism, as well as its parties, are traitors, not patriots and subservient to Germany, creditors and bankers. Although Germany itself is an imperialist country in a subordinate position to the United States, in the European context it is not entirely wrong to emphasize the critique of the role played by German imperialism within the European Union, although it is necessary to point out that US imperialism is the leader of the imperialist coalition that dominates not only Europe, but the entire world. Communists, by making this kind of agitation, can present themselves to the popular masses of their own countries as the true defenders of independence and national sovereignty. It is worth remembering that the consequent forces of the International Communist Movement have long recognized that the bourgeoisie has thrown away the banner of independence and national sovereignty. Stalin spoke about this in his famous speech to the XIX Congress of the CPSU already in the distant year of 1952:

“Before, the bourgeoisie believed itself to be the leader of nations , whose rights and independence it defended and placed “ above all ” . Today not even a trace of this “ national principle ” remains : the bourgeoisie sells the rights and independence of nations for dollars . The banner of independence and national sovereignty was thrown away. There is no doubt that it is up to you , representatives of the communist and democratic parties , to collect it and carry it forward, if you want to appear as the patriots of your countries and make become the leading force of nations . There is nobody else who can do it.”

By not finding necessary mediations - and there the national question could be an important vector in this direction - that put the seizure of political power by the working class and the consequent construction of socialism, the KKE ends up transforming the problem of the struggle for socialism into something merely abstract.Therefore, we can conclude that denying the national question will not help the KKE to fight the opportunist parties. It is not because the revisionists manipulate around this concept that it is necessarily wrong. In countries that suffer more intensely from the pressure of imperialism, the national question is something totally present, being an important flag to be raised by the party of the proletariat .

SYRIZA's problem is not in acknowledging these concepts – formal recognition, by the way – but in accepting to be a mere administrator of the bourgeois order, which in Greek conditions, inevitably, will be an order built so that things are exactly the way they are today, that is, so that imperialism continues to exercise its control and domination. As a petty-bourgeois force, SYRIZA does not make any criticism of the Greek bourgeois state and sowed the illusion that it would be possible to break with the condition of dependence on Greece by electoral and orderly means, respecting the norms of the European Union, without a true democratic and popular revolution led by the Greek proletariat together with its fundamental allies. For SYRIZA, it would be enough to reach the management of the bourgeois state for things to be straightened out. Unfortunately, things are not as simple as these incorrigible reformists think. Such are the correct criticisms that must be made of SYRIZA.

The KKE continues its analysis by talking about the forces that “arbitrily” use the correct Leninist thesis that in imperialism a small number of States plunder a large majority of States throughout the world. According to the Greek communists, this “arbitrary” (actually this is a Leninist definition) interpretation would make such forces identify imperialism as a reduced number of countries, while all others are subordinate, oppressed, colonies , etc. In fact, the recognition of this correct Leninist thesis has as a consequence the identification of imperialism as a world system where there are oppressor, dominant countries and dependent countries. The number of dependent and imperialist countries may change according to the development of the class struggle on a world level, but fundamentally this is exactly how things look. The countries that are “victims of powerful capitalist states ” (terms used by the KKE in it’s article) are precisely the dependent countries, while the countries that are not victims of these states these are the countries that managed to sustain some kind of sovereign position.

The Greek communists continue their article arguing that the opportunist forces present Brazil and Argentina as countries that are a positive example for overcoming the crisis. Now, any study of the general state of the economy of these countries, mainly Brazil, would easily verify that both are countries dependent on imperialism. If the opportunists, in Greece or elsewhere, use them as an example, it only demonstrates that they propose to their peoples the continuation of imperialist domination. Once again, the KKE make a mistake in the arguments used to criticize the opportunist forces. The KKE could very well point to this fundamental error of the opportunists, while demonstrating its solidarity with the people of these two Latin American nations that have suffered under imperialist rule for years .

In the same way as the right-wing opportunists of social democracy and revisionist parties, the KKE also believes that the countries of Latin America are countries that have already overcome their condition of dependence on imperialism, however, contrary to what the revisionist and social-democratic parties preach, for the Greek communists these nations would have already reached the stage of imperialist development. The KKE even puts regional economic blocs such as UNASUR, ALBA and the European Union in the same boat, even though it recognizes that the capitalist countries that form the latter are “stronger” . 

It is common knowledge that, from the mid- 1990s onwards, with the election of Hugo Chávez as president of Venezuela, several countries in Latin America began to elect leaders of nationalist and leftist parties and organizations, in a political and social phenomenon that developed as a result of various anti -neoliberal struggles that were being conducted on the continent. Countries like Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua , etc., also started to have governments that, in levels of radicalism and different transformations, expressed in a contradictory way the demands progressives of the popular masses of the region. The KKE, by denouncing the social-democratic and reformist character of many political forces that direct these transformations, loses its hand and starts to condemn en bloc the whole movement of an objectively transforming and progressive character that followed and still follows the struggles that are waged by different types of left organizations in Latin America, in their different levels of depth and radicalism. More than that, for the KKE, the Latin American countries, by reinforcing initiatives of mutual coordination, would be shaping a new imperialist economic bloc, so that it would be wrong for the communists to try to dispute and influence the course of progressive transformations initiated by nationalist and left-wing governments (even if we are still talking about a bourgeois left). 

To justify such a position, the KKE put forward its concept of “imperialist pyramid”. The conception of the “ imperialist pyramid ” , as it is presented by the KKE, is a anti-leninist and false conception, which is in contradiction with Leninism. As already stated, it denies the fundamental fact that in the world chain of imperialism there are oppressor nations and oppressed nations, as well as in practice it ends up generalizing all countries as imperialists (since they are part of of the world system of imperialism) sustaining that the contradictions would only be between the “strong and weak ” capitalist States. The KKE asserts that the strong capitalist countries divided not only the colonies, but also the non-colonized countries, hiding the fundamental fact that, from the moment these countries were divided among the strong capitalist countries (imperialist countries) they also became dependent nations. And it is precisely because they are deeply dependent, oppressed countries that their capitalism is “ weak ” compared to the capitalism of imperialist countries; not to mention that the overwhelming majority of dependent countries , especially in Latin America, Africa and Asia, still coexist with strong remnants of modes of production prior to capitalism.

Lenin stated, under imperialism the division of nations into oppressors and oppressed is inevitable.This is one of the characteristics of contemporary imperialism, although after the disintegration of the imperialist colonial system, this division has acquired new contours and configurations derived from the disintegration of the old colonial system and the emergence of the neocolonial type of domination. Evidently, since the time when Lenin formulated his theses on imperialism, this system has undergone important transformations. Obviously, such changes and transformations, far from denying and being a counterpoint to the positions developed by Lenin, actually confirm and deepen several of the trends and characteristics presented in his time by the great leader of the October Revolution. However, it would be completely wrong to recognize that the imperialist system has no undergone transformations. One of the most evident transformations is that, especially after the end of the Second World War, the previous situation marked by the parallel coexistence of several imperialist countries (USA, Japan, Germany, etc. .), was replaced by the sole hegemonic dominance of the United States as the lead country of the imperialist coalition. Countries like Germany, Japan and England, at the end of the Second World War, left fragile positions thanks to the blows that their economies suffered due to the consequences of the international conflict. The United States, on the other hand, rises by taking advantage of the fragility of its former adversaries, placing them under its tutelage through the reconfiguration of the imperialist exploitation system. Such a system is based on US financial control through the imposition of the dollar as the main reference currency in the capitalist world and the creation of a military bloc controlled by US imperialism. The KKE, stuck in the situation prevailing in the period prior to the outbreak of the First World War, is incapable of seeing such changes, oscillating, at the same time, in a merely formal defense of Lenin's reading of that time, with the misrepresentation of the essential and basic characteristics of imperialism presented by him.

Finally, we know that phenomena in the world advance and are constantly changing. A country, which is independent today, may tomorrow become a country oppressed by imperialism, just as a country oppressed by imperialism, when carrying out its anti -imperialist national democratic revolution, it can become an independent country and even move towards socialism. The KKE make a serious mistake by adopting certain views which that are diametrically opposed to the imperialist theory of Leninism.

Resistance is Ugly: Palestine, Israel, and the Nature of Struggle

By RJ Park

October seventh, for Israel, marked a point of no return. After demonstrations by their own civilians against the country’s lack of commitment to democracy, they have now been faced with the other side of their oppressive regime. Perhaps in an attempt to win over their dissatisfied civilians in the face of a ‘greater evil’, Prime Minister Netanayahu has refused to mince his words on what he believes Palestine’s revolutionary brewings mean for his country and the people therein, stating that Hamas, the lead organization in this recent wave of resistance, has ‘launched a murderous surprise attack against Israel and its citizens.’ [1] Clearly, he does not view this conflict as a mere addition to the ever-expanding list of violent encounters between Israeli and Palestinian forces. This is a battle for the existence of Israel and, at the same time, the necessary non-existence of Palestine that is a required qualifier for the success of the entire Zionist project. [2]

For Palestine, decades of relocation, colonization, and outright murder by the hands of Israel’s military branch, the IDF, has stockpiled tensions to an unbearable degree. They have tried to be diplomatic with Israel, to no avail. They have tried to protest peacefully, and were gunned down in the streets. [3] They have tried forceful forms of resistance, and were brutalized more harshly than they had been ever before. [4] It is clear why the only path forward seems to be a full-scale overthrow of the government which has kept them under its boot heel for the better part of the past one-hundred years. That is a difficult conclusion to disagree with.

Yet for all the vocal support of Palestine that has emerged from across West’s political landscape, denunciation of Palestine’s actions in their ongoing struggle with Israel seem to be gradually gaining acceptance. This is expected of more conservative politicians and social critics, most of whom never endorsed Palestine in the first place. However, similar (occasionally identical) critiques have been adopted by individuals who previously supported Palestine in their ongoing struggle against the Israeli government. As soon as Palestinian groups like Hamas began resisting their occupation with violence, however, this support dissipated, and the same people who had called for their independence accused them of deliberately killing civilians, a claim which is a verifiable organization concocted for the sole purpose of playing into the Zionist trope  of barbaric Palestinians attacking innocent Israelis. This version of events implies that Israel’s citizens have nothing to do with the oppression of Palestinians, who are actively seeking wanton violence against Israel and all its inhabitants in order to satisfy a mindless drive for vengeance. 

When observing the history of Palestine’s struggle against Israel, both sides of this claim fall apart. Firstly, those who willingly leave their country of origin in order to live in Israel cease to be ‘innocent civilians’ the moment they step foot into the country, which is built upon occupied territory. Instead, they become active colonizers of Palestinian land, engaging in a form of violence that, although less direct, is no more forgivable than the violence enacted against Palestinians by the IDF. Secondly, it is impossible for Palestine to be the aggressor in their fight against Israel. Since they are the ones being actively oppressed, all that they do is in retaliation to that oppression. Any violent action they take is a component of their war for liberation, and their violence can only be understood in this context. Separating this violence from the history of violence committed against them by Israel does nothing but enhance Israel’s narrative of continual victimhood, which is essential to their ongoing war against Palestine.

But why have some of the most progressive voices in mainstream American politics succumbed to this narrative so easily? It seems that years of exposing Israel’s excessive use of force, their violation of human rights, and, most-relevantly, their tendency to deceive the international community by posturing as an oppressed minority despite being the most powerful country in the Middle East would have primed these politicians to be wary of any claims by Israel that their safety - not the safety of the Palestinian people - was under attack. Obviously, though, this has not been the case. These politicians have, at best, simultaneously denounced both the actions of Hamas and the IDF and, at worst, singled out Hamas as being especially malicious and bloodthirsty while excusing the actions of Israel.

Although there are many reasons for this trend, electability is a large factor. A person is a politician in the West so long as they can be elected to public office, and, as such, Westerners - including politicians themselves - view politics as a matter of marketability instead of principle. It does not appear at all odd for most of them to see a politician support a cause (such as the liberation of Palestine) while critiquing the means through which that very same cause is pursued. A degree of separation is considered acceptable between vocally supporting something and actually supporting something if the former is popular and the latter is not. 

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Observing that politicians maintain these contradictions within their individual political views goes a long way to explain why Western governments are regularly faced with deadlocks on a systemic level. Rather than electing representatives that believe in and pursue certain goals with a definite plan in mind, representatives are elected because they espouse certain beliefs without having formulated an overarching plan to put those beliefs into action, out of fear that the specifics of such a plan may have convinced less people to vote for them. So, when they actually inherit the responsibilities they were elected to wield, they have no actionable promises to fall back on. They act based on what they think will match public opinion, not what they think will help the public.

Politics do not operate like this the world over. In places like Palestine, in which the government is ostensibly subservient in the face of a military and political powerhouse like Israel, politics is a matter of on-the-ground change, not dealings in bureaucracy. Politics is a matter of life and death, not a popularity contest. Politics, ultimately,  is a very real, very definite thing, experienced consciously by every Palestinian each time they are reminded that they are in the process of being colonized, which they are reminded of fairly often. While, to the bourgeois West, political views can be divorced from the external world, Palestinians do not have this luxury. A conversation of mild disagreement between two moderates, one who leans conservative and one who leans liberal, could never take place between a Palestinian and an Israeli. The views they express are too closely tied to the nature of equality, the rights of man, and the validity of the Zionist project to be discussed in casual conversation. 

Many Western politicians, on the other hand, feel entitled to have such casual conversations about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on behalf of the Israelis and Palestinians. No matter which group one supports, if this support is artificial, spurred on by a desire to be elected more than anything else, results in demeaning one group or the other (or both) for not living up to Western standards of compromise and decency. 

This view is rooted in sheer ignorance, namely ignorance of the fact that the Zionist project, from its inception, was explicitly hostile and violent towards Palestinians. Conflict between Israeli settlers and Gaza natives is not a recent development, emerging out of a difference of opinion as to which group is entitled to the land, in which neither opinion can be said to be more or less valid than the other. Zionism emerged as an unabashedly colonialist entity, with the intention of transforming Palestine from an Arab-majority country to a European-majority country, not through mutual agreement, but by force. Quoth Vladimir Jabotinsky, a 20th-century Zionist ideologue: ‘If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison on your behalf…Zionism is a colonizing adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force.’ [5] Clearly, the presence of violence in the establishment of Israel was never considered avoidable. Early Zionists knew that they were entering land in which other people lived, knew that those people would not be pleased with them dominating that land, and knew, because of this, that they would have to use force in order achieve their desired outcomes, yet chose to do so anyways. The recent outburst of retaliatory violence against Israel by Hamas is miniscule when compared to this decades-long ‘colonizing adventure,’ but the furious violence of Israel, which is inherent in Zionism itself and made manifest not only in military oppression by the IDF but also through avenues like property redistribution and cultural suppression, is usually ignored by the West, which will only ever briefly take note of it when it is too indefensible to gloss over. Meanwhile, the much smaller-scale violence of Palestine, which is born out of a desire for national liberation, is framed as a threat not only to Israel’s very nationhood but as a mad annihilation of innocent lives. 

All of this defamation of Palestine’s fight for freedom, all of this critique and harmful rhetoric about its methods of resistance is, once spoken by Israeli demagogues, absorbed uncritically by Western political voices, even those which outwardly express support for Palestine. The disconnect of their political imagination from the actual situation in Palestine is so severe, that, when they claim to endorse Palestinian liberation, the image they have in their mind is one of diplomacy and calm discussions in congressional halls. The actuality of liberation, the pain, the suffering, the violence, the death, comes as a surprise to them. Their fantasy of a wave of peaceful protests, meetings between community leaders, and, perhaps, an international summit of some kind being all that it takes to restore relations between the two countries (as if an amicable relationship existed in the first place) suddenly disappears before their eyes. In its place are shocking images of bombings and burning helicopters, and they are so shocked to find that the political process they imagined is not how any country can ever or will ever gain true, long-lasting freedom that they are inclined to accept the first explanation for all this chaos that somebody offers them. Unfortunately, this explanation tends to go as follows: ‘Israel is facing unprovoked attacks by Palestinian radicals.’

It is not hard to see that this explanation, beyond being overly simplistic, is also outright incorrect. In response, one may be inclined to search for an explanation through which middle ground can be found within this complex issue. Despite many popular maxims, though, the relationship between Palestinians and Israelis does not constitute a ‘complicated situation’ with ‘valid claims emerging from both sides.’ In the words of political commentator Michael Brooks: ‘It's not a complex issue. That's the big thing. It's super simple. There's one group [Israel] that has enormous power. It's the most powerful country in the Middle East. It's backed by the United States. It acts on another population of people with total impunity. It is never held accountable for anything. So, there's no symmetry in the relationship, period.’ As much as American politicians may claim to  represent a reasonable middle-ground on the issue of Palestinian liberation, this proposed ‘middle-ground’ does not and can not exist. When Israel uses violence on Palestinians, it is oppression. When Palestinians fight back against Israelis, it is self-defense. That much is certain. 

Notes

[1] Dahman, Ibrahim. Gold, Hadan. Iszo, Lauren. Netanyahu says Israel is ‘at war’ after Hamas launches surprise air and ground attack from Gaza, sec.7

[2] Kayyali, Abdul-Wahab. Zionism and Imperialism: The Historical Origins, p.110

[3] al-Mughrabi, Nidal. Israeli forces kill three Gaza border protesters, wound 600: medics, sec.1

[4] McGreal, Chris. Army pulls back from Gaza leaving 100 Palestinians dead, sec.1

[5] Jabotinsky, Vladimir. The Iron Law, pg. 26

The Crisis in the West Bank

[Photo Credit: Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty]

By Sudip Bhattacharya

Republished from Counterpunch.

Although it’s been decades since he left Palestine, building a life for himself and his loved ones in the Austin area, memories of olive trees and hills, of family and him sharing meals under an orange sun, flowed through Ahmad Zamer on most days. Having been able to visit the West Bank a few years ago, Zamer could still hear the people conversing in the town square, the men and women sharing jokes, asking him how’s been, even as he sits in his house thousands of miles away, skyscrapers along the impeding horizon.

But that sliver of normalcy and good feeling has been replaced, rather swiftly, with the screaming of people buried under rubble, of others waking up each day, finding yet another building reduced to piles of bricks and twisted metal.

“You always hold out optimistic hope that it doesn’t happen to you, although it’s happened to us before,” Zamer explained, “But it’s been a different scale of violence now. It’s shocking,” he added, his voice drifting.

During Israel’s recent onslaught over Gaza, Zamer lost a dozen members of his family from an Israeli airstrike. He’d lose 35 on another day, snatched from him in a matter of mere moments.

Since the beginning of October, the number of Palestinians who’ve been killed are now over 20,000, with many others still unaccounted for, lost under the wreckage of buildings and homes. The Israeli state has also targeted hospitals, refugee camps, and even UN-designated zones, killing innocent women, children and men in droves.

“It’s a slaughter,” said Hatem Natsheh, a close friend of Zamer’s, and also someone who’s managed to rebuild his life in the U.S. Natsheh has remained committed to the Palestinian cause for liberation and for the creation of a secular democratic nation with equal rights for all. However, the last few months have been dispiriting and traumatic. Natsheh, like many Arab Americans, had voted for Biden in the last presidential cycle, and now have become embittered and frustrated over that choice. As a progressive, Natsheh himself remains committed to progressive cause of economic and political equality, of fighting for labor and human rights. However, the fact that the Biden administration has been insistent on delivering more military aid to the far-right dominated Israeli state, disregarding the critical situation millions of Palestinians find themselves in, has been painful to reckon with.

“It’s not been easy, I’m telling you,” he admitted, also in regards to Bernie Sanders having refused, until recently, to even mention the word “ceasefire”. As a delegate for Sanders, this has felt like a betrayal.

“At the beginning of all of it, I wasn’t doing too well,” said Jade, whose grandparents became refugees in the original Nakba and is studying to be a human rights lawyer in the Midwest. The images of children in shock, and others having been injured or killed, have stuck to her, like grime. “Seeing all the images of dead children has been difficult since my brother also died at a young age, so I know what the death of a child can do to a family. I can hear my own mother screaming while carrying my brother’s body when he was little, and I can hear that when seeing these images of other peoples’ children,” she shared.

The trauma, however, cannot be reduced to the Israeli attacks on Gaza, although the attacks themselves merit focus given the intensity of harm. What is occurring in Gaza, especially with the Israeli ground invasion, has been rightfully identified as ethnic cleansing, as another Nakba. Plans have been considered for Palestinians in Gaza to be moved into the Sinai Peninsula or to simply be dispersed around the Middle East.

Still, the Israeli imposition on Palestinian life has been targeting Palestinians generally, including those who have managed to remain in the West Bank.

Both Natsheh and Zamer speak to family members in the West Bank, who relay to them stories of harassment and fear.

“My family has added an extra lock to their doors,” Zamer said about some of his family members’ coping responses to the intensification of Israeli settler violence that’s been ongoing. Some of this violence and taking over of Palestinian land in the West Bank had been taking place prior to the latest Israeli assault on Gaza even.

Despite Israel’s recent decision to pull back its troops from Gaza, and some of its attempts to suggest Palestinians never wanted a real political solution in the region, the situation in the West Bank must not be overlooked, or allowed to be treated as marginal. Instead, the situation in the West Bank, from Palestinains being attacked by Israeli settlers to more Palestinian land also being taken, reflects the broader issue, which has always been about settler colonialism and an appropriation of Palestinian land and power.

NAKBA 2.0

According to scholars like Rashid Khalidi, himself Palestinian, the Palestinian situation is one shaped by disposition of land and resources beginning in the formation of the Israeli state in 1948, whereby Palestinians were forced off their land, herded into refugee camps, or compelled to find some form of dignified living in other parts of the region. All in all, this disposition, similar to what had been experienced by indigenous peoples in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, and other parts of the globe, would mark the Palestinian people for decades to come, as a right of return to the land they once had would become a major part of their liberatory struggle and search for justice.

Khalidi writes in The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine,

For all Palestinians, no matter their different circumstances, the Nakba formed an enduring touchstone of identity, one that has lasted through several generations. It marked an abrupt collective disruption, a trauma that every Palestinian shared in one way or another, personally or through their parents or grandparents.

The crisis in Gaza is a very clear example of this continued disposition. Total the land and force people to flee, making it difficult for them to rebuild what little they might have had: that’s been the strategy of the Israeli state that has been targeting the dense region of the Gaza strip, as it imposes an embargo that leads to mass starvation and lack of basic resources. Once more, such strategies have echoes of previous colonial tactics, such as the British Empire’s decision to create policies that caused mass famine and economic instability across parts of South Asia at the turn of the 20th century and during WWII. This pattern would repeat across parts of Africa as well, not to mention the corraling of populations as a means of stealing more land, or as a means of punishing resistance, as was the case in Kenya after WWII, with concentration camps set up by the British colonial regime.

The West Bank has been part of this overall strategy too, even if it hasn’t faced the same level of death and starvation that we’ve seen for decades inside Gaza. Nevertheless, since the early 1990s, the seizure of land, and the surrounding of Palestinian life with Israeli state apparatus and Israeli extremists, has been its norm.

Legal scholar, Noura Erakat, stated in Justice for some: Law and the Question of Palestine,

As of late 2015, the Israeli settler population in the West Bank numbered more than 600,000, a 200 percent increase since the advent of the Oslo peace process in 1993. Israel’s settlement enterprise carves the West Bank into more than twenty noncontiguous landmasses separating approximately three million Palestinians into as many groups that stand apart from one another, thus undermining any sense of territorial contiguity or national cohesion.

Natsheh, who visited family in the West Bank in 2018, the first time in thirty years he’d been able to step on Palestinian land, remembered the joy of seeing his family, and of seeing the landscape brimming with greenery and life. Part of the experience of being back was fairly normal, as he made the rounds of meeting friends and family, of sharing experiences, of hugs, and kisses on the cheek.

And yet, even then, it was impossible not to pay attention to the Israeli settlements all around them, circling them.

“You can tell the settlers are armed,” he said, paying extra attention to his surroundings as he’d venture around, visiting and talking, getting to know the land once again. Israeli forces too were seen managing the movement of people, mainly Palestinians in the region, despite the West Bank being promoted as primarily controlled by the Palestinian Authority, and Fatah, a rival to Hamas.“If you’re Palestinian, you are being harassed by Israeli forces, by settlers, you have to go through checkpoint after checkpoint,” Natsheh described, “It’s tiring. It’s basically a form of hell.”

The beauty of the trees and the land can start to fade into a brutal routine of being targeted by the Israeli occupation forces and the monsters its occupation breeds. A sense of dread and disappointment can start to seep into you, said Natsheh.

Since early October, the pace of land being stolen, of Palestinians falling under Israeli state domination, has only intensified. As Israeli jets fire upon buildings in Gaza, Israeli occupation forces and settlers have increased their land seizures in the West Bank.

Bel Trew at the Independent writes, “Israeli human rights groups say this is the single biggest land grab since Israel captured the West Bank in 1967, and likely amounts to the war crime of forcible transfer.”

The situation for Palestinians in the West Bank has grown more tenuous, more dangerous over the recent months, with nothing set to change anytime soon. The strangulation of Palestinian life in the West Bank has been, at times, nearly unbearable, according to Natsheh and Zamer, both of whom remain in touch with family members, desperate for an end to the occupation and violence.

““There’s no freedom of movement,” Zamer said about his family’s situation in the occupied West Bank, “I talk to them every day. I worry that one day I will call them and no one will answer.” He paused. “That’s how I feel right now. It’s too much.”

VIOLENCE AS NORM

Ahmad Abusharkh, a nurse in Chicago, also has family in the West Bank. He explained how through the Palestinian authority, the Israeli government has managed to repress actions of Palestinians trying to exhibit solidarity with their kinfolk in Gaza. Although the Palestinian Authority aims to build towards Palestinian statehood, so far, it’s become a vessel for elements of Israeli control over the years by continuing its security cooperation with the IDF. Much like South Africa, the West Bank under the existing Fatah government has become what some would describe as a Bantustan, an area that’s designated for Arabs, and portrayed as somehow autonomous but is very much a sliver of land in which sovereignty has still been denied. In many ways, the West Bank has also become a place where Palestinians are corralled, rather than provided the resources and rights a group would need to be sovereign, or to live a just and dignified life.

“We have family members who are afraid to go out at night”, Abusharkh explained, “The settlers are terrorizing people and everybody knows that they will not be punished. Everybody knows that the settlers to a certain degree can do whatever they want. There’s a lot of fear in the West Bank about the way the repression and the genocide in Gaza will continue to spill over to them, will spill over to repression in the West Bank.”

In 2023 alone, 483 Palestinians in the West Bank were killed. In October, assault rifles had been distributed to Israeli settlers, eager to wield violence against Palestinians across the West Bank.

Yagil Levy, a professor of political sociology and public policy, writes about the situation inside the West Bank,

As Israeli military operations continue in the Gaza Strip, a parallel escalation of violence is unfolding in the West Bank. This includes intensified army attacks against Hamas targets and a reported increase in Palestinian fatalities. Alongside these developments, there has been a rise in violence by settlers, apparently aimed at pushing Palestinians from their homes and extending Israeli control in certain areas.

He adds,

The violence itself is not new, but two things are worth watching. As the attacks spread, there’s growing evidence that soldiers and settlers are working hand in hand. And there are signs that settlers are increasingly worried about a political shift after the war in Gaza—and trying to change the West Bank landscape while they can.

“They just go in and do whatever they want to do,” said Natsheh, speaking about the Israeli settlers feeling ever more emboldened. “They’re arresting people, blowing up houses, destroying infrastructure, bulldozing the streets. It has been miserable for the people living in the West Bank. Miserable.”

Zamer reiterated the fear that family members will also perish in the West Bank, or be driven out from their homes, left to fend for themselves.

“The pressure on them has been constant,” said Zamer, “They’ve had their olive trees taken by these right wing settlers. The settlers come out and act like hooligans, attacking people, taking property as they wish.”

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk stated in regards to the intensification of harassment and attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank, “The use of military tactics means and weapons in law enforcement contexts, the use of unnecessary or disproportionate force, and the enforcement of broad, arbitrary and discriminatory movement restrictions that affect Palestinians are extremely troubling.”

The routine, nearly everyday, for Zamer, Natsheh and many others in the Palestinian diaspora has been to put aside time and learn about what’s been going on with family and friends thousands of miles away. It’s both a process of replenishing, as they manage to maintain connections with those they care about deeply, but of course, it’s a reminder of the constant horrors and troubles that so many have endured, and in the case of the West Bank, are set to experience for the years ahead, regardless whether a ceasefire over Gaza is finally implemented, however porous.

The reality has been the West Bank, despite it being controlled by Hamas’ rival, Fatah, and despite it being seen as nominally “autonomous”, has been a target of the Israeli settler agenda for decades now. Settlers themselves have consistently been moving into the territory, with the backing of Israeli state forces, and have the very clear intention of taking over the land completely for a greater Israel.

“We want to close the option for a Palestinian state, and the world wants to leave the option open. It’s a very simple thing to understand,” said Daniella Weiss, a settler in the West Bank, in a recent interview about her interests and the interests of other settlers like her.

“Palestinians already could not go wherever they wanted to go, it takes hours just to go from one village to the next,” Natsheh described, pulling from his own experience when visiting. “That’s just gotten worse. And that won’t change either.”

Zamer related to how things would deteriorate in the years to come, expressing fear over what comes next for the people he loves and those he may not yet but are part of the general Palestinian population. Zamer spoke, again, about the land, how beautiful it can be to simply step outside one’s home and see the orange sun peeking between the hills. Or to stroll into the farmland, the grass below looking neon green, the trees growing new limbs shrouded also in bright green colors.

“We need a one state that’s democratic and secular,” he stressed, “We need it before it’s too late.”

LIBERATION TIME

The West Bank serves as a reminder that the Israeli war on Gaza is a general war on a possible Palestinian state, and future.

Even if a ceasefire were to finally be realized, the Israeli state, so long as it remains controlled by such extremists and settler interests, shall persist in finding ways to seize more land and to find ways for more Palestinians to either be compelled to flee, or to find themselves marginalized under an expansive Israeli state.

The cultural theorist and popularizer of the term “Orientalist”, Edward Said, had written about a one-state democratic secular state in 1999, explaining,

I see no other way than to begin now to speak about sharing the land that has thrust us together, sharing it in a truly democratic way, with equal rights for each citizen. There can be no reconciliation unless both peoples, two communities of suffering, resolve that their existence is a secular fact, and that it has to be dealt with as such.

This does not mean a diminishing of Jewish life as Jewish life or a surrendering of Palestinian Arab aspirations and political existence. On the contrary, it means self-determination for both peoples.

The only real solution then, for Palestinians too in the West Bank, is for the emergence and flourishing of such a state in that region. For years, such an idea has been relatively marginal in the U.S. and other parts of the “West”, itself a political construction mediated through myth-making and delusion. Still, the subject of Palestinian liberation, and the recognition of just how difficult life has also become for people in the West Bank, the sheer scale of Israeli settlements, has become more and more a part of the U.S. left’s discussion, as well as discussion among liberal and progressive groups. Over the years, we’ve seen the emergence of organizations such as Jewish Voices for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine.

In recent polling, an increasing share of Americans are skeptical about existing U.S. policy towards Israel. A large number of young people have expressed dissatisfaction with Biden and his abiding faith in the far-right Netanyahu administration.

“More people around the world are identifying with the Palestinian cause as a struggle against colonialism and for democracy,” Abusharkh said, as someone also deeply involved around socialist organizing and Palestinian liberation, “It’s definitely different than where the movement was several years ago even.”

The liberation for Palestine, as Natsheh describes, is a liberation struggle for all progressive forces throughout the world, from the cities and towns faced with deindustrialization and police harassment across the U.S. to the villages of Yemen struggling against Saudi oppression. The world as is, shaped by a contingent of U.S. capitalist and imperialist interests, along with their “allies” from inside Israel to the Egyptian junta, is a world rife with inequalities and extreme injustices, not to mention political instability.

“Israel would not maintain a system of domination without the U.S. maintaining a system of domination over the global south and working people,” Jade explained, “Our struggles are all interlinked. Our liberation is only guaranteed by uplifting each other.”

A world in which the West Bank and Gaza are free is a world in which the world has become far more open for more progressive and socialist horizons for the world’s majority, whether that is someone African American seeking financial stability in the American Northeast, or someone Asian American cleaning offices in Silicon Valley, or someone in the West Bank, finally free to grow as many olive trees as their heart desires.

Amilcar Cabral, one of the world’s most insightful anti-colonial thinkers, stressed the interlinking of national liberation struggles with the general struggle for a more humane planet. Cabral, who led the struggle for Guinea-Bissau against the Portuguese occupiers who received support from the U.S. and other Western governments, emphasized this with as many different audiences as he could, from people in Italy, to African American activists in New York City. Cabral himself believed in the Palestine cause for freedom, aligning with his own, and with the fight against apartheid in South Africa in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, prior to when he was assassinated by Portuguese agents.

In a speech on Guinea-Bissau society to an audience in Milan, Cabral would explain,

To end up with, I should just like to make one last point about solidarity between the international working-class movement and our national liberation movement. There are two alternatives: Either we admit that there really is a struggle against imperialism that interests everybody, or we deny it. If, as we would seem from all the evidence, imperialism exists and is trying simultaneously to dominate the working class in all advanced countries and smother the national liberation movements in all the underdeveloped countries, then there is only one enemy against whom we are fighting. If we are fighting together, then I think the main aspect of our solidarity is extremely simple. It is to fight—I don’t think there is any need to discuss this very much. We are struggling in Guinea with guns in our hands, you must struggle in your countries, as well—I don’t say with guns in your hands, I’m not going to tell you how to struggle, that’s your business; but you must find the best means and the best forms of fighting against our common enemy—this is the best form of solidarity.

Such a message of solidarity is one we must have with the people of Gaza and the West Bank, with the Yemenis, with people facing deportation procedures in Pakistan, with people experiencing police aggression across the U.S., with people finding it increasingly difficult to dream after a long day of low-wage work, regardless of skill.

The struggle in the West Bank will persist, for true autonomy and freedom, and so we must continue to find a way to remain connected with that struggle, knowing full well our rights and freedoms are intertwined, as black and brown people, as people seeking liberation, and our own version of a calm afternoon peering ahead and watching the sun descend along the horizon.

REALITY LOOMING

As the sunlight snuck past the blinds, peering into the living room, Natsheh was already on his phone, staring at the graphic images of children with their eyes wide open, of older children begging for their parents and grandparents to wake up, shaking them until others finally pulled them away. Every day, when it’s still pitch black outside, Natsheh can’t help but stir, images and doubts having piled up in his gut, his body feeling pulled apart. Every day, he makes it a point to watch the videos of what’s been taking place in the land he was born and raised in, fear and anger forming sweat on his brow.

“It’s a very…” he paused, searching for the words, as the reality of the crisis loomed over us. “It’s just very surreal. Sad, and surreal. You have to go to work. You have to do what you can to get by but with all this…happening.”

For Natsheh, he is still committed to progressive politics. He is still committed to the fight for racial and economic justice, here and abroad. But the crisis, the sheer scale of it, the Israeli bombing, the fact that even certain “progressives” such as Bernie Sanders have been so slow in calling for a “ceasefire”, has weighed on him, even as he’s trying to do “normal” things, such as go to work, or cooking dinner.

As much as there are signs of people caring, and more importantly, with increasing scrutiny and condemnation of Israel by the UN, the reality remains that thousands of lives have been lost, been taken. The reality remains, according to Natsheh, that the bombings have continued, the targeting of refugee camps, and churches. The reality is that when the bombings stop, the seizure of land shall persist, and there’s always the danger that people’s attention spans might fluctuate, losing sight of the dispossession that’s been happening in the West Bank. Based on the pattern we’ve seen over the last few decades, the land dispossession in the West Bank will only increase, with the backing of the Israeli government, as the Knesset is dominated by far right demagogues eager to take direct control of the region.

“This has been a new level of violence that won’t really end,” Natsheh emphasized.

For many too, there’s the fact that witnessing all this violence, seeing it on screens, the terrible loss and pain felt by people in Gaza and the West Bank, can also serve to demoralize.

Jade talked about a video of a young boy seen crying after another Israeli attack, that being her motivation, even though on some days, it’s just difficult to absorb everything that’s going on.

“I keep him in mind,” she said, “That kid has to get out of this, to go and have a normal life, to get ice cream, to have a crush on somebody. That kid is in the back of my mind, almost always.”

Zamer insisted on how critical it is to remember the survivors, and all those who need solidarity now. Giving into pure cynicism would mean, in effect, giving up on a world that’s better for them, and best for everyone impacted by similar issues of colonialism, exploitation and domination. The West Bank too will start to have more videos being shared of more people losing their lives, losing their land. It can be overwhelming and yet, there’s no other choice but to maintain a connection and sustain a level of activism and solidarity that could save those who will survive the Israeli state apparatus and its domination.

“There are people who are still living who need us,” Zamer exclaimed. “We cannot get too emotional right now. We must keep working to save those who are still living. We must remember that.”

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.

Decolonisation Isn't Pretty Or Complicated: When Violence Is Humanising

By Derek Ford

The first pro-Palestine demonstration called after the latest counterattack by a host of Palestinian forces on October 7, endorsed by Students for Justice in Palestine, the ANSWER Coalition and others, put matters very plainly:

Today, we witness a historic win for the Palestinian resistance: across land, air, and sea, our people have broken down the artificial barriers of the Zionist entity, taking with it the facade of an impenetrable settler colony and reminding each of us that total return and liberation to Palestine is near. Catching the enemy completely by surprise, the Palestinian resistance has captured over a dozen settlements surrounding Gaza, along with many occupation soldiers and military vehicles. This is what it means to Free Palestine: not just slogans and rallies but armed confrontation with the oppressors.

Of course, the colonisers do not want to hear such realities and hypocritically condemn them as ‘violent’ and ‘terrorist.’ In Indianapolis, we had to keep our coalition together in the face of the fear-mongering by both Democrat and Republican politicians. Unfortunately, many on the academic ‘left’ – already predisposed to conciliatory readjustments – continue echoing the same talking points as the State Department.

Henry Giroux, for example, contends that ‘The reach of violence and death in Israel by Hamas is shocking in its depravity and has been well-publicised in the mainstream media and in other cultural apparatuses.’ For a ‘critical’ scholar, it should instinctively raise questions when one finds truth in the pro-Zionist media and cultural outlets and remains merely satisfied with noting the ‘one-sidedness’ of such coverage. Giroux goes further still, calling us to do more than ‘exclusively condemn Hamas’s atrocious violence as a violation of human rights’ and to hold Israel’s apparently asymmetrical violence to equal condemnation. ‘Refusing to hold all sides in this war to the standards of international law is a violation of human dignity, justice and democratic principles,’ Giroux proclaims.

Palestinian resistance: Armed love

I recommend revisiting Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, where he unequivocally denounces such false equivalences. ‘Never in history,’ he writes, ‘has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators if they themselves are the result of violence?’ It is rather the oppressors who trigger violence and ‘not the helpless, subject to terror, who initiate terror.’ Furthermore, the counter-insurgency of the oppressed, the ‘violence’ or ‘terror’ they wield, is in reality ‘a gesture of love.’

For Giroux, however, Hamas’s heroic attack on October 7 is ‘brutal and heinous’ and ‘horrific.’ To be fair, he acknowledges that Israeli Occupation Forces have murdered more children than ‘Hamas.’ Yet he swiftly returns to the equation, arguing that both Israel and Hama are united by ‘the violence done against children,’ which is apparently ‘used simply as a prop to legitimate and continue the war and the ongoing death and suffering of children, women, and civilians.’

Simultaneously, in the article titled ‘Killing Children: The Burdens of Conscience and the Israel-Hamas War,’ Giroux commands us not to equate Hamas with Palestine. Fair enough; no single entity represents an entire people. Yet Hamas is one of many resistance forces operating under a united front, along with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Popular Resistance Committees, the Al-Quds Brigades and countless others. This is beside the point: those of us in the US have absolutely no business telling the colonised how to resist colonisation, nor what armed groups should resist and on what grounds!

One wonders what such academics would have written about Nat Turner’s historic 1831 rebellion in Virginia. In August of that year, Turner led a group of six slaves to freedom. They killed their slaver, Joseph Travis and his family before traversing plantations to free more enslaved Africans by force. Along the way, ‘free’ Blacks joined their army of about 70 people.

They took money, supplies and weapons as they moved and eliminated over 55 white slave owners and their families. Their violence was not altogether indiscriminate, and, in fact, Turner ordered his troops to leave the homes of poor white people alone. Still, they killed children in their march towards freedom.

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Should we remember this remarkable uprising as a tragedy to be condemned, albeit less so than the violence of the slavers? No! We celebrate Turner’s rebellion as we do all revolts of the oppressed worldwide throughout history!

Their violence was humanising, a necessary measure to prevent them from enslaving others and part of a long tradition of insurrection that ultimately overthrew chattel slavery in the US.

No demonisation of the oppressed

After an amazingly long chase, once the slavers found and killed Turner, the white supremacist papers condemned him and his motley crew for their barbaric violence. How would you respond? ‘Yes, it was terrible, but slavery is worse?’

Things are different today. All imperialist wars are for ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights.’ So it was with Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq again, Libya, Syria, you name it. In each instance, the propaganda is quickly absorbed by our critical intellectuals. I remember Noam Chomsky endorsing UN Resolution 1973, put forward by the ‘saviours’ of humanity like Italy and the United States on March 17, 2011, imposing a ‘No-Fly Zone’ over Libya. Of course, this only applied to the Libyan air force, not to the US and its NATO allies.

There was relentless propaganda about an ‘impending massacre’ in Benghazi when, in reality, the small armed uprising was on the verge of defeat by the massively popular (and, it goes without saying, flawed) Jamahiriya government of Moammar Gaddafi. It turns out there was no impending massacre, nor was there any validity to the accusations of ‘mass rape.’

The same is true of October 7, 2023. As it turns out, the Israelis massacred their own people. The air force admitted one commander ‘instructed the other fighters in the air to shoot at everything they see in the area of the fence, and at a certain point also attacked an IDF station with trapped soldiers in order to help the fighters of Navy commando unit 13 attack it and liberate it.’ Yasmin Porat confirmed the Israeli army massacred civilians after the courageous Hamas counterattack and, moreover, said Palestinian resistance forces who ‘kidnapped’ her did not treat her inhumanely and did not intend to murder her.

For those with a cursory knowledge of the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine, this is not surprising.

No purity in the fight against oppression

Let’s imagine that the lies told by the State Department and distributed by their stenographers in the media were all true. Even then, why would anyone in the US or any imperialist nation that is currently sponsoring the Israeli genocide feel any need to ‘condemn’ or even denounce the heroism of those fighting back?

The answer is simple: standing up to the demonisation campaign is difficult, especially early on. Yet how many have heard the endless outrageous lies used to dehumanise primarily Black and Brown heads of state, governments, militaries, and populations? The real question is: how many of us have heard the retractions? How many of us have questioned our national chauvinism and privilege? Why would anyone entertain the notion that Hamas wants Israel to continue bombing its people and infrastructure?

It goes without saying that I don’t share a political allegiance to Hamas, and neither do the myriad forces uniting with them to defend their people – and the people of the region and world – from the genocidal apartheid regime of Israel!

Moral purity is an idealism only those cloistered in their academic offices can afford. Still, it’s a waste of money. I guess, at the very least, it shows us what critical academics are willing to criticise the oppressors and not the oppressed. Me? I’m unequivocally and proudly on the side of the oppressed.

The Imperative to Organize: What Palestine Needs from Us Now

[Photo Credit: Ringo H.W. Chiu, AP]

By Juan Gonzalez Valdivieso and Salma Hamamy

On October 7th, the Islamic Resistance Movement — a Palestinian political and military organization based in Gaza better known as Hamas — began a multi-faceted attack against the settler colony of Israel. The operation included aerial rocket launches and on-the-ground operations. The attack marked only the latest bout of Palestinian resistance against the sieges, occupations, and ethnic cleansing campaigns that have fundamentally characterized the Israeli state, an entity built on these very atrocities since its founding in 1948. With a dreadful immediacy, Israel responded to the attack in kind, and then some.

The war crimes and genocidal exploits that have unfolded since the fighting began are too multitudinous to list in full. But suffice it to say that Israel has unleashed an endless shower of hospital and school bombings — collective punishment galore. As of December 18th, Israel has slaughtered almost 20,000 Palestinians in Gaza, 70% of whom were women and children. Meanwhile, the Israeli death toll stands at about 1,200. 

Immediately following October 7th, the United States predictably offered Israel — its client state — unconditional support. Soon thereafter, they expanded the gesture by offering military contributions and punishing domestic dissent. In contrast, the American public has largely opposed their government’s pro-Israel posture. An estimated 300,000 protesters marched on Washington in support of Palestine last month. The event featured speakers such as writer Mohammed El-Kurd, musician Macklemore, and lawyer Noura Erakat. It brought together groups from 22 states including California, Illinois, and New Jersey. Two of the largest labor unions in the country — the United Auto Workers and the American Postal Workers Union — have voiced their support for a ceasefire in the region.

Waves of pro-Palestine advocacy have overtaken social media, much to the chagrin of executives and algorithmic gatekeepers. Popular methods of demonstrating solidarity also include calling, emailing, and faxing politicians, donating to pro-Palestine organizations and humanitarian relief efforts in Gaza, boycotting pro-Israel companies, and attending protests and direct actions such as strikes and walkouts. These tactics have all made major headway in nurturing a greater collective consciousness in the United States that supports the Palestinian cause and feels evermore compelled to apply liberatory praxis wherever systemic oppression rears its hegemonic head.

Meanwhile, the situation in Gaza worsens by the hour. The twice-renewed humanitarian pause that began on November 24th ended on December 1st, doing little to ameliorate the displacement, destruction, and brutality that Israel has subjected Gazans to for over two months now. The moment demands an additional layer of action on the part of comrades living outside the occupied territories. Beyond the more traditional forms of activism, we must also embody the organizer spirit in our daily lives. In other words, allies of the Palestinian cause must view our various social relationships and networks as breeding grounds for heightened awareness and collective action. 

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Individualized actions done in unison may spark a wave. But organized actions done in community build a tide. As agents in this transformational moment, we now have a responsibility — to our Palestinian comrades and to ourselves — to organize our immediate surroundings, ensuring that no stone goes unturned. Workplaces, friend groups, family units, neighborhoods, and the like all provide pre-established groupings within which communal awareness and collective action can grow. Beginning with the most promising group, the first step is to start organizational conversations with fellow group members.

These interactions can take many forms, such as further publicizing one’s support for Palestine, pushing back against pro-Israel rhetoric and apologia, wearing clothing that physically depicts solidarity with the Palestinian cause (e.g., keffiyeh), etc. But, generally speaking, the aim is to establish an accurate conception of the individual’s stance on the issue in question, making sure to note any potential gaps in knowledge or qualities that stand out as particularly ripe for agitation. These gaps may include an ignorance of Palestinian history, American ties to Israel, or Israeli ties to imperialist efforts abroad. Ripe points of agitation may include intersecting issues (e.g., the role of co-opted queer liberatory rhetoric in Israeli propaganda), points of reference (e.g., Israeli settler-colonialism as compared to its American counterpart), or personally relatable phenomena (e.g., labor exploitation as seen in both the occupied territories and the United States political economy).

Such efforts will provide a clear portrait of the group’s relationship to said issue. With this layout in mind, subsequent organizing conversations and broader discussions of majority opinion can begin. The hope is that, as this process unfolds, group consciousness will gradually increase, previously unaddressed imperatives will become glaringly obvious, and collective action will inevitably form. From here, discussions to determine group-wide initiatives will become ever more commonplace, until they eventually culminate in a collective decision to pursue a democratically agreed-upon program. 

This organizational method embodies the full meaning of collective action where the reach of individualized initiatives falls short. It penetrates our existence as atomized subjects of imperial capitalism by forcing a collectivization of ideology, commitment, and praxis. It also creates a sociopolitical infrastructure through which we can continue to wield collective action going forward, whether it be for Palestine or for any other issue.

The engagement with the Palestinian cause we’ve seen from Americans in the last couple of months most definitely comprises a host of noteworthy waves, many of which have significantly toppled political affiliations and institutional prestige across sectors. But, now, only the embodiment of an organizational spirit by each and every one of us will do the work of constructing a tide — one that may just push us over the revolutionary edge into a world where Palestine is free, from the river to the sea. 

Juan Gonzalez Valdivieso is a Colombian writer, organizer, and artist. In his writing, he seeks to interrogate the nuances of socialist thought and praxis.

Salma Hamamy is a Palestinian student-activist and the president of the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at the University of Michigan, known as Students Allied for Freedom and Equality.

The Syli in the Room: Reviving Ahmed Sékou Touré

By Kevin McCleish

Afro-pessimism in its original iteration found use as a medium to explain the phenomenon of perpetual underdevelopment in Africa. As Mahmoud Mamdani notes, Afro-pessimists suggest Africa cannot rejuvenate itself from within due to the persistence of traditional culture. Kevin Ochieng Okoth describes how Afro-pessimism grew from incessant negative depictions of Africa in Western media, which portray an utterly hopeless continent.

In the face of post-independence failing states, raging epidemics, genocide, and worsening inequality, Afro-pessimism resonated with a global audience because it seemed to justify the interventions of actors ranging from saviorist NGOs [1] to agents of structural adjustment programs like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. If Africans proved incapable of solving their problems, a host of others appeared who claimed they could.

Emerging from the academy, what Ochieng calls Afro-pessimism (AP) 2.0 differs from its predecessor by focusing intently on the experience of black Americans and how, as Adolph Reed Jr. often and sarcastically puts it, “nothing has changed” since 1865. Reed describes AP 2.0 as an approach which…

“... postulates that much of, if not all, the history of the world has been propelled by a universal ‘anti-blackness.’ Adherents of the Afropessimist critique, and other race-reductive thinkers, posit a commitment to a transhistorical white supremacy as the cornerstone and motive force of the history, and prehistory, of the United States, as well as the imperialist and colonialist subjugation in other areas of the world.”

AP 2.0 proponents believe the uniqueness of anti-black oppression prevents collaboration with other oppressed peoples due to fundamental racial antagonism “condemning them to a life of social death.” AP 2.0 therefore hinders the development of the broad, class-conscious coalitions needed to overcome the hegemonic power of capital. This also renders it impotent against imperialism.

Ahmed Sékou Touré, the first post-colonial president of Guinea (1958–1984), understood that fighting imperialism requires collective action across racial and ethnic lines. Touré is best remembered for organizing an electoral rejection of a new French constitution on September 28th, 1958, which prompted immediate political independence for Guinea. Though the referendum was held in France and across all overseas departments and territories, Guinea had the impressive distinction of being the only political unit to vote “no” on the constitution and colonization. Through his organizing efforts, Touré achieved 85% voter turnout with 95% voting against the colonial arrangement.

After becoming president in October 1958, Touré quickly realized that political sovereignty meant little without economic sovereignty. So Touré adopted what he called a “non-capitalist” path of development in recognition that “the anti-imperialist struggle is the climax of class struggle.” Following this path was made all the more difficult by repeated attempts of international sabotage and economic isolation.

A committed pan-Africanist and fierce proponent of nonalignment during the Cold War, Touré played an immense and overlooked role during arguably the most critical juncture in human history: the Cuban Missile Crisis. When President John F. Kennedy directed a naval “quarantine” of Cuba after intelligence showed the construction of nuclear missile sites on the island in response to the American placement of missiles within striking distance of Moscow, the Soviets immediately began planning an airlift of critical military supplies to circumvent the naval blockade. To do so, however, Soviet jets would need to land and refuel prior to reaching the island.

In the fall of 1962, only the five West African countries of Guinea, Ghana, Senegal, Liberia, and Morocco had airstrips long enough to accommodate jet traffic. To stop an airlift before it ever got off the ground, American officials lobbied African leaders to refuse Soviet air traffic. Though each country had its own set of diplomatic challenges, Washington was most concerned about Guinea.

Touré had just accepted Soviet assistance to improve Conakry’s airport runaways months prior. Coincidentally, though, Touré had also just returned from a state visit to Washington where he and Kennedy made good impressions on one another. Recognizing that the Guinean people had nothing to benefit by obliging the Soviet request, Touré, with his trademark independence, refused. His commitment to what he termed “positive neutrality” gave him the diplomatic flexibility to exercise an inordinate amount of influence during the Cold War. 

Unfortunately, readers unfamiliar with the “Grand Syli” (Touré’s nickname; literally “Big Elephant”), are likely to see his revolutionary contributions as a dead end rather than a point of departure. Often overlooked in the Anglophone world, Touré’s radical pedigree, honed from the mass politics of labor organizing, shows how today’s leftists can use labor organizing to facilitate the formation of broad-based coalitions capable of agitating for radical political transformation. Such strategies are a welcome antidote to the alternative approach of AP 2.0, which does not challenge the foundations of the current political economy. 

Radical Roots Sprout a Labor Leader

Touré’s propensity for mass politics came from his poor peasant origins in Faranah, Guinea. As Saidou Mohamed N’Daou recounts, Touré’s social consciousness developed at an early age as he witnessed his deaf mother suffer abuse. His father died early, and mistreatment drove his mother to suicide shortly after. Orphaned at age seven, Touré found loving refuge in his uncle’s family. Touré entered primary school and showed great intellectual promise and an affinity for anti-colonial agitation — from challenging colonial curriculum to organizing protests against a headmaster who forced students to toil in his garden without compensation (the headmaster refused to take responsibility for a student who died of a snakebite whilst laboring in the garden) [2], to leading a food strike, which resulted in his expulsion as a teenager. 

Though his rebelliousness ultimately derailed a promising academic trajectory, Touré’s anti-colonial intransigence ensured he avoided becoming one of the évolués (Africans “civilized” through European education and assimilation) he later came to despise. Had Touré instead complied and wound up in the academy as another “misguided intellectual,” he may have turned out much like his rival and Négritude proponent Leopold Senghor. Touré took issue with Négritude, which — like AP 2.0 — had essentialist foundations.  He dismissed Négritude as a reflection of bourgeois class ideology that merely masked Western cultural imperialism. Touré held that African culture could not be disassociated from political, social, and economic contexts asserting:

“[T]here is no black culture, nor white culture, nor yellow culture…Négritude is thus a false concept, an irrational weapon encouraging…racial discrimination, arbitrarily exercised upon the peoples of Africa, Asia, and upon men of color in America and Europe.”

Rather than ascend to the ivory tower training the colonizer’s comprador class, Touré’s path through vocational school kept him grounded with ordinary Guineans ensuring his exposure and involvement in radical politics.

After several apprenticeships and a year as a clerk in the French Company of Western Africa, Touré passed examinations qualifying him to work in the Post and Telecommunications Department in 1941. Denied the ability to continue his scholarly endeavors through official channels, he continued his studies via correspondence education and took a “Red” turn by devouring the works of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong. Despite the French Communist Party’s (PCF) refusal to enroll local members in West Africa (in adherence to the orthodox view that Africa undergo a bourgeois revolution to precede a genuine anti-capitalist revolution), Touré became a founding member of the PCF’s first Guinean study group, Groupes d’Études Communistes, three years later in Conakry. Contemporaries remember the PCF “not being progressive enough” for Touré. But he found them useful to learn organizing methods from.

Not content with merely discussing theories of Marxist revolution, Touré’s political praxis led him to organize the first union in French-controlled Guinea, the Post, Telegram, and Telephone Workers’ Union (PTT), in 1945. The PTT, an affiliate of the PCF-connected French General Confederation of Labor (CGT), flexed its muscle in various labor actions under Touré’s leadership which landed him in jail, but also gave him the credentials necessary to organize the United Trade Union of Guinean Workers (USCG). Under this umbrella union, all CGT affiliates in Guinea consolidated just a year later in 1946. Recognizing “unionism is…a calling…to transform any given economic or social regime, always in search of the beautiful and just,” Touré became the most influential labor leader in French West Africa just five years after forming the first Guinean labor union.

Occurring simultaneously with his ascent in the labor movement, Touré’s reputation as an organizer enabled him to quickly climb the ranks of anti-imperialist political organizations operating in French West Africa, such as the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain (RDA). Formed in 1946 at the Bamako Conference, the RDA, in cooperation with the PCF, attempted to coordinate the efforts of regional anti-imperialist leaders throughout French-occupied Africa. 

While the RDA formed with PCF support, it is mistaken to assume the leaders were all committed to a vision of “Red Africa.”

As it were, the PCF was one of few European political forces committed to anti-imperialism, which forced many associations of convenience. As Elizabeth Schmidt details, under Touré’s direction, the Guinean RDA chapter, later named the Parti Démocratique de Guinée (PDG) in 1950, certainly remained committed to the PCF and CGT far longer than its regional peers who feared anti-communist repression when the PCF lost governing power in 1947 France. Although the RDA officially broke from the PCF in 1950, Touré dubiously followed the RDA line in his political activities and continued cooperating with the CGT in his union work. Unlike the RDA in other regions whose membership was comprised of planters and chiefs, the PDG’s core membership were civil servants and trade unionists reluctant to sever ties with communist organizations.

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72-Day Strike and Electoral Victories

Touré soon integrated his labor and political acumen after becoming the secretary-general of the PDG in 1952. From that point forward, his labor and anti-colonial political activities converged into one indivisible force. The French administration felt the power of the peoples’ solidarity during the 72-Day General Strike of 1953, which set the stage for the famous 1958 independence referendum.

Both Schmidt and N’Daou produce excellent accounts of the 72-Day Strike, the impetus of which was a reduction of the workweek from 48 to 40 hours. Though a work reduction is typically welcome, pay fell proportionally by 17%. Guineans, who were already poor,  protested. But French management was unwilling to compromise. So Guinean labor leaders voted to begin a general strike on September 7th, 1953.

As he had done his entire labor career, Touré gave neighborhood speeches to thousands and continued education programs throughout the strike, urging workers to eschew ethnic strife and embrace their common bonds as workers. Composed of various ethnic groups — principally but not exclusively Malinke, Susu, and Peul — Guinea’s ethnic tensions proved more salient in the rural rather than urban areas due to the coercive power of the colonial canton chieftaincies. In the more cosmopolitan Conakry, calls to transcend significant social divisions using an eclectic mix of themes, found in the language of Marxist class antagonism, French liberal ideals, and selected African beliefs of honor, dignity, and racial pride united workers along class lines.

Like any effective organizer, Touré understood that the value of an idea is measured by its social utility. While some critique the “third way socialism” of Touré, it is unlikely Marxist-Leninist proselytization would have had the same impact on participants as his pragmatic ideological flexibility. By December 1953, workers won their wage increase with 80% of Conakry’s workers participating in the labor action. Trade union membership exploded, from 4,600 in the beginning of the strike to 44,000 by 1955. 

Touré’s foundation in and amongst the people is what made him successful. His effective organization of workers and their corresponding communities laid the groundwork for his coming electoral success and the resounding campaign to dismiss colonialism on September 28th, 1958. Touré’s broad-based coalition strategy became apparent leading up to the independence vote, when he campaigned throughout Guinea on behalf of the RDA/PDG, asserting that “the RDA is not a knife that divides, but a needle that sews [together].” Knowing that any anti-colonial coalition could not survive identitarian fragmentation, Touré relied on public pedagogy to elevate the political consciousness of the masses, declaring:

“We are against racial and ethnic prejudice. We are for qualified people whether they be European, Senegalese, Peul, or Bambara. Some of you say you will not vote for the RDA ticket…because a European is on it. This reasoning is stupid.”

Ethnic divisions proved more salient in the rural areas, where colonial-approved chieftains exercised coercive power over taxation, corvée labor [3], and — even though it had been outlawed in 1905 — slavery primarily made up of Dialonka people serving Peul-aristocratic chiefs in the region of Futa Jallon. It is estimated that 25% of the Futa Jallon region’s population were composed of slaves or their descendants in 1955. Residue from the colonizer’s imported Hamitic Hypothesis still plagued many amongst the Peul aristocrats, who believed they were of superior racial stock compared to non-Peul Guineans.

This second-class population divided by class and ethnicity were organized electorally by Touré and the PDG by referencing their exploitation at the hands of the colonial-connected chieftaincy and appealing to Islamic egalitarian principles. Ever pragmatic, Touré omitted Marxist references and spoke plainly about the exploitative conditions enforced by canton chiefs. Doing so, however, he carefully distinguished between their material and ethnic differences to ensure his broad-based coalition remained inclusive to all Guineans.

Communicating his message to overwhelmingly illiterate rural populations elsewhere, he continued in comprehensible terms:

“Man is like water, equal and alike at the beginning. Then some are heated and some are frozen so they become different. Just change the conditions, heat or freeze, and the original equality is again clear.”

Facing historic and manufactured social divisions proved no easy task. But Touré’s inclusive organizing paid off, as demonstrated by the electoral results from 1954 to 1957 where the PDG dominated municipal, regional, and territorial elections. Though the French initially managed to stem the tide of Touré through electoral manipulation, after 1954, the colonizers recognized that continuing to engage in obvious fraud would lead to backlash. It was clear who ruled the streets.

With his newfound legislative and executive authority, Touré set out to destroy the colonial chieftaincy through a parallel power structure of democratically elected PDG local committees who effectively replaced the hated colonial canton chiefs by 1957 and assumed their duties of tax collection and administering justice. After years of power-structure analysis, Touré knew their destruction would be necessary to remove the vestiges of colonial authority.

As president, Touré continued to combat ethnic and religious differences by moving bureaucrats outside of their home regions, banning groups organized on the basis of race, religion, or ethnicity, surrounding himself with ethnically diverse advisers, and continuing to communicate in various indigenous languages. In such a brief spell of political activity, the man who cut his teeth as an organizer engineered the only electoral rejection of French colonialism and fought against all odds to achieve genuine political and economic sovereignty.

Whose Touré is This?

Although violent resistance against capitalism is often fetishized, any Marxist worth their salt should be able to organize resistance at the point of production. Through his organizing career, the man who not only read Marx’s Capital but had, as Bill Haywood put it, “the marks of capital all over [his] body” from his time on the shop floor, transcended social divisions and united Guineans of all stripes against their colonizer. Recipient of the 1961 Lenin Peace Prize, Touré’s experience should not only be included in the tradition of “Red Africa,” but serve to illustrate the revolutionary possibilities of labor organizing as an alternative to AP 2.0. 

Touré’s ability to unite a diverse population on the basis of class antagonisms proves his mantra that content rather than form supersedes all concerns for those committed to overthrowing capitalism. By focusing on the common denominators and rejecting essentialist obstacles, Touré’s lifelong commitment to construct a better world is instructive. He unequivocally rejected the notion that black people could not exercise political agency, that cooperation amongst demographically diverse groups is impossible, and that a history of slavery precludes meaningful participation in civic life. Rather than accept condemnation to a “life of social death,” Touré instead embodied the words of Frantz Fanon, believing that:

“Man is a yes…Yes to life. Yes to Love. Yes to generosity. But man is also a no. No to the scorn of man. No to the degradation of man. No to the exploitation of man. No to the butchery of what is most human in man: freedom.”

Kevin McCleish is a high school social science teacher and labor organizer from Illinois. His best work is found on the shop floor.

Footnotes

[1] Examples include George Clooney’s Not on Our Watch, which intervened in Darfur, and Invisible Children — the group behind Kony 2012.

[2] Touré does not indicate the headmaster’s race in his recollection. The omission is, perhaps, indicative of his position that imperialism does not operate exclusively along strict racial lines. The colonial education system functioned to maintain existing power relations using white Europeans, black Antilleans, and Africans of the comprador class. Resistance to the system was inherently anti-colonial.

[3] Corvée labor is a system wherein people must work unpaid for a feudal lord for a period.

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.

Muslim and Arab-American Voters Show Black People How to Exercise Political Power

By Margaret Kimberley

Republished from Black Agenda Report.

Black voters feel trapped in the duopoly but other groups are giving a master class in political courage. The Abandon Biden campaign shows the way.

Face the Nation Host Margaret Brennan: Thasin, you did change your mind on the president. Why?
Thasin: I was a champion for Joe Biden until October 7. I feel he disowned us, disenfranchised us, with his stance on Gaza.
Brennan: What do you mean by that?
Thasin: He’s not listening to us. We’re asking for a cease fire at this time. It’s a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. Too many lives have been lost at this time. I was never a single issue voter and in fact I used to argue with people not to be single issue voters but for me this is a deal breaker. Way too many lives have been lost. 
Brennan: When you say “us” you’re Muslim, is that what you mean? You think the Muslim community here feels as you do?
Thasin: Yes. I think the vast majority of Muslims, Arab-Americans, progressives, I identify myself as a progressive, and many people I talk to in my circles are not going to be voting for Joe Biden.

- Michigan Voter Focus Group on CBS news program, Face the Nation

Historically, Black people in this country have allowed themselves to feel trapped by the racialized political duopoly. A feature of U.S. politics is to allow only two parties to play a decisive role in elections and for one of them to be designated as the white people’s party and the other as the Black party. 

Beginning after the civil war and until the 1960s, the democrats were the party of the segregated south, and thus the party for white people generally. Republicans, the party of Abraham Lincoln, became the de facto preference for Black people despite their willingness to shove Black interests under the bus when they felt the need to placate white voters. 

In 1872 Frederick Douglass spoke at the National Convention of the Colored People and famously spoke these words. “For colored men the Republican party is the deck, all outside is the sea.” Douglass and other Black people counseled continued support for the republicans, even when they made deals to withdraw federal troops from the south, or refused to codify the Civil Rights Act of 1875 into law after the Supreme Court declared it to be unconstitutional. 

Democrats were the party of the confederacy and thus could not be countenanced under any circumstance, even republican betrayals.

This dynamic played out for the next 100 years when the two teams made a switch which lasts until today. The last time a majority of white people supported a democrat in a presidential election was 1964. Ever since that time they have given a majority of their votes to republicans and Black people have done likewise with the democrats. 

Unfortunately the role that Black political action played in forcing democrat Lyndon Johnson to advocate for and sign the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Right Act of 1964 into law have been forgotten. Black people won legislative victory through their own efforts in creating a mass movement and a political crisis that brought about change. This era has been fetishized, without any understanding of its real importance and meaning. The truth has been turned on its head, and we are taught that Black people owe loyalty to democrats, when that party should reward loyalty with policies that Black people want to see enacted.

But every group in the country has not been cowed. Voters who identify as Muslims or who have Middle Eastern ancestry have put Joe Biden on notice that his aiding and abetting of Israel’s war crimes in Gaza will cost him politically. Michigan has the largest Arab-American community of any state and plays a pivotal role in presidential elections. Democrats take great care to mobilize voters in this key “swing” state. Hillary Clinton’s failure to do so in 2016 resulted in Donald Trump’s victory there by a small margin of 13,000 votes and he prevailed in the Electoral College when Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were also neglected by the democrats and flipped to the republican column. 

Joe Biden won in Michigan in 2020 by a 154,000 vote margin in a state where 200,000 registered voters identify as Muslim and 300,000 claim ancestry from the Middle East and North Africa. Michigan is not the only state Biden won by a small margin thanks to Arab and Muslim voters. In Arizona, Georgia, Minnesota, and Wisconsin he also owed his victory in part to members of this community.

A group of Muslim leaders in swing states are rightly using their electoral power with the #AbandonBiden campaign. They are not so frightened of a Trump presidency that they have allowed themselves to vote for the man who through his proxy Israel has killed some 24,000 people in Gaza and despite phony claims of “working behind the scenes” shows no inclination to change policy and save lives.

It is true that these communities do not share Black people’s history of enslavement and Jim Crow segregation. As such they have a greater willingness to show independence but there are lessons here for Black people in how to exercise their power.

Joe Biden and every democrat elected in the last 60 years owes his presidency to Black voters. The same is true of politicians in city halls, state legislatures, and in the Senate and the House of Representatives. Black people have political muscle but through a combination of misleadership chicanery and ignorance of the right lessons of history, act as supplicants instead of as political players.  

Arab-Americans have not forgotten Trump’s so-called Muslim ban, when citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen were barred from entering the country. Yet they do not act fearfully despite the fact that Trump is again a candidate for the office he once held and pledges to bring back the ban and even to deport people who protest U.S. policy towards Palestine.

Fortunately the #AbandonBiden campaign has shown no signs of letting up because its leadership knows how to get results and because they refuse to disrespect themselves and their people by rewarding a genocidaire with another term in the white house. How much could Black people achieve with similar determination?

In 2024 and beyond, the words “but Trump” should lose their power. How much has Biden done for Black people in the last three years? The covid era programs of small stimulus payments and the Child Tax Credit are over. Millions of people eligible for Medicaid and SNAP food benefits have been kicked off the rolls in many states with no intervention from the federal government. The pardon for federal marijuana convictions freed no one from jail. Police continue their killing spree with more than 1,300 victims in 2023. Mass incarceration continues as 1 million Black people are locked up, more than anywhere else in the world with the help of the most draconian sentences in the world. Of course Senator Joe Biden bragged about his role in the Clinton era Crime Bill which put so many Black people behind bars. There was good reason not to vote for him in 2020.

As it seems Black people have forgotten how to demonstrate political power, perhaps lessons from other groups are a means of regaining what has been lost. Black people can abandon Biden too, along with all of the democrats who owe their elected office to a group of people they routinely ignore or use for “dog whistle” politics appealing to white voters. 

Donald Trump is not the biggest enemy, he is just the loudest and the least refined. Abandoning Biden and his minions can be a reality which may produce some worthy result. Feeling trapped by the duopoly has been and continues to be a losing proposition.

Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents . You can support her work on Patreon and also find it on the Twitter , Bluesky , and Telegram platforms. She can be reached via email at margaret.kimberley@blackagendareport.com

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.