About a month ago when Netflix announced a price hike, I came this close to dropping it especially since it has become much more of a streaming service for crappy TV shows and B-Movies. I’m glad now that I decided to stick it out since the Netflix-produced series “Stranger Things” is the best damned entertainment I have run into in a long time. Season one consists of 8 episodes that can now be seen in their entirety. If you have Netflix, put it on your must-see list if you like me are fond of pop culture icons such as the X-Files, Stephen King’s “It” and “Carrie”, Spielberg’s “ET” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, “Poltergeist”, “Let the Right One In” and “Silent Hill”.
“Stranger Things” borrows liberally from all of these in a delirious mash-up that is both a tribute to the originals and an entirely new contribution to the supernatural/horror/fantasy/deep state paranoia they all incorporate to one degree or another. If Hollywood is committed to sequels and knock-offs from the standpoint of the accountant’s ledger, the Duffer brothers who produced the series come at it more from the standpoint of passionate fans.
The premise of “Stranger Things”, which is set in the 1980s, is that MK Ultra experiments with LSD on an unsuspecting guinea pig woman has led to the birth of a daughter called Eleven by her handlers who has telekinetic powers that a top-secret government agency wants to harness for military purposes against the Soviet Union.
In the course of experimenting with the girl, who has been seized from her mother, the agency inadvertently opens up a backdoor into a parallel dimension in Hawkins, Indiana, the village next to agency laboratories. The parallel dimension is a dark, dank, fetid, monster-ridden sinkhole that bears a resemblance to the normal world but only in the way that Mr. Hyde resembles Dr. Jekyll.
In the first episode we meet four boys, who are about Eleven’s age, playing Dungeons and Dragons in the finished basement of a house that will be familiar to you out of the Stephen Spielberg oeuvre or those films that emulate Spielberg like Tobe Hooper’s “Poltergeist” (the screenplay was actually written by Spielberg.) As Spielberg has mentioned in interviews, this was the kind of neighborhood where he grew up in Arizona and that he likes to evoke in many of his films. Their mundaneness is the perfect backdrop for the otherworldly happenings in his films.
In the first episode we also meet Eleven who has fled from the laboratories whose experiments on her have been physically and psychically damaging. She is also weary of the isolation that is imposed on her as a top-secret asset. Kept in virtual imprisonment, she lacks family and friendship.
As one of the four friends rides his bike home after the Dungeons and Dragons game has ended, he is pursued by a monster who has crossed over into his world from the parallel dimension and then hurled into that netherworld himself. Like the little girl in “Poltergeist”, he becomes the object of a desperate search by his three friends and his mother who has been nearly driven mad by his disappearance. When she discovers that he is in a parallel universe occupying the same space as her house, she begins to break down walls in an effort to penetrate into the dark space that has imprisoned him. In her bizarre efforts to weaponize her home, break down the walls between the two dimensions and rescue him, those closest to her begin to view her as having lost her mind in the same way that Richard Dreyfuss was deemed insane by his wife, children and neighbors for building a replica of the Devil’s Tower in Wyoming.
Also in the first episode Eleven crosses paths with the boys and is given shelter in the home of Mike Wheeler, one of the three, who keeps her a secret just like ET was kept secret. When Mike and his pals are being bullied at their school, Eleven steps in and teaches the bullies a lesson just like the vampire sweetheart of a young boy does in “Let the Right One In”. In fact, “Stranger Things” would be a great final exam for a film school class. Identify the borrowed material and get an A.
After it became clear that the Sanders Political Revolution was history, the pro-Clinton propagandists redirected their fire at Jill Stein. The contrast between Sanders and Stein could hardly be greater but that made little difference to those who not only favored the two-party system but the hegemonic role of ruling class politicians like the Bushes, the Clintons and Barack Obama within it. Even though Sanders never had any intention of making a breach with corporatist Democrats, he was considered a trouble-maker for pointing out the obvious, namely that the system was rigged in favor of Wall Street.
As a standard-bearer of the anti-Sanders propaganda offensive, it was to be expected that the Washington Post would turn its attention to Stein once the relatively toothless Senator from Vermont was out of the way. On July 26th an article titled “As Green Party’s Stein woos Sanders backers, some see unhappy flashbacks to 2000” appeared. Like the last time a relatively successful Green Party campaign for President made an impact on American society, the Democrats worry that Stein might steal votes from Clinton just like Nader supposedly stole votes from Gore:
“I’m sure she’s a great person, but I can’t see how the effort can lead to anything but helping Trump,” said Rep. Keith Ellison (Minn.), who had been one of Sanders’s most high-profile supporters but is now urging the party to unify behind Clinton. “Trump is such a clear and present danger to the republic that we’ve got to get behind the candidate who gives us the best chance of defeating Trump.”
To make sure that people got the message, an op-ed piece titled “A vote for Jill Stein is a vote for Donald Trump, and that’s the point” appeared the very next day making the same point. Tom Toles, the Post’s cartoonist, warns: “This is one where there doesn’t need to be any confusion. Voting for Jill Stein (in a competitive state) is voting for Donald Trump to be president. There isn’t any room to quarrel on this.” The repetition of basically the same article in the Post and others referenced below remind me of Adolf Hitler’s observation: “The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly – it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.”
At one point Salon.com was relatively fair-minded about Stein’s campaign in keeping with its liberal pretensions but since the demise of Sanders’s Political Revolution, the gloves have come off. Amanda Marcotte, a typical “progressive” hack of the sort that Salon hires, crapped on both the disaffected Sanderistas and Jill Stein in an article titled “Hanging with “The Bernouts” and Jill Stein: The Bernie-or-bust crowd is loud at the DNC — but they’re powerless”:
Like the Cleveland rally, this one was composed mostly of white men who really, really hate Hillary Clinton and aren’t afraid to make wild accusations about the first woman to be a major party nominee for president. Or to carry signs that they probably did not realize communicate subconscious phallic fears of Clinton’s ascension to power.
“White men” and “phallic fears”? Very transparent use of racial and sexual demagogy, isn’t it. Maybe the problem is that people don’t want to vote for a candidate who represents everything the left hates.
A day later Salon reporter Sean Illing conducted a hostile interview with Stein that included questions in the “When did you stop beating your wife” vein:
In 2000, people implored Ralph Nader to run only in “safe states.” (non-swing states). He refused to do so and we know what happened. The idea was to allow progressives to vote their conscience in greater numbers and send a message to the Democratic Party without empowering the GOP. Voters know the Green Party or the Libertarian Party candidates aren’t going to win. These are protest votes, and more people would cast them if they were confident they weren’t doing Donald Trump or George W. Bush a solid. This matters a great deal to people who detest the two-party system but care deeply about core liberal principles or the balance of the Supreme Court. Why won’t you do what many now wish Nader did?
Slate Magazine, which is much more in tune with Hillary Clinton’s political agenda than Salon, chimed in with “Jill Stein’s Ideas Are Terrible. She Is Not the Savior the Left Is Looking For”. The author is Jordan Weissman who also complained about Sanders’s attack on free trade. Since he believes that “The fact is, most of the world has seen its standard of living improve quite a bit in the era of free trade,” naturally he would have no use for Jill Stein.
One of the more vitriolic attacks on Jill Stein came from a character named Dan Savage who writes for an alternative newspaper in Seattle called The Stranger and produces radio show podcasts at http://www.savagelovecast.com/. In May, after someone called in to express support for Jill Stein, Savage went postal:
Disaster will come. And the people who’ll suffer are not going to be the pasty white Green Party supporters — pasty white Jill Stein and her pasty white supporters. The people who’ll suffer are going to be people of color. People of minority faiths. Queer people. Women.
Don’t do it. Don’t throw your vote away on Jill Stein/vote for, bankshot-style, Donald Trump.
Since Savage is gay, the demagogy about “pasty white” Jill Stein and suffering gay people was to be expected. It is also worth mentioning that he was a big-time backer of George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, saying “Because we’re not just at war with al Qaeda, stupid. We’re at war with a large and growing Islamo-fascist movement that draws its troops and funds from all over the Islamic world. Islamo-fascism is a regional problem, not just an al Qaeda problem or an Afghanistan problem.” So naturally he might be motivated to support Hillary Clinton who voted for the war like him and also like him ultimately admitted that it was a “mistake” to back the war in 2002. You can bet your last dollar that if the war in Iraq had gone smoothly, neither Savage or Clinton would have decided it was a mistake.
This brings me to the matter of Jill Stein’s problematic position on Syria that shares most of the left’s tendency to see it terms of a potential repeat of 2002 as if the USA ever had any intention of “regime change”. In 2013, a year after her last campaign for president, Stein assembled a Shadow Cabinet that included David Swanson as “Secretary of Peace”. In brief, Swanson’s views on Syria are identical to those of most on the left. He has written nothing about the uprising and focuses exclusively on alleged American plans to remove Bashar al-Assad going back to 2006.
He has written: “In 2012, Russia proposed a peace-process that would have included President Bashar al-Assad stepping down, but the U.S. brushed the idea aside without any serious consideration, suffering under the delusion that Assad would be violently overthrown very soon, and preferring a violent solution as more likely to remove the Russian influence and military — and perhaps also due to the general U.S. preference for violence driven by its weapons industry corruption.” In fact no such proposal was ever made as I pointed out in a September 2015 article.
Furthermore, her statements on Syria have not been so much in the Swanson apologetics mode but more in the vein of wishful thinking:
The US and Russia should support diplomacy leading toward a peace settlement in Syria. A peace settlement should include provisions for civil society in Syria that has been working for democracy. The US and Russia should work cooperatively to help resettle refugees feeling the war and the drought.
There is about as much chance of this happening as Hillary Clinton breaking up Wall Street banks.
While I consider Syria to be a kind of litmus test for the left, I tend to apply it a little less forcibly when it comes to someone whose speeches are almost totally about Wall Street criminality, fracking, immigrant rights, single-payer health insurance, and police killings.
Unlike Swanson, I doubt that Stein has ever paid much attention to Syria, something backed up by a search of Nexis. From 01/01/2012 to 07/29/2016 there were 132 articles that turned up in a search on “Jill Stein” and “Green Party” but when you add Syria to the search, nothing comes up.
In fact, the candidacy of Jill Stein and Ralph Nader’s should be understood less as a smorgasbord of positions than about the possibility of opening up a space on the left that can facilitate coordination and common struggle around burning questions facing American working people. When I attended a sold-out Madison Square Garden rally for Ralph Nader in 2000, I was less interested in what he had to say than I was at the sight of nearly 18,000 warm body in the seats. I said to myself that if only ten percent of these people could become serious activists in a nationally coordinated organization that could fight for clean air and water, jobs for all, civil rights, etc., Nader’s bid would be worth it even if much of what he said was beside the point. If I remember correctly, he went on for ten minutes about how bad Coca-Cola was for youngsters. While I don’t think that he was wrong to attack a drink that apocryphally has been used to clean car batteries, it might have been a better use of those ten minutes to explain why Al Gore was a fake on the question of climate change. I doubt that Nader had any ability to expound upon Marxist economics given his preference for Jeffersonian small businesses, but it would have also been great to hear something about the capitalist system’s contradictions.
After Nader was blamed for Gore losing the election, the Green Party became demonized by the same sorts of people who are demonizing Jill Stein today. In 2004 the pressure exerted by people like Eric Alterman and Todd Gitlin resulted in the nomination of David Cobb, an obscure figure who the “Demogreens” felt would pose no threat to John Kerry. It turns out it was Kerry’s terrible campaign, just like Gore’s in 2000, that led to his defeat.
Jill Stein has the courage of her convictions. In an interview with Paste Magazine, she was emphatic: “The lesser evil thing is false. It’s not going to fix this problem. We’ve been using that strategy since Bush-Nader-Gore and where has it gotten us? The politics of fear has delivered everything we were afraid of. All the reasons you were told you had to vote for the lesser evil is exactly what we’ve gotten: expanding wars, the meltdown of our climate, the prison-industrial complex, more student debt, police violence, the off-shoring of our jobs, Wall Street.”
It is her stiff-necked determination to push forward that will help to build the Green Party. There is an enormous potential for the growth of the left that hasn’t been seen since I was in my 20s. On February 5, 2016 the Washington Post reported that in a poll on socialism versus capitalism, respondents younger than 30 rated socialism more favorably than capitalism (43 percent vs. 32 percent, respectively). Now, of course, these are likely people who understand socialism in terms of Sweden rather than Cuba but if you have the ear of someone who simply has little use for capitalism, you at least are dealing with someone who can be reached politically.
Furthermore, a WSJ/NBC poll revealed that there was a big opening for Third-Party candidates due to the unpopularity of Clinton and Trump. Reporting on the poll, the Washington Post noted:
Those whose views on the race haven’t hardened seem open to choosing Mr. Johnson or Ms. Stein. These “persuadable” voters comprised nearly three in 10 of those surveyed.
Of them, 28% leaned toward Mr. Trump and 25% toward Mrs. Clinton. Some 21% favored Mr. Johnson and 12% went for Ms. Stein.
To me those are jaw-dropping figures. Imagine that, Stein’s favorability was only half that of Hillary Clinton even though the media has been hostile to the Greens as indicated at the start of this article. Actually, that’s probably one of the reasons people are leaning in her direction.
Under consideration in this review are two documentaries that defy conventional expectations even for a genre not particularly known for commercialism. The first is “Cameraperson”, which is basically excerpts from documentaries in which Kirsten Johnson served as lead cameraperson, none lasting more than ten minutes or so and often without providing any kind of context for the excerpted film’s overall design. Although often mystifying, it is never without interest. The second is “Homo Sapiens”, a film by Nikolaus Geyrhalter that has an ironic title given that not a single human being is seen throughout the film. Indeed, it consists of nothing but scenes from abandoned cities and towns across the world and as such has a dystopian quality far more disturbing than any Mad Max movie since it is all very real. I can recommend both films to students of film, which does not mean that you are enrolled at NYU or UCLA but that you have a taste for the offbeat and especially those works that are trying to get to the heart of the human condition in a world coming apart at the seams.
Kirsten Johnson’s film was the closing night feature at the 2016 New Directors/New Films Festival at Lincoln Center and will now open on September 9th at the IFC in New York. Johnson’s film includes excerpts from 24 films over the years, most of which would be of interest to those who follow my reviews and some of which I have covered including “Fahrenheit 9/11” and “Citizenfour”. While most of her work is on such political films, there are also a number that are almost impossible to categorize including “Born to Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs Gravity” that is foreshadowed by the strange sound of some heavy object hitting something soft and pliant, like a 50-pound bag of potatoes being dropped on a mattress from the top of a five story building—the kind of stunt David Letterman used to favor. It turns out that the sound is from dancers falling on a cushioned platform from about a 20-foot-high platform in line with choreographer Elizabeth Streb’s envelope pushing aesthetic.
Johnson has risked her life making films in war-torn locales, including Bosnia, Darfur and Liberia. In conversation with friends she made in Bosnia who were principals in “I Came to Testify”, she can barely hold back tears. This is obviously a woman who made films for the same reason I got involved in radical politics. It was not for the money.
In addition to the excerpts from the documentaries and her reminiscences with the people featured in them, a large part of the film involves her in conversation with her mother who is suffering from Alzheimer’s. In trying to help her mother retrieve lost memories, she evokes the overall theme of the film, which is the importance of film and photography in enshrining the past.
Johnson is most eloquent about the ambivalent feelings she has about her role:
The people I film are in immediate and often desperate material need, but I offer little to nothing material.
I can and will leave a place I film (a war, a refugee camp, etc.) when the people I film cannot.
I traffic in hope without the ability to know what will happen in the future.
I ask for trust, cooperation and permission without knowing where the filming experience will lead the subject.
I alter the balance of power by my presence and act on behalf of one side or another in a conflict.
My work requires trust, demands intimacy and entails total attention. To both me and the people I film, it often feels like a friendship or family, but it is something different.
I know little about how the images I shoot will be used in the future and can not control their distribution or use.
My work can change the way my subject is perceived by the people who surround him/her and can impact reputation or safety for years into the future.
I follow stories the director I work for does not need and/or want me to follow.
I fail to see or follow stories the director I work for hopes I will follow.
One of these points resonates with my own feelings about a life spent trying to make a revolution in the USA: I traffic in hope without the ability to know what will happen in the future.
I first encountered the work of Nikolaus Geyrhalter almost exactly 10 years ago. His “Our Daily Bread” lacked narration and simply depicted visually the process of food production in fields, barns, slaughterhouses, etc. From my review:
The images of “Our Daily Bread” will linger in the viewer’s mind like a bad dream. Two men and overalls are attending to a cow with a gaping hole in its side, out of which they extract new born calves. We do not know why the animal is not allowed to give birth in the normal fashion, but have to assume that this born of scientific necessity and the need to maximize profits. Chickens are hurtled at high speed on conveyor belts into awaiting crates. When one falls off, a worker picks it up by its feet and throws it into another carton as if it were a plastic part. Indeed, one can only conclude that in order to survive on such a job, it becomes necessary to become utterly detached from what you are doing. If you have any sense of compassion for the animal kingdom, it will only get in the way of performing your job. When one is paid to slit the throats of chickens 8 hours a day, it is best not to think about what you are doing.
“Homo Sapiens” is also a bad dream of sorts, even though not so nearly as shocking as “Our Daily Bread”. There is no killing as such in the film, only the aftermath so to speak—the detritus of cities and towns that have lost their raison d’être, namely their role in the circulation of capital. Once again sans narration, you can only surmise that the abandoned hospitals, factories, schools, jails, laboratories, forts, etc. were abandoned because they became redundant just like the homo sapiens who lived and worked in the cities and towns where they were located. You get some of the same feeling of desolation and loss traveling around Sullivan County where I grew up—the Borscht Belt. When I and my wife’s brother-in-law strolled around the ruins of the once glamorous and thriving Nevele Hotel in Ellenville, I could not help but feel that I was in a kind of graveyard.
In the press notes for “Homo Sapiens”, Geyrhalter describes his goal in making such a film:
Homo Sapiens is a film about the finiteness and fragility of human existence and the end of the industrial age, and what it means to be a human being.
What will remain of our lives after we’re gone?
Empty spaces, ruins, cities increasingly overgrown with vegetation, crumbling asphalt: the areas we currently inhabit, though humanity has disappeared. Now abandoned and decaying, gradually reclaimed by nature after being taken from it so long ago.
Homo Sapiens is an ode to humanity as seen from a possible future scenario.
“Homo Sapiens” opens tomorrow at the Anthology Film Archives in New York. Highly recommended for those with a taste for the unconventional and a shared belief with the director that we are coming to the end of the industrial age—one hopefully that ushers in a New Age based on the rational use of resources and technology to serve human needs rather than private profit.
Ivanka Trump, the daughter of Republican real estate mogul Donald Trump, will host a fundraiser for Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s Senate bid next Wednesday, a campaign source familiar with the event said.
The event, with a suggested contribution of $5,200 per person, will be held at Ivanka Trump’s home on Park Avenue in Manhattan.
She and her husband, Jared Kushner, had bundled $41,000 for Booker’s Senate campaign as of May. Booker has raised raised $6.5 million so far this year.
Booker is running to replace the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) in a special election. The primary is on August 13 and the general election is on Oct. 16. Booker leads the Democratic field with 52 percent, according to a Quinnipiac poll out last week. Just 10 percent said they would vote for Booker’s leading Democratic opponent, Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), whom the Lautenberg family endorsed.
Ivanka Trump endorsed Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election.
If you like me appreciate good writing about what it means to be a working stiff, don’t waste any time. Send in a check to subscribe to Hard Crackers: Chronicles of Everyday Life that is edited by Noel Ignatiev, a long-time revolutionary scholar, journal and activist. A check for how much, you are probably asking. Unlike many journals on the left, particularly the high-toned ones that are peer reviewed, the operating principles for Hard Crackers is—how shall we put it?—socialistic. As they say on the inside cover, “There is no set price for either single issues or subscriptions. Pay what you can. Bulk orders are particularly appreciated.”
Send checks and printed material to:
Hard Crackers, PO Box 28022, Philadelphia, PA 19131
Communications to noelignatiev@gmail.com
There is something decidedly old school about Hard Crackers. There is no website, a gesture that is consistent with the esthetic of the magazine that has the redolence of the factory floor, the billiards parlor, the bowling alley and the saloon whose juke box features Hank Williams and Hank Ballard.
The articles in the premiere issue of Hard Crackers were just the kind that I dote on. They remind me of Harvey Swados’s classic 1957 Bildungsroman “On the Line”, a collection of stories about being an auto worker in the Mahwah Ford Plant. Or Michael Yates’s In and Out of the Working Class. Or even the novels and short stories of Charles Bukowski, who while by no means being a Marxist, conveyed through his fiction the observation made by Karl Marx in Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844: “…the worker feels himself only when he is not working; when he is working, he does not feel himself. He is at home when he is not working, and not at home when he is working.”
It is not just about the experiences of workers. It is also about what Ignatiev refers to in his Editor’s Introduction: “virtually every article in this issue of Hard Crackers deals directly or indirectly with race—no surprise since race remains a major concern in the U.S.”
As it happens, I cited Race Traitor, the journal that Hard Crackers grew out of, in my review of the new movie “Free State of Jones” since the main character Newton Knight was the ultimate race traitor, a Mississippi farmer who joined with the Union army to break the back of the Confederacy. I had never read Race Traitor but knew enough about Noel Ignatiev to understand that the connection was real. Indeed, so did he, as evidenced by what he wrote in the introduction:
Southern non-slaveholding whites played an important part in bringing about the downfall of the Confederacy, resisting the draft, deserting the army in large numbers and joining the general strike of white and black la-bor. The alliance between those who owned thousands of acres and hundreds of people and those who eked out a hardscrabble existence on the poorest land was unstable and could not endure.
The intersection between working class existence and racial oppression is at the heart of Ignatiev’s own contribution to the first edition of the magazine, a chronicle of one of his factory jobs as a drill press operator titled “Influence”. It deals with the experience he had with a genial old-timer named Mike who was just the kind of white worker who now supports Trump. Mike was a loyal employee all too ready to cooperate with speed-up at the small manufacturing plant, as well as to assert his role in the microcosm of American society on the shop floor:
As I was going over in my mind plans for getting the guy to slow down before he killed the rate on the job (including breaking his other eight fingers if necessary), one of the assemblers, a black man, turned the corner to head into the shop. Mike muttered something.
My mind elsewhere, I didn’t hear him clearly. “What did you say?” I asked.
“Are you from out of state or something?” said Mike. “I called him a nigger. Don’t they use that word where you come from?”
“Well, I don’t,” I said.
“Oh, I forgot, you’re at the University. They’re all liberals there,” he said with a laugh.
Before I could reply, the buzzer sounded, calling us to our devotions.
Now Mike, although brought up in a neighborhood world-famous for its resistance to school integration, lived on a street where the majority of residents were black. In response to questions from whites on the job, he simply explained that he liked living with black people. He got along well with most of the black workers. I wanted to learn more about how he thought. But first, I would have to straighten something out: no one was going to get away with calling me a University liberal. When mid-afternoon break came around, I walked over to Mike’s work station and said, “I want to ask you a question and I want you to think before you answer. I’ve spent twenty years in places like this. Do you real think that a couple of years of college makes that much different in what I am?”
I strongly urge you to take out a subscription to Hard Crackers. It is much closer to the grass roots than some of the other trendy Marxist journals that get fawned over in the NY Times and elsewhere for its millennial bloodlines. Since Ignatiev was born in 1940, he certainly couldn’t be mistaken for one.
If you need any other motivation to take out a sub, you might want to read the editor’s invitation that appeared in CounterPunch in February:
Attentiveness to daily lives is absolutely essential for those who would like to imagine how to act purposefully to change the world. During the 1940’s and 1950’s The NewYorker ran a series of profiles by Joseph Mitchell of characters around New York. Mitchell wrote, “The people in a number of the stories are of the kind that many writers have recently got in the habit of referring to as ‘the little people.’ I regard this phrase as patronizing and repulsive. There are no little people in this book. They are as big as you are, whoever you are.” The profiles are collected in Up in the Old Hotel.A reader will find there hardly a single “political” reference, yet there is no doubt that Mitchell and many of the people he wrote about would have happily adapted to life in an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.
There is a need for a publication that focuses on people like the ones Mitchell profiled. It would not compete with publications that analyze developments in the capitalist system and document struggles against it, nor with groups formed on the basis of things their members oppose and things they advocate; still less would it substitute for participation in actual struggles. It would be guided by one principle: that in the ordinary people of this country (and the world) there resides the capacity to escape from the mess we are in, and a commitment to documenting and examining their strivings to do so.
The Internet has its place, but paper carries a permanency and weight no digital form can equal. Before John Garvey and I published the first issue of Race Traitor, we sent a prospectus to everyone we knew, asking those who supported it to send us ideas, articles and money. We were so unsure of the future that we didn’t ask for subscriptions. By the third issue we had attracted a new kind of audience and had become part of the public discourse on race. Thus we were able to publish sixteen issues over the next twelve years—without once having to ask readers for financial contributions. I think something similar is possible today.
Exactly four years and one day ago, I wrote an article titled “Libya, Syria, and left Islamophobia” that called attention to leftist support for Gaddafi and Assad that despite its “anti-imperialist” posturing was more in line with the sort of thing that Christopher Hitchens was writing over a decade ago in support of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
I cited Pepe Escobar as following in Hitchens’s footsteps. For him, there was no point in distinguishing the FSA from al-Qaeda as he writes in his patented and rather plastic journalistic style:
Destination of choice of the $1,500 Kalashnikov in 2012: Syria. Network: al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers, also known as AQI. Recipients: infiltrated jihadis operating side-by-side with the Free Syrian Army (FSA).
Also shuttling between Syria and Iraq is car bombing and suicide bombing, as in two recent bombings in the suburbs of Damascus and the suicide bombing last Friday in Aleppo.
Who would have thought that what the House of Saud wants in Syria – an Islamist regime – is exactly what al-Qaeda wants in Syria?
Nothing has changed since he wrote this crap. You make an amalgam between FSA and al-Qaeda and when ISIS comes along, you add them to the mix. So when Syrian and Russian bombers blow up entire neighborhoods, including their hospitals, you justify it in the name of “fighting terrorism” just as Hitchens did. You come to this position because it is the “axis of resistance” killing people rather than the USA. And when the USA joins in, your response is muted. Has anybody seen the ANSWER coalition organizing protests against American bombing in Iraq or Syria? I haven’t. In fact, when you go to their website you will see an article that warns about the possibility of American intervention against ISIS being a decoy maneuver that is intended to prepare the way for “regime change”. One imagines that if these assholes could be guaranteed that the USA would stick to killing ISIS and any civilian unfortunate enough to be within 5 miles of their fighters, they’d shrug their shoulders and say “go ahead”.
As inured as I have become to this kind of political decrepitude, it did not prepare me for the totally disgusting rant by Bill Blum that appeared on Information Clearing House five days ago. Titled “ISIS Has Nothing To Do With Islam?”, it starts off with a warning that “Warning! What follows is very politically incorrect.”
Since William Blum announced his support for Donald Trump on March 11, 2016, you can guess that his reference to being “politically incorrect” is in line with the oft-repeated mantra of the American Marine Le Pen. Blum has it in for the left because it is “politically correct”:
The left is the worst when it comes to political correctness. Here is the very progressive Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), criticizing the New York Times for labeling the mass-murder truck attack in Nice “terrorist” … “despite admitting that it had no knowledge of the presumed killer’s motives.”
This is a real knee-slapping joke considering the fact that FAIR has been part of the Baathist amen corner for the longest time, with staff member Adam Johnson writing some of the worst offal outside of ZNet, Salon or CounterPunch.
But as bad as Johnson is, he has never written anything like this:
Is Nice the last straw for you? The last victims before you call it by its proper name: radical Islamic terrorism? French Prime Minister Hollande was quick to point out that it was a “terrorist attack”, but not a radical Islamic attack. Oh? When the perpetrator is a Muslim named Mohamed, as in this case, and the victims are celebrating an iconic Western holiday, why the reluctance to use the latter term? President Obama’s preference is “violent extremists”.
The Islamic teachings I refer to are not necessarily explicitly mentioned in the Koran or any other sacred texts, nor have any connection to actual historical events of the 7th through the 21st centuries, but rather are an imbedded part of the atmosphere surrounding a young person growing up in a Muslim culture or environment. This atmosphere, this education, this culture must be severely curtailed. The West must oversee the classes in Islamic schools in France, the UK, the US, et al; and particularly Pakistan if feasible. Even if it means sending in spies to the classes, outfitted with recording devices. The teachers of these classes, if they have had any connection at all to anything smacking of radical Islam, should not be hired; if already hired, should be fired.
Let’s get straight to the point. These are the words of a bigot and someone who has about as much understanding of the roots of terrorism as the crew that beat the drum for George W. Bush in 2003.
Like the 9/11 attack, the spate of ISIS-directed or inspired terrorist attacks in Europe and the USA have derailed a wide section of the left. It is not understood as a departure from “radical” principles but upholding them in the name of secularism, diversity and Western Civilization.
The one thing that might be a saving grace is that Blum is writing this racist garbage on Information Clearing House, a website that is a cut below ZNet, Salon and CounterPunch, journals that (hopefully) will understand that Blum is now beyond the pale.
Yesterday I was rather taken aback to see the near brawl that took place on the set of “The Young Turks” between the host Cenk Uygur and two supporters of the Trump campaign, Roger Stone and Alex Jones. Uygur’s show, which is webcast only, was in Cleveland covering the Republican convention when Stone and Jones literally hijacked the broadcast and began baiting him about supporting Saudi Arabia, calling one of Uygur’s assistants a “little jihad”. This really got Uygur enraged, who jumped out of his seat and screamed, “We are against Saudi Arabia, you dumbass.” Getting in Stone’s face, he looked on the verge of punching out Stone’s clock. All in all, it had the ambience of those afternoon TV shows like the Jerry Springer Show that were popular about 20 years ago, when, for example, the two men who a woman was having sex with on alternate days, had to be separated by crew members to avoid a fist fight. The Springer shows were pretty much staged but I have no doubt that Uygur was ready to kick some ass.
The provenance of Jones and Stone is interesting. Alex Jones has a radio show called “Infowars” that shares about 90 percent of the talking points of Mike Whitney, Eric Draitser, Pepe Escobar and Andre Vltchek—in other words, the far reaches of the Baathist amen corner. Despite his affinity with them, it is doubtful that CounterPunch would ever publish Jones because he is an out-and-out rightwinger. Unlike Paul Craig Roberts, who does appear regularly on CounterPunch, Jones is qualitatively more toxic. If anything would shut the door on him, it is his heavy promotion of 9/11 conspiracy theories of the kind that Alexander Cockburn despised. This is not to speak of his pro-cop broadcasts, including one that just appeared–“The Case for Blue Lives Matter”.
Roger Stone is as colorful a character as Jones. He got involved with Richard Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President in 1972 when he was a student at George Washington University. One of his “dirty tricks” was donating money to Nixon’s presidential primaries rival in the name of the Young Socialist Alliance, the Trotskyist youth group I joined in 1967. He then took the receipt and released it to the ultraright Manchester Union-Leader to scandalize Nixon’s rival. So devoted was Stone to Nixon’s way of doing business that he had his face tattooed on the back of his neck.
Stone was a lobbyist for Trump for many years, promoting his casino businesses. This is probably how the connection was made to Paul Manafort, who is now Trump’s chief adviser. Stone and Manfort hooked up with Charlie Black to form the consulting firm of Black, Manafort and Stone in 1985. Black is as creepy as Stone, having founded the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC) in 1975.
Stone became Donald Trump’s first chief adviser and served until August 8, 2015. Trump fired him for unspecified reasons, only tweeting “I terminated Roger Stone last night because he no longer serves a useful function for my campaign. I really don’t want publicity seekers who want to be on magazines or who are out for themselves. This campaign is not about them. It’s about victory and making America great again.”
Stone remained loyal to Trump even after being fired. There were probably no deep policy differences between the two scumbags since his partner Paul Manafort took over for him. One imagines that Trump decided Stone was a liability because of his big mouth. It was not so much that he disagreed with what he said, only that he was just a bit too obvious on Twitter as the liberal MediaMatters reported:
Donald Trump ally Roger Stone, who was recently banned from CNN for crude attacks on its staff, has tweeted sexist and racist attacks against other members of the media, according to a Media Matters review.
Stone is a notorious “dirty trickster” who recently co-authored The Clintons’ War on Women. The 2015 book is dedicated to — and cites research from — a Holocaust denier who blames a “Jewish plot” for the 9/11 attacks. Stone’s history includes forming an anti-Hillary Clinton group named “C.U.N.T.” during the 2008 election.
Stone worked for Trump’s presidential campaign last year and is now organizing against Clinton’s campaign again. He is a frequent presence in the media because of his long ties to Trump; their friendship and professional relationship goes back decades.
As Media Matters previously documented, Stone has written disgusting tweets against people who work for CNN and Fox News. He’s called employees at those networks an “arrogant know-it-all negro,” a “stupid negro,” a “fat negro,” a “Mandingo,” and “quota hires.” He told Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer — who was paralyzed in a diving accident when he was in medical school — to “stand the fuck up,” and said Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly has a “nice set of cans.”
No wonder Uygur was ready to punch him in the mouth.
For many on the left, people like Jones, Manafort and Stone have one redeeming feature. They are pro-Assad and pro-Putin. If you go to Infowars, you can find an article that appeared originally on RT.com that accused the USA of supporting al-Qaeda in Syria. One of Jones’s frequent guests is “The Syrian Girl”, a diehard supporter of the dictatorship. In terms of Russia, Jones’s views hardly differ from what you can read in The Nation or on the World Socialist Website such as his broadcast of “PUTIN WARNS OF WORLD WAR 3: Society hurdles dangerously closer to global warfare” on July 2nd.
So the question of how someone like that can become a comrade of Manafort and Stone, whose love for Reagan passeth all understanding, is worth considering. Is it possible that the ultraright has broken decisively with the Cold War-bred neo-conservatism of the Republican Party and adopted the coloration of European movements like UKIP in England, the National Front in France and Jobbik in Hungary? Apparently so.
This week two articles appeared that took note of this.
Two days ago Jeffrey Goldberg wrote an article for Atlantic titled “It’s Official: Hillary Clinton Is Running Against Vladimir Putin”. Goldberg, an arch-Zionist and ardent supporter of George W. Bush’s war in Iraq, is quite upset over Trump’s disdain for NATO obligations and indifference to Putin’s intervention in Ukraine.
And just yesterday, Paul Krugman wrote an op-ed piece titled “Donald Trump, the Siberian Candidate” that raised the same concerns but was additionally troubled by Trump’s admiration for Putin, particularly his “leadership” abilities. He, by the way, is not the only rightwinger who goes weak in the knees when he sees a bare-chested Vladimir Putin. Rudolph Giuliani, who vilified Black Lives Matter in a speech at the Republican convention, views Putin as the kind of strong leader the USA needs.
It seems that Rush Limbaugh has a photo of a shirtless Putin on his website, accompanied with this observation:
Well, did you hear that the White House put out a photo of Obama talking on the phone with Vlad, and Obama’s sleeves were rolled up? That was done to make it look like Obama was really working hard—I mean, really taking it seriously. His sleeves were rolled up while on the phone with Putin! Putin probably had his shirt off practicing Tai-Chi while he was talking to Obama.
If the ultraright was identified by “one percent” type ideology in the past, it has swung over apparently to demagogic populist appeals that arguably position it to the left of the Democratic Party—at least on economic questions.
In his speech to the Republican Party convention, Trump said the following:
I have visited the laid-off factory workers, and the communities crushed by our horrible and unfair trade deals.
I am going to bring our jobs back to Ohio and to America – and I am not going to let companies move to other countries, firing their employees along the way, without consequences.
My opponent, on the other hand, has supported virtually every trade agreement that has been destroying our middle class. She supported NAFTA, and she supported China’s entrance into the World Trade Organization – another one of her husband’s colossal mistakes.
My opponent, on the other hand, wants to put the great miners and steel workers of our country out of work – that will never happen when I am President. With these new economic policies, trillions of dollars will start flowing into our country.
This new wealth will improve the quality of life for all Americans – We will build the roads, highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, and the railways of tomorrow. This, in turn, will create millions more jobs.
It is quite startling to see such words coming out of the mouth of a man who has relied on the advice of Roger Stone and Paul Manafort, who have a long history of backing the most retrograde economic policies of Nixon, Reagan, and George Bush, father and son.
It is entirely possible that Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States since the pain people have been suffering is so acute. The contrast between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the debates will be striking, with her backing NAFTA and other such trade agreements and Trump attacking them as if he were Bernie Sanders or Ralph Nader.
It is important to remember that Trump is a skilled demagogue whose long-time tenure on “The Apprentice” made him a celebrity whose success was envied by the unfortunate souls who paid good money to take classes at Trump University.
On January 5, 2016 Trump took part in an off-the-record interview with the NY Times where he revealed that his views on immigration were strictly intended to get votes and that he should not be held to them. If that is good news, there is also the bad news that his anti-NAFTA tirades have the same intention, promises that will not be kept.
Back in the 60s, when the radical movement was far more powerful than it is today, leftists honed in on the question of the Permanent Government. It analyzed institutions like the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission and so on. A large part of the interest in how the state operated beyond the control of ordinary citizens flowed from LBJ’s broken promises about keeping us out of Vietnam and Richard Nixon’s continuation of that war despite his nominal opposition. In more recent years, the Marxist core of such analysis dissipated to be replaced by conspiracy-mongering of the Infowars variety.
For many on the left, politics has become personality-driven as if our vote in November will have any major impact on what the ruling class decides to do about wars, the economy, killer cops, global warming or any of the other major problems facing us. In the final analysis, the state is the executive committee of the ruling class and will remains so as long as capitalism exists.
Jack Rasmus, an economics professor at St. Mary’s College in California and a frequent contributor to leftist magazines and websites, made very good sense in an article titled “Trump, Trade, and Working-Class Discontent” that appeared on Telesur.
He is pandering to those with a legitimate and serious real concern who have been deeply harmed by U.S. trade policies. Trump is in that great U.S. presidential candidate tradition, promising voters what they want to hear and then, if elected, doing whatever the economic elites want them to do. U.S. presidential candidates, of either wing—Republican and Democrat—of the Corporate Party of America, are habitual liars and cannot be trusted.
We had our pseudo-populist from the “left,” Barack Obama, elected eight years ago promising to reform free trade treaties. And he became the biggest free trade advocate in U.S. economic history. In Trump, we have our Obama analog, a pseudo-populist this time from the “right,” promising the same. And who then will do the same. To paraphrase an ancient saying, U.S. voters now considering voting for Trump based on his anti-trade views would do well to “Beware Billionaires Bearing Gifts.”
If you need any evidence on how Trump is not going to take on the billionaires who are making our lives miserable, there is an article that appeared in yesterday’s NY Times that is aptly titled “G.O.P.’s Moneyed Class Finds Its Place in New Trump World”. It states:
Roughly 500 wealthy Republicans poured close to $16 million into the Republican National Committee’s convention account leading up to this week, according to disclosures made to the Federal Election Commission through last Friday. The biggest donors, giving more than $100,000 each, are also a veritable roll call of the stop-Trump movement, among them the billionaire investor Paul E. Singer and Marlene Ricketts, who bankrolled early efforts to deny Mr. Trump the nomination.
Mr. Singer did not attend, though his political advisers made the rounds in Cleveland, as did representatives for other megadonors who remain opposed to Mr. Trump. And there were growing signs that at least some of the party’s biggest givers were warming to him: Co-hosts of Monday’s super PAC reception at the Ritz-Carlton included Harold Hamm, a billionaire oil tycoon and former energy adviser to Mitt Romney, and Stanley Hubbard, a Minnesota television station owner and prominent donor.
Among the guests was Foster Friess, the Wyoming-based mutual fund investor and super PAC donor, who expressed optimism at his party’s prospects. “I think it could be a landslide,” Mr. Friess said in an interview. “Donald Trump has the ability to reach all the plumbers and carpenters and factory workers who usually vote Democratic.”
Interesting to see that Friess is enthused about Trump’s ability to reach plumbers, carpenters and factory workers when he has given millions of dollars for the election campaigns of Scott Walker, John Kasich and Rick Perry—three politicians who epitomize the determination of the bourgeoisie to turn the clock back to 1880 or so when there were no trade unions and big business drowned strikes in blood. This is the reality of American politics. Pay less attention to what politicians say and more to what they do. If Trump is elected, we have to mobilize to stop him in his tracks. The same thing goes for Hillary Clinton. As the economic situation continues to favor the billionaires they represent, we will have the opportunity to get across a radical message in a way that we haven’t since the 1930s. Let’s not waste that opportunity on ill-conceived maneuvering in the two-party system that needs to be abolished with the capitalist system it stands upon.
Earlier this week the Baathist amen corner was all abuzz over the bestiality of a group called Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zinki that beheaded a 12-year-old Palestinian civilian named Abdullah al-Issa who was on his way to a hospital for treatment according to the Baathist media.
Moon of Alabama, a prime outlet for Baathist and Kremlin propaganda, posted this article:
Mint Press accepted the regime’s story as genuine as did Daniel Lazare on Consortium News. Mint News, of course, is the sleazy Baathist outlet that published an article about the rebels in East Ghouta being responsible for the Sarin gas massacre that was disavowed by the reporter whose byline was attached to the article without her permission. Meanwhile Lazare, who is otherwise a reasonable person, turns into a stark raving madman when dealing with Syria.
This week Syrian, Russian and American jets have been killing civilians in huge numbers and this is the subject that these filthy propagandists want to put on the front burner. They would make Joseph Goebbels blanch in horror.
The only thing worth mentioning is that killing captive soldiers is wrong, whether by a firing squad as the Red Army did in the Russian Civil War or by a sword. Given the horrors that the Baathists and their ghoulish allies have visited on the Syrian people over the past 5 years, it is a miracle that this kind of retribution doesn’t take place every day.
A Syrian who was beheaded by a rebel group in Aleppo this week was a 19-year-old pro-regime fighter suffering from a growth defect and not a child, activists have claimed.
He was named as Abdullah al-Issa and that his family members said he was a 19-year-old who volunteered to fight with the regime’s National Defence Forces militias.
Other social media users said he was from the Alawite village of Wadi al-Dahab in Homs, and photos emerged allegedly showing his funeral in the area.
Issa was said to be suffering from thalassemia, which led to a growth defect that made him appear to be a child. Photos shared of Issa online show him in military fatigues and carrying a rifle.
“This boy, whose [beheading] has caught the world’s attention is my cousin Abdullah Issa from Wadi al-Dahab district of Homs, and he suffers from thalassemia,” his alleged cousin – Loly Alamora [“Loly the cutie”] – wrote on her Facebook page.
“That is why he appears younger than his age, but he is 19-years-old.”
Banners reading “I am Syrian” with Issa’s picture were put up [Facebook]
The Syrian regime had earlier claimed that Issa was a 12-year-old Palestinian civilian who was on his way to hospital for treatment when he was picked up by militants from the Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zinki rebel group.
His murder caused outrage, particularly as he appeared to be a child.
Facebook account user Zoze Aisa – alleging to be Issa’s sister – posted a series of angry comments about regime claims he was Palestinian.
“He is the son of Assad’s Syria,” she wrote, referring to the Syrian president.
A picture of Issa posing with weaponry was shared on the social media platform [Facebook]
“How can they turn a brave Syrian fighter into a Palestinian refugee?” she claimed.
The account user listed the exact locations where Issa had allegedly fought to “defend his country”.
This included Palmyra, Jebel Shaar, T4 airport, Hama and Homs. He would spend month-long deployments on the front-lines before returning home for medical treatment.
Issa’s cousin confirmed that he had suffered from the growth defect, but rather than staying behind to receive medical care chose to fight for Syrian regime forces.
An image of Issa’s alleged national ID card was circulated online, showing that he had joined the ranks of the National Defence Forces militia umbrella in August 2015.
Issa was beheaded by members of the Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zinki rebel group in Syria’s Handarat district, just a few miles north of Aleppo.
The rebel group – who have received US-backing in the past – said that the killing was a “mistake” committed by some of its members. The murderers are allegedly being held by rebels who are investigating their cases.
Today I got a FB message from an American living in Italy who has been asked to give a short speech “to one of the many Italian communist parties at the end of the month in Naples concerning class consciousness in current movements in the US, particularly Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, among others.” He asked what I and another North Star editor might have responded to the questions below. As is customary, I will answer them publicly since others might have the same types of questions.
1) what the make-up of these movements is, if they’re vastly working class and poor or if there is a substantial component of middle or even upper class support etc.
Occupy Wall Street was predominantly made up of students and young working people who were willing to camp out in Zuccotti Park in the financial district even if it meant losing their job. Since many young people are part of the “precariat”, it is altogether possible that sacrificing a job as a barista or a bike messenger was acceptable given the importance of the struggle. I have much less contact with Black Lives Matter but feel confident in saying that many of the activists are a mixture of working class African-Americans and students. In fact, I doubt that there is much difference in social terms between the two movements and the Vietnam antiwar movement and Black liberation movement of the 1960s such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) that was led by college students primarily. What you will not see to any great extent is representation from the major unions of the AFL-CIO even though they have praised the movements and provided speakers at rallies. The explanation for this is that bus drivers, UPS deliverymen and women, postal workers, etc. tend to be preoccupied with managing their family affairs and unwilling to take the chance of being arrested or fired. This has been true of leftist movements since WWII for the most part.
2) what the role of the working class is, especially among the young, in these movements..and what their contribution has been to these movements towards the development of mass organization
Answered above.
3) if communists, those identifying as such, or communist parties in the US are participating in these movements
Once again I have had more direct contact with the Occupy movement than BLM. Although I am sure that “the communists” themselves would disagree with me but I would say that the anarchists had a much more organic connection to the Occupy movement than the organized left that saw it as an opportunity to pick up members. This is not to say that they weren’t hard workers and did not believe deeply in the goals of the movement. It is just that they have been trained for generations to see the mass movement as a sphere to operate it rather than an end in itself. They are hamstrung by conceptions of “democratic centralism” that entail caucusing beforehand and bloc voting to support the party line. If the party line and the mass movement’s goals coincide, that works out but when they clash, there can be hell to pay. I say that as a veteran of the Vietnam antiwar movement.
4) and what links, if any, there has been to anti war movements in recent years to the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan etc.
There has been almost no connection. The anti-war movements tend to be made up of older veterans of earlier struggles such as Vietnam and Central America who belong to “communist” parties that were not particularly suited to the “horizontalism” of Occupy or BLM. I posted an article written by a co-thinker about the “culture clash” between the Leninist parties and the new movements back in December 2011. It is a very astute commentary on the failure of the communists to develop organic ties to Occupy and by implication applies to BLM as well.
Guest post by Pham Binh
Occupy and the Tasks of Socialists
By Pham Binh
December 14, 2011
Occupy is a once in a lifetime opportunity to re-merge the socialist and working class movements and create a viable broad-based party of radicals, two prospects that have not been on the cards in the United States since the late 1960s and early 1970s. The socialist left has not begun to think through these “big picture” implications of Occupy, nor has it fully adjusted to the new tasks that Occupy’s outbreak has created for socialists. In practice, the socialist left follows Occupy’s lead rather than Occupy follow the socialist left’s lead. As a result, we struggle to keep pace with Occupy’s rapid evolution.
Occupy Wall Street (OWS) mobilized more workers and oppressed people in four weeks than the entire socialist left combined has in four decades. We would benefit by coming to grips with how and why other forces (namely anarchists) accomplished this historic feat.
The following is an attempt to understand Occupy, review the socialist response, and draw some practical conclusions aimed at helping the socialist left become central rather than remain marginal to Occupy’s overall direction.
Occupy’s Class Character and Leadership
Occupy is more than a movement and less than a revolution. It is an uprising, an elemental and unpredictable outpouring of both rage and hope from the depths of the 99%.
Occupy is radically different from the mass movements that rocked American politics in the last decade or so: the immigrants’ rights movement that culminated on May 1, 2006 in the first national political strike since 1886, the Iraq anti-war movement of 2002-2003, and the global justice movement that began with the Battle of Seattle in 1999 and ended on 9/11. All three were led by liberal non-governmental organizations (NGOs). They sponsored the marches, obtained the permits, and selected who could and could not speak from the front of the rallies. Militant, illegal direction action tended to be the purview of adventurist Black Bloc elements or handfuls of very committed activists.
Compared to these three movements, the following differences stand out: Occupy is broader in terms of active participants and public support and, most importantly, is far more militant and defiant. Tens of thousands of people are willing to brave arrest and police brutality. The uprising was deliberately designed by its anarchist initiators to be an open-ended and all-inclusive process, thereby avoiding the pitfalls of the failed conventional single-issue protest model. The “people’s mic,” invented to circumvent the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) ban on amplified sound, means that anyone can be heard by large numbers of people at any time.
One of the most important elements that makes Occupy an uprising and not merely a mass movement is its alleged leaderlessness. Of course as Marxists we know that every struggle requires leadership in some form, and Occupy is no exception. The leaders of Occupy are those who put their bodies on the line at the encampments and get deeply involved in the complex, Byzantine decision-making process Occupy uses known as “modified consensus.” Occupy’s leaders are those who make the proposals at planning meetings, working groups, and General Assemblies (GAs) that attract enough support to determine the uprising’s course of action.
The people leading the uprising are those who are willing to make the biggest sacrifices for it.
Since Occupy is self-organizing and self-led by its most dedicated participants, attempts to make its decision-making process more accessible to those who are not willing or able to dedicate themselves to Occupy 24 hours a day, seven days a week will fall flat. “All day, all week, occupy Wall Street!” is not just a chant, it is a way of life for Occupy’s de facto leadership.
This reality has affected the class character of encampment participants, who tend to be either what Karl Marx called lumpenproletariat (long-term homeless, hustlers, drug addicts, and others who have fallen through the cracks of the capitalist edifice) or highly educated (white) students, ex-students, and graduate students. The former joined the encampments not just to eat and sleep in a relatively safe place but also because they hope the uprising will win real, meaningful change. The latter tend to dominate Occupy’s convoluted decision-making process and what motivates them is identical to what motivates the lumpenproletarian elements: hope that Occupy will win real, meaningful change. Many of these people are saddled with tremendous amounts of personal debt, have worked two or three part-time jobs simultaneously, or were unable to find work in their field despite their expensive, extensive educations. They were destined to be secure petty bourgeois or well-paid white-collar workers before the ongoing fallout from the 2008 crisis claimed their futures and put their backs against the wall. This is the material reality underpinning the determination of Occupy participants to keep coming back despite repeated arrests, beatings, and setbacks. Their determination is the stuff revolutions are made of.
The advantage of Occupy’s structure and form is that the Democratic Party, liberal NGOs, and union leaders have been unable to co-opt the uprising before it exploded into over 1,000 American towns and cities and targeted President Obama. The disadvantage is that it limits Occupy geographically to places where authorities will tolerate encampments and sociologically to the least and most privileged sections of the population, to those who have no where else to go besides the encampments and to those who can afford to camp out for weeks at a time.
The undocumented immigrant who works 60 hours a week and the wage slave who works 40 hours a week will find it very difficult to shape Occupy’s decision-making process. Attempts to scrap Occupy’s existing structures and forms to make them more accessible to those other than full-time occupiers carry two inherent risks: 1) opening it up to forces that would love nothing more than to turn the uprising’s fighters into foot soldiers for Obama’s 2012 campaign and 2) diminishing the power wielded by Occupy’s most dedicated participants. In places where Occupy does not take the form of a permanent encampment its decision-making process can be even more diffuse and difficult to participate in.
