oaklandsocialist

We all knew it was coming: Now, the police are claiming they found a vial of PCP in Crutcher’s car. Even if they did, it’s irrelevant; they’re just using that to distract attention from what they did. But, aside from that, how seriously can we take their claim?

The police “find” all sorts of things. Take, for example, the OJ Simpson case, where they  “found” the bloody glove in Simpson’s car. The claim was that this was the glove Simpson was wearing when he allegedly stabbed Nicole Brown, thus proving that he was the culprit. The glove was “found” by the cop Mark Fuhrman, who was a proven and dedicated racist. There was just one little problem: Simpson’s hands are so large, he couldn’t get them into the glove!

Can anybody reasonably doubt that Fuhrman planted the glove?

Then there is the case ongoing right now in St. Louis. In December of 2011, two cops – Jason Stockley and Brian Bianchi – tried to arrest Lamar Smith on suspicion of dealing drugs. Smith fled in his car. As the cops gave chase, Stockley is recorded as saying “Going to kill this (expletive), don’t you know it.” (Previously, Stockley is seen waving around an AR-47 rifle – his own personal weapon that is not authorized by the department.) After Smith’s car crashes and he is stuck in the car, Stockley then reaches into the car and does exactly what he said he’d do: he shoots and kills Smith. He is then videotaped returning to his cruiser, rummaging around in a bag in the back of the car, and bringing a pistol and planting it in Smith’s car!

Mark Fuhrman (left); Jason Stockley (right)
These two cops clearly planted evidence. The only unique thing about them is that we have the evidence they did. Is this what happened in Crutcher’s case? Will we ever know?

No, Bernie Sanders is the one who is lying when he says most cops are honest and hard working. They make up a criminal conspiracy.

Who are the Bernie Sanders supporters? Where are they coming from and where are they headed? And what should the role of socialists be in this phenomenon?

I went to the DNC in Philadelphia to try to get a better grip on these questions.

The “Berners”
We have to distinguish between the protesters on the outside (which were almost unanimously pro-Sanders) and the Sanders delegates, who tended to be a bit older and more established in life. One main reason, I suspect, is economics: All the expenses of the delegates are borne by the individual delegates themselves, unless they can get donations from somebody. Expenses include travel, hotel room (delegates must stay at the hotel assigned to their delegation) and all sorts of other required expenses such as paying for the required breakfasts, required bus to take them to the convention, etc. Obviously, this means that a single mother or a broke student or ex-student cannot be a delegate. For some of these delegates, this was their first time being involved in an election campaign. For others, they’d had long experience in such campaigns. This included one Sanders delegate I talked with who made his living working on such campaigns, starting with the John Kerry presidential campaign of 2004. (He tried to recruit me to get involved in the Democratic Party at the local level here in Oakland.)

I spoke with a lot of “Berners”, as one Sanders DNC delegate called them, who were on the outside. Most of them were relatively young (surprise!), but they came from a diversity of political backgrounds. Some had been deeply involved in Democratic Party politics for years. Here is a partial list of “Berners” I talked with:

• A young woman who had been involved in campaigning for various Democratic candidates for the last 13 years, but she didn’t plan to continue with this. She also said
  

  A Sanders supporter

  that she would have quit sooner were it not for Sanders’ campaign.

• A 30s something woman who had also campaigned for other Democrats. She said she was done with the Democratic Party, that she supported a “3rd party”, but that she would support other Democrats “on a case-by-case basis.”
• A woman in her early 20s who was brand new to political activism of any sort and who agreed with the need for a workers’ party, but who also wasn’t totally clear on the concept.
• A 30s something woman from Chicago who also agreed on the need for an alternative to the Democrats but at the same time hopes the liberal Democrat Chuy Garcia will be able to replace the machine Democratic Chicago mayor, Rahm Emmanuel.
• A 30s something socialist supporter of Sanders who also was a member of Socialist Alternative. He believed that Sanders’ campaign was “unique… an exceptional instance that’s likely to never happen again.”
• A group from “foreclosurebusters.org” from New York. In response to my question about the need for a workers’ party, one of them said that “the two party system is broken” but that “we’re not ready” for the “real democracy” of a party built “from the grass roots up.”
• A group of Haitians protesting against Hillary and Bill Clinton’s role in Haiti. The person I talked with agreed with the need for a workers’ party but was not optimistic about the prospects.
• A 20 year old with a sign “Socialists 4 Justice”, who also both supported Sanders and said he agrees with the need for a workers’ party.
• A middle age, middle class liberal who argued that change comes “incrementally” and slowly.

As you can see, there was a huge diversity in the backgrounds of these “Berners”, including whether or not Sanders had brought them into political activity, and specifically into Democratic Party activity.

Clinton Supporters

I also managed to speak with a few Clinton supporters. They were:

• A middle age woman delegate from California who was an official in the SEIU. She
  

  These supporters of Hillary Clinton are smiling here, but they dropped the smile when I asked them about her role in Haiti.

  totally defended everything about Clinton and was very excited about the “first woman president,” was unwilling to consider either the role of Margaret Thatcher in Britain or the Clintons’ role in Haiti. She adamantly denied that the union leadership is not really fighting for its members on the job.

• A middle age woman who was completely unfamiliar with the role of the Clintons in Haiti and basically tried to bore me to death.
• A middle age couple, from New York, who were “guests” to the convention. (I was told that most of these official “guests” were the big money donors.) They got a bit agitated when I asked them about Hillary’s role in Haiti, accused me of having “an agenda” (which is true) and stomped off.

General Mood
In general, I didn’t get the impression that the Berners felt that Sanders had betrayed them by supporting Clinton, although the overwhelming mood was to support Jill Stein of the Green Party. One woman, in fact, said that Sanders had only done so because “he had to,” or else he’d have had his credentials removed.

Young people marching for “Bernie and Jill”

Despite Sanders’ repeated statements that this is not just about one candidate, that was precisely the mood there — “feelin’ the Bern” as some signs put it. This focus on the individual was inevitable since most “Berners” weren’t committed to building “Bernie’s” party – the Democratic Party, nor did he put much emphasis on that issue.

And once “the Bern” was out, there was a tendency for this mood to be transferred to Jill Stein. “Jill not Hill” was the chant. There was some talk about the Green Party, but that wasn’t the focus; the individual candidate was the overwhelming focus, to the extent that even some of the “Berners” I talked with agreed that it approached hero worship or a personality cult.

The Convention
I didn’t have a chance to watch any of the speeches (too busy and too tired), but I did get some insights into the workings of the convention through talking with a few of the Sanders delegates. One delegate said it was one giant “infomercial”, with the delegates under complete control from when they got up in the morning and had to sit through a breakfast that they’d already paid for (mandatory) and listen to various speakers lay down the line. It also costs a minimum of several thousand dollars for a delegate to attend, and I was told that the costs had increased several times over since the 2012 convention. Whether intentional or not (probably intentional, in my opinion), this would have served to keep away many of the younger, more radical of the “Berners”.

An example of how the convention was handled was this: Some Sanders delegate had several thousand old little balloon-type inflatables left over from the 2012 Obama campaign. He painted “No TPP” on them and mailed around several hundred to every state. The plan was to hold them up when Obama spoke. On that day, the convention security confiscated every one of them when the delegates entered the hall. In at least one case, they actually called the cops to enforce their edict!

The walkout on Tuesday, when Sanders officially endorsed Clinton, had been planned well in advance. These delegates went to the media center, where they were locked in and had to negotiate their release with the Philadelphia cops!

One delegate reported to me that the general mood in the convention among the Clinton supporters was like something she’d seen in the Republican nomination, with the immense hostility from the Clinton supporters, who tried to drown out the Sanders supporters with chants of “USA! USA!”.

The Sanders Campaign – some details
The Sanders delegates were getting regular tweets and text messages from on high. However, there was no means of them communicating amongst themselves, except on a person-by-person basis. And there was the constant threat to yank the delegate’s credentials. One delegate I talked with was quite sure that if any delegate had stepped forward and actually tried to organize anything apart from what the Sanders leadership approved of, they would have lost their credentials.

I was also told that the text of Clinton’s acceptance speech was distributed to the Sanders delegates in advance and that they were negotiating with the Clinton campaign about that speech from eleven in the morning until seven at night. The “Berners” had seven points they wanted added or changed; they got five of them. For instance, Clinton was originally going to call for a $12/hour minimum wage, but they got her to agree to fifteen. The also wanted her to “apologize” for the way they’d been treated by the Democratic National Committee. They did not get that.

Future
The Sanders campaign has set up what appears to be a non-profit called “Our Revolution.” It is revealing to compare it to “Momentum,” which was set up by the British Labour Party’s new, left-wing leader, Jeremy Corbyn.  “Momentum” is an open organization, with rank and file local meetings and branches. One Momentum member tells me that with a week’s planning they can get several hundred to a meeting. On the other hand, everything about “Our Revolution” is controlled from the top – from the message that’s sent out to its general focus, which appears to be to advise and help (including financially) local liberal candidates run for office. Some of these might be “independent” vs. “Democrat”, but let’s not forget that  Sanders has run as an “independent” before he even got to Washington, and for all that time, he functioned in the real world as a Democrat, continues to function as one despite the fact that he is now reportedly reregistering as an independent.

Role of Socialists
The most prominent socialist in the US – Seattle city council member Kshama Sawant along with her group, Socialist Alternative – supported Sanders. This is contrary to the classic view of revolutionary socialism – that the workers’ movement has to stand on its own two feet, independent of all wings of the corporate (that is, capitalist) politicians, and that in the US the most important step is to start down the road of building a working class political party, which can’t be done while supporting a liberal Democrat like Sanders. While all my criticisms of Sanders were, I believe, on track and fairly concrete, I think my experience in Philadelphia went a long way towards putting some flesh on the bones (as did Sanders capitulation, which I predicted – to the extent of predicting more or less what he’d say.

A coalition of different socialist groups organized a “Socialist Convergence” for every night. It was attended by hundreds, and there was not the bickering that so often marked socialist meetings of the past. Here, on right, the daughter of slain Honduran indigenous leader Berta Caseres speaks. (Translator is on left.)

The main problem is the lack of clarity on the question of class struggle – the fact that there is an irresolvable conflict of interest between those who work for wages for a living (the working class) and those who live off those who work for wages (the capitalist class), and that while the latter – the capitalist class – has two major political parties, the working class needs a party of its own, which the Democratic Party can never be. The conflict comes in when you support these liberal Democrats, as Sawant did. How can you support any Democrats on one hand (which she also has done in effect at the local level in Seattle), and clarify this point about class conflict and the need for a workers’ party on the other?

I listened closely to Sawant speak at one rally in Philadelphia. She hinted at the class struggle, just as Sanders has done. She denounced “the Democratic Party establishment”, but not the party as a whole. (She made that distinction in Seattle when defending one of the Democratic liberals there.) She hinted at the idea of the working class when she talked about “ordinary people”, but never clarified it. And she hinted at the need for a party based on the working class, when she talked about the need for a party “of the 99%”. Here are some quotes from her speech: “people all across this great country are looking for an alternative to these two establishment parties…. We need to build a left… We need an independent party for the 99%… We have to build a left right here and right now… (We need an) independent party for the 99% right now in an election year….” 

As I said, I didn’t encounter any support whatsoever, not the slightest, for the idea that Sanders should have run as an independent. That was because the call was simply seen as a tactical question. What needed a clearer explanation was the class issues at the core of it — who the working class is, who Corporate America or the capitalist class is, what is the basis of the Democratic Party, and why the working class can never control that party and needs its own party. And that couldn’t be clearly explained, including in popular but clear language, if you turn around and then support a representative of the Democratic Party, no matter how liberal he or she might be. Admittedly, it makes things a little more complicated if you don’t support Sanders, but I didn’t find anybody who cut themselves off from me once they heard that I didn’t support him.

Oaklandsocialist speaking before a small crowd in Philadelphia. You’ll notice that the speech didn’t get the loud cheers, but some people seemed to be listening and thinking; and several people came up to speak with me afterwards.

The socialist support for Sanders also led to a mistaken method in evaluating his candidacy. As one member of Socialist Alternative told me, “Sanders was unique…. this is an exceptional instance that likely will never happen again.” In another forum, another member of the same group expressed a similar approach when he said that he didn’t care about the history of similar candidates in the past. But we have to learn from the past. There is a long history of candidates like Sanders – Gene McCarthy (1968), George McGovern (1972), Jesse Jackson (1984 and ’88) and Dennis Kucinich (2012). Some attracted as much excitement as did Sanders (McCarthy, McGovern, Jackson the first time). And, contrary to what the S. Alt. member said, we almost certainly will be faced with similar candidates again in the future, especially if and when a movement for a working class party starts to get off the ground. That’s why it’s essential to learn from history as well as learn from mistakes.

The Next Step
The working class in this country cannot even start to resolve its problems, it cannot even start to stamp its will on society, without its own organization. The unions can do so, but only in a very limited way. That’s because the unions necessarily focus on the work place – not entirely but that’s the main focus – and also because the majority of workers can never even join a union. No, workers need a wider organization that they can fight through – whether it be around the issue of racist police murders, the environment, or student issues. Such an organization can only be a political party – not one that simply wakes up every two years to run candidates for office, but one that helps workers organize to fight in the streets and work places and communities for their interests day-in and day-out.

How can such a party get started?

Right now, there is a mood among many Sanders supporters to support Jill Stein of the Green Party. Maybe that mood will lead to thousands of these “Berners” sweeping into the Green Party and transforming it into a working class political party that actually fights capitalism.

Or maybe the movement in the streets against racist police murders will start to run local candidates of their own – separate from and opposed to the Republican/Democrat paradigm. If they do this, they will also have to broaden out and take on other issues. These different local campaigns could then start to come together to form a wider body which could lead to becoming a working class political party.

We also have to be very conscious of the situation within the unions. There, the vast bulk of the membership is alienated from a union leadership that is absolutely dedicated to the proposition that there is a harmony of interests between the unionized employers and the members. The result is selling rotten contracts and refusing to fight for the members on a day-to-day basis. At the same time that these union leaders are the voice of the employers inside the unions, they are also the voice of the Democratic Party. And given the alienation of the membership, the union leaders tend to dominate the structures of the union, including controlling the local meetings. That is why any new movement cannot rely on simply going to local union meetings; it should go directly to the workers at their work places. Of course, this will incur the wrath of the union leadership, who will attack the movement for meddling with the internal affairs of the union, but so be it.

Some Conclusions
It’s unclear how the movement will develop, but the general rejection of the Democrats is an important first step. Election campaigns cannot replace the movement in the streets, work places and in the unions, but they can help clarify a program – what we are fighting for.

• It seems to make sense for those who are working in the Green Party to struggle to build this party as a socialist and working class party and as one that participates in and helps build the movements.
• For those who are active in different protest movements – from opposition to fracking to opposition to racism and police violence, to whatever –  it would make sense to start to more systematically link up these different movements with a view towards running independent local candidates who are explicitly opposed to both the Republicans and the Democrats. And at some point in the future, these local campaigns could start to link up to form a broader network which can become a mass workers party.
• In any campaign, if it starts to get off the ground the union leadership will try to intervene, either directly or through their left representatives or both. But they will do so in order to try to keep the movement within the bounds of what’s acceptable to the liberal Democrats and to prevent the radicalism from affecting their members. That’s why where the unions exist, they cannot be ignored, but the movement should go directly to the work places to talk with and try to involve the workers themselves.

Throughout this entire process, it is the task of socialists to both learn from the history – both more recent (Sanders) and earlier (including the other candidates mentioned above) and to watch and participate in the movement as it develops, both to learn from the movement and to try to apply the lessons of the past.

John Reimann
8/1/2016

For the latest Oaklandsocialist updates from Philadelphia, please check out our Facebook page, or chech the FB page of John Reimann. Thanks.

To those we talked with at the DNC: Please check out our Facebook page (Oaklandsocialist), where we have some video and photos and commentaries posted. We’ll have some of the same material up on our blog site by next weekend if not before.

John Reimann, representing Oaklandsocialist, will be speaking on this panel. Please pass the word.

Trump appears on stage at the Republican convention.
“I am your voice,” he said.
“I am the law and order candidate.”
“I alone can fix it.”

Donald Trump’s convention speech may have thrown plenty of red meat to the lions, it may have succeeded in adding to his super-hero image, and it may even be a road to victory in November, but it did not make corporate America happy. Consider how the mainstream corporate media reported on it:

• “Donald Trump, a rich businessman who has never been poor, recast himself as a populist… Thursday night…. Several times, the son of a millionaire New York landlord said, ‘I am your voice.” San Francisco Chronicle, 7/22/2016
• “With dark imagery and an almost angry tone, Mr. Trump portrayed the United States as a diminished and even humiliated nation, and offered himself as an all-powerful savior…” New York Times
• “Trump paints a grim portrait of the U.S. and casts himself as its only savior in GOP acceptance speech” headlined the L.A. Times
• “Trump spoke with so much gusto it sounded much of the time as though he were screaming, and by the end his face was notably red and glistening with sweat.” Washington Post.
• And even the far right Wall St. Journal, undecided who is worse, the subject-to-pressure Democrat Clinton or the untrustworthy Trump expressed their doubts: “Donald Trump ended his party’s convention Thursday the way he began his history-making campaign: attacking the political establishment, playing to voters’ fears of foreigners and crime, and making bold promises to fix America’s ills.”

No presidential candidate, not even “The Donald”, can run as an individual; he or she must run as the leader of a political machine, a political party. And there lies Trump’s problem. The Wall St. Journal described how Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party has created chaos inside that party. They discussed “the missteps that marred the first days of the convention: the repeated passages in Melania Trump’s speech from one delivered eight years earlier by Michelle Obama, a divisive fight over convention rules, and the chaos that erupted after Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s refused to endorse Mr. Trump during a prime-time address Wednesday…. ‘If you can’t run a convention, how is he going to run a State Department, or the Pentagon?’ said Rick Tyler, former aide to the Cruz presidential campaign.’

William Galston, member of the Brookings Institute and columnist for the Wall St.

“We may not know who will win the 2016 presidential election, but we already know who has lost it: corporate America.
Open warfare has broken out between the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Republican nominee. The less-combative Business Roundtable makes no secret of its dismay over the choice of candidates it faces. The turn away from free trade and welcoming immigrants confuses business leaders who still cannot understand why anyone would object to these policies. The corporate sector favors moderation in social policy and a steady internationalism in foreign policy—the reverse of the main currents within today’s Republican Party.
The political homelessness of corporate America is a kind of rough justice—the consequence of policies that have ended by alienating huge numbers of Americans. As recently as 1999, according to the Pew Research Center, 73% held “very” or “mostly” favorable opinions of corporations. By spring 2008—months before the financial crash and onset of the Great Recession—that share had already declined to 47%, and it fell further, to 38% in 2011, before bottoming out.
Other surveys help explain this negative attitude. In 2014, 66% of Americans told Gallup that big businesses were successful at creating jobs in foreign countries with which they were doing business. But only 43% thought U.S. companies were creating jobs domestically; 54% said firms were doing a poor job of balancing the best interests of the U.S. and American workers with the best interests of their company. Businesses have one view of “global supply chains,” it seems, and average Americans quite another.
The moral for corporate leaders is clear: If you care only about shareholder value, only your shareholders will care about you. And when a political crunch comes, your shareholders won’t be numerous or powerful enough to save you.
In a modern democracy, a stable relationship between citizens and corporations rests on a tacit compact. The people are willing to give big business substantial latitude to chart its own course. In return, business leaders are expected to give due weight to the interests of the people, including not only the businesses’ employees but also the citizens of the communities whose well-being the leaders’ decisions affect.
In the three decades after World War II, all parties to this compact understood its terms and mostly honored them. Since then, the social compact has weakened steadily, and many Americans now believe that it has broken down altogether. They have come to view corporations as employing a narrowly self-interested calculus to determine the level of wages and the location of production. And they are fighting back with the only weapon they have—their vote.
Many corporate leaders insist that they are doing what they must amid intensifying global competition. Their real choice, they say, isn’t between paying U.S. workers $20 an hour or Mexicans $3 an hour to make air conditioners, but rather between paying Mexicans $3 an hour and going out of business.
Globalization isn’t an abstract, irresistible force. It has political preconditions, including legal protections for mobile capital. Without international agreements, businesses could not confidently invest in new markets abroad. 
It is telling that neither party’s presidential candidate has endorsed the Trans-Pacific Partnership—and that the business community is surprised. Business leaders should examine their own role in bringing this about. Unless they are willing to live with an America of increasing economic insularity, they must look beyond narrow, short-term self-interest to the long-term common good on which their own well-being ultimately depends.”

Journal, explained why big business is not happy with Trump: “The corporate sector favors moderation in social policy and a steady internationalism in foreign policy.” (As if to confirm the former, on the very same day that Trump gave his speech the corporate giant National Basketball Association reversed its commitment to play next year’s money-making all star game from Charlotte, North Carolina because of that state’s recent law legalizing discrimination against gays and lesbians.)

In that same article, Galston wrote that corporate America “has lost” this election. But just because corporate America has lost this election doesn’t mean that the working class is winning it. Building on the years of development of the Tea Party, Trump is hitting on and thereby further popularizing certain themes:

• “law and order”, meaning support the police and more repression and more racism, at home.
• anarchy and chaos abroad, meaning a barrier to international working class solidarity.

Why? How?
Why, how has the mood developed that allows for the rise of this demagogue? To dismiss “Trumpism” as only the racism of a sector of the white population is to fall into the same simplistic thought process that Trump, himself, relies on and encourages. Of course that is part of it, but there is more:

William Galston, in his column on the right, explains a lot of it. But there is also the world situation: The United States has basically been in a state of low-grade war since 2001. Whenever any country is sent to war, a blood lust, a patriotic war fever tends to develop at first. This only is washed away when the body bags start coming home. But no significant number of body bags have come home. As a result, the patriotic fever has been allowed to build.

On top of that, one country after another has descended into anarchy and chaos – Yemen, Syria, Libya, Iraq… This disintegration of society, coupled with the disintegration of any central government, has meant that the US government is less able to control events in the world. As is true everywhere, many US workers associate with corporate America, especially in times of war (either overt or covert), and they experience the loss of US power as humiliation for themselves. Trump has played masterfully on this.

Democrats No Alternative
That is why not a single Democratic political leader – including Bernie Sanders – can provide any alternative, any barrier to “Trumpism”. Every last one of them, including Sanders, supports strengthening corporate America abroad; every single one of them supports the “war on terror”, either overtly or covertly. So they cannot provide an alternative to this war fever.

That is partly why it has been a violation of principles for socialists – including the only socialist* public official, Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant – to have supported this 21st century equivalent of a cold war liberal, Bernie Sanders. Now, Sawant & Co. are saying that there can be no road to a solution that lies through the Democratic Party. But they should have been explaining this before instead of strengthening exactly these illusions. How can they answer those former Sanders supporters who are now planning on voting for Clinton? One result of this confusion is that according to a June 14 poll, 22% of Sanders supporters say they’ll vote for Trump and 18% say they’ll vote for far-right Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson!

Movement in the Streets, Workplaces & Unions
Not only does action result from changed ideas, ideas change from action. That is why it’s vital to not only keep the movement in the streets going but to widen it. So far, that movement has been mainly in protest over racist police killings. It’s vital to keep attention on that issue, but equally important to expand it.

• The unions as an organized force have been entirely missing in action from this movement. Meanwhile, there is massive discontent within the unions over the union leadership capitulating to management. Their capitulation to management is the flip side of the coin to their capitulation to the Democratic Party, and that should be clearly explained to union members as part of a campaign to help them organize to transform their unions.
• Many protesters are trying to take a hands-off approach to the general elections. This usually comes from an attempt to avoid the thorny question of supporting the Democrats vs. building an alternative. That’s partly because building an alternative must mean taking a class position – the corporate-controlled Democrats (and Republicans) vs. the need for a working class alternative party. In this present situation, it seems the best alternative is to vote for Jill Stein of the Green Party, while the weaknesses of that party and that candidate are also explained.
• Finally, the movement cannot escape a clear position on the issue of capitalism vs. socialism. In Galston’s column on the right, he explains that for big business, the choice is moving to low wage countries and paying $2/hour or going out of business. This is the result of the inevitable further globalization of capitalism itself. Yes, a movement must be built to fight against these consequences – for international solidarity in action, not just words, including regional and global strike action when necessary; for a region-wide and a global minimum standard of living/minimum wage, etc. But in this process it must also be explained that ultimately you cannot control what you do not own, that the working class must put under public ownership the commanding heights of the economy – the giant corporations – and organize and plan the economy under the democratic control and management of the working class itself.

*- Use of the term “socialist” here includes all wings of the socialist movement, including social democrats like Sawant.

On Sunday, members of the Traditionalist Workers Party (TWP), the Golden Skinheads, and other neo-Nazi and white supremacist gangs attempted to spread hate by holding an ‘Anti-Anti-Fascist’ rally on the steps of the California state capital in Sacramento.

The TWP, formed only this year, is led by Matt Heimbach and is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a leading force in the “new wave of extremism” in America. While the group sometimes cloaks itself in leftist phraseology  – “America’s first political party created by and for working families” – its real mission is to “indoctrinate high school and college students into white nationalism” and strengthen the stench of racism, nationalism, and other backwards ways of thinking promoted by both major political parties. Heimbach told Reuters that the TWP and its affiliates were at the capitol “to support [white] nationalism.”

In response a mix crowd of nearly 400, called on by the anti-fascist organization Antifa Sacramento, rallied around and in front of the capitol building an engaged the few neo-Nazis who did eventually show up. Seven people (at least five of them anti-fascists) were hospitalized with minor to sever stab wounds, and many more were teargassed by police. After gaining the steps of the capitol around 1pm and feeling secure no other fascists were present, anti-fascists declared the rally a success. Heimbach, who was not present at the rally, said the fascists stood their ground and that the event was “a victory for us because more of them walked away injured.”

The anti-fascist rally in Sacramento follows a KKK rally in Anaheim and the praising of the Orlando killings by a Sacramento Baptist pastor. In the past two months hate flyers have appeared in downtown Sacramento and on the UC Davis campus.

There were a mix of leftist groups present at the rally, including anarchist elements dressed in black, holding plastic riot shields and wooden poles, and waiving the iconic anarchist red ‘A’ flag. There were many other groups present, including the Freedom Socialist Party and the Progressive Labor Party. Many of the demonstrators waved signs denouncing the white supremacists, encouraging peace, or condemning hate. The majority of the anti-fascist demonstrators did not engage with the neo-Nazis but did chant slogans and provide as much protection and medical aid to the more active comrades as was possible. (It took an enragingly long time for professional medical help to reach one young man who others described as “convulsing on the ground with stab wounds to his chest and abdomen”).

“From Olympia to Atlanta Antifa fights back, the Bay don’t play! Bay Area antifascists”

“The only good fascist is a dead one.”

For all their bluster and show of force, the police showed complete disinterest in stopping  violence between the two sides (violence, as usual, directed from the neo-Nazis against anti-fascists as exemplified by the stabbings). One anti-fascist said the police told National Lawyer’s Guild representatives present at the march that officers were not there to protect protestors. Police fired teargas indiscriminately and without warning, brandished assault riffles, and in one instance pointed shotguns at protestors gathered for a water break.

The state’s armed forces were on full display: police on the ground carried assault rifles and shotguns alongside teargas grenade guns and paintball guns, while helicopters flew overhead and snipers watched from the capitol building roof. The entire area was monitored by mobile camera platforms, and at least one protestor was sure undercover cops were working the crowds.

As is typical at demonstrations between fascists and anti-fascists, police in Sacramento chose to side with the powers of racism and hate. In Sacramento, officers at first refused anti-fascist protestors access to the capitol steps only to have two neo-Nazis ‘slip past them’ onto the steps an hour later. And why not? As armed protectors of capitalism, it is the job of law enforcement to safeguard a system of economic exploitation that thrives on violence and division within the working class. White supremacy – whether its spouted by the KKK, the police, or politicians –  has always been given a platform in mainstream discourse, while anti-fascist are portrayed as violent extremists devoid of any social or political context. If its a discussion of violent extremists, then certainly it’s the police – the only political group to have killed more people in the U.S. than white nationalists – who deserve an excruciating analysis.

Protestors hold a flag after taking the steps of the capitol building in Sacramento.

As increasing numbers of people struggle to survive under the further deterioration of capitalism, large groups are drawn towards the scapegoating tactics of racism and nationalism spewed forth by both ends of the two party establishment. The ruling class works very hard to blame anything and anyone for the deterioration of this country, so long as the eyes of the masses are kept from the true culprit – an economic system based on private profit, wage and job slavery, and complete disregard for the masses. Nationalists and racists should be apposed without hesitation, and by force if necessary, by a united front of workers and supporters; they will not be allowed to draw more people into their ranks and pollute any more young minds.

But force against the individual fascists is not nearly enough. If we are truly interested in stomping out fascists, then a change in the material conditions of the working class is necessary. To end fascism, we must end an economic system that leaves millions impoverished, and smash a state that uses fascism as a tool to intimated and disrupt organized labor and sow fear and hatred. An economy that meets the needs of everyone, implemented by a state controlled by the working class as the vast majority of the population, must replace one that far exceeds the needs of a select few and that leaves broken communities and decimated countries in its wake. Fascism can only be destroyed once workers gain control of the state and take power for themselves.

As the Brexit will soon demonstrate, the fight for socialism cannot be won on a platform of nationalism so long as the capitalist class is always leading the way. The working class within the ranks of neo-Nazis should know that their deteriorating economic conditions cannot be solved by the promises of Donald Trump, or the white nationalist agenda put forth by their leaders. Likewise, the working class of the world should also know that no capitalist state or politician will ever willingly provide the keys to their freedom.

Last week, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf told the media she is determined to “run a police department, not a frat house.” The mayor of 18 months continued, saying she wants to “root out a culture that tolerates unethical behavior,” and that “At a time when communities across the country are questioning police culture, it is critical that our officers operate ethically. This is especially important in a community like Oakland, where trust between the police and the community has been broken in the past.”

The “frat house” in question is the Oakland Police Department (OPD), an institution known for its rapes, murders, racism, brutality, and general disregard for the vast majority of Oakland’s poor, non-white, and/or politically active population. In short, the OPD is a police department like all the rest. Now, Oakland’s men and women in black are scrambling following revelations of trafficking a minor and statutory rape engaged in by “at least fourteen Oakland police officers, three Richmond police, four Alameda County sheriff’s deputies, and a federal officer.” Also of interest is the likely murder cover-up by the OPD involving former officer Brendan O’Brien. (O’Brien – the officer who first encountered the trafficked minor and started having sex with her in 2014 before introducing her to other officers – likely killed his wife in 2013 before committing suicide in early 2015).

Of course, we didn’t need this newest “scandal” to convince us of the criminal nature of the OPD and all police forces across America.

The Oakland Police Department has its roots in armed groups of white men tasked with protecting the property of Oakland’s up-and-coming shipyards and controlling its mostly black labor force. This followed a pattern of policing in the Northern States in which organized bands of full time professional officers were tasked with protecting the private property of burgeoning capitalists. Departments in the South formed to protect a different kind of property – slaves. In 1966 the Black Panther Party was founded in Oakland largely in response to police brutality against working class blacks. One of the many tactics of the Panthers – dubbed public enemy number one by J. Edgar Hoover – was to police the OPD. Armed with guns, pencil and paper, and citizens’ rights leaflets, Panthers would follow OPD cars, stop whenever they stopped, and make their presences known to the officers. (It’s no surprise that the nation’s first gun control laws were passed in California – with help from then-governor Richard Nixon and the NRA – to take arms away from the Panthers).

The original six Panthers: point seven of their Ten Point Program read, “We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people, other people of color, all oppressed people inside the United States.”

Starting in 1996, a group of four OPD officers – the “Rough Riders” – began a spree of violence that led to $11 million in settlements and 90 cases being thrown out. In 2000, all four officers were charged with terrorizing and beating suspects, planting evidence, and making false arrests over the four-year period. (An all-white jury would later clear the four officers on eight counts and deadlocked on the remaining 27). Since 2003, the OPD has been overseen by a federal monitoring board (labeled “independent” but currently led by a former Rochester police chief) and mandated to make certain reforms – changes the OPD consistently fails to make.

The Occupy movement brought masses of dissatisfied people – a mix of classes and political agendas – into public spaces across the city. Protestors were routinely harassed and beaten by police, and agent provocateurs infiltrated encampments. In Oakland, protestors first occupied Frank Ogawa Plaza and renamed the area in honor of Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old black man murdered by BARTPD officer Johannes Mehserle in 2009. The OPD, under then-mayor Jean Quan, responded to Occupy with such force that even the corporate media took note when protestor Scott Olsen was nearly killed by a non-lethal round to the forehead. During interactions with protestors officers covered their name tags with black tape, illegally detained several reporters and protestors, and abused and denied council and medical care to many of those in custody. Settlements for police abuse during Occupy Oakland have topped $6 million, a portion of the nearly $74 million the city has spent since 1990 to settle over 417 lawsuits against officers – the largest sum spent by any police department in California.

Oakland police clash with Occupy Oakland protestors in 2011. The city has since had paid millions to settle police brutality cases brought by protestors.

As we navigate such shocking and numerous examples of police misconduct, it can be easy to lose sight of the forest through the trees. Capitalism – an economic system based on the division of labor and private ownership of the means of production – requires a state with “armed men…material adjuncts, prisons, and institutions of coercion of all kinds” to impose the will of a few exploiters upon the many exploited. Police are bound to uphold the law, and the law in all instances is written by the ruling class in order to protect and further the means by which they make their exorbitant wealth. Weaving through instances of explicit brutality, the greatest crime committed by police is their protection of an economic system that negatively impacts millions of people nationally and billions globally. The sick and criminal culture that does exists within the ranks of the OPD and police in America is only a reflection of the economic system they are tasked to defend – a system strengthened by, and responsible for, the continued presence of racism, sexism, xenophobia, and other backward ways of thinking.

The capitalist class, alarmed by new financial crises and the fragility of its two-party duopoly, is taking steps to give their protective forces more weapons and even greater freedom to trample the constitution. Contrary to Obama’s word, the flow of military grade weapons to police departments has not stopped, and politicians continue to capitalize on blowback from their imperialist wars abroad to advocate for increased police state measures. Increasingly, states are pushing to make resisting arrest a felony offense, and so-called ‘Blue Lives Matter‘ laws are making violence against police a hate crime – despite the fact that police in America have never been safer. In addition, an increasing number of security drills across the country indicates a preparation for the mass imposition of marshal law – a scenario most Americans have been conditioned to accept, as evidenced by the largely apathetic public response to police activities following the Boston Marathon bombing.

Our task is to take power away from the current ruling class before it’s too late. Socialism – the logical solution to capitalism’s inevitable contradictions – would see a society free from the division of labor in which crime would fall as each individual is given a job, an income, and the means by which he or she can self-actualize.

But that future is a long ways off. Until then, socialists must explain the class character of policing in America and its necessary place in a capitalist economy. Work must be done to join together all those made especially vulnerable to police violence and to explain the impossibility of police reform independent from a larger attack on the capitalist system. While Libby Schaaf and other elites across the country may be questioning “police culture” and “unethical behavior,” the majority of working class people – especially those made extra vulnerable by race, gender, and/or sexual preference – question the very role of the police as an institution within a class based capitalist society. Increasingly, we can see the forest through the trees. And as our eyes open to business as usual under capitalism, our demands will come into direct conflict with the needs of the ruling class. In our way stands a coercive state apparatus – the police – existing, in the final instance, to protect the desires of a few.

(Introduction: On June 23, Britons will vote on whether to stay in or leave the European Union. There are a couple of points for US workers to think about:

• In the first place, the very fact of the vote shows the extreme weakening of the grip the two main parties (the Conservatives and Labour) have over British politics. We, here, are seeing something similar with the fracturing of the Republican Party.
• Second, the campaign to leave – which is currently leading in the polls there – is led by far right wing xenophobes. If that vote succeeds, it will not only strengthen them there in Britain, it will do the same here in the US. As the Wall St. Journal points out, “Boston’s (England) debate echoes that seen in the U.S., where Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has been preaching American renewal, more immigration controls and taking on the Washington establishment.” 

Below, Julian Silverman explains what’s happening in Britain:

The referendum taking place next week over whether or not Britain should stay in the European Union has stripped bare the political crisis of British capitalism. The repercussions could spell, literally, the end of the Tory party, the end of the British “United Kingdom”, and the end of the European Union.

One, at least, of Lenin’s conditions for revolution has been met. The ruling class cannot go on ruling the old way. And the middle class is volatile and increasingly hostile to the establishment.

Conservatives in Majority

British Prime Minister David Cameron

Last year the Conservatives found themselves unexpectedly with an absolute majority in the House of Commons. They had no choice but to form a government. Meanwhile, outflanked in ‘neoliberalism’, demagogery and xenophobia by UKIP (the “United Kingdom Independence Party – a far right, xenophobic party) they had promised a simple referendum ‘IN’ or ‘OUT’ of the European Union and – when pushed – had had to give a date.

Opinion polls then were largely non-committal and tended rather towards remaining IN. No doubt the Tory hierarchy thought they could stitch up a speedy apparent ‘reform’, mumble a few comforting patriotic platitudes, surrounded by undecipherable statistics – talk of GDP and single markets etc., relying on general ‘apathy’ and unwillingness to step into the unknown, and thus despatch the Brexteers without much fuss.

Britain’s rulers needed immigrant labour. They needed it as cheap as they could get.

[Incidentally, not only do the immigrant workers disproportionately care for our old, sick and disabled, at little cost, but, being predominantly of working age and ready to work, they also give Brits better, cheaper public services – since they bring in £millions more in taxes than they use.]

They needed the immigrants as workers but they needed them as scapegoats too. Whether immigrant or native British, low wages cannot keep the workforce alive. So, to keep their system running, the government is forced to subsidise bad employers and top up wages. (Tescos, the massive super-exploiting supermarket chain gets £385 million a year). This is called ‘in-work benefit’.

Cameron tries to stitch up deal
In order to appease both the screaming right and his EU colleagues/rivals at the same time, Prime Minister Cameron demanded from the EU a rule delaying immigrants in-work benefits for four years. This was not accepted, since it would have breached the principle of free movement of labour. Faced with European hostility to the Tories’ demands on immigration, for yet further deregulation and special privileges for British ‘financial services’, Cameron rushed across European capitals trying to stitch up one-to-one deals with individual governments.

He came back with nothing [apart, it seems, from some token – and unpublicised – ‘improvements’ to London’s financial dominance] But Cameron was a more than self confident professional liar, born to privilege, connections and money and trained in how to build on them at England’s elite private school, Eton. He had ‘worked’ as a Public Relations consultant. He had no reason to believe that his bread would not continue to fall butter-side up.

Decline in British economy
But he returned to office last year when, largely as a result of his last five years of office, manufacturing had actually declined, a fact which the government’s own ‘Office of Budget Responsibility’ read as a sign of “a coming crash”. Manufacturing represents no more than 8% of the British economy, but the Service industry was also declining. GDP was growing very little, and was to rise by no more than 0.4% in the first quarter of 2016. Estimates of productivity dropped and the OBR called previous optimistic reports “a false dawn”. Standard & Poor down-graded UK credit rating to ‘negative’ [from AAA] based precisely on the risk of exit from the EU.

Privatization and cuts
Meanwhile the population was rising. Each new baby had to be clothed, fed, housed, and taught before it could become a customer, worker or little entrepreneur. Then there were the disabled, the workless, the sick….Despite shifting much of the burden on to local authorities, while cutting down their funds and powers, despite NHS (National Health Service) and school privatisations and welfare caps [limits on benefits regardless of need] despite destroying centres and help for the mentally sick and despite the cuts and privatisation of care for the elderly, ‘welfare’, pensions and health care remain the three top drains on government spending., and the old stubbornly refused to die off quickly enough to save the government from budget irresponsibility. As one poor woman [a Brexiteer] said: “Never mind where they come from, we just can’t cope with more people………We won’t be any better off if we leave, but it’s our children…”.

“Welcome to hell”
Poverty in Britain has reached epidemic proportions.

The Tory leadership were ready for action. They prepared for the most massive onslaught on the poor and on workers that had been seen in many generations. They promised to cut all public services by a total of £12 billion, they made massive plans to cut disability allowances, they tried to impose a new work regime on all hospital doctors, they refused to take in even orphan refugee children with relatives in Britain, to throw out the [International] Human Rights statutes, cut the police force and bring in a new Trades Union Bill’ which would impose the harshest possible ballot and picket restrictions and effectively all but destroy their powerful link to the Labour Party. It was a fellow Tory who declared that this would take the unions back to their role in Fascist Franco’s Spain!

Tory Revolt
But there was a revolt. The very minister who had prepared the killing welfare reforms announced his resignation during the budget debate. He claimed he couldn’t go along with such attacks on the poor and vulnerable. [He went on to become one of the leaders of the OUT campaign]. The Tory (Conservative Party) establishment was running scared. A combination of Labour, Scottish Nationalists and an ever-increasing and ever more vocal band of Tory dissidents combined to force the government to withdraw every one of these projects – as well as others like increased liberalisation of Sunday trading, and relegalising fox hunting. The Tory establishment could not go into a referendum as such an overt and obvious enemy of the people whose interests they were claiming to want to serve.

Their opponents were no rosy kindly liberals. Like Cameron, the leading OUT Tory minister Boris Johnson went to school at Eton and joined the aristocratic Bullingham Club at Oxford. Ministers Duncan Smith and Michael Gove were directly responsible for welfare cuts and privatisations. Nigel Farage, leader of the right-wing xenophobic party UKIP was a millionaire commodities trader.

UK Independent Party.
Longing for a return to the days of British colonialism.

The campaign started low-key, slow and boring. It was as though we were being asked to act as unpaid auditors to “Britain plc”, and the debate was conducted in grandiose abstractions (“sovereignty”, “democracy”, “control of our own borders”. Soon, the invective increased without any corresponding rise in wit, as it descended to sheer Tory vs Tory nastiness: increased invective but no increase in wit. “You’re just polishing poo” said one, among similarly elegant use of words like “shit”, “crap” and worse.

Capitalist establishment unites
The initial response of the newly-elected left-wing Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was: “This is a squabble between Tories”. Later he was edged into taking up a relatively progressive position, refusing to join Tory platforms and emphasising the risk to workers’ hard-won rights. Meanwhile, under increasingly strident anti-immigrant propaganda from the OUT side, Labour panicked and adopted the uninspiring slogan “Labour: better IN for Britain!” and issued posters saying simply “VOTE REMAIN”. Some Labour MPs appeared on the same platform with Cameron. Cameron is in effect using Labour to keep his job. The Labour right is colluding with the Tories, just as they did in Scotland – thus losing at the last election every parliamentary seat they had in Scotland, bar one. The archbishop of Canterbury, the EU bosses, Obama, the banks, etc., all say one thing (helped by Blair, Brown and others who imagine they still have some influence). But the more they panic, the more workers see the combined establishment ranged on one side and they on the other.

Left Groups
Most of the left groups scoff at those who fear the consequences of a victory for the LEAVE camp for their “lack of confidence in the power of the British working class to fight back”. They for their part can equally be accused of a lack of confidence in the power of the European working class to mount an international struggle against the EU.

Cohesion of Working Class vs. “Leave” Campaign
Anything that weakens the cohesion of the working class is a weapon in the hands of the ruling class. A victory for the LEAVE campaign, which is firmly under the leadership of the most vicious enemies of workers’ rights – Johnson, Farage, Gove, and Duncan Smith – will grossly aggravate the political conditions in which socialists and worker activists are struggling. This campaign has already brought to the surface among millions of the more politically backward strata the vilest prejudices long festering in the rotting heritage of British imperialism. A victory for Brexit will herald an orgy of xenophobia and racism; a plague of verbal and physically violent street attacks on migrants and minorities; it will be a carnival of tub-thumping monarchism and chauvinism.

“Kill All Muslims“
Spray painted sign on a Muslim-owned shop in Britain. If the “leave” campaign succeeds, attacks on immigrants in Britain will get even worse.

Foreign Investors
Foreign investors now own close to £1tn worth of shares in UK-domiciled companies. Around 53.8% of shares in UK-based companies, worth some £928.6bn (€1.3bn, $1.4bn), were held by investors outside Britain in 2014, up from 53.6% in 2012 and 43.4% in 2010. (In the early 1980s, less than 5% of British shares were held by overseas investors. The manufacturing sector, which accounted for 25% of gross domestic product in 1979, now accounts for less than 10% – less the financial sector. The value of UK-owned foreign assets is less than the value of UK assets that are in foreign ownership. There is now a net flow abroad of interest payments, dividends and profits.

Most of Britain’s infrastructure is now in foreign ownership. This includes seaports, airports, power stations, railways and buses, water companies and much else besides. Large swathes of manufacturing industry are also now in foreign ownership. This includes the car industry, steel industry, cement manufacturing industry, a large proportion of the food processing industry, and Britain’s aerospace industry…. is passing into foreign ownership.

“National interest” and bashing workers
Of course this is more than balanced by the foreign investments by British firms. British capitalists do not worry over the nationality of the people they extract their profits from! Neither businesses nor their subject populations are overly concerned with national borders. What it shows is that ‘national interest’ is just business-speak for deregulation, union bashing, tax laxity etc.

This global profit-lust is inevitable irrespective of the EU. Last year the IMF leaders themselves reminded us that 85 individuals owned more than the world’s poorest 3.5000,000,000 half of the world’s population.. But in one year things have moved on again: now Oxfam reckons it’s 62.

Fight one country at a time?
So the question for us is how do we free ourselves from rule by these remote but ever-present vast powerful forces? Even if the monumental struggle in Greece had not shown us, a simple reckoning of the balance of forces would have shown us that it is impossible to escape from – still less to defeat – our oppressors one country at a time.

The referendum gives us the opportunity to put forward our vision for how the immense wealth of natural and human resources of Europe could be used for our mutual benefit. And we have valuable allies in the trade unions, activist groups, the various anti-austerity movements and parties across the continent. Labour should be among those making links with these people and join them in calling for a conference and coordinated campaign to work out and enact a strategy to take us towards reaching these goals.

As our recent resolution explains:

“‘Austerity’ is an international phenomenon: the chosen method of Europe’s financial rulers to uphold corporate profits – causing monstrous inequality, ruining hundreds of millions of lives across the continent. Recent events in Greece prove once again that it can only be defeated by concerted action of the peoples of each country.

Europe’s assets have been valued at €155,000,000,000,000. 24 million people are registered unemployed, countless millions more under-employed.

We call upon the Labour leadership to make positive use of the opportunity of the EU referendum to mount a positive campaign for a socialist Europe which can use its immense human and natural resources for the common good.

To this end we call upon the leadership to prepare to link up with the political parties, trades union and activist groups across Europe who support our aims, with a view to working out a common set of goals, and a strategy to achieve them.”

Update
Since we put up this article, the Wall St. Journal printed an article about this vote in UK. They make it clear that the debate over this issue has little or nothing to do with workers rights and everything to do with immigration. They toured the English town of Boston with a retiree and describe his comments: “That’s not English, that’s not English, that’s not English,” the 57-year old retiree said, gesturing to various shops around the town. “It’s all gone.” They also write: “Pollsters in the U.K. identify unease over immigration as a critical determinant of how likely a voter is to cast their ballot in favor of leaving the EU. More than 40% of voters backing Brexit said immigration was the most important factor in deciding how they will vote…”

Was Omar Mateen simply “psychotic”, or was he a homophobic reactionary thug? Is there really a difference? What, after all, happened in Germany when millions supported the Nazis? Was that a fascist movement or mass psychosis — or both?

132 mass shootings in 2016
One thing is certain: The mass outrage in Orlando – 49 dead – is not some isolated incident committed by some accidental individual. Not after San Bernardino. Not when James Wesley Howell was caught headed to the gay pride march in Santa Monica with several assault weapons, high capacity magazines and thousands of rounds of ammo. Not after Dylan Roof murdered nine black church goers in Charleston, SC. Not after the 132 other mass shootings in the US in 2016 alone.

liberals, conservatives and racist populists
The liberals, conservatives and racist populists have reacted as could be expected. Hillary Clinton calls for gun control, especially of assault weapons. But would it really have made any difference if Mateen had only been able to get his hands on a series of high-powered pistols?

Equally predictable was Donald Trump’s reaction: On the one hand reasserting his call for a ban on Muslims to enter the US; on the other, his bizarre implication that somehow Barack Obama was involved. “Look, we’re led by a man that either is not tough, not smart, or he’s got something else in mind. And the something else in mind—you know, people can’t believe it. People cannot, they cannot believe that President Obama is acting the way he acts and can’t even mention the words “radical Islamic terrorism.” There’s something going on. It’s inconceivable. There’s something going on,” he said.

You don’t have to be a supporter of Obama to see the implied racism of these comments.

Then there are the ever-predictable editors of the Wall St. Journal who commented, “One way to stop a Mateen before he strikes is to have an undercover agent invite him to take a step toward violence.” In other words, entrapment. You can be sure that those who are set up won’t be white racists; they will be mostly young and gullible Muslims. In the future, such methods of entrapment will be used against any popular, working class people’s movement, just as it was during the days of Cointelpro.

Meanwhile, homophobia will continue to grow. It is fueled by religious bigot fundamentalist preachers like Steven Anderson and Sheikh Farroukh Sekaleshfar  and Yishai Schlissel in Israel, who stabbed six people at a gay pride parade in Israel. More than that, it is fueled by a world society that is descending ever deeper into homophobia and bigotry as part of wartime bloodlust. And we should note that many parts of the world have been in a state of war – both outright and low grade warfare – for some 15 years now. In this context, willingness to sacrifice lives at the alter of xenophobia linked with all kinds of bigotry becomes the order of the day.

Never were the words of Rosa Luxembourg more true: “Socialism or barbarism.”