Election Eve 2020: You can't vote away fascism

I wrote a post in 2016 about my intention to abstain from the election which brought Trump to power. Inadvertently it wound up being the last post here for a while. For the record, I am abstaining again in 2020. Here's my facebook post of today explaining why.

Solidarity with all the other non-voters and abstentionists resisting the corrupt self-perpetuating rituals of the white supremacist, capitalist political system that have been foisted upon us. It's a lie that 2020's sham elections are the only or even best path of change or progress. This mobilization of intimidation, corruption, shame and fear is terrorism against the people. This thoroughly antidemocratic charade filling us with dread and fear exists to protect the guardians of capital from any real challenge to their self-proclaimed right to administer society for their own benefit. Let us recall the words of Audre Lorde, “For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives here. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.” It is past time for that genuine change. The system proves to us every day all it has to offer is violent repression, indifference to human life, rigged laws, injustice, and the unceasing admonitions to fear any solutions not rubber stamped by its own bloody enforced order. The horror we are experiencing didn't start with Trump and it won't end with whichever murderous criminals win Tuesday's contest.

 

Personally I don't judge individuals who choose to participate in the electoral charade, though I think your merry-go-round ride in search of a brass ring is self-evidently futile, but I judge harshly political forces who set aside the obvious truths that lesser evilism and the lie of "harm reduction" can halt the system's slide to open fascism and organize people into pretending that participating in this charade is some act of resistance. While I wish fervently for Trump's fall, it is my solemn duty to warn that Biden's potential rise does not actually defeat Trumpism or the broader resurgence of white supremacist forces in this country. The racist police forces currently inflicting terror on the residents of American cities are by and large ordered and administered by the Democrats who have frantically been attempting to blunt the revolution in consciousness about racism that swept the country this year on the joyous flames of urban uprisings and rebellions.

 

The elections are important only because our enemies tell us they are. They're not. In truth the vast majority of common people have veto power over this nightmare, but the people in power want you to forget that. Direct action has always gotten the goods, and will again. It doesn't have to be this way. All power to the people!

 

#LessVotingMoreRevolution #AnotherWorldIsPossible

Election Day

I am deeply aware that people fought and died for their right to vote. Democracy is, or rather, would be, a good thing, and surely it is righteous for people to demand not to be excluded from what passes for political process. Democracy is theoretically a mechanism whereby collectivity resolves into taking action in an act of shared commitment and responsibility. Problem is, I don't think that's what's actually happening right now.

My head has spent the last year split in two places, one watching this extended dumpster fire of an election, and two immersed in doing research on the probably esoteric (outside Ethiopia that is) subject of the Ethiopian revolution. There in 1974, a group of dedicated communist revolutionaries started an underground newsletter called "Democracy," that became one of the most well-read political papers in the country. The "Democracy" these folks argued for (and died for, by the thousands) was first demanded of the emperor Haile Selassie, and later, after the military snatched power from a popular uprising, became a rallying cry for pushing aside the military in favor of a popular people's government. So I've had quite a few occasions to think about what democracy might mean.

Listen, this, this USA, this is not a real democracy. This is a parody of democracy: it is not those abstaining from voting today who are spitting in the face of the freedom riders of the 1960s, it is the entire political system that is doing so. An elaborate and deeply embarrassing spectacle that wasted millions of dollars (ie, made a bunch of entertainment companies rich) just left people with the "choice" between a bloated fascist businessman, a deeply unprincipled and dishonest career politician responsible for the deaths of untold thousands who happens to be a woman, and a handful of quixotic alternatives who, with the one notable exception of Mimi Soltysik of the Socialist Party — who isn't even on most printed ballots — specialize in peddling low-frequency bullshit. (And to be clear I include there everyone from the problematic Greens and PSL, to the reprehensible SEP, SWP, libertarians and WWP).

It should be obvious, and yet strangely is not, to most, that this is in fact a dictatorship, the dictatorship of rich property owners we Marxists like to call the bourgeoisie. A government by and for rich people that has diabolically convinced millions that every few years being forced to rubberstamp choices presented to you from column A or column B, when mostly people want and need something else entirely, is actually what "democracy" looks like. It's not. And if you think dictatorship is a harsh word, take off your blinders and look at the role of police in this country and the role of the American military in the world, and see that "they" don't really give a shit what you think. Ruling though repression, fear and circuses, the class that owns this country needs us a lot more than we need them.

It's like a sickness what this country does to people. Like you, I have been indoctrinated for most of my almost 58 years that voting is a sacred responsibility. I have previously voted for Democrats, previously voted third parties, and occasionally abstained. The one thing I have learned is that I will never again close my ears to the evil promises of politicians in favor of the few morsels I want to actually hear. And yet with everything I know and I have studied, I still find myself wracked with guilty obligation. And so I have tried to figure out what I would do today.

Watching the intense fear that has been whipped up by both Democrats and Republicans fills me with both disgust and sadness. I can't blame or condemn most people for exercising what feels like the only thing they can do to stave off the obvious dangers ahead, though I urge folks to hit the books for the truth how that "I voted" sticker is zero defense against an actual fascist onslaught. I am, it must be said, pretty disappointed not in regular people with good hearts taking a stand against the vile and noxious Trump, but in leftists willing to overlook the vile and noxious Clinton, but that's a more complicated story.

I wish that the left was strong enough to run what I believe is actually correct, a campaign of revolutionary abstentionism. I think it would be an excellent step along the way to presenting a transcendent vision of liberation that revolutionaries need to find a way to re-popularize if we are ever to move out of the realm of symbolism. Symbolism is right now the only thing a micro-movement for revolutionary abstention can offer. One day the withholding of our participation in this game will be a weapon; it's not that yet.

It seems to be a beautiful day outside. I'm ever so privileged to be unemployed today and not quite at the bottom of my bank account. That same beautiful blue sky extends west to the Dakotas, and east across oceans and seas to Syria; distances far beyond sight and hearing yet not beyond knowledge.
I know where my polling place is. But I'm going to walk the other way.

I’m Not With Her

“I’m With Him”?

A little history lesson, for those who think voting for the "lesser evil" is a successful strategy. A lesson for those who are terrified of Trump. The SPD noted here were the German social democrats, sort of the left liberals of their time:

"[In 1932] The SPD regarded Hindenburg as the only man who could defeat Hitler and keep the Nazi Party from winning the elections (and they said so throughout the campaign)..... In the runoff election of April 1932, Hindenburg defeated Hitler for the presidency....Finally, the 85-year-old Hindenburg agreed to make Hitler chancellor, and on the morning of 30 January 1933, Hindenburg swore him in as chancellor at the presidential palace."

Sure, history never repeats itself.


#LessVotingMoreRevolution #RevoltDontVote

Supreme Court Voids Fourth Amendment

Apparently the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized," doesn't mean what you thought it meant.

The U.S. Supreme Court today ruled that "Every detainee who will be admitted to the general population may be required to undergo a close visual inspection while undressed," (translation: strip searched, including full body-cavity search) even if "the detainee" has been arrested only for something as trivial as a traffic violation. Of course it was a five-four vote, with the four right-wing justices joined by right-moderate Kennedy, and opposed by the four alleged right-liberals on the bench. Thus with the stroke of a pen, one of the supposed bedrocks of American civil rights, one of the very bill of rights itself, is gutted.

The New York Times reports on the case of a man arrested for speeding and held in error on an outstanding warrant: “Turn around,” Mr. Florence, in an interview last year, recalled being told by jail officials. “Squat and cough. Spread your cheeks.” Yes, that is now legal. With absolute impunity, according to the alleged final authority on the law and the U.S. constitution.

Women and black people have long understood the limitations of legal protections written two hundred years ago by a bunch of rich, white male slaveowners, but now it's clear to everybody: "The right of the people not to be searched in their persons" does not include protection from cops looking up your asshole on their whim. Not according to a bunch of crazy right-wing Republican congressmen, but according to the fucking Supreme Court of the United States. And you thought the ruling that brought us "corporations are people" was a problem.

Don't mourn, organize.

A note on the paucity of posts here in the last week: I've been busy with the real world, which is a good thing. Building for my local Occupy group, including our push for May Day celebrations, "a day without the 99%." But I've also been fuming over the Trayvon Martin case, so angry at white America's anguish over George Zimmerman I've been scarcely able to organize my thoughts. I'm not sure which rediscovery is worse: the way racism is revealed to be so deeply woven into the fabric of white American culture, or the absolute inability beyond mere denial of white Americans to even acknowledge the possible existence of that racism. From liberals like the NY Times' columnist Gail Collins suggesting the issue at the center of the Martin tragedy is "gun control," (as though limiting rope sales would have effected anything in the era of lynching), to people posting (false) pictures of an allegedly gold-toothed Martin (to what, prove he deserved to die?) that have been spread by outright fascists like Stormfront and eaten up by white Americans unwilling to understand the real world, I've been disturbed and demoralized to the point of inarticulateness. But here we are. Hopefully my voice is coming back. —ISH

The New York Post: The Der Stürmer of Our Time

Sean Delonas, ultra-racist and anti-gay cartoonist from the racist New York Murdoch tabloid "The New York Post" has proved once again that the spirit of the Nazi propaganda rag Der Stürmer is alive and well in today's New York City. Anyone who doubts that Islamophobia is racism should view this latest outrage and compare it to the vile ouevre of classic 1930s Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher. (I posted a previous Delonas cartoon equating Obama to a dead chimpanzee here on The Cahokian back in 2009. Good As You blog features an incredible roundup of some of his previous racist and anti-gay vitriol here.)

Delonas' cartoon was the response to complaints from New York City's Muslim community upon the discovery that the corrupt and deeply racist New York Police (NPYD) have been spying on the Muslim community mosques and organizations via in-depth surveillance and infiltration, even spying on things like hiking trips. Of course in Delonas' fevered imagination, all Muslims are terrorists, and all are hook-nosed, bearded and be-turbaned.

Delonas, fully encouraged and promoted by his employers in the Rupert Murdoch empire, seeks the same thing as Streicher and Der Stürmer: the dehumanization and demonization of people determined to be "other" into icons of derision and disgust. Never mind that the NYPD has been spying on peaceful men, women and children, American citizen and immigrant alike, the hateful bigots of the Post think they're all subhumans without the same rights as other people.

The printed equivalent of cable TV's ignorance-promoting Fox News, The New York Post is the voice of rightwing white racial resentment. Viciously pro-war and pro-repression, the Post is low on facts and information and high on bigotry. The New York Post deserves to be thrown into the trash; it's probably too toxic even to be used to absorb pet urine.


Here's a couple classic anti-Semitic Der Stürmer originals for comparison, snagged from the online German Propaganda Archive. A sense of familiarity is striking.

The Election...Eighty Years Ago

I stumbled across this photo on the internet a little while back. It's election graffiti from the 1932 German elections: it reads "Wählt Thälmann," or "Vote for Ernst Thaelmann," the candidate of the KPD, the German Communist Party, that in the years following was ruthlessly crushed. Here's the amazing thing about this photo: it was taken in Marburg, Germany, in 2008. Which means not only did it survive the 1932 elections (the KPD did not win a majority, as we know), it survived the rise of the Nazis, the brutality of WWII, and all the attempts since the war to control the narratives of history.

I've written before about those 1932 elections and about Ernst Thaelmann. The last time in fact, I pondered whether this era of elections, marked by a rise of the extreme right, would be the undoing of today's civil society. Interestingly, I failed to see the possibility of the return of a mass leftwing, popular movement. I saw the main hope, inadequate as it is, as defensive voting for Democrats. I find it worthy of note that while the mainstream of the Republican party has indeed drifted right, that the people out in the streets are no longer the teabaggers of the right but the Occupy movement of the left.

Which changes everything.

Big things are being planned for May Day, even. And frankly, despite the horrible words spouted by those horrible people on the daises of the Republican debates, and despite the transparent posturing of President Obama, they all seem a little bit irrelevant to the possibilities for the future. Not that one of them won't probably win come November, but that no longer engenders such a sense of foreboding hopelessness.

This election graffiti has survived eighty years, telling all sorts of stories about the way things were. While some of those stories are sad, with tragic endings, it occurs to me that the current story is still being told.

Anti-Americana: Peace President

Since on New Year's Eve he signed the despicable and dangerous NDAA, or National Defense Authorization Act, let's dedicate the first post of 2012 to President Obama, elected three years ago on a largely anti-war, reform platform. With his signing of NDAA — see previous posts here — Obama has in quite a real way significantly eroded the rights of American citizens to due process. He's proved that his definition of "peace" is not particularly cognizant with the one in the dictionary.

This poster is from the Cuban OSPAAAL, the Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America, an organization with a long tradition of brilliant graphic design. While this poster isn't artistically their best, their anti-imperialist message remains sharply on point. President Obama is shown winning the Nobel Peace Prize as a warlike American eagle swoops down from behind. Captioned at the sides are the scenes of the President's "peaceful" actvities: Iraq, Afghanistan, Middle East, Honduras, Terrorism, Yemen, the blockade against Cuba, military bases in Colombia, and Pakistan. The poster pre-dates Libya, probably produced in 2009 or 2010.

I must note that this blog marked the awarding of the Peace Prize to Obama, indeed his very election, with a sense of hope. To my credit I think by the time of his actual prize acceptance speech my critique was developing. At some point this year I'm sure I will sum up my own trajectory and thinking about how all that worked out. I think it's important to take responsibility for positions I have argued in the past, and where necessary, to revisit them with a proper sense of self criticism. Let's just say that Obama has been a tremendous disappointment to those who gave him their support, even those of us who offered that support with a critical eye. This disappointment was also entirely predictable, and looking at what happened in the past four years will be important as this year's election season heats up. The question needs to be answered whether voting defensively for Obama last time around did anybody any good. It certainly didn't help an awful lot of innocent people killed by predator drones on his orders. Stay tuned.

For more examples of Anti-Americana, the regular Cahokian feature on worldwide anti-American propaganda art, click here.

Look Who's About to Trash the Bill of RIghts (Hint: Not a Republican)

I have major bones to pick with the New York Times, often. But in a series of blogposts today editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal nails the deadly danger behind the National Defense Authorization Act, passing in stealth under cover of more visible bills on the economy:

"For a while, the administration encouraged people to think that President Obama would take a stand against the unnecessary and very dangerous provisions that Congress jammed into the annual National Defense Authorization Act. He threatened to veto the whole bill in order to block new rules that would mandate the military custody of most terrorist suspects, and officially sanction their indefinite detention, without due process. Yesterday, the president backed down, completely." — 'The Sound of One President Caving'

"The first [issue] is whether certain provisions in the law give the president and the Pentagon the power to detain American citizens in a military facility, possibly for life, without a trial. Lawyers I talked to today said that the bill is pure mush in a lot of areas, including this one. The bill does not require military custody for American citizens suspected of membership with Al Qaeda or an allied group, as it more or less does for foreigners. (Note, by the way, that this is all about suspicion, not proof.) But neither does it prohibit military trial or detention of American citizens. It’s stunning that the president is willing to sign a bill that might effectively turn the right of habeas corpus into a mere privilege — even for citizens." —'More Rubble from the Military Detention Cave-in'

When this bill is signed into law, if you don't like this blogpost, all you have to do is accuse me of being an ally of Al-Qaeda and I can be locked away, forever, with no right to defend myself or even ask why. I disappear, legally, and utterly without recourse. If you doubt whether Mr. Obama's government would do such a thing, I think you're quite possibly being very naive. Do remember the late American citizens Mr. Al-Awlaki and son. But even if you think Obama wouldn't do such a thing, what about President Gingrich? President Bachmann? President Romney?

It's been nice knowing you all.

"Shut Up, You Don't Get A Lawyer"

"To those American citizens thinking about helping al-Qaida, please know what will come your way: death, detention, prosecution. If you are thinking about plotting with the enemy inside our country to do the rest of us harm, please understand what is coming your way: the full force of the law. The law I am talking about is the law of armed conflict. You subject yourself to being held as an enemy of the people of the United States, interrogated about what you know and why you did what you did or planned to do, and you subject yourself to imprisonment and death. The reason you subject yourself to that regime is because your decision to turn on the rest of us and help a group of people who would destroy our way of life is not something we idly accept. It is not a common, everyday crime. It is a decision by you to commit an act of aggression against the rest of us....It is not unfair to make an American citizen account for the fact that they decided to help al-Qaida to kill us all and hold them as long as it takes to find intelligence about what may be coming next. And when they say 'I want my lawyer,' you tell them 'Shut up. You don't get a lawyer....You are an enemy combatant, and we are going to talk to you about why you joined al-Qaida.'"
— Republican Senator Lindsey Graham on the floor of Congress, Wed. Nov. 30

"If we can't hold an American citizen who has chosen to be a member of al-Qaida and has participated in a belligerent act against our country to ask them what other attacks they are planning and whom they are working with, how are we going to get information to make sure that--God forbid--we can prevent another 9/11 on our soil, because that is why they want to come to the United States of America. Also, how do we deal with this issue of homegrown radicals?"
— Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte in the same debate

The occasion was a debate over whether to resolve ambiguous language resulting from the heinous post-9/11 emergency laws like the Patriot Act that suggests American citizens or people inside the United States might be subject to the same extra-legal military repression now allowed by these new laws. These new laws mean that thousands of people are held in secret and no-so-secret jails outside the United States indefinitely awaiting "miltary justice," whatever that is. The Republicans want these laws to apply to American citizens as well; some Democrats are mounting not an opposition to these repressive laws but only to the notion that they should apply to U.S. citizens. According to the NY Times, the vote after this horrifying discussion was inconclusive, and the legal ambiguity stays for now, perhaps subject to future high-court resolution.

But ponder what this means. For all these politicians' talk about people choosing to join Al Qaeda and thus declaring war against the U.S. and therefore being considered combatants awaiting the end of a conflict, what they are now making perfectly clear is that they want the right to accuse anyone they want of high crimes — including American citizens — and not have to prove a thing. That means if Lindsey Graham says you or I is a terrorist, we go to jail. For as long as he wants. And you and I do not have a single solitary right to protest or defend ourselves. No evidence necessary. No right of appeal. No nothing. No rights at all. And these Senators are literally and clearly advocating that.

There is a name for the kind of society that acts like that. This is not about preventing another 911, this is about repression and stifling political dissent. A friend of mine on Facebook posted a song about the Mothers of the "Disappeared" in Argentina's dirty war of right-wing repression and asks, now, of the U.S.: "How long until our friends and neighbors begin disappearing? Will anyone write a song for their mothers?" That is what the Lindsey Grahams and Kelly Ayottes of the U.S. government are asking for: the right to disappear anyone who disagrees with them.

You owe it to yourself to hear Senator Graham say "Shut Up You Don't Get a Lawyer" in his own shrill, venomous voice. You can here a snippet of his time on the Senate floor in this report at NPR's Morning Edition. Click here.

'More than machinery we need humanity"

I was reminded of this brilliant speech by one of my favorite left-wing sites. It's the climax of Charlie Chaplin's 1940 film "The Great Dictator," a must-see on anyone's list. This is a stirring, heartfelt speech made by Chaplain himself playing a Jewish barber who has found himself masquerading as Adenoid Hynkel, the film's bumbling parody of Adolf Hitler.

The times we live in are very different than the world of 1940: the Hitlers of the world today are at worst very little Hitlers indeed. But it's not necessary to exaggerate the state of the world or fling over-reaching hyperbole about to find in Chaplin's emotional call for a new and better world ideas that retain currency even when jack-booted thugs are for the moment mostly dormant.

Fighting hatred, intolerance and militarism is always a good idea: and in a world that does seem like it's spinning about on a precipice of horrible possibilities, I find a poignancy in the relevance of this short and stirring testament. Some people seem in an awful hurry to repeat some really horrible chapters of the past: perhaps by listening to this cry from the past we can remember to keep our gaze pointed at a better future.

Islamophobic Terrorism: Mainstream Racism Comes Home To Roost

No sooner had the smoke started clearing from the rubble in the streets of Oslo, the word was out: jihadi Islamic terrorists have struck again. Even the New York Times briefly reported a sudden claim of responsibility alleged to have been issued by some previously unreported al-Qaeda-like sectlet. Then came the reports of shootings on a "youth camp" outside of Oslo. Soon a shooter was apprehended: He was distinctly blonde and Scandinavian. Between the bombing and the shooting, at least 75 people were dead and dozens more wounded. The news stories changed: the terrorist was now claimed to be a Norwegian convert to Islam. To fit the standard established media narrative, as more came to be known of Anders Breivik, the word "terrorist" started appearing less and the word "madman," more. For days afterward, the American wingnut site World Net Daily ran a poll: "Do you think more Islamic terrorism of the kind that hit Norway today will visit U.S.?"

And then out came the truth: in a propaganda video slideshow, a record of copious web posting, a facebook page, and a thousand-page manifesto, Anders Breivik announced himself to be not only a Christian, but a dedicated crusader (in the most literal sense of that word) to fighting Muslim immigration to Europe and its enablers, "multiculturalism" and "cultural Marxism." He revealed himself to be an ardent supporter of Zionism and the State of Israel. And he revealed himself to be an ardent fan of the whole roster of pseudo-scientific European and American Islamophobes including the vile Pam Geller of the American Atlas Shrugs hate blog. He announced the beginning of a historic struggle to defeat a Muslim takeover of Europe on the scale of the war that defeated the Ottoman Empire at the gates of Vienna in 1683 (that battle is shown in the illustration above: it is apparently a central theme of European Islamophobes and a recurring motif in Breivik's opus). His Norwegian targets were chosen because, out of some sci-fi scenario, he felt it was necessary to snuff out the next generation of "cultural Marxists." The youth camp, it turns out, was affiliated with the ruling Norwegian Labour (socialist) Party, and routinely held solidarity workshops with international struggles like Palestine and the Western Sahara (although condemning the attack, the American fascist commentator Glenn Beck charmingly suggested the youth camp sounded like "the Hitler Youth.")

Here's the thing: while Breivik's murderous rampage may place him on the violent fringe, his ideology is something quite less than fringe. Right-wing politicians across Europe in the Netherlands, Austria, Italy and elsewhere have been stoking the flames of hatred against Muslim immigrants and against "multiculturalism." While not everybody might be waxing nostalgic about the Knights Templar and the Winged Polish Hussars as Breivik does, clearly this idea of a white Europe besieged by brown heathens has caught the imagination of many, many people.

And the ideas of Islamophobia are seeping into mainstream discourse.


I saw this snippet from British "new atheist" Richard Dawkins posted at Lenin's Tomb earlier this year. In it the allegedly humanist Dawkins, a darling of intellectual liberals in the U.K. and America, speculates: "Given that Islam is such an unmitigated evil, and looking at the map supplied by this Christian site, should we be supporting Christian missions in Africa? My answer is still no, but I thought it was worth raising the question. Given that atheism hasn't any chance in Africa for the foreseeable future, could our enemy's enemy be our friend?" Wait, Dawkins is willing to speculate about casting his lot with (wildly conservative) evangelical Christians just to defeat the evil Muslim menace?? Dawkins' suggestion that Muslims represent a force of "unmitigated evil" that transcends his normal principles should be a danger sign that his ideology is infected with European nationalism that is ultimately racist at its core.

I have written earlier about "Everybody draw Muhammad day" in the U.S.: in my opinion it's an excellent example of how what might look like a laudable action in support of civil liberties becomes transformed into a mass demonization of the Muslim "other," a crazed, armed, and bloodthirsty mob threatening the foundations of Western civilization. How easily defense of secularism can be manipulated into an orgy of racist stereotyping, disinformation, and alarmist hype.

If in the U.S. the most outspokenly anti-Muslim politicians are obviously bigoted Republicans like Herman Cain and Congressman Peter King, one can see a potential trajectory based on how anti-Muslim immigrant attitudes have taken hold in Europe. A number of the right-wing anti-immigrant politicians in Europe are openly gay, claiming in Islam a special threat to European social tolerance. But this is a specious argument, presupposing that Muslim immigrants are not only specially predisposed to violently oppose homosexuality, but also closed to the possibility of coexistence. This despite the fact the Islamic scripture on homosexuality closely follows that of the Abrahamic traditions of Judaism and Christianity which, it must be acknowledged, birthed European secular society. In my experience in discussions on gay blogs, I can easily see Muslim immigration becoming — perhaps thanks to the Zionist investment in pinkwashing — a wedge issue that starts to chip off layers of privileged gays toward a conservative agenda. The condemnation of Islam's alleged social conservatism is not usually a serious theological discussion but an amalgam of fantasist assertions and alarmist generalizations usually invoking the notion that all Muslims want nothing more than to behead anyone who stands in their world-dominating way. Note that the anti-Muslim immigrant politicos, gays included, are so wrapped up in their narrative of these murderous "others" there is no thought to the bridges that might be built, for example by queer muslim immigrants (and there are plenty) between communities that might unite to find common — multicultural, and even class — interests.

Here's where, most closely tied to neoconservatism, the faux authorities on Islam step in: Pam Geller, Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer, Bruce Bawer, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and others. These cultural theorists beat a drum of hatred toward Muslims, hatred that is transformed into violence at the hands of activists like Anders Breivik.

And here's the truth you won't get from the media narrative: according to Europol, terrorist "attacks by separatist/nationalist groups far outnumber attacks by Islamists." (See Matthew Yglesias at Thinkprogress). It is not the Muslims who are bringing violence to Europe's streets. And on the contrary, fascist nationalist groups like the English Defense League (which Breivik was apparently in contact with) have been organizing not only behind the scenes, but openly provocative street actions as well.


This is a photo (from TPM) of one of the hate-fests held to protest the downtown Manhattan Islamic Community Center in 2010. Note the pro-torture "Waterboarding Instructor." These are not thoughtful secular humanists, this is a reactionary mob. The 75 acts of murder committed by Anders Breivik are an easy-to-understand warning to take the mainstream ideology of Islamophobia dead seriously. Are Breivik's writings the "Mein Kampf" of a future mass movement, as one leftwing blogger suggests? I'd rather not wait to find out.

The Laughing Faces of Evil

Who are these jovial people and what are they laughing about? These are the Republican presidential candidates at tonight's debate, and they're laughing at you, America.

I couldn't bear to watch any of it, and having read a number of live blogs and articles, I made the right decision. These people are monsters, every last one of them. They think it's funny to talk about enshrining discrimination against gay people in the constitution. They would rather orphaned and unwanted children languish in group homes than be adopted by loving foster parents who happen to be gay. They actually look admirably upon the social policy of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. They want to take away the rights of working people to organize. They want loyalty oaths and the right to choose who among those of us who live are here are good enough to be called real Americans. They don't understand the separation of church and state, and they think that their religion is not only better than yours, it gives them the right to make you do what they tell you. These people think that corporate profits and the right of rich people to have even more and more money are more important than the right of you and I to afford medical care. These people believe they have the right to lie as much as they want if it means they can have power over you and me. These people admire the mobs in occupied Jerusalem who just chanted "butcher the Arabs," and yet some of them claim to be against America's current wars.

Me, I'm not laughing at all.

History Is Not a Book

A Democratic congressman got in big trouble last week for making "inflammatory" remarks about the Republicans and their attempts to repeal healthcare reform. A Democrat from Tennesee, Steve Cohen said of the Republicans, "They say it's a government takeover of health care, a big lie just like Goebbels. Just like Goebbels, you say it enough, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, and eventually people believe it." Of course Cohen was roundly condemned on the right and the center. The allegedly centrist group "No Labels" called it a "toxic analogy." Glen Beckkk went on to claim that Goebbels was really a leftist or something anyway.

So it's true that there is a big difference between Nazi propagandist Goebbels and today's Republican Party. I wouldn't waste any energy trying to prove that the Republicans are really Nazis: I'd look as foolish as Glenn Beckkk trying to prove that Obama is a Maoist is a socialist is a nazi is....just really really bad. By saying that I don't mean to let the Republicans off the hook: their tactic of the Big Lie is indeed ripped straight from the pages of totalitarianism, dressed up all nice in American family values. But lying is a specialty of (American?) politicians, it always has been. Everybody knows it. And I'm not sure who comes out looking better: the crazy people who believe the lies when they're particularly outrageous, the deluded for whom the lies solve the problem of difficult choices, or the rest of us who enable this whole process by voting for people whose lies we like better, because, well, maybe that thing about lies containing a kernel of truth is our last vestige of hope.

I've illustrated this post with two photos I took in Berlin about 1994, just a few short years after the fall of the Wall. They are of a collection of vacant lots in the center of town called "The Topography of Terror." The fascinating thing about the Topography of Terror was that it was an open-air museum to something that was actually no longer there. These vacant lots and piles of overgrown rubble were the center of the Nazi machine of propaganda and repression: they included the headquarters of the feared Gestapo where thousands of political prisoners met a brutal end. Destroyed by the end of WWII, they were left empty by the course of the cold war: this was no man's land. I gather in the years since something more museum-like is materializing in this space, but when I visited you bought a ticket, passed through a gate, and there you were in the middle of nothing at all. As you can see in one direction were a few still-standing examples of totalitarian architecture, and in another some modern mid-rise buildings. But that "nothing at all" said everything. It was a kind of historical proof of a fearsome equation writ plainly all around.



Here in the United States you mostly have to look really hard to see signs of the violence we have done to ourselves over the centuries. A monument here, a skyscraper built on the ruins of another there, something slightly out of whack that disrupts the order of intention: my mother once showed me chips in stone down on Wall Street where her mother showed her that some bomb-throwing anarchist assassination took place early in the last century. But unlike the plain evidence lying about a vacant lot in Berlin, you have to go looking for meaning here. It's easy to forget that the U.S. Capitol building was built by slaves. It's easy to forget the words of hate that bounced off its council walls over the centuries: we want to think of these politicians as engaged in some kind of noble pursuit when really, that is just us searching again for some truth in all the lies.

If it's not happening on the news tonight--on the internet this second--is it actually happening? Did it happen? Was it real? Did it mean anything? We look through the pages of history books or the archives in a library or articles on Wikpedia to explain what happened before, waiting for it to happen again. Next week nobody will remember what Rep. Cohen said about Goebbels and the Republicans's big lie. And next week, next month, next year, indeed no Nazi stormtroopers will be unfurling their swastika banners from the podium in the center of the Capitol.

But when history happens to you, it's not unfurling neat and tidy like a history book, or a museum. There are politicians lying and something doesn't seem right and there's a terrible building downtown where people go in but don't go out and then there are bombs falling and you're trying to focus on staying alive and living out the life you were promised and one day you look up and there's ruins all about you and you're trying to figure out just where you went wrong or how you survived or where your friends are or trying not to remember things you've seen or heard or smelled and nobody's explaining it to you like a tour guide, it's just, well now there's this empty lot that says so eloquently, this is what happened to you because you made the wrong decision or chose not to act or you closed your mind to the horror you could see happening, or maybe even you just weren't strong enough to stop it, you were just trying to be you while the world happened around you. And hey, you must have made some right decisions, or you have really good luck, cause you're still alive. And somebody's putting your story in a really interesting book but it didn't seem so much fun when it happened, so confusing, so dangerous. So sad. So terrible.

Allow me to predict the future: the 21st century will not be a repeat of the 20th century, just as the 20th century was not a rerun of the 19th century. But already there are lies being told about what you, I -- we -- are experiencing. We can see that something is not right, something is out of whack.

Perhaps Steve Cohen was foolish to invoke a straw man as easy to dispatch as Joseph Goebbels. (Well, easy to dispatch 65 years after his death; it wasn't ever thus.) But in all the noise about Cohen's remarks, isn't it strange that the discussion is now on whether it's appropriate to link your political opponents to the figments of ulimate evil represented by the Nazis? Where is the discussion of the Republicans' message, that Obama's modest healthcare reform represents "a government takeover of healthcare"? History is happening to us. Confusing and dangerous as ever. Pay attention.

(Photos by me, ca. 1994, Berlin.)

The lessons of Ernst Thaelmann

German communist leader Ernest Thaelmann (Thälmann) was born April 16, 1886. He was murdered by the Nazis in Buchenwald in 1944. These photos are of the massive graffiti-covered monument erected in Berlin on the centenary of his birth in 1986, just a few years before the fall of Communist East Germany; I took them in 1994.

Thaelmann is a problematic hero: the leader of Germany's Communist Party (KPD) he was arrested by the Nazis in 1933 and spent 11 years in solitary confinement in a concentration camp before being executed toward the end of the war. But despite his personal heroism, the years of his leadership saw the KPD make mistake after mistake. While the KPD had mass support in Germany, it constantly minimized the threat of the nascent National Socialists, the Nazi fascists, and directed most of its ire against the social democrats. Thaelmann was not considered a theoretical heavyweight, and his adventurist tendencies did not serve the KPD well. Thaelmann himself was known to swagger around in a sort of militaristic uniform to compete with the Nazi brownshirts.

At the risk of invoking the dreaded Godwin's law, Thaelmann's story should be something of a cautionary tale for today. While the teabaggers are not exactly Nazis (yet?), I think the left makes a serious error in discounting teabagger discontent. Progressives are faced with similar challenges as they were in Germany in the early 1930s: how to press our own agenda, critique the failings of the inadequately progressive administration of Obama without subverting the parts of our agenda that are, in fact symbolized by his election; and in defending progressive ideas against resurgent far-right Republicanism without taking responsibility for Obama's failings. This is immensely complicated by the fact that the right-wing is vastly more self-aware and organized than the left in the US. I continue to believe that saying it doesn't matter whether Obama or the Republicans win is short-sighted.

The KPD missed the key dividing line in the battle between left and right, and many historians accuse them of facilitating the rise of the Nazis. Let us not forget that battle continues today.


This monument is huge; it still stands. It's classic monumental socialist realism. It's centered in a fairly dreary modern housing project in Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin.

Sarah Palin, the face of evil

Sometimes it doesn't come in jackboots and uniforms. Sometimes it comes giving lying and bullying speeches. Be afraid, be very afraid.