May Day 2014

Here's my yearly inspirational post on May Day. This is crossposted from the Kasama website:

MAY FIRST: RAISE A RED BANNER!

It's May Day, the international workers' holiday, the communist holiday. (And you can read about the origins of the holiday here.)

It's not a holiday to give gifts, to eat a big meal with the family, to contemplate a trip to the beach. It's a holiday to remember what we're in this for, a holiday to go outside and shout about what's wrong with the world and what should be, can be, must be, fixed.

It's not a day to talk about which lying and cheating candidate to vote for in the next election: it's a day to talk about less voting and more revolution.

It's not a day to talk about begging the bosses for a few more crumbs: it's a day to talk about a world without bosses.

It's not a day to settle for a slightly higher minimum wage: it's a day to proclaim the principle of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.”

It's not a day to think about taxing the rich, it's a day to envision ending the system that perpetuates inequality once and for all, and shaking off that 1% for good.

It's not a day to be locked down by the pain of racism, of sexism, of heterosexism, of transphobia: it's a day to be proud of who we are, knowing that by struggling together we're building a better world in our own image; it's a day to treat each other with respect.

It's not a day to question the right of people to live where they want, on this day nobody is illegal. Or maybe, everybody is illegal: we're all rejecting the rotten terms of "citizenship" in this society together. It's a day to embrace our sisters and brothers regardless of documentation, to walk together in solidarity, to speak our many languages openly and equally, to demand a home for all.

It's not a day to fear the police and the government snoops and snitches. It's a day to remember our vast power as the majority, aware of our right to fight, conscious of the righteousness of our cause. It's a day for us to own the streets, a day for us not to fear the shadows behind us.

It's not a day to be locked inside: it's a day to talk about smashing open the prisons and freeing our loved ones, about re-imagining how a truly just world might wipe away injustice and heal selfish hearts.

It's not a day to listen to the words of our so-called leaders as they try to trick us into supporting — and fighting in — new wars. It's a day to call them on their bullshit, to openly oppose them, to denounce their plans for world domination. It's a day to talk about a different world free of imperialism.

It's not a day, here in the belly of the beast, to decorate with red, white and blue. It's a day to remember that the proletariat has no country — has all countries — and the troops we need to be supporting are the liberation warriors fighting in the forests and mountains of India, of Nepal, of the Philippines.

It's not a day to shoot down our dreams as unrealistic, it's a day to proudly proclaim our struggle for a just society liberated from capitalism once and for all. It's a day to unleash those dreams.

It's not a day to be silent, it's a day to talk about what we want and to plan how to get it; it's a day to demand what is right.

It's not a day to talk about hoping things get better, it's a day to fight to make things better.

It's not a day to be only a radical or a leftist, to moderate our language or worry about what people think: it's a day to be a communist, a red, a revolutionary fighter for human liberation.

It's a good day to raise a red flag. It's a good day to link arms with your comrades, to take the streets, to act like we own those streets, which, in fact we do. It's a good day to talk to your neighbor about what needs to be changed in the world. It's a good day to help open the eyes of a friend to the reality of the world we live in. It's a good day to recommit to the struggle's long haul, to remember the martyrs we have lost, and to remember the words of the brilliant thinkers who help us to make sense and strategy of the world and its challenges. It's a good day to be inspired and reinvigorated.

As the dawn breaks red on the horizon, wake up and celebrate. And may tomorrow be as good as today. It's right to rebel!

#myNYPD #ftp

Had some great fun this week participating in the hijacking of the #myNYPD hashtag on Twitter. In a PR move, the NYPD issued an innocuous call to submit pictures of kindly cops helping out New Yorkers by submitting photos under the #myNYPD tag. Activists quickly took advantage of the NYPD's offer, and flooded Twitter with tweets and pics of police terrorism. The hashtag quickly trended, rocketing to the top after thousands and thousands of tweets.

I've written up the story on Kasama: "#MyNYPD: The people turn the tables on the pigs": "This was a victory for the people. This act of rebellion showed creativity and spontaneity, and more than anything it showed how corporate social media can be co-opted and harnessed to our own purposes. It may have been a minor skirmish against the armed thugs in blue, but we won this one." Head over there to read the whole piece.


Here are some of the tweets I sent out. I tend to tweet only on special occasions, but you can follow me @CahokianISH. The first pic was a random incident I witnessed walking through the 42nd Street Subway Station.

#myNYPD #ftp I was just passing by, subway cop just slammed this kid to the floor. He only asked for a swipe. pic.twitter.com/2I8SmpcDSv
— ISH (@CahokianISH) April 23, 2014

This one was from the one-year anniversary of OWS, S17 2012. The cops were pretty brutal that day. I also wrote about it on Kasama.

Ties that bind. #myNYPD #OWS Yes they pulled him out of the crowd and threw him to the street. #ftp pic.twitter.com/fxW3yEYHlX
— ISH (@CahokianISH) April 23, 2014

This was from a big demo in November of 2011, I think right after Zuccotti had been retaken by the cops. This was a moment when the crowd started to throw down all the police barricades. It only lasted a minute but it was exhilarating.

Your barricades will not stop the people. #myNYPD There are more of us than there are of you. We have the power. pic.twitter.com/IvKwK05gFo
— ISH (@CahokianISH) April 23, 2014

Michael Stewart was a graffiti artist killed by the cops in the early 1980s. Somewhat randomly I mentioned him here on The Cahokian. 

This young man didn't get to grow up because of #myNYPD Remember Michael Stewart. #graffiti pic.twitter.com/2fZAgAtVXN
— ISH (@CahokianISH) April 23, 2014

March Writings

I have a couple new pieces up on the Kasama site.

First up I wrote a short piece for International Women's Day. Entitled "International Women's Day: Oppression transformed into revolutionary power," it's a brief survey of some of the history behind the March 8 holiday:

"Today women are a significant part of the revolutionary movement: whether in the rural regions of India where armed women Maoist rebels challenge Indian capitalism (photo at top), or in the mass movements of the squares from Egypt to Wall Street, or in the spheres of theoretical exploration and debate necessary to take the communist movement to its next stage, women's voices are a crucial part of grounding the struggle in the reality of experiencing and challenging oppression. Revolutionary sisterhood is indeed powerful. Let's see what it can do next."

But what I'm really happy with is a short survey of some of my favorite radical songs. "Urban rebel music subverting your earwaves" takes a look at a handful of songs from Jill Scott, Ursula Rucker, Erykah Badu, Boots Riley and the Coup, and Welfare Poets. Faithful readers of The Cahokian will recognize a couple of these: I've written about the Rucker song and about Erykah Badu before.

I've combined a little bit of cultural critique, music appreciation, lots of song lyrics, and music clips and videos to discuss some surprisingly radical songs outside the more expected realms:

"When people start talking about radical or political music, I'm always surprised how the topic of conversation rarely moves outside the genres of hardcore head-banging punk or earnest sing-along folk. Sometimes talk moves on to the well-worn populism of mass-appeal pop-rock, the Springsteen/Mellencamp/Fleetwood Mac tunes so beloved by bourgeois politicians trying to put something over on voters, and there's the counterpoint of classic hip-hop with its righteous anger against cops and sometimes problematic derision of women and gays. Without disparaging any of these rich genres of music, I want to recommend some really great and really radical tunes from genre-busting urban musicians who sometimes defy easy categorization but whose visionary art is something that revolutionaries can really embrace."

There's some really great songs discussed. The Jill Scott number "My Petition" is a must-listen, and it really is amazingly subversive. The article was set off by re-listening to this song while riding the bus and paying attention to the lyrics. I hadn't noticed before how slyly Scott hooks you in to a critique of America while assuming at first she's talking about her love life. There's a song clip provided. Check it out!

I've also written a few short introductions for re-purposed content on Kasama. You can follow my postings there at this link.

Finally let me put in a plug for my daily work at the "Anti-Imperialist League" on Facebook. Every day I've been posting a picture with a first-person quote from a huge spectrum of revolutionaries. Each Saturday I post a quote about a little-known or forgotten episode of rebellion.

It's been really educational and rewarding. I've come to realize the importance of letting people speak on their own, and seeing how much traditional history actually disparages the record of oppressed people themselves. I don't find myself agreeing 100% with every analysis of imperialism offered, but the people featured, a worldwide mix of women and men, are all actual fighters or theoreticians against empire. And I've been able to feature some of the struggles that have always interested me, like the tragically brave Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (EPRP) May Day rally of 1976 featured in the graphic above.

My goal is to continue the anti-imperialist quote of the day project for at least an entire year.

Remember the Charge of the Light Brigade!

In a war between Russian and US imperialism, the only side the people should be on is their own. 

President Obama got on TV last night to say that there would be "consequences" to Russian military involvement in Crimea. While the Ukraine is certainly a complicated issue what with the involvement of a host of fascists and right-wing fake communists, opposing American saber-rattling must be key for those of us in the United States. 

No to Obama's Crimean Adventure! The main enemy is at home — Down with US imperialism!

Recent Writings

Supporters of GEHO in Jinja, Uganda

After a long dry spell, I've been doing some more writing, all of it over on the Kasama website. Working with other members of the editorial collective, I've been helping to flag and introduce interesting articles from outside websites, as well as generating original content.

First up, I'm most proud of a long piece I spent a week researching and writing. Entitled "Real Enemies, False Friends: Imperialism and Homophobia in Africa," it covers the causes behind the wave of terrifying anti-gay repression in Africa. I've coined the phrase "weaponization of gay rights" to describe the hypocritical embrace of LGBT rights by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as a neocolonialist cudgel in the arsenal of US imperialism. It's pretty timely in the context of the orgy of hypocrisy during the Sochi Olympics in which anti-gay, repressive Russia is being pilloried by the professedly pro-gay, but still repressive US. I take aim at local demagogues, American evangelicals like Scott Lively, imperialist politicians, and the worst alleged gay rights organization ever, the Human Rights Campaign.

Next up are a bunch of short introductions meant to frame and introduce articles for discussion:

"Sochi Olympics — stop anti-gay violence in Russia" is a Human Rights Watch report  on the disturbing increase in antigay violence following the passage of Russia's gay propaganda law. My introduction just presents some of the issues for those not familiar. I'd like to follow this up with a discussion of the attempted gay boycott of Sochi and its corporate sponsors, addressing some of the same issues of hypocritical imperialism as in my Uganda/Nigeria piece.

"East Baltimore — What the fuck is a selfie?" is an article about life in a world where social media doesn't reign supreme. My introduction is a call to examine the bubbles and presumptions leftists inhabit when thinking about interacting with the real world.

"Atlanta, unfit rulers should get out of the way" is an article about the calamitously unusual snowstorm that swept the south. My introduction talks about the clash of extreme weather and capitalist crisis.

"American Studies Association penalized by NY Senate for Israel boycott" talks about the attempted retaliation against supporters of the BDS movement in New York. My introduction introduces the BDS movement as a way of materially supporting the Palestinian struggle.

Since Kasama front paged my fairly critical piece on Peter Seeger, we chose another article that was more personally laudatory as a counterpoint. I introduced "Music journalist Dave Marsh remembers Pete Seeger" in the hopes of keeping a discussion going.

My personal life is still quite unsettled, but it feels good to be speaking my mind again and keeping up with the writing. I'd love feedback from readers.

On Pete Seeger and the Purpose of Hammers

Pete Seeger performing in the 1950s

If I had a hammer,
I'd hammer in the morning
I'd hammer in the evening,
All over this land

I'd hammer out danger,
I'd hammer out a warning,
I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.

...

Well I got a hammer,
And I got a bell,
And I got a song to sing, all over this land.

It's the hammer of Justice,
It's the bell of Freedom,
It's the song about Love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land. —Pete Seeger, 1949

Like everybody else on my Facebook wall — people my age, older than I, and younger than I — I grew up on Pete Seeger's music, on his warm voice, and on his sunny optimism and apparent unflagging commitment to every decent cause of humanity. It is hard to imagine a world without him, for sure. 94 is an impressive age. That said, I feel compelled to raise a few questions about the meaning of Pete Seeger. With all due respect to somebody who lived his long life in an apparently principled. humble and admirable way, I don't mean to piss on his personal reputation. But something needs to be said, not about Seeger the man, but about the comfortable niche that Seeger's vision found in American society.

Somewhere between the late 1930s, the 40s and 50s, American radicalism became so infatuated with its own narrative that it cast aside the quest for actual political power. With a few heroic exceptions (and to be fair, by the 1950s in the face of extraordinary repression), American leftists began to repudiate the idea of making actual revolution, of challenging the state power of capitalism. In hoping to ride progressive but ultimately no more than liberal waves of change and avert the harsh scrutiny of cold-war anti-communism, radicals started to deny that their goals represented any kind of threat to the American system as we know it. By the time that the McCarthyite reign of terror made such disavowals legally beneficial, something was rooted out of radicalism, and that was its revolutionary spirit. While this spirit has occasionally returned for short periods of time (as in the aftermath of the 1960s student, antiwar and black-consciousness movements that birthed the New Communist Movement and a host of other mostly doomed left grouplets), an utterly reformist lack of imagination came to dominate American social movements. Political struggle would be the good fight, but it would only take place in a context of an almost mythological view of America that smoothed out all the rough edges, and assured us that good would triumph over evil if only our intentions were true and our votes wisely cast.

Pete Seeger, as witness to most of the 20th century, was profoundly a product of that process. He came up as a fellow traveler of rightward-drifting American communism. His radicalism was tamed, unthreatening, heartwarming even. The faux nativism of the folk movement, as much as it combined egalitarian notions that allowed common people to make their own music, also marked a perpetuation of the mythological narcissism that defanged the American left. Social justice activism has done a lot of great things, all to the tune of Seeger's soundtrack no doubt. But this sunny narrative of the good fight will never actually end the cause of everything that is foundationally wrong with our system. Indeed, it perpetuates the system because it waves away difficult and unpleasant questions about capitalism itself and what it might take to actually finally transform society by confronting state power. It is a harsh question to ask but at what point does Seeger's music become the lullaby that lulls us to the sleep of satisfaction with the incremental?

All these incremental struggles over the past few decades: there's much real progress there, along with the unresolved and the lost and the undone. But, and nothing has taught me this more than the experience of the Obama years, that hammer has to do more than ring out warnings. The myth that everything gets better and returns to some primal American state of fundamental justice is demonstrably a lie that in turn perpetuates capitalism. I think there's something in the culture of Pete Seeger that consciously perpetuates this liberal, reformist myth.

The love between our sisters and our brothers is a thing of beauty, for sure.
But hammers are also for smashing things that need to be smashed.

Not Dead!

So, turns out everything they say about 21st-century capitalism is true!

I've been out of work for a few months now, dealing with caregiving for an elderly parent who's receiving inadequate insurance, and dealing with dwindling finances. We've put our home up for sale, and are making various plans to move forward, all of which involve lots of angst and concrete challenges and difficulties. It's all quite depressing, and as the months have gone on it turns out that it's hard to focus on one's literary voice in the midst of personal turmoil caused by the inability of the system to care for its people. I'm grateful for a solid relationship and a warm cat, and trying to remain optimistic and thinking longterm past temporary difficulties, but this all adds up to an extended absence from my blogging commitments.

I haven't abandoned The Cahokian, or given up writing longer pieces for other websites like Kasama, but my energy is focusing on keeping me above water. I'm hoping to return to regular posting here as life calms down, but I wanted to acknowledge my failure to post in, well, months.

Meanwhile, I haven't been absent from the world, I'm still trying to keep a finger in social networking. You can follow my work, mostly anti-imperialism focused, on a number of platforms:

Follow me on Pinterest

Follow my postings of anti-American propaganda on Tumblr: Anti-Americana

Follow occasional personal/political posts on Tumblr: cahokianish

Like my anti-imperialist quote-of-the-day project on Facebook: Anti-Imperialist League 

Follow me on Twitter: @CahokianISH

There's some overlap on the above, I'm trying to still have a voice despite everything. I feel like I have a lot left to say on a lot of subjects, but now isn't winding up to be the moment.

See you back here soon. And fuck capitalism.

Anti-Americana: Anti-Imperialist Spectacle

This is a tourist postcard from Pyongyang, capital of the Democratic Republic of Korea. While tourism is not a major industry in North Korea, it does serve a public relations role in attempting to counteract the dominant western propaganda narrative built on standard anti-communist tropes of drudges walking around in a gray slave society. As a resident of the United States, which specializes in the manufacture of such tropes, I find it hard to accurately speculate on the actual nature of North Korean society; I suspect it's a country like any other, full of people just trying to live their lives in peace. I would reject out of hand both the giant prison narrative and the competing official rainbows and unicorns one.

Back to our postcard, this seems to be a shot of a stage spectacular. There's a projection of a spinning globe and a choir bearing red flags; actors gather in clusters around the stage posed in composed vignettes that suggest the dynamic groupings of people shown on propaganda posters. What's going on here?
 

Turning the card over, we get to the crux of the matter. The caption reads: "The revolutionary peoples of the world, unite more firmly under the banner of anti-imperialist, anti-U.S. struggle, and mutilate the U.S. imperialists in all parts!" Ouch!

The card doesn't say which, but this is clearly some kind of revolutionary theater production. As in cultural-revolution-era China, in North Korea there are a number of officially sanctioned revolutionary plays, operas, dances and films. One of them, "Sea of Blood," a story of resistance to the Japanese occupation, has apparently been running continuously since 1971. Another, "The Flower Girl," also about the years of resistance to Japan, is attributed to Great Leader Kim Il Sung himself. Sadly, I can't tell what work is represented on this postcard. But I'd sure like to see the show! I'm guessing this card is from the 1970s.

Forty Years Ago Today

Forty years ago today, the Chilean military, backed by the United States, overthrew the elected socialist government of Chile, and brought a bloody end to the "Chilean road to socialism," and the life of its architect, President Salvador Allende Gossens.

On that day forty years ago, neoliberalism introduced itself to the world, waving a bloody hand and pounding a mailed fist of repression, revealing the gruesome reality hidden in the pages of economic texts written by milquetoast academics in the service of capital. One day the oppressive theories and practices of neoliberalism will be heaped in a bonfire, and today's heirs to Kissinger, Friedman and Pinochet will be swept away to dim historical memory.

Last year I wrote a short analysis of Allende's Popular Unity government and its fall: Although a lot of the lessons of Chile are negative ones, nothing takes away from heroic, self-sacrificing example of Allende, who fell in combat for the people he loved. ¡Salvador Allende Presente!

Lasting vengeance will arrive with the real creation of People's Power, the creation of a just and equitable world of human liberation.

Liberation Time Capsule

I'm not sure how it survived four moves and thirty years apparently undisturbed, but while rummaging through a box looking for something, this week I found a plastic bag filled with metal buttons from 1983. I wish my memories were as sharp, fresh and uncorroded as the pins folded on their backs. These pins date from the Lesbian and Gay Pride March of 1983, and there's a little story attached.

I was part of a group of leftists active inside the Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee, as the official pride planning coalition was then known. This was a year or two before Heritage of Pride corporatized and institutionalized the planning of New York's annual June festivities. It was a coalition of community and political organizations, run by an odd alliance of longtime activists who longed to make it into the halls of Democratic party machine politics and representatives from the gay business world, including some rumored to have deep connections to organized crime.

Everybody had an agenda. The folks in charge were trying very hard to figure out how to turn Lesbian and Gay Pride into a profit center; I don't remember if it was this 1983 march or the year before, but they engineered the redirection of the event from a march that burst out of the Village uptown toward a rally in Central Park to a parade that assembled uptown and funneled crowds downtown into a street festival and the bars and shops of a rapidly gentrifying gayborhood. They weren't terribly concerned with the politics of the event, though they sure didn't want it to be threatening.

I was there with my organization, the Revolutionary Socialist League, and allies in Lavender Left, CRASH (the Coalition against Racism, Anti-semitism, Sexism and Heterosexism), DARE (Dykes Against Racism Everywhere, Freedom Socialist Party, and the Coalition of Lesbian and Gay Male Socialists. It was time to come up with the annual slogan. Each year, the march and rally had a theme, and the theme's slogan was emblazoned on official banners and buttons. I have no memory of what the other slogans proposed were, but I came up with a slogan that encapsulated our own more radical, political agenda: "Diversity Is Our Strength, Liberation Is Our Fight." Oh, that first half doesn't sound like so much now in today's world of diversity programs sponsored by corporate Human Resources departments, but at the time it was a broadside against the whitewashing tendencies of a middle-class gay movement striving for middle-class respectability. The second half, in an era of struggle for New York's gay rights bill, set its sights on the evocative higher goal of liberation, achieved not through influencing politicians, but through self-struggle.

We were shocked when the volunteers from all those other community organizations liked our slogan better than the one the CSLDC bigs seemed to favor. The grassroots political groups, the religious folks, the volunteers, they loved it. We were angrily opposed by the Stonewall Democrats, the mafiosi, and the other business interests. Our radical slogan swept the vote, despite an attempt to stuff a bag full of ballots. "Diversity Is Our Strength, Liberation Is Our Fight" became the official slogan of the 1983 Christopher Street March & Festival! We looked forward to seeing the graphic treatment the publicity committee would develop.

Fast forward a couple meetings. The new buttons and banner designs were in, and were about to be unveiled!

Our jaws dropped. For the first time in the 12 or 13 years of the march, the slogan was left off the buttons, replaced by an unappealing abstract design. The corrupt ringleaders of CSLDC had their corporate revenge. "But it will be mentioned in the program," they said, over our loud protestations. We were done with CSLDC. We had all learned a lesson about the gay establishment.

So we organized the "Militant Stonewall Contingent for Lesbian and Gay Liberation." I designed a logo for a button, using the pink triangle, the symbol of gay resistance in those pre-rainbow flag days. I still remember the laborious manual mechanical pasteup of these designs in those pre-desktop publishing days. "Stonewall" evoked nothing short of revolutionary turmoil for us: at the time the building that had been and now is again a bar called Stonewall was a bagel restaurant. We produced hundreds of buttons in English and Spanish. And apparently, sometime after the march was over, bagged up the leftover buttons in such a way that I wouldn't notice them again for thirty years.

Frankly my first few pride marches in New York City are a bit of a blur. I wish I could report confidently that our Militant Stonewall Contingent was a raving success. I think it was actually pretty good, drawing together many otherwise not-so-friendly organizations left of gay center, but I'm not even sure if the few march photos I have from that era were that year or another. I know we were young, happy and energetic; the worst of the decimating AIDS assault still ahead of us. The photo above is either from 1983 or the year before. I'm happy to say I can still call the guy front and center in this photo a friend.

Hey, anybody want a button?

Anti-Americana: Historical Optimism

 

"Vietnam Will Win! America Will Lose!" reads this Chinese poster, probably from the early 1960s. I'm not 100% sure of this poster's provenance, and would love to know more about it. The illustration shows a crowd of peasants attacking an American soldier; usually the careful compositions of Chinese propaganda art showed a measured balance between civilians, militia, and military. Also, I'm pretty sure the Chinese characters used predate the simplification engineered in the PRC in the 1950s, and there is no use of Pinyin, which seemed to appear on most Chinese posters predating the Cultural Revolution. 

As for the slogan, of course it turned out to be quite accurate. A myth of the invincibility of US imperialism emerged somewhere between the Spanish-American War and World War II, that the US always emerged victorious from war. This myth is largely preserved in popular consciousness, even though it's quite far from the truth.

The U.S. failed to make a decisive victory in its first major post-WWII engagement, Korea. Unable to defeat the North Koreans, who were heavily backed by the Soviet Union and more importantly the new People's China, the best the US could achieve was a military stalemate, easily claimed as a victory by the North. Vietnam ended in the ignominious collapse of a massive American war effort. Cuba brushed off the CIA attack at Giron in 1961. Some minor US engagements, on might call them episodes of bullying, like Grenada and Panama, ended in decisive US victories. However, its two wars in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, while victorious in battlefield terms, probably count as net political defeats. The US seemed to win the cold war, though the resurgence of no-longer-even-claiming-to-be-socialist Russia on the international scene in the last few years makes it clear that that victory might have been only politically solid, leaving a potential military opponent standing.

Surely the US is hungry for a clear military success. Let's hope that proves elusive in Syria... or Iran.

Anti-War Anthems: Has the Bombing Begun?

It's been a couple years, but sadly it's time to break out a new entry in the "Anti-War Anthems" feature here at The Cahokian. Today, it's a video I've seen floating around Facebook. "Has the Bombing Begun?" by David Rovics. I don't know anything about this guy, but this song captures something about this moment: the sad resignation that once again, the world has to go through this, because of the willful evil of people who once claimed better.

Anti-Americana: Remember Norman Morrison, I Am Today and You Are Forever

I don't usually run two Anti-Americana features in a row, but the onslaught of pro-war propaganda as the Obama regime and his bipartisan allies attempt furiously to drum up support for their apocalyptic attack on Syria seems to demand it. Shown is a stamp from the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, or North Vietnam, issued in 1965 to honor "Noman Morixon," otherwise known as Norman Morrison. The stamp shows Morrison's smiling face, shown above an apparently American anti-Vietnam war demonstration with signs in English.

Morrison would be eighty this year had he not sacrificed his own life to protest the Vietnam War, then rapidly escalating. Morrison was a devout pacifist Quaker; in November of 1965 he doused himself with gasoline and burned himself to death in front of Robert McNamara's Pentagon office in Washington, D.C. Self-immolation has, of course, a long and tragically noble tradition, from the South Vietnamese monks who Morrison was probably emulating, to Mohammed Bouazizi of Tunisia who set off the Arab spring with his own supreme sacrifice.

Morrison became a folk hero in Vietnam. An incredibly moving poem about Morrison, his daughter Emily, who he carried along with him on the day of his death, and his act of political and social protest, was written by Vietnamese poet To Huu. I tracked down the poem, in its original Vietnamese with English translation, on a Vietnamese blog of poetry, Tay Bui, which I repost below. It's angry, profane, and really evocative of both the moment of Morrison's sacrifice and the horrible murderous moment in Vietnam he was protesting. Be sure to go to the original blog and thank the blogmaster for making this powerful poem available. Tay Bui offers some further information on Morrison in English and in Vietnamese.

I weep that once again, as warships steam toward Syria, this refrain of tragedy has the ring of now. It's past time to rid the world of the scourge of U.S. aggression, once more under the false flag of humanitarianism. How many more will die this time?

Emily, Child (Ê mi-ly, con)

Ê mi-ly, con đi cùng cha
Emily, come with me
Sau khôn lớn con thuộc đường, khỏi lạc...
Later you'll grow up you'll know the streets, no longer feel lost
- Đi đâu cha?
- Where are we going, dad?
- Ra bờ sông Pô-tô-mác
- To the banks of the Potomac
- Xem gì cha?
- To see what, dad?
Không con ơi, chỉ có Lầu ngũ giác.
Nothing my child, there's just the Pentagon.
Ôi con tôi, đôi mắt tròn xoe
Oh my child, your round eyes
Ôi con tôi, mái tóc vàng hoe
Oh my child, your locks so golden
Đừng có hỏi cha nhiều con nhé!
Don't ask your father so many questions, dear!
Cha bế con đi, tối con về với mẹ...
I'll carry you out, this evening you'll going home with your mother...
Oa-sinh-tơn
Washington
Buổi hoàng hôn
Twilight
Ôi những linh hồn
Oh, those souls
Còn, mất
That remain or are lost
Hãy cháy lên, cháy lên Sự thật!
Blaze, blaze the Truth!
Giôn-xơn!
Johnson!
Tội ác bay chồng chất
You fucker, your crimes accumulate
Cả nhân loại căm hờn
All humanity detests
Con quỷ vàng trên mặt đất.
The yellow demon upon this earth.
Mày không thể mượn nước son
You cannot borrow the crimson waters
Của Thiên Chúa, và màu vàng của Phật!
Of God, and Buddha's yellow.
Mác Na-ma-ra
McNamara
Mày trốn đâu? Giữa bãi tha ma
Where are you hiding, asshole? In the burial yard
Của toà nhà năm góc
Of a five corner building
Mỗi góc, một châu.
Each corner a continent
Mày vẫn chui đầu
You still squeeze your head
Trong lửa nóng
Inside hot flames
Như đà điểu rúc đầu trong cát bỏng.
Like the ostrich buries its head in the scorching sands

Hãy nhìn đây!
Look over here!
Nhìn ta phút này!
Look at me right now!
Ôi không chỉ là ta với con gái nhỏ trong tay
Oh it's not only me with my little daughter in my arms
Ta là Hôm nay
I am Today
Và con ta, Ê-mi-ly ơi, con là mãi mãi!
And my daughter, oh Emily, you are forever!
Ta đứng dậy,
I stand awake,
Với trái tim vĩ đại
With the great heart
Của trăm triệu con người
Of a hundred million
Nước Mỹ.
Americans.
Để đốt sáng đến chân trời
To flame, light up the horizon
Một ngọn đèn
A light
Công lý.
Of Justice.

Hỡi tất cả chúng bay, một bầy ma quỷ
Hey all you fuckers, pack of devils
Nhân danh ai?
In whose name?
Bay mang những B 52
You bring B52s
Những na-pan, hơi độc
Napalm, poison gas
Từ toà Bạch Ốc
From the White House
Từ đảo Guy-am
From Guam
Đến Việt Nam
To Vietnam
Để ám sát hoà bình và tự do dân tộc
To liquidate peace and national freedom
Để đốt những nhà thương, trường học
To incinerate hospitals and schools
Giết những con người chỉ biết yêu thương
Murder people who only know love
Giết những trẻ em chỉ biết đi trường
Murder kids who only know going to school
Giết những đồng xanh bốn mùa hoa lá
Murder green fields, four seasons of leaves and blossoms
Và giết cả những dòng sông của thơ ca nhạc hoạ!
And even murder rivers of poetry, music and art!

Nhân danh ai?
In whose name?
Bay chôn tuổi thanh xuân của chúng ta trong những quan tài
You bury the bloom of our youth in coffins
Ôi những người con trai khoẻ đẹp
Oh, those strong, handsome sons
Có thể biến thiên nhiên thành điện, thép
Who can transform nature to into electricity, steel
Cho con người hạnh phúc hôm nay!
For people's happiness today!

Nhân danh ai?
In whose name?
Bay đưa ta đến những rừng dày
You bring me to dense jungles
Những hố chông, những đồng lầy kháng chiến
Spiked pits, muddy fields of resistance
Những làng phố đã trở nên pháo đài ẩn hiện
Villages that become fortress that disperse to reappear
Những ngày đêm đất chuyển trời rung...
Nights and days where the heavens and earth shake and jolt
Ôi Việt Nam, xứ sở lạ lùng
Oh Vietnam, a strange land
Đến em thơ cũng hoá thành những anh hùng
To the children who become heroes
Đến ong dại cũng luyện thành chiến sĩ
To the wild bees who train to be warriors
Và hoa trái cũng biến thành vũ khí!
And the trees and flowers become weapons!

Hãy chết đi, chết đi
Go ahead and die, die
Tất cả chúng bay, một bầy ma quỷ!
All you jerks, a pack of demons
Và xin nghe, nước Mỹ ta ơi!
And I ask that you listen, my America!
Tiếng thương đau, tiếng căm giận đời đời
To the voices of pain, of eternal hatred
Của một người con. Của một con người thế kỷ
Of a child. Of a person of this century

Ê-mi-ly, con ơi!
Emily, oh child!
Trời sắp tối rồi...
It's beginning to get dark...
Cha không bế con về được nữa!
I can carry you no further
Khi đã sáng bùng lên ngọn lửa
When I ignite, light up as a flame
Đêm nay mẹ đến tìm con
Tonight, your mother will come find you
Con sẽ ôm lấy mẹ mà hôn
You'll hug her and kiss
Cho cha nhé
Her for me
Và con sẽ nói giùm với mẹ:
And tell your mother this for me:
Cha đi vui, xin mẹ đừng buồn!
I left happy, mother don't be sad!
Oa-sinh-tơn
Washington
Buổi hoàng hôn
Twilight
Còn mất?
Remains or is lost?
Đã đến phút lòng ta sáng nhất
It's come, the moment when my heart's brightest
Ta đốt thân ta
I set fire to myself
Cho ngọn lửa chói loà
So the flames dazzle
Sự thật.
Truth.

Anti-Americana: Kids Do the Darnedest Things

 

An Anti-Americana twofer today, with two North Korean images of unknown provenance. Both show cartoonish militarized children — an airman, a nurse, a soldier, and a seaman — using the tools of their trade to stick it to the man, in the form of a helmeted U.S. soldier. In the top image, the U.S. imperialist is joined by a Japanese imperialist: the North Koreans have long memories, not easily forgiving the brutal, forty year occupation of Korea in the first half of the 20th century.

I recognize these classically composed propaganda images cross the line from archetype to stereotype; still, I can't get enough of 'em. Frankly, with all the hypocritical sabre-rattling against Syria, I can't think of a nicer target for derision than U.S. imperialism.

If you enjoy these images, Anti-Americana is a regular feature here on the Cahokian; see old entries here. You can also subscribe to my pinterest feed of Anti-Americana by going here and clicking "follow." Also, check out the "Anti-Imperialist League" on facebook, in which I'll be trying to contextualize and historicize today's struggles in the long annals of organized popular resistance.

Depravity & Hypocrisy Laid Bare: The Meaning of Syria

Crossposted from The Kasama Project:

 Who gassed 1,300 civilians in a suburb of Damascus one Summer morning?

The United States government says it was the government of Bashar al-Assad. The rebels fighting to overthrow Assad, and I heard an estimate this morning that there are as many as a thousand different rebel groups and factions, agree. The Russian government, which backs Assad, says it was done by the rebels, whom it calls terrorists. Others say it was done by Israeli intelligence agents waving the impossible to prove or disprove "false flag" that ends all arguments. Still others say nothing happened at all, a bunch of faked pictures and staged news reports. (A report this morning, as plausible or questionable as any other, claims the gas was Saudi-supplied and accidentally set off by inept rebel mishandling). The United Nations says it is investigating! The United States says it doesn't really care what the UN says, it's too late for facts.

President Obama says the U.S. must respond to what happened with as-yet-undefined military force. As he beats the drum for an attack on Syria, the American people don't seem particularly interested in supporting a new war. And yet, for those voices that are beginning to speak out against the idea of a new war, there seems to be a lot more silence. I think we need to look into what is going on.

If anything is clear in the midst of this muddle (besides the fact that a lot of people seem to be dying), it's that the reputation of the U.S. government for telling anything resembling the truth is completely in the shitter.

President Obama's sudden drive for military retaliation against Assad can't be heard without the reverberation of deafening echoes of the propaganda and disinformation campaign waged by President Bush and his neocon allies in their drive to attack Iraq just over a decade ago. Everyone knows, now, that Bush and his cronies were lying, and most people assume that Obama and his cronies are lying now.



This is a photo of Obama's current secretary of state, John Kerry — then a Senator — and his billionaire wife having an intimate dinner for four with Mr. and Mrs. Assad at a classy Damascus restaurant a couple years ago. Secretary Kerry has just called the alleged chemical weapon attacks "a moral obscenity." He went on to claim, "Our sense of basic humanity is offended."

As happens so often lately, one doesn't know whether to laugh or cry at this imperialist politician's words.

Basic sense of humanity? Is this the same basic sense of humanity that caused the U.S. to starve untold thousands in a decade-long blockade of Iraq, and when that didn't seem to advance their agenda, to invade that country, unprovoked, causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands? The basic sense of humanity that sends drones to assassinate thousands of people on all corners of the globe without trial or evidence, or apparently, even very good aim? Many avert their eyes and ears from the monstrous claims of these politicians, but few actually believe them.

But even as the politicians were crying "But, chemical weapons!," long suspected news was confirmed that the CIA had no problem assisting Saddam Hussein back in the days when he was fighting U.S. Enemy Number One, Iran. Let's quote the headline: "Exclusive: CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran. The U.S. knew Hussein was launching some of the worst chemical attacks in history — and still gave him a hand." That water under the bridge is experiencing a bit of a backflow.

And, speaking of WMDs, chemical weapons and moral obscenities, a little bit of cursory historical research reminds us that it was the U.S. that was the first and only nation to use nukes against civilians. The U.S. blanketed Vietnam with the chemical defoliant Agent Orange, still causing birth defects generations later. The U.S. used depleted uranium weapons in both its wars against Iraq, again leaving a multi-generational legacy of of horrible birth defects. Then there's white phosphorus munitions, shared with its Israeli client state, that turn mere explosives into toxic explosives. Or how about that tear gas used by repressive governments across the Mediterranean, made in U.S.A.? Or closer to home, is not the pepper spray that drenched the Occupy movement a chemical weapon? Indeed let's discuss moral obscenities, shall we?

Occupy Wall Street veteran Mickey Z., in a great article detailing some of the government and media hypocrisy over Syria, wagged, "When I first read about a dictator unleashing chemical warfare upon "his own people," I thought the media was finally discussing how President Obama appointed Michael Taylor (vice president for public policy at Monsanto) to the position of deputy commissioner for Foods at the FDA." Mickey's joke makes a serious point: who the fuck are these people to be lecturing anyone? They don't actually care about people at all: they care about money, votes, power.


This is a picture of U.S. marines walking the streets of Fallujah, Iraq. Fallujah was levelled after its rebellious inhabitants killed and strung up some hired American mercenaries. You'll need a strong stomach to follow up links on what vengeful Americans did to the people of that city. Now, these same masters of outrage say that Assad must be punished for using gas "against his own people." They say they don't want to invade Syria, they don't want to take sides in the civil war, they don't want regime change, they just want to lob a few missiles on the country to teach them a lesson. Would could possibly go wrong?

Remarkably, at least for now, the British parliament just voted down a motion by the Prime Minister to join the U.S. in retaliatory strikes against Syria. (Unsurprisingly for anyone who knows anything about the party obscenely calling itself "socialist" in France, the French President, Socialist Party leader Françoise Hollande has pledged full support to any U.S. attack. France is always eager to remind its former colonies, like Syria, who still wields the stick of imperialism.)

What is less good news is the apparent broad cynicism, apathy or resignation of the U.S. population.
A handful of demonstrations against the threat of a U.S. attack on Syria have already taken place, but they've been small, nothing like the huge demonstrations that met Bush's drive to war. A call went out for local demonstrations at noontime on Saturday, August 31, but I expect these to attract mostly core activists and suspect they will be widely ignored by the media.

The liberal establishment and its media have fallen in lockstop behind the Democratic president Obama. It's a subject for its own discussion elsewhere, but the repulsive liberal vilification of military and NSA whistleblowers Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden and heroic journalists like Glenn Greenwald, is a sad spectacle to behold. The New York Times, which shilled endlessly for the Iraq war, losing quite a bit of journalistic prestige and integrity in the process, has already run one grotesque OpEd piece entitled "Bomb Syria, Even If It Is Illegal." Another creepy OpEd piece suggested that the best scenario for the U.S. and Israel (always the first concern of Times journalists) would be an extended civil war that drains the resources of all sides.

Vocal opposition to a strike on Syria seems to be coming more from the right wing of American politics. Republicans and Libertarians, ever eager to condemn Obama for anything at all, have seized the moment. Of course it helps these posers that they're on summer break right now. I would be surprised, in the end, if the U.S. congress doesn't acquiesce to whatever Obama chooses to actually do. He hasn't yet formally asked Congress for authorization, and in any case he refused to do so when "backing" the NATO attack on Libya.



We were treated to the spectacle this week of watching President Obama interrupt his plans against Syria to make a speech lauding the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr on the 50th anniversary of the civil rights March on Washington. While plenty of people in attendance remembered that Dr. King was vehemently opposed to the Vietnam War, suffice it to say that the liberal politicians speaking from the podium didn't call out this dramatic contradiction. Obama's speech seemed wooden and full of empty platitudes, and even liberals in the African-American community took notice: "Dr. King was a pacifist and anti-militarist who believed that America was the greatest single cause of violence in the world. Barack Obama, while giving his own March on Washington anniversary speech, has already, or soon will, order the United States military to attack Syria....In his soaring rhetoric, Barack Obama chose to return to an old trope, and what is for him, a comfortable narrative. He would speak about his dream of a post-racial America, one that is still a work in progress.....That Barack Obama would decide to lecture and scold Black America on the 50th Anniversary of Dr. King’s speech and the March on Washington is disturbing." (Chauncey De Vega)

In the face of all of this it's not surprising that people feel overwhelmed and anxious. People are worried and concerned about a new war, but disgusted at self-evident hypocrisy and politicians with a long history of lying. That doesn't seem to be enough to coalesce an antiwar movement. The rampant spread of demoralizing conspiracy theories among young people disaffected with liberalism is not helping. Why bother protesting if there is always a hidden hand manipulating reality?

Frankly I think the fact that some remnants of the old anti-war movement have now tied themselves to support for Assad in the Syrian civil war doesn't help, either. The Workers World Party's International Action Center seems to have furnished an antiwar demo I attended in New York with Syrian government flags and portraits of Assad; the PSL's ANSWER coalition seems to take a soft-peddled but similar approach.

There needs to be a real anti-war movement. People should be out in the street, angry and pissed off. It is absolutely incredible that this frayed worn script is being used to rationalize another war. It's outrageous that there are so few strong public voices against it.



As a communist, as an activist in my community, I'm gonna go out on the street with folks I met during the Occupy movement and we're gonna make some noise. I think there will be few of us. I think most people will pass us by. And the depravity of this situation is so horrible, so exhausting, I get that. If we don't look, maybe what's happening a million miles away won't get closer. But I think we should talk for a minute about what we're doing this for: what do we care?

For a hot minute Obama and Qaddafi, the Libyan dictator he eventually helped depose, were buds. In that same rarified world, the Kerrys and Assads can sit down to a gentile dinner or, as shown in another now classic photo, Donald Rumsfield and Saddam Hussein can share a hearty handshake. These photos reveal something profound about the world, the world that communists want to overturn.

It's just not true that for every bad guy there's a good guy. One of the great pieces of wisdom in Marxism is that people do things for material reasons: the world is not turned by a war between good and evil, or by black and white, but by material self interest. The actions of people with different class interests become predictable; and the key to changing the injustices of the world is understanding where the leverage lies, where the sources of power are.

Communists should oppose imperialism, this is absolutely true, and so very important.

The best thing we communists in the U.S. can do for all those who struggle around the world is to do what we can to defeat the monster in whose belly we live. But communists should also support the struggles of the people worldwide for liberation, for self-determination, for freedom. This means that while the Bushes and the Obamas and the Rumsfields and the Kerrys of this world are our enemies, the Qaddafis, the Saddams, the Assads, the Putins of this world, they are not our friends. That is not how the world is divided, not now. These are all, every last one of them, depraved, hypocritical, corrupt, capitalist politicians with a taste for the blood of the people.

Regardless of what the currently unknowable truth is behind the tragedy in that Damascus suburb, Assad and many of the rebel factions have committed easily documentable atrocities against regular people who want nothing more than their own right of self-determination. The western nations falsely posing as humanitarians have a documentable record of even worse atrocity. Communists must point to the horizon and say it doesn't have to be like this. We can win the world for ourselves, for the global majority.

Oh it's an idea not an exact number, but you remember, to coin a phrase, the 99%.
We must sweep away the clutter. Out with the bombs and missiles of imperialism. Out with the duplicitous false parties of capitalist politics. Out with the armies of sectarianism and division. Out with the self-serving, lying murderers who rule the nations of the world. Out with the lying mouthpieces of the mainstream media.

Stopping the war on Syria would be a very good start to making those things happen. Are you with us?

STOP THE ATTACK ON SYRIA!

—by Ish

Anti-Americana: Common Interests

Dating from the 1960s, when the Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea) was a little more self-identified with the socialist camp, this poster shows an armed Korean and and a very Che-looking armed Cuban bayoneting a cowering American figure in the corner who seems to look a lot like U.S. President Lyndon Baynes Johnson (LBJ). The flags are those of North Korea and Cuba, and sadly, once again my ignorance of Korean means I have no idea what the caption says. It's a classic distillation of the North Korean anti-American propaganda style.

North Korea and Cuba have of course both defied the presence of the strongest anti-Communist military power camped out right on their borders for decades. The threat to the Cuban and North Korean governments is evident every day still in 2013. Solidarity apparently actually helps!

In 1960, Che Guevara actually visited the DPRK on behalf of revolutionary Cuba, and here is a brief clip of him sitting down with DPRK leader Kim Il Sung. 

Stop the U.S. Attack on Syria!

It seems like it's finally about to happen. In the aftermath of an alleged poison gas attack on Syrian civilians, President Obama and his government are finally making noises about directly attacking Syria. There is widespread speculation in the press over so-called surgical cruise missile strikes against Syrian infrastructure and American naval forces in the Mediterranean are already steaming toward Syria. This, despite the fact that there is zero clarity over the nature of the supposed gas incident and what exactly happened and who exactly is responsible. The U.S. has even poo-pooed the fact-finding visit by U.N. weapons inspectors as "too late." It's deja-vu all over again, with flashbacks back to Iraq in the early part of the last decade.

The U.S., the biggest threat to world peace, now sets its sights on Syria. Let it be said: the U.S. cares nothing about the Syrian people suffering in a civil war, it cares only about geopolitical advantage and removing any threats to the State of Israel. The result is predictable: more Syrian people will die. There will be more terrorism and less stability. This is not a "humanitarian" anything, it will be murder, plain and simple, no different than the murders of Syrian people committed by the Assad dictatorship and the U.S./Saudi-backed Islamist rebels. The cruise missiles of the United States are a deadly threat aimed at anyone in the world who doesn't bow down to the brute force of imperialism. The record of American aggression is clear.

The attack must be stopped!

Anti-Americana: Unwelcome Visitor

I'm not entirely sure of the provenance of this image. It started appearing on my Facebook feed after the massacre of Ikhwan supporters in Egypt after the military coup. It shows a deadly spectre leaving a trail of blood as it moves along a hallway with doors marked "Pakistan," "Iraq," "Libya," "Syria" and "Egypt." The spectre is decked out in the stars and stripes, and its scythe is wrapped in the colors of the Israeli flag.

It is remarkable to me that the U.S. has, at least among its own citizens, preserved the laughable notion of being a benevolent, pacific world power gently using its influence for the greater good of the world's people. President Obama has displayed a remarkable clumsiness in foreign policy, as his speeches full of moral platitudes and lofty sentiment collide with American realpolitik, self-interest and remarkably self-evident hypocrisy. Sooner or later, all empires fall.

Anti-Americana is an ongoing series of anti-American propaganda art and caricature.

35 Years

"Who goes to prison when the government catches you lying? You. Who goes to prison when you catch the government lying? Nope, still you."

Bradley Chelsea Manning was sentenced today. 35 years.

Not sentenced today: George W. Bush or any of his co-conspirators for war crimes. Not sentenced, Wall Street hucksters for the 2008 economic crisis. Not sentenced, Barack Obama for sending drones to kill innocent civilians including US citizens. Not sentenced, George Zimmerman for racist murder. Not sentenced: Michael Bloomberg or Ray Kelly, for ruining the lives of hundreds of thousands of young black and brown people.

Assata Shakur is still free, so hope springs eternal. FREE BRADLEY CHELSEA MANNING!

Egypt: Sometimes Revolutions Fail

The aftermath of the army's crackdown on the Ikhwan: A grief-stricken man among the bodies in a makeshift morgue.

‘[I]f the state is the product of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms, if it is a power standing above society and “alienating itself more and more from it,” it is clear that the liberation of the oppressed class is impossible not only without a violent revolution, but also without the destruction of the apparatus of state power which was created by the ruling class and which is the embodiment of this “alienation”.’ —V.I. Lenin, The State and Revolution, 1917

It has been two and a half years of hope, cycled with fear and disappointment. In the winter of 2011, millions of Egyptians took to the streets. In Cairo, Tahrir Square was turned into a carnival of revolution, an encampment where hundreds of thousands shook off the quiet of decades of political and military repression. In a model for the Occupy movement which followed later in the U.S. (which, it must be said, never quite reached the critical mass of the Egyptian — or Greek— squares movements), people camped out in public spaces, talking and celebrating and building a new reality 24 hours a day, defying the rules and laws of established order. There were waves of repression and violence, sectarian tension, and massive social ferment. Egyptians watched as the military, key to Egyptian state power in the most obvious ways, stood down and then consented to the overthrow of the Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak in February of 2011.

It's worth calling out the role of the United States during the Egyptian revolution: while cops used American-supplied teargas against protesters, the Obama government made equivocating noises until the die was cast that Mubarak would fall. As the U.S. has loudly shouted "Democracy!" it's clear what they've really meant was "Order!" It's also clear their primary concern is for the protection of Israel: Egyptian revolutionaries have over and over again called into question the peace treaty signed by Anwar Sadat, even as successive governments including Morsi's have done their part to enforce the Israeli blockade of Gaza. Jumping ahead a moment, the new military regime has been coordinating military attacks against Islamist rebels in northern Sinai with Israel and Israeli drones.

An interim government — again with the backing of the military — organized elections. After a long period of confusing debate a run-off election seemed to exclude both liberal democrats and leftists, forcing Egyptians to choose their new leadership either from a candidate tainted by association with the previous machine, or Mohammed Morsi, the candidate of the long-banned Ikhwan, or Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist political party and social movement that sought to establish an Islamic State in a multi-sectarian nation. The Ikhwan promised to be more moderate than the far-right Salafist Islamist parties. Morsi won the election, and proceeded to use his new government to undermine democracy and give the Islamist movement permanent advantage. Leftists, liberals and Egypt's significant Coptic Christian population began to get nervous.

Fast forward to this summer, a new movement called "tamarod" ("rebellion") mobilized millions of people back into the streets. Some claimed that the ensuing demonstrations were the largest gathering of human beings ever. The military moved into action quickly, delivering an ultimatum not to the protesters, but to the Morsi government. In July, the military acted, and it deposed Morsi in a quick show of force. Millions celebrated the coup d'etat in the streets, though not the Ikhwan, who recognized that it had been backed into a corner.

A woman protester challenges a cop breaking up an Ikhwan protest encampment

The Brotherhood soon set up its own protest camps in different districts of Cairo. Demonstrations turned violent, and a confrontation seemed imminent. This week, the military acted and attacked those camps. Over just a few days, hundreds maybe thousands of people have been killed, significantly including dozens of members of security forces. A heartbreaking post from an eyewitness on Facebook conveys some of the horror of the military crackdown on the Ikhwan:

"For the first time in my life I thought I wasn't going to make it home. This is a nightmare. After Friday prayer we had the Day of Rage march spilling out of the mosque into the streets. We prayed upon the deceased, wrapped in shrouds at the front of the minbar, their loved ones crying out in pain and raising their hands to the sky. We drove to Ramses, where all of the protests around the country were funneling into a massive one. As soon as I started walking, I saw reporters scurrying here and there with their cameras trying to get into the mobs. Smoke was everywhere...for the first time I experienced tear gas. That stuff hurts. Your eyes water, your throat cracks, you can't see, and the only way to relieve it is to pour pepsi into your eyes or water with yeast and breathe into a cloth. I was walking with my family into the crowd when we saw people running back, warning us not to go, they are firing live ammunition, people are dying. Helicopters are everywhere, dropping tear gas canisters. You can distinguish the crisp shots of live ammunition as opposed to the muffled blunts of the cartouche. I look up and I can see snipers atop the buildings. All of a sudden it is chaos. Everyone is running, everyone is pushing you or pulling you along; on one side there are thugs advancing upon you with sticks, on the other side are snipers and helicopters. The only thing you can do is flatten yourself against the walls of the buildings. One man lost his temper and started screaming in the middle of the streets, almost ripping his clothes off, telling us "WHY ARE YOU SCARED. THEY ARE TEN. WE ARE TEN THOUSAND. STAND YOUR GROUND." None of the protestors were armed. No one. As we advanced ahead, more gunshots, more people with cartouche wounds in their face. Small motorcycles were operating as makeshift ambulances as they urgently puttered back and forth, each time with a different man or woman on it covered in blood, some lifeless, some screaming in pain. There aren't enough motorcycles; some people are holding others like babies and running in the streets to the mosque which is housing injured folk. Dead bodies are being transported atop floor mats. There are mini fires on every corner of the street so as to make smoke so the helicopters don't see clearly. As we turned to head home, we found the street we were on was blocked with thugs. We took a side alleyway, hoping it was safer. As I was walking in the quiet alley, passing by a guy making bean sandwiches, I heard a sharp rat-a-tat-tat and turned to my right. A man not one meter in front of me, RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY FACE, got shot in the head and plopped to the floor, lifeless. His brother was holding him when this happened and started shaking the man's bloody face. He gave one last futile kick...I swear I saw his soul go out of him...and sunk like jello. His brother screamed in anguish...the deepest anguish I've ever seen, and threw himself at my feet. Sobbing uncontrollably, pounding at the floor like an infant, wiping his face and smearing blood everywhere. People picked him up, hugged him, kissed him, consoling him for something that couldn't be consoled. The dead man was carried away, pools of viscous ruby red pouring out of his head on the floor. When I walked home I saw a tank with soldiers sitting on it, stoic expressions on their faces. One woman in hysterics asked them if they were content in their hearts, to which the soldier replied yes, yes I am very content. I don't even know anymore. You can sit behind your computer screen talking politics, talking about churches or mosques or brotherhood or the STUPID word 'islamists' all you want...go ahead. This stuff can't be unseen." —Eman Haggag (August 16)


Not clear from this account is the massive division taking place in Egyptian society. It seems the military government has the support of massive numbers of Egyptians. And it's true, even as the Ikhwan is being violently repressed (again, U.S.-supplied teargas and weapons), its supporters have been attacking Christian churches as they retreat.

A statement from Tahrir-ICN, an anarchist network, nails the danger faced by the Egyptian people:

"The events of the past couple of days are the latest step in a sequence of events by which the military can consolidate its hold on power, aim towards the death of the revolution and a return to a military/police state.

The authoritarian regime of the Muslim Brotherhood had to go. But what has replaced it is the true face of the military in Egypt — no less authoritarian, no less fascist and for sure more difficult to depose.

The massacre carried out by the army against pro-Morsi supporters in Nadha Square and Raba’a has left around 500 killed and up to 3000 injured (Ministry of Health figures — the reality is likely much higher). It was a pre-orchestrated act of state terrorism. Its aim is to divide the people and push the Muslim Brotherhood to create more militia’s to revenge and protect themselves. This in turn will enable the army to label all Islamists as terrorists and produce an “internal enemy” in the country which will allow the army to keep the military regime in an ongoing state of emergency.

They go after the Muslim Brotherhood today, but they will come after anyone who dares to criticize them tomorrow. Already the army has declared a state of emergency for one month, giving the police and military exceptional powers, and a curfew has been declared in many provinces for the same amount of time from 7pm to 6am. This gives the army a free hand to crack down on dissent..." (August 15)

A cumpled poster for overthrown President Morsi

So what has happened here? How is it that a revolutionary process that seems to have birthed so much hope all over the world seemingly come to such a terrible, bloody end, with an entrenched military dictatorship stronger than ever?

Let's go back again to Lenin:

"A state arises, a special power is created, special bodies of armed men, and every revolution, by destroying the state apparatus, shows us the naked class struggle, clearly shows us how the ruling class strives to restore the special bodies of armed men which serve it, and how the oppressed class strives to create a new organization of this kind, capable of serving the exploited instead of the exploiters."

It seems this crucial bit of revolutionary understanding has been lost. Even the Ikhwan, which rightfully saw seizing the government as key to its social agenda, seems to have forgotten that the state is nothing without the naked power of the military. The working-class communist left was destroyed by the radical nationalist Nasser in the 1950s. As happened across the Middle East, repression by rightward drifting nationalist forces drove a Leninist understanding of the state underground. While Egypt has a new generation of left organizations, none of these seems to have a strong mass base. The Trotskyist Revolutionary Socialists, for instance, seems to have bravely taken part in these two years of revolution, even losing martyrs to the repression. But in the end the Revolutionary Socialists supported the election of Morsi that has led to this predictable conclusion.

In my opinion, what the tragic unfolding of events in Egypt teaches us are some of the limits of horizontalism. Who could fail to be inspired by millions of people going out in the streets? Who could fail to be inspired by the new reality created in the mass democracy of the squares? In the early days of the revolution in 2011 there was some discussion of popular and factory committees, suggesting some will toward parallel horizontal self-reorganization of society; I can't tell how widespread or continued this movement was. But it's clear that this inspiring movement of people into the streets never challenged the real source of power of the Egyptian state. Indeed, Egyptian popular reverence for the military is repeated in news accounts ad nauseum. The whole world crossed its fingers and hoped that the Egyptian people would win, would win a new reality. How could millions of people in the streets, a scale unimaginable in the United States, lose? And yet, here we are.

What seems misunderstood to me in a horizontalist, or anarchist, critique of Leninist tradition, is the notion of how revolutionaries should organize. Horizontalists deride "vanguardists" for substituting themselves for the people, for being the seed of a future organized class of self-privileged dictatorship. I agree with anarchists that this is a danger, documented by certain historical failures. But what if the role of revolutionary leadership is to preserve the memory of theoretical and historical lessons? The capitalist state seems to well understand where its power comes from. In today's world it's true that not a lot of people are listening to communists, and there are lots of reasons why this is true, many of them excellent. But communist — Leninist — theory is rich with an understanding of the power of the state, and I think that it is incumbent on communists to offer up a bit of leadership by telling the truths it has learned about how revolutions unfold.

Egypt proves that none of this is an abstraction:

“According to the Marxist theory of the state, the army is the chief component of state power. Whoever wants to seize and retain state power must have a strong army. Some people ridicule us as advocates of the "omnipotence of war". Yes, we are advocates of the omnipotence of revolutionary war; that is good, not bad, it is Marxist. The guns of the Russian Communist Party created socialism. We shall create a democratic republic. Experience in the class struggle in the era of imperialism teaches us that it is only by the power of the gun that the working class and the laboring masses can defeat the armed bourgeoisie and landlords; in this sense we may say that only with guns can the whole world be transformed.” —Mao Zedong (1938)

The Egyptian revolution should remain an inspiration to all of us. It was a brilliant display of popular power, faults and all. Lenin talks about Marx's attitude toward the heroic Paris Commune, which was crushed in 1871:

"It is well known that in the autumn of 1870, a few months before the Commune, Marx warned the Paris workers that any attempt to overthrow the government would be the folly of despair. But when, in March 1871, a decisive battle was forced upon the workers and they accepted it, when the uprising had become a fact, Marx greeted the proletarian revolution with the greatest enthusiasm, in spite of unfavorable auguries.... Marx, however, was not only enthusiastic about the heroism of the Communards, who, as he expressed it, "stormed heaven". Although the mass revolutionary movement did not achieve its aim, he regarded it as a historic experience of enormous importance, as a certain advance of the world proletarian revolution, as a practical step that was more important than hundreds of programmes and arguments. Marx endeavored to analyze this experiment, to draw tactical lessons from it and re-examine his theory in the light of it." 

So many popular movements have been successful in the past few decades, even though they may have not been socially transformative or socialist revolutions, it's hard to see this one apparently collapse. And sadly it probably won't be the last time the people are defeated as blood runs in the streets. We remember the 1960s as the decade when the Vietnamese were waging their ultimately victorious struggle against US imperialism, but we forget that was also the decade when half a million Indonesian communists were killed in a counterrevolution. So this is an opportunity to learn, and prepare ourselves for the next time.

What if the Occupy movement had been stronger? We saw how much the state felt threatened, how repression, albeit non-lethal repression, was quickly (and ultimately successfully) wielded to crush occupations across the country. What were the limits of our own radically rebellious horizontalism? While I think it would have been silly to suggest getting guns and running off to the woods to practice armed struggle, for equal reasons I think it would also be wrong, as some leftists are suggesting to the post-Occupy milieu, to channel all that rebellious energy to fielding electoral candidates. We must create and build popular power, but never forget the enemy we are up against. When there are millions and millions of Americans out in the street— and I believe this will happen one day — we will need to be there to share the lessons of history, and "The people united will never be defeated" is inspirational but incomplete.


(Crossposted to the Kasama Project).