Biden’s campus crackdown — the Democratic Party bares its fangs, again
Tom Mackaman, WSWS, Apr 26 2024
A police officer detains a protester on the campus of Emory University, Atlanta, Apr 25 2024.
Over the past few days, America’s college campuses have been turned into scenes of violent police attacks on students. Young people peacefully demonstrating against the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza, in just its sixth month already one of history’s ghastliest crimes, have been arrested by the score, perhaps 1k in all. Police have been deployed in combat gear and on horseback. Snipers have been arrayed on campus buildings. Cops have tased students. At Emory University, professors protecting students have been violently arrested.
Had these scenes taken place in, say, Iran, there would be wall-to-wall coverage in the American media and demands for “humanitarian intervention” to protect the protesters. But this is America. So the media and the politicians denounce the students peacefully protesting against mass murder as “antisemites.” The crude, transparent amalgam is that opposition to Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians is antisemitism. The propaganda and the police crackdown are organized from the Oval Office. Asked about the demonstrations at a press conference Monday Apr 22, Biden said, “I condemn the antisemitic protests.” A day earlier Biden issued a press release stating that “Antisemitism is reprehensible and has no place on college campuses,” announcing the creation of a new police bureaucracy to monitor the campuses called by the Orwellian name “the National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism,” and promising to put “the full force of the federal government behind protecting the Jewish community.” Biden’s alleged concern over antisemitism is exposed by the fact that, in smashing opposition to Israel’s genocide, the White House works hand-in-glove with actual antisemites of the Republican Party, including advocates of the “great replacement theory” holding that there is a Jewish plot to eliminate white Christians from America. And Biden has transferred endless billions of dollars worth of killing machines to a government in Ukraine that celebrates as its greatest national hero Stepan Bandera, whose Ukrainian followers enlisted in Hitler’s mass murder of eastern European Jews.
Of course, extraordinary efforts will be made to separate Biden from his own policy and to promote the absurd fiction that somehow he can be made to “hear” the very protests he is trying to crush. This is the specialty of organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America, which is in fact only a faction within the Democratic Party. But the reality of what the Biden administration is and what it is prepared to do: to destroy democracy in the name of saving it, arises not from what its left hangers-on wish to believe about it. It emerges from the class interests the Democratic Party actually represents, and indeed from that party’s entire history. It is the oldest capitalist electoral party in the world. While certain of its longstanding characteristics had emerged already by the Civil War, for example its promotion of racial ideology to manipulate the working class, the modern Democratic Party came into itself at a point roughly midway between the Age of Jackson in the 1820s and 1830s and the Biden administration today, during the administration of Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921). It was at that moment that the Democratic Party emerged as the preferred party of American imperialism. This is born out by the fact that for decades every major war was initiated with a Democrat in the White House: WW1 (Wilson); WW2 (Franklin Roosevelt); the Korean War (Truman); and the Vietnam War (Kennedy and Johnson). These large wars necessitated the shifting of the economy and the disciplining of the workforce. In this, the crucial role was always played by the labor bureaucracy, which, to borrow a phrase from Trotsky, “fell into the steel embrace of the imperialist state” in the US through the Democratic Party precisely at moments of war. Samuel Gompers of the AFL attempted to render this service to Wilson during WW1, and Walter Reuther of the UAW (along with several other union heads) did the same for Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson. Shawn Fain of the UAW is busy auditioning for this role at present.
The big wars of the 20th century also demanded the imposition of a militaristic culture that sought to control political speech and thought. The substantially greater influence the Democrats have wielded among the liberal intelligentsia and the entertainment industry has made them more useful for this purpose than the Republicans. As Randolph Bourne put it in 1917 during WW1, it was the role of the intellectuals to open “the sluices that flood us with the sewage of the war spirit.” But the allegiance of the union bureaucracy and the intellectuals to imperialist war, deliverable only by the Democratic Party, has always had a darker side, out-and-out repression. In the Vietnam War, the Kennedy and Johnson administrations dramatically expanded the secret COINTELPRO organization, which had as its main goal the disruption of antiwar organizations. In WW2, the Roosevelt administration used the Smith Act to outlaw domestic opposition to the war, prosecuting for sedition almost the entire leadership of the Socialist Workers Party, with the notable exception of Joseph Hansen, who was later revealed to be an FBI informer. But the precedent for all that was to follow was the massive operation by the Wilson administration to quash resistance to WW1. His Espionage Act, still on the books and likely the basis for any prosecution of Julian Assange, effectively made illegal opposition to the war by asserting that such activity interfered with the operations of the military. The Espionage Act was used to prosecute and jail Eugene Debs, the founding figure of American socialism, for opposing US entry into the war in his famous Canton Speech.
Eugene Debs delivering his Canton Speech against WW1 on Jun 16 1918.
He was imprisoned for the remarks under the Espionage Act.
Under the Espionage Act, and kindred laws enacted at the state level, hundreds of socialists and labor militants were jailed. The foreign language press was required to submit to the Postmaster General translated copies of all of its publications. The Wilson administration effectively deputized a mass vigilante organization, called the American Protective League, which carried out violent attacks on labor strikes and radical organizations. Such tactics continued after the war, led and organized by the American Legion and the Ku Klux Klan. Immigrant radicals were especially targeted, with Wilson’s “Palmer Raids” rounding up thousands and deporting hundreds in the months after the war. The crucial issue that confronted Wilson, and which today confronts Biden, is preventing a convergence of the working class with opposition to war. In spite of Gompers’ efforts, Wilson faced the largest strike wave in American history. Over 1 million workers walked off their jobs in 1917 and 1918, and then 4.5 million struck in 1919. At the same time, the Bolshevik Revolution took power in Russia, and under Lenin and Trotsky, declared “war on war.” Under these conditions, Wilson’s program of repression was a desperate effort, only partially successful, to head off the influence of socialism on the working class.
Like the Wilson administration before it, the Biden White House seeks to block opposition to war that it fears will merge with the gathering movement of the working class. But Biden does so under very different conditions. In Wilson’s day, American capitalism was ascendant. No longer. For decades American capitalism has sought to offset its long-term economic decline by asserting evermore violently its military dominance. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Washington and its proxies have waged an uninterrupted series of wars: Iraq, Somalia, Serbia, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Ukraine and Gaza, to name the bloodiest. The wars have killed and displaced millions, cost trillions of dollars, and poisoned American culture and intellectual life. Yet they have only accelerated American economic decline, lately raising questions even over the status of the dollar as world reserve currency. And it is now clear that these wars, which form an arc around Eurasia with a geographical center in the Middle East, have been preparatory for a third world war, which is in fact already in its initial stages. As we noted in a recent perspective commenting on Biden’s signing into law another massive tranche of war funding:
By linking together in a single piece of legislation the war spending for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, the bill signifies that the Biden administration and the US ruling elite as a whole do not view these conflicts as separate and distinct. They are, rather, connected theaters in a global war. American imperialism is fighting on a vast front which stretches from the Arctic Ocean to the Black Sea, then through the Middle East and Central Asia, all the way to China and the Pacific. Between the Democrats and Republicans, there are no difference over principle, only how the program of world domination should be presented and rolled out. It is therefore a matter of pressing urgency for youth protesting the genocide to draw the necessary political conclusions and break once and for all with the Democratic Party, and those political forces grouped around it. They must consciously turn to the revolutionary force that has both the means and the motivation to end war and the capitalist system that breeds it: the American and international working class.
Germany’s Green Party vice-chancellor appoints himself “defence industry minister”
Peter Schwarz, WSWS, Apr 26 2024
The Greens, who began 45 years ago as pacifists, have not only become Germany’s leading pro-war party, they have also lost all their inhibitions. In an interview with broadcaster Deutschlandfunk on Monday, Economics Minister Robert Habeck boasted that he was now also the German “defence industry minister.” The Green politician, who is also vice-chancellor, said:
You know which party I belong to. I really didn’t have the idea that I would once again prioritise my work as defence industry minister, but that’s what I have to do now. If Ukraine needs the weapons and ammunition, then it should get them, and if it no longer needs them, then the Bundeswehr can make good use of them. So, we have to scale up faster, scale up and produce more.
Habeck defined his new task as needing to “scale up the defence industry in Germany.” This was “a very, very necessary decision,” he concluded. Habeck had just returned from a trip to Ukraine, which he had visited along with managers from several defence companies. He had previously invited representatives from defence companies to his ministry to discuss the expansion of production capacities. Speaking on Deutschlandfunk, he insisted that Germany must play a pioneering role in armaments, even though it was already Ukraine’s second-largest arms supplier after the US. The Green politician stressed:
We have to see that we are first movers, that we lead the way, that we say we can go one step further.
Habeck, who has a doctorate in literature and worked as a writer before making a career in politics, chooses his words carefully. And he knows what he is talking about. There has only ever been one minister of the defence industry in German history, under Hitler. On Mar 17 1940, six months after the German invasion of Poland, a decree by the Führer established the “Reich Ministry of Armaments and Munitions.” Minister Fritz Todt, a member of the NSDAP since 1922 and SA Obergruppenführer, ensured that the war economy covered the growing needs of the Wehrmacht. After Todt’s accidental death in Feb 1942, Hitler appointed his personal architect Albert Speer as his successor, under whose leadership the ministry developed into the central control centre of the Nazi war economy. In Sep 1943, it was renamed the “Reich Ministry of Armaments and War Production.” All other economic sectors had to be subordinated to it.
Armaments production tripled between 1940 and 1944. The ministry exploited millions of forced labourers and concentration camp prisoners, only a minority of whom survived. The fact that Habeck is now taking up this criminal tradition by appointing himself “defence industry minister” makes clear how far to the right the entire ruling class has moved. On the 300th anniversary of Immanuel Kant’s birth, it is not the celebrated philosopher’s “categorical imperative” that determines their thoughts and actions, but their naked imperialist class interests. During WW1 & WW2, German imperialism sought to satisfy its hunger for markets, raw materials and cheap labour by subjugating Europe and expanding eastwards. It is now following the same path again. After two years of war in Ukraine, which NATO deliberately provoked, and six months of genocide in Gaza, which the German government fully supports, there is no longer anyone in the ruling class who is in favour of military restraint.
Pacifism, which relies on reason and the good will of those in power, is proving to be completely bankrupt. Nothing demonstrates this better than the pro-war policy of the Greens, the party of the wealthy and privileged upper-middle class. They are unrivalled when it comes to dressing up a pro-war policy with moral fumes. But now this is taking on perverse forms. They support the slaughter of the Palestinians and persecute anyone who protests against the genocide in Gaza as antisemites, while in Ukraine they cooperate with the admirers of Nazi collaborators and Jew-haters in the war against Russia. They are enraged by Putin and Xi, while in the Middle East they throw themselves at dictators and mass murderers like Saudi prince Mohammed bin Salman and the butcher of Cairo, Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi. Disgust and revulsion at these policies and the opposition to them are growing. But it is necessary to consciously draw the lessons from the bankruptcy of the Greens. Pressure on the government and the ruling class cannot stop the danger of a third world war. What is needed is the building of an independent anti-war movement based on the international working class and linking the struggle against war, social inequality and fascism with the struggle against their cause, capitalism. This is what the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei is fighting for in the European elections.
Australian police and media fuel anti-Islamic witch hunt to justify arrests of teenagers on flimsy “terrorism” charges
Mike Head, WSWS, Apr 27 2024
Arrests in Sydney, Apr 24 2024
Over 400 officers from NSW Police and the Australian Federal Police have arrested six Sydney teenagers, accusing them of terrorism-related offences. A foul campaign has been launched by the Australian and other Murdoch media outlets, evidently assisted by selective leaks from the police and intelligence agencies, to demonise Muslim teenagers and whip up an Islamic terrorism scare campaign. Today’s Australian splashed over its front page “exclusive” stories, based on prejudicial police information. One article witch-hunted the seven boys, as young as 14, arrested last Wednesday in huge police raids in Sydney’s working-class western suburbs on serious “terrorism” charges despite the police admitting they had no evidence of a terrorist plot or plan. Another inflammatory article claimed that the 16-year-old boy who allegedly stabbed an Assyrian Christian priest at a suburban Sydney church on Apr 15, “idolises” former Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, because the boy had a photograph of bin Laden on his social media profile, at least according to the police leaks. Noting what “appears to be a major security breach,” the newspaper also reported that the names, addresses and other personal details of the teenagers arrested on Wednesday as supposed “associates” of the boy were being shared across WhatsApp groups, already triggering an anti-Muslim retaliation attack. The Australian stated:
A page from Wednesday’s police warrants has started circulating, including the colour, make and licence plate of five cars, one of which has since been vandalised.
The newspaper also broadcast “extraordinary” CCTV footage of one of the arrested boys, aged 16, allegedly throwing stones and another object at a liquor bottle shop attendant earlier this week. The publication of such material, violates sub judice laws, and makes impossible any fair trial of the teenagers. This has all the hallmarks of a coordinated campaign, emanating from the highest echelons of the police-intelligence apparatus, and politically backed by the Albanese Labor government, to stir up anti-Islamic sentiment. It is part of an attempt to tarnish and suppress the intense opposition in the working class to the government’s support for the worsening Israeli genocide in Gaza.
Within hours of the stabbing at the church, the police and intelligence chiefs, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s personal involvement, initiated an official declaration of a “terrorist” incident, before even speaking to the accused boy, who has a documented history of mental health problems. By doing so, they activated police-state powers, including to search and seize, arrest and detain without charge and conduct intensive surveillance. Albanese then quickly convened a meeting of the “National Cabinet” security committee. This body, which consists of key government ministers, the police, intelligence and military chiefs and top officials, set the police raids in motion, spearheaded by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the domestic political spy agency. More than 400 police and ASIO officers were mobilised to storm into at least 13 homes in southwestern Sydney suburbs that have significant Middle Eastern populations, causing widespread shock and anger. This offensive is still continuing. A 15-year-old boy was arrested last night and charged “with conspiring to prepare a terrorist act.”
The media witch hunt is, in the first instance, a bid to justify the raids and arrests, all conducted on similar vague and flimsy charges. Far from any evidence of specific plans, locations, times or targets for “a terrorist act,” the AFP said investigations had revealed a “network” who shared a “violent extremist ideology.” Clearly, this accusation was directed at identification with Islamic belief. The only cited “evidence” against the boys consisted of belonging to a social media chat group. In the case of the 14-year-old, it soon became known that his “crime” was to passively receive online material. The flimsy nature of such charges points to the political timing of Wednesday’s police raids. They began just before ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess and AFP Chief Commissioner Reece Kershaw made a joint appearance at the National Press Club to declare a heightening danger of “Sunni Islamic violent extremism.” Burgess claimed there was a 50% chance that someone would plan or conduct such an act of terrorism in the next 12 months.
Under the terrorism laws, imposed with Labor’s support by the previous Liberal-National government in 2002, charges such as “conspiracy,” “preparation” and “possession” of material can be laid and prosecuted without any proof of concrete plots. And by defining terrorism in terms that include religious ideology, the laws have been used, in repeated high-profile cases over the past two decades, to essentially imprison people for their beliefs. In many cases, the only evidence of terrorist intent has been based on loose talk provoked by undercover police or ASIO agents. Prominent Islamic leaders called a media conference in Sydney yesterday to denounce the “questionable law enforcement tactics” involved in the teenagers’ arrests, made without any specific terrorist evidence. They said the arrests had caused alarm and outrage in their communities. This clearly reflects widespread anger. The Islamic organisations called for changes to the terrorism laws, saying they “target specific communities” by focussing on religious belief. That call was immediately opposed by police representatives and New South Wales (NSW) Labor Premier Chris Minns. In an earlier statement, the Islamic Council of NSW said:
Many in the Muslim community have expressed their concern that if you are an Australian Muslim, even with a formal mental health diagnosis, you will be subjected to a different application of the law compared to other Australians.
At the same time, another large police operation across western Sydney is targeting 50 men and teenagers accused of participating in clashes with the police outside the church after the April 15 stabbing. During what the police classified as a “riot,” people in the crowd, evidently supporters of the right-wing priest, Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel, demanded vigilante-style revenge against the boy. These widespread police operations point to the Labor governments and the police-intelligence apparatus exploiting the Apr 15 events to inflame communal tensions and activate far-reaching police powers, both as a means of sowing toxic divisions in the working class and of intimidating and suppressing unrest. This is happening under conditions of intensifying disaffection among workers and young people with the Albanese government’s support for the US-backed genocide in Gaza and its commitment to the wider war drive of US imperialism against Iran, Russia and China, combined with a deepening cost-of-living and social crisis in working-class areas. Once again, but even more than before, the “war on terror,” declared by the US and its allies in 2001 to justify the barbaric preplanned invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, is being used to blackguard and suppress domestic discontent. Like the Biden administration in the US, the Labor governments have slandered as “antisemitic” the mass opposition to the Gaza genocide, including the student encampments that are now developing in Australia in solidarity with those spreading across the US. Far from being antisemitic, the protests are anti-genocide and anti-Zionist, with many Jewish students taking part, calling for their universities to divest from corporations engaged in the genocide. Labor leaders have previously threatened to outlaw Gaza genocide protests. They are now inciting communal tensions and stoking fears of terrorism to seek to create the conditions for police repression, as in the US.
Students at Australian universities form encampments to protest Gaza genocide
Eric Ludlow, WSWS, Apr 27 2024
Anti-Gaza genocide camp at the University of Melbourne
Students at Australia’s University of Melbourne and University of Sydney have begun campus occupations to protest against Israel’s ongoing genocide against Gaza. The encampments in Australia have been organised in solidarity with similar demonstrations at university campuses in the US. The Australian protests have denounced the police-state crackdown on US students, which is being coordinated nationally by the Biden administration and has as its aim the outlawing of opposition to the genocide, and war more broadly. Such protests at two of Australia’s most prestigious universities, in the two largest cities in the country, underscore the ongoing and deepening opposition of students and youth to the mass murder in Gaza, which is being aided and abbetted by all the imperialist governments, including the Labor administration in Australia.
A central demand of the students is the cessation of the universities’ collaboration with arms manufacturers which have been directly supplying weaponry and other military supplies to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and used in the genocide. About 100 students and others joined the encampment on the University of Melbourne campus which began on Apr 25. That date marks the yearly pro-militarist celebration known as “ANZAC Day” which is used by the political and media establishment to glorify Australia’s involvement in past wars, especially WW1, and promote the military as Australia deepens its involvement in the ongoing assault in the Middle East, the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine and US-led provocations against China. Young people protesting against war on ANZAC Day has sparked outrage from right-wing commentators. Spokesperson for veterans’ affairs for the opposition Liberal-National Coalition Barnaby Joyce denounced “anti-ANZAC sentiment” as disrespectful.
Meanwhile, the universities have issued threats against the protests. An email by University of Melbourne Vice Chancellor Duncan Maskell in response to the peaceful protest paid lip service to students’ right to exercise “their right to protest.” But the email quickly warns against any action which is deemed to undermine “safety and wellbeing” of others on campus. Maskell’s email says the university “will not tolerate” behaviours including “vilifying an individual on their own or as part of a group” and denounces “all forms of racism, including antisemitism and Islamophobia.” The university is attempting to set up the conditions where, like in the US, the students engaged in peaceful protests against the Gaza genocide can be accused of antisemitism and of jeopardising campus safety. Maskell’s threats against the protests include the warning:
In order to observe and maintain public order, Victoria Police may themselves choose independently of the University to attend campus at any time.
University of Sydney acting Vice Chancellor Annamarie Jagose issued a similar statement on Wednesday, 24 April. In it, she also states:
We have zero tolerance for any form of racism, threats to safety, hate speech, intimidation, threatening speech, bullying or unlawful harassment, including antisemitic or anti-Muslim language or behaviour.
New South Wales state police conducted an operation at the University of Sydney yesterday according to campus newspaper Honi Soit. It is unclear if the police presence had anything to do with the ongoing encampment. A University of Sydney spokesperson who gave Honi Soit a statement refused to comment on the nature of the supposed threat to which the police were responding. Several buildings were evacuated. As in the US, a nationally-coordinated attack on the demonstrations is being developed.
The Murdoch-owned Australian has published several frothing denunciations of the small encampments, in the few days since they were established. In an article today, the Australian featured a letter from the Australian Academic Alliance Against Antisemitism to university leaderships across the country. The missive, from the rabidly Zionist and pro-Israeli organisation, includes hysterical accusations that the situation is “rapidly spiralling out of control,” with a wave of purported antisemitism on campuses across the country. This is a lie, conflating opposition to Israeli war crimes with anti-Jewish racism. It is a slander against the many Jewish youth in Australia, as internationally who have protested against Israel’s mass murder. It is also antisemitic, falesly identifying the Jewish people en bloc with a widely-despised garrison state of imperialism as it perpetrates atrocities.
The national Chancellors Council has immediately acceded to the letter, pledging to table it and discuss it at a meeting in Queensland this Thursday. This body, which brings together university leaderships across the country, includes senior figures from the military apparatus, such as former Chief of the Defence Force Angus Houston. The frothing response underscores the bankruptcy of the perspective advanced at the encampments by pseudo-left organisations such as Socialist Alternative, Socialist Alliance and Solidarity. All of them are seeking to limit the actions to pressuring the corporatised university leaderships to break ties with Israel. This is part of their broader program of subordinating anti-genocide protests to feckless appeals to the federal Labor government, as it continues to aid Israel’s mass murder. As the International Youth and Students for Social Equality and the Socialist Equality Party have insisted, students and youth must turn to the working class, to fight the genocide and the developing attacks on democratic rights. The aim must be to develop a unified movement of workers around the world, against the mass murder, the broader program of imperialist militarism and their source, the capitalist system itself.
Safiyya
IYSSE campaigners spoke with students at the encampments. In Melbourne, Safiyya, a psychology student, said:
I am here because I believe strongly that Gaza should be free from killing and oppression. We’re here to show that students around the world support the Palestinians and we won’t back down. The Labor Party’s support for genocide is terrible. They are totally ignoring the rights of Palestinians. It’s a really scary thought, the possibility of a world war. I just hope the genocide stops soon.
Siena
In Sydney, Siena also spoke with IYSSE members. She studies law at the University of New England, but travelled to the University of Sydney to join the protest. She said:
It’s just horrific. It’s blatant genocide and it’s been going on for over six months now, not to mention the 75 years prior. The government is not only apathetic, they are actively supporting the genocide, sending weapons and doing weapons deals with Israel despite no one supporting it! People straight up see through it, it’s not like you can cover up a genocide, especially nowadays with everyone on social media seeing the horrific events that are happening. We’ve all seen clips of Albo out being pro-Palestine decades ago, and now they’re truly spearheading the deals with Israel. I saw a photo today of Penny Wong putting flowers on the grave of someone that was murdered from the genocide. It is truly ghoulish and completely unconscionable to be putting on this façade of empathy towards the victims of this genocide when you are the ones providing them with the resources to continue it. It’s just completely absurd. Australia has their priorities in all the wrong places. They’re continuing to invest in weapons manufacturing and make people feel like that is a fundamental part of our economy when that’s just so not true. Instead, they should be investing in actual essential services like teaching, nursing and other healthcare professions. It’s unsustainable because people are going to get more angry and they won’t continue to support a government that is actively supporting genocide oversees while violently oppressing minorities and the working class in our own country.
Niqnaq 