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Imperialist league of war criminals denounce the International Criminal Court
Jordan Shilton, Andre Damon, WSWS, May 22 2024

The charging for war crimes of Netanyahu and Gallant by the lead prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has elicited howls of indignation from the world’s leading imperialist war criminals. Biden and Blinken have joined hands with the fascistic Christian fundamentalist Republicans Mike Johnson and Lindsey Graham to condemn the ICC and assert the right of Israel and the US to commit war crimes with impunity. In remarks on Monday, Biden absurdly declared:

We reject the ICC’s application of arrest warrants against Israeli leaders. It is clear that Israel wants to do all it can to ensure civilian protection. Contrary to allegations against Israel made by the International Court of Justice, what’s happening is not genocide. We reject that.

What world is Biden living in? The two men charged by the ICC prosecutor have not only killed tens of thousands of civilians, they have made clear that this massacre is motivated by genocidal intent. Netanyahu referred to the Palestinians as “monsters” and “Amalek,” while Gallant referred to the Palestinians as “human animals.” If this is not a genocide, what is? In fact, Biden’s response to the ICC charges has exposed his government’s open and unabashed support for the physical extermination of the Palestinian population by Israel. In testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee Tuesday, Blinken pledged to “work with” congressional Republicans to sanction the ICC. Blinken made this statement in response to Republican Senator Graham, who earlier this month implied that Israel should use nuclear weapons against Gaza by invoking the precedent of “Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” In his remarks in a congressional hearing Tuesday, Graham said that the prosecution of Israel sets a precedent for prosecuting the US for war crimes. Graham pressed Blinken:

If they do this to Israel, we will be next. So I want to take action, not just words. Will you support a bipartisan effort to sanction the ICC not only for the outrage against Israel, but to protect our own interests in the future?

To this, Blinken replied:

I welcome working with you on that.

Graham, who had previously stated that “there is no limit” to the number of civilian casualties Israel should be allowed to carry out, and defended collective punishment against the population of Gaza because they are a “radicalized population,” praised Blinken and Biden for their response to the war crimes charges against Netanyahu and Gallant. Graham said:

I want to thank you. I want to thank President Biden for issuing a strong statement. Your statement was terrific, Mr Secretary.

As Biden was publicly denouncing the ICC, his national security advisor Jake Sullivan posed for a photo while shaking hands with Yoav Gallant in Israel, as the Israeli defense minster asserted his intent to expand the attack on Rafah. Gallant told Sullivan during their meeting:

We are committed to broadening the ground operation in Rafah.

Israel’s genocidal onslaught has proceeded without interruption for seven and a half months. It has officially claimed the lives of over 35k Palestinians, overwhelmingly women and children. Unofficially, well over 45k have lost their lives, with thousands of bodies remaining uncovered under the rubble. Over 75k people have been injured, and over 70t of the enclave’s housing stock has been demolished. Added together, the IOF has killed or maimed 5% of Gaza’s population. None of these crimes would have been conceivable without the support of the imperialist powers. American and German imperialism have led the way with their delivery of high-powered weaponry and military equipment to the far-right Zionist regime.

At home, the North American and European imperialist powers have witch-hunted all opponents of the genocide as “antisemites,” banned protests, and let the riot cops loose on anti-genocide demonstrations and encampments. The imperialist powers’ complicity in the barbaric genocide in Gaza demolishes their cynical posturing as defenders of “democracy” and “human rights,” claims they have used to sell every war of aggression since the Stalinist dissolution of the USSR. Beginning with the first Gulf War, US imperialism unleashed one war after another in what has become more than three decades of uninterrupted military conflict. The assertion that American imperialism and its European allies were the most indefatigable proponents of “human rights” served the purpose for their political and media propagandists as justification for these wars. The first Gulf War, everyone was told, was a crusade to free Iraq from the barbaric Hussein regime, which was killing babies in incubators in Kuwait and oppressing the Kurds. To justify the destruction of the major European city of Belgrade by NATO warplanes in 1999, Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic was cast as the reincarnation of Hitler himself, guilty of a “genocide” against Bosnians and Kosovo Albanians.

Seizing on al-Qaida’s 9/11 terrorist attack, Washington’s leadership of a two-decade-long neocolonial occupation of Afghanistan was presented as a mission to secure “women’s rights” and bring “democracy” to the long-suffering Central Asian country. The US-led “coalition of the willing” that destroyed Iraqi society following the 2003 illegal invasion portrayed itself as a “liberating” force as it butchered civilians and inflamed internecine ethnic and religious conflicts. NATO’s 2011 air war on Libya claimed tens of thousands of lives, led to the brutal murder of Muammar Gaddafi and plunged one of the continent’s most advanced societies into a fratricidal civil war that continues to this day. Its advocates, relying on a pretentious pro-war academic theory cooked up in a project funded by the Canadian government, asserted that the war was justified by the imperialism’s “responsibility to protect” civilians from an impending massacre by Gaddafi. Similar lies were used to legitimise the incitement of civil war against the Assad regime in Syria, which the imperialists hoped would produce “regime change” in Damascus.

These crimes have now reached a new level of savagery. US imperialism’s uninterrupted series of wars has metastasized into a rapidly escalating third world war involving all of the major powers in a global struggle for markets, raw materials and geostrategic influence. Washington’s backing of Israel’s “final solution” of the Palestinian question is bound up with its preparations for a region-wide war against Iran, aimed at consolidating American dominance over the Middle East. The other two main fronts in this war are in Ukraine, where the crusaders for “human rights” are allied with genuine antisemites and the political successors of Nazi collaborators in their war against Russia, and in the Asia-Pacific against China. American imperialism and its European allies seek to subjugate these two countries to the status of semi-colonies so they can capture natural resources and, in the case of China, prevent its emergence as an economic and geopolitical “peer competitor.” To this end, they are prepared to commit any crime, including genocide, and risk the destruction of human life itself through a nuclear conflagration.

The pursuit of such predatory goals demands the mobilization of the most reactionary political forces at home and abroad. The standing ovation in Sep 2023 extended to the Nazi war criminal Yaroslav Hunka by the Canadian parliament, joined by diplomatic representatives from every G7 member, underscores that global imperialist war must go hand in hand with the rehabilitation of fascism and dictatorship. The brutal repression meted out by governments in North America and Europe against anti-genocide protesters is part of the abrogation of workers’ democratic rights. As the World Socialist Web Site wrote in its 2024 New Year’s statement:

All the ‘red lines’ that demarcate civilization from barbarism are being effaced. The motto of capitalist governments is: ‘Nothing that is criminal is alien to us.’

Millions of workers and young people around the world recognize the hypocrisy and lawlessness of the imperialist powers. This is testified to by the mass movement against the Gaza genocide, including the launching of a strike by US academic workers to protest the brutal police clampdown on anti-genocide demonstrators. But the challenge now posed is to draw political conclusions from these facts. Like Mussolini and Hitler, who contemptuously brushed aside the League of Nations as they plundered Abyssinia and marched into one European capital after another, Biden, Scholz, Sunac and Macron, the leading imperialist barbarians of the 21st century, will not permit the United Nations or the ICC to restrain them. Appeals to these institutions to hold war criminals like Netanyahu, or Biden for that matter, accountable are doomed to fail. The same capitalist contradictions that produce imperialist barbarism are propelling the international working class into struggle. It is the independent political mobiliation of this social force that the students and young people protesting the genocide and the complicity of the imperialist governments must fight for. The prosecution of war criminals, halting the genocide, and preventing the further escalation of a third world war are tasks inseparably connected with the fight for the revolutionary transformation of society under the leadership of the working class, which will replace capitalist barbarism with socialism.

US Treasury secretary seeks European support in economic war against China
Nick Beams, WSWS, May 22 2024

Following its imposition of sweeping tariffs on a range of Chinese green technology goods, spearheaded by a 100 percent charge on electric vehicles, the US is trying to draw the EU into its economic warfare against Beijing. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen issued what amounted to a call to arms in a major speech yesterday in Frankfurt, Germany, on the importance and strength of the Transatlantic alliance. After recalling the collaboration with Europe from the Cold War to the NATO operations against Russia in the Ukraine war, she turned to the issue which is front and centre for the US, the existential threat to its global economic dominance it considers is posed by the economic rise of China.

China’s industrial policy may seem remote as we sit here in this room, but if we do not respond strategically and in a united way, the viability of businesses in both our countries and around the world could be at risk.

The US maintains that state subsidies provided by Beijing, particularly in high tech sectors, are creating “unfair” competition. Yellen said:

Industrial overcapacity in China not only poses a threat to firms in the US and Europe but could also prevent countries around the world, including emerging markets, building the industries that could power their growth.

In this presentation Yellen was following the long-established tradition of US imperialism, which has always presented the pursuit of its own strategic and economic interests as somehow saving the world, bringing peace, stability, democracy, a “rules-based order” and economic advancement. In this instance, however, she had to deal with a problem regarding the claim that China was undermining that order with its state subsidies—the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act. Measures under this legislation, a combination of outright subsidies along with major tax breaks that will eventually provide up to $1t for US corporations, have come under fire in Europe as protectionist. Seeking to deflect these criticisms, Yellen asserted the IRA was “not a turn toward American protectionism” but was creating opportunities not just at home but around the world. She said:

As we produce more in the US, we will drive down the costs of clean technologies globally, benefiting people and economies around the world.

The claims that the US measures are benefiting the world are ripped to shreds by the fact that lower-cost products are already available from China and the aim of the tariffs is to raise, not lessen, the price of green technologies. The EU has indicated that it is not completely on board with the US approach under conditions where there are differences within it. Germany is treading a cautious path because auto production, its major manufacturing industry, is so dependent on China as a market, a production centre, and a supplier. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has denied Europe is in a trade war with China and that its approach would be “different” from the US. Speaking to the Financial Times she said:

Let’s say we share some of the concerns of our American counterparts. Our approach is different. The Americans have just applied blanket tariffs. We want competition, we want to trade together, but we want to be fair and by the rules.

The position of the EU is that at any measures against China, in EVs and other products, should comply with the regulations of the World Trade Organisation. The US does not share that concern having concluded that the WTO, supposedly the guardian of the “rules-based” international trading order which it played a major role in establishing, should now be bypassed because it no longer serves its interests. Starting under the Trump administration, it has refused to nominate representatives to the WTO’s appellate body, which adjudicates on conflicts, effectively rendering it inoperable. Auto production and green technology products are not the only US target. The extraction of minerals needed for the production of computer chips and batteries is another. Yellen said:

Our critical mineral supply chains are currently over-concentrated in China.

The danger of over-reliance was revealed in the COVID-19 pandemic and at the start of the Ukraine war, and so the US had developed what she called:

friendshoring to deepen economic ties with a wide range of partners and allies to build resilient supply chains that advance our energy and economic security.

The US, she claimed, was not seeking to “decouple” from China but to “diversify.” But semantics aside, there is no mistaking the central goal of US policy. It is to concentrate key economic resources either at home or in the hands of reliable allies, so that in the event of a war with China, for which it is actively preparing, the US is not cut off from critical supplies. And while it is not directly in her bailiwick, Yellen made some significant comments on the Ukraine war and the stepping up US measures against Iran in the Middle East, revealing the close integration of economic policy and military action. It was vital, she said, that Ukraine get the support it needed for its military. She said:

That’s why I believe it’s vital and urgent that we collectively find a way forward to unlock the value of Russian sovereign assets immobilised in our jurisdictions for the benefit of Ukrainians. This will be a key topic of conversation during G7 meetings this week.

At the start of the Ukraine war, the US and the European powers froze the foreign financial assets of the Russian central bank, amounting to the equivalent of around $300b, with the aim of crippling its financial system. That action sent out a shock wave because it made clear that the foreign assets could effectively be hijacked because of US domination of the global financial system. Now the US wants to go further and use the Russian assets to finance its war in the Ukraine. However, most of the Russian money is held in the European banking system. While there has been general agreement that the interest on the funds could be used to finance the war, the EU has balked at the outright theft because it is fearful this would raise concerns in other countries about the security of their assets in the European financial system. But the US is determined to press ahead if not by seizing the assets directly, then at least using them as collateral for loans to be provided to Ukraine. Yellen also called for European support for its military operations in the Middle East, saying:

We must stay in close coordination as we take additional action to target the Iranian regime and its proxies.

President Ruto grovels to Washington to put Kenya on the global war map
Kipchumba Ochieng, WSWS, May 22 2024

Kenya’s President William Ruto will be arriving in Washington for a state visit to the US Wednesday. The Kenyan press is celebrating the visit, terming it “the first state visit by an African leader in more than 15 years”, a “major milestone and investment opportunity” and a “historic moment” that is putting “Kenya on the map”. Ruto is “eating big things,” wrote the Nation newspaper, adding, “Kenya has to wear big-boy pants.” Far from this delirium, Kenya and the entire African continent are being drawn into the maelstrom of an expanding global war. The continent’s geostrategic position and vast mineral resources are viewed by Washington as critical in its conflicts with Russia, Iran and China. Ruto is the sixth head of state invited for a state visit by Biden since he took office. The other five visits were related to Washington’s war theatres across the globe. Leaders of South Korea, India, Australia and Japan were invited to discuss military alliances against China. France was accorded a state visit to discuss NATO’s war on Russia in Ukraine.

It was not long ago that Washington viewed Ruto as a political thug threatening US interests in the region. Washington backed the International Criminal Court charges against him over his involvement in Kenya’s 2007-2008 post-election violence. Ruto played a crucial role in planning and organising violence that that left over 1.2k dead and over 600k internally displaced. The case was eventually dropped as witnesses disappeared and the US lost interest in backing Ruto’s prosecution after he become deputy president. Today, Ruto is given a red carpet to establish Kenya as Washington’s main military ally in the region. His visit coincides with the landing of 200 Kenyan police officers, the first batch of a thousand, in Haiti as part of a US-funded mission. The officers, mainly from the special forces, known for their brutality in anti-terror operations, will operate from US Army-built military barracks. They are tasked with terrorizing the Haitian population and ensuring months of gang warfare does not precipitate an outflow of refugees to the US and Canada and destabilize the Caribbean region. The main issue on the agenda will be countering China’s influence across the African continent. According to the White House press release:

The leaders will discuss ways to bolster our cooperation in areas including people-to-people ties, trade and investment, technological innovation, climate and clean energy, health, and security. The visit will affirm our strategic partnership with Kenya and further the vision set forth at the US-Africa Leaders Summit.

The US-Africa Leaders Summit was held in Dec 2022, with 49 African heads of government attending. It was a clear signal that Washington was not going to let China’s influence grow unopposed in Africa. The Biden Administration’s US Africa strategy states:

China views Africa as an important arena to challenge the rules-based international order, advance its own narrow commercial and geopolitical interests, undermine transparency and openness, and weaken US relations with African peoples and governments.

The “rules-based international order” is the world order established by US imperialism in the aftermath of WW2, in which it sets the rules. The expansion of Chinese influence in Africa over the past 15 years directly threatens US and European imperialism’s control over the lion’s share of Africa’s natural riches and disrupts Washington’s ability to encircle China and strangle it economically. At the same time, Western corporations and banks, eager to plunder Africa’s vast economic resources and its working masses, have been losing ground to China. In this conflict African governments and political establishments have been torn between their military-political ties to Washington and the economic gains from closer ties with Beijing, whose investments have dwarfed those of the US. Kenya is a clear example of this process. As part of its “Look East” policy, Nairobi’s relations with China intensified under the presidencies of Mwai Kibaki (2002–2013) and Uhuru Kenyatta (2013-2022). China-Kenya trade grew more than thirty-fold, from $106m in 2000 to $6.55b in 2022. China is now Kenya’s largest trading partner, with more than 16% of the total merchandise trade volume, followed by the EU, India, and the UAE. The US is relegated to fifth place.

China has emerged as the preferred source country for electronic goods, textiles, cosmetics, vehicle accessories and machinery. It is responsible for major infrastructure projects in the country including the Thika Super-highway easing transportation of raw materials and finished products between Nairobi and the country’s second-most industrialised town of Thika, the Nairobi-Mombasa railway connecting Nairobi to the coast, and projects like the Kipevu Oil Terminal in Mombasa Port, Lamu Port, Liwatoni Floating Bridge and Thwake Dam. Last October, Ruto, despite his anti-Chinese rhetoric during the presidential elections in 2022, met with President Xi Jinping as part of a three-day state visit. Ruto asked for $1b in loans, adding to Kenya’s $6.3b debt to China, to help complete infrastructure projects. Last week, Kenya secured commitment from China’s Exim Bank for the funding of the standard gauge railway from Nairobi to the Ugandan border. For years, the Kenyan ruling class hoped it could balance between Chinese loans and infrastructure projects and Washington’s political and military support. In 2020, then President Kenyatta told a conference hosted by the Atlantic Council in Washington:

We don’t want to be forced to choose. We want to work with everybody, and we think there is opportunity for everybody.

Those days are over. With the politics of the entire continent on a knife’s edge, Biden will demand Ruto to distance himself from China. A glimpse of the underlying threat was seen last December when the US State Dept made the unfounded claim that Beijing was planning to set up military bases in Kenya as part of its pursuit of a global military logistics network to counter the US. It stated:

China is seeking to expand its overseas logistics and basing infrastructure to allow the People’s Liberation Army, the armed wing of the Party, to project and sustain military power at greater distances.

This was only weeks after US Sec Def Austin visited Kenya and held a series of meetings with defence officials and Ruto. Ruto’s visit comes at a time when Washington’s influence across Africa is rapidly diminishing. South Africa, a traditional ally of the US, took its main Middle Eastern ally, Israel, to the International Court of Justice over its genocide in Gaza. Last year, the South African military participated in joint military exercises with Russia and China along South Africa’s east coast. Ethiopia, Washington’s previous preferred security partner in the Horn of Africa, is increasingly orientating towards China, following decades of authoritarian rule by the US-backed Tigray People’s Liberation Front since 1991. In 2020, a civil war erupted between forces aligned with the new Ethiopian federal government and the TPLF. In Niger, the new military junta booted US troops out of the country and handed over the US military bases, one of the largest US drone bases in Africa, to Russia. In Chad, the US has withdrawn its military after the country demanded they leave last month. As one US diplomat bemoaned in an article on International Crisis Group when asked why the Biden administration had invited the Kenyan leader to Washington:

If not Ruto, who?

Washington is hoping to transform Kenya, which has a track record as a satrap for US and European imperialism in maintaining their strategic grip over Eastern and Central Africa, into a strategic military partner against China and Russia in the Horn of Africa. Over the past 18 months since Ruto came to power, Washington high-ups have visited Nairobi, including CIA chief William Burns, AFRICOM Commander General Michael Langley, US Sec Def Austin, and anti-China hawks like US Senator Chris Coons and US Trade Representative Katherine Tai. In September, Austin signed a five-year defence deal with Nairobi providing US-led training of Kenya Defence Forces. Kenyan Defence Minister Aden Bare Duale said:

In an increasingly complex and interconnected world, our ability to work seamlessly together is paramount. This cooperation will enable us to respond effectively to the ever-evolving security challenges in our region.

These visits took place as Ruto backed US foreign policy. Kenya signed up to US-led Operation Prosperity Guardian, the military operation against the Houthi militias in Yemen that have attempted to disrupt supplies to the Israeli military, in solidarity with the Palestinians. Ruto endorsed airstrikes on the impoverished nation, after supporting Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The US will likely request Ruto to expand its troop presence at its Camp Simba base in Manda Bay, which serves as host for US drones and surveillance to project its control across the Indian Ocean, the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea, particularly over the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a chokepoint critical to securing global energy. The base has played a key role in the undeclared war on the Al-Shabaab insurgency in Somalia, where thousands of people have died in US drone strikes, and where Kenya continues to deploy thousands of troops as the US proxy since 2011. The US is also likely to use Kenya’s army in proxy wars across Africa. It has already tested the country’s soldiers in its war in Somalia, and in eastern mineral-rich DR Congo, and is now using Kenya’s US-trained special forces police in Haiti.

Ruto is eager to play this role. In a country where malnutrition is rampant, defence spending grew by 38% between 2021 and 2024, from $925m to $1.2b. Earlier this month, Nairobi announced it was acquiring a high-tech missile defense system from the genocidal regime of Israel using a $1 billion loan from Tel Aviv. The sophisticated system, which could have only been offered with Washington’s approval, offers protection against aircraft attacks, helicopters, cruise and ballistic missiles. Nairobi ludicrously claims growing security threats in the Gulf of Aden from Al-Shabaab in Somalia, which has no aircraft, and the Houthis in Yemen, who have a single fighter jet, an ancient F-5. Washington also hopes to use Kenya, the largest economy in the Eastern African Community economic bloc, and its growing influence in the African Union to steer African countries away from Russia and China. The US and Ruto are currently backing Kenya’s main opposition leader, the millionaire Raila Odinga, nominated to lead the African Union. Odinga is a longtime supporter of US and French imperialist interventions in Africa.

The intensified orientation to the US and its war aims is not merely a political choice by Ruto. It is based on fundamental objective relations between the Kenyan ruling class and imperialism. In exchange for supporting the US, the Kenya Kwanza government of Ruto hopes to receive crumbs, in the forms of a trade deal and more US investment, which will be syphoned by the parasitical layer running the Kenyan state. The Ministry of Investment, Trade, and Industry plans to pitch over $20.5b in investment opportunities, showcasing more than 30 promising projects to potential American investors. Ruto is also hoping to conclude the US-Kenya Strategic Trade and Investment Partnership this October, to boost US investment and exports to the US. US companies such as Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger already profit out of the exploitation of cheap Kenyan labour in the Export Processing Zones across the country, which are exempted from paying taxes.

In return for Ruto’s pledge to draw Kenya into wars across the continent and even around the planet, Ruto will seek Washington’s backing for his Kenya Kwanza alliance government’s war against the working class and rural poor. Last year, the government imposed brutal IMF-dictated austerity measures that have decimated the living standards of Kenyan workers, including the introduction of a housing levy, doubling Value Added Tax on petroleum products from 8% to 16%, tripling sales tax for small businesses from 1% to 3%, and introducing a new medical insurance tax of 2.5%. Ruto’s taxes have resulted in a skyrocketing cost of living, compounded by NATO’s war in the Ukraine. This year, Ruto has vowed to escalate the class war. A Finance Bill will propose a battery of new taxes including motor vehicle tax, minimum top-up tax, economic presence tax, withholding tax, and digital content tax. Ordinary bread, a staple which was among the zero-rated items, will cost more following the imposition of 16% VAT.

The Kenyan military and police are being prepared not only to support US-led wars abroad but also as shock troops at home. Last year, mass anti-austerity protests were savagely drowned in blood, leaving over 70 dead, most shot by the police. Widespread discontent is re-erupting. Earlier in the year, Ruto teargassed pro-Palestinian protests in Nairobi, and a pro-Palestinian gathering at a bookshop was dispersed and activists arrested. Last week, hundreds of interim teachers protested demanding permanent jobs, threatening to strike as the unions shut down a two-month nationwide doctors’ strike. The Kenyan opposition party, Azimio la Umoja, is threatening new countrywide protests, after Odinga called them off last year fearing they were breaking free of his party’s control. All Kenya’s parties, in government or opposition, support the alliance with the US, austerity and militarism. The only alternative is for workers to take matters into their own hands and fight for a socialist programme against war and to address the pressing social needs of working people.

Netherlands parties strike agreement on most right-wing government since 1945
Parwini Zora, Peter Schwarz, WSWS, May 22 2024

Six months after the Dutch general election, three far-right parties: Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party (PVV), Pieter Omtzigt’s New Social Contract (NSC) and Caroline van der Plas’ Peasant Citizens’ Movement (BBB), together with the Liberals (People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, VVD) of incumbent Prime Minister Mark Rutte, have agreed on a new coalition government. It will be the most right-wing Dutch government since WW2. Wilders and the leaders of the three other parties will not be part of the government themselves. The decision on the head of government and the distribution of ministerial posts is to be finally made by mid-June. However, even if he does not personally take on a ministerial post, Wilders will be the strongman behind the new government. With 37 out of a total of 88 MPs, his PVV is the strongest force in the government alliance, and Wilders, the only formal member of the PVV, can freely determine its policies and personnel.

Wilders is one of the best-known and vilest far-right figures in Europe. He is notorious for his Islamophobia and maintains close links to neo-fascist circles at home and abroad. Back in 2015, he took part in a demonstration in Dresden, East Germany, called by the xenophobic Pegida movement. Four weeks ago, he took part in a conference in Budapest together with 3k far-right figures from all over the world. The 26-page coalition agreement named “Hope, Courage, Pride” is a declaration of war on the working class and all forms of social and left-wing opposition. The agreement has two central goals: the introduction of the “toughest asylum law ever” and the establishment of a police state. The document clearly bears Wilders’ signature. In foreign and security policy, on the other hand, the Dutch bourgeoisie has demanded guarantees that the new government will not deviate from the current NATO and EU course. The coalition paper is fully committed to supporting the EU and Ukraine in the war against Russia. Wilders had previously questioned both commitments. With regard to Gaza, however, the Islamophobic Wilders has always been one of the most vehement supporters of the Israeli genocide.

The message sent out by the government programme is unmistakable. In the face of growing social tensions and fierce protests against the genocide of the Palestinians, the ruling class is bringing the far right into government to intimidate and suppress all opposition. Having already brutally cracked down on anti-genocide protests in recent weeks, the Dutch bourgeoisie considers Wilders, who has called the opponents of war and genocide antisemitic scum, is ideally suited to suppress protests with a heavy hand. The tightening up of the country’s asylum law serves the same purpose. Asylum seekers and migrants are being made scapegoats for the social crisis and deprived of their rights. This is how the dismantling of all democratic and social rights of the working class is being prepared. The coalition paper promises to introduce “the strictest admission regime for asylum and the most comprehensive package for control over migration ever.” It blames refugees and immigrants for all social problems. The Netherlands is “one of the most densely populated countries in Europe,” in which the significant increase in migration “has had a major impact on housing, health, education, finances and social cohesion in our country,” the document states.

It then proposes measures to drastically reduce all forms of migration. Admission procedures are to be tightened, border controls intensified and existing EU rules disregarded in order to make the Netherlands “less attractive for asylum seekers.” Automatic family reunification is to be stopped indefinitely and reunification is to be significantly restricted. Asylum procedures are to be streamlined, indefinite asylum permits abolished, access to legal assistance restricted and procedures shortened. “Deportations” of migrants are to be stepped up and those who do not cooperate severely punished. The admission of labour migrants and students from non-EU countries is to be significantly restricted. The agreement goes on like this for pages. While some members of the new governing coalition tried to exploit dissatisfaction with the acute housing crisis, low pensions, inadequate healthcare and chronically underfunded public education during the election campaign, hardly any of these issues feature in the coalition programme. And when they do crop up, in the case of a promised reduction in health insurance contributions and day care centre fees—they remain empty promises for which there is no funding. Significantly, the official minimum wage is to remain unchanged despite inflation and the rising cost of living. The duration of unemployment benefits is to be reduced from 24 to 18 months.

The second dominant theme of the coalition agreement is the militarisation of society and the arming of the state security apparatus. Of the 10 chapters in total, one is titled “Good governance and the strong rule of law,” and another “National security.” They envisage a massive increase in the police force and far-reaching resources and powers to establish a police state. A section reads:

Our democratic constitutional state is threatened by Islamic terrorism and directly undermined by organised crime. Our security is under pressure from social polarisation and discontent. Security and a resilient society are top priorities. This requires tough action against anyone who threatens freedom and security. For an effective security policy, prevention and repression are two sides of the same coin.

This is followed by a long list of repressive measures and new powers for the security services, giving them free rein for repression and provocations. These measures include “tougher detention based on the Italian model,” “expanding working under a pseudonym for the police, public prosecutors and investigating judges,” along with “increasing visible presence and more police stations in neighborhoods, communities, and regions.” The powers of the police and intelligence services to spy on digital communications are to be significantly expanded. The criminal offence of membership in a terrorist organisation is to be extended and penalties increased. In anticipation of a broader radicalisation of young people, the document states:

Juvenile justice for 14- to 16-year-olds will be tightened, including increasing maximum sentences.

In view of increasing social discontent and the recent student protests, the coalition is planning a massive restriction on the right to demonstrate. A sharper distinction is to be made “between (peaceful) demonstrations and disruptive actions.” It goes on to say:

Disturbances of the peace, threats against others and public violence will not be tolerated. The public prosecutor’s office, local authorities and the national police are called upon to intervene decisively when demonstrators overstep the boundaries of the law.

The entry of Wilders’ PVV into the Dutch government exposes all the talk of a European “firewall” or “cordon sanitaire” against the far right for what it really is: a fraud, an attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the population and sabotage any serious fight against fascism. Such a firewall never actually existed and is now being officially removed. The decision to bring the PVV into the government was taken at the highest political level. Without Mark Rutte’s approval, the coalition agreement would not have been possible. Rutte is not only well connected in the Netherlands, which he has governed for 14 years, but also in the EU and NATO. He is one of the leading figures in the European Council, the body of EU heads of state and government, and is considered the most likely candidate to succeed Jens Stoltenberg as NATO Secretary General. His party, the VVD, is a member of the liberal Renew Europe group, which also includes French President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance and German Finance Minister Christian Lindner’s Free Democratic Party, FDP.

The alliance between Rutte and Wilders confirms the warning made by the WSWS for a long time: the far right is being deliberately developed by the ruling class to intimidate and suppress the class struggle and all resistance to its war policy. The far right is not a foreign body in an otherwise healthy organism, but rather an expression and product of the shift to the right of the entire ruling class. This development is well advanced throughout Europe. The EU is preparing to give the far right an important political role after the European elections in June. At the end of April, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen already expressed her willingness to be elected for a second term with the votes of the far right. The leader of the conservative EPP group in the European Parliament, Manfred Weber, has long endeavoured to work more closely with the extreme right. In Germany, too, ruling circles are preparing to include the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), the PVV’s sister party, in state governments after elections in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg scheduled for September. A commentary in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung leaves no doubt about this. The newspaper describes the integration of Wilders and his PVV into the government as the “only logical conclusion from the election results of recent years” and states:

Firewalls did not help, on the contrary.

The FAZ tries to reassure its readers with the assurance “that participation in power has a civilising effect,” but the opposite is the case. On Sunday, the Spanish Vox party, which stands in the tradition of the fascist dictator Franco, gathered 10k supporters in a bullring in Madrid. Marine Le Pen (France), Giorgia Meloni (Italy), Viktor Orbán (Hungary), Mateusz Morawiecki (Poland) and other representatives of ultra-right parties in Europe addressed the gathering directly or via video. The star guest was Argentinian President Javier Milei, who sparked a storm of enthusiasm with a fascist tirade. He said:

Socialism is the cancer of humanity. Socialism is the enemy. Let’s not let the dark, black, satanic, disgusting, atrocious, carcinogenic side, which is socialism, defeat us.

The main responsibility for the rise of the right lies with the nominally left-wing parties. The Social Democrats, the Greens and also the trade unions support the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, seal Europe off from refugees and organise the dismantling of jobs, social benefits and wages. Their policies are not fundamentally different from those of the far right. This also applies to the Left Party in Germany and other pseudo-left organisations. They enable the far right to channel some of the frustration with official politics into support for their utterly reactionary policies. The fight against the far right requires a clear political perspective. It can only be successful if it is directed against all parties that defend the capitalist order. The strikes against wage and social cuts and the protests against Israel’s genocide must be united into a powerful movement against capitalism in the struggle for a socialist society. This will sweep the ground from beneath the fascists. This is the perspective of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei in the European elections.