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The Biden-Trump debate and the crisis of the American political system
Tom Mackaman, WSWS, Jun 29 2024

Even by the standards of American “political culture,” Thursday night’s presidential debate between Biden and Trump was a spectacle of degradation, reaction and stupidity. It is not simply an issue of Biden’s dementia, which can no longer be denied. Nor of Trump’s thuggish persona, which has never been in doubt. Exposed before the entire world on the evening of Jun 27 2024 was the far-advanced decline of the entire ruling class. American capitalism placed on stage its two leading spokesmen: the senile warmonger Biden, whose overriding policy is limitless war against Russia, and the fascist blowhard Trump, who used the debate to defend his Jan 6 2021 attempted coup d’etat. This is the “choice” American politics has on offer in 2024. The media has focused in almost choreographic unison on Biden’s catastrophic debate performance, with several major outlets, led by the NYT, calling for him to step aside. Coverage has been peppered with words like “unintelligible,” “incomprehensible,” “stumbling” and “incoherent.” Biden struggled to speak in whole sentences, think in whole thoughts, hold the thread of any subject or offer a single new idea, a fitting epithet for American liberalism as a whole.

Biden, indeed, is the perfect embodiment of an American political system that is rotting on its feet. The president, it is true, is not able to speak clearly, and may well be non compos mentis. But just what would the Times have him say? What policies should he be elaborating? What accomplishments can he point to? Where does he propose to lead the country as president and self-proclaimed “leader of the free world?” The answer to each question is the same: war. Biden’s few moments of semi-clarity revealed him to be the creature of the military-intelligence apparatus that he has always been. Like the bedridden patient who perks up when nurses bring the medication, Biden was finally able to say something intelligible when prompted by the CNN debate hosts to restate his unstinting support for Israel’s mass murder of the Palestinians of Gaza. Biden declared:

We are providing Israel with all the weapons they need and when they need them.

With this policy, some 40k civilians have been slaughtered in nine months of merciless bombardment. But Biden’s “clarity” on this subject will hardly win him support among the masses of workers and youth who hate the genocide. Biden was similarly lucid in his demand for an escalation of the NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, which threatens the planet with a nuclear holocaust. Of the Russian president, Biden said:

Putin has made one thing clear: He wants to reestablish what was part of the Soviet Empire, not just a piece, he wants all of Ukraine. That’s what he wants. And then do you think he’ll stop there? Do you think he’ll stop when he – if he takes Ukraine? What do you think happens to Poland? What do you think of Belarus? What do you think happens to those NATO countries?

Biden’s position is that Russia must be militarily defeated, “as long as it takes” and “as much as it costs,” as he has said many times. This warmongering threat is a matter of pressing urgency for every person on the planet. It is clear for all those with eyes to see that Washington, along with its NATO allies, is already deep into an undeclared war with nuclear-armed Russia. To their shame, CNN hosts Jake Tapper and Dana Bash did not offer a follow-up on this momentous question. Likewise, the moderators asked nothing about the COVID-19 pandemic, whose unchecked spread was encouraged by both Trump and Biden, killing millions, much less the newly emerging H5N1 bird flu virus, even as epidemiologists and public health experts desperately sound warning alarms. The “Fourth Estate,” the media, is also far, far gone.

It is not only because of his age and senility that Biden could not effectively answer a single one of Trump’s fascist threats, let alone his moonshot lies. It is because, fundamentally, he offers no alternative to the presumptive Republican nominee. Trump spent much of the debate fulminating against immigrants, repeating the demonstrably false assertion that migrant workers are responsible for a crime wave (data show that immigrants are less likely to commit violent crimes than native-born Americans) and that immigrants “are taking over our schools, our hospitals, and they’re going to be taking over Social Security.” (Immigrants are net contributors to the American tax base, as recently spelled out once again by the Congressional Budget Office. It is Trump’s brethren among the super-rich who are bleeding the country dry). Trump dodged the only challenging question of the evening, from Tapper, who asked:

President Trump, staying on the topic of immigration, you’ve said that you’re going to carry out “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” Does that mean that you will deport every undocumented immigrant in America, including those who have jobs, including those whose spouses are citizens, and including those who have lived here for decades? And if so, how will you do it?

Trump did not explain how he would sweep up millions of immigrants: working class men, women and children. But it is obvious he could only carry out such a massive deportation by violent police state methods, which would very quickly be directed against the entire working class. Such a policy entails the destruction of what remains of US democracy and the complete inversion of the national credo of the USA as a nation of immigrants and “an asylum for mankind,” as Tom Paine put it. Biden did not, or could not, challenge Trump on immigration, perhaps because he and his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, bear responsibility for the creation of the very police state infrastructure that Trump now threatens to mobilize. The Biden administration openly boasts that it has deported “more people than in all four years of the prior administration,” in the words of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Obama, for his part, deported more immigrants than all previous administrations combined. Only last week, Biden won a Supreme Court case that asserted the untrammeled right of the executive branch to prevent American citizens from living with their immigrant husbands and wives.

But it is not Biden’s right-wing politics that has stunned the Democratic Party establishment and the factions of the ruling class that tend to orient to it: Wall Street, the intelligence apparatus, the upper military brass, and Silicon Valley, among others. What these layers fear above all else is that a Biden collapse and a Trump victory will alter the war policy against Russia, though Trump makes no bones about his readiness to unleash the US military, including its nuclear arsenal. Biden’s debacle comes at a moment of mounting crisis for the American ruling class. Washington’s Ukrainian puppet regime is losing the war, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian lives. Elections will soon take place in Britain and France, whose leaders, key Washington allies, are, if anything, more discredited than Biden. And on Jul 9-11, Biden is slated to oversee a NATO war council in Washington that will push for direct involvement in Ukraine. Meanwhile, US sovereign debt stands at nearly $35t and is rapidly growing, owing to the endless funding for the wars in Ukraine and Israel and to the high interest rates imposed to punish the American working class in the name of fighting inflation, which has the effect of making debt more expensive. The political bankruptcy of US capitalism, indeed, reflects its financial bankruptcy.

It is under these conditions that the NYT is spearheading a campaign to remove Biden from the ticket. Such a move has dangers of its own. There are no politicians in the Democratic Party of genuinely national stature who are not despised (a similar problem confronts the Republicans should Trump be removed). And the upper-middle class base of the Democratic Party is cobbled together from various identity-based constituencies, which will demand that their “own” be put forward in lieu of Biden, threatening a faction war among the Democrats. This would have nothing to do with political differences. Any replacement would only mean a repackaging of Biden’s war policies behind a new face and name. In the final analysis, Biden’s decline represents that of a political order and the capitalist ruling class it represents. It is a sclerotic regime that can brook no challenge to its authority. Under these conditions, vast political possibilities open up, especially to the working class. This is why Biden has cracked down on campus protests against the Gaza genocide and why the Democratic Party is desperately seeking to exclude third parties from the ballot. Among those parties is the Socialist Equality Party. In a statement, SEP presidential candidate Joe Kishore commented:

The debate gave expression to the political rot in the US, the center of finance capital and the cockpit of imperialist war planning. This crisis must be understood as an expression of profound objective factors.

While the exact course of events cannot be predicted, one thing is absolutely certain. There will be no progressive resolution to this crisis until the working class, on a world scale, comes together as an international force on the basis of a socialist program.

US has sent Israel 14k 2k lb bombs since October
Andre Damon, WSWS, Jul 29 2024

The Biden administration has sent Israel more than 10k city block-destroying 2k lb bombs since October, Reuters reported Friday. Each of these bombs has a blast radius of up to 500 feet and is highly lethal up to 250 feet. In some cases, they can be lethal up to 1,200 feet away. If dropped on a city block, one of these bombs would damage nearly every building on the block and potentially kill dozens or hundreds of people. Among the most notorious uses of this weapon was the Oct 31 strike that destroyed the Jabalia refugee camp, killing or wounding over 400 people. The use of these massive bombs has largely been phased out by the American military, nominally because of their massive potential for “collateral damage.” These 14k 2k lb bombs have a combined yield of 13 kt, almost equivalent to the power of the “Little Boy” atomic bomb that the US used to destroy Hiroshima in 1945. The provision of these weapons demonstrates the genocidal intent of the Biden administration. Knowing full well that Israel has been dropping these bombs on densely populated urban areas, the Biden administration has provided 14k of them. In addition to the 2k lb bombs, the US has provided 6.5k 0.5k lb bombs, as well as 2.6k Hellfire guided missiles, 1k bunker-buster bombs and 2.6k small-diameter bombs. To date, the US has provided $6.5b in weapons, which it distributed in over 100 separate tranches in order to bypass congressional oversight.

The revelation of the exact composition of the munitions sent exposes the complete fraud of the Biden administration’s claim that it opposes Israel’s use of heavy munitions inside cities. In December, Biden condemned the Netanyahu government for carrying out “indiscriminate bombing.” Given the fact that the US gave Israel more 2k lb bombs than all other types of bombs and missiles combined, it is clear that the intent of the US was to level Gaza, as Israel has done. In January, the BBC reported that more than half of the buildings in Gaza had been destroyed or damaged. By this point, the figure is likely to be closer to three-quarters. One troubling interpretation is that the US sees Gaza as an experiment in the total destruction of a densely populated urban area. Given the horrific scale of mass urban destruction that has been unleashed, the use of nuclear weapons in a future war cannot be seen as such a qualitative leap. Reuters’ report was published one day after the presidential debate, in which the two candidates scrambled to paint themselves as the greatest defenders of Israel and the Gaza genocide. Biden declared:

We provide Israel with all the weapons they need, and when they need them. We are the biggest producer of support for Israel of anyone in the world.

Trump, for his part, praised the Netanyahu government for opposing any negotiated settlement of the war, declaring, “let them finish the job.” Trump called Biden “a Palestinian.” The debate came the same day as Axios reported that the Biden administration will imminently release a shipment of 1.7k 0.5k lb bombs that were put on hold for delivery over the White House’s alleged concern that they would be used in an offensive on Rafah. The White House has fully endorsed Israel’s assault on Rafah, which has displaced over 1 million people. The offensive has largely cut off food shipments through the southern Rafah border crossing, accelerating mass starvation throughout Gaza, and halted emergency medical evacuations over the border, leaving thousands of critically ill people stranded in Gaza with insufficient medical care. To date, 37,765 Palestinians have been killed and 86,429 have been injured in Gaza, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.

The news that the Biden administration will greenlight the sending of more bombs to Israel followed the meetings by Gallant with high-ranking Biden administration officials in Washington. Gallant was welcomed by senior White House officials Wednesday, after the lead prosecutor of the International Criminal Court applied for charges against him last month, accusing the Israeli defense minister, alongside Netanyahu, of “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity.” Gallant’s trip sets the stage for the visit by Netanyahu to Washington on Jul 24, when he is set to address both houses of Congress. In a readout of the meeting between Gallant and US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, the White House wrote:

Mr Sullivan reaffirmed the US’ ironclad commitment to Israel’s security, including in the face of threats from Iranian-backed terrorist groups such as Lebanese Hezbollah.

The White House praised the purported humanitarian efforts of Gallant, the man who has pushed the population of the narrow enclave to the brink of starvation by declaring a “complete blockade” of food into Gaza because the Palestinians are, in his words, “human animals.” The readout declared:

Mr Sullivan and Minister Gallant discussed the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and the need to increase and sustain the flow of humanitarian assistance into Gaza. Mr Sullivan recognized Minister Gallant’s personal efforts and leadership to support these efforts.

Philippine ambassador raises spectre of nuclear war with China
Peter Symonds, WSWS, Jun 29 2024

The Philippine ambassador to Washington has warned of the danger of a US-led nuclear war against China as tensions intensify over the disputed Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea. Clashes between Chinese coast guard ships and Philippine vessels seeking to take supplies and materials to the Sierra Madre, a Philippine hulk grounded on the tiny reef and manned by Philippine troops—have escalated in recent months. In an article published on Wednesday, Jose Manuel Romualdez told the Financial Times:

It’s the most dangerous time. Weapons of mass destruction are very real. You have several countries, major powers that have large arsenals of nuclear power. If anything happens, the entire Asian region will be completely included.

Asked how a dispute over a reef could spark a major conflict, Romualdez referred to the incident that provided the immediate trigger for WW1, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo, saying:

It’s an analogy, but it could happen that way.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has warned that the killing of a Filipino in clashes near the shoal would cross a “red line.” Romualdez declared that China was testing US resolve with its actions around the reef. He said regarding the US-Philippines military alliance:

I don’t think China should just simply dismiss it as something that is not serious, because it is serious.

Speaking at the CFR on Monday, US Deputy Sec State Kurt Campbell declared the crisis over the Second Thomas Shoal was caused by one of many Chinese provocations that could “spark conflicts that would devastate the global economy.” The Biden administration has warned Beijing that the 1951 US-Philippine Mutual Defense Treaty applies to the Sierra Madre and its crew. Campbell did not specify the conditions under which the Philippines or US would invoke the treaty, but he said it was important to “draw very clear, public and private lines” about what could trigger a military conflict. While Washington and its allies denounced Chinese “provocations,” US imperialism has been instrumental for more than a decade in transforming the South China Sea into a dangerous flashpoint for war with China. For decades, the US paid scant attention to the longstanding territorial disputes over islets, reefs and other small features in the South China Sea, involving China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei. Manila grounded the Sierra Madre, a WW2 landing craft, on the Second Thomas Shoal in 1999 in a bid to bolster its claim to the reef in response to China’s reclamation of Mischief Reef, another part of the disputed Spratly Island group.

In 2010, the Obama administration ratcheted up tensions over the South China Sea as it was preparing to announce its “pivot to Asia,” a diplomatic, economic and military strategy aimed at confronting and preparing for war against China. Speaking at the ASEAN security forum in Jul 2010, US Sec State Hilary Clinton declared that the US had a “national interest” in ensuring “freedom of navigation” in the South China Sea. In doing so, Clinton effectively declared Washington’s intention of challenging China’s territorial claims. Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi responded by declaring that the US, by internationalising the disputes in South China Sea, was carrying out “virtually an attack on China.” Since then, the US has deliberately exacerbated the situation by sending US warships and warplanes close to Chinese-controlled islets in the South China Sea on the pretext of asserting “freedom of navigation.” Washington also provided crucial support for the Philippines to mount a case against China’s maritime claims in the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague, based on the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). In 2016, the court found against China’s historic claims to most of the South China Sea as well as the existence of any territorial waters around tiny features such as the Second Thomas Shoal. While the US and its allies routinely assert that the 2016 ruling against China vindicated Philippine claims, UNCLOS only applies to maritime issues and not to disputes concerning the ownership of land features. Moreover, Washington’s hypocritical demands that Beijing abide by international law ignore the fact that the US itself has not ratified UNCLOS.

The current confrontation around the Second Thomas Shoal takes place amid intensifying geopolitical tensions fuelled by the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, US backing for Israel’s genocidal war in the Middle East and the Biden administration’s escalating economic war against China. Since Obama’s announcement of the “pivot to Asia” in 2011, the US has engaged in a comprehensive military build-up and restructuring throughout the Indo-Pacific and systematically strengthened its military alliances, basing arrangements and forged new military pacts throughout the region. Romualdez’s warnings of nuclear war are not far-fetched and, if anything, are understated. The wars underway in Europe, in the Middle East and the reckless US-led confrontation with China are fronts in an unfolding global conflict involving nuclear-armed powers. Driven by the deepening global crisis of capitalism, US imperialism is engaged in a desperate attempt to shore up its global hegemony by all means, including military ones.

The Marcos regime in the Philippines is a willing stooge in the Biden administration’s reckless provocations against China in the South China Sea. Since coming to power, Marcos has extended the US military presence in the Philippines to include four new bases and greatly expanded joint military exercises with the US, including in the South China Sea. Marcos has also overturned the understanding reached with China by his predecessor, President Rodrigo Duterte, who agreed to maintain the status quo in the South China Sea as he sought to boost Chinese trade and investment with the Philippines. In the case of the Second Thomas Shoal, that “gentleman’s agreement” signified that the Philippines would not reinforce or fortify the Sierra Madre. China justified its blockade of the shoal by declaring that the Philippines was sending construction materials in breach of the agreement, which the Marcos administration has vehemently and repeatedly denied. It claimed that its vessels were only providing food and other essentials to the handful of Marines on the Sierra Madre. In an interview last week, however, the Philippine ambassador Romualdez admitted that construction work had taken place. He claimed it was not “strengthening” the ship, but rather carrying out needed repairs, saying:

We’re just doing a humanitarian act of giving these people a decent place to be in because they’re stationed there.

Contrary to Romualdez, the Financial Times noted that “people familiar with the situation said Manila had secretly reinforced the ship in ways that would extend its life.” Such moves, certain to inflame tensions with China, confirm in practice what Marcos declared last year, referring to Dutarte’s deal with China:

I am not aware of such agreement. If there was, I rescind it as of this moment.

Romualdez has declared the disputes with Beijing in the South China Sea to be more dangerous than the situation in the Taiwan Strait, no doubt to bolster the case for greater US military aid to the Philippines. Since 2011, however, US imperialism has transformed the entire region into a tinderbox, deliberately inflaming tensions with China not only over the South China Sea and Taiwan, but also the East China Sea, North Korea and India’s disputed borders with China. Amid the current acute geopolitical crises, any one of these volatile flashpoints has the potential to become the Sarejevo incident that precipitates a catastrophic war throughout Asia and internationally.

The Australian Labor Party’s record in the Assange case
Oscar Grenfell, WSWS, Jun 29 2024

The sudden release of Julian Assange and his return to Australia last week have been greeted with warmth and enthusiasm by ordinary people, who have long viewed the WikiLeaks founder as a courageous journalist persecuted for exposing war crimes. The response of the Australian ruling elite, on the other hand, has been a nervous one. Liberal Party figures have slandered Assange as a “felon” and a risk to “national security,” together with media commentators closely aligned with the US state. One such, Peter Hartcher, warned in the SMH this morning:

With Assange comes a campaign, a movement and a cult.

The Labor government has sought to balance between the two reactions. On the one hand, its leaders have claimed substantial credit for the plea deal and travel arrangements that resulted in Assange’s freedom. On the other hand, they too have expressed their commitment to “national security” and their hostility to WikiLeaks’ disclosures and have kept an arms length. Several articles in the Labor-aligned press have encouraged the government to avoid further mention of the matter. One said:

The PM would be wise to take the win and move on. In political terms, Assange could be sticky fly paper.

As Assange was touching down in Australia on Tuesday evening, Albanese gave a press conference presenting his government as having played a key role in Assange’s liberation. It was confirmation, Albanese stated, of the correctness of his approach of “quiet diplomacy.” He said:

We don’t shout. We’re not in a contest of machismo. What we do is, we get things done.

In a phone call, Assange reportedly thanked Albanese. His supporters, including wife Stella Assange and lawyer Jennifer Robinson did the same, with both noting that the Labor government’s calls for the case to be “brought to a close” beginning after its election in May 2022 had marked a shift. Several points should be made. Labor’s conditional statements, combined with limited representations to the Biden administration could only represent a shift because all previous administrations, including past Labor governments, abandoned Assange and aided his persecution. Labor only made a shift under the impact of mass pressure, resulting from a sustained campaign by supporters of Assange’s freedom. A Herald poll in May last year, for instance, indicated that 79% of Australians wanted Assange to be freed, while another placed the figure even higher. Then there is the question of what exactly Labor’s representations consisted of and how frequently they were made. A detailed article in the Herald reported five specific instances on which Labor ministers had raised the issue with their US counterparts over a period spanning more than two years. That is not exactly the “unflagging campaign” that some have touted. The same Herald article noted:

At no point, say those aware of the talks, did the Australian government say how the case should be resolved.

That is, the matter was left up to the US government, which was seeking Assange’s extradition so that it could prosecute him for exposing war crimes and imprison him for life, in what was clearly a monstrous witchhunt. What Labor was actually angling for was indicated on several occasions. Departmental briefing notes for Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus in Jun 2022, i.e., a month after Labor came to office, referred only to the possibility of a “prison swap” involving Assange. That would have meant accepting his extradition to the US and prosecution on the Espionage Act charges. Over the following months and years, Labor leaders would repeat deliberately vague talking points, “enough is enough” and “this matter must be brought to a close.” Labor MPs declared that their options to intervene were limited, describing the frame-up proceedings against Assange as a “legal process” that had to be “respected.” In an interview last November, Albanese publicly acknowledged that he had not asked Biden to drop the prosecution of Assange. Albanese made a tortured argument about respecting the “separation of powers,” fraudulently presenting the US pursuit of Assange as a bona fide legal case exclusively involving the DoJ, when in reality it was clearly a political persecution.

Labor’s decision to accept the “legal process” and its refusal to call for the charges to be dropped helped to create the conditions where Assange could only be freed through a plea deal. An Australian Broadcasting Corporation article this morning noted that the “pressure” of Labor’s representations over Assange “wasn’t necessarily just on the US. It was likely also placed on Assange and his legal teams.” Last year, Albanese publicly stated that a resolution would require “compromises” on both sides, while other Labor figures openly called for Assange to plead guilty. That meant that the government accepted the precedent that the US was seeking to set through its prosecution of a journalist for exposing war crimes. Labor was undoubtedly intensely fearful that the successful extradition of Assange to the US would inflame mass anger. But, its ambiguous line and failure to forthrightly demand Assange’s unconditional freedom at any point meant that the decision was in the hands of the US government.

Ultimately, it is clear that the plea deal, which represented a major backdown by the US and a victory for Assange, was the result of two intersecting factors: fears in the US state that Assange’s extradition would intensify a political crisis there and internationally, and a recognition that the frame-up legal case would never stand up in court. Earlier this week, the WaPo reported that DoJ lawyers working on the case were increasingly convinced that it would be lost. They made panicked representations to their leadership in April for a plea deal to be finalised. The fears were intensified by the decision of the UK High Court in May to allow Assange to appeal extradition. Those court hearings, which were scheduled for July, would have been the first time in years that the substantive issues in the case, including its assault on press freedom and innumerable US violations of the law, would have been heard in an open court. The Labor government chartered a private jet for Assange to travel to Saipan, where the plea deal was signed off on by a US court, and on to Australia. In a decision which has provoked considerable anger, it refused to foot the bill, leaving the Assange camp with the task of crowdfunding the A$782,190.

Whatever one’s assessment of Labor’s role over the past two years, its record over the fourteen-year US pursuit of Assange is a rotten one. In 2010, WikiLeaks published the documents for which Assange would be charged, exposing massive war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, and American imperialism’s daily diplomatic conspiracies and black operations on a global scale. Labor was in office at the time. Its Prime Minister Julia Gillard denounced the WikiLeaks’ publications as “grossly irresponsible” and declared:

It’s clear that the theft of those documents is an illegal act.

Labor’s then Attorney-General Robert McClelland and Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd, who, as ambassador to the US, accompanied Assange to Saipan and back to Australia, asked the Australian Federal Police to investigate whether criminal charges could be laid against Assange. The Labor government prefigured the later US prosecution. The AFP was compelled to note that Assange had not violated any Australian laws. Gillard nevertheless threatened to seize Assange’s passport and pledged to assist the US campaign against him. This was under conditions where senior US politicians including Biden were denouncing Assange as a “high-tech terrorist,” while others including Hillary Clinton were suggesting that he be assassinated. WikiLeaks reportedly had concerns at the time that if Assange returned to Australia, Labor would either prosecute him or hand him over to the US authorities. Albanese, Foreign Minister Penny Wong and other current Labor leaders were also prominent in the Gillard administration. They thus bear a central responsibility for all of the persecution he has suffered over more than a decade.

Labor’s line was not confined to 2010, but persisted, including after Assange was compelled to seek political asylum in Ecuador’s London embassy in 2012. Labor’s foreign minister from early 2012 to Sep 2013, Bob Carr, has welcomed Assange’s freedom. But, when he was in high office, Carr angrily rejected calls for his government to defend Assange, instead slandering the WikiLeaks publisher as “amoral,” accusing him of having released information “without inherent justification,” and declaring that there was “not the remotest possibility” that the US was seeking his extradition. As late as Apr 2019, when millions of people were shocked when Assange was violently dragged from the embassy by British police, senior Labor figures including current Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek publicly gloated over Assange’s dire plight and denounced his supporters. The record amply demonstrates that to the extent that Labor played a role in the outcome of the case, it did so reluctantly and as a result of a movement involving thousands of ordinary people and the sentiments of millions more.

Labor’s hostility to Assange was not simply a matter of following US instructions. WikiLeaks had exposed not only US war crimes, but those of its allies, including Australia which under conservative and Labor administrations participated in the criminal assaults on Iraq and Afghanistan. As it was joining the campaign against Assange, moreover, the Gillard Labor government was aligning Australia with the US pivot to Asia, a vast military build-up directed against China. This process, transforming Australia into a frontline state for a catastrophic war aimed at ensuring US global hegemony, has accelerated greatly in the intervening years and is being completed by the Albanese administration. That is the significance of the AUKUS war pact as well as Labor’s “urgent” program of overhauling the entire military with offensive capabilities so that it can engage in “impactful projection” throughout the Indo-Pacific and beyond. This program is part of an eruption of imperialist militarism globally, to which Labor is also a party. It has fully backed the US-NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, which threatens nuclear war, as well as Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. The war drive is incompatible with democratic rights. As in the other imperialist centres, Labor has viciously attacked opposition to the genocide, threatening to ban protests and villifying ordinary people as “antisemites” for taking a stand against the war crimes.

In 2017, Labor joined hands with the then conservative government to pass sweeping “foreign interference” laws. In addition to creating a McCarthyite atmosphere over purported “Chinese influence” in Australia, the legislation potentially outlaws national security journalism, containing major penalties for whistleblowers that could also be directed against publishers. At the time, some conservative MPs said the laws were necessary to prevent future WikiLeaks-style exposures. The fraud of Labor’s posturing over Assange is summed up in the case of David McBride. In May he was sent to prison for more than five years, with Labor’s explicit support, for having exposed confirmed Australian war crimes in Afghanistan, including the murder of civilians and prisoners. McBride is the first, and so far the only, person to be imprisoned over the atrocities, most of which were perpetrated under the Gillard government. As a WSWS statement explained last week:

Though Assange is free, the global capitalist offensive against democratic rights is only accelerating. For every tactical retreat by imperialism, there is a more brutal counterattack.

The conditions that underlay the monstrous persecution of Assange, of massive social inequality and global war, had only intensified, posing a threat to the democratic rights of everyone, including Assange. That underscores the necessity to develop an international movement of the working class, opposed to war, authoritarianism and all of the governments, based on a socialist perspective directed against the source of the deepening barbarism, the capitalist system itself.