Image is of Joseph Robinette Biden, who has stepped down and will not run against Trump in the 2024 election.
In the aftermath of Trump surviving an assassination attempt, many professional opinion-havers are now talking about the scourge of "political violence" that has overtaken, or will soon overtake America, and how we must not let chaos rule. This is, of course, patently absurd. The American government and its allies have been the greatest force of political violence on the planet since the beginning of colonialism, and the foundations of the country are made of corpses. Today, America commits political violence by forcing Ukrainians into the maw of Russian artillery instead of trying to reach a peaceful settlement, which Russia has repeatedly expressed interest in and offered Ukraine relatively favourable terms. They supply Israel with endless weaponry to destroy entire cities and populations, while Biden supporters insist that somehow things could be worse than daily massacres and mass starvation.
In May 1945, French police fired on protestors, causing retaliatory attacks on French settlers, killing about a hundred. In response, the French murdered 45,000 Algerians in a little under two months, in a frenzy of political violence called the Sétif and Guelma massacre. As the massacre was being completed, the International Court of Justice was established. It goes without saying that Algeria never benefited from the ICJ, and the War of Independence from 1954 to 1962 was made inevitable. Over a million Algerians were killed before France could bear the fighting no longer and gave up, and Algeria won itself a state. Comparisons to the ongoing war of independence and genocide in Palestine are obvious.
While the means of colonial violence have evolved over the centuries, the basic structure of it has not. As in Algeria, Vietnam, and Cuba, resistance groups in and around Palestine are fighting for a world with less political violence. The American government would drown every city in the developing world in blood to prevent peace.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The Country of the Week is Algeria! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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Last week's thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
PSL statement about the assassination attempt related to the megathread topic: https://www.liberationnews.org/psl-statement-the-attempted-assassination-of-trump-and-its-political-fallout/
Full Text
In an instant, the political situation in the United States was transformed when a gunman shot Donald Trump while he was on stage at a rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania on July 13.
The situation is still evolving, but the initial political impact is highly favorable for Trump. Instructing his Secret Service detail to pause as they evacuated him from the stage, Trump pumped his fist and yelled to the crowd, “Fight!” — instantly creating iconic images that make Trump look heroic and strong. The contrast between his (self-created and false) image as an unstoppable fighter and Biden’s feebleness has never been greater.
Immediately following the shooting, the Biden campaign suspended its advertisements. Practically every major Democratic Party elected official rushed to express their sympathy for Trump and wish him well. A range of corporate leaders, perhaps seeing Trump’s victory as now inevitable, issued statements embracing him.
The main argument the Democratic Party had in the campaign up to now was that Trump was an aspiring dictator and pathological liar who represented an existential threat to democracy. They instantly dropped all these talking points in the name of “coming together” and “turning down the rhetoric.” The furthest Biden now goes is to say Trump has a “competing vision” for the country.
The right wing, on the other hand, immediately went on the attack. J.D. Vance, a vice-presidential contender, directly blamed Biden’s rhetoric for the shooting. Donald Trump, Jr. immediately said after the shooting that his father “will never stop fighting to save America, no matter what the radical left throws at him.” There is zero indication the “radical left” had anything to do with this, as the shooter himself was a registered Republican, but such comments have saturated the far-right political ecosystem. They are meant to cow Trump’s liberal critics into silence, lest they be seen as supporting violence. It also lays the groundwork and creates a pretext for a new wave of repression, either under a second Trump presidency or even now under Biden.
Already the White House has signaled Biden is planning to go on a new political offensive this week against the campus encampments in solidarity with Palestine as an example of “violent extremism.” This is absurd. The encampments were launched to stop the genocidal violence against the Palestinian people; the student protesters attacked no one and were, in fact, targets of violence themselves.
Trump is headed to Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention. His speech at the RNC will set the tone for the next phase of the campaign. Trump is reportedly rewriting his speech, which had originally been an all-out attack on Biden, to focus more on themes of national unity. With leading capitalists extending him an olive branch, Trump could calculate that his best move would be to move in a “moderate” direction and demonstrate to fellow members of the ultra-rich elite that he can be a unifying, “presidential” figure and present strength for the Empire. Trump has no fixed ideology and solely cares about his image and legacy.
In another sign that an elite consensus was emerging around Trump as the next president, the judge in the classified documents criminal case against Trump suddenly dismissed all charges two days after the assassination attempt. Soon, a DC judge will have to decide if other charges relating to the plot to overturn the 2020 election can go forward in light of the Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity.
Fake pacifism and a new cycle of political violence
“There is no place in America for this kind of violence,” Joe Biden says. “No exception.” It is important not to lose sight of the extreme hypocrisy of the powerful figures now issuing blanket condemnations of violence.
The same people who are so appalled that someone would shoot at a politician did not bat an eye at the news the same Saturday morning that Israeli fighter jets had just killed 90 Palestinian civilians in a failed assassination attempt of a resistance leader in Gaza. They normalize and defend all the violence carried out by the state — whether in oppressed neighborhoods inside the United States, at the U.S.-Mexico border, or overseas. But then they turn around and say, “violence has never been the answer.”
All the politicians who have suddenly become pacifists for a weekend don’t really mean it. This is about their own safety and no one else’s.
More than anything, they are concerned about a new wave of political violence that could destabilize their rule. Contrary to Biden’s assertions that such political violence is “unheard of,” working-class leaders and social movement leaders have been targeted by violence throughout U.S. history. There have also been periods of U.S. history where violence and assassination have been the methods used to resolve disputes within the ruling class. The U.S. Civil War came about after years of escalating political violence. A century later, the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy in 1963 and 1968 profoundly reshaped the presidential campaigns that were underway in each of those instances. Then came the shooting that left George Wallace paralyzed in the 1972 election, an election which also saw President Nixon order the break-in to the offices of the DNC. The impeachment of Nixon, and the subsequent appointment of an unelected president and vice-president, Gerald Ford and Nelson Rockefeller, capped off this period of extreme instability in the ruling class — and to end it, Nixon was pardoned in the name of “national unity.”
In periods of major upheaval domestically and internationally, the tendency to resolve struggles within the ruling class using violence grows stronger, as does the tendency to use violence against the people.
Lest we forget: from 2017 to 2020, Democratic Party leaders attempted to undo the 2016 election with the phony Russiagate conspiracy, asserting that Trump was elected because of Russian interference in the election. From Day One of the Trump presidency, the Democratic Party leadership and their supporters were looking to impeach him for being a “puppet” of Putin. Then, in turn, Trump tried to undo the 2020 election by mobilizing fascist forces to seize the Capitol at the moment the vote was to be ratified. And in between these two events, there was a mass uprising against police killing of unarmed civilians, during which the National Guard was called out, Democratic mayors complied with Trump to impose curfews and conduct mass arrests, and Trump itched to invoke the Insurrection Act and call out the military to occupy cities in the United States. Talk about instability.
Headed into the 2024 election, there remains all the same explosive potential around the election and the transfer of power. The underlying social crises — of job destruction, climate destruction, military confrontation, state violence, the cost-of-living crisis, etc. — cannot be solved by either faction of the capitalist class. Neither party can control the two egomaniacs who lead them. The trust in Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court are at record lows. There are already hundreds of millions of guns in circulation among the population. The country appears to be on a collision course. No wonder they’re saying, “Cool it.”
All this is more important than who, if anyone, the shooter was connected to politically. Theories already abound, and there will now be extensive investigations by multiple different arms of the government with contradictory political interests. There is intense speculation about how the gunman was able to position himself so close to the stage and why police did not stop him. Some of that may become clearer in the coming weeks, but it also may remain shrouded in mystery. Rather than focus on that, class-conscious workers should pay more attention to how the ruling class will politically utilize this assassination attempt in the here and now.
Real working-class unity — no unity with the ruling-class establishment!
The Democrats now want to invoke “unity” and American patriotism to silence criticism of the institutions whose legitimacy has been rapidly in decline. The Republicans also talk of unity and wrap themselves in the flag, but they want to use this event to blast through any opposition to their radical pro-corporate agenda.
The hypocrisy of elite politicians aside, they are playing on a sincere feeling among many working class people that the United States has become deeply divided in a way that has dangerous consequences. People do desire peace over instability, unity over division. The question, then, is what is the answer to “polarization”?
Socialists desire working-class unity, but no unity with the tiny billionaire class that has doubled their profits in the last four years by exploiting people of all backgrounds. The problem is not that people are politically polarized, but that we are polarized on totally the wrong basis.
Working-class people who vote for Biden or for Trump, or neither, have more in common than they may think. They share the same problems paying for rent, mortgage, a tank of gas, and a dozen eggs while dealing with stagnant wages, disrespectful bosses, decrepit schools, exorbitant child care, and parasitic insurance companies. They have almost no democratic say in any of it. They generally want to stay out of wars abroad and would much prefer to see their tax dollars used to build stronger communities.
Full Text pt. 2
But both parties, representing two factions of the same ruling class, intentionally keep the working class divided into different political blocks, into the fiction of “blue vs. red” so each can be more easily mobilized in favor of their respective rulers, rather than against their common enemy. Backed by powerful media institutions churning out content, both factions each invent existential threats in the other and drum up points of division to keep workers estranged and voting out of fear. The Republican leaders are, of course, less subtle in their cultural appeals to racism, sexism, and xenophobia. The Democratic leaders, by contrast, use “politically correct” language to signal sympathy for targeted communities, while doing nothing for them and instead protecting the same system of exploitation and Empire.
For all the harsh rhetoric the two parties use against each other, the truth is that they are just shades apart! On most of the issues that are important to the capitalist class, they are on the same team. They work for the same lobbyists and banks, enact the same mass surveillance policies against all of us, and work together to fund and arm Israel, Ukraine, and military contractors. They both work to keep third parties off the ballot and out of the debates. Both scapegoat immigrants for declining services. Neither fights for working people. Our problems won’t be solved when these two parties are more “united.” They are functionally already the same.
As long as this deception continues, and as long as workers have to fight among themselves for the scraps left over by the billionaire class, there will inevitably be countless points of division and conflict. The basis of broad working-class unity is a program that advocates for taking away the power of Wall Street and the Military-Industrial Complex, instead using the country’s wealth to build up housing, healthcare, education, and good-paying jobs, while rejecting all forms of hatred and bigotry.
Since its founding, a small group of rich capitalists have maintained a hold on the political power in this country. For over 150 years, they have maintained this grip on power through two ruling-class parties. The vast majority, those whose labor creates all the real wealth in society, do not hold any political power and are only allowed to participate either as supporters of one of the two parties that don’t represent their needs and interests or as spectators to a system dominated by Big Money. This is a Plutocracy, not a Democracy. Biden tells the public that Trump is the problem. Trump says that Biden is the problem. The real problem is that the biggest banks, corporations, and capitalist-owned media have dictatorial power over society, the government, and its policies. We can create a real democracy in the United States by ending the stranglehold on political and economic power by Wall Street banks and corporations, and their political servants in government.
Surprisingly good statement given how bad the takes have been from basically every other American leftist org
What other leftist org has had a bad statement? Unless you mean comprador orgs like CPUSA or liberal parties like the DSA, of course
That's a good statement from the PSL, found myself agreeing at all of the points they made. It's weird, a lot of leftists I know irl have said they had bad experiences with the PSL, but all of their messaging seems good. I wonder if my local branch sucks. (Also granted a lot of the negative stuff I've heard was about the upper leadership being bad, their leader being a terf etc). I haven't been able to find any confirmation of the terf allegations online but enough people have mentioned it irl that I believe it
While I have my own opinions of PSL as a member of a party that often interacts with PSL in the areas we operate in, and from my interaction with PSL members here on hexbear, I'll keep them to myself. (It's a mixed bag, don't assume I mean either positive or negative. I got dialectics on the mind)
That said, touching on your actual comment, not everyone is able to be in political organizations as Americans are some of the most politically disorganized and individualistic peoples on earth. This means people who think they're the hottest revolutionary to ever fall out of the coconut tree will join and immediately act like they're the reincarnation of Lenin commanding the the October revolution, only to quickly walk out of the party and drag mud over its name just because they didn't get their way.
That's why you have to respectfully yet carefully listen to who's talking, their message, and the length of time they were a part of whatever party they left. Which is mainly why if you have less than a year in a party unless you have some serious shit that can be backed up with concrete proof I'm generally going to shrug and put in a mental file box with other complaints to get a more aggregate analysis - with an added note for the people that are notorious for constantly jumping parties to be more skeptical of their claims
Thanks for taking the time to write out that response
I will try to keep that in mind going forward. The people who have had negative comments were not people who had tried to become part of the party, mostly just individuals who had interacted with local party members before. That being said I totally agree that American leftists can be super disorganized and it would not surprise me given some of the people I know locally if small disagreements got blown out of proportion. Also most of my friends lean more towards anarchism while I'm more of an ML person (no shade on anarchists or on my friends I love them) so that might also be coloring some of the stuff I hear. I think that since the PSL seems to be an active org in my area that is consistently taking good positions on things and seems to be actually organizing for local issues well I might try to get more involved and make my own opinions about them. I am finally getting to a place where I have enough stability in my living situation where I can spend energy getting involved and helping others while would be really nice to start doing
Make sure you have a solid foundation for your living first and foremost. Any sort of political work will come after your livelihood is secure.
I've been working with the PSL and it's been genuinely wonderful. Thanks to other PSL members here for getting me in touch with the right people
. However, yeah, before you can be involved in political action consistently you should prioritize your own living situation; not only is it a better idea for you but it'll help you deal with the potential stresses of organizing even better.
Terf accusations are extremely baseless. It's a party packed to the gills with trans people and has absolutely no anti-trans positions whatsoever.
Thanks for the response, the terf stuff I heard was about La Riva specifically and that the org had basically forced her to keep it quiet, but it's the kind of rumor that's basically impossible to verify and you're right there are a lot of trans people involved with the org (they were also at our local trans rights demonstration this year) so I guess even if those rumors are true they don't seem to be impacting party policy which is good