In de NRC van 1 februari 2021 stelde opiniemaker Ian Buruma met grote stelligheid dat president Biden ‘de democratie [moet] redden uit de puinhopen van een politieke crisis, en dat is met name een crisis van vertrouwen.’ Watschort aan deze bewering? Allereerst dat Buruma zwijgt over het feit dat de Verenigde Staten al vóór het aantreden van president Donald Trump geen ‘democratie’ was. Niet alleen vooraanstaande Amerikaanse intellectuelen vertelden dit, maar ook een politicus als oud-president Jimmy Carter verklaarde al in 2015 dat zijn land ‘an oligarchy’ was ‘with unlimited political bribery.’ Carter merkte op dat dit feit zowel voor de presidentsverkiezingen opgaat, als bij verkiezingen van 'governors and U.S. senators and congress members.’ De conclusie van de Democratische oud-president was dat er sprake is van ‘a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election is over.’ Het gevolg is dat, aldus Carter, de ‘Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves.’ Desondanksbeweert Buruma nu dat ‘Biden hoopt iets te doen aan de polarisatie in zijn land,’ zonder erbij te vermelden dat juist Biden als ‘oude rot die precies weet hoe het systeem werkt’ 48 jaar lang heeft meegewerkt aan de corrumpering van de Amerikaanse federale politiek. En juist deze, in de ogen van mijn oude vriend Ian, ‘nette politicus’ zal de komende vier jaar de niet bestaande Amerikaanse democratie ‘moeten’ gaan ‘redden’ door ‘met name een crisis van vertrouwen’ op te lossen.
Dat Buruma deze nonsens zelf gelooft is tot daaraan toe, maar dat hij ervan uit kan gaan dat zijn geschoold publiekdit alles voor zoete koek slikt, toont aan hoe diep de westerse culturele ‘crisis’ verankerd is in brede lagen van de gezeten burgerij. Zijn stelling in de laatste zin ‘dat Biden de buste van Churchill liet verwijderen’ die ‘opzichtig prijkte achter het bureau van Donald Trump,’ lijkt Buruma ‘alvast een goed teken,’ waarmee hij bewijst hoe uiterlijk vertoon bij mainstream-opiniemakers een doorslaggevende rol kunnen spelen. Ware het niet zo beschamend stupide en gevaarlijk dan zou men in schaterlachen kunnen uitbarsten. In Nederland worden zijn meningen dermate gewaardeerd dat hij er in 2008 de Erasmusprijs voor ontving.
Breonna Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, demanded President Joe Biden take action on racist police violence.
You’ve probably heard the saying, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
This isn’t really true, of course. The environment, people and society are constantly changing, even down to the subatomic level. And when enough small changes accumulate, they can lead to sudden, dramatic change — even a revolution.
But one month into the Biden administration, you could be forgiven for thinking of that old platitude. Because the new Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration is laying a course to continue many of Republican Donald Trump’s anti-people policies, only with some cosmetic changes.
Why?
Politicians and mainstream media often speak of the change of presidents as a “transfer of power.” That was especially true in the case of the transition between Trump and Biden, coming after months of The Donald and his allies trying to suppress the votes of Black people and the Jan. 6 coup attempt at the Capitol.
But it’s not really a transfer of power. Only the office holders change. The capitalist system, and the super-wealthy bosses who profit from it, continue to hold real power whether a Republican or a Democrat sits in the White House or which faction has a majority in Congress.
All the way back in 1848, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels hit the nail on the head when they wrote in the Communist Manifesto, “The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie” — that is, the capitalists.
Those capitalist politicians elected to high office, whether a Trump or a Biden, do so with the expectation that they will carry out the interests of the capitalist system. And while a large part of the ruling class tired of Trump’s mismanagement of the pandemic and the economic crisis, they still love many of the policies he put in place, like deregulation of industry, tax cuts for the rich, and strengthening police powers.
So Biden, the new “administrator,” is expected to carry on. As he told a Wall Street fundraising event during his campaign, “Nothing would fundamentally change.”
That’s good news for Big Capital. For the rest of us, not so much.
A cage or ‘overflow facility’?
In the first few days after his inauguration, Biden made a show of issuing a flurry of executive orders countermanding some of Trump’s most egregious and unpopular measures — at least on the surface.
No class-conscious worker will miss Trump’s bigoted “Muslim ban” that prevented people from many Muslim-majority countries (and some others) from visiting the U.S. and kept families apart. Many capitalists hated it too. It was bad for their bottom line and undermined their PR for the U.S. as “champion of democracy.”
The restoration of the “Dreamer” program for undocumented adults who arrived in the U.S. as children is also welcome.
But while the president and First Lady Jill Biden announced their intention to reunite hundreds of migrant parents and children victimized by Trump’s “family separation” policy, under Biden the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Border Patrol continue to deport hundreds of refugees and immigrants, including children.
On Feb. 8, amidst the mass protests and government repression in Haiti, ICE deported 72 refugees back to the country — including 22 children, the youngest a two-month-old baby.
A Biden executive order to temporarily suspend some deportations “pending review” was halted by a Trump-appointed judge. But the deportations of the Haitian refugees would not have qualified, even if the order was in effect.
Remember the outcry in 2018-2019 over Trump keeping children in cages? Biden’s team has announced plans to reopen an “overflow facility” for unaccompanied minors (children) captured by the immigration enforcement goons. In case you’re wondering, “overflow facility” is just a polite term for “cage.”
In an op-ed published by The Hill on Feb. 13, “Biden has not done enough to end family separations at the border,” attorneys Clara Long and Elora Mukherjee wrote: “As attorneys who met with hungry, dirty, desperate children separated from their families at the southern border during the height of the kids-in-cages calamity in 2019, we had hoped President Biden would quickly fix the problem. So far, we’ve been disappointed.
“The Biden administration may be choosing to drag its feet on ending Trump border abuses because it doesn’t want to encourage more people to come. This isn’t new. For decades, the United States has justified cruelty at the border with the canard that such treatment will deter future migrants from coming.
“But after months of mass separations of parents from their children in 2018 — the cruelest policy ever rolled out in the name of deterrence — border apprehensions surged in 2019.”
What about Breonna Taylor?
Most workers know how Biden backtracked on his promise of a new $2,000 stimulus payment. That was quickly changed to $1,400 — because the $2,000 now included the pittance $600 payment sent by Trump at the New Year. Scrooge would have applauded.
Then Biden agreed to lower the income threshold for people to receive the stimulus. What that lowered threshold will be has not been determined yet, but it will not include any adjustment for the highly varied cost of rent and other living expenses in different parts of the U.S.
The millions of workers struggling with enormous student loan debt also know that Biden has flatly refused to consider the $50,000 debt forgiveness advocated by many Democrats. He capped the amount at $10,000 max even in the midst of an unprecedented global economic and unemployment crisis. And even that is not guaranteed.
A big selling point for Biden’s administration was that he would take action to bring the rampaging COVID-19 pandemic under control and speed up the distribution of new vaccines. But he’s pushed to reopen schools in the first 100 days of his administration, increasing pressure on teachers’ and school workers’ unions that have been fighting for a safe return to classrooms and additional resources for remote learning.
Biden’s CDC issued guidelines saying it’s okay to reopen in-person schooling — even if teachers haven’t been vaccinated. How is this different from Trump’s dangerous policy? Under either administration, Big Business wants schools open so it’s easier to force parents back into unsafe workplaces — health and safety be damned.
During their campaign, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris condemned the grand jury decision that let off the police who murdered Breonna Taylor. Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron deliberately and blatantly sabotaged the case.
Given how much the Black Lives uprising contributed to mass Black voter turnout and his election success, you might imagine Biden would immediately order his Justice Department to take action to put the killers behind bars.
But no. Breonna Taylor and the epidemic of racist police terror against Black and Brown people dropped off the radar after Election Day. Sensing which way the winds were blowing, Taylor’s mother Tamika Palmer penned an open letter in December bluntly reminding Biden of his campaign promises to curb police violence. Supporters paid to have it published as a full-page ad in the Washington Post.
Danger of war
The new administration clearly wants to be compared to the New Deal of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But the only explicit connection Biden has drawn is with FDR’s policy of building up for war: “American manufacturing was the arsenal of democracy in World War II. It will be so again,” he said of his economic recovery plan.
Since the Great Depression, U.S. capitalism has relied on war to pull it out of crisis. It doesn’t matter which party is in the White House. Biden’s foreign policy moves have been especially ugly:
Support U.S.-backed Haitian President Jovenel Moïse’s illegal plan to stay in power for an additional year, until Feb. 7, 2022.
Continue Trump’s propaganda war and military threats against China.
Appoint many veterans of the Obama administration State Department responsible for far-right coups in Honduras, Libya and Ukraine.
Even Biden’s heralded decision to end U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen is deceptive at best. The U.S. will continue to arm and aid the House of Saud for so-called “defensive” purposes and build up the anti-Iran, anti-Yemen alliance in the region.
On Feb. 5, while millions of people were desperately waiting for the promised stimulus check (and are still waiting today), the Pentagon announced its first big arms sale of the Biden era — a combined $150 million in spy tools for the NATO military alliance and missiles for the right-wing regime in Chile.
Break with the system
Nothing the Biden regime has done is new or surprising. Every Democratic administration of the past 30 years has continued and deepened the anti-people policies of the prior Republican government, and vice versa.
Bill Clinton continued and deepened the anti-poor austerity and racist repression of the Reagan-Bush years, escalating mass incarceration of Black and Brown youth — with help from then-Senator Joe Biden. Clinton continued murderous sanctions against Iraq, wearing the country down in the decade between the first and second Gulf Wars.
Barack Obama continued and expanded George W. Bush’s militarization of the U.S. police, mass spying at home and abroad, and drone assassinations. Picking up Bush II’s anti-immigrant baton, Obama earned the epithet “Deporter in Chief.”
Office holders come and go. Capitalism remains the real power behind the throne. And as capitalism continues to decay, it becomes more repressive, more racist, more hungry for war, and unable to respond to the most urgent needs of the people it rules.
We must organize and fight to make the Biden government meet the people’s demands. But that’s not all.
Capitalism is the continuity between Trump and Biden. Let’s build a movement to fight the rotten profit system and replace it with one that can serve the needs of the people: socialism.
Two recent articles in the mainstream press reflect the moral bankruptcy of the left when it comes to U.S. foreign policy.
The first article is actually an editorial in the Washington Post. It is entitled “Biden Continues Business as Usual with Trump’s “Favorite Dictator.” The editorial provides an excellent critique of U.S. foreign aid for Egypt, which is one of the world’s most brutal dictatorships. Pointing out that Biden had criticized former President Trump for supporting Egypt’s ruler, Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, the Post’s editorial then proceeds to point out that that is precisely what President Biden is now doing:
On Tuesday, the State Department approved a $197 million sale of naval surface-to-air missiles to the Sissi regime. Spokesman Ned Price described the transfer as “a routine replenishment of defensive weapons.” In other words, if not a blank check, then business as usual with a government that pays for its U.S. weapons with $1.3 billion in annual U.S. aid — one of the largest subsidies to a foreign nation.
So, what does the Post recommend? Does it call for an end to all foreign aid or at least an end to foreign aid for brutal dictatorships or at least an end to foreign aid for Egypt’s brutal military dictatorship?
Unfortunately, no. Saying that Biden must connect his words favoring human rights and democracy to action, the Postwrites: “A good first step would be to consult with the Egypt Human Rights Caucus on linking further military aid and sales to Egypt to the release of political prisoners….”
In other words, under what the Post considers to be a “good first step,” the U.S. would continue using U.S. taxpayer money to continue funding this brutal and tyrannical military dictatorship if Egypt would just release some political prisoners. By advocating this incremental “good first step,” the Post destroys the entire moral force of its editorial.
The second article is an op-ed in the Washington Examiner by a noted international leftist named Nuri Kinko. His article is entitled “Stop the Starvation of Syrian Children.” His article provides an excellent analysis of the horrific consequences of the U.S. government’s foreign policy of sanctions against Syria. Hoping that their sanctions will achieve regime change in Syria, U.S. officials have placed the placed the Syrian populace on the verge of starvation.
So what does Nuri advocate? He says that the “U.S. and the European Union must adopt alternatives to comprehensive sanctions on Syria.”
What alternatives? He doesn’t say. Regardless, while Nuri can see the moral bankruptcy of sanctions, like other leftists (and like conservatives), he has a moral blind spot when it comes to foreign interventionism in general. In other words, he has no problem with the U.S. government taking interventionist actions against Syria; he just doesn’t want such actions to include sanctions.
There is only one moral position that can be taken with respect to foreign aid for Egypt and to sanctions on Syria: End all foreign interventionism, including foreign aid and economic sanctions. This is one of the areas where we libertarians have the moral high ground. We must continue to hold that ground and not succumb to immoral piecemeal compromises, as both liberals and conservatives do.
Leader of Neo-Nazi Group Previously Worked for Department of Homeland Security
Rinaldo Nazzaro, the leader of The Base, publicized three letters from the Department of Homeland Security and the Marine Corps thanking him for his service.ALEX WONG / GETTY IMAGES
The Department of Homeland Security confirmed on Wednesday that the neo-Nazi leader of The Base, a white nationalist and accelerationist paramilitary group recently designated a terror group by the Canadian government, worked within their ranks for several years, coordinating efforts to combat terrorism.
According to aVICE Newsreport released on Wednesday, Rinaldo Nazzaro, the leader of The Base, publicized three letters from the DHS and the Marine Corps thanking Nazzaro for his service. The Base, which Nazzaro has described as a “survivalism and self-defense network … sharing knowledge and training to prepare for crisis situations,” has been responsible for coordinating train derailment plans, weapons stockpiling, synagogue vandalism, and an assassination plot.
Nazzaro told VICE News that he posted the letters to legitimize his history in the military, which has been questioned within the far-right community. “There’s been much speculation about my background,” he said, “So, I posted the letters for the benefit of my side as evidence that I am who I say I am.”
The DHS did not authenticate the letter Nazzaro alleged it had sent him, but it did admit that the far-right leader worked for the department for two years. “I can confirm that Rinaldo Nazzaro worked at DHS from 2004 to 2006,” a DHS spokesperson told VICE News.
The department’s letter, which Nazzaro posted to Telegram, an online hub for right-wing extremists, read, “Thanks for all the personal work you did to make DHS/Intelligence Analysis […] as good as they were. You did a superb job,” adding, “Your outstanding service has been greatly appreciated. All the best in the future — I will miss you.”
The Marine Corps’ letter similarly thanked Nazzaro for his “performance as an intelligence professional,” which “reflect[ed] an impressive understanding of the insurgency in Afghanistan and tireless devotion to duty.”
According to VICE News, Nazzaro also worked as a private military contractor in 2014 in the Special Operations Command (SOCOM), a highly secretive element of the U.S. military tasked with fighting jihadist terror groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda.
“[I did] multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan over five years,” said Nazzaro in May 2019, noting that he worked at the Victory Base Complex, a collection of military buildings just outside the Baghdad Airport. The Marine Corps’ letters noted that Nazzaro was responsible for the deaths of thirteen “enemies.” The Pentagon, however, denied any evidence of Nazzaro’s employment.
In early February, the DHS issued a terror advisory, warning of domestic terrorists that felt “emboldened” by the Capitol riot. However, reportshave shown that many domestic terrorist groups are largely comprised of active troops and veterans. Reports have also revealed a “resurgence” of white supremacism in the ranks of the military itself, casting doubt over whether the military has done enough to weed out right-wing radicalism.
