Letter from Mahmoud Khalil, a Political Prisoner in an ICE Detention Centre

 

Mahmoud Khalil being detained. Source

Mahmoud Khalil is a student and political activist who was a leading figure in the Columbia University campus protests sparked by Israel's invasion of Gaza and its collective punishment tactics. As punishment for his activism, he has been targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) who are working to revoke his student Visa and arrested him on the 8th of March. Currently, he is in an ICE detention centre. 

There is no accusation of criminality against Mahmoud Khalil, the legal grounds for this repressive act is being justified by invoking the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, a McCarthyite era piece of legislation designed to punish migrants who become too bothersome to ignore. Personally, I would be opposed to the actions against Mahmoud Khalil even if there were criminal charges, but I bring this up to demonstrate that this is a deliberate targeting aimed at intimidating others from resisting.

The Letter is taken from the Centre for Constitutional Rights

Letter from a Palestinian Political Prisoner in Louisiana
Dictated over the phone from ICE Detention
March 18, 2025

My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in
Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices
underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law.
Who has the right to have rights? It is certainly not the humans crowded into the cells here. It isn’t the
Senegalese man I met who has been deprived of his liberty for a year, his legal situation in limbo and his
family an ocean away. It isn’t the 21-year-old detainee I met, who stepped foot in this country at age nine,
only to be deported without so much as a hearing.

Justice escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration facilities.
On March 8, I was taken by DHS agents who refused to provide a warrant, and accosted my wife and me
as we returned from dinner. By now, the footage of that night has been made public. Before I knew what
was happening, agents handcuffed and forced me into an unmarked car. At that moment, my only concern
was for Noor’s safety. I had no idea if she would be taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her
for not leaving my side. DHS would not tell me anything for hours — I did not know the cause of my
arrest or if I was facing immediate deportation. At 26 Federal Plaza, I slept on the cold floor. In the early
morning hours, agents transported me to another facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There, I slept on the
ground and was refused a blanket despite my request.

My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free
Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night. With January’s
ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced
to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle
for their complete freedom.

I was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria to a family which has been displaced from their land
since the 1948 Nakba. I spent my youth in proximity to yet distant from my homeland. But being
Palestinian is an experience that transcends borders. I see in my circumstances similarities to Israel’s use
of administrative detention — imprisonment without trial or charge — to strip Palestinians of their rights.
I think of our friend Omar Khatib, who was incarcerated without charge or trial by Israel as he returned
home from travel. I think of Gaza hospital director and pediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who was
taken captive by the Israeli military on December 27 and remains in an Israeli torture camp today. For
Palestinians, imprisonment without due process is commonplace.

I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate
my oppressors from their hatred and fear. My unjust detention is indicative of the anti-Palestinian racism
that both the Biden and Trump administrations have demonstrated over the past 16 months as the U.S. has
continued to supply Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented international intervention. For
decades, anti-Palestinian racism has driven efforts to expand U.S. laws and practices that are used to
violently repress Palestinians, Arab Americans, and other communities. That is precisely why I am being
targeted.

While I await legal decisions that hold the futures of my wife and child in the balance, those who enabled
my targeting remain comfortably at Columbia University. Presidents Shafik, Armstrong, and Dean
Yarhi-Milo laid the groundwork for the U.S. government to target me by arbitrarily disciplining
pro-Palestinian students and allowing viral doxing campaigns — based on racism and disinformation —
to go unchecked.

Columbia targeted me for my activism, creating a new authoritarian disciplinary office to bypass due
process and silence students criticizing Israel. Columbia surrendered to federal pressure by disclosing
student records to Congress and yielding to the Trump administration's latest threats. My arrest, the
expulsion or suspension of at least 22 Columbia students — some stripped of their B.A. degrees just
weeks before graduation — and the expulsion of SWC President Grant Miner on the eve of contract
negotiations, are clear examples.

If anything, my detention is a testament to the strength of the student movement in shifting public opinion
toward Palestinian liberation. Students have long been at the forefront of change — leading the charge
against the Vietnam War, standing on the frontlines of the civil rights movement, and driving the struggle
against apartheid in South Africa. Today, too, even if the public has yet to fully grasp it, it is students who
steer us toward truth and justice.

The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent. Visa-holders,
green-card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs. In the weeks ahead,
students, advocates, and elected officials must unite to defend the right to protest for Palestine. At stake
are not just our voices, but the fundamental civil liberties of all.

Knowing fully that this moment transcends my individual circumstances, I hope nonetheless to be free to
witness the birth of my first-born child.

On the Collision in the North Sea

 

Courtesy of the BBC

 

It's not often that I get to comment on recent news from a position beyond armchair commentator. Several weeks ago, my small corner of the world became global news for a time. Two great big cargo ships collided in the North Sea at an anchorage for vessels waiting clearance to enter the River Humber. One was the carrier of aviation fuel, the Stena Immaculate, and the second a container ship Solong. The captain of Solong is a Russian national, that fact coupled with the news that he's being investigated for criminal conduct has encouraged speculation that this was a deliberate act carried out as part of the Russian Federation's hybrid warfare doctrine.

The investigation is ongoing, and I won't speculate on whether I think the charges have merit or not. What I will say is that if it comes to light that the cause of the collision which killed one of the crew of the Solong and injured dozens of sailors on both vessels was negligence or equipment failure, well I wouldn't be entirely surprised.

There's a fortune tied up in international freight and massive pressure to avoid delays at all costs. Cutting corners and meeting windows for berthing, discharging cargo and taking on new cargo are stressful times with many bottlenecks, that area of the North Sea is effectively a floating car park for vessel to wait their turns, clearance and the boarding of pilots. Miss that window and the ship is at the back of the line, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars. 

I know this because I have friends and family who worked in the shipping agencies, and I worked on the same dock that ships including the Stena Immaculate regularly berthed and met their crews and captains. It's a small part of the world. I've had the pleasure of being shouted at in 02:30 am because a ship hasn't sailed for Norway due to its bridge crew not returning from shore leave, I've also had to draw maps of the docks for crew members who were just dumped outside the gates for their shore leave, and I've had to stand in the pouring rain with a radio awaiting the arrival of the port medical team so I could show them a dead body that washed up.

But enough flavour text, the reason I'm bringing this up is to demonstrate why a vessel barrelling at 16 Knouts in low visibility in an area well known for being a busy anchorage doesn't shock me despite being an obviously bad idea. This attitude of rush, rush, rush, get it done quickly is endemic to the shipping economy, and it breeds a culture of apathy and resentment towards the regulations that are designed to prevent incidents and accidents like what happened here. 

Russian owned/captained vessels were especially notorious for obeying the letter of the law and ticking all the boxes, while expending the least amount of effort possible. I remember two examples, one was when a sailor had collapsed, and I was talking to the medical team, they repeatedly asked me to confirm the ship was not Russian, because the last time they had attended a Russian vessel the captain wanted to leave the crew member on the jetty and depart without answering any questions. Another time I was working over water and needed a life jacket, UK regulations state you must wear one when working over water, the penalties for violating that one are quite steep. When we ran short, we just radioed the vessels and used some of their spares. The Russian vessel gave use life jackets that were empty, either someone had stolen the bouncy material or they never had any. I thought that was a one-off, but a guy who'd been there for longer than me said it happened all the time. 

I must stress the point of this is not that the Russians are uniquely corrupt and lazy. Corners were cut across the industry, and there were many times Russian vessels arrived without incident or noticeable deficiency. Common issues are Flags of convenience where a ship is registered to a company in a nation with lower safety and employment standards, I saw that all the time, it was blatant, crew lists and manifests gave it away, a ship that sails between Le Havre and Grangemouth, is operated by a company in France and is crewed by Indians and Filipinos and has a Greek captain is registered as belonging to Liberia or one of the smaller Caribbean island nations. Often finding out who actually owns a ship is an impossible task. The news reported that the Solong had Portuguese owners and the Stena Immaculate is owned by the USA, but the Stena was an exception as it served US military aviation, I met a Department of Defence rep once who turned up to inspect the ship. He had a baseball cap and a denim jacket, called everyone buddy. 

So, in conclusion, I'll wait and see what the results of the investigation are. I am interested in their findings but the two most likely options will not be surprising to me.

 

Through a Glass Rosily

by George Orwell, Tribune, 23 November 1945

The recent article by Tribune’s Vienna correspondent[1] provoked a spate of angry letters which, besides calling him a fool and a liar and making other charges of what one might call a routine nature, also carried the very serious implication that he ought to have kept silent even if he knew that he was speaking the truth. He himself made a brief answer in Tribune, but the question involved is so important that it is worth discussing it at greater length.

Whenever A and B are in opposition to one another, anyone who attacks or criticises A is accused of aiding and abetting B. And it is often true, objectively and on a short-term analysis, that he is making things easier for B. Therefore, say the supporters of A, shut up and don’t criticise: or at least criticise “constructively”, which in practice always means favourably. And from this it is only a short step to arguing that the suppression and distortion of known facts is the highest duty of a journalist.

Now, if one divides the world into A and B and assumes that A represents progress and B reaction, it is just arguable that no fact detrimental to A ought ever to be revealed. But before making this claim one ought to realise where it leads. What do we mean by reaction? I suppose it would be agreed that Nazi Germany represented reaction in its worst form or one of its worst. Well, the people in this country who gave most ammunition to the Nazi propagandists during the war are exactly the ones who tell us that it is “objectively” pro-Fascist to criticise the USSR. I am not referring to the Communists during their anti-war phase: I am referring to the Left as a whole. By and large, the Nazi radio got more material from the British left-wing press than from that of the Right. And it could hardly be otherwise, for it is chiefly in the left-wing press that serious criticism of British institutions is to be found. Every revelation about slums or social inequality, every attack on the leaders of the Tory Party, every denunciation of British imperialism, was a gift for Goebbels. And not necessarily a worthless gift, for German propaganda about “British plutocracy” had considerable effect in neutral countries, especially in the earlier part of the war.

Here are two examples of the kind of source from which the Axis propagandists were liable to take their material. The Japanese, in one of their English-speaking magazines in China, serialised Briffault’s Decline and Fall of the British Empire. Briffault, if not actually a Communist, was vehemently pro-Soviet, and the book incidentally contained some cracks at the Japanese themselves; but from the Japanese point of view this didn’t matter, since the main tendency of the book was anti-British. About the same time the German radio broadcast shortened versions of books which they considered damaging to British prestige. Among others they broadcast E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India. And so far as I know they didn’t even have to resort to dishonest quotation. Just because the book was essentially truthful, it could be made to serve the purposes of Fascist propaganda. According to Blake,

A truth that’s told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent,

and anyone who has seen his own statements coming back at him on the Axis radio will feel the force of this. Indeed, anyone who has ever written in defence of unpopular causes or been the witness of events which are likely to cause controversy, knows the fearful temptation to distort or suppress the facts, simply because any honest statement will contain revelations which can be made use of by unscrupulous opponents. But what one has to consider are the long-term effects. In the long run, can the cause of progress be served by lies, or can it not? The readers who attacked Tribune’s Vienna correspondent so violently accused him of untruthfulness, but they also seemed to imply that the facts he brought forward ought not to be published even if true. 100, 000 rape cases in Vienna are not a good advertisement for the Soviet regime: therefore, even if they have happened, don’t mention them. Anglo-Russian relations are more likely to prosper if inconvenient facts are kept dark.

The trouble is that if you lie to people, their reaction is all the more violent when the truth leaks out, as it is apt to do in the end. Here is an example of untruthful propaganda coming home to roost. Many English people of goodwill draw from the left-wing press an unduly favourable picture of the Indian Congress Party. They not only believe it to be in the right (as it is), but are also apt to imagine that it is a sort of left-wing organisation with democratic and internationalist aims. Such people, if they are suddenly confronted with an actual, flesh-and-blood Indian Nationalist, are liable to recoil into the attitudes of a Blimp. I have seen this happen a number of times. And it is the same with pro-Soviet propaganda. Those who have swallowed it whole are always in danger of a sudden revulsion in which they may reject the whole idea of Socialism. In this and other ways I should say that the net effect of Communist and near-Communist propaganda has been simply to retard the cause of Socialism, though it may have temporarily aided Russian foreign policy.

There are always the most excellent, high-minded reasons for concealing the truth, and these reasons are brought forward in almost the same words by supporters of the most diverse causes. I have had writings of my own kept out of print because it was feared that the Russians would not like them, and I have had others kept out of print because they attacked British imperialism and might be quoted by anti-British Americans. We are told now that any frank criticism of the Stalin regime will “increase Russian suspicions”, but it is only seven years since we were being told (in some cases by the same newspapers) that frank criticism of the Nazi regime would increase Hitler’s suspicions. As late as 1941, some of the Catholic papers declared that the presence of Labour Ministers in the British Government increased Franco’s suspicions and made him incline more towards the Axis. Looking back, it is possible to see that if only the British and American peoples had grasped in 1933 or thereabouts what Hitler stood for, war might have been averted. Similarly, the first step towards decent Anglo-Russian relations is the dropping of illusions. In principle most people would agree to this: but the dropping of illusions means the publication of facts, and facts are apt to be unpleasant.

The whole argument that one mustn’t speak plainly because it “plays into the hands of” this or that sinister influence is dishonest, in the sense that people only use it when it suits them. As I have pointed out, those who are most concerned about playing into the hands of the Tories were least concerned about playing into the hands of the Nazis. The Catholics who said “Don’t offend Franco because it helps Hitler” had been more or less consciously helping Hitler for years beforehand. Beneath this argument there always lies the intention to do propaganda for some single sectional interest, and to browbeat critics into silence by telling them that they are “objectively” reactionary. It is a tempting manœuvre, and I have used it myself more than once, but it is dishonest. I think one is less likely to use it if one remembers that the advantages of a lie are always short-lived. So often it seems a positive duty to suppress or colour the facts! And yet genuine progress can only happen through increasing enlightenment, which means the continuous destruction of myths.

Meanwhile, there is a curious backhanded tribute to the values of liberalism in the fact that the opponents of free speech write letters to Tribune at all. “Don’t criticise,” such people are in effect saying: “don’t reveal inconvenient facts. Don’t play into the hands of the enemy!” Yet they themselves are attacking Tribune’s policy with all the violence at their command. Does it not occur to them that if the principles they advocate were put into practice, their letters would never get printed?

[footnote 1]: When Tribune's Vienna correspondent had reported the appalling conditions in the city and, quite truthfully, described the monstrous behaviour of some of the Russian occupying troops, several readers protested against what they called “this slander” on the Red army.

War and Hell or Peace and Starvation

 

 

 

I came across this short article by Eugene V. Debs. It was written in 1915 but much of it, including the peace in the USA and war in Europe, is still very timely. I sometimes feel tired of saying that when going through historical records, especially since it only seems to apply to bad things, disease, poverty, war, corruption, bigotry etc. 

Debs was at the time the leader of the Socialist Party and was its pick for Presidential candidate, his opposition to American entry in the First World War and refusal to buckle to pressure led to his arrest, and he ran his last Presidential campaign from behind bars.

 

 Published in St. Louis Labor, whole no. 578 (Aug. 14, 1915),

 

 Because the workers have everything to lose, including their lives,
and absolutely nothing to gain in war, it does not follow under the
benevolent rule of capitalism that they have everything to gain and
nothing to lose in peace. In Europe just now the workers have war
and hell while in this country they are enjoying peace and starvation.
That there may be no mistake about the latter condition I quote from
the highest capitalistic authority, the Associated Press, which carries
the following dispatch:

COLUMBUS, Ohio, July 26th, 1915.— Reports received here
today from militia officers who have charge of the distribution of
food supplies among destitute families in the Southern Ohio coal
mining districts, prompted state officials to send out additional
appeals for contributions to aid in the relief work.

The reports showed that a large number of these 10,000
families in the Hocking and Sunday Creek Valleys are dependent
on outside aid for food. In describing conditions the word “piti-
able” appeared frequently in the reports. There is no strike in
these districts, but most of the miners are out of work owing to
the shutting down of the mines.

There is much more to the dispatch, but this is enough. There is
no war in this country and there is no strike in Ohio. Instead of war
and hell such as they have in Europe they have peace and starvation
in Ohio. The soldiers who are asphyxiated in the trenches have one
advantage in war over their fellow-workers who are starving in the
mining camps in peace — their agony is reduced to hours, perhaps
minutes, instead of being prolonged into a lifetime. Blessed are they
who are speedily reduced to wormfood, for they shall not see their
offspring starve in the midst of plenty.

 • • • • •
It is not the misfortune of the miners that condemns them to see
their wives and children starving before their eyes in a state bursting
with riches they themselves produced; it is their folly and crime in
common with the folly and crime of the people among whom they
live.

The men who shut down the mines and locked out the miners
and are now starving them and their families are not among those
crying for relief. They own the mines and control the jobs and can
shut out and starve the miners at will — by grace of the miners them-
selves, an overwhelming majority of whom belong to the same capi-
talist party their masters do and cast their votes with scrupulous fidel-
ity to perpetuate the boss ownership of the mine in which they work
and their own exclusion and starvation at their master’s will.

Blessed be the private ownership of the mines, for without it the
miners and their wives would lose their individuality, their homes
would be broken up, their morality destroyed, their religion wiped
out, and they would be denied forever the comfort and solace of pov-
erty and starvation!

When the miners themselves control the mines, once they have
learned how to control themselves, they will not lock themselves out
and starve themselves and their loved ones to death. The bosses are
very kindly doing this for them, but only because the miners them-
selves, by their votes and otherwise, have willed it.
The bosses lose their power and along with it their jobs when the
workers find theirs.

• • • • •

But I only meant to show that in peace as in war the workers are
the losers; if they are not killed in war they are starved in peace; if
they escape the trenches they are reserved for the slave pits.
The bosses are always the beneficiaries; the workers always the
victims. The Rockefellers never lose and the [John R.] Lawsons never
win. Such is capitalism and the workers who side with the bosses and
support capitalism politically and otherwise, and are therefore respon-
sible for capitalism, are also responsible for the hell they get in war
and the starvation they suffer in peace.

 

Using Mother Night to Understand Elon Musk

 

Thanks to Cold War Steve

 Some years ago, I reviewed Kurt Vonnegut's story Mother Night. I won't rehash what I said then, I'd just like to bring up that one of the points I was keen to emphasise is that the book is one of the few that deserves the cliché "More timely now than when it was written". I'm not sure if Mother Night is my favourite of Vonnegut's works, but it is the one I come back to most.

I don't think I need to introduce Elon Musk, even if this is the first blog post you've read. There have been much commentary on his Nazi salutes and boosting of Nazi sympathisers on his platform Twitter. The thesis of Mother Night is summed up in the phrase "You should be careful about what you pretend to be, because in the end you are what you pretend to be". 

I don't think Elon Musk is a Nazi in his heart and mind, his temperament isn't a good fit for the mindset. But, this is irrelevant compared to the material impact of his actions and his conscious attempts to emulate the Nazis as much as the circumstances and his own talents will allow. It doesn't matter that he's not a Nazi, because in the end of the day he is pretending to be one. 

He shares some things in common with Howard Campbell Jnr, the protagonist of Mother Night. Howard, like Musk was a bit of an outsider, Howard was an American but raised in Germany and spoke German as a first language, and like Musk Howard was a Nazi, that's why he's in a cell in Israel when the story starts. He was a prominent official working under Goebbels. He was also a spy for the Allied cause and is credited by his handler with bringing the Allied victory sooner than expected. 

  So, what's Howard's problem? Well, in a nutshell, Howard can't reconcile his idealised version of himself with the material reality of his existence. In order to become a good spy he had to win over the Nazi government, in order to do that he had to be useful to them. During the War Howard spent his time crafting propaganda for the Axis powers, radio broadcasts to the US Army denouncing Roosevelt, plays and other antisemitic propaganda. All of which he personally ridiculed as insane drivel. At no point in the narrative are we given any suggestion that Howard was remotely close to the Nazi ideology, he was just very good at both of his jobs.

This fact haunts him, time, and again he is confronted with the toxic impact and festering legacy of his work. His father-in-law a brutal Nazi police officer who enslaved dozens of Slav women to work on his estate thanks Howard personally for convincing him of the righteousness of the cause. In a horrifically beautiful passage, the father-in-law unknowingly twists a knife in Howard's insides by confiding that there was a time when he had doubts about this whole Greater Germania and master race thing, but it was Howard's propaganda that corrected him. 

In yet another example, after the War, Howard runs into the American Neo-Nazi fringe. This is a tiny movement led by decrepit cranks and a dozen or so angry, alienated young men. The whole "movement" is a sad bunch of losers, but their guns still work, and they've been using bootleg recordings of Howard's old racist ranting speeches for succour and to maintain morale. Even after the War has ended, the seeds he planted are still sprouting.

Still, Musk and Howard are not completely alike, Howard is torn apart about the evils he aided, whereas Musk seems positively giddy about them and frustrated that he can't go further. In the end if Musk teaches us anything, it's that Vonnegut was right. We are who we pretend to be.

 

News from Zengakuren

 

 

ZENGAKUREN, the All-Japan Federation of Autonomous Student Bodies is a mass revolutionary organisation, with a militant tradition of struggle against American Imperialism and the Japanese ruling class. In 1960, it organised strikes and continuous demonstrations, in which many were wounded, outside the Tokyo Diet, against the Ratification of the Japanese – US Security Treaty. These reached such an intensity that the US Government thought it advisable to cancel a proposed Eisenhower visit to Japan.

The Zengakuren have recently called for the establishment of an anti-war International. They are supported in this by the Committee of 100, the Student Peace Union in the US, the Socialist Students Organization of West Germany and many other organizations opposed to both American and Russian tests. On August 17, 1962, representatives of the Zengakuren, including Nemoto, their President, attended the Leningrad Conference of the International Union of Students. On their way, they had demonstrated in Red Square against all nuclear tests. They had been arrested, then released and `closely watched during the remainder of their stay`.

We publish below an extract from Zengakuren Information Bulletin No.3, describing their discussions with representatives of the Soviet Student Council (SSC):

Soviet Student Council (SSC): Are you fighting against the nuclear testing of any nation other than the USSR? Do you realize that the Soviet Union is not the first country to engage in nuclear tests?

Zengakuren: We are engaged in a militant mass struggle against American nuclear tests. Our slogan in this struggle is, `Against tests of USA and USSR`. We oppose any nuclear activity by any country, be it England, France or China. Of course, we are fighting against the nuclear armament of Japan. You who sponsor the I.U.S. Congress should have known such a well-known fact.

SSC: Granted, but what country began the first nuclear tests and how many times were such tests carried out before the Soviet Union began?

Zengakuren: That is of no consequence. We accuse all countries engaged in testing of promoting the arms race and of suppressing the working class and people.

SSC: We are glad to hear that you oppose the American nuclear tests and can appreciate your stand against these tests. We lost millions of lives in World War II. This tragedy was due to the fact that our military forces were weaker than those of the Fascists. We do not want to be the second Hiroshima. If during the war Japan had had nuclear weapons at their disposal, the tragedy of Hiroshima would not have occurred.

Zengakuren: We oppose your dangerous view. According to your logic, you encourage the Japanese Imperialists to arm themselves with nuclear weapons. Do you really think that this is an effective way to stop the nuclear race and to prevent nuclear war?

SSC: The best way to prevent war is obviously total disarmament, but the next best procedure is to continue Soviet nuclear tests.

Zengakuren: Your policy, based on such a philosophy, wields an immeasurably harmful influence on the anti-war struggle of the working class. Do you know the slogan that is being used in Tokyo, New York and London to fight N-tests? `Against tests by the US and USSR`. These students and workers attempt to obtain peace not with nuclear weapons but by their own struggles.

SSC: You believe that if the Soviet Union stopped its tests, the working class movement would increase in strength and the imperialists’ tests would stop. We cannot be sure of such an outcome.

Zengakuren: Are you suggesting that the workers of the world stop their struggles and support Soviet testing? By holding such a view, you cause dissension among the workers of the world and make them oppose each other. The workers must unite. Soviet nuclear testing does not support peace. It provides America with an excuse to continue their tests and intensify the arms race. Any nuclear testing suppresses the workers of the world and subjects them to the domination of the ruling class. Aren’t you yourselves the slaves of nuclear weapons?

SSC: We can appreciate your point of view, but we are of totally different opinions.

Zengakuren: The justice of our views will be borne out by the continuation of the world-wide struggle against N-tests.

SSC: Your opinion sounds quite sincere; continue your work as you like, but don’t forget that you are in the USSR now.

Catastrophic Gradualism by George Orwell

 

The following is a commentary by George Orwell on the intellectual backing for dictatorship and oppression. It is in reaction to the 1945 publication of Arthur Koestler's book The Yogi and the Cossack, which is a collection of essays.

  It first appeared in the September 1946 issue of Politics.

THERE is a theory which has not yet been accurately
formulated or given a name, but which is very widely
accepted and is brought forward whenever it is necessary
to justify some action which conflicts with the sense of
decency of the average human being. It might be called,
until some better name is found, the Theory of Catastrophic
Gradualism. According to this theory, nothing is ever
achieved without bloodshed, lies, tyranny and injustice, but
on the other hand no considerable change for the better is
to be expected as the result of even the greatest upheaval.
History necessarily proceeds by calamities, but each succeeding
age will be as bad, or nearly as bad, as the last.

One must not protest against purges, deportations, secret
police forces and so forth because this is the price that
has to be paid for progress: but on the other hand “human
nature” will always see to it that progress is slow or even
imperceptible. If you object to dictatorship you are a reactionary,
but if you expect dictatorship to produce good results you are a sentimentalist.


At present this theory is most often used to justify the
Stalin régime in the USSR, but it obviously could be— and,
given appropriate circumstances, would be— used to justify
other forms of totalitarianism. It has gained ground as
a result of the failure of the Russian Revolution— failure,
that is, in the sense that the Revolution has not fulfilled
the hopes that it aroused twenty-five years ago. In the name
of Socialism the Russian régime has committed almost every
crime that can be imagined, but at the same time its evolution is away from Socialism, unless one re-defines that word in terms that no Socialist of 1917 would have accepted. To
those who admit these facts, only two courses are open.
One is simply to repudiate the whole theory of totalitarian
ism, which few English intellectuals have the courage to do;
the other is to fall back on Catastrophic Gradualism. The
formula usually employed is “You can’t make an omelette
without breaking eggs.” And if one replies, “Yes, but
where is the omelette?”, the answer is likely to be: “Oh
well, you can’t expect everything to happen all in a
moment.”


Naturally this argument is pushed backward into history,
the design being to show that every advance was achieved
at the cost of atrocious crimes, and could not have been
achieved otherwise. The instance generally used is the over
throw of feudalism by the bourgeoisie, which is supposed
to foreshadow the overthrow of Capitalism by Socialism in
our own age. Capitalism, it is argued, was once a progressive force, and therefore its crimes were justified, or at least were unimportant. Thus, in a recent number of the New
Statesman, Mr. Kingsley Martin, reproaching Arthur Koestler for not possessing a true “historical perspective,” compared Stalin with Henry VIII. Stalin, he admitted, had
done terrible things, but on balance he had served the cause
of progress, and a few million “liquidations” must not be
allowed to obscure this fact. Similarly, Henry VIII’s
character left much to be desired, but after all he had made
possible the rise of Capitalism, and therefore on balance
could be regarded as a friend of humanity.

Now, Henry VIII has not a very close resemblance to
Stalin; Cromwell would provide a better analogy; but,
granting Henry VIII the importance given to him by Mr.
Martin, where does this argument lead? Henry VIII made
possible the rise of Capitalism, which led to the horrors of
the Industrial Revolution and thence to a cycle of enormous
wars, the next of which may well destroy civilization altogether. So, telescoping the process, we can put it like this:
“Everything is to be forgiven to Henry VIII, because it was
ultimately he who enabled us to blow ourselves to pieces
with atomic bombs.” You are led into similar absurdities
if you make Stalin responsible for our present condition
and the future which appears to lie before us, and at the
same time insist that his policies must be supported. The
motives of those English intellectuals who support the Russian dictatorship are, T think, different from what they publicly admit, but it is logical to condone tyranny and massacre if one assumes that progress is inevitable. If each
epoch is as a matter of course better than the last, then any
crime or any folly that pushes the historical process for
ward can be justified. Between, roughly, 1750 and 1930
one could be forgiven for imagining that progress of a
solid, measurable kind was taking place. Latterly, this has
become more and more difficult, whence the theory of Catastrophic Gradualism. Crime follows crime, one ruling class
replaces another, the Tower of Babel rises and falls, but
one mustn’t resist the process— indeed, one must be ready
to applaud any piece of scoundrelism that comes off— be
cause in some mystical way, in the sight of God, or perhaps
in the sight of Marx, this is Progress. The alternative would
be to stop and consider (a) to what extent as history pre
determined? and, (b) what is meant by progress? At this
point one has to call in the Yogi to correct the Commissar.

In his much-discussed essay, Koestler is generally assumed to have come down heavily on the side of the Yogi. Actually, if one assumes the Yogi and the Commissar to be
at opposite points of the scale, Koestler is somewhat nearer
to the Commissar’s end. He believes in action, in violence
where necessary, in government, and consequently in the
shifts and compromises that are inseparable from government. He supported the war, and the Popular Front before it. Since the appearance of Fascism he has struggled against
it to the best of his ability, and for many years he was
a member of the Communist Party. The long chapter in
his book in which he criticises the USSR is even vitiated by
a lingering loyalty to his old party and by a resulting tendency to make all bad developments date from the rise of Stalin: whereas one ought, I believe, to admit that all the
seeds of evil were there from the start and that things would
not have been substantially different if Lenin or Trotsky
had remained in control. No one is less likely than Koestler
to claim that we can put everything right by watching our
navels in California. Nor is he claiming, as religious
thinkers usually do, that a “change of heart” must come
before any genuine political improvement. To quote his
own words:

“Neither the saint nor the revolutionary can save us;
only the synthesis of the two. Whether we are capable
of achieving it I do not know. But if the answer is in
the negative, there seems to- be no reasonable hope of
preventing the destruction of European civilization, either
by total war’s successor Absolute War, or by Byzantine
conquest— within the next few decades.”

That is to say, the “change of heart” must happen, but
it is not really happening unless at each step it issues in
action. On the other hand, no change in the structure of
society can by itself effect a real improvement. Socialism
used to be defined as “common ownership of the means of
production,” but it is now seen that if common ownership
means no more than centralised control, it merely paves the
way for a new form of oligarchy. Centralised control is a
necessary pre-condition of Socialism, but it no more produces Socialism than my typewriter would of itself produce this article I am writing. Throughout history, one revolution after another— although usually producing a temporary relief, such as a sick man gets by turning over in bed—has
simply led to a change of masters, because no serious effort
has been made to eliminate the power instinct: or if such an effort has been made, it has been made only by the saint, the Yogi, the man who saves his own soul at the expense of
ignoring the community. In the minds of active revolutionaries, at any rate the ones who “got there,” the longing for a just society has always been fatally mixed up with the
intention to secure power for themselves.


Koestler says that we must learn once again the technique
of contemplation, which “remains the only source of guidance in ethical dilemmas where the rule-of-thumb criteria of social utility fail.” By “contemplation” he means “the
will not to will,” the conquest of the desire for power. The
practical men have led us to the edge of the abyss, and the
intellectuals in whom acceptance of power politics has killed
first the moral sense, and then the sense of reality, are urging us to march rapidly forward without changing direction.
Koestler maintains that history is not at all moments pre
determined, but that there are turning-points at which humanity is free to choose the better or the worse road. One such turning-point (which had not appeared when he wrote
the book), is the Atomic Bomb. Either we renounce it, or
it destroys us. But renouncing it is both a moral effort and
a political effort. Koestler calls for “a new fraternity in a
new spiritual climate, whose leaders are tied by a vow of
poverty to share the life of the masses, and debarred by
the laws of the fraternity from attaining unchecked power”;
he adds, “if this seems utopian, then Socialism is a utopia.”
It may not even be a utopia— its very name may in a couple
of generations have ceased to be a memory— unless we can
escape from the folly of “realism.” But that will not hap
pen without a change in the individual heart. To that ex
tent, though no further, the Yogi is right as against the
Commissar.