2016 = 1933?

The new German Chancellor addresses a crowd in January 1933

In the run up to November I kept stumbling upon antsy Democrats trying to drum up support, though weirdly this tailed off the closer we got to the 8th of November. One popular tactic was to remind everyone about a little nation called Germany and the year of our lord Nineteen Hundred and Thirty Three. Basically comparing the United States Presidential elections of 2016 to the German Federal elections of 1933. The message being only a united vote can stop Fascism.

This argument has been used in the UK in the early to mid 2000's when the BNP vote was on the rise and they got a few council seats too.

The Election of 1933

This argument is simply false, the rise of Nazism in Germany really had little to do with the elections of 1933. At best NSDAP's vote share help cement an already established government. The elections were held on the 5th of March 1933 and here's the results.



Party

	Votes	%	Seats	+/–
National Socialist German Workers Party	17,277,180	43.91	288	+92
Social Democratic Party of Germany	7,181,629	18.25	120	–1
Communist Party of Germany	4,848,058	12.32	81	–19
Centre Party	4,424,905	11.25	73	+3
Black-White-Red Struggle Front (DNVP)[a]	3,136,760	7.97	52	+1
Bavarian People's Party	1,073,552	2.73	19	–1
German People's Party	432,312	1.10	2	–9
Christian Social People's Service	383,999	0.98	4	–1
German State Party	334,242	0.85	5	+3
German Farmers' Party	114,048	0.29	2	–1
Agricultural League	83,839	0.21	1	–1
German-Hanoverian Party	47,743	0.12	0	–1
Socialist Struggle Community	3,954	0.01	0	New
Workers' and Farmers' Struggle Community	1,110	0.00	0	0
Invalid/blank votes	311,698	–	–	–
Total	39,655,029	100	647	+63
Registered voters/turnout	44,685,764	88.74	–

So yes the Nazi's did very well staying the largest party and increasing their vote share. However as you can see they didn't get an outright majority and the second and third parties the Social Democrats (SPD) and Communists (KPD) were in vehement opposition. But really it didn't matter much either way, since Hitler had already been Chancellor since the 30th of January that year, and already begun co-opting the German state machinery by staffing it with Nazi members and sympathisers, and had already launched a campaign of terror and repression throughout the nation against his enemies.


Ernst Thalmann the leader of the KPD was already under arrest as were around 4,000 senior party members including the Reichstag members. The Reichstag Fire Decree passed six days before the election had effectively made the party virtually illegal, and Hitler's large army of SA storm troopers (Over two million members by 1932) had been hard at work with the assistance of the German police the elections were no barrier to the Nazi regime.

In addition to direct collaboration from some police forces, Hitler had appointed 50,000 SA members as "Hilfspolizei" ("Auxiliary Police") officers who worked with regular police.

In Prussia Herman Goring had become Interior Minister giving the Nazi party direct control over the largest police force in the country and he wasted no time turning the territory into a police state smashing all public opposition to the Nazi party.

 In keeping with the purpose and aim of the decree the additional measures … will be directed against the Communists in the first instance, but then also against those who co-operate with the Communists and who support or encourage their criminal aims… I would point out that any necessary measures against members or establishments of other than Communist, anarchist or Social Democratic parties can only be justified by the decree … if they serve to help the defense against such Communist activities in the widest sense.

Within the next two weeks (so before, during and after the March 33 elections) the Nazi party moved to replace the interior ministers of the other German states with party members and Prussian style repression was quickly repeated throughout the nation. The main target was the KPD but as Goring made clear in his instructions to the Prussian police the entire German labour movement was also a target.

And of course all newspapers supporting the KPD and its "allies" like the SPD Vorwärts or the pro Trotsky Permanente Revolution newspapers were banned.



The Enabling Act

The focus of some who raise the spectre of 33 isn't the election itself but on the vote for the Enabling Act amendment to the Weimar Constitution. The act helpfully made much of what Hitler wanted to do legal, and therefore further consolidation of his power. Though it should be kept in mind that Hitler was a man in charge of a party that embarked on an armed uprising in 1928, and had carried assault, murder and intimidation on a national scale for years, so clearly legalism wasn't a deal breaker for him and his mates.

But Hitler did consider the passage of the act important enough to negotiate with others, so let's assume defeat in the hall would have been a concrete blow to the Nazi's. How likely was such and even with a united SPD/KPD opposition slate?

Hitler needed a super majority or two thirds of the new Reichstag, and as we've seen from the vote table above, they didn't get that many seats. But here's the problem, the Nazi's were not alone. NSDAP had entered into a coalition with Conservative DNVP giving it roughly 51% of the seats. It then entered into agreements with all the other parties in Reichstag including the fourth largest Catholic Centre party to get the votes needed to pass the act. So could a united Left part block this coaliton?

The answer is no, assuming like the Nazi's did that a vote for the SPD would go to the KPD or vice versa if one of the parties wasn't on the ballot and the two parties vote share's would be combined totally in this united front, (kinda unlikely given the two parties history of hostility) their vote and seat share would have been less one third at around 30%. Of course that's assuming all these elected members would have been allowed in. In reality no KPD members were allowed there to vote, they were busy fleeing or being arrested. The only party that opposed the act was the SPD and not all of their 120 members voted against it either, the vote was 444 in favour and 94 (all SPD members)  against. The over 26 members were in the chamber because they were also being targeted by the Nazi's for repression.

And to refer briefly to 2016, this hypothetical argument is the one thing that 2016 and 1933 have in common. There was a de facto united front against Donald Trump even numbers of Republicans broke ranks to side with the Democrats who had the support of the CPUSA. And it still didn't matter, this united electoral front failed miserably.  And in 1936 the Popular Front slate in Spain successfully defeated the right wing parties in the elections and all that happened was that the right wing launched a coup attempt and when that failed resorted to launching a full scale civil war.

So if we were to travel to another dimension where the only difference was in Weimar Germany the SPD and KPD formed an electoral coalition nothing much would've changed. If anything it would've been worse as both parties would have been repressed far more quickly and the vote on the Enabling Act would have been 444 in favour versus 0 against. But lets again for the sake of argument assume that somehow the Enabling Act was defeated, why would this mean the defeat of Hitler? It mess his plans up that's true but he survived the humiliation of the crushing defeat of his Putsch in Munich when the Party was practically non existent. In 1933 he was already Chancellor and also in charge of the German police force and was using it and his private army to destroy his enemies. Why would he stop doing this, is it not more logical to assume that in order to ensure his party remains in power that the repression against his enemies would increase?


The Nazi party didn't come to power due to lefty infighting, it came to power because the German state preferred Fascist thugs to the possibility of  socialism. The Nazi's didn't get to make their seizure of power constitutional because the German worker had to choose between two parties, but because all other major political factions in Germany preferred militaristic nationalism to pro Moscow Commissars and lefty reformers. And that all feared the power of the German working class which for better or worse was represented by these two organisations, at least in the state and federal legislatures.

The real lesson to be taken away from 1933 is that voting is not an effective weapon to fight Fascism. In pre Fascist Italy, Mussolini only four seats in the parliament before and yet he managed to seize power too. The same thing occurred in Spain, the Popular Front won the elections and yet by 1939 the Fascists were in power.

The Lesson that Should be Learned from 1933

There is however an important lesson to be learned from the rise of the Nazi party and its fellow travellers, and that is what actually is an effective way to fight Fascism. The Nazi's didn't officially ban the KPD from standing in the March 1933 elections, instead it focused on attacking its physical structure. It didn't view KPD as an electoral threat but a physical one, and indeed street fighting between the KPD and the Nazi's was a cause for concern for the Nazi party. In addition to the KPD and SPD the Nazi's were quick to target groups that didn't even stand in the elections. The Freie Arbeiter Union (FAUD) an Anarcho-syndicalist union that had already gone underground in 1932 was also targeted for repression with its leading members imprisoned or driven out of the country by the Gestapo. The FAUD believed the best way to stop the Nazi's was to mobilise a general strike, a tactic which did succeed in defeating the Right wing Kapp Putsch in 1920.

Up to the rise to power of the

Nazis, the worker Franz Bungert

was a leading member of the

Duisberg FAUD. Without even

the pretence of a trial, he was

interned in the concentration

camp of Boegermoor in 1933. After a year he was freed but was put under perma-

nent surveillance. His successor was Julius Nolden, a metalworker then unemployed

and treasurer of the Labour Exchange for th

e Rhineland. He was also arrested by the

Gestapo, who suspected that his activity in a Society for the Right to Cremation(!) hid

illegal relations with other members of the FAUD.

http://flag.blackened.net/af/ace/anarchist_resistance_to_nazism.pdf

In addition Hitler also moved to smash the German Trade Union movement. By May 2nd Trade Unions ceased to exist in Germany. 

Hitler proclaimed May Day, 1933, as a national holiday and arranged to celebrate it as it had never been celebrated before. Trade union leaders were flown to Berlin from all parts of Germany. Joseph Goebbels staged the greatest mass demonstration Germany had ever seen. Hitler told the workers' delegates: "You will see how untrue and unjust is the statement that the revolution is directed against the German workers." Later that day Hitler told a meeting of more than 100,000 workers that "reestablishing social peace in the world of labour" would soon begin. (19)
The next day, Hitler ordered the Sturm Abteilung (SA) to destroy the trade union movement. Their headquarters throughout the country were occupied, union funds confiscated, the unions dissolved and the leaders arrested. Large numbers were sent to concentration camps. Within a few days 169 different trade unions were under Nazi control. (20)

 Again the emphasis of the Nazi's was to attack and disrupt and destroy the enemies physical organisations. The main concern of Fascist movements is their opponents ideological opposition and physical abilities. The FAUD was small and weak by 1933 and it was still hunted down and destroyed by the Nazi state. The Trade Unions were broken up because they represented a potential obstacle to Hitler's restructuring of the German state and economy.

And this wasn't a quirk of the Nazi's either, over in Italy in the 20's similar events were happening.

  It was from this moment onwards that the state moved on the offensive and Mussolini’s ‘revolutionary action’ squads were supplied with enough arms to take to the streets.

Until the formation of the AdP, the fascists had things mostly their own way. Starting off with an attack on the town hall in Bologna, the fascist squads swept through the countryside like a scythe, undertaking ‘punitive expeditions’ against the ‘red’ villages. Following their success there, they began attacking the cities. Labour unions, the offices of co-operatives and leftist papers were destroyed in Trieste, Modena, and Florence within the first few months of 1921. As Rossi writes, they had “an immense advantage over the labour movement in its facilities for transportation and concentration…The fascists are generally without ties…they can live anywhere…The workers, on the contrary, are bound to their homes…This system gives the enemy every advantage: that of the offensive over the defensive, and that of mobile warfare over a war of position.”**

 It is in physical confrontation and mobilisation by the labour movement that the key to the defeat of Fascism lies. A general strike brought down Kapp's nationalist putsch in 1920. The arming of the Spanish working class delayed the rise of Fascism for three years, and in Italy the only effective opposition to Mussolini's mobilisation of the Black shirts was the Arditi del Popolo. And the isolation and rejection of the AdP in favour of electoral schemes was the leading cause of the victory of the Fascists in Italy.

However, just as the AdP was building up the momentum on the streets, they were betrayed by the PSI who were more interested in signing a pact of non-aggression with the fascists; this at a time when the fascists were at their most vulnerable. Socialist militants were forced by their leadership to withdraw from the AdP, while the CGL union ordered its members to leave the organisation.

One union leader, Matteotti, confirmed the sell out in the union paper Battaglia Sindicale: “Stay at home: do not respond to provocations. Even silence, even cowardice, are sometimes heroic.”

The communists went one step further by forming their own pure ‘class conscious’ squadrons thus decimating the movement further. According to Gramsci, “the tactic…corresponded to the need to prevent the party membership being controlled by a leadership that was not the party leadership”. Quite soon, only 50 sections of 6,000 members remained, supported both by the anarcho-syndicalist Unione Sindicale Italiana (USI) and the anarchist Unione Anarchica Italiana (UAI).

A number of these sections went into action again in September in Piombino when the fascists, who had burned down the offices of the PSI (the same organisation that had sold them out a month before), were intercepted by an anarchist patrol and forced to flee. Piombino was soon to become the nerve centre of the defence against fascism, defending itself a further fascist onslaught in April 1922, before finally succumbing after one and a half days of fierce fighting, when the fascists, aided by the Royal Guard, were able to capture the offices of the USI.

In July 1922, the reformist general strike to defend ‘civil liberties and the constitution’ marked the final disaster for the labour movement, as the work stoppages were not, and could not be, accompanied by aggressive direct action. The fascists simply ran public services with scabs and made themselves masters of the streets. With the strike’s collapse, the fascists mustered their forces to deal with the last remaining outposts of resistance, one of which, Livorno, succumbed to a force of 2,000 squadristi.

If 2016 in the US of A has any connection to Germany 1933 or Italy 1922 etc Its  as yet another example of the futility of ballots in opposing reactionary movements. Fascists  and their fellow travellers are dangerous people, and we owe those who have already fallen fighting them to stop repeating the mistakes of the past.

The Post Election MAGAPOST

Well it looks like that glass ceiling will remain intact for awhile at least. Donald Trump is going to be the next President of the USA. I'm not happy, but honestly I wouldn't be happy if Hillary Clinton had it in the bag.

I'd like to say I'm not surprised and pretend to cleverer than thousands of career politicians but there were a few times like Donald Trump's insulting of the grieving family of a dead serviceman or his "grab em by the pussy" line and his generally very sketchy behaviour regarding women and the allegations of sexual harassment would tank him. The religious right is a big part of the modern Republican party and I couldn't see them supporting such an open womaniser. These are the same folks who made married couples on TV shows sleep in separate beds, for fear that such racy imagery as a couple tucked up in a kingsize duvet  would plunge the nation into Godless hedonism, and then finally Communism. And to be fair a few of them didn't support him.

In the months since Jerry Falwell Jr. endorsed him, Donald Trump has been inexorably associated with Liberty University. We are Liberty students who are disappointed with President Falwell’s endorsement and are tired of being associated with one of the worst presidential candidates in American history. Donald Trump does not represent our values and we want nothing to do with him.A majority of Liberty students, faculty, and staff feel as we do. Donald Trump received a pitiful 90 votes from Liberty students in Virginia’s primary election, a colossal rejection of his campaign. Nevertheless, President Falwell eagerly uses his national platform to advocate for Donald Trump. While he occasionally clarifies that supporting Trump is not the official position of Liberty University, he knows it is his title of president of the largest Christian university in the world that gives him political credentials. Associating any politician with Christianity is damaging to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But Donald Trump is not just any politician. He has made his name by maligning others and bragging about his sins. Not only is Donald Trump a bad candidate for president, he is actively promoting the very things that we as Christians ought to oppose

But by and large that vote block seems to have remained strong. I guess the lesson here is that moral guardian movements are more interested in power than purity.

But even in the moments where I thought for certain Trump was a chump I never got the bizarre sense of self assurance of the Democrats. I saw polls and talking heads saying there would be landslide, and that Hillary would take Florida and crack the deep south by taking a few states and coming close to the others, and the Senate and House were up for grabs. Yesterday (in the UK time zone) the radio news headline program was repeating every hour a brief chat with a Clinton campaign aide saying she was going to win, the only question was by how much, either she'd have a landslide or it'd come down to one state and one county. Those were the only possible results he predicted.

If I were a gambler I would of put money on the Democrats remaining in the White House but by a pretty slim margin. So never take betting tips from me is what I'm trying to say here I guess. But at least I wasn't off the mark by a country mile.

Given how toxic Donald Trump is and how quick he was to alienate, and then insult and anger large demographics of the US population we can forgive the Democrats for a little optimism. But spending a few minutes on American left of centre websites and forums and you'd think they had nominated some sort of clone hybrid of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, when in reality it was the worst candidate they could've picked  There candidate has been a target for hate and fear since 1992 at the latest. 24 years of constant negative associations is quite a handicap even if your a saint, and no one with a snowballs chance in hell of becoming President of the United States is spotless. And while much of the allegations and smears trumpeted by the `lock her up` crowd were grossly exaggerated if not completely made up, Hillary Clinton was more than a bit mucky.

Her allies in the Democratic party hierarchy like disgraced former DNC Chairwoman Schultz were undermining her Primary opponent Bernie Sanders and had cultivated extensive covert links with members of the American media and given favours to wealthy donors.  Its a bit hard to write off accusations of vote rigging, media bias and corruption -your opponents main points of attack-  when people close to you have been caught out doing just that. And in a way that was to your benefits you to boot.

I can also only assume that many American democrats lived in bubbles, because they completely misread the mood of the country. This is a period where belief in the American system and its institutions is at an all time low,

that is why Donald Trump did so well against the Republican also rans and ultimately why he won today. He ran as an outsider on a populist anti-establishment platform and against this the Democratic party in its wisdom put up the person most closely linked to the political establishment, and ran largely on that connection. Thus reinforcing the arguments levelled against her. Indeed she had a lot of trouble beating Bernie Sanders to the nomination, her own establishment credentials and record alienated a very large segment of her own party. The internal opposition was so large that I remember some Democrats were worried that the nomination fight would jeopardise the election campaign.

Multiple Democrats talked at length at how Trump had no experience while Clinton had decades of it. The problem here is that's a double edged sword, lack of political experience is strange as it may seem is a positive with many people, it makes a candidate look more down to earth and in touch with the people. Now admittedly its strange how a millionaire who inherited his wealth, has managed to come across as a champion of the common man, but I suspect his campaign team(s) advised him on how to tap into it*.

Though once again the Democrats seem to have helped him out here, by picking someone even more associated and tied with the established and discredited order than him. 

For many Hillary with her decades in DC and exclusive talks with wealthy business interests and foreign capital for very high fees just makes her seem aloof and corrupt. And they didn't even try to lessen the damage with a "radical" new policy platform.  Honestly I'd prefer to live in a country with her platform over Trump's but there isn't much in the way of a break with the status quo that could counter the criticism or energise their voters.  Though in retrospect I think the Democrats were relying on the fear of a Trump Presidency to motivated the masses instead.

It worked for Chirac I guess.

Going Forward

So what can we learn from today? Apart from the obvious don't put a person already hated for over 20 years as your candidate for a popularity contest. Well I think this election is a very good example of how fragile and useful voting as a mechanism for social change really is.  We had a man championed by racist militia's and open Fascists, and the best opposition that could be put up against him thanks to vested interests and the party system was the very embodiment of what he was mobilising against and was already hated and feared since 1992**.

And with Congress under the control of the Republicans, and some Supreme Court judges nearing retirement it looks like his first term will have no effective official opposition. For Americans the choice is now just hang on, take your lumps and wait four years to try again, or build alternative support networks and structures for resistance. Its sink or swim time, America's vaunted checks and balances no longer apply the country is under the control of open reactionaries. Violence against minority groups is only going to continue and I honestly doubt Trump will make good on any of his vague promises to ease the burden on the working class.

But on the other hand this would have been the case if Hillary's cheerleaders had been correct too. And also if the US government remained split, however in that case electoralists would have an easy scapegoat in the party their sad loathes the most.

Governments that won election have been defeated by protests and strike action, in some cases they've even brought the government down. Casting ballots is not a substitute for political or economic activism, even if your Trump supporter and pleased as punch for today's result its only a matter of time before another political gang gets in and starts undoing your hard work.

Basically what I'm trying to say is don't mourn organise, but by organise I don't mean canvass for the democrats in the mid terms.

*Though now that I think about it many populist leaders claiming to be concerned with the plight of the down trodden have come from upper income brackets, like Napoleon who was from one of the wealthiest families in Corsica, or FDR.

** Yes I keep saying this, because it deserves to be repeated, the Democratic party was so out of touch it didn't see a problem with choosing a woman who'd been a figure of hate on a national level since 1992 if not a bit earlier.



The Illegalists: Anarchism, Banditry and Automobiles

A while back I backed a project on kickstarter. The project was about getting a comic book made about an interesting chapter in French history, 1911-12 when the headlines of all the major French newspapers were dominated by lurid tales of a gang of Anarchistic bandits striking fear into the hearts of the wealthy  and humiliating the police. Dubbed the Bonnot Gang after one of their more prominent members Jules Bonnot the mixed group would raid jewellery stores, banks, armouries and mansions, and one of the first to use the automobile as a getaway car.

Jules and his mates have since become a part of French folklore, a sort of 20th century Robin Hood with his band of merry men. The truth is bit more complex and a lot more bloodier of course. But I was intrigued and the sample sketches provided by the artist Attila Futaki looked great so I stumped up some money and hoped for the best. The book made its goals and earlier this year was published, and I received my copy a few months ago. I've read it a few times and really like it.

The book isn't an in depth look at the Bonnot gang, or French  Anarchism at the time or the concept of Illegalism, it also takes quite a few liberties with the story, though the historical account of what happened with the group and the police. One version of Bonnot's end not used in the book involves a brawl between the police and the army over perceived lack of support in the operation. A lot of accounts by members, supporters and opponents are mutually contradictory too, so I don't really blame the writer for going in a streamlined direction.

This book by Richard Parry* goes into extensive detail into the Bonnot Gang and the author goes to great lengths to make the reader aware of how hard it is to get completely accurate information on anything about the Gang.

Here, the question of 'historical truth' rears its ugly head: some of

the story remains very obscure for several reasons. To begin with, none

of the surviving participants admitted their guilt, at least until after the

end of the subsequent mass trial. It was part of the anarchist code never

to admit to anything or give information to the authorities. Equally, it

was almost a duty to help other comrades in need, and if this meant

perjury to save them from bourgeois justice, then so be it. Hence the

difficulty in knowing who was telling 'the truth'. Those who afterwards

wrote short 'memoirs' often glamorized or ridiculed persons or events,

partly to satisfy their own egos and partly at the behest of gutter-press

sub-editors.

In the trial itself there were over 200 witnesses, mainly anarchists for

the defence, and presumably law-abiding citizens for the prosecution.

Much evidence from the latter was contradictory. While most were

probably telling the truth as far as they could remember, others had

told an inaccurate version so many times that either they believed it

themselves, or, under police pressure, they found it too late and too

embarrassing to withdraw it. A few were certainly motivated either by

private, or a sense of social, revenge.

But the changes made are such that many parts of the story are completely fictive, Jules Bonnot is a hardworking family man who wants to keep his head down and provide for his wife and son, and is practically pushed into criminality and rebellion. The real Jules Bonnot while caring deeply for his son at least (he fought hard for custody, even crossing the border to Switzerland) was already an experienced thief and had already been familiar with Anarchism and even met and worked with some of the gang that appear in the comic later. His love interest Judith while real was not a prostitute, though she was married. Palatano was a close associate of Bonnot but their parting of the ways was very different. Its possible that Bonnot may have murdered him, or Bonnot accidentally shot him in the head, we'll never know for sure.


Basically what I'm trying to say is don't use this comic book as a source on a school assignment, or a research project. Its like Blade Runner and Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the characters have the same names and the setting is correct but both have diverged too far and rarely meet in the middle.







On the other hand, the book does do a very good job of showing instead of telling. We don't get any expository lectures on the ideology of illegalism and reappropriation, but we do see it in action with the heists by the group being motivated mainly by the concept. And the author put in a few comments by the gang to help make this clear.  And throughout there's a not so subtle tone of individualistic defiance and a few introspective passages about society and the prospects for building a better world. So it isn't devoid of political content its just made to work with the story and leaves a lot to the readers imagination.

We also spend time with Dubois and his Anarchist workmates who are trying to build a revolutionary union, and while we don't get a page and a half tract about the importance of anarcho-syndicalism (sadly) we do see the opposition they face, the importance of solidarity and being ready and willing to meet violence with violence and how fearful the capitalists and police are of such a strategy.

In this hostile atmosphere the police and secret services were used aggressively to attack demonstrations and break picket lines. In 1891 twelve workers died in clashes with the police at Fourmies, in 1900 strikers were shot dead at Chalon-sur-Saone (on the orders of the France's first socialist- minister Alexandre Millerrand), three separate strikes and demonstrations ended in murder in 1907 and in 1908 the deaths of two striking quarrymen at Draveil were followed days later by the murder of six construction workers protesting in solidarity. The Interior Ministry had a dedicated 'political brigade' responsible directly to the minister and agent provocateurs and spies infested the CGT. When protest could not be contained by aggressive union-busting employers or the machinations of the security services, the government would typically turn to the army. When more than 200,000 workers walked out in strikes for an 8 hour day on May 1st 1906, the government brought 50,000 troops to the capital and arrested 700 strike leaders. On other occasions they used conscription as a weapon against workers, calling-up striking railmen to force them back to work in 1910 on pain of execution, jailing 200 strike leaders.

They also mention the Anarchist press and name L'Anarchie newspaper, but aside from mentioning police interference and suspicion, it amounts to a cameo.

The main educational strength of the comic is its communicating the hypocrisy and brutality of life in the Third French Republic for workers. The police are shown to be brutal in dealing with the poor, strikes are repressed by armed force, union meetings are raided and participants but in jail for weeks, Devil's Island a penal colony where many reformers and militants were exiled for advocating strike action is named several times as a potential punishment for any crime, be it armed robbery or advocating a pay rise. We also see the police execute by guillotine an innocent man.

Business is also depicted as being callous and willing to support if not push the police and army to keep taking a hardline against the unions and workplace agitators and Anarchist newspapers.

Bonnot's personal plight though romanticised is shown to be driven by a desire for payback, and a strong will to get revenge on the society that has made life hell for him and his friends. As a story its very interesting, a romantic tale of rebellion against all the odds and learning to live in those brief moments of calm during the struggle.

Its a bit thin on factual information or criticism,  but it is a comic book, and as an introduction to Bonnot (the myth of Jules Bonnot), early 20th century France and Anarchism as a political force I think it does its job well. I hope the graphic novel will spark some interest in readers to go further, but I'm happy this project got off the ground and wish its creators, Futaki, Pierce and Vogel well in their future works.

Edit from the future: Activedistributions sells copies if you're curious, haven't seen the book available elsewhere which is a shame.

* Richard Parry is listed under the special thanks credit so the authors of the graphic novel were aware of his work.

Jackboots and Phasers

It seems like we have another theory about the sinister message behind Star Trek, this time from the other side. Unlike that weird essay on Star Destroyer.net I think this is mainly tongue in cheek, its a youtube video on a channel called Film Theory. But I honestly struggle to tell, I have seen people with similar presentations and styles say even more ridiculous things only to find out they were being sincere. I mean I thought that Star Destroyer guy was having a joke before I read the whole thing and realised they were being 100% genuine, and I have seen both being used by other people on the internet as the crux of a serious argument, so I think its worth taking sometime to dissect it.








We don't get off to a great start this fellow doesn't seem to understand what Fascism is. He gives a brief introduction on Fascism but aside from name checking Hitler and Mussolini there's nothing really in it that's unique to Fascism. It's just generic authoritarianism. Fascism is a word that's become incredibly overused and misused over time, probably more so then Communism. It refers to a specific ideology but most times when you see or hear the F word its used to describe a thing the person using it doesn't like. Pinochet's regime in Chile was often described as a Fascist regime and while its true the regime was brutal and relied on the police and military for its survival, it can't really be described as Fascist because its economic foundation was unrestricted capitalism (well until they needed the state to prop them up) and that's pretty much the opposite of Fascist economics. And later on the author (video star?) claims that Fascism hated capitalism, this ahistorical nonsense. His only support for this assertion is one quote from Hitler.


Now there are a number of problems with this, its considered bad practice to rely on quotations devoid of context. Especially when dealing with politicians who lie, exaggerate and in some cases are being sincere in their wishes but find once their in power will have to make some sort of compromise. A good example of this is President Nixon. Nixon is remembered as a war monger and a lying crook but in the 1968 election where he became president he ran on a fairly peacenik friendly campaign, well friendly compared to his image anyway. He claimed he would end the draft (which he did, but in 1973 during his second term) and be a better negotiator then LBJ and Hubert Humphrey.

WINNING THE PEACE

''Every American wants peace in Viet Nam. The question is what kind of peace. The war must be ended, but in a way that does not encourage aggression and thereby sow the seeds of future wars.

''Beyond this, we need a new diplomacy -- one that looks past Viet Nam to the prevention of future wars, and one that enlists other nations more fully in their own defense.

"In Korea, and again in Viet Nam, America furnished most of the money and most of the arms -- and most of the men.

"America is a big country. But there are only 200 million Americans, and there are more than 2 billion people who live in the free world. We need a new diplomacy that will get other nations with a stake in the defense of peace and freedom to bear their share of the burden. And we need a new diplomacy that will insure that, if the people of a friendly nation again are threatened, we help them fight the war but we don't fight the war for them."

 Of course Nixon didn't really end on his watch, if anything the war escalated and spilled over into neighbouring countries. Nixon did eventually make good on his promises to pull US troops out of Vietnam and set up negotiations but most of that happened in his second term after his creditability on the war was already wrecked.


Now what's the relevance here? Well its because the evidence in the video is far from compelling. Hitler and the Nazi party did indeed criticise capitalism (the Nazi version of Titanic film blames British Capitalists for the disaster to pick a random example) but the context gives a different picture. Many of the disparaging comments directed at capitalism by Hitler and his gang revolved around the perceived damaging effects to the nation inflicted by self interested businessmen.


The video actually quotes Hitler's speech in 1927 were he declares the Nazi party to be socialists. Though thankfully he's only interested in the bit at the very end of the passage were he talks about his determination to destroy capitalism under all conditions. This speech is actually quite well known it gets used a lot by right wing types all over the internet to paint the Nazi's as socialists. And it's understandable if your naive enough to take a politician at his word. Remember Hitler also publicly  stated that he wished to be a man of peace, and allied with the Soviet Union for a couple of years after murdering German communists and spending decades warning anyone who would listen that the USSR was a direct threat to the Western world and the German race.

But this particular case is quite egregious, you see the date of the speech was 1927 when the Nazi party was doing rather badly, but the Social Democrats and the Communist party were both on the up. The mid to late 20's are seen as a period of desperation by the Nazi party as it struggled to stay relevant and break out of its 2-3% vote share. Part of this strategy was to try an nick some members from the SPD and KPD which didn't really work, of the three they always came a distant third amongst working class Germans. Another part was to provoke the other two into violent outbursts and frame the Nazi party as the only real opposition to the Reds, which did work, after the press reported the street fighting membership applications went up. But it's important to remember that even when Hitler and Goebbels tried to appeal to the left that they never deviated from their racist core.

For example the "We are socialists" speech was actually about how important Lebensraum, the colonisation of the East was to German survival.

And later on when the Nazi party lost its interest in attracting German workers to it, Hitler made multiple speeches and paragraphs in Mein Kampf talking about a need for a disciplined capitalism.

“We concede that capitalism itself is not the enemy; but rather it is capitalist excess and irresponsibility, such as Jewish Finance Capitalism and the destruction of profiteering from interest, that we must strive ruthlessly against....We do not seek to replace the capitalist system, but to harness its productive capacity for the betterment of the German Nation."

There was also another factor, Hitler believed very strongly that financial and international capitalism was dominated by the Jews, and was one of the two means the Jews had for attacking and dominating the human race, the other being of course "Bolshevism".

The Jewish train of thought is, moreover, clear. The 
bolshevization of Germany, i.e., the extermination of the 
national folkish intelligentsia and the exploitation of Ger- 
man labor power in the yoke of world Jewish finance facili- 
tated thereby, is thought of solely as a preliminary to a 
further extension of this Jewish tendency to conquer the 
world.

Indeed he was so focussed on resisting Jewish financial capitalism that he dedicated one of the later chapters of Mein Kampf "The Will to destruction of Jewish Finance" to the subject.

But beyond speeches, the reality of the Fascist regimes shows how shallow the anti-capitalism of big business really is. See Fascist economics in theory is based on class collaboration and mediation. Labour and Capital are viewed as competing, sectional and at times selfish interests and if the two are in open conflict or one side dominates completely the nation in its entirety suffers. So in order to balance the two, the Fascist party (representing the entire national community) will act as a mediator and moderating force on the two to ensure the best possible outcome for both sides. The Deustche Arbeits Front (DAF) the main organisation for German labour would support wage increases and holidays and other benefits on occasion, in order to ensure high productivity. But on others they would support employers in preventing wages from rising beyond a certain point, make sure the workers would work long shifts, and assisted in the transfers of workers to strategic industries.


In addition the Nazi party provided German industry with thousands of slave labourers. Even in the concentration camps factories and workshops owned by private companies could be found. IG Farben the chemical giant that produced the pesticide Zyklon B operated in Auschwitz

The history of the founding of the camp is connected with the initiative by the German chemical concern IG Farbenindustrie A.G. to build its third large plant for synthetic rubber and liquid fuels. The new camp was to be located in Silesia, beyond the range of Allied bombers at the time. Among the several sites proposed in December 1940/January 1941, the final choice fell on the flat land between the eastern part of Oświęcim and the villages of Dwory and Monowice. The decision was justified by the favorable geological conditions, access to railroad lines, water supply (the Vistula), and the availability of raw materials: coal (the mines in Libiąż, Jawiszowice, and Jaworzno), lime (Krzeszowice), and salt (Wieliczka). Furthermore, the belief that it would be possible for the firm to employ prisoners from the nearby Auschwitz concentration camp was by no means a trivial consideration, and may in fact have been decisive in the choice of the project.

IG Farben put the pieces of the deal in place between February and April 1941. The company bought the land from the treasury for a knock-down price, after it had been seized from its Polish owners without compensation; their houses were vacated and demolished. At the same time, the German authorities expelled the Jews from Oświęcim (resettling them in Sosnowiec and Chrzanów), confiscated their homes, and sold them to IG Farben as housing for company employees brought in from Germany. Some local Polish residents were dispossessed in the same way. Finally, IG Farben officials reached an agreement with the concentration camp commandant on hiring prisoners at a preferential rate of 3 to 4 marks per day for the labor of auxiliary and skilled construction workers. In a letter to his colleagues about the negotiations, IG Farben director Otto Ambros wrote that “our new friendship with the SS is very fruitful.”

And this is just one example, a far more complete list of German firms taking advantage of slave labour in the camps can be found here.

So no matter what Hitler thought about the pursuit of money, the reality is that his Fascist regime was heavily dependent on capitalist enterprises to function, and it worked to support them to ensure the needs of both state and capital were met.


But let's move on now, what about the rest of his statements? Do his other claims about the Federation stand the test of scrutiny? Well not really.


POV:

The viewer is told that we only ever see the viewpoint of the Federation, and that just isn't true. Throughout the franchise we get alternative views. DS9 is the best in this regard, by the time season seven ends we know just as much about the Ferengi, Bajorans and Cardassians as we do the Federation, if not more. We also see different points of view from within the Federation, that's actually an important subplot in early DS9, the Maquis are group of extremely disgruntled colonists are highly critical of the Federation.


But its not just DS9, in TNG and TOS we do get the Klingon and Romulan side of the story in several episodes. Even Voyager tried to do this with its long running villains the Kazon, Hirogen and Borg. Its just that they weren't very good at it.


Conquest and colonisation:


He also says the Federation is a colonising power, which it undeniably is, we spend many episodes at Federation colonies. But then he links it to human colonisation on earth. The destruction of the American Indian societies, the scramble for Africa etc. That is in a word bizarre, see all those colonies are on worlds that had no intelligent life, and the only way to join the Federation is through mutual consent. We see episodes were the Enterprise encounters primitive planets and the crew is supposed to leave them alone. But if they were only interested in empire building and resource gobbling they would love these planets, they would be very easy to dominate and exploit.


The Prime Directive, Star Fleets most important rule, so important that we're told that a Captain is prepared to give his life and the lives of his entire crew to uphold, states this, civilisations that don't have warp technology are to be left alone.


I can think only one episode where the Federation tried colonising a planet that was already inhabited by intelligent creatures (TNG Home Soil). But that was because they didn't know it was there. The species was a form of intelligent crystal,  and once they find out the crystals are intelligent and alive they call the operation off.


Monopolies


Now we getting into familiar ground, much is made of how we don't see ships that don't belong to Star Fleet even though we do. Remember the Maquis? Well they were so critical of the Federations policy that they went rogue and started turning their own ships into a sort of attack fleet. Also Sisko dates and marries and independent freighter captain. There is also quite a few references to individual Federation planets having their own fleets and ship designations.


A combat vessel knocked up by farmers



Communications, its often brought up that the Federation owns a monopoly on interstellar communications. Every time I hear this I think do they? Because there doesn't really appear to be any difference which communicator you other then the prop frame. You can ring up Romulus or use a Klingon hand communicator to hail the Enterprise, the only restrictions seem to be on whether the bad guys can track the signal or if the person your calling is out of range or in some space anomaly that interferes with communications.


Basically what I'm getting at is that they don't really develop their communications technology on the show. Like the transporters its just a means of plot convenience. You can use something the size of a smart phone to alert the flagship of an alien plot with little issue, unless the episode is about the crew overcoming whatever was preventing them from making a call.


A bit later on the author gets back to the point by taking Trek philosophy "The needs of the many" and mirroring it to what he claims are Fascist philosophical pillars, but are mostly just generic collectivist sayings. Like Hitlers "Society's needs come before the individuals'" though to be fair in this section he does get the Fascist idolisation of the state right. And he is correct with  the Italian Fascist symbol being a bundle of sticks with an axe blade. However that was the symbol for ancient Rome, from the time of Roman kings to the Republic era and survived into the Imperial period. Mussolini talk a lot about rebuilding the Roman Empire apart from deliberate evoking of Roman imagery the two societies simply aren't comparable.

 However he draws the connection by linking it to the bundle of sticks proverb and not a representation of the Fasces. The problem here is that the Fasces were a direct reference to the proverb which comes from one of Aesop's fables,

An old man had a set of quarrelsome sons, always fighting with one another.  On the point of death, summoned his sons around him to give them some parting advice. He ordered his servants to bring in a bundle of sticks wrapped together. To his eldest son, he commanded, "Break it." The son strained and strained, but with all his efforts was unable to break the bundle. Each son in turn tried, but none of them was successful. "Untie the bundle," said the father, "and each of you take a stick." When they had done so, he called out to them: "Now, break," and each stick was easily broken. "You see my meaning," said their father. "Individually, you can easily be conquered, but together, you are invincible. Union gives strength."

There's also a similar story about the Bulgar king Khan Kubrat, the Bulgarian national motto (Union gives strength) is a reference to that tale.

 And the proverb was used by the Shawnee Chief Tecumseh while he rallied his people to fight in the war of 1812. So what's happened here is a case of disingenuous, the author has taken something Fascists use to argue that the source they  used and by definition all other usage and allusions by others is automatically  fascist. This would be like claiming Hindu religious rituals are fascist because a lot of them involve drawing some form of Swastika.

That's really the crux of his argument, what's left is a bit where he uses Kirk being punished for mutiny as an example, but unless he's claiming military discipline is inherently Fascist as too, is just another out of context fallacy. He ends comparing the relationship between the Federation and the Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians etc to the Holocaust (no seriously its at 12:10 in the video). Not only is that in very poor taste, it's not remotely true. The Federation doesn't demonise its enemies, at every turn it tries to make peace. They never conquer any of their major enemies, they turn the Klingons into allies, and gave up settlements in disputed space with the Cardassians, and agreed to neutral zone between them and the Romulans, and promised not to build cloaking devices.

The only time we ever encounter a Federation member demonise and entire species, like Captain Maxwell in TNG's the Wounded, or Picard and the Borg, or Section 31 in Deep Space Nine, their shown negatively, with their motives being challenged and explained. Maxwell lost his family in the war with the Cardassians and couldn't let go. Picard also had trouble putting what happened to him at the hands of the borg, but in the episode I Borg he realises he has issues and works to overcome, them. And Section 31, well their incredibly paranoid and have their plans to commit genocide thwarted by the series main cast.

Point is, as a joke this video isn't funny, as a serious argument its a joke.

The RCP's Current Solution to the Gay Question

I first started writing about the American Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) and its really toxic attitude to homosexuals three years ago. I meant to submit this final bit on the current RCP shortly after the last one (I guess we know why that free lancing gig didn’t work out for me hey?). I’ve been busy with many other things but the sad truth is I have actual tried to complete this piece half a dozen times only to scrap it all half way through.

The current official attitude of the RCP to homosexuals is detailed in the grandly titled “On the Position on Homosexuality in the New Draft Programme” or DP for short. This position paper was finished in 2001 and hasn’t been updated in the fifteen years since first publication. The document is very long 34 A4 pages, but what does it actually say, well at the very end it says that homosexuals can now become members of the party. And I mean at the end it only comes up in the second to last section of the paper.

Quote:

Can homosexuals be progressive revolutionary allies and even revolutionary communists and members of the revolutionary vanguard party? The answer on both counts is yes.

So end of the story? Well if you’re an RCP member looking to defend its reputation yes it is, but the DP shows a few severe problems with this attempt to show that the party has really changed. And I’m going to briefly go over them.

The main issue is that the DP is dishonest. It doesn’t apologise for the really nasty stuff the party did to its own members before this change. Indeed it doesn’t acknowledge it even happened. The only mea culpa here is for the 1988 line on homosexuality. This is important because the 1988 line was considered a compromise line implying that its at least a little better than the previous positions. So all the DP is doing is making excuses for having a party position that in their words wasn’t correct. I eventually found copies of all the RCP positions on homosexuality (there were quite a few) thanks to a blogpost by a former RCP member who had drafted a few of them in his past. Its worth reading his account as it goes into detail about the attitude of the party leadership (AKA Bob Avakian). I’ve added the lines as an appendix at the bottom of the page.

The party’s position on the gay question and why it is imperative to solve it has gone through many permutations. In the seventies homosexuality was on the level of prostitution and drug addiction, and a bourgeois plot to enslave the masses. By 1988 the gays were supporting women’s oppression somehow. In 2001? Well according to every other section of the DP the Gays are still colluding in women’s oppression but now it’s not true of all of them. There are some gays and Bi’s who want to end all oppression and one way to tell the difference is whether or not they want to join the RCP.

Quote:

“The Party must constantly bring forward into its ranks those who dedicate themselves to the cause of the international proletarian revolution, who seriously take up the weapon of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism [MLM] and carry out the Party's line and tasks among the masses. The members the Party must attract are those whose dedication is not to narrow and personal interests, but to the historic mission of communism.”

The second to last section opens up membership of the party to homosexuals, the last section is an attempt to bury criticism of the party’s history with the LGBTQ crowd, most of the other sections though are written to try and make it look like the RCP was kinda right about the negative relationship between homosexuality and women oppression. I’m only going to quote just one example here, but I’m not kidding when I say the majority of the paragraphs in this 34 page document are like this.

Quote:

“Historically, lesbian relationships and networks have encouraged and provided support for some women to exist and function outside of traditional roles or as a safe haven from male/women relationships that have been physically or emotionally abusive. But while this may be an individual improvement for some women, it is also true that, as we pointed out in our 1988 article, the larger relations in society still get reflected in lesbian relations to one degree and in one way or another. And more fundamentally, the practice of lesbianism does not solve the overarching problem of the oppression of women as a whole, in U.S. society and throughout the world.”

This particular passage in a vacuum may seem a fairly blunt rebuttal to what’s called identity politics but the majority of the section and the rest of the DP is dedicated to reiterations on these two themes. Same sex couples are just as susceptible to societies ideology (though why this means they seem to exclusively be an obstacle to women’s liberation, rather aiding in all the other oppressions and exploitations of bourgeois society is not explained or even addressed) and that same sex couples don’t on their own represent a rejection of class based society. The last part is true, but that’s true many other things like heterosexual relationships that the RCP either has no problem with (there is no position on heterosexuality in the party’s history) or actively champions.

The repetition of this argument and the layout of the document is designed so that anyone wishing to know about the RCP’s policy on gay members has to read through its self-justification before it gets to the answer. This paper isn’t a product of self-criticism, it’s a compromise and attempt to save face. Any homosexual who attempts to join the party must do so having swallowed the party’s bizarre line that by existing as a homosexual they are probably participating in the oppression of women, and must prove themselves by forgiving the party for writing a bad article in the eighties that it still largely stands by and in general a strict adherence to party doctrines.

So in conclusion, the RCP is still homophobic, (incidentally the only time the word homophobia appears is in the title of a book cited in the footnotes) and unapologetic for its worst behaviour on this issue. It’s moved a little, but there’s merely because of the sustained opposition its received over the decades.



Appendix


From Programme And Constitution of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA (1975)
Socialist society will wipe out the decadence of capitalism in all spheres. Prostitution, drug addiction, homosexuality and other practices which bourgeois society breeds and the bourgeoisie promotes to degrade and enslave the masses of people, will be abolished. The prostitutes, drug addicts and others who are caught in these things will be re-educated to become productive members of society, with working class consciousness. The shame connected with these practices will be taken from the shoulders of these victims and the guilt will be placed where it belongs—on the bourgeoisie.
(page 43)

From New Programme And New Constitution of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (Draft for Discussion) (1980)
The twisted outgrowths of this society, such as pornography and prostitution, will be forcibly abolished right off the bat and their re-emergence will not be tolerated. As for the prostitutes and others victimized by this capitalist degeneracy, they will be given productive work, politically educated and freed from the immediate source of their oppression, while education will also be carried out broadly in society to expose capitalism as the source of this degradation and to remove the tendency to blame or look down on the victims.

As for homosexuality, this too, is a product of the decay of capitalism, especially of the increased ripping apart of the family, which is inevitably taking place under capitalist conditions, especially as it sinks into deeper crisis. In particular it stems from the distorted, oppressive man-woman relations capitalism produces. Once the proletariat is in power, no one will be discriminated against in jobs, housing and the like merely on the basis of being a homosexual. But at the same time education will be conducted throughout society on the ideology behind homosexuality and its material roots in capitalist society, and struggle will be waged to eliminate it and reform homosexuals.
(page 67)

From New Programme And New Constitution of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (1981)

The twisted outgrowths of this society, such as pornography and prostitution, will be forcibly abolished right off the bat and their re-emergence not tolerated. As for the prostitutes and others victimized by this capitalist degeneracy, they will be given productive work, politically educated and freed from the immediate source of their oppression, while education will also be carried out broadly in society to expose capitalism as the source of this degradation and to remove the tendency to blame or look down on the victims.
As for homosexuality, this too, is perpetuated and fostered by the decay of capitalism, especially as it sinks into deeper crisis. This is particularly the case because of the distorted, oppressive man-woman relations capitalism promotes. Once the proletariat is in power, no one will be discriminated against in jobs, housing and the like merely on the basis of being a homosexual. But at the same time education will be conducted throughout society on the ideology behind homosexuality and its material roots in exploiting society, and struggle will be waged to eliminate it and reform homosexuals.
(page 77)

The Olympic games show the fraudulent liberty of right wing Libertarianism



The Olympics are on again, and while the physical achievements of the athletes are quite impressive I’m not really that fussed about who wins medals and who got disqualified for nudging a bar. Even if I was the corruption, security crackdowns and forced relocations of thousands of locals that always seem to accompany these global events would sour me on the topic. It does provide some interesting lessons about government priorities, corporate ethics and culture clash. And very occasionally there will be a very important symbol of protest.

A bit of trivia that I learned about the 2012 Olympics provides an example of why right Libertarian types (Anarch Capitalists, the Watchmen state types, and the Ron Paul style Libertarians of the USA etc.) vision of a perfect society is basically a fraud. The main fixture of the Olympics is of course the medals, and how many medals one nation can accrue. For the 2012 games the precious metals supplied for the shiny medals was supplied by a global mining giant called Rio Tinto. Rio Tinto has stretched across the globe in the US, Canada, Australia, Madagascar and Indonesia. They have a very murky record in practically every operation they run. One part of Indonesia that is of particular interest to Rio Tinto and other mining conglomerates is West Papua, an area that has suffered over fifty years of martial law and is under the direct control of the Indonesian military. If you wish to visit West Papua legally, you require a permit with the signatures of 18 heads of different ministries, and the conflict is estimated to have killed between 100-500,000 people[1].



Indonesian military "pacify" a village

The resource extraction companies like Rio Tinto that operate in West Papua are not independent of the security apparatus, there labour practices and environmental destruction including dumping toxic chemicals into the river system

“ The mine reportedly has caused “massive environmental destruction” in West Papua due to the dumping of waste, including toxic metals, into Indonesia’s river system.(16)   According to WALHI, a leading Indonesian environmental group, the mine has already disposed of one billion tons of tailings into the local river system, resulting in copper concentrations in local rivers that are double the Indonesian legal fresh water limit. Over the life of the project, the mine reportedly will dump up to 3.5 billion metric tons of waste, despite the fact that riverine disposal is expressly prohibited under Indonesia’s water quality control regulation.(17)”[2]

Because of human and labour abuses at mining sites company infrastructure has been targeted, a riot in 1996 shut down the Grasberg mine (one of the largest open pit mines in the world) for several days and cost the company several million. In response the mining companies stepped their support for the Indonesian military.

“  In 1996, local people rioted, destroying $3 million in equipment and shutting the facility down for three days.  Shortly thereafter, Freeport-McMoRan, Rio Tinto’s partner, reportedly started providing significant support to the Indonesian government and military to ensure the protection of the mine.(18)   The company reportedly made an initial investment of $35 million in military infrastructure and vehicles and paid at least $20 million to military and police in Papua between 1998 and 2004.(19)

§    Serious human rights violations have reportedly occurred near the Grasberg Mine and Rio Tinto and Freeport-McMoRan have been accused of complicity due to their reliance on the military and police for security at the mine.  According to Indonesia’s National Commission on Human Rights, “in the mid-1990s the Indonesian security forces indulged in indiscriminate killings, torture and disappearances of local people in their safeguarding of the mine operations and their campaigns against West Papuan secessionists.” (20)”[3]



The support that Freeport (the operations company that Rio Tinto owns 40% of) has given to the Indonesian military and police in West Papua is more than the millions of dollars given to the Police and Military. Company support for this armed protection has become so extensive that Indonesian troops and police are barracked on company property, drive company vehicles, and sport company uniforms[4] and receive direct bonuses and are even fed by the company.



“During a recent interview in Jakarta, the respected Amungme traditional leader ('Mama') Yosepha Alomang demonstrated that she did not need to read the New York Times to know that although the government security forces [including police and military] receive three free meals a day from Freeport, they still receive generous "food allowances" and other payments. The payments were recently revealed to the wider world in an exposé by Jane Perlez and Raymond Bonner published in the New York Times. ”[5]



In return for this generosity the army and police (The distinction seems pretty arbitrary to me) maintain discipline on company sites, keep the area clear of terrorists and on occasion spy on troublesome civil society groups for the company. Indeed when this cosy relationship was exposed in 2005 by the New York Times the Indonesian military fully admitted to the relationship,

“A military spokesman, Major General Kohirin Suganda, said yesterday the military "as an institution" had never benefited from the Freeport payments. He also claimed that individuals did not enrich themselves, rather that the money was spent on the forces in the field. "We have heard that Freeport provides support such as vehicles, fuel and meals directly to the units in the field," Gen Suganda told the Associated Press. "That's the company's policy. It was not done because we requested it."”[6]

This is deplorable but you might be wondering what the point of this is. The abuses and murders being carried out in West Papua are by state institutions; the police and the army. Well for the sake of argument let’s assume that a world revolution took place, inspired by the ideas of right libertarianism, and the state everywhere was overthrown or dissolved, or whatever. Would anything change for the people of West Papua? I realise this is a hypothetical but I don’t believe it would. Rio Tinto, Free Port and the other resource and mining companies would still be there. The metals in the ground would still be there, the market and the capitalist system would still be functioning. So not much has changed, the people of West Papua are being oppressed and a key component of that oppression isn’t even scratched.



Rio Tinto et al aren’t using Indonesian soldiers because they personally oppose the regions secessionism and believe in an Indonesia one and indivisible. They are doing it because they want to keep profits up and costs down.

Since they’ve already shown for decades that they’re prepared to ignore the local population’s needs with their business practices and that they are willing to enforce this  corporate policy through armed force. What’s to stop them from continuing to do so? There using the state army and police, because they were already there. If the army and police go away along with the rest of the state then what’s stopping the companies from building their own security forces? They already employ by proxy Indonesian soldiers so it wouldn’t even be a radical break.

If you’re being menaced by an armed force does it really change anything from your point of view if that force is motivated by a desire to maintain national unity or to get a bonus? If the people are not much happy being beaten by the “people’s stick” would they be much happier being beaten by the “Individuals privately owned stick”?

The simple reality is that both state and capital are oppressive and exploitative institutions so getting rid of one and ignoring the other, leaving aside the question of whether it’s possible won’t stop exploitation or oppression, it simply changes the jargon and uniform logo’s.

---

[1] http://thediplomat.com/2013/11/asias-palestine-west-papuas-independence-struggle/

[2] http://londonminingnetwork.org/2010/04/rio-tinto-a-shameful-history-of-human-and-labour-rights-abuses-and-environmental-degradation-around-the-globe/

[3] Idib

[4] Leith, Denise. The Politics of Power; Freeport in Suharto's Indonesia. University of Hawai'i Press, 2003.

[5] http://www.downtoearth-indonesia.org/story/illegal-military-payments-freeportrio-tinto

[6] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/dec/30/indonesia.johnaglionby

Cops, Dirty Harry, And Junious Poole: By Hal Draper

 The response to a sniper in Dallas targeting police officers has been rather mixed, I seen some tweets and FB status and forum comments outraged, alarmed, attempting neutrality, and few being quite giddy. In response to the latter a friend shared this 1972 address by Hal Draper from the Marxist Internet Archive.

 

And I'm sharing it here because I think the topic of urban terrorism in response to police repression and societal indifference is arguably just as relevant today as it was when first given. 

I am going to talk about Dirty Harry and Junious Poole, and about your responsibility for both.

Dirty Harry, as you may have found out by now, is a well-made right-wing movie, virtually a Birchite propaganda film, made with the cooperation of the great liberal mayor of San Francisco and his great liberal Police Department. Harry, a San Francisco police detective, is a mad-dog sadist killer in plain clothes, with a badge, who hates people, blacks, browns, and himself (more or less in that order) and who is shown to be a great hero who rescues civilization from a crazy killer, who is also in plain clothes but minus a badge. This crazy – I mean the second crazy – is a pathological sniper who is likely to get YOU if you don’t watch out. And so the audience is set up to root for Dirty Harry as he denounces the Supreme Court decisions as soft on crime, and indicts the civilian bleeding-hearts who release an insane murderer to kill more people just because their civil-libertarian do-gooders. This enlightening film even shows you that this mad dog (I mean the sniper) gets himself beat up deliberately in order to accuse Dirty Harry of doing it – so who can believe any stories about police brutality now? The victim probably paid someone to get beat up himself ...
That’s the way it goes, and it sets you up to nod your head as the scriptwriter, on the basis of fraudulent claims of how the rad-libs tie the hands of the cops from protecting you and me – the scriptwriter shows how you need touch cops, free-shooting cops, violence-loving cops; in fact, he shows how you need mad-dog types on the police force in order to protect you against the mad dogs who are not on the police force.

That’s Dirty Harry. Now who is Junious Poole?
Last Monday, in San Francisco, Junious Poole, a black man who was high on liquor and benzedrine, and low on money and hope, took up a rifle in the street and leveled it at two random policemen who happened to be walking along, emptied its bullets at them in a blur of hatred of something, wounding both of them. What he told newspaper reporters reads like an imitative movie script of what a poor devil like him is supposed to say: “It all came down on me,” he said. “No income. My wife collecting welfare, two babies ... I felt disgusted with the whole world and the situation. You can be a fool for so long, man, and then you just begin to see it in front of you,” he said.

Well, this poor casualty of society, who had been a fool for so long: what did he begin to see in front of him? Here’s what he also said: “I saw all the background that I have been told when I saw these two policemen walking down the street.” That’s Poole, verbatim.

What was “all the background” he had been told – what did he see when he saw these two policemen walking down the street? He saw the signs scrawled on walls: “Off the pig!” and similar enlightening political messages about making the revolution in the streets, and picking up the gun to Get the Man. That on the one side. On the other side, he saw all the Dirty Harries in uniform who had roughed up and beaten up blacks in the ghetto areas.

And what did the two policemen see? They saw that Dirty Harry was right: give it to ’em before they give it to you – knee in the groin, bullet in the head, get tough because your life is on the line.
So Dirty Harry produces Junious Poole; and Junious Poole produces more Dirty Harries; and you have a fine old war between the Cops and the Crazies, the Crazies and the Cops – till you can’t tell who’s the cop and who’s the crazy, and moreover it hardly matters.
Now my target in all this is neither Dirty Harry nor Junious Poole. I have no wish to spend any time turning cops into vegetarians or flower children or mourning over their lost souls. I was brought up in a Marxist movement where it was an axiom that a man in this society who put a policeman’s uniform on him and took his club in hand was, until evidence to the contrary, nothing but scum. But, by the same token, I learned a very long time ago not to confuse the ruling powers of society with the scum in their employ.

My target is also not the poor fool, aching with his miseries, who picked up the rifle and might just as well have shot himself in the head as those policemen. My target is the people who told him “all that background.” I refer to the self-styled radicals who, for some years now, have been burbling over with their rhetoric about “offing the pig,” and “picking up the gun,” and “revolution in the streets,” and “urban guerrillas,” and cheering every time somebody else bombs the window of a Bank of America branch, or terrorizes a PG&E power line, or incubates a revolution in a safety-deposit vault, or otherwise takes direct action in terrorism according to the most fashionable doctrines of 1890. Because it has been these bumpkin-blowhards of the Big Bang theory of revolution who have been very successful not in tearing apart the System, but in tearing apart what there was of a radical movement that was aborning.

In the whole history of movements of social dissent, in this or any other country, I doubt whether there was ever an emptier and more self-defeating theory of revolutionary action than this trend in our recent years which made “offing the pig” its main slogan, and orated about making the “revolution in the streets.” Of course, the two come down to the same thing, because if you sally out into the streets to make the revolution, it’s the pigs you’re going to meet. You are not going to run into the Board of Directors of General Motors in this your chosen battlefield, nor into the Cabinet, nor even the office boys of the Powers That Be: the enemy you meet “in the streets” is the hired scum, that’s all. And the cream of the jest is that, for every cop that is killed by some self-styled revolutionary bravo, not a hair is mussed on the head of the ruling class, who have a right to laugh themselves to death over these pseudo-revolutionary antics while, in public, they make a horrified outcry about the crimes of the subversives.

It should be understood that the police are the paravanes of the capitalist state power. That implies a comparison with (say) a minesweeper. It is in mined waters, and any direct contact with a mine will blow a hole in its side. Its whole strategy, therefore, is to avoid any direct contact, but to interpose its own buffers – one or more layers of buffers – which any explosive force has to get through before it can even confront the real core of power. The minesweeper’s paravanes are most useful the further they are removed from the real center that has to be defended. A paravane makes contact with an explosive mine, and it is blown up: the paravane is destroyed, but the ship itself is safe because it has been destroyed.

The police act as the paravanes of the system. They are there, way out in the open, as the first contact with potentially explosive social material. If a cop is killed, or merely attacked, the state power makes a big hue and cry, and can draw a long breath of relief. It can use the incident for arousing public opinion against dissenters; it can use it for escalating repression; it can use it for deepening reaction; and in exchange, all it pays is a pension to the cop’s widow, if that. But not a hair on its own head is hurt. The transaction is so beautifully cheap, for the state, that it could not be better if it had been planned by itself; and you never know whether it was or not. There is a big misunderstanding about the question of telling the difference between police provocateurs and plants, on the one hand, and sincere if stupid Weatherman types, on the other. The misunderstanding is this: that it makes much difference whether you can tell them apart. In the history of terrorism, some waves of reaction have been launched by governments which produced a terroristic incident to order, and some by governments that simply waited for some obliging chucklehead to do it for them. And in some cases, to this day it has not been possible to determine which was which.

I remember vividly an interview that TV newsman Mike Wallace (I think it was he) held with Eldridge Cleaver in Algeria, the first interview he gave after fleeing there, I think. It was broadcast after the first wave of police assaults on the Black Panthers, and, if I’m not mistaken, at the time Huey Newton’s life was hanging in the balance in the courts. In the midst of this lynch atmosphere, which was based on the proposition that the Panthers were nothing but terroristic assassins, Cleaver calmly told his interviewer that sure, it would be a good idea if President Nixon were assassinated.
Now, could Cleaver have done any better to help the lynch movement against the Panthers if he had been paid to do his stuff by the FBI? As it happens, I have no doubts about Cleaver’s sincerity in this case; this political ignoramus and half-baked Theoretician of the Absurd has been a disaster for the Panthers just as he was a disaster for the Peace and Freedom Party, which he knifed in the back after being named its presidential candidate. A police spy would probably be cleverer. But what difference does it make whether the FBI gets his help free or on salary, as this great revolutionary Thinker keeps on sending his advice, from Algeria, on how the radical movement here can get its head chopped off?
This whole movement of sick-radicalism, as represented by these terroristic elements or Weatherman types, counts on something to puff it up from the nullity it really is. They count on you. That is, they count on their mischievous antics meeting with a certain amount of unspoken sympathy from the liberal and radical public, because their intentions are so good, or because they are regarded as being real free-wheeling revolutionaries. That is pure bull-bleep. These elements have nothing in common with a serious revolutionary movement. These types are really middle-class liberals in a frenzy. In fact, some of them act this out by alternating between supporting Democratic Party left-fakers on the one hand and writing articles, on the other, about the chemistry of pipe bombs.

A long time ago, my friend Karl Marx had their number. In 1850 he wrote a review of a couple of books by French police spies on the conspiratorial secret societies of the day – the Weathermen of the day. In this piece, Marx took them down and shook them out as never before. Here are a couple of sentence from Marx’s review, for example:

“Their job indeed consists in forestalling the process of revolutionary development, pushing it artificially into crises, making a revolution on the spur of the moment without the conditions for a revolution. For them the only condition for the revolution is a sufficient organization of their conspiracy. They are the alchemists of the revolution, and wholly share the confusion of ideas and the limitation to fixed notions of the old alchemists. They go eagerly for invented devices to achieve the revolutionary miracle: incendiary bombs, explosive contraptions with magical powers, riots, whose effects are sure to be all the more miraculous and awesome the less they have any rational basis. Busy with such plot-mongering, they have no other aim than the next overthrow of the existing government, and look with deepest disdain on a more theoretical clarification of the workers as to their class interests.”

So much for Karl Marx. But of course Marx is out of date for these bomb-bumblers, whose theories were mildewed with age before Marx was born. These theories, now dressed up with new terms like “urban guerrillaism” or others, have always been the rediscoveries of people overcome by their own impotence, frustrated by their own lack of any really revolutionary perspective, giving out with their last shriek of liberal rage just before going back to “make it” inside the system or to back the latest capitalist politician who uses the latest phrases of the left. Above all, as Marx already said, they have the deepest disdain for the tasks of theoretical education and long-term class-struggle organization of the mass of working people in this country, who in turn have the deepest contempt for them, and rightly so.

Leave these types to their games of Cops and Crazies. That is not the way.