CLASS COLLABORATION

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—Those who bravely resist the US war machine or make themselves inconvenient for western empire managers don’t get to become popular heroes. You don’t see the westerners who work to stop weapons shipments to Gaza being celebrated for their efforts on CNN and the BBC. You don’t see antiwar activists getting Hollywood movies made about their work — at least not until the wars they were protesting lie safely in the distant past. You don’t see journalists who work to expose the most egregious crimes of the empire being elevated to fame and fortune.

The only figures who get elevated to fame and fortune in this fake plastic dystopia are those who either actively serve the interests of the empire or who passively distract people from its abuses. Donald Trump. Elon Musk. The Kardashians. Taylor Swift. Spider-Man and SpongeBob. [And a huge mob of obscenely paid sports figures and their media chroniclers and sycophants.—Ed)

RAMIN MAZAHERI—What would have happened is merely this, and I have seen France’s tested CRS riot police defeated many a time in France: a mass of protesters, enraged at the limitation on their dearly-held bourgeois democratic rights of free assembly and speech, push past the cops and merely go protest a few hundred feet closer than where they were.

That is merely what we wanted at the 2024 DNC, but the numbers were not there: Chicagoans stayed at home, and not enough outsiders thought the DNC protest was worth making a trek to.

MARGARET KIMBERLEY—n 2012 Angela Davis felt compelled to give fulsome praise to Barack Obama, including claiming that his rise to the presidency showed a connection with the Black radical tradition. The false statement was quite alarming, as Davis ignored the obvious, that the Obama campaign was a creation of the neo-liberal and imperialist elites who needed a more attractive face in a moment of crisis. Our late comrade Glen Ford observed that, “The ‘delusional effect’ that swept Black America with the advent of the First Black President has warped and weakened the mental powers of some of our most revered icons – and it has been painful to behold.”

EDITOR—After a historically brief postwar period when the working class (especially in Europe) could enjoy a more tolerable standard of living thanks to the adoption of social democracy out of fear for the Soviet example— better wages, unemployment cushions, healthcare, free education, etc.—the inexorable capitalist crisis is forcing a shrinking of the “goodies” with which the ruling class bought the passivity of the masses. This is inherent in capitalism which, due to its internal dynamic always goes from boom to bust, a problem now magnified with the extension of capitalism to global dimensions under US imperialism. 

Thus, the working class today in practically all capitalist countries is feeling the pain of living under totally non-representative increasingly tyrannical oligarchies and fake democracies, a situation aggravated by a decadent set of blatantly hypocritical “civilised values” (i.e., the rise of “WOKE imperialism”), and the grotesque lies implicit in the pretend fight for human rights and against anti-semitism, that serve to muzzle free speech, protect Israel from retribution for its multitude of heinous crimes, and facilitate the deletion of democratic norms. 

THOMAS FAZI—The Wagenknecht phenomenon is fascinating — and unique — for several reasons. Not only has she managed to establish the BSW as one of the country’s major political forces in a matter of months, but she’s also running on a platform that is unique in the Western political panorama, at least among electorally relevant parties. Though Wagenknecht tends to avoid framing her party in tired Left-Right terms, its platform can best be described as left-conservative.