A Black Agenda Radio Commentary by Bruce A. Dixon

In the European “wars of religion,” the losers were often hanged. This is Jacques Callot’s represenation in the 1630s. (Wikipedia)

[dropcap]When you want[/dropcap] to understand how the big wide world works you don’t look back at yourself and try to make it rhyme with what you already think you know.

That means you don’t ask smug, Eurocentric, self-congratulatory Bill Maher questions like “Why are they so touchy? How come those backward Muslims separate their religion from politics?” If you actually want to understand why some fraction of Muslims saw gratuitous insult instead of satire when the French magazine Charlie Hebdo depicted the prophet Muhammad doing things you wouldn’t want your own small children to see, or pregnant Muslims as “Boko Haram sex slaves” howling for welfare checks, all you’ve got to do is look at is two bits of history. Philosopher Karen Armstrong, in her latest book Religion and the History of Political Violence, goes a long way to break it down.

The first bit of history Armstrong explains, is that the notion of religion as a set of practices and beliefs about the diety you can perform on Sundays separate from how you put together political and economic life is an exclusively Western concept that nobody on earth before 17th and 18th century Europeans would recognize at all. The Sanskrit, Jewish, Arabic and other old terms for “religion” all mean something that recognizes no separation between politics, economics and morality and moral life.

Bill Maher (Via DonkeyHotey, flickr)

It took more than a century of warfare in the 1600s and 1700s at a cost of hundreds of thousands of lives to establish a kind of religion in Europe which could be separated from politics and economics. That way Europeans could have slavery and capitalism. European ruling elites could exterminate tens of millions in history’s greatest genocide colonizing the New World and still call themselves Christians. Non-European Muslims are being allowed only a generation or two and fortunately a lot less bloodshed to make that kind of transition, which brings us to Armstrong’s second bit of relevant history.

She reminds us that the 20th century’s so-called modernizers in the Muslim world mostly didn’t do it with friendly and democratic persuasion. Under the approving eyes of the West, they did it forcibly, with secret police, torture, discriminatory laws, kangaroo courts and especially in Iran sponsored by Britain and the US, with bullets fired into crowds of often nonviolent protestors. In addition to needed reforms like curtailing shariah law, Turkey’s Mufasta Kemal Atatürk, the Pahlevis in Iran and Egypt’s Gamel Adbul Nasser each locked up thousands of religious opponents, and purged them from the civil service and political life.

This ain’t exactly how you train people to engage in a friendly, respectful and civil discussion of religious and political differences. It IS how you make lasting enemies, ever suspicious and vengeful, alert for the next slight or insult. But this is the real and relevant history Americans have trained themselves not to know.

Add to this the wave of armed US and European interventions in Muslim lands, our puppet governments, our occupations, torture campaigns and drone strikes, and factor in that even while cruise missile liberals like Bill Maher and US presidents say we just don’t DO religious war, US military personnel “at the tip of the spear” call their enemies “hajis” and police departments in the US and Europe surveil Muslim communities wholesale and incarcerate Muslims disproportionately.

In this context, unlike jokes exposing the foibles of the powerful, which are real satire, Charlie Hebdo, which is now subsidized by the French government is engaged in something much like war propaganda. And Bill Maher is just another cruise missile liberal, a bully.

For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Bruce Dixon. Find us on the web each week at www.blackagendareport.com.

Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, and a member of the state committee of the GA Green Party. Contact him via this site’s contact page or via email at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.

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“The popular distrust in capitalist democracy and authoritarian elections if now so widespread the movement to boycott them is becoming nearly universal.”

WHAT A FEW OF OUR MEMBERS SAY ABOUT JOINING AND/OR SUPPORTING THE EBA:

wo of our members have each written extensive comments on two blogs I just published. Those are referenced here: “Why I Boycott Elections by DeNeice Kenehan, and “Why I Became an Election Boycott Advocate” by Terri Lee.

Other brief comments are here:
“I boycott all phony elections because to participate in the farce is to endorse the farce. The billionaire class controls all governments in the United States of America and in many of its imperialist allies, clients and neo-colonies as well. In fact, in the 130 or so countries within the U.S. imperial-global hegemony, there are no democracies, and to pretend that such plutocracies are democratic, and even to vote in or run in these charades, is to endorse them and to give your consent to the billionaires to govern.

Turning the silent boycott into a loud and militant boycott makes the implicit explicit:

1) We do not agree to comply with your rule, billionaires! 2) We do not agree with your totalitarian dictatorship over most of the world. 3) We do not agree with your murderous wars of plunder. 4) We do not agree with your occupations and repressions of nations all over the world, nor do we agree with your worldwide repression of the working class and poor. 5) Our campaign of noncompliance with your rule starts with this boycott, but it does not end here. We will continue to whittle away at your illegitimate power until you have none at all.”—Christopher Driscoll

“I am a member and support the Election Boycott Advocates because it is the only rational alternative to our corrupt political two party system which we have today. If we continue on this path we either must destroy it or it will destroy us. It is controlled by corporations and the wealthy elite and the facts and experience of many years conclusively show that.”–Thomas Baldwin

“I am an Election Boycott Advocate because elections truly do not matter. The political and economic system is arranged for and by the ruling class. In order for the working class to have any sort of decent life, we must control the means of production.”—Bob Carson

“ I boycott voting for representatives because those we elect are NOT held accountable for their actions! When you vote YOU give your consent for them to do whatever the hell they want. I refuse to give them that POWER.”—Emmagee Mindy Oaktown

“Capitalism in any form and democracy are mutually exclusive. There is no democracy in America. Elections in America operate within the confines of the bourgeois narrative and not beyond. Elections merely provide the ruling classes with a cloak of legitimacy. Don’t give it to them. Boycott.

Sure, the ruling classes will still rule, but they will not be able to claim legitimacy. Voting is a coward’s way out. The voter pretends he has a voice. This pretense spares the voter humiliation which would otherwise force him to stand up for himself and fight the ruling class head on.”—John Mcgarry

“The working people are barred from participation in bourgeois parliaments (they never decide important questions under bourgeois democracy, which are decided by the stock exchange and the banks) by thousands of obstacles, and the workers know and feel, see and realize perfectly well that the bourgeois parliaments are institutions alien to them, instruments for the oppression of workers by the bourgeoisie, institutions of a hostile class, of the exploiting minority.” -V.I Lenin, 1918, “The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky”—Brad Holhut

“Three reasons I boycott elections
1. Republicans
2. Democrats
3. I forgot the third,”—DeNeice Kenehan

“Our federal elections are a farcical charade that no longer
matter. They’re held to give us the semblance of choice where there is none. Our elected officials are selected and installed by global corporate elites who have no loyalty to anyone or anything but profit. Pretend, if you must, but at your own peril.”— Jill Dalton (See Jill’s blog on this entitled:  “Does Voting Matter?”)

“I was a sucker for the old freedom and democracy spiel. After Obama reneged on his political promises of hope and change, I could no longer deny those we elected and who swore an oath to represent we the people were no longer doing it. I started to say out loud and to the consternation of many that our democracy is a lie. Freedom is a joke. We are all being played for the suckers we seemed so willing to be. So just like that I decided to stop voting. If and until I feel my vote counts, that those I vote for are interested in representing what is best for the common good instead of a wealthy elite, then I have no one to vote for. Very simple and practical, really.”—Willa Bea

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OpEds
Barry Grey

The Democratic party mafia: the slickest mask for what is in effect a bipartisan-implemented plutocracy. (click to enlarge)

[I]n less than three weeks, the United States will hold national elections to choose a third of US senators, all 435 members of the US House of Representatives, the governors of 36 out of 50 states, and thousands of state legislators.

The elections come at a time of immense crisis, nationally and internationally. The American people are being dragged into yet another war in the Middle East, as Washington pursues a global militarist policy that leads inexorably toward World War III.

At home, chronically high unemployment is fueling a growth of poverty, while basic social services—education, health care, housing—are being slashed, along with wages and pensions.

Democratic rights are being shredded, with police-state mobilizations in cities such as Ferguson, Missouri against social protest and the government sweeping up the communications of every American.

Social inequality has reached levels not seen since before the Great Depression of the 1930s. And now an Ebola epidemic in Africa is exposing the criminal neglect of healthcare infrastructure in the US and threatening to spiral into an international catastrophe.

All of these issues are being ignored in the election campaigns of the two big business parties, the Democrats and the Republicans. Instead, what predominate are banal and right-wing platitudes combined with mutual mudslinging. The entire process is dominated by corporate money, with all of the rival candidates on the take.

The Democratic Party is seeking to hold onto its majority in the upper house of Congress, the Senate. This is presented by the media as a momentous issue. In reality, which party ends up in control of Congress makes no difference for working people. The outcome of every election, regardless of which party wins, is a shift of the political system further to the right.

The Democrats secured comfortable majorities in both the House and the Senate in 2008. They proceeded to continue the war in Iraq, escalate the war in Afghanistan, expand the taxpayer bailout of Wall Street, implement a health care “reform” that slashes workers’ benefits and increases their costs, impose a 50 percent cut in the pay of newly hired auto workers, and oversee a vast expansion of government spying on the population.

Neither party offers any policies to address the raging social crisis. The Obama administration touts a “recovery” that has brought the share of total household wealth held by the richest 0.5 percent to just under 35 percent and that of the top 0.1 percent to 20 percent. The Republicans, who work hand-in-glove with the Democrats to slash working class living standards, demand even bigger tax cuts for the rich and deeper cuts in social programs.

The basic bipartisan unity extends to a foreign policy of endless war and militarism. The Democrats who postured as opponents of the Iraq war under Bush—and insured that war funds were continued when they gained control of Congress—are avidly backing Obama’s new war in Iraq and Syria.

On the domestic front, there is no mention of the bankruptcy of Detroit, imposed by a Republican governor working with a Democratic mayor and backed by the Obama White House. The gutting of Detroit city workers’ pensions and health benefits, in violation of the state constitution and under the dictates of an unelected “emergency manager,” is being used as a precedent for cities across the US. In a debate Sunday night, Mark Schauer, the Democratic challenger to Republican Governor Rick Snyder, made clear that he supported the Detroit bankruptcy as well as the wage-cutting bankruptcy of General Motors and Chrysler.

War, austerity and the attack on democratic rights are all massively unpopular, but the views and interests of working people, the vast majority of the population, find no expression in the election campaigns of the two parties. The experience of the Obama administration, which came to power by exploiting popular disgust with Bush and his policies of war and social reaction, only to continue and deepen the same policies, has further alienated the masses of Americans from the political system.

They no longer believe that their votes will have any impact on the policies pursued by the government. They try to block out the meaningless debates between the candidates and the mind-numbing attack ads financed by the corporate donors who control both parties and the system as a whole.

The crisis of the American capitalist political system results in an election that is barely being followed by the electorate, the majority of whom feel little commitment but a great deal of anger toward both parties. One would hardly know, from the level of interest shown by the population, that an election is taking place.

None of the traditional outward signs of an election—license plate stickers, lawn signs promoting candidates, campaign buttons—are to be seen.

All signs point to a record low turnout on November 4, even lower than the dismal 37 percent of eligible voters who cast ballots in the last nonpresidential election, in 2010. Voter turnout in the primary elections earlier this year, in which the Democrats and Republicans chose their candidates, hit new lows, with, in many cases, fewer than 5 percent of eligible voters going to the polls.

The likely participation of younger voters, who turned out in relatively large numbers to elect Obama in 2008, is particularly revealing. In recent polls, only 23 percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 said they were definitely going to cast a ballot this year.

The contrast could hardly be starker between the acuteness of the issues the American people confront—war, poverty, dictatorship—and the empty and right-wing character of the campaign and general popular disinterest in the election. This contradiction bespeaks a system that is coming to the end of its rope. The immense growth of social inequality has turned American democratic institutions into hollow shells behind which the corporations, the military brass and the intelligence agencies conspire against the people of the US and the world.

The political system is incapable of responding to the crisis facing the working class because it is an instrument of a plutocracy.

The 2014 election is an expression of the crisis of American capitalism, which is at the center of the breakdown of world capitalism. The abstention is not an expression of either acceptance of the status quo or popular complacency. Social opposition is mounting, but the working masses as of yet see no alternative.

As they enter into struggle, they will inevitably seek alternatives outside the two official parties. The burning question is the building of  a socialist option. The coming mass movement, must break all ties with the Democratic Party, and [be] imbued with socialist consciousness and an independent revolutionary program.

Barry Grey is a member of the Social Equality Party, which he endorses, naturally, as an option out of the above-described criminal mess.

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