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The USA one month after the elections

On election day, we interviewed several leftists from the USA about their feelings about the elections. At the time, a Trump victory was still a distinct possibility. One month on, we interviewed US socialists based in Germany, the UK, and the USA to try to get a sense of the current mood

Phil Butland
07/12/2020

Interviews with Tina Lee (TL), Kate O’Neil (KON), and James Ziegler (JZ)

Could you please briefly introduce yourself?

TL: I’m Tina Lee, a writer, researcher, and project manager in Berlin. I’m registered to vote in Virginia.

KON: I’m a socialist from the US, active on the American Left for many years, and have lived and worked as a teacher in London, UK since 2012. I’m a contributor to Counterfire on US-American politics.

JZ: My name is James Zeigler. I am a member of marx21 (US), and resident of Pasadena, CA and past resident of Portland, OR.

At the time of the first interview, a Trump victory still seemed possible. Now it seems that Biden has won a clear majority. What is your reaction?

JZ: I was actually not surprised to see Trump on the verge of what looked like another election day victory. I was surprised to see that Biden had been able to flip PA, MN, MI, and GA from 2016 Trump wins over Hillary. I am, however, not surprised it was close— but am very surprised by the increased voter turnout for both candidates. I do not think we can extrapolate much from the increased turn-out other than that this election cycle is far more politically charged, and I think the mail-in option made a difference with turn-out.

Do you think that Trump will go gracefully?

TL: HA.

JZ: He is incapable of grace. Humility is not something he has ever shown.

There were some nasty right-wing demos in Washington and elsewhere. Who organised these demos, and what are they doing now?

JZ: Mostly Proud Boys, or other ‘Patriot’ groups like ‘Patriot Prayer’, and I am sure other Nationalist groups and the White Supremacist fringe that will get involved There are plenty of militia groups (3 percenters) that will also get involved, usually seen in military grade body armour and weaponry.

Isn’t it now time to scrap the Electoral College system?

TL: Yes! And introduce a raft of other voting reforms, and ban gerrymandering, and fight for statehood for DC and Puerto Rico. Let’s fight on many fronts.

JZ: It’s been time for quite awhile. I doubt that it will go away any time soon. It has been the symbolic equaliser for ‘Rural America’ vs the evil ‘City Slickers’ (Liberals). The fight over keeping this system of minority control has been viewed as absolutely necessary to protect classic ‘American Values’ (Conservatism, Heartland, Christian Values, etc).

What can we expect of a Biden/Harris government?

JZ: A less verbally offensive version of Trump politics. They literally have no choice because Biden and Harris are 100% dedicated to bi-partisan politics, because the Democrats lost in both the House and Senate. Unless they want to get nothing done, they must draft right-leaning legislation, which will help further pave the way to Trump 2.0 (either Trump or potentially his son’s running in 2024).

TL: People often haven’t read Biden’s manifesto and don’t realise that he has the most progressive platform of any president in US history — far to the left of either Obama administration on issues such as immigration reform, environment, and criminal justice. Considering what has come before that certainly doesn’t make him a socialist, but it means there are some real possibilities for progress if he doesn’t face massive gridlock and follows through with what he promises. We will have to wait for Senate run-offs in Georgia to assess more properly.

But what I expect initially is a slate of executive orders overturning the Muslim Ban, reinstating DACA (the Dream Act), and restoring environmental standards to where they were pre-Trump. I am looking forward to this while being realistically pessimistic about the massive entrenched challenges facing this administration and their own tendency to side with centrists. I’m not assuming the worst before they even start, though, because whether it’s right or left, it’s best to look at what people actually do, not what they say.

KON: An attempt to move politics back to a pre-Trump, Obama-style centre. This was clearly the party leadership’s goal in side-lining Sanders during the primary, and it was further evidenced by the support they welcomed from Wall Street and Bush-era hawks during the campaign and of Washington insiders for cabinet roles after the election. Internationally, this will mean a recommitment to organisations and agreements that Trump has snubbed, such the WHO, NATO, and the Paris climate accords, and an overturning of the Muslim travel ban. Biden has also signalled his wishes to re-join the Iraq nuclear deal, although recent tensions with Iran over the assassination of their lead nuclear scientist may complicate this.

Domestically, scientific agencies like the Centres for Disease Control and the Environmental Protection Agency will be re-legitimised; commissions will be set up to address social issues like police abuse and separation of immigrant families; and some limited ‘pathway to citizenship’ for undocumented immigrants begun under Obama will be renewed. Most of this can be done through executive order. We are also certain to see some emergency action on COVID, such as one-off economic relief measures, tighter social distancing restrictions and funding for treatment and vaccination. It won’t be hard to improve on Trump’s performance in this area, though. He just seems to close his eyes, plug his ears and sing ‘Happy Birthday’ as the virus spins out of control.

Beyond this, those looking for a departure from status quo capitalist management are sure to be deeply disappointed. The few progressive reforms that Biden has pledged to put on the table in 2021—a 7% tax hike on corporations, the addition of a ‘public option’ to Obama’s healthcare reforms, a $2 trillion fund for clean energy development, and the creation of 5 million jobs through a $700 billion economic boost—will all undoubtedly be blocked or whittled down by Republicans in Congress, regardless of the outcome of the Georgia senate race in January. Even if they were to pass in full, they are far narrower in scope than Sanders’ Green New Deal or Medicare for All plans and rely essentially on private sector investment.

But this moderate brand of politics cannot resolve the deep crisis country is facing. Whatever the intentions, the Biden administration will be operating under conditions very different from those of the Obama administration. Transformative economic, health, and climate change is required, and the less Biden is willing or able to issue from White House, the more politics will need to fought over between right and left in the streets.

In 2020, one of the most discussed political slogans was “Defund the Police”. Could this demand be realised (and how)?

TL: Despite all the hand-ringing over the phrasing, the slogan accomplished a lot: it moved the Overton window on police reform, drew attention to police budgets, and started a conversation about alternatives to the carceral state. A huge majority of Americans support divesting funds to the police to invest in social programs – which is what #defundthepolice stands for. Abolitionists should build on this momentum and continue to stack up victories for community-led solutions and alternatives to sending our taxpayer dollars to increasingly militarised police departments that don’t make communities safer.

JZ: Not under a Biden/Harris presidency. Both are staunch supporters of police; Harris is a cop, and her CA record should illustrate her absolute support of more cops, more jails. I think there will be some states where there will be token shows of de-funding, or of restructuring police budgets in ‘Liberal’ states, but because these changes will be debated over and end up completely watered-down versions of real change. Any changes will prove to be ineffective, and instead of identifying the poor implementation, they will blame ‘socialistic’ type programs that prove the failures of socialism and scrap the entire project and blame us.

Since the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, there are worries the new Supreme Court could ban all abortions. How likely a scenario is this?

TL: It is not likely that SCOTUS bans abortion. Instead, it seems possible that they could overturn Roe v. Wade, a case that said women have the right to an abortion without excessive government regulation. With that case revoked, we can expect to see a flurry of fascist state laws regulating women’s bodies. However, it is still possible to make state-level laws that enshrine a woman’s right to choose, or for state level courts or constitutions to do so. So, the Supreme Court won’t likely ban abortion, but it may open the floodgates for states to do so.

KON: What is at stake here is whether or not the court will overturn the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973, which gives constitutional protection to abortion in all fifty states. So overturning it would not ban abortion nationally, but it would grant the right to ban it at the state level. A majority of Americans has consistently opposed a blanket ban on abortions since Roe v. Wade, and you can be sure that in more liberal states the extent of support for the right to choose is very high. So if Roe v. Wade is overturned, what we would be looking at is an unequal patchwork system in which women in some states have access and others do not.

This is still a nightmare scenario, of course. It would set the women’s movement back generations, and it is a distinct possibility. Currently there are over a dozen abortion-related cases just one step away from a Supreme Court, and with the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett, six out of nine justices are now conservative. It is likely that one of these cases will come up soon, and women’s rights activists must remain on high alert and prepare to ‘go Polish’ when it does.

But I don’t think it’s the case that Roe v. Wade will be overturned ‘automatically’, as Trump claimed in 2016, just because conservatives stack the court. Republican appointees have been the majority on the Court for 49 of the past fifty years, and Roe v. Wade was in fact decided by a Court with the same ratio of conservatives and liberals that it has now, 6-3, during the reign of Richard Nixon. These people opposed abortion, but they were also responding to popular opinion and the women’s rights movement of the early seventies.

This summer, the Court, which already had a 5-4 conservative majority, struck down a challenge to Roe v. Wade coming from Louisiana. Why? 2019 saw waves of protests across the country when first-trimester abortion bans were declared in various states. I think the Court has been hesitant to go for the jugular on abortion all these years because, ultimately, they fear unleashing a national ‘Women’s Lives Matter’ movement and a major political crisis. For this reason, rather than trying to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Court may choose to continue kicking the issue back to the states, where rights have been quietly chipped away since 1973 and where smaller local movements are easier to trample. Our movement must be just as prepared to confront that strategy.

Biden has made no secret of his imperial ambitions. Can we expect more wars under Biden?

JZ: Lots more, and he will sell it as ‘good for the failing economy’, which will still be failing but not for the ruling class.

TL: I think in the short term a US return to robust collective security organisations probably makes new outbreaks of wars somewhat less likely. But that won’t necessarily impact below the surface conflicts where the US and our horrible weapons continue to play a significant role.

What can we expect from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Squad?

TL: Unless she drops out of politics because of the relentless harassment, I think AOC is going to continue to be a major progressive force in the party, and the current squad will hopefully continue to grow. I think their success depends heavily on their ability to change the way dark money influences US politics. Warren and Sanders both had good approaches to dealing with that issue, and I hope they push for their strategies in the Biden administration.

JZ: I expect more of the same. Obviously much further left than the majority, but she and the Squad have shown the several contradictions they have politically with the DSA and the ‘Left’. They have limits, but I expect them to be the popular voice of dissent in the Senate and House.

The DSA had a strategy of building inside and outside parliament. What can we expect of them now that the elections are over?

JZ: I am not sure what sort of faith I have in the DSA. There are too many political contradictions within the organisation, and I am not sure they can actually be the vehicle to push politics leftwards in America because of the contradictory strategy. But maybe this sort of Big-Tent organisation can be effective in the struggle for socialism, but I am not sure how.

KON: There is a wide range of views in the DSA about how much weight to give parliamentary versus extra-parliamentary activity, and this reveals itself in debates about how to orient to the Democrats. Many, like Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, look to a strategy of reforming the Democratic Party and shifting it leftwards—very similar to that of the Corbyn-supporting Left inside of the British Labour Party. The priority is to get progressives elected to office and to leverage this to lobby for change through legislation.

Much of the DSA membership, led by the Bread and Roses faction and promoted in publications like Jacobin, have espoused an inside-outside strategy that they call ‘the dirty break’. That is, electoral campaigns on the Democratic ticket should continue to be a key area of activity until the political and organisational strength of DSA, and indeed class struggle, has developed to the point where they can form a separate party. In theory, this strategy should lend equal weight to grassroots organising and campaigning, but it has been argued that in practice ‘the dirty break’ has pushed movement and organisation building to the margins of DSA work. For example, while individual DSA members or local DSA branches have been very involved in the Black Lives Matter organising, DSA has not been a key player in the movement nationally. It is for this reason that a minority of DSA members, often around revolutionary left publications such as Tempest, are now pushing for a ‘clean break’ from the Democratic Party and a renewed emphasis on grassroots organising in workplaces and neighbourhoods.

For the foreseeable future, it looks like the Bread and Roses ‘dirty break’ position will hold the most sway over the membership, but that view could be put to the test quite dramatically in the coming year if Biden launches a direct attack on the Left in the Democratic Party, if politics is deadlocked in Washington, if further major class struggles do emerge. There is no guarantee, of course, that DSA will be capable of responding to these changes. One mustn’t forget that its transformative growth spurt took place in the wake of an electoral campaign, the Sanders’ 2016 presidential run, and electoralism has dominated the group’s leadership and activity ever since. A shift from this approach would have to be the subject of major debate inside DSA. I hope we will see this.

Does the left have a future in the Democratic Party? If not, what should it do?

TL: Yes, in fact it is the future of the Democratic Party.

JZ: No, and we should really stop trying. The work should be started to break labour away from the Democratic Party. Union Labour donations to the Democrats has been far eclipsed by Wall Street. The voice of Labour in American Politics has been effectively silenced since probably 1920-1930’s when the American Labour Movement sort of loses its effectiveness. Workers need to organise to either force their union to back and formulate a true American Labour Party, or to form new labour organisations that will work to back or form a Labour Party alternative. However, it must be only the political representative of the working class and not the path to socialism.

KON: If by this you mean, ‘Can the Democratic Party be transformed into a left-wing party?’, the answer is an emphatic no. There is no historical precedent for this. Since its founding as a party representing southern slaveowners in the eighteenth century, through to its conversion in the twentieth century to the party of choice for more liberal-minded capitalists, the Democrats have never been anything but an advocate for elite interests. This is obscured, of course, by the fact that the Party—at least since the Roosevelt era—has relied on votes from working-class and oppressed constituencies, and so must talk left at election time to gain votes. Institutions that routinely rally the vote for Democrats—from trade unions to civil rights groups—in turn echo and legitimise this left talk.

Until the Sanders campaign in 2016, it was the often case that grassroots activists from the ranks of these institutions would run for office themselves, furthering the impression that the party represented a left-wing agenda. But in the end these activists have generally ended up colouring within the moderate lines drawn by the party’s Wall Street backers. John Lewis, the recently deceased civil rights hero turned Democratic congressman, is a perfect example of this kind of progressive loyalist. A radical in the 1960s, he maintained his progressive credentials by defying the party leadership on a number of important occasions, including opposition to both Gulf Wars, NAFTA, Clinton’s regressive welfare reforms and the homophobic Defense of Marriage Act. But he has also played a key role in propping up the party’s neoliberal establishment. In 2016, he not only chose to back Clinton over Sanders for the presidential nomination, he even tried to discredit Sanders by claiming Sanders had exaggerated his involvement in the civil rights movement. He is also a staunch supporter of Israel and stood against the Black Lives Matter movement’s call to defend the police.

Since 2016, we have witnessed the emergence of a very different kind of progressive inside the Democratic Party: first with the Sanders campaign in 2016, then with the election to Congress of the Squad in 2018, and again this year with the election to Congress of other progressives, most famously Jamaal Bowman from New York and Cori Bush from Missouri. These figures look to grassroots struggles as an engine for social change; support transformative policies like the Green New Deal and Medicare for All; and—most crucially—are willing to stand up to party leadership on a host of controversial questions, such as defunding the police and support for Israel. This is very refreshing, but it will not fundamentally change the direction of the party.

My one hope is that these new progressives can at least caucus collectively and leverage their positions as a coherent voice inside Congress for left-wing movements on the ground. The pressure from inside the Democratic Party not to do this will be immense, though. To resist such pressures, grassroots movements will need to grow in size and strength, and the Squad and others will need to maintain close links with them. Meanwhile, the extra-parliamentary left will need to devote more resources to building the mass organisations and networks that can pose a left-wing alternative to the Democrats in the future. I would love to see inspiring fighters like Ilhan Omar, AOC, and Cori Bush at the helm of such a venture one day.

What are your wishes for 2021?

JZ: An end to the pandemic.

TL: To only hear the words ‘I think you’re muted, check your microphone?’ once a week instead of 4 times a day. Also, obviously, to crush fascism and the white supremacist patriarchy.

Why are Abortion Rights under Attack in Brazil?

Speech from the meeting The Conspiracy Against Choice: Why abortion rights are under attack in Poland, Brazil and the USA, 2 December 2020

Debora Thome
04/12/2020

I would like to thank you all for the invitation, as well as Kristina, who puts me in contact with LINKE Internationals group in Berlin. It is always great to have the opportunity to connect and change ideas with people, activists and politics from other countries who are dealing with similar struggles, although in different countries and contexts.

Since this talk will be in English, I prepared something written. I hope it won’t be boring and I will be very happy to answer questions and doubts at the end of the presentation.

My name is Debora Thome, I am an associated researcher at LabGen-UFF, a gender center of studies, in Brazil.

Just to talk a little bit about my work. I started what I call my institutional life in feminism fighting for abortion rights in Brazil. I was a journalist. A friend, a former professor and an important activist in Brazil for abortion rights – was organizing a group to do advocacy pro-reproductive rights. She contacted me and invited me to integrate this group. Although the subject is hard, it was a great and funny group composed by feminists in their 70s. Most of them were 70 years old or around it and we together met with Supreme Court judges and some congressmen and women to try to pressure for abortion rights in Brazil.

It was the beginning of 2015, and a lot has happened since them. In my professional life, I decided to start a PhD in Political Science and I started also to train women candidates. The almost total absence of women in politics in Brazil was the main subject of my thesis. However, I never left the agenda of reproductive rights, women rights and my great old ladies feminist group. I will talk a little bit more about their work during this talk.

This was just to give some background.

Far away from the stereotype of women in bikinis, Brazil is a very sexist, misogynist, and religious country. It is the country with the highest number of Catholics (although our Catholicism can be not so intense). In this sense, it is important to mention this number is changing in the last few years with a rise of evangelicals from neo-Pentecostal churches. This new group of religious people are, many times, even more conservative in terms of preferences, and they also have the antiabortion agenda as one of their main discourses.

Talking about violence against women, Brazil has high rates of homicide, feminicides. Every two hours, a woman is murdered in the country usually from someone she knows. It means everyday 12 women and girls are victims of homicide in Brazil usually by their relatives, partners, ex-boyfriends. Just to complete this quick scenario, in 2018, following a wave of conservatism and political disillusion, Brazilians elected a far-right president and lots of far-right deputies. Nowadays, this far-right party is the second largest in number of seats in Congress.

Considering specifically the reproductive rights, abortion is allowed in three cases here in Brazil. Two of them have been allowed since 1940 (it means 80 years now). In the first case, the law guarantees the right of abortion when the woman was the victim of some violence – it means, rape. The second case permitting abortion is when the pregnancy signifies some threaten for the mother’s life. The third case was just allowed in 2012, and it refers to cases of anencephaly, when medicine cannot, in any situation, guarantee the life of this fetus.

In this third case, it is not a law, but a ‘guarantee’ based on a decision of the Supreme Court. As you can notice, the first two exceptions were decided almost a century ago, so why are feminists not given any new opportunity to have the right for a 12 weeks abortion? If you look from outside, this question seems reasonable. However, as we say in Portuguese, we are most of the time “drying the ice”. It means, our efforts in all these years were mostly to maintain things the way they are, avoiding the complete prohibition.

A recent study was written by three public health servants, using numbers from the public health system. The available data (as you know it is difficult to have good data for illegal abortion) between 2008 and 2015, shows there were about 200,000 hospitalizations per year because of abortion-related procedures. Since abortion is forbidden in Brazil, many people try to do it at home. It means many of these poor women are using knitting needle, natural beverage, or hangers to do the abortion themselves. Of this total of 200 thousand hospitalizations, less than 1 per cent – it numbers 1,600 – were for medical and legal reasons. From 2006 to 2015, there were 770 maternal deaths caused by abortion related problems. This number could increase 29% if you consider other possible deaths related with the usual abortion consequences.

We also have to remember women cannot say they had an abortion when they go to the hospital, because it is a crime and they can be arrested. Although official health data do not allow to estimate the number of abortions in Brazil, they do establish the profile of women at higher risk for death from abortion: black and indigenous women, with low educational levels, under 14 and over 40 years old, living in the North, Northeast and Central regions, without a partner.

According to a report from ‘Genero e Numero‘, a Brazilian feminist news media, from 1949 to 2019 (70 years) 275 bills were presented mentioning the word abortion at the Congress. Most of the bills that were pro-abortion were presented in two decades – 1990s and 2000. The initiatives that were biased against abortion (meaning increasing punishment and prohibiting legalized abortion), have been increasing, from 6% of the total in the 90s to 44% in the 2010s. We have to consider that, since 2019 we faced an increase of the bills that try to guarantee, the right of life since conception, and try to writte that in the Constitution. It is a way to prohibit any abortion. If any of them pass, Brazil would be the worst case in reproductive rights in Latin America, just as bad as El Salvador. Uruguay, Argentina and Mexico – are all examples of places where the abortion laws are becoming more permissive in the last few years.

Over seven decades, the PT – worker party – was the fifth party to present the largest number of bills against abortion: there were six, the same amount as the PSL (of President Jair Bolsonaro).

In 2002, the center-left, represented by the workers party won the election. Many of the feminists from the second wave were founders of the party. Many of them were participants of the 14 years government of the central left in Brazil. Yet, during these years, although other feminist agendas found space to increase, it was not the case with the abortion rights. Some scholars argue it is causally related to the fact that not just feminists were founders of the ‘Worker’s Party’, but also a giant group coming from the church, belonging to the liberation theology tradition. Considering this sexist country, with a huge space for Catholicism and conservatism, the abortion agenda was never an easy issue or a non-complex subject. So, even if we had 14 years to work on the improvement for reproductive rights, it didn’t seem to be a political preference from the party ruling the country.

It is worth noting that Brazil is also one of the countries with the lowest scores in women’s representation according to the ‘Inter Parliamentary Union’. It is the 133 among 197 countries. In this case, we have also to consider men are 80 per cent of the authors of the bills related to abortion rights. This an anachronism that horrified me, I have to confess. It is a shock each time I realize male deputies are the ones who decide about women’s bodies, women’s lives, and women’s futures.

So, backing into the old feminist ladies’ group pro-abortion rights who could not increase their agenda during Lula’s time… In the midst of a crisis, in 2015, the beginning of the second term of Dilma Rousseff, our first female president, this group of 10 women decided to arrive in Brasilia with a schedule of 15 meetings in 2 days. At that time, with a very conservative legislative, we considered the only space to improve abortion rights was to try our chances directly with the Supreme Court. Our work in Brasilia was the beginning of an attempt that some years later would be a way to guarantee an habeas corpus for a woman arrested for abortion.

At that time, we were counting on a support from public opinion, because few months earlier there were a famous case of a woman who died after making an illegal abortion in Rio de Janeiro. About this case, a small story. We, as group for pro-abortion rights, decided to send some flowers to the funeral. Yet, the family, when we arrived there rejected all of our condolences. Since they are evangelical, although the woman, her name was Jandira, was dead, their family considered this was the punishment she deserves.

We should have paid more attention to this event because it seems to be the rationale for the beliefs of many Brazilians right now.

Four years later and Jair Bolsonaro, a very conservative, far-right president, with an extensive right-wing agenda (anti-abortion rights, very misogynist, anti any LGBTQ+ agenda) was elected, with the strong support of the Catholics and evangelicals. This, again, put the feminists back to the role to watch out for a backlash.

It means: our work right now is to protect the laws and the rights we already have.

This year, during the pandemic, one of the cases, mentioned in the description of this talk, was symbolic. A 10-year-old girl, in an extremely poor family, was pregnant, after being raped by her uncle for 2 years. In her case, abortion was not just guaranteed by law since 1940, but also a question of survival, considering her age. Even in this context, the national secretary of women and human rights decided to use all her possibilities and power to forbid the abortion. First, the local hospital denied the possibility, then she made her functionaries to offer money to the family to not have an abortion. In the end, the girl had to travel, during the pandemic, to another state, 2 hours by plane, to have her and the family’s rights guaranteed. In the middle of this, feminists were working in many states in the country trying to guarantee that she could have the abortion. It was 4 days of calls, petitions, communication, advocacy. It worked.

The secretary, personally, tried to interfere in the process. Just to clarify how difficult the situation is now in Brazil.

Also, during the pandemic, a new rule increases the siege against abortion in Brazil. This law starts to compel health professionals to notify the police when they assist patients who want to do an abortion due to rape. This document also says doctors must inform the woman of the possibility of seeing the fetus on ultrasound – something that some experts consider this to be a way to demote the patient. The text also requires patients to sign a consent form with a list of possible complications of abortion.

Now, it is time to just dry the ice.

Thailand’s Protest for Democracy: What’s (not) happening!

Outlines the protest movement and its Three demands

Passion Asasu
02/12/2020

After more than half a decade of military government control and oppression in Thailand. We (groups of Thai pro-democracy advocates), started movements to call for real democracy. Thai people deserve to be treated with respect and dignity and be given basic human rights!

The protests in Thailand and around the world are using the three-fingered salute from The Hunger Games movies to represent ‘Freedom, liberty and fraternity’ and to demand from the government our three demands: first the PM must resign, second a new constitution written by the people not the government, and third to reform the monarchy.

Growing up in Thailand, we were indoctrinated to believe in ‘Nation, Religion and Monarchy’. We had this ideology, especially the love for the Monarchy, drilled into us by schools, teachers, books – even educational materials, media, social events and government. The social events including the King’s Birthday, Queen’s Birthday and the anniversary of the Kings’ passings are given a high status .Much higher than significant people driven events such as the pro-democracy rally on 14 October 1973 and the student massacre on 6 October 1976 at Thammasat University. Moreover, there are the charges of Act 112, known as the lese-majeste law, that subjects anyone criticising the royal family to secret trials and long prison sentences. The question simply is “How can talking about someone result in a jail sentence?” There are numerous people who were charged by this unfair law, without proof, and no one from the government helped them out of it. If the government is not working for its people then what’s the point of their existence?

In addition, the government has rigged the most recent election by adding their selection of 250 seats into the national council and rewriting the constitution in their own favour. In spite of these advantages that the government gave itself, pro-democracy people in Thailand remained hopeful. That was because the Future Forward party that gained immense popularity was pro-democracy. However, the government found unfair ways to undermine the party and destroy their rights in power. Unbiased media that spoke or wrote about the government’s failures were threatened by being told that their channel will be blocked. One of the main failures of the government that have caused great pain to Thai people are the terrible economic policies and corruption. That stripped away the chance of economic prosperity for Thai people. In addition these failures have further enlarged the wealth gap between rich and poor in Thailand.

Protests erupted in 2020 due to the absolute failures of the government, including: attacking and persecuting democratically elected council members, not supporting the people during the Corona crisis, not tackling corruption, not addressing the blurry role of the Monarchy in Thai politics and using the rightful of act 112 to oppress people. The growing movement amongst Thai people (mainly students) has been calling for political reform in Thailand and around the world. Instead of listening to its people, the government has acted to the

contrary by labeling the protesters as young, stupid and naive puppets. Additionally, the government has ignored the legitimate voices of the people’s demands and started violence against peaceful protesters. On 17 November 2020, Thai police used tear gas and water cannons laced with irritating chemicals to disperse protesters in Bangkok. The protesters who came to the protests with their bare hands and rubber ducks, were forced to use them as shields against police water cannons. Why use such excessive force against peaceful protests? Why did the police who earn their salaries through our tax fight against the people instead of taking care of them? This is clear evidence that the officers are biased in favour of the government and over-reacted violently to harm people, arrested innocent protesters and sent a message to the people that they are not allowed to express their human rights.

As a member of the TDPG group (Thai Democratic People in Germany), I stand to insist on the equitable rights that we deserve and to support the movements in Thailand and in Berlin, Germany. Our group has assembled a movement and carried out demonstrations at the Brandenburg gate on 19th September 2020 and on 17th October 2020 and will carry on making the call for real democracy – whether offline or online according to the Corona crisis rules in Germany. Our aim is to spread awareness of the Thai Democratic Crisis to the world and to help support the Thai pro-democracy movement in the real battlefield in Thailand.

The key strength of the Thai Democratic Movements in Thailand and around the world is that we don’t follow the traditional leadership structure: we don’t have one leader spearheading the movement rather a common belief in an agreed upon set of ideals called the people’s 3 demands. When the government arrests one of our members, the government encourages more people to join our movement as they provide evidence of their own injustice.

What will happen next with the Thai Democratic Movement? I cannot say because there is no singular leader, therefore there is no singular direction or action. However, what I can say for sure is “What will NOT happen in Thailand”. We will not surrender, we will not be taken advantage of and we will not stand for being oppressed any longer. Those who attained power illegitimately must step down in our generation!

The Thai Democratic Movements are not going to stop until the government accepts the 3 peoples’ demands: first the PM must resign, second a new constitution written by the people not the government, and third to reform the monarchy.

Looking under the Hood – The Instrumentation of a Pandemic

We have seen demonstrations in several countries containing a strange mixture of COVID deniers, anti-Vaxxers and hardcore Fascists. Hari Kumar explains what is bringing these people together

Hari Kumar
29/11/2020

Introduction

Over the pandemic year a repeated pattern was seen. People joining aggressive right wing demonstrations, whose slogans are ‘COVID is a myth’, ‘vaccinations kill’, and there is a ‘swamp’ of power and corruption against ‘the people’. Marx tells us that the validity of observations, is only proved by the test of practice. [1]

Here repetitive observations (often called reproducibility) become a key ‘proof’ of an undeniable association. The repetitive associations between anti-vaxxers and the far right forms a distinct pattern. What binds these groups? This is an international phenomenon. But here I give some thoughts particularly citing examples from the USA and Germany.

The essential backdrop identified by ‘socialists’ of all brands, is that obvious class antagonisms are rising. It was untenable that the ruled majority would forever allow themselves to be exploited uncomplainingly. But in the post-austerity, post neo-liberal ‘consensus’ a new high plateau of exploitation has been reached. A mere 1% of the metropolitan countries owns over 97% of the country’s wealth, bringing a harsher, more overt class war. This politicises whole layers of society excluded from the supposed ‘gravy train’ and benefits of capitalist society. They develop intense alienation against any authority.

An editor at the Financial Times – Rana Foroohar – puts it this way:

Anyone with a pulse knows that in the US today the system is rigged in favour of the wealthy and powerful. One particularly illuminating paper published this month by the Institute for New Economic Thinking quantifies the problem. Building on a persuasive 2014 data set, it shows that when opinion shifts among the wealthiest top 10 per cent of the US population, changes in policy become far more likely.

Look no further than the way in which Uber, Instacart, Lyft and other digital groups this month got their way with Californian labour law. Together they spent $200m to push through Proposition 22, a ballot initiative that exempts many gig workers from benefits. These companies may well now take their efforts to other US states. [2]

We examine the association between the anti-science deniers and fascism, by identifying its separate parts. We start at the simplest and naïve level and end at the most sinister and conscious. At the outset we flag an intent to foment a deliberate chaos and sense of crisis.

Three Volatile Components mix – 1. The Anti-Vaxxers

The least conscious political agents are the anti-vaxxers and anti-science lobbyists. Often they are pretty naïve. But at their leadership some articulate an ideology seeing the medical profession manipulating and controlling the truth. What is this ‘truth?’ It is claimed that vaccinations kill, and that modern science is dangerous. Prestigious journals like the Lancet were hoodwinked by fraudulent researchers into publishing bogus claims linking autism and vaccinations. Those have fueled this camp.

Their ‘research’ in fact was funded by lawyers angling to claim fiscal damages in a case of autism. This was a failure of the journals and peer review process, to unmask frank fraud but also a conflict of interest. This was only revealed by a curious lay journalist. Although the fraudster Andrew Wakefield was finally exposed, it took 12 years to scientifically retract the paper – as a fraud. [3]

Meanwhile measles exploded out of control, and this remains a renewed risk in many countries from where it was previously a rarity. In the UK: “Cases of measles rose from 56 in 1998 to nearly 1,400 in 2008. In 2006, a 13-year-old boy became the first person in more than a decade to die of the disease in Britain.” [4] The responsible charlatan – Andrew Wakefield – was formerly a doctor, but is now forbidden to practice. However he has a thriving career as a TV based promoter of the anti-Vaxx movement in the USA.

What explains the appeal of this grouping? Undoubtedly the medical hierarchy was very slow to strip that bogus researcher of claims to the truth. In addition, a mantle of authority was assumed by the upper echelons of the medical professions, wrapping it in protection from criticism. This was resented.

In addition, undoubtedly the failure to reveal the causes of autism to date, inflames a smaller but very vocal section who legitimately claim to be a vulnerable section. The real problem of insufficient targeted funding for research at root causes, does not carry such an appealing thrust for action. They become so alienated they tend to drift into the second and third groups below.

2. The COVID denialists

There are several groups within this category. A small ultra-left-wing contingent continues to make absurd claims that death rates from COVID are no greater than that from influenza, and to laud mistaken attempts such as in Sweden to ‘raise herd immunity’. I have replied to these myths very early during the pandemic [5], and for now I leave further response to these left wing deniers to one side. For they are dwarfed by much larger right wing elements.

But both the left and right wings in this grouping use the fallacious arguments of infringement of personal rights and freedoms. The appropriate response seems to me to be along the lines of ‘Is it my freedom to kill you and should society condone that’? This fits in well with USA mythology of ‘independence’ and the Second Amendment so-called – to enable gun carriage etc.

But this camp also includes elements of the petit bourgeoisie who are (or were) self-employed and previously had a measure of some independence. In the absence of an effective vaccine, the old tried and true anti-pandemic measures of isolation, distancing, avoiding congregating, and masks were the only effective protections. This hit small business and shop-keepers. Especially where the capitalist state does not adequately support those suffering in the pandemic accentuated recession, this social class will turn into an ‘anti-state’ extreme individualist mentality.

3. The Fascists

The final major component is of course the open or near open fascists. This certainly applies to the AfD in Germany and the most aggressive Trump elements including the USA ‘Proud Boys’ etc. But all these actively ferment chaos – just as the Nazis did in their prelude to power in Kristallnacht. In chaos lies a chance for them to create a leadership. A direct fomenting of chaos was seen in the attempt to intimidate the USA Michigan legislature by armed militia, and the attempts to storm the Reichstag. Most recently in Germany there was the provocation by AfD members of parliament who invited aggressive thugs into the Reichstag.

How to combat this volatile toxic coalition

What is offered here is only a very rudimentary set of suggestions which need considerable amplification by the progressive and anti-fascist movement. However:

To undercut the anti-scientific attacks, a much more concerted and well mounted educational effort is needed. In the USA this is particularly urgent. In Germany it is also needed, despite the excellent podcasts of the Charite based Dr. Drosten. That series only targets the largely already medically savvy section of the population. Much broader efforts are needed.
But ultimately only by improving social services, housing education and benefits will the anger that drives this anti-science lobby be assuaged. Such measures primarily assist the working class, but also would assist the small shopkeepers and business (petit-bourgeoisie). This is becoming increasingly difficult for capitalist societies to do while retaining their profit basis. Some are better able to do this than others (see 3 below).
To address COVID deniers, the same educational effort is needed. Here, however, the vaccine issue is more urgent. Ultimately vaccine research, preparation and funding would be much better done by states and public funding. There is considerable scientific and profit based distortion from private companies in this sphere.
This is especially seen in the Astra-Zeneca vaccine effort of the UK, where bad science [6] is coupled with nationalistic bluster. [7] This type of ‘spinning’ of the news further reduces trust: “They have damaged confidence in their entire development program” Geoffrey Porges, an analyst at SVB Leerink Investment Bank, told the New York Times. The head of the Tübingen Institute for Tropical Medicine, Peter Kremsner, who is involved in a study by the German vaccine developer Curevac, finds even clearer words: “What we now read from the newspapers sounds miserable,” he says. [8]
State funding also applies in a major way to both the German innovative vaccine pioneered by the two scientists at BioNTech but coupled to Pfizer for production, and to Moderna. Both utilise approaches that were originally developed for anti-cancer therapies, but could be re-routed for COVID. [9] In both cases, the original work had not been funded by private industry. In fact the German scientist duo had been funded by the German government and developed much needed knowledge form that. The same is true of the USA based Moderna.
The message that a unified societal approach versus an individualistic approach is better to protect the public health is loud and clear. We can compare the USA and Germany – both are capitalist countries. But, there seems little doubt that the German system functions far better because its public health care system is enabled to take a societal perspective.
As the Boston Globe says: “Germany’s health care system is world class and well funded. Germany is less politically polarized, which lets it respond to crises more quickly and effectively. It mandated a strict early lockdown, and it invested heavily in testing and tracing. The 16 German states also acted more or less in concert. But more fundamentally, looking at Germany shows us that the kind of COVID culture clash that continues in the United States – between individual rights and collective well-being – is actually a false choice. And basic protections for workers and citizens, in place long before the pandemic, shielded the country from the more serious outcomes experienced elsewhere. Germany offers an alternative model, a picture of what might have been possible if the United States had reacted quickly and coherently to the threat.” [10]
Undoubtedly for the working class to ensure a socialist agenda, the intimidation of the openly fascist groups cannot be accepted. If it comes to a choice, how can the working class choose not to defend bourgeois democracy over fascism? Only if reformist agendas are not fulfilled, and if a socialist alternative party is not built. Even then, the reality of either the 70- million pro-Trump voters in the USA, of whom some unclear proportion is likely to be supportive of fascism. Hence the urgency of a truly anti-fascist broad united front. In Germany this is even more of a priority than it is in the USA.
Nonetheless, capitalist societies are finding it ever more difficult to reconcile the buying off of the working class with reforms while maintaining the enormous profits of the capitalist class. The ultimate choice will become a real socialism (not mere social-democratic reforms) – versus capitalism. In my opinion the working class and the petit bourgeoisie are not well placed to face that decision right now. This I believe is an urgent organizational task for all progressives.

Hari Kumar is a retired physician and a regular contributor to theleftberlin.com

Footnotes

1 Karl Marx Theses on Feuerbach; Volume 4; 5; p.4; Moscow 1976;

2 Rana Foroohar Corporate America’s deal with the Devil FT, Nov. 23, 2020

3 Surprisingly, a very good summary can be found at Wikipedia

4 Alex Hannaford, Andrew Wakefield: autism Inc Guardian 6 Apr 2013

5 How should Marxists view the COVID19 Pandemic of 2019-2020? Berlin Left March 17, 2020

6 Rebecca Robbins and Benjamin Mueller After Admitting Mistake, AstraZeneca Faces Difficult Questions About Its Vaccine; New York Times; Nov. 25, 2020

7 Benjamin Mueller Britain Set to Leap Ahead in Approving Vaccines New York Times; Nov 27, 2020

8 Edda Grbar Pharmakonzern reagiert auf heftige Kritik AstraZeneca kündigt „zusätzliche Studie“ zu Corona-Impftstoff an; Der Tagesspiegel, 26.11.2020

9 Joe Miller Inside the hunt for a vaccine Financial Times (Europe), 11/14/2020;

10 AnnaLisa Quinn Germany has lessons about containing the damage of COVID-19. It’s not too late for us to start listening Boston Globe; Nov 27, 2020

Photo Gallery – 28 November 2020, Rally for Western Sahara

Photos by Phil Butland, Maria González and Jaime Martinez Porrro

The Left Berlin
28/11/2020

Photos by Phil Butland, Maria González and Jaime Martinez Porrro