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The Departed

Silvio Berlusconi’s recent death provides an opportunity to reflect on his career and his damaging legacy.


30/06/2023

While Berlusconi was buried in Milan, during a State Funeral on June 14 2023, the whole country was instructed to celebrate a day of public mourning. The Italian media, with few exceptions, duly threw themselves in a frenzy of commemorative praise, propelling Berlusconi into the thousand-year-old genre of hagiography. For days in a row, millions of Italian citizen-viewers were bombarded with media images of mourning and celebration for a man that, apparently, must be gravely missed.

Those interested in who Silvio Berlusconi really was may find out by reading the many articles and books written on him, or by watching the several documentaries produced about his life and career. In the past three decades, in fact, a few independent intellectuals insisted in their mission to tell and remind Italians how Berlusconi, the richest man in Italy, had earned his wealth and power. Over the years, many of these professionals disappeared from the country’s public arena, while a few resourceful ones survived and even established some independent media – a rarity over there. What these (few) brave journalists found through decades of work has very little to do with magic, and will certainly ring a bell in the mind of anyone who ever had a penchant for social equality: it is not possible to become filthy rich without ripping off your neighbour.

Berlusconi was born in 1936 in Milan to a bank employee and a stay-at-home wife. Silvio’s father would have a prominent career within his bank, where he was destined to become director. Meanwhile, young Silvio attended grammar school at the private Salesian Institute and then studied law at the University of Milan. As a student, Silvio sings in a band and sells household appliances to earn some extra cash, then, after his degree, makes his debut in real estate, propelled by his father’s contacts in Italy’s financial capital. After selling his first apartment buildings in Milan, Berlusconi makes his real exploit with Milano 2, a residential complex close to the town of Segrate, not far from Milan’s Linate airport. These are the years of Italy’s post-war economic boom, and satellite towns are a fashionable model of living for the aspiring middle classes of the prosperous industrial north. The modern, trendy satellite town even includes its own local TV broadcaster, Telemilano.

Backed by investors whose identity still remains unclear, Berlusconi becomes a rampant estate developer and launches a number of other business ventures. [1] He takes control of a constantly increasing number of regional and local TV broadcasters, with the only national one remaining RAI, the state broadcasting company. After founding Canale 5, Berlusconi buys two more channels, with their local broadcasting licenses. In 1984 his network allows him to broadcast the same programmes on three channels across the whole country. This should be a prerogative of the state broadcasting company, but Berlusconi can get away with it because he formally only owns local broadcasters. During the following 10 years, Berlusconi’s media empire grows at an impressive pace, as he takes control of Mondadori, the largest publishing company in the country, which controls not only book publishing, but also several of Italy’s main journalistic publications. In 1986 he also buys the AC Milan football club. Berlusconi thus becomes increasingly known across the country as the clever and reckless entrepreneur who converts everything he touches to gold. [2]

Berlusconi’s achievements, in reality, have a lot to do with the complacency and complicity of a wide network of personal “friends”, clients, figureheads, and political patrons who allowed him to circumvent the law. In order to build this formidable circle of mutual assistance, Berlusconi got involved with pretty unpalatable company, like the mafioso Vittorio Mangano, whom he hired as stable keeper in the 1970s, after a recommendation by his old friend and close collaborator Marcello dell’Utri. Dell’Utri, who would later be a Senator of the Republic, is eventually tried in the context of several investigations. He served a prison sentence for having collaborated with the mafia, and has since been released. [3]

In his search for “good friends” Berlusconi also entered the masonic lodge Propaganda 2, ideologically close to the most reactionary areas of Italian politics. The main objective of this convivial group of well-to-do gentlemen is to counter the rise of the left and promote the supremacy of the executive over the other democratic powers. Berlusconi’s fellow members are important people: civil servants, members of the secret services, bankers, lawyers, journalists. The rampant entrepreneur, with his media company Mediaset, is the ideal member for an organisation that aims at the ideological remaking of the country. In the space of a generation, Italy has moved from post-war poverty into fully-fledged consumerism. In the 1980s young Italians are dreaming of lives that are impossibly different from those lived by their parents, and are ready to enjoy something bolder than the polite and buttoned-up entertainment offered by RAI. The colourful and cheeky Mediaset programmes respond to the expectations of the public. The American TV series populated by blonde beauties and reckless car drivers, the exotic manga cartoons and the comedy shows decorated by scantily dressed ladies sweep up generations of viewers young and old.

Mediaset programmes shaped the imaginary of whole generations of children and young people. In 1994 these people would, together with their families, vote Berlusconi into government. At the time, Italian voters had not yet recovered from the implosion of the Italian Communist Party and from a string of major corruption scandals that had swept away the rest of the political and entrepreneurial class. Berlusconi had just lost his political patron and personal friend Bettino Craxi to the public prosecutor, and had to find someone else who could protect his interests in the political arena. And who could do this better than himself? He founded Forza Italia, presented himself as a self-made man who would make everybody as rich as he was, and a few months later he was sworn in as Prime Minister. Berlusconi was elected three times and served four terms as Prime Minister. During his mandates he carried out a systematic dismantling of the RAI public service to the advantage of his own Mediaset channels; his lawyers, who sat in Parliament as MPs, drafted a plethora of new laws aimed solely at protecting his own private interest and impunity. His far-right allies regularly passed these bills, since in return they could promote a string of repressive and unfair laws. One example of this is the infamous 2002 Bossi-Fini immigration bill, which made it extremely difficult for undocumented migrants to escape detention and greatly contributed to rising racism in Italy.

When Italians did vote Berlusconi out of office, the Parliament failed to become much of an impediment for him. Disaffected leftist voters started wondering why those who were supposed to be his adversaries were so harmless towards him. Then, once back in power, Berlusconi attempted to rewrite history, suggesting in 2009 that Italy’s Liberation day be renamed “Day of Freedom”. This because, according to him, those who died during WW2 should all be mourned, independently from their political camp. This was, first of all, a gift to his far-right allies and a clear attack on the Resistance and the anti-fascist values that had founded the Italian Republic. Secondly, his declaration constituted once again an appropriation of the value of freedom, which he always claimed as the basic principle underpinning his media, business, life, and politics.

Freedom was, according to Berlusconi, the differential unicum that made him superior to his political enemies, whom he called “the communists”. As time went by, leftist politics was gradually purged from Parliament and his tirades increasingly concerned “the judges”, often creating the illusion that magistrates, too, must be communist. Berlusconi’s media apparatus promoted a systematic delegitimating of the judiciary, whose services were not up for sale as those of the lawyers he hired. Berlusconi claimed as his privilege the freedom he had offered to television viewers: market freedom, i.e. the freedom to buy and sell anything for money. The success of his electoral campaigns relied on lies based on a transactional nature: the promise of one million new jobs, the signature of a mock “contract with Italians” during a popular TV programme, the assurance of lower taxation, etc. This was a relief for many voters, who did not want anything more than to forget about politics. For many of his critics, Berlusconi was a weird creature who did unconceivable things, like pronouncing the word “Nazi” in the European Parliament during a discussion with a German social democrat MEP. Many, both in the country and abroad, became intoxicated by his taste for making a spectacle of himself, seeing him as some kind of gifted comedian. This is rather unfortunate, as Berlusconi’s extraordinary ability to entertain both his friends and enemies was the one talent that allowed his impunity. During the last years of his life Berlusconi was ridiculed because of the sex scandals that surrounded him, yet the other side of this decadent guignol was the immense fragility of a Prime Minister who at any point in time could be blackmailed by any of the innumerable buffoons eating at his court.

Some observers have interpreted Berlusconi’s boundless ambition and his obsessive desire to embody the alpha male as a sort of “death of the father”, which would in turn herald an age of total permissiveness. However, if it is true that Berlusconi had the inclination to step over any boundary, in time his ability to do so became increasingly reliant on the limits of his viewers’ imagination, rather than on his own inventiveness. His increasing freedom to buy and sell anything he wanted went hand in hand with the loss of rights and freedoms of those living in Italy, while many of them came to see him precisely as a father figure whose authority should not be challenged.

Berlusconi’s legacy is for all to be seen: a country where, after decades of economic crisis and stagnation, the citizenry has lost all confidence in institutions. During the past 30 years the only ideological frame of reference offered by the media and the cultural industry has been defined by rampant individualism, nationalism and the cynical belittling of civic and social rights. In the meanwhile, Berlusconi’s supposed opponents abdicated their political and cultural role. As Chinese revolutionary intellectuals showed in the 20th century, imagination is key to politics. It is therefore not surprising that a large share of the Italian electorate, long deprived of any progressive ideological horizon, cannot imagine anything better than what they see: the far-right coalition led by Berlusconi’s political heiress, Giorgia Meloni.

 

 

[1] Cremagnani, Beppe and Deaglio, Enrico and Oliva, Ruben. 2005. Quando c’era Silvio. See also John Hooper’s obituary. 

[2] Berlusconi was first interviewed for the television by Enzo Biagi in 1986. Biagi, former partisan and the most revered political commentator in Italy, would leave RAI in 2002 after Berlusconi’s Bulgarian diktat. The 1986 interview can be seen here.

[3] Michael Day’s 2015 book Being Berlusconi: The Rise and Fall from Cosa Nostra to Bunga Bunga describes this. See also Quando c’era Silvio.

“There is an element of not knowing who our enemy is”: Interview with Elif Sarican

An interview with Elif Sarican, one of the organizers of the The Beyond Equality: Feminisms Reclaiming Life conference, happening from 30.06 – 02.07.


28/06/2023

Elif Sarican is a writer, curator, translator, organiser, host of the Pomegranate Podcast and one of the authors of the anthology “She Who Struggles: Revolutionary Women Who Shaped the World”. Elif spoke to The Left Berlin about the event “Beyond Equality: Feminisms Reclaiming Life – an Internationalist Gathering”, happening this upcoming weekend. 

Hello, Elif, thank you for agreeing to talk with The Left Berlin today. Can you start by telling us a bit about yourself, about your work and also about your connection to “Beyond Equality: Feminisms Reclaiming Life. An Internationalist Gathering”? 

My name is Elif and I’m a writer, curator and various things. I always say, etc, etc. I’m based in London, I do a lot of work on the Kurdish women’s movement. “Beyond Equality: Feminisms Reclaiming Life” came about, for me, especially through that experience, but also through some of the other work I’ve done – for example, I worked with David Graeber during my masters. And so, part of my connection to Berlin also came through the three day conference that was done at the HKW (Haus der Kulturen der Welt), based on David’s last book, which he finished before he passed away. Then, I met some of the others now on the curatorial team.

 

The “Beyond Equality: Feminisms Reclaiming Life” is curated by a collective based in Berlin that addresses the struggles in the Iranian Revolution, the Kurdish Liberation Movement, the diasporic and migrant movements, the feminist anti-extractivist and media and artistic articulations between Latin America and Germany. How did the idea for this event come about? 

Margarita Tsomou, who is the in-house curator of the HAU, brought us together and wanted to do this. It came particularly off the back of the Women Weaving the Future conference that happened in Berlin in November, which was led by the Kurdish women’s movement. There were 800 participants and women coming from 44 different territories, and that inspired all of us to want to continue some of this work.

 

This internationalist gathering is also part of the festival “¡PROTAGONISTAS! Resistance Feminisms Revolution” – can you tell us more about that? What is the difference between the two events? 

Protagonistas is the broad umbrella, while our conference is essentially the discourse curation of the broader festival. And the broader festival is different in that, while there’s still obviously discourse and discussions and debates; it also has performances, theatre and dance, and other elements of creative expression. During our conference there will also be some of that, particularly in the evenings, but what makes it slightly different is that it’s a concentrated two and a half days of discussions and debates, and giving space to collectives and movements.

 

What kind of space is HAU (Hebbel am Ufer), how is it connected to feminism and why was this the chosen place for the conference? 

The space was as a result of Margarita’s relationship with HAU, and partially also because the HAU has tried to do certain feminist work for some time. It was important that, in a way, it’s a combination of that, and a continuation of the conference that happened in Berlin in November – The Women Weaving the Future conference. So yeah, we’re very, very happy that the HAU Theatre has agreed to host this. We think it’s very important that these kinds of debates are happening in institutions as such, but also with the realisation that this is not where we take our strength or power from.

 

Feminisms seem to have entered the mainstream agenda of western countries in the last decade, but it’s been commodified and commercialised, under a concept of “gender equality” which centres individual-focused approaches and reproducing neoliberal rhetorics and practices. Why is this not enough, why do we need to go beyond the narrative of “equality”? 

We decided to call the conference Beyond Equality because we all believe in not having an equal seat at the table that is the patriarchal, capitalist, nation state system – actually, not only to create an alternative, but also supporting the alternatives that already exist. We’re not claiming to do anything new per se – what we’re merely trying to do is to make an intervention into some of the mainstream feminist discourses; a lot of these discussions already exist within movements that we’re going to be talking about throughout the conference. We see it in the last decade or so, and I think especially in Germany, with women’s equality, with this so-called feminist foreign policy, and more recently the appropriation of the slogan Jin, Jiyan, Azadî. It is not just a slogan of the Kurdish women’s movement, it’s also a political declaration for an alternative that is based on the principles of radical democracy, ecology and women’s liberation. And the reason why we believe this conference is important, as a critique to this so-called gender equality, is because we understand this strategy of liberal gender equality as an attempt to integrate certain radical elements of women’s struggle into existing systems of governance without meaningful change. And to be able to do that, these women’s struggles are made more palatable, and friendly to these systems, and the elements that don’t fit into the system are ferociously criminalised – this is exactly what we’re seeing. The so-called declaration of gender equality by some governments and states is only possible because a part of the women’s struggles are taken, and then there is an attempt to brutally crush the rest. In the case of Jin, Jiyan, Azadî, for example, the declarers of this struggle are perhaps one of the most criminalised movements in Germany. But somehow, Jin, Jiyan, Azadî sounds good to the ear and it was taken as a slogan of a friendly women’s struggle that is against Iran and therefore, is not a direct threat. This is not to say that the Kurdish women’s movement and the radical elements of it that are criminalised is a direct threat to Europe or the West, but politically and ideologically it’s clearly seen as a threat, because it’s not just about equality in this existing system – it’s about changing the system. The synthesis of all of these elements of struggle is what is seen as a threat. For Jin, Jiyan, Azadî to be put on the front of government buildings, and government funded institutions – is only possible because it’s also a way to give lip service to women’s struggle far away, and to declare that there’s no need for struggle here.

 

How do you make sure that certain parts of movements aren’t cherry picked to make them more accessible, and instead make people aware of the entire struggle?

The Kurdish women’s movement doesn’t see itself as the sole owners of this slogan, they are not territorial about it. What is important to recognise is that, to be able to develop this slogan, to be able to develop this political declaration, decades of struggle have gone into it – quite literally blood, sweat, and tears. And I think what is important is, of course, to be a part of the universalisation of this slogan. But for that slogan to be universalised in a meaningful way, that process needs to understand and recognise what the political declaration of the slogan is – that is, radical democracy, ecology, women’s liberation – and that it comes from an anti-colonial movement fighting for freedom. The important element is to really recognise and to talk about the history and the struggle of this movement. If you also believe in that struggle, in those principles, in those values, then I guess you would also want to talk about why this slogan is important. But the issue is that government ministers are chanting this, and I doubt that they believe in radical democracy, ecology, or women’s liberation, because their governments and their institutions continue to sell arms to some of these states, including the Turkish; they continue to be almost actionless when it comes to ecological destruction, and continue to repress women’s struggles themselves. So this is where the appropriation comes – when what you do, and the policies, don’t match the slogan.

You will be hosting a workshop on abolitionist feminism. In conversations about gendered violence, sexual assault and feminicide, it’s easy to end up engaged with narratives using a carceral framework, even within feminist movements. How can we speak about feminist justice, centring real transformative practices, without reproducing or enabling punitivist logics? 

These are some very difficult questions to figure out. One element that is important, when talking about abolition, is what one’s perspective of abolition is, because some schools of thought see abolition as a step towards revolution, and some as a complete refiguring of how society relates to each other and therefore as the revolution. When we talk about the latter, it’s difficult still to create reasons for carceral solutions, because you’re talking about completely refiguring how people in society relate to each other. Obviously, there’s very real issues in terms of the violence and the threats that people face, because of the state of society. One of the important things in developing this workshop was that Nazan Üstündağ will be talking about how we can reframe certain elements of abolition in terms of self-defence as well, because that is also important for an anti-carceral approach. For example, in the case of some parts of Kurdistan, there’s the reality of ISIS – and of course, now there’s many ISIS members who are also either in prison or in camps in these areas – and what do you do with this? If they are out in the world, then they’re quite literally a threat to that entire society and particularly to women (although obviously not only women). In the workshop we’ll talk a bit about how we can really think about what we call “Feminism Unchained”, and how we can start to try to think about what that can look like, where we start and what that means. It will be very interesting, in terms of self-defence, and what the others will bring, in terms of the attempts and work that they’ve done with transformative justice and how that’s worked, and how that hasn’t worked in some ways; Sabine Hark will talk about the education system, and so on. It’s not to say that no one should go to prison now, it’s to say: how do we get to a point in which society doesn’t have this? And even now, is the existence of prisons really making us safer? They will have their interventions and there’s going to be three scenarios, and we’ll all discuss how could there be an abolitionist perspective in dealing with them. It will be abolition storytime.

 

Can you tell us a bit more about your views on the current feminist struggles here in Berlin and in Germany? 

Some of the struggles I know the most about are struggles of what would be considered migrant communities, and the women of migrant communities. There’s so many elements of it, from certain migrant communities, from organising and fighting as care workers, to the Kurdish women’s movement – organising assemblies and trying to organise society in that sense. What I think is the reflection – and this is sadly the case in many parts of Europe – is women’s struggles are very fragmented; and this fragmentation is really a success of the system. To understand the reasons for this fragmentation and to really analyse it, there is of course many elements, but we can simplify in the name of trying to understand things. One of the key things is that there is an element of not knowing who our enemy is – and this is probably one of the biggest issues that keeps women’s movements fragmented. We often identify our enemies as very different things or places or institutions and so on. So there is much work to do, particularly in Europe, in terms of a systematic analysis of where we are, why we are there, or why we’re in the state or the position that we are, and this obviously includes practical and material situations.

 

About the lack of identification of the enemies, related to care work – it’s hard for people to immediately identify with care work and what it conveys, because it’s been so invisibilised. What would be strategies to bring care work to the agenda, in a way that people can relate it to their daily lives and struggles? 

The important thing is making some of the connections in terms of the class, gendered and the social reasons behind this, and understanding that care work and its exploitation in particular, are quite a fundamental part of capitalist exploitation as well.

 

How can other feminist activists, organisers and collectives get involved in your collective’s work beyond next week’s gathering? 

On Saturday evening, July 1, we will have a feminist assembly which is definitely a way to get organised. What is important about this assembly is that it’s also an avenue in which these relationships don’t have to go through us – groups, struggles and people can meet each other directly. Beyond that, we have the intention of continuing some of these discussions in a public sense, for sure. But I think what’s important to declare is that we, by no means, feel like anything needs to go through us, we’re not overstepping the function of this conference. I don’t want to say this is a big turning point – maybe it will be – but I think what’s important is that if you come to the conference, and particularly the assembly, hopefully you can meet others. If groups and movements who have never met before, and perhaps have or have not been in the same room, also get to connect, that is already a huge success for this conference.

 

Beyond Equality: Feminisms Reclaiming Life will happen this upcoming weekend, between 30 June and 2 July. The workshop registration is free, by email, as well as the possibility for childcare on Saturday and Sunday (email anmeldung@hebbel-am-ufer.de). 

What just happened in Russia?

Putin and the failed coup leader Prigozhin are two peas in the same pod


27/06/2023

Putin and Prigozhin meeting at food catering business

The oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin who founded the armed mercenary group called ‘Wagner”, is today’s Coriolanus. Similar to that Roman general in an arrogant hubris fueling a spectacular change of direction, he now only awaits his own murder. As Ukrainian Mykhailo Podolyak (adviser to President Zelensky) said, “you almost nullified Putin, took control of the central authorities, reached Moscow and suddenly… you retreat. Because one very specific intermediary with a dubious reputation (Lukashenko) promised security guarantees from the person (Putin) who ordered to destroy you in the morning“.

A recap of events

Although Prigozhin never directly called for the overthrow of Putin himself, just his Head of Defence Sergei Shoigu, the “Wagner” group’s actions were a missile aimed at Putin’s regime. Prigozhin seized military installations at Rostock-on-Don. Wagner armoured columns and troops then rolled down the M-4 motorway towards Moscow. In short – an attempted coup. Putin fled Moscow on his presidential jet. But within 200 km (125 miles) of Moscow, the armed threat was defused. What happened?

The Belarus Republic President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, offered asylum of sorts to Prigozhin. Simultaneously Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov assured Prigozhin that:

“the criminal case against… Prigozhin, would be dropped. Prigozhin will go to Belarus, Peskov said, and the fighters who rebelled with him would not be prosecuted by law given their “service at the front.” Wagner fighters who did not participate in the mutiny can sign contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense, he said.” 

At last reporting the armoured column was turned back, and the Wagner occupation of Rostov-on-Don (the jump-off point for munitions and Russian troops) against Ukraine was ended:

“Wagner armored vehicles began leaving the military hub of Rostov-on-Don, in southwestern Russia, on Saturday night..The fighters’ departure from Rostov, whose occupation sent an image of strength, added credibility to the deal apparently reached in talks with the Belarusian leader.” NYT 24 June, 2023

Perhaps the last word of the news roundup goes to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and his message on Twitter that “today, the world saw that the bosses of Russia do not control anything.” 

How can Marxists understand these events?

Putin’s passage to power arose out of the slow destruction of the socialist USSR by the Soviet leaders Khruschev, Bulganin and then Brezhnev, and the turbulent and rapid changes of the post-collapse period. Through the 1950s to the 1980s, successive Soviet leaders created a state capitalist enterprise favouring domestic heavy industrialists. However, in the post-Gorbachev era when rapid privatisation was enacted on Russian industry, these same Russian state capitalists were enormously weakened. American capital was allowed entry and stripped previously state-owned resources to their delight. But this spurred national Russian capital to take back control and are the foundation of Putin’s political support.

In the 1990s into the 2000 and beyond, criminal gang activities took over vital parts of financial institutions, seizure of State assets and corrupt governing bodies – particularly from Leningrad (Saint Petersburg). This was Putin’s domain. From recently acquired political office he delegitimized Chechenya’s national aspirations as terrorism in the late-1990s. This justified his murderous rampages engineering false-flag explosions in Moscow, and the brutal war in Chechnya.  This enabled his militarized hold that finally established the oligarchic regime in Russia.

Russia under Putin is characterized as “a hyper-nationalist neo-imperialist state… Putin himself is an oligarch and a ruthless imperialist.” If Putin was initially just one hyena amongst others feeding off the carcass of the former USSR – he rapidly extinguished most others. Including Mikhail Khodorovsky, and Alexei Navalny.

Who is Yevgeny V. Prigozhin?

Prigozhin is a Russian businessman who until recently was a close associate of Putin. Born in 1961 in then Leningrad, Mr. Prigozhin was imprisoned in 1981 for robbery amongst other crimes. After serving nine years, he “opened a hot-dog stand, eventually leading to an entrepreneurial career starting restaurants and convenience stores.” NYT June 23, 2023 

Prigozhin was labelled:

“Putin’s chef” because of his catering business, which has staged elaborate state banquets for Mr. Putin” . 

But he came more to prominence when he formed the mercenary group “Wagner”. This first saw prominence during the 2014 annexation of the Crimea by Russia:

“The entity first emerged in 2014, during Russia’s annexation of Crimea. The U.S. government has said that the organization is financed by Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, The group reportedly took its name from the nom de guerre of its leader, Dmitry Utkin, a retired Russian military officer. Mr. Utkin is said to have chosen Wagner to honor the composer, who was a favorite of Hitler’s. Despite the Kremlin’s denial of any ties to Wagner, Mr. Utkin has been photographed next to Mr. Putin.” NYT March 31, 2022

After that the Wagner mercenaries were used as an extension of the Russian state arm overseas. It enabled a plausible deniability of Russian imperialist brutality and extra-judicial murders in Syria and elsewhere, especially in Africa (NYT March 31, 2022): 

“In addition to their involvement in Syria, Libya, Central African Republic and Ukraine, Wagner operatives have also fought in Sudan, Mali and Mozambique, exerting Russian influence by proxy, doing the bidding of authoritarian leaders and, at times, seizing oil and gas fields or securing other material interests. Increasingly, they’ve become more formalized and have started acting more like Western military contractors.” 

He appeared to have a mandate from Putin for electronic disruption and media control. That led to his indictment in 2018 by a USA federal grand jury, and personal sanctions for:

“interfering in the American election through the Internet Research Agency, a troll factory that spread falsehoods and waged information warfare against the United States, in support of the presidential campaign of Trump”. NYT June 23, 2023

Wagner goes to the Ukraine

After the Putin Russian imperialists started their poorly led aggressive war of invasion in Ukraine, Wagner was sent to the Ukrainian Front. Prigozhin being familiar with Russian jails himself, recruited prisoners to fight in Wagner. Wagner’s moderate successes – achieved only at high death rates – there both swelled Prigozhin’s head, but infuriated him against the Russian army leadership. Especially after the recent, grinding senseless battle of Bakhmut – many Wagner troops died. Prigozhin accused Russian commanders of inadequate supply of munitions, and incompetence. This rapidly began a ‘tough talk’ set of diatribes:

“using social media to turn tough talk and brutality into his personal brand.. launching accusations at Russia’s military leadership, blaming it for failing to provide his forces with enough ammunition and ignoring soldiers’ struggles… Mr. Putin had not checked Mr. Prigozhin’s online accusations, despite jailing or fining many other critics of the war. Spewing vulgarities, disregarding the law and displaying loyalty to no one but Mr. Putin, Mr. Prigozhin.. became a symbol of wartime Russia.” NYT June 23, 2023

All this likely gave Prigozhin delusions of grandeur as a ‘saviour’ of Russia. It appears he even met with Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov. Prigozhin made extraordinary offers of treason to reveal Russia’s most vulnerable troop locations to Ukraine:

“In late January, with his mercenary forces dying by the thousands in a fight for the ruined city of Bakhmut, Wagner Group owner Yevgeniy Prigozhin made Ukraine an extraordinary offer. Prigozhin said that if Ukraine’s commanders withdrew their soldiers from the area around Bakhmut, he would give Kyiv information on Russian troop positions, which Ukraine could use to attack them. Prigozhin conveyed the proposal to his contacts in Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate, with whom he has maintained secret communications during the course of the war, according to previously unreported U.S. intelligence documents leaked on the group-chat platform Discord… Two Ukrainian officials confirmed that Prigozhin has spoken several times to the Ukrainian intelligence directorate, known as HUR. One official said that Prigozhin extended the offer regarding Bakhmut more than once, but that Kyiv rejected it…” Washington Post; May 15, 2023 

Conclusions

Obviously Prigozhin finally realized he was unlikely to prevail. Putin for his part invoked the Civil War in 1917, facilely painting that as a time of “intrigues, quarrels, politicking behind the back of the army and the people turning at end into “the tragedy of the civil war” Putin’s Speech 24 June. In reality the Civil War was far more, it was an open fight between the Bolshevik new order fighting the ex-Tsarist, pro-Western imperialists, who were trying to dislodge the Lenin Government

While there are a number of pro-Marxist and Marxist-Leninist forces in Russia today, none have reached anywhere near the point of being able to intervene with mass credibility. Until such a party emerges, anti-Putin struggles are doomed to remain largely in the realm of inter-oligarch struggles. 

In those the people have no voice. That is not to say that alliances at certain points might not be necessary. But only a principled working-class party leading the way forward can hope to dislodge the oligarchs and recreate conditions for a new socialist revolution in Russia. The same largely applies to the Ukraine. Although in Ukraine a pre-condition will be the removal and forcing back of Russian aggression. Only then can remaining reactionary forces – including their own oligarchy – can be dealt with. 

First published June 25th at Red Phoenix APL

What does Israel’s government mean for Palestinians?

Palestinian journalist Hebh Jamal discusses the predictable totalitarianism of Israel and how it signals an escalation in the battle to decolonise Palestine


26/06/2023

Earlier this year, Israel saw an unprecedented amount of protestors taking to the streets to protest their own government. They compared the Netenyahu regime to biblical autocrats and chanted that they did not want fascism to prevail within their own society.

Netanyahu’s far right coalition was seeking to grant the government more control over judicial appointments as well as the power to overrule supreme court decisions. The Israeli people were in effect, protesting the overhaul of the judiciary or as they put it, the immediate threat to their “democratic” state.

The subsequent narrative within the liberal press was that this overhaul was a break with Israeli democratic values, and even western governments urged Netanyahu to preserve those values to protect the future of the Israeli people.

While some Israelis believe that religious fundamentalists and the far right coalition parties are belittling their state institutions and inching the country towards outright fascism, Palestinians are absent from the conversation.

The very high court that liberal Israelis are trying to preserve, has been the epicenter of Palestinian repression. The same court allows the confiscation of Palestinian land in the Occupied West Bank for Jewish settlers. The same court allowed the use of live fire against Palestinian protesters in Gaza in 2018 where 234 Palestinian were killed. The same court is willing to tolerate and even explicitly approve the use of torture against Palestinians. They also allow the unlawful and illegal detainment of Palestinian prisoners without charge and when they die, the same court allows the state to hold their bodies as political bargaining chips.

Hannah Arendt’s argument, that totalitarian regimes rely on an all encompassing ideology to justify their actions can perfectly be exemplified by how Israel weaponises antisemitism and depicts Zionism as a self liberating ideology…

So it is no surprise that Palestinians are not keen on helping “save” Israeli democracy. Understandably, the logical question that may follow is “won’t it just get worse for Palestinians if Israel is a fascist state?”

For us, Israel has been a fascist state since its inception. And its inception is plagued by the Palestinian catastrophe, known as the Nakba which we commemorated this month, that expelled three quarters of a million Palestinians from their homes and villages. The election of Netanyahu and the appointment of radicals like Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich is only the natural behaviour of a violent settler-colonial state.

But let’s go even further, why not call Israel a totalitarian state? Hannah Arendt describes totalitarianism as a distinct form of social system chracterised by total control and domination over every aspect of an individual’s life. They seem to eradicate all forms of pluralism, dissent and individuality in the pursuit of their ideological objectives.

To me, that definition perfectly defines how Israel controls Palestinian movement by surveilling them continuously in places like Jerusalem and Hebron through AI technology, then deploying numerous checkpoints on their land to monitor their every move. The factors that make a state totalitarian, such as “the complete domination of a people” can be defined through Israel’s murder campaigns in Gaza and their complete control of the strip’s access to water and electricity.

I can draw another parallel. Hannah Arendt’s argument that totalitarian regimes rely on an all encompassing ideology to justify their actions can perfectly be exemplified by how Israel weaponises antisemitism and depicts Zionism as a self liberating ideology – even if it’s rooted in complete ethnic cleansing.

To Palestinians Israel is a fascist, totalitarian, let’s say even autocratic state, and we can debate the terms, semantics and theology for a while, but my point is actually that for Palestinians, it does not matter what you call Israel, because a common talking point that you will hear among Palestinians in Palestine or in the diaspora is that “we saw this coming.”

In fact, I’ll make it personal despite the typical German sentiment that tells us to keep emotions out of it. My family’s village of Jimzu in the Lydd district of ‘48 Palestine was ethniclly cleansed on July 9th 1948 under Operation Danny. Lt. Moshe Dayan, who then became Israel’s defence minister, gave the order to conquer all of Lydd and Ramle, and all of the villages that inhabited the region. Moshe Dayan’s intentions from the start was to depopulate Jimzu and the surrounding villages, “torching everything that can be burned.”

My great grandfather, Issa Al-Jamal, sneaked into his village after the military operation was over. He recalled that the remains of dead people were scattered all around the village, unburied. “It’s as if their bodies were dismembered by wild dogs,” my great grandfather said.

My great grandfather made it a point to remember Moshe Dayan’s words. And in fact, he read Theodore Herzl’s diary wherein he said that the “process of expropriation and the removal of the poor Arabs must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.”

Herzl wrote this in 1895.

And we made it a point to remember how the Jewish National Fund went even further by destroying our homes then planting trees on top of our cemeteries. “It must be clear that there is no room in the country for both peoples … If the Arabs leave it, the country will become wide and spacious for us. The only solution is a Land of Israel … without Arabs” the director, Joseph Weitz said.

This country’s memory culture is embedded, not in self reflection and critique, but in attempting to absolve their sins to advance their national gains. Israel has determined that Germany will never again be anti-semitic as long as it is Zionist.

The call for genocide has always been said out loud, it has just been masked by a neoliberal facade because democracy and freedom was working for some. Palestinians have identical stories like my family’s. Our shared trauma and dispossession is all due to the success of Israel’s so called democracy. So why on earth would we fight to preserve it?

In fact, the seeming crisis within the Zionist movement itself is an important development. You have far right parties opposed to the even farther right parties. And eventually this crisis will collapse in on itself and will lead to its own destruction.

I understand my speech may be provocative and may not even answer the questions that this panel originally poses, but I wanted to give a Palestinian perspective about why this discussion and framing, in the end, does very little to change the terms for our liberation struggle which have always been about our fundamental right to return to our houses and villages.

We always believed Israel is not a democratic state, and can’t be a democratic state if it is built on the dispossession of the Palestinian people.

And unfortunately the only thing that does change is the escalation of death, imprisonment and violation of basic human rights in which Israel will carry out against the indigenous population. Because a self-proclaimed western state that no longer cares about its liberal facade and does very little to protect that facade will only aim to eradicate the existential threat indiscriminately.

As we saw just this month when Gaza was bombed, murdering 30 Palestinians, including women and children. It was only then that Israel’s Ben Gvir ended his boycott of the government. His far right party, Otzma Yehudit said “Following the adoption of our position and a transition from containment to attack and targeted assassinations of Islamic Jihad leaders, we will return to vote with the government. “

Ben Gvir said that it was “a good start.”

Fascist Zionists and right wing Zionists are currently leveraging the deaths of Palestinians as bargaining chips for their own internal crisis.

However, I understand there exists an Israeli left that does say that Palestine should be free as we’ve seen earlier this year. While for some this may look like a glimmer of hope that an Israeli populace might change from within, I urge you to not overestimate these occurrences.

Franz Fanon explains the grim reality that comes with decolonisation. He says:

“[decolonisation] sets out to change the order of the world, and is obviously a program of complete disorder. It cannot come as a result of magical practices, nor of a natural shock, nor of a friendly understanding. It is the meeting of two forces, opposed to each other by their very nature, which in fact owe their originality to that sort of substantification which results from and is nourished by the situation in the colonies. Their first encounter was marked by violence and their existence together—that is to say the exploitation of the native by the settler—was carried on by dint of a great array of bayonets and cannons.”

I want to believe that everyone, even Fanon himself, wanted his analysis to be wrong. But as history has explained to us over and over again, the only people that can liberate themselves from violent settler colonisation, is the colonised themselves. The Palestinians that resist do not do so because they crave death, contrary to popular belief, it is because they crave life.

I understand that the essence of this talk was looking outwards to Palestine and Israel and the current phenomenon that is transpiring. But I hope to speak about another issue that impacts us all here in Germany which I wanted to briefly touch upon through my role as a journalist.

Right here in Berlin last weekend we saw an incredible amount of repression by the police, who violently attacked protestors who were commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Nakba. They arrested Jewish anti-Zionists and Palestinians alike.

They are the extended hand of the fascist, totalitarian, colonial state of Israel as they are doing their bidding, suppressing Palestinians whether it is censoring them, slandering their names with false allegations, refusing to give them access to public funding and space or by signing a resolution that specifically calls their nonviolent form of resistance anti-semitic – for Palestinians the Nakba in Germany is alive and well.

This country’s memory culture is embedded, not in self reflection and critique, but in attempting to absolve their sins to advance their national gains. Israel has determined that Germany will never again be anti-semitic as long as it is Zionist. Instead, Germany claims that a new wave of anti-semitism has infiltrated its country – an imported form of anti-semitism that stems from the migration of Arab and Muslims.

They have turned phrases such as the powerful chant that Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea, as a call for murder. Israel has given them a book of their propaganda in which to abide by and have obscured even our calls of freedom from oppression, occupation and apartheid.

Germany has even changed school textbooks to ensure that their children understand Israel is not to be criticised.

The reality of the situation whether in Palestine or in Germany forces us to wake up to the intricacies of settler colonialism that always had a Western and European backer.

But I would urge my allies to not despair. All efforts of decolonisation sees an escalation of state violence and repression. The more repressive policies are adopted , the more they attempt to erase our existence. The more our identities become a nuisance to Germany, and Israel’s imperial project, the closer we actually are to eventual liberation – from the river to the sea.

This is the text of a speech given by Hebh in a meeting at the Marxismuss conference in Berlin with Rob Ferguson. Rob’s speech is available here.

Israel, the US, and imperialism

Talk of a ‘Zionist lobby’ gets things the wrong way round. The US supports Israel for its own imperial interests


25/06/2023

Israel, the US, and imperialism

In July 1956, Egyptian president, Colonel Abdul Nasser, announced the nationalisation of the Suez Canal. Britain and France, the old colonial powers, had together with Israel, conspired to invade Egypt, seize control of the canal and overthrow Nasser. On 29 October Israeli forces attacked, and British and French troops followed on 5 November. Within two days it was over, ending in humiliation for Britain and France. President Eisenhower, who had warned against invasion, cut off finance to Britain from the International Monetary Fund and threatened sanctions, fuelling a massive run on sterling. Britain, facing bankruptcy and devaluation of the pound, accepted a UN ceasefire and withdrawal.

The outcome of the 1956 Suez Crisis reflected the new imperialist order after 1945. The US and the Soviet Union now confronted each other as global nuclear superpowers; the middle east was a growing site of superpower rivalry. As the Soviet Union accelerated arms supplies to Egypt, Syria and Iraq, the US looked to counter Soviet influence. After Suez, Israel recognised the US as the key imperialist power and increasingly sought an alliance. Whilst the US had opposed the 1956 invasion, the tension between the US and Israel soon loosened. By 1962, President Kennedy declared a special relationship with Israel comparable to that with Britain.

The first key watershed came with the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The war left Israel the most formidable military power in the region; President Nixon told Henry Kissinger that Israel was the only effective opponent to Soviet expansion in the Middle East and the US now overtook France as Israel’s main source of arms.

However, the second turning point came with the Arab-Israeli war of 1973; here the outcome was more ambiguous. The Arab armies took Israel and its imperialist patron by surprise. Whilst Israel emerged as the victor, the initial defeats punctured assumptions of Israeli invulnerability.

After the 1973 war, the cornerstone of US policy was to establish Israel’s permanent military and technological superiority, known as “Qualitative Military Edge”. Up to 1973, US foreign military sales to any one recipient were capped at $250 million per year. In 1974, US military aid to Israel rocketed to $2.2 billion, setting an annual benchmark since. A senior state department official defined Qualitative Military Edge as the guarantee of Israel’s ability to “counter and defeat credible military threats from any individual state, coalition of states, or non-state actor, while sustaining minimal damages or casualties… Each and every security assistance request from the Israeli Government is evaluated in light of our policy to uphold Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge.” This policy was written into US law by the Obama administration.

At the same time, the US has sought to bring the Arab regimes into its camp. After the defeat of 1973, Egypt began negotiations with Israel and in 1979, President Sadat signed the Egypt-Israel peace treaty. Egypt became the second biggest recipient of US military aid.

Nonetheless, US imperialism faces a fundamental quandary: the vulnerabilities of the Arab regimes. During the 1970s and early 1980s, the Palestinian struggle combined with popular resentment, posing a threat to Arab rulers, and acted as a catalyst for anti-imperialist sentiment across the region.

In 1970, civil war erupted in Jordan between Palestinians and their allies on one side, and the autocrat and key US ally, King Hussein, on the other. Syria backed the revolt seeking an advantage against a regional rival. However, Israel confronted Syria in the Golan and Jordan valley; King Hussein’s forces overwhelmed the Palestinians and forced a Syrian withdrawal.

After the civil war in Jordan, US Aid to Israel rose five-fold from under $300 million between 1968-1970 to $1.5 billion in 1971-1973 – even before the 1973 October war. The same pattern was repeated after the Iranian revolution and during the civil war in Lebanon and Israel’s invasion in 1982. After the Iranian revolution and the overthrow of the Shah, arguably the US’s most important ally on the Persian Gulf, US military aid to Israel sky-rocketed to its highest ever level in real terms – at over $5 billion at 2018 dollar value.

Thus, the biggest spikes in military aid took place when the Arab regimes were threatened by mass revolt, and when Israel faced mass resistance from Palestinians. For example after the first intifada in the late 1980s, and the second intifada in the early 2000s. These increases were proportionally greater in real terms even than were the increases after the Arab-Israeli wars.

Today, Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of US military aid since 1945, totalling $160 billion. Israel also has the world’s largest F-16 fleet except for the United States Air Force. In 2011, as Arab revolutions shook the Middle East, Andrew J. Shapiro, assistant secretary for the Middle East at the state department, in an address entitled “Ensuring Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge” referred to the storming of the Israeli embassy by anti-regime protestors in Cairo. Shapiro insisted the Obama administration was providing unprecedented levels of aid to Israel “at a time when Israel needs our support to address the multifaceted threats it faces.”

There is a side point to be made here but an important one. The trajectory of the relationship between US imperialism and Israel shows that to place emphasis on a “Zionist Lobby” manipulating US foreign policy is misplaced and misleading. This gets things the wrong way round. The US is the most powerful imperialist power in history. It needs no persuading that Israel is an indispensable strategic asset in defence of US imperialist interests in the middle east.

Indeed, before 1973, what is now the largest pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, AIPAC, was a marginal shoe-string operation that sometimes was not able to pay its own staff. It only rose to significance in the 1980s, long after massive escalation in US military aid to Israel and the US policy of establishing Israel’s “Qualitative Military Edge”.

Israel – A Militarised Economy

What does Israel’s imperialist role mean for Israel itself? Both Israel’s society and economy is highly militarised. The massive acceleration of US military and economic aid to Israel since the 1970s is central to the political economy of the Zionist project. Military spending laid the basis for a boom in high-tech and research-intensive manufacturing that fuelled the Israeli economy.

In 1965, high-tech industries accounted for 37% of industrial production; by 2006, the figure was 70%. As a percentage, computer and communications rose from 36% of service exports in 1995 to 78% in 2019. The huge investment by the US feeds back into the high-tech sector and Israel’s industrial base.

Israel has a dual foundation: maintaining the apartheid system over Palestinians on one hand and acting as regional enforcer of US imperialist interests on the other. The apartheid state is more than a foul system of dispossession and domination. It reflects a particular form of capitalist development of imperialism in the middle east.

A Colonial Settler State – Fortress of Imperialist Interests

The understanding of how the settler-colonial garrison is embedded into the imperialist order helps explain why US support for Israel is unconditional. Even faced with far-right pogromists in power, there are no red lines in US support for Israel.

Addressing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy Summit in June, Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken declared that the US-Israel commitment to Israel’s ‘security’ was “non-negotiable” and “ironclad”. He continued to detail the $3.3 billion per annum in foreign military financing; an additional $500 million funding for missile defense, tens of millions for counter-drone and anti-tunneling technologies and an additional $1 billion funding for Israel’s Iron Dome.

Of course true the US also relies on Arab regimes. However, there is a fundamental feature that distinguishes Israel from the Arab rulers. These regimes can be brought down by revolt from below. Pillars of US imperialism such as the Shah of Iran in 1979, Mubarak in Egypt in 2011 have been deposed through revolt from below, a threat that all Arab rulers of the region fear.

In this, Israel has a distinguishing feature. There is no settler-colonial state in history that has dissolved itself. It is this that makes Israel a uniquely vital fortress of imperialist interests.

After the Cold War: 1991 – 2023

However, the imperialist order is not static; imperialism is a system driven by competing states. That process is dynamic, generating tensions and conflict as the relative position of rival powers shifts.

At the end of the Cold War, the US emerged as the world’s sole military superpower. However, the US has suffered a continuing relative decline in its dominance over world trade and production. The US has therefore sought to re-assert hegemony through the exercise of military might – in the Balkan Wars, Somalia, the first Gulf War of 1991, in the 1990s bombing campaigns and sanctions against Iraq. The 1990s closed with the Kosovan war, the NATO campaign against Serbia, and the onset of NATO’s massive expansion eastward.

This vision of US global dominance was expressed most explicitly in the neo-con “project of the New American Century” that informed the Bush administration. This vision met its nemesis in the Middle East amidst the disastrous defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan. The key beneficiary of the Iraq War was the United States’ historic foe – Iran. This led to intensified confrontation between Iran, Saudi and other Gulf states… and of course, Israel.

At the same time, Russia emerged from the collapse of the 1990s on a tide of oil and gas revenues, and now Russia’s intervention in support of the Syrian regime further highlighted US weakness.

Palestine and the Arab Spring

Here we need to turn to the question of Palestinian resistance and the Arab revolution. The first Intifada at the end of the 1980s led to the Oslo Accords of the early 90s. The Accords held out a false promise of a future Palestinian state in an attempt to quell Palestinian resistance while harnessing the PLO leadership to collaboration. By 2000 Oslo was buried in a massive tide of settlement expansion and ethnic cleansing.

The fraud of  the Oslo Accords sparked the second intifada of the 2000s, and the election victory of Hamas in 2006, followed by the blockade and repeated assaults by Israel on Gaza. This brings us towards today. In May 2021 the “unity intifada” erupted across historic Palestine and new forces of resistance emerged, particularly amongst Palestinian youth and above all amongst Palestinians with Israeli citizenship within “1948 Israel”.

The Arab revolutions of 2011 sent shock waves through the middle east and centres of imperialist power. The Palestinian struggle was invoked repeatedly in the mass protests. Starting on Nakba Day in May, thousands of protestors attempted to approach or breach the Israeli border from Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and Jordan.

In Egypt thousands planned to drive to the border in convoys of buses from across the country. The military ordered bus companies to cancel their transport and stopped any who approached the border. At the Syrian border, Syrian police were overwhelmed; four protestors were killed and dozens injured when Israeli soldiers opened fire. In September 2011, a mass protest laid siege to the Israeli Embassy in Cairo. Thousands broke down the security wall, occupied and ransacked the embassy for two days. Embassy security staff were rescued by Egyptian commandos; the ambassador and 85 diplomats fled to Tel Aviv.

In 2020, the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco signed the Abraham Accords with Israel, Saudi and other Gulf states moving towards closer collaboration. As the New York Times put it: “The Arab Spring uprisings had shown Gulf monarchs that popular anger over repression and corruption were bigger threats to their rule than any blowback over their failure to maintain solidarity with the Palestinians”. In addition, the Gulf rulers shared economic interests with Israel – one influential Gulf think tank argued that normalisation of relations with Israel would bring an arc of prosperity across the region.

Shifts in Imperialist Power

However, the tectonic plates of imperialist power are shifting. China’s brokering of the Saudi-Iranian deal is a hugely important indication. China needs stability in the Gulf from where it gets over 40% of its crude oil. It has important investments in the Saudi energy sector and interest in a potential energy pipeline transit corridor through Iran that would provide an alternative trade route to the Suez Canal and the South China Sea.

For its part, Saudi Arabia is investing billions of dollars to attract foreign investment. It no longer sees itself simply as a security vassal of the United States but a regional power, even while it maintains a strategic alliance with the US. As one Saudi official put it, “The United States fails to understand that we cannot be allies at the expenses of our interests”.

Conclusion

The state of Israel is not an anachronism or a left-over from the colonial period. Israeli apartheid has been reproduced by the dynamics of imperialism in the Middle East; it is cemented to US imperialism. Change will not come from the Arab ruling classes, nor from forces within Israeli settler society. To bring the Zionist state to an end and forge a free Palestine of equality for all its citizens will require a challenge to imperialism from the Arab masses themselves.

In this, Palestinians are not simply the passive beneficiary of struggles in the wider region, they act as a potential detonator of revolt. Palestinian resistance ebbs and flows but is permanently inscribed in the struggle against settler colonialism and imperialism in the Middle East. Whenever the working class and oppressed in the Middle East challenge their own regimes, they confront the imperialist order and in doing so they confront the Zionist state. The process that began with the Arab revolutions of 2011 is not over.

The struggle for a free Palestine is therefore an indissoluble part of the struggle against imperialism in the Middle East and the anti-imperialist struggle here at home.

This is adapted from the text of a speech Rob Ferguson gave at the Marxismuss 2023 Conference in Berlin.