Commodifying Neo-Fascism: The NRA's Carry Guard in Trump's America

By James Richard Marra

Neo-liberal fascism reigns triumphant in Donald Trump's great America. This neo-fascism does so in part because over 62 million Americans agree with him concerning America's defense against heralded threats. These include Muslim terrorists, immigrant terrorists, Black terrorists, pro-choice feminist terrorists, eco-terrorists, and a terroristic federal government that intends to imprison law-abiding gun owners in FEMA concentration camps . Anti-gun activists and Black Lives Matter protestors imperil America's Anglo-Saxon culture. Together these "bad guys" offer manifest and pervasive risks, which may arrive unanticipated and perhaps be unavoidable.

In America, protecting oneself from threats is big business, and the modality of that protection for 55 million citizens is the personal firearm. Gun owners are prepared, owning approximately 265 million weapons of various types and lethality. The firearm and ammunition industries earn $15 billion annually , and are politically adroit and entrenched in Washington, thus ensuring a steady flow of profits.

As the gun industry's obsequious marketing and lobbying arm since 1977, the National Rifle Association (NRA) offers its extreme right wing political branding to entice Americans to buy guns, accessories, and training for self defense. It does this by launching a tsunami of fear bating, fallacy, and misinformation, propelled by a white Christian and paternalistic nationalism. This is the moral vision that invigorates Trump's political base. Its imperialist military-security consciousness celebrates hyper-masculine intimidation and violence, and elevates "security" to the moral level of "Moses and the Prophets" (to paraphrase Karl Marx). "Freedom's Safest Place" is a Trump Tower of Babel, where a muddle of hysterical jingoism, fake news, and industry "reports" (read "advertisements") are counted as gospel. Not surprisingly, the gun industry funnels massive funding to political candidates guided by the NRA's moral compass, to the tune of $50.2 million.

The use of guns in self-defense comes with, in insurance parlance, a "moral hazard." This is because people may successfully defend themselves, yet in error or through malfeasance. When an injury (physical or financial) occurs due to a firearm discharge, a tort may occur that exposes gun owners to substantial civil liability, or criminal prosecution. These risks are exacerbated by the maze of complex, ambiguous, mercurial, inconsistent, and even contradictory gun regulations and self-defense laws among states. This legal and administrative morass complicates the task of complying with applicable laws. As the Carry Guard web page announces, the threat of litigation looms large: "You can do everything right and still lose….[L]awful self-defense can cost a fortune." Thus, a tool intended to satisfy a need for physical self-defense engenders a new need and a new tool: legal self-defense and the insurance to pay for it.

Thus arises the NRA's Carry Guard membership plan. In addition to a general membership, the NRA joins with the Chubb Group to offer, through its subsidiary Lockton Affinity, insurance reimbursement coverage for legal defense costs, either criminal or civil, resulting from acts of self-defense with firearms; along with a package of related products and services. Carry Guard insurance is a personal liability commodity, combined with financial assistance benefits for criminal defense, which intends to fill a gap in most homeowners insurance that usually excludes potentially morally hazardous acts, like intentionally shooting in self-defense.

Chubb's new product has a potential market of approximately 400,000 gun owners. The $154.95 price of the Bronze-level Carry Guard premium (minus $40 for the NRA membership) covers policy administration and claims costs paid to Lockton, with the remainder going to Chubb. The potential gain for Chubb is considerable, given that the United States Concealed Carry Association's self-defense insurance has an estimated annual revenue range between $30 and $70 million .

Carry Guard embodies the ideological interdependence among the gun industry, the NRA, and Trump's neo-fascist regime. The gun industry exists to maximize profits from selling firearms, regardless of the enabling marketing. While gun manufacturers and the Chubb Group enjoy the profits offered by their partnership with the NRA, the Carry Guard suite of benefits also satisfies two fundamental needs of the NRA: increased membership and expanded political power. They do this by stoking fears that a greedy liability attorney will convince an Untermensch from some disliked group to file a civil suit; or that district attorneys from an overreaching "leftist" and anti-gun government will file criminal charges. Fears of the racial "other" and government "tyranny" are the marketing the NRA brings to Carry Guard.

This marketing finds it origin in the NRA's extreme right-wing Cincinnati Revolt of 1977 . The Revolt established the NRA's aim to make America great again by arming its citizenry to the teeth. By doing so, the nation can be ostensibly defended from threats to its Second-Amendment rights, capitalism, and its social Darwinist worldview. It is no wonder that the neo-liberal Ronald Reagan was the first president to endorse the NRA, or that the NRA's darling neo-fascist, Donald Trump, told the 2017 NRA Convention that he would, "come through" for them. Carry Guard membership affirms a commitment to the threat-filled worldview of Trumpism. That worldview, as the NRA website celebrates, is championed by a cabal of extremist gun-rights advocates, racists, militarists, and proto-fascist law enforcement, and the virulently anti-Muslim Trump supporter Rep. Clay Higgins, who was rendered notorious by his Auschwitz gas-chamber debacle .

As a commodity, Carry Guard satisfies the basic human need for security against threats unmasked at "Freedom's Safest Place," including supposed unjust litigation. It also satisfies a fundamental need for group membership, which is accomplished through an association with a right-wing political organization, along with the blessing of a neo-fascist national leader. Self-esteem comes with one's self-identification as a "responsible" gun owner, a defender of Constitutional rights, and a law-abiding citizen standing for law and order.

Carry Guard's insurance represents a controversial niche market product. However, its notoriety as so-called "murder insurance" should not obscure the fact that Carry Guard is a bundle of mutually supportive products and services. Its "use values" for the NRA, to use Marx's term, are to: 1) promote the purchase of firearms for self-defense, 2) help to increase NRA membership and funding, 3) and provide an additional venue for the indoctrination of NRA members and public advocacy; thereby increasing the political force of the organization. Viewing Carry Guard as a consolidated suite of products provides a basis an understanding the product as a neo-fascist political project which combines, as the Trump "administration" does, neo-liberal capitalist and extremist right-wing political agendas.

As Karl Marx explained, capitalists are adroit at discovering or fabricating new needs, and developing products or services that satisfy them. While some human needs and desires can potentially be satisfied, those that can do so through use values. A firearm is a use value that fulfills the need for self-defense, even if the perceived threats are largely imagined. While some people personally fabricate firearms, ammunition, and accessories, most purchase them on the firearm market; from which the gun industry acquires its profits. However, the employment of a firearm in self-defense, that moment when the gun owner realizes its use value, engenders a new litigation risk potentially requiring a new use value. This new use value might take the form of a personal financial reserve intended to pay for self-defense litigation. However, the cost of litigation is high and the risk of a large civil settlement substantial. The cost of self-funding a legal defense is prohibitive for most gun owners, and " peer-to-peer " funding looks much like the specter of communism. These consumer concerns provide Chubb with an opportunity to sell a new use value in the form of an insurance commodity. As such, it obtains an exchange value within the insurance market; and is for the gun owner the premium price of the insurance. Thus, capitalists double dip into the gun owner's pocketbook. They sell the use value of a firearm as a commodity within the firearm market in order to satisfy a need for personal self-defense. Then they sell the use value of an insurance commodity to satisfy a need for legal self-defense arising from the actual use of the firearm. Thus, Carry Guard members, wishing to enjoy the practice of "American rugged self-reliance," ironically become inextricably dependent upon a capitalist enterprise to insure their financial security and personal freedom.

This irony reflects a deeper alienation of human beings from what Marx views as their own human essence. According to Marx, what distinguishes human beings from other species that exploit natural recourses instinctively to satisfy needs (like birds constructing nests from twigs and human refuse), is that humans do so through purposeful and creative labor. When gun owners are not able to personally design and establish their legal defense, the Chubb Group offers their capital and the creativity of their workers (policy administrators and actuaries, for example) to market a suitable insurance commodity to meet the need. By doing so, gun owners become "alienated" from the means of producing their own protection. Thus, Chubb "rents" NRA gun owners, for the price of an insurance premium, a safe place that is manufactured, so to speak, and administered by the Chubb Group exclusively for profit. Viewing Carry Guard from a Marxian perspective dissolves the myth of the product as primarily an enabler of self-reliant defense. It exposes the function of Carry Guard as a vehicle to establish a dependency of policyholders on the Chubb Group and the NRA (through the needed self-defense training), and for the enrichment of the capitalist class.

This Marxian perspective illuminates the dynamics of the gun market not only in terms of the commodification of physical use values (firearms and their accessories), but also with reference to affective use values; those psychological needs that the physical use values satisfy. Affective utility plays a central marketing role. Most gun owners are middle-aged, white, high school educated, and politically conservative; for whom firearm ownership is exciting and patriotic. The adrenaline rush triggered by shooting firearms creates a sense of physical strength, heightened masculinity, and rugged independence, stirring to life the "badass" warrior within. Badasses don't feel insecure, powerless, fearful of strangers, dependent, or confused in an uncertain world. An obsession with design innovations and hi-tech accessories also proclaims who are the baddest asses; those who possess the baddest ass magazines or laser sights. Given that the shrinking civilian firearms market requires repeat sales to maintain profits, gun manufacturers and the NRA appeal to the super-hero fantasies of hyper-vigilant males to continually stir a toxic stew of affective needs to maximize sales.

In this sense, Carry Guard represents a commodification of "peace of mind" (as all personal liability insurance does) in the face of the looming threats prophesied by the NRA, as well as a social acceptance and self-esteem that comes participating in the defense of hearth, home, and country. When the satisfaction of these basic human needs is couched in the NRA's neo-fascist worldview, the commodity sold is not simply self-defense, but a comforting neo-fascist worldview as well.

Commodity marketing is remarkably successful and adaptable, in part, because it can effectively appeal to affective desires, while simultaneously wrapping them in a self-actualizing political worldview. The Virginia Slims' 1960s accolade "You've Come a Long Way, Baby" celebrated both the vanity of a Twiggy-like female body, and a self-actualization promised by second-wave feminism. Today, the post-sexist spokeswoman, Dana Loesch, has come a long way as well; roaring from the Carry Guard website as a confident and square-jawed gun owner, squeezed into a skin-tight Carry Guard tee shirt. Coca Cola underscored its iconic advertisement with the jingle "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)," sung by a commune of sanitized and serenely spellbound hippies residing in the Nirvana of the 1960's "Counterculture." Now, Barneys is banking on their M65 anarchy jacket to appeal to Millenials who are confronting Trump's neo-fascism in streets across America, in a desperate struggle for a secure and compassionate world; one free from the exploitation and repression of "The System." Barneys hopes there will be value added from sales to those who choose to safely impersonate revolutionaries at a safe distance.

Altogether, Carry Guard's carefully designed and marketed package of commodified use values embodies the symbiosis between neo-liberal capitalism and right-wing extremist politics that forms the core of, and is a marketized metaphor for, Trump's neo-fascist regime.

Coups and History: An Interview on Zimbabwe

By Brenan Daniels

This is the transcript of a recent interview with Abayomi Azikiwe, of Pan African Newswire, and Netfa Freeman, an Analyst and Events Coordinator for the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a longtime organizer in the Pan-African and international human rights movement, and former Liaison for the Ujamma Youth Farming Project in Gweru, Zimbabwe. Netfa hosts and produces the radio show Voices With Vision on WPFW 89.3 F. The interview focuses on the recent coup in Zimbabwe, putting it in current and historical context.

The coup in Zimbabwe seemed to happen all of a sudden. What were the events leading up to it?

Abayomi Azikiwe: These factional dispute within the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) ruling party have been coming to a head for over three years. With the expulsion of the former Vice President Joice Mujuru and her supporters in Dec. 2014, the stage was set for an intensified struggle between those aligned with the now Interim President Emmerson D. Mnangagwa on the one side and the forces surrounding First Lady Grace Mugabe on the other.

The Generation 40 Group aligned with the First Lady appeared to be gaining the upper hand when the-then Vice President Mnangagwa was expelled during early Nov. Nonetheless, the Lacoste Group, the supporters of Mnangagwa, had strong backing within the military and this was the determining aspect of the struggle which shifted power toward the current leadership group. On the surface the conflict appeared to be an internal struggle within the ruling party itself although there have been suggestions and some documented proof that outside interests such as the United States and Britain may have played a role as well in forcing the resignation of President Robert Mugabe. It was quite interesting that the Voice of America reported on Nov. 21 that the State Department had already outlined the terms for the lifting of sanctions against Zimbabwe.

Whether the sanctions are actually lifted will remain to be seen. There have been western business-friendly statements made by some officials of the current leadership within the party such as a willingness to compensate the British settlers for land confiscated in 2000; the scaling down of government personnel including ministerial portfolios; the amendments already made to the indigenization policy; and the potential for Zimbabwe re-entering the Commonwealth.

Netfa Freeman: Some are disputing use of the term coup given that it doesn't fit other historical examples of coups in Africa. But getting into that would be too much and would deviate from the question.

First, nothing of this nature can happen all of a sudden. The context might be a little too complicated to explain in this interview but a synopsis seems to be that this was the culmination of power struggles within the ruling party ZANU PF that have been brewing since at least 2015 or 14. Contributing factors to their acuteness are the economic tensions largely due to imperialist sanctions imposed on the country and concerns over who would succeed the aging President Robert Mugabe now 93. It should be no wonder that tensions about succession would arise and intensify.

As they say politics abhors a power vacuum. Factions formed, one delineated as a younger strain of ZANU PF party members known as G40 or Generation 40, led by Grace Mugabe and the other being the old guard of members many of whom fought in the liberation struggle for independence led by one of two Vice-presidents, Emmerson Mnangagwa. Some very contentious politburo meetings ensued with accusations being leveled against one another of plots to force a government take over. The tensions led President Mugabe to depose Mnangagwa of his post. This seemed to set of what seemed to be a contingency plan already in place by Mnangagwe and Defense Commander Constantino Chiwenga to use the military to constrain the police forces and anyone under the influence of G40. Then assume control of the various levers of the government.

I can't pretend to know which of the factions (G40 or Team Lacoste, as the other is known) were motivated by the more altruistic concerns or revolutionary principles. The lessons for African and the struggling world are many. What we do know now is that after initially holding out, Mugabe has resigned.

Mugabe is generally shown as a dictator by mainstream American sources. Can you shed some light on who exactly Mugabe is?

Abayomi Azikiwe: President Mugabe's position in modern African history is secured as a liberation movement leader, progressive governmental head-of-state and an ideological contributor to the African revolutionary struggle for Pan-Africanism, Anti-imperialism and Socialist-orientation. Mugabe worked as an educator and youth leader during his younger years. In the 1960s he was imprisoned by the settler-colonial regime of Rhodesia for ten years. After being released in 1974 during an internal crisis within ZANU, he was able to steer the liberation movement to victory by 1979-1980.

After gaining independence in April 1980, he presided over a government of reconciliation and transition for five years as prime minister. The 1985 constitution made Mugabe president and by late 1987 he along with Joshua Nkomo, considered the "father of the movement", who headed the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU), merged the two groups into ZANU-PF which ended the initial instability which occurred in Matebeleland in the early 1980s after independence where a rebellion was ruthlessly suppressed by the Zimbabwe Defense Forces (ZDF) Fifth Brigade. The reconciliation with Nkomo was historic and can serve as a model for African governance moving forward.

The 2000 Land Reclamation program was key in consolidating the genuine independence of the country. However, it drew the ire of western imperialism which imposed sanctions that hampered the capacity for economic growth and development. In addition, the advent of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) parallels the land redistribution program debates and enactment from 1998-2000. MDC has been funded by the West along with other groups in a failed effort to reverse the independence process. These methods have failed due to the incompetence of the opposition leaders largely stemming from their lack of support among the people and gross opportunism.

Netfa Freeman: I can't agree with that. Generally seen by whom as a dictator? I do know that the West consistently refers the leaders of countries that do not bow to them economically and politically as dictators.

But if a dictator is defined as a ruler with total power over a country then how can one be a dictator in a country with a parliamentary system constitutionally consisting of Executive, Judiciary and Legislative structures? This is what has been in Zimbabwe. And on top of that it's been a multi-party system? Even if accusations were true that the system has been manipulated to give disproportionate power to Mugabe, it can't be said that he held total power.

But to answer your question who is Mugabe; Robert Mugabe was the son of a carpenter and as a youth attended Roman Catholic mission schools. He won a scholarship to go to a Black University in South Africa where he achieved the first of his 6 degrees in one year and became an African nationalist. He returned home to what was then called Rhodesia to teach for 4 years before going to teach and study in Ghana and becoming influenced by Kwame Nkrumah. Once he returned to Zimbabwe he involved himself in African nationalist politics advocating revolution through non-violent direct action, propaganda, and civil disobedience. At that time he considered himself a Marxist and staunch anti-racist. In the early years of the struggle he was arrested several times by the white minority regime. In a 1965 government crack down on the African nationalist movement Mugabe was incarcerated for 10 years without trial. While in prison he taught and also earned 3 law degrees.

During this time was when he and his comrades determined that armed struggle was the only way to liberation. After his release he was given refuge by the new revolutionary government in Mozambique where he founded ZANLA, Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army with many of his former fellow political prisoners and entered into the fray. ZANU, the Zimbabwe African National Union was formed later as the political arm.

To make a long story short, in 1979 the Rhodes as they were referred to were forced to the negotiation table in Lancaster. After the Lancaster House Agreement established elections for a new president in 1980 in which Africans ran for office, Mugabe won in a landslide victory.

Talk about how the economic situation has changed and deteriorated over the past several years.

Abayomi Azikiwe: Zimbabwe has been hampered through the sanctions imposed by the United States, Britain and the European Union. There have been discussions held with Washington for a number of years around lifting the sanctions particularly after the acceptance of a Global Political Agreement and coalition government after the disputed 2008 national elections. Yet despite the bringing of opposition forces into the government between 2008-2013, the U.S., Britain and EU have maintained the sanctions.

This clearly reveals that the ultimate objectives of the sanctions were to either topple ZANU-PF or drastically shift the domestic and foreign policy of Zimbabwe. The impact of the sanctions have been compounded by the worst drought in recent history which exists throughout the entire Southern Africa region. Also there has been a precipitous decline in commodity prices over the last three years that was a direct result of U.S. economic policy under the administration of President Barack Obama. Prices are starting to rise again in the energy and strategic mineral industries.

Zimbabwe has large deposits of diamonds and platinum. Consequently, the imperialists are set on gaining favorable terms for any long term economic relationships with Zimbabwe and other states in the sub-continent.

Netfa Freeman: Yes there is hyper-inflation and high unemployment and the value of currency is very precarious. But what is often missing from the explanation are the effects of the EU, UK and US sanctions legislation explicitly designed to damage the economy. This is done by denying any extension of credit and loans to the government or any balance of payment assistance from international financial institutions. The sanctions also actively dissuade investments in, or trading with the country. All this has had devastating effects on the ordinary citizens of Zimbabwe in multitude of ways, a fact that Western media and liberal progressive pundits never fail to ignore.

I'm not denying that there is some mismanagement and corruption. The government officials in ZANU PF and Mugabe himself acknowledge it but this is not to blame for the magnitude of the economic problems. The economic warfare that had been being waged against Zimbabwe also included denying it access to foreign exchange which is needed to carry out diverse international business transactions.

There has been some talk of China possibly giving the green light to the coup plotters. What are your thoughts on this?

Abayomi Azikiwe: I have not seen any evidence that China was involved in the military intervention and the resignation of President Mugabe. Typically Beijing does not get involved in the internal affairs of African states. China is a large trading partner with Zimbabwe and its assistance along with the neighboring Republic of South Africa and Republic of Mozambique have been essential in maintaining stability in Harare. Relations between the People's Republic China, the ruling Communist Party of China, and ZANU-PF goes back to the era of the national liberation war. These ties have been maintained, strengthened and enhanced over the years since independence.

Netfa Freeman: This seems a mischaracterization. As we know China has a strong and long relationship with Zimbabwe in many economic areas. And it has been further strengthened by ZANU's "Look East Policy" in response to the belligerence of the West toward them. Mnangagwa and General Chiwenga were simply assuring that China would not feel compelled by a change of forces to interfere in Zimbabwe's internal affairs and that the diplomatic and economic relationship would remain.

It was reported recently by the Australian Broadcasting Company that Zimbabwe is looking to go back into the British Commonwealth. Why would they do that? What about giving the white farmers back land?

Abayomi Azikiwe: Zimbabwe under President Mugabe in 2002 did not leave the Commonwealth voluntarily. They were in effect expelled. London set terms for their return and these conditions were rejected by ZANU-PF. These are colonial institutions. ZANU-PF has developed a "Look East" policy. The objectives are to build economic relations with other African states, countries in Asia and Latin America. This is the future of the world. Britain is facing a tremendous crisis due to the vote by the electorate to withdraw from the EU in June 2016.

There maybe an attempt to re-enter the Commonwealth under Interim President Mnangagwa. Nevertheless, what will Zimbabwe have to sacrifice in order to re-enter this declining system? There are many other former British colonies in Africa who are Commonwealth members yet their people remain impoverished and uneducated. Zimbabwe has the largest literacy rate in Africa where over 95 percent of the people can read and write. This is a monumental achievement of the Revolution.

Netfa Freeman: First on the land question, no one could give back the land to the white farmers even if they wanted to. That process is past the point of no return. Besides doing that would be the easiest way to get the country to revolt against the new dispensation. The media is fond of showing images in the urban areas, particularly Harare the capital, of what are basically opposition forces to ZANU and Mugabe. But the majority of the population is in the rural areas, which are also the areas that benefitted most directly from the 2000 fast track land redistribution. What Emmerson Mnangagwa did say was that the land reform would remain untouched but that they would continue to compensate the white farmers for certain upgrades they made to farms. That part really wasn't anything new and had already been part of the 2000 fast track land reclamation process.

About the British Commonwealth, I don't know. I've been hearing that said but not yet from the leaders of the new dispensation themselves. Every time i read it is Europeans saying that they would welcome them back if they meet certain conditions. If they are looking into it, i would be careful that we not have a knee-jerk reaction to it, as if that in and of itself is a sellout move. Zimbabwe was suspended from the Commonweath in 2002 based on imperialist hegemonic demonization that claimed among other things that Zimbabwe elections weren't free and fair. But this is bull for two reasons. One is that those elections were certified by independent electoral observes, including a delegation of the NAACP that drafted a detailed report on how fair those elections were. The second reason is the West doesn't really care about democracy in other countries. They will invade and over throw democratic countries.

But many people, myself included, applauded Mugabe's response to them suspending Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth. He basically said Africans don't need the approval of Europeans and then left the body all together. But because Member states have no legal obligation to one another and there are some benefits to being a part of it, like in trade agreements and working together to cooperate on things like migration policies for instance, I don't think it should be seen as principled position to stay out of it. It has a different history than the OAS, Organization of American States but essentially serves the same purpose. Countries just need to make sure rejoining is not based on compromising its sovereignty and revolutionary or socialist principles.

This is actually is the area that I am concerned about in the new developments

What are your thoughts on the future of Zimbabwe?

Abayomi Azikiwe: This will depend on the policies coming out of the interim government between now and the elections slated for mid-2018. If the Party maintains its legacy it will do well in the elections. However, the imperialists now perceive an opening and will utilize the current situation in an attempt to influence domestic and foreign policy. As I have outlined in a previous report, there are four areas which are significant in assessing the direction of events in Zimbabwe.

The land question, indigenization, the country's commitments to regional institutions such as the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union (AU), and the role of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). The developments in Zimbabwe should be a lesson as well for the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa. There are factional problems within ANC and the imperialists along with their allies within the opposition parties inside the country are seeking to overthrow the ANC using similar methods.

Therefore, the situation in Southern Africa is at a critical stage and the next year will be important as it involves the region and the continent as a whole.

Netfa Freeman: It is still too early to determine what lies ahead and to know where the heads are of those who have assumed leadership of the country. I'm very concerned over some things we're seeing. All the imperialist countries that have had Zimbabwe in their crosshairs are now pledging to help with economic recovery and sending emissaries to the country etc. The new leadership seems to be working toward re-establishing dealings with institutions of neo-colonialism, like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. These institutions are notorious for imposing their "economic structural adjustment programs" (ESAPs) on underdeveloped countries. These programs obligate countries to surrender to foreign trade relations tilted to benefit multi-national corporate interests, like privatization of public goods and services, deregulations, wage caps, and all sorts of things not in the interest of the masses.

It is hard to pass judgment on the leaders for the decisions they make. I am not in the predicament they are in and don't know what decisions i would make if actually in their shoes. But history teaches us that Imperialism does not make such commitments unless they are certain that their economic interests are secured. So what is being worked out behind closed doors concerns me. I do think that peace and justice loving people outside of Zimbabwe should take the principled stand for the unconditional lifting of sanctions and for her people's right to national self-determination.

Stand Against Torture: Political Scientists Refuse to Legitimate Torture

By Paul A. Passavant and Jodi Dean

Since 2004, we have known that that the United States Government has been responsible for torture. We have known that the legal memoranda written by Berkeley law professor John Yoo during his tenure in the US Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel provided the legal arguments that enabled torture to become a matter of United States policy in the "global war on terror." (GWOT). Many have been shocked, outraged, or ashamed that the United States has banished itself from the most fundamental norm of the post-World War II international order and, some would argue, American constitutionalism and the rule of law itself. [1] Human rights organizations have struggled to discover how this system of torture has functioned, to remove victims from exposure to torture, and to hold key officials and private contractors (such as psychologists) responsible for their conduct. Despite support for these efforts, the success of organizations like Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International (AI), and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has only been limited. Both the Bush and Obama administrations frustrated and blocked their work. Others have moved on, out of cynicism, exhaustion, or preoccupation with other horrors. Nevertheless, the necessity of confronting and rejecting the US's institutionalized torture regime remains. We cannot and must not be a country that tortures.

Upon hearing that John Yoo was scheduled to appear at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA), held August 31 - September 3, 2017, a number of Political Scientists organized a response. The theme of the annual meeting was "The Quest for Legitimacy: Actors, Audiences and Aspirations." The goal of the organizers was to ensure that the APSA did not legitimate torture by providing institutional cover for Yoo. Our response included protests at the two panels on which Yoo was speaking, both organized by the Claremont Institute, an affiliated group that participates in the annual meeting. When Yoo got up to speak, we stood and turned our backs on him. We held signs, "Stand Up Against Torture." We remained silently standing until the end of the panels. Our response to Yoo's participation in our annual meeting also included getting measures passed at the APSA business meeting that would instruct and enable the ethics committee to bring the association's concern with abuses caused or experienced by political scientists together with its stated commitment to human rights.

In an article posted on the blog of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College, Samantha Hill and Roger Berkowitz express "unease" about the APSA Yoo protests. Hill and Berkowitz seem to know that torture occurred. They recognize that Yoo's memos legally enabled the construction of a torture regime. They excerpt at length Corey Robin's summary of the public record. Yoo was not offering the idle speculations of an academic, Robin reminds us, he was issuing legal memoranda whose interpretations of law were binding on the executive branch unless overturned by the Attorney General himself. Yoo was bureaucratically central to the GWOT. According to Jane Mayer's sources, "it's incredible, but John Yoo and David Addington [legal counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney] were running the war on terror almost on their own." [2] Nevertheless, Hill and Berkowitz oppose those Political Scientists who stood in silent protest when Yoo rose to speak.

Hill and Berkowitz echo some of Yoo's supporters, arguing that he should be allowed to speak at APSA because he has not been convicted of the crime of torture. This objection goes to the heart of the problem of uncheckable executive power that Yoo enabled and the key point of the protest. No one can face criminal charges unless the executive branch prosecutes those who violate the law. Obviously, the Bush administration was committed to evading, rather than enforcing, US law criminalizing torture. Moreover, as Glenn Greenwald has reported , the Obama administration actively avoided prosecuting, or otherwise holding accountable, those responsible for the practice of torture. That the state failed to act, however, does not absolve its citizens for inaction. Citizens, too, can and must take action to prevent the normalization of torture. Hill and Berkowitz are disingenuous when they argue APSA should provide Yoo with a platform until he is convicted of war crimes. They can appear to oppose torture, without having to take a stand against torture, as they wait for Yoo's prosecution.

Hill and Berkowitz miss the point of the protest. Surely Hill and Berkowitz are familiar enough with the basics of law to know the difference between a profession's code of ethical conduct and the state's criminal law. The APSA protest was targeted less at Yoo than it was at APSA. Political scientists were insisting the ethical guidelines of our profession do not permit enabling torture. The American Psychological Association (APA) has amended its code of ethics to make this clear (if it wasn't before). The APSA protest announced that it is time for APSA to catch up to the APA. Hill and Berkowitz are playing a shell game by seeking to fool their readers insofar as they criticize the APSA protest because Yoo has not yet been found criminally liable.

Hill and Berkowitz may miss the point of protest period. They say that democracy requires the work of persuasion. Yet they appear not to grasp that protests are tools of persuasion. At APSA, the protests were accompanied by discussions at Council and business meetings about changing APSA policies. Throughout the meeting, not to mention on social media before and after the meeting, there were numerous discussions regarding the appropriateness of having an architect of the US torture regime speak at APSA. The protests were central to the debate over the professional ethics of political scientists.

Hill and Berkowitz are at their worst when they offer a comparison between Yoo and Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi bureaucrat who enabled horror at a mass scale. Any torture regime requires a bureaucracy. Eichmann and Yoo are the kind of bureaucrats who transform the worst of what is humanly imaginable into a mundane institutional practice. For Hill and Berkowitz, Eichmann is unlike Yoo and was rightly punished because he "set in motion the mass murder of innocents because of their religion." In contrast, Yoo "legally rationalized the torture of a small number of terrorists who may or may not have had information that might lead to the saving of thousands of American lives." Eichmann is evil because people were killed on account of their religion - because of their identity or imagined race. Yoo, they suggest, was rationalizing the torture of terrorists to discover information to save American lives. Hill and Berkowitz use religion, ethnicity, or an imagined race, to say nothing of nationalism, to rationalize torture.

Anyone familiar with Abu Ghraib - the key event in the discovery of the Bush torture regime - knows that 70-90 percent of those detained in that space dedicated to torture were ordinary civilians and not terrorists. [3] During the GWOT, 780 people were detained at the US military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Only three of those ever convicted by military commission are currently detained there, and there are plans to prosecute only fourteen of all those held at that detention camp. Here we see the double standard deployed by Hill and Berkowitz. We must listen to Yoo and treat him as part of the community - knowing his legal work enabled torture - because he has not been convicted for participating in a torture regime. Yet such generosity does not extend to the overwhelming majority of those Muslims and Arabs who have been victims of the torture regime. They are all (potential) terrorists and their torture is, apparently, permissible.

The Hill and Berkowitz comparison of Yoo to Eichmann is striking for its repetition of the torturers' lie: the terrorist might have information. While Hill and Berkowitz spare us the "ticking time bomb" in this scenario, the torturer can never be certain whether the victim does have "information" before inflicting torture. Afterwards, one does well to doubt that the anguished confessions provided anything reliable. [4]

Hill and Berkowitz mischaracterize Yoo's legal work as "opinion," although it was meant to be "binding" on other executive branch bureaucrats in the torture regime. They treat Yoo as rationalizing torture whereas Eichmann set it in motion. This is a lie. As Mayer makes clear, US torture policy came from the lawyers in the Justice Department. Hill and Berkowitz say, "Yoo is the kind of person we need to argue with head on." A debate over torture's merits violates the fundamental ethical and legal injunction against torture. It concedes that torture might sometimes be permissible. Hill and Berkowitz are thus open to the possibility that torture was acceptable in the GWOT. The political scientists protesting Yoo refuse this possibility.

Hill and Berkowitz inoculate Yoo from accountability. They even draft Hannah Arendt into the service of their sorry endeavor, situating Yoo in an Arendtian "space of appearance" where words and actions are recognized. This misappropriation ignores Arendt's own verdict on Eichmann: he should be banished from the world. The APSA protests did not call for Yoo's banishment or execution. They called on APSA to refuse to legitimate the author of US torture policy by providing him with institutional cover. They called on political scientists to stand against torture.

Originally published at Public Seminar .

Paul A. Passavant is Associate Professor of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY.

Jodi Dean is the Harter Chair of Humanities and Social Sciences at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY.

Notes

[1] Jeremy Waldron, "Torture and Positive Law: Jurisprudence for the White House," Columbia Law Review 105 (October, 2005).

[2] Corey Robin, "When Political Scientists Legitimate Torturers," August 25, 2017 (Online: coreyrobin.com, accessed September 5, 2017), citing Jane Mayer, The Dark Side (New York: Doubleday, 2008).

[3] Mark Danner, "Torture and Truth," in Mark Danner, Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror (New York: New York Review Books, 2004), 3.

[4] Darius Rejali, Torture and Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), chap. 21.

Internationalism Gone Local: The Ginger Jentzen Campaign Shows How Socialism Grows from the Bottom-Up

By Bryant William Sculos

When Socialist Alternative member Kshama Sawant successfully ran and was elected to the Seattle City Council in 2013 (assuming office in 2014), she proved for the first time in a very long time that socialist politics, embodied and presented aggressively, openly, and strategically, can be viable in the United States. Since entering office, Sawant, as the only socialist on the council, has spear-headed a number of successful policy campaigns, including raising the city's minimum wage over several years to $15 an hour and reforming housing and rental policies in Seattle. Sawant has since been reelected and risen in national prominence. Her successes, supported by local, national, and international activists and organizers-combined with the massively popular Democratic Party primary campaign of Bernie Sanders in 2016-have led to a resurgent popularity of socialist ideals throughout the country, with those on left increasingly believing in the importance of building a political party to the left of the corporate Democratic Party.

The enthusiasm quickly spread to Minneapolis where another Socialist Alternative candidate for City Council is driving towards a possible upset election victory against a well-entrenched Democratic Party establishment. Ginger Jentzen's path to becoming one of the top candidates for the Ward 3 seat on the Minneapolis City Council is a bit different than Sawant's. Jentzen, before even considering running for office, led a massively successful uphill battle to convince the corporate-centrist Democrats on the City Council to support raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour (something that the current mayor, who ran on a progressive platform, wrongly claimed they did not have the power to do, in a failed effort to quell the 15NOW! movement in Minneapolis, which Ginger was the director of).

The Democrats on the council colluded with Republican judges to keep a $15 minimum wage referendum off the ballot in Nov. 2016. Despite the machinations of the Democrats and Republican parties in Minneapolis, the continued pressure from the 15NOW! campaign pushed most Democrats on the City Council to pivot earlier this year in support of the $15 an hour minimum wage demand, but still only with some concessions to the powerful local business interests .

Ginger Jentzen's campaign is built on this foundation laid by the grassroots activists primarily from Minneapolis, as well as around the country, to win this raise for the working people of her city. Jentzen is striving to bring her experience, passion, and political savvy with her into an elected spot on the City Council.

Ginger is fighting, and gaining a lot of political ground, for her platform centered on: housing affordability, community oversight of the police, increasing taxes on the wealthy, support for the LGBTQA+ and immigrant communities, and expanding support for public transit and education. The Democrats want nothing to do with these extremely popular positions-or rather, they are only interested in them so far as they can appropriate them for electoral victories only to abandon them without a second thought as they continue to cash checks from their corporate backers.

Jentzen has refused all corporate and anti- $15 minimum wage interest donations to her campaign. She is fighting against the establishment Democratic Farmer-Labor Party (the Minnesota iteration of the Democratic Party) candidates who continue to benefit from outside money from corporations and DNC affiliated PACs, groups that care nothing for the working people of Minneapolis. Jentzen has recently become the most successful fundraiser in the history of the Minneapolis City Council-almost all of that money coming from very small individual donations (which is now over $140,000 - a new record for a Minneapolis City Council race).

Ginger Jentzen's campaign has been endorsed by the Minnesota Nurses' Association, CWA Minnesota State Council, United Transportation Union Minnesota Legislative Board, Our Revolution-Twin Cities, Socialist Alternative, the International Socialist Organization, the Democratic Socialists of America, and last but not least, the long-time civil rights activist, world-renowned scholar and public intellectual, Dr. Cornel West.

While Jentzen's victory would still represent a tremendous upset, it is far from unlikely. She has the support of the working people and students in her ward. She has the potential to benefit from the ranked-choice voting procedure in Minneapolis (though her Democratic opponents are laughingly attempting to convince voters that this should benefit them). By allowing voters to choose their real first choice and not be brow-beaten into the continually failed strategy of lesser-evilism, Jentzen has more than a fighting chance.

This is how democracy and socialism, inextricably linked, are supposed to work. Democracy and socialism must be internationalist in its outlook and goals, but building support for the cause of all humanity (especially those long-oppressed and exploited peoples) is a process of persuasion and movement/organization-building that must occur at the local level in order to be successful. Kshama Sawant and Ginger Jentzen (regardless of the eventual electoral results) show why this is so. Local successes, in addition to improving the lives of people, breed confidence. They serve as models for others who may share political and economic solidarity with the socialist project but wrongly fear that those politics cannot be successful electorally in the United States-or that whatever successes achieved would remain local.

Kshama Sawant is a household name in progressive circles in the US, and even beyond. She has continued to live up to her promise to fight for the working people of Seattle while also contributing to the building of a national and international movement. Ginger Jentzen's campaign offer the same promises for success for the working people of Minneapolis, as well as the broader aims of continuing to strengthen the organized Left in the US and around the world. For Kshama and Ginger, a small part of this includes only taking a salary equivalent to that of a skilled worker in their constituencies and donating the rest to build social movements.

Forget Hillary Clinton. These are the real women leading the movements that could eventually break the highest class ceiling of all: the glass ceiling of exploitative, white supremacist, heteropatriarchal, imperial capitalism.

For more information about how you can help or support Ginger's campaign before election day (November 7), check out her campaign website.

Maternal and Child Health in the Face of Natural Disasters

By Cherise Charleswell

Ironically, just three months after the unqualified, unethical, and unstable narcissist who occupies the White House, decided to pull out of the Climate Accords/Paris Climate Agreement , the United States has been struck by a number of natural disasters from the uncontrollable fires raging in Oregon and California, and other parts of the west coast, to hurricanes Harvey and Irma in the states of Texas and Florida, respectively. Irma first wreaked her damage on the Caribbean islands, leaving a trail of devastation, where in some places, such as the tiny island of B arbuda, where there was a reported 90% destruction of all structures. Both hurricanes have been recorded among the worse or most virulent in recorded history, in the past 150 years. There has also been hurricanes, flooding, and horrific mudslides in the countries of Nepal, Bangledash, and India, as well as Sierra Leone; where poverty and the lack of sustainable infrastructure has resulted in the deaths of thousands.

What is clear, and what has been long understood by scientists and those in public health, is that "climate change and environmental degradation is real". We have been sounding the horn for many decades now, and there has been many attempts to silence and discredit us. However, despite being climate change deniers, such as Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Florida Governor Rick Scott , have both called for federal aid, and declared a state of emergency. All while refusing to to truly address the root causes of this devastation. These climate change deniers and the internet trolls that they help to create through propaganda, misinformation, lies, and false promises of re-opening mines - which have likely already been stripped of all of its natural resources., continue to convince enough members of the public that climate change is a hoax. 45 (One seriously cannot refer to that man as President) even went as far as to claim that it was a hoax started by the Chinese to undermine US business interests.

Americans are now learning that they should be doing more than sending "thoughts and prayers" when a natural disaster occurs, and should instead do something to prevent or reduce the harmfulness of the next one, by voting into office legislators that would enact the necessary policies that address climate change and environmental degradation. Recognizing that climate change has become the most pressing public health issue impacting the lives of people globally, the American Public Health Association (APHA), as well as a number of its affiliates, such as the Southern California Public Health Association (SCPHA) have choose to make climate change the theme of their 2017 conferences. In fact, in January APHA has declared that 2017 is the Year of Climate Change and Health, APHA actually has an ongoing climate change initiative that has included monthly themes, webinars, and resources for advocacy. While SCPHA just established its Resolutions, with the first titled Resolution on Oil & Gas Development, Climate and Health . Again, the experts agree that "climate change is real".

Another issue that is not being openly discussed in these responses to natural disasters is the fact that, like most aspects of life, intersectionality is at play, and having an identity that encompasses any combination of the following factors, increases the degree of impact that a natural disaster has on one's health and wellbeing: being located in the global south, being a person of color, having a disability, being an immigrant or refugee, being a woman, being a mother, and being low income.

Further, the fact of the matter is that while Western nations, especially the US, utilize most of the natural resources and carry out activities that have increased pollution, environmental degradation, and have hasten climate change, nations in the Global South are disproportionately impacted by the effects of climate change, and suffer the greatest degree of destruction and burden. And again, what complicates matters is that these nations are among those without the wealth and resources to protect and provide services to its citizens, fortified their structures, and readily rebuild following the devastation; putting citizens at risk for disease and injury.

Whether abroad or within the US, due to those aforementioned intersections, those who are the most impacted by natural disasters are women and children ; particularly mothers. During the wake of Hurricane Harvey there were images of many mothers trying guide their children to safely. One could not helped to notice that many were single mothers, or simply had no men in sight who were able to assist. On a CNN interview there was an African American mother who lashed out at interviewers for their insensitivity in wanting to know all of the details about the trauma that she and her children went through trying to navigate the storm, and there was the tragic story of a three year old child being found alive, grasping to the body of her deceased mother . It is easy to talk about evacuation when there is available income to readily do that, as well infrastructure that can accommodate a mass exodus of people from major metropolitan areas; however it becomes far more difficult when

All of this points to a subset of maternal & child health that public health truly needs to consider more intently, and that is wellbeing during and after a natural disaster. This consideration needs to ask the questions:

• Are communities being effectively assisted in preparing for a natural disaster?

• Are special considerations being given to helping to evacuate and shelter single mothers and their children, knowing that they do not have any other support in the home?

• Are resources to withstand natural disasters being made available to those who may not be able to afford the, or have access to reliable transportation to gather them? The central argument is that more resources need to be invested in disaster preparation and not just focus all monies and other resources to disaster response.

• Are shelters being stocked with supplies that will be most needed by mothers of infants, toddlers, and small children: diapers, bottles, etc.?

• Are precautions being carried out to accept pregnant women into shelters, and assist if they go into labor?

Of course, we would want to ask where are the fathers, and the answer may be that they work a distance from their homes, particularly in the global south, have fell victim to the natural disaster, which was the case with the 2004 tsunami that pulled millions of people into the Indian Ocean, or that they were literally off saving themselves; leaving women to fulfill the traditional role of nurturer and protector of their children. One that they are showing that they are ready and willing to give their own lives to fulfill.

Black Bolsheviks and White Lies: Reflections on the Black Radical Tradition

By Peta Lindsay

A lot of nonsense has been written about the role of Putin's Russia in subverting "our democracy." As though our democracy had been functioning perfectly (even reasonably) well, until these shadowy Russian forces purchased a few Facebook ads that sent us all into the streets. It's a laughable concept. I'm sorry, did Putin acquit George Zimmerman or Jason Stockley? Did Putin shoot 12-year-old Tamir Rice? Russia did not carry out the drug war against African Americans or implement policies of mass incarceration, or pass voter ID laws in the U.S. - all of which have contributed to disenfranchising millions of African Americans over the years. The U.S. has a lot to answer for with regard to systematically denying the democratic rights of African Americans and this is not the first time they've tried to deflect criticism for that by blaming Russia. As a student of history I've mostly just rolled my eyes this time around while the Democrats attempt to make red-scare tactics that are very old, new again. But a recent entry in this canon of "Black activists are pawns of Moscow" writing is so insulting and patently false, that, as we approach the hundredth anniversary of the Russian Revolution, it seems very important to reply.

Last month an author named Terrell Jermaine Starr wrote a piece for The Root entitled, " Russia's Recent Facebook Ads Prove the Kremlin Never Loved Black People ."

I've enjoyed entries from The Root before, particularly in chronicling racist attacks against African Americans that are underreported in the mainstream media. But their willingness to toe the Democratic Party line, uncritically in most circumstances, has been noted.

Starr's piece is supposedly historical in scope but is premised upon a huge, glaring, historical fallacy: that of conflating the Russian Federation with the Soviet Union. In one sentence, Starr describes the two as essentially the same (showing you the level of material historical analysis he's interested in engaging in) and then for the rest of the article proceeds to whitewash the history of Black communism, using the favorite arguments deployed by racists - that Blacks who supported socialism did so because they were duped, and that the Soviet Union was only interested in Black liberation insofar as it meant spiting their enemies in the White House.

These assertions deny the agency of African Americans, many of whom were amongst the most prominent Black intellectuals of their time, who looked to the Soviet system as an alternative to American racism and exploitation. This interpretation also denies the real solidarity and support that the Soviet Union expressed in their assistance to liberation movements of many Black, brown and oppressed people all over the world. Since anti-communist propaganda is easily promulgated without evidence in this country, allow me to present some of the evidence that exposes these racist lies for what they are.

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was birthed via a revolution in 1917 and overthrown via counter-revolution in 1991. While Russians were in the majority of the population, the USSR itself was actually an extremely diverse and vibrant society for all of its existence. The Soviet Union spanned 14 time zones and comprised many independent nationalities and ethnic groups, such as Tajiks, Kazakhs, Lithuanians, Tartars - all of whom spoke different languages, practiced different religions - and suffered terrible racist oppression under the Tsar. The triumph of the socialist revolution and the very existence of this unique political formation was the result of a revolution carried out by united oppressed peoples, who rose up as one and took control of society away from their Tsarist and capitalist exploiters. The Bolsheviks always took the task of uniting oppressed people and elevating their struggle very seriously. This was a key to their success and a guiding principle in their work. It was Lenin who pioneered communist opposition to imperialism and he who changed the Marxist formulation, "Workers of the World Unite" to "Workers and oppressed people of the world unite" as an expression of the priority they placed on the struggle of colonized people against imperialism.

Around the world, the 1919 triumph of Lenin and the Bolsheviks was greeted by the imperialists with great dismay and by oppressed/colonized peoples with great enthusiasm, inspiration and hope. In America, 1919 was an infamous year, known for its "Red Summer" of intense lynchings, race riots and gruesome violence against African Americans at the hands of white mobs. The Black American political movement had entered a new era of militancy, as veterans returning from WWI were less inclined to submit to Jim Crow and more inclined to fight for their dignity, wages and rights. A new wave of radical Black intellectuals all but took over the Black political scene, many from the Caribbean and mostly based in Harlem in the 1920s and 30s. These men and women were considered some of the premier thinkers and writers of their time and of the majority of these radical African American leaders-regardless of political orientation- held the Russian Revolution in very high esteem.

According to historian Winston James, in his work Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia, the appeal of the Russian Revolution to Black people in America at the time lay not in their having been "recruited" by Russia as the Root article asserts, but in their own independent evaluation of the Bolshevik government and where it stood with regard to equality for oppressed and colonized people.

James wrote about three major factors that attracted Black people to Bolshevism in the 1920s and 1930s. The first was the domestic policies promoting national minorities and oppressed groups that were put in place almost immediately after the triumph of the revolution. After the revolution the Bolshevik government undertook what can be described as the most far reaching and thorough affirmative action plan that any government has ever attempted, dedicating much in the way of their limited resources towards raising the standard of living for groups who had been historically oppressed and creating conditions that could facilitate greater equality for those groups.

To Black Americans, the most convincing example was the swiftness and seriousness with which the Soviets began redressing historical inequality suffered by the Jews, including immediately outlawing discrimination against them and putting an end to the violent pogroms that had plagued them under the Tsar. In 1923 Claude McKay, the young Black intellectual, writer and poet wrote: "For American Negroes the indisputable and outstanding fact of the Russian Revolution is that a mere handful of Jews, much less in ratio to the number of Negroes in the American population, have attained, through the Revolution, all the political and social rights that were denied to them under the regime of the Czar (166)."

The other two factors explored by James were the "uncompromising rhetoric of anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, and the right of self-determination for oppressed nations (165)" espoused by the Bolshevik government and the creation of the Third Communist International, an international body that openly encouraged colonized (often Black or Brown) people to rise up against their (mostly European) exploiters all over the world.

At a point when the U.S. government had systematically ignored the pleas of Black people to pass even one federal law against lynching, when city and state governments all over the country were colluding in lynchings, race riots and allowing whites who attacked Blacks to go free, or even reap rewards - it doesn't take a genius to figure out why many Black thinkers were genuinely excited that such a different kind of government, one that spoke to them and had taken action to support and defend its own national minorities, had come into the world.

Black and white (film)

Langston Hughes was a Black intellectual of this generation, this being the same generation that we associate with the Harlem Renaissance and the New Negro. Of all the insults buried in that heinous Root article, the disrespect to Langston Hughes, inarguably one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century, is one of the most difficult to endure. Starr paints Hughes as a dupe, someone "recruited" to champion the Soviet Union, as if the man had not traveled all over the world, studied and written extensively and was not capable of genuinely supporting a government that he believed to be on the right track. We revere Hughes' poetry that celebrates Black beauty, he is the jazz poet laureate of Black America and we love to recite his words that affirm our deep history and continued struggle in the face of white American racism. But what about his poetry celebrating the Soviet Union? Here's a link to a poem that he wrote praising Lenin . Did they break that one out at your school's Black history month event? Probably not. But that doesn't change the fact that Langston Hughes was extremely sympathetic to the Soviet Union, as is abundantly evident in his autobiographical writing, including in the chapter of I Wonder As I Wander, "Moscow Movie."

The Root provides perhaps the most cynical and shallow reading of this chapter possible, though I hesitate to affirm that that author of that piece has even actually read it. "Moscow Movie" tells an important story about a time in 1932 when Langston Hughes was invited to the Soviet Union by the government, to work on a major film production. This film was called "Black and White" and it was supposed to highlight the struggle of Black workers in the South and give an international showcase to the racism and oppression experienced by Black people in America. According to Langston Hughes, it was "intended to be the first great Negro-white film ever made in the world (80)," though unfortunately it did not come to fruition.

Hughes accompanied a delegation of 22 young African Americans who were supposed to star in the film, though it was odd that most in that group were not actors or performers by trade. Starr erroneously attributes this casting to racism, saying that Hughes determined that the Soviets were so racist that they assumed that all Black people could sing and dance (and play sports?) and so didn't bother to check the backgrounds of the people they hired for the film.

In fact, Hughes said nothing of the sort. He addressed the peculiar composition of the delegation early in the chapter, stating, "That most of our group were not actors seems to have been due to the fact that very few professional theater people were willing to pay their own fares to travel all the way to Russia to sign contracts they had never seen. Only a band of eager, adventurous young students, teachers, writers and would-be-actors were willing to do that, looking forward to the fun and wonder of a foreign land as much as to film-making. There were a few among them who wanted to get away from American race prejudice forever, being filled up with Jim Crow (70)."

It's important that Hughes highlighted their motives as traveling to seek a reprieve from American racism. So high was the esteem for the Soviet Union in the group, that "When the train stopped beneath this banner for passports to be checked, a few of the young black men and women left the train to touch their hands to Soviet soil, lift the new earth in their palms, and kiss it (73)," according to Hughes.

In his accusations of racism what Starr may be referring to is where Hughes says at one point, "Europeans as well as Americans, seem to be victims of that old cliche that Negroes just naturally sing (80)." That is hardly an indictment of any particularly Russian racism and more of a complaint on how African Americans are represented on the world stage.

Lack of specific cultural knowledge about African Americans was a problem throughout the film's production and that is what Hughes believes ultimately damned the film. Hughes was given an early copy of the script and let them know that he did not think it was usable because there were so many errors with regard to what racism and working class struggle actually looked like in the American South. Hughes said that the author of the script was well intentioned but had never been to America. He also said that information from or by Black Americans was rarely translated into Russian in those days. Even with these critiques, it's nearly impossible to interpret Hughes as being at all bitter or resentful at the Soviets for their attempt at making this film. On the contrary, Hughes wrote with unmistakable good humour throughout the chapter and also repeatedly mentioned that they were all paid in full and well taken care of, even when it became clear the film wouldn't be made.

The reception that the students received in Moscow is really remarkable, especially considering the historical context - none of which The Root brings up, of course. The students were "wined and dined" in Hughes' own words, they were put up in the most lavish hotels and treated to free tickets to the theater, the opera, the ballet and dinners and parties with dignitaries and important people, almost every night. They were official guests of the state and treated with the highest honors. No Black delegation has ever been received in America with such grace. Hughes says that they were always introduced as "representatives of the great Negro people (82)" and after describing the incredible amenities at one of the elaborate resorts they were housed in, he adds "I had never stayed in such a hotel in my own country, since, as a rule, Negroes were not then permitted to do so (93)."

On their reception by ordinary Soviet citizens, Hughes writes:

"Of all the big cities in the world where I've been, the Muscovites seemed to me to be the politest of peoples to strangers. But perhaps that was because we were Negroes and, at that time, with the Scottsboro Case on world-wide trial in the papers everywhere, and especially in Russia, folks went out of their way there to show us courtesy. On a crowded bus, nine times out of ten, some Russian would say, "Negrochanski tovarish - Negro comrade - take my seat!' On the streets queueing up for newspapers or cigarettes, or soft drinks, often folks in line would say, "Let the Negro comrade go forward." (74)

This is in 1932! Nowhere in America were Black people treated like this in 1932. Hell, many of us could not get that treatment today, if our lives depended on it (and they sometimes do). This account echoes many others by African Americans who visited or moved to the Soviet Union. In William Mandel's Soviet but Not Russian, Muhammad Ali is quoted as saying of his 1978 visit to the Soviet Union:

"I saw a hundred nationalities. No such thing as a Black man, or a white man, or 'you nigger,' or get back. People say, 'Oh well, they just showed you the best.' You mean all of those white folks rehearsed, said: 'Muhammad Ali's coming!' .. 'All hundred nationalities, pretend you get along. Muhammad Ali's coming!'…'They just took you where they wanted to go.' I know that's a lie. I got in my car and told my driver where to go. Lying about the Russians.. I jogged in the mornings in strange places where they hardly ever saw a Black man. I ran past two little white Russian ladies who were walking to work. They didn't look around and ask what I was doing. I can't go jogging in some streets in America in the morning in a white neighborhood." (85)

The Root tries to paint a picture of a USSR where the same racism that existed in Jim Crow America infected everyone there, but there simply is not enough evidence to say that was the case. They cite the experiences of one Black American man (Robert Robinson), thoroughly. But what about the experiences of the estimated 400,000 African students who were educated for free in the Soviet Union between 1950-1990? These Black youth attended technical schools, Lumumba University and the special Lenin school for leadership, they lived and traveled all over the Soviet Union and upon graduation, they would return to their homelands with skills necessary to aid in the new independence governments. Mandel interviewed quite a few Black Soviets for his book, including other African Americans who moved to the Soviet Union- and the picture they paint is very different from the one in Robinson's account. Providing no evidence, Starr also asserts that interracial relationships would naturally be a problem in the Soviet Union, saying "both Russian and white American men weren't cool with their women messing with black men." Since he introduced the term "bullshit" just before that line, I'm going to call bullshit on that.

Langston Hughes' account features many stories of the men in his group dating Soviet women and not a word about anyone batting an eye at such pairings - which in 1932, would have gotten someone lynched in the United States. Please stop projecting American racism onto the Soviet Union, when you just don't have the evidence to back that up. As W.E.B. Dubois wrote on his third visit to the USSR in 1949, "of all countries, Russia alone has made race prejudice a crime; of all great imperialisms, Russia alone owns no colonies of dark serfs or white and what is more important has no investments in colonies and is lifting no blood-soaked profits from cheap labor in Asia and Africa." The material basis for widespread Jim Crow style racism just wasn't there.

Hughes was aware that the western press celebrated the failure of the movie and spread many rumours that they knew to be false concerning the Soviet government maneuvering against the Black students. He writes that Western journalists, who saw them spending money and carousing in Moscow nightclubs, filed stories in the U.S. about how they were going unpaid and neglected.

Hughes wrote that some in his group suspected that the movie was scrapped because the Soviets were sacrificing the Black struggle to appease the American government - but Hughes himself did not believe that. He was one of the only members of the group who saw the script and he was unequivocal in stating that more than anything else, it was the script that caused the project's failure. Hughes also repeatedly mentioned the context of the international campaign in defense of the Scottsboro Boys, a Black struggle that was most certainly not being dropped by the Soviets, as all this was going on.

The Root miscasts this excerpt from the life of Langston Hughes to support their conclusion that "the Soviets' attempts to curry favor with the black struggle" was "insincere and downright fraudulent." I would counter that this anti-communist propaganda is actually "insincere and downright fraudulent" but allow me to present further evidence on the genuine solidarity expressed by the Soviet Union. Sticking with the theme, let's keep talking about film.

Focus on Africa in film

In the book Focus on African Film, noted film scholar Josephine Woll describes "The Russian Connection" between the Soviet Union and African film, an invaluable alliance in making postcolonial African cinema a reality. As alluded to in the previous section, the Soviet Union expended a lot of resources on aid and development for African nations, who were in the process of throwing off their own colonial oppressors and beginning their independence after World War II. These countries were severely underdeveloped, as chronicled by Walter Rodney and the Soviet Union was a key ally in providing material support, education and technology to allow these countries to thrive without being beholden to their former colonial masters. It's worth noting that the greatest victory for Black liberation to occur in my lifetime, the fall of apartheid in South Africa, involved a great deal of material and political support from the Soviet Union, which was integral to the success of that movement.

Film was another area in which the Soviet Union provided Africans with crucial foundational support. Ousmane Sembene of Senegal, widely considered the "father of African film" was educated in the Soviet Union. This was also the case for other pioneering African filmmakers, like Souleymane Cissé of Mali and Abderrahmne Sissako of Mauritania/Mali and Sarah Maldoror, the French daughter of immigrants from Guadeloupe who made many films about African liberation. In addition to technical know-how, the Soviet Union also provided the essential film and production equipment, distribution and promotion, to bring African cinema onto the world stage.

Dr. Woll seems to believe that the motives of the Soviets were clearly political, but also genuine. Woll wrote: "The Bolshevik Revolution and its aftermath, radically altered how, why, and for whom films were made. Financial profit still mattered but it competed with other goals: educational, political, promotional. The new regime in post-tsarist Russia, like the new leaders of post-colonial African nations, willingly allocated part of its budget to subsidizing cinema because it recognized how effective the medium could be as an instrument of propaganda; and most Soviet filmmakers in the 1920s, though they had individual and often compelling aesthetic agendas, readily supported the politics of revolution (225)." In the U.S. we tend to be very cynical of the word "propaganda" but in revolutionary times, propaganda is necessary and the Africans needed aid in producing theirs. Ousmane Sembene clearly agreed; he was adamant about telling compelling political stories through his films and he fully recognized the potential for his films to "help decolonize Africa (225)."

The Soviet Union trained and equipped these African directors, so that they could bring the beauty and the struggle of their people to the world stage. The work of these revolutionary African filmmakers can be seen as a happy ending to the saga that was begun with "Black and White." While we never got the Soviet sponsored film about Black struggle in the U.S. that they wanted to produce, we have since seen a variety of films out of different African countries that highlight their struggle in similar, but undoubtedly much more accurate, ways.

Conclusion

I realize that this was a lot to write in response to a small article that was probably not even this carefully considered by the author himself. But the legacy of the Soviet Union with regard to Black struggle is unique and inspiring and should be celebrated, not horrifically distorted and denied. In Paul Robeson Speaks, the great Black American actor says:

"Mankind has never witnessed the equal of the Constitution of the U.S.S.R. . . . Firstly, because of the significance it has for my people generally. Everywhere else, outside of the Soviet world, black men are an oppressed and inhumanely exploited people. Here, they come within the provisions of Article 123 of Chapter X of the Constitution, which reads: "The equality of the right of the citizens of the U.S.S.R. irrespective of their nationality or race, in all fields of economic, state, cultural, social, and political life, is an irrevocable law. Any direct or indirect restriction of these rights, or conversely the establishment of direct or indirect privileges for citizens on account of the race or nationality to which they belong, as well as the propagation of racial or national exceptionalism, or hatred and contempt, is punishable by law." (1978, 116)

While our current President appoints KKK members to the Department of Justice and calls Nazi murderers "very fine people," while his opponent Hillary Clinton called our children "super predators" and campaigned for them to be locked up en masse- we have to appreciate how significant it is that a national government - in 1919 - put laws on the books like the ones described above. They outlawed racism. They invested heavily in Black education and Black artistic expression. They gave guns to those fighting imperialists and fascists all over the world. What more could you want? Terrell Jermaine Starr and The Root may be confused about which government cares about Black people, but I can't say that I am. I'm proud to be a socialist and I'm proud of the legacy of friendship between my people and the USSR.

As I mentioned in the start of this article, calling Africans who fight for their liberation "Commies" or "dupes" is nothing new. John Hope Franklin referred to this in From Slavery to Freedom, saying that the response to Black self-defense against race riots in 1919 caused such speculation: "Many American whites freely suggested that foreign influences - especially … Bolshevik propaganda after the 1917 Russian Revolution - had caused blacks to fight back. Perhaps there is some truth to that… However, black Americans all along the political spectrum (from conservative, to moderate, to radical left) ridiculed the claim that their new assertiveness was the result of 'outside agitation.' American blacks needed no outsiders to awaken their sense of the tremendous contradiction between America's professed beliefs and its actual practices (362)".

That remains as true today as it was when written. Additionally, I'll close with one more statement from that time, which also remains true, for myself at least. The militant Black Harlem publication The Crusader, under the leadership of fiery Black Communist Cyril Briggs declared in 1919: "If to fight for one's rights is to be Bolshevists, then we are Bolshevists and let them make the most of it!"

This article originally appeared at Liberation School .

References

Hughes, Langston. (1984). I wonder as I wander: An autobiographical journey. New York: Hill and Wang.

Robeson, Paul. (1978). Paul Robeson speaks: Writings, speeches, interviews 1918-1974, ed. by P.S. Foner. New York: Citadel.

Trump's Evangelical Opening: The Gateway Drug to a Fascist America

By Werner Lange

Masters of deceit are not necessarily fascists, but fascists are notorious for their nefarious use of the power of deception effectively with devastating results. The Trump regime is the most diabolical manifestation of that repressive power in US history, to date. Lies, especially big ones, deceptively called "alternative facts," are its ideological trademark; white supremacists, deceptively sanitized as "alt-right," form its frontline battalion in America's culture wars; and Trump's ruthless and relentless attacks upon the media, which he castigated in a recent rant in Phoenix as "fake news" generated by "really, really dishonest people" and "bad people" who "don't like our country," constitute the modus operandi of a regime hell bent on shutting up critics and shutting down any remnants of a free press that remain. This toxic combination of repressive traits is not altogether new on the historical stage. Big lies were the ideological weapons of choice in Hitler's propaganda arsenal; institutionalized racism degenerated abysmally into the fascist final solution of the Third Reich; and critics of the Nazi regime ended up in foreign exile or in early graves.

However, Trump is no American re-incarnation of Hitler, and his regime is not a fully fascist one. Trump is merely the gateway drug to a fascist America. That is what makes it so ominous, but also so vulnerable to decline and defeat before it transitions any further toward fascism. Its antithesis, America's democratic institutions and what's left of the American Left, though battered and bloodied, remains mostly unbowed but only partially unleashed. Essential for a broader and fuller unleashing of anti-fascist forces at this critical juncture in American history is a deeper understanding of the neonatal fascist nature of the Trump regime and its racist reliance upon a perverted faith-based false consciousness for its mass base at the bottom, and a pervasive theological social Darwinism for its delusions of grandeur at the top of our highly stratified and increasingly polarized social order.

While religion in its politically hijacked forms has repeatedly proven itself to the opiate of the masses, the Trump regime represents a contemporary illustration of how a viciously perverted form of Christianity has become the hallucinogen of the elite. An ideological profile of Trump's evangelical advisory board reveals each of its 24 members (almost uniformly rich white men) to be hopelessly mired in the theological swamp of the Prosperity Gospel or Christian Zionism, or typically both. In true social Darwinist fashion, the money-worshipping Prosperity Gospel (unlike the liberating Social Gospel) embraces the elitist notion that God's favor rests upon the wealthy, especially the super-rich, who are best equipped spiritually and empowered financially to run a nation under God. Among the most ardent proponents of the Prosperity Gospel on Trump's evangelical advisory board is Ken Copeland, who has an estimated net worth of $750 million and claims that his vast wealth is "the assignment that the Lord gave me." He resides in a $6 million mansion and regularly uses his $20 million private jet to spread the "good news" about prosperity through Jesus around the country and world. "God's Will concerning financial prosperity and abundance is clearly revealed in the scriptures," according to the website of the Ken Copeland Ministries, which operates from a 1500-acre campus near Forth Worth, Texas, with a staff of some 500 employees. Paula White, who gave Trump a bible signed by the evangelist patriarch Billy Graham and prayed for Trump at the 2016 RNC, successfully solicits large donations for her New Destiny Christian Center in Florida by claiming God will reward generous donors with special favors. Jentezen Franklin, pastor of two megachurches, routinely flies in his private jet between Georgia and California in order to provide Sunday services in multiple locations on the same day. Evangelical advisory board members, along with the nearly one thousand evangelical pastors who met privately with Trump in June 2017 as well the many who prayerfully "laid hands" upon him in the Oval Office, evidently all conveniently ignore the biblical passage (Luke 16:13) clearly stating that "You cannot serve both God and Money."

To praise the power elite as God's chosen class, as proponents of the heretical Prosperity Gospel essentially do with their self-serving hijacking of Christianity, is an ideological stratagem to enlist the elite, particularly high-ranking political officials, in the crusade by right-wing evangelicals to create a Christian theocracy in America within a fascist framework. Foremost in that evangelizing crusade is Ralph Drollinger, head of Capitol Ministries, who has for years conducted weekly bible study sessions for over 50 select members of the US House and Senate. With the 2016 election of Trump, Drollinger has been given unprecedented access to the White House and the Cabinet with his indoctrination lessons designed to sanctify their evil deeds and feed their hallucinations of being God's instruments. In his picture booklet, Rebuilding America: The Biblical Blueprint, Drollinger fancies himself as a modern-day Apostle Paul with a God-appointed mission of "winning government authorities for Christ" (p.4) and "discipling political leaders for Christ" (p. 30) in preparation for the "Future Tribulation Period" when "wars will erupt, natural disasters will occur, and persecution will be common for all of Christ's followers" (p. 53) followed ultimately by a "1,000-year-long Millennial Kingdom" in which the "redeemed by Christ will be given the privilege to rule with Him, under Him, on earth" (p. 57). This projection of mass slaughter followed by universal Christian hegemony is, of course, sheer madness, but one increasingly embraced by the Trump regime and its deep commitment to Christian Zionism.

Despite its name, Christian Zionism has precious little in common with authentic Christianity or Judaism. Thoroughly embedded in violent racism and virulent dogmatism, Christian Zionism's uterine sibling is fascism. Both reactionary social movements rely upon widespread false consciousness among a distressed social base easily manipulated and deluded into thinking that an alien Other is the enemy. For the Nazis, the scapegoats were the Jews and many other targeted groups, particularly Marxist political opponents. For Christian Zionists it is Islam and the Muslims, particularly "radical Islamic terrorists," the label Trump relishes for his denunciation of Muslims and Islam.

Though embraced to varying degrees by every member of Trump's evangelical advisory board, the most vocal and passionate advocate of Christian Zionism is only a heartbeat away from the presidency. Vice President Pence has a longstanding friendship and close working association with John Hagee, the pastor of a right-wing megachurch in Texas and founder of the influential Christians United for Israel (CUFI), a rabidly anti-Muslim and pro-Israel organization which boasts some 3.3 million members. Ever since its founding in 2006, Pence vigorously and vocally supported CUFI as a US Congressman and Indiana Governor. As the Vice President addressing CUFI's 12th annual summit in July 2017, Pence had nothing but laudatory praise for "the largest pro-Israel organization in the USA" and its founder, John Hagee, "my friend," whom he profusely thanked for his "leadership on behalf of this nation and the Jewish state of Israel." In the course of his relatively short speech before thousands of CUFI members, the Vice President explicitly identified Israel as America's "most cherished ally" three separate times; he also identified Trump as a "tireless friend of the Jewish state of Israel"; stated his conviction that the formation of modern Israel revealed the "hand of heaven"; proclaimed that he and Trump will "stand with Israel forever"; and ominously declared Iran to be "the leading state sponsor of terrorism".

Pence is a sponsor of Drollinger's bible study sessions in the White House; and, given his strong commitment to Christian Zionism, it is no surprise that Drollinger would identify him as a modern-day Mordecai, a high-ranking Jew from ancient Persia who, according to the book of Esther, saved his people from persecution and destruction. However, to do so, Mordecai had the leader of the alleged conspiracy, Haman, along with his ten sons, summarily hanged; issued an order to kill all who would harm Jews; and consequently slaughtered some 75,000 Persians with his retributive pogrom. In this context, it is unnerving to note that Hagee, Pence's good friend, identified Iran (modern Persia) as equivalent to Nazi Germany and its former leader (Ahmadinejad) as the "new Hitler." Pence himself defines Iran as the world's leader in state-sponsored terrorism, and vowed that the US would never allow this Muslim nation to have any nuclear weapons. If people and nations are treated as they are defined, then the operative labels imposed by Christian Zionists upon undesirable others, particularly Muslims and Iran, constitute an open invitation to racist violence, ethnic cleansing and imperialist war, even nuclear war. For all of Trump's bluster about hitting North Korea with "fire and fury like the world has never seen," it is perhaps a would-be President Pence, guided by the bizarre and barbaric notions of Christian Zionism which embrace inevitable cataclysmic war in the Middle East as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, that poses the greater threat to world peace.

Racism, particularly white supremacy, is also no stranger to the Trump regime or its evangelical advisory board. A recent reaffirmation of racism's operative presence in the Trump White House came with the official pardon in late August 2017 of "America's toughest sheriff." Joe Arpaio, who once bragged that his open-air tent city jail was run like a "concentration camp" and who was convicted of criminal contempt rooted in his sordid legacy of illegal Latinx profiling. A more revealing reaffirmation of operative racism in both the White House and its evangelical advisory board came earlier that same month. In the wake of Trump's revealing "many sides" comments, placing anti-racist protestors on a moral and behavioral equivalency with the violent white supremacists gathered in Charlottesville to spew their hatred and to attack, with murderous results, counter demonstrators, one of Trump's most ardent supporters and a member of the evangelical advisory group, Jerry Falwell Jr, praised the US President for his "truthful statement" and attacked the media for "trying to paint this as Republican vs. Democrat; Black vs. White; and Jew vs. Gentile." The only remaining Black board member, Mark Burns, directed his public criticism only at the counter protestors; and a third member, Robert Jeffries, who once labeled Catholicism as a "pagan religion" and claimed God placed Trump into the US presidency, blamed the media for allegedly distorting Trump's racist remarks. No member criticized Trump for his implicit endorsement of the violent display of fascism and racism at this watershed moment in US history.

Many of the white supremacists gathered in this "Unite the Right" demonstration in Charlottesville carried symbols of Christianity as part of their self-identification to continue the racist legacy of the KKK and its iconic burning cross. Members of the Traditionalist Worker Party, a fascist group that advocates for racially "pure nations" and an end to "anti-Christian degeneracy," wore a shirt adorned with an Orthodox Christian cross, the logo of the Neo-Confederate League of the South (LOS), whose goal is to establish a Christian theocratic state. And the leaders of the Traditional Youth Network (TYN), another prominent group in the "Unite the Right" movement, describe ideal activists for their racist causes as "warriors for the cross." Even loudly chanted by many torch-bearing fascist marchers, many proudly displaying the swastika, was the Nazi call for "blood and soil" (Blut und Boden). These are among the openly Christian fascist groups and individuals in America, all of which warmly welcomed the triumph of the Trump regime and envision it as a major breakthrough toward the eventual realization of white nationalism and white supremacy as official ruling forces in a future fascist America.

For their demonic goal to be thwarted, a qualitative change in both objective and subjective conditions is needed. Fascism relies upon two major conditions for its existence and growth: failed or failing systems in objective reality and mass false consciousness in subjective social reality. Both are present at alarming levels in contemporary America, and have been for some time. Objectively, the gap in wealth/income/power between the elite and the mass population in the United States has never been greater than it is today. Similarly, with perhaps the exception of the Great Depression, there has never before been a time of greater systemic failures in the social fabric of American life than now. Such dysfunctional objective conditions are fertile ground for right-wing political extremism propelled by false consciousness at the bottom and unbridled greed at the top of an increasingly polarized racial and social hierarchy. Pronounced false consciousness has been a standard feature of American society for decades, especially when it comes to the concept of class. Rather than defining class on the basis of ownership of sources of wealth and means of production, it is commonly defined and treated, even within social science, as nothing more than an income level resulting in the mass perception of a normative middle class and two deviant groups, one commonly hated and the other functionally envied, known as the poor and the rich. The poisonous harvest of this rampant false class consciousness came in the electoral victory of a racist, misogynistic billionaire perceived by millions of working-class voters as somehow representative of their interests.

A false political consciousness echoes this false class consciousness. Once vibrant and diverse enough to encompass every and any modern political allegiance, the viable political spectrum in American has narrowed itself to a functional dichotomy of only "liberals" and "conservatives" along with their operative political parties, Democrats and Republicans, two wings of the same bird of prey. The extent to which politicians and voters march lock step to these designations is as common in practice as it is dangerous to democracy in theory. Objectively, most Americans are not affiliated with either major party and therefore have their interests effectively marginalized or entirely excluded from representation. Subjectively, however, most would define themselves as conservatives in the raging culture wars, and identify liberals as an out-group which does not embrace traditional American values, but instead promotes calls for sinful and deviant behaviors. Such false consciousness is an ideal setting for fascist wolves in conservative shepherd clothing, a reality which has increasingly confronted the Republican Party in recent years leading to the Trump triumph.

However, the greatest vehemence in politics is reserved for false faith consciousness. Christian fascism, an oxymoron in reality, relies upon an inversion of Christianity in the mindset of its deluded evangelical mass base, which overwhelmingly voted for Trump and continues to unabashedly support him despite his plummeting approval ratings within the general population. The only "real Christian." in their warped worldview, is an "evangelical born-again Christian," an identity which precludes being a liberal but mandates allegiance to conservative principles and politicians, especially ultra-right ones. Only those who explicitly identify themselves as "evangelical born-again Christians" (i.e. social conservatives) are among the chosen few destined to deliver a chosen people and nation under God into the promised land. All others are not only marginalized out-groups, but outcasts ultimately destined to spend eternity in hell after desired exclusion from political office on earth. Such is the operative mindset of Christian fascism, and it is rampant within influential segments of American society today. The Trump regime has catapulted it, along with Christian Zionism and white nationalism, into the highest offices of our troubled land, an unmitigated American tragedy which should and must be a clarion wake-up call to us all.

To paraphrase a bit of social wisdom, all that is necessary for this emergent evil to triumph totally is for good folks to do nothing. As our Declaration of Independence, composed by a former resident of the Charlottesville area, Thomas Jefferson, exhorts American citizens then and now: "when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security." And as a great American, Frederick Douglass, prophetically proclaimed: "power concedes nothing without a demand… The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." It is time for Americans, the openly and latently oppressed, to do our duty and firmly close the gate on this tyrannical gateway drug known as the Trump regime before more damage by more potent and pernicious forces of fascism is inflicted upon us and all of humanity.

Citizenry, Inc.: The Ambiguous, Euphemistic Language of Corporate America and its Impact on Democracy

By Jesse Hamilton

Ambiguous, euphemistic language is common in corporate, bureaucratic environments and is used for a variety of rational reasons. This type of language may lead to ignorance among those who use it and those who consume it. As it becomes more prevalent in American society, ambiguous, euphemistic language is leading to a state where the lines between knowledge and ignorance are blurred. This paper explores how ambiguous, euphemistic language: 1) is used in corporate, bureaucratic settings and why it is accepted; 2) could be a cause of ignorance among those who create and consume it; and 3) has implications for the acquisition and transfer of knowledge in broader society.

Ignorance is often thought of as a barrier to the consolidation of power, so it would stand to reason that organizations, especially those with profit motives, are incentivized to avoid ignorance and pursue knowledge. However, as Linsey McCoy explains, "Ignorance serves as a productive asset, helping individuals and institutions to command resources, deny liability in the aftermath of crises, and to assert expertise in the face of unpredictable outcomes" (McGoey, 553).

In the 19th and 20th centuries, as the United States shifted from an agrarian society to an industrialized society, Americans have not only become more exposed to business culture and its language, but have also become dependent on it for their livelihood. Additionally, individuals are directly and indirectly exposed to the sort of ambiguous, euphemistic language commonly used in business settings in a variety of ways - at work, within social circles, through advertising, from public statements issued from business leaders to media organizations, and from public relations teams. Finally, as business leaders begin to assume more prominent roles in public office within federal, state, and local governments, the ambiguous, euphemistic language which comes naturally to them has begun to change the way elected and appointed officials communicate with the public. Put simply, the language of corporations seems to have permeated broader society, and this has implications for knowledge and ignorance in American society.

What is ambiguous, euphemistic language?

The language of business which will be addressed in this paper consists of two distinct parts which can be used independently or in combination: ambiguity and euphemisms. Ambiguous language is a powerful tool in business because it has the advantage of being interpreted in different ways, by different individuals/groups, at different times, both in the present and in the future. As Jackall notes, "The indirect and ambiguous linguistic frameworks that managers employ in public situations typify the symbolic complexity of the corporation" and serves as "a tentative way of communicating that reflects the peculiarly chancy and fluid character of their world." Basically, managers have learned that the best way to deal with the volatile nature of business, which is mainly driven by exogenous economic factors, is to communicate with ambiguity.

Euphemisms - "the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant" - are used as well, for reasons that will be discussed in-depth in Section IV.

Why is ambiguity used?

Ambiguity is a powerful tool that is used to manage and/or avoid different types of risks inherent with a career at large, American corporations, and family businesses (Carmon, 87). All of the risks discussed in this section are related to uncertainty about the future. How ambiguity is used in corporate settings is important as it has implications for how it can be successfully applied in other American institutions; for example, in government and politics.

Avoidance of decision making

The future is uncertain, therefore managers are inclined to hedge their statements and actions against unforeseen events and outcomes. The simplest way to achieve this is through the use of ambiguous language and avoidance of making decisions. A manager interviewed by Jackall describes the avoidance of decision making: "The basic principles of decision making in this organization and probably any organization are: (1) avoid making any decision if at all possible; (2) if a decision has to be made, involve as many people as you can so that, if things go south, you're able to point in as many directions as possible" (Jackall). Given that the goals of a business are often very ambiguous and amorphous, by not committing to specific details, managers can pass responsibility (and therefore accountability) to subordinates, so that if goals are not achieved or laws are broken, managers reduce the risk that they themselves will be held accountable by their superiors and/or courts.

Organizational Contingency

Power within the hierarchy of a corporation is volatile, with managers regularly falling in and out of favor. As Jackall notes, "First of all, at the psychological level, managers have an acute sense of organizational contingency. Because of the interlocking ties between people, they know that a shake-up at or near the top of a hierarchy can trigger a widespread upheaval, bringing in its wake startling reversals of fortune, good and bad, throughout the structure" (Jackall). Therefore, it is rational for those who aspire to move up in the ranks to create allies and avoid creating enemies. After all, one never knows who will be handed a position of authority next. One way to achieve this is through providing ambiguous feedback (perhaps laced with euphemisms to soften the message) to superiors, peers, and subordinates alike. When feedback is provided in this way, the interpretation is left to the receiver, a strategy which will be discussed again in Section VII.

Finally, it should be noted that in an age where everything is filmed or recorded, and where bits can be combined and commingled (Negroponte, 18), ambiguity is an important defense against being undeniably connected to concrete statements and/or positions.

Why are euphemisms used?

Jackall notes that "managers' public language is, more than anything else, euphemistic" however "for the most part, euphemistic language is not used with the intent to deceive. Managers past a certain point, as suggested earlier, are assumed to be "maze-bright" and able to "read between the lines" of a conversation or a memorandum and to distinguish accurately suggestions from directives, inquiries from investigations, and bluffs from threats" (Jackall). Additionally, Jackall points out that euphemistic language is used internally for purposes of deniability and externally when dealing with the public.

An example from business

In 2006, Jeff Skilling was convicted on federal felony charges for his involvement in the collapse of Enron Corporation, where he served as CEO during the time in which fraudulent activity occurred. As documented by the New York Times, during the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearings in 2002, when questioned by Representative James Greenwood as to whether or not he was aware of any wrongdoing at the company during his time as CEO, Skilling stated:

"I do not believe -- I did not do anything that was not in the interest, in all of the time I worked for Enron Corporation, that wasn't in the interest of the shareholders of the company."

Skilling's response offers nothing more than his belief, thus positioning himself to plausibly deny any future evidence of wrongdoing. Interestingly, due to the clever wording, his statement might actually be true. During the time Skilling was CEO, Enron used deceptive accounting (among other fraudulent practices) to artificially inflate their earnings. During the time of the fraud, Enron's stock skyrocketed, often outperforming the broad market by a wide margin. This is, of course, good for the current shareholders in the short-term. However, it was not in the best interest of Enron's long-term shareholders, employees, and lenders, as the company declared bankruptcy in 2001. In short, Skilling's statement is disingenuous at best, but serves as an example of the malleability of ambiguously-worded statement.

When are individuals exposed to ambiguous, euphemistic language?

Individuals are exposed to ambiguous, euphemistic language in a few ways: internally through company communications, and externally through statements to the public.

Internal business communications

Internal company communications are often rife with ambiguity and euphemisms. In this capacity, the language can serve different purposes. For example, it is used to rally employees around core missions, especially if the mission is under public attack. Also, cleverly worded communications can be used to soften harsh messages/actions that employees might not find appealing. For example, instead of stating "we plan on firing people because we need to increase our profits," a typical communication may describe "a strategic, systematic restructuring and reallocation of resources to address ongoing shareholder interests at this point in the business cycle." Employees are more likely to be accepting of, or indifferent to, the latter; whereas the former would likely cause discomfort, anxiety, and anger.

External business communications

Public relations teams play a large role in the conveyance of messages to the public. Jackall sums up the subtleties of public relations best:

"…the essential task of public relations…is to transform expediency into altruism or even statesmanship. Second, the genius of public relations…consists to a great extent in its dexterity at inverting symbols and images. Whether it is hyping products, influencing legislation, transforming reputations, or erasing stigma, public relations tries to transform actually or potentially perceived weaknesses into strengths and subvert or at least call into question the strengths or particularly the credibility of opponents."

It should be noted that public relations tactics and strategies are not strictly confined to businesses - they can be applied to communications from government, academic institutions, and scientific research organizations when those institutions desire to transform weakness into strength and negativity into positivity.

What are the broad, societal implications associated with the increasing use of ambiguous language?

Individuals' exposure to ambiguous, euphemistic language has implications for how they think, speak, and interpret reality.

The effect of ambiguous language on how individuals think

The language we use shapes the way we think. According to Lera Boroditsky, "Language can be a powerful tool for shaping abstract thought. When sensory information is scarce or inconclusive, languages may play the most important role in shaping how their speakers think" (Boroditsky, 1). This may have important implications as we continue to be exposed to ambiguous, euphemistic language because we may begin viewing the world as a place with less certainty, where the lines of knowledge and ignorance are naturally blurred.

The effect of ambiguous language on ontological security, lay theories, and ignorant othering

To understand how ambiguous language affects broader society, it is important to understand how individuals establish a sense of what is real and true. Giddens' concept of ontological security is described as "a sense of continuity and order in events, including those not directly within the perceptual environment of the individual" (Giddens, 243). Ostertag builds on this further with the development of two other concepts: lay theories and ignorant othering (Ostertag, 828). Lay theories "serve as vital tools in developing social realities" and "allow people to ground and justify a sense of reality that they can trust as correct and true" (Ostertag, 828). When ambiguous language is used, knowledge may not be communicated with the same degree of fidelity as when clear, concise language is used. Therefore, the ambiguity is removed at the level of the receiver, as opposed to being removed at the level of the communicator. In this way, ambiguous statements have the potential to become personalized in the same way that advertising has become personalized (Baudrillard). By increasing the scope of what can be true, ambiguous language potentially increases the number different senses of reality, or lay theories, that exist in a given population. A wider variety of lay theories may, in turn, exacerbate the phenomena of ignorant othering, which Ostertag describes as when "people construct an image of the 'average' American whom they claim is often less informed of the news, less aware of the problems of the news, and therefore less aware of and knowledgeable about the world than they themselves are" (Ostertag, 828).

The effect of ambiguous language on conspiracy theories

Using the same rationale described above, ambiguous language may also be used to support and increase belief in conspiracy theories because it is malleable enough to fit into the conspiracy narrative. This might strengthen current and future conspiracy theories by making them more persuasive. Kay states that "the only characteristic that strongly correlates with belief in any conspiracy theory is a belief in other conspiracy theories" (Kay, 150). If individual conspiracy theories are made more persuasive by ambiguous language and thereby increase the number of individuals who believe any one conspiracy theory, this might lead to a cascading effect where belief in conspiracy theories becomes more prevalent. In order to support this hypothesis, more research is needed on why belief in any conspiracy is correlated to belief in others.

The effect of ambiguous language on fake news and alternative facts

Given the similarities between conspiracy theories and fake news, individuals who are more prone to believe in conspiracy theories may also be more prone to believe fake news. This may make fake news more influential. Also, individuals may be more prone to accept "alternative facts," not just due to the clever euphemism, but because they're more inclined to believe in conspiracy. More research is needed to understand the relationship between belief in any one conspiracy theory, piece of fake news, and "alternative fact" and belief in others.

Examples of ambiguous language in politics

Donald Trump

Donald Trump, a businessman turned politician, is a unique case study. Consider Trump's statement about his opponents' position on gun control:

"Hillary wants to abolish - essentially abolish - the Second Amendment. If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is. I don't know."

Trump's ambiguous, and seemingly persuasive, language here is based in a false premise that Hillary Clinton would (1) have the power to abolish the Second Amendment, and (2) want to abolish the Second Amendment. Both are equally absurd on their own merit, with the latter relying on the reactionary conflation of gun-control laws with some mythological government confiscation of over 300 million guns. There are two different ways to interpret the purpose of Trump's statement. Proponents of the Second Amendment will either use votes or violence (which are wildly different mechanisms for change) to prevent his political opponent from taking away their gun rights. In this case, since the ambiguity of the statement is removed in the mind of the listener, there are two (or more) versions of reality.

According to NPR, Trump's use of ambiguous language follows a predictable pattern. He makes an ambiguous statement which is subsequently criticized by opponents, incessantly covered by the media. Trump then claims to be a victim of the "liberal media" claiming that his words were taken out of context (McCammon). The foundation of his strategy is ambiguity.

Hillary Clinton

During a 2016 Democratic Primary debate, Hillary Clinton and her opponent, Bernie Sanders were each asked by the moderator if they support fracking. Clinton's response displayed ambiguity and "talking in circles" when she stated:

"By the time we get through all my conditions, I do not think there will be many places in America where fracking will continue to take place."

Although not as egregious as Trump, Clinton's choice of wording and syntax indicate a propensity for unnecessarily complex language, something her opponent was quick to point out. Sanders stated, "My answer is a lot shorter. No, I do not support fracking."

Recent examples of euphemisms in American politics

Just as in business, euphemisms also prove useful in the realm of politics. For example, the Trump administration regularly uses euphemisms to downplay the negativity associated with its policies and/or past statements. The euphemisms "extreme vetting" and "locker room talk" provide useful examples. Many Americans can accept a policy of "extreme vetting," but some would be hesitant to accept it if it were stated for what it truly is - racial and religious discrimination. Additionally, some citizens might not be dissuaded from voting for a presidential candidate that uses "locker room talk," but might draw the line over a candidate who "[grabs women] by the pussy."

A cautionary warning from George Orwell

Given that individuals are becoming desensitized to ambiguous, euphemistic language, there is a greater likelihood that politicians can successfully employ Orwellian doublespeak, or "language used to deceive usually through concealment or misrepresentation of truth." In Politics and the English Language, George Orwell describes how politics may inevitably reach a point where it must serve this very purpose of shielding citizens from ugly truths by avoiding any clear "defense of the indefensible:"

"…political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them."

Political statements, like those used as examples by Orwell, are unnecessarily wordy, confusing, take time and effort to interpret, and do not overtly communicate the harsh nature of the message. While this paper is not proposing the inevitability of a totalitarian state due to corporate America's language and culture, it suggests that a population that has been desensitized to ambiguity may be more susceptible to being influenced by disingenuous language.

Conclusion

The use of ambiguous, euphemistic language, stemming from practical use within American corporations, may have implications for knowledge and ignorance in broader society. Most notably, ambiguous language is interpretable at the personal level, which may result in numerous individuals having personalized versions of reality. These versions of reality may be incompatible, leading to a state where no one knows what is really true.

Works cited

"Ambiguity." Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 4 Aug. 2017.

Beauregard, Jean. The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures. London: SAGE Publications, Print.

Boroditsky, Lera. "Does Language Shape Thought?: Mandarin and English Speakers' Conceptions of Time." Cognitive Psychology, 43 (2001): 1-22. PDF.

Cameron, Anna F. "Is It Necessary to be Clear? An Examination of Strategic Ambiguity in Family Business Mission Statements." Qualitative Research Reports in Communication, 14:1, (2013): 87-96. PDF.

"Doublespeak." Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 4 Aug. 2017.

"ENRON'S MANY STRANDS; Excerpts From the House Subcommittee Hearings on the Enron Collapse." New York Times February 9, 2002: Web.

"Euphemism." Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 4 Aug. 2017.

Frizell, Sam. "Why Clinton and Sanders Answer Questions So Differently ." Time May 5, 2016: Web.

Giddens, Anthony. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 1991, Print.

Jackall, Robert. Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers. Oxford University Press, 1988, E-Book.

Kay, Jonathan. Among the Truthers: A Journey Through America's Growing Conspiracist Underground. Harper Collins, 2011, Print.

McGoey, Linsey. "The logic of strategic ignorance." The British Journal of Sociology Volume 63, Issue 3 (2012): 553-576. PDF.

McCammon, Sarah. "Donald Trump's Controversial Speech Often Walks the Line." NPR August 10, 2016: Web.

Negroponte, Nicholas P. Being Digital. New York: Vintage Books, 1995, Print.

Orwell, George. Politics and the English Language. London: Horizon, 1946, Web.

Ostertag, Stephen F. "Processing Culture: Cognition, Ontology, and the News Media."

Sociological Forum

, Vol. 25, No. 4 (December 2010): PDF.

The Nature of the Reactionary: A Polemic

By Ben Harney

When I ask you why justice and equality will never be embraced by humanity, you respond with an answer that sounds as if it has been rehearsed in your head one thousand times:

"Human nature, of course. It is evil, it is greedy."

And now a sly smile creeps onto your face, you have just won the debate of the millenia. A tidal wave of release has swept through your soul; this response is almost a confession, but an easy one for you at that! To you, this nature is an infallible god. Think on what you have done, friend! Somehow, you have just redeemed the suffering of billions with one fell sweep from this Nature; and with its omnipotence comes your own liberation. Anything is justified with this Nature on your side. Somewhere, in one of the deepest caverns of your mind, one demon sighs with relief upon hearing your message from this new deity. He thought his work would have to be done in the dark recesses of your soul, but now, he knows, he is free!

The speed of your answer to my question betrays the intensity of how desperately you hold onto it. Why? I suppose there might exist some dragons within you which truly revel in this nature of yours. Or is it yours? Maybe it belongs to the others, just not you, O virtuous one! No, these dragons remain a part of you, they grew up with you; in your bed, at your dinner table, in your Church, in the yacht club, in Prep school. They whispered fire into your mind when you strolled by some fellow brother or sister sleeping in waste on the soulless concrete. They clawed and lashed at your eyes when you saw a cousin with a darker complexion. These dragons took a hold of your throat and cackled when you glared at that worn traveler or worker. The beasts within now have made you their own; your society nurtured them, and you never fought them.

I can only assume you to be a genius! Alas, you know the nature of all humankind! I wonder who told you, whoever has that kind of wisdom; I should like to talk with them.

In this answer, you have confessed not the nature of humankind, but yourself, my friend. Human nature is evil? It is selfish? No. You are evil, you are selfish. From that tower of yours, you look down on the stalwart people who carry on, and you spit. You look to your father, some banker perhaps, and orgasm to his success. Do you call him evil, is he selfish? Your eyes say no. Ah, I forgot, the nature you speak of applies only to the unwashed rabble, not your high kin! But wait, you do embrace it. The grin you don when such a question comes up is the real horror, but, evidently, you delight in this. The chains are broken, and you are let loose; make those millions, ignore everything else.

It seems that your own self, under the watchful guise of the wretched system which planted seeds in your psyche, has gorged on the pleasures of fear and laziness, of apathy and greed. You bow to one thousand generations of tradition. You bow to things as they are, you bow to suffering. Pathetic submission is your roll call, and this false creation you call 'innate Nature' commands you. Instead of seizing your sword, pushing forward with all your might, and ascending the summits of yourself in order to confront the dragons which now call your own mind their dominion, you act as their humble servant. But this is the rule, not the exception. The articulated and painted social existence which you were immersed in, one which if the surface is scratched at only slightly the rotten and tortured flesh below is revealed, has created a perfect mind for this kind of disease to flourish in. You and your neighbors all pat each other on the back in celebration of the evilness of humankind!

Do you say it is human nature for billions to endure exploitation, to endure a constant war for their dignity, because you, yourself, have become a slave to cruelty, to laziness, to the filthy heads of this hydra? But do you know that starving goes against human nature? Do you know that dying from black lung is in direct opposition to human nature? In the least, the nature of humanity is to live and thrive, just like any other species. Equality, freedom, now these are the philosophical pinnacles of human nature, you and your system has made it so. There is nothing more true than the rage and pain a mother may feel when her child is hungry. And there is nothing more unnatural than being relegated to a certain life because of the amount of a certain compound in one's skin. You say our present system is in harmony with human nature. I say this system makes billions cry out against it in one billion different ways for one billion different reasons, but all of these tears and fists can be traced back to the root, to the foundation. The coming revolution will be the culmination of five hundred years of pain and suffering and hope and unity, what do you have, what will you have, and where will you hide? Your nature prevents you from realizing a new society where the masses of humanity hold the torch of power in their own coarse hands.

But it must be known, to everyone, that your nature, the nature of the Reactionary, is the nature of the coward. There is no courage, or fire, in that soul of yours. All I can see is a fat and bloated devil which scrambles to bow the lowest when his master comes to him. It takes no strength to justify the pain and rape of one million souls, no bravery to be settled with the current state of things, when the 'current state of things' means no pain, and only pleasure, for you. But perhaps you do need some strength, I grant you, which you must use to hold up the unbelievable quantity of unseen cruelty within your heart. That must be a heavy weight.

To revolt means to first hunt down the socially implanted demons which lurk in one's own heart. If you confess that your own nature is to submit to these demons, to greed and evil, then you have already lost that battle. The beasts have slain you before the hunt even began.

So be it, you cannot accept justice and equality. But Humanity's nature is not yours to brand.

The Dialectic of Tolerance

By Bryant William Sculos

Until the Right-and liberals-are going to defend the free speech rights of everyone, until they are going to put themselves on the line to promote solidaristic tolerance of others whom they "disagree with," they do not deserve to utter the words free speech, tolerance, or persecution (but sure, they have "the right to"). And the Left must continue to refuse to let them get away with it.

We cannot be afraid of being perceived as intolerant. We are intolerant. We do not tolerate hatred. We do not tolerate repression or oppression. We do not tolerate bigotry, racism, or cisheterosexism. We are also aware that letting any government or unaccountable body like a university board of trustees-never mind obscenely corrupt, undemocratic ones-determine what is tolerable and what is not, is extremely problematic-and as of now must also be resisted. It is a tight rope to walk, but it is one we must walk.

This is the internal contradictory nature of universal tolerance. It is impossible to defend universal, emancipatory tolerance without asserting directly that whatsoever undermines tolerance must not be tolerates. What form this intolerance takes should and must be democratically debated and contested.

Counterrevolutionary (In)Tolerance

I am not talking about legality here though. I am talking about the relationship between the principles of free speech and tolerance, which should (and are) central to any notion of socialism from below, and the contemporary reactionary practices covered in the so-called debates around free speech and tolerance in the US (and somewhat in the UK and Europe, specifically around the "no-platform" policies pursued in many universities).

Defending a white supremacist's right to speak at a university while decrying protesters of that speech is a hypocrisy so ripe that it is literally rotten. That is, it is no defense of tolerance nor is it a defense of free speech. It is a reactionary silencing portrayed as a neutral defense of freedom and toleration. "Of course I don't agree with the white supremacist, but those protesters are hypocritical and violating the free speech of others. The protesters are the ones being intolerant of views they disagree with!" Then when controversial professors on the left are targeted for their speech, surely the outrage is the same, right? Right? Righ....Wrong.

Protesting is a form of free speech. Opposing intolerance is rooted in tolerance. In fact, tolerance would be incomprehensible without this element. Actively battling against the comprehensively intolerable, actions and kinds of speech that directly threaten vulnerable peoples' lives, is a virtuous, solidaristic defense of freedom. Openly advocating exclusionary, bigoted politics and repressive structural (and inevitably direct) violence might be legal, but it is certainly not any kind of freedom worthy of the name, and it is certainly not something worthy of toleration-at least so long as those who are targets of such speech are not guaranteed the right to openly oppose that exclusionary bigotry and violence-advocacy.

This is what my co-author Prof. Sean Noah Walsh and I were getting at in our 2016 New Political Science article "The Counterrevolutionary Campus" applying philosopher and social critic Herbert Marcuse's concepts of repressive tolerance and liberating tolerance to the student protest movements (primarily on college campuses and associated with Black Lives Matter and Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Against Israel [BDS]). [1]

Here, put very simply, we argued that right-wing claims of having had their right to free speech violated or that they are experiencing intolerance at the hands of activists who were organizing and protesting against intolerance, exclusion, inequality, and oppression, were not actually attempting to defend the principles of free speech and tolerance. The counterrevolutionary Right was deploying these claims to silence those they didn't want to hear from, those whom they want(ed) society to remain intolerant of. We argued that Marcuse was right in the 60s and his argument is still applicable today: the most prominent arguments about free speech and tolerance, predominantly by the Right, are exemplary forms of repression and oppression-not freedom.

In his March 2016 National Review article, Fred Bauer took umbrage with our argument, which he seemingly willfully misinterpreted (as he has done of Marcuse's work in the past) in his article condemning the Middlebury College protests against racist pseudo-intellectual Charles Murray. Bauer writes:

"Sculos and Walsh try to discount the anti-liberal implications of this viewpoint by arguing that Marcuse here is calling for the repression only of 'those thoughts and words that promote destruction, bigotry, racism and deprivation. Any science repressed is that which is geared toward developing technologies of war, environmental catastrophe and human exploitation.' However, Marcuse's criteria for repression may be far broader, and far more open to abuse, than Sculos and Walsh might think. After all, the question of which 'thoughts and words' really promote 'destruction, bigotry, racism and deprivation' is itself a topic for debate."

Bauer is not wrong that there are certain aspects of discussions about free speech and tolerance that are genuinely up for debate, but just because there is some room for debate does not mean that all sides of the debate are equally viable or worth seriously considering. Furthermore, Bauer refuses to take the central aspect of our argument seriously: that the Right deploys free speech and tolerance claims in order to silence those groups who are most often targeted by their vitriol and discriminatory policy agenda; that they have very little interest in defending the free speech of those they disagree with.

The beauty of Marcuse's work on repressive tolerance [2], that those like Bauer so often overlook or perhaps just politically disagree with, is its admittedly controversial conclusion that in situations where 'tolerance' produces more intolerance, we need a new notion of tolerance that refuses to tolerate the silencing of systematically oppressed peoples and views.

It is not a neutral conception of tolerance at all, and even a superficial reading of Mill's On Liberty actually supports our position (and Marcuse's). Mill's liberal understanding of tolerance is justified based on the results of tolerance--that in tolerating all view points the more tolerant views will eventually win, and society will progress. In our and Marcuse's evaluation, that progress is not occurring, and therefore the notion of tolerance lacks a coherent justification-under these specific circumstances. To put it very simply, we are defending a position that says: We value tolerance, and until society is systematically tolerant, we need a different conception of tolerance in-place that prevents the spread-and dominance-of intolerant ideas.

It is not, as Bauer suggests, that I am unaware of the potential for abuse of this position by so-called "mandarins" (and if such abuse occurred, I would be among the first to speak out against it), but instead I am willing to risk the abuse of our position, in principle, to argue against the existing abuse by the Right of the liberal notion of tolerance-seemingly deployed only when it supports their desire to defend their own intolerance. The abuse of tolerance (by the Right) is already occurring, so, there is not much in the application of the liberal position to defend at the moment (besides Mill's initial argument that tolerance should serve Progress-which, it is worth noting, led him to defend socialism towards the end of his life).[3]

Towards a Socialist Tolerance

Again, legal interpretations aside, we must look at the hypocrisy of claiming to defend free speech and tolerance while actively defending the rights and freedoms of those who want more and greater exclusion and repression in our world. We must be willing to accept the very real possibility that hypocritical defenses of free speech and tolerance are actually more dangerous to these concepts and the oppressed peoples these principles are supposed to protect, than a curtailment of the "freedoms" of others that are called precisely that.

It is not just the Right that has a problem with Marcuse's approach to tolerance though. Renowned socialist Hal Draper, writing in 1968 for the Independent Socialist, excoriated Marcuse's supposed anti-democratic elitism, imploring the radical left to avoid following Marcuse's guidance:

"Revolutionary socialists…want to push to the limit all the presuppositions and practices of the fullest democratic involvement of the greatest mass of people. To the limit: that is, all the way. No progressive social transformation is possible except insofar as the largest mass of plain people from way below in society start moving. And this movement both requires, and also helps to bring about, the fullest opening-up of society to democratic controls from below not their further restriction. It means the breaking up of anti-democratic limitations and restrictions. It means the greater unleashing of new initiatives from below. In other words, it means the exact opposite of Marcuseism." [4]

Draper's point here is only wrong insofar as he perceived that Marcuse would have fundamentally disagreed with him. Against Draper's suggestion that Marcuse desired some kind of elitist group to determine what should be tolerable and what should not be, Marcuse states quite clearly that he has little faith that there is an existing institution or coterie that could do so effectively, justly, and democratically. [5] This takes nothing away from his point about the general tendency of demands for tolerance and free speech to be deployed in defense of intolerable, counterrevolutionary positions-and the importance for the Left to take this reality seriously.

My goal here is not mainly to defend Marcuse from misreadings, but instead to mobilize the core of his argument for what I perceive to be its original purpose and contemporary value: we must comprehensively refuse to concede ground to the right-wing establishment when it comes to defending the best versions of free speech and democratic tolerance. We must be clear-eyed, nuanced realists whilst also promoting a radically reimagined future for ourselves and future generations. Idealist notions of the purity of free speech and tolerance have yet to provide an adequate basis for radical Left politics, and there is little reason to think this is going to change anytime soon.

What I am not advocating here is that the Left abandon its defense of free speech or tolerance. In fact, I am arguing the opposite. However, history has shown us often enough that liberal and right-wing defenses of free speech and tolerance effectively protect the most reactionary forces in our societies, not the people who are fighting to overcome those forces. The Left needs to be strategically clearer and more open about this fact in order to insulate the principles of freedom of speech and tolerance from their abusers. In other words, the Left must aggressively defend democratized, emancipatory conceptions of tolerance and free speech-before these ideas have lost all practical meaning.

Bryant William Sculos, Ph.D. is a postdoctoral fellow at The Amherst Program in Critical Theory, adjunct professor at Florida International University, contributing writer for the Hampton Institute, and Politics of Culture section editor for Class, Race and Corporate Power.

Notes

[1] B.W. Sculos & S.N. Walsh, "The Counterrevolution Campus: Herbert Marcuse and the Suppression of Student Protest Movements," New Political Science (Dec. 2016), pp. 516-532.

[2] Herbert Marcuse, "Repressive Tolerance," in Robert Paul Wolff, Barrington Moore, and Herbert Marcuse (eds),A Critique of Pure Tolerance (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969).

[3] See John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, pp. 1-115 and Mill's Chapters on Socialism, pp. 221-279 in Stefan Collini (ed.), On Liberty and Other Writings (Cambridge University Press, 1989).

[4] Hal Draper, "Free Speech and Political Struggle" in Independent Socialist (April 1969), pp. 12-16.

[5] Marcuse, "Repressive Tolerance," pp. 81-83.