Citizen Therapists Against Trumpism Manifesto Signers (now closed)
A Public Manifesto
Citizen Therapists Against Trumpism
http://citizentherapists.com/manifesto/
As psychotherapists practicing in the United States, we are alarmed by the rise of the ideology of Trumpism, which we see as a threat to the well-being of the people we care for and to American democracy itself. We cannot remain silent as we witness the rise of an American form of fascism. We can leverage this time of crisis to deepen our commitment to American democracy.
What is Trumpism?
Trumpism is an ideology, not an individual, and it may well endure and grow after the Presidential election even if Donald Trump is defeated. (Variants can be seen all over Europe.) Trumpism is a set of ideas about public life and a set of public practices characterized by:
Scapegoating and banishing groups of people who are seen as threats, including immigrants and religious minorities.
Degrading, ridiculing, and demeaning rivals and critics.
Fostering a cult of the Strong Man who:
Appeals to fear and anger
Promises to solve our problems if we just trust in him
Reinvents history and has little concern for truth
Never apologizes or admits mistakes of consequence
Sees no need for rational persuasion
Subordinates women while claiming to idealize them
Disdains public institutions like the courts when they are not subservient
Champions national power over international law and respect for other nations
Incites and excuses public violence by supporters
At the political level, Trumpism is an emerging form of American fascism, a point being made by social critics across the political spectrum, including Robert Reich, Robert Kagan, and Andrew Sullivan. As journalist Adam Gopnik points out, whether or not the term fascism fully fits, it’s clear that the American republic faces a clear and present danger when the candidate of a major political party embraces an anti-democratic ideology. At the cultural level, the Urban Dictionary has defined Trumpism as the belief system that encourages pretentious, narcissistic behavior as a way to achieve money, fame, and power.
What are the Effects of Trumpism?
Fear and alienation among scapegoated groups, beginning with Latino immigrants and Muslims, and then other groups who become identified as threats
Exaggerated masculinity as a cultural ideal, with particular influence on young people and economically insecure men
Coarsening of public life by personal attacks on those who disagree
Erosion of the American democratic tradition which has emphasized the agency of we-the-people instead of the Strong Man tradition of power
Where Did Trumpism Come From?
This question is bigger than Donald Trump. The next public figure to capture the wave of Trumpism may be less clownish and have a better set of movement-building skills, and thus be even more dangerous. Following is a partial list of forces that underlie Trumpism:
Economic insecurity, particularly among working-class Americans
The threat of terrorism since 9/11
Fear of immigrants (related to economic insecurity and threats of terrorism)
Distrust for government and politicians at a time of polarized gridlock
Growing distrust for other institutions such as religion, the press, and the courts
Rapid cultural change that has left many people confused and alienated
Why Therapists Must Speak Out
We must speak out for the well-being of people we treat and care for in our work. Trumpism will undermine the emotional health of those seen as the other in America both historically denigrated groups and those whose turn will come. And it will compromise the integrity of those who are seduced by the illusion that real Americans can only become winners if others become losers. The public rhetoric of Trumpism normalizes what therapists work against in our work: the tendency to blame others in our lives for our personal fears and insecurities and then battle these others instead of taking the healthier but more difficult path of self-awareness and self-responsibility. It also normalizes a kind of hyper-masculinity that is antithetical to the examined life and healthy relationships that psychotherapy helps people achieve. Simply stated, Trumpism is inconsistent with emotionally healthy living and we have to say so publicly.
We must speak out for the well-being of our democracy, which is both a way of living and acting together and a set of political institutions. Therapists have taken for granted how our work relies on a democratic tradition that gives people a sense of personal agency to create new narratives and take personal and collective responsibility for themselves, their families, and their communities. Reliance on a Strong Man who will solve our problems and deal with internal and external enemies is a direct threat to the democratic basis of psychotherapy. Therapy only flourishes on democratic soil.
Why speak collectively? Our responses thus far have been primarily personal—and too often confined to arm-chair diagnoses of Donald Trump. But a collective crisis faces our nation, a harkening back to the economic depression and demoralization of the 1930s (which fed European fascism) and the upheaval over Jim Crow and Black civil rights in the 1950s. Fortunately, the resolution of these crises led to a deepening of American democracy, not the abandonment of it. Martin Luther King, influenced by his mentor Bayard Rustin and by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, didn’t just critique unjust systems from the outside. He called for strategic, collective work to take back an American democracy that belongs to all the people. As therapists, we have been entrusted by society with collective responsibility in the arena of mental, behavioral, and relational health. When there is a public threat to our domain of responsibility we must speak out together, not just to protest but to deepen our commitment to a just society and a democratic way of life. This means being citizen therapists who are concerned with community well-being as much as personal well-being, since the two are inextricably joined.
Where We Stand as Citizen Therapists
We understand the draw of Trumpism and we acknowledge that some of our fellow citizens, and some of our clients, voted for Donald Trump not because they embrace all aspects of Trumpism but because they are frustrated with their circumstances and fed up with the current political system. We are against Trumpism and its architects, not against those who are inclined to give it a chance to change the direction of the country.
But we reject the false equivalence of saying that because there is dishonesty and demagoguery on all political sides, why not support someone from the outside? Trumpism is qualitatively different. To repeat: Trumpism undermines the core of American democracy by promoting the idea of a single leader who will bring greatness to the nation by battling Those People. Democracy requires personal and collective agency so that we can work together across differences to solve problems and develop a shared way of life. Psychotherapists must be firmly on the side of democracy and work in solidarity with groups directly threatened by current and future versions of Trumpism. This work does not end with the election. The wake-up call has been received. Our first response is this manifesto. More to follow.
Therefore, as citizen therapists we stand united against the dangerous ideology of Trumpism, and we encourage others to join us in a deepened commitment to a democratic way of life that engages the talents, yearnings, and capacities of all the people.
AfricaFocus Bulletin
January 23, 2017 (170123)
(Reposted from sources cited below)
Editor’s Note
“Eskom, accused of overly cozy ties with the Guptas featured heavily
in the report, with 916 mentions. … it’s Eskom’s chief executive,
Brian Molefe, who comes out looking the worst. According to cell
phone records, Molefe had 58 phone calls with the eldest of the
Gupta brothers, Ajay Gupta, between August 2015 and March 2016, just
before the Guptas purchased South Africa’s Optimum coal mine for
2.15 billion rand ($160 million). Eskom, which prepaid the Gupta’s
Tegeta Exploration and Resources 600 million rand for coal, had been
accused of helping to finance the Guptas’ coal mine deal through
preferential treatment.” – Quartz Africa
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In South Africa, as elsewhere in countries both large and small, the
debates about government energy policy are often framed in terms of
what is best for the “national interest.” But few doubt that behind
these choices between renewable energy options and others (fossil
fuels or nuclear energy), there are also private interests, whose
roles in the management of the state are not new but are becoming
more and more blatant (see below on links on the common stakes of
the incoming Trump administration and Russia’s Putin in promoting
fossil-fuel interests).
Concentrating on this aspect of what is termed “state capture” in
South Africa, this AfricaFocus Bulletin includes (1) brief excerpts
from the 355-page report on “State of Capture” from Public Protector
Thuli Madonsela; (2) an article with a summary of the report from
Quartz Africa, and (3) an article from The Conversation on the state
capture issue and its effects on plans for nuclear energy.
Two recent articles with background on the energy debate include:
le Cordeur, Matthew, “5 reasons why Eskom is wrong about renewables
costs – CSIR,” Jan 12, 2017 http://www.fin24.com – direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/jmpts84
“Eskom delaying R50 billion renewable energy plan to push nuclear
goals,” Jan 10, 2017, http://businesstech.co.za – direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/zcqku94
Watch live on youtube January 25
Zitamar News and Africa Research Institute present:
A Webinar on Mozambique’s Debt Crisis
Wednesday 25 January – 15:00 Maputo / 13:00 London / 08:00 New York
The Trump Election: Intersecting Explanations
http://www.noeasyvictories.org/usa/trump-win-reasons.php
Observations (second installment), Jan 23, 2017
In the period between the election and the inauguration, the
highest profile debate about reasons for the Trump electoral win was
about Putin’s intervention. But that debate produced more heat than
light, while key issues such as the common interests of Putin and
the Trump administration in promoting the fossil-fuel industry
received only marginal attention.
See http://noeasyvictories.org/usa/putin-intervention.php for short
observations and database entries for 31 sources to date.
Articles on the fossil-fuel connection in particular include:
Joe Romm, “Did Putin help elect Trump to restore $500 billion Exxon
oil deal killed by sanctions?,” ThinkProgress, Jan 8, 2017
http://tinyurl.com/z6d45ub
Rachel Maddow, 5-minute video on ExxonMobil & Russia deal, Dec. 20,
2016 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n60SzMzjXog
Alex Steffen, “Trump, Putin and the Pipelines to Nowhere
You can’t understand what Trump’s doing to America without
understanding the ‘Carbon Bubble’,” Dec 15, 2016, http://medium.com
– Direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/hb2xnc6
“State of Capture”: A Report of the Public Protector
14 October 2016
Full 355-page report in pdf available at http://tinyurl.com/jffpskt
5. Evidence and Information Obtained
Introduction
5.1. The Gupta family, originating from India, arrived in South
Africa in 1993. They established businesses in South Africa with
their notable business being a computer assembly and distribution
company called Sahara Computers. The family is led by three
brothers Ajay Gupta who is the eldest, Atul Gupta and Rajesh Gupta
who is the youngest. Rajesh is commonly known as “Tony”. According
to a letter submitted to my office, total revenues from their
business activities for the 2016 financial year amounted to R2,6
billion, with government contracts contributing a total of R235
million of the revenues.
5.2. They later diversified their business interests into mining
through the acquisition of JIC Mining Services, Shiva Uranium and
Tegeta Exploration and Resources, Optimum Coal Mine and
Koornfontein Coal Mine. They also started a media company called
TNA Media, which publishes a newspaper called The New Age and owns
a television channel called ANN7.
5.3. The Gupta family are known friends of the President Zuma.
President Zuma has openly acknowledged his friendship with them,
most notably during a discussion in the National Assembly on 19
June 2013 where he admitted that members of the Gupta family were
his friends. Mr Ajay Gupta (“Mr A. Gupta), also admitted to being
friends with President Zuma when I interviewed him on 4 October
2016.
5.4. President Zuma’s son, Mr Duduzane Zuma (“Mr D. Zuma”) is a
business partner of the Gupta family through an entity called
Mabengela Investments (“Mabengela”). Mabengela has a 28.5% interest
in Tegeta Exploration and Resources (“Tegeta”). Mr D. Zuma is a
Director of Mabengela.
5.5. Members of the Gupta family and the President Zuma’ son, Mr D.
Zuma, have secured major contracts with Eskom, a major State owned
company, through Tegeta. Tegeta has secured a 10 year coal supply
agreement (“CSA”) with Eskom SOC Limited (“Eskom”) to supply coal
to the Majuba Power station. The entity has also secured contracts
with Eskom to supply coal to the Hendrina and Arnot power stations.
5.6. Eskom CEO, Mr Brian Molefe (“Mr Molefe”) is friends with
members of the Gupta family. Mr A. Gupta admitted during my
interview with him on 4 October 2016 that Mr Molefe is his “very
good friend” and often visits his home in Saxonwold.
5.7. The New Age newspaper has also secured contracts with some
provincial government departments and state owned entities, most
notably Eskom and South African Airways (“SAA”).
5.8. The Gupta family recently purchased shares in an entity called
VR Laser Services (“VR Laser”). VR Laser has major contracts with
Denel SOC Limited (“Denel”), a State owned armaments manufacturing
company. VR Laser has also partnered with Denel to apparently seek
business opportunities abroad.
5.9. During March this year, Mr Jonas issued a media statement
alleging that he was offered the position of Minister of Finance by
members of the Gupta family in exchange for executive decisions
favourable to the business interests of the Gupta family, an offer
which he declined. The Gupta family has denied the allegations made
by Mr Jonas.
5.10. At the time Mr Jonas is alleged to have been offered a Cabinet
post as Minister of Finance, Mr Nene was occupying the post. Mr
Nene was removed from his post on 9 December 2015 by President Zuma
and replaced with Minister Van Rooyen. Minister Van Rooyen was
replaced by Minister Gordhan on 14 December 2015 as Minister of
Finance, 4 days after his appointment.
5.11. Following Mr Jonas’ statement, Ms Mentor also issued a
statement to the press alleging that she was also offered a Cabinet
post by members of the Gupta family in exchange for executive
decisions favourable to their business interests, an allegation
denied by the Gupta family.
5.12. The former CEO of Government Communication and Information
System (“GCIS”), Mr Themba Maseko also issued a statement alleging
that members of the Gupta family pressured him into placing
government advertisements in the New Age newspaper. Mr Maseko
further alleged that President Zuma asked him to “help” the Gupta
family.
**********************************************
What the “State Capture” report tells us about Zuma, the Guptas, and
corruption in South Africa
It’s the report that confirms South Africa’s worst fears about
corruption: that the state has been captured. In 355 pages, former
public protector Thuli Madonsela and her team of investigators
outline in detail just how much control the Gupta family, a wealthy
Indian immigrant family, has over South Africa’s resources. The
Guptas’ close friend, president Jacob Zuma, as well as two ministers
implicated in the report, went to court to stop its release. But it
was finally released on Nov. 2, after protests and a court battle.
The report is potentially damning for Zuma, offering proof that he
sanctioned the use of state companies for personal enrichment. But
now the real reckoning begins, as a web of corruption around Zuma,
the Guptas, and at least three ministers begins to unravel.
Hiring and firing ministers in the Guptas’ house
The report contains a detailed interview with deputy finance
minister Mcebisi Jonas, who alleges that the Guptas offered him the
finance minister’s post weeks before Zuma was to shuffle three
finance ministers in one week. Jonas was driven to the Guptas’ home
by the president’s son Duduzane Zuma, where he was met by Ajay
Gupta.
Ajay Gupta allegedly told Jonas they’d been keeping tabs on him and
wanted him to be their man in the treasury. Ajay Gupta revealed that
they’d already made 6 billion rand ($443 million) from dealings with
the government, and wanted to make at least 2 billion rand more
(about $147 million). When Jonas refused, they tried to sweeten the
deal with 600 million rand (about $44 million) and an extra 600,000
rand ($44,318) in cash, right there. Jonas declined the money, and
months later became the whistle-blower that launched this
investigation when he revealed his story in March.
Vytjie Mentor, who came out after Jonas with an account of how the
Guptas tried to offer her the job of minister of public enterprises,
in charge of state-owned companies, also details her exchange with
the family. According to the report (p.89), Mentor was told during a
meeting in October last year at the Guptas’ home that she would go
from an ordinary parliamentarian to cabinet minister in a week. All
she had to do was make sure South African Airways dropped their
route between Johannesburg and Mumbai, making way for the Gupta-
linked carrier Jet Airways. Mentor declined. She was surprised to
see the president himself emerge from an adjacent room, who said
“it’s okay girl…take care of yourself,” as he personally escorted
her out.
According to the report, the Guptas also have the power to fire
ministers seen as stumbling blocks to their plans. Former finance
minister Nhlanhla Nene’s insistence on sticking to the rules cost
him his job. As did Barbara Hogan, former minister of public
enterprises, who refused to allow outside influence in appointments
of board members of state-owned South African Airways, Transnet, the
national rail, and Eskom, the state power utility (p. 89, 90). On an
official visit to India, Hogan said she was shocked to find the
Guptas running proceedings. She was relieved of her duties a few
months later.
Des van Rooyen, the unknown parliamentarian who became finance
minister for a few days after Nene, went to court in a bid to delay
the report, fearing it would implicate him. And it has. His phone
records show that van Rooyen visited the Guptas’ home seven days in
a row before he was appointed as finance minister. He was later
moved to a less prominent ministry. Van Rooyen has denied any
wrongdoing.
Negotiating on behalf of the Guptas
Mining minister Mosebenzi Zwane also tried to have the report
delayed, saying it was hastily prepared and that he had not been
given time to respond. According to the report (p. 124, 125), Zwane
travelled to Switzerland on behalf of the Guptas to smooth over
their acquisition of a troubled coal mine from multinational
commodity trader Glencore, helping the Guptas become one of the main
coal suppliers for state utility Eskom. Zwane allegedly helped
facilitate the deal by accompanying delegates from a Gupta resources
company, Tegeta, to Zurich, according to a flight itinerary obtained
by the public protector. Zwane could not be interviewed in time for
the report, but should be allowed to give his version in subsequent
investigations, the report says.
Eskom: Keeping the lights on for the Guptas
Eskom, accused of overly cozy ties with the Guptas featured heavily
in the report, with 916 mentions. Lynn Brown, who became the
minister in charge of South Africa’s state owned enterprises, is
implicated in the report for allowing the appointment of a lame-duck
board that turned a blind eye to murky deals made at the energy
monopoly.
But it’s Eskom’s chief executive, Brian Molefe, who comes out
looking the worst. According to cell phone records, Molefe had 58
phone calls with the eldest of the Gupta brothers, Ajay Gupta,
between August 2015 and March 2016, just before the Guptas purchased
South Africa’s Optimum coal mine for 2.15 billion rand ($160
million). Eskom, which prepaid the Gupta’s Tegeta Exploration and
Resources 600 million rand for coal, had been accused of helping to
finance the Guptas’ coal mine deal through preferential treatment.
The report concludes (p, 20), “it appears that the sole purpose of
awarding contracts to Tegeta to supply Arnot Power Station, was made
solely for the purposes of funding Tegeta and enabling Tegeta to
purchase all shares in OCH [Optimum Coal Holdings]. The only entity
which appears to have benefited from Eskom’s decisions with regards
to [the Optimum coal mine deal] was Tegeta.” Cellphone records also
put Molefe in the Saxonwold area, where the Guptas live, 19 times
between August and November 2015 and phone calls between Molefe and
Ronica Ragavan, head of the Gupta’s holding company, Oakbay
Investments. Justifying these calls and visits, Ajay Gupta told
Madonsela in an interview last month that Molefe is his “very good
friend” who often visits the Gupta compound. But Madonsela says
these records show “a distinct line of communication between Molefe
of Eskom, the Gupta family and directors of their companies… These
links cannot be ignored as Mr Molefe did not declare his
relationship with the Guptas.” Eskom hasrefuted any allegations of
wrongdoing. “We do believe everything that we’ve done so far was
above board,” spokesman for the utility, Khulu Phasiwe, told a local
radio station.
Advertising with the Guptas
Themba Maseko, former chief executive of government’s communications
agency, in charge of a media buying budget of 600 million rand a
year, said he was pressured by the Gupta family to place government
ads in their newspaper the New Age. Maseko was also one of the
whistleblowers who took his story to the media in March.
In an interview with Madonsela in August, Maseko said he was on his
way to a meeting with the Guptas in late 2010 when the president
called him on the phone to say, “The Gupta brothers need your help,
please help them.” During the meeting with Ajay Gupta, Gupta told
Maseko that he wanted government advertising channeled to his new
newspaper, the New Age. According to Maseko’s account, the
government official told Gupta that he could not decide where
government departments advertise. Gupta responded that this was not
a problem. He would instruct the departments to advertise in the
newspaper
According to Maseko’s account, Gupta instructed Maseko to tell him
“where the funds are and inform the departments to provide the funds
to you and if they refuse, we will deal with them. If you have a
problem with any department, we will summon ministers here.” Later
when Maseko refused to take a meeting with a New Age staff, Gupta
told Maseko, “I will talk to your seniors in government and you will
be sorted out.” Maseko was fired a few months later.
A bright spot: Integrity in the Treasury
The report shows how the Guptas’ plans were repeatedly thwarted by
officials in the treasury (p. 131, 132, and 94). The National
Treasury, in charge of approving deals linked to state-owned
enterprises, stuck to the rules of procurement and public finance.
Treasury officials questioned the Eskom coal deal with Tegeta.
Unable to stop the initial deal, they succeeded in blocking an
extension of the Tegeta contract. These obstructions appear to have
frustrated the Guptas and cost Nene his job. Many speculate that
current finance minister Pravin Gordhan’songoing legal battles are
related to the treasury’s resistance to the Guptas influence.
What next?
Zuma, the ministers, and the Guptas have yet to respond to the
damning allegations in the report. Madonsela has since left office,
with state capture report serving as her parting shot in a seven-
year battle against corruption. Still, she’s left instructions on
how to use with her findings. Her successor, who has already
started, should bring potentially criminal accusations in the report
to the National Prosecuting Authority and the police’s Directorate
for Priority Crime Investigation, better known as the Hawks.
Madonsela has also recommended that the report be taken further by a
commission of inquiry, headed by a judge appointed by the chief
justice of South Africa’s constitutional court, Mogoeng Mogoeng.
There are concerns that the prosecuting authority and the Hawks have
been compromised. (They have spearheaded the fraud case against
finance minister Gordhan.) But the public’s hopes lie in the chief
justice, who has spoken out harshly against the abuse of power
before.
“Public office bearers ignore their constitutional obligations at
their peril. This is so because constitutionalism‚ accountability
and the rule of law constitute the sharp and mighty sword that
stands ready to chop the ugly head of impunity off its stiffened
neck,” Mogeng said in March when he ruled against the president over
his use public funds used to renovate his personal compound in
Nkandla.
How the state capture controversy has influenced South Africa’s
nuclear build
Harmut Winkler
The Conversation, May 26, 2016
http://tinyurl.com/jgrjcz8
South Africa is facing a critical decision that could see it
investing about R1 trillion – or US$60 billion to $70 billion – in a
fleet of new nuclear power stations. Proponents argue that it will
greatly increase electrical base-load capacity and generate
industrial growth. But opponents believe the high cost would cripple
the country economically.
What should be an economic decision has now been clouded by
controversy, with political pressure to push through the nuclear
build and the increasingly apparent rewards it would bring to
politically linked individuals.
The nuclear expansion programme needs to be considered exceptionally
carefully given that the required financial commitment is roughly
equal to the total South African annual tax revenue. Loan repayments
could place a devastating long-term burden on the public and on the
economy as a whole.
South Africa’s energy needs
South Africa is in the process of massively expanding and
modernising its electricity generation capacity. The government-
driven Integrated Resource Plan aims to increase total capacity from
42,000MW (peak demand of 39,000MW) to 85,000MW (peak demand of
68,000MW) in 2030. A key component of this plan is the construction
of facilities to produce 9,600MW of nuclear power. However, this
aspect of the plan has been challenged.
The biggest concern is that nuclear power is too expensive for the
country. The debate gained momentum when the 2013 update to the
2010-2030 electricity plan found that electricity demand is growing
slower than originally anticipated. Peak demand in 2030 is now
expected to range between 52,000 MW and 61,000 MW. There is
consequently widespread belief that new nuclear power stations can
be delayed considerably.
South Africa’s energy generation options
South Africa has had remarkable success with speedy, cost-effective
installation of renewable energy power plants. In addition to this,
technologies for harvesting South Africa’s plentiful wind and solar
energy resources are rapidly becoming cheaper, raising the question
of whether the country should not invest more in these options
rather than in going nuclear.
The argument that nuclear energy provides a stable base load,
independent of weather conditions, is mitigated by improvements in
energy storage technologies. But also by the fact that South Africa,
with its large coal power production, has a proportionally higher
base load than many highly developed industrialised countries. The
pro-nuclear option is therefore not unavoidable, as nuclear
proponents suggest, but rather a matter for thorough economic
consideration.
Zuma and the Russians
The nuclear debate gained a political dimension when President Jacob
Zuma and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, started to develop
an unusually close relationship. It culminated in an announcement
that the Russian nuclear developer, Rosatom, had been awarded the
potentially highly lucrative contract to build the new reactors. The
agreement was later denied.
Rosatom was considered the preferred contender, with other bidders
only there to lend the process legitimacy, according to some
observers. The lack of transparency surrounding the process, coupled
with a history of corruption in South African mega-projects like the
arms deal, has made the whole scheme seem suspicious to the broader
public.
A thickening plot
A crucial thread in this saga involves the Shiva uranium mine, about
30km north-west of Pretoria, the country’s executive capital. It
originally belonged to a company called Uranium One, a subsidiary of
Russia’s Rosatom. It was sold in 2010 to Oakbay Resources, a company
controlled by members of the politically connected Gupta family and
the president’s son, in a deal that greatly surprised economists.
The mine was deemed unprofitable and thus unattractive to other
mining companies. But it was still considered worth a whole lot more
than the R270 million paid by Oakbay. The mine would, however,
become highly profitable if it became the uranium supplier to the
new nuclear power stations. Oakbay and its associates therefore have
a very strong incentive for this nuclear build to happen.
It is here that the nuclear build drama feeds into the recent major
controversy surrounding alleged state capture, meaning a corrupt
system where state officials owe their allegiance to politically
connected oligarchs rather than the public interest. This was
highlighted by the shock dismissal of Finance Minister Nhanhla Nene,
a reported nuclear build sceptic, but also by subsequent allegations
of ministerial positions being offered to people by members of the
Gupta family.
Political, legal and civil opposition
The nuclear build’s association with the Zuma faction in the ruling
African National Congress (ANC) will be a political hot potato for
decades to come. The whole scandal also offers potential opportunity
to opposition parties. With increasing evidence of individuals
benefiting, opposition parties have found another spot to exploit,
as they did with Nkandla. A post-Zuma government would find it most
convenient to simply dissociate itself from the whole scheme.
The South African courts have been used very effectively by pressure
groups in the past. Already a number of environmental groups have
initiated legal applications, and these might end up being escalated
to the Supreme and Constitutional Courts. This will delay any
building initiative by years.
The South African experience with the 2010 World Cup has shown that
mega-projects can come to fruition when there is broad overall
support for the initiative. At the same time, South Africans can be
very disruptive and obstructive when this is not the case. For
example, the public opposition to e-tolling, an electronic toll
collection on certain roads.
The two leading opposition parties, the Democratic Alliance and the
Economic Freedom Fighters, have already expressed their strong
criticism of the planned nuclear build. Their supporters and civil
society in general have demonstrated their capacity for mobilisation
around specific issues. So the potential for an anti-nuclear protest
movement cannot be discounted.
A negative nuclear outlook
Building these plants is a risky business proposition, especially
for Rosatom, which is implicated in the developing scandal. The
recent political mood swing against state capture and a likely
credit rating downgrade add to the risk.
Rosatom has suggested a nuclear build financing option that
effectively amounts to it providing a loan. It is, however,
conceivable that a future government may not honour debt repayments
if there is a view that the construction deal was secured
irregularly.
The narrow public support base and downright hostility in some
quarters to a nuclear build has already effectively stalled local
nuclear construction plans. The level of controversy, high costs and
potential for further disruption mean that the planned
implementation could only proceed under severe social strain.
Such a scenario could very well cost the ruling ANC the 2019
national elections. And the party is becoming increasingly aware of
this. As such, it is posited that the nuclear build will not happen
any time as soon as planned.
AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
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Interviewed by Marcus Rolle and Alexandra Boutros – 3rd January 2017
“We live in ominously dangerous times” stated the opening line of an article by C.J. Polychroniou (with Lily Sage) titled “A New Economic System for a World in Rapid Disintegration,” which was recently published in Truthout. And while the aforementioned piece was mainly a scathing critique of global neoliberal capitalism and a call for a new system of economic and social organization, its underlying thesis was that the world system is breaking down and that contemporary societies are in disarray.
Is the (Western) world in shambles? We interviewed C.J. Polychroniou about the current world situation, with emphasis on developments in Europe and the United States, and sought his views on a host of pertinent political, economic and social issues, including the rise of the far right and the capitulation of the left.
Marcus Rolle and Alexandra Boutri: Let’s start by asking — what exactly do you have in mind when you say, “We live in ominously dangerous times?”
C.J. Polychroniou: We live in a period of great global complexity, confusion and uncertainty. It should be beyond dispute that we are in the midst of a whirlpool of events and developments that are eroding our capability to manage human affairs in a way that is conducive to the attainment of a political and economic order based on stability, justice and sustainability. Indeed, the contemporary world is fraught with perils and challenges that will test severely humanity’s ability to maintain a steady course towards anything resembling a civilized life.
For starters, we have been witnessing the gradual erosion of socio-economic gains in much of the advanced industrialized world since at least the early 1980s, along with the rollback of the social state, while a tiny percentage of the population is amazingly wealthy beyond imagination that compromises democracy, subverts the “common good” and promotes a culture of dog-eat-dog world.
The pitfalls of massive economic inequality were identified even by ancient scholars, such as Aristotle, and yet we are still allowing the rich and powerful not only to dictate the nature of society we live in but also to impose conditions that make it seem as if there is no alternative to the dominance of a system in which the interests of big business have primacy over social needs.
In this context, the political system known as representative democracy has fallen completely into the hands of a moneyed oligarchy which controls humanity’s future. Democracy no longer exists. The main function of the citizenry in so-called “democratic” societies is to elect periodically the officials who are going to manage a system designed to serve the interests of a plutocracy and of global capitalism. The “common good” is dead, and in its place we have atomized, segmented societies in which the weak, the poor and powerless are left at the mercy of the gods.
I contend that the above features capture rather accurately the political culture and socio-economic landscape of “late capitalism.” Nonetheless, the prospects for radical social change do not appear promising in light of the huge absence of unified ideological gestalts guiding social and political action. What we may see emerge in the years ahead is an even harsher and more authoritarian form of capitalism.
Then, there is the global warming phenomenon, which threatens to lead to the collapse of much of civilized life if it continues unabated. The extent to which the contemporary world is capable of addressing the effects of global climate change — frequent wildfires, longer periods of drought, rising sea levels, waves of mass migration — is indeed very much in doubt. Moreover, it is also unclear if a transition to clean energy sources suffices at this point in order to contain the further rising of temperatures. To be sure, global climate change will produce in the not-too-distant future major economic disasters, social upheavals and political instability.
If the climate change crisis is not enough to make one convinced that we live in ominously dangerous times, add to the above picture the ever-present threat of nuclear weapons. In fact, the threat of a nuclear war or the possibility of nuclear attacks is more pronounced in today’s global environment than any other time since the dawn of the atomic age. A multi-polar world with nuclear weapons is a far more unstable environment than a bipolar world with nuclear weapons, particularly if we take into account the growing presence and influence of non-state actors, such as extreme terrorist organizations, and the spread of irrational and/or fundamentalist thinking, which has emerged as the new plague in many countries around the world, including first and foremost the United States.
What is the state of the Left in today’s Europe?
Since the collapse of Soviet communism, the European Left has been in a state of complete disarray, although the crisis of Europe’s Left dates back to the 1970s — i.e., long before the collapse of “actually existing socialism.” But let’s be clear. What do we mean today by the term European Left? The European Socialist and Social Democratic parties abandoned long ago any pretext to being “socialistic” and, in fact, have become advocates of austerity and staunch supporters of free-market capitalism. There are some communist parties still around, but most of them are completely marginalized and lack political influence.
Only in Greece do you have a communist party that still carries some influence inside the labor movement, but it is essentially a Stalinist party and has actually worked hard to maintain political stability and thus the status quo. Nonetheless, until very recently, the Greek Communist Party was far more popular than the Coalition of the Radical Left, popularly known as Syriza, which has been in government since January 2015, thanks to the terrible financial and economic crisis that broke out in early 2010 and has since converted the country to a German/European protectorate.
There are, of course, grassroots movements and parties of the radical Left to be found in virtually every European country, but they lack mass popular support. The rise of Syriza in Greece was seen as representing a new dawn for the European Left, but its complete sellout to the euro masters and its actual conversion to a neoliberal and thoroughly corrupt political party has actually been one of the biggest setbacks for progressive forces throughout the continent.
You were expressing strong reservations about Syriza, in fact through these pages, long before its rise to power. What actually went wrong with the Greek Radical Left?
Syriza was a loose organization of various leftist groups (old-fashioned euro communists, anarcho-communists, Maoists and even social democrats), and its appeal was confined mainly to the intellectual class. It lacked a cohesive ideological worldview and, in fact, [it] was difficult to pinpoint its stance on a variety of crucial issues due to the many political factions that it represented.
Naturally, the great majority of the Greek voters saw Syriza as being nothing more than a movement of political clowns, with Alexis Tsipras at its helm. However, a close look around Syriza’s core leadership would have revealed a group of people who were simply political opportunists, people hungry for power. To me, therefore, it was obvious that, in the event that Syriza came to power, two things would happen: first, a split between radicals and opportunists, and second, the capitulation of the opportunists (Alexis Tsipras and his gang) to the domestic economic elite and the euromasters. And this is precisely what has happened.
After five years of brutal austerity and the sharpest decline of the standard of living in any postwar European country, the Greek people voted into power Syriza, believing that its leader, Alexis Tsipras, would carry through with his pre-election promises of ending austerity and subsequently re-boosting the economy, tearing into pieces the EU/IMF bailout agreements, and forc[ing] the cancellation of a major portion of the debt. But shortly after coming to power, the opportunists realized that the option was either complete surrender to the capitalist forces or stepping down from power. They opted for the former, just so they could stay in power, even if it meant completing the carry out of the neoliberal agenda of the European Union and the IMF as part of the financial bailout of the country.
Syriza has been in power for nearly two years now, and, during this time, it has shoved the neoliberal agenda down the throat of the Greek people with more forcefulness and determination than any previous government. It agreed to a new, far more brutal and humiliating bailout plan, and is now overseeing the complete privatization of the economy and the further deterioration of the standard of living, thereby fulfilling the long-held view of the European neoliberal masters that Greek wages and the nation’s standard of living should not be above those found in nearby Balkan countries like Bulgaria and Romania. Any public official or government minister standing in the way to the implementation of the neoliberal agenda was either isolated or pushed out of the government. Indeed, one of Tsipras’ most pronounced traits as prime minister of Greece is the ease with which he is selling out his former comrades.
To secure his goals and aims, i.e., the sellout of the country, he even ended up recruiting as his lackeys academics from abroad, such as the president of the (allegedly progressive) Levy Institute, Dimitri Papadimitriou, and his wife, Rania Antonopoulos, who is currently serving as the Greek Alternate Minister for Combatting Unemployment. Shortly after having accepted the position of Minister of Economy and Development as a result of a recent cabinet reshuffle, Papadimitriou — when asked about his research as an economist in which he challenged the European dogmas of austerity and neoliberalism and advocated the introduction of a “parallel” currency for the deeply ailing Greek economy — replied by saying that, “until last week I was an academic, and academics may say … things. But when the time comes to implement a program, then they realize that some things may have been wrong!”
Of course, the Greek media had a feast over the amazing opportunism and the hypocrisy of this man, but his reaction has been rather typical among pseudo-progressives and social democrats all throughout modern history. Unsurprisingly, Papadimitriou also went on to say that Greeks, Spaniards and Italians live beyond their means, thereby displaying his obedience to the EU and IMF masters, and that one of the major comparative advantages that Greece now enjoys is that it is a country with “cheap labor.”
What has been happening in Greece may represent an extreme example because of the actual state of the economy, but it is quite representative of the state of politics of contemporary European Left. That is, a Left without political convictions and values, a Machiavellian Left that prefers to serve the Masters of Mankind than seek to reorganize society from below.
What is your explanation for the rise of Donald Trump, and do you actually see a future in “Trumpism”?
Understanding the phenomenon of Donald Trump demands that we look beyond the individual himself and, instead, into the way US society has evolved over the last few decades. Millions of Americans have seen their livelihoods either entirely collapse or be threatened by economic forces which they neither understand or control. For example, they (and Donald Trump) blame Mexico and China for the loss of American jobs, but no one is taking the trouble to point out to them that the bulk of the products that China, for example, exports to the United States are being produced by US or multinational corporations who opted to move their operations outside the US in order to take advantage of cheap labor opportunities. In the meantime, wages in the US have remained stagnant over the course of the last 25 years for the great majority of the population, while the economy has grown considerably. But the economic gains end up almost exclusively in the hands of a tiny corporate and financial elite, which also controls the political agenda.
“Trumpism” and disingenuous populism represent the future of American politics, especially since the economic policies that the Trump administration will implement will surely further deteriorate the state of inequality in this country and thus do nothing to ameliorate anger and anxiety about the future, which were the driving forces that sent so many people into Donald Trump’s arms.
Note: This interview has been condensed and edited for concision. Reprinted with permission from Truthout.
It was a chilling moment when I woke up to a surreal New World in which Donald Trump had been elected President of the United States (POTUS) the night before.
Just like one of the disjointed scenes from the 1971 Monty Python movie “And Now for Something Completely Different”, the present absurd reality shocks us out of the previous absurd reality. The previous buffoon has been jettisoned and a new buffoon takes the stage.
Now we are confronted with a new POTUS that some on the left characterize as a right-wing, authoritarian populist. It is too early to tell whether he is a true fascist since he has never held public office before. There can be no question that many of the kooks and clowns he has appointed to his new administration are open fascists. However, “one swallow does not make a summer.” The world will soon find out if the US people have elected a true fascist to head their government.
Meanwhile, the vanquished social Democrats in the United States refuse to be excluded from the buffoonery. The buffoon-elect is no stranger to bad ideas and bad policy. He has a terrible history of vicious public attacks on people with disabilities, women, racial minorities, immigrants, i.e. you name it, and he has attacked it. He advocates dismantling government programs and replacing them with privatization schemes which only benefit the wealthy. He has put his foot in the middle of almost all important domestic economic issues.
Do the so-called “progressive” forces in the United States call out the new buffoon in the White House on these issues? When you listen to the mainstream media, do you hear about the new POTUS’ absurd stance on these issues?
No, all you hear about are the unfiltered delusions of the progressive left about the Russians hacking poor, innocent little Hillary and causing her Majesty to lose an election that was hers to lose. All you hear about is the Russian state propaganda machine which has poisoned the minds of innocent Americans and turned them into agents of Putin.
Never before has one man had such pervasive control over the minds of Americans. Putin has been turned into a modern day Rasputin, Hitler and Darth Vader all combined into an evil individual who threatens the very survival of the American way of life. Indeed, Putin and Trump are accused of threatening “American democracy.”
Trump, in spite of his repugnant racism, sexism, misogyny, xenophobia, etc., has resisted the demonization of the Russians and has argued against the social Democrats’ rush to war with the Russians. In this regard, Trump has assumed the role of the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike.
Trump seems to get it that war with Russia would be the end of capitalism, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in short order.
This position infuriates the most reactionary sector of the US bourgeoisie.
So, what do the social Democrats do? In an opportunistic orgy they attempt to savage Trump in an effort to please the most reactionary sector of the US bourgeoisie. By attacking Trump’s peaceful tendencies towards Russia, they prove without a doubt that the social Democrats in the United States view their alliance with the most reactionary sector of the US bourgeoisie to be more important than their alliance with the US working class.
A war with Russia would definitely benefit the US bourgeoisie but would be devastating and catastrophic for the US working class.
The US social Democrats continue unashamedly with their historical motto “Profits before People.”
No one knows whether they will be successful in pushing the new buffoon-elect into starting a new war.
They must believe that great treasure awaits them if they please their evil Masters.
Meanwhile, the US working class is stuck in a swamp full of alligators.
Will the US working class continue to cleave to the social Democrats? The next four years should tell the story.
Systems of governance that are seized by a tiny cabal become mafia states. The early years—Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton in the United States—are marked by promises that the pillage will benefit everyone. The later years—George W. Bush and Barack Obama—are marked by declarations that things are getting better even though they are getting worse. The final years—Donald Trump—see the lunatic trolls, hedge fund parasites, con artists, conspiracy theorists and criminals drop all pretense and carry out an orgy of looting and corruption.
The rich never have enough. The more they get, the more they want. It is a disease. CEOs demand and receive pay that is 200 times what their workers earn. And even when corporate executives commit massive fraud, such as the billing of hundreds of thousands of Wells Fargo customers for accounts they never opened, they elude punishment and personally profit. Disgraced CEO John Stumpf left Wells Fargo with a pay package that averages nearly $15 million a year. Richard Fuld received nearly half a billion dollars from 1993 to 2007, a time in which he was bankrupting Lehman Brothers.
The list of financial titans, including Trump, who have profited from a rigged financial system and fraud is endless. Many in the 1 percent make money by using lobbyists and bought politicians to write self-serving laws and rules and by forming unassailable monopolies. They push up prices on products or services these monopolies provide. Or they lend money to the 99 percent and charge exorbitant interest. Or they use their control of government and the courts to ship jobs to Mexico or China, where wages can be as low as 22 cents an hour, and leave American workers destitute. Neoliberalism is state-sponsored extortion. It is a vast, nationally orchestrated Ponzi scheme.
This fevered speculation and mounting inequality, made possible by the two ruling political parties, corroded and destroyed the mechanisms and institutions that permitted democratic participation and provided some protection for workers. Politicians, from Reagan on, were handsomely rewarded by their funders for delivering their credulous supporters to the corporate guillotine. The corporate coup created a mafia capitalism. This mafia capitalism, as economists such as Karl Polanyi and Joseph Stiglitz warned, gave birth to a mafia political system. Financial and political power in the hands of institutions such as Goldman Sachs and the Clinton Foundation becomes solely about personal gain. The Obamas in a few weeks will begin to give us a transparent lesson into how service to the corporate state translates into personal enrichment.
Adam Smith wrote that profits are often highest in nations on the verge of economic collapse. These profits are obtained, he wrote, by massively indebting the economy. A rentier class, composed of managers at hedge funds, banks, financial firms and other companies, makes money not by manufacturing products but from the control of economic rents. To increase profits, lenders, credit card companies and others charge higher and higher interest rates. Or they use their monopolies to gouge the public. The pharmaceutical company Mylan, in a classic example, raised the price of an epinephrine auto-injector used to treat allergy reactions from $57 in 2007 to about $500.
These profits are counted as economic growth. But this is a fiction, a sleight of hand, like unemployment statistics or the consumer price index, used to mask the speculative shell game.
“The head of Goldman Sachs came out and said that Goldman Sachs workers are the most productive in the world,†the economist Michael Hudson told me. “That’s why they’re paid what they are. The concept of productivity in America is income divided by labor. So if you’re Goldman Sachs and you pay yourself $20 million a year in salary and bonuses, you’re considered to have added $20 million to GDP, and that’s enormously productive.â€
“We’re talking with tautology,†said Hudson, the author of “Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy.†“We’re talking with circular reasoning here. So the issue is whether Goldman Sachs, Wall Street and predatory pharmaceutical firms actually add product or whether they’re just exploiting other people. That’s why I used the word ‘parasites’ in my book’s title. People think of a parasite as simply taking money, taking blood out of a host or taking money out of the economy. But in nature it’s much more complicated. The parasite can’t simply come in and take something. First of all, it needs to numb the host. It has an enzyme so that the host doesn’t realize the parasite’s there. And then the parasites have another enzyme that takes over the host’s brain. It makes the host imagine that the parasite is part of its own body, actually part of itself and hence to be protected. That’s basically what Wall Street has done. It depicts itself as part of the economy. Not as a wrapping around it, not as external to it, but actually the part that’s helping the body grow, and that actually is responsible for most of the growth. But in fact it’s the parasite that is taking over the growth.â€
“The result is an inversion of classical economics,†Hudson said. “It turns Adam Smith upside down. It says what the classical economists said was unproductive parasitism actually is the real economy. And that the parasites are labor and industry that get in the way of what the parasite wants, which is to reproduce itself, not help the host, that is, labor and capital.â€
The established elites dislike Trump because he is gauche, vulgar and boorish. He is not part of the refined group of mandarins trained to become plutocrats in Ivy League universities and business schools. He never mastered the cloying patina of refinement and carefully calibrated rhetoric of our courtier class.
Trump and his coterie of half-wits, criminals, racists and deviants play the role of the Snopes clan in William Faulkner’s novels “The Hamlet,†“The Town†and “The Mansion.†The Snopeses rose up out of the power vacuum of the decayed South and ruthlessly seized control from the degenerated aristocratic elites. Flem Snopes and his extended family—which includes a killer, a pedophile, a bigamist, an arsonist, a mentally disabled man who copulates with a cow, and a relative who sells tickets to witness the bestiality—are fictional representations of the scum we have elevated to the highest level of the federal government. They embody the ethos of modern capitalism Faulkner warned us against.
“The usual reference to ‘amorality,’ while accurate, is not sufficiently distinctive and by itself does not allow us to place them, as they should be placed, in a historical moment,†the critic Irving Howe wrote of the Snopeses. “Perhaps the most important thing to be said is that they are what comes afterwards: the creatures that emerge from the devastation, with the slime still upon their lips.â€
“Let a world collapse, in the South or Russia, and there appear figures of coarse ambition driving their way up from beneath the social bottom, men to whom moral claims are not so much absurd as incomprehensible, sons of bushwhackers or muzhiks drifting in from nowhere and taking over through the sheer outrageousness of their monolithic force,†Howe wrote. “They become presidents of local banks and chairmen of party regional committees, and later, a trifle slicked up, they muscle their way into Congress or the Politburo. Scavengers without inhibition, they need not believe in the crumbling official code of their society; they need only learn to mimic its sounds.â€
The Snopes-like mentality of our president-elect is portrayed in a documentary movie, “The Queen of Versailles,†about another sleazy developer. The film, by Lauren Greenfield, chronicles the tawdry and insatiable greed of David Siegel and his ditzy trophy wife, Jackie, who is three decades younger, and their quest to build one of the largest private residences in the United States, a 90,000-square-foot mansion modeled after Versailles. Siegel and his wife, who once dated Trump, are fervent Trump supporters. Siegel, like Trump, is a barely literate philistine. He, like the president-elect, sponsored beauty pageants, was accused of sexual assault, made his money through high-pressure sales tactics and had access to hundreds of millions in bank loans. And he, like Trump, uses bankruptcy or the threat of bankruptcy to protect his wealth. And like our next president he has a volatile and vicious temper.
“The great Roman historians Livy and Plutarch blamed the decline of the Roman Empire on the creditor class being predatory, and the latifundia,†Hudson said. “The creditors took all the money, and would just buy more and more land, displacing the other people. The result in Rome was a dark age, and that can last a very long time. The dark age is what happens when the rentiers take over.â€
“If you look back in the 1930s, Leon Trotsky said that fascism was the inability of the socialist parties to come forth with an alternative,†Hudson said. “If the socialist parties and media don’t come forth with an alternative to this neo-feudalism, you’re going to have a rollback to feudalism. But instead of the military taking over the land, as occurred with the Norman Conquest, you take over the land financially. Finance has become the new mode of warfare.â€
“You can achieve the takeover of land and the takeover of companies by corporate raids,†he said. “The Wall Street vocabulary is one of conquest and wiping out. You’re having a replay in the financial sphere of what feudalism was in the military sphere.â€
What comes next, history has shown, will not be pleasant. A cruel and morally bankrupt elite, backed by the organs of state security and law enforcement, will, as the Eupatridae did in sixth-century-B.C. Athens, bankrupt the citizenry through state-sponsored theft, war, austerity and debt peonage. They will reduce workers to the status of serfs or slaves. The most benign dissent will be criminalized and crushed. America’s Snopes-like elites have no external or internal constraints. They are barbarians. We will remove them from power or enter a new dark age.
Chris Hedges is a U.S. writer, author and RT.com host. His many books include ‘Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt’ (2015); ‘Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt’ (2012); and ‘The Death of the Liberal Class’ (2010). He is the host of the weekly program on RT.com, ‘On Contact’. The latest episode of ‘On Contact’ aired on December 4, 2016: Looking back at the 1971 Attica prison uprising and the ‘poisoning’ of the U.S. penal system, with guest Heather Ann Thompson, author of the newly published ‘Blood In The Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy’.
According to the Washington Post: Donald Trump has weighed in twice on the death of former Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
The president-elect offered up a four-word tweet shortly after 8 a.m. Saturday, saying simply: Fidel Castro is dead!
Trump followed that up a few hours later with a lengthier statement, in which he called Castro a ˜brutal dictator who oppressed his own people for nearly six decades” and said he hoped Castro’s death gave Cuban Americans “the hope of one day soon seeing a free Cuba.”
“Fidel Castro’s legacy is one of firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights,” the statement said.
“While Cuba remains a totalitarian island, it is my hope that today marks a move away from the horrors endured for too long, and toward a future in which the wonderful Cuban people finally live in the freedom they so richly deserve.”
Trump added: “Though the tragedies, deaths and pain caused by Fidel Castro cannot be erased, our administration will do all it can to ensure the Cuban people can finally begin their journey toward prosperity and liberty.”
Shortly thereafter, Vice President-elect Mike Pence chimed in on Twitter, saying: “The tyrant #Castro is dead. New hope dawns.”
The United States has a long history of disrespecting the sovereign nation of Cuba. One of the pivotal events leading up to the revolution occurred in Havana when a US soldier stationed there in support of the brutal dictator Batista urinated publicly on a statue. The rest is history.
Trump and Pence’s words are a recapitulation of the public urination years ago. No other leaders of major nations humiliated themselves and their country by such disrespectful words about the death of Fidel Castro.
Fidel Castro led his country in a revolutionary struggle against a truly brutal dictator, Batista. Castro led the struggle to make education and healthcare accessible to all people in Cuba. Castro led the struggle against US imperialism in Cuba. Castro led the struggle to provide housing for all in Cuba. Castro led the struggle against organized crime, drugs and prostitution in Cuba. These are but a few of the progressive changes Castro implemented for the benefit of the Cuban people.
It would be nice if the President-elect and vice president-elect of the United States would lead struggles for the goals achieved already in Cuba.
Trump and Pence’s reactionary insults only underline the insensitivity of their leadership style.
These insults come from a savage politician who has made fun of disabled people. We must remember that these insults come from a man who has disrespected women and publicly made fun of them by making reference to women bleeding. We must remember that these insults come from a man who has called women “fat pigs.” We must remember that these insults come from a man who has the full support of the KKK as well as neo-Nazis in the USA and Nazis in Greece. We must remember that these insults come from a man who has insulted and lied about the hard-working immigrants in this country. We must remember that these insults come from a world-class swindler who will soon become the leader of the USA.
Working people must unite and fight to resist this negative influence on the consciousness of people in the USA. The destiny of humanity depends on it.
