Canada’s military forced to admit growing number of far-right extremists in armed forces

Matthew Richter

The head of the Canadian Army, Lt-Gen. Wayne Eyre, has publicly conceded that support for far-right extremism is growing in the ranks of Canada’s military, declaring, “We have a problem with far-right activity across the army.”

This is a staggering about face. Canada’s military-intelligence and political establishments have for years downplayed the presence of supporters of the far-right in the Canadian Armed Forces. Those military personnel exposed as having far-right views and ties have invariably been labeled “rare,” and “bad apples.”

Internal intelligence documents, obtained by Global News through access to information requests, indicate a cavalier attitude towards the far right. In 2016, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), Canada’s primary national intelligence agency, claimed that “within the broader context of extremism in Canada, the number of right-wing extremists who promote or are willing to engage in politically-motivated violence is extremely small.” An internal report authored by Military Police Criminal Intelligence on the presence of far-right and neo-Nazi elements in the Canadian Armed Forces was similarly dismissive, claiming that “hate groups do not pose a significant threat.” The report said that between 2013 and 2018, 53 members of the armed forces were confirmed to have connections to far-right groups, including the Three Percent, the Soldiers of Odin, Hammerskin Nation, the Proud Boys, La Meute, and Atomwaffen Division.

Last week, Eyre announced he would soon issue a special order giving army units ”explicit direction” on how to respond to expressions of support for the far right and racism among military personnel. According to CBC, he also pledged to convene a meeting of some 450 mid-level Army commanders to discuss “far-right infiltration of the military.”

The military top brass’ change of tack is in response to a series of recent incidents and revelations that have proven impossible to ignore, notwithstanding the best efforts of the corporate media to trivialize them. The most high-profile of these was the attempted assassination of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by Army Ranger Corey Hurren, who was quickly revealed to be an advocate of far-right conspiracy theories.

On the morning of July 2, Hurren drove his pickup truck through the gates of Rideau Hall, the residence of the governor general, and the temporary residence of Trudeau. A 90 minute standoff between RCMP officers and the heavily-armed Hurren ensued, which ended when the latter was peacefully apprehended. A decorated Army Ranger who had received an army medal as recently as January 2020, Hurren was on duty when he carried out his attempted attack. Yet, as part of the media’s general indifference to the affair, no journalist has seen fit to inquire whether he conducted the assault in his army uniform.

Hurren faces 21 weapons charges and one count of threatening the prime minister. His bail hearing has been delayed several times since July. The hearing is currently set for October 16.

The attempts to gloss over Hurren’s political motivations were undermined by the contents of a letter that he had on his person when he was arrested. “With the firearms ban,” wrote Hurren, “and seeing more of our rights being taken away, on top of bankrupting the country, I could no longer sit back and watch this happen. I hope this is a wakeup call and a turning point.” Hurren accused the Trudeau Liberals of establishing a “Communist dictatorship.” This is a trope of far-right conspiracy theorists, including the likes of the fascistic Alex Jones of InfoWars, whose views Hurren had promoted as far back as the early 2000s on his personal webpage.

Social media posts by Hurren on Instagram and the public Facebook account of his small business, GrindHouse Fine, show that he was influenced by conspiracy theories linked to QAnon, a far-right group that advocates violence and mass arrests to protect President Trump from what they allege is a state-organized conspiracy against him. Social media posts also show his strong support for the military, including many shared posts from the 4th Canadian Ranger Patrol Group, of whose Swan River Patrol he had been elected second in command.

The Canadian Rangers are also in the spotlight because of other personnel with ties to the far right.

Two Rangers in the Valemont, B.C. Rangers Patrol Group, Erik Myggland and his ex-wife, Jodi Myggland, were under the scrutiny of military intelligence for at least four years due to their open support of far-right organizations. Erik Myggland has been pictured wearing patches of both the Three Percenters and the Soldiers of Odin. Remarkably, the two were allowed to continue serving in Canada’s military unhindered, with Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan stating he only learned about their cases when the CBC raised the issue in August after the broadcaster conducted its own investigation.

Founded in 2008, the Three Percenters are an outgrowth of the militia movement in the United States. Their ideology combines extreme anti-government hysteria with an almost religious devotion to gun rights. As with the militia movement of the 1990s, they make references to the “New World Order” conspiracy theory and believe that the world is controlled by a shadowy “globalist” or “socialist” clique, a sentiment that overlaps with the far-right contemporary QAnon movement and the ravings of Alex Jones.

The Soldiers of Odin were formed as part of the right-wing nationalist backlash against the refugee crisis sparked by the imperialist wars in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia. Founded in 2015 in Finland, the movement quickly spread across Europe and to North America. Their ideology is ultranationalist, anti-immigrant, and anti-refugee. The first Canadian chapter of the Soldiers of Odin was founded in 2016. As with the Three Percenters, the Soldiers of Odin have a strong survivalist mentality, coupled with an obsession with protecting national sovereignty. They have been known to conduct “patrols” in immigrant neighbourhoods with the intention of intimidating and harassing immigrants and minorities.

Earlier this month, Eyre announced publicly that Eirk Myggland would be removed from the Rangers “within weeks.” However, the army chief said that the military would not and could not take specific disciplinary measures against him, because he had engaged in his far-right activities during his own free time.

Myggland and Hurren were no doubt attracted to the Rangers by its promotion of bellicose nationalism. On the website of the 4th Canadian Ranger Patrol Group, of which both Myggland and Hurren were members, the unit boasts that one of its main tasks is “watching for illegal immigrants.”

The neo-Nazi terrorist organization “The Base” has also found support within the Canadian Armed Forces. The leader of the movement, Rinaldo Nazzaro, used to work as an FBI analyst and contractor for the Pentagon. The movement aims to recruit weapons specialists from western militaries. Corporal Patrik Mathews, a Canadian Armed Forces reserve combat engineer, went AWOL in August 2019 when an undercover investigative report uncovered his efforts to recruit members of his unit, the 38 Canadian Brigade Group in Winnipeg, to the Base. He fled to the United States, where he was arrested with two other Base members for planning a terrorist attack in Richmond, Virginia, in January.

The FBI discovered videos at Mathews’ apartment in Delaware, in which he discussed his plans: “Derail some f—ing trains, kill some people and poison some water supplies … If you want the white race to survive, you’re going to have to do your f—ing part.”

This information has been largely ignored by the corporate media and political establishment. The same media outlets that for decades have screamed about the threat of Islamist terrorism, and cited it to justify foreign wars and a massive expansion of the powers and reach of Canada’s intelligence agencies, have treated the attempted assassination of Canada’s head of government as a non-event. Only a handful of articles, mainly in the CBC and the Winnipeg Free Press and based on their own investigative reporting, have drawn attention to the growing presence of far-right forces within Canada’s military.

The reasons for this are clear. The exposure of far-right elements within the military cuts across the ruling elite’s efforts to cast the armed forces as a defender of “democracy” and protector of “human rights” abroad. These have been the key justifications used to sell decades of Canadian military aggression around the world in close alliance with US imperialism, from the bombardment of Yugoslavia to the ongoing war in Syria. Additionally, the Trudeau government, backed by the entire political establishment, is in the process of vastly increasing military spending, so as to ensure Canadian imperialism has the “hard power,” to use the words of Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, to be a protagonist in the new era of global strategic competition among the great powers.

Current plans call for Canada’s defence spending to be hiked by more than 70 percent by 2026 over 2017 levels. But Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan recently indicated that military spending could be raised still higher so as to speed up delivery of new weapons and weapons systems.

UK: Labour schools spokesperson confirms bi-partisan “malign neglect” policy on COVID-19

Julie Hyland

Remarks by Labour Party education spokesperson Kate Green and the panicked response of her frontbench colleagues have underscored the policy of “malign neglect” shared by Tory and Labour alike on COVID-19.

Speaking to an online session of the Labour Party conference, Green said, “I think there’s obviously a real immediate pressure to address these funding needs for the crisis. But I think we should use the opportunity, don’t let a good crisis go to waste.

“We can really see now what happens when you under-resource schools, when you under-resource families and communities. And I think that particularly for those of us in Labour, let’s be talking now about what this has really exposed, about the way in which we’ve undervalued our whole education system.”

Her reference to not “letting a good crisis go to waste” was seized on by Rupert Murdoch’s Sun and the right-wing Guido Fawkes to issue outraged denunciations of the Labour Party for seeking to use the pandemic for political advantage, when the iron rule must be national unity and no criticism of the Johnson government. The outrage is, of course, bogus. The ruling elite has and is using the pandemic, which is on track to claim the lives of 1 million people worldwide, to its advantage by passing a multibillion-pound subvention to big business, banks and hedge funds, while driving workers into unsafe workplaces, schools and universities.

Nevertheless, senior Labourites stepped in to offer their apologies, with Shadow Foreign Secretary Lisa Nandy telling ITV’s Good Morning on Tuesday that Green was “making the point that we’ve got to now make sure this Covid crisis doesn’t worsen [the social] divide and doesn’t write some children off. It was absolutely the wrong way to express that and Kate knows that. She feels very passionately about this. I’m sure she will apologise if she hasn’t already. Let me apologise for the way that that’s come across as well.”

Green’s address to Labour’s online congress, aside from the platitudes quoted, in fact made no substantive criticism of Johnson’s murderous “back to work/reopen schools” policies. She spoke as the number of COVID cases continued to rise to more than 41,000 officially, driven particularly by the reopening of schools from September 1. Infections have risen precipitously ever since, especially among the young, and 1,776 schools have reported cases.

Yet Labour’s education spokesperson had virtually nothing to say on this trail of death and destruction. Outlining the party’s “vision” as to how to “develop and re-energise the role of schools, colleges and universities as hubs of their community,” Green treated the pandemic as a non-event.

Far from breaking Labour’s de facto pact with the Tories, Green’s contempt and indifference for the impact of COVID-19 on working people and their families goes to its heart.

Since assuming Labour leadership on April 4, Sir Keir Starmer has been the most vociferous proponent of “reopening the economy,” especially schools. He has consistently stressed that “under my leadership we will engage constructively with the government, not opposition for opposition’s sake. Not scoring party political points or making impossible demands. ...”

Just weeks into a national lockdown, Starmer demanded a government exit-strategy.

In an April 14 letter to then-acting Prime Minister Dominic Raab, Starmer said this should be published “now or in the coming week” and should outline “the sectors of the economy and the core public services (e.g., schools) that will most likely see restrictions eased. ...”

That day, the official daily death toll in the UK reached 744 and continued to climb. On May 5, UK fatalities became the highest in Europe and the second highest in the world.

Nonetheless, on May 10, Johnson announced schools would reopen on June 1 as central to forcing workers back into the workplace. Behind the scenes, the government and Labour were conspiring to this end.

On May 18, Starmer wrote a “confidential” letter to Johnson in which he asked “if I could help build a consensus for getting children back into our schools. I did it confidentially and privately, because I did not want to make a lot of it.”

Starmer’s letter was copied to Education Secretary Gavin Williamson, offering the services of Labour and the teaching unions as central to the efficient reopening of schools. He only disclosed the letter when his offer was not taken up.

The June 1 re-opening failed in the face of mass public opposition and was pushed back to September. This led to a doubling down by Labour in its demand for a full reopening.

On August 15, as it was clear the government had no intention of delivering on its pledge for mass testing, Starmer nonetheless insisted it was a “moral duty to reopen schools. Let me send a clear message to the Prime Minister: I don’t just want all children back at school next month, I expect them back at school. No ifs, no buts, no equivocation.”

This joint offensive, backed by the teaching unions, is what enabled schools, and now universities and colleges, to reopen with disastrous consequences. And still Labour repeats its mantra that another national lockdown must be avoided at all costs.

Its concern is not the health or livelihoods of working people and their children. It is recouping the billions of pounds in bailouts handed over to the corporations, banks and hedge funds made at the start of the pandemic through driving up the exploitation of the working class.

Grotesquely, Starmer is now urging the government to put children “at the front of the queue” for testing, while demanding schools remain open. Tests are now rationed to those with acute clinical needs, followed by care home, NHS staff and teachers in that order.

Last week, the Office for National Statistics revealed “clear evidence” that COVID-19 cases were rising amongst the young. The strongest surge in the infection rate is amongst 2- to 11-year-olds, which this month is already seven times higher than in July, albeit from a lower base rate. The infection rate is climbing across all age groups, with cases doubling every week.

The mendacity of Johnson and Starmer was on show in their staged battle during Prime Minister’s Question Time on Wednesday. Responding to Johnson’s ludicrous claim that “testing and tracing has very little or nothing to do” with the spread of COVID and that children were “low risk,” Starmer said, “ the point...isn’t whether the children have got COVID, it’s that they’ve got COVID symptoms and then they’re off school. ... The government’s own department shows that one in eight children are off school this week. That disrupts their education. Whether it’s COVID symptoms or other symptoms is nothing to the point.” [emphasis added]

The Labour leader’s dismissal as to whether children have COVID-19 was made as it was reported that a 52-year-old father in Blackburn had died from the virus, after his child had been told to isolate at home due to a school outbreak. Blackburn, Lancashire, had been placed under tighter restrictions as it is amongst the 10 worst-affected areas in England by COVID-19, but schools and workplaces remain open.

Homelessness to soar as UK eviction ban ends

Julia Callaghan

A massive wave of homelessness is set to hit the UK, with Monday’s lifting of the eviction ban for private renters in England and Wales.

With the jobs furlough scheme coming to an end from November, the removal of these protections by the Conservative government, as both unemployment and coronavirus cases soar, will be catastrophic.

The ban on evictions was introduced in March and has been extended twice. But on Monday the government gave the green light for those suffering the worst financial effects of the pandemic to be forced out of their homes.

Under the terms of the last extension, anyone served with an eviction notice since August 29 has been given a six-month notice period. Yet, up to 55,000 households served notices between March and August are not afforded this protection and their tenancies are immediately threatened, according to campaign group Generation Rent.

There are 4.5 million private rented households in the UK, supplied by an estimated 2.2 million landlords. Debt charity StepChange reports that 590,000 tenants have fallen into rent arrears since the lockdown, with an average of £1,076 debt per household. This leaves more than half a million people in danger of homelessness.

The eviction notice period has been extended from three to six months, except in cases of anti-social behaviour, and there will be a so-called “Christmas truce,” meaning no evictions over a few days at Christmas. This all means that the nearly 200,000 people who have already been served notices can still face homelessness from this week, including through Section 21 “no-fault” evictions. Housing charity Shelter reports more than 170,000 tenants have already been threatened with eviction by their landlord or letting agent.

Even as the government was cynically extending the ban on evictions, in the face of growing anger, it was putting into place the legal infrastructure to ensure that they can go ahead in the period ahead. Eviction hearings will now resume in courts in England and Wales to deal with the backlog of legal proceedings that have built up during the coronavirus outbreak. To get the ball rolling, courts are firstly dealing with eviction cases involving domestic violence or anti-social behaviour and ones where the rent has not been paid for more than a year. A Generation Rent briefing noted that 200 judges have been given special training to deal with housing cases as courts prepare to get through the backlog.

The most at risk of eviction are the young and lowest-paid workers. According to the Office for National Statistics, more 16- to 24-year-olds are losing their jobs than any other age group, with the number in employment falling by 156,000 in the three months to July. This represents the steepest drop since the midst of the last recession—and the true situation is worse than this as the data only records up to July.

The horrifying effects are already visible, as homelessness among young people is rising sharply. Sussex and Surrey charity YMCA Downslink Group says it has seen a 61 percent rise in youth homelessness since the start of the coronavirus crisis, as well as an exponential increase in mental health emergencies among this vulnerable group.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation points to the fragile circumstances of the lowest paid, and the huge difference in income security between these workers and the rest of society. While only 1 percent of those earning over £41,000 are at risk of redundancy, 40 percent of workers on minimum wage face a high or very high risk. As the average low-income family in the UK has just £95 in savings, even a temporary loss of income can have immediate and catastrophic effects.

The lifting of the eviction ban and a huge wave of homelessness, just as COVID-19 cases are resurging, will accelerate the spread of the virus. The British Medical Association (BMA) has warned that “people who are homeless are three times more likely to be chronically ill with lung and breathing problems—a serious risk factor in the development of the virus.” It notes the comments of Professor Dame Parveen Kumar, BMA board of science chair, who said with the ending of the eviction ban, “we could see large outbreaks of COVID-19 among the homeless population, not only putting this community at risk, but also the wider population.”

For the government and the landlord lobby, this is a risk worth taking. Some landlords are even venturing that their own predicament has been worse than that of their tenants during the pandemic! Elisabeth Kohlbach, chief executive of property investment firm Skwire, said, “While tenants themselves have been able to rely on pandemic assistance, such as furlough pay, landlords have, throughout the pandemic, had no government support.” She insisted that, despite now having the power, landlords “have been and remain unlikely” to evict anyone financially impacted by COVID-19.

Food insecurity among the poorest is another aspect of the escalating social crisis. The UK’s largest food bank network, the Trussell Trust, has said it expects extreme poverty to double in the three months to Christmas, with at least 670,000 additional people becoming destitute. It expects a 61 percent increase in food parcels needed across its UK network in October to December, equating to 6.5 handed out every minute, or a total of 846,000 parcels.

This staggering demand will dwarf even the unprecedented level of need for emergency food seen in April and June, when 100,000 people used food banks for the first time. Trussell Trust Chief Executive Emma Revie warned that, unless action is taken, there will be a significant “reshaping of the landscape of poverty, destitution and food insecurity in this country.”

Families with children have been the worst hit by food shortage, which brings profound stress and deprives children of the nutrition they need to grow, develop, and participate actively in school and society. Data from the Food Foundation reveals that 14 percent of families with children have experienced moderate or severe food insecurity in the past six months, with 12 percent of the adults in these families reporting skipping meals because they could not afford or access food. Four percent said they had gone a whole day without eating.

Like the pandemic, this destitution crisis is global. Unemployment is expected to triple in Poland this year, and quadruple in the Czech Republic. In the US, 14 million people are now unemployed, and in the Philippines, joblessness reached a record 45.5 percent in July. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees says 75 percent of Syrian refugees in the region are now in “extreme poverty,” up from 55 percent before the pandemic. According to UNICEF and Save the Children, the coronavirus crisis has plunged 150 million more of the world’s children into poverty.

The ongoing suffering of hundreds of millions of people in the UK and internationally during the lockdown is the opposite of the experience of the ruling elite, who have vastly increased their wealth. Since the lockdown, UK billionaires have seen their fortunes soar by 20 percent, or £25 billion.

The Labour Party and Liberal Democrats’ parliamentary opposition have done nothing to oppose the attacks on private renters, beyond making occasional mealy-mouthed calls to “extend the ban.”

Yesterday, after the horse has already bolted, Lib Dem peer Baroness Olly Grender put a motion forward in the House of Lords, using the archaic “Prayer to Annul” mechanism, to try could force a vote on the government’s pandemic regulations, including evictions. On Labour’s behalf, justice spokesperson Lord Ponsonby of Shulbredeh put down a “Regret Motion” against the changes.

Senate confirmation hearing for Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf reveals bipartisan support

Jacob Crosse

After ignoring a subpoena to appear before a congressional committee last week, Acting US Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf appeared before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Wednesday morning to answer questions as part of the confirmation process. The Senate panel is expected to vote September 30 to recommend that Wolf be made the permanent head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), paving the way for his approval by the full Senate.

The less than two-hour long hearing was notable more for what was not said than what was said. Not a single Democratic senator voiced opposition to Wolf’s confirmation, despite near-daily revelations of unconstitutional and illegal arrests, as well as physical, sexual and mental abuses committed by DHS agents against immigrants and asylum seekers, including children, in detention facilities throughout the country.

President Donald J. Trump listens as Chad F. Wolf delivers remarks in the Press Briefing Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Wolf has been serving as acting head of the DHS since November 2019. The Senate had previously approved him for the position of DHS undersecretary for strategy, before President Trump elevated him to fill the vacancy at the head of the department created by the removal of Kevin McAleenan.

DHS, with an annual budget of over $50 billion, is the third largest cabinet department in the US government. Over 240,000 personnel are spread across 22 departments and agencies, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CPB) and the US Marshals Service.

As acting head of the massive apparatus for repression, Wolf personally oversaw the deployment of federal police and paramilitary forces into Portland, Oregon this summer—over the public opposition of the elected leadership of the city and the state—to crack down on daily protests against police violence that began in the aftermath of the Memorial Day slaying of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.

In the course of the occupation of downtown Portland by the federal police forces, DHS agents carried out kidnappings of protesters, who were bundled into unmarked vehicles and secreted to locations where they were held without charges and interrogated for hours on end before being released. In previous congressional testimony, Wolf called this police state practice “a common de-escalation tactic.”

Nor did anyone on the committee raise the September 4 assassination of Portland protester Michael Reinoehl by a taskforce led by US Marshals. At the urging of Donald Trump, the specially assembled task force assassinated the unarmed Reinoehl, who had previously confided to reporters in an interview that he was being “hunted” by far-right forces and the police.

Eyewitness testimony attested that Reinoehl was fired on by agents after being confronted as he was walking to his car. His death came hours after an arrest warrant had been issued pertaining to his role in the killing of far-right Patriot Prayer member Aaron “Jay” Danielson during an armed pro-Trump rally on August 29.

Wolf has overseen the imprisonment of thousands of immigrants, including children, in deadly ICE detention facilities. In addition to appalling reports of forced sterilizations, at least seven people have died in ICE detention centers this year from COVID-19. The latest victim was 61-year-old Cipriano Chavez-Alvarez, who died on Monday. Eunice Cho, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, said the death of Chavez-Alvarez was “entirely preventable and foreseeable.”

The senators on the committee spent a majority of their allotted time thanking Wolf for “his service to the country,” with several urging their colleagues to move forward with the nomination process as soon as possible. This the Republican chairman, Senator Ron Johnson (Wisconsin), pledged to do.

Johnson set the tone for the proceedings, expressing appreciation for Wolf and the “enormous challenges” his department has faced, including dealing with “protests which have turned into riots.” Johnson’s false characterization of the overwhelmingly peaceful protests went unchallenged by any of the senators.

After Johnson ended his gushing praise of Wolf and the Trump administration, the ranking Democrat on the committee, Senator Gary Peters (Michigan), questioned Wolf on the whistle-blower complaint filed by Brian Murphy, former head of intelligence analysis at the DHS. Murphy has alleged that Wolf withheld intelligence reports that reflected negatively on the Trump administration, including that Russia was interfering in the elections to denigrate Joe Biden, and that the DHS was downplaying the threat of white supremacists and “white nationalist domestic terrorism,” while exaggerating the role of alleged terrorists infiltrating through the southern border.

Peters presented a chart titled “Domestic Extremist Related Murders in the US,” covering January 2010 through August 2020. The chart presented data from the Anti-Defamation League showing that 345 murders, or 77 percent of all “extremist related murders” that have occurred over the past decade, were attributed to “white supremacist, anti-Semitic, anti-government and related ideologies.” This was followed by “domestic Islamist extremism,” which accounted for 86 murders, followed by “anarchists, environment, animal rights, black nationalist and related ideologies,” which accounted for only 16 murders, or less than two a year.

Wolf acknowledged that from “a lethality standpoint,” the most “persistent and lethal threat is white supremacist domestic terrorism.” But he quickly added, “It’s important that when we talk about domestic violent extremists, especially in the last four months, that we include the anti-government, anarchist, anti-law enforcement folks.”

Peters readily agreed with Wolf’s assessment and then transitioned to Murphy’s allegations as they pertain to supposed election interference by the Russian government against Joe Biden, seeking to revive the Democrats’ discredited anti-Russia witch hunt.

India’s health minister downplays raging pandemic to conceal ruling elite’s criminal “herd immunity” policy

Saman Gunadasa

While India’s coronavirus cases are increasing at an alarming rate, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government’s health minister, Harsh Vardhan, has downplayed the threat posed by the pandemic’s relentless spread. Vardhan’s remarks were aimed at justifying the government’s reopening of the economy, which has also been supported by the state governments led by the opposition parties and has needlessly exposed millions of workers and rural toilers to the virus.

Even according to the highly under-reported official figures, India’s total number of COVID-19 infections has passed 5.6 million, while more than 90,000 deaths have been registered. India is second only to the United States in terms of the number of coronavirus cases. However, due to the high level of transmission, with new cases routinely exceeding 90,000 per day, India is expected to surpass the US sooner rather than later.

In an hour-long appearance on social media Sunday, health minister Vardhan made the truly absurd claim that community transmission of the virus is not yet occurring in India. “Only 10 states are contributing 77 percent of active cases,” argued Vadhan. “If you see state-specific data, you will find that these cases are concentrated in few districts.”

Addressing India’s parliament on the first day of its Monsoon session, on Sept. 14, Vardhan similarly tried to cavalierly downplay the pandemic’s impact. He claimed that 92 percent of cases are reported to be a “mild disease,” and contended India’s response to the pandemic is among the best in the world. “India,” he said, “has been able to limit its cases and deaths to 3,328 cases per million and 55 deaths per million population respectively, which is one of the lowest in the world as compared to similarly affected countries.”

Vardhan’s effort to cherry pick statistics that compare relatively well to other countries thanks only to India’s large population of 1.3 billion people cannot disguise the fact that all states and Union territories have recorded increasing infections, and that the pandemic and its economic fallout have produced a social catastrophe.

On Saturday, the Delhi government’s health minister, Satyendar Jain, from the Aam Aadmi Party, admitted the vast increase in infections, adding, “We should have accepted there is community spread.”

In a further exposure of the bogus character of Vardhan’s denial that community spread is taking place, 30 MPs and 50 members of staff tested positive for the virus prior to the commencement of the new parliamentary session.

Even based on the severely under-counted official death toll of more than 90,000, India is currently third globally in terms of coronavirus deaths, behind only the United States and Brazil. Indian authorities are notorious for failing to provide the cause of death in the majority of cases even under non-pandemic conditions, making it all but certain that the actual death toll is far higher.

Compared to the other countries of South Asia, India’s recorded deaths per million population is much higher. As of September 21, according to Worldometer, deaths per million cases in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh were respectively 64, 29, and 30.

Various scientific studies have shown that India’s official tally of coronavirus cases grossly understates the pandemic’s prevalence. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) published a sero-survey, which measures the percentage of the population with coronavirus antibodies, on September 10. Conducted in 700 villages/wards from 70 districts across 21 states, the study found that in early May, India potentially had 6.4 million COVID-19 infections. This indicated an overall infection to case ratio (ICR), i.e., the ratio of undetected infections to confirmed cases, of between 82 and 130 to 1. Extrapolating from this finding, the survey concluded half of the Indian population could now have been infected with the virus.

These findings indicate the perilous situation produced by the BJP government’s homicidal policy of “herd immunity,” under which the virus is allowed to spread unchecked through the population. Such a policy invariably means accepting large-scale death, especially among the elderly and immune-compromised populations. One of the government’s top epidemiological advisers, himself an advocate of herd immunity, admitted in the early stages of the pandemic that the pursuit of such a criminal policy could result in the deaths of 2 million Indians.

Mass death on such a horrific scale is justified by the proponents of “herd immunity” with the need to protect the “economy” and corporate profits. As Vardhan told parliament, “We are in the stage of unlock to revive the economy.”

With the economy now largely reopened, the government has placed all responsibility for containing the virus onto working people. Prime Minister Modi’s advice for citizens to “follow all precautions including masks and social distancing” shows the utter contempt of the ruling class for the vast majority of the population, large sections of which live in slums or rural areas with no chance to follow basic hygiene measures or socially distance.

The BJP government sanctioned the reopening of workplaces and factories as early as late April. Despite the subsequent surge in infections, no restrictions have been put in place on big business’ profit-making operations. Moreover, public transport services throughout India such as buses, trains, metros (subways), and smaller vans cannot comply with public health precautions as they are crammed to capacity with people trying to get to work.

While no expense has been spared on supporting major companies and funding the Indian military, which recently held a ceremony to accept the first batch of a fleet of Rafale fighter jets worth some $7.8 billion, the chronically under-funded public health care system is in crisis. Several states have reported severe shortages of oxygen and intensive care beds. Indian media outlets reported last week that four COVID-19 patients died in Madhya Pradesh due to oxygen shortages. Similar shortages have been reported by Maharashtra and Punjab. In Bengalaru (Bangalore), the main city in Karnataka, which recorded close to 10,000 new cases on Sunday, there is an acute shortage of ICU beds with ventilators.

Responding to a public outcry over the oxygen shortages, Health Ministry Secretary Rajesh Bhushan claimed that there is “no shortage” of medical oxygen and that the problem is with organizing the replenishing of supplies. However, figures from the All India Industrial Gases Manufacturers Association contradict this assertion, since they indicate that oxygen usage by hospitals has grown exponentially as the number of patients has risen. Compared to an average daily consumption of 750 tonnes by hospitals and care centers in April, this month’s daily consumption has shot up to 2,700 tonnes.

The Modi government and Indian ruling class’ herd immunity policy is the spearhead of their drive to intensify the exploitation of the working class and rural toilers.

Facing a catastrophic 23.9 percent drop in GDP in the April-June quarter and predictions of a year-long contraction of at least 5 percent, Modi has promised to implement a “quantum jump” of pro-investor reforms. The government has already announced a wave of privatizations, and in the face of mounting farmer protests, last week rammed through parliament two laws that will facilitate the rapid expansion of agri-business. The government is also intent on passing three labor laws in the coming days that will further expand contract labour, gut restrictions on layoffs in the “formal” or large-scale enterprise sector, weaken India’s already notoriously lax occupational health and safety regulations, and outlaw many worker job actions.

This class war assault on the working class, goes hand-in-hand with the government’s aggressive drive to expand India’s reactionary, anti-China military-strategic partnership with US imperialism. With active encouragement from Washington and the support of the opposition Congress Party, the Modi government has taken a provocative, bellicose stand in the current border crisis with China; while working with the US, and its principal Asia-Pacific allies, Japan and Australia, to bully and entice western-based firms to develop India into an alternative manufacturing production-chain hub to China.

Fearing the growing opposition of workers and rural toilers to its right-wing policies and ruinous response to the pandemic, the BJP government is also exploiting the tensions with China to whip up national chauvinism, and it continues to shamelessly promote anti-Muslim Hindu communalism with the aim of dividing the working class.

In this situation, the Indian Stalinists are playing a treacherous role. They are redoubling their efforts to shackle the working class to the BJP’s ruling class opponents—the big business Congress Party, which has long spearheaded the capitalist elite’s neo-liberal agenda and pursuit of a “global strategic partnership” with US imperialism, and various regional-chauvinist and caste-based bourgeois parties.

The main Stalinist party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM, is in the process of formalizing an electoral alliance with the Congress in West Bengal, India’s fourth largest state. Earlier this month, the CPM publicly welcomed Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi’s choice of president of the party’s state unit, declaring him the right person to lead the “Congress-CPM alliance.”

Police repression continues during national strike in Colombia

Andrea Lobo

A national strike and major marches took place on Monday in Colombia to protest recent police killings, a massacre of protesters on September 9 and the broader government response to the social crisis deepened by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite its peaceful character, anti-riot police broke up the mass demonstration in the capital of Bogotá, confirming the continued drive of the Ivan Duque administration and the entire Colombian ruling class toward dictatorship.

Demonstrators gather at Plaza Bolívar, September 21, Bogotá (Credit: @InstitucionalTV)

This follows the bloody clampdown on September 9 against mass protests in Bogotá that erupted after the police tortured and killed worker Javier Ordóñez the previous night. The National Police used gunfire in a systematic fashion, killing 14—eight young workers in the service sector, two young engineers, one university student, and three whose backgrounds were unclear—and leaving 72 people wounded by bullets.

On Monday, people in cars, bicycles and on foot formed caravans across the cities of Bogotá, Medellín, Barranquilla, Cartagena, Bucaramanga and Cali, and significant demonstrations took place in smaller cities from the coastal Tumaco to Magangué, up the southern Andes range in Villavicencio and to Arauca next to the Venezuelan border. Socially heterogenous marches grew into the thousands in Medellín and Bogotá.

In the afternoon, the police reported significant gatherings in 107 municipalities (out of 1,103) and said repeatedly that they were “all peaceful.” They were also largely following health protocols to minimize infections. Nonetheless, the mayor of Bogotá, Claudia López of the Green Alliance, nervously called on people to be home by 7 p.m.

Before 5:00 p.m., however, as a mass gathering in Bogota’s Plaza Bolívar kept growing, López pointed to one isolated and suspect incident of looting, in a heavily patrolled area, to order the Mobile Anti-Riot Squadron (ESMAD) to disperse all demonstrators, media and human rights observers alike. The ESMAD moved in violently with armored vehicles, tear gas, stun grenades, batons and rubber bullets.

Dozens were immediately snatched into police vehicles, while others were chased and beaten up. Tear gas canisters and stun grenades were shot directly at protesters, leaving some with severe injuries. Mayor López then tweeted a video showing a line of riot police surrounding the emptied Plaza Bolívar, adding, “There are no injuries and calm has been reestablished.”

The repression happened as a new cellphone video began circulating online, showing Javier Ordoñez, in agony and handcuffed on the floor of a police station, as cops watched amused. The video refutes the official police version claiming that Ordoñez “harmed himself” at the station.

Monday’s demonstrations are only the tip of the iceberg. Millions of outraged workers are eager to fight against the murderous Duque regime and see the police repression as a defense of intolerable levels of poverty, unemployment and inequality.

On Monday, demonstrators called for an “end to police abuse,” “jobs and income,” “no privatizations,” and “an end to handing over our country’s resources.”

With a seven-day average of 7,000 new daily cases, Colombia has the fifth-highest number of cases in the world, with more than 770,435 cases and nearly 25,000 deaths. Fatalities have been concentrated among the poorest layers, which have been forced to risk exposure to earn a living, while official efforts to contain the pandemic have been abandoned.

The National Strike Committee, composed of the three main trade-union centrals, focused its demands on “a restructuring of the National Police and resignation of the Defense Minister.” It also called for the cancelling of decree 1174—which they claim promotes part-time employment—and suspending a $370 million loan to the bankrupt airline Avianca.

The real reason behind convoking the strike was summarized by former presidential candidate Gustavo Petro, who tweeted as early as September 10: “I have asked you the union centrals to call a strike, but you might not do it. The people will [strike] regardless.” In other words, with only 4.6 percent of workers affiliated to trade unions, these apparatuses serve merely as fronts for the bourgeois political establishment to intervene in times of social unrest in order to contain it.

Petro, Mayor López and the entire establishment “opposition” to Duque have also centered their calls on resignations in the Defense Ministry and the “reform” of the National Police.

These trade unions and parties, thousands of whose members and leaders have been murdered by the Colombian security forces, understand more than anyone the futility of calling for a superficial overhaul of the police.

In fact, their demands expose their staunch defense of Colombian capitalism and imperialism, whose existential crisis has been deepened by the pandemic, and are aimed at duping workers and youth with illusions in the prospects of democratic and social reforms within bourgeois politics, while preparations are made for a further crackdown.

The Duque administration and the corporate media are already working to criminalize all forms of protest. In a manner similar to the New York Times in the United States, Noticias RCN published on September 10 a fabricated report from the Colombian intelligence agencies claiming that the protests were being “coordinated” by the guerrillas on social media.

The following day, Semana doubled down with a video on “the hidden causes of the protests,” claiming that social media was inciting “unjustified violent protests” led by “criminals and organized anarchists.” The video then calls for building up the Bogotá police.

RCN is owned by Carlos Ardila Lulle (net worth $1.5 billion), a business partner of Rupert Murdoch. Semana is owned by banker Jaime Gilinski Bacal (net worth $3.5 billion), who became the main benefactor of the privatization of Banco de Colombia, by raising money from international investors to buy it.

Washington, for its part, endorsed the massacring of protesters in Colombia. As it continued to shed crocodile tears over “democracy” in Venezuela, the US State Department and Pentagon made no statement to condemn the repression in Colombia and seamlessly continued joint activities with the Colombian National Police.

The US Embassy tweeted on September 12: “Colombia counts with the US in tough times. Allies and Friends.” This was followed by joint war games and a visit by State Secretary Michael Pompeo in Bogotá, aimed at threatening the Venezuelan government.

The day of the massacre, the US International Development Finance Corporation granted the Colombian bank Davivienda $250 million to weather the crisis. The bank is owned by Grupo Bolívar, a major financial backer of Duque.

This attitude is not limited to the Trump administration and the Republicans. According to a cable published by WikiLeaks, the Colombian Army inspector general told the US ambassador in February 2009 that the military’s “extrajudicial execution problem was widespread” and stemmed from “the insistence by some military commanders on body counts as a measure of success…coupled with some commanders’ ties to criminals and narcotraffickers.” The Democratic Obama administration in power at the time continued to pour in billions in military aid.

As Washington ratchets up its confrontations against its geopolitical rivals—chiefly Russia and China—and faces growing social unrest at home, the vassal state in Colombia constitutes a military and economic stronghold for US imperialism to secure its domination over Latin America. The Colombian Police, specifically, has been built up by US imperialism as a quasi-military force to wage counter-insurrectionary operations against guerrillas and working-class opposition, while it carries out even more US-sponsored trainings of regional special forces than the Colombian military itself.

The fight against police abuse and authoritarianism constitutes a struggle against the entire Colombian oligarchy, its imperialist patrons and their hirelings in the trade unions and political parties. This includes those forces that, throughout the post-World War II period, portrayed themselves as socialist and even revolutionary only to channel opposition behind claims that one or another faction of the national bourgeoisie was more “democratic,” chiefly the Stalinist Communist Party of Colombia (PCC) and the Socialist Workers Party (PST). The latter was founded by the anti-Trotskyist revisionist Nahuel Moreno.

Both have joined the bandwagon of calls for police “restructuring” and resignations, with the PST arguing in defense of “good police and soldiers that refuse to repress their class brothers.”

The NGO Temblores has documented 664 police killings since 2017, while many more have been killed by the military.

Colombia’s 330,000 troops and 167,000 police—which compare to 321,000 formal teachers—constitute the core of the capitalist state, conceived of by Marxists as “special bodies of armed men” committed to enforcing class rule.

Drawing from this conception, Russian Revolutionary Vladimir Lenin wrote in State and Revolution that “it follows that the ‘special coercive force’ for the suppression of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie, of millions of working people by handfuls of the rich” must be abolished in revolution and replaced by a workers’ state that “takes possession of the means of production in the name of society.”

The only political organization fighting for this program, rooted in a long history of struggle against all forms of Stalinism, bourgeois nationalism and the pseudo-left internationally, is the International Committee of the Fourth International, the World Party of Socialist Revolution. The only revolutionary road forward is to build a section of the ICFI in Colombia and every country.

Protests erupt over whitewash of police murder of Breonna Taylor in Kentucky

Niles Niemuth

Protests erupted in Louisville, Kentucky on Wednesday following the announcement that a grand jury impaneled by the state attorney general, Daniel Cameron, had decided not to bring criminal charges against police officers for shooting and killing Breonna Taylor, a twenty-six-year-old African American emergency medical technician. Taylor was felled by multiple bullets during a police raid on her home in the early morning hours of March 13.

Anger over Taylor’s killing—along with the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25—has fueled months of multi-racial protests across the US and internationally demanding an end to police violence and racism.

People gather in Jefferson Square awaiting word on charges against police officers, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)

Hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets of Louisville as soon as Cameron, who served as a special prosecutor in the case, announced the grand jury’s decision at an afternoon press conference. Soon after, phalanxes of riot police waded into the crowd of peaceful protesters, swinging clubs and carrying out multiple arrests.

Already on Monday, Democratic Governor Andy Beshear had declared a state of emergency in Louisville and ordered a lockdown of the downtown business area, enforced with the aid of concrete barricades set up by the police. By Wednesday, Beshear had activated the Kentucky National Guard and Louisville Mayor Greg Fisher, also a Democrat, had imposed a 72-hour curfew from 9 pm to 6:30 am, beginning Wednesday night.

In the weeks following the murder of George Floyd, hundreds of thousands marched and demonstrated in a wave of protests that spread to small towns as well as big cities. Louisville has remained a center of anti-police violence protests.

Thousands have been arrested in violent crackdowns by police, who have assaulted and detained journalists and fired countless rounds of tear gas, pepper balls and rubber bullets. Two protestors were killed by a right-wing militia member in Kenosha, Wisconsin last month during protests over the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

President Donald Trump has hailed the police violence against demonstrators and incited violent attacks on protesters by far-right and fascistic elements, including armed militia groups. His Department of Homeland Security sent federal police and paramilitary forces into Portland and Seattle to lead the crackdown on protesters in those cities. Trump has defended the targeted assassination of anti-fascist protester Michael Reinoehl by a police squad led by US Marshals.

One of the officers involved in the fatal shooting of Taylor, Sergeant Jon Mattingly, sent an email to his colleagues that was leaked to the media on Monday. The email encouraged his fellow cops to confront protestors and hailed the police as “warriors.”

Elsewhere, Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker announced that the Illinois National Guard had been placed on a “state of readiness” ahead of Wednesday’s announcement in the Louisville case.

Hundreds of people gathered at a park near downtown Louisville Wednesday afternoon to listen to Cameron’s announcement on the grand jury’s decision. They began marching immediately after it became clear that none of the police officers involved would face trial over Taylor’s death.

While police were arresting protestors and trundling them into waiting vans, they allowed heavily armed right-wing militia members to march and harass motorists.

Wednesday’s grand jury decision came after 119 consecutive days of protests in Louisville, sparked by the release of the 911 recording of Taylor’s boyfriend Kenneth Walker pleading for help as Taylor lay dying on the floor of her home, having been struck by six police bullets.

Detective Brett Hankison is the only officer involved in the raid that led to Taylor’s killing to face criminal prosecution. Cameron announced that the grand jury had charged Hankison with “wanton endangerment” of Taylor’s neighbors. During the raid on Taylor’s apartment, Hankison blindly fired 10 bullets through a patio window, several of which entered another unit in the apartment building where a man, his pregnant wife and their five-year-old child were asleep.

Hankison was booked Wednesday and immediately released on a $15,000 cash bond while awaiting trial. If convicted, he faces a maximum of 15 years in prison. His attorney told local NBC News affiliate WXIX that he plans to plead not guilty to the charges. “I don’t think the evidence will support the charge,” attorney Stew Matthews said.

Hankison was fired by the Louisville Metro Police Department in June for displaying “an extreme indifference to the value of human life.” None of the bullets that he sprayed into the apartment hit Taylor.

Jon Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove, the two officers who fired the fusillade of 22 bullets that killed Taylor and wounded her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, have been on administrative reassignment since the shooting, but have faced no punishment within the department. Their fatal shooting of Taylor has now been ruled justified under the law. The rationale is that Walker fired first, striking Officer Mattingly in the leg.

The decision by the grand jury to not charge the officers for killing Taylor is a whitewash, overseen by Cameron, who is African American and a rising star within the Republican Party. He was elected attorney general in 2019 on a law-and-order platform.

Cameron spoke at the Republican National Convention last month, which was a non-stop attack on “socialist” and “anarchist” protesters, demonized as terrorists and arsonists, and a glorification of the police. Trump presented himself as the leader of a twilight struggle to defend “American civilization” against a socialist menace that controlled the Democratic Party and its candidate, Joe Biden.

The convention included thinly veiled appeals to racism, including a video statement by the St. Louis, Missouri couple who had pointed guns at anti-police violence protestors. They warned that Biden and the Democrats wanted to destroy the suburbs by flooding them with outsiders.

The fact that Cameron spoke at this fascistic event while serving as special prosecutor in the police killing of Taylor should itself have led to his dismissal from the investigation.

During his press conference Wednesday, Cameron denounced those who sought “mob justice” and dismissed the outrage of “celebrities and influencers” who were supposedly ignorant of Kentucky law.

Cameron said the police were carrying out a “knock and announce” warrant—rather than a no-knock warrant as had been widely reported. He said they had announced themselves before using a battering ram to burst into Taylor’s apartment after midnight, where they found Walker already in a shooting stance with Taylor next to him.

Cameron claimed that Walker almost immediately fired his gun. All three officers then opened fire on the apartment. According to Cameron, only one of the six bullets that struck Taylor was fatal, but state investigators could not determine which officer fired it, meaning they could not ascribe blame. He also claimed that since Walker opened fire first, the officers were acting in self-defense and therefore manslaughter charges could not be brought.

None of the officers were wearing body cameras, meaning that Cameron based his account of the shooting on the testimony of the three officers, which, he said, had been corroborated by one resident of the apartment, who claimed that he heard the officers announce themselves.

Walker and the 11 other residents of the apartment building all say they never heard the police announce themselves.

Walker, who had a legal permit for his gun, filed a lawsuit against the city of Louisville and the police department for damages earlier this month, claiming that he was the victim of police misconduct. While it took months to investigate and ultimately exonerate the police who killed Taylor, Walker was arrested and charged with first-degree assault and attempted murder of a police officer within hours of the raid. The charges were eventually dropped with prejudice, meaning they could be pursued again if prosecutors choose to do so. Walker is still seeking immunity from prosecution.

“I am a legal gun owner and I would never knowingly shoot a police officer,” Walker said at a press conference on September 1. He said he believed he was acting in self-defense, confronted by a group of unidentified men invading the apartment. “Breonna and I did not know who was banging at the door, but police know what they did,” he told the press.

The outcome of Cameron’s investigation and the grand jury decision is blanket immunity for police who burst into a home in the middle of the night. The decision makes clear that Taylor’s life meant nothing to the state. If confused or frightened residents act to defend themselves, they and their family can be blasted away.

Police in the United States already kill with almost complete impunity. Officers are charged and convicted in only the rarest of cases, despite killing approximately 1,000 people every year. The Supreme Court has routinely upheld and expanded the policy of qualified immunity, which gives police great leeway in the use of violence when on the beat.

The police are the armed enforcers of the capitalist state. While racism plays a role in police killings, contributing to the disproportionate number of African Americans and other minorities who fall victim to police brutality, the largest number of those who are killed are white.

Police violence is a class issue. The never-ending wave of police attacks and killings is a function of a social system that condemns millions to poverty while concentrating ever more obscene levels of wealth in the hands of a parasitic elite.

The implementation of cosmetic reforms and the placement of more minorities and women in positions of power has done nothing to ease the reign of police terror against the working class all across the country.

The only way to end police violence is to put an end to the capitalist system, which is the root of all the social ills confronting the working class, and establish a system based on social equality, that is, socialism.

Trump’s coup d’état election

Joseph Kishore & David North

The United States presidential campaign is being transformed into a coup d’état by Donald Trump, who has declared that he will not accept the results of any vote that goes against him.

At a White House press conference Wednesday evening, Trump was asked whether he would “commit here today for a peaceful transfer of power after the election?” He replied, “We’re going to have to see what happens. You know I have been complaining very strongly about the ballots. And the ballots are a disaster.”

When his questioner persisted, Trump said, “You’ll have a very peaceful trans—there won’t be a transfer frankly. There will be a continuation.”

Trump’s determination to rapidly appoint a new Supreme Court justice to fill the seat left by Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death is a critical element of the unfolding criminal conspiracy. Trump intends to stack the Supreme Court with lackeys who will rubber stamp his repudiation of the election results. “I think this [the election] will end up in the Supreme Court, and I think it’s very important that we have nine justices,” Trump said at the news conference.

That the preparations for an overthrow of the Constitution are well advanced is now widely acknowledged. A column published Wednesday in the Atlantic, headlined “The Election that Could Break America,” outlines what it called a nightmare scenario for November 3, involving the mobilization of right-wing vigilantes and the seizure of uncounted ballots. The Atlantic references discussions within the White House over how to overturn the election results if they go against Trump:

According to sources in the Republican Party at the state and national levels, the Trump campaign is discussing contingency plans to bypass election results and appoint loyal electors in battleground states where Republicans hold the legislative majority. With a justification based on claims of rampant fraud, Trump would ask state legislators to set aside the popular vote and exercise their power to choose a slate of electors directly.

In doing so, Trump would be acting on the basis of Justice Antonin Scalia’s argument in Bush v. Gore twenty years ago, when the Supreme Court intervened to shut down vote-counting in Florida and hand the election to Bush.

Trump is not running an election campaign. He is setting into motion a plot to establish a presidential dictatorship. This is a continuation of the entire conspiracy initiated with his June 1 speech threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy the military against domestic protests.

There is a staggering contrast between the ruthlessness with which Trump and his co-conspirators are implementing their plans and the fecklessness and cowardice of the Democratic Party and its presidential candidate, Joe Biden. Even as Trump is planning to stack the Supreme Court to facilitate his illegal seizure of power, the Democrats have declared that there is nothing that can be done to stop Trump’s appointment of another justice before the November election.

After Republican Senator Mitt Romney announced Tuesday that he would support Trump filling the Ginsburg vacancy, the Democrats abandoned their “resistance” strategy, such as it was, of finding four Republicans who would break with Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and oppose a confirmation vote.

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer has declared that “all options are on the table,” but only after the Supreme Court nominee is confirmed, and then only if the Democrats win control of both the Senate and the White House. But the Supreme Court pick is central to Trump’s strategy of maintaining his position in the White House.

On Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who proclaimed that her quiver was “full of arrows,” reached an agreement with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Tuesday to extend funding for the federal government until after the election, removing the threat of a government shutdown in response to Trump’s effort to push through his Supreme Court nomination.

With this craven capitulation, the Democrats are not only giving up a seat on the Supreme Court. They are going a long way toward surrendering to Trump’s coup.

Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said on Wednesday that Trump is seeking “to discredit the votes of millions, stack the Supreme Court to disenfranchise millions and perpetuate himself in office,” warning that this is “how you see democracies end.”

Schiff’s only response, in addition to blaming “foreign assistance” for Trump’s actions, was to propose legislation to restrain future presidents. He expressed the hope that voters would “turn out in such massive numbers that there’s a landslide repudiation of Trump and Trumpism.”

The Constitution does not require that a presidential candidate receive a landslide to unseat the incumbent. Schiff’s statement amounts to a declaration that the Democrats will capitulate to Trump if Biden secures anything less than an overwhelming victory.

Elissa Slotkin, one of the House Democrats closest to the intelligence agencies, stated yesterday that Trump is attempting to carry out a coup d’état, and implied that he was acting with high level support. “The President can’t successfully refuse to accept the results of the election without a number of very high officials aiding him,” she tweeted.

But her response was merely to appeal to the military, stating that she has been seeking assurance from Pentagon officials that they would ensure a transfer of power if Trump refuses to concede. “To the Attorney General, Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secretary of Homeland Security,” she said, “history is coming for you, and you will have to make a choice.”

The pathetic response of the Democratic Party and its presidential candidate to Trump’s conspiracy is determined, above all, by its fear that any call for resistance would trigger a mass movement from below that would get out of control and threaten the capitalist oligarchy.

The Democrats fear such a development more than anything. Their entire focus over the past four years has been to divert popular opposition to Trump behind the conflicts within the ruling class over foreign policy, centered on the demand for more aggressive action against Russia.

To subordinate the fight against Trump to the Democratic Party can lead only to a political catastrophe.

Workers must recognize that American democracy is collapsing. The language of Trump is the language of fascism, dictatorship and civil war. The Democrats, meanwhile, are providing Trump with the ability to carry out his coup d’état and if they were to come to power would implement the same basic class policy.

Beneath the political crisis in the United States, what is unfolding is a massive confrontation between the corporate and financial aristocracy, which controls both political parties, and the working class. Trump’s coup plotting is entirely bound up with the ruling class policy of “herd immunity,” the drive to force workers to continue working and reopen schools amidst the expanding pandemic, and the utilization of the pandemic to orchestrate a massive redistribution of wealth to the rich.

For the working class, the fight against the pandemic, the massive social crisis, the unending wave of police violence and the threat of dictatorship is entirely bound up with the fight for socialism.

The critical issue now is the development of a mass movement of the working class. The logic of the rapidly developing crisis poses before working people the need to prepare for a political general strike. Popular organizations, controlled by working people, should be established in order to prepare resistance to Trump’s criminal conspiracy.

The growing wave of strikes, protests and demonstrations—including those sparked by the whitewashing yesterday of the police murder of Breonna Taylor in Louisville—must coalesce into a general strike, demanding Trump’s removal from office.