Hindutva way of normalising violence

Bhabani Shankar Nayak

The pestilence of Coronavirus has given free hand to the Hindutva fascists in India to undermine all democratic norms and constitutionally established institutions. The caste, class and gender based structural violence is ubiquitous. Both the organised and fragmented nature of Hindutva violence is accelerated by the current political regime led by BJP government under the leadership of Mr Narendra Modi. There is a symmetrical relationship between the rise of Hindutva cult of fascist authoritarianism, violence and declining of democracy and failure to consolidate the governing liberal values in India. In the name of cultural nationalism, the Hindutva forces are pushing India to dark ages and actively manufacturing misinformation and myths by rewriting history.  The Hindutva narratives are not symbolic but engage with material realities of everyday life of individuals and communities. The centrality of Hindutva ideology is all about controlling individual rights by forcing food habits, dress patterns, reproductive choices, religious and spiritual freedoms.

Hindutva forces hide their regressive social, political, religious and cultural outlook by intensifying propaganda to advance and implement neoliberal economic reforms in the name of economic growth and development. These flawed policy perspectives accelerate social and economic crisis by overemphasising the role of market forces. Market forces find their natural ally with Hindutva force to run their errant political economy of capitalist consolidation processes. In the absence of democratic polity and representative opposition, the market forces develop oligarchical economic system where the state and Modi government ensures protection and facilitates capitalist accumulation processes in India.

The rampant privatisation of public resources has served the corporations but puts pressure on government’s ability generate revenue for public welfare. There is massive reduction of funding to public health and education. This helps in the growth of private healthcare and education institutions in India. The Modi government has failed to check growing unemployment in urban areas, agrarian destress in the rural areas, crisis in both formal and informal sectors of Indian economy. As social and economic condition of poor has continued to worsen, people are looking for alternatives, but BJP led Modi government is directionless. It continue to divert public attention from real issues of people by focusing on supercilious agendas of Hindutva that threaten the unity and integrity of India.

The Hindutva regime in unison with neoliberalism has created a condition in which Indians have lost their control over their democratic rights. The predetermined fascist ideology of Hindutva and neoliberalism are incompatible with democratic norms and traditions. The culture of corporate dominance over state and government, political and social repression, authoritarian intimidation and surveillance are everyday outcomes of Modi government and its prevailing model of misgovernance. It strengthens of power of lynch mobs promoted by the RSS Hindutva cult. It is systematic strategy to accelerate social and religious conflicts to destabilise constitutional and liberal democracy in India by electoral means. Hindutva forces are following four strategies to normalise religious violence, social conflicts and economic marginalisation in India. It follows the politics of assimilation, co-option, dominance and monopolisation over making of narratives with the organisational network of the RSS. Such a combination of strategies help in diverting issues of poverty, inequality and unemployment.

The normalisation of everyday violence by lynch mobs help Hindutva forces to hide their bourgeoisie hypocrisy and failures in all fronts of governance. Violence always strengthens the power of ruling and non-ruling elites whereas it disempowers the masses and perpetuates impoverishment, disparity and exploitation. Such an outcome is visible in India under BJP led Modi government. The Hindutva forces and cult of violence provide central social and political institutions and create regimes of capitalist accumulation for the crony capitalists in India. Both structural and erratic forms of violence are integral to Hindutva and capitalist system where peace, prosperity and progress are necessary illusions for the survival of ruling capitalist regimes. Mr Narendra Modi’s government displays this illusion in everyday governance of India and its people. These forces talk about peace and progress but practice violence that destroys prosperity.

Such a process helps in establishing the hegemony of Hindutva and its violence which reduces people’s understanding of nature of our everyday crisis. The culture of fear and struggle for survival becomes primary that takes a toll on intercultural and interreligious social relations in India. The prevailing crisis is an opportunity for the crony capitalist friends of Hindutva to pursue regulations and economic policies that are concomitant with the requirements of capital and market forces. The Modi government is proactively doing this work for his corporate friends who provide him with lump sum money through electoral bonds. In this way, violence breeds political dividends for Hindutva forces and profits for capitalist. Hindutva politics and capitalist system are twin beneficiaries of Hindutva violence. In this way, Hindutva is an ideological ally of capitalism and its authoritarian culture of governance led by caste and class elites in the Indian society. The Hindutva foot soldiers are ideologically groomed by the RSS to normalise violence to perpetuate caste-class hegemony and weakens working class struggles for justice and equality.

Violence in contemporary India is not natural. It is manufactured by the Hindutva forces. From organising riots to garlanding of mob lynchers have become an unofficial policy directive of the BJP governments in the states and at the centre as well. The cycle of violence is pushing India backward and putting Indian in long term crisis. It is within this context, democratic, liberal, secular and progressive forces in India needs to mobilise the masses for peace, equality, liberty, citizenship rights and justice. The collective struggle against Hindutva violence can only ensure these objectives for the future of India and survival of Indians with dignity. There is no alternative to mass movements. Only mass movement can defeat Hindutva politics and its entrenched regressive ideology based on everyday violence. The emancipation from violence is a necessary condition for participatory democratic development in India. Unity, solidarity and struggles are three undefeated strategies in history to defeat Hindutva violence and repair the broken republic of India.

UK: Investment banker adviser to Tory government appointed BBC chair

Paul Bond

The Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has approved the government’s preferred candidate as new chair of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Board, multi-millionaire Richard Sharp. The former Goldman Sachs banker, previously an adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson and closely-linked to Chancellor Rishi Sunak, has donated generously to the Conservative Party.

The appointment follows a year of government efforts to put “allies in key positions,” as a source close to Johnson told the press.

The proposed replacements for Sir David Clementi, who steps down next month, confirms that the British bourgeoisie can no longer tolerate even the illusion of impartial state broadcasting it historically cultivated at the BBC.

BBC headquarters in London (© Copyright Christine Matthews under Creative Commons)

The government first announced that Johnson’s “preferred candidate” to replace Clementi was Charles Moore, former editor of the right-wing Daily Telegraph and a biographer of Margaret Thatcher. Johnson had ennobled Moore, formerly his boss at the Telegraph, in a rush of appointments of close Tory supporters to the House of Lords last year.

The preference for Moore, a prominent critic of the BBC, was widely criticised, even within the ruling class. Commissioner for Public Appointments Peter Riddell expressed concern that the government was exercising naked political cronyism.

When Moore withdrew from consideration, the government initially looked at Robbie Gibb, a former Downing Street communications director and brother of schools’ minister Nick Gibb. Others in the frame for the £160,000 a year post were Nicky Morgan, a former Tory Culture Secretary, and former Tory Chancellor George Osborne.

Morgan was ennobled in 2019, allowing Johnson to keep her in cabinet as an unelected life peer after she stood down as an MP. Osborne, the architect of the Cameron administration’s 2010-2015 austerity programme and until recently the editor of the London Evening Standard, saw the three or four day a week job as too limiting on his opportunities for outside earning.

It is a mark of how far to the right the British ruling class has lurched that Sharp, whose wealth was once estimated by the Sunday Times Rich List at £150 million, is seen as relatively uncontroversial compared with these figures. Several liberal commentators welcomed the appointment because he is “not Charles Moore.” Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden, confirming the nomination, described Sharp as “exactly the chair the BBC needs right now.”

Sharp has worked in investment banking for three decades. In 23 years at Goldman Sachs he rose to head the company’s principal investment business in Europe. Between 2013 and 2019 he sat on the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee. He was Sunak’s boss at Goldman Sachs, and last year Sunak invited him to advise on Britain’s economic response to the coronavirus pandemic. He acted as an economic adviser to Johnson when he was Mayor of London.

Supporters have talked up his cultural expertise, leading to an enthusiastic puff piece in the big bourgeoisie’s fashion rag, the Tatler. After leaving Goldman Sachs in 2007, Sharp spent seven years as chair of the Royal Academy of Arts. He was a director of the Olympic legacy board.

In the present political and economic climate, Sharp is seen capable of giving the impression of defending culture without posing any financial threat to the ruling elite. He has been widely credited with having played a leading role in Sunak’s belated and tokenistic £1.57 billion Cultural Recovery Fund for the arts last year, as well as a £500 million insurance deal that allowed television production to restart.

Sharp was previously a director of the right-wing thinktank, the Centre for Policy Studies, which accused the BBC of left-wing bias and called for the abolition of the licence fee.

One recent colleague told the Guardian that Sharp’s right-of-centre politics were “not in doubt.” The source said it would be “reasonable for anyone suspicious of the government to be suspicious of him.”

The most striking aspect of Sharp’s background is the extent to which he has funded the Tories. There was almost something comical about the discussion of this question at the DCMS Select Committee. Asked about his donations, Sharp said that at the last general election he had given £2,500 to a constituency campaign in Hereford, “and I think that’s broadly what I’ve donated in the last 10 years.”

When asked how much he had donated before that period, he said it was something like £400,000 over 20 years.

Other sources suggest he has in fact donated £4,600 since 2010. When he joined the Financial Policy Committee, he said, he stopped donating to political parties. This is what constitutes “impartiality” among the ruling elite.

Sharp has continued to support charities—he has said he will donate his BBC salary to charity—but these donations have often also had a political character. He reportedly gave £10,000 in 2017, and £25,000 in 2019, to the Quilliam Foundation, a right-wing thinktank with close ties to the state and security services.

The BBC’s long and carefully constructed fiction of impartiality is now increasingly rejected by the ruling class, who want more open support for their anti-democratic and repressive measures, and less airing of dissent and criticism.

Sharp’s performance at the DCMS was a careful restatement of this fiction, designed not to alarm his employers whilst still making noises about defending public broadcasting. Saying he was “considered to be a Brexiteer,” Sharp thought the BBC’s coverage of Brexit mostly “incredibly balanced,” but used this to criticise “some aspects of the… coverage [as] not balanced.”

At the same time, he found time to criticise a drama series by left-wing playwright David Hare, who is “not considered to be impartial.” Producing Hare’s Roadkill, he said, with its Tory villains, offered “a partial view that could influence people in the way they view the Conservative party.”

Sharp told MPs “I’m familiar with capitalism. I understand what drives Facebook, Google, Apple—I understand that capitalism has its strengths. It also has its fundamental weaknesses and in the area of media and truth and impartial information public service broadcasting has a very important role to play.”

These comments are important, as competition with streaming services is one of the main concerns for the corporation.

The key issue confronting Sharp will be the licence fee, which currently funds the BBC. The present funding arrangement expires in 2027, and there have been repeated calls for adopting a subscription model in a move towards privatisation.

Sharp will be discussing these questions with Tim Davie, recently appointed as Director-General of the BBC after a career in marketing. Like Sharp, Davie also has close links to the Tories, having stood as a local council candidate and been deputy chairman of his local Conservative Party. Davie opposes subscription models of funding but has suggested axing the corporation’s output and slashing its budget. Sharp’s closeness to Johnson and Sunak is seen by many as a strategic advantage for Davie in the mid-term charter review due to begin next year.

The rightward lurch of the ruling class made Sharp’s performance before the DCMS too nuanced for some. The Spectator protested that Sharp’s appointment marked a retreat from head-on “reform” of the BBC, i.e., its wholesale dismantling. With Johnson’s disgraced adviser Dominic Cummings gone, it grumbled, “is there anyone now in government who will take the BBC on?”

Oregon faces legal challenges after establishing blacks-only COVID-19 relief fund

Dominic Gustavo

A COVID-19 relief fund set up by the state of Oregon has run into legal challenges after it became known that the fund was reserved exclusively for African American residents. The state’s doling out of inadequate financial aid to troubled businesses on race-based criteria reveals the politically bankrupt and deeply reactionary nature of racialist politics.

The Oregon Cares Fund was arranged by state Democratic Party officials in July 2020 and reserved $62 million out of the $200 million that was set aside by the Oregon legislature’s Emergency Board to provide relief to small businesses affected by the pandemic. The fund’s website declares it is intended for “Black people, Black-owned businesses, and Black community based organizations” and provides up to $3,000 per-family and $100,000 per-business. The relief funds were drawn from the $1.4 billion that the state of Oregon received from the federal CARES Act last spring.

Oregon State Capitol Building (source: Wikipedia)

According to the New York Times, the fund has paid out nearly $50 million. A remaining $8.8 million was held up by a federal court in December, in the face of legal challenges by non-black business owners alleging discrimination. The Times, in its noxious and typical fashion, calls the fund “novel and bold” for allocating funds on a racial basis. Democratic state senator Lew Frederick told the Times, “It was finally being honest: This is who needs this support right now.” The Democratic governor of Oregon, Kate Brown, has vowed to defend the discriminatory fund.

Walter Leja, the white owner of a small electrical company and a plaintiff in the lawsuits against the state, told the New York Times that he would be forced to lay off employees if he does not receive relief funds soon. Referring to the fund, he said, “It’s discriminatory. It’s locking up a bunch of funds that can only be used by Black businesses when there’s a ton of other businesses out there that need access to those funds. It’s not a white or Black thing. It’s an everybody thing.”

Leja, alongside two other small business owners are suing based on the argument that the fund violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. Maria Garcia, the Mexican American owner of Revolucion Coffee House in Portland, claims her application for aid was denied because her shop “does not meet the criteria because 0% of its owners identify as Black,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

Oregon’s Democratic lawmakers claim that the racially exclusive legislation is required to make up for historical crimes committed against blacks. African Americans make up 2.2 percent of the Oregonian population, while Hispanics make up 13.4 percent, Asians 4.9 percent, and Native Americans 1.8 percent.

While there is no question African Americans have faced discrimination in the state—for instance, in 1844 the then territory passed a law barring African Americans from settling there—in reality it is working class and lower-middle class people of all races who have been most severely affected by the pandemic. Meanwhile, the US government has pumped trillions of dollars into the financial markets to enrich corporate executives and investors, while allowing the virus to spread rampantly, workers to be laid off and forced into poverty, and small businesses to collapse in financial ruin.

Furthermore, a brief overview of Oregon’s history demonstrates that blacks were not the only ethnic group that suffered racist discrimination and capitalist exploitation.

Upon gaining statehood in 1857, the Oregon government adopted a number of anti-Chinese measures, such as forcing Chinese miners to pay a $50 tax each year and prohibiting them from voting. In 1882, alongside the nationwide Chinese Exclusion Act passed by Congress, the state of Oregon banned Chinese from public schools, restricted their housing opportunities, and prohibited them from entering professions.

The Native American population was also subject to brutal racism and violence at the hands of the federal and state governments. Their attempts to fight back culminated in the Rogue River Wars (1855-56), which turned into a one-sided campaign of extermination and terror against the Native population.

Among the most oppressed section of the American working class, the Oregon indigenous population faces high rates of extreme poverty, homelessness, addiction, suicide, police brutality and other manifestations of social inequality. A study by a research team at Portland State University in 2011 found that nearly half of Native children live in poverty.

During World War I, German Americans were pressured to swear their loyalty to the US and saw restrictions placed on the use of the German language, including an order by the State Council of Defense for Oregon which required the use of English during church services.

The history of racism and xenophobia in Oregon is inseparable from and flows out of the brutal exploitation of the working class that has characterized American capitalism. Oregon’s key industries were logging and mining, among the deadliest and most exploitative in American history.

The efforts of the racial communalists in and around the Democratic Party to center race as the fundamental division in American society is meant to obscure the brutal class divide that has been laid bare by the pandemic. Workers of all races and nationalities are getting sick and dying around the world because they are being forced back to work in dangerous conditions, and because hospitals do not have enough staff or beds to deal with the surge in patients.

None of this will be addressed by creating a racially exclusive fund for black business owners and others. It completely ignores the class character of the capitalist state’s response to the pandemic, which has placed the accumulation of profit over the lives of masses of workers of all races. It deliberately obscures the fact that it is not “white people” who have benefitted from the pandemic, but a ruthless financial oligarchy, which is indifferent to the lives and health of all poor and working class people.

Even before the pandemic, 13 percent of Oregonians lived below the federal poverty line. That encompasses more than 516,000 people, which includes 134,000 children, according to the Oregon Center for Public Policy. Of those in poverty, 4 in 10 lived in deep poverty—defined as having an income less than half of the poverty guideline, in this case a family of 4 having to survive on $13,100 a year.

According to a report from Oregon State University, some 1 million Oregonians, or 1 in 4, experienced hunger in 2020. While official poverty statistics for the first year of the pandemic are still to be compiled, there can be no doubt that the level of hardship experienced by workers and the poor has risen sharply. In the context of the growing level of misery, the paltry aid provided by Oregon’s Democratic government to workers and small businesses assumes an insulting character.

Just one Oregon billionaire, Nike founder Phil Knight, has a personal fortune estimated at more than $48 billion. This is more than 240 times the amount of money the state allocated to relief for small businesses. It also dwarfs, many times over, the $1.4 billion in aid that the state received from Congress via the CARES Act, underscoring the obscene level of inequality that the pandemic has both exposed and exacerbated.

According to inequality.org, the wealth of the 651 billionaires in the US skyrocketed between March (the start of the pandemic) and December 2020 from $2.95 trillion to over $4 trillion. The top 10 billionaires alone control more than $1 trillion. To put that unfathomable number in perspective, $1 trillion in wealth held by just 10 people is more than it would have cost to send a $3,000 check to every one of the 330 million people in the US.

This is almost 4 times the $267 billion in stimulus checks that was given to 159 million people last year. It is also more than the $900 billion in COVID “relief” funds that was passed by Congress in December, which consisted mostly of corporate handouts while providing little more than crumbs for the jobless.

Rather than addressing these discrepancies, Oregon’s Democratic Party lawmakers have revived criteria similar to the “one drop” rule used to discriminate against minority groups in the past. In determining who was eligible to receive aid, a tutorial video on the fund’s website states a business must be at least 51 percent black owned, that is, 51 percent of the owners must identify as black.

This raises critical questions as to how these claims may be verified. Anyone can “identify” as black. If there are doubts on the part of the fund’s organizers as to the purity of the claimants’ race, how will these discrepancies be resolved? Perhaps the claimants should have to submit to a DNA test, or to a tracing of their ancestral line.

Revealingly, the racialist proponents of the fund offer not a word of protest against the miserly character of the relief that has been offered. The pittance left over for working people from the CARES Act, which was largely intended to satisfy Wall Street and big business, is accepted as given. Instead, they pit small business owners and workers against each other along racial lines in the scramble for aid, obscuring the common social and class interests which working people of all backgrounds share.

The right-wing efforts of the Democratic Party to sow racial divisions in the working class and sections of the middle class must be fiercely opposed. Socialists do not accept the framework that there is not enough money or resources for everyone who needs it, which encourages people down the dangerous path of racial communalism and nationalism.

Rather than encouraging a scramble for crumbs among the most desperate and hard-hit layers of society, a socialist movement must be built which unites workers of all races, ethnicities, nationalities and identities to demand the expropriation of the wealth of the rich and its distribution to provide full access to financial assistance, unemployment aid, food, housing, education and health care for poor and working class people not just across Oregon, but throughout the world.

German federal and state governments reject consistent lockdown measures

Marianne Arens

On Tuesday, the heads of the German Länder (federal states) met again with Chancellor Angela Merkel to discuss pandemic measures. On the same day, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) again reported almost 1,000 coronavirus deaths.

The new coronavirus variant, which is already ravaging Ireland, Portugal and Spain, in addition to Britain, is taking centre stage in Germany was well. Other mutations have been discovered in South Africa and Brazil. Yet the politicians at both the federal and state level continue to insist on keeping workplaces, schools and day care centres open and rejecting any serious restrictions on the economy.

Crowds of pupils in a school in Dortmund-Hacheney, Germany

A “radical change of strategy” is being increasingly demanded from doctors and virologists, as well as from school children and kindergarten teachers. A joint declaration by scientists from all over Europe, first published in the journal The Lancet, bears the signatures of well over a thousand scientists, including Christian Drosten and the head of the RKI, Lothar Wieler. “The virus does not respect national borders,” Prof. Isabella Eckerle told the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ). What is needed, she said, is a coordinated, complete lockdown across Europe.

This policy is supported by signers of a petition titled “ZeroCovid,” whose initial signatories include some 400 scientists, medical professionals, artists and journalists. The petition easily reached its first target of 75,000 signatures in Germany. It reads: “To stop the virus and prevent further deaths in the tens of thousands, a pause of solidarity is now necessary… We must shut down all non-socially necessary sectors of the economy for a time.”

A group of doctors has written directly to the federal government, stating that there should be “no room for a so-called ‘herd immunity strategy.’ Denying facts and watering down scientific proposals must not be allowed to further negatively influence political decisions.”

The imperative of a hard lockdown is all the more urgent given that vaccination has already begun. The new, even more contagious mutant strains have already been detected in Berlin, Bavaria, Hesse and Baden-Württemberg.

A medical professional wrote on Twitter: “If we take [coronavirus mutation] B 1.1.7 seriously, we should now vaccinate around the clock as if disaster had struck. Because it has.”

But the vaccination rollout is a debacle. It is going much more slowly than necessary because every step is subordinated to the profit interests of the pharmaceutical companies.

There can be no doubt that government officials are unwavering in keeping the profits flowing. “Profits before human lives” is the unspoken motto, which prevailed again at the Federal-Länder Round Table on Tuesday.

It was agreed to extend the previous, half-hearted measures until 14 February, but not tighten them significantly, so as to not restrict non-essential production and service companies. The only new step is to make compulsory in the future the wearing of an FFP2 mask or surgical mask in public spaces and on public transport.

The government officials did not even pass a truly binding resolution on the issue of working from home. At present, only about 15 percent of employees work from home, whereas in April 2020, more than twice as many people worked from home. Now, the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs is to issue a temporary decree urging employers to allow working from home “wherever it is possible” and “provided operations allow it.” These woolly formulations leave so many loopholes that much will remain the same.

In recent days, several state heads and education ministers were still urging that schools and day care centres be kept open. These include Susanne Eisenmann, the education minister of Baden-Württemberg, and the education ministers of North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse, Hamburg and Berlin. The consequences of the half-measures called for by the highest levels of government are predictable: trains and buses will remain full, millions of employees will be forced into workplaces every day, and children will be sent to schools and day care centres in order to keep production running.

Berlin journalist and author Markus Feldenkirchen commented sarcastically in the newsweekly Der Spiegel, “Of course, priority is given to manufacturers of pork chops, downhill skis, egg liqueur, rapid-fire weapons, toasters and cigarettes. To produce them, millions of people may continue to gather in closed rooms—as if there were no virus at all.”

Not surprisingly, the pandemic continues to accelerate. On Tuesday, nearly 11,369 new infections were reported in one day. The number of coronavirus deaths rose to a total of 47,622, with 989 new deaths. The seven-day incidence rate is still many times too high, with officially 131.5 infected persons per 100,000 inhabitants.

These figures may be grossly incomplete. This was recently pointed out by the Central Institute for Statutory Health Insurance (Zi). The research institute wrote in a concerned press release on Thursday, 14 January that far too often overburdened health offices report case numbers too late or incompletely.

“Given systematic reporting delays, as in the current calculation procedure,” there is a danger that “individual districts will permanently appear in the statistics with infection incidence values that are too low,” the Zi wrote. For this reason, the Zi stressed that it was “urgently necessary” to look at other central aspects of infection incidence rates, above all, the utilisation of intensive care units and the incidence in risk groups.

The situation in hospitals and overcrowded intensive care units is highly threatening. Large parts of the nursing staff are increasingly becoming infected—similar to the situation in Britain. In a hospital in North Friesland, 2,200 people have been in quarantine since Tuesday, after 73 staff and 60 patients tested positive for the coronavirus. The hospital has imposed a general admission ban.

A district hospital in Ansbach in eastern Franconia also reported that 33 patients and 29 staff members had become infected.

The situation in numerous crematoria is gruesome. In Saxony, deaths doubled in December, according to the Federal Statistical Office. Pictures of chaotically stacked coffins from the Meissen crematorium circulated in the news, while coffins in Zittau had to be stored temporarily outside the crematorium.

In an interview with gmx.net, undertaker Tobias Wenzel from the Erzgebirge region explained that he was unable to “even begin to imagine” such a situation. He said that undertakers and crematoria staff in Saxony had to cope with “at least a third more funerals than usual.” He added, “At the moment, we are just managing.”

Wenzel had worked 280 hours in December, and his hours were by no means exceptional. He concludes the interview with a bitter indictment of the responsible politicians for failing to act when experts warned during the summer of exactly such a situation.

Government officials at all levels will continue to fail to act. Not even the gruesome scenes at crematoria, reminiscent of images from Bergamo in Italy last spring, can change their minds. The demand for a tougher lockdown, including all non-essential production, is highly popular among working people, as petitions by scientists and “ZeroCovid” show.

But the federal and state governments will not be swayed by pressure. From the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) to the Christian Democrats (CDU), Free Democrats (FDP), Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and the Left Party: all the establishment politicians are aligning themselves with the needs of the banks and corporations.

“I don’t want us to have to run down our entire economy,” declared Federal Labour Minister Hubertus Heil (Social Democratic Party—SPD) shortly before the discussion round in the Chancellery. Meanwhile, several leading business representatives were able to air their views in Der Spiegel. Under the headline, “Top economists warn against economic lockdown,” they emphasised almost word for word that a shutdown of the economy was out of the question.

The President of the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) and Humboldt Professor Marcel Tratzscher said, “A forced closure of companies… could disrupt supply chains and thus cause considerable costs for the entire economy… A work from home obligation could cause great economic damage, as it could severely damage effective working hours and productivity.”

These bosses receive support from the trade unions. In an interview with the Augsburger Allgemeine , IG Metall leader Jörg Hofmann warned of the consequences of an economic lockdown. “Then our economic power would collapse,” he said. “But we urgently need this strength to be able to continue to afford all the welfare state measures to cushion the consequences of the crisis. Such a shutdown of the economy has long-lasting consequences… We must—as far as possible—continue industrial production, because this creates value and income for many people.”

The high-ranking union official even claimed that “infection figures are lower in production plants than in the private environment,” an assertion that would quickly vanish into thin air if the unions ensured that corporations truthfully informed their workers and the public about COVID-19 cases in the workforce and had workers systematically tested.

The interview again makes it very clear that the union leaders are in the same boat with the politicians and the capitalists—doing everything they can to keep the German economy open at the expense of working people. Any appeal to these officials is absurd.

Weakened Italian government clings to power

Peter Schwarz

Though substantially weakened, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte will remain in power, and there will be no early elections. These were the results of the vote of confidence in the Italian parliament, which Conte won in both chambers.

In the House of Representatives, where the majority is clearer due to electoral law than in the Senate, a majority of 321 of the 630 deputies voted for Conte on Monday. By contrast, after a 12-hour debate Tuesday, only a minority of 156 out of the 321 senators backed him.

Matteo Renzi (Source: the European Parliament)

Conte’s survival was thanks to the very party that initially triggered the crisis by leaving the government. Former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi along with 13 other representatives of his party Italia Viva abstained in the vote. Had they voted no, the government would have fallen on Tuesday. One-hundred and forty senators from the opposition parties voted against Conte. He will now head a minority government that will have to seek majorities in parliament as and when required.

Under conditions of the deepest social and economic crisis in the post-war era, the government crisis cannot simply be traced to the personal rivalry between Conte and Renzi, as many media outlets claim. Rather, it would be much more accurate to see it as an expression of the decline of the system of bourgeois parliamentarianism. Opposition to the government is growing in the working class. Its policies have made Italy one of the epicentres of the pandemic in Europe, with 83,000 deaths and more than 2.4 million infections, while the ruling class is turning increasingly to far-right and fascistic forces.

If elections were to be held now, 24 percent of the vote would go to the right-wing extremist Lega under Matteo Salvini, and 17 percent to the fascist Fratelli d’Italia. Together with Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (8 percent), the right-wing parties would have a clear majority. The two main governing parties, by contrast, enjoy the support of just 20 percent (Democrats) and 14 percent (Five Star Movement). Renzi’s split-off from the Democrats, Italia Viva, currently has 3 percent.

The rise of the right-wing extremists is thanks, in the first place, to support from influential business and intellectual circles. Seventy-five years after his assassination by partisans, the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini is once again a socially acceptable figure. Secondly, they also profit from the policies of the so-called centre-left parties, which have played the leading role in imposing social spending cuts over the past three decades, and have always enjoyed the support of the trade unions and pseudo-left parties, like Rifondazione Comunista.

The mass opposition among the working class finds no political expression in the existing political setup. Strikes and protests repeatedly erupt, but they are suffocated by the trade unions and subordinated to the Democrats.

The right-wing extremists benefit from this by winning support from dissatisfied sections of the middle class and even among some impoverished workers. The spectacle of the governing parties, who squabble like vultures over money and influence, plays directly into the hands of the fascist demagogues.

The government crisis was triggered by a dispute over the €209 billion Italy is supposed to receive from the European Union’s (EU’s) coronavirus fund. Renzi, who during his first term as prime minister from 2014 to 2016 gutted labour regulations and decimated pensions, saw this as a chance to renew his project of “modernising” Italy.

In a public campaign against Conte, Renzi claimed that the funds should be made available to the major corporations, rather than the small businesses and self-employed that make up the clientele of the Five Star Movement, with whom Conte is aligned.

“One doesn’t need to be a Keynesian to understand that the only way to growth is through public and private investment,” wrote Renzi in an open letter to the prime minister published in Corriere della Sera on December 17. He appealed for a “coherent industrial policy, from steel to the roads.” The €209 billion is “the last chance we have,” he warned, referring to the long-serving head of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi.

Renzi also demanded that Italy borrow a further €36 billion from the European Stability Mechanism, which ties its loans to strict austerity measures. For the Five Star Movement, this amounted to waving a red rag to a bull. One of the reasons for its electoral victory in 2018 was a campaign against the EU, and it is therefore now seeking to symbolically distance itself from the EU, as its practical cooperation with it continues to deepen.

On foreign policy, Renzi advocated the aggressive pursuit of imperialist interests in alliance with the EU and “the new world of Biden’s America.” Italy must “position itself in light of the great challenges of the Asian century,” go to Africa, and play a role in the Mediterranean region, “where our presence has noticeably declined over recent years and the influence of Russia and Turkey has increased.”

When Conte only partially responded to Renzi’s demands, Renzi withdrew his ministers from the government and provoked the latest crisis. He probably only wanted to intensify the pressure on Conte, but he accepted new elections and the prospect of the victory of the right as a price worth paying.

However, the support Renzi had hoped for from Berlin and Brussels did not materialise. The Italian, German, and European press expressed horror that he had triggered a government crisis in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, when all European governments have their backs to the wall. They feared that the visible collapse of state authority could provoke an intervention by the working class, which would call capitalist rule as a whole into question.

The decay of Italian democracy will continue under the Conte government, an unstable alliance of the Five Star Movement and Democrats. This will in turn increase the speed with which the bourgeoisie is turning to an authoritarian, fascist solution.

The only way out of this crisis is the independent intervention of the Italian and international working class. The struggle against fascism, mass death in the pandemic, poverty, and war is possible only on the basis of a socialist programme—by expropriating the super-rich, the corporations, and banks, and the construction of a socialist society.

Senate hearings for Biden’s security cabinet expose bipartisan unity on war and reaction

Bill Van Auken

On the eve of an inauguration speech in which newly sworn-in President Joe Biden invoked the need for unity nearly a dozen times, the Senate conducted confirmation hearings for key nominees for his security cabinet. The tenor of these sessions made it clear that a principal foundation for unity between the incoming administration and a Republican Party that sought to overturn Biden’s election, including through the January 6 fascist coup attempt at the Capitol, will be bipartisan agreement on policies of imperialist aggression abroad.

Three nominees appeared before separate Senate committees Tuesday: Anthony Blinken, Foreign Relations; Lloyd Austin, Armed Services; and Avril Haines, Intelligence.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., listens during a confirmation hearing for Secretary of State nominee Antony Blinken before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2021. (Alex Edelman/Pool via AP)

All of them are veterans of the criminal policies carried out by the Obama administration, from wars and regime change interventions in the Middle East and the drone assassination program to the 2014 coup in Ukraine.

The overriding issue discussed in the hearings was preparation for “great power” conflict with China. While in the course of the 2020 election campaign Trump had tried to portray Biden as soft on Beijing, the nominees made it clear that the incoming administration is determined to escalate Washington’s anti-Chinese campaign to the point of armed conflict.

Blinken was the most explicit on this score, embracing the thrust of the Trump administration’s policy. “I also believe that President Trump was right in taking a tougher approach to China,” he told the committee. “I disagree very much with the way that he went about it in a number of areas, but the basic principle was the right one, and I think that’s actually helpful to our foreign policy.”

While failing to spell out where the incoming administration will be at odds with the Trump administration’s China policy, Blinken embraced its anti-Chinese tropes, including the charge that Beijing had deceived the world about the coronavirus, and the claim that China is guilty of “genocide” against Uighur Muslims, a designation issued by Trump’s rabidly anti-Chinese Secretary of State Mike Pompeo the very same day. This parting shot against Beijing has been endorsed by no other country.

The one area of potential conflict with the Senate panel was the Iran nuclear accord that the Obama administration, together with the world’s other major powers, joined in 2015 trading a lifting of sanctions for Tehran’s agreement to sharply curtail its civilian nuclear program. The Trump administration unilaterally abrogated this treaty in November 2018, imposing a “maximum pressure” sanctions regime that is tantamount to a state of war and has led to widespread poverty, hunger and preventable deaths among the Iranian population.

While Biden had indicated his intention to rejoin the accord, Blinken made it abundantly clear that this would not happen anytime soon, if ever. Both the Senate panel’s new Democratic chairman, Bob Menendez of New Jersey, and its ranking Republican member, Jim Risch of Idaho, are opposed to the treaty, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Blinken said that Iran would have to come back into full compliance with the JCPOA before any of the draconian sanctions are lifted. Tehran has increased its uranium stockpile, as well as its level of enrichment in response to US aggression and the failure of the Western European powers to effectively counter Washington’s economic blockade. The Iranian government has insisted that Washington must make the first step by ending its violation of the agreement.

Also, Blinken said that the Biden administration would seek a “longer and stronger” agreement, meaning an accord that would not only restrict Iran’s nuclear program permanently, but also compel Tehran to scrap its conventional missile program and submit to US hegemony in the Middle East. Iran has insisted that these issues are not up for negotiation.

“We’re a long way from there,” he assured the Senate committee in relation to the US rejoining the nuclear accord.

Blinken also indicated that the incoming administration will pursue a more aggressive policy toward Russia. “The challenge posed by Russia across a whole series of fronts is also one that is urgent,” he said. “This is very high on the agenda for the incoming administration.” He declared his support for providing the right-wing regime in Ukraine with “lethal support” and indicated that the incoming administration would continue the Trump administration’s campaign to stop completion of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.

He expressed essential agreement with the Trump administration’s policy of aggression toward Venezuela, saying that the new administration would continue recognizing the right-wing US puppet Juan Guaidó as the country’s head of state and would refuse any negotiations with President Nicolas Maduro.

Blinken indicated that the Biden administration has no intention of reversing the Trump administration’s policies of total accommodation to Tel Aviv, including the transfer of the US Embassy to Jerusalem. He said that it would return to a policy of nominal support for the so-called two-state solution, while assuring the senators that there was no prospect for “near-term” progress toward such a solution, which has been turned into a dead letter by relentless US-backed Israeli occupation of Palestinian land in the occupied territories.

The one issue where he expressed differences with the Trump administration was on its support for the near-genocidal Saudi-led war against Yemen and the Trump administration’s recent branding of the Houthi rebels as a “terrorist” organization. This measure will serve to block food supplies to a population confronting mass starvation.

No one on the committee was so rude as to note that it was Blinken who, as Obama’s deputy secretary of state in 2015, flew to Riyadh to cement the deal under which the Pentagon provided arms and logistical support, including refueling for Saudi bombers, paving the way to the mass murder of Yemeni civilians. Even in feigning disagreement with the Trump administration’s policies, Blinken affirmed Washington’s obligation to defend the House of Saud against Houthi “aggression”!

In his tenure in the State Department and as a member of the Democratic Party’s foreign policy establishment, Blinken was a fervent advocate for a more aggressive US military intervention in both Libya and Syria.

Summing up his subservience to the Republican right, he answered a series of litmus test questions from South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, formerly a fervent Trump supporter.

Did he consider Iran the world’s number one “state sponsor of terrorism”? “I do,” Blinken replied. Did he believe that Israel is a racist nation? “No.” Should any withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan be “conditions-based”? “Absolutely.” And what would he tell Central Americans fleeing for their lives from violence and hunger? “I would say, ‘Do not come.’”

Graham was visibly elated. “I think you are an outstanding choice, and I intend to vote for you,” he said.

The essential line laid down by Blinken was echoed by the other nominees who testified Tuesday. Avril Haines, tapped by Biden as his director of national intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that China is Washington’s “most important strategic competitor.”

Haines, who as deputy CIA director under Obama, was one of the architects of the drone assassination program that claimed countless victims in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. She is being touted by the Biden team as “the first woman DNI.”

“China is a challenge to our security, to our prosperity, to our values across a range of issues, and I do support an aggressive stance,” Haines said. “That is the place we are now and one that is more assertive than where we had been in the Obama-Biden administration.”

On Iran, she answered a question about Biden rejoining the nuclear accord by saying, “I think, frankly, we’re a long way from that,” adding that the incoming administration will “have to look at the ballistic missile issues” and Iran’s “destabilizing activities.”

In his testimony before the Senate Committee on Armed Services, Gen. Lloyd Austin (ret.), nominated by Biden as defense secretary, used bellicose language to describe China as a “regional hegemon” whose “goal is to be a dominant world power.” He added that “they are working across the spectrum to compete with us in a number of areas, and it will take a whole of government approach to push back on their efforts in a credible way.”

Included in this pushback, Austin said, would be an accelerated production of advanced nuclear weapons systems.

Similar to Haines, Austin’s nomination has been promoted as ground-breaking in that he would be the first black defense secretary. More significant than his skin color, however, is that he, like Trump’s first defense secretary, Gen. James “Mad Dog” Mattis, is a recently retired general, whose confirmation requires that both houses of the Congress waive an act prohibiting any ex-officer from serving in the post until seven years after leaving the military.

This act was aimed at bolstering civilian control over the military. The nomination of Austin, who succeeded Mattis as the commander of US Central Command (CENTCOM), overseeing US imperialism’s bloody wars throughout the Middle East and in Afghanistan, is another indication of the thorough-going militarization of the US state apparatus.

Since leaving the military, Austin took a position on the board of Raytheon Corp., one of the largest arms suppliers to the Pentagon. Upon confirmation as defense secretary, he would be required to quit the defense contractor’s board, for which he would receive a severance package worth $1.7 million.

One statement by Secretary of State nominee Blinken summed up the incoming administration’s view of Washington’s global role. He told the Senate committee, “The reality is the world doesn’t organize itself. When we’re not engaged, when we don’t lead, then one of two things happen: either some other country tries to take our place, but probably not in a way that advances our interests or values. Or no one does, and then you get chaos.”

In other words, US imperialism must “organize” the world. Under conditions of its declining economic hegemony, this can only translate into a global eruption of American militarism.

As COVID-19 resurges, Chinese workers hit by pay and job cuts

Jerry Zhang

The coronavirus pandemic is continuing to spread in China, and a recent report has revealed that, as elsewhere around the world, governments and employers are exploiting the crisis to slash wages and full-time jobs.

According to the National Health Commission, 118 new confirmed COVID-19 cases (symptomatic) and 91 asymptomatic infections were reported in China on January 18. As of midnight on January 19, China had 2,215 confirmed cases and 811 asymptomatic infections.

Students line up to sanitize their hands to avoid contracting the coronavirus before their morning class at a high school in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2020. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

As well as being placed on the front line of the pandemic, Chinese workers are facing an offensive against their working conditions. On January 16, the School of Social Sciences of Tsinghua University released the “2020 Township Labor Market Survey Report.” The report stated that during the pandemic, 24.4 percent of workers have experienced a wage cut, with 6 percent of workers’ wages dropping sharply.

In addition, 31.7 percent of township workers started to take part-time jobs after the pandemic began. Support for workers’ food and accommodation in the workplace also dropped significantly.

Hebei, Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces are still the hardest hit COVID-19 areas. The Hebei Provincial Health Commission issued a notice on January 17, upgrading a region in Xinle City, Shijiazhuang to a high-risk area. Another high-risk area in Shijiazhuang is Gaocheng District. Also on January 17, another 10 Shijiazhuang districts were upgraded to medium-risk, taking Hebei Province’s total of medium-risk areas to 48.

Also on January 17, a Jilin Province pandemic prevention and control press conference announced that a “super transmission” event had occurred in the province, causing 102 cases, after an asymptomatic infected sales person from Heilongjiang entered Jilin. According to reports, from January 6 to 11, he conducted four marketing activities aimed at the elderly.

A few days ago, the epidemic in Suihua City, Heilongjiang Province spread to eight cities in three provinces within three days. According to the data previously notified by Heilongjiang Province, the province had 216 new infections inside seven days. An infected person reportedly attended a wedding for two consecutive days, resulting in an outbreak.

What is particularly worrying is that many infected people took trains or buses and entered crowded places such as stations, expanding the pandemic’s geographical scope.

With the rapid spread of infections, medical resources have begun to be strained, and weaknesses in the medical system have been exposed. In an interview with Caijing magazine, a doctor said rural areas and some small towns were far from vigilant, and management was relatively rigid, making it difficult to detect pandemics immediately.

A person in charge of a township health centre in Hunan Province said epidemic prevention work in “grassroots areas” such as townships and rural areas was quite difficult, with limited personnel and funds. Some hospitals have no relevant medical equipment. Protective clothing and masks are very expensive, and the qualifications and training levels of medical workers are problematic.

After the pandemic was contained in the second half of 2020, the Chinese government and media began to downplay its impact and vigorously promoted achievements in “recovering production.” Protection work was neglected to a certain extent.

With the annual Spring Festival due on February 12, returning migrant workers have put further pressure on the prevention and control of pandemics in rural and township areas.

China’s bureaucratic measures have also affected residents in infected areas. Local governments have resumed the methods they used during last year’s lockdown, such as setting up roadblocks to halt traffic, severely affecting the transportation of medical supplies and everyday necessities. In recent days, news has spread of shortages and sharp price rises for vegetables, meat and other foods.

On January 17, a number of departments in Hebei Province jointly issued a notice requesting local governments to immediately stop this method of blocking traffic, but the problems have persisted. In order to prevent infections from appearing in their jurisdictions and affecting their own “political performance,” local bureaucrats have kept stopping vehicles and people from entering.

The rigidity of social management is also taking a toll, including by making it difficult for ordinary patients to seek medical treatment. In one reported instance, a parent of a premature baby asked for help on social media. The child was at risk of blindness and in urgent need of eye surgery in Beijing, but because their household registration was in Hebei, many hospitals refused treatment. The plea for help aroused popular attention, finally forcing a hospital in Beijing to treat the baby.

Since the Wuhan lockdown last year, similar things have happened in every city. While lockdowns in China have proved effective against the pandemic, the official state media ignores the demands and difficulties of ordinary people.

While the working class is bearing the brunt of the pandemic, the total wealth of the 400 richest people in China soared from $US1.29 trillion to $2.11 trillion last year—an increase overall of more than 60 percent— according to the Forbes 2020 Rich List.

This staggering inequality is set to worsen. On January 15, Chen Yulu, deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, said China’s prices would continue to rise “modestly” in 2021. Rising prices will make the life of working class households more difficult.

Philippine military breaks longstanding agreement, returns forces to campuses

John Malvar

On January 15, Philippine Secretary of Defense Delfin Lorenzana, in letter to University of the Philippines (UP) President Danilo Concepcion, unilaterally abrogated a standing agreement between the Department of Defense and UP banning the entrance of military forces on UP campuses.

Lorenzana used politically menacing language branding students as “Communists” to justify the renewed incursions of the military onto state university campuses after a more than 30-year ban. He declared that the campuses were sites of “clandestine recruitment” by the Communist Party, which he labeled a terrorist organization. The military would be establishing a presence on UP campuses to protect “youth against the enemies of the Filipino people.”

The University of the Philippines is the prestigious state university system, founded in 1908 during the American colonial period, with a number of campuses throughout the country. Its flagship campus, UP Diliman in Quezon City, Metro Manila, has played a leading role in the country’s student activism for the past half-century.

Prior to the 1989 agreement, the military regularly deployed its forces on the campus in full assault gear. Student activists were arrested or ‘disappeared.’ Soldiers opened fire on student protestors on more than one occasion.

The Diliman Commune—Over the course of the first nine days of February 1971, students at the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman erected barricades around their campus, fought off repeated attempts by the military to tear the barricades down, and took control of the university.

In June 1989, under the Corazon Aquino administration, the military abducted Donato Continente, a student journalist writing for the campus paper, Philippine Collegian, from Vinzons Hall, the campus student center. Continente was tortured and forced to confess to the assassination of US military Colonel James Rowe. Rowe was training counter-insurgency forces in the country and had been killed in an ambush by the Alex Boncayao Brigade, the urban hit squad of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), which was then active in Manila.

As a result of the uproar over the abduction of Continente, then Defense Secretary Fidel Ramos was compelled to sign an agreement with UP that the military and police would not deploy any forces on the state university campuses without a request from university officials, or in “cases of hot pursuit and similar occasions of emergency.”

Lorenzana has now torn up this agreement. When his letter became public on Monday, January 18, it was immediately greeted by an outcry of protests on campuses and social media. The hashtags #DefendUP and #UPFight began to go viral.

Lorenzana sharpened his threatening anti-communist rhetoric in response to the protests, issuing a statement on Tuesday in which he declared that the 1989 accord was “obsolete” and that the University of the Philippines had become a “safe haven for enemies of the state.”

The military on Wednesday seized the opportunity to deploy truckloads of heavily armed soldiers in camouflage gear to the Diliman campus under the absurd pretext that they were going to teach students about “urban gardening.”

The abrogation of the 1989 UP-Department of National Defense (DND) agreement is a marked escalation in the ongoing campaign of red-tagging and repression being conducted by the administration of the country's fascistic president, Rodrigo Duterte. Duterte has overseen the creation of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), a heavily funded government body dedicated to anti-Communist propaganda and to the persecution of anyone accused of being associated with the CPP.

Over the past four years, the Duterte administration has overseen a campaign of mass murder and repression against the poor waged by the police, military, and paramilitary groups, in the name of a “war on drugs.” More than 30,000 people have been killed.

The repressive measures of the Duterte administration are aimed above all against the emergence of mass social unrest. The fascistic and dictatorial steps of the Duterte administration are a national expression of the shift to authoritarian forms of rule by the ruling class around the globe in the context of acute social and economic crisis.

Duterte received the support of the Stalinist CPP in the initial stages of his administration. But under intense pressure from the military, and in particular Lorenzana, Duterte broke ties with the CPP and turned the murderous apparatus of the state against the organizations associated with its political leadership.

The mounting attacks against activists accused of being "communists" and against organizations tied to the political line of the CPP, expresses sharpened tensions in the Philippine ruling elite.

When the CPP’s ties with Duterte were severed, the party reoriented to his bourgeois rivals and are now working in a de facto partnership with the opposition Liberal Party and its head, Vice President Leni Robredo. The founder and ideological leader of the CPP, Jose Maria Sison, has issued multiple statements over the past year calling on restive sections of the military leadership to withdraw support from Duterte and install the Vice President in office.

The return of the Philippine military to the University of the Philippines campuses is both a salvo in the ongoing struggle between rival factions of the elite and another step towards authoritarian rule.

The moves taken by Duterte toward establishing direct military rule are far advanced, and the Philippine military is now operating in a semi-autonomous fashion. Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque told the press that the president was not consulted by Lorenzana prior the abrogration of the UP agreement. He added, however, that Lorenzana was Duterte’s “alter ego,” so “of course, the President supports the decision of Secretary Lorenzana.”