UK Conservative Party attacks “white privilege” theories, capitalises on identity politics

Thomas Scripps

The Conservative party-led House of Commons Education Committee produced a report on June 22 titled, “The Forgotten: how White working-class pupils have been let down, and how to change it.”

Its publication is another cynical move by the Tory government to capitalise on the anti-class identity politics of the affluent petty-bourgeoisie, and has been met with a storm of hypocrisy and racialist reaction in these layers.

House of Commons Education Committee, “The Forgotten: how White working-class pupils have been let down, and how to change it.” (credit: UK Parliament)

By “working class”, the report refers exclusively to pupils eligible for free school meals (FSM)—the poorest 20.8 percent of pupils in January 2021, up from 17.3 percent a year before.

The education committee noted that in 2018/19 White British children eligible for FSM recorded the poorest scores by Development Goals, Attainment 8 scores, Progress 8 scores, GCSE English and Maths pass rates, and entry to higher education of all ethnicities other than Irish Traveler and Gypsy/Roma.

Its report criticises the concept of “white privilege”, calling it “divisive” and “alienating to disadvantaged white communities” and arguing that it “may have contributed towards a systemic neglect of white people facing hardship”.

The Tory chair of the committee, Robert Halfon, told Sky News, “The concept of white privilege is entirely wrong-headed, because white working-class boys and girls from disadvantaged backgrounds under-perform compared to most other ethnic groups.”

He added, “Disadvantaged white children feel anything but privileged when it comes to education. Privilege is the very opposite to what disadvantaged white children enjoy or benefit from in an education system which is now leaving far too many behind”.

The report recommends that schools “consider whether the promotion of politically controversial terminology, including White Privilege, is consistent with their duties under the Equality Act 2010,” and calls on the Department for Education to “take steps to ensure that young people are not inadvertently being inducted into political movements”.

This document has been drawn up by a party which has imposed devastating social spending cuts year after year that are overwhelmingly responsible for “leaving far too many behind”. It is a call for antidemocratic state interference in the education system, used to advance the Tories’ right-wing, nativist appeal to the “White British” population.

But opposition to the naked hypocrisy and authoritarian and reactionary intervention of the Tory government does not imply the slightest support for the proponents of “white privilege” theories, whose racialist irrationalism the Tories have refashioned for their own purposes.

The Tory party has no monopoly on hypocrisy. Labour MP Kim Johnson and her fellow Labour members of the education committee opposed the Tories’ report and submitted an alternative document which begins, “While this inquiry began with a focus on disadvantaged White pupils (specifically, those eligible for free school meals, or FSM), the evidence that we have received clearly indicates that this is an issue of class and often regional inequalities, rather than being about ethnicity.”

Prominent Corbynite Diane Abbott wrote in the Independent, “The reality of course is that the education system has failed whole cohorts of pupils because of factors including austerity, underfunding, and efforts to homogenise the curriculum, as well as the underpayment and mistreatment of hardworking teachers and staff.”

These are representatives of a Labour Party that has dutifully implemented rafts of Tory cuts in the major urban conurbations where it holds power.

Both Johnson and Abbott accused the government of stoking a “culture war”, as did the Guardian. The newspaper editorialised, “MPs ought to be embarrassed by a stunt designed to whip up animosity without addressing real problems of inequality and disadvantage.” It quoted Maurice Mcleod, from thinktank Race on the Agenda, who stated, “Instead of honestly accepting that children from all backgrounds have been badly let down by decades of neglect, this report attempts to create unhelpful divides between children based on their race.”

Such protests are the height of political cynicism. It was not the Tory government which introduced a debate on social disadvantage devoid of class and framed entirely in terms of competing ethnicities. That work was done for them by the same forces now lambasting the Tory Party for its failure to recognise the class roots of deprivation and inequality. The right-wing has walked through the door to ethnic politics held wide open by the putative left.

For years, the Guardian and sections of the Labour Party have waged a determined campaign to racialise every aspect of political debate and social inquiry, holding “white people” and racism responsible for the class-rooted oppression suffered by ethnic minorities. Only two months ago, Labour’s shadow women and equalities secretary, Marsha de Cordova, responded to the government’s rotten Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report, commissioned after the UK’s George Floyd protests, with the outraged comment, “The report appeared to claim that socioeconomic conditions drive inequality more than racism.”

The global multi-ethnic protests against police brutality sparked by Floyd’s murder were given the same treatment. The Guardian published, “White America has an ingrained fear of blackness”; the Independent, “White people, the responsibility of ending racist systems rests on your shoulders”.

Even the pandemic, the sharpest demonstration of the common suffering of the international working class under capitalism, has been routinely described as proof of the fundamental societal division of race. The significance of COVID-19, the Guardian ’s contributors have written, is its “ultimate demonstration of the real-world impact of racism” and exposure of “how riddled Britain is with racial inequality”. A report commissioned by the Labour Party, partners in enforcing a policy of social murder with the Tory party, described coronavirus as having “exposed the devastating impact of structural racism”.

It has taken a transparent political manoeuvre by the Tory party, which poses point-blank the disadvantage suffered by the poorest white children, to force these people, who pass broadly for the “left” in British politics, into acknowledging basic class realities. But this is no road to Damascus moment. Labour and the Guardian ’s invocation of class is raised only to dismiss the education report then quickly discarded as they return to their own racialist agenda.

The Guardian rushes to turn the ethnic appeal by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government on its head, criticising the government for basing its conclusions on FSM pupils alone and claiming, “Official statistics show that for the 88% of pupils not in receipt of free meals, white British children are ahead, in GCSE English and maths, of their black Caribbean, Pakistani and Gypsy/Roma heritage counterparts.”

These are carefully chosen figures. Just under half (49.1 percent) of White children get grade 5 or above in GCSE English and Maths—higher than the groups cited by the Guardian but lower than Black African (50.7 percent) children and all Asian groups (58.3 percent) except Pakistani.

It is striking that once the focus shifts from the very poorest sections of society, there is barely a social statistic to cite on education that is not based on ethnicity, despite the Guardian itself acknowledging that “a majority (60%) of people identify as working class”.

In an earlier period, even bourgeois sociologists would speak broadly in terms of class privilege and advantage. Academic reports and government statistics would break down results according to the categories, A (upper middle class), B (middle, middle class), C1 (lower middle class), C2 (skilled working class), D (working class) and E (not working), based on the occupation of the head of household.

These classifications were informed by a sociological narrative aimed at combating the influence of Marxism and the definition of class based on ownership and control of the means of production, the bourgeoisie, and the necessity to work for this capitalist class, the proletariat. Today what is called for from the petty-bourgeois ideologists is not the distortion of a class analysis but its complete obliteration in order to better conceal and suppress the class struggle.

What social research is done in this field proves that ethnic differences are cut across and dwarfed by the influence of class. A study by academics at the London School of Economics reported last August that whereas the average child of parents in “higher professional occupations” gained eight GCSEs, the children of parents in “routine occupations” gained half as many, just four.

It is the same story with Labour’s alternative education committee report. After referring to the importance of class in its first paragraph, the authors are compelled to state: “For every £1 of White British wealth, Pakistani households have around 50p, Black Caribbean have 20p and Black African and Bangladeshi have 10p.”

What useful meaning can these cited ethnic terms possibly have? “White British wealth” is an aggregate of FSM children and billionaires like Sir James Dyson. “Pakistani households” include Pakistani-British billionaire Sir Anwar Pervez. Bangladeshi households include some of the poorest communities in the country and Bangladeshi-British multi-hundred millionaire Iqbal Ahmed OBE.

The averages show that the richest sliver of the white population holds larger fortunes than the richest sliver of the ethnic minority population. At most they indicate that a higher proportion of ethnic minorities are working class and poor. What the figures obscure is that they share this status with the vast majority of the white population. This multi-ethnic class has the shared social interest of overthrowing the whole system of capitalist inequality and exploitation and must be politically united in pursuit of that end. Dividing workers along racial lines serves to undermine that struggle and to promote the interests of a small, affluent layer of ethnic minorities who use the plight of their “racial group” as leverage for personal advancement and securing a larger slice of the wealth in the richest 10 percent of society.

This is the purpose of the “white privilege” racket, which claims that white people in general are conferred social advantages over, and are complicit in the oppression of, non-white people in general, for which whites must atone—usually by financially supporting the BAME bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie.

In the words of Kelsey Smoot, writing in the Guardian last June, white people share “culpability in White supremacy”, leading her to question, “Would they truly want to wake up tomorrow, in an America in which my life mattered just as much as theirs, if it came at the cost of all they have come to know and enjoy in the vein of White privilege?”

The answer to their complicity and guilt is “a willingness to lose things. Not just the extra $50 in one’s monthly budget by way of donating to an organization working towards racial justice. I mean palpable, incalculable loss. The loss of the charmed life associated with being a White person in America. Refusing a pay raise at one’s job and insisting that it be reallocated to co-workers of color who are undoubtedly being underpaid.”

The BBC gave a more shamefaced definition of “white privilege” in the aftermath of the education committee report, provided by American rapper JT Flowers, “You might be a white person and still be poor with a lack of access to education or face a language barrier in the workplace. It doesn't mean you can't be disadvantaged in other ways. It just means with respect to that one particular thing—your race and skin colour—you do have the luxury of not being able to think about it.”

In this account, all that is left of the concept is the facile analysis that white British people are not the subject of racism, from which is hung the filthy lie that racism flows collectively from “white people” and underlies all hardship suffered by non-whites.

There is nothing left-wing or progressive in these theories. An especially pernicious role is therefore played by the pseudo-left who attempt to give racialist politics a socialist gloss.

Writing on the education committee report, the Socialist Workers Party repeats the line of the Guardian et al with the headline, “Anti-racism isn’t to blame for Tory education failures”. The article maintains the pretence of a class perspective, while continuing to hold out an olive branch to the proponents of white privilege, employing the weasel formulation, “Theories of ‘white privilege’ are right to point to racism in society. But they don’t identify the system that produces it.” In fact, these theories identify racism as a universal and inherent divide in the working class and actively oppose any attempt at a class analysis.

The danger of the Johnson government’s increasingly strident appeal to “whites” is not that it challenges the identity politics which has been allowed to define the “left” for decades, but that this left, together with the entire Labour Party and the trade unions, has done all it can to undermine class consciousness, sow divisions in the working class and thereby prevent a unified struggle against capitalism. The construction of a mass socialist movement of the working class against all inequality and oppression depends on a root-and-branch rejection of racialism and its ideological siblings.

Delta variant surges as Irish government prepares to cut workers’ benefits

Dermot Quinn

Last week as the Delta variant of Covid continued to spread internationally, Ireland's Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, and Green Party coalition reluctantly postponed lifting the final phase of public health restrictions, scheduled for July 5, which would have seen the reopening of indoor restaurants and pubs.

The token delay in no way confronts the growing threat posed by the Delta variant, which now accounts for over 50 percent of daily infections in Ireland.

Micheál Martin (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

The National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET), the overall medical professional body advising the government, warned last week of 'a peak of deaths in August' with projections showing the variant infecting 'thousands of people per day'. Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Micheál Martin who leads Ireland's coalition government told the Dáil (parliament), 'I spoke... with Nicola Sturgeon First Minister of Scotland and she used a very telling phrase. She said Delta will rip through an unvaccinated population. All their eggs are in the vaccination basket'.

Even this was too much for Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary. The billionaire airline CEO rubbished NPHET’s warnings as a 'variant scariant' narrative in an open letter to Transport Minister Eamon Ryan. Earlier this year, O'Leary complained that NPHET was disseminating misinformation, 'scare stories' and stoking 'mass hysteria' despite much evidence that hasty opening of travel restrictions contributed to the second COVID wave.

As of July 1, there have been 5,000 deaths from Covid-19 in Ireland. A further 448 infections were reported on Thursday, with 44 hospitalised and 14 in [intensive care units. Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan warned Taoiseach Martin that despite the vaccination programme the 'black cloud of the Delta variant loomed as a clear threat... The rise in the number of cases in the past week is following a similar pattern that is being seen across a number of European countries.'

Delta is proven to be 40 to 60 percent more infectious than the Alpha strain, previously the dominant variant in Ireland. Despite this, the government, with broad support from Sinn Fein, the main parliamentary opposition, has opened up almost all workplaces and schools thereby gambling with the lives of millions of workers for the sake of profit. Only about 44 percent of Irish adults have been fully vaccinated.

The strategy from business and the ruling elite is to push the lowest paid and most exploited workers back to work. These workers are mainly young and unvaccinated. The government is also aiming to claw back from working people the greater portion of the huge debt burden the state has accrued during the pandemic.

In March, the European Commission reported that Ireland is forecast to have run up a total government debt of €241.6 billion for 2021, up almost 10 percent on 2020. This amounts to €48,291 this year per person, which is the highest across the European Union and higher than the UK. It is forecast to rise a further € 1,509 per person in 2022. Martin told a business function last week that 'the level of spending by the Government during the pandemic, is 'not sustainable' and must 'move to the next stage'.

The 'next stage' as outlined by Martin and other representatives of corporate interests will swiftly emerge as a huge attack on workers living standards and rights in order to maintain the flow of profits. Last month the government introduced a series of measures including the cutting of Covid-19 jobless benefit, increases in taxes on the family home, the lifting of eviction restrictions on landlords introduced at the start of the pandemic, and a draconian increase in the powers of the Gardaí (Police).

Last week, the Gardaí set up vehicle checkpoints (Multi Agency Vehicle Checks) targeting recipients of social welfare entitlements, including Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP). This payment was first introduced in March of 2020, to compensate those who lost all their employment due to the Covid-19. To enforce a full return to work, particularly in low paying jobs, the coalition government last month outlined its intention to cut the PUP in September and November. Workers receiving just €250 per week will see a cut of €50 euro to bring them down to a subsistence unemployment rate.

In June, as tens of thousands of workers returned to work at bars, restaurants, cafés, gyms, swimming pools, leisure centres, cinemas, theatres and more, a widespread propaganda campaign from the corporate media pushed the lie that thousands were falsely claiming PUP.

The Irish Mail on Sunday, for example, ran a front page tribute to the far right businessman and owner of the Supermac's chain, Pat McDonagh, who has attacked the meagre PUP payment to workers made jobless by the pandemic. The banner headline read, 'Supermac's Boss: 'Covid Payments claimed By Fraudsters''

While workers are facing immediate reductions in benefit, as rent and mortgage debts pile up, the government has developed a host of schemes benefiting the corporations and rich.

At the beginning of this month the coalition outlined a €3.6 billion package of spending supports to boost the Irish economy in the form of further grants to employers. Part of the package is an extension of the Emergency Wage Subsidy Scheme introduced in March 2020 at the start of the pandemic which gives a flat rate subsidy to employers. These latest generous subsidies to business can be added to a long list of grants and loans now estimated at €8.5 billion.

Danny McCoy, CEO of the Irish Business and Employers Confederation (IBEC), Ireland's largest lobby and business group, welcomed the giveaway, telling the Irish Times, 'Focus must now turn to ensuring the activation of the labour market and safely returning workers to the workplace as swiftly as possible.'

While handouts to business run to billions, there is deepening poverty in the working class. A new report from Oxfam shows the fortunes of Ireland's billionaires rising €3.3 billion since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Jim Clarken, CEO of Oxfam Ireland, told RTE news recently that 'a rich elite are riding out the pandemic in safety, while those on the frontline are struggling to pay the bills and put food on the table. In Ireland, the fallout from the pandemic on employment has disproportionately hit young adults as well as people in low-paid occupations, all of whom are more likely to be paying rent'.

Latest figures from advocacy group Social Justice Ireland predict that due to the pandemic the unemployment rate will increase by the end of this year to 390,000, or 16.1 percent of the workforce. This is far beyond the highest rate recorded during the banking crash and economic meltdown in 2008 when unemployment in Ireland peaked at 14.6 percent.

The political parties of the Irish establishment and financial elite as represented by Micheál Martin's coalition could not function without the tactical support of Sinn Féin, the main bourgeois opposition party. Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald again proved that she is a safe bet for the establishment and the financial elite when speaking in the Dáil last Wednesday. She limited her remarks on the crisis to the government merely being 'unfair' to 'young people'. The time has come to stop paying lip service to young people and to listen to them and to meet their needs. I am asking you to treat young people fairly', McDonald said '

Euro 2020 football cup linked to thousands of COVID-19 cases as delta variant sweeps Europe

Samuel Tissot

The delayed 2020 UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) Football Championship (Euro 2020) began a year late on June 11 and is now at the semi-final stage. While in previous Euro cups one nation has hosted the competition, Euro 2020 has seen 24 national teams play in 11 different cities across Europe, from Seville to Baku.

Tournament matches have been attended by over 800,000 fans despite the resurgence of COVID-19. Many of those in attendance travelled hundreds or thousands of miles to watch their team play.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson poses for a photograph outside 10 Downing Street with a giant St George's flag ahead of the England Quarter Final game against Ukraine. July 1, 2021 (Picture by Simon Dawson/No 10 Downing Street/Flickr)

Next week’s semi-final and final matches are due to be attended by over 60,000 fans each at London’s Wembley stadium, though Britain is deep into a third wave of coronavirus driven by the more deadly and more infectious delta variant.

England’s Round of 16 victory against Germany at Wembley Stadium, attended by more than 40,000 fans, led to wild celebrations of thousands of closely-packed home fans shouting and singing arm-in-arm despite the “official” implementation of social distancing within stadiums. The government pushed forward with the large attendance at matches, and the media promoted celebrations violating social distancing measures as part of the ruling class’ effort to promote a “back to normal” attitude.

Britain’s Conservative government also hopes to use the strong performance of the England team, which will play a semi-final against Denmark at Wembley Stadium on Wednesday. The intent is to raise nationalist fervour and distract from the government’s deadly herd immunity policy that has led to over 152,000 deaths where a death certificate mentions COVID-19 as one of the causes. On Saturday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson stood on a massive English flag draped across Downing Street to declare his support for the team before its quarter-final against Ukraine that evening.

On Saturday, the UK had a seven-day average of 23,115 cases, up from 13,835 a week earlier. According to the British Medical Association, COVID-19 hospitalizations in Britain have risen 55 percent over this period. On June 30, the UK saw 331 new hospitalizations from COVID-19, the most since March 18. The spread of the delta variant in Britain is a warning for what is to come on the European continent, which has an even lower vaccination rate.

London is using its higher vaccination rate compared to other European countries to give a false, anti-scientific rationalization of its herd immunity policy. New Health Secretary Sajid Javid, who aims to prematurely end all social distancing restrictions on July 19, repeated the murderous mantra of French President Emmanuel Macron, asserting in an op-ed for the Mail on Sunday, that the British population must “learn to live with COVID.”

The resurgence of the virus in Europe, driven in no small part by the Euro 2020 cup, threatens a catastrophe on a largely unvaccinated population. Only 39.7 percent of the European Union’s (EU) population have received two doses. In the wider European area, including Russia and other non-EU countries, many of which played in Euro 2020, only 24 percent are vaccinated, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Half of elders in the continent remain unprotected as well as around 40 percent of health care workers.

On Thursday, WHO regional director for Europe, Dr Hans Henri Kluge, warned: “By August, the WHO European Region will be ‘delta dominant’; but by August, the Region will not be fully vaccinated (63 percent of people are still waiting for their first jab); and in August, the WHO European Region will still be mostly restriction-free, with increasing travels and gatherings.”

Kluge added, “The three conditions for a new wave of excess hospitalizations and deaths before the autumn are therefore in place: new variants, deficit in vaccine uptake, increased social mixing.” After a 10-week decline in cases across Europe, Kluge revealed that the number of cases rose 10 percent last week.

Asked by a reporter whether Euro 2020 games were acting as “super-spreader” events, Kluge cautiously responded: “I hope not … but this can’t be excluded.”

In fact, it is already clear that stadiums have been major vectors for the spread of the virus:

*Public Health Scotland said that there had been 1,300 cases among Scottish fans who travelled to London for Scotland’s game against England.

*Finnish health authorities reported nearly 100 confirmed cases among fans who travelled to St. Petersburg—which saw 115 COVID-19 deaths on July 1—for Finland’s game against Russia.

*Danish authorities are currently trying to track down 4,000 contact cases after three fans tested positive for the delta variant after a match in Copenhagen.

The English, Swedish, Spanish, Scottish and Slovakian national football teams all have reported cases either in preparation for, or during, the tournament.

While stadiums are a major concern, these are not the only places that infections linked to Euro 2020 occur. Senior Emergency Officer for WHO Europe Catherine Smallwood raised concerns about travel to the stadium, asking, “How are people getting there? Are they travelling in large-crowded convoys of buses? Are they taking individual measures when they are doing that?” Infection rates have also been driven by large groups of fans congregating at bars, “fan zones” and private residences to watch games.

Speaking to AFP , Antoine Flahault, the director of the Institute of Global Health at the University of Geneva, said of the tournament, “if we want to spread the Delta variant around Europe then this is the way to go.”

As infections accelerate, sections of the ruling class are distancing themselves from the decision to press ahead with the tournament with tens of thousands of fans attending. In a joint press conference with Johnson, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was “very concerned” that 60,000 fans in Wembley “might be a bit too much.”

This came after Merkel’s interior minister, Horst Seehofer, called UEFA’s decision to host 42,000 fans at the June 29 Germany-England match “absolutely irresponsible,” adding: “I have the suspicion this is about commerce again.”

Merkel and Seehofer are cynically trying to distance themselves from Johnson’s brazen “herd immunity” policy, though they pursued this same deadly policy in all but name—forcing a premature reopening of schools and businesses in Germany that led to 91,032 deaths.

UEFA’s decision to go ahead with Euro 2020 was, however, undoubtedly determined by the profit interests of Europe’s multi-billion-dollar media and sporting conglomerates. According to insideworldfootball.com, revenue from Euro 2020 is expected to exceed €2.5 billion. At Euro 2016, UEFA made €847 million in profits from a smaller revenue of €1.92 billion. While figures from ticket sales are currently unavailable for Euro 2020, Euro 2016, held in France, raised €269 million from attending fans.

Similar financial calculations were behind the decision to play the Copa América football tournament, which ran at the same time as Euro 2020, in Brazil. Brazil’s fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro justified the deadly decision to host the tournament by stating, “I regret the deaths, but we have to live.”

Brazil has averaged 1,500 daily deaths throughout the tournament and now has an official tally of over 523,000 COVID-19 related deaths.

The decision taken by UEFA to push ahead with Euro 2020, without the necessary safety measures in the face of a mass resurgence of the virus, exposes the financial aristocracy’s contempt for the lives of millions of European football fans. The full support capitalist governments across Europe have given the tournament underscores their determination to allow the virus to continue spreading unchecked in the population.

Trial of far-right German soldier gets under way

Max Linhof

On May 20, the trial of Franco A., a key figure in the right-wing extremist network within Germany’s state apparatus, got underway in the Senate for State Protection at the Frankfurt Regional High Court.

The state prosecutor has accused the 32-year-old first lieutenant in the Bundeswehr (German Army) of preparing an attack that would have posed a serious threat to the state, i.e., a terrorist attack. The indictment charges that the defendant planned to carry out the attack while posing as a refugee.

Franco A. in an interview with RT Germany (screenshot)

Franco A. is also accused of breaching firearms regulations as well as laws controlling military-grade weapons and explosives. He is also charged with fraud and theft. The trial is expected to last until the end of October.

The accused allegedly planned and prepared an attack on the human rights activist Annetta Kahane, a figure targeted by the neo-Nazi far-right. Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (Social Democratic Party—SPD) and the vice president of the German parliament, Claudia Roth (Greens), were allegedly also possible targets.

Franco A. was arrested in early 2017 as he sought to remove a weapon from a secret stash in a disabled toilet at Vienna airport. When his fingerprints were taken, it was discovered that he was leading a double life. He served as an officer in the German-French brigade in Illkirch, Alsace, but was also registered under the name David Benjamin as a Syrian refugee. He was allocated an apartment in Erding in Bavaria and approved for social welfare payments.

More than 1,000 rounds of ammunition and 51 explosive devices were subsequently found in his cellar. The soldier was an expert in weapons and combat techniques. He previously went through an eight-year training course in jungle combat. He learned how to plan commando operations, ambushes and surprise attacks.

Despite the seriousness of the charges, Franco A. is a free man. Germany’s Federal Court overturned the arrest warrant against him in the autumn of 2017.

In 2018, the Frankfurt Regional High Court refused to hear the charges against Franco A. The court justified this by claiming that he had more than seven months to carry out his attack. As he had not done so, there was no adequate basis for the accusations, the court asserted. It took an appeal from the state prosecutor to the Federal Court to compel the Frankfurt Regional High Court to bring the case to trial.

It is significant that the charges avoid referring to the “formation of a terrorist association,” although there is evidence that Franco A. had accomplices. As was the case in the trials of the National Socialist Underground (NSU) and the murderer of politician Walter Lübcke, the myth of a “lone wolf” or “a few bad apples” is being asserted, even though there is a wide-ranging neo-Nazi network in the military and state apparatus with which Franco A. has close ties.

During the first days of the trial, Franco A. behaved with a considerable degree of self-confidence and cynicism. He used the courtroom for right-wing extremist propaganda. He accused German Chancellor Angela Merkel of breaking her pledge of office that requires her to protect her people from harm, because in 2015 she allowed thousands of refugees to enter the country. He said he posed as a refugee to find out first-hand how the asylum system in Germany is being abused. This was the act, he declared, of a “courageous civilian and citizen.”

Franco A. rejected the allegations that he was a right-wing extremist and had planned terrorist attacks. He avoided answering questions about the origins and purpose of his weaponry.

Prior to the trial, Franco A. gave extensive interviews to the New York Times, L e Figaro and the “Russia Today” television channel. During breaks in the trial, he addressed the media.

“He evidently feels very secure,” remarked Annette Ramelsberger, the court reporter for the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Secure in the knowledge, one must add, that his backers in the state apparatus will not hang him out to dry.

The defence also conducted itself extremely aggressively. As the trial began, it described the proceedings as character assassination, a hate campaign and stigmatisation of the accused. Defence lawyer Moritz Schmitt-Fricke elaborated on this position by declaring that the federal government “in a quasi-autocratic manner” let too many refugees into the country and now wished to hold the person to account who had tried to draw attention to this wrong.

The defence sought to counter the prosecutor’s accusation that Franco A. has had “a Volkish-nationalist and racist outlook for several years,” and harbours “a special dislike for people of the Jewish faith.” Toward this end, he presented dozens of statements from family members, friends, acquaintances and former teachers. The accused is cosmopolitan, has an intense sense of justice, is “very conservative, but by no means militant,” they claimed. Without a basic commitment to democracy, he would “never have become an officer in the German Army,” they added.

However, many of the people cited by the defence are themselves from the far-right milieu. And numerous documents attest to Franco A.’s racist and nationalist outlook.

His master’s thesis, which he submitted to the Saint-Cyr French military university in 2014, was rejected on the basis that it was a “radical nationalist, racist appeal.” In it, Franco A. advanced the ideal of a homogeneous people with a single people’s will, to which the individual must subordinate himself. He opposed “mixed marriages” and denounced equality for women on the grounds that it “distorts” the role of the woman and damages the family. He attacked the United Nations’ Human Rights Charter and made openly anti-Semitic statements. He praised British Holocaust denier David Irving and blustered about a global Jewish conspiracy.

Franco A.’s obvious right-wing extremist views were covered up by his German superiors at the time, who promoted his military career.

Franco A.’s practice of documenting his appearances and ideas in pictures and recordings also confirms his right-wing extremist views. Over 33,000 chat messages, videos and audio recordings reveal the internal life of a neo-Nazi. He speaks in monologues about foreigners who want to murder Germans and concludes that he must kill them first. One of his friends calls in a chat message for a nuclear bomb to be used on refugees. Franco A. responds, “Keep note of that for later.”

Among the 129 recordings found on Franco A.’s phone are self-composed songs, radio extracts and speeches and addresses to soldiers that Franco A. intends to deliver one day. In addition, audio memos reveal his anti-Semitic and nationalist views. Extracts from these were read out by the prosecution last week. They included statements such as, “Jews and Germans are not the same people,” and “Hitler stands above everything.”

Franco A. admitted to the court that along with the pistol concealed in Vienna, he possesses three additional high-performance, illegal weapons, but he refused to say where he got them and where they currently are. One of the weapons is a G3 rapid-fire machine gun, which is used by the German army as a standard weapon.

He justified his possession of the weapons by saying he was preparing for a potential crisis, such as a conflict of Western European states with Russia or with Islamic State fighters. For this reason, he said, he joined the South chat group run by the former Special Forces soldier Andre S.

The South chat group is part of the so-called “Hannibal Network,” where dozens of elite soldiers and police officers have gathered to hoard weapons, draft death lists and prepare for “Day X,” on which political opponents are to be rounded up and murdered. Andre S. (alias Hannibal), who built the network, has neither been arrested nor charged. As in the case of Franco A., the Frankfurt Regional High Court found that there was not adequate evidence to support a suspicion of terrorism. The state prosecutor is continuing to consider possible charges.

It also emerged in court that Franco A. used numerous email and telephone identities. He justified this by referring to the prospect of a breakdown in public order.

The fact that Franco A. planned terrorist attacks under the false identity of a refugee is strongly suggested by lists and notes he authored. He wrote, among other things: “Antifa group: have an asylum seeker throw a grenade, then film it;” “blow up the Rothschild Stone in FFM (Frankfurt am Main);” and, “If we wait any longer, then they will have robots, and then it won’t matter if we can win the people to us.”

In court, Franco A. claimed he could no longer remember some of the notes, and he justified others with absurd arguments. He said, for example, that during his school days he was very interested in cinema, and the refugee with a grenade was merely an idea for a film.

Annetta Kahane, on whom Franco A. spied as a potential target, declared in a statement prior to the legal proceedings: “The trial should be understood as an opportunity to uncover armed networks and thoroughly root them out. Unfortunately, after all the experiences of recent years, our expectations are very low.”

In the Munich NSU trial and the Frankfurt trial for the murder of Lübcke, the courts did everything they could to conceal the far-right cliques within the state apparatus. While the immediate perpetrators were punished, their backers in the political establishment, the judiciary, the police and the intelligence agencies remained untouched.

New laws legalize police state operations in Germany (Part 2)

Wolfgang Weber

Germany’s grand coalition government has used the last parliamentary sessions of the legislative period to massively expand the powers of the police and secret services. Largely unnoticed by the public, the Bundestag has passed a total of nine laws and amendments. The first part of this article examined the new laws pertaining to the country’s domestic and foreign intelligence services. The second part deals with the remaining seven laws and law amendments. The final part provides a political assessment.

The new Federal Police Act

Just as Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND, is being upgraded into an all-powerful super-intelligence-service, the Federal Police (Bundespolizei) is being transformed into a super police. The corresponding law was passed by the Bundestag on June 10, 2021.

Originally founded after WWII as a strictly border police force, the Federal Police was given “special policing duties” in the interior of the country in the 1990s, especially with regard to rail, shipping and air traffic. Today, with 51,000 employees, it is the largest police authority in Germany. It includes the anti-terrorist special unit GSG-9 and the country’s riot police, which is deployed against demonstrations and other protest actions. It reports directly to the German Interior Ministry.

Headquarters of the BND in Berlin Mitte (Image: Olaf Kosinsky / CC-BY-SA 3.0)

The new law greatly expands the powers of the Federal Police with a smooth transition to empowering intelligence activities. Like the secret services, the Federal Police may now also deploy state trojans—government made spyware—on social media and telecommunications services. What is striking is that the police can do so although the persons affected may have committed no crime, i.e., the police can decide to launch a cyber-attack without a judicial order within the framework of a preliminary investigation being required. In the same way, they can also identify and locate mobile phone SIM cards and communication sources.

The Federal Police is now armed with far-reaching powers of seizure and prosecution to use against foreigners. They are allowed to arrest them inside the country, e. g. on trains or at railway stations, and immediately transfer them to custody pending deportation without a court order. Regarding the population in Germany as a whole, the Federal Police is empowered to ban individual citizens from staying in certain areas and even entire localities, again without any judicial authorisation. From there, it is only a small step to the reintroduction of “protective custody” (Schutzhaft), the arbitrary incarceration without judicial order and control as it was used under the Nazis en masse by the SA, SS and Gestapo against opponents of the regime.

Finally, the law also empowers the Federal Police to transfer data of citizens under surveillance, which it has received via its own cyberattacks or from other intelligence services and state authorities, to the police and intelligence services of other EU states.

In order to close all loopholes in the surveillance and police control of the population, the Bundestag has passed six other laws in addition to the laws dealt with in Part 1 and the above Federal Police Law. All these laws drastically restrict democratic rights.

Law on the Further Development of the Code of Criminal Procedure

According to this law, passed on June 10, 2021, the police and secret services are allowed to conduct searches of apartments at night—a measure previously not permitted. This makes it possible for the police or secret services to surprise people when they are working at night on an open computer that is not protected by a password.

In addition, the scanning of car licence plates in public traffic and their subsequent storage for tracing purposes is now permitted. This opens the path to other uses of this data and its dissemination to other state agencies or right-wing extremist circles within and outside the police authorities.

Copyright Service Providers Act

This law was passed on May 20, 2021. It implements the EU Copyright Directive and obliges all major internet platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, etc., to automatically check all content uploaded with upload filters from August this year. The companies are then obliged to block such content if it violates copyright laws.

Up until now, internet platforms had to check and, when necessary, delete possible illegal content only after receiving concrete evidence of violations. Now platforms must monitor all uploads with suitable filters and automatically delete content presumed to be illegal, without any detailed investigation and/or consultation with the user.

The grand coalition has thus capitulated to pressure from major music labels and corporations which seek to maximise their profits in this manner. At the same time, the new law creates new technical preconditions for authoritarian surveillance measures and censorship of the internet.

Inventory Data Disclosure Act

According to this law of March 26, 2021, telecommunications services and telemedia providers such as WhatsApp, eBay, Facebook, Google or YouTube are obliged to hand over a user’s personal data to the police and secret services. This includes not only passwords, PINs and PUKs, IP addresses, but also data on websites visited, the frequency of such visits, etc.

The Federal Constitutional Court had declared the previous version of this law to be unconstitutional in May 2020, but hardly anything has changed in the new law. Police and intelligence services now only have to give a “grounded” reason for their request, which can include such catch-all categories as “endangering the constitutional democracy” or “aspirations hostile to the constitution.”

Act to Strengthen Security in the Passport, Identity Card and Aliens Document System and eID Act

On November 5, 2020, the obligation to store fingerprints in all identity cards was introduced. The measure was presented as an addition to the biometric data of an ID card holder, which would only be recorded in a decentralised manner. However, six months later, on May 21, 2021, the Electronic Identity Proof (eID) Act followed, legalising the central storage of all biometric data and personal details.

This law initially allows all biometric data and a person's signature to be transferred to a mobile device such as a smartphone. This was also presented as a “boon for the user” and facilitate the digitalisation of state administration. However, data protection experts emphasise that this data would thus be accessible to the secret services and police authorities via the insertion of spyware.

At the last minute before the law was passed, the grand coalition went even further: an amendment allows Germany’s individual states to collect all this eID data in central state databases—a prerequisite for eventually transferring it to a national database and an EU data centre.

Law on the Further Development of the Central Register of Foreigners

Data centralisation and surveillance take on a particularly perfidious character with this law, which was passed in its third reading on June 9 and still has to pass Germany’s second house, the Bundesrat.

Since 2016, all personal data, such as name, date of birth, date of entry, vaccination status, and biometric data such as photos and fingerprints of 11.4 million people have been stored in the Central Register of Foreigners (AZR). Of this total, 1.8 million are persons seeking protection in Germany from persecution and war. The data storage, including fingerprints, also applies to children from the age of six.

Now all of this information is being “developed further” by storing in complete length all of an asylum seeker’s documents—his or her application, transcripts of interrogations, court decisions. These documents include very private and often intimate information, e.g. on sexual orientation, political views, state of health, etc. The data from the AZR is then available at the push of a button to hundreds of authorities, first and foremost the secret services and the federal police, but also employment agencies, social and youth welfare offices and registration authorities. Until now, the passing on of such information was “only” possible upon request.

According to the government, the aim of the law is to massively speed up the identification and deportation of “undesired” foreigners and refugees by coordinating the activities of all state authorities.

Many human rights organisations, including Pro Asyl and Médecins Sans Frontières, have protested against this inhumane practice, which is reminiscent of the registration and biometric measurement of Jews, Sinti and Roma, disabled people and other minorities persecuted by the Nazis. They have urgently warned that such confidential data thus becomes virtually public and can be used to expose refugees to the propaganda and persecution of far-right networks in Germany or, in the case of deportation, the authorities of their home country.

A conspiracy of all parties represented in the Bundestag

Thirty years after the reunification of Germany and the reintroduction of capitalism in East Germany were celebrated as triumphs for “freedom” and “democracy,” these new laws have created the formal legal basis for a surveillance and police state that makes the activities of the GDR’s Stasi and judiciary look amateur in comparison.

The government led by Angela Merkel was able to rely not only on the support of the coalition parties—the CDU, CSU and SPD, but on an alliance of all parties represented in the Bundestag, from the far right Alternative for Germany to the Greens and the Left Party.

Notwithstanding occasional “critical” comments, the Greens and the Left Party also support the strengthening of the armed state apparatus. This explains why the drafting and passing of the laws have taken place without a murmur. There were no appearances on TV talk shows to oppose the laws and no protest demonstrations, as had taken place a few years ago against the new tougher state police laws or the revamped BND law. Instead, there was only deafening silence.

This is not because of any decline of public opposition. On the contrary. Yet in the past the Greens and the Left Party had partly supported protests against repressive laws in order to keep opposition under control and steer it into the dead end of appeals directed to the Federal Constitutional Court. Today these same parties are fully integrated into government policy and the state apparatus.

The Greens are involved in 11 and the Left Party in three of Germany’s separate 16 state governments. In Baden-Württemberg and Thuringia, these parties fill the post of state premier. They could have easily defeated the laws by vetoing them in Germany’s second chamber, the Bundesrat. Nothing of the sort happened. In the event of becoming part of the next federal government following this year’s federal election, the Greens and the Left Party will do nothing to abolish these laws or disband the secret services. The Greens go so far as to explicitly advocate the use of state trojans in their election manifesto.

In Germany’s leading media outlets there have been hardly any reports or critical comments about the dismantling of basic democratic rights associated with the new laws. The journalist Heribert Prantl, who used to make a name for himself by commenting on such developments, now proposes the complete abolition of the post war separation of police and secret services. In his regular column in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Prantl writes: “I advocate integrating the Verfassungsschutz into the police. The police have state security departments; that’s where the Verfassungsschutz belongs.” If that would be implemented, then it remains only to “integrate” the names as well into Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo).

The working class is facing a veritable conspiracy of all the parties represented in the Bundestag, the media and the state apparatus, working towards the establishment of a dictatorial regime. What is driving them to do this?

As is the case across the globe, the profound class divisions between the richest families and the working population has penetrated the consciousness of broad strata of the population in Germany. The 90,000 deaths in Germany caused by the official COVID-19 pandemic policy of “profits before life,” the catastrophic social consequences of the pandemic for broad, mainly already poor strata of the population, the announcement of hundreds of thousands of layoffs and plant closures in many industries are rapidly fermenting opposition and anger directed against the all-party coalition government and the capitalist profit system.

According to a February poll by the Civey polling institute, only 31 percent of respondents were satisfied with political developments in Germany, while 53 percent were somewhat or very dissatisfied. A month earlier, 38 percent had given a positive verdict and 45 percent a negative one.

The results are also revealing when respondents were asked what were the most important social and political problems. Just 11 percent replied that immigration was the most important problem, while 9 percent declared it was domestic security. On the other hand, 33 percent regarded the threat to life and health and the danger of poverty, above all of poverty in old-age, to be the most pressing problems, while 23 percent responded with unemployment or the danger of losing one’s job.

Such results stand in sharp contrast to the AfD-type xenophobic propaganda employed by the German government to justify its police and secret service laws. The poll figures indicate that profound social upheavals are on the agenda.

For 75 years, the German bourgeoisie was able to suppress the class struggle with the help of the social democratic trade unions, the SPD, the East German Stalinist bureaucracy and the Left Party. This period is now over. In the face of the ruthless imposition of the profit interests of a tiny minority of billionaires and millionaires against the vital interests of millions, strikes, mass protests and revolutionary struggles by the working class are breaking out all over the world.

In Germany, as in all other countries in Europe and around the world, the ruling class is determined to defend its profit system and immense wealth with the use of force, intensified exploitation, war and dictatorship. But it confronts opposition from a population in which the memory of two world wars commenced by the German bourgeoisie and the barbaric Nazi dictatorship is deeply rooted.

Surge in homelessness underway with ending of the evictions ban for renters

Barry Mason

Following the lifting of the ban on bailiff-led evictions by the UK Conservative government on May 31, a surge in the numbers of homeless is a certainty.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson brought in the ban on evictions at the beginning of the pandemic, seeking to placate the growing anger of workers facing the threat of losing their homes as a result of being laid off or on reduced pay after being furloughed.

A homeless person sleeping on Euston Road in London last winter (credit: WSWS)

Homelessness has been on the increase year on year in England for years. Just before the pandemic, the numbers of homeless households increased again, with the annual report by homeless charity Crisis noting that it had shot up from 207,600 in 2018 to over 219,000 at the end of 2019.

The lifting of the eviction ban, delayed several times, was central to the government’s determination to have no further lockdowns and reopen the economy in two weeks’ time on July 19—regardless of the resurgence of the pandemic through the Delta variant.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation released a survey the same day as the lifting of the ban, which showed around 400,000 renting households (representing five percent of renters) had already been served an eviction notice, or been told they may be evicted, The survey revealed that in addition around 450,000 households were currently in rent arrears, of which 18 percent had arrears of more than four months. Landlords have to give only four weeks’ notice of eviction to tenants more than four months in arrears of rent. Around one million renters (11 percent of the total), half being families with children were worried about being evicted in the coming three months, the survey found.

Workers face other pressures which will intensify an already precarious situation. The government furlough, job retention scheme which provided 80 percent of the wages (up to a maximum of £2,500) of workers laid off during the pandemic is due to finish September 30. From July 1, the state will pay just 70 percent of wages up to £2,187.50, with employers being asked to pay the rest, adding to workers insecurity, with employers no doubt considering further layoffs as a result.

In addition, the £20 a week upgrading of the Universal Credit welfare payment paid in the course of the pandemic will also end in September.

Despite the ban on evictions during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, staggering numbers of people were still made homeless. An Observer newspaper analysis published June 13 found that around 130,000 households became homeless over that period. The newspaper analysed government data, from around 70 percent of local authorities, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. It showed 132,362 households were owed “relief duty”, meaning they were assessed as already homeless. A further 106,000 were assessed as being owed “prevention duty” meaning while not legally homeless they were at risk of being so.

Housing charity Shelter chief executive, Polly Neate, said of the figure, “The ban didn’t stop tens of thousands from facing homelessness. During the pandemic, the most common triggers for homelessness were no longer being able to stay with friends or family, losing a private tenancy, and domestic abuse.”

A spokesperson from the Acorn tenants’ union told the newspaper, “The government’s commitment to tackling the crisis of homelessness has repeatedly been shown to exist only in word and not in action… Homelessness isn’t an unavoidable natural phenomenon: it can be solved if the political will exists to do so.”

Even worse levels of homelessness are on the horizon. Earlier this year a survey by housing charity Shelter revealed over six million adults, one in seven, feared becoming homeless. Adults renting in the private sector predominated with over a quarter fearing loss of their home. In addition, half of private renters experienced mental stress about their housing situation.

Shelter found that “24% of private renters have had to borrow money to pay their rent, 18% have cut back on food or skipped meals to pay their rent, 12% have cut back on heating their home to pay their rent.”

According to debt counselling charity, StepChange, a black hole of rent arrears to the tune of £360 million has been built up during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. It has called on the government to provide grants and interest free loans to tenants to avoid a tsunami of evictions.

Writing just prior to the lifting of the eviction ban, StepChange CEO, Phil Andrew stated, 'The rental eviction suspension was the last lifeline for many renters, who have been among the groups worst hit by the pandemic. The number of private renters in arrears has doubled since the start of the pandemic to 460,000 people. With evictions now resuming, many will be facing an uncertain future without additional financial support.

“Support from Government, like furlough and benefit uplifts, has been important in helping people through the pandemic, but not sufficient to keep many renters out of arrears. There are clear gaps in support which have seen a £360m black hole of rent debt build up over the course of the pandemic.”

As a result of the financial hit, landlords are concerned over the level of rent arrears built up over the course of the pandemic. The National Residential Landlords Association is calling on the government to establish a £200 million to help tenants in rent arrears. Chief executive of the landlords' association, Ben Beadle, spoke out on the scale of tenants in arears in comments to the parliamentary Work and Pensions Committee on June 9. He said, “Research shows 82 percent of renters are in arrears who were not in arrears before the pandemic. Many of these [people] are ineligible for housing allowance or discretionary payments.

“There is nothing really there [in funding terms] for people who haven’t been in arrears before but need a short, sharp injection of funds to help them sustain their tenancy, which is in the interests of everyone frankly.”

With the virus in no way under control-- new infections were above 20,000 in six out of seven days last week-- Scotland’s tenant’s union Living Rent raised the health implications of forcing vast numbers of people out of their homes. The organisation told Scottish Housing News last month, “Throughout the past fifteen months, our homes have been our frontline defence against the virus. Preventing eviction therefore remains of the utmost importance to ensure that tenants are not forced from their homes both in the context of a public health emergency, and the uncertain long-term economic consequences we face in recovery.”