Class struggles mount in Turkey after earthquake disaster

Hasan Yıldırım

The total confirmed loss of life in the February 6 earthquakes that shook Turkey and Syria exceeded 51,000 yesterday, as a magnitude 5.6 aftershock rocked Malatya. At least one person died and more than 100 were injured. Experts say aftershocks in the region could continue for a year.

People who lost their houses in the devastating earthquake, sit outside their tent at a makeshift camp, in Iskenderun city, southern Turkey, on Feb. 14, 2023. [AP Photo/Hussein Malla]

With countless buildings and workplaces damaged and workers lacking housing and other basic needs, the capitalist class is forcing workers in the quake zone to work, demanding that production continues unabated. In response, workers are resisting this onslaught with wildcat strikes. Even before the quake, millions of workers were struggling against the extraordinary cost of living, as official inflation exceeded 80 percent.

Around 600 workers at the construction site of the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant in Mersin walked off the job last week, demanding a wage increase. Workers at the Russian-built site, which will be Turkey’s first nuclear power plant, stopped working on Wednesday after their demand for a 30 percent wage increase was rejected.

Intens Construction, another company operating at the same construction site, responded to workers’ demand for a wage increase by firing those who had gone to the earthquake zone to help.

Workers who went to the earthquake zone in solidarity and to participate in search and rescue operations said that when they returned, their entry cards were not issued. No executive gave them an explanation. “We asked for equipment for the earthquake and were not given it, and now they are firing us for going to help,” a worker told Sol Haber.

“They went to the earthquake zone with the call of the main company. They have arrived at the earthquake zone before the state, but they are fired. Is this right?” he said to the daily Evrensel.

Workers in the affected area are increasingly driven into struggle. An Iskur İplik thread worker in the Dulkadiroğlu district of Kahramanmaraş told Evrensel: “There was a fire in the factory because of collapsed floors [due to the quakes]. Other factories in the neighborhood also collapsed, but there were no casualties.”

The worker added that they are forced to work in unsafe factory buildings: “The whole place is shaking. What will happen if a concrete block falls on me in a new earthquake? If I lose an arm or a leg, management will say ‘it’s not my problem.’ Who will give me my rights?”

Shortly afterwards, a worker forced to work in a badly-damaged metal factory in the same district was killed and four others injured in a collapse. The company boss reportedly had forced workers to take the remaining products out of the factory.

A 23-year-old worker at the Haliloğlu weaving factory in Gaziantep, an industrial city in the earthquake zone, told the Gerçek Gündem that after the 6.4 magnitude earthquake in Hatay on February 20, the supervisor told them, “Get used to these earthquakes, get back to your machines.”

A worker from the Şireci textile factory in Gaziantep said the columns of the factory where he worked cracked after the earthquakes, but they were covered with plaster and workers were called in to work. The factory had sent a message promising 2,000 lira in aid to persuade workers who did not want to come to work.

Another worker at Şireci said, “Our factory exports to Russia. Trucks are waiting at the gate. The management has the ambition to keep the business going… The bosses are fine with it… It’s like in the military when they put the infantry in front, ‘let’s win this war, at any cost.’”

In Malatya, the majority of Mil-May textile workers did not go to work despite threats from management. On February 16, the company sent a message to the workers threatening them with dismissal without compensation if they did not continue working. Workers in textile factories in Adıyaman also said that their employers had called them to ask if they would return to work.

In many places, workers launched wildcat strikes, refusing to work in buildings damaged in the quake and facing dangerous new aftershocks. Workers at Şireci textile, Kaplanser carpet and Gür thread factories were among them.

Amid this growing backlash from workers, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan issued a decree banning layoffs and introducing short-time working allowances for the affected area. Although the decree purportedly bans “layoffs” in the region, companies can dismiss workers by paying a fine of only one gross minimum wage.

For those who do not benefit from short-time working or unemployment allowance and remain unemployed, the Unemployment Insurance Fund will pay a very inadequate sum of 133 Turkish liras (TL) per day or around 4,000 TL (US$210) per month, during the state of emergency. The workers will be covered by General Health Insurance. However, the poverty line for a family of four already exceeds 30,000 TL (US$1,590).

This decree actually strengthens the hand of corporations. A similar decree was issued after the COVID-19 pandemic began. The “ban on dismissal” does not provide job security. It allows employers to dismiss workers for reasons such as “failure to comply with the rules of morality and goodwill” and “closure of the workplace” in the Labor Code.

Moreover, workers can be dismissed on trumped-up grounds, without notice or severance pay. Those who find a new job because the short-time working allowance is insufficient and want to start a new life outside the affected area cannot benefit from severance pay.

The capitalist class and the political establishment do not want to allow the earthquake disaster, which has caused massive destruction and loss of life, to stop the wheels of production and thus cause a prolonged disruption in the extraction of profit from workers. Companies are more worried about the loss of labor power than the social destruction faced by masses of workers. It is estimated that 3 or 4 million people have migrated from the 11 provinces in the affected region.

Hikmet Çinçin, the chair of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Antakya, one of the cities hardest hit by the quakes, told Ekonomim.com: “Businesses need to maintain their minimum human resources to survive. I think the healthy male population should not leave the city.”

Biden’s program for mass hunger: Food stamps being cut back for 42 million

Patrick Martin

Food stamp benefits are being reduced across the board Wednesday, with 42 million Americans, all of them poor and many of them children, seeing cuts ranging from $95 to $235 a month per household. The average per capita payment will fall to $6.10 a day, or about $2 a meal.

This monstrous attack on the most vulnerable in American society is being carried through on a bipartisan basis. An emergency increase of food stamp benefits enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic was ended, effective March 1, 2023, by the omnibus budget bill passed by Congress last December and signed into law by President Biden.

Further cuts for the poorest Americans are already in the pipeline, either as part of the budget legislation or because of Biden’s decision to end the Public Health Emergency (PHE) and declare the COVID-19 pandemic over, effective May 11, 2023. This declaration flies in the face of the grim reality that hundreds continue to die every day from COVID-19 in the US alone and thousands worldwide.

The cuts will include the restart of eligibility determination for food stamps, Medicaid and other social benefits, which was halted in March 2020 when the eruption of the pandemic compelled the Trump administration to declare a national emergency. Hundreds of thousands of families and individuals will be cut off month by month and millions by the end of the year.

The reduction in food stamps (officially SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) actually began on February 1, when 18 states, all of them Republican-controlled, began the cuts as soon as it was legally possible. The one month phase-in of the cuts ends March 1, when 32 states plus the District of Columbia, Guam and the US Virgin Islands, will put them in place.

The numbers affected on March 1, state by state, are staggering. The top 16 include: California, 2.93 million people; New York, 1.61 million; Texas, 1.34 million; Illinois, 1.06 million; Pennsylvania, 1.04 million; North Carolina, 813,000; Michigan, 705,000; Ohio, 673,000; Massachusetts, 629,000; Washington, 518,000; Virginia, 470,000; Oregon, 416,000; Alabama, 393,000; New Jersey, 388,000; Maryland, 360,000; and Wisconsin, 347,000.

The food stamp cuts are particularly perverse and reactionary because they take place under conditions of high inflation in food prices. According to the US Department of Agriculture, food prices rose by 11.4 percent in 2022 overall, faster last year than in 2021. Eggs led the way, up 32.2 percent, in part because of the avian flu epidemic. Fats and oils were up 18.5 percent, poultry was up 14.6 percent, other meat up 14.2 percent. Cereals and bakery products were up 13 percent.

Millions of low income people, most of them drawn from the “working poor,” must now pay these higher prices from a food stamp allotment that has been slashed significantly and will stay there. The Congressional Budget Office projects that overall food stamp outlays will fall this year because of the cutoff of emergency benefits and remain flat for the next decade.

The result, according to the Food Research and Action Center, a research and lobbying group in Washington, is that millions will go over a “hunger cliff.” The organization warned, “The steepest cliff will be for older adults at the minimum benefit level who will have their monthly SNAP benefits fall from $281 to $23.” 

Mass hunger will grow, and there will be increasing demand on the pathetically inadequate resources of food banks and other charities. In Georgia, where the cuts have already taken effect, the Atlanta Community Food Bank reported a 34 percent increase in visits.

The Biden administration has declared that Russia is guilty of “crimes against humanity” in the war in Ukraine. Meanwhile, the American government is carrying out what can only be called a “crime against humanity” within the United States. But there have been no presidential speeches about the cuts to food stamps, and no “courageous” secret visits to Michigan, Mississippi or West Virginia for the president to show his solidarity and sympathy with those struggling to survive. That is because Biden himself is the author of this crime, along with those he likes to call his “Republican friends.”

Biden’s war against Russia and his war against the poor and the working class at home are directly connected. The US government has already spent $110 billion on the war against Russia in Ukraine, which was deliberately provoked by the expansion of NATO through Eastern Europe to Russia’s borders. This is roughly the same as the $113 billion annual cost of the entire SNAP program, and more than triple the amount that will be “saved” through the cutbacks being imposed on March 1. 

The total number of Americans affected by the food stamps cutoff, 42 million, is even larger than the population of Ukraine, 39 million. The US ruling elite cares nothing about either one. The people of Ukraine are being used as cannon fodder for a war against Russia that has been instigated by Washington as part of its drive to dominate the Eurasian land mass. The recipients of food stamps are being further impoverished in order to pay for that war and provide the even greater sums required for the worldwide operations of the American military machine, including an impending war with China. 

There are no screaming newspaper headlines or emergency bulletins on cable news about the impending disaster for 42 million Americans, who would comprise the largest state in the country if taken as a unit. Not a single congressional leader, Democratic or Republican, has issued a statement of protest. That is, of course, because they all agreed to this policy with their votes last December.

Particular note should be taken of the silence from the so-called left wing of the Democratic Party. Senator Bernie Sanders has said nothing. On his Senate website, one can find him declaring that food stamp cuts by the Republican administration of Donald Trump were “unconscionable.” But when the cuts come now under the Democratic administration of Joe Biden, the self-proclaimed “democratic socialist” loses his voice.

Likewise, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her “squad” of House members, who belong to or are supported by the pseudo-left Democratic Socialists of America, have said nothing against the food stamp cuts. Ocasio-Cortez too denounced the food stamp cuts by Trump, declaring that the program was vital to working people, and that her own family “may have starved” without it. But under Democrat Joe Biden, and with a six-figure congressional salary, the starving masses are no longer her concern.

Zionist settlers carry out murderous pogrom on Palestinian town

Jean Shaoul

In the most violent settler attack on Palestinians in decades, 400 Israeli vigilantes went on the rampage in Huwara, a town close to the northern city of Nablus in the West Bank, Sunday evening. At least one Palestinian was killed and more than 100 were injured on the pogrom-style attack.

There were horrific scenes of settlers, some masked and carrying guns and other weapons, setting fire to scores of homes and shops, destroying 35 and damaging at least 40 more. They torched more than 400 cars and destroyed agricultural property, leaving the town aflame for hours afterwards. Nine Palestinian families had to be rescued from their homes, according to Israel’s public broadcaster, Channel 12 news.

Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers stand next to a damaged Palestinian building in the town of Hawara, near the West Bank city of Nablus, February 27, 2023. Scores of Israeli settlers went on a violent rampage in the northern West Bank, setting cars and homes on fire. Palestinian officials say one man was killed and four others were badly wounded. [AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg]

Palestinian health authorities said that a 37-year-old man had been shot and killed by Israeli fire. Two people were wounded by gunfire, a third was stabbed and a fourth was beaten with an iron bar. Ninety-five others were being treated for teargas inhalation, stabbings and beatings. Settlers also attacked other towns in the area, as well as Ramallah and Salfit.

One Israeli commentator made the comparison with Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass,” the state-orchestrated pogrom carried out by the Nazis against the Jews in Germany in 1938.

The intention of the attackers is to provoke a wider conflagration and create the basis for stepped up ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the West Bank and possibly an all-out war by Israel.

The attack came in the wake of the killing by a Palestinian of two Israeli brothers who lived in one of the nearby settlements that surround Huwara as they drove through the town earlier Sunday morning. It had been widely trailed on social media, with settlers announcing a rally through the town, posting flyers and giving out leaflets calling for revenge.

Despite this, the constant military patrols in the area and the regional headquarters of the Samaria just two minutes away, neither the Border Police nor the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) deployed troops to stop the vigilantes. As in all previous settler attacks, those soldiers that were there simply stood by, protecting the vigilantes not the victims. The next day, the streets were empty, bar the settlers who chanted racist slogans and gave the thumbs up signal, taunting the residents.

Sunday’s violence caps weeks of escalating violence and criminality by Israeli security forces that have shot 67 Palestinians, including 13 children, as they carried out mass operations aimed at arresting alleged terrorists, including a Palestinian gunman who killed seven Israelis in a settlement in East Jerusalem.

These killing sprees, extra-judicial executions, are provocations designed to precipitate revenge attacks on Jewish Israelis. They come just two months after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s return to power at the head of a coalition of fascist, racist and ultra-orthodox religious nationalist parties that are determined to annex the Palestinian territories that Israel has occupied illegally since the 1967 Arab Israeli war.

Settler attacks on Palestinians, their homes, property and land, in the occupied territories, a recurrent feature for decades, spreading to attacks on Israel’s own Palestinian citizens in the last year, have escalated in tandem. They have been aided and abetted by the most advanced military machine in the Middle East.

Instead of protecting the Palestinians as required under international law, Israeli soldiers have fired tear gas grenades, rubber bullets and live rounds to drive Palestinians from their own lands and sometimes even joined the settlers in their attacks.

In 2022, Israeli security forces injured more than 2,000 Palestinians in settler-related incidents, four times more than in 2021. There was a near 50 percent increase in settler violence in 2022 compared to 2021. The last weekend in January saw 144 settler attacks on Palestinians and their property in just the northern part of the West Bank, according to Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian official.

Lior Amihai, executive director of Yesh Din, an Israeli legal advocacy group that defends Palestinians in legal cases, says that the Palestinians have no recourse to help when they are attacked. “They are completely alone. It’s the Wild West. That’s why it’s like a pogrom.” Peace Now and B’Tselem, Israeli NGOs, also described the settler attacks as a “pogrom” supported by the government.

Recent weeks have seen Ben-Gvir, the Israeli security minister, take increasingly punitive measures against Palestinian prisoners in Israel jails, believed to number around 5,000, who, he said, were being treated too softly. These measures include the increased use of solitary confinement, searches of cells, bans on visits, the closure of prison-run bakeries and a four-minute time limit on showers, as well as legislative proposals to limit medical treatment.

The pogrom-like rampage in Huwara followed the call by Finance Minister and Religious Zionism leader Bezalel Smotrich for the IDF to “strike the cities of terror and its instigators without mercy, with tanks and helicopters.” He said that Israel should act “in a way that conveys that the master of the house has gone crazy.” He had earlier liked a tweet by a settler leader saying that “the village of Huwara should be wiped out today,” deleting it only after the revenge raid.

Not a single cabinet minister condemned the vigilantes or the security forces’ failure to restrain them. Netanyahu responded by immediately announcing that Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, had passed legislation approving the death penalty for those convicted of terrorism offences against Israelis. He and Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Jewish Power leader and National Security Minister, made pious statements, saying, “This is not the way.” But Ben-Gvir gave voice to his real agenda, declaring, “The government of Israel, the state of Israel, the IDF, the security forces—they are the ones who have to crush our enemies.”

Jewish Power legislator Zvika Fogel gave his full-throated support for the burning down of Palestinian villages in revenge for attacks on Jewish Israelis. He said Monday, “A closed, burnt Huwara—that’s what I want to see. That’s the only way to achieve deterrence. After a murder like yesterday’s, we need burning villages when the IDF doesn’t act.” He also said, “We need to stop shying away from collective punishment,” a crime under international humanitarian law. Members of Netanyahu’s Likud party supported the settlers.

While the United Nations, the United States and the major European powers have condemned the violence and called for a “de-escalation of tensions,” they have supported Israel’s brutal suppression of the Palestinians for decades. They have all given Netanyahu’s fascistic government the green light to terrorise the Palestinians with ever greater force in pursuit of its agenda of annexing the Palestinian territories and implementing apartheid rule, as embodied in the “Nation-State Law” enshrining Jewish supremacy as the legal foundation of the state.

The raid on Huwara, orchestrated by the Netanyahu government and given de facto support by the Israeli military, came just hours after officials from Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Egypt and the US met in the Jordanian port city of Aqaba. The talks “reaffirmed the need to commit to de-escalation on the ground and to prevent further violence”, in an effort ostensibly aimed at de-escalating the tensions in the West Bank and preventing a broader conflagration spilling over into neighbouring countries. The Jordan foreign ministry published a concluding statement saying Israel had agreed to pause the expansion of the settlements and the legalization of settlements outposts, illegal even under Israeli law, but Netanyahu immediately repudiated any such agreement.

The killing of two Israeli settlers Sunday was the response by groups who fear the Palestinians are being betrayed and disarmed by the Palestinian Authority and the Arab regimes in the face of Israel’s intention to drive them out of large swathes of the West Bank. 'The Hawara operation is a natural response to the occupation's crimes, the latest of which was the Nablus massacre,' a spokesperson for Hamas said.

Lula government ends daily COVID-19 tracking in Brazil

Guilherme Ferreira

Facing the clear threat of a worsening pandemic in Brazil, driven by the Omicron XBB.1.5 subvariant, the Workers Party (PT) government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has signaled its intention to declare the pandemic over and get the Brazilian population used to “living” with the coronavirus.

On February 16, the Health Ministry announced that it will start releasing COVID-19 data of cases, deaths and vaccination rates weekly and no longer daily, starting March 3. Trying to justify what in practice means a further departure from monitoring the pandemic in the country, the Health Ministry’s director of immunization, Eder Gatti, stated that only nine of the 27 Brazilian states update the data daily, which supposedly does not “allow an epidemiological analysis.” Still, he claimed, “We are not restricting data. ... What we want here is to facilitate the work with the data and send weekly data that is more accurate.”

This claim is patently false. If the Lula government had a genuine concern about the pandemic, the least it could do is coordinate a national effort and assist the states in implementing a system to monitor the pandemic on a daily basis, with a mass testing program, genetic sequencing of the variants in circulation, among other measures completely ignored by the “herd immunity” policy of the former fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro.

However, almost two months after taking office, the Lula government has not reversed the Bolsonaro government’s measures to prioritize corporate interests over human lives, including its ending of the National Public Health Emergency due to COVID-19 as early as April 2022. The Lula government has also failed to implement awareness campaigns about the airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the importance of wearing quality masks and distributing them for free, as well as other basic public health measures that would have an almost immediate impact and could prevent cases and deaths.

The Brazilian bourgeois media has aided the Lula government in its effort to hide the pandemic. In a move that set the stage for the Lula government’s decision to begin limiting the release of COVID-19 data to a weekly basis, in late January, Brazil’s major dailies ended their joint daily pandemic tracking system, launched in June 2020 when the Bolsonaro government attempted to censor COVID-19 data in Brazil.

Throughout February, the news about the pandemic in Brazil and around the world virtually disappeared from the Brazilian media, especially with the approach of Carnival, which became the focus of the news in recent weeks and was deliberately seized upon by the Lula government to announce the change in the release of pandemic data in Brazil. In fact, two of the most important Brazilian newspapers, Estado de S. Paulo and Folha de S. Paulo, did not even report this change by the Health Ministry.

Screenshot of Health Minister Nísia Trindade during her speech on February 17 (Twitter) [Photo: Twitter]

Later, the Lula government took a step further in its attempt to cover up the pandemic in Brazil. On February 17, Health Minister Nísia Trindade released a video saying, as if the pandemic was over, that “finally, the time has come for us to celebrate the biggest popular party in our country.” This statement on the eve of Carnival, when the service and tourism sectors in Brazil reap billions in profits, also expressed the Lula government’s intention not to put any restrictions on the economy, even with the worsening of the pandemic.

The Brazilian Carnival threatens to become a new superspreader event for the coronavirus and drive another wave in Brazil. This situation may be further aggravated by the spread of the Omicron XBB.1.5 subvariant, which is more transmissible and more vaccine-resistant. It was first detected in São Paulo in early January, and a month later XBB.1.5 was responsible for 80 percent of the cases in the state.

Parroting the anti-scientific claim advanced by the world’s capitalist elite that vaccination alone is enough to control a disease as infectious as COVID-19, Trindade also said in the video, “our great ally [right now] is vaccination. The more people with full vaccination, the more we will be protected in the face of the severe forms of the disease.”

Although vaccines protect against severe COVID-19, they do not prevent people from getting infected and suffering all its effects, particularly Long COVID. Considering this, the Lula government’s health minister is saying to the population that it can ignore all the other tools that science has used for decades to fight infectious diseases, such as social distancing and the use of masks, and take the risk of getting infected and suffering all the consequences.

This, in fact, has been put in place since the PT’s election victory, with the habit of Trindade and government officials—including Lula himself, who is 77 years old and has already tested positive for COVID-19—of attending closed and crowded events without wearing masks. After the wearing of masks, as well as the tracking of the pandemic, were relentlessly targeted by the “herd immunity” policy of Bolsonaro government—policies which the PT supposedly “fought”—this bad example leaves society totally unprepared for the risk of a new outbreak, which now threatens Brazil.

Since the beginning of February, there has been a reversal in the drop of COVID-19 cases and deaths in Brazil after a wave driven by the Omicron BQ.1 subvariant last year. On February 22, Isaac Schrarstzhaupt, the coordinator of the COVID-19 Network, one of the few initiatives still tracking the pandemic in Brazil, confirmed this trend, drawing particular attention to the increase in the occupancy of nursing beds in São Paulo from 750 on February 7 to 1,050 on February 21. Nationally, only the Southern region is not registering a worsening of the pandemic. In the Northern region, the state of Amazonas registered a 546 percent increase in hospitalizations and a 1,200 percent increase in cases in the first 15 days of February.

Data from the last few days further confirms this trend. After the failure to release COVID-19 data between February 18 and 21, due to Carnival, on Wednesday, Brazil registered 453 deaths and 11,616 cases, while on Thursday 334 deaths and 9,646 cases were recorded. Due to massive under-reporting, the average number of cases between February 11 and 17 decreased from 8,192 to 3,544 between February 18 and 23, while the average number of deaths increased from 55 to 131 in the same period.

In contrast to the position of the Lula government’s health minister, leading neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis has issued a series of warnings on Twitter in recent days. “The pandemic has been totally removed from the agenda and political speeches,” he wrote last Thursday. “Two days before the beginning of Carnival, which promises to have the largest crowds in decades, there is no official communication from the MH [Ministry of Health] to alert the population about the spread of new Omicron variants! No strategy to break transmission, other than vaccines, announced.”

On Monday, Nicolelis added: “The MH [Ministry of Health] should not join the negligence and lack of health responsibility of states that fail to publish daily COVID-19 data. It should instead determine that this data be made available daily. This conduct is shameful and extremely disappointing.”

Although Bolsonaro represents the most vicious expression of “herd immunity,” recent events expose the PT’s embrace of this homicidal policy. This, however, had already been made clear in previous waves of the pandemic in Brazil. In the second deadly wave, in 2021, Nicolelis, himself a longtime PT supporter, left the scientific committee of the Northeastern states in the face of inaction by the region’s governors, including four of them from the PT.

Then, during the peak of the Omicron BA.1 subvariant wave early last year, Nicolelis again denounced the PT’s policy, saying in an interview with the WSWS: “the PT governors, who I know very well because I worked with them, stopped doing what had to be done a long time ago. So, who are the progressives in this story? I have seen conduct by so-called progressive people that was very similar to Bolsonaro’s. They just had the varnish and the stamp of progressives.” The same thing could now be said of the Lula government.

This development confirms the warnings of the Rank-And-File Committee for Safe Education in Brazil (CBES-BR) that the Lula government would follow the example of other capitalist leaders who, with each wave of the pandemic, withdrew the mitigation measures still in place. This, in turn, has allowed its wide circulation and the emergence of a subvariant such as XBB1.5, which has spurred a deadly wave in the US recently and now threatens Brazil.

At least 59 migrants drown off Italian coast, including newborn baby and 19 other children

Thomas Scripps

At least 59 migrants have been killed after their wooden vessel shipwrecked on the rocks off the Calabrian coast in Italy. A newborn baby and 19 other children were among the dead. Many of the bodies washed up on shore near a seaside resort.

Another 81 people are known to have survived, 20 of whom have been taken to hospital, one to intensive care. According to survivors, roughly 150 people were originally on board. They had set sail from Turkey three or four days previously.

Responsibility for this terrible crime lies with all the governments of Europe, who have conspired to turn the continent into a “fortress” against desperate people, and with the United States and its allies whose imperialist violence has dismembered societies across the Middle East and Africa, forcing unprecedented numbers to flee their homes.

Rescuers recover a body after a migrant boat broke apart in rough seas, at a beach near Cutro, southern Italy, Sunday, Feb. 26, 2023. Rescue officials say an undetermined number of migrants have died and dozens have been rescued after their boat broke apart off southern Italy. [AP Photo/Giuseppe Pipita]

With repulsive hypocrisy, the fascist Prime Minister of Italy Giorgia Meloni proclaimed her “deep sorrow,” before pledging more of the policies responsible for bloodbath on Europe’s borders, a crackdown on routes to Europe by “preventing departures.” Her interior minister boasted last week that such measures, implemented with Libya and Tunisia, had already “averted the arrival” of close to 21,000 people—trapping them in hellish conditions in those countries and pushing countless others to risk more dangerous journeys.

The same message as the fascist Meloni could be heard from any of Europe’s rulers.

President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said she was “deeply saddened” by the deaths, before adding, “We must redouble our efforts on the (EU) Pact on Migration and Asylum and on the Action Plan on the Central Mediterranean.” Its details were spelt out at an EU summit earlier this month which discussed an “integrated package of mobile and stationary infrastructures… from vehicles to cameras, from watchtowers to electronic surveillance” to deny entry to asylum seekers and plans to make easier the mass deportation of refugees and to strengthen collaboration with the brutal regimes policing the North African coast.

“Fortress Europe” has already seen 2,406 people recorded as dead or missing in the Mediterranean by the International Organization for Migration in 2022. Nearly 26,000 have been lost since 2014. This says nothing of the horrors suffered on the road to the Turkish or North African coast, or the network of internment camps in which tens of thousands of refugees are imprisoned and denied basic democratic rights.

Since the 2015 picture of a young Syrian boy lying dead on the beach in Turkey produced an outpouring of popular shock and anger, government policy has made dead children washing up on the shore a regular event. In November 2020, a five-year-old boy was found dead on the shores of the Greek island Samos. His father lost hold of him as their boat capsized on rocks. He is now facing 10 years in prison, charged with endangering his son’s life. He was taken in handcuffs to identify the body.

The next month, the bodies four children aged between 5 and 10 were found on the beach west of the Libyan capital Tripoli. Five months later, another three children, including a six-month-old baby and a three-year-old, were found dead on the same stretch of coast. A month after that, a one-year-old was found on the Norwegian coast after drowning with his family trying to cross from France to the UK.

In May 2021, Guardian analysis linked 2,000 deaths to the EU’s pushback operations, illegal under international law, to force migrants away from Europe’s borders, including the use of violence and humiliation. This is the tip of an iceberg of suffering, with the worst abuse outsourced to forces in Libya and Tunisia, intercepting migrant vessels and returning refugees to camps in which torture, rape, extortion, murder and slavery are rife.

Another strategy has been to abandon refugees to the sea. A 2021 report by the European Commissioner for Human Rights found that European governments had been redeploying ships away from areas where they were most likely to find migrants in distress.

Many small NGOs have stepped in to uphold the international obligation to save lives at sea. Meloni’s government is spearheading efforts to outlaw these emergency efforts. On Thursday, the parliament passed a law requiring rescue vessels to immediately sail to a port after completing a rescue, rather than find other boats in distress.

A body and the wreckage from a capsized boat are seen at a beach near Cutro, southern Italy, Sunday, Feb. 26, 2023. Rescue officials say an undetermined number of migrants have died and dozens have been rescued after their boat broke apart off southern Italy. [AP Photo/Giuseppe Pipita]

But while the Italian government has gone the furthest in law, it is only codifying the common policy of all the European powers. On Friday, 15 EU states issued a statement calling for financial support for “all types of border protection infrastructure including physical barriers.” They added that “the support of Frontex should also be increased and fully deployed in the most affected member states,” and demanded “more possibilities for accelerated [deportation] procedures followed by rejections in case of unfounded asylum applications.”

Rescue ships filled with hundreds of refugees are regularly left stranded at sea for weeks as country after country refuses access to its ports. In 2020, Amnesty International published a report, “Solidarity on trial in Fortress Europe,” condemning how “human rights defenders and civil society organizations that have helped refugees and migrants have been subjected to unfounded criminal proceedings, undue restrictions of their activities, intimidation, harassment, and smear campaigns in several European countries.”

One case cited was the Greek government’s ongoing investigation of a group of 24 volunteer workers who rescued migrants off the coast of Lesbos for alleged human trafficking, money laundering and fraud. Initial charges of espionage had to be dropped. The group includes Sarah Mardini, whose story of helping fellow refugees cross the sea from Turkey to Greece inspired the film The Swimmers.

Mardini fled the devastating war in Syria waged between NATO’s Islamist proxy forces and the government of Bashar al-Assad. The refugees drowned Sunday hailed from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Iran—also the subject of US occupations, military interventions, indiscriminate drone strikes and crippling sanctions and the victims of global inequality and climate change. These factors have created a record forcibly displaced population of more than 100 million people, considered so much human debris by the world’s capitalist governments.

Nearly four million displaced people are living in Turkey, including, until recently, those shipwrecked in Calabria. Another 6.6 million are internally displaced in Syria. Many had their lives devastated a second time by the earthquake earlier this month which killed at least 50,000 people and has left millions homeless.

The response of the European governments says everything about the ruling class’s priorities. So far the European Commission has pledged just €6.5 million in aid for victims of the earthquake, while last year €754 million was made available for its border force Frontex. The agency, along with the Greek government, has stepped up patrols around the Aegean in anticipation of larger numbers of people seeking to escape the disaster. “The mass movement of millions of people is not the solution,” threatened Greece’s migration minister Notis Mitarachi.

The assault on migrants and denial of democratic rights is playing out globally. Last week, US President Joe Biden announced an immigration policy barring entry and asylum to almost all migrants at the southern US border in a gross violation of international law.

Events like these tear apart the fiction that the US and European powers are waging a war for “democracy” and “freedom” again Russia in Ukraine. In fact, NATO’s war and the attacks on migrants are inextricably linked. A major war in Europe is incompatible with democratic rights and demands a massive assault on the living standards of the working class, which will fall fastest and heaviest on its most vulnerable sections, already forced to flee their homes and communities.

Norway emerges as key staging ground for US military provocations against Russia

Jordan Shilton

As the US-NATO war against Russia enters its second year in Ukraine, Washington is recklessly escalating the conflict. After it sent battle tanks to Ukraine, there is public discussion of sending fighter jets and even NATO ground troops, which could quickly trigger a global military conflagration between nuclear-armed powers. Beyond Ukraine, Washington and its European imperialist allies are ratcheting up pressure on Russia, including in the Arctic and Baltic Sea regions.

U.S. Marines inspect a MV-22B Osprey prior to flight at Norwegian Air Force Base Bodo during Exercise Cold Response 22, Norway, March 16, 2022. [AP Photo/Lance Cpl. Elias E. Pimentel III/U.S. Marine Corps via AP]

Norway’s Evenes Air Station, north of the Arctic Circle, is to become a regional hub for surveillance of Russia. Details on the joint project between the United States, Britain and Norway were provided earlier this month in comments by Norwegian Minister of Defence Bjørn Arild Gramm, who said the base will host USP-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft.

Two Arctic bases, Evenes and the Ramsund naval base, are the subject of an upgraded bilateral defence cooperation agreement between Washington and Oslo. They are classified as “agreed areas,” which grant US forces unimpeded access to the bases and exclusive rights to certain parts of them. The agreement provides for US jurisdiction over all US Army personnel in the country, including for crimes they commit off-duty, and even over Norwegian citizens who come into contact with the “agreed areas.”

Washington initiated talks on the bilateral agreement, and the Biden administration said the deal was an “invariable requirement” for further US investment in Norwegian facilities.

Eight months after the agreement’s commencement, it clearly aims to create a framework for a massive military build-up across the Arctic and Scandinavia. Indeed, Washington is negotiating similar arrangements with Denmark, Finland and Sweden. A likely candidate for “agreed area” status in Sweden is the island of Gotland, the site of a key Cold War-era Swedish military base just 300 kilometres northwest of Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave.

Charly Salonius-Pasternak, a researcher at the Finnish Institute for International Affairs, said Washington could demand “agreed areas” in Finland as well, including the Rovaniemi Airport in the north, writing:

The opportunity to store equipment and materiel in advance, which is included in the Norwegian-American agreement, clearly expresses American commitment. It would be beneficial if the US and Finland agree that American forces can store, for example, 500 anti-tank missiles and 500 anti-aircraft missiles in Finland and that a mechanism is designed so that Finnish forces can use these in extreme cases before US support arrives.

On “agreed areas” in Norway, Defence Minister Gramm said: “At Evenes, the aim is to develop cooperation between Norwegian, British, and American P-8 maritime surveillance aircraft—in accordance with the investments that are made in the Norwegian Armed Forces’ long-term plan.” These include five P-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft bought by Norway, which will work with British Poseidons to search for and destroy underwater targets, i.e., submarines. Evenes also hosts Norway’s US-produced F-35 fighter jets.

Ramsund will serve as a “maritime logistics hub” for large-scale military activities in the region by the US and other NATO powers. Gramm said:

In the current long-term plan for the defense sector, it is planned that the Ramsund Naval Base will have an expanded role as the Navy's base in the North—and that the base is further developed to support the Navy and allies, including expanded quay facilities, storage of ammunition, logistics, and maintenance. … Our NATO allies train and exercise regularly in Norway, something that may also involve periodical presence in connection with logistics support. Increased cooperation with the US and other allies at Evenes and Ramsund is desired and will provide economies of scale and increased operative effect.

Norway’s location on the northwest of the Scandinavian Peninsula and with a 196-kilometre border with Russia make it a key ally for US imperialism to open a northern front in its war with Russia. This was underscored in a new military summit on the Arctic in January in Oslo. Chaired by US Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley, it included US and Norwegian officials and from 11 “close allies and partners” that the Norwegian Armed Forces refused to identify.

Emphasizing that the gathering will convene several times per year, the Norwegian Armed Forces declared: “This meeting with Allies and Partners builds collective understanding of the evolving strategic environment and informs military advice on key issues. The senior military leaders exchanged perspectives on shared strategic challenges, to include the Arctic and High North, the persistent threat of terrorism, and the changing dynamics of the South China Sea.”

January’s meeting was the latest in several military-security gatherings on geostrategy preparing for war in the Arctic and Northern Europe. Last August, Canada hosted an Arctic Chiefs of Defence meeting with representatives of the US, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. In October, the Northern Europe Chiefs of Defence Conference was held in Poland. Participants included the Nordic countries, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, Britain, Canada and the US.

Norway also hosts regular military exercises. Over 10,000 Norwegian and allied troops, including forces from the US, Britain and the Netherlands, will participate in Joint Viking 2023 in the Troms district of northern Norway on March 4-16. Norway also hosts the NATO exercise “Cold Response,” which is being expanded for 2024 into a jointly-organised exercise with Finland and Sweden called “Nordic Response.”

These exercises are part of a comprehensive regional plan for war on Russia. This emerges in advice prepared by the Nordic countries’ chiefs of staff to their governments for a meeting of the Nordic Defence Cooperation (Nordefco) last November. Nordefco was set up in 2009 and has helped train Finnish and Swedish military personnel to use NATO equipment and procedures even if they are not yet NATO members.

Their proposals included identifying four ports in western Scandinavia that could be used as transport hubs for military personnel and equipment in the event of a “crisis.” The ports include Narvik and Trondheim in Norway, Gothenburg in Sweden and Esbjerg in Denmark.

Veteran journalist Seymour Hersh’s exposure of the US role in bombing the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic last September underscored just how important Norway already is to US military and intelligence operations. Hersh documented secret meetings between US and Norwegian military and intelligence personnel in the months prior to NATO’s “BALTOPS 22” exercise in June 2022, which served as the cover for US military divers to plant the explosives on the pipelines.

One such meeting took place n March 2022 between the Norwegian secret service and navy and US officials. It led to a proposal by Norway to take advantage of shallow waters off Bornholm, an island on Denmark’s east coast, to bomb the pipelines. Norwegian officials also proposed using NATO’s “BALTOPS 22” exercise in June 2022 as the cover to plant explosives on the Nord Stream pipelines.

After the Biden administration decided on a delayed explosion to create a degree of plausible deniability, it was, according to Hersh, a Norwegian aircraft flying over the Baltic Sea on September 26 that dropped a buoy to trigger the blast. Explaining Norway’s centrality to US operations against Russia, Hersh wrote:

In the past few years of East-West crisis, the U.S. military has vastly expanded its presence inside Norway, whose western border runs 1,400 miles along the North Atlantic Ocean and merges above the Arctic Circle with Russia. The Pentagon has created high-paying jobs and contracts, amid some local controversy, by investing hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade and expand American Navy and Air Force facilities in Norway. The new works included, most importantly, an advanced synthetic aperture radar far up north that was capable of penetrating deep into Russia and came online just as the American intelligence community lost access to a series of long-range listening sites inside China.

Norway’s powerful energy sector has been a major beneficiary, together with the United States, of sanctions on Russia and the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines. Norwegian natural gas exports to Europe rose 3.3 percent in 2022. Deliveries to Germany shot up 11 percent year over year.

Germany has expanded its network of liquified natural gas terminals to include locations in Wilhelmshaven, Brunsbüttel and Lubmin. By December 2023, they will have a total annual capacity of 30 billion cubic metres—about half the gas supplied through Nord Stream 1 in 2021. This exposes the interests underlying the unprecedented decision of Norway’s Labour-led government to criminalise an oil strike last summer, immediately after a visit by German Economy Minister Robert Habeck.

Moldova’s President Sandu tightens grip on power, as the country is being drawn into the maelstrom of the NATO-Russia war.

Andrei Tudora

Moldova, a former Soviet republic of 2.6 million people, is in the grips of a severe political crisis as its government prepares to drag it into the NATO war against Russia.

The country is sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine and has long been one of Europe’s poorest countries.

Since 1994, Moldova has maintained a constitutionally enshrined status of neutrality vis-à-vis NATO and other military alliances. The status was key to preserving a settlement of the conflict around Transnistria or the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR) in Moldova, a Russian-speaking breakaway republic on the border to Ukraine which has claimed independence since the breakup of the Soviet Union. In a war that lasted from November 1990 through the spring of 1992, the authorities of the PMR received military support from Russia, which still has 1,500 troops stationed in the region. Moldova, by contrast, has been backed in the conflict by NATO member Romania.

This map shows the location of Transnistria in Europe. [Photo by TUBS / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0]

However, under President Maia Sandu, Moldova has openly sided with NATO in the war against Russia and is now even discussing joining the military alliance. Last week, Sandu met with US President Joe Biden, and the Polish and Romanian presidents on the sidelines of the Bucharest Nine summit of NATO’s Eastern European member states, after the US president praised her profusely in his speech on Ukraine.

In early February, after the forced resignation of the previous prime minister Natalia Gavrilița, a new government was sworn in under Dorin Recean, a hardliner and Sandu loyalist. The change in government marks an important moment in the country’s slide towards authoritarianism and war.

Since the change in government, Moldova has been thrown into a state of permanent war hysteria, with the president or prime minister having repeatedly warned that the takeover of the country by the Kremlin was imminent. The government is deliberately whipping up a climate of war fever in order to increasingly align the territory with the NATO war against Russia as well as to poison the internal atmosphere and stifle protests.

The fall of the previous government under Gavrilița and the turn to ever more authoritarian forms of rule were precipitated by massive protests against the rising cost of living and war, which took place in the country for over six months. The protests started in August in the autonomous Gagauz province and spread to the capital Chisinau and other regions by autumn. Protesters demanded Sandu’s resignation and an end to the war drive against Russia.

Fearing that protests could destabilize the regime and its “pro-EU course,” authorities sought to criminalize protests and any form of opposition. Protesters, numbering at times in the tens of thousands, have been vilified as paid “Russian agents” and part of Russian “hybrid warfare.”

In the run-up to the latest protest in Chisinau on February 19, the pro-Russian Shor Party offices were raided, with authorities claiming to find “Russian money” that was used to pay off protesters. Seven television stations were also shut down because they allegedly had a “lack of correct information in the coverage of national events, but also of the war in Ukraine.” Four of the channels regularly broadcast Russian television shows, and some were linked to Ilan Shor, a fugitive oligarch and leader of the Shor Party.

The conflict around Transnistria has also flared up again in full force. Sandu had been in open conflict with her government since December, when she accused Energy Minister Andrej Spinu of handing gas supplied by Gazprom to Transnistria.

Amidst the NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, Moldova came under pressure to cut off its remaining economic ties with Russia. This has led to catastrophic price hikes for working people, as well as gas and energy shortages. Even before the war, Moldova was one of the poorest countries in Europe, second only to Ukraine.

The almost 500,000 people who live in Transnistria remained in a virtual state of siege, caught between a hostile Chisinau and Ukrainian tanks. The two territories that comprised the Moldovan Soviet Republic have remained heavily intertwined despite the state of hostility, with the Transnistrian side providing electricity and industrial goods, but relying completely on Chisinau for raw materials. The Moldovan side increasingly sought to pressure the authorities in the capital of Transnistria, Tiraspol, especially by withholding its share of the natural gas received from Gazprom.

In November, the Transnistrian authorities spoke of an impending humanitarian crisis, as industrial activities had come to a halt and households were facing a dramatic shortage in heating. Many politicians and commentators in Chisinau rejoiced at the prospect of forcing an economic collapse of Transnistria and the fall of its government.

As the year drew to a close, the economic situation was spiraling out of control, and the government’s position became increasingly untenable.

While the government kept gas stocks in Romania and Ukraine, it had no way of assuring the generation of electric power. The lines from Romania passed through territory controlled by Tiraspol and the Ukrainian provider was taken out by Russian missile strikes.

Under these circumstances, Spinu and Gavrilita decided to give the gas from Gazprom to Tiraspol, in exchange for preferential prices on electricity produced by Transnistria’s plants. The move bought relief for both territories but was criticized in hysterical terms by hardliners in Chisinau and Bucharest who accused Spinu of “financing” and “saving” the Transnistrian government.

A few days before Gavrilita and Spinu were forced out of the government, Moldova’s parliament passed a landmark new “anti-secession law,” which criminalizes the authorities on the left side of the Dniester River and effectively ends the 30 years of peace negotiations and the prospect of a negotiated settlement.

Moldova has also developed close links to the Ukrainian government under Volodymyr Zelensky. Various provocations and “imminent attacks” are announced first by Zelensky or the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), with Moldovan officials confirming and announcing further repressive measures. Sandu recently called for a speedup to ram through Parliament several laws which will give greater powers to the Moldovan secret services (SIS) and the prosecutor’s office.

In an interview with Moldovan TV8 and Romanian Digi24, Zelensky’s adviser Mykhailo Podolyak called the Moldovan protesters “bandits” and “bands of criminals” and asked Moldova to make the “correct choice.”

The Russian Ministry of Defense has accused Ukraine of massing troops and equipment on the border of Transnistria, and warned that any assault on the territory would be considered an attack on Russia.

Denials were issued by Ukraine, Moldova and also by Romania. In the days leading up to the standoff, Recean talked about the “demilitarization” of the Transnistrian region.

In a bizarre and revealing declaration at the Munich Security conference, quoted by the Ukrainian European Pravda, Sandu said that “so far there is no public support for changing this [the official neutrality policy]…” and that even though there was a serious threat of the occupation of Moldova by Russian troops, “Ukraine is ensuring our security.”

Klaus Iohannis, the president of Romania, a NATO member, also warned on February 22 that Romania is not just “ready, but willing to support Moldova in any scenario. How this will look depends on the geopolitical evolution. For now we support with gases, electricity and institutional reforms, but I personally, I am prepared to go much further if the situation calls for it.”

Anti-Defamation League: All “extremist” mass killings in the US in 2022 linked to the far right

A report released Thursday by the Anti-Defamation League asserts that in 2022 every “extremist” mass killing in the United States was committed by “right-wing extremists of various kinds.” Of the at least 25 mass murders last year classified by the ADL as “extremist,” the organization concludes that 21 were linked directly to “white supremacists.”

This figure, while slightly less than the 33 documented “extremist” murders in 2021, is more than the 22 recorded in 2020. The ADL found that 84 percent of the killings were linked to “white supremacy,” 8 percent were linked to anti-government/QAnon extremism and another 8 percent to “other” right-wing extremism. Ninety percent of the killings in 2022 were committed with a firearm.

While right-wing extremists every year make up a vast majority of the “extremist-related” killings in the United States, 2022 appears to be the first year the ADL did not record any by alleged “left-wing” extremism. It should be noted that the ADL’s incorrect definition of “left-wing” extremism includes “Black nationalism,” a political ideology that defends the nation-state and capitalist system on a racialist program.

Importantly, all of the “extremist” mass murders identified by the ADL in the US in 2022 were committed by fascists who either had direct connections to the Republican Party, or were inspired by anti-immigrant ideology, one of many important facts omitted in the 36-page report.

The ADL report noted that the largest mass right-wing massacre in the US last year was the grocery store shooting in Buffalo, New York in May, committed by neo-Nazi Petyon Gendron. Earlier this month the 19-year-old white supremacist was sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of murdering 10 people and injuring three more, all African Americans.

People hug outside the scene of the Buffalo shooting on Saturday, May 14, 2022, in Buffalo, N.Y. [AP Photo/Joshua Bessex]

In a 180-page manifesto posted online by Gendron hours before the attack, the fascist terrorist laid out his assassination plans and revealed he was an adherent of the “Replacement Theory,” which posits that Jews, including Holocaust survivor George Soros, are conspiring with the Democratic Party and other institutions to replace the “white race” in the United States with “lesser” races from South America, Asia and Africa.

“Jews are the biggest problem the Western world has ever had,” Gendron wrote, “They must be called out and killed…”

Anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic and other fascist agitation has emerged as the dominant feature of Republican and right-wing rhetoric since Trump’s 2016 campaign. An April 2022 investigation by the New York Times found that in “more than 400 episodes” of his program on Fox News, Tucker Carlson “amplified the idea that a cabal of elites want to force demographic change.” On their programs, Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham and Jeanine Pirro have likewise claimed that the Democratic Party is engaged in a plan to “replace” American citizens with “illegals” and “migrants.”

In reality, Biden and the Democrats have adapted virtually all of Trump and the Republicans’ immigration policies, including new measures aimed at preventing refugees from applying for asylum if they enter the US from Mexico.

Despite the Democrats’ anti-immigrant policies, nearly every week, neo-Nazis, Proud Boys or another fascist group is publicly protesting and intimidating LGBTQ persons, Jews, drag shows or alleged communists/socialists. On February 17, neo-Nazis of the Goyim Defense League (GDL) harassed and intimidated Jewish people outside the Chabad of South Orlando in Florida.

In a video posted on social media, GDL founder Jon Minadeo and his small group of Nazi followers insult Jews and threaten their extermination.

Ron DeSantis, aspiring Republican 2024 presidential nominee and Florida governor, has yet to publicly denounce any of the numerous neo-Nazi demonstrations held in Florida since he took office in 2018. The ADL noted that in 2021 Florida had the third most documented anti-Semitic demonstrations, 190, nearly double the 98 recorded in 2017.

The second largest “extremist” mass killing identified by the ADL was at Club Q in Colorado Springs, Colorado on November 20, the Transgender Day of Remembrance, when Anderson Lee Aldrich, the son of former California Assemblyman Randy Voepel, a supporter of former President Donald Trump’s failed coup, killed five people and injured 17 at the LGBTQ nightclub.

A makeshift memorial near Club Q, a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Sunday, November 20, 2022, that left at least five dead and 25 injured. [AP Photo/Geneva Heffernan]

Notably, the ADL report does not include the July 4, 2022 Highland Park Massacre committed by Trump supporter Robert Crimo III, which killed seven people and wounded 48 more. The ADL claims that while they found “bigoted” posts made by Crimo online, they did not “uncover sufficient evidence to confirm any extremist motivation.”