Greece’s New Democracy party seeks to overturn law protecting students from police repression

George Gallanis

The proposal by Greece’s new Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, a member of the right-wing New Democracy (ND), to end the country’s Academic Asylum law must be taken as a serious warning by the Greek working class. The Greek ruling class is preparing the grounds for a dictatorial state reminiscent of Greece’s 1967-1974 junta, from whose bloody legacy the law was born.

The law, put in place in 1982, bars police from entering university campuses. Police can only enter campus grounds if given permission by university administrators. The law guarantees students protection from arrest or state brutality. Such a law exists nowhere else in Europe.

The law was put in place in response to the brutal murder by the US-backed military junta of at least 23 students and pedestrians, including a five-year-old boy, during the uprising at the Polytechnic University in Athens, now called the National Technical University of Athens, on November 17, 1973. On that day, the third day of protests, students launched a strike under the slogan of “bread, education, freedom.” Students were calling for the downfall of the Greek military junta, led by CIA-connected George Papadopoulos, which had taken power in 1967. That day, tanks and soldiers would come crashing through the university’s gates and carry out the slaughter.

November 17 is marked annually by demonstrations of youth and workers throughout Greece in remembrance of the victims of the Greek military dictatorship.

In 2011 the law was scrapped under the PASOK government, and for the first time since the collapse of the junta in 1974, Greek police entered university campuses on November 17 of the same year, a day marked by Greece’s largest protests in years. That evening, police entered the campus of Aristotle University after chasing a group of youth into the grounds.

The Syriza government, led by former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, reinstated the asylum law in 2017. This cynical ploy, two years after Syriza took power, was done knowing full well the law could easily be overturned by successor governments in the near future, something of a certainty given the deep hostility by the Greek working class to Syriza at the time.

After coming to power on the promise that it would fight austerity measures, and receiving the undying adulation of pseudo-left groups like the Democratic Socialists of America and Jacobin magazine, Syriza betrayed the Greek masses and implemented the austerity diktat of the European Union (EU). The Greek working class, students and youth were thrown to the wolves. Youth unemployment reached devastating levels and today stands at 40 percent, while Greece’s adult population suffers 18 percent unemployment. This is in addition to the ending of universal health care and the slashing of incomes and public pensions.

Syriza also oversaw the strengthening of the police apparatus, which it brutally unleashed on Greek workers and students during protests. At the same time, the Syriza government corralled helpless refugees fleeing from war and certain death into concentration camps, in which many still languish today. Syriza’s embrace of state repression found its sharpest expression with Tsipras’s flowering relationship with the butcher of the 2011 Egyptian revolution, military dictator General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

The right-wing ND is only intensifying Syriza’s repressive measures. After it defeated the pseudo-left party in the legislative elections earlier this month, new Greek Prime Minister Mitsotakis (ND) promised to increase state violence and repression. He said, “We will strengthen the police, which has to do its job well. We have to protect policemen, while there has to be more police activity in the centre of Athens. For the next government security is a political priority ... Police commanders of precincts that go into hostile areas will be rewarded.”

Mitsotakis is putting forth the lie that the Asylum law has allowed university campuses to become festering centers of violence and drug use. He said, “We want universities where students and teachers aren’t afraid; universities that we are not ashamed of … I pledge that no space will be occupied in our public universities. The gangs that today exist there will be eradicated.”

In reality, Mitsotakis, representing the aims of the Greek ruling class, wants to strip away protections from the working class and students that would prohibit the ND government from violently repressing, or as Mitsotakis bluntly put it, “eradicating” demonstrations and strikes by students and workers. This aim is also bound up with the fact that campuses have also been used by refugees as shelters from the Greek police.

In every country the ruling class is responding to the growing revolutionary challenge from below with a sharp shift to the right and toward dictatorial measures. The threat to scrap the Academic Asylum law comes at a time of growing class tensions that have seen a wave of explosive protests and strikes.

European Union threatens Iran with naval mission to Persian Gulf

Alex Lantier

As the British Ministry of Defense announced on Sunday that a second UK destroyer, the HMS Duncan, had arrived in the Persian Gulf, calls were escalating across the European ruling elite to deploy a European naval flotilla or “eurofleet” in the Persian Gulf to threaten Iran.

The pretext for this European escalation is the military crisis provoked by Washington in the oil-rich Persian Gulf. After Washington unilaterally tore up the 2015 Iranian nuclear treaty and reimposed sanctions on Iran last year, and Trump said this year that he had been 10 minutes away from bombing Iran, British troops illegally seized an Iranian tanker off Gibraltar on US orders, and Iranian boats seized a UK-flagged tanker, the Stena Impero. The European Union (EU) powers are reacting, however, not by opposing Washington, but threatening Iran.

After the July 19 capture of the Stena Impero, officials in Britain and other EU countries launched a campaign calling for an EU naval intervention targeting Iran. Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian called for “better securing the Persian Gulf maritime zone” at the French National Assembly on July 23, adding: “This is why we are now launching a European mission with the British, the Germans, so there will be a mission to observe and ensure maritime security in the Persian Gulf.”

Amid the US war drive against Iran, this mission is a reckless attempt by the European imperialist powers to grab a share of oil resources in the strategic Persian Gulf region.

In 2013, as Berlin remilitarized its foreign policy for the first time since the fall of the Nazis in 1945, a group of German firms formed the Raw Materials Alliance. In a piece titled “Will we see resource wars?”, one of its officials, Dierk Paskert told Handelsblatt: “History shows that many conflicts have their origin in the fight for resources… The supply of raw materials is the basis for added value and the well-being of a country, and so has geopolitical significance.” The paper added that industry wants “more state—and military—involvement in securing raw materials.”

Yesterday, Dieter Kempf, the head of the German Industrial Association (BDI), came out in favor of German military participation in an EU intervention in the Persian Gulf. Echoing Handelsblatt’s earlier call for resource wars, Kempf said: “For Germany, an exporting nation and industrial power, freedom of navigation is of critical importance. … At least one fifth of world oil demand is transported through these shipping lanes.”

Cynically calling the EU expedition to the Persian Gulf a “defensive intervention,” Kempf added, “It is a question of solidarity between us Europeans; Germany should participate in such a mission.”

Kempf’s positions are shared by capitalist politicians across Europe. Norbert Röttgen, a top official of Germany’s ruling Christian-Democratic Union (CDU), called for “a genuine contribution to a European mission” from the German military. German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (AKK), Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ostensible successor, did not rule out participating in the EU mission, declaring: “We can talk about it, once we know exactly what is being planned.”

Last week, it was reported that French, Italian and Danish officials supported the British plan for an EU naval mission, while Spanish and Dutch officials were still studying it.

Yesterday, Iranian officials condemned the planned EU naval missions. “The presence of foreign forces will not only not help the security of the region, but will be the main factor for tension," said Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, while government spokesman Ali Rabiei said: “We heard that they intend to send a European fleet to the Persian Gulf, which naturally carries a hostile message, is provocative and will increase tensions.”

It is an open secret in European ruling circles that these plans are coordinated with the Pentagon, which has called for EU powers to send their warships to the Persian Gulf as part of its war plans against Iran. A senior EU diplomat cynically told Reuters: “Britain’s request, rather than Washington’s, makes it easier for Europeans to rally round this. Freedom of navigation is essential; this is separate from the US campaign of maximum pressure on Iran.”

Similarly, officials in South Korea are reportedly discussing sending a warship to participate in “freedom of navigation” operations in the Persian Gulf, targeting Iran.

The campaign for an EU naval mission targeting Iran underscores the hysterical shift to the right in ruling circles across Europe and internationally. Amid a new march towards an ever-greater Middle East war, Washington is reprising the methods of provocation that led to the illegal, US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq, based on lies that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction.” Yet the EU powers led by Berlin and Paris, who criticized US provocations against Iraq at the United Nations in 2002, today make no public attempt to oppose the war drive against Iran.

Despite the unpopularity of Middle East wars and of Trump in the US, European and international working class, the European bourgeoisies are preparing military operations that, for now at least, largely dovetail with the war plans of American imperialism.

Nonetheless, deep contradictions and conflicts persist between the imperialist powers who are all sending forces to the Persian Gulf. While the Trump administration tries to include EU warships in its war plans, it is also threatening EU corporations with hundreds of billions of dollars in trade-war tariffs and demanding that the EU powers abandon plans for an independent EU army. At the same time, the EU is being shaken by the looming Brexit crisis. These conflicts have led to visible tensions among the EU powers as they try to work out an anti-Iran policy.

After Boris Johnson became British prime minister last week, calling for a no-deal Brexit from the EU, UK officials abandoned the fiction that the “eurofleet” was unrelated to US war plans. “I think we do want to see a European-led approach, but that doesn’t seem to me to be viable without American support as well,” incoming Foreign Minister Dominique Raab told the Times of London. The Daily Telegraph said that Raab’s remarks were “likely to unsettle Germany and France, both of which have stated that any European effort must be independent from the US.”

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas responded by declaring, “We have made clear that we do not subscribe to the United States’ policy of maximum pressure. Our efforts in the region must be recognizably European.”

French Defense Minister Florence Parly told L’Est Républicain, “We are working to organize ourselves only between Europeans, but one thing is clear: our policy must have only one objective, to calm the current tensions and defend our interests. … We do not want to contribute to a force that could be perceived as aggravating the tensions.”

The attempts of Berlin and Paris to distance themselves from US war plans against Iran are shot through with hypocrisy. While proclaiming that they do not want maximum pressure or aggravating tensions with Iran, they are stirring up the crisis, threatening to send warships to one of the world’s most volatile military and commercial flashpoints—a move playing into the hands of US war policy.

The EU’s militarist policy underscores that the only way to oppose the war drive against Iran is to mobilize the vast opposition and disaffection with war among workers internationally in a struggle against all the capitalist governments including the EU imperialist powers threatening Iran.

Trump threatens unilateral action against World Trade Organization

Nick Beams

President Trump has widened the scope of the US trade war, taking aim at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the “developing” country status it gives to China and other countries under agreements reached when it was established in 1995, replacing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

The Trump administration has criticised the provision for some time, saying it gives China and other countries an unfair advantage under conditions where vast changes have taken place in the global economy over the past quarter-century.

The criticism has now led to a threat by Washington to take unilateral action. The White House issued a memorandum on Friday giving the US trade representative (USTR) power in 90 days’ time to no longer treat designated countries as having “developing” status unless “progress” is made on changing the rules of the WTO.

The memorandum has attracted little media attention, but it represents a significant US challenge to the structure of the WTO, the world’s major trade regulatory body. Trump has railed against the operations of the organisation for some time, issuing threats that the US might withdraw from it. Washington has refused to sign off on the appointment of new members to its appellate body, effectively crippling its operations in adjudicating trade disputes, on the grounds that it has made “activist” interpretations detrimental to the US.

According to Friday’s memorandum, while there have been major economic changes since 1995, “the WTO continues to rest on an outdated dichotomy between developed and developing countries that has allowed some WTO members to gain unfair advantage in the international trade arena.”

It said nearly two-thirds of WTO members had been able to designate themselves as “developing” countries, thereby obtaining “special treatment” under WTO rules.

The document declared that while some designations were “proper,” many were unsupportable in the light of current economic circumstances. It cited economies such as Brunei, Hong Kong, Kuwait, Macao, Qatar, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, which, despite being among the richest economies on the basis of per capita gross domestic product, currently claimed “developing” country status. It noted as well that Mexico, South Korea and Turkey, members of both the G20 and the Organization for Economic Development (OECD), also claimed this designation.

The main target of the US move is China. The memorandum said that since joining the WTO in 2001, China had continued to insist it was a “developing” country and was able thereby to avail itself of “flexibilities under any new WTO rules.”

“The United States has never accepted China’s claim to developing country status and every current economic indicator belies China’s claim,” the memorandum said. It pointed to China’s “explosive” growth to a position where it now had the second highest GDP in the world, topped only by the US, and the five-fold increase in its share of global goods exports between 1995 and 2017. These exports were not confined to low-wage manufactured goods, but extended to high-technology products. China, in fact, currently ranked first in this area.

The trade statistics, taken on their own, give a somewhat distorted picture because much of what counts as Chinese high-tech exports are goods that have been assembled as part of the operations of US firms. But the focus on this area underscores concerns in the US political, military and intelligence establishments that China is developing new technologies that will challenge the global dominance of the US.

Seeking international support, the memorandum said the need to “reform” international institutions was a challenge not just for the US, “but for all countries that participate in the global marketplace.” It added that there was “no hope of progress in resolving this challenge until the world’s most advanced economies are prepared to take on the full commitments associated with WTO membership.”

But rather than seeking changes through the framework of the WTO, the US is seeking to force the issue by taking unilateral action.

The USTR, the memorandum said, would use “all available means to secure changes at the WTO that would prevent self-declared developing countries from availing themselves of flexibilities in WTO rules and negotiations that are not justified by appropriate economic and other indicators.” It added that the US would “pursue this action with other like-minded WTO members.”

The USTR would report to the president within 60 days on progress made in such endeavours, and if within 90 days “substantial progress” had not been made, the US would take unilateral action.

This would include not recognising a country’s “developing” status if it was the USTR’s judgment that it was “improperly declaring itself a developing country” and “inappropriately seeking the benefit of flexibilities” under WTO rules.

“Where relevant,” the United States would not support any such country’s continuing membership in the OECD. This threat does not impact China, which is not a member of the OECD. But it would affect Mexico, South Korea and Turkey, all of which have come into conflict with the US.

The memorandum specified that the USTR should consult with the US National Security Council and the National Economic Council on the “advisability of interagency coordination,” meaning any action would be considered a “national security” issue.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, non-recognition of a country’s claimed developing status would not have an immediate effect, unlike other measures taken by the administration on tariffs. The Journal cited Clete Willems, who worked on trade and WTO policy in the White House until last April, who said any change would affect only “small stuff” in the short term. But it would shape ongoing WTO negotiations in fishing subsidies and e-commerce.

In issuing the memorandum, Trump clearly has a broad agenda in view. In a tweet posted on Friday announcing the decision, he wrote: “The WTO is broken when the world’s richest countries claim to be developing countries to avoid WTO rules and get special treatment. No more!!! Today I directed the US Trade Representative to take action so that countries stop cheating the system at the expense of the USA!”

Beijing responded Sunday to the latest US move with an editorial in the state-owned People’s Daily declaring that the classification of a country as a “developing nation” should not be defined by the interests of the US, and reform of the WTO should not be determined by a few “hegemonic countries.” It said the 90-day deadline set down by the US had laid bare its “arrogance and impudence.”

The timing of the memorandum was obviously aimed at putting pressure on China in the face-to-face trade negotiations that resume in Shanghai this week, following the collapse of talks in mid-May. The US is seeking an immediate commitment from the Chinese side for increased orders of soybeans in order that Trump can tout a victory to sections of his electoral base in agricultural states.

The Chinese side may be prepared to make such an agreement, but it will depend on how far the US is prepared to go in relaxing the restrictions imposed on the telecom company Huawei when it was placed on the Commerce Department’s entity list, banning it from receiving components from US suppliers unless they received a license. Talks were held with the executives of US high-tech firms last week, but it was still not clear what would or would not be covered.

The substantive issues that led to the breakdown of the talks, including the retention of tariffs by the US even after a deal is signed and stipulation that Beijing must write into law measures demanded by the US for the protection of intellectual property rights, as well as reductions in state-subsidies to Chinese firms, remain unresolved.

Media reports in both the US and China hold out little prospect of an agreement emerging from the latest round of discussions. In a briefing to reporters on Friday, Trump suggested that Beijing might decide to wait until the outcome of the 2020 election.

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow has warned that the addition of “hardliners” on the Chinese side—a reference, without naming him, to the inclusion of Commerce Minister Zhong Shan in Beijing’s negotiating team—could complicate efforts to make a deal. Kudlow had claimed in May that such an agreement was 90 percent complete.

This view was dismissed by China analyst Pauline Loong, managing director at the research company Asia-Analytica, in remarks to Bloomberg News.

“This is not some minor discussion with give and take on minor issues,” she said. “The concessions now needed to clinch a deal will require decisions at the Politburo Standing Committee level, not at the level of the negotiating team.”

China is by no means the only target of US economic warfare. Last Friday, as he issued his memorandum on the WTO, Trump also took aim at France, warning that it would face retaliation over the decision by the Macron government to impose a digital services tax on US tech giants, including Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Google.

“We will announce a reciprocal action on Macron’s foolishness shortly,” Trump wrote on Twitter. Expanding his remarks at a press briefing, he said: “I told them. I said ‘Don’t do it, because if you do it, I’m going to tax your wine—tariff or tax, call it whatever you want.’”

White House spokesperson John Deere said the US had consistently stated it would “not sit idly by and tolerate discrimination against US-based firms.” The administration had launched an investigation under Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act into France’s digital services tax, he said.

This is the same legislation that has been used to impose a 25 percent tariff on $250 billion worth of Chinese goods, with the threat of more to come.

Layoffs mount as slump in world auto industry deepens

Shannon Jones

The global downturn in the auto industry is continuing with warnings of further massive job losses ahead as sales continue to slump in key markets and companies are seeking to put aside cash to carry out research and development of electric and self-driving vehicles. The escalating trade tensions between the US and China are putting additional pressure on automakers.

The global character of the attack on jobs exposes the reactionary nationalism promoted by the unions and big-business politicians around the world including the US Trump administration. The threat to jobs is not a product of the trade policies of this or that country but the failure of the capitalist system itself, which is hurtling toward another major economic downturn.

Workers at the Suzuki Powertrain plant carried out a sympathy strike in October 2011 to support the workers at Maruti Suzuki's Manesar car assembly plant.

This week, a leading industry figure in India warned that the continuing sales slump in India could lead to as many 1 million jobs cuts in the auto components sector out of a total employment of around 5 million in the country.

According to Ram Venkataramani, president of the Automotive Components Manufacturers Association of India, passenger car sales in India fell 18.4 percent in the first quarter of 2019 and sales in June were at the lowest level in 18 years. The auto sector accounts for almost half of all manufacturing in India and the downturn in auto is a major reason for slowing growth in that country. About 35 million jobs are dependent directly or indirectly on auto production.

China, the world’s largest auto market, is continuing to see a sales decline, with new vehicle sales down 14 percent year over year in the first half of 2019. General Motors’ first-quarter sales fell 10 percent and Volkswagen 6 percent. The slump has erased 220,000 jobs, about five percent of the total, in the Chinese auto industry since July 2018.

The decline is having a serious impact on many automakers, with some expected to pull out of China altogether in the not too distant future. Ford auto plants in China, for example, were only running at 11 percent of capacity the first six months of 2019. Profits from sales in China account for a significant percentage of the pre-tax income for many major global car companies, including Audi (over 40 percent), Volkswagen (38 percent) and General Motors (23 percent).

Last week Japanese-based Nissan announced the elimination of 12,500 jobs worldwide, including 6,400 in Japan, the US, Britain, Mexico, Spain, India and Indonesia by March 2020. Another 6,100 will be cut in fiscal 2021 and 2022.

The slump in Asia parallels a downturn in auto sales in North America, with a Bank of America/Merrill Lynch analyst warning that sales could fall 30 percent by 2022. Ford, General Motors and Fiat Chrysler have all announced layoffs in the United States and Canada in 2019. In addition, about 2,420 of the Nissan cuts will hit plants in the US and Mexico. Earlier this year Nissan cut 381 jobs at its Canton, Mississippi factory when it eliminated a production shift.

This week GM closed its 78-year-old transmission plant in Warren, Michigan with the loss of 200 jobs. The plant, which as recently as 2006 employed 1,200, is one of five in North America the company has slated for closure by early 2020 at a total cost of 14,000 production and white-collar jobs. GM previously shuttered its Lordstown, Ohio assembly plant and is threatening to close two other assembly plants in Detroit-Hamtramck and Oshawa, Ontario.

Fiat Chrysler eliminated a shift earlier this year at its Belvidere, Illinois assembly plant and has scheduled the layoff of the third shift at its Windsor, Ontario assembly plant with the loss of 1,500 jobs.

Earlier this month, Ford in Canada announced it will lay off 200 workers at its Oakville, Ontario plant in September with the threat of further potential job reductions to come. The announcement follows a jobs bloodbath by Ford, including the elimination of 12,000 production jobs across Europe and 7,000 white-collar jobs in North America, 10 percent of its global salaried workforce.

Opel announced last week another 1,100 job cuts in Rüsselsheim, Eisenach and Kaiserslautern. In June, Ford effectively ended production in Russia, finalizing the closure of three factories.

The attack on jobs is being fueled by the incessant demands of investors for ever-higher rates of return in the midst of tightening market conditions. This requires squeezing ever-more production out of workers, rationalizations and the destruction of labor protections won over decades of bitter struggle.

A malignant feature of this has been the exponential growth of contract and casual labor, workers who are little more than pariahs, paid lower wages with few if any rights. Nowhere is this more evident than India, where contract workers comprise 70-80 percent of the automotive workforce, according to industry spokesman MS Unnikrishnan. The fight against contract labor was the major issue in the struggle of Maruti Suzuki workers at Manesar plant that led to the frame-up on bogus murder charges of the 13 leaders of the newly organized Maruti Suzuki Workers Union.

Terrified by the growing militancy of autoworkers, in June the Tamil Nadu state government invoked India's "essential services" legislation to effectively banstrikes in the auto parts sector.

In the US the use of part-time and contract workers has emerged as a major issue in the ongoing contract talks between the United Auto Workers and the Detroit-based automakers. There is powerful sentiment among rank-and-file autoworkers to convert part-time and contract workers into full-time employees with full pay and benefits while GM wants half its workforce to be temps.

A further assault on jobs and working conditions is anticipated with the increasing use of electric and driverless vehicles, which require fewer mechanical parts than gas or diesel trucks and cars. As one market analyst told investor website S&P Global, “(A)s demand for components related to internal combustion engines decrease, legacy suppliers will be forced to compete on a cost basis in a market of decreasing size to an increasing degree (even more than now) and this will drive benefits to scale players, which will force suppliers to merge over time.”

He noted that in his process “significant financial resources will be required and large and well-capitalized suppliers will have an inherent competitive advantage, again, likely forcing mergers and consolidation over time.” This has been reflected in a series of mergers and partnerships, including the recent alliance between Ford and Volkswagen on the development of autonomous vehicles and electric cars.

Mass Assembly at the Matamoros plaza during wildcat strikes in Mexico earlier this year [Credit: Esteban Martínez]

The assault on the conditions of the working class, which is not confined to auto, is meeting growing resistance. This was expressed by the recent strike of Faurecia auto parts workers in Saline, Michigan and growing struggles internationally, including a general strike earlier this month in Ecuador, mass protests in Algeria, Hong Kong and the US territory of Puerto Rico. Earlier this year a rebellion by 70,000 auto parts workers in Matamoros, Mexico cut off the supply of critical parts to US and Canadian auto factories.

Autoworkers around the world confront the same attack on their jobs, living standards and working conditions. That is why they need a global strategy to unite and coordinate the struggles of autoworkers across national boundaries.

The United Auto Workers, Unifor in Canada, IG Metall in Germany and all other unions are based on the reactionary and outmoded program of nationalism. Far from resisting the attack on jobs and living standards, the UAW and other unions are surrendering further conditions based on the bogus claim that if workers submit to the demands of their “own” capitalist exploiters this will save their jobs by undercutting workers in other countries.

Job cuts are not the result of unfair trade or foreign competition but of capitalism. As Karl Marx said in the “industrial war of capitalists among themselves” the “battles in it are won less by recruiting than by discharging the army of workers. The generals (the capitalists) vie with one another as to who can discharge the greatest number of industrial soldiers.”

In place of the corrupt, bureaucratic unions, workers must organize democratically elected and controlled factory and workplace committees to mobilize a fightback against the auto bosses. These committees would not start with the profit demands of corporate management but the needs of workers to secure jobs, decent wages and a safe and healthy workplace.

The fight to defend jobs poses the necessity of a reorganization of society. Against the right of corporations to close factories and devastate communities, workers must advance the social right to a job and decent standard of living. This is a political struggle, posing the need for the development of a political movement of the working class to unite workers globally in the fight for international socialism.

New draconian police law introduced in Germany

Tino Jacobson & Marianne Arens

At the same time that new neo-Nazi networks linked to the intelligence services, police and army are being uncovered across Germany, state governments are systematically expanding the powers of all of these forces. In the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the ruling SPD-CDU coalition, headed by Manuela Schwesig (SPD), plans to implement a new, much tougher police law after the summer break.

In common with the new police laws introduced in Bavaria, Baden-Wuerttemberg, Hesse, Brandenburg, North Rhine-Westphalia and Berlin, the so-called Security and Ordinance Act (SOG) in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania will significantly strengthen the police apparatus. It undermines important democratic rights.

One focus of the new law is the use of so-called state trojans, which can be used to spy on the entire digital traffic of a targeted individual. In order to plant the spy software on computers and smartphones, police will be allowed to secretly enter and search apartments to “prepare” their eavesdropping operations. The state trojans can also be used against those who are not accused of any offence and are merely seen as likely to commit a crime in the future.

In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the police will be able to monitor source telecommunications, making it possible to read texts before encryption, as well as online searches, to gain access to all electronic data stored in a computer or smartphone. “If we are unable to finally acquire the data, the state police can simply shut down their operations,” state Interior Minister Lorenz Caffier (CDU) boasted.

Another important focus of the new law makes clear that the case of Julian Assange is to serve as a role model for suppressing the freedom of the press in Germany. The bill aims to further restrict the right of journalists to protect their sources and refuse to give evidence. It allows police officers to access journalists’ information, contacts and documents in the event of any “imminent danger” without a court order, thereby endangering both journalists and their sources.

At the end of 2011, the German constitutional court ruled that legislative bodies were not obliged to grant journalists the same protection as clergy, parliamentarians or lawyers. State governments are now using this ruling to justify their new police laws.

According to the new police law internet providers and platforms can be forced to release the data, including passwords and addresses, of “suspicious persons.” Police will also be granted increased powers to deploy undercover agents, control the documents and monitor the homes of people classified as so-called “threats.”

In addition, the new security law permits the use of drones and for police to shoot suspects with a “final rescue shot” should they decide that they, or other persons, are in danger. Last year electronic shackles were already introduced in the state.

Increasingly politicians from parties across the board are putting into practice the program of the xenophobic Alternative for Germany (AfD). They are expanding the powers of state agencies as new details about right-wing extremist networks in the police and army come to light. This is particularly clear in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

On 21 June, the parliament in Schwerin approved the new police law in a first reading. Less than 10 days earlier, the state prosecutor had issued a warrant against four police officers accused of stashing ammunition. One of them, Marko G., is the founder of the terrorist chat group “Nordkreuz.” The public prosecutor in Schwerin ordered a search of 13 premises, including homes and police stations, and arrested four officers who belonged to, or were formally members of the Special Task Force (SEK) of the state Criminal Investigation Office (LKA). The former SEK policeman Marko G. is also a member of the AfD.

His group “Nordkreuz,” which is part of the so-called “preparers,” is characterised by its ruthlessness. The group has been hoarding weapons, ammunition and supplies and conducting shooting practice to prepare for a “Day X”, i.e. the day when the state will collapse. On this day, the group plans to kill political opponents using lists of 25,000 names of “representatives of the left-wing political spectrum” (as stated in the search warrant). The members of the group are mostly police officers and army soldiers. They are said to have planned to procure 200 body bags and quicklime to dissolve victim’s bodies.

The state government and its Interior Ministry have been aware of the group “Nordkreuz” for a considerable length of time. The house of Marko G. was searched for 11 hours two years ago, but he was then only called as a witness. He has been able to work undisturbed for another two years and expand his huge network, which is linked to far right-wing groups throughout Germany.

Two years ago investigations were already being carried out against two members of the “Nordkreuz” group, a police officer and a right-wing lawyer. The investigating team found weapons and a list of 5,000 names. One of the suspects, the police officer Haik J., an AfD member, was merely suspended from duty. The other, the lawyer Jan-Hendrik Hammer, is apparently still active in the Rostock community; his name appears as a deputy on the website of the right-wing populist list, Independent Citizens for Rostock (UFR).

Jan-Hendrik Hammer joined the UFR while he was a member of the neo-liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) and maintains close ties to the Identitarian Movement (IB). The former AfD state spokesman Holger Arppe (now independent) wrote about Hammer: “The guy would fit perfectly in our ranks. He hates the left, has a well-stocked gun cabinet in the garage and lives by the motto: when the left eventually go completely crazy, I’m prepared.” Referring to some of his colleagues in the Rostock community Hammer said, according to Arppe, “Some people in the citizenry I can only imagine with a hole in their head, I cannot stand these left-wing pigs.”

The events in Rostock and Schwerin demonstrate the proximity of the AfD to the far-right networks in the police and army. With its new police law, the state government of the SPD and CDU covers up for these forces and at the same time implements AfD policy.

In the past, state Interior Minister Lorenz Caffier had awarded Marko G. a medal as a sports shooter, and Marko was a regular guest on a shooting range where the LKA organised training for special units of the police and army. This shooting range has now also been searched because its manager was probably active in “Nordkreuz.” Despite official requests from state politicians, Caffier has refused to inform those whose names appear on the “enemy” and “death lists.”

The SPD, which heads the state government, also implements this right-wing policy. The police spokesman for the SPD, Manfred Dachner, himself a former police officer, expressly welcomed the extension of powers embodied in the new police law. In order to cast the law in the most favourable light, the SPD has promised to carry out an evaluation in 2024 and then, as it says, perhaps a few measures could be relaxed. However, history has shown that once implemented, such laws are only likely to be further strengthened.

1,300 arrested in police crackdown on liberal opposition in Russia

Clara Weiss

In a massive police crackdown in Moscow on Saturday, over 1,300 people were arrested at a rally of the liberal opposition. The protesters demanded that 57 candidates, most of them associated with the right-wing opposition politician Alexey Navalny and his party, “Russia’s Future,” be allowed to participate in the Moscow city duma elections on September 8. Along with the Moscow elections, some 30 regional and municipal elections will be held on that day.

The city authorities had declared the demonstration illegal and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin had denounced them as a “security threat,” vowing that “order will be ensured.” The ensuing crack-down on the protest, which involved between three and five thousand people, in Moscow’s city center was unprecedented in its scope, even by the standards of the frequent police crackdowns on opposition protests in Russia. Video footage shows scenes that resemble a military occupation or a civil war.

Several heavily armored vehicles were stationed on Tverskaya Street. Along with Moscow city police, the state mobilized the OMON, a paramilitary formation of the Interior Ministry that forms part of the Russian National Guard. There were at least as many policemen and OMON on the streets as there were protesters. At several points during the protests, which lasted almost all day, hundreds of OMON men formed chains, surrounding large groups of protesters, before storming into the crowd, beating people up and carrying them away to arrest them.

Chants by the protesters included: “There will be freedom in Russia,” “Russia without Putin,” “Putin get out,” as well as “Russia” and “occupiers.” Banners held up by protesters said: “We will take Russia back,” and “Stop lying to us.”

Among the arrested were several of the candidates that had been barred from running in the election, among them Ilya Yashin, Liubov’ Sobol and Ivan Zhdanov. They are all involved with Alexey Navalny’s “Fund to Fight Corruption.” According to unconfirmed reports, passers-by were also arrested.

The crackdown on Saturday followed over a week of demonstrations by the liberal opposition, which were attended by several thousand people, demanding that its candidates be placed on the ballots. Alexei Navalny had been arrested at one of these protests last Wednesday and is still in prison. Overall, the authorities accepted over 200 candidates who are competing for 45 seats.

Most of them, including several who run as “independent” candidates, are affiliated with the ruling United Russia party, or with the main opposition parties in the Duma which for some two decades have functioned as the “loyal opposition” to the Putin regime – the ultra-nationalist and Stalinist Communist Party of Russia (KPRF), the fascistic Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR), and the nationalist Just Russia party.

The only other organization that was allowed to run candidates are the Stalinist “Communists of Russia,” an organization that is widely considered to be a Kremlin project set up to divert votes from other candidates. Among their candidates is the right-wing Stalinist Darya Mitina from the United Communist Party (OKP) whose ties to the Kremlin and far-right in Russia and internationally the WSWS has exposed in the past. Boris Kagarlitsky, another important figure in the Stalinist and pseudo-left scene of Russia, is running as a candidate for the nationalist “Just Russia” party. Like Mitina, Kagarlitsky has supported the East Ukrainian separatists during the Civil War that began in Ukraine after the US-backed fascist coup in Kiev in February 2014.

Over a dozen candidates that were affiliated with the liberal opposition of Alexei Navalny were barred from participation despite having collected the necessary 5,000 signatures.

The program of the liberal opposition is thoroughly reactionary: orienting toward a closer alliance with US imperialism, figures like Alexei Navalny and Ilya Yashin, speak for sections of the Russian oligarchy and the upper-middle class that feel like their economic interests are being overruled by the oligarchs around Putin and have disagreements with the Kremlin about foreign policy.

They have been built up for years by Washington as potential leaders of a movement by discontented sections of the upper middle class and the oligarchy. Similar to the Maidan movement in Kiev which culminated in the ousting of the pro-Russian Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych in a fascist coup in February 2014, such a movement would be aimed at ousting Putin through the mobilization of extremely right-wing forces and establishing of an oligarchic regime that would be more directly subservient to the foreign policy and economic interests of US imperialism.

Like Navalny, with whom he has worked for almost two decades, Yashin has been a long-standing advocate of a close alliance of the so called liberals with far-right forces in Russia. Yashin was also a close collaborator of the late Boris Nemtsov, who was killed under dubious circumstances in early 2015, and was one of the most important Russian politicians with close affiliations to Washington.

Support for the liberal opposition is largely limited to layers of professionals and the upper middle class, as well as sections of the oligarchy, that are centered in Moscow and, to a lesser extent, in St. Petersburg.

However, workers must understand the massive crack-down on the opposition protest on Saturday as a serious warning. It testifies to the extreme nervousness of the Kremlin under conditions of an escalation of the US war drive against Iran, the resurgence of the class struggle internationally, and growing anger and social discontent within the Russian working class. It was meant as a show of force and a demonstration of the state’s readiness to violently repress any opposition, above all opposition coming from the working class.

With the ruling United Russia party already deeply unpopular, ratings for Putin have also recently dropped significantly, above all in response to his backing of the widely hated raising of the retirement age. This “pension reform” was pushed through against mass opposition last year, and signifies a frontal assault on the already impoverished living standards of the overwhelming majority of the working population. In addition, recent months have seen the layoff of thousands of Ford workers with miserable compensations amid fears that Russia’s biggest auto company GAZ might shut down, threatening hundreds of thousands of jobs.

The liberal opposition, the Putin-regime, its “loyal opposition” of the LDPR, KPRF and Just Russia, as well as the Stalinist and pseudo-left forces are united in their hostility to any movement by the working class and determination to implement an agenda of social austerity. All of these parties are supported the dissolution of the USSR and are hostile to Trotskysim.

This was demonstrated clearly by last year’s bogus protests against the pension reform, in which Darya Mitina’s OKP marched alongside supporters of Navalny, the fascistic LDPR, the KPRF and the Russian Pabloites, and openly fascist forces. Their common aim was to disorient the mass discontent about the pension reform and prevent a movement by workers in opposition to the government.

There is no question that any protests and strikes involving broad sections of the working class would be met with even greater violence and ferocity by the state than the protests on Saturday. This makes it all the more urgent for workers and intellectuals who are seriously concerned about the danger of war, social austerity and the attacks on democratic rights, to establish their complete political independence from the prevailing reactionary political forces in Russia by turning to a socialist and internationalist program.

Johnson plans for a no deal exit from the European Union

Robert Stevens

The Conservative government of Boris Johnson announced over the weekend that it is “working on the assumption” that it will leave the European Union (EU) without a trade and customs deal on October 31.

In the Sunday Times, Michael Gove wrote, “No deal is now a very real prospect.” One of the central Tory figures in heading the Leave campaign in the 2016 EU referendum, Gove is now charged with coordinating Brexit across all government departments in Johnson’s Cabinet announced last week.

Denouncing the Withdrawal Agreement the EU reached with Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, which she failed to get through parliament, Gove wrote, “You can't just reheat the dish that's been sent back and expect that will make it more palatable.” The EU may agree to a new deal with Johnson, he said, “but we must operate on the assumption that they will not.”

Chancellor Sajid Javid announced in the pro-Brexit Sunday Telegraph that there would be “significant extra funding” for 500 new Border Force officers and new infrastructure around ports.

These moves followed a statement Friday by a spokesman for Johnson, insisting: “The withdrawal agreement has been rejected three times by the House of Commons. It’s not going to pass… That means reopening the withdrawal agreement and securing the abolition of the backstop.”

The backstop, opposed by the Tories’ hard Brexit wing, refers to the proposed measures agreed between May, the EU and Irish government intended to prevent the return of a hard border between the Republic and Northern Ireland post-Brexit.

Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s senior adviser, and the main Vote Leave campaign strategist in the referendum, told Downing Street advisers Friday that Johnson said Brexit had to be carried out “by any means necessary.”

Johnson claimed that he has “absolutely” ruled out a general election prior to the Brexit deadline date of October 31—though this is far from assured. The Sunday Times noted that Johnson has established a “war cabinet” of six members that will meet from today to “plot the nation’s course.” This cabinet consists only of Brexiteers who will back a no-deal outcome: Johnson, Gove, Javid, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay and the Attorney General Geoffrey Cox.

Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, said May’s deal was the “the best and only agreement possible.” Johnson’s demand to withdraw the backstop “is of course unacceptable and not within the mandate of the European Council.” He warned that no-deal Brexit “will never be the EU's choice,” but “we all have to be ready for all scenarios.” Germany’s Europe Minister, Michael Roth, said, “Boris, the election campaign is over. Calm yourself down … What do not help are new provocations.”

Summing up the growing conflicts, Financial Times columnist Wolfgang Münchau said the EU now “must prepare for the shock of a no-deal Brexit.”

The central concern of the EU is to preserve the unity of the bloc, as trade war with the United States escalates amid developing global recession. The Financial Times commented, “The brinkmanship, if anything, has stiffened resolve in European capitals.”

It cited a “senior EU official EU” who said angrily, “Will member states want to reward a Trumpist in No 10?... Is that the sort of politics that they think should be seen to be successful? Do you reward those who go rogue?”

The official warned that the EU has “a hierarchy of interest … The first is self-preservation, the continued existence and development of the union. The second is an orderly withdrawal. If there is a conflict between one and two, we give priority to number one. Leaders are resigned to the fact that Britain may leave without a deal.”

Britain hurtles towards a no-deal exit under conditions in which one study last week said that the economy may already be in a recession, with forecasts of a 10 percent collapse in the value of the pound and an increase in inflation to above 4 percent. These reports are devastating, but they underestimate the situation facing the working class. Brexit was an advanced expression of the deepening descent of world capitalism into bitter trade war and protectionism. Johnson’s perspective is based on uniting British and US imperialism for a trade war against Europe. The Remain faction favours Britain and Europe forging an alliance against the US or at least straddling the growing divide between the two rivals.

Johnson heads an unstable government of Thatcherites committed to a war agenda against the working class. But nothing they are planning could be contemplated without the role played by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. His every action since being elected has been to demobilise the working class, preventing it from intervening independently in a political crisis within ruling circles without precedent in peacetime. The Tories are now on their third leader in the nearly four years since Corbyn took office, but they still cling to power thanks to him.

As Leader of the Opposition, Corbyn has it in his gift to call a no-confidence vote in Johnson—who only has a working majority of three MPs—at a time of his choosing. Corbyn says that he will only move a no-confidence motion when this is “optimal.” What does this mean?

Corbyn is occupied with assembling a parliamentary majority—including dissenting Tories—for an alternative perspective serving that faction of the British bourgeoise who want a deal with the EU that preserves access to the Single Market and Customs Union. On Sunday, in an interview with Sky News, he complained: “What we proposed was actually a very credible deal. A bespoke customs union with the EU and the trade arrangements would have achieved those things. It didn’t go through parliament, that was the problem.”

For a genuine workers’ leader, the only point in calling a no-confidence vote would be to make clear the implacable opposition of his party to the government and to expose the refusal of its other “critics” to any fight to bring it down. It would be bound up with a fight to mobilise the working class against this hated government on an alternative perspective representing their class interests. But Corbyn fears a movement from below just as much as do the Tories and is absolutely opposed to bringing downing the government.

It was revealed last week that May’s former Remain supporting Chancellor Philip Hammond, who stepped down as Johnson became prime minister, has held “private talks” with Corbyn’s Brexit Secretary, the Blairite Sir Keir Starmer. The Guardian reported, “On Saturday night Starmer confirmed that Johnson’s arrival in No 10 had spurred more cross-party discussions at high levels involving senior Tories sacked by Johnson, or who chose to resign, as opponents of no deal prepared a cross-party counter-offensive against his new hard-Brexit cabinet and government.”

The only viable response for the working class, as fought for by the Socialist Equality Party, is to oppose both factions of the ruling class, Leave and Remain, Tory and Labour, and fight for the United Socialist States of Europe in unity with workers across the continent and internationally.

FTC imposes $5 billion fine on Facebook for “deceiving users” about data privacy

Kevin Reed

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a ruling on Wednesday that ordered the social media giant Facebook to pay an unprecedented $5 billion fine and to implement management practices enumerated in a “Mandated Privacy Program” that includes a twenty-year third-party “compliance monitoring” regime run by the Justice Department.

The settlement with Facebook—in which the company neither admits nor denies any of the allegations against it—was approved in a 3-2 vote by the FTC one month ago. The formal ruling in the US District Court of the District of Columbia was made after the deal was approved by Attorney General William Barr and was signed by representatives of the FTC and Facebook on July 23.

The deal was the product of a sixteen-month investigation by the FTC into Facebook’s alleged mishandling of the private data of its 2.2 billion active users. According to an FTC news release, the agency had charged “that the company violated a 2012 FTC order by deceiving users about their ability to control the privacy of their personal information.”

The settlement is by far the largest penalty ever levied against a company in the history of the agency. The previous largest privacy-related fine was for $22.5 million against Google in 2012 for “misrepresented privacy assurances to users of Apple’s Safari internet browser.”

The FTC was founded in 1914 under the administration of Democratic President Woodrow Wilson as a government enforcement and regulatory agency in the era of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Over the decades, the agency has been increasingly used to shield corporate executives and owners from prosecution for a host of criminal activities and business practices that have killed or maimed workers or been harmful to the health and well-being of the public.

The FTC currently has two Democratic and three Republican appointees—each commissioner is appointed by the President for a seven-year term—and the vote was split along party lines. In a statement announcing the settlement on behalf of the majority, Agency Chairman Joseph Simons said, “We are extremely proud of the landmark penalty and conduct relief announced today. The size of the $5 billion penalty, as well as the percentage of profits it represents, will provide significant deterrence not just to Facebook, but to every other company that collects or uses consumer data.”

For its part, Facebook reported the settlement on its Newsroom blog explaining how the FTC ruling “is not only about regulators, it’s about rebuilding trust with people.” The post also included an infographic on how Facebook will now finally protect user privacy, something it has said so many times in the past that everyone has lost count.

The Newsroom report also included a 48-second video of a clearly-perturbed CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressing a meeting of Facebook staff saying, “This is a new chapter for the company. Privacy is more central than ever to our vision for the future and we’re going to change the way we operate the company from the leadership down and from the ground up.” His speech was not convincing.

Congressional figures from both parties also weighed in on the ruling as being too lenient. Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, said the FTC ruling “utterly fails to penalize Facebook in any effective way” and Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said, “The FTC is sending the message that wealthy executives and massive corporations can rampantly violate Americans’ privacy and lie about how our personal information is used and abused and get off with no meaningful consequences.”

While the FTC and Democrats and Republicans in Washington, D.C. hypocritically prattle on about user privacy violations by “massive corporations” like Facebook, they have absolutely no qualms about the scraping of social media profiles and driver’s license photo databases by the intelligence agencies while serving up lies “about how personal information is used and abused” for the purposes of surveillance and building dossiers on the entire public with “no meaningful consequences.”

The FTC case against Facebook stemmed from revelations in early 2018 that the British data mining firm Cambridge Analytica had harvested the personal data of 50 million Facebook users without their permission. The data was then repackaged and sold by the consulting firm for political advertising purposes.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal had all the hallmarks of a carefully orchestrated media campaign by Democratic Party supporters to further tarnish and blame Facebook for allowing supposed “Russian meddling” in the 2016 presidential elections and the victory of Republican Donald Trump. That this type of data scraping had been going on for years and has been a central feature of Facebook’s business model for paid advertising revenue was completely left out of the sensational news coverage.

Far from protecting Facebook user privacy rights—the entire $5 billion will go to the US Treasury with not one cent to the harmed users that the FTC is supposedly standing up for—the present ruling is a significant action in preparation for more aggressive government regulation and control of the major social media platforms. With the imposition of a massive fine—$5 billion is 24 percent of Facebook’s 2018 profits—and the onerous twenty-year oversight regime, the FTC is putting all of big tech and their Wall Street investors on notice that major changes are in the making.

The FTC settlement takes place alongside of a congressional investigation into big tech that uses similar language about protecting the public from the invasive practices of Microsoft, Google, Apple and Amazon and “breaking up” the tech monopolies. The ruling class is seeking a means of intervening politically into the mobile, broadband wireless device and social media industries, while not disrupting the enormous earnings of these largest firms on Wall Street and maintaining their dominant role in the worldwide competition for technology products and services.

Behind the phony public relations lingo about “user rights” is a concerted effort by the state and the corporations to find a way to halt the use of social media for the purposes of expressing and organizing the rising political opposition of workers and young people against the ruling class and capitalism internationally. Every strike and struggle today—including the mass demonstrations in Puerto Rico which resulted in the governor’s resignation—is being organized and coordinated with social media apps like Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter.

The strategy of the ruling class is two-pronged. On the one hand, the tech corporations are implementing—with state assistance—censorship that stifles and blocks the development of left-wing and socialist views on their platforms. And on the other hand, the state is intervening with lawsuits, court cases and legislation to both gain access to all content on social media and impose regulation on the corporations preventing the use of social media for political and social struggle. This is the objective meaning of the campaign against “user privacy violations” and “fake news” on social media over the past two and a half years.

The mass drownings off Libya and the fight to defend refugees

Alex Lantier

The ongoing wave of atrocities against refugees demonstrates that it is impossible to defend immigrants without a mass, international movement against the capitalist system. Despite mounting outrage at crimes committed against refugees by the world’s wealthiest states, these governments are determined to continue anti-immigrant policies condemning tens of thousands of innocent people to death.

On Thursday, a ship carrying 270 to 300 refugees fleeing Libya capsized and sank in the Mediterranean, en route to Italy. Fishermen who spotted the boat called the Libyan coast guard, who rescued around 140 refugees from the waves. The remaining are missing and presumed drowned.

Refugees rescued in the Mediterranean in 2014 © Italian Navy/M. Sestini

Sabah Youssef, a survivor of the shipwreck devastated by the drowning of her seven-year-old child, declared: “I don’t want anything now except to go back to my country, Sudan, to die there.”

An Eritrean survivor made an international appeal for help: “We rescued ourselves. No one could help us, and no one came to rescue us, and here we are in a big problem, so we need your help.”

The refugees who survived the shipwreck are still in grave danger. Like all refugees delivered to Libya’s coast guard—a force built and funded by the European Union (EU), after the 2011 NATO war against Libya destroyed that country’s government and armed forces—they risk internment in EU-funded concentration camps. There, they face assault, rape, being sold into slavery, or murder, as the United Nations, human rights groups and major media have repeatedly documented.

Those who survive the abuse meted out by camp guards risk falling victim to the civil war that has devastated Libya since the NATO war. Earlier this month, dozens died when aircraft loyal to Khalifa Haftar, a military strongman backed by French President Emmanuel Macron and Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, bombed a refugee camp in Tajoura as they attacked the Italian-backed official Libyan government in nearby Tripoli.

Yesterday, UN High Commission on Refugees Spokesman for Africa Charlie Yaxley tweeted shocking news that of the survivors of the shipwreck, “84 were taken to Tajoura detention camp, where more than 50 died trapped inside during an airstrike just weeks ago. … They must be released and action taken so that no one is brought back to detention centers.”

Responsibility for refugee drownings in the Mediterranean, which have claimed 14,000 lives since 2016, lies with the European Union (EU) and the capitalist system. Faced with a global upsurge of the class struggle—mass protests in Puerto Rico, US teachers strikes, “yellow vest” protests in France, and strikes against EU austerity in Portugal, Germany and Poland—the capitalist class is viciously stoking anti-refugee chauvinism to divide the workers. At the same time, it builds up a police state for mass repression of the entire working class.

Imperialist governments on both sides of the Atlantic pour hundreds of billions of dollars into their military machines, and impose austerity to enrich billionaires like Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos (net worth $165.6 billion) and LVMH owner Bernard Arnault ($104.2 billion) at workers’ expense. Yet, echoing the fascist regimes of the 20th century, governments and bourgeois parties of all political colors insist that everyone must blame their troubles on immigrants.

America’s fascistic president, Donald Trump, has detained hundreds of thousands of immigrants in a network of US concentration camps and is threatening police raids on US cities to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. The Democratic Party has played a key role in supporting Trump’s far-right policy, voting $4.6 billion to fund the US concentration camp system despite protests against immigration raids across the United States.

The drownings off Libya have provoked outrage in Europe at Italy’s far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini, who proclaims his admiration for fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

Salvini, who has threatened mass raids to deport illegal immigrants and the Roma people, blocks all ships bearing refugees from reaching Italy. He ignored protests by 200,000 people this spring in Milan in defense of refugees. Having arrested German captain Carola Rackete of the Sea Watch 3 vessel for landing refugees in Italy, and released her amid a wave of protests in Germany, he now refuses to allow an Italian coast guard ship bearing refugees to land until other EU states agree to accept all immigrants aboard.

Yet responsibility lies with the entire EU. In 2015, it launched “Operation Triton,” ending rescue operations and stepping up warship deployments in the Mediterranean, and accelerated construction of a vast network of concentration camps. Millions of Middle Eastern and African refugees are imprisoned in horrific conditions in EU-funded camps stretching from Italy and Greece to Turkey, Libya and Niger.

Statements by Berlin and Paris criticizing Salvini’s fascistic outbursts reek of hypocrisy. While the Macron government has called Salvini “disgusting,” Macron has hailed fascist dictator Philippe Pétain and his officials boast to their fascistic base in the security forces and the financial elite about grounding the migrant rescue ship Aquarius in Marseille to keep refugees from reaching France. French police brutally broke up a protest by African refugees in Paris on July 14, the anniversary of the French Revolution, and have savagely attacked “yellow vests” protesting social inequality.

Having briefly extended an open door in 2015 to migrants fleeing the Syrian war via the Balkans to Germany, Berlin has adopted an anti-immigrant policy. As it rearms, and right-wing extremist German professors call to rehabilitate Hitler and German militarism, violent neo-Nazi groups are flourishing in the police apparatus. The unsolved murder of politician Walter Lübcke, who faced multiple death threats from neo-Nazis after publicly defending refugees, amounts to a barely veiled threat against anyone supporting refugees in Germany.

In 1940, two years before European fascism launched the genocide of the Jews, the great Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky wrote: “Today decaying capitalist society is striving to squeeze the Jewish people from all its pores; seventeen million individuals out of the two billion populating the globe, that is, less than 1 percent, can no longer find a place on our planet! Amid the vast expanses of land and the marvels of technology, which has also conquered the skies for man as well as the earth, the bourgeoisie has managed to convert our planet into a foul prison.”

Eighty years later, Trotsky’s words sound as a warning. After three decades of imperialist war in the Middle East and Africa since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and a decade of economic crisis since the 2008 Wall Street crash, tens of millions have fled bloodshed and poverty across the planet. Last year, 70.8 million people were displaced around the world, the most since World War II.

The relentless state repression and police state build-up are signs that the ruling class is firmly set on a fascistic course.

The way forward is the fight to mobilize ever broader layers of the international working class entering into struggle and arm these struggles with a socialist and internationalist program. This means rejecting attempts to blame immigrants for the social crisis produced by capitalism and defending their right to travel, live and work in any country of their choosing. Above all, it means rejecting illusions that fascistic anti-immigrant policies can be fought in alliance with any section of the ruling establishment.

Only a perspective for mobilizing the working class internationally for the socialist transformation of society can free humanity from the diktat of the corporate oligarchy, defend democratic rights and guarantee a high standard of living to all.