CounterVortex

This transcript appears on the Oakland Socailist website:

Welcome back to the CounterVortex with your ranter Bill Weinberg, ranting at you in the wee hours of Aug. 18, 2024, as always from my apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side—which fortunately is not under aerial bombardment (yet), but is perhaps, along with the rest of this increasingly unwieldy entity known as the United States of America, on the brink of a fascist takeover. Kinda feels like we’re being sucked into a vortex, eh?

There are, however, certain counter-vortextual currents emerging. Have you noticed all the uprisings going on all around the world, all of a sudden over the past few weeks? I’m starting to feel a little nostalgic for 2011.

2011—like 1989 and 1968 and 1848—was a revolutionary moment, a utopian moment , an opening for utopian possibilities, with uprisings around world. Most famously the Arab Revolution, the indignados in Spain, anti-austerity protests in Greece, and Occupy Wall Street in the US—but that year saw youth and labor protests from Chile to Kazakhstan, and a strong sense of international solidarity between those movements.

Now, the Arab Revolution was generally perceived as being a pro-democracy wave of revolution, while the indignados and Occupy were more about economic grievances. In fact, these two demands are intrinsically linked, and of course the incident that sparked the Arab Revolution was all about economic grievances—the self-immolation of street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi on Dec. 17, 2010 in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia. And the economic impacts on the common people of the corruption and nepotism of the entrenched dictatorships was definitely a driving motive of the movements.

There was a real moment of hope that crystalized for me in November 2011, after Occupy had spread to Oakland, California, and there was what was billed as a “general strike” to shut down the Port of Oakland, which was met with police repression. And there was a solidarity demonstration with Oakland in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, which had itself been occupied by protesters earlier that year in the revolution that brought down Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak. And the demonstrators also marched on the US embassy carrying hand-written signs reading “#OAKLAND #GREECE #LONDON #SYDNEY –> THE SAME GOAL” and “FROM EGYPT TO WALL STREET: DON’T BE AFRAID, GO AHEAD.”

Of course, the revolutionary moment of 2011 passed, and the Arab Revolution was met in the following years with either restored dictatorship, as in Egypt, or descent into internal war, as in Libya, or both, as in Syria—which has seen actual genocide in the intervening years at the hands of both Assad and ISIS. And very sadly, the one success story of the Arab Revolution, Tunisia—the first victorious uprising of that year, which brought down the dictatorship and actually established a democratic order…. well, 13 years later a new dictatorship is consolidating in Tunisia.

There was another such moment of revolutionary possibility with the Black Lives Matter uprising here in the US in 2020, although without the international dimension.

And now I have a tentative sense that we could be approaching another such moment—and with the stakes now very high given the explosive international situation, with wars in both Europe and the Middle East that are escalating and threaten to become internationalized.

But this time the politics of the uprisings, alas, are considerably more complicated.

The most depressing contrast is in the United Kingdom, where there were angry youth protests in several towns across England in August 2011—kind of akin to the Black Lives Matter uprising in the US nine years later, sparked by the police killing of a Black man named Mark Duggan in North London on Aug. 4 of that year, although grievances about unemployment and austerity were also involved. A general anti-racist uprising…..

In vivid contrast to what we are witnessing now: a racist uprising in England, organized and enflamed through social media by the far right, and attacking immigrants and Black-owned businesses. Very bad news, nothing hopeful about that whatsoever—the clean contrary of course: the worst example of popular rage being deflected onto ethnic scapegoats in fascist manner.

But other examples from around the world at the moment are more hopeful, if often still… complicated. First let’s turn to the African continent.

In our podcast of July 14, about nuclear power being sold to us as a false hope to address the climate crisis, we discussed the anti-nuclear protest movement on the Kilifi Coast of Kenya, and noted the perversity of the Kenyan government’s hubristic plans to build a nuclear plant there as a symbol of status and prestige, while the harsh iniquities of land tenure in the region are fueling inter-communal violence on the ground, with the small farmers having been expropriated by the landed elite and left to fight over the meager and marginal lands left to them. Utterly sickening. Well in an oversight, I failed to mention in that rant the big, angry protests that were then underway in Nairobi.

The protests actually broke out the month before, with at least 13 people killed and 150 injured as police opened fire on protesters who stormed the parliament building on June 25. In the aftermath of this violence, President William Ruto backtracked on a contentious finance bill that would have imposed new taxes at a time of rising prices.

The protests still continued for a few weeks after that before being put down with considerable repression, with some 80 killed around the country, and the authorities seemingly engaging in a kind of “dirty war” against the perceived leaders. The Guardianreported Aug. 15: “The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights has recorded 66 cases of people who are thought to have been abducted or have gone missing since the protests began, leaving behind relatives and friends who are desperately searching for them.”

Police again fired tear gas on protesters in Nairobi on Aug, 8 at the “Nane Nane” march, meaning “eight eight” in reference to the date, presumably in Swahili—an attempt to reignite the demonstrations.

But by then the flame had spread to Uganda. July 23 saw a mass march on the parliament building in Kampala, organized by youth, leading to over 100 arrests and mobilization of the army to the city’s streets. The protests were primarily about corruption under the long-ruling strongman Yoweri Museveni, and seem to have mostly subsided since mobilization of the army.

But by then the flame had spread to Nigeria. A 10-day protest was called in Nigeria Aug. 1, under the slogan “End Bad Governance”—in large part against a new electricity tariff, but more generally against austerity imposed under neoliberal reforms by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Media reports showed signs reading such things as “One day the poor will have nothing else to eat but the rich oppressors.”

At least seven people were killed in police repression on Aug. 1, the first day of the protests, mostly in north-central Niger state, and Lagos and Abuja were flooded with police and army troops. So in the face of this, the protests seem not to have been sustained throughout the planned 10 days.

In some unsettling news, some 40 protesters were arrested on Aug. 6 for waving the Russian flag, mostly in the northern city of Kaduna.

Well, that is rather frustrating. Because Nigeria is in the Anglo-American influence sphere, the protesters are rallying around the rival imperial power, Russia, just as we’ve seen elsewhere in West Africa recently—most notably in the anti-French protests in Niger and Burkina Faso. And the exact mirror image of this was seen in the Hong Kong protests in 2019 and 2020, where protesters waved the Union Jack and Old Glory—a tactical and analytical error, I submit, in both Hong Kong and West Africa. But in neither case does this mean we can simply dismiss the protests as coopted by imperial powers and unworthy of our solidarity. Right?

And by the way, there was a kind of Black Lives Matter uprising in Nigeria in 2020, sparked by the Oct. 20 Lekki Massacre, when soldiers and police fired on demonstrators who were occupying a toll bridge in a protest against police brutality in the Lekki district of Lagos, killing some 40 and only causing the protests to spread. Google up that episode if you missed it.

So, starting to look like an African Spring or African Revolution, eh? Within the African continent, at least, there is definitely a sense of international solidarity mounting in the protests, with one sparking another as in the Arab world in 2011—although this time there has been no regime change, yet.

OK, let’s turn our attention to Asia now—most significantly, Bangladesh.

Things started heating up there about a year ago, with protests to demand the ouster of prime minister Sheikh Hasina, but have very significantly escalated in recent weeks. The unrest was reignited this July, initially in student protests against the quota system that reserves 30% of government jobs for children of “freedom fighters” (an official designation) in the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971. The government ordered the indefinite closure of schools and colleges as the country was engulfed in angry protest. Eventually a nationwide curfew was imposed, and some 250 were killed in repression. But protests continued, and on Aug. 5 protestors stormed the residential palace in Dhaka, and Sheikh Hasina fled the country—in what the local media have dubbed the “Monsoon Revolution.”

An interim government has been installed, led by Muhammad Yunus, the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner for his work in micro-financing. This seems to have largely chilled out the protests, although there have been some disturbing incidents since then. On Aug. 15, mobs wielding bamboo sticks and pipes attacked supporters of Sheikh Hasina’s formerly ruling party, the Awami League, preventing them from holding a rally of their own. And more disturbingly still, there have bee several violent mob attacks on religious minorities, primarily Hindus and Ahmadi Muslims, who are deemed heretical by the orthodox Sunni establishment.

And it as to be said that the Awami League is the more left-leaning and secular of the two major parties in Bangladesh, although it has been accused of exploiting the issue of Liberation War veterans to consolidate power in clientelist manner. Whereas the opposition Bangladesh National Party (BNP) is more conservative and Islamist. Not being there to judge directly, I would like to believe that the accusation from the ousted government that the protesters were all in the pocket of the BNP is a calumny, or at least overstated. In any case, the appointment of Yunus, who is not associated with either party, is a good sign that the revolution will not prove to be a mere coup for the BNP. An important one to watch.

And India…. Doctors are on strike across India, and there have been big protests in their support, after the killing and rape of a medical intern at a hospital in Calcutta. Violence against women and misogyny are the central grievance here, although there is also a law-and-order aspect to the demands, including calls for wider use of the death penalty, which I’m not happy about.

And China…. Just this week, on Monday Aug. 12, a bicycle delivery worker in Hangzhou was accosted and humiliated by the police after he apparently damaged fencing outside a building while rushing to deliver a takeout order. And he actually kneeled in the street to beg the officers to release him so could make his deliveries. And the image went viral, and there was a mass bicycle protest by the city’s delivery workers! Authorities are now trying to mollify them with pledges of better treatment for workers in the “gig economy.”

And this is a question I am very much aware of here in New York, where the Mexican and Guatemalan delivery workers complain of the patrón fantasma, the “ghost boss,” which is what they call the app pressuring them to bike faster at risk to their own lives and road safety generally. So utterly dystopian, and it really points to the contradiction in instant-gratification yuppie culture, where you buy everything online, including all your damn meals. And the same people who live this way are the first to complain about bicycle delivery workers zipping around on the streets, and to call for a police crackdown on them. So deeply out of wack.

I’ll also point out that even a small protest in a closed society like China is often more significant than a large protest in a bourgeois democracy, such as the US remains for the moment, at least. (*Cough*) And the fact that the same robot oppression of delivery workers prevails in both New York and Hangzhou says everything about the transparent lie of Chinese socialism. The People’s Republic of China is a savage-capitalist dictatorship

Moving back to Europe… In vivid contrast to the ugliness in the UK at the far western fringe of the continent, across the continent in the Balkans, and in a country that has certainly seen its share of ugliness over the past generation and change… a very hopeful and encouraging development from Serbia….

Tens of thousands of people filled the streets of Belgrade on Aug. 10 following weeks of near-daily protests in more than fifty cities and towns across Serbia to demand a ban on lithium mining in the country. Protesters blockaded the city’s two main railway stations, leading to several arrests. Leaders of the activist groups Ne Damo Jadar (Jadar is Not For Sale) and the Association of Serbian Environmental Organizations said they were briefly detained before the rally by police, who warned them that they could face criminal charges if there was any move to block roads or rail lines. President Aleksandar Vučić accused the anti-mining movement of attempting to topple the government in a “color revolution.” (But he says that like it’s a bad thing!)

The protests mobilized after Vučić’s government signed an agreement with the European Union last month calling for multinational mineral giant Rio Tinto to move ahead with the Jadar Valley lithium project in the west of the country. The pact comes under the rubric of the European Green Deal, with the lithium to be used in batteries for electric vehicles. But local farmers are opposing it on environmental grounds, fearing contamination of their lands and waters, and have won broad popular support.

And I’ll recall that just about a year ago, in August 2023, there was a cross-country march by indigenous people against lithium mining, from Argentina’s northern Jujuy province to Buenos Aires, with thousands converging on the capital.

I will also note, although it concerns litigation rather than protest, that Indigenous peoples or First Nations in Canada just this week filed suit challenging Ontario’s Mining Act, after a provision was added that enables prospectors and mining companies to stake claims on Crown lands, or public lands, including traditional Indigenous territories, without prior consultation—with a digital claim-staking process that allows claims to be registered online within minutes, without the knowledge of affected First Nations. This comes amid a big mining exploration boom in Ontario, driven by the provincial government’s push to provide critical materials to supply the electric vehicle manufacturing economy, especially lithium in the Ring of Fire region of the James Bay lowlands in the north.

It’s very important to take note of this. Reject the false solution of electric cars. As with nuclear power, this is exchanging one dystopia for another. The climate crisis cannot be addressed without fundamental transformation of society.

I should briefly mention the big protests being met with state repression in Venezuela, following the contested elections there—also complicated, because the Maduro regime rules in the name of socialism, and the opposition is led by the right. But that doesn’t mean we should be cheering on the repression or insisting that Maduro won the election—a question on which I must remain agnostic until the electoral records are released, which the regime is refusing to do. And I’ll also note that despite the right-wing and very bourgeois leadership of the opposition, it is starting to look like the protests in Venezuela are picking up broad popular support, including among sectors (at least) of the working class. So one to watch with a critical eye, and an open mind.

But now I want to turn to the protests most closely related to the terrifying world situation and the escalating trajectory toward world war.

First, ongoing protests continue in Israel, demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a deal with Hamas for release of the hostages—most recently, this Thursday, Aug 14, with big rallies in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

It has been a source of great frustration to me that the Israeli protesters have not been able to explicitly embrace solidarity with the Palestinians. Even as they are now calling for a ceasefire, it’s put almost entirely in terms of freeing the some 115 hostages still alive and in captivity in Gaza—even as the total recorded death toll in the Strip after more than 10 months of incessant bombardment has now just surpassed 40,000. And it is a source of great frustration that the worldwide movement in solidarity with the Palestinians has not even taken note of the Israeli protests, much less loaned them any encouragement, or taken any encouragement from them.

And on the subject of Palestine solidarity protests, here’s some very bad news from the Chicago Tribune three days ago, Aug. 15: “A coalition of activist groups set for a massive protest at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next week have challenged late denials by Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration of their plans to set up stages and sound systems for rallies in parks near the United Center,” where the convention is to be held. “In an emergency petition filed in US District Court, the Coalition to March on the Democratic National Convention, which has a pending civil rights lawsuit against the city over protest preparations, called the move a bait-and-switch violation of their constitutional rights.”

So, that sucks. And I fear that the municipal authorities in Chicago may be ironically creating the conditions for bringing about what they fear—a replay of Chicago 1968.

I have to say that I continue to be disturbed by the open Hamas-stanning at many of the protests for Gaza here in New York and elsewhere around the country, which has only gotten more blatant as the war has progressed (as we ranted about most recently on our podcast of July 28.)

I want to point out that just about a year ago, on July 30, 2023, there were anti-Hamas protests in Gaza City, over power outages, and the high cost of living. And I’m sure all of the protesters were very well aware—excruciatingly aware—of the obvious role of the Israeli siege in these conditions, but perceived that this does not absolve Hamas.

There were also anti-Hamas protests over economic conditions in Gaza City in March 2019, with Amnesty International calling upon Hamas security forces to end their “violent crackdown against peaceful Palestinian protesters, activists, and human rights workers.”

And interestingly, back on Feb. 1 of 2011, Hamas security forces in Gaza shut down a demonstration in support of the Egyptian uprising. And I just want to recall the “Manifesto for Change” that was issued two months earlier, in December 2010, on the very eve of the outbreak of the Arab Revolution, by a group called Gaza Youth Breaks Out, which eloquently opened:

“Fuck Hamas! Fuck Israel! Fuck Fatah! Fuck the UN! Fuck the USA! We, the youth in Gaza, are so fed up with Israel, Hamas, the occupation, the violations of human rights and the indifference of the international community! We want to scream and break this wall of silence, injustice and indifference like the Israeli F16s breaking the wall of sound [over our heads]; scream with all the power in our souls against this fucking situation we live in; living a nightmare inside a nightmare, no room for hope, no space for freedom.”

And I assume the line “nightmare inside a nightmare” was a reference to the Hamas dictatorship within a Gaza Strip under Israeli siege.

And I believe Gaza Youth Breaks Out continues to exist, and in fact there have been sporadic anti-Hamas protests within Gaza since the bombardment began—most recently on Feb. 17, organized on social media by a group calling itself Gaza’s Liberators. In viral videos of the event, people are seen chanting slogans such as: “Bring down Hamas,” “The people want a bag of flour,” and “Sinwar, Haniyeh, the people are the victims,” referencing Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh, who was just killed in a targeted assassination in Iran.

Now wouldn’t it be interesting if conscious anti-war content emerged in the protests in Israel, and if the Palestine solidarity protest movement here in the states also saw itself in solidarity with the protests in Israel, and both were in explicit solidarity with groups like Gaza Youth Breaks Out and Gaza’s Liberators, rather than authoritarian clerical-reactionary Hamas. That would be a real counter-vortex, moving things in the other direction from the general global vortex into permanent war and ultimately social and ecological collapse.

And apropos of the current frightening trajectory toward world war… I want to recall Jack London’s eerily prescient book of 1908, The Iron Heel, anticipated the political moment that now looms here in the United States, with a dictatorship of the right being imposed by big business, and a socialist and labor movement mobilizing to resist it. London also anticipated the US going to war with Germany. He has Germany (rather than Japan) bombing Pearl Harbor in a sneak attack, in his book of 1908! But the disaster of war is avoided as the working classes of both the US and Germany shut down their respective countries in a general strike in solidarity with each other and in rejection of the war drive. The American and German bosses are forced to abandon their war plans in the face of international working-class solidarity.

Now, wouldn’t that be the shit? Wouldn’t that be the actual shit?

But as we await global apocalypse… a brief comment on the quotidian oppression of the capitalist system. Briefly returning the discussion to were we began, in Uganda, a grim headline from that country this week: “Uganda garbage landslide death toll rises to 26, 39 missing.” From Reuters Aug. 14: “The death toll from a landslide at a vast garbage dump in Uganda’s capital Kampala last week has risen to 26, while 39 people remain missing… Late on Friday [Aug. 9], a mountain of garbage collapsed at a landfill site on the outskirts of Kampala, burying dozens of homes as people slept. As of Sunday the death toll stood at 21.” A bitter poetic statement on the entire world crisis….

But I am tentatively hopeful that maybe, as in 2011, a moment of revolutionary possibility is on the imminent horizon, and maybe won’t be derailed by ethnic hatred and other such distractions, but mount toward the long-term project that is necessary for humanity’s survival—smashing the state and overthrowing capitalism. Don’t blame me! Its not myfault that global anarchist revolution is the only faint glimmer of hope. Don’t shoot the messenger.

Or in the memorable words of Patti Smith: “We must open up our eyes and seize and rend the veil of smoke which man calls order… positive anarchy must exist…”

Anyway, meanwhile let’s see if we can avert imminent global apocalypse, mm-kay?

This has been Bill Weinberg with the CounterVortex.