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      The Godfather of Fascist Terrorism

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      For one of the first times in history, an individual has been designated as a terrorist entity. Late in June, Canada added a 68-year-old resident of Denver, Colorado, to its list of proscribed terrorist entities. The individual in question is James Mason; he is a thrice-convicted jailbird with a felonious “interest in underage girls,” a former greeter at K-Mart now reduced to referring to his receipt of free meals at a soup kitchen for the needy as “guerrilla warfare.” So why bother? 

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      The Canadians are right to not be fooled. Nondescript and rarely captured on film since his last stint in prison ended in 1999, Mason is also the godfather of fascist terrorism. So just who is James Mason and why does an individual merit inclusion on a proscription list otherwise aimed at fascist groups? 

      Siege Culture

      By his own account, Mason has been a neo-Nazi for nearly 55 years now, joining George Lincoln Rockwell’s American Nazi Party at the age of 14. Mason bounced around after Rockwell’s assassination in 1967, washing up in the short-lived American terroristic group National Socialist Liberation Front (NSLF) in the mid-1970s. In 1980, things took a turn for the weird when Mason embraced the imprisoned cult leader, Charles Manson, and split off from the existing neo-Nazi scene to establish Universal Order.

      Among other curiosities, this tiny group argued that Charles Manson, of all people, fit the mold of a Nazi leader for the postwar American world. This would likely have been Mason’s tragicomic fate had he not also revived the NSLF’s publication, Siege, in 1980. 

      Between August of that year and June 1986, Mason published comment pieces of roughly 1,000 words each in a monthly magazine, extending to more than 210 individual items. In 1992, the fascist ideologue Michael Moynihan edited and published Siege as a single volume. Although scarcely a best-seller, Siege clearly had its admirers. For one, the leader of WAR (White Aryan Resistance), the San Diegan Tom Metzger, was all ears.

      Shortly after Siege was released, Metzger conducted several interviews with Mason on his television program, “Race and Reason.” Of especial interest to Metzger was Mason’s appropriation of the anarchists’ “propaganda of the deed” of the late 19th and early 20th century for right-wing extremists. Siege explicitly advocated this “lone-wolf terrorism,” with Mason preaching the virtues of so-called “one-man armies” and “lone eagles” fully three years before the better-known Louis Beam published (and republished online in 1992) his essay “Leaderless Resistance.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      In 2003, a second edition of Siege appeared, this time with added appendices and an internet-friendly format. One of these appendices included the transcript of a 1985 speech to Metzger’s WAR, which ended with the simple injunction that had made Mason infamous amongst the American neo-Nazi movement: “until the System is destroyed, by whatever means necessary, none of these fine plans will ever amount to anything more than a dream.” Turning this dream into a reality was the task of self-directed neo-Nazi terrorists, who have become, and will continue to be, a staple of 21st-century political violence.

      Yet Mason’s role as ideologue likely would have remained minimal and even subterranean had it not been for the emergence of the Iron March platform in 2011. Envisioned as a clearinghouse for fascist militancy, Iron March shared Mason’s view that only destruction of liberal democratic systems could create the space for fascism to emerge again — an emphatic rejection of political engagement and still less of building a movement. The moderators at Iron March gravitated to Mason’s uncompromising advocacy of lone-wolf terrorism, so much so that they published a first “revision” of Siege in June 2015. 

      Just over two years later, in September 2017, a third edition of Siege was published under the Iron March imprint. It was identical to the 2015 version save for a new, 6-page preface by Mason, who had been located by members of one of the new neo-Nazi groups emerging from the Iron March forum, Atomwaffen Division (AWD). The latter celebrated Mason’s return to the neo-Nazi scene, and in 2017 secured Mason’s contributions to a website entitled Siege Culture. Mason ultimately wrote more than three dozen new pieces during 2017 and 2018 — before the website was taken down — in much the same style as his 1980s Siege writings. 

      Neo-Nazi Gravitas

      Mason’s neo-Nazi gravitas and willingness to rejoin the fray was a major boon to so-called accelerationist cells, which were growing in both number and militancy. For example, by early 2018, the acknowledged leader of these loosely organized groups, AWD, had no fewer than five alleged murders ascribed to its supporters. That year, an early study of Siege’s influence identified “33 extremist entities — 21 individuals and 12 organizations — with ties to Siege. Of these 21 individuals, nine have been involved in acts of violence, four have been involved in specific murders, and four have been involved in threats or acts of terrorism.”

      This political violence extended far beyond AWD and the US. Other groups around the world were quick to franchise these branded terror cells, from the Antipodean Resistance in Australia, the Scrofa Division in Holland, the Sonnenkrieg Division (SKD) in the UK, and even the Feuerkrieg Division in Estonia, led by a 13-year-old boy known as the “Commander.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      While Iron March provided the means and opportunity for lone-actor terrorism, it is without doubt that Mason supplied, and still supplies, the motive. In fact, the dalliance between the neo-Nazi ideologue and a clearinghouse for fascist militancy was only consummated after the Iron March website was taken down in late 2017. In 2018, a fourth edition of Siege appeared, with nearly 200 pages of added material. Much of this material was explicit propaganda for AWD, SKD and others, including dozens of new images and threatening statements by now-imprisoned leaders of the Atomwaffen Division, Brandon Russell (aka “Odin”) and John Cameron Denton (aka “Rape”).

      Put another way, the evolution of Siege, as both text and terroristic encouragement, in 2018 finally found its natural home with AWD and other accelerationists trying to help overthrow Western democracies. 

      In the 30 months since, this wider Siege-inspired culture has continued to hone its tactics, including violent memes now dubbed “fashwave,” and advance a post-organizational ethos. Make no mistake, this neo-Nazi doctrine is reloading, not retreating. It is becoming younger and more militant by the day, particularly in light of COVID-19. At the time of writing, Siege culture is amongst the most pressing terror threats posed within liberal democracy, just as Mason giddily envisioned in 1980 in “Later on we’ll Conspire”:

      “The lone wolf cannot be detected, cannot be prevented, and seldom can be traced. For his choice of targets he needs little more than the daily newspaper for suggestions and tips galore. … For his training the lone wolf needs only the U.S. military or any one of a hundred good manuals readily available through radical booksellers … His greatest concern must be to pick his target well so that his act may speak so clearly for itself that no member of White America can mistake its message.”

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      This is the face of radical-right terror today. It will continue to persist so long as we — scholars, authorities and practitioners — continue to misunderstand lone-wolf terrorism and, just as troublingly, discount the dangers posed by Siege culture coming from either keyboard warriors or misguided youth. The voluntarism, vehement racism and social Darwinist “proof” of individual political violence as a pathway to what is increasingly called sainthood (Saint Tarrant and Saint Breivik memes are increasingly popular) are all gathering speed online despite attempts to take down this material. Siege’s bloody heyday is likely still ahead of us.

      This would mean that more mangled bodies of innocents to come, and more terrorist convictions of would-be lone-actor terrorists, many teenagers. That suits James Mason just fine, for he is nothing if not an agent of destruction. The Canadians have it right: Both the man and the movement he inspired are immensely dangerous. Banning Mason is a start — and other countries concerned about radical-right terrorism should follow suit — while both Siege Culture and the wider movement it represents must be at the top of any counter-terrorism efforts. This terroristic movement will scarcely disband itself.

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      The Delta Variant of Global Stupidity

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      You’d think that the whole world could unite against a deadly virus. COVID-19 has already sickened over 200 million people around the world and killed over 4 million. It has now mutated into more contagious forms that threaten to plunge the globe into another spin cycle of lockdown.

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      Avoiding global catastrophe from the more infectious Delta variant of COVID-19 doesn’t require a huge commitment from people and governments. Richer countries just have to ensure more widespread availability of vaccines, and individuals have to get vaccinated. COVID-19 is not an asteroid on a collision course with the planet. It’s not an imminent nuclear war. It’s an invisible enemy that humanity has demonstrated it can beat. It just requires a bit of cooperation. So, what’s the problem?

      Three Problems

      Actually, there are three problems. The first has to do with supply, since the richest nations have cornered the vaccine market and have been criminally slow to get doses to poorer countries. On the entire continent of Africa, for instance, less than 2% of the population has been fully vaccinated.

      The second problem, on the demand side, is the commonplace resistance to the newfangled, in this case a vaccine that was developed very quickly, hasn’t yet been approved by the Food and Drug Administration and has some side effects that are harmful for a very small number of people. Hesitation is understandable. But not when placed against the obvious lethality of COVID-19 and the clear benefits of herd immunity.

      The third problem is political. The far right has jumped on the anti-vaccination bandwagon, seized control of the wheel and is driving the vehicle, al-Qaeda-style, straight into oncoming traffic.

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      Both in the United States and globally, the far right has long been infected by various harmful delusions — the superiority of white people, the fiction of climate change, the evils of government. As the far right has spread, thanks to vectors like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro and Viktor Orbán and Narendra Modi, those delusions have mutated.

      Now, with its anti-vaccine opportunism, the far right is circulating a new Delta variant of global stupidity: virally through social media, in a shower of spit and invective on the street and through top-down lunacy from politicians and political parties. COVID-19 and all of its variants will eventually burn themselves out, though at who knows what cost. The latest versions of global stupidity promoted by the far right, however, are proving far more resistant to science, reason and just plain common sense.

      Hijacking the Anti-Vax Movement

      The Brothers of Italy is a neo-fascist formation that is now polling the highest of any political party in the country today. With 21% support, this pro-Mussolini throwback is just ahead of the far-right Lega party. Throw in Silvio Berlusconi’s Forward Italy party at 7% and the hard right looks as if it could form the next government in Italy whenever the next elections are held.

      How did the Brothers of Italy grow in several months from a few percent to the leading party in the polls? Led by Giorgia Meloni, a woman who predictably decries Islam and immigrants, the Brothers of Italy started out as a booster of vaccines, which seemed like a pretty safe position in a country that has suffered so much at the hands of COVID-19.

      Embed from Getty Images

      But Meloni abruptly shifted the party’s stance when the Italian government, currently led by technocrat Mario Draghi, introduced a “green pass” that allows the vaccinated to eat in restaurants, go to bars and enter various public places like museums. Meloni called the pass “the final step on the road to the creation of an Orwellian society,” which “limits the freedom of citizens, further devastates the economy and de facto introduces a vaccine mandate.”

      Limits the freedom of citizens? The freedom to infect other people with a deadly virus? Effectively, Meloni wants to grant all citizens the same right that James Bond famously possessed: the license to kill. Unfortunately, such nonsense has support outside Italy as well.

      Batting for a Pathogen

      In France, the government of Emmanuel Macron has instituted a similar health pass as well as mandating that all medical professionals get vaccinated. The response has been ferocious, with several demonstrations of over 100,000 people mobilizing around the country.

      It might seem at first glance that the French protestors are just ordinary folks who are sick and tired of government intrusions in their lives, similar to the yellow vests protestors from 2018. But the organizers of these anti-vax protests are the usual suspects from the far right like Florian Philippot, a former top aide of the National Rally’s Marine Le Pen. National Rally and the equally rabid Stand Up France have come out against Macron’s policies. Unfortunately, some leading members of the left-wing France Unbowed party have also endorsed the rallies. As in the United States, French anti-vaxxers are resorting to anti-system conspiracy theories up to and including QAnon.

      Despite the size of these rallies whipped up by the far right, a majority of French support the health pass and nearly 70% of the population has gotten at least one shot, compared to only 58% in the United States. But the far right sees the anti-vaccine movement as an opportunity to worm its way into the mainstream in France and elsewhere, such as the Querdenken movement in Germany, the anti-Semitic far right in Poland and evangelical Christian organizations in the Philippines.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Toward this end, the far right has eagerly employed the services of such “useful idiots” as Robert Kennedy, Jr., perhaps the most famous face of the anti-vaccine movement. The Polish far-right party Confederation invited Kennedy to speak on-ine to a Polish parliamentary group on vaccines. Kennedy also put his social media power behind a global day against vaccines that took place last October in 15 countries from Europe to Latin America, which a number of far-right parties helped to organize.

      Originally in the United States, vaccine skepticism circulated mainly on the left, where suspicions of chemicals and corporations created a resistance to having just any substance injected into one’s arm. But then along came Donald Trump, the dark conspiracy theories of the alt-right and ultimately QAnon, which focused latent anti-government sentiments against the medical establishment and its COVID-19 vaccines. Suddenly, videos like “Plandemic” were zipping around cyberspace, and prominent anti-vaxxers like “healthy lifestyle advocate” Larry D. Cook fell under the sway of QAnon.

      Today, in a tired repeat of 2020, US anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers are again protesting in front of governors’ mansions, bringing their message to Disneyland and shutting down school board meetings. If COVID-19 were a wealthy corporation that underwrote such disruptions, these actions would make at least some economic sense. If COVID-19 were a wildly popular musical group or a subversively attractive religious cult that governments were trying to suppress, the frenzy of crowds would be somewhat understandable. But COVID-19 is a deadly virus. Why on earth would anyone go to bat for a pathogen?

      The Far Right Has Its Reasons

      Conservatives have traditionally supported the powerful pillars of society: the police, the army, the state. Today’s far right is not conservative. It detests the state. It prefers vigilante justice — everyone standing their ground with gun in hand — to the police and the army, since these latter are representatives of the state.

      Effectively, the far right embraces the old Hobbesian concept of a “war of all against all,” which was the status quo before the emergence of the state. To achieve this “golden age” of general mayhem, the far right pursues any means necessary. It supports homeschooling to destroy public education, privatization of state assets to weaken the government, and deregulation to tilt the playing field in favor of corporations.

      And now, in the age of COVID-19, the far right is even willing to support germ warfare. For that’s what the anti-mask and anti-vaccine ideology amounts to: siding with the novel coronavirus against the sensible policies of the state. One wonders: If the state issued a mandate that required people not to jump off cliffs, would the far right suddenly launch a Lemming Crusade simply to spite the state?

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      I can well imagine the segment on Newsmax.

      Reporter: I’m here with patriot James Q. Public. He and his family are standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon. Tell me, James, why are you about to take a big step into the unknown?

      James Q. Public: The government can’t tell me what to do. I believe in choice. And this is my choice.

      Reporter: Do you think of yourself as a pioneer?

      James Q. Public: Absolutely. This socialist government with its Five Year Plans sickens me. I take it one day at a time. One minute at a time.

      Reporter: Your youngest child doesn’t look happy about your choice.

      James Q. Public: Oh, he’s just a crybaby. He’ll get used to it.

      Reporter: Get used to falling off a cliff?

      James Q. Public: What makes you think we’ll fall?

      Reporter: Well, uh, gravity —

      James Q. Public: Come on, man, you believe in all that nonsense those scientists are trying to force down our throats? Vaccines? Climate change? Gravity? Okay, everyone, let’s go. One small step for the Public family, one large step for arrgghhh….!

      It would all be grimly amusing, like some pandemic version of the Darwin Awards, if the far right’s Lemming Crusade wasn’t threatening to drag the rest of us off the cliff with it.

      *[This article was originally published by Foreign Policy in Focus.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Biden Must Call Off the Bombing of Afghan Cities

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      Ten provincial capitals in Afghanistan have fallen to the Taliban in just a week, while fighting continues in four more. US military officials now believe that Kabul, the Afghan capital, could fall in one to three months. 

      It is horrific to watch the death, destruction and mass displacement of thousands of terrified Afghans and the triumph of the misogynist Taliban that ruled the nation 20 years ago. But the fall of the centralized, corrupt Afghan government propped up by the West was inevitable, whether this year, next year or 10 years from now.     

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      US President Joe Biden has reacted to America’s snowballing humiliation in the graveyard of empires by once again dispatching US Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad to Doha, Qatar, to urge the government and the Taliban to seek a political solution. At the same time, the US has dispatched B-52 bombers to attack at least two of Afghanistan’s 34 provincial capitals.

      In LashkarGah, the capital of Helmand province, the bombing has already reportedly destroyed a high school and a health clinic. Another B-52 bombed Sheberghan, the capital of Jowzjan province and the home of the infamous warlord and accused war criminal Abdul Rashid Dostum, who is now the military commander of the US-backed government’s armed forces. Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that US Reaper drones and AC-130 gunships are also still operating in Afghanistan. 

      The Fall of the Afghan Army

      The rapid disintegration of the Afghan forces that the US and its Western allies have recruited, armed and trained for 20 years at a cost of nearly $89 billion should come as no surprise. On paper, the Afghan national army has 180,000 troops. In reality, most of them are unemployed Afghans desperate to earn some money to support their families but not eager to fight their fellow citizens. The army is also notorious for its corruption and mismanagement. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      The army and the beleaguered and vulnerable police forces that man isolated outposts and checkpoints around the country are plagued by high casualties, rapid turnover and desertion. Most troops feel no loyalty to the corrupt US-backed government and routinely abandon their posts, either to join the Taliban or just to go home. When the BBC asked General Khoshal Sadat, the national police chief, about the impact of high casualties on police recruitment in February 2020, he cynically replied: “When you look at recruitment, I always think about the Afghan families and how many children they have. The good thing is there is never a shortage of fighting-age males who will be able to join the force.” 

      But a police recruit at a checkpoint questioned the very purpose of the war, telling the BBC’s Nanna Muus Steffensen: “We Muslims are all brothers. We don’t have a problem with each other.” In that case, she asked him, why were they fighting? He hesitated, laughed nervously and shook his head in resignation. “You know why. I know why,” he said. “It’s not really our fight.”

      Since 2007, the jewel of US and Western military training missions in Afghanistan has been the Afghan commando corps or special operations forces, who comprise only 7% of Afghan national army troops but reportedly do 70% to 80% of the fighting. But the commandos have struggled to reach their target of recruiting, arming and training 30,000 troops. Poor recruitment from Pashtuns, the largest and traditionally dominant ethnic group, has been a critical weakness, especially from the Pashtun heartland in the south. 

      The commandos and the professional officer corps of the Afghan army are dominated by ethnic Tajiks. This community consists of the successors to the Northern Alliance, which the US supported against the Taliban 20 years ago. As of 2017, the commandos are estimated at only 21,000. It is not clear how many of these Western-trained troops now serve as the last line of defense between the US-backed puppet government and total defeat. 

      The Taliban’s speedy and simultaneous occupation of large amounts of territory all over the country appears to be a deliberate strategy to overwhelm and outflank the government’s small number of well-trained, well-armed troops. The Taliban have had more success winning the loyalty of minorities in the north and west than government forces have had to recruit Pashtuns from the south, and the government’s small number of well-trained troops cannot be everywhere at once.

      US Fighter Jets

      But what of the United States? Its deployment of B-52 bombers, Reaper drones and AC-130 gunships is a brutal response by a failing, flailing imperial power to a historic, humiliating defeat. 

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      The US does not flinch from committing mass murder against its enemies. Just look at the US-led destruction of Fallujah and Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria. How many Americans even know about the massacre of civilians that Iraqi forces committed when the US-led coalition finally took control of Mosul in 2017? This came after Donald Trump, while campaigning in 2015, said that the US should “take out the families” of Islamic State fighters.

      Twenty years after George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld committed a full range of war crimes — from torture and the deliberate killing of civilians to the “supreme international crime” of aggression — Biden is clearly no more concerned than they were with criminal accountability or the judgment of history. But even from the most pragmatic and callous point of view, what can continued aerial bombardment of Afghan cities accomplish, besides a final but futile climax to the 20-year-long slaughter of Afghans by tens of thousands of American bombs and missiles?

      The intellectually and strategically bankrupt US military and CIA bureaucracy has a history of congratulating itself for fleeting, superficial victories. The US quickly declared victory in Afghanistan in 2001 and set out to duplicate its imagined conquest in Iraq two years later. Then, the short-lived success of the 2011 regime change operation in Libya encouraged the US and its allies to let al-Qaeda affiliates loose in Syria, spawning a decade of intractable violence and chaos and the rise of the Islamic State (IS). 

      In the same manner, Biden’s unaccountable and corrupt national security advisers seem to be urging him to use the same weapons that obliterated the Islamic State group’s urban bases in Iraq and Syria to attack Taliban-held cities in Afghanistan. But Afghanistan is not Iraq or Syria.  First, fewer Afghans live in cities. Second, the Taliban’s base is not in major cities, but in the rural areas where the other three-quarters of Afghans live. Despite support from Pakistan over the years, the Taliban are not an invading force like IS, but an Afghan nationalist movement that has fought for two decades to expel foreign invasion and occupation forces from their country. 

      In many areas, Afghan forces have not fled from the Taliban, as the Iraqi army did from IS in 2014, but joined them. On August 9, the Taliban occupied Aybak, the sixth provincial capital to fall, after a local warlord and his fighters reportedly agreed to join forces with the Taliban.

      That very same day, the government’s chief negotiator, Abdullah Abdullah, returned to Doha for further peace talks with the Taliban. His American allies must make it clear to him, his government and the Taliban that the US will support every effort to achieve a peaceful political transition. 

      The New Syndrome

      But the United States must not keep bombing and killing civilians to provide cover for the Afghan government to avoid difficult but necessary compromises at the negotiating table to bring peace to the long-suffering, war-weary people of Afghanistan. Bombing Taliban-occupied cities and the people who live in them is a savage and criminal policy that President Biden must renounce.           

      Embed from Getty Images

      The defeat of the US and its allies in Afghanistan now seems to be unfolding even faster than the collapse of South Vietnam between 1973 and 1975. The public takeaway from the US defeat in Southeast Asia was the “Vietnam syndrome,” an aversion to overseas military interventions that lasted for decades.

      As we approach the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, we should reflect on how the Bush administration exploited the US public’s thirst for revenge to unleash this bloody, tragic and utterly futile war in Afghanistan. The lesson of America’s experience in that country should be a new “Afghanistan syndrome,” a public aversion to war that prevents future US military attacks and invasions, rejects attempts to socially engineer the governments of other nations, and leads to a new and active American commitment to peace, diplomacy and disarmament.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      In China, Cuba and Ohio, Reform and Inertia Go to Battle

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      In August, the Daily Devil’s Dictionary appears in a single weekly edition containing multiple items taken from a variety of contexts.

      This week, before glancing at political division in the US, we look at what is shaping up to be a game-changing development in China. Bloomberg’s reporters refer to it as a “policy bombshell,” but mainstream media in the West have largely ignored it. This neglect may have something to do with the conviction in the West that, though there are monumentally important problems to deal with, the inertia of the political and economic system we have today is such that no one believes that anything we decide to do will ever change anything. Could China be on course to become the century’s new “exceptional nation”?

      Xi’s Promise of a New Great Leap Forward

      In his successful 2008 campaign, Barack Obama railed against George W. Bush’s tax cuts and wars, only to maintain both during his two terms in office. In his campaign last year, Joe Biden lamented Donald Trump’s provocative policies regarding Cuba and Iran as well as Trump’s tax cuts. But after six months at the helm, he has shown no serious intent to reverse those policies. 

      Both Democratic presidents claimed they would effect change (Obama) and be transformative (Biden), hiding they would be acting to reduce the inequality between makers and takers that Republicans promoted as an illustration of capitalist virtue. Both Democrats have shown themselves ready to accommodate and defend the interests of the 1% who supported their campaigns while expressing a sentimental commitment to improving everyone’s lives. The structure of US democracy seems to make challenging the status quo an impossible task. Sentiments consistently fail to influence reality.

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      China is governed by an exclusive elite, the Communist Party. Its monopoly on power spares its leaders the trouble of having to invent campaign promises to seduce ignorant voters. Many have noticed the comfortable complicity of China’s communist leaders with an economy that has become a decidedly capitalist power structure. If the US has cultivated an efficient, legally validated system of structured private capitalist corruption that offers the wealthy class the privilege of controlling politics, the Chinese have perfected a system of state corruption that offers the politically powerful direct control of wealth itself.

      All recent US regimes have had no choice but to capitulate to the private interests that literally own the economy. The Democratic Party’s public war against the progressive reformers within its midst provides a good demonstration of the phenomenon. The democratic processes laid out in the US Constitution have been successfully manipulated over time to comfort oligarchy. This makes it particularly remarkable today that China’s authoritarian regime under President Xi Jinping, a true and largely unassailable oligarchy, appears to be providing the rare example of a government intent on taking action against the powerful interests that control the global economy. Xi appears to be taking steps to move China’s political economy in a more egalitarian direction. It may not be Karl Marx, but it clearly isn’t Milton Friedman.

      According to Bloomberg journalists, Tom Hancock and Tom Orlick, “Xi is engaging in a “capitalist smackdown” that will change the way the Chinese economy works in the coming years. Xi’s new agenda “puts three priorities ahead of unfettered growth.” The first, which should surprise no one, is national security. It “includes control of data and greater self-reliance in technology. All nations in our dangerous world are enamored of security. The second is far more radical: “Common prosperity, which aims to curb inequalities that have soared in recent decades.” The third is consistent with traditional Chinese culture: “Stability, which means tamping down discontent among China’s middle class.” In Chinese culture, this is the effect of the virtue of harmony.

      In other words, Xi is attempting to do what Joe Biden has ominously warned he might do: use his authoritarian power to achieve pragmatic goals in the name of the people that are difficult to achieve in the kind of democracy practiced in the US.

      Common prosperity:

      The opposite of the now current regime of private prosperity that works by undermining what was once idealized in the notion of the commonwealth, implying a fraternal sharing of national wealth

      The Context

      Xi appears to be announcing a quiet but stern revolution that has already provoked panic among many of the vested interests in the world of finance, both foreign and Chinese. Forty years ago, Deng Xiaoping’s departure from Mao Zedong’s radical communist egalitarianism and his encouragement of Western-style economic freedom led to China becoming a fixture of the global capitalist system. It achieved this goal by exciting the appetites of both Western and Chinese economic opportunists, leading to a record-breaking expansion of the Chinese economy.

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      The new policy aims at relieving the suffering of “stretched workers, stressed parents, and squeezed start-ups.” The article’s authors designate the losers: “tech billionaires and their backers in the stock market, highly leveraged property companies including China Evergrande Group, and foreign venture capital firms that had hoped to take Chinese companies public in the U.S.” The Economist describes the intended outcome in these terms: “Alibaba in e-commerce or Tencent in payments and entertainment will be around but less overweening — and less lucrative. Policies to curb their market power will redistribute some of their profits to smaller merchants and app developers, and to their workers.”

      Xi’s gambit doesn’t appear to be merely rhetorical. Whether he can accomplish his goals remains an open question. He has undoubtedly set the scene for a major drama that, as it plays out, will most likely dominate the decade to come. Both the world of global capital and the declining US empire will react. It could lead to war. It could also lead to radical restructuring of the current geopolitical order in what may become a more multipolar world. For the moment, we the spectators are simply discovering the dialogue of Act I, Scene 1.

      Can Xi Really Corral Such Ferocious Animals?

      The same Bloomberg article explains Xi’s political motivation for his “capitalist smackdown.”  To ensure the population’s acceptance of his hold on the reins of power, Xi wants to reassure the middle class that he is defending their interests. There may be more complex geopolitical causes, but that motivation clearly explains the urgency of the shift. The authors go on to evoke the possible downside of Xi’s new agenda: “The bigger risk for Beijing: Heavy state intervention might dampen the animal spirits that drive private investment and reverse an integration with the global economy that has helped drive growth in the last four decades.”

      Animal spirits:

      The spontaneous exuberance attributed to unthinking creatures with energy to expend, an unbridled appetite and scorn for anything that stands in their way

      The Context

      Xi is undoubtedly a clever geopolitical strategist. He can see clearly the issues Western empires have struggled with in past centuries. China had a privileged vantage point for observing the British Empire’s strengths and weaknesses after experiencing a pair of Opium Wars in the 19th century. The incoherence of nationalistic rivalries in Europe ultimately undermined the British Empire that had reduced much of Asia, and particularly India and China, to a state of economic submission, if not slavery. 

      Two world wars that included an emerging Japanese Empire eventually cleared the space for the USA’s consumer society-led neo-colonial, officially apolitical but heavily militaristic empire that eventually crafted a productive role for China’s post-Marxist economy. The Chinese “workshop of the world” became a vital feature of a system focused on permanent growth and obsessively stoked consumerism. Following World War II, American consumers became literally addicted to falling prices on consumer goods. China, with help from US capitalists, could step in to provide an ever-expanding cornucopia of goods at lower prices.

      Xi is aware that the entire Western world, struggling with various imperfect models of democracy, has reached a tipping point regarding two existential problems: health and wealth. Both are clearly out of control. Governments in the West have demonstrably failed to address both the health of the planet, increasingly subjected to climate chaos, and the health of their people. None more so than the US, a nation that continues to resist even the idea of universal health care and persists in spectacularly bungling most of its initiatives with regard to the COVID-19 drama. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      With its retrograde approach to the distribution of vaccines, the intellectual ownership-obsessed West, guided by the wisdom of Bill Gates, has failed to live up to its image as the putative provider of global solutions. As it focuses on protecting and exploiting its supposed intellectual property in competition with the rest of the world, the West has, embarrassingly for itself, allowed spectacular chaos to continue and amplify. As for wealth, the effects of the pandemic have aggravated the growing and insurmountable gap between the hyper-rich and the rest of humanity. The idea that everyone can someday become a millionaire has been replaced by the clear perception that the super-wealthy will do everything in their power to ensure that only a select few will ever be admitted into their club.

      China’s authoritarian system has made it easier to enact and implement policy. Powerless to solve problems, Western governments, captured by binary logic, prefer to explore hypothetical consequences and debate what emerge as two contradictory positions. With his Belt and Road Initiative, Xi has already expertly used the contrast between the image of constructive cooperation and the American addiction to war, military operations and sanctions as the solution to all problems. Xi’s gambit may translate more as image-building than economic realism, and it may rely as much on corruption as the will to collaborate, but it stands as an effective example of soft power.

      Now Xi can remake his image as a populist hero at home. His announced policies even correspond to the fantasies of populists on the right and left who would love to see the financial operators ushered out the door, replaced by laws and practices that at least appear to be transferring power to the people under the protection of the government. Xi promises to put a leash on the over-exuberant animals who alone make the law in the capitalist West.

      Antony Blinken Worries About China’s Ambitions

      The Biden administration has apparently decided that the key to consolidating its image with voters lies in a foreign policy that consists of getting tough on the nations that refuse to get in line behind US leadership. The first among them and the one most likely to inspire the kind of fear that galvanizes American voters is, of course, China. With nearly four times the population of the United States, the quantity of fear it can generate will be spectacular. And in politics, it’s the spectacle that counts.

      Bloomberg has published an article by Peter Martin with the headline, “Blinken Warns Asian Nations of China’s Growing Nuclear Ambitions,” in which he cites the US secretary of state’s “‘deep concern’ over China’s growing nuclear arsenal.” 

      Deep concern

      The emotion politicians claim to have, thanks to their privileged knowledge of geopolitical realities, which, when communicated to the people, generates the degree of fear that justifies risky and aggressive policies, including war

      The Context

      Reuters reports Secretary Blinken’s complaint that “Beijing has sharply deviated from its decades-old nuclear strategy based on minimum deterrence.” China is expected to understand that only the US is authorized to practice maximum deterrence. The following two paragraphs in the Reuters article give an idea of why Blinken’s concern is so “deep”:

      “A 2020 Pentagon report estimated China’s nuclear warhead stockpile in ‘the low 200s’ and said it was projected to at least double in size as Beijing expands and modernizes its forces.

      Analysts say the United States has around 3,800 warheads, and according to a State Department factsheet, 1,357 of those were deployed as of March 1.”

      Who wouldn’t be concerned with only 3,800 warheads to ensure peace in the world? Bloomberg quotes Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who disapproves of “countries interfering in each other’s internal affairs.” Wang added a casual historical observation “that Asian nations had been bullied by others in the past and didn’t require ‘teachers’ or ‘saviors.’” The Opium Wars apparently left an indelible smoky taste in the Chinese collective unconscious.

      The Latest Skirmish Inside the Increasingly Divided US Democratic Party

      As the Republican Party continues its existential anguish surrounding the role of Donald Trump, the Democratic Party struggles to define whether its loyalty is to the people or the lobbies that fund its campaigns. The drama played out this past week in a special election pitting two African American women against each other.

      The Los Angeles Times provides its explanation of the come-from-behind victory of mainstream Shontel Brown over progressive Nina Turner in a high profile Democratic primary election for a congressional seat in Ohio: “Brown’s primary win is a boost for moderate Democrats who have been in increasingly testy tussles with progressive activists and gives a new voice in Congress for voters who are more hungry for calm pragmatism than for the passionate populism that animates Sanders’ followers.”

      Calm pragmatism:

      The fear of calling into question the visible cause of one’s suffering because the status quo has proved so destructive that people think any change will make things even worse

      The Context

      One Democratic political consultant in Cleveland explained what he thought “calm pragmatism” amounts to: “People are tired and worn out after the last four or five years.” They have stopped thinking about the implications of political choices and simply hope there will be a new status quo. The loser, Nina Turner, claimed that her campaign “didn’t lose this race. Evil money manipulated and maligned this election.” She has a point, since the effect on politics of money — once deemed in the Christian West to be “the root of all evil” — now dominates the rhetoric deployed in campaigns to the point of definitively crippling and even excluding serious political debate. Populist passion is real, but so is the passion of fear-mongering that incites voters to retreat into the illusion of calm pragmatism.

      On an unrelated topic, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, Marwan Bishara, has expressed his surprise at the African Union’s acceptance of Israel as an observer despite its consistent criticism of what it qualifies as Tel Aviv’s apartheid policies. Bishara explains that African nations may “reckon that Israel has major sway in Washington and may be of help to influence the decisions of the world’s superpower in their favour.” He then adds, “Indeed, such pragmatism — read opportunism — may have worked for the likes of Sudan in getting US sanctions lifted after it began normalising relations with Israel.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      Bishara thus equates “calm pragmatism” with “cynical opportunism.” Can the Ohio voters who chose Brown over Turner be accused of opportunism? Undoubtedly no, if only because they have nothing specific to gain from Brown’s election. The true explanation is the “evil money” Turner complains about paid for yet another media campaign based on stoking voters’ fear of the unknown. Democratic Party stalwarts — which included Hillary Clinton, Jim Clyburn and their sources of corporate money — effectively countered the successful grassroots funding of Turner’s campaign and turned the tide in Brown’s favor. Those stalwarts and their backers are the opportunists. The voters persuaded by their fear of the unknown were their dupes.

      What links these two stories together is what a significant factor in Brown’s primary victory. As the Times of Israel explains, a lobbying group, “Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) threw its support behind Brown.” The DMFI reportedly contributed nearly $2 million to Brown’s campaign. Why? Because they know that Turner is one of the rare American politicians who has the independence of thought to criticize Israel, something no US politician is permitted to do on pain of being branded anti-Semitic. The idea that Turner might challenge the unconditional commitment of the US to supporting Israel galvanized the white suburban voters who ended up giving Brown the majority.

      The lockstep alignment of the US with Israel has been as important a factor as access to oil in determining US Middle East policy in recent decades. That policy has been disastrous for the region, the US and the world in a variety of ways. Is that the result people still expect from following a policy of calm pragmatism?

      A Washington Post Columnist’s Shameful Feinting With Damned Praise

      Conservative Washington Post columnist Marc A. Thiessen quite logically makes it clear that he is ready to come to the defense of black Cubans as the most effective way of undermining pretentions of the most vocal black US Americans: “As the Cuban people — up to 75 percent of whom have Afro-Cuban ancestry — rose up to demand their freedom, the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation issued a statement praising the brutal regime that oppresses them and calling on the Biden administration to lift the U.S. embargo on Cuba.”

      Praise:

      Make an objectively true statement describing a complex situation that includes a reference to a regime that has been labeled for ideological reasons as a diabolical enemy of every moral (i.e., economic) principle the United States is believed to stand for

      The Context

      In July, protests spread in Cuba provoked by a variety of ills for which many Cubans, succumbing to conditions of severe deprivation, wish to hold their government to account. US media predictably seized upon the occasion to nourish the dream of various interested parties in the US — mostly located in the quintessential swing state, Florida — to restore the situation of effective neo-colonial rule that the US enjoyed over the island from 1915 to 1959.

      The first thing to notice in Thiessen’s piece, as in most of the media treatment in the US, is the facile use of the term “the Cuban people.” When a crowd of protesters appears, they become “the Cuban people.” Many of the same pundits in 2003 claimed that an overwhelming majority of Iraqis were ready to toss flowers at US soldiers invading their country. Honest reporters might write “a significant number of discontented Cubans” or some variation on that idea, but the dishonest ones simply declare that the protesters, some waving US flags, are synonymous with “the Cuban people.”

      Thiessen reveals his utter dishonesty when he complains that Black Lives Matters was “praising the brutal regime” in its statement. Thiessen links to a BLM statement on Instagram that begins by condemning “the U.S. government’s inhumane treatment of Cubans.” At no point does it praise the Cuban government other than citing an objective fact of “the country’s strong medical care and history of lending doctors and nurses to disasters around the world.” The BLM statement notes one other objective fact concerning a government’s policies, that “the United States has forced pain and suffering on the people of Cuba” through its embargo.

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      Anyone inclined to doubt that fact need simply refer to the State Department memorandum of April 6, 1960, that describes a policy that has been in place for the last 60 years: “The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship.” It recommends “every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba … to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”

      Although the sanctions regime was loosened in 2015 by Barack Obama, Donald Trump scaled back and imposed new crippling measures. During his campaign last year, candidate Joe Biden proclaimed: “I’d try to reverse the failed Trump policies that inflicted harm on Cubans and their families.” Instead, he has maintained Trump’s sanctions and last week added new ones, while promising even “more to come.”

       *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Joe Biden Faces a Dilemma Over Iran

      by

      Everything old is new again, at least when it comes to US President Joe Biden’s deterrence credibility problem with Iran. This must seem like déjà vu to him, since he witnessed similar dynamics play out during an earlier stint at the White House.

      Several weeks ago came news that the FBI had foiled a brazen scheme by an Iranian intelligence network to kidnap an Iranian-born US citizen who is a prominent critic of the Islamic Republic.  The apparent plan was to abduct her from the streets of Brooklyn, spirit her to Venezuela via “maritime evacuation” using “military-style speedboats” and from there deliver her to Iran.  The plan was part of a broader scheme entailing the seizure of other individuals in Canada and the United Kingdom.

      Is America Ready to Raise the Minimum Wage?

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      The elaborate operation, which the head of the FBI’s New York field office described as “not some far-fetched movie plot,” is a flagrant gesture on Iran’s part at a time when the Biden administration is seeking to diplomatically engage Tehran on nuclear proliferation issues. What stands out from this episode is how much Tehran is willing to extend US–Iranian hostility onto the American homeland and how little it seems to fear the prospect of retaliation.

      The Saudi Ambassador

      The thwarted abduction is reminiscent of an even more audacious scheme on US territory by Iranian agents a decade ago. In the fall of 2011, the FBI broke up an operation to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington. The plan was directed by the Quds Force, an elite branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that conducts clandestine operations beyond the country’s borders. The plot involved blowing up the Saudi diplomat at an upscale restaurant popular among Washington’s political elite, followed by the bombing of the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington and in Argentina. The high likelihood of mass casualties at the restaurant was dismissed by the operation’s US-based organizer as “no big deal.”

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      The plot organizer sought to outsource the bombings to the Los Zetas drug cartel in Mexico, which the FBI later described as having “access to military-grade weaponry and explosives, and has engaged in numerous acts of violence, including assassinations and murders.” As part of the deal with the cartel, the organizer promised to funnel tons of opium from the Middle East to Mexico. The plan unraveled when the organizer reached out to an individual he believed was a cartel member but who was actually an informant for the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). 

      Reporting on the foiled plot, the Washington Post commented that it resembled “an international cloak-and-dagger operation that reads like the plot of a Bond novel.” Robert Mueller, the FBI director at the time, noted that “Though it reads like the pages of a Hollywood script, the impact would have been very real and many lives would have been lost.” James R. Clapper, the US director of national intelligence, cautioned that “some Iranian officials — probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived US actions that threaten the regime.”

      At the time, the Obama administration was looking to wind down the military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as find a way to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Although then-Vice-President Biden described the botched assassination plot as “an outrage that violates one of the fundamental premises upon which nations deal with one another”, the White House did little beyond prosecuting the hapless Iranian organizer and imposing sanctions on several Quds Force officials.

      James Mattis on Obama’s Response

      The tepid response was particularly criticized by General James Mattis, the head of the US Central Command (CENTCOM), which directs military operations in the greater Middle East. He was dismayed that President Barack Obama kept the details of “the enormous savagery of the intended attack” from the American public and failed to respond forcefully to the provocation.

      Obama would eventually fire Mattis from his CENTCOM post, in part due to the latter’s frequent criticism of the president’s approach toward Iran. Once in civilian life, Mattis publicly lambasted Obama’s response to the attempted assassination. Speaking at a conference in 2013, he claimed the plot was the result of a decision “taken at the very highest levels in Tehran.” He further asserted that “We caught them in the act and yet we let them walk free,” and “They have been basically not held to account. … I don’t know why the attempt on [the Saudi ambassador] wasn’t dealt with more strongly.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      In his 2019 memoir, Mattis blamed the lax US reply on Obama’s keenness to strike a nuclear deal with Iran. He also elaborated on his earlier criticism, lamenting that “We treated an act of war as a law enforcement violation.” He added:

      “Had the bomb gone off, those in the restaurant and on the street would have been ripped apart, blood rushing down sewer drains. It would have been the worst attack on us since 9/11. I sensed that only Iran’s impression of America’s impotence could have led them to risk such an act within a couple of miles of the White House, Absent one fundamental mistake — the terrorists had engaged an undercover DEA agent in an attempt to smuggle the bomb — the Iranians would have pulled off this devastating attack. Had that bomb exploded, it would have changed history.”

      In the end, it was Obama’s successor who delivered the kind of reprisal Mattis thought necessary. In early January 2020, the Trump administration launched a drone strike that killed Major General Qassem Soleimani, the long-time Quds Force commander, while he was on a secret visit to Baghdad. Hundreds of miles away on the very same night, a drone strike in Yemen targeted but missed Abdul Reza Shahlai, a senior leader in the Quds Force. Washington had long accused Soleimani and Shahlai of being the key Iranian officials in putting the bomb plot into motion.

      Biden’s Conundrum

      Like Obama, President Biden now confronts a conundrum: how to shore up eroding US deterrence resolve vis-à-vis an increasing risk-acceptant Tehran while also keeping it in good enough humor to extract significant nuclear concessions. So far, he has eschewed Mattis’ advice about how to dissuade Iran from mounting further attacks on American soil.

      In contrast to his outrage a decade ago, Biden has opted to keep personally silent about the Brooklyn abduction plot while his administration treats it as a matter for law enforcement. It seems unlikely that the incoming Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, will find this response a cause for restraint.

      The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Is America Ready to Raise the Minimum Wage?

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      Since the federal minimum wage was introduced in the United States in 1938, it has provided a level of security for workers to be able to afford a minimal living standard. However, the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour has not changed since 2009, the longest timespan without an increase in its history. Critics argue that $7.25 is not a livable wage, which by 2018 was worth 14.8% less after adjusting for inflation. For nearly a decade, discussions about raising the wage have continued, with the minimum wage in 30 states now above the federal level.

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      Yet according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s 2021 report, a full-time minimum wage worker, whether at the $7.25 federal wage or higher state minimum wages, could afford a one-bedroom rental at market rate in only 7% of US counties. The report estimates that workers will need to make $20 an hour to earn a one-bedroom housing wage.  

      With debates around the issue ongoing, how sensitive is the American public to a minimum wage increase? President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats’ proposal for a $15 minimum wage may be popular among workers, but fear of the consequences complicate its passage.

      To Raise or Not to Raise?

      Businesses with razor-thin margins face a threat of closure if wages increase. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that a $15 minimum wage would result in a likely loss of 1.4 million jobs. Likewise, the national deficit was also predicted to increase by $54 billion over the next decade if the wage were raised. Opponents argue that a new minimum wage will create more problems than it solves, fail to alleviate poverty and transfer the extra $333-billion cost to firms on to consumers in the form of higher prices. In contrast, Republican senators have floated increasing the minimum wage to $10 an hour in exchange for policy concessions on immigration.

      Proponents of the $15 minimum wage assert that it will bring earnings closer to the rising cost of living expenses. A report by the Economic Policy Institute states that essential and frontline workers constitute 60% of those who would benefit from the higher wage. A National Low Income Housing Coalition report states that with a $15 minimum wage, some inland states would approach full-time wages that support modest rent at 30% of one’s income. The CBO report estimates that 900,000 Americans would be brought out of poverty with a $15 minimum wage. The raise would also decrease racial income inequality.

      A recent survey by the Pew Research Center showed that 62% of Americans supported an increase of the federal minimum wage to $15, with only 10% opposed to any level of increase, with clear partisan differences: 72% of Republicans expressed opposition to a $15 minimum wage while 87% of Democrats were in favor.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In 2013, a Gallup poll showed that small business owners were divided on increasing the minimum wage to $9.50, juxtaposed to 76% of the public supporting an increase to $9. In 2014, analysis by CBS News found that people were less supportive of raising the minimum wage if they thought it would lead to job losses. The issue of how raising the minimum wage will affect small businesses is a crucial component of how willing people are to support an increase.

      We conducted a national web survey using quota sampling and recruited 625 American respondents via Qualtrics on June 22-24. Rather than just ask about support for the minimum wage in the abstract, we randomly assigned respondents to one of four questions to evaluate on a five-point Likert scale (strongly disagree to strongly agree). Targeted formulation of the statements allowed us to directly test whether support differs between $15 as the Democrats have proposed versus the $10 endorsed by some Republican senators. The methodology would also show whether support declines if primed to think about the potential negative impacts to small businesses.

      With no mention of businesses closing, increasing the minimum wage to $10 was more popular than the $15 option (64.31% vs. 57.21%), reflecting that opponents of a $15 minimum wage favor a more modest increase as found by previous survey work. When primed to consider that some small businesses may close due to increased employment costs, support for both a $10 and $15 wage declined (53.13% vs. 55.77%). Regression analysis finds statistically significant drops in support for increasing the minimum wage when the increase was listed as $15 instead of $10 and when businesses closing was mentioned. The pattern endures when controlling for demographic factors.

      Political Divide

      Surprisingly, a majority of Republicans agreed with raising the minimum wage to either $10 or $15 when we did not reference small businesses. This deviates from past survey work showing strong Republican opposition to increases in the minimum wage, signaling that conservatives may be more open to increasing the minimum wage than they have been in recent years. Additionally, non-white Republicans were more willing to support an increase than white Republicans, consistent with trends among racial minorities being more willing to support an increase than white Americans.

      Unsurprisingly, a majority of Democrats supported raising the minimum wage to $15 both when businesses closing was mentioned or not. However, the inclusion of small businesses closing had a larger effect on declining support than specifying a $15 wage versus a $10 wage. This indicates that Democrats are not immune to concerns about small businesses failing from an increased minimum wage but have largely accepted a $15 over a $10 minimum wage as the path forward. Providing protections for small businesses such as a gradual increase of the minimum wage or government financial support for businesses could garner more support for the wage hike among Democrats, making the proposed increase more feasible. 

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      To help move the issue forward, reporting on how raising the minimum wage could help small businesses would be a meaningful way to combat concerns. The Center for American Progress argues that higher wages will increase demand for goods, increase worker productivity and ultimately benefit small businesses in the long run with the correct support from the government. Politicians and media outlets supportive of increases could use this framing to solidify support for Democrats and perhaps strengthen support from Republicans as well.

      Proponents argue that increases are necessary to make the federal minimum wage a livable one, as the inflation-adjusted value of the minimum wage peaked in 1968. An increase to $15 would only partially address the impact of inflation and the rise in housing costs, the latter that has increased by nearly 30% since the last minimum wage hike. However, if small businesses close due to higher payouts, workers may not be any better off. Our survey findings suggest public sensitivity to broader impacts of a minimum wage increase, suggesting that gradual policies of raising the minimum wage or policies that can minimize the burden on small businesses could expand bipartisan support.

      *[Funding for this survey work was provided by the Mahurin Honors College at Western Kentucky University.]

      The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Thought Suppression Flourishes in France and Washington

      by

      In August, the Daily Devil’s Dictionary appears in a single weekly edition containing multiple items taken from a variety of contexts. 

      This week, we jump from French President Emmanuel Macron’s proposal of a new law intended to produce electoral momentum in the run-up to the presidential election to Republican Senator Josh Hawley’s campaign to avoid dishonoring the great tradition of white supremacy. We then move on to congressional Democrats’ greater sense of loyalty to the military-industrial complex than to their elected president and also the military threat that China’s peaceful overtures in Africa appear to represent for the US. Finally, we look at the Financial Times’ realistic, but unorthodox reading of the global debt crisis. 

      Macron’s Revised Motto: Liberté (diminished), Egalité (Two-tiered) and Neutralité

      It used to be that countries like Switzerland could claim the privilege of neutrality. The notion applied to political entities. President Macron of France has extended it to people in the name of combating “separatism,” the latest and deadliest sin against what he imagines to be republican integrity. Parliament is now deliberating on a bill designed literally to neuter the French by imposing neutrality as a behavioral norm. Macron sees the effort to inculcate and enforce “republican values” as the key to winning reelection in 2022.

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      “Introduced by hardline French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, the bill contains a slew of measures on the neutrality of the civil service, the fight against online hatred, and the protection of civil servants such as teachers,” France 24 informs us. The New York Times explains that this “law also extends strict religious neutrality obligations beyond civil servants to anyone who is a private contractor of a public service, like bus drivers.”

      Neutralité:

      A legal concept that provides a pretext for targeting the Muslim community in France for failing to live up to republican standards, a requirement that not only judges people on their aptitude to adhere to a modern faith known as “republican principles” (which supersedes any other creed or philosophy a person may identify with), but also proclaims that those principles are universal and should be shared by any rational person anywhere in the world

      The Context

      The law voted by parliament on July 23 seeks to eliminate “separatism” by removing a few of the traditional liberties the French formerly enjoyed. It also seeks to foment a climate of suspicion against anyone who resists signing on to a behavioral code designed to protect members of the current secular order.

      To ensure that some of Marine Le Pen’s xenophobic, anti-immigrant voters may be tempted to drift across to vote for Macron in next year’s election, the president has proposed a law clearly intended to demonstrate his personal pleasure in intimidating Muslims.

      Radical Ideology According to Senator Josh Hawley

      Republicans in the United States believe in freedom of expression so long as thought itself is controlled. Missouri Senator Josh Hawley understands that white exceptionalism is the unimpeachable foundation of the American way of life. “Over the past year, Americans have watched stunned as a radical ideology spread through our country’s elite institutions—one that teaches America is an irredeemably racist nation founded by white supremacists,” Hawley said. “We cannot afford for our children to lose faith in the noble ideals this country was founded on.”

      Radical ideology:

      The citing of any facts of history that might contradict the self-proclaimed normal and noble ideology of those who believe that the power structure they are a part of is predestined not only to rule the world, but also to restrict useful, objective knowledge of the world

      The Context

      When Hawley claims that we “have to make sure that our children understand what makes this country great, the ideals of hope and promise our Founding Fathers fought for, and the love of country that unites us all,” the key concept is “make sure.” This is the language not of education but of indoctrination, a characteristic traditionally associated with totalitarian regimes that mobilize whatever resources are required to “make sure” people toe the line.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The idea of “making sure” that children “understand” should be seen as an aporia, a simple contradiction, since true understanding means appreciating what one cannot be sure of — in other words, of putting things in perspective. Hawley clearly wants to remove what he calls the “ideals” from their context. This is more about undermining than understanding.

      There are similarities between Macron’s and Hawley’s approach to normalizing understanding and testing for loyalty.

      The Democrats’ Competing Priorities 

      US President Joe Biden has claimed that transformative FDR-style reforms are his priority and opposed Donald Trump’s race to further bloat the defense budget. Biden’s party in Congress is implementing its own priorities, similar to Trump’s.

      “One has to wonder what is even the point of a Senate Democratic majority if they’re going to not only continue Trump policies but work with Senate Republicans to undermine [Biden’s] priorities. Utterly pathetic,” tweeted Stephen Miles, executive director of Win Without War.

      Priority:

      Something political leaders want the public to believe is the first thing they wish to accomplish, even when they have no intention of implementing the stated policy and also expect it will not be implemented

      The Context

      During last year’s presidential campaign, Defense News reported that Biden said that “if elected president, he doesn’t foresee major reductions in the U.S. defense budget as the military refocuses its attention to potential threats from ‘near-peer’ powers such as China and Russia.” The website nevertheless suspected that “internal pressure from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, combined with pandemic-related economic pressures, may ultimately add up to budget cuts at a Biden Pentagon.”

      In a comic historical twist, Biden did not propose a reduction in the defense budget, but instead a modest increase despite drawing down the US commitment in the Middle East. The Senate Armed Services Committee, with a majority of Democrats, applied its pressure not to reduce the budget, but to spend even more than Biden demanded. The only “internal pressure” came from one isolated progressive, outvoted by 25 Democrats and Republicans.

      The moral of the story is clear. The president cannot run the country because even the policies he prefers (sincerely or insincerely) will be overturned by the all-powerful military-industrial complex that controls Congress. Defense is no longer about defending the nation, which is already extremely well defended. It’s about supporting the defense industries that are at the core of the economy and the focus of politicians’ attention. Spending freely on defense is the norm even in a nation that hates any spending other than consumer spending. The taxpayers will never complain, because they have been taught that producing arsenals that will never be needed is consistent with the belief in the “ideals of hope and promise our Founding Fathers fought for,” to quote Hawley again.

      Embed from Getty Images

      As the wealth gap continues to grow and the effects of both the COVID-19 pandemic and a growing climate crisis have spread more misery across the nation, the Republicans and Democrats on the Armed Services Committee appear to blissfully ignore the observation of a former Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

      The US Counters a Global Overture Threat

      It goes without saying that, given the multiplicity of threats to “national security,” the US is supposed to be everywhere in the world as a military presence. For two decades, terrorism was the main pretext, but its attraction has faded, allowing other missions to emerge, especially in Africa.

      “Now, in addition to fighting violent extremist groups, they have to counter Chinese and Russian overtures in a region where great powers are increasingly competing for access, influence, and resources,” writes Stavros Atlamazoglou in Business Insider

      Overture:

      Any initiative taken by a rival power in territories currently dominated by Western colonial and neocolonial powers, especially in regions where US troops are already present as a reminder that these are the West’s private hunting grounds

      The Context

      America’s hard power, its famed military might, appears to have a new challenge. This time it isn’t a foreign army, insurgents or terrorist cells. It is, as Atlamazoglou explains, something far more frightening: “Chinese aid, in the form of loans or infrastructure development,” part of “Beijing’s quest for natural resources and global legitimacy.” How dare the most populous nation on earth seek “natural resources and global legitimacy?” No one has called them off the bench to play the same game Western powers have excelled at for the past 500 years.

      Then there is the Russian variant, which is more respectful of the well-established American model. “Russia sells arms and provides political advisors in addition to hunting for lucrative contracts for natural resources and other geopolitical benefits,” Atlamazoglou writes. The two former rivals have remained faithful to the methods developed in that golden age politicians remember as the Cold War.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Atlamazoglou relies heavily on the testimony of John Black, a retired Special Forces warrant officer, who observes that American ambassadors need “to look at the country as a whole and take more risks, use [the US] military arm to effect real change within a country.” The stirring examples of Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya demonstrate how “real change” can take place when you accept to “take more risks.”

      Black understands the risk, apparently viscerally: “China or Russia might not hesitate to work with a dictator with an abdominal [sic] human-rights record to further their geopolitical goals.” Could he have possibly meant “abominable?” Or does this describe a brutal regime that weaponizes diarrhea? Citing the US commitment to the rule of law, Black implies that the US would never cavort with a dictator possessed of an abominable human-rights record.

      How did the usually serious Business Insider allow such an “abdominal” article to appear?  

      The Great Reset: The Effect of Coordination or Chaos?

      The magnates of Davos recently agreed to mobilize their forces to implement what they call the “Great Reset,” ushering in a new golden age of socially responsible capitalism. All it requires is some concerted action under their leadership.  

      Gillian Tett, writing for the Financial Times, seems to envision a different scenario: “The total global debt is now more than three times the size of the global economy, since debt — and money — has expanded inexorably since 1971. It seems most unlikely this can ever be repaid just by growth; sooner or later — and it may be much later — this will probably cause a direct or indirect restructuring or a social or financial implosion.”

      Restructuring:

      The process by which the laws of inertia teach human beings with political and economic power, who believe they possess the intelligence capable of problem-solving, that such a belief can only be an illusion

      The Context

      Humanity finds itself struggling with a straightforward situation: multiple crises related to health, climate and an economy functioning on increasingly absurd principles. Theoretically, they can all be addressed through a harmonious global focus on rational resource management followed by intelligent decision-making. But history demonstrates on a daily basis that society has delegated decision-making to: first, individuals within nations (consumers and voters); second, nations (each competing one another); and third, those who govern the nations (theoretically, politicians whose sole aim is to hold onto power once they have acquired it and who are beholden to anyone who assists them in achieving that goal).

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      In other words, the more universal the problem, the less likely it will be that it may be solved. Local and national crises continue to exist, but they have now become dominated by universal crises. The consumer economy and the quasi-democratic nation-states are structured, in terms of decision-making, in a way that makes any voluntary effort at restructuring impossible.

      Not only do our economies and political systems need restructuring. Our thinking about who we are and how we function as a society needs some serious revision.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      “Freedom” Failed to Set Americans Free

      by

      A little over a month ago, those who were fully COVID-19 vaccinated in America were feeling pretty good about themselves and their prospects for a summer of wining, dining and a bit of travel. The kiddies, even though unvaccinated, could for some unexplained reason do camp, amusement parks and movies with a return to full in-person schooling to come. And just to show how far we had come in turning back the viral tide, those masks could be washed and stored away to await the next pandemic.

      So, what happened? First, a lot of ignorant and selfish people decided not only to stay that way, but to avoid COVID vaccinations as well. They started getting sick and dying, but not enough of them did so to end the plague. Instead, they just spread the disease, now a highly contagious variant, to other unvaccinated people. Then, something really bad happened: It was soon discovered that those ignorant and selfish people were also spreading the disease to vaccinated people, who just haven’t started dying in large numbers, at least not yet.

      Why the US Will Not Achieve Herd Immunity

      READ MORE

      Meanwhile, the commercial machine and its political allies were ramping up to open everything and let the good times roll. It quickly became hard to find a seat at the bar or a hotel room at the beach. Airports and airplanes were filled again with vacationing families, rental cars were so scarce that it is hard to imagine that turnaround time included a drop of disinfectant, and those ever-popular buffet tables were dusted off for the hungry hoards. Forgetting your mask at home or in the car was deemed to be of little consequence.

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      The US federal government response was to go all in on vaccines as the obvious path to public health and commercial revitalization. The vaccines are now everywhere to be had and free of charge. The only problem with this plan is that it is playing out in America, where freedom is defined by way too many as not having to do anything you don’t want to do that you can get away with. The well-being of others be damned.

      This situation would be easy to ignore if it involved only a fringe group of pock-marked anti-vaccine individualists whose children regularly get the measles and who never go to school. But this time, for some reason, the vaccine-resistant crowd also includes a large percentage of Republicans who are not pock-marked and whose children get a whole raft of vaccines so they can go to school. Then throw in a bunch of members of religious covens whose leaders are chatting with their god about this issue and then let the flock in on the big secret that their god definitely isn’t vaccinated against COVID-19 (even though there seems to be some disagreement about god’s smallpox vaccination status).

      “Freedom”

      There are more ironies here than I can keep up with. Let’s start with “freedom” of choice. Many of those resistant to vaccines resist government “interference” in personal health choices, even though many of those same people are fully engaged in trying to get that same government to prevent women from making their own reproductive choices. Think about that for a moment.

      More ironic yet, many of those in the “freedom” crowd seem untroubled by most government health mandates, yet all of a sudden, putting a vaccine in their bodies to help themselves and others avoid the ravages of a relentless virus has become some political and social litmus test for them. Seatbelt requirements, drinking and driving prohibitions, no smoking in restaurants, a host of required vaccines for employment, travel and schooling all make the good health mandate list. Meanwhile, mindless resistance to life-saving COVID vaccines and masking requirements has become a right-wing badge of honor, generally until the bodies of right-wing family and friends start piling up.

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      However, maybe the grandest irony of all is that the leader of the pack of virus resisters, Donald Trump, is himself fully vaccinated, as are at least his wife and the precious Ivanka. It is bad enough that the Trump clan lied its way to prominence and supposed wealth and that when empowered to do the right thing almost always did the wrong thing. Then, when a pandemic was inserted into the mix, the whole crew conspired to undermine any meaningful national response while over 500,000 people in America died on their watch. While others were gasping for their last breath, Trump got vaccinated just to make sure it wouldn’t be him on that ventilator.

      You would think that as the actions of the Trump clan played out before adoring eyes, those ignorant and selfish acolytes would be pushing others out of the way to get vaccinated. But instead, they can’t wait to parade their “freedom” from vaccine tyranny at every super spreader event they can find, while the vaccinated and protected leader of the pack cheers them on. This seems to work really well until that stairway to heaven leads to a COVID ward in a local hospital surrounded by other ignorant and selfish people, many of whom now use their last breathes to beg for the vaccine.

      Another Wave

      In the face of this insanity, it seems that it is slowly dawning on some public officials that another wave of deadly COVID disease and disorder is closing in. Lots of parents are suddenly worried about their children, some private concerns are worried about something other than their short-term bottom line, and lots of people anticipating a return to crowded workplaces and those already there are staying home. There are even a few people with September travel plans suddenly concerned that playa wherever will be a petri dish when they get there. More importantly, it may be sinking in that there is only one way out of this: mandated vaccines wherever the authority exists to mandate them.

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      To do this, there can be no more coddling of the ignorant and selfish. Get vaccinated or get out. Everywhere that the federal government has the authority to do so should require proof of vaccine for employment and entry. Start with federal buildings, museums and entertainment venues, airplanes and trains, and the military and military bases. Examine every interstate commerce authority for ways to tighten the vise. No vaccine, no entry, period.

      In those pathetic states and localities where resistance overwhelms public health, everything that can be done to isolate those populations from the rest of us needs to be done. No conventions in Atlanta, no cruise ships docking in Miami, interstate highway dead zones, hotel and restaurant chains shuttering their venues, testing and mask mandates for those who knowingly come in contact with the unvaccinated while engaging in interstate commerce, and no event licenses or advertising dollars to sports and entertainment venues that won’t mandate vaccines for entry.

      If this gets done before the viability of today’s vaccines begins to wane or is crushed by new COVID-19 mutations, Americans, at least, have a chance to put the pandemic behind them. We are lucky that we have this opportunity at all, but we can only take advantage of it if we move swiftly and decisively to mandate vaccines and isolate those who won’t comply. If accomplished, America might then have the moral authority, the scientific and manufacturing strength, and the financial resources to lead the rest of the world to the same place.

      *[This article was co-published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More