Far rightists divided over Hugo Chávez

Far rightists are of two minds about the legacy of Hugo Chávez, who died on March 5th after leading Venezuela’s “Bolivarian Revolution” for over fourteen years. Chávez was a left populist whose “anti-imperialist” friends and allies included not just Fidel Castro and Evo Morales but also Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashar al-Assad, Vladimir Putin, and Belorus’s neo-stalinist president Alexander Lukashenko. Some far rightists applaud this kind of left-right alliance, others don’t.

(For more on Chávez’s deeply flawed politics, see Bill Weinberg’s “Contradictory legacy of Hugo Chávez,” and Bromma’s “Notes on XXIst Century Socialism.”)

“Reasons to like Chavez”
Attitudes toward Chávez on a recent discussion thread on Stormfront, a leading neo-nazi discussion forum, were mostly but not entirely positive. The thread began with a 2010 video clip in which Chávez claimed that Israel was funding the Venezuelan opposition and that Mossad agents were trying to kill him. A Stormfront forum member favorably quoted several mainstream articles accusing Chávez of antisemitism (see note below), and offered the following “reasons to like Chavez”:

“-He increased the living standards of his countries poor brown masses, meaning less of them emigrating to Western nations.
 -He cut into the profits of the big Jew banks by encouraging barter trade… This was seen especially in his trade with Russia.
 -He undermined the crypto-Jews that control Venezuela greatly.
 -He was against Zionism, and helped those who also opposed Zionism. He also spoke out against the Jewish Power Structure.
 -He was a nationalist. Nationalist’s should support one another in this globalist Jew world, as long as interests do not conflict, irrespective of brand or race.”

Another commenter on the same thread wrote simply, "Have observed that jewish neo-cons hated this guy. That has to mean there's some good!" But not everybody agreed with this “enemy of my enemy is my friend” logic. One person wrote that Chávez's opposition to Israel “proved nothing save for a common cause which is as toxic as any type of neo-con zionism.” And another commenter declared that “Chavez hated whites.”

Similar discussions can be found on other fascist discussion boards, such as Vanguard News Network Forum (a split off from William Pierce’s National Alliance) and aryanism.net. On Iron March Forums, one person disparaged Chávez’s “verbal bluster” and criticized “his support for Colombian FARC rebels who are a bunch of Marxist clowns,” but conceded that “he was a problem for globalism and capitalism. While I would not have seen him as an ally, I give him cred for that.” Another commenter on the same thread wrote, “Now while I would call him far from perfect he embraced his political myth (Simon Bolivar), gave the land back to the people (in a hap hazard way), fought of[f] the globalists and over all contributed to the quality of life of his citizens. While he was not perfect… he could have been a friend to states such as ours.”

"Put in power through the British embassy"
The Lyndon LaRouche network, whose idiosyncratic fascist ideology draws heavily on anti-British conspiracy theories, claimed that “Chavez was originally put in power in Venezuela through actions of the British embassy… Chavez in that sense was following in the footsteps of his hero, South American liberator Simon Bolivar, who was a wholly-owned asset of British intelligence’s Jeremy Bentham, until he broke with him at the very end of his life.” The LaRouchites conceded that Chávez “had positive and negative features” and “on occasion broke profile with this British imperial game” by promoting closer collaboration with other South American leaders. But LaRouchites considered his support for the FARC (supposedly “the world’s leading cocaine cartel”) especially damning.

Riding the Tiger, which embraces Julius Evola’s “Traditionalist” brand of far right ideology, praised Chávez as “a staunch opponent to neoliberal globalist imperialism” who “institut[ed] social programs to benefit the poor of his own country rather than line the pockets of the rich.” The article continued,

“Some traditionalist minded people may question our support for leftist governments like that of Venezuela and Cuba today, but such support is necessary, and opposition is nitpicking. As Chavez himself told a reporter in 1998, ‘I am not a communist, not a fascist. I am a Bolivarian, whose ideology exists as an ideology of liberty.’ Chavez was one of the few leaders who had the bravery to stand for an alternative to American neo-liberalism in South America. His government (as with any government) was not perfect and there certainly were errors made, and he certainly wasn’t a Traditionalist to be sure. His movement could be described as socialist or Third Positionist.”

"Common interests and a common enemy"
Two of the most in-depth (and widely quoted) rightist tributes following Chávez’s death have come from Counter-Currents Publishing, which promotes European New Right (ENR) ideology blended with explicit white nationalism and antisemitism. Counter-Currents’ Gregory Hood offered “Two Cheers for Chávez.” Hood wrote that he wouldn’t want to live in Chávez's Venezuela, citing rampant crime, corruption and other problems, but focused mainly on reasons to admire the deceased leader:

“Chávez’s ‘socialist’ revolution always contained powerful nationalist and even traditionalist overtones. ‘Bolivarianism’ emphasized Latin American unity, strength, and above all, sovereignty as an independent economic and political bloc against the new order of globalization. He attempted to mobilize the masses behind a patriotic identity, imbuing them with a sense of mission and national pride that transcended class. While Chávez’s opponents conspired with foreigners to overthrow him, Chávez broke with neoliberal orthodoxy to build what he called a ‘Third Way’ that would put Venezuela first.”

Hood also took it as a good sign that “the Tribe [i.e., Jews] was famously hostile to Chávez.” “For their part,” he noted approvingly, “pro-Chávez groups and newspapers have distributed the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, called for the ‘expulsion’ of Zionist organizations from the country, and monitored the ‘subversive activity’ of Jewish organizations.”

Hood argued that “White Nationalists and Hugo Chávez share common interests and a common enemy: global capitalism,” and that white Americans specifically had good reason to align themselves with Chávez and his movement: “It is Wall Street and the capitalist elite – not so called ‘anti-Americans’ like the late Hugo Chávez – that are importing the non-white masses to serve as cheap labor and dispossess Western peoples from their homelands. Americans should sympathize with Third World anti-colonialists like Chávez, since our country too is now merely a colony of global capital.” He concluded that “Hugo Chávez was an ally in that fight [against the neoliberal financial order]. His Bolivarian Revolution is not something we would wish to emulate. But it does deserve our support and respect.”

Dugin's Eurasianism, for and against
Two days after publishing Hood’s essay, Counter-Currents published a much longer and even more glowing assessment of Chávez by Kerry Bolton. Leading off with a 1961 quote from red-brown alliance guru Francis Parker Yockey, Bolton emphasized two points: Chávez's kinship with Peronism on one hand and with the geopolitical thinking of ENR theorist Alexander Dugin on the other. Bolton described Chávez as “the first Latin American leader to fill the shoes of the great Juan Perón,” as a non-Marxist leftist who sought Latin American unity against U.S. imperialism (and who referred to himself as “really a Peronist” in a 2008 meeting with Argentine President Kirchner). Bolton emphasized Chávez’s intellectual debt to Peronist and antisemite Norberto Ceresole, who was for a time Chávez’s close advisor and who as recently as 2006 Chávez described as a “great friend” and “an intellectual deserving great respect.” “The influence certainly endured through Ceresole’s ideas on geopolitics [such as physical integration in Latin America], his opposition to Zionism and the influences of Judaism, and his conception of a civil-military state.”

Bolton also highlighted the Chávez-Dugin connection:

“In opposing the USA and globalization Chávez countered with an alternative that accorded with a growing body of political and academic opinion in Russia, based on ‘Eurasianism’ and the ‘Fourth Political Theory,’ the most well-known exponent of this in Russia being Professor Alexander Dugin of the Center for Conservative Studies, Moscow State University. The theory is broadly advocated by President Putin, and Chávez sought a close relationship with Russia as the axis for a global reorganization based on geopolitical blocs and alliances or what Dugin calls ‘vectors.’” In 2010, “Putin visited Venezuela to sign an energy accord. Chávez, who visited Russia many times, stated of the Putin visit: ‘We’re forging a new multipolar world and Russia plays a big part in that process.’”

Bolton’s conclusion emphasized Venezuela’s importance for the future of left-right alliance-building:

“Venezuela stands at the crossroads. The Bolivarian regime provides the nexus for the Latin American bloc that is forming in alliance with Russia and Iran against the ‘new world order.’ Its demise is crucial to the recapture of Latin America for the plutocrats and globalists and will delight World Zionism. Chávez was the pivotal figure in this new bloc. Will Venezuela produce another great leader, or will another arise from elsewhere in Latin America? Or will the region revert to colonial status behind the façade of ‘democracy,’ ‘human rights,’ and the market economy that is regarded as their necessary pillar?”

A direct counter to Bolton’s approach came from white nationalist Colin Liddell at AlternativeRight.com:

“It seems, though no one told anyone else about this, that there exists a Grand Invisible Alliance that will ultimately save us from our common enemy. This enemy is apparently the evil globalist clique that is bent on turning our planet into a multicultural materialistic Orwellian-Huxleyian hellhole, etc. etc. Although this enemy may or may not exist in the form speculated, I have serious reservations about the existence of this supposed Grand Alliance, of which the burly mulatto populist strongman of Venezuela was a leading light – along with Fidel Castro, President ‘I’m a Dinner Jacket’ of Iran, the ghost of Muammar Gaddafi, and Bigfoot.”

Liddell traced this alliance-building strategy to Alexander Dugin’s Eurasian theory, which he dismissed as “nothing more than a rehash of Soviet/Russian Imperialism and its Machiavellian tendency to seek strange bedfellows in any tent, mud hut, or igloo on the planet.” Liddell concluded, “An ally, remember, is someone who acts in concert with you and makes sacrifices for you. Chavez was none of these things; in fact, quite the reverse. A leader who redistributed wealth to the less-White sector of his nation’s population and is mourned by the ANC, is hardly a fitting coffin-fellow for White Nationalists.”

The disagreement between Liddell and Bolton represents an important strategic choice for far rightists. Anticommunism and racial animosity have historically discouraged many rightists from even considering an alliance with leftists, and these barriers remain strong. At the same time, European New Right and national bolshevist influence have been growing in recent years among U.S. and other English-speaking fascists, and are cross-pollinating with other rightist doctrines. This is a dangerous development that could strengthen the right’s ability to present itself as the main insurgent challenge to the existing order. Leftists — whatever we think of Hugo Chávez and his impact on Venezuela — would do well to pay close attention.

                    *                    *                    *

Note on Chávez and antisemitism
Many Jew-hating far rightists believe that Hugo Chávez was a fellow antisemite. In this, ironically, they rely largely on accusations against him by some mainstream Jewish groups. But many of these accusations are based on wrongly equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism or, in some cases, distorting Chávez’s public statements, as Chávez defenders on the left and even Venezuela's Jewish community leaders have pointed out. So far, I have not seen clear evidence that Chávez himself intentionally attacked or scapegoated Jews. However, some of Chávez’s supporters and close associates, such as Ceresole, have certainly done so, and Chávez (as far as I can determine) failed to criticize such bigotry from within his movement. He also used rhetoric that trivialized antisemitism (for example, equating Israel with Hitler) and — intentionally or unintentionally — played into anti-Jewish stereotypes and myths (for example, claiming without providing evidence that Israel was secretly bankrolling the Venezuelan opposition). For useful but flawed discussions of this issue, see Claudio Lomnitz and Rafael Sánchez’s “United by Hate” and “A Necessary Critique,” and Max Ajl’s rebuttal.

North American Anti-fascist speaking tour by Greek Antifa

Several Greek anti-fascists are in the middle of a speaking tour of North American cities. For the schedule, information about the speakers, and other details, go to antifaevents.wordpress.com.

The following is excerpted from the flyer for the March 10 event in Detroit:

"Fascism in Greece
As has been well documented in the media, the nation of Greece is in the throes of an economic
meltdown.  Austerity measures aimed at paying off an astronomical debt load have plunged the
economy into a death spiral, and sparked nationwide protests and strikes.  Unemployment is at 27
percent and climbing.

Much as the Nazis arose in Weimar Germany by exploiting similar economic conditions, Golden Dawn, an avowedly fascist political party, has been rapidly gaining power in Greece.  Once an
unimportant fringe group, Golden Dawn captured seven percent of the seats in parliament in the
most recent election.  Armed with government funding and the tacit cooperation of the police (many
of whom are Golden Dawn members), fascists have adopted a strategy of terrorizing Greece's
immigrant population while offering rudimentary social services restricted to Greek  citizens.

Ordinary Greeks are mobilizing to prevent the fascist takeover of their country.  Neighborhood
assemblies, immigrant solidarity groups, labor unions and other civil society organizations are
resisting both Golden Dawn and the destructive government policies that created the economic
collapse.  Greek activists Sofia Papagiannaki, Thanasis Xirotsopanos and Vangelis Nanos are here
to speak about fascism and resistance in their country."

Rape, the state, and the far right in India

The December 16, 2012 gang rape/murder of a female student on a Delhi bus helped spark a major upsurge in anti-rape activism across India. This activism has continued despite a harsh police crackdown and has targeted not only India's epidemic of sexual violence against women but also, to a more limited extent, the entrenched patriarchal beliefs, practices, and institutions that foster it. Some critics, such as Soma Marik of the Forum Against Oppression of Women, Calcutta, have also highlighted the ways that both the state and the Hindu nationalist far right in India use rape as a weapon against specific groups of women. That's what I want to focus on in this post.

Writing some eight months before the recent anti-rape protests, Kavita Krishnan, national secretary of the All India Progressive Women's Association (which is affiliated with the maoist CPI[ML]), argued that rape must be seen as "part of a larger web of violence and subjugation of women" and "we need to assert the nature of rape as a crime of power rather than a crime against innocence, chastity, or property" [i.e., women as sexual property of someone else]. She also pointed out that "safety" for women "is often tied up with the patriarchal ideology of masculine guardianship" and typically means restrictions on women's freedom of movement, although most rapes are committed by family members, friends, and neighbors -- not by strangers. Although the details vary, most of Krishnan's basic points apply not just to India but also to the United States and other patriarchal societies.

While emphasizing that "rape and other forms of sexual violence are an assertion of patriarchal dominance and power," Krishan also noted that "other centres of power -- caste, religion, and State -- also draw upon this form of patriarchal violence to assert their own dominance, and so we have rapes as part of caste and communal violence, and custodial rapes by police or army."

The Indian state is a major perpetrator of rape. In recent decades, Indian security forces have used rape extensively as part of counterinsurgency operations in regions such as Kashmir. A 1993 report by Asia Watch and Physicians for Human Rights, entitled "Rape in Kashmir: A Crime of War," found that "the use of rape [by Indian army and paramilitary forces] is common and routinely goes unpunished" (p. 3). The main targets have been women civilians who are suspected of sympathizing with the insurgents. In nearly all such cases, the government has rejected the evidence and tried to discredit the accusers, for example regarding the 1991 Kunan Poshpora incident, in which soldiers reportedly gang-raped at least 53 women in the Kashmiri village of Kunan Poshpora. In 2005, according to Wikileaks, almost one-fourth of the 1,296 Kashmiri detainees interviewed by the International Committee of the Red Cross said they had been sexually abused by Indian security forces (out of a total of 681 who reported some form of torture).

Looking more broadly, the following passage from the AW/PHR Kashmir report probably describes the situation today as well as it did in 1993:

"Rape by Indian police is common throughout India; the victims are generally poor women and those from vulnerable low-caste and tribal minority groups. In some cases, women are taken into custody as suspects in petty crime or on more serious charges; in others, women are detained as hostages for relatives wanted in criminal or political cases; in still others, women are detained simply so that the police can extort a bribe to secure their release. In all of these cases, women in the custody of security forces are at risk of rape. Rape has also been widely reported during counter-insurgency operations elsewhere in India, particularly in Assam and other areas of conflict in northeastern India. In both conflict and non-conflict situations, the central element of rape by the security forces is power. Soldiers and police use rape as a weapon: to punish, intimidate, coerce, humiliate and degrade" (p. 3).

The Asian Center for Human Rights has documented 45 cases of Indian women being raped by police officers while in custody between 2002 and 2010, according to Jason Overdorf in the Global Post. Given that rape is heavily under-reported even when the police are not involved, the real figure may be much higher.

Rape is commonly perpetrated not only by soldiers and police officers, but also by members of India's political class itself. According to the watchdog group National Election Watch (as cited by Overdorf), over the past five years 260 candidates from all the major political parties in India have faced charges for rape, sexual harassment, or other crimes against women. Two current members of the national parliament and six members of state legislatures are facing rape charges.

India's far right Hindu nationalist movement promotes rape in ways that are closely bound up with the movement's anti-Muslim politics and dream of a culturally pure hierarchical society. Hindu nationalists demand Hindu cultural and political dominance of India and have perpetrated some of the most horrific mass violence of recent decades, including the torture and murder of thousands of Muslims. The movement includes India's largest opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as well as the country's biggest labor union, biggest student organization, and many other groups. Most of these groups are part of a network centered on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), an all-male cadre organization that aims to reshape Indian society along authoritarian corporatist lines. (See my "Hindu nationalism: an annotated bibliography of online resources.")

During the recent public outcry about rape, the BJP called for the death penalty in many rape cases while some of its leaders trivialized rape or engaged in victim-blaming. A more sophisticated response came from Shiv Sena, a Hindu nationalist political party in Maharashtra state, which handed out knives to thousands of women in Mumbai for self-defense, to show that "women are empowered and they can take care of themselves." Like the fascist Golden Dawn party in Greece offering self-defense classes for women, Shiv Sena's "symbolic gesture" (as they called it) appropriated an element of feminist politics in the service of a violent ethnic-chauvinist program.

But Shiv Sena's progressive-sounding response was unusual among Hindu nationalists, and it's probably no coincidence that Shiv Sena is the only major Hindu nationalist organization in India not affiliated with the RSS. By contrast, RSS head Mohan Bhagwat, who is arguably the most influential Hindu nationalist in the world, blamed rape on the decline of traditional patriarchal relations, as quoted by Devika Narayan:

"A husband and wife are involved in a contract under which the husband has said that you should take care of my house and I will take care of all your needs. I will keep you safe. So, the husband follows the contract terms. Till the time, the wife follows the contract, the husband stays with her, if the wife violates the contract, he can disown her. Crimes against women happening in urban India are shameful. But such crimes won't happen in Bharat [roughly: idealized traditional Hindu society] or the rural areas of the country. You go to villages and forests of the country and there will be no such incidents of gang-rape or sex crimes. Besides new legislation, Indian ethos and attitude towards women should be revisited in the context of ancient Indian values. Where Bharat becomes 'India' with the influence of western culture, these types of incidents happen."

Many critics, such as Narayan, have pointed out the utter fallacy of Bhagwat's claim that rape does not happen in traditional Indian villages, and have argued that sexual violence against women is in fact integral to the kind of patriarchal traditionalism that Bhagwat and his followers glorify. Yet Bhagwat's view was echoed by Ashok Singhal, of the Vishad Hindu Parishad (VHP), an RSS-affiliated cultural organization. Singhal claimed that the rise of sexual assault on women reflected the growth of a western lifestyle in Indian cities. "This western model is alarming. What is happening is we have imbibed the US. We have lost all the values we had in cities," notably virginity.

The Hindu nationalist movement doesn't just rationalize or hide rape -- it has actively promoted it on a large scale. Rape and other violence against women and girls have been central to a number of the anti-Muslim pogroms that Hindu nationalist groups have fomented or organized over the past twenty-plus years. The largest and most horrific example was the month-long Gujarat pogrom of 2002, when Hindu nationalist mobs killed at least 790 and probably more than 2,000 Muslims. Many women were raped, tortured, and then hacked to death or burned alive.

In an important analysis entitled "The Semiotics of Terror: Muslim Children and Women in Hindu Rashtra," historian Tanika Sarkar highlights three aspects of the Gujarat pogrom: "One, the woman's body was a site of almost inexhaustible violence, with infinitely plural and innovative forms of torture. Second, their sexual and reproductive organs were attacked with a special savagery. Third, their children, born and unborn, shared the attacks and were killed before their eyes." The focus of this violence, Sarkar argues, reflected Hindu nationalists' fears of the supposedly super-fertile Muslim woman as well as "a more virile Muslim male body that lures away Hindu girls."

Sarkar also emphasizes that the pogrom followed "months of systematic planning," such as compiling lists of Muslim addresses, and pointed to Hindu nationalists' extensive "penetration of state and grass roots institutions -- from police to hospitals" in Gujarat. The Gujarat state government was controlled by the BJP, and state organs protected and sometimes actively participated in the pogrom. Narendra Modi, Gujarat chief minister and a leader within both the BJP and RSS, rode the pogrom's success to victory in the state elections a few months later, and is still in power today.

Both the Indian state and the Hindu nationalist movement have used rape to terrorize and control specific groups of women. But Hindu nationalism has gone much further -- both in its level of cruelty and in its use of rape to mobilize and build up supporters. As the International Initiative for Justice in Gujarat declared in its interim report about the 2002 pogrom, "We find chillingly unique the incitement to sexual violence as a means of proving the masculinity of the 'Hindu' man, as reflected in the political propaganda of the forces of Hindutva [Hindu nationalism] prior to, during and after the violence in February/March 2002..." (See also the Initiative's full 197-page report, "Threatened Existence: A Feminist Analysis of the Genocide in Gujarat.")

Yet the same report also noted, "The use of systematic rape and sexual violence as a strategy for terrorizing and brutalizing women in conflict situations echoes experiences of women in Bangladesh in 1971, and in countries such as Rwanda, Bosnia and Algeria. In Gujarat, as in all these other countries, women have been targeted as members of the 'other' community, as symbols of the community's honor and as the ones who sustain the community and reproduce the next generation. This has become an all too common aspect of larger political projects of genocide, crimes against humanity and subjugation."

All of these political projects feed on and feed back into the larger, global system of male power and violence against women -- violence that is often less visible and less "newsworthy" than what happened on that Delhi bus.

A call for international solidarity: with Greek anti-fascism

From the Organizing Committee of the “19 January – Athens Antifascist City” (athensantifa19jan.wordpress.com):

"We appeal to the antifascists who have been alerted by the rise of the neonazi Golden Dawn and to those who stand in solidarity with the greek people. Our call for international solidarity has now grown into an international antifascist movement.

Demos outside greek embassies and consulates are now being organised in London (UK), Dublin and Derry (Ireland), Barcelona and Ossona (Catalunya), Lyon (France), Tampere (Finland), Chicago and New York (USA) and news for initiatives in other countries are streaming in.

We ask for more demos in solidarity with the greek movement, that is preparing for a big show of strength in Syntagma Square on the 19th of January. It is not just an international affair, it is part of a concerted effort to build a movement that will target rising fascism and racism in Europe and in the whole world.

We ask you:

1) to contact us and give us details for your activities on the day, through facebook, twitter or email: antiracismfascism@yahoo.gr

2) to send us photos and videos of support, holding plackards, stating your solidarity.

3) to send us statements of support that will be read from the platform the day of the demo and concert in Syntagma.

4) to take photos from your solidarity events and send it to us, in order to publicise the size and breadth of our movement."

Read more

Red Skies at Night: new revolutionary journal

"Red Skies at Night is intended as a humble and limited contribution to the project of building a revolutionary left that can think and write as well as act and fight. We are interested in being one tool in developing a revolutionary communist pole by building comradely dialogue and debate between class struggle anarchists, anti-state communists, autonomist marxists, revolutionary feminists, critical leninists, and others about the questions facing us."

Red Skies at Night expects to print their first issue in about a month. They are looking for groups to help with distribution, submissions for Issue #2, and donations of funds to help keep the project afloat.

Check them out at 

www.redskiesatnight.weebly.com

Tinley Park Five: Anti-fascists accept non-cooperating plea bargain

The Tinley Park Five are a group of anti-fascists who were arrested for allegedly assaulting a number of neo-nazi organizers in the Chicago suburb of Tinley Park, Illinois, on May 19, 2012. 

From the Tinley Park Five blog: 

"On January 4, 2013 all members of the Tinley Park Five accepted a non-cooperating plea bargain in which they each plead guilty to three felony counts of Armed Violence in exchange for “lenient” sentences and the guarantee of ‘day-for-day’ good behavior. Jason Sutherlin was sentenced to 6 years. Cody Lee Sutherlin and Dylan Sutherlin were sentenced to 5 years. Alex Stuck and John Tucker were sentenced to 3 1/2 years due to their youth and complete lack of criminal history. Each will be placed upon two years of supervised release upon release from prison.

"Before the plea was accepted, the State offered the Tinley Park Five one last chance to betray their comrades in exchange for their freedom. What a waste of time! As anarchist and antifascists, the Tinley Park Five are no more capable of selling out the struggle than their broken system is capable of reforming itself! They laughed at the offer and bravely accepted their fate."

Read more

For background information, see the Tinley Park Five blog's "News" page, with links to articles on several other websites.

Feds + Corporate America versus the Occupy movement

This post was originally titled "FBI versus the Occupy movement" but has been retitled based on a reader's comment below.

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) recently released federal documents showing that the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) coordinated not only with local police but also with universities, banks, private security firms, and other corporate bodies to monitor, disrupt, and suppress the Occupy movement. The PCJF obtained these documents through Freedom of Information Act requests and has made them available online together with commentary. Many mainstream and leftist media outlets have picked up the story, for example Naomi Wolf at the Guardian, Dennis Bernstein at Consortium News, and David Lindorff at Counterpunch.

PCJF Executive Director Mara Verheyden-Hilliard declared, "These documents show that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are treating protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity. These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America."

The PCJF notes that "FBI offices and agents around the country were in high gear conducting surveillance against the movement even as early as August 2011, a month prior to the establishment of the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park and other Occupy actions around the country," and that the FBI "treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat even though the agency acknowledges that organizers explicitly called for peaceful protest and did 'not condone the use of violence' at occupy protests." At the same time, the FBI learned of a plan to assassinate Occupy movement leaders in Houston (which fortunately was not carried out), but the agency arrested nobody for this and did not warn those targeted.

In an interview with reporter Dennis Bernstein, Verheyden-Hilliard also highlighted the fact that this operation took place under President Obama. "People think if you shift the Democratic, Republican administration that somehow these abuses are not going to occur. But, of course, this is full license to have this type of activity going on under the Obama administration."

The operation involved FBI offices in at least ten states, from New York to Colorado and from Alaska to Florida, as well as the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, the DHS's fusion centers, and the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force and Campus Liaison Program. PCJF reports, "The Memphis FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force met to discuss 'domestic terrorism' threats, including 'Aryan Nations, Occupy Wall Street, and Anonymous.'"

The released federal documents include a report by the little-known Domestic Security Alliance Council (DSAC), which describes itself as "a strategic partnership between the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the private sector." A "handling notice" in the report warns that its contents are "meant for use primarily within the corporate security community. Such messages shall not be released in either written or oral form to the media, the general public or other personnel…"

The DSAC, according to its website, was formed in 2005 and includes more than 200 companies, accounting for over one-third of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product. The DSAC's Leadership Board represents 29 major companies such as Walmart, General Electric, Walt Disney, Merck, United Airlines, and ConocoPhillips.  Over one-third of the board's members are from firms in banking and financial services -- the capitalist sector most directly targeted by the Occupy movement -- such as Citigroup, Barclays, and Ernst & Young.

In my previous post, I warned that counterinsurgency operations against the paramilitary far right can and will be used to bolster ruling-class power against the rest of us. The federal government's campaign against the Occupy movement underscores this point. Like the anti-rightist operations envisioned by the New America Foundation and other liberal think tanks, the anti-Occupy operation involved the same network of security agencies, the same framework of "fighting terrorism," and the same preemptive, interventionist approach. Above all, the campaign makes clear that -- whether directed against the left or the right -- the security services' fundamental role is to protect the capitalist elite.