Tempest Magazine

Zainab Abu Halib was only six-months old when she died in her mother’s arms on July 26, starved to death by Israel. At the time,  she weighed less than she did at birth. Another child murdered, born and killed in a world that is completely defined by a ruthless genocidal war. In the brutal clarity of her grief, Zainab’s mother Esraa spoke:

With my daughter’s death, many will follow. Their names are on a list that no one looks at. They are just names and numbers. We are just numbers. Our children, whom we carried for nine months and then gave birth to, have become just numbers.

Another life taken, another entire world destroyed.

The visible, ravaged humanity, and the deepening impact of the enforced starvation of Palestinians and the looming plans for the Zionist military’s full occupation in Gaza has provoked some criticism of Israel from some very unlikely corners. Individuals like Jeremy Ben-Ami, the head of the staunchly pro-Israel J Street this week admitted that now he is “convinced that Israel is committing genocide.” A number of prominent Israeli figures, including Avraham Burg, a former speaker of the Knesset and the head of an organization tasked with encouraging settlements, signed a letter calling for “crippling sanctions on Israel” because of Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of genocide. Others, from ex-attorney generals to prominent authors, have made similar public comments.

Here in the U.S., in the gaseous bowels of the Republican party, various GOP congresspeople—who hold nothing but contempt for Palestinians—have voiced support for more food aid.  Trump himself, shockingly, has called to “get the children fed” to alleviate the “real starvation.” Marjorie Taylor Greene—one of the most hardline of the parties’ far right, “America First,” MAGA wing—has come out to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide, and remarkably proposed a recent, failed, amendment to cut military aid to Israel’s missile “defense” system. None of these should be confused as allies, but the changes in their language reflect the intensity of the situation.

The changing imperial dynamics being hastened by Trump, along with the public outcry about the severely worsening conditions, has also led countries like France, the United Kingdom, and Canada to state that they would move to recognize a Palestinian state—in a month’s time. In lieu of swift action to achieve a ceasefire or attempts to resolve the humanitarian situation, these sage imperialist powers, many of whose colonial ambitions carved up the region of Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) to begin with, are making a symbolic move to recognize a two-state solution. China and the other BRIC countries have responded in similarly contradictory fashion, with some public condemenation while seeking to maintain their business and military ties to Israel. Of course, the path of a two-state solution has long been implausible, routinely rejected by a majority of Palestinians, and has merely been kept on life-support by Western liberals and soft Zionists who want to preserve an exclusionary Zionist ethnostate while giving lip service to Palestinian rights.

The contradictions and fractures among supporters of Israel, in Israeli society, and in imperialist political parties have driven some to pretend they have a semblance of a conscience when they  otherwise care nothing for the liberation of Palestine. Nonetheless, the starvation of Gaza is a dire situation demanding an expeditious resolution. Immediate aid is needed.

At the same time, an end to Israel’s barbaric starving of Palestinians is not enough to stop the genocide in Gaza. Starvation is but one component of the plan of genocide and ethnic cleansing that the Zionist entity has been carrying out on Palestinians since before 1948. Indeed, since Israel’s 2006 blockade of Gaza, the settler-colonial state has grotesquely been calibrating and facilitating hunger within the concentration camp. The calculation of calories, connected to shipments allowed in, had as its goal, as described by an advisor to then-prime minister Ehud Olmert: “ to put the Palestinians on a diet.” For years before October 7, 2023 many international humanitarian groups routinely warned of the impending “uninhabitable”conditions in Gaza. By December 2023, per the UN, 80 percent of those people in the world experiencing catastrophic hunger lived in Gaza. That “diet” has now become starvation.

Control of food is also applied by Israel to the West Bank, from the dividing up of Palestinian agricultural areas, the destruction of orchards, the attempts to restrict the olive harvest, and the control of over 85 percent of the West Bank’s water. Israel also controls the tax revenue collected in the West Bank and often refuses to turn it over to the Palestinian Authority, thus purposefully starving the West Bank of access to resources. At least $1.25 billion has been withheld from the territory by Israel since October of 2023. The current starving of Gaza is a macabre continuation and escalation of these politics of settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing across historic Palestine.

The current focus of concern with the active starving of children in Gaza is depressingly welcome, just as it is criminally belated and too often skips over the role of the West and the U.S. in creating the very situation over which many are now acting surprised. Many of the same individuals who called those of us who marched and rallied to end the genocide in Gaza “antisemitic”are now admitting the genocide. To be clear, while we should wholly welcome those of our neighbors and co-workers who may, just now, be coming around to call Israel’s actions a genocide, our attitude toward the Israeli apologists in power should be nothing but scorn and contempt.

The current focus of concern with the active starving of children in Gaza is depressingly welcome, just as it is criminally belated and too often skips over the role of the West and the U.S. in creating the very situation over which many are now acting surprised.

The current forced famine is a joint project of Israel and the U.S. ruling classes. It was Biden, rallying the majority of the major Western countries behind him who cut funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in retaliation for the International Court of Justice finding that Israel was committing genocide. UNRWA was the primary humanitarian agency in Gaza with over 2 million people depending on it for their sheer survival. The U.S., and much of the West, endorsed the position of forced famine. Biden then rejected and buried internal reports that Israel was restricting aid.  The UN and nearly every international aid organization issued warnings about the campaign of deliberate mass starvation.  And yet the aid that the U.S. has happily delivered is billions upon billions ($18 billion just from October 2023-October 2024) of weapons to Israel used to murder Palestinians and raze homes, hospitals, and schools.

The U.S.-backed dismantling of UNRWA, its arming and supporting of the Israeli assault on Gaza, and the maintaining of the border by the Egyptian client state have led to the dire condition we see now. The joint US-Israeli Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) brings in a pitiful fraction of food aid needed. Run by a pro-Trump, Christian Zionist evangelical, the measly aid is administered under such fierce control that U.S. mercenaries and Israeli troops round up hungry Palestinians forced into the caged corrals to accept food and routinely open fire, killing roughly 1,400 Palestinians at aid centers since May of 2025. The number of roughly 400 aid distribution locations operated by UNRWA has dropped to an astonishing three or four. One ex-GHF contractor likened the aid operation to the sci-fi novel “Hunger Games.” These handful of sites located in the south of Gaza act as deadly bait to draw hungry and desperate Palestinians into what Gaza’s Government Media Office calls “weaponized humanitarian corridors.” This is part of the Israeli occupation plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza and the West Bank.

As this article is being written, Netanyahu is moving to escalate the situation further with the initiation of plans for the military occupation of all of Gaza. This corresponds with the desire of the fascist settler movement to deepen its campaign to expel Palestinians, steal Gazan land, and construct Jewish settlements. In the West Bank this means using the terroristic violence of armed settlers in conjunction with the Israeli military, working towards further annexation at a fever pitch. Israel has also made raids, led by the far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, on the Al Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam.

Alleviating the starvation is essential; at the same time, it cannot be separated from the genocidal project that Israel is carrying out with the support, backing, and contribution of the United States. Disconnecting those two elements lets those in marble halls of power who are complicit off the hook.

It is the staunch U.S. bi-partisan support for Israel that has made this genocide possible. Democratic party politicians, who supported Biden and his policies, or rallied support for them behind lies—like the claim that Harris was “working tirelessly for ceasefire”—are complicit. Of the 44 Democrat senators who implored Trump to send more humanitarian aid, nearly half of them couldn’t even vote for a recent resolution put forward by Bernie Sanders to restrict the sale of specifically “offensive weapons” to Israel. In the House, even beloved liberals like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in an act of characteristic cowardice, refused to vote on the amendment to divest Israel of money used on its Iron Dome missile system. We should also  remember the police repression carried out by Democratic party mayors to suppress the encampments on university campus calling for ceasefire of the genocide.

It is the staunch U.S. bi-partisan support for Israel that has made this genocide possible. … While immediate relief is desperately needed, we should be wary and hold as enemies those in power whose concern is merely cover for their continued support of genocide.

Beware those who may cry crocodile tears about the death of Gaza’s children by enforced hunger while they plot and fund their murder with bombs and guns, drones and planes. While immediate relief is desperately needed, we should be wary and hold as enemies those in power whose concern is merely cover for their continued support of genocide.  As writer Nisha Atalie wrote of resisting the starving a year ago: “We must learn to nourish ourselves on built solidarity rather than on the promises of liars.” In contrast with the actions of the world’s states, we have witnessed the courageous efforts of regular people, including the Freedom Flotilla activists attempting to sail aid to Gaza despite the forcible blockade by Israel’s army. We see the massive attempt of the Sumud Convoy of activists, from all across the Maghreb, to drive to the Rafah crossing stymied by Egyptian and Libyan police. We celebrate the brave sabotaging of weapons manufacture by the activists of Palestine Action. We praise the refusal of dock workers in France, Greece, Italy, and elsewhere to load or unload ships carrying Israeli weapons. We hold up the trend of Egyptian activists in the Netherlands and elsewhere padlocking embassy doors and Egyptian police stations to protest Egypt’s role in locking in the people of Gaza.

Continuing to build a movement for Palestine in the U.S. is of the utmost importance. During the rebellion against ICE in Los Angeles, we saw solidarity in the form of the flags of Mexico and Palestine being waved amidst the smoke and rage. Deepening this connection between the Palestine movement and the broader resistance against Trump and the current U.S. state is not only more possible now it greatly strengthens both. It can serve to even further deepen popular support for the Palestinian struggle while simultaneously helping to bring more of the political clarity about the bipartisan nature of the U.S. imperialist project, into the broader resistance.

Deepening this connection between the Palestine movement and the broader resistance…can serve to even further deepen popular support for the Palestinian struggle while simultaneously helping to bring more of the political clarity about the bipartisan nature of the U.S. imperialist project.

The repression of the Palestine movement is one of the key lines of attacks of political reaction and has been used to undermine all of our democratic rights. Bolstering Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions, initiatives like the Apartheid Free Communities campaigns should be required in our organizing within the labor movement, communities, schools and universities; it is key to fostering political independence and sustaining and building the movement. When the protests and actions in the immediate term seem inadequate in the face of astonishing brutality and misery, they are critical to nourishing and strengthening our movements. These protests facilitate the longer term orientation that we need while retaining the fierce urgency of now given the dire and immediate need to alleviate the suffering of Palestinians.

It is astonishing that the world continues to turn while Gaza suffers. Genocide and starvation, decimation and murder. And yet while most of the world’s people sympathize or solidarize with Palestine, the world’s states have abandoned them or joined in their slaughter. The leaders don’t listen, our states aren’t our own, and our regimes need to fall. As pediatrician Dr. Omar Abdel-Mannan wrote of his work in Gaza: “The starvation of Gaza is not a glitch in the system; it is the system—a system that deems some lives worth mourning and others worth erasing, a system that needs to be torn down.” The necessity of liberation for Palestine has never been more urgent.

Free Palestine!

Long live the Intifada!

Glory to the martyrs!

An injury to one is an injury to all.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: Pedro Fanega; modified by Tempest.

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It was a jolt to U.S. politics when Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic nomination for New York City mayor: a Muslim democratic socialist who seemed likely to rule the nation’s flagship city. Progressives of all stripes cheered the victory of a people-powered, pro-Palestinian campaign rooted in an explicitly working-class platform.

While the significance of the victory shouldn’t be minimized, is the celebration premature? The New York oligarchy sustained a blow, but it’s likely the election has merely awakened them to the real danger. Though they spent millions of dollars against him in the primary, the capitalist oligarchy will not quietly allow Mamdani to enact his program at their expense.

Assuming Mamdani survives the frenzied slander to win the general election, the survival of his campaign platform will remain questionable—freezing rents, raising wages, free transit, free childcare, city-run grocery stores, taxing the rich, etc.

Attempts to implement this platform will further radicalize the New York elite against him and unleash a barrage of serious obstacles to destroy his mayorship.

To overcome these obstacles—both legal and illegal—Mamdani will have to rely on ongoing mobilization and other forms of action—both legal and illegal—from his working-class base, rather than the methods typical of a Democratic Party politician.

Some early warning signs suggest Mamdani is likely to choose the methods of the latter, but time will tell. Zohran’s post victory speech did not thank or even mention the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the backbone of his volunteer base and the organization he has a long history with. Could this imply a drift to the right? Early evidence of AOC’s rightward drift was her distancing herself from DSA.

During his victory speech Mamdani did mention a couple of Democratic Party politicians and said, ominously, that his campaign was “… a model for the Democratic Party, a party where we fight for working people with no apology.”

A social movement, class-struggle approach to governing … is necessary to outflank the Democrats dying to see [Mamdani] fail.

Many powerful Democrats have congratulated him, but few have endorsed him for the general election. Some may be holding out for concessions on Mamdani’s program in return for endorsement. Many may hope for a rerun of the India Walton election in Buffalo, where she won the primary but was undermined by the Democrats and lost the general election.

Mamdani is better situated to win the general election than Walton was. If he does become mayor, Democrats will keep insisting that he pare back his campaign platform. They’ll demand he give assurances to Wall Street and big business; that he not upset the balance of political and economic power in the city; that he soften his stance on police, that he completely abandon the DSA, etc, etc.

A social movement, class-struggle approach to governing—mobilizing and being accountable to those who put Mamdani in power—is necessary to outflank the Democrats dying to see him fail.

How the U.S. ruling class will respond to a Mayor Mamdani

If Mamdani does become mayor, it’s unclear if he’ll actually be allowed to govern. Given the enormous stakes—hundreds of billions of dollars—a political coup of some kind (before or after he takes power) is not outside the realm of possibilities, not to mention the threats to his personal safety that have already begun but promise to worsen.

The state of U.S. capitalism in 2025 cannot easily tolerate a powerful example of a successful working-class platform, since for 45 years both parties have been in general agreement that every progressive element of the New Deal should be overturned. Thus  the U.S. ruling class will desperately seek to thwart Mamdani’s plans before his program gets exported to other cities.

Already the city’s own ruling class is organizing to prevent his victory in the general election. The New York Times discussed how the super rich appear to be coalescing behind the disgraced current Mayor, Eric Adams.

The article quotes Scott Rechler who is described as “one of the city’s biggest landlords.” Rechler denounced Mamdani’s campaign because New York is “the capital of capitalism.” Rechler’s comment is more than symbolic. It’s a call to action loaded with cash and other forms of power.

The U.S. ruling class will desperately seek to thwart Mamdani’s plans before his program gets exported to other cities.

Donald Trump, for example, has many investments in the city that prompted him to call Zohran a “communist lunatic” after the primary victory. Trump’s comment, while ridiculous, reminds us that resources from the federal government are likely to be deployed on some level to undermine Mamdani.

For example Trump’s “Border Czar” Tom Homan responded to Mamdani’s pro-immigration approach by saying “President Trump made it clear we’re going to hammer—we’re going to double and triple down on sanctuary cities. So, what you see in New York City today, double it … game on we’re coming.” Trump then threatened to arrest Mamdani if he interfered with federal immigration officers.

Because Trump has been “successful” in threatening universities and states with the withholding of federal funding, it seems inevitable that he will use this approach against Mamdani, especially since New York city is budgeted to use $7.4 billion in federal funds next year.

The city is also dependent on state grants, and the governor, a Democrat, has already been clear that she does not support Mamdani’s program. She has also made clear that she will do her best to oppose his plans to raise taxes on the wealthy.

Another possible attack may come from Wall Street, who may use their control of credit markets to undermine a Mamdani government, just as they did in 1975 when New York was pushed into “bankruptcy” by the big banks, who used their power to degrade New York’s credit rating and push the city down the path of austerity. Credit agencies such as Moody’s could choose to downgrade New York bonds, which could scare away creditors and raise borrowing costs.

Nothing should be ruled out, from endless lawsuits to the NYPD organizing “work slowdowns” that aim to create chaos to other forms of political and economic sabotage.

The NYPD made life miserable for former Mayor Bill de Blasio, and will likely be even more aggressive against Mamdani. If the police and super-rich succeed in sowing some chaos, it’s possible the governor might intervene “in the name of law and order” to legally oust the mayor.

This may seem alarmist, but when you really grab the tiger’s tale the beast lashes out. An explosive backlash from the ruling class has only just begun, and without a real plan to tame the cat, Mamdani and his base is certain to get badly mauled.

The only way Mamdani can avoid such a showdown with the ruling class is if he concedes to most of their demands, i.e., if he betrays the platform he ran on.

But if he actually stays true to fighting for his platform, he’ll need to go far beyond Democratic Party norms and organize effectively and militantly with the New York working class, including the various unions that have endorsed Mamdani, including the New York City labor council. The inevitable lesson will be that the Democratic Party is not a vehicle for real social change, but an obstacle.

Overcoming the oligarchy

Already there are activists, both in DSA and outside of it, who realize that voting for Mamdani won’t be enough to get his program implemented. Class struggle of various sorts—such as work stoppages, rent strikes, mass demonstrations—will be necessary to overcome ruling-class resistance.

The campaign is the time to persuade people to get ready for these fights. The Left needs to make an explicit case for struggle among those who already support Mamdani, including among the thousands who have put in time to get him elected. Those who are already most committed to a Mamdani victory are potentially the most coherent force to agitate for struggle beyond November 4.

The broader working class of New York could well be energized and even radicalized by the oligarchy’s reaction against Mamdani. A rising sense of anger is likely to permeate sections of Mamdani’s supporters as they watch the increasingly hysterical attacks on him and his platform. The Left, whether they are activists in the Mamdani campaign or not, needs to get ready to help the class turn that energy into collective action, into a movement.

Those who are already most committed to a Mamdani victory are potentially the most coherent force to agitate for struggle beyond November 4.

Such a movement also needs to develop political independence—the ability to transition from protecting Mamdani’s platform from the rich to pressuring him to follow through on his promises. Without such a counterweight, the pressure Mamdani will get from the rich could easily make him crumble.

If the course of events produces such a movement, the base could organically deepen his platform, bringing new issues to the forefront that they demand he act on, since a working class appetite has historically developed once it’s allowed to eat.

All of this, however, hinges on Mamdani’s willingness to actually fight New York’s ruling class, many of which are powerful members of the Democratic Party Mamdani currently seeks to win over.

To counter the influence of the ruling class, the Left and labor groups supporting Mamdani now will need to maintain their organizing post-election, to keep him focused on the program that won him their support.

Celebrity politicians versus class-struggle politics

Mamdani is a skillful politician with Obama-level charisma, but is he a real fighter?

We’ll see soon enough.

Will the organizations backing Mamdani push him to fight harder and better? We’ll know very soon.

What’s certain is that if a rent freeze is implemented the powerful New York landlords will do more than cry and go home; they will take action to destroy the Mamdani administration.

If Mamdani follows his platform around public safety, the NYPD will do more than sulk; they will be even more vicious than when they undermined the Bill de Blasio mayorship. They will be let off the leash.

If Mamdani’s tax plans are pursued the New York ruling class will do more than publicly slander him. And especially if he actually pursues plans to raise the city’s minimum wage to $30 an hour.

If he continues to speak out against the genocide in Gaza, AIPAC will continue to use their wealth and influence against him.

Zohran Mamdani speaks at the Resist Fascism rally last October in Bryant Park. Image by Bingjiefu He

Political enemies act predictably, which is why Mamdani and his base—within DSA and beyond—must prepare now for a real fight where their only real allies will be the working class and some radicalized sections of the middle class.

There are few good modern examples on how to do this in city government. The best is probably Kshama Sawant, who fought effectively on the Seattle city council against Amazon and the rest of the Seattle ruling class to win real victories for working class people.

Sawant was despised by Democrat and Republican alike, forcing her to rely on militant organizing to achieve her wins. Given that she had no real allies on city council, she and her socialist organization fought far above their weight-class by mobilizing the working class, a process she described well recently on the Bad Faith podcast.

Mamdani talks well about the struggles of NYC’s working class, but he must match their urgency with a campaign serious enough to overcome the resistance of the capitalist elite.

There is no electoral path to socialism—or even social democracy—without unleashing a powerful social movement. If Mamdani wages a real fight against New York’s establishment, the national working class will rally in support.

But if he crumbles under the pressure, lessons must be learned so that a similar path isn’t pursued in the future. In this way the working class can develop the political independence necessary to win the kind of platform it desperately needs.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: Bingjiefu He; modified by Tempest.

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The situation in the province of Suweida, southern Syria is still unstable at the time of this writing despite an official ceasefire and the arrival of a first humanitarian aid convoy on July 20 in the provincial capital, the city of Suweida, which has a population of approximately 150,000. The devastated city continues to suffer from a siege by the central government in Damascus and pro-government armed groups, depriving Suweida’s population of water, electricity, and food. Attacks were ongoing in some villages in the province by armed groups supportive of the central authorities.

Following the conclusion of a ceasefire, Bedouin fighters and pro-government tribes withdrew from part of the city of Suweida. Local armed Druze factions have regained control. At the same time, U.S. officials claimed to have brokered a truce between Damascus and Tel Aviv. This agreement allowed the deployment of Syrian government forces in Suweida province, with the exception of the city of Suweida, which Israel had  initially rejected.

After more than a week of fighting, several thousand deaths have been recorded, of both civilians and combatants, and more than 140,000 people have been displaced, according to the United Nations. The Suweida 24 news website recorded 36 destroyed and damaged villages, most of which are currently emptied of their inhabitants, while looting continues.

These latest events follow attacks by the Damascus government in April and May that left more than 100 dead. Damascus is seeking to achieve its political objectives by consolidating its power over a fragmented Syria, undermining Suweida’s autonomy, and disrupting democratic dynamics from below.

Attacks from all sides in deadly siege

Suweida province, with a majority Druze population, gained a degree of political autonomy during the Syrian popular uprising. After the fall of the Assad regime, many local armed forces and leading Druze religious leaders maintained contact with the new authorities in Damascus but refused to lay down their arms, due to the lack of a democratic and inclusive political transition or guarantees for Suweida province. However, the region has become a war zone since July 13, following the arrest and torture of a Druze merchant at a checkpoint stationed by Bedouin armed groups established following the April and May violence against the Druze population in Damascus and Suweida. This checkpoint on the Damascus-Suweida road is governed by Bedouin tribes from Al-Mutallah in the Al-Kiswah region of rural Damascus; these tribes are affiliated with the General Security of the Ministry of Interior. Despite repeatedly attacking Druze people, Damascus has used tribal clashes as a tool of political pressure against Suweida.

Damascus is seeking to achieve its political objectives by consolidating its power over a fragmented Syria, undermining Suweida’s autonomy, and disrupting democratic dynamics from below.

The Bedouin population represents approximately five percent of the population in the Suweida region and is primarily based in rural areas. Their military organization is limited and less centralized than that of the local Druze factions. Several Bedouin tribes exist in the south. The armed Druze factions, for their part, are divided into three major military entities (the Suweida Military Council, the Men of Dignity, and the Forces of Dignity). The Druze factions were not unified in their response to the new government in Damascus following the fall of Assad’s regime in December 2024. The Suweida Military Council, for example, has a more hostile stance toward the central authorities, while the Forces of Dignity have collaborated more closely with the presidency of Ahmed al-Shareh.

Following initial clashes between Bedouin and Druze armed factions, the Syrian interim government sent columns of armored vehicles from Damascus to Suweida in an attempt to assert control over the province, claiming to want to end the violence while fighting alongside Bedouin armed forces affiliated with the central government.

During the first days of military operations in Suweida province, the actions in Suweida of armed forces aligned with the Damascus government brought to mind images of the March massacre against Alawite populations in coastal areas; these resulted in the deaths of more than a thousand civilians. We are witnessing the murder of civilians, sectarian and hateful speech, and scenes of humiliation of local residents–mustaches cut or shaved by fighters. These scenes of destruction and looting of infrastructure and civilian homes circulate on social media. As of July 18, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) recorded more than 200 deaths and several hundred wounded. At the same time, many civilians in Suweida have left homes close to the military clashes and fear the actions of pro-government fighters to seek refuge in safer areas of the province.

Despite their military superiority, government armed forces and pro-government militias were forced to withdraw from the captured areas due to resistance from local armed factions in Suweida, and especially to Israeli airstrikes against military headquarters in Damascus and convoys of the forces affiliated with or supportive of the government (see below).

Following these events, self-proclaimed Syrian President Ahmad al-Shareh announced on July 17 the transfer of responsibility for maintaining security in Suweida to local armed factions and Druze religious dignitaries. Attacks by Druze fighters against Bedouin civilians in Suweida province occurred.

Following these actions, a number of Sunni Arab tribes, often with ties to central government figures, from different regions of the country published appeals and statements on social media to help their Bedouin “brothers” in Suweida. This mobilization was further reinforced by media propaganda encouraged by the government and its allies, amplifying the violence against Bedouin civilians. A new offensive by tribal armed groups then took place the evening of July 18 in Suweida province, while hateful and sectarian calls against the Druze population multiplied through social media in different regions of the country.

Images then began to appear on social media of vehicles and armed men from different tribes mobilizing and heading towards Suweida province. Some of the tribal armed groups entered the western part of the city of Suweida, unopposed by government forces, and looted and burned dozens of houses, shops, and cars. Following this assault, the walls of these neighborhoods were covered with graffiti such as “Druze pigs” or “We are coming to slit your throats.”

Ahmed al-Shareh condemned the perpetrators of abuses against the Druze population in Suweida and affirmed that they “will be held accountable.” However, he made the same promise after the massacre on the Syrian coast against Alawite civilians, with no consequences for these perpetrators to date. The commission of inquiry established for these massacres was initially supposed to submit its report within 30 days of its creation; its mandate was then extended for three months on April 10. The report was finally submitted to President al-Shareh after more than 90 days, on July 20. Moreover, the commission of inquiry stated during its press conference on July 22 that no evidence existed to demonstrate the responsibility of senior state and military officials in the March massacres, contrary to a Reuters investigation conducted a few weeks earlier. Similarly, the committee announced that it had no information on the numerous cases of targeted kidnappings, disappearances, and gender-based violence against women and girls that occurred during the massacres, which have been ongoing since February 2025, particularly against Alawite women.

Furthermore, Al-Shareh primarily accused “outlaw groups”—the term used by the ruling authorities to refer to the local Druze armed factions in Suweida—of being primarily responsible for the violence in the province and of violating the ceasefire agreement by engaging in “horrific violence” against civilians, threatening civil peace by pushing the country toward chaos and a collapse of security. At the same time, the government praised the mobilizations of the Arab tribes and celebrated their “heroism” while calling on them to respect the ceasefire– a contradictory message, to say the least.

In fact, in the political strategy of the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) central authorities, the mobilization of Sunni Arab tribes appeared to be a useful tool to compensate for the military weakness of the government armed forces in their offensives against Suweida and to obtain political concessions.

At the same time, the dominant media coverage in the country, particularly on the Syrian national television station “al-Ikhbariya,” echoed official state propaganda by encouraging a reading of the events in which Sheikh al-Hijri, a senior Druze religious dignitary, and armed Druze factions were primarily responsible for the violence, accusing them of being simultaneously “separatists,” “armed gangs,” “allies of the Zionists,” and so on.

These general attacks, both military and media-driven, against the province of Suweida have considerably reduced the differences that existed both between the various armed Druze groups, and also within the local Druze population. Faced with these threats, perceived as an offensive against the Druze population as a whole, the need for unity is felt on all sides.

Reflecting this dynamic, several trade unions and professional associations in Suweida have notably severed all contact with the trade union centers in Damascus in protest against the massacres perpetrated and hold the central government fully responsible for these human rights violations. The Council of the Bar of Suweida, for example, announced its resignation in its entirety, condemning “the terrorist acts, war crimes, sectarian cleansing, genocide, and crimes against humanity committed in the governorate of Suweida by the government through its military and auxiliary forces.”

The Suweida Engineers Association issued a statement mourning its murdered members and calling for the creation of a genuine national authority representing the people, and announced the cessation of coordination with the trade union center in Damascus. The Agricultural Engineers Union expressed its mourning for three of its members, “who died following the barbaric attack supported by the terrorist regime.” It stated that it would “suspend its contacts with the trade union center in Damascus until the situation changes and an authority representing the Syrian people is established, protecting their dignity and preserving their rights.”

The Veterinarians Union called these events a “crime against humanity” targeting civilians on sectarian grounds and denounced the role of the central authorities in inciting and directly supporting the violations. The union announced the suspension of its relations with the trade union center until “the de facto authority is removed and an authority representing the Syrian people is established,” in its words. The teachers’ union in Suweida, for its part, accused the authorities of being directly responsible for the massacres. The union reiterated its commitment to the message of education and democracy, affirming its rejection of the mobilization and calls for takfirism. It announced the cessation of its cooperation with the Damascus trade union center “until the elimination of the extremist ideology that monopolizes it.”

On July 28, massive demonstrations occurred throughout Suweida Governorate demanding the lifting of the siege in the province, condemning the massacres committed by the armed forces affiliated and supportive of the Syrian Interim government, requesting an international intervention to open humanitarian corridors, and calling for an independent international investigation into the recent events. They also denounced the security forces’ prevention of foreign media from entering the province and documenting the atrocities that occurred.

In many ways, the actions of the armed forces belonging to or supporting the Damascus government and their behavior toward the local population in Suweida recalled the dark memories of the entry of the former Assad regime into eastern Aleppo in late 2016 and into Ghouta, in the Damascus countryside, in the spring of 2018; and of the Turkish army and its Syrian proxies entry into Afrin, in the northwest of the country, the same year. In other words, all of these are forms of armed occupation rejected by the local population.

Sectarianism: a political tool of domination and control

These armed operations against Suweida province are part of a broader strategy by the Syrian government, led by HTS, to consolidate its power over a fragmented country.

To achieve this, it has primarily implemented a strategy based on external recognition and legitimization to consolidate its dominance within the country. Syrian President al-Shareh and his affiliates demonstrate a clear desire to anchor their country within a regional axis led by the United States and its regional allies such as Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia in order to consolidate their hold over Syria. In this context, the new government is also seeking a form of normalization with the Israeli state.

Building on this initial momentum, the new HTS-led government consolidated its dominance over state institutions, the army, security services, and social actors in the country. In the case of Suweida, after the fall of the Assad regime it was local networks and groups that elected longtime activist Muhsina al-Mahithawi to be governor of Suweida province. This result was rejected by Damascus, which appointed its own governor. More generally, Al-Shareh has appointed ministers, security officials, and regional governors affiliated with HTS or armed groups within the Syrian National Army (SNA), an alliance of Syrian armed opposition groups that has acted for years as a proxy for the Turkish government. For example, the new authorities have appointed some of the highest-ranking HTS commanders to the new Syrian army, including the new defense minister and longtime HTS commander, Mourhaf Abu Qasra, who was promoted to general. The reorganization of the Syrian army has been carried out by integrating only armed groups loyal to the new authorities in Damascus (HTS and SNA) and by recruiting new soldiers with similar loyalty-based dynamics.

At the same time, the new authorities in Damascus have accused armed Druze factions and others opposed to the central government of being “outlaw groups.” In contrast, other armed groups more favorable to the government are not worried by these accusations, such as the Sunni Arab tribes fighting in Sweida. While the unification of all armed groups into a new Syrian army does not raise opposition in itself, large sectors of the Druze population in Suweida and the Kurds in the northeast still oppose it, in the absence of certain guarantees, such as decentralization and a genuine democratic transition process. The actions and violence of pro-government armed groups have not calmed these fears–quite the contrary.

Similarly, key positions in the new transitional government are held by figures close to al-Shareh. In addition, parallel institutions composed of the Syrian presidency and figures affiliated with HTS have been established, such as the Syrian National Security Council, headed by al-Shareh and composed of his close associates (the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Defense, the Minister of Interior, and the Director of General Intelligence). The National Security Council was created at the same time as the interim government to manage security and politics. The new Syrian authorities have also taken steps to consolidate their power over economic and social actors. For example, they have restructured the country’s chambers of commerce and industry by replacing the majority of their members with individuals appointed by Damascus. Several new board members are known for their close ties to HTS, such as the new president of the Federation of Syrian Chambers of Commerce, Alaa Al-Ali, formerly president of the Idlib Chamber of Commerce and Industry, affiliated with HTS. Other members are prominent figures in the pre-2011 business world, such as Issam Ghreiwati, who now chairs the board. Issam Ghreiwati is the son of Zuhair Ghreiwati, founder of the Ghreiwati Group, one of Syria’s largest business conglomerates.

Furthermore, in mid-April, Ahmad Al-Sharaa’s brother, Maher Al-Sharaa, was appointed Secretary-General of the Presidency, responsible for managing the presidential administration and liaising between the presidency and state bodies. A recent Reuters investigation also revealed that Hazem al-Sharaa, along with others, is responsible for reshaping the Syrian economy through secret acquisitions of Assad-era companies.

At the same time, the authorities also appointed new leaders to unions and professional associations. In particular, they selected a union council for the Syrian Bar Association, composed of members of the Idlib Council of Free Bars. Syrian lawyers responded by launching a petition calling for democratic elections within the Bar Association.

Sectarian tensions and hatred are not due to ancient religious divisions, nor are they “rooted” in the region’s populations, nor are they supposedly dynamics rooted in the “revenge” of minorities against the Sunni Arab majority. Sectarianism and sectarian tensions are a product of modernity and have political roots and dynamics.

Finally, the new ruling authorities led by HTS have been using sectarianism as a tool of domination and control over the population. Clearly, sectarian tensions and hatred are not due to ancient religious divisions, nor are they “rooted” in the region’s populations, nor are they supposedly dynamics rooted in the “revenge” of minorities against the Sunni Arab majority. Sectarianism and sectarian tensions are a product of modernity and have political roots and dynamics.

More generally, the rise in sectarian rhetoric, tensions, and attacks by the ruling authorities, led by HTS and the armed forces supportive of the government, first against the Alawite populations, as demonstrated by the coastal massacres in March, and then against the Druze communities, aims to achieve three main objectives.

First, the exploitation of sectarian tensions and the discourse of “Mazlumiya Sunniya” (“Sunni injustice”) seeks to build a sense of popular belonging and unite large sections of the Sunni Arab population despite the many political, social, regional, and other differences within this community.

Second, these sectarian attacks and tensions aim to disrupt democratic space or dynamics from below. In this perspective, Suweida has been a symbol of popular resistance since the beginning of the popular uprising in 2011, including against the former Assad regime, with ongoing democratic actions, a vibrant local civil society, and attempts to create alternative unions and professional associations. For example, popular demonstrations and continuous strikes took place in the Suweida governorate, particularly after the outbreak of a relatively large protest movement since mid-August 2023, which highlighted the importance of Syrian unity, the release of political prisoners and social justice. Some local armed Druze factions also participated in the military offensive with other military groups in southern Syria against the Syrian Assad regime in its final days before its fall. And we must remember the support of local armed Druze factions for tens of thousands of young men from Suweida who refused to join the Syrian army loyal to the Assad regime and fight in its ranks since 2014.

In March, sectarian massacres in coastal areas had virtually put an end to the protests organized in January and February 2025 in various provinces by civil servants dismissed by the new government. Since December 2024, the Syrian authorities have laid off tens of thousands, if not more, of public sector employees. Following this decision, demonstrations by dismissed or suspended civil servants erupted across the country, including in Suweida. These protests were promising, as were attempts to create alternative unions or, at the very least, coordination structures. These new entities, in addition to opposing the mass layoffs, also demanded wage increases and rejected the government’s plans to privatize public assets. However, the consolidation of the protest movement was considerably weakened due to fears that armed groups close to the regime would respond with violence.

Finally, sectarian rhetoric and attacks have allowed the new authorities in Damascus to attempt to impose their total control over regions outside their control, such as in Suweida, or to consolidate their power, as in the coastal areas in March, by mobilizing segments of the population along sectarian lines.

Sectarianism acts as a powerful mechanism of social control, shaping the course of class struggle by fostering dependency between the popular classes and their ruling elites. As a result, the popular classes are deprived of any political independence and define themselves—and engage politically—through their sectarian identity. In this respect, the new government follows in the footsteps of the former Assad regime, continuing to use sectarian policies and practices as a means of governance, control, and social division.

Sectarianism acts as a powerful mechanism of social control, shaping the course of class struggle by fostering dependency between the popular classes and their ruling elites.

In this context, the armed abuses committed by affiliated and pro-government armed forces are not “simply” the result of “individual actions” or a “lack of professionalism” on the part of the army, whether during the March massacres against the Alawite population or today in Suweida. Indeed, the Reuters investigation has demonstrated that pro-government armed groups were directly involved in the violence perpetrated against Alawite civilians in March, with the knowledge and consent of the highest levels of the state. Moreover, the new authorities created the political conditions that made this violence possible. Indeed, human rights violations against individual Alawites, including kidnappings and assassinations, have increased in recent months, some of which—such as the Fahil massacre in late December 2024 and the Arzah massacre in early February 2025—resembled dress rehearsals for the coastal massacres in March. Moreover, Syrian officials have repeatedly portrayed the Alawite community as an instrument of the old regime against the Syrian people. For example, during his speech at the 9th Syria Donors’ Conference in Brussels, Belgium, Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani stated, “54 years of minority rule have led to the displacement of 15 million Syrians”—implicitly suggesting that the Alawite community as a whole had ruled the country for decades, rather than a dictatorship controlled by the Assad family. While it is undeniable that Alawite figures held key positions within the former regime, particularly within its military and security apparatus, reducing the nature of the state and its dominant institutions to an “Alawite identity” or portraying the regime as favoring religious minorities while systematically discriminating against the Sunni Arab majority is both misleading and far removed from reality.

The authorities have also failed to establish a mechanism to promote a comprehensive transitional justice process aimed at punishing all individuals and groups involved in war crimes during the Syrian conflict. Such a mechanism could have played a crucial role in preventing acts of revenge and easing growing sectarian tensions. However, Ahmad al-Shareh and his allies have no interest in transitional justice, most likely fearing being tried for their own crimes and abuses committed against civilians. Moreover, on May 17, the Syrian transitional authorities announced presidential decrees establishing two new government bodies: the Transitional Justice Commission and the National Commission for the Missing. However, the mandate of the Transitional Justice Commission, as defined in the decree, is narrow and excludes many victims, including those of HTS and its allied armed groups such as the SNA. This selective justice is therefore highly problematic and risks provoking new political and sectarian tensions in the country. This is not to mention that certain figures affiliated with the Assad regime and guilty of committing crimes, or contributing to them, have been granted de facto immunity by the new authorities, such as Fadi Saqr, former commander of the National Defense Forces (NDF) affiliated with the previous Assad regime, or Muhammad Hamsho, a well-known businessman affiliated with Maher al-Assad.

Therefore, the strategy and actions of the Syrian government forces in Suweida province are part of these attempts to centralize power in the hands of the new ruling authority and consolidate their domination over society.

The risk of exclusive power with a central authority with limited capabilities can only lead to further political tensions in the country. This situation also further weakens the country’s sovereignty.

Israel’s Exploitation of Sectarian Tensions

At the same time, the Israeli government has sought to exploit recent human rights violations committed by pro-Damascus armed forces against the Druze population to fuel sectarian tensions in the country, presenting itself as the defender of the Druze population of southern Syria and threatening military intervention for their “protection.” Despite appeals to the Israeli government by Druze religious dignitary Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri and greater openness among some segments of the Druze population toward Israel, particularly after the recent violence against them, there is a widespread rejection of any Israeli intervention by large segments of the Druze population in Suweida and other regions. They have also repeatedly reaffirmed their belonging to Syria and their support for the country’s unity.

But the defense of the Druze population is not, and never has been, the State of Israel’s priority. On the contrary, Tel Aviv is sending a clear message to Damascus: It will not tolerate any military presence in southern Syria, including in the provinces of Qunaytra, Deraa and Suweida, and aims for the demilitarization of these areas.

In this context, the Israeli occupation army launched new strikes in Damascus near the Syrian army headquarters and the Ministry of Defense, as well as in other areas of the country on July 16 and 17, following previous attacks.

In doing so, the colonial and racist Israeli state seeks to further weaken the Syrian state and obtain more political concessions from Damascus, which has demonstrated its willingness to normalize, directly or indirectly, its relations with Tel Aviv. The Syrian government, led by HTS, has confirmed the existence of negotiations and discussions with Israeli officials aimed at easing tensions between the two countries and finding forms of understanding. This is despite the Israeli occupation army’s incessant attacks on Syrian territories, particularly those occupied following the fall of the Assad regime in December, and the destruction of agricultural land and civilian infrastructure. Al-Shareh has repeatedly reiterated that his regime does not pose a threat to Israel and has also apparently told President Trump that it is willing to rejoin the Abraham Accords if the “appropriate conditions” are met.

This is also why Damascus has not condemned the massive Israeli strikes against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Rather, it views Iran’s weakening positively, just as it does with Hezbollah in Lebanon. This position is not only linked to Iran’s role during the Syrian popular uprising and the hostility toward it among large sectors of the population, but also reflects, as explained above, the political orientation of the new ruling elite in Syria, which seeks to root the country within a US-led axis in order to consolidate its power internally.

This orientation has not changed despite recent events, and the United States is well aware of this. Washington does not want to see this new power in Damascus, which seeks to satisfy these regional political interests and ensure a degree of authoritarian stability there, further weakened. It was in this context that US leaders called on Tel Aviv to cease its bombing of Syrian government targets and to conclude a truce with Damascus. This truce agreement also allowed the deployment of Syrian government forces in the province of Suweida, with the exception of the city of Suweida, which Israel initially rejected.

Moreover, the military escalation in Suweida followed discussions in Baku, Azerbaijan between Syrian and Israeli officials, according to the Syria in Transition website. During these discussions, Syrian authorities, led by HTS, reportedly sought Tel Aviv’s approval for the reintegration of Suweida. While Israeli officials expressed openness to limited reintegration—that is, the restoration of public services and the deployment of a limited local security force—Damascus misinterpreted this decision as authorization for a large-scale military operation. Despite this misunderstanding, this decision by the Syrian authorities reveals a persistent tendency to rely on external validation and support to justify certain policies, including coercive measures against local populations, as in the case of Sweida, rather than encouraging political dialogue.

According to various sources, senior officials from the United States, Israel, and Syria met on Thursday, July 24 to reach a security agreement in southern Syria and prevent further crises.

In other words, international recognition, the pursuit of good relations with the United States and its regional allies, and the promotion of a possible normalization process with Israel are all aimed at consolidating HTS’s power over the country. The interests of the Syrian working class and their democratic aspirations are being ignored in this process.

In this context, the recent events in Suweida demonstrate, once again, that Syria is not experiencing a democratic and inclusive political transition. Rather, it is a process of establishing a new authoritarian regime, structured and led by HTS, under the guise of institutional and international legitimacy.

However, this process remains incomplete due to the weak political, economic, and military capabilities of the new authorities in power led by HTS, as demonstrated by the failure of its total control over Suweida. Despite this failure, the ruling authorities are unlikely to change their policies or make real concessions in favor of the political and socio-economic interests of the Syrian working classes in all their diversity without a shift in the balance of power and, above all, without the (re)construction and development of a counter power within society, bringing together democratic and progressive political and social networks and actors.

New political, social, and community groups and organizations have nevertheless emerged and are organizing, but have yet to develop into social forces rooted in the population capable of broader mobilizations in society. At the same time, collaboration between the different regions of Syria, including with Kurdish organizations present in northeast Syria, must be intensified.

Fourteen years of war and destruction, and more than 50 years of dictatorship, weigh heavily on this process.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: Shadi Alashkar; modified by Tempest.

The post Suweida under fire appeared first on Tempest.

In February 2025, I reported for Tempest on a controversy at the American Historical Association (AHA), the world’s largest association of history scholars and teachers. A motion brought to the annual business meeting in early January by Historians for Peace and Democracy (HPAD), the “Resolution to Oppose Scholasticide in Gaza,” condemned Israel’s destruction of universities, schools, and cultural centers in Gaza, and the killing of students and teachers underwritten by the United States.

Following a contentious discussion, members in attendance overwhelmingly (428 to 88) passed the resolution. According to the AHA constitution, the executive council could accept the resolution as binding, submit it to a general membership vote, or veto it—if it believed the measure was “in violation of the Association’s constitution, the law, or financially or administratively infeasible.” In an interview after the meeting, resolution supporter Rebecca E. Karl predicted the council would submit the resolution to the membership, since while it was clear the council opposed the resolution a veto “would be absurd, given the landslide support it had at the meeting.”

Yet that is precisely what it did. In a short statement published on January 17, the executive council claimed the resolution contravened the AHA’s mission as outlined in the constitution, which is to promote “historical studies through the encouragement of research, teaching, and publication,” including the “collection and preservation of historical documents and artifacts” and the dissemination of historical knowledge among the general public. The resolution condemned the IDF’s destruction of Gaza’s archives, libraries, and other cultural centers–which clearly falls within the association’s remit. There is, moreover, readily available information concerning Israel’s destruction of Palestinian archives and libraries, going back to 1948 and accelerating after October 7, 2023.

A very different scene unfolded at the April annual business meeting of the Organization of American Historians’ (OAH), the largest historical association dedicated solely to the study of U.S. history, where HPAD brought a similar Scholasticide resolution. Like their colleagues at the AHA, attendees of the OAH conference voted for the resolution by a large margin, in this case 104 to 25. Unlike the AHA, however, the OAH executive council honored the vote as binding on the organization, and has agreed to set up a committee to assist in rebuilding Gaza’s education system.

Members were not willing to let the issue die at the AHA. At the end of May HPAD, together with the Palestine Historians Group and Historians for Palestine, endorsed a slate of candidates for the annual AHA officer election. The candidates had to petition to get on the ballot, however, as nominations for the organization’s officers are chosen by a nominating committee. Notably, the right to get on the AHA ballot by petition has its origins in the turbulent 1969 annual meeting, when the Radical Historians’ Caucus led by Howard Zinn and the Committee on Women in the Historical Profession unsuccessfully attempted to pass anti-Vietnam War resolutions and elect Staughton Lynd to the presidency.

That controversy led then-president R.R. Palmer to acknowledge that the AHA was experiencing a major crisis, and reforms followed. It would not be going too far to say the association is experiencing another major crisis. At a time of severe rightwing reaction, as the Trump administration engages in a major offensive against all levels of education, academia in general is experiencing a crisis. It is an unfortunate irony that as it attempts to position itself as an important pillar of resistance to the new authoritarianism, the AHA has subverted democratic norms in its own organization. Notably, while candidates for office this year all vowed to defend history teaching and scholarship from the reactionary assault, only HPAD-endorsed candidates also emphasized the need for greater democracy within the AHA.

The Counteroffensive

The AHA establishment was determined to thwart the “Democratize the AHA” slate, however. Subscribers to at least two listservs for history professionals, H-France and the Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA), received a letter about the association’s election (then in process). The post was signed by 27 prominent scholars, with asterisks next to names indicating that 12 signatories were former presidents of the AHA—a clear demonstration that the message held institutional weight. The letter urged readers who belonged to the AHA, or who wished to join, to vote in the election.

Claiming this was a “moment of truth” for the AHA, the message was presented as part of an effort to combat the Trump administration’s assault on the institutions (National Archives, Smithsonian, Library of Congress, National Endowment for the Humanities, etc.) on which educators and researchers depend. The AHA’s current leadership had “valiantly” fought book bans and legislative efforts to limit the teaching of “divisive” topics—the right’s code word for teaching and curricula that acknowledge the U.S.’s racist past and present. These efforts were why, signers claimed, it was crucial to vote in the election.

While encouraging members of professional organizations to vote in elections might seem unobjectionable, the post in fact made little sense. What person running for AHA office would not vigorously defend the teaching and research of history from the attacks of Trump and the likes of the Heritage Foundation? Were the unprecedented exhortations to people in groups unrelated to the AHA, to vote in that organization’s internal elections, really be attributable solely to the current rightwing assault on academic freedom?

In fact, as Joan Scott pointed out on the blog of the American Association of University Professors, the letter was in reality a “stealth attack” against the Democratize the AHA slate. That the post was about defeating insurgent candidates rather than combatting MAGA attacks on educational institutions was obvious to anyone with an inkling of knowledge about the Scholasticide controversy. LAWCHA and H-France subscribers were not just encouraged to vote; they were urged to vote specifically for “those candidates proposed by the Nominating Committee.” Each year, listserv members were informed, the committee puts forward two candidates for each office, a “diverse mix of professors and history professionals” who are “judicious, responsible, and committed to the organization’s values.”

If, however, the two candidates put forward every year by the committee are equally judicious, responsible, and committed to the organization’s values, what, one might ask, is the point of the letter—or even of voting? If that weren’t enough, the message implored subscribers one more time “to vote for one of the two candidates proposed by the Nominating Committee (i.e. one of the first two listed).” The point could not be clearer: do NOT vote for candidates on the ballot by petition. The nominating committee knows who should be elected, and its wisdom and authority should not be questioned. No other interpretation makes sense.

Scott noted that the letter implicitly impugned the integrity and motives of those on the alternative slate, and suggested that they were outsiders not committed to the AHA’s values. Scott also acknowledged that some signers likely opposed the Scholasticide resolution on its merits, fearing that insurgents would force their criticism of Israel on the association, which could in turn bring the Trump administration’s wrath on the organization. It was possible that had there been an honest debate, and had the resolution been put to the general membership, it may not have passed. However, instead of an open debate, a call to arms commenced that purported to defend the association from the right, when in fact it was worried about an insurgency from the Left. This, Scott claimed, contradicted the democratic values that “ought to” guide the AHA.

The Response

The responses to Scott’s blog post in the comments section exemplify the divide between the AHA establishment “elders” and the rank and file. One of the signers opposing the Democratize slate, Claire Potter, wrote a long (and at times incoherent) response to Scott’s message that claimed the letter was completely independent of the AHA, and that “We are merely a group of concerned colleagues with a point of view.” Potter also asserted that the letter was not sent to any listservs, being circulated only in signers’ personal networks. The message’s motive was as it states: the AHA must be ready to meet the challenges of the Trump administration, so members should vote.

However, while claiming that the more members who participate “the greater our internal democracy as an organization” regardless of who wins the election, Potter also claimed—evidently unaware of any contradiction—that because they were “people deeply familiar with the work of the organization,” signers know that it is the nominating committee that is best suited to choose who will successfully promote and defend the historical profession. Potter evidently has a deferential democracy in mind, one in which the plebs defer to their betters but are rewarded with the democratic façade of choosing one of two candidates hand-picked by an elite committee.

In the past year alone…three AHA members—Raz Segal, Cemal Kafadar, and Rosie Bsheer—lost academic positions for speaking out on Gaza…The AHA’s silence in all these cases is as shameful as it is indefensible.

Commenters also pointed out that Potter’s response was flatly wrong. One scholar claimed to have received the letter via an AHA account, contrary to Potter’s assertion, and shamed the association and its signers for their attempt to undermine the election. Potter was forced to issue corrections about the assertion the letter was not sent to listservs, as it was obviously sent to both H-France and LAWCWA (and possibly more?). These errors, however, were excused by the claim that the “accepted risk of electronic documents is that they will find homes elsewhere.” More disturbingly, Potter attacked Scott personally and demanded evidence that signers “intended to do anything other than ask people to consider an institutionalist point of view hen [sic] they cast their votes”–an odd phrase that, like the actual alternative candidates, appears nowhere in the letter.

An anonymous historian of the Middle East lamented the message and Potter’s “smug condescension and contempt for both histories and historians of the Middle East.” They also called out the hypocrisy of the association’s condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and academic censorship in China while refusing to defend Middle East historians from attack in the U.S. In the past year alone, the commenter noted, three AHA members—Raz Segal, Cemal Kafadar, and Rosie Bsheer—lost academic positions for speaking out on Gaza. (The University of Minnesota rescinded an offer to Segal; Kafadar and Bsheer were dismissed by Harvard in that university’s disgraceful attempt to appease Trump.) The AHA’s silence in all these cases “is as shameful as it is indefensible.”

The Results

Election results were announced on July 21, and four of HPAD’s six endorsed candidates (Van Gosse, Karen Miller, Prasannan Parthasarathi, and Alexander Aviña) were victorious. Annalise Orleck, a Dartmouth professor arrested at a Gaza encampment in May of 2024, was unsuccessful in her bid for the position of president-elect, as was Sherene Seikaly, of UC-Santa Barbara and editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies, in her bid for vice-president of the professional division. Nevertheless, the success of the alternative slate in winning four offices is an unambiguous demonstration of a rank-and-file desire for a more democratic and accountable association. Conversely, the establishment’s effort to manipulate the election can only be described as a shambolic failure.

Whether the association can truly be reformed is another question. The executive council and nominating committee (together with the executive director) have substantial control over the AHA, and in academic associations—as, unfortunately, in too many labor unions—changing bylaws in ways that facilitate member engagement are difficult by design. Perhaps usefully, however, recent controversies regarding Palestine in organizations like the AHA and Modern Language Association reveal the hypocrisy of liberal organizations that profess progressive and democratic values, but are willing to violate these principles when officials deem it necessary.

As we witness the first “livestreamed genocide,” it is worth asking at what point the AHA will reach out to Middle East experts for their views on what is happening in Gaza (and the West Bank) if it is truly committed to being relevant to an informed citizenry.

Back in 2015, AHA executive director (and opponent of the Scholasticide resolution) James Grossman introduced the hashtag #EverythingHasaHistory. This was done in the belief history “can inform our understanding of everything and historians’ voices are essential in conversations about current events.” As we witness the first “livestreamed genocide,” it is worth asking at what point the AHA will reach out to Middle East experts for their views on what is happening in Gaza (and the West Bank) if it is truly committed to being relevant to an informed citizenry. As members get weekly notifications for history workshops, talks, panels, and initiatives, and as a growing chorus of scholars and professional organizations recognize the genocide in Gaza, the AHA’s silence only grows louder.

There are analogies in the AHA’s current crisis with U.S. society more broadly. Like the Democratic Party, university administrations, and liberals generally, AHA institutionalists have refuted (and sought to subvert) the wishes of its base in an effort to maintain respectability and access to the halls of power. Such strategies, in the AHA as elsewhere, have succeeded only in generating demoralization and resentment among those it claims to represent. As should be clear to historians more than anyone else, grassroots organization from below, not deference to self-proclaimed authorities, makes social and political change. Given the stakes at every level, it is important that our voices both be heard and encouraged.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: United Nations Photo; modified by Tempest.

The post History without democracy appeared first on Tempest.

This essay is both a review of Ishchenko’s book and a discussion of the implication of the statement Marx and Engels wrote at the start of the Communist Manifesto:

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the mutual ruin of the contending classes.

Ishchenko’s title Towards the Abyss implies “mutual ruin” in the context of the Russian attacks on Ukraine. But the time span of this book covers two different “mutual ruin” time frames. The first is the collapse of the former Soviet empire, including the Former Soviet Union (FSU) itself. The second is the current crisis of global capitalism and its states, with the war in Ukraine being just one instance of that.

Towards the Abyss is a collection of articles written at various times, from January 2014, when the Maidan protests in Ukraine were at a relatively early stage, through December, 2022, when the full-scale invasion by Russia was less than a year old. It also includes an undated preface, titled “A Wrong Ukrainian,” which was presumably written sometime in 2023 or early 2024. The book thus reflects the author’s changing views through a tumultuous period of history and his increasing distancing from much of the Ukrainian left. As indicated by the book’s title, the author views Ukrainian history since the dissolution of the USSR as having been a journey to the abyss of ruin. He offers no solutions to the current bloodbath, which is disappointing though hardly unique to him. Although I am unwavering in my support for Ukrainian struggles for self-determination (unlike Ishchenko), I also see no path that points to a satisfactory end to the mess other than a massive social movement to transform Russia—and I certainly offer no political route to this desired end.

I will point to one or two high points and to a few places where I think he is abysmally wrong. (I will then turn to the second part of the paper, some ruminations on the “mutual ruin.”)

The Maidan and anti-Maidan movements in 2013 – 2014

Ishchenko usefully points to the internal political conflict that took place in various parts of Ukraine during the Maidan uprising of 2013-2014 and after. There is some tendency on the part of supporters of Ukraine against Russian invasion to downplay this uprising, but it is important. Ishchenko correctly argues that the Maidan uprisings of 2013-2014 were confusing to many people in Ukraine. Various aspects of people’s lives and communities affected their reactions to it. Ischenko discusses at some length the fact that many people in the eastern and southern parts of the country were afraid that the uprising might lead to discrimination against people of relatively recent Russian origin or people who were primarily Russian-speaking. This fear was based on hostility in parts of western Ukraine to the Russian language and a history of (oligarchs’) political parties making an issue of language. These fears, and fears that the Maidan movement was “led by Nazis,” were reinforced by Russian newscasts.

As Ischenko points out, this fear led to a willingness on the part of some people in the Donbas to support efforts to seize local power by anti-Maidan elements, some of whom were local. (Others were Russian nationals with various official and unofficial ties to the Russian government or parties.) His argument accords with what I remember from the time and with my experience during my trip to Odesa in early February, 2014. A good friend who grew up there was herself lukewarm to the Maidan movement and said that many people she knew were not impressed by it. (After Russia seized Crimea, however, she became a strong Ukrainian patriot.) Kudelia’s detailed study of anti-Maidan and pro-Maidan political conflicts in this period in the Donbas, Kharkiv, and Odesa supports Ishkenko’s claim that the anti-Maidan efforts in these areas had a degree of support although not simply working class support; it included some local political and economic elites and received various degrees of leadership and physical support from political groups based in Russia.

It is useful to put this situation in the context of other revolutionary movements—something Ishchenko does not do enough of. Revolutions are complicated processes, and often people in and outside of the country where they take place oppose or support them because of different estimates of where they are headed. This varying support can sometimes lead to violent resistance by groups you might expect to support a revolution in outlying areas, as happened during the French Revolution after 1791 in the Vendée.

The rulers of Ukraine and Russia

Ishchenko usefully discusses the nature of the ruling class in Ukraine and in Russia, and, based on this analysis, the reasons Russia invaded Ukraine. When the Former Soviet Empire, and then the Former Soviet Union itself, fell apart approximately 35 years ago, Russia and Ukraine went through a process that created a sharp economic, health, and social crises. Former members of the ruling bureaucracy, together with leading members of criminal gangs, took possession of factories, mines, and other forms of productive assets and formed a class of kleptocratic capitalists whose first decade of rule saw gigantic rises in poverty and disease. (See Dzurasov, 2014; Friedman & Reid, 2002; Yurchenko, 2018). Ischenko argues that in such kleptocratic oligarchies where the state is dominated by shifting or at least potentially shifting alliances of oligarchs, much of the surplus value comes from the allocation of political favors and contracts by the government; in this economic logic, the owners transfer much of their profits to foreign banks or foreign investments to keep them safe from political expropriation when political alliances change. Ischenko further argues that this economic system leads to slow growth, an impoverished working class (even by the standards of neoliberal capitalism), and an incentive for the rulers of powerful states (Russia) to grab new territories by imperial conquest in order to expand their profits.

On the other hand, this economic explanation is only part of Ishchenko’s analysis of the Russian motivation to attack Ukraine. He correctly sees (although based on a class analysis I critique below) that the rule of these kleptocratic oligarchs is unstable, and relying on the great mass of the people to be passive, apolitical, and disorganized. The Maidan revolution in Ukraine showed this vulnerability (once again) to the people of Russia, and Putin and the rest of the Russian rulers were deeply threatened by it. As I argued at the time, the Russian seizure of Crimea and fomenting of strife in the Donbas in 2014 were designed to ensure that the Maidan revolt did not turn left (which seemed like a real possibility at the time). It also led the movement to become “patriotic” and thus not to focus on removing the kleptocratic ruling class. This process also made it easier for Russia’s rulers to repress dissent in Russia itself. Then, in the early 2020s, mass popular movements took place in Belarus and Kazakhstan, and more-contained mass unrest took place in Russia–once again raising the spectre of revolution spreading to Russia. After helping the oligarchs of Belarus and Kazakhstan to maintain their power, Russia invaded Ukraine to undercut popular unrest in Russia itself. In addition, although Ishchenko does not make this point, much of the Russian ruling class had become increasingly invested in Great-Russian imperial ideologies.

Misplaced nostalgia

Older Ukrainians and Russians lived through the last years of the USSR, and younger ones grew up with their elders’ stories and analyses of the Soviet years. Most Ukrainians I have known have strong negative feelings and beliefs towards the Communist era. Ishchenko, however, is much more positive and describes himself as a “Soviet Ukrainian,” adding, “Soviet Ukrainians were the product of a social revolution; its degradation destroyed them as a political community” (p. xxviii). He definitely looks back on the Soviet period as one of technological triumphs. (His parents were deeply involved in this development.) When he discusses the history of the USSR during the 1930s (p. xvii), he does so in functionalist terms that describes what happened as a strategic necessity that led to a strong nation state. He makes no effort to look at internal contradictions or class or bureaucratic interest. He makes no mention of mass starvation or of the Holodomor as part of this history, although he had briefly  made note of the Holodomor on p. xix and of the Stalinist Great Terror as part of his family history later in this same paragraph. Politically, this position is crippling: He expresses no sympathy or empathy for those who reject “socialism” due to its equation with the Soviet past, even though any successful socialist movement in Ukraine needs to find ways to adjust to this memory and develop a clearly non-Stalinist concept of workers’ power.

Workers and other classes

Ishchenko analyzes the anti-Maidan movement of 2014 as supported by the workers of Eastern Ukraine. Yet, he seems to have no understanding of, or contact with, workers. Further, when he discusses revolutionary possibilities in Ukraine or Russia, although he seems to yearn for a new Bolshevik Revolution, he never frames this possibility as the product of a revolutionary working class. Workers are also absent from his discussion of how the political capitalist class came into being. His analysis of the crystallization of oligarchic economic power frames this process as “primitive accumulation” by interpreting it as the initial “hoarding of gold” (p. 98). Again, workers are absent, and he does not seem to understand that Marx explicitly argued that amassing wealth was not what he meant by “primitive accumulation.” Marx viewed primitive accumulation as the creation of “free” workers who were free of ties to the soil or other sources of material survival and who were thus available for employers to hire and exploit. In Ukraine, this took place to some extent in Tsarist years, but to a much greater extent during the Holodomor and after, supplemented perhaps by the Second World War devastation. This “freed” many millions to become exploited as workers.

He does have a concept of class conflict in Ukraine and Russia, but again it ignores the working class. He sees the main (non-war) conflict in Ukraine as between oligarchic capital and middle class/intellectual/NGO/transnational capital:

The central class conflict in the post-Soviet world: that between, on the one hand, the professional middle classes allied with transnational capital and, on the other, local political capitalists (colloquially known as ‘oligarchs’) who could only rely on the passive consent of a segment of the working class, mainly in heavy industry and the public sector (p. 3).

He then uses this idea to frame the Maidan movement as based on these middle class elements and thus as incapable of transforming society. His analysis of the instability of rule in Russia and Ukraine rests on describing the governments as Bonapartist and as balancing between these middle class elements and political capitalists.

This analysis fails to notice the overt working-class presence in the Maidan struggles in Krivih Rih and the diffuse participation of millions of workers in other Maidans. It also means that he fails to formulate political strategies based on the working class.

Mutual ruins

The fall of Rome was a major topic of historical interest in Europe throughout Marx’s life and was clearly one of the examples of mutual ruin that he and Engels had in mind. They may also have been thinking of events in some areas of Europe in which serfs and lords got into conflict in the ideological framework of religious “heresies,” only to have outside forces take over their localities in the name of the True Church with considerable bloodshed and worsening of conditions for the agricultural producers. Here, I will discuss the fall of Rome with particular attention to how Kevin Anderson analyzed what Marx wrote near the end of his life. Marx analyzed the impasse facing the western part of the Roman Empire. Slave rebellions broke out in many areas, often with some initial success. Plebians, who were the descendants of former peasants whose livelihoods had been destroyed by the transition of agriculture into slave operations over a wide part of Italy and other locations, were a potential powerful ally of the slaves. They lived to a large extent on “bread and circuses” provided by the ruling classes in an early form of welfare, undoubtedly supplemented to some extent by petty trading, some rudimentary crafts, and involvement in criminal activities. The plebian class was also an important source of soldiers for the army, which held out the possibility of economic advancement and “retirement” as a peasant-holder of conquered lands. When the Empire could no longer conquer and hold new territory, this cut off the supply of new slaves (whose living conditions did not allow for widespread reproductive maintenance of the slave labor force) and also threatened the ability to hold the loyalty of plebians via military service. This failure led first to the split of the Empire into western and eastern portions, with the East able to avoid the “mutual ruin” by basing itself far more on peasant agriculture. In the West, on the other hand, the ruling classes were unable to establish a viable social order but were able to divide the plebians from the slaves (via racism-like advantages and ideological distinctions) and thus prevent the lower classes from reconstituting the society via successful revolution. The form this mutual ruin took was an inability to prevent outsiders from conquering them, destroying the Senatorial ruling class and its slave-based economy and, along with it, the public works and culture that the Europeans of Marx’s time admired.

As discussed above, the Former Soviet Union and its empire found itself in the 1980s at a similar impasse. Its ruling nomenklatura, which has been disparately analyzed as a state capitalist ruling class, a bureaucratic collectivist class, or as a privileged bureaucratic stratum by various forces on the Left, was unable to meet corporate capitalist economic and military competition. Its working class had been unable to replace it and reconstitute society, as most clearly shown by the defeat of the mass, ideologically diverse but dynamic Solidarity movement in Poland in the early 1980s. This incapacity led to the fall of the previous social relationships and their replacement from above by new social relations. As in the case of the Roman Empire, this fall led to different outcomes in different parts of the empire, with corporate neoliberal capital dominant in East Europe and kleptocratic political capital dominant in Ukraine, Russia, and some other countries. Beyond that, China, with its similar forms of social relations in the 1970s, and facing a succession of economic and political crises (most visibly, the Tiananmen Square crisis in 1989), was able to set up what became a thriving form of state- and party-led capitalism and thus a reconstitution of social relations without undergoing a period of mutual ruin.

The entire world, unfortunately, faces the prospect of a far deeper “mutual ruin.” Put in other terms, we face a crisis that can optimistically be framed as “socialism or barbarism” or pessimistically (realistically?) as “socialism or extermination.” Capitalism has become universal over the surface of the Earth, and it faces several deep crises. On the one hand, there is an economic crisis that has been evident since 2008 if not before. So far, neither capital nor the working class has been able to resolve this crisis, and its political impacts make solving the other crises more difficult. Secondly, there is a deep crisis of the imperial order posed by the rise of China and other countries as rivals to the hitherto-dominant North American world order and to its sub-imperial countries in Europe, Japan, and Australia. The last such crisis in imperialism brought about the First and Second World Wars, the Cold War, and the threat of nuclear war. Finally, capitalism has created a deep and multi-faceted environmental crisis, with climate change its most immediate apparent threat (and pandemics as a possible additional immediate system-threatening catastrophe). This crisis, too, makes the other crises harder to resolve, since it is causing ever-increasing efforts by tens of millions of people per year to move to other countries—and the racialist far right wing has (so far) been able to use this to strengthen the domination of right-wing capitalists over politics.

Globally, capitalist leaders have failed to resolve any of these crises, and the rising power of fascist and semi-fascist politicians is making it less likely that they will do so before ecological collapse or nuclear war creates barbarism or extermination of humanity. Unfortunately, working class movements and movements of the oppressed have been unable to mount adequate responses to these challenges either. Symptoms of these failures include genocidal or potentially-genocidal wars in Palestine, Sudan, and Ukraine, a potentially out-of-control conflict between nuclear armed India and Pakistan, the misery and incarceration in what can only be thoughts of as concentration camps of vast numbers of displaced and refugee populations, and worsening economic conditions (including attacks on medical care, public health, education, income support and much else) for working classes throughout the world.

Ishchenko’s book offers a glimpse of how this mutual ruin is playing out in Ukraine. It offers no solutions either to what is happening in Ukraine or to the global crisis. Nor will I attempt to do so here. The pages of left and environmental publications are filled with a wide mix of efforts to describe solutions. However, although Ishchenko does not seem to realize this, the first step in the revolutionary solution to the crises will have to start with seemingly-spontaneous uprisings that destabilize and replace political regimes in ways that set off a spreading series of similar upsets, followed by social revolutions conducted “from below” by workers and members of oppressed groups. The Left can contribute ideas and to some extent organizational support for this process, but particularly in the opening acts, these movements are multi-class and politically diverse as were the Maidan political revolution, the upsurge that unseated multiple presidents in Argentina in a few weeks early in this century, or Polish Solidarity in the early 1980s.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: Edgar Degas; modified by Tempest.

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Amid all his regime’s chaos, Donald Trump is implementing the unilateralist strategy laid out bluntly in The Prioritization Imperative of focusing on Washington’s great power rivalry with China. First, the administration declared it will no longer be the global policeman, backing up allies against external and internal opposition.

Trump has attempted to extricate the United States from the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, if unsuccessfully. Despite his failures, he seems determined to shift attention from these crises and convince U.S. allies to shoulder the burden of managing them.

In the case of Europe, Vice President J. D. Vance warned allies even before his election that “the United States has to focus more on east Asia. That is going to be the future of U.S. foreign policy for the next 40 years, and Europe has to wake up to that fact.”

In keeping with that, Trump has secured an agreement with NATO members to increase their defense spending to 5 percent of their GDP to deter Russian imperialism, triggering an arms race in Europe. Germany went so far as to suspend its constitutional restrictions on deficit spending to plow money into rearmament, while slashing social welfare spending, and to assert itself as an imperialist power in its own right.

Putting China first

By trying to clear Washington’s portfolio, Trump attempted to prioritize Washington’s conflict with China. He imposed new tariffs on Beijing, escalated the chip war with new bans on semiconductors and software sales, suspended the sale of tech and software essential to China’s manufacture of jet engines, and threatened to subject all Chinese foreign students’ visa applications to heightened scrutiny and deny visas to members of the Communist Party.

Trump has backed this economic assault with geopolitical pressure on Beijing. He dispatched Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth throughout Asia to shore up alliances against China. At Singapore’s Shangri-La Dialogue, Hegseth told allies that China’s threat “is real, and it could be imminent” to all of them, particularly Taiwan.

He promised to support them on the condition that they raise their defense expenditures. That pressure, combined with conflicts between various Asian states and China, is fueling a new arms race unlike anything in the region since World War II. Secretary of State Marc Rubio reinforced that message in his own follow-up trip to Asia.

Finally, the administration is jacking up its own military budget. Trump has increased the Pentagon’s budget to $1 trillion, with its top priority being, in the words of Hegseth, “deterring aggression by Communist China.”

The U.S. is backing up this rhetoric with increasingly aggressive demonstrations of military power in the Asia-Pacific, most recently with the U.S.-led 19-nation biennial exercise named Talisman Saber, the largest one yet, specifically designed to rehearse war with China.

In addition, the administration has promised to spend upwards of half a trillion dollars on its Golden Dome defense system to intercept advanced missiles developed by China. Such a system, if it gets built and if it actually works, would enable the United States to strike without facing retaliation, undermining the deterrent of mutually assured destruction, predisposing both Washington and Beijing to strike first and ask questions later, thereby jeopardizing all life on earth.

Obstacles to prioritization

The Trump administration faces both objective and subjective obstacles to implementing its prioritization strategy. Most obviously, as world history’s largest informal empire, with vested economic interests, geopolitical alliances, and 800 military bases in every corner of the earth, it will find it objectively difficult to extricate itself from its role as global cop to focus on Beijing.

On top of that, the administration’s subjective problems—its internal conflicts, incoherence, and MAGA-driven idiocy—compromise its prioritization strategy. These will further weaken U.S. capitalism and undercut its imperial dominance.

Trump is being pulled in different directions. Protectionists like trade advisor Peter Navarro and MAGA leader Steve Bannon advocate total decoupling with China. Treasury Secretary Steve Bessent and the chair of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers, Stephen Mirran, oppose that and simply want a better deal—a Mar-a-Lago Accord—to rebalance trade within the current neoliberal capitalist order. And the tech capitalists like Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Elon Musk support free trade, including with China.

The ever transactional and mercurial Trump balances between these factions. Their conflict exploded over economic policy, with Navarro pushing the most extreme reciprocal tariffs, Musk opposing them and denouncing Navarro as “a moron” and “dumber than a sack of bricks,” Bessent dialing them all back in the hopes of reaching bilateral pacts with dozens of countries, and Trump boasting that all of this chaos was an example of his “art of the deal.”

These conflicts have created contradictions in the regime’s offensive against China, most obviously in its new tariff policies. After indulging the China hawks and playing hardball with record tariffs, he then backed off in a concession to pro–free traders like Nvidia’s Huang, allowing the sale of the company’s chips to Beijing.

Huang has argued for a different strategy for the United States to maintain dominance in high tech and specifically Artificial Intelligence (AI). He contends that Washington should keep China dependent on Nvidia’s less powerful chips to prevent it from developing its own. That way Washington can both protect its monopoly on the most advanced chips and prevent Beijing from creating its own competing AI infrastructure that could supplant that of the United States. But that strategy is unlikely to succeed, given that China is determined to build exactly such an infrastructure.

The administration’s China hawks have also warned that Beijing having access to even the less advanced chips will enable it to copy them and accelerate its own program. The outcome of this strategic debate remains unclear, but neither is likely to succeed in stopping China’s rapid development of its own chips, high-tech companies, and AI programs.

TACO Don’s confusing messages

Similar contradictions have emerged in Trump’s treatment of Washington’s allies and vassals. Trump is jacking up levies to discipline all states in the world to bow to U.S. interests and against China. For instance, his new accord with Vietnam blocks its use by China as a base for transhipping goods to the United States to avoid tariffs.

But such bullying alienates the very states Trump needs to form a bloc against China. It made little sense to start a tariff war with Washington’s semi-colony, Mexico and its junior imperialist partner, Canada, which are both utterly integrated with the U.S. economy.

It made even less sense to impose blanket tariffs on foes, allies, and economically insignificant islands inhabited only by penguins and seals. All that did was drive allies to put their interests before those of the United States, disrupting the formation of a bloc of imperialist states to confront and contain China.

Trump added more confusion in his tariff policy by giving multinationals like Apple carve-outs, and then drawing down all of the reciprocal tariffs to 10 percent—still a level without precedent in recent years—and promising further reductions in bilateral negotiations with countries all around the world. That earned the president the insulting moniker, TACO, short for “Trump Always Chickens Out.”

His brief spiraling tariff war with China was equally ham-fisted and counterproductive. When the United States imposed 145 percent levies on Chinese exports, China countered with 125 percent ones, disrupting supply chains, slowing both economies, and leading to shortages at factories and retail shelves in the United States. Yet again, TACO Don backed down, cutting a “gentleman’s agreement” in Geneva to lower tariffs on China to 30 percent, while Beijing dropped theirs to 20 percent.

Trump’s erratic tariff war with China has alienated U.S. capitalists who depend on China’s supply chain and sell in its market. The Business Roundtable, Chamber of Commerce, big multinationals like Apple, and scores of small businesses all lobbied Trump for carve-outs and decreased levies.

On top of that, the stock and bond markets registered their opposition. Stocks dropped while investors sold off bonds, driving up yields and with them long-term interest rates. That left Trump no choice but to relent, making “Tariff Man’s” bark look far worse than his bite.

His new round of tariff increases is shot through with the same contradiction. On the one hand, he has written stern letters to countries, again both friend and foe, threatening new levies, but on the other, he has extended the deadline for trade deals to August 1.

Making Stagflation Great Again

Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill will compound U.S. capitalism’s problems, undermining his attempt to reassert its dominance. Despite brutal austerity measures against the working class, it will drive up spending overall with big increases in border enforcement and defense, while cutting taxes on the rich and corporations. This will drive up the deficit and debt.

Musk denounced the bill as “a disgusting abomination,” staged a social media war with TACO Don, and then launched a third party to unseat Republicans who voted for it. Moody’s agreed with Musk, downgrading Washington’s credit rating, increasing the likelihood of increased interest rates for loans for everyone from capitalists to small business owners, professionals, and workers.

Trump’s assault on migrants will further exacerbate the U.S. economy’s problems. His bill includes a $170 billion increase in immigration enforcement to bring ICE’s annual spending to almost $40 billion—a sum that would make it the 16th largest military budget in the world. He has already shut down the border and started raids throughout the country, triggering resistance in Los Angeles and across the country.

Trump responded to this opposition by deploying 4,000 National Guard troops, along with 700 Marines, to join the Los Angeles Police Department in protecting ICE’s reign of terror against migrants. But the workers he’s targeting for deportation are essential to the U.S. economy in everything from meatpacking to construction and agriculture.

Any decrease in participation of these vital sections of the workforce will drive up wages, causing shortages, increasing prices, and hiking up inflation. In a sign of desperation, Agricultural Secretary Brooke Rollins floated a sadistic, boondoggle proposal to use new workfare requirements to force Medicaid recipients to replace millions of deported workers.

Faced with the threat of losing its workforce, agribusiness, hotel barons, construction companies, and other capitalists lobbied Trump to back down, which he did, promising to dial back workplace raids and focus on “criminals.” But then, under pressure from his far-right major domo, Stephen Miller, he promised to continue the raids, despite a majority of people now opposing them and 79 percent viewing immigration as a “good thing.”

Economists are worried that Trump’s policies will weaken U.S. growth, if not trigger a recession. Instead of fueling new manufacturing in the United States, Trump’s erratic tariff policy and ugly bill have led to a contraction in investment and freeze in hiring…

Economists are worried that Trump’s policies will weaken U.S. growth, if not trigger a recession. Instead of fueling new manufacturing in the United States, Trump’s erratic tariff policy and ugly bill have led to a contraction in investment and freeze in hiring, slowing an already stagnant economy amid persistent and, because of his disruption of Chinese supply chains, potentially higher inflation. That has renewed fears of another cycle of the 1970s nightmare of stagflation, weakening U.S. capitalism.

MAGA idiocy

Trump’s ideologically driven war on the state bureaucracy, social institutions, and agencies of imperial soft power will further compromise U.S. dominance. He’s eliminating, cutting, and purging key ministries from the FBI to the CIA, military brass, and State Department to get rid of any guardrails that block his authoritarian rule.

In the process, he is incapacitating key parts of the state that enforce and win consent for U.S. dominance. For example, he gutted the Voice of America, a key media outlet the United States has historically used to spread propaganda against its opponents and seduce their domestic opposition to mistakenly see Washington as an ally in their struggles.

China and Russia have celebrated. The former editor of China’s Global Times declared it “really gratifying,” while the editor of Russia’s RT called it an “awesome decision.” Beijing and Moscow are pumping more money to fill the vacuum and win greater global influence.

Trump’s all-out assault on higher education, especially elite institutions like Harvard, will also undermine U.S. supremacy. He and especially Vance, who infamously gave a speech entitled “Universities Are the Enemy,” despise these institutions for reproducing the liberal capitalist establishment, which they view as their mortal enemy.

Trump has justified the assault based on false charges of these institutions’ antisemitism and supposed hesitancy in crushing the Palestine solidarity movement. With that cover story, he has cut their funding, demanded they rewrite their curriculum, and called for them to abolish their diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.

This assault on higher education will weaken U.S. imperialism. It will disrupt the reproduction of the ruling class, its ideologists, and professionals. And it will prevent the training of the skilled working class, essential for the United States to dominate its high-tech competitors.

These institutions are central to the military industrial complex, especially in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields. Cutting their funding will undercut U.S. efforts to win “the chip war” with China. The repercussions will not only be borne by the elite schools and their wealthy students in blue states, but also by public universities and working-class students in red states.

Even worse for U.S. imperialism, Trump’s witch hunt against foreign students, Chinese ones in particular, as well as international researchers, will drive them out of the country, depriving universities and corporations of a key source of international talent, especially in STEM fields. Already, Washington’s competitors from Europe to China are recruiting Chinese students with offers of funding and lucrative jobs, leading the ruling class to panic about a brain drain.

Trump’s onslaught on science will similarly compromise U.S. supremacy. He is not only defunding scientific research in higher education, but also at the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Weather Service, and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Such cuts will cripple research essential not only to corporations, but also to public safety and health, destabilizing U.S. society in the process. With FEMA and other agencies incapacitated, tragedies caused by climate change, like the drowning of over a hundred people in the recent flash flood in Central Texas, which could have been avoided with proper regulations, precautions, and alerts, will multiply throughout the country.

Trump’s destruction of USAID, as well as withdrawal from most multilateral institutions and agreements—including the World Health Organization, the Paris Climate Accords, and almost every United Nations agency—fundamentally compromises Washington’s soft power and ability to win allies and subjects to its imperial project against China. Instead, it will isolate and discredit the United States and make even more states view the United States with suspicion.

Trump’s “America First” policies have already led powers to chart their own course, putting their economic, political, and military interests first. That, in turn, will lead to greater conflict between states throughout the world. It will also make it harder for the United States to pressure its nominal allies, like Europe and Japan, to limit their trade with China. As a result, all the Trump regime will be left with is hard power, economic and military bullying.

Rather than restoring U.S. dominance, the regime’s incoherent implementation of the prioritization strategy will likely accelerate its relative decline.

Rather than restoring U.S. dominance, the regime’s incoherent implementation of the prioritization strategy will likely accelerate its relative decline. Fiona Hill, who served in the first Trump administration, went so far as to compare her former boss to Boris Yeltsin, who oversaw the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, declaring, “Trump is deconstructing the United States, just as Yeltsin deconstructed the Soviet Union.”

China goes toe-to-toe with Trump

Sensing its position of strength against the United States, China stood up to Trump’s belligerence and exploited his administration’s contradictions. It called his bluff on tariffs, matching each of his increases with ones of its own, including those designed to target Republican states.

It played the ace up its sleeve—its near monopoly on processing rare earth minerals and magnets that are essential components to everything from cars to U.S. fighter bombers like the F-35. It halted their export, paralyzing both civilian and military manufacturing.

China drove Trump to strike the “gentleman’s agreement” for a 90-day pause to allow talks to secure a trade deal. While he blinked, so did Xi Jinping. With the economy already struggling to maintain growth, Xi Jinping could ill afford the near-total cessation of trade with the United States. Despite increased exports to Europe and Southeast Asia and modest growth overall, the loss of markets in the United States disrupted businesses in China.

But their agreement fell apart with China limiting the release of rare earth metals and the United States retaliating with bans on the export of chips, essential software, and parts for Chinese airline construction. With their economies imperiled, they both again blinked, promising to reinstate their agreement and continue bilateral trade talks for a final deal. Nevertheless, China demonstrated Trump’s weakness.

Xi has exploited the new administration’s abandonment of superintending the neoliberal order of free trade globalization by posturing as its defender. He pledged to be, unlike Washington, a reliable trade partner to the rest of the world.

Of course, this was hardly disinterested, since China has been one of the main beneficiaries of that order and desperately needs access to international markets to export its capital and products. Indeed, China made up for the loss of markets in the United States by diverting exports throughout the world, achieving a record trade surplus of $586 billion.

Xi has also taken advantage of Trump’s foolish decision to launch his trade war on all countries at once by extending diplomatic and trade offers to states in Asia, Latin America, Africa, and Europe. But the response of states throughout the world has been contradictory. They have both welcomed China’s offers and expressed concern that it will use them to export its surplus into their markets, undercutting their corporations.

Brazil recently embraced China in a common defense of free trade, but just last year investigated Beijing for dumping, while its steel companies demanded increased tariffs to protect their industry and market share.

Finally, Xi has responded to Trump’s increased militarism with aggressive assertions of China’s own hard power. China increased exercises around Taiwan, sent ships to Australia in an unprecedented naval exercise, escalated its conflicts with the Philippines and other states in the South China Sea over contested islands, and even deployed two aircraft carriers in Japan’s economic waters.

Escalating global rivalry

The rivalry between the United States and China is engulfing the entire world, from Greenland to Panama, the Arctic, Antarctica, and even outer space. They are locked in competition in key conflicts and theaters in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America.

In Europe, Trump had hoped to cut a deal with Vladimir Putin for the partition of Ukraine, perhaps with the aim of peeling Russia away from its alliance with China. But his proposal has been rejected by Moscow, which seems intent on annexing as much territory as possible, no matter its cost to Russian and Ukrainian lives.

China remains committed to its “friendship without limits” with Russia, sustaining its economy against the sanction regime. For its part, Kyiv has opposed the partition of its country, refused to accept any settlement without security guarantees, continues to defend its sovereignty in the face of unrelenting Russian aggression, and has succeeded in launching a drone strike against Moscow’s fighter bomber fleet.

But Trump has made some gains, most importantly pressuring his NATO allies to increase their defense spending to 5 percent of their GDP and rearm at a frightening pace. As a result, Ukraine will continue to be a source of inter-imperial conflict over a national liberation struggle that could metastasize into a war involving several great powers.

In the Middle East, the United States had been the unrivalled hegemon, but China is a rising power. Because Beijing depends on the region’s oil and natural gas for energy and its petrochemical industry, it has established political and economic relations with everyone from Iran to the Gulf States and Israel.

Biden and now Trump have used Israel’s genocidal war to reassert U.S. power in the region and weaken the so-called Axis of Resistance, decimating Hezbollah, weakening Iran, and cutting deals with the rebels that toppled Syria’s dictatorship. Trump had hoped to consolidate U.S. dominance with a “final solution” in Gaza, economic agreements with Arab states, expansion of the Abraham Accords to normalize their relations with Israel, and a new nuclear pact with Iran, so that it can prioritize China.

However, Palestinian resistance remains unbowed, and the region’s Arab masses oppose normalization and are hostile to their rulers for living in luxury amid their growing poverty. When the nuclear talks with Iran stalled, Israel took the opportunity to launch its blitzkrieg, not only against Tehran’s nuclear facilities, but also its leadership, military, and scientists.

Trump pivoted to support the attack and then dropped several of the U.S. military’s largest conventional bombs, the Massive Ordinance Penetrator, to decimate Iran’s nuclear facilities including the one at Fordow, which lies buried deep under a mountain. Trump, however, restricted action to a one-off attack, instead of an attempt at regime change, something that would have trapped Trump in an enormous war and undercut support from his isolationist MAGA base.

Trump has now pledged to restart talks with Iran, in the hope of reaching an agreement over its nuclear program. It remains to be seen whether the Iranian regime, which is torn between those who want to make a bomb and those who would prefer a deal, will agree to stop their program on U.S. terms.

While the United States seems to have scored major victories, the region remains a site of interstate conflicts, as well as resistance from below. China, which stood by while its Iranian ally was pummeled, will use any setbacks to U.S. interests to advance its own in the region, guaranteeing that its state conflicts and rebellions will be an occasion for imperial jockeying for advantage.

Latin America is another area of growing contestation. While the United States has been the regional hegemon, China has used its Belt and Road Initiative to become a major investor in the region and South America’s leading trade partner. That has enabled it to pull middling powers like Brazil into its orbit through the BRICS alliance.

The United States has responded by reasserting its power against Beijing’s influence. Trump has used the charge that China secretly controls the Panama Canal to threaten to annex it, and ramped up tariffs on countries that depend on exports to the U.S. market to impose Washington’s dictates.

The two powers are also engaged in nothing less than a new scramble for Africa. China has become the largest investor in the continent, with a focus on mining, particularly of rare earth minerals. Trump has responded by using investment, tariffs, and geopolitical pressure to bully nations to tilt toward the United States.

For instance, during peace negotiations between Rwanda and Congo, he pressured Congo to allow U.S. extraction of rare earth minerals, instead of China. This is but one of many proxy conflicts between Washington and Beijing in Africa. These will escalate as China seeks to expand its extractivist monopoly in rare earths and the United States seeks to break it.

Flashpoints in the struggle for hegemony in Asia

By far, the region most prone to conflict between the United States and China, though, is Asia. There are several pivotal flashpoints that could trigger a war despite their declared intention to avoid one.

Already, the United States and China engaged in a quasi–proxy war over Kashmir with Beijing backing Pakistan and Washington supporting India. Both great powers carefully analyzed the performance of their planes, missiles, and defense systems against the others.

Even more ominous is South and North Korea. The United States, which maintains massive bases in South Korea, has tried to block any peace deal with the North, pressure Seoul to spend more on its military and forge a military pact with Japan against China. That will only antagonize Pyongyang and Beijing, heating up a conflict involving three nuclear powers.

China’s standoff with the Philippines over contested islands in the South China Sea is just as ominous. Trump has established friendly relations with the Philippines’ new government of Ferdinand “Bong Bong” Marcos, the son of the notorious dictator, and dispatched Hegseth there on his first foreign mission in Asia.

Hesgeth promised to uphold Washington’s “ironclad alliance” with the Philippines “in the face of communist China’s aggression in the region.” He declared U.S. intentions to increase military aid, stage more joint operations, and pre-position U.S. military hardware for operations in the Asia Pacific.

The greatest and most explosive conflict is over Taiwan. As noted above, the stakes are not just geopolitical, but economic, because of Taipei’s advanced microchip industry. Xi has ordered his military to be prepared to annex the country by 2027, while the United States has made defense of the island its top priority.

As a result, imperial and regional conflict is heating up throughout the Asia Pacific with states arming themselves to the teeth.

Against imperialist nationalism

In this ominous conjuncture, the Left must do everything in our power to stop inter-imperial rivalry from triggering another world war. In the United States, our first and foremost task is to oppose our own imperialist state, which remains the most dangerous power in the world.

The key site to build opposition is the broad resistance to the Trump regime. The emerging movement includes a wide range of forces, from explicitly pro–Democratic Party NGOs like Indivisible, to the Palestine solidarity movement, and trade unions grouped around May Day Strong. The Left must argue for an independent working-class movement that stands against all of Trump’s divide-and-rule attacks on the oppressed and opposes U.S. imperialism in all its forms—economic, geopolitical, and military.

We have to make several pivotal arguments. The resistance needs to oppose Trump’s siren song of nationalism, protectionism, and xenophobic attacks on Chinese international students and researchers in the United States and Chinese workers in the mainland as a threat. Both Teamsters’ Sean O’Brien and the United Autoworkers’ Shawn Fain fell prey to that temptation, expressing support for tariffs as a way to save jobs.

Trump, a corrupt real estate boss who starred in a reality TV show with a tag line “you’re fired,” doesn’t care about workers. Moreover, contrary to union officials’ claims, the vast bulk of job losses have not been caused by globalization but by corporations’ imposition of lean production and plant relocation within the United States from the unionized north to the non-union south.

Blaming globalization lets bosses off the hook. It also sows racist, anti-immigrant divisions within the multiracial, multinational U.S. working class and between U.S. workers and workers in other countries, especially China. Such bigotry will disrupt the solidarity necessary to organize against capitalism’s international system of production, transport, and sale.

Economic nationalism had deadly consequences in the 1980s, when two laid-off auto workers, who blamed their unemployment on Japan, killed a Chinese American, Vincent Chin, whom they mistook for Japanese. It can have equally deadly consequences today, with Trump targeting Chinese international students and researchers and whipping up anti-Chinese racism and anti-Asian racism in general.

Even worse, nationalist bigotry weds the working class to U.S. imperialism. Trump and the Democrats will exploit such allegiance to con us into accepting austerity to pay for increased ICE and military budgets, as well as to kill and die to preserve U.S. dominance over China and other rivals, not to improve workers’ lives.

At the same time, we should oppose the Democrats’ defense of the existing neoliberal order of free trade globalization. That was a vehicle for U.S. imperial hegemony over global capitalism at the expense of the workers who were forced to compete in a global race to the bottom for our rulers’ benefit.

The enemy of my enemy is not my friend

We also need to argue against those on the Left who support Washington’s rivals like China or Russia as some kind of alternative. They are not. They are capitalist and imperialist states. Beijing proved its predatory and brutal nature in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, while Moscow has done the same in Ukraine.

The multipolar order that Washington rivals aim for is also no alternative. Of course, unipolarity—the unrivalled hegemony of U.S. imperialism—was horrific, as Iraq proved, but a multipolar order of competing imperial powers will be no better and potentially far more deadly. Remember that the last multipolar order ended in two world wars.

When sections of the Left support the Chinese or Russian state, they inevitably betray international solidarity with the liberation struggle of the nations and peoples those states oppress and the workers they exploit. In their view, such struggles threaten Beijing and Moscow and their ability to stand up to the United States. They trade working-class internationalism for great power nationalism in reverse.

Even worse, holding up those states as some kind of alternative will only discredit the Left in the eyes of most working people. No one wants to live in police states like those in China and Russia, just like no one wants to live under Trump’s increasingly authoritarian rule here in the United States.

For internationalist anti-imperialism

The alternative to the dead end of great power nationalism is internationalism. It comes in two forms. One common one, which seems on the surface appealing and realistic, is internationalism from above. Often put forward by pacifists and reformists, it argues for international cooperation between imperialist rivals as a path to cooperation and peace.

In the early 20th century, Karl Kautsky held out the promise of such a “golden international” only to see such hopes dashed by World War I. Today, leftists oriented on the Democratic Party hope to convince or elect its leadership to pursue a policy of great power collaboration.

That strategy is no more likely today to lead to success than it was in Kautsky’s time. Why? Because it fails to grasp that inter-imperial rivalries are not a mere product of governmental policy but of the capitalist competition that drives great powers into conflict over the division of the world market.

Inter-imperial rivalries are not a mere product of governmental policy but of the capitalist competition that drives great powers into conflict over the division of the world market.

Moreover, the chosen vehicle to accomplish the fantasy of cooperation, the Democratic Party, has shown itself impervious to left-wing influence. Remember, despite the Left’s attempt to use the Democrats for anti-imperialist aims, they started most of the wars in the 20th century, from World War I to Vietnam and Israel’s genocide in Gaza. And, while Democrats may have grumbled about wars like Iraq started by Republicans, they went along with them anyway, voting for military budgets to carry them out.

Instead, we need anti-imperialist internationalism from below. That entails opposing our own imperialist state, the United States, first and foremost, and in all its forms, from its economic policies (whether protectionist or free trade) to its geopolitical bullying and wars.

Washington’s heretofore imperial partners like the European Union, Britain, Canada, Japan, and Australia do not offer any kind of progressive option, as their histories of colonialism, conquest, and economic exploitation prove. Today, amid the decomposition of U.S. hegemony, they are only out for their own capitalist advantage.

At the same time, we should have no illusions about U.S. imperial rivals, most importantly China. We must oppose Beijing and defend the right of self-determination of nations like Taiwan and national minorities like the Uyghurs they oppress. And, just as importantly, we have to oppose Washington’s cynical weaponization of these national and popular struggles for its own imperial purposes.

Workers against rivalry and war

Our main project must be to build international solidarity between the working classes in all the imperial and regional powers as well as oppressed nations. This is now more possible than ever. Globalization has interlocked the destinies of workers throughout the world.

Nowhere is this more clear than in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, where the regionalization of production and migration of people has bound the fate of the North American working class together. Either we stand together as one, or we will be divided and conquered separately.

The same is true of U.S., Chinese, and Taiwanese workers who are bound together by global production, supply, and retail chains. For example, Apple designs products in California, subcontracts their manufacture to Taiwan’s Foxconn, and in turn employs Chinese migrant workers to make iPhones and other devices in China, which are flown by FedEx’s workers to the United States to be sold either directly to customers or by retail shop workers.

Thus, even in the case of Taiwan, the world’s most dangerous flashpoint in the rivalry between the United States and China, the international working class shares common interests against the three ruling classes collaborating in exploiting us.

Given our power to shut down their system, we have the potential to unite and oppose their rivalry and slide toward war. The most important way the labor movement can do that today is by opposing Trump’s witch hunt against Chinese international students, graduate students, and scientists. This is essential in order to build fighting unity within the U.S. working class, in which Chinese graduate students in particular play a significant role in organizing unions in higher education.

If the labor movement can unite against Sinophobia here in the United States, it would send a strong signal to Chinese workers that workers here are their natural allies. And, Chinese international students, graduate students, and scientists can help establish connections across borders, making international solidarity concrete.

We have the chance to forge such unity amid the struggles provoked by capitalism’s global slump, our rulers’ increasing authoritarianism, and the austerity measures they are imposing on us all. Over the last fifteen years, we have witnessed an unprecedented wave of mass struggle all around the world, including in the United States with Occupy, Black Lives Matter, the Red State Teachers Revolt, and the Palestine solidarity movement.

Similar struggles have erupted in China. Migrant workers have gone on strike, Hong Kongers staged a mass democratic uprising, and Chinese people rose up in mass protests and strikes against the regime’s brutal Covid lockdowns.

Washington and Beijing’s rivalry will provoke yet more working-class struggle. Trump’s brutal class war at home to transfer wealth from workers to the billionaires and the Pentagon war machine has already triggered a national resistance.

Likewise, Xi will make the Chinese working class pay to challenge the United States, forcing them, in the words of one official during Trump’s last term, to get through the trade war “by eating grass for a year.” Such austerity will stoke rising levels of struggle in China.

Amid the resistance in both countries, our task is to find every way possible to link our common struggles. We can and must put forward Marx and Engels’ slogan “Workers of all countries, unite…. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.” Today, that is not a utopian slogan but a realistic possibility and indeed a necessity.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”

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Alex Schmaus: What’s been happening at the Chicago Teachers Union headquarters the last couple of days?

Jesse Sharkey: There’s been a meeting of the May Day Strong coalition. We had about 475 rank and file activists, community organizers, leaders of civil rights organizations, people who do labor education, and people who do trainings on non-compliance. It’s basically a big cross-section of the anti-Trump movement in the country. We’re here to build a working-class fight-back against the MAGA billionaires.

AS: Can you say more about who’s here and where they’re from?

JS: There’s a ton of rank-and-file teachers. We’ve got local leaders who are still in classrooms and doing amazing work from San Diego, L.A., San Francisco, all the way up the West Coast to Portland, Oregon. Then we have people from Colorado, Minnesota, the upper Midwest, Ohio, Michigan, and Missouri. There are a  bunch of people from Illinois, Wisconsin, the Northeast, the South, and across the Sunbelt. There are a bunch of big community organizations here like People’s Action, which has an important base in the upper Midwest and in the South as well. United Service Workers are here. A bunch of federal workers are here. A number of people in higher education, Higher Ed United folks, United Electrical Workers. I can keep going. It’s an impressive list of folks from across the community. I should mention that there are a bunch of community organizers who are affiliated with Journey for Justice, people from Louisiana, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. And the list goes on. People from the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, they’re here. It’s a really impressive turnout. Most workers aren’t in unions, so if you want to get something together that feels like a working class movement, you’ve got to include those groups and spaces. That’s what it feels like here.

AS: What’s the vision? What is May Day Strong trying to accomplish today and into the future?

JS: Trump and the billionaires that he supports have launched a broad attack. For many parts of our society, it’s not a new attack, but it’s got a renewed ferocity and viciousness against social programs, against the LGBTQIA community, against immigrants in a particularly vicious form right now, against workers’ rights in our unions, against civil rights, and against the 14th Amendment. So that represents an authoritarian attack. The only way to get that kind of attack against so many people is that they dispense with a whole set of features of formal democracy. They’re going to seize people without a court order. They’re going to use masked law enforcement agents. They’re going to defy court orders, or they’re going to get a packed Supreme Court to ratify the worst of their excesses. We’re saying we need a united working-class defense against rising authoritarianism. They’ve had a breakthrough. We have got to stop them from consolidating power.

We need a united working-class defense against rising authoritarianism. They’ve had a breakthrough. We have got to stop them from consolidating power.

To be explicit, that means up to and including the general strike, the ability to withhold our labor across our society. That’s what stopped the coup in South Korea in December. Historically, the general strike has been a really important defense mechanism, whether it was in Tunisia or whether it was in South Africa during the apartheid regime. It’s a really important defense mechanism. So our vision is that we see an attack and we need to defend ourselves against it. We represent the vast majority of people in our society. We have a vision of a society that provides for a decent future for all people, where they can live with dignity and with high-quality public institutions and healthy communities; where they can have the resources that they need to thrive and where our children can look forward to a future on a planet that isn’t being destroyed. We have a broad vision of the future. So it’s not just about trying to stop the terrible things that their side is trying to do. It’s about having an inspiring vision of the future that we can believe in that gives us a life that’s full of joy and fulfillment.

AS: What is important for Tempest’s audience of people who are interested in socialism and left politics to understand about May Day Strong?

JS: I think that anyone who’s paying attention, whether they’re a socialist or not, has to be really concerned about the direction of U.S. politics, the way the right has broken through. I think that when you look at mainstream society, most of the response to that has either been completely anemic, like, let’s wait for the Republicans to screw up. James Carville said that in our times, the most radical thing we can do is nothing. We’re going to wait basically and then we’ll get ’em in the polls. That’s one kind of vision.

We have a broad vision of the future. So it’s not just about trying to stop the terrible things that their side is trying to do. It’s about having an inspiring vision of the future that we can believe in that gives us a life that’s full of joy and fulfillment.

Another vision is based on very large mobilizations. I’m really happy that those exist. Indivisible and 50501 are playing an important role and doing important work. And in fact, those folks have been quite unsectarian; they have been willing to work with us. But periodic large mobilizations aren’t going to be sufficient for taking on this challenge. And to the extent that those mobilizations play into an electoral strategy, again, I think that what’s really challenging about Trump is that they’re trying to undermine the basis of fair elections. They have a program of voter suppression. They have a program of layoffs and attacks on federal workers and other unions. They are bullying institutions in higher education and law firms. They are putting troops on the streets. I mean, this is a playbook that is not based on electoral calculation. This is based on authoritarian use of force, intimidation, and control over a whole series of institutions in our society. We need a strategy that mobilizes a big majority of society well organized in our workplaces, in our communities, among immigrants, and wherever people congregate to counter that power. I think the readers of this interview should pay attention to it because I think this is at the heart of a vision that can win.

AS: How can people support this project? How can they get involved?

JS: A bunch of ways. We don’t represent the same kind of money and power that they do, but we represent a fuck of a lot more than nothing. And so there are many responses. If I lived in L.A. or a place like that where masked ICE agents were terrorizing folks, I’d be out on the side of those being targeted. I’d be cautious–I saw that there’s a report that there was an explosion at a police training facility today. It wouldn’t surprise me if that had nothing to do with our movement, but I promise you that our movement is going to get blamed for it. There’s going to be a lot more repression, and we’ve got to stand up to it. We can’t cede the streets to them. We’ve got to be smart, but we’ve got to exercise our right to assemble and to be seen.

So participate in your local actions, whether it’s defending immigrants, or defending any of the attacked groups. When they’re trying to erase LGBTQIA people from our libraries and curriculum, show up, speak, fight it as well as we can. If there’s a union that’s got a picket line up, support it. My point is that there’s a whole bunch of local ways that people should be participating. By all means, do it.

Then there is May Day itself. We put out a call in March for mobilization across the country, and we had hundreds of thousands of people participate in those actions on May Day. The next thing that we want to try to do as a coordinated movement is to turn out for Labor Day events. It’s a workers’ holiday. In a lot of places, it hasn’t been radical in maybe forever, certainly for a long time. We’re trying to reclaim left-wing space. We’re asking people, if there’s a Labor Day march, to bring a sign, show up to it. In a bunch of places, we’re trying to get regular organizing meetings that are open to people who plan to turn out. Here in Chicago we’ll show up to a Labor Day parade and we’ll make a stop and make a protest against some of the billionaires that are behind the DOGE efforts to cut public services.

So if that’s happening in your community, you plug in that way. Labor Day will be an event that we’ll coordinate online at maydaystrong.org. There’ll be a map up and people can click on a map and get a mobilizing link and plug into local actions that way. And then going forward, we want to have twenty or thirty regional conferences around the country. Get a union hall or get a school on a Saturday and ask activists to come to plan. We’re cognizant of the fact that we haven’t had a particularly united movement for quite a while. So the idea of those regional conferences is that they’ll be a place where we can discuss strategy and have workshops that build up our skills and be together in a conversation about what our next steps are and really try to strengthen our ties and build coalition. So those are coming up in the fall. And then beyond that, look for more national mobilizations. And I hope that May Day 2026, which falls on a weekday again next year, will actually be a day where we have some ability to stop production and slow down the authoritarian machine.

AS: Many people have grown skeptical of calls for general strikes and political strikes. Why is this one different?

JS: Yeah, I am skeptical too. I think we should be a little skeptical. A general strike is easy to call for, but actually pulling it off is a different matter. If wishing for it and pulling it off were the same thing, then there would’ve been general strikes long before now. I don’t think I’m predicting that you circle it on a calendar in ten months and say, this is when the general strike is going to be. But it’s an idea that has a tremendous amount of currency right now because it highlights the people who deliver the food; plant, grow, and harvest the crops; make our society run in every kind of way; allow water to run into houses; build our houses; make the roads drivable; and build the machines that we use to run our lives. In any area you want to look at, our society depends on workers. You might have some freaking billionaire weirdos who believe that we’re going to jet off to Mars and that robots are going to do all that work, but that’s not the way our society actually works.

When you have a government that is thoroughly captured by a billionaire agenda like the Trump government is, they’re  also in a complete bubble, they’re in a Twitter bubble, and there’s an echo chamber. They hear themselves talking and think they represent the majority of people. They have a talking point about illegal aliens. I don’t see illegal aliens. I know the city of Chicago and I see vibrant communities of people from around the world who not only make the city work by doing their jobs, but they make it a vibrant and amazing place to be. But those folks on the right have a monopoly on the means of violence right now and a kind of self-assurance and overconfidence that should give all of us pause. It doesn’t matter if their program is deeply unpopular, they intend to carry it out. It doesn’t matter if deporting 16 million people is going to leave our society broken. If they could get away with it, which they won’t, but they’re going to attempt to carry that out because they’re ideologues and they’re in a bubble and they’ve got their hands on the levers of power. That can be a really demoralizing place to be if you’re a worker. And if the only thing that you can do is cast a ballot once every four years, if that’s the only thing you think you can do is stop it, that’s not a recipe for having the confidence and the initiative that we need to organize.

The idea of a general strike really has important currency because it’s actually a vision of something that could change things. It could work.

The idea of a general strike really has important currency because it’s actually a vision of something that could change things. It could work. Now in history, it’s often been that general strikes actually happen because of a particular convergence of events. In the general strikes in the thirties, the cops would murder  a striker and the funeral would wind up becoming the general strike. There would be a defensive response. On the West coast, there was an attempt to crush the longshore strike. The repression gets worse and then the strike generalizes. It was a response to a particular kind of provocation from the bosses. I suspect that we’re in a similar kind of situation. So again, I don’t think you can put it on the calendar, but I think that we can train people about what it means and give the idea currency and get people organizing in the workplaces. It would be really unwise to say that a general strike is something that we are never going to do. It’s the kind of tool in our toolbox we really need right now.

AS: Thank you for doing this interview. I want to express appreciation to the CTU for organizing this space. As one of the union activists here from the San Francisco Bay Area, we are going back home with plans for a Labor Day demonstration, and we’re going to plan a big mass meeting in the fall. We’re going to try to get a thousand people into a high school or a union hall to plan for more actions and to give people courage to fight back here in the Bay Area. I’m very inspired.

JS: Thank you. Awesome.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: Charles Edward Miller; modified by Tempest.

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Two crises in this moment show Trump’s nearly-unchecked power: Brutal deportations of immigrants in Los Angeles and the sudden withdrawal of seven billion dollars in education funding passed by Congress for this coming school year. But when these policies are seen in the totality of Trump’s project, which is simultaneously ideological, political, social, economic, and cultural, they reveal education’s importance as a site of struggle, demonstrating that our location as education workers is uniquely important in building a powerful movement to overturn the Right’s agenda, being fueled by the wealthiest, most powerful elite in this country’s history.

The Moment

The carceral state, with its extensive detention and surveillance,  was started and expanded well before Trump’s recent victory. Yet even for many aware of the development of “Cop City,” seeing ICE and DHS agents in Los Angeles, protected by the local police, conducting deportations, kidnappings, and imprisoning immigrants in detention centers, brutalizing demonstrators who try to stop these actions is a horrifying acceleration and intensification of militarizing the police, endorsed by both parties. LA was the experiment, which Trump has announced he will take to other cities, and we should take him at his word. The massive funding Trump has won from Congress to expand deportations and internments is larger than most nations’ military budgets and is accompanied by expansion of the attack on civil liberties, to include cities’ self-rule. As creation of the internment camp, “Alligator Alcatraz,” in the Everglades and plans to deport more people to other countries show, we cannot count on the courts, lawsuits, or lobbying to stop Trump’s usurpation of the government apparatus to destroy democracy.

Trump’s “strategic chaos” is being used to create havoc in education, throwing school districts into immediate disarray, pushing states to either compensate districts directly for this lost education funding or forcing districts to cover the financial loss themselves.

The other crisis comes with the Trump administration’s surprise announcement that the federal government is withdrawing seven billion dollars in appropriations approved by Congress for K-12 education,  due to be released on July 1 for this coming school year. Trump’s “strategic chaos” is being used to create havoc in education, throwing school districts into immediate disarray, pushing states to either compensate districts directly for this lost education funding or forcing districts to cover the financial loss themselves. While we might have had time to build broad coalitions to fight for state funding in response to money lost in the omnibus GOP legislation by reaching out to other public employee unions and constituencies that will suffer from the cuts, now education workers, our unions, and parent and community supporters face the extraordinary challenge of wheedling money from the states before school begins. Without this additional funding, most districts will be unable to stave off cuts in services to English language learners, children of migrant farmworkers, and after-school programs. Cuts in services generally translate into layoffs of school personnel, and how that scenario plays out will depend on hastily organized political struggles, appeals to governors and state legislatures, and lawsuits against Trump’s action. As of today, thirty-six states have already filed these suits.

Dismissing Trump, his backers, and his administration as “morons,” “lunatics,” “ignorant incompetents,” which I see often in posts on social media, obscures the purposes of the policies and the ideology driving them. The policies’ aims are certainly evil, but the decisions are politically calculated, carried out by those transparently furthering personal ambitions. Trump and his backers aim to sow fear, insecurity, confusion, and a sense of powerlessness, as do terrorists. The intent to create chaos in the schools to further the Right’s project of destroying social, political, and economic gains won since Reconstruction is clearly seen in Oklahoma, by two mandates issued by the state superintendent of schools, Ryan Walters, one right after the other. Overturning decades-long certification agreements among the states, Walter’s, a Trumpster with an appetite for power unrestrained by law or even GOP norms, announced Oklahoma will withhold certificates for teachers from “woke” states who do not pass a new ideology test developed by PragerU, which measures whether they are patriots. And in response to cuts in federal aid to schools for students’ meals, he ordered districts to submit new budgets to pay for all students’ school meals immediately. Though Walters’ mandate on districts’ funding meals was dismissed by the chair of the Oklahoma House Education Committee as unenforceable and unconstitutional, Walters’ argument repeated rhetoric and arguments Trump/Musk used in firing federal workers. Walters argued education funds “need to go from administrators and bureaucrats’ pockets to school lunches…We have got to get away from growing government, growing bureaucracy, growing administrators….We need less administrators and more of the taxpayer dollars to go to kids directly.” Walters’  actions are intended to make education workers feel isolated and defeated. He may have succeeded for now, but his crude pummeling of school administrators and school boards has the potential to create the kind of support that education workers tapped into during the Red State walkouts, so it’s worth noting that the chair of the House Education Committee, who called out Walters’ action, is a former teacher.

When we examine these crises, such as the one manufactured by Walters, as authoritarian strategy, they reveal the centrality of schools as sites of struggle in this moment and what education workers and our unions can do. Trump and his billionaire backers care very much about what occurs in schools. The Trump administration has not disclosed reasons for the timing of the ICE raids, but we do know the raids began at the very end of the school year, with just two days of instruction left in the calendar. We also know public schools have been central to the life of the Hispanic community in LA, and members of the LA teachers union, United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA), are widely known to be committed to protecting immigrant students and their families. For instance, UTLA won provisions about immigrant rights in their contract and protected students when ICE agents came to schools in the Spring. LA high school students have a long, proud history of organizing walkouts to protect their communities, including walkouts against deportations in February and forming a grassroots organization, Students Deserve, which has won significant reforms to defund policing in schools. Students Deserve has continued the struggles of Black Lives Matter, with support from UTLA in alliance with community organizations. While this background is not conclusive evidence that the timing of the raids was deliberate to avoid schools being used as staging areas for resistance, the information does demonstrate that public schools can be strategic sites for building resistance in the greater society.

Really? Education workers are a threat to Trump?

Why would education workers, taken as a group, from kindergarten teachers, to grad students,  from school bus drivers and classroom aides to full-time higher ed faculty, be of particular concern to Silicon Valley billionaires, asset managers that control Wall Street, and huge corporations like Walmart?

The ideas we hold as individuals can pose a serious challenge to the status quo, which is why universities are being attacked and curricula purged of anything suggesting ideas the Right wants suppressed. But in addition, acting collectively as workers, we are a danger, for reasons Erin explains in her first article for The Future of Our Schools Collective.  What many in education miss, a strength our unions have declined to tap, is that the combination of education’s function in our social system and the unique power workers possess when they organize and fight together, especially when they tap the power a militant, democratic union provides, makes us unique occupationally. Shared occupational interests can unite us if we see beyond geography and institutional silos. Work in the education sector gives us social connections and political power that workers in other sectors can’t tap so readily, though their position in the productive economy can give them power we lack.

Education’s role is ensuring a society secures its future. Education reproduces (or changes) its essential functions. Though teachers generally make sense of that responsibility in individual terms, helping students to learn, grow socially, and master disciplinary knowledge, our work is part of a far greater picture. K-12 teaching’s day-to-day work, accomplished in classrooms and schools that were, by design, insular, isolated from one another and separated from communities, often obscures that big picture from us. But those wielding concentrated power and wealth over our lives and those they employ to orchestrate public opinion and set policy think a lot about maintaining their position, expanding their power and money, and hence what schools can and should do to make that occur. Reforms they successfully impose on us reflect how they want society to look, just as our struggles to use teaching and schooling’s organization to create a more just, equal society contest their vision and plans. Often, when teachers organize to demand adequate preparation time, smaller classes, libraries in schools, and pay and pensions that allow us to make teaching a career, we’re not thinking about the ways the improvements we want in schools relate to the big political, economic, and social picture. But be assured, our enemies see it all. Still, what occurs in classrooms is not the only, nor arguably the most influential, site in which learning occurs. We’re flooded with information from social media and influencers. The cultural apparatus educates, but social movements do as well, exposing cultural and ideological assumptions.

What happens in “government schools,” as the far-right labels public education, what we teach and how, matters to powerful elites because we socialize and educate the workforce; we make their profits possible.

The other site of education occurs at work, which, whether we like it or not,  is configured by conflict between workers and those who control our labor. That’s why workers form unions, which is another reason education workers are a threat.  What happens in “government schools,” as the far-right labels public education, what we teach and how, matters to powerful elites because we socialize and educate the workforce; we make their profits possible. Though this topic is one I can’t give the attention it merits in this article, education’s role in addressing economic contradictions and changes in working conditions is a significant factor now and relates to new reforms being pushed to vocationalize K-12 schools with an emphasis on information technology and work with AI.

A final factor that has motivated education reform and driven attacks on education workers organized collectively is that education remains the last and largest public service that has not yet been privatized. It is a massive source of profit, now more than ever, because of the money expected to be made in AI. Huge profits beckon investors in Trump’s plan to destroy public education as a system and completely privatize it-  as does the new neoliberal project, which is gaining popularity in both parties. The refurbished version of the neoliberal project will fund a system of public education looted internally, with technology.

In fact, this new neoliberal project has morphed from the old.  A blog in February 2020 proudly explained that the Progressive Policy Institute (which has ties to the Democratic Party, through its Center for American Politics), had formally sponsored a group called “The Neoliberal Project” since 2017. Colin Mortimer describes this in “A New Chapter: the Neoliberal Project Joins PPI.” Feb. 10, 2020.  Shortly after it was created, the Neoliberal Project boasted that it had 40 chapters around the world, a podcast listened to over 300,000 times, and a social media reach of over 15 million impressions a month. Will Marshall, PPI’s president, took to Reddit to explain The Neoliberal Project to this new audience.

This is a brutal time for education workers, and it’s understandable they may not feel the idea of potential power is a help when they’re facing vicious attacks on their integrity, ideals, and their jobs. With the exception of Chloe Asselin’s interview with the newly-elected reform president of the Washington DC local, long a bulwark of the national AFT machine, the other pieces the collective has published in our first month, based on observations and discussions with activists, suggest the power education workers might claim is far from what people in schools are thinking and feeling now.  Some are seeking relationships and community to sustain us while questioning long-held assumptions, but not coming up with answers.

The ferocious legislative and political attacks about what we teach and how, as well as the conditions of our labor, are felt most directly by education workers in school districts and states with a well-organized, aggressive Right wing. This sense of being embattled and isolated is prevalent in the South, especially outside of large cities, although education workers in communities under siege by right-wing activists in liberal states and communities can feel it too. While we need to acknowledge and respect these feelings, doing so doesn’t change the challenge:  Protecting democracy and expanding it requires that we carve out space for struggle, even when we question how to win the big battles.

Carving out and expanding space(s)

I suggest we flip the question from whether we can succeed to how we move towards creating and carving out spaces in which activists can imagine struggle in ways that encourage solidarity among education workers, supporting and protecting one another from victimization. It’s a process that needs to occur in schools, though it need not start there.

As food for thought, I’ll share an experience I had before Trump’s election, when I spoke about union democracy at a conference of the Oregon Education Association. I led a workshop intended to help members who were or wanted to be active in the union identify and use their power as rank-and-file workers in their schools, aided by staff when specific help was requested. Most participants taught in rural communities or small towns. We know from research in teacher education that unspoken cultural assumptions can configure how we deal with students, and in my experience working with union activists, this extends to the way we relate to authority as well–administration and school boards. Education workers, especially women (over 70% of teachers are women), especially those working with younger students, often feel they must be “nice” when they face conditions that undercut their work. As the entire workshop analyzed ideas shared by small groups, we saw some reflected reluctance to seem critical, negative, confront authority, or rock the boat. Participants discussed the complex ways we resist and accommodate policies we think are wrong and agreed (it seemed–we took no votes) that at times, to protect our students and the dignity of our labor, we must move from “nice” to another mode.

I suggested “naughty,” pushing the envelope on school practices and behavioral norms.  More seasoned activists cautioned that this has to be done in ways that keep individuals from being singled out and harmed. An energy filled the room as we discussed this mindset change, and although I do not know what follow-up occurred when they returned to their schools, when the workshop ended for a break before the next sessions began, several workshop participants decided they wouldn’t wait in the very long line for the women’s bathroom, claiming the right to use the empty men’s bathroom, laughing about being “naughty.”This anecdote suggests that what often appears to be spontaneous is often a result of a new idea. Building confidence and solidarity depends on more than attitudes. Knowledge counts too.

Another source of power for education workers in this country, from the most militant urban locals in “blue” states to the smallest communities in states dominated by the Right, is what we can learn from the “Red State” walkouts, curiously ignored by the media, the left, and our national unions. For complex reasons, including the fact that education involves social reproduction, that we do “care” work, as well as cultural and knowledge work, rather than manufacturing cars or delivering packages or lattes, many don’t see teachers as “real” workers. Yet we have blazed trails that contain vital lessons in building a resistance to Trump.

[Education workers] have blazed trails that contain vital lessons in building a resistance to Trump.

Just seven years ago, education workers led the  2018 “Red State Revolt,” a struggle that labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein discusses as one of four instances in which unions transformed themselves into “popular and consequential social movements” in his forthcoming book Why Unions Matter. In these historic walkouts,  “tens of thousands of public-school teachers conducted a set of entirely illegal strikes in GOP-dominated West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, Kentucky, and other conservative states.” While the four examples differ in many respects, they shared “something far more transcendent” than being a labor struggle, a term, a way of thinking, Red State participants themselves may not have used to characterize their struggle. Regardless of their conception of what they were doing and why, their actions spoke for them. They launched a vast social movement, developing and bringing with them new allies–a movement in the most conservative regions of this country aided by radical ideas and activists. The movement, our movement of education workers, challenged repressive political authority directly, demanding democracy, creating a moment in history “when these social movements are at flood tide” and  “multitudes of ordinary men and women glimpse a world transformed.”

While I intend this to inspire, I am not proposing that the “Red State” walkouts are a template for organizing education workers at this moment because I do not think there is a single model or blueprint. What we do have are examples from which we can learn. The walkouts demonstrated our potential power, how a labor struggle can become a social movement, and how a struggle in one place can spark similar battles elsewhere, even when not coordinated. What’s to be learned from the walkouts?

Imagine how militant national unions could support education workers coming under the most severe attacks in states controlled by the GOP and also educate and help mobilize members in Democratic states about the destructive policies being hatched now for them? Imagine if our national unions helped coordinate actions for a national walkout, in alliance with social justice activists and community organizations? Imagine if they,  or we, coordinated a national day of protest, not a “Saturday march,” but a one-day national strike?

NEA and AFT have made important shifts in their rhetoric and appear more hospitable to members mobilizing. Still, they shirk from providing the leadership we need, in part because mobilizing members, supporting them to think and act independently, having a robust democratic culture and organizational practices that support it, creates challenges to their power and ideas about what’s best. So, how might we put pressure on the national unions to lead as they should? I’ll address that challenge in another article, but for now, let me propose that we be naughty.

I’ve heard arguments from teacher union activists that now is not a time to criticize the national unions. Instead, we need a “united front.” However, AFT’s deal with OpenAI and Microsoft to push AI in classrooms is a glaring example of how their strategy disarms us, forcing us to struggle defensively, in locals or maybe states, against harm being done on the national level, by our own unions, supported by our dues.

Some also contend we should not organize along “sectoral lines,” that is, as education workers per se. This strategy not only ignores the harm done to all of labor by AFT’s stunning alliance with tech moguls who support Trump, but it also misses what education workers bring to the critical task of organizing the South. We have won the most important battles not because we have followed the wishes of the national unions but because we have set out an independent path, fighting for democratic unions that integrate social justice ideals and ideas into our organizing, fighting the powerful elites rather than trying to accommodate them.

I’ve been concerned about how much discussion about labor’s future in general and teachers’ unions in particular focuses on the more liberal political environments in which collective bargaining is (still) legal. The focus has encouraged people to miss an important victory that followed the aftermath of the West Virginia walkouts. Education workers organized “wall to wall” in a struggle that brought radical activists, union members, and education workers who belonged to neither AFT nor NEA affiliates, together in a social movement supported by communities and often local school administration, throughout the state. They created the conditions and pressure for ” a merger-from-below” in which both the AFT and NEA state affiliates combined in one state union of education workers.

Education workers in West Virginia are now unified organizationally, not just wall-to-wall in their own districts but throughout the state. What occurred in West Virginia is a sharp contrast to bureaucratic fusion of the NEA affiliate in New York and the New York City AFT machine, which produced  New York State United Teachers. This West Virginia experience suggests that rank-and-file members of AFT and NEA in all the states that have separate state affiliates might consider their own “merger-from-below,” demanding a single, democratic organization to represent education workers in the state. Do we really have resources for the rivalries between separate state affiliates?

The third accomplishment of education workers in the South, in North Carolina, a “purple” state,  that provides ideas as well as hope for U.S. education workers, is Organize2020, a caucus that intended to democratize its sclerotic, bureaucratic NEA state affiliate, NCAE, North Carolina Association of Educators by building a grass roots movement of education workers committed to racial justice. The caucus started out as a small group of people meeting in someone’s kitchen and grew its network based on its vision, organizing in the locals in the “Triangle” as well as rural areas. Their goal was to win leadership in a revitalized union by 2020, which they did. It has changed the culture and organizational practices of the state organization, reflected in its Summer Member Organizer program. Organize2020 has grown the program from 45 members in 5 counties when they took office to 150 members in 45 counties, with more than two dozen members playing lead roles. Before writing this article, I talked with one of the first Organize2020 members, who is the current NCAE president, about the vision guiding their work. I was struck by how his brief answer captured Nelson Lichtenstein’s more expansive description of what unions can and should do:

Trade unions advance democracy, nowhere more clearly than in those times and places where an oligarchic or authoritarian government holds sway. To do so, however, the unions have to transcend themselves. They move from being organizations that represent just a well-defined sector of the working-class to social movements that engender a vast new set of energies and aspirations. They open political and moral opportunities never before thought possible for ordinary men and women.  And that is a large part of the reason that when dictators and reactionaries come to power, in the United States as well as distant lands, they invariably attack the unions, either by destroying them outright or transforming these organizations into but an apparatus of the state.1Op. Cit. Chapter V, “Subverting the Union Impulse.”

The largest union in this country is the NEA, with about three million members. The AFT has 1.8 million members. Our numbers, education’s location in the society, our existence in almost every community in this country, and the conditions of our work, in particular our relationships with parents and students, make us uniquely situated to claim our power in fighting the billionaires who aim to destroy our livelihood and the role of schools in improving our society. To do that, we have to recognize our power, take ownership of the unions,  and think of new possibilities, going beyond lobbying, lawsuits, webinars in which we’re given information,  using the contract but going beyond contract unionism. Details?  In future articles, I’ll explore what those possibilities might be. In the meantime, solidarity!

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: Anastasiya Badun; modified by Tempest.

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The Trump administration has taken a sledgehammer to the existing domestic and international order. All the damage it has done can appear to be just a cynical smash and grab operation for Donald Trump and his fellow lumpen capitalist cronies. It is that, but it is not just that.

The rational core of Trump’s project is laid out by the Heritage Foundation in its Mandate for Leadership and The Prioritization Imperative: A Strategy to Defend America’s Interests in a More Dangerous World. These have provided him with a blueprint to implement an authoritarian nationalist strategy to reassert U.S. dominance in global capitalism.

Trump is abandoning Washington’s post–Cold War project of superintending a neoliberal order of free trade globalization. Instead, he is trying to accomplish his oft-repeated goal of “Making America Great Again” by putting “America First” against both friends and foes. He is downgrading or abandoning multilateral institutions, imposing tariffs on scores of countries, and threatening to annex Greenland, Panama, and even Canada.

While far more coherent than Trump 1.0, Trump 2.0 is an administration still riven by conflicts best exemplified by the apocalyptic breakup of the president’s bad bromance with Elon Musk over the so-called Big Beautiful Bill. It is one of many splits, including Trump’s battle with the Federalist Society, which helped stack the courts with friendly judges, over its support of the Court of International Trade’s ruling against his ability to impose tariffs. Another is the enormous one between Trump and his MAGA base over releasing Jeffrey Epstein’s client list of people with whom he trafficked women and girls.

Despite all the chaos, confusion, and faction fights, Trump’s administration is united behind one project—escalating Washington’s imperial rivalry with China.

Mandate for Leadership identifies China as “a totalitarian enemy of the United States, not a strategic partner or fair competitor.” The administration is trying to extricate itself from wars in Ukraine and Gaza, compel allies to take up the burden of their own security, and thereby free itself up to prioritize its great power rivalry with Beijing.

In response, China has made clear its determination to go toe to toe against the U.S. trade war, as well as its geopolitical threats and military buildup in Asia. Faced with such opposition from Beijing, Trump has backed off his most extreme measures, relaxing, for example, restrictions on exports of Nvidia’s computer chips and dialing down the unprecedented tariffs he initially imposed.

But the growing competition between the two powers will disrupt such temporary measures. With their interimperial rivalry in danger of superheating, the Left must do everything in our power to build international solidarity to stop this conflict triggering a catastrophic war between nuclear powers.

Despite all the chaos, confusion, and faction fights, Trump’s administration is united behind one project—escalating Washington’s imperial rivalry with China. The capitalist roots of imperial rivalry

To be clear, this rivalry is not the result of the policies of the Trump or Biden administrations nor that of Xi Jinping’s regime in China. It is the product of capitalism’s laws of uneven and combined development, crises, and competition between states over the division and redivision of the world market for their corporations.

This economic competition drives states toward geopolitical rivalry and war. The result of those conflicts creates a dynamic hierarchy of states—with the imperialist powers at the top, regional powers in the middle, and oppressed nations and peoples at the bottom. All these capitalist states are riven by internal class and social divisions.

No order of states is permanent. The system’s booms, busts, rivalries, wars, and domestic struggles upset and reshuffle the state system, with established powers declining and new ones rising. We have witnessed a sequence of imperialist orders over the last century—the multipolar colonial period of the 19th century through World Wars I and II, the bipolar Cold War, and Washington’s unrivalled hegemony after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The United States hoped to maintain that unipolar order by integrating all states into its so-called “rules based order” of free trade globalization. It tried to block the rise of any potential peer competitor, to demolish any “rogue state” like Iraq, and to police states destabilized by Washington’s neoliberal policies and interventions like Haiti.

The relative decline of U.S. Imperialism

Four developments led to the relative decline of the United States and the end of the unipolar order. First and foremost, the neoliberal boom from the early 1980s up through the 2008 Great Recession led to the rise of new centers of capital accumulation, most importantly China, but also Russia, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and many others.

Second, Washington’s attempt to lock in its hegemony over the Middle East and its energy reserves through its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq ended in disastrous defeat, preoccupying it in brutal occupations and counter-insurgencies. With Washington bogged down, China, Russia, and various regional powers became increasingly assertive in the state system.

Third, the Great Recession brought an end to the neoliberal boom, ushering a global slump of alternating recessions and weak recoveries. Sluggish growth and declining rates of profit have driven states to protect their own corporations, slowing global trade and exacerbating geopolitical rivalry.

Finally, the pandemic, its disruption of global supply chains, and the accompanying recession exposed Washington’s relative decline, as well as its dependence on China. Together these developments ushered in today’s asymmetric multipolar order.

The United States still stands atop the system with the largest economy and military, as well as unparalleled geopolitical influence, but it now faces imperialist rivals; most importantly China, but also Russia. In addition to these, there are a host of regional powers that jockey for position between the biggest powers over oppressed nations and peoples.

With none of the imperialist powers able to overcome the global slump, the ruling elites of each have turned to austerity and authoritarian repression of resistance at home and beggar thy neighbor policies like dumping and protectionism abroad.

In this new order, the key rivalry is between the United States and China. They had been strategic partners with increasingly integrated economies in the heyday of neoliberal globalization under Bill Clinton’s administration. But no longer.

Today, China is the world’s largest capitalist manufacturer, exercises growing geopolitical influence, and has the ability to enforce its will with the second largest military. Washington now views China as a potential peer competitor it must contain. As a result, the two powers are at loggerheads on everything from economics to geopolitics and military expansion, particularly in the Asia Pacific region.

The new Washington Consensus

In this asymmetric multipolar world order, successive U.S. administrations abandoned the old strategy of superintending global capitalism to adopt the new Washington Consensus of great power conflict with China. Up until the last decade, the United States had pursued a strategy of “con-gagement” with Beijing, a combination of containment and engagement. The Obama administration’s Pivot to Asia was its last gasp.

The first Trump administration decisively shifted U.S. grand strategy to rivalry with China and Russia. It aimed to downgrade multilateral alliances in favor of unilateral assertions of U.S. power, banning high tech exports to China, imposing tariffs to reindustrialize the United States, boosting the U.S. military budget, and reorienting U.S. armed forces towards Asia.

Successive U.S. administrations abandoned the old strategy of superintending global capitalism to adopt the new Washington Consensus of great power conflict with China.

But Trump’s erratic swings, his administration’s deep internal divisions, and opposition from the state bureaucracy hampered the implementation of the new approach. In the end, he accelerated Washington’s relative decline and, in the words of two Obama administration officials, managed to “embolden China, distress Europe and leave all American allies and foes wondering about the durability of our commitments and the credibility of our threats.”

The Biden administration retained Trump’s focus on great power rivalry with China and Russia but replaced its predecessor’s America First approach with muscular multilateralism. It aimed to refurbish U.S. capitalism by implementing a new industrial policy in high tech, to maintain Trump’s tariff regime with a high fence around a small yard of strategic technology to block China’s progress, especially in advanced microchips, and to rebuild and expand Washington’s alliances, turning them against Beijing and Moscow.

After a shambolic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Biden administration exploited Russia’s imperialist invasion of Ukraine to rally its allies, not only against Moscow, but also against Beijing. It convinced NATO to declare China a global security challenge.

But Biden fundamentally undermined his moralistic claims that the United States was defending its so-called rules-based international order with his support for Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. That enabled China and Russia to expose Washington’s hypocrisy and rally other states around them under the banner of “multipolarity.”

Nonetheless, no one should be under any illusions that Beijing or Moscow are allies of Palestinian liberation. In the case of China, despite its rhetorical opposition to Israel’s genocide, it is the second largest trade partner with Israel, its state-owned Shanghai International Port Group built and operates Haifa’s $1.7 billion port, one of its other companies is building Tel Aviv’s light rail system, and another, Hikvision, sells surveillance technology to Israel to police Palestinians in the West Bank.

Xi makes China great again

Faced with Washington’s new great power strategy to contain China’s rise, Beijing had no choice but to respond with aggressive countermeasures of its own. Xi Jinping broke with his predecessors’ cautious foreign policy, promising to carry out a “national rejuvenation” to fulfill “the Chinese Dream” of reclaiming the country’s status as a great power.

But Xi confronts innumerable challenges of his own. China’s economy has slowed from around 10 percent annual growth in the 2000s to now about 5 percent, and it’s plagued with overproduction, a burst real estate bubble, massive debt, corruption, an aging and shrinking workforce, and high youth unemployment. China’s regime has also faced waves of class and social struggle from strikes and mass protests in the 2000s to the democratic uprising in Hong Kong, Uyghur resistance to Han settler colonialism in Xinjiang, and insurrectionary job actions and mass marches against its brutal Zero-Covid lockdowns.

To maintain his rule against bureaucratic rivals and resistance from below, Xi has turned to authoritarian repression. He has purged dissident and corrupt bureaucrats, banned labor NGOs, carried out cultural genocide and mass incarceration of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, crushed the movement in Hong Kong, and ramped up the oppression of women and LGBTQ people as part of the regime’s pro-natalist drive to raise the birth rate and replenish its labor force.

Xi paired that repression with massive new investment in the economy, with two goals in mind—shoring up domestic support with the promise of a better life and fending off Washington’s attempt to block China’s rise. The regime enacted an enormous stimulus plan to sustain economic growth after the Great Recession and amid the global slump.

In 2015, Xi inaugurated Made in China 2025, a state-funded industrial policy to develop the country’s high tech companies, ensure they’re self-sufficient, and position them to outcompete their multinational rivals. By any measure it has been a smashing success. China now boasts world class chip design and manufacturing companies like HiSilicon and SMIC, the world’s largest EV company, BYD, the world’s leading battery maker, CATL, the dominant manufacturer of solar panels, JinkoSolar, pathbreaking AI innovators like DeepSeek, robotics makers that have automated factory labor at a higher rate than Europe and the United States, and a near monopoly on rare earth processing plants and magnet manufacturers that supply the world’s high tech industry.

China has started not only to catch up, but in some cases surpass U.S. high tech industries. As two influential economists argue,

“According to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, an independent think tank funded by the Australian Department of Defense, the United States led China in 60 of 64 frontier technologies, such as A.I. and cryptography, between 2003 and 2007, while China led the United States in just three. In the most recent report, covering 2019 through 2023, the rankings were flipped on their head. China led in 57 of 64 key technologies, and the United States held the lead in only seven.”

In reality, Washington’s bans on tech exports to China backfired, driving Chinese corporations to develop their own capacity that is now challenging, and in some cases surpassing, those of its rivals in the advanced capitalist world. That led Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to declare Washington’s tech bans on China a “failure” that “only strengthens foreign rivals” and “weakens America’s position.”

Competing for markets

All this government stimulus has not saved China from capitalism’s global slump. It has instead produced a crisis of overinvestment, cut throat competition between state and private capitalist corporations, declining profitability, deflation, and overcapacity.

This in turn led capital to flow into speculative investment in housing, creating a giant bubble that popped with the collapse of the world’s largest real estate corporation, Evergrande. That exacerbated the country’s debt crisis, hammered the household wealth of the country’s middle class, and undercut consumer demand.

Even after China partially stabilized this crisis, it has not solved its problem of overproduction. In fact, the regime exacerbated it with a new stimulus package to drag its economy out of the pandemic recession. As a result, China produces more of everything—from concrete to steel, solar panels, and EVs—than it can sell domestically at high enough profits.

The Chinese ruling class had hoped that its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched in 2013, could help China export its excess industrial capacity. BRI was planned as a $1 trillion infrastructure development project that builds roads, railway networks, and ports mainly in the Global South.

Participating states have taken out loans from Chinese banks to pay for the construction, making China the world’s largest debt collector. And, in a classic imperialist pattern, the transport systems built through BRI are more often than not designed to deliver raw materials from developing countries’ extractivist industries to China for its manufacturing system.

China has also ramped up exports, triggering protectionist responses from capitalist states, not just the U.S., but also the European Union and various states in the Global South. They have all started to complain about China dumping its surplus in their markets and undercutting their less competitive corporations.

The export splurge has had a negative impact on Beijing’s nominal allies. For example, it has exacerbated the deindustrialization of Brazil, increasingly reducing its economy to the export of raw materials and agricultural produce to China, a classic dependency trap.

Beijing’s diversification of its export markets is also intended to insulate its economy from Washington’s increasing tariffs and bans. As part of that effort, it has decreased its holding of U.S. treasuries and increasingly conducted trade with other countries like Russia in its own currency.

But there is no way China can replace the U.S. market entirely. So, to evade U.S. tariffs, it relocated plants to countries like Vietnam and Mexico to use them as export processing platforms.

At the same time, the regime realized that it had to develop its own internal market. To accomplish this goal, it launched its dual circulation strategy, which invests in state-owned enterprises producing for its domestic market while maintaining a parallel export-oriented economy.

As part of that strategy, Xi has repeatedly promised to raise domestic demand by increasing workers income, bolstering the state’s minimal safety net, and stabilizing the real estate market. But such proposals for “common prosperity” have died on the vine in the past.

Why? Because China’s economic growth has been entirely premised on exploitation of cheap, migrant labor. It therefore refrains from increasing these workers wages and its social spending. That’s why Xi has opposed “egalitarianism” and “welfarism” that reward “the lazy.” As a result, China still remains dependent on its export economy.

Forging alliances in a multipolar world

To maintain and expand its access to the world market, China has forged multilateral and bilateral political pacts. It established the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which brings together Eurasian as well as Middle Eastern states, most importantly China and Russia, in an economic, political, and security alliance.

Even more importantly, China set up the BRICS alliance, made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, as well as a growing list of other countries, but in which Beijing is by far the dominant player. China has used this alliance to advance political and economic initiatives, including The New Development Bank and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, establish economic relations with countries in the Global South, and attempt to lead them in a challenge to Washington’s unipolar order in order to establish a multipolar one.

China doubled down on its most important geopolitical alliance with Russia when Xi and Vladimir Putin inked their “friendship without limits” at the Beijing Olympics in 2022, right on the eve of Russia’s imperialist invasion of Ukraine. As the dominant player, China has increased exports to Moscow—including so-called dual-use technology for its military industry, to prevent Russia from collapsing under U.S. and EU sanctions—and inked deals with Russia to import oil, natural gas, and coal.

But these powers do not form a coherent bloc of states, nor are they forging an “Axis of Upheaval” against the United States. They are internally divided by their distinct and sometimes competing interests.

There are countless examples of their schisms. India, for example, is in the BRICS alliance with China, but is also in the QUAD along with the United States, Australia, and Japan against China. India and China just recently clashed over disputed border claims. And Russia and China abandoned Iran, another member of the BRICS,when it was attacked by the United States and Israel.

Nor are Beijing’s pacts breaking from the neoliberal order the United States has established. For instance, the BRICS’ New Development Bank declared support for “the multilateral trading system with the World Trade Organization (WTO) at its core.” In fact, China has used its alliances to advance its interests within the neoliberal order of free trade globalization that the United States built.

Flexing military power

To back up its economic and geopolitical assertion of power, China has modernized its military. It has increased annual military spending for thirty years in the row to a whopping $296 billion in 2023, the second largest in the world but still just a third of what the U.S. spent at over $916 billion in 2023.

It has developed a blue water navy boasting more ships than any other power, including three aircraft carriers, with a fourth now under construction. And it is expanding its air force, nuclear arsenal, and battery of intercontinental ballistic and hypersonic missiles at a rapid pace.

[China] has increased annual military spending for thirty years in the row to a whopping $296 billion in 2023, the second largest in the world but still just a third of what the U.S. spent…

China has flexed its military might in the South China Sea. It has deployed its navy to protect shipping lanes, asserted control over fisheries, and staked claims to undersea oil and natural gas reserves. That has brought it into conflict with several countries in the region over rival claims to islands, including the Philippines and Japan and behind them the United States, Asia’s overlord.

Most importantly, China has deployed its military in increasingly aggressive exercises around Taiwan, which it considers a renegade province that it aims to assimilate by force if necessary. The United States has armed the island nation and maintained “strategic ambiguity” as to whether it would defend it in the case of a Chinese invasion.

The stakes of the standoff are not only geopolitical, but also economic. Taiwan produces 90 percent of the world’s most advanced microchips, which are essential to everything from computers to high tech fighter bombers like Lockheed Martin’s F-35. The United States and China are at odds over Taiwan, each using it as a pawn in their rivalry while overriding the nation’s right to self-determination in the process.

“Making America Great Again” again

To fend off China’s challenge to U.S. hegemony, Trump is carrying out a radical break with Washington’s post–Cold War grand strategy of superintending global capitalism through multilateral economic, political, and military alliances. In place of that, he is implementing the Heritage Foundation’s authoritarian nationalist strategy.

At home, Trump has launched a neoliberal class war. He hopes that austerity, tax cuts, and deregulation will stimulate capitalist investment in manufacturing, restore U.S. economic independence, and bolster competitiveness in general and specifically against China.

He is carrying this assault in authoritarian fashion, using executive orders, overriding and in some cases smashing the federal bureaucracy, and testing the boundaries of the U.S. Constitution. He has dismantled whole sections of the so-called deep state that obstructed him in his first term, shredded the welfare state, and fired federal workers. To divide and conquer working class resistance, he has scapegoated migrants, trans people, people of color, and Palestine solidarity activists.

Abroad, Trump is implementing “America First” unilateralism. It is not isolationist, despite mainstream commentators’ repeated and mistaken claims. He is determined to intervene economically, politically, and militarily throughout the world to advance U.S. interests at the cost of both allies and adversaries, especially China.

His bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities proves this. The attack was intended to send a message to powers throughout the world, especially China, that the administration is more than willing to use its powerful arsenal of destruction to pursue its aims.

Nor is his strategy to forge a new “Concert of Great Powers,” dividing global capitalism up into spheres of influence overseen by the United States, China, Russia, and other great powers. Whatever deals he has offered to Putin and Xi, their potential spheres of influence overlap and contradict one another.

The United States, for example, will not relinquish Asia to China, nor will it abandon Europe to Russia. No Yalta 2.0 is in the offing. Trump is asserting U.S. dominance throughout the entire world against both allies and antagonists.

Editors’ Note: Part Two of Ashley Smith’s article will run next week. It more closely analyses the roots of the Trump administration policy and the Chinese response.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”

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Alex de Jong reviews the Filipino activist-scholar Walden Bello’s new memoir, Global Battlefields: My Close Encounters with Dictatorship, Capital, Empire, and Love. Chronicling Bello’s political development, Global Battlefields provides us with an informative and entertaining portrait of a committed internationalist.

In Global Battlefields: My Close Encounters with Dictatorship, Capital, Empire, and Love, Walden Bello remembers a rich life as a scholar and activist, from agitating against U.S. support for Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the 1970s and 1980s to becoming a leading critic of neoliberal globalization to joining the Philippine House of Representatives and running for vice-president.

As Bello describes in Global Battlefields, his life went through very different phases. Only once Bello was already in the U.S. to work on his PhD at Princeton did he jump into political activism. Quite literally; in April 1970, as the U.S. was expanding the Vietnam War into Cambodia, he passed by a crowd blocking the entrance of the Pentagon-linked Institute of Defense Analysis. As he saw police breaking up the human chain in front of the entrance, “something snapped,” and he joined the protestors, “linking up with two people that I later learned were Arno Mayer, a distinguished professor of diplomatic history, and Stanly Stein, an equally prominent professor of Latin American history.” It makes one wonder which Ivy League professors today are willing to engage in such civil disobedience.

The making of an activist

Joining the anti-war activists might have been a snap decision but it did not come out of nothing. In the early chapters of Global Battlefields, unfortunately left out of the U.S. edition for reasons of space, Bello remembers being a budding existentialist and atheist at the deeply Catholic Ateneo de Manila University. At this university, a breeding ground for conservative members of the elite, Bello was all too conscious of his “middle-middle class status.” For much of his life, Bello was somewhat of an outsider, going on to become a Filipino activist, and a member of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), in the United States. During the 1990s and early 2000s, he was a prominent spokesperson and intellectual in the alter-globalization movement that opposed the extension of the neoliberal model, especially as it was forced upon countries in the Global South. Differing from the quasi-anarchist sentiment that was, at least in Western countries, so prevalent in this movement, Bello always saw politics and states as not only parts of the problem but also as parts of potential solutions.

Differing from the quasi-anarchist sentiment that was, at least in Western countries, so prevalent in th[e alter-globalization] movement, Bello always saw politics and states as not only parts of the problem but also as parts of potential solutions.

European and U.S. audiences are probably most familiar with the work Bello did in the period of the alter-globalization movement. Building on his work investigating the role of the World Bank in supporting the dictatorship of Marcos in the Philippines, which he wrote about in Development Debacle: the World Bank in the Philippines (1982), Bello became an analyst and critic of the role of supposedly non-political international institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF. Such institutions played a key-role in the neoliberal globalization that had its heyday in the two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Bello wrote influential studies of what were then called the “Newly Industrializing Countries” (NICs) in Asia: South-Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong. Common to all these countries was that their economic policies were not those of the unbridled free market recommended by neoliberal ideologues.

The state and its willingness to intervene in economic development was crucial to enabling the economic growth seen in these countries. The rapid economic growth of South Korea, for example, sharply contrasted with the stagnation in the Philippines, even though the latter was once seen as one of the most “promising countries” in Asia. Bello writes how IMF- and World Bank-style policies such as “cutting wages, reducing government spending, devaluation and export orientation” led to economies becoming stuck in a ‘‘low-level trap’’ of low investment, low wages, and reduced growth, effectively locking countries in as suppliers of cheap resources and cheaper labour for an international market. To escape this trap, Bello writes, “what you needed was an external agent, the state, to counteract the systemic logic leading to stagnation.” This was probably always the weakest part in Bello’s analysis: the state is hardly an external agent in implementing neoliberal policies, starting with Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile. One needs only to think of its role introducing market mechanisms where those did not exist before and most of all of its role in repressing social protest and disciplining labour.

Crossing borders and generations

Not just the record of the engaged life of an impressively productive activist-intellectual, Global Battlefields provides a valuable, “border crossing” perspective. It is the perspective of an anti-imperialist from the Global South for whom the struggle against the U.S. War in Vietnam was a formative experience. Bello’s political trajectory also crossed movements that can be considered emblematic of their time. Being based in the U.S., Bello joining the resistance against the regime of Ferdinand Marcos meant agitating against Washington’s support for the Philippine dictator. As part of this movement, Bello joined the CPP.

Leaving the party

The CPP embodied some of the best and worst characteristics of the kind of Marxist-Leninist movements that dominated much of the Left in the seventies. It was clear-eyed about the need for deep-going social-economic transformation for the Philippines to break free from imperialism. It had deep social roots and consisted of committed revolutionaries. Bello emphasises the kind of dedication this movement inspired. In the Philippines it meant a willingness to risk torture and death. He seems unsure that new generations are able to fully grasp this kind of political faith.

The flip-side of the CPP’s conviction was a stifling dogmatism and authoritarianism. Based on a largely mythical view of Soviet and Chinese history, the Maoist CPP thought that revolution meant its own coming to power, not the emancipation of the popular masses. When history refused to follow its supposed laws, and, for example, the allegedly  powerless liberal opposition revived in the Philippines in the early- to mid-1980s, the CPP found itself sidelined. The party had no role in the 1986 protests that brought down Marcos, the so-called “EDSA revolution.”

Upon hearing the news that Ferdinand Marcos had been brought down, Bello rushed to the Philippine Embassy together with John Cavanagh of the Institute for Policy Studies, the progressive think tank for which he worked at the time. “The two of us took possession of the building, ordering the stunned and dejected staff to leave.” The police did not intervene as a growing group of opposition supporters celebrated with champagne and cigars in the ambassador’s office.

Whereas the CPP was convinced that it had discovered “the laws of history,’’ the alter-globalisation movement around the turn of the century was characterised by a deep questioning of the paradigms of much of the socialist Left. The movement was a healthy break with the false certainties of a Left that thought it had deciphered the laws of history. With its lack of not only an alternative vision but also of a strategy, opting instead for conjunctural meetings of the so-called movement of movements, the movement quickly became exhausted.

Important to Bello’s decision to leave the CPP was his study of the internal party purges that ripped through the movement in the 1980s. Up to two thousand party members and sympathizers were killed by their own comrades in a witch-hunt for government spies. The use of torture led to a disastrous dynamic: under duress, prisoners said whatever they thought their tormentors wanted to hear, naming names and coming up with new “revelations.” Bello wrote a study of this murderous episode, pointing to the movement’s instrumental view of people, its poor procedures for dispensing justice, and its lack of ‘‘guidelines for the preservation of common sense’’ as its causes.

Important to Bello’s decision to leave the CPP was his study of the internal party purges that ripped through the movement in the 1980s. Up to two thousand party members and sympathizers were killed by their own comrades in a witch-hunt for government spies.

Supposedly, a lesson the CPP learned from it was the need to respect human rights. Its assassination campaign against former CPP leaders and activists from other left-wing groups in the early 2000s and its initial alliance with Rodrigo Duterte give the lie to this claim. The CPP leadership, in which after his release from prison in 1986 founding chairperson Jose Maria Sison once again would play a domineering role, used torture and killings as a political cudgel. It attributed the overwhelming blame on cadres who had become dissatisfied with the CPP’s strategy and attempted to explain both “purges” and “deviationism” from Maoism as expressions of “petty bourgeois impatience.’’ Bello does not make it explicit but the quotes from Sison he provides show the founding chairperson himself was exceptionally “impatient,” severely overestimating the chances of victory in the near future.

In 2004, the CPP published a list of supposed counter-revolutionary individuals and groups that named Bello as well as the organisation with which I work. Despite this Bello included Sison among the people to whom he dedicated Global Battlefields. That can be taken as speaking to Bello’s generosity as the argument that Sison did not play a decisive role in the CPP’s sectarianism is not very convincing.

In an attempt to make the reader understand the CPP’s appeal, Bello quotes from an article he wrote in the early 1980s, when the CPP was nearing its peak and it seemed to have figured out the laws of history. Briefly, after the famous Battle of Seattle protests, it seemed the alterglobalization movement was carried along by the winds of history. “From Seattle onwards,” Bello writes, “I felt myself as a participant in a movement that was on a roll. Those years passed by like a long, hot summer.” In the words of Bello, the two main movements that he was part of, the CPP and the alterglobalization movement, both “crashed.” Global Battlefields attempts to show that both movements were not total failures, from the CPP building the opposition to the Marcos dictatorship to the struggle against the dominance of neoliberal development models.

Adventures in Philippine politics

Less well known outside the Philippines might be Bello’s political career in the country. In 2007, Bello became a member of the Philippine House of Representatives. He was elected on behalf of the party-list Akbayan. The Philippine Party-list reserves 20 percent of seats in the House of Representatives for election on the basis of nation-wide proportional representation. This system allowed the Left to win some representation but in recent years party-list elections have become increasingly dominated by capitalists.

The decline of the CPP inevitably gave birth to a process of questioning and reorienting. Akbayan was formed by the coming together of different social-democratic and socialist groups. A significant part of the new organisation had its political roots—like Bello himself—in the Communist Party of the Philippines.

In 2010, Benigno Aquino, the son of former President Corazon Aquino, was elected president of the Philippines. Aquino was carried along by a wave of nostalgia for the enthusiasm that had been called forth by the mass protest that brought down Marcos in 1986. The “people power uprising,” many hoped, would make a more democratic and just society possible. The ensuing decades proved a disappointment. Aquino’s campaign, promising a strengthening of democracy and especially a fight against corruption, seemed for many a chance to finally fulfil the potential of people power. Akbayan was among those who joined the government camp.

In the House of Representatives, an institute dominated by the representatives of the wealthiest families of the country, Bello once again was something of an outsider. “I am not much into decorum,” he writes. When former president Gloria Arroyo, under whose administration political killings and corruption had reached new peaks, was elected to the House, Bello did not pull his punches in a speech in which he described her as a role model on “how to behave to impunity” and as someone who should be hauled to jail. Bello’s “colleagues were shocked, demanding that the remark be deleted from the record.”

Eventually the Aquino government became bogged down in scandals. Aquino himself was seen as detached and arrogant, not surprising for a scion of one of the country’s most patrician families. More fundamentally, the benefits of economic growth were distributed highly unevenly and corruption remained pervasive. Rather than a failure of the state-system, a symptom of its “weakness,” the systemic intertwining of economic wealth and political power is a constitutive element of capitalist rule in the Philippines. As Bello’s fellow party-member Nathan Quimpo put it, Aquino followed an “untenable strategy fighting corruption through patronage” that brought the “country back to the old politics of patronage and privilege of the oligarchic elite.” This, Bello writes, “went back on the foundation stone” of the coalition between Akbayan and Aquino’s Liberal Party. In protest, Bello resigned his seat in 2015, a unique step in Philippine politics.

What is not always well remembered is that Duterte initially also claimed to be of the Left…A significant part of the Left in the Philippines went along with this, most of all the National-Democratic movement that takes its political line from the CPP.

The following year, Bello again showed he is not afraid to go against the tide. The disappointment caused by the Aquino administration played a significant part in the rise of popularity of Rodrigo Duterte. Rather than progressive reforms, Duterte promised authoritarian leadership and violence against scapegoats, especially drug users. What is not always well remembered is that Duterte initially also claimed to be of the Left and used social demagogy against U.S. imperialism and for workers’ rights to gather support. A significant part of the Left in the Philippines went along with this, most of all the National-Democratic movement that takes its political line from the CPP. Used to substituting their organisations for the emancipation movements of the popular classes, leaders of this movement accepted Duterte’s invitation to serve his government in an opportunistic grab for resources.

Undeterred by the criticism and attempts at intimidation by supporters of Duterte, Bello on the other hand was among the early voices sounding the alarm. Duterte’s rise was prepared by the ‘deadly combination of elite monopoly of the electoral system, the continuing concentration of wealth, and neoliberal economic policies and the priority placed on foreign debt repayment imposed by Washington’, Bello writes. Having studied far-right movements in other countries, Bello was aware that such figures can enjoy genuine support. At the end of Duterte’s term, tens of thousands of people had been murdered in the so-called “war on the drugs.”

In 2022, Bello, not satisfied with “teaching, writing books, or enjoying meals with a 20 percent seniors’ discount,” as he wrote at the time, ran for vice-president under the presidential campaign of Leody de Guzman of the socialist Partido Lakas ng Masa. This campaign broke new ground: it was the first openly socialist presidential campaign in Philippine history. Despite its ultimately disappointing electoral result, it brought socialist ideas to a broader audience and provided valuable experience for the future.

One does not need to agree with Bello’s views—for example, on the collapse of the Soviet Union, which he refers to as “socialist”— to be informed and entertained by Global Battlefields. One of Bello’s most charming characteristics is that although he takes politics seriously, he also finds joy in the struggle. From dressing up as Kermit the Frog in front of the IMF headquarters to occupying the Philippine embassy or bluntly declaring “fuck you Marcos” on prime time television to then candidate and now President Marcos Jr. in 2021, Bello has a flair for the dramatic. When police came to arrest him in 2022 after the Duterte camp filed libel charges, Bello insisted that police put handcuffs on him, the seventy-six-year-old former congressman.

Apparently Walden Bello needed some convincing from friends before deciding to write his memoirs. It is good that they convinced him.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”

Featured Image credit: Marcello Casal Jr.; modified by Tempest.

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