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THEMAR, Germany As the deafeningly loud, rapid-fire music known as "hate rock" blasted out, hundreds of white nationalists, skinheads and neo-Nazis nodded their heads and swigged their drinks.

Among them was Keith, 46, a welder from Las Vegas, who for the second year in a row had traveled from Nevada to Germany to attend several far-right events.

"We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children,'' Keith told NBC News in June.

However, he was not there just to enjoy the music. He said he was also hoping to share ideas and strategies with like-minded people a small part of what Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, said was becoming an increasingly interconnected international movement with "clear links" between Europe and the U.S.

"You can't just sit at home and eat cheeseburgers anymore. It's time to mobilize," said Keith, who did not wish to have his last name published, for fear of reprisals back in the U.S.

Events like the one in Themar, a small town in central Germany, are reluctantly tolerated and strictly controlled by the authorities. Both federal and local police could be seen monitoring the gathering, and riot squads with water cannons were braced for trouble nearby.

Keith changed his clothes before venturing to the event. At a privately run hotel before the event, he had been dressed from head to toe in clothing full of white power symbolism, and he wore a necklace showing Odin's wolves and Thor's hammer.

His big steel-capped boots, with 14 lace holes representing a popular white supremacist slogan, were scuffed from "brawling," he boasted.

He said he was prevented from wearing them outside because German police considered them a weapon.

The country's laws also ban the display of Nazi imagery and any action that could be deemed an incitement of hatred. To avoid arrest, many attendees walked around with Band-Aids on to hide their swastika tattoos.

"You'll notice there's a whole lot of people with scratches or bruises around here, Keith said, adding that while he had given Nazi salutes many times, he would not do so in Germany because he would likely be arrested.

Like other events of its type, it was held just outside the town, cordoned off to keep it separate from the local community. Keith and his fellow attendees then faced a gauntlet of searches and Breathalyzer tests from the authorities and jeering from a handful of anti-fascist protesters.

Separated by police and metal barriers, one of the demonstrators blew bubbles at them, while another taunted them with a beer can on a fishing rod.

As they have at many events of this type, police had banned the sale of alcohol, citing violence at similar events in the past. In March 2019, journalists and police officers were attacked at a far-right rock concert in Saxony.

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Once inside the event in Themar, attendees, including a number of Americans like Keith, were greeted by Patrick Schroeder, who runs a weekly internet TV show espousing far-right views. He handed them free red baseball caps emblazoned with MGHA, shortform for Make Germany Hate Again. They mimick the "Make America Great Again" hats used to promote Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.

"We make it look like the Donald Trump party when he was elected," said Schroeder, who has been dubbed a "nipster," or "Nazi-hipster," by the German media.

While the German government does not regularly publish the number of far-right events and concerts, the Interior Ministry has provided them when asked by members of Parliament. The last time they were made public, the figures showed that there had been 132 events of this type from January to September 2019.

There was a "major increase" in the number of violent crimes linked to the far right in Germany in 2017, according to the latest report from the Interior Ministry. The rise in right-wing extremist offenses motivated by anti-Semitism during the reporting year was also "noticeable," it said, without providing figures.

In the U.S. meanwhile, the FBI recorded 7,036 hate crimes in 2018 the latest figures available of which 59.6 percent were racially motivated. That was a 17 percent spike in hate crimes overall, and there was a 37 percent increase in anti-Jewish incidents the most common kind.

While it is unclear how many Americans attend events like the one in Themar, "there's a great deal of cross-pollination" between the far right in Europe and the U.S., said Greenblatt.

"There are clear links between white supremacists in the United States and their ideological fellow travelers in Europe," Greenblatt said in an interview, adding that the alt-right in the U.S. and Europe's far-right Identitarian movement were both young and sophisticated and used the internet and social media to spread their messages.

"Both these movements have a lot in common," he added. "They are anti-globalization, they are anti-democratic, they are anti-Semitic to the core, and they are highly opposed to multiculturalism and diversity of any sort."

European white supremacists were marching in 2017 at the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where counterdemonstrator Heather Heyer was killed when a car was deliberately driven into a crowd, he said.

A few months later, American white supremacists marched at the Independence Day rally in Poland, he added.

Greenblatt said there was a "through line" between a series of atrocities linked to attackers inspired by far-right thinking, including Anders Breivik, now 40, who killed 77 people in Norway's worst terrorist attack in July 2011.

Breivik told a court that he wanted to promote his manifesto, a mixture of his thinking, far-right theories and other people's writing. This included sections from a manifesto produced by Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who over a number of years sent letter bombs to several universities and airlines, killing three people and wounding 23 others.

American white supremacist Dylann Roof, now 25, who killed nine people at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in a bid to promote a "race war" in June 2015, cited Breivik as an influence, as did white nationalist Alexandre Bissonnette, now 21, who shot six people dead at a mosque in Quebec City in 2017. Bissonnette also praised Roof.

After 11 people were gunned down at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in October 2018, the suspect, Robert Gregory Bowers, was found to have repeatedly threatened Jews in online forums. British lawmaker Jo Cox was killed in the street in 2016 by a man inspired by far-right beliefs.

In March 2019, a man walked into two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, killing 59 people as he livestreamed the attack on Facebook. He referred to Breivik, Roof and Bissonnette in his writings.

"We are no longer talking about one-off events, but a loosely coordinated chain of far-right attacks across the world, where members of these networks inspire and challenge each other to beat each other's body counts," said Peter Neumann, a professor of security studies at King's College London.

These killers want to "launch a race war," he said, adding: "The aim is to carry out attacks, claim responsibility, explain your actions and inspire others to follow."

Describing himself as "a white internationalist because I'm international at this point and I'm participating in political activities on more than one continent," Keith said he did not approve of violence.

But he said he thought the far-right attacks were a "direct result of the terrorist attacks that have happened against Christians and white people throughout the world."

Keith said he did not believe that Trump was a white nationalist, although he said the U.S. president was "definitely white" and "definitely a nationalist."

However, he added: "To put the two together is suggesting that he has some kind of desire to be associated with people like myself, and I don't believe he does."

Nevertheless, he said it is "great" having a national leader who "makes common-sense decisions in line" with his own beliefs.

Greenblatt said he found it "deeply disturbing" to see neo-Nazis "taking cues from our commander in chief."

Trump has been criticized on a number of occasions for his use of language and his failure to condemn racist behavior from his supporters.

After Heyer was killed, Trump declared that there were "very fine people on both sides, although in a later White House briefing he said the egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence had no place in America.

Similarly, as the president stood by, the crowd at a Trump rally last year in Greenville, North Carolina, chanted "send her back" about the Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich, collectively known as "the squad."

Trump later disavowed those chants, telling reporters: "i was not happy with it. I disagree with it."

Asked about whether white supremacists were taking their cues from Trump, a White House spokesperson told NBC News the the president had consistently and repeatedly rejected racism, racial discrimination, and anti-Semitism in all its forms.

That should be a real cause for concern, Greenblatt said. The racists feel like they have someone who is in their corner, and that is a total break from the role of the presidency."

Read the original here:
Neo-Nazis from U.S. and Europe build far-right links at concerts in Germany - NBC News

Winnie and Franny hard at work, entertaining the nation. Photo: Courtesy of YouTube

Greetings, comrades. Welcome to the new era of late-night television. Were about two weeks into the Great Late-Night Experiment of 2020, and the results have been promising. Online content from late-night shows like The Daily Show and Last Week Tonight With John Oliver currently streaming on digital platforms have been on the whole funny, intelligent, and extremely relatable, reminding the world that we are all in the same boat, sitting six feet apart. As Vulture critic Jen Chaney noted in her article on late-night television amid the coronavirus, the DIY attitude that has pervaded late night has been a wonderfully weird and unexpected joy. Lets dive in and see what late-night clips stood out this week.

Stephen Colbert has been having fun as Americas second most relatable Late-Night Dad, with web-only segments like The Light Show With Stephen Colb-Air shot on his front porch and The Flame Show With Stephen Colburn filmed at his extra smoky firepit. My favorite segment has gotta be Returning My Face Back to Normal, where Stephen Colbeard decides to shave off his quarantine beard, which, by his own admission, is less of a beard and more of a loose collection of gray hairs on his chin. Before he shaves, Colbeard decides to spruce up his face, which leads to him singing to himself in the mirror while giving himself a pretty impressive cat eye, all while wearing a Fratagonia. The segment ends with him in full Tony Stark drag, goatee and all, promising to build a bigger robot to rid the world of the coronavirus. As someone who is currently growing out a gross little mustache and has yet to master the cat eye, this segment was at once relatable and inspiring. In a word, glam.

Seth Meyers has kept busy under quarantine by continuing to churn out his signature A Closer Look segment from a room that definitely isnt his garage because he is not allowed to do his little political rants at the dinner table. His most recent installment is incisive as ever, accurately noting that Trumps impeachment trial occurred 300 years ago while analyzing Trumps erratic and unhinged behavior amid the global pandemic. Meyers gets extra points for making a fantastic Thats So Raven reference, but loses half of those points for slightly misquoting the titular Raven-Symon. Meyers quotes Raven-Symon as using the singular word nasty a lot, but she almost always said the phrase ya nasty. The ya is critical to the punch line, and as a comedian I expect Meyers to understand and respect that.

Jimmy Kimmel, rocking a Mets hat and a salt-and-pepper quarantine beard, gave viewers a wonderful distraction by having Courteney Cox play Friends trivia against his cousin. After his quarantine minilogue (get it? Its like a monologue, but mini), Kimmel video-chatted with Cox who, like the rest of us, is going a little stir-crazy at home. We learn Cox has an apartment where she works out somewhere in Los Angeles (stars theyre just like us) and that she has a well-stocked fridge complete with my personal favorite drink, Canada Dry ginger ale. In the conversation, the Friends star reveals that she doesnt remember being on the show but is currently binge-watching it for the first time and had to buy it on Amazon Prime like a regular person. Cox then gets absolutely crushed by Cousin Anthony in Monica-based Friends trivia, but she doesnt take the loss too hard and gives Anthony a virtual kiss. Sigh, remember kissing? Me neither.

Maybe its the quarantine talking, but when we get to the other side of this I think I want to become a furry thanks to this segment from Full Frontal With Samantha Bee. Taped pre-pandemic but released on March 26, the segment follows correspondent Amy Hoggart as she attends a furry convention where people socialize while wearing animal costumes. The genius of the segment is that Hoggarts voice-over places the conference in conversation with our new era of quarantining and social distancing. Weeks ago, we were able to attend a furry convention and ask the participants who they were voting for (overwhelmingly for Bernie Sanders, by the way), and now that has been taken from us. I miss six days ago, says Hoggart over images of furries dancing together. Even furry conventions arent immune to nefarious forces though, as Nazis and members of the alt-right have tried to infiltrate the convention. Seriously, if you cant go to a furry convention without running into a Nazi, then where the hell can you go? But the furries persevered and put a swift ban on the Nazis (Twitter, take note). Community, in any form, is rare these days, and getting a peek into a community as loving and accepting as the furries was unexpectedly emotional. Bernie Furry Bros forever.

The award for Best Transition to Online DIY Late-Night Television Hosting has got to go to Americas No. 1 most relatable, goofiest dad, Jimmy Fallon. Fallon is the most charming hes been in years, according to Jen Chaney, and I cant disagree. A large part of that charm must be attributed to his utilization of his adorable daughters, Winnie and Franny, as everything from the house band to graphic design to a live studio audience. Their joy watching and playing with their dad is infectious (in the good way), and Fallon loosens up in their presence. Beyond Winnie and Franny, Fallon has managed to provide great musical moments by Zooming with Lin-Manuel Miranda, John Legend, and Americas favorite DJ, D-Nice. Winnie, Franny, and The Tonight Show: At Home Edition have been a small salve in this bizarre time. Plus, they have an indoor slide, which is, like, the coolest thing ever.

See more here:
Jimmy Fallons Daughters, Winnie and Franny, Won Late Night This Week - Vulture

With an associatefilming him, the neo-Nazi whose real name is Robert Warren Ray gave speeches, tussled with counterprotesters and was charged with illegally spraying tear gas.

Since those days in in August 2017, Azzmador has been nowhere, appearing only on podcasts on The Daily Stormer and occasionally talking with his lawyers in a federal civil lawsuit.

Robert Warren Ray, a neo-Nazi known within white supremacist circles as Azzmador, appears with a sign promoting hate site The Daily Stormer during the August 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. (Photo via Twitter.)

His disappearing act prompted the plaintiffs in the civil suit to petition a federal judge on March 11 to compel Ray to comply with court orders to turn over electronic devices.

Prosecutors and police in Albemarle County, Virginia, have been searching for Ray since June 2018, when he was indicted on a charge of illegally using tear gas during the tiki torch march on Aug. 11, 2017.

Ray did not return three emails Hatewatch sent to an address on file with the federal court.

This is our war! Ray growled during a post-rally speech in a safe house the night of the deadly rally. This has always been our war. And I wouldnt want it any other way. Death to traitors! Death to the enemies of the white race! Hail victory!

Ray, a tough-talking neo-Nazi from Frankston in East Texas, was a major player in organizing and executing the rally, along with white nationalist Richard Spencer, Elliot Kline, then the head of Identity Evropa, and white nationalist Jason Kessler.

Neo-Nazis, white nationalists and neo-Confederates from around the country descended upon Charlottesville, a town of about 48,000 tucked into the Blue Ridge Mountains of central Virginia.

At the tiki torch march at the University of Virginia on Aug. 11, Ray and others confronted counterprotesters with chants of Jews will not replace us! as pepper spray shot through the air.

The next day, the Unite the Right rally descended into chaos, with counterprotesters fighting with white nationalists, neo-Nazis and other rally participants.

Virginias governor declared the rally an unlawful assembly, and the violence continued as participants left downtown Charlottesville. A group of white nationalists and neo-Confederates attacked and beat up a black man in a parking garage, and a neo-Nazi drove his car into a crowd, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer.James Alex Fields Jr., a 22-year-old from Ohio, is serving life in prison for Heyers death. A state court jury found him guilty, and Fields pleaded guilty in federal court.

White nationalists gathered that night at a safe house for a party highlighted by Rays speech.

They declared the daya win.

This event was a huge victory for the Alt-Right, Azzmador wrote for The Daily Stormer on Aug. 31, 2017, in a refrain that has been repeated on podcasts since. Dont believe any of the crap the MSM is peddling.

Fomenting discord in pubic often comes with a price.

A group of people on the University of Virginia campus during the tiki torch march sued Ray and nearly two dozen other white nationalists and neo-Nazis in federal court in Charlottesville, seeking damages for the emotional distress and other injuries.

Prosecutors in Albemarle County indicted Ray and his bodyguard, Will Zachary Smith of Nacona, Texas, on a charge of illegally using tear gas.

Two others, known only as Sunglasses and Red Beard,are being sought by Charlottesville police for allegedly taking part in the beating of DeAndre Harris in a parking garage after the rally disbursed.

Red Beard is seen on video wearing a truckers hat and sporting a shaggy red beard. Sunglasses shows up on a video of the attack on Harris with short-cropped brown hair and a pair of sunglasses.

The identities of the two men remain a mystery. Warrants listing Ray and Smith as fugitives are pending in Albemarle County Circuit Court.

The Albemarle County Commonwealth Attorneys office and the investigating agency, the University of Virginia Police Department, did not return messages left via email and phone seeking comment.

Ray initially surrendered one computer to the plaintiffs, but since has declined to turn over a second computer, cellphone and passwords to social media accounts.

It is thus apparent Ray has not satisfied his discovery obligations in this case, plaintiffs attorney Robert Cahill wrote in the March 11 motion.

Ray isnt the only defendant to ignore court orders to turn over evidence. U.S. District Judge Norman Moon held Kline, the one-time head of Identity Evropa, in contempt and ordered him to jailin January for refusing to turn over evidence in the case.

The neo-Nazi organization the National Socialist Movement is also refusing to cooperate. In court proceedings and on the social media site VK, NSM Commander Burt Colucci has made his defiance of court orders and distaste for the plaintiffs plain.

I am not named as a defendant in that lawsuit and do not have to answer to Uncle Zog, nor can I at this point because I was not there, Colucci posted on VK on May 14, 2019. "ZOG" is a neo-Nazi slang term that means "Zionist-Occupied Government," referring to the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jews control the levers of power.

And five defendants in the case have defaulted, including Andrew Anglin, the editor and founder of The Daily Stormer.

But so far, Ray is the only defendant who is a fugitive.

These days, Azzmador mostly exists on podcasts on the neo-Nazi website, ranting about Jews, minorities and others he sees as less than himself and other white people.

Ray most recently appeared on a podcast associated with the Daily Stormer onFeb. 6, when he talked about immigrants and other minorities seeking health care among the coronavirus outbreak.

His account on Gab, asocial media platform favored by white nationalists and neo-Nazis, has been quiet since March 2018 three months before he was charged.

In podcasts, Ray refers to Texas agencies as ours, but doesnt say where he is or mention his actions in Charlottesville, the lawsuit or the warrant for his arrest.

Since Charlottesville, he hasnt made any high-profile appearances at rallies or large gatherings.

Photo illustration by SPLC

Continued here:
Once a High-Profile Neo-Nazi, Azzmador Has Pulled a Disappearing Act - Southern Poverty Law Center

Sherronda J. Brown x Mar 27, 2020

Humans are not the virus. We are not a sickness or a disease, and yall should stop singing this tired refrain as we are all reeling from the global Coronavirus pandemic. With several false reports of animals flourishing as cities slow down due to quarantine recently going viral (how ironic), a concerning amount of people have responded with the sentiment that the presence of humans living and taking up space on our planet is its own type of sickness.People are even circulating an article from 2018 about the ozone layer finally beginning to heal, undoubtedly without reading the date or anything beyond the title, and somehow connecting it to the sudden diminished presence and activity of humans as most of us uphold our social responsibility to stay home during this time.

Some have also named COVID-19 as Mother Natures vengeance, Earths vaccine for the human virus, or the universes way of making the world a better place. Self-righteously deeming it some sort of divine intervention, they imply that the massive loss of life and our collective grief over those lost lives are somehow worth it for the sake of the planet, or even necessary. This pandemic has helped to facilitate the development and worsening of trauma and grief in entire communities, and rhetoric that frames this as a blessing for those who deserve to live here and a penalty for those seen as unworthy is not only deeply insensitive, but dangerous.

It also fails to take into account the fact that those who have profited from industrialism and hazardous environmental practices will never stop seeking out ways to maintain their capital. In fact, due to the current virus, the Trump administration has weakened public health and environmental enforcement, waiving several mandates put in place for our protection to instead benefit the oil and gas industries (and this comes after Trump has already worked to roll back rules against power plant pollution and remove federal water protections).

Wow Earth is recovering

Air pollution is slowing down Water pollution is clearing up Natural wildlife returning home

Coronavirus is Earths vaccine

Were the virus

The people who are and who will continue to be impacted the most by this pandemic are poor, working-class, unhoused, incarcerated, and detained communities who are disproportionately BIPOC. This is not only in terms of a health riskwith elderly, disabled, immunocompromised, and folks with comorbidities being at the highest risk of contracting and dying from the virusbut also in terms of economic access and stability. Those who are already poor and disenfranchised are less able to self-quarantine properly if they still have to go to work or will not have the financial resources to afford rent and essentials if they are now unable to work. And, of course, those in detention centers and prisons are not able to practice social distancing in order to prevent rapid spreading of the virus, while unhoused folks have very limited access to be able to do basic hygiene practices like washing their hands. To compound this, actually contradicting the virus will leave them with a mountain of medical debt and they may not even receive proper treatment due to well-documented medical racism.

The fact is that there will be and already have been many preventable deaths due to the violently unequal systems that marginalize these vulnerable populations in the first place. To suggest that any of what is happening is due to the will of Mother Nature, a god, or the universe is beyond atrocious, especially when we have wealthy white people freely admitting their belief that the U.S. should allow 2-3% of its population to die (more than 8 million people) in order to revive the stock market. Valuing nature over human lives and valuing money over human lives are the same kind of malignancy.

Instead of critiquing the exploitative systems in place that ensure social and economic disparities, many are allowing their eco-feminist, conservationist, environmentalist, or spiritual ideologies to wade dangerously into eco-fascist territorywhich does absolutely nothing to help us, especially marginalized folks. Capitalism, white supremacy, and colonialismnot humanity itselfare the conditions that breed the destruction of natural habitats, the poisoning and polluting of our water supply, and the defiling of the health of our planet and our bodies. It is imperative that we make that distinction. When we do not, it leaves room for the most damaging systems of our world to thrive even more by throwing marginalized people under the bus.

Eco-fascisman emphasis on the preservation of nature that disregards human lifefinds its roots in white supremacy and xenophobia, specifically because the human life that it disregards is that of BIPOC. Along the same vein of eugenic thought, which uses ableism, racism, and classism to determine who must live and who must die for the greater good of society, eco-fascism should absolutely be understood as a tool of genocidal efforts. Nazisms Blood and Soil mantra, which has now been adopted by the alt-right as demonstrated in Charlottesville, is an eco-fascist refrain asserting that only people Indigenous to a landessentially tied to the soil by bloodhave the right to live there and that the environment should be preserved by culling the population of rootless immigrants via genocide and/or deportation.

Much likeor perhaps exactly likethe tyrannical Thanos, his forced balancing of the universe, and the scarcity myth that informed his violent actions, eco-fascists are beyond willing to sacrifice people in order to preserve environments and natural resources, and they believe that they have the right to determine that people must be expelled. The El Paso and Christchurch mass shooters both held eco-fascist beliefs and cited them as their motivation for murdering Hispanics invading Texas and people praying in mosques, with the Christchurch shooter even describing immigration as environmental warfare.

A white supremacist group, Hundred-Handers, is currently impersonating a climate change organization called Extinction Rebellion in order to spread these beliefs while drawing specific connections to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Eco-fascist rhetoric works to obscure the responsibility of white colonialism and its long history of destruction, as well as imperialist presences in predominantly Black and brown countries. It ignores capitalist industrialism and environmental racism, especially how large corporations actively destroy the world in pursuit of profits and territorial control. While many of the people currently regurgitating humans are the virus talking points on Twitter and beyond are certainly not intentionally promoting white nationalism, their words are still aligned with a dangerous school of thought. Regardless of their belief system, simply blaming people as a whole for the state of the environment is an insistence that many of us should take the blame for the very oppressions weve had to suffer under.

As many have pointed out, eco-fascism is a logic that finds footing when its arbiters only acknowledge a revisionist historical narrative that completely disregards the truth of Indigenous peoples relationship with nature. For millennia, Indigenous communities have demonstrated the possibility of peacefully and respectfully communing with the Earth. They have proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it is possible to live on this planet and respect it and allow it to thrive while feeding, clothing, sheltering, and caring for ourselves. We could learn so much by following the lead of Indigenous climate activists, heeding their wisdom, and honoring their work.

In the midst of this pandemic, with so much loss and uncertainty and even more on the horizon, we have to understand that institutional and corporate disregard for the planet cannot be divorced from disregard for marginalized beings from those same destructive systems. Know that when you post and share variations of humans are the virus online, you are parroting the rhetoric of white supremacists. Instead of doing that, I encourage you to remind others and yourselves of the capitalist, corporate, colonialist, and imperialist failings of a deeply unequal world.

Every single dollar matters to usespecially now when media is under constant threat. Your support is essential and your generosity is why Wear Your Voice keeps going! You are a part of the resistance that is neededuplifting Black and brown feminists through your pledges is the direct community support that allows us to make more space for marginalized voices. For as little as $1 every month you can be a part of this journey with us. This platform is our way of making necessary and positive change, and together we can keep growing.

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Humans Are Not The VirusDon't Be An Eco-Fascist - Wear Your Voice

In a new and dangerous twist to the coronavirus crisis, Donald Trump is now calling for an end to social distancing, perhaps as early as Easter. His goal is to restart the economy and avoid the worst impact of the coming recession.

Can you imagine: Trump in the crudest and most callous possible way is attempting to solve the crisis on the backs of our working class and people. It wasnt enough that the administration ignored each and every warning from the scientific community and called it a hoax and a scam. It wasnt enough that they are using the crisis to turn immigrants back at the border and bust unions.

Now, Trump is willing to risk the health and lives of millions of workers in order to satisfy the Wall Street Journal and corporate Americas quest for maximum profits. They think that, since most people under 50 years of age who contract the virus will experience only mild symptoms, reopening the country wont be a problem. The theory is that those most affected by the coronavirus will develop an immunity, and the virus will end. They call this herd immunity. And it might have worked in early January before the pandemic became widespread in the U.S.

But heres the problem: because Trump refused to test earlyand even refused the World Health Organizations offer for free testspublic health experts still have no idea how many people are infected. And the rate of infection is doubling and tripling. Today in New York, the new epicenter of the crisis, hospitals are close to being overwhelmed.

The whole purpose of social distancing is to slow the rate of infection so that the hospital workers can deal with the influx of critically ill patients. But if Trumps return-to-work plan goes through, hospitals will be pushed to the verge of collapse.

The country is faced with more than a health crisis. Its also an economic crisis. In addition, its a political, social, and environmental crisis. And these crises are interlocking, interengaging, and interacting in ways that cant be anticipated.

Who would have thought that a month ago, even two weeks ago, a health crisis would shake the very foundations of the capitalist system? This is not an exaggeration; the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis estimated that the unemployment rate could be as high as 30%higher than during the Great Depression.

The service economy is shutting down. The entertainment industry, restaurants, and bars are closing. And because the crisis is international, its going to affect basic industry, from cars to iPhones, as supply chains are disrupted and production comes to a halt. With just-in-time production, assembly parts are scarce. If factories in other countries dont send them here, workers get laid off. Laid-off workers dont buy products, and the circulation process is affected: business shuts down, state and local governments lose revenue, and the whole thing starts to unravel. Thats whats starting to happen.

On top of all this, theres a political crisis, in the first place with respect to the elections. Already several state primaries have been postponed, and its not beyond possibility that Trump may attempt to postpone the general election in November. The conservative Rasmussen poll recently claimed that 25% of Americans support postponement.

Needless to say, such an eventuality must be resolutely opposed.

Adding to the depth of the crisis is the administrations ideologically driven approach to governing, one aspect of which is the dismantling the administrative state. One of the reasons that Trump was not prepared for the pandemic is that in 2018 the Executive Branch got rid of the office of the Senior Director for Global Health Security and Biothreats, established during the Ebola crisis. They also drastically cut funding for the Centers for Disease Control, which oversees combating the spread of pandemics in other countries.

Hence, its not an accident that they at first refused to take effective federal action and put everything on the governors or that they have refused to use the Defense Production Act to compel industries to produce the goods necessary to combat the crisis. It all grows out of their alt-right approach to ruling the country. Those who claim the president is not ideologically driven might take another look.

All of this requires a political response, but that, too, is part of the crisis. As necessary as the stay-at-home policy and social distancing is, it raises enormous issues: How do you protest when you cant gather in groups of more than ten, when doing so risks being charged. One idea is to organize car caravans with protest signs to the homes and offices of elected officials. Another is the pot-banging protests used effectively in Latin American protests. A third is the organization of rent strikes in support of tenants facing eviction.

Added to this is the fact that the crisis increases risks associated with the fascist danger that go beyond election postponement, as grave as it is. The Justice Department is reportedly considering state of emergency provisions that would end the right of people who are arrested to appear before a judge, eliminating habeas corpus. One could be held indefinitely without trial, so long as a state of emergency exists. Other plans are being contemplated for setting up military rule and martial law in the event of a collapse in the order of succession to the presidency.

Even before the crisis, Trump had initiated purges of individuals deemed disloyal in the federal government along with repeated interference in the judiciary as in the Roger Stone case. Taken as a whole, its a dangerous situation. Without the 2018 midterm elections, Trump, Barr, and his other henchmen would have had free rein to do as they pleased, limiting the working-class and peoples movements ability to struggle.

Clearly the only way forward is to struggle for a program and platform that puts people before profits as the point of departure for addressing the crisis. Even by bourgeois accounts, the $2 trillion legislation passed by the Senatealthough twice the size of the 2007 bailoutwill mitigate only the worst aspects of the crisis.

In the first place this means putting money in the hands of workerswhatever it takes to do this: whether its a livable monthly stipend, unlimited sick leave, or Medicare For All for the duration of the crisis, or eliminating student debt, ending rent and mortgage payments, or a moratorium on all debta debt jubilee. Fidel Castro used to say that the Third Worlds debt is unpayable and uncollectable: the same holds true for working-class debt here in the First World, especially for students.

Lets not forget that there will be a racist and sexist dimension to this crisis. Most African Americans and Latinos never recovered from the wealth loss of the subprime rip-off and the consequent impact of the Great Recession. And the majority of those going to work now are black and brownthose most unable to have the resources to respond when and if laid off. These issues will undoubtedly play out with respect to who lives and who dies today.

Special attention has to be given to the incarcerated, including immigrants held in detention in overcrowded conditions, veritable breeding grounds for epidemic. Demands are being placed for an amnesty for elderly prisoners as well as for the release of non-violent offenders.

The point here is that special compensatory measures are required to address the more aggravated social and economic consequences of the crisis on people of color, women, and LGBTQ persons.

In many ways, this crisis has heightened the significance of the socialist moment. In a profound way it has laid bare the gross inequities of the capitalist system. Its laid bare how privatization, austerity, cutbacks, and profiteering wreak havoc on the working-class public. The socialist moment arises precisely in those areas where capitalism begins to fail.

Its also revealed the ruling classs indifference to working-class plight and circumstancethe rich just dont care. Workers will be sent back to work sick or not, so long as the bosses maintain their profit margins. What will happen when they realize this? Or to be more precise, what will be done to help workers come to this realization, the understanding that there are common interests as a class, that survival requires workers as a class to take the future into their hands. This is not only a question of education but also of platform, of connecting partial demands today with more long-term ones tomorrow.

In this regard, the crisis has raised some tactical questions with respect to the all-peoples front and the placing of publicthat is, socialistsolutions to the crisis. Depending on how the crisis unfolds, the question looms: can the working classs problems be solved, can the countrys crisis be addressed without putting forward socialist solutions? Do not, in circumstances such as these, the national interests coincide with working-class interests? Can a 30% unemployment rate be addressed without massive public works jobs on the order of the WPA? Will the health crisis be met without Medicare For All or universal health care? In the eventuality of a banking crisis, can a solution be found thats in the publics interest absent socializing the banks? What about the airlines? Calls are already being made for their nationalization.

On the other hand, more limited and therefore more winnable issues have to be considered.The most radical demands are not always the most revolutionary. What happens when the $1,200 checks run out? In many places thats one months rentif you are lucky. What demands will address whats needed when the extension in unemployment compensation runs dryand thats coming sooner than later. Consideration always has to be given to what will move the largest and broadest numbers of people around the most effective issue. Politics begins with the millions.

The election campaign does not preclude addressing these issuesin fact this crisis demands it. The 3040% who voted for Bernie will expect it; those in the center radicalized by the crisis need it; and the future of the country may depend on such a discussion and action.

The country, indeed, the capitalist world system may be entering a new period of profound weather, health, and economic calamities. Consider, for example, this summers coming fires in the West, or this falls hurricanes in the South and East as the inevitable second wave of the coronavirus strikes.

The role of the Party in these circumstances must be to bring our revolutionary working-class communist plus to an analysis of these issues. And on the basis of this analysis, the CPs job must be to, in concert with others, agitate and organize while spreading the word. How do we unite our class and people against the right and big business in these new circumstances? This is a question for peoplesworld.org and for cpusa.org. And its an issue for every club and district.

In this regard, the Party has got to up its social media and social networking game. For years weve been trying to improve our online activities, not without some progress but not nearly enough. Social distancing now demands it. Everyone must now learn to work in a different way.

This means greater use of the PW and sharing of our articles, not only on the district parties pages but on the members personal pages. It means developing an electronic paper route. It means sharing of video, podcasts, and images.

It also means joining local neighborhood mutual aid networks or setting them up to assist people in need. Weve often talked about the importance of neighborhood concentrationthe technology exists to achieve it via social networking.

In the near future, were going to develop plans for national schools, local study groups, as well as ongoing webinars. But lets start with a national town hall meeting on addressing the crisis, and lets do it soon.

Comrades, the time is now! A decisive moment has arrived. How the Party acts now will help determine not only our Partys future but also, if we act correctly, the countrys.

This report was made to the National Board on March 25, 2020.

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The struggle of our lives: Coronavirus and capitalist crisis - Communist Party USA