Indictments have now been unsealed against four Florida-based members of the Uhuru Movement, a group of black socialists, for their alleged connection to a Russian campaign to influence local politics. The Biden Justice Department has opted to target this fringe group as a clear violation of their first amendment rights to free speech simply because they oppose the dominant political narrative about the Ukraine war.

Jimmy and Americans’ Comedian Kurt Metzger talk to The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal about this case and why the government might be pursuing it now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW6HKRIEROc

SEE ALSO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-VGKfPaiiQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxa_BSMPf1Q 

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHUleQ4NOBI

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History of an involution: from structural politics to hysterical moralism

by Andrea Zhok

The other day I was reflecting on how it could have happened that the operational capacity of a political opposition has been extinguished and today needs to be rebuilt essentially from scratch.

Given that this is "the" problem of problems today, and given that, as for any historical process, its causes are plural, I want to dwell briefly on just one cause, of a specifically cultural nature.

The era of democracy and political opposition from below was a circumscribed time that began around the mid-1800s, in which the Marxian lesson played a fundamental role.

Specifically, the Marxian lesson was fundamental in understanding, and making people understand, how in the modern world every change of habit and opinion that becomes hegemonic always has a primary root in the "structure", that is, in the sphere of economic production and the related management of power.

If in a description of what happens there is no awareness of this structural root, if there is no understanding of how the problem under discussion should be placed with respect to the mechanisms of distribution of the economy and power (often coinciding), one ends up losing from view the only sphere where the decisive levers of causality can be moved.

Once this fact is recalled, one's thoughts cannot fail to turn to the generational distribution of today's political awareness. Repeated experiences, from the collection of signatures, to public debates, to rallies signal a common vision: the generational distribution of political awareness almost perfectly follows a decreasing curve. Those who show greater urgency to act towards the levers of power are the older ones, and as one goes down in age the ranks of the politically aware are reduced, to the point of almost disappearing in the sphere of the young and very young (let's say the 18-24 age group ).

Now, it is important to note that this is a historically unprecedented fact. Until recently, young people have been part of the ranks of “revolutionaries” (arsonists), universities have always been hotbeds of protest, political passion was born on the biographical threshold between study and entry into the world of work. And this is only natural, because the commitment and energy required for critical political participation are more easily found in a twenty-year-old than in a sixty-year-old; and likewise constraints, burdens and responsibilities ordinarily grow with age.

So the question is: what happened to us?

For a clue it is enough to look at youth political activism, which indeed still exists, but whose form is instructive. It is interesting to note what issues such activism is focused on today. A brief inspection will reveal:

1) An environmentalism focused on climate change;

2) Gender identity issues, gender violence, gender equality, gender self-determination, gender language;

3) Animalism of the Disney type and self-flagellatory food practices (veganism, lauding of synthetic meat and of insect meal, etc.);

4) for the more daring, some appeal to "human rights" in a highly selective version (where incidentally the violations occur all and only among America's enemies).

What is essential to underline is how on the other hand it can exist, and does exist:

1) an authentic “structural” environmentalism;

2) a historical-structural awareness of the sexual division of labor (and its customary consequences);

3) an analysis of “consideration of an abstract thing as if it were concrete, or of an inanimate object as if it were living" of sentient nature (animals) in modern industrialisation;

4) a political awareness of the exploitation and violation of human nature.

And in each of these cases it is possible to recognise real problems by placing them in the overall framework of the processes of economic production and distribution of power in the contemporary world.

But mostly none of this is part of youth political activism, which instead receives its “protest” agenda from above, in a format rigorously sanitised of its structural implications.

In other words, the enclosures in which to exercise one's protest, and the forms in which to identify problems, have been dropped from inscrutable altitudes, through the media apparatus, school and university indoctrination. In this way comfortable dispute bubbles are created, with the certificate of progressive goodness, provided by accredited sources.

The old system of social control alternated the violent repression of youthful passions with periodic warfare in which to let them vent; the new control system, on the other hand, already provides equipped fields where it is possible to make fake revolutions with cardboard swords, on islands without communication with the mainland where real power plays its games.

However, this process of building artificial fences, without structural anchorage, is not new and it is wrong to focus only on those who are young today. It is a process that began at least in the 1980s, which has simply expanded and has been perfected over time. All the conceptual effort made by Marxian reflection (in part already Hegelian) and then developed for over a century, has been canceled with the bleach of the new media power.

Today these carefully emasculated "political" agendas spread and make their characteristically shrill voice heard, which is then echoed, perhaps benevolently reproached in some excess, but ultimately blessed, by the spokesmen of power.

We have thus fallen back into an analysis of history, politics and geopolitics which, forgetting what the real levers of power are, dedicates itself body and soul to moralising readings of the world, to crime news, to vicariously enjoy petty scandals, to political correctness, to political gossip.

Geopolitical articles and lectures proliferate and thrive, in which Putin is evil and the Russians are monsters; 

social presentations where the critics of the various "gender ideologies" are homophobic abominations; 

where whoever does not embrace a Chinese on command is "fascist", and whoever embraces a Chinese after being given the countermand is "Stalinist"; 

ecological readings where museums are soiled because "there is no longer a minute to lose", before returning home to the ZTL to play on the 88-inch Smart TV; etc. etc.

This infantilisation of historical-political analysis renders fatally impotent any "activism", which examines the world as if the distribution of moral adjectives were at its core. And when someone points out to him/her that all that exhausting hysterical squawking doesn't produce even a step for power, which one actually applauds, they have another moral attribute ready: you're cynical.

The compartmentalisation of the protest according to the ideological fences prepared upstream produces, in addition to an effect of substantial impotence, a complete loss of balance and ability to evaluate the proportions of the problems. Each of these enclosed ideological games appears to those who frequent it as an enclosed universe, the only point of view from which the whole world is best seen. And this generates a crazy sensitivity in those who frequent those enclosures, because they invest all their energy and passion in that carefully delimited field: 

there are people who pass twice a day in front of the old lady dying of starvation in the apartment next door, but they jump with bloodshot eyes if you use a frowned-upon gender pronoun; 

there are people who are scandalised by human rights violations in Belarus (where they have never set foot) and then explain to you that it is right to fire the "antivaxx" and deprive them of hospital care; there are even students who claim meritocracy and then vote for Carlo Calenda… (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Calenda) i.e. support [anti-workers] Macron or [crooked and devious] Joe Biden.

Overall, the picture is as follows, while real POWER recommends resilience because if you take the shape of the boot that tramples on you, you suffer less, while the POWER advises us not to have children and not to retire for the sake of the future, while every day the POWER explains that you have to be mobile, to work where there is a need, and that you have to stop moving because you ruin the climate, while the POWER pisses on your head explaining that in this way you save on the shower, while all this and much more is happening, the famous "masses" furiously squabble over respectful ningnongeries — the imperative urgency of anti-fascism and for the rights of asparagus.

Because no injustice will go unpunished.

READ MORE:

https://sinistrainrete.info/articoli-brevi/25371-andrea-zhok-storia-di-un-involuzione-dalla-politica-strutturale-al-moralismo-isterico

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TRANSLATION BY MARTINO VIGNERONI

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By Julian Cribb

There is rising wrath, out there in Elderland. The Elders, it seems, are no longer happy to look on as a bunch of corporates and their political stooges pillage the planet and lay waste their grandchildren’s future. With growing resolve, resources and organisation, older people are fighting back.

Rather than sitting meekly in their retirement homes, the elders are getting out there, getting themselves arrested and gaoled, making their opinions felt by the politicians and plutocrats who have ignored them for half a century.

This isn’t the ‘grey power’ or ‘ageivism’ that was once talked about. For one thing, the focus isn’t on themselves, their pensions and comforts – it’s on their children and grandchildren, the parlous state of the planet and its ability to support life, the ruined world that is being handed to the youngsters to try to survive on.

Retirees are radicalising in a global movement to rescue the human future. People who have spent a lifetime being ‘good citizens’ have had enough. More and more are realising that the legacy now being left to future generations is the most accursed in history – a world with a ruined climate, landscape, oceans, air; vanishing species of plants and animals; scarcities of water, trees, soils, fish; spreading chemical poisons; new disease pandemics; a teetering global food supply; an imminent nuclear peril; and a human species with an unlimited capacity for self-deception about the crisis it has engendered.

The anger has been brewing a while. Back in 2011, it was NASA scientist James Hansen, the man who brought the world its clarion climate warning, being whisked off to gaol for defending his grandchildren. He was just one of a thousand arrested at that demo against tar sands developments.

Then it was actress Jane Fonda, aged 82 and twice arrested in various climate protests, along with veteran actresses Sally Field and Lily Tomlin.

Of course, Greta Thunberger’s School Strikers have successfully roused the rising generation of global citizens, along with Extinction Rebellion and similar groups. They, after all, are the heirs to this global mega-tragedy. But behind the youngsters, now being arrested and gaoled in their thousands in Britain, the United States, Germany, Denmark, Holland, Australia, Sweden, India – even in Russia and China, where being a climate activist is very dangerous – is a rising movement of Elders, joining hands and risking their freedom alongside their children and grandchildren.

Part of the motivation is a rising fury that our courts and police forces – supposedly created to defend society, its rights and freedoms – are being universally conscripted to do the dirty work of the $7 trillion fossil fuels lobby, insidiously tightening its control over governments democratic, autocratic and in-between.

Slowly, steadily, an international protest movement is taking shape among older people, fuelled by shared outrage on social media. Ideas and protest methods are flying back and forth at lightspeed between different but likeminded groups, across the age cohorts as well as national and cultural borders.

The evidence for a politically active and engaged Elderhood is all over the internet, on Facebook, Twitter, Get-Up and Avaaz, and in retiree groups like U3A and SEE-Change, as wise and experienced minds contemplate the catastrophic mix of climate, extinction, toxic pollution, militarisation, resource scarcity, society-wide surveillance and resurgent authoritarianism in place of democracy.

In Australia, the Knitting Nannas is an “international disorganisation where people come together to ensure that our land, air and water are preserved for our children and grandchildren. We sit, knit, plot, have a yarn and a cuppa, and bear witness to the war against the greedy, short-sighted corporations that are trying to rape our land and divide our communities.”

On the global scene, the Raging Grannies is “an international group of social activists made up of older women who use playful energy, song, creativity and humour to protest and increase awareness of issues related to social justice, environmental sustainability, women’s rights, and more.”

The rebellion by The Elders isn’t a revolt of the disempowered. It’s far bigger, and much more potent, than that – but just as disillusioned and angry with political inertia and the mess that corruption, corporate greed and laissez-faire economics are making of the present and future.

Australia began the current century with 12 per cent of its population aged 65 or over: by 2030 it will be 20 per cent – about 5 million people. These are, according to HILDA (Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia), the richest cohort in the country. They are literate, experienced, time-rich, educated and enfranchised. They understand politics. Furthermore, they are overwhelmingly parents and grandparents – who know their grandkids are getting a very rough deal indeed.

Politicians and corporate executives should tremble. How the Baby Boomers vote, buy, invest or disinvest decides the fate of governments and businesses in Australia – and globally. If the Elders conclude your product or policy is harmful to their grandkids, they can inflict a lot of damage on shareholder value, corporate reputation or political majorities.

Currently there are a billion people aged 60 and over worldwide, according to the UN. This number is expected to double by the mid-century. In Europe, North America and Australasia, Elders will make up a quarter of the population and a third of the voters. They will live, and exert influence, for 25 years or more beyond retirement. The disparaging characterisation of elders as apathetic and conservative is falling away in the light of harsh new realities: everything they have lived their lives for is under threat.

Here’s the thing: ethical Elders know their grandchildren are being handed a rough deal, a planet more damaged and dangerous, and a society less free, fair, safe, healthy, just and equal, than they themselves enjoyed. More and more, they are putting their voices, brains and financial power behind things like renewable energy, clean-up campaigns, political pressure for wildlife and landscape restoration, safer food, better healthcare, opposition to war and militarism, and a renewal of trust and investment in those pillars of modern society, education and science.

The phenomenon of the billionaire-turned-philanthropist is well known – after a lifetime of rapacious accumulation, a deathbed (or thereabouts) crisis of conscience transforms the accumulator into a social benefactor. What’s happening with the Elders is equally profound but far more significant, because it is occurring across a whole generation and a planet, not just among a few individuals.

Climate campaigner Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org has also set up The Third Act, a group of elder climate activists, who recently staged protests in 90 locations across the USA. Their manifesto states “We are building a community of Americans over the age of sixty determined to change the world for the better. Together, we use our life experience, skills, and resources to build a better tomorrow.” One of the things they do, most effectively, is threaten banks who fund fossil fuels with the loss of their money.

“Older people have got money and structural power coming out of our ears,” says McKibben, who is 62. “We have to show young people we have their back. We are the first generation to leave the world in a worse place than we found it.”

Another potent dynamic in the activism of the Elders is that many of the movement’s leaders are women. People who have been politically powerless and voiceless most of their lives are rising with new-found confidence, will and determination to try to save their grandchildren, to go where men are often too timid and compliant to dare. Women are rising up, as leaders of the new world, to rescue the human future.

It is a timeworn saying that young people are the future and the hope of our species. Now it is equally true that old people are, too.

READ MORE:

https://johnmenadue.com/look-out-here-come-the-elders/

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