Diarmuid Breatnach
Twenty-three activists arrested at three different Dublin events between Monday and today (Friday). Three women reported being strip-searched. Six activists were pepper-sprayed into the eyes.
Oppression leads to resistance; the system responds with repression. But repression can also lead to resistance.
Reports to follow.
Diarmuid Breatnach
(Reading time: 6 mins.)
Both Sinn Féin party leaders, Michelle O’Neill (First Minister of the British colony) and Mary-Lou Mac Donald, TD and party President, have publicly declared that they will not attend the White House on St. Patrick’s Day this year.
What made Michelle O’Neill decide not to to go to the White House shamrock fest, she tells us, were President Trump’s words about turning Gaza into a desirable beach-front property development once the Palestinians had been removed. This, she told us, was a question of principle.
“The decision not to travel to the White House has not been taken lightly, but it is taken conscious of the responsibility each of us as individuals have to call out injustice. We are all heartbroken as we witness the suffering of the Palestinian people and the recent comments of the US President around the mass expulsion of the Palestinian people from Gaza, something I cannot ignore.1
“… At moments like this, whenever our grandchildren ask us what do we do, whenever the Palestinian people were suffering in the way in which they are, I want to be able to say that I stood on the side of humanity so this decision for me is very much the position of principle and I think it’s the right thing to do.”2
In January, Trump made those statements about the intention of ethnically cleansing Gaza of its population and the relocation of Gazans to Jordan and Egypt (the regimes of both have clearly stated their opposition to such plans) for the creation of “a Middle Eastern Riviera”.3
Prior to that, Joe Biden’s US Presidency was not only backing Israel’s accelerated genocide for 15 months financially and politically but supplying the IOF with the very weapons to carry out that genocide. Without SF feeling the need to break with him. But a few words from Trump …!
According to Brown University’s “Costs of War” project, the U.S. has spent at least 17.9 billion dollars in military assistance to Israel since October 7 2023, which is more than U.S. military assistance to Israel in any year since the U.S. began to assist Israel militarily. 4
And it vetoed a ceasefire resolution three times at the UN Security Council, against the will of a majority of member states. 5
In mid-March 2023 when O’Neill and MacDonald attended the White House shamrock fest, in spite of many calls not to go, including that of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Biden had been feeding the IOF’s accelerated genocide for over five months.
O’Neill’s reason for her intention not to attend this year (if indeed she were invited)6 clearly had nothing to do with opposition to genocide, solidarity with the Palestinian people, common humanity nor anything of the sort and we must look elsewhere to explore her possible motivation.
Mary-Lou Mac Donald also indicated she wouldn’t be going to browse the blood-soaked shamrock, including an acknowledgement of the degree of US imperialist penetration of the Irish state’s economy:
“I have followed with growing concern what is happening on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank and like many other Irish people have listened in horror to calls from the President of the United States for the mass expulsion of the Palestinian people from their homes and the permanent seizure of Palestinian land. Such an approach is a fundamental breach of international law, is deeply destabilising in the Middle East and a dangerous departure from the UN position of peace and security for Palestine and Israel and the right of Palestinians to self determination.
“… The US is a valued friend to Ireland. Their work in helping to achieve the Good Friday Agreement stands as a clear example of successful U.S. foreign policy. They are an important partner for peace and play a strong role in Ireland’s economy.7
For genuine anti-imperialists, Irish Republicans and socialists, the correct attitude is clear. Indeed it should be so for any democratic people or even for people just opposed to genocide.
‘Israel’ is only able to commit genocide through the assistance of US Imperialism and therefore we should endeavour to isolate any of its governmental expressions and most of all any that lay claim to our special support, on one of our national days and with one of our national symbols.
“CAN’T WIN”?
There may well be a ‘damned if we do, damned if we don’t’ response from the SF faithful to the type of criticism in this article. They won’t actually analyse the reasons upon which the criticisms are based – no, of course not.
This party likes to claim credit for events that seem favourable, dodge criticism over errors or just nasty actions while at the same time whingeing that they can never win, that they will be criticised whatever they do, an eternal victim attitude from a party aspiring to government rule.
So, could SF have done anything in this regard of which their critics would have approved? Yes, they could. They could have admitted their error of last year, apologised for it and called for a St. Patrick’s Day White House boycott at least until the USA stops supporting genocide.
No need to worry about my sanity, they won’t, of course nor did I imagine for one minute that they would.
IMPERIALISM AND SF SUPPORT
The USA is a world imperialist power and still the one dominating the world, though it is under serious challenge and its days appear numbered. The ruling class of the USA, a European settler state, practised genocide and exploitation on the indigenous people and on imported slaves.
It also ruthlessly exploited the immigrant working class and its descendants, along with the emancipated slaves. It fought attempts to organise labour and legal trade unions with billy clubs, pistols, machine guns, arson, laws and regulations, jail and the hangman’s noose.
The fact that a section of the immigrant Irish in the US support Sinn Féin is in part due to the socially conservative background of both groups of people and also to SF’s never seriously challenging the imperialist nature of the USA.
And how does this obeisance supposedly benefit Ireland? Will the US support an Irish revolution against British colonial occupation? It refused to do so even at the time of its greatest hostility with the British, when the latter actively supported the Confederate states in the Civil War.8
No, for the major imperialists of the US, the lesser imperialists of the UK are occasional competition but much more fundamentally, allies and it is not going to undermine its fundamental external power base.
Mary-Lou Mac Donald stated very clearly that Mícheál Martin should attend the shamrock fest. What was that about? Possibly she was indicating to Ireland’s Tánaiste (Prime Minister), that she would not be taking political advantage of his attendance at the White House to denounce him.
But she was also clearly indicating that the Sinn Féin leadership are ‘responsible’ potential representatives of an imperialist-dependent Gombeen ruling class, who understand how there are times to put aside any principle in order to attend at the Court of King US Imperialism.9
Through her statement Mary-Lou MacDonald represented her party as a safe pair of hands to run the State for the Gombeen class in the future.
Should the current representatives of the Irish neo-colonial ruling class be invited, they will of course attend, bearing the shamrock tribute, knowing that they are safe at least from the criticism of SF, the largest opposition party in Leinster House (the parliament of the Irish State).
US and Zionist military flights can continue to stop over at Shannon and otherwise fly through Irish airspace. On the international stage, the Irish State will continue to align itself with the western imperialist bloc and continue to open its markets, resources and networks to imperialist plunder.
If O’Neill does indeed say what she claimed she would to her grandchildren about her reasons for not going, she will be lying to them. But then, at least the grandchildren will come to know they were not alone – the party’s supporters and the whole country were being lied to also.
If there was anything other than rank opportunism behind the statements of the SF (Stoop Further) party leaders, such as solidarity, it certainly wasn’t with the Palestinians; solidarity with EU imperialist elites and with the genocidal Democratic Party elite, perhaps.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1https://www.belfastlive.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/michelle-oneill-boycott-white-house-31050982
2https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy870w30q6qo
3https://www.reuters.com/world/palestinians-have-no-alternative-leaving-gaza-trump-says-2025-02-04/
4https://mondoweiss.net/2025/02/israel-is-stepping-up-its-military-aggression-across-the-region-but-is-it-out-of-strength-or-weakness/
5Ibid.
6There is every likelihood that she would not have been; SF is in government only in a colony of the UK and furthermore in the USA is strongly connected to Trump’s political rivals, the Democratic Party – and he is not known for kindness towards his political enemies.
7https://vote.sinnfein.ie/sinn-fein-leaders-announce-they-will-not-attend-white-house-events-this-year/
8The USA under General Ulysses Grant, who was of part Irish descent, arrested Fenians and in 1866 prevented the support forces from crossing the St. Lawrence River to support the advance invasion forces which had emerged victorious from two engagements against British forces in Canada.
9And O’Neill displayed her responsible credentials in managing the colonial occupation also, stating that she would not criticise the colony’s Second Minister, Unionist Emma Little-Pengelly, if she were to attend.
Diarmuid Breatnach
(Reading time: 11 mins.)
Recently Donald Trump scandalised much of the world with his suggestion that Gaza could be turned into an attractive location after its inhabitants, the Palestinians, were removed.
Was this a serious proposal? If so, could the US and Israel manage it? What are the chances?
Firstly, a quick look at the territory envisaged and its recent history.
GAZA
A strip of land 365 km2 (141 sq mi)1 on the eastern coast of the Middle Eastern land of Palestine, bordered by the State of ‘Israel’ and the State of Egypt, with an estimated Palestinian population of 2.1 million in 2024 (since hugely depleted by genocide and removal).
Gaza had been settled mainly by Palestinian refugees expelled from Zionist-occupied Palestine in 1948 and by those fleeing Israeli Occupation Force persecution and harassment in the West Bank in subsequent years added to of course by their descendants born and growing up there.
The strip was occupied after the 1967 War by around 5,000 Zionist settlers – illegally even by international law — who took up around 40% of the land there but after the Second Intifada,2 left in 2005, as did the Israeli Occupation Army.
In the 2006 elections in Gaza and the West Bank, Hamas won, ousting the Fatah party which had won the previous elections. However, Fatah refused to accept the results and had to be physically removed in Gaza in 2007, though Hamas stepped back from doing the same in the West Bank.
The Western powers, those bastions of the democratic way of doing things, refused to acknowledge the Palestinian popular will and blocked Hamas from all aid, which went instead to the undemocratic Palestinian Authority, which the Fatah party control.
‘Israel’ blockaded Gaza from then onwards, keeping the population at a marginal level of existence and regularly attacked it, what they called “mowing the lawn” in 2008/9, 2012, 2014, 2018/19, 2021 until the Palestinian breakout and counter-attack of October 2023.3
In October 2023 Hamas and Islamic Jihad broke out of their concentration camp, overran the ‘Israeli’ armed forces overseeing them and seized captives to exchange for the many Palestinian captives in ‘Israeli’ jails. Other groups and individuals also poured through the gaps in the wall.
The IOF besieged Gaza, cutting off its supplies of food, clean water and other supplies. It dropped 85,000 tonnes of explosives4 on that highly-concentrated population, killing an estimated 46,000 (with another 10,000 buried in rubble)5 and injuring at least 110,265 (one in every 20).6
The IOF destroyed nearly all wells and rooftop water tanks, along with desalination plants,7 destroyed totally or in part 90% of residential buildings,8 at least 27 hospitals and 12 other medical centres,9 along with schools, higher education buildings, mosques and churches.
Some 1.9 million people have been displaced, 90% of the population, with many of them forced to move repeatedly.10 “Nearly 1.9 million people in Gaza are internally displaced, of which nearly 80 percent are living in makeshift shelters without adequate clothing or protection from the cold.
“UN agencies estimated that nearly half a million are in flood-prone areas. Authorities in Gaza said about 110,000 of the 135,000 tents being used as shelters in the Gaza Strip are worn out and not fit for use.”11
PROPOSERS OF ETHNIC CLEANSING
The USA – In March 2024 Jared Kushner, property developer, senior policy adviser and son-in-law of Donald Trump (then former US President and now President again) commented that Gaza after the removal of the Palestinians would make a great site for a beach-front property development.12
Donald Trump, after being re-elected, commented in somewhat similar lines and bluntly proposed the expulsion (‘voluntary relocation’) of Palestinians from Gaza. But to where? Well, to Jordan and Egypt in particular, whose ruling regimes would accept them, he assured.13
The Democratic Party wing of the US imperialist ruling class expressed horror at such crass statements of ethnic cleansing but had supported the ‘Israeli’ state in maintaining the siege, periodic bombing attacks and in demonising Hamas along with the whole Palestinian resistance.14
‘Israel’: Prime Minister Netanyahu and a number of his cabinet made statements supporting the plan.
REACTION OF ARAB & IRANIAN STATE LEADERS
The leaders of Arab states and of Iran have opposed the ethnic cleansing plan, all of them concerned at further destabilisation of the Middle East (and threat to their regimes). Most (excepting Yemen and Iran), advocating instead Gaza as part of a Palestinian state (sic) alongside the ‘Israeli’ one.15
WHAT EUROPEAN STATE LEADERS SAY
All of the leaders of European states that have commented have opposed the plan, all of them concerned at further destabilisation of the Middle East and, with regard to Palestine, advocating instead Gaza as part of a Palestinian state (sic) alongside the ‘Israeli’ one.16
All of the main political parties in the European states have also opposed the ethnic cleansing and advocate the “two state solution” (sic).
RUSSIA & CHINA also oppose Trump’s plan as do many states in AFRICA and in LATIN AMERICA. The top levels of the United Nations also oppose Trump’s idea.
WHY MOST STATES OPPOSE THE PLAN
Those objecting to the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and transporting Palestinians to other destinations may well have moral objections to that plan but their political and practical reasons for objecting are much stronger.
Lebanon already has a Palestinian refugee population of 60% and in 1975-’90 a war there saw fascist Lebanese forces combined with the IOF fight Palestinian and Druze forces with massacres of refugees as “Beirut” became a byword in urban destruction, invasion and ethnic conflict.
The Jordanian regime is heavily foreign-dependent and vulnerable to imperialist pressure but it also knows that it walks a tightrope and can’t afford to add to the economic, social and political pressures by taking in a large influx of Palestinians forced out of Gaza.
Nearly 25% of Jordan’s population is composed of Palestinian refugees and their descendants.17
The King of Jordan, an imperialist stooge trained in the UK, nervously attended the meeting with the real king, Trump, to which he was summoned, evidencing his unease with a nervous tic taking over his face. He agreed to take 2,000 injured children, not at all the same thing as Trump wanted.
Egypt, a bigger power though also US-dependent (especially its military) has its own economic, social and political reasons for rejecting a proposal to integrate a large population of forced Palestinian refugees into its society and economy and declined an invitation to meet Trump.
US ally Saudi Arabia, which has not been pressured to the degree of Egypt and Lebanon, nevertheless has reasons to reject the plan and that is the de-stabilization of the whole Middle East by a further expansion of the Zionist State and growing population of stateless refugees.
That is the other and fundamental reason why the Saudi ruling class is opposed to the expulsion of Palestinians and they have stated it in terms of the need for a ‘Palestinian state’ – within the framework of a two-state ‘solution’ (i.e. a partitioned Palestine with about 20% for Palestinians).
The Saudis have also proposed to rebuild and set up Gaza with the Palestinians remaining there but in the course of which they intend to have somebody other than Hamas – whom the people elected, let’s not forget – administer the area.
The Palestinian Authority (sic) despite its role as proxy policeman for the Zionist State and US Imperialism, would not welcome the loss of a large part of its possible fiefdom and certainly could not politically afford to agree to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
Macron, for the French imperialist ruling class, has welcomed the Saudi proposal. It is not beyond possibility that the US ruling class will approve and it may even have been part of its plan to frighten everyone and make such ‘solutions’ as that of the Saudis more generally accepted.
UAE is not vulnerable internally to anything like the degree of Egypt and Jordan and on the other hand is at times in contention with Saudi Arabia for influence in the region but also ally of the USA is nevertheless opposed the Trump ethnic cleansing process.
Qatar, home of Al-Jazeera news channel and much more in contention with Saudi Arabia and also the UAE, is also an ally of the USA but opposed to removing the Palestinians from Gaza.
The elites of the Western European states, from imperialist to lesser capitalist states wishing to coexist with imperialism, including the colonial and neo-colonial states of Ireland all oppose the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, saying it threatens the ‘two state option’.
That option would copper-fasten Israeli occupation of around 80% of Palestine and control over the remaining 20% as a client state. They would hope to isolate the Palestinian resistance under collaborator rule and help and assist in the stabilisation under imperialism of the Middle East.
A DIFFERENT BASIS FOR OPPOSITION
The ruling elites of IRAN and YEMEN18 see ‘Israel’ as an important foothold for US and other Western imperialism in the Middle East and also as an aggressive colonial force in its own right. Therefore they are fundamentally hostile to any kind of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
That too is the position of Hezbollah, a major political and military force in Lebanon.
IS THE ZIONIST ARMY CAPABLE OF ETHNICALLY CLEANSING GAZA?
The Israeli Occupation Army is unlikely to welcome being sent back into Gaza to fight the Palestinian resistance there once again. And signalling that, rather than an inadvertent slip, may have caused the admission of very high combat fatality figures by the IOF’s commander.19
Eyal Zamir, ‘Israel’s’ new Chief of Staff, referred in a recent interview to the “5,942 of bereaved families”20 since October 2023, terminology only used by the IOF to refer to the families of their soldiers killed and also noted that some families likely lost more than one member.
Those numbers, apart from being around six times those previously admitted by the IOF, are not such that can be replaced in the short term.
Furthermore, the Palestinian resistance in Gaza (and presumably Hezbollah in Lebanon) targeted officers whenever they could resulting in a high attrition rate among higher ranks engaged in combat. These take longer to replace due to their experience, training and skills.
It has long been suspected in many quarters that Israel was concealing its war casualty numbers by imposing press censorship, installing IOF officers to answer queries at hospitals and issuing untrue statistics for foreign and home consumption.
Zamir also stated that 15,000 soldiers were suffering from physical or mental injuries.21 As early as December 2023, the ‘Israeli’ publication Haartez, quoted their Health Ministry figures of a staggering 10,548 injured as opposed to the 1,593 stated by the IOF.22
“In October 2024, Haaretz also reported that around 1,000 wounded soldiers were admitted to rehabilitation centres each month, along with new injury claims associated with past incidents.
“The report stated that the rehabilitation division estimates that by 2030, around 100,000 Israeli soldiers will be classed as disabled, and almost half also experience some form of psychological challenge.”23
Statistics show a military age population in ‘Israel’, male and female, of around three million24 of which some are already serving, many exempt from recruitment due to specific occupation or studies, pregnancy, general health or ability, criminal status or psychological unfitness.
This is without taking into account the Haredi, formerly exempt from service due to religious studies but since June last year eligible to call-up. However this has led to Haredi protests and only 10% of those called actually presenting for service — and also strains Netanyahu’s coalition.25
On the other hand, there is general agreement among commentators that the Resistance, in particular Al-Qassam Brigades (Hamas military wing) have already replaced their fallen across the ranks. The survivors are likely to be for the most part battle-hardened, motivated and confident.
‘Israel’ fought the war in Gaza largely from the air through bombing and missile strikes along with artillery at a distance or a little closer by tanks. The IOF Merkava tanks have been severely depleted due to roadside IEDs (bombs) and Resistance-developed or modified RPGs.
The IOF generally did not take the Resistance on in soldier-to-soldier combat and when they did, were generally defeated. IOF snipers were often themselves sniped or they and their spy-posts eliminated by a rocket with thermobaric warhead.
Gaza still contains a vast network of sophisticated tunnels of which the IOF know very little nor, when an entrance is discovered, do the IOF go in there to fight. The IOF-created rubble landscape with rarely any building for the IOF to hole up but no way of spotting tunnel exits.
As demonstrated in the prisoner handover events, Hamas is not short of weapons, though level of ammunition stores is an unknown factor. Given the huge amount of unexploded bombs dropped by the IOF, possibly as high as 15% the Resistance will not be short of explosives either.26
CONCLUSION
Whether Trump was serious about the plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza or was merely soft-soaping Netanyahu and his most fascist Zionist supporters remains to be seen. Equally, the US may have wanted to scare Palestinian Arab neighbours to step forward to police Gaza for them.
Let us not forget that Brett McGurk under Biden’s administration discussed the need to consider how to manage Gaza “the day after” the war there ended and that a revamped Palestinian Authority might be able to do the job27 – Abbas rushing to assure his masters that the PA was indeed ready!
Proving themselves ready for Gaza management was probably the reason for the PA’s siege of Jenin and then participating in attacks upon the Resistance there alongside the IOF. However, it is unlikely that the imperialists have much faith in the corrupt PA’s ability to take on running Gaza.
The ethnic cleansing of Gaza, whether it was ever really contemplated by Trump or not, will not happen in the near future because none of the regional stakeholders – other than the blindest fascists of the Israeli Government – can afford to agree with it.
Also because the only ones reasonably available to attack Gaza again, the IOF, got really badly chewed up in their fifteen months of genocidal warfare there. But then perhaps the whole threat was scare-bait to get Arab states to collude even further with ‘Israel’ in managing post-war Gaza.
On the other hand, an unthinkable idea has been thought of and widely publicised. And when the unthinkable becomes part of public discourse, it breaks the taboo around it and makes it easier to put into practice at some point in the future.
Resumption of and constant bombing of Gaza is therefore not totally beyond possibility but it seems unlikely the master, the USA (Trump variety) wants that and, while that is the case, it cannot happen.
End.
Footnotes
1Not very much larger than Dublin city.
2The 2nd Intifada (uprising) was against the ‘Israeli’ occupation but also against the Oslo Accords, the perceived sell-out by the ruling Fatah party of Palestinian self-determination and the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
3A very biased source nevertheless gives the dates and some statistics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza%E2%80%93Israel_conflict
4https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/15/the-human-toll-of-israels-war-on-gaza-by-the-numbers#:~:text=46%2C707%20Palestinians%20killed,number%20killed%20is%20far%20higher.
5https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/15/the-devastating-impact-of-15-months-of-war-on-gaza
6https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/15/the-human-toll-of-israels-war-on-gaza-by-the-numbers
7https://www.oxfamamerica.org/press/less-than-seven-percent-of-pre-conflict-water-levels-available-to-rafah-and-north-gaza-worsening-a-health-catastrophe/ and (from para 8 in) https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/22/israel-palestine-gaza-water, not only by the IOF but also in attacks by Zionist settlers.
8https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/15/the-devastating-impact-of-15-months-of-war-on-gaza
9Quoted in this anti-Hamas report .https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/israels-attacks-have-devastating-impact-gazas-hospitals-turk-tells-security-council
10https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/15/the-devastating-impact-of-15-months-of-war-on-gaza
11https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/15/the-human-toll-of-israels-war-on-gaza-by-the-numbers
12https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/19/jared-kushner-gaza-waterfront-property-israel-negev
13https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-gaza-riviera-echoes-kushner-waterfront-property-dreams-2025-02-05/
14Since the IOF pulled out of Gaza and the election of Hamas by the people, five US Presidencies have supported ‘Israel’s’ actions and supplied them with the financial and military means to carry them out: George Bush Jnr, Barrack Obama, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Donald Trump (again). Two individual Presidents have been Democrats, two Republican; two Presidencies have been Democratic and three Republican.
15https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/02/05/world-reactions-to-trump-s-proposal-for-us-to-take-over-gaza-strip_6737820_4.html
16https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/02/05/world-reactions-to-trump-s-proposal-for-us-to-take-over-gaza-strip_6737820_4.html
17https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinians_in_Jordan
18And seems to reflect the opinion of their countries’ masses also.
19Given the secrecy around the real statistics he may have been not only signalling disapproval of resuming the war in Gaza but also feeding information ammunition to others who might also be opposed to that return.
20https://www.newarab.com/news/israeli-new-army-chief-admits-gaza-losses-higher-reported
21Ibid
22Ibid
23Ibid.
24https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_global_manpower_fit_for_military_service Some of those may have left ‘Israel’ without intention to return in the short term (“manpower” is a misnomer since female figures are also included)..
25https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-supreme-court-rules-religious-seminary-students-must-be-drafted-military-2024-06-25/
26https://www.timesofisrael.com/much-of-hamas-explosives-comes-from-idf-fire-that-failed-to-detonate-report/
27Also a suggestion of Borrell’s, Foreign Affairs Minister of the EU: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/27/corrupt-discredited-could-a-reformed-palestinian-authority-run-gaza
Sources
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gw89x8x11o
Roundup of reaction of states and major organisations to Trump’s ethnic cleansing words: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/2/5/world-reaction-to-trumps-comments-on-ethnic-cleansing-in-gaza
Gearóid Ó Loingsigh Feb 7 (Reading time: 7 mins.)
NB: Edited by RB from original article for formatting purposes
Trump’s decision to suspend funding of USAID (United States Agency for International Development) provoked the ire of many liberals.
Trump took the decision for all the wrong reasons; he is not very intelligent nor is he analytical and is incapable of understanding the big picture — and the liberals who were horrified and criticised his actions also did so for all the wrong reasons.
They came out in defence of the agency stating that all the dictators in the world will be happy,[1] ignoring that USAID has throughout its history financed projects for dictatorial or authoritarian regimes.
They even went as far as the stupidity of saying that Elon Musk wanted this as vengeance against USAID for its role in defeating Apartheid.[2] Nothing could be further from the truth.
What little role it played in the country was to ensure that capitalism would be safe, but it did not bring an end to Apartheid.
The US government and all its agencies supported the racist regime, just like they supported the new “black” capitalism as an integral part of the usual “white” capitalism, as capitalism really doesn’t have a colour.
So, what is the agency? And what role does it play in the world? These are questions that have prefabricated answers from those who have remained silent in the face of many of the US’ barbarities. There are exceptions of course.
Mehdi Hasan is a journalist who is now famous worldwide for his positions on the genocide in Gaza, but in general, all those who answer those two questions positively, answer questions on the role of the US positively, even in the case of Palestine.
Firstly, we should be clear about how the agency defines itself and how it has been seen by successive US governments. In 2002, George Bush described foreign aid as the third pillar of US national security, along with defence and diplomacy.[3]
The same document Foreign Aid in the National Interest explains various lines of work of the agency such as financing the “development” of agriculture etc. They demand changes and reforms in the countries they “help”, just as does the World Bank.
When they clash with governments that are not given to implement the reforms they seek, they bluntly state that they will give funds to functionaries, ministers and others in the country to promote their agenda for change.
That is even if at that precise moment the beneficiaries of the programmes have no political power to implement such changes.[4] They play the long game. They openly state that they have to finance NGOs that promote “democracy”.[5]
This is what is nowadays called Colour Revolutions i.e. where through an NGO a situation of instability is generated in a country against a government or regime, whether it be democratic or authoritarian.
What is important is whether its economic and foreign policy coincide with Washington’s interests or not.
Colombia, for example, has always been a recipient of USAID’s programmes despite the murders of journalists, social leaders, opposition politicians, such as the Patriotic Union, trade unionists etc.
Not in the worst years of the bloodbath was it proposed to limit the aid or even pressure the government to introduce democratic reforms. Colombia has always served US interests.
In the case of Colombia, the negative impacts of the supposed North American aid can be clearly seen. In 1961, Kennedy announced a new programme for Latin America, the Alliance for Progress and he also set up USAID.
As part of that programme wheat was donated to certain countries, amongst them Colombia, but it was no favour. In 1961 there were 160,000 hectares of wheat in the country with a crop of 142,100 tonnes.
The following year the area sown fell to 150,000 hectares and so it went every year until in 2023 there were barely 3,000 hectares of wheat with a crop of 9,354 tonnes. They collapsed the production of a basic crop in the Colombian diet.
In reality, USAID is prohibited by law from financing crops and other economic activities that compete with US companies. They were always going to collapse wheat production.
They did similar things in other parts of the world, collapsing local markets, though they always say that it is not their intention.
Biden and Harris announced a new USAID pilot programme to supply emergency food and it consisted of sending one billion in food to 18 countries, all of them in Africa with the exceptions of Haiti, Yemen and Bangladesh.
Amongst the products to be exported were “wheat, rice, sorghum, lentils, chickpeas, dry peas, vegetable oil, cornmeal, navy beans, pinto beans and kidney beans – commodities that align with traditional USAID international food assistance programming.” [6]
It is nothing more than a subsidy to the cereal sector in the US dominated by just four large companies (Cargill, Cenex Harvest States, Archer Daniels Midland ([ADM] and General Mills), who get rid of their surpluses this way.
Looking at the list one sees that it includes countries with high levels of food insecurity, but they are not the worst in the world. Five of them are amongst the top ten countries with people suffering food insecurity in terms of absolute numbers of people suffering food insecurity.
In terms of percentages, just three of them are in the top ten countries with a percentage in excess of 30%. Afghanistan was not selected by the USA as they are no longer interested in the country, despite 46% of the population suffering from food insecurity, i.e. 19.9 million people.
Neither did they select Syria with 55% where they were only interested in replacing the Ba’athist regime with ISIS, which they achieved this year.
The causes of this insecurity are varied. In twelve countries it was due to weather extremes, affecting 56.8 million people and in another 27 countries economic shocks affecting 83.9 million people. And lastly 117.1 million people affected by conflicts in 19 countries.
It is worth pointing out that two of those countries were Syria and Ukraine, both of them conflicts in which the USA and Europe play a deciding role, not just in the start of the conflict but also in its course and duration.[7]
In the case of Ukraine the war had a dramatic effect on the price and supply of cereals in many parts.
USAID’s initial work consisted of economic aid programmes that included promoting US companies and so-called free enterprise. Later in the 2000s it allied itself more closely with US companies, giving them contracts to benefit themselves and not the countries.
Dupont, one of the companies that most pollutes water in the US, won a contract to supply drinking water to Ethiopia! The jokes write themselves.
An opportunity is never lost for multinational capital. Before the war with Iraq had even begun, USAID was signing contracts for the reconstruction of the country once the war was over.
One of the beneficiaries was Bechtel, a company that drummed up public support for the war and obtained one billion in contracts after the war.[8] USAID is an arm of the US government and its policies and contacts always favour their interests and never anyone else’s.
As for the threat that this represents to freedom of the press and expression etc. the mainstream press has raised an outcry.
It is true that for the moment the USA will have to look to another agency to help foment discontent and carry out the so-called Colour Revolutions and other coups d’etat. The CIA will have to finance those organisations directly and not through USAID as they have done up till now.
It has to be said that many of the regimes overthrown were not a bit progressive but neither were those who replaced them. The US supported them because they were useful to their interests, and nothing more.
Assad in Syria was replaced by Jolani from ISIS and in the ex-soviet republics, all of those governments have dubious human rights records. USAID never financed opposition groups, nor alternative press in Colombia despite its human rights record.
It never financed those that sought to overthrow the dictator Pinochet in Chile, nor in Bolsonaro’s Brazil, nor currently in Milei’s Argentina.
Now, various NGOs around the world, including Colombia, weep. They are organisations that are only interested in their own slice of the cake. We lose nothing with them. The sooner they go bankrupt the better.
They will say that there are good projects that USAID finances and they are right. Of course there are.
The soft power of a country cannot be 100% Machiavellian, not everything is absolute greed and power. In order for the US soft power to work there must be modicum of projects that are good in and of themselves or at least not as evidently open to criticism. That is what it is about.
These projects serve to generate an atmosphere conducive to US activities and give it the right to opine on internal policies and present itself as a friend of the government — or the people when it wants to carry out a coup d’etat.
Neither Trump nor Musk understand this. They are not intelligent people; their abilities have always been to take advantage of what others build.
Thus, they have no ability to think about what soft power means as a tool of real domination in other countries, nor as a means to justify the hard power of a coup or colour revolution. The closure of USAID is an own goal of imperialism.
Elon Musk stated in Twitter that the agency was a nest of anti-American Marxist vipers. The Indian Marxist Vijay Prashad replied that Marxists such as him detested USAID as it was a nest of liberal imperialists. Prashad is right, so the answer to the headline question of this article is clear.
USAID is the foe, and no one on the left should mourn its passing. Good riddance. And those who mourn it, run to get your thirty pieces of silver whilst they are still signing cheques.
End.
NB: For more articles by Gearóid see https://gearoidloingsigh.substack.com
NOTES
[1] The Guardian (06/02/2025) Authoritarian regimes around the world cheer dismantling of USAid. Joseph Gedeon. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/06/authoritarian-usaid-elon-musk
[2] The Ink (03/02/2025) USAID fought Apartheid. Musk is killing it.
The.Ink
USAID fought apartheid. Musk is killing it
As we speak, an unelected billionaire, born in South Africa, is staging an unconstitutional coup in the United States, shutting down an agency that happened to fight the apartheid regime he and his family thrived under as rich whites…
Read more
14 days ago · 222 likes · 29 comments · The Ink
[3] USAID (2002) Foreign Aid in the National Interest. USAID. Washington D.C. pIV https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GOVPUB-S18-PURL-LPS46120/pdf/GOVPUB-S18-PURL-LPS46120.pdf
[4] Ibíd., P.51
[5] Ibíd., P.44
[6] USDA (18/04/2024) USDA, USAID Deploy $1 Billion for Emergency Food Assistance. https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2024/04/18/usda-usaid-deploy-1-billion-emergency-food-assistance
[7] Statistics taken from Global Report on Food Crises 2023, https://www.fsinplatform.org/report/global-report-food-crises-2023/
[8] Current Affairs (10/03/2021) Aid for Profit: The Dark History of USAID. Saheli Khastagir. https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2021/03/aid-for-profit-the-dark-history-of-usaid
Chris Hedges (shared from his substack Subscribe here for more)
(Reading time: mins.) NB: Edited by RB from original article for formatting purposes
The wildfires in California replicate the massive fire storms in the boreal forest in Canada and Siberia, the lungs of the earth. Our addiction to fossil fuel has ignited an age of fire.
The apocalyptic wildfires that have erupted in the boreal forest in Siberia, the Russian Far East and Canada, climate scientists repeatedly warned, would inevitably move southwards as rising global temperatures created hotter, more fire-prone landscapes. Now they have.
The failures in California, where Los Angeles has had no significant rainfall in eight months, are not only failures of preparedness — the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, decreased funds for the fire department by $17 million — but a failure globally to halt the extraction of fossil fuel.
The only surprise is that we are surprised. Welcome to the age of the “Pyrocene” where cities burn and water does not come out of the hydrants.
The boreal forest is the largest forest system on earth. It circumnavigates the Northern Hemisphere. It stretches across Canada and Alaska. It travels through Russia where it is known as “the taiga.”
It reaches into Scandinavia, picks up again in Iceland and Newfoundland, and moves westward across Canada, completing the circle. The boreal forest has more sources of freshwater than any other biome, including the Amazon Rainforest.
It is the lungs of the earth, able to store 208 billion tons of carbon, or 11 percent of the world’s total.
Yet it has been steadily degraded, assaulted by deforestation and the extraction of the tar sands in Alberta, Canada — which produces 58 percent of Canada’s oil and is the U.S.’s largest source of imported oil — man-made drought and rising temperatures from carbon emissions.
Almost two million acres of boreal forest have been destroyed by extraction industries and timber companies. They have scraped away the topsoil and left behind poisoned wastelands.
The production and consumption of one barrel of tar sands crude oil releases between 17 and 21 percent more carbon dioxide than the production and consumption of a standard barrel of oil.
The oil is transported thousands of miles to refineries as far away as Houston, through pipelines and in tractor-trailer trucks or railroad cars.
This vast assault, perhaps the largest such project in the world, has accelerated the release of carbon emissions that, unchecked, will render the planet uninhabitable for humans and most other species. There is a direct line from the destruction of the boreal forest and the raging wildfires in California.
The boreal forest system has, for over a decade, seen some of the planet’s worst wildfires, including the 2016 Wood Buffalo (aka Fort McMurray) wildfire, which consumed nearly 1.5 million acres and which was not fully extinguished for 15 months.
The monster wildfire, which was, according to journalist John Vaillant, about 950 degrees Fahrenheit — hotter than Venus — destroyed thousands of homes and forced the evacuation of 88,000 people.
The fire ripped into Fort McMurray with such ferocity and speed that residents barely escaped in their cars as buildings and houses were instantly vaporized. Flames shot 300 feet into the air. Fireballs rolled up into the smoke column for another 1,000 feet. It was a harbinger of the new normal.
More than 100 climate scientists have called for a moratorium on the extraction of tar sands oil. Former NASA scientist James Hansen warned over a decade ago that if the tar sands oil is fully exploited, it will be “game over” for the planet.
He has also called for the CEOs of fossil fuel companies to be tried for “high crimes against humanity and nature.”
It is hard to get a sense of the scale of the destruction unless you visit, as I did in 2019, the Alberta tar sands. I spent time with the 500 inhabitants of Beaver Lake, the Cree reserve, most of whom are impoverished and live in small, boxy prefabricated houses.
They are victims of the latest iteration of colonial exploitation, one centered on the extraction of oil that is poisoning the water, soil and air around them.
Beaver Lake, as I wrote at the time, is surrounded by over 35,000 oil and natural gas wells and thousands of miles of pipelines, access roads and seismic lines.
The area also contains the Cold Lake Air Weapons Range, which has appropriated huge tracts of traditional territory from the native inhabitants to test weapons.
Giant processing plants, along with gargantuan extraction machines, including bucket wheelers that are over half a mile long and draglines that are several stories high, ravage hundreds of thousands of acres.
“These stygian centers of death belch sulfurous fumes, nonstop, and send fiery flares into the murky sky,” I wrote. “The air has a metallic taste.
Outside the processing centers, there are vast toxic lakes known as tailings ponds, filled with billions of gallons of water and chemicals related to the oil extraction, including mercury and other heavy metals, carcinogenic hydrocarbons, arsenic and strychnine.
The sludge from the tailings ponds is leaching into the Athabasca River, which flows into the Mackenzie, the largest river system in Canada.”
Nothing in this moonscape, by the end, will support life. “The migrating birds that alight at the tailings ponds die in huge numbers,” I noted. “So many birds have been killed that the Canadian government has ordered extraction companies to use noise cannons at some of the sites to scare away arriving flocks. Around these hellish lakes, there is a steady boom-boom-boom from the explosive devices.”
The water in much of northern Alberta is no longer safe for human consumption. Drinking water has to be trucked in for the Beaver Lake reserve. Cancer and respiratory diseases are rampant.
John Vaillant, author of “Fire Weather: On the Front Lines of a Burning World” describes the tars sands landscape:
…mile upon mile of black and ransacked earth pocked with stadium-swallowing pits and dead, discolored lakes guarded by scarecrows in cast-off rain gear and overseen by flaming stacks and fuming refineries, the whole laced together by circuit board mazes of dirt roads and piping, patrolled by building-sized machines that, enormous as they are, appear dwarfed by the wastelands they have made.
The tailings ponds alone cover well over a hundred square miles and contain more than a quarter of a trillion gallons of contaminated water and effluent from the bitumen upgrading process.
There is no place for this toxic sludge to go except into the soil, or the air, or, if one of the massive earthen dams should fail, into the Athabasca River. For decades, cancer rates have been abnormally high in the downstream community.
The out-of-control fire storms and blizzard of swirling embers, he chronicles, are what we are witnessing in California, a state which normally experiences wildfires during June, July, and August.
Neighborhoods burn “to their foundations beneath a towering pyrocumulus cloud typically found over erupting volcanoes” and fires generate “hurricane-force winds and lightning that ignites fires miles away.”
These cyclone-like fires resemble the firebombing of Hamburg or Dresden during World War Two, rather than forest fires of the past. They are almost impossible to control.
You can see an interview I did with Vaillant here.
“Fire wants to climb,” Vaillan told me. “[W]e all know heat rises. It’s rising up into the treetops and it’s sucking in wind from underneath because it needs oxygen all the time. So the fire, it’s helpful to think of it as a breathing entity.
It’s pulling oxygen in from all around and rising into the architecture of the trees and so there’s this rushing chimney-like effect. Where the fire is in a way happiest, most energetic, most charismatic, and dynamic is up in the treetops, and then it’s pulling in wind from down below.
As that heat builds, as the whole tree is engaged, you have this increasing heat and increasing wind which then builds on itself so it becomes almost a self-perpetuation machine. If you have hot enough, dry enough, [and] windy enough conditions, those flames will then begin to leap from treetop to treetop.”
The heat releases vapor, hydrocarbons from the fuels around it, which is why we see
“explosive fireballs and massive surges of flame coming out of big boreal fires because that’s the superheated vapor rising up and then ignited. Imagine an empty gas can — even though there might not be a lot of liquid in it, it will still explode in a spectacular fashion.
Well, that’s really what the fire is enabling in the forest, for all those hydrocarbons to release in this gaseous cloud that then ignites. That’s when you see, especially a boreal fire, in full run. It’s called a Rank 6. It’s comparable to a Category 5 hurricane.”
When houses and buildings become very hot they, like trees, release hydrocarbons. Vaillant calls modern buildings “incendiary devices.” They are packed with petrochemicals and often sheathed with petroleum products like vinyl siding and tar shingles.
When fires push temperatures to over 1,400 degrees the vinyl siding, tar shingles, glues and laminates in the plywood vaporize.
“The modern home is in fact more flammable than a log cabin or a 19th-century home that’s made mostly out of wood, mostly furnished with cotton-stuffed furniture or horse hair stuffed furniture, things that we think of as antiques now,” Vaillant said.
“But the modern home is really in a way a giant gas can and we don’t think of that when it’s 75 degrees. But when it’s 300 degrees because of the radiant heat coming off a fire, or 1,000 degrees because of the radiant heat coming off a boreal wildfire, it turns into something completely different.”
“All of us alive today have grown up in the petroleum age,” Vaillant said. “It feels normal to us the way I think people smoking on airplanes and in doctors’ waiting rooms felt normal to people in the 1950s. We’re completely habituated to it, to the point that it’s invisible to us.
But if you really stop and think about how petroleum is rendered and what it in fact is, it’s literally toxic at every stage of its life. From the moment it’s drawn from the ground through the incredibly polluting refining process, into our cars and where it’s burned…
Petroleum will kill you in every form, whether as a liquid, as a toxic spill, as a gas, as an emission.
It’s strange to think that we have surrounded ourselves and persuaded ourselves that this profoundly toxic substance is an ally to us and an enabler of this wonderful lifestyle that we live that is now being compromised in measurable and visible ways by that very energy source.”
We have harnessed the concentrated energy of 300 million years and set it alight. We are addicted to fossil fuels. But it is a suicide pact. We ignore the freakish weather patterns and disintegration of the planet, retreating into our electronic hallucinations, pretending the inevitable is not inevitable.
This vast cognitive dissonance, fed to us by mass culture, makes us the most self-deluded population in human history. The cost of this self-delusion will be mass death. The devastation in California is the harbinger of the apocalypse.
end.
The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support his work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
SOURCE:
Gearóid Ó Loingsigh 30 December
(Reading time: 6 mins.)
NB: Edited by RB from original article for formatting purposes
Luigi Mangione’s killing of Brian Thompson has resulted in a plethora of memes on Facebook celebrating to some degree the demise of the unlamented CEO.
Some of them are very funny, full of wit, others express outrage at the nature of the US health system and others openly call for more such killings and Facebook has not suppressed them, which says a lot.
Facebook is run and owned by a right-wing extremist, Mark Zuckerberg. But he is no idiot and probably hopes to ride out this particular storm, rather than suppress it. But he is mistaken as Mangione has struck a nerve. This is not going away.
Some so-called progressives have also sought to soften the impact of Mangione’s actions.
There are of course criticisms from the Left about how such actions don’t solve problems, the CEO is replaced and the machinery rolls on, and these are valid, but there are others who seek to wrest any agency or legitimacy from him.
Munya Chawawa, the British comedian and rapper released a musical video questioning how he was treated by the Police and saying he would have got different treatment if he were black.[1]
Yes, generally the cops are quick to kill blacks, especially those they think have actually killed someone, though they did in fact arrest the black DC Snipers (also known as the Beltway Snipers) who had murdered ten innocent civilians.[2]
In fact, it is not that US cops don’t kill whites, they do, it is just that not at the same rate as blacks. Half of those killed by US cops are white, but blacks are killed at more than double the rate of whites despite making up only 14% of the population.[3]
And yes, he is handsome and it helps, and again the memes have gone into overdrive. His arrest and mugshots have been compared to even scenes from one of the innumerable Superman films. Though I prefer the Che Guevara comparison.
He is no Che, as Che set out to overthrow a state and had a programme for change and is the main person behind the remarkable success story that still is, despite everything, the Cuban health system, but the striking mugshot images do help.
However, Chawawa missed the point altogether and questioning police violence is not something you would automatilaccly associate him with.
But the idea that the cops act with benevolence towards those who shoot CEOs if they are white is nothing short of identitarian rubbish. He is not the only one though.
There are many others from all sorts of liberal backgrounds who recoil in horror that someone might lash out, but shrug their shoulders every day when people die having been refused medical care.
Most people in the US have understood and identify with Mangione’s actions, not out of some idea that he might change the system, but out of their own frustration at how the system works. The plethora of memes on Facebook bears testament to this fact.
The killing of the CEO is extremely popular regardless of how effective a strategy it is.
Another comedian, this time from the US Josh Johnson, understood something that many liberals and chic rappers like Chawawa could not is that Mangione struck a chord.
Though Johnson unlike Chawawa is from the US and understands the US healthcare system. He mentioned the fact that many CEOs are eliminating their Linkedin accounts and that the media went into overdrive on how devastating it all was.
“I’m not gonna lie, this is how you can tell the news is owned by billionaires because the news was like, uh, ‘this devastating, terrifying, harrowing attack in New York’, and I’m not saying… look a murder did take place… I’m not saying it couldn’t have been listed as those things, I’m just saying ‘you’re the news!’
You play horrific stuff all the time. You’re the same news that when those pagers were going off in the Middle East, exploding, you were like ‘check this out!’”[4]
The same media pundits who were horrified, express no such horror as Israel carries out its genocide, they don’t even question it and yet we are expected to take their statements on Thompson and the sanctity of life at face value.
Johnson then made a point about the system and how it didn’t care about anything other than money, not even about Brian Thompson. The meeting Brian Thompson was going to when he was shot went ahead as planned, and on time.
Capitalism doesn’t miss a heartbeat when there is money at stake. All the fake outpouring of grief from the corporate world and the media is to be measured against that fact. Nothing stopped their ruthless pursuit of profit, not even the killing of one of their own.
It has brought to mind the film John Q starring Denzel Washington. It is a bit late to review a film some 22 years after its release, but it is more relevant now than when it was released.
The film deals with the father of a child who is taken to hospital only to find that the surgeons can’t operate on him as his insurance doesn’t cover what is needed.
It also turns out that the child’s condition could have been detected earlier, but the US health system missed it. Never was the film John Q so relevant. In his manifesto, he could just have said, Do you want to know why? Watch John Q. That would have been enough.
Films don’t exist in a void. When you see lots of films where the government is corrupt, or the CIA and FBI is in cahoots with big business, it indicates that a lot of people accept the basic premise of the film.
The same goes for dramas like John Q which was the highest grossing film for the President’s Day weekend release and took a total of US $71 million in the US and US $ 102.2 million world-wide.
Though it was not based on the real incident, in Canada (not the US), where Henry Masuka took the ER staff hostage in 1999 demanding immediate treatment for his son and was later killed by the cops exiting from the hospital, carrying an unloaded pellet gun.
In the film most of the public are sympathetic to John Q as are most sympathetic to Luigi Mangione in real life. The difference of course is that John Q managed to force them to operate on his son, making one small change at an individual level.
Mangione has made no changes at all, but he has reignited a debate on the issue and once again put not only the nature of the health system in the spotlight, but also the police and judicial system.
With various social media posts pointing out the huge effort put into finding him as opposed to arresting the billionaires who raped underage girls on Epstein’s island.
One of capitalism’s greatest successes in the late 20th and early 21st century is not how high the Dow Jones Index is at, or any of the other roulette tables known as stock exchanges.
Rather it isthat it has destroyed many collective organisations, co-opted others or through social partnership brought on board to one degree or another all the potential opposition movements and organisations.
Trade unions frequently fall into all three categories, social and environmental movements also and of course the huge deluge of NGOs that abound in all areas of social and economic life.
The organisations a Luigi Mangione type figure would have turned to decades ago are now part of the problem, implementing government policy, refusing to challenge the state as their salaries depend on government largesse and patronage and making sure their “clients” i.e. the poor, don’t step outside of the structures.
So, it is no surprise that Mangione would lash out the way he did, nor is it a surprise that he is so popular. The success of capitalism in convincing people there is no possibility of organised opposition is such that individual acts go viral.
Those liberals who wail against his actions are the same ones who make sure there is no collective response.
What is needed is not so much more killings but more people with Mangione’s resolve organising to brush not only the Thompsons of the world aside but also the co-opted organisations paid to keep them in check.
It is as Leon Trotsky once said “Where force is necessary, there it must be applied boldly, decisively and completely. But one must know the limitations of force; one must know when to blend force with a manoeuvre, a blow with an agreement.”[5]
More relevant to Mangione is the killing of a Nazi diplomat in Paris by Herschel Grynszpan,[6] whose actions were used by the Nazis as a pretext for Kristallnacht.
Trotsky commented “A single isolated hero cannot replace the masses. But we understand only too clearly the inevitability of such convulsive acts of despair and vengeance. All our emotions, all our sympathies are with the self-sacrificing avengers…”[7]
So let us wish Mangione well in his trial.
End.
NB: For more articles by Gearóid see https://gearoidloingsigh.substack.com
NOTES
[1] See https://www.instagram.com/munyachawawa/reel/DDwz9k5I78i/
[2] Washington Post (01/10/2022) D.C. sniper attacks: A timeline of the violence and victims https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/10/01/timeline-dc-sniper-attacks/
[3] Washington Post (18/12/2024) Police shootings database 2015-2024 https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/
[4] See
[5] Leon Trotsky (1932) What Next? Part III. https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/1932-ger/next03.htm
[6] Jacobin (09/11/2021) The Boy Who Shot a Nazi: An Interview with Joseph Matthews. https://jacobin.com/2021/11/herschel-grynszpan-kristallnacht-jewish-nazi-germany-joseph-matthews-interview
[7] Leon Trotsky (1939) For Grynszpan. https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/xx/grnszpan.htm
Gearóid Ó Loingsigh 10 December 2024
(Reading time: 6 mins.)
NB: Edited by RB from original article for formatting purposes
The murder of Brian Thompson the CEO of United Healthcare has sent shock waves throughout the US, if the media are to be believed.
There is consternation in some quarters that the motive for the murder may be that he was the CEO of a health insurance company.
This was evidenced by the message left behind of Delay, Defend, Depose on the shell casings, a reference to the tactics employed by insurance companies so as not to pay out on medical claims.
The right-wing media are understandably concerned that it is not a one-off and that others may take similar action against high-ranking insurance employees.
Some have even used the occasion to question, to a degree, the US private health care system, a system the Irish one is a pale copy of but intent on emulating as much as possible.
The company Thompson headed up is worth around US $550 billion, which is no small change. In the first nine months of 2024 it paid out US $9.6 billion to shareholders on total revenues of US $100.8 billion.[1]
Despite the company’s name alluding to health care, that is not how it makes its money. Its money is the result of people paying for a private health care plan and then either not claiming or being denied coverage for medical procedures from the routine to vital lifesaving procedures.
Health insurance companies are not in the business of curing, they don’t even provide health care, they are merely intermediaries between the surgeon’s scalpel and the patient, capable of inflicting a deeper cut than the sharpest instrument in the hands of the most skilled medical professional.
With all the finesse of a drunken mugger with a blunt pen knife. It is in the sickness and death business through non-payment.
Every year almost 650,000 people in the US are forced into bankruptcy by medical bills, representing over 60% of all personal bankruptcies. Nearly 80% of those who go bankrupt had medical insurance![2]
A recent report found that over 20 million people in the US owe at least US $220 billion in medical debt with the majority of that comprising of debts in excess of US $ 10,000 amongst just 2.9 million people.[3]
Some of the debt arises from the so-called deductibles, the point at which insurance kicks in, which has been on the rise for years, with in some cases people having to pay US $3,700 before the insurance company pays a penny.[4]
And then 20% of claims are denied, though depending on the company that may range from as low as 2% to 49%.[5]
There is no way of looking at this, other than to conclude that health insurance companies are leeches, sucking the blood of the aged, the infirm and those who fall ill, for whatever reason.
In order to force people to pay health insurance the human cost of not doing so must be dramatic, traumatic, life threatening and unbearable. The threat of death or ill health is the whip with which they force people into line.
Thompson’s murder has touched a number of nerves. His company, the media and politicians expressed their sorrow and even rage at the killing. But as the BBC reported unofficial USA had a different reaction.
But online many people, including United Healthcare customers and users of other insurance services, reacted differently.
Those reactions ranged from acerbic jokes (one common quip was “thoughts and prior authorisations”, a play on the phrase “thoughts and prayers”) to commentary on the number of insurance claims rejected by UnitedHealthcare and other firms.
At the extreme end, critics of the industry pointedly said they had no pity for Thompson. Some even celebrated his death.
The online anger seemed to bridge the political divide.
Animosity was expressed from avowed socialists to right-wing activists suspicious of the so-called “deep state” and corporate power. It also came from ordinary people sharing stories about insurance firms denying their claims for medical treatments.[6]
Facebook is full of memes, celebrating, joking or otherwise supporting the killing. More than a reflection of some well thought out support for the murder, this is people lashing out at a system that condemns them to misery. It is a weapon of mass destruction.
Whilst many people with health insurance are frequently denied coverage for medically necessary interventions, there are others who have no health insurance at all. They simply can’t afford it or are not eligible.
Another report finds that as “many as 44,789 Americans of working age die each year because they lack health insurance, more than the number who die annually from kidney disease.”[7] That is nearly the same amount as soldiers who died throughout the entire Vietnam war.
So, given the nature of the system and the US $10 million that Thompson, vampire like, earned per year, it is very easy to have no sympathy for him. He was one of those grey men, that moved pieces of paper. He was like Eichmann, the banality of evil.
A man who never deliberately shot anyone or even gave an order to kill anyone, but nevertheless was responsible for a system that saw thousands die every year. The insurance companies are not idle bystanders simply taking advantage of a broken system.
The system is not broken, it works the way they intend it to work. Every year insurance companies spend millions on lobbying. In 2023, US $ 159 million was spent and in the first three quarters of 2024, US $117 million was spent on lobbying. [8]
US $10.7 million of that came from United Healthcare in 2023[9] and a further US $5.8 million reported in the first three quarters of 2024.[10] In the 2019-2020 election cycle, Thompson’s company donated US $ 4,285,464 to the Democrats and the Republicans. [11]
So, neither Thompson nor his fellow CEOs are innocent bystanders just doing a job, or making a buck as they like to say in the US. They are active participants in a system that relies on people falling ill and not being covered by their companies.
Death and disease are the lifeblood of the insurance industry, but only when people like Thompson do not pay out. Were they to payout for everyone and everything that US $9.8 billion dividend would be quickly whittled down.
It is easy not to feel any sympathy for Thompson, it is even easier perhaps to feel some sympathy and even empathy with the killer, if indeed his motive was related to a denial of coverage.
But knocking off CEOs of insurance companies won’t solve the problem; $9.8 billion dividends can take a hit and pay for increased security. The CEO will be replaced and at 10 million per year, there will be no shortage of candidates.
All it does is give some personal satisfaction to the killer and perhaps a sense of schadenfreude to the rest of us, as desperate times produce desperate reactions in many, reactions that in other times we might not have had.
Voting for the Democrats won’t solve it either. The insurance industry remained profitable and continued to not pay out under Obamacare as it did not challenge the private health industry or the insurance industry.
Turning your back on such politicians would be a first step and that includes Bernie Sanders who despite all his bluster would also fudge the issue.
Desperate times, desperate situations, desperate individual solutions that ultimately do not solve the problem, but give some people a sense that at least one of them got a taste of their own medicine. As The Guardian reported:
Though his survivors include a widow and two sons aged 16 and 19, Thompson’s death elicited a grim schadenfreude from many in the US who had been mistreated by the country’s rapacious health insurance industry. A private funeral for Thompson was planned for Monday.[12]
A private funeral, as there is unlikely to be some mass outpouring of public grief, but rather the unsightly spectacle of public anger was always a possibility at what in the end will be a moment of deep despair and grief for the family.
Though it should never be forgotten that deep despair and grief was the cut and thrust of how he made his money, his bread and butter. He and his family became rich through the deliberate inflicted anguish and misery on others.
But the only thing that will really give insurance companies a taste of their own medicine is the abolition of private health care and private insurance in all its forms, not just in medicine. And then putting the CEOs on trial for crimes against humanity.
Those thousands who die every year without insurance, those who suffer or die due to denial of coverage are not simple administrative situations. They are like the acts of Eichmann, the bureaucratic acts of grey men, who though never pulling a trigger, cause the deaths of millions.
Thompson’s epithet on his tombstone should read, Here Lies a Depraved Criminal. Loved by the Shareholders, Not Missed or Mourned by Many Others.
Thanks for reading Gearóid’s Substack! This post is public so feel free to share it. NB: For more articles by Gearóid see https://gearoidloingsigh.substack.com
[1] See United Health Group Third Quarter Reports 2024 https://www.unitedhealthgroup.com/content/dam/UHG/PDF/investors/2024/UNH-Q3-2024-Release.pdf
[2] Public Citizen (n/d) Medicare-for-All Prevents Medical Bankruptcies. https://www.citizen.org/article/medicare-for-all-prevents-medical-bankruptcies/
[3] Rakshit, S. et al. (2024) The burden of medical debt in the United States. https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/the-burden-of-medical-debt-in-the-united-states/#Share%20of%20adults%20who%20have%20medical%20debt,%20by%20health%20status%20and%20disability%20status,%202021
[4] CBS News (09/12/2024) Americans are paying more than ever for health insurance. Denials add to their pain. Aimee Pichi. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/health-insurance-costs-inflation-denials-luigi-mangione-united-healthcare/
[5] Ibíd.,
[6] BBC (07/12/2024) Killing of insurance CEO reveals simmering anger at US health system. Mike Wendling & Madeline Halpert. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2eeeep0npo
[7] PNHP (17/09/2024) Lack of Insurance to Blame for Almost 45,000 Deaths: Study. https://pnhp.org/news/lack-of-insurance-to-blame-for-almost-45000-deaths-study/#:~:text=As%20many%20as%2044%2C789%20Americans,to%20expand%20health%20insurance%20coverage.
[8] See https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/lobbying?cycle=2024&ind=F09
[9] See https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary?cycle=2023&id=D000000348
[10] See https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary?cycle=2024&id=D000000348
[11] See https://www.opensecrets.org/industries//indus?ind=H&cycle=2020
[12] The Guardian (10/12/2024) Suspect in UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting charged with murder by New York prosecutors. Edward Helmore. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/09/brian-thompson-shooting-suspect-mayor
Diarmuid Breatnach
(Reading time: 7 mins.)
The elections for a government in the 26-County state are only days away now and, while many are advocating a vote for this or that party or candidate, some are opposed to voting at all.
ARGUMENTS AGAINST VOTING
An amusing take on abstention advises: Don’t vote – it only encourages them! Anarchists have long been opposed to voting in national elections and I recall a poster in Britain exhorting people to Vote for Guy Fawkes – the only man ever to enter Parliament with honest intentions. 1
Revolutionary marxists have also often called for a boycott of elections.
The position that they hold in common is that changing this or that party in government does not change the system and that it is that which is in need of change; as Connolly2 famously declared capitalist governments to be “committees of the rich to manage the affairs of the capitalist class.”
However, it is possible to hold that opinion but yet to vote – and even to advocate voting – in some circumstances. However among some Irish Republican circles there has been a trend maintaining that voting in these elections is a recognition or acceptance of their alleged legitimacy.
A massive spoiling of ballot papers is often advocated by those who wish to ensure that the boycott may not be interpreted as apathy among the electorate. The number of spoiled ballot papers is supposed to be recorded and the papers available for inspection.
ARGUMENTS FOR
Those arguing in favour of voting in elections come at the question from a variety of points, including that voting is a democratic right for which our ancestors fought; that if we fail to vote we have no right to complain about government actions (or inaction).
They may maintain that not voting for some parties is equivalent to voting in favour of their opponents; or that voting a particular party into power can be used to overturn undesired legislation or conversely to promote desired legislation or to put them in power so that they may be exposed.3
The reformists and social democrats (often presenting themselves as revolutionaries) advocate for reforming or at least controlling capitalism under a Left Government. Despite the impracticability of the latter in many historical experiments, the hopeful and deluded keep advocating it.
Then of course, there is the ‘Lesser Evil’ argument, which is probably the most seductive; we witnessed that during the Harris-Trump USA Presidency competition. The Greens in Europe even appealed to Stein of the USA Greens, running against Harris on an anti-Genocide ticket, to desist.4
The claim that we might as well use our votes to elect a ‘lesser evil’ government is seductive precisely when we feel that no other option is available, combined with fear of worse economic and social conditions to be imposed upon us by the ‘worse evil’ party or candidate.
To follow the ‘lesser evil’ road is not only to perpetuate the system in one form or another but also fail to recognise our potential strength as the producers of all wealth; to fail to strengthen our energies to break firstly the mental chains, then the physical ones; to make fundamental choices.
THE TACTICAL VARIANT
Some argue that although in general national elections don’t change the system, they can be used at times to effect a tactical change: show rejection of a specific government position or individual.
They sometimes argue in favour of voting to put a specific individual or group of individuals into parliament for tactical reasons.
Can it be of use to have a few individuals in the Irish parliament who will attack the government and ruling class in speeches? Or to put specific issues forward on which to expose the ruling elite? Or to ask questions to gather government information? I am sure that it can and has been at times.
Can it be useful to have a handful of individuals elected to the Irish parliament who are prepared to seek entry to prisons to talk to political prisoners? Or who will head an investigation into some kinds of abuses and publish the results? Such can be and has been of use at times.
The important thing is to ensure that the message we give is that useful though such people and positions may be at times, they are not the solution, which can only be the overthrow of the system and the establishment of a socialist system with power in the hands of the working people.
ELECTIONS IN A CAPITALIST DEMOCRACY
What are known as ‘democracies’ are states concentrated across ‘Western’ regions, i.e western Europe and its former colonies of the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, with varying degrees of effect upon states on the African and Asian continents, along with ‘Latin America’.5
These are without exception, regardless of variety, systems of governing their working people without having to resort to wide-scale constant repression and suppression. For that project, the illusion of choice is essential, hence the regular elections and different political parties.
But the illusion of any fundamental choice is failing. Increasingly, governments in many European ‘democracies’ are becoming coalitions between a number of political parties and in Ireland, the main Government-Opposition parties for decades have exposed the reality by governing together.6
The effect of such exposure of the lack of real choice is impacting upon the consciousness of the populations concerned so that progressively less of them are willing to participate in the charade. In Ireland now more than one-third of the population do not vote.
This situation is of great concern to the ruling classes and to their intellectuals who are busy trying to devise schemes to offset the drift such as advocating voting from home, spectacles such as televised confrontations between competitors and ‘Citizenship’ programs in schools.
Clearly revolutionaries should not assist in any attempt to justify the system or to perpetuate the illusion of elections in capitalist ‘democracy’ being anything else than a periodic choice for slaves between the overseers employed by their masters.
DOES IT MATTER ANYWAY?
The nub of the question as to whether to vote boils down to what we hope to achieve and its prospects. If there were a massive abstention from the polls then of course that would be seen as a huge vote of no confidence in the parties standing and perhaps in the system itself – but from what perspective?
From the Right? From the Left? From apathy? In any case at the moment that looks like a moot question since there’s a likelihood of a turnout of around 60% of the registered voters.7
Will abstention make people more politically aware or conversely will participation in the elections turn people away from the possibilities of organising on the ground and ultimately of revolution? Perhaps for some – but overall, I think not many in either case, not on a longer-term basis.
From a revolutionary point of view, does it matter whether people vote or not? Or even sometimes who they vote for? Surely what matters is organising and supporting the movement for fundamental progressive change? Can that be done by people who vote as well as by those who don’t?
I’d say that is at least as likely.
During capitalist state elections the best we can do, I think, is to point out the inadequacy of the choices presented to us and to advocate stronger and more militant organisation as an alternative to the calls to vote for one party or another.
Whatever party or individual gets elected to Leinster House, the principal struggles remain: for a free united independent Ireland, for a socialist system, against the imperialist world system, against environmental destruction. It is on that we need to concentrate.
The newly-elected management committee of the capitalist class should be savaged mercilessly for its inevitably broken promises and its continuing attacks upon the economic and social conditions of the working people, and on Irish national neutrality.
Most of all, we need to improve our organising, strengthen our ranks and find ways to strike blows against the system to win victories in our march towards the overthrow of the neo-liberal and neo-colonial Gombeen ruling class and its foreign masters.
End.
1While amusing as a caption, given that Guido Fawkes plotted to blow up the English Parliament on 5th November 1605, upholding Guido Fawkes as some kind of historical hero is problematic, as he was a militant Catholic and the date of capture, Guy Fawkes’ Day, was a regular occasion for the exhibition of anti-Catholic prejudice even into the 20th Century in Protestant Britain, which more often than not, manifested itself as anti-Irish racism.
2James Connolly (1868-1916), revolutionary socialist activist, theoretician, journalist, writer and trade unionist, leading participant in the 1916 Irish Rising for which he was sentenced to death and shot by British firing squad.
3Lenin famously advocated voting the British Labour Party into government for the first time to ensure their exposure, supporting them “as a rope supports a hanging man”, advice misused by social democrats and others on the electoral Left and about which revolutionaries have argued ever since.
4https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/01/european-greens-ask-jill-stein-to-stand-down-and-endorse-kamala-harris
5And of Eastern Europe.
6Throughout the existence of the Irish State, the Fianna Fáil party has been the longest in government, with Fine Gael second, both socially conservative parties with strong loyal electoral bases. However now they are governing in coalition, along with the Greens. It is worth noting that there has not been a government of absolute majority by any party in the Irish state since 1981, when Irish Republicans stood as H-Block (e.g. hunger strike) candidates and two were elected with another having a near miss.
7Despite a trend of dropping percentages of the potential voters actually participating, in 2020 the turnout was a little over 62%.
Diarmuid Breatnach
(Reading time: 3 mins.)
The news about the sexual predations of Mohammed Al Fayed, owner of Harrods and Chelsea Football Club, was not news to many. His predilections, we learn now, were well-known in his circles. Yet only after his death are these stories made public.
Again and again we learn these stories of sexual predators, even paedophiles, whose predations come to the attention of the public only after their deaths. Entertainers such as Rolf Harris and Jimmy Saville, for example, who preyed on children.
Fayed wasn´t an entertainer but he was very rich and preyed on young women – in this world in which we live, some entertainers are often very rich too. With wealth comes protection, not just of the privately-hired variety but of the public kind also – the police force.
Their victims, at least the adult ones, knew that their words would count less with the police than would those of the rich. In the end, the police know instinctively who are their employers. The government ministers and senior police officers mix in the same circles as some of the rich.
The victims are aware of how the vertical power structure in society is constructed. They know or are soon taught that the rich have not only direct protection but retribution for those who offend also. There are penalties beyond police harassment or lack of police response to complaints.
There is the jeopardising of employment for the employee, lacking of job reference, unfavourable comment in another employer´s ear … The employers also have a network of mutual interest.
HR managers of one company will wish to further their career progression through the capitalist network. Players know how the game is played.
WHY AND HOW
The predators do not do what they do merely because they like to – there are many temptations in people´s heads that are not acted upon, that remain in internal fantasy or perhaps acted out only with consensual partners.
The famous predators functioned out of a sense of entitlement – like their wealth which they felt they deserved,1 they believed also that they were entitled to do what they wanted to “lesser” beings because they themselves were famous and rich (like Harris and Saville) – or just rich, like Mayed.
Just as their wealth was the accumulation of the wealth created by the work of many others, with their sense of entitlement went also the reality of their ability to do what they wanted. They did it because they could.
Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were eventually arrested and went to jail, Epstein dying there. Far from being a vindication of the justice of the system, their victims were initially ignored by the police and even harassed – and Epstein died in mysterious circumstances before trial.
All around the world people are suffering these kinds of abuses to one degree or another, have done so for centuries and will continue to do so. Yes, even with the occasional exposure of this or that person.
For as long as the system of status, wealth and privilege exists. Which means at least for as long as the capitalist system exists – and even beyond that, perhaps.
So in organising to overthrow the capitalist system we must ensure that we do not replace a system of unquestionable authority and power with another.
Yes, well, that´s for the future, right? No. It starts now. In our treatment of one another. In how we conduct ourselves. In ensuring we do not claim a special entitlement or the right not to be be questioned.
And when we err, individually or organisationally, to act to correct and remedy the ill.2
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Let us remember here too that no-one can get rich by their own work, no matter how hard – it requires the work of many others to make one person wealthy.
2Let us not forget the one example among many: the past history of the ostensibly revolutionary socialist organisation of the former Workers Revolutionary Party. Its General Secretary Gerry Healy was accused of the sexual abuse of 26 young female activists in the organisation. A painfully honest description of the replication of systems of unquestioned privilege in the former Party and the process of the expulsion of Gerry Healy and of his defence (for example by famous film actors Corin and Vanessa Redgrave) can be found here: https://libcom.org/article/break-wrp-horses-mouth-simon-pirani
Diarmuid Breatnach
(Reading time: 5 mins.)
Prominent among the many words quoted from Theobald Wolfe Tone, ‘the father of Irish Republicanism’, are that ‘Our Strength shall come from that great and respectable class, the men of no property’.
The interpretation of those words has led to some confusion between socialism and republicanism.
Wolfe Tone, as he is normally known historically, co-founded the Society of United Irishmen in 1791, which led a mass armed uprising in 1798 against British Rule in Ireland, as a speaker said at the Anti-Imperialist Action’s oration at their annual commemoration at Tone’s grave last month.1
Tone himself was arrested on a French ship captured by the British Navy and despite his French Army officer rank, tried on treason charges and sentenced to death upon the gallows … but died instead in prison of a wound to his throat.
An important part of the leadership of the United Irishmen, most of the Leinster Directorate was arrested in Dublin but the Rising went ahead in other parts of Ireland, notably Antrim, Wexford and Wicklow, and another with French troop reinforcements, too few and too late, in Mayo.
The Rising was crushed, the leaders executed or exiled, along with many of their followers. A large body of Irish traditional and folk song, mostly in English and much of it composed in its centenary, commemorates the struggle and sacrifice of the United Irishmen.
The AIA speaker: “Tone’s most important belief was that we must ‘break the connection with England’ by any means necessary – one of the most important teachings for the Revolutionary Republican Movement today,” to work “for National Liberation by any means we decide necessary”.
No-one who has even the most cursory acquaintance with the historic figure of Wolfe Tone can deny that he was determined to break away from English colonial rule and, once he became convinced there was no peaceful way to do so, was determined to do it by force or arms.
“Tone was also clear that the revolutionary struggle could only be successful,” continued the speaker, “if it was based on the masses of the Irish People, stating that, ‘Our Strength shall come from that great and respectable class, the men of no property’.”
From that, the speaker went on to claim that “we learn from Tone that the fight for our Republic is a class struggle and that the driving force of that struggle will be the working class fighting for their own liberation.”
I do not believe that the writings or recorded words of Wolfe Tone justify that interpretation. Indeed, it would have been strange if they had; the 1798 Rising was what Marxists describe as a “bourgeois revolution”, i.e. one led by a section of the capitalist class in its own class interests.2
Such also were the Revolutions in England of 1649 and 1688, of the French in 1789 and the American in 1765-1783, the Italian of 1848, the Chinese of the early Kuo Min Tang and the Latin American revolutions against the Spanish Empire, along with the Mexican 1910-1920.
Yes, the capitalist class, which is always telling us to employ only constitutional means to get what we need or want, tries to conceal that they themselves came to power by revolution.
The leadership of the United Irishmen was almost totally of the established Anglican church or of Protestant sects – “Protestant and Dissenter”, in Tone’s words. They were descendants of settlers from Britain and they were of bourgeois social strata.
This section of the bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie were fed up with restraints imposed from England on developing the colony’s potential, on a taxation system they considered unfair, on corruption in the Irish Parliament and in management by the Monarch’s representative in Ireland.
Being only a very small minority of the Irish population3 they were aware that they needed the mass behind them in order to build an independent national economy, for which they tried to gain Catholics admission to the Irish Parliament, which at the time only admitted Anglicans as MPs.
When Henry Grattan, who had earlier led quite a rebellious Irish Parliament,4 failed in the attempt to make Parliament more representative, Tone and many others became convinced that only revolution could progress society in Ireland and from then on he strove to bring that about.
Grattan
A revolution against England, a great European naval power, even with the help of revolutionary France, would require mass participation and support, as the AIA speaker remarked at the commemoration. So Tone aspired to the unity of “Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter.”
The section of the religions that most fell into the category of the “men of no property” were of course the Catholics, dispossessed of their lands and under Penal Laws of the Occupation. Without the support of the Catholic majority there was no chance of a successful revolution.
Tone may well have been a most democratic Republican in favour of all kinds of progressive social reform but nowhere in his writing does he advocate the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, seizure of private property and the setting up of a socialist system to be run by the working class.
united men
Theobald Wolfe Tone was a courageous democratic revolutionary, anti-colonial and a martyred patriot but was not nor could have been a socialist leader. That which he was, was the best of his time and among the best we had to offer and there is no need to try to make him something else.
The United Irishmen represented a section of the Irish bourgeoisie that was truly Republican and revolutionary. That section of society was mostly of settler descent since the mass of the native and Catholic population had been ground down and oppressed.
Thereafter most of the native Irish bourgeoisie developed as a subservient client class, “Castle Catholics” ag sodar i ndiaidh na n-uaisle,5 up to whatever “cute hoor”6 and gombeen7 tricks they could get up to but without a fraction of the spine necessary to fight for real independence.
A successful Irish national revolution does indeed need to be led by the Irish working class as demonstrated by what James Connolly – rather than Wolfe Tone – observed: “Only the Irish working class remain as the incorruptible inheritors of the fight for freedom in Ireland.”
The reason for that, as outlined by Connolly, is quite simple: the working class is the only social class of any size that has nothing to gain from compromise and betrayal of the revolution.
Some other key points laid down by Tone, continued the speaker, include that Republicanism is Anti Imperialist and it is Internationalist. Our struggle in Ireland is part of a wider international struggle of oppressed people against occupation, colonialism and imperialism.
Tone understood this when he looked to Revolutionary France to support the 1798 uprising.
This was well understood by Irish Republicans of Tone’s time who celebrated the fall of the Bastille in 1789 and the defeat of the English by the settlers in America. The United Irishmen also helped the creation of the United Englishmen and led two of the British Navy’s most serious mutinies.8
Today, continued the speaker, Republicans must fight our struggle while also supporting Liberation struggles around the world in the belief that every blow struck against imperialism brings our victory closer.
So from Palestine to the Philippines and from India to the Basque Country, and everywhere people take a stand against NATO, the Revolutionary Republican movement must raise our cries in solidarity.
End.
Footnotes
1The event was organised by Anti-Imperialist Action, a socialist republican organisation, with the oration being given on behalf of the organisation. A pilgrimage to Wolfe Tone’s grave in Bodenstown is a fixture on the calendars of most Irish Republican organisations.
2This should not be taken as a criticism since Marxists agree that many bourgeois revolutions were progressive in their time.
3Tiny, in the case of the Anglicans in particular; the Presbyterians were much more numerous.
41689-’91.
5Irish language: “Trotting after the nobles.”
6An admiring description in Ireland for one who manages to benefit by dubious means.
7Corruption of an Irish language term for the ‘carpet bagger’ types who benefited amidst the disaster of the Great Hunger in the mid 19 Century, snapping up land in particular at the lowest of prices.
8The Spithead and Nore naval mutinies, 1797.
Sources
rebelbreeze 