A new report suggests that despite the statements of outrage and promises to reevaluate PAC donations, corporate donors have continued to support members of Congress who objected to certifying the 2020 election.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, an liberal-leaning watchdog group, said on Friday that a new analysis shows that the 147 members of what it dubs the Sedition Caucus—lawmakers who voted against certifying Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss following the January 6 insurrection—have since raked in at least $44 million in corporate PAC donations to their campaigns. CREW says the donations came from 1,283 different corporate and industry trade group PACs.
Immediately after January 6, some of the biggest companies and trade associations involved with lobbying in Washington said they would stop donations to election objectors, or even stop making donations altogether. Despite these pledges, CREW found that of the $44 million donated from corporate PACs to election deniers, at least $12 million came from sources that had pledged to suspend donations to members who sought to overturn the election.
CREW found that the five biggest sources of donations to the Sedition Caucus were PACs associated with Koch Industries ($625,000), American Crystal Sugar ($530,000), Home Depot ($350,000), Boeing ($488,000), and UPS ($479,500). Boeing, Home Depot, and Koch had all paused donations or promised to reevaluate their donations after January 6.
This is not entirely surprising. Despite the companies’ pledges in the wake of January 6 to stop donating—or, as a Koch Industries spokesperson put it at the time, reevaluate donations based on the “the civility of candidates”—contributions never really seemed to be paused. Within the first six months after the insurrection, members of the Sedition Caucus had already raised $3.8 million from corporate PACs.
“Most people can’t even articulate a political thought. Like, why do they get to vote?…
The Italian general election was a historic win for the far right. A coalition of the three major parties won 44 percent of the vote, enough in Italy’s byzantine electoral system to form a clear majority in both houses of parliament. Most importantly, it was driven by the meteoric rise of Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, a party rooted in the post-Mussolini fascist tradition, which secured 26 percent of the vote, making it the single largest party in parliament.
For many, the ascension to power of a fascist party in the centre of Europe seemed unthinkable. But decades of grinding economic crisis, state-sponsored racism and the discrediting of parties of the neoliberal centre have created a dangerous situation of far-right advance. With Europe on the brink of yet another recession, the prospect of further descent into authoritarianism and barbarism is alarming.
If you listen to the capitalist press and politicians, however, you would think that there’s nothing to worry about. A headline in the Australian exhorts: “Relax, Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers aren’t fascist”. The Australian Financial Review carried the line, “Victory to Italian right is no lurch into extremism”. This is despite Meloni’s pledge to institute a naval blockade to stop refugee ships, roll back abortion and LGBTI rights and dismantle social welfare.
Speaking to an Italian journalist at the Venice Film Festival, US former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton even praised Meloni: “The election of the first woman prime minister in a country always represents a break with the past, and that is certainly a good thing”. It’s remarkable to speak of “breaking with the past” as Mussolini-nostalgists return to power in the birthplace of fascism.
A statement from Lorenzo Codogno, a former director-general of the Italian Treasury, reveals the real reason for establishment nonchalance in the face of fascism. “They want to be perceived as a party that you can do business with and can govern the country.” Business has taken a look at this coalition of far-right racists and fascists, and decided it’s a government they can deal with, potentially making a great deal of money.
Aided by a wave of apologetics from the media, Meloni has attempted to sanitise her image to present a respectable face. During the election campaign, she reassured voters that her party had “handed fascism over to history for decades now”. But Meloni has maintained a commitment to fascist politics throughout her life. At the age of 15, she joined MSI (Italian Social Movement), the party founded by leading fascists who survived the fall of Mussolini’s regime in 1943 and wanted to work for its return. Along with a series of other former MSI leaders, Meloni founded Fratelli d’Italia in 2012 as the latest iteration of this project.
In her autobiography, I am Giorgia, she espouses the “great replacement theory”, claiming that the left is attempting to destroy Western civilisation by flooding the continent with African and Middle Eastern migrants and undermining traditional family structures. In local government, Brothers politicians have passed legislation making it harder for migrants to access social housing, and proposed laws that would make it compulsory to bury aborted fetuses in cemeteries.
Meloni will rule in coalition with the Lega, led by Matteo Salvini, who as interior minister in a previous government blocked the entry of NGO ships carrying rescued refugees to Italian shores, and Silvio Berlusconi, the infamously corrupt and venal media magnate whose Forza Italia was once the leading light of the populist right.
While the far right has been advancing in Europe since the 2008 global financial crisis, Meloni’s victory is a significant milestone. It’s the first time a party with neo-fascist roots has led a government in a major European economy. This gives a boost to the rising tide of far-right politics internationally.
Meloni’s victory comes in the immediate aftermath of the major win for the far-right Sweden Democrats. She has been a vocal supporter of the Spanish Vox Party and Viktor Orbán’s authoritarian government in Hungary. Both Meloni and Orbán were guests of honour at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the most important gathering of the American right.
Meloni’s victory was assured by the craven support that every party of the political mainstream gives to unpopular and brutal neoliberal policies, which have created massive poverty and youth unemployment and savaged living standards. The 25 September election was triggered by the collapse of the Draghi government, an unelected technocratic cabinet headed by a former European Central Bank president to oversee further cuts to social spending.
Every major party from the centrist Democratic Party to the Lega participated in this “national unity” government. Meloni’s group was the only significant force that remained outside of the coalition. As the government slowly but inevitably collapsed, the Brothers gained credibility.
The high level of abstention in the election was another important factor in Meloni’s success. The rise of the right can be put down to widespread revulsion at the political mainstream, rather than a popular endorsement of Meloni’s program. Fewer than 64 percent of the eligible population voted, the lowest turnout in history and down from an average of 90 percent in the post-WWII period. Meloni increased her vote largely by winning voters from the other right-wing parties.
Despite a history of shallow anti-establishment rhetoric, a hallmark of the far right, Meloni will likely continue Draghi’s economic agenda. Meloni has also reassured the capitalist class that her government will support NATO. Internal divisions could emerge within the coalition over the war in Ukraine—Salvini’s Lega has ties to Italian capitalists with heavy investments in Russia, and he has questioned the continuation of sanctions. Meloni will have to balance the fragile and conflicting interests of her coalition partners with her desire to remain a reliable ally of European capital at large.
What is certain is that the new right-wing coalition will intensify attacks on workers and oppressed people. It can’t be ruled out that they will attempt to curb civil and democratic rights. The Brothers have already signalled their desire for legislation to ban what they term “totalitarian” or “extremist” ideologies, by which they mean communism and Islam.
The far right’s victory is a harbinger of things to come. A recent opinion piece by Edward Luce in the Financial Times noted: “Western liberalism is still skating on thin ice”, with war and looming recession in Europe, a protracted energy crisis and far-right electoral advances making for destabilising factors in world politics.
The capitalists realise that in a crisis-ridden and polarised world, far-right governments may increasingly be an option for defending their power and privilege. They think that they are playing a clever game by normalising the new government in Italy. They believe that they can keep the fascists under their thumb, use them to absorb discontent at unpopular austerity measures and advance their economic agenda.
History tells us that fascists like Meloni, who are inspired by the monstrous dictatorships of the 1920s and ’30s, may harbour even darker aspirations for the future.
Donald Trump’s recent open embrace of the QAnon conspiracy cult that deifies him has predictably metastasized into full-on identification. This became clear at his Sept. 17 rally in Youngstown, Ohio, where QAnon fans in the audience raised their fingers in a coded salute while Q-derived theme music played over the loudspeakers. Over the past couple of weeks on his Truth Social chat platform, he has repeatedly posted and reposted Q-derived memes and hashtags, including ominous suggestions of future Jan. 6-style insurrectionist violence.
Just as predictably, those hordes of QAnon cultists have been rapturous over what is now his open public embrace and how it normalizes them. After Trump posted an ominous Q meme—one reading, “Nothing can stop what is coming. Nothing”—a popular Q account reposted it, saying: “It doesn’t get more Q affirming than that. It’s almost like he’s trying to tell us something. Boom!”
We’ve writtenextensively about the political shenanigans of Ginni Thomas and hubby Clarence Thomas’ refusal to recuse himself from cases she involves herself in and financially benefits from. But the financial secrecy is at least as concerning as her politicking. Politico noted that Justice Clarence Thomas “has chosen not to reveal any of his wife’s clients, let alone how much they contributed to the Thomas family coffers, dating back to when her consulting business was founded.”
Less obvious but just as important are the careers of Chief Justice John Roberts’ wife, Jane Roberts, and Jesse Barrett, husband of Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Politico reported that Jane Roberts is a legal head-hunter at a firm representing “high-powered attorneys in their efforts to secure positions in wealthy firms,” meaning that her placements earn fat fees for her firm and, presumably herself.
President Joe Biden on September 1 delivered a roughly 25-minute primetime speech from Independence Hall in Philadelphia about Trumpism’s threat to US democracy. Primetime, that is, for the two major US television networks that aired it live: MSNBC and CNN. The others—ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox—opted not to carry the address, because they deemed it “political” (Washington Post, 9/2/22).
CNN is one of two major US TV networks that aired President Joe Biden’s speech live from Philadelphia.
Across the Atlantic just over a week later, King Charles III addressed Britain and the world about his 96-year-old mother’s death and his preparations to take over the solely symbolic role of British monarch. ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox all presumably found it more newsworthy than the President’s remarks, because they carried it live (MediaMatters, 9/9/22). (CNN and MSNBC carried both Biden’s and Charles’ speeches.)
Biden’s speech urgently named MAGA Republican ideology as an imminent threat to democracy, rejected violence and extremism, and condemned conspiracy theories. The “political” speech took an explicitly bipartisan tone, with Biden repeatedly claiming that Trumpism doesn’t represent the majority of the Republican party, and appealing to the American public regardless of political affiliation to defend democracy.
“I’m an American president—not the president of Red America or Blue America, but of all America,” he said.
Charles’ speech, on the other hand, was essentially a eulogy. He waxed poetic about Queen Elizabeth II’s public and private lives, praising her “warmth” and “humor” and the “sacrifices” she made to uphold her “duty.” It was appropriately vague and inoffensive for a figurehead whose job is to be apolitical.
Despite the President of the United States’ speech being patently more relevant to the American people than the symbolic figurehead of another country’s address, the latter had not only more networks airing it, but nearly as much analysis and coverage in the 48 hours surrounding it as the former: A Nexis database search of ABC, CNN, NBC, MSNBC, CBS and Fox transcripts the day of and the day after each of the respective speeches turned up 113 mentions of Charles’ speech and 116 of Biden’s.
The networks varied widely in the relative amount of coverage they gave to the two speeches. ABC and NBC had roughly twice as many segments on Charles’ speech compared to Biden; Fox and MSNBC had closer to twice as many segments on Biden’s speech. CBS and CNN had roughly similar numbers of segments on each speech.
‘Politically charged’
However much time they gave it, each of these networks characterized the president’s speech as inflammatory, ignoring much of its content, and “balancing” it with a chorus of Trump-aligned politicians.
Fox characterized Biden’s speech as a “dark and depressing” “diatribe.”
Unsurprisingly, on Fox News’s Hannity (9/2/22), fill-in host Tammy Bruce whined that Biden “bashe[d]” Republicans in his “rage-filled speech” that she later described as a “dark and depressing” “diatribe.” But this same right-wing indignation could be heard across network news, regardless of their presumed political leanings.
ABC’s World News Tonight anchor Mary Bruce (9/2/22) called the remarks “scathing,” saying the speech “slam[med]” MAGA Republicans. The segment quoted Republican former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who served as UN ambassador for Trump: “It was one of the most unbelievable things I’ve seen in a long time. It’s unthinkable he would be so condescending and criticize half of America.”
Putting aside that Haley’s own history of opinions about Trump are mixed—“He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him,” she said after January 6—the segment did not bring up Biden’s repeated clarifications:
“Now, I want to be very clear up front: Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans. Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology.”
“There are far more Americans—far more Americans from every background and belief—who reject the extreme MAGA ideology than those that accept it.”
“Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans: We must be stronger, more determined, and more committed to saving American democracy than MAGA Republicans are to destroying American democracy.”
Reporter Craig Melvin on NBC’s Today show (9/2/22) described the speech as “politically charged,” and anchor Peter Alexander called it “blistering,” including derisions from Republican California Rep. Kevin McCarthy, without including any voices of those who found Biden’s condemnation of Trumpism necessary. The segment also described the speech being delivered in front of a “military backdrop”—that is, two Marines standing behind Biden. (Marines have been present at other debatably “political” presidential speeches, including Trump’s at the RNC in 2020.)
CBS Morning News’ Bradley Blackburn (9/2/22) chose the word “sharp.” And though CNN opted to air the remarks in primetime, they included the opinion of former Trump White House official Gavin Smith, who posited that threats to democracy are not a priority to discuss in a 25-minute speech, and that Biden should have spoken instead about rising prices (CNN New Day, 9/2/22). (To her credit, anchor Brianna Keilar pushed back against this statement.)
MSNBC’s The Beat (9/2/22) took Biden’s speech more seriously, with anchor Katie Phang calling out the irony of the GOP labeling a speech about the GOP’s divisiveness as divisive. “There’s so many Trump supporters,” she said:
They’re screaming about how Joe Biden now has promoted this divisiveness. But you know, the reality is, they’re not looking in the mirrors, right? There’s this hypocrisy that seems to be the currency that these Republicans are trading in.
Believers in the ‘storm’
Instead of engaging in handwringing over Biden’s tone, these outlets could have investigated the truth of his claims that MAGA ideology—regardless of what percentage of the Republican party subscribes to it—is a threat to democracy. Beyond the deadly January 6 insurrection itself, polling backs up Biden’s assertions that there are widespread anti-democratic tendencies within the Republican Party.
In February, a PRRI report found that a quarter of Republicans consider themselves believers of the QAnon conspiracy theory. When polled on the three central delusions of QAnon, 16% completely or mostly agreed that media and economy are run by a Satan-worshiping cabal of child sex-traffickers; 22% completely or mostly agreed that a coming “storm” will wipe away these elites and restore the country to its rightful leaders; and 18% completely or mostly agreed that violence may be necessary to save the country.
Additionally, the Washington Post (9/18/22) recently questioned 19 GOP candidates running in gubernatorial and Senate races about whether they’d accept the results of the upcoming elections. Twelve either refused to commit or declined to respond. All 19 Democratic nominees committed to accepting the results of the elections.
Sowing distrust in legitimate democratic processes—and resorting to violence in an attempt to prevent them—is certainly dangerous to democracy.
‘A very significant event’
Of course, Charles’ address the day after the queen’s death served a much different purpose than Biden’s: celebrating and remembering a figurehead, versus warning against a rising domestic threat to American democracy. While comparing the content of these two addresses would be comparing apples and oranges, networks’ attitudes toward each are telling.
“Breaking News”: CBS had extensive live coverage from London surrounding King Charles III’s speech.
On Chris Jansing Reports (9/9/22), MSNBC’s British historian Andrew Roberts called Charles’ speech “very significant.” CBS Evening News’ Norah O’Donnell and Charlie D’Agatta (9/9/22) called it “historic.” On CNN’s Erin Burnett Outfront (9/9/22), CNN International diplomatic editor Nic Robertson foreshadowed the upcoming ceremony that marked Charles’ official ascension to the throne, also calling it “perhaps a very significant event.”
While the death of the 96-year-old queen and ascension of her son might be significant for royalists—and the pomp, circumstance, anachronism and celebrity of the monarchy might be entertaining and appealing to many Americans—it has almost no political implications for the world. That’s because the British monarch’s role is ceremonial, and, as the constitution dictates, apolitical.
But the British monarch is also inextricably linked to the British Empire and is a living symbol of that imperial legacy, as well as of an extreme elitism based on nothing more than the privilege of birth (Economist, 9/15/22). Elizabeth’s death spurred significant conversations about Britain’s brutal, bloody legacy of colonialism around the world and abolishing the monarchy—all of which was left out of the above segments, and the majority of network news coverage.
US news networks instead largely discussed the queen’s death as if everyone agreed on her legacy. “The world mourns the death of Queen Elizabeth,” said CBS Mornings’ Anne-Marie Green (9/9/22), who described the late monarch as “one of the most beloved women in the world.”
‘We need to examine that history’
The entire world was not, in fact, mourning the death of Britain’s queen. On Democracy Now! (9/13/22), Amy Goodman discussed the possibility that “British Overseas Territory” (read: colony) Antigua and Barbuda might cut ties with the British monarch. When asked to respond to the queen’s death, Dorbrene O’Marde, chair of the Antigua and Barbuda Reparations Commission, said:
I’m under no obligation, I think, to be mourning her death. And that is simply because of, I think, my understanding of history, my understanding of the relationships of the British monarchy to African people and Asian people, but to African people certainly, on the continent and here in the Caribbean. And so that my response is perhaps to recognize the role that the queen, Queen Elizabeth II, has played, how she has managed to cloak the historical brutality of empire in this veneer of grandeur and pomp and pageantry, I guess, and graciousness. But I think that at this point in time, we need to examine that history a lot more closely.
The British Empire committed many atrocities during Elizabeth II’s reign (Liberation News, 9/9/22):
The “Malayan Emergency” (1948–60) was a guerilla war fought between Britain and the Communist Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA) after the territory sought independence from British rule. During this 12-year-long war (of which eight years were fought under Elizabeth), British forces set fire to homes and farmland of those suspected to be affiliated with the MNLA, sent 400,000 people to concentration camps and destroyed crops with Agent Orange. 6,700 MNLA fighters and more than 3,000 civilians were killed.
The Mau Mau rebellion (1952–60) took place in Kenya when the Mau Mau rebels launched an uprising against colonial powers, white settlers and loyalists in the country. The British launched a counterinsurgency campaign, sending more than 100,000 people to detainment camps where they were tortured, interrogated and abused. The Kenyan Human Rights Commission estimated 90,000 Kenyans were killed, maimed or tortured, and 160,000 were detained in camps.
The Covert War in Yemen (1962–69) cost an estimated 200,000 lives. After the death of Yemeni King Ahmed in 1962, Arab Army nationalists backed by the Egyptian army seized power and declared the country a republic, with popular support. Britain claimed it would not intervene, but supplied fighter jets and weapons to royalist forces.
Bloody Sunday (January 30, 1972) was just one incident during the Northern Irish Troubles, a 30-year fight for independence from Britain. Marchers in Derry, in British-occupied Ireland, were protesting against British legislation that allowed suspected Irish nationals to be imprisoned without trial; the British military opened fire on them, killing 14.
Even though Elizabeth II had no legislative abilities, this colonial violence was enacted to uphold the empire she helmed (Vox, 9/13/22).
‘They know nothing about colonialism’
Fox specifically scolded those criticizing the monarchy, claiming colonized countries should be grateful for the image of stability Elizabeth upheld, arguing she led the decolonization process. Contributor Douglas Murry claimed on Hannity (9/9/22):
They know nothing about colonialism. They clearly know nothing about the decolonization process. They know nothing about the late queen’s extraordinary work with the commonwealth countries. If the queen would preside over this, was it a genocidal empire? Unbelievable. There’d be nobody alive if it had been a genocidal empire. And they smear her with this total lack of knowledge.
There are a handful of scholarly and international legal definitions of genocide. “Everyone has to be dead” is not one of them.
Other programs may not have engaged in this kind of royalist admonishment, but they still delighted in the royal corgis (ABC’s Nightline, 9/9/22), swooned over Charles’ “emotion” (CNN Newsroom, 9/9/22), admired his handshaking with the crowd (Fox Special Report, 9/9/22) and saluted his promise of a “life of service” (NBC Nightly News, 9/9/22), with little space given to substantive critique of what the monarchy represents.
Outlets aired King Charles III’s speech live and spent the surrounding hours commending his life in service and glossing over Britain’s colonialism.
As noted, none of the aforementioned TV segments that effusively memorialized the queen and relished in the pomp and circumstance of the monarchy addressed colonialism. In fact, of the total 113 segments on network TV that mentioned Charles’ speech, only 29 mentioned—even in passing—Britain’s colonial legacy or calls to abolish the monarchy. Fifteen of those were from CNN, five from MSNBC, four from NBC, three from Fox (all of which condemned criticism of the monarchy), one from ABC and one from CBS.
CBS’s mention denied that there was any movement for change: “There is no current, no modern, serious movement to abolish the monarchy,” journalist and royal-watcher Tina Brown said on CBS Mornings (9/9/22).
That depends on what you define as “serious.” In Australia, thousands marched for abolishment, shutting down streets in Melbourne on the country’s National Day of Mourning for the queen (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 9/22/22). #AbolishTheMonarchy trended on social media (Forbes, 9/9/22). Pro-republican campaigns in Australia, New Zealand and Canada are expected to gain traction now (Wall Street Journal, 9/11/22).
Many shows repeated the term “colonial past” (e.g., NBC’s Today, 9/9/22; CNN Newsroom, 9/9/22), as if British colonialism is not ongoing. Today, British companies still own $1 trillion of Africa’s gold, diamonds, gas and oil, and an area of land in the continent about four times the size of Britain itself (Guardian, 4/17/18).
Other legacies of colonialism still reverberate: In 2013, Carribbean heads of governments established the Caricom Reparations Commission (CRC) to demand reparations for Britain’s genocide, slave trade and apartheid in the region, citing illiteracy, physical and mental health issues and generational poverty as modern-day effects of British rule and slave trade.
Suffice it to say, worldwide opinion about the British monarchy, the death of Queen Elizabeth and the rise of King Charles is far from unanimous, despite US television news framing Charles’ speech—unlike Biden sounding the alarm over the threat to democracy—as something we all could agree on.
How do we assert reproductive autonomy when far rightists are on the offensive and liberals have failed to stop them?
As we noted two months ago, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision repealing Roe v. Wade marks a historic victory for the Christian right and specifically its fascist, theocratic wing. Defending access to abortion is an antifascist struggle, but that doesn’t mean the focus should be only, or even primarily, on combating the far right. What’s needed is a struggle on two fronts: against the various forces of the authoritarian right but also against their centrist enablers—the politicians and institutions that have long claimed to be defending abortion access while weakening opposition to the far right and giving ground to it step by step by step. These are different kinds of struggle and they call for different approaches.
This is what three way fight politics is all about: a recognition that the fascistic far right is interconnected with but distinct from the oppressive status quo, and combating them both requires interconnected but distinct strategies.
In the wake of Roe’s repeal, I’ve seen several excellent essays that use this kind of two-front framework to guide liberatory strategy. I’d like to focus here on three of these essays, to highlight what they share and also how their different perspectives broaden and enrich an ongoing discussion that’s vitally needed.
Noah Zazanis, in “On Our Own Terms: Class Struggle for Abortion and Transition,” argues that “Right-wing offensives against abortion, transition, and queer sociality aim to enforce the bourgeois family by any means necessary,” and calls for a labor-based struggle that challenges the constraints imposed by established non-governmental institutions (NGOs).
CrimethInc.’s “To Defend Abortion Access, Take the Offensive” advocates a carefully tailored approach to militant direct action in order to exert leverage where it can be most effective—on liberal politicians.
Reading these essays, I see three overarching themes—three key things that each of them calls on us to do: highlight interconnections between different groups or rights under attack, confront liberal NGOs and the Democratic Party, and develop a clear and militant strategy. Let’s look at each of these themes in turn.
Highlight interconnections
Both Elise Hendrick and Noah Zazanis frame access to abortion as a key form of bodily autonomy, and both specifically emphasize connections between criminalizing abortion and criminalizing trans people as two prongs of a larger right-wing strategy. Zazanis writes, “The surface logic of parental consent laws [for getting an abortion] is similar to the logic barring childhood transition: abortion is a serious, irreversible medical procedure for which youth under 18 are too young to give informed consent.” Hendrick denounces a recent New York Times column that tries to stake out a position that’s pro-abortion rights yet trans-exclusionary as a blatant example of divide-and-rule tactics.
Zazanis also emphasizes the ties between defending bodily autonomy and building a strong working class:
“Our fights for healthcare, and against criminalization, are inseparable from the labor rights of healthcare workers, and of the nonprofit workers doing unpaid overtime in the wake of the Dobbs ruling. More than ever, we must build strong, independent unions willing to defend workers who refuse to enforce these bans… It is no coincidence that the workers on the frontline of criminalization are in fields dominated by women, fields where queer workers are overrepresented and underpaid.”
Hendrick and CrimethInc. both highlight a further connection: between the fight for abortion access and the fight against police violence and repression. CrimethInc. urges abortion rights advocates to learn from the George Floyd uprising and writes, “Yes, there are fundamental differences between the movement for reproductive freedom and the movement for Black lives—but those who will be most impacted by the criminalization of abortion overlap considerably with those who are most impacted by racist policing.” Hendrick calls out implications for movement security, noting that criminalization of abortion means “the full weight of the surveillance state is coming down on millions of people who have previously been largely exempt from it…. That means making clear the importance of not talking to the police, not coordinating with police, protecting our identities, and…not posting unedited video of people doing illegal things on social media.”
In summary, drawing the connections between anti-oppression struggles helps us to understand the right’s larger agenda, build and strengthen coalitions, make our movements smarter, and honor the multiple and complex ways that people are affected by institutional violence.
Confront NGOs and the Democrats
All three of our featured essays sharply criticize the Democratic Party’s role as supposed defender of abortion access. Zazanis notes that “For decades, Democratic leadership has treated abortion as a cudgel for electoral gains” (and more recently has done the same with so-called “LGBT issues”). Hendrick adds that this approach has repeatedly meant whitewashing the shameful anti-abortion positions of some Democratic candidates, such as Hillary Clinton’s 2016 running mate Tim Kaine. CrimethInc. describes the effect of such opportunism as “the workings of the political ratchet, in which Republicans continuously push state institutions towards more oppressive agendas while Democrats continuously give ground, keeping those who are suffering invested in the state itself in hopes that it might one day be reformed.” As I’ve argued elsewhere, this dynamic doesn’t result from Democratic leaders’ subjective “weakness”—it reflects the party’s structural role as a vehicle to divert liberatory initiatives into support for an oppressive, capitalist order.
Zazanis and Hendrick are similarly critical of liberal NGOs for being structurally and financially tied to a “respectability politics” that weakens—or simply betrays—liberatory struggle. Hendrick warns that “Liberal non-profits will try to narrow the focus of this movement, to divide bodily autonomy into specific niches… and channel our energy and our anger into avenues that don’t make the ruling class nervous. They will resist any attempt to defy these laws and the cops who enforce them outright, and they will try to prevent any kind of solidarity and cross-pollination” between political struggles. Zazanis gets more specific, calling out Reproaction for trying to police the boundaries of acceptable “direct action” and Planned Parenthood, the Guttmacher Institute, and the National Center for Transgender Equality for union-busting and abusive management practices. Even smaller, more independent NGOs engaged in vitally important support for self-managed medication abortion have “effectively ignored the question of who runs the clinics and how they operate, or how to defy those who seek to close them.”
Hendrick sums up part of the lesson with regard to both NGOs and the Democratic Party: “Only by maintaining our independence from these institutions can we exert the sort of pressure that is necessary in order to force them to do the right thing.”
Develop clear, militant strategy
To varying degrees, all three essays offer suggestions on what’s needed to protect abortion access and bodily autonomy more broadly. Zazanis advocates breaking with respectability politics, recognizing that effective direct action “makes oppressors feel victimized,” and forming independent networks both to help criminalized people survive and to lay a foundation for more comprehensive institutional change in the future.
Hendrick elaborates on Zazanis’s point about direct action:
“If we want the ruling class to even consider restoring our right to bodily autonomy, we need to put the hurt on them. We need an or else.
“Historically, the movements that have extracted meaningful concessions from unwilling ruling classes have been those that attack the two major pressure points of capitalist society: profitability, which is the point of the entire system, and governability, which calls the system’s very existence into question.”
As reference points, she cites two recent large-scale militant initiatives: in Poland in 2016, mass protests and a strike (an attack on profitability) that forced the government to walk back a proposed total abortion ban, and in the U.S. in 2020, widespread militant attacks on both police stations and big box retail stores (governability and profitability) following the police murder of George Floyd. Hendrick argues that calls to abolish the police have not succeeded because they threaten capitalist society on a deep level, but that U.S. capitalists are not committed to banning abortion and would restore abortion access “if we make it clear that they can’t afford not to.”
CrimethInc., too, argues for a militant approach, but they are particularly concerned with how militancy is targeted:
“if your goal is to exert leverage, you have to identify a group you can actually exert leverage on—a group that is likely to change course as a consequence of your intervention…. You have to make sure that the target of your efforts has a choice—then make them an offer they can’t refuse.”
They cite two counter-examples. On one hand, many abortion rights proponents have joined public rallies that help to boost participants’ morale but have no specific target. On the other, a number of anonymous groups, operating under the name Jane’s Revenge, have vandalized anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy centers.” The latter actions “may inspire people to take action on their own, but do not offer a participatory space in which to build collective momentum.” In addition, although the vandalism actions have a specific focus, “in targeting anti-abortion centers, they are taking on the most intransigent opponents of abortion…” CrimethInc. continues, “If it is possible to exert leverage on anyone who is complicit in criminalizing abortion, it is probably not far-right religious cult members, but their centrist accomplices”—in other words, liberal and moderate politicians who could be persuaded to defend abortion access if the cost of not doing so is high enough.
Here, too, the movement against racist police violence offers a useful reference point:
“At the high point of the George Floyd uprising, when millions of people had ceased to accept the legitimacy of the police and were acting accordingly, we saw terrified liberals like the mayor of Minneapolis suddenly take the demands of the movement very seriously, promising to take steps towards police abolition… Later, when the politicians had reestablished control, they betrayed those promises—showing that our effectiveness hinges on keeping our social movements lively and strong, not on winning concessions.”
Exerting leverage in this way is very different from allying with liberals against the far right, or with, say, the federal government against state governments. As CrimethInc. puts it, “compelling one [state] institution to limit the power of another can be strategic, provided it does not contribute to legitimizing any of the institutions involved. It must be clear to everyone that the power that drives social change derives from grassroots organizing, not from state institutions…”
Concluding thoughts
How do we go about asserting reproductive autonomy in the face of a major defeat, when far rightists are on the offensive and the forces of liberal respectability have failed to stop them? The three essays I’ve examined here grapple with this question in related ways. That doesn’t mean that their authors necessarily agree on every point, but it’s striking to me how much their arguments complement each other, and I do think the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. At the least, there’s a lot here that can inform and inspire further discussion and strategizing.
I started this discussion by invoking three way fight politics as a framework for strategy. None of the three essays uses that terminology, but at least two of them make points closely related to it. CrimethInc. notes that the far right are not defenders of the established order but rather advocates of social change (increased repression and oppression) and have used sustained pressure campaigns and a range of tactics, including bombings and murder, to bring it about. Hendrick emphasizes that those who advocate banning abortion are “a minority of bigots who are useful to capital, but far from essential to it,” and it is precisely this gap that opens strategic space for advocates of liberatory politics. These three essays insist that we have choices beyond surrendering to fascism on one hand and subordinating radical possibility to liberal holding actions on the other.
The Spanish civil war of 1936 becomes more relevant every day. That’s because it was a war against fascism in its pure form. In case you wonder what form that is, amid the poisonous, weedy varieties sprouting up globally these days, it’s fascism, exercised through corporate control of government, against and thus persecution of leftists, More
Andy Campbell, a senior editor at The Huffington Post who is the author of the book We Are Proud Boys: How a Right-Wing Street Gang Ushered in a New Era of American Extremism has said that The Proud Boys and other far-right vigilante groups will likely commit violence during the next two upcoming elections.
In a recent interview, Campell noted the Proud Boys were founded by right-wing commentator Gavin McInnes to fight in ways that other straight-laced Republicans wouldn’t.
Campbell also noted former President Donald Trump’s ominous command for the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” during his final September 2020 debate against now-President Joe Biden.
Several Proud Boys members are currently on trial for sedition for their involvement in the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
“I think we might learn some bombshells about their connection to Trump’s inner circle,” Campbell said. “And the fact that several top-level Proud Boys have already agreed to testify against their own means we may learn a lot.”
Trump also recently said that the nation would face “problems … the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen” if he is indicted for taking classified documents after leaving office. His comment was widely seen as a call for his followers to commit violence if he’s ever criminally charged.
“I think Trump knows that everybody is going to react violently to this,” Campbell said. “The pipeline between the rhetoric and the violence in the street is so short now. How many hours was it between the time he was complaining about the FBI going through Mar-a-Lago and somebody showing up with a gun to an FBI field office? He knows he has people waiting to mobilize.”
Campbell added, “There will absolutely be Proud Boys violence in 2024 and I think in the 2022 election, too,” noting that Arizona Republicans have called for vigilante justice around ballot boxes.
“I think they are absolutely going to show up in force for Trump’s election regardless of what happens. I think we have to realize that the violence has trickled out to everyday Americans. It’s not just extremist groups anymore. Trump pointing to the back and calling the press the enemy, Trump glorifying Jan. 6 rioters,… that has come full circle.”
He concluded, “I think the spirit of January 6 is still here. All of the groups involved are still here, and everyday Americans have joined them… It’s going to be scary.”
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