Social Self-Defense Against the Impending Trump Coup

 

Written by Jeremy Brecher and first published at Labor Network for Sustainability 

President Donald Trump has refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power no matter who wins the election. What is to be done if Trump loses the election but refuses to concede? The purpose of this commentary is to stimulate discussion and preparation for how to overcome such a Trump coup. 

Even before the 2016 election, Donald Trump hinted that if he lost he might not accept the outcome. Now, far behind in the polls, Trump is taking action to disrupt the 2020 election and laying obvious groundwork for refusing to leave office if he loses. As this threat has moved from a hypothetical concern to an immediate fear, the media have been filled with stories about Trumpite plans for red state legislatures to overturn popular votes, destroy mail ballots, and send in the military to quell demonstrators defending the vote. 

But reports have also begun appearing about plans to defend the ballot and resist a Trump Coup d’état – an “executive usurpation” sometimes referred to as a “self-coup.”(1) This commentary gives a brief historical background on the effective use of “people power” to contest coups and stolen elections and reviews recent writing and organizing against a Trump Coup. It presents resistance to a Trump Coup not as primarily a matter of Biden vs. Trump or Democrats vs. Republicans, but rather as Social Self-Defense — a defense of society against an attack on the very things that make our life together possible.(2) 

Anti-Coups Have Succeeded 

Tyrannical regimes from Serbia to the Philippines to Brazil and many other places have been brought down by “people power” — nonviolent revolts that made society ungovernable and led to regime change. While the U.S. has a strong tradition of social movements based on people power, it does not have a tradition of using mass action and general strikes for the defense of democracy. However, in other countries where democratic institutions have been so weakened or eliminated that they provide no alternative to tyranny, such methods have emerged and been used effectively. 

There is now an extensive literature analyzing popular resistance to subversion of elections and other forms of coup d’état. The pioneer of such research was theorist and historian of nonviolence Gene Sharp. His Waging Nonviolent Struggle provides extensive analysis and many case studies of effective nonviolent resistance; his The Anti-Coup focuses in on the use of these methods against illegal seizures of government power.(3) It proposes such guidelines as: 

• Repudiate the coup and denounce its leaders as illegitimate 
• Regard all decrees and orders from the coup leaders contradicting established law as illegal and refuse to obey them 
• Keep all resistance strictly nonviolent – refuse to be provoked into violence 
• Noncooperate with the coup leaders in all ways

Steven Zunes’ Civil Resistance Against Coups analyzes the resistance to twelve coups and provides an expanded theoretical framework.(4) Sharp and Zunes provide invaluable background for anyone who contemplates resisting a possible Trump coup. Here are two examples that involve popular resistance to coups that utilized stolen elections: 

In 1988, despite the circumventing of electoral laws, repression of universities and media, and ethnic cleansing, Serbia under Slobodan Milosevic was still holding elections of a sort. An activist group called Otpor formed around the goal of driving Milosevic from power and began hundreds of small actions of resistance around the country to counter pervasive fear of the regime. 

Its plan was that activists would compel the regime to call elections; they would create massive turnout around a united opposition candidate; they would join other nongovernmental organizations in carefully monitoring election results so they could document their victory; and they would use mass noncompliance – leading up to a general strike – if and when Milosevic refused to step down. 

In 2000, Otpor pushed 18 of Serbia’s squabbling opposition parties to form a coalition to support a unity candidate, promising to deliver 500,000 votes to the unity candidate but threatening to put 100,000 protesters at the door of any politician who betrayed the coalition. As elections approached, the regime called Otpor an “illegal terrorist organization”; police raided its offices and shut down independent radio and TV stations; each day an average of seven activists were arrested. 

Meanwhile, the opposition organized ten thousand election monitors. They announced exit polls showing Milosevic had been defeated by a 50% to 35% margin. Instead of accepting the results, Milosevic refused to leave office and demanded a run-off election. 

Otpor announced a deadline for Milosevic to concede and 200,000 people demonstrated in Belgrade. The opposition called on the population throughout the country to “perform any acts of civil disobedience they have at their disposal.” Miners struck; TV and radio stations opened their airwaves to opposition voices.  As the deadline approached, cars and trucks filled the highways heading toward Belgrade. 

Police put up roadblocks and were issued orders to shoot, but seeing the size of the convoys they abandoned their barricades. Half-a-million people gathered in Belgrade. Police fired tear gas, but when the crowd stood its ground riot police began running away or joining the crowd. The opposition candidate declared victory and Milosevic accepted his defeat. 

There are many other cases where popular action has forestalled or reversed efforts to subvert the outcome of a democratic election. After the assassination of opposition leader Benigno Aquino, Jr. in 1983, Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos met growing protests. 

Marcos called a presidential election to be held in February, 1986. Aquino’s widow Corazon Aquino was backed by all major opposition parties. Marcos’ campaign included vote-buying and the murder of more than 70 opposition workers. On election day casting of fake ballots and falsification of returns was widely witnessed. 

Marcos claimed victory, but Mrs. Aquino met with opposition leaders and proposed a long nonviolent campaign of what she dubbed “people power.” Top military officers resigned, withdrew support from Marcos, recognized Aquino as the legitimate winner, and fled to military camps in Manilla. The city’s Roman Catholic Church leader appealed on nationwide radio for people to nonviolently protect the officers and prevent bloodshed. 

By midnight 50,000 surrounded the camps; two days later it was more than a million. Marcos ordered tanks and armored transports to attack. Nuns knelt in front of the tanks and priests climbed on them and led a million protesters – plus soldiers – in prayer. The troops turned back. Next day Marcos ordered another assault, but the commanding officer ordered his troops to return to their base. The military rebels announced that ninety percent of the Armed Forces had defected. Large crowds took over the government television station. 

The next day Marcos fled the country and Aquino was inaugurated president. Ever after mass nonviolent direct action has been known around the world as “People power.”(5)

How the Trump Coup Is Unfolding 

This summer a group called the Transition Integrity Project held a series of “war games” with more than 100 current and former senior government and campaign leaders and other experts to review possible scenarios for the upcoming election and presidential transition. The result: 

We assess with a high degree of likelihood that November’s elections will be marked by a chaotic legal and political landscape. We also assess that President Trump is likely to contest the result by both legal and extra-legal means, in an attempt to hold onto power. Recent events, including the President’s own unwillingness to commit to abiding by the results of the election, the Attorney General’s embrace of the President’s groundless electoral fraud claims, and the unprecedented deployment of federal agents to put down leftwing protests, underscore the extreme lengths to which President Trump may be willing to go in order to stay in office. 

Their likely scenarios included: Trump’s refusal to concede; Attorney General William Barr opening investigation of vote-by-mail fraud allegations and Democratic ties to antifa; and rival selection of pro-Trump electoral college slates by Republican state legislatures. Meanwhile Trump would call for armed supporters to challenge pro-Biden demonstrators, leading to multiple killings of demonstrators; Trump says he will invoke the Insurrection Act to teach anti-American terrorists a lesson. All this before Thanksgiving. 

Except in the case of a big Biden win, each scenario “reached the brink of catastrophe, with massive disinformation campaigns, violence in the streets and a constitutional impasse.” In two of the scenarios there was no agreement on the winner by Inauguration Day.(6) 

An extended article in The Atlantic by Barton Gellman released in late September presented evidence that Trump and Republican officials are already laying the groundwork for such scenarios. The disruption of the Post Office and the plans to intimidate voters and prevent full vote counting are already under way. Gellman maintains that after election day, “Donald Trump may win or lose, but he will never concede,” and that he may “obstruct the emergence of a legally unambiguous victory for Biden in the Electoral College and then in the Congress.”

Preparations are already being made for red state legislators to replace elected members of the Electoral College with their own appointees. Barton spells out in detail this and many other strategies available and likely to be used to prevent a losing President Trump from being forced to leave office.(7)

 How to Overcome a Trump Coup 

In late September, four movement activists and experts on civil resistance issued a manual called Hold the Line: A Guide to Defending Democracy. Reminiscent of the Indivisible manual that helped launch the resistance to Trump in 2016, it presents a detailed plan for locally-based resistance to a Trump Coup.(8) It lays out various scenarios in which Trump refuses to leave office. It calls for forming community-based “election protection” groups. These can start immediately with meetings by a small core group that develops a response plan and recruits others to participate in it. 

These groups will “hold the line” that all votes must be counted; all irregularities must be investigated impartially and remedied; and election results must be respected, regardless of who wins. Public officials can be called on in advance to state their commitment to these principles. Violation of these “Red Lines” by Trump or other officials will trigger these groups into action. 

The guide provides sample meeting agendas, templates for “Power Maps” of forces to influence, tactics “brainstorming sheets,” and other planning tools. It outlines targeted action to “undermine the pillars of support” for an illegal Trump regime. It calls for mass popular mobilization based on disciplined nonviolence because “violence will backfire badly against the side that uses it.” 

It discusses tactics including displaying symbols of protest; engaging in demonstrations, marches, and nonviolent blockades; strikes of all kinds; deliberate work slowdowns; boycotts of all kinds; divestment; refusing to pay certain fees, bills, taxes, or other costs; or refusal to observe certain expected social norms or behaviors. 

Trade unionists Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Jose La Luz have made a related proposal for organized labor to establish “pro-democracy volunteer brigades” in preparation for the election. 

We need volunteers who will assist with voter registration; mobilize in large numbers should law enforcement and right-wing militias show up at polling places in order to intimidate voters; block the right-wing from challenging legitimate voters and ballots; and lay the groundwork for massive civil disobedience should the Trump administration attempt to forestall the elections and/or refuse to recognize the results.(9)

Organizing So Far Against a Trump Coup 

The Trump presidency has been an era of mass resistance, an upwelling of direct action that came to be known as the Trump Resistance or simply The Resistance. A social science organization called the Crowd Counting Consortium listed more than eighty-seven hundred protests with six to nine million participants in the first year of the Trump administration, 90 percent opposing Trump’s agenda.(10) The Black Lives Matter protests following the 2020 murder of George Floyd constituted the largest mass uprising in the U.S. in half a century with an estimated 15 to 26 million participants.(11) The base for contesting a Trump Coup is already in motion. 

At the start of September, a coalition of 50 organizations called the Fight Back Table, which includes Service Employees International Union, the American Federation of Teachers, Color of Change, Indivisible, and MoveOn, established a post-election planning vehicle called the Democracy Defense Nerve Center. Taking off from the Transition Integrity Project war games, they have begun to chart out what it would take to stand up a multi-state communications arm to fight disinformation, a training program for nonviolent civil disobedience, and the underpinnings of what one official described as “mass public unrest.” 

They began to struggle with such questions as how do you maintain sustained strikes and occupations and what do you do if armed right-wing militias show up at polling places?(12)

A number of other groups have been mobilizing to forestall or overcome a Trump coup. Protect the Results, a joint project of Indivisible and Stand Up America supported by 80 other groups, is planning mass mobilization in more than 1,000 locations.(13) Keep Our Republic is organizing to support a “civic creed” to “Let all citizens vote. Let all votes be counted. Let the count stand.” 

The group Peoples Strike has issued a Pledge of Resistance committing to occupy civic squares on Wednesday, November 4th, to occupy state capitols on Saturday, November 7th, and to engage in “strategic rolling strikes” thereafter. No doubt other preparations are under way as well. 

Other sectors of society are also beginning to consider what their responsibilities will be if Trump refuses to concede electoral defeat. On September 25 AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka released this statement about the post-election transition: 

The AFL-CIO categorically rejects all threats to the peaceful transition of power. The labor movement simply will not allow any breach of the U.S. Constitution or other effort to deny the will of the people. Union members across the political spectrum are united in our fundamental belief that the votes of the American people must always determine the presidency. America’s workers will continue to be steadfast in defense of our democracy in the face of President Trump’s antics, and we stand ready to do our part to ensure his defeat in this election is followed by his removal from office.(14) 

A recent New York Times article reported that: 

senior leaders at the Pentagon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, acknowledged that they were talking among themselves about what to do if Mr. Trump, who will still be president from Election Day to Inauguration Day, invokes the Insurrection Act and tries to send troops into the streets, as he threatened to do during the protests against police brutality and systemic racism.(15)

Several Pentagon officials said there could be resignations among many of Mr. Trump’s senior generals, starting at the top with chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark A. Milley, should troops be ordered into the streets at the time of the election. As we have seen in the opposition to the Serbian and Philippine electoral coups, the role of various sectors and levels of the military – from the brass to the privates — can be critical. 

But as revealed by the top brass’ second thoughts after the military was called in to provide Trump a photo op confrontation in Lafayette Square during a June Black Lives Matter demonstration, they are most likely to come to a sense of their responsibilities when they are called on to suppress peaceful protestors in the interests of a tyrant. 

Social Self-Defense 

Resisting the rise of tyranny will no doubt require sacrifice. After all, we are dealing with an aspiring tyrant who lionizes someone who shoots down demonstrators in the street. But that sacrifice will not be primarily on behalf of one political party vs. another, of Democrats vs. Republicans. It will be a defense of democracy – defense of government of the people, by the people, and for the people. 

Beyond that, it is the protection of that which makes our life together on earth possible. It is defense of the human rights of all people; of the conditions of our earth and its climate that make our life possible; of the constitutional principle that government must be accountable to law; of global cooperation to provide a secure future for our people and planet; and of our ability to live together in our communities, our country, and our world. It is a threat to all of us as members of society. Overcoming a Trump Coup is Social Self-Defense. 

Notes 

1.     From the Spanish autogolpe, used to describe cases in Latin America in the early 1960s. Sharp and Jenkins, Anti-Coup, p. 6. https://novact.org/2012/09/the-anti-coup-bruce-jenkins-and-gene-sharp/?lang=en.

2.     The term “Social Self-Defense” has its origin in the Polish Committee for Social Self-Defense which led to the creation of the Solidarity trade union and ultimately the dissolution of Poland’s Communist dictatorship. I have used it before to characterize the Trump Resistance. Jeremy Brecher, “Social Self-Defense: Protecting People and Planet against Trump and Trumpism,” https://www.labor4sustainability.org/uncategorized/social-self-defense-protecting-people-and-planet-against-trump-and-trumpism/.

3.     Gene Sharp, Waging Nonviolent Struggle (Boston: Porter Sargent, 2005).  Gene Sharp & Bruce Jenkins, The Anti-Coup (Boston: The Albert Einstein Institution). Sharp’s magisterial three-volume The Politics of Nonviolent Action (Boston: Porter Sargent) lays out how and why nonviolent direct action is able to work.

4.     Steven Zunes, Civil Resistance Against Coups: A Comparative and Historical Perspective (ICNC Monograph Series) https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Stephen-Zunes-Monograph_Final.pdf.

5.     Joshua Paulson, “People Power Against the Philippine Dictator – 1986,” in Gene Sharp, Waging Nonviolent Struggle (Boston: Porter Sargent, 2005), Ibid.

6.     “Preventing a Disrupted Presidential Election and Transition,” Transition Integrity Project, August 3, 2020. https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/7013152/Preventing-a-Disrupted-Presidential-Election-and.pdf and  Rosa Brooks, “What’s the worst that could happen? The election will likely spark violence – and a constitutional crisis,” Washington Post, September 3, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/09/03/trump-stay-in-office/?arc404=true.

7.     Barton Gellman, “What If Trump Refuses to Concede?,” The Atlantic, pre-released in late September from November, 2020 issue. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/what-if-trump-refuses-concede/616424/ Much of the same material is covered and confirmed with additional details in David Smith, “Recipe for Chaos,” The Guardian, September 27, 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/27/recipe-for-chaos-2020-election-threatens-snap-us-already-pushed-limit.

8.     Hardy Merriman, Ankur Asthana, Marium Navid, Kifah Shah. Hold the Line: A Guide to Defending Democracy. version 1.1. 2020.  http://holdthelineguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Hold-The-Line_-A-Guide-to-Defending-Democracy.pdf.

9.     Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Jose Alejandro La Luz, “Organized Labor and the ‘Cold Civil War,’” Portside, September 17, 2020. https://portside.org/2020-09-17/organized-labor-and-cold-civil-war.

10.  The Trump Resistance and other mass opposition to Trump and Trumpism is recounted in Jeremy Brecher, Strike! Revised, Expanded, and Updated Edition (Oakland CA: PM Press, 2020) Chapter 12, “Harbingers.” https://www.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1085.

11.  Larry Buchanan, Quoctrung Bui, Jugal K. Patel, “Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History,” The New York Times, July 3, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html.

12.  Sam Stein, “The Left Secretly Preps for MAGA Violence After Election Day,” The Daily Beast, September 8, 2020. https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-left-secretly-preps-for-violence-after-election-day . Developing efforts against a Trump Coup are also described in Sasha Abramsky, “Is Trump Planning a Coup d’État?,” The Nation, September 7, 2020. https://www.thenation.com/article/society/trump-coup-elections-gop/.

13.  Sam Stein.

14.  Richard Trumka, “We Will Not Tolerate Any Constitutional Breach,” _AFL-CIO, September 25, 2020.  https://aflcio.org/press/releases/trumka-we-will-not-tolerate-any-constitutional-breach.

15.  Jennifer Steinhauer and Helene Cooper, “At Pentagon, Fears Grow That Trump Will Pull Military into Election Unrest,” New York Times, September 25, 2020. https://portside.org/2020-09-25/pentagon-fears-grow-trump-will-pull-military-election-unrest.

We need your support – Open letter by #FridaysForFuture #Rojava

Dear students of Fridays For Future,

We have been following the world wide climate protests and strikes with great excitement. And since we founded Fridays For Future Rojava in May of this year we have been protesting and striking along side you!

Fridays For Future has brought young people together all over the world, united by the understanding that we cannot continue living in a world in which nature is being destroyed!

The reality in Rojava, the Kurdish region of Northern Syria, is very different from the reality in many places, where there are local chapters of FFF. Since 2012, when the revolution in Rojava began, we have been building an alternative model for society – based on the three fundamental principles of women’s liberation, ecology and radical democracy. In the last 7 years, bottom up, self administrated and ecological projects have been created everywhere: neighbourhood councils – women’s centres - educational academies – an alternative, free school system – economic and agricultural cooperatives – and much more besides. 

All areas of life have been reorganised from the bottom up. In the past, everything used be governed from Syria’s capital Damascus. Now we govern ourselves. In all these new structures, women organise themselves autonomously so they can form a counterbalance to the power structures of patriarchy.

This democratic system has been a target for reactionary forces from the beginning. First, the Al-Nusra Front (a subsidiary of Al-Qaeda) and then the Islamic State attacked our cities and occupied large parts of the country. But we were able to free ourselves from their cruel regime. The Islamic State has been defeated. But the Islamic State is not a phenomenon that arose only here in the Middle East. Many of the Jihadists came here from Western countries passing through Turkey.

Even with the end of the Islamic State the attacks did not stop. In early 2018, Turkey led an illegal war of aggression and has been occupying Afrin ever since – a region that was under self-administration before and was considered one of the safest areas of Syria. Now, violence rules there again.

Many young people like us helped in defending Afrin. Almost every family can name someone who fell in the defence against the Islamic State and Turkey – someone who was murdered defending peace and democratic values for the world.

On October 9th 2019, Turkey started attacking. Everywhere bombs dropped by airstrikes and shot by artillery rain down on us. The Turkish forces are also attempting to cross the border in some places. Already, there have been many civilian casualties. Infrastructure like damms and the electricity power supply have been among the first targets.

In these trying hours, we turn to you, dear friends of Fridays For Futures. We believe that a solution to the ecological crisis is only possible through self-determination. Our economy has to be structured in a cooperative way and according to the needs of the people. That is what the revolution in Rojava stands for. Stand strong, discuss these topics, don’t let yourself be fooled by the media, hit the streets! As long as these attacks continue, there will be actions of solidarity and resistance. The campaign #Riseup4Rojava will tie all these actions together.

If you want to contact us directly, write us at makerojavagreenagain@riseup.net! We are a diverse group of people from the region as well as people who have come to Rojava to support the revolution – so you can write us in English or any other language! 

New Zealand Mosque Massacre Suspect Says he is an Eco-fascist

Brenton Tarrant, one of four people arrested for the shooting to death of fifty people at two Mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, last week, claims in a 74 page manifesto, to be, amongst other things, an Eco-fascist. The document entitled the “Great Replacement” has been posted at various locations on the web, but all appear to have been deleted now. I haven’t read the full document myself, but it appears that many people have.

A report on the Medium website has published some extracts from Tarrant’s manifesto, and I’m mainly quoting here from this report. Tarrant apparently declares:

“I am an Ethno-nationalist Eco-fascist,” in his manifesto. “Ethnic autonomy for all peoples with a focus on the preservation of nature, and the natural order.”

He goes on to say:

“Immigration and climate change are the same issue, the environment is being destroyed by over- population” and “we Europeans are one of the groups that are not over populating the world. […] Kill the invaders, kill the overpopulation, and by doing so, save the environment.”

Although Tarrant is an Australian national he sees himself as European, from “English, Scottish and Irish” stock, and advocates a hierarchical economic and political system in which an ethnically cleansed Europe will be free from the influences of cheap labour, foreign trade, and environmental destruction.

Tarrant claims to be ‘anti-capitalist’ in his manifesto and he appears to believe in a globalist conspiracy theory in which “Marxists” exact corporate control over the markets, media, academia, and NGOs. This seems to be more akin to a classical antisemitism conspiracy type of belief, with ‘Marxists’ filling the role of ‘Jewish bankers.’

Nazi Germany employed some anti-capitalist rhetoric in its ideology, but after his rise to power, Hitler took a pragmatic position on economics, accepting private property and allowing capitalist private enterprises to exist so long as they adhered to the goals of the Nazi state. Business groups made significant financial contributions to the Nazi Party both before and after the Nazi seizure of power, in the hope that a Nazi dictatorship would eliminate the organized labour movement and the left-wing parties.

Of course Hitler was anti-Marxist, usually of the ‘Jewish bankers’ variety, stating this in his book Mein Kampf and also his hatred of democracy “because it inevitably leads to Marxism.” Left wing activists were persecuted and often murdered in Nazi Germany, alongside Jews and gay people.

Hitler also admired the British Empire and its colonial system as living proof of Germanic superiority over 'inferior' races and saw the United Kingdom as Germany's natural ally. He wrote in Mein Kampf: "For a long time to come there will be only two Powers in Europe with which it may be possible for Germany to conclude an alliance. These Powers are Great Britain and Italy."

Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience, written by Janet Biehl and Peter Staudenmaier contains two essays entitled "Fascist Ideology: The Green Wing of the Nazi Party and its Historical Antecedents" and "Ecology and the Modernization of Fascism in the German Ultra-Right." They linked German Nazism with “traditional agrarian romanticism and hostility to urban civilization”, and that ecological ideas were an “essential element of racial rejuvenation.”

The Nazi slogan “blood and soil” was coined by their foremost ecological thinker, Richard Walter Darré, who meant it to capture a mystical link between race and a particular territory.

This conflation of race and land, quite absurdly in the case of Africa, was present in the South African political and para-military organisation the Afrikaner Resistance Movement, whose leader was Eugène Terre'Blanche, in the era around the end of apartheid in the early 1990s. Terre Blanche means literally in French ‘white land or white earth.’

In more recent times, the British National Party (BNP), under then leader Nick Griffin, before the party imploded, made the argument that climate change offered a great opportunity for the advancement of fascism, with Britain likely not being in the first wave ecological destruction, and an island, with refugees from the worst hit regions wanting to get into the country. The tensions that would arise from this within the British people could be exploited for their political ends, Griffin thought.

The notion of ‘indigenous people’ is captured in this strain of nationalist fascism, a way of life challenged by the arrival of outsiders, who will change the prevailing culture. An insistence on all people in England to speak English, at all times, at least in public, is a common feature of Brexit. I once saw some graffiti in a pub toilet in east London that said: ‘the indigenous people are being discriminated against.’

The United Kingdom Independence Party, largely inherited those voters when the BNP fell apart. They seem to be courting them even more now under their new leader Gerard Batten, who has hired Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon), the fascist former English Defence League (EDL) leader, who made anti-muslim sentiment a central part of the EDL’s ideology.  

Whilst the vast majority of the people in the green movement are of the political left, aspects of the movement also bear some ideological blame for a form of eco-fascism. What is known as ‘deep ecology’ sees environmental degradation as a problem caused by ‘too many people’, advocate massive reductions in the human population, usually black and brown people, and strict anti-immigration policies.

Conveniently, they ignore that rich industrial nations, cause much more environmental destruction than the population of Africa and other poor parts of the world. This is a form of eco-fascism, however much deep ecologists try to deny the fact.

All of which means that those of us on the green left, should be aware of this alternative ecological philosophy, and redouble our efforts to challenge their narrative with a just and inclusive green politics.

EU Puts the Ball in the UK’s Court with Irish Border Plan

The European Union (EU) has published its plan for resolving the problem of a return to a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, once the UK leaves the union. In the worse-case scenario, of no other workable alternative being found, which looks to be the case now, Northern Ireland will be considered part of the EU’s customs territory after Brexit. In effect, Northern Ireland will remain in the customs union and single market, and checks will be needed on goods passing between the UK mainland and Northern Ireland.

“A common regulatory area comprising the Union and the United Kingdom in respect of Northern Ireland is hereby established,” the draft paper says. “The common regulatory area shall constitute an area without internal borders in which the free movement of goods is ensured and North-South cooperation protected.”

Northern Ireland would stay under the jurisdiction of the European court of justice and the EU’s VAT regime and state aid rules would apply.

Michel Barnier, who is leading the negotiations on Brexit for the EU said: “We are just saying that on the island there are two countries, we need to fund the capacity for certain issues relating to the internal market and customs union, that we need to ensure the Good Friday Agreement can function ... We need to ensure there is regulatory consistency, alignment.”

Yesterday, Boris Johnson the foreign secretary, being interviewed on the BBC radio Today programme, claimed that the Irish border was being used to ‘frustrate’ Brexit, and further claimed that the problem could be resolved by a similar system of CCTV cameras that is used to enforce London’s vehicle congestion area. Johnson was trivialising the situation disgracefully, because the analogy is completely different. He shames his high office with such blithe statements.

It was also revealed yesterday by Sky news, that a leaked letter from Johnson to the prime minister also trivialised the problems, and did not shy away from maintaining a hard border.

The prime minister, Theresa May, said at PM questions today that there would not be a hard border in Ireland, but she also ruled out the EU’s solution, which effectively would draw the EU/UK border in the Irish Sea. May refused to be drawn on the practicalities of this when pressed by the leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn on the issue. No doubt this is because there is no workable plan, so yet again the government indulges in magical thinking, but this can’t last. Decisions need to be taken, and the EU has taken one. Over to the UK.

Since the problem of the Irish border has begun to receive attention in recent weeks, although it has been known about all along, the value of the Good Friday Agreement has been brought into question by the looniest Tory Brexiteers.

Tory MP Owen Paterson, a former Northern Ireland secretary, tweeted a link to a piece with a comment which claimed that the Good Friday Agreement ‘had outlived its usefulness.’ Paterson was sacked by former prime minister David Cameron as environment secretary, for making a complete shambles of the west of England badger cull, blaming the badgers ‘for moving the goalposts.’ A towering intellect he is not.

Tory MEP Daniel Hannan, who is close to Boris Johnson, has claimed that the Agreement is ‘flawed.’ But it brought to an end twenty years of military conflict, and shakily has maintained the peace for a further twenty years.

Journalist Fintan O’Toole writing in the Irish Times said that although the Agreement was imperfect, the Brexiteers are playing a dangerous game by trying to rubbish it and puts it down to Britain’s priority being a recklessly pure Brexit, not peace in Ireland. “If the Belfast agreement must die so that the glorious ideal of Brexit may live, so be it” he concludes.

One can hardly blame the EU for becoming exasperated with the UK’s contradictory and completely unrealistic positions on Brexit. They have now given Britain a clear choice on the Irish border, either accept the EU’s solution, or have a hard border. That’s it.

The Good Friday Agreement is an international agreement, and an open border in Ireland is part of it. If we reject the EU’s terms, which the UK accepted in December as a fall back option, then we will break international law. But more than this, if the conflict returns to Northern Ireland, the British government will have to justify to the families of British soldiers, the death of their loved ones. All to uphold the ideology of the most crazy wing of the Tory party.

Will the families be comforted by this? I very much doubt it.     

Make Rojava Green Again as a bridge for internationalist solidarity

We, the Internationalist Commune of Rojava, want to contribute to the ecological revolution in Northern Syria. To this end, we have started the campaign Make Rojava Green Again, campaign in cooperation with the Ecology Committee of the Cizire Canton. The campaign has three aspects:

Building up the Internationalist Academy with an ecological ethos, to serve as a working example for comparable projects and concepts for the entire society. The academy will facilitate education for internationalists and for the general population of Rojava, to strengthen awareness and environmental consciousness, pushing to build up an ecological society.

Joining the work of ecological projects for reforestation, and building up a cooperative tree nursery as part of the Internationalist Academy.

Material support for existing and future ecological projects of the Democratic Self-administration, including sharing of knowledge between activists, scientists and experts with committees and structures in Rojava, developing a long-term perspective for an ecological Northern Syria Federation.

The first two concrete projects of the Make Rojava Green Again campaign are:

Realization of the concepts of an ecological life and work in the Internationalist Academy, partly with the building up a nursery as a part of the Academy. In the spring of 2018, we will plant 2,000 trees in the area of the academy, and 50,000 shoots in the nursery.

Practical and financial support for the Committee for Natural Conservation in the reforestation of the Hayaka natural reserve, near the city of Derik, in Cizire Canton. Over the next five years, we plan to plant more then 50,000 trees along the shores of Sefan Lake.

Support the ecological revolution in Northern Syria

These are some of the ways people can support the the campaign ‘Make Rojava Green Again’, the ecological work in Rojava, and revolution in Northern Syria.

Share this campaign with activists, scientists, and experts from fields such as ecological agriculture, forestry, water supply, and sustainable energy production.

Contact and liaise with activists, journalists, politicians and others who would be interested in this campaign.

Write, publish and share articles and interviews about the campaign.

Share information with friends and family. Spread the word about the growing ecological revolution in Rojava.

Establish contacts between persons/groups/organizations and the Internationalist Commune of Rojava.

Work in Rojava itself.

Support the work financially.

Contact:

Mail: makerojavagreenagain@riseup.net

Web: https://internationalistcommune.com/make-rojava-green-again

 Facebook: facebook.com/CommuneInt

Twitter: twitter.com/CommuneInt

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IBAN: CH82 0900 0000 8555 9939 2

BIC: POFICHBEXXX

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Reference: “Make Rojava Green Again”

Irish Border - A more serious problem than a No Trade Deal for the UK

It is not as though the British government haven’t known of the potential problems for Ireland that Brexit causes, in the almost 18 months since the UK voted to leave the European Union (EU). This issue has been the subject of the same magical thinking though that has characterised the UK government’s approach to their whole Brexit strategy, if you can call it that.

A ‘technological solution’ is the best that the UK has come up with, whereby there is an exemption for all small traders and farmers from a host of customs, agricultural and food safety checks, on either side of the Republic/Northern Irish border. This has never really been a runner, as it makes a mockery of the EU’s borders and customs control, but the UK persists in insisting it is all perfectly reasonable, all the same.

At the weekend, Liam Fox, the International Trade Secretary, stated that the Irish border issue cannot be determined ahead of any trade deal with the EU, so it should be parked for now. Again, this has been the UK’s approach with all three of the EU’s initial demands: that a Brexit payment is made, and an agreement on UK and EU nationals living in the UK/EU are the other two, are concluded before talks on trade can begin. These first two issues are perhaps close to some agreement between the UK and EU, but the Irish border problem has not been progressed at all.

This was highlighted at the weekend by the Leo Varadkar, the Irish prime minister, saying he wants a written guarantee that the border will be kept open after Brexit, otherwise the Irish government will veto any trade deal. The Republic of Ireland exports £13 billion of goods to the UK, mainly farm produce, and £40 billion to the EU.

Fox’s position makes some sense, because an actual trade deal between the UK and EU will be part and parcel of the whole process. But that is only if you think the UK will get a bespoke deal with the EU, which seems highly unlikely. The EU also appears to support the Irish government’s position on this, so Fox’s line will probably not hold for much longer.

The only way this will be solved quickly, is if the UK agrees to remain in the European Single Market and Customs Union, but this has been specifically ruled out by the UK government. Alternately, the Irish government has suggested that Northern Ireland remains in the single market and customs union, even if the rest of the UK does not. It is possible this might work, but would throw up many problems unless the Irish Republic controlled all of Ireland’s borders, on behalf of the EU.

But the main Unionist party in Northern Ireland has ruled out any such arrangement. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader, Arlene Foster told her party conference at the weekend that their Westminster MPs will not agree to a special status for Northern Ireland. Fearing some kind of Sinn Fein plot to start a slide towards the uniting the island of Ireland, the DUP could bring down the minority Tory UK government in Westminster, if any such special deal is made for Ireland.

The impasse appears to be unbridgeable, with time running out for any deal to be struck. If the UK doesn’t remain in the single market and customer’s union, our likely trade deal will be similar, if not exactly the same as the recent CETA trade deal concluded by the EU and Canada. The UK will look to replicate CETA with Canada, and I don’t know the exact details of CETA, but I think we will have to remain in the trade deal anyway, even when we leave the EU. These agreements usually stipulate a continuation of the deal for a period even if you leave the trading union. An EU/UK CETA type trade deal will not solve the Irish border problem though.

Canada is different to the UK, in that it doesn’t have a land border with the EU, and so this trade deal is much easier to police. Say for example the UK makes a trade deal with the US, where the American’s have said this would have to include farm produce. We could have things like chlorinated chicken exported to the UK from the US, which contravenes EU laws. It could get from the UK into Northern Ireland and without border checks, into the Republic of Ireland and from there right around the EU unimpeded. The EU will not allow this situation to occur for obvious reasons.  

So, we can have a deal with the US or the EU but not both, without the UK remaining in the single market and customs union, or the Republic of Ireland policing the whole Irish/UK border. But as I say the DUP will not tolerate this. So, no trade deal with the EU is possible, end of story, unless something gives.

But more than trade deals, this situation could have another more deadly consequence in Ireland. Irish senator Neale Richmond, a European affairs spokesman for the Fine Gael party that leads the government, has warned of violence if there is a return to a hard border in Ireland.

He said: “You put up one watchtower, or put out one customs patrol, and they will be a target, and I would argue they would be attacked within a week of them going up.”

After all the slow progress that has been made in Northern Ireland over the last twenty years, this is all at stake from English arrogance and fanciful thinking. Is a hard Brexit really worth the risks to peace in the UK and Ireland? I don’t think so. 

Why are the UK Establishment so Terrified of a Corbyn Government?

Attitudes may be breaking a little in the UK establishment, with British employers groups starting to warm to the relative certainty of Labour’s stance on remaining in the European Single Market and Customs Union after Brexit, compared to the chaotic approach of the Tory government. 

Business leaders also like the idea of Labour making huge investments in infrastructure, at a time of record low interest rates. This is probably more of a reflection on the hapless Tories though, than any ringing endorsement of Corbyn’s Labour, but it is happening all the same.

Even Tories are breaking ranks. Tory member and journalist Matthew d'Ancona, writing about the Tory Party's predicament in The Guardian, says:

‘I can think of far worse things than a left-wing Labour victory that such oligarchic arrogance might eventually spawn…..In truth, their worst enemy is not Corbyn, but the stultified inertia of their own government, and its leaden inability to see how unbelievably awful it is.’

But there is a substantial proportion of the UK establishment that is very worried about what a Labour government would mean, in terms of taxing corporations and wealthy individuals fairly. Led by the ring-wing media, the Telegraph, Mail, Express and Sun, they are trying to create hysteria amongst the public, about what a Corbyn government would be like. With some success it would seem, as I wrote last month on this blog, posing the question, ‘Why are the Incompetent Tories at around 40% in the Opinion Polls?’

At the 2015 general election, the then Labour leader, Ed Miliband (dubbed Red Ed, of course) on a much more modest soft left platform was called a Marxist, and all kinds of calamity forecast by the same media, if he won. At this year’s general election, the same accusations and more were thrown at Corbyn, but with much less success though. The barrage has continued ever since.

Re-nationalisation of public services would fell one of the magic money tree scams that fill capital’s coffers and a modest (0.5%) Robin Hood tax on financial transactions are further concerns to the elites.

But concern is not just on the financial front. The media has tried to paint a picture of Labour as anti-Sematic, with little evidence to support it, but the casual observer wouldn’t notice that. This is conflated with Corbyn’s years-long support for the cause of Palestinian self-determination, and wider foreign policy concerns, such as his distain for the arms trade with Saudi Arabia.

Corbyn’s lack of support for NATO and his personal distaste, at least, for Britain’s Trident nuclear deterrent, are also cited as demonstrating his unsuitability for prime minister.

Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of Britain’s foreign intelligence agency MI6, writing in The Telegraph said, “the leader of the Labour Party is an old-fashioned international socialist who has forged links with those quite ready to use terror when they haven’t got their way: the IRA, Hizbollah, Hamas. As a result he is completely unfit to govern and Britain would be less safe with him in No 10.”

Dearlove appears to be oblivious to fact that the UK’s foreign policy in the middle east of recent years is the cause of most of our foreign affairs woes, including international terrorism. The situation in Northern Ireland was resolved through dialogue, although it is now in peril if a hard Brexit takes place. Relations with Russia are also at their worst since the end of the cold war. Hardly anything to be proud of and certainly no justification for a status quo approach.

So, establishment opposition falls into broadly two areas, class war against any significant redistribution of wealth downwards in the UK and fear of foreign policy changes that have existed for decades and are a part of the geo-political order, backed by the US and its allies around the world.

By historical standards, what Corbyn’s Labour is proposing is not anywhere near Marxism or even some of the more radical polices of Labour governments past. It is a measure of how far to the right politically the centre ground has shifted, that what is quite tame social democratic positions are painted in such extreme colours.

The truth of the matter is, what Corbyn represents is a small push back against the class war winners of the last nearly forty years, nothing more. And certainly nothing for the vast majority of people to worry about, who will benefit from such policies. Nothing could be worse than the shambles the Tories are making of the country.

Nothing at all.