Trump’s new policy in Afghanistan, unveiled in a nationally televised address Monday evening, is a declaration of open-ended and unrestrained military violence against a country that has suffered sixteen years of unbroken American aggression. It was at the same time an expression of the extraordinary degree of power and influence exercised by the military over political life in the United States.
In their conflict with Trump, the Democrats and their political allies have worked to bury beneath an endless series of diversionary issues—centered on a grossly distorted presentation of the United States as a country torn by irreconcilable racial divisions—the most critical issues: social inequality, poverty, war and the unprecedented growth in the power of the military-industrial-financial complex, which represents the most serious threat to the democratic and social rights of the working class.
In response to Trump’s commitment to ever-greater military violence, a new antiwar movement must be built. The fight against imperialist war must be rooted in the working class, mobilized on an international basis in opposition to all the organizations and institutions of the ruling class and the capitalist system they defend.
Contact the SEP today to help build this movement!
Fraternally,
Joseph Kishore
SEP National Secretary
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By Joseph Kishore
The most remarkable passages in Trump’s speech came at the beginning. He delivered a paean to the military as the essential force for controlling a divided nation. The military is an instrument of “absolutely perfect cohesion,” Trump declared. “The soldier understands what we as a nation too often forget,” he said. “The young men and women we send to fight our wars abroad deserve to return to a country that is not at war with itself at home.”
Trump’s statements have profoundly sinister implications. They portray the military as the unifier of a fractured country, a force for structure, discipline—and repression. Under conditions of mounting social and political conflicts within the United States, his speech is a declaration of the central role of the military not only in waging war abroad, but maintaining order at home. Read more » |
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Behind the political warfare in the US: Rising fears of financial collapse, social unrest
By Nick Beams
There are growing concerns in US and global financial circles that the rise in the US stock market that accelerated with the election of Donald Trump is heading for a major downturn. These concerns shed a revealing light on some of the underlying forces driving the virtual civil war in the US political establishment.
The view among Wall Street speculators and corporate executives is that the “Trump trade”, which sent the Dow Jones and other market indexes to record highs, has run its course, with the president increasingly becoming an economic liability. The tipping point in business sentiment came in the wake of the conflict over the Charlottesville Nazi rampage. Trump’s remarks defending neo-Nazis were seen as undermining the interests of American imperialism internationally and threatening to unleash social and political instability at home.
However, concerns over the instability caused by Trump reflect deeper fears. The American ruling class confronts problems that extend far beyond the current occupant of the White House. Read more » |
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Trump, Charlottesville and Jorg Baberowski
By Johannes Stern
It is difficult to overstate the hypocrisy of the German ruling class. When the right-wing extremist German Professor Jörg Baberowski trivializes the crimes of the Nazis and endorses right-wing violence, there is no outcry from the political or media establishment. On the contrary, these very same circles slander and seek to censor those critical voices that are raised in opposition to Baberowski’s pro-Nazi apologetics—above all the World Socialist Web Site.
Under the protection of influential forces in the realms of politics, the media and the military, Baberowski has for years been using his position at Humboldt University to agitate against refugees, argue in favour of illegal methods of war, and whitewash the Nazis. His right-wing extremist statements go well beyond anything Trump has said publicly. Baberowski is, for example, a declared supporter of Ernst Nolte, the most well known Nazi apologist among post-World War II historians. “Nolte was done an injustice. Historically speaking, he was right,” Baberowski told Der Spiegel in 2014. Read more » |
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More than two thousand sign petition to stop Google censorship
By Zac Corrigan
On August 14, the World Socialist Web Site launched a petition against the manipulation of search results by tech giant Google, which is aimed at blocking access to socialist, anti-war, and progressive websites, with the WSWS the principal target. After one week, more than 2,000 people from at least 70 countries have signed the petition, demanding that Google’s top executives stop their “attack on free speech, independent thought, and the basic right to uncensored information.”
The number of signatures jumped over the weekend, after WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange tweeted a link to the WSWS’s exposure of Google’s actions.
Google’s censorship program, which was announced on April 25 under the pretext of countering “fake news,” has been thoroughly exposed by the WSWS in an ongoing series of articles. Since April, thirteen leading oppositional websites have been buried or banished altogether from Google search results, causing a massive drop in their readership. The WSWS itself was the hardest hit, losing more than two-thirds of its traffic that originated from Google searches. The top 45 search terms that formerly led readers to the WSWS are now blocked by Google. Read more » |
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