Wednesday, August 5, 2020
Lancet warns of massive resurgence of coronavirus after UK school reopening
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/05/ukco-a05.html
By Thomas Scripps
5 August 2020
A modelling study published in the Lancet, “Child And Adolescent Health,” warns that the UK’s testing and tracing for coronavirus is inadequate to prevent a “rebound” of the epidemic once schools are reopened next month.
One author, Chris Bonell, professor of public health sociology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, warns, “Reopening schools fully in September, alongside reopening workplaces in society, without an effective test, trace, isolating (TTI) strategy could result in a second wave of infections between two and 2.3 times the size of the original wave [emphasis added].”
The study modelled an “optimistic” scenario, assuming 68 percent of contacts of people testing positive could be traced, in which “an epidemic rebound might be prevented.” However, the current level of coverage is closer to the study’s “worst case” scenario, which assumed only 40 percent were traced. Bonell explains, “Looking at the NHS reports from the TTI system, it looks like it’s about 50 percent coverage.”
Without an improvement, the government is “likely to induce a second wave that would peak in December 2020 if schools open full-time in September.”
This warning comes as a resurgence of the virus is already underway. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), 4,200 people are being infected with coronavirus every day, up from 3,200 the week before and 2,500 the week before that.
But the government’s response to the Lancet study has made clear its determination to reopen the economy in the interests of big business, whatever the cost to the population. Simon Clarke, minister for local government, told Sky News: “One thing is clear, schools are going to reopen in full in the autumn, that is not up for debate.” He described the NHS Test and Trace System as a “massive success.”
On Saturday, the government’s modelling expert Professor Graham Medley suggested pubs and restaurants may have to be closed as a “trade-off” to allow schools to reopen. He said, “closing some of the other networks, some of the other activities may well be required to enable us to open schools. It might come down to a question of which do you trade off against each other and then that’s a matter of prioritising, do we think pubs are more important than schools?”
Even this entirely misguided “trade off” was rejected. The Guardian reported, “English pubs are likely to be spare any new restrictions” after Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s spokesman played down Medley’s suggestion, adding “we are committed to supporting the hospitality industry, which has had a very tough time.”
Last week, Johnson met with Chancellor Rishi Sunak to discuss ways of avoiding a second UK lockdown in the event of a resurgence of the virus later this year. Their overwhelming concern is to maintain the flow of corporate profits. This precludes any serious public health measures, leaving only piecemeal interventions which cause serious distress to working-class households while doing nothing to substantially address the threat of the virus.
These sociopathic priorities led to the absurd situation last week when several million people in the north-west of England and Leicester were placed under additional public health restrictions at less than an hour’s notice, and mandatory mask wearing was extended, just one day before more than two million medically vulnerable people were told to stop shielding and return to work if ordered to.
As millions of people were prevented from visiting the gardens of their relatives, they were encouraged, along with the rest of the nation, to “Eat Out to Help Out” in pubs and restaurants. The slogan refers to a government scheme subsidising 50 percent of the cost of food and participating cafes and restaurants, up to £10 per head, for three days a week. Several pubs across the country have already been responsible for clusters of COVID-19 cases.
Britons also continue to be encouraged to travel for their holidays—yesterday EasyJet reported it was increasing its number of flights above expectations to cope with increased demand—even as countries like Spain and Luxemburg are suddenly removed from quarantine exemptions, Greek flights are cancelled, and French and German authorities warn of a second wave.
The new laws on wearing masks, which will not be properly enforced, follow months in which the government cast doubt on their effectiveness. According to a survey of 70,000 people by University College London, just 45 percent of adults in England feel they understand current government guidelines, compared to 90 percent in March, during the period of stricter lockdown. The danger is that this confusion, combined with the government and media’s relentless boosterism and lying complacency, will dull popular consciousness of the danger posed by the pandemic—facilitating the spread of the disease.
Dr Bharat Pankhania, senior consultant in Communicable Disease Control at the University of Exeter, told the Independent last week, “When the prime minister lifted lockdown, I said it was unbelievably premature. There were mixed messages… That public health message of ‘go carefully’ just isn’t there.”
Dr Gabriel Scally, President of the Epidemiology and Public Health section of the Royal Society of Medicine and member of Independent Sage, explained that “if there are too many [local flare-ups of the virus] the capacity at a local level won’t be able to deal with them and they will emerge as a wave.”
A major resurgence of the epidemic will bring tens and possibly hundreds of thousands more deaths. The longer the virus is left uncontrolled, the more damage will be done by the ongoing disruption of people’s lives. The Tory government’s cynical invocation of children’s welfare notwithstanding, it is undoubtedly the case that world capitalism’s shambolic response to the pandemic—necessitating the long-term closure of schools and other services—has caused a “generational catastrophe” for young children, in the words of the World Health Organisation.
The ruling class know that they are sitting on a ticking time bomb of unrest and are reaching for a military-police solution. A “major incident” has now been declared in Manchester, giving local police a freer hand to deploy national resources.
Early in July, the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) heard a report, “Public Disorder and Public Health: Contemporary Threats and Risks.” Using the threat of “disorder… facilitating the spread of the disease” as a cipher for mass social opposition, the report states, “There has been a step-change in threat levels since the last sustained period of serious rioting in the UK in 2011.” It warns, “The police are in a far weaker position in terms of capacity” and that they “would be likely to require military support.”
Among the risks it foresees over the coming months are “The beginning of protests planned during the lockdown, (e.g., anarchist/anticapitalist groups seeking to frustrate a ‘return to normality’,” and “Rising unemployment and/or anxiety about employment as furlough is wound down.”
On July 22, Lieutenant General Douglas Chalmers, Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff (Military Strategy and Operations), told the House of Lords’ Public Services Committee that the military was wargaming scenarios for a four-way winter crisis of a coronavirus resurgence, winter flu spike, Brexit disruption, and national flooding.
This is a development of the “Operation Yellowhammer” strategy formulated last year to suppress discontent, supposedly in the wake of a hard Brexit. Once again it proceeds with the full support of Labour and other “opposition” parties.
The British ruling class are in an unprecedented state of crisis which they hope to escape through an equally unprecedented exploitation and endangering of the working class, enforced by military-police repression. The working class must respond with their own perspective and programme, based on an international struggle for socialism, for the eradication of the virus and the safeguarding of all jobs, wages, and social services.
UK teachers’ pay award: A shoddy deal for all
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/05/teuk-a05.html
By Tom Pearce
5 August 2020
The Conservative government is hailing as a major advance Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s announcement of a pay-rise for teachers.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The offer is divisive and paltry. It will not be funded by the government, but out of already chronically under-funded school budgets.
The deal is being sold as a “generous offer,” aimed at resolving the teacher recruitment and retention crisis but does not come close to resolving the strains of a sector on its knees. Only Newly Qualified Teachers (NQTs) will get the headline 5.5 percent pay rise, with more experienced teachers being offered 2.75 percent, equating to a measly 3.1 percent increase overall. When inflation is factored in, schools are left where they were 13 years ago.
Young people are being enticed into a profession at breaking point. The statistics are stark. There was a 4.6 percent increase in teacher vacancies last year, with almost 1,300 more vacancies advertised by schools in 2018-2019 than in 2017-2018. The Department for Education (DfE) reported that almost a “third of teachers leave the classroom within five years of qualifying.” The overall number of teachers has not kept pace with increasing pupil numbers and the ratio of pupils to qualified teachers has increased from 17.8 in 2011 to 18.9.
Around 42,000 full-time equivalent qualified teachers left the state-funded sector in the 12 months to November 2018, a “wastage rate” of 9.8 percent. According to the House of Commons Library, “The wastage rate has ranged from 9.1 percent (2012) to 10.3 percent (2015) since the current series started in 2011.” It noted, “32.3 percent of newly qualified entrants in 2016 were not recorded as working in the state sector five years later. This is the highest five-year wastage rate on the current series, which dates back to 1997.”
It noted, “Overall pupil numbers are expected to continue rising, driven by a projected 15 percent increase in the number of secondary school pupils between 2018 and 2024.”
The environment that newly qualified teachers (NQTs) will find is one of constant surveillance and pressure. UK teachers work 47 hours a week on average according to a study by the UCL Institute of Education. A third of teachers work over 60 hours a week and during the “holidays”. These long hours are unsustainable and a major reason why teachers are fleeing the profession.
Since 2014, teachers have had to deal with performance related pay (PRP). This has been used to cap teacher pay, as schools are now allowed to award increases or not at their own discretion.
The 2.75 percent pay rise sanctioned by the Department for Education (DfE) for 2019-20, for example, was not implemented across all schools. The National Education Union (NEU) who surveyed their members, found that out of 25,000 responses only 49 percent received the pay award.
Overseen by the unions, workers have experienced pay freezes and cuts in pay for over a decade. This amounts to a 15 percent loss of income over the last 15 years for workers in education. The new pay deal does not come close to addressing this shortfall.
A decade of underfunding and budget cuts has seen school funding cut by 8 percent in real terms in the last decade, and sixth form funding by 21 percent. In the last three years alone, £5.4 billion has been lost from school budgets, affecting 91 percent of schools in England.
Headteachers have had to make desperate decisions about staffing redundancies and curriculum provision to balance their budgets. Schools now rely more and more on teachers and parents to plug deficits due to crippling budget cuts.
The pay deal will add to financial difficulties as schools will have to find the money themselves at a time when the funding situation is exacerbated by the costs of COVID-19. Schools are having to buy signage and cleaning resources out of existing budgets.
In September 2019, £7.1 billion was promised to schools over three years. The government has also promised a £1 billion catch-up plan for children affected by the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. £650 million will be shared across state primary and secondary schools and a £350 million National Tutoring Programme is being set up. This is paltry compared to the hundreds of billions in bailout funds handed to big business.
The unsafe reopening of schools in September will elevate the crisis. That many older teachers will retire early, concerned about the impact of the pandemic on their health, is also a factor in the carrot of enhanced payments for new starts. The stick will follow the carrot. The stress levels involved in attempting to teach while keeping “bubbles” of up to 240 children and themselves safe with no protective measures, such as social distancing and masks, will weigh heavily on the mental health of staff.
The teaching unions are not opposing the unsafe opening of schools and have refused to mobilise the broad-based opposition among staff. They welcomed the government’s empty promises for NQTs, saying they were merely “disappointed” that the deal did not reward experienced staff.
The National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT), General Secretary Dr Patrick Roach said, “Whilst [the] announcement recognises the importance of pay levels in making teaching more attractive to new teachers, the Government also needs to do more to retain experienced teachers in the profession.”
Making no reference to how schools would find the money for such a raise, Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, referred to the government’s move as a “curate’s egg”:
“Raising starting salaries by 5.5 percent should make the profession more attractive to graduates,” she said. “But the prospect of salaries tapering off as they progress through the profession means that progress made in recruiting teachers will not be sustained in retaining them.”
The NEU, after only asking for a 7 percent pay rise for all teachers in their own ineffectual campaign and having again been ignored by the government, responded by glorifying the pay deal for new starts!
This is consistent with their response to the coronavirus crisis—to demand the government incorporate them in their decision making as the best-placed institutions for imposing the government’s pro-business agenda. The NEU have called, yet again, “to establish, in consultation with the teacher unions, a timetable for further above-inflation teacher pay increases beyond 2020.”
It then lists, without irony, the major defeats teachers have experienced under the watch of the unions in the last decade: “The dismantling of the national pay structure, imposition of PRP and real-terms funding cuts have resulted in many teachers not getting the cost-of-living increases announced in previous years.”
The pandemic will only intensify the attacks of recent years. The billions handed out by Sunak to big business will be clawed back from the working class. Teachers need new rank-and-file organisations based on unifying workers in a struggle against the profit system, as the only way to secure a decent education for children and good working conditions for staff.
The author also recommends:
No to the reopening of schools! Build action committees to safeguard children and teachers!
[30 May 2020]
Opposition builds to re-opening of UK schools
[5 June 2020]
Brazilian teachers oppose back-to-school drive
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/05/braz-a05.html
By our correspondents
5 August 2020
As Brazilian local governments are pushing for a general reopening of schools, following the sociopathic demands of the fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro, widespread opposition to these measures is emerging among parents and educators.
A survey by Instituto Datafolha in April revealed that three in every four people in Brazil believed that it is more important to “stay home to avoid the coronavirus spread, even if this jeopardizes the economy and provokes unemployment.” In June, another survey from the same institution revealed that 76 per cent of Brazilians are against the schools reopening in the next two months, and that only 21 percent are in favor of going back to schools in the short term.
The World Socialist Web Site spoke to teachers from different parts of Brazil about the political reasons behind the back-to-school campaign and the dangers it poses to the lives of the school staff, students, and their families.
Francisca, a public school kindergarten teacher in São Paulo, explained that a series of safety protocols being approved by state and municipal governments are an active part of the back-to-school campaign. “The protocols that are being presented seem to me like a listing of general procedures that do not guarantee the safety and well-being of workers, children or families and do not consider the specifics of each age group or the structure conditions of each education unit.”
Arguing that adequate infrastructure is a pre-requisite for protecting people from contagion, Francisca said, “The school where I work has an inadequate infrastructure ... and one which, in this moment, determines the impossibility of implementing the [protocol] measures: reduced spaces, making social distancing difficult; the absence of reserved spaces for isolating symptomatic children; and poor airing and cooling systems, compromising the air healthiness. These are only three basic preventive measures that our school, as many others of the school network, are under no condition to implement.”
Fabiano, a Portuguese middle school teacher in São Paulo’s public system, made reference to the cuts that were already occurring before the pandemic. “These protocols are very subjective, and we know that the municipal government under this administration [of Bruno Covas of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB)] has already reduced the cleaning staff. The hygiene aspect is fundamental for these protocols to work and I don’t believe, especially due to this administration’s record, that there would be personal protective equipment, hand sanitizer, soap, what they call ‘safety protocols’.”
Job cuts in the municipal school system of São Paulo have been occurring under successive administrations, including that of Fernando Haddad of the Workers Party (PT), who was the PT candidate in the 2018 presidential elections.
Geraldo, a Sociology teacher in a public state school in Amazonas, warned about a potential new upsurge in infections resulting from a return of classes. “The Department [of Education] will leave us to fend for ourselves and there will be no following of safety protocols ... One person can transmit to another five or ten. I read that, at the same time as kids have a lower probability of contagion, they are less symptomatic. And how are people going to interact in schools without human contact? And by that I don’t mean touching other people—they are going to touch things; they are going to walk to different places.”
Pedro, a primary school History teacher also working in the Amazonian public school system, described the “safety protocols” being planned for the return to schools. “One hundred percent of the students would come back under a hybrid, rotation scheme. They claim that there will be testing for teachers, but only once, when they get back to school. This testing is not being planned for students, who will, at most, have their temperatures measured.”
Pointing out the herd immunity policies being de factoimplemented by governments throughout the world, Geraldo warned: “The professionals are being prepared to return as guinea pigs, with all of the existing surveys about chronic diseases among teachers.”
There is an understanding among educators that the back-to-school campaign is based on financial interests. Igor, a private school teacher in São Paulo, stated that “The immediate return certainly cannot solve even the teaching issues for students. The interests are economic ones.”
He also exposed the movement in private schools to decrease teachers’ wages. “From one side, there are demands from parents, who want to pay less for not getting the same services. From the other, there is pressure from the companies, which indeed can suffer from decreases in enrollment and default, but which may use the moment to worsen labor relations. A sign of that is that a big company in education where I work reduced wages by 25 percent for three months, but considers that it can be a good moment to make new company acquisitions.”
Expressing the educator’s distrust of the ability of a return to school to solve the educational issues existing in distance learning, Francisca denounced the new issues that would arise. She highlighted the utter lack of preparation and indifference towards the education of small children.
“It will be, at best, an uncertain, if not worrisome outcome, as the return does not completely solve the problems posed and, actually, creates other ones: Which kids and families will ‘earn’ the right to be part of the first 35 percent [of students allowed in classrooms in the first phase of the plan]? They will be guaranteed meals, ‘safe’ school day time and it will relieve the workers responsible for them, but at what cost? Are the protocol measures really sufficient or possible? In the specific case of small children, how to guarantee significant school experiences in the face of physical distancing, restricted spaces and the prohibition of sharing?”
Pointing to the worsening of the work conditions that came with the widening of digital service platforms, Geraldo made a connection between the inadequate conditions and poor wages of app delivery workers, who have recently engaged in strikes in Brazil, and the attacks faced by education workers over the last years. “If you look at people who work in tourism sector, in hotels, or submitted to companies as Airbnb, I think that situation has also arrived in education, in the sense that the teacher will also start to share content without any labor obligations.”
The pandemic was seen by education government officials, NGOs and companies as an opportunity to accelerate the introduction of distance learning digital platforms in school curricula. Already, hundreds of millions of dollars in digital equipment were promised to supposedly ameliorate working conditions for teachers.
However, Pedro denounced the precarious experience that actually is being provided. “Not even half of the students own a cell phone … many families are poor. We have many Venezuelan students, who have just arrived in Brazil and don’t speak Portuguese.”
“Participation is minimal, with three or four students attending classes where there are almost 50 students enrolled.” Those that do participate are doing so by overcoming precarious conditions. “A colleague of mine told me that a parent works as a night guard. His son finishes the activities, then his father takes pictures on his cell phone and sends it when he arrives at work, where there is wireless internet connection.”
He went on to explain the inadequate meal distribution to the families. “They have created a program called ‘Meals at Home’, distributing one food basket to the family of each student during these four months. However, there are many parents complaining that they still haven’t received it. In the countryside, families are just now receiving their first food basket.”
Geraldo denounced the criminal response of the trade union in São Paulo joining the government in implementing the return to school plans. “In some schools, the attacks were so intense that many teachers were fired, and some lost their contracts. And the response of the trade unions is limited to assistance, sending food and aid. The trade union is unable to get close to the rank-and-file. It is already supporting the Plano SP [the return-to-work plan of the state government], limiting their demand to a ‘drastic decrease’ [in cases before reopening schools], which doesn’t mean anything.”
“The trade union doesn’t create an official Facebook, or Instagram account and doesn’t show their number of followers because they are afraid to be among the rank-and-file, exposing their own contradictions and problems, which teachers would expose.”
On Wednesday, São Paulo state teachers organized a motorcade, planned to finish outside of Governor João Doria’s house. Doria ordered the police to block the motorcade, preventing it from reaching his house. Then, the São Paulo Teachers Union (APEOESP) president, Maria Izabel Azevedo Noronha, known as Bebel, walked towards the police blockade and feigned opposition to the governor’s plans.
In the beginning of July, Noronha met with the state’s education secretary to supposedly oppose the back-to-school drive, on the grounds that a “drastic reduction of the pandemic” is needed before that. Such formulation leaves open the possibility that teachers and students are forced into schools as cases and deaths reach an “acceptable” level.
In Rio de Janeiro, where the Mayor Marcelo Crivella of the Republicans party is promoting the reopening of private schools starting this Monday, trade unions are blocking a unified opposition of the educators. The unions officially representing state, municipal, and private school teachers, who are all threatened by the same policies, held separate meetings in different dates.
Teachers, school staff and workers in Brazil and internationally must form rank-and-file committees independent of both the trade unions and “left” parties such as the PT, PSOL and PCdoB. They will allow workers to unify themselves to fight against the murderous back-to-school campaign, and for the modernization of schools and high-quality infrastructure for distance learning, both financed by the expropriation of the capitalist oligarchy.
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Fascist networks in German police and military issue new death threats
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/05/netz-a05.html
By Jan Ritter and Max Linhof
5 August 2020
Far-right-wing extremist chat groups involving members of the German military and security apparatus have been publicly exposed over recent days. At the same time, a growing number of threatening e-mails and faxes, almost all signed NSU 2.0, have been sent to left-wing artists, immigrants, politicians, journalists and lawyers. Social Democrat leader Saskia Esken recently received a death threat signed NSU 2.0. Many of the threats contain personal information about those targeted that is not publicly available. In at least three cases, the data was accessed from police computers.
The best-known case is of the lawyer Seda Basay-Yildiz, whose secret address was accessed on a police computer in Frankfurt. The lawyer, who represented some of the victims of the far-right National Socialist Underground (NSU) terrorist group, received a death threat several days later signed NSU 2.0.
Der Spiegel reported on July 29 that the police officer whose computer was used to access the data had not been seriously investigated, because another officer could have logged on to her computer with a password displayed nearby. On this basis, she was not initially considered a suspect. However, after officers found out that she was an active participant in a right-wing extremist chat group, they were finally compelled to launch an investigation against her.
The far-right group “Itiotentreff” was almost exclusively made up of police officers in the state of Hesse. A total of 102 pictures, caricatures and messages were shared, of which 40 were deemed to be relevant to the investigation by the state prosecutor. Group members made fun of disabled people, survivors of concentration camps, black people and Jews. The messages showing Alan Kurdi, the Syrian refugee child who drowned in 2015, were especially inhumane. “Whoever finds it can keep it” was written beneath the picture of his lifeless body on a Turkish beach.
The chat group had an openly fascistic character and aimed to serve as a platform for sharing right-wing extremist material and possibly planning acts of violence, apparently all under the protection of the security agencies and local politicians from the government parties.
One of the group’s members lived in 2018 in Kirtorf, a stronghold of the far-right that has played host to several right-wing extremist major events since the turn of the century. In addition, a search of the home of another police officer in Kirtorf in late 2018 uncovered a collection of Nazi memorabilia that investigators described as a “Nazi museum.” The mayor of Kirtorf at the time, Ulrich Künz (Christian Democrats), justified the find by saying that it is normal for people to collect historical material. He described the Nazi memorabilia collector and his brother, who was also a police officer in Hesse, as “nice guys, friendly, very integrated into clubs and associations.”
This is just one example of the building up of far-right structures within the state apparatus. Across Germany, new far-right networks are continually being exposed, from “Revolution Chemnitz” in Saxony, to the chat group led by the special forces soldier Andre S., better known as “Hannibal,” and the nationwide far-right Telegram chat group #WIR.
On July 23, Die Zeit published extracts from these chats in an article headlined “Soldiers who are planning a revolt.” The author and right-wing extremist expert Christian Fuchs wrote that among #WIR’s members, which at times totalled around 240, were “several soldiers, reservists and army veterans.”
According to his research, several right-wing extremist and neo-Nazi members of the army are active in the #WIR chat group. One member was Hartmut T., who holds at least the rank of sergeant in the military. In the Telegram group, he has been presented a series of awards for parachuting and individual bravery during his 12-year career as a soldier, is stationed at an army air base in the Lüneburg region and is now a member of the rapid response division. This unit is part of the same division as the special forces (KSK), which was so heavily infiltrated by right-wing extremists that Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer felt compelled to restructure the force last month.
Like the network organised by Hannibal in the KSK, the #WIR network also planned to murder left-wing figures and establish a fascist regime in Germany on “Day X.”
Hartmut T. wrote in the #WIR chat, among other things, “Can you add me to the group Antifa Reconnaissance? I want to know who my enemies are...so I can take action against these terrorists.” Another contribution cited by Die Zeit underscores just how concrete the plans for a far-right revolt were. “Patriots” must now “keep themselves safe” so that “when the first wave is over with, we can rebuild our country,” wrote T. in November 2019.
The author of the article in Die Zeit adds, “These statements were made in November 2019, so the ‘wave’ has nothing to do with the coronavirus; it probably refers to the initial phase after a putsch.”
The material presented by Fuchs leaves no doubt about the group’s fascist outlook, its close ties to the German army and other European militaries, and its plans for a violent putsch. “Anti-Semitic slogans and racist violent fantasies” were among the messages shared, as well as “free social national.”
Andreas E., another group member, was, “according to his own admission,” active for five years in the French Foreign Legion in French Guyana, Congo and Papua New Guinea.
Another member of the group was Heiko Herbert G., who according to Fuchs is a member of the military reserves, Lower Saxony group. In December 2019, he directed a threat to anti-fascists, “It’s not enough just to slap those guys in the face! I don’t want to write any more about it.”
The plans were apparently far advanced, and links had already been established with other far-right groups. “My preparations are complete. Own weapons, fighting gear, civil war,” wrote Heiko Herbert G. in the chat group. He has everything “up to calibre 38–45.” In addition, the reservist posted a picture “of a mountain of rucksacks, helmets and a sleeping bag with German army insignia.”
One of the administrators of #WIR was Marion G., who consciously wanted to bring together “patriots...and National Socialists.” She was an alleged supporter of “the right-wing extremist terrorist S Group,” whose members were arrested by the police in February. But Marion G. “remained free” and “continued to be active in the digital underground.” And this in spite of the fact that the S Group was reportedly on the brink of striking.
According to a report in Der Spiegel in February, the group had already hoarded weaponry and munitions and planned in a concerted “military” action to launch attacks on mosques across Germany and kill Muslims as they prayed. The goal was to provoke a counter-response and a “civil war.” The investigating state prosecutor summarised the group’s aim as having been the “rattling” and “overcoming” of the Federal Republic’s state structure and social order.
The fascist networks in the German security forces are now so widespread and threatening that the New York Times felt compelled for the second time in a few weeks to warn of the danger of a right-wing putsch. After an initial article on July 3, the Times wrote last weekend about the plans for “Day X” of the Northern Cross group, which emerged out of the network operated by Hannibal. “Increasingly, the German authorities consider the scenario a pretext for domestic terrorism by far-right plotters or even for a takeover of the government,” wrote the Times .
It may well be the case that sections of the state apparatus and government are troubled by the putsch plans and terrorist activities. But the fact is that there is no force within the political establishment or state, including the judiciary, investigative authorities, and political parties, capable of or willing to deal with the far-right threat. The strengthening of far-right terrorist networks in the police, military and intelligence agencies is directly linked to the German bourgeoisie’s return to militarism and war. The only way to stop the right-wing extremist terrorists is through the independent mobilisation of the working class on the basis of a socialist programme.
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The growing fascist influence in German politics: The case of Christian Democratic politician Robert Möritz
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