Saturday, September 5, 2020
'Fighting Against Voting Rights Everywhere': Trump, RNC Sue Democratic Montana Governor to Restrict Mail-In Election
"This template lawsuit appears to be part of a pattern of lawsuits across the country by Republican Party operatives to limit access to voting during the pandemic," said Gov. Steve Bullock.
Kenny Stancil, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/09/03/fighting-against-voting-rights-everywhere-trump-rnc-sue-democratic-montana-governor
President Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee on Wednesday sued Montana's Secretary of State and Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock for giving counties the choice to hold the November election by mail, an expansion of a safe voting option during the Covid-19 pandemic that the lawsuit alleges—without evidence—would "invite fraud and undermine the public's confidence in the integrity of elections."
In a statement announcing the lawsuit (pdf), the RNC called Bullock's initiative to improve voter access and safety during the ongoing deadly outbreak of coronavirus an "unconstitutional vote-by-mail power grab."
But many Republicans in Montana would likely object to that description of Bullock's directive, which "he issued after a request from county clerks statewide," NBC News reported.
According to the secretary of state's elections office, 42 out of 56 counties have already confirmed plans to conduct the November election completely by mail, and voting rights expert Stephen Wolf pointed out that "even many GOP counties" in the state "have opted" to mail ballots to voters ahead of the election.
In a statement, Bullock said:
This template lawsuit appears to be part of a pattern of lawsuits across the country by Republican Party operatives to limit access to voting during the pandemic. Voting by mail in Montana is safe, secure, and was requested by a bipartisan coalition of Montana election officials seeking to reduce the risk of Covid-19 and keep Montanans safe and healthy.
Marc Elias, a lawyer and founder of Democracy Docket, an organization advocating for fair elections, argued that the "GOP is fighting against voting rights everywhere."
For Wolf, Wednesday's lawsuit filed by the President's re-election campaign and the RNC cannot be understood outside of the context of Montana's "hotly contested Senate race" between current Gov. Bullock and Sen. Steve Daines, the Republican incumbent.
Given the large number of "split ticket voters" in Montana who might support Bullock over Daines regardless of which presidential candidate they prefer and because the outcome of this contest could determine the balance of power in the Senate, some think that the state's voters are key to a potential victory for the Democratic Party.
Trump and the RNC's attempt to limit Montana's recently expanded vote-by-mail option came within hours of Trump's felonious encouragement of voter fraud in North Carolina—where he told residents to vote twice—and Attorney General Barr's failure to acknowledge whether doing so is illegal, as Common Dreams reported earlier on Thursday.
"I don't think it can be emphasized enough that Trump has been emboldened to the point that he sees democracy as his primary rival," said Walter Shaub, former director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, earlier this week.
"He is asking Americans to reject it, and he's not waiting for an election to validate his thinking."
Friday, September 4, 2020
'Dangerous, Destructive, and Divisive': Trump Ploy to Defund So-Called 'Anarchist Jurisdictions' Denounced as 'Illegal' Reelection Stunt
"This is actually happening. On our watch," said civil rights leader Vanita Gupta. "I can't imagine what four more years of Trump-Barr would mean for our democracy."
Jon Queally, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/09/03/dangerous-destructive-and-divisive-trump-ploy-defund-so-called-anarchist
Democratic lawmakers and rights advocates voiced outrage and contempt overnight in response to a new five-page memo from the Justice Department sanctioned by President Donald Trump late Wednesday that would restrict federal funding to U.S. cities determined by Attorney General William Barr to be so-called "anarchist jurisdictions"—a term that made clear to critics the move is nothing short of an election-year canard designed to bolster the president's "law and order" campaign message.
According to the Washington Post's Jeff Stein—who characterized the move as an "extraordinary attack on political opponents just months ahead of the 2020 election" by Trump—the DOJ memo "directs the White House Office of Management and Budget [OMB] to give guidance to federal agencies on restricting funding to cities that 'defund' their police departments. The memo also directs the Justice Department within 14 days to come up with a list of localities that qualify as 'anarchist jurisdictions' and post that list publicly."
While Black Lives Matter protesters and others have called for "defunding" police departments in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd and other victims this year, there has been little political purchase for the demand—which polls have shown remains largely unpopular—among most Democratic lawmakers. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has adamantly opposed cutting budgets as part of the solution to otherwise much-needed police and criminal justice reforms.
As Stein reports:
The memo comes as the president seeks to intensify his attacks on Democratic mayors of cities that have faced civil unrest amid protests against police brutality. It specifically calls for a review of federal funding that goes to Portland, Ore.; New York City; Seattle; and D.C. Legal experts said the White House maneuver to restrict funding would almost certainly be met by an immediate challenge in court.
Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, was gobsmacked over the latest threat by the president—especially as it arrived directly through the Justice Department.
Gupta cited the DOJ's memo—which broadly defines "anarchist jurisdictions" as an area "that unreasonably refuses to accept offers of law enforcement assistance by the federal government" or "any other related factors the Attorney General deems appropriate"—to express disbelief.
"This is actually happening. On our watch," Gupta said. "I can't imagine what four more years of Trump-Barr would mean for our democracy."
Kanya Bennett, senior legislative counsel with the ACLU, said the president's order and the DOJ memo should be seen as deeply troubling and misguided.
"There is an urgent need to divest from programs like the Department of Defense 1033 program, which gives military weapons to local police and suggests it's okay to treat communities like war zones and their residents like enemies," said Bennett. "But instead, this president wants to broadly strip funding from those cities that may dare to resist his lawless agenda."
Trump, added Bennett, "should not hold hostage taxpayer funds as part of yet another campaign stunt that, at its core, seeks to suppress demands for racial justice and transformational changes to our policing institutions." She further vowed that the ACLU "will be closely monitoring any actions resulting from this unfounded and irresponsible memorandum, which accomplishes nothing more than to stoke the flames of racism and division across this country."
Sam Berger, a former senior OMB official during the Obama administration, told the Post that legal action would be nearly certain if and when Trump follows through with the memo's threat and said: "This is a campaign document coming out of the White House."
Mayor Ted Wheeler of Portland, Oregon—who has clashed repeatedly with Trump—warned that the withdrawal of federal funds could possibly include money for "health, education and safety net dollars Americans need to get through the pandemic and economic crisis."
"This is a new low, even for this president," said Wheeler in a statement late Wednesday. "He continues to believe that disenfranchising people living in this country to advance his petty grudges is an effective political strategy. The rest of us know it is dangerous, destructive, and divisive."
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York denounced the DOJ memo and the president's support for it. "We will not allow President Trump's malicious infantile ways to hurt New York City," Schumer tweeted. "Instead of these foolish stunts he ought to be focused on getting our country out of the COVID crisis."
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo delivered a similar message:
Katie Phang, a legal analyst for NBC News, was among those who noted: "It's not 'anarchists' that will be hurt by this power grab; it's the residents."
And Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director of counsel for the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund, said in response to the DOJ order: "Ironically the one instance in which the federal government is actually required to withhold fed funds from local programs is missing. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which should prohibit federal funding to police departments engaged in racial discrimination."
Further Vindicating Righteousness of Snowden's Whistleblowing, NSA Bulk Spying Ruled Illegal
"I never imagined that I would live to see our courts condemn the NSA's activities as unlawful and in the same ruling credit me for exposing them. And yet that day has arrived," said Edward Snowden in response to the ruling.
Jake Johnson, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/09/03/further-vindicating-righteousness-snowdens-whistleblowing-nsa-bulk-spying-ruled
In a unanimous ruling seven years after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden exposed the federal government's mass surveillance of Americans' phone records, a federal appeals court said Wednesday that the warrantless spying program was illegal, repeatedly citing Snowden's disclosures in its long-awaited decision.
Snowden and other civil liberties advocates applauded the ruling (pdf) by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit as further vindication of the whistleblower's decision in 2013 to leak thousands of highly classified NSA documents to journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Barton Gellman, who ultimately published the documents, touching off an international scandal to which the Obama administration responded by pursuing espionage charges against Snowden.
"Seven years ago, as the news declared I was being charged as a criminal for speaking the truth, I never imagined that I would live to see our courts condemn the NSA's activities as unlawful and in the same ruling credit me for exposing them," Snowden tweeted late Wednesday. "And yet that day has arrived."
While rejecting federal officials' arguments in defense of the mass spying program—authorized under Section 215 of the Patriot Act—the three-judge panel ruled that the unlawful data collection does not undermine the convictions of four Somali immigrants found guilty of fundraising for Al-Shabaab.
"We are convinced that under established Fourth Amendment standards, the metadata collection, even if unconstitutional, did not taint the evidence introduced by the government at trial," Judge Marsha Berzon wrote in her opinion.
Joshua Dratel, a lawyer for defendant Basaaly Moalin, said he and his client are "disappointed in the result, especially since more recent disclosures regarding misconduct regarding FISA has further revealed how the lack of transparency in the entire process compromises individual rights of those charged with crimes as well as those never charged—including those Americans whose telephone metadata was collected and retained."
"In this case, we believe that the lack of transparency was prejudicial to our ability to challenge the FISA surveillance," said Dratel.
ACLU attorney Patrick Toomey echoed Dratel's criticism of the ruling while also characterizing the decision as "a victory for our privacy rights."
"We are disappointed that, having found the surveillance of Mr. Moalin unlawful, the court declined to order suppression of the illegally obtained evidence in his case," Toomey said in a statement. "The ruling makes plain that the NSA's bulk collection of Americans' phone records violated the Constitution."
"The decision also recognizes that when the government seeks to prosecute a person, it must give notice of the secret surveillance it used to gather its evidence," Toomey added. "This protection is a vital one given the proliferation of novel spying tools the government uses today."
No UAE 'peace deal' can make Gaza disappear
Edo Konrad, +972 Magazine
The timing of the Israel-UAE accord couldn’t have been better for Israel’s floundering “unity government.” Beset by an explosion in new COVID-19 cases, the possibility of another lockdown, and a bottomed-out economy with growing unemployment, the deal has provided Netanyahu and his allies with the press they were longing for.
And yet, no glittering headline replete with photos of the first-ever El Al flight to Dubai will be able to cover up the story that keeps forcing its way into the news cycle: Israel’s 13-year siege on Gaza.
Last month, Israeli authorities shut down Gaza’s central commercial crossing to all goods — most importantly fuel — aside from humanitarian aid, after Palestinians launched hundreds of incendiary balloons into southern Israel in an attempt to pressure the Israeli government into easing the blockade. A week after the shutdown, at the peak of summer, Gaza’s sole power plant ceased working, leaving the strip’s two million residents with only four hours of electricity a day.
On Tuesday night, three Palestinian children died in a fire after a family member lit a candle in their home. The family reportedly tried to alert the authorities, but it took them close to an hour to arrive. When they did, they had no water source with which to put out the fire.
All this is taking place as Hamas has put Gaza under lockdown to fight a new breakout of COVID-19, which has infected close to 600 people so far. Mohammad Mousa spoke to people in Gaza this week who told him they are consumed by fear of the virus outbreak.
A number of human rights organizations petitioned Israel’s High Court to force the Israeli government to open the crossing, before Hamas announced Monday that it had struck a deal with Israel to allow Qatari money, goods, and medical supplies into Gaza and to de-escalate tensions.
But we’ve seen this phantasmic calm too many times. As long as the siege on Gaza continues, this will remain an artificial quiet that is meant to temporarily stave off a full-fledged military confrontation which, under these conditions, feels all but inevitable.
The UAE deal was supposed to reinforce Netanyahu’s mantra that peace with the Arab world is not contingent on ending the occupation, and that the international community no longer cares about the fate of the Palestinians. But the past month is a reminder that Israel cannot wish Palestinians away, and that there is no military solution to Gaza.
Real calm is contingent on ending Israel’s military rule, and on Palestinians fulfilling their right to live as free people.
Coronavirus is turning Gaza’s nights even darker
Netanyahu is dismantling the Israeli ‘kingdom’ — and that’s a good thing
The UAE-Israel accord is a victory for Temple Mount extremists
Human rights groups demand Israel allow fuel into COVID-struck Gaza
Thursday, September 3, 2020
Trump's 'Payroll Tax Holiday' Is Going Into Effect And You Are About To Get Screwed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIO4RByPCoI
The case of Alexei Navalny and the imperialist intervention in Russian politics
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/03/nava-s03.html
By Clara Weiss
3 September 2020
The Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, who became seriously ill and fell into a coma on August 20, is still being treated at the German university clinic Charité. While the circumstances of his illness and suspected poisoning are still under investigation, his case has become a focal point for the intervention of the imperialist powers, most notably Germany, in Russian politics.
Navalny fell ill amidst an escalating crisis in Belarus, a small country bordering Russia to the west, and the only remaining “buffer” between Russia and NATO-aligned countries in the Baltics, Poland, and Ukraine. Because of both the heightened conflict with NATO and the emergence of mass strikes in the working class, the crisis in Belarus has significantly escalated tensions within the Russian elites and the state apparatus.
The timing of Navalny’s illness, whoever and whatever may be behind it, strongly suggests that it was a political operation. It is by no means excluded that one or another agency of the imperialist powers was responsible. Whatever the case, it is abundantly clear that these powers are determined to use the case to further maximize pressure on the Kremlin and escalate the anti-Russia campaign.
Why do the imperialist powers care about Navalny?
One of the most striking features of the media campaign about Navalny is that not a single newspaper has critically examined or even honestly discussed his politics. Readers are expected to take at face value that no one, except for Putin, could have any interest in poisoning Navalny, and that Navalny represents some kind of principled, democratic opposition to the Putin regime.
The presentation of Navalny as the leader of some kind of democratic popular movement is a conscious fraud.
Navalny is not a popular leader but a creation of imperialism and representative of some of the most right-wing elements within the Russian oligarchy. Though his popularity has grown somewhat in recent months amidst the Kremlin’s catastrophic handling of the coronavirus pandemic, only two percent of the population named Navalny as the politician they trusted the most in a Levada poll from late July.
For over a decade, Navalny and his team have been groomed and trained systematically by the agencies of US imperialism. Both Navalny and his chief-of-staff, Leonid Volkov, participated in the World Fellowship program of the elite Yale University in the US in 2010 and 2019, respectively. The program has trained leading figures of imperialist-backed “color revolutions” in the former Soviet Union, including the Orange Revolution in 2004 and the Maidan 2013/2014 in Ukraine.
Navalny has long distinguished himself from other figures in Russia’s “liberal opposition” through his determination to integrate the far-right into the anti-Putin opposition. He used to be a member of the organizational council of the Russian March, an annual event organized by the country’s fascist and far-right forces. In 2007, the pro-US party Yabloko kicked him out because of his sympathies with the far-right.
He has denounced people from the Caucasus as “cockroaches” and has stated about immigrants, “Everything [sic!] that bothers us must be carefully removed through deportation.” At the 2011 Russian March, he agitated in a thinly veiled anti-Semitic manner against oligarchs before a fascist audience and was seen having a friendly conversation with Dmitry Diomushkin, a notorious neo-Nazi and organizer of the March. In other words, if Navalny was operating in the context of German or American politics, his positions would bring him in line with those of Donald Trump or the neo-fascist Alternative für Deutschland.
While Navalny has refrained from participating in these marches in recent years, he has never apologized for his earlier support for these events, let alone retracted his own statements. In all opposition-led protests against Putin that he helped organize, far-right forces were consciously integrated.
Moreover, Navalny has close ties to sections of the Russian elites and the state apparatus. Among his backers have been Vladimir Ashurkov and Mikhail Fridman, two of the richest men in Russia, as well as the economist Sergei Guriev, a former ally of ex-president Dmitri Medvedev. The Russian Nezavisimaya Gazeta has noted that the revelations about corruption that Navalny makes bear the imprint of the secret service FSB, which is notorious for compiling so-called kompromat dossiers with compromising material about its current and potential opponents. The newspaper suggested that many of these revelations were likely based on leaks from the security apparatus.
It is precisely this orientation that has made him attractive to Washington and Berlin. In their operations in Eastern Europe, they have traditionally relied heavily on a combination of dissident factions of the oligarchy and state apparatus, on the one hand, and far-right and neo-Nazi elements, on the other.
Navalny and the promotion of regionalist and separatist tendencies in Russia
Another key element of Navalny’s agenda is the promotion of regionalist and separatist tendencies that have festered within the Russian oligarchy ever since the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. In the 1990s, the violent conflicts between different elements of the rising mafia-oligarchy over the control of raw material resources frequently took the form of conflict between the regional elites and oligarchs in Moscow.
In the early 1990s, both US and Russian ruling circles were openly discussing the possible secession of the Far East. A full-blown separatist movement, which enjoyed the support of US imperialism, developed in the Northern Caucasian republic of Chechnya. The Kremlin responded to it with two brutal wars that claimed the lives of a tenth of the local population to ensure that the North Caucasus remain part of the Russian Federation.
A central component of the Putin presidency has been to strongly subordinate the regional elites to the federal government and state apparatus. However, these tensions have intensified significantly in recent years, and have been further heightened by the coronavirus pandemic, in which regional authorities were given significant leeway in handling the crisis. With the recent constitutional amendments, the Kremlin has tried to further restrict the authorities of regional and municipal government structures.
In contrast, Navalny has publicly advocated to “let the North Caucasus go.” He also calls for the strengthening of regional autonomy, including the reintroduction of direct elections of regional governors. Since 2016/2017, his campaign staff, which used to be centered almost exclusively on Moscow, has made a conscious push to establish “offices” in the regions. In 2019, Navalny and his staff supported and helped organize demonstrations in Yekaterinburg, a city in the Urals, under regionalist banners together with one of the most notorious proponents of the formation of an independent “Ural Republic.”
This year, Navalny and his staff have supported the ongoing protests in the Russian far eastern city Khabarovsk over the arrest of the region’s governor Sergei Furgal, a member of the far-right Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR). The protests have been dominated by regionalist slogans such as “This is our region” and “Moscow get out.” They have enjoyed the support of local bourgeois layers who feel that their own interests are infringed upon by major state-owned enterprises and the oligarchs in Moscow. The arrest of Furgal was also bitterly denounced by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the head of the far-right LDPR, and a long-time de facto ally of Putin.
The arrest of Furgal and the protests, coming just a few months before regional elections on September 13, have shed a light on just how fraught relations between the Kremlin and substantial sections of the ruling class are. In the German press coverage of Navalny’s illness, in particular, numerous commentaries have pointed out that the Khabarovsk protests have significantly weakened the Putin regime, and that they could provide the starting point for a mass movement against Putin similar to the movement against Lukashenko in Belarus. In reality, unlike in Belarus, which has been shaken by mass strikes, there has been no involvement by sections of the working class in the Khabarovsk protests. This, however, is precisely what makes the case of Khabarovsk so appealing to the imperialist powers.
Both the US and Germany have long recognized in the promotion of regionalist and separatist tendencies in Russia a powerful means to further the fracturing of the ruling class, weaken and destabilize the Putin regime, and thus advance their own interests, while at the same time preempting any independent involvement by the working class, and bolstering right-wing forces. The ultimate goal is a regime-change operation for which Navalny, thanks to his ties to the elites and state, is regarded as a useful and reliable figure. At the same time, especially due to his ties to fascist forces, he is seen as capable of dealing, if necessary with great violence, with social and political opposition in the working class.
The case of Navalny and the resurgence of German imperialism
While Navalny has well-documented ties to Washington, it was clearly Germany that has played the leading role in his case. In its cover story on Navalny this week, the German magazine Der Spiegel noted that discussions “in ruling circles in Berlin create the impression that Germany consciously made the case its own.” The magazine wrote that German Chancellor Angela Merkel “personally took up his case” and made his transfer to Germany possible. Merkel is reportedly receiving daily news briefs on his condition. The Charité, Germany’s leading hospital, has requested the assistance of the German army (Bundeswehr) to find out the substance with which Navalny was poisoned.
Navalny was flown out of Russia in a private jet that had been organized by the Berlin-based NGO Cinema for Peace. Its head Jaka Bizilj described the operation as “very expensive.” The NGO, which was founded after 9/11 to allegedly promote “peace” through cinema, is a thinly veiled imperialist front organization. It is supported by Hillary and Bill Clinton, the former German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, and his former foreign minister, Joschka Fischer; as well as the Ukrainian boxer Vitaly Klitchko, who was installed as mayor of Kiev after the US and German-orchestrated coup in Ukraine in February 2014. The former general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, is the honorary chairman of the foundation.
The German media has been filled with propaganda pieces denouncing Putin and calling for a much more aggressive stance by Germany toward Russia. The German bourgeoisie is no doubt highly sensitive to the fracturing of the Russian oligarchy and state apparatus due to its extensive economic and political ties to the Russian elites. Berlin may well have decided that the time to act and destabilize the Putin regime was now.
Jürgen Trittin, a leading politician of the German Green Party, suggested in an interview with Der Spiegel that the “attack“ on Navalny may have been ordered by someone in the Russian state apparatus independent of or even in opposition to Putin, which would mean that Putin is no longer in control of the situation in the country. In either case, Trittin insisted, the case of Navalny meant that Russia could no longer be a “strategic partner” of Germany.
The full significance of the escalation of the anti-Putin campaign in Germany and the stepped-up effort of Berlin to intervene in Russian politics over the Navalny case can only be understood in its broader historical, geopolitical and social context.
Since 2014, when far-right forces toppled the pro-Russian Yanukovych regime in Ukraine with the backing of US and German imperialism, the German ruling class has pushed aggressively for the remilitarization of its foreign policy. This process has been accompanied by the systematic build-up of neo-Nazi forces within the state apparatus and the army, which have perpetrated numerous massacres and assassinations, killing dozens of people.
These processes are now being accelerated by the breakdown of world capitalism and geopolitical relations amid the coronavirus pandemic. Social tensions in Germany itself are at a fever pitch as the ruling class is pushing for the premature reopening of schools and easing of lockdown measures against the opposition of the vast majority of the working population. The aggressive militarist propaganda in the media is not least of all aimed at further bolstering the far right and diverting social tensions outward.
Moreover, tensions with US imperialism have been massively exacerbated in the recent period. With American society now in an unprecedented crisis, there are calls in the German ruling class to seize the opportunity to advance its own interests.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Mass has recently stated in a programmatic speech that the time had come for Europe to take decisions, saying: “If we don’t do it [now], then we in Europe will become the plaything of third parties.” The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a leading mouthpiece of the German ruling class which has been central, in particular, to the resurgence of the far right, published a commentary headlined, “The World under America’s Cudgel.” It called for Germany to oppose the “lawless ... American expansion” under Trump, writing: “To give in [to the US] is not an option.”
The imperialist operations of Germany in Russia stand in a long and bloody tradition. The so-called “Drang nach Osten” (push eastward) was central to Germany’s strategy in two world wars. The Nazis regarded the destruction of the Soviet Union, a degenerated workers’ state, and the establishment of full control over its vast raw material and labor resources, as the necessary precondition for taking on the US, Germany’s main imperialist rival. As a result of their “war of annihilation” in the East, 27 million people died in the Soviet Union, and many millions more perished in other parts of eastern and southeastern Europe.
In all of these interventions, German imperialism—and later US imperialism—have traditionally relied on the mobilization of local nationalist and fascist forces. The promotion of Alexei Navalny stands in this tradition.
Workers across Europe and Russia must be warned of these sinister operations and their potentially catastrophic consequences. But any genuine struggle against the dangers facing the working class must be conducted independently from all factions of the capitalist class, including the Putin regime. Torn by inner conflicts, the Putin regime has been scrambling to negotiate with the imperialist powers for years, while promoting nationalism and militarism, and overseeing skyrocketing social inequality and austerity in Russia itself. The only progressive way forward lies in an independent intervention of the working class on the basis of a revolutionary and international program that is aimed at the overthrow of capitalism on a world scale.
3 September 2020
The Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, who became seriously ill and fell into a coma on August 20, is still being treated at the German university clinic Charité. While the circumstances of his illness and suspected poisoning are still under investigation, his case has become a focal point for the intervention of the imperialist powers, most notably Germany, in Russian politics.
Navalny fell ill amidst an escalating crisis in Belarus, a small country bordering Russia to the west, and the only remaining “buffer” between Russia and NATO-aligned countries in the Baltics, Poland, and Ukraine. Because of both the heightened conflict with NATO and the emergence of mass strikes in the working class, the crisis in Belarus has significantly escalated tensions within the Russian elites and the state apparatus.
The timing of Navalny’s illness, whoever and whatever may be behind it, strongly suggests that it was a political operation. It is by no means excluded that one or another agency of the imperialist powers was responsible. Whatever the case, it is abundantly clear that these powers are determined to use the case to further maximize pressure on the Kremlin and escalate the anti-Russia campaign.
Why do the imperialist powers care about Navalny?
One of the most striking features of the media campaign about Navalny is that not a single newspaper has critically examined or even honestly discussed his politics. Readers are expected to take at face value that no one, except for Putin, could have any interest in poisoning Navalny, and that Navalny represents some kind of principled, democratic opposition to the Putin regime.
The presentation of Navalny as the leader of some kind of democratic popular movement is a conscious fraud.
Navalny is not a popular leader but a creation of imperialism and representative of some of the most right-wing elements within the Russian oligarchy. Though his popularity has grown somewhat in recent months amidst the Kremlin’s catastrophic handling of the coronavirus pandemic, only two percent of the population named Navalny as the politician they trusted the most in a Levada poll from late July.
For over a decade, Navalny and his team have been groomed and trained systematically by the agencies of US imperialism. Both Navalny and his chief-of-staff, Leonid Volkov, participated in the World Fellowship program of the elite Yale University in the US in 2010 and 2019, respectively. The program has trained leading figures of imperialist-backed “color revolutions” in the former Soviet Union, including the Orange Revolution in 2004 and the Maidan 2013/2014 in Ukraine.
Navalny has long distinguished himself from other figures in Russia’s “liberal opposition” through his determination to integrate the far-right into the anti-Putin opposition. He used to be a member of the organizational council of the Russian March, an annual event organized by the country’s fascist and far-right forces. In 2007, the pro-US party Yabloko kicked him out because of his sympathies with the far-right.
He has denounced people from the Caucasus as “cockroaches” and has stated about immigrants, “Everything [sic!] that bothers us must be carefully removed through deportation.” At the 2011 Russian March, he agitated in a thinly veiled anti-Semitic manner against oligarchs before a fascist audience and was seen having a friendly conversation with Dmitry Diomushkin, a notorious neo-Nazi and organizer of the March. In other words, if Navalny was operating in the context of German or American politics, his positions would bring him in line with those of Donald Trump or the neo-fascist Alternative für Deutschland.
While Navalny has refrained from participating in these marches in recent years, he has never apologized for his earlier support for these events, let alone retracted his own statements. In all opposition-led protests against Putin that he helped organize, far-right forces were consciously integrated.
Moreover, Navalny has close ties to sections of the Russian elites and the state apparatus. Among his backers have been Vladimir Ashurkov and Mikhail Fridman, two of the richest men in Russia, as well as the economist Sergei Guriev, a former ally of ex-president Dmitri Medvedev. The Russian Nezavisimaya Gazeta has noted that the revelations about corruption that Navalny makes bear the imprint of the secret service FSB, which is notorious for compiling so-called kompromat dossiers with compromising material about its current and potential opponents. The newspaper suggested that many of these revelations were likely based on leaks from the security apparatus.
It is precisely this orientation that has made him attractive to Washington and Berlin. In their operations in Eastern Europe, they have traditionally relied heavily on a combination of dissident factions of the oligarchy and state apparatus, on the one hand, and far-right and neo-Nazi elements, on the other.
Navalny and the promotion of regionalist and separatist tendencies in Russia
Another key element of Navalny’s agenda is the promotion of regionalist and separatist tendencies that have festered within the Russian oligarchy ever since the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. In the 1990s, the violent conflicts between different elements of the rising mafia-oligarchy over the control of raw material resources frequently took the form of conflict between the regional elites and oligarchs in Moscow.
In the early 1990s, both US and Russian ruling circles were openly discussing the possible secession of the Far East. A full-blown separatist movement, which enjoyed the support of US imperialism, developed in the Northern Caucasian republic of Chechnya. The Kremlin responded to it with two brutal wars that claimed the lives of a tenth of the local population to ensure that the North Caucasus remain part of the Russian Federation.
A central component of the Putin presidency has been to strongly subordinate the regional elites to the federal government and state apparatus. However, these tensions have intensified significantly in recent years, and have been further heightened by the coronavirus pandemic, in which regional authorities were given significant leeway in handling the crisis. With the recent constitutional amendments, the Kremlin has tried to further restrict the authorities of regional and municipal government structures.
In contrast, Navalny has publicly advocated to “let the North Caucasus go.” He also calls for the strengthening of regional autonomy, including the reintroduction of direct elections of regional governors. Since 2016/2017, his campaign staff, which used to be centered almost exclusively on Moscow, has made a conscious push to establish “offices” in the regions. In 2019, Navalny and his staff supported and helped organize demonstrations in Yekaterinburg, a city in the Urals, under regionalist banners together with one of the most notorious proponents of the formation of an independent “Ural Republic.”
This year, Navalny and his staff have supported the ongoing protests in the Russian far eastern city Khabarovsk over the arrest of the region’s governor Sergei Furgal, a member of the far-right Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR). The protests have been dominated by regionalist slogans such as “This is our region” and “Moscow get out.” They have enjoyed the support of local bourgeois layers who feel that their own interests are infringed upon by major state-owned enterprises and the oligarchs in Moscow. The arrest of Furgal was also bitterly denounced by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the head of the far-right LDPR, and a long-time de facto ally of Putin.
The arrest of Furgal and the protests, coming just a few months before regional elections on September 13, have shed a light on just how fraught relations between the Kremlin and substantial sections of the ruling class are. In the German press coverage of Navalny’s illness, in particular, numerous commentaries have pointed out that the Khabarovsk protests have significantly weakened the Putin regime, and that they could provide the starting point for a mass movement against Putin similar to the movement against Lukashenko in Belarus. In reality, unlike in Belarus, which has been shaken by mass strikes, there has been no involvement by sections of the working class in the Khabarovsk protests. This, however, is precisely what makes the case of Khabarovsk so appealing to the imperialist powers.
Both the US and Germany have long recognized in the promotion of regionalist and separatist tendencies in Russia a powerful means to further the fracturing of the ruling class, weaken and destabilize the Putin regime, and thus advance their own interests, while at the same time preempting any independent involvement by the working class, and bolstering right-wing forces. The ultimate goal is a regime-change operation for which Navalny, thanks to his ties to the elites and state, is regarded as a useful and reliable figure. At the same time, especially due to his ties to fascist forces, he is seen as capable of dealing, if necessary with great violence, with social and political opposition in the working class.
The case of Navalny and the resurgence of German imperialism
While Navalny has well-documented ties to Washington, it was clearly Germany that has played the leading role in his case. In its cover story on Navalny this week, the German magazine Der Spiegel noted that discussions “in ruling circles in Berlin create the impression that Germany consciously made the case its own.” The magazine wrote that German Chancellor Angela Merkel “personally took up his case” and made his transfer to Germany possible. Merkel is reportedly receiving daily news briefs on his condition. The Charité, Germany’s leading hospital, has requested the assistance of the German army (Bundeswehr) to find out the substance with which Navalny was poisoned.
Navalny was flown out of Russia in a private jet that had been organized by the Berlin-based NGO Cinema for Peace. Its head Jaka Bizilj described the operation as “very expensive.” The NGO, which was founded after 9/11 to allegedly promote “peace” through cinema, is a thinly veiled imperialist front organization. It is supported by Hillary and Bill Clinton, the former German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, and his former foreign minister, Joschka Fischer; as well as the Ukrainian boxer Vitaly Klitchko, who was installed as mayor of Kiev after the US and German-orchestrated coup in Ukraine in February 2014. The former general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, is the honorary chairman of the foundation.
The German media has been filled with propaganda pieces denouncing Putin and calling for a much more aggressive stance by Germany toward Russia. The German bourgeoisie is no doubt highly sensitive to the fracturing of the Russian oligarchy and state apparatus due to its extensive economic and political ties to the Russian elites. Berlin may well have decided that the time to act and destabilize the Putin regime was now.
Jürgen Trittin, a leading politician of the German Green Party, suggested in an interview with Der Spiegel that the “attack“ on Navalny may have been ordered by someone in the Russian state apparatus independent of or even in opposition to Putin, which would mean that Putin is no longer in control of the situation in the country. In either case, Trittin insisted, the case of Navalny meant that Russia could no longer be a “strategic partner” of Germany.
The full significance of the escalation of the anti-Putin campaign in Germany and the stepped-up effort of Berlin to intervene in Russian politics over the Navalny case can only be understood in its broader historical, geopolitical and social context.
Since 2014, when far-right forces toppled the pro-Russian Yanukovych regime in Ukraine with the backing of US and German imperialism, the German ruling class has pushed aggressively for the remilitarization of its foreign policy. This process has been accompanied by the systematic build-up of neo-Nazi forces within the state apparatus and the army, which have perpetrated numerous massacres and assassinations, killing dozens of people.
These processes are now being accelerated by the breakdown of world capitalism and geopolitical relations amid the coronavirus pandemic. Social tensions in Germany itself are at a fever pitch as the ruling class is pushing for the premature reopening of schools and easing of lockdown measures against the opposition of the vast majority of the working population. The aggressive militarist propaganda in the media is not least of all aimed at further bolstering the far right and diverting social tensions outward.
Moreover, tensions with US imperialism have been massively exacerbated in the recent period. With American society now in an unprecedented crisis, there are calls in the German ruling class to seize the opportunity to advance its own interests.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Mass has recently stated in a programmatic speech that the time had come for Europe to take decisions, saying: “If we don’t do it [now], then we in Europe will become the plaything of third parties.” The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a leading mouthpiece of the German ruling class which has been central, in particular, to the resurgence of the far right, published a commentary headlined, “The World under America’s Cudgel.” It called for Germany to oppose the “lawless ... American expansion” under Trump, writing: “To give in [to the US] is not an option.”
The imperialist operations of Germany in Russia stand in a long and bloody tradition. The so-called “Drang nach Osten” (push eastward) was central to Germany’s strategy in two world wars. The Nazis regarded the destruction of the Soviet Union, a degenerated workers’ state, and the establishment of full control over its vast raw material and labor resources, as the necessary precondition for taking on the US, Germany’s main imperialist rival. As a result of their “war of annihilation” in the East, 27 million people died in the Soviet Union, and many millions more perished in other parts of eastern and southeastern Europe.
In all of these interventions, German imperialism—and later US imperialism—have traditionally relied on the mobilization of local nationalist and fascist forces. The promotion of Alexei Navalny stands in this tradition.
Workers across Europe and Russia must be warned of these sinister operations and their potentially catastrophic consequences. But any genuine struggle against the dangers facing the working class must be conducted independently from all factions of the capitalist class, including the Putin regime. Torn by inner conflicts, the Putin regime has been scrambling to negotiate with the imperialist powers for years, while promoting nationalism and militarism, and overseeing skyrocketing social inequality and austerity in Russia itself. The only progressive way forward lies in an independent intervention of the working class on the basis of a revolutionary and international program that is aimed at the overthrow of capitalism on a world scale.
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