Following the stressful Let It Be sessions (that would not be mixed into the album we know as Let It Be for another 2 years) Lennon called it quits.
McCartney’s instant response was “well if you’re not announcing it to the press it didn’t really happen did it?” And begged Lennon to let the group record one final effort to wrap up the legacy the group had created.
Thus Abbey Road.
Possibly the only Beatle album to showcase Harrison’s songwriting more than Lennon or McCartney’s.
Here you can hear Lennon breaking the album down track by track. Notice his distaste for the latter halves medley. In his opinion Abbey Road was half a record and half a mish mash of tying up loose ends.
It really is largely indicative of his feelings towards the group as a whole as of 1969.
1969 also brought about the first solo endeavours from Lennon, the first in the form of “Give Peace A Chance” which was recorded on the 1st of June that same year at one of John and Yoko’s famous Bed-Ins.This period of time, post Abbey Road and pre Lennon’s first solo album, would see John and Yoko tour the world on a political mission to bring about world peace through a series of non violent demonstrations supplemented with musical projects to further back up their points.
The bed ins, as they sound, consisted of John and Yoko sitting in a bed at the Queen Elizabeth hotel in Montreal Quebec waiting for anyone from the press that wanted to question them. They allowed any persons to ask any questions and entertained many famous names during their residency in Canada such as Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsburg and Petula Clarke who all contributed to the “Give Peace A Chance” recording. September of that year saw Lennon kicking his heroin dependency that he had picked up over the past year due to the increasing skepticism surrounding him and Yoko. This led him to write the song “Cold Turkey” which detailed his withdrawal symptoms and also showcased some of Yoko’s musical ability through the means of intense vibratory screaming to paint a picture of what the pair were going through.
Pitched to McCartney as a Beatles single, which was quickly rejected as one can imagine, the release of Cold Turkey was after its first performance at the infamous 1969 Toronto Rock and Roll revival show that marked the first performance of “The Plastic Ono Band”.
Not a Beatle in sight, Lennon scrambled together a band at short notice and made his way to Canada. Snorting a decent amount of heroin backstage, Eric Clapton was reportedly slapping Lennon back into consciousness minutes before they hit the stage, despite this the debut performance of “The Plastic Ono Band” would actually be a great success.
Playing a mix of contemporary self authored pieces alongside Rock and Roll classics like “Dizzy Ms Lizzie” and “Blue Suede Shoes” the set ended with a boundary pushing performance of “Don’t Worry Kyoko” which, penned by Ono, still feels dangerous today in 2020.
That year wrapped up with Lennon taking the stage in London alongside an all star line up, Clapton, Keith Moon, Billy Preston, George Harrison) for a festive time performance of “Cold Turkey” and “Don’t Worry Kyoko” which honestly still rock harder today than most so called “rock bands”. (Seriously, check it out).
This performance was followed up by the well known single “Instant Karma” which in no sly manner throws accusations at his former band mate such as “who in the world do you think you are, a superstar? Well right you are!” And “What in the world are you thinking of, laughing in the face of love?”.
It would be a fitting end to year of great change for Mr Winston Boogie.
This stark change in creative direction can be seen as a want to get to the truth.
The outpouring of emotions on Cold Turkey would foreshadow the entire “Heavy” rock genre to come and its subsequent off-branches such as metal and punk. The idea of putting ones pain into music was nothing new, Lennon was simply taking what had been done decades earlier by slaves to make the precursor to Rock and Roll, The Blues and taking it one step further.
One can start to see the difference between the late Beatles artistic direction and what John had in mind at the time. The following summer John and Yoko went through what was known as Primal Scream therapy with a man called Arthur Janov. The basic premises of this therapy is that you scream until you cry, forcing the soul to deal with any repressed trauma you may be carrying. For a man who lost his mother at a young age and showed classic displays of a repressed emotions whenever his sexuality was questioned, John obviously had some backed up emotion that had been bubbling over for quite some time now and the resulting musical project shows the fruit of this process.
The self titled debut release from the Plastic Ono Band released in the summer of 1971 and showcases all of the above across short but sweet 11 song track listing.
Bipolar by design POB displays the tenderness of John’s want for a mother figure in his life on songs like “Mother” and “Love" whilst “God” takes philosophical swipes at any fallacy Lennon has ever come up against including ones of his own construction whilst rockers like “I Found Out” and “Well Well Well” thump along with bluesy riffs and a pulsating beats that can only be described as “hard rock” years before the genre’s mainstream acceptance.
If there is one word to describe this album it would be “honest” and after years of playing hide and seek with allegorical compositions honestly would be exactly what Lennon was aiming for with this project.
As you can imagine by this point Mr McCartney was not best pleased with the events of the previous year. The public has been fairly unbeknownst to the dramas that had been occurring in the Beatles camp but they would be read into the situation with the announcement of Paul’s own self titled solo effort in April of 1970.)
Paul announced the album at a press conference and despite his wishes for John not to publicise the groups split, announced it exclusively at the conference to promote his first solo effort.
A move the other members of the group were not best pleased with.
This miscommunication was possibly instigated by the arrival of a gentleman called Allen Klein who can be seen as the successor to Magic Alex in some respects.
Whilst Madras was mearly influencing Lennon’s outlook, Klein was brought in to relinquish Bill McCartney’s control over the Beatles’s finances.
From the moment Klein entered Apple HQ, Paul boycotted anything to do with the company including speaking to his former band mates.
Hence the resulting misunderstanding amongst the group.
At this point in time it is actually a contribution from Ringo Starr’s 1973 self titled album that gives us the best impression of the camp at the time of “Early 1970”.
Lennon was brutal regarding McCartney’s first solo effort and slandered his decision to announce the groups split citing it as “another move from the worlds best PR man”. These events led to the two former collaborators to take part in what could be seen as the first public “beef” between two musical artists, again foreshadowing an entire branch of the music industry as of 2020.
This bad blood would continue to boil throughout 1971 and on to 1972 where we would see the release of two albums that are inherently connected due to this ongoing “beef”.
Imagine) by John Lennon and Ram) by Paul McCartney.
Ram would feature the bitter albeit still rather conservative “Too Many People” that shouted accusatory tones of “Too Many People preaching practices, don’t let them tell you what you want to be!” directly in the direction of John and Yoko’s camp, to little effect I might add. Backed by the voice of his new wife, Linda McCartney, the piece imitates the wailing vocals that could be found on many Ono Band tracks and paid tongue in cheek homage to the simple guitar licks Lennon was famous for. The icing on the cake would be on the reverse cover of the LP, where McCartney chose the fitting image of two Beatles copulating, perfectly summarising the situation from Paul’s point of view.
Imagine is best known now for its title track which went on to become probably Lennon’s best known solo effort whilst Ram would fairly moderately in McCartneys lengthy discography. The relevant song on Imagine regarding this beef would be the scathing blues inspired “How Do You Sleep?”.)
Footage from inside the studio during the recording of this song shows Lennon in a notably enthusiastic mood whilst showing George Harrison the basic structure of the track on a piano and the sneering grin that emerges when he sing the infamous “Those freaks were right when they said you were dead” is a great indication of the atmosphere in the studio that day.
They cherry on the cake would be the footage of Lennon aggressively singing the chorus of the song with the extra addition of “How Do You Sleep You Cunt!” to an unused take.
Legend goes that Ringo even turned up and left in disgust saying “That’s enough now John”.
This spat would be as far as the beef went with John and Paul finally meeting face to face after nearly two years of only telephone or letter based conversations. The agreed not to let their fall out spill into the press any longer and even cited the meeting to be of “good spirits”.
By the time Imagine was released, John was done with British establishment.
The Plastic Ono Band had seen harsh press since their inception, Yoko had been the victim of a literal racial witch-hunt and the interviews with the British press that Lennon was allowing himself to be a part of were becoming more and more explosive by the day.
He wanted creative freedom and therefore set sail for the land of the free.
America.
Despite his intentions, it is this trip to the land of possibilities that would ultimately lead to his demise.
John and Yoko arrived in New York City in the autumn of 1971. Their first action of business was to record and release the well known Yule time song “Happy Xmas (War Is Over) which triggered a retaliation from the Nixon administration that they detailed as “a strategic counter measure” against Lennon’s “attacks”. This would set the precedent for Lennon’s entire stay in the USA and would begin his infamous fight for a green card and US citizenship. Lennon’s songwriting in this era would take on a inherently political stance covering the liberal protests against the Vietnamese war and the decriminalisation of marijuana.
This led to the recording and release of “Sometime In New York City” which featured a cover adorned with the image of Chairman Mao and Richard Nixon dancing fully naked and the lead single “Women Is The Nigger Of The World”.
It’s fair to say that this release can be seen as a watershed moment in Lennon’s solo career and would mark a distinct change in his attitude following the fallout SINYC would cause.
Continuing the British exile of Lennon the NME made their review of the album a open letter to Lennon and Yoko calling him an “ageing pathetic revolutionary” and begging him to “Stimulate. Not alienate” like he “used to” in their estimations. On its home turf the album fared better with Lennon even performing the lead single on the “Dick Cavett Show” after giving a iconic interview laying out his plans whilst in the Americas. He also performed his only ever solo concert at Madison Square Garden that would see him take on classics from throughout his career backed by New York’s own Elephant Memory band.
This performance would be the last time Lennon would perform at a arranged concert of his own name and mark the last time he’d perform with Yoko on a stage.
MSG will end up being a significant venue for Lennon and the events of 73-74 will show you why.
Following the re-election of Richard Nixon, Lennon was somewhat disillusioned with the entire endeavour he had come to the US to pursue. Lennon can even be quoted as saying backstage after his MSG performance that” this was the last time you’d see John and Yoko perform together” and this quote would be indicative of what was to come. 1973 saw the relinquishing of Allan Klein as financial manager for Apple Corps which in turn improved relationships between the former Beatles substantially. Lennon admits in an interview that Paul was right and shortly after a incident at the activist Jerry Rubin’s house where Lennon slept with another women, he and Yoko split up.
This period of time is known to Beatles fans as John’s “Lost Weekend” and can be seen in retrospect as the last gasp of Lennon’s macho bravado attempting to solidify its place as the forefront of John’s psyche and public image.
It begins with Lennon recording his “Mind Games” album with a brand new iteration of the Plastic Ono Band called the Plastic UFOno Band” continuing John’s ongoing intrest in the topic.
This re-titling of the group can be seen as a nod to the on-going saucer wave that began in the 1950’s and still continues today, a phenomenon that Lennon would experience first hand in subsequent years.
This period of time would see Lennon descending back into the pits of debauchery and excess that would make the young Beatles exploits in Hamburg seem tame. He had a new young mistress, set up for him by none other than Yoko herself, May Pang and spent a large amount of time with other musicians such as Harry Neilson, Keith Moon, David Bowie and Elton John collaborating and partying. This would lead to scandals in the press and Lennon gaining a new reputation as a hard rocking bachelor with nothing to loose.
The infamous bootleg “A Toot and a Snore” captures one faithful night on March 28th 1974 when McCartney and Lennon are actually in a recording studio in Los Angels with none other than Stevie Wonder and Jesse Ed Davis jamming whilst partaking in a bit of recreational activity.
Namely Cocaine.
This recording is a good indication of where Lennon was at during this turbulent time in his career. He is scattered brained, brash and frankly a bit annoying in the just under half an hour recording, snapping at the engineers to find a headphone mix this author is sure never existed and ignoring Paul’s attempts to actually play a rendition of “Stand By Me”, who knows Lennon’s 1975 album “Rock n Roll” could have been a collaborative effort had it not been for his distractions.
Another amusing anecdote from this period of time is Lennon listening to Joni Mitchell’s 1974 release “Court and Spark” prior to its release and telling Mitchell that the record was a product of her “over education”.
This is a great signal that John’s working class bravado was leading his emotional path at this time, something that would shortly come to an abrupt end.
Following the expulsion of Allan Klein, their time spent in LA and Yoko’s departure from John’s life it’s easy to see how Paul McCartney must have felt during this period of time.
The origins of their original drama had all been wrapped up by this point and all that was really stopping him and John from collaborating was John himself.
The occasion in LA must have left a bad taste in his mouth because it triggered him to contact Yoko with the news that John was in a bad way.
He asked what what it would take for her to take him back, which in retrospective of the late 60’s is quite ironic after all the suspicions that Paul was trying to get rid of Yoko, but now he found himself singly handedly bringing them back together.
She said John would have to submit to her ideals and morals and build their relationship back up from the bottom to the top.
The bad behaviour would have to end.
And so the story goes, during the recording of Lennon’s 74 album “Walls and Bridges”, he and Elton John would record the well know single “Whatever Gets You Through The Night” and during this session Elton wagered a bet with Lennon that if the track went to number 1, Lennon would have to perform the song live with him.
Thinking that the song hitting number 1 was a ludicrous concept (another indication of John’s low self esteem at this point in time) he agreed without giving it much thought.
The song released in late September of that year and by the first week of October it was number 1 in the US making Elton’s upcoming Thanksgiving concert the perfect venue for John to cough up his end of the bargain.
The 28th of November 1974 came about and Madison Square Garden was sold out.
Lennon was backstage throwing up.
Paranoid about his live vocals the nerves were getting to him.
Unbeknownst to him Yoko was in the crowd.
Subsequently he said if he had know she was there he would have never been able to go on stage.
Fortunately this was not the case and Elton and Lennon appeased the audience with a stomping rendition of WGYTTN, Lucy in The Sky with Diamonds and a version of I Saw Her Standing There.
The crowd went ballistic and the night was a great success.
Upon leaving the stage John indeed, saw her standing there and according to the man himself Sean Ono Lennon was conceived that very evening.
It is at this juncture we see a stark change in Lennon’s mentality beginning with the way he portrayed himself in public.
He withdrew completely.
1975 - late 1979 is a particularly difficult period of Lennon’s life to chronically as there are very little sources of information regarding this period of time.
From the innocent bystanders point of view he was simply looking after his new born after not managing to do so with Julian and taking a well deserved real from the hum drum beat of the music industry.
To the well read fanatic, Lennon was biding his time planning a comeback to right all the wrongs of his past, reunite with his former Beatle brothers and possibly change the world all over again.
What we can be sure of is that in 1975 Lennon finally received his long awaited green card which finally enabled him to travel to and from the US at will.
This combined with his newly announced retirement allowed Lennon to take stocks of who he had become since being introduced to super stardom.
It allowed him to ask himself important questions like “Why do I need to be wanted?” & “Now I don’t believe is fallacies, what is John Lennon?”, the answers to which would dictate the final 5 years of his life.
Namely he would address the moral and personal issues that had cropped up whilst he had been busy being a Beatle.
The last stand of his boyhood.
This issue include but were not limited to:
His relationship with Julian and Cynthia.
His overall respect for women.
His short temper and sharp tongue.
His relationship with his fellow Beatles.
His juxtaposed relationship with the music industry.
Dispelling his macho bravado image.
His fear of Homosexuality.
& as always
Why are we here?
Taking full advantage of his newly established freedom, the Lennon family now completed by baby Sean, began 1976 by heading to Yoko’s homeland, Tokyo, for a well deserved holiday.
At some point in 1973 John had started subletting an apartment at the world famous Dakota hotel in NYC. Well known as the filming location of Roman Polanski’s horror classic “Rosemary’s Baby” the iconic hotel housed Lennon all the way up until his death and by that time his residency had taken up most of an entire floor.
Elton John would sing in jest;
“Imagine six apartments
It isn’t hard to do.
One is full of fur coats
The other’s full of shoes.”
This location would be the HQ for John’s self imposed hiatus and the manner in which they lived in the Dakota speaks volumes about their intentions for their late 30’s and 40’s.
Namely Yoko began collecting Ancient Egyptian to store in a room of the Dakota known as “The White Room”.
There was also a corresponding “Black Room”.
The purpose of these rooms was contemplation and meditation in line with the colour of the room.
White fro positive sessions.
Black for more morally ambiguous sessions of contemplation.
These rooms were adorned with the artefacts Ono and Lennon would begin collecting i the latter half of the 1970’s.
A ritual space.
A constructed alter.
It’s clear that ceremonial magic played a big part in Lennon’s life by the middle of the 70’s.
Paul and Linda at this point in time we’re making an abundance of attempts to reconcile with John and Yoko. This would include the infamous Saturday Night Live event where John and Paul would nearly scoot on down to the live filmed event and perform and the following event where John turned Paul away citing “Its not 1963 anymore Paul” which obviously knocked Paul’s enthusiasm for a collaboration.
It must have been quite a confusing time for Paul as John in his immediate actions was being warmer than he had been to Paul in years but still keeping him at arms length regarding a musical project together.
This bipolar esque behaviour can be attributed to the many Tarot card readers on the Lennon payroll circa 1975. The first account of magickal activity affecting the career of Lennon can be seen in 1975 when the other 3 Beatles met on NYC no less to sign a contract dissolving their former partnership allowing them to move freely as musicians. An event that it had made perfect sense for John to attended, despite this he was no where to be seen.
The reason being Yoko’s psychic had checked the cards and decided it was a bad decision to venture out that day leaving the rest of the group bewildered.
Now here is where we really reach the meat of this discussion regarding Mr Lennon.
A strong case can be made that the career of John Lennon was massively steered and inspired by works of esoteric knowledge and methods of divination.
Any Beatles fan worth their salt will have heard John talk of his distaste for writing a song for the sake of it and his preference to write when the spirit has taken over him, a possession of you will so due to this being the method the man made his name in we can say that methods of divination and a relationship with “the other” were massive motivations for John when it came to his creative output and as we all know the man had a fairly successful career so is it fair to say that belief doesn’t really come into the conversation, it’s about how you apply ancient principles to your day to day life, as Lennon was doing all through the 70’s?

Why does it matter?

The legitimacy of the majority of information from this period of John’s life falls to your understanding of a man called John Green and his book “Dakota Days”, published in 1984.
The book claims to be an account from 75-79 written by one of Yoko’s many Tarot card readers, in this case Mr John Green, referred to in the book as Charles Swann as to not confuse Lennon and himself at Lennon’s apparent request.
This book is considered to be controversial for a myriad of reasons:

• It shines light on a period of John’s life no one else seems to be able to cover.
• It makes some fairy outrageous claims regarding John’s intentions for the coming years, the state of his and Yoko’s marriage and his general mental state during the late 70’s.
• It was released so close to his death and therefore flew under the radar at the time of release as a cash grab.
• There is minimal information regarding its author apart from one quite informative Amazon review where the reviewer claims to have known Mr Green himself and corroborate the book’s legitimacy.

It is the opinion of this writer that Dakota Days is a faithful, if not highly edited, version of the events of John Lennon’s life from 1975 - 1979 and when paired with Phillip Normans book “The Life of Lennon” provides the reader with a pretty comprehensive overview of Lennon’s unknown years.
With that in mind let us press onwards. If we recall back to the middle of the 60’s we remember Lennon’s want to buy a Greek island for the band to live on in peace and harmony and wants of this nature still resided within John circa 77. The couple started to search for “Scotland 20 minutes from New York” and began travelling the globe in search of a hidden paradise for the family to reside in.
This included trips to Tokyo, Kathmandu, The Bahamas and South America.
Despite having his green card, there is still fair evidence to suggest that the US government were still monitoring Lennon’s goings on.
It’s probably worth mentioning at this point that in 74 Lennon and his appointed mistress May Pang witnessed a UFO from the balcony of their 434 East 52nd Street apartment.
Followers of the UFO phenomenon will see this event less as a supernatural one and more of an intelligence operation.
The work of Whitley Striber and Budd Hopkins allow us to view the abduction experience as an imposed breach of ones spiritual facilities and Hopkins has done extensive research into the markets left on abductees after the event has long passed leaving subjects with “antennas” so to speak.
As an individual that dabbled with his own meta programming as it was the idea that a UFO may have manifested in front of Lennon to postulate his esoteric beliefs and “push him over the edge” is one worth pondering at least.
So the intentions of the Lennon family circa 1977 would be to:

• Clean up John’s previous misgivings regarding his macho bravado, his abandonment issues and his relationship with other human beings.
• Give Sean the upbringing Julian never had and mend his relationship with Julian.
• Fix his damaged reputation with his family and fans across seas in Britain.
• Let the world know that (again) Love is all you need but this time from a man who walked the walk and talked the talk.

The methods by which they intended to achieve this were of an esoteric nature.
Let’s take a look at the birth of Sean for example.
The subsequent body of work that followed his birth was titled “Double Fantasy” and there exits reams of information where John speaks candidly about their intentions to have a child.
From the late 60’s John referred to Yoko as an extension of himself and by the time the late 70’s had come around this had developed into the couple desiring to view the same vision as one another, completely.
To share the same world view, to bring the exact same vision to fruition, they figured two minds are better than one?
This sort of thinking can be considered sexual alchemy not unlike the narrative of a Aleister Crowley book entitled “Moonchild” in which a established writer comes across a ritual that makes a “Scarlet Women” appear at his door.
The two then collaborated in a sexual manner whilst both desiring and meditation upon the same concept for the child that they were to produce.
Therefore bringing about what is know in the Occult as a Moonchild.
A product of direct intention.
This is the meaning of “Double Fantasy”.
The songs that appear on Double Fantasy were all written in the June of 1980 on a trip John took to Bermuda and during the interviews that followed the release of DF Lennon claimed his guitar lay behind his bed, untouched for the most part.
Back in 1980 this all lined up chronologically. The public hadn’t seen John for 5 years, all of a sudden he had a burst of creative and 5 months later boom, new album.
But there are several recordings that throw this narrative to the wayside, just more evidence of Lennon’s crafty ability to perform psychological operations upon his audience.
Not unlike the “Get Back” sessions, The Dakota years are seen by most as a period of creative drought for Lennon. But also not unlike the Get Back sessions there are piles of unreleased material to unsubstantiate Lennon’s claims. The two most famous cases of this would be Real Love and Free as a Bird.
Both recorded as basic acoustic demos in 1977 these songs both go against the trend and show that least two compost were made by Lennon during this time. But then more come to the surface.
Now and Then, India India, Serve Yourself, One of the Boys, Life Begins At 40, The Great Wok, The Rishi-Kesh Song... the list goes on (as this bootleg https://www.discogs.com/John-Lennon-The-Househusband-Years-The-Complete-Home-Recordings-1975-1980/release/7156946 will show you) so why the radio silence regarding these tracks. Surely this casts some doubt upon the bread baking house husband image Lennon has tried so hard to push during the press run for Double Fantasy.
And here’s the crux of the matter folks.
Lennon was aware of his influence upon culture. Interviews linked in this very write up show that self awareness had been the entire philosophical basis for Lennon’s creative output.
So let me try this one on you for size.
The wave of John Lennon’s career that started with the release of Double Fantasy would have been a complete rebirth and turn around in ethos and PR for not only Lennon but his audience too.
Audiences spend so long looking at Lennon’s own psyche and traumas that they manage to end up ignoring their own issues whilst also ignoring the fact that we live in a culture inherently influence by Lennon.
There is some decent commentary from Lennon around 75 talking about his resentment for The Rolling Stones and the idea that they were ever in the same league as The Beatles.
He states that what the Stones do is theatre.
Glam.
A fallacy.
Yet they are still rolling today in 2020 as is, I imagine, John in his grave.
The issues one can see Lennon dealing with throughout his life are not unique to him.
They are quite severe on one hand but on the other people survive with much less.
This implies that the lessons the man learnt across his career can also be useful to us right now, as abandonment, sexism, domestic violence are all still in abundance in today’s society.
As we head everyday into an ever changing world of uncertainty one begs the question, had Lennon been able to continue his ideological turnaround would we have seen an impact on culture such as the Beatles once did in the 60’s?
The group split up due to each one of the songwriters coming into their own creatively. What was once filled by one another, was now fulfilled by their respective spouses. Yet still, this odd dynamic of John, Paul, Linda and Yoko still remains the crux of the emotional basis of this whole debacle.
If those 4 human begins could have worked out a way to be amicable with one another’s outlooks we may have seen a creative collaboration the likes of which have been seen.
Because that is what the entire Beatles message is all about no?
All You Need Is Love.
Love and sex are concepts that are intertwined but can be seepage from one another, most of the time this is how they are found unfortunately. The emotional ground shared by John and Paul runs (to this day) deeper than most participants of regular platonic relationships can really understand.
This whole drama can be seen as a sort of alchemical Rubix’s cube that was never quite completed.
Personally, I believe that when take to its furthest logical conclusion the liberal ideology trumps the conservative view every time.
I mean who could argue against world peace ect?
But what I will say is that whilst their hearts in the right place, most liberals (hippies as they were once called) fail to understand the nature of the systems in front of them.
That is to say that whilst philosophically the liberal ideology is sound in implementation it falls flat on its face, something Mr Lennon witnessed first hand on multiple occasions.
A strong knowledge of the systems that exist in our society allows one to then “play the game”, most never get to do this and remain in the “armchair philosopher” category, banished to their local drinking hole to sceptically criticise our governments without ever making any sort of tangible change.
Through going through the ranks of the entertainment industry of first Britain and the the US, Lennon was able to navigate the bureaucratic mine field that lies between any citizen and true freedom.
So to see his legacy steeped in his past wrong doings, of which he was well aware of, and about to attempt to rectify the situation is truly tragic.
I shall not speculate on what could have been, I shall only say that the 80’s, now a decade known for its excess, its war and its yuppie culture, and the 90’s (famous for its rise in emotional based music Grunge, Black Metal, Punk Rock leading to Emo) maybe would have been seen differently if John and Yoko had been able to pull off their final performance to the world.
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If you have made it this far I applaud you and hope it has been worth your time. Below I will link all the sources I used to put this piece together and hope that this post provides you hours of research during this time of deep uncertainty.
Youtube Playlist of Videos Used
Chronological Beatles Playlist
Quick shoutout to YouTubers John Heaton and breathless345 for their comprehensive knowledge on this topic, could not have done it without them.
unme
🙌
ølund

JANUARY 7 – Yesterday’s mob rampage at the U.S. Capitol was the culmination of Donald Trump’s campaign of frenzied claims that the November 2020 presidential election was “stolen.” The assault on Congress was instigated by Trump and his top lieutenants, led by outright fascists, spearheaded by white supremacists brandishing the Confederate battle flag of the slavocracy, and it was facilitated by the police. Similar riots targeting government centers are nothing new in East Europe, where they have typically been organized by the U.S. (Georgia 2003, Ukraine 2014), and Yankee imperialism has unleashed them innumerable times in Latin America. But they are seen as novel in the United States since the post-Civil War period’s racist rampages against Reconstruction. After all, Republicans and Democrats alike claim this is “the world’s greatest democracy,” a “shining city on a hill” as union-busting racist and warmonger Ronald Reagan called the U.S. That was hardly the scene on Capitol Hill on January 6. What the world witnessed was a chilling acceleration, the latest bizarre and dangerous episode, in the spectacular unravelling of “democratic” bourgeois rule in the strongest imperialist power. What it dramatically underscores is that this capitalist society is falling apart. The bankruptcy of this decaying system of exploitation, imperialism and racist oppression highlights the urgent need to fight for socialist revolution.
In the media and by numerous politicians the Capitol attack is described as an “insurrection,” “coup d’état” or failed “coup attempt.” Yet this grotesque rampage by a would-be lynch mob was not an actual attempt to seize power (for which they obviously didn’t have the forces), nor was it the military trying to disperse and shut down the U.S.’ highest legislative body. English doesn’t have very descriptive terms for such actions. In Spanish it would be an amotinamiento, in French a coup de main. It was a mob assault aimed at intimidating Congress into not confirming Democratic president-elect Joe Biden, and failing that, to galvanize hard-core Trumpers into an authoritarian movement for future action. It was not a last paroxysm of Trumpism, but a harbinger of dangerous times to come. The several hundred fascists who turned out, together with tens of thousands of enraged racists and reactionaries, are plenty dangerous, but the most powerful and central dangers come from the organs of state power of the capitalist ruling class – police, military, National Guard – which brutally repress protests for black rights and protect the fascist terrorists. Democrat Joe Biden is their new boss, and he backs them to the hilt.
That the assault was directly instigated by Trump is obvious. It’s also recognized by key sectors of the bourgeois establishment in the U.S., which is genuinely shaken up by yesterday’s events. The white supremacist in the White House, defeated in the November elections, set the date for the riot, calling on his supporters to come to Washington for a “wild” time. Some 30,000 did. At a morning rally Trump whipped them up, railing against “RINOs” (Republicans in Name Only) and urging the crowd to “walk down to Congress” in order to “fight.” His lawyer, the ubergrifter Rudy Giuliani who instigated the 1992 police riot against New York City’s black Democratic mayor David Dinkins, called for “trial by combat.” Donald Jr. warned Democrats and Republicans who didn’t support the plot to annul the votes of tens of millions of voters, “We’re coming for you.” This led even right-wing Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming to declare: “The president incited the mob. The president addressed the mob. He lit the flame.”
Scripted Mayhem, Police Connivance
The mayhem was scripted by the president himself, though of course the cowardly macho-man reneged on his vow to march with his followers to the capitol. “A senior White House aide said Trump wanted his supporters to swarm the Capitol and protest loudly all day,” the Washington Post (7 January) reported. But, the aide was quoted as claiming, “There was no plan for them to go inside.” In fact, the mob was milling around outside on the balcony and steps for an hour before managing to get in the building. Once they were inside, Trump watched on television for over two hours until people were starting to leave, when he posted a (pre-recorded) video saying it was time to go home. In that video he proclaimed his “love” for the “very special” rioters, insisted that the election was stolen and told them to “Remember this day forever!” Which they will, of course. The fact that they stormed the U.S. Capitol and got away with it will embolden racists and fascists for years – and not just to vote for Trump or his surrogates, but also to attack black people, immigrants and all who would block their drive to “take back” what they proclaim is their country.
That the assault was facilitated by the police is also beyond doubt. The cops and military were obviously monitoring the social media where the fascists were openly talking of plans for the armed assault. Moreover, ultra-rightists’ armed takeover of the Michigan legislature last May had already set the pattern. From the outset in Washington, rioters surged past barriers and up the steps with scarcely any serious opposition from the Capitol Police. Subsequently videos have surfaced showing police opening barriers and standing back to let the mob in. A livestream video by the fascists shows an invader taking a selfie with a police officer. There are a few photos of scuffles over barriers and a brief standoff in the basement, but once the crowd was in, the very few police outside disappeared. Inside, the cops let the rioters have the run of building, invading and rifling offices, taking over the Senate, and then let them leave unhindered.1 “Law enforcement experts said they were mystified by the tactics that police used once the mob was already inside the Capitol,” the Washington Post reported. That the police weren’t just “overwhelmed,” that police collaborated with the mob, that this was policy, is clear. The only “mystery” – so far – is who decided it.
You couldn’t miss the stunning contrast between this “kid glove” treatment on January 6 of the white supremacist mob and the wanton brutality unleashed against Black Lives Matter demonstrators peacefully protesting on June 3 in Lafayette Park, a public space, against racist police murder. It immediately struck us, along with countless other activists (and even the bourgeois media and politicians) – if black and other anti-racist demonstrators had sought to redress their grievances by converging on Congress, much less storming the building, they would have been shot down. It’s all one more confirmation that the police at every level are a white supremacist institution, and have been since their inception as slave patrols in the early 19th century. Nor was this equivalent to the workers’ occupation of the Wisconsin state capitol in 2011 (which we enthusiastically participated in) to protest a vicious anti-labor bill. This was a racist mob bent on destruction and seeking to halt one of the functions of Congress with the most far-reaching consequences, which the mob did with impunity.
When the New York Times (7 January) writes of “violent clashes between protesters and law enforcement,” those few incidents cannot obscure police connivance with the rioters. When the D.C. National Guard arrived at the end – after Trump and his Army and Defense secretaries had earlier blocked a request by the city to mobilize it – there were very few arrests, mostly for curfew violation. But now that Democratic mayor Muriel Bowser has issued a public emergency order until after Inauguration Day (January 20), it will surely be used against any anti-fascist protesters. Meanwhile, as Twitter and Facebook temporarily blocked Trump’s accounts, various pundits and legal beagles are flirting with curtailing First Amendment rights (“Have Trump’s Lies Wrecked Free Speech?” New York Times, 6 January). Again, you can bet that any bans on “extremists” will be used against leftists and anti-racists far more than against the fascists who openly organized their Capitol bash on Parler and other right-wing social media.
That the attack on the U.S. Capitol was led by fascists is also undeniable, although barely mentioned in the bourgeois media. They had to notice that the first rioters who stormed into the Capitol were brandishing the Confederate battle flag, though they left unsaid that this banner of slavery is also that of the racist terrorists of the Ku Klux Klan. There were also numerous QAnon flags, and the green “Kekistan” flag (based on the WWII German battle flag) used by fascists. There were gallows with a hangman’s noose – a threat of lynching – set up outside. Nazi provocateur Tim Gionet (aka “Baked Alaska”) was livestreaming from inside the building. Inside the Capitol, one of the fascists wore a sweatshirt hailing the Nazi death camp Auschwitz. And prominent among those at the front of the rioters were III Percenters (who brag about their connections to police and military), Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, wearing a different uniform than usual, with orange caps. Orange armbands and tags were also noted in similar pro-Trump mobs in state capitals in Arkansas, California, Minnesota, Oregon and elsewhere.
There was a surreal quality to aspects of the fascist-led assault, including a QAnon “shaman” with a horned helmet made of fur pelts, stars-and-stripes face paint and Norse tattoos. Another rioter with a fur pelt and a fox skin on his head stood out among the camouflage jackets and MAGA caps. But it was no joke: the invaders were armed and dangerous. During the storming, two pipe bombs and a cooler full of Molotov cocktails (gasoline bombs) were found on Capitol grounds. One of the camo-clad rioters had a handful of zip ties, indicating intentions of taking hostages, again echoing the events in Michigan last May. Had they gotten their hands on Nancy Pelosi or one of the “Squad” (Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib) vilified by Trump, or others, these fascist and racist terrorists could well have carried out their murderous fantasies to “hang traitors.”
After the rioters left, the assembled senators and representatives resumed “debate” on certifying the electors’ votes for president state by state. While a few dropped their plans to challenge electors reflecting the popular vote (like Georgia, where the Democrats just won a by-election, replacing two Republican senators with two Democrats, giving the incoming Biden administration control of the Senate as well as the House), most did not. As the night wore on, there was one pious, nauseating speech after another praising the “bipartisan” rejection of “violence,” “insurrection” and “sedition,” instead endorsing “civility,” “decency” and, of course, “our democracy.” Of course, the rioters were foot soldiers for the blatantly anti-democratic ploy by the Republican defeat deniers to throw out tens of millions of votes – disenfranchising the voters of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. In the end, Biden’s victory was confirmed, but more than half of House Republicans voted not to recognize its legitimacy.
Repeatedly over the past weeks, media pundits have waxed lyrical about how the only thing holding the line for democracy has been the “good will” of a handful of officials, both Democratic and Republican. This despite all the civics lessons about checks and balances, the power and majesty of the Constitution, and the rest. What this underscores in reality is the crucial Marxist point that the state is fundamentally armed force in the service of the socially dominant (ruling) class. In capitalist society, that is the class of owners of the wealth and means of production. It is their (bourgeois) “democracy,” and when their interests demand it, they can dispense with these forms and resort to untrammeled naked force. Counteracting the patriotic fairy tales of bourgeois ideology is an important part of unshackling the working-class power so urgently needed in defense of the rights of all.
As for bourgeois politicians’ cloying appeals for bipartisan harmony and the rest of it as the pro-police duo of Biden and the vice president-elect, Kamala Harris, prepares to take charge of administering U.S. imperialism – the biggest and most dangerous enemy of the oppressed worldwide – Marxists stand in irreconcilable opposition to this and all administrations of the capitalist state. To unchain the power of the working class from capitalism’s parties, politicians and institutions is the urgent task in order to defend the rights and interests of all the exploited and downtrodden, and to put an end to the depredations of U.S. imperialism once and for all.
What Next for U.S. Capitalism?
In the aftermath of the January 6 riot in the Capitol, key sectors of the U.S. ruling class are worried about Donald Trump remaining in office, even for the 13 days left of his term. An alarmed National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), the U.S.’ premier business lobby and longtime Trump ally, denounced “mob rule,” declaring that “The outgoing president incited violence in an attempt to retain power.” The NAM called on Vice President Mike Pence and the cabinet to exercise the 25th Amendment, which would allow removal of Trump as president for being “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” Unsurprisingly, Pence refused. Today the two top Congressional Democrats, Senator Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, called for the impeachment of Trump for inciting armed insurrection. MSNBC host and former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough called for Trump, Giuliani and Donald Jr. to be arrested on the same charges. Several Trump administration officials have resigned, rats leaving a sinking ship.
Yet Trump is not the only one responsible for inciting the mob. There are quite a few Trump sycophants and enablers in Congress, some of whom have now opportunistically turned on him (like the execrable neo-Confederate senator Lindsay Graham), but who are all accomplices and co-conspirators. Ultimately, they – together with their Democratic rivals and colleagues – are all bourgeois politicians, representing the same class interests. Recall Barack Obama’s words following Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 election: “We have to remember that we're actually all on one team. This is an intramural scrimmage.” Obama said then that what he heard from Trump was “Respect for our institutions. Our way of life. Rule of law.” Really? So was January 6, an “intramural scrimmage,” marked by respect for the “rule of law”? Leading spokesmen for capital have concluded that Trump is an unhinged adventurer, prepared to sacrifice the interests of their “team” for his own, and that he must be stopped before he does more damage to “our institutions.” At this point, they’re just not sure how to do it.
The capitalist establishment has some problems in that respect: 74 million people voted for Trump, three-quarters of all Republicans say he was robbed of victory by (non-existent) massive voter fraud, and he now has a potential party fighting force of some tens of thousands, many of them heavily armed, fanatically devoted to him. While bourgeois detractors often portray him as just a crazy person, in denial about the election, he has created an organizing myth, the “stolen election,” akin to Hitler’s use of the myth of the “Dolchstoss,” the supposed stab in the back by Jews and communists, to explain Germany’s loss in World War I. Trump does not head up a mass fascist movement such as arose in Italy and Germany after WWI, and the motley crew that stormed the Capitol on January 6 aren’t disciplined shock troops like Mussolini’s Black Shirts and Hitler’s Brownshirts. They more closely resemble the rabble that Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, then president of the French Second Republic, gathered around him as he sought to become emperor in 1851.2 Like the little Napoléon, Trump would like to use the January 6 mob as his private army for his next adventure.
Many liberals think Trump wants to be like Putin in Russia or Erdoğan in Turkey, an authoritarian elected president. But being an emperor would be more fitting for his grandiose self-image. As if. Over the weekend, Trump begged Republican officials in Georgia to fix the votes for him so he could steal the election (while accusing the Democrats of doing so). But he had no quid for the quo, and was publicly humiliated as the tape of his wheedling, threatening call was released. So Trump turned to his last-ditch ploy, whipping up a mob, but he failed once again. That the powers that be knew it was coming was shown by the extraordinary January 4 letter by ten former secretaries of defense reminding the military that any effort to “involve the U.S. armed forces in resolving election disputes” would be “dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional” and any officials involved would face “criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic.” The Pentagon snapped to attention.
When Louis-Napoléon staged his December 1851 self-coup proclaiming himself French emperor, he had the backing of top generals. In the U.S. today, Trump only had the convicted ex-general Michael Flynn to conspire with about invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807 to impose martial law. The Pentagon generals fight for Wall Street. They got their tax cuts and are done with Trump. They have no appetite to stick their necks out for President Bonespurs (Trump got a medical deferment from the Vietnam draft by claiming bone spurs on his feet).
Biden wants to form a bipartisan Party of Order. But his lame calls for “decency” and unity, for “reaching across the aisle,” fly in the face of the everyone-for-himself, “sauve-qui-peut” (save yourself if you can) mentality of today’s bourgeois rulers. Capitalists flip from one bubble to the next, looking for speculative profits before they burst, as the capitalist system is putrefying before our eyes. They are cashing out of many companies and with their “golden parachutes” buying retreats in New Zealand and Patagonia, as far from Wall Street as they can get. Likewise, the “take no prisoners” style of Republican politics goes hand in hand with the outlook of many lawyers, epitomized by Giuliani but far more widespread, whose attitude toward the “rule of law” is to grab anything they can get away with, and the stability of the system be damned. They all fit well with a would-be authoritarian megalomaniac who holds that the truth is whatever he says it is, and that as president he could do anything he wants. But if he no longer can, many jump ship.
U.S. rulers are deeply split, reflecting the declining fortunes of American capitalism. The “American century” that began when the U.S. walked away with the victor’s spoils in World War II was to be followed by a “New World Order” of unchallenged U.S. imperialist hegemony after the counterrevolution that swept the Soviet bloc in 1989-92. Instead, there was world disorder, of “wars without end,” and the devastating consequences of the 2007-08 financial crash that unleashed a decade-long worldwide capitalist depression. That led to deepening social decay, reflected politically in the Tea Party movement and socially by the ravages of the opioid crisis, both fed by despair of ruined petty bourgeois and permanently unemployed workers. That is also a major factor in lower-middle-class and working-class votes for Trump. And now the coronavirus pandemic, the worst plague in a century that has killed 363,000 in the U.S. and 1.8 million+ worldwide, has set off an even deeper economic crisis, whose effects are only beginning to be felt.
While denouncing Trump, the Democrats avidly uphold the extraordinary, and deeply anti-democratic, powers of the presidency, built up even further during the Obama years. So how can Biden “unite the nation”? We have warned that war with China is a prime option: trade war, economic war against Chinese companies, and possibly provoking some military skirmishes in the South China Sea. It would cement ties with the Pentagon, which has been planning for this since Obama’s 2012 “pivot to Asia,” which never got off the ground because the U.S. was bogged down in the Middle East. Senate Republicans, who have promised to grill Biden cabinet choices on their position on China, would quickly jump on board. So would the misleaders of labor, who have long pushed poisonous anti-China protectionism. The opportunist left, which falsely calls China capitalist and even imperialist (and hailed the U.S.-backed “democracy” riots in Hong Kong), would barely object. Public opinion is primed with war propaganda blaming China for COVID-19, although it contained the plague while the response of the capitalist West has been a deadly disaster. But Biden would be playing with fire.
In the face of this wall-to-wall anti-China front, the Internationalist Group and the League for the Fourth International call to defend China – a bureaucratically deformed workers state – against imperialist attacks and threats, and against the danger of internal counterrevolution.
Capitalist “Democracy” Is Bankrupt – For a Workers Government!
Marxists could clearly see yesterday’s fascist/racist mob attack coming. A year and a half ago, as campaigning for the 2020 election got underway, we warned, “The intensity of political clashes in the ruling class recalls the period leading up to the U.S. Civil War…. Today, the intensity of the political clashes in Washington and the provocations of violent racist and outright fascist groups raise the spectre of civil war. Certainly, sectors of Trump’s most rabid base yearn to avenge the defeat of the vile Confederacy. Yet there are fundamental differences from the U.S. of a century and a half ago” (“Dangerous Racist Provocations in Pre-Election Maneuvering,” The Internationalist No. 57, September-October 2019). “The frenzy of bigotry from the highest levels of government underlines again the connection between anti-black racism and anti-immigrant racism,” we wrote, underscoring that “Would-be leftists who sow illusions in Democratic ‘resistance’ can only help disarm real struggle against racist reaction.”
There have been a lot of comparisons between the present crisis and what followed the presidential elections of 1876. Yesterday, the New York Times (6 January) ran an article with the headline, “You Think This Is Chaos? The Election of 1876 Was Worse.” That contested election led to the rotten “Compromise of 1877” which gave the presidency to the Republican in exchange for abandoning Reconstruction and pulling U.S. troops out of the occupied former Confederacy. That signal betrayal of the former slaves, on top of the failure to expropriate the slaveowners’ lands after the abolition of slavery, led to the rise of the KKK terrorists and then the Jim Crow segregation that institutionalized white supremacy and black subjugation in the South for another 90 years. Those are the “good old days” that the mob of fascist-led racists who stormed the U.S. Capitol yearn for. African Americans and all working people are still paying the price for the failure to rip out the slave system by the roots following the Civil War.
Today the legacy of slavery is still with us, particularly in the racist death penalty, mass incarceration and wanton police murder of black people. It is also enshrined in the institutions of what pious liberals and labor officials praise as “our democracy.” Among the most flagrant examples are the Electoral College and the Senate, along with the Supreme Court. (See “Slavery and the Constitution,” Revolution No. 17, August 2020.) Even consistent bourgeois democracy (“one person, one vote”) would demand the abolition of these reactionary bodies. Yet capitalist “democracy” is so corroded and hollowed-out by the gangrenous rot of capitalist society that the only real defense of democratic rights for the masses lies in the fight for the proletarian democracy of a workers government. This would not be based on the cynical charades of the puppets of capital – whose campaigns depend on billions from Wall Street (over $500 million in the Georgia runoffs) – but on workers councils chosen directly by the working people.
Labor bureaucrats or reformist leftists may call to “fight the far right” in the name of “defense of democracy.” Against fascist and racist marauders, and against the constant murderous violence of the bourgeois state, Marxists are the most intransigent defenders of democratic rights. In fact, all the democratic liberties of the mass of the population were won by bitter struggle against the ruling class. But to defend those rights, it is crucial to state clearly that this is not “our democracy.” The owners of wealth, of land, of the means of production, transport and communications can sweep away all constitutions and legal guarantees if they decide their interests demand it – as has happened so many times in history, from Italy (Mussolini’s fascists) and Germany (Hitler’s Nazis) to Chile (Pinochet’s military junta) and elsewhere. In fact, bourgeois democracy is a cloak for the dictatorship of the exploiting class against all the workers and oppressed.
In the lead-up to the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, V.I. Lenin stressed, citing Friedrich Engels, that the core of the capitalist state consists of “special bodies of armed men” protecting the power and property of the ruling class. It cannot be reformed away or pressured into becoming an instrument of “the people” – mass struggle by the workers and oppressed, culminating in socialist revolution, must sweep it away to make way for a workers government, the proletarian democracy of workers councils (soviets). Right-wingers ludicrously condemn the Democrats – the oldest capitalist party in the world – as “socialists” and even “communists.” To defend the lives, most basic interests and hard-won rights of the workers and oppressed requires above all a struggle to forge a revolutionary workers party based on the genuine communist program of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky, the program of international socialist revolution. In these times of a deadly coronavirus pandemic, racist attacks by the repressive apparatus of the capitalist state and its fascist auxiliaries, and another capitalist depression, forging that party is key to winning a real future for workers and youth, here and around the world. ■
*One of the rioters was shot and killed as they sought to break into the House chambers. A Capitol police officer has reportedly died of injuries.
*Louis Napoléon was the nephew of Napoléon Bonaparte, who proclaimed himself emperor in 1804 after putting an end to the ten years of turmoil following the French Revolution of 1789 with his Coup of 18 Brumaire (9 November 1799, according to the French revolutionary calendar). Karl Marx, in his famous pamphlet, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852), described the lesser Napoléon’s ragtag crew (the Society of December 10) as made up of “vagabonds, cashiered soldiers, ex-convicts, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, idle riffraff, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, pimps, brothel keepers, porters, literati, organ grinders, ragpickers, knife grinders, tinkers, beggars.” This lumpenproletariat, or proletariat in rags, Marx wrote, was called upon “to play the part of the people” in Louis Napoléon’s various schemes.
http://www.internationalist.org/capitalist-democracy-falling-apart-2101.html

JANUARY 7 – Yesterday’s mob rampage at the U.S. Capitol was the culmination of Donald Trump’s campaign of frenzied claims that the November 2020 presidential election was “stolen.” The assault on Congress was instigated by Trump and his top lieutenants, led by outright fascists, spearheaded by white supremacists brandishing the Confederate battle flag of the slavocracy, and it was facilitated by the police. Similar riots targeting government centers are nothing new in East Europe, where they have typically been organized by the U.S. (Georgia 2003, Ukraine 2014), and Yankee imperialism has unleashed them innumerable times in Latin America. But they are seen as novel in the United States since the post-Civil War period’s racist rampages against Reconstruction. After all, Republicans and Democrats alike claim this is “the world’s greatest democracy,” a “shining city on a hill” as union-busting racist and warmonger Ronald Reagan called the U.S. That was hardly the scene on Capitol Hill on January 6. What the world witnessed was a chilling acceleration, the latest bizarre and dangerous episode, in the spectacular unravelling of “democratic” bourgeois rule in the strongest imperialist power. What it dramatically underscores is that this capitalist society is falling apart. The bankruptcy of this decaying system of exploitation, imperialism and racist oppression highlights the urgent need to fight for socialist revolution.
In the media and by numerous politicians the Capitol attack is described as an “insurrection,” “coup d’état” or failed “coup attempt.” Yet this grotesque rampage by a would-be lynch mob was not an actual attempt to seize power (for which they obviously didn’t have the forces), nor was it the military trying to disperse and shut down the U.S.’ highest legislative body. English doesn’t have very descriptive terms for such actions. In Spanish it would be an amotinamiento, in French a coup de main. It was a mob assault aimed at intimidating Congress into not confirming Democratic president-elect Joe Biden, and failing that, to galvanize hard-core Trumpers into an authoritarian movement for future action. It was not a last paroxysm of Trumpism, but a harbinger of dangerous times to come. The several hundred fascists who turned out, together with tens of thousands of enraged racists and reactionaries, are plenty dangerous, but the most powerful and central dangers come from the organs of state power of the capitalist ruling class – police, military, National Guard – which brutally repress protests for black rights and protect the fascist terrorists. Democrat Joe Biden is their new boss, and he backs them to the hilt.
That the assault was directly instigated by Trump is obvious. It’s also recognized by key sectors of the bourgeois establishment in the U.S., which is genuinely shaken up by yesterday’s events. The white supremacist in the White House, defeated in the November elections, set the date for the riot, calling on his supporters to come to Washington for a “wild” time. Some 30,000 did. At a morning rally Trump whipped them up, railing against “RINOs” (Republicans in Name Only) and urging the crowd to “walk down to Congress” in order to “fight.” His lawyer, the ubergrifter Rudy Giuliani who instigated the 1992 police riot against New York City’s black Democratic mayor David Dinkins, called for “trial by combat.” Donald Jr. warned Democrats and Republicans who didn’t support the plot to annul the votes of tens of millions of voters, “We’re coming for you.” This led even right-wing Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming to declare: “The president incited the mob. The president addressed the mob. He lit the flame.”
Scripted Mayhem, Police Connivance
The mayhem was scripted by the president himself, though of course the cowardly macho-man reneged on his vow to march with his followers to the capitol. “A senior White House aide said Trump wanted his supporters to swarm the Capitol and protest loudly all day,” the Washington Post (7 January) reported. But, the aide was quoted as claiming, “There was no plan for them to go inside.” In fact, the mob was milling around outside on the balcony and steps for an hour before managing to get in the building. Once they were inside, Trump watched on television for over two hours until people were starting to leave, when he posted a (pre-recorded) video saying it was time to go home. In that video he proclaimed his “love” for the “very special” rioters, insisted that the election was stolen and told them to “Remember this day forever!” Which they will, of course. The fact that they stormed the U.S. Capitol and got away with it will embolden racists and fascists for years – and not just to vote for Trump or his surrogates, but also to attack black people, immigrants and all who would block their drive to “take back” what they proclaim is their country.
That the assault was facilitated by the police is also beyond doubt. The cops and military were obviously monitoring the social media where the fascists were openly talking of plans for the armed assault. Moreover, ultra-rightists’ armed takeover of the Michigan legislature last May had already set the pattern. From the outset in Washington, rioters surged past barriers and up the steps with scarcely any serious opposition from the Capitol Police. Subsequently videos have surfaced showing police opening barriers and standing back to let the mob in. A livestream video by the fascists shows an invader taking a selfie with a police officer. There are a few photos of scuffles over barriers and a brief standoff in the basement, but once the crowd was in, the very few police outside disappeared. Inside, the cops let the rioters have the run of building, invading and rifling offices, taking over the Senate, and then let them leave unhindered.1 “Law enforcement experts said they were mystified by the tactics that police used once the mob was already inside the Capitol,” the Washington Post reported. That the police weren’t just “overwhelmed,” that police collaborated with the mob, that this was policy, is clear. The only “mystery” – so far – is who decided it.
You couldn’t miss the stunning contrast between this “kid glove” treatment on January 6 of the white supremacist mob and the wanton brutality unleashed against Black Lives Matter demonstrators peacefully protesting on June 3 in Lafayette Park, a public space, against racist police murder. It immediately struck us, along with countless other activists (and even the bourgeois media and politicians) – if black and other anti-racist demonstrators had sought to redress their grievances by converging on Congress, much less storming the building, they would have been shot down. It’s all one more confirmation that the police at every level are a white supremacist institution, and have been since their inception as slave patrols in the early 19th century. Nor was this equivalent to the workers’ occupation of the Wisconsin state capitol in 2011 (which we enthusiastically participated in) to protest a vicious anti-labor bill. This was a racist mob bent on destruction and seeking to halt one of the functions of Congress with the most far-reaching consequences, which the mob did with impunity.
When the New York Times (7 January) writes of “violent clashes between protesters and law enforcement,” those few incidents cannot obscure police connivance with the rioters. When the D.C. National Guard arrived at the end – after Trump and his Army and Defense secretaries had earlier blocked a request by the city to mobilize it – there were very few arrests, mostly for curfew violation. But now that Democratic mayor Muriel Bowser has issued a public emergency order until after Inauguration Day (January 20), it will surely be used against any anti-fascist protesters. Meanwhile, as Twitter and Facebook temporarily blocked Trump’s accounts, various pundits and legal beagles are flirting with curtailing First Amendment rights (“Have Trump’s Lies Wrecked Free Speech?” New York Times, 6 January). Again, you can bet that any bans on “extremists” will be used against leftists and anti-racists far more than against the fascists who openly organized their Capitol bash on Parler and other right-wing social media.
That the attack on the U.S. Capitol was led by fascists is also undeniable, although barely mentioned in the bourgeois media. They had to notice that the first rioters who stormed into the Capitol were brandishing the Confederate battle flag, though they left unsaid that this banner of slavery is also that of the racist terrorists of the Ku Klux Klan. There were also numerous QAnon flags, and the green “Kekistan” flag (based on the WWII German battle flag) used by fascists. There were gallows with a hangman’s noose – a threat of lynching – set up outside. Nazi provocateur Tim Gionet (aka “Baked Alaska”) was livestreaming from inside the building. Inside the Capitol, one of the fascists wore a sweatshirt hailing the Nazi death camp Auschwitz. And prominent among those at the front of the rioters were III Percenters (who brag about their connections to police and military), Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, wearing a different uniform than usual, with orange caps. Orange armbands and tags were also noted in similar pro-Trump mobs in state capitals in Arkansas, California, Minnesota, Oregon and elsewhere.
There was a surreal quality to aspects of the fascist-led assault, including a QAnon “shaman” with a horned helmet made of fur pelts, stars-and-stripes face paint and Norse tattoos. Another rioter with a fur pelt and a fox skin on his head stood out among the camouflage jackets and MAGA caps. But it was no joke: the invaders were armed and dangerous. During the storming, two pipe bombs and a cooler full of Molotov cocktails (gasoline bombs) were found on Capitol grounds. One of the camo-clad rioters had a handful of zip ties, indicating intentions of taking hostages, again echoing the events in Michigan last May. Had they gotten their hands on Nancy Pelosi or one of the “Squad” (Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib) vilified by Trump, or others, these fascist and racist terrorists could well have carried out their murderous fantasies to “hang traitors.”
After the rioters left, the assembled senators and representatives resumed “debate” on certifying the electors’ votes for president state by state. While a few dropped their plans to challenge electors reflecting the popular vote (like Georgia, where the Democrats just won a by-election, replacing two Republican senators with two Democrats, giving the incoming Biden administration control of the Senate as well as the House), most did not. As the night wore on, there was one pious, nauseating speech after another praising the “bipartisan” rejection of “violence,” “insurrection” and “sedition,” instead endorsing “civility,” “decency” and, of course, “our democracy.” Of course, the rioters were foot soldiers for the blatantly anti-democratic ploy by the Republican defeat deniers to throw out tens of millions of votes – disenfranchising the voters of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. In the end, Biden’s victory was confirmed, but more than half of House Republicans voted not to recognize its legitimacy.
Repeatedly over the past weeks, media pundits have waxed lyrical about how the only thing holding the line for democracy has been the “good will” of a handful of officials, both Democratic and Republican. This despite all the civics lessons about checks and balances, the power and majesty of the Constitution, and the rest. What this underscores in reality is the crucial Marxist point that the state is fundamentally armed force in the service of the socially dominant (ruling) class. In capitalist society, that is the class of owners of the wealth and means of production. It is their (bourgeois) “democracy,” and when their interests demand it, they can dispense with these forms and resort to untrammeled naked force. Counteracting the patriotic fairy tales of bourgeois ideology is an important part of unshackling the working-class power so urgently needed in defense of the rights of all.
As for bourgeois politicians’ cloying appeals for bipartisan harmony and the rest of it as the pro-police duo of Biden and the vice president-elect, Kamala Harris, prepares to take charge of administering U.S. imperialism – the biggest and most dangerous enemy of the oppressed worldwide – Marxists stand in irreconcilable opposition to this and all administrations of the capitalist state. To unchain the power of the working class from capitalism’s parties, politicians and institutions is the urgent task in order to defend the rights and interests of all the exploited and downtrodden, and to put an end to the depredations of U.S. imperialism once and for all.
What Next for U.S. Capitalism?
In the aftermath of the January 6 riot in the Capitol, key sectors of the U.S. ruling class are worried about Donald Trump remaining in office, even for the 13 days left of his term. An alarmed National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), the U.S.’ premier business lobby and longtime Trump ally, denounced “mob rule,” declaring that “The outgoing president incited violence in an attempt to retain power.” The NAM called on Vice President Mike Pence and the cabinet to exercise the 25th Amendment, which would allow removal of Trump as president for being “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” Unsurprisingly, Pence refused. Today the two top Congressional Democrats, Senator Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, called for the impeachment of Trump for inciting armed insurrection. MSNBC host and former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough called for Trump, Giuliani and Donald Jr. to be arrested on the same charges. Several Trump administration officials have resigned, rats leaving a sinking ship.
Yet Trump is not the only one responsible for inciting the mob. There are quite a few Trump sycophants and enablers in Congress, some of whom have now opportunistically turned on him (like the execrable neo-Confederate senator Lindsay Graham), but who are all accomplices and co-conspirators. Ultimately, they – together with their Democratic rivals and colleagues – are all bourgeois politicians, representing the same class interests. Recall Barack Obama’s words following Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 election: “We have to remember that we're actually all on one team. This is an intramural scrimmage.” Obama said then that what he heard from Trump was “Respect for our institutions. Our way of life. Rule of law.” Really? So was January 6, an “intramural scrimmage,” marked by respect for the “rule of law”? Leading spokesmen for capital have concluded that Trump is an unhinged adventurer, prepared to sacrifice the interests of their “team” for his own, and that he must be stopped before he does more damage to “our institutions.” At this point, they’re just not sure how to do it.
The capitalist establishment has some problems in that respect: 74 million people voted for Trump, three-quarters of all Republicans say he was robbed of victory by (non-existent) massive voter fraud, and he now has a potential party fighting force of some tens of thousands, many of them heavily armed, fanatically devoted to him. While bourgeois detractors often portray him as just a crazy person, in denial about the election, he has created an organizing myth, the “stolen election,” akin to Hitler’s use of the myth of the “Dolchstoss,” the supposed stab in the back by Jews and communists, to explain Germany’s loss in World War I. Trump does not head up a mass fascist movement such as arose in Italy and Germany after WWI, and the motley crew that stormed the Capitol on January 6 aren’t disciplined shock troops like Mussolini’s Black Shirts and Hitler’s Brownshirts. They more closely resemble the rabble that Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, then president of the French Second Republic, gathered around him as he sought to become emperor in 1851.2 Like the little Napoléon, Trump would like to use the January 6 mob as his private army for his next adventure.
Many liberals think Trump wants to be like Putin in Russia or Erdoğan in Turkey, an authoritarian elected president. But being an emperor would be more fitting for his grandiose self-image. As if. Over the weekend, Trump begged Republican officials in Georgia to fix the votes for him so he could steal the election (while accusing the Democrats of doing so). But he had no quid for the quo, and was publicly humiliated as the tape of his wheedling, threatening call was released. So Trump turned to his last-ditch ploy, whipping up a mob, but he failed once again. That the powers that be knew it was coming was shown by the extraordinary January 4 letter by ten former secretaries of defense reminding the military that any effort to “involve the U.S. armed forces in resolving election disputes” would be “dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional” and any officials involved would face “criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic.” The Pentagon snapped to attention.
When Louis-Napoléon staged his December 1851 self-coup proclaiming himself French emperor, he had the backing of top generals. In the U.S. today, Trump only had the convicted ex-general Michael Flynn to conspire with about invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807 to impose martial law. The Pentagon generals fight for Wall Street. They got their tax cuts and are done with Trump. They have no appetite to stick their necks out for President Bonespurs (Trump got a medical deferment from the Vietnam draft by claiming bone spurs on his feet).
Biden wants to form a bipartisan Party of Order. But his lame calls for “decency” and unity, for “reaching across the aisle,” fly in the face of the everyone-for-himself, “sauve-qui-peut” (save yourself if you can) mentality of today’s bourgeois rulers. Capitalists flip from one bubble to the next, looking for speculative profits before they burst, as the capitalist system is putrefying before our eyes. They are cashing out of many companies and with their “golden parachutes” buying retreats in New Zealand and Patagonia, as far from Wall Street as they can get. Likewise, the “take no prisoners” style of Republican politics goes hand in hand with the outlook of many lawyers, epitomized by Giuliani but far more widespread, whose attitude toward the “rule of law” is to grab anything they can get away with, and the stability of the system be damned. They all fit well with a would-be authoritarian megalomaniac who holds that the truth is whatever he says it is, and that as president he could do anything he wants. But if he no longer can, many jump ship.
U.S. rulers are deeply split, reflecting the declining fortunes of American capitalism. The “American century” that began when the U.S. walked away with the victor’s spoils in World War II was to be followed by a “New World Order” of unchallenged U.S. imperialist hegemony after the counterrevolution that swept the Soviet bloc in 1989-92. Instead, there was world disorder, of “wars without end,” and the devastating consequences of the 2007-08 financial crash that unleashed a decade-long worldwide capitalist depression. That led to deepening social decay, reflected politically in the Tea Party movement and socially by the ravages of the opioid crisis, both fed by despair of ruined petty bourgeois and permanently unemployed workers. That is also a major factor in lower-middle-class and working-class votes for Trump. And now the coronavirus pandemic, the worst plague in a century that has killed 363,000 in the U.S. and 1.8 million+ worldwide, has set off an even deeper economic crisis, whose effects are only beginning to be felt.
While denouncing Trump, the Democrats avidly uphold the extraordinary, and deeply anti-democratic, powers of the presidency, built up even further during the Obama years. So how can Biden “unite the nation”? We have warned that war with China is a prime option: trade war, economic war against Chinese companies, and possibly provoking some military skirmishes in the South China Sea. It would cement ties with the Pentagon, which has been planning for this since Obama’s 2012 “pivot to Asia,” which never got off the ground because the U.S. was bogged down in the Middle East. Senate Republicans, who have promised to grill Biden cabinet choices on their position on China, would quickly jump on board. So would the misleaders of labor, who have long pushed poisonous anti-China protectionism. The opportunist left, which falsely calls China capitalist and even imperialist (and hailed the U.S.-backed “democracy” riots in Hong Kong), would barely object. Public opinion is primed with war propaganda blaming China for COVID-19, although it contained the plague while the response of the capitalist West has been a deadly disaster. But Biden would be playing with fire.
In the face of this wall-to-wall anti-China front, the Internationalist Group and the League for the Fourth International call to defend China – a bureaucratically deformed workers state – against imperialist attacks and threats, and against the danger of internal counterrevolution.
Capitalist “Democracy” Is Bankrupt – For a Workers Government!
Marxists could clearly see yesterday’s fascist/racist mob attack coming. A year and a half ago, as campaigning for the 2020 election got underway, we warned, “The intensity of political clashes in the ruling class recalls the period leading up to the U.S. Civil War…. Today, the intensity of the political clashes in Washington and the provocations of violent racist and outright fascist groups raise the spectre of civil war. Certainly, sectors of Trump’s most rabid base yearn to avenge the defeat of the vile Confederacy. Yet there are fundamental differences from the U.S. of a century and a half ago” (“Dangerous Racist Provocations in Pre-Election Maneuvering,” The Internationalist No. 57, September-October 2019). “The frenzy of bigotry from the highest levels of government underlines again the connection between anti-black racism and anti-immigrant racism,” we wrote, underscoring that “Would-be leftists who sow illusions in Democratic ‘resistance’ can only help disarm real struggle against racist reaction.”
There have been a lot of comparisons between the present crisis and what followed the presidential elections of 1876. Yesterday, the New York Times (6 January) ran an article with the headline, “You Think This Is Chaos? The Election of 1876 Was Worse.” That contested election led to the rotten “Compromise of 1877” which gave the presidency to the Republican in exchange for abandoning Reconstruction and pulling U.S. troops out of the occupied former Confederacy. That signal betrayal of the former slaves, on top of the failure to expropriate the slaveowners’ lands after the abolition of slavery, led to the rise of the KKK terrorists and then the Jim Crow segregation that institutionalized white supremacy and black subjugation in the South for another 90 years. Those are the “good old days” that the mob of fascist-led racists who stormed the U.S. Capitol yearn for. African Americans and all working people are still paying the price for the failure to rip out the slave system by the roots following the Civil War.
Today the legacy of slavery is still with us, particularly in the racist death penalty, mass incarceration and wanton police murder of black people. It is also enshrined in the institutions of what pious liberals and labor officials praise as “our democracy.” Among the most flagrant examples are the Electoral College and the Senate, along with the Supreme Court. (See “Slavery and the Constitution,” Revolution No. 17, August 2020.) Even consistent bourgeois democracy (“one person, one vote”) would demand the abolition of these reactionary bodies. Yet capitalist “democracy” is so corroded and hollowed-out by the gangrenous rot of capitalist society that the only real defense of democratic rights for the masses lies in the fight for the proletarian democracy of a workers government. This would not be based on the cynical charades of the puppets of capital – whose campaigns depend on billions from Wall Street (over $500 million in the Georgia runoffs) – but on workers councils chosen directly by the working people.
Labor bureaucrats or reformist leftists may call to “fight the far right” in the name of “defense of democracy.” Against fascist and racist marauders, and against the constant murderous violence of the bourgeois state, Marxists are the most intransigent defenders of democratic rights. In fact, all the democratic liberties of the mass of the population were won by bitter struggle against the ruling class. But to defend those rights, it is crucial to state clearly that this is not “our democracy.” The owners of wealth, of land, of the means of production, transport and communications can sweep away all constitutions and legal guarantees if they decide their interests demand it – as has happened so many times in history, from Italy (Mussolini’s fascists) and Germany (Hitler’s Nazis) to Chile (Pinochet’s military junta) and elsewhere. In fact, bourgeois democracy is a cloak for the dictatorship of the exploiting class against all the workers and oppressed.
In the lead-up to the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, V.I. Lenin stressed, citing Friedrich Engels, that the core of the capitalist state consists of “special bodies of armed men” protecting the power and property of the ruling class. It cannot be reformed away or pressured into becoming an instrument of “the people” – mass struggle by the workers and oppressed, culminating in socialist revolution, must sweep it away to make way for a workers government, the proletarian democracy of workers councils (soviets). Right-wingers ludicrously condemn the Democrats – the oldest capitalist party in the world – as “socialists” and even “communists.” To defend the lives, most basic interests and hard-won rights of the workers and oppressed requires above all a struggle to forge a revolutionary workers party based on the genuine communist program of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky, the program of international socialist revolution. In these times of a deadly coronavirus pandemic, racist attacks by the repressive apparatus of the capitalist state and its fascist auxiliaries, and another capitalist depression, forging that party is key to winning a real future for workers and youth, here and around the world. ■
*One of the rioters was shot and killed as they sought to break into the House chambers. A Capitol police officer has reportedly died of injuries.
*Louis Napoléon was the nephew of Napoléon Bonaparte, who proclaimed himself emperor in 1804 after putting an end to the ten years of turmoil following the French Revolution of 1789 with his Coup of 18 Brumaire (9 November 1799, according to the French revolutionary calendar). Karl Marx, in his famous pamphlet, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852), described the lesser Napoléon’s ragtag crew (the Society of December 10) as made up of “vagabonds, cashiered soldiers, ex-convicts, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, idle riffraff, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, pimps, brothel keepers, porters, literati, organ grinders, ragpickers, knife grinders, tinkers, beggars.” This lumpenproletariat, or proletariat in rags, Marx wrote, was called upon “to play the part of the people” in Louis Napoléon’s various schemes.
http://www.internationalist.org/capitalist-democracy-falling-apart-2101.html

JANUARY 7 – Yesterday’s mob rampage at the U.S. Capitol was the culmination of Donald Trump’s campaign of frenzied claims that the November 2020 presidential election was “stolen.” The assault on Congress was instigated by Trump and his top lieutenants, led by outright fascists, spearheaded by white supremacists brandishing the Confederate battle flag of the slavocracy, and it was facilitated by the police. Similar riots targeting government centers are nothing new in East Europe, where they have typically been organized by the U.S. (Georgia 2003, Ukraine 2014), and Yankee imperialism has unleashed them innumerable times in Latin America. But they are seen as novel in the United States since the post-Civil War period’s racist rampages against Reconstruction. After all, Republicans and Democrats alike claim this is “the world’s greatest democracy,” a “shining city on a hill” as union-busting racist and warmonger Ronald Reagan called the U.S. That was hardly the scene on Capitol Hill on January 6. What the world witnessed was a chilling acceleration, the latest bizarre and dangerous episode, in the spectacular unravelling of “democratic” bourgeois rule in the strongest imperialist power. What it dramatically underscores is that this capitalist society is falling apart. The bankruptcy of this decaying system of exploitation, imperialism and racist oppression highlights the urgent need to fight for socialist revolution.
In the media and by numerous politicians the Capitol attack is described as an “insurrection,” “coup d’état” or failed “coup attempt.” Yet this grotesque rampage by a would-be lynch mob was not an actual attempt to seize power (for which they obviously didn’t have the forces), nor was it the military trying to disperse and shut down the U.S.’ highest legislative body. English doesn’t have very descriptive terms for such actions. In Spanish it would be an amotinamiento, in French a coup de main. It was a mob assault aimed at intimidating Congress into not confirming Democratic president-elect Joe Biden, and failing that, to galvanize hard-core Trumpers into an authoritarian movement for future action. It was not a last paroxysm of Trumpism, but a harbinger of dangerous times to come. The several hundred fascists who turned out, together with tens of thousands of enraged racists and reactionaries, are plenty dangerous, but the most powerful and central dangers come from the organs of state power of the capitalist ruling class – police, military, National Guard – which brutally repress protests for black rights and protect the fascist terrorists. Democrat Joe Biden is their new boss, and he backs them to the hilt.
That the assault was directly instigated by Trump is obvious. It’s also recognized by key sectors of the bourgeois establishment in the U.S., which is genuinely shaken up by yesterday’s events. The white supremacist in the White House, defeated in the November elections, set the date for the riot, calling on his supporters to come to Washington for a “wild” time. Some 30,000 did. At a morning rally Trump whipped them up, railing against “RINOs” (Republicans in Name Only) and urging the crowd to “walk down to Congress” in order to “fight.” His lawyer, the ubergrifter Rudy Giuliani who instigated the 1992 police riot against New York City’s black Democratic mayor David Dinkins, called for “trial by combat.” Donald Jr. warned Democrats and Republicans who didn’t support the plot to annul the votes of tens of millions of voters, “We’re coming for you.” This led even right-wing Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming to declare: “The president incited the mob. The president addressed the mob. He lit the flame.”
Scripted Mayhem, Police Connivance
The mayhem was scripted by the president himself, though of course the cowardly macho-man reneged on his vow to march with his followers to the capitol. “A senior White House aide said Trump wanted his supporters to swarm the Capitol and protest loudly all day,” the Washington Post (7 January) reported. But, the aide was quoted as claiming, “There was no plan for them to go inside.” In fact, the mob was milling around outside on the balcony and steps for an hour before managing to get in the building. Once they were inside, Trump watched on television for over two hours until people were starting to leave, when he posted a (pre-recorded) video saying it was time to go home. In that video he proclaimed his “love” for the “very special” rioters, insisted that the election was stolen and told them to “Remember this day forever!” Which they will, of course. The fact that they stormed the U.S. Capitol and got away with it will embolden racists and fascists for years – and not just to vote for Trump or his surrogates, but also to attack black people, immigrants and all who would block their drive to “take back” what they proclaim is their country.
That the assault was facilitated by the police is also beyond doubt. The cops and military were obviously monitoring the social media where the fascists were openly talking of plans for the armed assault. Moreover, ultra-rightists’ armed takeover of the Michigan legislature last May had already set the pattern. From the outset in Washington, rioters surged past barriers and up the steps with scarcely any serious opposition from the Capitol Police. Subsequently videos have surfaced showing police opening barriers and standing back to let the mob in. A livestream video by the fascists shows an invader taking a selfie with a police officer. There are a few photos of scuffles over barriers and a brief standoff in the basement, but once the crowd was in, the very few police outside disappeared. Inside, the cops let the rioters have the run of building, invading and rifling offices, taking over the Senate, and then let them leave unhindered.1 “Law enforcement experts said they were mystified by the tactics that police used once the mob was already inside the Capitol,” the Washington Post reported. That the police weren’t just “overwhelmed,” that police collaborated with the mob, that this was policy, is clear. The only “mystery” – so far – is who decided it.
You couldn’t miss the stunning contrast between this “kid glove” treatment on January 6 of the white supremacist mob and the wanton brutality unleashed against Black Lives Matter demonstrators peacefully protesting on June 3 in Lafayette Park, a public space, against racist police murder. It immediately struck us, along with countless other activists (and even the bourgeois media and politicians) – if black and other anti-racist demonstrators had sought to redress their grievances by converging on Congress, much less storming the building, they would have been shot down. It’s all one more confirmation that the police at every level are a white supremacist institution, and have been since their inception as slave patrols in the early 19th century. Nor was this equivalent to the workers’ occupation of the Wisconsin state capitol in 2011 (which we enthusiastically participated in) to protest a vicious anti-labor bill. This was a racist mob bent on destruction and seeking to halt one of the functions of Congress with the most far-reaching consequences, which the mob did with impunity.
When the New York Times (7 January) writes of “violent clashes between protesters and law enforcement,” those few incidents cannot obscure police connivance with the rioters. When the D.C. National Guard arrived at the end – after Trump and his Army and Defense secretaries had earlier blocked a request by the city to mobilize it – there were very few arrests, mostly for curfew violation. But now that Democratic mayor Muriel Bowser has issued a public emergency order until after Inauguration Day (January 20), it will surely be used against any anti-fascist protesters. Meanwhile, as Twitter and Facebook temporarily blocked Trump’s accounts, various pundits and legal beagles are flirting with curtailing First Amendment rights (“Have Trump’s Lies Wrecked Free Speech?” New York Times, 6 January). Again, you can bet that any bans on “extremists” will be used against leftists and anti-racists far more than against the fascists who openly organized their Capitol bash on Parler and other right-wing social media.
That the attack on the U.S. Capitol was led by fascists is also undeniable, although barely mentioned in the bourgeois media. They had to notice that the first rioters who stormed into the Capitol were brandishing the Confederate battle flag, though they left unsaid that this banner of slavery is also that of the racist terrorists of the Ku Klux Klan. There were also numerous QAnon flags, and the green “Kekistan” flag (based on the WWII German battle flag) used by fascists. There were gallows with a hangman’s noose – a threat of lynching – set up outside. Nazi provocateur Tim Gionet (aka “Baked Alaska”) was livestreaming from inside the building. Inside the Capitol, one of the fascists wore a sweatshirt hailing the Nazi death camp Auschwitz. And prominent among those at the front of the rioters were III Percenters (who brag about their connections to police and military), Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, wearing a different uniform than usual, with orange caps. Orange armbands and tags were also noted in similar pro-Trump mobs in state capitals in Arkansas, California, Minnesota, Oregon and elsewhere.
There was a surreal quality to aspects of the fascist-led assault, including a QAnon “shaman” with a horned helmet made of fur pelts, stars-and-stripes face paint and Norse tattoos. Another rioter with a fur pelt and a fox skin on his head stood out among the camouflage jackets and MAGA caps. But it was no joke: the invaders were armed and dangerous. During the storming, two pipe bombs and a cooler full of Molotov cocktails (gasoline bombs) were found on Capitol grounds. One of the camo-clad rioters had a handful of zip ties, indicating intentions of taking hostages, again echoing the events in Michigan last May. Had they gotten their hands on Nancy Pelosi or one of the “Squad” (Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib) vilified by Trump, or others, these fascist and racist terrorists could well have carried out their murderous fantasies to “hang traitors.”
After the rioters left, the assembled senators and representatives resumed “debate” on certifying the electors’ votes for president state by state. While a few dropped their plans to challenge electors reflecting the popular vote (like Georgia, where the Democrats just won a by-election, replacing two Republican senators with two Democrats, giving the incoming Biden administration control of the Senate as well as the House), most did not. As the night wore on, there was one pious, nauseating speech after another praising the “bipartisan” rejection of “violence,” “insurrection” and “sedition,” instead endorsing “civility,” “decency” and, of course, “our democracy.” Of course, the rioters were foot soldiers for the blatantly anti-democratic ploy by the Republican defeat deniers to throw out tens of millions of votes – disenfranchising the voters of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. In the end, Biden’s victory was confirmed, but more than half of House Republicans voted not to recognize its legitimacy.
Repeatedly over the past weeks, media pundits have waxed lyrical about how the only thing holding the line for democracy has been the “good will” of a handful of officials, both Democratic and Republican. This despite all the civics lessons about checks and balances, the power and majesty of the Constitution, and the rest. What this underscores in reality is the crucial Marxist point that the state is fundamentally armed force in the service of the socially dominant (ruling) class. In capitalist society, that is the class of owners of the wealth and means of production. It is their (bourgeois) “democracy,” and when their interests demand it, they can dispense with these forms and resort to untrammeled naked force. Counteracting the patriotic fairy tales of bourgeois ideology is an important part of unshackling the working-class power so urgently needed in defense of the rights of all.
As for bourgeois politicians’ cloying appeals for bipartisan harmony and the rest of it as the pro-police duo of Biden and the vice president-elect, Kamala Harris, prepares to take charge of administering U.S. imperialism – the biggest and most dangerous enemy of the oppressed worldwide – Marxists stand in irreconcilable opposition to this and all administrations of the capitalist state. To unchain the power of the working class from capitalism’s parties, politicians and institutions is the urgent task in order to defend the rights and interests of all the exploited and downtrodden, and to put an end to the depredations of U.S. imperialism once and for all.
What Next for U.S. Capitalism?
In the aftermath of the January 6 riot in the Capitol, key sectors of the U.S. ruling class are worried about Donald Trump remaining in office, even for the 13 days left of his term. An alarmed National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), the U.S.’ premier business lobby and longtime Trump ally, denounced “mob rule,” declaring that “The outgoing president incited violence in an attempt to retain power.” The NAM called on Vice President Mike Pence and the cabinet to exercise the 25th Amendment, which would allow removal of Trump as president for being “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” Unsurprisingly, Pence refused. Today the two top Congressional Democrats, Senator Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, called for the impeachment of Trump for inciting armed insurrection. MSNBC host and former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough called for Trump, Giuliani and Donald Jr. to be arrested on the same charges. Several Trump administration officials have resigned, rats leaving a sinking ship.
Yet Trump is not the only one responsible for inciting the mob. There are quite a few Trump sycophants and enablers in Congress, some of whom have now opportunistically turned on him (like the execrable neo-Confederate senator Lindsay Graham), but who are all accomplices and co-conspirators. Ultimately, they – together with their Democratic rivals and colleagues – are all bourgeois politicians, representing the same class interests. Recall Barack Obama’s words following Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 election: “We have to remember that we're actually all on one team. This is an intramural scrimmage.” Obama said then that what he heard from Trump was “Respect for our institutions. Our way of life. Rule of law.” Really? So was January 6, an “intramural scrimmage,” marked by respect for the “rule of law”? Leading spokesmen for capital have concluded that Trump is an unhinged adventurer, prepared to sacrifice the interests of their “team” for his own, and that he must be stopped before he does more damage to “our institutions.” At this point, they’re just not sure how to do it.
The capitalist establishment has some problems in that respect: 74 million people voted for Trump, three-quarters of all Republicans say he was robbed of victory by (non-existent) massive voter fraud, and he now has a potential party fighting force of some tens of thousands, many of them heavily armed, fanatically devoted to him. While bourgeois detractors often portray him as just a crazy person, in denial about the election, he has created an organizing myth, the “stolen election,” akin to Hitler’s use of the myth of the “Dolchstoss,” the supposed stab in the back by Jews and communists, to explain Germany’s loss in World War I. Trump does not head up a mass fascist movement such as arose in Italy and Germany after WWI, and the motley crew that stormed the Capitol on January 6 aren’t disciplined shock troops like Mussolini’s Black Shirts and Hitler’s Brownshirts. They more closely resemble the rabble that Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, then president of the French Second Republic, gathered around him as he sought to become emperor in 1851.2 Like the little Napoléon, Trump would like to use the January 6 mob as his private army for his next adventure.
Many liberals think Trump wants to be like Putin in Russia or Erdoğan in Turkey, an authoritarian elected president. But being an emperor would be more fitting for his grandiose self-image. As if. Over the weekend, Trump begged Republican officials in Georgia to fix the votes for him so he could steal the election (while accusing the Democrats of doing so). But he had no quid for the quo, and was publicly humiliated as the tape of his wheedling, threatening call was released. So Trump turned to his last-ditch ploy, whipping up a mob, but he failed once again. That the powers that be knew it was coming was shown by the extraordinary January 4 letter by ten former secretaries of defense reminding the military that any effort to “involve the U.S. armed forces in resolving election disputes” would be “dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional” and any officials involved would face “criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic.” The Pentagon snapped to attention.
When Louis-Napoléon staged his December 1851 self-coup proclaiming himself French emperor, he had the backing of top generals. In the U.S. today, Trump only had the convicted ex-general Michael Flynn to conspire with about invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807 to impose martial law. The Pentagon generals fight for Wall Street. They got their tax cuts and are done with Trump. They have no appetite to stick their necks out for President Bonespurs (Trump got a medical deferment from the Vietnam draft by claiming bone spurs on his feet).
Biden wants to form a bipartisan Party of Order. But his lame calls for “decency” and unity, for “reaching across the aisle,” fly in the face of the everyone-for-himself, “sauve-qui-peut” (save yourself if you can) mentality of today’s bourgeois rulers. Capitalists flip from one bubble to the next, looking for speculative profits before they burst, as the capitalist system is putrefying before our eyes. They are cashing out of many companies and with their “golden parachutes” buying retreats in New Zealand and Patagonia, as far from Wall Street as they can get. Likewise, the “take no prisoners” style of Republican politics goes hand in hand with the outlook of many lawyers, epitomized by Giuliani but far more widespread, whose attitude toward the “rule of law” is to grab anything they can get away with, and the stability of the system be damned. They all fit well with a would-be authoritarian megalomaniac who holds that the truth is whatever he says it is, and that as president he could do anything he wants. But if he no longer can, many jump ship.
U.S. rulers are deeply split, reflecting the declining fortunes of American capitalism. The “American century” that began when the U.S. walked away with the victor’s spoils in World War II was to be followed by a “New World Order” of unchallenged U.S. imperialist hegemony after the counterrevolution that swept the Soviet bloc in 1989-92. Instead, there was world disorder, of “wars without end,” and the devastating consequences of the 2007-08 financial crash that unleashed a decade-long worldwide capitalist depression. That led to deepening social decay, reflected politically in the Tea Party movement and socially by the ravages of the opioid crisis, both fed by despair of ruined petty bourgeois and permanently unemployed workers. That is also a major factor in lower-middle-class and working-class votes for Trump. And now the coronavirus pandemic, the worst plague in a century that has killed 363,000 in the U.S. and 1.8 million+ worldwide, has set off an even deeper economic crisis, whose effects are only beginning to be felt.
While denouncing Trump, the Democrats avidly uphold the extraordinary, and deeply anti-democratic, powers of the presidency, built up even further during the Obama years. So how can Biden “unite the nation”? We have warned that war with China is a prime option: trade war, economic war against Chinese companies, and possibly provoking some military skirmishes in the South China Sea. It would cement ties with the Pentagon, which has been planning for this since Obama’s 2012 “pivot to Asia,” which never got off the ground because the U.S. was bogged down in the Middle East. Senate Republicans, who have promised to grill Biden cabinet choices on their position on China, would quickly jump on board. So would the misleaders of labor, who have long pushed poisonous anti-China protectionism. The opportunist left, which falsely calls China capitalist and even imperialist (and hailed the U.S.-backed “democracy” riots in Hong Kong), would barely object. Public opinion is primed with war propaganda blaming China for COVID-19, although it contained the plague while the response of the capitalist West has been a deadly disaster. But Biden would be playing with fire.
In the face of this wall-to-wall anti-China front, the Internationalist Group and the League for the Fourth International call to defend China – a bureaucratically deformed workers state – against imperialist attacks and threats, and against the danger of internal counterrevolution.
Capitalist “Democracy” Is Bankrupt – For a Workers Government!
Marxists could clearly see yesterday’s fascist/racist mob attack coming. A year and a half ago, as campaigning for the 2020 election got underway, we warned, “The intensity of political clashes in the ruling class recalls the period leading up to the U.S. Civil War…. Today, the intensity of the political clashes in Washington and the provocations of violent racist and outright fascist groups raise the spectre of civil war. Certainly, sectors of Trump’s most rabid base yearn to avenge the defeat of the vile Confederacy. Yet there are fundamental differences from the U.S. of a century and a half ago” (“Dangerous Racist Provocations in Pre-Election Maneuvering,” The Internationalist No. 57, September-October 2019). “The frenzy of bigotry from the highest levels of government underlines again the connection between anti-black racism and anti-immigrant racism,” we wrote, underscoring that “Would-be leftists who sow illusions in Democratic ‘resistance’ can only help disarm real struggle against racist reaction.”
There have been a lot of comparisons between the present crisis and what followed the presidential elections of 1876. Yesterday, the New York Times (6 January) ran an article with the headline, “You Think This Is Chaos? The Election of 1876 Was Worse.” That contested election led to the rotten “Compromise of 1877” which gave the presidency to the Republican in exchange for abandoning Reconstruction and pulling U.S. troops out of the occupied former Confederacy. That signal betrayal of the former slaves, on top of the failure to expropriate the slaveowners’ lands after the abolition of slavery, led to the rise of the KKK terrorists and then the Jim Crow segregation that institutionalized white supremacy and black subjugation in the South for another 90 years. Those are the “good old days” that the mob of fascist-led racists who stormed the U.S. Capitol yearn for. African Americans and all working people are still paying the price for the failure to rip out the slave system by the roots following the Civil War.
Today the legacy of slavery is still with us, particularly in the racist death penalty, mass incarceration and wanton police murder of black people. It is also enshrined in the institutions of what pious liberals and labor officials praise as “our democracy.” Among the most flagrant examples are the Electoral College and the Senate, along with the Supreme Court. (See “Slavery and the Constitution,” Revolution No. 17, August 2020.) Even consistent bourgeois democracy (“one person, one vote”) would demand the abolition of these reactionary bodies. Yet capitalist “democracy” is so corroded and hollowed-out by the gangrenous rot of capitalist society that the only real defense of democratic rights for the masses lies in the fight for the proletarian democracy of a workers government. This would not be based on the cynical charades of the puppets of capital – whose campaigns depend on billions from Wall Street (over $500 million in the Georgia runoffs) – but on workers councils chosen directly by the working people.
Labor bureaucrats or reformist leftists may call to “fight the far right” in the name of “defense of democracy.” Against fascist and racist marauders, and against the constant murderous violence of the bourgeois state, Marxists are the most intransigent defenders of democratic rights. In fact, all the democratic liberties of the mass of the population were won by bitter struggle against the ruling class. But to defend those rights, it is crucial to state clearly that this is not “our democracy.” The owners of wealth, of land, of the means of production, transport and communications can sweep away all constitutions and legal guarantees if they decide their interests demand it – as has happened so many times in history, from Italy (Mussolini’s fascists) and Germany (Hitler’s Nazis) to Chile (Pinochet’s military junta) and elsewhere. In fact, bourgeois democracy is a cloak for the dictatorship of the exploiting class against all the workers and oppressed.
In the lead-up to the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, V.I. Lenin stressed, citing Friedrich Engels, that the core of the capitalist state consists of “special bodies of armed men” protecting the power and property of the ruling class. It cannot be reformed away or pressured into becoming an instrument of “the people” – mass struggle by the workers and oppressed, culminating in socialist revolution, must sweep it away to make way for a workers government, the proletarian democracy of workers councils (soviets). Right-wingers ludicrously condemn the Democrats – the oldest capitalist party in the world – as “socialists” and even “communists.” To defend the lives, most basic interests and hard-won rights of the workers and oppressed requires above all a struggle to forge a revolutionary workers party based on the genuine communist program of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky, the program of international socialist revolution. In these times of a deadly coronavirus pandemic, racist attacks by the repressive apparatus of the capitalist state and its fascist auxiliaries, and another capitalist depression, forging that party is key to winning a real future for workers and youth, here and around the world. ■

1. One of the rioters was shot and killed as they sought to break into the House chambers. A Capitol police officer has reportedly died of injuries.
   
2. Louis Napoléon was the nephew of Napoléon Bonaparte, who proclaimed himself emperor in 1804 after putting an end to the ten years of turmoil following the French Revolution of 1789 with his Coup of 18 Brumaire (9 November 1799, according to the French revolutionary calendar). Karl Marx, in his famous pamphlet, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852), described the lesser Napoléon’s ragtag crew (the Society of December 10) as made up of “vagabonds, cashiered soldiers, ex-convicts, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, idle riffraff, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, pimps, brothel keepers, porters, literati, organ grinders, ragpickers, knife grinders, tinkers, beggars.” This lumpenproletariat, or proletariat in rags, Marx wrote, was called upon “to play the part of the people” in Louis Napoléon’s various schemes.
   

http://www.internationalist.org/capitalist-democracy-falling-apart-2101.html

This story was first published in The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer (https://mideastsoccer.blogspot.com/2020/11/subtly-china-pressures-gulf-states-to.html)
By James M. Dorsey and Alessandro Arduino
Public debates about China’s Middle East policy are as much internal Chinese discussions as they are indications of where Beijing’s thinking is going and efforts to nudge countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to accommodate potential policy changes.
Relying on scholars rather than officials, China is signalling to Gulf states adjustments they would have to make to enable China to become more engaged in regional security and geopolitics.
The subtext in the scholars’ writings and statements is that a failure to reduce tension, particularly with Iran, could persuade China to either reduce its economic involvement in the Middle East or focus on relations with non-Arab states, two of which are arch-rivals of Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
At the bottom line, China’s subtle hints at what it would like Gulf states to do is in line with a Russian proposal that calls for a non-aggression agreement with Iran and possibly Turkey that would significantly reduce the risk of disputes spinning out of control and allow China to expand its engagement beyond economics.
In the latest blast, Chinese Middle East scholar Fan Hongda suggested that China rather than “overestimating” the importance of Arab states should pay more attention to the Middle East’s non-Arab powers, Turkey, Israel, and particularly Iran.
"Given Iran's expressed willingness to strengthen bilateral relations (with Beijing), China needs to respond more actively," Mr. Fan said in an op-ed published by Lianhe Zaobao, a Chinese language newspaper in Singapore.
Driving the point home, Mr. Fan argued in two articles in Hamshahri, a popular Iranian newspaper published by the municipality of Tehran, that China should forge closer ties to Iran irrespective of US policy or potential Arab opposition. “These overcautious concerns have no advantage whatsoever for the 'second most powerful country in the world,” Mr. Fan said referring to China.
The timing of Mr. Fan’s article will not have been lost on Gulf leaders. It comes on the back of the publication in Iran of a draft 25-year multi-billion dollar Chinese-Iranian agreement on economic and military cooperation. The draft sparked intense speculation about Chinese Middle East policy and how realistic an agreement was.
To capitalize on the speculation, Iran substantially increased the number of companies populating its pavilion at this month’s China International Expo (CIIE) in Shanghai.
Mr Fan’s article was further published as US President-elect Joe Biden prepares to take office in January with the stated intention to break with Donald J. Trump’s harsh ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions policy and return the United States to the 2015 international agreement that curbed Iran’s nuclear program. Mr. Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018.
China’s suggestion that it has alternatives in the Middle East puts pressure on countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE as they try to come to grips with a Biden administration that is likely to put greater emphasis on human rights and take a more critical view towards Gulf involvement in wars in Yemen and Libya.
Similarly, the suggestion anticipated a Biden administration effort to rejigger, if not reduce, the United States’ security commitment to the Middle East and possibly entertain a more multilateral regional architecture.
Mr. Fan’s proposal follows an article by prominent Chinese scholars Sun Degang and Wu Sike arguing that the Middle East was a “key region in big power diplomacy with Chinese characteristics in a new era.”
Messrs. Sun and Wu indicated that Chinese characteristics would involve “seeking common ground while reserving differences,” a formula that implies conflict management rather than conflict resolution.
The scholars said Chinese engagement in Middle Eastern security would seek to build an inclusive and shared regional collective security mechanism based on fairness, justice, multilateralism, comprehensive governance, and the containment of differences.
Earlier, Niu Xinchun, director of Middle East studies at China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), widely viewed as one of China’s most influential think tanks, adopted a different tone to drive the same message home: China’s interest in the Middle East was waning. To avoid losing China, Gulf states need to create a degree of stability.
“For China, the Middle East is always on the very distant backburner of China’s strategic global strategies … Covid-19, combined with the oil price crisis, will dramatically change the Middle East. (This) will change China’s investment model in the Middle East,” Mr. Niu said.
With few exceptions, Gulf states and media have largely remained silent about Chinese voices that reflect thinking in Beijing that calls into question China’s relations with key Arab states.
No doubt, Gulf states believe that China’s dependence on Middle Eastern energy and their significance to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) makes them all but indispensable.
The BRI is Chinese President’s Xi Jinping’s energy, infrastructure, and telecommunications-driven Eurasia-wide signature foreign policy initiative.
While the Gulf states may not be wrong, they remain vulnerable in an environment in which shifts in US policy force them to hedge their bets and be more attentive to the positions of China in an increasingly multi-polar world.
Said Mordechai Chaziza, an expert on China-Middle East relations: “Beijing has indeed become more concerned about the stability of Middle Eastern regimes. Its growing regional interests combined with its BRI ambitions underscore that Middle East stability, particularly in the Persian Gulf, is now a matter of strategic concern for China.”
Dr. James M. Dorsey is an award-winning journalist and a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute.
Dr. Alessandro Arduino is principal research fellow at the Middle East Institute of the National University of Singapore.

Welcome to Lost in the Sauce, keeping you caught up on political and legal news that often gets buried in distractions and theater… or a global health crisis.
TOMORROW: I’m going to post a keep_track look at issues involved in police brutality, prosecution of cops, protests, etc.
Housekeeping:

• HOW TO SUPPORT: I know we are all facing unprecedented financial hardships right now. If you are in the position to support my work, I have a patreon, venmo, and a paypal set up. No pressure though, I will keep posting these pieces no matter what.
  
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Russia

Trump announced Saturday he is postponing the annual G7 summit, which was due to be hosted in the U.S. in June, until September — and plans to invite four additional non-member nations including Russia. Boris Johnson responded by saying that he will veto any push by Trump to readmit Russia to the G7 gathering.
The U.S. National Security Agency says the same Russian military hacking group that interfered in the 2016 presidential election has been exploiting a major email server program since last August or earlier. The NSA might have issued an advisory to publicize the IP addresses and a domain name used by the Russian military group, known as Sandworm, in its hacking campaign — in hopes of thwarting their use for other means.
A Russian oligarch is reportedly backing an effort to smear Biden and states he is working with the Trump administration to leak additional damaging material… The oligarch, Oleksandr Onyshchenko, gave tapes of Biden on a phone call with then Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to pro-Russia Ukrainian politician Andriy Derkach, who then leaked the tapes. The audio consisted of edited fragments of phone conversations from years ago when Biden joined other leaders in pressing for the ouster of Ukraine’s corrupt prosecutor general.

• Derkach met with Rudy Giuliani last year. Onyshchenko worked with another Giuliani associate, Pavel Fuchs (also a co-developer of Trump’s Moscow Tower), to launder hundreds of millions in frozen Yanukovych assets bought from a Russian tycoon. Now, this same group of oligarchs tied to Trump and Giuliani are leaking tapes of unknown provenance to try to undermine a US political campaign.
  
• Pro-Trump One America News Network wanted Onyshchenko to come to the US to help with Rudy's disinformation campaign. OAN tried to help him get a visa to travel to the U.S.
  

Giuliani is also trying to raise $10 million to finance the production of a Biden-Ukraine documentary that can be released this year. Giuliani and his partners have considered the possibility of drawing in investors from overseas, raising the possibility that Giuliani is (again) attempting to orchestrate foreign involvement in the current presidential election.

Flynn-Kislyak transcripts

Last week, the DNI office released the transcripts of the December 2016 calls between former national security adviser Michael Flynn and then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak… The transcripts confirm that Flynn lied to the FBI when he claimed that he had not discussed the sanctions imposed on Russia by the Obama administration in response to Vladimir Putin’s attack on the 2016 election.
The transcripts show Flynn encouraged the Russians to not retaliate severely, suggesting that when Trump took office things between Moscow and Washington could be smoothed over… At no point does Flynn castigate Kislyak for Russia’s intervention in the 2016 election. As the Obama administration was trying to impose a punishment on Putin for that attack, Flynn, on behalf of the Trump gang, was sending an utterly different message: We don’t care about that.

• In fact, Flynn was signaling to Putin that once Trump took office, Trump wouldn’t be pursuing the matter and, instead, would be reaching out to Russia as a partner. (A few months later, Trump, in the Oval Office, would tell Kislyak that directly.)

Kisylak argued that the Obama administration sanctions were aimed at damaging the incoming Trump administration just as much as they were the Kremlin… “I just wanted to tell you that we found that these actions have targeted not only against Russia, but also against the president elect,” said Kislyak, adding that he hopes “within two weeks we will be able to start working in [a] more constructive way.
Tidbit: Mueller’s team asked Trump a series of questions about Flynn's calls with Kislyak; the president simply ignored them.
Tidbit: Flynn told Kislyak in December 2016 that "the boss" (Trump) was aware of Russia's request to have a secure teleconference between Trump and Putin.

Personnel issues

The FBI's top lawyer Dana Boente was asked to resign on Friday following criticism by Fox News for his role in the investigation of Flynn… Two sources familiar with the decision to dismiss Boente said it came from high levels of the Justice Department rather than directly from FBI Director Christopher Wray.

• Before he moved to the FBI General Counsel job, Boente was the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia—the last US Attorney appointed by President Obama to leave office during the Trump era.

Trump’s given reason for firing the State Dept. Inspector General last month was proven to be a false pretense… Trump claimed he was fired for leaking to the media when, in fact, IG Steve Linick was cleared earlier this year by an independent investigation. Pompeo recommended Linick’s removal at a time when the office was investigating multiple instances of abuse of power by the Secretary of State.
Members of three House and Senate committees will interview former State Department Inspector General Steve Linick on Wednesday, as part of an investigation into his abrupt firing. Linick will speak to members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the House Oversight and Reform Committee, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee behind closed-doors.

• The committees also plan to call Brian Bulatao, undersecretary of State for management; Lisa Kenna, Pompeo's executive secretary; senior adviser Toni Porter; Assistant Secretary for Political-Military Affairs R. Clarke Cooper; former Deputy Assistant Secretary Marik String, a legal adviser to the department; Deputy Assistant Secretary of Political-Military Affairs Mike Miller; and former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs Charles Faulkner.

Mike Pompeo's CIA advisory board rankled agency veterans… As CIA director, Pompeo and his wife Susan organized an undisclosed board of outside advisers while he was director of CIA that some at the agency viewed as inappropriately weighted toward wealthy individuals and well-connected political figures.
Op-Ed: Mike Pompeo Is the Worst Secretary of State Ever. The F.B.I. said a Saudi Air Force trainee who killed three U.S. sailors and wounded eight others at a Navy air base in Pensacola, Fla., on Dec. 6 was an act of foreign-planned “terrorism.” ...That sort of intelligence failure — the first foreign-planned terrorist attack on U.S. shores since 9/11 — is something you’d expect Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to be particularly upset about… He just smirks and marches on. But every American should care. The morale and effectiveness of our State Department — and our standing in the world — are both the worse for him.
Last week we learned that the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general exaggerated his credentials… Joseph Cuffari’s official government bio claims “Dr. Cuffari earned a Ph.D. in philosophy,” but new reporting revealed that his degree is from an unaccredited “diploma mill” that required no classroom instruction and issued degrees for low flat fees. Additionally, the Ph.D. is in management, not philosophy.

Congress

Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday about the origins of the Russia probe. "Mr. Rosenstein will testify about the new revelations contained in the Horowitz report concerning the FISA warrant applications and other matters," Chairman Lindsey Graham said in a statement. "This will be the first in a series of oversight hearings regarding all things Crossfire Hurricane and the Mueller investigation."

• Reminder: After Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein begged for his job, reportedly trying to assure President Trump that he was on his team. “I give the investigation credibility,” Rosenstein[said on a call with Trump. “I can land the plane.”

Top Republicans are suing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over new proxy voting plans that will allow some members of the House to vote from home amid the coronavirus pandemic. The decision to allow proxy voting was approved by the House earlier this month, largely along party lines, and is only temporary.
House Republican introduces bill to hold up members' pay if they vote by proxy… Rep. Ted Budd (R-N.C.), who is leading the effort, said: “Outsourcing the duty of a member of Congress is unconstitutional and wrong. House members should not be allowed to send someone else to do their jobs for them.”
Last week, Trump unexpectedly withdrew his support from a FISA reauthorization bill, leading Republicans to abandon the proposal and the House to pull a vote on the legislation. However, as Rep. Justin Amash pointed out, in 2018 Trump himself signed into law the long-contentious spying authority he recently began railing against.

Judicial news

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham urges senior judges to step aside before the November election so Republicans can fill vacancies… Graham said:

“This is a historic opportunity. We’ve put over 200 federal judges on the bench. … If you can get four more years, I mean, it would change the judiciary for several generations. So if you’re a circuit judge in your mid-60s, late 60s, you can take senior status, now would be a good time to do that, if you want to make sure the judiciary is right of center…”

• Op-Ed: Should Trump lose, you can bet that the day after, McConnell will be on the phone to the White House Counsel’s Office demanding that they nominate someone for every vacant seat, ASAP. It won’t matter who — somebody’s neighbor, somebody’s nephew (there isn’t even a requirement that judges be lawyers) — so long as they’re committed conservatives, and as young as possible so they can serve for decades

Democratic lawmakers are scrutinizing one of President Donald Trump’s outside advisors and his multimillion-dollar “dark money” network for rigging the judicial nomination process… The Senate Democrats’ report details how an interlocked group of anonymous donors has been directing the judicial nominations process through media and lobbying campaigns. Leading this effort is allegedly Leonard Leo and his conservative organization, the Federalist Society.
The Supreme Court late Friday rejected a California church’s challenge of the state’s new pandemic-related rules on worship services, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joining the court’s liberals in the 5-to-4 vote… Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s dissent falsely accused the state of religious discrimination in an extremely misleading opinion that omits the most important facts of the case. Roberts went out of his way to scold Kavanaugh’s dishonest vilification of the state.

Immigration

DOJ memo offered to buy out immigration board members… The buyouts were only offered to Board of Immigration Appeals members hired before Trump took office. Critics view the move as an effort to push out the civil servants on the board and stack it with new hires who would align with the Trump administration’s restrictive immigration agenda.
An immigrant woman sued a private prison company on Wednesday alleging she was raped inside an ICE detention center in Texas that resulted in her giving birth to her attacker's daughter. The woman, identified in the complaint as Jane Doe, was detained at the Houston Processing Center, operated by CoreCivic.
The Trump administration is accelerating efforts to seize private property for Trump’s border wall, taking advantage of the coronavirus pandemic to survey land while its owners are confined indoors. However, landowners are largely fighting the effort in court. Since December, the administration has obtained only seven miles of land.
Family separation returns under cover of the coronavirus… Citing the coronavirus to seal the border, the Trump administration is engaged in a pressure campaign against immigrant parents to get them to give up either their kids or their legal claims to protection in the U.S.

Trump corruption

Trump Tower’s 2010 Profits Magically Grew By $3 Million In New Loan Filings. One set of reports listed the tower’s 2010 profits as $13.3 million; a second put them at $16.1 million. That helped the Trump Organization borrow $73 million more than it had before.

Last year, ProPublica revealed another set of income discrepancies at Trump Tower and other company-owned buildings, ones that seemed to hark to the testimony of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who testified that Trump would inflate income figures when seeking a loan and deflate the figures when filing taxes. Other Trump Organization properties investigated by ProPublica reported higher profits in the CMBS filings than they did in tax filings. A Trump Organization spokesperson said at the time that “comparing the various reports is comparing apples to oranges” because reporting requirements differ.

Trump Towers Istanbul partner lobbied the president and White House cabinet to sizably boost trade with Turkey in response to the novel coronavirus. Asked whether the president performed favors for a business associate, a senior White House official emphasized the longstanding trade relationship with Turkey, a NATO ally.
Lawmakers urge Trump to cancel DC's July 4 event… "Given the current COVID-19 crisis, we believe such an event would needlessly risk the health and safety of thousands of Americans," the lawmakers wrote. "Further, this event would come at the cost of millions of taxpayer dollars while we are facing an unprecedented economic downturn due to the pandemic," they added.
The Republican National Committee held its winter meeting in January at Trump’s struggling Doral golf resort, giving Trump more than half a million dollars from the RNC and 13 state GOP committees. The state Republican party committees of West Virginia, Texas, Connecticut, Minnesota, Iowa, North Carolina, Alabama, Colorado, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, Georgia, and Wyoming all contributed to the massive tab.
Trump’s Spent Nearly $20 Million on Lawyers to Carry Out His Political Vendettas… A large part of recent spending is aimed at curbing mail-in voting.

Hi helsaabiart, you're not shadowbanned, but 101 of your most recent 200 comments/submissions were removed (either automatically or by human moderators).

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g7f12yw in lebanon on 02 Oct 20 (2pts):

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g7f03x5 in lebanon on 02 Oct 20 (3pts):

Animal Planet - Veterinary Hospital 71 860 974
https://www.facebook.com/DrGhauch/ Vet Plus 70 140...

g7exusv in lebanon on 02 Oct 20 (3pts):

then take kitty to send to the vet is check to kitty's body.

g7ehndj in lebanon on 02 Oct 20 (2pts):

Thanks. :)

g7ebn2i in lebanon on 02 Oct 20 (2pts):

Yep, it's someone thought my old username as a bot.

g7e922g in lebanon on 02 Oct 20 (2pts):

lol, me too I watching crunchyroll on my crappy laptop. :3 I'm looking forward new Fall of anime 2020. When they're think I'm bot act like cyborg or robot. XD

g7e7gle in lebanon on 02 Oct 20 (2pts):

heh, Thanks -w- to be honest ,it's my silly addiction to reddit. I tried to my best to better my art but my crappy laptop is always black screen "no bootage device" and blue screen. so I tried to...

g7e6p0s in lebanon on 02 Oct 20 (2pts):

Caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab chaired on Friday a meeting of the school textbooks support committee, in the presence of Ministers Raoul Nehme, Imad Hoballah, Tarek Majzoub and Hamad Hassan,...

g7e6lcy in lebanon on 02 Oct 20 (2pts):

Well, you see my name on helsaabi. I cannot tell you my real name. because it was anonymous username.

g7e5o4b in lebanon on 02 Oct 20 (3pts):

Lebanese.

g7e11ds in lebanon on 02 Oct 20 (1pts):

Well,it's reason my username syriancivilwar6 is been banned by syraincivilwar. it's no longer post on syriancivilwar. Of course, I spam like 4 or 5 times on syriancivlwar.

g7e0v2h in lebanon on 02 Oct 20 (1pts):

Yes, it's my username syriancivilwar is related on syriancivilwar.

g7e039r in lebanon on 02 Oct 20 (8pts):

Yes. :)

g7dxrzw in lebanon on 02 Oct 20 (10pts):

The National News Agency reported the death of Lebanese journalist Salah Al-Asmar after being infected with the coronavirus.
The late journalist graduated from the Faculty of Information at the...

g7dxpqn in lebanon on 02 Oct 20 (8pts):

Journalists covering the hostilities between Azerbaijan and Armenia, including the LBCI team consisting of two colleagues Edmond Sassine and Paul Bou Aoun, were shelled by Azeri forces in the...

g7dxm1s in lebanon on 02 Oct 20 (1pts):

The Information Office of the Presidency of the Republic issued Thursday a statement in which it announced that President Michel Aoun welcomed the announcement by US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo...

g7dxl44 in lebanon on 02 Oct 20 (1pts):

Member of “Loyalty to Resistance” parliamentary bloc, MP Ibrahim Al-Moussawi, told on Thursday Al-Manar TV that the amnesty law does not include the takfiri militants involved in terror attacks on...

g7dxiyz in lebanon on 02 Oct 20 (3pts):

BEIRUT: Lebanon has asked Interpol to issue arrest warrants for the Russian captain and owner of the ship that brought the explosive material that detonated at Beirut port in August, killing nearly...

g7dxh4w in lebanon on 02 Oct 20 (2pts):

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Interior Ministry Friday announced a weeklong lockdown of 111 towns and villages across the country due to a high number of coronavirus infections.
Several localities in Akkar,...

g7ble5o in shia on 01 Oct 20 (1pts):

either.

g7bj0d5 in lebanon on 01 Oct 20 (4pts):

and turkey sea dispute.

g7bhjli in lebanon on 01 Oct 20 (1pts):

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/622/754/871.jpg

g7b2hv8 in lebanon on 01 Oct 20 (1pts):

Oil? you mean talking about oil olive?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyONPbUmZjQ&list=PLpBmPyeRmQKssozcUGYRun-RgmkIHusMy&index=4

g7azyol in Lebanese on 01 Oct 20 (1pts):

Member of “Loyalty to Resistance” parliamentary bloc, MP Ibrahim Al-Moussawi, told on Thursday Al-Manar TV that the amnesty law does not include the takfiri militants involved in terror attacks on...

g7ayr9l in lebanon on 01 Oct 20 (5pts):

here crappy juice about 5,500 lire.

g7ax2j8 in lebanon on 01 Oct 20 (1pts):

That it! I will post it tomorrow. Good night! https://i.redd.it/qxdhzfpao8y11.jpg

g7asutm in lebanon on 01 Oct 20 (5pts):

The three leading Armenian political parties in Lebanon on Thursday vehemently condemned Turkey's participation in the ongoing war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
The Tashnag, Hunchag, and Ramgvar, held a...

g7assfr in lebanon on 01 Oct 20 (1pts):

The following is a statement delivered on Thursday by US Secretary of State, Micheal R. Pompeo, on the Framework Agreement for Israel-Lebanon Maritime Discussions:
"The United States welcomes the...

g7aslxc in lebanon on 01 Oct 20 (3pts):

House Speaker, Nabih Berri, on Thursday expressed hope in a press conference that Blocks 8 and 9 could be a way for Lebanon to pay its debts “if maritime border demarcation with Israel proves to be...

g79u42t in lebanon on 01 Oct 20 (1pts):

Mufti of the Lebanese Republic, Sheikh Abdul Latif Derian welcomed Thursday at Dar el-Fatwa, the Sheikh Akl of the Druze community, Sheikh Naïm Hassan, who called on all political components to make...

g79u1bs in lebanon on 01 Oct 20 (1pts):

Chinese Ambassador to Lebanon, Wang Kejian, addressed the Lebanese and Chinese residing in Lebanon on the occasion of the 71st anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China and the...

g79tt6p in lebanon on 01 Oct 20 (1pts):

BEIRUT: The Italian Embassy in Lebanon Thursday stopped allowing those using its consular services in the country to pay in the local currency.
“The Embassy of Italy in Lebanon informs that from...

g79tr8g in lebanon on 01 Oct 20 (1pts):

BEIRUT: Caretaker Health Minister Hamad Hasan tried to reassure anxious Lebanese Thursday that the price of hospital fees and medicines would not increase, as the head of the Private Hospitals...

g78jimt in lebanon on 01 Oct 20 (1pts):

I would love to Kojima return to work Metal solid gear 6

g76uvyt in lebanon on 30 Sep 20 (10pts):

That it! tomorrow I will post it. good night...

g76uqnz in lebanon on 30 Sep 20 (5pts):

The ministry of Health announced on Wednesday that 1257 Coronavirus cases were registered in Lebanon during the past 24 hours.
The ministry added that 6 new Coronavirus deaths were also registered...

g76gxt6 in Lebanese on 30 Sep 20 (9pts):

I bet Trump still believes Netanyahu.

g763uyh in lebanon on 30 Sep 20 (1pts):

The European Union issued the following statement on Wednesday:
Through the EU Regional Trust Fund in Response to the Syrian Crisis, the Madad Fund, the European Union is working in partnership...

g763rmo in lebanon on 30 Sep 20 (5pts):

Thousands of fish died on Saint Simon beach in Jnah on Wednesday, in a scene that requires the urgent intervention of the Agriculture Ministry to protect fishermen and fisheries in Lebanon.
Watch...

g763mci in lebanon on 30 Sep 20 (1pts):

Social media platforms circulated on Wednesday videos showing inmates inside the Roumieh prison threatening to hang themselves in a bid to approve the general amnesty draft law.