Democrats push attacks on free speech, rights workers need
https://themilitant.com/2021/03/06/democrats-push-attacks-on-free-speech-rights-workers-need/
BY TERRY EVANS
Vol. 85/No. 10
March 15, 2021
Covers of Militant from Aug. 2, 1941, above, as well as of Minneapolis
Star Journal, above left, and Minneapolis Morning Tribune, left, both
from June 28, 1941. U.S. rulers use FBI, their political police, to
target and try to frame up vanguard workers. Special targets were
leaders of Socialist Workers Party, Minneapolis Teamsters union leading
labor opposition to Washington’s entry into second imperialist war.
Covers of Militant from Aug. 2, 1941, above, as well as of Minneapolis
Star Journal, above left, and Minneapolis Morning Tribune, left, both
from June 28, 1941. U.S. rulers use FBI, their political police, to
target and try to frame up vanguard workers. Special targets were
leaders of Socialist Workers Party, Minneapolis Teamsters union leading
labor opposition to Washington’s entry into second imperialist war.
Democrats are pressing forward with new attacks on free speech and
rights working people need. Their bludgeon is an all-points campaign
claiming the Jan. 6 disruption of Congress was nothing less than an
“insurrection,” carried out by some right-wing militia forces,
conspiracy theorists and a tiny minority of the thousands of supporters
of Donald Trump rallying in Washington that day.
The liberals’ offensive includes efforts to further unleash the
capitalist rulers’ political police, the FBI. It is dangerous for
working people who need free speech to defend ourselves from assaults on
our jobs, wages and working conditions by the bosses and their government.
Jan. 6 was “the most heinous attack on democratic processes that I’ve
ever seen,” Merrick Garland, Joseph Biden’s nominee for attorney
general, said during Senate confirmation hearings Feb. 22.
Garland said his number one priority as attorney general would be the
fight against “domestic terrorism.” FBI Director Christopher Wray said
he would vow to do the same.
“It was a planned insurrection, we know that now,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar
insisted Feb. 23.
The Justice Department has arrested and charged some 300 people in the
Jan. 6 intrusion, including with thought-control conspiracy charges.
Sedition and conspiracy laws make advocating ideas a crime, and have
long been used by the government and the FBI to try to frame up vanguard
workers, including leaders of the Socialist Workers Party.
Garland dismissed comparison of the Jan. 6 action with the provocative
attacks on federal buildings and stores carried out by antifa and some
Black Lives Matter leaders over many months in Portland, Oregon, and
elsewhere. Only Jan. 6 was “a core attack on our democratic
institutions,” Garland said. In fact both actions are dangerous for the
working class, opening the door to government attacks on political space
working people need.
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Markoyas chimed in, saying the
agency would widen its hunt for “domestic extremists,” including “white
supremacist, anti-government or anti-authority extremists.” Such people,
he added, must be prevented from using “the banner of the First
Amendment to disguise their attempts to incite.”
‘New York Times’ invents attack
Conspiracy laws are crucial to efforts like this, because there was a
paucity of real violent attacks Jan. 6. The liberal media has done its
best to remedy this, even if it had to promote a “narrative” that just
wasn’t true.
The New York Times ran an article Jan. 8 titled, “Capitol Police Officer
Dies from Injuries in Pro-Trump Rampage.” It claimed that Capitol Police
Officer Brian Sicknick was murdered when “he was struck with a fire
extinguisher.” In another article, the paper said, “With a bloody gash
in his head, Mr. Sicknick was rushed to the hospital and placed on life
support” and died. They attributed these “facts” to unnamed “law
enforcement officials.”
The Times continued to repeat this for weeks, as did other media. In
fact, the charge was incorporated into the Democrats’ bill of
impeachment against President Trump.
But none of it was true, a fact they knew long before they admitted it.
While the Times said Sicknick was on life support, his brother told
ProPublica, he “had texted Wednesday night [Jan. 6] to say that while he
had been pepper-sprayed, he was in good spirits.”
To this day no one knows why Sicknick collapsed and died.
The Times never printed a retraction. They quietly went back to the
early articles online and posted what the editors called an “update.”
In fact, every one of the five people who died Jan. 6 — Ashli Babbitt,
who was shot by cops, three who had medical emergencies, and Sicknick —
were supporters of Donald Trump.
Liberals push press censorship
Homeland Security chief Markoyas also says steps are urgently needed to
suppress “media disinformation and false narratives.”
The foundation for more censorship was advanced by Democrats at
congressional hearings Feb. 24, under the guise of eradicating
“misinformation that causes public harm,” code words for anything they
don’t agree with.
In his Times column March 2, Ross Douthat quotes “experts” who have
called for Biden to appoint a “reality czar” tasked with enforcing the
administration’s version of reality.
Bosses at Facebook, Twitter and other “social media” are on the
bandwagon, canceling accounts of those they deem questionable — on both
the right and in the workers’ movement.
The right wing of capitalist politics seizes on moves like this to claim
for themselves the mantle of defenders of free speech, while they push
their own course to defend capitalist rule.
The liberals drive to censor and attack the political rights of
Republicans and Trump for partisan advantage is rooted in a deeper fact.
They hold working people in contempt, and fear struggles to come against
the bosses’ attacks on us.
Millions of workers and farmers have been subjected to years of
worsening conditions and increasingly recognize that changing
administrations in Washington has done nothing to halt this. Until
workers break with the Democrats and Republicans and build our own
party, a labor party, millions will be attracted to capitalist
politicians like Trump who claim they will take steps to create jobs and
drain the political “swamp” in Washington.
Neither of the bosses’ parties offer any way to address what working
people confront.
“Socialist Workers Party candidates in 2021 champion struggles that
workers and our unions are organizing today for jobs, better wages and
conditions, and to defend the rights we need to decide and act on a
course forward,” Joanne Kuniansky, SWP candidate for governor of New
Jersey, told the Militant. “We use our campaigns to explain that only
through our own struggles can workers fight for what we need, not what
the bosses and their Democratic and Republican parties tell us is
‘possible.’”
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--
Charles Bukowski “For those who believe in God, most of the big
questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the
God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to
new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a
command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the
teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here
to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds
and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.” ―
Charles Bukowski