How to counter right-wing speeches

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Is the effects of the Great Re­ are making every effort to ensure that the working class bears the brunt of the economic crunch. In this atmosphere, elements of the extreme right feel emboldened to promote their reactionary wares.

From the increasing visibility of right-wing websites like breitbart. com, to well-publicized speaking tours by conservative ideologues like Milo Yiannopoulos and others, to former Breitbart editor Steve Bannon’s attaining the status of presidential advisor, the message from the top is clear: racism, sex­ ism, and xenophobia will all be used to divide and oppress the 99%. Meanwhile, these same poi­ sonous sentiments are used to divert attention from those actu­ ally responsible for and benefiting from the current crisis.

It’s natural for any compassionate, thinking person to be angry at the notion of a Yiannopoulos, Bannon, Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, Coulter, O’Reilly, or Trump being given a prominent platform to promote their reactionary ideology. The question is: what should we do about it? What’s the best way to counter rightwing propaganda?

How can we most effectively shift the narrative from the phony answers offered by the right to the genuine solutions championed by the revolutionary left? How can we best ensure that the right-wing talk doesn’t become right-wing action? And critically, how can we best harness the power of the 99%—the working-class majority—in this ideological, social, and eco­ nomic battle?

Pyrrhic victories On Jan. 20, Milo Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak before a sellout crowd of 700 at the University of Washington in Seattle. Outside, protesters gath­ ered. Some in the crowd began throwing bricks, fire­ works, paint, and other objects. One protester was shot by a Trump/ Yiannopoulos supporter. Despite the disturbance, Yiannopoulos was able to complete his talk.

On Feb. 1, Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak at the University of California, Berkeley. Some among the 1500 protesters at the event threw rocks through campus windows, causing a generator to catch fire. The police responded with rubber bullets and locked down the campus. The event was cancelled before Yiannopoulos could speak. Afterwards, some protest­ ers smashed commercial storefront windows and car windshields. Later, Yiannopoulos was quoted as say­ ing that “the left” was “terrified of free speech and will do literally anything to shut it down.”

On April 15, protesters clashed with participants at a pro-Trump rally at a park in Berkeley. Fireworks, bot­ tles, trashcans, and traffic cones were thrown. Eleven people were injured; seven were taken to the hospital. Police used pepper spray on the crowd. In the after­ math of these events, dozens of mainstream as well as right-wing outlets rushed to proclaim: “Berkeley riot lays bare liberal hypocrisy on free speech” and “The hypocrisy of ‘love trumps hate’ liberals.” Who’s responsible for violence?

The narrative that grew out of these events was a gift to the right and corporate elites, making it easier for the powers that be to turn reality on its head.

It’s a fact that our society is characterized by ram­ pant inequality, where wealth and power reside in the hands of a tiny minority. But such an imbalance is unnatural and can only be sustained by the use of (continued from page 6: “Big farms produce big flu epidemics”)

enclosures and all the stuff that he described for early capitalist agriculture in England—you can see it be­ ing played out in Guinea.

And so, the state company starts to violate the com­ mons, enclose it, consolidate, select for a particular type of industrial hybrid palm oil, and clear the land so you can start producing at scale.

Our hypothesis was that this had an effect on the ecology. If a bunch of host species in the forest die out, then their pathogens die with them. But some force. No privileged minority can maintain its rule over the majority without resorting to repression and violence.

It is the 1% and defenders of minority rule who are responsible for violence and exploitation today. The war, racism, sexism, mass incarceration, police bru­ tality, austerity, destruction of the environment, and attacks on civil liberties that are so characteristic of modern capitalism benefit only those at the top.

Of course working people—the majority—have ev­ ery right to defend ourselves from those who would use force to exploit us. But in the process, we should not carelessly hand propaganda victories to our en­ emy, muddying the waters as to who are the real per­ petrators of violence.

Free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of as­ sembly, and other civil liberties are vital, hard-fought gains for working people. Each of these rights is con­ stantly under attack, although to date none have been decisively reversed.

It is easier for us to fight against the rule of the 1% with the tools of civil liberties in our arsenal. If we were forced to fight for fundamental change against an overt dictatorship—if we were compelled to func­ tion as an illegal, underground movement—our task would be immensely more difficult.

When we consider some of the basic civil liberties that are not guaranteed to Americans today—the right to health care and family leave, the right to edu­ cation, the right to form unions, the right to a job, the right to democratically control our workplaces and our economy—it’s easy to see how the lack of these rights hinders our ability to fight back.

By contrast, those in power today do not rely on civil liberties to maintain their rule. In fact, they readily flout the law when it suits them, and they steadfastly defend their perks and privleges whether or not they are strictly legal.

Thus, civil liberties are more important to the work­ ing majority than the ruling elites. When democratic rights are attacked, it is always the working class and progressive movements for social change that bear the brunt and suffer the most. This is one more reason to guard against giving the authorities any excuse for restricting our rights.

Two sides of the same coin Liberal reformers have no faith in the ability of the working class to organize and change society. They erroneously believe that meaningful change can come through appealing to the better nature of the ruling elites. This is why they focus their efforts and energy on pleading with “friendly officials” to grant incre­ mental reforms.

of those [host] species are going to prosper. You have some bat species, bird species, and monkeys that are quite adaptable and can prosper and do quite well in this new agro-forestry. Some bat species, which are documented Ebola carriers, are attracted to the palm oil, and that increases the interface between humans and bats....

Pathogens and their outbreaks are a mirror, a reflec­ tion of our mode of civilization. And the ones that win out are telling us something about ourselves. The bi­ ology of the pathogen matters because it is figuring out something about the nature of our social organi­ (Left) Picketers in Costa Mesa, Calif., at 2015 book-signing by right-wing author Ann Coulter.

Many frustrated radicals and ultra-left activists make a similar mistake. They too have given up on organizing masses of people.

Instead, they substitute their own sensational, often violent confron­ tations for the mobilization of the 99% as a whole. Like liberals, ul­ tra-left radicals hope to shock and shame the corporate establish­ ment into seeing the light.

But an effective movement is not one that is overly concerned with changing the minds of those at the top; it is one that reaches out to those at the bottom. The powers that be cannot be moved by moral or logical arguments because their rule is not based on morality or logic. It is based on economic and political power. For this reason, the aim of our actions must be to har­ ness the countervailing power of millions of working people, and in so doing force those at the top to change course against their will. With this clearly in mind, tactics can be chosen which will bring the maximum number of people into action. A winning strategy It is counterproductive to seek to prevent right-wing ideologues from speaking. In the first place, it is not their speech that is dangerous, but their policies and actions. In the second place, all of the right-wing talk­ ing points can easily be debunked by suitable argu­ ments from the left. Thirdly, history has shown that any restriction of free speech or other democratic rights redounds most severely on the organizations and movements of the left.

However, right-wing propaganda does present a real threat that needs to be answered. What’s needed is a response that strengthens our hand, undermines the opposition, makes clear who’s responsible for sys­ temic violence, and demonstrates which side has the majority.

The strategy that fits the bill is counter-mobilization. Here’s how it works: When a right-wing speaker is invited to campus, student and community groups should unite in demanding that an opposing speaker representing a more radical left view be invited as well. Preferably, the event is turned into a debate.

Wherever a right-wing racist, misogynist, or xeno­ phobic speaker is given a platform, mass protests and pickets should be organized outside. The point is not to prevent people from attending or to prevent the speaker from being heard, but to ensure that the speaker’s viewpoint does not go unchallenged, and to visibly demonstrate which side has the majority.

When right-wingers move into action, the left should build a bigger, broader counter-action. Rightwing marches and pickets should be met with larg­ er, broader counter-marches and counter-pickets. There’s no need to prevent the right-wingers from marching. Rather, the aim is to dwarf the impact of the right’s action with a suitable, massive counter-action.

Of course, in circumstances when the right resorts to outright violence, the labor movement and its allies must conduct a defense. Organizers are duty bound to prepare in advance to defend our counter-mobili­ zations against possible attack by reactionary forces.

Yes, right-wing speakers must be challenged. But this is best achieved in a way that brings the largest possible number of people into struggle against their policies. Counter-mobilizing does this while defend­ ing civil liberties, making it clear that it’s the ruling rich, their gendarmes, and their right-wing hangers-on who are responsible for initiating any violence. n zation and what it does. Our effects are profound and far and wide.

Every one of those pathogens—HIV, Ebola, and so on—going all the way back to the beginning of civili­ zation, are marginal at first, and then when we change something in the landscape or in our cultural practice, a new ecosystem niche opens up, and the pathogens take advantage of it—a nice convergence of biology and ecosystemic circumstance. Every new emergent pathogen, all the way back, can be explained that way...

(continued on page 11, in “News and views from SA Canada”)

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