A Quick Opinion on the Current Situation in the United States.

I want to overview the many situations going on in the United States at this time. There is a lot to get to so lets jump right in.


The Oregon Situation;

   Essentially what happened is that a rancher was using public land to graze his livestock and when this was discovered the united states government told him he could not do such. So naturally conservative "market de-regulaters" answered the call to stand around in the snow carrying guns and fighting tyranny. From the beginning the militia started spouting empty rhetoric. They obviously do not live under tyranny as they're allowed to own the guns they're "fighting" with. These militia's first words to the media was that all public land should be opened to mining, logging and grazing. My first thought when I heard these people talking was; "which corporation is financially backing y'all." I think to most people, especially socialist, it should be obvious that there is no basis for a left wing support of this militia. I mean these are the same groups who supported Cliven Bundy who famously used one of his youtube pukefest to spew racist rhetoric about black people's living off the government while this man was literally doing the same thing by not paying his grazing fees. Even semi-fascist Glen Beck attacked these militia's saying that grazing on other people's land is not and should not be free. It is theft. The militia in Oregon want free land off the backs of hard working people's who pay taxes to preserve this land for nature. The militia's want to privatize the land and sell it to the highest bidder.

   Luckily the militia can not keep peace within its own ranks. It is also literally organized by people who lied about their military service (supported in link) and schizophrenic people who have fantasies about being killed by the feds (also supported in link). So it looks like there is little chance of this proto-focoism catching on. Not to mention their call for snacks has gotten them boxes of dildos (yes the sex toys) lube and even the Socialist Workers Party sent them news papers. I have literally met no one who supports these militia outright.

  As with any situation it get complicated when it comes to left. Some groups want the feds to smash the militia. Some want the militia to succeed to weaken the imperialist state. I can not support the militia in any way. But the militia is not relevant enough for supporting the government over the militia either at the beginning or currently. Right now they are just fascist light sitting in the frozen woods with about 100 (according to the militia) people. There is no reason to believe at this time that the militia is fighting for the proletarians and poor people's of this nation. The fact that Cliven Bundy is allowed to speak at these militia take overs tells us that they're perfectly accepting of the racial oppression upheld by our government and there is little to no reason to separate these entities. If anarchist and communist took over anything in this nation we would be crushed with violence at the first opportunities. If one Muslim took over a water pump in the middle of the woods the government would bomb the water pump and use it as an excuse to invade another country. Don't be confused brothers and sisters these militia and the government have little to no ideological differences. But the infighting should be encouraging to the left wing in this country. More on that later in the post. Neither side should be championed over the other as neither is fighting for the working class and poor masses. Both should be opposed and if they want to blow each other to pieces then so be it.  


The Election Candidates; 

   Donald Trump: One disturbing discussion I've heard/read about on the left is on if Donald Trump is a fascist or not. Of course we have the overly academia who claim he can not be a fascist because he does not fit the description given to us by Trotsky, ignoring the fact Trotsky holds no authority on the topic as he neither fought or ever organized against fascism successfully. So I will not be using his definition. Now if he even was a fascist I would accept his definition but Trotsky was not a fascist so he really has no right to claim he knows what it is or how to stop it. I will take the word of a actual fascist as to what fascism is. It is corporatism mixed with jingoist xenophobia militarism that uses authoritarianism and oppression of working class parties to stay in power.

   There is no reason to watch Trumps campaign and not see the connections between his ideas and that of fascist. To be clear here Donald Trump is a fascist and would want to implement fascism as soon as he could. Hitler didn't run on the campaign of putting people in ovens. Slowly over time he made laws and slowly changed his rhetoric to these policies but that was not his rhetoric at the time he rose to power. He talked of making Germany powerful and great again. Sound familiar? Yes? Because that is the rhetoric that is coming from Trump at this time. He talked of deporting peoples, he talked of races of people causing the ills of his society. Was sexist, racist and very pro-capitalist/imperialist. I think it is sad to see the left deny what could end us up in camps.

   Hilary Clinton: I think this is obvious. Not even liberals are very supportive of Hilary at this time. Why would they be? Most people's in the states are sick of the Bush/Clinton dynasty. That is why this section will be short. Feminist see her as weak, liberals are scared of her conservative past. She was against gay rights up until it was a sure election loser to oppose gay rights, so that is another demographic she loses in the elections. She has no strong history on immigration rights. She has supported imperialism every step she could. All of those previous points then add the fact she is supper secretive and is known for making back ally deals to smear her opponents and the list goes on. I don't see her as a serious contender to win the presidency.

   Bernie Sanders: This section is going to be me treading lightly as I feel no mater the conversation surrounding Sanders it will cause arguments among the left. So this candidate is complicated. Is he a socialist? no. Is he a social-democrat? Yes. Should communist/socialist support his campaign? Well that is a hard question to answer. Because he is not a socialist it is hard to imagine giving any real support to his campaign but his run is interesting because it has people talking about socialism in the United States. Now of course Sanders is a pro-imperialism pro-capitalist candidate. He would not have run on the democratic party if he was not. But his success is inspiring. He does have average Americans discussing and finding interest in socialism. My hope for his campaign is that more people will google and read up on socialism and once he falls threw on his promises that the masses will actually start looking for a true alternative. The fact that his campaign is getting the support it is getting tells us that socialism is not such a scary word as it used to be. Discussing his ideas and campaign with people has given me much opportunities to propagate for socialism and against his nationalism and imperialist support.

   Should socialist work for his campaign? No. If you do you're supporting imperialism and are using right wing communism to justify your imperialist support. But we should not ignore and berate his supporters either. We should patiently explain why we like that socialism is becoming more of an acceptable ideology in the states while explaining that what Sanders supports is actually not our brand of socialism. We would never support someone who would cause damage to the world proletariat and Sanders would keep things more the same.


   The Left Situation;

   The left wing is in a special situation right now. The need for those who can unite is desperate. Will we be the generation of people's who finally cast aside the left wing privilege of splitting every time someone in the room sneezes and calls it a new idea? If you take socialism/communism seriously you should not engage in any more splitting. If you can't find a group that could represent you then start asking comrades for help. Creating new groups all the time with ideologies that already are represented by other groups is not going to help our cause. There are many grouping in the US (can't believe I am writing this AGAIN) that are separate based on trivial tactical preferences. Right now in history we have a chance to become relevant but due to party/organizational chauvinism and chest beating there is no real unity. I do not care how old or big your party or organization is, if you stay separate for trivial reasons you're anti-socialist and are a bigger road block to organizing revolution than the old McCarthyist were. The splits keep us irrelevant, separate and small. Start organizing for socialist revolution and stop organizing for your groups fund raising efforts. How would you know if you were organizing for socialist revolution or not? If you're not organizing for the overthrow of capitalist imperialism entrenched government for a people's government you're not organizing for socialist revolution. Power to the people!                  

Review: The Battle for Spain by Antony Beevor

This is a book review of "The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939" By Anthony Beevor. (This is my first shot at doing a book review so feel free to tell me if I do a horrible job or not I'd also like to hear how I could better review a book.)


For a book that has 432 pages of reading material the book has many ups and downs. During some parts of the book it is impossible to put the book down. Other parts get kind of dull and can be confusing at times.


One of my favorite parts of the book is the very beginning, Anthony Beevor (AB) does a great job of laying the political, class and economic landscape to show how events led up to the seeming inevitable chaos that would become the Spanish Civil War. By listening to the drawn out constant arguing between leftist, many factors of the war are left out and AB does a good job of filling many of these gaps.


The book is overall very informative and mainly un-biased despite a few comments which are baseless and pure attacks on communist, and later in the book he also starts calling the nationalist "brave" and things of that nature. Funny considering the Italian's practically won the war for the Falangist. But for example the author writes that while the fascist killed many people: "....if the Republic would have won , how many would have been executed and might have died in their camps? As several historians have pointed out, the winner of a civil war always kills more than the losers. Everything would have depended on the Republican regime which would have emerged. If it had been a communist regime, then to judge by other communist dictatorships, it would have been very high because of the paranoid nature of the system"(page 405-406)(1)


This is strange to me since in the book he says that around 200,000 people were killed and executed during and after the war by the fascist(page 94) he goes on to quote nationalist General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano as saying to the Republican forces: "on my word of honor as a gentleman that for every person that you kill, we will kill at least ten."(page94) And to prove a point further about how no one probably would have killed as many people as the Fascist Falangist did, again on page 94 he quotes Franco as saying when asked if he forgave his enemies: "I have none. I have had them all shot."


One thing the book confirmed for me is that the anarchist were not the angels that the modern day anarcho's paint them as. This is not to say that they were evil but the picture most anarcho's paint is that in the anarchist controlled areas that everyone was free and that it was pretty much a Utopia of classless freedom. This book is more realistic painting the CNT as a multi-tendency which at times acted childish not wanting to work with communist and republicans and at other times the CNT and UGT were the only organizations that were standing up for the poorer classes. I never knew that the CNT was a union that had both reformist and revolution Anarchist in its ranks. Untill reading this book I never realized how small of a roll the FAI actually played in the war as I thought the CNT and FAI had the same amount of influence.


It is strange how the anarcho CNT seem to support the republican one month then switch the next month. On one occasion Caballero invited the anarchist to form a government with out the communist and the anarchist refused. Not to mention that a anarcho leader was quoted as saying: ".....there is a foreign ambassador in Madrid who is interfering in Spanish affairs. We warn him that Spanish affairs only concern the Spanish."(all info on page 146) This is a lovely display of internationalism if you ask me (not). Not to mention that ambassador was the one helping to arm the different armies and militias. The book points out many times how without USSR weapons and ammunition, aircraft and artillery that the civil war could not have lasted three years.


In fact in one case some CNT members arrested both communist and CNT members for simply fleeing Madrid to escape death AKA for retreating. I think this display helps show that even libertarian socialist, anarchos etc can be authoritarian. They eventually release the soldiers on persuasion of the CNT national council. (page 171) But not to play one side of the field it should be said that the communist were more so authoritarian and made many useless arrest and some crazy generals would kill their soldiers for little or no reason.


But I don't mean this to demonize the Anarchist CNT as they did give an invaluable sacrifice against the nationalist/religious/fascist movement. At times even giving up their own wants and needs to better combat the fascist, something the POUM was not capable of doing. In-fact the book points out how even the POUM was getting weapons from the USSR until the POUM started critiquing the CNT/Communist party and the USSR.


History, as time has gone on has painted the POUM incorrectly and I think that AB does a good job of clearing this up. Most Trots and Stalinist claim that the POUM was a Trotskyist organization. However the author correctly points out many times how this was just assumed as time went on even though there is no basis for this other than the fact that the USSR called them "trotskyist fascist" and the leader of the POUM (Andres Nin) used to be good friends with Trotsky himself.


The book states many sources for how Nin had broken with Trotsky and how Trotsky and his fourth international criticized the POUM many times. Including how Trotsky himself repudiated his former colleague in furious articles. The fourth international attacked the POUM personally for joining the popular front in the elections to beat the Carlist, royalist and the nationalist.(page 262) But as time went on in the civil war the POUM was still discredited and attacked by both the fourth international and Stalinist alike until it was suppressed and its leaders arrested by the republican government. (page270)


Now I want to bring up Stalin in this civil war, I have heard him be single-handedly blamed for the lost of the Spanish Civil War. Despite the fact that the USSR was very poor and had little to give in weaponry at the time. The book goes to great lengths to explain how Stalin and his people in Spain had very different ideas for Spain. In-fact many Russians who served in Spain got executed for their actions in Spain.


Stalin was afraid to enter into the Spanish Civil War because he thought that Hitler would see this as a time of USSR weakness and that his nation would be attacked. But at the chance of proving Trotsky wrong (Trotsky wrote an article attacking Stalin for not intervening in Spain) he decided to send supplies to Spain. But it was the Russian workers who saved the day, forming up discussion councils and giving donations to help fund the supplies to Spanish militias to fight the fascist.(page 139)


Stalin said to his advisers going to Spain: "....Always remember that, in spite of the great solidarity which now exist between the Spanish people and the people of the USSR, a Soviet specialist, being a foreigner in Spain, can be really only useful if he stays strictly within the limits of an adviser and an adviser only." (page 256) He goes on to quote Stalin on page 257 that Spain should become a democracy.


The book makes it seems as though Stalin wanted one thing for Spain; a democracy and self-determination while his advisers and Comintern members wanted one thing; a communist ruled Spain.


One reoccurring theme through out the book is that AB says how the USSR and the Spanish Communist Party was paranoid of nationalist and fascist infiltration. And how they were practically crazy for being so paranoid about this "fifth column". Only to later in the book to go on to confirm that there was many fascist, nationalist and loyalist infiltrators into the republican army. (page 388, 390, 391)


The book overall is informative with a very in depth history leading up to the events of 1936. But the book is well written in some areas and in other parts the book is very poorly written. If you have a hard time concentrating then this book may not be for you. It jumps around dates and events that at times seems like a bi-polar kid hyped up on red bull. It is very hard to follow is what I am saying. AB jumps from date to date so fast and often that some times you have to re-read multiple pages to reassure yourself that you know what is going on.


The battle chapters (where he describes the battles and gives the layouts of the battles) are horribly written, unless you are an expert in Spanish geography you will mainly have no clue what is going on. There are no good maps in the book to really help you know where he is talking about. Only a few maps of battles and one map of Spain that labels the capitals are the maps you get, making it hard to know what and where he is talking about in many battles. However if you are an expert in Spanish geography then I'm sure you will love his descriptions of battles. He does give deep details of the battles to his credit.


Let me say that one thing that had me angry is the ending to this book. This is not structured or sold as an opinion book but as a history book. So there is no real need for a good ending or conclusion. The last sentence of this book reads: "Conclusions are much too convenient." So is laziness, there is a conclusion; The Republicans, Communist, Socialist, Anarchist and Independence movement's couldn't stop fighting among themselves long enough to fight the right wing forces. The nationalist, fascist, royalist/carlist Italian and German coalition forces won, the Falangist consolidated power, killed almost a quarter million people and denounced both Fascist Italy and Germany when it was obvious they were going to lose their wars. The Falangist ruled with an iron fist until the 70's. The conclusion isn't hard to come up with.


Overall I would give this book a five out of ten.




(1) Which Historians say this? And can one in a history book really claim that the winning side ALWAYS kills more? Not to mention the statement about communist is completely biased and a baseless claim almost as to humanize the fascist regime by saying 'well the communist would have been worse'



Written by: Dustin Slagle