By Gavrielle Gemma
Every day, the Trump administration ramps up the danger of nuclear war and environmental destruction. Trump has endorsed white supremacy and homophobia, violence against women, a militarized police, an incarceration bonanza, imperialist war, and is pushing to add to the obscene accumulation of wealth of the rich through a tax cut while starving people, destroying Medicaid and Medicare, threatening social security and waging an anti-union, anti-worker war — all for which Trump deserves to be put in jail.
But we are to docilely clap while a former FBI director announces a few indictments for dealings with Russia? Mueller’s job is to discipline the Trump administration into accepting the general direction of the capitalist ruling class. His job is to misdirect the anti-Trump struggle into a safe, legalistic dispute that does not threaten the empire. In fact, the Liberals are attacking Trump from the right.
While the whole Russia-gate is a distraction, it is important for activists to know the truth. The U.S. / NATO military and economic alliance has taken over Eastern Europe, privatizing for profit the national assets of these countries, impoverishing the people and destroying their rights. Military bases encircle Russia on its border. In 2014, Obama/Clinton engineered a coup to oust the elected head of the Ukraine after he declared neutrality in trade with the U.S. and Russia, and the US installed a swastika flying junta in Kiev that is bombing the anti-fascist resistance with U.S. weapons.
Russia’s crimes are that it did not turn over all its assets to U.S. corporations or allow U.S. bases into the country and maintained its independence from the U.S. Wall Street views this as the unfinished counter-revolution. The Putin administration has its own ambitions in trade and capitalist development, which is its right. The progressive movement in Russia will deal with Putin on other issues.
The wing of the capitalist class that wants outright takeover of Russia is pitted against the Trump supporters who want to make a deal with Russia. But both want nothing more than to exploit the region, seeking not to protect human rights but to expand the rights of corporations and the protections they enjoy from the legion of US military bases abroad. They would love to control all Russia’s wealth.
Occasionally, we hear comparisons to 1974 when Nixon resigned. At that time, the U.S. was losing the war in Vietnam and at home, and millions in the U.S. were becoming class-conscious revolutionaries. Wall Street had to channel his ouster into safe ways by focusing on the Watergate burglary rather than the deeper crisis of capitalism and divisions in the ruling class. So Nixon was not charged with genocide. Nor was he indicted for his illegal June meeting of the FBI, CIA, NSA, etc. in an attempt at an outright military takeover of the government, but with LYING. Sound familiar?
The present quiet in the mass struggle is temporary as capitalism is on a massive drive towards more war, poverty and racist attacks. We must cast off illusions or faith in the capitalists to cure their own diseases and resist them diverting us from the real issues. The coming independent struggle of the workers and oppressed, globally and in the U.S., is being born as we write.