#lutte_des_classes

Féodalisme dans Jack London War of the Classes (1905)
▻https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1187/pg1187-images.html

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London présente plusieurs idées d’un futur féodalisme comme régime politique du capitalisme.

he catches fleeting glimpses of an extreme and tyrannically benevolent feudalism very like to Mr. Ghent’s, as witness the following:

“I asked one of the largest employers of labor in the South if he feared the coming of the trade union. ‘No,’ he said, ‘it is one good result of race prejudice, that the negro will enable us in the long run to weaken the trade union so that it cannot harm us. We can keep wages down with the negro and we can prevent too much organization.’

“It is in this spirit that the lower standards are to be used. If this purpose should succeed, it has but one issue,—the immense strengthening of a plutocratic administration at the top, served by an army of high-salaried helpers, with an elite of skilled and well-paid workmen, but all resting on what would essentially be a serf class of low-paid labor and this mass kept in order by an increased use of military force.”

In brief summary of these two notable books, it may be said that Mr. Ghent is alarmed, (though he does not flatly say so), at the too great social restfulness in the community, which is permitting the capitalists to form the new society to their liking; and that Mr. Brooks is alarmed, (and he flatly says so), at the social unrest which threatens the modified individualism into which he would like to see society evolve. Mr. Ghent beholds the capitalist class rising to dominate the state and the working class ...

►https://www.unz.com/book/jack_london__war-of-the-classes

Two remarkable books are Ghent’s “Our Benevolent Feudalism”[7] and Brooks’s “The Social Unrest.”[8] In these two books the opposite sides of the labor problem are expounded, each writer devoting himself with apprehension to the side he fears and views with disfavor. It would appear that they have set themselves the task of collating, as a warning, the phenomena of two counter social forces. Mr. Ghent, who is sympathetic with the socialist movement, follows with cynic fear every aggressive act of the capitalist class. Mr. Brooks, who yearns for the perpetuation of the capitalist system as long as possible, follows with grave dismay each aggressive act of the labor and socialist organizations. Mr. Ghent traces the emasculation of labor by capital, and Mr. Brooks traces the emasculation of independent competing capital by labor. In short, each marshals the facts of a side in the two sides which go to make a struggle so great that even the French Revolution is insignificant beside it; for this later struggle, for the first time in the history of struggles, is not confined to any particular portion of the globe, but involves the whole of it.

#USA #féodalisme #capitalisme #lutte_des_classes

War of the Classes, Jack London, 1905
ttps://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1187/pg1187-images.html

https://ucrarts.ucr.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/0023_Howe_Socialist-CR-Version-e1645762937555.jpg

La lutte des classes existe aux États Unis.

PREFACE

When I was a youngster I was looked upon as a weird sort of creature, because, forsooth, I was a socialist. Reporters from local papers interviewed me, and the interviews, when published, were pathological studies of a strange and abnormal specimen of man. At that time (nine or ten years ago), because I made a stand in my native town for municipal ownership of public utilities, I was branded a “red-shirt,” a “dynamiter,” and an “anarchist”; and really decent fellows, who liked me very well, drew the line at my appearing in public with their sisters.

But the times changed. There came a day when I heard, in my native town, a Republican mayor publicly proclaim that “municipal ownership was a fixed American policy.” And in that day I found myself picking up in the world. No longer did the pathologist study me, while the really decent fellows did not mind in the least the propinquity of myself and their sisters in the public eye. My political and sociological ideas were ascribed to the vagaries of youth, and good-natured elderly men patronized me and told me that I would grow up some day and become an unusually intelligent member of the community. Also they told me that my views were biassed by my empty pockets, and that some day, when I had gathered to me a few dollars, my views would be wholly different,—in short, that my views would be their views.

And then came the day when my socialism grew respectable,—still a vagary of youth, it was held, but romantically respectable. Romance, to the bourgeois mind, was respectable because it was not dangerous. As a “red-shirt,” with bombs in all his pockets, I was dangerous. As a youth with nothing more menacing than a few philosophical ideas, Germanic in their origin, I was an interesting and pleasing personality.

Through all this experience I noted one thing. It was not I that changed, but the community. In fact, my socialistic views grew solider and more pronounced. I repeat, it was the community that changed, and to my chagrin I discovered that the community changed to such purpose that it was not above stealing my thunder. The community branded me a “red-shirt” because I stood for municipal ownership; a little later it applauded its mayor when he proclaimed municipal ownership to be a fixed American policy. He stole my thunder, and the community applauded the theft. And today the community is able to come around and give me points on municipal ownership.

What happened to me has been in no wise different from what has happened to the socialist movement as a whole in the United States. In the bourgeois mind socialism has changed from a terrible disease to a youthful vagary, and later on had its thunder stolen by the two old parties,—socialism, like a meek and thrifty workingman, being exploited became respectable.

Only dangerous things are abhorrent. The thing that is not dangerous is always respectable. And so with socialism in the United States. For several years it has been very respectable,—a sweet and beautiful Utopian dream, in the bourgeois mind, yet a dream, only a dream. During this period, which has just ended, socialism was tolerated because it was impossible and non-menacing. Much of its thunder had been stolen, and the workingmen had been made happy with full dinner-pails. There was nothing to fear. The kind old world spun on, coupons were clipped, and larger profits than ever were extracted from the toilers. Coupon-clipping and profit-extracting would continue to the end of time. These were functions divine in origin and held by divine right. The newspapers, the preachers, and the college presidents said so, and what they say, of course, is so—to the bourgeois mind.

Then came the presidential election of 1904. Like a bolt out of a clear sky was the socialist vote of 435,000,—an increase of nearly 400 per cent in four years, the largest third-party vote, with one exception, since the Civil War. Socialism had shown that it was a very live and growing revolutionary force, and all its old menace revived. I am afraid that neither it nor I are any longer respectable. The capitalist press of the country confirms me in my opinion, and herewith I give a few post-election utterances of the capitalist press:—

“The Democratic party of the constitution is dead. The Social-Democratic party of continental Europe, preaching discontent and class hatred, assailing law, property, and personal rights, and insinuating confiscation and plunder, is here.”—Chicago Chronicle.

“That over forty thousand votes should have been cast in this city to make such a person as Eugene V. Debs the President of the United States is about the worst kind of advertising that Chicago could receive.”—Chicago Inter-Ocean.

“We cannot blink the fact that socialism is making rapid growth in this country, where, of all others, there would seem to be less inspiration for it.”—Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

“Upon the hands of the Republican party an awful responsibility was placed last Tuesday. . . It knows that reforms—great, far-sweeping reforms—are necessary, and it has the power to make them. God help our civilization if it does not! . . . It must repress the trusts or stand before the world responsible for our system of government being changed into a social republic. The arbitrary cutting down of wages must cease, or socialism will seize another lever to lift itself into power.”—The Chicago New World.

“Scarcely any phase of the election is more sinisterly interesting than the increase in the socialist vote. Before election we said that we could not afford to give aid and comfort to the socialists in any manner. . . It (socialism) must be fought in all its phases, in its every manifestation.”—San Francisco Argonaut.

And far be it from me to deny that socialism is a menace. It is its purpose to wipe out, root and branch, all capitalistic institutions of present-day society. It is distinctly revolutionary, and in scope and depth is vastly more tremendous than any revolution that has ever occurred in the history of the world. It presents a new spectacle to the astonished world,—that of an organized, international, revolutionary movement. In the bourgeois mind a class struggle is a terrible and hateful thing, and yet that is precisely what socialism is,—a world-wide class struggle between the propertyless workers and the propertied masters of workers. It is the prime preachment of socialism that the struggle is a class struggle. The working class, in the process of social evolution, (in the very nature of things), is bound to revolt from the sway of the capitalist class and to overthrow the capitalist class. This is the menace of socialism, and in affirming it and in tallying myself an adherent of it, I accept my own consequent unrespectability.

As yet, to the average bourgeois mind, socialism is merely a menace, vague and formless. The average member of the capitalist class, when he discusses socialism, is condemned an ignoramus out of his own mouth. He does not know the literature of socialism, its philosophy, nor its politics. He wags his head sagely and rattles the dry bones of dead and buried ideas. His lips mumble mouldy phrases, such as, “Men are not born equal and never can be;” “It is Utopian and impossible;” “Abstinence should be rewarded;” “Man will first have to be born again;” “Coöperative colonies have always failed;” and “What if we do divide up? in ten years there would be rich and poor men such as there are today.”

It surely is time that the capitalists knew something about this socialism that they feel menaces them. And it is the hope of the writer that the socialistic studies in this volume may in some slight degree enlighten a few capitalistic minds. The capitalist must learn, first and for always, that socialism is based, not upon the equality, but upon the inequality, of men. Next, he must learn that no new birth into spiritual purity is necessary before socialism becomes possible. He must learn that socialism deals with what is, not with what ought to be; and that the material with which it deals is the “clay of the common road,” the warm human, fallible and frail, sordid and petty, absurd and contradictory, even grotesque, and yet, withal, shot through with flashes and glimmerings of something finer and God-like, with here and there sweetnesses of service and unselfishness, desires for goodness, for renunciation and sacrifice, and with conscience, stern and awful, at times blazingly imperious, demanding the right,—the right, nothing more nor less than the right.

JACK LONDON.

Oakland, California.
January 12, 1905.

#lutte_des_classes

Don’t Just Tax the Rich — Attack Inequality at the Root
▻https://jacobin.com/2026/08/taxes-inequality-markets-regulation-finance

https://media.jacobin.com/images/2026/8/025689528604.jpg

Voilà une belle analogie entre la circulation et la société en général : le déclin du nombre de morts par accidents de voiture n’est pas le résultat du progrès médical mais de la régulation de la circulation automobile et de voitures moins gangereuses pour les utilisateurs. Il ne suffit pas d’imposer davantage les riches. Il faut lutter cintres les causes de la répartition injuste des fortunes et revenus.

8.8.2026 by Arthur MacEwan - To address the US’s severe inequality, we can and should raise taxes on the rich. But we can also restructure markets so that they don’t produce such unequal incomes in the first place, by reining in corporate power and our predatory financial sector.

Economic inequality in the United States has risen dramatically over the last sixty years. Indeed, the degree of inequality today is probably greater than at any point in the country’s history. This severe inequality is a severe social malady. So, what should we do about it?

Consider the following analogy. Suppose that, in response to the high rate of fatalities from automobile accidents, the United States had undertaken major investments in hospital trauma centers, improving the medical system’s means of caring for people who had been injured in such accidents. These investments would have included funds for the extensive training of doctors and for emergency room equipment.

In fact, over the last several decades, there has been a dramatic decline in fatalities from automobile accidents. Perhaps some of the decline has come from improved trauma care. However, the really important changes that account for this decline have been seat belts and airbags (and, most recently, safety technology built into cars), improved road design and traffic control, and campaigns (and laws) against drunk driving.

In other words, the reduction in car accident deaths has been due to changes that have reduced the number, or at least the severity, of accidents, not from the treatment of people who have been seriously injured in accidents. As a society, we have intervened in causes of car accident deaths rather than just trying to fix up the injured people after the accidents have happened. We might learn from this experience and apply the same approach to severe inequality in the United States.

Like fixing up people after automobile accidents, higher taxes on the rich are an after-the-fact fix-up to the problem of great economic inequality. And like helping people recover after automobile accidents, higher taxes on the rich are certainly desirable. (A good place to start would be making tax rates on capital gains as high as tax rates on labor income.) But in both cases, these treatments do not address the origins of the problems — the high rate of severe injuries from car accidents and the rising share of income going to the very rich.

There is an added problem. A policy of focusing on repairing the injured people after the accidents can draw attention away from eliminating or reducing the cause of the damage. Likewise, a policy of focusing on taxing the rich after they have become exorbitantly wealthy can draw attention away from the causes of our great inequality and perhaps imply that there is nothing we can do about those causes.

At the same time as we tax the rich, there are things we can do about the causes of great inequality. The severe inequality we face is not simply the result of the way “free markets” operate. Indeed, there is really no such thing as “free markets.” Markets are not simply the “natural” order of things, existing beyond human control. Markets are social creations, constructed by governments and by people with social power. They are not set in stone. Perhaps a few examples will clarify the point.

Consider, for starters, the labor market. In 2022, the US Department of the Treasury issued a report stating, “The American labor market is characterized by high levels of employer power . . . . A careful review of credible academic studies places the decrease in wages at roughly 20 percent relative to the level [they would be] in a fully competitive market.” Among the factors that generate this result are “noncompete agreements,” which prevent employees from taking jobs with other competing firms, and labor laws that tend to favor employers. When the laws themselves don’t favor employers, the administration and lack of enforcement of the laws often serve that function

Then there are international markets. For millennia, governments have been involved in commerce around the globe, setting the rules for who could trade in what, protecting ships at sea, building and maintaining seaports and airports and roads, restricting and taxing trade in many commodities, and establishing trade arrangements among countries. In the current era, it has become especially clear that trade agreements tend to favor the interests of powerful businesses, while placing workers in various countries in competition with one another. One of the interesting — and perverse — aspects of US trade agreements in recent decades is that they are often called “free-trade agreements”; in fact, they generally extend monopoly power by including extensions of US patent and copyright laws. Monopoly power is not confined to international commerce. It has also been increasing within the United States and has provided a basis for rising corporate profits. There are, of course, laws in place to restrict monopolies; these laws are themselves examples of government involvement in the operation of markets. Yet in recent decades (with a brief exception during the Biden administration), these laws have not been effectively enforced. Here, one might say, it was not the anti-monopoly laws that constructed the market, but the government’s choice to ignore those laws. And as is the case internationally, patent and copyright laws support monopoly power within the United States.

There are other important examples of government’s role in shaping markets in ways that impact economic inequality. Long-existing subsidies to fossil fuel firms and operating school systems that continually recreate social inequality are important examples.

And connecting all the markets for goods and services is the financial system, which, through deregulation, has become detached from its traditional role of allocating funds to enterprises — a useful function in a market economy. According to Oren Cass, the chief economist at the American Compass, which the New York Times describes as “a conservative economic think tank,” the “finance industry is a grift.” Cass points out that the industry has generated “financialization,” which he describes as follows:

The term for making financial markets and transactions ends unto themselves, disconnected from — and often at the expense of — the societal benefits that support human flourishing and are capitalism’s proper purpose. Chief among those benefits are good jobs that support families, and products and services that improve people’s lives.

Financialization has made American businesses less resilient, less innovative and less competitive. It has been a major cause of slow wage growth and rising inequality. It has fueled the loss of manufacturing jobs across the heartland.

And financialization has been very profitable for a small group of people and thus an important generator of rising inequality!

The lesson of all this — this brief account of how markets are structured in ways that generate extreme inequality in the United States — is that we had better focus some attention on the way markets are constructed and undertake some restructuring.

One might argue that reconstructing markets is not enough. It would, of course, be good to make labor markets more worker-friendly, to disrupt monopoly power in many markets, and to organize global trade to undermine its exacerbation of inequality — to say nothing of reining in financialization. Yet beyond focusing on these broad markets, we could benefit from a systemic approach through a general extension of social control of economic activity and a reduction in the heavy reliance on markets as the foundation of economic relations. Similarly, returning to automobile deaths, we might argue that the real solution lies in a much more extensive public transportation system, rather than simply safer cars and driving conditions.

These would be reasonable arguments and well worth considering. But neither social control of the economy nor widespread effective public transportation will come into being overnight. In the meantime, we need to do what we can to make society, including transportation, work as well as possible. This will not solve all our economic ills, but it would move things in the right direction.

#USA #capitalisme #lutte_des_classes

Incendies et lutte des classes - La Grappe
▻https://lagrappe.info/?Incendies-et-lutte-des-classes-2198
▻https://contre-attaque.net/2026/07/29/incendies-et-lutte-des-classes

https://lagrappe.info/local/cache-gd2/83/d7098b02f64d0fb79a3b231e017864.jpg

Alors que les feux sont fixés et que tout le monde rentre chez lui, place à l’amnésie organisée. Les autorités ont intérêt à faire oublier à tout le monde le désastre de leur préparation face aux incendies prévisibles et annoncés au pays de la monoculture de pins. Mais aussi à faire oublier l’appel aux dons et au bénévolat alors que l’état nous vole déjà tous les moyens de notre auto-organisation. Et enfin à faire oublier l’étrange hasard qui a fait que la commune du Porge est entièrement calcinée, alors que les maisons secondaires et villas du Cap Ferret sont intacte...

Deux classes sociales et un brasier qui les sépare. Des cendres pour les uns, les villas avec piscines intactes pour les autres.

Le feu et le capital | Cairn.info
▻https://shs.cairn.info/revue-etudes-rurales-2024-2-page-90

Cet article montre comment les controverses liées aux incendies ont modifié le modèle landais, un système forestier marqué par l’extractivisme, dans le sens où il ignore autant l’épuisement des ressources que les conséquences environnementales de son activité. Nous proposons d’étudier les grands incendies de 2022 comme des phénomènes révélateurs du Capitalocène [1] dans un massif forestier dominé par une sphère économique régie avant tout par des enjeux financiers. En effet, si la forêt landaise est l’image même d’une nature façonnée par le capital, elle est aussi le reflet de ses excès.

#incendie #Gironde #lutte_des_classes #inégalité #feu #sécheresse #réchauffement_climatique

The Battle for History : Why Trump wants to Erase the Past
▻https://red-spark.org/2026/03/13/the-battle-for-history-why-trump-wants-to-erase-the-past

Pourquoi la politique réactionnaire du trumpisme mènera à son échec.

13.3.2026 by Brian Becker - This lecture is the first of an eight-part seminar series hosted by The People’s Forum NYC, Hidden Histories of Rebellion in the United States.
...

We saw in Minneapolis on January 23rd, the first general strike in a city in the United States since 1934. One hundred thousand people [came out] and the high temperature that day was 9 below zero. This was a real testament to the fact that, in spite of a very difficult climate, people were ready to mobilise and did mobilise – just an immense outpouring of people.

All the teachers went on strike, the schools were closed down. The Somali small businesses shut down. All of the unions came together. That’s very rare in the United States. It’s not rare in France. It’s not rare in Spain. It’s not rare in Colombia. It’s very rare in the United States, and it’s an indication that we are at a moment, a watershed moment, in fact, for the direction of the country – and people are coming together to organise.

Whenever people are active politically, when they’re involved directly, the thirst, the hunger for political education becomes very, very evident. Because when you’re just going about your business, your everyday life, you may be troubled about this or that, but when you’re in struggle, when you’re in motion, when you’re at the battlefield, so to speak, when you’re contesting with the police or with hostile media, or an administration that demonises you and describes you as domestic terrorists, and then engages in all kinds of violence – and you fight back, [you] don’t retreat, you’re not intimidated, you stay strong – all of the issues that you wouldn’t [normally] be considering, you start to, they become first, front and centre in your brain. That’s how people’s ideas change.
How Change Happens

And this course is about how people change and how change happens, how social change happens in the United States. Right now, there’s an effort by the Trump administration and the MAGA movement and Project 2025 to create a very vast change in society. They are very serious about what their plans are: the firing of hundreds of thousands of federal workers in the first days of the Trump administration; decimation of the environmental protection agency; decimation of the National Park Service, elimination of any remnant from the civil rights movement; [elimination of] the telling of history, full scale assault against trans people, trans kids, the LGBTQ community and immigrants who are being targeted and demonised.

This isn’t just random, weird, chaos created by a right-wing project. They have a plan. Project 2025 is the plan, and they intend to carry out a very significant change in the United States. And as a consequence of their very robust effort to carry out this change, they are meeting with the resistance of masses of people, and those people are determined to defeat MAGA. They’re determined to defeat Project 2025.

They’re now determined to defeat ICE, and we believe, firmly, that MAGA will fail, that ICE will be defeated, that the Trump agenda will be defeated, that this effort to, “Make America Great Again”, which means to take America back before the civil rights movement, before what we call the Civil Rights Revolution transformed America and really, in a way, carried out a cultural revolution, not just an economic or social, but also a cultural revolution in the United States… The effort by ICE and MAGA, and DOGE, and all of these other acronyms associated with the Trump White House, we believe this will fail.

In fact, we feel so confident that it will fail. That is a point of departure between our movement, which is a socialist movement, a Marxist movement, and many liberals who see what we see, who are anguished by what they see, rightfully, who are upset and outraged by the Trump administration’s program, but they basically, have been engaged in a lot of handwringing.

Like, “Everything is gone!”, “The country’s lost”, “What are we going to do?”, “Maybe we should move!”. It’s just this whole defeatist notion that because Trump is on a rampage that he will win. We think [that] not only misses the point, but actually undermines the capacity of the people to fight. If you feel you’ve already lost, people generally tend to seek individual salvation. Retreat, save yourself.

But if you feel it’s an unfought battle, in fact, if you feel that it’s a battle that can be won, and that everything you believe in is at stake, instead of running, instead of seeking individual salvation, you stand with other people and you fight. Truthfully, bravery is a social phenomenon. Bravery is not simply an individual act of courage by some especially courageous person. If I’m brave, you’re brave. If you’re brave, I’m brave. If we’re brave together, this feeling of struggle, this feeling of determination, this feeling that we can fight and win, this feeling that we refuse to surrender to racism or sexism or patriarchy, or all of the bigotry and discrimination and hatred. If we feel that way and act that way, we can win.

And if we don’t, we can lose.

So what we think and how we interpret the events is not something academic. It’s something that, I would say, is a life and death issue for our movement.
Events in Minneapolis

I’d like to bring up some photos of 3 individuals who have been murdered by ICE. First, it’s Keith Porter, killed at the end of the year in Los Angeles. Followed by Renee Goode, whose final words to the ICE agent who shot her three times in the face, were: “Dude, I’m not mad at you”. And then he shot her three times in the face.

Finally, of course, Alex Pretti. You see this slow motion shot, where he’s on his stomach, and the ICE agent takes his gun out. They shoot him in the back, and nine more shots are fired.

He’s executed. This wasn’t, like, a chaotic moment. Same with Renee Goode. A chaotic moment where in the fog of war, people make quick decisions.

No! This was cold blooded executions, intentionally carried out by ICE agents. In the case of Alex Pretti, they did that because they were upset about the general strike that happened the day before. They came out that morning, and they were gonna show people who’s boss. He wasn’t threatening anybody. He was filming them.

They came over to him, and the two women who were his friends. They pushed one of the women over. He steps in front and says, “Hey, don’t do that” and then they come at him, they swarm him. He has a registered gun, which is his right. They take the gun away, then they shoot him 10 times in the back. That was to send a message.

Frankly, if there had been no general strike the day before, if there had not been this mass mobilisation of the working class and young people in the Somali community, the very day before, the killing of Alex Pretti would have been [just] one more killing by an ICE agent. But instead, it sparked a nationwide opposition that’s all over the media, each and every one of you have been watching it, either on social media or mainstream media.
Trump Retreats

Then two days later, Donald Trump says, “Well, I’m reconsidering, I’m gonna bring Bovino”, the Gestapo-like, guy leading ICE in Minneapolis, “I’m going to bring him out”, “We’re gonna take some of the agents out”, “we have to reconsider what exactly happened”. It is like this superficial effort to sort of de-escalate. You know, to lower the temperature.

The reason Trump did that is the country is at a boiling point over what ICE is doing. I think everybody in this room knows it’s at a boiling point. People are seething with anger. Seething with anger. And if you think about the country as a boiling pot with a lid, there’s only three options: You lower the temperature, you take the lid off, or you let it explode. The country is a boiling pot right now because of the Trump administration’s aggressions on many fronts, ICE being one of them.

So Trump right now is trying to lower the temperature. And the Somali students, in particular, know exactly what Trump is doing, and they are asking all of us not to lower the temperature, but to turn the temperature up. They’re asking that the effort that they carried out in Minneapolis, to shut down Minneapolis, that we replicate that – not just in one city, but all over the United States, ICE out, nationwide shutdown, this Friday, January 30th.

We’re not looking to lower the temperature. We’re looking to get ICE out. We’re not trying to even get ICE out of Minneapolis. We want to abolish ICE. We want to abolish the entire instrument of repression.

There’s going to be an issue that’ll come up probably on Friday of whether or not ICE will be funded again. The Democrats funded it the last time around. There’s a lot of pressure right now growing in the country. If you say, I’m gonna call my congressperson and tell them, vote, no, that won’t mean that much. The only thing that will really stop this ICE war against the people is if the ruling class in America fears that the opposition to what ICE is doing will lead not only to resistance and rebellion, but possibly revolution.

That’s how the Civil Rights movement actually made the gains it did. It was the threat of revolution. It was the insurrection that was taking place in cities and towns, big and small, all over the United States, starting in 1955 and going up until 1972.

That’s when even Richard Nixon, the ultimate racist, who adopted the Republican Southern Strategy, he was the one who said, “let’s have affirmative action”. He was the one who created far reaching economic reforms, concessions to the civil rights movement.

It wasn’t a liberal Democrat, it was this racist, anti-communist Republican, Richard Nixon, because Nixon knew – as did the other ruling class politicians – that if they didn’t make serious concessions at that moment, the United States was going to erupt into civil war, and the government would be the target of a righteous indignation by the people, led by the Black community, but joined by Latino, Asian Americans, Native Americans, White people.

I mean, that’s what was actually happening in 1969 and ’70. Which brings me to the question that I started with:

How does change happen? That’s really the theme of our 8 part class. Our basic question (and I’m going to come back to why) is why will MAGA fail? Why will Trump fail? [The answer tells us] why we shouldn’t be involved in hand ringing, [why] we should be engaged in a fierce struggle to stop them – and if we do, we can win.
Lessons from the Civil Rights Movement

All right, let’s think about the civil rights movement and what it achieved. We call it a Civil Rights Revolution. It was still a capitalist system after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the next year, the 1965 Voting Rights Act. It wasn’t a revolution in the sense that it was a socialist revolution. But I just want to describe a little bit how things were at that time and how things changed.

In 1964, America was an apartheid state, a literal apartheid state. We’re talking about in my lifetime. We’re not talking about ancient history. I know I’m old, but I’m not that old. But I’m old enough that it was an apartheid state when I was a child. A literal apartheid state.

In Rochester, New York, where I grew up, Eastman Kodak was the company that ran the city. There were 250,000 people who lived in Rochester. 55,000 employees worked at Kodak. My father was one of them. He was a research chemist.

And of the 55,000 workers at Kodak, there were almost no black workers. I think there were about 70, out of 55,000, because Kodak was that racist. In 1964, in Rochester – 6 months before the rebellion in Harlem took place in that same year – there was an uprising in the Black community in Rochester.

Here’s the headlines, “Negro mob riots here”, “Homer declares state of emergency”, “The police came out, the youth fought back”. It went on for almost a week. It was the precursor to all the other rebellions: Harlem in 1964, the Watts Insurrection in 1965, Newark in 1967, Detroit in 1967, all over the country in fact.

Of course, when Martin Luther King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, that night, 120 cities went into insurrection, including Washington, D.C., the nation’s capital. And when I say insurrection, it was a state of complete rebellion. The U.S. Military was sent to 120 cities, probably more, that night.

During this time, when the rebellion happened in Rochester, this is somewhat of a personal anecdote, I guess, an organisation called Fight, F-I-G-H-T. Fight. I can’t remember what all the acronym stands for. I know the G is for God, and fight is for F is for fight. Right?

(laughter)

Anyway, you get the picture. FIGHT demanded that there would be 600 jobs set aside out of these 55,000 for unemployed black people in Rochester, New York, to which Eastman Kodak said, “No way, we will never allow you to tell us who we’re gonna hire and who we’re not going to hire. We won’t do it”. That initiated a protracted struggle in Rochester, New York, over whether Kodak would grant these 600 jobs. I mean, that’s not a big ask. That’s a pretty small ask. But they said no. It dragged out and became (you can research it at home), it became a nationwide symbol of the fight against capitalist corporate America and its racist discrimination policies.
Apartheid USA

The apartheid character of America wasn’t simply governmental laws, and it wasn’t simply in the South. Rochester is 30 miles as the crow flies from Toronto, Canada. It’s pretty north. The deep north you could call it … and they said “No”, and it became an epic battle.

My parents were involved in this because my parents were involved in the civil rights movement, so my father, as a chemist at Kodak, actually said, “I support the demand for 600 jobs.”. [That] basically ended his career.

We lived in this little suburb of Rochester called Irondequoit, which was one mile from the city and my parents had five kids. They decided they needed a bigger house. These suburbs opened up, and they were all white. Literally all white. As a matter of fact, they were sundown towns. They didn’t call them sundown towns, but they were sundown towns, meaning if you were black or a person of colour, and you were there after sundown, you were gonna get hurt, or you were gonna get killed. This was another form of apartheid in America.

So this little area, Irondequoit, New York, where we lived, was a sundown town, even though we didn’t know that word at the time. But there were no black people who lived there or were permitted. Nobody, no banker would give a black family a mortgage there. Again, this is not Alabama. It’s not Mississippi, it’s Rochester, New York.

When my father took a stand and supported the demand for the 600 jobs, he was completely -as was my mother -completely demonised by all of our neighbours. The entire neighbourhood stood with Kodak. Even though these were working-class white people, they were standing with Eastman Kodak and insisting that only Kodak should be allowed to make hiring decisions. If Kodak wanted to have an all-white workforce, that was their decision. That’s how it was in 1965 and 1964.

If you go back further, before the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965, for instance, in Mississippi and in South Carolina, if you go back even to the year 1900, the African American population in Mississippi and in South Carolina was the majority. It wasn’t a black minority. It was a majority in Mississippi and in South Carolina. How many black voters voted in 1900 in Mississippi and South Carolina? That would be none. Or less than 0.5 percent because the apartheid system’s laws were enforced through terror, the terror of the police department and the terror of the KKK, and they weren’t distinctive organisations. The cops and the Klan weren’t just working hand in hand, as the chant went. They were the same – the same people. So were the judges. So were the bosses and so was the Chamber of Commerce.

America was so profoundly racist that in 1954, when the Brown vs. Board of Education Decision was taken. That was a decision by the Warren Court, making apartheid, separate, segregated schools no longer legal. It said there was no such thing as “separate but equal schools”, which is where Jim Crow was established in 1896. The Supreme Court in 1954 ruled that it’s not possible to be separate and equal, because the black schools were underfunded, to put it mildly. All of the resources in society were flowing to the white schools, and they said it’s against the law.

So what happened in response to the Brown v. Board of Education? There was the beginning of the academy movement, and the academy movement was vast number of white people in southern states taking kids out of public schools, even before the first black student was able to come into the public white school, and they created private academies. This is like the charter school movement. Where it really started was that the government then took public monies and gave it to private academies, who would use religious criteria and other false, BS metrics, to basically make sure they were all white.

The academy movement spread everywhere throughout the South. So even though the law of the country changed, meaning you now had to have desegregation, it was the same.

It was essentially the same. And that was a mass movement.
National Liberation Revolutions

Why did the Supreme Court finally, after two centuries, well, not quite 200 years, why did it finally decide to say apartheid was illegal in public schools? Because America had a problem. The problem was, after World War Two, China had a communist revolution.

North Korea had a revolution. Vietnam had a revolution. Indonesia was having a revolution.

India was having a revolution. The colonialised people of Asia, Africa, the Middle East were rising up in anti-colonial movements, and they were led by communist parties.

Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, Kim Il Sung in North Korea, Mao Tse-tung in China. The US said, “Well, we’re fighting for freedom against these communists”. And the communists would say, “You have apartheid.”, “Where’s that freedom?”, “How can you have apartheid?”, “In the case of Mississippi, [you oppress] the majority of the population, and talk about democracy and freedom?”.

All the people in the so-called Third World, the Global South, when they heard, wait, the United States has apartheid against black people, and the Soviet Union, and China, and North Korea, and Vietnam are championing the causes of national liberation – it became a gravitational pull towards the communist movement.

The Warren Court decision in 1954 was the first effort by the American ruling class to overcome this major obstacle in the Cold War, which gave all of the advantage to the communists. They said, we have to start to reform and get rid of apartheid because it doesn’t conform to the new reality of a world that is becoming anti-colonial.

It was the international situation that actually motivated sectors of the U.S. Ruling class to make this reform. But other sectors of the ruling class thought this was terrible.

They weren’t thinking about how to compete with the communists in China, or Vietnam, or someplace else. They were [thinking] we want to control the Mississippi. We want to control Alabama. If you start to let the majority – meaning the black population – vote, we are gonna lose control. So we don’t care about China. We care about Mississippi.

You had a struggle between different sectors in the U.S. Capitalist ruling class. As a Marxist, it’s very important to understand that a class in society, whether it’s the working class, the proletarian, the petty bourgeoisie, the capitalists, whatever class you’re talking about – classes are not monoliths. It’s not like there’s one grand ruling class that all meets together and they have one thought pattern.

They’re not the ruling class because they all think the same thoughts. They’re the ruling class because they own the banks and corporations. But within that class, they can have different strategic views, different philosophies, etc. So, one section of the ruling class was trying to reform American capitalism away from this extreme racism, and other sectors of the ruling class were promoting what amounted to a mass white racist movement in America.

If you’re younger, if you think about the civil rights movement – ’50s and ’60s – you think Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, the Black Panther Party, Kwame Ture, Rosa Parks. That’s what we think about. But having been alive at that time and also politically active for the latter part of the 60s, the dominant force was not the civil rights movement. It was the white racist movement. People don’t know that. People think of the 60s as being like this panacea of leftism. You think of Woodstock and anti-war, and then Dr. King’s 1963 March.

There was a mass movement of white supremacy against the Civil Rights Revolution. And that movement, the white supremacist movement, was defeated.

And I’ll say a little bit about why it was defeated, but it was defeated. The MAGA movement is the resurrection of that old, defeated white supremacist movement. When they say Make America Great Again, they need to go back to the era where white supremacists had ruled the roost without dispute.

What they mean by that is not, just white working class people, if they’re reactionary. If they’re racist, they can be pawns in the game, but they’re not owning corporations.

They don’t have investments in the Middle East. They’re wedded to racist capitalists.

It’s a form of class collaboration.

So there was a war going on in the ’50s and ’60s. [Today] the Make America Great Again movement, is really an effort to go back and undo all of the social, economic, and especially cultural achievements that came about as a consequence of the Civil Rights Revolution.

Again, the fact that this kind of extreme racism greeted the beginning of civil rights reforms was not enough to stop it. Ultimately, because the movement succeeded on many fronts, (even though it’s still a capitalist system), because there were so many cultural, economic, and social changes in America, as a consequence of the Civil Rights Revolution, America has changed, and the right-wing sector of the bourgeoisie in America feels that they need to create a new form of governance to get rid of the social, economic, and cultural changes.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act made segregation illegal, and the 1965 Voting Rights Act made it impossible for the Southern states to create any voting laws in those states without the agreement of the Justice Department on the federal level. That meant that all of the tricks and patterns of racist disenfranchisement in Southern states was no longer allowed.

And there was a flourishing of black political representation in the South.
How did the Civil Rights Movement Achieve Changes?

I would say those two bills, the 1964 Voting Rights Act and the 65 Voting Rights Act, are by far the biggest, most important, most far-reaching pieces of legislation in American history. How did it happen?

If you look at the U.S. Congress in 1964, that passed these two far-reaching bills. From a point of view of demographic composition, it’s exactly the same as Congress in 1954, when it upheld apartheid. There were very few black representatives. The Congress was dominated by the Dixiecrats – the Southern Bloc. It’s the same Congress.

So how did this Congress that was so reactionary and racist in 1954 have the most far-reaching legislation in American history one decade later? Well, they didn’t change. People changed. The masses of people, by the millions, changed because they became political actors. The civil rights movement was the activation of tens of millions of “ordinary people” who became political.

When we look at Minneapolis, what just happened on January 23rd, that was not 100,000 socialists. I mean, maybe in a year or two, they’ll be socialists. If all goes well – if they’re watching our classes.

(laughter)

But no, that’s not what motivated them. What motivated them was the brutality of ICE.

The terrible right-wing assault by the Trump administration. And when people get involved in the struggle, like take Alex Pretti, who was assassinated. He’s an intensive care unit nurse at a VA hospital. He was leading his life. He was doing good deeds.

He was obviously a conscientious and beloved medical professional, but he wasn’t going out Saturday mornings with his cell phone to, you know, film ICE agents or police agents.

He was one of those 100s of 1000s of Americans around the country who have been brought into politics right now.

And what brought them into politics? It wasn’t only Trump, and it wasn’t only Project 2025. It wasn’t only the assault on our basic Democratic rights in the United States. It was also what happened starting on October 8, 2023 – Palestine. How many millions of young people, in particular, many who are probably in this room, came to demonstrations not once, not twice, not once a year, not a conference once in a while, but all the time?

They were witnessing a genocide in real time on their smartphones. [For] the first time, people who weren’t at the battlefront or at the scene of a genocide – we watched it.

And we also knew that the government, that speaks in our name, was lying. The government that sends our tax dollars to fund the genocide was lying. [We know] that all of their arguments – like in the early days – remember when a hospital was blown up, and the Israelis said: “Well, that was a Hamas rocket that misfired and it landed on the hospital.” Then there was two weeks of debate in the New York Times, on MSNBC, in Fox News, like, “Who destroyed the hospital?”

Well, a year later, all the hospitals were destroyed. There’s no question about why they’re destroyed. The Israelis destroyed them. Every university was destroyed because the Israelis blew them up. If people had just been at home watching, they might have been mortified, they might have been upset, they might have wanted to change the channel because it’s so disturbing.

But if you’re in the streets, if you’re organising, if you’re with your fellow students or coworkers, or people in your community, or your family – and you’re in the streets, and you’re out there every day, when it’s cold, or when it’s raining, no matter what, you’re there with the Palestinians – and then you see how the lies are being presented by the capitalist media, you realise that the problem, the problem here isn’t a bad policy. The problem isn’t a mistaken policy. The problem isn’t a bad politician or a mistaken politician. The problem really is a system. And then you think, “Well, what is this system?”, “Does it have a name?”.

If you ask school kids, what’s the name of the U.S. System? They might say democracy or republic. Nobody in the past would have said, oh, we live in the capitalist system, and all the problems that we’re facing or seen are the problems of capitalism. But when you’re in struggle, and this, this phenomenon, this process is taking place, and you’re looking for answers in your thinking and seeing for yourself, it’s not a mistaken foreign policy, a mistaken lead, or a bad party, as opposed to a good party. When you realise it’s a system, then you want to know what this system is.

Who benefits from it? Who profits from it? What’s it called? How did it evolve? How did it get here? And you also think, “Can we have a different system?”.

I mean, the kings and queens of medieval Europe told the serfs, “This is how God wanted it”. “You’re a serf, and I’m a noble because this is God’s will.”. A lot of serfs believed that, because they were devout religious folks who went to church and the clergy – who was the 2nd estate, along with the nobility – told them” yeah, this is exactly what God wants.” “This is exactly… you do all the work, we pray, and all the money goes to the church and to the king.”

Then, finally, there’s a revolutionary process, and people realise, “Well, no, this is not what God wants. This is a system that benefits a ruling class, and we can have a new system.”

And once you have a new system, you don’t normally want to go back to the old system.

There’s not a yearning in Europe right now, in spite of how messed up Europe’s politics is, nobody’s thinking like, can’t we have an absolute monarch? There’s not some beck and call for a return to medievalism. In fact, if somebody said, “yeah, let’s have the farm workers be serfs.”, they would be, they would be destroyed. It would be completely impossible.

MAGA wants to go back to the old system before the Civil Rights Revolution and say, “Let’s go back.” People don’t want to go back. Some people may want to go back. I mean, what is MAGA really, and what is Project 2025? It’s a coalition of two things. There’s two wings to this:

The MAGA – Make America Great Again – is really a vessel, really just for Donald Trump.

And Trump was this seemingly anomalous, weird, reactionary reality TV guy.

Uh, very different from all other politicians, catering to sort of anti-immigrant, racist notions, especially in the white population and especially the rural white population. The electoral system is constructed that gives a great advantage to rural and small towns in America – even though 87 percent of the people in the country live in urban areas, which are generally not aligned politically and ideologically, and culturally with what MAGA stands for.

So MAGA, in one sense, is a vessel for Trump, who became a popular politician with what part of the population? Maybe 30 percent? Not really more. It’s probably 30 percent.

Project 2025 is something different. Project 2025’s author is Russell Vought.

Russell Vought is a long-time, semi… I don’t know, when do you call somebody a fascist or a semi-fascist? I mean, it’s a judgment call. But Vought believes that the problem in America was the Civil Rights Revolution because the Civil Rights Revolution detonated other movements: the women’s rights movement, what was at that time called the gay liberation movement, the movement that allowed disabled people to have access to things, the environmental protection movement that inhibited what corporations could do, that regulated and told corporations, they couldn’t completely poison the air and water, the lakes and rivers and air, at their own discretion, that there had to be some government oversight. That came also from the Civil Rights Revolution.

Russell Vought believes that the Democratic Party and the sector of the ruling class that’s aligned with the Democratic Party accommodated themselves to the Civil Rights Revolution changes because they are communists. He believes the Democratic Party leadership is communist. What does that make us, then? They actually believe it.

When you read Russell Vought’s stuff, he [says] these people are communists, and the reason he knows they’re communists is that they supported civil rights. Now, they didn’t really support civil rights, but the Democratic Party acclimated itself to the demands of the civil rights movement when they became institutionalised.

I have this quote [that Andrea Lucas], head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, just made an announcement that she’s urging all white male employees who feel that they have been the victims of racism and discrimination to come forward and file a claim with the EEOC.

[That is] an agency designed for and created by the civil rights movement, to remedy past discrimination, like what I was showing you about Eastman Kodak, where black people could not get jobs. I also worked at Bausch and Lomb in Rochester, which makes eyeglass lenses.

In 1965, there were 8,000 workers [and] zero African American workers. And now the EEOC head leader, Andrea Lucas, is saying, “White men, please come forward and file your claims because we know the real problem in society is that white men have been discriminated against.”.

When you look at the history of the country, on all fronts, and come to the conclusion, it’s so obviously sort of an appeal to a section of the white population to mobilise them on the basis that whatever problem they are encountering, it’s a consequence of the Civil Rights Revolution.

Russell Vought and the MAGA leadership, they want to take that part of the white population, galvanise them into a little reactionary, racist army, in order to reverse the social and economic and cultural changes that not only were good for society and good for people, but that inhibited capitalism. You know, those demands that you had to build an access ramp for disabled people, you couldn’t simply pollute the rivers at will, you couldn’t poison the air at will, the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Capitalists have to give workers basic job safety.

When I worked at Bausch and Lomb, which was in the early 1970s, the temperature there was 125 degrees in the unit. We were using chemicals which were later banned under [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] OSHA. Every week, some worker would have some disgusting, terrible, chemical burn, third-degree burns. There [was] no safety regulations.

That’s what Project 2025 wants to go back to – this unfettered rule by capitalism. But they couldn’t do it, they couldn’t get the job done unless they had a popular mass movement. So MAGA is the popular mass movement, because Trump was popular with a certain part of the population.

All the work behind the scenes at the Federalist Society, or [American Legislative Exchange Council] ALEC, or these different agencies and institutions to rewrite the laws against the Civil Rights Revolution, and all the women’s movement, and the social justice movements, and the environmental movement. They were not succeeding, but with Trump, they had a man on horseback. They had what is needed for a right-wing counter-revolution: mass base. These policies are so unpopular that MAGA felt we can [only] do it with a mass base, but the mass base is only 30% of the country.

So that’s the question, everybody. If they have 30 percent of the population, and 70 percent don’t agree with them – and yet, 70 percent don’t do anything, or the 70% are waiting for November 2026 for a midterm election so they can vote for some Democrats who will immediately compromise with Trump. If that’s the idea – if that’s the thought process – we lose, and MAGA wins.

But we feel that MAGA won’t win because that’s not what’s going to happen, and we think Minneapolis is a testament to that. Minneapolis is where George Floyd was killed May 25th, 2020. That was the first Trump regime year. Trump tried to use the military against the masses of people in Minneapolis and around the country, including Washington, DC. By May 30th, all the Democratic governors and the mayors, including the mayor of Washington, were going along with the curfews and the suppression.

Remember, [on June 1] Trump walked across Lafayette Park to have his picture taken with that Bible in front of St. John’s Church, and in order to get there, they had the police just pepper spray and hit all these people who are peaceful protesters with less than lethal munitions, which still cut up your body or destroy your eyes or whatever. He walked through, and he held his Bible there in front of St. John’s. That was the day he had a conference call with every governor saying, “You either crack down, or we’re sending the army.”.

He wanted to send the army then, just the way he’s sending the military now. And what happened the next day? The next day, instead of the governors and the mayors being able to go along with him, tens of millions of people came into the streets all over the country. That’s what happens if we remember June 1st, June 2nd, June 3rd, 2020. That went on for six weeks, and it changed the whole narrative.

Even the NFL and Major League Baseball were [saying] “Let’s take a knee.” Like, really? These billionaires, [were saying] “Yeah, let’s take a knee. Yeah, and the Confederate statue, that has to come down. We hate that. It’s been there for 100 years, and we loved it last year, but now we hate it. We really hate it, and it doesn’t stand for what we believe in.”

The whole narrative shifted for a moment, but it was just a moment because everything then kind of got sidetracked into, “Well, who are you going to vote for – Biden or Trump?” So all of the energy from the street, which was so dynamic, it was 35 million people in the street. Everybody said, “Let’s really make a difference by electing Biden so we don’t have a second Trump administration.”

All of the energy got funneled into the Democratic Party and into the election of Biden.

And what did Biden do? He reversed all the COVID aid programs. You know, the COVID aid program, which came under Trump and then Biden: You got $300 a month per child, every family. That brought childhood poverty in America down 50 percent in one year. Biden ended the program.

It shows that childhood poverty is a policy choice, right? They decided to spend the money on something else, not on that program. If you can eliminate childhood poverty by half, in one year, it shows it’s a completely remediable problem. So it’s a policy choice.

So, our movement went with the Democrats because that’s the game. The game is: “You hate the Republicans enough, you hate [Trump] enough. We gotta get him out of there.”

And who’s gonna take his place? Well, it’s gonna be a Democrat, because the system is rigged so that only one of the two ruling class parties has a chance of winning.

I’m with the Party for Socialism and Liberation. [PSL Presidential candidate] Claudia de la Cruz and [Vice Presidential candidate] Karina Garcia ran a great campaign, promoted socialism, got a huge number of votes, but they’re excluded from the TV debates.

They don’t have $3 billion for TV ads. In many of the places we got on the ballot, the Democrats then spent $100 million to get us off the ballot, and we were a minor party.

But they spent an enormous amount of money in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Ohio. The system is rigged.

So if you really want change – which we all do – it’s understandable why people would want to vote Trump out and the Republicans out. Understandable. Got it. But that’s not where change comes from, because then what happens is that the Democrats, essentially, because they are a ruling class party, either compromise with the far right, or go even further in some way. In the case of war and peace, the Democrats, I would say, are even worse.

If we think back to what I said a few minutes ago, where does change come from? It’s not the politicians – not changing the politicians. That Congress, in 1964, was the same Congress as 1954. Yet, the same Congress passed the most far-reaching legislation in American history, the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act, not because they changed. We changed – meaning we became political. We became active. Our communities became active.

The people, once organised, become an irresistible force. There are two kinds of change that can take place: far-reaching economic reform or revolution.

Now, there have been two revolutions in the United States, well, two and a half. The American Revolution was a political revolution. But at the end of that war, the slave owners were still the slave owners, the enslaved people were still the enslaved people. The social fabric of society was not altered. It was just that the ruling class colonists became independent from the British ruling class. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t unimportant, but that’s what it was.

The U.S. Civil War was more of a real revolution because the system of enslavement – [where] enslaved people constituted the centre of the American proletariat – that system ended, and it hasn’t come back yet. I don’t mean it’s coming back.

In fact, it kind of came back, five years later, ten years later, with the defeat of Reconstruction, the bloody counter-revolution in the South, when Northern capitalists betrayed the struggle for equality and freedom, by cooperating with – rather than fighting against – the old, defeated slaveocracy.

And then this defeated slaveocracy told the story of the Civil War from their point of view.

In New York City, right up until the 1930s, the Civil War was taught from the point of view of the Southern defeated slave owners. It was only the teachers’ union in New York that insisted that the war be taught to New York City public students from the vantage point of the North.

That was because the teachers’ union was led by communists at that time. They insisted that the North teach the Northern version of the Civil War. So in a way, the South won the Civil War, even though the system of slavery, which had been the centrepiece of labour in the South, was formally and technically and legally ended (unless you’re incarcerated, in which case, the Constitution says, you are enslaved, you can be enslaved.).

So how does change happen? It’s not gonna be by supporting the Democrats. It’s not gonna be by supporting the lesser evil. The problem really is the system. The ruling class has different factions and tendencies. If our movement says, “Look, one section of the ruling class is really bad. So we’re gonna follow and be tied to another section of the ruling class.”, then the idea of system change goes away.

If you believe that the real problem is the system and that society could be reorganised, such, for instance, that a new Constitution would say, “Bill of Rights, number one: free healthcare for every person in the United States. Every person who lives here, not just citizens. Number two: free education up to and through secondary education. Absolutely free. Third: housing must be affordable, no one can take your home from you, and housing can never be, say, more than 6% of your income, or free. Four: that you are guaranteed employment at a good salary, or if you can’t work, that you’re entitled to a basic income that can never be taken from you.”

These are the first four rights. The only rights that we have in our Bill of Rights are our inhibitions on what the government can’t do. It can’t inhibit our free speech. So homeless people have a right to speak, but they don’t have a right to a home, right? If you’ve gone bankrupt because you can’t pay your doctor’s bill, you have a right to speak about that, but you don’t have the right to go to a doctor for free.

So instead of having a bill of rights that are simply inhibitions or prohibitions about what the government can’t do on the political level, a Socialist Bill of Rights would be what society guarantees to every person. I was in Cuba recently. Cuba is suffering. Cuba is really suffering because of the blockade. I mean, in the 60s and early 70s by Caribbean standards, Cuba was affluent. [its] healthcare system second to none. Life expectancy [is] still the same as the United States, in spite of the blockade. But they can’t buy anything. They can’t sell anything. [The country] can’t trade. They can’t do any of that. There’s blackouts every day; it’s terrible.

Article 5 of the Cuban Constitution says the state has an obligation to provide free healthcare services to all of the people who are on the island of Cuba for their entire lifetime, from the time they’re born till the time they die. Here’s a country that’s so poor because of the blockade, and yet they make a legal guarantee to their people that healthcare is a right, not a privilege. If Cuba can do that under these circumstances, just think of what the United States can do.

Zoran Mandani’s election was a stupendous blow against the MAGA narrative about how right-wing the country is going to be. His demands are positive and progressive, like free buses. That’s great. They should be free. So should subways. So should healthcare.

So should the things that I just talked about.

The way to do it is we have to build an independent people’s movement that has – I believe – socialist understanding, socialist values, socialist and perspective, perspective about how change happens, that people make change. When we change, because we become politically active and [are] struggling, then change happens – whether it’s far-reaching reforms like the civil rights movement or environmental protection, or even more profound change of revolution. It’s when we change, when the people change.

And so that’s when we go out and demonstrate, when we leaflet, when we do all the things that we’re doing. We’re not trying to impress Donald Trump or Chuck Schumer. We’re trying to reach out to the people in the working class – the young people, especially. The people who are the agents have changed. Because if they become involved, as we’re involved, we can make the change that we want.

Brian Becker is a founding member of the Central Committee of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the National Director of ANSWER Coalition, and host of The Socialist Program.

▻https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.N.S.W.E.R.

#USA #révolution #racisme #trumpisme #histoire #lutte_des_classes

Ali Smiths „Gliff“ : Warum man diesen dystopischen Roman unbedingt lesen sollte
▻https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/article/ali-smiths-gliff-warum-man-diesen-dystopischen-roman-unbedingt-lese

Le roman comme métaphore de niore vie actuelle ? Si la référence à "The Iron Heel" est juste, c’est un livre à ne pas manquer.

▻https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Heel

4.7.2026 von Jenny Farrell - Das preisgekrönte Buch der Schottin zeigt, warum Überwachung, Datenmacht und die Verfolgung von Whistleblowern zu den großen Themen der 2020er Jahre gehören.

Die dystopische Literatur des Imperialismus, die mit Jack Londons „Eiserne Ferse“ begann, erfährt seit den 2020er Jahren ein Comeback und wird zunehmend mit internationalen Preisen ausgezeichnet. Von Paul Lynchs „Das Lied des Propheten“ (Booker-Preis 2023) bis zu Ali Smiths „Gliff“ (Dubliner Literaturpreis 2026) entwerfen Schreibende Zukunftsvisionen, die der Gegenwart verstörend nahe sind.

Anders als Lynch, dessen Widerstand konspirativ und düster bleibt, verankert Smith ihn in der Struktur von „Gliff“ selbst. Durch die Mutterfigur, zwei Gleichnisse, das Pferd Gliff, den Akt des Benennens und den Wechsel zur zweiten Person zeigt sie Widerstand als fortwährenden Akt des Linderns: Wunden versorgen, Ausgelöschtes erinnern und dem Unverifizierbaren entgegengehen. Zentral ist dabei die Kategorie des „Unverifizierbaren“ – Menschen, denen ihre digitale Identität entzogen wurde, weil sie die Mächtigen mit der Wahrheit konfrontierten. Das Pferd Gliff bewahrt die Erinnerung an das Humane in einer Welt, deren System und dessen Vollstrecker unmenschlich geworden sind.

Dass gerade der basisdemokratische Dublin Literary Award, der die Stimme des Lesepublikums vertritt, „Gliff“ auszeichnet, unterstreicht die Wirkung des Romans: Er verhindert, dass das Lesende nur Zuschauer bleiben. In Deutschland wurde der Preis erst in den letzten Jahren stärker wahrgenommen, vor allem durch die Auszeichnung 2023 von Katja Oskamps „Marzahn, Mon Amour“.
Die unsichtbare Mutter als verborgener Ausgangspunkt

Der Staat in „Gliff“ erklärt Menschen für „unverifizierbar“ und unterwirft sie Inhaftierung, Folter und „Umschulung“ in Archen (für Erwachsene) und Zirkussen (für Kinder). Die Gründe dafür wirken erschreckend vertraut: „All die Menschen, die hier lebten, inklusive der wilden Kinder, waren jetzt Unverifizierbare. Letztendlich alle wegen Wörtern. Einer Person hier hatte man die Verifikation entzogen, weil sie laut gesagt hatte, dass etwas ein Krieg ist, obwohl man es nicht Krieg nennen durfte. Eine andere wurde als unverifizierbar eingestuft, weil sie das Töten vieler Menschen durch ein anderes Volk im Internet als Genozid bezeichnet hatte. [...] Die Wilden waren einfach deshalb als unverifizierbar eingestuft worden, weil niemand wusste, was mit ihren Erwachsenen passiert war, und sich nicht nachweisen ließ, wer sie waren.”

Zur Strafe für das Aussprechen unerwünschter Wahrheiten unverifizierbar erklärt zu werden: Gerade darin liegt die Verstörungskraft von Smiths Dystopie, die die Feindseligkeit der Gegenwart gegenüber unbequemen Wahrheiten spiegelt.

Die Mutter von Briar und Rose, deren Schicksal im Zentrum des Romans steht, bleibt weitgehend unsichtbar und bildet zugleich dessen verborgenen Ausgangspunkt. Als Whistleblowerin deckte sie die Machenschaften des Konzerns Kindweed auf, wurde entlassen, verklagt und mit einer roten Linie um ihr Haus isoliert. Auf Briars Frage, was ein Whistleblower sei, antwortet sie: „Jemand, der die Wahrheit über irgendetwas sagt, obwohl andere Menschen nicht wollen, dass die Wahrheit darüber gesagt wird.” Ihre Philosophie „Wir können es nicht lösen. Aber wir können es lindern“ wird zum ethischen Leitmotiv des Romans. Nach ihrem Verschwinden bleiben ihre Werte – Benennen, Erinnern und Fürsorge – als moralischer Kompass der Töchter zurück. Zugleich spiegelt sie die beiden Figuren zweier eingebetteter Gleichnisse: die Mutter, die nie vergisst, und den Gegner, der sich der Auslöschung entzieht.
Ein Dialektwort für plötzlichen Schrecken

Die Gleichnisse schaffen einen mythischen Rahmen, der Widerstand rechtfertigt und in eine lange Geschichte einschreibt. Die Saccobanda-Erzählung berichtet von einem pferdeköpfigen Mädchen, das das Ungesagte hört, für unverifizierbar erklärt und weggebracht wird. Seine Mutter erinnert sich, und alles Misshandelte erhebt sich als grauer Berg aus Lärm. Der Mythos verleiht den Ausgestoßenen eine kollektive Identität und verspricht die Rückkehr des Ausgelöschten als Erinnerung.

Das zweite Gleichnis erzählt von einem Tyrannen, der seinen Gegner vernichten will, dessen Asche jedoch Teil von Luft, Wasser und Universum wird. Der Tyrann atmet seinen Gegner schließlich ein. Die Wahrheit kann nicht ausgelöscht, nur zerstreut werden. Gemeinsam legitimieren die Gleichnisse Widerstand als notwendige Antwort auf eine Welt, die ihn auszulöschen versucht.

Das Pferd Gliff bewegt sich auf prähistorischer, lebendiger und literarischer Ebene. Die Mutter zeigt den Kindern eine steinzeitliche Pferdegravur aus der Robin-Hood-Höhle in Derbyshire, die einen mutmaßlichen Auslöschungsversuch überstanden hat. Dieses Erlebnis bereitet die Begegnung mit dem Pferd vor, das Rose „Gliff“ nennt – ein Dialektwort für plötzlichen Schrecken, kurzen Blick oder ein beliebiges Wort. Das Pferd überschreitet die rote Linie und wird zum Begleiter ihrer Bewegung nach Norden.

Zugleich evoziert Smith die Houyhnhnms aus „Gullivers Reisen“. Wie diese verkörpert Gliff Wahrhaftigkeit, Sanftmut und natürliche Würde. Auf dem Höhepunkt trägt es Rose in die nordwärts gerichtete Flucht, während Briar gefangen genommen wird. Das Pferd steht für die fortdauernde Beziehung zwischen Mensch und Tier, die sowohl die prähistorische Kunst als auch der Roman feiern.

Ali Smith lässt ihre Protagonisten durch die englische Grafschaft Derbyshire ziehen.

Ali Smith lässt ihre Protagonisten durch die englische Grafschaft Derbyshire ziehen.

© Tom Nicholson/Imago
Ein hart errungenes Bild möglicher Gemeinschaft

Briars Entwicklung führt vom Widerstand über erzwungene Mittäterschaft zu einer Form der Erlösung. Der Roman verfolgt sie auf zwei Zeitebenen: als Kind und fünf Jahre später, als sie nach Gefangennahme und „Umschulung“ zu „Mr Allendale“ geworden ist, einer Aufsichtsperson am Packfließband, in eine männliche Identität gezwungen. Der Wendepunkt kommt, als die verletzte Arbeiterin Ayesha Falcon sie erkennt und ihr von Rose erzählt, die in einer Höhle lebte und „Verwahrlosten“ half. Mit Ayeshas Schicksal konfrontiert, erkennt Briar ihren eigenen Verrat.

Obwohl der Roman überwiegend Briars Perspektive folgt, rückt er am Ende Rose in den Mittelpunkt. Die jüngere Schwester verweigert die Bedingungen der Macht von Anfang an, widersetzt sich ihrer Sprache und bleibt bis zuletzt unverifizierbar. Während Briars Entwicklung eine Rückkehr zu sich selbst ist, besteht Roses darin, nie von sich selbst abgewichen zu sein. Gerade deshalb bildet sie den moralischen Anker des Romans.

Colon verkörpert dagegen den reuigen Kollaborateur. Als Teil des Überwachungssystems markiert er Rose und Briar zunächst als mögliche Unverifizierbare, löst sich jedoch zunehmend von seiner Rolle. Nachdem Oona McCool ihn ermutigt, den roten Kreis zu überschreiten, entscheidet er sich, Rose und Gliff nach Norden zu folgen. Auf seine Frage „Wie machen wir es wieder richtig?“ antwortet Rose: „Wir lösen es (…) Wir lindern es.” Der Junge folgt dem Mädchen, der Mensch dem Pferd – ein hart errungenes Bild möglicher Gemeinschaft jenseits früherer Mittäterschaft.

Der Norden trägt in „Gliff“ eine tiefgreifende Bedeutung: der grüne Norden der Reise der Mutter, die Höhlenkunst, das Unverifizierbare, die Fluchtrichtung vor dem südlichen Überwachungsstaat. Mit der Mutter war der Norden eine vorübergehende Flucht im Wohnmobil. Für die Kinder ist er anders: Rose und Briar fliehen getrennt nach Norden – ohne Erwachsene, ohne Pass, ohne Sicherheit. Der Norden ist kein Ziel, sondern eine Richtung.

Plädoyer für radikales Umdenken: ein neuer Blick auf Mary Shelleys „Frankenstein“
Plädoyer für radikales Umdenken: ein neuer Blick auf Mary Shelleys „Frankenstein“
Die Zukunft definiert sich negativ

Die Robin-Hood-Höhle mit der paläolithischen Pferdegravur liegt auf diesem Weg nach Norden. Die Region Derbyshire ist historisch von Widerstand geprägt – von industriellem und religiösem Dissens bis zur Pentrich-Revolution von 1817 und der Rolle des Peak District als Rückzugsraum vor staatlicher Kontrolle. Für die Schottin Ali Smith endet dieser Norden jedoch nicht historisch, sondern wird räumlich und politisch weitergedacht: als Zone abnehmender Kontrolle, in der die Überwachungslogik des Staates dünner wird und ein Mädchen auf einem Pferd überhaupt noch ankommen kann.

Nach Briars Erzählung in der ersten Person wechselt der Roman auf den letzten Seiten in die zweite Person und berichtet von Roses Widerstand nach Briars Gefangennahme: „Du bist ein Mädchen auf einem Pferd.“ Die Leser werden zu Rose; Widerstand wird nicht mehr beobachtet, sondern vollzogen. Das „Du“ bindet sie direkt ein. Das Ende bleibt offen: Rose, Gliff und Colin gehen nach Norden, Briar folgt später. „Das überlegen wir uns auf dem Weg.“ Es gibt keinen festgelegten Weg, keinen garantierten Sieg. Die Zukunft definiert sich negativ: nicht Autoritarismus, nicht Überwachung, nicht rote Linie, nicht Schlachthof. Sie bleibt improvisiert, kollektiv und offen.

In „Gliff“ benennt Ali Smith zentrale Gegenwartsprobleme: Überwachung, Datenextraktion, Feindseligkeit gegenüber Flüchtlingen und Wahrheitssagenden sowie Unternehmens- und Establishment-Immunität. Zugleich entwirft sie ein Bild des Widerstands: ein Mädchen mit einem Pferd, einen Stein aus ihrem zerstörten Zuhause in der Tasche, unterwegs nach Norden. „Gliff“ erscheint so als einer der bedeutenden dystopischen Romane der 2020er Jahre – nicht weil er Zukunft vorhersagt, sondern weil er zeigt, wie sie bereits hier ist.

Ali Smith: „Gliff“ , aus dem Englischen von Stefanie Jacobs, 304 Seiten, 25 Euro.

Jenny Farrell, Publizistin und Autorin, promovierte Literaturwissenschaftlerin, studierte an der Humboldt-Universität und lebt seit 1985 in Irland.

#science_fiction #lutte_des_classes

A Piece of Steak by Jack London
▻https://americanliterature.com/author/jack-london/short-story/a-piece-of-steak

Aujourd’hui #POTUS Trump fête son anniversaire avec une compétition de mixed martial arts (MMA). C’est le moment de nous rappeler le sort des boxeurs usés par de longues années de combat et de travail physique entre les brèves apparitions dans le ring . Le prolétariat des sports de combat n’a pas une longue vie.

https://pictures.abebooks.com/inventory/22386669456.jpg

With the last morsel of bread Tom King wiped his plate clean of the last particle of flour gravy and chewed the resulting mouthful in a slow and meditative way. When he arose from the table, he was oppressed by the feeling that he was distinctly hungry. Yet he alone had eaten. The two children in the other room had been sent early to bed in order that in sleep they might forget they had gone supperless. His wife had touched nothing, and had sat silently and watched him with solicitous eyes. She was a thin, worn woman of the working-class, though signs of an earlier prettiness were not wanting in her face. The flour for the gravy she had borrowed from the neighbour across the hall The last two ha’pennies had gone to buy the bread.

He sat down by the window on a rickety chair that protested under his weight, and quite mechanically he put his pipe in his mouth and dipped into the side pocket of his coat. The absence of any tobacco made him aware of his action, and, with a scowl for his forgetfulness, he put the pipe away. His movements were slow, almost hulking, as though he were burdened by the heavy weight of his muscles. He was a solid-bodied, stolid-looking man, and his appearance did not suffer from being overprepossessing. His rough clothes were old and slouchy. The uppers of his shoes were too weak to carry the heavy re-soling that was itself of no recent date. And his cotton shirt, a cheap, two shilling affair, showed a frayed collar and ineradicable paint stains.

But it was Tom King’s face that advertised him unmistakably for what he was. It was the face of a typical prize-fighter; of one who had put in long years of service in the squared ring and, by that means, developed and emphasized all the marks of the fighting beast. It was distinctly a lowering countenance, and, that no feature of it might escape notice, it was clean-shaven. The lips were shapeless and constituted a mouth harsh to excess, that was like a gash in his face. The jaw was aggressive, brutal, heavy. The eyes, slow of movement and heavy-lidded, were almost expressionless under the shaggy, indrawn brows. Sheer animal that he was, the eyes were the most animal-like feature about him. They were sleepy, lion-like—the eyes of a fighting animal. The forehead slanted quickly back to the hair, which, clipped close, showed every bump of a villainous- looking head. A nose twice broken and moulded variously by countless blows, and a cauliflower ear, permanently swollen and distorted to twice its size, completed his adornment, while the beard, fresh-shaven as it was, sprouted in the skin and gave the face a blue-black stain.

Altogether, it was the face of a man to be afraid of in a dark alley or lonely place. And yet Tom King was not a criminal, nor had he ever done anything criminal. Outside of brawls, common to his walk in life, he had harmed no one. Nor had he ever been known to pick a quarrel. He was a professional, and all the fighting brutishness of him was reserved for his professional appearances. Outside the ring he was slow-going, easy- natured, and, in his younger days, when money was flush, too open-handed for his own good. He bore no grudges and had few enemies. Fighting was a business with him. In the ring he struck to hurt, struck to maim, struck to destroy; but there was no animus in it. It was a plain business proposition. Audiences assembled and paid for the spectacle of men knocking each other out. The winner took the big end of the purse. When Tom King faced the Woolloomoolloo Gouger, twenty years before, he knew that the Gouger’s jaw was only four months healed after having been broken in a Newcastle bout. And he had played for that jaw and broken it again in the ninth round, not because he bore the Gouger any ill-will, but because that was the surest way to put the Gouger out and win the big end of the purse. Nor had the Gouger borne him any ill-will for it. It was the game, and both knew the game and played it.

Tom King had never been a talker, and he sat by the window, morosely silent, staring at his hands. The veins stood out on the backs of the hands, large and swollen; and the knuckles, smashed and battered and malformed, testified to the use to which they had been put. He had never heard that a man’s life was the life of his arteries, but well he knew the meaning of those big upstanding veins. His heart had pumped too much blood through them at top pressure. They no longer did the work. He had stretched the elasticity out of them, and with their distension had passed his endurance. He tired easily now. No longer could he do a fast twenty rounds, hammer and tongs, fight, fight, fight, from gong to gong, with fierce rally on top of fierce rally, beaten to the ropes and in turn beating his opponent to the ropes, and rallying fiercest and fastest of all in that last, twentieth round, with the house on its feet and yelling, himself rushing, striking, ducking, raining showers of blows upon showers of blows and receiving showers of blows in return, and all the time the heart faithfully pumping the surging blood through the adequate veins. The veins, swollen at the time, had always shrunk down again, though each time, imperceptibly at first, not quite—remaining just a trifle larger than before. He stared at them and at his battered knuckles, and, for the moment, caught a vision of the youthful excellence of those hands before the first knuckle had been smashed on the head of Benny Jones, otherwise known as the Welsh Terror.

The impression of his hunger came back on him.

“Blimey, but couldn’t I go a piece of steak!” he muttered aloud, clenching his huge fists and spitting out a smothered oath.

“I tried both Burke’s an’ Sawley’s,” his wife said half apologetically.

“An’ they wouldn’t?” he demanded.

“Not a ha’penny. Burke said—” She faltered.

“G’wan! Wot’d he say?”

“As how ’e was thinkin’ Sandel ud do ye to-night, an’ as how yer score was comfortable big as it was.”

Tom King grunted, but did not reply. He was busy thinking of the bull terrier he had kept in his younger days to which he had fed steaks without end. Burke would have given him credit for a thousand steaks—then. But times had changed. Tom King was getting old; and old men, fighting before second-rate clubs, couldn’t expect to run bills of any size with the tradesmen.

He had got up in the morning with a longing for a piece of steak, and the longing had not abated. He had not had a fair training for this fight. It was a drought year in Australia, times were hard, and even the most irregular work was difficult to find. He had had no sparring partner, and his food had not been of the best nor always sufficient. He had done a few days’ navvy work when he could get it, and he had run around the Domain in the early mornings to get his legs in shape. But it was hard, training without a partner and with a wife and two kiddies that must be fed. Credit with the tradesmen had undergone very slight expansion when he was matched with Sandel. The secretary of the Gayety Club had advanced him three pounds—the loser’s end of the purse—and beyond that had refused to go. Now and again he had managed to borrow a few shillings from old pals, who would have lent more only that it was a drought year and they were hard put themselves. No—and there was no use in disguising the fact—his training had not been satisfactory. He should have had better food and no worries. Besides, when a man is forty, it is harder to get into condition than when he is twenty.

“What time is it, Lizzie?” he asked.

His wife went across the hall to inquire, and came back.

“Quarter before eight.”

“They’ll be startin’ the first bout in a few minutes,” he said. “Only a try-out. Then there’s a four-round spar ’tween Dealer Wells an’ Gridley, an’ a ten-round go ’tween Starlight an’ some sailor bloke. I don’t come on for over an hour.”

At the end of another silent ten minutes, he rose to his feet.

“Truth is, Lizzie, I ain’t had proper trainin’.”

He reached for his hat and started for the door. He did not offer to kiss her—he never did on going out—but on this night she dared to kiss him, throwing her arms around him and compelling him to bend down to her face. She looked quite small against the massive bulk of the man.

“Good luck, Tom,” she said. “You gotter do ’im.”

“Ay, I gotter do ’im,” he repeated. “That’s all there is to it. I jus’ gotter do ’im.”

He laughed with an attempt at heartiness, while she pressed more closely against him. Across her shoulders he looked around the bare room. It was all he had in the world, with the rent overdue, and her and the kiddies. And he was leaving it to go out into the night to get meat for his mate and cubs—not like a modern working-man going to his machine grind, but in the old, primitive, royal, animal way, by fighting for it.

“I gotter do ’im,” he repeated, this time a hint of desperation in his voice. “If it’s a win, it’s thirty quid—an’ I can pay all that’s owin’, with a lump o’ money left over. If it’s a lose, I get naught—not even a penny for me to ride home on the tram. The secretary’s give all that’s comin’ from a loser’s end. Good-bye, old woman. I’ll come straight home if it’s a win.”

“An’ I’ll be waitin’ up,” she called to him along the hall.

It was full two miles to the Gayety, and as he walked along he remembered how in his palmy days—he had once been the heavyweight champion of New South Wales—he would have ridden in a cab to the fight, and how, most likely, some heavy backer would have paid for the cab and ridden with him. There were Tommy Burns and that Yankee nigger, Jack Johnson—they rode about in motor-cars. And he walked! And, as any man knew, a hard two miles was not the best preliminary to a fight. He was an old un, and the world did not wag well with old uns. He was good for nothing now except navvy work, and his broken nose and swollen ear were against him even in that. He found himself wishing that he had learned a trade. It would have been better in the long run. But no one had told him, and he knew, deep down in his heart, that he would not have listened if they had. It had been so easy. Big money—sharp, glorious fights—periods of rest and loafing in between—a following of eager flatterers, the slaps on the back, the shakes of the hand, the toffs glad to buy him a drink for the privilege of five minutes’ talk—and the glory of it, the yelling houses, the whirlwind finish, the referee’s “King wins!” and his name in the sporting columns next day.

Those had been times! But he realized now, in his slow, ruminating way, that it was the old uns he had been putting away. He was Youth, rising; and they were Age, sinking. No wonder it had been easy—they with their swollen veins and battered knuckles and weary in the bones of them from the long battles they had already fought. He remembered the time he put out old Stowsher Bill, at Rush-Cutters Bay, in the eighteenth round, and how old Bill had cried afterward in the dressing-room like a baby. Perhaps old Bill’s rent had been overdue. Perhaps he’d had at home a missus an’ a couple of kiddies. And perhaps Bill, that very day of the fight, had had a hungering for a piece of steak. Bill had fought game and taken incredible punishment. He could see now, after he had gone through the mill himself, that Stowsher Bill had fought for a bigger stake, that night twenty years ago, than had young Tom King, who had fought for glory and easy money. No wonder Stowsher Bill had cried afterward in the dressing-room.

Well, a man had only so many fights in him, to begin with. It was the iron law of the game. One man might have a hundred hard fights in him, another man only twenty; each, according to the make of him and the quality of his fibre, had a definite number, and, when he had fought them, he was done. Yes, he had had more fights in him than most of them, and he had had far more than his share of the hard, gruelling fights—the kind that worked the heart and lungs to bursting, that took the elastic out of the arteries and made hard knots of muscle out of Youth’s sleek suppleness, that wore out nerve and stamina and made brain and bones weary from excess of effort and endurance overwrought. Yes, he had done better than all of them. There were none of his old fighting partners left. He was the last of the old guard. He had seen them all finished, and he had had a hand in finishing some of them.

They had tried him out against the old uns, and one after another he had put them away—laughing when, like old Stowsher Bill, they cried in the dressing-room. And now he was an old un, and they tried out the youngsters on him. There was that bloke, Sandel. He had come over from New Zealand with a record behind him. But nobody in Australia knew anything about him, so they put him up against old Tom King. If Sandel made a showing, he would be given better men to fight, with bigger purses to win; so it was to be depended upon that he would put up a fierce battle. He had everything to win by it—money and glory and career; and Tom King was the grizzled old chopping-block that guarded the highway to fame and fortune. And he had nothing to win except thirty quid, to pay to the landlord and the tradesmen. And, as Tom King thus ruminated, there came to his stolid vision the form of Youth, glorious Youth, rising exultant and invincible, supple of muscle and silken of skin, with heart and lungs that had never been tired and torn and that laughed at limitation of effort. Yes, Youth was the Nemesis. It destroyed the old uns and recked not that, in so doing, it destroyed itself. It enlarged its arteries and smashed its knuckles, and was in turn destroyed by Youth. For Youth was ever youthful. It was only Age that grew old.

At Castlereagh Street he turned to the left, and three blocks along came to the Gayety. A crowd of young larrikins hanging outside the door made respectful way for him, and he heard one say to another: “That’s ’im! That’s Tom King!”

Inside, on the way to his dressing-room, he encountered the secretary, a keen-eyed, shrewd-faced young man, who shook his hand.

“How are you feelin’, Tom?” he asked.

“Fit as a fiddle,” King answered, though he knew that he lied, and that if he had a quid, he would give it right there for a good piece of steak.

When he emerged from the dressing-room, his seconds behind him, and came down the aisle to the squared ring in the centre of the hall, a burst of greeting and applause went up from the waiting crowd. He acknowledged salutations right and left, though few of the faces did he know. Most of them were the faces of kiddies unborn when he was winning his first laurels in the squared ring. He leaped lightly to the raised platform and ducked through the ropes to his corner, where he sat down on a folding stool. Jack Ball, the referee, came over and shook his hand. Ball was a broken- down pugilist who for over ten years had not entered the ring as a principal. King was glad that he had him for referee. They were both old uns. If he should rough it with Sandel a bit beyond the rules, he knew Ball could be depended upon to pass it by.

Aspiring young heavyweights, one after another, were climbing into the ring and being presented to the audience by the referee. Also, he issued their challenges for them.

“Young Pronto,” Bill announced, “from North Sydney, challenges the winner for fifty pounds side bet.”

The audience applauded, and applauded again as Sandel himself sprang through the ropes and sat down in his corner. Tom King looked across the ring at him curiously, for in a few minutes they would be locked together in merciless combat, each trying with all the force of him to knock the other into unconsciousness. But little could he see, for Sandel, like himself, had trousers and sweater on over his ring costume. His face was strongly handsome, crowned with a curly mop of yellow hair, while his thick, muscular neck hinted at bodily magnificence.

Young Pronto went to one corner and then the other, shaking hands with the principals and dropping down out of the ring. The challenges went on. Ever Youth climbed through the ropes—Youth unknown, but insatiable—crying out to mankind that with strength and skill it would match issues with the winner. A few years before, in his own heyday of invincibleness, Tom King would have been amused and bored by these preliminaries. But now he sat fascinated, unable to shake the vision of Youth from his eyes. Always were these youngsters rising up in the boxing game, springing through the ropes and shouting their defiance; and always were the old uns going down before them. They climbed to success over the bodies of the old uns. And ever they came, more and more youngsters—Youth unquenchable and irresistible— and ever they put the old uns away, themselves becoming old uns and travelling the same downward path, while behind them, ever pressing on them, was Youth eternal—the new babies, grown lusty and dragging their elders down, with behind them more babies to the end of time—Youth that must have its will and that will never die.

King glanced over to the press box and nodded to Morgan, of the Sportsman, and Corbett, of the Referee. Then he held out his hands, while Sid Sullivan and Charley Bates, his seconds, slipped on his gloves and laced them tight, closely watched by one of Sandel’s seconds, who first examined critically the tapes on King’s knuckles. A second of his own was in Sandel’s corner, performing a like office. Sandel’s trousers were pulled off, and, as he stood up, his sweater was skinned off over his head. And Tom King, looking, saw Youth incarnate, deep-chested, heavy-thewed, with muscles that slipped and slid like live things under the white satin skin. The whole body was a-crawl with life, and Tom King knew that it was a life that had never oozed its freshness out through the aching pores during the long fights wherein Youth paid its toll and departed not quite so young as when it entered.

The two men advanced to meet each other, and, as the gong sounded and the seconds clattered out of the ring with the folding stools, they shook hands and instantly took their fighting attitudes. And instantly, like a mechanism of steel and springs balanced on a hair trigger, Sandel was in and out and in again, landing a left to the eyes, a right to the ribs, ducking a counter, dancing lightly away and dancing menacingly back again. He was swift and clever. It was a dazzling exhibition. The house yelled its approbation. But King was not dazzled. He had fought too many fights and too many youngsters. He knew the blows for what they were—too quick and too deft to be dangerous. Evidently Sandel was going to rush things from the start. It was to be expected. It was the way of Youth, expending its splendour and excellence in wild insurgence and furious onslaught, overwhelming opposition with its own unlimited glory of strength and desire.

Sandel was in and out, here, there, and everywhere, light-footed and eager- hearted, a living wonder of white flesh and stinging muscle that wove itself into a dazzling fabric of attack, slipping and leaping like a flying shuttle from action to action through a thousand actions, all of them centred upon the destruction of Tom King, who stood between him and fortune. And Tom King patiently endured. He knew his business, and he knew Youth now that Youth was no longer his. There was nothing to do till the other lost some of his steam, was his thought, and he grinned to himself as he deliberately ducked so as to receive a heavy blow on the top of his head. It was a wicked thing to do, yet eminently fair according to the rules of the boxing game. A man was supposed to take care of his own knuckles, and, if he insisted on hitting an opponent on the top of the head, he did so at his own peril. King could have ducked lower and let the blow whiz harmlessly past, but he remembered his own early fights and how he smashed his first knuckle on the head of the Welsh Terror. He was but playing the game. That duck had accounted for one of Sandel’s knuckles. Not that Sandel would mind it now. He would go on, superbly regardless, hitting as hard as ever throughout the fight. But later on, when the long ring battles had begun to tell, he would regret that knuckle and look back and remember how he smashed it on Tom King’s head.

The first round was all Sandel’s, and he had the house yelling with the rapidity of his whirlwind rushes. He overwhelmed King with avalanches of punches, and King did nothing. He never struck once, contenting himself with covering up, blocking and ducking and clinching to avoid punishment. He occasionally feinted, shook his head when the weight of a punch landed, and moved stolidly about, never leaping or springing or wasting an ounce of strength. Sandel must foam the froth of Youth away before discreet Age could dare to retaliate. All King’s movements were slow and methodical, and his heavy-lidded, slow-moving eyes gave him the appearance of being half asleep or dazed. Yet they were eyes that saw everything, that had been trained to see everything through all his twenty years and odd in the ring. They were eyes that did not blink or waver before an impending blow, but that coolly saw and measured distance.

Seated in his corner for the minute’s rest at the end of the round, he lay back with outstretched legs, his arms resting on the right angle of the ropes, his chest and abdomen heaving frankly and deeply as he gulped down the air driven by the towels of his seconds. He listened with closed eyes to the voices of the house, “Why don’t yeh fight, Tom?” many were crying. “Yeh ain’t afraid of ’im, are yeh?”

“Muscle-bound,” he heard a man on a front seat comment. “He can’t move quicker. Two to one on Sandel, in quids.”

The gong struck and the two men advanced from their corners. Sandel came forward fully three-quarters of the distance, eager to begin again; but King was content to advance the shorter distance. It was in line with his policy of economy. He had not been well trained, and he had not had enough to eat, and every step counted. Besides, he had already walked two miles to the ringside. It was a repetition of the first round, with Sandel attacking like a whirlwind and with the audience indignantly demanding why King did not fight. Beyond feinting and several slowly delivered and ineffectual blows he did nothing save block and stall and clinch. Sandel wanted to make the pace fast, while King, out of his wisdom, refused to accommodate him. He grinned with a certain wistful pathos in his ring- battered countenance, and went on cherishing his strength with the jealousy of which only Age is capable. Sandel was Youth, and he threw his strength away with the munificent abandon of Youth. To King belonged the ring generalship, the wisdom bred of long, aching fights. He watched with cool eyes and head, moving slowly and waiting for Sandel’s froth to foam away. To the majority of the onlookers it seemed as though King was hopelessly outclassed, and they voiced their opinion in offers of three to one on Sandel. But there were wise ones, a few, who knew King of old time, and who covered what they considered easy money.

The third round began as usual, one-sided, with Sandel doing all the leading, and delivering all the punishment. A half-minute had passed when Sandel, over-confident, left an opening. King’s eyes and right arm flashed in the same instant. It was his first real blow—a hook, with the twisted arch of the arm to make it rigid, and with all the weight of the half- pivoted body behind it. It was like a sleepy-seeming lion suddenly thrusting out a lightning paw. Sandel, caught on the side of the jaw, was felled like a bullock. The audience gasped and murmured awe-stricken applause. The man was not muscle-bound, after all, and he could drive a blow like a trip-hammer.

Sandel was shaken. He rolled over and attempted to rise, but the sharp yells from his seconds to take the count restrained him. He knelt on one knee, ready to rise, and waited, while the referee stood over him, counting the seconds loudly in his ear. At the ninth he rose in fighting attitude, and Tom King, facing him, knew regret that the blow had not been an inch nearer the point of the jaw. That would have been a knock-out, and he could have carried the thirty quid home to the missus and the kiddies.

The round continued to the end of its three minutes, Sandel for the first time respectful of his opponent and King slow of movement and sleepy-eyed as ever. As the round neared its close, King, warned of the fact by sight of the seconds crouching outside ready for the spring in through the ropes, worked the fight around to his own corner. And when the gong struck, he sat down immediately on the waiting stool, while Sandel had to walk all the way across the diagonal of the square to his own corner. It was a little thing, but it was the sum of little things that counted. Sandel was compelled to walk that many more steps, to give up that much energy, and to lose a part of the precious minute of rest. At the beginning of every round King loafed slowly out from his corner, forcing his opponent to advance the greater distance. The end of every round found the fight manoeuvred by King into his own corner so that he could immediately sit down.

Two more rounds went by, in which King was parsimonious of effort and Sandel prodigal. The latter’s attempt to force a fast pace made King uncomfortable, for a fair percentage of the multitudinous blows showered upon him went home. Yet King persisted in his dogged slowness, despite the crying of the young hot-heads for him to go in and fight. Again, in the sixth round, Sandel was careless, again Tom King’s fearful right flashed out to the jaw, and again Sandel took the nine seconds count.

By the seventh round Sandel’s pink of condition was gone, and he settled down to what he knew was to be the hardest fight in his experience. Tom King was an old un, but a better old un than he had ever encountered—an old un who never lost his head, who was remarkably able at defence, whose blows had the impact of a knotted club, and who had a knockout in either hand. Nevertheless, Tom King dared not hit often. He never forgot his battered knuckles, and knew that every hit must count if the knuckles were to last out the fight. As he sat in his corner, glancing across at his opponent, the thought came to him that the sum of his wisdom and Sandel’s youth would constitute a world’s champion heavyweight. But that was the trouble. Sandel would never become a world champion. He lacked the wisdom, and the only way for him to get it was to buy it with Youth; and when wisdom was his, Youth would have been spent in buying it.

King took every advantage he knew. He never missed an opportunity to clinch, and in effecting most of the clinches his shoulder drove stiffly into the other’s ribs. In the philosophy of the ring a shoulder was as good as a punch so far as damage was concerned, and a great deal better so far as concerned expenditure of effort. Also, in the clinches King rested his weight on his opponent, and was loath to let go. This compelled the interference of the referee, who tore them apart, always assisted by Sandel, who had not yet learned to rest. He could not refrain from using those glorious flying arms and writhing muscles of his, and when the other rushed into a clinch, striking shoulder against ribs, and with head resting under Sandel’s left arm, Sandel almost invariably swung his right behind his own back and into the projecting face. It was a clever stroke, much admired by the audience, but it was not dangerous, and was, therefore, just that much wasted strength. But Sandel was tireless and unaware of limitations, and King grinned and doggedly endured.

Sandel developed a fierce right to the body, which made it appear that King was taking an enormous amount of punishment, and it was only the old ringsters who appreciated the deft touch of King’s left glove to the other’s biceps just before the impact of the blow. It was true, the blow landed each time; but each time it was robbed of its power by that touch on the biceps. In the ninth round, three times inside a minute, King’s right hooked its twisted arch to the jaw; and three times Sandel’s body, heavy as it was, was levelled to the mat. Each time he took the nine seconds allowed him and rose to his feet, shaken and jarred, but still strong. He had lost much of his speed, and he wasted less effort. He was fighting grimly; but he continued to draw upon his chief asset, which was Youth. King’s chief asset was experience. As his vitality had dimmed and his vigour abated, he had replaced them with cunning, with wisdom born of the long fights and with a careful shepherding of strength. Not alone had he learned never to make a superfluous movement, but he had learned how to seduce an opponent into throwing his strength away. Again and again, by feint of foot and hand and body he continued to inveigle Sandel into leaping back, ducking, or countering. King rested, but he never permitted Sandel to rest. It was the strategy of Age.

Early in the tenth round King began stopping the other’s rushes with straight lefts to the face, and Sandel, grown wary, responded by drawing the left, then by ducking it and delivering his right in a swinging hook to the side of the head. It was too high up to be vitally effective; but when first it landed, King knew the old, familiar descent of the black veil of unconsciousness across his mind. For the instant, or for the slighest fraction of an instant, rather, he ceased. In the one moment he saw his opponent ducking out of his field of vision and the background of white, watching faces; in the next moment he again saw his opponent and the background of faces. It was as if he had slept for a time and just opened his eyes again, and yet the interval of unconsciousness was so microscopically short that there had been no time for him to fall. The audience saw him totter and his knees give, and then saw him recover and tuck his chin deeper into the shelter of his left shoulder.

Several times Sandel repeated the blow, keeping King partially dazed, and then the latter worked out his defence, which was also a counter. Feinting with his left he took a half-step backward, at the same time upper cutting with the whole strength of his right. So accurately was it timed that it landed squarely on Sandel’s face in the full, downward sweep of the duck, and Sandel lifted in the air and curled backward, striking the mat on his head and shoulders. Twice King achieved this, then turned loose and hammered his opponent to the ropes. He gave Sandel no chance to rest or to set himself, but smashed blow in upon blow till the house rose to its feet and the air was filled with an unbroken roar of applause. But Sandel’s strength and endurance were superb, and he continued to stay on his feet. A knock-out seemed certain, and a captain of police, appalled at the dreadful punishment, arose by the ringside to stop the fight. The gong struck for the end of the round and Sandel staggered to his corner, protesting to the captain that he was sound and strong. To prove it, he threw two back-air-springs, and the police captain gave in.

Tom King, leaning back in his corner and breathing hard, was disappointed. If the fight had been stopped, the referee, perforce, would have rendered him the decision and the purse would have been his. Unlike Sandel, he was not fighting for glory or career, but for thirty quid. And now Sandel would recuperate in the minute of rest.

Youth will be served—this saying flashed into King’s mind, and he remembered the first time he had heard it, the night when he had put away Stowsher Bill. The toff who had bought him a drink after the fight and patted him on the shoulder had used those words. Youth will be served! The toff was right. And on that night in the long ago he had been Youth. To-night Youth sat in the opposite corner. As for himself, he had been fighting for half an hour now, and he was an old man. Had he fought like Sandel, he would not have lasted fifteen minutes. But the point was that he did not recuperate. Those upstanding arteries and that sorely tried heart would not enable him to gather strength in the intervals between the rounds. And he had not had sufficient strength in him to begin with. His legs were heavy under him and beginning to cramp. He should not have walked those two miles to the fight. And there was the steak which he had got up longing for that morning. A great and terrible hatred rose up in him for the butchers who had refused him credit. It was hard for an old man to go into a fight without enough to eat. And a piece of steak was such a little thing, a few pennies at best; yet it meant thirty quid to him.

With the gong that opened the eleventh round, Sandel rushed, making a show of freshness which he did not really possess. King knew it for what it was—a bluff as old as the game itself. He clinched to save himself, then, going free, allowed Sandel to get set. This was what King desired. He feinted with his left, drew the answering duck and swinging upward hook, then made the half-step backward, delivered the upper cut full to the face and crumpled Sandel over to the mat. After that he never let him rest, receiving punishment himself, but inflicting far more, smashing Sandel to the ropes, hooking and driving all manner of blows into him, tearing away from his clinches or punching him out of attempted clinches, and ever when Sandel would have fallen, catching him with one uplifting hand and with the other immediately smashing him into the ropes where he could not fall.

The house by this time had gone mad, and it was his house, nearly every voice yelling: “Go it, Tom!” "Get ’im! Get ’im!" “You’ve got ’im, Tom! You’ve got ’im!” It was to be a whirlwind finish, and that was what a ringside audience paid to see.

And Tom King, who for half an hour had conserved his strength, now expended it prodigally in the one great effort he knew he had in him. It was his one chance—now or not at all. His strength was waning fast, and his hope was that before the last of it ebbed out of him he would have beaten his opponent down for the count. And as he continued to strike and force, coolly estimating the weight of his blows and the quality of the damage wrought, he realized how hard a man Sandel was to knock out. Stamina and endurance were his to an extreme degree, and they were the virgin stamina and endurance of Youth. Sandel was certainly a coming man. He had it in him. Only out of such rugged fibre were successful fighters fashioned.

Sandel was reeling and staggering, but Tom King’s legs were cramping and his knuckles going back on him. Yet he steeled himself to strike the fierce blows, every one of which brought anguish to his tortured hands. Though now he was receiving practically no punishment, he was weakening as rapidly as the other. His blows went home, but there was no longer the weight behind them, and each blow was the result of a severe effort of will. His legs were like lead, and they dragged visibly under him; while Sandel’s backers, cheered by this symptom, began calling encouragement to their man.

King was spurred to a burst of effort. He delivered two blows in succession—a left, a trifle too high, to the solar plexus, and a right cross to the jaw. They were not heavy blows, yet so weak and dazed was Sandel that he went down and lay quivering. The referee stood over him, shouting the count of the fatal seconds in his ear. If before the tenth second was called, he did not rise, the fight was lost. The house stood in hushed silence. King rested on trembling legs. A mortal dizziness was upon him, and before his eyes the sea of faces sagged and swayed, while to his ears, as from a remote distance, came the count of the referee. Yet he looked upon the fight as his. It was impossible that a man so punished could rise.

Only Youth could rise, and Sandel rose. At the fourth second he rolled over on his face and groped blindly for the ropes. By the seventh second he had dragged himself to his knee, where he rested, his head rolling groggily on his shoulders. As the referee cried “Nine!” Sandel stood upright, in proper stalling position, his left arm wrapped about his face, his right wrapped about his stomach. Thus were his vital points guarded, while he lurched forward toward King in the hope of effecting a clinch and gaining more time.

At the instant Sandel arose, King was at him, but the two blows he delivered were muffled on the stalled arms. The next moment Sandel was in the clinch and holding on desperately while the referee strove to drag the two men apart. King helped to force himself free. He knew the rapidity with which Youth recovered, and he knew that Sandel was his if he could prevent that recovery. One stiff punch would do it. Sandel was his, indubitably his. He had out-generalled him, out-fought him, out-pointed him. Sandel reeled out of the clinch, balanced on the hair line between defeat or survival. One good blow would topple him over and down and out. And Tom King, in a flash of bitterness, remembered the piece of steak and wished that he had it then behind that necessary punch he must deliver. He nerved himself for the blow, but it was not heavy enough nor swift enough. Sandel swayed, but did not fall, staggering back to the ropes and holding on. King staggered after him, and, with a pang like that of dissolution, delivered another blow. But his body had deserted him. All that was left of him was a fighting intelligence that was dimmed and clouded from exhaustion. The blow that was aimed for the jaw struck no higher than the shoulder. He had willed the blow higher, but the tired muscles had not been able to obey. And, from the impact of the blow, Tom King himself reeled back and nearly fell. Once again he strove. This time his punch missed altogether, and, from absolute weakness, he fell against Sandel and clinched, holding on to him to save himself from sinking to the floor.

King did not attempt to free himself. He had shot his bolt. He was gone. And Youth had been served. Even in the clinch he could feel Sandel growing stronger against him. When the referee thrust them apart, there, before his eyes, he saw Youth recuperate. From instant to instant Sandel grew stronger. His punches, weak and futile at first, became stiff and accurate. Tom King’s bleared eyes saw the gloved fist driving at his jaw, and he willed to guard it by interposing his arm. He saw the danger, willed the act; but the arm was too heavy. It seemed burdened with a hundredweight of lead. It would not lift itself, and he strove to lift it with his soul. Then the gloved fist landed home. He experienced a sharp snap that was like an electric spark, and, simultaneously, the veil of blackness enveloped him.

When he opened his eyes again he was in his corner, and he heard the yelling of the audience like the roar of the surf at Bondi Beach. A wet sponge was being pressed against the base of his brain, and Sid Sullivan was blowing cold water in a refreshing spray over his face and chest. His gloves had already been removed, and Sandel, bending over him, was shaking his hand. He bore no ill-will toward the man who had put him out and he returned the grip with a heartiness that made his battered knuckles protest. Then Sandel stepped to the centre of the ring and the audience hushed its pandemonium to hear him accept young Pronto’s challenge and offer to increase the side bet to one hundred pounds. King looked on apathetically while his seconds mopped the streaming water from him, dried his face, and prepared him to leave the ring. He felt hungry. It was not the ordinary, gnawing kind, but a great faintness, a palpitation at the pit of the stomach that communicated itself to all his body. He remembered back into the fight to the moment when he had Sandel swaying and tottering on the hair-line balance of defeat. Ah, that piece of steak would have done it! He had lacked just that for the decisive blow, and he had lost. It was all because of the piece of steak.

His seconds were half-supporting him as they helped him through the ropes. He tore free from them, ducked through the ropes unaided, and leaped heavily to the floor, following on their heels as they forced a passage for him down the crowded centre aisle. Leaving the dressing-room for the street, in the entrance to the hall, some young fellow spoke to him.

“W’y didn’t yuh go in an’ get ’im when yuh ’ad ’im?” the young fellow asked.

“Aw, go to hell!” said Tom King, and passed down the steps to the sidewalk.

The doors of the public-house at the corner were swinging wide, and he saw the lights and the smiling barmaids, heard the many voices discussing the fight and the prosperous chink of money on the bar. Somebody called to him to have a drink. He hesitated perceptibly, then refused and went on his way.

He had not a copper in his pocket, and the two-mile walk home seemed very long. He was certainly getting old. Crossing the Domain, he sat down suddenly on a bench, unnerved by the thought of the missus sitting up for him, waiting to learn the outcome of the fight. That was harder than any knockout, and it seemed almost impossible to face.

He felt weak and sore, and the pain of his smashed knuckles warned him that, even if he could find a job at navvy work, it would be a week before he could grip a pick handle or a shovel. The hunger palpitation at the pit of the stomach was sickening. His wretchedness overwhelmed him, and into his eyes came an unwonted moisture. He covered his face with his hands, and, as he cried, he remembered Stowsher Bill and how he had served him that night in the long ago. Poor old Stowsher Bill! He could understand now why Bill had cried in the dressing-room.

#sport #boxe #exploitation #lutte_des_classes

The Apostate, by Jack London
▻https://americanliterature.com/author/jack-london/short-story/the-apostate

https://www.planet-wissen.de/geschichte/menschenrechte/kinderarbeit/tempxkinderarbeitbesengjpg102~_v-gseagaleriexl.jpg

Au début du miracle économique états-unien il y a vait l’exploitation des enfants du pays. A la fin de la montée du pays à la suprématie impérialiste du monde il y a l’exploitation des enfants du monde entier. Jack London s’est battu contre le capitalisme américain de 1900. Dans l’histoire L’apostat il décrit les effets du travail incessant sur les enfants des usines.

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“If you don’t git up, Johnny, I won’t give you a bite to eat!”

The threat had no effect on the boy. He clung stubbornly to sleep, fighting for its oblivion as the dreamer fights for his dream. The boy’s hands loosely clenched themselves, and he made feeble, spasmodic blows at the air. These blows were intended for his mother, but she betrayed practised familiarity in avoiding them as she shook him roughly by the shoulder.

“Lemme ’lone!”

It was a cry that began, muffled, in the deeps of sleep, that swiftly rushed upward, like a wail, into passionate belligerence, and that died away and sank down into an inarticulate whine. It was a bestial cry, as of a soul in torment, filled with infinite protest and pain.

But she did not mind. She was a sad-eyed, tired-faced woman, and she had grown used to this task, which she repeated every day of her life. She got a grip on the bedclothes and tried to strip them down; but the boy, ceasing his punching, clung to them desperately. In a huddle, at the foot of the bed, he still remained covered. Then she tried dragging the bedding to the floor. The boy opposed her. She braced herself. Hers was the superior weight, and the boy and bedding gave, the former instinctively following the latter in order to shelter against the chill of the room that bit into his body.

As he toppled on the edge of the bed it seemed that he must fall head-first to the floor. But consciousness fluttered up in him. He righted himself and for a moment perilously balanced. Then he struck the floor on his feet. On the instant his mother seized him by the shoulders and shook him. Again his fists struck out, this time with more force and directness. At the same time his eyes opened. She released him. He was awake.

“All right,” he mumbled.

She caught up the lamp and hurried out, leaving him in darkness.

“You’ll be docked,” she warned back to him.

He did not mind the darkness. When he had got into his clothes, he went out into the kitchen. His tread was very heavy for so thin and light a boy. His legs dragged with their own weight, which seemed unreasonable because they were such skinny legs. He drew a broken-bottomed chair to the table.

“Johnny,” his mother called sharply.

He arose as sharply from the chair, and, without a word, went to the sink. It was a greasy, filthy sink. A smell came up from the outlet. He took no notice of it. That a sink should smell was to him part of the natural order, just as it was a part of the natural order that the soap should be grimy with dish-water and hard to lather. Nor did he try very hard to make it lather. Several splashes of the cold water from the running faucet completed the function. He did not wash his teeth. For that matter he had never seen a toothbrush, nor did he know that there existed beings in the world who were guilty of so great a foolishness as tooth washing.

“You might wash yourself wunst a day without bein’ told,” his mother complained.

She was holding a broken lid on the pot as she poured two cups of coffee. He made no remark, for this was a standing quarrel between them, and the one thing upon which his mother was hard as adamant. “Wunst” a day it was compulsory that he should wash his face. He dried himself on a greasy towel, damp and dirty and ragged, that left his face covered with shreds of lint.

“I wish we didn’t live so far away,” she said, as he sat down. “I try to do the best I can. You know that. But a dollar on the rent is such a savin’, an’ we’ve more room here. You know that.”

He scarcely followed her. He had heard it all before, many times. The range of her thought was limited, and she was ever harking back to the hardship worked upon them by living so far from the mills.

“A dollar means more grub,” he remarked sententiously. “I’d sooner do the walkin’ an’ git the grub.”

He ate hurriedly, half chewing the bread and washing the unmasticated chunks down with coffee. The hot and muddy liquid went by the name of coffee. Johnny thought it was coffee—and excellent coffee. That was one of the few of life’s illusions that remained to him. He had never drunk real coffee in his life.

In addition to the bread, there was a small piece of cold pork. His mother refilled his cup with coffee. As he was finishing the bread, he began to watch if more was forthcoming. She intercepted his questioning glance.

“Now, don’t be hoggish, Johnny,” was her comment. “You’ve had your share. Your brothers an’ sisters are smaller’n you.”

He did not answer the rebuke. He was not much of a talker. Also, he ceased his hungry glancing for more. He was uncomplaining, with a patience that was as terrible as the school in which it had been learned. He finished his coffee, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, and started to rise.

“Wait a second,” she said hastily. “I guess the loaf kin stand you another slice—a thin un.”

There was legerdemain in her actions. With all the seeming of cutting a slice from the loaf for him, she put loaf and slice back in the bread box and conveyed to him one of her own two slices. She believed she had deceived him, but he had noted her sleight-of-hand. Nevertheless, he took the bread shamelessly. He had a philosophy that his mother, because of her chronic sickliness, was not much of an eater anyway.

She saw that he was chewing the bread dry, and reached over and emptied her coffee cup into his.

“Don’t set good somehow on my stomach this morning,” she explained.

A distant whistle, prolonged and shrieking, brought both of them to their feet. She glanced at the tin alarm-clock on the shelf. The hands stood at half-past five. The rest of the factory world was just arousing from sleep. She drew a shawl about her shoulders, and on her head put a dingy hat, shapeless and ancient.

“We’ve got to run,” she said, turning the wick of the lamp and blowing down the chimney.

They groped their way out and down the stairs. It was clear and cold, and Johnny shivered at the first contact with the outside air. The stars had not yet begun to pale in the sky, and the city lay in blackness. Both Johnny and his mother shuffled their feet as they walked. There was no ambition in the leg muscles to swing the feet clear of the ground.

After fifteen silent minutes, his mother turned off to the right.

“Don’t be late,” was her final warning from out of the dark that was swallowing her up.

He made no response, steadily keeping on his way. In the factory quarter, doors were opening everywhere, and he was soon one of a multitude that pressed onward through the dark. As he entered the factory gate the whistle blew again. He glanced at the east. Across a ragged sky-line of housetops a pale light was beginning to creep. This much he saw of the day as he turned his back upon it and joined his work gang.

He took his place in one of many long rows of machines. Before him, above a bin filled with small bobbins, were large bobbins revolving rapidly. Upon these he wound the jute-twine of the small bobbins. The work was simple. All that was required was celerity. The small bobbins were emptied so rapidly, and there were so many large bobbins that did the emptying, that there were no idle moments.

He worked mechanically. When a small bobbin ran out, he used his left hand for a brake, stopping the large bobbin and at the same time, with thumb and forefinger, catching the flying end of twine. Also, at the same time, with his right hand, he caught up the loose twine-end of a small bobbin. These various acts with both hands were performed simultaneously and swiftly. Then there would come a flash of his hands as he looped the weaver’s knot and released the bobbin. There was nothing difficult about weaver’s knots. He once boasted he could tie them in his sleep. And for that matter, he sometimes did, toiling centuries long in a single night at tying an endless succession of weaver’s knots.

Some of the boys shirked, wasting time and machinery by not replacing the small bobbins when they ran out. And there was an overseer to prevent this. He caught Johnny’s neighbour at the trick, and boxed his ears.

“Look at Johnny there—why ain’t you like him?” the overseer wrathfully demanded.

Johnny’s bobbins were running full blast, but he did not thrill at the indirect praise. There had been a time . . . but that was long ago, very long ago. His apathetic face was expressionless as he listened to himself being held up as a shining example. He was the perfect worker. He knew that. He had been told so, often. It was a commonplace, and besides it didn’t seem to mean anything to him any more. From the perfect worker he had evolved into the perfect machine. When his work went wrong, it was with him as with the machine, due to faulty material. It would have been as possible for a perfect nail-die to cut imperfect nails as for him to make a mistake.

And small wonder. There had never been a time when he had not been in intimate relationship with machines. Machinery had almost been bred into him, and at any rate he had been brought up on it. Twelve years before, there had been a small flutter of excitement in the loom room of this very mill. Johnny’s mother had fainted. They stretched her out on the floor in the midst of the shrieking machines. A couple of elderly women were called from their looms. The foreman assisted. And in a few minutes there was one more soul in the loom room than had entered by the doors. It was Johnny, born with the pounding, crashing roar of the looms in his ears, drawing with his first breath the warm, moist air that was thick with flying lint. He had coughed that first day in order to rid his lungs of the lint; and for the same reason he had coughed ever since.

The boy alongside of Johnny whimpered and sniffed. The boy’s face was convulsed with hatred for the overseer who kept a threatening eye on him from a distance; but every bobbin was running full. The boy yelled terrible oaths into the whirling bobbins before him; but the sound did not carry half a dozen feet, the roaring of the room holding it in and containing it like a wall.

Of all this Johnny took no notice. He had a way of accepting things. Besides, things grow monotonous by repetition, and this particular happening he had witnessed many times. It seemed to him as useless to oppose the overseer as to defy the will of a machine. Machines were made to go in certain ways and to perform certain tasks. It was the same with the overseer.

But at eleven o’clock there was excitement in the room. In an apparently occult way the excitement instantly permeated everywhere. The one-legged boy who worked on the other side of Johnny bobbed swiftly across the floor to a bin truck that stood empty. Into this he dived out of sight, crutch and all. The superintendent of the mill was coming along, accompanied by a young man. He was well dressed and wore a starched shirt—a gentleman, in Johnny’s classification of men, and also, “the Inspector.”

He looked sharply at the boys as he passed along. Sometimes he stopped and asked questions. When he did so, he was compelled to shout at the top of his lungs, at which moments his face was ludicrously contorted with the strain of making himself heard. His quick eye noted the empty machine alongside of Johnny’s, but he said nothing. Johnny also caught his eye, and he stopped abruptly. He caught Johnny by the arm to draw him back a step from the machine; but with an exclamation of surprise he released the arm.

“Pretty skinny,” the superintendent laughed anxiously.

“Pipe stems,” was the answer. “Look at those legs. The boy’s got the rickets—incipient, but he’s got them. If epilepsy doesn’t get him in the end, it will be because tuberculosis gets him first.”

Johnny listened, but did not understand. Furthermore he was not interested in future ills. There was an immediate and more serious ill that threatened him in the form of the inspector.

“Now, my boy, I want you to tell me the truth,” the inspector said, or shouted, bending close to the boy’s ear to make him hear. “How old are you?”

“Fourteen,” Johnny lied, and he lied with the full force of his lungs. So loudly did he lie that it started him off in a dry, hacking cough that lifted the lint which had been settling in his lungs all morning.

“Looks sixteen at least,” said the superintendent.

“Or sixty,” snapped the inspector.

“He’s always looked that way.”

“How long?” asked the inspector, quickly.

“For years. Never gets a bit older.”

“Or younger, I dare say. I suppose he’s worked here all those years?”

“Off and on—but that was before the new law was passed,” the superintendent hastened to add.

“Machine idle?” the inspector asked, pointing at the unoccupied machine beside Johnny’s, in which the part-filled bobbins were flying like mad.

“Looks that way.” The superintendent motioned the overseer to him and shouted in his ear and pointed at the machine. “Machine’s idle,” he reported back to the inspector.

They passed on, and Johnny returned to his work, relieved in that the ill had been averted. But the one-legged boy was not so fortunate. The sharp- eyed inspector haled him out at arms length from the bin truck. His lips were quivering, and his face had all the expression of one upon whom was fallen profound and irremediable disaster. The overseer looked astounded, as though for the first time he had laid eyes on the boy, while the superintendent’s face expressed shock and displeasure.

“I know him,” the inspector said. “He’s twelve years old. I’ve had him discharged from three factories inside the year. This makes the fourth.”

He turned to the one-legged boy. “You promised me, word and honour, that you’d go to school.”

The one-legged boy burst into tears. “Please, Mr. Inspector, two babies died on us, and we’re awful poor.”

“What makes you cough that way?” the inspector demanded, as though charging him with crime.

And as in denial of guilt, the one-legged boy replied: “It ain’t nothin’. I jes’ caught a cold last week, Mr. Inspector, that’s all.”

In the end the one-legged boy went out of the room with the inspector, the latter accompanied by the anxious and protesting superintendent. After that monotony settled down again. The long morning and the longer afternoon wore away and the whistle blew for quitting time. Darkness had already fallen when Johnny passed out through the factory gate. In the interval the sun had made a golden ladder of the sky, flooded the world with its gracious warmth, and dropped down and disappeared in the west behind a ragged sky-line of housetops.

Supper was the family meal of the day—the one meal at which Johnny encountered his younger brothers and sisters. It partook of the nature of an encounter, to him, for he was very old, while they were distressingly young. He had no patience with their excessive and amazing juvenility. He did not understand it. His own childhood was too far behind him. He was like an old and irritable man, annoyed by the turbulence of their young spirits that was to him arrant silliness. He glowered silently over his food, finding compensation in the thought that they would soon have to go to work. That would take the edge off of them and make them sedate and dignified—like him. Thus it was, after the fashion of the human, that Johnny made of himself a yardstick with which to measure the universe.

During the meal, his mother explained in various ways and with infinite repetition that she was trying to do the best she could; so that it was with relief, the scant meal ended, that Johnny shoved back his chair and arose. He debated for a moment between bed and the front door, and finally went out the latter. He did not go far. He sat down on the stoop, his knees drawn up and his narrow shoulders drooping forward, his elbows on his knees and the palms of his hands supporting his chin.

As he sat there, he did no thinking. He was just resting. So far as his mind was concerned, it was asleep. His brothers and sisters came out, and with other children played noisily about him. An electric globe at the corner lighted their frolics. He was peevish and irritable, that they knew; but the spirit of adventure lured them into teasing him. They joined hands before him, and, keeping time with their bodies, chanted in his face weird and uncomplimentary doggerel. At first he snarled curses at them— curses he had learned from the lips of various foremen. Finding this futile, and remembering his dignity, he relapsed into dogged silence.

His brother Will, next to him in age, having just passed his tenth birthday, was the ringleader. Johnny did not possess particularly kindly feelings toward him. His life had early been embittered by continual giving over and giving way to Will. He had a definite feeling that Will was greatly in his debt and was ungrateful about it. In his own playtime, far back in the dim past, he had been robbed of a large part of that playtime by being compelled to take care of Will. Will was a baby then, and then, as now, their mother had spent her days in the mills. To Johnny had fallen the part of little father and little mother as well.

Will seemed to show the benefit of the giving over and the giving way. He was well-built, fairly rugged, as tall as his elder brother and even heavier. It was as though the life-blood of the one had been diverted into the other’s veins. And in spirits it was the same. Johnny was jaded, worn out, without resilience, while his younger brother seemed bursting and spilling over with exuberance.

The mocking chant rose louder and louder. Will leaned closer as he danced, thrusting out his tongue. Johnny’s left arm shot out and caught the other around the neck. At the same time he rapped his bony fist to the other’s nose. It was a pathetically bony fist, but that it was sharp to hurt was evidenced by the squeal of pain it produced. The other children were uttering frightened cries, while Johnny’s sister, Jennie, had dashed into the house.

He thrust Will from him, kicked him savagely on the shins, then reached for him and slammed him face downward in the dirt. Nor did he release him till the face had been rubbed into the dirt several times. Then the mother arrived, an anaemic whirlwind of solicitude and maternal wrath.

“Why can’t he leave me alone?” was Johnny’s reply to her upbraiding. “Can’t he see I’m tired?”

“I’m as big as you,” Will raged in her arms, his face a mass of tears, dirt, and blood. “I’m as big as you now, an’ I’m goin’ to git bigger. Then I’ll lick you—see if I don’t.”

“You ought to be to work, seein’ how big you are,” Johnny snarled. “That’s what’s the matter with you. You ought to be to work. An’ it’s up to your ma to put you to work.”

“But he’s too young,” she protested. “He’s only a little boy.”

“I was younger’n him when I started to work.”

Johnny’s mouth was open, further to express the sense of unfairness that he felt, but the mouth closed with a snap. He turned gloomily on his heel and stalked into the house and to bed. The door of his room was open to let in warmth from the kitchen. As he undressed in the semi-darkness he could hear his mother talking with a neighbour woman who had dropped in. His mother was crying, and her speech was punctuated with spiritless sniffles.

“I can’t make out what’s gittin’ into Johnny,” he could hear her say. "He didn’t used to be this way. He was a patient little angel.

“An’ he is a good boy,” she hastened to defend. “He’s worked faithful, an’ he did go to work too young. But it wasn’t my fault. I do the best I can, I’m sure.”

Prolonged sniffling from the kitchen, and Johnny murmured to himself as his eyelids closed down, “You betcher life I’ve worked faithful.”

The next morning he was torn bodily by his mother from the grip of sleep. Then came the meagre breakfast, the tramp through the dark, and the pale glimpse of day across the housetops as he turned his back on it and went in through the factory gate. It was another day, of all the days, and all the days were alike.

And yet there had been variety in his life—at the times he changed from one job to another, or was taken sick. When he was six, he was little mother and father to Will and the other children still younger. At seven he went into the mills—winding bobbins. When he was eight, he got work in another mill. His new job was marvellously easy. All he had to do was to sit down with a little stick in his hand and guide a stream of cloth that flowed past him. This stream of cloth came out of the maw of a machine, passed over a hot roller, and went on its way elsewhere. But he sat always in one place, beyond the reach of daylight, a gas-jet flaring over him, himself part of the mechanism.

He was very happy at that job, in spite of the moist heat, for he was still young and in possession of dreams and illusions. And wonderful dreams he dreamed as he watched the steaming cloth streaming endlessly by. But there was no exercise about the work, no call upon his mind, and he dreamed less and less, while his mind grew torpid and drowsy. Nevertheless, he earned two dollars a week, and two dollars represented the difference between acute starvation and chronic underfeeding.

But when he was nine, he lost his job. Measles was the cause of it. After he recovered, he got work in a glass factory. The pay was better, and the work demanded skill. It was piecework, and the more skilful he was, the bigger wages he earned. Here was incentive. And under this incentive he developed into a remarkable worker.

It was simple work, the tying of glass stoppers into small bottles. At his waist he carried a bundle of twine. He held the bottles between his knees so that he might work with both hands. Thus, in a sitting position and bending over his own knees, his narrow shoulders grew humped and his chest was contracted for ten hours each day. This was not good for the lungs, but he tied three hundred dozen bottles a day.

The superintendent was very proud of him, and brought visitors to look at him. In ten hours three hundred dozen bottles passed through his hands. This meant that he had attained machine-like perfection. All waste movements were eliminated. Every motion of his thin arms, every movement of a muscle in the thin fingers, was swift and accurate. He worked at high tension, and the result was that he grew nervous. At night his muscles twitched in his sleep, and in the daytime he could not relax and rest. He remained keyed up and his muscles continued to twitch. Also he grew sallow and his lint-cough grew worse. Then pneumonia laid hold of the feeble lungs within the contracted chest, and he lost his job in the glass-works.

Now he had returned to the jute mills where he had first begun with winding bobbins. But promotion was waiting for him. He was a good worker. He would next go on the starcher, and later he would go into the loom room. There was nothing after that except increased efficiency.

The machinery ran faster than when he had first gone to work, and his mind ran slower. He no longer dreamed at all, though his earlier years had been full of dreaming. Once he had been in love. It was when he first began guiding the cloth over the hot roller, and it was with the daughter of the superintendent. She was much older than he, a young woman, and he had seen her at a distance only a paltry half-dozen times. But that made no difference. On the surface of the cloth stream that poured past him, he pictured radiant futures wherein he performed prodigies of toil, invented miraculous machines, won to the mastership of the mills, and in the end took her in his arms and kissed her soberly on the brow.

But that was all in the long ago, before he had grown too old and tired to love. Also, she had married and gone away, and his mind had gone to sleep. Yet it had been a wonderful experience, and he used often to look back upon it as other men and women look back upon the time they believed in fairies. He had never believed in fairies nor Santa Claus; but he had believed implicitly in the smiling future his imagination had wrought into the steaming cloth stream.

He had become a man very early in life. At seven, when he drew his first wages, began his adolescence. A certain feeling of independence crept up in him, and the relationship between him and his mother changed. Somehow, as an earner and breadwinner, doing his own work in the world, he was more like an equal with her. Manhood, full-blown manhood, had come when he was eleven, at which time he had gone to work on the night shift for six months. No child works on the night shift and remains a child.

There had been several great events in his life. One of these had been when his mother bought some California prunes. Two others had been the two times when she cooked custard. Those had been events. He remembered them kindly. And at that time his mother had told him of a blissful dish she would sometime make—"floating island," she had called it, “better than custard.” For years he had looked forward to the day when he would sit down to the table with floating island before him, until at last he had relegated the idea of it to the limbo of unattainable ideals.

Once he found a silver quarter lying on the sidewalk. That, also, was a great event in his life, withal a tragic one. He knew his duty on the instant the silver flashed on his eyes, before even he had picked it up. At home, as usual, there was not enough to eat, and home he should have taken it as he did his wages every Saturday night. Right conduct in this case was obvious; but he never had any spending of his money, and he was suffering from candy hunger. He was ravenous for the sweets that only on red-letter days he had ever tasted in his life.

He did not attempt to deceive himself. He knew it was sin, and deliberately he sinned when he went on a fifteen-cent candy debauch. Ten cents he saved for a future orgy; but not being accustomed to the carrying of money, he lost the ten cents. This occurred at the time when he was suffering all the torments of conscience, and it was to him an act of divine retribution. He had a frightened sense of the closeness of an awful and wrathful God. God had seen, and God had been swift to punish, denying him even the full wages of sin.

In memory he always looked back upon that as the one great criminal deed of his life, and at the recollection his conscience always awoke and gave him another twinge. It was the one skeleton in his closet. Also, being so made, and circumstanced, he looked back upon the deed with regret. He was dissatisfied with the manner in which he had spent the quarter. He could have invested it better, and, out of his later knowledge of the quickness of God, he would have beaten God out by spending the whole quarter at one fell swoop. In retrospect he spent the quarter a thousand times, and each time to better advantage.

There was one other memory of the past, dim and faded, but stamped into his soul everlasting by the savage feet of his father. It was more like a nightmare than a remembered vision of a concrete thing—more like the race- memory of man that makes him fall in his sleep and that goes back to his arboreal ancestry.

This particular memory never came to Johnny in broad daylight when he was wide awake. It came at night, in bed, at the moment that his consciousness was sinking down and losing itself in sleep. It always aroused him to frightened wakefulness, and for the moment, in the first sickening start, it seemed to him that he lay crosswise on the foot of the bed. In the bed were the vague forms of his father and mother. He never saw what his father looked like. He had but one impression of his father, and that was that he had savage and pitiless feet.

His earlier memories lingered with him, but he had no late memories. All days were alike. Yesterday or last year were the same as a thousand years- -or a minute. Nothing ever happened. There were no events to mark the march of time. Time did not march. It stood always still. It was only the whirling machines that moved, and they moved nowhere—in spite of the fact that they moved faster.

When he was fourteen, he went to work on the starcher. It was a colossal event. Something had at last happened that could be remembered beyond a night’s sleep or a week’s pay-day. It marked an era. It was a machine Olympiad, a thing to date from. “When I went to work on the starcher,” or, “after,” or “before I went to work on the starcher,” were sentences often on his lips.

He celebrated his sixteenth birthday by going into the loom room and taking a loom. Here was an incentive again, for it was piece-work. And he excelled, because the clay of him had been moulded by the mills into the perfect machine. At the end of three months he was running two looms, and, later, three and four.

At the end of his second year at the looms he was turning out more yards than any other weaver, and more than twice as much as some of the less skilful ones. And at home things began to prosper as he approached the full stature of his earning power. Not, however, that his increased earnings were in excess of need. The children were growing up. They ate more. And they were going to school, and school-books cost money. And somehow, the faster he worked, the faster climbed the prices of things. Even the rent went up, though the house had fallen from bad to worse disrepair.

He had grown taller; but with his increased height he seemed leaner than ever. Also, he was more nervous. With the nervousness increased his peevishness and irritability. The children had learned by many bitter lessons to fight shy of him. His mother respected him for his earning power, but somehow her respect was tinctured with fear.

There was no joyousness in life for him. The procession of the days he never saw. The nights he slept away in twitching unconsciousness. The rest of the time he worked, and his consciousness was machine consciousness. Outside this his mind was a blank. He had no ideals, and but one illusion; namely, that he drank excellent coffee. He was a work- beast. He had no mental life whatever; yet deep down in the crypts of his mind, unknown to him, were being weighed and sifted every hour of his toil, every movement of his hands, every twitch of his muscles, and preparations were making for a future course of action that would amaze him and all his little world.

It was in the late spring that he came home from work one night aware of unusual tiredness. There was a keen expectancy in the air as he sat down to the table, but he did not notice. He went through the meal in moody silence, mechanically eating what was before him. The children um’d and ah’d and made smacking noises with their mouths. But he was deaf to them.

“D’ye know what you’re eatin’?” his mother demanded at last, desperately.

He looked vacantly at the dish before him, and vacantly at her.

“Floatin’ island,” she announced triumphantly.

“Oh,” he said.

“Floating island!” the children chorussed loudly.

“Oh,” he said. And after two or three mouthfuls, he added, “I guess I ain’t hungry to-night.”

He dropped the spoon, shoved back his chair, and arose wearily from the table.

“An’ I guess I’ll go to bed.”

His feet dragged more heavily than usual as he crossed the kitchen floor. Undressing was a Titan’s task, a monstrous futility, and he wept weakly as he crawled into bed, one shoe still on. He was aware of a rising, swelling something inside his head that made his brain thick and fuzzy. His lean fingers felt as big as his wrist, while in the ends of them was a remoteness of sensation vague and fuzzy like his brain. The small of his back ached intolerably. All his bones ached. He ached everywhere. And in his head began the shrieking, pounding, crashing, roaring of a million looms. All space was filled with flying shuttles. They darted in and out, intricately, amongst the stars. He worked a thousand looms himself, and ever they speeded up, faster and faster, and his brain unwound, faster and faster, and became the thread that fed the thousand flying shuttles.

He did not go to work next morning. He was too busy weaving colossally on the thousand looms that ran inside his head. His mother went to work, but first she sent for the doctor. It was a severe attack of la grippe, he said. Jennie served as nurse and carried out his instructions.

It was a very severe attack, and it was a week before Johnny dressed and tottered feebly across the floor. Another week, the doctor said, and he would be fit to return to work. The foreman of the loom room visited him on Sunday afternoon, the first day of his convalescence. The best weaver in the room, the foreman told his mother. His job would be held for him. He could come back to work a week from Monday.

“Why don’t you thank ’im, Johnny?” his mother asked anxiously.

“He’s ben that sick he ain’t himself yet,” she explained apologetically to the visitor.

Johnny sat hunched up and gazing steadfastly at the floor. He sat in the same position long after the foreman had gone. It was warm outdoors, and he sat on the stoop in the afternoon. Sometimes his lips moved. He seemed lost in endless calculations.

Next morning, after the day grew warm, he took his seat on the stoop. He had pencil and paper this time with which to continue his calculations, and he calculated painfully and amazingly.

“What comes after millions?” he asked at noon, when Will came home from school. “An’ how d’ye work ’em?”

That afternoon finished his task. Each day, but without paper and pencil, he returned to the stoop. He was greatly absorbed in the one tree that grew across the street. He studied it for hours at a time, and was unusually interested when the wind swayed its branches and fluttered its leaves. Throughout the week he seemed lost in a great communion with himself. On Sunday, sitting on the stoop, he laughed aloud, several times, to the perturbation of his mother, who had not heard him laugh for years.

Next morning, in the early darkness, she came to his bed to rouse him. He had had his fill of sleep all the week, and awoke easily. He made no struggle, nor did he attempt to hold on to the bedding when she stripped it from him. He lay quietly, and spoke quietly.

“It ain’t no use, ma.”

“You’ll be late,” she said, under the impression that he was still stupid with sleep.

“I’m awake, ma, an’ I tell you it ain’t no use. You might as well lemme alone. I ain’t goin’ to git up.”

“But you’ll lose your job!” she cried.

“I ain’t goin’ to git up,” he repeated in a strange, passionless voice.

She did not go to work herself that morning. This was sickness beyond any sickness she had ever known. Fever and delirium she could understand; but this was insanity. She pulled the bedding up over him and sent Jennie for the doctor.

When that person arrived, Johnny was sleeping gently, and gently he awoke and allowed his pulse to be taken.

“Nothing the matter with him,” the doctor reported. “Badly debilitated, that’s all. Not much meat on his bones.”

“He’s always been that way,” his mother volunteered.

“Now go ’way, ma, an’ let me finish my snooze.”

Johnny spoke sweetly and placidly, and sweetly and placidly he rolled over on his side and went to sleep.

At ten o’clock he awoke and dressed himself. He walked out into the kitchen, where he found his mother with a frightened expression on her face.

“I’m goin’ away, ma,” he announced, “an’ I jes’ want to say good-bye.”

She threw her apron over her head and sat down suddenly and wept. He waited patiently.

“I might a-known it,” she was sobbing.

“Where?” she finally asked, removing the apron from her head and gazing up at him with a stricken face in which there was little curiosity.

“I don’t know—anywhere.”

As he spoke, the tree across the street appeared with dazzling brightness on his inner vision. It seemed to lurk just under his eyelids, and he could see it whenever he wished.

“An’ your job?” she quavered.

“I ain’t never goin’ to work again.”

“My God, Johnny!” she wailed, “don’t say that!”

What he had said was blasphemy to her. As a mother who hears her child deny God, was Johnny’s mother shocked by his words.

“What’s got into you, anyway?” she demanded, with a lame attempt at imperativeness.

“Figures,” he answered. “Jes’ figures. I’ve ben doin’ a lot of figurin’ this week, an’ it’s most surprisin’.”

“I don’t see what that’s got to do with it,” she sniffled.

Johnny smiled patiently, and his mother was aware of a distinct shock at the persistent absence of his peevishness and irritability.

“I’ll show you,” he said. “I’m plum’ tired out. What makes me tired? Moves. I’ve ben movin’ ever since I was born. I’m tired of movin’, an’ I ain’t goin’ to move any more. Remember when I worked in the glass-house? I used to do three hundred dozen a day. Now I reckon I made about ten different moves to each bottle. That’s thirty-six thousan’ moves a day. Ten days, three hundred an’ sixty thousan’ moves. One month, one million an’ eighty thousan’ moves. Chuck out the eighty thousan’”—he spoke with the complacent beneficence of a philanthropist—"chuck out the eighty thousan’, that leaves a million moves a month—twelve million moves a year.

"At the looms I’m movin’ twic’st as much. That makes twenty-five million moves a year, an’ it seems to me I’ve ben a movin’ that way ’most a million years.

“Now this week I ain’t moved at all. I ain’t made one move in hours an’ hours. I tell you it was swell, jes’ settin’ there, hours an’ hours, an’ doin’ nothin’. I ain’t never ben happy before. I never had any time. I’ve ben movin’ all the time. That ain’t no way to be happy. An’ I ain’t going to do it any more. I’m jes’ goin’ to set, an’ set, an’ rest, an’ rest, and then rest some more.”

“But what’s goin’ to come of Will an’ the children?” she asked despairingly.

“That’s it, ’Will an’ the children,’” he repeated.

But there was no bitterness in his voice. He had long known his mother’s ambition for the younger boy, but the thought of it no longer rankled. Nothing mattered any more. Not even that.

“I know, ma, what you’ve ben plannin’ for Will—keepin’ him in school to make a book-keeper out of him. But it ain’t no use, I’ve quit. He’s got to go to work.”

“An’ after I have brung you up the way I have,” she wept, starting to cover her head with the apron and changing her mind.

“You never brung me up,” he answered with sad kindliness. “I brung myself up, ma, an’ I brung up Will. He’s bigger’n me, an’ heavier, an’ taller. When I was a kid, I reckon I didn’t git enough to eat. When he come along an’ was a kid, I was workin’ an’ earnin’ grub for him too. But that’s done with. Will can go to work, same as me, or he can go to hell, I don’t care which. I’m tired. I’m goin’ now. Ain’t you goin’ to say goodbye?”

She made no reply. The apron had gone over her head again, and she was crying. He paused a moment in the doorway.

“I’m sure I done the best I knew how,” she was sobbing.

He passed out of the house and down the street. A wan delight came into his face at the sight of the lone tree. “Jes’ ain’t goin’ to do nothin’,” he said to himself, half aloud, in a crooning tone. He glanced wistfully up at the sky, but the bright sun dazzled and blinded him.

It was a long walk he took, and he did not walk fast. It took him past the jute-mill. The muffled roar of the loom room came to his ears, and he smiled. It was a gentle, placid smile. He hated no one, not even the pounding, shrieking machines. There was no bitterness in him, nothing but an inordinate hunger for rest.

The houses and factories thinned out and the open spaces increased as he approached the country. At last the city was behind him, and he was walking down a leafy lane beside the railroad track. He did not walk like a man. He did not look like a man. He was a travesty of the human. It was a twisted and stunted and nameless piece of life that shambled like a sickly ape, arms loose-hanging, stoop-shouldered, narrow-chested, grotesque and terrible.

He passed by a small railroad station and lay down in the grass under a tree. All afternoon he lay there. Sometimes he dozed, with muscles that twitched in his sleep. When awake, he lay without movement, watching the birds or looking up at the sky through the branches of the tree above him. Once or twice he laughed aloud, but without relevance to anything he had seen or felt.

After twilight had gone, in the first darkness of the night, a freight train rumbled into the station. When the engine was switching cars on to the side-track, Johnny crept along the side of the train. He pulled open the side-door of an empty box-car and awkwardly and laboriously climbed in. He closed the door. The engine whistled. Johnny was lying down, and in the darkness he smiled.

#USA #capitalisme #travail #exploitation #enfants #lutte_des_classes

The Platypus Affiliated Society – Horkheimer in 1943 on party and class
▻https://platypus1917.org/2016/01/12/horkheimer-in-1943-on-party-and-class

Platypus Review #82 | December 2015 - January 2016

Chris Cutrone - Without a socialist party, there is no class struggle, only rackets

HORKHEIMER’S REMARKABLE ESSAY “On the sociology of class relations” (1943) [1] is continuous with Adorno’s contemporaneous “Reflections on class theory” (1942) as well as his own “The authoritarian state” (1940/42), which similarly mark the transformation of Marx and Engels’s famous injunction in the Communist Manifesto that “history is the history of class struggles.” All of these writings were inspired by Walter Benjamin’s “On the concept of history” (AKA “Theses on the philosophy of history,” 1940), which registered history’s fundamental crisis. Instead, for Horkheimer and Adorno in the 1940s, history has become the history of “rackets.” [2] As Horkheimer concludes his draft, parenthetically citing Marx on Hegelian methodology, “the anatomy of man is key to that of the ape:” the past is explicable from the present, in the form of clique power-politics. But this change is for Horkheimer a devolution — regression. It stemmed from the failure of proletarian socialist revolutionary politics after 1917-19. Without Marxism, there was no class struggle. [3]

The significance of this change is the relation of the individual to the collective in capitalism. This affects the character of consciousness, and thus the role of theory: the critical theory of the capitalist totality — Marxism — is fundamentally altered. Specifically, the role of working-class political parties in developing this consciousness is evacuated. At stake is what Horkheimer later (in his 1956 conversation with Adorno translated as Towards a New Manifesto [2011]) called, simply, the “memory of socialism.” It disappears. This was Horkheimer’s primary concern, why he points out that the socialist party was not focused on fighting against exploitation, and was indeed indifferent to it. This is because exploitation does not distinguish capitalism from other epochs of history; only the potential possibility for socialism does. That is why, without socialist politics, the pre-capitalist past reasserts itself, in the form of rackets.

At the conclusion of “The authoritarian state,” Horkheimer wrote that, “with the return to the old free enterprise system, the entire horror would start again from the beginning under new management.” Regarding the specific topic stated in the title of this essay in particular, we should note Horkheimer’s unequivocal observation in “The authoritarian state” that,

“Sociological and psychological concepts are too superficial to express what has happened to revolutionaries in the last few decades: their will toward freedom has been damaged, without which neither understanding nor solidarity nor a correct relation between leader and group is conceivable.” [4]

If there was a “sociology of class relations” to be had, then it would be, as usual for the Frankfurt School, a “negative” and not positive phenomenon. The issue was how to grasp the significance of the original proletarian socialist revolutionary “will toward freedom” degenerating into a matter of mere “sociology” at all. We need to pay attention to the problem indicated by the “On . . .” in the title of Horkheimer’s essay. “Class” in Marx’s sense was not amenable to sociology; but “rackets” are. Sociology is about groups; but the proletariat for Marx was not a sociological group but rather a negative condition of society. The proletariat in capitalism was for Marx a negative phenomenon indicating the need for socialism. The political task of meeting that necessity was what Marx called “proletarian socialism.”

Horkheimer was in keeping with Marx on this score. As the former SYRIZA Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis pointed out in a recent (October 23, 2015) interview, Marx was not concerned with “equality” or “justice,” but “liberty” — freedom. [5] Moreover, as Varoufakis correctly observes, for Marx, capitalism is a condition of unfreedom for the capitalists and not only for the workers. [6]

As Marx wrote, at least as early as The Poverty of Philosophy (1847), the capitalist class is constituted as such, as a class, only in response to the demands of the workers. It treats the demands of the workers as impossible under capitalism, as a more or less criminal violation of society. It is only in meeting the political challenge of a unified capitalist class that the working class constitutes itself as a class “in itself,” not only subjectively but also objectively. For Marx, the historical turning point in this development was Chartism in England, which inaugurates the “class struggle” of the working class per se.

Only in fulfilling the task of proletarian socialism, transcending not only the workers’ (competing, racket) economic interests in capitalism but also democracy in bourgeois society, that is, coming up against the limits of liberalism, does the proletariat become a class “for itself” — on the way to “abolishing itself” in overcoming the negative condition of society in capitalism: its politics is not about one group replacing another. But Chartism in the U.K., like the revolutions of 1848-49 on the Continent, failed. For Marx, this is the need for “revolution in permanence” (1850) indicated by the failure of the democratic revolution and of the “social republic” in 1848. This is why Adorno (1965) characterized the critical concept of “society” itself, negatively, as originating “around 1848.” The Chartists’ last act was to translate Marx and Engels’s Manifesto. [7]

So what, for Marx, was missing in 1848? This is key to what is missing for Horkheimer a hundred years later: an adequate political party for proletarian socialism; the means for making capitalism a political issue.

The role of the political party, specifically as non-identical with the workers’ consciousness, both individually and collectively, was to actually preserve the individuality of the workers — as well as of intellectuals! — that is otherwise liquidated in the corporate collectives of capitalist firms, labor unions and nation-states. These rackets have replaced the world party of proletarian socialist revolution, which was itself a dialectical expression of the totality of market relations and of the otherwise chaotic disorder of the concrete conditions of the workers. For Horkheimer, workers related to the political party individually, and only as such constituted themselves as part of a class — in revolutionary political struggle to overcome capitalism through socialism. It was not that Lenin’s party caused the liquidation of the individual, but the later travesty of “Leninism” in Stalinism was the effect of a broader and deeper socially regressive history of capitalism — what Marx called “Bonapartism” in the 19th century — that the 20th century authoritarian state and its concomitant “sociological” problem of political “atomization” expressed.

Liquidating the political party paves the way for conformism: individuality in society instead becomes individualism, whether of persons or corporate bodies. As Margaret Thatcher succinctly put it, “There is no such thing as society.” Not only as wish but in fact. By contrast, the party was the negative political discipline adequate to the societal crisis of liberal capitalism in self-contradiction. But for Horkheimer, now, instead positivity rules, in a direct authoritarian manner that capitalism eludes. Avoidance of the party means avoiding capitalism — which suits the power of the rackets as such.

The problem of society’s domination by anonymous social forces was revealed by the struggle against exploitation, which demonstrated the limits of the power of the capitalists and hence the problem of and need to transform “society” as such. The “social question” dawned in the political crisis of 1848: the limits of the democratic republic. This becomes replaced by overt power relations that are mystified, by appearing to know no limits. For Horkheimer, following Lenin,[8] the party’s struggle for socialism picked up where the struggle against exploitation reached its limits; without the party there is no struggle for socialism: no pointing beyond but only accommodating capitalism as nature — or at least as a condition seemingly permanent to society.

This is why Horkheimer likens the ideology of organized “racket” capitalism in the 20th century to traditional civilization, by contrast with the liberal capitalism of the 19th century mediated by markets. Indeed, the problem with the rackets is that they falsify precisely the universalism of ideology, which in liberalism could be turned into a negative critique, an index of falsity. Universality is no longer claimed, so the universal condition of domination by capital is rendered occult and illegible. As Adorno put it, “The whole is the false.” Only by confronting the negative totality of capitalism politically was class struggle possible. The power-struggles of rackets do not point beyond themselves. There is no history. | P

Notes:

1. Unpublished manuscript, available on-line at: <▻http://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/horkheimer/content/pageview/6591478>. See the symposium on Horkheimer’s essay with Todd Cronan, James Schmidt, John Lysaker, Nicholas Brown and David Jenemann published at nonsite.org (January 11, 2016), from which this essay is taken: <▻http://nonsite.org/the-tank/max-horkheimer-and-the-sociology-of-class-relations>.

2. Horkheimer specified the concept of “rackets” in “On the sociology of class relations” as follows:
“The concept of the racket referring to the big and to the small units struggling for as great a share as possible of the surplus value designates all such groups from the highest capitalistic bodies down to the little pressure groups working within or without the pale of the law among the most miserable strata of the population. It has arisen as a theoretical concept when, by the increasing absoluteness of the profit system the disproportion between the functions of the ruling class in production and the advantages which they draw from it became even more manifest than at the time of . . . [Marx’s] Capital.”

3. Rosa Luxemburg had a half-century earlier expressed this succinctly in her October 3, 1898 speech to the Stuttgart Congress of the Social-Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), that, “It is the final goal alone which constitutes the spirit and the content of our socialist struggle, which turns it into a class struggle:”

“Think about it: what really constitutes the socialist character of our whole movement? The really practical struggle falls into three categories: the trade-union struggle, the struggle for social reforms, and the struggle to democratize the capitalist state. Are these three forms of our struggle really socialism? Not at all. Take the trade-union movement first! Look at England: not only is it not socialist there, but it is in some respects an obstacle to socialism. Social reform is also emphasized by Academic Socialists, National Socialists, and similar types. And democratization is specifically bourgeois. The bourgeoisie had already inscribed democracy on its banner before we did. . . .

“Then what is it in our day-to-day struggles that makes us a socialist party? It can only be the relation between these three practical struggles and our final goals. It is the final goal alone which constitutes the spirit and the content of our socialist struggle, which turns it into a class struggle. And by final goal we must not mean, as [Wolfgang] Heine has said, this or that image of the future state, but the prerequisite for any future society, namely the conquest of political power. . . . This conception of our task is closely related to our conception of capitalist society; it is the solid ground which underlies our view that capitalist society is caught in insoluble contradictions which will ultimately necessitate an explosion, a collapse, at which point we will play the role of the banker-lawyer who liquidates a bankrupt company.” (Dick Howard, ed., Selected Political Writings of Rosa Luxemburg [New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971], 38–39; also available on-line at: <▻https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1898/10/04.htm>.)

4. Max Horkheimer, “The authoritarian state,” in The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, ed. Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt (New York: Continuum, 1985), 117.

5. <▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X034u2pls3M

>

6. See also Horkheimer’s “The little man and the philosophy of freedom,” in Dawn and Decline, Notes 1926–31 and 1950–69, trans. Michael Shaw (New York: Seabury, 1978), 50–52. There, Horkheimer wrote that,

“[A]lthough [the capitalists] did not themselves create the world, one cannot but suspect that they would have made it exactly as it is. . . . But for the little man who is turned down when he asks for a job because objective conditions make it impossible . . . [n]ot only his own lack of freedom but that of others as well spells his doom. His interest lies in the Marxist clarification of the concept of freedom.”

Horkheimer paraphrased Marx and Engels’s The Holy Family (1845), where they wrote that,
“The property-owning class and the class of the proletariat represent the same human self-alienation. But the former feels at home in this self-alienation and feels itself confirmed by it; it recognizes alienation as its own instrument and in it possesses the semblance of a human existence. The latter feels itself destroyed by this alienation and sees in it its own impotence and the reality of an inhuman existence.” (Quoted in Georg Lukács, “Reification and the consciousness of the proletariat” part III “The standpoint of the proletariat,” History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics, trans. Rodney Livingstone [Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1971], 149. Available on-line at: <▻https://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/hcc07_1.htm>.)

7. See David Black, “The elusive threads of historical progress: The early Chartists and the young Marx and Engels,” in Platypus Review 42 (December 2011 – January 2012), available on-line at: <▻http://platypus1917.org/2011/12/01/elusive-threads-of-historical-progress>.

8. See Lenin’s What is to be Done? (1902), where Lenin distinguished “socialist” from “trade union consciousness:” "We have said that there could not have been Social-Democratic consciousness among the workers. It would have to be brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc. The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical, and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes, by intellectuals." Available on-line at: <▻https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/ii.htm>.
Furthermore, in a January 20, 1943 letter debating Henryk Grossmann on Marxist dialectics, Horkheimer wrote that, “It is no coincidence that [Lenin] the materialist thinker who took these questions [in Hegel] more seriously than anyone else placed all those footnotes next to the [Science of] Logic rather than next to the Philosophy of History. It was he who wanted to make the study of Hegel’s Logic obligatory and who, even if it lacked the finesse of the specialist, sought out the consequences of Positivism, in its Machian form, with the most determined single-mindedness [in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, 1908]. It was still in this Lenin sense that Lukács was attacked for his inclination to apply the dialectic not to the whole of reality but confine it to the subjective side of things.” Trans. Frederik van Gelder at: <▻http://www.amsterdam-adorno.net/fvg2014_T_mh_grossmann_letter.html>. Original letter in German: <▻http://www.amsterdam-adorno.net/fvg2014_T_MH_Grossmann_letter_DEU.pdf>.

#lutte_des_classes #racket #horkheimer

When the Orthodox Church Was Red
▻https://jacobin.com/2026/06/russian-orthodox-communism-tsar-putin

https://media.jacobin.com/images/2026/6/531260937827.jpg

L’exemple de la réussite de la révolution prolétarienne en Russie a marqué les égluses orthodoxes états-uniennes dans les années 1920. Comme quoi la question n’est pas si tu es croyant ou athé mais si tu comprends ta situation de classe.

5.6.2026 vy Gavin Moulton - Drawn to its promise of a “trad” conservative lifestyle, young American men are increasingly converting to Russian Orthodoxy. But two generations ago, the Orthodox Church in the US was an FBI-surveilled hotbed of Bolshevik-inspired leftism.

In 2025, the young American Orthodox convert and podcast host Conrad Franz visited Donbas in occupied Ukraine on a media tour sponsored by the Russian Orthodox Church. On social media, Franz posted photos with Russian soldiers holding a flag with an icon of Christ and boasted of receiving a badge from the Tsar Nicholas II Rocket Brigade. For Franz, experiencing a war-torn region was invigorating. Recounting the trip, he recalled that “life feels way more real down there.”

Like the Moscow-based Russian Orthodox church, which has strongly supported Russia’s invasion, Franz views the war in moral terms, even referring to Ukrainian soldiers as “satanists.” After returning to Moscow, he praised the reconstruction of Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow — a symbol of Vladimir Putin’s reintegration of the Russian church and state — as an example of “what a Christian government is capable of.”

Franz’s celebration of Christian authoritarianism and far-right politics is common in a small but growing movement of male Orthodox converts in the United States. Primarily based in the South and Southwest, these new converts seek an older, more hard-line version of Christianity shorn of technological frills or contemporary aesthetics. Unlike both mainline Protestantism and modern Evangelicalism, Russian Orthodoxy’s unquestioned hierarchical authority, strict patriarchy, and aesthetic beauty offer an alternate vision of Christianity for those dissatisfied with the American religious mainstream. Seeking a connection with the past absent in warehouse-like megachurches, converts are drawn to the onion domes, icons, and long-bearded priests of Russian churches. Orthodoxy’s rightward turn, including condemnation of LGBTQ rights and the social conservatism of Putin’s Russia, is equally attractive to Protestant converts who dissent from the progressive wings of their former denominations.

Historically, Orthodoxy in America — roughly 1 percent of the population — has consisted of Eastern European and Middle Eastern migrants. The two largest Orthodox groups in the United States are the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), the American daughter of the Russian Orthodox Church. The OCA adopted its current name in 1970 when Moscow granted it independence. Because Orthodoxy was often associated with an ethnic group and derived authority from patriarchs abroad, there are many Orthodox jurisdictions in the United States, including Armenian, Antiochian, Carpatho-Rusyn, Ukrainian, and Serbian churches. But converts are overwhelmingly concentrated in the Antiochian Church and the OCA due to their many English-speaking churches and convert priests.

The right-wing Orthodoxy sought by today’s American converts however is only one part of the Russian church’s long history in the United States. Built by working-class migrants in mining and industrial towns, the roots of Russian Orthodoxy are more communitarian and rebellious than new converts might expect. Religious studies scholar Aram Sarkisian’s new book, Orthodoxy on the Line: Russian Orthodox Migrants and Labor Migration in the Progressive Era, excavates the radical history of Russian Orthodoxy in the Midwest and Northeast from foreign language newspapers, church archives, and FBI files. Sarkisian challenges hagiographical accounts of the church that “draw a distinct line between Orthodox adherence and leftist politics.” Indeed, many “clergy and laity participated in labor actions, voiced critiques of industrial capitalism, and joined socialist, communist, and anarchist groups.” In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution in 1917, some Orthodox believers even went as far as to create independent Bolshevik-inspired churches.

As a church with a strong national orientation, Russian Orthodoxy in the United States has been implicated in European conflicts since its earliest days. In Alaska, the church arrived as part of imperial expansion, and in the continental US, the tsar funded the church’s growth to increase Russian soft power among Slavic migrants. As Sarkisian argues, “The resources of imperial bureaucracies blurred the boundaries between the Russian Church and the czarist state.” Sailors and a choir from a Russian battleship participated in the dedication of the new Orthodox Cathedral in Manhattan in 1901, and Orthodox priests promoted tsarism by urging all Slavic migrants to “look lovingly to Moscow.” But in 1917, the Bolshevik revolution ended the Romanov dynasty, severing American Orthodoxy’s ties with the motherland and forcing churches to rethink the meaning of their political and spiritual ties to Russia.

Some of today’s Orthodox converts, especially those to the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) — a traditionalist sect founded in the 1920s by supporters of the Russian monarchy — similarly look to Russia and cite Putin’s alliance with the Russian Orthodox Church as inspiring. They see Putin’s public religiosity as a bulwark of Christianity in an increasingly secular world and hope to emulate the Russian model of church-state relations in the United States.

Because this wave of converts was not raised in Orthodox countries or around diasporic communities, social media provided their first exposure to the church. Popular images of a bare-chested Putin in nature wearing a tripartite cross and drone footage highlighting the grandeur and rich ornamentation of new government-funded churches showed converts how political power could powerfully aid religion, even if this vision of tightly interwoven church-state relations is banned by the American Constitution.

Frequently circulated videos on Orthodox social media feature Putin’s massive Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces. Constructed outside of Moscow in 2018, the imposing church celebrates a militant, authoritarian faith. War is portrayed as foundational to Orthodoxy. In giant mosaics, soldiers with machine guns accompany saints bearing weapons. Underneath captions list dozens of wars fought by Russian soldiers, ending with the invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and leaving space for the names of wars yet fought to be inscribed.

Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has also pulled American Orthodoxy into its orbit. On August 15, 2025, Archbishop Alexei of Sitka met with Putin during his visit to Alaska and expressed appreciation for Russia’s role as protector of the church. The meeting escalated growing concerns about the influence of Russia in American Orthodox churches. Leaders of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the United States swiftly condemned the archbishop’s participation in a photo shoot with Putin as “a betrayal of the Gospel of Christ.”

But as strange as it sounds, the phenomenon of Americans converting to Orthodoxy is nothing new. Much like today, converts drove the first major expansion of Orthodoxy over a century ago. While most associate Russian Orthodoxy in the US with colonization in Alaska and missions to indigenous communities, the church’s greatest growth occurred in the industrial Midwest and Northeast. This wave of converts was mostly Greek Catholic, primarily Ukrainians and Carpatho-Rusyns from the provinces of Galicia and Transcarpathia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They shared a liturgical history with the Orthodox but a political history with the Catholic powers of Poland, Austria, and Hungary. Under Catholic empires, large Orthodox populations in the region were allowed to continue Orthodox practices, such as married clergy and iconostases (icon screens), in exchange for pledging allegiance to Rome.

When Greek Catholics arrived in the United States, they tried to practice their faith as they had in Europe. But Roman Catholic bishops protested Greek Catholic practices such as married clergy and denied the authority of European Greek Catholic bishops to minister to flocks in the US. The American bishops did not understand what made Greek Catholics different from other Slavs and hoped that they could join existing Polish or Slovak congregations. Attempts by Roman Catholic bishops to control and assimilate Greek Catholics fueled dissatisfaction. Working-class Greek Catholics did not want to give their hard-earned wages to a church that resented their unique culture and liturgical expression.

The conversion of Greek Catholic priest Alexis Toth accelerated the growth of Russian Orthodoxy. Toth is revered as “Confessor and Defender of the Orthodox Faith in America” and as one of the fathers of American Orthodoxy. Toth turned to Orthodoxy after being rebuffed by the Roman Catholic Bishop John Ireland of Minneapolis. Toth had presented himself to the bishop, requesting permission to work among Greek Catholics in Minneapolis, but Ireland threw him out upon learning that he had been married. Toth was a widower, and for Ireland, no true Catholic priest could have had a wife, even though that was the norm for Greek Catholics in Europe. Seeking new spiritual authority, Toth contacted the Russian Orthodox bishop of San Francisco and was eventually received into the church, along with his entire congregation in Minneapolis.

Toth’s conversion ignited discontent in Greek Catholic communities and transformed Minneapolis into “American Kyiv” — the birthplace of Orthodoxy in America. Inspired by Toth’s leadership, congregations voted en masse to leave the Catholic Church and join the Russian Orthodox Church, opening vast new mission territory among Slavic migrants. Community identity was central to these migrants, and unlike today’s conversions, entire parishes often converted, rather than an individual or personal decision of faith. Converts enshrined their unique history in the official name of their new church: Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic.

Although Sarkisian focuses on the spiritual appeal and excitement of Russian missionaries in the United States, the sudden interest in Russian Orthodoxy among migrants from the eastern border of the Austro-Hungarian Empire had political ramifications: conversions in the US drew the attention of the tsarist authorities. The converts’ Carpathian homeland held great strategic value because it contained mountain passes that controlled Russian access to the Hungarian basin. Spreading Orthodoxy offered political benefits by increasing Russian soft power in the United States and spurring return migrants to spread Orthodoxy into the Austro-Hungarian borderlands that Russia hoped to one day conquer.

Russian funding aided struggling migrant congregations and helped the church to quickly expand. The tsar donated lavishly, funding the majority of the church’s budget. Striking cathedrals rose in Chicago, Cleveland, Passaic, and Brooklyn, introducing distinctive Russian architecture to America’s industrial cities. These high-profile projects drew significant attention. Notably, the American modernist architect Louis Sullivan designed Chicago’s Russian Orthodox Holy Trinity Cathedral, blending his distinctive, eclectic forms with traditional Russian church plans, creating one of the most unexpected crossovers in American architecture.

Jobs in America’s booming industries beckoned Orthodox immigrants from around the world, including Albanians, Syrians, and Serbians. Large numbers from Ukraine and Belarus joined the many Greek Catholic converts, forming a diverse community of believers that Sarkisian calls American Orthodox Rus’. These multiethnic churches of American Rus’ served as outposts of Moscow, extending imperial authority over multinational diasporic communities in the United States. Visits by Russia’s military choirs, prayers for the tsar during liturgy, and the promotion of the Russian language (rather than Belarusian, Rusyn, or Ukrainian) projected a Russian political agenda into the American heartland.

But in 1917, the Russian Revolution destroyed the social and financial ties between Orthodox believers in the US and the tsar, sending the church into hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. One Orthodox official in New York expressed concern about the situation in Russia and stressed the church’s role. “In the absence of a permanent form of Government the Church will be more necessary than ever to keep the masses under control and prevent them from leaping into all kinds of brutal excesses to which revolutions give rise.” But without the tsar, financial support and gifts of icons and liturgical equipment from the Russian state to the American church came to an abrupt halt.

During the same period, harsh conditions, ethnic discrimination, and workplace accidents had made many Orthodox sympathetic to the communist message of egalitarianism, cooperation, and collective ownership of industry. A church newspaper warned readers of difficult conditions in American industry and advised that “only the most completely physically able and healthy person” should emigrate. One incident in Detroit especially offended the Orthodox community. On Christmas 1914, Ford fired hundreds of Russian workers who took the day off to celebrate on January 7. When critics objected to the cruel policy, a Ford spokesman stated, “If these men are to make their home in America, they should observe American holidays,” blaming the workers’ termination for the failure to assimilate rather than the company’s breach of their religious rights.

Corporate officials hoped that Russian Orthodoxy would exert a calming influence on workers, but that was not always the case. After the Bread and Roses strike in Massachusetts, Metropolitan Platon Rozhdestvensky, a high-ranking bishop, declared, “In no other country throughout the world can the condition of the unemployed be as terrible as in these most wealthy United States,” and proclaimed, “We are in need of a law that firmly asserts a worker’s rights.” On-the-ground efforts achieved mixed results. In Gary, Indiana, US Steel donated thousands of dollars to help fund the construction of St Mary’s Church, which, one Russian observer noted, decreased the readership of a popular anti-tsarist paper.

After an alcohol-fueled Easter Sunday brawl in Berlin, New Hampshire, paper company executives wrote to the Russian diocese pledging support for a full-time priest to bring the community under control. When the priest arrived and the company paid for the new church, the situation proved more challenging than expected. An observer noted that “the saloon element is making a last desperate effort to control things at the church” and advised the priest, “The only way out of the matter is to absolutely prohibit these men being in any way connected to the Church Committee.” After only four months, the priest was forced out of the church.

Orthodox communities in the United States followed events in Russia. When the revolution broke out, many parishioners were eager to support reform in Russia and in their own churches. The Russian Orthodox Church had fundamentally been part of an imperialist project, and in the wake of the collapse of the tsarist regime, workers wondered what a people’s church would look like and how it could support their struggle against corporate greed through union organizing.

Tensions over Bolshevism and Orthodoxy came to a head in Detroit and Baltimore. At All Saints Russian Orthodox Church on the edge of Detroit’s Poletown, one Orthodox priest feared that his entire congregation had become “Bolsheviki.” The congregation hung banners of Eugene Debs and Vladimir Lenin in a parish-affiliated club and loudly sang radical songs in the church basement. To control the situation, the priest denied communion to suspected “Reds” who “worked and agitated against the church,” and he may have even informed the police to advocate for the arrest and deportation of unruly parishioners.

But the radicalized parishioners refused to give up, took control of the church council, and insisted on reform. They reasoned that since the church had prayed for the tsar as the leader of Rus’, it should now pray for the Soviet Union’s success. Parishioners even demanded that an icon of St Nicholas the Wonderworker be replaced with one of Lenin. These conflicts between the priest and the congregation over the compatibility of Bolshevism and Orthodoxy escalated into a yearslong legal battle for control of the parish that eventually reached the Michigan Supreme Court.

Similarly inspired by the revolution, Russian Orthodox believers in Baltimore formally established a breakaway parish. The congregation resented their pastor’s introduction of capitalist practices, such as charging high fees for religious services. Breaking away from Orthodox jurisdictional control, the parishioners decided to establish a new church, Holy Trinity, that would be collectively owned by the people where they could live out their radical political convictions. The message resonated among workers, and the church quickly raised an extraordinary sum to acquire property and hire a priest.

Orthodox workers were not the only ones to respond to the Russian Revolution. American authorities unleashed a wave of hysteria, spreading fear that Bolshevism threatened the American way of life. Diaspora communities like the radicals at All Saints in Detroit immediately fell under suspicion. Eastern European migrant workers and their children made up a plurality of workers in much of the country’s heavy industry and had led some of the country’s longest strikes. The outbreak of a massive steel strike in September 1919, along with the involvement of thousands of Eastern Europeans and communist organizers, led many Americans to conflate all Slavs with Bolsheviks.

In late 1919 and early 1920, the federal government targeted left-wing activists across the country, including those in the radical Orthodox parishes of All Saints in Detroit and Holy Trinity in Baltimore, for deportation without due process in what became known as the Palmer Raids. As Sarkisian recounts, “In thirty-three cities spanning twenty-three states, federal agents arrested thousands of alleged ‘radicals,’ most of whom were Eastern European immigrants.” The press welcomed the move and praised the dramatic, sweeping arrests, without concern for the flagrant violation of civil liberties.

Alarmed by the powerful combination of Bolshevism and Orthodoxy that erupted in Baltimore, the Bureau of Investigation (today’s FBI) surveilled the growing Holy Trinity Church and sought to deport its pastor. Government investigators assumed the only explanation for the church’s rapid success was Soviet funding and sent spies to infiltrate the parish. The bureau found that the church’s priests led parishioners in singing Wobbly songs and concluded the church had been established exclusively for political reasons, but uncovered no evidence of Soviet funding.

Deportation raids created an atmosphere of fear in the Baltimore church. An unusual visitor at a parish picnic alerted the congregation to the presence of a spy. The priest informed the congregation that they were under surveillance and urged them to act carefully: “We must know with whom we speak and not use the same words as we do to our workers.” Furthermore, the priest condemned the bureau’s incursion into church affairs, comparing the informants who sold out the church to Judas’s betrayal of Christ.

Surveillance of the parish continued, and the bureau hired additional informants. Even under increased scrutiny, the priest continued to critique American society in sermons, lamenting that “the American people are educated to worship gold and not God.” Driven to reform society, religion, and industry, parishioners organized for social change in Baltimore, and the church cooperated closely with the local Communist Party branch. A Communist fundraising event even featured the church’s seal on its tickets.

Although the combination of Orthodoxy and Bolshevism drew criticism from anarchists and concern from the federal government, it was clearly popular among Baltimoreans. Holy Trinity continued to grow and remains an active parish today. After toning down some of its revolutionary rhetoric, the church reconciled with Orthodox authorities, but the legacy of leftism and Orthodoxy endured for decades. When a new priest arrived in the 1950s, he found a Soviet flag and portraits of Lenin and Joseph Stalin displayed in the church hall. In vain, the priest tried to explain to the congregation that Marxism and religion were incompatible, unaware of the irony that their combination had led the faithful to build some of the most important Orthodox churches in the country.

In recent decades, Orthodoxy has taken a markedly different path. Enter a church today, and you might find worshippers venerating an icon of Nicholas II and the imperial family. This new vision of Orthodoxy idealizes the power of kings over peasants, priests over parishioners, and men over women. The Romanovs, killed by Bolsheviks in 1918, were controversially glorified as saints in 2000 by Patriarch Aleksy II. For converts, authoritarianism and gender hierarchy are part of the appeal. In posts on X, Franz lamented the Romanovs’ demise as the “end of the God ordained Imperial order” and promoted various conspiracy theories about Bolsheviks and Judaism.

While the current state of the Orthodox church is a far cry from the reform efforts of activists a century ago, Orthodoxy on the Line shows how religious organizing led to significant reforms and reveals how Orthodoxy’s communal tradition supported migrants and workers seeking a better life in the United States. Through painstaking archival work, Sarkisian has reclaimed an extraordinary chapter in religious and labor history that defies many stereotypes about Russian Orthodoxy and highlights the critical contributions of Slavic migrant churches to working-class struggle.

Although the story of independent Bolshevik churches is a forgotten chapter in American Orthodoxy, it’s proof that the most radical reform can start in very unexpected places.

Contributors

Gavin Moulton is a PhD candidate in history at the University of Notre Dame. His research interests include religion, labor, and architecture, especially Slavic diasporas in the industrial United States.

#religion #USA #Russie #lutte_des_classes #histoire

« Je suis mise en examen », pour « avoir dénoncé la répression syndicale qui sévit à Tefal », annonce Sophie Binet, secrétaire générale de la CGT
▻https://www.franceinfo.fr/economie/syndicats/je-suis-mise-en-examen-pour-avoir-denonce-la-repression-syndicale-qui-sev

En France c’est comme en Allemagne. Quand les syndicalistes ne jouent pas le jeux des patrons on les poursuit en justice.

Publié le 25.5.2026 - Sophie Binet, secrétaire générale de la Confédération générale du travail (CGT), était l’invitée des 4V sur France 2 ce lundi 25 mai.

France Télévisions : Vous avez été mise en examen en décembre dernier pour injure publique après avoir qualifié les patrons de « rats qui quittent le navire ». Vous nous annoncez lundi 25 mai au 4V que vous êtes visée par une nouvelle procédure judiciaire. Dites-nous laquelle ?

Sophie Binet,(Nouvelle fenêtre) secrétaire générale de la Confédération générale du travail (CGT) : Oui, j’ai appris vendredi 22 mai que j’étais mise en examen suite au fait que j’ai dénoncé la répression syndicale qui sévit à Tefal parce que la CGT alerte depuis des mois sur la dangerosité des PFAS, un composant chimique qui est utilisé pour les poêles de Tefal.

Vous avez dit répression patronale violente.

Tout à fait. Et c’est la réalité puisque la déléguée CGT de Tefal a eu une sanction et que nous allons la dénoncer dans les prochains jours aux prud’hommes. Et par cette procédure, finalement, Tefal confirme l’ampleur de la répression syndicale et confirme qu’elle essaie de bâillonner les syndicalistes qui s’expriment sur les conditions de travail ou l’impact environnemental des productions. C’est très grave, deux mises en examen en six mois. C’est un signal d’ensemble qui est envoyé parce que sur cette base, c’est la quasi-totalité des syndicalistes du pays qui pourraient être mis en examen. C’est grave. Donc j’alerte les parlementaires, le gouvernement à enfin mettre sur le tapis une loi pour protéger la liberté d’expression et la liberté syndicale qui aujourd’hui est en danger. On ne peut pas nous museler.

Mise en examen pour diffamation, ça veut dire nuire à la réputation en affirmant des informations douteuses. Vous assumez aujourd’hui les propos que vous avez tenus ?

Complètement, puisque d’ailleurs ils sont confirmés par les faits. D’abord, Tefal pratique tellement la répression syndicale qu’elle ose poursuivre la secrétaire générale de la CGT, c’est quand même une confirmation. Et ensuite, la déléguée syndicale de la CGT est poursuivie et a eu une sanction avec un avertissement qu’on va contester aux prud’hommes la semaine prochaine. Tout ça, c’est tout à fait confirmé, oui.

L’actualité sociale, c’est mercredi 27 mai où se tient un nouveau comité de suivi des salaires avec notamment les organisations syndicales patronales, mais aussi le ministre. Vous réclamez avec la CFDT notamment de nouvelles négociations salariales. Le ministre vous répond : « Dans négociations annuelles, il y a ’annuelles’ et donc ce n’est pas le moment », ils renvoient aux patrons. Est-ce que c’est une réponse satisfaisante selon vous au regard de l’inflation et des nouveaux défis ?

Non, pas du tout. Le ministre du Travail ne peut pas se contenter de dire « circulez, il n’y a rien à voir » et de renvoyer la balle aux employeurs. Il a des responsabilités qu’il doit exercer. Nous demandons trois choses. La première chose, c’est l’indexation de tous les salaires sur les prix, l’échelle mobile des salaires, de façon à ce que les salaires augmentent automatiquement en même temps que le SMIC. La deuxième chose, c’est que le gouvernement s’est engagé il y a trois ans à sanctionner toutes les branches qui ont des minima inférieurs au SMIC. Au premier juin, ça sera le cas de 80 % des branches. Ces sanctions ne sont toujours pas là.

Lui dit à ce stade 44 branches et qu’au premier janvier, si c’est démontré, il y aura des sanctions.

Oui, c’est toujours ça. Il y aura peut-être des sanctions dans six mois. Donc avec ça, on peut patienter longtemps. On sait d’ores et déjà aujourd’hui qu’il y a deux tiers des Françaises et des Français qui disent qu’ils ne vont pas partir en vacances. La situation est très grave. Ce sont des millions de salariés qui sont obligés de choisir entre remplir leurs frigos et faire le plein avec un risque de récession qui guette dans le pays. Et le dernier point sur lequel nous alertons le gouvernement, c’est le salaire des fonctionnaires. L’État employeur doit être exemplaire. En l’occurrence, les fonctionnaires ont perdu 25 % de pouvoir d’achat en 20 ans. Leur salaire n’a pas été augmenté depuis des années. On a des enseignants débutants qui sont payés quasiment au niveau du SMIC au premier juin. Et pour les agents de catégorie C, par exemple, les ATSEM (agents territoriaux spécialisés des écoles maternelles), les auxiliaires de puériculture, etc., il faudra faire 19 ans sur ce poste pour décoller du SMIC et avoir une augmentation de salaire. Vous vous rendez compte ? 19 ans sans augmentation de salaire.

#lutte_des_classes #syndicalisme

Der nächste KI-Angriff : ChatGPT verbindet sich mit Banken ChatGPT verbindet sich jetzt mit Banken
▻https://www.business-punk.com/business/der-naechste-ki-angriff-chatgpt-verbindet-sich-mit-banken/?xing_share=news

L’IA suit la règle d’or du capitalisme moderne : si tu ne peux pas conquérir des terres inconnues, tu dois t’introduire dans les parties intimes afin de les commercialiser. Ceci dit ChatGPT s’en prend à ton épagne, les autres n’ont qu’à se rhabiller et faire la queue pour l’aumône chez les bienfaiteurs des démunis. Voici la fin du monde petit bourgeois comme nous le connaissons.

18.5.2026 von Günther Suchy - OpenAI dreht am Regler und macht ChatGPT jetzt zu einem digitalen Finanzberater mit Zugang zu Bankkontodaten. Wer das Pro-Abo hat, kann seine Konten verbinden und sich von der KI analysieren lassen, warum am Monatsende plötzlich wieder Ebbe herrscht. Möglich macht das eine Partnerschaft mit Plaid, einem der größten Finanzdaten-Netzwerke der USA. Damit wird aus dem Chatbot eine Maschine, die tiefe Einblicke in die Finanzen ihrer Nutzer bekommt – OpenAI betont, dies diene der besseren Beratung.

Die KI will jetzt deine Finanzen kennen

Bisher beantwortete ChatGPT Fragen über Politik, Filme oder kaputte Beziehungen. Jetzt geht OpenAI den nächsten Schritt und schiebt die KI direkt zwischen Girokonto, Kreditkarte und Aktiendepot. US-Pro-Nutzer können ab sofort ihre Finanzkonten mit ChatGPT verbinden und dem Bot Fragen stellen wie: „Warum gebe ich plötzlich so viel Geld aus?“ oder „Wie schaffe ich es, in fünf Jahren ein Haus zu kaufen?“ Die neue Finanzfunktion läuft zunächst nur in den USA und vorerst exklusiv für Pro-Abonnenten. Verbunden werden können laut OpenAI mehr als 12.000 Banken und Finanzdienstleister – darunter Chase, Fidelity, Robinhood, American Express oder Capital One. Wer seine Daten freigibt, bekommt danach ein Dashboard mit Ausgaben, Abos, Depotentwicklung und anstehenden Zahlungen serviert.
Plaid wird zur Datenautobahn

Damit die Konten überhaupt angebunden werden können, arbeitet OpenAI mit Plaid zusammen. Das Unternehmen ist in den USA längst die unsichtbare Infrastruktur hinter vielen Finanz-Apps. Plaid verbindet Banken mit Apps – und jetzt eben auch mit ChatGPT. Die Botschaft dahinter ist klar: OpenAI will nicht mehr nur Antworten liefern, sondern zum persönlichen Kontrollzentrum des digitalen Lebens werden. Erst Texte. Dann Bilder. Dann Gesundheit. Jetzt Geld.

Vom Chatbot zum Finanzberater

Der Zeitpunkt kommt wenig überraschend. Erst vor wenigen Wochen kaufte OpenAI das Team hinter dem Finanz-Startup Hiro. Die Crew war auf persönliche Finanzplanung spezialisiert und wurde von bekannten Investoren aus dem Silicon-Valley-Universum unterstützt. Jetzt landet das Know-how direkt im Maschinenraum von ChatGPT. OpenAI gibt an, bereits über 200 Millionen Nutzer würden jeden Monat Finanzfragen an die KI stellen. Mit GPT-5.5 soll das System jetzt besser darin geworden sein, komplexe finanzielle Zusammenhänge zu verstehen und langfristige Planungen zu erstellen. Klingt praktisch. Klingt aber auch ein bisschen so, als würde man seinem Taschenrechner plötzlich seine komplette Existenz anvertrauen.
Die totale Analyse-Maschine

Die neuen Funktionen gehen deutlich weiter als einfache Budget-Apps. ChatGPT soll Muster erkennen, Ausgaben analysieren und finanzielle Prognosen liefern. OpenAI plant außerdem eine Integration mit Intuit, wodurch die KI künftig sogar Steuerfolgen von Aktienverkäufen oder Chancen auf Kreditgenehmigungen berechnen könnte. Damit bewegt sich der Konzern immer tiefer in Bereiche, die früher Banken, Steuerberatern oder Vermögensverwaltern gehörten. Der Unterschied: Statt grauem Büroflur gibt es jetzt lockere Chatfenster und freundliche KI-Antworten.
Datenschutz? Irgendwo zwischen Komfort und Kontrollverlust

OpenAI betont, Nutzer könnten ihre Konten jederzeit wieder entfernen. Nach dem Trennen sollen die synchronisierten Finanzdaten innerhalb von 30 Tagen gelöscht werden. Außerdem lassen sich gespeicherte Finanz-Erinnerungen manuell entfernen. Trotzdem bleibt ein mulmiges Gefühl. Denn je mehr persönliche Daten Nutzer freiwillig an KI-Systeme geben, desto größer wird die Abhängigkeit von Konzernen, die längst nicht mehr nur Software bauen, sondern digitale Lebensbegleiter.

Der nächste große Angriff auf den Alltag

Die Richtung ist eindeutig: KI-Unternehmen drängen immer aggressiver in sensible Lebensbereiche vor. Nach Gesundheits-Tools und KI-Assistenten für medizinische Fragen folgt jetzt der Schritt zu persönlichen Finanzen. Auch Konkurrenten wie Anthropic oder Perplexity experimentieren bereits mit spezialisierten Finanz- und Recherchefunktionen. OpenAI verkauft das Ganze als Komfort-Revolution. Kritiker sehen darin eher den nächsten Schritt Richtung Totalintegration der KI in den Alltag. Der Chatbot wird damit endgültig vom netten Textgenerator zur allwissenden Kontrollzentrale. Und viele Nutzer klicken vermutlich trotzdem einfach auf „Konten verbinden“.

#exploitation #lutte_des_classes #intelligence_artificielle

Beisetzung der RAF-Terroristin : Die vielen Beerdigungen der Ulrike Meinhof
▻https://taz.de/Todestag-von-Ulrike-Meinhof/!6178619

https://taz.de/picture/8434856/665/41131030.webp

Il y a cinquante ans nous avons enterré notre camarade Ulrike . Sans avoir jamais partagé sa ligne politique nous l’avons repecté pour sa droiture et parce que elle luttait contre notre ennemi commun. Seulement les vieux nazis et leurs successeurs ne partagaient pas cette attitude. Trois ans aprés son enterrememt naquit le journal TAZ qui devait continuer la lutte contre les fascistes et les ravageurs impérialistes du monde.

Aujourd’hui Ulrike n’est plus qu’une terroriste pour le journal qui a changé de camp. Il est déjà mort comme le système qui s’apprête à entraîner dans l’abîme de la guerre la génération qu’on espérait pouvoir protéger contre les nouveaux fascistes.

Peut-être Ulrike avait raison. On ne le saura jamais. Nous, les socialistes opposés aux actions militantes d’avant-garde, nous avions tort. Les ennemis des classes populaires font toujours preuve d’absence totale de scrupules. Il continuent à torturer et assassiner avec un pragmatisme digne des tortionnaires nazis. Nous par contre nous voulons toujours nous comporter en êtres humains. Nous acceptons que parfois c’est une erreur.

P.S. Vous avez bien regardé la photo ? On se dirait sur la scène de la société du spectacle.

14.5.2026 von Londa Valja Rathgeb - Vor 50 Jahren wurde Meinhof beigesetzt, ihr Gehirn erst 25 Jahre später. In der Zwischenzeit versuchten Männer zu ergründen, was in ihrem Kopf vor sich ging.

Auf dem Friedhof in Berlin-Mariendorf stehen 4.000 Menschen und tragen Deutschlands bekannteste Terroristin in einem schweren Eichensarg zu Grabe. Neben dickbäuchigen Männern in schwarzen Anzügen stehen langhaarige Möchtegern-Revolutionäre, JournalistInnen klettern auf Grabsteine und halten schwere Kameras und Mikrofone in die Luft.

Es ist der 15. Mai 1976, die Birken rauschen und der Flieder auf dem Sarg leuchtet lila und weiß. Die Familie hatte um Spenden statt Blumen gebeten, trotzdem liegt das Grab übersät mit Tulpen und Vergissmeinnicht (und, wie die späteren Biografie-AutorInnen nicht müde werden zu schreiben, unzähligen Zigarettenstummeln) da.

„Was Ulrike Meinhof umgebracht hat, waren die deutschen Verhältnisse“, sagt der Verleger Klaus Wagenbach an dem noch offenen Grab. Der danach sprechende Theologe wird mehr oder minder bei seiner Rede mundtot gebuht. Dann tritt diese seltsame Gesellschaft aus Schaulustigen und Trauernden einen 15 Kilometer langen Marsch an – Gespräche nach einer Beerdigung, die die Bild-Zeitung als „Gegröle und Geheule“ beschreibt, die Beerdigung sei eine „Demonstration des Hasses und des Terrors“, oder, so kann man es ja auch immer nennen, „der linksradikalen Verbrüderung“ gewesen. Zeitungen wie die Süddeutsche sehen das etwas anders, es sei doch alles recht friedlich verlaufen, man stand beisammen und hörte den Reden zu oder sang Wolf Biermann-Lieder.

Einen Tag vor dieser sagenumwogenden Trauerfeier hatten zwei Unbekannte noch versucht, den Leichnam zu stehlen, zumindest seien sie in die Kapelle eingebrochen, in der Meinhof aufgebahrt lag. Einen Friedhof zu finden, der diese RAF-Gründerin unter die Erde bringt, schien auch nicht sonderlich leicht gewesen zu sein. Jetzt wird das unscheinbare Grab 3 A-012-019 nach wie vor mit frischen Blumen geschmückt, zum Beispiel vom Jugendbuch-Star Alois Prinz, der versucht (nach eifrig beschriebenen 300 Biografie-Seiten) einen Abschluss zu finden.

Es muss schwer sein, sich in den unzähligen Dokumenten, Briefen und Artikeln zurechtzufinden, eine Frau zu porträtieren, die einerseits als Deutschlands größte linksradikale Terroristin galt und andererseits als Märtyrerin zu Grabe getragen wurde (der Dichter Erich Fried erklärte sie zur größten deutschen Frau seit Rosa Luxemburg).

Ein zerschnittenes Gehirn

Ulrike Meinhof also, das Hirn der RAF, die einzig Intellektuelle neben dem Comic-lesenden Baader-Macker und der ihm ergebenen Shoppingqueen Ensslin – Raspe und die drei M, Mahler, Möller und Meins, lassen wir einmal außen vor. Um ihr Hirn soll es, und das nicht im übertragenen Sinne, auch gehen. Und um die Tatsache, dass Meinhof nicht nur einmal zu Grabe getragen wurde. Es gab in den Zweitausendern noch eine zweite, private Beerdigung, in der Meinhofs eingeäschertes und davor in unzählige Scheiben zerschnittenes und seziertes Gehirn beigesetzt wurde.

Am Ende bleibt: Ein ausgeräumtes Neurologielabor und ein (nun) vollständiges Grab, vor dem Meinhofs Zwillingskinder Bettina und Regine Röhl stehen. Sie wollten es privat halten, ohne Fotos und den 4.000 anderen, die bestimmt noch ein zweites Mal in das abgelegene Mariendorf gefahren wären. Die Odyssee des Meinhof-Gehirns sei nun beendet, schreibt Der Spiegel 2002.

Aber warum das Ganze? Konnte man einer Frau nicht genauso wie dem Fotzen grölenden Baader zutrauen, sich radikal zu politisieren? Waffen zu benutzen? Sicher, es ist keine Kleinigkeit, Pistolen des Kalibers neun Millimeter, eine Maschinenpistole, zwei selbst gefertigte Handgranaten, eine etwa viereinhalb Kilogramm schwere Bombe und zahlreiche gefüllte Magazine und diverse Munition mit sich herumzuschleppen (mit diesem Arsenal nahm man sie 1972 in Langenhagen bei Hannover fest). Und trotzdem, man (und die Betonung liegt hierbei wirklich auf dem „man“) forschte noch viele Jahre nach den möglichen Gründen für Meinhofs Entscheidung, in die Illegalität zu gehen und vor allem ihre Kinder zurückzulassen (Manon Garcia schreibt passend dazu in Die Zeit – wohlgemerkt 2026 und nicht 1970: „In Frankreich ist eher wichtig, dass Frauen sexy sind, in Deutschland, dass sie gute Mütter sind. In Frankreich stehen Frauen daher stärker unter Druck, sich ansprechend zu kleiden. In Deutschland wird von Frauen, wenn sie Mutter werden, erwartet, dass sie aufhören, Individuen zu sein und die Bedürfnisse ihrer Familie immer an erste Stelle setzen. Nur jeder vierte Deutsche findet eine Vollzeitbeschäftigung von Müttern mit Kindern unter drei Jahren für angemessen.“)

Ganz zu schweigen also von einem geplanten Waisenheimaufenthalt in Jordanien, vor dem der Spiegel-Redakteur Stefan Aust die beiden Töchter Meinhofs gerettet hat. Dass eine Frau schreibt: „Der Typ in Uniform ist ein Schwein, das ist kein Mensch … wir haben nicht mit ihm zu reden, und natürlich kann geschossen werden.“ – Das schien den Männern der Neunzigerjahre ein Rätsel zu sein.
Das Fahndungsplakat hing überall

Wenn man versucht, Erklärungen für Meinhofs Gewaltbereitschaft zu finden, stößt man in ihrer Biografie schnell auf einen monatelangen Krankenhausaufenthalt, bei dem ihr, unter Vollnarkose, ein Blutschwamm, den man fälschlicherweise für einen Tumor hielt, mit Silberklammern abgeklemmt wurde (ihn herauszuschneiden, war zu risikoreich).

Danach sei sie wohl immer mehr zu einer „Anderen“ geworden. Also ein bisschen à la: vom Protestantenmädchen, das sich durch schnelle Karriere eine Villa in Blankenese kauft und Champagnerbesäufnisse auf Sylt mit der gesamten intellektuellen Hamburger Elite veranstaltet, zu: MORDVERSUCH in Berlin. 10.000 DM BELOHNUNG. Ulrike Meinhof (geschiedene Röhl). Personenbeschreibung: 35 Jahre alt, 165 cm groß, schlank, längliches Gesicht, langes mittelbraunes Haar, braune Augen. – Das Fahndungsplakat, das kurz nach der Baader-Befreiung 1970 überall hing.

Zwei Jahre und vier Morde sowie 54 Mordversuche später wurde Meinhof festgenommen. Obwohl sich die Beamten nicht so sicher waren, ob es sich bei dieser abgemagerten Frau mit kurzen Haaren und schwarzem Röckchen wirklich um die gefürchtete Ulrike Meinhof handelte. Um Licht ins Dunkle zu bringen, ließ man sie (gegen ihren Willen) röntgen, erst auf diesen Radiografien, auf denen die Silberklammern sichtbar sind, war man sich sicher, die richtige Terroristin gefasst zu haben.

Im Gefängnis, in dem sie sich, vor Stammheim, in der viel diskutierten Isolationshaft befand (bevor sie sich in den Wetthungerstreit mit Baader, Enslin und Meins – der daran starb – begab), wurde mehrfach ein Psychologe in ihre Zelle geschickt, den sie aber unter lautem Protest wieder hinauswarf. Es galt, ihre Zurechnungsfähigkeit festzustellen, aufgrund der Hirnoperation natürlich und dem dadurch entstandenen „Persönlichkeitsbruch“.

1973 wurde schließlich diskutiert, Frau Meinhof erneut neurologisch zu untersuchen. Es sollten ein Szintigramm erstellt und weitere, eventuelle Zwangseingriffe durchgeführt werden, um Frau Meinhof den Kopf quasi wieder richtig herum auf die Schultern zu setzen. Dagegen sprach eine Klage von dreißig Universitätsärzten, die freundlicherweise darauf hinwiesen, dass ein solcher Eingriff bei fehlender akuter Gesundheitsgefahr gesetzeswidrig sei.

Steuerung der Affekte

Der Prozess in Stammheim fand also statt, trotz geistig ungeklärter Zustände und mal mit, mal ohne die abgemagerte Angeklagte. Ab dem 9. Mai 1976 dann ganz ohne Ulrike Meinhof, die um 7.34 Uhr tot aufgefunden wurde. Der Gerichtsmediziner und ironischerweise vormalige SS-Unterscharführer Hans-Jürgen Mallach gab bei der Obduktion Suizid an und vermachte dem Neuropathologen Jürgen Peiffer das Gehirn der 41-Jährigen.

Dieser verschleppte es an die Universität Tübingen und stellte auch gleich einen Hirnschaden im Bereich der für die Steuerung der Emotionen und Affekte verantwortlichen Amygdala fest, der 1962 bei der Operation an dem Blutschwamm entstanden war. Dieser Bericht blieb allerdings unveröffentlicht. Das Hirn Meinhofs wiederum lag von da an in Scheiben geschnitten in einem Kunststoffbeutel in der Asservatenkammer unter der Nummer ES154/76. 26 Jahre später kommt es zu einem grandiosen Zufall: Bernhard Bogerts entdeckt bei einem Mehrfachmörder ähnliche Schäden und Peiffer gibt den schwierigen Rabenmutter- und Terroristinnen-Fall erleichtert ab.

Der Spiegel-Redakteur Jürgen Dahlkamp hat diese ja wirklich fachneurologische Angelegenheit in einem Artikel, der 2002 unter dem Titel: „Das Gehirn des Terrors“ erschien, zusammengefasst: „So viel ist jetzt schon klar: Die Terroristin hatte einen Hirnschaden und war wohl nur vermindert schuldfähig.“

Bogerts legte, so der Spiegel-Redakteur, die schon zerteilten Gehirnstücke in einen Paraffinblock ein und zog dann mit einem Präzisionshobel weitere Schichten ab. 400-mal soll er so das Hirn Stück für Stück auseinandergehobelt haben – wobei jede einzelne Schicht 20 Mikromillimeter dünn war. Diese Scheiben färbte er dann ein: Nervenzellen blau und Nervenfasern schwarz. In 37 Grad warmer Gelatine eingelegt, können diese zerschnittenen, gefärbten Lappen nun unter den Objektträger. Und was sieht man? Schäden nahe dem Mandelkern – der Schädelbasis, in der die „Abteilung der Emotionen“ liegt, also die, Wortlaut Dahlkamp: „Urinstinkte“.

Diesen Schaden führt Bogerts zurück auf die Silberklammern, die Frau Meinhof in ein „pathologisches Ausmaß der Aggressivität“ wortwörtlich gedrückt hätten.
„Es explodiert einem der Kopf“

„Es gab für Ulrike Marie Meinhof keine Flucht mehr, keine Therapie, und ihren Dämon hatten sie mit ihr zusammen eingesperrt“, schreibt Der Spiegel – und knüpft damit interpretatorisch siegessicher an Meinhofs Tagebucheintrag aus der Isolationshaft an: „Das Gefühl, es explodiert einem der Kopf. Das Gefühl, die Schädeldecke müsste eigentlich zerreißen, abplatzen. Das Gefühl, es würde einem das Rückenmark ins Gehirn gepresst … Rasende Aggressivität, für die es kein Ventil gibt. Das ist das Schlimmste.“

Die Einzige, die diesem Männerwahn der weiblichen Zerstückelung ein Ende bereitete, war Meinhofs Tochter Bettina Röhl. Sie zeigte Bogerts wegen Störung der Totenruhe an und dem illegalen Umgang mit sterblichen Überresten und forderte die Rückgabe von dem, was von ihrer Mutter übriggeblieben war. Die Ethikkommission der Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg verbot Bogerts daraufhin, weiter an dem Gehirn zu forschen und seine bisherigen Ergebnisse dazu zu veröffentlichen. Am 16. Dezember 2002 wurde Ulrike Meinhofs Silberklammer-Gehirn eingeäschert und drei Tage später beigesetzt. Der Toten wurde ihr Kopf zurückgegeben und das Grab ein für alle Mal geschlossen.

Für reichlich Stoff – Bühnenstoff – bietet sich die ganze Angelegenheit aber trotz Totenruhe an. Die deutsche Dramatikerin Dea Loher findet in dieser Zwangspathologisierung (lassen wir einmal außen vor, inwiefern Silberklammern Einfluss auf den Mandelkern und die menschlichen Urinstinkte haben) eine Sprache, die sie der Meinhof-Figur „Maria“ in dem Theaterstück „Leviathan“ zuweisen kann. Da heißt es dann:

„MARIE: Die Silberklammer, die in meinem Hirn verwächst, sie holt den Schmerz in meinen Schädel, nicht ein Tumor, wie sie es behaupten werden. Sicherlich, damit ein Irresein leicht einzusehen sei und gelten möge billig als Entschuldigung für das, was ich getan habe oder noch tun werde oder sogar nur gerne tun würde.“

Und Elfriede Jelinek schreibt, passend zu dem männlichen Psychoterror, in ihren Notizen für das Stück „Ulrike Maria Stuart“: „Die Frau ist eben nicht in der gleichen Weise in der Welt wie der Mann (…), wenn Frauen Geschichte machen wollen.“
Drei Millionen Dollar

Anders als diese beiden Dramatikerinnen verkauft der Künstler Gerhard Richter seine Ulrike Meinhof im Gemäldezyklus 1995 für drei Millionen Dollar an das New Yorker Museum of Modern Art.

Auch hier wird Meinhof als schizophrene Persönlichkeit abgebildet: Einmal in dem „Jugendbildnis“ (67 × 62 cm, Werkverzeichnis: 672-1), das im Vergleich zu den anderen Gemälden in seinen Konturen am erkennbarsten ist, und in dem der Kunsthistoriker Hubertus Butin meint, eine „eklatante Harmlosigkeit“ zu erkennen. Und einmal in die „Tote“ (62 × 67 cm, Werkverzeichnis: 667/1-3), das, wie der Titel nahelegt, die suizidierte Meinhof abbildet, dieses Mal aber in seinen Grautönen verwischt. Butin folgert daraus mit Kennerblick: „die unaufhebbare und trostlose Faktizität des Totseins“ – nicht in jedem steckt eine Jelinek.

Meinhof wiederum scheint keine Totenruhe zu finden, trotz vollständigem Leichnam. Der Kontrast: Protestantenmädchen und Terroristin der ersten RAF-Generation sorgt für schweres Kopfzerbrechen, ob auf Projektoren, Theaterbühnen oder MoMA-Ausstellungen.

#lutte_des_classes #obsèques #Berlin #impérialisme #histoire #nazis #iatrocratie

Kein Gesetz, aber Kameras : Großbritannien überwacht Proteste per Gesichtsscan
▻https://www.telepolis.de/article/Kein-Gesetz-aber-Kameras-Grossbritannien-ueberwacht-Proteste-per-Gesichtss

https://heise.cloudimg.io/width/1500/q40.png-lossy-40.webp-lossy-40.foil1/_www-heise-de_/imgs/18/5/0/8/3/4/4/3/shutterstock_2677980499-d17fed29181faf15.jpeg

Sous la common law tout est possible pour l’exécutif ce qui n’est pas interdit et semble plausible aux chefs d’administration. Au Royaume Uni on pratique alors la surveillance biométrique sans bornes. La Grande Bretagne s’en sert pour défendre le pouvoir de la classe capitaliste sur le prolétariat et les autres classes soumises par le régime capitaliste libéral.

Dans les parties de l’Europe capitaliste où chaque acte et décision administrative a besoin d’une autorisation expresse dans la loi (régimes du code civil et d’ume manière plus conséquente de la BGB allemande) il n’y a donc plus que la « pauvreté » de l’état et quelques lois éphémères qui nous protègent contre l’introduction d’une dictature de surveillance ouverte par les sbires de la classe au pouvoir. La lutte pour notre liberté continue.

26.5.2026 von Bernd Müller - Die Met Police scannt Gesichter bei einer Großdemo – ohne Gesetz, ohne Parlamentsvotum. Eine Premiere mit Signalwirkung für ganz Europa.

Wer an diesem Samstag im Londoner Stadtteil Camden unterwegs ist, wird von der Polizei biometrisch erfasst. Nicht weil er verdächtig wäre, sondern weil er sich in der Nähe einer politischen Demonstration aufhält.

Die Metropolitan Police setzt dort erstmals Live-Gesichtserkennung (Live Facial Recognition, LFR) im Rahmen einer Demonstration ein – ein Novum in der britischen Polizeigeschichte.

Anlass ist die „Unite the Kingdom“-Kundgebung, organisiert vom rechten Aktivisten Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, laut AP News besser bekannt als Tommy Robinson. Die Polizei erwartet rund 50.000 Teilnehmer.

chzeitig demonstrieren am selben Tag geschätzt 30.000 Menschen beim jährlichen Nakba-Gedenkmarsch. LFR-Kameras sucht man dort vergeblich.

Die Met begründet den selektiven Einsatz mit Geheimdiensterkenntnissen, wonach von Teilen der „Unite the Kingdom“-Teilnehmer eine Gefahr für die öffentliche Sicherheit ausgehe.

Wie Deputy Assistant Commissioner James Harman in einem Briefing erklärte, werde man die „durchsetzungsstärkste mögliche Nutzung unserer Befugnisse“ anwenden. Neben den biometrischen Kameras sind 4.000 Polizisten, Drohnen, gepanzerte Fahrzeuge, Helikopter und Hundestaffeln im Einsatz – Kosten: rund 4,5 Millionen Pfund. Laut ersten Berichten vom Einsatztag gab es bis zum Nachmittag mindestens 11 Festnahmen (Sky News Live-Blog)..

Reform-UK-Chef Nigel Farage sprach von einer „Schande“: Es werde mit zweierlei Maß gemessen, wenn patriotische Briten anders behandelt würden als der pro-palästinensische Marsch.
Von der Einkaufsstraße zur Demonstration

Der Einsatz bei einer Demonstration fällt nicht vom Himmel. Zwei Tage zuvor hatte die Met die Ergebnisse eines sechsmonatigen Pilotprojekts in Croydon veröffentlicht, das die Richtung vorzeichnet.

Dort montierte die Polizei erstmals LFR-Kameras an Laternenmasten statt in auffälligen Einsatzwagen. Die statischen, ferngesteuerten Kameras überwachten von Oktober 2025 bis März 2026 die Haupteinkaufsstraße.

Über 470.000 Gesichter wurden gescannt, 173 Personen festgenommen – rechnerisch eine Festnahme alle 35 Minuten laut Met-Statistik. Die Polizei meldete einen Kriminalitätsrückgang von 10,5 Prozent, bei Gewalt gegen Frauen und Mädchen sogar 21 Prozent.

Lindsey Chiswick, die nationale LFR-Verantwortliche der Met, nannte die Technologie ein „äußerst wirkungsvolles Instrument, wenn es sorgfältig, offen und an den richtigen Orten eingesetzt wird“.

Was sie nicht erwähnte: 99,96 Prozent der biometrisch erfassten Passanten hatten mit keiner Straftat etwas zu tun. Pro Festnahme wurden die Gesichter von rund 2.717 unbeteiligten Personen gescannt und mit Fahndungslisten abgeglichen.
Kein Gesetz, keine Debatte – aber Kameras an Laternenmasten

Der Wechsel von mobilen Einsatzwagen zu fest installierter Infrastruktur verschiebt das Machtgefälle erheblich.

Ein Polizeifahrzeug ist sichtbar, temporär und erfordert Personal vor Ort. Kameras an Laternenmasten fügen sich in das Stadtbild ein und lassen sich per Fernzugriff aktivieren, wann immer Beamte es für nötig halten.

Das britische Parlament hat nie über den Einsatz von Live-Gesichtserkennung abgestimmt. Kein Gesetz regelt deren Nutzung explizit. Die Polizei stützt sich auf allgemeines Polizeirecht, eigene Abwägungen zu Menschenrechten und selbst verfasste Richtlinien.

Im April 2026 scheiterten Bürgerrechtler vor dem High Court mit einer Klage gegen die Met-Praxis. Met-Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley feierte das Urteil als „bedeutenden Sieg für die öffentliche Sicherheit“.

Die britische Datenschutzaufsicht ICO warnt derweil vor „rechtlichen Risiken“, wenn LFR bei Protesten eingesetzt wird.

In einer Stellungnahme vom April 2025 hatte die Behörde betont, dass der Einsatz „notwendig und verhältnismäßig“ sein müsse und besonders in sensiblen Kontexten strenge Datenschutz-Folgenabschätzungen erfordere.
Abschreckung als Kollateralschaden

Bürgerrechtsorganisationen wie Big Brother Watch sehen in der Kombination aus massivem Polizeiaufgebot, LFR, Drohnen und erweiterten Befugnissen nach dem Public Order Act eine Militarisierung der Protestpolizei.

Ihr Kernargument: Wer weiß, dass sein Gesicht bei einer Demonstration erfasst und mit Polizeidatenbanken abgeglichen wird, überlegt sich zweimal, ob er hingeht. Dieser sogenannte Chilling Effect trifft Minderheiten besonders hart – Communities, die ohnehin überproportional häufig Polizeikontakten ausgesetzt sind.

Für deutsche Beobachter ist der Fall aufschlussreich. Hierzulande beschränkten sich Versuche mit automatisierter Gesichtserkennung bislang auf eng gefasste Pilotprojekte wie den Test am Berliner Bahnhof Südkreuz 2017/2018 – mit freiwilligen Teilnehmern und ohne Einsatz bei Versammlungen. DSGVO und Versammlungsrecht setzen hohe Hürden.

Doch Londons Weg vom Pilotversuch auf der Einkaufsstraße über permanente Laternenmasten-Kameras bis zur biometrischen Erfassung von Demonstranten zeigt, wie schnell sich Grenzen verschieben, wenn gesetzliche Leitplanken fehlen.

Premierminister Keir Starmer besuchte am Freitag die Einsatzzentrale der Met und erklärte: „Wir kämpfen um die Seele dieses Landes.“ Die Frage ist, ob die biometrische Totalerfassung politischer Teilnahme zu dieser Seele dazugehört.

#Europe #surveillance biométrique #capitalisme #lutte_des_classes #common_law #code_.napoléon #code_civil #BGB #Bürgerliches_Gesetzbuch

Abschuss von Fliegern vor 30 Jahren : USA wollen offenbar Kubas Ex-Staatschef Raúl Castro anklagen
▻https://www.tagesspiegel.de/internationales/abschuss-von-fliegern-vor-30-jahren-usa-wollen-offenbar-kubas-ex-staats

On mène und guerre non déclarée contre un pays puis on se plaint quand la cible se défend en tirant sur les avions d’une organisation terroriste qui violent l’espace aerien du pays. Les mafieux réclament déjà qu’on leur rende les hôtels et casinos socialisés il y a soixante sept ans. La lutte des classes continue. Les impérialistes réclament la domination totale.

15.5.2026 - Die US-Regierung übt seit Monaten Druck auf Kuba aus, um einen wirtschaftlichen und politischen Wandel zu forcieren. Laut US-Medien sind nun rechtliche Schritte geplant, die die Beziehung weiter belasten dürften.

Die USA unternehmen Medienberichten zufolge Schritte, um den 94-jährigen kubanischen Ex-Präsidenten Raúl Castro anzuklagen. Die mögliche Anklage soll sich auf den tödlichen Abschuss von Flugzeugen einer exilkubanischen Organisation durch Kuba im Jahr 1996 konzentrieren, berichtete der Sender CBS News unter Berufung auf US-Beamte. Die Zeitung „USA Today“ setzte eine mögliche Anklage ebenfalls in Zusammenhang mit dem 30 Jahre alten Fall. Sie stützt sich dabei auf zwei mit der Angelegenheit vertraute Quellen.

Für eine solche Anklage bräuchte es üblicherweise die Zustimmung einer Grand Jury. Eine solche Gruppe Geschworener kann in den USA nach der Vorlage von Beweismitteln durch die Staatsanwaltschaft entscheiden, ob in einem Fall Anklage erhoben wird.

Die kubanische Luftwaffe hatte am 24. Februar 1996 zwei Flugzeuge der damals in Miami ansässigen exilkubanischen Organisation „Hermanos al Rescate“ (Brüder zur Rettung) bei einem Flug vor der kubanischen Küste abgeschossen.

Nach Darstellung Havannas waren die Cessnas in den kubanischen Luftraum eingedrungen. Die Internationale Organisation für Zivilluftfahrt (ICAO) kam aber zu dem Schluss, dass sie sich über internationalen Gewässern befanden. Drei der Todesopfer waren US-Bürger. Die exilkubanische Organisation stellte 2003 ihre Arbeit ein.

Einige Politiker in den USA fordern eine Anklage Raúl Castros

Floridas republikanischer Gouverneur Ron DeSantis legte auf der Plattform X nahe, dass er eine Anklage gegen Kubas früheren Staatschef Raúl Castro begrüßen würde. Den Bericht von CBS News kommentierte er mit den Worten: „Gib Gas, das hat lange auf sich warten lassen!“.

Mehrere US-Medien hatten bereits in den vergangenen Monaten über einen Brief mehrerer Kongressmitglieder an die US-Regierung berichtet, in dem diese eine Anklage gegen Raúl Castro gefordert haben sollen. Ihr Vorwurf demnach: Er hätte den Abschuss als damaliger Verteidigungsminister angeordnet.
Welche Rolle Castro aktuell auf Kuba spielt

Raúl Castro gab 2018 das Präsidentenamt und 2021 den Vorsitz der Kommunistischen Partei ab, seitdem ist er nicht mehr in der Tagespolitik aktiv. Als jüngerer Bruder von Revolutionsführer Fidel Castro und einer der letzten Vertreter der Generation der Revolutionäre genießt er aber immer noch hohes Ansehen in Kuba.

Er gilt als wichtiger Berater von Präsident Miguel Díaz-Canel und ist als früherer Verteidigungsminister innerhalb des mächtigen Militärs bestens vernetzt. Zuletzt zeigte er sich bei der Kundgebung zum 1. Mai vor der US-Botschaft an der Seite seines Nachfolgers Díaz-Canel.

Seit der Revolution 1959 sind die Beziehungen zwischen beiden Ländern angespannt, mit Trumps Amtsantritt hat sich das noch einmal verschärft: Im Januar 2025 setzte er den von der Kommunistischen Partei regierten Inselstaat wieder auf eine US-Terrorliste. Seit Monaten erhöht seine Regierung den Druck, um auf Kuba einen wirtschaftlichen und politischen Wandel im Interesse der USA zu forcieren.

#USA #Cuba #anticommunisme #terrorisme #impérialisme #lutte_des_classes

What Real American Won’t Say About Hulk Hogan
▻https://jacobin.com/2026/05/hulk-hogan-gawker-racism-trump

Voilà un exemple cimment les médias des riches empêchent la propagation des idées et informations essentielles pour la défense des intérêtes des classes inférieures. Dommage que Werner Herzog ait participé au spectacle.

11.5.2026 by Tim Gill - From his late-life support for Donald Trump to playing a key role in destroying Gawker, the Netflix documentary series Real American keeps its distance from substantive questions about Hulk Hogan’s legacy.

In 1991, I sat in front of the television and wept as Sgt Slaughter beat Hulk Hogan with a chair. My brother and I had watched in horror for months as Slaughter and his cronies brutalized Hogan in the lead-up to WrestleMania VII, unwilling to accept my dad’s attempts at consolation. We were kids, and like millions of other Americans, Hulkamaniacs.

Thirty-four years later, my son Sebastian, who had just turned seven, stood beside me at WWE SmackDown in Cleveland on July 25, 2025. We watched grown men and women weep as the bell tolled ten times to commemorate Hogan, a day after his death. The moment was surreal. I was grieving the figure who had defined a piece of my childhood, and I was thinking, even then, about what I had spent the better part of a decade trying not to think about: the man behind the character, and what that man had done.

Netflix’s new four-part documentary, Real American, takes a partial accounting. But like most documentaries produced in association with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), it ducks the questions that matter most. Watching it didn’t resolve my dissonance.

The legendary film director Werner Herzog, a longtime aficionado of professional wrestling, appears in the final episode to offer some philosophical opining on performance.

“All of us in a way have a performative life,” he says. “As a father, I am performative. It’s part of human nature, of the human experience.”

Symbolic interactionists like George Herbert Mead and Erving Goffman troubled the idea of a “true” self decades ago, arguing that social life is essentially theatrical. We all manage impressions and perform versions of ourselves for different audiences. Hogan just did it at a scale most people can’t imagine, and he eventually lost the distance between performer and performance. He didn’t just play Hulk Hogan. He convinced himself he was Hulk Hogan. Terry Bollea more or less disappeared into what some in the wrestling business call “becoming a mark for your own character.”

In his final interview, Hogan tells the camera that his happiest years were when he was married to Linda Bollea and his two kids were still young. This was before the reality TV show, the affairs, the divorces, the lawsuits. It is hard to watch a man in his final days look back and admit, more or less, that despite everything he was given and all the second chances he received, he destroyed his own family and set them on a path forever marked by his own mistakes.

But the documentary stops there. The dissolved family becomes the lens through which we are invited to see Bollea. The film treats this as the central tragedy of his life. There were others, and they were not his alone.

Hogan’s fellow wrestler Bret Hart says early in the documentary that Hogan knew almost nothing about wrestling. He’s not entirely wrong. Hogan had a predictable formula, and it wasn’t a technical one. He was all presence. He didn’t fly off the top rope, because he didn’t need to. He didn’t attempt technical maneuvers, because his sheer appearance was enough. He was enormous. He had twenty-four-inch pythons for biceps and a cartoonishly expressive face. The crowd didn’t come to see him wrestle. They came for the broader set of feelings they experienced and for the relationship they had built with the character.

That’s why they went along for the ride. They believed in him. He was the last of a bygone era of “good guys” in wrestling.

By the mid-1990s, the era of Jerry Springer and MTV, the kids who had gone along for the Hulkamania ride were now teenagers more interested in raunch than the good-guy image Hogan had crafted at his wrestling career’s peak. After a lackluster turn in Hollywood, Hogan finally caught up to the culture, returned to wrestling for billionaire Ted Turner’s new league, World Championship Wrestling, and turned heel in 1996, reinventing himself as “Hollywood Hogan,” a narcissist who referred to the audience in derogatory terms and often cheated to win against his opponents. Hogan had the power to pull off this transformation. The harder question, and the one Real American never takes up, is what he did with it everywhere else.

The biggest omissions in the documentary are also the most important about Hogan’s life. In the second episode, Hogan claims that his drawing power lifted all boats in the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), and that all wrestlers made more money because of him. Most wrestlers, however, never worked with Hogan. They worked the mid-card and the lower card, jeopardizing their bodies, their home lives, and their marriages for paydays that were a fraction of his. WWF wrestlers were classified as independent contractors despite working a schedule that left no time for and in fact prohibited outside employment. They had no health insurance, no pensions, no collective bargaining rights, no retirement.

The toll was not abstract. The WWF rosters of the 1980s and 1990s are populated with men who died in their forties and fifties from heart attacks, overdoses, and suicides, and the through line is almost always the same: bodies broken on the road, then medicated to keep them on it.

By the time of WrestleMania 2 in 1986, Jesse Ventura and Jim Brunzell had begun pushing for a union within the WWF. As Brunzell told me for a piece for Jacobin in 2022, he approached Hogan personally and asked him to support the effort. Hogan not only refused but went straight to WWF CEO Vince McMahon and ratted on his coworkers. Ventura was fired, and the other WWF wrestlers got the message. Forty years later, professional wrestlers are still classified as independent contractors. There has never been a successful organizing drive in what in 2002 became WWE.

Hogan was the only one who could have changed that. He was the irreplaceable star of pro wrestling. McMahon could absorb the loss of almost any other wrestler in 1986; he could not absorb the loss of Hulk Hogan. That made Hogan, and only Hogan, immune to the reprisal that fell on Ventura. He alone had the leverage. He chose not to use it. The wrestlers who years later couldn’t pay for the surgeries to fix the broken bodies that their working lives had left them with were paying interest on a decision Hogan made before some of them were old enough to drive. This was the pattern of his career. He was always the protagonist. Everyone else was an extra to be managed.

This is the part I can’t get around. The goodness of the character was the entire premise of Hulk Hogan. He told children to say their prayers, take their vitamins, and believe in themselves. He sold them on a moral universe in which the good guys helped each other. Yet the man playing Hogan sold out the workers in his own locker room and lived with that decision for the rest of his life without ever revisiting it.

The documentary broaches the controversies over Hogan’s racist comments in private and public, but it never engages them seriously. The slurs themselves were caught on a sex tape leaked in 2015 and published by Gawker. In it, Hogan, ranting about his daughter Brooke’s dating life and using the n-word, described himself as a racist. WWE fired him. When WWE reinstated him, his apology to other wrestlers was widely described as less an expression of remorse than a warning to others to be careful about getting caught on tape in an age of endless surveillance.

It didn’t end there. After campaigning for Donald Trump and ripping his shirt off at the 2024 Republican National Convention (RNC), Hogan barnstormed the country promoting his Real American Beer. At a stop in Medina, Ohio, he was caught on tape mocking Kamala Harris’s Indian heritage and reaching, for good measure, for racist tropes about Native Americans. He caught himself and blamed a buzz from his beer.

At one point in the documentary, Natalya Neidhart, a current WWE roster member, says she knows why Hogan was booed out of the building during one of his final appearances. The documentarians never let her finish the thought and actually explain the reason why.

While the documentary briefly broaches Hogan’s sex tape controversy, it doesn’t at all examine the ramifications of what came later. After Hogan sued Gawker, one of the most prominent independent media outlets at the time, for publishing the tape, he was awarded a $140 million payout that bankrupted the outlet. Gawker’s publishing the tape was, to say the least, ill-advised. Yet it wasn’t just Hogan who held a grudge against the media outlet. Peter Thiel, a billionaire Trump and J. D. Vance donor and ally, also wanted revenge after Gawker outed him as gay in 2007. When Thiel learned of the Hogan sex tape, he bankrolled the lawsuit and aligned with Hogan to exact revenge by destroying Gawker. Thiel got his wish, in one of the most successful assaults on freedom of the press in the United States in years. Yet the documentary, once again, mentions none of this.

Herzog’s observation about performance connects to something the documentary nearly catches but doesn’t quite hold. Hogan was addicted to approval. He was a working-class kid, self-conscious about his weight, raised in a family that was never outwardly warm and by parents who in many ways seemed disappointed with his occupational choices. He stumbled into a world that could deliver the adoration he had never received, at a level few human beings have ever been given. He found the crowd’s love and spent the rest of his life chasing the high.

The documentary almost names this. The figure on screen is a man who needed love so badly he would do anything to keep it. He would betray his coworkers to keep his boss happy. He would say whatever the room wanted to hear, and he would eventually find a new room at Trump rallies, RNC stages, and crowds overjoyed to buy his beer in Medina to say those things.

This is the part that makes the reconciliation so difficult, and it is the part Real American will not press on. Because if you press on it, you have to ask whether the love Hulkamaniacs like me gave him as kids was ever really for a person at all, or only for an act we mistook for one. And if it was only for an act, what does it mean that so many cried when the memorial bell rang ten times?

Contributors

Tim Gill is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Tennessee. He is the author of Encountering US Empire in Socialist Venezuela: The Legacy of Race, Neocolonialism, and Democracy Promotion and the forthcoming Unraveling the American Mafia: Angelo Lonardo, Carmen Zagaria, and the Beginning of the End in Cleveland.

#USA #société_du_spectacle #sport #exploitation #union_busting #lutte_des_classes

Affaire Master Poulet : la grande hypocrisie de Bouamrane
▻https://www.lemediatv.fr/emissions/2026/affaire-master-poulet-la-grande-hypocrisie-de-bouamrane-CROlSo_ZSumyCNdrKu

Dans ce nouvel épisode de la VAR Politique, Nabil Touati décortique l’affaire « Master Poulet » à Saint-Ouen.

#Lutte_des_classes

https://static.lemediatv.fr/stories/2026/thumb_story_list-affaire-master-poulet-la-grande-hypocrisie-de-bouamrane-CROlSo_ZSumyCNdrKuSFmg.jpg

Streit um Krankschreibungen : Darf Tesla in Grünheide einfach den Lohn streichen ?
▻https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/article/tesla-stoppt-gehalt-fuer-kranke-experte-sieht-hohe-huerden-fuer-den

Depuis Bismarck le prolétariat allemand confie son état de santé à la section médicale des classes au pouvoir. L’autorité médicale se présente ainsi comme élément neutre entre capitalistes et exploités. Sa récompense est le pouvoir silencieux sur la vie et la mort de tous les patients sans égard de leur appartenance à une classe sociale.

Le capital ultra-libéral états-unien n’accepte pas cet accord tacite et tente de s’emparer du pouvoir décisionnel réservé à la caste médicale.

C’est un conflit qui risque de révolutionner la répartition du pouvoir entre les institutions et classes d’Allemage. Histoire à suivre.

27.4.2026 von Oliver Weinlein - Wegen angeblicher Folgeerkrankungen verweigert Tesla in Grünheide die Entgeltfortzahlung. Ein Arbeitsrechtler ordnet die heikle Taktik ein.

Die Entscheidung von Tesla, in seinem Werk in Grünheide bei bestimmten Mitarbeitern die Lohnfortzahlung im Krankheitsfall auszusetzen, sorgt weiterhin für erhebliche Unruhe. Hintergrund der Maßnahme ist ein Krankenstand in der Belegschaft, der in der Vergangenheit erhebliche Ausmaße angenommen hatte. Frühere Berichte sprachen oft von 15 Prozent oder mehr, für August 2024 wurden konkret 17 Prozent gemeldet.

Zwar ist dieser Wert inzwischen deutlich gesunken und liegt laut Werksleiter André Thierig aktuell bei unter fünf Prozent, doch das Vorgehen des Managements gegen Langzeiterkrankte verschärft sich weiter.
Druck auf Kranke trotz sinkender Quoten

Parallel zum Rückgang des allgemeinen Krankenstands hat Tesla nach Informationen des Handelsblatts erneut Schreiben an länger erkrankte Beschäftigte verschickt, in denen die Entgeltfortzahlung gestoppt wird. Unter der Überschrift „Keine weitere Entgeltfortzahlung wegen möglicher Fortsetzungserkrankung“ bezweifelt das Unternehmen in diesen Briefen, dass tatsächlich eine neue Erkrankung vorliegt.

Mehrere Betriebsräte bestätigten den Vorgang, bei dem der Autobauer die Betroffenen zudem auffordert, ihre Ärzte von der Schweigepflicht zu entbinden und ihre gesamte Krankengeschichte detailliert offenzulegen. Es scheint, als wolle Tesla trotz der verbesserten Gesamtlage den finanziellen Druck auf einzelne Mitarbeiter erhöhen und eine juristische Klärung provozieren.

Die rechtliche Einordnung von Folgeerkrankungen

Zentrale Figur in der juristischen Bewertung ist die sogenannte Folgeerkrankung. Wenn ein Mitarbeiter aufgrund desselben medizinischen Leidens wiederholt ausfällt, summiert sich die Zeit der Krankschreibung. Hierzu erklärt der Berliner Arbeitsrechtler Johann D. Riemenschneider: „Das Vorgehen von Tesla wäre rechtlich begründet, wenn es sich tatsächlich um Folgeerkrankungen handeln würde.“ Er verweist dabei auf die strengen gesetzlichen Fristen, die in Deutschland gelten: „Bei einer Folgeerkrankung entfällt der Anspruch auf Lohnfortzahlung nach sechs Wochen, es sei denn, der Arbeitnehmer war seit sechs Monaten aufgrund dieser Krankheit nicht mehr krankgeschrieben oder es ist ein Jahr seit der ersten Krankschreibung vergangen.“

Sobald jedoch eine neue, unabhängige Erkrankung vorliegt, beginnt der gesetzliche Anspruch auf sechs Wochen Entgeltfortzahlung für die Beschäftigten von vorn. „Mit einer neuen Erkrankung würde ein neuer Sechs-Wochen-Zeitraum starten“, so der Experte. Für das Unternehmen bedeutet dies, dass es bei jeder Arbeitsunfähigkeit genau prüfen muss, ob ein Zusammenhang zu vorherigen Ausfällen besteht – eine Aufgabe, die rechtlich fast unmöglich scheint, ohne die Privatsphäre der Angestellten zu verletzen.

Das Problem der Beweislast

In Deutschland ist die Diagnose auf der Arbeitsunfähigkeitsbescheinigung für den Arbeitgeber grundsätzlich nicht sichtbar. Dies schützt die Privatsphäre der Arbeitnehmer, erschwert aber die Argumentation des Arbeitgebers bei der Verweigerung von Lohnzahlungen erheblich. „Dafür trägt allerdings Tesla als Arbeitgeber die Beweislast. In der Praxis dürfte das schwierig werden, da der Arbeitnehmer die Diagnose nicht offenlegen muss“, ordnet Riemenschneider die Situation ein.

Völlig chancenlos sind Unternehmen vor Gericht allerdings nicht. Zeigen sich in der Praxis beispielsweise auffällig kurze Abstände zwischen verschiedenen Krankschreibungen oder gibt es deutliche Hinweise auf identische Symptome, können Arbeitsgerichte durchaus das Vorliegen einer Fortsetzungskrankheit annehmen, selbst wenn die Diagnose zunächst nicht offengelegt wurde. Die nun verschickten Aufforderungen zur Schweigepflichtentbindung deuten darauf hin, dass Tesla versucht, den gesetzlichen Schutz der Diagnosedaten systematisch auszuhebeln.

Der Medizinische Dienst als gesetzlich vorgesehenes Mittel

Statt der direkten Offenlegung der Krankenhistorie gegenüber dem Arbeitgeber sieht das Gesetz einen anderen Weg zur Klärung vor. Bestehen begründete Zweifel an der Arbeitsunfähigkeit oder an der Frage, ob eine Folgeerkrankung vorliegt, kann das Unternehmen intervenieren. Riemenschneider führt dazu aus: „Der Arbeitgeber kann jedoch verlangen, dass sich der Arbeitnehmer einer Untersuchung beim medizinischen Dienst der Krankenkassen zur Beseitigung von Zweifeln an der Arbeitsunfähigkeit unterzieht. Dabei kann auch die Frage der Folgeerkrankung geklärt werden.“

Dieses Instrument wird in der betrieblichen Praxis meist als letzte Eskalationsstufe betrachtet, da es das Vertrauensverhältnis zwischen Management und Belegschaft massiv belasten kann. Die aktuelle Strategie von Tesla, die Lohnfortzahlung einzustellen und gleichzeitig tiefe Einblicke in private Krankenakten zu verlangen, dürfte zu einer neuen Welle von Auseinandersetzungen führen.

Riemenschneider, der in Berlin zahlreiche Mandanten vor dem Arbeitsgericht vertritt, beobachtet die weitere Entwicklung in Grünheide daher genau.

#Allemagne #lutte_des_classes #capital #iatrocratie #travail #contre-révolution

1er mai : ce symbole qu’ils veulent détruire
▻https://www.lemediatv.fr/emissions/2026/1er-mai-ce-symbole-quils-veulent-detruire-GCP5plAMR9KRkztyGMzQbQ

Gwên nous fait un rappel de ce qu’est le 1er mai… Une fête, une journée de revendications internationale, et un symbole de la #Lutte_des_classes.

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Jack London, John Barleycorn
►https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/318/pg318-images.html

Dans son texte autobiographique sur la vie avec l’alcool Jack London révèle le secret de la servitude volontaire. C’est la terreur, la peur de la mort et les substances permettant de l’adoucir qui en forment l’ensemble des facteurs essentiels.

Through all the vicissitudes of its life, from first to last, somehow, in unguessably dim ways, it must believe that life is good; that the drudgery in harness is good; that death, no matter how blind-instinctively apprehended, is a dread giant; that life is beneficent and worth while; that, in the end, with fading life, it will not be knocked about and beaten and urged beyond its sprained and spavined best; that old age, even, is decent, dignified, and valuable, though old age means a ribby scare-crow in a hawker’s cart, stumbling a step to every blow, stumbling dizzily on through merciless servitude and slow disintegration to the end—the end, the apportionment of its parts (of its subtle flesh, its pink and springy bone, its juices and ferments, and all the sensateness that informed it) to the chicken farm, the hide-house, the glue-rendering works, and the bone-meal fertiliser factory. To the last stumble of its stumbling end this dray horse must abide by the mandates of the lesser truth that is the truth of life and that makes life possible to persist.

This dray horse, like all other horses, like all other animals, including man, is life-blinded and sense-struck. It will live, no matter what the price. The game of life is good, though all of life may be hurt, and though all lives lose the game in the end. This is the order of truth that obtains, not for the universe, but for the live things in it if they for a little space will endure ere they pass. This order of truth, no matter how erroneous it may be, is the sane and normal order of truth, the rational order of truth that life must believe in order to live.

#alcoolisme #oppression #exploitation #lutte_des_classes #création

Prix de l’essence : « La colère monte mais... » Les vérités d’un ancien gilet jaune
▻https://www.lemediatv.fr/emissions/2026/prix-de-lessence-la-colere-monte-mais-les-verites-dun-ancien-gilet-jaune-j

La colère sociale couve-t-elle à nouveau en France ? Hausse du prix du carburant, inflation persistante, sentiment d’abandon dans certains territoires… autant de signaux qui rappellent le contexte de 2018.

#Lutte_des_classes

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Beschlagnahmter Laptop bei Tesla : Ermittler finden keine heimlichen Aufnahmen
▻https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/mensch-metropole/beschlagnahmter-laptop-bei-tesla-ermittler-finden-keine-heimlichen-

Le sale coup de Tesla contre les syndicalistes d’IG Metall est désormais un sale coup vérifié par la police. Il n’y a pas eu d’enrégistrement caché de conversations par les syndicalistes.

26.3.2026 von Oliver Weinlein - Nach schweren Vorwürfen gegen einen IG-Metall-Gewerkschafter im Tesla-Werk zeigt die Auswertung seines Laptops: Es gab keine heimlichen Mitschnitte.

Nach den schweren Vorwürfen gegen einen Vertreter der IG Metall im Tesla-Werk in Grünheide gibt es eine neue Wendung. Im Februar war es im Anschluss an eine Betriebsratssitzung zu einem Polizeieinsatz gekommen, da Vertreter des Unternehmens und einer managementnahen Liste dem Gewerkschafter vorgeworfen hatten, die Zusammenkunft heimlich mit seinem Laptop aufgezeichnet zu haben.

Daraufhin wurde der Mann durch Sicherheitskräfte vom Werksgelände verwiesen und sein Computer beschlagnahmt. Die Staatsanwaltschaft Frankfurt (Oder) nahm nach einer Anzeige des US-Autobauers Ermittlungen wegen der möglichen Verletzung der Vertraulichkeit des Wortes sowie eines potenziellen Verstoßes gegen das Betriebsverfassungsgesetz auf. Wie die IG Metall nun gegenüber dem Spiegel mitteilte, haben die Ermittlungsbehörden das Gerät umfassend geprüft und dabei keinerlei Audiodateien oder sonstige Aufzeichnungen der besagten Sitzung finden können.

Schlammschlacht vor der Betriebratswahl

Der Vorfall ereignete sich in einer ohnehin stark aufgeheizten Phase vor den Betriebsratswahlen bei Tesla. Der Werksleiter André Thierig hatte damals wenige Stunden nach dem Vorfall in einer Rundmail an die Belegschaft die Vorwürfe publik gemacht. Darin hieß es, der Gewerkschafter sei von einem aufmerksamen Betriebsratsmitglied ertappt worden. Thierig warf der Gewerkschaft im Zuge dessen unfaires Verhalten vor.

Jan Otto, der Bezirksleiter der IG Metall, wies das Vorgehen scharf zurück. Er warf der Werkleitung vor, mit falschen Behauptungen in die Betriebsratswahl eingegriffen und durch dreiste Anschuldigungen eine Schmutzkampagne losgetreten zu haben. Eine Stellungnahme der Staatsanwaltschaft sowie von Tesla zu den fehlenden Aufnahmen auf dem Laptop steht derzeit noch aus.
Juristisches Nachspiel der Betriebsratswahl

Die richtungsweisende Wahl Anfang März endete für die IG Metall mit einem Dämpfer. Die Gewerkschaft verlor Stimmanteile und landete auf dem zweiten Platz hinter der Liste Giga United um die amtierende Betriebsratsvorsitzende, der eine Nähe zum Management nachgesagt wird.

Insgesamt gingen 24 der 37 Sitze an Listen ohne gewerkschaftliche Bindung. Inzwischen geht die IG Metall juristisch gegen das Wahlergebnis im größten ostdeutschen Autowerk vor und hat beim Arbeitsgericht Frankfurt (Oder) einen Beschlussantrag zur Feststellung der Unwirksamkeit eingebracht. Begründet wird dieser Schritt mit zahlreichen Einschüchterungsversuchen, Drohungen und einer ungleichen Behandlung der Kandidaten seitens der Tesla-Werkleitung während des Wahlkampfes.

#Allemagne #lutte_des_classes #Tesla

Féris Barkat : Banlieues Climat, écologie et engagement des quartiers
▻https://www.lemediatv.fr/emissions/2026/feris-barkat-banlieues-climat-ecologie-et-engagement-des-quartiers-2FCAtsl

Dans Le Fauteuil, la journaliste Amina Kalache reçoit Féris Barkat, cofondateur de Banlieues Climat.

#Écologie #Lutte_des_classes

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« 100.000 Euro für ein 15-jähriges Mädchen » : Neue Details zu « Jagdreisen » im Bosnienkrieg
▻https://www.t-online.de/nachrichten/panorama/kriminalitaet/id_101173948/bosnienkrieg-reiche-europaeer-sollen-jagd-auf-menschen-gemacht-haben.html

L’histoire dans « Hostel » est plus proche de la réalité qu’on le croyait. Il y a pire que du « Epstein ». On aporend une nouvelle interprétation brutale quoique secondaire de la phrase notoire de Warren Buffet.

18.3.2026 - Haben Millionäre Menschen gejagt?

„Für ein Mädchen musste man 100.000 Euro zahlen“

Eine Straße im vom Krieg verwüsteten Sarajevo. (Quelle: via www.imago-images.de/imago-images-bilder)

Ärzte, Anwälte, Unternehmer: Wohlhabende Europäer sollen im Bosnienkrieg nach Sarajevo geflogen sein – um Jagd auf Menschen zu machen. Recherchen bringen nun neue Details ans Licht.

Im Bosnienkrieg sollen mehrere Hundert wohlhabende Hobbyjäger aus Europa und Nordamerika an Wochenenden Jagd auf Zivilisten in Sarajevo gemacht haben. Diesen Vorwurf erhebt der italienische Autor und Rechercheur Ezio Gavazzeni, dessen Buch „Cecchini del Weekend“ ("Die Wochenend-Scharfschützen") am Dienstag in Italien erscheint.

Nach seinen Angaben hat er seine Recherchen im Januar 2025 an die Staatsanwaltschaft Mailand übergeben. Dort würden derzeit rund ein Dutzend Verdächtige vernommen.

Nach Gavazzenis Erkenntnissen soll es ein Netzwerk wohlhabender Männer aus mehreren westlichen Ländern gegeben haben, die während des Bosnienkrieges (1992–1995) dafür gezahlt haben, Jagd auf Menschen machen zu können. Dabei soll es sich unter anderem um Ärzte, Anwälte, Notare, Architekten und Unternehmer gehandelt haben, berichtet Gavazzeni jetzt in einem Interview mit dem „Stern“. Sie seien sehr wohlhabend gewesen und hätten eine gemeinsame Leidenschaft für Waffen und die Jagd gehabt.

„Die Täter kamen offenbar auch aus Deutschland“

Ein Informant habe ihm gesagt, dass allein rund 230 Italiener beteiligt gewesen sein sollen. „Wenn man noch die Schützen aus anderen europäischen Ländern dazurechnet, dann kommt man auf insgesamt etwa 500. Die Täter kamen offenbar auch aus Deutschland und Frankreich, den Niederlanden oder Spanien“, sagte der Autor in dem Gespräch mit dem „Stern“.

https://images.t-online.de/2026/03/AaO9Zdum8WWL/0x0:4000x2667/fit-in/1366x0/image.jpg

Der italienische Journalist und Autor Ezio Gavazzeni. (Quelle: IMAGO/Michele Luigi Edoardo Novaga/imago-images-bilder)

Die Italiener seien nach seinen Angaben über Triest geschmuggelt und anschließend mit Privatflugzeugen oder Helikoptern auf die Hügel um Sarajevo gebracht worden. Von dort aus hätten sie auf die in der Stadt eingeschlossenen Menschen geschossen. Zeugen hätten beschrieben, dass die Männer Tarnkleidung, Wanderschuhe, Sonnenbrillen und Jagdgewehre für Großwild mit sich geführt hätten.

Zu den belastendsten Schilderungen zählt laut Gavazzeni der Bericht eines Mannes, den er „den Franzosen“ nennt. Diesen habe er nicht persönlich getroffen, sondern nur per Mail und später telefonisch kontaktiert. Der Mann habe beschrieben, wie die Reisen organisiert worden seien.

Nach Gavazzenis Darstellung soll es sogar ein System mit festgelegten Summen für getötete Opfer gegeben haben. „Für ein Kind oder ein 15-jähriges Mädchen musste man nach heutiger Rechnung etwa 100.000 Euro zahlen, für Frauen etwa 70.000 Euro und für Männer etwa 50.000 Euro.“ Begleiter haben demnach dokumentieren müssen, wie viele Menschen jeder Schütze getroffen habe.

#nantis #perversion #meutre #torture #lutte_des_classes

Florian Warweg : Warum Bundespressekonferenz-Journalisten unkritisch sind
▻https://ostdeutscheallgemeine.com/article/florian-warweg-kaum-kritik-und-meinungsfreiheit-in-bundespres

J’aime la critique du journaliste qui travaille pour le riche couple d’entrepreneurs qui vient de lancer son nouveau journal. Il a raison car le mécanisme de corruption qu’il décrit a contribué a la tranformation par exemple du TAZ en organe des petits bourgeois gauchisants mais au fond d’accord avec le pouvoir en place.

Au débur le TAZ a été un journal de gauche indépendant qui publiait des infos sur les réunions plénaires des squatteurs et des appels à don pour armer la guérilla du Salvador. Aujourdhui il ne reste plus rien de l’esprit de la Wattstraße. La grande table de réunion de la « Kommune eins » a disparu de la salle de réunion du journal. Aujourd’hui le TAZ est propriétaire du building qu’il a fait construire dans l’ancien quartier de presse dans le centre de Berlin.

Warweg ne mentionne pas que travailler pour la presse au mains de la bourgeoisie constitue un acte de corruption en soi. Lui aussi se soumet à la servitude volontaire. Il faut bien vivre de quelque chose, n’est-ce pas ?

16.2.2026 von Florian Warweg - Die Bundespressekonferenz versteht sich als Ort kritischer Öffentlichkeit. Den Anspruch verfehlt sie zunehmend. Das hat nicht nur Folgen für die Pressefreiheit.

Die Bundespressekonferenz (BPK) ist trotz ihres offiziell klingenden Namens ein privater Verein. Dreimal die Woche (Montag, Mittwoch und Freitag) führt sie in dieser Funktion die sogenannte Regierungspressekonferenz (RegPK) durch. Dazu lädt der Vorstand der BPK die Sprecher aller 16 Bundesministerien sowie den Sprecher des Kanzlers in ihre Räumlichkeiten im sogenannten Pressehaus am Schiffbauerdamm 40 in Berlin-Mitte ein. Den meisten Lesern wird der Saal mit der charakteristischen blauen Rückwand zumindest optisch vertraut sein.

Kleines, aber vielsagendes Detail am Rande: Der Raum ist vom BPK e.V. nur angemietet. Das ganze Pressehaus, inklusive des BPK-Saals, befindet sich im Besitz des börsennotierten Versicherungskonzerns Allianz SE, Jahresumsatz rund 180 Milliarden Euro.

Laut Eigendarstellung ist der Zweck des Vereins, insbesondere mittels Durchführung der Regierungspressekonferenzen, einen „freiheitlichen, kritischen und unabhängigen Diskurs in der demokratischen Öffentlichkeit“ zu ermöglichen sowie „seinen Mitgliedern Möglichkeiten einer umfassenden Unterrichtung der Öffentlichkeit zu verschaffen“. Diesem Anspruch wird die BPK derzeit nicht gerecht. Und das liegt nur zu Teilen an der Art und Weise, wie die Regierungsvertreter dort Rede und (wenig) Antwort stehen.

Das Hauptproblem der Bundespressekonferenz ist das Selbstverständnis der Mehrheit der dort tätigen Journalisten. Und das hat meiner Meinung nach drei zentrale Gründe:
1. Zu viel Nähe zur Macht

Die Journalisten in der Bundespressekonferenz sind oft dieselben, die am nächsten Tag als „Chefreporter“ für die großen Nachrichtenagenturen wie die Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) oder als Korrespondenten des ARD-Hauptstadtstudios den Kanzler oder Außenminister und deren Entourage im Regierungsflieger nach Washington, Paris oder Abu Dhabi begleiten. Man duzt sich meist, im Zweifel handelt es sich ohnehin um ehemalige Kollegen, mit denen man bereits die Bank in der Deutschen Journalistenschule (DJS), der Henri-Nannen-Schule oder der Burda-Journalistenschule gedrückt hat.

Seltenes Bild: Journalisten stehen Schlange, um in die Bundespressekonferenz zur Sommer-Pressekonferenzen von Bundeskanzler Friedrich Merz (CDU) zu gelangen.

Seltenes Bild: Journalisten stehen Schlange, um in die Bundespressekonferenz zur Sommer-Pressekonferenzen von Bundeskanzler Friedrich Merz (CDU) zu gelangen.

© Bernd von Jutrczenka/dpa

Verwiesen sei beispielhaft auf den aktuellen Regierungssprecher Stefan Kornelius, der zuvor das Ressort Politik bei der Süddeutschen Zeitung leitete. Oder auf Michael Stempfle, seines Zeichens Leiter der Presseabteilung des Verteidigungsministeriums. Dieser war vor seinem Wechsel an den Bendlerblock Korrespondent im ARD-Hauptstadtstudio und machte mit Elogen auf seinen jetzigen Chef, Verteidigungsminister Boris Pistorius (SPD), erfolgreich auf sich aufmerksam. Dieser sei ein „Vollblutpolitiker, der anpackt“.

Mit zu kritischen Fragen auf der BPK würde man folglich nicht nur seinen Sitz im Regierungsflieger und den damit einhergehenden privilegierten Zugang zu Informationen, sondern auch die Option, zur durchaus attraktiven Besoldungsgruppe A 16 zu wechseln, gefährden. Das ist eine der wirkmächtigen inneren Zensurscheren, die in der BPK greifen und kritische Fragen auf ein Minimum begrenzen.
2. Die Gier nach „exklusiven News“

Über 900 Journalisten sind in der BPK akkreditiert, selten finden jedoch mehr als 20 ihren Weg in die Weiten der leeren Stuhlreihen des dortigen Pressekonferenzsaals. Ein weltweit einmaliger Betreuungsschlüssel von fast 1:1, was das Verhältnis Journalist zu Regierungssprecher angeht. Von diesen wenigen Journalisten kommen wiederum regelmäßig einige, ohne eine einzige Frage zu stellen. Deren Moment kommt erst dann, wenn die Pressekonferenz vorbei, der Protokollant (ja, den gibt es noch!) seinen Stift zur Seite gelegt und die Kameras ausgeschaltet sind.

Regierungspressekonferenz bei der Bundespressekonferenz am 28. Januar 2026. Man beachte das Verhältnis von Journalisten zu Ministeriensprechern.

Regierungspressekonferenz bei der Bundespressekonferenz am 28. Januar 2026. Man beachte das Verhältnis von Journalisten zu Ministeriensprechern.

© Achille Abboud/imago

Denn eine der Hauptwährungen im journalistischen Geschäft ist der informelle und exklusive Zugang zu Informationen. Auf der BPK gibt es das grundsätzlich nicht, da alles Gesagte öffentlich protokolliert und zumeist auf Video gebannt wird. Doch sobald die BPK offiziell vorbei ist, stehen einem die 16 Ministerien plus Regierungssprecher ja immer noch zur Verfügung – dann allerdings ohne laufende Kamera und Protokollant. Und so kommt es nach der BPK regelmäßig zur Rudelbildung vor dem Podest.

Auch hier greift eine ähnliche Dynamik der inneren Selbstzensur. Stellen Sie sich vor, Sie nutzen die BPK vorwiegend in der Absicht, im Nachgang im Vier-Augen-Gespräch mit einem der Regierungsvertreter an zusätzliche Informationen zu gelangen. Dann ergibt es wenig Sinn, diese geplante Gesprächssituation durch kritische Fragen während der laufenden BPK zu gefährden. Da verzichte ich doch lieber auf die Frage etwa an den Sprecher des Bundesfinanzministers, wie dieser sich zum Vorwurf verhält, Lars Klingbeil (SPD) habe sich beim aktuellen Haushaltsentwurf zahlreicher Finanztricksereien bedient.
3. Regierungsnähe statt kritischer Distanz

Im Gegensatz zu den Kollegen von dpa, taz, ARD, Spiegel, aber auch Junge Freiheit, Nius und Epoch Times musste ich mir meine Präsenz und mein Fragerecht in der Bundespressekonferenz vor Gericht erkämpfen. Vor dem zuständigen Landgericht Berlin argumentierte der BPK-Vorstand unter anderem damit, dass sich sechs der insgesamt über 900 Mitglieder gegen meine Teilnahme an der BPK ausgesprochen hätten. Namentlich bekannt sind davon lediglich zwei: der Videoblogger Tilo Jung mit seinem Format „jung & naiv“ sowie der ehemalige Tagesspiegel-Redakteur Matthias Meisner.

Insbesondere Letzterer erfüllt schon seit mehreren Jahren nicht mehr die offiziellen Mitgliedschaftsvoraussetzungen der BPK, wird aber im aktuellen Mitgliederverzeichnis 2026 noch immer als Vollmitglied geführt. Seine eigene Nichtteilnahme hielt ihn jedoch nicht davon ab, lautstark sowohl gegen meine als auch gegen die Mitgliedschaft von Boris Reitschuster zu intervenieren. Nach meinem Wechsel als Parlamentsberichterstatter zur Berliner Zeitung und zur Ostdeutschen Allgemeinen versucht er aktuell erneut, mein Fragerecht in der BPK zu hintertreiben. Anscheinend hat der Mann eine Obsession.

Bundespressekonferenz zur Vorstellung des Frühjahrsgutachtens 2025 des Sachverständigenrates zur Begutachtung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung.

Bundespressekonferenz zur Vorstellung des Frühjahrsgutachtens 2025 des Sachverständigenrates zur Begutachtung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung.

© Political-Moments/imago

Vor Gericht wurde tatsächlich folgender Einwand gegen meine Teilnahme angeführt: Florian Warweg mache „Regierungsmitglieder verächtlich“, was dem Ansehen des Vereins schaden würde. Als einziger „Beleg“ für diesen Vorwurf wurde dann auf einen Tweet verwiesen, „mit dem sich der Kläger über Frau Baerbock lustig macht“. Als zusätzliche Pointe zeigte sich der Vorstand noch nicht einmal in der Lage, diesen angeblichen Tweet dem Gericht vorzulegen.

Diese Form des journalistischen Selbstverständnisses muss man sich tatsächlich auf der Zunge zergehen lassen: Der Vorstand der Bundespressekonferenz verweigert einem Journalisten den Zugang zu den Regierungspressekonferenzen mit der Begründung, dieser habe sich einmal über die damals amtierende Bundesaußenministerin lustig gemacht. Und kann diesen Vorwurf dann, wie es so schön im Juristendeutsch heißt, nicht einmal „substantiiert“ darlegen.
„Den angeschlagenen Kanzler nicht weiter schwächen“

Im September 2023 erhielt ich nach dem deutlichen Urteilsspruch des Landgerichts Berlin endlich Zugang und Fragerecht in der Bundespressekonferenz. In Vorbereitung meiner ersten BPK nach rund anderthalb Jahren „Pause“ – von 2018 bis Januar 2022 war ich dort für RT DE tätig gewesen – las ich mir die Protokolle der letzten Monate durch. Damals waren der Cum-Ex-Skandal und die fragwürdige Rolle, die der damalige Kanzler Olaf Scholz (SPD) dabei spielte, in aller Munde.

Wieso wurde hier nicht kritischer zur Rolle von Olaf Scholz beim Cum-Ex-Skandal nachgefragt?

Wieso wurde hier nicht kritischer zur Rolle von Olaf Scholz beim Cum-Ex-Skandal nachgefragt?

© Christian Ditsch/imago

Umso überraschter war ich, als ich bei der Durchsicht der Protokolle feststellen musste, dass über die ganzen Monate des Cum-Ex-Skandals kein einziger Journalist dazu in der BPK nachgefragt hatte. Es geht um ein Thema, bei dem bis heute der Vorwurf im Raum steht, Olaf Scholz habe bei Anhörungen vor dem Bundestag sowie dem Untersuchungsausschuss in Hamburg unzutreffende Angaben gemacht. Zudem wurde sein Name in der Anklageschrift gegen den ehemaligen Chef der Warburg-Bank, einen der Hauptakteure im Cum-Ex-Skandal mit einem Schaden für den deutschen Staat in dreistelliger Millionenhöhe, 27-mal erwähnt.

In gewisser Weise musste ich den Kollegen für diese Ignoranz des Themas dankbar sein, so konnte ich das Feld der Fragen rund um den Cum-Ex-Skandal und die mutmaßlichen Falschaussagen des amtierenden Kanzlers über Monate exklusiv in der BPK beackern. Dieses Desinteresse der BPK-Journalisten an dem Thema trieb mich aber um. Denn egal, was man sonst etwa von t-online oder dem Spiegel halten mag: Zu Cum-Ex gab es aus diesen Medienhäusern durchaus kritische Recherchen. Wieso aber schwiegen die BPK-Vertreter eisern zu diesen Themen?

Aus informellen Gesprächen erfuhr ich im Laufe der Zeit, dass viele BPK-Journalisten bewusst nicht kritisch zur Rolle des damaligen Kanzlers bei Cum-Ex und insbesondere in Bezug auf die in Hamburg beheimatete Warburg-Bank nachfragten. Begründet wurde das damit, dass man angesichts „der ganzen aktuellen Krisen“ und „des derzeitigen Umfragehochs der AfD“ es nach eigener Darstellung vorzog, „den Bundeskanzler nicht noch weiter zu schwächen“ oder „unter Druck zu setzen“.

Eine derart kommunizierte Haltung und die damit verbundene Selbstbeschränkung lassen tief blicken und können kaum eine tragfähige Grundlage für ernsthaften Journalismus sein. Zumindest nicht für ein Selbstverständnis als Vierte Gewalt, die den Anspruch erhebt, die Bundesregierung zu kontrollieren, statt sie zu schützen. Wohin diese Haltung führen kann, lässt sich anschaulich in Frankreich beobachten. Dort spielt Präsident Emmanuel Macron seit Jahren erfolgreich auf der Klaviatur der Selbstbändigung der Presse à la: Wenn ihr mich kritisiert, stärkt das nur Le Pen. Solche Zustände dürfen wir hier nicht zulassen.

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