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nationalism
Why Sean O’Brien’s RNC Speech Was a Bad Move
It’s bad enough for a union leader to play into the charade that common ground might be found with the anti-union, employer-funded Republican party. It’s even worse when that party is scapegoating our fellow workers.
Jul 19, 2024
Teamsters President Sean O’Brien spoke at former U.S. President Donald Trump’s Republican National Convention on Monday. This was a bad move.
Much of the speech would have been fine if he had delivered it somewhere else. O’Brien railed against corporate greed, singling out Amazon and the private equity vultures that killed Yellow Freight. He called for stronger labor laws. Nobody says that stuff at the Republican convention, so some unionists were pleased to hear righteous themes reach a new audience.
But it almost didn’t matter what he said—the far louder message was where he said it. The convention is not a forum where policy is debated. It’s a coronation pageant.
What’s the message to immigrant Teamsters—and the immigrant workers the Teamsters hope to organize—when their union leader shares a stage with speaker after speaker blaming them for low wages and calling for their families to be torn apart?
There’s a reason why the party gave O’Brien a prime speaking slot on day one, and why Trump, who has zero interest in O’Brien’s pro-worker proposals, beamed through the speech.
Having the Teamster president there—talking tough, laying into the corporate elite—is great for Trump’s fake-populist brand. It lends credibility to his “I’m for the little guy” shtick.
It’s bad enough for a union leader to play into the charade that common ground might be found with the anti-union, employer-funded Republican party. It’s even worse when that party is scapegoating our fellow workers.
What’s the message to immigrant Teamsters—and the immigrant workers the Teamsters hope to organize—when their union leader shares a stage with speaker after speaker blaming them for low wages and calling for their families to be torn apart? Last night the party handed out printed signs to convention delegates that read, “Mass Deportation Now!”
The Jury Is In
In an interview with Fox News before his speech, O’Brien described himself as a lifelong Democrat—but said the Teamsters rank and file is split between the parties, he hoped to speak at both conventions, and he was willing to work with anyone on labor’s issues.
The event was smartly stage-managed, though. A parade of speakers just before O’Brien, billed in giant letters as “Everyday Americans,” told touching stories about working three jobs and not being able to afford gifts for the grandkids. Each one blamed President Joe Biden and said a Trump administration would restore prosperity.
O’Brien’s talking points were so similar—workers are getting the short end of the stick, government is dysfunctional—that he seemed to be agreeing with them, even if he didn’t outright blame Biden or endorse Trump.
In case there’s any doubt: Billionaire Trump, who as an employer has fought unions and stiffed workers, and as a TV personality made “You’re fired” his catchphrase, is not for the little guy. There’s no mystery how labor would fare under his administration. This guy was already president, and we saw the results.
He cut back workplace safety inspectors to their lowest numbers in history. His Labor Board rolled back union rights so far that labor lawyer Robert Schwartz had to delete an entire chapter from The Legal Rights of Union Stewards.
He stacked federal agencies and courts with anti-union zealots who made millions of workers ineligible for overtime pay, made it harder for workers to unionize and easier for bosses to steal wages, and lots more. His Supreme Court made the whole public sector “right to work.” He celebrated a massive tax giveaway to the rich, and never offered a word of support to workers on strike. He tried to slash Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. He opposed any increase in the minimum wage.
He waged war on federal employee unions with attacks on their collective bargaining and due process rights, and shut down the government in a stunt that forced them to go without pay for 35 days. He called climate change a hoax and removed references to it from government documents, while workers suffered the effects of fires, hurricanes, and heatwaves.
Corporate tycoons and alums of his first administration have put together an even more draconian plan for a second term. They want to abolish overtime pay, public sector unions, the federal minimum wage, prevailing wage agreements, the Department of Education, and child labor laws.
Divisive Nonsense
O’Brien singled out Senator JD Vance, the party’s vice presidential nominee, as someone Teamsters can work with, saying, “He’s been right there on all our issues,” though the AFL-CIO says Vance has voted with working people 0% of the time. This year Vance co-sponsored with Senator Marco Rubio a bill to legalize company unions.
O’Brien praised Missouri Senator Josh Hawley too, even though he voted against the Butch Lewis Act that saved 400,000 Teamsters’ pensions, and his AFL-CIO scorecard is barely better than Vance’s at 11%. Hawley put out an op-ed the next morning touting the new “Pro-Labor Conservatism.”
“The C-suite long ago sold out the United States, shuttering factories in the homeland and gutting American jobs,” Hawley wrote, “while using the profits to push diversity, equity, and inclusion and the religion of the trans flag.”'
Hating on workers in other countries makes impossible the only effective strategy against multinational employers: solidarity across borders.
This is divisive nonsense. What CEOs do with their profits is buy mega-yachts and ridiculous watches; transgender workers are not to blame for runaway plants. The problem with corporate DEI is that it’s often hollow, but equality is actually a union value, something we fight for—and bosses usually resist, because things like equal pay for equal work cost money. Yet O’Brien retweeted the op-ed with the comment, “@HawleyMO is 100% on point.”
The most ominous theme in O’Brien’s speech was nationalism. He hammered on the phrase “American workers” and said Amazon’s worst crime is a lack of allegiance to the United States—aligning nicely with right-wing “America First” talking points. Yet his audience was the same party that opposes warehouse safety bills, opposes bills to make it easier to organize a union, and opposes the joint-employer rules that would hold Amazon accountable.
Hating on workers in other countries makes impossible the only effective strategy against multinational employers: solidarity across borders. Are unions going to ally ourselves with right-wing politicians—who, when it comes to foreign policy, back anti-union governments across the world—or are we going to ally with workers in other countries to take on companies like Amazon?
Hawley’s op-ed bashes China and backs “America First” energy policies he claims would help auto workers by repealing electric-vehicle mandates. But the United Auto Workers are taking a different road. The union is not opposing the transition; it’s organizing EV workers. And rather than take an America First line, the UAW has been building an alliance with the growing independent union movement in Mexican auto factories—recognizing that solidarity is in the interests of workers on both sides of the border.
The best way to fight the race to the bottom is to help build a strong independent labor movement in Mexico, China, and everywhere else. The real Republican agenda is to turn working people against each other while our employers laugh all the way to the bank.
Real Problems, Wrong Solution
O’Brien presents his “we can work with either party” approach as powerful and pragmatic, a departure from labor’s longstanding alliance with the Democrats. It looks like he’s trying to solve two problems.
One is to stop the Democratic Party from taking us for granted, so they’ll fight harder for labor’s priorities. Good, but we can only do that by challenging them with real labor candidates, whether in primaries or via the third-party route. Cozying up to Republicans is self-defeating.
The other problem is tough, and not unique to the Teamsters: What to do about Trump’s appeal in our own rank and file? The union deserves credit for initiating a more participatory presidential endorsement process than ever before. Its 300 locals held town hall meetings where members hashed out the issues. The union hasn’t released the results of its straw polls yet, but conversations like those are a good start.
Union leaders, though, should lead. They owe it to their own members—and to every member of the working class who would be harmed by a second Trump administration—to fight to keep anti-worker politicians out of office.
We get why union leaders want “access”; they’ve been shut out of real influence for so long. But it’s delusional to think that Trump might swap out his anti-worker—really, anti-humanity—policies; they are at the core of his being. One more person kissing his ring won’t change that.
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We Need an Alternative to Nuclear-Armed Nationalism
If “war made the state and the state made war,” then the state, as currently perceived, at least by those besotted with military power, is the problem.
Apr 13, 2024
An enormous flash, a mushroom cloud, multi-thousands of human beings dead. We win!
Nuclear weapons won’t go away, the cynics—the souls in despair—tell us. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. You can’t, as Gen. James E. Cartwright, former head of U.S. Strategic Command, once put it, “un-invent nuclear weapons.” So apparently we’re stuck with them until the “big oops” happens and humanity becomes extinct. Until then: Modernize, modernize, modernize. Threaten, threaten, threaten
David Barash and Ward Wilson make the case that this is completely false: We’re not “stuck” with nuclear weapons any more than we’re stuck with obsolete and ineffective technology of any sort, bluntly pointing out: “Crappy ideas don’t have to be forgotten in order to be abandoned.”
“Useless, dangerous, or outmoded technology needn’t be forced out of existence. Once a thing is no longer useful, it unceremoniously and deservedly gets ignored.”
We live in a self-declared democracy but we, the people, are not the ones with real authority here. Those who run the show seem essentially blind to the consequences of militarism, war and, for God’s sake, nukes.
This is a valid and significant challenge to the cynicism of so many people, which is an easy trap to get caught in. Nuclear weapons will eventually go the way of the penny-farthing (huge front-wheeled) bicycle, according to the authors. Humanity is capable of simply moving beyond this valueless technology—and eventually it will. The genie has no power to stop this. Praise the Lord.
Transcending cynicism is the first step in envisioning change—but envisioning change isn’t the same thing as creating it. The next step in the process is hardly a matter of “better technology”—i.e., a better (less radioactive?) means of killing the enemy. The next step involves a change in humanity’s collective consciousness. As far as I can tell, we’re caught—horrifically caged—in the psychology of a border-drawn, divided planet. Social scientist Charles Tilly once put it with stunning simplicity: “War made the state and the state made war.”
The human race cuddles with the concept of “state sovereignty.” It’s the basic right of the 193 national entities that have claimed their specific slices of Planet Earth—and I certainly understand the “sovereignty” part. Who doesn’t want to make his or her own life decisions? But the “state” part? It’s full of paradox and contradiction, not to mention a dark permission to behave at one’s worst. The militarism that worships the nuclear genie couldn’t exist without state sovereignty.
To me the question in crucial need of being asked right now is this: What is our alternative to nationalism, which currently claims free reign on the planet? And nationalism strides with a lethal swagger—especially nuclear-armed nationalism. For instance, as The Associated Press recently reported:
President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Russia is ready to use nuclear weapons if its sovereignty or independence is threatened, issuing another blunt warning to the West just days before an election in which he’s all but certain to secure another six-year term.
Or here’s The Times of Israel: “Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu said Sunday that one of Israel’s options in the war against Hamas could be to drop a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip...”
Plunk! Finish the job!
And then, of course, there’s the global good guy—USA! USA!—leading the charge to bring peace to the world wherever and however it can: for instance, by claiming “sovereignty” (you might say) over the national interests of South Korea and declaring, as Simone Chun puts it at Truthout, a “new Cold War with China” and implementing a “massive expansion of the provocative U.S.-led military exercises in the Korean Peninsula.”
Wow, a new Cold War! Over 300,000 South Korean troops and 10,000 American troops, in a series of war games known as “Freedom Shield 2024,” have conducted numerous field maneuvers, including bombing runs, at the North Korean border.
Chun writes: “The combined United States Forces Korea (USFK) and South Korean forces far overshadow those of North Korea, whose entire military budget is $1.47 billion compared to that of South Korea at $43.1 billion, not to mention that of the U.S. at $816.7 billion...”
“The U.S. is using North Korea as a pretext for its new Cold War against China,” she goes on, “and, with its control of 40% of the world’s nuclear stockpile, is even willing to risk nuclear war to further its geopolitical aims.”
And she quotes Noam Chomsky who, addressing the country’s blatant indifference to this risk, points out that “the United States always plays with fire.”
How do we get it to stop?
We live in a self-declared democracy but we, the people, are not the ones with real authority here. Those who run the show seem essentially blind to the consequences of militarism, war and, for God’s sake, nukes. Having power means having the ability to threaten—and, if necessary, cause—harm... beyond their divinely sanctioned borders, of course (not counting the likely consequences that know no borders).
If Tilly is right—if “war made the state and the state made war”—then the state, as currently perceived, at least by those besotted with military power, is the problem. Knowing this is the beginning... but of what? Survival means finding an answer.
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Why Biden’s Strident Support for Israel Could Lose Him Critical Youth Turnout
While few of these young anti-war voters will vote for Donald Trump, they are now far more likely to vote third party or not vote at all.
Mar 21, 2024
Young people are increasingly turning away from President Joe Biden as his administration refuses to budge in its support for Israel despite its assault on Gaza killing tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians. Older Americans, in contrast, largely remain in support of Biden’s stance. This generational gap could cost him the election.
A recent poll showed that 72% of voters ages 18 to 29 disapprove of Biden’s handling of the war. That is a higher percentage of young voters than those who disapproved of George W. Bush’s war in Iraq, Ronald Reagan’s wars in Central America, or even Richard Nixon’s war in Vietnam.
Another poll in December noted how 18 to 29-year-olds sympathized more with Palestinians than Israelis, while those over 65 were seven times more likely to sympathize with Israelis. Similarly, while two-thirds of Americans over 65 thought it “very important” for the United States to support Israel, only 14% of those under 30 agreed. A poll this past week showed that only 38% of Americans 18 to 34 have a positive view of Israel, as compared with 71% of those over 55.
The alienation of young Democratic-leaning voters by Democratic nominees supporting unpopular wars has led to weak Republican candidates narrowly defeating them on three occasions—1968, 2004, and 2016.
Perhaps even more than LGBTQ+ rights, there is no other political issue in which there is such a direct correlation between age and political attitude.
There are a number of reasons for this shift.
Younger Americans are more racially and ethnically diverse than ever, including a significantly larger population of Muslims than previous generations. People of color are more likely to identify with Palestinians against the predominantly white Israeli leadership. The younger generations also have a keener understanding of institutionalized racism, as exemplified in the Black Lives Matter uprising and movements for Indigenous rights. Understanding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through those lenses, it is pretty hard to support Israel. Zionism, to many younger Americans, is seen as a settler-colonial project instead of a national liberation movement for Jews.
Another reason is that older Americans remember when Israel was led by social democrats who had created a relatively progressive society for its Jewish citizens, so it was easier to hide their racist and exclusionary policies. Israel provided its citizens with universal healthcare and a generous welfare program; many saw it as the Sweden of the Middle East. Socialist collective farms known as kibbutzim attracted idealistic volunteers from around the world, including Bernie Sanders and even Noam Chomsky. The ruling Labor Party was open to at least some territorial compromise, so they could claim it was the Arabs who were not interested in peace.
Younger Americans, by contrast, have only known Israel under right-wing leadership that categorically rules out a withdrawal from occupied territories. The government’s overt racism, implementation of what leading human rights groups refer to as a form or apartheid, colonization of the occupied West Bank, and savage repression of the Palestinian population have been the status quo for at least the last two decades.
While Israeli Jews have moved to the right, American Jews have been moving to the left, with nearly half of younger Jews believing that Biden is too supportive of Israel. As a result, it has become easier for non-Jews to be critical of Israel and U.S. policy without coming across as being motivated by antisemitism.
Yet another factor is that while older Americans get most of their news about the ongoing war in Gaza and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from mainstream media outlets, which still tend to somewhat favor the Israeli narrative, younger Americans increasingly get their news through TikTok and other social media, which more frequently relies on information directly from the source—including from Palestinians on the receiving end of the bombings.
Another point is that, unlike the first several decades of Israel’s existence when its support came from the liberal establishment, Israel’s biggest backers today are right-wing Republicans and Christian fundamentalists. Opposing U.S. support for Israel is now often perceived as part of the longstanding tradition of challenging U.S. support for other repressive right-wing governments engaging in war crimes in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere, rather than unfairly singling out the world’s only Jewish state.
Still, another shift is that we are getting further away from the Holocaust. The guilt surrounding the failure of the United States to prevent it or even allow fleeing Jewish refugees into the country weighed heavily on many older Americans. And while overt antisemitism still exists, it has become harder to justify and get away with. Despite Biden’s insistence that “were there no Israel, there wouldn’t be a Jew in the world who was safe,” most young Americans recognize that Jews are, in fact, relatively safe in the United States and most other democratic nations, so the need for an Israel—particularly at the expense of the Palestinians—is less persuasive.
Until recently, even among older U.S. progressives willing to criticize certain Israeli policies, Zionism was seen as a national liberation movement of an oppressed people. There was a recognition that all nationalist movements had both progressive and reactionary currents and that oppressive policies by a government did not necessarily negate their people’s national rights. The Zionist movement, like nationalist movements in Indochina, Southern Africa, and Latin America, were guilty of certain excesses but were still progressive manifestations of self-determination.
Not only has Israel’s rightward turn made it harder for younger Americans to appreciate such an analysis, but their conception of nationalism is very different than in previous decades when most nationalist struggles challenged colonialism and neocolonialism in the Global South. They see nationalism in the form of reactionary, chauvinistic, and racist movements like those that have emerged in post-Cold War Eastern Europe and elsewhere. And the kind of Zionism that dominates Israel today more closely resembles the latter than the former.
As a result of all the above, Biden’s strident support for the Israeli government, his opposition to an immediate and permanent cease-fire, his unwillingness to condition arms transfers to adherence to international humanitarian law, and his opposition to an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories, has left younger voters significantly less likely to vote for him. His popularity among voters ages 18 to 34 has declined by 18%, a rate twice that of older voters, to an abysmal 30%. This is all the more disturbing in light of the fact that younger voters have normally been far more likely to vote Democratic and voted overwhelmingly for Biden in 2020.
While few of these young anti-war voters will vote for Donald Trump, they are now far more likely to vote third party or not vote at all. The past several election cycles have revealed that youth turnout is critical. When it is high, Democrats win. When it is low, Democrats lose. Even those willing to vote for Biden may now be far less likely to donate money or do the important door-to-door campaigning and the get-out-the-vote efforts that rely on an army of young volunteers.
The alienation of young Democratic-leaning voters by Democratic nominees supporting unpopular wars has led to weak Republican candidates narrowly defeating them on three occasions—1968, 2004, and 2016. It appears that this could very well happen again.
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