With Greta Thunberg: For a left that fights Trump, Netanyahu, and Putin, without distinction!

[Sukla Sen]

With Greta Thunberg

For a left that fights Trump, Netanyahu, and Putin, without distinction!

By Yorgos Mitralias

But what peace plan in Palestine are they talking about? The one that, in its magnanimity, goes so far as to allow the survivors of the genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza to live? Or the one that rewards their relentless quest for an independent state of their own by granting them a “government” of pro-Israeli foreigners led by an American (Trump) and/or a Brit (Blair)? Such a peace plan is anything but peaceful; it is more like a macabre joke and is doomed from the outset to remain a dead letter. Just as all those that preceded it have remained dead letters. In other words, the genocide continues...

So what can be done? First, abandon the illusions that are also responsible for the current situation. And understand once and for all that Netanyahu, like Putin, is uncompromising, confident in his (military) strength and, above all, in the unwavering support of the Brown International, of which they are both founding and leading figures. And also, that salvation for the Palestinians will never come from the “great” powers of this world, nor from those from above, even if they are Arabs or co-religionists. And it will never come from them because they have no interest in changing a situation that they themselves have created and maintained. For even in the best-case scenario, their belated recognition of a Palestinian state looks very much like the recognition not of a state but rather of a cemetery, the Palestinian cemetery that is the current Gaza, razed to the ground...

The lesson to be learned from these observations is obvious: salvation for both Palestinians and Ukrainians can only come from those from below. From those human beings who are no longer satisfied with words and are taking action, demonstrating their solidarity in the streets almost everywhere in the world. From those, including Jews of the Diaspora, who, armed only with their militant internationalism, go so far as to challenge the Israeli genocidal killing machine with their unarmed flotilla. And also from those—unfortunately still few in number—Israeli Jews who stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and fight courageously at the very heart of the Zionist monster. As well as those heroic Russians and Belarusians who do not hesitate to show their solidarity with the Ukrainian people, even though it costs them their freedom and sometimes even their lives...

It must therefore be noted that the scandalous hypocrisy of our leaders, who denounce the crushing of Ukraine by the Russian army but unconditionally support that of Gaza by the Israeli army, not only greatly fuels the ongoing quasi-global popular revolt against the Israeli genocidaires and their accomplices, but also exacerbates the crisis of these leaders and their regimes. Thus, the double standards cynically practiced by the right and far right, which now govern almost everywhere in the world, are depriving bourgeois domination of what is probably its most precious asset: the credibility it has patiently built up over a long period of time!

However, it must also be noted that this major crisis of bourgeois and capitalist credibility is not benefiting the international left at all. Why? Because the same hypocrisy and the same crisis of credibility currently characterize most of the international left. Indeed, while the right wing supports Ukraine but arms, finances, and diplomatically covers up Israel's crushing of the Palestinians in Gaza, which, according to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, “is pursuing similar goals to those of Russia” in Ukraine (1), this international left unreservedly supports the Palestinians against Israel but ostensibly refuses to support Ukraine, which is under military attack from Putin's Russia. Worse still, part of this left goes so far as to support Putin, attributing to him totally imaginary anti-imperialist and progressive virtues.

And yet, fortunately, there is another international left, currently in the minority but rapidly gaining ground, which abhors hypocrisy and refuses to apply double standards: this is why it supports both the Palestinians against Netanyahu's Israel and the Ukrainians against Putin's Russia. This is because it refuses to choose the good executioner over the bad executioner, making common cause with the supposedly good imperialist against the bad one, simply because there is no such thing as a good imperialist or a good capitalist! It is the left that fights against all injustices and on all fronts alongside the humble, the poor, and the oppressed, and whose emblematic figure is none other than the young Swedish girl Greta Thunberg, whom the mentor of triumphant Trumpism, the neo-Nazi billionaire Peter Thiel, has rightly targeted as the No. 1 enemy of the global reactionary counter-revolution, going so far as to call her... “the antichrist”!

But it is not only Mr. Thiel who is hurling anathemas at Greta. As we wrote almost two years ago (2), in 2019, Mr. Putin, "reacting to Greta’s speech at the UN, showed pitiful paternalism by calling her a misinformed “kind girl” who doesn’t understand how complex today’s world is! ". And we completed the picture of anti-Greta horrors by recalling that ” it was with the same paternalistic tone of a shoddy prosecutor that the famous German magazine Der Spiegel recently attacked Greta, calling her “naive or perhaps anti-Semitic” when she dared to demonstrate in the streets of Amsterdam in solidarity with the Palestinians. Apparently because, according to the good German magazine, only “naive” and “anti-Semitic” people can feel solidarity with the Palestinian civilians massacred by the Israeli army. Worse still, she was subjected to hysterical attacks, even going so far as to identify her with... Hitler Youth (!), when Greta dared to chant, along with other demonstrators, the slogan Krossa Sionismen (crush Zionism) in front of the Israeli embassy in Stockholm ".

" And all this without forgetting that Western “liberals” went so far as to threaten her... with a “bullet between the eyes” [3] when Greta denounced them with the same words she uses against Putin and his acolytes, both of whom persist in emitting ever more greenhouse gases, thereby committing the greatest of crimes against the planet and its inhabitants. Moreover, when Greta declares that “to save the planet, the world must get rid of capitalism”, this categorical statement sounds like a declaration of war against all of them, without exception..."

And this is how we concluded these useful reminders, to which we have absolutely nothing to add today:

"Greta is emblematic of our times for another reason too: because she rallies against herself the most heterogeneous and historically unprecedented coalition of bloodthirsty tyrants, billionaire capitalists, wealthy bourgeoisie and rude dictators and well-mannered murderous democrats, who fight each other but are united by their common passion for power and greed for ever greater profits. But by provoking this unprecedented unanimity and rallying all these destroyers of humanity against her, Greta reveals to everyone the essence of things, the perpetrators and those responsible for today’s widespread historical crisis. Moreover, since she agrees with the great Palestinian prisoner Marwan Barghouti (22 years in Israeli jails!), who declares himself “peaceful but not a pacifist”, Greta appears to be the sworn enemy number one of “those above”, and the main source of militant inspiration for the multitude of “those below” and their revolted avant-gardes. As for today’s disoriented and confused left, Greta’s clear mind could be useful in clarifying its ideas, priorities and orientations once and for all" 

Notes

1. See Sergei Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister:”Israel pursues objectives similar to those of Russia”!: https://anticapitalistresistance.org/sergei-lavrov-russian-foreign-ministerisrael-pursues-objectives-similar-to-those-of-russia/

2. See also With Palestine and Ukraine against Russia, NATO and Israel Greta leads the way! : https://www.cadtm.org/With-Palestine-and-Ukraine-against-Russia-NATO-and-Israel-Greta-leads-the-way