Joe Biden's support for the Zionist genocide in Gaza has been steadfast, as he wholesales the lies being retailed by the Zionist regime. When it comes to Zionism and its genocide in Gaza, there is no room for dissent in the US, Democrat and Republican politicians speak in one voice, and anyone attempting to present even the slightest glimmer of criticism of that genocide or US imperialism's support for it, has to be crushed mercilessly, whether by the force of the huge ideological apparatus of the state, or alternatively by the use of the state's bodies of armed men. This is the definition of totalitarianism.
There is no room within such a polity for rational thought or questioning of the obvious lies peddled by the state, the bourgeois politicians and the mass media. Hannah Arendt wrote in “The Origins of Totalitarianism”,
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (e.g. the standards of thought) no longer exist."
A look at the Republican politicians who turned up on university campuses, who had already put out their statement, before they even arrived, could not reconcile their claims about violent students, or harassment, or anti-Semitism with what they actually encountered. In fact, the violence and racism came not from the students, but from external forces, supporting the Zionist genocide and attacking the students. Yet, the Republican politicians were blind to what was in front of their eyes. Asked about the genocide in Gaza, the real mass violence, which is the basis of the protests, a mass violence carried out with US support, and US supplied 2,000 pound bombs, the politicians could only deny the reality of more than 30,000 dead in Gaza, and parrot the mantra that these are “Hamas' figures”!!!! But, they are able to do that, precisely because, all along, Biden and his spokesmen have said exactly the same. The monolith has been constructed.
These were some of the same politicians who, based on this narrative, called for the peaceful student protests to be smashed, by vigilantes, and Biden's regime complied, as police goons, armed with heavy, weapons, body armour, and gas masks invaded the peace camps, arresting not the Zionists fascists, but those they were attacking!
The relevance of Arendt's comments, here, of the cognitive dissonance between the lies put out by the monolithic state, and the reality observed is astounding. We have peaceful protests described by Biden, just as with Republicans as “violent”; we have university lecturers, not only supporting the students, but proclaiming that there has been no obstruction of students going to classes and so on, and yet, the politicians claim the opposite; we have the politicians claiming “anti-Semitism” from protesters, and yet the protests contain a large number of openly Jewish students; we have outside Zionist gangs attacking the camps with clear complicity from the police, and yet the politicians ignore it, and claim the violence is on the part of the protesters. Arendt would most clearly have recognised these characteristics as those of totalitarianism. Indeed, so would Orwell, as that state engages in ever more hysterical forms of “truth speak”.
And, what is Biden's response, he goes on national TV, to repeat all of those lies in the most vile way, to justify the use of his stormtroopers. All of this massive force, designed only to intimidate, and to convey to mass media audiences the idea that the forces of the state were confronting “violent extremists”, “terrorists”, “supporters of Hamas”, “agents of Putin”, and other such nonsense, was in response to only peaceful protest, and at worst, the breaking of a window!!! This monolithic view, central to any totalitarian regime, was conveyed by all of the mass media too.
As Marcuse noted in relation to so called bourgeois-democracies like the US, their superficial pluralism only enhances these totalitarian tendencies, because of giving the appearance of dissent within the limited scope of the Overton Window. He argues that the outward forms in the US may be different, but this seeming liberty “under the rule of a repressive whole”, becomes “a more powerful instrument of domination”. So, we see the same solid wall of propaganda and wholesaling of lies, both in relation to the genocide, and in relation to the peaceful protests against it, whether from Fox News on the Right to CNN and MSNBC on the so called Liberal Left.
Some have claimed that Biden's address showed how out of touch he is with Democrat voters. Indeed, the increasingly senile image he presents is reminiscent of the last days of the USSR, and its series of geriatric leaders, prior to Gorbachev. But, this misses the point. If Biden, himself, is out of touch, senile and so on, that is not true of his advisors and speech writers. They, and indeed to the extent that Biden, himself knows what time of day it is any more, know what they are doing, know they are lying through their teeth, and know that what they are saying is hostile to the views of the large majority of Democrat voters, let alone Democrat grass roots activists. The point is they are forced to lie, to ignore the views of Democrat voters, precisely because US imperialism is so invested in the genocide in Gaza, so invested in the Zionist state, as the instrument of US imperialism in the Middle-East, which is one of the main centres of global strategic conflict between US/NATO imperialism and China/Russia/BRICS+ imperialism.
Biden's claims about violence, about breaking the law and so on were just so much tosh, and Bernie Sanders in a speech in the Senate set out why.
And, of course, its not just in the US that this lurch into totalitarianism is happening. The same is seen in Britain, with attempts to close down the right to protest, as well as the use of laws to outlaw free speech, under cover of claims of “hate speech”, or “anti-Semitism”. It was used effectively against the Left in the Labour Party, and Corbyn failed to counter it, leaving himself ultimately to be brought down by it. One group central to that weaponisation of “anti-Semitism”, was the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism of Gideon Falter, whose role has been highlighted recently in trying to get anti-genocide protests banned. A leading supporter of it was the noxious Margaret Hodge, who has subsequently left it, after it achieved its aim of removing Corbyn, and when it continued to then pursue the same narrative against Starmer!
But, the same is happening in the US. Biden has also weaponised “anti-Semitism” as the chosen vehicle for opposing the protests against genocide and US complicity in it. But, Trump and the Right will inevitably, as they have, demand that he move even further to the Right, hurtle even more rapidly down the path of totalitarianism, and as US imperialism tries to defend its genocide in Gaza, in the face of growing opposition from its own population, the more willingly will Biden and the so called “liberal” media comply. And, when that is not enough, as seen now daily on college campuses, the stormtroopers will be deployed, assisted by the Zionist and other fascist auxiliaries as required.
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