This is what the start of totalitarianism in a mass society looks like!
Biden's stormtroopers have immense physical force to mobilise against the peaceful student protests springing up across US university campuses. Like the forces of Zionism in Palestine, they are indirectly supporting, and which itself trained these US police forces, they have an overwhelming monopoly of violence. In the end, that is the role of the state, when all of its other methods, based on the use of ideology, and its mass media have failed.
Across the US, Biden's stormtroopers are using that monopoly of violence to attack peaceful protests in order to continue to support the genocide of Zionism in Gaza, and to slap down any criticism of it. It isn't working for them as an increasing proportion of the US population opposes that genocide and opposes Biden's complicity in it.
The students cannot defeat this huge monopoly of violence by the US state, which is careening headlong towards the kind of totalitarian state seen, elsewhere, such as in Israel itself, as well as in Russia, China and so on, where the role of ideology no longer suffices to control the masses, because its presentation of reality no longer conforms with what those masses can see and experience for themselves.
The students have learned something from the experience of their grandparents, some of whom were involved 60 years ago, during a similar period of the long wave, in the protests against the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement and so on. At UCLA, recognising the superior violence of the police goons, the mantra of Bruce Lee, and of his system of Jit Kun Do, was heard "Move like Water". The students can simply move continuously as the stormtroopers launch their attacks, reforming in another place, just as when a fist strikes water, the water parts, and surrounds the fist, which only makes a temporary hole. As soon as the fist is removed, the hole fills with water once more.
The students are going nowhere, and the heavily armed goons cannot stay assembled on the campuses forever. A few protesters may be arrested, but for each one arrested, a hundred more are being recruited to the protests as they see for themselves the reality of the state violence being imposed by Biden and his increasingly authoritarian Bonapartist regime.
But, the US working-class should not settle for such a condition in which their kids on college campuses are facing this kind of violence, not only from Biden's stormtroopers, but also from the Zionist and other fascist auxiliaries being mobilised alongside them. Many working-class people from local communities have already joined into give passive support to the protests having seen the reality of the state aggression. However, given the fact that imperialism has staked so much on its support for the Zionist genocide in Gaza, it is also not likely to simply accept some kind of stalemate, especially as the Zionist state continues its genocide in Gaza, with an imminent assault on Rafah, and planned attacks on Lebanon.
The organised labour movement, in the US needs to mobilise its own violence to counter that of the capitalist state, in the best traditions of that movement, and the history of US militia, in their war against British colonialism, during their War of Independence. Local unions and activists should begin to organise defence squads to form protective rings around student protests, and the peace camps. In an election year, where Biden and the Democrats already look to have lost against Trump and the Republicans, due to the reactionary policies adopted by Biden over the last four years, those workers should use their influence through the unions to press for alternative workers candidates to be standing in the elections, on a socialist programme. At the very least, they should be raising their voices in union locals, and in local Democrat organisations to condemn the genocide and Biden's support for it, as well as the use of the fascist goons.
It may be too early yet, though the role of university lecturers and their unions provides some basis for it, to begin to call for local general strikes to oppose the state violence, but, at some point, such calls will become relevant, as well as calls to spread the occupations into workplaces, especially any workplaces related to the state, the production of weapons and so on. It is time that significant pressure was put on the unions of journalists and other media workers, as the US media has played a truly appalling role in lying about the genocide in Gaza, and supporting Zionism. That is not just the usual suspects of Fox News, and so on. We need strikes and occupations of workers in those media outlets.
The role of Marxists is to act as the memory of the class from one generation to the next. We are living through an equivalent period of the 1960's. Marxists should study the lessons of that time, codify them, and use them to the benefit of the current generation, advancing its successes and warning against its errors.
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