The British state has lost the argument, even as it rigs the trials of genocide opponents

The UK isn’t a dispassionate arbiter of justice in prosecuting anti-genocide activists. It has been aggressively colluding in Israeli crimes. That huge conflict of interest is the elephant in the room

Johnathan Cook  Aug 29th 2026

The British state rigged the trial of Tony Greenstein, a secular Jewish socialist and peace activist, to get him locked up for as much as 14 years – supposedly for “inviting support for Hamas”. 

Fearful that the judge would punish his barrister for delivering a closing speech that properly defended him, Greenstein instead spoke directly to the jury.

For half an hour, he picked apart sham charges relating to three social media posts and a blog article he wrote against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. In doing so, he exposed the proceedings as a political show trial – one of a growing number, designed to silence opposition both to Israel’s genocide in Gaza and to the British state’s complicity in it.

In summing up, Judge Sarah Plaschkes said she had considered referring Greenstein for contempt of court. But instead she dismissed his eloquent, damning address to the jury as a “rambling speech delivered by an old man”. At that point, presumably, she had no idea what impact Greenstein’s words would have on the jury. 

In a stinging rebuke to the judge, the jury members unanimously acquitted him after just two hours of deliberation. As it turned out, it was not Greenstein on trial; it was British justice. 

Once given a chance to hear all the facts, not just the ones curated by the Crown, the jury accepted Greenstein’s arguments, including his accusation that the judiciary were readily conniving in the growing authoritarianism unleashed by the UK state’s complicity in genocide.

Which may explain why Greenstein’s landmark victory in a case with huge implications for free speech – and the right to speak out on the British state’s partnership in Israel’s genocide – was almost entirely ignored by the establishment media. 

Had the jury found against him, you can be sure that same media would have covered the matter extensively, playing its part in sending a message to audiences that they should to keep their heads down and avoid showing any solidarity with the Palestinian people or risk sharing Greenstein’s fate. 

His acquittal, and the British state’s humiliation, was not a message the state – or the billionaire-owned media – wanted publicised. 

What Greenstein’s closing speech managed to do was introduce something the British state and its judiciary have been carefully trying to strip out of the current wave of show trials of anti-genocide activists: important context.

Greenstein had to dismiss his barrister for the closing speech because, had the barrister spoken to the jury as Greenstein himself did, he would have most likely shared the fate of another distinguished lawyer, Rajiv Menon KC. 

Jonathan Cook 2mo The judge in the Palestine Action trial is having a second go at trying to jail the respected defence barrister Rajiv Menon for contempt of court. Here is the section of his closing speech, citing a 350-year-old legal precedent, that offended the judge: https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/barristers-powerful-speech-at-filton 200 5 93

Menon is facing contempt of court proceedings over his masterful closing speech in the trial of six Palestine Action defendants, who were charged with multiple and serious crimes over their efforts to destroy killer-drones produced at a factory in Bristol operated by Israel’s biggest arms maker, Elbit Systems. 

As a result of Menon’s speech – you can read the most important passages here – the jury refused to convict any of the defendants of any of the offences for which the state had put them on trial. 

The judge in that case, Jeremy Johnson, was so eager to make an example of Menon – and intimidate other lawyers so they would be dissuaded from giving other Palestine solidarity activists a proper defence – that he managed to abuse the established legal procedure specifically designed for contempt of court referrals. 

The Court of Appeal had to overturn his decision, though it allowed him to reapply for contempt proceedings against Menon, this time using the proper channels. Johnson did so. 

The point is that judges like Johnson and Plaschkes – faithful servants not of justice but of the British state – know that no jury will convict activists trying to to stop a genocide if it is framed in those terms. So these judges must rig these trials to keep the jury as ignorant as possible of the relevant context: that the British state is persecuting peace activists for embarrassing it over its collusion in genocide. 

That fact was, once again, only too evident during Greenstein’s trial. 

Plaschkes was angry throughout the proceedings at Greenstein’s efforts to introduce context to the case. Were the prosecution to succeed, she needed the jury to ignore many relevant things about Greenstein’s supposedly “Hamas-supporting” comment about a “ghetto uprising” in Gaza : 

• the context that he was referring to the fact that the one-day break-out from Gaza on 7 October 2023 was a direct response to Israel’s preceding 16-year blockade of Gaza, denying its 2.3 million-strong population the essentials of life and turning the enclave effectively into a concentration camp; 

• the context that, following the October 2023 breakout, Israel immediately launched a genocidal campaign of destruction against the enclave’s infrastructure and its civilian population;

• the context that, as a secular socialist, Greenstein has been a long-time critic of Hamas, as proven by a stream of articles he had written over more than a decade and that he cited to the jury;

• the context that, as the son of Holocaust survivors, he is deeply opposed to one people systematically oppressing another – all the more so given that Jewish Zionists have exploited their people’s historic victimhood to justify Israel committing contemporary crimes against Palestinians;

• the context of international law, which states that a people under occupation, the Palestinians, have a right to resist their oppression by Israel, including through the use of violence; 

• the context that Greenstein made no mention of Hamas, or indicated any support for it – only his support for the right in law for Palestinians to resist Israeli crimes; 

• the context that the British government proscribed the political wing of Hamas under the UK’s terrorism laws only in 2021, not based any new “terror” behaviour – in fact, four years earlier Hamas had rewritten its charter, showing a strong willingness to make concessions to Israel. No, the purpose of proscription was specifically to advance Israel’s goal of intimidating popular, international solidarity with the people of Gaza; 

• the context that, in prosecuting Greenstein, the British government is destroying the very basis of the right to free speech, all to advance the interests of the demonstrably genocidal state of Israel;

• the context that the British state is not some dispassionate arbiter of justice in these prosecutions: it is aggressively colluding in Israel’s crimes. Its huge conflict of interest in silencing critics is the elephant in the room. 

Greenstein told the jury: 

Your [verdict] will not stay in this room. If these three posts are terrorism, then the word has a new meaning for everyone in this country. Every student who shares an article. Every pensioner who retweets the wrong opinion. Every writer, every blogger, every one of your neighbours with a social media account and a view about a war. 

Can it really be the law of England that any of them – that any of you – will be condemned to 14 years of prison for a tweet? You have the power, today, to answer that question. Whatever your answer is, it will be remembered long after this trial is forgotten.

The whole speech is a masterclass in how to speak over the head of a complicit judiciary and prick the conscience of people who have a moral backbone. I recommend you read it in full here: 

The British government desperately wanted the scalp of a Jewish activist to show that no one is safe from the state’s long arm of persecution. It failed, which should be cause for relief and celebration among every person who opposes authoritarianism. 

The defeats being handed to the British state by juries who hear the actual evidence are adding to the pressures on officials to find new ways to bypass the ancient right of trial by jury. 

The government of Keir Starmer was determined to establish the precedent of scrapping jury trials. Faced with the unpopularity of such a move, his successor Andy Burnham has sounded hesitant about advancing the measure. But pledges he made while seeking the Labour leadership – and prime ministership – are proving to be worth little now that he is in office. 

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Meanwhile, courtier-judges like Johnson are finding ways to get round the reluctance of juries to convict anti-genocide activists of serious crimes. 

Juries that convict activists of a relatively minor charge of criminal damage for smashing up killer-drones, assuming the defendants will get a few months in prison, are learning that they are thereby handing the judges in these trials unlimited powers, in violation of the most basic principles of justice. 

After the verdict, judges like Johnson are choosing to rewrite the charge sheet, adding retrospectively what they are bogusly calling a “terrorism connection”. That means they can sentence the defendants as “terrorists”, leading to far longer jail sentences and destroying the defendants’ lives in perpetuity. 

This is the mark of a justice system that no longer cares about evidence, fairness or jury verdicts. It cares only about visible punishment, about spreading terror through the courtroom. 

We can fight back. Juries appear to be growing increasingly wary of these highly politicised trials the British state is staging to exonerate itself of its criminal activities and lock up its critics. As judges increasingly abuse the justice system to get the jail sentences demanded by the state, juries are likely to become much less willing to serve as an alibi for state repression. 

This is no longer a struggle simply for the Palestinian people’s survival. It is a struggle for ourselves, for our right to have a voice, to have some say in how our societies are run and for whose benefit. It is a struggle to keep the forces of darkness at bay a little while longer. 

And it is a battle none of us can afford to lose.

Canada: Campus Antisemitism Report Hid a Key Finding that Turns the Results Upside Down

Republished from The Grind Magazine

                                                 PHOTO: MCMASTER UNIVERSITY

OPINION

Campus Antisemitism Report Hid a Key Finding that Turns the Results Upside Down

BY JOSHUA SEALY-HARRINGTON

AUGUST 28, 2026

In early August, mainstream outlets repeated the findings of a flawed report describing alarming levels of antisemitism on university campuses. Two weeks later, the authors stated that 92 per cent of anti-Zionist Jewish respondents found campuses safe and inclusive.

In early August, the Canadian government released a report on the “alarming prevalence of campus antisemitism” at postsecondary institutions. The mainstream media was quick to uncritically parrot the report’s findings, despite early alarm bells raised by independent organizations about the report’s methodology.

After the initial news articles, there was a slew of opinion writing. On Aug. 18, for example, the Globe and Mail’s editorial board ran a column largely based on the report claiming that, on Canadian campuses, “Jewish students are not safe, not even in the classroom.”

However, closer scrutiny of the report — known as the Campus Antisemitism and Student Experience, or CASE, report — reveals both glaring bias and several methodological flaws that misrepresent the state of safety on campuses, while dangerously conflating anti-Zionist speech with antisemitism. The result has fed into a moral panic that has for several years now been used to clamp down on the pro-Palestine movement.

What’s wrong with the CASE report?

The CASE report was written by the tightly-connected Association for Canadian Studies and Metropolis Institute, based together in Montreal. The report was published by Canadian Heritage, where Marc Miller is the minister responsible. 

The report claims to describe “[w]hat Jewish students experience,” but its methodology belies this.

First, the report is based on an online survey that lacked proper screening. For example, Dr. El Jones—an Associate Professor in political and cultural studies who is neither a student nor Jewish—was able tocomplete the survey, twice. 

Second, the survey’s recruitment process, which prioritized explicitly Zionist organizations such as Hillel and Chabad, resulted in a clearly pro-Zionist bias: the report found that 86.8% of the survey respondents indicated that “Zionism” is very or somewhat important to them, despite the fact that a 2024 survey found that only half of Canadian Jews identify as Zionist. 

Moreover, the report’s authors failed to consult with anti-Zionist Jewish organizations, such as Independent Jewish Voices, who could have shared the survey with its hundreds of student members. (The survey only included 900 respondents.) Indeed, the report itself admits it cannot be relied on as a representative sample of Jewish student experiences, noting that “[t]he Jewish survey is not weighted,” such that the results can only be “interpreted descriptively rather than as precise population estimates.”

Despite these glaring issues, mainstream media outlets were largely uncritical in their reporting. CBC, for example, initially reported in their article subheading that “95.7% of Jewish students say they saw or experienced antisemitism in 2025.” After the report was criticized, the article subheading was changed to “95.7% of surveyed Jewish students say… .” 

The above methodological concerns, however, are amplified by a rhetoricalconcern, obscured by what one might call the CASE report’s “rolling disclosure” — an opaque process by which the report’s findings are slowly and partially revealed over time, rather than all at once. This complicates the ability for readers to scrutinize the report’s raw data, as well as its author’s interpretation of that data. 

When the CASE report was first released on Aug. 5, it exclusively highlighted the experience of Zionist Jewish respondents, while making zero reference to the experience of those anti-Zionist students who participated in the survey. 

Later, following a slew of serious methodological critique, the report’s creators responded on a Canadian Jewish News podcast episode released Aug. 14 (see 9:49-10:14) by selectively disclosing unpublished data from the report. Unsurprisingly, this previously suppressed data undermines the report’s exaggerated conclusions.

Then, writing in the National Post on Aug. 17, two of the report’s authors and one of its advisors noted that only 11 per cent of anti-Zionist Jewish respondents agreed with the statement that antisemitism was “a serious problem on campus.” When Zionist Jewish survey respondents answered that same question, that figure skyrocketed to 95 per cent. 

Put differently, it is not simply “Jewish students” who consider antisemitism a serious problem on campus, but, more precisely, Zionist Jewish respondents that do. 

In stark contrast, amongst anti-Zionist Jewish respondents, a whopping 92 per cent said their campuses were safe and inclusive for Jewish students. In the National Post column, the authors try to write off the anti-Zionist data as a “psychological or social” phenomenon rooted in “a desire for social acceptance.” 

The reality seems much simpler: Zionist Jewish students conflate hostility towards Israel with hostility towards Jews, whereas anti-Zionist Jewish students do not.

Conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism

As the Jewish Faculty Network has observed, the report’s misrepresentation of antisemitism “attempts to turn a legitimate political position [i.e., anti-Zionism] into a synonym for hatred before a single survey question is even asked.”

And this misrepresentation is apparent in the report’s many frivolous examples: a student’s subjective claim of “encountering course content […] that portrayed […] Israel […] in [a] biased way” is called a “toxic classroom dynamic”; a professor “showing Al Jazeera videos” and wearing “pro-Palestine […] earrings” is labelled “classroom bias”; the report calls “antizionist indoctrination […] among the most worrying” of its findings. This is unserious.

Even the report’s examples of actual antisemitism are misleadingly presented by its authors. One appendix provides what the report itself calls “a selected sample” of comments from survey respondents, including various pro-Nazi references. But the report egregiously frames these references as representative of “the pro-Palestine movement”, which, according to one anonymous quote, “very loudly and publicly sympathize[s] with Hitler.” The report fails to provide a single example of this supposed “loud” and “public” sympathy from the avowedly left-wingmovement to decolonize Palestine. And the report obscures how Nazi sympathies are ideologically associated with the political right. In this way, the report crudely lumps right-wing discourse with left-wing activism to discredit Israel’s decolonial critics.

Indeed, the report is so dedicated to defending Israel and Zionism that it, while claiming to document antisemitism on Canadian campuses, includes a gratuitous reference denying the genocide in Gaza. The report states: “No court, international or otherwise has determined that the War in Gaza is a genocide.” This omits, however, that there is a virtual consensus amongst relevant scholars (including hundreds of international law academics), United Nations findings (including the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights), and Non-Governmental Organizations (including Amnesty International) that Israel is, indeed, committing a genocide in Gaza, a finding the Israeli NGO B’Tselem has confirmed.

The report relies on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which is widely discredited for conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism. The government of Canada adopted the IHRA definition in 2019, despite its rejection by over 400 scholars of Antisemitism Studies and related fields, the Canadian Association of University Teachers (which represents 75,000 academic staff), and even one of the definition’s main authors, who now recognizes that it has been “weaponize[d]” by “rightwing Jewish groups.” The report does not acknowledge, let alone refute, this overwhelming critique. 

Instead, the CASE report affirms IHRA by citing a non-peer-reviewed essay in Tablet magazine — a magazine so right-wing that the largest scholarly association in Jewish Studies stopped advertising in it. The frivolous examples above speak for themselves: despite claiming to be a report on “antisemitism,” the authors cast watermelon earrings, Peabody Award-winning journalism, and peace activism as intolerable campus expression. 

The CASE report does not accurately document antisemitism; it perpetuates anti-Palestinian racism. That the Canadian government would characterize righteous dissent as “antisemitism” to discipline political discourse is an affront to our democratic principles and academic freedom. And that Canadian media would parrot such jejune propaganda is an affront to the accuracy and impartiality of our press.

The Association for Canadian Studies and Metropolis Institute acknowledged receipt of The Grind’s requests for comment but did not respond before publication. The article will be updated if they send comment.

Joshua Sealy-Harrington is an Associate Professor and the Chair in Palestinian Human Rights in Canada at the University of Windsor Faculty of Law.

The Role of the State in Society. It is Not Our Protector.

 

John Clarke

Ontario Canada

 

This annoying cartoon completely misrepresents the role of the capitalist state. For good measure, it does this by presenting the hated symbol of US state power, Uncle Sam, as a weakened but noble protector of the victims of predatory capitalists.

The motivation behind this depiction is dismay at a decades long undermining of measures of social provision and regulation which is then inaccurately perceived as evidence that the state is in decline. This has led many liberals to incorrectly conclude that major capitalist interests have disempowered the state.

To dispel this false view, we need only recall Margaret Thatcher’s infamous claim that ‘there is no such thing as society.’ With this assertion, she was actually attacking the secondary state function of timidly limiting the destructive conduct of capitalists, in order to maintain social stability. She was suggesting that the social infrastructure should be gutted and the victims of this process lectured on the need for self-reliance.

 

Had someone suggested that the non-existence of society meant that the prisons should be opened up or that police forces and the military be disbanded, the limits of Thatcher’s desire to weaken state involvement in peoples’ lives would have emerged rather quickly.

 

Thatcher’s reactionary selectivity gets to the heart of the matter. The state emerged in history at a point where private property and a division between exploiting and exploited classes had developed. State power is employed to uphold the property relations that the ruling class requires and to ensure that public affairs are conducted and social order maintained in ways that correspond to this.

 

It is true that the capitalist state has an interest in preserving legitimacy and even sometimes protecting the capitalists from their own worst instincts. The state does this over a wide front to one degree or another. Laws are enacted that provide some rights to workers, tenants, consumers, etc. A portion of the state budget is allocated to public health, public education, social housing, income support and other elements of social provision. Moreover, the business dealings of capitalists are subjected to a degree of control that limits their ability to exploit, pollute and swindle.

 

The state has an interest in preventing social dislocation and unrest so as to ensure that an exploitative society is relatively stable. Individual capitalists, on other hand, often object to such mild forms of interference with their scramble to maximize profits. Public debates on this front further the illusion of an impartial state trying to strike a fair balance so as to serve the common good.

 

To return to the cartoon, it draws on the fact that, from the 1970s on, the capitalist state’s function was modified (though not fundamentally changed). As the neoliberal era took hold, the major effort to curtail the restraining hand of the state that Thatcher advocated was carried through on a massive scale.

 

At the same time, however, the more vital functions of the state were by no means weakened. Repressive and military power were actually increased and the regulation of the poorest portion of the population was dealt with by intensified forms of policing instead of systems of provision. When workers went on strike, they dealt with a state power that was by no means diminished.

 

It is true that capital broke free of state regulation in a whole series of ways but the state wasn’t coerced into this. It made the changes very willingly in the interests of the class it is there to serve. Moreover, the rapacious conduct of the capitalists took place under systems of legality that rested on state authority. Whenever the power of workers needed to be crushed or a failing bank or major company bailed out at public expense, the state was anything but powerless.

 

At this particular time, concerns for Uncle Sam’s health and strength are entirely groundless. His military forces are deployed across the world, his cops and immigration enforcers are fully active and his readiness to provide the legal forms and physical authority the capitalists need is undiminished. He and the major companies that are circling him in this absurd cartoon are all in it together. He is there to serve their interests but they need him more than ever.

Working Class History (UK) On the 90th anniversary of the 'Battle of Cable Street'.

I was reading this piece from Michael Rosen on Facebook this morning about the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street, a confrontation that took place on October 4th 1936. Oswald Mosely and his British Union of Fascists had planned a march through London's East End and area with a significant Jewish population.  In response, Jews and their allies fought open battles with the fascists and drove them back.

Rosen points out that there were different currents and views within the group that fought the fascists that day, including Jewish organizations and included in his comments a warning from the Jewish Chronicle urging the Jewish community not to attend or protest the march. But the general consensus was to confront the fascists and stop them. 

I am familiar with the event and have read a little about it but found the video above really interesting as it deals with the wider class issues, the various radical groups that were involved  and what was happening in Europe at the time. It's also important as the BUF picked immigrants and in this case, Jews, many of them victims of the pogroms and violence they faced in Easter Europe. In times of economic crisis the state, its security apparatus including fascist and nationalist organizations, direct the anger at the "other" among us.

I was at a similar protest when I was in London in the 1980's and it was the right wing anti-immigrant forces directing their hatred toward Bangladeshi's. The area where the Cable Street battle took place has since been populated by East Indians, Bangladeshi's and other ethnic groups. 

With the absence of a working class alternative and a unifying force in society that can direct the anger at the social and economic crises people are facing at the state and its security apparatus, there are people that will be drawn to the racist anti-immigrant position. 

Immigrants that have saved Britains precious NHS from the privateers ax are now being blamed for destroying it. Behind the most innocuous statements on the cost of immigration are the fascists elements and the British state. Immigration does need to be addressed but from the perspective of the working class both at home and abroad. The capitalist state cannot solve a crisis of its own making. The flow of people from the Middle East and North Africa in to Europe and the UK is a product of colonialism and the continuing support of US imperialism's wars in the region from the British government. 

It's insanity people telling immigrants to "go back where they came from" when they have no homes to go back to.

Michael Rosen

London UK

MichaelRosen.co.UK

I see that the Board of Deputies are organising an event for the 90th anniversary of the 'Battle of Cable Street'. Obviously, anyone can organise what they want to commemorate what they want, when they want (within the confines of the law etc etc). In 2026, there are people walking about, living their lives who stand in various traditions. We aren't prisoners of them (if we don't want them to be) but they exist in our minds, our memories and in our political acts. We 'negotiate' them. That's to say, we work out how we stand now in relation to those past traditions. 

 

As I understand it, the group that I'm part of who are organising commemorations of Cable Street owes its origins to the Jewish People's Council which was the prime mover of the resistance to Mosley and the fascists. Within that Council were many strands of opinion, as Dave Rosenberg has shown in his book 'Battle for the East End'. 

 

However, opposed to organising a demonstration on that day was a group of people who said, no, don't demonstrate. This is not hearsay or rumour. There was a note in the Jewish Chronicle telling people not to go and I've posted it here.

Now, I don't know for sure which people now, in 2026, belong to that tradition, but I'd say that whoever is organising commemorative events, part of that history is to acknowledge, who was there, who wasn't there, who was in favour of it, and who was against it - actively against it in some cases. 

 

I would hope (but don't know) that the Board of Deputies event would acknowledge what the official 'line' seems to have been towards people going on the demonstration that day. Perhaps they'll acknowledge who said that kind of thing and why, and whether it put people off going, off taking part. 

 

As people will know, my parents were there and it was an important part of their personal, social and political education - and through them, mine too. They felt that they belonged to that tradition, all their lives, even after they left the Communist Party in 1957. 

 

Here's the notice.

Israeli (activists) block aid from Reaching Gaza. With Police Help

Shaiel Ben-Ephraim

Tuesday 25 August 2026 at 6:30 AM in Kerem Shalom Crossing: Israeli "activists" blocked aid from reaching Gaza today. The police not only did not stop them, here you can see an officer congratulating them on what they are doing. 

 

Mainstream media Channel 12 is there interviewing them in a friendly spirit. 

 

Then you can see members of political parties participating, including a member of Liberman's opposition party which is against Netanyahu. 

 

There is complete support for starving Gazans to death from the police, media and opposition. A genocidal society fully on view here.

Books: Fabian Holt, Organize or Burn: How New York Socialists Fight for Climate Survival.

order here

Fabian Holt, Organize or Burn: How New York Socialists Fight for Climate Survival. 

New York University Press: 2025.  229 pages.

Marian Swerdlow 

NYC

Fabian Holt, a Norwegian professor of the sociology of music, came to Brooklyn, New York in late 2019, to write about its music scene.  The pandemic disrupted his plans, and, instead, he ended up becoming active in NYC Democratic Socialists of America (NYC - DSA).  Fight or Burn is about the group and his experiences with it.

 

“I stumbled on volunteers petitioning to get a person named David Alexis on the upcoming [primary for the Democratic Party nomination for the] State Senate race, and they talked about democratic socialism and climate change    . . . The participants were different from the image I had of socialists.  They were not sectarian or intellectualizing.”(p. 22 - 3: All citations are from Holt: 2025)

 

Holt admits, if rather late in his book, “I do not think of myself as a socialist or call for the end of capitalism.  I have not participated in US electoral work before.  I am not a native English speaker and do not have local knowledge,” of Brooklyn (p. 115) “ . . . I became politicized and attached to NYC - DSA.”(p. 120) 

 

So, he’s not writing from a revolutionary socialist point of view, and he may not always know much about what he’s writing about.  For example, he apparently doesn’t know there was an important Socialist Party in the US around the beginning of the 20th century (pp. 8 - 9). 

 

Despite this, his experiences and the interviews he conducted with other NYC - DSA members are a revealing look into NYC - DSA, especially how its electorialism influenced its orientation toward the ecosocialist movement.  His book has important lessons about electorialism, regardless of which group, or where, it is adopted.  

 

Holt’s book is limited to only NYC - DSA: the reader should not assume it describes DSA in other cities or locations. Although Holt himself makes a case for why a book about DSA in NYC is especially relevant, calling NYC an “epicenter of the international democratic socialist movement” (p. 2) and Central Brooklyn “the epicenter of the ‘new NYC DSA,’” (p. 24) I believe it is most useful as a case study of what happens when a socialist group adopts a strategy that priorizes winning elections and passing legislation over all other tactics.

 

The history Holt relates involves two NYC - DSA “working groups,” and how their tactics, strategies and goals interacted.  The first was the Electoral Working Group (EWG). One of its members recalls how it began: a few of them who had been active with a campaign to elect a housing activist for State Senate in 2016 decided, “we can recruit, endorse, and win local socialist campaigns and build the political movement that Bernie Sanders started.” (p. 11)  

 

This group made a key strategic decision: “We want to change the political terrain in NY and we want to do that on the level of the state legislature, which controls the levers of so many people’s lives.  Basic material conditions are truly controlled by this group of people in Albany.”  (p. 164). 

 

The “Proposal for a Brooklyn Branch DSA Electoral Committee” was passed by the branch in December 2016.   It said in part, “  . . . we can use our victories to challenge the billionaire class directly, build the confidence of working class voters  . . . Recruiting socialist candidates to run in local elections  . . . voters can be mapped and mobilized  . . .   Learning and teaching organizing skills like canvassing and campaign planning.” (p. 184)  

 

The working class is conceived as a voting bloc, rather than producers of commodities let alone surplus value, with its power lying in voting, not in withholding its labor. “Organizing skills” are narrowly defined as those involved in an election campaign, not the broader range involved in workplace, community or grassroots organizing.  

 

The other working group was the Ecosocialist Working Group (ESWG) which started the following year, and “became a small and focused space, somewhat removed from the more mass-public spaces in NYC-DSA  . . . Over time, the group developed into a semi-professional entity . . .  ” (p. 203)  

 

In 2019, it reached a defining moment when one of its members pitched the idea of passing laws to expand the powers of a relatively small state agency, the NY Power Authority (NYPA) to give it the ability to build and operate renewable energy and make it “the decarbonization engine for NYS.”   NYPA provides electricity only to public entities, not residential customers or private businesses.  (p. 211) 

 

The book fails to discuss implications for this plan of the special nature of NYS  “authorities” such as the Metropolitan Transit Authority, and the Port Authority.  Unlike other state departments or agencies, they have various levels of autonomy from the State, based on the powers and constraints built into their legislative mandate. Each is governed by a separate board of directors appointed by elected officials for varying terms of office. 

 

The ESWG got to work on a series of bills to change the NYPA for this purpose.  One of them would become the Build Public Renewables Act (BPRA). The ESWG conceived of it as the centerpiece of the first stage of “Public Power NY” (PPNY), a broader movement vision of the state’s ecological transformation, and launched a pressure campaign to pass it (p. 194), developing a coalition of community-based climate justice organizations.  The PPNY campaign was elevated to a NYC-DSA priority campaign, and “a lot of effort coalesced around it.” (p. 212)

 

When the first attempt to pass BPRA in 2021 failed, ESWG felt betrayed by politicians who had seemed ready to support it and initially responded with a blockade outside legislators’ offices in NYC and exposing their donations from fossil fuel interests.  But the ESWG grew concerned about these activist tactics, by alienating politicians whose support was needed to pass BPRA.(pp. 219 - 220) 

 

As its way out of this dilemma, the ESWG decided to “electoralize” the PPNY, (p. 218) and that “. . . primary elections are probably the most important tactic that we have . . .” (p. 206). Coalition building, mobilization of community members to lobby legislators, and direct action, were all abandoned as ineffective.  According to the ESWG’s co-chair of strategy, “We couldn’t get past a certain point without having our own people in the legislature.”  (pp. 221- 222.)  The ESWG influenced the decision to run all the 2021 election campaigns on an ecosocialist platform. (p. 219)    

 

Professor Holt, roaming the streets of Brooklyn, came across NYC - DSA canvassers for one of those campaigns. The incumbent, State Senator Kevin Parker, was targeted because, as the head of the Senate Energy Committee, he had been delaying climate legislation for years. (p. 99) DSA lost this particular primary, but it was close enough to make Parker get behind NYC-DSA BPRA and it passed in 2023. (p. 107) 

 

Holt describes the passage of BPRA as “a significant event in the history of climate legislation  . . . [because it] directs the state-owned NY Power Authority to build enough renewables to meet the state’s 2019 landmark targets for reducing carbon emissions, the most ambitious targets in the country.  Also, this is the first law in the country to introduce democratic socialist Green New Deal principles of labor rights, climate justice for indigenous and vulnerable communities.” (p. 192 -3) 

 

Relying on the passage of a law, in and of itself, to achieve all this depends upon an assumption that the state is a neutral body without any class character, and that laws, once passed, are implemented effectively and in the way the bill’s writers intended them to be. Insofar as NYC - DSA accepts these assumption, they do not agree with the traditional Marxist concept of the capitalist state.  

 

Traditional Marxists would expect that in a capitalist country where the working class is disorganized and demobilized, as in the United States today, the government - to put rather crudely -  acts in accordance with the interests of the ruling class, and that if that class had wanted the NYPA to achieve significant reductions in carbon emissions, it wouldn’t have required a battle by NYC - DSA.  Furthermore, they would be skeptical that the NYPA’s Board of Directors would respond to the new law by drawing up a plan for how it could hit those targets.

 

Three years after the passage of BPRA, leading members of the ESWG are frustrated that the NYPA has done so little in response to the law.  A PPNY email in July 2026 celebrates,  “NYPA Considers 6.2GW More Public Power!” but goes on to say “it still falls short of the 15GW we need to be on track in New York State to reduce our emissions, take pressure off our struggling grid, and lower our unaffordable utility bills.” 

 

Furthermore, “so far, they have not broken ground on the Somers Solar project, slated to be the first public renewable project to begin construction,” and “Governor Kathy Hochul is giving discounted power to multibillion dollar corporations,” not to residential customers.  Although the email asks people to speak at public hearings, and donate money, NYC - DSA’s main strategy is to elect more DSA candidates to the NYS legislature. (p. 166)

 

This also reflects the idea that the capitalist state is a neutral instrument, where decisions are made by majorities and then carried out by class-neutral bureaucrats.  But there are visible mechanisms through which this illusory democratic decision-making is thwarted, and the wealthy and powerful play a disproportionate role.  Holt notes,  “The [state] legislative process has been described as ‘broken’”(p. 113).  It’s not broken: it’s fulfilling the role of the capitalist state.  Three people decide almost all of which NYS legislation will be passed in NYS, the governor, the assembly speaker, and the senate president.  The latter two are elected by a majority in the body they lead.  

 

So, for its electoral success to translate into making state law, DSA must get a majority in at least one legislative house, or win the governorship. In January, if all its candidates win, there will be eleven DSA-supported members in the 150-member Assembly, and four DSA-supported Senators among the 63 Senators.  The math is obvious.  This, along with the nature of NYS authorities, cast doubt on how realistic electing more state legislators is as a way to make the NYPA into the engine for progress toward more renewables and less use of fossil fuels in NYS.  

 

However, NYC - DSA remains firmly committed to electoralism. Holt quotes one member, “Electoralism is attractive because it’s clear what power is in the context.  It’s limited but at least it’s concrete.”  (p. 70 - 71) This begs the question of whether it’s part of a strategy that can have any impact on climate change.  Marxists from the tradition that supports independent social movements should be asking whether NYC-DSA’s electoralist orientation will build the kind of broad and powerful ecosocialist movement that will be needed to achieve that progress.

 

Holt observes: “NYC - DSA’s strategy in elections is to win them.” (p. 14) So when canvassers in the largely Afro-Caribbean Flatbush community in Brooklyn found that “[some] people say ‘ . . . what I really care about is my rent and my health care,’” (p.127) and Holt himself found “climate change was not the main grievance of the constituents I canvassed in Flatbush  . . .  their main grievances were crime and health care,”  (p. 223) that would be taken into account in how the campaign was run.  

 

If talking about climate change didn’t resonate with voters, they would pivot to other talking points.  Thus, Holt finds “‘Public Power’ was barely, if ever, mentioned in the canvassing introductions I attended,” (p. 222) and that “ESWG members did not make [PPNY] front and center of campaign communications.” (p. 223) By so completely “electoralizing” the cause of transition to green power, not even the volunteers, let alone the voters, were given a chance to learn about climate change and why it must be stopped.  As a result, the election campaign did far less than it might have to make the volunteers better climate activists, or to spread public awareness of the crisis of global warming.  In sum, it missed opportunities for building a social movement for renewable energy.

 

NYC - DSA’s electoral victories of the past two years have clear benefits for working people.  NYC has the most progressive, reform-minded Mayor since at least 1950, and Congress is about to seat two new members who will speak up for workers and the oppressed.  But the down side is, these victories reinforce NYC - DSA’s electoralism, and even encourage it among other DSA chapters, potentially taking time, energy and focus away from building social movements.  The “organizing” techniques in running to win - hitting on a popular message that will, in a short period of time, motivate the maximum number of people to do one thing: vote - is not the same as the process of building a social movement.  

        

Before the pandemic, in New York and across the country, large demonstrations were organized to raise awareness of the danger of climate change, and pressure government and business to switch to renewable energy.  The pandemic ebbed, but the movement did not resurge, possibly because there was a Democratic administration.  Now, with climate change deniers running the federal government, and terrible heat waves and wildfires affecting millions of people, there is desperate need for such mass actions.  NYC - DSA, as the largest left group in the city, is the force most capable of initiating a coalition for such actions.  However, this is clearly not on their agenda.