Sheriff Dupnik who described the immigration law of the Republican governor Brewer pictured below as "racist and divisive" and a national "embarassment" and criticized the climate of hate and bigotry being stirred up by some in the media.
We on this blog have always explained that capitalism is in a continual struggle for the consciousness of the working class. It has to control this consciousness in order to control society. They exercise this control through their mass media, their education system, their political parties, their churches and other institutions.
In its main editorial today, the first day after the events it takes its stand. And it backs this up with over two more pages of material. It claims that the shootings were the work of a "disturbed loner," of a person with a "mental illness." No connections with the crisis in society and no connections with anybody else. All very neat. A lone disturbed mentally ill person. The disturbed loner theory allows them to tie the whole thing up and avoid any discussion about its system and its politicians, allows them to continue with their narrative that US capitalism is the best in the best of all possible worlds and only disturbed loners who are mentally ill can find anything wrong with it.
Every now and then events happens, such as the events in Tucson on Saturday, which demand that capitalism pull together and focus all its resources to keep its control from being weakened. At all costs Saturday's events must not be blamed on the system or on the capitalist politicians and parties. This is the main priority in the aftermath of the Tucson killings and shootings. The Wall Street Journal as is usual with this mouthpiece of finance capital takes the lead.
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| Arizona Governor Brewer |
In its extensive coverage the Wall Street Journal avoids mentioning that the alleged shooter in his website attacked people who could not speak English in the district of the shot Congress woman. And he compared women who wished to exorcise their right to have an abortion to terrorists. These are major issues of the extreme right and the Republican Party. The alleged shooter is a product of the right wing of US politics, the right wing which propped up the Republican Party which is at the moment the preferred party of capitalism and its mouth piece the Wall Street Journal. But any such discussion must be avoided at all costs. However capitalism has a problem. We live in the age of the Internet and capitalism cannot control the agenda so decisively any more. The Internet is full of material making the connection between the right and these killings and shootings and has forced this idea into the mass consciousness. Interviewers on talk shows yesterday morning would continually bring this up but apologize for doing so with the explanation that it was already all over the Internet. Times have changed.
Sarah Palin the Republican vice presidential candidate put politicians such as Giffords on her website with gun targets on them. It was known as them being "bullseyed." Palin and others talked of "lock and load" and of "targeting opponents." The Republican who opposed Giffords called for support on the basis that an M16 should be used to remove her. The health care bill was supposed to contain death panels and conjure up visions of old people being dragged to their death by bureaucrats. Immigration is posed as such a problem as to need a border fence in Arizona and to need a new law to allow anybody who looked like an undocumented worker to be arrested. These events in Tucson have thrown back the Republican led right wing agenda and momentarily left capitalism scrambling to get its version of events once again become the decisive narrative.
They will probably succeed. One reason is that the Democrats are as much a capitalist party as the Republicans. It too wants capitalism to regain more decisive control over the consciousness of the working class. So its will help the Republicans with their lone nut theory. Then there is the leadership of organized labor. They see no alternative and are completely committed to capitalism. So they too will help reestablish the old capitalist propaganda that the US is the best country in the world narrative again and only a lone nut could think otherwise.
However be this as it may. The events in Tucson have left an imprint. They have increased working peoples' understanding about how rotten this system is. And how the extreme right wing agenda is leading only to worse problems. These events therefore bring closer the day when a major shift in working class consciousness will take place sufficient to change the class balance of forces in society and open up a new era of class struggle in which the working class will be on the offensive, not like now, on the defensive.
Related to this discussion is what is happening with Wikileaks. The US government is getting court orders to get at its records and they are preparing a court case against it. In the meantime Bradley Manning still sits in solitary confinement. Please keep up your efforts to free him. The information we can get from Wikileaks can help in this struggle to prevent capitalism from putting its spin on the Tucson events and on reasserting more firmly once again its control over the consciousness of the working class.
Sean.
2 comments:
Sarah Palin's office is now saying that the "cross hairs" markings weren't meant to be gunsights, "It was simply cross hairs like you'd see on maps".
But even the founder of the anti-immigrant racist group the Minutemen, says in the papers today, "I fear for my life from people like this who are on my side of the argument" as well as from the "ultra left".
The folks in Congress are calling for unity now but I think the right wing is worried and personally feel Palin's career will be very negatively affected.
There is too much violence everywhere in society. Why do so called responsible political leaders allow such violence on our tv screens. We really need to have a collective discussion about how much of this should enter our kids lives. We need better more creative political leadership on this issue. We simply cant have all these right wing politicians bowing to the gun iobby and we have to teach our kids what peace and fairness is.
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