Sexist Berlusconi slanders Merkel, keeps his job and continues war on workers

Silvio and Angela: bourgeois women not exempt from sexual predators

If we had any doubt about the rampant sexism that exists among the bourgeois that doubt must surely have been extinguished over the past period as we witnessed the alleged rape of a maid by one of the most powerful men in the world, the head of the IMF.  The victim has been demonized in the mass media and the perpetrator the IMF finance minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn has been replaced by a woman bourgeois which is supposed to show how egalitarian this class is.

Regardless of what happened, we have to look at rape just as we should look at anything, in class terms. After the initial complaint, the authorities immediately went after the woman with all the resources in their control and discovered she had lied about this and that. She is an immigrant from West Africa.  Even if there was "consent" we have to understand the difference in social power that the two possess. At work as a shop steward, I always dealt with sexual harassment differently if it was between co workers as opposed to when the alleged perpetrator was a supervisor or person in a position of power. This does not mean that an innocent person should be determined guilty simply because they are "in charge" or that workers should be let off the hook, but these relationships in society have to be taken in to consideration.

So we had the Strauss Kahn affair, one of the many incidents of this pig abusing women and now it has been revealed that Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister who just received a very slim vote of confidence from his pals in the Italian parliament (316 to 312) has been heard referring to Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany and labeled the world's most powerful woman as an "Unfuckable lard ass.".

We are all influenced by sexist and racist ideas. We cannot live in a racist and sexist society and not be so.  There is a difference between expressing and having such ideas than being an ideological racist or misogynist. I am of the opinion that these ideas are propagated by the ruling classes, the likes of Berlusconi and his friends, as a means of dividing and weakening the unity of the worker class. If it isn't these two issues, it will be religion like in Northern Ireland or India.

In my own experience, it was an active participation with women and others in the Union and the class struggle that helps us overcome these damaging ideologies.  As we struggle with others against the bosses, we see that it is in our material interests to reject these ideas.  It advances the material well being of our families and our children if we reject these ideas.  This is a class bond, a stronger bond than the moralizing of liberals who think that you can unite people simply on the basis of it being the "right" thing to do. That can be done, especially with regard to race as white liberal left types are from the middle classes generally and they feel very bad about the privilege their class position and skin color and their gender (if they're male) has given them. But it is a weak unity that can too easily be broken based on guilt.  This issue is for another time but white middle class lefts (which is what predominates in the US anyway) fear nothing worse than being called racist and overcome this by attacking white workers in order to prove how cleansed they are of racist thinking.


It just shows though, you can be the most powerful woman in the world and still be called "an unfuckable lard ass" by another national leader who still keeps his job.  Imagine how Berlusconi treats women workers.