Green Party and UK Elections. Polanski: the Next Left Smear Campaign

Reprinted from the UK Socialist website Left Horizons

Polanski: the next left smear campaign

May 12 2026

By Joe Langabeer

A quote attributed to Mark Twain reads: “History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes”. Well, in this case, history is repeating itself when it comes to Zack Polanski, the leader of the Green Party, with him being characterised as ‘antisemitic’ in a smear campaign by the press and right-wing politicians.

It was noticeable – and it astonished a number of Jewish people present – that when the Jewish establishment organised a ‘march against antisemitism’ last weekend, Zack Polanski, who is Jewish, was not invited, while the leader of Reform UK was invited and was represented by his deputy to spoke to cheers from those present. One antisemitism campaigner, Ruvi Ziegler, told the Financial Times,  “We cannot fight racism alongside racists. Inviting Reform UK to speak in such a rally is objectionable, inconsistent given the exclusion of the Greens and highly damaging.”

The defenders of the establishment are replicating material almost from the exact same playbook as they used when they went after Jeremy Corbyn during his period as Labour leader from 2015-2019. Ultimately, it is because the right-wing are starting to panic that Polanski and the Greens could gain significant power by the time of the next general election. So they are already preparing the ground for a campaign against Polanski, ranging from the ridiculous to the outright sinister. The latest ‘scandal’ is his failure to pay the proper council tax on a house-boat!

Whilst there have been rumblings from the press for a while that the Green Party are beginning to accept ‘antisemites’, due to Polanski’s criticisms of Israel and its genocide in Gaza, the door was burst wide open when Polanski retweeted someone who criticised the  heavy-handed police approach in taking a man who had targetted and attacked Jews in Golders Green, north London. It has been reported that the attacker was mentally unwell, which was also used as criticism in the post that Polanski retweeted.

The press were already on the march, alongside right-wing Labour MPs calling Polanski an antisemite and suggesting that “he was unfit for office”. The attacks on him escalated further when the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, wrote a letter to Polanski suggesting that he was attempting to “undermine the police” by retweeting the photo.

Polanski did apologise for that retweet, but has since rightly come out to criticiseRowley for “interfering with the local elections” by attempting to whip up a negative perception of Polanski and the Greens before the elections had even taken place. Not that it had much effect on the Green vote, which surged, largely at Labour’s expense.

The hypocrisy of Trevor Phillps

The press and media have since been on a relentless campaign to label Polanski as antisemitic, claiming that he does not care about the Jewish community and that he should resign as leader. In a woeful interview on Sky News, presenter Trevor Phillips attempted a hit job on Polanski. Phillips presented a series of hypotheticals that no one would reasonably be able to answer, alongside constant aggressive interruption.

Even when Polanski attempted to bring up the conflation between antisemitism and Zionism – an association encouraged by Israeli leader, Benjamin Netanyahu – Phillips was condescending towards him and dismissed his argument, even though Polanski’s argument is central to much of the discussion and mislabelling of antisemitism that we see today.

Phillips will not admit his bias when it comes to this issue, but during the 2019 general election he was one of the public figures who wrote a letter to The Guardian claiming that he would refuse to vote for Corbyn on the grounds of the latter’s alleged antisemitism. The following year, however, Phillips himself was suspended from the Labour Party for making racist tropes about Muslims, saying that he was worried about the number of Pakistani Muslim men sexually abusing children, and criticising Muslims for not wearing poppies on Remembrance Day.

That suspension was handed down by the then Labour General Secretary Jennie Formby, an ally of Corbyn, but when Keir Starmer and the right-wing regained power in the party they reinstated Phillips’ membership.

Racist Enablers

Immediately after that interview, a panel of guests discussed various actions being taken on antisemitism. The panel involved former General Secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, Mick Lynch, The Times columnist Melanie Phillips, (more on which below) and former special adviser to the Liberal Democrats, Polly Mackenzie.

The discussion centred around the banning of pro-Palestinian marches. Lynch gave a fairly reasonable response, arguing that banning these marches would not change someone’s opinion on whether they were antisemitic or not.

But Melanie Phillips argued that these protests should be banned, with comments suggesting that people are fabricating stories about atrocities by Israel in Gaza. She claimed that people were making up accusations that “Israel were killing babies in Gaza”.

She didn’t mention that the charity Save the Children estimated that 20,000 children have been killed since Israel began its assault on Gaza, one child every hour. In a report from Al Jazeera earlier this year, Israeli forces reportedly killed a Palestinian child in northern Gaza, despite the supposed “ceasefire” that came into force last October. Such reports are emerging constantly, but Melanie Phillips either does not read them, or actively ignores them in order to fuel a narrative in defence of Israel.

Because she is a staunch Islamophobe, she has written for countless right-wing newspapers, including The Spectator, where she falsely accused the president of the British Muslim Initiative, Muhammad Sawalha, of being antisemitic — an allegation for which both she and The Spectator later had to print an apology.

She has also used her platform to promote antisemitic conspiracy theories, including an article in the Daily Mail in 2007 where she used the term “cultural Marxism” to explain why she believed the UK had become so accepting of gay civil partnerships.

The term “cultural Marxism” has historically been used by the far-right. It comes from the idea that progressives and people who considered themselves Marxist, many of whom happened to be Jewish, have infiltrated institutions with causes on social justice and were manipulating children and young people in the process.

There was a campaign akin to this in Germany prior to 1933, where the Nazis used the terms “cultural Bolshevism” and “Jewish Bolshevism”, claiming that Jewish people were spreading causes (and revolutionary politics), particularly on issues related to sex, gender and identity, throughout the Weimar Republic. [There is a very good breakdown of the definition of “cultural Marxism” written by the Antisemitism Policy Trust, which you can read here.]

Melanie Phillips has also written books that spread her Islamophobic propaganda. One example is Londonistan, published in 2006, which has since been co-opted by the far-right to claim that London, and indeed the United Kingdom as a whole, has become dominated by Islamism.

It is disgraceful, given her track record, that she should be allowed on a panel discussing antisemitism. Yet Trevor Phillips makes no attempt to reveal her background, so that an unsuspecting Sky TV audience might assume she has some authority, because she is “a Times columnist”.

The Times well represented

This was the nature of the supposed “interview”, in reality a hit-job, done on Polanski by Trevor Phillips. What was not disclosed during the programme is that both Trevor and Melanie Phillips write for The Times.

We can expect a lot more of this in the future

All of this is important because, since that interview was aired, both Trevor and his namesake Melanie have used their platforms as commentators to write pieces attacking Polanski, and The Times itself has been incessantly attempting to discredit him.

Yet there was one attack that will leave Times readers questioning whether the paper is itself contributing to the rise of antisemitism. The paper printed a cartoon of Polanski kicking a police officer whilst they were tasering the Golders Green attacker. There is very little wit or satire in the drawing, qualities for which political cartoons were once respected, but when you look more closely at Polanski’s face, he has been drawn with a visibly crooked nose, what appears to be a classic antisemitic image.

Owen Jones reported in his blog Battlelines that the Green Party submitted a complaint to The Times, with a statement criticising the hypocrisy of the paper for attacking Polanski over alleged antisemitism, whilst itself producing antisemitic depictions of Jewish people in its cartoon. As the statement also noted, Polanski, who is Jewish, faces antisemitism on a daily basis and, as he stated both in the interview and elsewhere, two people have already been arrested for antisemitic actions directed against him.

Has The Times retracted the cartoon and apologised to Polanski? Have both of the Phillipses — who have since written columns claiming that “Jewish people must be protected” — criticised the newspaper for its racist stereotyping in the depiction of Jewish people? The answer to both questions is a resounding NO.

Instead, The Times has simply moved on to attacking Polanski in increasingly ridiculous ways, including reports that the British Red Cross denied that Polanski was a spokesperson for them, although Polanski said as much during his leadership campaign. Polanski has since clarified that he misspoke when describing himself as a “spokesperson”, but made it clear that he had campaigned and carried out work for that organisation.

Does any of this actually matter? Of course it does not. But much like during Corbyn’s time in Labour, the press will stop at nothing to discredit the left in the most shallow and incredulous ways possible and nowadays, the Green Party is a part of the left, infused not only with Polanski’s radicalism, but with the support of many former Labour members.

I will always remember the run-up to the 2017 general election, when the Daily Mailran a 13-page attack on Jeremy Corbyn and Labour, repeatedly describing him as a “terrorist” throughout much of the coverage. The reality, both then and now, is that the right are becoming increasingly worried about the prospect of the Greens gaining significant power.

Polanski has seen a surge in popularity because of his shift towards more left-wing ideas and policies, and that terrifies the establishment, which is why attacks are now being directed against him.

Polanski’s Test

But these predictable attacks by the pro-capitalist media, most of it owned by billionaires, there are serious issues that Polanski needs to address. He will need to learn from the mistakes of Jeremy Corbyn and not bend to the pressure of the media. The media, weakness will only invite more attacks. Polanski needs to take the fight directly to the press and the establishment and for him it will be a real test, one of many he will face before the next general election.

This is an important issue because it may have had some effect, notably within the ‘old guard’ of the Green Party, those who dominated the party before its new leader was elected and before its surge of mostly radical members. Former leader, Caroline Lucas, for example, who is nowhere near as radical as Polanski, has criticised the supposed antisemitism within the party. We have seen this before, during the Corbyn period. Polanski should push back against such accusations because ultimately they only seek to undermine him.

In my opinion, Polanski missed a trick when criticising the Metropolitan Police over their handling of the Golders Green attack, and it is a scandal that no newspaper appears to have done its due diligence in scrutinising the response of the Met when the attack took place.

According to a report in the Financial Times, the attacker, Essa Suleiman, had apparently assaulted another man earlier that same day. Scotland Yard carried out searches but were unable to find him. Also, he had reportedly been referred to Prevent six years earlier as a potential danger, but, as reported by The Guardian, the case was closed within six weeks because authorities concluded that he was not dangerous.

In the footage of the arrest the police response does appear to be unnecessarily aggressive and violent. But that should not have been where the criticism ended. Instead, some focus should have been on why the police were involved in such a confrontation in the first place, when there had been multiple opportunities to stop this man before the attack ever happened.

We can expect a crescendo of criticism directed at Polanski in the coming months. Even the Guardian has been splashing Polanski “scandals” across its pages. We have been here before with Jeremy Corbyn, and we will continue to see these kinds of smears whenever a left-wing alternative to the Conservatives, Reform UK, or the right of Labour begins to emerge.

So far, the Green Party and Polanski have been better than Corbyn at levelling criticism against establishment figures like Sir Mark Rowley, The Times and when there have been smear attempts. But Polanski must also ensure that he is not undermined from within the Greens themselves. The Greens and Polanski must hold their nerve and when there are attacks on them – and there will be – they need to bring the discussion back to policy, the area where the establishment and the right-wing have nothing to offer. 

Opinion: If Starmer gets his way, Reform - not the Greens - will be his legacy

If Starmer gets his way, Reform - not the Greens - will be his legacy

The question for Polanski, as for Corbyn before him, is whether the spear of an insurgent politics can pierce the billionaires' defences

Johnathan Cook May 12, 2026

[First published by Middle East Eye]

There are two conclusions to be drawn from last week’s momentous local elections in Britain.

The first, and most obvious, is that two-party politics in the UK is now finished. After a century of being at the centre of British political life, Labour’s time is over. It is a spent force, whoever leads it.

Voters now understand that the party is too utterly captured by Big Business to ever again serve as a meaningful counterweight to the right – or as a vehicle for progressive, anti-austerity politics.

In this election, Britain’s decades-long Tweedledum and Tweedledee politics was finally unmasked as a charade.

The electorate is no longer having it.

Previous Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, elected by members a decade ago, was the last-gasp effort to make the party relevant to ordinary people. But the rightwing faction that dominates the parliamentary party – and the billionaire donors and media who stand with it – soon demonstrated who had the upper hand.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer had to dissemble, pretending to be the Corbyn continuity candidate, to win over the membership. But once installed as leader, he rode to power on the coattails of the billionaires.

It will be the same hidden hand, belonging to the same Epstein class, that nudges Starmer’s successor to the forefront in the coming months.

But Labour, offering only a game of catch-up with the right, is doomed electorally.

Pretender to the throne

The second lesson is that Labour is determined, before it sinks into terminal irrelevance, to pave the way for a far-right, Reform-led government under Nigel Farage.

It would be too charitable to suggest that this will be an unintended consequence of Starmer’s dismal, dishonest performance as prime minister.

In a real sense, Starmer’s political trajectory has done more than simply discredit the status-quo politics championed by modern Labour. It has also, by implication, painted Reform as the sole legitimate pretender to the throne.

Starmer and the Labour right did not just carry out a comprehensive, Stalin-esque purge of the progressive left after Corbyn’s ousting. They did not just drive that same Labour left into the embrace of the once-marginal Green Party, sending the latter’s popularity soaring.

No, they chose to launch the same dirty-tricks campaign against the Greens, centred on a supposed “antisemitism crisis”, which they earlier weaponised against the Corbyn left.

In doing so, the Labour right, alongside the British establishment and the state and billionaire-owned media, revealed their true colours: with two-party politics over, they would much prefer the baton be passed to the far-right than the progressive left.

That real-world conspiracy, out in the open, propelled Reform to its massive haul of seats in councils across England, and to its surprise successes in the Welsh and Scottish parliaments.

It also hampered the Greens, as we shall see, by tainting their political brand.

Insurgency politics

Last week’s results proved there is a craving for meaningful change – and the two traditional parties, Labour and the Conservatives, are structurally incapable of delivering it. Each is captured by the billionaire class.

The only game in town now is insurgency politics. That is what Reform claims to be offering, as do the Greens. Both cleaned up in disillusioned Labour and Tory heartlands.

But this is not really a fight between two competing insurgencies. Farage and Reform are cosplaying insurgency politics.

Like President Donald Trump in the United States, they are a wing of the billionaire class pretending to be taking the billionaires on. They are another captured party, another safe pair of hands for the super-rich.

With the Tories and Labour structurally incapable of fixing a system purpose-built to siphon off public wealth into the private coffers of the billionaires, Reform has come up with a crowd-pleasing solution.

Farage isn’t promising to tackle a corrupt political system that keeps the super-rich in power. No, his function is to shift attention away from the billionaires’ malign role and direct it instead towards immigrants and Muslims.

Farage knows where his bread is buttered. And so should the rest of us, given the revelation that the butter was thickly plastered on – to the tune of £5 million – by an expat cryptocurrency trader living in Thailand.

Reform has an endless number of such skeletons in its closet. Among the latest to be exposed was a candidate elected last week to Sunderland council, who among his recent grossly racist and sexist social media posts, suggested of the local Nigerian population that the city should “melt them all down and fill in the pot holes”.

Chorus of concern

Racism is endemic to Reform. It’s central to its platform. Immigrants – always “illegal” – are viewed exclusively as a problem that must be dealt with firmly. Islam and Muslims, in Reform’s view, need to be discussed as a threat to “the British way of life” and western “civilisational values”.

But note this: racism is not central to the media discourse about Reform. However often the profound racism of its members and candidates is exposed, none of it sticks to the party itself. None of it stains the moral character of Farage as leader.

Contrast that with the treatment of the Greens since their new leader, Zack Polanski, took the party from irrelevance a year ago to membership numbers of 230,000 – larger than the Conservatives, and possibly even than Labour by this point.

Polanski is the country’s only Jewish party leader. But he spent much of the local election campaign defending himself and his party from the constant accusation that the Greens were institutionally antisemitic. In this extraordinarily twisted political climate, even Reform felt confident about smearing the Greens as racist.

The media rushed to add every incident, however small or unrepresentative, to a ledger suggesting that there was something unhealthy, even sinister, about the Greens under Polanski. At every opportunity, the media chorus of concern that antisemitism is once again surging – as it supposedly did under Corbyn – was laid at the Greens’ door.

In the ultimate paradox, the insinuation that the Green Party was rife with Jew hatred authorised a wave of grossly antisemitic caricatures of Polanski himself – in the Telegraph, Times, Mail and Sun – that would not have looked out of place in the Nazi publication Der Sturmer.

In turn, claims by the establishment that Iran is ultimately guiding this wave of antisemitism subtly imply that the Greens are really acting in the service of a foreign enemy. The subtext – levelled against Britain’s only Jewish leader, remember – is that Polanski’s party is unpatriotic, that it is serving another master.

In the topsy-turvy, manufactured political and media consensus, racism does not define the racist platform of Reform. But it does define the anti-racist platform of the Greens.

Firing squad

There is a reason that the Greens’ current moment under Polanski feels so familiar – like a rerun of the hounding of Corbyn through 2017 and 2018. Because that is exactly what it is.

Now, as then, an insurgent leftwing party, led by a popular figure, is disrupting the cosy ping-pong politics of the two main, establishment-serving parties.

Now, as then, the left insurgency appears to be growing into something bigger than simply a political party. It is tapping into a wider mood that will not be satisfied with tinkering. It demands wholesale change.

Now, as then, the insurgency is emphasising how the billionaire class has captured and corrupted the political system, and how it maintains “mainstream” narrative control through its ownership of the establishment media.

Now, as then, the insurgency is challenging the lifeblood of Britain’s ruling class: its permanent “rip-off” austerity politics at home, and permanent warmongering politics abroad.

Now, as then, the establishment is playing dirty: it studiously avoids addressing the political issues raised by the insurgents, because it knows it would lose such debates. Instead, it focuses on staining the moral character of the insurgent leader.

And finally, now as then, it has learned that the best way to smear the insurgents, and drain energy and political momentum from the movement, is by tarring them as antisemites.

If the Greens were forced to run the gauntlet during this local election campaign, just wait for the firing squad they will face when the national elections arrive in a few years’ time.

The British establishment is once again cornering the insurgent, anti-racist left with a double-bind ultimatum. It must hollow out its moral core by jettisoning its opposition to apartheid, genocide, wars of aggression, the military-industrial complex, and the war machine’s interminable assaults on the environment – or be condemned as Jew haters.

As became clear through these latest elections, the Greens are going to face relentless hounding until they agree to ditch Polanski. They will be required to find a “moderate” leader ready to cosy up to Big Business – and make their party as politically superfluous as Labour has become under Starmer.

Caught in quicksand

Anyone who imagined that Polanski would be spared Corbyn’s fate because he is Jewish was not paying close attention during the pile-on a decade ago.

The British media and political classes successfully obscured what they were up to then, during what they characterised as a Labour “antisemitism crisis“. The reality was that a disproportionate number of Corbyn’s supporters who were suspended and expelled by the party bureaucracy as antisemites were, in fact, Jews.

That was the reason the left spoke at the time of antisemitism being weaponised – an observation that itself became grounds for expulsion from the party.

Non-Jewish politicians – including prominent rightwing factionalists in Labour – as well as non-Jewish media commentators were among those rushing to label Corbyn-supporting Jews as “self-hating” or “the wrong sortof Jews”.

Polanski now finds himself in exactly the same kind of political quicksand. The more he fights against his smearing, the more smearing he faces, as evidenced by the media’s antisemitic caricatures of him.

Note another feature of this process. Jewish Voice for Labour, the main group of Jews inside Labour who backed Corbyn, were – like the Jews who march against the Gaza genocide – erased from the media’s narrative about a supposedly “antisemitic left“.

They had to be, because their very existence made nonsense of establishment claims that it is the anti-racist left, not the racist right, that poses a threat to Jews.

Polanski’s Jewishness, as he has pointed out, is being carefully erased from coverage too. It has to be if the vilification campaign is to land.

Trading in tropes

But there is a further ominous development at work. The British ruling class is not just exploiting what it describes as a rise in antisemitism; it is stoking it for its own political survival.

Paradoxically, it is the very people casting themselves as the protectors of the Jewish community who are trading in the antisemitic tropes they accuse others of.

It is Starmer, Farage, Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch, and Metropolitan police chief Sir Mark Rowley who are responsible for fuelling the kind of antisemitism they claim to be tackling.

The growing clamour to crack down on the marches against Israeli crimes in Gaza and southern Lebanon – or even ban them – depends on an assumption that any vocal opposition to genocide equates to a racist threat to Jews.

That, in turn, depends on a perverse premise: that all Jews support Israel; that the two are inseparable. By extension, it implies that any Jew who calls out these crimes, such as Polanski, is an impostor.

The conflation between Israel and Jews is clearly in breach of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism – a definition that British politicians extol, while cynically wielding it to malign and crush the left.

Consider the event that served as the starting gun for the latest outpouring of concern about antisemitism, and the opportunity to pile on Polanski: the stabbing of two Jews in Golders Green late last month. Though you would not know it from most of the media coverage, or even statements issued by police, the accused perpetrator also attacked a Muslim man.

The political and media classes sought to downplay the attack on the Muslim man, because it disrupted a more convenient, and simplistic, narrative they are determined to advance.

Discourse trap

The argument being pressed into service by the establishment – blaming pro-Palestine marches for a rise in antisemitism – is clearly ridiculous.

Had no pro-Palestine marches taken place over the past 30 months, images of children torn to pieces by US-supplied Israeli bombs would still be on our feeds. There would still have been news of Israel levelling Gaza’s hospitals, and starving its population month after month. Palestinians taken hostage by Israel, as well as their whistleblowing Israeli captors, would still have revealed that the Israeli army trained dogs to rape them.

Anyone who blames Jews for the Gaza genocide, or for the ethnic cleansing of southern Lebanon, isn’t doing so because of the London marches. At the protests, the distinction is always clear, and indicated by the visible participation of a significant Jewish bloc.

Robert Reich: The Green Party is a Trump Front Group.

 

Reich with Bill Clinton

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
GED/HEO
9-13-23

Here we go again. A Third Party Candidate will help Trump win says Robert Reich in his column in the US Guardian earlier this week. Reich is one of the former Democratic Party machine operatives that brought us NAFTA as former Labor Secretary under Clinton. Bernie Sanders, the forever socialist who has his entire life caucused with the Democrats agrees. Things will be terrible if we don't support the war Biden. For a socialist, he doesn't have much faith in the US working class.

Biden, the Senator from Du Pont, the fella who just ensured legislation was passed overnight that denied workers the right to strike (isn't that sacred for Democrats?) and forced them to accept a contract they already rejected, will save our Democracy apparently.

In over 50 years in this country I have heard this argument before. "Whether they intend to be or not, third-party groups such as No Labels and the Green party are in effect front groups for Trump in 2024." says Reich adding  that, "The reason they’re all front groups for Donald Trump is that the upcoming 2024 election is likely to be nail-bitingly close even as a two-way race between Trump and Biden."

I don't know anything about the No Labels party other than it sounds silly and whatever weaknesses the Green Party may have, it certainly is not a front for Trump and it's insulting to even suggest it. And these elections are always nail bitingly close. The two Wall Street parties divide the electorate up in to red states and blue where each have the winning game in the one or the other, so campaigning there becomes superfluous. Then they fight over a couple of states that will decide the outcome. 

In 1980 (40 years ago) I remember being told we were facing World War Three if we didn't vote for Jimmy Carter, the guy who began the deregulation binge that Reagan, his opponent in 1980, continued. I was literally told this, and the liberals gasped with relief when Mitterrand won in France and went backwards after that. If we didn't vote for Mondale in 1984 Reagan would win a second term and it would be a catastrophe. Well, Reagan got his two terms and in 1988 the fear was that if George Bush senior, the former VP under Reagan won, we'd suffer if we don't vote for Dukakis. Bush won of course and the point is, we suffer no matter which of the two Wall Street parties is in power. That's why it's called voting for the lesser of the two evils.

All during this period, strikes in states or cities where Democrats dominated were crushed or blocked by them.  Perpich the Democratic Governor in Minnesota was no friend of the Hormel workers, members of Local P9 of the UFCW and Wilson Goode (of Move fame) threatened to fire sanitation workers that didn't return to work in their strike in 1986, this was one year after my local Afscme 444 struck. There were huge strikes in the 1980's as sections of organized labor moved in to struggle against the Reagan offensive. The British Miners strike was facing the same forces against Reagan's co-thinker Thatcher. These strikes like the one at Hormel were defeated primarily through a combination of the bosses and the trade union hierarchy.

Any time there is a party or candidate on the ballot that isn't a Democrat, accusations of this kind occur. A vote for the Green Party for example is a vote for the Republican. It is a vote for Bush, or a vote for Trump. But isn't this undemocratic? Surely a person has the right to vote for whichever party or candidate they feel represents their interests. A Green Party voter for example could just as easily argue that if all those that vote Democratic Voted Green it would be a greater deterrent to the right than voting Democrat and losing. As it is, no matter who wins, the Wall Street candidate gets in. 

This political wasteland, the lack of any serious alternative to the two big business parties, is why millions of Americans simply don't bother to vote at all. Close to 100 million opted out in the 2016 national election.

Why would people bother to vote? Very little changes when it comes down to it. This similarity between the material gains, or lack of them between the two parties, is one of the reasons social issues tend to dominate. Abortion rights, religion, prayer in schools, guns or no guns, sexual identity, all these issues take center stage as people line up on one side or the other as on the basics------ jobs, shelter, transportation, health care, housing, public services, whether one can feed the kids or pay the rent-----crucial social issues, will pretty much remain the same or get worse.

Sanders: The loyal Democrat

Bernie Sanders is calling for a vote for Joe Biden to avert catastrophe and fascism despite Biden's squashing of workers' democratic right to strike. On the other hand he's calling on the US population to support the auto workers if they go out on strike. No warning that Biden would do the same to the auto workers that he did to their class brothers and sisters on the railways. We know he would as this industry is so important to the US economy and profits. The Biden Administration is in the thick of all the major labor disputes at the moment, including the West Coast dock workers and the entertainment industry, all in attempt to soften any militancy that might arise out of prolonged talks. Despite hundreds of thousands of unionized workers on strike or in disputes at the moment, we hear nothing. Another opportunity knocks here. But profits must not be harmed.

Sanders had his chance, and I have to say, I wish he would just sail off in to the sunset. He played a positive role there for a minute. He had an opportunity to break from the Democrats and quite possibly take some of the more left wing types like Ilhan Omar, and others with him. It's hard to say, but a left alternative could have been born. He let down thousands of youth and disgruntled voters who thought he would offer something different. 

Sanders never mentions that we are in this mess because workers have no political party. As Tony Mazzochi used to say in the 1980's, the bosses have two parties and we have not one. At very least Sanders could raise this issue, that there is no way forward through the Democratic Party even as he calls for a vote for it. It would give workers food for thought. The era of the domination of these two parties over US political life is coming to a calamitous end and there's no mention of any other way out.

US society is in social, political and economic crisis. The two most powerful capitalist parties in the world offer no choice to the US working class (and the world) other than two aging behemoths of a dying era; one a degenerate serial sexual predator. Both parties cannot appeal to the millions of disgruntled workers that have abandoned the political process because US capitalism has nothing to offer them. Better let sleeping dogs lie.

In this situation, an authoritarian, a "strongman", a degenerate like Trump  can appear the best bet, can be seen as the alternative to the old status quo. He has already proved this to be the case. It's a dangerous situation and what do do about Trump is posing a problem for the US ruling class. 

This crisis, a result of the unraveling of capitalism on a global scale, is what it is due to another failing and that is the leadership of organized labor that I have referred to as The Dogs That Don't Bark. On all issues of importance they defer to their friends in  the Democratic Party; anything but taking the helm themselves. With the resources at their disposal they could offer a real alternative to the status quo but that thought terrifies them; where would it lead? Chaos is their answer to that question.  

Organized labor has given billions over the decades to the Democratic Party machine and supplied labor power as well. This stifling bureaucracy and the thousands of full time staff it employs to ensure its concessionary policies are maintained, bears much of the blame for the present situation including the rise of Trump.

Sanders, even while supporting Biden himself,  could point to this failing and urge the rank and file of organized labor to confront this leadership and its pro-market policies and their failure to build a political alternative despite having the resources to do so.

Sanders is a prisoner of his own consciousness, his view of the world. Like the trade union hierarchy and most critics of the market, they can only go so far and wish for the good old days of the Post War Boom that laid the material groundwork for the "American Dream" that was never a dream for millions of US workers. They plead with the bosses to be less aggressive. They argue for a fair and egalitarian capitalism where profits should be equally shared with the workers that create them. It's just greed in the abstract and character flaws that are the problem  and appeals are made to their "better" nature. Thank you Engels for Socialism Utopian and Scientific.

But capitalism isn't a "fair" system. Like any class society, it is based on exploitation. There's nothing wrong with fighting for reforms, in my view it is how we learn and draw conclusions about society and how it works. But understanding that social reforms, especially in this era, are unlikely and at the best very temporary, is the key.  For workers, demanding what we need to live a decent life, not what politicians and the "experts" in academia think are realistic is all that matters. We know what we need.

Relying on our own strength and the unity of the working class in the economic struggles and the political arena as the means to achieve these goals is crucial if we want to move forward.

But the road to a democratic socialist world, a world federation of democratic socialist states is a very short one these days and time is short also as environmental catastrophe, and possible nuclear disaster are realities we can't ignore. Take too many steps and we are over the edge of the abyss. 

I am convinced the US working class will step forward and enter the fray in a major way, the crisis of capitalism will demand it, so in that way I am optimistic. But there are no guarantees in this world and, either way, the road ahead is going to be a rocky one.

Reasons Why the Green Party Will NOT Lead the Political Revolution

Jason O'Neal

Green Party Activist and former NTEU Steward

Will the Greens become another "bourgeoisie" party?

Anyone following the rising tide of organized mass protest movements in the United States will attest that the issues can at times become blurred and confusing.  For many Americans, life is a daily struggle to survive. 
Overwhelmed by a multitude of outlets for entertainment few Americans follow the daily news.  Corporate media companies run 24-hours a day with “breaking news” about Russia’s involvement in our elections or the latest Twitter rant by the degenerate occupying the White House.  And we must not forget the weekly shake-ups in the circus cabinet of the President.  With such a spectacle is it any wonder why so many Americans do not understand the importance of the many marches for better wages, women’s rights, healthcare, science, the environment, and police brutality on people of color? 

That said, however, the plight of millions of Americans is excluded from the conversation or even participation in the discussions provided by those channels covering these events.  Almost always depicted as a war between Democrats and Republicans, interpretations of the increased protest actions are biased to force voters to choose between one or the other.  A third option, like the Green Party, is always absent from the discussion.  Because of this, millions of Americans have practically given up on politics and who could blame them?  Elections have given them nothing more than a diminishing standard of living over the last fifty years.  As their children grew up, they watched both parents go to work.  When the factories were shut down and their jobs shipped overseas or replaced by automation, their savings accounts or retirement pensions were raided and their credit card bills piled up.  Living hand to mouth every month, it is not uncommon for some families to have adult children who still live at home while working part-time to pay off their student loans.  And to think that those are the lucky ones.

Aside from the fact that the Trump presidency has ushered in a new fervor to march in the streets, many movements remain splintered or under direct control of the liberal wing of the current national government.  This includes many labor union leaders and could possibly explain why there has been very little mentioned other than statements which are anti-Trump or against his GOP allies.  Unless, of course, one considers the union leaders from the building trades who gleefully rubbed shoulders with the former reality television character now sitting in the Oval Office.  But, hasn’t this always been the case in the United States?  In absence of a Labor Party, which the Green Party is far from being, workers are cornered into supporting the lesser evil liberals who help broker deals with big business and conservatives.

This is the story of American democracy which has existed for more than one hundred and fifty years under the control of the two political cartels of economic power.   At the same moment in time when the most productive generation limps into retirement and social security, millions of Americans are underemployed or without work.  Wall Street, however, is busier than ever as the Dow Jones Industrial Average shattered past 22,000 this week.  An unprecedented level even for the past twenty-five years of globalization.  With no jobs to go to and failing neighborhood schools, crime and poverty cripple urban centers across America.  And, what was once depicted as a problem solely in the inner-city ghettos, gang violence and drug addiction now exist in rural communities throughout the Midwest and the South.  Wait until those problems hit the suburbs. 

Meanwhile, politics and the media have Americans divided along lines of gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, and religious zealotry.  These problems did not just arrive out of nowhere, but it takes a politically conscious person to understand their complexity.  This is where class becomes a crucial lens for interpretation and this is exactly why the Green Party will fail in its endeavor to become the newest political party of the people. 

With so many voters enamored by Bernie Sanders’ campaign rhetoric they had nowhere to turn when he endorsed Hillary Clinton as the Democratic Party nominee.  Some capitulated and returned to the herd in fear of Trump in the White House while others happily cast a vote for “the Donald.”  Those who “#DemExit”-ed were dispersed to write-in campaigns or voting for third party candidates who collected approximately 4.5 percent of the total 137 million votes cast.  That is less than 6 million votes.  The Green Party’s nominee, Jill Stein, received only 1.5 million.  Hardly a dent in the 65.8 million votes for Clinton or the 62.9 million given to Trump, and a poor showing even for a reform party.  To move forward, the Green Party must address this failure and purge the progressives and liberal elements from its leadership if it ever hopes to become a legitimate revolutionary party of the working class.

Before the keyboards are set ablaze with the flurry of fury from the reactionaries within the Green Party, I would like to elaborate on my position.  For the record, I am a registered Green Party member in the state of California.  I have been an active member of the Green Party since 2013 and before that I volunteered and worked within the Democratic Party of San Diego for about six years.  After moving to the Bay Area, I attended meetings with the Alameda County Green Party, as well as the Oakland Greens, and I was also a founding member of the UC Berkeley Green Party student organization.  It’s because of my experience within the party, and my interpretation of political theory and social movements, that I say the Green Party will not be leading a revolution anytime soon, if ever. 

To begin, this position must be situated within our current social crisis, both political and economic.  In the United States and other industrialized nations around the world economics is determined by those groups who control the political apparatus of the government.  This means Democrats and Republicans argue over the best way to grow the economy and spend money, usually in favor of the same people.  Wall Street banks, technology companies, pharmaceutical giants, industrial food producers, and big insurance companies spend money on candidates from both major parties.  Globalization, which has been pushed by leaders in both parties, is the latest endeavor for a corporate dominated means of production whose existence relies on establishing new markets for exporting surplus goods in exchange for cheap labor, raw materials, and resources.  Today, the unfettered capital of big business, which fueled the rapid economic expansion of the United States during the two decades following World War II, is no longer bound to remain at home.  Unlike the early years of the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union competed for access to markets in developing nations, corporate investment in national infrastructure and social services through taxation is practically nonexistent. 

This is the reality in which we live.  Any attempts to reverse course on this path of development have been met with sharp rebuke from legislatures and courts across this nation.  It is also important to understand that the quality of life enjoyed by middle class workers who lived during the 1950s and 1960s will more than likely never return to the shores of this country so long as the status quo is maintained.  To believe a presidential candidate can restore “greatness” to a nation where millions of Americans are in a downward economic slide could be fatal for a so-called democratic society obsessed with continuous growth and consumption. 

The policies which created today’s conditions were put in place decades ago by presidents along with men and women in Congress from both political parties.  To make matters worse, justices sitting on the Supreme Court have sided with them and their high dollar campaign contributors by cementing in place the influence of corporate money and power within our society.  As the mass media follows script keeping reporters and commentators focused on the identity group differences between the two parties, the rusty gears of the economy continue to grind out profits for a few at the expense of the many.  These days the only choices Americans have are centered around what brand names to buy and where one chooses to spend their money.  Bridled by ignorance, and perhaps even apathy, those Americans fortunate enough to have a job now work harder and longer for less money while all of us get a minimal return from services and benefits paid for by our tax dollars.

To expand on this downward spiral of economic and financial insecurity for the American working class one needs only to remember the past and the lives of our parents.  For Americans born during the two decades after World War II, today may appear to be a bad dream.  A retiree today remembers a time when a high school graduate could get a job at a factory which paid enough money to buy a home and put food on the table for their family.  They had a car, took vacations, invested in retirement and savings, and some paid for their children to go to college if it wasn’t already completely free.  As war raged on in the developing nations of the world and U.S. troops were deployed to protect political allies in foreign markets, tax cuts for wealthy corporations began to trickle down at home. 

By the 1970s both parents were in the workforce to maintain the same standard of living provided by a single earner just ten years earlier.  Shocks to oil markets and currency manipulation brought unemployment and interest rates higher.  In response, America began deindustrializing as factory jobs relocated overseas.  Usually, to countries were American bombs were dropped just a few years before.  Those producers who remained began to implement automation in their manufacturing plants and on assembly lines.  Blaming the loss of their economic livelihood on the advancement of rights for women and people of color, many working-class Americans saw an opportunity to move against “socialist” programs of big government.  Unfortunately for them, their jobs did not return. 

The 1980s saw more tax cuts for the wealthy.  Households where both parents were working could no longer afford to invest in retirement or savings as Cold War military spending ballooned the federal budget.  Arming religious fundamentalists and right-wing dictators with modern weaponry to fight communism was the idea at the time.  However successful or flawed that strategy may have been, it clearly had negative effects on the domestic economy and has made an impact on American credibility worldwide ever since. 

Following the fall of the Soviet Union, the 1990s ushered in NAFTA and the dot.com speculation bubble to drive the economy as Americans were buying goods and services on credit debt.  After more tax cuts, and a restructuring of welfare, the new millennium witnessed an increase in global commerce and military campaigns in the oil producing regions of the world.  More deregulation of banks allowed financiers to craft multiple schemes to push consumers into home ownership and the bad loans issued nearly collapsed the global economy in 2008.  Households across America were barely getting by with both parents working as billionaire bankers received a taxpayer-funded bailout of several trillion dollars.  Usually renting a home and financing a car, there was no money left over for savings or retirement.  Company pensions were replaced by stock shares, IRAs, and a 401k and many college educated children lived at home to help pay bills.  Not much has changed for the better.  After a dismal economic recovery, and facing the next global financial meltdown, many families will have nowhere to go except to join the millions of Americans already living in the streets.  Ultimately, that is where a revolution will begin—millions of organized protesters marching in the streets.   

The primary reason that the Green Party will most likely fail in its endeavor to become the opposition party to lead this revolution is because it has no class identity.  When the Green Party started during the early 1990s, it was viewed as a left-wing party preoccupied with the environment.  Over the years it became a home for many disenfranchised voters, former democrats, environmentalists, sectarian left groups, anarchists, hippies, and conspiracy theorists.  Aside from having some members who claim to be actively involved in their local unions, the Green Party has no real connections to the everyday struggle of working class Americans.  It has yet to grow into a political option for the rank and file organized and unorganized worker. 

Politically, the Green Party has been a non-factor on the national scene.  While winning a few hundred elections at the local and county level, however, none of the fifty state legislatures throughout the U.S. have Green Party representation.  With no true political base to produce leaders organically the Green Party is tied to a strategy of depending on presidential campaigns every four years to increase membership.  This opens the door for opportunists to promote their cults of personality while ignoring the essential step of organizing workers and communities around real problems with concrete demands.  Could this be by design and orchestrated by those who benefit financially from non-profits tied to the Green Party?

During the 2000 Presidential Election won by George W. Bush, the Green Party candidate, Ralph Nader, was called a “spoiler” for taking votes away from Democrat Al Gore.  Never mind those Democrats who voted for Bush, or any of the other candidates who were on the ballot, particularly in Florida.  Perhaps this played a factor in the 2004 Presidential Election when nominee David Cobb and the Green Party chose not to campaign in swing states where voters might choose other than Democrat or Republican.  A lackluster election in 2008 with former Democratic Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and back-to-back runs for Jill Stein in 2012 and 2016 have failed to generate the necessary momentum to surpass the popularity of Nader from nearly two decades ago.  An opposition party must continue to grow in popularity or it will become a meaningless voice in the boneyard of failed social movements which have fizzled out over past election cycles.  In some ways, the Green Party may be akin to the Democratic Party in this regard as it becomes a hospice for social movements on life support.    

During the last election in 2016, Stein received between 1.06-1.09 percent of the total votes cast.  It is important to remember that this election was a contest between the two least popular candidates in recent history representing the two major parties of big business and nearly half of eligible voters in America stayed home.  The Green Party finished fourth behind the Libertarians who ran a candidate, Gary Johnson, who had no clue where Aleppo, Syria was even located.  He received nearly three times as many votes as Jill Stein, but to listen to the likes of Cobb and others within the national leadership of the Green Party you wouldn’t know it.  They have been too busy touting that one percent of the vote as a victory which is a ridiculous position to take.  The Green Party must discuss why the election went so poorly and it can’t rely on the outdated excuses of a “media blackout.”  Party leaders appear to be content with using the same playbook from the Nader years and this will not help build a revolutionary party.      

The second reason it is unlikely to have a Green Revolution is the party leadership is controlled by a predominantly white, upper middle-class membership.  Sectarian left organizations have infiltrated the party in hopes of recruiting members to “build the vanguard” and they are countered by environmentally conscious business owners, landlords, and professionals.  Too often Green Parties, especially in California, remain detached from the rank and file labor unions and community organizations fighting for qualitative change on the ground and in the workplace.  The Green Party remains irrelevant in the lives of the very people who could build a strong and vibrant social movement.  Until the Green Party recognizes this disconnect and breaks away from the opportunists from the dysfunctional socialist elements, the academics who fail to acknowledge the role of workers, and the petit bourgeoisie (both white and non-white) who control the party purse strings, it will remain a minor blip on the political radar of American politics.  

Lastly, two additional failures of the Greens are its inability to generate revenue outside of donations during presidential campaigns and the consensus voting method.  If the party is to remain free of corporate influence, which also includes the corrupt ideology of the labor leadership, it must develop a sustainable way to collect dues from members.  This is for two reasons.  First, without a viable campaign war chest only candidates with access to money will be able to run for office in costly elections.  And, secondly, these candidates can remain unaccountable to party members and run on their own platform and agenda.  This was the case in 2016 when Jill Stein made few attempts to identify the Green Party as an “eco”-socialist party, a platform plank adopted at the nominating convention in Houston.  Perhaps, too busy appealing to former Bernie Sanders supporters, Stein missed an opportunity to stand as the lone voice against the environmental ravages of the planet promoted by the free-market economic policies of the other three candidates. 

This lack of accountability to membership leads to the structure of the internal life of the party.  Consensus may be the most ideal way to make decisions for groups, however, a political party cannot function in this way and remain democratic.  Too many times, a minority position holds up motions and elections on party issues because they are not completely satisfied.  A democratic organization should listen to all positions, including the least popular, and a majority vote should govern the decisions of the group.  If any member feels aggrieved or slighted they may continue to voice their opposition and build a coalition to support them.  Allowing a minority group to determine the agenda of the party is not democratic and can lead to a seizure of power which resembles the despotic rule of tyrants.  Steering committee members and delegates for the past fifteen years will know what I am referring to here. 

There have been countless arguments through social media and articles posted by Counterpunch and The Black Agenda Report highlighting the inner turmoil as the Green Party struggles to establish its class identity.  Green Party delegates are accusing one another of racism, sexism, and even assault as various factions jockey for power.  To Jill Stein’s credit, she has continued appearances at townhalls and media studios.  However, her campaign’s decisions to not release funds to the party and the subsequent challenge of the election results have the Green Party divided.  All of this was done while accepting money from organizations tied to the Democratic Party.  Understanding that the integrity of elections is essential to democracy, and in response to mass voter registration purges, I agreed with the challenge.  But, myself and other members of Facts For Working People demanded that new elections be held to right the wrongs of election fraud by the two major parties.

By not separating ourselves from the parties of big capital the Green Party will fall into the liberal economic trap of progressivism.  The Green New Deal is a great place to start, but it means nothing without identifying capitalism, not just predatory or crony capitalism, as the root cause of our pending climate catastrophe.  Restructuring the economy to make a nicer form of capitalism will fall short of changing society and holding the reins tighter on growth, or “de-growing,” is not possible.  Capitalism will consume everything on earth to produce commodities for markets because that is its nature.  When the leadership of the Green Party fails to take such a stance it is a good indication that they want another bourgeoisie party.  Trying to move right and appeal to Berniecrats just proves it. 

Also, attending a “democracy convention” at the University of Minnesota this weekend with “progressive” Democrat Keith Ellison in attendance doesn’t sound too revolutionary.  And neither does proudly claiming to be an international party while many Green Parties in other countries are corrupted by their own political systems.  Perhaps, the Democratic Socialists of America convention in Chicago would have been a better place to start looking for a revolution.  At least the DSA is in the process of breaking away from the Democratic Party and have voted for BDS (Boycott, Divestment, & Sanctions) against Israel.  They also voted to break with the Socialist International and pursue a course for reparations.  All three are revolutionary positions in today’s political arena.

Again, I am basing these statements on my observations and interactions with members of the Green Party in California.  There are great people in the Green Party who are conscious of the need for a new political party.  I believe we all want the same things in relation to the environment and social justice, but we must also address the economic system for our party platform.  We must have the courage to speak truth to power and hold our leadership accountable to the main.  The Green Party must not remain under the influence of those with money or access to financial resources.  There are many great revolutionaries fighting within the party in Colorado, Texas, Illinois, New York, Maryland, and New Jersey to do just that.  This is by no means an attempt to discredit their work.  It is, however, the beginnings of a discussion we must have to identify the best strategy needed to raise the collective consciousness of the working class and revitalize the militant forces of labor unions and community activists.  This is an opportunity to network and build coalitions within and between communities to fight back against the onslaught from big money and the two political parties it controls.  Some may say that my position is one where it is easier to criticize than to create, or that I prefer to tear down than to build.  However, myself and many others would like to know—who approved the blueprints for this path forward?  Just exactly what are we building?  And, to whose benefit?         

It may be difficult to imagine, but less than one hundred years ago workers in the United States didn’t even have the luxury of the social safety nets we temporarily enjoy today.  With union membership near record lows, and new legislation preventing workers from organizing, we may lose these rights paid for by the blood of those workers who organized and fought before us.  Millions of workers, including women and children, had to go on strike or walk off the job to force the bosses and the government controlled by big business to concede to better wages and working conditions for less hours while earning benefits like social security and healthcare.  It wasn’t a political party that saved them, it was an organized collective of determined workers and their families who fought and changed society.  Will the Green Party become the political arm of the new movement for social change?  With its current leadership I think not, but only time will tell and the clock is ticking.