Alysse Stepanian

“The civil neoliberal gaslights, ghettoizes, boxes and erases. A Machiavellian form of political violence.” (by Alysse Stepanian)

Feeling pissed off and grateful at the same time. I know you don't want to hear this now, especially if you've been protesting in the airports all day. But let me remind you: In 2016 alone, America dropped at least 26,171 bombs on seven majority Muslim countries, six of them in the ban list, and most of them on Iraq and Syria. That's drone baby drone! And 2.5 million immigrants were deported in the last eight years:

“War is a racket” (i.e. “an illegal or dishonest scheme for obtaining money”)

If you think that wars serve some greater good, think again!!

Smedley Darlington Butler (1881-1940) was the highest-ranking U.S. Marine Corps major general, with a 33-year career that led him to become the most decorated marine in American history. Later in life he became one of the most outspoken critics of U.S. led wars. In his speech, “War is a racket”, he described his job as a gangster for capitalism, protecting Wall Street, bankers, big business, the fossil fuel industry, and other war profiteers. The longer version of his speech was later published in 1935 as a book (see Notes below). Currently the video of his speech is available online, in which he states:

I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies. In China I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents. War is a racket. It always has been. A few profit – and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can't end it by disarmament conferences. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war.

Fast forward to the present and imagine the implications of the fact that “US weapons sales more than tripled in 2011… all told the US sold 78 percent of the world’s arms in 2011”, with Gulf Arab states as its main customers.

Wars are for war profiteers. Socialist Eugene V. Debs has famously said: “Let capitalists do their own fighting and furnish their own corpses, and there will never be another war on the face of the earth” (see Notes below). The 1917 Espionage Act and 1918 Sedition Act were designed to battle anti-war and anti-capitalist movements, both of which had a chilling effect on anti-war sentiments. Those arrested under the 1918 Sedition Act include Eugene V. Debs, who spoke against the American participation in WWI. Debs ran for president from his Atlanta prison cell with a campaign pin that carried the slogan: “For President Convict No. 9653”. Years later under President Obama, the 1917 Espionage Act was used against Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden. About Manning’s arrest, the Albuquerque attorney, Hollander has stated, “We cannot prosecute people who tell us what our government is doing.”

In 2016 President Obama signed the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) into law with a $619 billion military budget and a provision that establishes a national anti-propaganda center that could suppress press freedoms.

Mark Twain is known for stating, "Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." In his anti-imperialist essay, “To the Person Sitting in Darkness”, he condemns the cruelty and brutality of the American missionary movement that to his opinion served its imperialist agendas, and he spoke against the atrocities committed around the world by the British, French, German, Russian and American capitalist governments.

Systems of oppression cannot be fought by the same set of tools and ethos of war that perpetuate them. During Obama presidency, drone strikes have killed many innocent civilians, including women and children. For decades targeted killings were condemned by the U.S. government, “characterizing them as assassinations or extrajudicial executions.” However, in early 2016 alone U.S. drone strikes targeted six countries and prepared attacks on another (see The Drone Memos).

In December 2016 Congresswoman Tulsi Gubbard (D., Hawaii), who recently returned from Syria, introduced the Stop Arming Terrorists Act, in order to stop the U.S. government from funding either directly or indirectly, either “moderate” rebels or terrorist groups. During her visit she spoke to many Syrians and came home with the message that the Syrian people “cry out for the U.S. and other countries to stop supporting those who are destroying Syria and her people.”

Trump’s presidency has left many Americans and people around the world feeling insecure and afraid for the future of our planet. Sales of George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, first published in 1949, “have increased almost 10,000 percent since the inauguration”, after the President’s Counselor, Kellyanne Conway’s statement about the administration’s “alternative facts.” In Orwell’s novel, the slogans “WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH” were inscribed on the building structure of the Ministry of Truth. Trump’s choice for the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is a man who has been actively working against EPA’s regulations, with current pending lawsuits. Another man who wanted to eliminate the Department of Energy, was chosen to be in charge of it. And the chairman and chief executive of ExxonMobil with vested interests around the world was chosen as the Secretary of State. Although doublespeak is nothing new in the U.S. government, its intensity and obviousness has increased under Trump presidency. For example, in 2011 during the Obama Presidency, many of us were shocked when it was announced, “The person who may be responsible for more food-related illness and death than anyone in history has just been made the US food safety czar.”

Trump Presidency: Blessing in Disguise for Intersectional People's Movement

The effects of the horrors we've been spreading around the world have finally hit home and people are feeling them on a personal level. There is only one way out now: We must change our ways.

Wars and bullying less powerful countries have caused the spread of terrorism and have created millions of refugees, propagating a fear of Islam, xenophobia and racism. Neofascism is spreading around the world, including here in the US. In Germany Hitler's "Mein Kampf" went on sale again in January 2016, with surprising high demand, after a 70 year ban.

The super-rich 0.01%* benefit from the country being divided into two opposing camps. Their stock prices must continue to rise at all cost. They profit from cheap labor, racial injustice with privatized prisons, uneducated and misinformed masses, fossil fuel dependency and destruction of the environment, cruel animal agriculture that causes global warming and world hunger, unlimited human births and a constant flow of new consumers. Without the ultimate sacrifices of our youth there would be no profitable wars. Many veterans are attracted by the promises of free healthcare and higher education. What would happen if these became available to all Americans?

Dr. Cornel West has said, "…under neoliberal rule, Wall Street’s still in the driver’s seat. We were hoping, with Brother Bernie Sanders, that we could bring the neoliberal era to a close. And by 'neoliberal,' what I mean is, when you see a social problem, you financialize, you privatize and militarize." While Clinton and Obama have made many convincing speeches against racism and about tolerance, in a passionate speech at the Women's March on Washington, the Palestinian-American activist and Co-Chair of the Women’s March, Linda Sarsour stated, "Many of our communities, including my community, the Muslim community, has been suffering in silence for the past 15 years under the Bush administration and under the Obama administration. The very thing that you are outraged by during this election season, the Muslim Registry Program, the banning of the Muslims, the dehumanization of the community that I come from, that has been a reality for the past 15 years."

Under neoliberal rule we have moved so far to the right that we've given birth to the Trump phenomenon. And this might just be the blessing we've been waiting for in disguise. Trump's nontraditional extremism has created activists and marchers of millions of us. But we must be careful not to confuse a people's movement with a movement that is driven by the old establishment. On January 21st I participated in the Women's March in Los Angeles with trepidation. I was afraid that it was going to be made to seem like a movement for the failing Democratic Party establishment that not unlike the Republican Party, has continued to protect the corporate and militarized state. Hence I carried a sign that makes references to Trump's sexism, xenophobia and racism, as well as Clinton's militarism. The sign reads: "PUSSIES AGAINST WAR! WARS CAUSE RACISM & XENOPHOBIA & HURT WOMEN & CHILDREN".

Intersectionality brings awareness to socially constructed hierarchies and the interconnectedness of various expressions of oppression and bigotry, such as racism, classism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, and even speciesism. I look forward to an intersectional feminism and intersectional people's movement, as described by the wise words of Angela Davis at the Women's March on Washington. After the Women's March my friends and I looked for a place to have a meal. All restaurants were packed with hungry protestors that ate animals, many of whom will continue to refer to themselves as intersectional feminists. Angela Davis, also vegan, has connected human and animal liberation. She asks, “what is it like to sit down and eat that food that is generated only for the purposes of profit and creates so much suffering?” 

Now is the time to unite, to end the monopoly of the two-party system that has failed us, to take our country back from the hands of the exploiters and war profiteers, and to think good and hard about compassion and what it means to be an intersectional feminist.

  NOTE: * See "Inequality and Democracy: 10 Facts About the 0.01 Percent"