Trump's Immigration Policy is on the Spectrum of Ethnic Cleansing

Table of Contents

Part 1: Immigration

Part 2: Ethnic Cleansing

Part 3: The Israel-Palestine Conflict

Content

Part 1: Immigration

     While some in the Libertarian Party stress the importance of establishing the rule of law, I agree with those in the Libertarian Socialist Caucus (as well as those outside the L.P.) who call for the abolition of I.C.E. (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). I also join calls to deport I.C.E..

     I will remind conservatives and libertarians who defend I.C.E. that the agency did not exist just 15 years ago; and that, being part of the D.H.S. (Department of Homeland Security), it's questionable whether I.C.E. has any constitutional authority to exist in the first place.

     America got by fine for 227 years without ICE, just like it got by fine for 70 years before the racist Chinese Exclusion Act set the precedent for World War I -era exclusions, and a subsequent hundred years of unfounded restrictions on the natural right to engage in locomotion (movement), the right to escape tyranny, and the right to escape poor economic conditions.

     Some say that poor economic conditions is not as a good an excuse for illegal immigration as escaping tyranny is. However, tyranny often causes poor economic conditions, through mismanagement. It wasn't acceptable for Stalin and Mao to starve people just because it might have been an accident; for the same reason that negligent manslaughter is a crime just like murder is.

     If someone laments that N.A.F.T.A. cost America jobs, then explain that N.A.F.T.A. also caused the repeal of the part of the Mexican constitution that protected indigenous people's rights to their land, allowing them to be sold to multinational corporations for “development”. Remind them that losing your land, and having your babies taken from you on your way into the country, are bigger deals than losing a few people's jobs. Remind them that both America and Mexico suffered as a result of N.A.F.T.A..

     Conservatives are supposed to believe that jobs are supposed to go wherever the invisible hand of the market dictates; wherever there is a market demand that is going unfulfilled. They do not believe in free markets or free trade, unless they believe that “labor and capital must be perfectly mobile in the long run”. Basically, that working people ought to be free to cross borders; every bit as free as consumer goods, machines, corporate assets, and money are. Those who want free movement of capital, but restricted movement of labor, are not supporters of the free market, but of capitalism.

     Those who want a border wall, but claim to be conservatives, are using the government to insulate themselves from having to compete against hard working people from other countries, and against foreign industry that is trying to do its best just like us. That idea is totally antithetical to free-market and limited government values, and has no business being called conservatism because it conserves neither finances nor the constraints we have imposed upon our government.

     Historically, white Americans have often used property – and other people's lack thereof - as a way to exclude non-Aryans and undocumented immigrants from America, and the poor from private property. Even some modern conservatives and libertarians believe that people who have no property (and by property, I mean to include identification documents) should be prohibited from voting altogether. Being deprived of the opportunity to own property is not a just cause to take away someone's right to vote, it's just theft with extra steps.

     For example, poll taxes, which were made unconstitutional by the 24^th Amendment, but which are now coming back subtly in the form of requirements that voters pay to purchase identification documents. They would rather lecture us for an hour about how all sorts of poor people can easily afford, obtain, and hang onto I.D.s, instead of pay for needy people to get those I.D.s in the first place; all this to justify proving who we are not only when we vote, but before every decision we make, major or minor.

     The difficulties associated with needing an I.D. everywhere you go, are, of course, compounded for undocumented immigrants. Opponents of undocumented immigration say that only citizens should vote, but these people are quite often fleeing despotic countries where they know their vote won't count. If they're ineligible to vote in their home countries, then their vote ought to be counted somewhere, or else there's arguably a human rights deprivation happening. Why not allow their votes to count in the jurisdictions in which they have settled, whose affairs actually materially affect them?

     If someone uses private property to justify excluding undocumented immigrants – like by asking “Do you have a fence around your house?” or “Would you let just anyone onto your property?” - then say to them what we say in the Libertarian Party: “Your right to police immigration ends at your property line.” Tell them that if they want to police immigration, then they should join I.C.E., or else they should stop using the government as a tool to do their dirty work for them, like they claim the Democrats do. Additionally, ask the anti-immigrant property lover how he can support a border wall, when plans for it are causing people's property to be taken away via eminent domain.

     Some claim that America needs I.C.E. to stop people from “stealing our country” or “stealing our land”. But it's the people at I.C.E. who are the thieves, because they're stealing all our money to kick people off of land which the government stole from the native people in the first place.

     If someone claims that America won the land fair and square in a fight, then tell them you'll fight them for it. Conquest is not only theft, but also genocide. Tell them that ignoring treaties with native tribes is not how you protect the rule of law, it's how you look untrustworthy while you try to say with a straight face that they can be sure the Constitution protects their rights because you wrote it down on a piece of paper.

     Also, the American military has entered a hell of a lot more countries illegally (and unconstitutionally, without congressional authorization and a formal declaration of war) than any group of immigrants has. So the American military are “the real illegal immigrants”. That is why I join calls to not only abolish I.C.E., but to deport it as well.

     It is unfortunate that so few people in this country realize that entering the country illegally is a misdemeanor the first time you do it. It's not a felony until the third offense. Additionally, entering the United States without permission can certainly be done without harming anyone or damaging property; it can be as simple as entering without permission or overstaying a visa.

     Illegal immigration is an infraction, so technically it is illegal and against the law. But it is usually victimless, and therefore usually not a crime. That's because crimes have real victims. In the jury nullification and pro se defense movements, we say “no victim, no crime”. The legal principle corpus delicti (meaning “the body of the crime”), and precedents on evidence established in Terry v. Ohio, dictate that there must be real, physical evidence that someone has been harmed or wronged, or their justly acquired property damaged or missing, if it is to be said that an actual crime has occurred.

     Additionally, a real person must be harmed, not just “the public”. The public is a social construct, its membership is controlled and regulated and somewhat exclusive, and it is not a real physical person which can fall victim to bodily harm or loss of justly acquired property. Arguably, none of the public's property is just.

     Some refute the claim that undocumented immigration is victimless, by saying that undocumented immigrants do victimize people, because “the taxpayer” is the victim (because he is made to pay for the immigrant). But this situation is the fault of the I.R.S. and Congress, not the fault of immigrants in general, nor any particular immigrant.

     Furthermore, undocumented immigrants are not the drain on America that they are depicted to be. Working undocumented immigrants might even be net contributors to the Social Security system, because they might be using a false Social Security Number, or someone else's, while they're unable to receive any benefits (unless and until they become citizens, if at all). So not all undocumented immigrants are a drain on the taxpayers. Especially considering that white, Republican states are the primary recipients of government assistance, and considering how willing some Republicans were to accept $12 billion in farm aid (most of which they know damn well will go to large agro-industrial producers).

     Opponents of immigration say, “Just come in legally, and you won't experience the problems associated with being an illegal immigrant.” It sounds like a simple solution, sure. But wouldn't an even simpler solution be to give amnesty to the non-violent immigrants who are already here, so they don't have to resort to living lives of secrecy in the shadows as second-class citizens? Then, they would be full, legal citizens, and they wouldn't have to experience the problems associated with not being free to come out of the shadows.

     In May 2007, during the debates for the Democratic presidential nomination, former Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich said that no person is illegal; “they're undocumented”. He's right; no person is “illegal”, nor an “alien”. To call someone illegal is to call the person illegal, not the “crime”. Calling someone illegal is hating the sinner, not the “sin”. Calling someone an alien is treating them like they're from another planet. Thus, calling someone an “illegal alien” others people twice in one phrase; it literally alienates them.

     Anyone who is not frightened by this kind of language is ignorant of history. I would not enjoy living in a culture in which people “police” other people's language so as to conform to “political correctness”, but I also detest the usage of certain words which I feel dehumanize people, and I detest speech which is intended to cause a riot or call for harm against people.

     We must not forget that the Nazis used words like “parasite”, “virus”, and “disease” to describe the Jews; and we must notice when people like President Trump and Alex Jones spew terms like “illegal alien”; and words like “scum”, “worms”, and “maggots”.

     And just because someone's in a gang, doesn't mean you have to call them a “dog” or say they're lower than human beings. I don't know a single dog who's ever joined a gang. To call MS-13 “dogs” is almost an insult to dogs. Also, MS-13 was formed in Los Angeles, which is located in the United States, so immigration controls are not going to stop the spread of MS-13.

     The only thing that will stop the spread of MS-13 and other gangs is good, old-fashioned, by-the-book police work. Those who support Donald Trump's immigration policy say it is necessary to protect “the rule of law”; but this is the same president who openly flaunted the rule of law when he spoke about guns (saying “Take the guns first, go through due process second.”).

     This is a president with no respect for the civil liberties of anybody, citizen or not, except himself. Considering the escalation in Afghanistan, the tariffs backfiring, the separation of children at the border into internment camps, and Trump's defense of using eminent domain to steal from one private property owner to give to another, it is a wonder why anyone can call himself a conservative, let alone a libertarian, and still support the guy.

     It's just an awfully big coincidence that the victims of that escalation in Afghanistan, the victims of internment camps at the border, and most of the intended victims of the tariffs, are all non-whites.

Part 2: Ethnic Cleansing

     In late July 2018, congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, NY-14) told a co-host of the podcast “In the Thick” that she agreed with their assessment that President Trump's zero-tolerance policy on immigration restriction is “kinda like ethnic cleansing”, saying “I mean, we're on that spectrum, I would say.” She also said “How much is this black-box detention necessary?”, adding “we're caging women and children, we're jumping to criminalize people...”. I agree with her.

     In January 2018, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany released a study of 1,350 American adults, which revealed that 2/3 don't know what Auschwitz is, and 1/3 believe that substantially less than 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. Even more of us seem to forget that an additional 5-14 million more people in Germany were murdered by Nazis, and 20 million more by the Nazis and their Axis Powers allies in Europe outside of Germany.

     If Americans can't remember important things about the Holocaust, or believe it happened at the magnitude it did, then it should be no surprise that many of them can't see a Holocaust coming before it happens. If you've read the work of Lillian Faderman then you'll know that reproduction and giving birth can be considered forms of political activism. Her study of a Native American mother, and a Jewish mother whose parents were Nazi refugees, tell stories of giving birth on a reservation during a hail of C.I.A. gunfire nearby, and giving birth to a Jewish baby knowing that the Nazis would have rather had the baby die or never live. Giving birth to a new member of the tribe, knowing that the tribe is threatened and decimated, is thus an innately political action.

     Not only are babies being taken away from their mothers at the border, but children are sometimes separated from their mothers with a lie that the officials are going to give the children showers. This is arguably reminiscent of the way the Nazis led Jews to gas chambers by having them prepare for showers.

     Also, people are being separated on the basis of sex and age group, as they were in the Nazi concentration camps. They are lodged in cages, or in other kinds of cramped, uniform housing facilities. Those who get in, even legally, are often worked half to death, treated as second class citizens, and shamed for using their native language and having different hairstyles. And finally, they are used as scapegoats for all the country's problems, and subjected to ethnic and racial slurs, and other forms of dehumanizing and alienating rhetoric (scum, filth, parasites, viruses, animals, etc.).

     It was this treatment – treating Jewish and Mexican people as if they either have diseases, or are diseases – which led to the de-lousing of members of both groups with harsh chemicals. If you read about the El Paso - Juárez Bath Riots, you'll learn that in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s – even until long after the Mexican typhus scare ended - at that border crossing, immigrants were made to strip nude for inspection, to have their clothes treated in a steam cycle, and to undergo lice treatment that included being sprayed with hazardous chemicals, including gasoline, a caustic mineral called cryolite, and even Zyklon B (the cyanide-based pesticide that was developed into a chemical weapon in Germany in the 1920s, and then used to systematically exterminate six million Jews and at least five million other “undesirables” under the Nazi regime).

     That is the history of Jewish immigrants to America, and that is the history of Chicano and Latinx immigrants to the United States (and non-immigrants as well).

     While supporters of Israel cry “never again”, some almost seem to solely mean that this should never happen again to Jewish people, only to whomever tries to enter illegally. The State of Israel might not even exist if not for unrestricted, undocumented immigration (that is, immigration of Jews into Israel, from collapsing and hostile countries).

     These ardent supporters of the Jewish state will even stoop to hushing any discussion of the story of the boat the St. Louis, which carried Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany to North America and then back to Europe. F.D.R.'s America rejected those immigrants, who were undocumented, but who were desperate enough to come without paperwork because Hitler and the S.S. wanted them dead. Luckily, Canada accepted some, and European countries accepted the rest, before the boat returned to Germany.

     As I explained earlier (in discussing socialism), it is ironic that the supporters of the modern right-wing Israeli state, refuse to give up their hatred of anarchists and communists, and refuse to admit that the last century of Jewish settlement of the Levant was characterized by autonomous, independent labor communes, which predated the existence of a Jewish state in the area.

     The Jewish nation has gone from a polycentric, libertarian-communalist diaspora, to one of oligarchical capitalism and racial exclusion. Considering Israel's latest “Jewish national self-determination” law, this is more blatant and obvious than ever. Fortunately, I feel that the tide is turning: for Jewish people, but against the occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights.

     Many Zionists do not seem to understand that the same immigrant exclusion laws which are today being used against Hispanic and Muslim immigrants, could easily be used to exclude Jewish people and victims of real humanitarian catastrophes. If the only thing that will remind them of this possibility is the looming threat of takeover of the Republican Party by the Alt-Right, and by neo-Nazis - like Illinois U.S. House candidate Arthur Jones - then so be it, they need reminding.

     The power to discriminate on the basis of national origin in our immigration policy - and the use of that power as a subterfuge to distract from the fact that the real policy is exclusion on the basis of non-whiteness and non-Christianity – are only going to be used to keep out real refugees. Some of them lack papers, but if we demand that people identify and label themselves everywhere they go, and maintain internment camps that we ship people to without a trial, then how is our immigration substantially any different from the ethnic cleansing and domestic internment programs enforced by Hitler and the SchutzStaffel?

Part 3: The Israel-Palestine Conflict

     While many supporters of the State of Israel consider it a hate crime to suggest that the State of Israel does not have the right to exist, many of the same people are perfectly willing to assert, and boldly, that Palestine has no right to exist as a sovereign entity. Certainly the Jewish people have a right to exist, but their government only has the right to exist only so long as it does not make war on its neighbors, and only so long as it does not oppress foreigners seeking refuge within it.

     I am concerned that a Palestinian state could only ever achieve 40% support, and thus it might oppress nearly two-thirds of the people who will be expected to pledge it allegiance. That is why I am not necessarily ready to support a two-state solution.

     The one-state solution and the two-state solution are not the only potential solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Here are some alternative arrangements:

     1) We could reinstate the 1967 borders, make Jerusalem an international city, while establishing three separate Jewish regions and three separate Arab regions (like the U.N. Partition Plan originally intended).

     2) Egypt could take Gaza, Syria could take the Golan Heights, and Jordan could take the West Bank. Gaza could become independent.

     3) The State of Israel could be dismantled, while allowing Jewish communities to remain autonomous within an Arab-run state.

     4) Jewish people could decide that the Holy Land is too hostile for Jews, and decide to migrate to Europe, America, both, or elsewhere.

     5) All communities in the Holy Land – Jewish, Arab, or otherwise – could abandon dreams of securing an exclusive nation-state, and instead return to communal autonomy. Call it the No-State Solution.

     Anything could happen. But in my opinion, no solution should ever be considered “the final solution”; for the same reason that you don't put all your eggs in one basket, which is that one bad apple spoils the whole bunch.

     The occupation of Palestine is illegal; despite the cries of “What's to occupy? Palestine isn't a country”, which have come from Joe Lieberman and Ron deSantis in rebutting Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's views on the issue.

     First off, the occupation illegal because Palestine is a country, and a nation, even if it is not yet a fully sovereign state in the eyes of every single country in the world. Also, it is undoubtedly a place – the Gaza Strip (historical Philistia), the West Bank of the River Jordan, and the Golan Heights – and it is a people.

     With or without fully sovereignty, the Palestinian state does exist, because the Palestinian National Authority does exert some level of control over certain areas in the West Bank. However, it's only where the Israeli government permits it to exercise some modicum of control. To call the P.N.A. “semi-autonomous” would be a huge compliment to both it and Israel. But even if it is not a fully sovereign state, that's because it's not being allowed to govern by the Israelis.

     Moreover, Palestine remains a state in the eyes of more than half of the world's United Nations member countries. Although it's true that fewer nations recognize Palestinian sovereignty than Israeli sovereignty, the difference is only 23 countries. While 84% of countries recognize Israel (161 U.N. member countries out of 192), 72% recognize Palestine (138 countries).

     Since 2012, 138 United Nations member countries voted to extend non-member observer state status to Palestine, amounting to de facto recognition of the sovereignty of the Palestinian state. Any further elevation of Palestine's status in the United Nations will result in irrefutable nationhood status for that country. It is, for all intents and purposes, as close to a sovereign state as one can be, without technically being a full member in the eyes of the U.N..

     Additionally, the settlements are illegal, because the State of Israel acquired all three Palestinian territories (and also the Sinai Peninsula, which it soon after gave up) during the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel retained the three territories, and effectively declared the entirety of East Jerusalem as its territory in the 1980 Basic Law, by declaring Jerusalem to be the capital of the country (despite its divided status).

     The specific laws which state that the occupation and settlements are illegal, are the Fourth Geneva Convention, which states that no country may move its people into a territory which was occupied during a war. Additional laws to this effect are the 1979 U.N. Security Council Resolution 446, and subsequent U.N.S.C. Resolutions from 1980 and 2016.

     Additionally, East Jerusalem is the most populous city in all of the three Palestinian territories combined, and thus, it is probably the most suitable place for a capital city. Therefore, a divided city would arguably still be just as problematic as it was thought to be when the original U.N. Partition Plan was being considered (which would have created two sovereign states, and would have designated Jerusalem an international city, thus hopefully avoiding such a problem).

     It's not only that Palestine lacking full sovereignty doesn't mean it can't be occupied; it's also that the notion that Palestinians cannot be a nation unless they have full sovereignty, plays into the idea that Jewish people were not a nation before Israeli independence (and into the idea that they therefore have no right to exist). The nation of Palestine exists regardless of whether there is a Palestinian state; just like how Jewish people have remained a nation despite going centuries upon centuries without sovereign government.

     It's difficult to help but wonder, if the State of Israel were recognized by fewer than 138 countries, whether its supporters would use the same arguments to defend their position. If that were the case, it would be even more difficult for an Israel supporter to attempt to de-legitimize Palestine, without also accidentally de-legitimizing Israel as well.

     The nine men I have listed below are Jewish critics of the State of Israel and its crimes. While the first two are not observant Jews, they come from Jewish families. These men criticize the occupation of Palestine, or the legitimacy of the State of Israel's authority, or both; and they do it without criticizing Jewish people or the Jewish religion.

     1) Dr. Noam Chomsky, the linguist, academic, and political dissident who called the Gaza Strip “an open-air concentration camp”.

     2) Professor Norman Finkelstein, son of Holocaust survivors, and the author of the book The Holocaust Industry, which criticized Israel for what he considers its exploitation of the memory of the Holocaust to justify the occupation of Palestine.

     3) Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro, whose books and lectures explain Jewish opposition to political Zionism, while also noting the attempts of secular founders of Zionism (Theodor Herzl and Ze'ev Jabotinsky) to effectively destroy Jewish cultural identity by attempting to mold Ashkenazi Jews into macho, almost Naziesque idealizations of the Jews' Teutonic oppressors.

     4-5) Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, the spokesman of Neturei Karta; and Rabbi Elhanan Beck, who answers the e-mails of the American branch of the group (www.nkusa.org). Neturei Karta is a group of Jewish activists who oppose the existence of the State of Israel on religious grounds, and who also protest the occupation of Palestine. Neturei Karta is Aramaic for “the guardians of the city”, referring to Jerusalem.

     6-9) Rabbis Moshe and Yoel Teitelbaum (deceased), and Aaron and Zalman Teitelbaum (living), prominent Hasidic rabbis belonging to the Teitelbaum family, which originally hailed from Satmar, Romania. Each of these rabbis has led congregations of Jewish people who reject the authority of the State of Israel on religious grounds.

     Neturei Karta, and about 150,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews the world over, believe that the State of Israel is antithetical to the Jewish religion. This is because they believe that it subverts the rule of God, the Davidic Dynasty, and the rabbinic courts. They also say Jewish sovereignty is premature, because they believe that the Jews are currently in exile, and Mashiach (the Messiah) has not yet returned and ended that exile through a miracle.

     If you think about it, the idea that an obvious miracle did not end the exile, is almost to suggest that it was not a miracle that the Holocaust ended, and a miracle that anyone survived. But leaving that idea aside, most Jewish people (besides “messianic Jews”, sometimes called “Jews for Jesus”) cannot readily name the Jewish Messiah. So even if a miracle ended the exile, the Jewish Messiah seems to be missing (unless either Christianity is right, and Jesus is the Messiah, or there's something else I'm missing).

     The point is, religious and political radicalism are reasons why many Jewish people view Neturei Karta as “extremists”, as full of hate, and as wanting to destroy the Jewish people (or at least destroy what they see as its source of strength, its government). While they are arguably “extreme”, even “radical”, they are not violent, nor do they preach violence. Instead, they say they “pray for the speedy and peaceful dismantlement of the state”, seeing G-d as a greater source of strength for the Jewish people than the Israeli government ever could be.

     These disagreements should help explain why many of the nine men I mentioned above have been described as “anti-Semitic”, and/or as “self-hating Jews”, by supporters of Israel. Some supporters of Israel even believe that “all criticism of Israel is rooted in anti-Semitism”, and some are attempting to push the phrase “Anti-Zionism is the new anti-Semitism”. These people evidently believe that the best way to keep Jewish people safe is to silence them. They must think that if they repeat their slogans over and over, eventually people will believe them.

     I would be remiss if I neglected to mention a tenth person, philosopher Hannah Arendt. The author of The Origins of Totalitarianism and Eichmann in Jerusalem, she served as an expert witness in the Nuremberg Trials. Despite the fact that she was Jewish, she was not accused of being a Jewish anti-Semite (to my knowledge) when she argued against holding trials of Nazi officers in Jerusalem. She essentially argued that to try Nazis in Jerusalem would render the trials as circuses or kangaroo courts, and lead to an environment of hysteria which would make a fair trial impossible. She appealed to neither legality, nationality, race, nor religion; but instead, to centuries-old, well-respected legal precedents, establishing the notion that trials should be held near where the crime occurred, or in the same jurisdiction. Hannah Arendt should serve as a great example of someone who refused to let having to flee the Nazis cloud her judgment as to how to ensure that they are prosecuted properly, and to the fullest extent of the law. We may not like it that we have to give fair trials to people we hate, the obviously guilty, and those accused of especially heinous crimes. But to deprive them of due process and a fair trial, is to risk letting them get off on a technicality, and thus get away with their crimes.

     Another person to note, whom is relevant to this topic, is Helen Thomas, the late White House reporter. During a 2011 episode of C.N.N.'s Larry King Live, Joy Behar (filling in for Larry King) interviewed Thomas, who retired the previous year after being accused of anti-Semitism. In that interview, Thomas described herself as “Semitic, but not Jewish”, while describing Behar as “Jewish, but not Semitic”. In response to Behar asking whether she was anti-Semtic, Thomas said, “Hell no. I'm a Semite, of Arab background.” This is accurate; since Behar's ethnic heritage is European, while Semites come from the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula, including Helen Thomas's ancestral land of Lebanon. Ralph Nader, also of Lebanese ancestry, has made similar statements in explaining his thoughts on the term anti-Semitism.

     Several additional facts are necessary to mention – about American-Israeli relations, and Iranian relations with both countries – in order to better explain the wider Israeli-Arab and Israeli- Islamic conflicts, and in order to contextualize what we hear about Israel and Palestine.

     For example, he oft-repeated quote from Iran's former president – that Iranians desire to push Israel into the sea, or something to that effect – is not a fact, but a wild distortion. First off, because Palestinians were literally pushed into the Mediterranean Sea when the Israelis took control of the Holy Land from the British (kicking out both British and Palestinian forces in the process). This event is called the Nakba (disaster); it occurred on May 15^th, 1948; and its anniversary is celebrated as Nakba Day.

     Secondly, the other reason that the claim that Iranians want to “push Israel into the sea” – or is it “wipe Israel off the map”? - is misleading, that the quote has gone through “the telephone game”. Former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not threaten to wipe Israel, nor Jews, off the face of the Earth. It is also noteworthy that Ahmadinejad was not speaking off the cuff; he was quoting Ayatollah Khamenei. The most direct translation of what Ahmadinejad said was this: “The regime that is occupying Jerusalem shall vanish from the page of history.”

     While Western media lead people to believe that this is a call for the destruction of the State of Israel, nor the Jewish people, it could just as easily be taken to mean that the Iranians express sorrow for the 700,000 Palestinians who were displaced as a result of the Israelis gaining independence. Sure, some Iranian political and religious leaders have said of terrible things about the State of Israel, and Jewish people; but the point is that Iran is not openly hostile towards the State of Israel, although it is portrayed to be.

     Another interesting fact is that Iran has signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (N.P.T.), while the State of Israel has not. Israel maintains a state of “intentional ambiguity” over the fact that it has somewhere between 150 and 1000 nuclear weapons (Ralph Nader and Jimmy Carter put it at 150 and 200, while other estimates range higher, potentially making Israel the world's #3 or #4 nuclear power). Most fascinating of all, it is quite possibly a violation of the 1976 International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act, which says that a country that has not signed the nuclear N.P.T. is not eligible for U.S. foreign aid.

     You may be wondering: If all this is true, then why do we hear so much positive information about the State of Israel, and so much negative information about Arab countries? I believe that this is not only because of the U.S.'s involvement in World War II (for which, in my opinion, it receives far too much credit for helping Jews and fighting Nazis, when it arguably did plenty of the opposite as well), but also due to Israeli efforts to intimidate the United States into continuing to support it.

     The State of Israel is small, in both geography and population, but it is influential, and it is located at perhaps the single most strategic geopolitical land position in the entire world. Prior to modern accelerated Old World contact with the Americas, Jerusalem was widely considered to be at the center of the world. The U.S.'s military and financial aid arguably assists Israel's ability to build and sell weaponry, and to defend itself while surrounded on all sides by rivals and enemies.

     This is why many Americans wonder whether Israel is metaphorically “America's 51^st state”, or if instead it is “the tail wagging the dog”, and really has as much influence over U.S. foreign policy as it is often thought to have. I contend that if one looks into the history of conflicts between American and Israeli agents, then one will find many examples of Israel spying on the U.S., and Israeli agents attacking U.S. targets while posing as Arabs, and the U.S. paying Israel back for those “gifts” by securing U.S. surveillance contracts to Israeli companies, and by imitating its racist policies on immigration and transportation security. All one has to do to find out more about these topics is to seek -ut information on the Jewish organized crime syndicate Murder Inc., the ship the Altalena, the Lavon Affair, Jonathan Pollard, and others.

     Only one sovereign nation has successfully attacked a United States military target since World War II, and that was the U.S.S. Cole bombing, in whose planning Sudan's government is suspected. However, a non-military vessel – the U.S.S. Liberty – was an unarmed communications vessel, whose crew of 31 U.S. sailors died, after Israeli forces decided to fire-bomb it, and blame it on the former nation of the United Arab Republic (which is now the separate nations of Syria and Egypt).

     Islamophobes need to understand that Muslims didn't collectively do 9/11, and that it wasn't only Muslims who did 9/11. Also, that Iran wasn't involved, because 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. However, the U.S. government has ruled that Iran can still be held legally accountable to the victims, for no good reason other than their material support of Hezbollah. But of course, the Saudis didn't do it alone, and based on what I have read on the topic, they certainly didn't do it without Western help.

     The Israelis – in addition to the Russians, the British, the Italians, and the team of people around then- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice - had foreknowledge of the event. You can learn more about possible Israeli involvement in 9/11 by looking up Sayeret Matkal (the counter-terrorism division of M.O.S.S.A.D.); and the circumstances surrounding the death of Daniel M. Lewin. Lewin was an internet technology billionaire, a former Sayeret Matkal agent, and the alleged first casualty of 9/11, who was allegedly killed by hijacker Satam al-Suqami (by what weapon, it is uncertain).

     Additionally, look up “the Dancing Israelis”: Dominick Suter (the C.E.O. of Urban Moving Systems, Inc.), and his “employees” Oded Ellner, Omer Marmari, Yaaron Shmuel, and Paul and Sivan Kurzberg. Alan Dershowitz provided legal defense for those six Israeli men, who were arrested on 9/11 on suspicion of involvement in the attacks. They were seen filming and celebrating the collapse of the World Trade Center, dressed in traditional Arab garb. A woman called the police, and thought they were Palestinians, but several of the men were found to have worked for the Israeli M.O.S.S.A.D. When they were arrested, they had socks full of thousands of dollars, razor blades, and maps of New York City with highlighted routes. It's entirely possible that these men – whichever few of those six were dancing on a rooftop in New Jersey, cheering and filming and celebrating and dancing - were the men whom Donald Trump thought he saw in Arab countries celebrating 9/11. Three of the six men appeared on an Israeli television show, and told the interviewer “Our purpose was to document the event”, a clear indication of foreknowledge.

     Given the State of Israel's crimes against its own people (in Gaza and the West Bank, and also its repression of anti-Zionist Jews), and its possible attacks on the United States, it would be completely understandable for a person concerned about the fate of Palestinians to consider waging a boycott against illegal activities and commerce occurring in the occupied territories.

     I believe that boycott and divestment should be legal. In fact, I believe that they are not yet fully legal (because of corporate subsidies, and other protections), and so, they need to be made fully legal. However, I worry that sanctions with any nation can lead to problems with which we may not be fully prepared to deal.

     I believe that we should have diplomacy and trade with all nations. I believe that that is how war with other nations can and should be avoided, and I believe that engaging in diplomacy while being a hypocrite is unacceptable. To accuse your enemy or rival of doing what you yourself are doing, destroys all of your credibility in negotiations.

     That is why I worry that sanctions could lead to trade wars, and accelerate into embargoes, trade bloc wars, cold wars, and even military conflagrations. I believe that boycott should be the first resort, then divestment, then withdrawing foreign aid. Especially considering that Israel is the #2 recipient of U.S. foreign aid (after Afghanistan), at nearly $4 billion per year, and rising by $0.1 B annually.

     If none of those measures achieve the objectives, then sanctions should be considered, but only if the U.S. is willing to put lives on the line to defend American property overseas, and to defend the prospect of continued profits for American firms selling in those overseas markets. This, of course, risks that inevitable slippery slope to trade wars and real wars which I described above, and I can't imagine a situation in which I would approve of such a course of action.

     However, a good way to avoid all this, might be to support boycotts, divestment, and sanctions which are targeted solely against economic activity based in those parts of Israeli territory; areas which rightfully belong to the refugees living in the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights. Any B.D. or B.D.S. movement should make it absolutely clear that legitimate commerce within Israel's pre-1967 borders are not the target of the consumer action; otherwise such an action will certainly be perceived (and reacted to) as if it were an act of war.

     If nothing convinces people that U.S. taxpayers should stop footing the bill for the Israeli government's expenditures (which are fungible, and funds for one purpose can be transferred to any other purpose) then perhaps the only thing that will, is the news that Israeli weapons are being sold to neo-Nazi militants in the Ukraine who have used them against Jewish people, and jihadists in Syria who are likely to use them against Jewish targets.

     Some say that, as someone who is neither an Israeli citizen nor a Jew, I should not be talking about the business of the State of Israel, a sovereign country. However, I would be glad to quit talking about what the State of Israel does, when it learns to do what it does without using my money. As soon as they stop using American taxpayer money to put people in refugee camps, I'll stop complaining.

     Oh wait, no I won't.

Post-Script:
     I would also like to note that the United Nations recognizes genocide as occurring even if systematic killing has not been attempted. Taking people's children away from them can and should be considered genocide, if it is done with the deliberate intent of covering up their identity or annihilating their culture. We should oppose genocide, whether it involves killing or not, regardless of whether it affects Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists, Israelis, Palestinians, Mexicans, Central Americans, et cetera.

Written on July 4^th, 20^th, 26^th, and 27^th, and August 1^st through 4^th, and 6^th, 2018

Edited and Expanded on August 15^th and 17^th, 2018

Originally Published on August 17^th, 2018
Post-Script Added on August 18th, 2018

Reflection Upon the Use of Forced Labor Camps by Anarchists and Communists

     It is said, and accurately, that “people starved under Communism”.

     What is typically meant by “Communism”, of course, is the ideology of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.), which was founded by Bolshevik revolutionaries in Russia in 1917 and collapsed in 1991. [Note: soviet means “council”, and Bolshevik means “majority”].

     The ideology of the U.S.S.R. was predominantly influenced by Marxism-Leninism, Lenin having been instrumental in developing Marxist theory, and in leading and organizing the October Revolution. In Marxist theory, socializing control of the means of production (“socialism”, for short) can empower workers and associations between them sufficiently, such that the state is no longer needed, and withers away, giving way to moneyless, classless, stateless communism, while at the same time a new kind of “state”; a “dictatorship of the proletariat”.

     Marxism-Leninism combined the idea of a revolutionary vanguard party with democratic centralism and council communism; while Stalinism ran with vanguardism practically to the point of ignoring the risks of imperialism and of stifling international attempts at communism that did not wish to stay in communion with the U.S.S.R.. However, Russia and the other former members of the U.S.S.R. are not the only countries that have tried communism. Additionally, Bolshevik socialism, with communism as its stated end goal, is not the only form of communism that has ever been proposed.

     Leninism, Stalinism, Trotskyism, Luxemburgism, Juche, libertarian and anarcho-communism, the utopian communalism of Owen, Fourier, and Mill... Not only are there are many varieties of communism, but there are many kinds of socialism, and they don't all have communism as their end goal (whether we mean Bolshevism or anarcho-communism).

     Whomever makes such a broad statement as “people starved under communism” should be cautious as to which form of communism he means. Sometimes it ought to be enough to differentiate theorized stateless communism from Bolshevik Communism with a simple difference in capitalization, but that difference cannot be understood voice-to-voice without explanation. Using capitalization to make a distinction is just like capitalism: it only works on paper.

     Communism can and does work. Regimes that were communist in intent and/or name have made extraordinary achievements in fields such as agriculture, industry, literacy, social justice, and aeronautics. Communist militias have been formed. Anarchist communes have been founded, settled, and lived in. Nations have been formed out of the voluntary associations of communes with one another. Paris was a commune twice in the 19^th century. The autonomous republic of Transnistria is arguably still communist or Soviet. There are regional and national federations of anarchists and communists, that have associations with one another, all around the globe.

     Communism can exist, has existed, and does exist. Some people have starved under communism, and some people did not starve while under communism. When communism fails, and when people starve under communism, it is usually the result of attack, sabotage, or natural calamity. The Paris Commune ended when the French aristocracy took control back from the Communards. Communists' attempts to control Vietnam and South Korea - and socialists' attempts to control various Latin American and South American countries (even via democratic election) – were sabotaged by the capitalistic American Empire. The Ukraine suffered a famine in the 1930s, called the Holodomor.

     Other causes of the collapse of communist societies ought not be blamed solely on communism, but on those self-described communists who ignored the principle of autonomy in the organization of workers, and who chose centralization over decentralization as a way to ensure the needs of the populace were met (namely, Marxists). Nationalization and centralization of industries, over-bureaucratization of management, micro-management, strict discipline of workers; these practices neglect all impulses to guard against the bourgeoisie spirit, and against the treatment of the working class as a “reserve army of labor”, both of which workers should despise.

     But the Left is not prone to authoritarianism just because its members are sometimes hypocritical. Nor is collapsed communism the only system prone to hypocrisy. For instance, the modern-day Russian Federation criticizes Western imperialism while arguably acting just as imperialistic as either the United States or as the U.S.S.R. under Stalin. Readers also ought to note the irony of the fact that Stalinists and American imperialists both conspired to crush international attempts at communism during the 20^th century. Although they appeared to do that for different reasons, it makes one wonder whether the old rumor is true that American banking interests financed the October Revolution.

     It's entirely possible that Jacob Schiff and other Western banking interests helped finance the Vanguard of the October Revolution (which included Lenin and Trotsky) – and if they did, then British and German banking interests were likely involved as well. That the same three imperialist nations all later fought the U.S.S.R. and Soviet influence, should be no surprise. Western imperialist nations have profited off of the desperation of the second and third world in such a manner; America for at least two centuries now, the others for much longer. This will continue to happen as long as nations desirous of communism keep “trading” with capitalist enterprises and governments representing capitalist interests.

     What this is, is a scheme to undermine successive regimes, by sowing the seeds of discord and revolutionary activity in the public; the goal being to cause regime after regime to fall, no matter its ideology, intent, or goals. This is done in order to pressure fledgling regimes to sell their assets to the U.S. government and American businesses, to seize assets from their citizens in order to find more to sell, and to open up their countries' land and labor to foreign interests who want to export nearly everything of value out of the country in question.

     While it may seem hypocritical to help destroy the regime you just helped put into power - to bait all countries and governments against each other for your profit – it is actually a very consistent method of seizing power. Through differential interest rates on lending, and through cartelization and fixing of monetary exchange rates, the banking elite make bets on which nation will best be able to exploit its citizens and their property, and force them to join militaries to murder foreigners for their property, so they can give it to the banks to repay the debts which the government and/or public owe the banks.

     This system is innate to capitalism, mercantilism, fascism, and indeed any purported “free”-market system that tolerates any degree of state interference. This is so for the simple reason that militaries and banking monopolies do not behave like normal actors engaging in voluntary exchange. By their nature, their very presence in markets destroys the freedom of markets. True choice cannot take place under conditions of monopoly or coercion.

     If communism is defeated or sabotaged by an outside force, we should not blame the victims, nor encourage them to feel ashamed on account of it. Just as it is in the nature of militaristic, belligerent imperialist nations to crush attempts to live outside of their purview, it is in the nature of trading capitalist nations to legally exploit the natural resources and work-power of the countries agreeing (or reluctantly assenting) to trade with them.

     Trade itself poses a dangerous question, and threat, to communist regimes. That is, the danger is the issue of whether a communist nation is supposed to trade, or whether it should be entirely self-sufficient. What's so dangerous about trade is that the “freedom to trade” usually has force to back it up, rendering trade a “force” in and of itself (that is, at least in “market” economies that tolerate any degree of state influence). The “freedom” to pressure, leverage, manipulate, isolate, and intimidate a government into confiscate its people's lands and selling their jobs, futures, and homes out from underneath them, is not a freedom, because it destroys the liberties of others. Nor is it a natural “freedom”, because it requires coercion to enforce.

     That is why it is so unfortunate that spreading truly free-market systems has proven difficult, and has sometimes failed. Perhaps that's because proponents of this idea have always hoped that a central government, in whatever form, can ensure that trade stays free. Federations of council republics, and systems of common markets and free interstate commerce, are difficult to craft, because they require some level of military and managerial will-power to organize whole communities and nations of people, to try new systems of political and economic self-governance.

     When critics of Soviet “Communism” (if indeed it really was Communism; many Leftists will argue that it was not because it did not achieve statelessness) blame the economic ideology that led it, and also blame all other vaguely associated and vaguely similar ideologies, it usually seems to be motivated by the desires to find a scapegoat, and simplify things to fit their preconceived narrative and confirmation bias.

     Turning nationalist movements into territorial nation-states is not something that happens without some bloodshed, and people in uniforms telling other people what to do. Furthermore, if any society exists for long enough, anarchist or not, it will eventually suffer from some sort of famine or other natural disaster. Are we to blame communism for even the weather? Should we blame the Governor of California every time there is a wildfire in his state?

     Every time we pretend that more control and fire-power, or better government management, could have prevented a national tragedy or a natural calamity, we give in to the Statist idea that government is like a God, that it can stop evil at-will, that it can save people from natural disasters. It's true that government agencies have rescued people from natural disasters, and that government employees put fires out; but it's also true that government mismanagement has resulted in lots of people living in flood-prone areas, exposing them to the risk of natural disasters. It does liberty no service to attempt to criticize communism and statism while ascribing godlike powers to those who practice them.

     In Jamestown colony, John Smith echoed the words of Paul the Apostle: “If a man does not work, then neither shall he eat.” Yet the Jamestown settlers resorted to cannibalism. Lenin espoused the same idea, and some people starved under the U.S.S.R.. Why should we try to blame the failure of a colony in America, or the failure of the U.S.S.R., on either communism or Christianity, when we could blame the drought that afflicted the settlers, or the famines that afflicted the Communists?

     The Marxian material conception of history tells us that the material conditions of those community-building attempts determined their destiny much more than any political or economic system ever could have.

     In the early 20^th century, before fascism swept Europe - with its ultra-nationalism, nationalization of property under the pretense of privatization, and command-and-control economics measures such as rationing and price controls – tens of millions died of Spanish influenza following the conclusion of World War I. Between ten and twenty years after that, in the United States, agricultural mismanagement exacerbated the already severe financial conditions. Next, for Europe and America alike, it was that perfect storm - severe natural and material conditions, combined with the pressure to choose between the fascists and the communists - which caused liberal democracy after socialist republic to fall victim to the pressure to impose rigorous controls on the economy and society.

     The result was what some call “socialists acting like fascists”. Events like the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentropp treaty showed that the Stalinists were just as expansionist as the Nazis, and just as much without regard for the fate of Poles, Jews, and other people living in the giant World War II hot spot known as the Russian Pale. Socialists and Communists caved into military, natural, and economic pressure, and started focusing on centralizing control and consolidating power to guard against outside threats (namely, fascism). And anarchists and Communists alike built work camps, and worked people to death.

     The tactics employed by both the anarcho-communists and the fascists – namely, economic controls and coerced labor - were similar. However, to suggest that those facts alone makes them the same, is almost to say that a fascist militant, once captured, doesn't deserve to be treated with the torturous methods which his ilk invented. There is a time for justice, and a time for mercy; but mercy is by definition something which is undeserved.

     Even if anarcho-communists and fascists did share some of the same goals in maintaining their forced labor prisons (or justice and rehabilitation systems, whatever you want to call them), that does not mean that all anarcho-communists “become what they despised”, or “became authoritarian” or became Nazis. Whether they deprived anyone of liberty wrongfully or not, their actions should not discredit all anarchists, nor all socialists, communists, nor “Leftists” (however you wish to define that term).

     I could blame any crimes of the anarchists of the Spanish social republic on the U.S. Republican Party if I wanted to, but I wouldn't make such a ridiculous claim. It may take a little extra time to criticize different types of communist regimes for different activities, but it's worth it compared to the non-existent benefits of oversimplifying things by lumping-together everyone with a slightly similar philosophy or name.

     In the 1930s, as nationalism swept Europe and imperialism swept the world, the need to unify in a solid front against the fascists grew; specifically against the Francoists in Spain, the Mussolinian fascists in Italy, and Hitler's National Socialist Nazis in Germany.

     In 1936, to contain the spread of Franco's sphere of influence, mechanic and revolutionary Buenaventura Durruti erected the Durruti Column, a militant organization comprised of thousands of anarchists from all over the world. The Durruti Column worked in close coordination with the C.N.T. and F.A.I. to organize resistance to the Francoists. The C.N.T. (Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo) is an anarcho-syndicalist union, and the F.A.I. (Federacion Anarquista Iberica) is a group of militant anarcho-communists who are active within affinity groups inside the C.N.T..

     Solidarity between anarchists, syndicalists, communists, and other anti-fascists was essential, given the small numbers of radical anti-fascists, considered against the magnitude of the threat posed by Franco (and, later, the Axis Powers). [Note: At times throughout this essay, I may refer to the entire anti-fascist front as either “anarchist” or “communist”, or both.]

     Beginning in 1937, the leadership of the C.N.T.-F.A.I. began imprisoning people in coerced labor camps; including fascist sympathizers, clergymen, members of the bourgeoisie, and “reactionaries” and “subversives”, as well as thieves, drunkards, and delinquents, and even C.N.T.-F.A.I. officers who abused their power. According to the C.N.T.-F.A.I.'s defenders, these prisoners were not held in as brutal conditions as those in Stalin's gulags, as they still had contact with the outside world.

     Some of the anarcho-communists' decisions at this time – in particular, the decision to maintain work camps – were framed in the context that the only alternative was fascism. If one did not work hard enough, one was treated with suspicion of sabotage. It is said that this is because if military activities lag behind, and if the civilian work which gives the military its support structure lags behind, then the fascists will take advantage of the communists' vulnerability, and take over.

     The anarchists' treatment of their prisoners of war may seem cruel; however, they deemed it necessary to face the fascist threat. In order to fight against the fascists, one had to join forces with whomever was fighting them, in order to overcome overwhelming odds. If one wanted to fight with the anarchists, one had to tolerate fighting alongside communists, and obeying the officers of the military unit. If you had to fight fascists and Nazis, your willingness to tolerate a little “authoritarianism” within your own ranks might prove advantageous in the long term.

     Enemies at the gates breed desperation inside, and desperation and pressure breed coercion and control. And whomever puts in the most initiative to organize people, organize their labor, and organize the military and its support structure - and whomever is the best at directing resources, in a way that balances the needs of those needing protection and incapable of defending themselves, versus the militants doing the protecting – is going to look authoritarian by contrast to the people they are empowering.

     The fact that Spanish anarchism eventually lost-out to Franco, or that the U.S.S.R. eventually collapsed, should not be mistaken so as to prove that all political and economic systems will fail if they are to any extent “radical”, “extremist”, “Leftist”, or “collectivist”.

     Nor should they be construed to prove that only private property rights and market systems guard against starvation or authoritarianism. Nor should they be taken to prove that all of these systems require corruption into Statism, nor that they cannot survive without imposing extreme economic controls (such as rationing, or collectivization or nationalization of resources).

     Anarchism certainly seems to embrace liberty, and not all communism opposes liberty. If anarchism and communism do not succeed often, it is not necessarily because there is something intrinsically wrong with them, nor with their name, nor even because they did not embrace liberty enough. Actually, at times, some anarchists and libertarians have been too tolerant of people who are not willing to tolerate them, and their mercy and benefit of the doubt betrayed them.

     But the reasons that anarchists and communists didn't often succeed in the 20^th century, as I have hinted at already, are that there are military, commercial, and rhetorical forces mounted against them from secure places of power and influence. Additionally, because the inferior agricultural technology and medicinal science, coupled with poor agricultural conditions, compounded the already enormous politicoeconomic pressures of the time, which caused poverty conditions and starvation. Aside from that, it also came down to how efficient the distribution system was, whether it focused on government management or market-based pricing mechanisms, whether there were multiple supply lines, and how much the black market thrived.

     Wars, famines, droughts, natural disasters, health epidemics, deficiencies and inefficiencies in transportation and distribution infrastructure: any one of these things alone could bring a nation - even a whole continent - to its knees. The early 20^th century was fraught with those problems, and it had to solve them with early 20^th century technology, industry, and science.

     In light of all these difficulties, and the dire domestic material conditions of the time – alongside the extraordinary threat posed by authoritarian controls coming from outside the country – it should be easy to understand why the anti-authoritarian anarchists of the C.N.T.-F.A.I. were willing to tolerate these controls; seemingly authoritarian, though designed to keep communities safe from fascist military advances.

     It should be even easier when one considers that no particular political nor economic system ought to be blamed for imposing command-and-control measures upon the economy, such as rationing and price controls. Minimum wage laws are price floors on the value of labor, yet they continue to exist in nearly every country in the world, with hardly anyone calling them controls on price. More directly to the point, even the staunchly market-oriented liberal democracy of the United Kingdom nearly succumbed to fascism.

     That is to say, even if the British regime in London didn't fall due to continuous Nazi bombings, Chamberlain tried to appease Hitler several years prior, Churchill had admired Hitler early-on in his reign, and Churchill oversaw rationing, and made racist comments about the people of India. But then again, Gandhi wrote a letter to Hitler as well. It is true, as they say, “politics breed strange bedfellows”, and “desperate times call for desperate measures”. It's just too bad that “all our national heroes were psychopathic, murderous, racist sexual predators” isn't a snappy enough phrase to catch on. In the grand historical scheme of things, hopefully we've made it past the worst of that. Taking baggage with us from the 20^th century isn't going to help us; not anywhere nearly as much as making sure we're all on the same page.

     The way we can make sure we're all on the same page is by talking to each other - specifically, to people with different economic and political views from us, and different backgrounds - making sure we're understood when we use particularly loaded political terms, and making more questions fair and open.

     One particular question which it might help us to ask is whether people who make private property claims are depending on the state to enforce that claim, while putting minimal or no effort into protecting the property themselves. Additionally, whether this expectation predisposes propertarian market systems to value the protection property and control, instead of the protection people and their freedoms; by welcoming coercive governments to intrude upon the market for the protection of property, and then to seize and sell that property.

     For as we have seen throughout history, governments wielding a monopoly on protecting the people, all too often neglect their duties, fail to even assume those duties through any form of legal obligation, or simply confiscate and sell the land (and the people on it) which they were charged with the task of protecting.

     I don't know whether, nor how, any particular one of my readers might distinguish work camps, internment camps, concentration camps, and gulags from one another; nor whether they would differentiate slavery, involuntary servitude, or coerced or forced labor, from “mandatory volunteering”. But whatever you call the facility and the practice, it should be easy to see why, under any political or economic system suffering from production and distribution difficulties (and/or any number of other major problems), command-and-control measures are natural and predictable responses to dire military and economic circumstances.

     But that is not to suggest that we ought to tolerate authoritarian economic nor social controls, nor that command-and-control measures nor work camps are unavoidable whenever there is a major problem. Not only are those measures avoidable, the supposed solution to those problems (forced labor) does nothing to solve the problem, nor even to alleviate it. Imposing long hours of coerced labor for little or no compensation, - whether done by Nazis, Bolsheviks, anarchists, or even liberal democracies – causes the hoarding of labor-hours in the hands of the workers (really, in the hands of those who make them work).

     When the bulk of necessary tasks in a society are performed by people in chains - living in camps and ghettos and other densely populated centers - the distribution of labor-hours becomes uneven, and all areas outside of the most densely populated areas are drained of laborers. That is why the use of work camps - although they promised the destitute that they could “work themselves free” or “buy their freedom” - breeds concentration of wealth in the hands of the few. That's because it concentrates wealth into small areas (namely, urban areas, and densely-populated areas, where the most people are working), and it brings with it vast inequality of income and opportunity. And not just due to the poverty of unemployment, and depending on one's location; being employed was obviously no picnic either.

     Fortunately, today, the risks of natural disasters and bad farming weather have become easier to alleviate with modern technology, and extreme poverty is nowhere near as much of a problem now as it was in the early 20^th century. Today, though, we have new industrial and scientific technologies.

     We also have new developments in political and economic science; as technologies like improved protection of the rights to speak and communicate will help us guard against the risks of control and authoritarianism in the 21^st century. Hopefully, too, will the freedoms of, to, and from political association will become better protected; unfortunately, the issue of who we expect to do that protection is beyond the scope of this essay.

     Decentralizing power away from cities and central governments could help distribute wealth and power geographically in a more equitable way. Moreover, it could help reverse the flow of workers and jobs from rural communities to dense population centers, and undo a lot of the damage caused by the territorial enclosure of the Commons.

     Additionally, eliminating all subsidies and bailouts, reducing or eliminating unnecessary taxes on sales and imports, and drastically reducing the durations of the terms of patent protection (or else the complete abolition of government protection of intellectual property) could all help accelerate the process of making goods easier to afford. These measures would diminish most of the ill effects of the concentration of military and economic power, as well as the inordinate powers of governments - and the “innovators” and “developers” they protect – to determine prices, and to control production and distribution.

     With pirating and peer-to-peer file-sharing, the free and open collaborative commons, the “sharing economy” and “gift trade barter share” economies, and technological innovations such as the rise of automation and 3-D printing, obtaining resources (especially information) without going through governments and monopolists has gotten easier. With the rise of the internet, the black market of underground voluntary exchange has grown, and has been conducive to freedom, but so too has the red market (the market for violent exchange). The difference between them is the difference between “piracy” (sharing) and theft.

     The benefits of owning rather than sharing notwithstanding, the easier it becomes to share resources, and to use substitutes or unlicensed versions of those resources, the more affordable those resources become. Even if those counter-economic measures only succeed in increasing the affordability of the substitute, then there is, at least, still some pressure on the monopolist to lower his price, at least prospectively.

     The more affordable resources become, the easier and cheaper it becomes to transport and distribute them. That is why avoiding government and its beneficiaries in “private” industry like the plague - and crafting market-oriented liberal-democratic policies that respect the civil liberties and social freedoms of the people, as well as the autonomy of the citizen, worker, and governmental jurisdiction - are the best ways to ease the strains which result from inefficient and insufficient distribution infrastructure. Coincidentally, and conveniently, they are also the best ways to create equal justice under the law, and equality of opportunity, and to erect a unified front against fascism.

     Freedom-loving supporters of the markets can criticize “left-authoritarianism”, “social-authoritarianism”, or “feelings-fascism” as much as they please; but if libertarians, classical liberals, modern liberals, progressives - and, yes, even socialists or syndicalists, communists anarchists alike, do not fight against fascism together - then there might not be enough anti-fascists to save the people, their communities, and their property from being seized by authoritarian regimes. And if there is no respect of even the most basic property rights, then there can be no free market system, because you can't make a trade if you don't have anything to trade with.

     The “authoritarianism” that was characteristic of early 20^th century anarcho-communists and fascists alike, was motivated by a desire to provide for the needs of the most trustworthy members of the given communities (or nations, as the case may have been).

     Fascist or anti-fascist, the people who contributed the most to the cause reaped the most rewards, while those who could but didn't were treated as if they were aiding the enemy. But it's hard not to wonder, had the early twentieth century been a time of extraordinary sustained growth and prosperity for nearly all sectors of society, rather than the mess it was, would the Nazis and Bolsheviks have ever even resorted to economic controls?

     If they certainly still would have, then perhaps they would only have expected the political enemies they imprisoned to follow them? After all, nobody who runs a prison system should be expected to treat their prisoners better than civilians (save for a few modern Scandinavian countries that arguably come close). Naturally, such “equal treatment” does not happen without some public criticism, and any people would have every right to be concerned about such a policy. People like to think that the people who are in prison, are in there because they did something wrong, and they're there because they're being punished – not rewarded – for it.

     When you have to decide between killing large numbers of active, attacking, militant fascists, versus trying to put them all in prison - so you can give each of them a fair trial, letting them plead their cases in front of juries of their peers - you have to consider which choice conserves your effort, which choice is less likely to get you killed, and which is more realistic. And handcuffing people on the battlefield is hardly a realistic military strategy.

     Unfortunately, neither is allowing cronies, monopolists, usurers, racketeers, profiteering land hoarders, and hawkish and imperialist military generals, run amok, and try to control the flow of resources, controlling society and labor in the process.

     Anarchist, Communist, or fascist, they all did what they did, and imprisoned whom they imprisoned, because they wanted to wreak vengeance upon those they thought responsible for causing, or contributing to, the inequality of just rewards to those they considered “parasites”. Or, in the fascists' case, they at least said they did.

     Anarchists, Communists, and fascists all seem to agree on at least a few things, like that usury is bad, that getting defeated in a war is bad... and that's about as far as their agreements go. The difference, however, is that the anarchists and Communists prioritized ending inequality, while the fascists focused on scapegoating Jews and other minorities as such parasites.

     This is not to say that there have never been Judeophobic communists; of course there have been. The contributions of the U.S.S.R. to liberating Auschwitz and to helping win World War II notwithstanding, after the October Revolution, there were anti-Jewish pogroms in the Soviet Union, and Jewish revolutionaries were purged from Communist Party ranks.

     However, anarchists and communists in Spain, unlike the Soviets during the later years of Stalin's regime, did not arrest people solely for being foreigners, nor for being Jewish. Nor did they characterize parasitism as a character of a particular race or religion. On the contrary; their ideology was specifically anti-racist and internationalist, and as such, they accepted fighters from around the world.

     This is not to say that zero of the Spanish anarchists were Judeophobic; many of the anarcho-communists and anarcho-syndicalists who fought Franco indeed were atheists and agnostics (while atheism was considered the “state religion” of Communism), and many may have even hated all religions, Judaism not excepted. However, the anarchists' aversion towards religions is easier to understand in light of many Spanish Catholic priests sympathizing with the Franco regime and papism, and the Catholic Church's later complicity in aiding the Nazis (albeit while giving aid to Holocaust victims, while on the other hand, the Church has also apologized for not having done more to help the victims of Nazism).

     Ownership of private property (as Proudhon and Marx defined that term) arguably requires either unanimous public support, or else protection by a state. Bureaucratic controls on pricing and distribution, too, require a certain level of coercion and discipline in order to enforce. Whether it's private ownership or participatory democratic planning, any semblance of coercion or state influence, or diminution of choices, has only ever served to exacerbate any existing inefficiencies and insufficiencies in distribution.

     But, then, without enforcement, discipline, or strict management, how may we ensure a good distribution, which is both fair and free? The best response seems to be to simply allow people to take what is freely to given to them and shared with them, and allow them to freely give and share, without imposing any taxes upon them (which have sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally, punitive effects upon the behavior being taxed).

     Additionally, to allow each person to take their fair share of natural resources, including land, so that they may do on that land whatever they please with their own product and property. Also, that they may keep all they make on that land, and retain possession of the parcel, and trade properties with one another, and pool their properties together (whether contiguously or not). But if you did not make the land, then you may not destroy the land; the parcel's being in your possession does not give you the right to destroy nor burn down any part of it which you did not create.

     Although it could be argued that this might result in a distribution which is still uneven, it cannot be said that it would be insufficient to meet any particular person's needs. To declare the slightest inequality unacceptable is almost to argue that it is unacceptable to give something away without expecting anything in return. Ensuring reciprocity of voluntary exchange is one thing, but it should never excuse coercing a person into making a transaction they do not wish to make. Nor should it excuse taking away a person's right to be charitable, nor their right to do something that needs to be done, but which nobody is willing to pay for it to be done.

     If people are free to give, then they are free to have slightly less than others. If a person voluntarily renounced all possessions, and claims to rent and tenancy and property, then to continue to burden him with licensing agreements, rental contracts, furniture, and the material trappings of which he is trying to rid himself. Just as well as the need for reciprocity, the freedom to give away our things should also not be used to excuse intentionally putting people into a state of inequality.

     Having less currency, or a different or less numerous set of possessions, does not determine your wealth, nor does it determine your class. Your wealth is determined not by your riches, but by your subjective definition of what wealth means to you. And your class is determined by your relationship to the means of production (factories, assembly plants, large machines), and also your relationship to the land (i.e., whether and under what circumstances you may own and attend it).

     Whether ownership of land or factories is free or prohibited, if everyone with good standing in society at least has access to these things, then class conflict becomes less pronounced. But then again, access only guarantees the “freedom” to rent and borrow; while on the other hand, the risks of absolute domination in ownership risks exploitation and destruction.

     But whether with property - or whether with only access, use, and occupation – free and open common access (or anything better) should still be sufficient to ensure that a person be free to perform any task; without it being overly taxed and regulated, and without it necessarily being treated like work or like a profession; and these diverse life-sustaining labors would be sufficient to sustain any person with minimal physical effort. Technological achievements, in the way of automated production and distribution - along with economic and political liberalization reforms – will help ensure that this occurs.
     Equal access to land, and mass individual and collective ownership of automatons, will help ensure that anyone can own as much as he wishes - and as much as he can build, grow, and transform - using his share of land. That's because any kind of labor and any kind of capital can be combined upon any type of terrain. Land, not the pistol, is the true Great Equalizer. Indeed, land is freedom; free land breeds a free people. That's why the land issue is so important. And that's why autonomous communities, voluntarily associating in federations, should be free to decide what degree of private property rights in land they shall allow; additionally, in order to balance the needs of human beings with that of the ecosystem that sustains us.

     While it pains me to admit that sometimes a binary choice may be necessary, or even voluntary, the posing of choices between fascism and communism, fascism and chaos, and fascism and democracy in the 20^th century, happened so often because it was a reality. Twice in that century, the whole continent of Europe was framed by two long battle fronts, and in World War II the theaters of conflict spanned entire oceans.

     It's natural for anti-fascists, anti-authoritarians, and just plain freedom lovers to want to advocate maximizing choice when it comes to democracy (who we're voting for, or what we're running for) and markets (what we're buying and selling). But when you're caught near a war, and governments and anarchists and terrorists are coming from all over the world to fight each other, the “only choices” that nature and the circumstances “dictate” be given to you, are “fight or flight”.

     At that point, the only real choices you'll find, lie in your decisions concerning where to flee to, by what methods you wish to defend yourself, and whom else you wish to protect. Those may not be enough choices for you, but those are the choices you have left. We must also accept that some choices are irreversible; and that as such, making them constraints the future sets of choices we are able to make. Most importantly, as John F. Kennedy cautioned, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

     If only it were as easy to know when you are really consenting to what your peers goad you into doing (or if you are just going along to make them happy) as it is to know whether you are starving.

     Note: I would like to thank author and I.W.W. historian Peter Cole for bringing the history of the C.N.T.-F.A.I. to my attention.

To learn more about C.N.T.-F.A.I., please visit:

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/scw/anarchist.htm

and

http://libcom.org/forums/theory/prison-labor-camps-during-spanish-revolution-your-opinions-05102011

To learn about Peter Cole, please visit:

http://www.wiu.edu/cas/history/cole.php

To learn about the communists' betrayal of anarchists in Catalonia in May 1937, please visit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Days

or read "Homage to Catalonia" by George Orwell

Written on February 1^st and 2^nd, 2018

Based on a post written on January 30^th, 2018

Originally Published on February 2^nd, 2018

Additional source note added on February 28th, 2018

Edited on March 7th and April 26th, 2019