The Distorted Deluded Debate

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The so-called Democratic Party decided that Joe Biden will face Donald Trump in the up-coming presidential election. Working people know that Trump stands for more repression, more injustice and more poverty. But the question is: will Biden be any better? Chomsky and other liberal progressives believe so.

 Neither a Democratic nor a Republican president is capable of addressing the crises of the 21st century: the pandemic; climate change; concentration of wealth and power among the 5%, the shredding of the social safety net for the poor to pay for a growing national-security state and its endless war. The difference between a Biden presidency and a Trump presidency is the difference between driving towards a cliff-edge at 55 mph and driving at 90 mph. The sad reality, though, is that it is impossible to disabuse people of the lesser evil idea. No matter how compelling the case against lesser evilism may be, when faced with a Biden versus Trump choice, what sane person would not succumb? The Democratic Party functionaries and their media hacks will do their best to keep lesser evil thinking alive. No politician can ever confess to the impossibility of the tasks he or she sets themselves. The gap between promises and reality must be bridged by other means. Sometimes, as we said, it might be by a little bit of luck. Mostly, the gap is bridged by a more calculated method, the public relations and the advertising agencies. You sell yourself and your programs the way a business sells its products.

Lesser evil is a losing strategy. It invariably paves the path for greater evils. There is no time like the present to push a socialist agenda in the electoral arena. A voter revolt is underway and we are beginning to see an unprecedented number of Americans rejecting both parties and their candidates. A vote for Biden may be a vote to defeat Trump, but it also a vote to defeat the emergence of a socialist alternative.

What Biden’s program amounts to is little more than sugar coated regulations. He and his backers understand that the people of the U.S. will not continue to accept no jobs, poor housing, decaying schools, lack of adequate health care, and police terror. They also understand the need to devise new means of ruling other than the open repression of the Trump administration. Biden’s plans are presented as a modern version of FDR’s New Deal. Roosevelt tried to save capitalism from the 1930’s Depression by making jobs, setting up an elaborate system of welfare and unemployment work compensation insurance. But the New Deal didn’t really solve problems – it just temporarily papered over them. In the end it took a world war to keep capitalism from going under. If Biden is elected we can be sure that his plans and deals will also falter and fail, as well. Biden’s ideas and proposals are a compendium of catch-all slogans. He makes his appeal on a false, hypocritical and deceptive basis. Biden is promising a lot of things like more jobs, extra housing, better welfare, etc. – but who is going to pay the bill? For a while the federal budget can be altered with military spending diverted for social programs, and corporations may even be asked to pay higher taxes. Yet even this will only scratch the surface. In the end the people will bear the cost with austerity cuts. Biden is just the latest instalment in a series of “liberal” politicians full of promises to deliver security. In the end, Biden will be leading a ruling class war against the people of this country.

Never has the need been greater than now for socialists to conduct a campaign for their own principles and in their own name against capitalism. The last months have been portraying the illusion that the Democratic Party can somehow be used as instruments of struggle for civil rights and for civil liberties.

The Delhi Riots

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During deadly religious riots in Delhi earlier this year more than 40 people died when clashes broke out between Hindus and Muslims over a controversial citizenship law. 


An Amnesty International investigation corroborates the BBC’s reporting on incidents of police brutality and complicity during the riots in February, the deadliest in the city for decades. Several other reports have also raised questions over police conduct during the riots. A report by the Delhi Minorities Commission also alleged that the police allowed Muslim homes and shops to be targeted by mobs.
Amnesty International alleges police beat protesters, tortured detainees and at times took part in riots with Hindu mobs. The Amnesty report says that while Hindus also suffered losses, Muslims were disproportionately targeted in the riots.


“The riot that seemed far from spontaneous saw almost three times the number of Muslim casualties compared to Hindus. Muslims also bore the brunt of loss of business and property,” it said.
The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) – which critics say is anti-Muslim – sparked massive protests across India after it was passed last year. One such demonstration in Delhi turned violent – clashes broke out between protesters for and against the law. The violence soon took religious overtones and the rioting continued for three days, with Muslim homes and shops being targeted by violent mobs. The report says its forensic analysis of videos from the rioting supports the conclusion that the police stood by, allowing rioters to wreak havoc in some places.


It also alleges that hate speeches by right-wing leaders sparked the riots – but notes that the police have taken no action against them. On the other hand, it says, police have arrested civil rights activists, teachers and students, most of them Muslim.
“Not even a single political leader that made hate speeches, which advocated violence in the build-up to the riots has been prosecuted,” it said.


“As the Delhi police investigate who is responsible for the riots, there have been no investigations till now into the human rights violations committed by the Delhi police during the riots,” says the report.

Win-Win for the Rich

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 While Trump and top members of his administration continue push for another round of tax cuts to rich investors, a new analysis published Tuesday by the Institute for Policy Studies and Americans for Tax Fairness showed that U.S. billionaires have seen their collective wealth soar by nearly $800 billion since Covid-19 began spreading rapidly across the country in March.



 The research found that between March 18 and August 20—a five-month period in which the economy tanked and tens of millions of people across the U.S. lost their jobs—the combined wealth of America’s more than 600 billionaires jumped by $792 billion, bringing their collective net worth to a staggering $3.7 trillion.



 “For billionaires, this is a heads we win, tails you lose economy, boosted by Trump policies to funnel wealth to the top,” Chuck Collins, director of the IPS Program on Inequality, said. He explained that just 12 U.S. billionaires now own more than a trillion dollars in combined wealth is “an unprecedented and disturbing indicator of the concentrated wealth during a pandemic.” According to IPS, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos—the richest man in the world—has seen his wealth grow by $81.9 billion since mid-March, a bigger jump than any other U.S. billionaire.



 https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/08/26/trump-pushes-new-tax-cuts-wealthy-analysis-shows-us-billionaires-800-billion-richer

The New Abnormal

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No election would be complete without denial, delusion, deception, and those words: “the lesser of two evils.” At every election leftists argue about ‘lesser evil’ and ‘tactical voting’. Truth is the bosses have both parties in the palms of their hands, while we need one of our own. Workers who are so hypnotized by the promise of reforms, those bandaids upon the festering sores of a social structure, that they neglect to observe the rottenness of the capitalist system itself, will naturally support that party whose program promises them most, providing that they retain enough infantile trustfulness to believe anything from the mouth of a politician. Suicidal though this is, and regrettable from the socialist standpoint, there is no doubt that the workers who will to vote for Joe Biden believe they are acting intelligently. He might bring some seeming advantage to some other sections of the workers. He might introduce measures bringing fleeting relief to the some of the working class who forget to ask themselves why reform legislation is necessary, and why, in spite of it, their conditions still grow steadily worse.

Socialism distinguishes itself from capitalism by this fundamental requirement: the community shall own the means of production in common. Biden believes in the capitalist system. He might advocate reform of capitalism’s current excesses, but he is still pro-capitalist. The World Socialist Party of the United States doesn’t see capitalism as a reformable institution but liberal and progressives willing to vote for Biden do. Biden believes in a basic market economy with a welfare state and a healthy amount of regulation, standard fare for a Democrat politician’s promises. Like all politicians Biden is selling America a fantasy.

The US has the highest number of its citizens languishing behind bars. Biden played a central role in winning support for Bill Clinton’s two crime bills in 1994 and 1996 that required mandatory sentencing guidelines, accelerated spending on prisons and put more police on the streets. Now he wants us to believe that he has had a change of heart and wants to end the worst abuses of the system. Everyone talks about how awful it would be if Trump won again but what he has been doing is what the Democrats have actually been doing in previous years –  regime change campaign, the death squad campaigns, all hidden in the artful dodge of the humanitarian intervention. Biden is running a supposedly liberal campaign because he had to fend off the populist candidacy from Sanders. Nothing he says is the truth because once he gets in the office he will do what exactly what he espoused in the past with  trade agreements like NAFTA and while in the Senate or VP he never opposed any wars, pushed hard for the destruction of Libya. Biden has the blood on his hands while put a moral veneer over military intervention, killing in the name of democracy, and taking credit for it as being humanitarian even if it isn’t.

Whatever else might be said about these and related facts on economic mobility, they show that America is not a land of opportunity in which everyone has a good chance to get ahead. The rich are getting richer, at the expense of the rest of us. This is not a radical viewpoint. It is well understood by everyone. The hard part is not grasping what is happening. The hard part is motivating people to do something about it.

We have choices to make. There’s no way that reforming this current system is going to change the quality of life for the majority of humanity. Quite the opposite. The more we improve the system, the more we’re keep the system whose logical outcome will be the destruction of the planet. The global economy by definition destroys the planet. To-day’s capitalist way of living has maybe a 30-year expiry date on it. Communicating this message to our fellow workers is a strong and urgent priority. The global capitalist culture wants us to believe that there is no alternative. Free access and sharing is going to be a central pillar of the post-capitalist world. The social revolution needn’t be violent. It will probably be multifaceted, and multilayered.

Socialism is one of the most abused and misunderstood words in modern history. Socialism has always been based upon the idea of social ownership and control of the means of production, to be achieved through the expropriation of the private property of the capitalist class.

 Eugene Debs called for workers to unite to “assert their combined power” to “break the fetters of wage slavery.” Sanders is yet to refer to wage slavery as endemic in a capitalist economy, as Debs did. Debs spoke derisively of the business owner, who “holds the exploited wage worker in utter contempt…No master ever had any respect for his slave, and no slave ever had, or ever could have, any real love for his master.” “Prostitution,” Debs wrote, “is a part, a necessary part, of capitalist society.” He called for workers to “assume control of every industry” and for ownership to be “transferred from the idle capitalist to the workers to whom it rightfully belongs.” Biden still guarantees the corporations their independence.

Pandemic – Poor Nations Suffer

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The International Monetary Fund has said low-income developing countries (LIDCs) entered the pandemic in a vulnerable position and faced the prospect of their progress in poverty reduction over the past seven to 10 years being wiped out.
 Growth, which averaged 5% in 2019, was likely to come to a standstill this year, the IMF said, adding that previous pandemics had left permanent scars.
“LIDCs entered the Covid-19 crisis in an already vulnerable position – for example, half of them suffered high public debt levels,” the IMF said. “Since March, LIDCs have been hit by an exceptional confluence of external shocks: a sharp contraction in real exports, lower export prices, especially for oil, less capital and remittances inflows, and reduced tourism receipts. Despite the best efforts of LIDC governments, lasting damage seems unavoidable in the absence of more international support. Long-term ‘scarring’ – the permanent loss of productive capacity – is a particularly worrisome prospect.”
Scarring from past pandemics had included high death rates, worse health and education outcomes leading to weaker future earnings; a depletion in savings and assets that result in the closure of firms; and a legacy of debt that depressed lending to the private sector. 
The IMF said that in the aftermath of the 2013 Ebola outreak, Sierra Leone never recovered to its pre-crisis growth path.
“Scarring would trigger severe setbacks to LIDCs’ development efforts, including undoing the gains in reducing poverty over the last seven to 10 years, and exacerbating inequality, including gender inequality,” the IMF said.

Kafala in Qatar Still Hurting

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Qatar’s treatment of migrant workers and its human rights record have been under the spotlight since it was awarded the hosting of football’s 2022 FIFA World Cup.
Under Qatar’s “kafala” (Arabic word for sponsorship) system, migrant workers must obtain their employers’ permission – a no-objection certificate (NOC) – before changing jobs, a law that rights activists say ties their presence in the country to their employers and could lead to abuse and exploitation.
However, a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, released on Monday, said the country’s “efforts to protect migrant workers’ right to accurate and timely wages have largely proven unsuccessful”.
“Despite a handful of reforms in recent years, withheld and unpaid salaries, as well as other wage abuses, are persistent and widespread across at least 60 employers and companies in Qatar,” the report added. HRW said most of the migrant workers it spoke to for the report experienced salary delays, non-payment of dues and end-of-service benefits. Some said “employers made arbitrary deductions from their salaries”.
“This is a pervasive issue, not just in Qatar but across the Gulf. It is important to stress that our report does not say nor intend to imply that all migrant workers in Qatar suffer wage abuses. Instead, it seeks to show that they work against a backdrop that both enables widespread wage abuse and fails to adequately protect them from it when it occurs.”
HRW’s Zayadin said while “Qatar has made many promises to migrant workers over the past several years and has introduced some reforms”, they were not going far enough.
“Time and again, migrant workers in Qatar have been disappointed to find that the marketed reforms have done little to improve their lived realities in the country,” she added. “If Qatar truly wants these reforms to reverberate on the ground and to make a difference in the lives of those they aim to target, they need to abolish kafala in its entirety, allow workers to join trade unions, and introduce reforms that address harmful business practices.”
In June, Al Jazeera published a report on how the coronavirus shutdown affected Qatar’s migrant workers. It spoke to hundreds of workers employed by private companies in the country and found that most were in a “no work, no pay” situation, struggling to survive despite the government’s stimulus package. Al Jazeera spoke to numerous affected migrant workers, including driving instructors, salon staff, baristas, chefs, private taxi drivers, small business owners, and hotel and hospitality staff. Most of them have not received any assistance from their employers and are too afraid to complain.
Al Jazeera has learned that despite a lot of coronavirus-enforced restrictions being lifted as part of Qatar’s four-phase plan to reopen the country and economy, a number of private sponsors are still not paying staff, despite making them work.
“I’m working six hours daily all week but getting paid just over seven riyals [$1.9] per hour,” staff from another cleaning company told Al Jazeera. “Because, until now, the company is still not operating fully, they said they are unable to pay us what the contract says.
“My last salary was paid in March. Since then, the company has not given us anything, not even a single riyal. We are only able to survive through private donations of rice and food items.”
Some workers said they have not been paid since January. Others are being paid a fraction of their salaries. Workers have also told Al Jazeera some employers transfer salaries into the workers’ bank accounts but force the employees to hand over the ATM cards before withdrawing the amount.
Workers are also losing faith in the system due to the barriers to accessing justice that exist in Qatar echoing the fear among migrant workers of repercussions if they complain.  The announcement of reforms or a report means little.

Kafala in Qatar Still Hurting

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Qatar’s treatment of migrant workers and its human rights record have been under the spotlight since it was awarded the hosting of football’s 2022 FIFA World Cup.
Under Qatar’s “kafala” (Arabic word for sponsorship) system, migrant workers must obtain their employers’ permission – a no-objection certificate (NOC) – before changing jobs, a law that rights activists say ties their presence in the country to their employers and could lead to abuse and exploitation.
However, a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, released on Monday, said the country’s “efforts to protect migrant workers’ right to accurate and timely wages have largely proven unsuccessful”.
“Despite a handful of reforms in recent years, withheld and unpaid salaries, as well as other wage abuses, are persistent and widespread across at least 60 employers and companies in Qatar,” the report added. HRW said most of the migrant workers it spoke to for the report experienced salary delays, non-payment of dues and end-of-service benefits. Some said “employers made arbitrary deductions from their salaries”.
“This is a pervasive issue, not just in Qatar but across the Gulf. It is important to stress that our report does not say nor intend to imply that all migrant workers in Qatar suffer wage abuses. Instead, it seeks to show that they work against a backdrop that both enables widespread wage abuse and fails to adequately protect them from it when it occurs.”
HRW’s Zayadin said while “Qatar has made many promises to migrant workers over the past several years and has introduced some reforms”, they were not going far enough.
“Time and again, migrant workers in Qatar have been disappointed to find that the marketed reforms have done little to improve their lived realities in the country,” she added. “If Qatar truly wants these reforms to reverberate on the ground and to make a difference in the lives of those they aim to target, they need to abolish kafala in its entirety, allow workers to join trade unions, and introduce reforms that address harmful business practices.”
In June, Al Jazeera published a report on how the coronavirus shutdown affected Qatar’s migrant workers. It spoke to hundreds of workers employed by private companies in the country and found that most were in a “no work, no pay” situation, struggling to survive despite the government’s stimulus package. Al Jazeera spoke to numerous affected migrant workers, including driving instructors, salon staff, baristas, chefs, private taxi drivers, small business owners, and hotel and hospitality staff. Most of them have not received any assistance from their employers and are too afraid to complain.
Al Jazeera has learned that despite a lot of coronavirus-enforced restrictions being lifted as part of Qatar’s four-phase plan to reopen the country and economy, a number of private sponsors are still not paying staff, despite making them work.
“I’m working six hours daily all week but getting paid just over seven riyals [$1.9] per hour,” staff from another cleaning company told Al Jazeera. “Because, until now, the company is still not operating fully, they said they are unable to pay us what the contract says.
“My last salary was paid in March. Since then, the company has not given us anything, not even a single riyal. We are only able to survive through private donations of rice and food items.”
Some workers said they have not been paid since January. Others are being paid a fraction of their salaries. Workers have also told Al Jazeera some employers transfer salaries into the workers’ bank accounts but force the employees to hand over the ATM cards before withdrawing the amount.
Workers are also losing faith in the system due to the barriers to accessing justice that exist in Qatar echoing the fear among migrant workers of repercussions if they complain.  The announcement of reforms or a report means little.

The Republicrats

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It has been said that the attraction of Bernie Sanders was his principled position. However, Sanders can be criticized for having conceded the most basic of socialist tenets: that an independent working class must create its own revolutionary party and put an end to class collaboration. His support and endorsement of Hillary Clinton in 2016 and his support for Joe Biden in 2020 legitimizes those who feel a need to offer a “pragmatic” electoral policy of the “lesser evil”. Success in the class struggle demands working-class independence from all capitalist parties. Sanders instead simply increased the ability of the the Democrats to absorb and defuse discontent.

The task of convincing our fellow–workers of socialism is a daunting one. There is a cornucopia of radical-left parties in the United States but the almost-forgotten World Socialist Party of the United States may impress you if you have an appreciation of the history of America’s socialist movement.

The WSPUS maintains that it has been unique in the history of American socialist parties since its inception by unrelentingly putting forward the original conception of socialism, defined as a post-capitalist mode of production where the accumulation of capital is no longer the driving force governing production, but production is instead undertaken to produce goods and services directly for use.

The WSPUS defines socialism as a money-free society based on common ownership of the means of production and cooperative and democratic associations as opposed to bureaucratic hierarchies and companies. Additionally, the WSPUS considers being state-free, class-free and the abolition of wage labor as components of a socialist society—characteristics that are usually reserved to describe a fully developed communist society. Unlike anarchists the World Socialist Party advocates a political revolution because it argues that as the state is the “executive committee” of the capitalist class. It must be captured by the working class to keep the former from using it against the will of the latter.

Today when a “socialist” supports a Democratic Party candidate, it is like boarding a train that is headed in the opposite direction of one’s destination. The Democratic Party is a top-down political party, controlled by corporations, and indisputably pro-capitalist. Capitalism is above all an economic system that promotes diametrically opposed interests between workers and capitalists. Capitalists must compete against one another in order to survive, and to compete successfully they must maximize profits, which in turn requires keeping production costs, including labor costs, to a minimum. Joe Biden might say he is for ordinary working people or for the “middle class,” but he is also for corporations, because capitalism cannot operate smoothly without the smooth functioning of corporations, and hence, Biden’s loyalties are at best divided, sowing more confusion than clarity. His distinguishing attribute is that he favors a tighter leash on corporations and a stronger safety net for the working class, which is mere reformism. America badly needs a vigorous socialist party.

Many have been inspired by Sanders’ campaign for the Democratic nomination for president. Even the most cynical socialist acknowledges that he did much to bring back into the political discourse in the United States the ideas of socialism. He legitimized the concept of socialism in electoral politics. He gathered around him many supporters, some who now pledge that they will continue their activities to achieve a more just America, independent of the Democratic Party machine which was always biased against Sanders who is now fated to become a footnote in American history. He now becomes just another in a long line of reforming politicians who have failed to change the basic nature of America’s political party duopoly.  

Sadly, the negatives out-weigh the positives now. Basing his argument on the lesser evil Sanders has endorsed Biden for president. Sanders had spent months of giving speeches where he denounced Biden as a tool of the corporate elite in Wall Street and exposing his hawkish foreign policies. He condemned the greed and corruption of bought and paid for political power by the nation’s ruling elite. By endorsing Biden he has gravely diminished what he accomplished.

America is a plutocracy, which means a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich where politicians are financed by a select group of oligarchs. Always, there are groups in protest against some aspect or other of this social system. The energy and ingenuity they display in campaigns they consider important provides further proof that once working men and women get on the right track capitalism’s days are numbered. Enthusiasm is an excellent and valuable thing when rightly applied, but when it is wasted in fruitless directions it only leads to disheartenment and apathy. The WSPUS has resisted all attempts on the part of those on the Left to renounce its principles and in doing so has been accused dogmatism and sectarianism. This charge is seen by the WSPUS as badge of political honesty and sincerity; of persistence and perseverance. These are precious attributes. But the WSPUS needs more than that. It requires the understanding and cooperation of fellow workers and it is humble enough to admit that it has been lacking in this particular support. The World Socialist Party’s message has always been the same message – that the workers can just as easily run society for their own benefit. The focus of those in the socialist movement must now be to make it a more powerful factor in the years to come. 

Poverty and the Education Gap

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The learning gap between rich and poor primary age pupils in England has widened. 



 Disadvantaged primary pupils more than nine months behind, with the gap widening for the first time since 2007



 Disadvantaged secondary pupils are more than 18 months behind their better-off classmates by the time they take their GCSEs – the same as five years ago, the researchers found.

The researchers identify the increasing proportion of children in persistent poverty as a key cause of the reversal which, they say, is becoming more entrenched each year. The researchers found a strong link between persistent poverty and weaker educational performance.
Children on free school meals for more than 80% of their schooldays were almost two years (22.7 months) behind their wealthier classmates.
Those children on free school meals for less than 20% of their time at school had a learning gap of just under a year (11.3 months).
Last year’s report said it would take more than 500 years to close the gap – now it looks as if it is no longer closing at all.
Sam Butters and Gina Cicerone, joint chief executives of the Fair Education Alliance which collaborated on the report, called its findings “sobering”.
“Without systemic change, this gap will never close,” they added.
Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said with children coming to school too hungry to learn, education staff had been working flat out to tackle the effects of poverty, even before the pandemic.
It is widely expected that the pandemic lockdown school closures will widen the gap even further.

Monbiot and the Malthusians

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The Guardian columnist George Monbiot writes a scathing article criticising the over-populationists.



 Firstly he reminds readers of the major study published last month, showing that the global population is likely to peak then crash much sooner than most scientists had assumed, 



 “I naively imagined that people in rich nations would at last stop blaming all the world’s environmental problems on population growth. I was wrong. If anything, it appears to have got worse….”



 Monbiot points out that  “…the BirthStrike movement  will dissolve itself, because its cause has been hijacked so virulently and persistently by population obsessives. The founders explain that they had “underestimated the power of ‘overpopulation’ as a growing form of climate breakdown denial”…”



 He concedes,  that “in some parts of the world, population growth is a major driver of particular kinds of ecological damage, such as the expansion of small-scale agriculture into rainforests, the bushmeat trade and local pressure on water and land for housing. But its global impact is much smaller than many people claim.”



 Then he cites the scientific formula  for calculating people’s environmental footprint.



  “Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology (I = PAT). The global rate of consumption growth, before the pandemic, was 3% a year. Population growth is 1%. Some people assume this means that the rise in population bears one-third of the responsibility for increased consumption. But population growth is overwhelmingly concentrated among the world’s poorest people, who have scarcely any A or T to multiply their P. The extra resource use and greenhouse gas emissions caused by a rising human population are a tiny fraction of the impact of consumption growth. “



 Monbiot explains that “Panic about population growth enables the people most responsible for the impacts of rising consumption (the affluent) to blame those who are least responsible.”



 He highlights the hypocrisy of over-populationists such as Jane Goodall,  a patron of the charity Population Matters.

“…Goodall appeared in an advertisement for British Airways, whose customers produce more greenhouse gas emissions on one flight than many of the world’s people generate in a year. If we had the global population of 500 years ago (around 500 million), and if it were composed of average UK plane passengers, our environmental impact would probably be greater than that of the 7.8 billion alive today.
She proposed no mechanism by which her dream might come true. This could be the attraction. The very impotence of her call is reassuring to those who don’t want change. If the answer to environmental crisis is to wish other people away, we might as well give up and carry on consuming….”
Monbiot also explains that Sir David Attenborough, also a patron of Population Matters, wrongly blamed famines in Ethiopia on “too many people for too little land”, and suggested that sending food aid was counter-productive.
The article then goes into the relationship of the over-populationists and racism. 
“…Most of the world’s population growth is happening in the poorest countries, where most people are black or brown. The colonial powers justified their atrocities by fomenting a moral panic about “barbaric”, “degenerate” people “outbreeding” the “superior races”. These claims have been revived today by the far right, who promote conspiracy theories about “white replacement” and “white genocide”. When affluent white people wrongly transfer the blame for their environmental impacts on to the birthrate of much poorer brown and black people, their finger-pointing reinforces these narratives. It is inherently racist…”
His article ends with the conclusion that “Nations will soon be fighting over immigrants: not to exclude them, but to attract them, as the demographic transition leaves their ageing populations with a shrinking tax base and a dearth of key workers. Until then, we should resist attempts by the rich to demonise the poor…”
Much of the article is reflected in numerous posts on this blog. Fortunately, George Monbiot has a wider and larger audience than ourselves, so the message travels a lot further.

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