CLASS ANALYSIS

BILL BLUM—Red-baiting did not originate with Sanders, of course. It has a long, inglorious history in the United States that began with the persecution of anarchists in the late 19th century, continued through the Red Scare of the World War I era and came to full flower in the form of McCarthyism during the late 1940s and 1950s. But while the attacks on Sanders contributed to his defeat in 2016, they proved less effective than the red-baiting of old.

ALISON BODINE—In Vancouver, the Chilean diaspora has come together with others living in Canada in a new group named Van4Chile. Van4Chile has organized protests and public demonstrations in solidarity with the people of Chile, including an energetic protest in front of the CBC in downtown Vancouver on November 2, 2019. At this action, more than 200 people, from all walks of life, came together to demand that the CBC cover the protests in Chile. They also called out the government of Canada’s complicity in the repression of people’s human and democratic rights in Chile.

JUAN MANUEL BOCCACCI—A deep criticism of the neoliberal system is the common denominator in the assemblies. People are talking from their exhaustion of a system that wore them down. They don’t want to continue living in debt; they don’t understand why they have to pay expensive basic services while the elite fills their own pockets. It is their dignity that the Chilean people are demanding in the streets. And the assemblies are the space to express their exhaustion from party politics.

JOANNE LAURIER—Mendes’ movie never asks who was responsible for one of the most barbaric episodes in world history, a calamity that resulted in some 40 million civilian and military casualties, including an estimated 22 million dead. The claims that the film’s depiction of numerous atrocities makes it an anti-war work are spurious, as is the case in regard to various contemporary movies on the subjects of the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions (The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty, Lions for Lambs, Mendes’ own Jarhead, etc.). It is entirely possible to picture the awfulness of such conflicts—particularly as they affect one’s “own” side—and still insist, or imply, that such conflicts are necessary, inevitable, or, once begun, have to be “carried through to the end” in the national interest. The uncritical, narrowly focused treatment of the immediate “facts” of the war in 1917 helps plant it firmly in the pro-British establishment camp.

ERIC ZUESSE—The basic distinction is class, not ethnicity. The cause of all these wars — not only international but also civil conflicts — is the unlimited greed of the wealthiest. Ethnicity is merely used by them in order to expand their own wealth.