If you’re on the left, despite any disappointments and misgivings you may have with the Democratic Party, you may conclude that they are the lesser evil and vote for them in most elections. This is not normally a difficult case for Democrats to make. Indeed, “not as evil as Republicans” has almost become the party’s tagline. It’s their primary selling point.
In 2024, however, President Joe Biden is struggling to make that case. He’s done a lot wrong during his years in office and a few things right. But his present support for Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza is so monstrous and criminal that no moral nation could allow him to remain president.
At least 34,000 Palestinians have been killed since the fighting escalated after October 7, the large majority of whom are women and children. The number of dead is surely much higher, but the region is so totally devastated that they can no longer keep count.
The Israeli blockade has triggered widespread famine, with Oxfam reporting that “the entire population of Gaza is currently facing high levels of acute food insecurity.” That’s 2.3 million starving people.
More than 50% of the buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, including universities, hospitals, and critical infrastructure.
Israeli leaders routinely pledge total destruction of Gaza and dehumanize Palestinians, setting up a narrative where the victims deserve whatever Israel decides to dole out to them.
By punishing the entire civilian population of Gaza, the Israeli military has exceeded in scale and criminality the terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas on October 7. And they have done so with unconditional funding, arms, and diplomatic support from the United States and President Biden. Biden is not just culpable in this genocide; he may bear more responsibility for it than anyone else on Earth. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu simply couldn’t carry it out without Biden’s blessing.
Reelecting a man who’s perpetuating a genocide is unthinkable. There are no good alternatives. Donald Trump will likely be just as bad, if not worse, on the question of Gaza. And simply put, if Biden loses, Trump wins. That’s a horrifying prospect for Palestinians and the planet. But if our system is so corrupt and amoral that it can’t present even one candidate who refuses to aid and abet genocide, then it deserves to crumble and begin anew.
American presidents do terrible things routinely. Warmongering comes with the territory of managing a global capitalist empire. But there are some crimes for which there can be no forgiveness or grace. Deeds which, once done, put you in league with the worst monsters of history. Genocide is chief among these. We can’t keep allowing politicians to get away with this sort of thing by rewarding them with more power.
Now, protests and occupations demanding an end to U.S. support for the genocide have emerged on university campuses across the country. Police have cracked the skulls of college students and professors, staging mass arrests and conducting heavily militarized raids in places like Columbia. Biden responded to the unrest not by condemning police brutality or offering any sympathy to the protesters’ legitimate concerns. Instead, he painted protesters broadly as lawless and antisemitic, claims for which there is scant evidence if any.
It’s a curious strategy that Biden and the Democrats are running: Carry out a genocide, then use state stormtroopers to beat and silence the young people who oppose it and whose vote they desperately need to win. Somehow, unleashing state violence on a core constituency and telling them to “get over yourself” seems like an irresponsible way for the defenders of democracy to campaign during a must-win election against the most dangerous fascist in American history.
On climate change, the social safety net, labor, ballot access, and rights important to women, immigrants and minorities, Democrats are generally at least marginally better than Republicans. That holds true in the Biden vs. Trump rematch. These are hugely important issues and many progressives will make that calculation and vote for Biden on that basis.
Yes, Donald Trump is a serially corrupt, pathologically lying, habitually felonious, fundamentally indecent, and totally amoral crook. He will do damage that will last generations. He must be kept out of the White House. More than that, if he showed up at your house you’d be ill-advised to let him in.
But Biden is sanctioning, funding, and arming the worst humanitarian crisis on earth. Whatever damage Trump will do in four years might be worth suffering if it shifts the country’s political calculus such that an alternative to the Democratic and Republican super-hawks has a chance to emerge. We might teach the Democratic Party that its lust for war, violence, and profit will not be tolerated and pave the way for a new party.
Our lesser of two evils system was always destined to be a race to the bottom, and now we’re there, voting between two genocidal geriatrics. If these are the kinds of decisions we’re having to make, then we’ve gone way too far over the edge. We might be better off abstaining from the election altogether and finding new ways to oppose the two nihilistic death cults we call political parties.
A crowd gathers around bodybags of all sizes laid out in Gaza.
For more than 100 days, Israel has been relentlessly bombing, starving, dehumanizing, and denying aid to the people in the Gaza Strip. In terms of scale and proportionality, it’s one of the most brutal assaults in memory. It’s being done in broad daylight with funding from the American taxpayer and the full support of the American political and media class.
On January 11, South Africa presented a genocide case against Israel at the United Nations’ International Court of Justice at the Hague. Their case was persuasive, outlining a long list of war crimes and genocidal rhetoric from top Israeli officials.
Despite this flurry of negative attention, Israel has carried on undeterred and Western governments have maintained their support. America and the Biden Administration continue to fund the assault and have even supported it with direct military action.
The situation feels helpless. It’s a tragedy unfolding in real time, with live updates from victims and reporters. Every day brings a new horror, and the supposed moral arbiters of the free world are looking humanity in the eyes and saying, “We’re doing this, and there isn’t a thing you can do about it.”
The case against Israel
Whether Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide is a matter of ongoing debate. The United Nations’ definition of genocide includes, “…any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
The first three of these are almost a given. More than 25,000 people have been killed in Gaza since October 7 and another 58,000 have been injured. Around 70% of the dead are civilian women and children. On average, Israeli strikes kill one child in Gaza every 15 minutes. The actual numbers are believed to be much higher as bodies lie uncounted under the rubble. In a population of just 2.3 million, this equates to more than one out of every 100 people killed, and the numbers grow every day.
This is why the IDF is killing any journalist that flies a drone over Gaza, they don’t want the world to witness the sheer scale of the genocide…🇵🇸💔 pic.twitter.com/uwNTpamtih
The World Health Organization reports that virtually everyone in Gaza faces “crisis levels of hunger.” Facilities and infrastructure have been demolished. Diseases are running rampant amid the deplorable sanitation conditions, horrific overcrowding and lack of healthcare. The Israeli siege prevents Gazans from accessing goods, basic aid, electricity, and vital services. The UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Martin Griffiths, declared in a briefing to the Security Council that in Gaza, “Dignified human life is a near impossibility.”
Devastation in Gaza is almost total. Everywhere is death, disease, starvation, and destruction.
But proving genocide requires proving intent. All this carnage could be, and often is, dismissed by Israel as collateral damage in a righteous war against Hamas. Even if everyone in Gaza winds up dead, that isn’t necessarily enough to convict Israel.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant: “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed… We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”
Israel President Isaac Herzog, implying everyone in Gaza shares culpability for the terror attack on October 7: “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible… It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved.”
Agriculture Minister Avi Dicther, referencing the 1948 Nakba in which 750,000 Palestinians were violently removed from their homes or killed to make way for the State of Israel’s founding: “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba… Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it’ll end.”
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, advocating the permanent removal of Gazans from their homes: “I welcome the initiative of the voluntary emigration of Gaza Arabs to countries around the world… The State of Israel will no longer be able to accept the existence of an independent entity in Gaza.”
The Israeli defense
The day after South Africa presented its genocide case, Israel dismissed the charges as “grossly distorted” and argued they have only acted in self-defense. They insisted they were fighting a war against Hamas, not the Palestinian people, and rejected calls to stop the assault. One common refrain from Israel supporters and Israel itself has been, “Israel has a right to defend itself” – and they claim everything they’ve done since October 7 has been to that end.
In the current narrative, everything began on October 7, when Israel was attacked by armed members of Hamas, Gaza’s governing militia. The details of October 7 were horrific: Hamas stood accused of slaughtering civilians, taking hostages, committing mass rape, and decapitating babies. While some of the more sensational allegations are disputed, no one disputes that Hamas killed innocent Israelis.
But even if you treat October 7 as an out-of-the-blue terror attack, what the IDF is doing in Gaza goes far beyond self-defense. Hamas killed 1,139 people during its attack. Of these, 68% were civilians. Not only has Israel killed more than 20 times that number of Gazans, a greater proportion of them have been civilians. In other words, the Hamas attack was slightly more focused on military targets.
People who flippantly tout the self-defense argument either don’t understand the scale of destruction in Gaza or they’re trying to imply that Israel has a right to murder anyone it thinks might one day pose a problem – even if that person is only a child.
Israel and its defenders have also resorted to censorship and bringing up irrelevant counterpoints – for instance, suggesting that South Africa is acting as “the legal arm of the Hamas terror organization.” Even if that were true, it says nothing about the charges and the evidence.
Antisemitism and censorship
Another not-insignificant tactic of Israel defenders has been, unfortunately, to accuse opponents of antisemitism.
Much of the discussion conflates and confuses the State of Israel, the religion of Judaism, the Jewish people, and Zionism – the movement to establish and, nowadays, expand a homeland for Jews. Jumbling these concepts has the effect of turning criticism of any one of them into antisemitic criticism of them all. In supposing that Jews, Israel, and Zionism are inseparable from one another, even human rights advocacy on behalf of Palestinians becomes antisemitism.
This has led to the stigmatization and even criminalization of the phrase, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Popular at demonstrations, the phrase refers to the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, which is currently shared by Israel and what’s left of Palestine. Propagandists are taking the most uncharitable possible interpretation of the slogan to smear protesters and college students worldwide as irredeemable, terror-supporting antisemites. Ironically, a pro-Israel variation of the phrase is used by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ruling Likud Party without mainstream controversy.
Censorship of phrases like “from the river to the sea” and “decolonization” is less about protecting everyday Jews from bigotry and more about discrediting criticism of Israel and its assault on Gaza. However, everyday Jews may actually be suffering because of it. Agencies worldwide have reported a rise in both antisemitic and Islamophobic hate crimes. It’s cowardly, disingenuous, and dangerous for Israel and its defenders to put the Jewish people between themselves and their accusers while they commit war crimes.
It’s also important to note that countless Jews have raised their voices, often quite bravely and at enormous personal risk, in opposition to Israel’s assault on Gaza. Here’s a sample:
Ofer Cassif, a member of Israel’s legislative body Knesset, is risking expulsion for speaking out against the Gaza assault.
The group Rabbis4Ceasefire has led marches and a prayer protest at the United Nations.
Author and 87-year-old Holocaust survivor Marione Ingram called for a ceasefire and protested outside the White House.
The Guardian reported on multiple Jewish groups that condemned the harsh treatment of Gazans by Israel.
Tal Mitnick, an 18-year-old conscientious objector in Israel, was jailed for refusing to take part in the Gaza genocide.
It’s deeply cynical and unfair to label criticism of Israel’s actions or support for Palestinians as antisemitic. It’s also deeply unfair to hold Israel’s actions and the statements of its politicians against the Jewish people. Antisemitism is an ancient blight on mankind that should be stamped out wherever it emerges. Opposition to violent military occupations is a proud tradition that should be celebrated wherever it emerges.
US President Joe Biden and Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israel’s genocidal co-defendant: The United States
For many Americans, the shame of this situation arises from our complicity in it. Aside from some occasional finger-wagging and suggestions that Israel ought to “be more careful” about killing so many children, the Biden Administration has been ironclad in its support of Israel since the assault on Gaza began.
Now, the US is moving from arms dealer to active participant. Together with the UK and others, the US has been bombing the Houthis in Yemen. The Houthis are an Islamic militia that controls large parts of Yemen. They’d begun attacking commercial vessels in the Red Sea in an attempt to disrupt the shipment of supplies to Israel. Now, the US has effectively gone to war with one of the poorest nations on Earth to open shipping lanes for a country accused of genocide. Perversely, the Houthis are actually the ones acting in accordance with international law, which obligates states to “take measures to prevent and to punish the crime of genocide.” The international community is pleading for de-escalation as fighting threatens to extend throughout the Middle East and beyond.
The Biden Administration is also running diplomatic cover for Israel. The US has vetoed UN Security Council resolutions calling for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby called the South Africa genocide case “meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.”
And Biden is doing all this at his own political peril. He’s about to have a rematch for the presidency against Donald Trump, who leads him in polls. Meanwhile Biden’s support among many of his core constituencies, especially young people and Muslim-Americans, has cratered since the Gaza assault began. There is zero reason to expect that Trump will offer any greater wisdom or morality on this issue, but voters can’t bring themselves to support the man they’ve nicknamed Genocide Joe.
Where do we go from here?
Whether you call it a war, an assault, or a genocide, what Israel is doing to Gaza can’t last forever. Soon there won’t be anything remaining of Gaza to attack. Without immense international pressure, applied swiftly, all that will be left is to write the history.
Netanyahu and his top officials are crystal clear. Their goal is “full Israeli security control over all the territory west of Jordan” – in other words, Israeli domination from the river to the sea. Netanyahu has flatly refused to consider a two-state solution, the long-sought resolution that would create two sovereign states, Israel and Palestine. Increasingly, it seems unlikely that there’ll even be a one-state solution – that is, a single state where Israelis and Palestinians coexist peacefully with shared, equal rights.
A judgment from the International Court of Justice could take years. Even if the court convicts Israel, it has no enforcement powers. The US can simply veto, as it has in the past, any Security Council resolution requesting that Israel stop its assault.
It’s never too late for peace. No matter how much damage has been done, it would be better if the fighting stopped. Anyone with any means at their disposal, whether it’s protests, letter-writing, petition-signing, boycotting, or even voting, can pressure their leaders to impose sanctions and diplomatic measures. Perhaps, with enough action from activists and the international community, the genocide can be stopped before it’s completed.
This article only catalogues evidence from more or less reputable news sites. Underneath all the lies, coverups, and sanitization there almost certainly lie even greater horrors. One day, Western institutions will have to pretend they didn’t know what was happening, pretend there weren’t countless videos of Palestinians clutching their dead and dying loved ones, pretend they weren’t warned by human rights organizations and journalists.
There’s no one left in Gaza who hasn’t been displaced, gone hungry, lost a relative, and/or been blown to bits. If that isn’t a genocide, it’s hard to know what is. The psychological toll has been profound and will last generations – if there are future generations left to feel it. Whoever does survive will harbor deep, long-lasting animosities for Israel and the US for the carnage visited on them. Many of them will likely respond to the violence they’ve experienced with violence of their own. They will never forgive us, because what we’ve done is unforgivable.
Whatever you call it, hardly anything on Earth today is as clear-cut and morally unambiguous as Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip. And the USA, President Biden, establishment Washington, and mainstream media are firmly on the wrong side of it.
Tensions between Israel and Palestine have erupted anew, reaching perhaps their most dangerous escalation yet. Things kicked off when Hamas, the leading political authority in the Palestinian territory of Gaza, slaughtered some 260 people at a music festival in Israel. Since then, all the world’s eyes have been on the region as reports of war crimes and atrocities on both sides – some exaggerated or made up, but far too many true – filter out daily. Political leaders, pundits, and ordinary people have responded to the horror with vengeful, even genocidal rhetoric.
Discussing the situation is difficult. Emotions are high, and the sheer scale of violence makes level-headedness feel almost inappropriate. Disinformation and propaganda make it hard to know the truth even for those who seek it out and there are numerous misunderstandings about the region’s politics and history in general. Add organized religion to the mix and all the bigotries, atrocities, and accusations that entails, and it’s not hard to imagine things quickly going off the rails.
Still, it’s more important now than ever to not get carried away – though the powers that be are already well on their way to doing horrific, irreversible, history-staining crimes.
Responding to terrorism with war crimes
Many have referred to the massacre as Israel’s 9/11. The analogy is apt not just for the horror of the act itself but for the reaction its leaders have had. Both Israel and the US were allegedly warned about the attack in advance. In both cases, leaders refused to acknowledge how any of their own wrongdoings may have incited terror, and in both cases they seized the opportunity escalate their own violence in brutal revenge.
No doubt, the Hamas-led massacre was heinous. Nova music festival attendees did nothing to deserve being butchered. The Palestinian people have real grievances with the State of Israel, but those innocent people were not responsible for generations of abuse.
By the same token, the 2 million Palestinians living in Gaza were not responsible for Hamas’s actions. Despite that, retaliation against the entirety of Gaza has been swift and gigantic. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant used violent, dehumanizing language when he ordered, “… a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly.” Gallant’s siege has been condemned as a war crime, hundreds of Gazans are being killed by Israeli bombing daily, and a ground invasion is underway.
To be outraged by the violence in only one direction is simply morally inconsistent. We must never allow ourselves to think responding to terrorism with war crimes is justifiable – yet, far too often, we do. We afford grace to leaders like Gallant and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, just as we did for George Bush after 9/11. “Proper” leaders wage war honorably with bombs. Shooting civilians in a murderous rampage is rightly viewed as savage terrorism. Killing them with bombs while they’re asleep at home is somehow dignified, civilized – or, at worst, unfortunate but necessary collateral damage.
A brief history of Israel/Palestine
Disturbingly, this contempt and inhumanity is how Israel has treated Palestinians all along. The Palestinian people, in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, have suffered for generations under one of the most brutally oppressive apartheid regimes the planet has ever seen.
The history of the region, of course, goes back millennia. Jews were persecuted throughout Europe for centuries, with “the Jewish question” being debated in the 1700s in Britain and early Zionists like Theodor Herzl arguing for the creation of a Jewish state as early as 1896. Following the atrocities of World War II, large numbers of displaced Jews and holocaust survivors were looking for a place to call home. Governments including the U.S. and U.S.S.R. struck up a deal to carve up Palestine – then under British control – into Arab and Jewish sections, displacing some 700,000 Palestinians and giving birth to the State of Israel in 1948.
From the beginning, the region was fraught with turmoil, and even times of peace were uneasy with resentments always simmering. Wars broke out with neighbors like Egypt and Jordan while territorial control waxed and waned. Overall, however, Israel grew considerably, eventually dwindling Palestine down to only two occupied territories: Gaza, now a small, 25-mile-long strip bordering the Mediterranean Sea and Egypt, and the West Bank, now a fragmented cluster of Palestinian villages.
This land wasn’t taken through luck or savvy negotiation. It was taken by military force, settled illegally and maintained with often brutal occupations.
In the 1970s, Israel also became a close military ally of the US. Adjusted for inflation, the American government has given Israel some $260 billion in aid, the vast majority of it military. Israel is the largest annual recipient of US military aid, and the package grows with almost every presidency. In addition, the US looks the other way on Israel’s myriad human rights violations and shields it from international scrutiny, vetoing some 53 United Nations resolutions over the years that condemned Israel for its illegal settlements, repression of dissent, and treatment of Palestinians.
The terrifying place we now find ourselves: Calls for ethnic cleansing
To place Hamas’s rampage, and the ensuing violence and hostage-taking, in this historical context is not to excuse or justify it. However, the context is necessary to understand why it happened. The kind of violence and abuse the Palestinians have been subjected to for generations radicalizes people and makes citizens of the offending country, and the entire world, less safe.
After the Nova festival attack, Israeli journalist Gideon Levy wrote in Haaretz: “Behind all this lies Israeli arrogance; the idea that we can do whatever we like, that we’ll never pay the price and be punished for it… it’s impossible to imprison 2 million people forever without paying a cruel price… Israel hasn’t stopped punishing Gaza since 1948, not for a moment… We haven’t learned a thing.”
Not only have we not learned a thing, Netanyahu’s government – with the support of President Biden and the US government – appears ready to commit full-on genocide in Gaza.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog blamed all Gazans for the Hamas massacre, saying, “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible… It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved… They could have fought against that evil regime.” By the same logic, every US citizen bears responsibility for US crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and elsewhere. Every Israeli is responsible for the displacement and subjugation of Palestinians.
Netanyahu ordered the evacuation of some 1.1 million Gazans, nearly half the strip’s population, despite them having nowhere to go and being given only 24 hours’ notice. Then, Israel bombed the evacuation route, killing as many as 70 people, including women and children. A full-scale invasion of Gaza is imminent, and virtually everyone there has been declared an enemy terrorist. Already, more than 2,200 Gazans have been killed, including 700 children, and the number grows by the hundreds every day. Meanwhile Hamas has killed some 1300 Israelis and taken another 150 hostages. Some hostages have reportedly been killed by Israeli bombs. What’s happening in Gaza is heartbreaking and horrifying – and as Netanyahu has already threatened, “this is only the beginning.”
Defenders of Israeli policy often claim the nation, as the only Western ally and Jewish state in the Middle East, is beset on all sides by enemies. There may be some truth to that. But to truly understand the power differential between Israel and Palestine, simply look at what’s happening: a complete siege, shutting off power, ordering over a million people to evacuate. Hamas doesn’t have the power to do that to Israel. Only Israel has the power to do it to Gaza.
All this context is lost in mainstream American media and political discussions. President Biden flippantly says, “Israel has a right to defend itself” – as if every action it takes, every bomb it drops, apartment it levels, child it maims, and human being it terrorizes is purely self-defense. On top of that, warmongers in Washington are now calling for war with Iran over its support of Hamas, which could spark World War III.
What can we do?
Solving the problems in Israel and the Middle East, ending war, and allowing for the dignity, peace and security of everyone – these are all lofty goals that feel depressingly unachievable in moments like this. The need of the greedy and the powerful to expand their territory and subjugate others with as much violence as it takes feels insurmountable.
But even in these ugliest and darkest moments, there are things we can do. We can choose to see the humanity in one another. We can seek out voices on the ground like Plestia Alaqad, who is reporting from besieged Gaza despite a lack of energy and internet. We can refuse to be bullied by warmongers and dehumanizers into cosigning their genocidal worldview. We can protest, educate ourselves and each other, put the squeeze of public pressure on leaders, and if necessary or able, put our bodies on the line.
We must break free of the American corporate, political, and media narrative that says nations can retaliate to terrorism with any murderous war crime they want. We must stop tolerating or justifying abuses of the powerful against the weak.
Terrorism isn’t about justice. It’s a violent means to a political end. Hamas’s crime was heinous, but the correct response is not even larger-scale atrocities. Governments can undertake police actions to find those responsible. They can inspire, support, and encourage the people of Gaza to overthrow Hamas. Best of all, Israel could lift their boot from Palestinians’ necks, begin treating them like human beings, and alleviate the desperate situation that foments extremism in the first place.
Whether it’s Hamas with machineguns or Netanyahu with F-15s, mass-scale murder should always repulse us and animate our passion for justice. What Netanyahu and the Israeli government is leading us toward – with the bloodthirsty, salivating support of American politicians, media, and the military-industrial complex behind them – reeks of genocide. No one with any morality can be comfortable watching it, but we all must be brave enough to not look away.
The former members of Pink Floyd have had a long-running and highly public feud ever since Roger Waters, the principal writer of the band’s best-known material, left the group in 1984. His former chief collaborator, lead guitarist David Gilmour, carried on using the band’s name, leading to bitter legal battles. Aside from a couple momentary reunions, the two showed no interest in burying the hatchet, let alone working together again.
Recently the feud exploded, going well beyond the confines of the band and bleeding into issues of geopolitics, war, and peace. On February 6, Gilmour’s wife, writer Polly Samson, tweeted, “Sadly @rogerwaters you are antisemitic to your rotten core. Also a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac. Enough of your nonsense.” Shortly after, Gilmour concurred, tweeting, “Every word demonstrably true.”
Samson’s tweet was a shocking, vitriolic series of epithets that paint Waters as a complete and total scumbag. This is no mere difference of opinion. Plenty of people disagree with Waters, but Samson apparently sees him as an irredeemable, worthless human being who contributes nothing but evil to the world.
It’s worth asking what brought her to this venomous string of insults. The personal stuff is difficult for anyone to knowledgeably comment on, but Waters does have a long record of public statements that can shed some light on where she got “Putin apologist” and “antisemitic.”
Roger Waters on the Russian invasion of Ukraine
Waters has recently been vocal in his calls for a diplomatic resolution to the war in Ukraine. On February 8, he even addressed the United Nations on the matter. In his impassioned speech, Waters pleaded for an end to all wars, including the one in Ukraine. He also called for a reorientation of global priorities more broadly, speaking for the hungry, the cold, the sick, the oppressed, and the war-torn all the world over.
“The invasion of Ukraine by The Russian Federation was illegal. I condemn it in the strongest possible terms.”
“The Russian invasion of Ukraine was not unprovoked, so I also condemn the provocateurs in the strongest possible terms.”
“The only sensible course of action today is to call for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine.”
Parts of Waters’s speech have been cherrypicked to dismiss him as a pro-Putin propagandist. In particular, his characterization of Russia’s invasion as “provoked” has drawn the most flack.
Saying an attack was “provoked” is not the same as saying it was “justified.” For instance, wondering what provoked Polly Samson to say what she said about Roger Waters isn’t the same thing as justifying her words. Simply trying to understand another’s motivation isn’t apologia. When something happens, thoughtful people ask, “Why?” And in most cases, whether they be interpersonal matters or war and geopolitics, the answers are complex.
It would be convenient if the war in Ukraine was simply a case of irrational, bloodthirsty Russian barbarians waging a war of conquest and the heroic US and NATO sending arms to secure peace. That’s the narrative shared by most establishment media and political figures, and it’s predicated on the perfectly reasonable notion that the invading force is the bad guy.
But Waters acknowledging that the US and NATO have antagonized Russia, particularly around Ukraine, is not the same thing as absolving Putin or acting as his propagandist. Nor is it victim-blaming Ukrainians for their predicament. Waters believes the war in Ukraine is a proxy war, provoked by Western powers, at enormous cost to the Ukrainian people.
And he is calling for a diplomatic resolution before the situation erupts into a nuclear World War III. He’s implored the West, particularly President Biden, to stop fueling the war and inflaming the tensions by pouring money and arms into it. Agree with him or not, those calls for peace don’t sound like the things an unforgivable monster – like the kind Polly Samson depicted in her tweet – would say.
Even today, in concerts, Waters consistently confronts enormous crowds with challenging calls for racial justice, economic security, and peace. He doesn’t have to put himself out there the way he does. Pink Floyd is one of the biggest bands ever and he could easily coast on royalties and reputation. But he can’t help himself because he is passionate, and it does matter to him.
Roger Waters, the alleged antisemite
Samson’s other accusation, which Waters has contended with for years, is that he’s antisemitic. It’s a tough charge to shake, and one that outspoken critics of Israeli policy are often confronted with. Because Waters is forceful with his language, it sometimes comes across as overtly hostile. Critics of Israel must not conflate the state with the Jewish people themselves. By and large, Waters has always been on the right side of that line.
The Anti-Defamation League’s page, Roger Waters In His Own Words, primarily uses Waters’s criticism of Israel and groups like AIPAC as evidence against him. Arguably the most damning thing, perhaps even explicitly antisemitic, was a video Waters played in 2010 concerts that depicted the Star of David and a dollar sign together, which he later stopped using.
A huge part of Waters’s identity comes from losing his father in World War II at the tender age of five months. Waters has been committed to fighting the evils that took his father away from him – war, imperialism, and Nazism chief among them. He has always denied every accusation of antisemitism.
Not just a difference of opinion
As for the personal charges Samson throws – misogynist, liar, thief, hypocrite, tax-avoider, lip-syncing, envious, megalomaniac – only those who know Roger Waters can say. There’s little if anything in his lyrics or public statements to support those accusations. None of us are perfect, but Waters appears, for the most part, to be a fairly dedicated humanist and peacenik.
What’s so sad about this fight, though, is how Samson – and by extension, David Gilmour – employed the lowest of tactics to not only dismiss an ideological opponent, but to dehumanize him, reduce him to beneath contempt. Indeed, this is how many in the neoliberal establishment want to paint their antiwar critics: not just as naïve or wrong, but as villainous, evil, and vile enough, perhaps, to even deserve death.
The War in Ukraine brings out a lot of intense emotion, and with good reason. Any war should. But this war, in particular, has some incredibly unnuanced and aggressive supporters. Until we can break that cycle and that rigidity, it will only escalate.
Fifty years ago, Waters wrote about the folly of Us and Them mentality. Here he is now, being otherized by the partner with whom he recorded some of history’s most impressive and timeless popular music. That music carried a vital message and philosophy, and Waters sticks to it still, offering his perspective and searching for a way out of a deadly war that threatens to engulf the world. For that to prompt such an incredibly vicious tweet from someone so close in his life is incredibly sad.
The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, has officially purchased the social media platform Twitter for the astronomical sum of $44 billion. It’s one of the most high-profile business transactions in recent memory, and the ensuing chaos has steadily unraveled both the myths Musk built up around himself and the myths we tell ourselves about billionaires and capitalist excellence.
Musk, age 51, was born into wealth. His father famously owned significant shares of an emerald mine, among other business and real estate ventures, while his mother was a fashion cover model. After college, the young Musk made a series of very savvy business decisions, helping to found PayPal and SpaceX and becoming the largest shareholder in Tesla. In the years since, Musk has invested heavily in his public relations, branding himself as a forward-thinking, genius inventor.
Until recently, that image largely held. But gradually, as Musk began making more peculiar and immature statements and as journalists dug deeper into his business practices and personal history, a different picture emerged. Now, with his acquisition of Twitter and all the ensuing, very public drama that’s entailed, it’s become clearer than ever that Musk isn’t a transformative savior who will guide mankind to a brighter future. He may not even be much of a businessman. He may, actually, be kind of a dunce.
Musk overpays for Twitter and scrambles to recoup his investment
For months after making his initial offer, Musk tried to back out of his deal to buy Twitter. The $44 billion price he paid for it is more than the GDP of most nations, and some $30 billion more than Twitter’s estimated value. Musk’s own net worth is estimated at around $180 billion, but it fluctuates dramatically as his unpredictable actions leave investors and stockholders in turbulence. To seal the Twitter deal, Musk put together $46.5 billion through a combination of personal financing, including by selling Tesla stock, and loans from a number of banks and investors.
Now that Musk is the owner, Twitter is delisted from the stock exchange. One of the world’s largest social media platforms, with some 240 million monetizable daily active users, is now Musk’s own privately held fiefdom. The company is no longer accountable to the usual bylaws or ethics, limited though they may be, of public corporations. And all that user data — pictures, direct messages, financial and personal information — is now in the hands of a man with utter contempt for the privacy and security of others, as is the platform himself.
Conservatives applauded much of this, viewing Musk as a decisive man of action and Twitter employees as spreading left-wing propaganda. Many of the laid-off workers were responsible for Twitter’s moderation of hate speech, communications, ethics, and advertising. Instances of the n-word skyrocketed 500% immediately after Musk’s takeover and right-wing conspiracy theories surged. Musk had previously complained that Twitter censored conservative voices in favor of liberal ones.
Shortly after taking over, Musk proposed an $8 monthly fee for verified users, apparently haggled down by Musk himself from an initial $20 in a Twitter thread with author Stephen King. Verification comes in the form of a blue check mark next to an account’s username that signals to readers the account is official. Charging for it is apparently an attempt to monetize Twitter’s users and sort of invert the site’s long-running business model. Before, Twitter’s users were the product and advertisers were the customers, paying for users to see their ads. Now, Musk wants users themselves to pony up as well.
Comedy is now legal on Twitter — except for this, this, and this
Musk has often branded his decision to buy Twitter as an attempt to restore free speech to the platform, proudly tweeting, “Comedy is now legal on Twitter.” Trolls and other users very quickly tested the limits of that theory.
After Musk began selling verification, a rash of phony verified accounts began impersonating official accounts, posting satire and parody from them. Many of these pretended to be Musk himself, posting about his association with convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, his dodging of taxes, and offering to give away cryptocurrency. Musk quickly clamped down on these accounts and suspended them, but in some cases, not before they had significant, real-world consequences.
On November 10, an account impersonating pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly tweeted, “We are excited to announce insulin is free now.” The real company quickly put out a tweet correcting the information — they are not giving away insulin, despite the fact that its creators gave it away and wished it to be affordable for all — and Twitter suspended the phony account, but the damage had already been done. Eli Lilly’s stock, along with two other pharmaceutical companies, took a significant hit by the time the market closed.
In many ways, these parody accounts are laudable. They have given high-profile spotlights to corporate misdeeds. But the companies themselves certainly don’t like them. And Musk’s own behavior can’t be reassuring — he posted laughing emojis under a tweet spotlighting parody accounts of Nintendo mascot Mario giving the middle finger and President Joe Biden talking about self-fellatio. Especially at first, it seemed to be primarily his own image that he’s dedicated Twitter’s resources to upholding.
All the chaos has sown distrust and made advertisers wary of Twitter. In addition to the brand risks they face from impersonations and less-regulated hate speech, there is Musk’s personal brand, now inextricably linked to Twitter as a platform, which has slowly morphed from visionary savior of humanity through capitalism to right-wing, anti-woke, sophomoric man-child and reckless business tyrant.
Musk’s behavior at Twitter is high-profile because of the nature of the platform and his own inability to keep quiet on it. But it’s perfectly in line with his practices elsewhere. His companies have committed a litany of labor and product safety violations, including active union-busting, illegal retribution, unsafe work spaces, and flammable solar panels. It’s tempting to buy into his hype, and believe that he is a benevolent billionaire who offered the market cleaner, more sustainable choices. But that doesn’t seem to be who Elon Musk is at his core.
The future looks chaotic
No one knows what will ultimately happen with Twitter. Musk himself has already floated the idea that it could go bankrupt next year. All the dumb decisions — to amplify voices that pay over those that don’t, to fire employees responsible for curating a minimally decent public space — are Musk’s own. The average user experience hasn’t dramatically changed yet, but if the company can’t pay its workers or its bills, anything could happen.
Twitter has always had issues. Social media itself is inherently problematic. But it’s still remarkable to watch Musk transform a potentially viable digital town square into a wasteland, at enormous financial expense to himself and his investors. So far, the whole debacle been a spectacular illustration of just how far the myth of the genius billionaire is from the reality. And, just maybe, it should give us cause to reexamine how we exalt rich people in general.
The ongoing war in Ukraine recently escalated to new and more dangerous heights. Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden have both begun openly discussing the prospects of nuclear war, with Biden suggesting we were closer to nuclear war – and nuclear Armageddon – than at any point since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
To some degree, Putin’s recent nuclear threats have been sensationalized. Headlines like “Putin Raises Specter of Nuclear Weapons Following Battlefield Losses” make it sound like he’s a desperate madman preparing to nuke Kyiv. In reality, Putin reaffirmed his longstanding nuclear posture: that he is prepared to use nuclear weapons if Russian territory is threatened.
Still, this is an extremely dangerous, perhaps unprecedented, moment. U.S. intelligence places the likelihood of nuclear weapon use in Ukraine at around 25% – infinitely higher than any human being should tolerate.
Putin claims the Donbas, raising the possibility of war on Russian soil
Among many big stories coming out of the conflict in recent weeks, the most geopolitically significant concerns the Donbas. Made up of quasi-independent regions including Luhansk and Donetsk, the Donbas lies between Russia and Ukraine and has been a focal point of tensions between the two countries. The international community officially recognizes the Donbas as part of Ukraine.
Home to a large population of ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking people, the Donbas has been embroiled in a bloody war for years between Russian-backed separatists and the Ukrainian military. Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have condemned the situation in Donbas, citing civilian casualties, repression of civil liberties, torture, discrimination, and other human rights abuses perpetrated by both sides.
In September 2022, four Russian-occupied regions of the Donbas voted in a referendum to leave Ukraine and join Russia. Western leaders and media quickly labeled the referendums a “sham” and declared that Putin had “annexed” the Donbas. Putin declared the people of the Donbas to be Russian citizens “forever.”
Regardless of the validity of the referendums, Putin has made it clear that he considers the Donbas to be Russian territory. His claim, though contested, should give Western leaders pause. As the NATO-backed Ukrainian military reclaims territory toward and into the Donbas, they could violate Putin’s red line and trigger a nuclear response.
Tensions are escalating with no end in sight
None of the principal actors are doing anything to cool this highly combustible situation. Putin recently called up 300,000 reservists and launched more missiles at Kyiv, demonstrating no desire to pull back his troops or end his offensive. The United States and other NATO nations continue to pour billions of dollars in arms into Ukraine, effectively turning the conflict into a proxy war between NATO and Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky formally applied for full NATO membership, an application which, if granted, would draw every NATO member into direct military conflict with Russia, per NATO’s collective defense protocols.
It’s important to understand that, though Putin fired the first shot and has committed monstrous war crimes during this invasion, he has legitimate grievances with NATO. Foreign policy analysts have long known – and Putin has made explicitly clear – that Russia would not stand for Ukraine joining NATO. Ukraine joining NATO potentially means U.S. military installations, and possibly even nukes, right on the Russian border. Just as the U.S. wouldn’t tolerate Putin placing Russian weapons and soldiers in Mexico, Putin doesn’t want to see NATO forces in Ukraine. When a similar situation played out in reverse in the Cuban Missile Crisis, the U.S. nearly went to war.
Biden is seemingly uninterested in diplomatic solutions, making it clear that the U.S. is “not about to, nor is anyone else prepared to, negotiate with Russia about them staying in Ukraine, keeping any part of Ukraine.” He accused Putin of war crimes and said, “I don’t see any rationale to meet with him now.” State Department Spokesman Ned Price likewise dismissed proposed peace talks with Russia as not “constructive” or “legitimate.”
We must do whatever it takes to avoid nuclear war
This is not some childish conflict of good vs. evil where we demand that the heroes triumph no matter what the cost. It’s not possible for either side to win a war against the other without mountains of dead bodies. Putin is a powerful leader. Russia is huge, its resources are vast, it has thousands of nuclear weapons, and it is allied with China and India. It’s possible to hate what Putin has done while recognizing that his interests need to be respected.
Opponents of diplomacy have suggested Putin is using “nuclear blackmail” to get his way. They argue that if other nations see Putin scoring a win over NATO by threatening nuclear war, nuclear threats will become common in international affairs. But Putin has only affirmed his intention to use nukes to defend Russian territory, including the contested Donbas region. This kind of deterrence has long been understood as precisely the point of nukes, including by NATO itself.
Nuclear weapons could fall into the wrong hands and be used to make unreasonable claims and demands. That’s always been a risk. We unleashed this horror on the world and now we have to live with it. For now, we have to find ways to de-escalate with other nuclear powers while we work towards eliminating nukes from the face of the earth altogether.
Like it or not, the U.S., Ukraine, and NATO should negotiate with Putin. A potential deal could include ceding the Donbas, rejecting Ukraine’s bid to join NATO, and offering Putin an “off ramp” so he can withdraw gracefully. It may sound ugly, but the stakes are too high for any other course. People who want the U.S. and NATO to be the only ones getting their way in the world are barreling us toward a nuclear World War III.
If leaders can’t be counted on to take these responsible actions, their citizens must compel them to. This is already happening in some ways. Some 200,000 brave Russians recently expatriated to Kazakhstan to avoid being conscripted into Putin’s war. Americans should welcome with open arms any deserters from the Russian military and clog every major city with protests demanding that our country stop fueling the conflict by pouring arms into it and seek diplomatic resolutions.
Briefly, when COVID-19 first broke out into a global pandemic, there was a significant, coordinated response, because everyone felt the danger. The world learned that people and societies can, under the right pressures, work together. Unfortunately, even though nuclear war is infinitely more dangerous than coronavirus, the problem hasn’t received the same degree of urgency. Perhaps we’re too distracted, or too misinformed by war propaganda. Perhaps the problem feels too big, too depressing, or too outside our capacity to influence.
It’s tempting to simply close our eyes to nuclear threats, even to pray for ignorance, as many have – to wish that, if we’re to die in a nuclear war, we know nothing about it until the bombs have already incinerated us. Death is inevitable, after all, and it does no good to dwell on it.
Nuclear war, however, is not inevitable. Leaders around the world, from Putin to Biden, are making conscious decisions to increase the likelihood of it, playing a potentially apocalyptic game of chicken not just in Ukraine but in China as well. Every man, woman and child on earth should be passionately, actively involved in efforts to stop it by any means necessary. Territorial losses and geopolitical wounds are bitter, but they are not as grave as the infinite, potentially final cost of nuclear war.
The new order of our times seems to be that everything must get worse. Because one plague was not enough, we’ve added another: monkeypox, a close relative of smallpox that causes flu-like symptoms and painful, pus-filled blisters. Making matters even worse, it’s spreading primarily in gay communities, giving new life to old bigotries and complicating public health messaging.
On June 24, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that has been the focus of America’s abortion debate since 1973. In that decision, the 1973 court ruled that the Constitution protected a woman’s right to an abortion, with some limits. By overturning that decision, today’s court leaves abortion laws up to individual states, allowing them to ban abortion under any circumstances and at any point during pregnancy. In doing so, the Supreme Court has placed millions of women across the country at grave risk.
After months of tension and speculation, on February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded his neighbor Ukraine. Putin’s troops started in the Russia-friendly separatist region of the country known as the Donbas and have since made their way toward the Ukrainian capital city of Kyiv, which remains under siege.
The invasion has put the world on high alert. Western nations have imposed sanctions on Russia, markets have spiraled, and politicians have begun openly wondering whether the end result of all this will be a nuclear World War III.
No one can predict the future, but to make even an educated guess requires an understanding of Ukrainian/Russian history and US/NATO influence in the region.
As tensions on the border of Russia and Ukraine escalate, the United States is getting more deeply involved. Over the last two weeks, US cargo planes have delivered nearly 600 tons of military equipment to Ukraine. Last week, President Biden announced the deployment of 3,000 US troops to eastern Europe. The United States is pushing toward a nuclear World War III, and American citizens must raise their voices to stop it.
Third Rail News 