The longer the corporate state erodes the social bonds that knit us to society and give us a sense of purpose and meaning the more inevitable an authoritarian state and a Christianized fascism becomes
I recommend everyone watching RFK Jr's campaign announcement speech in which he said:
"The merger of corporate power and state power is destroying our country. It's cushy socialism for the rich and for big business, and a merciless free market capitalism for everyone else." Kennedy talked about Ukraine and how the government is sending billions over there, while cutting food stamps and medicare at home. If I recall correctly, it was 112 billion to Ukraine thus far, while the entire yearly budget of the EPA is like 5 billion, CDC 6 billion.
The 3 minutes RFK spent on Tucker Carlson was absolutely brilliant. ( Sorry, MSNBC didn't invite Kennedy) He said the same things Chris is saying.
The MSM just calls Kennedy an "anti-vaxxer;" I am not an expert on vaccines but given what we have seen in terms of pharmaceutical company shenanigans, I can't say that I have 100% faith that every vaccine they pull out of the bag is safe and effective. Don't they have an incentive to continue to add vaccines to the recommended ( and often mandated) schedule?
I'm not sure paralysis is entirely correct, Chris. I think there's a mixture of paralysis, bribery, blackmail, corruption, greed, fear, and amoralism. Some individuals who are complicit with the corporate-globalist takeover will face loss of job, loss of reputation, and blacklisting for standing up to them. The globalists are like a monstrous Mafia, who have bent the world to their will using every trick in the book, including outright murder. People are justifiably afraid of them. However, there is also a lack of courage and moral fiber in standing up to them. As Kennedy said in his recent Boston speech, which I attended (to paraphrase), it is not circumstances that define us, but how we respond to those circumstances. Most of us have responded with fear, trembling and compromising our integrity. A small minority have courageously stood up, suffered the consequences, and continued to fight. Some of these soldiers, like Zelenko, may fall in battle, but others will pick up the banner and continue the fight.
The paralysis about which Chris Hedges writes was set in motion, I believe, by Ronald Reagan. I disliked Reagan even when I was a young lad listening to his voice over advertising 20 Mule Team Borax on "Death Valley Days". My young and youthful gut knew even then that Ronnie was a phony.
Politicians and community leaders continue to shake their fingers at problems without solutions. The gun ownership debate has been thriving endlessly since Columbine without serious solution or resolution. Recently I coined, "Fear paves the way to fascism. Republicans pave the way to fear." Yet, the Democrats have allowed this most unfortunate moment in our history. They pine and whine about all the dirty deeds committed by Republicans without any real pushback. Democrats appear to believe they can intellectualize everything, even bare-knuckle fights. Hell! Dems can't even fight a real fight.
Born exactly one week to the day after D-Day, I will turn 79 this coming June. I remember energized, exuberant high school discussions and debates about capitalism, democracy, communism and totalitarianism. As a young USAF Sergeant, I remember how "hallowed" we deemed our nation. How proud we were, indeed, to celebrate our beacon to the world. Then, with age, the myth became the lie. Truth became the lie. Fact became the fake. We have been seduced by the best among the seductresses. Fakery abounds. Faketriots (borrowed term that I truly like) are abundant in every quarter, seeking to impose their own form of tyranny and totalitarianism on the rest of us. "America" is burning. Who will extinguish the inferno before it is too late? Even then, will there be enough of our constitutional democracy to salvage? Quoting Pogo, "I have seen the enemy, and he is us." How prophetic that is!
“The gathering darkness of the totalitarianism we face seems to be nothing less than a Faustian effort to deconstruct everything it means to be human.”
NS Lyons, The Upheaval substack, highly recommended.
Jesus, who woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?
Yes, we often suck at being perfect; but the biased focus on the glass half empty is not gonna’ help improve anything. And people owning this type of mindset that everything is a crisis of terrible are fucking terrible at real problem-solving and logical consequences. It is like their stock and trade is criticism and thus they will never admit to progress of anything. That is fucking messed up (excuse my French).
For example, the Biden policies on climate change and the war on fossil fuels is a luxury virtue signaling cult practice that is responsible for several of the social and economic problems listed in this lament.
The hilarious thing for me is to note how people like Chris to cling to Democrat party fealty while the Democrat party backs and supports the Wall Street controlled corporatist agenda responsible for the problems. I mean you effs backed the administrative state of COVID vaccines… basically joining in the war to force people to comply at the expense of their kid’s education, their economic and social health, and their quality of life… and the impetus for this was big pharma profit. It was those working class Trump supporters that objected and you killed them… are still killing them.
Here is a bit of a lesson on capitalism… the favored fake boogie man of left social and economic critical theory play script. Corporatism is not capitalism. The tenants of capitalism are one where domestic labor is suppose to share in the returns of domestic capital. Capitalism was never designed to enrich the three guys at the top having colluded with Joe Biden for the policies that exported the manufacturing jobs to China and Mexico and then shipping the products back to the US to be purchased.
But you people are so stuck on the climate change cult, that it probably does not matter. The WEF globalist Great Reset requires that American industrialism and the American working class be destroyed. The fake science of climate change is their jam. You buy into it like you bought into the COVID jab hysteria. These media manipulators know you… they know you lack life meaning and will jump at the next cause that makes you feel better in the morning.
Meanwhile, yes, none of our big problems get solved.
No one here talks about the personal courage required to use what they know not simply to get into street organizing on a national level but carrying actions through. Relentlessly without ceasing until demands are met. Most will likely say - their personality isn't built to do that. That their small acts of kindness and volunteerism are their domain. How are these not rationalizations that are symptoms of the paralysis? Can you think of any major mass movement that significantly moved the needle on social justice that was not peopled with those who said to themselves - striking for labor unions, protesting for the end of tyrannical rule, marching for women's right to vote among more - by putting my body publicly on the line is way outside my comfort zone, but if I don't do it I can't look myself in the mirror. Or answer my children when they ask what did you do? Keenly interesting is how come the psyche of the American citizen appears so different from that of the
French who poured into the streets in mass demonstrations against neoliberal Macron raising the retirement age? Also, given the citizenry's paralysis - common to all rape victims - what must happen for feeling to come back into the body? On a personal level and the body political? Hedges' listing of all of the degrees and varieties of the corporate minded assault to and on us would, one thinks, stir us below our collarbone into action. But - looking at the comments - everyone remains this side of the Rubicon. Up in the head. Another symptom of the split states of paralysis? What would get you into sustained street action and presence?
The tragedy of America and the West it leads is that it has many of the world's greatest universities, the world's greatest thinkers and yet idiots and quislings are left to run the show. This is the great disconnect common to all former Western democracies and why we are failing. Ruinous ideologies and corruptions rule us.
Politics is no more than window dressing for Sheldon Wolin's "inverted totalitarianism".
The "dark forces" have taken over it is up to true patriots to fight back.
The ironies are inescapable for the Christian fascist to escape from. Where there damnation of Islam and it's strict doctrine while hiding behind the patina of a more patient liberal doctrine is laughable now with all the cultural crack downs of expression. Being random while black and now just human gets you despised and shot by the more zealously convicted in our
I have nothing positive to add. But if I add something pessimistic for others to act against, that becomes a positive. This is my view: America was built by slaves. That produced a wondrous nation. Those slaves became (technically) free men and women and they contributed to building American culture. Blues, then Jazz Rock etc. and so much more. It was a miracle, though the profits mostly went to the ruling class. Still, at one time it made America great. But it wasn’t good enough. So Capitalism replaced plantation slavery with prison slavery, which is worse in every aspect, and it produces nothing except misery. Every opportunity to make America great has been co-opted by either Oil or arms makers. What is their future? There is none. Oil and arms are the endgame. Loud, careless, talk is going around about ‘survivable’ nuclear war. I believe this is the goal of the American ruling class. I believe that the BRICS nations think so too.
The negative that I’m afraid of is that these lunatics have only one way remaining to establish their domination and it’s a cloudy future indeed, cloudy with a chance of fungus. And lining up to buttress this insanity are the liberals. Sean Penn, are you listening?
The election that brought Fain to the head of the UAW was organized by the US Labor Department to provide a facelift to the union in the aftermath of a years-long corruption scandal, which has seen a dozen top officers, including two past presidents, convicted and sent to prison for embezzling union funds and taking payoffs from the corporations in return for imposing company-friendly contracts on the membership.
The election for president and other top officers—the first-ever direct election in the UAW’s history—was a complete fraud. The recorded percentage of eligible UAW voters who returned ballots was the lowest of any previous national union election in the history of the United States.
In the first round of the election, less than 10 percent of the 1.1 million eligible active and retired UAW members cast valid ballots. Among the 48,000 University of California strikers, only 1,200 ballots were cast, or just 2.5 percent.
This was not due to rank-and-file “apathy.” It was the result of the deliberate suppression of the vote by all factions of the UAW bureaucracy, which sought to confine the turnout to the thousands of UAW apparatchiks. The vast majority of UAW members, including on the campuses, were not even aware that an election was taking place, because the national and local union officials did next to nothing to inform them and the government-appointed election monitor refused to compel the union officials to ensure that all workers received ballots.
The second round runoff ballot between Curry and Fain, which the union publicized more extensively, aroused a vote of only 13 percent of eligible members, reflecting both a lack of knowledge of the election and hatred for both factions of the union apparatus.
The Will Lehman campaign
Will Lehman, a rank-and-file tier-two worker at the Mack Trucks plant in Pennsylvania, ran in the election as a socialist and principled opponent of the entire union bureaucracy. He advocated the abolition of the bureaucracy and return of power to the rank-and-file workers on the shop floor. He advanced the fight to build a network of rank-and-file committees nationally and internationally to coordinate and unite the struggles of workers globally against global capitalism.
Lehman fought for the democratic rights of the UAW membership, filing a court suit to extend the first round and ensure that all members were sent ballots and assisted in casting them. He then filed complaints with the election monitor and the Labor Department demanding that the entire election be rerun on a democratic basis and exposing the election monitor’s longstanding business connections to the Big Three auto companies.
Both Fain and Curry, as well as the monitor and the Biden Labor Department, opposed Lehman’s complaints, underscoring their common contempt for the rights of the rank-and-file.
Despite the mass suppression of the vote, Lehman won nearly 5 percent of the ballots cast and counted in the first round, demonstrating the broad support for a fight against the entire union apparatus and a growing interest in socialism. In the end, Fain was elected with the support of less than 3 percent of the rank-and-file members of the union.
Who is Shawn Fain?
Shawn Fain has spent the past 20 years working his way up the bureaucratic ladder, first as Local 1166 shop chairman at Stellantis’ Kokomo Casting Plant, and then, for the last 10 years, as an international rep at the union’s “Solidarity House” national headquarters in Detroit.
Donate to the WSWS 25 Year Fund
Watch the video of workers internationally explain why you should donate to the WSWS.
DONATE TODAY
Selected by Bob King in 2009 to serve on the UAW-Chrysler National Negotiating Committee, Fain endorsed the savage cuts imposed by Obama’s Auto Task Force. These included reducing the wages of all new-hires by 50 percent, eliminating COLA (the cost-of-living adjustment), expanding the use of temporary part-time employees and laying off thousands of workers.
By the time the 2015 negotiations rolled around, Fain had been promoted to assistant director of the UAW-Fiat Chrysler Department. His boss, Norwood Jewell, was convicted of taking millions in company bribes for signing and enforcing pro-company contracts. Fain claims he had no idea what was going on in the department he helped run.
In 2015, Chrysler workers shot down another concessions contract by a 2-to-1 margin, in the first rejection of a UAW-backed national contract since 1982. The UAW rolled out its full bureaucratic machine to force through a refurbished deal several weeks later.
There is no public record of any opposition from Fain to this criminal conspiracy. Instead, over the next few years he was rewarded with an “administrative assistant” position on the Solidarity House staff. In November 2017, he was appointed as co-director of the UAW-Chrysler National Training Center in Detroit, where union officials regularly used company-issued credit cards to pay for their luxurious lifestyles.
Who is Bob King?
Bob King, first as head of the UAW’s Ford department and then as UAW president, arguably played a greater personal role than any of his sellout predecessors or successors in the destruction of all remaining gains made by generations of autoworkers since the sit-down strikes of the 1930s.
King negotiated contracts that enabled Ford to cut 40 percent of its workforce between 2005 and 2007. In 2007, he led the team that renegotiated the UAW’s four-year contract with Ford, establishing the two-tier wage system, including a $14-an-hour wage for new-hires, and shifting $22 billion in retiree health care obligations from the company to a union-run voluntary employee beneficiary association (VEBA).
In 2009, King led the UAW team in negotiating a tentative agreement that included more onerous concessions and pay cuts. It also allowed Ford to make up to 50 percent of its payment into the VEBA with common stock in lieu of cash. This made the UAW bureaucracy a major shareholder in the company, with a direct financial stake in cutting wages and benefits, ending the eight-hour day and increasing exploitation in order to boost Ford’s profits and increase its stock price.
UAW members at Ford rejected the deal 70 percent to 30 percent, but then-President Ron Gettelfinger imposed the contract by invoking an arcane provision of the UAW constitution. King succeeded Gettelfinger as UAW president in 2010, and spent his four-year term imposing the brutal terms of Obama’s Auto Task Force. He was succeeded by Dennis Williams, who was later jailed as a result of the government’s corruption investigation.
King burnished his credentials as a pawn of the corporations at a 2010 Center for Automotive Research conference in Traverse City, Michigan. He all but boasted that under Obama “UAW members took wage cuts of $7,000 to $30,000 a year,” that “benefits were also reduced significantly,” and that “restructuring resulted in the loss of nearly 200,000 jobs.”
Laying out shamelessly the corporatist dogma that denies that workers have any interests distinct from those of the bosses, he declared: “The 21st century UAW no longer views these managements as our adversaries or enemies, but as partners in innovation and quality. Our new relationships with these employers are built upon a foundation of respect, shared goals, and a common mission.”
He stressed the utility of the UAW in policing the workers and imposing layoffs and wage cuts, noting that the union had taken “a strong proactive role in making sure that quality did not suffer from the workforce reductions and churning.”
These then are the figures and the union apparatus being presented by the DSA leadership of the GEO to the grad student instructors as genuine supporters of their struggle. This is no wonder, since the DSA and related groups such as Labor Notes in “Unite All Auto Workers for Democracy” (UAWD) largely ran Fain’s election campaign and are playing a leading role in his administration.
Beautifully written. A fantastic documentary "Chasing Ice" shows the spectacular beauty of collapse. Destroying is so easy while building takes steady effort.
People presence in the streets strategically impacting the capitalist business as usual disturbs the powers that be. And as Mr. Hedges has mentioned frequently from his experiences in countries where revolutions have occurred, it is the overwhelming presence of citizens massed that scares the powers that be. It is ongoing political activism between elections that matters; activism that educates the citizenry as well as moving it into actions that disrupt the normal course. Of course, the kind of information you want spread is important as well. Mr. Small's persistent efforts -organizing his Amazon warehouse that not only succeeded despite Amazon's attempts to block them but lit a smoldering fuse on college campuses and other labor intensive businesses all over the country with the possibility of unionizing successfully - demonstrate the power of "united we stand".
I recommend everyone watching RFK Jr's campaign announcement speech in which he said:
"The merger of corporate power and state power is destroying our country. It's cushy socialism for the rich and for big business, and a merciless free market capitalism for everyone else." Kennedy talked about Ukraine and how the government is sending billions over there, while cutting food stamps and medicare at home. If I recall correctly, it was 112 billion to Ukraine thus far, while the entire yearly budget of the EPA is like 5 billion, CDC 6 billion.
The 3 minutes RFK spent on Tucker Carlson was absolutely brilliant. ( Sorry, MSNBC didn't invite Kennedy) He said the same things Chris is saying.
The MSM just calls Kennedy an "anti-vaxxer;" I am not an expert on vaccines but given what we have seen in terms of pharmaceutical company shenanigans, I can't say that I have 100% faith that every vaccine they pull out of the bag is safe and effective. Don't they have an incentive to continue to add vaccines to the recommended ( and often mandated) schedule?
I'm not sure paralysis is entirely correct, Chris. I think there's a mixture of paralysis, bribery, blackmail, corruption, greed, fear, and amoralism. Some individuals who are complicit with the corporate-globalist takeover will face loss of job, loss of reputation, and blacklisting for standing up to them. The globalists are like a monstrous Mafia, who have bent the world to their will using every trick in the book, including outright murder. People are justifiably afraid of them. However, there is also a lack of courage and moral fiber in standing up to them. As Kennedy said in his recent Boston speech, which I attended (to paraphrase), it is not circumstances that define us, but how we respond to those circumstances. Most of us have responded with fear, trembling and compromising our integrity. A small minority have courageously stood up, suffered the consequences, and continued to fight. Some of these soldiers, like Zelenko, may fall in battle, but others will pick up the banner and continue the fight.
The paralysis about which Chris Hedges writes was set in motion, I believe, by Ronald Reagan. I disliked Reagan even when I was a young lad listening to his voice over advertising 20 Mule Team Borax on "Death Valley Days". My young and youthful gut knew even then that Ronnie was a phony.
Politicians and community leaders continue to shake their fingers at problems without solutions. The gun ownership debate has been thriving endlessly since Columbine without serious solution or resolution. Recently I coined, "Fear paves the way to fascism. Republicans pave the way to fear." Yet, the Democrats have allowed this most unfortunate moment in our history. They pine and whine about all the dirty deeds committed by Republicans without any real pushback. Democrats appear to believe they can intellectualize everything, even bare-knuckle fights. Hell! Dems can't even fight a real fight.
Born exactly one week to the day after D-Day, I will turn 79 this coming June. I remember energized, exuberant high school discussions and debates about capitalism, democracy, communism and totalitarianism. As a young USAF Sergeant, I remember how "hallowed" we deemed our nation. How proud we were, indeed, to celebrate our beacon to the world. Then, with age, the myth became the lie. Truth became the lie. Fact became the fake. We have been seduced by the best among the seductresses. Fakery abounds. Faketriots (borrowed term that I truly like) are abundant in every quarter, seeking to impose their own form of tyranny and totalitarianism on the rest of us. "America" is burning. Who will extinguish the inferno before it is too late? Even then, will there be enough of our constitutional democracy to salvage? Quoting Pogo, "I have seen the enemy, and he is us." How prophetic that is!
“The gathering darkness of the totalitarianism we face seems to be nothing less than a Faustian effort to deconstruct everything it means to be human.”
NS Lyons, The Upheaval substack, highly recommended.
Your one sentence about the ruling party seems inadequate. Clinton, Obama, Biden get off pretty easy.
When did the Far Left or Far Right ever have enough votes to do anything? The centrist corrupt warmongering liars have had the power for decades.
Jesus, who woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?
Yes, we often suck at being perfect; but the biased focus on the glass half empty is not gonna’ help improve anything. And people owning this type of mindset that everything is a crisis of terrible are fucking terrible at real problem-solving and logical consequences. It is like their stock and trade is criticism and thus they will never admit to progress of anything. That is fucking messed up (excuse my French).
For example, the Biden policies on climate change and the war on fossil fuels is a luxury virtue signaling cult practice that is responsible for several of the social and economic problems listed in this lament.
The hilarious thing for me is to note how people like Chris to cling to Democrat party fealty while the Democrat party backs and supports the Wall Street controlled corporatist agenda responsible for the problems. I mean you effs backed the administrative state of COVID vaccines… basically joining in the war to force people to comply at the expense of their kid’s education, their economic and social health, and their quality of life… and the impetus for this was big pharma profit. It was those working class Trump supporters that objected and you killed them… are still killing them.
Here is a bit of a lesson on capitalism… the favored fake boogie man of left social and economic critical theory play script. Corporatism is not capitalism. The tenants of capitalism are one where domestic labor is suppose to share in the returns of domestic capital. Capitalism was never designed to enrich the three guys at the top having colluded with Joe Biden for the policies that exported the manufacturing jobs to China and Mexico and then shipping the products back to the US to be purchased.
But you people are so stuck on the climate change cult, that it probably does not matter. The WEF globalist Great Reset requires that American industrialism and the American working class be destroyed. The fake science of climate change is their jam. You buy into it like you bought into the COVID jab hysteria. These media manipulators know you… they know you lack life meaning and will jump at the next cause that makes you feel better in the morning.
Meanwhile, yes, none of our big problems get solved.
Another fantastic piece
No one here talks about the personal courage required to use what they know not simply to get into street organizing on a national level but carrying actions through. Relentlessly without ceasing until demands are met. Most will likely say - their personality isn't built to do that. That their small acts of kindness and volunteerism are their domain. How are these not rationalizations that are symptoms of the paralysis? Can you think of any major mass movement that significantly moved the needle on social justice that was not peopled with those who said to themselves - striking for labor unions, protesting for the end of tyrannical rule, marching for women's right to vote among more - by putting my body publicly on the line is way outside my comfort zone, but if I don't do it I can't look myself in the mirror. Or answer my children when they ask what did you do? Keenly interesting is how come the psyche of the American citizen appears so different from that of the
French who poured into the streets in mass demonstrations against neoliberal Macron raising the retirement age? Also, given the citizenry's paralysis - common to all rape victims - what must happen for feeling to come back into the body? On a personal level and the body political? Hedges' listing of all of the degrees and varieties of the corporate minded assault to and on us would, one thinks, stir us below our collarbone into action. But - looking at the comments - everyone remains this side of the Rubicon. Up in the head. Another symptom of the split states of paralysis? What would get you into sustained street action and presence?
The tragedy of America and the West it leads is that it has many of the world's greatest universities, the world's greatest thinkers and yet idiots and quislings are left to run the show. This is the great disconnect common to all former Western democracies and why we are failing. Ruinous ideologies and corruptions rule us.
Politics is no more than window dressing for Sheldon Wolin's "inverted totalitarianism".
The "dark forces" have taken over it is up to true patriots to fight back.
The ironies are inescapable for the Christian fascist to escape from. Where there damnation of Islam and it's strict doctrine while hiding behind the patina of a more patient liberal doctrine is laughable now with all the cultural crack downs of expression. Being random while black and now just human gets you despised and shot by the more zealously convicted in our
F ed up society. Welcome to the terror dome.
I am paralysed and your words speak to me as right on point...what does the average working-class American do?
I have nothing positive to add. But if I add something pessimistic for others to act against, that becomes a positive. This is my view: America was built by slaves. That produced a wondrous nation. Those slaves became (technically) free men and women and they contributed to building American culture. Blues, then Jazz Rock etc. and so much more. It was a miracle, though the profits mostly went to the ruling class. Still, at one time it made America great. But it wasn’t good enough. So Capitalism replaced plantation slavery with prison slavery, which is worse in every aspect, and it produces nothing except misery. Every opportunity to make America great has been co-opted by either Oil or arms makers. What is their future? There is none. Oil and arms are the endgame. Loud, careless, talk is going around about ‘survivable’ nuclear war. I believe this is the goal of the American ruling class. I believe that the BRICS nations think so too.
The negative that I’m afraid of is that these lunatics have only one way remaining to establish their domination and it’s a cloudy future indeed, cloudy with a chance of fungus. And lining up to buttress this insanity are the liberals. Sean Penn, are you listening?
The fraudulent UAW election
The election that brought Fain to the head of the UAW was organized by the US Labor Department to provide a facelift to the union in the aftermath of a years-long corruption scandal, which has seen a dozen top officers, including two past presidents, convicted and sent to prison for embezzling union funds and taking payoffs from the corporations in return for imposing company-friendly contracts on the membership.
The election for president and other top officers—the first-ever direct election in the UAW’s history—was a complete fraud. The recorded percentage of eligible UAW voters who returned ballots was the lowest of any previous national union election in the history of the United States.
In the first round of the election, less than 10 percent of the 1.1 million eligible active and retired UAW members cast valid ballots. Among the 48,000 University of California strikers, only 1,200 ballots were cast, or just 2.5 percent.
This was not due to rank-and-file “apathy.” It was the result of the deliberate suppression of the vote by all factions of the UAW bureaucracy, which sought to confine the turnout to the thousands of UAW apparatchiks. The vast majority of UAW members, including on the campuses, were not even aware that an election was taking place, because the national and local union officials did next to nothing to inform them and the government-appointed election monitor refused to compel the union officials to ensure that all workers received ballots.
The second round runoff ballot between Curry and Fain, which the union publicized more extensively, aroused a vote of only 13 percent of eligible members, reflecting both a lack of knowledge of the election and hatred for both factions of the union apparatus.
The Will Lehman campaign
Will Lehman, a rank-and-file tier-two worker at the Mack Trucks plant in Pennsylvania, ran in the election as a socialist and principled opponent of the entire union bureaucracy. He advocated the abolition of the bureaucracy and return of power to the rank-and-file workers on the shop floor. He advanced the fight to build a network of rank-and-file committees nationally and internationally to coordinate and unite the struggles of workers globally against global capitalism.
Lehman fought for the democratic rights of the UAW membership, filing a court suit to extend the first round and ensure that all members were sent ballots and assisted in casting them. He then filed complaints with the election monitor and the Labor Department demanding that the entire election be rerun on a democratic basis and exposing the election monitor’s longstanding business connections to the Big Three auto companies.
Both Fain and Curry, as well as the monitor and the Biden Labor Department, opposed Lehman’s complaints, underscoring their common contempt for the rights of the rank-and-file.
Despite the mass suppression of the vote, Lehman won nearly 5 percent of the ballots cast and counted in the first round, demonstrating the broad support for a fight against the entire union apparatus and a growing interest in socialism. In the end, Fain was elected with the support of less than 3 percent of the rank-and-file members of the union.
Who is Shawn Fain?
Shawn Fain has spent the past 20 years working his way up the bureaucratic ladder, first as Local 1166 shop chairman at Stellantis’ Kokomo Casting Plant, and then, for the last 10 years, as an international rep at the union’s “Solidarity House” national headquarters in Detroit.
Donate to the WSWS 25 Year Fund
Watch the video of workers internationally explain why you should donate to the WSWS.
DONATE TODAY
Selected by Bob King in 2009 to serve on the UAW-Chrysler National Negotiating Committee, Fain endorsed the savage cuts imposed by Obama’s Auto Task Force. These included reducing the wages of all new-hires by 50 percent, eliminating COLA (the cost-of-living adjustment), expanding the use of temporary part-time employees and laying off thousands of workers.
By the time the 2015 negotiations rolled around, Fain had been promoted to assistant director of the UAW-Fiat Chrysler Department. His boss, Norwood Jewell, was convicted of taking millions in company bribes for signing and enforcing pro-company contracts. Fain claims he had no idea what was going on in the department he helped run.
In 2015, Chrysler workers shot down another concessions contract by a 2-to-1 margin, in the first rejection of a UAW-backed national contract since 1982. The UAW rolled out its full bureaucratic machine to force through a refurbished deal several weeks later.
There is no public record of any opposition from Fain to this criminal conspiracy. Instead, over the next few years he was rewarded with an “administrative assistant” position on the Solidarity House staff. In November 2017, he was appointed as co-director of the UAW-Chrysler National Training Center in Detroit, where union officials regularly used company-issued credit cards to pay for their luxurious lifestyles.
Who is Bob King?
Bob King, first as head of the UAW’s Ford department and then as UAW president, arguably played a greater personal role than any of his sellout predecessors or successors in the destruction of all remaining gains made by generations of autoworkers since the sit-down strikes of the 1930s.
King negotiated contracts that enabled Ford to cut 40 percent of its workforce between 2005 and 2007. In 2007, he led the team that renegotiated the UAW’s four-year contract with Ford, establishing the two-tier wage system, including a $14-an-hour wage for new-hires, and shifting $22 billion in retiree health care obligations from the company to a union-run voluntary employee beneficiary association (VEBA).
In 2009, King led the UAW team in negotiating a tentative agreement that included more onerous concessions and pay cuts. It also allowed Ford to make up to 50 percent of its payment into the VEBA with common stock in lieu of cash. This made the UAW bureaucracy a major shareholder in the company, with a direct financial stake in cutting wages and benefits, ending the eight-hour day and increasing exploitation in order to boost Ford’s profits and increase its stock price.
UAW members at Ford rejected the deal 70 percent to 30 percent, but then-President Ron Gettelfinger imposed the contract by invoking an arcane provision of the UAW constitution. King succeeded Gettelfinger as UAW president in 2010, and spent his four-year term imposing the brutal terms of Obama’s Auto Task Force. He was succeeded by Dennis Williams, who was later jailed as a result of the government’s corruption investigation.
King burnished his credentials as a pawn of the corporations at a 2010 Center for Automotive Research conference in Traverse City, Michigan. He all but boasted that under Obama “UAW members took wage cuts of $7,000 to $30,000 a year,” that “benefits were also reduced significantly,” and that “restructuring resulted in the loss of nearly 200,000 jobs.”
Laying out shamelessly the corporatist dogma that denies that workers have any interests distinct from those of the bosses, he declared: “The 21st century UAW no longer views these managements as our adversaries or enemies, but as partners in innovation and quality. Our new relationships with these employers are built upon a foundation of respect, shared goals, and a common mission.”
He stressed the utility of the UAW in policing the workers and imposing layoffs and wage cuts, noting that the union had taken “a strong proactive role in making sure that quality did not suffer from the workforce reductions and churning.”
These then are the figures and the union apparatus being presented by the DSA leadership of the GEO to the grad student instructors as genuine supporters of their struggle. This is no wonder, since the DSA and related groups such as Labor Notes in “Unite All Auto Workers for Democracy” (UAWD) largely ran Fain’s election campaign and are playing a leading role in his administration.
Beautifully written. A fantastic documentary "Chasing Ice" shows the spectacular beauty of collapse. Destroying is so easy while building takes steady effort.
People presence in the streets strategically impacting the capitalist business as usual disturbs the powers that be. And as Mr. Hedges has mentioned frequently from his experiences in countries where revolutions have occurred, it is the overwhelming presence of citizens massed that scares the powers that be. It is ongoing political activism between elections that matters; activism that educates the citizenry as well as moving it into actions that disrupt the normal course. Of course, the kind of information you want spread is important as well. Mr. Small's persistent efforts -organizing his Amazon warehouse that not only succeeded despite Amazon's attempts to block them but lit a smoldering fuse on college campuses and other labor intensive businesses all over the country with the possibility of unionizing successfully - demonstrate the power of "united we stand".
We have fascism with Obama and Biden -- don’t see where is that Christian fascism at all !!
Perhaps because I am just an atheist but I simply don’t see Hodges point right now.