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Charlottesville, VA Protests Clash: Analysis
Donald Trump and extreme right supporters, outright fascists, white nationalists – suffered a huge defeat Saturday, August 12 in Charlotteville Virginia at a rally called Unite The Right. Anti-fascist demonstrator 32-year-old Charlottesville paralegal Heather Heyerdahl was murdered when a car driven by a Nazi sympathizer from Ohio ran into her. Nineteen other counter-demonstrators were injured, some of them seriously.
As a consequence of the murder and injuries the fascists and white nationalists were socially isolated even as the United Left welcomed support from a large swath of Americans. Demonstrations were held in many cities and towns across the country.
People jeered Trump at his first New York City homecoming. Hundreds gathered at Trump Tower which was protected by police and twelve garbage trucks. During his campaign Trump clearly refused to disavow ultra-right wing support. After the murder he condemned the violence in Charlottesville laying blame on many sides.
Some 500 fascist and white nationalist forces came together in Charlottesville with the intention on violently suppressing their opponents. They unified around their support of keeping a statue of Confederate General and slave owner Robert E Lee who led the Southern Army from 1861 until 1865 when he finally surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Maryland. The South had lost its fight to preserve slavery. More than 600,000 Americans died in this war, more than the combined total of all deaths in all subsequent wars. The ultra-right still embraces this lost cause.
Guest – Jeffrey Fogel, a Charlottesville attorney who has practiced criminal law for many years. He served as Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights before moving to Charlottesville, VA where he recently ran for District Attorney. He was on the scene as a National Lawyers Guild attorney on August 12, 2017.
Guest – Jon Kurinsky is a Chicago activist, he recently gave a speech on the topic of fighting the right at the Socialism 2017 conference in Chicago which had a record attendance of more than 2000 people.
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North Korea, the United States, China and Nuclear Weapons
President Donald Trump scared the hell out of us last week with his threat to nuclear bomb North Korea. He promised fire and fury like the world has never seen. He said this at the time of the 72nd anniversary of the US nuclear bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima and then, six days later, the Japanese city of Nagasaki. This was done, not to stop the war, which was coming to an end, but to scare the Russians.
These two bombings killed some 160,000 persons instantaneously and tens of thousands died later of nuclear poisoning. So far, this has been the only time nuclear bombs have ever been used.
That United States had previously been at war with North Korea from 1950 to 1953. More than 3 million North Koreans were killed and the country laid to waste. The war never ended, but an armistice was signed in 1953.
North Korea begin its nuclear program in self-defense after George W. Bush in 2004 named it along with Iraq and Iran as part of “the axis of evil.” Then Bush started the war against Iraq, captured and executed it’s leader Saddam Hussein, and destroyed a viable country killing over 1 million people and scattering refugees across the world.
Guest – Richard Becker is the Western Regional Coordinator of the A.N.S.W.E.R.-Act Now to Stop War and End Racism-Coalition. Becker has been a key organizer of many marches, rallies and public forums sponsored by the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition opposing U.S., wars, occupations and sanctions against Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Libya and other countries. Becker is the author of Palestine, Israel and the U.S. Empire, published in 2009. He has visited the Middle East on numerous delegations since 1986, including trips to Palestine, Iraq and Syria. Becker represented the ANSWER Coalition in conferences on Palestinian political prisoners in Lebanon in 2014 and Tunisia in 2016. Recent article in the Liberation.