By László Molnárfi 

Sunday 27 October 2024

The closed-shop student union model has paradoxically led to an all-encompassing, yet strikingly unrepresentative model of democracy.  It is a mirage of liberal philosophy, presupposing a magical, homogenous and apolitical unity between students. It does the bidding of university managers and the state to ensure that student unions are devoid of radical politics and to turn them into organisations invisibly occupied by the liberal mainstream. In this article, I will make the case from a left-wing perspective to abolish mandatory membership and replace it with voluntary association.  

All student unions in the Republic of Ireland operate with mandatory membership. The generalised form of this is that upon enrolling in a third-level institution, the student automatically becomes a member of the student union. In the process, they pay within their student fees a small union due, which is redistributed to the student union by the university’s bureaucracy. Calls to abolish this have mainly come from right-wing circles, with ill-informed and reactionary campaigns targeting the wrong decision-makers (Roche, 2023). Other calls have arisen from the legal community, but these represent an obsession with form over content and are devoid of material analysis (Forde, 2018). There is a need for an analysis grounded in a practical perspective as to the outcomes of mandatory membership, keeping in mind the interaction of philosophy and politics. 

This simple system has unintended consequences that are severely damaging to the ability of radical politics to emerge from within student unions. Rather than being a gift to the left, as the right claims, it is a curse. It needs to be re-conceptualized as a tool of liberalism to counter-balance socialist influence within the student movement. 

The liberal conception of governance is that of pluralism. While other interpretations exist, this is the prevailing image that the ruling elite present. Under pluralism “there is not a dominant class or a set of institutionally based elites that has predominant power” (Domhoff, 2005), but competing interest groups, which ensure that power is so diffuse that it is in democratic hands. Arising from this interpretation, people organise themselves via various means, such as trade unions, student unions and community groups, which are bequeathed with the ability to interact with dominant powers, such as the state. In the eyes of the liberal, these interactions are authority-citizenry relations that take place on the so-called marketplace of ideas, under the auspices of a neutral state machinery which is pluralistic, tolerant and rational. The content of the interactions thereof concern itself with matters of policy, to be tweaked, hashed out and debated to a satisfactory conclusion. Pluralism tends to downplay the role of wealth and power, insisting on democracy through diffusion, and thereby promote the role of good policy. In other words, “the system is flawless, but the policy is adjustable” (Molnárfi, 2024). 

This stands in opposition to interpretations of systems of domination, such as class power, relations and interests that are present in institutions. 

“Neoliberal capitalism and its bourgeois democratic form presents itself not merely as flawless, but as the irreversible logic of social reality. By appearing as logic itself, it dissolves ideology, system and history, which cease to exist. In its place appears the one-dimensional obsession with authority-citizenry feedback. As such, we cannot speak of structural forces, such as the role of the profit motive in decision-making under capitalist economies, the vested interests of the haves to exploit the have-nots, nor can we speak of ideologies that drive these tendencies.” (Ibid). 

If the student union accepts the liberal interpretation of society, then it will be forced to abandon systemic analysis in favour of “piecemeal inputs in pre-existing institutional channels” (Ibid). The denial of systemic analysis results in ineffective campaigning due to the inability to diagnose the capitalist logic behind the issues that students face. This, regardless of whether the union has a friendly or confrontational relationship with decision-makers, “seeks to undermine the union by stripping it of its ability to understand and work against oppressive structures in capitalist societies, trapping them in an eternal cycle of dead-end dialogue with authorities.” (Ibid). A depoliticised organisation is liberal and is content with participation in pre-existing inputs within, whereas a political organisation that has a socialist ideology may seek to change the system entirely. 

The ideological hinterland of a student union that has an all-encompassing membership is liberalism. By reifying the student as an all-inclusive category whose interests need to be represented in the face of the university and the state, class analysis has already been eclipsed. Arising from therein, acts of representation will now take place pursuing the student interest, rather than the class interest. In tandem, the varying class allegiances of students are discarded. Then, if political ideologies reflect different class allegiances, then mutatis mutandi political allegiances are discarded. This reductionist approach then results in the tendency towards depoliticisation. Rather interestingly, a contradiction has arisen between the values of free association that liberalism espouses and the forcible amalgamation of students into a singular student union, negating itself. The dialectics reveal themselves insofar as that a moment of liberalism has produced an instance of its own negation. The movement from the theory of liberalism to its practice produces this moment, precisely because liberalism does not recognize class domination in theory but supports it in practice. 

By the automatic membership of thousands of students, the order of the day becomes the pursuit of representation for all. If representation for all is the mandate, then it follows that there must be a need to cater to the lowest common denominator, which turns out to be policy-making within a liberal-democratic representative system. This results in the rise of a ‘neutral union’, which, in its strive towards representation for all, discards politics. The aspect of politics which is state-citizenry interaction is presented as the whole when it is just a part in the whole, since “expressing opinions on political parties, systems and ideologies.” (Ibid) is forbidden. This represents “an ideological imposition that restricts the union at its singularity” (Ibid). In certain cases, transcending from the realm of a cultural pressure into a legal actuality, this has also been recorded in the constitution of student unions via apoliticism clauses. 

The eclipse of politics in favour of an imagined, liberal and apolitical unity is thus complete. The artificial ‘student interest’ which has been reified as a political subjectivity denies questions of revolution. The liberal framework is presented as the fundamental and irreversible logic of social reality by denying the ability to hold opposing ideological thought. Thus, the existence of class society is denied and the class interest is purposefully put aside. Since “The ensemble” of “student unions are not independent actors, but are themselves extensions of the state apparatus and continuously assert their cultural hegemony over student activism by weight of their social power situated in capitalist power structures” (Molnárfi, 2023a), the development of the political consciousness of students is arrested. A socialist student movement cannot be built on the basis of liberal unity. It is built on schisms, the development of political consciousness amongst the student body and its self-organisation into groups that represent its various ideologies. The liberalising incentive is a process of the ruling mode of production to subsume student unions into itself by preventing the development of political consciousness. 

Without a single conscious act on the part of the ruling class, capital has already ensured its influence within the student union. A subjectivity has been established that influences outcomes. This is an ideological hinterland surrounding the student union which acts as an “invisible barrier constraining thought and action” (Fisher, 2009), on top of which a series of economic incentives push the student union to become co-opted by the third-level institution and the state. These economic incentives range from league tables, careerist motivations to interactions in Bourdieu’s field theory via joint projects with the authorities to the neoliberal underfunding of academia pushing unions and the university closer (Molnárfi, 2023b). They then present themselves as apolitical service and event providers rather than unions that rely on collective action to deliver change (Ibid). We must thus begin to imagine the student union as part of an assemblage of a larger liberal-bourgoise machine. The student union becomes a mini-state machine, reflecting not only “the dissolution of its independent values into the hegemonic image of the ruling mode of production”, but its territorialization by capital (Ibid). The student union becomes the liberal vanguard of the masses, spreading liberal context, language and power.

It is no surprise that the structures of the student union mirror that of liberal-parliamentary democracy, with constituency representatives, a senate, an executive and independent judiciaries. The final result is that upon entering the hall of the senate meeting of the student union, and proposing motions to be debated, voted on and passed as a ritualistic expression of liberal democracy, the student is expressing the desire for change in dominant terms, in relation to the bureaucratic machine of the university administration or the state office, to which the executive will inevitably bring whatever policy was accepted and lobby therewith. There may be protests too, should the lobbying fail, but it will have already been sanitised of any holistic transformative power via ritualised liberalism.  If the desire of capital is to block the formation of alternative subjectivities and the creation of autonomous war-machines (Robinson, 2010), then it is swiftly achieved by the subjectivity-generation and territorialization of student representation by the student union. 

The illusion of democracy is established by the right to propose motions, vote and ask questions of union leadership to hold them accountable, but the ideological choice has been already made. The elevation of the ‘democratic principle’ and the sidelining of the ideological is a mistake, as it “demonstrates the theoretical inconsistency and the practical deception of a system which pretends to reconcile political equality with the division of society into social classes determined by the nature of the mode of production” (Bordiga, 1922). Therefore, any action within the boundaries of the student union will not only be reformist but necessarily reproduce liberal reality and its conditions of existence. 

If power is diffuse and able to “generate reality, domains of objects and rituals of truth” (Foucault, 1991) and is “exercised over free subjects” (Dreyfus, Rabinow and Foucault, 1982), then the student union embodies this principle by choosing liberalism without a single vote ever having been held on the matter. In the same way, the state maintains the illusion of democracy, with periodical elections for representatives, while maintaining class domination. By design, neither system can be re-directed for the re-production of other realities, safe for a fundamental alteration. Much like the U.S Constitution’s claim to the right of revolution that would immediately result in death or arrest if attempted in practice, the student union’s insistence that it speaks truth to power is meaningless because its structure is designed to replicate present conditions, it being a war-machine captured by the state and its energies redirected to capital’s ends. 

The parallels between the systems are a result of the interaction of organisms under the capitalist mode of production, because the “corporate university copies the state structure with its rigidity, bureaucracy and autocracy. The student union copies the university” (Molnárfi, 2023b). The eternal reappearance of rigidly-defined, lookalike and vertical anti-democratic structures proves that liberal capitalism, far from being democratic, is a special type of dictatorship, that of the bourgeois. 

This philosophical infestation, the ‘original sin’ of automatic membership,  lies at the root of a series of topsy-turvy phenomena which consequently arise. 

There are those who claim that automatic membership makes for stronger unions. This is a classic mistake. Once again, this arises from the liberal-idealistic approach that mistakes the form for the content. The claim that thousands of students are signed up to the union is mistaken for the actuality of membership. In essence, student unions have all-inclusive membership in formal terms only, not in real terms. The third-level institution to which student unions are attached keep a complete list of students. There are two separate scenarios.  Either this database is not transmitted to the union. The union communicates with students through aggregate mailing lists. Alternatively, the database is transmitted via a data-sharing agreement. If the database is transmitted, the student union can communicate with students via individual emails aggregated. These approaches are enshrined in the third-level institution’s statutes, policies and partnership agreements it may have with the student union, and is backed by national legislation. 

In both cases the automatic membership introduces an element of passivity into the system. This is unlike when trade unions sign up their members. The database is created. Yet, that database will reflect an accurate number of enthusiastic union members, reflecting an active approach.  It appears that the student union has been granted the right to claim representation, without having earned that representation. There arises a further two phenomena in addition to the ideological pressure of all-inclusive representation. 

• Crisis of Legitimacy: The share of students who engage in the politics of student unions, measured by elections in 9 of them in the 26 counties, hovered between 4% to 19.6% in 2022/2023. The arbitrary comparison created between the students engaging and the students supposedly members of the union creates a crisis of legitimacy that can be exploited by the authorities to ignore students. If the union plays nice with the authorities, it receives praise and recognition. If the union takes on a more adverse attitude, it is dismissed as unrepresentative. The same would never happen to a trade union with voluntary membership because no arbitrary gulf exists between who the organisation claims to represent and who it actually represents. 
• Passivity: Automatic membership creates illusions that power lies in the formal recognition of authority to represent. This is untrue. Power to effect change on a local (university) or national (state) level lies solely in the ability to mobilise students to actions that threaten, or actually damage the reputation and finances of the powers that be. As a result of there being no recruitment mechanism, but passive sign up, there is a total lack of mobilising infrastructure. The entire system encourages passivity – and this is compounded by the fact that as a result of economic incentives, student unions tend to present themselves as event and service providers rather than militant campaigning groups. A set of motions that trade unions partake in, that which is the recruitment ritual, is thus missing. There arises a Derridean autoimmunity (Rae, 2022) in the student union, in which the act of appearing to represent all students is taken for the actuality of representing and insisted on for reasons of maintaining power, and in the process true organising power is eroded.

Whenever student unions engage in the political realm for progressive reasons beyond the neo-liberal status quo, the instant reaction is that they have to represent all students. In this way, automatic membership is the conservative’s best friend because reactionary ideologies can be justified by alluding to liberal ideals. Rather than competing on the basis of politics, a hyper-moralising paradigm is created in which minority rights, specifically the right to free (dis-)association, have been trampled upon. Before a political idea is even debated, it is shut down. If the student union is funded per each student, and is the officially-recognized representative body by the third-level institution and the state, then this interaction between all-inclusive representation and the need to depoliticise combined with the profit motive is an effective deadlock on radical change. Historically, it has been used to argue against political slogans advocating for changes in the government and systems with great success, as well as to block individual campaigns like B.D.S, abortion rights and support for striking university workers with less success. 

The point is not to enable the student union to take political stances which a minority do not agree with, as that would indeed be unfair, but it is that mandatory membership is a significant obstacle to the development of political consciousness. Militant leadership has overcome it, but the general tendency is that it acts as too strong of an ideological force to prevent radicalism. Socialist consciousness is grown via active recruitment  by agitators into revolutionary organisations, a process that is diametrically opposed to the passive reification of the student as an all-inclusive, apolitical and monolithic block, and their shoehorning into the student union. 

The creation of the paradoxically exclusionary yet all-encompassing representation arises from the refusal to acknowledge politics. In its place, we should abolish mandatory student unions, and implement the French model. This enables voluntary associations with defined political ideologies, and indeed those presenting as apolitical, to run slates to university governance bodies. The seats are proportionally divided amongst the voluntary associations following the share of the vote garnered in a student-body wide election. These voluntary associations act as representatives of the students divided among political lines as well as organise other forms of political action. They are not responsible for service or event provision. This would be a totalizing politicisation which would acknowledge politics while allowing space for self-organisation to mushroom, and would greatly benefit the socialist left whereas the reactionary conservatives would lose massively in the battle of ideologies when it comes to an open debate. The formation of subjectivities that grassroots voluntary groups would allow is exactly the type of war-machine that we need to put into motion to defeat capitalism. It is important to outline that what is being proposed is strictly-defined so as to enable the development of political consciousness; voluntary associationism has been used to disempower student unions in some countries such as Australia due to its particular implementation, but this not a universal feature thereof. Despite the discourse being dominated by reactionaries, this is not the first time that a demand for the ability to have an explicitly political mandate rather than just the ‘student interest’ has been made by socialist radicals in student unions (Buddeberg, 1968). 

The rigidity of the Irish assemblage of youth representation is a stark reminder of the amalgamation process that neo-liberalism has resulted in, with student unions imposing a de-politicised version of advocacy. These monoliths serve to sustain the status quo by substituting political advocacy for a-political advocacy. They are pushed into it unwillingly, via their structures that offer no real ideological choice. The implementation of voluntary associationism for student representation would fracture the assemblage and force engagement with varying political ideologies. As opposed to the tendency to promote an ignorance of politics, it would enforce a totalising politicisation. Therefore, it would force an opening of the political horizon towards revolutionary questions, offering radicals a platform to penetrate. 

Reference list

Bordiga, A. (1922). The Democratic Principle . [online] www.marxists.org. Available at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1922/democratic-principle.htm.

Buddeberg, M. (1968). Manfred Buddeberg: The Student Movement in West Germany (Summer 1968). [online] www.marxists.org. Available at: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/isj/1968/no033/buddeberg.htm.

Domhoff, G.W. (2005). Who Rules America: Alternative Theories. [online] whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu. Available at: https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/theory/alternative_theories.html.

Dreyfus, H.L., Rabinow, P. and Foucault, M. (1982). Michel Foucault : beyond structuralism and hermeneutics. Chicago, Ill: University Of Chicago Press.

Fisher, M. (2009). Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Winchester: Zero Books.

Forde, E. (2018). No ‘I’ in Students’ Union: The Constitutional Right to Opt-Out. [online] Trinity College Law Review (TCLR) | Trinity College Dublin. Available at: https://trinitycollegelawreview.org/no-i-in-students-union-the-constitutional-right-to-opt-out/ [Accessed 19 Jun. 2024].

Foucault, M. (1991). Discipline and punish: the Birth of the prison. Penguin Books.

Molnárfi, L. (2023a). In a world which really is topsy-turvy, the true is a moment of the false. [online] Aontacht Media. Available at: https://aontachtmedia.ie/2023/07/05/in-a-world-which-really-is-topsy-turvy-the-true-is-a-moment-of-the-false/ [Accessed 17 Jun. 2024].

Molnárfi, L. (2023b). Photo-ops and Goodie Bags: Co-Optation of Student Unions. [online] Trinity College Dublin Social and Political Review. Available at: https://www.tcdspr.com/copy-3-of-article-one-1 [Accessed 17 Jun. 2024].

Molnárfi, L. (2024). Depoliticising the Students’ Union is a Right-Wing Attack on Students. [online] universitytimes.ie. Available at: https://universitytimes.ie/2024/02/depoliticising-the-students-union-is-a-right-wing-attack-on-students/ [Accessed 17 Jun. 2024].

Rae, G. (2022). Derrida, autoimmunity, and critique. Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, pp.1–21. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/1600910x.2022.2039739.

Robinson, A. (2010). In Theory Why Deleuze (still) matters: States, war-machines and radical transformation | Ceasefire Magazine. [online] ceasefiremagazine.co.uk. Available at: https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/in-theory-deleuze-war-machine/.

Roche, C. (2023). Campaign Launched to Reform Students’ Union. [online] universitytimes.ie. Available at: https://universitytimes.ie/2023/11/campaign-launched-to-reform-students-union/ [Accessed 19 Jun. 2024].

By Emmet O’Reilly

Saturday 3 August 2024

Emmet O’Reilly is an Irish-Iranian history student at NUIG (University of Galway)

This piece will address an increasingly problematic narrative I have been seeing in news media and discussions in apparent “left-wing” outlets in the West, there is also a huge conglomerate of leftist content creators who promote these same narratives some examples to keep an eye out for are Richard Medhurst, ”SaveSheikhjarrahnow”, Max Blumenthal. They all share the following views that I write about in the following sentences. I am referring to the common misrepresentation of the Islamic Republic of Iran as a bulwark against imperialism and Western hegemony. This is a disturbing interpretation of what has been, since its inception, a sexist, xenophobic, sectarian theocratic dictatorship, which hijacked a popular anti-monarchy pro-democratic revolution in 1979. It is important during this turbulent time in the world, that we have moral clarity and not let ourselves slip into un-nuanced and simplistic narratives. We need to call out hypocrisy and lies where we see them, whether it be from traditionally “friendly” media or the establishment.

The perspective I am writing from is one of a wish for freedom for all peoples, including the Palestinians, by liberating themselves from the apartheid genocidal state of Israel.  

By the same logic, I am calling for “Women, Life, Freedom,” the slogan of the Iranian uprising of 2022. The reason I say that Palestinian liberation and the liberation of all groups in Iran are not mutually exclusive is that the statement is often seen as contentious by a portion of the Western left, who see the Islamic Republic of Iran as a counterweight to Israeli influence in the middle east and that if the Islamic Republic ceased to exist so would armed Palestinian resistance. 

I hope in this piece you will see how this is a false narrative and that Palestinian resistance will only harm itself by associating with the Iranian regime. In addition, it is important to mention the irony of leftists supporting a regime that is notorious for holding leftist political prisoners or in many cases the open execution of them. The primary example of this is during the war with Iraq when the opportunity was taken during the chaos of the conflict to execute thousands of Iranian Marxists, many of whom were charged with moherab (war against God) by the recently deceased Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi, also known as the Butcher of Tehran. 

You will often hear from a section of the Western left, “I don’t agree with everything Iran does, but Israel must be opposed.” I really think we need to start challenging these arguments openly because It only takes the use of the same moral hypocrisy in an Israeli context to understand how ridiculous it sounds. If someone says they don’t agree with all Israeli policies concerning Gaza but still supports the occupation of Palestinian land in the West Bank, would this be acceptable? Of course not! So why don’t we apply our condemnation of authoritarianism consistently? This speaks to a larger problem of double standards within the left around condemnation, and nonsensically defending totalitarian dictatorships whether it be the Chinese Communist Party, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Assad’s Syria, or Russia, solely based on the fact they are in opposition to Europe and the United States.

The Islamic Republic of Iran supports resistance to Israeli tyranny in the form of various armed groups, Hamas being the most prominent. But is this support genuine?  I argue it is not genuine or consistent. The Islamic Republic has no other interest but to further its own ideological influence over the Middle East. We see this in the case of Iraq, which has a majority Shia population (as does Iran), where the tentacles of the Iranian regime spread its influence greatly, using the excuse of religious connection. This is leading to the risk of Iraq becoming a proxy of the Islamic Republic which already has powerful militias in the country like Haashd al-Shabi as well as Iraqi Hezbollah. This is the same outcome that the Islamic Republic wants for Palestine – it is purely an alliance of convenience. 

The Sunni group, Hamas, does not share an ideological or religious basis with Tehran. If a real independent Palestinian state was created tomorrow with a Hamas government that wanted to retain sovereignty and cut ties with the Islamic Republic, Iran would attempt some form of state interference. The Islamic Republic has no compassion for the Palestinian people because it only sees them as tools for its ambitions. One only needs to look at the horrific treatment of Iran’s domestic population to see this, through the complete denial of ethnic minority rights whether they be Ahwazi Arabs, Kurds (Sunni), or Baloch (Sunni).

The Iran-Iraq war provides stark examples of the illegitimacy of the Islamic Republic’s solidarity towards the Palestinians. In the eight-year war (1980 -1988), Saddam Hussein, using weapons sold by the Americans, attacked the newly formed Islamic Republic. Between 1981 and 1983, the Israelis sold $500 million worth of weaponry to Iran. Ranging from parts for F-4  fighter jets, as well as tanks. Interestingly, although at the time, the Supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, was referring to Israel as an “enemy of Islam,” he still approved the weapon sales, though of course, he denied this. In 1982, Former Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, acknowledged the fact that Israel sold weapons to the Islamic Republic so they could destabilize the perceived threat to Israel by Saddam Hussein, it is important to note that the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) at the time were actually fighting alongside the Iraqis against the Islamic Republic.

For fear of this becoming a personal rant, I will reiterate my core point, which is that championing the Islamic Republic in supposed support of the movement for Palestinian liberation is not only counterintuitive but a waste of misplaced energy.

How we will achieve lasting change is not by endorsing any specific group but simply by showing support for Palestinian people to have their self-determination without any outside influence. If the democratic choice made by the Palestinians is Hamas, then it is Hamas. If it is Fatah or another group, then the world must accept this process of democracy, regardless of our individual qualms with any specific political party. 

In the same light, we should support Iranians, especially Iranian women, in their fight for liberty and real democracy. We should listen to them and take them on as our leaders. We must fight with veracity to uphold the values of equality, solidarity, and democracy. 

I will end with a quote from the inspiring women’s rights activist, Fannie Lou  Hamer, that encompasses what I believe, “Nobody is free until everybody is free.”

By Nikola B. Karin

Friday 10 November 2023

There is a new name for the 46th president of the United States, Joe Biden. Ironically it harkens to the exact same name Biden tossed at Vladimir Putin right after his invasion of Ukraine¹. Throughout Belfast, right after American envoy Joe Kennedy III visited the city, the shouts, “Butcher Biden” filled the air². At this point, over 7500 civilians had been massacred in Gaza by Israeli forces with American-funded weaponry. The same cries have been heard all throughout Ireland, from major cities to tiny towns to busy streets, it has been whispered in workplaces and shouted out across college campuses. What is especially important to note is that this, however, is not the first sin of “Butcher” Biden, and it is far from his last.

Joe Biden’s Track Record

Joe Biden was elected to the senate in 1972 on an anti-war, progressive platform. But his opposition to the Vietnam war was not based on any sort of loyalty to the working class, or moral outrage, it was a purely calculated position. To Biden, the war was nothing more than “lousy policy.”³

Biden’s lack of moral fibre would become evident quite soon with his hawkishness on the drug war. Joe Biden could in fact be described as nothing less than an architect of the American drug war. Biden constantly criticised president Carter for not taking business as usual in the war on drugs⁴, and during the 90s authored a major crime bill that would accelerate the war on drugs. Largely as a result of the drug war in America, roughly 2 million Americans are in prison – as a proportion of the population this is the highest in the world. In spite of this, the amount of drug-related deaths in America since the beginning of the war has only increased. It is arguably clear then, that Biden neither has the heart to be in opposition to draconian measures or the brain to be talking about, “lousy policy.”

In 2002, Joe Biden was one of 77 senators to vote in favour of the Iraq war. Over 280,000 have been killed in Iraq ever since the war⁵. During the war itself, over 150,000 were killed, and the escalation in violence in the region can be placed on the war as well.

While Joe Biden was vice president, the POTUS, Obama escalated the usage of drone strikes by tenfold. In 2016 alone, Obama’s drone strikes in Afghanistan for example, killed over 1000, in Somalia, which America never even declared war on, over 200 were killed⁶. Over 100 were killed by American drone strikes in Yemen.

Under Obama, weapons sales were agreed upon with Saudi Arabia during its invasion of Yemen. After almost two years in office, despite his thorough lambasting of prince Mohammed bin Salman and his promise he would not cut arms deals with Saudi Arabia⁷, more arms sales were approved. Over 150,000 have been murdered since the start of the war. 

Biden’s Relationship With Zionism

Joe Biden’s support for Israel is nothing more than a cold and calculated position. In 1986, after praising America’s aid to Israel as one of the best investments ever made, Joe Biden infamously said, “Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel.”⁸ Of course, Israel was also a largely British and European invention of settler colonialism. Regardless, for Biden, all that matters in a deal is that more profits flood in for the war industry, no matter how much blood is needed to oil the wheels. This is clear from the approval of an over 14 billion dollar aid bill to Israel during its terrorist invasion of the statelet of Gaza.

The Plans For Gaza Must Be Opposed

Despite Israel’s increasingly wanton acts of violence in Gaza, the mass bombing of hospitals, of United Nations shelters, of schools, and of even graves (Perhaps the IDF has concluded that using the miraculous technology at their disposal Palestinian fighters have begun recruiting zombies), Biden’s support of Israel has not changed. 

Where Biden has differed on Netanyahu is very important to highlight, as Israel is the junior partner in their bloody alliance. Joe Biden has made comments recently in support of putting the Palestinian Authority in charge of Gaza after the war, saying “There needs to be a Palestinian authority. There needs to be a path to a Palestinian state.”⁹ Only a day ago, the Palestinian Authority said that they would be interested in playing a role in Gaza if the US properly backs a 2 state solution¹⁰. 

Biden is attempting to paint this as a necessary change to keep “extremists”, such as Hamas out of Palestine. But, we should be absolutely clear, Hamas has become synonymous with the entire opposition force of Palestine. Every single political party, group, etc which is not part of the increasingly isolated Fatah camp has been either branded a terrorist or lumped together with Hamas to paint Palestinians as bloodthirsty Islamists similar to ISIS fighters. Such comparisons are absolutely shameless, we should note that extremists such as ISIS do not even support Palestinian liberation because they do not recognise the moral authority of any modern Arab nations. 

The Palestinian Authority has become an unchecked dictatorship that regularly murders and silences any opposition. Edward Said rang the alarm bells even in the 1990s, describing Arafat as increasingly becoming a dictator¹¹. Fatah has not even won an election for decades, they have roughly the same level of support as Hamas – by no measure of democracy is the Palestinian Authority the body that should be ruling Gaza or anywhere. There has already been an assassination attempt on Abbas since the start of this war and a mutiny by P.A. security forces¹². The rank-and-file of Fatah itself is unhappy with Abbas’ and the leadership’s compromising attitude towards Israel, even at this time.

If the P.A. is put into power in Gaza, it will be put into power, once again, as a junior partner of the Zionist regime, it will be put into power upon the mass graves of the entirety of Palestinian political society, ranging from opposition groups within the PLO itself, within Fatah itself, and as well as those outside the PLO. The expansion of settlements will not end, and as the war floats once again into the background, much of the world will forget. Palestinians will suffer as the slow genocide rolls on. There is only one solution: A secular, democratic Palestine, from the river to the sea, and we must vigorously push against Netanyahu or Biden’s plans for Palestine.

1. Daniel Boffey, Shaun Walker, Philip Oltermann. “Biden: ‘butcher’ Putin cannot be allowed to stay in power,” The Guardian, 27 March 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/26/biden-butcher-putin-cannot-be-allowed-to-stay-in-power
2. Christopher Woodhouse & Press Association. “There should be ‘no red carpet’ for US Special Envoy in Belfast, Palestine rally told,” Belfast Telegraph, 28 Oct 2023. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sunday-life/news/there-should-be-no-red-carpet-for-us-special-envoy-in-belfast-palestine-rally-told/a972496916.html
3. Jeremy Scahill. “1970S: Vietnam War”, The Intercept 27 Apr 2023. https://theintercept.com/2021/04/27/joe-biden-vietnam-war/
4. David Stein. “The Untold Story Joe Biden Pushed Ronald Reagan to Ramp up Incarceration Not The Other Way Around,” The Intercept, Sep 17 2019. https://theintercept.com/2019/09/17/the-untold-story-joe-biden-pushed-ronald-reagan-to-ramp-up-incarceration-not-the-other-way-around/
5. Neta C. Crawford. “Blood and Treasure: United States Budgetary Costs and Human Costs of 20 Years of War in Iraq and Syria, 2003-2023”  Costs of War, Mar 15, 2023. https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2023/IraqSyria20
6. Jessica Purkiss, Jack Serle. “Obama’s Cover War In Numbers: Ten Times More Strikes Than Bush,” Jan 17 2017. https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2017-01-17/obamas-covert-drone-war-in-numbers-ten-times-more-strikes-than-bush#:~:text=Obama%20embraced%20the%20US%20drone,to%2057%20strikes%20under%20Bush.
7. Jeff Abramson. “Biden Urged to Halt Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia,” November 2022. https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2022-11/news/biden-urged-halt-arms-sales-saudi-arabia#:~:text=At%20the%20start%20of%20his,months%20of%20the%20Trump%20administration.
8. Middle East Eye. “Joe Biden’s long history of pro-Israel statements.” YouTube, uploaded by Middle East Eye, 21 May 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86Nrv5izaTs
9. Peter Baker. “Biden Warns Israel Not to Occupy Gaza,” New York Times Oct 15 2023. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/15/us/politics/biden-israel-gaza.html
10. Mark Landler. “Palestinian Authority Open to Gaza Role if U.S. Backs 2-State Solution” New York Times Nov 9, 2023. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/09/world/middleeast/palestinian-authority-gaza.html
11. Edward Said. “Edward Said interview (1994).” YouTube, uploaded by Manufacturing Intellect, 6 June 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAu-52feMS8
12. Palestine Chronicle Staff. “24 Hours Ultimatum to Mahmoud Abbas – Who are ‘Sons of Abu Jandal’?” Palestine Chronicle Nov 6, 2023. https://www.palestinechronicle.com/24-hours-ultimatum-to-mahmoud-abbas-who-are-sons-of-abu-jandal/