Saving American democracy

 

“Since World War II, much of Europe has looked to the U.S. as a democratic model”, so said the New York Times daily briefing on Friday 8th January.  “The headlines in newspapers around the world on Thursday showed something else” it continued. “The images of a mob overrunning the U.S. Capitol Building on Wednesday touched a nerve in fractured Western societies, our Paris bureau chief writes: If it could happen at democracy’s heart, it could happen anywhere.”

My immediate reaction reading that was ‘are you kidding?’ Really? ‘A democratic model’. ‘Democracy’s heart’? It takes a particular type of arrogant exceptionalism to not only write that but to believe it is true. America with its history of voter suppression and a system designed to ensure black people are barred from obtaining a majority in a number of states is a model of democracy?

A country that has, literally, started a war in a foreign country in almost every year since 1945 is democracy’s heart? America is big and it is successful but that is true of many bullies. Just ask El Salvador, Nicaragua or Chile whether America is a model of democracy. Or, try Iraq, Libya, Syria or Yemen. 

America is a model only in its own self-belief. And, here I will be careful to avoid tainting all Americans and recognise that in talking of America I am using a reification. But, nonetheless, despite the fact that America has since 1944 had 7 Democrat Presidents, its commitment to maintaining global capitalism has never wavered.

It’s commitment to democracy starts to look thin when we consider that American blacks only got the right to vote in 1965. Although the fifteenth Amendment, passed in 1870 says:“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” most states found ways to deny black people the vote.

It is no coincidence that the worldwide Black Lives Matter movement started in America. Despite formal equality and the first black President, the position of African-Americans remains largely second class. Christian E Weller noted in 2019 that African Americans “continue to face systematically higher unemployment rates, fewer job opportunities, lower pay, poorer benefits, and greater job instability. These persistent differences reflect systematic barriers to quality jobs, such as outright discrimination against African American workers,1 as well as occupational segregation—whereby African American workers often end up in lower-paid jobs than whites2—and segmented labor markets in which Black workers are less likely than white workers to get hired into stable, well-paying jobs.”

The cradle of democracy has an electoral college to select its President that was devised on entirely racist terms. When a direct national election of the President was proposed in 1873 the slave owning states complained that they would be outnumbered by the north. The electoral college therefore used a calculus based on the number of persons including slaves (each counted as two-fifths of a person) which built in an advantage for the southern states, although slaves were denied a vote themselves. As Ackil Reed Amar points out in Time Magazine: “If the system’s pro-slavery tilt was not overwhelmingly obvious when the Constitution was ratified, it quickly became so. For 32 of the Constitution’s first 36 years, a white slaveholding Virginian occupied the presidency.”

Of course, it could be argued that the modern USA cannot be held responsible for its past. Fair enough, but why not then get rid of the symbols of that racist past? 

Democracy, of course, is not just the right to vote. It is an environment which encourages debate and discussion. Clearly, the Trump supporters in evidence at the Capitol on Tuesday were looking for a debate. Or probably not. But whilst right-wing extremists are tolerated, if not actually encouraged left-wing dissent is less so. 

In the 1950’s a ‘red scare’ spread through America in which school teachers, college professors, trade unionists, artists, journalists and others were accused of using their position to promote communism. Most famously a number of Hollywood actors, writers and directors were dragged before the House Unamerican Activities Committee where they were asked by Senator Joseph McCarthy ‘are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?’ This was an assault on free speech which would have been denounced as totalitarian if it had happened in any other country in the World.

Americans, particularly white, middle class Americans love to hold America as ‘the land of the free” conveniently forgetting that the land was stolen through a systematic and brutal genocide of the Native American people. It is estimated that when the first settlers arrived in what they decided was to be called America there were around 15 million indigenous inhabitants. By the late nineteenth century there were around 283,000 left. Latter day revisionists might try to put much of this decline down to disease but settlers regarded the indigenous population as beasts and were paid up to $50 for each adult scalp they presented. 

As the Chinese Global Times (admittedly not the most neutral of sources) points out: “Fifty-eight out of every 1,000 Native American households lack plumbing, compared with 3 out of every 1,000 white households. Native Americans experience more deaths, poverty and higher unemployment rates. The incidence of murders and disappearances against indigenous people is well above average.” These are, however, verifiable facts and the plain truth is that there would be no American democracy without the theft of land and ritual slaughter of the existing inhabitants.

It might be pointed out in retaliation that the British Empire played its part in the slave trade, plundered its way around the World and restricted the franchise to all but a small elite until 1928. I concede all of this and in criticising American myth of democracy I am not arguing that Britain necessarily offers a better model. But one thing I am certain of is that the claims by Americans to be a model democracy are based on an arrogant assumption of American exceptionalism that does not bear scrutiny.

It is often held that America saved democracy in the Second World War by defeating Nazism. This is a narrative promoted by Hollywood. It is overlooked that America is the only country to ever use a nuclear weapon. This is justified on the grounds that it brought to an end an awful period of warfare. As the Morning Star noted on VE Day, it was Russian troops who fought their way into Berlin and eventually forced the Nazi defeat. The Americans far from winning the war offered only air support as the Red Army entered Berlin on April 16th 1945. During last years commemoration Russian Communist Party General Secretary Gennady Zyuganov paid tribute to the Red Army. He said: "Twenty-seven million Soviet citizens lost their lives in the war. Of the 13 million soldiers lost by Germany, 10 million fought against the USSR. Despite the defeats of the first weeks of the war, the Red Army and the entire Soviet people defeated Hitler’s blitzkrieg.”

Well, the Morning Star would say that wouldn’t they? But even the Washington Post was forced to accept a simple fact: “It was the Soviet Union that made by far the biggest contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany. All honor to the 400,000 Americans who died in the war, and to the millions of others who fought and died for the Allied cause, from Britain, France, Poland, Serbia, India, China and many other lands. However, the Soviet Union suffered more losses than any other combatant power: 11 million military dead and another 16 million civilian. And between 1941 and 1945, it was the Soviets who fought most of the German military and inflicted most of the German casualties.”

So, America’s role in winning the Second World War has been mythologised by its own media. Numerous war films show heroic Americans outwitting the Germans. But, in itself that is not an affront to democracy. You can be selective with the truth and maintain your democratic credentials, but what of the end of the war in Japan? It is widely believed that America dropped its nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order to save tens of thousands of lives that might have been lost in.a ground assault. Whilst the use of such destructive power would still be difficult to justify, that rationale - saving the lives of allied servicemen and women who had already endured 5 years of, often, brutal warfare - might be convincing. That is if that were actually the case. But more recent research suggests that Japan was already looking for a way to surrender without losing face. The Americans knew this and plenty of politicians, diplomats and military figures did not believe a nuclear attack was necessary. So why do it? 

Kate Hudson of CND explored the evidence in a blog post and concluded that: “The US leadership did not inform the Japanese that its surrender terms were more or less acceptable, because it needed an excuse to use the bomb in order to demonstrate its awesome power in a world where only the US was in possession of this weapon. Its only opportunity to do so was before the Japanese surrendered.” And why was this so important? The USA was aware that the Red Army was in Berlin and that Josef Stalin was prepared to invade Japan.  As Kate Hudson notes: “the US would not accept that any part of the world economy should be closed to it,” and herein lies the real reason for the use of the nuclear weapons. Henry Stimson, Truman’s secretary of war, has commented that “Japan had no allies; its navy was almost destroyed; its islands were under a naval blockade; and its cities were undergoing concentrated air attacks”. 

The debate about the use of nuclear weapons which killed something like 400,000 people in the two cities will continue. But, if you intend to hold yourself up as the model democracy you might expect that rather than justify such an attack you would be looking at reasons to make sure that it would never happen again. Yet despite years of non-proliferation agreements no American President has seriously proposed getting rid of nuclear weapons. As time lapses and the imminent threat of nuclear war recedes America still has a nuclear arsenal which it could deploy at any time. And, there is a real fear amongst experts that new aggressions, often stoked by America, are once again threatening nuclear Armageddon. “We have forgotten how to fear nuclear war,” Nicolai Sokov, a Vienna-based disarmament expert told Der Spiegel. “And the bad thing about that is that if people aren’t afraid of it, it will become inevitable.”

We should be very clear about one thing the heart of democracy is, and has been, ruled by people who regard a pre-emptive nuclear attack on any country that threatens their global dominance as a viable military option. Whilst Biden is regarded as a safer pair of hands than Trump, frankly who wouldn’t be, the clever money suggests that Biden will take a more measured approach than Trump, that will fall short of leading by example and de-escalating the nuclear proliferation by destroying nuclear weapons.

Liberal America was appalled at the right-wing mob which threatened Capitol Hill this week. But that mob is perhaps more representative of America than they would like to admit. Liberals love democracy when they are getting their own way, but can be very partial to a lack of democracy for those they oppose. No American President has made any serious attempt to tackle the democratic deficit in apartheid Israel, for example. And, if those running amok were a terrifying sight how much less terrifying were they than the CIA sponsored death squads in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Chile? Did a mob occupying offices shake democracy to its core any more than the US backed total destruction of Libya, Iraq or Afghanistan? 

Liberal America believes that it holds aloft the banner of democracy. After all, didn’t they help to elect Barack Obama? Don’t they champion ‘Me Too’ and within reason ‘Black Lives Matter’? Of course all of these things may be good, but what of supporting ordinary workers? This is where we see the limits of liberal democracy. As The New Yorker pointed out in a recent article: “In 2008, when the Democrats took the House, the Senate, and the White House, labor leaders hoped that politicians would level the playing field. But Barack Obama’s priority was health care. For decades, Rosenfeld writes, there hasn’t been “even one significant piece of pro-union legislation.” Democracy is fine but it must never inconvenience the liberal elites. Strikes are fine provided they are in Poland or Iran, but not so much when they challenge the dominance of the liberal elite.

Liberal America has always had an inflated sense of its own moral superiority. But if America was anything like the democratic beacon it wants the World to believe it would not be pursuing Julian Assange to death for telling the truth about it. If America was anywhere near as democratic as it proclaims it would not need to cover up atrocities committed in its name. A truly democratic state would not have invaded Iraq on the flimsiest of pretexts or been responsible for Abu Ghraib. A truly democratic state would not have police officers that routinely kill black people. George Floyd would not have happened, an action that is the successor to lynchings and the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama.

Trump has been an abomination but when he was first elected most liberal commentators believed that the Republican establishment would come to its senses. The liberal establishment take no responsibility at all for its own role in promoting the multi-millionaire Trump as some kind of anti-establishment hero. Trust me if they had to choose between Trump and Bernie Sanders most liberals would choose the racist, sexist Trump as the lesser of two evils. Like Frankenstein they now stand askance as the monster they created runs wild.

Watching the neo-Nazi supporters of Trump express their disgust at the establishment cannot but make anti-fascists fearful. However, it is delusional to think of America of all places as a cradle of democracy. You can have democracy or you can have global capitalism. You cannot have both and the sooner ordinary Americans wake up from the mythical American dream the sooner we might see a democracy worth the name.

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