Solidarity Marches and Combatting the Language of the Right
Earlier today I attended a solidarity action at Albany International Airport called to support the marches around the country against the…
Earlier today I attended a solidarity action at Albany International Airport called to support the marches around the country against the Trump White House’s Muslim ban.
The action had a large, enthusiastic turnout.
Speakers from Albany’s communities of faith immigrant communities spoke to the crowd of around 300.
People from across the region were there, as far south as New Paltz and as far east as the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts.
There were many families and children in the crowd.
Almost all signs promoted a message of inclusion and positivity.
There was, however, someone with a rather disturbing sign promoting the future Vice Presidential candidacy of Hawaiian Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard.
Gabbard’s name has no place at a solidarity action such as this one.
Gabbard backed a bill to make it even more difficult for refugees from war-torn Syria and Iraq to enter the country back in 2015. It was a move that bucked her party’s leadership. And she has a deep connection with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a fascist whose government has taken aim at Muslims within the country.
As I’ve written about in detail, she is a hard-right extremist that has wormed her way into the liberal imagination with some well timed actions, like backing Bernie Sanders during the 2016 primaries.
Yet while I discussed this problem with a gentleman at the action, another man— wearing a “Labor for Bernie” pin— interjected himself into our conversation and spat three disturbing pieces of rhetoric at me that would have been more at home at a Trump rally than a solidarity, leftist action.
He demanded to know who I was “and who I was with.” Papers, please.
He demanded I show reverence and respect to Gabbard because of her military service, a fascistic belief system that holds that military service is divine and renders those who choose to partake in it above criticism.
He said he would endorse attendees flying Nazi flags at the action. In other words, promoting hate speech and intimidation of the people the action was called to rally for in the first place.
This behavior shows that for all the noise the left has made over the last nine days, many of the people attending our rallies have swallowed right wing, fascist rhetoric whole and are still controlled by it. Militarism, police tactics, and acceptance of hate speech should be anathema to a movement for the people. These tactics belong at Trump rallies and state functions, not at protests and actions for the left.
Freddie deBoer wrote today that Trump will eventually lose. But he added that conservative ideology will win if we do not meet their extremism with our own.
[R]efusing to match conservative extremity with left-wing extremity is suicide. People on the left like to say “there’s more of us than there are of them,” and I think that’s true, in a sense. But that should lead to shame: if that’s true, why is the country so dominated by conservative politics? Because Republicans ruthlessly pursue a right-wing agenda and Democrats do not meet that force with equal left-wing force.
We need to call out the rhetoric of the right when it’s used on the left; to fight against the creeds of the right around militarism and hate speech when it’s accepted on the left; and to not use the right’s tactics of intimidation. Instead, we must fight back by holding to left wing principles — especially in the face of our brothers and sisters who want to adopt those beliefs while fighting for a better world.
We’ll see you in the streets.
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