On 21 December 2022 Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the comedian-president of Ukraine, was flown on a U.S. Air Force jet out of his war-devastated country to beg for alms from his American masters in front of the U.S. Congress. Zelenskyy is the representative of the fascist-infiltrated government in Kiev and serves at the pleasure of a loose coalition of Banderite leaders — men who profess loyalty to the vision of the ultranationalist, antisemite, and murderer Stepan Bandera who organized mass executions during World War II. Before his televised debut, Zelenskyy stopped over at the White House to receive assurances from the decaying Joe Biden that the Banderite government of Kiev would continue to receive U.S. support. The U.S. imperialists, through their gerontocrat mouthpiece Biden, announced that they would not abandon the U.S. commitment to Ukraine. Indeed, the mobile corpse at the head of the U.S. executive said that he had “never seen NATO or the EU more united about anything at all.”

With these promises in hand, Zelenskyy delivered his speech to the U.S. ruling  classes with a bald-faced recognition of the truth — ”Americans won this victory.” Despite the fact that Ukraine is even now being reduced to a smoldering ruin, despite the fact that millions and billions of dollars in war machinery and materiel is being destroyed, Zelenskyy began by recognizing the power of the U.S. propaganda machine. He praised that the “victory” Ukraine has already won is, in Zelenskyy’s own words, a “hearts and minds” victory, a triumph of propaganda and intelligence. He thanked, in essence, the most powerful media presence in the world. With the U.S. imperialist war-lobbying machine at his side, how can he lose? In fact, by June of 2022, Ukraine had already lost 50% of its military equipment. On June 13 one of Zelenskyy’s advisors, Mykhailo Podolyak, tweeted that Ukraine needed at least 1,000 howitzers, 300 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS), 500 tanks, 2,000 armored vehicles, and 1,000 additional drones.

An estimate of Western-donated totals indicates somewhere around 200 howitzers, 51 MLRS, 250 tanks, and 700 armored vehicles have made it into Ukraine.
Zelenskyy went on to use the language of decolonization to describe Ukraine: Yet we have to do whatever it takes to ensure that countries of the Global South also gain such victory.” He hasn’t lost his gift for comedy! The “Global South” is dominated and colonized by the very U.S. Empire that Zelenskyy serves. The largest, most powerful empire in the world can’t “decolonize” anything!

This battle is not only for territory, for this or another part of Europe. The battle is not only for life, freedom and security of Ukrainians or any other nation which Russia attempts to conquer. This struggle will define in what world our children and grandchildren will live, and then their children and grandchildren.

Here, Zelenskyy appeared to be auditioning for yet another role — the battered president standing up against fascists, painting the Russian Federation with the same brush as Nazi Germany. This kind of rhetoric harkens to the world-shattering conflicts of World War I and II and, in good European style, Zelenskyy casts this war as one between democracy and destruction, between a free way of life and a dictatorship. But, like everything else in his presidency, for Zelenskyy this is nothing more than an act; this is no war between democracy and totalitarianism. Zelenskyy’s own government is shot through with fascists, and this big man of democracy role is merely a kind of sleight of hand. The real script is being written by the heirs of Stepan Bandera. Only a comedian could, with a straight face, defend the erection of statues to the antisemite and murderer of Poles Bandera, whose paramilitary Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists killed 35,000 Ukrainian Jews and between 50,000 and 100,000 Poles.  A fine deflection from his own Banderite government!

It’s of no small moment that Zelenskyy stood before the U.S. Congress to make this impassioned but bankrupt plea. It was the U.S. Empire and its machinations that put Ukraine on the frontlines. It is the insatiable drive of the U.S. imperialists for the natural resources of the Russian Federation, the pathological refusal of the U.S. ruling class to integrate Russia into the world-imperialist machine, and the bloody-minded desire of U.S. Cold Warriors who were sad to see the war end in their favor that put Ukraine on the path to war. For thirty years, the U.S. Empire has manipulated little Ukraine. The president of that embattled country must come to the U.S. and nowhere else to hold out his cap and beg for bullets, guns, bombs, even nuclear war. After all, Zelenskyy merely asked the U.S. to hold up the bargain its agents have been whispering in his ear since he took office. Make us like you, he says. Make us part of the imperialist West. And if his countrymen down to the last must die to fulfill the Banderite ambition? So what!

Zelenskyy went on to describe the Russian onslaught. “Every inch of that land is soaked in blood; roaring guns sound every hour. Trenches in the Donbass change hands several times a day in fierce combat, and even hand fighting.” But who, oh President Zelenskyy, invited that war? Who was it that loudly courted NATO, that loudly asked for the U.S. Empire to involve itself in the affairs of Ukraine? Whose government was it that waged a war of ethnic cleansing in the Donbass for the past three years? Oh, well, of course, Mr. Zelenskyy has nothing to say on those subjects.

But he admits that the Russian forces “have a significant advantage in artillery. They have an advantage in ammunition. They have much more missiles and planes than we have ever had.” The unspoken corollary: the U.S. must make up the deficit. You got us into this, Zelenskyy says without saying, now it’s up to you to get us out.

Of course, Zelenskyy couldn’t help but accuse the Russian Federation of what Ukraine itself has done. As early as February, Zelenskyy was releasing the prisoners in Ukraine to form penal battalions to fight the Russians. Yet, the comedian-president said to the Congress that “They [the Russians] sent convicts to the war.” And again, he cannot resist the comparison of Russian president Vladimr Putin to the Nazis: “[J]ust like the brave American soldiers which held their lines and fought back Hitler’s forces during the Christmas of 1944… [b]rave Ukrainian soldiers are doing the same to Putin’s forces this Christmas.”

But President Zelenskyy reminded Congress that the $68 billion USD sent by the Congress up to November 2022 is not enough money to win the war. “Financial assistance is also critically important.” The gross domestic product of Ukraine is only $200 billion USD; Zelenskyy warns that the entire output of the country is insufficient to win the war.

And what does winning look like, to this comedian president? “Ukraine has already offered proposals which I have just discussed with President Biden,” he said. Peace to President Zelenskyy looks like the Russian Federation voluntarily cutting the price of its gas and oil, guaranteeing food exports from Ukraine, releasing all of its prisoners, delivering over the sovereign regions of Donetsk and Luhansk back to Ukrainian war criminals and Banderite fascists, withdrawing all troops, submitting to an internal war crimes tribunal, and signing a peace treaty. Victory, in other words, is the complete capitulation of the Russian Federation and the return of the Banderite militias to the Donbass where they will continue to murder unopposed.

Zelenskyy, who once told a reporter that the fact that he was Jewish “barely makes 20 in [his] long list of faults,” under whose administration statues of the notorious antisemite and killer Stepan Bandera have multiplied, whose administration is staffed by open far-right fascists, demands that the U.S. help his government reconquer the Donbass so those same fascists can return to their ethnic cleansing. So much for the vaunted democracy and freedom! He then went on to say “We’ll celebrate Christmas. Celebrate Christmas even if there’s no electricity.” Throughout his speech he said the word Christmas no less than nine times.

At a time when the decrepit Biden White House has proved its value to the U.S. capitalist class by crushing the railroad workers movement, at a time when the consumer price index in the U.S. is soaring and inflation is spiraling out of control, at a time when student debt relief was dangled only to be canceled, at a time when the domestic population of the U.S. Empire desperately needs some kind of monetary relief, Biden and the other cronies of the big capitalists have chosen to spend over $60 billion in war machinery, ammunition, and supplies for the Ukrainian army rather than to give any relief to the U.S. working classes. Zelenskyy is their reasoning. The rugged face of the handsome actor-president serves as a stand-in for argumentation. It now merely needs to flash his photograph in the news or mention his name on the radio for standing ovations and tearful protestations of loyalty to Ukraine to spill from the lips of regular U.S. citizens (nearly always in the form of the fascist phrase Slava Ukraini).

This is a war against Russia; this is a war against the Empire’s European partners; but this is also a war against the working class. It is a war against the working class in Russia, which suffers. It is a war against the working class in Ukraine, which chafes under the fascist yoke. It is a war against the working class in the U.S. Empire, which must make sacrifices so the U.S. government can enact its capitalist masters’ bloody will in Eastern Europe and remake the map of the world.

We must not be duped by Washington or Kiev. When they send in the clowns, we must be prepared with the real facts that led to this conflict. When they cry crocodile tears about human rights abuses, we must remind them who created the abuses, who funded the murderous fascists that perpetuate them, who even now send money and materiel to them so they can continue their depravities. We are not fooled by the funny man from Ukraine.

Washington, we see your hand in the shadows.

Last week the Federalist (a right-fascist magazine) published a new fascist manifesto. This boldness follows the capture of the United States Supreme Court by the similarly named Federalist Society and lays out the future these so-called “Federalists” imagine for their movement. The manifesto isn’t aimed at the left-fascist Democrats, but rather at other, recalcitrant members of their own right-fascist clique: the “Grand Old Party” (GOP). They stand ascendent in the most reactionary institution of a reactionary government and are poised to sweep the statehouses and legislatures of the country, to be followed by the United States Congress next month. The political content of their message is clear. To other Republicans, they say: Fall in line now with the right-fascist program, or you will be treated like more of the same left fascists that we despise.

Who are the Federalists?

More fully the “Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies,” this lawyer’s guild was founded in 1982 by a collection of students from Yale, Harvard, and University of Chicago Law. These were the dialectical opposite of the Students for a New Democratic Society, the reaction to the left-wing movements of the 1960s and 70s, and the self-professed vanguard of the right reaction. Although it began with the typical right-wing objectives of “checking federal power, protecting individual liberty, and interpreting the constitution to its original meaning,” these slogans have only ever been an obfuscation, kind sounding words to mask their real aims and interests. The Federalists are nothing more than the tip of a spear of counter-revolution that has been wielded against the working classes for decades.

Six of the nine sitting members of the Supreme Court are members or former members of the Federalist Society: Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, and Amy Coney Barrett. Their presence is ubiquitous on the campus of every law school in the country. Their initial funding came from Olin Industries (an arms manufacturer and industrial chemical producer) and the Society is given donations by Google, Chevron, the Koch Brothers, the Scaifes and the Mercer family. It claims something in the order of $20 million in annual revenue. Federalist Society members have served in both the George W. Bush administration and the Trump administration.

This far-reaching organization is the sharpened spear tip of the bourgeois and petit-bourgeois reactionary intelligentsia. They are the driving force behind the rightward lurch in the federal judiciary, and they have finally made their statements clear, open, and unambiguous: they are the violent and repressive wing of U.S. fascism, prepared to sweep the slate clean of their ineffectual forebears and ensure that the rising class-consciousness of the working people is defeated once and for all.

Although there are no official links between the Federalist Society and the Federalist, their membership has contributed writing to the Federalist (for instance, “I Thought I Could Be A Christian And Constitutionalist At Yale Law School. I Was Wrong”) and the magazine has been a loud supporter of Federalist judges and legal vision. They share a name, but more importantly, they share a movement between them.

The Fascist Vision

What kind of movement, asks fascist John Daniel Davidson, should the conservatives adopt? “For starters,” he answers, they must start thinking of themselves as “radicals, restorationists, and counterrevolutionaries.” Lest the message be missed, he is clear: “that is what they are, whether they embrace those labels or not.”

Davidson rejects the small-government libertarianism of his movement as counter-productive. He argues that the right fascists must get “used to the idea of wielding power…. [b]ecause accommodation or compromise with the left is impossible.” He explicitly calls for counter-revolution, because “periodic revolution to preserve liberty and civil society has always been and always will be necessary.”

Along with the rejection of the libertarian right’s commitment to small government, Davidson rejects the “freedom of the market” and moans that it has allowed more popular but “anti-Western” ideas to flourish. This is the most troubling and dangerous part of the manifesto and comes close to being programmatic. The rough program he describes is one that:

• Uses anti-trust powers to break up Silicon Valley firms because they are petit-bourgeois strongholds, producing “woke” ideology;
• Cuts off all public funds to universities;
• Makes no-fault divorce illegal;
• Subsidizes families with children, with the clear fascist intent of “preserving the race”;
• Expands the criminal code to outlaw all abortion, everywhere, under every circumstance;
• Outlaws drag shows;
• Promises the arrest and prosecution of parents who take their children to drag shows;
• Outlaws gender-affirming care for both children and adults and makes it punishable by incarceration for the doctors performing it;
• Outlaws “teachers who expose their students to sexually explicit material” — here, a coded whistle for the existence of gay and lesbian and gender-varient persons.

As the markets lurch from impending crisis to impending crisis and as the housing situation in the U.S. Empire becomes less and less tenable for more and more working people, voices like Davidson’s will only get louder. It is this very list of policies that differentiates left- and right-fascisms. Ultimately, it is the left fascists’ (like the Democrats) inability to hold an ever-vanishing center that has led and will continue to lead to the right fascist seizure of power. While Democrats and Republicans both agree on the continued liquidation and genocide of Indigenous peoples, the enslavement and colonization of New Afrika, and support for the vast imperialist war-machine abroad, it is here where they, for the moment, diverge.

Until this point, fascism in the U.S. Empire has been content to ride quietly behind all politics, right or left, and suffuse all political decisions with its implications. It has been a secure fascism that has no need of intricate repressive machinery, because it has relied instead on an all-powerful control of the economy, on the renewing and regenerating powers of the settler-state to confront its crises by bringing new land under its control, by endless fascist war-mongering and the conquest of new markets, and so on. This has allowed the economic features of fascist organization to do most of the work and permitted the public face of the empire to wear any expression it desires. The publication of this manifesto is an important and dangerous step in the end of this self-delusion among right fascists. It represents a level of clarity and self-awareness so far lacking in modern U.S. politics; it sets out not only the fundamental ideological groundwork of fascism, exposing it to the public so it can be addressed and argued over, but also describes the basic methodology by which fascism will tighten its grip on the people of the U.S. Empire.

The day is soon coming when even the left-fascist Democratic Party will polarize and fracture into that vanishingly small group willing to stand for the liberties of the masses, and those who will ally with or become right fascists to preserve the dying order.

The Cuban Revolution has undeniably taken a monumental step forward toward the total emancipation of the oppressed. As this paper reported, Cuba’s new Family Code “is, in no uncertain terms, the most progressive and comprehensive law in history, anywhere on Earth, with regard to the emancipation of women, LGBT people, children, the elderly, and disabled people.”

But not everyone is celebrating. The Western capitalist press, serving as the propaganda arm of U.S. imperialism, is desperately sputtering and stumbling over itself to drown out any celebration of revolutionary Cuba’s historic victory. To this end, the capitalist press is peddling a multifaceted, deeply incoherent narrative — a cacophony of anti-Communist propaganda, joined by such vaunted outfits as the Associated Press, The New York Times, and Reuters. Various anti-Communist NGOs funded by the imperialists — the usual suspects, like CIVICUS and the NED — have also crawled out of the woodworks.

Most have focused on dampening Cuba’s world-historic victory by oversimpliyfing the new Family Code as “legalizing gay marriage.” At the same time, any hint of faint praise for revolutionary Cuba is carefully qualified by attacking the revolution for a “slow” pace of progress, despite the fact that revolutionary Cuba has already outpaced every country in the Americas, and most countries in the world, in the struggle for LGBT emancipation.

As we reported in the Red Clarion, Cuba’s new Family Code does, in fact, enshrine marriage equality as law — but it does so much more than “just” that.

The new Family Code is a comprehensive legal code, laying out the legal dimensions of families, children and the elderly, women, LGBT people, and disabled people. It is uniquely progressive in the world on every front. We could go on, but we will instead encourage readers to read our full summary of the new Family Code.

Yet, the Family Code has been oversimplified in the capitalist press of the United States and other Western countries as something resembling the U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision, which tenuously legalized same-sex marriage in the U.S. — and which is now on the verge of being overturned by the current Court, dominated by far-right fascist Trump-appointees.

So, why the oversimplifications?

The capitalist press has been forced to acknowledge the most widely known and reported aspect of the Family Code: marriage equality. But the capitalists can still subtly manipulate public perceptions by “failing” to thoroughly report the facts surrounding the popular referendum — to “tell the whole truth.”

The more rabidly anti-Communist outlets accuse the Cuban government of forcing an “unwanted” Code on the people, despite the fact that the Code was passed in a popular referendum. Hardly a single capitalist news outlet, even the “moderates,” can admit that the popular referendum expressed the political will of the people. Instead, the capitalist press explains away the new Family Code’s popularity by denying the political agency of Cuba’s people.

One of the news agencies most obviously guilty of this is Reuters. “Cubans Split over Liberal Family Code as Referendum Nears” — this was the headline of an article, published by Reuters in March 2022, in the lead-up to the popular referendum. The article baselessly asserts that, “Tepid support for the reforms … threatens to hand state-backed supporters a defeat,” citing as its source three so-called “experts.” One of these “experts,” who works for a German state-sponsored think-tank, falsely claimed that the Family Code had been, “compiled by state authorities, rather than being a grassroots movement.” In fact, the Family Code underwent multiple, significant alterations in accordance with suggestions voiced by the public at the nearly 80,000 grassroots community meetings held during the four-month-long public consultation process leading up to the referendum.

We hardly need to point out now that the predictions of Reuters and its “experts,” that the new Family Code would be rejected, were predictably and embarrassingly wrong: The Code was instead ratified by a two-thirds supermajority.

The more conspiracy theory-minded are coping and seething with the assertion that the popular referendum was really a sham effort by the Communist Party of Cuba to “stabilize the regime.” For instance, the Miami Herald cites nameless (likely fictitious) sources to paint the popular referendum as “a smokescreen for a government that is in desperate need of … legitimacy.” The truth, of course, is that the Cuban government enjoys the support of the overwhelming majority of Cubans, and therefore already has “legitimacy” by any truly democratic standard; this is not changed by the fact that an insignificant minority of Cubans oppose the revolution and the Communist Party.

Reuters also indulges in its share of conspiracy theories. In an article headlined “Cuba Uses Media Blitz to Promote ‘Yes’ on New LGBT-Friendly Laws,” published a few days before the vote, Reuters accused the Communist Party of “flooding state-run media with stories and celebratory images” of LGBT people and putting up “roadside billboards touting diversity,” all in order to convince the Cuban public to support the new Family Code’s historically unprecedented expansion of LGBT rights. (How truly evil, those Communists!) The conspiracy theorists at Reuters claimed that the Communist Party’s mass public education campaign on LGBT rights, launched in the months leading up to the referendum vote, was an underhanded effort to dupe the Cuban public and cover up “anger” and “widespread protests” — demonstrations which, in actuality, have at most attracted a few hundred paid activists in Havana.

Reuters only cites “analysts consulted by Reuters” to justify its conspiracy theories. One of these “analysts” is the same German sham “expert” Reuters consulted in the previous article, who makes the truly bizarre claim that, “many people will vote [out of] loyalty to the government, much more than on content” — as if Cubans were incapable of independent thought; as if the Cuban electorate wouldn’t vote “Yes” on the Family Code for the simple and obvious reason that the majority supports the rights of LGBT people, women, children, the elderly, and the disabled. This “expert” assertion that citizens of revolutionary socialist states are mindless robots is a classic anti-Communist smear. Another of these so-called “analysts” is a right-wing fascist “dissident” — the sort who are broadly ignored as irrelevant extremists by the Cuban public, but are beloved by the rabidly anti-Communist Western capitalist press as “pro-democracy activists.” Reuters quotes this “dissident” (who lives not in Cuba, but in Madrid, Spain) as actually advocating against the Family Code — against the expansion of LGBT and other rights — for no other reason than to “punish the regime.” The “dissident” takes off the “pro-democracy” mask and admits that anti-Communists are, in truth, against democracy and emancipation. 

Why the baseless pessimism toward the people of Cuba? Why the sham “experts” stating easily disprovable falsehoods? Why the indulgence in conspiracy theories?

Doesn’t Reuters brand itself as a respected, trustworthy, “value-neutral,” and “objective” news agency?

Among other distortions appearing in the capitalist press is the widely-repeated line that the recent popular referendum was “rare” and “unusual” in Cuba — another easily disprovable falsehood. The Associated Press, for instance, released an article headlined, “Cuba Holds Unusual Vote on Law Allowing Same-Sex Marriage,” in which it characterized the referendum as a “rare” event. In fact, popular referenda are a normal feature of Cuba’s robust participatory democracy, and have been held many times in the past. The most recent such popular referendum was held in 2019, only 3 years ago, when an overwhelming 90.6% (with a voter turnout of 90.15%) of the electorate ratified Cuba’s new Constitution. The only “exceptional” aspect of this year’s popular referendum on Cuba’s new Family Code was the unprecedented level of public grassroots participation: The public consultation leading up to the referendum involved nearly 80,000 mass community meetings across Cuba and among Cubans living abroad, attended by a total of over 6.5 million Cubans (75.93% of the electorate).

Again, why the distortions? Isn’t the Associated Press one of the largest news agencies in the world, and isn’t it meant to be an “objective” source?

The fact is, the capitalist press cannot afford to admit the truth about Cuba. A two-sided pressure compels these agencies and outlets to manipulate, distort, falsify, and lie.

On the one hand, to tell the truth about revolutionary Cuba would force the capitalist press to acknowledge the progressive, democratic, and emancipatory nature of the Cuban Revolution — and, by extension, Communism. The mass media monopolists in the West will never allow this. The capitalists invest untold billions of dollars in their propaganda machines, because demonizing Communism is a crucial pillar of the capitalist class dictatorship. They must, at all costs, convince the oppressed that another world, free of exploitation, war, and all oppression, is impossible.

On the other hand, acknowledging the progressive, democratic, and emancipatory nature of the socialist revolution would expose a sharp contrast between the advancements of revolutionary Cuba and the reactionary backslides of the fascist U.S. Empire.

Let’s look specifically at the rights of LGBT people in the U.S. Empire today, and compare this abysmal situation with the progress of LGBT emancipation in Cuba.

So far this year, nearly 240 anti-LGBT bills have been filed in state governments across the U.S. Empire. In February 2022, Texas instituted a program denying life-saving medical care to transgender children, while threatening parents who accept and affirm their transgender children with prison sentences. Texas has been joined, to greater or lesser degrees, by the states of Alabama, Missouri, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, South Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, Utah, Idaho, and California — yes, even “liberal” California — all of which have passed (or are considering) laws banning medical care for transgender children in particular and transgender people generally. The states of Alabama, Minnesota, and Oklahoma are considering or have passed restrictions on the rights of same-sex families. In recent years, many of the same states have instituted laws that prohibit public school teachers from even discussing the existence of LGBT people. Across the country, we’ve seen LGBT pride parades and other events get attacked by cops and civilian-fascist demonstrators. At the center of it all, the current far-right Supreme Court, having overturned Roe v. Wade (the right to an abortion), is threatening to put marriage equality next on the chopping block. And it doesn’t stop there: In addition to entertaining challenges to the Obergefell decision, the far-right fascist wing of the Court has threatened to overturn the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision, which legalized homosexual intimate contact, and the 1967 Loving v. Virginia decision, which legalized inter-racial marriages.

This is the awful state of LGBT rights in the U.S. Empire. Meanwhile, only 90 miles away from U.S. shores, Cuba’s electorate has ratified the most progressive, comprehensive law regarding the rights of LGBT people — as well as women, children, the elderly, disabled people — and the nature of the family in world history.

The capitalists can’t allow this hypocrisy to be exposed, but it will be exposed, one defiant voice at a time, all the same. No anti-Communist cacophony can drown out the fact that Cuba is thriving, while the U.S. Empire continues to descend into fascism.

We must proclaim “Death!” to this fascist settler-colonial empire, and, in the same breath, proclaim, “Long live the revolution!”

Viva Cuba! Viva la revolución! Hasta la victoria siempre!