Don’t be fooled: failed politicians and Proud Boys tried to spread antisemitic bile at Harvard. DSA anti-fascists won’t let them

On November 11, 2023, several members of Boston DSA, a mix of non-Jews and Jews, disrupted Shiva Ayyadurai’s antisemitic, “anti-Zionist” rally in Harvard Square. As the flier advertising it made clear, this was no rally in support of Palestinians or anti-Zionism, but a rally to support Shiva’s particular brand of conspiracy theory and the idea of Jews as all-controlling oppressors of working people.

We carried signs reading “Antisemitism is the Anti-Zionism of Fools” (a play on the old quote “Antisemitism is the socialism of fools”), “Pro-Palestine, Pro-Jewish, Antifascist” and others. We did this because we find antisemitism repellent, and we find it repellent that Shiva would co-opt the suffering and death of Palestinians for his own ends in this manner. And, we did this to send a message, in deed and not just word, that principled anti-Zionists oppose antisemitism. Jewish, Palestinian, Muslim members of the Harvard and Cambridge communities—indeed, all members—did not deserve Shiva’s spectacle, or the stress and fear that they may have felt as a result of the rally fliers. Indeed, some passers-by thanked us for helping them understand what was happening. Several people who had simply heard about a Palestine rally in Harvard Square spoke to us and were upset and disappointed about the true nature of Shiva’s rally.

We are all experienced antifascists, and we understand the difference between principled anti-Zionism and antisemitism masquerading as anti-Zionism. John Medlar, a well-known Proud Boy who tried to crash a Drag Queen Story Hour in Fall River last year, was Shiva’s livestreamer. Another rallygoer told us that he too was a Proud Boy and a friend of Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes, and called a member of our group a “homo.” One of us, a Jewish survivor of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in August 2017, was wearing Palestine colors with a Star of David necklace, and was asked multiple times by Shiva’s rallygoer fans what was around their neck. Another of us was told by a rallygoer that 60% of Congress has dual citizenship with Israel, a variant on a longstanding antisemitic myth. Several told us that vaccines are a “globalist” (a dogwhistle for Jewish) population control plot. In no way is any of this Palestine solidarity or helpful to the people being murdered in Gaza.

We encourage readers to attend rallies for Palestine and a ceasefire that are sponsored by legitimate coalitions and organizations such as the Boston Coalition for Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, and to contact their representatives in support of the Ceasefire Now resolution. Unfortunately, right now, with the increased attention to Palestinians’ oppression and many new people in the movement, the antisemitic far right will do what it often does, and try to inject its ideas into the movement through spreading them to well-meaning people (some of them new activists, English language learners, and/or people new to North American cultural contexts) who don’t realize the full implications of certain framings, terms, or images. If you see a friend repeating things that seem off (like suggesting that Americans need to be freed from Israeli dominance, or that Israelis or Jews are “unbelievers” in some way, or using Jewish symbols like the menorah to signify something bad, or using the neo-Nazi phrase “Zionist Occupied Government”), talk to them about it! That’s how we build healthy movements.

No to antisemitism, no to anti-Palestinian hatred, no to Islamophobia, no to fascism!

We repeat here the points from the educational fliers that we distributed on site:

We are supporters of a ceasefire in Israel/Palestine. Many of us are longtime Palestine solidarity activists. We oppose antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian hatred, and fascism.

The rally we are here to oppose claims to be an anti-Zionism, pro-worker rally. However fliers advertising it intertwined the Star of David with a dollar sign as the chain in a pair of handcuffs, accusing “Zionists” of enslaving workers throughout the world. The use of a plain Star of David in this way is unambiguously antisemitic.

While Zionism is an ideology and there is nothing intrinsically antisemitic in anti-Zionism, there is a long and unfortunate history of antisemites using “Zionist” and “Zionism” as antisemitic dog whistles, dating back to Willis Carto’s Liberty Lobby in the 1950s.

Shiva Ayyadurai, who called the rally that we are here to oppose, has spoken at several far-right rallies in the Boston area since 2017, speaking alongside notorious figures such as the violent neo-Nazi/former Proud Boy Kyle “Based Stickman” Chapman, Proud Boy and convicted 1/6/21 Capitol attack leader Joe Biggs and Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson. For more on this era of fascist activity in Boston, see this 2019 piece.

One of the local rallies he spoke at was the 2018 Proud Boys rally in Concord, MA. The Proud Boys have become well-known as one of the groups that led the attack on the Capitol on 1/6/21. Massachusetts Proud Boy John Medlar is a long-time collaborator of Shiva’s.

Shiva is a conspiracy theorist who testified at “election audit” hearings to claim the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump

We find it grotesque that Shiva is co-opting Palestinian suffering and death in this opportunistic, antisemitic way. As principled anti-Zionists, ceasefire supporters, antifascists, we say no.

Six months ago, President Biden ended the pandemic state of emergency and declared COVID over. From the way government officials and the media are – or more accurately, aren’t – talking about the pandemic, it might seem one has no choice but to believe that Biden was right.

Except that the pandemic is not over. By what metric was Biden measuring? Hospitalizations? Deaths? For the week ending September 16, the U.S. had >20,000 covid hospitalizations and >1500 covid deaths (over half the deaths on 9/11). These are both likely significant underestimates due to inadequate case testing, counting, and reporting across the capitalist world. Indeed, these inadequacies are often exacerbated by active suppression – for example, in the UK, an email was recently leaked in which hospital workers were directed by hospital administration not to test for COVID if presenting with symptoms, because it might result in workers “remaining home longer.”

Certainly Biden’s declaration wasn’t based on heartening new evidence about disability from long COVID, which, contrary to popular media coverage, scientific studies have consistently shown is both common (at a well-established incidence rate of at least 10% for each case of COVID) and debilitating (a recent study showed that many people with long COVID report a worse quality of life than people with Stage IV lung cancer). And recent data suggests that long COVID may even be more common in vaccinated people who had mild cases and were infected since the emergence of Omicron.

So why Biden’s declaration, and why aren’t we hearing about any of this?

The start of the COVID pandemic brought both a clarifying look at the failures of capitalism and a hint at how things could be different. From very early in the pandemic, we have known what interventions would be effective, and could even end the pandemic altogether: distribution and mandating of effective masks, contact tracing to understand disease spread, and quarantines in the case of actual or suspected COVID cases with guaranteed paid time off. Some countries, in particular China and other countries that have previously had to manage epidemics, implemented some or all of these interventions from the very start of the pandemic.

Unfortunately, many of these measures require political will and a government willing to intervene for people’s wellbeing; we have neither in the United States, where institutions are utterly at the command of capital and ordinary people are deservedly skeptical of those institutions. To instate these measures adequately would necessitate the nationalization of key industries, the complete transformation of our tattered welfare state (both of which we call for in the DSA national platform), and a willingness to take bold action to stop right-wing misinformation. These propositions would be utterly unthinkable to America’s capitalists, who fought tooth and nail the meager stimulus checks, rent forgiveness, and brief extension of unemployment benefits, all of which were simply too inconvenient and unprofitable to keep up. 

This is the root of the current messaging and media strategy. If it’s unprofitable and inconvenient for capital to actually address and stop the pandemic, then it becomes necessary to convince people to live with it – to continue working and spending, to keep the ever-important economy chugging along, with no regard for the number of lives sacrificed at its altar.

Despite posturing as “pro-science” while Trump was in charge of managing the pandemic, the Democrats have quickly adopted a stance of soft pandemic denialism that does nothing to substantively address, or even really acknowledge, the issue. Rather than acknowledge that adequate pandemic precautions are only possible at a societal level and act accordingly, they tell the working class that they may keep themselves safe as a matter of personal choice. This is reminiscent of the Democrats’ soft climate denialism, in which they adopt rhetoric that climate change is real while catastrophically failing to acknowledge the gravity of the situation or the radical measures necessary to adequately address it, instead shifting the burden of responsibility to people’s individual choices to recycle or bike to work.

It’s no coincidence that we have one of the highest death rates of any country in the world, at 3,331 deaths per million people for the entire pandemic – a death rate of 0.33% of the entire population. By contrast, China, a country both larger and more densely populated than the U.S., has a death rate of 85 deaths per million. Of course, COVID deaths in the U.S. are not evenly distributed throughout the population. Like many other societal inequities, COVID and its outcomes disproportionately affect poor people, people of color (especially Black, indigenous, and Latino people), people with disabilities, and other marginalized people.

In DSA, we recognize both the social inequities revealed by the pandemic and the new world it reveals and necessitates. We also recognize that we cannot follow in the footsteps of the Republicans or the Democrats, both of whom have communicated clearly that under capitalism, human life has no value except that which it is able to produce for the ruling class. We are fighting for a radically transformed world in which profits don’t necessitate the unchecked spread of a pandemic, and we must reflect that world, to the greatest degree possible, in how we organize now.

To that end, NC Triangle DSA has written and passed a resolution creating a pandemic policy that uses layers of protection – including mandated masking, air filtration, testing, vaccinations, case reporting, and staying home when sick – to keep our events as COVID safe as possible. We welcome all the most vulnerable at our meetings, and we want you to know that we will help keep you safe. We are fighting for a world where all of us can be safe, healthy, and liberated – but to do that, we must build a mass movement. Join us in our fight for a better world!

DSA celebrates phenomenal general election results – a win rate of 69% from 23 races, with one remaining to be called. Voters elected 12 nationally endorsed candidates to local office in Washington, New Mexico, Minnesota, New York and Massachusetts, and contributed to multiple ballot initiative victories:

• Protecting abortion by enshrining the right in the Ohio constitution
• Blocking funds to build a “cop city” police training facility in Colorado Springs
• Expanding democracy on the Houston city council
• Protecting our landmark rent control measures from the Portland, Maine landlord lobby’s second rollback attempt
• Legislating a Tenants Bill of Rights for renters in Tacoma

Congratulations to all chapters running nationally endorsed campaigns. DSA sets a high bar, and win or lose, your hard work grows working-class power in your communities.

Here’s your November Dispatch! This month, check out DSA electoral wins, an international labor panel, and more. Read on to get involved.

And to make sure you get our newsletters in your inbox, sign up here! Each one features action alerts, upcoming events, political education, and more.

• From Maria — Thankful for the DSA Difference
• Sunday 11/12 — Join our National Labor Commission and International Committee for Autoworkers of the Americas!
• Updates from the Green New Deal Campaign Commission
• Statement: DSA Condemns the Censure of Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib
• RSVP for Still Here Still Queer: Queer Socialist Work in DSA Wednesday 11/15
• Housing Justice Commission Steering Committee Applications Open! Deadline Friday 11/17
• Check Out our DSA Store Relaunch!
• Sign Up for Red Rabbits Security Trainings
• Work for DSA! Positions Available

From Maria — Thankful for the DSA Difference

I am so thankful for you.

Together, DSA members have…

• Mobilized members to picket lines across the country to support numerous successful strikes in 2023, including those of Teamsters, UNITE-HERE, SEIU, WGA, and many others, most recently (pending contract ratification votes) UAW and SAG-AFTRA workers. This year has seen the largest number of striking workers since the 1990s.
• Organized over 1,000 members to make 220,000 calls to generate pressure on Congress for a ceasefire, with 22 Representatives as of now signed on to the Ceasefire Now resolution.
• Brought hundreds of members to Washington, D.C. to demand a ceasefire and an end to the massacre in Palestine, and to numerous local protests and direct actions.
• Passed multiple union resolutions calling for a ceasefire.
• This Tuesday, elected ten nationally endorsed candidates to local office in Washington, New Mexico, Minnesota, New York and Massachusetts, and dozens more locally endorsed candidates across the country, including multi-candidate slates for governing bodies and landslides for two incumbents in New York City, epicenter of the backlash to our stance in solidarity with Gaza.
• Drove or contributed major voter contact muscle to multiple ballot initiative victories:
  • Protecting abortion by enshrining the right in the Ohio constitution
  • Blocking funds to build a “cop city” police training facility in Colorado Springs
  • Expanding democracy on the Houston city council
  • Protecting our landmark rent control measures from the Portland, Maine landlord lobby’s second rollback attempt

DSA is dangerous to the ruling class.

We are a triple threat — building multiracial, internationalist working class power in the political arena, the economic arena, and in the streets. And we do it by funding ourselves and acting as we find strategic, not wealthy funders, even in the face of relentless intimidation.

This weekend, warmongers in both parties will celebrate veterans while continuing to make policy decisions that send our siblings to war and starve and rain bombs on civilians. DSA will stand with our comrade Representative Rashida Tlaib instead, the only Palestinian-American member of the House, under bipartisan attack for shining a light on genocide.

Read and watch Rashida Tlaib’s speech on the floor of the House.

In solidarity forever,

Maria Svart
DSA National Director

Sunday 11/12 — Join our National Labor Commission and International Committee for Autoworkers of the Americas!

Labor work and internationalism go hand in hand! Join DSA Labor on Sunday 11/12 at 7pm ET/6pm CT/5pm MT/4pm PT for Autoworkers of the Americas. On the call, you’ll hear from workers in the US, Canada, Mexico and Brazil on international solidarity in the auto industry. RSVP today!

Updates from the Green New Deal Campaign Commission

Check out what the Green New Deal Campaign Commission — and chapters who have been Building for Power for a Green New Deal — have been up to in September and October.

Statement: DSA Condemns the Censure of Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib

This week, in a shameful bipartisan attack, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 234-188 to censure Congresswoman and DSA member Rashida Tlaib of Detroit. Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American member of the House, has shown immense bravery in exposing the truth about Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians while she endures vicious and racist attacks, which now extend to the halls of government. She stands strong alongside fellow DSA member and Representative Cori Bush of St. Louis as an original co-author of the Ceasefire NOW resolution. And like Rashida, we will not back down. You can read our full statement here.

RSVP for Still Here Still Queer: Queer Socialist Work in DSA Wednesday 11/15

The Queer Socialists Working Group invites all comrades to join us for our first Still Here, Still Queer educational event on Wednesday 11/15 at 8pm ET/7pm CT/6pm MT/5pm PT. This event will highlight the work being done to advance queer rights by several DSA chapters. The registration link can be found here. There will be excellent discussion of queer activity, and how you too can fight for queer liberation in your own chapters and working groups!

Housing Justice Commission Steering Committee Applications Open! Deadline Friday 11/17

The Housing Justice Commission is getting ready to elect a new Steering Committee! If you are interested in becoming a candidate, please fill out this form no later than Friday, 11/17 at 11:59pm PT. Elections will be held 12/1-12/8, and the new term starts on 12/15. Not ready to become a candidate, but you’re interested in HJC’s work? Sign up here!

Check Out our DSA Store Relaunch!

Check out our updated DSA store! Featuring union-made apparel, buttons, posters, and more, the new store is now more intuitive and easier to use. Be on the lookout early next week for new items!

And now you can find chapter items through the store as well! When you buy chapter merch, proceeds go directly to the chapter.

Sign Up for Red Rabbits Security Trainings

The Red Rabbits is reorganizing with a mission to provide security training to every group in DSA, regardless of size or location. These trainings include:

• a basic InfoSec course for anyone holding the password to official DSA social media or member lists
• marshal training on providing physical safety for in-person and virtual meetings
• advanced marshal tactics and strategies when participating in direct actions and public events

We need to change DSA’s security culture, and above all ensure that we remain safe and capable of working on a socialist future together.

We need all hands on deck, so please designate a security contact and we’ll be in touch. Our primary aim is to begin by providing training to everyone who holds access to member lists and social media accounts. Please reach out to redrabbits@dsacommittees.org for more details, or fill out the contact form here.

Work for DSA! Positions Available

Join our team! Available Positions:

• Finance Director: If you’re a financial expert with a strategic mindset and the ability to lead, we want to hear from you.
• Data and Technology Manager: Do you thrive in a tech-driven environment and have a knack for managing data and technology resources? This role might be perfect for you.
• Development Database Coordinator: Attention to detail and organization are your strengths. Join us to support our development efforts and make a real impact.

Application Deadline: November 26, 2023

For inquiries or more information, please contact jobs@dsausa.org.

The post Thankful for the DSA Difference — Your November Dispatch appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).