Mahmoud has not been charged with any listed offense; his crime is his support for the Palestinian national liberation movement. Mahmoud stood against the slaughter of his people and the ongoing theft of their homeland. The fascist Empire is committed to worldwide terror and the enslavement of humanity. The state would rather us remain silent, going about our cleaved lives apathetic to genocide — this is vile and unacceptable. 

Free speech is dead. Did it ever exist in the first place?

Our free speech rights go about as deep as a puddle on the side of the road. The American Fourth Reich, aided by the skeletal Democratic party, has gutted what little was left of so-called “civil liberties” in this country. The U.S.’s liberal democracy was founded on the “rights” of only the white, slave-owning, and propertied classes, leaving everyone else, especially enslaved peoples, grasping for the shards of a deadened life.

Regardless of what the slave owners who founded this country may have intended when they wrote the Constitution in 1791, the settler-imperial government has never meaningfully valued free speech. Just seven years and one president later, the John Adams administration would pass the Alien and Sedition Acts: the Sedition laws criminalized any negative speech against the government, while the Alien Acts let the president deport any foreign nationals. Adams, who was a federalist, used the Sedition Acts to arrest journalists supporting his political opponents, the Democratic Republicans. The minute differences between Federalists and Democratic-Republicans are not terribly significant — (both supported the slavery of New Afrikans and the genocide of Indigenous Turtle Islanders) — suffice to say they were the two dominant tendencies of early USian politics. Adams lost the political battle; the Democratic Republicans won the next election and repealed the Sedition Acts. And the Alien Acts? They remain in effect to this day. The president may therefore deport any foreign national they consider to be dangerous, based on this 225 year old law.  In essence, dystopian state repression is one of the hallmarks of liberal democracy.

The Alien and Sedition Acts would be the first major crackdown on free speech, but they are not the last, nor the most recent. The Democratic-Republicans had their own opportunity to silence mass dissent a few decades later when the abolition of slavery became a contentious issue. In 1836, an Andrew Jackson-controlled Congress ratified a gag order banning any mention of abolition in the halls of Congress. 

In light of the modern national security state, first amendment rights are shallow.  With state surveillance and a history of interference in liberation movements, an American citizen’s speech may be free, but only so long as their words remain barren and removed from action. The Black Panthers, the Puerto Rican independence movement, the American Indian Movement: when nationally oppressed groups peaceably assemble, we can see time and time again that the First Amendment often has a selective application. Perpetual surveillance, state assassinations; sharpened knives which they are ready to use against any defiant organization. 

Before the regime will criminalize your collective expression, two circumstances must generally be met. 

1. The expression must be dissent, i.e., it must go against the regime’s foreign or domestic policy.
2. The expression must be popular. The degree of popularity can vary, but generally, the dissenting speech or collective expression must be popular enough for the regime to consider it a threat to its rule or the implementation of its policy. 

Popular dissent is forbidden.  

If this clownish blockheaded President is trying to weaken free speech rights on campus, he is late to the party. Colleges and universities across the Empire beat him to the punch by launching a full scale offensive against the right to protest before the Fall 2024 semester. Protests now have formal time limits. They are banned in popular gathering spots. Fascism on the Amerikkkan campus is objectively bipartisan. Trump’s threat is a promise to build upon the groundwork that was laid last year. Do not be scared. For fear is your greatest enemy. Now, we’re all able to see clearly without the blinding, twisted distortions of Democrats who use identity essentialism as bait in order to duplicitously rally support for their graveyard of a party, and therefore gut the very undercarriage of revolutionary understanding and action of the mass of vexed workers.

Saturday’s attack on student resistance was orchestrated by the regime’s use of the word “terrorist;” it is, by all means, a propagandistic term in the modern U.S., the same way “communist” was in the past, and is in the present. The state of course uses the veneer of a mythical “antisemitism” to justify its draconian measures. Claims of a phantasmal antisemitism from the very same administration that goes around giving Nazi salutes. Remember, the Trumpian gendarmes are the very same ilk that said “Jews will not replace us.” The very same people whose base committed a massacre in a synagogue,  now want to wage a “holy war,” which they pretend is for the very Jewish people they tried to mass murder. 

However, we must recognize that we’re in the depths of a revolutionary moment. The inflection points of class war are nearing a breaking crescendo, and it is up to us in the anti-imperialist movement to understand this dialectic of intense struggle and form a clear and firm guide to action. Now is the time to unite with left and progressive forces (While not compromising the proven Marxists analysis) to defeat the fascist juggernaut. In the age of techno-imperialism and the mass slaughter of our people, we must do away with the muddled Trotskyist tendency of splintering into groups of 50 (that has historically gutted the left in this country) and form a temporary alliance to defeat the strangling repression of the Trump regime. We, the mass reserved army of labor must pick up the red banner and fight for the liberation of all those colonized, imprisoned, and hyper-exploited. 

Editors Note: This topic is one of particular concern to Unity–Struggle–Unity and to the Red Clarion in particular. It has come to our attention that a subscriber to our newspaper and a local contact on the ground in the state of Connecticut has also faced state repression and news approbation for his anti-zionist views. See the piece about his suspension in The Masses for more.

The spin doctors are on life support. The world sees the truth about zionist occupation of Palestine. Hundreds of thousands march in the streets in protest of the U.S.-backed zionist state, demanding an end to the slaughter of Palestinians. We see the images of bombed-out apartments, schools, and hospitals, as well as children murdered by zionist hands. We see the unlivable conditions in Gaza as zionist troops force Palestinians out of their homes and into the desert. And we see the valiant resistance of the Palestinian people standing up to the genocide that occupation forces are conducting on the ground.

The more obvious the truth, the harder those in power will work to conceal it. Across the entirety of North America, as the people reach out and stand in solidarity with the embattled Palestinians, it becomes increasingly difficult for imperialist mouthpieces to lie. Young people in the United States have not bought into the lies about so-called “israel”. They see the zionist occupation for what it is: a genocidal apartheid state with an increasingly fascist settler population, driven by greed and racism. Zionist news outlets talk out of both sides of their mouths, assuring English-speaking viewers they are taking appropriate precautions to safeguard civilian lives, while openly broadcasting their genocidal intent in Hebrew and Arabic. Their lies are for us. The victims know what they face.

Since the October 7 Al-Aqsa Flood, support for Palestine has grown rapidly among young Americans. A Quinnipiac poll listed just over half of eighteen to thirty-four-year-olds sympathizing with Palestine, while a staggering sixty-five percent of the occupation’s supporters are age fifty and older. The generational gap looms large. Since its creation, the zionist state has built up its mythology in the Middle East with the full support of the U.S. media. The occupation’s role as an outpost of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East involved the media construction of an  “Israel” that is a hyper-competent military operator enduring a siege conducted by the America’s barbaric enemies. This was effective in influencing public opinion during the Cold War. Young people today see the obvious truth: that the zionist state is the aggressor, using unending U.S. military aid to terrorize its neighbors and ethnically cleanse its Palestinian population. Young Americans do not have access to the imperial spoils that flowed to the United States after World War II. The rich have concentrated their wealth at unprecedented levels and even the meager welfare state is being stripped for parts. The next generation can see their economic future and it is grim. Young people see the realities of capitalism at home, and are connecting to the struggle abroad.

The cracks in the imperialist narrative are growing. The 2020 killing of George Floyd heightened consciousness of the white supremacist policy underlying the U.S. police state. The police who killed George Floyd, like many of the police across the U.S. Empire, train with the zionists to hone their killing technique. Riding that wave, more people see the zionist state as the United States’ steadfast ally in oppression. Zionist troops test so-called “less lethal” munitions on Palestinians. They deploy new and cruel anti-protest tactics and psychological operations, which they then teach to the largest police departments in the U.S. The U.S., in response, gives the zionists billions of dollars of state-of-the-art weaponry and freedom from the consequences of international law. U.S. and zionist occupying forces are two sides of the same coin, two imperial groups united in their use of overwhelming violence.

Used to acting with impunity, to being able to control the public narrative, the U.S. security regime and its little brother, the U.S. news media, have acted with swiftness and brutality to those who are making their voices heard for Palestine. Advocates have faced censorship from the state and from private corporations. Solidarity with Palestine threatens the increasingly fragile liberal order. Editor Michael Eisen of the journal eLife was fired for simply retweeting a headline from satirical newspaper The Onion, “Dying Gazans Criticized for Not Using Last Words to Condemn Hamas.” When he refused to apologize for standing up for Palestinians, the board of directors fired him. Seven editors resigned in solidarity with him.

Air Canada suspended pilot Mostafa Ezzo for his participation in a pro-Palestine rally. The company claimed he was not authorized as a spokesperson, asserting that he could not express his beliefs while publicly being an employee of Air Canada. Ezzo posted pictures of his attendance at a rally on his private page. 

Goldie, a restaurant in Philadelphia, fired two employees for wearing Palestinian flag pins. Employees and workers were engaged in an ongoing dispute about whether the restaurant would hold a fundraiser for the IOF on October 12. The company lied to employees about the fundraiser, pretending that the supplies were going to humanitarian aid in Gaza.The company fired the two employees for wearing pins and a manager who refused to enforce the censorship.

The Minnesota Nurses’ Association suspended Tania Singh for posts advocating for Palestinian resistance. Her analysis of the zionist state as a settler-colony led to her panicked firing right after she unionized nurses who specialized in examining sexual assault victims.

Universities, too, have been harsh in their response to pro-Palestinian sentiment. The U.S. Congress conducted a show trial of Ivy League university presidents, drawing a line in the sand. Not even one word of anti-zionist sentiment would be tolerated. Ryna Workman, a law student at New York University, faced organizational and professional consequences for pro-Palestine speech. They were first removed as the President of the Student Bar Association, then their job offer at a top firm was rescinded. This serves as a stark warning to anyone in the legal field.

Student organizations are under fire. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis ordered that all Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters in the state be dissolved. SJP members have faced harassment, doxxing, and firing for their political activities. They are targeted by everyone from their universities to state politicians to the zionist government. Anti-zionist Jews in SJP face especially intense backlash.

Under normal circumstances, there’s one group of people in the U.S. that can tell the truth if they feel like it: celebrities. Wealth, power, and popularity do wonders for insulating someone from consequences. Zionists, however, are so desperate that we have witnessed a slew of high-profile celebrity firings in response to Palestinian solidarity. Actress Melissa Barrera was fired from Scream VII for accurately describing the genocidal conditions in Gaza. Susan Sarandon was dropped from the United Talent Agency after appearing at a pro-Palestine march. Novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen was pulled from an event for merely signing an open letter critical of the zionist state.

From the working class to the red carpet, none of these people are saying anything particularly radical. These are not the sort of statements one expects to see censored. In fact, they are the prevailing opinion. Seventy percent  of the U.S. public supports a ceasefire; support for Palestine is not a fringe view. The zionists are too brutal even for the U.S. ruling class, demonstrating a division in the goals of each. This genocide threatens the stability of U.S. military operations in the region, and the contradictions are driving a wedge between the United States and its puppet.

We are winning. The world sees the truth and we cannot stop speaking it. These acts of petty censorship cannot stand up to the wave of solidarity with the oppressed. Every worthy cause has its risks. For every person fired, we need thousands condemning it. For every zionist lie, we must respond with the truth that this is a genocide, and that Palestinian resistance is noble and worth fighting for. We must respond, “We stand with Palestine!” There is one struggle for liberation against global capitalism and white supremacy, and the Palestinians stand at the front of that struggle. We must declare, with all our hearts, that from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free! Our voices together will quake the earth.