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'Unions and socialism to blame for deficit' - rants Glenn Beck
Republicans and Democrats in the US Congress recently agreed an eleventh hour deal to slash a massive $38 billion from federal government spending, mainly on public services and welfare. These are the largest domestic spending cuts in US history and represent a victory for the right-wing Republicans, who won control of the House of Representatives last November. The trillion dollar bailout to big business has led to the government's budget deficit but as Ramy Khalil, Socialist Alternative (CWI supporters in the US) explains, the right wing has blamed trade unions and socialists instead.
Glenn Beck, a notorious right-wing media pundit in the US, recently launched an attack on the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI - the international socialist organisation to which the Socialist Party is affiliated) in Britain and Ireland. It was part of a tirade against trade unionists and workers in the US.
On a 5 April TV programme - 'Getting our fiscal house in order' - Beck does one of his typical rants, this time blaming unions and socialism for causing governmental budget deficits!
He denounces the role that socialist parties are playing in rallying workers to fight for their rights around the world, including the Irish Socialist Party as well as the "Socialist Party of the UK". These parties are sections of the CWI.
Five minutes and 40 seconds into the show, a very brief video of a Socialist Alternative leader Philip Locker appears where he is leading chants on a megaphone at a Wisconsin labour rally.
At the 8:08 mark in the show, Beck attacks the article, 'Greece - Capitalist austerity must be met with workers' action' from the website of the Socialist Party (CWI Ireland). At the 8:33 mark, he attacks the article, 'Socialists on the 26 March demonstration' from the website of the Socialist Party of England and Wales.
If right-wing big shots like Glenn Beck are viciously attacking the labour movement and socialists, specifically our organisation, then we must be doing something right!
Beck draws links between the increasing general strikes in Europe, the revolutions in the Middle East, and the growing labour protests in the US: "Workers of the world unite!" he declares sarcastically, expressing fear that these growing protests pose a global threat to the capitalist system. This is one of the few times when he is actually right about something!
Beck has joined the resounding media chorus blaming government budget deficits on workers, unions, and socialists who are fighting for basic economic necessities for workers. The true blame, however, belongs to the anarchic, profit-driven capitalist system and the system's business and political leaders.
The bailouts came at the expense of working class and middle class taxpayers in order to save the 'free-market' capitalist system, which had utterly failed and ushered in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
In the face of Beck's 5 April call for government investigations into the activities of socialists - which is completely undemocratic - we in Socialist Alternative will not compromise our principles or conceal our socialist views.
We will continue to patiently explain the undeniable logic that public ownership of banks and corporations and a democratically planned, worker-controlled economy is the only solution to the economic crises which are unavoidable under capitalism.
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