Why we Should Pause Before Supporting the Likes of John Fetterman
The supposed progressive is as racist and reactionary as any Republican when it comes to international affairs
John Fetterman is running for U.S. Senate as a Democrat in Pennsylvania
Career politician John Fetterman of has been celebrated by progressives of a particular variety as “left-leaning” and therefore also a supposedly promising alternative to not just Republicans in his home of Pennsylvania but also to reactionary Democrats like Conor Lamb. On Tuesday Fetterman beat Lamb and a field of others to win the Pennsylvania Democratic Primary for the U.S. Senate.
Everywhere we look, Leftists are being told this is something to celebrate, that we should fold in passive hope to Fetterman’s latest personal career accomplishment. He wants to legalize weed!
Fetterman says unions are good! Fetterman says gay people are people, too!
John Fetterman is a strong supporter of apartheid!
Well, we don’t hear too much about that last one as Leftists being asked to give our money to and turn out to vote for the likes of Fetterman. If no one has told you, before, I’m sorry, and you’re welcome.
It’s true. Fetterman campaigned on a promise to “lean in to” supporting the repressive, colonial government of Israel. According to Amnesty International and Israel’s own largest human rights organization, Israel is an out and out racist apartheid state that subjugates its indigenous Palestinian population to the point of making them a veritable wholesale prison population.
In a policy stance indistinguishable from his main Senate primary opponent Conor Lamb, and indeed any Republican he could face in the upcoming general election, Fetterman has vowed to be a strong supporter of Israel’s apartheid government and to maintain what he callously calls our nation’s “special” relationship with Israel, which in actuality is our support of Israel’s state-sponsored terror against the Palestinian people.
I’m no purist but I hope that one day at least those who consider themselves progressives and Leftists can collectively decide that opposing racist apartheid states is an appropriate and easy line to hold. Alas, we’re far from that, now.
We’re told to celebrate Fetterman’s electoral victory because Conor Lamb is so bad. And, because Republicans are so bad.
No argument here against the latter two assertions. Still, the following is also unassailably true - The top two Dems who ran in the Pennsylvania U.S. Senate primary - Lamb and Fetterman - are so reactionary, so cruel, that they support the most brutal, racist apartheid state that exists in the world.
The winner of the primary, Fetterman, will now go on to face a Republican who agrees with him on international racism and apartheid. That Lamb and Republicans are bad does not mean that faux-Leftists like Fetterman are any better.
The most Euro-Centric and biggest American chauvinists will cry foul at the above. We must be practical! Just because Fetterman compromises on a single issue doesn’t mean he isn’t an improvement!
When the single issue is materially supporting the world’s most brutal, racist apartheid government, I maintain that the stance is indeed disqualifying. Also, even if Fetterman wants to give me a union job and a blunt, it is beyond evil for an American like this writer to still not interrogate for whom a politician like Fetterman might be an improvement for.
Fetterman will face either Mehmet Oz or Dave McCormick, both Republicans, in the general election. All three have virtually indistinguishable stances on Israeli apartheid, which is to say all three support it unconditionally.
John Fetterman in the U.S. Senate would not present an improvement for the two million Gazans who live in an open-air prison under Israeli occupation. John Fetterman in the U.S. Senate will not represent an improvement for the journalists Israeli military snipers assassinate, nor their funeral mourners whom Israeli police beat.
The electoral victories & personal career success of people like John Fetterman will mean nothing good to the most marginalized people in the world, because he ardently supports the US empire's most sprawling, genocidal components, just like Bernie Sanders before him.
Bernie Sanders’ warm and fuzzy takes on American college education funding and healthcare mean nothing to the 500,000 Iraqis he helped murder by supporting our illegal sanctions against the nations’ women and children. Sanders’ quirky democratic socialism has been of no help to the victims of the American empire’s illegal and murderous drone assassination program, which he supports.
Everyone has the right to support or get excited about anyone or anything they like. We all also have responsibility for the crimes done in our name, with our support - tacit or explicit - and with our tax money and campaign donations.
So, be excited about Bernie Sanders. Be excited for John Fetterman.
Give Fetterman your hard-earned cash, just do so with full understanding that he promises to take more of your money and give it to Israel to murder Palestinian children, increase their nuclear arsenal, and continue to menace the entire Middle-East.
You can be a progressive and/or Leftist, or you can support racist apartheid states. You cannot do both.
No amount of dental care or legalized cannabis or free college promised by people like Fetterman to Americans like me can absolve him or I for the American sin of supporting the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. I’m done distracting myself with social safety net baubles promised by supposedly progressive politicians only to Americans like me.
Either we as Leftists prioritize the liberation of the world’s most marginalized, most persecuted, most innocent people, or we do not. I’ve made my own decision, even though it took me far too long.
So, if your leftism includes voting for and/or giving money to career politicians who, like John Fetterman, support the most vile apartheid state in the world, you and I are not allies. I have a feeling Democrats and Republicans who all support apartheid will do just fine without my support, but I’m done doing what’s left of my soul the indignity of giving it to them.
I’ll take my loan forgiveness, and universal healthcare, and legalized weed when my Palestinian brothers and sisters are free.