2335 - AFL-CIO’s Cold War Complicity; Lebanon Under Attack w/ Jeff Schuhrke, Séamus Malekafzali

The Majority Report with Sam Seder

It's an EmMajority Report Thursday! Emma speaks with Jeff Schuhrke, assistant professor in labor studies at SUNY Empire State University, to discuss his recent book Blue-Collar Empire: The Untold Story of US Labor's Global Anticommunist Crusade. Then, she speaks with Seamus Malekafzali, freelance writer and journalist, proprietor of the Seamus Malekafzali newsletter on SubStack, to discuss the recent Israeli offensive into Lebanon. First, Emma runs through updates on the indictment of Eric Adams, Netanyahu’s visit to the UN, Israel’s devastating offensives in Lebanon and Gaza, election spending, the GOP’s anti-Haitian attacks, US-Israel aid, Harris’ cozying up to crypto, Lina Khan vs. AI, Mark Robinson, and Hurricane Helene, before parsing a little deeper through the beautifully idiotic actions outlined in the fed’s Adams indictment. Professor Jeff Schuhrke then joins, diving right into the history of the AFL-CIO’s internal cold war and the havoc it wreaked on the institution’s organizing capacities, stepping back to outline the start difference in organizing of the then-separate AFL and CIO during the union boom at the peak of the Great Depression in the 1930s, with the Congress of Industrial Organizations taking on a grassroots approach, organizing across the spectrum of the working class to improve class consciousness, including among the growing communist factions in the US, and thus rapidly and drastically expanding their base, unionizing massive corporations, and establishing many openly-communist-led unions, all nationwide, a strategy directly contrasted by the American Federation of Labor’s establishment and anti-communist tact of this era. Moving into the 1940s, Professor Schuhrke explores how the post-war period, between the overwhelming backlash to a wave of strikes in 1945, the growth of an anti-communist government-backed military industry, and the onset of the McCarthyist Red Scare, saw a complete inversion of the growing labor power of the last decade, with full-scale communist purges and the GOP’s takeover of Congress crippling both the numbers and the rights that had so bolstered labor, resulting in a decimated CIO limping to join the AFL in 1955. From here, Jeff walks Emma through the rapid expansion of the AFL-CIO’s anti-communist aims, as funding poured in from the State Department to sponsor an international effort by the labor federation fundamentally conflating anti-communist fear-mongering with labor organizing, be it through worker training or illegal, mafia-backed intimidation practices, putting any attempt to unify the working class to the side as labor took a back seat to US empire, with union rates reflecting exactly that. They wrap up the interview by tackling what we can learn from this period of corruption and degradation as the US finds itself amid a labor renaissance. Séamus Malekafzali then walks Emma through the past few weeks of Israel’s terror campaign on Lebanon, first tackling the brief retaliatory attacks from Hezbollah in late August following Israel’s assassination of commander Fuad Shukr that preceded Israel’s escalation, before diving deep into the material impact of this offensive, between the wide-scale terrorism of Israel’s rigged pagers and communications devices, to their following record-setting bombardments in South Lebanon. After stepping back to explore how Israel’s offensives in Lebanon and against Hezbollah have been central to the IDF developing their tactics of collective punishment, Séamus wraps up with how these tactics have devastated South Lebanon over the last week, pushed the population into a complete crisis, and what it means for the future of the Lebanese people and Zionist expansion.

And in the Fun Half: Emma is joined by Brandon Sutton and Matt Binder as they unpack the absurd controversy developing around Chappelle Roan’s statement critiquing the Democratic Party (while still saying she’ll vote Harris), and the predictably disgusting (and unsuccessful) backlash to Bisan Owda’s Emmy nomination. Mike in Denver has some questions about Colorado’s ranked-choice referendum, Sophie from Vienna discusses organizing the Palestine Congress, Vienna, and the MR Crew tackles Clay Higgins’ decision to join in on the rest of the GOP’s anti-Haitian bigotry, plus, your calls and IMs!

Check out Jeff's book here: https://www.versobooks.com/products/2979-blue-collar-empire

Follow Seamus on Twitter here: https://x.com/Seamus_Malek

Check out Seamus' newsletter on SubStack here: https://www.seamus-malekafzali.com/

Find out more about the Palestine Congress in Vienna here: https://palaestinakongress.at/en

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