Farewell, Genocide Joe

Editorial Board

Biden’s farewell address falsely depicts a mortal struggle between US imperialism and Chinese social imperialism while warning against the incoming Trump administration, all the while taking credit for things he didn’t accomplish and framing the fallen crumbs from inter-imperialist competition as great progress for the people.

US-Israel Genocide

Biden opened his speech by immediately taking credit for the ceasefire deal conquered by the Palestinian resistance, and here his lies and grandiosity immediately take shape. Not only was Biden not responsible for the ceasefire deal, but he actively sabotaged it. From the very beginning of the deal last May, the Biden administration repeated the blatant lie that Hamas was the barrier to the deal even though the resistance group accepted the terms from the start and Netanyahu repeatedly rejected them. Not only did the Biden administration use this as a cover to justify and continue the genocide in pursuit of the failed aim of defeating Hamas, but sadistically used the mirage of negotiation developments in the eight months since to keep protesters at bay and intensify the genocide. Weapons transfers continued unabated, including Biden’s authorization of an additional $8 billion in military supplies for Israel earlier this month.

The Palestinian resistance, led by Hamas, and their allied anti-imperialist forces in the region proved to Israel and the US that they could not be destroyed, demonstrating durable roots among the people who never stopped fighting back. This is the why there is a ceasefire, and this is why negotiations are taking place with Hamas.

The Lies and Half-Truths of Biden’s “Accomplishments”

Prominently, Biden continued to push the Democrats’ delusion regarding the economy—that the economic crisis has been overcome. Meanwhile, inflation has increased by 20% over the course of his presidency and he has left the country with an unemployment rate that has remained roughly at last year’s record, nearly 7 million workers on top of the over 4 million forced into part-time work and the millions more who have given up on finding employment altogether. Not only this, but the parasite lauds this wage slavery as “the dignity of work”—the dignity to work for whom? The billionaires he represents, who unfold the economic crisis on the backs of their workers through automation, layoffs, and work speed ups, through inflation that depresses their wages while stifling their strikes in collaboration with his administration.

The “achievements” of his administration he ticks off hardly even amount to breadcrumbs, the filthy byproducts of the imperialist pursuit of profits he presents to the working people. He hides the inter-imperialist contradiction with China over Taiwan and its semiconductors with the chauvinist rhetoric of “bringing those chip factories and those jobs back to America where they belong”—even then still a lie, as he pushed production to Mexico, where the superexploited labor is cheaper and the land freely given by the Mexican government subservient to US Imperialism.

He brags of “giving Medicare the power to negotiate lower prescription drug prices for millions of seniors” despite the US still having the highest healthcare and prescription medicine costs in the world. He claims “passing the most significant gun safety law in 30 years” despite a record number of mass shootings taking place under his presidency. His claim of “bringing violent crime to a 50-year low” also reflects an existing trend, with a decrease recorded under each administration compared to the one before, not something unique to his administration. His claims of protecting the environment are belied by the fact that the Biden administration increased the rate of oil and gas drilling permits on public lands at a monthly average higher than even the Trump administration despite promising to end the practice. This is on top of the fact that the US military is the world’s top polluter, releasing more emissions than 140 countries.

Here is the lie of liberalism and its sacred institutions—it’s “progress” for the people is nothing more than the framing of the natural progression of profit accumulation. During a feast a few crumbs will fall to the ground—don’t mistake this for progress! What Biden has “accomplished” is only the continuation of the same trends of his predecessors. Among the imperialist representatives, there is only slight variations in their methods to achieve the same thing—maximize the profits and dictatorship of the imperialist class.

Tantrums of a Sore Loser

Throughout his speech, Biden issues a series of warnings—for things he has already facilitated and taken advantage of. Trump has played the game better than him or his vice president, and so his farcical warnings can be understood as nothing more than empty proclamations attempting to curb the advantages of the rival mafia.

In a shoddy attempt at populism, Biden warns of “the dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultrawealthy people, and the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked. Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead” — this coming from a Democrat, which has increasingly become associated with degenerate extravagance. There is no mention of the failed run of his VP, who was the favored candidate of billionaires and set a record for the biggest fundraising quarter following her entry in the race, and whose candidacy was marked by millionaire celebrity appearances and billionaires bragging about how Trump wasn’t as rich as them. Biden’s warning against “dark money” is equally hypocritical given that the top “dark money” spender in the last election cycle was for Kamala Harris’s campaign.

He criticized “the concentration of power and wealth” despite corporate profits increasing by 36% under his term. In 2021, when taking office, the concentration of wealth among the top 0.1% richest sat at 13.2% of the total country’s wealth according to data from the Federal Reserve. This increased by 30% throughout Biden’s term, adding over $5 trillion. This includes the very tech billionaires Biden derides as part of the “tech-industrial complex”, such as the world’s richest man Elon Musk, who has seen his net worth increase by nearly 70% in the last few months of Biden’s presidency.

He repeatedly calls on billionaires to “pay their fair share”. But what is the fair share of a parasitical class that lives off the work of others? He wants the billionaires to invest more in soft counterinsurgency, to make the lives of workers and the poor bearable enough so that they won’t rebel —an unachievable dream, an outgrowth of his class collaborationist delusions.

Biden’s warnings are based in a typical liberal paternalism. According to him, the danger of wealth concentration is that “people don’t feel like they have a fair shot.” Just as the Democrats insist on the health of the economy in the face of workers crushed by inflation, Biden’s concern is simply that workers will become disillusioned because they don’t recognize how good they really have it. Or, in the case of his warnings regarding the “tech-industrial complex”, that people will fall for the lies of his political rivals rather than those of the Democrats.

So what is Biden’s concern? As mentioned in a previous editorial, Trump and his billionaire cabinet will fill their role “in the most obnoxious manner” – in other words, the process of reactionization continues faster under the Trump administration and the lies are bolder, threatening to unveil the charade of class collaboration for the class reality of bourgeois dictatorship.

Photo: Retrieved from Anadolu Agency.

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