Bernie Sanders speaks in Berlin
"It's OK to be Angry about Capitalism." ...The oligarchs "want it all."
US Sen. Bernie Sanders (Independent Democrat-Vermont) appeared in Berlin on Thursday, promoting the German publication of his 2023 book, “It’s OK to be Angry About Capitalism” (Penguin/Random House; Tropen).1 The conversation covered a range of issues, from global climate change and US news media to the violent occupation of the US Congress by Trump-supporting insurrectionists in January 2021.
Responding to questions by ZDF moderator Jana Pareigis, Sanders opened with a brief observation about the escalating Israeli-Hamas war. The October 7 Hamas attack, he said, had “set back any effort” for peace and justice in the region — especially for poverty-stricken women and children in Gaza. Noting the domestic movements for peace and justice by Israelis who had been staging pro-democracy protests for most of 2023, Sanders said the October Hamas attack quickly short-circuited such movements in favor of Israel’s pro-occupation militarists.
“So the extremists — people who believe in violence on both sides — benefit from this, while the peace process and the desire to improve life in Gaza suffers a major setback. It is a real tragedy.”
With the publication of his new book, Sanders has sharpened his familiar 2016 presidential campaign tirade against the billionaire-class as fettering the US labor force and even impoverishing the once-powerful American middle class. Further, Bernie openly indicts the globe-hopping “one percent” as a fixed carbon-burning oligarchy that is wrecking the planet. Beyond “destroying the planet Earth,” he said, “Musk and Bezos are taking rockets to Mars!”
“These guys really do want it all.”
“Do you know how often the issue — of how American system of health care differs from the European system — is discussed? Never….because of the power of the insurance companies and the drug companies. We have the highest rate of childhood poverty in America of almost any major country on earth…. Virtually. Not. Discussed….”
In both his book and his Berlin talk, Sanders holds US corporate media giants accountable for not adequately informing the American public. While only eight mega-media conglomerates — all “owned by billionaires” — control “about 90 percent of what Americans see, hear, and read,” he said, they increasingly lack the courage to grapple with serious historic changes and issues facing the United States.