The support by Bernie Sanders for the prosecution of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, which he voiced during Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential debate, is a damning exposure of the pro-imperialist politics of this self-described “socialist” politician.

Sanders attempted to distinguish himself from his fellow candidates only by calling for a “lenient” sentence for Snowden. “He did break the law, and I think there should be a penalty to that,” Sanders declared. “But I think what he did in educating us should be taken into consideration.”

In fact, the Vermont senator’s arguments were essentially similar to those of the other four candidates on the Las Vegas stage, all of whom sought, in one way or another, to distance themselves from the widely hated NSA programs while at the same time reaffirming their support for the military-intelligence apparatus.

Sanders’ call for leniency in the case of Snowden rings false, since once in the clutches of the American criminal “justice” system, he would face the full vengeance of the state machine. And there are clear warnings. Chelsea Manning was tortured while in military custody, and is currently serving over three decades of jail time for leaking diplomatic documents to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. The editor of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has been forced to seek asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London in order to avoid being extradited to the United States on espionage charges.

In the case of Snowden, given calls for his murder by officials within the state apparatus, there is no guarantee that once in custody he would even live to see a courtroom.

The argument that Snowden’s courageous stand is a crime deserving of punishment reveals far more about Sanders than his rhetorical denunciations of government spying. While calling for a lesser sentence for Snowden’s “crimes,” he has not called for the arrest and prosecution of the government officials responsible for actual crimes against the people of the United States and the world, through the dragnet surveillance program. These include above all Obama himself, whom Sanders is seeking to succeed as president. Nor did he offer any criticism on this score Tuesday of Hillary Clinton, who as Obama’s secretary of state for four years was directly involved in these and countless other crimes.

Sanders, like the entire political establishment, views the precedent set by Snowden, as well as the outpouring of mass support for him among the population, as extremely dangerous. This support reveals the depth of popular hostility to the Pentagon, CIA and NSA after a generation of unending war and repression. Such fears have only been further fueled by the revelations that have followed Snowden, including a large-scale leak this week of documents related to Obama’s drone war program.

At a Vermont town hall meeting in February 2014, Sanders said, “Look, you don’t want to have a situation where everybody who works for the government suddenly wakes up and says, ‘you know, I think I’ve gotta reveal this information despite any oath or agreement that I made.’ You’re gonna have chaos.” He continued, “He broke the law. I think that clearly…there should be an effort to enter into a plea agreement.”

Conscious of the danger presented by these social tensions to the American political establishment, expressed in near-record-low voter turnout and a deep disaffection with the entire political establishment, Sanders has intervened in the 2016 elections to corral the leftward shift in mass sentiments back into the safe channels of the Democratic Party. His oft-repeated call for a “political revolution,” although it is obviously directed to workers and youth looking for an alternative to the corporate-controlled political system, has been defined down by Sanders to a call for improved voter turnout in order to elect more Democrats to public office.

Nevertheless, he is appealing to broad layers of the population, particularly the youth, who consider Snowden to be a hero. This is what accounts for his more ambivalent rhetoric on government spying, calling for various “reforms” while making a less strident denunciation of Snowden than his fellow candidates.

In reality however, Sanders completely supports American imperialism’s twin policies of war abroad and repression at home. Indeed, on NBC’s “Meet the Press” last Sunday, Sanders issued bellicose threats against Russia, called for a major escalation of the war in Syria using Saudi ground troops (a stance he reiterated at Tuesday’s debate), and declared his support for the drone warfare of the Obama administration. When asked whether “counterterrorism” under a Sanders presidency would include “drone strikes and special forces,” Sanders replied, “Well, all of that and more.”

Much of Sanders’ appeal derives from his longstanding claim to be a “socialist.” But his support for the prosecution of Snowden, which ultimately reflects his support for American imperialism, is incompatible with the basic principles of socialism. For well over a century, genuine socialists have fought to develop an opposition to imperialism within the working class internationally, counseling workers that the “main enemy is at home.”

Socialists have sought to base this opposition on the scientific understanding that imperialist war abroad is inextricably bound up with the bourgeoisie’s class war at home, and that imperialism, as Lenin said, was reaction “all down the line.” Thus, the erection of the scaffolding of a police state in the United States, exposed most graphically by the courageous revelations made by Edward Snowden, is the necessary consequence of the drive by American capitalism for world domination.

It is impossible to oppose inequality within the United States, as Sanders claims to do, while supporting American aggression abroad. Indeed, it is highly significant in this regard that under the banner of the “War on Terror” the ruling elite have erected a surveillance infrastructure directed in the first instance against the American population.

Workers should take Sanders’ call for the prosecution of Edward Snowden as a warning. Sanders is opposed not only to the right of workers to know about the crimes committed by “their” government. Above all, he is determined to prevent a political break by the working class with the two-party system.

By Tom Hall for wsws.org

Some left-wingers sometimes mock some right-wingers for likening every government program to socialism.

Not Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the leading Democratic presidential candidate not named Clinton. He embraces the idea that socialism is just a word for government, which is just a word for the things we do together.

It’s the strategy he plans on using to sell his vague idea of “democratic socialism” to American voters. Up to now, Sanders’ explanations have largely involved pointing to Scandinavian countries like Sweden and Denmark, which are far more socialist in the minds of American left-wingers than they are in the real world.

But as Sanders comes tantalizingly close to being within the margin of error of Hillary Clinton in the polls, he’s decided he needs to push democratic socialism like he means it. Sanders’ plan is to explain that socialism consists of things like public libraries, fire departments, and police departments.

The New York Times reports:

“When you go to your public library, when you call your Fire Department or the Police Department, what do you think you’re calling?” Mr. Sanders said. “These are socialist institutions.”

While Mr. Sanders may have a point, he drew some blank stares from liberals in the audience who are probably used to hearing the police described with other terms. He didn’t dwell on the point, veering back to his concern about social safety nets.

Instead of wallowing in their own ignorance, liberals should face the fact that police departments are, if not exactly socialist institutions, certainly institutions that, in a democratic society like America’s, are more or less representations and embodiments of the popular will. The implications of that are not just theoretical. Cops engage in police brutality in large part because “we” want them to. The cops who killed Eric Garner, for example, did so because they were ordered by their superiors to crack down on loose cigarette sellers, who threaten not corporate profits (a loose cigarette has already been purchased, at some point, from the tobacco company) but government revenue (a loose cigarette evades local taxation). Those superiors, in turn, ordered cops to crack down on loose cigarette sellers because that’s what New York’s democratic government wanted.

After Garner was killed and several other local incidents of non-fatal police brutality over petty law enforcement issues got a lot of press, Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) insisted he would continue to order police to vigorously enforce such laws. “A violation of the law is a violation of the law,” the mayor said, illustrating why law enforcement, when met with resistance, can become deadly.

Bill Bratton, the police commissioner, made the same point Sanders did, that his liberal supporters are so uncomfortable with, that the police are a democratic institution. “It’s important that when an officer does approach you to correct your behavior, that you respect them,” said Bratton. “That’s what democracy is all about.”

It is. And while it may be fashionable today to blame the policies that lead to excessive police brutality on things like white supremacy, it would be far more productive, and lead to real harm reduction, to engage police brutality as a true expression of democracy, and to correct our expectations of government.

Sanders’ tactic, however, shouldn’t be surprising. He learned to be an ally of cops, to treat them as part of the “labor” class not, say, an apparatus of the ruling class, decades ago. When Sanders is asked about criminal justice and moves to economic issues, it’s not just that he’s a one-note pony but that he understands the importance of police unions in creating “good jobs,” even if they come at the expense of systematically trampling on the rights of Americans, with a particular focus on the poor and marginalized.

By Ed Krayewski for Reason.com

In a campaign appearance ahead of next week’s Democratic presidential debate, Sanders cited two shootings Friday at universities in Arizona and Texas as well as last week’s slayings at an Oregon community college.

“Instead of people yelling at each other, we have got to come together on commonsense approaches which, in fact, the vast majority of the American people support,” said Sanders, who represents a rural state with few gun laws. He added that there is “widespread support to ban semiautomatic assault weapons, guns which have no other purpose but to kill people.”

Sanders supported such a ban along with universal background checks — another measure he called for on Saturday — in 2013, after the massacre at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School. But the self-described socialist has also voted to allow guns in national parks, to shield firearms manufacturers from liability for shootings and against a five-day waiting period for gun purchases. Many expect him to come under criticism for his record at the first debate on Tuesday.

The comments were similar to ones Sanders made in Tucson on Friday. Otherwise, he focused Saturday on familiar themes, decrying income inequality and the political clout of corporations and the wealthy.

By Dave Urbanski from The Blaze