Covington City Government: Genocide Apologists
Former Commissioner Steve Frank and Mayor Joseph Meyer
The extreme racist dehumanization of Palestinians in Israeli society has reached a fever-pitch. In Israel, politicians and pundits in The Times of Israel and the Jerusalem Post openly call for the genocide of Palestinians, and right-wing Israelis are adopting neo-Nazi insignia. Even here in our own backyard, so well-documented by Mohammad Ahmad of Covington for Ceasefire, Zionists like Former Covington Commissioner Steve Frank publicly support the genocide of Palestinians and share drinks with Covington Democrat Mayor Joseph Meyer, who is the same age as the Israeli state. It is not only unsurprising, but expected, that fascists are closely entwined with politicians that are in place to keep us placated. Meyer himself has fanned the flames of Zionist lies—such as Hamas beheading children—yet we see explicit evidence as of late May 2024 of Palestinian babies beheaded by the IOF during their invasion of Rafah and no outrage from Meyer to show for it.
With the support of Covington's capitalist class, Meyer attempted to pass an ordinance restricting public comment procedures due to his own discomfort at being confronted over his cowardice in failing to pass a ceasefire resolution or denounce the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians. While he originally wanted to ban public comment entirely—which is despotic enough—he settled on restricting public comment to only one speaker per topic. This autocratic McCarthyite measure shows that bourgeois politicians will always see their constituents and the working class as their enemy. The oligarchs on the dais have political and material interests that align with the rich and owning class, as was demonstrated when Cincinnati City Council admitted they spoke with members of Cincinnati’s “corporate community” regarding their own ceasefire resolution rather than with the working masses.
Meyer, in a recording of a conversation with Ahmad, said, “If Hamas had not invaded Israel and killed all those people, Israel would not have been bombing Gaza.” This is a historically illiterate claptrap. In removing all historical context surrounding the violent Israeli occupation of Palestine and the resistance born out of it, Meyer arrives at full-on genocide denial. This is either deliberate or Meyer truly has no idea what he’s talking about. If the case be the latter, maybe he should do a bare minimum level of investigation before spewing ahistorical nonsense. We suggest that he pick up a book. At the very least, he could type “Nakba” into the Google search bar. Meyer also cited a Newsweek article entitled “I Saw the Children Hamas Beheaded With My Own Eyes. Shame on Queen Rania,” the claims of which have since been debunked.
During the same conversation, Meyer told Ahmad, “I could have been silent and let you keep coming [to Covington City Council meetings] ... You get frustrated because nobody’s saying anything or doing anything, so it was out of respect and a sense of fairness [our italics] [that we said anything at all in response to you] because we have listened. We are not oblivious. These are competing interests, and these other situations impact our ability to do what you want at this particular time.” Again, this exchange shows Meyer’s cynicism. Either Meyer is concealing that he does not care enough about Palestinians being genocided to oppose it or he is unable to because of the corporate interests he serves. In either case, Meyer, like all bourgeois politicians, can not serve or represent the people, so why should we expect him to do either?
The problem with reformist demands and appeals to our local council members for purely symbolic resolutions is not the demands themselves, but the ideological predisposition to see the realization of such demands as proof of the democratic character of the bourgeois state. As with the commodity form, the problem is not the commodity itself, but its mystified social being as a commodity. The same holds with liberal democracy. Those who serve the interests of the state will never allow their concessions to be anything more than stratagems to maintain their own power. They propose compromises to render democracy toothless, not to strengthen it. The real lesson of any partial win is that only the people, through struggle, can change the world. The bourgeois state is an exploitative hindrance, not a vehicle for our liberation.
In fact, the bourgeois state stands directly in our way, as evidenced by Meyer and Covington City Council restricting participation in public comment at Covington City Council meetings. Meyer, in a video walking out of a City Council meeting immediately after restricting public comment, said directly to Ahmad, “Mohammad, you're just an ineffective advocate.” One would think, if Ahmad were truly ineffective, Meyer wouldn’t have to resort to blatant suppression of him and his Comrades. Whatever his reasoning, he can’t effectively argue that he’s done this to quell divisive hate speech while at the same time associating with the likes of former Covington city commissioner and open racist, Steve Frank.
Frank, a close buddy of Meyer, is shown in an instagram video recorded earlier this year explicitly supporting the genocide of Palestinians. Ahmad confronted him at a bar in Covington and asked what he thinks about the genocide taking place in Gaza. Frank responded, “Um, I approve of it!” Note the pause to consider his answer before delivering it. Ahmad, shocked, asked, “You approve of genocide?” Frank doubled down with “I approve of what Israel’s doing.” He approves the slaughter of Palestinian civilians but stops short of labeling it a genocide. He can call it a genocide or not. It makes no difference. A shit by any other name smells just as foul. One can only imagine the stench in-between Steve Frank’s ears.
For further evidence that Frank is a genocidal freak and proponent of Palestinian erasure, we now turn to some choice highlights of screenshots from a deleted Facebook post he made in late February of this year:
“The Jews want peace. The Arabs who call themselves Palestinians do not. They never have. They never will.
Anyone who thinks that offering the Palestinians a state will solve anything is a fool. Period. Full stop.
It's time the world learned Arabic. The Palestinians want dead Jews. They say it, they vote for it, they act towards it, and then they live stream it. And yes I said Palestinian, not Hamas.
The Palestinian people exist from day one for the sole purpose of destroying Israel. It’s their entire identity.”
Need we say more?
Meyer and his friends are colonialist talking heads. Meyer has shown repeatedly that he is nothing more than a weapon wielded by Covington’s business class to silence opposition and to make exploitation and corruption palatable.
"We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror. But the royal terrorists, the terrorists by the grace of God and the law, are in practice brutal, disdainful, and mean, in theory cowardly, secretive, and deceitful, and in both respects disreputable."
-Karl Marx, "Suppression of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung," May 1849