The popular movement against Trump vs. the corporate media’s anti-Russia witch-hunt
Andre Damon, wsws.org
[dropcap]O[/dropcap]ne day after Donald Trump’s extraordinary news conference, the battle within the American state only grew more intense. The conflict pits the ultra-right president of the United States against powerful sections of the military-intelligence apparatus, with the corporate media, the Democratic Party and a section of the Republicans serving as mouthpieces of the CIA.
Dateline: 18 February 2017 The disgraceful traitor and political prostitute Boris Yeltsin. A favorite of the US oligarchy, of course.
Putin is the product of the restoration of capitalism in Russia—enthusiastically supported by the Times and the American ruling class—which has had disastrous consequences for the Russian working class. In 1993, the Times could barely conceal its enthusiasm for Boris Yeltsin’s bombing of the Russian parliament building, at the cost of up to 2,000 lives. No democratic qualms then, since Yeltsin was deemed the best vehicle for implementing “shock therapy” to dismantle nationalized industry and destroy the social welfare network.
None of this history is of any significance to Paul “McCarthy” Krugman. He reveals the pro-war sentiment animating his criticisms of Trump when he writes, “[N]othing [Trump] has done since the inauguration allays fears that he is in effect a Putin puppet. How can a leader under such a cloud send American soldiers to die?”
In the coverage by the Times and other news outlet, there is not the slightest hint that the declarations of anonymous intelligence agents should be treated with any degree of skepticism. It is as though the CIA’s lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (which the Times helped promote) had never happened.
Krugman exemplifies the intellectual, political and moral corruption of what passes for the left-liberal intelligentsia. The privileged social strata for which Krugman speaks have seen their income steadily rise with the stock market, while the incomes of workers have collapsed. They have become open defenders of imperialism, the capitalist state and the CIA. The entirety of the official “left,” from Michael Moore, who called Trump a “Russian traitor,” to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who issued their own anti-Putin statements, has signed on to the anti-Russian campaign.
There is an unbridgeable gulf between the opposition to Trump’s reactionary, anti-democratic policies among masses of workers and youth, and the right-wing, pro-war agenda of the intelligence agencies and their representatives in the Democratic Party and the media.
The establishment critics of Trump are doing everything they can to infect public consciousness with the virus of militarism and hijack a popular movement for reactionary ends. It is necessary to warn strongly against any accommodation to their filthy campaign.
The pressing task in the struggle against the Trump administration is a clean and unequivocal break with the Democratic Party. This struggle must be based in the working class, rallying behind it all the genuinely progressive elements of society on the basis of a socialist political program and intractable opposition to US imperialism.
Andre Damon
