Revolution Is Racist. Populism Is Sexist. Economic Justice Is Homophobic.
HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.
Hague fugitive George W Bush was trending yesterday after drawing accolades from amnesiac liberals everywhere for a speech he gave condemning Trumpism and Russia. The DNC has just held a surprise purge of progressives from its ranks, replacing them with reliably corrupt establishment stalwarts like Donna Brazile. Bernie Sanders has bowed out of his scheduled Women’s Conference speech following outraged cries of sexism from fake feminists and demands that he be replaced with a drone-bombing, Wall Street-coddling female politician like Hillary Clinton.
Get used to this. This is the new normal.
George W. Bush just used the words "white supremacy" in calling out the racism of Trump in a nationally-televised speech. Wow.
Two years ago journalist Max Blumenthal predicted that “Trump’s true role is expanding political space on the far-right, making the militarists and racists who roundly condemn him seem moderate,” and we see today that this is exactly how he’s being used. After their failed attempt to use Trump’s far-right following to make his fanatically neoconservative opponent look electable in 2016, they simply shifted to using the exact same tactic for 2020. This is less about getting a more presentable face in the White House than it is about herding rank-and-file Americans into supporting the neoliberal neoconservative power structure represented by what is hilariously known as America’s political “center”.
The amount of success they’ve been having in paralyzing the left with this tactic means that you will only see more of this going forward. Big scary boogiemen like Trump will be used to frighten mainstream America into the arms of the “centrists”, who will magnanimously offer protection from racism, sexism, and an assortment of bigoted-phobias in exchange for allegiance to the US war machine and rapacious plutocratic exploitation. Anyone who refuses to play along with this manipulation will be accused of bigotry and privilege in various ways.
This will happen. It won’t be blatant, it won’t be sudden, and it won’t happen in any uniform way, but it will happen. In various ways, everyone to the left of John McCain will be guilted, manipulated and bullied into supporting the warmongering, CIA-loving, corporate crony McCarthyist establishment faction of the Democratic party.
And, unless something huge changes very soon in the way people look at these things, enough of them will buy it. Even many well-meaning individuals on the far left who are aware they’re being manipulated will get snagged on some aspect of the relentless deluge of propaganda eventually; if they’re not sucked into supporting the machine they’ll be rendered impotent by sectarian infighting against fellow lefties who react differently to the manipulations.
George W. Bush: "The Russian government has made a project of turning Americans against each other." pic.twitter.com/VvFtzKdXzA
George W. Bush is a good guy. Russia hacked the election. Seth Rich = botched robbery. Obama = Nobel Peace Prize. Bernie Sanders was never cheated. Racism started under Trump. Libya is a great place to live after Obama. Comey never lied to Congress. Hillary's server = convenient
Those of us on the political left are going to have to find a way to deal with the fact that opposing the establishment machine will inevitably result in withering accusations of a litany of -isms and -phobias because of these manipulations, and we’re going to have to figure out how to do that without alienating the disadvantaged groups who are hurt by the status quo worse than anyone else.
But that won’t be enough. It’s all well and good to talk about “rejecting identity politics”, but if all we do is reject the worldview that has made accusations of privilege and bigotry such effective tools of establishment manipulation, they’ll just figure out how to manipulate whatever worldview we replace that one with. Identity politics is indeed a great way to cajole a large percentage of the population into supporting agendas that the ruling elites care about (economic injustice, war, surveillance, media propaganda, etc.) in exchange for agendas that the ruling elites don’t care about (pro-choice, anti-racism, marriage equality, etc.), but ultimately it’s just one of many possible collars that the propagandists can attach leashes to.
[dropcap]A[/dropcap]s we’ve discussed previously, propaganda as we understand it today has been a developing science for about a hundred years. Think about how much innovation has happened in other fields over the last century, and you get a feel for how much these powerful manipulators have developed their craft during that time. That’s how advanced the establishment propagandists are. That’s how much of a head start they have as we begin to figure this thing out.
For this reason, it’s not enough for us to change what we think; we’re going to have to change how we think as well. As long as we can be manipulated, they will find ways of manipulating us. If we’re ever to beat the people who wield the immense power of the establishment propaganda machine, we will have to find some way to become more difficult to manipulate.
I am speaking about a total transformation in humanity’s relationship with thought. I know that sounds like a far-fetched and idealistic suggestion, but I just don’t think we’ll be able to survive as a species if it doesn’t happen. The best case scenario if this doesn’t happen is an Orwellian future dominated by the elites who control AI technology which will make the current propaganda machine look like child’s play, and the worst case scenario is extinction via nuclear holocaust or climate chaos. All of these things are pressing concerns right now, and we’ll probably have our answer as to what our fate will be within a generation or two. We are at evolve-or-die time.
If we’re to evolve, this will necessarily entail an overall shift in our species’ relationship with thought and belief. Propaganda works by constructing a pro-establishment narrative that the human mind can be duped into imbuing with the power of belief via sympathy and frequent authoritative repetition. If we’re to evolve to a point where propaganda no longer works on us, we’ll have to transcend this insidious mental habit of believing thoughts instead of using them as tools for our benefit.
If we can use our ingenuity as a species and our unprecedented ability to network and share information to find some way to make this shift happen, we will become very difficult to manipulate, and therefore impossible to effectively propagandize, and therefore impossible to manipulate into supporting the rule of oligarchic tyrants. This would usher in a new era where a true collaborative anarchy (a word which literally means nothing other than “without rulers”) would become possible for us. An era where political ideologies become meaningless, since we’d be naturally inclined to collaborate toward everyone’s benefit.
This would be possible because the aforementioned mental habit of imbuing thoughts with belief is the same tendency which makes it impossible for humans to be content with enough. When we’re lugging around a ton of believed thoughts about “me” and “mine” and “others” and “world”, believed thoughts which revolve around an ego who needs to be protected and secured against a hostile world, there’s an insatiable sense of lack, and an interminable fear of losing safety and security. These egoic mental habits are what lead people to fight, to be greedy, to be manipulated into supporting war and injustice because those people over there are trying to harm you or take what’s yours.
Believed mental narrative is the primary obstacle to overthrowing the unelected power establishment which has loosely centralized itself in the United States. It’s also the primary obstacle to happiness and contentment.
Everyone has had a glimpse of this possibility in themselves, however faint. Maybe in the wake of some deep personal trauma, maybe in the space between sleeping and waking, maybe that one time you tried psilocybin mushrooms in the eighties, maybe in a moment of deep contemplation, maybe when you got really “in the zone” during sports or art, or maybe in some spontaneous moment of stillness that took you by surprise. Everyone’s seen a glimmer of this possibility at some point, but they usually get lost in the ruckus of life or dismiss it as some insignificant anomaly and forget about it. That’s what’s real, though. That’s what’s true. That’s the part of you that can lead us home.
After watching the repeating patterns of human behavior and the trajectory that those patterns have got us on, I cannot imagine our species having a worthwhile future on this planet unless this shift takes place on a global scale fairly soon. I don’t know how it can happen. I do know that seven and a half billion human brains increasingly interconnected by the internet has never, ever happened before. Anything is possible. We can wake up together.
Just putting this idea out there for Team Human. I love every last one of you.
Hey you, thanks for reading! My work is entirely reader-funded so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following me on Twitter, and maybe throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal.
About the Author
Caitlin Johnstone is a brave journalist, political junkie, relentless feminist, champion of the 99 percent. And a powerful counter-propaganda tactician.
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—”If we’re to evolve, this will necessarily entail an overall shift in our species’ relationship with thought and belief. Propaganda works by constructing a pro-establishment narrative that the human mind can be duped into imbuing with the power of belief via sympathy and frequent authoritative repetition.”
Parting shot—a word from the editors The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found
In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.—Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report
Twelve Thoughts On Feminism And Its Place In Today’s Political Environment
HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.
don’t write about feminism much. There’s too much vitriol and too little curiosity from those who vehemently oppose it; you wind up preaching to the choir of those who have explored these issues while staving off the frenzied mommy issues of those who have not. I vowed a long while back not to waste my energy trying to justify my ideas about the plight of women to men who are only interested in shutting those ideas down, but this is actually something I think about quite a bit and I’ve got a few things I’d like to say to anyone who’s sincerely interested.
Here are twelve thoughts on feminism and where it plugs in to the political dynamics of our time. Some men will find some aspects of it abrasive and egoically confrontational. Those men will find a way to live with that.
In my last article I wrote about how the very legitimate and necessary protests of NFL players against police brutality and institutional racism have been hijacked by the Democratic party and turned into an establishment wedge issue. In the exact same way, the very legitimate and necessary agendas promulgated by generations of feminist thought have been hijacked and turned into establishment wedge issues by this same party. Just as with the grievances voiced by black rights activists, the fact that a political party has attempted to twist feminism into a corporate tool of the oligarchy in no way invalidates the movement itself.
Underneath all the establishment wedge politics and corporate manipulations there is an authentic feminism, which just might save the world. The way for women to get in touch with it is not to listen to the Clinton feminists, but to listen to your own body and reflect deeply on your actual experience of rape, abuse, harassment, commodification, coercion, condescension and subjugation in a society that was forged in the fires of misogyny. The way for a man to get in touch with it is to listen deeply and sincerely to a woman’s reflections on these experiences.
By “forged in the fires of misogyny” I mean that human civilization was formed without much input from women, and developed during a time when women were essentially all slaves. After the invention of agriculture and the institution of marriage, women all over the world became property, bought, sold and owned like cattle, whose job was to be a receptacle for their husbands’ reproductive fluids whether they liked it or not and to toil in the house raising children without pay. During this time men invented religion, money, economics, war, government, hierarchy, class, culture, rules, laws and traditions, and women had no influence over any of it.
The last few generations have seen women birthed into a society that feminine sensibilities had very little hand in constructing, and told that this is what equality looks like. Welcome to equality, women; the bank’s over there, your jobs are over there, the Church of the Patriarchal God is around the corner, and FYI we still expect you to bear and raise children. Good luck.
Money is the engine room of the patriarchy. Money was invented by men and its innate intelligence only recognizes men’s value, and when you create a system where money equals power then the alpha man and his ideas are always going to be the ones to rise to the top. Money can’t see the very obvious value and hard work in bearing and raising children, and caring for the disabled, vulnerable, and elderly family members, for example. The only way we’ve been able to get money to support these things is through socialism. Socialism is a way of forcing money to value women’s work.
We’re blind to the value in disappearing problems and making harmony which is primarily the female function. The masculine solves problems through doing, whereas the feminine solves problems by un-doing. So much of every woman’s work is invisible, and I’m not just talking about our domestic and maternal work. We create social cohesion through our networks, knit families together through celebrations, lessen the need for new things by distributing goods, and do an awful lot of unpaid counselling work which leads to less stress, healthier people and therefore lessens the load on the medical system.
But money doesn’t know how to reward making problems go away. Money only knows how to create more demand, so when you point the “intelligence” of money at a problem like health, you just create more demand, which means creating more illness. Money fails as an arbiter of value. If you let money run things, you are relying on individual men to be good enough to see the value of looking after their women so that they may be free to use their skills to better everyone’s life.
Essentially, libertarians want a benevolent patriarchy. They want the intelligence of money to take care of everything, and where it fails to recognize value in the many unpaid areas of essential female work such as child-bearing and rearing, the patriarchy will take care of it through volunteerism. In short, for libertarianism to work, we have to have a lot of really good men willing to support women’s work out of the kindness of their hearts.
This is is why I love libertarian men. They must be such good people for that to work in their brain. They must be projecting their goodness so hard on their fellow men for them to think “Well, I’ll just look after the children I have and the mother/s that bore them regardless of whether we’re in a relationship or not, and I’ll donate to charity for the rest, and everyone else will do the same.” That’s really sweet. The stats do not back you up though, buddy. Only 31 percent of single moms report receiving any kind of child support payments, which is why 77 percent of young children in single-mom families are poor or low income. If the world was full of guys like you, then sure, no worries… but it’s not.
And also — can we really claim equality and freedom for women when we are inherently relying on the benevolence of men to see and reward our value? Ideally, a free and equal woman would be valued and supported regardless of whether men liked her enough to give her money or not.
For these reasons, the only truly pro-woman political movements are those that move to the left. Clintonist feminism is designed to keep that from happening at all cost, and to instead steer women into the safe ideological container of the neoliberal neoconservative one-party system of establishment politics. The voice of the feminine is ideologically leftist — not the left of the patriarchy-controlled Democratic party, nor the left of the male-dominated Marxist power grabs we’ve seen throughout history, but a compassionate system wherein everyone gets what they need. When unmolested by patriarchal influences, this is where woke women will inevitably lead politics.
In addition to learning how to embody an authentic feminism by eschewing establishment indoctrination and sincerely grappling with our own lived experiences as women, another way to help bring our healing influence into the world is for women to begin collaborating in large groups together in private. When agriculture was invented and the ownership of separate plots of land became possible, men began taking wives, separating us into isolated family units policed by the bigger, stronger males, with far less interaction with the women in our communities and crippling our ability to collaborate together. With rising internet access we now have an unprecedented ability to reclaim that collaborative spirit.
I say in all sincerity that one of the most seditious and effective ways that we can fight the insanity of our times is to start secret women-only Facebook groups together to talk about women’s issues. Just start one with your trusted female friends and set it to secret; you’ll be very glad you did. There’s a very different dynamic that takes over when a large group of women know they’re not being observed by men folk, and a new-yet-strangely-familiar sort of collaborative chemistry begins taking over. The collective wisdom that comes from such collaborations will gradually change the way you operate — your relationships, the way you think about yourself and your body, and the way you move in the world. I can say with absolute certainty that I’d never have been able to do this job without the influence of such groups, for example.
There is nothing more dangerous to the status quo than a woman who has stopped apologizing. A woman who is acutely aware of all the various ways that she has been manipulated throughout her life, who realizes that there is nothing to be gained by compartmentalizing away her grievances any longer, who is absolutely finished with all the bullshit and who is ready to begin roaring unapologetically at a society that is inseparable from the misogyny it was formed in, will terrify people. And rightly so. Her voice will cause the death of the familiar. The death of the known. Her voice will bring our species toward something wildly unprecedented. It will bring us into health.
If men want to help us out with this, the best thing they can do is get curious and listen. Talk to a woman who’s been chewing on this stuff and get curious about her perspective; eventually your openness will build a trust between the two of you, and she will tell you things about gender and society you may never have realized before. Just give us your sincere curiosity about our experience and you’ll be giving us more than we’ve ever received throughout the entirety of recorded history.
Our species’ male-dominated way of operating clearly does not work, and you can’t say we haven’t given it a red hot go. The patriarchy has been ruling since the beginning of agriculture, the results are in, and guys? You get a D-minus. We are barely scraping by. Looking to the past we see violence, destruction, exploitation and degradation as far back as history can see, and looking to the future we see certain death by ecocide or war unless something changes drastically. It’s time to give the feminine a chance. She’s just there, just under the surface. All she needs is an ear that’s willing to listen.
I’m a 100 percent reader-funded journalist so if you enjoyed this, please consider helping me out by sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following me on Twitter, or throwing some money into my hat on Patreon.
About the Author
Caitlin Johnstone is a brave journalist, political junkie, relentless feminist, champion of the 99 percent. And a powerful counter-propaganda tactician.
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—In my last article I wrote about how the very legitimate and necessary protests of NFL players against police brutality and institutional racism have been hijacked by the Democratic party and turned into an establishment wedge issue. In the exact same way, the very legitimate and necessary agendas promulgated by generations of feminist thought have been hijacked and turned into establishment wedge issues by this same party. Just as with the grievances voiced by black rights activists, the fact that a political party has attempted to twist feminism into a corporate tool of the oligarchy in no way invalidates the movement itself.
Parting shot—a word from the editors The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found
In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.—Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report
HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.
The buzz surrounding the proto-candidacy of Kamala Harris, the Obama with skirts, being floated by the contemptible Democrats requires us to reprint this article.
No. Come on. Seriously? No.
This is stupid. I’m not writing this fucking article. I’m not going to sit here and explain how another alt-center establishment neocon is not the answer to the massive, institutionalized problems of America in general or of the Democratic party in particular. No.
Kamala Harris and the hypocrisy of the female left
California Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris has brought a number of former Hillary Clinton campaign veterans on board to work in her Washington, D.C., congressional office, according to its roster.
[dropcap]I[/dropcap] say this in all sincerity, and in the best exasperated John Oliver impression I can muster: Are you fucking kidding me???
We don’t have time for this bullshit. I don’t have time for this bullshit. I’m not going to write a big, long screed about how Americans are sick of the same fake two-headed one-party system that chokes Americans to death with neoliberal domestic policies and destroys entire nations with neoconservative foreign policies. Know why? Because someone else already made that argument a lot better than I ever could, and her name is 2016.
In the extremely unlikely event that America’s oligarchs ever check out indie political punditry, let me provide y’all with some helpful cost-saving information: Kamala Harris will not be president. 2016 settled this beyond dispute. I don’t care if CNN catches Donald Trump on camera giving Vladimir Putin a Thai massage with a happy ending — Kamala Harris will not be president. People’s increasing discontent combined with their rising internet literacy and widespread access to alternative media will kill that possibility. The US establishment has pushed people to the brink, and, since this is only going to get worse, they will do whatever they have to in order to create another possibility for themselves.
Financial Times buries the lede. CIA not only armed Syria's insurgents--it paid their salaries. pic.twitter.com/4elGBCZ60h
— Julian Assange ???? (@JulianAssange) July 22, 2017
Trump ends the CIA’s covert program of arming anti-Assad rebels in Syria, a move likely to please Russia https://t.co/wvguaf8GvQ
We don’t have time for this bullshit. The US political establishment is pushing as hard as it possibly can toward escalated Cold War tensions with Russia, which are dangerously complicated by hot proxy wars in both Syria and Ukraine, and which are being inflamed by NATO expansionism along Russia’s border. This could all blow up any minute, and America’s unelected power establishment is actively fighting any attempts to de-escalate. Powerful deep state propaganda outlets like the Washington Post, whose sole owner is a CIA contractor, are smearing Trump’s move to stop the CIA from funding terrorists in Syria as a treasonous capitulation to Moscow, while Netanyahu is pressuring the administration to abandon the partial ceasefire it negotiated with Russia in southern Syria. If this does not chill your bones, it should.
We’re being shoved hard in the direction of a world war with a nuclear superpower and its allies with the full thrust of the planet’s most powerful elites. A deeply disturbing amount of information indicates that the climate catastrophe we’re hurtling toward could be far worse and far more imminent than even the most pessimistic climate scientists had thought. We’ve got no time to debate about Kamala fucking Harris. Forget it. Not acceptable. Move on.
We don’t have time for this bullshit. People are desperate, and they’re scared. Something’s going to have to give, and give soon. It’s fucking 2017 and they’re already priming us for the Inevitability of Kamala. They already want progressives debating how many concessions toward social progress they can beg for from the new Anointed Queen, when in the real world people have all got an itchy, peripheral feeling that the end of the world may be near. We need massive, sweeping changes, not some Clintonite who’d look cute dancing on Ellen.
Our species has reached evolve-or-die time, and this is the last time I’ll be writing about Kamala fucking Harris. We are not doing this. No.
About the Author
Caitlin Johnstone is a brave journalist, political junkie, relentless feminist, champion of the 99 percent. And a powerful counter-propaganda tactician.
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—We’re being shoved hard in the direction of a world war with a nuclear superpower and its allies with the full thrust of the planet’s most powerful elites. A deeply disturbing amount of information indicates that the climate catastrophe we’re hurtling toward could be far worse and far more imminent than even the most pessimistic climate scientists had thought. We’ve got no time to debate about Kamala fucking Harris. Forget it. Not acceptable. Move on.
Parting shot—a word from the editors The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found
In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.—Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report
‘Bernie Bros’ and ‘Alt-Left’ Are Propaganda Terms Meant to Disempower
HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.
byMICHAEL J. SAINATO
The 2016 Presidential Primaries ended more than a year ago, but the divisive and destructive rhetoric that was developed during it remains prevalent. During the battle between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, the Bernie Bros narrative, a resurfacing of the Obama Boys narrative used during the 2008 Primaries by Clinton supporters, became a novelty for political opponents of Bernie Sanders. It served as an easy smear campaign that could be exploited and touted without citing any actual evidence to corroborate the claims behind it.
Neera Tanden: haughty centrist extremism, typical of all corporatist liberals.
The narrative, devoid of any policy discussion, weaponized identity politics to frame Bernie Sanders and his supporters as a movement being propped up by sexist white males, erasing the women and people of color who supported the movement and continue serving as leaders within it. The narrative also served to arrogantly reaffirm the sense of entitlement Clinton, Democratic Party centrists, and the establishment had to voters in marginalized communities while they actively ignored and abandoned them.
Instead of embracing movements like Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock, anti-fa, or similar organizing against racism, social injustice, and oppression, centrists have often reverted to covering for the establishment forces doing the oppressing and pushing false narratives against these movements.
This past weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia, many progressive groups that are pejoratively aligned with the “Bernie Bros” and the “Alt-Left” participated in the protests against white supremacist Nazi’s demonstrating in support of a Confederate Statue on the University of Virginia Campus. Members of the Democratic Socialists of America and the International Workers of the World were injured and one of them, Heather Heyer, lost her life. Despite this, the President of Center for American Progress Neera Tanden, and Daily Kos Founder Markos Moulitsas used the event to try to shamelessly attack the “alt-left,” and progressives, when it’s disproportionately the left rather than centrists and establishment Democrats who are individually and collectively mobilizing and organizing against fascism.
Centrists have traditionally denigrated and attacked protests, if not ignored them completely, from the Occupy Wall Street movement to the water protectors standing up to the Dakota Access pipeline, to the anti-fascists standing up against rallies and organizing of Nazi white supremacists, and the nurses and activists fighting for single-payer healthcare in California and across the country, the same purveyors of the Bernie Bros and alt-left myth were nowhere to be found. ShareBlue, a centrist propaganda outlet, didn’t run a single story on the NoDAPL protests, and Neera Tanden, Markos Moulitsas, several former Clinton staffers,and DNC Chair Tom Perez have never tweeted or otherwise mentioned the protests at all, while a militarized police and security force terrorized Native Americans and the Standing Rock Sioux reservation.
Moulitsas: Created Daily Kos, a huge insidious appendage to imperialist Democrats.
Instead of embracing movements like Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock, anti-fa, or similar organizing against racism, social injustice, and oppression, centrists have often reverted to covering for the establishment forces doing the oppressing and pushing false narratives against these movements.
The “Alt-left” is a term developed to try to portray the activist left as comparable to the alt-right of neo-nazis and white supremacists, when what is defined as the “alt-left” is generally providing the strongest and most assertive opposition to the alt-right, while centrists virtue signal over civility and embrace neo-conservatives who align with alt-right policies. The alt-right, neo-cons, and centrist establishment voices are invested in disempowering and discouraging activism and protests that stand up to the status quo.
“This is not a time for cowardice or careerism in the face of rising fascism and overt violence against a wide range of minorities. This is not a time to mince words or fret over tenure and promotion. And this is certainly not a time to remain silent. For, as Audre Lorde warned us: ‘Your silence will not protect you.‘” “Many of the same citizens, scholars and everyday people who can clearly see white supremacy in the Trump era did not see it in the Obama era and would not have seen it under Clinton’s regime, either,” wrote Stony Brook University Professor of Sociology Dr. Crystal Fleming in Black Perspectives. “And this is the double tragedy of this moment: obscene celebration from Nazis and white nationalists who correctly view Trump as their advocate and crocodile tears from liberals who could not see the Democrats’ collusion with white supremacy, systematic racism, corruption and state violence here and abroad.”
This isn’t to say that progressives, leftists, and Bernie Sanders supporters have all the answers, but that’s the point of progressive policies and the grassroots attitude toward politics. It’s not about an absolutism based on one person, it’s about people coming together out of an impending restlessness to continuously progress toward racial, social, and economic justice.
About the Author
Michael Sainato’s writing has appeared in the Guardian, Miami Herald, Baltimore Sun, Denver Post, Buffalo News, the Hill, Alternet, and several other publications . Follow him on twitter: @MSainat1
The narrative also served to arrogantly reaffirm the sense of entitlement Clinton, Democratic Party centrists, and the establishment had to voters in marginalized communities while they actively ignored and abandoned them.
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Sweet Irony... Amazon will donate a commission for every purchase you make using this app
We all know that Amazon is an uber-capitalist octopus swallowing ever more industries and openly collaborating with the CIA. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, probably the #2 richest man on earth, is no friend of radicals, or socialist revolution, that's for sure. But this app, ironically, promises to donate some money to whoever uses it to search and make a purchase on Amazon. Since many people will go on using Amazon due to habit or convenience, make it kick back a few dollars our way to continue our pro-peace and anti-imperialist work. Our financial situation leaves us no choice at this point. So consider it. A boycott of Amazon by lefties at this point is hardly going to register on their radar. But any funding we get, at our puny level, will keep us going. Simple as that.
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Parting shot—a word from the editors The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found
In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.—Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report
The Democratic Party’s Grand Inquisition has move leftward, targeting 2016 Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, whose political crime was to attend an RT dinner in Russia, the year before. The Democrats are trying to yoke her into their fake “Russiagate” conspiracy. Stein is “the perfect foil. She can simultaneously be blamed for Clinton’s loss while feeding the anti-Russia frenzy.”
“The Democrats have shamefully praised the intelligence apparatus, shown love for an FBI director and joined the chorus for war and American intervention around the world.”
Democrats hate the left more than they hate the right. Democrats are allegedly the counter weight to the right wing in America when in reality their goal is to replicate the same policies. The subterfuge inherent in the political duopoly allows them to live off the pretense of defending the people from the neo-liberal forces they in fact support.
Their hatred is most evident when people who are truly on the left dare to make the case for political change. When Al Gore and Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but lost presidential races in the Electoral College, Democratic Party scorn was directed solely at the Green Party and their voters.
In both elections there were far more instances of registered Democrats voting for George W. Bush and Donald Trump respectively. One would think that they would be marked for condemnation. Instead the Democrats show their true colors, excusing and placating the turncoats in order to make the case for “lesser evil” neo-liberalism and imperialism.
“The subterfuge inherent in the political duopoly allows them to live off the pretense of defending the people from the neo-liberal forces they in fact support.”
The Russiagate phenomenon makes Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein an even bigger target. Stein visited Russia in 2015 and attended the RT network’s anniversary dinner. She was seated at the same table with Vladimir Putin, although the two never spoke.
This simple act is now being included among the flimsy so-called evidence that the Russian government interfered in the election. The war party is an important part of the duopoly and leading Democrats are reveling in their opportunity to make political hay.
Congressman Adam Schiff is ranking minority member of the House Intelligence Committee and a leader in the charge against Russia and now Stein. “Jill Stein was also in Russia attending the RT function, so we’re going to need to look at any efforts the Russians made through whatever means to influence our elections.” It isn’t clear how Stein’s presence in Moscow impacted the election but truth isn’t the point.
“We have a right to visit any nation and interact with anyone we choose and to question presidents, congress and elite punditry.”
The Democrats’ urge to destabilize the entire system in order to do the work of the war party is dangerous for many reasons. It now gives them an even bigger out. They can continue their attack on the rights of nations and people all over the world and simultaneously blame the Russian government for their own abject political failures.
Donald Trump Jr. and others involved in his father’s campaign are now targets of investigation because of their amateurish contacts with Russian citizens. The Senate Judiciary Committee demanded that Trump the younger provide them with any communication he had with 41 individuals and entities and they included Jill Stein’s name among them. The list also includes Putin, his foreign secretary, the ambassador to the United States, the Ritz Carlton hotel and the oligarch who bankrolled Trump’s Miss Universe pageant in Moscow.
“There is no legitimate reason for Stein’s name to be on this list.”
Every other person, business or organization on the list is a Russian government official, played some role on the Trump campaign, or are or are mentioned in stories about election hacking. There is no legitimate reason for Stein’s name to be on this list. She makes clear that she has had no contact with the Trump family or campaign. She is being thrown under the bus in a classic smear tactic.
Rank and file Democrats have lost all sense of logic and common sense in their post-election trauma. They are always predisposed to attack anyone who points out the obvious deficiencies in the party they cling to with such devotion. The years of anti-Russian propaganda and willingness to censure anyone daring to do what they will not has primed them for this moment.
Ever since Election Day they have shamefully praised the intelligence apparatus, shown love for an FBI director and joined the chorus for war and American intervention around the world. Jill Stein is now the perfect foil. She can simultaneously be blamed for Clinton’s loss while feeding the anti-Russia frenzy.
“Stein is being thrown under the bus in a classic smear tactic.”
It is important for the left to defend Stein at this moment. She and all Americans have a right to disagree with their government’s foreign policy. We have a right to visit any nation and interact with anyone we choose and to question presidents, congress and elite punditry. We should be able to do so without fear of harassment or legal jeopardy.
American provocations against Russia go back to the collapse of the Soviet Union and are responsible for the possibility of a hot war. It is important to say so and to act in solidarity with those who become targets when they act on their right to freedom of movement and speech.
The notion that Russia is a hostile power is a concoction of the corporate media and the war loving members of the duopoly. If they attempt to silence or smear Stein or anyone else they must be met with staunch opposition.
About the author
Black Agenda report's Senior Editor and Columnist Margaret Kimberley'sFreedom Rider column appears weekly at the Black Agenda Report. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley (at) BlackAgendaReport.com.
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Parting shot—a word from the editors The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found
In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.—Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report