BOURGEOIS LEFT

PATRICK LAWRENCE—Meta’s accusations of [The Cradle] “praising terrorist organizations” and engaging in “incitement to violence” largely stem from posts and videos that relay information or quotes from West Asian resistance movements like Hamas, Hezbollah, and Ansarallah — blacklisted by many western governments — who are an essential part of the news stories unfolding in a region on the precipice of a major war.

It is also essential to recognize that these are major West Asian political organizations that have deep institutional and civic roots within Lebanon, Palestine, and Yemen and are part of the very fabric of these societies. They are represented in governance, run schools, hospitals, and utilities, and disperse salaries to millions of civilian workers.

JOE LAURIA—Cassuto says Kostakidis should have made clear in her retweet of Nasrallah’s video that she did not agree or endorse it. He says Nasrallah was calling for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Israel. 

In the retweeted video, the Hezbollah leader says: “Here, you don’t have a future, and from the river to the sea, the land of Palestine is for the Palestinian people and for the Palestinian people only …” 

Above that Nasrallah quote in the Censored Men retweet, Kostakidis wrote: “Israeli govt getting some of its own medicine. Israel has started something it can’t finish with this genocide.” 

EDITORS—8/20/2024 Episode 105 of Blowback: Exposing Imperial Decline with special guests Slava and Max Parry.
In-depth discussion of how personal identity, race and culture are exploited by classism, colonialism and imperialism to maintain their hold on power, with a focus on the Ukraine/Russian conflict.  PLUS: Cynical efforts by the Dems to split the pro-Palestinian movement using pro-ceasefire protests at Kamala Harris events as an attack on Kamala because she’s “black”.

BRUCE LERRO—For the most part, the use of electronic media, especially television, had a debilitating impact on political rhetoric. The number of outdoor speeches declined as the politician was followed by television cameras inside the studios. The public now had to make much less effort to hear a speech as they could now watch it on television. For various reasons, over the years the attention span of the public got shorter and shorter in part because there was a lot to see on television and also because the pace of life quickened.

BRUCE LERRO—Using loaded language in politics supports narrowing the thinking process to heroes and villains, gods and devils, dictators or democrats. Working-class people do not initiate what these words mean, or in what contexts they are used. However, working class people circulate these words unconsciously when they talk about politics to others. Working-class people also internalize these words and this narrows the span of how they think about political processes. The purpose of this article and the next one is to challenge you to try purging from your vocabulary the words totalitarian dictatorship or democracy. Chances are very good that the Yankee anti-communist campaign is playing you.