CLASS COLLABORATION

Glenn discusses the recent origins of AOC’s political career, and how much she has already distanced herself from her initial anti-establishment positions. The charitable interpretation is that AOC could not resist the forces of corruption that define the US duopoly, but that would require us to see at least some attempt on her part to oppose such forces, instead of simply caving in almost at once. The fake left co-optation rhetoric continues, of course. And the same goes for the rest of the “Squad” and the notorious Bernie Sanders.

Caleb discusses the reasons why he is certain Breadtubers like Vaush and Jason Unruhe are doing US imperialism’s bidding, while pretending to be on the radical left. 

S. JONAS—”Many critics of the Soviet Union conveniently forget that the Soviet experience was shaped in a significant part by what someday will come to be known as ‘The 75 Years War Against the Soviet Union, 1917-1992.'”

BEN NORTON—But if you were to read Orwell, you would think that the Soviets were the real evil ones. As Asimov observed in his review, in 1984, “Orwell didn’t want readers to mistake the villains for Nazis. The picture is of Stalinism, and Stalinism only.”

In fact, Orwell had nothing at all to say about the enormous Soviet sacrifice in World War II. He was much more interested in demonizing the USSR and everything it stood for. Because, like much too many anti-communist “leftists,” Orwell’s hatred of communists exceeded his hatred of genocidal fascists (something he shared in common with Conservative Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain).

CHRIS HEDGES—The belief that the Democratic Party offers an alternative to militarism is, as Samuel Johnson said, the triumph of hope over experience. The disputes with Republicans are largely political theater, often centered around the absurd or the trivial. On the substantive issues there is no difference within the ruling class. The Democrats, like the Republicans, embrace the fantasy that, even as the country stands on the brink of insolvency, a war industry that has orchestrated debacle after debacle, from Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq, is going to restore lost American global hegemony. Empires, as Reinhold Niebuhr observed, eventually “destroy themselves in the effort to prove that they are indestructible.” The self-delusion of military invincibility is the scourge that brought down the American empire, as it brought down past empires.