Category: CULTURE & CRITICISM - The Greanville Post

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S.L. Kanthan

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Mao: Tyrant or Great Leader? • Debunking American lies about the Great Leap Forward and the "Great Famine"

Mao’s Legacy and Accomplishments

“Mao Tse‐tung, who began as an obscure peasant, died one of history's great revolutionary figures. In Chinese terms, he ranked with the first Emperor who unified China in 200 B.C.

A Chinese patriot, a combative revolutionary, a fervent evangelist, a Marxist theorist, a soldier, a statesman and poet, above all Mao was a moralist who deeply believed, as have Chinese since Confucius, that man's goodness must come ahead of his mere economic progress.

China achieved enormous economic progress under Mao. He transformed China into a modern, industrialized socialist state."

Unlike many great leaders, Mao never exercised, or sought, absolute control over day‐to‐day affairs.”

Who would write such blatant communist propaganda?

It was the New York Times in 1976!

This year is the 75th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. After winning the long Chinese civil war, Mao Zedong spoke before a large crowd in Beijing in 1949 and proclaimed, “The Chinese people have stood up.” Thus, was born the PRC.

Mao inaugurating the Chinese Communist Republic

Chairman Mao laid the foundation from which contemporary China took off like a rocket over the last 40 years, especially in the last 20 years.

And the Chinese are still standing up against imperialism, which is desperately trying to contain the Middle Kingdom through trade wars, tech wars, geopolitical wars and propaganda wars.

The quote you heard in the beginning of this podcast about Mao sounds shocking, only because the US and the UK have engaged in profound revisionism of history since the 1990s. It all started when the CIA’s color revolution in China failed in 1989 – yeah, we are talking about the Tiananmen Square protests. The globalists really wanted to end communism all over the world when the USSR collapsed.

However, when China continued to cling on to its core ideology, Americans decided to rewrite history and demonize Mao as an incompetent or evil tyrant who killed tens of millions of people. But you can go back and look at US media and even the CIA reports for four decades, from 1950 until 1989, and you will mostly find neutral or positive reports. You will not find a single report on the Great Famine or millions of people dying. I will share a lot of stunning statistics and some CIA reports later in this article.

This is not to say that Mao was flawless. Obviously, nobody is perfect. Even the Chinese Communist Party acknowledges that Mao made mistakes, especially during the cultural revolution. But I will show you what Mao accomplished and what the Western lies are about his record.

Let’s start with the big picture. Mao was greatly admired by the regular Chinese people when he was alive. In fact, a CIA report in 1971 described as a semi-god!

Mao liberated China from the imperialists and their puppet, Chiang Kai-shek. And it was an improbable military achievement – Mao and his poorly armed peasants defeated the opponents who were heavily funded and armed by the US. Mao’s legendary Long March involved trekking for 6000 miles. This inspires the Chinese people even today while dealing with any extraordinary challenges as a nation.

Mao also liberated all the farmers from feudalism, for which the farmers were eternally grateful. Mao was also a feminist – he proclaimed that women hold up half the sky and established equal rights for women. This is why the poor people of China never once rose up against Mao even when the times were difficult. Even today, many villagers in China have Mao’s picture in their homes and public places. And, of course, Mao’s image is on all the denominations of Yuan, the currency. His photo will also stay in the Tiananmen Square forever. Yes, that’s me in the picture:

More importantly, Mao turned China into an industrial powerhouse. This was beyond anyone’s expectations after the Soviet Union withdrew all its technical advisors and aid in 1960. But merely four years later, China exploded its first nuclear weapon.

China had such holistic success in so many areas that the US decided to befriend Mao. This is why Nixon flew to Beijing and spent a week with Mao, forging a new alliance.

China in 1949

What a lot of people don’t understand when criticizing Mao is the formidable challenge he faced when he came to power. In 1949, China was extremely poor and faced a myriad of serious problems after suffering through colonialism and the Century of Humiliation.

1. There were only 10 countries in the world with GDP-per-capita smaller than that of China!

2. More than 4 out 5 Chinese people could not read or write.

3. More than 20 million Chinese were addicted to opium

4. China was a primitive agricultural country with no industrial capacity. People outside the big cities did not even have electricity.

5. Life expectancy was only 35 and healthcare was nonexistent in much of the country.

6. Worse, the US was meddling in China’s internal affairs by establishing Taiwan and preposterously claiming it to be the real China. Consider that 0.2% of Chinese were in Taiwan and 99.8% lived in mainland China. That’s democracy with American characteristics.

Given all these, what Mao accomplished was quite astounding. Let’s take a quick look at the stats between 1949 and 1976, when Mao passed away:

First, life expectancy under Mao grew from merely 35 years to 64 years. In 1949, Chinese people lived 9 years less than the world average. By 1976, they lived three years longer than the world average.

Under Mao, infant mortality fell by a whopping 75%.

And China’s population grew by 400 million during the Mao era – from 540 million to 940 million. That’s a stunning number!

The Communist party of China also reduced youth illiteracy from close to 90% to 20% under Mao. The UN called it the “single greatest educational accomplishment in human history.” To be deemed literate, a person in rural China had to master 1500 Chinese characters!

Next: Under Mao, 1.4 million barefoot doctors became famous worldwide by delivering free basic medical services, prevention, and education on hygiene and nutrition to hundreds of millions of people.

The barefoot doctors integrated Chinese and Western medicine. Thanks to the Patriotic Health Campaigns and barefoot doctors, China eradicated or significantly controlled many diseases such as smallpox, plague, malaria, cholera, tuberculosis, parasitic infections etc. This revolutionary program was so successful that the UN’s World Health Organization and UNICEF considered recommending it for all developing nations.

Mao was also a feminist who emancipated Chinese women from many societal injustices. He famously said that “women hold up half the sky.” Mao got rid of child marriage, arranged marriage, prostitution, and concubines, while ensuring that girls had equal access to education and women had not only the right to work but with equal pay. By the time Mao died, the female labor force participation rate in China was 80%.

So, 75% growth in population, 85% growth in life expectancy, 75% reduction in infant mortality, massive improvement in healthcare, and emancipation of women, but Western media have the chutzpah to lie about Mao being a mass murderer. That’s deranged propaganda. [Unfortunately, a huge number of people in the West, especially the USA, the most brainwashed nation in history, believe such malicious idiocies and stubbornly repeat them. Rightwingers in the US swallow these myths about China and much more, calling even dedicated servants of the oligarchy such as Kamala Harris or Barack Obama a "Marxist" or "communists". This is part because the mass media has never made any effort to correct such disinformation, and in fact, as China grew in world power, it has spread more lies about China in the last 25 years. —Ed]

Okay, now let’s take a look at the industrial and technological capabilities that improved under Mao. From the beginning, he understood the importance of transforming the nation into an industrial giant. For example, steel production from 1949 to 1976 grew a staggering 120-fold.

Of course, you cannot grow a country without plentiful of electricity and energy. Thus, in coal production, China became #3 in the world by 1976, only next to the US and the USSR. In terms of electricity, China’s production increased 50-fold, from 4GWh to 200 GWh.

Although China does not have a lot of oil, the production grew 400-fold under Mao from 0.2 million tonnes to 80 million tonnes.

In the late 1950s, China even started manufacturing its own cars and tractors. The first Chinese car Hongqi was Mao’s favorite and it’s still a luxury car, especially for diplomats.

Given all these accomplishments, let’s quickly debunk the Western lies about the Great Leap Forward – from 1958 to 1962 -- when there was supposedly a Great Famine that killed 30-60 million people, and that was all due to Mao.

First, there was no mention of such a famine in the Western media for 40 years since it allegedly happened! The US had spies all over China from the moment PRC was born. Plus, the US had spy balloons and spy planes – such as Lockheed U2 – flying over China. Thus, the CIA knew exactly what was happening within China during the Great Leap Forward.

Thus, let’s see what the CIA reports from 1960, 1961 and 1962 say:

· There was NO widespread famine.

· The failures of Chinese agriculture have been “principally due to adverse weather conditions.”

· Also, the Sino-Soviet split in 1960 certainly exacerbated the problems, as all Russian technical experts left China that year. The US sanctions on China also made it difficult for China to buy farm equipment, fertilizer etc.

· The food grain production in 1960 – the worst year – was 180 million tons, which was the same three years earlier. So, not bad at all.

And during the five years of Great Leap Forward, Chinese people had 85 million children! Even during the worst year in this period, 12 million Chinese kids were born. Think about that for a minute.

85 million newborn children during the “Great Famine.” Hmm... sounds like the Great American Stupid Propaganda.

Also, ask yourself, why there have been no famines or severe droughts in China since 1960? After all, China has had periodic droughts and famines for centuries.

The answer is that Mao put an end to droughts and famines! That’s right, Mao should be associated with ENDING droughts and famines, and not causing one.

You see, the first thing to realize about China is that much of the agriculture happens in the North which has great soil, but does not get much rain and there are not enough rivers.

In the South, the problem is reversed! The terrain is not so great, but it gets a lot of rain and there are many rivers. Actually, the South has a problem with too much water and flooding.

To address this issue, Mao built projects for water conservancy – in fact he built a staggering 90,000 hydro-power dams and reservoirs all across China. Most of them were small and medium, but there were some massive ones – like Xinfengjiang and Xinanjiang - which still serve as the primary source of water for capitalist regions like Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Guangzhou.

China now has more than half of all the dams in the world.

Mao also dreamed of the Three Gorges Dam and a North-South water diversion projects, which were eventually accomplished by his successors.

So, you can see what rubbish the West has been spreading about Mao. The biggest source of the atrocity propaganda came from the crazy Dutch historian Frank Dikotter, who is no doubt funded by the US deep state. In one of his books, he claimed that China’s prohibition of opium caused greater harm than the drug itself. This is, of course, to condone the opium trafficking by the British into China.

His book “Mao’s Great Famine” – written in 2010 – is the go-to source for all the anti-China loonies.

When the book came out first, he could not find a single photo of a malnourished Chinese person from that era (1958-1962). So, Frank Dikotter used a photo of a child beggar from the 1930s, when China was plundered by the Europeans and Americans.

Later, when his literary deception was revealed, he simply re-published the book without the book on the cover. He won several awards for his silly book, because Western propaganda is rewarded with fame and money.

As for the tens of millions of people dying, consider that China’s population was 650 million in 1960. How many people die in a normal situation? Let’s use the mortality rate of 1.7% from the US in 1940. That translates to 11 million people dying in China. Multiply that by 5, you get 55 million. That’s normal.

To summarize, Frank Dikotter lied in four ways:

· The severe drought lasted for one year and not for five

· It had nothing to do with Mao or the Great Leap Forward, but was mainly due to nature and China’s unfortunate climate and geographic conditions. And Mao put an end to the droughts.

· The number of deaths look sensational only because of China’s large population.

· Also, by CIA’s own reports, China’s population kept GROWING during the Great Leap Forward years. And the GDP growths were also impressive: 18% in 1958, 12% in 1959 and 8% in 1960. These numbers are the opposite of “catastrophic times.”

Conclusion

OK, hope you found this informative. As Mao liked to say, “Seek truths from facts.” But it takes a lot of time to explain facts, while fake news and lies are much easier and more seductive.

Mao was a great and visionary leader, who did what might have seemed impossible in those days. He laid the foundation, from which China went on to achieve greater things over the last 40 years. He was a man of the people, and was especially loved by the farmers, workers and women of China.

The end.

S.L. Kanthan

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CARA MARIANNA
The Floutist

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PALESTINIAN VOICES

Flags and guns are all they have. The wall of Old Jerusalem. (C.M., 2024.)

11 OCTOBER—
My first impression of Israel, as I sat in a taxi and looked out the window on an early evening in April of this year, was shock. Much of the land I rode through on the way from Ben Gurion Airport to Jerusalem was, in a word: ugly. It was barren and dry with little to distinguish it except for high-rise buildings in the near distance. Urban sprawl appeared out of control as new construction gobbled up the fragile terrain. It wasn’t until the taxi ascended into the Judaean Mountains north and west of Jerusalem that the landscape was transformed into a rugged kind of beauty.

Even at this, the startling number of Israeli flags hanging from light poles that line the freeways and overpasses on the drive to Jerusalem did nothing to improve the view. I didn’t fully comprehend this obsessive display of the national flag until, some days later, it was explained to me by a child in Hebron.

“The flag is all they have,” ten-year old Sofia told me. “And guns.”

I would come to understand the Israeli flag—to say nothing of the guns, or all the other weaponry—as a symbol of an insecure people. The blue Star of David on its white field is everywhere surrounding Old Jerusalem. Israelis fly their flag from cars and apartment balconies, shopping centers, intersections… anywhere and everywhere there is a place to hang it. It is, to put it quite bluntly, the attempt of a frightened people to proclaim their dominance—just as they are now doing with their bombing raids in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank. One wishes they would be content with the flag. But it is impossible that Israel should be content merely to fly its national flag given all that it stands for: conquest, ethnic cleansing, and now genocide. The very presence of the Israeli flag implies the imperative of violence for a nation that has nothing more.

This compulsion to fly flags, to mark and claim territory, reminded me of American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planting the Stars and Stripes on the moon in the summer of 1969. On one hand it is meaningless, pure hubris. But on the other hand: the Israeli flag—like the American flag—is a deadly serious symbol. It functions like a chess-piece in the opening gambit in a life-and-death struggle over the land of Palestine.

The sudden appearance of an Israeli flag on a hilltop in the West Bank indicates that another land grab is in process. It begins when the Israeli occupation force seizes an area of land and establishes an outpost. Next, a flag appears along with a military observation tower. Very soon a new illegal settlement springs up around both. And from that settlement atop a hill violence rains down upon the Palestinians living nearby. It is almost as if the Israeli flag itself is the very wellspring of all the racist brutality that flows from the apartheid Jewish state.

I am writing here about land. The flag being merely a symbol of Israel’s settler-colonial project. The Israeli pursuit of total conquest turns the land into a battle ground where violence is directed against the Palestinian people and against the land itself.

■

When I was in the West Bank city of al-Bireh, I met a man named Abu Hamed, not his real name. Abu Hamed was active in local politics during the 1970s. He worked with others in his community and throughout the West Bank to build economic independence and organize resistance to Israel’s illegal military occupation. He was successful enough that the Israelis arrested him. They drove Abu Hamed into the desert and left him there along with six other people. Together the seven men crossed into Jordan on foot. Abu Hamed spent the next 20 years in exile, first in Jordan and then in Lebanon, where he worked with the PLO. His sons grew up without their father.

For many generations, Abu Hamed’s prosperous family has owned large tracts of land and olive groves in the West Bank. Much of it has been stolen and is now occupied by settlers. Fifteen years ago he planted new olive trees in one of his remaining groves. This year, during the Muslim holy days of Eid al-Adha, 16 to 18 June, settlers burned his young olive trees.

One of Abu Hamed’s sons, a journalist whose name I cannot share, made a video of his father standing in the burned grove. This is what Abu Hamed said: “Olives trees are holy creatures for us. Nobody burns them. Even if they are cold they won’t cut a tree to heat themselves or their homes.”

His son asked, “Why do you think they burned the land? Why do you think they burn the farmland and the olive trees across the West Bank?”

Abu Hamed replied, “They don’t want to see either our trees or us, we as a people. They don’t want to see our people in their land.”

And then Abu Hamed, who was 92 years old when the video was made said, “I need fifteen years more to start these trees again.”

Two days after my visit with Abu Hamed, I drove with my guide and translator to speak with shepherds and farmers from the village of al–Mughayyir. We met on the road outside of the village and spent an hour together on a hillside in the shade of an olive tree drinking coffee made over a small fire. I listened to their stories and took notes.

Kathem, one of the olive growers, was the spokesperson and our village guide that day. “We used to graze our herds on open land near the settlement,” he told me. “Since 7 October settlers have been taking our land. They put tents on the land and steal our herds. Because they don’t let us graze on our land we have to buy fodder to feed the animals and their health isn’t good. Our animals are suffering.”

Kathem continued:

“We had thirty wells near the settlement. All have been destroyed. They polluted the water and filled them with rocks. Now we have to haul water. It costs 100 shekels to deliver water. They shoot the water tanks and puncture them. Or they steal the tanks.”

The other men listened quietly and smoked cigarettes while Kathem spoke. A young shepherd boy with an engaging smile, the son of one of the men, joined us. My interpreter translated and I scribbled notes. Someone added fuel to the small fire and refilled my cup of coffee.

“My cousin, they took his sheep and goats,” Kathem said as he pointed to a man wearing a green sweatshirt. “He had 120 animals. It was his entire herd.” Another man handed me his phone. On it were photographs of sheep and goats lying dead in a field. They had clearly been shot. Settlers routinely steal herds and shoot any animals that try to escape or run away. They also kill sheep dogs.

“For the olives,” Kathem continued, “none of the land near the village was harvested this year. Olive oil is a main source of income for us. The village lost a lot of money.” When I asked why the olives hadn’t been harvested he explained, “Since October, they won’t let us near our land. They shoot at us if we get close.”

Kathem had recently been given a grant from a farming cooperative to plant new olive trees. “I planted 100 little trees and they are all destroyed.” Settlers brought their sheep to Kathem’s olive grove to eat the young trees. They all died. “I have another piece of land with grapes,” he said. “But I can’t get to it because the soldiers will shoot.”

I heard the same story from Bedouin shepherds in the village of Umm al–Khier, in the South Hebron Hills. One can hear this story all over the West Bank.

■

There is often little apparent distinction between soldiers and settlers who have been given uniforms and military-grade weapons. Indeed, settlers often raid al–Mughayyir wearing military uniforms. Villagers quickly learned to distinguish between the two: “All we have to do is look at their shoes,” Kathem said. “The army doesn’t issue military boots with the uniforms.”

Settlers appear to enjoy playing at being soldiers. In another common bullying tactic, settlers dress as soldiers and order shepherds off of their land. But just as commonly settlers remain dressed in civilian clothing as they bully shepherds. When these illegal incidents are later reported, the same settlers don military uniforms and, in a sadistic cat-and-mouse game, mockingly “investigate” their own crimes. The villagers, who recognize their victimizers, are powerless to do anything and have no legal recourse.

As one of the shepherds said, sharing a thought I had not considered, “They want people to hate themselves. That’s why they harass and humiliate people.” But the same man, who clearly did not hate himself, also told me, “I like being a shepherd. My father and grandfather were shepherds. It’s inherited.”

■

After finishing our coffee we returned to the car and drove some five kilometers into the village. Kathem accompanied us, pointing out blackened areas along the road where settlers had set cars on fire six weeks earlier.

For two days in April, 12-13, settlers rampaged through al–Mughayyir and numerous other villages, throwing rocks and shooting people. Such raids are frequent. During the April raid one villager was killed, at least twenty-five were injured. Cars and houses were set on fire and sheep were stolen. The Israeli occupation forces stood by and watched. Soldiers fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse villagers who had gathered to defend themselves. Much of the damage was still clearly visible on the day I visited the community.

Al–Mughayyir stands on the shoulder of a hill overlooking a fertile valley to the north and east. Kathem took us to a house on the edge of the village where, standing on a second floor terrace, we could look out over the farmland below. Spread across the valley were wheat fields, olive groves, grape vineyards, peach and almond trees, greenhouses, vegetable fields.

Two illegal settlements were visible in the near distance: Adei Ad to the north and Mal’achei Hashalom, to the east. Any villagers approaching the farmland risked being shot at by soldiers or settlers. Since 2022, the Israeli military had prevented villagers from using the main road that cuts through the valley, thus preventing them from accessing their fields, groves, and grazing land on the far side. Since 7 October and the April raids, the villagers have lost access to the fields on the near side of the road—virtually all of their agricultural lands.

The ethnic cleansing of the smaller Bedouin and Muslim communities surrounding al–Mughayyir has been under way since at least 2019. Settler violence has forced numerous communities to abandon their lands and homes. As reported by +972 Magazine—an independent journal run by Palestinian and Israeli journalists doing some of the best commentary and reporting from the region—“settlers weaponize shepherding as a means to take over Palestinians’ land and force them out.”

Kathem pointed to the east and said:

All of the land reaching to the Jordan Valley, no one can access it. When I was young we used to go to the Jordan Valley every Friday. Now we can’t even cross the road. We can’t access our land.

As we stood on the terrace looking across the valley, the matron of the house carried coffee out to us on a tray. It was thick and dark and served in what must have been her best ceramic demitasse cups. “Last week they shot at our house,” she told me. “The kids were inside. I was sitting out here on the terrace when they started shooting. They broke one of our windows.”

We sipped coffee and looked out over the land. “I have a wheat field there,” she gestured. “I have goats. Now I have to keep them penned and buy food for them. They are losing weight and getting sick. We have to sell sheep and goats to feed the other animals.” She later showed us her sheep which were languishing in stalls below the house. These were small dark pens where normally the animals would have spent only the coldest weeks of winter.

Kathem looked at me. “They are made to destroy,” he said, the anger visible on his face. “They are a destruction machine. They kill, they steal, they take everything. Everyone in the world wants peace and stability,” Kathem said. “They don’t. They want to kill and steal.” He pointed to the top of a nearby hill where I could see an Israeli flag and military outpost. Beyond it was another small settlement.

Few Palestinians I met would name the occupier. Rarely would a Palestinian utter the words “Israel” or “Israeli,” as if to do so might invoke their presence or intensify their brutality. It seems best to leave the evil unnamed. “They” has all the force of a four-letter word in the West Bank. But perhaps, now I think about it, this refusal to name the occupier was how Palestinians denied Israel’s legitimacy.

Ugly. It was my first and lingering impression of Israel. As Abu Hamed might say: “Olive trees are not sacred to them.” Nor indeed it seemed, as I listened to the shepherds of al–Mughayyir, is anything else.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cara MariAnna is an artist and writer with an interest in fighting injustice wherever it may rear its ugly head. The oppression of Palestinians now providing an almost inexhaustible focus for her work.

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In cynicism and power, the US propaganda machine easily surpasses Orwells Ministry of Truth.
Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
Unless opposed, neither justice nor our Constitutional right to Free Speech will survive this assault.

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Laith Marouf • Prof. Mohammad Marandi

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Laith Marouf & Dr Mohammad Marandi tour destroyed suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, after Iran retaliates.

Free Palestine TV
Oct 3, 2024 BEIRUT
Laith and Prof. Marandi do a walking tour of Beirut's area damaged by Israeli airstrikes in the wake of Iran's missile barrage on Oct. 2, in retaliation for numerous crimes and provocations by Tel Aviv.

Hiz-b-ullah's Media Relations Office organised a tour of Beirut's southern suburb (Dahieh), to give the world a glimpse of the mass destruction of civilian infrastructure as a result of Zionist (Israeli) indiscriminate bombardment of the area. Laith Marouf and Dr Mohammad Marandi, along with Hadi Hotait behind the camera, joined the tour and commented on what they saw, the retaliation of Iran, Hiz-b-ullah repelling invading forces, and the coming expansion of the war.

Filmed: 02/10/2024
Donate/Watch/Share elsewhere https://FreePalestine.Video

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How Wokeness Kills Class Politics and Empowers Empire (w/ Christian Parenti) | The Chris Hedges Report

CHRIS HEDGES

SEP 25, 2024

This interview is also available on Rumble and podcast platforms.

Oftentimes the idea of “wokeness” or “woke” ideology, whether calling it as such or acknowledging its existence, can be thought of as coinage of the right wing. Christian Parenti, professor at John Jay College, journalist and author, joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to make the case that what he and many others define as “woke” is actually a weapon used to further suppress marginalized people, prevent the awareness of class politics and class struggle and further divide the working class.

“What a lot of the story comes down to,” Parenti tells Hedges, “[is] detaching class struggle from cultural struggles. And what woke is, is the continuation of all of the goals of the Enlightenment left, but in the realm of culture war, in the realm of cultural struggles, and that material conflict is increasingly elided and erased.”

Although the ideas behind “wokeness” attempt to foster a more egalitarian and inclusive society, it has been corrupted by the system itself and thus weaponized. “Woke ideology, wokeness, serves as an armory, an arsenal for the professional managerial class to draw weaponry and armor from in their increasingly Hobbesian war of all against all for posts,” Parenti remarks. For him, this is crucial to understanding the material incentive behind what wokeness stands for now as it continually appears in corporate and academic sectors.

“There are real material stakes for people, and one way a professional manager/member of this class can get ahead is by using these tropes to advance themselves and defend themselves,” he argues.

Its prevalence in today’s society, Parenti asserts, has cynically manifested as a reaction to corporations historically having to shell out millions of dollars in lawsuit settlements for discrimination and unethical cultural practices. Nowadays, in contrast, companies are very careful and even promote this ideology to appeal to marginalized groups—and ultimately raise their bottom line.

Enterprises like the Ford Foundation or the Rockefeller Foundation, Parenti argues, may present themselves as proponents of social justice but in reality “[they] are not established to and are not seeking to overthrow, undo or transform American capitalism. They are fundamentally about legitimizing and perpetuating it,” he says. It turns out that woke ideology is only their latest tool in doing so.

Thanks for reading The Chris Hedges Report! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Transcript

Chris Hedges

Woke ideology is pervasive in liberal institutions, especially universities, but does it further and hamper the liberal values and inclusiveness it purports to advocate? It seeks to transform society through what Christian Parenti calls the moralizing micropolitics of politicized etiquette. It is fixated on the politics of language and symbols, the sins of cultural appropriation and misnaming and calls for centering historically oppressed groups. It advocates identity politics, prioritizing race, gender, indigeneity, sexual orientation, physical disability, mental health diagnoses, immigration status and socioeconomic status over political content. Woke discourse, Parenti writes, “is imbued with a therapeutic mentality expressed in safety-obsessed incantations about harm, trauma, healing, care and doing the work. Personal struggles take precedent over political struggles. But, as Parenti argues, wokeness is deeply anti-intellectual, endowed with a moralizing that draws a distinction between the politically clean and unclean, friend and enemy, good and evil. It demands the censoring and cancelling of the politically incorrect, along with books and ideas. Woke culture has displaced old-fashioned universalist class politics – the fundamental struggle over who produces wealth, how and for whom. It not only divides the working class, but often serves, as Parenti points out, the interests of the ruling class. Joining me to discuss woke culture is Christian Parenti, Professor of Economics at John Jay College, City University of New York, and author of the recent article “The Cargo Cult of Woke.”

Okay, let's begin with the title, Christian. “The Cargo Cult of Woke.” Woke, where participants believe that social justice and perhaps even revolution can be achieved through the performance of safety oriented rituals of political etiquette. So let's define it. What is it?

Christian Parenti

Well, I mean, your introduction helped kind of define it. So I see it as having basically six key features. It's this, as you said, this micro-politics of etiquette... I mean, it's not going through all six of them. Woke is the dominant subculture of the left now, and it is highly destructive. If you critique it on the left, a lot of people deny its existences. Now, there's no such thing as wokeness or woke culture, or cancel culture, there's only accountability culture. But indeed, wokeness is a real thing, and it's a real problem for the left. So in this article, which was for Catalyst, the journal associated with Jacobin magazine, independent, but sort of a cousin-sister institution, maybe. It's a review essay of several books that came out over the last year about wokeness, some of them from the left, some of them from the right, even far right. And some of them sort of center. And I go through their explanations and try and unpack them, and there's actually a second half of this, which the article in its first draft was too long, and a lot of it was left on the cutting room floor, which I'm currently turning into another article which gets kind of deeper into the history of how the left arrived at this. But the main problem with wokeness is that it effectively purports to offer total transformation of society, even revolution. But it is in reality, it comes at the expense of Universalist class politics that seek to redistribute wealth and seek to change how wealth is created, you know? And does and seeks to grapple the questions of how wealth is produced by whom and for whom, right? Those questions drop away, and frequently, woke ideology purports to want to arrive at the same place many proponents of woke will even claim to be socialists and Marxists, but I argue that in reality, it doesn't add up to class politics, and it really, more often than not, comes at the expense of good old Universalist class politics. And the great irony, one of the greatest ironies in all this, is that it is, in fact, Universalist class politics that delivers the most for whatever hyper-variegated subgroup of the most oppressed there is. That might sound snide, but I don't mean it that way. So as I say in the article, you know if Black trans people suffer disproportionately from unemployment, lack of medical care, lack of adequate housing, etc. The irony is that universal provision of those goods would disproportionately benefit the most marginalized Black trans people, for example, right? We see that logic at work in Social Security. Everyone pays into Social Security, though the rich, of course, stop paying after whatever it is like $170,000, maybe it's $150,000. That's the first 150k you're taxed on. But anyway, the point is, everybody pays into Social Security according to their ability, and then everyone receives Social Security, both millionaires and elders, who otherwise would be homeless. And who benefits disproportionately from the Social Security check? The poor, the poorest benefit disproportionately. For the millionaires and multi-millionaires, whatever social security pays them doesn't have a material impact on their life. It's not that important, but the average working class senior, that check is transformative. If they didn't have that, millions of them would be homeless. So that, I think that's an important thing to keep in mind when arguing for and considering a return to or an amplification of a Universalist class politics, that it is, in fact, very good for all of the ultra-oppressed groups who that woke ideology purports to serve more efficiently and foreground most. And I think, in other words, long story short, is that woke doesn't deliver on its own goals.

Chris Hedges

Well, as you write in the article, it's even pernicious in the sense that it's become a bludgeon in the hands of the corporate state. You call it authoritarian and profoundly anti-intellectual. You write, others on the left privately bemoan wokeness and its safety obsession, but in public, remain quiet for fear of attack from woke online mobs. I think this is especially true in universities. At Princeton, for instance, that woke culture has banned the great Black novelist Richard Wright as a misogynist, and so they don't teach him. But let's talk about that authoritarianism and anti-intellectualism.

Christian Parenti

Yes, I mean, I opened the article with a recent example of the anti-intellectual and authoritarian nature of woke ideology. The American and Canadian Anthropological Association at their annual meeting, canceled, unilaterally from the executive committee, canceled a previously approved panel called, "Let's Talk About Sex, Baby: The Enduring Importance of Biological Sex to Anthropology." And their explanation was that, well, this would be, this would cause harm to trans and LBGTQ members of the association. I mean, that is kind of bonkers that the Anthropological Association doesn't want to have a panel discussing, contemplating, grappling with what role should biological sex play in the discipline, right? And they didn't do it by some membership vote, it was done last minute after scheduling the panel, you know, from the top down. So, I mean, that's an example of the woke authoritarianism. But I mean, it's everywhere in that it's one of the preferred strategies these days, this cancel culture of, you know, online mobs targeting a person, going to their employers, their funders, whatever, and trying to get them fired, canceled, etc. I mean, we saw this with countless, countless people, many of whom deserved it but it also can run amok. So that's how it's authoritarian and I mean, it's anti-intellectual in that it has this intolerance, that you are not allowed to explore. If you're going to stay in the good graces of woke ideology, and those who report you, you can't ask difficult questions. You have to sort of assume the right language, etc, etc. I mean, it's also just incredibly divisive. One of the books discussed is Yascha Mounk's book, "The Identity Trap," and he has some really surprising examples of just like racially segregating five-year-old kids in some elite private school. There's a number of examples of this kind of, like, just racist, but in the name of anti-racism, segregation of young people in private schools, but it also examples of this in public schools. You just wonder, like, how could that even be legal? So in that regard, it's incredibly divisive.

Chris Hedges

You quote Adolph Reed at the end, and he refers to this anti-racism as class politics, I think it explained that idea. And also you note that while woke politics professes concern for the downtrodden, you say it's right in content because it is compatible with economic exploitation.

Christian Parenti

Yeah, so an example of that, that I cite in the article, is how the CIA had these online ads called "Humans of the CIA." One of them was a Latina who has this amazing, like, flawless woke riff about how...

Chris Hedges

You got to read it. Do you have it in front of you?

Christian Parenti

Yeah, it's pretty hilarious. Okay, here we go. Yeah, "Humans of the CIA." So this is what she says. She says,
I am a cisgender millennial who has been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. I'm intersectional, but my existence is not a box checking exercise. I did not sneak into CIA. My employment was not and is not the result of a flute or a slip through the cracks. I used to struggle with imposter syndrome, says this [inaudible]. But at 36, I refuse to internalize misguided, patriarchal ideas of what a woman can or should be, right?

So this is from the CIA, right? An organization that goes around overthrowing governments, assassinating people, and we should say, has a long history of meddling in American politics and American culture in very destructive ways. So if the CIA can try and legitimize itself with wokeness, then you know, that really shows you, kind of, how flexible it is, in terms of its relationship to power. Another thing came to mind, another example, this was Jamie Raskin, a year or so back, talking about how, you know, when ramping up to the war in Ukraine, how Putin was a homophobe and transphobe and all this sort of stuff. This is like, here is woke ideology in the service of a US proxy war. So it is completely compatible with all of that and actually, it's not just compatible, I mean, it's actually pretty useful to the American empire to legitimize it, to return some sort of patina of moral legitimacy to it. And in terms of Adolph Reed, at the end there's a section where I discuss how the professional managerial class embraces wokeness. So you have from the end of World War II to the present, the kind of old, petty bourgeoisie of the small shopkeepers and independent businesses is increasingly absorbed into the corporate structure, structures of universities, corporations, this kind of stuff. And there a class emerges, a class of workers, it should be said, they're fundamentally just workers, but they're a political constituency different from blue collar workers, right? The professional managerial class that has as its task, managing some piece of a hierarchy. No sooner does this class emerge and grow by the '60s and '70s, then does it also start to experience a new kind of precarity? There is, by the end of the '70s, the first experiments in what we would now recognize as neoliberal economic restructuring. Then, beginning with the Volcker shock of 1980 and Reaganomics, there's massive deregulation, tax cuts that facilitate the upward redistribution of wealth, massive deindustrialization, an expansion of the financial sector. And with all of that, the rhythm of the economic cycles of capitalism increases. You have more frequent and more extreme booms and bubbles. And connected to that, all of that, you have an increase in the creative destruction of the capitalist economy throughout the West, but particularly in the United States. And that means that this professional managerial class, pretty much as soon as it sort of reaches its peak form, also finds itself under all sorts of stresses. The company you work for is now likely to be bought out and restructured, and so people are constantly struggling to maintain their position. You see it very clearly in academia. The number of adjuncts has increased massively in academia, while the overall number of faculty has kept up with and matched the number of students, the number of tenured professors has shrunk radically, and the amount of people working on short term contracts is increased enormously. That introduces an intense precarity and fear of falling, as Barbara Ehrenreich put it in her great book by that title. And so woke ideology, wokeness, serves as an armory, an arsenal for the professional managerial class to draw weaponry and armor from in their increasingly Hobbesian war of all against all for posts. And that is an important kind of material incentive for what drives this. There are real material stakes for people, and one way a professional manager/member of this class can get ahead is by using these tropes to advance themselves and defend themselves.

Chris Hedges

But you say in the process, you say, it erases class politics. ...remarkable.

Christian Parenti

Chris Hedges

No, go ahead.

Christian Parenti

Well, another material force behind all this is the law. And the last book I discussed is actually by a really, a pretty odious right winger, Richard Hanania, who was a self-admitted former racist. But his book, I must say, makes an interesting point. He says that a lot of what, that essentially woke culture is downstream from the law, specifically 1964 Civil Rights Act, which he doesn't like and would like to get rid of. But this is the interesting part of his argument. He says it's the weakness of the law that sort of perpetuates wokeness. What's he talking about? Well, the Civil Rights Act allows for private sector enforcement in the civil courts, and it has incredibly vague parameters. For example, for some reason that I'm honestly not quite clear on, hiring quotas have always been taboo in the United States. This is, I believe, Eisenhower said, you know, when first being confronted with civil rights legislation that in the military, that there wouldn't... as long as there weren't any quotas, right? Ever since then, maybe it was Truman, ever since then, this idea has stuck. But in fact, there are quotas. There are informal quotas. And so part of how you learn what, part of what you learn in modern academia is this kind of lying and double standards. Anyway, so in the vagueness of this law, and he compares it to some extent, with what's going on in France. In France, for example, there are certain laws against discrimination. For example, French firms have to hire a certain percentage of disabled workers. This is a quota. It's set by the labor ministry, and the labor ministry enforces it, right? In the United States, we don't have anything like that, that would be illegal, but instead, what we have is a law that says you, as a worker or consumer, person, you can sue institutions if you've been discriminated against. And so this leads to, I should interrupt myself for a second. There is also enforcement of civil rights law violations by the federal government, but a lot of the enforcement is left up to the private sector. So what has happened over recent decades is that corporate America has been faced with really expensive lawsuits, you know, $100-200 million at times by basically like, I think it's like 95% of the Fortune 500 firms have had to pay out pretty significant damages for various types of racial and sexist discrimination, right? So what do they do to defend themselves? Well, they start investing in the HR infrastructure and the outsourced HR infrastructure of diversity consultants and trainers, etc, etc. And they do this in hopes that they won't have, that they can, extirpate the racist and sexist managers, or at least the mentality of managers that might have those attitudes, get them to shut their mouths and stop costing the company money. But if that fails, they they also have a defense, because they say, look, to the court they say, look, you know, we invest heavily in trying to create an inclusive workspace. So that's a huge amount of money that goes to people like Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo. And there's an entire industry, people make a fairly good living doing this kind of training around these woke ideas. And inculcating, also, it's not just ideas and arguments, it's a whole kind of sensibility, right? That's why it's a subculture. It's like concern with etiquette and aesthetics is absolutely important in it. And that's part of why corporate America, people are like, why does corporate America go into this stuff? To defend themselves against lawsuits because the history of 95% of the Fortune 500 companies having had to pay out large damage settlements because of their bigotry, right? So they invest heavily in this private sector, entrepreneurial infrastructure. And so then this cadre of experts, of course, see the need for their services everywhere. And as a result, you get certain kind of left ideas from social sciences extracted and distorted. For example, the idea of structural racism has become the notion of systemic racism. Structural racism is the idea that there are racist outcomes even when there isn't racist intent, that structures like housing markets, educational funding systems that are partly dependent on property values, how this can lead to, you know, unfair outcomes for different demographic groups, right? Systemic racism is the idea that racism is everywhere and in everyone, and that everything is racist. The two sound similar, structural racism, systemic racism. What's the difference? They're actually very different. So now this cadre that can siphon up money, not just from universities and foundations, but also from the private sector, is constantly pushing these ideas into sensibility, and that's a very important part of where it all comes from. Another part of where it comes from, which I left out of the piece but if I were to do it again and have more time, more space, the Obama administration plays a very important role in this. Mounk notes that the mainstream press turns woke in around 2010 and that all this predates Trump. This is not just a reaction to Trump, but that the use of terms like systemic racism increases by orders of magnitude in the New York Times, usage of it in the New York Times and The Washington Post, etc. And while he doesn't get into this, Laura Kipnis does in her book, which is not one of the books that is reviewed here, called "Unwanted Advances." And she shows how the Obama administration's interpretation of Title IX and the use of what it called "Dear Colleague" letters really kind of set off a kind of sex panic on campuses that she documents in a critical fashion. And that's a very good book, but I think that's a very important part of the kind of explosion of woke. Those Obama administration, "Dear colleague" letters about how Title IX is to be interpreted.

Chris Hedges

Let's talk about social media...

Christian Parenti

Lest it be misunderstood. So Hanania, he wants to get rid of civil rights law. That's a terrible idea, but what I argue in this piece is that the evidence he shows can be used for the exact opposite conclusion, which is that actually maybe what we need is a clearer, stronger civil rights law. We need to have a larger role for government and maybe, you know, a discussion about quotas, since we informally have them but we deny it. And to get rid of this whole private sector, entrepreneurial, propulsion system for woke ideology.

Chris Hedges

I want to talk about social media and you're quoting Mounk, "the rise of a popularized version of the identity synthesis to transform the ideas of serious thinkers," he's probably thinking of [Michel] Foucault, "into simplistic memes and slogans."

Christian Parenti

Yes, what's the question in that, like, what...

Chris Hedges

I want to know how that works. I mean, what's happened? So you have figures like Edward Said and [Michel] Foucault and others, but it's the reductionism, that how they're very complex, often, and especially with Edward, nuanced ideas are reduced to a simplistic formula to serve woke culture.

Christian Parenti

Well, I mean, that happens... I don't think that Mounk's account of that as particularly good. All the academics take up this case against post-structuralism. And I mean, they have a point. I mean, what happens... But the thing they leave out is the following: what happens simultaneously with the arrival of post-structuralism from Europe in the late '70s, early '80s, simultaneously, there is the legacy of McCarthyism, right? In the background of all this has to be understood the impact of the Red Scare. Taft-Hartley, so in the second half of this article, which I'm working on now, it's almost done, I get into the role of Taft-Hartley [Act]. This is very important, since Taft-Hartley doesn't just weaken organized labor in a quantitative sense, but also qualitatively undermines all sorts of practices of solidarity that help build class consciousness.

Chris Hedges

But let me just interrupt to explain. This is the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, which essentially prohibits any kind of sympathy strike. It absolutely cripples the ability of striking workers to have any kind of impact.

Christian Parenti

Right, boycotts, sympathy strikes, these kinds of things. Communists are purged from the CIO. You've got the Smith Act, where socialist politicians are actually prosecuted. You've got McCarthyism and the Red Scare, and this continues on. You've got then the blossoming of this kind of radicalism of the new left, but pretty quickly thereafter, there is very serious red-baiting all the way through, this red-baiting within the universities. And lots of Marxists lose their jobs in university. And so what happens is that this new radical theory from Europe arrives, which is a reaction, for example, from the pen of Foucault. I mean, Foucault is a member of the French Communist Party for a while, but in the '50s, the French Communist Party was hegemonic among intellectuals, and it didn't always have good ideas, and it had a kind of bureaucratized culture, and there's plenty about that project to critique. And so Foucault is a part of a generation of left intellectuals who become increasingly anti-communist while promoting new kinds of radicalism. And so that's what Foucault is taken up for in the US and others, right? And so as a vacuum is created by the continued red-baiting and blacklisting of professors, my father was one of these people. He was Yale educated, PhD, and was treated very well, until, in the '60s, his students started radicalizing him, and he became a radical and a Marxist, and thereafter, found it very, very hard to get and keep jobs. A lot of Marxists had this experience.

Chris Hedges

And let me just interject there that you're talking about, Michael Parenti, your father, who has also written several great books, but Ellen Schrecker has done, if you want to read about the history of how brutal these purges were, right down to the high school level. Where the FBI would show up at a high school with a list and no questions asked, no evidence, suddenly, not only did all of those teachers lose their jobs, but they couldn't get hired anywhere else. So that's a moment in America that's extremely important. And Ellen Schrecker wrote two good books, "No Ivory Tower," and "[Many Are] the Crimes," I think is the name of the other one, but she's chronicled that history, and I didn't know how pervasive that blacklisting was until I read those books.

Christian Parenti

Yeah, so that creates an atmosphere of hostility and a vacuum, and then into it come these enticing new ideas about how, well, there's a different kind of revolution and radicalism that focuses on the micropolitics of resistance and the politics of identity, etc, etc. And part of the critique that makes this post-structuralist wave so appealing is that, Foucault's argument is that Marxism is this incredibly powerful theory, and it's essentially the height of the Enlightenment in western metaphysics. And it, nonetheless, in the hands of the Soviet state, produces, helps produce the gulags, right? So the problem is making any kind of sweeping truth claims, and so you have to push back against that and kind of shatter epistemology and knowledge into smaller pieces. And this became very useful and very appealing to academics because it was a way of being radical, a way of being subversive, and also a way of speaking to real problems. There really is racism, there really is sexism, right? Disabled people really are mistreated and shunned, right? So you can talk about real problems and be radical and propose radical transformations without confronting the class hierarchy of the society, which is where the power really lies. It's not that these other issues aren't important. They are, but it's like, in most cases, the solutions to those problems require the redistribution of resources, which only comes when the ruling class, the capitalist class, the owning class, are confronted, right? And so post-structuralism allows academics to pursue a kind of left politics that minimizes, in some cases is even openly hostile to a class analysis and to class struggle, you know? I mean, so what a lot of the story comes down to detaching class struggle from cultural struggles. And what woke is, is the continuation of all of the goals of the Enlightenment left, but in the realm of culture war, in the realm of cultural struggles, and that material conflict is increasingly elided and erased.

Chris Hedges

And isn't it done through the twin evils of relativism and subjectivity?

Christian Parenti

Yeah. I mean, I'm not sure I would call them evils. I mean, because, you know... But those are the methods, for sure. It's like, the question becomes subjectivity, and a kind of moral relativism is introduced, which is at first glance, it's about undermining the the bigoted ideologies that had dominated in the West, and say, well, no, it's like there's all sorts of different ways of being. And homosexuality is not a mental illness, right? And everyone deserves full civil rights, right? So there's some important work that's done by relativism. Say, well, just because your worldview is such that you think this is a sin doesn't mean you're right. You just have a point of view, and there are all sorts of other points of view. So I think there's something useful in that, but it is deployed to undermine the Marxist-socialist tradition say, well, it's reductive. It's this meta theory and it's essentialist, and we want to explode things and be more playful than that. And in terms of the subjectivity, yes, that's huge. And another part of that, kind of what goes with subjectivity is the therapeutic turn. And that's something that's in the second part of the essay, right? You have at the end of World War II, most psychologists, psychiatrists, work in institutions, but there's a massive deinstitutionalization of the profession prior to the deinstitutionalization of the patients, that happens in [inaudible] days. But there's a deinstitutionalization of psychology and post war psychology turns away from just dealing with crippling mental illness, and it starts trying to heal regular people and find pathology everywhere, and there's an explosion of this stuff, and you see it taking on a rather maligned form, unfortunately, in the new left. This is the second half of this essay, which is not published yet, but you get the rise of these like politicized therapy groups. There's one I've written about elsewhere, called "reevaluation counseling," which comes out of this guy, Harvey Jackins, who was one of the founders, actually, of Scientology. He was sued by L. Ron Hubbard for stealing a lot of Hubbard's ideas. And reevaluation counseling is still very big on the left, it's associated from 1971 onward, increasingly, with the Movement for a New Society, which is a group [that] comes out of sort of like Quaker movements. And they advocate collective living. And they're very, very involved, the Movement for a New Society is very, very involved in the anti-nuke struggles and the Central American solidarity struggles, and then the anti-globalization struggles, and then they expand. But their influence is still there in this kind of anti-communist, but very radical, quasi-anarchists, but detached from the traditional anarchist theories, and they're all also very influenced by Gene Sharp, who is one of the best known components of revolutionary non-violence. But unlike King and Gandhi, he's secular. He doesn't have a religious cosmology and morality driving him. His approach to revolutionary non-violence is very technocratic, and he actually spends the first 30 years of his career at a Defense Department funded think tank. He is not necessarily directly funded by the Defense Department, but this think tank at Harvard called the Center for International Affairs. When he arrives there, Henry Kissinger is one of the co-directors and the U.S. defense establishment uses Sharp's ideas to basically build out the color revolution toolkit, right? So those same kinds of ideas are increasingly permeating the new left. Reevaluation counseling is just one example of this stuff, these encounter groups like the radical Women's Liberation Movement in the late '60s. Again, these encounter groups and Cesar Chavez famously gets wrapped up with one of these kinds of like, basically cults, Synanon. So subjectivity becomes a battleground for the left, and from the '60s on, it's seen that individual subjectivity is in many ways, the path forward for larger social change. You could argue that it's the other way around. That people's subjectivity changes when the structures they're embedded in change. I mean, of course, it's a bit of both. Anyway, that whole psychological turn within the society and then within the New Left is a very important part of the origins of woke.

Chris Hedges

There's a small point, but I think an important one. And you talk about the avoidance that causes left intellectuals to brag openly about not reading their political enemies is itself an expression of woke, secular religiosity. The right is haram, do not touch it, lest you, too, become unclean. So there's all sorts of figures who I don't necessarily agree with. Karl Popper, I have huge issues with Reinhold Niebuhr, and yet these intellectuals deeply have informed my own understanding of the world around me, although ideologically, I'm not always in tune with them. And I think that, essentially by bifurcating the world into those who are acceptable and those who are not, it is anti-intellectual, intellectually stunting. It stunts us.

Christian Parenti

Yes, and anti-intellectualism and authoritarianism are deeply linked. One saw this during Covid, right? There was zero discussion of any dissent from the official line around any of these measures, lockdowns, the use of experimental vaccines. Mandates firing people who didn't want to take these vaccines. There was no discussion on the left about this. Go back and search the pages of Jacobin. Search the pages of Catalyst, in which this article appears. Search any left journalist pages. There was no critical discussion about any of that. And in fact, that facilitated what I consider to be intensely authoritarian and destructive policies, right? That's just one example of how anti-intellectualism facilitates authoritarianism. If you're not allowed to think, if you're not allowed to read certain authors and let your mind wander, you're going to end up in a very sterile, repetitive cul de sac. And I think that, frankly, I think that's where a lot of the left is at these days, that it is cutting itself off for more interesting ideas. And it's one of the ways that the right has gotten a kind of cultural upward hand on the left by, perhaps cynically, but entertaining ideas. And people are, all people, I think, are intellectually hungry. They might not seem intellectually hungry, I'm not saying that everybody wants to read esoteric theory, no. But people have ideas about stuff. People have ideas about reality. I mean, the number of people in this country who are interested in things is enormous, right? And if the left is just offering a set of kind of, "just so" stories and prefabricated pat answers, it becomes intellectually boring and people will turn away. So that's another problem with all this stuff that in shutting down and policing thought and policing speech and policing thought and turning away from the unclean authors and ideas, the left is painting itself into a corner.

Chris Hedges

You write that millennials, which I think is true, are kind of shaking off a lot of this woke culture.

Christian Parenti

Yeah, I definitely see that. Probably, you know, because for them, it's the establishment. It's not edgy. It's the guidance counselors and the principles that are pushing the trans club, right? Nothing against trans rights, right? I support all of that. But don't be surprised if there's a backlash when that becomes the official ideology, and everyone is supposed to just like accept the preconceived arguments of that lobby, essentially. And so yeah, you get younger people who are turning away from that. Unfortunately, sometimes, into some pretty destructive directions, but also, I think they're just getting over this stuff. And there was certainly a blossoming of a kind of socialist politics in the last 20 years, and a revivification of Marxism. I mean my generation, Gen X scholars, when we got hammered by this post-structuralist moment and the anti-communism, anti-Marxism, that was central to that stuff. And so you learned, perhaps even without knowing it, that you were not supposed to get too into those ideas, you can sort of assume their existence and utility, and you don't want to dig into that too much. I mean, I was explicitly told such things by a British socialist criminologist, Ian Taylor. Great guy, passed away, but he said he once, I think it's important you don't identify as a Marxist. And he had identified as a Marxist for the first half of his career, but he was telling me this in the mid '90s, and he was saying, it's like because you're not going to get a job if you do that, they're going to red-bait you. He didn't say that part, but that was implicit, right? But the younger folks have have thrown that off, and we got... for not being critical in relation to Covid. You know, Jacobin is a great example of this, of a kind of young millennial and Zoomers who are digging into the fundamental class questions and all of the literatures that have accumulated over the last 150 years that help the class struggle and the politics of class struggle.

Chris Hedges

Well, because this generation's hammered, economically. They have been completely betrayed by the system.

Christian Parenti

Yep, a friend of mine out west who was in DSA when it was blossoming, I asked him, so what's like, why are all these people into DSA? He recounted how they were in some meaning, like everybody went around and told the story of what happened to their families in the 2008 crash. And a lot of these people, like 70% of people in the room, like, yeah, you know, my parents, like, got divorced because we lost the house. Or it was just like, you know, stories of real suffering among middle class people. But there was this, like, economic trauma. I think that's actually the key rupture that helps explain the revival of socialist politics and kind of Marxist thinking. Not that that socialist politics and that Marxist thinking always has everything right, no. Not that it's just complete in of itself, no. But it is absolutely important to focus our intellectual efforts and our political organizing on the core class questions about who produces wealth, how and for whom, you know? And to think about ourselves in relationship to those material questions, because the vast majority of us make our living by selling our labor, and the way life is going to improve is if everybody comes together and struggles for what they all need in common, against the few, the increasing few, who are hoarding more and more, and in the process, in fact, creating bubbles and crashes that damage all of us and even freak out some of those owners of capital.

Chris Hedges

Well, we haven't seen an oligarchy. I mean, you know, figures like Bezos, are they worth $180 billion? I mean, you probably have to go back to Pharaonic Egypt to find this kind of disparity and then a system that they have distorted to essentially impoverish the rest of us and funnel wealth upwards, and that makes you ask the right questions. Yeah. Great. That was Christian Parenti, a professor at John Jay College, and we were discussing his article "The Cargo Cult of Woke." I want to thank Diego [Ramos] and Sofia [Menemenlis], Thomas [Hedges] and Max [Jones], who produced the show. You can find me at Chrisedges.substack.com

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Why I Feel Bad for Americans

Liar in Chief

12:15 30.09.2024

I feel bad for the Americans. Yes, they live in the biggest empire in human history. But the US is the #1 country in the world in consumption of antidepressants and other psychotropic medications, the #1 in the use of illegal drugs. Half of all American adults are functionally illiterate and the are many more problems.

Americans live in the biggest empire in human history. And there are many other statistics to boast – biggest GDP in the world, giant corporations worth trillions of dollars, the largest number of millionaires and billionaires, extraordinary dominance over the digital world and the media, technological superiority in many areas, dollar as the preeminent reserve currency of the world, and so on.

However, such impressive data hides a myriad of ugly facts faced by the average American who is financially broke, physically sick, mentally unhappy, and pessimistic about the future. How could that be? Let’s unpack life in the Empire of Lies, where the elites wage not only wars everywhere around the world but also on their own people.

The first thing to remember about the US is the mind-boggling inequality. Thus, while the US’ GDP-per- capita is $80,000, it does not mean that a family of three – mom, dad and a child – earn $240,000 a year. In fact, 92% of American households earn less than $240,000. Here’s a shocking stat: the top 1% of Americans earn more money than the entire Middle Class!

Similarly, the US stock market is worth nearly $50 trillion, but it’s almost entirely (93%) owned by the top 10%. This is plutocracy.

There is also another type of inequality – based on geography. While people in coastal states like California or New York make more money (on the average), there are vast areas in middle America that are crumbling and decaying, thanks to deindustrialization. Go to YouTube and search for “dying cities in America” and you can spend an entire day watching shocking videos. There are third-world and fourth- world countries hiding inside America.

Even in the relatively wealthier states, a majority of Americans live from paycheck to paycheck, because of the high cost of living. For example, in the 1960s, an average home cost twice as much as the average income. Now, the ratio is 7. Plus, in most families now, both parents must work to make ends meet, while a few decades ago, just the husband could work and support his entire family.

Education is key to the success of any nation, but the wealthiest nation ranks at the bottom of the OECD nations in math, science and reading. Half of all American adults are functionally illiterate. And when young Americans go to college, they often get useless degrees and are collectively burdened with $1.7 trillion of student loan. Welcome to a life of debt serfdom.

It’s no wonder that 78% of Americans say that their children will be worse off (than the parents).

But the problems continue.

All of America's big cities exhibit the huge problems afflicting this nation—grotesque inequality, drug use, dirty streets, crime, rundown neighborhoods, homelessness. All victims of the country's unofficial religion: capitalism.

It’s sad that most Americans cannot afford real food. The mainstream food is not even real food, it’s simply a toxic concoction of chemicals, GMO, sugar, bad fat, and ultra-processed junk. Hence the term SAD – Standard American Diet. The food corporations do not know anything about health, and the health corporations do not know anything about food.

Not surprisingly, Americans are also mentally sick. The US is the #1 country in the world in consumption of antidepressantsand other psychotropic medications. Big Pharma rigs all the clinical trials and comes up with fake science about “chemical imbalance” in the brain. Thus, even children in primary school are forced to take brain-altering drugs, some of which act in ways identical to cocaine or meth.

The US is also the #1 in the use of illegal drugs. 100,000 Americans die every year from drug overdose, but the elites do not care, since there is an endless supply of illegal immigrants across the border.

The cabal that rules the USA must really hate Americans, because there is no other explanation for the destructive social engineering that is being forced upon the masses. Since WW2, the US establishment has managed to destroy Christianity, tradition, wholesome values, and families by relentless bombardment of degeneracy and hedonism through Hollywood, media and even the legal system. What is being done to American children right now is unspeakable perversion. Worse, the experiments done in the US are soon spread to Europe and many other parts of the world. Thankfully, some countries like Russia and China have rejected these psychotic “values.”

So, what is left for the greatness of America? Capitalism, Freedom and Democracy? Let’s take a look.

There is no real capitalism or free market in the US. The real model of the US is “financial capitalism” or “casino capitalism” or “crony capitalism.” For more details, here’s my article on how financial capitalism is destroying the USA. There is an illusion of a free market in the US, but all the major corporations are controlled by a handful of giant financial corporations like Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street, which are the biggest shareholders. Moreover, all public corporations are controlled by a small network of people who sit on the boards of directors. Thus, there is only “One Corp” with different names such as Google, Lockheed Martin, Goldman Sachs, Pfizer, Walmart etc. This is neo-feudalism, not capitalism.

How about democracy, the one word that justifies all American wars? Lots of studies, including one from Princeton University, have shown that America works just like a textbook oligarchy. There is only one party in the US, but it comes in two flavors – Democrats and Republicans. This uniparty is funded by the One Corp mentioned before and special interest groups like AIPAC.

However, the US has an elaborate reality show known as the presidential election every four years. This rigged system is why Congress has an approval rating of 20% and nearly half of all Americans do not vote. But the clown show must go on.

While Americans love their freedom, it is increasingly under attack. Political correctness stifles discussion of many critical topics involving politics and geopolitics. People and groups on social media quickly get cancelled for daring to have the “wrong thought.” It is so bad that Americans cannot even talk about what they cannot talk about! There is a multibillion-dollar censorship industry made up of deep state, special interest groups, corporations and tech giants. And the US is working closely with its vassal, the European Union. As the official narratives keep losing their influence, totalitarianism is increasing, as seen by arrests and raids of journalists.

America’s oligarchs have been playing divide-and-rule in order to neutralize the 99%. However, this has resulted in an extremely polarized nation, which might face a civil war in the future. To preempt a revolution, the rulers of America are encouraging unbridled illegal immigration and are openly talking about getting rid of the Constitution. The mask will completely come off soon.

As for technological primacy, America is quickly losing that battle as well. China dominates the world not only in traditional industries such as steel production, but also modern sectors such as electric cars, EV batteries, solar panels, next-gen nuclear power plants etc. According to a study by Australia’s ASPI, China leads the world in 57 out of 64 critical technologies. Two decades ago, the US was #1 in 60 out of 64. In spite of brutal US sanctions on hundreds of top Chinese tech companies, China is on the verge of making breakthroughs in semiconductor technology. Once China masters the chip ecosystem, it will be game over for the US empire.

Finally, thanks to aggressive imperialism, the rest of the world is embracing BRICS and dedollarization. When that takes off, the US will lose its ability to print and/or borrow trillions of dollars. Once the voodoo economics is gone, Americans will face devastating austerity. The cost of imports will go up and the standard of living will decline, while the US government will be forced to slash spending, layoff workers, and raise the retirement age.

Conclusion

Americans need to wake up to the fact they are ruled by psychopathic and incompetent elites. Unfortunately, too many Americans are still hoodwinked by propaganda, since the entire US establishment – corporations, politicians, media, think tanks, academia etc. – is very disciplined in sticking to the official narratives.

The US needs a complete overhaul of its domestic and foreign policies. At home, the US needs to re-industrialize and focus on the welfare of farmers and workers. Also, the US should go back to traditional family values and reject the globalists’ social engineering. Abroad, the US needs to end the perpetual wars, make friends with Russia and China, and embrace a multipolar world.

Can Americans avoid the tragic end of an empire?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SL Kanthan is a geopolitical analyst, columnist, blogger, tweeter, podcaster. Based out of Bangalore, India.

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Why I Feel Bad for Americans

S.L. Kanthan SPUTNIK OPINION SPUTNIK INDIA

But the problems continue.

All of America's big cities exhibit the huge problems afflicting this nation—grotesque inequality, drug use, dirty streets, crime, rundown neighborhoods, homelessness. All victims of the country's unofficial religion: capitalism.

Conclusion

Print this article

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post.

CARA MARIANNA
The Floutist

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cara MariAnna is an artist and writer with an interest in fighting injustice wherever it may rear its ugly head. The oppression of Palestinians now providing an almost inexhaustible focus for her work.

Free Palestine TV
Oct 3, 2024 BEIRUT
Laith and Prof. Marandi do a walking tour of Beirut's area damaged by Israeli airstrikes in the wake of Iran's missile barrage on Oct. 2, in retaliation for numerous crimes and provocations by Tel Aviv.

Host: Chris Hedges
Producer: Max Jones
Intro: Diego Ramos
Crew: Diego Ramos, Sofia Menemenlis and Thomas Hedges
Transcript: Diego Ramos

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SPUTNIK INDIA