RAMIN MAZAHERI— The progression of Western fake-leftism from the 20th to 21st century has shown that many Western fake-leftists believe that identity politics has firmly established that any minority opinion – be the holder Black, female, gay, etc. – is inherently “woke”, instead of being merely worthy of no longer being ignored. At some point conversations such as this article need to be had: agreeing that historic repression of minority voices had tragic consequences, but also agreeing that minority individuals can be just as fascistic, capitalist and politically backward as any White Westerner.

AJAMU BARAKA—The white outside agitator trope. If it wasn’t frightening enough to see images of young white kids marching shoulder to shoulder with African and other colonized peoples, seeing white kids actually engaged in militant engagement with police authorities, which went beyond the approved forms of resistance, triggered a cognitive dilemma almost as serious as when they tried to comprehend and explain how China could escape the COVID-19 with five thousand deaths while the virus was killing tens of thousands in the U.S.  

GLEN FORD—There has been nothing approaching this level of unrest since April, 1968, when 100 cities burned in the wake of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. Back then, the U.S. corporate order responded to the challenge from below with massive expansion and militarization of local police forces, intensive secret police operations to eradicate Black and radical movements, and a program of mass Black incarceration that, over the past half century, has boosted the national prison population from less than 200,000 in 1970, to 2.2 million , today – an 11-fold increase.

RAINER SHEA—The first step taken towards this solidification of internal control has been the manufacturing, through government and media propaganda, of a worldview that the people within the imperial core are now expected to accept. This worldview says that Russia and China need to be feared and hated, that socialism is an evil force which needs to be stamped out, and that those who challenge the official narratives are working in favor of the nation’s enemies. In other words, a resurrection of the American Cold War narratives-except now the information deemed to be “dangerous” or “treasonous” is primarily in the online sphere.

Speaking on national television, Trump proclaimed: “I am your president of law and order… Our nation has been gripped by professional anarchists, arsonists, looters, criminals, Antifa and others.” Trump’s fascistic rant came only minutes after he ordered massively armed military police to launch a violent attack on citizens engaged in a lawful and peaceful assembly outside the White House to protest the police murder of George Floyd.

ANDRE VLTCHEK—The endemic, institutionalized brutality at home eventually spilled over to all parts of the planet. Now, for many decades, the United Stated has treated the entire world as full of its personal multitude of slaves. What does it offer to all of us: constant wars, occupations, punitive expeditions, coups, regular assassinations of progressive leaders, as well as thorough corporate plunder. Hundreds of millions of people have been sacrificed on the grotesque U.S. altar of “freedom” and “democracy”.

TIM WISE—The truth was there, but invisible to most whites when we told pollsters in the mid-1960s — within mere months of the time that formal apartheid had been lifted with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — that the present situation of black Americans was mostly their own fault. Only one in four thought white racism, past or present, or some combination of the two, might be the culprit.

George Floyd’s murder enraged people who have seen too many deaths as a result of police violence. The murder in broad daylight with cameras filming and scores of witnesses showed the impunity of police who are used to not being held accountable for their violence. During the uprising, police have used extreme violence and targeted people with cameras and the media even saying they were the problem. The root of the problem is a failed state that does not represent the people and has a deep history of racism and inequality.

BRUCE LERRO—Thus DSA, Jacobin magazine, Socialist Alternative and Global Exchange will always find a welcoming ear on the radio waves and journals of the Left Gatekeepers. Noam Chomsky, proclaimed anarchist, can come onto Democracy Now whenever he wants. But Michael Parenti, who will defend the Soviet Union or China and who is quite capable of matching Noam Chomsky, rarely gets on the air.

VINCENT BEVINS—In January 1966, Senator Bobby Kennedy said, “We have spoken out against the inhuman slaughters perpetrated by the Nazis and the Communists. But will we speak out also against the inhuman slaughter in Indonesia, where over 100,000 alleged Communists have not been perpetrators but victims?” He wildly underestimated the number of the dead, but at least he said something. No other prominent US politician condemned the massacre. By this time, RFK was in the habit of speaking out forcefully in ways that others wouldn’t. It’s unclear whether he knew that the Johnson administration was actively assisting with the massacre at that point. Maybe RFK had a kind of conversion about the nature of black ops after his brother’s death. Maybe it was politics. But whatever it was, Washington did not stop helping to carry out Operation Annihilation.

STUART SCHRADER—In the case of Indonesia, General Soekanto, the first director of the country’s national police, was among the most favored U.S. intelligence assets in the 1950s. Unlike other national police executives who emphasized improved crime control an objective when seeking U.S. aid, Soekanto acknowledged that Indonesia’s program was singularly focused on “reducing Commies.” It began with assistance to the Mobile Brigade or Mobrig, a 20,000-man specialized unit of the national police (125,000 total), considered the most reliable instrument to carry out the U.S. political agenda.

Some of the protests have turned violent, partly as a result of wanton police aggression backed up by heavily armed National Guard troops. There is also a big factor of general frustration among the populace and opposition to the massive social inequality under American oligarchic capitalism. The racist, brutish police are seen as the enforcers of a corrupt plutocracy.

JASON HIRTHLER—Liberal media including CNN, MSNBC, and the Times seek to blame Russia for the protests. ​ ​Former Obama official Susan Rice rehearses the wearisome trope that the protests are efforts to ‘divide’ the American public and “are straight out of the Russia playbook.” Another tone-deaf class-based insult from a millionaire white-collar bourgeoisie.

As part of the more cultured layer of the bourgeoisie’s official “conservative section” (as opposed to “liberal”, even though they are all conservative and reactionary, superficial differences depending on the issues and the misdirection necessary according to their pre-assigned roles)—Fox News host Tucker Carlson is now, consistent with his media platform’s reactionary political posture, sputtering a great deal of vitriol at the (to him) apparently outrageous notion of “defunding the police”.  Alternatively defining the protesters as a somewhat enigmatic “mob” and “rioters” (also a loaded word), in terms of their fuzzy goals, he’s nonetheless on firmer ground when he argues the protesters are also evidently being used by the Democrats and their legion of shills to attack Trump.

Jimmy Dore and Chris hedges discuss the events following the police murder of George Floyd, and where these mostly leaderless, spontaneist protests might be taking the country.