PATRICE GREANVILLE—Anti-Stalinism has served for many decades as psychological and disinformation shorthand (not to mention ubiquitous battering ram) for anti-Sovietism, and, in general, anticommunism. Therein lies its immense value to Western capitalist propaganda. It is clear that once you successfully implant the false equation that Stalin’s sins—as proclaimed by his legion of detractors— equals communism, the rest is straightforward: it’s far easier to demonise a man than a whole complex system which many people, despite the unrelenting propaganda, find intriguing and often, when capitalist brutality and indecency show their true face, downright attractive.
ANTI-COMMUNISM
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The French political mess has lessons for everyone living in a “Western” capitalist democracy regime
32 minutes readDIANA JOHNSTONE—Fifty years ago, it was “the left” whose most ardent cause was passionate support for Third World national liberation struggles. The left’s heroes were Ahmed Ben Bella, Sukarno, Amilcar Cabral, Patrice Lumumba, and above all Ho Chi Minh. What were these leaders fighting for? They were fighting to liberate their countries from Western imperialism. They were fighting for independence, for the right to determine their own way of life, preserve their own customs, decide their own future. They were fighting for national sovereignty, and the left supported that struggle.
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CJ HOPKINS—Of course, CNN is not the only corporate media outlet on the case. In the days leading up to the Iowa caucuses (which Sanders would go on to attempt to steal from Buttigieg by winning thousands more votes), a spate of dire warnings were issued. According to The Washington Post, “Sanders supporters have weaponized Facebook” and are terrorizing people with “angry memes.” The New York Times reported that “Bernie Sanders and His Internet Army have forced progressives who refuse to back him into hiring private security details to protect them from “death threats” and off-color jokes.
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Immigrants as a Weapon: Global Nationalism and American Power
37 minutes readYASHA LEVINE—In the late 1980s, these immigrants — their ideologies, their resources, their organizations, and their American support — started to flow back into their home countries. In the ideological vacuum of post-communism, their reworked ethno-nationalist mythologies flourished. From Latvia to Hungary to Estonia to Croatia — the ideas of nationalist immigrant movements that had been backed and kept warm by America’s security apparatus during the Cold War hold huge sway over their societies today.
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Chris Hedges’ counter-revolutionary advice for revolution
30 minutes readRAINER SHEA—By applying his familiar dishonest framing tactics to demonize militant anti-capitalist strains in modern America, Hedges is trying to undermine the strains of our society that seek to carry out practical steps towards revolution. The overthrow of the bourgeoisie, especially in the highly militarized United States, will require some amount of violent struggle. As Lenin concluded while he was participating in an actual anti-capitalist revolution, “The replacement of the bourgeois by the proletarian state is impossible without a violent revolution.” But Hedges attacks both those who acknowledge the necessity of violence, and those who seek to apply Lenin’s other lessons for building proletarian power.