ANTI-COMMUNISM

JONATHAN COOK—Biden isn’t over the finishing line quite yet, and there are likely to be recounts, court challenges and possibly violence over the result, but he seems all but certain to be crowned the next U.S. president. Not that that should provoke any kind of celebration. The rest of the world’s population, future generations, the planet itself – none of us had a vote – were always going to be the losers whichever candidate won. The incumbent, Donald Trump, miscalculated, it seems, if he thought dismissing his opponent as “Sleepy Joe” would be enough to damage Biden’s electoral fortunes. True, Trump was referring to the fact that Biden is a dried-out husk of the machine politician he once was. But after four years of Trump and in the midst of a pandemic, the idea of sleeping through the next presidential term probably sounded pretty appealing to liberals. Most of them have spent their whole political lives asleep.

CALEB MAUPIN—IN THIS EPISODE, ON THE EVE OF THE GREAT SHAM ELECTION OF 2020, CALEB DISCUSSES:
Lessons from history: Capitalism’s rise fueled the Protestant Reformation, pits the Catholic Church (invested in feudalism) against much of the world • Spain with a weak capitalist class chooses to defend Catholicism and the Pope • Rise of the Spanish Inquisition • Persecution of heretics at home and abroad • The US in the 20th century replicates feudal Spain, fighting the “heresy” of socialism across the globe • The rise of McCarthyism “to defend the American Way” •   The real Trump’s “thugs”, according to Biden • Sit this one out, folks. Despite all the noise and hysterics, you have no dog in this fight • There is no Lesser Evil in 2020, only a Different Evil.

The recent elections in Bolivia did not happen just because the “interim government” of Jeanine Áñez, duly anointed by the US-proxy OAS, decided to act fair and square and agree to hold elections. It happened after many obstacles and delays because the masses threw themselves out on the roads and streets to make their presence felt, defying harsh repression at every turn. 

CALEB MAUPIN—Dispatch dateline October 2019 • Topics included:
The fake (synthetic) left destruction of real leftism in the developed world • Criticism of identity politics, LGBTQ, transgenderist idealism, etc.  • Deliberate “de-industrialisation in the developed world heartland • Dismantlement of the postwar “welfare state” in Europe, and rollback of worker gains in the US (the “Great American Middle Class”) • The imposition of austerity and unending war • Why bourgeois feminism leads nowhere •The century long campaign to defame the Soviet Union and J. Stalin • The accomplishments of socialism • Art & music under the Bolsheviks: it wasn’t the way the film Ninotchka presented it —and much more.

GABRIEL ROCKHILL—Ford was only one of the American companies invested in Germany, and many other U.S. banks, firms and investors profited handsomely from Aryanizations (the expulsion of Jews from business life and the forced transfer of their property into ‘Aryan’ hands), as well as from the German rearmament program. According to Christopher Simpson’s masterful study, “a half-dozen key U.S. companies—International Harvester, Ford, General Motors, Standard Oil of New Jersey, and du Pont—had become deeply involved in German weapons production.” In fact, American investment in Germany sharply increased after Hitler came to power.