Last Wednesday, 4 May 2022, Caleb Maupin filed what is surely one of his most important chats, covering, as usual, a variety of topics, but the outstanding part comprised a couple of subjects rarely discussed with such honesty and lucidity, namely, the issues that define what is being “on the left” in the US, and the urgent need for a completely new approach to regain relevancy. Up to this point, says Maupin, the Right is eating our lunch. While the left has spent much of its political capital on what he defines as depressing and even pessimistic “causes” (abortion rights, overpopulation, anti-imperialist struggles, environmental destruction, etc.), all of which are valid and even urgent, Maupin notes that they also usually trigger a negative reaction in the working class, thereby opening the door to the Right, with its misty-eyed hymns to family, patriotism, praise for the invididual, “democracy”, “freedom”, “free enterprise”, and so on.
-
-
Trevor Noah was the selected comedian for this year’s White House Correspondents Association dinner, and he delivered precisely what he was paid for – some mild jokes at the assembled luminaries’ expense wrapped in an epic ass kissing praising the assembled press corps for their hard-hitting journalism and exercise of the sacred freedom of the press. No mention of Julian Assange, curiously. Jimmy and American comedian Kurt Metzger break down Noah’s performance and the responsibility falling on the shoulders of the comedian chosen to headline each year’s WHCD.
-
An organization called Newsguard Technology has taken to evaluating traditional and independent news organizations and rating the outlets for their trustworthiness and independence from outside influence. The only problem? Newsguard is itself controlled by national security apparatchiks, former administration officials and others with decided biases of their own. As The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal explains, an outfit like Newsguard isn’t interested in promoting good journalism so much as preventing the public from accessing journalism that threatens the establishment’s grip on power.
-
Barack Obama recently traveled to Stanford University to deliver a speech decrying the proliferation of lies and conspiracy theories, particularly those promulgated by the right wing on social media. Obama’s proposed solution: more censorship by social media outlets and increased government regulation. Jimmy and American comedian Kurt Metzger wonder at the way so many Democrats have embraced censorship to quash purported “lies and conspiracy theories” while simultaneously spreading so many of their own.
-
RAMIN MAZAHERI—The European lesson of the 1930s is that the working and middle class handed power to the socialists and communists – who immediately gave power back to the bourgeois!
Ever since the Brexit vote against the neoliberal and neo-imperial European Union Western democracies are perpetually stuck in 1936: constantly warning of “fascism” and constantly producing failures as bad as the original Popular Front in France.
