The Fake Left at the Left Forum

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Danny Haiphong, BAR contributor


NOTE: Originally posted on 13 Jun 2018 • Reposted due to renewed relevancy

Dr. Ajamu Baraka


“Black Agenda Report and the Black Alliance for Peace have been called ‘Assadists’ for defending the Syrian people’s rightful decision to determine who governs them and under what type of state.”

I was at the Left Forum held on the first weekend of June in New York City. I did what I’ve done every year that I’ve attended. I spoke at Black Agenda Report’s panel, chatted with a few comrades I rarely see due to distance, and attended a few of their panels. More than a few colleagues mentioned to me that a contingent of so-called “Trotskyists” publicly protested Black Alliance for Peace founder Ajamu Baraka for his support of the Syrian government. These so-called “Trotskyist” forces passed out leaflets condemning Baraka and protested his remarks at the closing plenary in opposition to “the brutal Assad regime.” A UNAC statement on the matter can be found here.

While some were engaged in unprincipled, pro-empire, and chauvinist actions such as these, others such as myself were using the Left Forum to figure out who the left is and what it should stand for and do. This is an important task because the real left in the United States is small. As Glen Ford stated in Black Agenda Report’s panel,the small size of the real left means that it shoulders a heavy burden. Not only must the real left in the United States find a way to develop an organized anti-imperialist, and class-based opposition to the ruling class, but it must also combat the fake left in its many forms. Those who participated in slandering Baraka are what the fake left looks like and sounds like in the flesh.

“The real left must combat the fake left in its many forms.”

The fake left at the Left Forum should be distinguished from the fake left of the non-profit industrial complex. The non-profit industrial complex indeed hires fake activistsbeholden to government and corporate funders responsible for the very problems that non-profit activists oppose in the first place. Fake left activists reside in non-profit organizations such as MoveOn.org and Indivisible. The fake left I refer to in this piece are perhaps even more insidious than those paid by foundations and non-profits. This band of leftists verbally states opposition to imperialism and an embrace of socialism in theory yet behaves more like amateur soft agents of the US intelligence services in practice.

These fake leftists reside in an alphabet soup of so-called Trotskyist organizations like the International Socialist Organization (ISO). So-called “Trotskyist” organizations have a long history of supporting US imperialism. I don’t pretend to know which organization the fake leftists who protested Baraka belonged to. An attendee told me that the organizers of the protest of Baraka stemmed from the League for the Revolutionary Party. Thetrend is more important than the organization. Just days prior to the Left Forum, activists in the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) wrote an opinion piece claiming that “The 2,000 US troops in Syria are not there to conduct ‘regime change.’ They are there to defend the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) in North East Syria and to oppose ISIS. Trump has made that clear.” One of the authors of the piece has been active on social media denouncing Baraka and the Black Alliance for Peace for being so-called apologists for Assad. This falls in line with the ISO, which has long been known to support US-led operations in Libya and Syria in the name of “revolution.”

“This band of leftists verbally states opposition to imperialism and an embrace of socialism in theory yet behaves more like amateur soft agents of the US intelligence services in practice.”

While claiming to want revolution, there are many activists in these organizations that choose to insult and defame every revolution that has ever occurred in history, even the Russian Revolution of 1917. According to their pro-war ideology, every socialist revolution in history has been led by despotic, self-interested authoritarians who wielded “state capitalist” formations to repress and impoverish the working class. This includes the Chinese and Cuban revolutions in addition to the Russian. And it ultimately includes any government that the US doesn’t like and wants to overthrow. As Diana Johnstone put it simply, “The trouble with these Trotskyists is that they are always “supporting” other people’s more or less imaginary revolutions. They are always telling others what to do. They know it all. The practical result from this verbal agitation is simply to align this brand of Trotskyism with U.S imperialism.”

Syria has been in the crosshairs of these fake leftists for some time. Real leftists at Black Agenda Report and the Black Alliance for Peace have been called “Assadists” for defending the Syrian people’s rightful decision to determine who governs them and under what type of state. This position is the essence of self-determination. Self-determination, as V.I. Lenin articulated , means that the independence of oppressed nations struggling against colonialism must be achieved and then defended for the conditions of socialism to exist at all. Syria has a long history of struggling against colonialism and imperialism, dating back to the early 20thcentury when it was divided up by the colonial powers under the Sykes-Picot agreement. It just so happens that the same colonial powers that dominated Syria in the early to mid-20thcentury have coalesced with the United States to place the Arab nation back under their political and economic thumb. The so-called “revolutionaries” in Syria have long been proven to be armed terrorist proxies of the colonial powers and their Gulf allies, something that fake leftists like those who protested Baraka refuse to admit.

“The attack on Baraka is an attack on any person, group, or organization that dares to struggle against imperialism.”

For this, Baraka, the Black Alliance for Peace, and the real left has been the target of a smear campaign. In this campaign, support for countries under the threat of US warfare is considered “fascist” and part of some mythical “Red-brown” alliance.” This theory was concocted by the likes of academics like Alexander Reid Ross and other self-proclaimed experts of fascism. What is their evidence for such a claim? The evidence lies in spurious connections in the political positions of the left and right. Right-wing groups and organizations are said to be infiltrating the real left and directing them in a right-wing direction. This assumes that the Syrian government, the Russian government, and the Iranian governments are fascist entities. No such label has been awarded to the U.S. government, the Israeli government, or their allies in Europe and the Gulf. Ukraine is under the direction of a U.S. installed fascist government but this has garnered little concern from the crusaders of the “red-brown” alliance theory.

The wide umbrella of pro-war propaganda includes the fake leftist politics that reared its head in the ugliest of ways at the Left Forum. What transpired at the Left Forum is much more than a smear campaign against Ajamu Baraka, someone who has spent much of his life struggling to overthrow capitalism. The attack on Baraka is an attack on any person, group, or organization that dares to struggle against imperialism. And it sends a clear message. Anyone who supports the right to self-determination is in league with the fascist, imperialist alliance of Syrian, Iran, Russia, and China. This alliance is said to be more dangerous than US imperialism. After all, just look at all the children the White Helmets have saved from Assad’s lethal weapons of mass destruction (sarcasm my own)!

“The same colonial powers that dominated Syria in the early to mid-20thcentury have coalesced with the United States to place the Arab nation back under their political and economic thumb.”

We have a name for such foolishness: social imperialism. A social imperialist is anyone who espouses socialism yet promotes imperialism. Social imperialism doesn’t require evidence, just racism and pro-American chauvinism. It is the subtlest variant of American exceptionalism. While claiming to be against police brutality, mass incarceration, and drone warfare, social imperialists huddle alongside the State Department to demonize nations abroad that US imperialism desperately wants to destroy. Social imperialists call Assad a war criminal yet have nothing to say when presented with the well-documented evidence of atrocities committed by proxies backed by the US, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and a host of imperialist countries. In fact, social imperialists deny the very existence of these forces, thus negating over four decades of marriage between US imperialism and jihadist mercenaries .

Social imperialism is not new. Its origins lie in the Second International’s betrayal of the colonial peoples during World War I when only the Bolsheviks were willing to oppose the war. It is our duty as the real left to ensure that historical mistakes are not repeated. While workers and oppressed people have little exposure to the more radical forms of social imperialism such as the attack on Ajamu Baraka, they are exposed regularly to the likes of the Congressional Black Caucus and Bernie Sanders. These forces have used their political power to expand the war machine alongside their allies in the intelligence and military apparatuses. We must defend Ajamu Baraka and the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) from social imperialist attacks because they distract us from our real target: the ruling class. But we must also be unafraid to call out whoever has decided to serve as a pig for imperialism. Especially when it manifests in pathetic displays like what transpired at the Left Forum this year.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Danny Haiphong is an activist and journalist in the New York City area. He is currently writing a book with Roberto Sirvent entitled American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: The Fake News of US Empire. He can be reached at wakeupriseup1990@gmail.com


ADDENDUM
Baraka tells it like it is
The below excerpts, from Wikipedia's page on Baraka, show he's a true leftist unafraid of pushing back against the corporatist-imposed (and rarely questioned) social conformity. Note that these passages were included by the CIA-influenced Wikipedia in an effort to denigrate Baraka. Needless to say, we strongly agree with all these evaluations. 
Critique of public individuals
Bill Clinton
In June 2016, Baraka criticized the family of Muhammad Ali for inviting Bill Clinton to deliver the boxer's eulogy.[46][47] Baraka described Clinton as a "rapist" and "petty opportunist politician."[46][47]
Beyoncé
In February 2016, Baraka criticized Beyoncé's performance of her song "Formation" at the Super Bowl 50 halftime show, which featured backup dancers dressed as Black Panthers, claiming that it was a "commodified caricature of black opposition."[48] Baraka derided the performance as "mindless entertainment" and "a depoliticized spectacle by gyrating, light-skinned booty-short-clad sisters."[48] Baraka claimed that the "white male capitalist patriarchy" was responsible for selecting Beyoncé to perform and would not have allowed "anything subversive or even remotely oppositional to the interests of the capitalist oligarchy" on stage.[48]
Barack Obama
Baraka referred to President Barack Obama as an "Uncle Tom president" after Obama condemned the 2014 riots and violence in Ferguson, Missourithat occurred in the wake of the police killing of Michael Brown.[32][49] Defending his use of the term, Baraka later said that he was speaking to a "specialized audience" and was attempting to "shock people into a more critical look at this individual."[50] Baraka has also argued that Obama has shown "obsequious deference to white power,"[51] and that Obama and Loretta Lynch are members of the "black petit-bourgeoisie who have become the living embodiments of the partial success of the state's attempt to colonize the consciousness of Africans/black people."[46]
Baraka was critical of the Obama administration's decision to not attend the 2009 UN World Conference Against Racism in Geneva.[52] In 2013, Baraka stated that inviting Obama to the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington "should be taken as an insult by everyone who has struggled and continues to struggle for human rights, peace and social justice."[51] More recently, he has argued that "the Obama Administration collaborated with suppressing the 2009 report from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which identified violent white supremacist groups as a threat to national security more lethal than the threat from Islamic 'fundamentalists'."[43]In an October 2016 interview with The Detroit News, Baraka described Obama as a "moral disaster" and one of "the worst things that has happened to African-American people".[53]
Bernie Sanders
Baraka referred to the presidential campaign of U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders as "media-driven pseudo-opposition"[48] and "an ideological prop… of the logic and interests of the capitalist-imperialist settler state."[54] In a September 2015 article, Baraka condemned Sanders' foreign policy and his support for continuing Obama's program of drone strikes in Yemen, claiming that "the world that a President Sanders promises" would be one with "continued war crimes from the sky with drone strikes and Saudi-led terror in support of the Western imperial project."[54] Baraka argued that support for Sanders represents "a tacit commitment to Eurocentrism and the assumptions of normalized white supremacy" due to what he perceived as "indifference" to the lives lost during the drone campaign in Yemen.[54]
Cornel West
In September 2015, Baraka initially criticized Cornel West for supporting Bernie Sanders, saying that West was "sheep-dogging for the Democrats" by "drawing voters into the corrupt Democratic party".[55] West later endorsed the Stein/Baraka ticket after Sanders endorsed Hillary Clinton.[56][57]


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A day in the death of British justice

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John Pilger




 

Assange with Stella Morris.


I sat in Court 4 in the Royal Courts of Justice in London yesterday with Stella Morris, Julian Assange’s partner. I have known Stella for as long as I have known Julian. She, too, is a voice of freedom, coming from a family that fought the fascism of Apartheid. Today, her name was uttered in court by a barrister and a judge, forgettable people were it not for the power of their endowed privilege.

The barrister, Clair Dobbin, is in the pay of the regime in Washington, first Trump’s then Biden’s. She is America’s hired gun, or “silk”, as she would prefer. Her target is Julian Assange, who has committed no crime and has performed an historic public service by exposing the criminal actions and secrets on which governments, especially those claiming to be democracies, base their authority.

For those who may have forgotten, WikiLeaks, of which Assange is founder and publisher, exposed the secrets and lies that led to the invasion of Iraq, Syria and Yemen, the murderous role of the Pentagon in dozens of countries, the blueprint for the 20-year catastrophe in Afghanistan, the attempts by Washington to overthrow elected governments, such as Venezuela’s, the collusion between nominal political opponents (Bush and Obama) to stifle a torture investigation and the CIA’s Vault 7 campaign that turned your mobile phone, even your TV set, into a spy in your midst.

WikiLeaks released almost a million documents from Russia which allowed Russian citizens to stand up for their rights. It revealed the Australian government had colluded with the US against its own citizen, Assange. It named those Australian politicians who have “informed” for the US. It made the connection between the Clinton Foundation and the rise of jihadism in American-armed states in the Gulf.

There is more: WikiLeaks disclosed the US campaign to suppress wages in sweatshop countries like Haiti, India’s campaign of torture in Kashmir, the British government’s secret agreement to shield “US interests” in its official Iraq inquiry and the British Foreign Office’s plan to create a fake “marine protection zone” in the Indian Ocean to cheat the Chagos islanders out of their right of return.

In other words, WikiLeaks has given us real news about those who govern us and take us to war, not the preordained, repetitive spin that fills newspapers and television screens. This is real journalism; and for the crime of real journalism, Assange has spent most of the past decade in one form of incarceration or another, including Belmarsh prison, a horrific place.


For those who may have forgotten, WikiLeaks, of which Assange is founder and publisher, exposed the secrets and lies that led to the invasion of Iraq, Syria and Yemen, the murderous role of the Pentagon in dozens of countries, the blueprint for the 20-year catastrophe in Afghanistan, the attempts by Washington to overthrow elected governments, such as Venezuela’s, the collusion between nominal political opponents (Bush and Obama) to stifle a torture investigation and the CIA’s Vault 7 campaign that turned your mobile phone, even your TV set, into a spy in your midst.

Diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, he is a gentle, intellectual visionary driven by his belief that a democracy is not a democracy unless it is transparent, and accountable.

Yesterday, the United States sought the approval of Britain’s High Court to extend the terms of its appeal against a decision by a district judge, Vanessa Baraitser, in January to bar Assange’s extradition.  Baraitser accepted the deeply disturbing evidence of a number of experts that Assange would be at great risk if he were incarcerated in the US’s infamous prison system.

Professor Michael Kopelman, a world authority on neuro-psychiatry, had said Assange would find a way to take his own life -- the direct result of what Professor Nils Melzer, the United Nations Rapporteur on Torture, described as the craven “mobbing” of Assange by governments – and their media echoes.

Those of us who were in the Old Bailey last September to hear Kopelman’s evidence were shocked and moved. I sat with Julian’s father, John Shipton, whose head was in his hands. The court was also told about the discovery of a razor blade in Julian’s Belmarsh cell and that he had made desperate calls to the Samaritans and written notes and much else that filled us with more than sadness.

Watching the lead barrister acting for Washington, James Lewis -- a man from a military background who deploys a cringingly theatrical “aha!” formula with defence witnesses -- reduce these facts to “malingering” and smearing witnesses, especially Kopelman, we were heartened by Kopelman’s revealing response that Lewis’s abuse was “a bit rich” as Lewis himself had sought to hire Kopelman’s  expertise in another case.

Lewis’s sidekick is Clair Dobbin, and yesterday was her day. Completing the smearing of Professor Kopelman was down to her. An American with some authority sat behind her in court.

Dobbin said Kopelman had “misled” Judge Baraister in September because he had not disclosed that Julian Assange and Stella Moris were partners, and their two young children, Gabriel and Max, were conceived during the period Assange had taken refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London.

The implication was that this somehow lessened Kopelman’s medical diagnosis: that Julian, locked up in solitary in Belmarsh prison and facing extradition to the US on bogus “espionage” charges, had suffered severe psychotic depression and had planned, if he had not already attempted, to take his own life.

For her part, Judge Baraitser saw no contradiction. The full nature of the relationship between Stella and Julian had been explained to her in March 2020, and Professor Kopelman had made full reference to it in his report in August 2020. So the judge and the court knew all about it before the main extradition hearing last September. In her judgement in January, Baraitser said this:

[Professor Kopelman] assessed Mr. Assange during the period May to December 2019 and was best placed to consider at first-hand his symptoms. He has taken great care to provide an informed account of Mr. Assange background and psychiatric history. He has given close attention to the prison medical notes and provided a detailed summary annexed to his December report. He is an experienced clinician and he was well aware of the possibility of exaggeration and malingering. I had no reason to doubt his clinical opinion.

She added that she had “not been misled” by the exclusion in Kopelman’s first report of the Stella-Julian relationship and that she understood that Kopelman was protecting the privacy of Stella and her two young children.

In fact, as I know well, the family’s safety was under constant threat to the point when an embassy security guard confessed he had been told to steal one of the baby’s nappies so that a CIA-contracted company could analyse its DNA. There has been a stream of unpublicised threats against Stella and her children.

For the US and its legal hirelings in London, damaging the credibility of a renowned expert by suggesting he withheld this information was a way, they no doubt reckoned, to rescue their crumbling case against Assange. In June, the Icelandic newspaper Stundin reported that a key prosecution witness against Assange has admitted fabricating his evidence. The one “hacking” charge the Americans hoped to bring against Assange if they could get their hands on him depended on this source and witness, Sigurdur Thordarson, an FBI informant.

Thordarson had worked as a volunteer for WikiLeaks in Iceland between 2010 and 2011. In 2011, as several criminal charges were brought against him, he contacted the FBI and offered to become an informant in return for immunity from all prosecution. It emerged that he was a convicted fraudster who embezzled $55,000 from WikiLeaks, and served two years in prison. In 2015, he was sentenced to three years for sex offenses against teenage boys. The Washington Post described Thordarson’s credibility as the “core” of the case against Assange.

Stella with the couple's children.

Yesterday, Lord Chief Justice Holroyde made no mention of this witness. His concern was that it was “arguable” that Judge Baraitser had attached too much weight to the evidence of Professor Kopelman, a man revered in his field. He said it was “very unusual” for an appeal court to have to reconsider evidence from an expert accepted by a lower court, but he agreed with Ms. Dobbin it was "misleading" even though he accepted Kopelman’s “understandable human response” to protect the privacy of Stella and the children.

If you can unravel the arcane logic of this, you have a better grasp than I who have sat through this case from the beginning. It is clear Kopelman misled nobody. Judge Baraitser – whose hostility to Assange personally was a presence in her court – said that she was not misled; it was not an issue; it did not matter. So why had Lord Chief Chief Justice Holroyde spun the language with its weasel legalise and sent Julian back to his cell and its nightmares? There, he now waits for the High Court’s final decision in October – for Julian Assange, a life or death decision.

And why did Holroyde send Stella from the court trembling with anguish? Why is this case “unusual”? Why did he throw the gang of prosecutor-thugs at the Department of Justice in Washington - -- who got their big chance under Trump, having been rejected by Obama – a life raft as their rotting, corrupt case against a principled journalist sunk as surely as Titantic?

This does not necessarily mean that in October the full bench of the High Court will order Julian to be extradited. In the upper reaches of the masonry that is the British judiciary there are, I understand, still those who believe in real law and real justice from which the term “British justice” takes its sanctified reputation in the land of the Magna Carta. It now rests on their ermined shoulders whether that history lives on or dies.

I sat with Stella in the court’s colonnade while she drafted words to say to the crowd of media and well-wishers outside in the sunshine. Clip-clopping along came Clair Dobbin, spruced, ponytail swinging, bearing her carton of files: a figure of certainty: she who said Julian Assange was “not so ill” that he would consider suicide. How does she know?

Has Ms. Dobbin worked her way through the medieval maze at Belmarsh to sit with Julian in his yellow arm band, as Professors Koppelman and Melzer have done, and Stella has done, and I have done? Never mind. The Americans have now “promised” not to put him in a hellhole, just as they “promised” not to torture Chelsea Manning, just as they promised …...

And has she read the WikiLeaks’ leak of a Pentagon document dated 15 March, 2009? This foretold the current war on journalism. US intelligence, it said, intended to destroy WikiLeaks’ and Julian Assange’s “centre of gravity” with threats and “criminal prosecution”. Read all 32 pages and you are left in no doubt that silencing and criminalising independent journalism was the aim, smear the method.

I tried to catch Ms. Dobbin’s gaze, but she was on her way: job done.

Outside, Stella struggled to contain her emotion. This is one brave woman, as indeed her man is an exemplar of courage. “What has not been discussed today,” said Stella, “is why I feared for my safety and the safety of our children and for Julian's life. The constant threats and intimidation we endured for years, which has been terrorising us and has been terrorising Julian for 10 years. We have a right to live, we have a right to exist and we have a right for this nightmare to come to an end once and for all.”

@johnpilger

John Richard Pilger is an Australian journalist, writer, scholar, and documentary filmmaker. He has been mainly based in Britain since 1962. He is also currently Visiting Professor at Cornell University in New York.

 

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The Progressive Death of Progressivism

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By Roger D. Harris
ORINOCO TRIBUNE



Spanish for progressives divided into two parts

Emblematic of our times, the Berniecrat organization Our Revolution – never remotely revolutionary – has rebranded itself as “pragmatic progressive.” This innovation is based on the realization that progressive reforms will never be enacted unless they are fought for. And, since they are not about to fight President Biden, then it is only programmatic to accept that these reforms won’t happen.

Our Revolution surrenders

Goodbye Medicare-for-All, now that Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and even Bernie Sanders have abandoned the cause. Never mind that a majority of the electorate still favors the proposal. But to get Medicare-for-All, progressives would have to stand up to the Democratic Party. And that would entail a fight and therefore is not pragmatic.

A major reason for the Democrat’s obstruction of Medicare-for-All is that the health insurance industry and big pharma bought them off plus the entrenchment of corporate interests more broadly in the party. However, another factor is at work. Access to healthcare free-at-the-point-of-service would make working people more secure. For the exploiting class, it is better to forego a small gain in profits as the tradeoff for keeping workers precarious and thus less demanding. The people who run the Democratic Party know which side of the class barricades they are on; unfortunately, some progressives do not.

Some of the dump-Trump veterans, who are now AWOL in the battle against the current leader of the imperialist camp, proclaim Joe Biden is the political re-incarnation of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Lost in the fog of war is the fact that, for over forty years, Biden has been among the architects of the neoliberal project associated with the Democratic Leadership Group to bury FDR’s New Deal.

The New Deal was an experiment in a mild form of social democracy, where the capitalist ruling class allowed a degree of social welfare state functions in return for labor peace. Ever since Carter, gaining steam with Reagan and Clinton, and continuing now with Biden, neoliberal reform has entailed privatization of education, health, and other state enterprises, economic austerity for working people, and deregulation and tax relief for the corporations, while augmenting the coercive apparatus of the state. In short, since the 1970s, neoliberalism has been the form of contemporary capitalism.

This is what democracy looks like

In the run-up to the US 2020 presidential election, some erstwhile progressives told us to hold our noses and get on the Biden bandwagon. Then, as they worked alongside the decadent Democrats, they became desensitized to the redolence of being in proximity to power. And now some counsel us to stand down to the powerful and join in attacking the official enemies of Washington.

However, some Berniecrats have resisted the succor of the Democrat’s big tent and are still fighting the good fight under the banner of the Movement for a People’s Party. They have had the temerity to picket Squad member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to hold her feet to the fire on her campaign promises.


This is what democracy looks like. Politicians can hardly be blamed for gravitating to the rewards of party orthodoxy, if their constituents fail to demand that they follow through on the platform that got them elected. But for demanding that politicians that talk progressive also walk progressive, those who speak truth to power are attacked by those who no longer consistently do so.

So, we often see the following progression. After shirking from criticizing the powerful, the next career move is to find legitimacy by criticizing those who do. For example, the Young Turks show accused anti-imperialist Grayzone reporter Aaron Mate falsely and without evidence of being “paid by the Russians.”


The Young Turks' Cenk Uygur and co-host Ana Kasparian have stood out as pseudo progressives willing to defame real progressives. 


This is symptomatic of elements of progressivism who have become ever more comfortable with the Democrats as the only alternative to what they perceive as the greater evil of the Republicans. Since they now eschew criticizing those actually in power, they are relegated to attacking the genuine left. Rather than “battling Biden” as they promised after “dumping Trump,” some progressives have descended the slippery slope into providing left cover for the Democrats both on domestic and, as argued below, international fronts.

Covering for imperialism

The domestic capitulation of some self-identified progressives also translates into a deafening silence about opposing the imperialism of the Democratic Party. Shortly after the dawn of the new millennium, the US anti-war movement experienced a resurgence against Republican President George W. Bush’s Iraq war. But soon as Democrat Barack Obama took office, with Bush’s Secretary of Defense Gates still in charge, the anti-war movement collapsed and has been since largely quiescent.

More recently, imperialist ventures have been greeted with more than silence. There are now, unfortunately, full-throated echoes of the imperialist’s talking points by former anti-war activists and intellectuals.


Whatever the intentions of the individual signatories of the petition, its actual impact had nothing to do with freeing someone who was already free and everything to do with providing a left cover for imperialism.

Take the arguably once progressive NACLA (North American Congress on Latin America) in a recent article specifically calling for “taking off the cloak of silence.” NACLA reports on the “long-standing totalitarian Cuban government.” According to the author, an expert on “social and cultural entrepreneurship” (i.e., promotion of capitalism), the US blockade of Cuba “isn’t responsible for the island’s economic downfall. Instead that is a result of the powerful [Cuban government] elite’s iron grip and stockpiling.” Of course, if that were anywhere near the truth, the US would have no need for the blockade.

This takes place in the context of President Biden doubling down on a regime-change offensive, reversing campaign promises to reverse Trump’s illegal sanctions on Cuba. Washington now believes Cuba is close to falling due to the deprivation caused by the ever-tightening US blockade exacerbated by the COVID pandemic.

Further, NACLA tells us that the view of Cuba as a “model for many anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements” is not only wrong but that the Cuban’s attempt at socialism is based on “an economic model that is inherently ineffective.” Unfortunately, that verdict has a perverse element of truth. As long as the US can impose suffocating unilateral coercive measures on Cuba and other small nations striving for an alternative to neoliberalism, the socialist model will not be allowed to succeed.

Socialism is supposed to satisfy people’s needs, while capitalism is inherently a system that creates unlimited perceived needs without the means for their fulfillment. That is, under capitalism, a system driven by individual greed, one cannot ever accumulate too much. The carrot on a stick, perpetually dangled out of reach, is the essence of what the author of the NACLA article proudly calls “entrepreneurship.”

But what happens when – as the NACLA article admonishes – the nation striving for socialism can no longer “cover the basic necessities to make daily life worth living”? Apparently, solidarity with the Cubans against attacks by the world’s superpower is not paramount for some self-identified progressives who issued a recent petition to the Cuban government.

Their Change.org petition, quoting Rosa Luxemburg on freedom from a repressive state, demanded the release of Frank García Hernández arrested by the Cuban government on July 11. However, Mr. García had already been released the following day, while the petition was still being circulated.

Whatever the intentions of the individual signatories of the petition, its actual impact had nothing to do with freeing someone who was already free and everything to do with providing a left cover for imperialism. Had the signatories been genuinely concerned with what they perceived as an overreaction by the Cubans to a manifestly existential security threat to their revolution, they should have also addressed the petition to the White House and demanded the ending or at least easing of that security threat. Some of these same individuals have also signed petitions against Nicaragua, Syria, and other official enemies of the US.

Struggling on two fronts

Meanwhile, the neoliberal order is becoming more and more exposed, with billionaires increasing their net worth astronomically while working people face a yet to be contained pandemic with inadequate healthcare, unemployment, and austerity. This is fuel for the populist right-wing, which could be the shock troops of a fascist movement. But we are not there yet.

The legitimate concern about fascism, when associated exclusively with Trump and his followers, has been used by some self-identified progressives as an excuse to embrace the Democrats. The struggle against “neofascist” Trumpism has been coopted into a surrender into the main party now in charge of the imperialist state and increasingly distinguishing itself as the leading proponent of war.

The January 6th riot by Trump supporters at the Capitol Building was conflated by Democrats into a coup attempt of new kind where the perpetrators, instead of taking state power, took selfies and went home. Some of the villains of January 6th, Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, turned out to be friendly with the FBI and possibly agents with get-out-of-jail-free passes.

It would be cold comfort for progressives to discover that they have triumphed against the crude fascism of working-class guys with tattoos only to find that the friendly fascism of Saint Robert Mueller’s national security state has prevailed. Progressives, who have their cannons aimed at Mar-a-Lago, may be leaving their backs exposed to those who now hold state power in Washington.

The ensuing clamor after January 6 from would-be progressives to expand the already enormous police powers of the state against protesters is an example of the dictum that you should be careful about what you wish for. The state coercive apparatus – police, military, homeland security, FBI, CIA, NSA, etc. – has been and will be used against the left.

The genuinely progressive solution is not to support one or the other neoliberal party, which are collectively the perpetrators of the current calamity, but to struggle against the conditions that foster a right-wing insurgency. That is, resist both right-wing populism and the established ruling class, with the main emphasis on those in power.


Roger Harris from Corte Madera, California, has a special interest in Venezuela and Cuba. He is on the central committee of the Peace and Freedom Party and is involved with the Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library. He is also a Certified Wildlife Biologist and conservationist, leading whale watching trips for the Oceanic Society and birding for the Marin Audubon Society. He is on the Marin County Parks and Open Space Commission. He is retired from an employee-owned environmental consulting firm, where he specialized in endangered species, wetlands, and native habitat restoration.

 

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The Unmasking of Imperialist Media by Jimmy Dore & Others is Not Just Drama

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The Unmasking of Imperialist Media by Jimmy Dore & Others is Not Just Drama


The always formidable Fiorella Isabel provides an eloquent description of the current hostility between opportunists and fake leftists (the Young Turks and their supporters and sycophants, plus a hefty contingent of pro-imperialism "breadtubers" like Vaush, Skipy the ear, etc.) and the genuine left, led by Jimmy Dore, the tireless folks at The Grayzone (Ben Norton, Aaron Maté, Max Blumenthal, and Anya Parampil), plus Eva Bartlett, Vanessa Beeley, Abby Martin, Lee Camp, Caleb Maupin and others of that caliber and dedication. In this kerfuffle, which is, as Fiorella points out, far from being a superficial and egotistical "drama" about mere personalities but a struggle for the very survival and viability of the genuine anti-imperialist left, many folks, like Kyle Kulinksy and Krystal Ball, are opportunistically sitting on the fence or actually supporting the fake leftists, thereby operating de facto as obstacles to the advance of antiwar forces.


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An Ugly War Among Leftist YouTubers Shows Two Common, Toxic Pathologies Plaguing U.S. Politics

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This is an article from our series on septic media




Baselessly accusing people of being Russian agents and weaponizing accusations of sexual misconduct are reputation-destroying cancers at the heart of liberal discourse.




The Young Turks’ co-hosts Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian, respectively, accuse independent journalist Aaron Maté of being “paid by the Russians” and working for “disgusting dictators,” May 26, 2021.


An incredibly vicious and protracted war is being waged, seemingly with no end in sight, among numerous prominent liberal and left-wing commentators who work primarily on YouTube. The conflict erupted on May 26 when Cenk Uygur — the founder and long-time host of The Young Turks, the largest liberal-left YouTube platform — baselessly and falsely accused independent journalist Aaron Maté of being “paid by the Russians,” while his co-host, Ana Kasparian, spouted innuendo that Maté was “working for” unnamed dictators.

Maté is one of the very few left-wing journalists who reported skeptically on Russiagate and who questioned the U.S. Government’s narrative about the civil war in Syria, including by traveling to war-torn parts of that country to do so. He won the 2019 Park Center for Independent Media’s Izzy Award for his work debunking Russiagate. Yet with a one-minute rant from their insulated studio, Uygur baselessly branded Maté as someone who is “paid by the Russians” while Kasparian asserted that he “seemed” to be working for Assad and other dictators — a potentially reputation-destroying smear for a journalist and one that can be quite dangerous for a reporter who, like Maté, works on the ground in war zones.

The conflict engendered by those grotesque fabrications escalated significantly when Kasparian sent a private Twitter message to one of Maté’s defenders, Jimmy Dore, in which she threatened to accuse Dore of #MeToo-type sexual harassment from when they worked together seven years earlier. Kasparian made clear that her intent to publicly vilify Dore as a sexual harasser would serve as punishment for his criticisms of The Young Turks. Dore then revealed Kasparian’s threat on his program, and days later, Kasparian made good on her threat by accusing Dore of sexual harassment back in 2014.

Twitter Direct Message from The Young Turks’ Ana Kasparian to Jimmy Dore, Apr. 14, 2016 and June 11, 2021.




While I used my social media platforms to denounce the false accusations voiced by Uygur and Kasparian against Maté, none of this would merit an article or stand-alone commentary if not for the fact that the two weapons they chose — false accusations that someone is a paid Russian agent and exploited sexual harassment accusations — have become extremely commonplace in Democratic Party politics, liberal circles and U.S. politics more broadly. It is long past time — way past time — that these tactics be rejected and scorned by everyone regardless of ideology or personality preferences.

I decided to analyze and dissect this conflict not in order to narrate everything that happened here or to arbitrate who is right and wrong with respect to every disagreement these parties are having. Instead, it is worth examining because the way this nasty exchange unfolded provides such a vivid and illuminating case study of two metastasizing cancers at the heart of liberal discourse. Both of these weapons are ethically repugnant and corrupt — obviously so — yet somehow have become as common and accepted among Democratic Party followers as they are toxic and reprehensible.

From Hillary Clinton and Howard Dean to Rachel Maddow and countless other liberal cable hosts, casually and falsely smearing people as paid Russian agents is now completely normalized behavior in liberal culture. And the list of people whose reputations have been destroyed from evidence-free and cynically deployed sexual harassment allegations or other vague accusations of sexual misconduct is too long to comprehensively chronicle. I examine these two issues in the format of video, which can be watched on the player below, because that is where so much of it has played out and because it seemed that is how the severity and magnitude of these abuses could be most effectively conveyed:


Glenn Greenwald is a journalist, former constitutional lawyer, and author of four New York Times bestselling books on politics and law. His most recent book, “No Place to Hide,” is about the U.S. surveillance state and his experiences reporting on the Snowden documents around the world. His forthcoming book, to be published in April, 2021, is about Brazilian history and current politics, with a focus on his experience in reporting a series of exposés in 2019 and 2020 which exposed high-level corruption by powerful officials in the government of President Jair Bolsonaro, which subsequently attempted to prosecute him for that reporting. Foreign Policy magazine named Greenwald one of the top 100 Global Thinkers for 2013. He was the debut winner, along with “Democracy Now’s” Amy Goodman, of the Park Center I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism in 2008, and also received the 2010 Online Journalism Award for his investigative work breaking the story of the abusive detention conditions of Chelsea Manning.

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