LIBERAL IDIOCY

CHRIS HEDGES—Woke ideology is pervasive in liberal institutions, especially universities, but does it further and hamper the liberal values and inclusiveness it purports to advocate? It seeks to transform society through what Christian Parenti calls the moralizing micropolitics of politicized etiquette. It is fixated on the politics of language and symbols, the sins of cultural appropriation and misnaming and calls for centering historically oppressed groups. It advocates identity politics, prioritizing race, gender, indigeneity, sexual orientation, physical disability, mental health diagnoses, immigration status and socioeconomic status over political content. Woke discourse, Parenti writes, “is imbued with a therapeutic mentality expressed in safety-obsessed incantations about harm, trauma, healing, care and doing the work. Personal struggles take precedent over political struggles.

JIMMY DORE—A range of prominent commentators, business executives and celebrities including Dave Portnoy, hedge fund manager Eric Reiner, Ben Shapiro and Michael Rappaport chimed in to respond with apparent glee to the recent pager attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon. For individuals who express such concern over terrorism attacks that have killed and maimed Israelis, this giddiness represents a real surprise — or at least it would if they adopted a universal code of morality. Jimmy and Americans’ Comedian Kurt Metzger discuss these individuals’ love of Israel expressed through joy at the deaths of Lebanese children.

RAMIN MAZAHERI—The nationalist view of modern history obscures the fact that it is ideologies which matter, not borders. Ideologies are what produce and define management systems – i.e. governments – and it’s crystal clear that the last 15 years have seen the socialist-inspired management system (China, Iran, North Korea and to a lesser extent Russia) defeat the liberalism-inspired management system economically, militarily and politically. Liberalism is at a Great Depression-level nadir in terms of global admiration.

THOMAS FAZI—Javier Milei, Argentina’s self-styled “anarcho-capitalist” president, enjoys an almost Christ-like status among heterodox conservatives and MAGA-style Right-wingers, almost on a par with Trump himself. Like lovestruck teenagers, a certain type of conservative drools over Milei’s over-the-top mannerisms and “based” speeches against “libtards” and “communists”.

There is, however, a problem: aside from his questionable hairstyle and swamp-draining rhetoric, Milei actually has very little in common with Trump. For all his faults, Trump stood on a platform that rejected the neoliberal orthodoxy that had defined the Republican Party ever since the Reagan era. Trump’s agenda, by contrast, was markedly anti-libertarian: he advocated economic nationalism and protectionism, lambasted globalisation, promised to protect social welfare programmes, vowed to support local industries, and even courted the labour movement.

EDITOR—The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate on the stunning victory of George Galloway in the Rochdale parliamentary by-election over a Labour candidate, which he dedicated to the people of Gaza, and the freakout it has caused among the British establishment. The team at Due Dissidence—Russell Dobular and Keaton Weiss—add their interpretations, along with their London guest, Ian Puddick.