VIDEOS

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.

MAX PARRY—Maupin emphasizes that the intelligentsia of the New Left were actively supported by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) through its clandestine Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) program during the Cold War, which sought to subvert the sympathies of liberals and the non-communist left with the Soviet Union through the covert funding of prominent literary magazines, journals, international conferences, modern art exhibitions, and other cultural activities. The objective was to promote an intellectual consensus on the Western left that the Soviet Union was to be opposed as much as capitalism and it was indisputably successful.

Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton speak about the dystopian show trial going on against political prisoner Julian Assange with journalist Kevin Gosztola, who is covering the UK court hearings to potentially extradite the WikiLeaks publisher to the US. We discuss the major threat this case poses to the freedom of the press — yet how it is being criminally under-reported and whitewashed in the corporate media.

Red Lines host Anya Parampil speaks with The Grayzone’s Ben Norton about his recent piece “U.S. govt-linked PR firm ran fake news networks for right-wing Latin American regimes.” They discuss Facebook’s recent announcement that it deleted dozens of accounts run by a Washington D.C. based PR firm called CLS Strategies. The accounts sought to undermine the democratically elected governments of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico, as well as boost support for the Bolivian coup regime. They also address CLS Strategies’ close ties to the Democratic Party and a potential Biden Administration.

KIM PETERSEN—Given the paucity of rigorous reporting in news media, especially among state and corporate media, RT has for the most part been a necessary and much appreciated breath of fresh air. For this media consumer, RT, CGTN, and Press TV (of those media that I am most aware) are among the most credible of news media. RT has a slogan it promotes: “question more.” It is excellent advice, and RT on-air personalities should abide by it. However, episodes like this one hosted by Malzberg make “question more” seem like an empty slogan.