American socialism revisited: “Lefty” Hooligan, “What’s Left?”, October 2021

Socialism for the rich; capitalism for the poor.

It’s an oft-repeated Leftist cliché that encapsulates an entire socio-political-economic analysis in a single sentence. It was first promulgated by Michael Harrington and frequently repeated by the likes of Noam Chomsky, Bernie Sanders, and Robert Reich. The gist of this argument is that capitalist corporations receive government largess in the form of subsidies, tax breaks, and favorable legislation while the general population is left to fend for itself. Big business regularly receives favorable treatment and corporate welfare from the government which allows corporations to “privatize profits and socialize losses.” The rest of us are shit-out-of-luck.(1)

Manhunt: Deadly Games review: “Lefty” Hooligan, March 2021

There’s a point in the Netflix series Manhunt: Deadly Games when ATF agent, explosives expert and good-ol-boy Earl Embry says of Richard Jewell—the man falsely accused of the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing by the FBI and the media—that he was an easy target.

“Fat. Southern. Poor.” Played by Arliss Howard, Embry drawls. “He’s presumed guilty ‘cause he’s a bubba. Yeah, well … Hey, I’m a bubba.”

During the media feeding frenzy following the bombing, a newspaper posts the libelous headline “The Bubba Bomber” over Jewell’s picture. A subplot in Deadly Games involves the North Carolina Regulators militia that might as well be called bubba anarchism. Welcome to this installment of American Exceptionalism: Extremist Edition.

Trump’s workers’ party debunked: “What’s Left?” January 2021

It pisses me off.

In 2015 Breitbart ran a story by Lisa De Pasquale entitled “Political Punks” that détourned the famous 1976 Ramones record cover by superimposing the heads of rightwingers Greg Gutfeld, Clint Eastwood, Ann Coulter and Gavin McInnes over the four original band members.

Blasphemy!

Writing and self-isolating in a time of plague: “What’s Left?” May 2020 (MRR #444)

The terrifying thing about an outbreak that requires people not to leave their homes for 90 days is it means the only ones to survive will be freelance writers.
—Sam Adams, senior editor, Slate Magazine

I dropped out of graduate school at UCSD in 1979 after a traumatic breakup with a lover. I spent the next two plus years drunk twenty-four/seven, even spending nine months homeless living in and around the UCSD campus. Friends helped me reconstruct my life, find a place to live and get a job. And from that point on until my retirement I was gainfully employed.

Almost.

Practical resistance: “What’s Left?” June 2014, MRR #373

The logic is inescapable. If US politics are irredeemably corrupt, then to try and reform them is a waste of time, even counter productive. If America is bound and determined to destroy the planet through its imperial activity, then to sustain this country is folly while to hasten its demise is necessity.

Only a fool fights in a burning house.

I’ve been on a doom-and-gloom jag lately. We’re all fucked, everything is going down the porcelain highway, the planet is bound for a slow-motion apocalypse. I keep harping on this pessimistic perspective, which allows for only two real choices; burn it all down, or party hard and die young. Well, this column I will mention a couple of political causes that you can get behind that might make a difference. Winning them won’t bring about The Revolution, which I’m convinced isn’t happening in my lifetime, but these small victories might make our lives a little bit easier, and counter the rampant nihilism in which I’m currently mired. But first, a sidebar with respect to relevance.

I once did an interview with David McReynolds in the 1980s for San Diego Newsline, a tiny independent community newspaper. McReynolds was a pacifist and democratic socialist, a member of the War Resisters League and the Socialist Party USA, of which he was their presidential candidate. He said something during that interview that has stayed with me, with regard to a central fallacy in Marxism. This fallacy holds true for both orthodox, vulgar Marxism (which called itself “scientific socialism”) and the plethora of Leninist variations of Marxism (all hail the science of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse Tung Thought!). As McReynolds explained, in science and the mathematics upon which science is based, 2+2=4. This formula is correct, and science is based upon a number of such correct formulations, truths that cannot be denied without denying reality itself.

If, however, your political ideology is defined as “scientific,” or “based on science,” or a “science” unto itself, then the formulations of your ideology are supposed to be scientifically correct. There are various and sundry Marxist and Leninist sects which promulgate their “correct political line” as scientific fact, on everything from whether or not to vote for Obama to who to support in the Syrian civil war. In the case of Syria, for instance, these sectoids fight over whether to support Assad whole heartedly, or provisionally, or as “objectively anti-imperialist,” debating in turn whether to support the Syrian opposition unreservedly, or reservedly, or just one or another opposition organization or individual. On this one issue alone, there can be a myriad contending positions, and believe me, there are scores of Leftoid sects vying against each other for possession of the correct political line on the Syrian civil war. Problem is, if all these groupuscules possess a political ideology based on science, and if their political pronouncements are all supposed to be scientifically correct, then why the fuck do they all disagree so vehemently with each other on virtually everything?

That’s because Marxism is not a science. But rather than argue this further (let alone probe the difference between ideology and theory), I will present a couple of political issues that most of us will consider important, broadly define as correct, and ultimately hope to see triumph in order to make our lives better. Unless, of course, you contend that “the worse things are, the better things are,” that the more miserable most of humanity becomes, the faster we all will inevitably rise up in revolution against state and capital. In which case, you can stop reading now.

STOP THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP

The Obama Administration is currently negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a free trade treaty on steroids. Encompassing a dozen nations around the Pacific Rim (Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore,Vietnam, and the United States), with more hoping to join, the TPP is being negotiated behind closed doors. The rigid secrecy extends to members of the US Congress, who aren’t privy to most of what’s being discussed, and who are prohibited from disclosing the little they do know. Shit has been leaking out about the TPP negotiations however, and it ain’t looking good. In addition to all the official government representatives cutting deals in smoke-filled rooms, there are over 600 business representatives from the likes of Chevron, Walmart and Halliburton participating in these trade talks. Similar trade deals in the past have resulted in 3 billion plus dollars in corporate handouts.

There are provisions for media censorship and the banning of buy-local policies. Big Pharma will be allowed to limit access to medicines, and governments will be restricted from regulating food labeling. Workers rights, organizing, and safety will be severely undermined. Foreign companies will be able to legally challenge US environmental regulation. Increased fracking, and the increased export of all fossil fuels will be promoted. In turn, fossil fuel corporations will be allowed to sue governments that stand in their way. The TPP is not so subtly considered an effort to encircle and contain China internationally. Finally, this massive corporate power grab, neoliberal restructuring of government power, systematic suppression of human and workers rights, and gutting of the climate and environment which the Trans-Pacific Partnership represents is intended to be pushed through the US Congress using Fast Track. Fast Track is a legislative process by which treaties are railroaded through without any opportunity for discussion, debate or amendment by up or down vote only.

We need to stop the TPP by any and all means necessary.

SEE SOMETHING, LEAK SOMETHING

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was intended to provide clear democratic access and oversight of federal intelligence and security agencies—the CIA, NSA, FBI and DIA specifically—by giving individual citizens a mechanism to request and receive classified documents being held by those agencies. But when MIT PhD candidate Ryan Shapiro made FOIA requests of three of the above agencies for documents regarding allegations that a CIA tip led to the arrest of Nelson Mandela by South Africa’s apartheid government in 1962, and Mandela’s subsequent internment in prison for 27 years, all three stonewalled Shapiro and denied his FOIA requests on grounds of national security, national defense, and executive privilege.

The Catch 22 Squared around this needs to be emphasized. The CIA, NSA, FBI and DIA are tasked with protecting national security, and thus see threats to national security at every turn and under every rock. The anti-war, anti-apartheid, and radical green movements, everything from the Left to Occupy Wall Street, have all been considered threats to national security and potential sources of domestic terrorism. Nelson Mandela himself was denounced as a Marxist terrorist, and remained on the US terror watch list until 2008. US security and intelligence agencies have been, and continue to be instrumental in the surveillance and subversion of all these progressive movements. For these agencies, the FOIA itself is a threat to national security, and those who request classified material through the FOIA are also considered threats to national security. In the case of the NSA, that agency completely refused to acknowledge the very existence of the documents requested by Shapiro in denying his FOIA application.

Shapiro, who has made over 400 FOIA requests over other issues in the past, decided to draw the line when the CIA, FBI, NSA and DIA used their official position to thwart his FOIA requests regarding Mandela by issuing repeated national security exemptions. In January 2014, Shapiro filed a lawsuit against the CIA, DOD, DOJ and NSA for their non-compliance.

“The failure of the NSA, FBI, DIA, and CIA to comply with my FOIA requests for records on Mandela highlights that FOIA is broken and that this sad reality is just one component among many of the ongoing crisis of secrecy we now face,” Shapiro says. The issue for him is that the public needs to keep the government accountable. “It’s not surprising those in power wish to keep their actions secret. What’s surprising is how readily we tolerate it. We are all familiar with the security-oriented signage instructing us to ‘See something, Say something.’ In the interest of promoting a fuller conception of national security, I add, ‘See something, Leak something.’ The viability of our democracy may depend upon it.”

It’s simple. See something, Leak something.

***

I’ll mention principled political issues from time to time in future columns, to try and counteract my deep and deepening cynicism and pessimism. It’ll be an uphill struggle, all the way.

Stranger in a strange land: “What’s Left?” October 2009, MRR #317

And Moses was content to dwell with the man: and he gave Moses Zipporah his daughter. And she bare him a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land.

Exodus 2:21-22

I’m riding on a bus, or sitting in a library, or sipping tea in a coffee shop, or even relaxing in a chair at home, and I’m tired. I didn’t get enough sleep the night before, so pretty soon I’m nodding off. My head slumps, my mouth drops open, I start to snore. Everything goes black. It lasts only a moment, though for all I know I’m out for hours. Suddenly, with a start, I’m awake again. I don’t know where I am or what I’m doing. The sense of disorientation is profound. Sometimes, it feels as if I’ve been transported to an alien world. Sometimes, I can’t even understand what the people around me are saying.

For an instant, I’m utterly bewildered.

That sense of complete estrangement, of being a stranger in a strange land, is how I’ve been feeling lately. The Left in this country is rallying around a president who makes sweetheart deals with Wall Street and Big Pharma, asserts executive power and privilege against Congress, regularly withholds information from the public on grounds of national security, and steadily escalates US military involvement in a foreign quagmire, while the Right protests and riots in the streets. It’s enough to give this aging commie vertigo.

For the record, I don’t give a flying fuck about Obama.

I won’t spill any ink debunking the significance of Barack Obama’s electoral victory in particular, or of the increase in Democratic party clout generally. Nor will I waste my time trying to disabuse people of the belief that some kind of revolution happened last November 8. The next few years are bound to deeply disappoint a lot of young people, bleeding-heart liberals, and aging ‘60s lefties who’ve come to consider Obama as God’s gift to progressive politics. But, maybe not. I know way too many progressive types who look fondly back to the Clinton years, despite the fact that Bill Clinton gutted welfare, pushed through NAFTA’s ratification, and initiated the policy of regime change against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. For all of Obama’s criticisms of Bush, there are numerous ways in which our current president’s policies are a mere continuation of his predecessors, as Michael Hirsh has so ably pointed out in his 7-31-09 Newsweek article “Barack W. Bush.” I’ve done a number of columns in the past about how there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the Democrats and the Republicans, and I could do many more columns about how Obama is the nothing more than the ever-so-slightly-to-the-left-of-center face of the American ruling class.

What’s far more interesting to me is that such a modest shift in political emphasis within the American bourgeoisie would cause such a monumental tumult, as well as the disconcerting Left-Right reversal mentioned above. The Left bitches about Obama’s betrayals, yet falls into line behind the Democrats when push comes to shove. The Right claims the mantle of populist rebellion, yet gets its marching orders from its corporate Republican enablers. When the SEIU and AFL-CIO announced that they would counter the presence of the birthers, tea bag partiers and other fringe rightists at the August congressional town hall meetings devoted to discussing health care reform, I had visions of Weimar Germany, of Communists and Nazis battling each other in the streets. Then I remembered how well that turned out for the working people of Germany, not to mention for the Left, the Jews, Gypsies, and gays, let alone for the Poles, Russians, French and much of the rest of Europe. I have no doubt who would win in any scenario where there’s actual street fighting between Left and Right in this country. Concentration camp stripes do not become me.

One small incident did help restore my sense of sanity in the topsy-turvy political landscape of the past several months. On July 20, members of Crimethinc Ex-Workers Collective (CWC) attempted to hold a Convergence in Pittsburgh. A group of Anarchist People of Color (APOC) converged as well and unceremoniously evicted the CWC folk five days later, condemning them for white supremacy in the anarchist movement, and gentrification of the surrounding impoverished neighborhood. Folks critical of APOC have used terms ranging from misguided and wrong to idiotic and racist to agent provocateurish and COINTELPRO in describing their actions.

By the way, I don’t give a flying fuck about Crimethinc or APOC either. Plug those two names into Google, and spend the next umpteen wasted hours reading the utter crap from both sides, and everything in between, about the incident. Don’t expect me to reprise the sorry facts here. The capacity for the anarchist movement to tear itself to shreds, to give sectarianism a good name, to make itself look the fool, is limitless. That’s reassuring. It’s what I’ve come to expect, given past practice.

I’m no longer a stranger in a strange land. I’m right at home.

I hear that APOC has denounced Food Not Bombs as white supremacist, and that the National Anarchists are using this anarcho-debacle to try to recruit disaffected white anarchists into their ranks. These shenanigans reaffirm that modern anarchism has become a pathetic joke. At a time when conventional politics seem to have turned upside down, it’s good to know that something like anarchism’s propensity for self-humiliation and self-destruction remains a constant upon which I can depend.