Socialism Without Anti-Imperialism: A Different Flavor of Tyranny
"...has coincided ominously with a wave of open liberal imperialism defined by...militarist creep-a-zoids like Adam Schiff"
Well dearest motherfuckers, socialism is back and it only took about a century, or at least so it appears. Nearly half the country has polled as being down with Debs. In spite of the worst efforts of his party’s trenchant neoliberal leadership, Bernie Sanders, who splays his socialist ID loud and proud, is now the undeniable frontrunner in the 2020 Democratic Primaries and even his moderate competition are aping his modus operandi.
For the first time in ever, formerly far-left positions like single-payer and free tuition have become so mainstream that they’re downright boring. Even beyond America’s official “left-wing” party, the socialist renaissance is in full bloom. At over 50,000 members, the once flimsy Democratic Socialists of America is now the largest American socialist organization since the height of the Labor Movement. More young people self-identify as proud socialists than ever before. So why the fuck am I so bummed?
Like America, my own relationship with socialism is a long and complicated one. A big part of the reason for our country’s conflicted relationship with the S word has to do with the fact that it’s loaded like a shotgun. This is why, while some 40 something percent of Americans are horny for socialism, another 50 something still find the word itself to be utterly terrifying. The reality is, if you really break it down, socialism is just some system of governance which affords some form of social ownership over the means of production. Democrats and Republicans alike have almost always supported some variant of socialist policy when it suits them. I myself follow a decidedly purist strain of this philosophy often referred to as libertarian socialism.
While in the past I’ve danced with the devil of full-tilt Bolshevism and I continue to stubbornly defend the legacy of Third World state socialists like Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, I’ve come to the hard-fought conclusion that the only way for truly empowered social ownership of basic human rights like healthcare and education to exist is for it to be wholly decentralized, voluntary and operated from the bottom up.
The idea of Bernie’s Medicare for All just sounds like swapping masters to me, from corporate bag munchers to federal bag munchers. I’m already experiencing Medicare for Some as a legally disabled agoraphobic and let me tell you, there is exactly nothing empowering about it. I feel like shit being barely strung along by the very same folks who brought us Waco, Ludlow and My Lai, and that brings me to the biggest bug I have up my ass about millennial socialism.
While America’s last great socialist era was defined by diehard peaceniks like Eugene Debs and Norman Thomas, socialism 2.0 seems to have little to no room for the leftist cornerstone that brought me to socialism in the first place, Anti-Imperialism. Oh sure, Bernie pays lip-service to broad notions of peace, love and understanding, but the most left-wing class in modern Democratic Primary history can’t seem to be bothered to give a fuck about war for longer than two debate questions and a soundbite. Tulsi Gabbard, the only candidate who dared to make the issue a priority, has been run off the reservation like a feral goat.
When you dig deeper into this phenomena, things only get more sinister. Bernie Sanders has strongly endorsed every massacre ever thrown by a member of his surrogate party, including downright genocidal ones like Clinton’s baby-killing sanctions regime in Iraq. In fact, the Democrats newfound infatuation with seemingly radical leftist state programs like the Green New Deal has coincided ominously with a wave of open liberal imperialism defined by the Russophobic New Cold War of militarist creep-a-zoids like Adam Schiff. Turn on MSDNC and you’ll hear an earful of pro-war cheerleading that is eerily reminiscent of Bush-era Fox News. So what the fucking is going on here?
We’ve seen this specific perversion of leftism before, dearest motherfuckers, and it ain’t got dick to do with Debs. It’s a sick cousin of Bernie’s other roll models, FDR and LBJ. A form of pro-war socialism that essentially amounts to blood and butter payola. In times of extreme upheaval like the Great Depression and the radical end of the Civil Rights Era, members of America’s elite parties and institutions have often conceded to light-weight genres of social democracy as a matter of staving off more revolutionary socialist impulses. The New Deal and the Great Society weren’t fantastic advancements in workers rights. They were top-down mechanisms designed to pay off the reasonably pissed proletariat to clear the fucking streets while our version of the left nuked Hiroshima and gassed Indochina. It’s fucking hush money and it worked. The mighty Labor Movement which earned us weekends and the 24-hour work week was affectively assimilated into the federal beast by FDR, and LBJ managed to castrate the Black Power Movement with welfare checks just when militants were taking whole cities back from the pigs in post-MLK urban meltdowns. And here comes Uncle Bernie with a pocket full of hard candy.
Don’t fucking fall for it, dearest motherfuckers. Like any political science, there are many schools of socialism and not all of them are benevolent. Any form of socialism which doesn’t put anti-imperialism front and center can best be described as a variant of national socialism. One that fattens up the proletariat on the spoils of conquest. I don’t know about you kiddies, but that is not what I signed up for.
Source: Exile in Happy Valley
sanders, an obvious fascist, fully reflects the amerikan character===manichean, dualist, barbaric”. (Galtung)….for amerikans socialism means free burgers and marijauna===amerikans r the most immoral people on the planet live in ‘THE ULTIMAte trickster’s paradise” (Bercovitch)…there is no surprise that the anloshere has never produced a moral philosophy…
there can be no social change in the USA===passive, submissive, shallow, automatons will never produce fundamental social change
If one were to read FDR’s speech from 1944, you will get a good idea of Democratic Socialism….which the majority of Americans prefer. We’ll see how 11/20 pans out..
and if Sanders isn’t shoved out by the DNC, you can plan on him running against the orange goon in the White House.
The one significant thing that just came on my radar today is a report that Mr. Sanders will not be attending the upcoming AIPAC shindig anytime soon. Apparently, he has never attended one! Is this true, anybody?
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/bernie-sanders-would-skip-aipac-conference-on-political-reasons-20200223-0016.html
a socialist is a communist with a pen
a communist is a socialist with a tank
I wonder, anyone here?, if the Adam Schiff is related to Peter Schiff and/or Jacob Schiff. And what’s the relationship between Petter Schiff and Jacob Schiff?
Anyone knows? I know that Jacob Schiff is the Jew who was financially responsible for the victory of the Bolsheviks. He bankrolled their bloody revolution with millions of dollars which today would be in the range of 500 million to 1 billion dollars.
Bravo for calling out Adam Schiff!
Yet we have had Socialism for decades in the US and I don’t mean the New Deal era programs.. It’s Socialism for the elites and super rich, socialism for the bankers and hedge funds, socialism for the Medical/Pharmaceutical giants, socialism for the creeping expansion of the military/security State. Not for everybody else.
But I myself don’t believe Sanders is a Socialist and his voting record proves it. I know for sure many card carrying Socialists don’t think so either.. check out WSWS! But if a fair election puts Sanders in the White House he will be our President, not Stalin. And really? people are all taking sides and especially wanting to defeat hated Socialism and praise righteous Capitalism as if this was a religious conflict! The above commentary demonstrates that.
True Socialism whatever that means will come to America when and if a majority of Americans vote it in. It’s called Democracy. Fascism as we have seen especially since Bush and now Trump will come in the middle of the night with badges and balaclavas.. it will execute your dog, confiscate your weapons, put a hood over your head and drag you and your computer and phones away.
It’s a Brave New World.
Your last couple of sentences actually sounds more like what happens in Syria,Iran, China and Russia
USA doesn’t have Socialism. It has Corporatism. Seems a LOT of people make that very common mistake, so dont get bummed. The difference is profound. Socialism makes priority helping ordinary people, while corporatism makes priority helping a handful of super rich. I lived under socialism and I KNOW what it meants. it means NO homeless and beggars on the street, good social services, free medical care, and very little crime. I lived under it for 18 years so I KNOW what Im talking about.
Corporatism is the exact opposite of Socialism. it means 0.0001% own everything, no social services, plenty of homeless and beggars on the street and high crime. . And that describes USA exactly.
We live in a combination of Brave New WOrld and 1984.
Corporatism = Socialism for Corporations.. Don’t get bummed.
You nailed it! The Yankees and most of their five-eyes citizens are clueless about what “socialism” really is all about, especially in practice. They believe that it is NOT the responsibility of the government to help ordinary people. And when their government helps out the 1% and/or their corporations, they have no problems whatsoever with this “socialism for the rich”!
Bingo! And I might add that under the system of the 1% (your 0.0001%), everything and everyone is runned by a few billionaires like in the USA.