by Ramin Mazaheri (@RaminMazaheri2) for the Saker Blog
It was an interesting ride, at least, but the Electoral College’s vote for Joe Biden marks the definitive end of the Donald Trump presidency.
Trump was somebody you could never support in a vacuum, only by comparison; there’s nothing wrong with a united Europe but not this American-penned, neoliberal version, so it’s clear why Britain chose Brexit; France has long been the West’s only hope, so it’s not fair to put the politically advanced, physically courageous, full of solidarité Yellow Vests in with this group, but all three here are certainly related.
I never supported Trump. What I support is the fight against fake-leftism, which is the perhaps the biggest threat to real leftism.
Many Anglophones now have no idea what I am talking about. That’s a problem.
There’s a problem when you Google such a hugely important concept like “fake-leftism” and Ramin Mazaheri has multiple hits on the very first results page: what on earth have Anglophones been talking – or not talking – about?
Fake-leftism is such a huge threat because we all know what the right-wing wants – they are totally clear about it, and that is at least respectable. It must be conceded that while some of their values (like rabid anti-socialism) have no merit at all, some of their other values are respectable and cannot destroyed any more than yang can destroy yin.
So in many vital ways fake-leftism is as big a threat to leftism as rightism because fake-leftists are right-wingers in disguise on some issues and totally deluded about what true leftism is on other issues – they distort, distract and undermine real leftism and thus are actually perpetually engaged in pushing things always to the right.
So spending time fighting fake-leftism is certainly just as vital as opposing right-wing forces. Unfortunately, there are enormous, tedious, ineffective reams of the latter and yet so little of the former that I am seemingly in the position to monetise the term “fake-leftism” with T-shirts and coffee mugs?
Let’s start in the opposite direction: what is fake-rightism?
It’s very interesting to listen to American fascist media. I am not referring to Fox News, nor even Christian conservative radio. The US has genuinely, openly fascist media you can find on the fringe, but I’m not going to give them free publicity by listing them.
As a daily hack journalist it’s my job to listen to everyone and quickly provide copy; and perhaps temperamentally I am simply lucky in that I can listen to people I disagree with without getting angry.
These American fascist media are full of unacceptable racism and hatred but still can provide some very unique takes on Trumpism, as Trumpism is a right-wing ideology which they naturally grasp more about than I do: For example, they actually assert that Trump lost because he betrayed his White Power base – which is to say that Trump lost because he was not racist enough – and the fact that the only group he lost votes from in 2020 as compared to 2016 was White men proves that. Considering how close the vote was, the idea should be considered, at least. However, I have and I find it insufficient and actually just more typically-Western “race and tribe and religious differences are everything” (we are talking about the analyses of racist fascists, after all) and actually mere identity politics (we are talking about the analyses of modern Americans, after all).
But something they said once stuck out for me: The Republican Party is the party paid to lose. That was funny because I was interviewing a Green Party candidate in my recent work in the US for PressTV and he said the same thing about the Democratic Party. We absolutely cannot draw a false equivalence between the far-right and the far-left (though, of course this is exactly what is done all the time in the know-nothing corporate Mainstream Media), but both are totally right.
That is very easy to explain, but nobody wants to explain it. I can explain it quickly, I just can’t get it published in any Mainstream Media, because the MSM does not want to promote clear political understanding as that would threaten the grip of the 1%.
The Republican Party is slightly watered-down Western fascism – which was never discredited by defeat in the US, unlike in Europe due to World War II. Modern Republicans are actually a “fake-fascist” party: they have rejected open racism (the apartheid of Jim Crow). This explains why you can find American fascist media openly rejecting both Republicans and even Trump – many modern Republicans have rejected a key pillar of fascism, after all – openly espousing racism and claims of racial superiority. American fascists also point out that Trump never built the Mexico wall, and that many Republicans encourage making the US less White via immigration – two more pillars of fascism which have gone unbuilt, so it’s no wonder genuine American fascists rejected Trump long before the Electoral College did.
Again, it’s not hard to explain, but who in the MSM takes American fascism seriously? The US MSM only wants to support the 1%, not to be intellectually rigorous, honest and willing to openly discuss American failures. Just look at how Russiagate was foisted on the US public from 2016-19 for proof of the latter.
At the very least I think we can agree that on the left wing (and probably the centre wing) of the Republican Party their racism and xenophobia is hidden – this runs contrary to fascism’s open racism. So to true American fascists people who do this would be labelled as “fake-fascists”.
Despite the clear accuracy of this logic the term of “fake-fascist” is – per a Google search – so unpopular that it also appears open to monetisation. But only a fascist would ever try to monetise everything, of course, and only a fascist would ever even try to denounce somebody’s fascism as “fake” or “insufficient”.
Yes, I promised to write about fake-rightism and gave you fake-fascism. I have a perfectly good answer to which allows me to move on: This is America, where fascism was never discredited and thus fascism is actually rampant (even if often a bit watered-down).
But what is the Democratic Party? It is fake-leftism
About this there is enormous, gigantic misunderstanding. It is so enormous that Google says that little old Ramin Mazaheri is a top exponent of what is the Democratic Party: It is a fake-leftist party.
Again, the far-right and the far-left are not at all, not at all, not at all the same, but political know-nothings, political-nihilists and lazy thinkers all like to claim that they are. So it’s important to briefly clarify why comparing socialists and fascists does not actually compare two extremes:
On the extreme left of the global spectrum of political thought anarchists occupy the furthest pole, with communists to the right of them, and then socialists to the right of them, and then centrists (combining elements of both left and right) to the right of them. Thus, socialism IS leftism and NOT far-leftism on the global spectrum of political thought. This is not up for debate – definitions are clear and accepted, and you are not allowed to make up your own if you want to talk among others without ruining the discussion.
Contrarily, the different national spectrums of political thought are indeed up for debate and are quite, quite mutable – merely look at how “Trumpism” clearly just become at least half of the Republican Party.
But the global political spectrum is almost totally immutable – it requires a stunning revolution in thought to upset it. One must concede that humans have thought about politics for a very long time, and that’s why it’s so hard to change the global political spectrum: what’s more to the left of anarchism, which posits that every person has total liberty and that nobody is in charge of anyone else? What’s to the right of totalitarian fascism, which has been most fully experienced by the victims in places like Apartheid South Africa, slave-owning states and Israel? Iranian Islamic Socialism was a huge, stunning revolution – many don’t know where to really place it on the global political spectrum – but it didn’t move the poles, right? Right.
So we know what things are on the global political spectrum when we see it, and the US Democratic Party is undoubtedly fake-leftist. We can argue about whether it is on the centre or right of the global political spectrum but it is definitely, definitely, DEFINITELY wrong to place it on the global political spectrum’s left.
So wrong it would be laughable if this issue of fake and real leftism were not so hugely vital.
Let’s unwelcome back the US fake-left’s return to power
I have written about this so much that even Google must acknowledge it, but I must admit I took some time off from writing about fake-leftism recently. I don’t think it was out of the boredom caused by repetition, but also because 21st century fake-leftism was deposed by Trump in the US, by Brexit in the UK and by the Yellow Vests in France – it became far more interesting to try and humbly publicly analyse these movements and why they arrived.
But with Biden’s ascension I realise I have to get back on the horse, because fake-leftism is back on the horse – it’s a huge threat to global leftism, after all, and one that goes totally, totally, totally unaddressed.
Part 2 of this article will remind us of just how right-wing the US Democratic Party is. This is perfectly obvious when what Joe Biden and his supporters actually believe are held side-by-side with the basic tenets of actual leftism. Because the West is so rabidly anti-leftist the basic, globally similar tenets of leftism are never openly discussed, and thus people get so very confused about what leftism is that they actually come to believe that Democrats are a “left” party on the global political spectrum. That’s absurd.
One last note, just to expand out this article as much as possible: In 2017 I supported Marine Le Pen for only the two weeks between Round 1 and Round 2 in France’s presidential election because I opposed Emmanuel Macron’s “fake-centrism”. Macron went on to wage incredibly fascistic violence against the Yellow Vests, extended the state of emergency for 2 years, closed down Muslim community centres, gutted longstanding French measures of economic redistribution and protection, and did many other things which would have caused an uproar…if they had been done by Le Pen. Macron was always a fake-centrist – he was also very far on the right, and the failure to call things by their proper names led to even worse long-term social disorder than if the repugnant Le Pen had won.
The repugnant Trump won in America, and so many great leftist-inspired movements absolutely dominated large swaths of Trump’s tenure: Black Lives Matter, #MeToo and a few others were not perfect, but mainly because in the US fake-leftism is so powerfully misleading and problem-inducing.
Let’s put aside Trump – perhaps only until 2024 – and focus on saying hello to the restoration of fake-leftism in the US.
It is very unfortunate to see you.
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Dispatches from the United States after the presidential election
Results are in: Americans lose, duopoly wins, Trumpism not merely a cult (1/2) – November 5, 2020
Results are in: Americans lose, duopoly wins, Trumpism not merely a cult (2/2) – November 6, 2020
4 years of anti-Trumpism shaping MSM vote coverage, but expect long fight – November 7, 2020
US partitioned by 2 presidents: worst-case election scenario realized – November 9, 2020
A 2nd term is his if he really wants it, but how deep is Trump’s ‘Trumpism’? – November 10, 2020
CNN’s Jake Tapper: The overseer keeping all journalists in line (1/2) – November 13, 2020
‘Bidenism’ domestically: no free press, no lawyer, one-party state? (2/2) – November 15, 2020
Where’s Donald? When 40% of voters cry ‘fraud’ you’ve got a big problem – November 17, 2020
The 4-year (neoliberal) radicalisation of US media & Bidenites’ ‘unradical radicalism’ – November 22, 2020
80% of US partisan losers think the last 2 elections were stolen – December 3, 2020
Trump declares civil war for voter integrity in breaking (or broken) USA – December 5, 2020
Mess with Texas via mail-in ballot? States secede from presidential vote – December 8, 2020
Biden won? 2016-2020 showed what the US does to even mild reformers – Dec 18, 2020
Alleged Nashville bomber not Muslim: Western media disappointed – January 2, 2020
This week in the US: The ‘model nation’ for no nation anymore – January 7, 2020
Ramin Mazaheri is currently covering the US elections. He is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’ as well as ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’, which is also available in simplified and traditional Chinese.
Here is something from left field.
We had the horned actor at the Capitol building D.C.
Did you know that the horned Ox is the symbolic symbol for year 2021 in China.
Find who pays the animal actor to unravel the riddle.
Excepting that Ox has been around in every protest from every side in 2020. He is everywhere. Fake-leftist or Fake-rightist – makes no never mind to the Ox. Show him a protest and he is there.
Of course Ramin is totally correct regarding the huge contradiction between authentic leftism and fake leftism. But what is needed is a clear definitional analysis of the difference between the two. Westerners desperately need this as they spend their entire lives subject to constant indoctrination that precludes that very understanding.
I am reminded of a telling incident that happened in Eugene Oregon about 30 years ago. A bunch of middle class white progressives (Eugene being a University town) got together for an idealistic virtue strengthening meeting one Saturday morning. Their stated goal was to welcome all progressives who represented any oppressed group into their meeting so that all oppressed peoples could feel validated, recognized and included in this wonderful open minded group. They were so idealistic and progressive and virtuous – and determined to be all inclusive. All very wonderful so far – liberation for all was clearly in sight. So we had women, people of color, gays and whomever. But the shit hit the fan when one particular oppressed group sought inclusion. The consensus was this was not a genuinely oppressed group and they did not warrant inclusion in the enlightened fraternity. So they were denied recognition and inclusion. Who was this evil group that did not merit recognition? You got it – the working class. In the West leftist idealism is wonderful and so virtuous provided you stay in denial of the aspiration for liberation of the working class.
It has been said, I think with truth, that Americans hate and fear poor people. Respect is never offered. It is so hard for Americans to visualize that the working people could possibly have anything positive to contribute on their own merits. For Americans workers are just losers. Workers are just people who don’t have the imagination to start their own individual businesses and become millionaires. What I believe underlies this is a very serious case of ungrounded hyper individualized egoism. That I would call bourgeois. So I read Ramin as writing a critique of bourgeois leftism. A contradiction in terms if ever there was one.
Nailed it on the first try! Couldn’t have said it better. It’s a class war where only one side – the privileged side – realizes that they’re at war. But the working class is finally catching on… slowly. Hope it’s not too late. Just dare to mention class in any serious political discussion and watch how fast you get shouted down.
…right on Snow Leopard…I was at that meeting in Eugene Oregon…& others like it in Town…workers/poor people were never included…more like demonized for being “shabby” or “unenlightened”…poor/working people have always been hated by the academics in this Town…thank you Saker site!
That is only part of the point being made — the fact that the media has selected him/it as the image du jour is the more salient point. Chinese New Year vs American New Year. Chalk and cheese; one on the rise, the other on the squeeze…
Fascism is not about racism.
The only difference between communism and fascism is that the elite hijacks a potential anti-elite socialised grassroots movement and turns it into an elite controlled socialised movement (fascism) with (optionally) a non-elite group as a scapegoat.
Fascism may or may not involve racism. It depends on whether the oppressors’ mythology is explicitly racist such as in Ukraine, Israel, and — up to the recent past — other European squatter colonial implants elsewhere (America, Africa and Australasia). In Hindutva India, fascism is instead very much about Islamophobia and caste prejudice.
The pet talking point of Western ”experts on totalitarianism” regarding ”the only difference between communism and fascism” misses the elephant in the room entirely (whether aforesaid ”experts” do it knowingly or not is a moot point). The elephant in the room is that fascism is very much about parasitic desires of misappropriating other peoples’ wealth in the form of land, natural resources, and labour output. Fascism is inseparable from imperialism. Communism has nothing similar whatsoever.
By its own measure, the US Democratic Party is somewhere to the right of the British Conservative Party. The Tories have backed genuine public healthcare since WWII. On gun control, have been been a total of five mass shootings in the UK, ever, and after the second and fourth ones, Tory government banned whole classes of firearms.
Most Americans think that Democrats are left wing and Republicans are right wing politically.
Nothing could be further from the truth, since both corporate owned political parties are essentially right wing, funded by oligarchs, corporate largesse, the banks, AIPAC and supported by the corporate mainstream media. They pretend to do verbal battle with each other in Congress, but it all kabuki theater to convince the gullible American public that they live in a democracy.
The US in fact has never been a democracy, it is a Constitutional Republic. The word democracy does not appear even once in the US Constitution of 1769. Just because you can vote does not mean that you live in a democracy.
The Declaration of Independence of 1776 was written to encourage the landless farm boys and indentured servants to fight and die in the interests of the Colonial landed gentry against the British Crown. After the Revolution was successful, the Constitution was written to defend the landed gentry from the landless farm boys and indentured servants.
Originally, the terms left and right came into being during the French Revolution of 1789 when members of the National Assembly divided into supporters of the King to the president’s Right and supporters of the Revolution to his Left.
you are historically correct. what made this setup acceptable to the masses was the belief that upward mobility was real and achievable. as long as parents thought that their children could have a better life than themselves nature of the club of which they were not a member could be tolerated.
over the past 20 years this belief has morphed into the realm of myth and now even the myth has died in the minds of an overwhelming majority of americans.
this is the dilemma the elites face. owning the country is not the same thing as enjoying that power along with the priviledge of spending that wealth in safety and peace. take away that and you have argentina and brazil at its political worst some decades ago. a reality the gates and zuckerbergs of the country would prefer not to recreate for themselves and their children,
weal and control is only useful if genuinely peaceful enjoyment of that power is possible. otherwise you’re constantly looking over your shoulder.
if you are an elite running a system that must at least offer the possibility for the masses of up ward mobility as the least common denominator. if you can not offer that much no amount of power and surveillance and technology will save you in the long run and in the micro chip internet age the long run is a decade maybe 2 at the most.
The problem for the US electorate is that socialism was never able to take hold as it did in Europe in 1945 when WW2 came to an end. I grew up in England (born in 1940) and the public knew that it was in a life or death struggle with Nazi Germany, and the working class realized that they had been down trodden and used as cannon fodder in two world wars.
Over a million British men had been slaughtered in the trenches of France and Belgium and they had enough of these wars instigated by their upper class superiors.
A Labour Government under Prime Minister Clement Attlee was elected and they quickly instituted the National Health Service, free at the point of delivery, free school lunch, free education up to and including university provided that the candidates could pass the entrance exam, and free places at Grammar Schools for those who could pass the 11 plus. Various industries were nationalized – electricity, coal, rail, road transport and steel. Unemployment and disability insurance that did not run out with time were also improved, plus old age pensions at the age of 65.
For me this worked very well as I was able to attend grammar school and university free of charge with a small stipend paid every month into my bank account by the government.
I was never unemployed until I retired and always received a decent wage with two weeks paid holiday. So what went wrong ? Well, the Tories got elected and things went downhill after that, especially under Margaret Thatcher the milk snatcher.
Thanks for your comment and historical overview.
Wasn’t there a huge struggle between Harold Wilson and the coal miners and other unions? Michael Foote?
Wasn’t the first referendum on membership in the Common Market under Wilson in the early seventies?
How does the Northern Ireland struggle fit into the postwar trajectory of socialist Britain? Lots of Irish used to come over to England to work. I think from the Republic, not from Northern Ireland.
Seems like Britain was in the throes of transformation as soon as the socialist system was established. Various forces were trying to dismantle it.
Katherine
The 1972 UK miners’ strike was a major dispute over pay between the National Union of Mineworkers and the hated Conservative Edward Heath government of the United Kingdom. Miners’ wages had not kept pace with those of other industrial workers since 1960. The strike began on 9 January 1972 and ended on 28 February 1972, when the miners returned to work. Some of my acquaintances thought that coal miners were already overpaid, so I suggested to them that they should get a job in a coal mine.
I was big fan of Harold Wilson and went to see him speak at the Birmingham Town HalI one time together with some my socialist friends. I cannot recall very much about the 1974 referendum on EEC membership. At the time I was working in the West End of London as an international metal trader, commuting from Saffron Walden in Essex, putting in 12 hour days, and also traveling in Europe on business several weeks per year. I certainly did not vote in the referendum, and I really cannot remember very much about it.
People from Eire have been finding work in England for quite some time, whether it was digging canals or working in the building trade. As far as I am aware they were always welcome and hard working. For me problems arose in 1973 when the provisional IRA from Eire started planting bombs in central London and Birmingham killing a number of people.
I was commuting into London and became quite worried about being killed, so I stopped using British Rail and started driving into London that took about three hours each way. I became so tired that I drove my car into a ditch one time on the way home. After that I car pooled for a while.
Mr Mazaaheri, it s a plain derision the mere fact of your naming those
US street mobsters and democratic bureaucrats of ‘left’.
The united states is not even leftleaning capable , as judged by the seven decades of presstitute indoctrination.
Left is another thing, which europeans and south americans know far better about. The ridiculous bipartisan system of course is just the war party, the
big tech-pharma-oil-jewish media party split in TWO FACTIONS>
The Dem faction has as of late embraced the pentagon plus the soup lettter Agencies in deadly move that will destroy the country.
How is the Iranian law on immigration? Do Iran accept unlimited immigration by uneducated people from the African continent or unlimited uneducated immigrants from the M.E seeking welfare money with no intention of assimilation into Iranian society?
What would happen to me if i asked for asylum in Iran and loudly proclaim Shia`s and sunnies are haram and Iran needs to change so that i feel comfertable there, shouting at Iranian women calling them whores and kafirs that needs to be raped?
These things are common here, unemployable/welfare client muslims do this Every day in European cities and towns. I have witnessed it to many times to recount, would Iran/Iranians tolerate that Christian men behaved like that after you took us in?
Do my country deserve to be destroyed by unlimited economic immigration bc our politicians are corrupt?
Is my skin color less worthy and not to be conserved?
That is what the Burn Loot Murder crowd, academia, media and politicians tell me daily🤷♂️
I never noticed or spent a calory thinking about immigrants before frau merkel and soros decided to end borders and let iphone/gucci wearing immigrants shop around for a country with high welfare payments, after that it was impossible Not to notice them.
The backfire have just begun, i fear things will get much worse and the refugees and us normal folks will pay the price for their “great reset”, birth of their new world order and new breed of docile mulatto serfs.
apart from my thoughts that you over simplify and always blame whitey in race questions i agree with most of your writings and think highly off you Hr Mazaheri.
Stay safe🌹
Btw the demonRat party=republiCon party=fascist. There is only 1 political party ruling the united banana states of america..
@ Per/Norway
“apart from my thoughts that you over simplify and always blame whitey in race questions”
Just some questions. Whos created all these immigration? Who bombed their cities and unleashed terrorist? Who steals natural reservs and wealth of those people and make them run from their homes. Who are they bombing homes, hospitals and weddings? It must theselves and not “whity”
Norway being a Nato member, what did those country that got bombed by Nato did to Norway? You have to ask for explanation from your government. Ask them why they made som many people homeless and force them to leave their homes?
Ask your government why they sell so much weapon to Nato and middle east?
https://www.tnp.no/norway/panorama/5498-arm-export-increases-keeping-norway-in-top-20-arms-exporter-list
Refugee crisis is mainly due to west endless war on poor countries, which by the way were impoverished none other than colonial west in the past two centuries
And btw I forgot to mention that all Social Demecratic parties in Nordic countries are fake-leftis too. Look at their policies and you will see how they are today. In Denmark they took over all anti-immigrant parties policies. In Sweden they are talking about joining Nato. Isnt Jens Stoltenberg, Nato boss a Norwegian social democratic?
The day will come when Ramin will grow up to realize:
All Leftism is fake-Leftism.
Why? Because all fancy, Hollywoodesque shades of Leftism were financed, scripted, produced, acted, staged, marketed, distributed, applauded, praised, decorated, hagiographied by
the Zionist Intel agencies, and their sock puppets. It is that simple.
Try telling that fantasy to the Peoples Republic of China
Actually a walid point to bring up, mr.Snow Leopard. Very many prominent and high-ranking Chinese (i mainland China) are fascinated with Jews. Very many of the foreign helpers of Máo’s CCP to power and those who stayed on after the Liberation were Jews, even if ever-so-much radical atheists. The top people in The CCP took note of this. And during the last 40 years of “getting rich is glorious” of course young ambitious Chinese have noted the preponderance of Jews among the rich eleets in Russia, France, UK and USA and want to emulate many sides of Israëli practices.
Thank you Toilef As. I was not aware of the details you bring up. That is interesting. I was reacting to smr’s blanket dismissal of all Leftist politics as fake. I consider that far too sweeping and unbalanced to the point of being ridiculous. As I see it the Chinese communists acknowledge that there are both leftist and rightist elements that exist in both contradiction and balance within the CCP itself. This getting rich is glorious mantra seems to me to cater well to the rightist individualist elements in China. However the collective integrity of Chinese communism seems to be able to hold this feature in balance within its larger vision.
”Because all fancy, Hollywoodesque shades of Leftism were financed, scripted, produced, acted, staged, marketed, distributed, applauded, praised, decorated, hagiographied by the Zionist Intel agencies, and their sock puppets. It is that simple.”
Reads like a dull agent movie script to me. Since this kind of infotainment is what Westerners are happily swimming in forever, I should feel inclined to say: Stay afloat. Any attempts at understanding anything of substance will drown you in a heartbeat.
”American fascists also point out that Trump never built the Mexico wall, and that many Republicans encourage making the US less White via immigration – two more pillars of fascism which have gone unbuilt, so it’s no wonder genuine American fascists rejected Trump long before the Electoral College did.”
American fascists are the paradigmatic example of what I call militant parasites. Sadly for them, their Global Apartheid wet dream is exactly what imperialism has deliberately put an end to with no going back. Of course Trump pandered to them with retrograde apeshit like the border wall with Mexico. Trump is, after all, a politician and knows what can be sold to the American public and what cannot. As regards the Euro-trash, its militant parasites curse and damn the very same act of Elite High Treason (ditching of Global Apartheid) accompanied by funny noises about Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi, who is singled out as their ultimate ’race traitor’. Less deluded Europeans at least have the sense to focus upon contemporary ideologues/philosophers/philanthropists in the very active, and totally unhidden, service of global corporatocracy.
As matters are developing today, governments riding high on a genuinely fascist mass base are rare exceptions indeed. One case in point is Hindutva India.
This is a reference to a quote from Marx, “Ce qu’il y a de certain c’est que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste” [If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist]. It comes to us as an indirect quotation by Engels, who mentions it in a letter to Eduard Bernstein dated 2–3 November 1882, in response to the latter’s complaint that French Marxism “suffers from a marked lack of esteem.” Engels replies that “what is known as ‘Marxism’ in France is, indeed, an altogether peculiar product — so much so that Marx once said to Lafargue: ‘Ce qu’il y a de certain c’est que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste.’ (Translation: ”If this is Marxism, then I am not a Marxist”)
Having been through the mill of social-democracy, communism, maoism, trotskyism it was difficult to find what exactly was a legitimate socialism. In Europe at least social-democracy is, and as a matter of fact always been, fake-leftist. In fact it is not even fake-left but fake-centrist. Just rattling off the names is dispiriting enough: the British Labour party, the German SPD, France Parti Socialiste, Spain PSOE, Italy the rebranded PCI now branded as the Democratic Party, and then coming to Eastern Europe quasi fascists the lot of them. Genuine socialism will not be found in this bureaucratised fake socialism.
The genuine left has no home and seems condemned to a peripheral status on the edge of this wholesale fakery.
Francis; Your point well made. Gilad Atzmon wrote recently that the “Left” needs to re-engage with its metaphysical origins. I suggest that Marx’s “I am not a Marxist,” referring to the French version, is a repudiation of a leftism that has forsaken contact with its metaphysical or spiritual origins. That being a consequence of its typically French immersion in the spiritually dead Cartesian world view. The problem being the universally false believe that Marx was a “materialist.” However he specifically condemned all of the versions of materialism that he is credited with upholding. Marx then went on to advocate what he called “new materialism.” But he did not actually define it. Hence massive confusion on the left. Marx was operating at a time before the concept of “holism” was available. So he was obliged to render a holistic and all inclusive world view that had human divinity at its core without the aid of the term holism. Yes, Marx was a Christian humanist and worked all his life to serve the cause of Christ as he understood it. The loss of moorings on the Left has got so much to do with leftists not being able to understand Marx’s spiritual motivations. Marx was working form his foundations in Hegel. This puts him right inside the progressive spirit of the German philosophical enlightenment. That German enlightenment has brought to the world the modern Western concept of the inner Self. This is extremely radical and demands to be interpreted in progressively humanistic Christian terms. Marx defined communism as the transcendence of human self estrangement. That is a philosophical way of saying that communism is collective self realization. This is radically progressive christian humanism. The confusion that strangles the left arises from its not being able to understand the Hegelian foundations of the political left in the German enlightenment. The cultural problem here is that in the West philosophy has collapsed and been replaced by psychology. So to understand what real Marxism is one has to go to the psychological insights of Carl Jung. There is a book entitled “Reason and the Absolute” which delineates the identity of purpose between Hegel and Jung. So that leaves us with the Jungian insight that Communism (as Marx defined it) is a process of releasing psychological denial and opening to spiritual awakening – Communism is collective self realization. That is the essential core which Gilad Atzmon correctly calls the left’s “metaphysical origins”.
This identity of perspective shared by Carl Jung and Hegel can be academically validated. This is why I argue that the key to understanding the metaphysical foundations of the Left (i.e., Hegel) can best be reclaimed through the insights of Carl Jung. Jung practically said as much when he wrote that Hegel is a psychologist disguised as a philosopher. A high compliment to Hegel from Jung. Lest there be any doubt about the attitude of Marx to the issue of human divinity we can find in the notes to Marx’s doctoral dissertation the observation – and I quote “The modern outlook on nature must start where the ancient Ionians left off, that is seeing the divine embodied in nature and humanity.” Atheist materialism has nothing to do with authentic Marxism. However Engels managed to unintentionally miscommunicate that to the world and the left has since the time of Engels lost itself in a crude and vulgar atheistic and materialistic understanding of Marx. Not being a competent philosopher, Engels conveyed a “Marxism” to the world that resulted in the Left losing contact with its spiritual origins. Hence the current dystopia.
As I see it Chinese civilization is so successful because it is able to psychologically short circuit this whole philosophical confusion by retaining a psychological orientation to what they call the great dragon. The “great dragon” is a Chinese way of talking about the innate divinity of the world and humanity. They know what it means to equate communism with their Red Dragon. Does any of this make any sense to you?
Very much so, Snow Leopard. Btw, google references some bourgeouis leftists, though they seem to be mostly of the same source. Thanks.
The current Chinese government is so successful in building infrastructure and raising the living standards of its workforce, because it creates its own domestic money supply, the yuan, without going into debt to private banks. This has meant that it can educate the population and pay its workers to actually do work that is creative, instead of paying off interest to the transnational bankers.
A very fine overview Snow Leopard. You meet my own way from early MARX’ self estrangement
to JUNG’s Individuation of the “Self” via 10 years of Communist Federation.
Yes, the philosophical humanism of Marx has been lost in the leftist movement quite early.
Now the production of any $-stuffed left-right theater of Identity-politic is in the short term
suffice to create political absurdities, to deviate from class-fight.
Anyway, it remains the expropriation of increment value, the product of the entire society, by the class of the bourgeois, which enslaves the entire society in alienation.
Jung’s contribution, in the light of the collective philosophical corruptibility, is, to face the soul of the individual as the arena, where the return to humanity has to occur by becoming ‘as a child again’.
No mass-movement can provide that. The realm of salvation is in the individual’s psyche only .
Yes Mundo. You are right, and it is the work of the Christ force to open that salvation within the individual psyche into a shared collective realization. The socialization of that inner realization is the only way the revolution can work. Failure to do so leads to betrayal of revolution and another round of “Animal Farm.” As I see it the vast majority of the people who follow this site are step by step finding their way into this convergence. Whether recognized or not. What you have said about salvation within the individual psyche is the inner core of Marx’s definition of communist revolution. This is why it is so radical. Too radical even for the communists perhaps. Arthur Kunstler wrote a book called “The Yogi and the Commissar” In it he argued that a commissar must also be a yogi. But then he despaired because he saw it as too hard. It all boils down to the fact that Karl Marx was promoting extremely radical progressive Christian spirituality. It just takes civilization a long time to be able to understand it.
German Nazism was leftist, not rightist.
I think that makes sense if Trotskyism is anything to go by (as a leftist phenomenon, that is). In one of his very last writings — ”On the future of Hitler’s armies”, published August 1940 — Trotsky depicts Nazi Germany’s soldiery as the harbinger of socialist revolution. Enjoy:
Still, I would not conclude from this utter horseshit that Stalin’s USSR was right-wing and a force of counterrevolution. Applying Trotsky’s reasoning to his present-day admirers of US neoconservatives is extremely hilarious. Try imagine people such as Pompeo, Ledeen, Bannon to ”see the light” as they face the horrors they perpetrate.
There are NO fake-leftists, NO fake-rightists, in america.
americans have no idea what is left or right. Education, media, entertainment have successfully emptied the words of meaning. Left, right, commie, fascist, Putin, Hitler, mother-fucker, faggot, all the woke wurds, all mean the same thing : “I don’t like you”.
I like confronting and rehabing the problem, the problem is, that there are too many problems.
To many trees in this forest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_7_lEOaU10
Regards
Kent
Thanks Ramin for putting things where they belong. Constantly I see in comments confused remarks about marxism, socialism, communism , anarchy …. And flaky concepts like “cultural marxism”, “anti- white racism”, “social darwinism” etc…
Some like to pretend that libertarians are anarchists….no , they’re right wingers.
It’s time words make sense, that those who want to get a grip on things study history. For americans they can start with researching why labor Day is on the 1th of May except in …the USA.There’s a huge history of real leftism in america that was crushed in the late 19 th and early 20th centuries. For europeans : look at your colonial history and stop babbling nonsense about democracy and “les droits de l’homme”.
Now the foolish fake leftists in the US think they’re back on the right path. This fake leftism has infected the europeans too. I don’t expect they will understand in the near future why “nothing’s working” for them even after electing their favorite “progressives”.
“This fake leftism has infected the europeans too.”
Exactly, the Ukrainian ‘Revolution’ was the watershed. The attitude to the return of Crimea
to Mother Russia is the probe. The fake-leftists, first of all the Green, are pro-sanctions.
The PTB are the super-spreaders of the ‘Virus’ of ‘dividing the people’ having seemingly immeasurable effort. But in the consequence it is chasing everybody to one’s inner voice,
where alone is health and vigor waiting, waiting soul, bound by the mesh of lies and money
and the dreams of ascend, to escape the world of the daily lies into distance and quietness
and time for the only quest, worth to strive for: find out what am, what can I contribute, hence
where am I missed in the collective puzzle of salvation?
Se o “dividir para reinar” e o complexo do Robin dos Bosques ao contrário (roubar aos 99% de pobres para dar aos 1% de ricos) fossem coisas de esquerda, então o Partido Democrata dos E.U.A seria o farol mundial da esquerda…
A verdadeira populaça, na Europa e nos E.U.A, é a destituída e empobrecida classe média a quem os órgãos de informação alinhados com os grandes monopólios fazem crer que vive a sua diária e importantíssima “revolução” de esquerda quando vocifera que basta o menino tornar-se numa menina (e vice-versa) e que basta abrir, de par em par, as portas aos desgraçados que os seus governos bombardearam e massacraram até ao Nirvana da democracia para o Mundo ser uma perfeita Utopia de esquerda.
O que é o Fascismo? É aquilo que já aí está em forma de Utopia da (pseudo) Esquerda: um miserável (ou uma miserável) de trinta e muitos anos que, por falta de rendimento, vive na cave da casa dos pais, cheio (ou cheia) de pensamentos progressistas, e todos os dias salva o Mundo do aquecimento global e dá a sua contribuição inteligente ao avanço da Humanidade jurando que a impossibilidade económica de ter uma família e de ter e de criar filhos é um passo gigantesco na libertação do Mundo das garras do hediondo Patriarcado. Enquanto essa criatura (essa e milhões de outras pelo Ocidente) envelhece e engorda o traseiro frente ao computador, a charada de Trotsky é, uma e outra vez, levada à cena: há que deixar o Fascismo triunfar, pois será desse triunfo que brotará o milagre da transformação dos fascistas em… progressistas. Pois…
Questão final: quando a pseudo Esquerda já se tornou um pesadelo (pessoal) de nihilismo egocêntrico que conduzirá à extinção de tudo aquilo que nos torna humanos e já se tornou um pesadelo (colectivo) de cegueira que não vê, e , muito pelo contrário, promove o imperialismo genocida e a não menos genocida exploração económica das massas, o que falta para o Ocidente ser, na sua totalidade, fascista?
Machine translation:
If “divide and rule” and the Robin Hood Complex backwards (stealing from the 99% of the poor to giving to the 1% of the rich) were left-wing stuff, then the U.S. Democratic Party would be the world beacon of the left…
In the real population, in Europe and in the us, it’s a very, and impoverished the middle class, to whom the media are lined up with the big monopolies, they do believe that it lives in your daily and all-important “revolution” to the left, when it vociferously advocates that it is enough for the boy to become a girl (and vice versa), and you can simply open wide the door to the wretched, that their governments have bombed and slaughtered, until the Nirvana of democracy in the World is a perfect Utopia of the left.
What is fascism? This is what we have here is in the form of a Utopia, in the (pseudo) Left, with a wretched (or miserable) in thirty many years, due to the lack of income, he lives in the basement of his parents ‘ home in full (or filled with) the thoughts of progressive, and every day, saving the World from global warming, and their contribution to the intelligent advancement of Humanity, even that of the impossibility of the economic of the family, and to have and raise children, it’s a huge step in the liberation of the World from the clutches of the abominable Patriarchy. While this creature (this one and millions of others in the West) grows old and fattens his ass in front of the computer, Trotsky’s riddle is, again and again, taken to the scene: we must let fascism triumph, because it will be from this triumph that the miracle of the transformation of the fascists into… progressives will spring. Because…
Final question: when the pseudo-left has already become a (personal) nightmare of egocentric nihilism that will lead to the extinction of everything that makes us human and has already become a (collective) nightmare of blindness that does not see, and , quite the contrary, promotes genocidal imperialism and the no less genocidal economic exploitation of the masses, what is missing for the West to be, in its entirety, fascist?
Human Beings, Earth Forms via Nature, the confusion is separation from nature;
Magna Carta, 1215, the human being document establishing the right of nature’s power first and foremost. Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America (Iroquois Republic as model), 1776;
Karl Marx was a proletariat, he died a pauper and during his life he never had enough money to support his many children.
The human being has been struggling for eons, to live in earth nature as an enlightenment:
Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Sun Tzu, et al from China gave to our humanity their verve, too.
Here we are and an enlightenment is not the practice. Worshipping a golden calf (after a fashion), continues to mesmerize and hypnotize the global multitudes.
Intellectuals (i.e., left) vs Rednecks (i.e., right) is used to keep We The Proletariat Majority Earth People chained to *superstition (*not free).
Do nothing. Get enough food & water and do nothing. In this time of nuclear annihilation enlightened Human Beings maybe can change the dense, coarse, gross energy, into an enlightenment.
“Many Anglophones now have no idea what I am talking about.”
Well, I think you are on shaky ground asserting this regarding the anglophones at this blog.
There was plenty of discussion of fake-leftism (and the increasing irrelevance of the supposed left/right divide) here before I ever noticed that you had started writing for The Saker blog.
Katherine
Well I guess the article is thought-provoking, mainly because i found it pretty confusing.
The fake-leftism thing sounds to me like setting up a straw man.
I mean, we know this already: that what goes for “the left” in the USA is nothing of the sort.
So, since I already understand this point clearly, I didn’t get much more out of this essay. It seems to shoot off in a number of directions, such as fake-rightism.
The only point that is clear to me is the one about Macron as “fake centrist” actually turning into right-fascist.
So, what is Biden’s “fake leftism” actually going to turn into ? Did Ramin clarify this?
Katherine
George Washington and his Freemason friends founded this country in 1776 along with American Freemasonry. It does not matter if the myths themselves are true or false. The people in Washington who control most of the planet believe and act upon their myths. They conducted 911 (and many other wars and assassinations, etc.) based on these myths. The myths are encoded in Washington DC which they believe is the center of time and place. They are encoded in the street layout, the architecture, the monuments, the zip codes, the area codes, etc.
It is complicated to get into the details, but the bottom line of these signs and symbols is that they are going to conduct a nuclear conflagration after 2021 which is the last year of the previous zodiac age as we enter the Age of Aquarius. This zodiac stuff is all B.S., but the Freemasons have been plotting this since they founded the country in 1776, and everything that they built points to this horrific mass ritual.
The people in power now support this plan. So in that sense, they are fake Leftists. The cancel culture that they promote is fake. It could be argued that the cancel culture is beneficial as it would be against nuclear conflagration. However, nuclear conflagration is the only way to avoid the total subjugation of this planet by technology. The Artificial Intelligence of the technosphere is evolving at the speed of electrons. It is already superior to human intelligence from a survival point of view. The technosphere is unconcerned about human suffering. If we have the nuclear conflagration that would fry their circuits, we need to engrave the message in stone, like the ancients and the Freemasons, to never go down this technological trap in the future.
I am bemused by this constant reference to Artificial Intelligence.
I have spent the last 40 years working in IT – and until about 15 years ago – used to at least keep up with all the IEEE Computer Society papers – including “AI”.
In this time, I have never encountered anything that even remotely resembles “Artificial Intelligence” as apparently perceived by almost everyone these days. Yes, it is a “subject” in IT schools, but mostly it is just a bit of a nerdy kidology.
Massive data farms, data mining and data scraping has got little to do with AI. All of the technologies employed by the likes of Google are essentially primitive. The UK recently awarded a contract for an “AI” database to track Adverse Reactions to the mRNA rollout, but it is obvious that AI is no more than another bit of marketing hype – rebranded analytical engines or data cubes or whatever.
Artificial Intelligence is not evolving at anywhere near the speed of marketing hype. Google Home, though, is useful in the kitchen for setting a timer when you want a 3 minute soft-boiled egg.
The spook agencies are 10 years ahead of the private sector with respect to cyber-warfare, AI, and biological war-fare (their preferred method now). COVID and its “vaccine” were on hand before the COVID panic. Look at how effective bio-warfare was in shutting down the world economy. It is easy to mask the origins of bio-warfare. The rate of change of all this has obviously accelerated within the last couple of years.
The AI thing is not solely a technical thing, just as biological evolution is not solely a technical thing. It is ongoing globally with every interface with technology and with every trial and error test. The technosphere is destroying the biosphere as Dimitry Orlov’s book explains. The spook agencies know everything about us, but operate in secrecy just like the Freemasons. That is absolute power.
A very timely observation. I have emailed several comments to various sites, stating that there are hardly three atoms of real LEFT politics in the entire American universe – and only a handful of people who would recognize it if they saw it. The U.S.A is “The Last Valley”.
Dear Ramin,
IMO you have been sucked into a quagmire from which you will find it difficult to escape.
Unless and until we stop using labels to categorize, isolate and enrage each other, we will never be able to change whatever you want to label the present arrangement (which is exactly why I use “present arrangement” instead of the you-know-what labels that would instantly lead to never-ending, pointless debate).
As the replies and sub-replies on this particular article IMO absolutely prove, we argue incessantly about the specific meanings or definitions of those labels. No assembly of people in an auditorium or in an online commentary/discussion such as this can, or ever will, agree upon just exactly WHAT the words socialism, communism, democracy, capitalism, fascism and terrorism mean, let alone leftist, fake-leftist, the left, liberal, fascist, neo-fascist, neo-nazi, right winger, far right, far left, militant, etc. “mean”.
Like the USD, new, imaginative labels for us to squabble over are printed out of thin air by the Oligarchic Transnational Elite Collective (OTEC) and their employees every day of the week. Let’s not assist them by emulating their behaviour.
Even further, what does the word “mean” mean for those particular labels? Here we are not talking about relatively simple words like cat, dog, paper, stone or scissors – where those words can be written on a post-it and stuck to the physical items they “name” or “represent” (something you might temporarily do to household items while learning a new language). All of these other, more complicated words (labels) require “definitions” that refer to the specific behavior of the people or the systems so labeled.
One might hope that a label would be a sort of short-cut that would eliminate the need to spell out certain human or systemic behavior time and time again. But, quite obviously, this is not the case. Instead, confusion reigns in Label World because, once again, everyone saying, speaking or writing the labels would have to agree upon their definitions in terms of, again, the behavior these labels “represent” and, IMO, this will continue to be, as it has in the distant-to-recent past, a never-ending endeavor. There are far more productive ways to expend our typing energy and IMO there is no time (tome?) like the present to do it.
For example, the 3 young human beings who inherited from their father a factory that had been in our city of 20,000 people for 75 years – one that employed 3,000 of those 20,000 people in well-paying jobs – suddenly decided to close down the factory and moved their capital equipment to a place on the planet where there were desperately poor, starving people who were “willing” to work 18 hours a day, 7 days a week, for food and a place on the factory floor to sleep. Those three owners are making much more profit as a result of that move. The 3 “owners” are ecstatic about their decision.
The employees of the factory who were about to lose their livelihoods were in panic mode because they knew full well that there were no other jobs in their city. The owners of the local businesses that depended upon the employees of the factory continuing to spend their money in their establishments were also in panic mode. They contacted their political representatives at the local, state and federal levels, but they were told that because the factory was “privately” owned, the owners were “free” to do with “their property” whatever they chose, including moving the factory to a location on the planet where they could “maximize profit”. The affect of the closure on the people of the town did not matter.
The factory workers and local business owners decided to do something in an attempt to keep the factory in the city. They decided to protest the factory closure by surrounding the factory to prevent the equipment from being moved. This worked for the few days that it took the 3 owners of the factory’s lawyers to go to a court of law. In short, however many taxpayer-paid, gun-toting, baton-weilding, pepper-spraying government employees it took to arrest and jail however many protesters it took to allow the capital equipment to be removed from the factory was ordered and, in short, the equipment was removed from the factory and relocated. Our town and its 19,997 people were economically devastated. The three owners of the factory were elated at their newfound wealth.
Now, will the vast majority of people living in this present arrangement, including you and all the commenters here, agree that the above outcome was unacceptable and that the arrangement that allowed it must be changed? I think the answer may very well be “yes”. So then the question is: Just exactly WHAT is a better arrangement than the present one? Do we want to discuss the details of a better arrangement, or would we all rather spend our lifetimes arguing about the definitions of labels and pointing fingers and name-calling? I know which option OTEC would prefer; they’ll even print some new labels for us to argue about.
The story you told about your town happenned in my hometown and my wife’s hometown in the 2000’s.
Sadly in this sick capitalist world, its more important for the rich to get richer than for the rest of us to survive!
I remember economists of the 1990’s and early 2000’s were telling us all about trickle down economics, the thesis was that the economy will benefit from the rich people spending, compensating for less middle class and working poor.
20 years later, its obvious the economists lied to we the people, trickle down economics wont work when there are stock buyback schemes to keep the money inside! The same economists set up these kickback programs at the same time.
For a regular guy trying to raise a family, stuff like this infuriates me!
When my wife is obsessed with TDS and identity politics, and cant understand that these structures are there to prevent any real reform of the financial system, its infuriating.
Seeing Pelosi saying democracy was attacked, when she had no problem sending jihadis to libya or syria to do the same exact thing is infuriating.
We are wasting our time blaming each other, when the ennemy is clearly the supranational rich elite and their henchmen!
I agree with you sir!
i found a good xample of the fake left.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/01/09/plot-j09.html
wsws is an imperial propaganda outlet🤷♂️
not news for most people so i post it for the ones that have not figured it out yet.
Actually, I have to say that the biggest threat to leftists was their corruption. Why did they resort to such sinister under handed tactics of the scamdemic? The ends justify the means, by any means necessary. Until leftists change their underlying ideology, they will never achieve what they are hoping to.
The leftists tied the nooses from whoch they will hang themselves. They have married themselves to lies. Selling an easily disprovable lie to the voting populations is an instaneous defeat before they can even begin to make their case to the public. They have tarnished their reputations as corrupt, shady characters tgat are willing to do or say anything, no matter how evil and heinous, including destroying an entire generation, and destroying the entire economy, harming billions of people and families by throwing them into destitute poverty, homelessness, despair, and death.
After that, people have realized that the leftists are not people that are to be trusted.
Until the leftists turn on those perpetratng The Big Covid Lies within their own cult, they are doomed.
Who did the leftists end up helping?
The very individuals that were the bain of their existences, the oligarchs. Silly little fools. Citizen Action responsible for Obamacare that worked with unions demanding the passage of the Affordable Care Act, written in large part by Dr. Robert Craig, working with union mob bosses, once again, it is the same people demanding lock downs, vaccines, contact tracing, mass testing, in the scamdemic.
Jeff Bezos could not be happier. The unions have resorted to thuggery, and have lost any remaining sympathy
that they previously had, which was next to nill, after the rapacity of not only the scamdemic, but with the support of BLM, which morphed into a terrorist network, sponsored by the Ford Foundation. The leftists united with Wall Street and the oligarchs, and Wall Street and the oligrachs could not be more appreciative.
How is that working out for ya?
They say that who ever laughs last, laughs best, and I think that Jeff Bezos must be rolling pn the floor laughing out loud after all of that. Mission accomplished for Bezos. Destroyed the unions, and all retail competition, even Walmart has been struggling.
Andrea Iravani
Fake left, fake right.
Fake black, fake white.
Fake events, fake causes
Fake gains, fake losses.
If it makes the headlines
Give yourself a break.
Throw it in the trash can
And realize it’s fake
America does not have a Left Wing.
And America does not have a Right Wing.
America only has one political ideology: Americanism.
And Americanism is messianic rapacious imperialism.
The “partisan political conflicts” in the USA are merely conflicts between different factions of the American Empire (and their grassroots supporters) for political and economic dominance in the USA.
Nothing more.
A Pox on *Both* their houses.