"The War on Right Wing Extremists"

The de facto war on the Left

The war against “right-wing extremists" is in fact—and has always been—a war against the Left.  Since World War Two, J. Edgar Hoover and his successors in the FBI, CIA, and other national security agencies have waged a de facto “war of terror” on political dissidents, civil rights activists, antiwar protesters, labor unions, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Occupy Wall Street protestors, and journalists (e.g. Julian Assange), characterizing them as “national security threats” —which they are to white, “right-wing extremists”.

The Left exposed the intrinsic racism of America’s ruling class, the greed of Wall Street, the corruption of elected representatives on the payroll of the corporations and billionaires who finance their campaigns, the mass surveillance on American citizens conducted by Silicon Valley giants on behalf of the national security state, and the needless deaths of millions abroad committed in service of US imperialism.  

It’s why journalists, intellectuals, and consumer protection advocates of the stature of Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, et al, are banned from the pages of New York Times, The Washington Post, and the “liberal” broadcast news media; they threaten the bipartisan pro-corporate, pro-war, neoliberal, imperial agenda established immediately after World War II by Harry S. Truman.

Americans are the most propagandized people on earth. They know little of actual American history and almost nothing of the meanings of words like “socialism”, “capitalism” or “communism”. More importantly, they’ve been conditioned not to know that they enjoy far fewer freedoms and suffer under a far more intrusive state than citizens of other countries, especially European and Scandinavian countries.

The most tragic aspect of the discussion of “social democracy” or “democratic socialism” is the fear and alarm that these terms evoke in the US.  This is a continuation of McCarthy-era anti-communism propaganda. Even though its proponents were discredited and disgraced 70 years ago, it still prevails to this day. From the Orwellian “House Committee on Un-American Activities” in the ‘50s which destroyed the lives of many journalists, artists, and intellectuals, to the current demonization of Russia and China, it’s incredible to see this absurd narrative continue to dominate the political and media discourse today, now by the Democratic Party and the so-called “liberal media”.

Americans have been persuaded to believe that they are freer in the abstract than citizens of countries such as Germany or Denmark precisely because they possess far fewer freedoms in the concrete.  As a result, Americans are far more vulnerable to medical and financial crisis, far more likely to receive inadequate medical coverage, far more prone to insolvency, far more unprotected against predatory creditors, and far more subject to income inequality, while effectively paying much more in taxes in the aggregate because critically important public services such as a free high quality medical care and education offered by other developed nations are not offered in the US and must be paid privately to for profit corporations and institutions.

The United States constitutes 4.6% of the world’s population, yet has 25% the world’s prisoners. Accord­ing to a 2012 DOJ survey, state crim­inal history repos­it­or­ies contain more than 100 million records. Regard­less of race or gender, research­ers estim­ate that by age 23 nearly one in three Amer­ic­ans will have been arres­ted. The fact that tens of millions of Americans have been imprisoned at some point in their lives is stark evidence of just how intrusive the state is, and how much “freedom” we actually have.

Evidence of using the war on “right-wing extremist” as an excuse to attack the Left is abundant. Those who watched the 2020 Democratic presidential debates could observe how both Senator Bernie Sanders’ and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s political positions threatened the corporate Democratic party’s anti-working class, pro-corporate, pro-war narrative.

Sanders spoke eloquently of extreme US wealth inequality and lack of basic social programs that European democracies offer their citizens.  In response to Sanders pointing out that Joe Biden has repeatedly advocated slashing Social Security in the past, Biden lied and denied this, although as Sanders pointed out, there are YouTube videos of Biden publicly stating precisely that. Polls show that 96% of voters support Social Security; if Biden had told the truth it could have significantly increased Sanders chances of being the 2020 Democratic candidate instead of Joe Biden.  If you lie in court about one defendant you can be charged with perjury; Joe Biden lied to millions of the potential voters watching that debate without suffering any political or media consequences.  

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who served two tours as an officer in an Army National Guard medical unit, spoke of her personal experiences and observations of the human carnage that resulted from US “interventionist” wars and the need for the US to place diplomacy over military intervention.

Immediately after that debate, the “liberal” corporate media viciously attacked both Sanders and Gabbard with absurd, false, McCarthy-era smears labeling them as “radical socialists”, “anti-Semites”, and “misogynists” (Sanders), and “dictator loving Assad apologists” (Gabbard) to derail their campaigns—even though they were polling far ahead of Biden and Harris respectively at that time. Hillary Clinton went as far as calling Tulsi Gabbard a “Russian asset”, and when asked if she meant that literally, she replied, “Absolutely”.  In response, Gabbard sued Clinton for 50 million dollars and Tweeted, “Thank you. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain.”

One would think that Hillary Clinton’s wild, obviously false, and viscous attack on a distinguished female military officer of color who served at the height of the Iraq War would forever destroy her reputation and political career, however his didn’t happen. Why? Because the US corporate media, led by The New York Times, are de facto press agents for the “right-wing extremist” national security state.

Polls pitting Sanders vs. Trump showed that Sanders would have won by a much larger margin than Biden vs. Trump. This didn’t matter to the Obama/Clinton controlled Democratic Party. The betrayal of Bernie Sanders by his own party was biblical in scale and its dire consequences on the vast majority of Americans are impossible to exaggerate.

As a result of the corporate media narrative, the 2020 presidential election was close to a “single choice menu” for voters as Biden’s long record in the Senate as an arch conservative, pro-war, pro-corporate, anti-working class neoliberal predicted, and his post-election record (e.g. immediately bombing Syria, Afghanistan, and Somalia, increasing sanctions on Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran, constantly threatening Russia and China, and upholding most of Trump’s most egregious domestic and immigration policies clearly demonstrates.

The full extent of Joe Biden’s role in provoking the current war in Ukraine prior to Russia’s invasion has yet to be revealed.

The infiltration and influence of the national security state into every aspect of our political, social, and personal lives, including what we're told by the "authoritative media”, what's allowed on social media, who are our "enemies", and what systems of government are "evil", etc., defines fascism.

The second most dangerous thing to US anti-diplomacy, pro-war foreign policy is it’s cruel domestic policy on the white as well as the minority working class. The US lacks the free national healthcare and education that every other developed nation on earth offers, and this has eviscerated our middle class, converting them to “serfs” for the likes of Jeff Bezos and the Walmart family.

How long has this been going on?  The devolution of American democracy and the rise of “right-wing extremism” began not with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 or Donald Trump in 2016 as some journalists posit, but with the rigged nomination of Harry S. Truman, a “machine politician” from Missouri who replaced FDR’s choice, socialist V.P. Henry Wallace, in 1945. It was Truman who authorized the first and only use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was Truman who invented the CIA and created the Cold War with Russia which was our ally during WW2 and suffered over 27 million casualties compared to 490 thousand US casualties. It was Truman, who without congressional approval, ordered the US Army to fight in Korea’s civil war which resulted in the deaths of 20% of the Korean population—a larger proportional civilian death toll than in World War II or the Vietnam War.

To paraphrase “The Godfather”, “It was Truman all along”.

Below is a video of my Ecuadorian music students performing, “How Long Has This Been Going On" —Jim Gala

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