So it has ever been with “communist”, “socialist”, and all the other similar epithets which have been deployed against any redistribution of wealth and political power that might benefit the people as a whole and restrict the privileges of the oligarchical minority. Michael Parenti (RIP) noted this rhetorical ploy in his talk at Fordham in the 1990s on his book, Inventing Reality.
You use the epithets to keep the discourse dressing off to the right and prevent any public proposal that might even signal a democratic benefit, even just a little bit, from being perceived as valid. This is also true of patriotism, which the right has arrogated to itself when they are the ones destroying the country.
The right, it must be acknowledged, was more skilled than the left (in the most general sense) in understanding and making use of narrative manipulation to steer people’s perceptions. It’s past time for that to corrected.
far right would need to be more skilled in manipulating ppl in order to go against their common sense and they did. Its also why the first thing they go after is education and critical thinking. I was amazed when during 2010's a bunch of democratic centrists senators advocated for the far rights project of charter schools very publicly-demonstrated how bought they were (by the same ppl to boot)
Fact check: Bernie Sanders has not been in the US Senate for four decades; he has not even been there for two. He was first seated as a Senator in January 2007; prior to that he had sat as Vermont's sole member of the US House from January 1991; prior to that he had been Mayor of Burlington for most of the 1980s. He has been in public life and making the case for his policies for well over four decades, as you go on to note, but not specifically in the Senate.
What I meant to say is "Bernie Sanders is not far left. He has made his case in American public life for four decades." — and I have made that correction. Thank you.
The receipts? AOC is an airhead I will leave her out of it. Mamdani probably not truly ideological but his language is straight out of Mao/Marx asking us to bathe in the warmth of collectivism. He has avowed communists on his team. These people are leftists. If you say they’re not, how much further can they go to be considered truly far left? Calling for the murder of the rich and seizure of all property? We’re basically there. Name one issue Bernie can be more left on. What baffles me is that there are plenty of socialist countries in the world, if you like that form of government so much or love islam so much and can’t stand nazi America then go live there. America has our own approach that made us unique and has served us very well.
Everything is coded as ‘harm’, these people are doing harm, they’re stealing, they’re nazi’s, they must be stopped! Meanwhile there is a new act of violence everyday and the dem politicians refuse to acknowledge this extremist language could possibly have had anything to do with that. Whatever keep focusing on jan6 and vance/thiel bizarre theocratic nonsense that literally no one cares about and ignore the actual thing that has caused bloody revolutions in very recent history and that is being stoked and pushed on us by our foreign enemies as well.
I honestly don't know what the hell you're talking about. That you've managed to convince yourself that we are one-step away from leftist Stalinist purges is pretty deranged. Saying "nobody cares" about what JD Vance thinks and then voting for him anyways, shows you're a completely irresponsible and unserious person.
Having as many assassination attempts on political/business figures as we’ve had in the past few years and the amount of people justifying and glorifying it is not normal, sorry.
I am not saying "far left" people do not exist. That extremists on the left do not exist. But saying that these people are the same as say, Bernie Sanders, is just slanderous and not true.
Ok well if Trump and this admin were truly far right then the entire dem leadership would be imprisoned or worse. All the examples of executive overreach you cite have happened with dem admins.
Are there people on the left who're going to post edits of Donald Trump's tweet celebrating Robert Mueller's death whenever that dude kicks the bucket? You can't convince me otherwise. People will do that. Some people will, at that time, post "Donald Trump just died. Good, I'm glad he's dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!" Maybe they'll even post it as easily searchable text rather than a slightly less easily searchable image edit of the Truth Social post.
But from elected politicians? If you hear anything more harsh than what Ilhan Omar said about Charlie Kirk (and the right got triggered like snowflakes and absolutely lost its collective shit over that and cried for a safe space in the US House by trying to censure her), I'd be very surprised.
Far-left are the combative ones who support Orban because he is against "Euro Imperialism" and sympathize with China as a socialist counterweight to the US. They also support Russia against Ukraine for different reasons...
Great piece Mike.
I appreciate these clarifications for people who don’t know. Perhaps Americans will begin to see that universal healthcare is possible for them too.
So it has ever been with “communist”, “socialist”, and all the other similar epithets which have been deployed against any redistribution of wealth and political power that might benefit the people as a whole and restrict the privileges of the oligarchical minority. Michael Parenti (RIP) noted this rhetorical ploy in his talk at Fordham in the 1990s on his book, Inventing Reality.
You use the epithets to keep the discourse dressing off to the right and prevent any public proposal that might even signal a democratic benefit, even just a little bit, from being perceived as valid. This is also true of patriotism, which the right has arrogated to itself when they are the ones destroying the country.
The right, it must be acknowledged, was more skilled than the left (in the most general sense) in understanding and making use of narrative manipulation to steer people’s perceptions. It’s past time for that to corrected.
far right would need to be more skilled in manipulating ppl in order to go against their common sense and they did. Its also why the first thing they go after is education and critical thinking. I was amazed when during 2010's a bunch of democratic centrists senators advocated for the far rights project of charter schools very publicly-demonstrated how bought they were (by the same ppl to boot)
Fact check: Bernie Sanders has not been in the US Senate for four decades; he has not even been there for two. He was first seated as a Senator in January 2007; prior to that he had sat as Vermont's sole member of the US House from January 1991; prior to that he had been Mayor of Burlington for most of the 1980s. He has been in public life and making the case for his policies for well over four decades, as you go on to note, but not specifically in the Senate.
What I meant to say is "Bernie Sanders is not far left. He has made his case in American public life for four decades." — and I have made that correction. Thank you.
The receipts? AOC is an airhead I will leave her out of it. Mamdani probably not truly ideological but his language is straight out of Mao/Marx asking us to bathe in the warmth of collectivism. He has avowed communists on his team. These people are leftists. If you say they’re not, how much further can they go to be considered truly far left? Calling for the murder of the rich and seizure of all property? We’re basically there. Name one issue Bernie can be more left on. What baffles me is that there are plenty of socialist countries in the world, if you like that form of government so much or love islam so much and can’t stand nazi America then go live there. America has our own approach that made us unique and has served us very well.
What Democratic politician is calling for the “murder of the rich”? Please point me to them, and I’ll write a Crisis Dispatch calling them out.
Everything is coded as ‘harm’, these people are doing harm, they’re stealing, they’re nazi’s, they must be stopped! Meanwhile there is a new act of violence everyday and the dem politicians refuse to acknowledge this extremist language could possibly have had anything to do with that. Whatever keep focusing on jan6 and vance/thiel bizarre theocratic nonsense that literally no one cares about and ignore the actual thing that has caused bloody revolutions in very recent history and that is being stoked and pushed on us by our foreign enemies as well.
I honestly don't know what the hell you're talking about. That you've managed to convince yourself that we are one-step away from leftist Stalinist purges is pretty deranged. Saying "nobody cares" about what JD Vance thinks and then voting for him anyways, shows you're a completely irresponsible and unserious person.
Having as many assassination attempts on political/business figures as we’ve had in the past few years and the amount of people justifying and glorifying it is not normal, sorry.
I am not saying "far left" people do not exist. That extremists on the left do not exist. But saying that these people are the same as say, Bernie Sanders, is just slanderous and not true.
Ok well if Trump and this admin were truly far right then the entire dem leadership would be imprisoned or worse. All the examples of executive overreach you cite have happened with dem admins.
Are there people on the left who're going to post edits of Donald Trump's tweet celebrating Robert Mueller's death whenever that dude kicks the bucket? You can't convince me otherwise. People will do that. Some people will, at that time, post "Donald Trump just died. Good, I'm glad he's dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!" Maybe they'll even post it as easily searchable text rather than a slightly less easily searchable image edit of the Truth Social post.
But from elected politicians? If you hear anything more harsh than what Ilhan Omar said about Charlie Kirk (and the right got triggered like snowflakes and absolutely lost its collective shit over that and cried for a safe space in the US House by trying to censure her), I'd be very surprised.
Far-left are the combative ones who support Orban because he is against "Euro Imperialism" and sympathize with China as a socialist counterweight to the US. They also support Russia against Ukraine for different reasons...