On "collaboration with the Right"

Still working on that "Marxist-Libertarian-Synthesis..."

Daybook  August 14, 2017

On "Collaboration with the Right"

Apparently, it's not OK for Leftists to coordinate with anyone deemed "right-wing" or "fascist".   Those who want to limit the dialogue to "true believers", and deny all connections between "Left" and "Right" are the ones who need to be excoriated. Such views only lead to war and attempts at "revolution" which is just that - another turn around the wheel of death and destruction.   

What we need to do is de-politicize and somehow rationalize "disputes" over the nature of the Confederacy, Fascism, Racism, Nazism, Bolshevism, etc.  which are entirely artificial and contrived.  No one cares whether or not there is a statue of some political hack in front of our State or national Capitols.   Should we compare Montana's Gen. Thomas Meagher (our first - appointed- Territorial Governor - few if any would have voted for him) with Robert E. Lee, no doubt the most popular General and leader of the Confederacy, and admired by nearly every student of history from any side, as well?   I can assure you that Gen. Meagher would compare unfavorably with Gen. Lee.  

People are dissing my old friend and 2004 Green Party Presidential pick David Cobb (thanks in no small part to the MT delegation, largely a creature of Cobb's own campaigning, but based on Nader's showing in 2000).  Most Greens in Montana had already given up and dropped out in 2004, and wouldn't have supported Cobb, in any case.   I don't remember the vote total, but it was at most a few thousand, and if I remember right, Nader got about twice as many votes in 2004 running as an Independent, with Peter Camejo.  In 2000, with a national organization, Nader got more than 20,000 votes in Montana - certainly not enough to make any difference in this "Red State".  And there was a "Libertarian" to draw off twice as many votes from the Republican  GW Bush, if the Democrats want to consider that - or that Perot put Clinton in the White House in 1992.  

That was the consensus of the national Green Party as well - to simply endorse Nader in 2004 (which he was counting on) instead of running our own candidate.   Most of the MT Greens turned out to be DemoGreens like Cobb - many even supporting Max Baucus or working in his campaigns.   So, I more or less considered the MT Green Party dead, but continued doing a non-party Montana Green Bulletin for another 6 years or so as an educational and journalistic activity - a sort of shoestring "alternative press," of which none really existed in MT at the time.  The Missoula Independent with George Ochenski and others, was doing very well, but it was mostly entertainment and arts news - more "hip" than "radical."   And it was bought out by some chain, as well.  

Most of my present views and positions derive from that experience of Green Activism (which really goes back to the 1970's), and there are a number of websites (whose stuff I share here) I follow - most notably Counterpunch 
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/08/11/overcoming-nuclear-crises/

and Global Research.   http://www.globalresearch.ca/neocons-have-been-destroying-sovereign-nations-for-20-years/5603225

Popular Resistance (mostly active Green Party people) is another good one - a digest, but Zeese and Flowers write a lot of their own stuff, too, and do a radio show easily accessed by podcast.  https://popularresistance.org/resistance-at-tule-lake-a-hidden-history-of-japanese-american-incarceration-and-defiance/

Z-Net used to be my favorite, but it is more sectarian than I like, and I rarely read it now, nor is it easily available like those mentioned, above.  

I have long defined myself as a "Green Libertarian", so I have a lot to do with the real libertarian right (which is anti-military, anti-empire, and anti- any sort of inteference in our private lives, or our private, consensual transactions - like sex workers and a whole "underground economy" which is essential to the health of the whole system).  

Any attempts to control or contrain our attempts to resolve our issues by cooperation and mutual understanding, as Cobb and Caitlin Johnstone have now been so villified for doing, should be recognized as the real problem, not someone's moral approbrium for making that effort....  Cobb may be a political hack, using various machine techniques (which he learned as a Jesse Jackson Democrat) to control Green Party decisions.  He was Jill Stein's campaign manager last year, as well.   So, the articles against him on those grounds have substance, but merely endorsing Johnstone's views (she is Australian, BTW), and wanting to work with "the libertarian right" on issues like overreaching govt, the National Security State, military spending out of control, the Gulags/War on Drugs which lock up 5 times more prisoners than any but the most totalitarian systems - these are all areas where "Left" and "Right" can and should work together.   

I often post graphs from https://www.politicalcompass.org/ to illustrate the feasibility - indeed, necessity - of identifying our political positions on a X-Y axis which reflects both Left and Right as well as Libertarian and Authoritarian.   Study it carefully.  You may be surprised.   

https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2016

The US Presidential Candidates 2016

Please note that the positions on the chart are based on speeches, manifestos and, where applicable, voting records. If positions markedly change during the campaign, we will revise the chart accordingly. Already the positions of Trump and Clinton differ slightly from the primaries chart.

Despite most polls indicating that Bernie Sanders would fare significantly better than Clinton against Trump, the party clearly wanted Hillary. This surely suggests that when push comes to shove, the Democratic establishment would prefer Hillary to lose the presidency than Sanders to win it. On the other hand, a large section of the GOP mainstream is probably uncomfortable enough with their blustering billionaire to swing behind Hillary — but never Sanders.

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This is the essay, following a number of other about Caitlin Johnstone, an Australian blogger who, along with David Cobb, a Green Party presidential candidate in 2004 and Jill Stein's campaign manager last year, was proposing "reaching out" to certain Rightist and libertarian groups and movements.....

JULY 28, 2017
Enough Nonsense! The Left Does Not Collaborate with Fascists
by ERIC DRAITSER

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/07/28/enough-nonsense-the-left-does-not-collaborate-with-fascists/

Whom the Gods would make mad they first make respond in print to vacuous, inane bullshit.

-Henry Wadsworth Draitser

Waterboard me! Give me the Ludovico Technique with the Atlas Shrugged Trilogy playing on an endless loop! Anything, anything at all would be better than having to write about Caitlin Johnstone and the ongoing back-and-forth about her so called “journalism.” And yet, here I am, doing precisely that because, quite frankly, some things have to be put in print, no matter how execrable the task.

What follows is not an attempt to perform a close reading of Johnstone’s couple months-old oeuvre because, to be perfectly honest, there’s not much to read other than repetitious anti-Democratic Party talking points which are perfectly fine, if a bit boring and easy. I don’t have any problem at all with endlessly bashing Democrats, I’ve been doing precisely that since before Johnstone was writing books on astrology.

Rather, the central critique, which Johnstone and her defenders studiously avoid engaging openly and honestly, is that this Australian blogger and self-proclaimed leftist openly advocates collaboration with the fascist alt-right...