{"id":36229,"date":"2024-09-17T20:57:16","date_gmt":"2024-09-18T03:57:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=36229"},"modified":"2024-09-17T20:57:17","modified_gmt":"2024-09-18T03:57:17","slug":"the-turncoats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2024\/09\/17\/the-turncoats\/","title":{"rendered":"The Turncoats"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"307\" height=\"164\" src=\"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/image-65.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-36230\" srcset=\"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/image-65.png 307w, https:\/\/occupysf.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/image-65-300x160.png 300w, https:\/\/occupysf.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/image-65-150x80.png 150w, https:\/\/occupysf.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/image-65-250x134.png 250w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 307px) 100vw, 307px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Why do Left-ish journalists and influencers &#8211; Matt Taibbi, Russell Brand, Glenn Greenwald, Joe Rogan, RFK &#8211; end up supporting, tacitly or explicitly, the Trump-ian Right?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/w_80,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcce9dbcc-f0a1-41a1-a0d0-df4ff46c48ab_1918x2560.jpeg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/profile\/2728693-daniel-pinchbeck\" target=\"_blank\"><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/@danielpinchbeck\">DANIEL PINCHBECK<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>SEP 10, 2024 (danielpinchbeck.substack.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today let\u2019s explore the underlying conditions which have caused popular Left-leaning journalists and influencers to swerve, over the last years, into either full-out, no-holds-barred supporters of Trump and the Right, or more tacit fellow travelers. The roster includes cynical \u201chippie catcher\u201d Russell Brand who recently embraced both Trump and the Bible; Naomi Wolf, former progressive Feminist turned Steve Bannon acolyte. Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald relentlessly attack the Democratic establishment while blithely ignoring the horrible activities of the Right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joe Rogan, a former \u201cBernie Bro,\u201d slants libertarian\/Trump\/Right, as&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/episode\/5lwyOhkPW13b09RL7RMe6s?si=f16389932ae04885\">this episode of \u201cDecoding the Gurus\u201d<\/a>&nbsp;dissects. RFK Jr fits into this constellation, as a former Democrat and environmental crusader who now supports Trump, even though Trump plans to \u201cdrill, baby, drill\u201d while annihilating what\u2019s left of our social services and environmental protections. RFK has taken the former New Age idealist Charles Eisenstein on this twisted journey into Trumplandia with him. In his latest essay, Eisenstein refuses to take any position against a demagogue who vows to put his political enemies into prison, intends to reduce taxes on the wealthy while raising them for the poor, and revels in the prospect of ending Democracy. Faced with this, Eisenstein chooses the \u201chigh road\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>I won\u2019t play the game of denouncing or endorsing. The psycho-social patterning of \u201cwhich side are you on\u201d springs from one of the chief narratives of the mythology of Separation. It understands the world by simplifying it into a drama of good versus evil, and also simplifies the human beings who play roles in that drama into subhuman or superhuman caricatures.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Elon Musk has moved further and further to the Right, manipulating Twitter, once the Internet\u2019s \u201cpublic square,\u201d to suit his racist, neo-Fascist agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How did this happen? There is nuance and history here<a href=\"https:\/\/danielpinchbeck.substack.com\/p\/the-turncoats?#footnote-1-148687204\">1<\/a>. Let\u2019s dive into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>First, let\u2019s admit there is hardly a meaningful Left in American politics. As I discussed in my podcast interview with Jared Paul Sexton, the reason for this is simple: When the Left started to gain traction in the US (after being demonized in the McCarthy Era) in the 1960s and early 1970s, the government and the FBI fought back against it, using a host of dirty tricks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"&quot;The Midnight Kingdom&quot; - Jared Yates Sexton\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/b4DCim3d9H4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>These dirty tricks included assassinations (Fred Hampton, Malcolm X, JFK, and so on) and the killing of peaceful protestors (Kent State). Another dirty trick was orchestrating trumped-up legal charges against movement leaders such as Abbie Hoffman and Timothy Leary. Long legal battles consumed the energy and financial resources of the Left. The \u201cWar on Drugs\u201d was another method. We now know the CIA helped to distribute a range of illegal drugs (cocaine, heroin, and LSD) to intensify social fragmentation while supporting unpopular wars in South East Asia and Latin America. Many believe that the CIA intentionally distributed LSD to the hippie counterculture in the late 1960s, knowing it would accelerate the collapse of \u201cthe Movement.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As demagogues know, rhetoric shapes and controls reality to a great extent. Since the annihilation of an actual Left, mainstream pundits talk about mainstream progressives and Democrats as, somehow, \u201cthe Left.\u201d Trump goes so far as to call Kamala Harris a Communist. Obviously, this is absurd. The late David Graeber explained this dynamic well:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"David Graeber on the Extreme &#039;Centre&#039;\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-9afwZON8dU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Today, Graeber noted, the \u201cLeft\u201d is said to be represented by \u201cObama and Macron-style centrism\u201d which supports entrenched bureaucracies and exploitative corporate practices while protecting Wall Street. \u201cThe only possible appeal of that kind of politics is, \u2018Well at least they&#8217;re not Nazis,\u2019\u201d Graeber quips. The Left is reduced to an \u201cextreme center,\u201d dedicated to bureaucratic markets, technocratic controls, and the surveillance-oriented \u201cnanny state.\u201d Graeber said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>Obama \u2026 looked like the kind of guy who would have a vision. He acted like a visionary. He had the intonation. He had the way of standing and looking into the distance like he really believed in something. And it shows you something about just how much visionary politics has been killed: It didn&#8217;t even seem to occur to people to ask what his vision actually was, because it turns out insofar as he had a vision his vision was not to have a vision. He believed in pragmatism, compromise, and so forth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s what the center has been reduced to: It&#8217;s become this pure set of performative symbols. At the same time, you get to feel morally superior, which is ultimately what liberal centrism is all about: It&#8217;s the ability to feel better than&nbsp;other people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So there is a symbiosis whereby the right wing pretend to be stupid. George Bush II perfected this: \u201cI&#8217;ll act like a yokel. All of the liberals will make fun of me as an idiot.\u201d Everybody who resents the cultural elite for having monopolized all the good jobs will look at them sneering at me and say: \u201cYeah, I bet those guys feel the same way about me as they feel about Bush. I&#8217;ll vote for Bush \u2014 hahaha \u2014 stick it to them.\u201d You know that shtick. Trump is just doing it more extreme version of the same thing\u2026 you act like an idiot so the educated [liberal] elite make fun of you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>People keep falling for the same stupid trick over and over and over again. There\u2019s a symbiotic relationship between these centrists, who are sneering elitists, and these guys who are the scam artists, who pretend to be yokels, who pretend to be idiots, or pretend to be fascists. They&#8217;re not even real fascists. They&#8217;re kind of phony fascists. They are trying to set up a situation where those are the only two viable political choices, because they both feed off and complement one another.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>To understand turncoats such as Greenwald, Brand, Taibbi, Naomi Wolf, and so on, we should acknowledge the historical context: First, any authentic Left \u2014 any movement to restrain corporate power and create social equity \u2014 was destroyed (and when a Leftist hope reappears, as with Bernie Sanders 2016 campaign, it is quickly snuffed out, yet again, with various shifty moves). Then the corporate Democrats (Clinton, Obama, Biden etcetera) appropriate Leftist rhetoric as part of their stage-managed dialectic with Republicans, while both sides maintain the status quo of massive wealth inequality and corporate predation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A negative perspective sees the opposition between the two parties as a symbiotic relationship which serves both sides (and their financial backers), while stifling any effort at real systemic change. For instance, the Democrats could have fought back against the hijacking of the Supreme Court by expanding the number of Justices; they did not even explore this possibility. It benefits the Democrats to frighten the populace with the ever-present horror of a Republican victory \u2014 in fact, considering their tepid platform, it is the only way for them to win. If the Democrats fully supported Leftist policies like decent universal healthcare and progressive taxation, they would win the popular vote in a landslide while alienating their financial backers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Personally, my perspective is not so extreme: I believe there are meaningful differences between the parties that profoundly impact millions of people. Rob Breszny offers&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/freewillastrology.com\/beauty\/archives\/254\/biden-administrations-progressive-accomplishments\">this list of Biden\u2019s progressive accomplishments<\/a>, and you can read Kamala Harris\u2019s actual&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/kamalaharris.com\/issues\/\">policy proposals here<\/a>. On the other hand, as I have noted previously, the Democrats have done little to restrain oil and gas exploitation, with the US now at its peak of domestic production, which is disastrous for our future. A roster of 88 current and former corporate CEOS have just&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2024\/09\/06\/business\/ceos-support-kamala-harris\/index.html\">released a letter<\/a>&nbsp;supporting Harris\u2019 candidacy. Dick Cheney \u2014 Right Wing warmonger, architect of the catastrophic Iraq War that left one million Iraqis dead \u2014 is&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/09\/06\/us\/politics\/dick-cheney-kamala-harris.html\">a supporter of Harris<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you have a Leftist agenda and you report on this situation long enough, you might start to despise the liberal establishment. You might start to hate the hypocrisy of the Democrats more than you hate the malevolence of the neo-Fascistic Right. I sometimes feel close to that, myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is what happened to Greenwald and Taibbi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A commonly held belief is that the Democrats possess a globalist agenda \u2014 aligned with Karl Schwab and the technocratic World Economic Forum \u2014 that is worse than the overt racism and covert Fascism of Trump and the Republicans. Taibbi, for instance, writes: \u201cThe Democrats\u2019 ambitions are significantly more dangerous than those of the Republicans. From digital surveillance to censorship to making Intel and enforcement agencies central players in domestic governance \u2014 all plans being executed globally as well as in our one country \u2014 they are thinking on a much bigger and more dangerous scale than Republicans.\u201d While I also do not like the push toward technocratic controls, I believe the Right Wing pose a far greater threat to our immediate future. I think it is naive to believe that the Right, once installed into power, won\u2019t use the same technologies to their advantage, particularly as Peter Thiel, Musk, and many other super-wealthy tech entrepreneurs and investors avidly support them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some other crucial factors must be included in this complex equation. One is the pernicious influence of Putin\u2019s Russia and the KGB, which employs a host of strategies to drive deeper rifts within American society, seeking to destroy its hegemonic power. Last week, in fact,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2024\/09\/07\/media\/tenet-media-russia-rt-tim-pool-dave-rubin-lauren-chen\/index.html\">a trove of documents were released<\/a>&nbsp;providing evidence that Russia has financially supported influencers and YouTube streamers such as Dave Rubin and Tim Pool, paying them as much as $400,000 a month through a shell company, Tenet Media. In a livestream last month, Pool declared:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>\u201cUkraine&nbsp;is the enemy of this country! Ukraine is our enemy, being funded by the Democrats. I will stress again, one of the greatest enemies of our nation&nbsp;right now&nbsp;is Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>What\u2019s clear is that there is a massive amount of money available for Right Wing influencers, while actual Leftist media is completely under-funded (as I know from personal experience, having tried repeatedly to raise capital for Leftist media projects).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Julian Assange was another beneficiary of Russian largess, apparently considered an asset by the KGB.&nbsp;<em>The Economist<\/em>&nbsp;noted in 2019:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>WikiLeaks\u2019 willingness to serve as an uncritical and enthusiastic laundromat for Russian intelligence reflects the group\u2019s longer history of publishing material with little or no newsworthiness, but calculated to undermine American interests. A cache of CIA hacking tools published in 2017 was one example. In contrast, WikiLeaks almost never publishes leaks that might undermine America\u2019s autocratic rivals. Mr Assange may not be an enemy agent, but he has at least been a useful idiot.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Wikileaks&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/story\/2016\/10\/john-podesta-wikileaks-hacked-emails-229304\">carefully timed release of Hilary Clinton\u2019s emails<\/a>&nbsp;may have tilted the 2016 election to Trump. As director of the CIA, Mike Pompeo defined Wikileaks in 2017 as \u201ca non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia.\u201d In the past, I was impressed with Assange and Wikileaks. As more information comes to light, I no longer see Assange as a heroic figure, but a double agent, on the wrong side in the ongoing war between autocratic and (imperfect) open societies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Another factor is the rise of cancel culture, #metoo, and woke identity politics, which poses a deep threat to some of these figures, particularly Brand and Taibbi. Their vulnerability to cancellation from the progressive world pushes them further toward the embrace of the Right. The Right not only provides funding and support for them through platforms like Rumble. It also ignores their past mistakes and absolves them of any transgressions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Let\u2019s look into this more deeply next time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you want a deep dive into this question from a Leftist perspective,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/inthesetimes.com\/article\/former-left-right-fascism-capitalism-horseshoe-theory\">this article from&nbsp;<\/a><em><a href=\"https:\/\/inthesetimes.com\/article\/former-left-right-fascism-capitalism-horseshoe-theory\">In These Times<\/a><\/em>&nbsp;is worth a read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(Contributed by Gwyllm Llwydd)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why do Left-ish journalists and influencers &#8211; Matt Taibbi, Russell Brand, Glenn Greenwald, Joe Rogan, RFK &#8211; end up supporting, tacitly or explicitly, the Trump-ian Right? DANIEL PINCHBECK SEP 10, 2024 (danielpinchbeck.substack.com) Today let\u2019s explore the underlying conditions which have caused popular Left-leaning journalists and influencers to swerve, over the&#8230; <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2024\/09\/17\/the-turncoats\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36229"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36229"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36231,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36229\/revisions\/36231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}