Author: Ariel

Censorship or Community Standards?: Answering the Question of “Why Did Facebook Purge TeleSUR English?” with Evidence

For the second time this year, the Facebook page operated by TeleSUR English was briefly unpublished. One of TeleSUR’s formal responses during that time was an article rebuking the host of their social media account on the platform of the New York based journal, Jacobin.

In the article “Why Did Facebook Purge TeleSUR English?”, the title an allusion to the popular movie franchise about a day long cessation of legal enforcement against crime, Branko Marcetic commits a number of grave sins against his readers and contains so much irony that it’s worth coining a new literary term, “Orwellian irony”, which I briefly describe in this article but which I go into depth on here.

For one, Branko Marcetic misrepresents the situation in such a way as to leave the reader misinformed of the facts of the matter.

Secondarily, he does not cite the proper precedents that accurately contextualizes the case he describes.

Additionally, he mis-attributes intentions to multiple actors and closes with a call to action that is based on these misunderstandings.

In other words, by close examination of a narrative intended to gain public support for TeleSUR English by claiming his employer has been victimized by a conspiracy, evidence is instead provided as to why it is that Facebook should permanently unpublish TeleSUR English’s Facebook page.

Misconstruing Censorship For Community Standards

Repeating many of the talking point made in the Jacobin article, the above video shows Adriano Contreras with tape over his mouth — as if he is being prevented from speaking. But framing the issue of their unpublishing as censorship ignores several facts — the most important being the fact that the unpublishing in no way impacted the ability for TeleSUR English to publish content.

Unlike the Palmer Raids in the U.S. at the beginning of the 20th century, no equipment for the production of media was seized or destroyed and no reporters have been jailed. No news facilities were shuttered, as has been the case in Venezuela, and no reporters were attacked by state or para-state actors.

TeleSUR never lost their ability to send out mail, something that American leftists faced in the wake of the Espionage Acts, and neither was their daily email newsletter, nor their website taken down.

During the period of their brief unpublishing TeleSUR English’s web domain and other social media outlets — such as Abby Martin’s The Empire Files or The World Today with Tariq Ali — were able to be shared on Facebook’s social media platform.

If we are to accept Marcetic’s uncommon interpretation of American jurisprudence, Jacobin is similarly guilty of “censorship” should they chose not to publish ads on their website to promote a new edition of The Turner Diaries. However this is not the case as the right to free speech doesn’t mean that someone else is forced to distribute that speech.

It’s worth noting that this is not the first time that TeleSUR has misrepresented Facebook.

In an article following the leak of internal Facebook information, TeleSUR shares more false information about the company.

The issue at hand here is a fundamental misunderstanding of what protectedgroups are. TeleSUR English shifts away from legal terminology to instead talk about privileged groups in order to imply that Facebook is inherently racist. Could a better example have been given to those acting as Facebook censors? Yes, but as you can see from the below, protected groups don’t include drivers or children.

While it’s possible that Marcetic’s upside-down interpretation of the American legal terms and enforcement history relates to his having studied the United States in Australia, the second misreading of legal context hints at something more purposeful.

Misunderstanding Author-Publisher Relations

In the numerous defenses of TeleSUR English following their unpublishing, Frank Marcetic, Abby Martin and others ignore the fact that that prior to being granted access to the Facebook platform, users must agree to its terms and conditions.

This isn’t unique to Facebook, but goes across all social media publishing platforms as well as the news publishing industry. Letters to the editor in newspapers are vetted and sometimes edited before publication, just as articles written by paid staff members are fact-checked for quality assurance. Academic journals will send back original research for any number of reasons and similarly many Facebook groups have rules for posting that will lead to those violating them getting removed from the group.

The current director of TeleSUR English’s operations, Orlando Perez, has previously defended the rights of a publisher to set editorial guidelines that determines whether or not an article is published. He even stated that it was sensible to cease business relations with an author for attempting to make a public scandal of the incident.

Had the unpublishing of TeleSUR English been part of a large scale “purge” of leftist perspectives then we could accurately describe that event as censorship. But that didn’t happen, which then begs the question: if TeleSUR English wasn’t unpublished for it’s content, then why was it?

Paranoia and Conspiracy: What Happens When Journalists Don’t Research Their Stories

It’s at this point in their reporting on the issues that Branko Marcetic; TeleSUR reporter Abby Martin; comedian Jimmy Dore; and news commentators, such as Ben Swann and Caitlin Johnstone, all do something worse than merely misrepresenting the context of the news — they fail to examine the evidence.

Even worse than making no attempt to research why Facebook would unpublish TeleSUR English based on the statement provided to them, these “journalists” rely on the words of a TeleSUR employee who has not worked there in several months, Pablo Vivanco, to validate their view that this was censorship.

Let’s examine the evidence and see how it is that Facebook may have been correct in unpublishing TeleSUR English.

Examining Evidence Part I: Public Admission of a Bad Actor

Pablo Vivanco’s use as a source in this matter is another example of Orwellian irony — for it was his assigning or purchasing of marketing services to artificially boost follower and engagement numbers that likely lead to TeleSUR English being unpublished.

Google the name of the former Director of TeleSUR English — Pablo Vivanco — and you will learn that in contrast to his statement to RT on August 14th of this year, former TeleSUR English Director Pablo Vivanco admitted that he did this at the 2016 Building Left Media in the Digital Commons panel at Left Forum.

This fact was repeated in several interviews I’ve conducted with current and former TeleSUR English employees over the past year, who also stated that this practice was known about throughout the organization and that Vivanco’s former assistant, Cyril Mychalejko, helped direct it.

Though Pablo Vivanco implies that they stopped doing this in his official statement, had any of these “journalists” done any investigation they would have learned the real truth of the matter and come to a much different conclusion.

Examining Evidence Part II: Public Admission of a Bad Actor

Though current and former TeleSUR employees and contractors, like Branko Marcetic and Abby Martin, quote Pablo Vivanco as evidence as to why it is that Facebook’s unpublishing is censorship, a review of his personal profile provides evidence as to why it is that Facebook’s algorithm unpublished the account.

If one reviews Facebook’s Terms of Service, it immediately becomes apparent that Pablo Vivanco is not being honest when he states that there is no reason to have been unpublished.

Clearly TeleSUR English has violated Terms of Service.

Examining Evidence Part III: Private Admission of a Bad Actor

Pablo Vivanco is not, however, alone in violating or directing the violation of Facebook terms of service. In the wake of the first unpublishing, a new TeleSUR English related account was created called TeleSUR English Aggregate.

While I was not able to obtain the name of the person running the account from speaking with them, their actions speak for themselves.

During my interview with admin of the TeleSUR Aggregate account, he openly admitted that the sole purpose of the account was to promote their content.

When I asked him why he did this, he gave me a pretty clear answer why he was doing this: he wanted to disrupt the operation of Facebook.

Examining Evidence Part IV: What An Automated Bot Network Looks Like

It’s not just the purchasing of likes, which helped get TeleSUR English to its roughly half a million likes that lead to it’s unpublishing, nor was it solely the TeleSUR Play and TeleSUR Aggregate accounts — whose sole purpose is to repost TeleSUR English content.

The false profiles obtained by Pablo Vivanco have done far more than just “liked” TeleSUR English’s profile — they also continue to artificially boost it’s engagement numbers.

If you go look through the public comments, likes, and reposts of TeleSUR English’s content — you will uncover hundreds of Facebook accounts that rarely have photos, and often have only a small number of friends, but are characterized by a large amount of user activity which consists entirely of re-posting news.

Unsurprisingly, given the media agreement between the Russian and Venezuelan state media, they also re-post content from RT and Sputnik.

Suggesting a mix of accounts that are directly controlled and others that are operated by 3rd parties, a number of them also post on behalf of various companies — such as GreenMedInfo.com.

Examining Evidence Part V: What A Human Re-Share Network Looks Like

In order to artificially inflate the reach of TeleSUR English, bad actors on Facebook aren’t limited to automated accounts but include coordinated behaviors by a large number of individuals.

There are over 30 “Friends who like TeleSUR English” Facebook groups. What their function is given the above evidence, I can’t clearly say.

I messaged all the administrators of these groups in February of 2018 and only recieved two responses, one from someone in Africa and one from someone in India. Both denied being an admin, even though they were clearly listed, and neither would respond to my questions

Some of these groups are moderated by employees of the Venezuelan government, like the one above. Others by Cubans. One is moderated by Vlaudin Vega, an individual formerly on the U.S. State Department’s terrorist watch list for association with the FARC. The vast majority of these have not been active in years.

What I can say that they do is to re-publish content into public groups, in order to make the content seem more valuable in Facebook’s algorithm.

The Real Reason TeleSUR English Was Briefly Unpublished AND Why Leftist Media Saw a Big Drop in Google Traffic

Just as algorithms can help prevent forest fires, help serial killers get caught, or suggest your next purchase based on your past ones, algorithms are also able to identify a large number of accounts that are spamming the system to drive traffic and increase page rankings.

While this type of marketing effort can lead to big increases in follower numbers, such behavior is prohibited by all the social media platforms as it degrades the user experience.

The reason that many leftist media outlets saw a drop in Google ranking and traffic being directed to their websites and why they posts have been deprioritized in Facebook feeds has nothing to do with selective targeting of companies or political viewpoints and everything to do with Facebook and Google holistically discouraging black hat marketing practices.

In their quest to create greater domain authority, media organizations all over the political spectrum as well as businesses bought followers from companies or created their own portfolios of sock-puppet accounts. They joined back-linking networks and compensated others to engage in practices designed to amplify the appearance of trustworthiness according to what the algorithms searched for and valued.

And then they got penalized for it and for other reasons.

Lest this seem overly abstract, let me give some examples that feature links to TeleSUR English content.

Examining Evidence Part VI: Fake Backlinking

By name alone Los Angeles Post sounds like it could be a credible outlet, but the small number of followers and the lack of postings over the past 8 months suggests otherwise.

Viewing their website you’ll learn that there are similarly few current news articles listed on their landing page, which also hints at this being merely a means for marketing companies to monetize companies desires for backlinks.

Looking through their back pages, however, you’ll see a large number of links going to TeleSUR English, CounterPunch, MintPressNews and other “alternative news” websites.

Another page which does this is called Russia is not the Enemy. Unlike LA Post, they do not pretend to be a news site — but are simply a news aggregate website that posts RT, TeleSUR, CounterPunch, etc.

Another example of such a backlinking scheme, but with actual operators, is Geopolitics Alert. Their Facebook page lists 36,700+ people liking it, however the journalistic pair that makes up this “Media/News Company” has only five Patrons and under 50 listens to their SoundCloud Account.

I emailed co-founder Jim Carey to ask him if he has accepted marketing services or money from TeleSUR, which is sensible as almost a quarter of the content on their website is directly from TeleSUR English, and he denied this.

When asked the same question as to his relationship with other state or private media organizations, Carey refused to answer my questions.

Websites like these, which claim to be funded by donations given the paucity of income they get from that means, have links to thousands of new backlinks to leftist news sites such as TeleSUR English and CounterPunch.

Not Censorship, But Technics

Just as there is a difference between censorship and a Facebook page being unpublished due to non-adherence to terms and conditions, so too is there a difference between a conspiracy to silence leftist media and the effects of algorithmic updates that seek to holistically counter the actions of bad agents. Facebook has had to delete millions of such accounts.

The notion that those with capital to pay the fees for partnership with such networks shouldn’t be given an advantage is not an “anti-democratic” decision, but one that encourages democracy. This is why Facebook and Google have changed their ranking system, and since this is clearly stated on their website and in the press Branko Marcetic, Abby Martin and others statements is not an act of courageous truth-telling but an attempt to deflect the truth that groups such as DFR Labs are trying to uncover. Rather than examining what it is such groups do to inform their readers, they hint at global conspiracies.

Doing so they ignore the fact that to operationalize the functioning of their internet platforms in such a way that it is more open, democratic, enjoyed by their users and not a source for marketing spam or disinformation campaigns from bad actors working on behalf of foreign governments — algorithms need constant refinement.

Is This What Democracy Looks Like?: The Evidence TeleSUR English Won’t Address

I posted an earlier version of this article in the only Friends of TeleSUR English group that had any recent postings. Moderated by Arnold August, a journalist and political scientist with a specialization on Cuba, I was hoping to better understand the perspective of the “Friends who like TeleSUR English” given the above evidence. Given that I was previously blocked on Twitter and Facebook by Vice Director of TeleSUR Orlando Perez and former Director of TeleSUR English Pablo Vivanco after asking them to explain as well, I can’t say that I was shocked by what transpired next.

First it was suggested that I was committing slander. Then it was implied that I had received help from “unnamed sources”. Then Nicolaj Leonardo — a writer for RT and TeleSUR English, posted a photoshopped photo of me with a knife, and then I was banned from the group.

This is not what democracy looks like.

To be clear, I do not now nor have I ever worked or consulted for Facebook, the Atlantic Council, the Digital Forensics Research Lab or any other of organization and the only “help” that I’ve recieved in my research is in the form of information given to me by current and former TeleSUR English employees.

I am a graduate of NYU’s Masters program in the Experimental Humanities, a Doctoral candidate at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana in their program for Innovation and Technology Management that has also worked in digital marketing for several years and the project leader of a team of researchers answering the call for research by Social Science One to depict the relationship between social media, democracy and elections.

Is Killer Mike’s Trigger Warning Venezuelan Propaganda? A Historical Media Analysis

Killer Mike and Bernie Sanders (DSA); a Democratic Socialists of America newsletter with a photo of Antonio Gramsci; Nicolas Maduro visiting Antonio Gramsci’s Grave

“If [Killer] Mike was to start his own country, which is always on the table, he would hire him (Bernie Sanders) as a consultant on how to set the institution up — cause he f*cks with the OG the long way.”

-El P, speaking for Killer Mike, Episode 1 of Trigger Warning with Killer Mike

“For Gramsci the rule of the bourgeoisie and the role and nature of the state was far more complex than orthodox and Leninist Marxists suggested. Control was exercised as much through ideas (ideology) as through force, and this gave a key role to intellectuals in what Gramsci called a “war of position,” a battle of ideas in which revolutionary forces must engage with bourgeois intellectuals. The function of intellectuals in capitalism is to organize beliefs and persuade the masses to embrace and accept the leadership and views of the bourgeoisie. Revolutionary intellectuals must disrupt and subvert this process of hegemony, thus making the sphere of ideology a battlefield, an arena of struggle. In the advanced capitalist countries the war of position must precede the overthrow of the state through a frontal assault (the “war of maneuver”). 

– Historical Dictionary of Marxism

New Afrika: A Communist Goal Since the 1930s

1930s map made by Communist Party members in The Negro Question in the United States showing the borders of a “New Africa” in America; 1970s Workers Party poster; Killer Mike’s New Africa

In a single word Killer Mike’s new series on Netflix, Trigger Warning, is brilliant.

It manages to address a number of serious social, political and economic issues in a way that is both irreverently funny, humane and deeply insightful. I hope that Netflix provides Killer Mike another season to explore such issues.

To understand why Trigger Warning could be associated with Venezuelan efforts to cause political polarization and conflict within the United States one must be informed about two things.

First, the historic political connection between Atlanta and Caracas.

Second, an understanding of “21st Century socialism” as political theory and practice of Hugo Chavez, the PSUV and their allies the FARC.

After I explain these and their linkages, I will show real-life examples of Trigger Warning’s politics in action; postulate that the inclusion of Juggalos in the series has to do with the Democratic Socialists of America attempt at entryism via the Struggalo Circus and the connection of black liberation movements in America.

Killer Mike and The Georgia-Venezuela Radical Access

(1) Killer Mike wearing a Kill Your Masters shirt (2) Book cover by a professor connected to Nicolas Maduro’s Kultural Marxism network (3) 2012 tweet referencing an Anarchist group in ATL.

The comprehensive version of the story is still being researched and written by myself.

If this interests you, I encourage you to follow Facebook page — it’s coming up over the next several months.

The short version is this:

Following an unsuccessful military uprising in 2002, Hugo Chavez, Nicolas Maduro, aides, assistants, specialists and the Ministry of Popular Power for Communication and Information converged to cogitate as to how to stay in power and effect a longer-term plan to enact what they saw as their Bolivarian mission.

Towards this end, they decided to make a media front for their intelligence services apparatus, TeleSUR – the name alluded to their motto “Our North is the South” and idea of transmitting The Global South as well as The Southern Question by Antonio Gramsci.

They did this in part to support a “long march through the institutions” in the United States, Latin America and Europe.

Their perspective, like that of the Comintern in the 1930s-1950s – was that the politically, socially and economically underdeveloped racially charged South would be more open to their messaging. Plus it was of crucial importance in the Civil Rights Era. Thus the potential to attract activists there, especially those that might be part of activist families made the South the designated the location where efforts would be directed in order to help create a shift in the political orientation of Americans.

Building off of the successes of the World Social Forum first held in Porte Alegre by the Brazilian Workers Party in 2001, a National Planning Committee (NPC) was formed to help develop a movement of movements in the United States that would lead, it was hoped, to Socialism in the United States.

From Brazil and Venezuela to the United States, this convergence of community activists provided the opportunity to create linkages with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela’s intelligence service and thereby tap into existent political activism and movement building networks and locate people they could assess, recruit, guide and develop as needed. Later efforts would involve Venezuelan Ambassador Jesus “Chucho” Garcia, and possibly others, working towards these ends (Brown-Vincent).

To facilitate people’s involvement they relied upon inchoate and established political activist networks; new media organizations and individual workers; academic networks and programs — such NYU’s Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, where George Ciccariello-Maher (GCM) now teaches. On this last point, it’s worth noting that part of Hemi’s mission is to “offers an anti-colonial model for engagement between ‘north’ and ‘south’ by promoting multi-sited, multilingual collaborations” — which is almost the same as that of TeleSUR. It’s also worth asking here if GCM returned the $20,000 homebuying gift from Drexel to buy a house considering that it was Venezuela’s media partner Russia that used coordinated inauthentic behavior to make things so bad for him that he could not continue to teach there).

In 2007 the United States Social Forum convened its first national meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. Inspired by the 2006 Worlds Social Forum in Caracas, the NPC “organizers followed the Caracas model in merging the discursive and performative dimensions of public space.” The location “was specifically chosen as a site for the USSF to highlight the history of struggle against racism and white supremacy… Organizers specifically targeted groups involved in “movement-building,” by which they meant community organizing among grassroots communities of color… and oppressed communities. As a USSF document explains, “There is a strategic need to unite the struggles of oppressed communities and peoples within the United States (particularly black, Latino, Asian/Pacific- Islander and indigenous communities) to the struggles of oppressed nations in the Third World.” This model privileges community organizing, popular education, and leadership development. It also reflects an anti-imperialist, nationalist frame that views oppressed communities in the U.S. as “internal colonies. (Juris 363)”.

Left, Jesus Garcia at SHROC. Center and Left, Ajamu Baraka at SHROC and in Venezuela.

Following the close of events, black activists aligned with various socialist and communist currents held a follow-up meeting in North Carolina.

There’s little public information about this, but it’s known that amongst those in attendance was Ajamu Barak, the 2016 Vice Presidential candidate for the Green Party. I recently had the chance to ask him about this in a live appearance – but was ignored.

Also notable in this period and place is how several months after this event in Georgia, Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney was nominated by the Green Party to be the presidential candidate of 2008. McKinney, who was endorsed by the Workers World Party and Cindy Sheehan, later completed a Ph.D. on issues related to Hugo Chavez’s leadership, also worked for TeleSUR.

With this groundwork laid, it became possible to start slowly building towards the American variation of Venezuela’s Constituent Assemblies — People’s Movement Assemblies, which seems to be aligned with Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez’s New Green Deal, and People’s Forums such as that one that George Ciccariello-Maher will soon be speaking at. The Poor People’s Campaign is resurrected and new schools are formed — from adolescent girls groups like the Radical Monarchs to pseudo-educational institutions like University of the Poor, who has a quote from Antonio Gramsci on their landing page.

Maybe you think this is all a coincidence..? Well, wait until the end and then give me your thoughts.

What is 21st Century Socialism?

Defining the Five Motors for 21st Century Socialism and a graphic representation of how the FARC’s bottom up, Leninist approach to forming dual power and enacting a revolution.

21st Century Socialism is driven by five “motors” — the Enabling Law, Constitutional Reform, Popular Education, Reconfiguration of State Power, and an explosion of Communal Power.

“People’s Institutions” are created via encuentros (encounters between activists and potential assets), forums and councils. Actors connected to it claim they are the real government, then begin to attack it. This dual power system of governance is intended to lead to the overthrow of the existent political power structure and provide the foundation for the establishment of a new political order.

It is this conflict between these two bodies which, in part, informs the current conflict in Venezuela and it is this that President Donald Trump was referring to in Miami recently when denouncing socialism.

There are a wealth of books about how the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUC) in Venezuela; the Movement for Social (MAS) in Ecuador; and Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) in Colombia have used such tactics— but you can more or less get the basics just from watching Trigger Warning.

Trigger Warning and 21st Century Socialism

Left: Killer Mike cites Fela as the inspiration for his project. Right: Expelled Bolivarian ambassador to the US Jesus “Chucho” Garcia holding up a Fela CD several days after I first published this blog,

The last episode of season 1 of Trigger Warning opens up with Killer Mike telling the story of Fela Kuti, the same musician that the expelled-from-the-U.S. Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela Ambassador Jesus “Chucho” holds up in a Twitter post a few days after I first posted this article.

This could just be random coincidence or affinity – but given that Chucho’s activism in the United States aligns with Mike’s this seems unlikely.

After Mike’s citation of Fela as a frame and inspiration for his idea, the show continues. For those that have already watched Trigger Warning, rather than detail each of the five motors – I decided just to share screenshots that illustrate the series the policies leading to 21st Century Socialism.

Enabling Law

Even though a Civil War was fought the last time there was a serious attempt at secession in the United States — Chief Asaru says that all you need to do it is get some signatures. Seems legit…

Constitutional Reform

After it’s been written, Killer Mike has the inhabitants of New Africa swear an oath to a new constitution that neither he nor they have read.

An Explosion of Communal Power

One of the first tasks that Killer Mike has his citizens engage in is to begin self-defense exercises.

Popular Education

Large political and vocational education projects are enacted. Institutionally, those that align with the Party in power rather than those that are scientifically and technically oriented in their decision-making process.
Reconfiguration of State Power
If Trigger Warning was connected to Venezuela’s Kultural Marxism network it would be sublimely ironic that Killer Mike cheats during the electoral process.

While the elections and after party give the appearance that this iteration of New Afrika is liberatory – another way of looking it is that all these people have just signed up to live in a company town. The flag literally has a corporate logos on it and the money that citizens now use is scrip.

What Trigger Warning Looks Like as Non-Fiction

Left – Patricia Okoumou posting about a direct action before being arrested and then posting a highly incendiary #fakenews story to her followers. On the right, Black Sovereign Nation — a revolutionary communal/communist project based on Lenin/FARC’s theory & practice.

Properly holding up the reality to the art-mirror that is Killer Mike’s New Africa, we can see that in addition to the movements and parties mentioned about – there are a growing number of examples of New Afrika’s in America.

Black Sovereign Nation is one working variation of this.

Unpermitted march threatening violence; an Antifa activist verifying Movement of Movements Thesis (many groups are connected to Venezuela; and an example of political action for meme’s sake.

Cooperation Jackson, who has extensive ties with People’s Institutions in Venezuela and promotes their activity and philosophy through Venezuela associated news outlets like Jacobin, TheRealNews, Transition Network, LibertarianCommunist, is also a working variant of his idea.

And there are several more group just like this – which is probably why in part that the FBI made the Black Identity Extremism classification. That Teen Vogue, one of Antifa/Venezuela’s news outlets, has an article decrying the term makes me think that this is the case – because these and groups like them are, in essence, an inchoate FARC.

And speaking of FARC, it’s worth pointing out another connection between Trigger Warning and Venezuela’s allies:

Another “coincidence” – whereas Killer Mike has Crips and the Bloods to produce a drink that embraces their violent past whereas the FARC now produces beers with revolutionary women on their labels.

FARC recently released their own line of beers.

They, like Crip-a-Cola and Blood Pop, lean into the violent mystique.

Trigger Warning & White Allies

A textbooks example of Socialist Party Entryism – Struggalo Circus was a group of Radical DSA activists that sought to recruit Juggalos to their political cause by claiming compatibility. Sources: Vice and Twitter.

Another thing notable about Trigger Warning was Killer Mike’s solidarity with the Juggalos and choice to make them the only white people that were invited to New Afrika.

Given the racial attitudes of the other white musicians that were featured, it’s unsurprising. However I’d postulate that this creative decision was made not because there simply weren’t any non-racist white musicians to be found. Instead, I think it was because of the recent press in alternative news outlets about the Struggalo Circus. The Struggalo Circus was a short-lived front group made up of members of the Democratic Socialists of America – the face of the United Socialist Party of America (PSUA). Based upon their own social media outlets they were only formed to engage in an entryist project to recruit Juggalos to their party at a March in Washington to protest the decision by the FBI to name them a game. Which makes one wonder why those press outlets ran stories about them in the first place…

Trigger Warning & Venezuela’s Projected Vision

Examples of Venezuela’s Messaging via their coordinated inauthentic behavior network on Facebook: Trump is the KKK; Democrats are the KKK, Everyone who Doesn’t Agree with Us are Nazis

In writing this report it is not my intent to suggest that Killer Mike was approached and coached by some Venezuelan Intelligence Agent, or that he is their puppet, muppet, Hobbit or anything other than himself.

Yet given rapper, poet, actor and political activist Saul Williams recorded the anti-Iraq-war poem/song Not In Our Name on behalf of a Revolutionary Communist Party front group; that Rebel Diaz and Immortal Technique have performed at multiple Venezuelan intelligence services supported events such, as the United States Social Forum and Poor People’s Movement, the Maoist-rapper Boots Riley’s agitprop film Sorry to Bother You! (which is also brilliant) was funded by Chinese-capital; that China makes rap songs to promote Karl Marx; and many other possible examples – it seems highly unlikely that he would not have popped up on their radar.

TeleSUR’s posting about Residente is one of many examples of Venezuela’s Intelligence Services marketing on behalf of radical rappers.

Neither is it my purpose to delegitimize Killer Mike’s poignant criticisms. Mike’s smart as heck and the things that he’s talking about matters. Which is why I took the time to unwind the mind of an artist whose works I enjoy: to help provide a mirror showing the world that’s in his/Netflix’s work of art. And with this knowledge about the connection between Venezuela and Atlanta – specifically how the former sought to influence the later in order to help develop and enact multi-generational political and cultural change project that has vast geopolitical goals, it also becomes possible to pose what I think to be are some interesting questions:

First, to Killer Mike: I know you don’t mess with Mexican weed, but when you were trappin’ was your connect Venezuelan? Given the connection between the Venezuelan government and drug trafficking cartels, this seems like a smart way to raise money for intelligence projects in the United States without leaving a paper trail. It’d straight blow my mind if Trap music was in part funded by Venezuela’s Cartel Del Soles…

Second, to Senator Bernie Sanders: If consulting on Mike’s New Africa, would you concur with him that the process depicted is “what is to be done?”

Third, to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes: Considering the Green New Deal is basically a practical re-formulation of the principles described in the Ecosocialist International into the American context — what’s your take on all this? Also, when I go to New York City to present the final version of this research will you be my date?

Fourth, to the reader: What are your thoughts? Do you think it’s all coincidence, or is Killer Mike’s Trigger Warning and example of Venezuelan Propaganda? What sorts of conversations and actions have you taken after watching it? Are you ready to move to a farm with a group of people?

Sources

Brittain, James J. Revolutionary Social Change in Colombia: The Origin and Direction of the FARC-EP

Brown-Vincent, Layla Dalal Zanele Sekou. We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting for: Pan-African Consciousness Raising and Organizing in the United States and Venezuela. 2016. Duke.

Juris, Jeffrey S. Spaces of Intentionality: Race, Class and Horizontality at the United States Social Forum (2008) Mobilization: An International Journal 13(4): 353–371

Rose Brewer, Katz-Fishman, Walda and Scott, Jerome.USSF 3 Evaluation and Documentation (4.10.16)

Walker, David & Gray, Daniel. Historical Dictionary of Marxism (2007) The Scarecrow Press, Inc. Lanham, Maryland

Review of Reinventing Leadership: Making the Connection Between Business and Politics

“The distinctions between leadership and management constitute a major shift in our thinking about how the private sector should be organized. A mere [six] decades ago, leadership was a conception business and industry generally chose to ignore. But now the best and brightest afree that leadership belongs in the private sector as much as it does in the public one. The only question is how exactly leadership and management should be defined” (147)

Reinventing Leadership: Making the Connection Between Business and Politics by Barbara Kellerman was published by the State University of New York press in 1999 and is volume in the SUNY series in Leadership Studies. At the time of the book’s publication, she was the Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of Leadership at the James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership at the University of Maryland.

While an academic work, the book’s message is also directed to leaders and managers in both the upper reaches of the private sector as well as the public sector – something that is reflected in its style. The first premise of the book is that a number of significant failures of government has shown that earlier models of political leadership are inadequate. The second is that changes in social norms and conceptions of leadership wrought by political events have made traditional notions of management that came into prominence in the period of the 1950s to the early 1970s no longer relevant. The third and final premise is about the advantages of the convergence and synthesis of leadership values that embraces traditional government and business positions. Given the increased necessity of business and government leaders to communicate and collaborate this helps to develop a common language so as to better understand each other and the interests they represent – the public and private capital interests.

Kellerman defines management as the efforts of those who hold a position of authority at some level to ensure that the activities of a firm continue as needed and that leaders are those that engage followers in the mutual pursuit of agreed-on goal representing, usually, significant and not merely incremental change. These two conceptual inputs for the synthesis she believes is now needed were defined by various authors writing for either the professional or government leader/manager. By showing the typical continuing education paths for both the professional and the government official and analyzing professional literature – such as Harvard Business Review publications as well as an impressively large list of books on management and leadership in corporate America – Kellerman shows how divergently the ideals character traits and habits of thought for each social actor was first conceived – and how large political scandals and failures drew the two together in a way that more contemporary theorists would categorize as a mix of neoliberal or technocratic with a human face.

Whereas previously managers did not view their role as to influence – simply to command, control and if necessary to coerce – the changes in cultural and legal norms mean that this no longer was valid. In some workplaces where there hasn’t been much change wrought by America’s changing labor laws, such as extraction and agricultural industries, these were few alteration in norms. In worksites dealing with more intangible goods and services, like those of the many value-added business-to-business industries, the impact was significant and well commented on in the journalism and editorials of the professional and government press.

A number of seminal business leaders from the 1960s to the 1980s are presented as case studies to show the varying trends in how leadership was approached as a theory and practice and a number of common threads highlighted. One such theme found in the private industry, but not in that of the public, was of the need for management to “know themselves” in a way that included rigorous self-assessment so as to become more aware of the interpersonal dynamics at the workplace and within the market in general. If this all sounds curiously “new-agey,” or vaguely psychotherapeutic in nature” Kellerman says in one of her many amusing asides, “that’s because it is” (76).

Another of Kellerman’s observations is that while egalitarian ideas increasing permeated literature on leadership in business that in practice a noticeable change in work relations towards something that might be defined as “workplace democracy” never materialized. In its stead there became an infatuation with “collaboration” and “teams”. While anachronistic to this book, a good modern example of this is found in Agile, Scrum, and DevOps, coding and testing team practices associated with software development firms that shown in their literature and practice to be highly consultative and communicative in nature. The scandals of presidents and CEOs as well as changed in legal regulation – especially the opening of borders for trade – all feed into the changing workplace dynamics. Because certain types of labor could be more easily moved in the face of organized discontent by workers, which increased the reserve army of labor able to replace those in other, less at risk sectors, there was an additional shift in those work cites as well. Not a point which is gone into in detail – it seems that the effects of this would be another large influence for the imperative to blur the lines between public and private leaders and managers. And on this topic, Kellerman cites three specific imperatives wrought by the new, post-NAFTA globalized:

  • Politicians will have no choice but to take cues for their corporate counterparts
  • Business executives will have no alternative but to learn lessons from leaders in government
  • Leaders in both domains will have to reinvent themselves to create something altogether new.

In the closing section of the book Kellerman extensively quotes a number of business leaders to make the point that “although real-world problems are interdisciplinary, and solutions are interdepartmental, interprofessional, interdependent , and international, our institutions – particularly our institutions of higher education – start with a heavy bias against breadth.” (219)

The book closes with a description of the image of the new ideal for a political leader and business leader. The traits that they should have, the challenged they face, the strategies that they deploy and the values they embody to strive are listed as they could go on the back of a baseball card. All in all, it’s a fascinating read on how Leadership and Management as a concept and practice have evolved in America and how it is that one should act if one desires to be a Leader or Manager in the modern political-economic environment.

This is from another of Kellerman’s books.

Orwellian Irony: A Case Study in TeleSUR English

One of the most well-known writers in the English language, George Orwell is known primarily for his works of political fiction. Recommended or required reading for literature programs across U.S. high schools, in the American political imagination Big Brother and Winston from are familiar characters while newspeak and thoughtcrime are well known concepts.

Not as well-known is how Orwell’s writings were promoted by the state intelligence services of the United States and England during the Cold War. This fascinating irony is teased out in detail in The New Yorker’s 2003 article Honest, Decent, Wrong: The Invention of George Orwell by Louis Menand. There, after illustrating how Orwell’s fiction was mobilized as a means of influencing populations not within America’s sphere of influence, Menand describes the trajectory of Orwell’s writing: “The great enemy of propaganda was subjected, after his death, to the deceptions and evasions of propaganda — and by the very people, American Cold Warriors, who would canonize him as the great enemy of propaganda.”

This is not the only great irony of how George Orwell’s work and thought has been mobilized by groups seeking to claim him as a guiding moral force.

By presenting a case study of the means by which the Venezuelan state media company TeleSUR has acted to propagandize the notion that Americans are living in an Orwellian, totalitarian dictatorship — this article will provide another example of such irony. A type of irony that is so unique given the circumstances that it deserves a new term to describe it: Orwellian Irony.

Before doing this, however, I’m going to first briefly describe the impetus for TeleSUR’s founding and how it’s primary funder — the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) — understands it’s mission. Then I will contextualize TeleSUR’s relationship to Russian state and para-state media and then define some terms.

TeleSUR English: Propaganda, Not News

TeleSUR was conceived following the attempted coup in against Chavez in 2002. It was seen as a project to help the government maintain control of the country. Because of this it’s sensible that Chavez describes the goal for TeleSUR in December 2003 at a meeting of media professional not to be a news station, but as a means “create a breach in the media wall” that would “use social networks”.

After stating that capitalism is reaching a potentially terminal crisis, former president of Chavez stated in his Program for the Homeland 2013–2019 that: “In the words of Antonio Gramsci, the old must finally end so that the birth of the new can be manifested to the full… it is difficult to know exactly when this great horizon will become visible, but we should deploy significant and well-aimed efforts in the interest of its advent.” (bold added)

Lest it appear that Chavez is the only one with such a vision for TeleSUR it’s worth pointing out that the Ministry of Popular Power for Communication and Information — the body which oversees TeleSUR — presented a report to the Venezuelan National Assembly in 2015 which clearly states that TeleSUR’s goal is not to present news, but to help create a new world order. Furthermore on page 36 of the Red Book, written by the PSUV — in the section titled Declaration of Principles, the party states explicitly that TeleSUR is one of the “spaces for diffusion for socialist experiences to the people of the world.” This explains why TeleSUR was so highly praised by Fidel Castro before his death.

Given that TeleSUR’s stated goal to help with the formation of a new, multi-polar world order and that one way to achieve this is by undermining American’s trust in their government — it’s no surprise that they would hire people to direct their organizations with a history of political activism aligned with their own goals instead of journalists and why they would partner with the Russian state — who has similar ambitions — to achieve their goal.

TeleSUR English and Russian Social Media Manipulation

In Fake News: A Roadmap, propaganda is defined as writing or audio-visual content that:

“does not disregard truth, but uses elements of truth in the ‘deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions’, in order to achieve a specific response or reaction from an audience, meant to benefit and ‘further the desired intent of the propagandist’”

During an investigation conducted by the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Labs that identified a Russian social media propaganda campaign they found that one of the ways that Russian nationals sought to do this was by mobilizing American’s familiarity of 1984 against the government.

This, however, isn’t the only time that Russian-originated media sought to make such a connection between 1984 and the present.

One of the videos that Abby Martin features in before she left her position at Russia Today for Venezuela’s TeleSUR English was, basically, a book report that sought to connect the present political environment in the United States to George Orwell’s description of Oceania. While a few of the connections are valid, as a whole they fall flat. To demonstrate why, I’ll briefly put on my professor’s cap to review what Orwellian means.

“Orwellian” as a Term for Describing the Present

“Orwellian” emerges from the description of the social and political qualities of the fictional world of Oceania in 1984, which was modeled on Orwell’s understanding of the Soviet Union during the leadership of Joseph Stalin. For Orwell the Soviet state, then defending it’s very existence in Stalingrad again Nazi invaders, had too much control over the individual and thus he claimed in the pages of the Socialist Journal Monthly Review that it is “willingness to criticize Russia and Stalin [that] is the test of intellectual honesty. It is the only thing that from a literary intellectual’s point of view is really dangerous”.

While one does not need to know this history to be able to use the term, it’s useful for understanding Orwell’s intent in writing 1984 and also to help distinguish it from other literary works that fall within the literary category of dystopia. A Handmaid’s Tale and The Iron Heel are dystopias, but they are not Orwellian.

To illustrate specifically what it is that Orwellian means, the below graphic organizer provides a number of the socio-political qualities of 1984. I’ve also included the header 2018 not to reference another book, but to show the book’s relationship to the qualities of the United States at present.

Based on this chart, I’d claim that saying that the present is “Orwellian” is analogous to arguing that since Peter Parker undergoes a metamorphosis into a human-insect hybrid, Spiderman, and then has an identity crisis and major issues with his job and family that the story is Kafkaesque. Yes, there’s some element of truth there, but that doesn’t mean that the metaphor fits. Anyone describing the present political and technological moment as Orwellian is intentionally misusing the term in order to promote a specific political perspective. Or, less likely, they simply have reading comprehension issues.

In what follows, you’ll see further evidence of Russian-Venezuelan collaboration and more examples of how TeleSUR English seeks to propagandize the notion that 1984 is now.

TeleSUR English’s Propaganda

Like Abby Martin’s video for RT, Paul Street’s editorial for TeleSUR English titled The Logical Bipartisan Insanity of Endless War similarly pitches the notion that 1984 is now. The irony is that it is don’t so in a style filled with the type of linguistic choices that Orwell hated. Unsurprisingly for someone who wrote a book entitled They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy, Street’s article is most similar to the writing qualities of the Communist writer that Orwell analyzes in Politics and the English Language. Orwell state there that “the [Communist] writer knows more or less what he wants to say, but an accumulation of stale phrases chokes him like tea leaves blocking a sink.” The first paragraph hints at this — with it’s “always supremely evil foreign others”, “toiling masses” and repetitions of “endless war”– while the rest of the article that seeks to frame the present in terms of 1984 continues it.

In another article on TeleSUR, this time by respected filmmaker and news analyst John Pilger, again the United States is cast as Big Brother.

The irony here is that this article published before the full extent of Russian disinformation campaigns in relation to their annexation of Crimea and had been analyzed and made available to the public. According to thorough analysis by experts on the matter: “Crimea may be considered a test-case for Russia in trying out this new form of warfare where hybrid, asymmetric warfare, combining an intensive information campaign, cyber warfare and the use of highly trained Special Operation Forces, play a key role”.

Following the two-day unpublishing of TeleSUR English’s Facebook page in August, the pace of “Orwellian” comparison accelerates. Adriano Contreras, a current TeleSUR English presenter, uses the term in the organizations public response video. Abby Martin again uses the term in an interview with Comedian Jimmy Dore for his television show on RT. Thus we can see that with the increase in use of the term it also becomes easier to connections between Venezuelan and Russian media becoming more apparent.

Russia Today and TeleSUR English: Propaganda Partners

Following the two-day unpublishing of TeleSUR English’s Facebook page in August not only does the acceleration of the Orwellian smear rapidly accelerate, but the connections between Venezuelan and Russian media also become more apparent.

On Sputnik and RT several editorials about TeleSUR English’s unpublishing were posted that were not only fundamentally, factually wrong in their presentation and assessment of what transpired but that also quoted a known propagandist, Pablo Vivanco, without fact checking statements he made that I was able to prove untrue with great ease. More than this, these articles all demonstrate the qualities that Orwell warned of while at the same time invoking his name.

Ask a credentialed reporter, a seasoned news editor or an English teacher about the use of the term “vanishes” in the above headline and all will likely agree that it is inappropriate. Vanish, which comes from the Latin ‘evanascere’, means to make nothing, to die away, to completely disappear. As should be clear from the fact no criminal charges have been made against Facebook executives, its staff or their contractors for either theft or destruction of TeleSUR English’s equipment or for the kidnapping or murder of their employees, we can see that the language used here is that of gross overstatement.

In his essay Politics and the English Language, George Orwell cautions readers to beware of:

political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer

cloudy vagueness… [this] inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.

To keep the casual reader interested I’m not going to undertake a close reading of the entirety of the articles, but suffice it to say that the qualities of the headline — maybe the most important part of the story for a reader in determining whether or not they will click through to read it — are replicated throughout the story.

Something else that I noticed in the comments section of the RT articles about the brief unpublishing of TeleSUR English was the numerous anti-Semitic comments.

I decided to respond to one of these trolls to see what kind of response I would get and sure from them enough I “learned” that Menlo Park is not the real place where Facebook policy is made.

This isn’t a trend related to the second unpublishing of TeleSUR English’s Facebook page. In Danielle Ryan’s opinion piece “Facebook pretending to care about democracy now is the height of hypocrisy” published on RT after their first unpublishing more anti-semitic comments popping up — though in a more covert fashion. For those not in the know the phrase dual nationals is allusion to American politicians with a Jewish background.

In the comments section on Sputnik’s article about TeleSUR English’s unpublishing I was able to get more interesting information as they use Facebook for their news comments. After reading this comment:

Since Rob’s profile was public (a requirement for allowing non-Facebook algorithm’s to include those social media actions in their calculations), I decided to review it. Sure enough it has all the qualities of a sock-puppet account: few friends — many without picture, no photos that would indicate this is a real person, and a very high level of posing for “alternative news” websites

Twitter, TeleSUR English and Orwellian Irony

It wasn’t just in the editorials and comments sections of Russia news outlets that Orwellian notes were being played.

The irony in this Aaron Mate tweet is like a German chocolate cake: sweet despite its darkness and with such efficiency linguistically that it contains multiple layers of decadent pleasure.

The first layer of irony is the fact that I’ve already referenced above: 1984 is not 2018 and a private company and a non-governmental organization partnering is literally the opposite of anything described in 1984.

The second layer of irony is how the original tweet by TeleSUR English, like the Resisters tweet shown above, also uses improper English.

A third level of irony is in the factual incorrectness of two of Mate’s claims. The Atlantic Council had nothing anything to do with the brief unpublishing of TeleSUR English and, as reported elsewhere, an explanation had been provided.

The fourth level of irony is the fact that Aaron Mate tweets this analogy to promote an interview for “The Real News Network”. This is ironic not merely because the title for such an organization sounds so similar to Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, but as The Real News Network was founded and is directed by Gregory Wilpert, one of the former directors of TeleSUR English!

The fifth level of irony stems from the fact that The Real News is engaged in exactly the same sort of promotional behavior that is prohibited by Facebook that causes their algorithm to flag and shut down the page!

Below are screenshots of two Facebook groups that I’ve found with memberships of 2 and 3 people whose sole activity is the reposting of links from The Real News as well as Venezuela’s TeleSUR English, Russia’s RT, CounterPunch, Global Research, Iranian.com, World Socialist Website and several other leftist “alternative media” outlets.

There’s a sixth level of irony in the Tweet, though it requires a story for context.

On September 3rd I emailed the contact listed on the Left Forum website to inquire about obtaining a copy of the 2016 Building Left Media in the Digital Commons panel. I wanted to view Pablo Vivanco’s presentation as while there is a screenshot available online of the presentation it is one of the few panels not available on YouTube.

This is itself ironic — as according to Marcus Graetsch, the only current full time volunteer for this “organization”, this was the year that the “organization” decided to have presenters arrange their own recording of the events and neither of these Directors of large media firms felt that what they had to share was worth recording and sharing for the sake of posterity. –

I expressed my frustration in a follow up email asking for something other than a story and this is when the seventh level of irony was revealed.

He said that though he couldn’t help he would ask Gregory Wilpert, who organized the panel to assist me.

In my exchange with Wilpert, the Managing Editor of an alternative news network, he claimed not to have a copy and then refused my request to ask others that were present if they had one as he believes that criticism of TeleSUR English should remain private.

Another words, in Aaron Mate’s tweet he dishonestly maligns Facebook for behavior that his employer is engaged in!

The Fifth Estate Masquerading as the Fourth Estate

Given that CounterPunch and WSWS — a Trotskyist political group — are similarly promoted by the above listed fake social media accounts and websites associated with TeleSUR English it’s not surprising seems also to be in on the game of promoting the U.S. and Facebook as Orwellian in nature.

In Andre Damon’s article Facebook Details Plans to Censor News Feeds and Manipulate Public Opinion he states the following: “It is exactly to prevent the distribution of “true news” that Facebook is, using Orwellian language, employing “fact­ checkers” to flag stories and opinions that are to be suppressed.”

TeleSUR English and “Independent” Blogs

It’s not just current TeleSUR English employees, former TeleSUR English’s employees, the current employees of former TeleSUR English employees, TeleSUR English’s official media partners, and TeleSUR English’s unofficial media partners that are in the “Orwellian” campaign.

Several blogs that exist seemingly only to echo TeleSUR’s position also do this, which is to be expected as any modern propaganda campaign on social media is not going to be limited solely to “official” news outlets to propagate the notion that such views are normal.

One blog, from which the above image comes, is from Luis Garcia and is titled Nomadic Thoughts.

Another blog, by the Russian-born Dimimtry Orlov, is titled the An Outsiders Sojurn. The not so subtle title of his blog: “The Social-Media Tech-Giants are an Orwellian/Dystopian Tentacle of this Anglo-Zionist Rogue-Empire!” gives a hint at the thrust of his analysis.

In addition to the videos, articles and blogs promoting the notion that Americans are living in an Orwellian epoch, there are also comments like the one below.

TeleSUR English and Orwellian Irony

One of George Orwell’s views about people who wrote from the party line was that: “Orthodoxy, of whatever colour, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style.” While the president of TeleSUR claims to be an impartial news outlet when other countries decide to stop funding them or continuing to their cable distribution packages, TeleSUR English is a propaganda outlet.

In their quest for cultural and political hegemony Venezuelan and Russian media find their interests overlapping and thus combined their efforts propagate a distorted worldview through their outlets in Russia Today and TeleSUR English.

Propagating the notion that contemporary America is “Orwellian” through a series of official, semi-official and quasi-official outlets is just one of many examples of this. If the above wasn’t able to convince you that it’s not, consider this last point in the form of a graphic organizer:

 

Sources

1984 by George Orwell

Analysis of Russia’s Information Campaign Against Ukraine: Examining non-military aspects of the crisis in Ukraine from a Strategic Communications Perspectives

Curso Basico de Formacion Socialista Para La Militancia de Vanguardia del PSUV

Digital Hydra: Security Implications of False Information Online

Documentos Fundamentales: Libro Rojo by Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela

Politics and the English Language by George Orwell

Proposal of the Candidate of the Homeland, for the Socialist Bolivarian Government 2013–2019 by Commander Hugo Chávez

The Logical Bipartisan Insanity of Endless War by Paul Street

Fake News: A Roadmap Editors: Jente Althuis and Leonie Haiden

Facebook Details Plans to Censor News Feeds and Manipulate Public Opinion by Andre Damon

https://riseuptimes.org/2018/01/29/facebook-details-plans-to-censor-news-feeds-and-manipulate-public-opinion/

Facebook pretending to care about democracy now is the height of hypocrisy by Danielle Ryan

Betraying the Bolivarian Revolution/ Vichy Journalism at teleSUR English by Jon Jeter

Facebook security officer: not all speeches are “created equal” by Andre Damon

https://www.wsws.org/es/articles/2018/06/06/cens-j06.html

Whose Truth? Soverignty, Disinformation and Winning the Battle of Trust by John T. Watts

TeleSUR or TellaSLUR?: Anti-Zionist News, Anti-Semitic Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior

A visitor to TeleSUR’s website can quickly see Israel holds a special place in TeleSUR’s news coverage. Despite the rest of the countries following an alphabetical organization, Israel is the first country listed.

While this could be just an instance of poor design which that made its past the eyes of everyone involved in the construction and user testing of its website — this isn’t the case.

As you’ll learn after reading the below, this little aesthetic glitch is anything but a mistake. It’s a not so sly code, which will be illustrated in detail below, that TeleSUR is a media company oriented towards helping Venezuela’s PSUV achieve the political goals stated in their Plan de Patria related to Israel rather than applying professional journalism standards.

What does this mean for their brand? Well, when it comes to international news reporting, truth-telling takes a back seat to the desire to delegitimize America by working to malign by any means necessaryits ally Israel.

The official news organization along with its media partners — a mix of private and state media companies as well as contractors — collaborate on projects that go far beyond anything that could be called principled anti-Zionism. Instead, TeleSUR consistently publishes in a false light; while their partners share a variety of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories on Facebook and the web.

TeleSUR Reports Fake News of Child Abduction

In 2010 the Anti-Defamation Leaguepublished Anti-Semitism in Venezuela: In the Wake of the Gaza Flotilla which contained extensive documentation of anti-Semitic views being expressed in various media outlets and by various members of the Venezuela government — including false accusationsthat Israeli doctors had stolen human organs from Haitians affected by the 2010 earthquake.

Nicolas Maduro, the president of TeleSUR, was cited as describing a situation wherein any potential attack could be ascribed to Mossad — “a conspiracy theory similar to one typically used by anti-Semites who claim Jews and Israel were behind terrorist attacks such as the 1994 AMIA attack in Buenos Aires or 9/11.”

While the whole publication is worth reading — especially for the connections it draws between Venezuela and their state news media’s coverage of international affairs — this article focuses solely on the past five years. Between 2010 and 2015 the Venezuelan state and its media apparatus, TeleSUR, learned to be overt about it’s anti-Zionism and use covert means to spread anti-Semitism in order to achieve political goals.

In May of 2015, for instance, TeleSURand their partner HispanTV, the Iranian’s Spanish-language news service, were both sharply criticized by the Wiesenthal Center and the International Center for Countering Anti-Semitismafter both of them falsely reported that “Israel used humanitarian aid to Nepal in order to disguise the smuggling of 25 infants.”

The article, which is still hosted on TeleSUR’s website, cites unidentified non-governmental organizations and falsely claims that these 25 infants were whisked away by the Israeli adoption agency Tammuz. Adding an extra element sure to inflame people with conservative and traditional religious belief, they also note that “the Tammuz clients include a number of homosexuals”.

Sergio Widder, head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Latin America Desk, stated on record that “HispanTV and Telesur Channels are behaving as the successors of the Nazi propaganda newspaper Der Stürmer. The editor of Der Stürmer, Julius Streicher, would have been certainly proud of such a dark and vile legacy.”

Worth noting is that this isn’t the first time that these news sources fabricated news of an anti-Semitic nature.

TeleSUR and Holocaust Denial Light™

In 2017 TeleSUR again published two articles of anti-Semitic Light™ content in Spanish, this time to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Apparently having learned from the backlash received the first time around they didn’t publish outright fabrications, but instead chose to present the Holocaust in a false light.

One doesn’t need to be a subject area specialist in order to understand ASININE such a comparison is. Let’s look solely at the images above.

I make a point of going into the math here not to make the case that Palestinians have such a quantitatively far smaller life debt that comparing the Israel state is just fundamentally unsound comparative political analysis — using the number of dead to measure the analogy, according to TeleSUR’s own reporting, the 10,000 dead divided by 7,000,000 dead = .001428571429 or .015% — but as it provides a means for applying pressure counter-point to TeleSUR’s reporting on their partner, Russia.

10,000 Palestinians killed, is roughly the same number of people that died fighting in the Russian invasion of the Donbass region. Given the timeline for this violence compared to the decades of Israel’s border consolidation, wouldn’t that then make Russia, using the same logic exhibited by this narrative, SuperNazis?

While the first article equated the Israeli government with that of Nazi Germany; the other informs about five other mass killing events that were “less known about than the Holocaust”. This unto itself isn’t problematic, but the framing within the text is. Specifically, by intimating that Jewish people are evil for having taken steps to ensure their collective survival by forming a state misrepresents the will of those other groups.

No TeleSUR reporter asked any high ranking member of political or cultural leaders from the groups that they named in the article if they wished they had a state organization and military capacity to ensure something like what happened before never did again.

And yet look to the news and you will see the groups mentioned therein working towards exactly that.

But does TeleSUR report this? No. Instead they publish stories in a false light using yet another false analogy. This time the narrative is “Jews have become Nazis”.

A pattern of Misrepresenting History Matches PSUV’s Plan de Patria

Misrepresenting history through maps.

What’s missing from TeleSUR’s coverage regarding similar conflicts as that which occur within Israel is as telling as what is there.

There’s no similar coverage of conflicts which have far higher casualty counts in the Philippines, India, Java, etc.The indigenous dispossession engaged in by TeleSUR’s current and former media partners — Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Peruetc. — so that those government-supported resource extraction; intensive agriculture; and transportation infrastructure development projects can proceed — isn’t something that’s discussed. Given TeleSUR’s claim that they represent and speak for “The South”, this is quite puzzling.

When one considers that this is because such coverage aligns with the PSUV’s Plan de Patria, however, it makes sense. Venezuela abstains from truth-telling about what’s going on in their partner countries so as to stay on the “good side” of the politicians there.

While Nicolas Maduro, the Ministry of Popular Power and Information and Patricia Villegas — TeleSUR’s executive core — officially only promote crude anti-Zionism, their “off-brand” media partners produce and share media conspiratorial anti-Semitic content. The insulation that they believed to have from such content is, however, easy to take apart following some investigation.

Cynthia McKinney’s Anti-Jewish Conspiracy Theories

Former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney ran for president on the Green Party ticket in 2008. Her campaign imploded and political career fell apart, however, after her father expressed a number of anti-Semitic views. Following her fall from grace she reinvented herself as a journalist. She blogged for TeleSUR, gave interviews to RT, wrote a series of books based upon her experience in war zones, and obtained a doctorate of Philosophy in Leadership and Change from Antioch University.

Her Ph.D. thesis, titled “El No Murio, El Se Multiplico!” Hugo Chávez: The Leadership and the Legacy on Race”, a stylistically appalling but at times insightful reflection on issues related to race, leadership, and statecraft. Less worthy are Cynthia McKinney’s Tweets related to such issues.

The first screenshot about ZioCon’s — which I presume means either Zionist Conservative or Zionist NeoConservative — represents a misinterpretation of the relationship between marketing and production companies and consumer. Seemingly a variation of the Cultural Marxism conspiracy, it suggests that there is a vast conspiracy by American Jews seek to destroy the black community through music.

Cynthia McKinney’sre-Tweet about Ethiopian Jews stem from Lizard-People-Rule-the-World conspiracy theorist David Icke. Like Janus, there’s two faces to what the Tweet claims.

The first claim is that Ethiopian Jews — aka Beta Israel — are “the Real Jews” and that those the settled in Israel and those who live in the Diaspora aren’t.

The Invention of Ethiopian Jewsby Steven Kaplen is published in a peer-reviewed academic journal and shows how this claim is incorrect. After extensively documented primary research and numerous interviews with members of the Ethiopian Jewish community, he comes to the conclusion that:

“Both the Beta Israel’s oral traditions and the testimony of their literature offer strong evidence that crucial components of their religions system developed no earlier than the fourteenth of fifteenth century. Beta Israel accounts of their history trace virtually all major elements of their religion to the influence of the originally Christian monks, Abba Sabra and Sagga Amlak.”

A list of websites too long too name — without sources, without real author attribution, with clear intent to slur a whole group of people as Satanic — states otherwise.

The second face of the claim is that the “fake Jews” are actually part of a giant, murderous, secret criminal empire which practices worships the Devil and practices their black magic order to gain power and profit.

I haven’t reviewed every article writing about it online, but all that I did either were anonymous; the author listed on it didn’t appear to exist anywhere else; had no sources; or sources that were easily shown to be fake following a Google search.

To give an idea of the sophistication of such a views I’ll share an excerpt. Following a history that lays, basically, every mass tragedy in European and American history at the feet of the “fake Jew” Khazarians, of which the RothschildFamily is one “tentacle,” this group takes over America from behind the scenes. Following this they then start to practice their “social manipulations”:

“The Rothschild Khazarian Mafia decided to gain complete control over all public education by setting up the Department of Education and creating globalist and socialist curriculums based on political correctness, diversity and “perversion is normal” teachings. Fluoride is added to the public water and toothpaste, and dentists are mind-kontrolled to believe that fluoride prevents cavities, and is not harmful to brain function or thyroid function, which it is.

The addition of fluoride to the public water supply and to toothpaste is to dumb-down Americans by on average lowering the operational IQ and making folks much more docile than they would normally be. Programs to develop and deploy vaccinations to dumb-down children and create huge numbers of future chronic health problems were initiated. Doctors have been mind-kontrolled and misled by biased research that was cherry-picked, ignoring any studies that were negative — and that included most of them. All vaccine cell lines are contaminated with SV- 40, a known carcinogenic slow-acting virus.”

The Khazarian Mafia conspiracy theory is largely a remix of claims made previously by the John Birch Society, however it also samples from others. According to this conspiracy theory, the Khazarians “continue their Satanic child blood and sacrifice rituals, and trust Baal to give them the whole world and all its riches, as they claimed he had promised them, as long as they kept bleeding out and sacrificing children and infants for him.”

This is what’s referred to as the Blood Libel — or the idea that Jews sacrifice Christian children as part of their religious ceremonies — and it’s a claim that has long been connected to pogroms that lead to the dispossession and death of Jewish people.

Following TeleSUR’s Unpublishing; Anti-Semitic blogs Signal Boost About It

TeleSUR’s brief unpublishing caused a flurry of reports decrying censorship by the news channels of TeleSUR’s media partners. The comments sections of Sputnik and RT, as I documented elsewhere, were filled with more conspiracy theories about the motives behind it.

These, however, were not the only outlets that sought to draw attention to TeleSUR. Several anti-Semitic blogs also started to publish content filled with outrage that such an event would happen. The websites are typical examples of the sort of fake backlinking networks, as I documeted elsewhere, that TeleSUR, RT, Sputnik, WSWS, RealNewsNetwork and MintPressNews, use. Drawing connections between them and TeleSUR beyond this would require more investigation.

TeleSUR Content Hosted by Anti-Semites on The Pirate Bay

While investigating for this article, I thought I decided to do some unconventional reporting and decided to see if TeleSUR had any content on The Pirate Bay. Sure enough they did!

One of the people seeding TeleSUR content is Joseph Blauman, aka joeblowman, the host of the The Joe Blow Conspiracy Show. Given the date that he uploaded the TeleSUR interview of Noam Chomsky and the rest of his digital footprint it’s unlikely that he’s connected with the organization.

The other account, roflcopter2110, also has a large number of anti-Semitic documentaries and is harder to determine.

To be clear I have no evidence that TeleSUR operates this accounts to spread anti-Semitism — but there is clearly a connection between those who tend to believe that the earth is flat, that vaccinations are bad, that fluoride in water destroys your precious bodily essence, and that Jewish people actually worship the devil and sacrifice babies and those that have an affinity for TeleSUR.

Anti-Semitism Spread on Leftist Facebook Groups

On Facebook there’s so much Anti-Semitism-In-the-Name-of-INternational-Extremism content isn’t not just ridiculous it’s ASININE. The bread of the photo sandwich above gives just a small hint at the amount of Rothschild conspiracy content that gets shared online in photos and posts.

Accounts with photos of Che with names in different alphabets — a simple way to determine which Facebook accounts are part of Venezuela’s coordinated inauthentic behavior network — repeat the same sort of nonsense the Cynthia McKinney does along with narratives of far greater absurdity.

What — you ask — could be more absurd then a make believe international criminal conspiracy like the Khazarians? One of the far-out-there claims I’ve seen posted in such groups as the ones shown above states that Osama Bin-Laden was both a Mossad agent AND a Jew and that he is still secretly alive and well and occasionally socializes with Bill and Hillary Clinton.

While the title of the Facebook group in the center of the photo is cut off, it’s full title is NUEVO GRUPO CON MADURO. As in Nicolas Maduro. Notable is that the person sharing this image within a Spanish language group has an Arabic name.

Showing that the point of this coordinated inauthentic behavior network is simply to spread disinformation, misinformation and thereby increase political polarization is evident in the fact that a website like rightoftheright.com would be posted in a group called ALL COMMUNISTS.

Anti-Semitic Sock Puppet Harassment on Facebook

After I saw one the accounts I identified as connected to TeleSUR’s Coordinated, Inauthentic Behavior Network post an article that denied that the Nazis burned ever destroyed the Torah I wrote a reply to their post stating that it was fake news and linked to a credible source which showed this. As is evident by the screenshot of my Facebook notifications in the center of the above picture, this did not please the operator of the sock puppet account.

He proceeded to tell me that he could tell I was Jewish by my nose and by my name — which I am, though I never heard people tell me that I have a “Jewish nose”.

After I posted a comment about how amused I was that even in the face of peer-reviewed scholarship and primary documents that showed he was spreading fake news, he then tagged me in a Facebook story and four posts which had images or text that were textbook antisemitism. I included the one about Kevin Bacon movies as while the “Jews Killed Jesus” comment is poor taste — especially in the context of a vast coordinated inauthentic behavior network promoting anti-Semitic anti-Capitalism — the meme by itself is funny.

And really, after doing this research and discovering that there’s a large scale, well-funded ongoing online campaign to spread the same sort of lies that lead to much of my family being killed in concentration camps in Ukraine a laugh is just what’s needed to help me from falling into a crushing sense of hopelessness about humankind’s ability to learn from the past by refraining from spreading bald-faced lies for political purposes no matter how just they think their cause is.

Sources

Steven Kaplan The Invention of Ethiopian Jews : Three Models.

Preston James, Ph.D -The Hidden History of the Incredibly Evil Khazarian Mafia (Updated)

Anti-Defamation League. Anti-Semitism in Venezuela IN THE WAKE OF THE GAZA FLOTILLA

The Revolution Will be Sexualized: TeleSUR’s Depiction of Women

Women have played a large role in Leftist revolutionary movements. According to Mao, they hold up half the sky. After yet after reading this report and viewing the media content pulled from Facebook you’ll learn that while TeleSUR’s officially stated position is for women’s liberation, their full network behavior shows that they replicate the same patterns of objectification and sexualization of women that they claim is cause for their moral superiority.

Going beyond sharing photos of attractive socialist women, their own channel and those of their partners share soft-core pornography; photos stylized like those of prostitutes (prepagos) as well as sharing imagines that would appeal to pedophiles. Given these facts, a more appropriate slogan for TeleSUR than “Our North is The South”, at least for its female audience, might be ‘Liberation up Front; Commodification in the Back’. An especially appropriate analogy, given that the mullet is also an animal and what follows is fishy.

Our North is Your Bust: TeleSUR’s titillating News and Lifestyle Sections

“Sex sells”, those in the room deciding TeleSUR’s media strategy say amongst themselves, “so if the photo of a pretty girl is what gets someone to become interested in getting involved or expressing solidarity with their struggles then so be it!”

The right image hints that it was the power of camiseta-liberated women that was the sole cause for the passage of the bill. If you want to help The Cause, whatever that is, you need to take off your shirt.

If “Telesur’s new Lifestyle section” seems odd in it’s clear appeal to a female teenage audience it’s important to remember that this tactic was similarly documented in the form of FaceMusic byDigital Forensic Research Labs’ analysis of Russian media influence tactics.

Rebel Girl You are the Queen of My World — Bikini Kill

There are whole websites devoted to hosting photos of Conservative American girls with guns. Kaitlin Bennett, a pro-Second Amendment supporter and Grassroots Director for Liberty Hangout made the newsfor a photo shoot at Kent State.

According to the Handbook of Clinical Sexuality for Mental Health Professionals the technical name for high levels of sexual arousal for seeing one’s preferred gender with a gun is called Hoplophilia.

Che’s Revolutionary Devotees * Guns Out Fun Bags Out* The Widows of Guacho

The first photo, Che’s Revolutionary Devotees, with the head coverage of the women and the eyes focal point being off in the distance seem to indicate that the women had a religious devotions to the thought and life of Che Guevara. Like modern apostles, the photo suggests, the FARC is the true heir of Che just like that Catholic Church first claimed of Jesus.

Guns out Fun Bags Out is of a style that was very popular amongst the CPI(M) accounts. Other variations of it had similar images but with bright pastels.

The Widows of Gaucho refers to the dissident FARC commander that was killed 21 de Diciembre de 2018, en Tumaco. The account which shared it, which for a profile photo has a picture of Correa, not so subtly hints that though dying young he had a sexually prolific life.

TeleSUR’s coordinated inauthentic behavior network has applied lessons from The Sun’s Page 3 Girl and Latin American prepago culture as a means of keeping audience interest.

Before moving to Colombia I was not familiar with post-social media prepago culture in Latin America. Young women that want to sell their sexual services no longer have to congregate in Zonas Rosa (Red districts) or Zonas de Tolerencia (Tolerance Zones) in order to find patrons.

Given that a number of the mobile phone plans operators in Latin America, such as Tigo, Claro, etc. don’t include use of Facebook as part of their data plans — thus making it free — this sort of dissemination of semi-nude photos is a manner for such girls to showcase their wares.

Apparently it has also become a manner to keep Chavistas interested in checking the media sent by the accounts that spread TeleSUR’s content and that of their partners.

TeleSUR-related Accounts Shares Photos of Pre-Pubescent Girls

“By any means necessary” is common revolutionary slogan indicating that the successful results of a revolutionary movement matters more than the manner in which it is achieved. Revolutionaries following this principle can thus excuse all sorts of behaviors that, were their enemy doing it to them, would be considered yet another justification for The Cause.

In promoting these kind of images, like those above, TeleSUR and their coordinated inauthentic behavior network are sexualizing young girls. Any sort of excuse that it is about “showing that children are keen to save the future” is a lie as (1) there were no similar images posted of young boys; (2) there was no similarly posted photos of groups of children engaging in some sort of collective activity — as was typical of Soviet propaganda employing children; and (3) the very notion of a child endorsing a political party or movement is absurd as they be definition are wholly ignorant of the world.

Furthermore, let me contextualize the images according to it’s culture and country of origin.

In India a child under the age of 16 is raped every 15 minutes.

In Gaza, according to a trauma therapist working for Physicians for Human Rights “more than one-third of the children I saw in the Jabalya [refugee] camp reported being sexually abused. Children from ages 5 to 13.”

In Russia and Ukraine, laws and cultural norms against reporting make statistics like the above difficult to find. Worth nothing, however, is that after Ukrainian journalist Nastya Melnychenko, recounted a number of incidents of sexual harassment and violence that started when she was six years old and continuing into adulthood on social media with the hashtag #Iamnotscaredtospeak — many thousands of others expressed similar stories.

Teen Vogue: TeleSUR’s Partner in Grooming Young Girls to Adore Socialist Men?

The images of pre-pubescent girls which appeal to pedophiles are all the more disturbing considering other aspects of TeleSUR’s coordinated inauthentic behavior network. Specifically that they occur at the same time that articles in Teen Vogue addressing the finer points of modern Socialist thought features frequent PSUV-spokesperson George Ciccariello-Maher.

Given the clear message illustrated in the images of the socialist women that are of age that there is imperative to submit to the needs of The Revolution and the men that run it — it begs the question if there is a concerted effort by TeleSUR/Venezuela to groom pre-teen young American girls to find Socialist men appealing and imbue the notion that they should sacrifice themselves in any way needed.

This is a classic characteristic of sex cults that exploit children — equating touching with love and devotion to the leaders of the group.

If we are to believe, as Rosa Luxemburg did, that “the most revolutionary thing one can do is always proclaim loudly what is happen” then TeleSUR claims it has to offer is either to be sex objects or warriors — nothing more.

Correcting Ben Norton’s Retweet Commentary of Newsweek

TeleSUR’s links to Russia’s maskirovka projects are now being admitted by those that are part of Venezuela’s Kultural Marxism network (with some editorial assistance that adds integrity to Ben’s reporting via redaction).

Newsweek is finally starting to catch on to what I’ve already been saying now for over a year: TeleSUR is a shameless ASS (Anti-Social Socialist) propaganda network.

In reality, this isn’t “news”. The two countries have been partners for a long time – both in the matter of sales of military technology and media.

The two countries have been involved in a media partnership since 2015.

Ben Norton’s Original Tweet, for context.

Given Ben Norton’s cosy relation to the Maduro regime, it’s unsurprising that he would share misinformation to his followers on Twitter.

What is surprising is that he would post something that so clearly shows his poor ability to read and interpret texts. If you read the original article on Newsweek, it’s clear that the author of it, Cristina Maza, never claims that TeleSUR is Russian.

If Ben Norton reads articles like this – which is written at an 8th grade reading level – one can’t but wonder what else he’s getting wrong in his “reporting”.

Cultural Marxism in America: A Historic Overview of its Origins

Example of art used by the IWW as a pedagological tool.

Over the past few weeks several articles in as many high-brow media outlets all took Cultural Marxism as a topic for discussion.

Several days after Samuel Moyn wrote an opinion articlein The New York Times calling the term “Cultural Marxism” a dog-whistle for conspiracy-minded racists that was too loaded for use, David Brooks published an opinion article in The New York Times whose topic was intergenerational economic struggles at the workplace over meliorism. One of his explanations as to why such conflicts happen was that Cultural Marxism is the lingua franca of the universities that had educated those workers.

Brooks use of this term caused a brouhaha on Twitter, and lead him to link to a series of articles related to the subject recently published on Tablet by historian Alexander Zubatov. Like me, he responded critically and at length to Moyn, which Ben Alpers publishing a blog for the Society for United States Intellectual History group on Facebook, who reiterated Moyn’s case.

Given my subject area knowledge mastery of the subject and as I’m currently researching and publishing about Kultural Marxism– a modern variant of the Cultural Marxism project — I decided to weigh in on this conversation as well.

In short, while I agree with David Brooks and Alexander Zubatov that Cultural Marxism exists and view the historiographical methodology of Ben Alpers and Samuel Moyn as fundamentally unsound — I also take issue with Zubatov’s periodization.

My claim is simple: before a single member of the Frankfurt School was even born, Cultural Marxism already existed in America.

Defining & Historicizing American Cultural Marxism

What exactly is Cultural Marxism?

I find Alexander Zubatov’s definition, which I now paraphrase here, to be suitable.

Cultural Marxism is a worldview that sees cultural productions (Films, TV shows, books, as well as the institutions which help them come to be), and ideas as emanations of underlying power structures. To understand them genuinely, rather than just on the surface, an honest reader must scrutinize and judge all culture and ideas based on their relation to economic and political relations. Following from this premise, advocates for the persecuted and oppressed must also attack forms of culture that re-inscribe the values of the ruling class, and also disseminate culture and ideas that support “oppressed” groups and “progressive” causes.

Why do I find this definition suitable? Because it matches the perspective Perry Anderson presents in his books In the Track of Historical Materialismand Considerations of Western Marxism. These works historicize the discourse of a number of leading Marxists and traces the shifts in the school’s practical concerns and theoretical innovations.

How do I know Cultural Marxism existed in the United States prior to the 20thCentury?

Because Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels said so, for one.

Secondarily, there were numerous Socialist political and cultural organizations operating in the United States that were avowedly Marxist in orientation prior to the arrival of the Frankfurt School. The legal response of the existence of these organizations was censorship, jailing and deportation and the extra-legal included large private police forces and spy networks that were accountable often only to those paying them (Preston).

Last, but not least, there are myriad examples of American citizens creating their own cultural works which contested the legitimacy of America’s political and economic institutions as well as criticizing cultural works as being counter-revolutionary.

I’ll now illustrate each point in the order just presented.

Marx’s Assessment of American Politics

While Karl Marx is more often associated with Russia than the United States given the successes of the Bolshevik Revolution and the Red Scares, when periodizing Cultural Marxism in America it’s important to remember that he also wrote for the New York Daily Tribune, corresponded with Abraham Lincoln, considered moving with his family to Texas after the American Civil War, and worked directly and indirectly with socialist organizations in America. While these facts indicate that there was an organized effort by Karl Marx and his associates to propagate communist beliefs via various distribution channels in the United States — Karl Marx understood an inchoate Socialist movement to have existed in America since he was a teenager.

In Marx and Engels’ view of American history, it was the Workingmen’s Parties of the early 1830s that quickly rose to prominence across across the country and then dissolved was the first iteration of America’s “own social democratic school.”

Marx believed this was so because the Workingmen’s Parties were the first class-oriented political organization in America that stated in their literature that the interests of Capital were intrinsically opposed to the interests of Labor. This briefly lived organization, however, wasn’t the only iteration of such a “social democratic school”.

Marxism in 19thCentury America

The Knights of Labor were founded in 1869 and by 1886 they had over 700,000 dues-paying members as well as their own membership cards, arcane initiation rituals, newspapers and associated meeting halls. After the Knights had disbanded The Industrial Workers of the World were founded in 1905, and had all the same trappings as well as comics in their news publications, like Mr. Block, and songbooks by musicians like Joe Hill, who would later be assassinated for his political activity. They even published their own catechism that clarified the positions from which they opposed capitalism. Both groups sought to organize workers regardless of race, sex or skill level of occupation. Their goals were to create One Big Union and thereby extend the meaning of democracy such that it included what transpired at the workplace (Montgomery).

These weren’t the only Socialist organizations operating in the United States prior to the Frankfurt School’s arrival. There were also the Modern Schools, which operated in New York, Chicago, Milwaukee and other cities that founded on the educational principals of the Spanish Anarchist Francisco Ferrer (Higham).

There were also a variety of state and national political parties organized as well — from Daniel DeLeon’s Socialist Labor Party to Victor Berger’s Socialist Party of America. In the 1930s Communist Party Members in Alabama consistently put their jobs, reputations, and in many cases there very lives on the line. Like a print version of Glassdoor — their newspapers contained information on prices of jobs in different regions; first person accounts of bad behavior by employers as well as the trials and tribulations faced by Communists (Kelley). These newspapers also shared stories of hope of what life could be like without the racism so endemic to the South (Horne). So desirable was the Grand Narrative presented through these media outlets that in 1936, when the Spanish Civil War began, Leftists and Blacks from throughout Africa, the Caribbean, and America volunteered to join the International Brigades to fight against the fascist forces of Spain, Germany, and Italy — much as contemporary Leftists have made cause with the Kurdish people in Rojava (Robinson).

There were also international socialist organizations operating in America. The International Working Persons Association, an organization once headquartered in Marx’s adopted home of London, which moved to New York in 1872. The IWPA was able to so successfully address themselves as able to help with the needs and concerns of workers that in Chicago alone in 1885 they had over 20,000 members that were of the mind that reforming capitalism would never be a sufficient means of improving their conditions and that a peaceful transition to socialism was not possible (Foner).

In fact, it’s in part because of the IWPA’s activity related to the legal defense of the group of radical political activists that came to be known as the Haymarket Martyrs, which included publishing their private correspondence and encouraging affiliated socialist groups to demonstrate on their behalf, that the first international holiday for workers — Labor Day — came in to being (Hill).

Such political projects were not monolithic, and the conflicts between the Marxists, Lasalleans and other tendencies played out in party debates, the pages of their theoretical and news publications and the policies they adopted. In Brian Lloyd’s book Left Out: Pragmatism, Exceptionalism, and the Poverty of American Marxism, 1890–1922, the author provides an intellectual history of early socialist thought in America. After claiming that too much of the historical writings on this period has taken for granted the Marxist nature of American Socialists by simply categorizing the two major tendencies into Reform and Revolutionary Socialism — he subjects the writing of socialist journals published during the 1890–1922 time period — such as The Massesand The New Republic– as well as the books by leading intellectuals to a close examination. By doing so Lloyd is able to illustrate how William James and John Dewey exhibited a marked influence on the intellectuals then writing for the socialist press.

In sharp contrast to the current Prosperity gospel, early American radicals depicted Jesus as a Socialist.

Lloyd demonstrates how Spencerian notions of social/cultural development; Veblenian economic stages; Nietzschean and Bergsonian concepts of the Will and Interest as well as Darwinian determinism Socialist discourse and practice. The “Farmers faction” of the Socialist Party, for instance, propagated small-producer ideologies in order to act as an organizing principle.

By limning the conceptual limits of quasi-Marxist thinkers that he alternately denigrates as hayseed empiricists; practical idealists; inchoate liberals; “great men” followers; economic monists, etc. he shows that the intellectual framework of the “American Marxists”, and those within the Second International, was not always aligned with Marx even if he was often used as a referent.

Examples of Early American Cultural Marxism

Given the role that literature plays in the oeuvre of Karl Marx, that Marx did write a number of romantic poems and his impact on aspects of so many national cultures, it’s perhaps most appropriate to say that he is the first Cultural Marxist. And yet he never wrote a novel that had the same radicalizing effect that William Morris’ News from Nowhere or Tressell’s The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists had for British Marxists or that Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward had for radicals on the other side of the Atlantic. Edward Bellamy’s novelization of a man seeing the future illustrated the dynamic tensions between what was and what could be in a way that appealed to many Americans by showing how a Socialist organization of industry and governance could benefit them.

Bellamy’s book was a certifiable best-seller that sold millions of copies in America and the Socialist Party advertised it in conjunction with The Communist Manifesto. Eugene V. Debs, five-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party, cited conversations with Victor Berger and reading the novel as highly influential to his political development and was part of a large body of literature which recorded American’s thoughts, experiences and fantasies as they came to terms with industrial capitalism. Indeed, there was a flourishing trade in books and articles that addressed the dynamic tension between what was and what could be possible in the present.

Between the Haymarket Riots of 1886 and the Bryan McKinley election of 1896 in over 100 works of utopian fiction were produced by politicians, literary authors, businessmen, and journalists in response to the struggles of their time. Not all were revolutionary — indeed some were conservative or outright regressive — but they were so successful that the Charles Kerr Publishing house was able to specialize in selling Leftist Utopias. According to Mary Jean Pfaelzer, the Kerr utopias included:

Anonymous — The Beginning , A Romance of Chicago As It Might Be, 1893

Anonymous — Man or Dollar, Which?, 1896

Frederick Adams’ President John Smith: The Story of Peaceful Revolution, 1897

Zebina Forbush’s The Co-opolitan: A Story of the Cooperative Commonwealth, 1898

W.H.Bishop’s The Garden of Eden USA: A Very Possible Story, 1895

James Galloway’s John Harvey: A Tale of the Twentieth Century, 1897

19th century literary works aren’t the only novels that could be categorized as Culturally Marxism. The Jungle, published serially in the avowedly socialist magazine Appeal to Reason by Upton Sinclair in 1906 depicted the difficulty of production line work in the Chicago abattoirs. While modern Socialists look with disdain on the Socialism of renowned American novelist Jack London, in 1908 his novel of revolution in Chicago, The Iron Heel,was seen as a classic — even garnering praise from Leon Trotsky. Then there was the comics that were published and distributed in order to raise class consciousnes.

Published in 1912, this collection of illustrations could be seen as a precursor to today’s meme-warfare.

Though it’s difficult, if not impossible, to empirically determine the social impact of such Cultural Marxist works — just as it is hard to measure the impact Ayn Rand has had on Objectivists and Libertarians or The Turner Diarieshas had on White Nationalists — clearly they exist.

Towards A New Periodization of Cultural Marxism in America

While it is true that both Antonio Gramsci and György Lukács both wrote significant, innovative works in the Marxist canon; both worked at the ComIntern in order to propagandize on behalf of the Soviet government and International Communism; and both have had their theories applied to various cultural projects — to not include people such as John Reed; Morris Hillquit; Victor Berger; Eugene V. Debs; Joe Hill; Edward Bellamy; Bill Haywood; Charles Kerr; August Spies; Albert Parsons; Lucy Parsons; Jack London; Hosea Hudson; Stan Weir; Marty Glaberman; Ted Wellman; William Z. Foster; Clarence Hathaway; W. E. B. DuBois; George Padmore; Max Shachtman; and myriad other native and immigrant Americans in an accounting of Cultural Marxism the United States is to cover up the country’s rich history of political and cultural radicalism.

Ben Alpers’ and Samuel Moyn’s claims that Cultural Marxism is nothing more than a baseless conspiracy theory intertwined with far-right anti-Semitism can only be made if one excludes American history from the end of the American Civil War until members of the Frankfurt school arrived in New York City. Indeed, so pervasive, violent and ruthless was the legal and extra-legal suppression wrought against the members of the above described and similar themed organizations that it proves anyone who uses the term political correctness to refer to the “intolerant left” is themselves guilty of Orwellian irony (Preston).

Bibliography

Alpers, Ben. A Far-Right Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theory Becomes a Mainstream Irritable Gesture. U.S. Society…

Anderson, Perry. Considerations of Western Marxism

Anderson, Perry. In the Track of Historical Materialism

Brooks, David. Liberal Parents, Radical Children: The Generation Gap Returns. New York Times.

Crawford, Margaret. Building the Workingman’s Paradise. New York: Verso. 1996.

Foner, Philip S. History of the Labor Movement of the United States. New York: International Publishers, 1979.

Higham, John. Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism 1860–1925. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2002.

Hill, Rebecca. Men, Mobs and Law: Anti-Lynching and Labor Defense in U.S. Radical History. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2009.

Horne, Gerald. Race to Revolution: The United States and Cuba During Slavery and Jim Crow

Kelley, Robin. Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depressions.

Kipnis, Ira. The American Socialist Movement: 1897–1912. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2005.

Lears, T. J. Jackson. No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880–1920. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2004.

Lipset, Seymor Martin & Marks, Gary. It Didn’t Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001.

Lloyd, Brian. Left Out: Pragmatism, Exceptionalism, and the Poverty of American Marxism, 1890–1922. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

Montgomery, David. The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State and Labor Activism, 1865–1925. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Pfaelzer, Mary Jean. Utopian Fiction in America, 1880–1890: The Impact of Political Theory on Literary Form. University College, London, 1975.

Preston, William. Aliens & Dissenters: Federal Suppression of Radicals 1903–1933. Cambridge: University of Illinois Press, 1994.

Robinson, Cedric J. Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition.

Westad, Odd. The Global Cold War and the Making of Our Times: Third World Interventions and the Makings of Our Times. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Zubatov, Alexander. Just Because Anti-Semites Talk About ‘Cultural Marxism’ Doesn’t Mean It Isn’t Real. Tablet Magazine.

Review of Culture and Management

Culture and Management by Zygmunt Bauman was published in Parallax in 2004 and speaks to the managers concerns with the managed, and how this relationship have evolved in the United Stated over the past 40 years.

Despite it’s having existed in practice for thousands of years, the sociological idea of culture was first spoken of as a term for the management of human thought and behavior. Industrial production processes that were increasingly complex and in need of absolute repeatability and precision, unlike the previous artisan approach to production, mean that there was an increased need for normative regulation within work spaces. Being part of a purposeful activity, certain human traits were seen to be like fertilizers to a productive process and thus human beings are made. Selective cultural improvement in the work site transpired by training and education in the “right” way of being. After connecting this term to another relatively new word – management – Bauman links the concept to ‘husbandry’ in the human sphere, ‘breeding’ in behavior and ‘cultivation’ of character. After this he makes a point to point out the dialectical characteristics, the interpenetration of opposites, which exists within the relationship:

“Just like ‘agriculture’ is the vision of the field as seen from the perspective of the farmer, ‘culture’ metaphorically applied to humans was the vision of the social world as viewed through the eyes of the ‘farmers of the human-growing fields’ – the managers. The postulate or presumption of management was not a later addition and external intrusion: it has been from the beginning and throughout its history endemic to the concept. Deep in the heart of the ‘culture’ concept lies the premonition or tacit acceptance of an unequal, asymmetrical social relation – the split between acting and bearing the impact of action, between the managers and the managed, the knowing and the ignorant, the refined and the crude.”

Bauman then quotes Theodore Adorno to point out how “the “managers-managed” relationship is intrinsically agonistic; how the two sides pursue two opposite purposes and are able to cohabit solely in a conflict-ridden, battle-ready mode. Put another way, from the Wobbly Constitution, the worker and the owner have nothing in common. As Baum himself puts it – “the management’s plot against the endemic freedom of is a perpetual casus belli.”

The ideas which structure workplace interactions – management – are codified into formal knowledge via educational institutions – like the Catholic University that I am now in – and the different approaches to workplace administration are taught. Culture creators are those that help apply changes to those norms, whereas managers are those that help maintain the norm. There is always a tension here too, as one seeks to change the status quo that the other previously enforced.

Bauman then quotes Hannah Arendt at length regarding the increasing liquidity of the world and its effect on human exchange in the workplace.

The second managerial revolution is the switch from normative, explicit regulation to a more implicit one.

First Managerial Qualities                  Neoliberal Model
Normative Regulation                                   Seduction
Day to Day Policing                                       PR
Routine                                                            Constant Change
Highly-Regulated                                          Precarity

Understanding culture as operationally meaning something like ‘pattern maintenance’ of a “kind of totality inside which any deviant behavior of human units is promptly spotted, isolated before irreparable harm is done and swiftly defused or eliminated.” Another words whereas the logic of “solid” modernity was following instruction; the “liquid” modernity is doing it yourself. Bauman is very critical of this, quoting other historians and ethnographers as this helping to contribute to a culture of “disengagement, discontinuity and forgetting.” Bauman does not go on into any extended description of how thus to unravel this negative aspect of modern workplace culture, but does state that management needs to be aware of this unless the quest for abstraction, branding and profit – the reification of thought, objects and human relations – lead to workplace problems that suffocate their relationship. Cultural events, a fancy phrasing for company events, can thus be space to reinforce the norms required for a good workplace culture.

Review of Organizational Knowledge Creation Theory: Evolutionary Paths and Future Advances

Organizational Knowledge Creation Theory: Evolutionary Paths and Future Advances was published in the Organizational Studies journal and was written by Ikujiro Nonaka, Georg von Krogh and Sven Voelpel and explains the process of “making available and amplifying knowledge created by individuals as well as crystallizing and connection it o an organization’s knowledge system.” As knowledge is something that is embodied within the body, knowledge creation is something more than just the transmission of information. Information itself is never interpreted outside of a specific embodied context – a basic presupposition within the education process for becoming a teacher – and therefore more than just the expectation of immediate assimilation following consumption needs to be presumed when developing organizational knowledge within a firm.

SECI Model of Knowledge Conversation

Knowledge expands through a four-stage conversion process:

Socialization aims at sharing tacit knowledge among individuals.
Externalization aims at articulating tacit knowledge among individuals.
Combination aims at combining different entities of explicit knowledge.
Internalization aims at embodying explicit knowledge into tacit knowledge.

The authors then use a Japanese concept, ba, to explain the different qualities of the spaces of encounter (originator -> context -> communication -> receiver) within which information and knowledge is transmitted.

There are for the authors three types of Ba – or Spaces of Meeting: Cyber, Interacting, and Originating.

Organizational epistemology is an important concept, and ought to be understood as a continuous process wherein the individual limits and constraints created through prior information and past learning is able to become newly actionable to the present job to be done. It views knowledge as something that “is oriented towards defining a situation so as to act on it rather than solving the depicted and manipulated pre-given problem.”

Knowledge, however, is fragile, and there are many ways that obstacles to coherence, creativity, sharing and innovation can emerge. Thus it is that an scientific method ought to be applied that relates to the needs of the business. Conversion, in which individuals externalize the experiences of knowledge, need not occur with every new bit information garnered by every individual, but an organizational design and knowledge creation and transfer processes should be in place to ensure that knowledge pertinent to Marketing is shared by Engineering should it have a potential use value. Because of this, the authors then look at standard business models to determine to an extent who needs what.

Hierarchy, Heterachy, and Hyper-Text

Hierarchy is what is most common in organizations where there is little variation in the work to be done – such as factories, fast-food restaurants, and construction. There is little variation that needs to be done, so there is little need from management for input from workers.

Heterarchy is categorized by its form. Assets and leadership are dispersed; communication is horizontal, and coordination informal and network based. reorganization results from “new demands for specialization and coordination as revealed by knowledge creation.”

Hyper-text – In a bureaucratic and hierarchical business system, this is a parallel project system layer that consists of a project teams that engaging in knowledge creating activities.

The authors’ connection between organizational knowledge, daily operations and the duties of company directors is clear: “providing accurate, timely and complete information for decision making is one of the most critical tasks of leadership.”
When understanding that the ba spaces are those where Middle managers are disseminating information, attitudes, etc. their role as knowledge producers, means for transmitting and ensuring that information was properly better comes into play. While reading this, I couldn’t help but think of my own training, both in the classroom as a teacher and in the classroom as a student discussing a different model of pedagogy and assessment.

The organization is in a state of becoming, moving between cycles of sense-giving from the top and sense-making in the middle, to sense-giving in the middle and sense-making at the top. There is no one “best model” for businesses, but rather they see that a business system, a project system and a knowledge system working in parallel that properly and efficiently coordinated and enables knowledge is the optimum for companies. This is and much further explanation on the topic gives rise to the “knowledge-based firm” concept that has recently come to dominate models used in Business education.

Outsider Knowledge Activists

Professional consultation is a common business practice as the focus of the business is sometimes so fixated on the task at hand they firms are unable internally to devote the attention required to weighing the benefits and liabilities of new practices and products. These people typically cause friction between themselves and the Performance Engine, but this is a “creative abrasion” that leads to new opportunities for knowledge creation. These people communicate future prospects and help provide overarching goals for the knowledge creation being developed in the different teams of an organization. They were the people with a “bird’s eye perspective” that helps firms achieve a new potentiality for being within the marketplace.

Leadership

One of the main directives for someone in a leadership position is to promote the SECI process. The primary functions of a leader is to:
1. Articulate knowledge visions and communicate them in and out of the organization.
2. Break down the values and visions into applicable concepts, images, and activities that direct the process of knowledge creation
3. Ensure that the knowledge system is being used, and considering how to help it evolve.
4. Define the organizational units, coordinate knowledge system layers.
5. Foster and nurture middle managers to act as knowledge producers
6. Provide space for ba and bring the right people together for it.
7. Search for supports, create internal groups and activities
8. Keep the bas energized and directed.

If it seems that if this were the case that all organizations and firms would be the same, however, they are not. The authors provide a telling explanation as to why that I quote here at length: “Organizations are dialectic phenomena that cannot be analyzed through a simple set of premises about behavior, be it profit or utility maximization, bounded rationality, altruism, human values, and social norms. The power of explanation lies in prudently combining insights from theories and research that draw upon different premises. In so doing we come closer to understanding the multifaceted nature of the organization.”