A portion of the website for the website fara.gov, on the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
CC: John C. Demers
Assistant Attorney General for National Security
National Security Division
Greetings FARA Unit,
My name is Ariel Sheen and I am an American citizen from the State of Florida that is currently under consideration for an Atlantic Council Fellowship and a Social Science One research grant on the social media behavior of Venezuela’s state media company TeleSUR.
Following comments made by Senator Marco Rubio, my representative, as well as comments by Senator Cornyn, Senator Gardner and Congressman Joe Wilson – I began to investigate whether I could find evidence that indicated that the TeleSUR has been acting as a foreign agent of the Nicolás Maduro regime on American soil.
After over a year of investigation, I can say definitively say that the answer is yes – TeleSUR is not a news outlet but the face of Venezuela’s intelligence services.
I’m emailing you now to share with you my findings and to offer you access to my research folder so that you can confirm anything that is claimed therein.
This report shows the various means that TeleSUR seeks to high-jack Facebook’s algorithm to have their information presented, an example of a shell account being used to communicate online, as well as an example of a “Hands Off Venezuela/Anti-Fascism” group member admitting on Facebook their attempts to shut down the debate of Steve Bannon and David Frum in Canada.
This work of journalism reviews the public, unethical behavior of TeleSUR operations and delineates which Facebook policies they violate.
This report shows how TeleSUR and their affiliates used coordinated messaging in order to amplify certain perspectives across a wide range of news outlets and blogs.
This report reviews operational documents published by the Venezuelan government and the PSUV; anonymous and public comments published by journalists that have previously worked for the company; as well as originally obtained data and research to illustrate that TeleSUR is directed by Nicolas Maduro and that it is a propaganda organization working on his direction and not a news company.
This report highlights the anti-Semitic aspects of TeleSUR’s coordinated inauthentic behavior network online.
If you have any questions, would like to be provided access to my research folder to confirm my claims, or would like to discuss my consulting for similar issues related to social media and democracy, please feel free to contact me.
This article reviews operational documents published by the Venezuelan government and the PSUV; news published by TeleSUR that has been shown to be fake; published investigations regarding the state of access to journalism in Venezuela and TeleSUR’s relation to current and former media partners; anonymous and public comments published by journalists that have previously worked for the organization; as well as originally obtained data and research.
I then present a case study which illustrates how TeleSUR and its journalistic associates violated the best practices for a standard of care in Journalism.
Based upon the above evidence, I then examine legal issues related to journalistic malpractice to determine whether TeleSUR aligns with the characteristics of a news organization or, as it’s many detractors say, it is better classified as a propaganda outlet for the Venezuelan government.
Operational Documents Indicate Motives for Unethical Practices
In December 2003, at a meeting of media professionals for brainstorming how a new propaganda machine — TeleSUR — would operate at the Cuartel de la Montana, Hugo Chaves spoke of his desire to “create a breach in the media wall” and via “social networks”. TeleSUR was started by people who wanted to have a means by which they could shape their audience’s perception to the same views as that held by those who funded it — the PSUV. Thus while TeleSUR may claim to be no different from other news organizations — the behavior of their correspondents, of their executives, and the people who provide it’s funding and oversight all show that this is not the case. Looking in Venezuela’s own public records allows one to see this clearly.
Former Telesur president Andres Izarra bluntly characterized the goal of the Venezuelan government’s media strategy as a form of “communication hegemony” (Pradas, 2007).
After stating that capitalism is reaching a potentially terminal crisis, Hugo Chavez states 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”
The PSUV’s Redbook, the Bolivarian iteration of Mao’s Little Red Book, is another place where information on the nature of TeleSUR can be determined. After stating their resolve to create alliances with similar political and social movements worldwide with the aim of achieving a new international pluripolar order — they gives examples of such initiatives: “ALBA, Petrosur, Petro-Caribe, TeleSUR, Bank of the South, UNASUR and the creation project of the Organization of Latin American and Caribbean Nations, are to fight and defeat imperialism (PSUV 35; underline and italics added). In other words,TeleSUR is viewed by the party who controls the company as an instrument of war.
What the terrain for this conflict looks like for the PSUV/TeleSUR can be found on page 89 of Hugo Chavez’s 2013–2019 Program for the Country. After stating that the main goal is to create a “new communication order” to be built, it states the need to:
“Strengthen the multi-State Telesur television and radio networks and Radio del Sur, together with their respective electronic platforms… in order to disseminate the truth of our peoples and break the information blockade and censorship to which the peoples of imperialist powers are subject to by the transnational communication corporations.”
Again, in Hugo Chavez’s own words TeleSUR is not a news station, but conceived of as an instrument of information warfare.
In a 2015 presentation given to the National Assembly by the Ministry of Popular Power for Communication and Information, the following information appears: “TeleSUR is oriented to promote a strategy that deepens the new socialist values and ethics”.
Their goal, another words, is to proselytize — not inform about the truth.
Low Quality, Poorly Sourced News Reporting With Undisclosed Bias
In June 2003, the New York times saw their brand forever tarnished after “executive editor Howell Raines and managing editor Gerald Boyd resigned their posts amid a much-publicized scandal that not only rocked journalistic circles but also left the newspaper’s readers wondering just how severely they had been duped” (Calvert).
The reason? One of their journalists had been found guilty of significant fabrications, plagiarism and errors. Jayson Blair, now a case study of what not to do, “lacked journalistic integrity and violated cardinal tenets of journalistic practice.The Times found in its investigation at least a half-dozen instances in which Blair lifted sentences and quotations from other published sources such as Associated Press and Washington Post” (Calvert).
While such reporting at the New York Times causes a journalist to be fired and forever shamed; the managing and executive editors to resign in disgrace while also forcing the company to set up new processes to ensure it didn’t happen again — this is the normal form of news reporting for TeleSUR.
This is evident in the photo above and the article it comes from. You can see in the photo that there is no “real author” connect to it, no parent names their child “ms-RSF-rg” and the way the article is sourced is solely by stating the places where information was pulled from — not what was pulled from where — as is the traditional professional standard.
According to an interview with a former TeleSUR English employee their “news writers” — which operate on shifts from 7am to 3pm, 3pm to 11pm, and 11pm to 7am — are tasked each day with reviewing the current events of the days from news websites and then publishing 5 different stories. In the process of stitching the articles together they also go through an “ideological polishing”.
Another former TeleSUR employee I interviewed sent me the below meme that circulated around the Quito office to mock Cyril Mychalejko, the former assistant-director of TeleSUR English, for the frequency with which he requested changes to news coverage to better meet the current editorial line developed in at the head office in Caracas in coordination with Venezuela’s Ministry of Popular Power for Communication and Information.
Thus while the content is by definition news, given the poor citations for information sources; the lack of author attribution; and the political influence from Caracas on the story it is better classified as opinion rather than truth. Which makes sense, after all, as he who pays the piper calls the tune.
TeleSUR’s Anti-Science Fake News
The first sentence for this TeleSUR article that was re-posted by a number of major media outlets, is as follows.
“A mysterious, cigar-shaped, 400-meter-long object is speeding through our solar system at almost 200,000 miles per hour, and astronomers — including Professor Stephen Hawking — believe it might (or might not) be an alien spaceship.”
What’s interesting about TeleSUR’s take is that they explicitly give the belief that this object is an alien spaceship to Stephen Hawking- despite the fact that he never made such a comment.
Despite what TeleSUR says, America doesn’t have a base in Costa Rica and the International Criminal Court has not declared Brazilian ex-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva a political prisoner
As part of Telesur’s coverage of Costa Rica’s presidential elections, they once said that there was a U.S. Southern Command military based in Costa Rica.
The base, according to the report, “Presencia de milicia de EE.UU. en Costa Rica es evidente”, was located in the Guanacaste province. There is, however, no military base there. In a formal letter Patricia Villegas, TeleSUR’s second in command to Nicolas Maduro, the television station acknowledged it had made a “regrettable mistake”.
TeleSUR also falsely published patently false information about the
Interesting to note is that despite over a year having gone by since this fake news has been debunked, that Cuba’s news outlet — and TeleSUR partner — re RadioRebelde, still not taken down the fake news.
The American Council on Science and Health has an interesting take on this article in particular and those within this category in general as being a part of a general Russian campaign to influence Americans to have an anti-science. This isn’t just conjecture, but a part of research they’ve done to determine the sources of these articles.
As you can see from the above, after doing a Google search for other outlets that had published the “fake news” story, TeleSUR was first, with Russian media outlets coming in second. I blockquote the ACSH article below, which is
Truthfully, no respectable news outlet should have covered this. The head researcher is Konstantin Korotkov, a well-known crank who once claimed to have photographed a soul leaving a human body. He is a hoaxer, so this is a non-story, just like “Crazy Person on Street Keeps Yelling Crazy Things” is also a non-story. Korotkov should have been ignored. But he wasn’t. Why?
Fake Aliens and Fake News: It’s Always the Russians
The timeline seems to go like this:
The story began in Russia’s state-controlled media. On March 5th, Mir 24picked up the story, which was then followed by Sputnikon March 10th. Then, the mother of all Russian propaganda outlets, RT, ran the story early on March 13th. From there, the story went “mainstream” in the Western press.
Stop and think about that for a second. A complete hoax was circulated among Russian state-controlled media as legitimate news, and the Western media fell for it. Sure, some of them provided “caveats,” but the point is that Russian propaganda has so infiltrated the public discourse that it appears regularly in mainstream Western media outlets. That’s shocking.
Why is Russia doing this? It appears that the Kremlin is waging a war on truth. (There is a book that discusses this by Peter Pomerantsev called Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia.) By purposefully muddying the distinction between fact and fiction, the Kremlin can further its own agenda.
Before Western journalists, who seem only to care about boosting traffic, copy-and-paste these clickbait stories from their Russian counterparts, they might want to first ask, “Is it true?” and, “Whom does the story benefit?” You know… the sorts of questions journalists are supposed to ask.
Disclaimer: the initial headline of this story has been changed from “Ancient Mummies in Peru ‘Not Human, Possibly Alien’: Scientists” to the current headline identifying Russian researcher Konstantin Korotkov as the scientist who claimed such findings. We have also included refutals of the claims by these Russian researchers in bold.
and the fact that the rebuttals of the claims that they added clearly show that the entire story is bogus — and yet it remains published.
Unethical Journalistic Practices Claimed By Anonymous Current and Former Employees
TeleSUR employees express fear of sharing their experience out of fear of the organization’s reach.
Convincing several former and current TeleSUR employees to share their story under the condition of anonymity isn’t the only way to learn about the unethical journalistic practices at TeleSUR.
On the GlassDoor reviewsfor TeleSUR English, there are a number of comments left which further indicate that the organization is the very definition of “fake news”
The news room at TeleSUR is described by one former journalist as follows:
“No ethics
– Cheap propaganda.
– No team work
This TV station is a joke. It’s all based in propaganda and lacks totally of ethics or professionalism. A government elite from Cuba and Venezuela manages all the “news” that are broadcasted. Couldn’t make less sense. Opinion diversity is banned and most of people in the offices have no experience in journalism/media at all. Pay… depends on who you know, and how aligned are you with their ideology (kiss butt).”
Another anonymous former employee highlights the connection between the Venezuelan Government and the organization in a different posting:
Cons
“Leftist slant on everything skews the truth sometimes. The building in Quito is mostly empty-space hasn’t been utilized well. Some staff are too affiliated with the Venezuelan government.”
Advice to Management
“Hire more journalists with journalistic qualifications and experience in order to grow the website further. Schedules are also subject to change without much notice.”
These concerns about professionalism are echoed by another commentator on February 6th, 2018:
Cons
“HR is rude and unhelpful, no clear lines of authority, low expectations, low accommodation for foreign staff, most people there aren’t journalists”
A Videographer and Senior Editor in Washington, DC — physically removed from the Quito location — is still able to feel the political pressure despite the geographic divide”
Cons
“Hard Left Ideology which makes very difficult to make real news”
Another anonymous source came to me directly.
After publishing my first article on Medium about TeleSUR English, I received an email that contained the following message from someone on staff:
The email closes with a re-iteration the themes of unprofessionalism and influence by the Venezuelan government:
“The top-down culture from Caracas to Quito and heedlessness regarding content quality and web management (which came to a head when the English page was accidentally un-published) consistently hobbles the performance of TSE, causing waves of talent to flee before TSE folds…”
There are, however, more than just anonymous sources that state that the TeleSUR is not a news station.
Unethical Journalistic Practices Claimed Openly by Current and Former Employees
After three years of trying to get TeleSUR to a specific level of professionalism and failing Aram Ahorian, one of TeleSUR’s founders, distanced himself from the organization saying thatit had become nothing but a cheap propaganda shop. “It is supposed to be a Latin American multi-state company. But it is not yet. It is a Venezuelan company, controlled by people who are interested in managing budgets and not news projects. It has to do with the internal struggle that exists in the Government of Venezuela.”
In October of 2018, TeleSUR anchor Daniela Vielman resigned from the network and released a statement stating that staff employed by TeleSUR are “treated as if they were working in a political party” and frequently imposed upon her and other “their political convictions.”
Following a post on Twitter that was critical of TeleSUR’s editorial choice to post an article supporting Donald Trump be Cassanda Fairbanks, former reporter Charles Davis saw all articles that he had previously written for them have their name taken off, and then shortly thereafter were deleted.
Jon Jeter’s article Betraying the Bolivarian Revolution goes into extensive detail about this. Given the conversation that the article was generating on Mint Press News, I created a employee satisfaction survey and posted a in the comments. The results as a whole were as I expected, and I include an except below.
What are some ways that TeleSUR English could improve?
1. Hire a new director [this was then Pablo Vivanco]
2. Value workers, develop clear journalistic standards
3. teleSUR could live up to the principals it espouses. Its operation in Caracas exists simply as a propaganda outlet for Venezuela foreign policy. I overheard star Spanish language reporters speculate how they could best portray the government in their pieces. If it truly represented the voice of the most vulnerable and traditionally underrepresented, we would hear the voices of Venezuela’s poorest, who are suffering the effects of the country’s worst ever crisis. Whatever the cause of that crisis may be, we never hear those perspectives. While many TeleSUR journalists are well intentioned, all content, no matter how insignificant or where it’s from, must pass through the Cold War like propaganda lens in Caracas before making it to air or online.
What three words would you use to describe TeleSUR English’s work culture?
1. Bad bad bad
2. Nepotism, back-stabbing, toxic
3. Disorganized, Dictatorial, Directionless
Anonymous sources of GlassDoor, anonymous sources obtained from an email and a targeted survey, as well as the comments of former employees all indicate that unethical journalistic practices are the norm at TeleSUR.
A conversation that occurred on March 21st, 2018 on Facebook in the comments section indicates that ethical violations went beyond the violation of professional standards, but also of labor law.
Unethical Business Practices with Journalists
In an exchange on Facebook former TeleSUR reporters Matt Sedillo and Irene Monica Sanchez, state that they were contracted for work and never paid.
In the comments section on the same post, anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan stated “they made me feel like a sleazy bill collector because I asked where the money that they promised me was.”
Given TeleSURs relationship with Jacobin writers and staff, as well as Jacobin’s business ethics, one wonders as to the specifics of their relationship.
Another unethical business practice of TeleSUR’s explains why it is that so few of the journalists associated with TeleSUR don’t respond — non-disclosure agreements.
I’ve learned from multiple former personnel in telephone interviews that following the publication of material on the Caracas Chronicle website, all foreign personnel on the TeleSUR English staff signed non-disclosure agreement addendum to their contracts. They did so under duress as Pablo Vivanco implied that they would be fired if they did not sign. They did so without consideration — typical for new conditions being inserted into the contract. And they did not provide a certified true-copy in English of the new conditions for those that did not speak Spanish.
I also received reports of significant violations of Ecuador’s labor law, such as scheduling people to work 6 or 7 days in a row.
Unethical Behavior Towards Other Journalists
In the article Struggle, Appropriation and Attacks on Indigenous Journalismin the online magazine Intercontinental Cry we learn the story of Courtney Parker, a University of Georgia College of Public Health PhD candidate. Parker was investigating Nicaragua’s northern Caribbean coast — where there are ongoing conflicts between Indigenous Miskitu people’s and colonialists. After publishing a series of sourced articles about the shooting of an Indigenous Miskitu leader by Sandanista youth and other issues in the area, a series of articles published online by a Sandinista-party associated “independent” media outlet. In what could be described as Orwellian irony,
“The politically motivated attack accused Parker and others of being part of some corporate imperialist power conglomerate trying to influence the upcoming November elections (where Daniel Ortega is set to run virtually unopposed with his wife as vice-president.) The byline claimed that “the reposting in various progressive outlets of biased report confirms the convergence in reporting international affairs between alternative and corporate media.”
Following the publication of these reports, TeleSUR then republished content contained there. Because of this and other examples of unethical behavior, The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas published an exposé about the Sandinista party and the Nicaraguan army intimidating and spying on journalists working for the magazine, Confidencial.
During their investigation the Knight Center documented multiple “campaigns to discredit journalists through official and unofficial media…” (i.e. the tag team efforts of Telesur and Tortilla Con Sal.)
It is not just reporters in countries that are aligned with Venezuela that face coordinated responses for coverage that contradicts the TeleSUR narrative. Within Venezuela a number of news stations that reported about corruption, electoral fraud, or systematic government problems have had their websites blocked. In The State of Internet Censorship in Venezuela, a group of digitalinvestigators analyzed the relationship between digital media access and censorship and was able to show how ISPs use DNS and HTTP means to prevent access to such material. In their summation the Venezuelan state — of which TeleSUR is an appendage of — is able to block the narratives that conflict with the one it wishes to promote.
“The censorship events identified as part of this study (particularly the blocking of news websites and blogs) contradict the rights outlined by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in its report on Standards for a Free, Open and Inclusive Internet. Media censorship and the blocking of blogs limit press freedom and the right to freedom of thought and expression. In examining each right outlined by IACHR, questions around the necessity and proportionality of these censorship events are inevitably raised, particularly in terms of how they relate to human rights.”
While difficult to determine whether or not Wikipedia contributor with DNS address 82.35.252.246 was a TeleSUR employee or not, given that this is the only article that they have ever worked on this is very likely the case.
It’s likely that in addition to the Venezuelan government’s attempts to silence journalists within their country; and coordinated attempts to delegitimize journalists that present a narrative contrasting to their own; that there also exists a need for TeleSUR to monitor public spaces like Wikipedia to ensure that content critical of its operation is not available.
Given that Chris Hedges, a regular TeleSUR and RT contributor, recently reported about how Wikipedia was a “tool of the elite” this is ironic in a special way.
Content and Imagery to Incite Violence
This set of pictures using Donald Trump’s campaign slogan is just one of many examples wherein internecine conflict is praised. By itself, there’s nothing innately problematic about this. Media, however, occurs within an symbolic ecosystem so a broader context to fully understand the images is required.
In my other case-study article on TeleSUR’s use of fake and alternative news sites and coordinated inauthentic journalism I illustrated how clustered use of a literary analogy in relation to a news event indicated that a number of showed there to be some kind of connection amongst the authors.
Given the journalists employment history; that Venezuelan media theorist and TeleSUR consultant Luis Britto frequently uses the term; as well as other TeleSUR-associated writers prior mobilization of the analogy I hypothesized that it was part of a concerted effort to attempt to influence Americans. This, however, is not the only manner in which their content seeks to shape their reader’s perceptions. Another way that they have sought to shape perceptions of America is by associating it with fascism through their own media and via the media channels of their partners.
Despite the fact that subject area specialists say that it is a “bad historical analogy,” since Donald Trump’s oath of office a veritable cottage industry of journalists and political commentator debating and editorializing as to whether or not he a fascist has formed (Riley 31). One political organization with extensive connections to Antifa — which is composed of members of various U.S. Communists groups such as the Revolutionary Communist Party and Workers World Party — is Refuse Fascism.
According to Influence Watch, Refuse Fascism is a project fiscally sponsored by Alliance for Global Justice, which is a front organization — like Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (A.N.S.W.E.R.); World Can’t Wait; Not In Our Name;and Stop Banking the Bomb – for the Revolutionary Communist Party. They desire the violent overthrow of President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, and justify this by asserting that the Trump administration functions is a “fascist regime.”
The group has been associated with “organizing demonstrations against President Trump’s inauguration as part of the “Disrupt J20” movement orchestrating demonstrations against right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopolous which devolved into rioting, and plann marches and occupations to last until President Trump and Vice President Pence leave office.
Via TeleSUR’s official media distribution channel — images reinforcing that it is imperative to kill fascists are shared, while through their coordinated inauthentic behavior network crasser propaganda images are shared. Not surprisingly, the suggestion that politicians should be killed by snipers occurred during the 2018 elections. If this seems just like a fortuitous juxtaposition, it’s important to know that the ANSWER Coalition has a long-standing association with the Cuba and Venezuela Solidarity Committee — Venezuelan and Cuban intelligence front groups.
This front group and it’s organizational core, the Revolutionary Communist Party, along with Venezuela’s other partners such as the Workers World Party and the Party for Socialism and Liberation thus not only provide a ready audience to consume TeleSUR’s content but also act on the political philosophy informing it.
TeleSUR’s Connections with Radical Political Activity
It’s operationally difficult to determine the impact the above content has on its audience. There are, however, instances I was able to determine through investigation on Facebook.
One was a Hands Off Venezuela member and Toronto Against Fascism associate, Mubarik Adams, who attended the Steve Bannon v. David Frum debate with a large group of political activists with the express purpose of using violence to end the event.
In the article Defend Antifa on the Workers World Party website the group states, “Communists and anarchists have proudly worn the mantle of antifa since the very beginning. Communists gave their lives in the tens of millions to fight Nazis in Europe, and armed multinational communist fighters have long battles the Klan’s fascist terror in the South.”
Considering Venezuelan political activist and former visiting professor to University of North Carolina and Consul General of Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in New Orleans, Louisiana Jesus “Chuco” Garciahas frequently encouraged students to engage in radical political activism, it’s no surprise that for TeleSUR, violent, organized armed conflict between racial groups is its vision of American Greatness (Brown-Vincent 11).
Given that George Ciccariello-Maher has a specialization in Venezuela and has been an outspoken defender of Antifa and participant in it’s female recruitment program, it begs the question as to his involvement as well.
TeleSUR Partners Work with Yemeni Intelligence to Doxx US Troops
Showing that 30 day bans can be like whack-a-mole — once an account goes down, associated accounts post new links to the same information. For context, VK is a social media and social networking service based in Saint Petersburg.
While previously they seemed to be just a pair of journalists that benefitted from the fake-backlinking and coordinated inauthentic behavior networks — now they’ve moved to active and open collaboration with Yemeni intelligence services by publishing the personal information of active U.S. military personnel.
Terrorist Threats Made in Florida Come to Life in Colombia
The day before a car bomb targeting a police academy in Bogota, Colombia exploded and killed at least 21 people — Tyler Miller, a resident of Lake Worth, Florida was arrested for spraypainting “Kill A Cop, Save a Life” next to a hammer and sickle.
Back in 2013, Miller had another run in with law enforcement when they say he tried to buy an SKS Semi-Automatic Rifle online.
According to the report, a witness reported seeing him at a firearms store and filling out paperwork, wearing a Chinese military uniform.
Deputies then made a visit to his house and found two AK-47 style airsoft guns in his room, which was decorated with Russian and Chinese communist-type paraphernalia.
What specific connections exist between Tyler Miller and media operations directed by the Venezuelan intelligence services intending to radicalize Americans is now unclear.
What is apparent is the connection between TeleSUR’s glorification of politically motived violence and it’s perceived need to “teach the public a lesson”.
Following the bombing of the police station in Bogota, I started receiving a apologias for it in WhatApps group chats that I’ve been able to get added to since moving to Colombia.
One of the things that the rapid, targeted deployment of such content suggests is that these media artefacts were prepared in advance of the bombing.
TeleSUR’s Connections with Violent Latin American Organizations
TeleSUR has long been accused of having institutional ties to the FARC-EP.
Besides discovering a number of FARC-EP documents stored on TeleSUR’s website — which can be perused here– and that FARC-EP associated accounts like to share TeleSUR content I’ve not yet been able to ascertain any new information on the relationship between TeleSUR and FARC-EP.
I did, however, find something else interesting.
After I started friending a large number of the accounts associated with TeleSUR’s coordinated inauthenic behavior network, besides the FARC-EP accounts being suggested to me as People You May Know a number of ELN and EPL accounts started being suggested to me.
A curious person, I friended them and started to see the type of content that they were sharing and groups they were involved in.
Reviewing a number of the likes and shares on FARC-EP, ELN and EPL accounts was notable as many of them were also sharing TeleSUR content.
While the current state of my research means that there is little to be said about all these connections — other than they at some level they exist — there are other questions to be raised about the relationship between TeleSUR and the promotion of violence.
Specifically questions relates to TeleSUR’s hiring practices.
Former correspondents for TeleSUR — like Gerardo Torres Zelaya — have been identified as participating in violent street protests while others have been linked to FARC.
Taken from an Ecuadorian Facebook Group of Feminists, who investigated Orlando Perez following his assault on his girlfriend.
The current Vice-President of TeleSUR English, Orlando Perez, was arrested and sentenced for a politically-motivated kidnapping in his 20s; was arrested in connection with the death of two people making bombs and then let go; and refers to people who disagree with his political positions as mentally-retarded.
My research in this area is underdeveloped due to a paucity of sources willing to provide on-record accounts — but these cases combined with the former employee assessments does seem to reinforce that notion that rather than journalistic talent, skill or ability driving hiring-decisions an antagonism capitalism and the United States is instead what is sought in employees — and those that push back in the name of truth are then pushed out.
Being an instrument of Nicolas Maduro’s political will, the anti-systemic political activity which TeleSUR disseminates is not limited to the United States.
Numerous accounts in Spain — specifically Valencia, Barcelona and Euskadi — all post content discouraging people from voting. Instead of traditional political activity people are encouraged to attend lectures on topics such as the Greatness of Stalin or political assemblies hosted by local radical organizations affiliated with the PSUV.
Coordinated Unprofessional News Reportage via TeleSUR Associated Journalists
Carlos Ballasteros — a longtime friend of then former director of TeleSUR English Pablo Vivanco, a fact not disclosed in the Newsweek article — had a correction added to his article by the editorial staff of Newsweek as in the original article he mispresented the facts.
After I published Censorship or Community Standards, I decided to test a hypothesis I had — specifically that none of the other TeleSUR-associated journalists that I’d found engaged in false reporting would correct their errors if notified.
I sent notification to all the Journalists that had also covered TeleSUR’s unpublishing informing them that they were mistaken and sharing a link to my investigation.
· I sent notification to Abby Martin’s producers via Facebook.
· I sent an email, a Facebook Message and left a comment on Twitter to notify Branko Marcetic.
· I tweeted to Jacobininforming them that the article by Branko Marcetic they are hosting was factually incorrect.
· I sent a Facebook message to Adriano Contreras asking for comment. He responded that he was not allowed to speak without the authorization of TeleSUR, which given the context, makes such a response another example of Orwellian Irony.
· I left a comment on the Twitter account of Aaron Mate.
In fact, over two months after I notified them they had published unverified false reports, not a single one of these self-proclaimed journalists has responded to my contacts or updated their coverage.
The only person that did respond was Andre Damon, of World Socialist Website. However after explaining the reason for my contact — to let him know that his reportage was wrong and to ask to speak with whomever is directing their black hat back-linking and coordinate inauthentic behavior network on Facebook — all communication immediately ceased.
Based upon the guidelines described in The Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics, this means that all of these people are in violation of the Principles of Ethical Journalism.
How TeleSUR’s Defenders Violate the Professional Community’s Ethical Norms
Unlike other professional associations, such the American Bar Association or Medical Board, there is no formal professional body by which charges of violations of ethical journalism can either be brought up. To some extent the Society of Professional Journalists can enforce their Rules through their official statements about the behavior of journalists, but they are not an enforcement body.
The Society of Professional Journalists states that there are four foundational principles for the ethical journalist:
· Seek Truth and Report It
· Minimize Harm
· Act Independently
· Be Accountable and Transparent
The full document can be found here.
I excerpt sections here in order to reference specific behaviors.
Ethical journalism should be accurate and fair. Journalists should be honest and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information.
Journalists should:
· Take responsibility for the accuracy of their work.
· Verify information before releasing it.
· Use original sources whenever possible.
· Remember that neither speed nor format excuses inaccuracy.
· Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment, and avoid political and other outside activities that may compromise integrity or impartiality, or may damage credibility.
· Respond quickly to questions about accuracy, clarity and fairness.
By refusing to make transparency, honesty and integrity their operational principles all of the above mentioned TeleSUR and the Journalists associated with them all violate the Society of Professional Journalist’s principle to Be Accountable and Transparent by “exposing unethical conduct in journalism, including within their organizations.”
TeleSUR’s Rejection by Former Partners
Besides the journalists which have gone to work for TeleSUR only to leave because of an unprofessional work environment, a number of TeleSUR’s media partners in Latin America have also decided to part ways with the company.
The overarching narrative for why this is so is that the company’s issues described above are seen as part of systemic ethical issues rather than isolated incidences.
In 2016 Argentina decided that they were not going to renew the digital signal of TeleSUR.
The interview that Patricia Villegas, the President of TeleSUR, had with Alejandro Alfie is informative as to why the government chose not to renew.
Despite the fact that TeleSUR’s founders — Hugo Chavez, Andres Izarra, Aram Aharoiam and others — avow that their goal for this network to be a means of spreading Bolivarian Propaganda; that TeleSUR’s corporate documents states this as well; that workers for TeleSUR view themselves as spreading leftist content; that the PSUV views TeleSUR as an instrument for spreading its message — when faced with a question about political pluralism, Patricia Villegas states with conviction that they have “a plurality of perspectives”.
When then asked about TeleSUR’s Twitter Account promoting a protest march by Chavistas; about reporting done TeleSUR which disseminated false information that made a geo-political enemy look bad; and her own political activity online — Villegas evades any and all responsibility or accountability by stating that other people were responsible for the first two and then avoids answering the question as to whether or not she believes Argentina is a dictatorship.
In 2017 Ecuador similarly broke ties with TeleSUR.
Considering that Venezuelan political groups associated with the government hold events intended to encourage people to break the law, and that TeleSUR associated accounts promote it within Peru, one can only wonder how long they will stay on air in that country.
Penalties Given to TeleSUR’s Partners
CCTV from China, RT and Sputnik from Russian and HispanTV from Iran are some of the media partners that TeleSUR has made. While this may seem like normal coordination amongst upstarts media organization seeking to obtain market shares in regions seen as key for future success, since the state governments are paying for their operation instead of corporate sponsors or subscriptions, this isn’t a valid rationale.
In his article for the Center for International Media Assistance entitled “Foreign Media and Misinformation: How TeleSUR and RT Coordinate Programs and Messages” Patricio Provitina provides another explanation
“These news outlets claim that their content offers an alternative, developing world perspective that counters the interests and agendas pushed in Western media coverage of domestic and international events. However, in reality, these state- sponsored media outlets are only designed to convey the Chinese, Russian, or Venezuelan government’s perspective to the rest of the world. Since these governments are authoritarian regimes that often impede freedom of the press at home, their foreign-language media outlets reflect domestic habits of selective issue coverage, omitting or distorting important facts in news stories, and making up information to reshape public opinion regarding specific issues or events. Furthermore, there is growing evidence that when state interests align, these outlets coordinate news story coverage, messaging, and programming.”
Analyzing En La Mira, one of the examples of Russian and Venezuelan state media collaboration, Provitina describes it as follows:
“The shows create simplistic, conspiracy-driven explanations that tie a country’s internal problems to an external source of power meddling in the affairs of the country. The evidence presented as proof of a foreign plot tends to mix-up un-related facts, half-truths, or highly edited video interviews with policy makers, intellectuals, and academics who echo or truly believe the conspiracy narratives of each show.”
Argentina sought to cancel RT’s television contracts, but used economic pressure to stay on the air after Macri’s election (Cardenal).
Further Research TeleSUR’s Unethical Journalism
While many unethical journalist practices engaged in by TeleSUR employees and associates are covered here, this is only a small fraction of a full analysis. Venezuela’s PSUV has invested millions of dollars over many years into developing a company that at face is a news organization, but underneath is a propaganda organ for helping Nicolas Maduro achieve his geopolitical interests.
I am currently awaiting word from Social Science One as to the status of my research proposal: The Social Media Behavior of Venezuelan State Media: A Case Study in TeleSUR English. I look forward to sharing this research on Medium, which will focus less on the qualitative issues discussed above — like the widespread evidence of TeleSUR journalists nor following professional norms — and will instead focus on depicting their efforts quantiatively.
Sources
Barajas, Héctor. TeleSUR after the End of Chavismo.
Baerga, Vanesa Media Imperialism in Latin America and the Emergence of Telesur.University of Nottingham.
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
Canizalez, Andres. Framing Revolution and Re-Framing Counter-Revolution:
History, Context and Journalism in the new Left-wing Latin American Paradigm.
Cardenal, Juan Pablo. Sharp Power: Rising Authoritarian Influence Chapter 2: Navigating Political Change in Argentina. International Forum for Democratic Studies. National Endowment for Democracy.
Chirinos, Mariengracia; Azpúrua, Andrés; Evdokimov, Leonid; Xynou, Maria. The State of Internet Censorship in Venezuela: A study by IPYS Venezuela, Venezuela Inteligente and the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI). 16 August 2018
Clay Calvert and Robert D. Richards, Journalistic Malpractice: Suing Jayson Blair and the New York Times for Fraud and Negligence, 14 Fordham Intell. Prop. Media & Ent. L.J. 1 (2003). Available at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/iplj/vol14/iss1/1
Contreras, Adriano. Facebook.
Di Rocco, Massimo. The Arab Spring is a Latin American Winter: TeleSUR’s “Ideological Approach” and the Breakaway from the Al-Jazeera Network. Global Media Journal, Spring/Summer 2012 issue.
Hugh J. O’Halloran. Journalistic Malpractice: The Need for a Professional Standard of Care in Defamation Cases. Marquette Law Review
International Media Support (IMS). Threats, Lies and Censorship: Media in Venezuela. 2016.
Jairo Lugo-Ocando , Olga Guedes & Andrs Caizlez (2011) Framing Revolution and Re-Framing Counter-Revolution: History, Context and Journalism in the new Left-wing Latin American Paradigm, Journalism Practice, 5:5, 599–612, DOI: 10.1080/17512786.2011.601912
Provitina, Patricio. “Foreign Media and Misinformation: How TeleSUR and RT Coordinate Programs and Messages”. The Center for International Media Assistance.
Riley, Dylan. What Is Trump, New Left Review 114, November-December 2018
Kultural Marxism and Reflections on Venezuela’s Gramscian Fantasy of Exporting Revolution via a Long March Through United States Institutions
For over a decade Venezuela’s Intelligence Agency has operated a network in America to disseminate political values, beliefs, strategies, tactics, and knowledge from the Bolivarian Revolution to American audiences in hopes it would lead to political radicalization and domestic unrest such that a “multipolar” world would emerge.
This multi-faceted, multi-million dollar project inspired by Antonio Gramsci included funding and other forms of assistance to found or further develop: outreach programs which sought to unite poor Americans for economic and environmental justice; movements which seek to educate, agitate and mobilize African American and Latino communities for direct actions; support of alternative news outlets and messaging coordination with foreign state media; a large inauthentic coordinated behavior army of trolls to amplify their messaging; etc. in order to feed into the creation of a counter-hegemonic movement within America.
As participants were averse to sharing their funding, partnerships and end political goals to outsiders, prior to new technological methods involving data science on sources of public and private origin, documenting and charting these behaviors was difficult. Now, however, the unveiling of this information is on the immediate horizon.
This presentation will be an excerpt of an ongoing investigation into Social Media and Democracy by the author, a doctoral student in Innovation and Technology Management, former Marxist Reading Group presenter and applicant for a research grant in partnership with Social Science One and the Social Science Research Council. It will cover why Venezuela’s state media and their many U.S. partners will soon be removed from Social Media; why this isn’t censorship; and what this means for American democracy.
Keywords:
Political discourse in Popular Culture; Digital rhetoric and cultures; Data Science; Activism and commodification; Venezuela; Media Studies
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.
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.
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.
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 PowerIf 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
“BE IT RESOLVED, THE FUTURE OF WESTERN POLITICS IS POPULIST, NOT LIBERAL”
As a former Lincoln-Douglas and Policy-Forum Debater while attending Jupiter High School, and a teacher of Speech and Debate while working at South Broward High School, I was excited to see an ad for The Munk Debates in my Facebook feed about the above resolution between Steve Bannon and David Frum.
Rather than drawing out who the winner was, I’ll say that it was without question Steve Bannon.
You can see why in my below tracking of the debate.
*
Steve Bannon’s first words presented a compelling narrative.
Etiological stories are powerful as they allow for an organic depiction of various actors and values and as it allows the audience to quickly project themselves amongst the group of actors described.
Bannon’s choice was all the more poignant – he describes the people arrayed in the White House speaking to the president during the 2008 financial crisis that caused numerous deleterious social, political and economic across the world. Bannon thus establishes his view of the driving concern of the modern populist movement – seizing power from a transnationally oriented economic elite – the party of Davos. The framing of the story allows the viewer, within the first minute, to either identify yourself as a member of this group – or as someone that has been affected by it.
Bannon then goes to define populism, as understood in this particular moment, to be equivalent with economic nationalism. Economic nationalism, as propounded by Bannon in this instance and shown by his expressed disdain for Richard Spencer, does not care about race, gender preference, sexual orientation or religion.
After a fawning show of respect for Bannon, Frum’s opening speech proceeds to develop a Manichean framework that he will develop throughout the debate. There is a choice between “renewal and destruction; freedom and unfreedom” in this given moment and to side with Frum is to side with the former. Populism is defined as Bannon and Trump and allude them to
I think that Frum made a lot of very unusual statements. For one, he says: “We are here to show that who are who are parents and our grandparents were.” and then states that the same fights that they fought are ours as well. This claim is made without a substantiation, and for those like myself that are deeply versed in American history this appears baseless.
Another aspect of Frum’s case that was peculiar and unpersuasive in their mobilization was his choice of political allusion.
Besides Donald Trump being president, the only other historical events that Frum cites are the Poppy Day and Kristallnacht. While rhetorically powerful points to mention, the bright line showing the connections between the 1918 and 1940 and the present is not. Frum doesn’t just make this poor allusion, but doubles down on it by making an extended point about how it is that Populism divides with more hints to Nazism and Fascism. To reinforce this construction of “the present populists are an echo of former 1940s villains” he then goes on to cite a number of current foreign politicians – which the audience is unlikely to be familiar with – to reinforce his claim that populists are crooks rather than giving substantive examples. Frum’s then fumbles with a prolix description of how those in the current White House are just interested in destroying things (apparently he’s not familiar with Schumpeter’s Capitalism, Socialism & Democracy and the notion of creative destruction) and then is unable to define what the “one assumption” that the new populism is based on because he has gone over in time.
Bannon’s retort that Frum is just smearing the populist movement and stating again how it was that it is previous government politics that drove people to become more politically involved allows him to deflate quickly deflate the case. By putting into context and then ending with a joke related to Trump’s poll numbers, he humanizes himself. More than that, he expands on his narrative, citing Hillbilly Elegy – a book that connects sociologically the deindustrialization of the United States with the opioid crisis.
Steve Bannon cites this as well as the $7 trillion dollars’ wars spent in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the infusion of capital as the motivating factors for why so many people abandoned the traditional Democratic and Republican establishment. He then relates the traditional economic concern for the “Little guy” as the basis of traditional American (settler, colonial) civilization. By following up with the rhetorical point on Canadian’s Commonwealth status gains him extra points given the audience.
One of the points that I think Bannon would have benefitted by responding to Frum’s comment is when he impugns the ethics of Trump for extracting profits from his businesses – as this is a form of financial inducement. While outside the proscribed constraints of the topic – “Be it resolved, the future of Western Politics is Populist Not Liberal” it would have been worthwhile to point out how the Clinton’s liberal policies helped them turn from poor county lawyers to billionaires. Say what you will about Breitbart, some of their reporting, such as on the Clinton Foundation, is worth-reading journalism.
Frum’s rejoinder round two begins with a torturously long admission that Liberal democracy is in crisis, but then claims that “the failures of a good system are not a reason to turn to an evil one.” Another binary sans substantive policy discussion. He states that there is a need to “renew and repair,” but rather than giving any substantive description of what those mean, their correlative in the American social body, or how to address the issues perceived as ills. He instead goes on to bloviate about how inclusiveness is important. After Frum sits down to another round of speech-halting applause, a class on why closing a speech with such a sentiment is bad rhetoric because of the opening it provides the opposing side is then provided by Bannon.
He responds by postulating the fundamental need for the Populist movement to convert others to its position or die as a directive forced in the governance of America. This and his follow up drastically undercuts Frum’s projection of it as xenophobic, racist or religiously intolerant. The succinct 3-part definition that Steve then gives definition to Populism/Economic Nationalism via specific items of Trump’s policies: economic nationalism, America-first security policies and deconstruction of the administrative state.
Given that a significant portion of Frum’s speeches are reminiscing about the political acumen of Bannon and referred to him as a “fiery tribune of Populism” it, functionally debunks Frum’s construction of the operating principles guiding the modern U.S. populist movement.
Bannon states that what is needed is an economic order that does not orient itself to the maximization of shareholder value, but of citizenship value. As someone that’s admittedly not familiar with the writings of America’s Modern Populist Movement, I was rather shocked by this. Bannon directly counters another of Frum’s positions by refuting the notion of populism as “mere destruction” by pointing out that the new NAFTA trade deal that was just organized helps develop a manufacturing hub that will be able to counter East Asia.
Frum tells a long tale meant to highlight how Trump is clumsy and his trade advisor doesn’t have any peer reviewed articles, then makes an introduction of two news terms he wants to introduce to the debate – nationalism and globalism. Describing several cases of one population harming another for various, such as pollution or military action and climate change he makes a national socialist (i.e. Nazi) smear rather than interrogating these new terms in detail and then claims that peace and prosperity are liberal ideas. Since Frum has already admitted by non-rebuttal of earlier of Bannon’s claims that he was a “conservative” involved in all of the government decisions that he now rues – to me this was a shocking admission. Not only does this disprove his claim, but it also shows from to be an unprincipled character as he did not leave in protest of the “illiberalism” that went on in the name of liberalism.
Having myself studied the history, institutions and policies of the EU myself in a graduate seminar at FAU, Bannon’s rejoinder is exactly what I would have responded with to this Frum’s turn of the debate topic from populism and liberalism to globalism and nationalism. Bannon asserts the longstanding tradition of a state within specific geographically definable national limits, and describes the chilling sentiment by many people about the foreign imposition of rules and also the rule by foreign unaccountable agents in some ways over the conditions of their lives. Citizen empowerment is populism. Bannon points to the supply chain changes as positives, as well as states movements to maintain their sovereignty. Bannon also states an eminently quotable phrase. “We have socialism in the United States for the very wealthy, and the very poor, and a brutal form of Darwinian capitalism for those everybody else. The devil gets the hindmost.” Millennials are like serfs in their non-ownership, 20% behind where their parents were in a gig economy without careers.
In another one of Frum’s unfit forensic formulations he responds to Bannon by claiming that “Trump’s economy is the same as Obama’s, but with more tariffs, more inflation and higher interest rates.” Given the impact these three factors have on the totality of America’s economic activity – this is a strange formulation. Substantive descriptions of continuity are absent. After this poorly made point, Frum gives a self-negating formulation – stating that the populists attempts to bring manufacturing back via tariffs shows that they “don’t know what they want” and that “hate doesn’t build”.
Bannon counter’s Frum’s hate point by pointing out that Trump’s first act of travel to visit foreign dignitaries in Saudi Arabia to have discussions on how to eradicate Muslim extremism, how does the Arab world come together to stop Iran, and in some ways advise towards the development of a peaceful social modernity. I think a worthwhile point to include here would have been to point to the massive amounts of fences that have been put up in Europe over the past two years to show provide a counter-factual to Frum’s construction of Europe as “less hateful”. I’ve heard Bannon talk about “the signal and the noise” in other interviews, and he closes the rejoinder by making it.
The debate is then here interrupted by the moderator so that he can ask specific questions. While they are tangentially related to the topic and are generally interesting, I think the moderator failed to sufficiently keep the debate within the framework of the resolution.
Frum claims Trump won in large part by appealing to people’s desires to have a better healthcare system that costs less money, a point which Bannon places back on his lap by stating that it was the Republican establishment that fumbled there, having requested to take this part of leadership over and not being able to follow through. Bannon responds by furthering the definition between establishment Republicans and Populist Republicans by talking about tax rates – which Bannon wants to increase for those that are making more than five million dollars a year. Bannon excuses Trump as getting his “sea legs”
Frum’s competency criticism of Trump seems shallow given the context of the 2016 election – wherein a political outsider who does not follow all of the pre-established paths paved by moneyed interests is governing in a new manner. Individual mistakes are endemic to any such process and while it’s true about his past similar denigrations aren’t now made about the character of Bill Clinton for his failed push for single player health insurance.
Bannon shows that much of this friction stems from contrasting Trump’s policy of quantitative tightening – something not desired by all economic sectors – with Obama’s of qualitative easing as well as a new national security policy that seeks to ensure that America’s allies are paying for their protection as otherwise the burden falls on U.S. taxpayers to the tune of trillions of dollars.
After another faltering deference to Bannon’s biography, this time to his military record, Frum’s response is to give the unsubstantiated claim that by demanding more of their NATO partners, Trump is selling the United States. It’s a weird statement given the lack of context provided, and Bannon shows his smarts by not responding to the claim and instead going back to NATO and national security and then relates this spending to an expressed desire not to be an Empire or an Imperial power expending “deplorable lives” in foreign theaters of war but a Revolutionary Power.
Frum’s rejoinder here about race seems shallow and following this he starts going on about how Bannon and Trump are “selling the country to the Russians”.
While Bannon does not go into detail about this, given the effects of global climactic change will have on the Arctic trade routes over the next 20 years (I am deeply pessimistic about U.S. politicians ability to enact legislation that will allow for the reaching of targets for cutting emissions) there will likely be a major shift in U.S. and Russian trade, collaborative resource extraction projects and military interaction (as more bases are planted to protect the routes) I was hoping that he would. Suffice to say as the questions continue from the moderator Bannon comports himself with equanimity even though the questions are loaded against him. Being familiar with the shocking statistical increase in White Nationalist murders and assaults across the country I found his claim that the left was worse to be disingenuous, even if I could agree with him that attribution of such people’s actions cannot be honestly placed solely at Trump’s feet.
Frum’s closing is weak. He falters at two points in making his points and can again only make an appeal based on poorly-explained historical precedent that populism will fail. When Frum states that “Liberal democracy is stronger than it looks because human kindness and decency is stronger than it looks.” I can’t wonder what he’s referring to as he’s agreed with so many of Bannon’s understanding of politics from Bush II to the Obama. He then goes on an extended diatribe reiterating the binary terms by which he has referred to throughout the debate which – given what speech acts have transpired better the orators – rings hollow. Frum has simply agreed to so many earlier points that I read the caricature he presented of Trump and other populists as disingenuous. When Bannon opens his response with describing David Frum’s speech as “Very good, and irrelevant”. It certainly matched my own assessment. Bannon’s assessment that the future will either be left or right populism, i.e. Bernie Sanders/Jeremy Corbyn or Trump/Bolsonaro is also my reading of the current moment. As evidence to the anti-institutional sentiments of this moment in history, Bannon points out how none of the “traditional” Republicans – backed as they were by think tanks and major donations by billionaires – were able to beat Trump. Giving a final emphasis to his point by alluding to other major upheavals in the U.S., Bannon states that it is the fourth turning moment and therefor it has to be the time of populism. Though I would not have understood the depth of what he meant by this had I not already ready The Fourth Turning, it was still a well-enough explained concept that it related to the resolution in a powerful manner.
At the end of the debate, for all the reasons describe in my comments above, I believe that Steve Bannon won the debate.
That said, I’m surprised that Facebook didn’t consider as part of their collaborative production with the Debate forum a scorecard on their website. It’d be an interesting to see how people actually tracked and responded to the debate. A little bit more pre-planning would have made for more interesting results that that which was given.
In a last bit of commentary related to the debate I have to admit being curious as to the protest that the moderator alluded to in the opening. After doing a little bit of digging online, I was amused to learn that one of the organizations that was involved in the demonstration outside and that may be responsible for the protestor interrupting Bannon was none other the front group for the Venezuelan State in Canada: The CPC and the Hugo Chavez Front. I find this to be yet another example of Orwellian Irony given that the economic goals of their Bolivarian project are actually pretty aligned with that of Bannon’s Economic Nationalism and that both projects – via different methods – are involved in re-writing/re-interpreting the law in radical ways.
Hugo Chavez Front is one of the Venezuelan government’s 5th Estate Front Organizations.
Using a 21st century iteration of a creative writing style stolen from Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, I like to engage in a public forums via a variety of different names, voices, and worldviews.
Some people play SIMS, I like to Spy and Mettle in other ways.
Whatever the ethics, it begets all sorts of unique stories based on hard to get data, like the anecdote and context I share in the below article.
Photo from an assassination attempt on an indigenous leader Rogelio Mejía
In response to a comment on an article about the political genocide of Communists in Colombia Reports, I cited the empirical fact that by looking at all available evidence, civilians were significantly more likely to be killed by the State and by the Paras then by the FARC. I didn’t say, though it’s equally true, that by far the most targeted political assassinations comes from the Right and not the Left.
What the response was, well, I’ve attached a screen shot of it to let it speak for itself as well as some other of this person’s comments found after some further research as I think it provides telling insight into the values of people that are antagonistic to the FARC specifically and Marxism genereally.
The USMC & the CIA: A Home White Supremacist Anti-Communists
So as you can see the guy who wants to torture and kill Communists also has some pretty strong, visceral feelings towards the “non-white” races.
A number of researchers have called such a belief system and practice as racial capitalism. Some have instead used the phrase Manifest Destiny, while others simply call it Americanism.
It’s a view of the world which justifies Whites engaging in conquest, colonization, dispossession, enslavement and environmental destruction – AKA all the things that “civilized white” North Americans have brought to the South as a means of controlling resources and ensuring trade and labor relations are profitable.
Trying (and Failing) to Place a Face on Hate
That the U.S. has directly and indirectly played a major role in shaping Latin America’s geo-politics isn’t new news, it’s history.
Nevertheless the comment having a full name and statement of profession so piqued my curiosity, I decided to if I could find out anything about this person.
I don’t know if any of the people in the above snapshot of a search on Facebook is the person saying I should be electrocuted and that minorities are sub-humans – but I do know that it’s not General David Rodgriguez. His service record only shows his time in Latin America as being part of the U.S. invasion of Panama.
Our brief exchange is not now available for verification by looking at the Colombia Reports article, as shortly after this exchange transpired Colombia Reports disabled the public comment function, however those with Disqus accounts, can search and confirm that this is not a Photoshop job.
The Ethnic and Religious Cleansing Power of Capitalism
Percentage of Afro-Colombians Voting for Peace in Bojaya, Department of Chocó
The story related to the above image is particularly devastating and makes everyone look bad – the Government for non-intervention; the Paras for using the civilian population as a human shield; the FARC for unintentionally killing non-combatants. And it’s also indicative of which demographics have been most affected by the civil war violence – the poor, Afro-Colombians and Indigenous communities.
It’s because of this that in the final Colombian Peace Accords there is explicit language wherein the Colombian government formally recognizes that the injustices inflicted against black and indigenous communities are the historic “product of colonialism, slavery, exclusion, and it’s drive to dispossess them of their lands, territories, and resources.”
This is the rationale for the inclusion of this section in which they are guaranteed protection, the ability to participate in elections and to self-govern themselves whenever possible.
And though the accords are now signed, as former Marine and CIA operative David Rodriguez’s comments show, there are still people that would like to throw that out and return to open violence against certain ethnic, racial, religious and political persuasions.
No Justice, No Peace
Given all the bullets fired and blood shed from opened veins throughout Latin America, it’s understandable why people don’t like to to talk about the region’s past.
It’s profoundly traumatic for many and saying certain things publicly certain could mean that your name winds up on a list that means you will be killed. But since the signing of the peace accords, despite the still simmering violence in the form of assassinations of political figures and civilian massacres, it’s important to be aware of the values and intentions of the actors involved in the violence and to work to public delegitimize the voices that long for it’s return.
Moving Forward, Together
Anthropomorphizing is certainly never always an appropriate form of argument, but I’ve always found it an insightful metaphor for the body politic and in this case I think it particularly instructive.
Just like when an individual is in a state of sustained panic and there is conflict over contrary instincts (people vs. profits); when executive functions and allocations of energy are no longer operating at an optimal level of survival (civil war); when external forces are relied upon to assist violent contractions rather than relying upon a new constitution (foreign intervention to preserve what is better served by forming a new constitution), peace is achieved from the negation of these and the sublimation to a new state of existence.
How can this be achieved? Through building bridges and through self-promotion.
Self-promotion entails the motions of going through and assessing one beliefs, values and abilities and clearly expressing it others.
Silencing the voices that would if they could bring about a return to practices of political genocide is part and parcel of that promotion. In another discipline, we’d call this reputation management.
Breaking free from the past in this particular circumstance of a bi-lateral peace agreement, requires that the negative voices which would threaten growth and development must be shown for what they are – violent white-supremacists that have Ayn Randian like disdain for non-capitalist socio-economic arrangements.
While this brief anecdote is unlikely to change all hearts and minds overnight, it’s part of a narrative that now needs to be shared far and wide as it hasn’t been told enough in the capitalist press. I’m hoping that some discerning Americans may now look with a new light on the stories that they’ve been told about the FARC and America’s involvement in the region and start to reassess the felicity of the stories they’ve heard.
More so I hope in whatever little way possible that this helps bring an end to the still simmering violence and helps build bridges between former antagonists so that together they can build a stronger, safer country together. Cause let’s be honest – the U.S. would sooner carpet-bomb all of Bogota then ever let the FARC come top power in a move that could help reconstitute Gran Colombia or a Bolivarian United States of Latin America.
Since I’ve started throwing out and packing my possessions to prepare for my move overseas, I’ve been thinking a lot of my Grandparents.
They came from the desirable countries. From Denmark and Russia. Neither side had any grasp of English before they first set foot on American soil. Neither side had anything other than pluck and their trades and a small bit of savings tucked away to make their way in the New World. They adapted to their environs, raised families and by most accounts flourished – but does that mean that they ever really became Americans?
By mere merit of my birth within territorial borders, does that really make me an American or is there something else that I should look to? I’d venture yes, I’m an American, but not for the reasons you think.
Despite excitement of days off school, the grandeur of fireworks, and the pleasant fictions told to children about: Independence; Noble Savages living in Peace with Entrepreneurial White Settlers; Supremely Ethical Founding Fathers; Dead soldiers fighting Worthy Wars abroad and Dead Leaders fighting Worthy Wars at home – my fondest memories as a boy never revolved around National Holidays and their accompanying spectacles of obeisance and foods that encourage obeseness. Instead I remember with vivid precision the energy and joy the different brought to religions and cultural costumes and practices of my Grandparents.
Though I can’t speak Danish or Yiddish, hearing my grandparents speak bilingually and participating in these ceremonies as a child deeply affected me. Joy, of course. But also alienation. On both sides, I felt like I’d lost something that had been for a long line unbroken in my family. I felt like it weighted on me. All the more so as I was the fruit of a union between what once were families of award winning pig farming Epicureans and solemn Orthodox Rabbis.
I remember their warm laps and doting attention to the millions of questions I had about their stories, their struggles. Each side shared stories about outbreaks of state-sponsored violence around them. They weren’t happy as it was some long-time dream to sever ties with all that one’s ever known and go to a strange land with better opportunities, but because the conditions which for generations had once allowed their forebears to sustain family life and line so deteriorated.
Now joining the demographic pool of the 8.5 million people born in American living abroad, I can’t help but think of my grandparents own voyage to a new world.
Their struggles are on my mind as while the forces which motivated them to pack up their things and leave is quite different in tenor, the violence of primitive dispossession is similar in effect to that enacted in the various markets in which people make their day to day way in the world. The opportunities for “good living” in the United States are rapidly disappearing and will continue to deteriorate further.
I say this not to invoke the rhetoric of disaster now popular because the most apt embodiment of the venality and corruption that is the American Ruling Class sits in the White House. No, Trump is but a symbol, a symptom of a deeper systemic illness rather than some special case. I say this as I’ve reviewed the metrics and can reasonably foresee that to have the family life like my grandparents aspired to, I would have to work myself to death so many of my compatriots do.
If America was once great for letting my grandparents in – those that were fleeing from violence – then it’s not now. In fact it’s reasonable to say that America is the opposite of great since its actions and those of its allies forcefully displace millions.
Defining America’s greatness as the people and energy that composed it – the courageousness of some to brave the acclimation process to a foreign culture, a foreign language, foreign business environments – then the Great Land that was once America is now outside its borders. In fact it’s reasonable to say that America is the opposite of great since those which direct the state openly display xenophobia and ahistorical cultural chauvinism – the same trends in different form which helped form my Grandparents decision to leave.
Were we to look to the ability of people to raise family and enough capital to live a good life as the basis for greatness, we’d see that the conditions today are quite different from then. The institutional embodiment of America, the political organization of the ruling class, Federal and State governments since the 70s have worked to erase the human face of what was always an oligarchy.
As I think about leaving the land that is America to live what I see as the noble ethos of America – meaning bravery to place oneself in uncomfortable situations to personally and professional develop and not the flipside of that spirit, the ignoble ethos which dispossessed natives, engaged in the slave economy and constructed a legal system and press thatjustified these and other injustices – I also cannot help but think of the life and work of Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. It is January 15th, after all, and while it wasn’t my intention to leave on such a date it does seem appropriate.
A year to the day before his assassination, King said something that had his contemporaries listened to and acted upon would have drastically changed the current shape of America:
“Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.”
Had the people of King’s time been more attuned to the long-term truth and acted with vigor to excise these qualities from the economy, from society, from the culture rather than fighting for their minor advantages I might feel better about staying. But they did not, and so I do not, and so I go – just like my amazingly brave Grandparents, on to greener pastures.
For the academic, 2016 “can be read as the year of the end of the long 20th century in historical terms”. He adds that Brexit, the victory of Donald Trump in the United States and the death of Fidel Castro symbolically mark a turning point in the correlation of forces worldwide, both political and economic. Álvaro García Linera points out that it is the end of globalization.
In reference to the book by Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation. I locate what happened in Ecuador in this decade in the framework of the political dispute, of the neoliberal background that marked two decades lost for the country and Latin America. There is a historical absurdity of wanting to point out that 10 years is enough to make a structural transformation, as some politicians like María Paula Romo and Guillermo Lasso have mentioned. That is to have no idea of history, neither Ecuadorian nor global. That is impossible, even more so when institutions created to generate an oligarchic society had to be dismantled and, after destroying it, to rebuild another that seeks the common good of the great majorities. If someone is being dragged by the current in the direction of a waterfall, the first thing to do is to steer the boat to take another direction. These ten years have allowed us to re-direct the ship, sailing against the current of world power relations and generate enough social energy to go towards peaceful waters and be able to anchor in a good port. Part of the great transition involves having redirected the ship, while improving the welfare of its passengers.
Does this mean that there is not a decade won?
Of course there is a decade won. And we have another decade ahead of us to win, but it is first a decade to contest. However, we must make a historical reading of the decade gained. Beyond the social results, which are clearly positive. Ppoverty has been reduced, consumption levels have improved, income levels, universal access to education and health, among others. There is a decade gained in political terms justly because the possibility of continuing to dispute a transformation of social structures to build a new social order: the construction of a sustainable human democracy is alive; that is, the society of good living.
What are the historical conditions identified in this transition that make the great transformation viable?
That there has been a dismissal / constituent moment, where the citizenry manifests the need to sign a new social covenant pact that generates a new social order; that the new social pact allows a structural transformation and that the political decisions that accompany the new pact have been structuring actions that allow us to configure the conditions of possibility of being able to dispute the great transformation.
The dismissal / constituent moment is clear, but does the new social pact make a new social order possible?
I have absolutely no doubt it does. The horizon of meaning is embodied in the new constitutional text. There are multiple paths for transformation. For example, we must pass:
1) from anthropocentrism to biocentrism;
2) from colonialism and patriarchalism to the pluridiverse society (plurinational and intercultural);
3) from exclusively representative democracy (which is consubstantial to capitalism) to sustainable human democracy, based on social participation and deliberation;
4) from market capitalism (social de-commodification) to the social and solidarity economy and, 5) from the mercantilist corporate state to the popular sovereign state guaranteeing rights.
Europe raised the construction of the Welfare State and that has been the last proposal for the construction of a new social order (after the failure of the offers of society made by the Soviet bloc). Now it seems that the right begins to dismantle it. In this framework, the road was based, among other aspects, on recognizing the equality of citizens with respect to social rights based on representative democracy. Undoubtedly, the constitutional proposals of South America are moving in that direction and the progressive governments have made rapid progress in reducing poverty, inequality and democratization of rights. But in the world that we live that is insufficient. The “new modernity”, if the term fits, goes through the construction of plurinational societies. This is what the Constitutions of Ecuador and Bolivia, which without a doubt are in the vanguard in these terms. While this was raised in the South, in Europe last week in two days, 340 migrants died trying to reach their land. In fact, in 2016 the record number of 4,300 deaths in the Mediterranean was reached with three times fewer arrivals of migrants by sea than in 2015.
Europe is now synonymous with obscurantism and barbarism. Equality has to live with diversity and recognize the diversity of identities that exist in the world. In this framework, the vanguard is to recognize universal citizenship and the recognition that unitary Plurinational States can be built respecting the pluriculturality of identities and nations that coexist in each territory. In Polanyi’s diagnosis of the rise of fascism in the mid-twentieth century, he shows how xenophobic nationalism was a reaction against the enormous inequality caused by the free market. It was a social defense mechanism. In our days, in it’s own unique way, it seems that history repeats itself.
In the economic sphere, what are the transitions that make the transformation viable?
Globally, you might think that 2016 can be read as the year of the end of the long 20th century in historical terms. The Brexit, the victory of Trump and the death of Fidel symbolically mark a watershed in the correlation of forces worldwide, both political and economic. Only the rejection of Trans-Atlantic and Trans-Pacific treaties and the exit of the EU from Great Britain configure another scenario in the world panorama. García Linera points out that it is the end of globalization. Personally I think it is the beginning of another globalization. Ecuador must think about that framework.
In these 10 years has been able to walk disputing the sense of the barbarism of what is capitalism but obviously within capitalism. The autistic left believes that it was viable to do it from another system. Impossible! Sometimes I feel that this left doesn’t understand what power means, while the right has a great understanding not only of its meaning but also how to exercise it.
In summary terms, I can point out that in the book I argue that in this decade there have been three actions (at different speeds) that are essential to continue disputing a great transformation:
1) a great deconcentration of capital;
2) a new original socio-ecological accumulation;
3) a large accumulation of physical capital.
It remains a task of the vanguard to build a form of productive organization where redistribution is produced and produced by distributing. We propose the construction of a social economy of knowledge built from a collaborative logic.
In these processes, other common meanings must be configured to break the hegemony of the exchange value and a new social value-based appropriation based on life and use value. We must break with the society that knows the price of everything, but knows the value of very few things. The construction and appropriation of such a sensibility is the urgent task of the second transition now in dispute.
Does the left that you call autistic point out that the big winners are the capitalists? What do you think about this assertion?
The decade is won because the whole society won. The difference is that in comparison with the preceding decade, these ten years before had a deliberate priority: the poor and the workers.
In my book I show how the growth during these 10 years went largely to the poor and working class. Participation in the pie (which, incidentally, doubled) decreased by 10% for the capitalists and was distributed among the workers and in that so-called mixed economy (for example, popular economy, cooperatives, etc.). In these ten years, decisions were made that disputed a de-accumulation of capitalist logic; that is, that it passes from hands -either in stock or in future flows- of the capitalists towards society, either directly or indirectly through the State.
Here are some examples: the compensation of the two biggest social robberies in the history of the country. With the audit of the external debt and the recovery of the bank bailout of 2000; the social recovery of oil revenues; the financing of the doubling of the human development bonus destined to the poorest financed with the profits of the private banks are examples of this deconcentration of capital.
In structural terms, we must be vigilant that the trade agreement does not entail a re-concentration of the accumulation in transnational capital and that the original accumulation produced in this decade will not serve to generate accumulation elsewhere, but will produce a larger concentration of wealth where the economy it is produced. This develops a domestic pattern of economic diversification and specialization.
Likewise, there has been a new accumulation of socio-ecological capital and a democratization of access to programs which enhance human capacities. Access to education, health care, social security. Avoiding the emission of 6.3 tons / year of CO2 as a consequence of the change in the matrix energy, etc. Is it not amazing that the average life of Ecuadorians has increased 5.5 years in the past decade?!
In this transition, it is important to develop non-speculative physical capital to make another types of accumulation viable: roads, hydroelectric plants, ports, airports, etc.
What we must have clear about is that in the current scenario there has been an accumulation that did not exist before. The right is rubbing his hands over this. After this wealth that did not exist before was created, the Right seeks to concentrate the benefits in a few hands on national and / or transnational capitalists. They want to freeze the increase in social spending for 20 year and, impose the elimination of the state’s obligation to guarantee initial and secondary education made public and free by Temer. They want a reduction of the government investment in Science and Technology a la Macri. Then there’s Lasso’s proposal to privatize social security so that each “one chooses” its provider in the name of freedom.
it is clear evidence of a new accumulation that the great capitals in our continent intend to do or are already doing after the social decade won by the progressive governments. The proposal of the right: the appropriation of human capacities and institutions of common interest. We must realize that in Argentina, and Brazil, for example, the dispute over transformation has become very opaque.
What should be the strategy?
In the contest to constitutionalize Ecuadorian society, we must be clear about the meaning of the history we are currently experiencing. A free flow of goods and services does not necessarily place us in the nexus of the world economy. As I point out in my book, it seems that 2017 will be the beginning of the 21st century.
That strategy is of the last century and would plunge us into the worst dependency in history. When I talk about the great transition in the book, I also point out that it is not a single transition, but two: the one that Ecuadorians sign and that is embodied in the constitutional text and the one that happens on a world scale: the transition from industrial capitalism to cognitive capitalism based both on processes of speculative financialization of the economy.
The new commercial policy will be directed towards the management of intellectual property. This strategy must then be linked to intelligent inclusion in the powerful circuits of generation of knowledge, technology and innovation. And all this within a framework that addresses the needs and potential of our peoples.
Unfortunately, I see very little debate about what is the role of science in social transformation and what strategy of technological development ought be followed in Ecuador’s coming decades. Ecuador will not get out of the development traps previous set unless it has a clear strategy of how to break the technological and cognitive dependence it has. And it must know how to defend the biodiversity that it has.
It is not fortuitous that in world treaties countries are forced to put in penal codes randing from sanctions to imprisonment when copyright or property rights are undermined. Yet nothing is done when the biodiversity of our countries is stolen! This is biopiracy!
In my book I proposed that the new geopolitics is already contesting this knowledge-biodiversity relationship. That is why, the strategy I propose is for bio-knowledge for the good living of our peoples and nationalities. Thank God we have oil, but we must also be clear that only through deliberate social collective action can we be a tertiary exporting country of knowledge and technology. Thank God we have Galapagos, but thanks to the will of the Ecuadorians we are building Innopolis.
What do you mean when you point to the little debate that takes place on these issues in the electoral process?
It is very sad to see how we have fallen into the democracy of the “encuestología”, that the government opposition consists simply in opposing everything the government has done according to their surveys. That is no proposal for how the future should be goverened. Not only that, if one analyzes what the candidates say, the country would fail sooner rather than later. Ecuador has no monetary policy towards the dollar, so trade policy may be cut for obvious reasons. This is heard in the proposals of the candidates who say they will lower taxes, will remove the tax at the exit of foreign currency or the advance of income tax, etc.
When the government put up safeguards, among other reasons, to defend dollarization, the right immediately went out to attack it. It wants to guarantee quality rights as in the ‘first world’, with a fourth world tax system. This is unfeasible! If such actions take place, Ecuador will soon have to exit dollarization (if the price of a barrel of oil changes radically upwards). I think we are in a very serious debate in the economic field in the electoral process.
One more point: the repressed past is being disputed. The right says: the government spent too much, now it is necessary to amend through sacrifice. It is punitive morality which seeks to induce fear and solve it by pointing to a scapegoat. In all the opposition speeches a negative messiah is announced and the pitiful tone of Ash Wednesday of the revolutionary carnival is heard. The left must continue to dispute the future, to hope, to embody the conviction that it is possible for all of us to live well, here, today and in this land called Ecuador. Let hope overcome fear!
What role do the media play in this dispute?
The media are the main tool of power used by the right to produce disenchantment and despair. The news, the newspapers try to build the society of fear, of suspicion, of distrust. The news that grows most in audience are the ones with the most blood. To this is added the social networks. This new public sphere allows anonymous trolls to defame without any public responsibility.
Their strategy of pyramidalization (I think this means reinforcing hegemony) when trying to generate the news of the week is clear: they use the massive media and the big ‘influencers’ who have many followers in their social network accounts. Not those who are random private media journalists. Therefore, one of the main principles that must be challenged in tofay’s democracy is truth and defense of the public sphere.
As a citizen I would expect that any candidate for the Presidency of my country will always be attached to the truth and have the courage, in case of being wrong, to clarify and ask for public apology for the mistake they made. Not that lying ought be used as a deliberate strategy to win votes. That is the strategy of a right without morals. We must be clear that there will be no quality democracy as long as there is no ethics in politics and as long as the truth does not reign in the public sphere.
There is a left that indicates that it has been a wasted decade. What do you think?
I agree with the point made by Emir Sader: for those that see is as wasteful decade, it is because they wasted the decade. The question asked by the Brazilian sociologist is pertinent: if governments like the Citizen Revolution are responsible for the return of the right, as these groups usually affirm, then why is this ‘ultra left’ not strengthened? Because they have not taken advantage of the weakening of progressive governments and thus taken their place? No. It is simple. It is because they have no popular base and their arguments have not penetrated any sector of the population.
This left should learn that they are also responsible for their actions or non-actions. Unfortunately, the right has been much more astute and efficient in political terms than this left. It is no coincidence that this left in the next elections has no direct spokesperson as a presidential candidate. A left without a town, it is not a left. In this sense, it seems that the left noun remained large. Yes, they have wasted this decade!
What is the role of politics in this regard?
Perhaps as important as the viability of the contest is that the same described transition has been made within a democratic and peaceful framework. The process of social reconfiguration, having these characteristics, has allowed us to recover the trust in the other and above all the capacity of citizen astonishment in the face of social injustice – which has allowed people to move from indignant anger to the hope of a mindful citizen hope. The right is astute in pointing out that institutional confidence, citizen’s hope in and the recovery of politics are the main weapons that progressive processes have to move forward.
In this context, it is vital for the right to disenchant, to despair of citizenship and to dismantle the image of politics as a space to create a just social order. In this framework, it is necessary to understand political action as a means but also as an end to the process of change. In this way, political action must create a virtuous circle, based on actors that support and push change, and that the change they sustain and support strengthens them. Faced with the society of mistrust and fear that the right seeks to establish as a common sense, one of the main challenges that Lenín Moreno has is to restrain the citizenry – as he does- in order to continue with the hopeful spirit we have had in these 10 years, which implies generating another aesthetic in politics.
I’ve not read much about her besides her character’s speeches in Martin Duberman’s novel Haymarket, but from Jacquelin Jones description of her as a historic person:
“She was very well known throughout the United States, especially when she began to launch her own speaking tours in 1886, when her husband was in prison. Her name was really a household word. She was never happier than speaking in front of large crowds, riling them up. Her politics were very radical, quite outside the mainstream — then and today. But workers loved her rhetoric. She condemned the employers, the capitalist machine, the corrupt two-party system. She knew that undercover detectives covered every one of her speeches.”
she seems like someone worth getting to know more about.
