Sunday, August 10, 2014

Roosting Chickens







                                                                                       

The American Left: Friends of Our Country’s Enemies


“In his book Antisemitism and the American Far Left, historian Stephen H. Norwood ends his tome by noting that since the 1960s, the American far left has echoed both extremist Palestinian propaganda as well as the old Communist anti-Zionist positions of the 1920s and ’30s, demonizing Zionism and “condemning Israel with increasing fervor…and calling for its destruction.” The Left think of themselves as secular democrats, while in reality they work to empower the forces of radical Islam that “would replace Israel with an Arab dictatorship unwilling to extend rights to minorities and women.”






The American Left used to be patriotic. In its heyday, Eugene V. Debs never attacked America, and the socialist vision he advocated was in his eyes a way to realize the promise of America. As for the American Communist Party, in reality the tool of Stalin’s USSR, it pretended in the 1940s to be pro-American, and its chairman, Earl Browder, coined the slogan “Communism is 20th century Americanism.” This pretense came to an end during the Cold War, when the Left supported the Soviet bloc and all of its policies, and argued that America was in the process of becoming a nascent fascist state.

The remnants of the ’60s New Left identified with America’s new enemies, especially North Vietnam, Communist Cuba, the PLO, and, in the ’80s, Sandinista Nicaragua. After 9/11, many of its adherents took the position that the United States had the terror attack coming to it, since the perpetrators had taken 3000 lives in protest against America’s imperial ambitions and control.

The left-wing of the Democratic Party is not happy. Baker interviewed Phyllis Bennis, who works at the far-left Institute for Policy Studies (not, as Baker describes it,“a research organization for peace activists”). The NYT does not let its readers know that Bennis herself is a person who believes that Israel’s very creation was illegitimate, and who supports “the right of return” and has previously criticized moves taken by Israel against Hamas. As for the IPS, as one can find at Discover the Networks, during the Cold War it was a major group disseminating Soviet disinformation and working to push the United States to the far left.
This led Michael Walzer, the social-democratic intellectual, to pen an article called “Can There Be a Decent Left?” Walzer courageously took on many of those on his side of the spectrum, hitting them for accepting the “blame America first” doctrine to explain foreign policy defeats; for not criticizing any peoples or nations in the Third World; for believing in what he called “rag-tag Marxism”; for failing to oppose dangerous jihadists and Islamist states; and for refusing to blame anyone else for the world’s wrong except the United States.

I wonder what Walzer would write today if he examined his article anew. If one looks around at the Left’s response to Hamas’ actions in Gaza and its attacks on Israel, and its view of Islamist fascism in countries like Iran, Syria and among the ISIS forces seeking to take over Iraq, it is clearer than ever that the Left has one function — to support the enemies of democracy. Operating in the United States, Britain and France, the Western Left takes the opportunity to speak freely in the democracies in which they live, to openly support and express their solidarity with democracy’s most fervent enemies.

Some would question why this Left, perhaps numerically small in terms of the entire population of the Western nations, is so important. Aren’t they really marginal? The answer is that in the United States, as well as in Great Britain, the positions of the far left have now become mainstream, and influence those in political power. So it is with the Democratic Party.

On these questions, the answer of the left-liberal wing of the Democratic Party, and the even further far left-wing base, makes the Democrats as an entire group unable to take any steps that endanger their electoral chances, unless the party’s leaders continually kowtow to the leftist base. They fear that if they took tough interventionist positions that would offend them, it might lead the Left to opt out of voting in the coming November elections, as well as not rallying behind whomever the Democrats pick as their candidate for the 2016 presidential race. There are, of course, some exceptions. Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey is one Democrat who has continually called for tough measures against Iran, much to the consternation of others in his own party.

[PJ MEDIA CONT]

Recent polls already have shown that most Democrats have already turned against Israel, and only 31 percent think Israel’s war with Hamas is justified.  Hence the Democrats fear not going along with the Left. Unless they appease the far left in their own ranks, previously mainstream Democrats will fear electoral defeat, and hence many will respond positively to far left appeals and protests. The Left’s marginality will not matter — what they think and call for has entered the mainstream.



 It appears someone ignored writings on the wall

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

While I agree with the excerpt,
I will not visit the link.
I HATE PJMEDIA.
Roger Simon is the CLASS A1 A§§H*LO who
1) said Romney was the only winnable candidate, and
2) those who accused him of statism had a mental disorder.

SO; F*CK HIM and his precious little site.
Yes, there are a few nice writers there.
I read them elsewhere whenever I can.
Roger Simon is an A§§.

Wabano said...

I like PJ media's Kim Zigfeld "La Russophobe"
http://pjmedia.com/blog/pat-buchanan-and-ron-paul-apologists-for-putin/
Also her:
http://dyingrussia.wordpress.com/

Anonymous said...

I stopped thinking of Communism as Anti-American when I started to read everything I could about 1850's politics. If you were in the upper slice of societies cake in NYC in 1855 you were a member of the New York City American Socialist' Club. They were very pro-America; their America. The Germanics and Slavs came here in droves, they brought their education system, their political system and their love of centralized government. And they implemented every bit of it. You consider your self to a true American every time you say their Pledge of Allegiance. -Anymouse

Post a Comment

Just type your name and post as anonymous if you don't have a Blogger profile.