Ukraine to Syria: How Imperialism & Sabotage Divided the Western Left for 100 years, w/ Ben Norton 

Aww come on man, what is it about many well meaning Americans that you make EXACTLY the same mistakes the capitalist minority want you to make and do EXACTLY the same service to capitalism by making those mistakes. Have Americans ever heard of the word CENTRIST??! Because you see you have the left and its principles, and anyone who does not adhere to those core principles has effectively abandoned the left no matter what comes out of their damned mouth, and moved to the liberal centrist position at a minimum who are a people who are centre left on matters of social justice in order to provide media cover for being centre right to right wing on domestic economics and foreign policy. So do me a favour, have a word with yourselves, have a word with Glenn, have a word with Jimmy, and anyone else spouting this bollocks constantly these days, because where you see faulty left wingers I see the reality which is a bunch of at best "social democrat" centrist class traitors. It is very very easy to tell who is a left winger and who is not in a democracy my American friends, ask anyone, any candidate, two questions: Question 1: Do you think we should have democracy? 99% of people without a screw loose will say yes of course. Question 2: Do you think we should have capitalism? If they answer in any other way than "DEAR GOD NO as capitalism is a top down anti democratic economic system that is not compatible with democracy and incentivises the corruption of it as well as incentivising expansions for profits of few taken from the work of many below them that inevitably leads to wars between nations to continue that expansion for profit." Then such a person is not a left winger in any way shape nor bloody form and has abandoned the principles of the left if they ever held them, in order to move to the centre ground. Same shit for support of NATO given the wondrous tool of capitalist wealth transfere from all europe/uk workers unto a handful of primarily US/UK banks and weapons corporations that it is, those are not left wingers, either by choice or by media manipulations they are centrists on an ever widening range of matters. To be a left winger adhering to its historical global principles, you cannot be in favour of capitalism in any way nor the tools and agents and institutions of capitalism which operate contrary to left wing economic principles, you cannot be in favour of global military alliances that work hand in hand with media owned by the capitalist minority to sow doubt and spread fear in effort of selling arms, sparking conflicts for profit, and providing financing for that expansion, and you must absolutely know your economic and political history well of at least the last 100 years to insulate yourself from propaganda capitalism will pump into your ear every minute of every day in effort to get you to abandone your principles and move to at a minimum the liberal centre conforming with capitalism as much as any right winger. If a person cant tick those boxes, they are not on the left. "The only thing in the middle of the road is yellow streaks and road kill" - Jim Hightower. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-3cdqQ2BdgOA.html p.s. As a left winger, I get very tired of being blamed for the god awful crap others do. It is the entire reason we are kept from any political or economic power, which is the entire reason centrists exist to begin with.

Look into the work of Dr Mathew Raphael Johnson.

Right on .. so jealous. Cheers.

I like Laos too

Glad you got out dude. Vietnam is awesome. Just comparing the response to covid compared to the US response should make US people sick.

Most Americans have trouble living where white supremacy doesn’t exist. Good for you man

Many I know travel as chauvinistic North Americans. They have middle class liberal views that sees the Global South as The Other. Their experiences don't influence them, they influence the experiences.

Sorry to hear that, Katharina. Good on you for being careful. Also, please know that if you are friendly to everyone, then you create a friendly social environment around you.

Ridiculous. You are always welcome in Chicago 👍

You don't have to feel depressed if you have a clear conscience. You see that this is blatant racism and it impacts over 5,5 billion people of color in the global south at the cost of 45 million Christian white Ukranians with blond hair and blue eyes. You need to decide and play your part and create an awareness and help those and support what is just.

We are here for any Russian in London. Maybe that sounds like a bad joke but I did hear Shostakovich on BBCR3 last week.

Even in the global south it can be by turns depressing (within and around the hegemonic orbit/sphere of things and people), and exhilarating/hopeful - that things may just be changing after so long.

Very multicultural nation 🇷🇺🪆

I've about heard this. Amazing nation. I imagine it must be very diverse, that region is huge. Tbf the US is very diverse as well, but I'm sure you're not unaware of the extreme histories of racism here, not just Wht towards Black/African ancestry, but Wht towards those of Latino, Asian, or Native American backgrounds; the long-lasting and disgraceful consequences of such are sadly still with us depending on where you look.

I have a question tho. I'm sure opinions will vary wildly like anything else, but, in your view, what is the average opinion locally on the dissolution of the USSR??? If you had to say, do most Russian citizens oppose that change and wish to reverse it or that it had not happened, or is it not much of a current issues among Russian citizens or former citizens?? I've never had an opportunity to ask a native person about it before and I've frequently wondered what the general consensus was.

@@WindowsXP_logon_sound_25yrsago The general consensus is there is no way and no reason to go back. We kinda need local, adapted version of capitalism.

@@tort77777777777777 Interesting. Thanks for your thoughts.

Likewise

That's because socialists/Commie doctrine changes with the wind to hide their lies, and by the way Russia isn't the USSR, and don't forget you types will be lined up first,

I'm from the UK. Most of the European and British left sucks on this issue too. The way so many people parrot the same ignorant line, feel less like Nazi Germany more like invasion of the body snatchers right now. Like I've woken up amongst the pod people.

@@adamsmith7058 It was just easy for me to see, to scale up. From the Section 8 projects and private gated communities of the USA to the council schemes and private estates of the UK we could see the same division on a global level between the rich countries of the West with 24/7 electricity and all that and the rest of the world where in some places it is difficult even to get water because the country has been devastated by America's imperialist wars. It's a shame to see the left in the West marching the Nazi goose step.

Yep all the Nazis came over here some went to Israel.

Great comment Ray, refreshing to read .

I feel the same here in libertarian hell.

@@kevinjohnson9533 Thanks for the kind words.

Great man👍

A big thumbs up for you.

I love how easy it is to divide Americans.

@@alexgorron6470 The entire function of cable-TV is "market segmentation." It's trivially easy. See the Pepsi Challenge? Coke vs. Pepsi? Nobody sane drinks branded bottled beverages. But idiots imagine their "choices" are "freedom." Hertz vs Avis? Apple vs Android? See the pattern? Heinz vs Hunts? DNC vs GOP? Americans implement monopolies in the form of staged "2-sides" duopolies?

@@scottmcloughlin4371 Oh I know. I've been watching these types of things recently to understand why we act the way we do. Exclusivity because we like to label and organize. "Social Identity Theory - Definition + 3 Components" was a pretty good video describing that.

It is great!

Excellent comment Paul.

Agree with that except that Trotskyists would say the same about Stalinists. Terrible split - it should have been Leninism all the way.

Problem with your reasoning is that it disregards the Kremlin Imperialism in the equation, which has driven the former WP- and USSR countries to join NATO.

@@johanmetreus1268 You completely misunderstand what imperialism is. US imperialism is the global imperialist power. Clueless.

@@paulmcgrory5165 That USA is vastly more effective than Russia does not by any means indicate that the latter is desirable or even harmless. The foremost obligation is to be politically aware and avoid being blindly used by whoever isn't the current main opponent.

😂 why did you decide that the sanctions are unlikely to the Russian population??? 😂 Only bloggers suffer from sanctions in Russia and that's it. Russians applauding each new sanctions - with each new sanctions our country becomes stronger and we develop our production.

@@lanalesna I don’t know much about how the sanctions are affecting or not affecting the Russian people. In the West we are told the sanctions harm the Russian people a lot. That is what independent and Leftist media says as well as mainstream. I hope what you say is true. Can you provide any more info about whether the sanctions are harming ppl? Have prices gone up? Is there scarcity?

It has to do with the dearth of well known critics of capitalism in the UK. He's been on TV quite a lot as the token green authority. It's an effect of the stultifying rightwing unanimity of all UK news media except for relatively weak platforms like The Morning Star (the CPB's daily) and newish online outfits like Novara and Double Down News which are still relatively small. So types like Monbiot and Mason, and Owen Jones who is little better, who get through the cracks and are moderately charismatic get more attention than they would in a more representative news media environment.

@@patrickholt2270 but Novara is dreadful in similar ways to what Rania and Ben describe here, with token mentions of "the global South" and Bastani's frequent references to being half Iranian. I used to like them... DDN frequently features Monbiot and other weird people.

@@hybridmongrel That reinforces the point abut how scarce and weak leftwing media is in the UK. I typically find Bastani completely reliable as a Marxist on UK politics, but he's badly wrong about Ukraine right now. He's perhaps drifted a little to the right since he founded Novara, at a point when they were all student socialists and anti-capitalists who were more or less anti-New Labour and indifferent to electoralism. What was exciting was when they were pursuading themselves to give electoralism a try in 2014 when Jeremy Corbyn snuck onto the ballot for Labour leader. Now Aaron describes himself as Labour for life, which is a massive hostage to fortune and breaking faith with all the good socialists who've been expelled from Labour. I think it's the influence of some of the id-pol left liberals on the team who are the real problem, starting with the Remainiacs who still insist on villifying working class Labour Leavers and cancelling militant trades unionists like Eddie Dempsey. Grace Blakely's recent backtracking on expressing admiration for the Management of Savagery because someone got in her ear about Max Blumenthal being somehow unacceptable is deeply disappointing. I think that Vivek Chibber's argument on Jacobin the other day talking to Slavoj Zizek, about where middle class leftists are going wrong is much better argued than Ben Norton's reductionist categorizing everyone as either pro-Stalin or working for the CIA, and is based on sound class analysis and recognition of material conditions, and explains why much of Novara Media is falling into the pattern of PMC leftists succumbing gradually to the norms of the London establishment media bubble (pro-EU, pro-NATO, anti-Russia, educational qualifications snobbery and identity politics over class politics, and generally wanting to be accepted by the club).

@@patrickholt2270 I agree on almost everything here, except Zizek is hardly 'grounded' in class struggle and is firmly EURO-US centric, but I'll find that article thanks. I like Aaron too, but he's a right know-all, which is embarrassing when he's obviously wrong. He keeps his head down on TQI+++ stuff too, apart from obligatory refs to 'cis'. This issue will be even bigger than antisemitism (which most of the left is clueless, ignorant and arrogant about: ever thought of listening to left wing Jews, like Finklestein? No, because the English left know it all and could never, ever be racist, ffs) and will blow up in their faces (sorry horrible exploding implant image). Johnson has now shunned crazy Tory incl Carrie's +++ sympathies, as he knows it will be a disaster electorally. There is only one party in Britain that has a good approach to all of this and due to MI5 and anti-comm left sectarianism, it is and will probably remain, marginal.

@@hybridmongrel It's Vivek Chibber's argument which I said was based on sound class analysis and recognition of material conditions. Zizek was hearing the argument from Chibber and agreeing with all of it. Obviously Zizek is a bit abstract to say the least. As for sectarianism, there's plenty of that to go around, unfortunately. I have as little time for Stalinist sectarianism as I do for Trotskist sectarianism. My dad was in the CP and my consistent experience is that CP people are more level headed and comradely than Trotskyists and better at working with others for the sake of the class. It's online-only tankies (self identifying as "tankie") who seem to have been bitten by the sectarianism bug. That's not how to build mass politics and class power.

Lots of good stuff but he totally shocked me with his Stalinist take on the Spanish civil war. Still reeling from this reactionary apologia for Stalinist repression of the left, which helped the fascists win

They rock

I hear that. Is there a good book on this?wasnt obama born in cia hospital in Hawaii?

@@eileenmc4746 If you're looking for a book detailing the specific involvement of Obama's parents in the massacre in Indonesia, I can't help you -- sorry! But, if you're looking for one about the massacre itself, that includes brief mentions of Obama's parents' roles, then _The Jakarta Method_ by Vincent Bevins is what you want. It connects what happened in Indonesia to similar US-sponsored anti-communist repressions in many other parts of the world. Very informative book.

I don't. These mandates cost peoples jobs including healthcare workers who refused to take the covid vaccine. The vaccine proved ineffective to stop the spread, and we are going to be stuck with the covid virus just like influenza 100+ years later.

In Canada you still can't travel by train or air without proving vaccination status. Mask mandates are still in places in many provinces. Only recently in Quebec the non vaccinated were allowed to shop at non essential stores. Lockdowns have proven ineffective at stoping the spread and have harmed many mental health.

Joel Whitney's book "Finks: How the C.I.A. Tricked the World's Best Writers". I also mentioned "The Cultural Cold War" by Frances Stonor Saunders

@@GeopoliticalEconomyReport Thank you!!