They’re finally saying the quiet part out loud.
From the day the far-left “movement” of sorts sought to put up a blockade against President Obama’s painstaking efforts to achieve health care reform, some of us have questioned their motives. Some of us have called out again and again their guerilla tactics against incumbent Democrats while promoting and making common cause with white supremacists, bigots, and insurrectionists on the right.
We were often dismissed as partisan hacks and corporate strumpets for advocating for reform without completely upending the existing system. Although the Affordable Care Act would outlaw the worst abuses of the insurance industry, cover 20 million more people with health insurance, close the Medicare prescription drug coverage gap, and expand Medicaid to cover everyone living in poverty, it did not include a provision for public flogging of insurance executives in front of their confiscated headquarters, which meant to the far left that Democrats were the Devil Incarnate, and Barack Obama was just a house negro for corporate America.
They weren’t able to stop Obamacare (thank God), but they never gave up on trying to burn down the Democratic party. The display of their destructive and voter suppressive power - culminating in keeping enough Democrats home to elect Donald Trump president - only made them bolder.
But for all that time, they have gotten away with the facade of being the “real” progressives who just wanted health care and free college. For far too long, they have gotten away with masking their project to burn down the sole organized political force for good for working people and the underprivileged in this country, the Democratic party in the guise of being unyielding fighters against straw man villains.
No more.
Joe Biden’s presidency and the popularity of his policies appear to have broken something in a range of prominent leftist activists, reporters, and podcasters. After gloating for four years about keeping Hillary Clinton out of the White House, and promising - but failing to do the same for Biden, they are desperate. They are failing to wound Biden through the same kind of cuts they deployed against President Obama and Hillary Clinton, and it’s frustrating them.
And that frustration is spilling out in public.
Just this week, Kyle Kulinski - an authoritarian radical and a founder of Justice Democrats, a group dedicated exclusively to primarying Democrats - exploded at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, his group’s first and most prominent recruits, for giving the Biden administration limited credit for governing in a progressive way. Rep. Ocasio Cortez, who prefers the branding ‘AOC’, has said that President Biden has turned out to be more progressive than she could have hoped for, and Kulinski spoke for the great majority of heartbroken socialists who are mourning the loss of AOC to the ‘establishment.’
Ocasio Cortez's statement on Biden is in and of itself based on a lie about Biden's true intentions that she and her ideological allies spread on the campaign trail, but that's not the focus of this essay. (That's the focus of this essay).
“AOC and Justice Democrats are supposed to actively be hostile to Biden even if Biden was doing a good job,” an angry Kulinski scolded the biggest non-Bernie political star of the socialist movement, making it clear that undermining Democrats, not delivering on progressive policy, is the top priority of the far left.
A group of leftist journalists, exemplified by The Intercept’s Ryan Grim, led the spreading of a complete and total fabricated story about Vice President Kamala Harris.
They echoed a New York Post story that claimed that unaccompanied minors who are being processed through immigration and Health and Human Services facilities are being given a children’s book written by Harris, with the implication being that Harris was personally profiting from the surge of migrant children at the border.
The story was a myth, and after it came out that it was, the reporter who wrote the story resigned, saying she had been forced to write the story despite it being fiction, and the New York Post deleted the story, at least temporarily.
But Grim, a supposed “progressive” journalist, rushed to compete with right wing outlets in promoting and spreading the fabricated story. He even equated it with Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway promoting Ivanka Trump products.
Ryan Knight, another prominent socialist podcaster, also ran with the NY Post’s story in a fit of rage against Kamala Harris.
Attack Democrats first, don’t worry about the truth, and preferably never ask questions. That has always been the motto of the rabid left.
On the other hand, though, the same cast of characters are often enamored with figures on the far right, including bigots, white supremacists, and fascists.
When Bernie Sanders received the endorsement of far right talk show shock jock Joe Rogan who frequents in racism, sexism, homophobia, and more on his show, the entire far left activist and intellectual circle hailed in celebration. In fact, Ryan Grim himself promoted videos of Joe Rogan ridiculing Biden’s speech disability, and our headliner Kyle Kulinski, according to socialist magazine Jacobin, introduced Bernie Sanders to Rogan.
Even after the election, gatekeeper progressives celebrated an unholy alliance between Bernie Sanders and top fascist in the Senate, Josh Hawley. Rep. Ro Khanna, a Sanders acolyte and a chief promoter of Kulinski’s group, proudly touted his close bond with radical Trumpist Matt Gaetz, who is now under federal investigation for trafficking underage girls, on right wing TV interviews, social media, and even a documentary featuring their budding friendship.
Khanna likes to say that his alliance with Gaetz was based on issues they agree on - like their common belief in the fading of American prominence from global affairs - but to my knowledge, has yet to condemn Grim or Kulinski, both of whom he frequently promotes on social media as ideological allies, for clearly picking fights with Democrats with no interest in issues. Hell, Khanna hasn’t even publicly called for the resignation of his friend, Gaetz.
It’s not that socialists don’t believe in making common cause. They just believe that common cause is best made with the people closest to them on the horseshoe ideological spectrum: the fascist right.
To be completely fair to them, they have always done a bad job of hiding their true colors. Even though they ostensibly pretended to work within the Democratic primary process and build the public perception that they are the real champions of the downtrodden and therefore the real Democrats, bits and pieces of their real agenda has been revealed over time. They have never really cared about policy; they simply want power. They always wanted a coup.
The hostility of the socialist left, like Donald Trump’s cruelty, is not there to serve a policy end. It is there, as Kyle Kulinski hinted, to intimidate with brute force.
That’s not working with Joe Biden, and the socialist left is losing it.
“AOC and Justice Democrats are supposed to actively be hostile to Biden even if Biden was doing a good job,” an angry Kulinski scolded the biggest non-Bernie political star of the socialist movement, making it clear that undermining Democrats, not delivering on progressive policy, is the top priority of the far left.
Here we see Kyle Kulinski, the founder of “Justice Democrats,” revealing that AOC and the “Justice Democrats” are running an op against Biden to undermine him regardless of what he does.
— JusticeDemWatch (@JusticeDemWatch) April 28, 2021
pic.twitter.com/4TeyF15ESK
Kulinski is not a lone voice among the authoritarian left screaming into the ether that his faction must actively undermine Democrats no matter what. It is something much of the far left movement is already doing to the young Biden-Harris administration.
A group of leftist journalists, exemplified by The Intercept’s Ryan Grim, led the spreading of a complete and total fabricated story about Vice President Kamala Harris.
They echoed a New York Post story that claimed that unaccompanied minors who are being processed through immigration and Health and Human Services facilities are being given a children’s book written by Harris, with the implication being that Harris was personally profiting from the surge of migrant children at the border.
The story was a myth, and after it came out that it was, the reporter who wrote the story resigned, saying she had been forced to write the story despite it being fiction, and the New York Post deleted the story, at least temporarily.
But Grim, a supposed “progressive” journalist, rushed to compete with right wing outlets in promoting and spreading the fabricated story. He even equated it with Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway promoting Ivanka Trump products.
Grim tries to claim later that he never believed the story in the first place, which is belied by the fact that he saw the need to promote it nevertheless. I suppose Grim’s defense could be that he purposely wanted to promote a negative story about the Biden-Harris administration that even he didn’t believe.
That, while a distinction without a difference, wouldn’t be uncharacteristic of Grim. Biden has been a longtime target of Grim’s. Grim promoted blatantly false (and eternally evolving) sexual misconduct against Biden from Tara Reade, and he jumped on every other spurious allegation he could find.
That, while a distinction without a difference, wouldn’t be uncharacteristic of Grim. Biden has been a longtime target of Grim’s. Grim promoted blatantly false (and eternally evolving) sexual misconduct against Biden from Tara Reade, and he jumped on every other spurious allegation he could find.
This was the journalistic standard applied to a false claim about Joe Biden from Christine "I am not a witch" O'Donnell's niece.
— Lucille (@Delilah399) April 28, 2021
The finest journalistic standards. The very finest. 🥴 pic.twitter.com/TywJy2OnfH
Attack Democrats first, don’t worry about the truth, and preferably never ask questions. That has always been the motto of the rabid left.
On the other hand, though, the same cast of characters are often enamored with figures on the far right, including bigots, white supremacists, and fascists.
When Bernie Sanders received the endorsement of far right talk show shock jock Joe Rogan who frequents in racism, sexism, homophobia, and more on his show, the entire far left activist and intellectual circle hailed in celebration. In fact, Ryan Grim himself promoted videos of Joe Rogan ridiculing Biden’s speech disability, and our headliner Kyle Kulinski, according to socialist magazine Jacobin, introduced Bernie Sanders to Rogan.
Even after the election, gatekeeper progressives celebrated an unholy alliance between Bernie Sanders and top fascist in the Senate, Josh Hawley. Rep. Ro Khanna, a Sanders acolyte and a chief promoter of Kulinski’s group, proudly touted his close bond with radical Trumpist Matt Gaetz, who is now under federal investigation for trafficking underage girls, on right wing TV interviews, social media, and even a documentary featuring their budding friendship.
Khanna likes to say that his alliance with Gaetz was based on issues they agree on - like their common belief in the fading of American prominence from global affairs - but to my knowledge, has yet to condemn Grim or Kulinski, both of whom he frequently promotes on social media as ideological allies, for clearly picking fights with Democrats with no interest in issues. Hell, Khanna hasn’t even publicly called for the resignation of his friend, Gaetz.
It’s not that socialists don’t believe in making common cause. They just believe that common cause is best made with the people closest to them on the horseshoe ideological spectrum: the fascist right.
To be completely fair to them, they have always done a bad job of hiding their true colors. Even though they ostensibly pretended to work within the Democratic primary process and build the public perception that they are the real champions of the downtrodden and therefore the real Democrats, bits and pieces of their real agenda has been revealed over time. They have never really cared about policy; they simply want power. They always wanted a coup.
The hostility of the socialist left, like Donald Trump’s cruelty, is not there to serve a policy end. It is there, as Kyle Kulinski hinted, to intimidate with brute force.
That’s not working with Joe Biden, and the socialist left is losing it.