By Finian Cunningham
The superficial distortions
propagated by many American politicians and
pundits only serve to sustain the status quo
of oligarchic tyranny.
March 10, 2021 "Information
Clearing House" - -
"SCF"
- One striking thing about contemporary
American politicians and pundits is their
dubious ability to mangle words and concepts
rendering them meaningless.
This common political illiteracy only
leads to a degradation of critical powers
among citizens to challenge the two-party
monopoly. The upshot is the two-party
tyranny is sustained and thus never held to
account for inequities and crimes of war.
A recent example is the media row over
Glenn Greenwald
labelling Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson
a “socialist”. Greenwald is supposed to be
one of the most independent and intelligent
of American journalists. It was his
campaigning style of journalism that brought
whistleblower Edward Snowden to the world’s
attention and which exposed the many crimes
of U.S. state surveillance.
But for Greenwald to call the Fox News
host a “socialist” is a betrayal of
intelligence and a lamentable distortion of
political concepts. It’s ludicrous to use
the term “socialist” alongside Carlson’s
name when the latter has shown over and over
on primetime TV that his own brand of
politics shares sympathies with far-right,
Neo-fascist supporters of former president
Donald Trump.
Carlson has repeatedly sought to absolve
the violent insurrection on January 6 when
Trump supporters assailed the Capitol to
overturn the joint Congressional session
certifying the election win of Democrat
rival Joe Biden. Carlson and his Fox News
ilk have made out that the events were a
show of patriotic fervor which was justified
by (baseless) claims of election fraud.
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By contrast it is quite clear from
testimonies given before Congress that
the events on January 6 were much more
sinister and were incited by then President
Trump. Especially damning is the fact that
Trump’s appointed chiefs at the Pentagon
refused to deploy the National Guard to the
Capitol for over three hours while it was
being ransacked by mobs calling for lynching
of lawmakers inside. The event was a coup
bid orchestrated by a fascist, loser
president and his far-right militia
supporters. People like Carlson and other
Fox News pundits who try to justify the
events or claim that they were sparked by
leftwing provocateurs are at the outer
fringes of rightwing, Neo-fascist lunacy.
For supposedly intelligent journalists
like Greenwald to apply the term “socialist”
to unhinged rightists like Fox’s Carlson
only demonstrates a poverty of political
discourse in America. (Curiously, too,
Greenwald has in other writings also sought
to play down the Capitol insurrection, and
has taken up a secondary focus on how the
event is being used to allegedly crackdown
on civil liberties.)
The same mangling of words and concepts
has been used by other commentators,
including some at this site, who make the
preposterous
claim that Biden and the Democrats are
“far-left socialists”. This is also a
ludicrous misnomer.
Trump and other Republicans often depict
America being taken over by “radical
socialists” in the Democrat party who are
aiming at turning the U.S. into a
“Venezuela”. Such a discourse is another
inane distortion which only serves to
distract from the objective reality.
The objective reality is that the United
States is an oligarchy ruled by an obscenely
wealthy minuscule class. All of America’s
social problems of poverty, inequality and
infrastructure breakdown could be solved by
the rational and egalitarian distribution of
wealth achieved in part by breaking up
corporate monopoly power. America’s problems
of social and economic degeneration can be
solved by socialism and democratic planning
to meet human need over private profit. The
same genuinely democratic politics would
also put an end to imperialist wars which
are fought only for the benefit of corporate
profits.
The oligarchy is fronted with the
window-dressing of two parties who argue and
bicker with one another over relatively
petty issues (“identity politics” and
“culture war”), thereby giving valuable
cover for the background, overarching
reality: the oligarchic system of siphoning
off wealth from the majority of working
Americans and launching wars from time to
time in order to shore up the presumed
hegemony of American corporate capital in
the world.
More enlightened American observers such
as Eric Zeusse at this site know and
clearly express the reality that the
U.S. is a tyranny camouflaged by two parties
who both compete to serve their rightwing,
capitalist, imperialist masters. Both
parties are in reality the War Party. New
President Joe Biden will turn out just as
belligerent and warmongering as all his
predecessors, whether Democrat or
Republican. It is damnable that this is so
predictable of the American tyranny.
Pundits who throw brickbats around about
one or other member of the War Party being
allegedly “socialist” are just being
disingenuous or else clueless about
understanding the real condition of American
power and its political window-dressing.
Such nonsensical mangling of words only
serves to disarm a popular mobilization
against the oligarchic system which would
mean throwing out the Democrats and the
Republicans.
A big part of the problem is the American
education system. There is systematic
neglect among American schools, colleges and
universities to teach principles of Marxism,
socialism and a materialist critique of
capitalism and imperialism.
The superficial distortions propagated by
many American politicians and pundits only
serve to sustain the status quo of
oligarchic tyranny.