Author: Deli Master

When it comes to politics, the tips are not made of the same meat as the rest of the wing. The demographics of the supporters show that it’s some sort of white meat, but it’s not clear just what sort, hence the mystery.

In the traditional right/left spectrum in America, the people who lean to one side or the other are called conservatives and liberals, respectively. But some people don’t just lean, they fall over, and this makes them qualitatively different.

Despite being on opposite extremes in one sense, these radicals are united by a shared political style: populism. But they often hide behind misleading terminology that allows them to deflect criticism, generally by sounding like they’re not extremists. This rant is mostly about calling them what they are instead of allowing them to maintain their disguise.

The correct term for the extreme right—whether it’s the hard right, far right, or the trendy alt right—is not conservative. The literally correct term is fascist. Of course, this word has long applied to the lunatic fringe: the neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, Birchers, and many libertarians.

Back then, these people were taken for granted by the mainstream Republicans—after all, it’s not like they could vote for the other party—and pointedly excluded from public events because they are embarrassing nuts.

The Republicans would still feed them red meat in the form of dog whistles and tacit support for bigotry. But they maintained plausible deniability by pretending that their actions were in the service of high-minded, bland-sounding, abstract principles such as small government or individual responsibility or states’ rights.

Conveniently, the social programs they attacked so as to harm minorities were the very same ones that the oligarchy hated. In this way, poor and middle-class white people were tricked into supporting policies that helped only the rich. It was a con, and it worked.

That con is no longer necessary. Where it once would have been hyperbole to call the Republicans, as a whole, fascists, things have changed. There are still conservatives in the party, particularly among the voters, but the people in charge are overt fascists.

Trump, Miller, Bannon: not one of these is a conservative in any sense. They are not defined by their caution about radical changes or their adherence to tradition. They’re just goose-stepping fascist scum.

Now, particularly outside of America, but increasingly even inside, fascists are often referred to as nationalists and populists. Trump even bragged about his nationalism. This is accurate, but doesn’t tell the full story. The source of confusion is that both of these terms also fit the other side: the left-wing extremists.

In America, the far left refers to itself as progressive, which is misleading in many ways. The biggest problem is that the term is sometimes used by actual liberals, due to the history of Reagan turning the l-word into a slur. Since the rise of St. Bernard, socialism has also been embraced as a label, but it’s not necessarily socialism in any Marxist sense, except when it is.

It’s also misleading in that it omits their populism, which is what distinguishes them from liberals, even more so than their extremism. Whereas liberals are equally focused on social and economic justice, left-pops give lip service to the former but care only about the latter. They are also nationalists, although more isolationist than expansionist.

Populism is a style of politics that entails both rhetorical and policy commitments, and is overlaid on top of political extremism on both ends. The rhetoric defines supporters as the only legitimate representation of “the people”; the ones who actually matter. Invariably, these special people are primarily white and male and otherwise non-minority.

Populism demands radicalism, activism, and ideological purity, and has no respect for experience, objectivity, or competence. There is no room for progress, only immediate, revolutionary change, and it doesn’t matter that revolutions always kill people. Populism denigrates the competent people as “the Establishment” and insists that, due to a willingness to compromise to get things done, they are inherently corrupt. This is ironic, as populism is, in practice, strongly associated with corruption.

While the populist right deserves to be called fascist, there is no equally handy term for the populist left. As I’ve written elsewhere, socialism is inherently ambiguous, and it since become a boogie man used by the Republican fascists as a cudgel against all Democrats, even the liberal base. But there is clearly a constellation of left-populist associations, which include such things as the Justice Democrats, Our Revolution, the Democratic Socialists of America, the Young Turks, and Bernie Sanders, and they need a name.

Aside from the generic left-populist, the best term I’ve found is based on their parallel with the Tea Party Movement, which is the right-populist faction that took over the RNC. Taking over the DNC is the stated goal of the left-pops, which is why some of us call them the Herbal Tea Party.

But you don’t have to love or use that term, unless you want to. You do have to distinguish between conservatives and fascists, and between liberals and leftists. That’s because extremism is an entirely different beast, no matter which extreme.

The base of the Democratic Party, the group that votes consistently and reliably for it, consists largely of women and people of color. One of the ways that some Democratic presidential candidates have been differentiating themselves while playing to that base is by backing reparations for African-American slavery.

This idea not only takes the moral high ground, it is a genuinely liberal goal that outflanks Bernie Sanders from the left while showing how his color-blind approach to (primarily economic) equality does not serve the base. Politically, it’s a bold move because it’s very much one of those broad, sweeping agendas that is ambiguous yet capable of alienating. In its current form, we can expect it to turn off white people broadly, even ones who genuinely oppose racism.

One answer to the ambiguity and skepticism comes from Marcus H. Johnson, a Twitterati celeb with a solid track record of compelling, well-thought-out political analyses. This rant is my sympathetic but partially dissenting response to his most recent one, entitled “Here’s What A Reparations Plan Could Look Like“. Read it. I’ll wait here.

There is much to admire about the approach he takes here, but also one fatal yet fixable flaw. First, he makes the moral case, which is honestly the easiest part. No amount of money can make up for what America did to the people they kidnapped, imported, and enslaved, but it can go a long way to countering the lasting harm by, as he says, “closing the racial wealth gap”. Otherwise, slavery’s effects continue through the generations unabated.

Second, Johnson does the math about how much it might cost, showing that it’s economically feasible, not only in terms of being a manageable ongoing expense but also due to savings from second-order effects, such as lowering incarceration rates.

If he wanted to, he could probably make an even stronger argument here. For example, any substantial downward distribution of wealth has beneficial collateral consequences because of the increase in demand and subsequent creation of jobs, leading to a positive feedback cycle that strengthens the economy.

Finally, Johnson recognizes that reversing the effects of slavery, Jim Crow, and institutionalized racism (particularly redlining) is a multigenerational project, not something that can be accomplished with a lump sum payment.

He offers a few alternatives, including a persuasive hybrid. And he is entirely cognizant of how such a program would be at risk of being, as he says, “siphoned off by outside actors”, both before and after the money is spent.

The problem that remains is the elephant in the room, which is that “reparations would be race-specific as opposed to a race-neutral plan”. Only Black people—by whatever definition—would be eligible. He defends this by saying that, while race-neutral plans are popular, they “have a poor track record of actually curbing the racial wealth gap”.

That may well be the case, but I don’t believe that race-specificity is necessary, plausible, or good for reparations.

We know it’s not necessary because Jim Crow laws, not to mention modern voter-suppression techniques, successfully target Black people while ostensibly remaining race-neutral. It’s a simple trick, but one that goes both ways.

The fallout from historic white supremacy is plainly visible in a variety of metrics, so economic reparations can be targeted to disproportionately help those who were disproportionately hurt while still remaining race-neutral in form. This would amount to turning the methods of systemic racism back against itself.

It comes down to the difference between equality and equity. The truly color-blind approach leads to equality, which helps everyone but still leaves some people out. That’s because it assists those who don’t really need it while not giving enough to those who truly do. However, helping people on the basis of their identity uses group membership as a proxy for need, with errors in both directions and at the cost of abandoning equality, which generates backlash.

The alternative is to bring equity by focusing on context, not color. Under this doctrine, people get as much as they need of what they need, not just a nominally equal share, with distribution based on metrics, not demographics. For example, in the cartoon above, the second frame shows boxes assigned based on height, not hair color.

Race-specificity is not plausible because predicating benefits on racial identity is politically and intellectually self-defeating. It feeds the narrative that the equal rights movement is nothing more than a constellation of partisan agendas, each seeking to boost its own identity group over others.

This false narrative thwarts intersectionality, undermines support from equalitarians, and provides cover for white supremacists. St. Bernard will deride it as identity politics, and just this once, he’ll have half a point. Moreover, the whole concept depends on an essentialistic notion of race as a biological fact, which is literally the core of racism. This will never fly.

Practically, there is no principled, reasoned basis upon which to define Blackness for this purpose. The #ADOS movement insists that reparations should be limited to “American descendants of slaves”. By that measure, neither our first Black president, Barack Obama, nor our (hopefully) next one, Kamala Harris, would qualify. After all, neither Kenya nor Jamaica are part of America, and both of these people are “mixed race”. Many Americans would, in practice, be unable to prove that they qualify due to a lack of birth records dating back to the days of Lincoln.

Johnson’s version is more sane and would apparently include both Black presidents, but it’s not clear where he’d draw the line or on what basis. If history teaches us anything, I can only imagine that any attempt at legislating Blackness at this level would collapse into the same absurdities that led to terms like quadroon, octoroon, and hexadecaroon, all of which are based on the overtly-racist “one drop rule” of hypodescent. This just won’t work.

Race-specificity is not morally good because it leaves out all the other groups that are the targets of systematic oppression, both historical and ongoing. African-American slavery was not just an economic crime, but a cover for rapes, beatings, and murders, yet it exists on a spectrum of badness that is populated by other forms of oppression against other victims.

Native Americans were enslaved, massacred, and forced into reservation ghettos. Where are their reparations? How about the Japanese-Americans who were rounded up into internment camps? Or the Hispanics who were mass deported in the 30’s or the ones who have more recently been separated from their families and caged? Or the women who could not vote, were excluded from professions, and to this day make dimes on the dollar? Or the gays or the Jews or the Muslims? Why some but not others? It’s not fair.

A wise man, martyred for the cause, once said that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”. Yes, we do need reparations, much along the lines that Johnson outlines, but they have to be aimed at closing the discrimination gap for everyone; not in a blind way, but in one that counters all forms of discrimination against irrelevant and effectively-immutable traits instead of feeding them.

We want to create an America that not only has a low Gini coefficient, but where Black men can feel safe when the police drive by, and women can feel safe in their own homes. By serving the greater goal of fostering equality of both civil rights and economic standing, we can achieve true social justice.

The two goals are interdependent, so we must fight both heads of the hydra—bigotry and oligarchy—at once in order to achieve them. If we focus on just one aspect of hierarchy at a time, the other will defeat our efforts. Systemic and social discrimination are not just attacks on the obvious targets, but a proven way to undermine unity among the oppressed so as to let the already-rich and already-powerful become even more so. Likewise, equality of opportunity depends on economic equality in order to yield equitable results.

The solution is intersectionality; the recognition that, whether seen in terms of identity or class, there is only one war for equality, no matter how many fronts its battles are fought on. We can only do this by crafting policies that focus on context, not color and use metrics, not demographics so as to serve each person in each group according to their own needs, never leaving anyone behind.

There is strength is unity, but only if the unity is fair. That’s why I support all the reparations for all the people in the form of a Newer Deal. This includes reparations for African-American slavery, but is not limited to them.

Anti-racism: Saviors, allies, and partners.

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise: making toast is hard. Too little heat, and it’s just bread. Too much, and it’s charcoal. Finding that balance, that middle ground, is an art. Or, actually, you could just use a timer, like the one in my toaster, but that’s beside the point.

Point is, there’s some spot between black and white that’s right, but finding it is hard. Maybe there’s a broader lesson in this or maybe this is a terrible analogy that’s going nowhere fast. We’ll see.

What got me started was this hilarious “White Savior” video by Seth Meyers. It’s one of those “funny because it’s true” parodies that’s spot on. Watch it. Now! I’ll just wait here, staring at you impatiently. Then go watch BlacKkKlansman for contrast. Still waiting.

Ok, humor aside, there is indeed a trope of feel-good-if-you’re-white movies about black racism that serve to alleviate the anxieties and guilt of white people who oppose racism in principle but don’t know how to do anything about it in the real world. The undeserving Oscar winner, Green Book, is a prime example of this.

While the white people in these movies are desperately well-meaning, they still treat Black people as inferiors, like children who need adult supervision to tie their own shoelaces. In doing so, they turn Black people into junior partners in their own liberation, passive recipients of outside aid. They buy into the very narrative that they ostensibly oppose.

This is offensive. While aid might be appreciated, infantilization is not, and nobody wants to have their own problems whitesplained or mansplained or straightsplained to them by a clueless outsider who wants to play at being their champion. For that matter, why would any oppressed minority want members of the oppressive majority to waltz into their activist group and take over?

It is understandably hard to trust these people—these racial carpetbaggers—despite their likely-good intentions because they don’t seem to have any skin in the game or even relevant personal experience. Given this, it would seem that their priorities would necessarily differ from those of the people they are trying to help, making them unfit to lead. Perhaps this is why BLM insists on black leadership.

The flip side is the notion of an ally, which was a perfectly good word until it came to mean a junior partner of a different sort. In this view, the role of an ally is not to lead but to follow. They have to be supportive, but not ask too many questions, and absolutely never make any suggestions. Donate your time and money, but be seen, not heard.

This, too, is offensive. So, do we really have to choose between one sort of subservient role or another? Do equal rights movements have to either be colonized by outsiders or relegate them to servitude? Before I try to answer my own rhetorical question, let me frame this in terms of the two types of equal rights movements.

There’s a powerful scene in BlacKkKlansman which intercuts between (white) Klansmen chanting “White power!” and Black student union members chanting “Black power!”. Despite the juxtaposition of the two, there is a deep contrast. The power that the KKK wants is for maintaining superiority, while the Black students want equality, not Black supremacy.

White supremacy is a partisan movement; it favors one group over others. Black civil rights is an equalitarian movement; it seeks to undo this favoritism, not to install a new favorite. In the same way, feminism is not a misandrous mirror to misogyny, it is simply the fight against it.

Nonetheless, false equivalence is rampant. White supremacists treat all civil rights activists as partisans. Perhaps this isn’t even so much a lie as it is blindness; they totally get how someone might want to fight for the group they identify with, but can’t wrap their bigoted little minds around the notion of wanting everyone to be treated fairly and therefore equally.

White supremacy is white identity politics, and its adherents project their partisanship onto their opposition. Through this lens, they understand how Black people can demand more rights for Black people but not why any white person might want to join them. They even came up with a nasty slur to describe whites who do not favor whites above all others: “race traitors“.

We can also see this in racists responding to Black Lives Matter with “all lives matter”. If we misinterpret BLM as only Black lives matter, then the response makes sense. If we correctly understand it as Black lives matter, too, then the response falls flat. After all, wanting Black lives to matter doesn’t mean wanting white lives not to. Human rights are not a zero-sum game. So if the BLM movement were to tap me for my PR skills, I’d suggest rebranding as BLMT to avoid being (intentionally) misunderstood as OBLM.

If we see black civil rights, such as BLM, as a partisan movement, then it makes sense for it to relegate white participants to second-class status. These white people are, in this view, just self-hating weirdos who are perversely working against their own interests. But if it’s an equalitarian movement, then it is not at odds with other equalitarian movements. Wanting Black people to be equal in no way conflicts with wanting Hispanics or women to be equal, much less wanting white men to be equal (but no more than that).

Call it intersectionality if you like, but all equal rights movements are part of one great movement for the equal rights of all. It is a single war with many fronts, and we are full partners who all have skin in the game, no matter the color of our skin. We each identify with many groups at once. While some are more privileged in particular contexts than others, what unites us is the moral imperative to design society as if we had no clue about our own identity.

When you think about it, even the most straight, cis, able, rich, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant man can have skin in the game because they have people they care about who are not so privileged. Besides friends and neighbors, there is always family, including mothers, sisters, and daughters. Life has its ups and downs, too. Over time, even those on the top rung in the hierarchy will slip from it by becoming sick or poor or elderly.

Moreover, being on the receiving end of one form of bigotry provides experience that is relevant to those on the receiving end of others. So if you’ve ever been discriminated against on any basis, or been subject to any sort of unfair treatment, it’s not hard to feel for for those who deal with this on a daily basis. You don’t need to identify with a particular group to identify with its plight and oppose its mistreatment. You need empathy: a working conscience and the ability to see all sides.

There is also a pragmatic aspect to this that BlacKkKlansman tackles head-on. The Black policeman, who poses as a white racist over the phone, still relies on a white cop to attend Klan meetings in his name. His fellow officer takes advantage of his white privilege to serve equality.

That’s a movie, but in real life, it is still counterproductive to alienate those who are willing to help. Embracing intersectionality allows taking full advantage of what individuals bring to the movement, whether it’s in their own skills, their connections, or their resources, regardless of how they identify or are identified.

It also brings an advantage stemming from their differences. When a white person calls for the equality of Black people or a man calls for the equality of women, it cannot be so easily dismissed as self-serving. This undermines the hostile narrative of it being a zero-sum, partisan struggle for supremacy.

Such outsiders can also serve as diversifiers, offering insights made possible by having more distance from the problem, and combating the tendency towards groupthink with cautions about how things will be seen from the outside.

There is no magic here. Being part of a group does not grant omniscience or infallibility about that group’s needs or how best to achieve them. While personal experience is an invaluable starting point, it does not replace education and an open mind. There is no substitute for the willingness to shut up and listen with humility. A good leader is one who knows when to follow; a public servant, not a dictator.

Given this, we should choose people for roles on the basis of their individual merit, not just their identity affiliation. Anything else is, by definition, bigotry. Does this mean that Black people need a white champion to rescue them or women need a chivalrous man to protect them? Not at all. But it also doesn’t mean that we should feed the partisan narrative by denying that they’re part of a broader fight for equality by denying all who support them the opportunity to be full partners, not mere cosplay allies.

Racism is wrong. Racism against anyone is wrong. Racism in the pursuit of anti-racism is still wrong. All bigotry is wrong; there are no exceptions or excuses. The best reason not to lower yourself to the same level as the mainstream racists is that it is immoral. This is sufficient reason in itself.

Some will argue that bigotry against the dominant group won’t harm them, but that’s not just false, it’s missing the point. This behavior is not only unjust, but self-defeating. It harms the oppressed more than the oppressor because it undermines our moral high ground and reduces us to yet another partisan movement that can be safely ignored by anyone not directly impacted.

Our shared goal is to build a world where people have the opportunity to reach their potential, regardless of their background. We are not going to beat bigotry with more of the same. Our movement for the goal of equality must be built upon the principles of equality, from the ground up. Otherwise, it is rooted in a contradiction that undermines it. Our fight for equality starts at home, in our own movement, which is why allies and saviors must both make way for partners.

I was disgusted by the Bernie-or-Busters in 2016 and assign them a big share of the blame for Trump, but I’m also NeverBernie in 2020. Does this make me a hypocrite?

I’m glad you asked, but the answer is no. First of all, there’s no parallel once you look at the details. Clinton was an actual Democrat who earned the Democratic nomination by an overwhelming majority of the votes. Sanders is a non-Democrat who is attacking the party from its radical left flank with yet another scorched-earth campaign.

He does not represent the best interests of the party that I am a member of, he does not care about equal rights outside of economics, and he is tainted by the same foreign ties that the Traitor-in-Chief has. Ultimately, he is not a viable candidate, whereas Clinton was supremely qualified and would have become president if the Bernie-or-Busters had instead supported her.

Second, it comes down to game theory. The Bernie-or-Busters are back, and they want to hold the entire country hostage. Again. Either we give them their preferred candidate or they give us Trump. Again. Fuck that!

Rather than negotiate with terrorists, we call their bluff. Let them stay home or not. Let them vote for Trump, as an eighth did last time. Let them threaten whatever they like, but we will not give in to them by ever voting for their candidate.

Go ahead, make my day.

The deep principle here is that every strength is a weakness, every weakness a strength. To gain the strength to stop someone from chopping down a tree, you accept the weakness of being chained to it. Yes, it would be better if you could walk away from the tree if they come at you with a chainsaw, but by removing that option, you call their bluff.

The same applies to chaining yourself to a commitment to vote only for a real Democrat; it calls the bluff of those who would try to force you to support them by refusing to vote for a real Democrat. It is the natural counter to their political power play.

Last time, Sanders lost the nomination by millions. I fully expect that he will lose again, so I consider this to be a safe bet. In other words, by committing to NeverBernie now, I am making it less likely that I will be in the position to have this commitment tested.

So, no, I don’t think I’ll ever have to choose between Sanders and Trump. But, yes, if push comes to shove, I will shove: I will not vote for Sanders under any condition. I will only vote for a Democrat. I don’t think they will ever be able to call me on it, but if they do, they will find that I do not bluff.

P.S.

By committing to never voting for Bernie, we compel his supporters to respond by doubling down on unity. They have to insist that we’re all Democrats and should agree to vote for whoever gets the nomination. Of course, this means that, when Bernie loses, they’ll be the ones who’ve insisted all along that they should vote for the nominee even though it’s not Bernie.

Does this mean they’ll actually vote for the Democrat who can oust Trump? Maybe. Some of them will remain Bernie-or-Busters and go bust again, no matter what they say now. But others will deal with the cognitive dissonance by avoiding hypocrisy. At the very least, they’re going to find it harder to justify bailing on the party.

So add this as one more game-theoretic benefit to calling their bluff.

I recommend this essay.

Nobody should have to go to Facebook, so I’ve done you the favor of reprinting an article from Skye Williams, with due credit. I wrote none of this, but I stand behind it. Here goes…

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WARNING: This article contains facts! You may not know it and you may not like it, but it’s still a fact. You can use a thing called Google and quickly find credible sources for all of the facts in this piece. If you are the kind of person who gets triggered and turns nasty every time someone posts something you don’t like or agree with, you probably shouldn’t be following my page. If you call this “fake news” or a “smear piece” or post comments calling me a Russian Bot just because you don’t agree with the facts herein, prepare to be humiliated, deleted and/or blocked.

The Male-Dominated Anti-Democratic Party Agenda Behind AOC

By Skye Williams (Originally Posted August 2018, Updated February 2019)

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ran as a 28 year old bartender with zero experience in public service. Her sole political experience was being an “organizer” for the Bernie Sanders campaign. Two divisive groups, Justice Democrats (JD) and Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), are responsible for her recruitment and her campaign and both continue to drive all her positions and ideology. It is simply irresponsible to form an opinion on AOC without looking at the people and organizations behind her and understanding their agenda.

Let’s start with Justice Democrats (JD), who recruited AOC. Justice Democrats are one of the most vile anti-Democrat PACs around. The JD’s have done Putin’s bidding from day one. Their sole purpose (like TYT, DSA and Our Revolution) appears to be attacking Democrats and promoting insurgents to hijack our party from within.

Justice Democrats was co-founded by Putin puppet Cenk Uygur, who also founded the divisive media platform The Young Turks aka TYT. Uygur’s main financial backers were conservative right-wingers, including former Republican governor and congressman Buddy Roemer, who invested millions in TYT. I’m not going to get too far into TYT here but if you are sharing videos and media content from TYT, Rebel HQ and their social pages, you are supporting a right-wing-backed group whose agenda is to divide Democrats with propaganda.

Other Justice Democrats founders include Kyle Kulinski (a left libertarian who proudly voted for Jill Stein and makes racist and misogynist comments on Twitter) and Saikat Chakrabarti, who “developed technology” (aka spreading anti-HRC propaganda) as an advisor for the Bernie Sanders campaign. David Koller served as Justice Democrats’ treasurer and co-founded The Young Turks with Uygur. These guys were the foundation of the Justice Democrats.

Uygur, Kulinski and Koller all resigned from Justice Democrats in December 2017 over “language deemed sexist or degrading to women” after a number of disgusting and misogynistic posts and articles were made public. As of February 2018, the executive board of Justice Democrats consisted of Chairman Saikat Chakrabarti and Co-Chairperson Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Justice Democrats recruited and promoted 12 candidates for 2018 races against incumbent Democrats. JD provided media, field reps and fundraising help. 11 of those candidates lost. Ocasio-Cortez won by a fluke, after a dismal voter turnout of less than 12% of registered Democrats in her district. After she won, JD co-founder Chakrabarti went to Washington as AOC’s Chief of Staff.

Since winning her small district race, Ocasio has gone on a national press tour slamming Democrats. After briefly trying to distance herself from Justice Democrats, Ocasio appeared in a new recruiting video for Justice Democrats on Jan 16, 2019, as they prepare their new campaigns against so-called “establishment” and “corporate” Democrats, many of whom have pushed for progressive policies.

Since taking office, AOC’s Justice Democrats rhetoric has only increased and she has voted against the party on several key issues including the new Democratic Party rules package. The new rules include defending Obamacare in court, creating a committee on climate change, promoting diversity and fighting Trump’s massive budget deficit. Only three Democrats voted against it, including AOC, Ro Khanna (another Justice Democrat and self-described “Berniecrat” who reps Silicon Valley) and Tulsi Gabbard (a cult-raised homophobic DINO supported by the alt-left).

On Jan 23, EVERY Democrat in the House voted for a bill to reopen the Government. Except one. AOC was the only “nay” vote.

Official Justice Democrats now serving in our Congress include Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), Ayanna Pressley (MA), Rashida Tlaib (MI), Ilhan Omar (MN), Ro Khanna (CA), Pramila Jayapal (WA) and Raúl Grijalva (AZ). Justice Democrats are also affiliated with Brand New Congress (a group that organized protests against the DNC at our 2016 convention) and National Nurses United, the superPAC who followed the Bernie Sanders campaign in their own tour buses.

Now let’s take a look at DSA. There are many Democrats (myself included) who advocate for some programs that could be defined as European-style Democratic Socialism. Unfortunately that is NOT what the DSA organization is doing. They are far more extreme.

Instead of attacking the real enemy (right wing fascists occupying our government) the DSA focuses their efforts on attacking and condemning Democrats and the Democratic Party. DSA is a divisive anti-capitalism alt-left group aggressively attempting to unseat real Democrats and infiltrate our party with fauxgressive insurgents. AOC’s propaganda-filled campaign videos, ads and TV spots were all produced and paid for by the DSA. Current DSA members serving in Congress include AOC and Rashida Tlaib. They are also affiliated with Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley.

The DSA was formed in 1982, when the Socialist Party and the DSOC merged the New American Movement (NAM) with former members of socialist and communist parties of the Old Left.

In 2000, DSA backed Ralph Nader. In 2016, DSA endorsed Bernie Sanders. After the 2016 primary, DSA would not and did not endorse Hillary Clinton. DSA leaders include Cornel West and many other prominent anti-Democrats who helped put Trump in office in 2016.

DSA is now the largest socialist organization in the United States. The median age of its membership is 32. Since 1982, DSA were members of Socialist International (SI), a worldwide association of political parties which seek to establish democratic socialism. To give you an idea of how extreme DSA has become, the DSA voted to leave the SI in 2017 over what the DSA perceived as “neoliberal” economic policies.

In the words of a DSA member and editor of the socialist magazine Jacobin, the object “in the long run is to end capitalism.” The DSA website states that “Capitalism pits us against each other” and that “Bernie Sanders launched a political revolution and we continue to build it.” Their website also makes looney claims like “the globalization of capital” is responsible for “racism, sexism and homophobia.” Wow. Clearly the agenda of the DSA group is much more extremist (and socialist) than what is known as “Democratic Socialism.”

We must also keep in mind that the very word “socialism” is toxic in American politics. Despite semantics or whether or not it is misunderstood, a Gallup poll shows that all Americans (D, R or I) rank socialism dead last in Presidential candidate characteristics. The poll showed all Americans were more likely to vote for a gay or even a Muslim candidate (!) before voting for a socialist. That is data that Democrats should definitely pay attention to.

AOC now has the audacity to claim that Democrats have done nothing on climate change (a lie) and is now taking credit for a “Green New Deal” first launched by Democrats in 2009.

Perhaps AOC and her fans need a little history lesson. The term “Green New Deal” was coined in 2007 by author Thomas Friedman, a self-described centrist and “free-market guy.” Barack Obama added a Green New Deal to his platform. In 2009, the United Nations drafted a report calling for a Global Green New Deal to focus government stimulus on renewable energy projects. The Democrats’ landmark cap-and-trade bill known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act, passed in the House but was killed by Senate Republicans in 2010. Likewise, Obama’s game-changing infrastructure bill Known as the American Jobs Act, was also killed by Republicans in 2011.

Another version of the Green New Deal was the centerpiece of Jill Stein’s 2016 campaign. It is not known whether she spoke to Putin about it over dinner.

While AOC was still in high school, Nancy Pelosi and Ed Markey launched the United States House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming in 2007. It was killed in 2011 after the Rethugs gained control of the House. Pelosi announced in 2018 that if Dems retook the House, she would revive the committee, which she did as soon as Dems retook the House in January 2019. It’s now called United States House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis.

Despite these facts, AOC led a shameful protest for Justice Democrats and the Sunrise Movement outside Nancy Pelosi’s office just days after the midterm election. They chanted “Step up or step down!” as Ocasio shouted about “busting down the doors” while the news cameras rolled.

They were supposedly protesting for environmental issues. If that were really the case, they would be protesting against the Republican fascists.

In fact, Pelosi announced her intention to restart the special committee on climate change weeks BEFORE the protest. Of course, Pelosi’s announcement was ignored by most of the media.

But this protest wasn’t about the environment, it was about optics and propaganda. They chose to protest against Democrats at Pelosi’s office because they knew the media would take the bait, hook, line and sinker. The big media story became about a “divided” party, not the environment. THIS was and is the goal of DSA, TYT and Justice Democrats.

Either way, AOC is a Justice Democrats / DSA mouthpiece who shouldn’t be getting credit for anything. She has no right slamming Democrats over environmental issues and “her” problem-plagued version of a Green New Deal was written in two days by Saikat Chakrabarti.

AOC and her male anti-Democrat mentors at DSA and Justice Democrats have a clear agenda to attack and divide Democrats. At best, AOC is an inexperienced green-tea-party mouthpiece for the alt-left. Or even worse, she is a knowing and willing insurgent on an ideological mission to divide or destroy the party. Either way, she is dangerous and she is aiding and abetting our real enemy (Right Wing Fascists) by attacking the very party she claims to represent in Congress.