The Digger

Two articles which grapple with the question and attempt to make some small sense of how and why the left has lost touch with its proletarian constituency. Is the Working Class Right Wing? Excerpt:  An increasing number of the proletariat and the declassed petty bourgeoisie have gone through a process which tends to reduce them to mere “plebs” [2]. It is, as we said above, a fact, confirmed by the advance of fascist electoral formations even in the old "red" strongholds [3] of European cities. However alongside this phenomenon, there is another one, usually much less emphasised by the mainstream media. It is, simply, the growth of abstention from one side of the Atlantic to the other. This is true for America’s Presidential election as well as, just to give a local example, Monfalcone. The municipal elections of early November took place in this town where both "indigenous" and immigrant workers are numerous. The abstention rate here was close to fifty per...

Much of the putative left who rail against nationalism and insipid nationalist racism and xenophobia as much as, if not even more than, the neoliberal corporate media in the Anglo-Atlanticist economic sphere appear insistently oblivious to the interests of the engineers of neoliberal globalization which drive such tropes 27/7 as though the ruling elites really gave a damn. The ease with which the left appears to more than willing to be played  by the capitalist elite is,  in as much as NATO and imperialism do not figure in most of their analyses, both repugnant and quite astonishing. ••••••• Excerpt: The only thing more sinister than intentionally creating refugees, is weaponizing them as leverage to further coerce nations and advance hegemonic ambitions. The United States and its allies have done both extensively – from exploiting the flow of refugees fleeing US-led wars in Libya and Syria – to the cynical exploitation of high-profile cases like Rahaf al-Qunun...

A plea for liberal nationalism ignores what it has looked like in practice. Morsels:  Yascha Mounk, a lecturer at Harvard who has emerged as a kind of expert on the vogueish “crisis of liberal democracy and the rise of populism” (he has also written for this magazine), has hit upon what he believes is a novel idea for achieving “a kind of society for which there is no clear precedent”—that is, a liberal democracy in a multiethnic country that was for a long time either monoethnic or subject to a racial hierarchy. In his new book, The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It, the executive director at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change’s “Renewing the Centre team” argues that a revitalized liberalism is the answer. [...] Mounk’s sociological realism should not be confused with critique. His treatise is inspired neither by anti-elite animus nor the radical promise of democracy. It is instead a view from above, or perhaps something lik...

"In Russia, Vladimir Putin’s evil genius matters less than pressures from the ultrarich, US foreign policy, and the ravages of the neoliberal Yeltsin years" Excerpt: "Wood’s Russia isn’t a reascendant superpower on the march. It’s a relatively weak, isolated nation teetering on the brink of instability and held together by a nationalism that has become newly powerful this decade. Its GDP per capita is around a sixth of the US’s and a quarter of the OECD average, with sluggish growth forecast for the future. Its mortality rate has long outpaced its fertility rate, with its population forecast to plunge in the coming decades. And far from a military threat, its 2015 military budget wasn’t even a tenth of that of NATO’s, let alone that of the US, while more and more of its neighboring states join the Western military alliance and China grows in power on its southern border (though Russia does still possess a huge stockpile of nuclear weapons). Moreover, it’...

Link:   USA – The World’s Invasion Nation   — by  Eric Zuesse Excerpt: "On November 29th, Gallup headlined  “Democrats Lead Surge in Belief US Should Be World Leader”  and reported that “Three-fourths (75%) of Americans today think the United States has ‘a special responsibility to be the leading nation in world affairs,’ up from 66% in 2010. The surge is driven by Democrats, whose belief in this idea has increased from 61% eight years ago to 81% now.” This finding comes even after the lie-based and catastrophic US invasions of Iraq in 2003, and of Libya in 2011 (and of so many others, such as Afghanistan, where the US and Sauds  created the Taliban  in 1979). Americans — now even increasingly — want ‘their’ (which is actually  America’s billionaires’)  Government to be virtually the world’s government, policing the world. They want this nation’s Government to be determining what international laws will be enforced around the ...

Link:   Days of palestine - Israeli minister: ‘I am happy to a be a fascist’ " Israeli Culture Minister Meri Regev has said that she is proud to be “fascist” and consider fascism as part of the Israeli culture. Her remarks came as a response to the charges made by the famous graphic artist, who designs politically inspired work, David Tartakover. “What is happening in Israel now is fascism,” says Tartakover, who designed the logo for the  Peace Now campaign in 1978 ."

Link:  Yellow Vests Rise Against Neo-Liberal ‘King’ Macron  by Diana Johnstone "For centuries, the “left” hoped popular movements would lead to changes for the better. Today, many leftists seem terrified of popular movements for change, convinced “populism” must lead to “fascism.” But it needn’t be so" Excerpt:   “I’m more worried about the end of the month than about the end of the world.” After the second Yellow Vest Saturday, November 25, which saw more demonstrators and more tear gas, the Minister in charge of the budget, Gérard Darmanin, declared that what had demonstrated on the Champs-Elysée was “la peste brune”, the brown plague, meaning fascists. (For those who enjoy excoriating the French as racist, it should be noted that Darmanin is of Algerian working class origins). This remark caused an uproar of indignation that revealed just how great is public sympathy for the movement – over 70% approval by latest polls, even after uncontrolled vandalism. Macr...

Link:   Macron Heralds The End Of The Union  by Raúl Ilargi Meijer "There are 28 countries in the Union at this point, and one of them is already preparing to leave. There are 28 different cultures too, and almost as many languages. It was always going to be an uphill struggle, a hill far too steep for mere greed to master and conquer. History soaked Europe in far too much diversity through the ages for that. To unify all the thousands of years of beauty and darkness, of creativity and annihilation, of love and hatred, passed on through the generations, a lot more than a naked and bland lust for wealth, power and shiny objects was needed." Excerpts: " Traditional right/left parties have been destroyed all across Europe in recent national elections. And it’s those traditional parties that still largely hold power in Brussels. As much as anyone except Germany and perhaps the European Commission hold any power at all. The shifts that happened in the political spect...