justinwyllie

The ideology of the progressive left in the US

I’ve just picked this as an example from one of the prime media exponents of the new-left ideology in the US – David Smith, who writes for the Guardian. In general this ideology is characterised by its inability to tolerate any divergent points of view (everything they disagree with is prefixed with “the false claim”), its confusion with ‘democracy’ with a particular set of values i.e. those of the Clinton wing of the US Democratic Party, its rabid promotion of identity politics, transgender politics and a racially divisive tendency to see racism where there is none and to endlessly replay old battles.

This is David Smith in today’s Guardian discussing a possible return to the political limelight by Donald Trump:

In 2021 the conference seems to offer proof that the Republican party is no longer in the political mainstream but has veered into far-right extremism. Speakers have raged against “cancel culture”, radical socialism and “big tech” companies while pushing Trump’s bogus claims of election fraud and denying he has any culpability for the subsequent insurrection at the US Capitol.

Notice some of the tenets of this ideology. People who criticise “cancel culture” (the tendency to trawl Twitter for something someone said 10 years ago which is now considered politically incorrect and use that to send them into exile) are “far-right extremism”. As are people who criticise “radical socialism”; which presumably means the small group known as “The Squad” in the democratic party. In passing note that in this new left ideology demands for a minimum wage and subsidised public healthcare are considered “radical socialism”, which places its politics somewhere close to Mrs Thatcher. [1] Notice too that criticism of “big tech” (curiously put into quotation marks even though this is a valid phrase which everyone understands) is also “far-right extremism”. And finally notice that the narrative about an “insurrection” at the Capitol is assumed to be a fact. It is characteristic of this ideology that once an interpretation of events takes hold it is then repeated as nauseum as absolute unquestioned fact, as the truth.

The Guardian is the main media vehicle in the UK for this ideology but the ideology has more power than just the pages of the Guardian. It is a real force. If successful it will transform Western society into a gigantic cult. A cult with a mono-view of truth and where everyone who doesn’t accept this version of reality is sent into exile.

Notes

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/15/politics/who-are-the-squad/index.html

Guardian fiction on Russia

I really shouldn’t get worried about anything that the Guardian prints about Russia – which is a stream of organised agi-prop and/or propaganda mixed up with low-quality reporting designed to meet an editorial demand for anything negative about the Russian state. This is especially noticeable in the case of Luke Harding who appears to be entirely credulous and entirely credulous in entirely one direction – a process which he describes simultaneously as “doing empirical journalism” and “joining the dots”.

But people probably (possibly) read this stuff and believe it.

“He was remanded in custody and jailed last week for two years and eight months for allegedly violating his parole. At the time Navalny was in a coma, receiving treatment at Berlin’s Charité hospital.” – No. The request for him to return and meet his probation officer was issued after an article appeared in The Lancet describing his recovery from the alleged poisoning. See this post from his lawyer dated 28/12/20 which shows how he had just received the request for Navalny to return and the Lancet article dated 22/12/20 – which contains the phrase “patient made a very favourable outcome”. (This Guardian article by the slightly more reliable Andrew Roth also makes it clear that Navalny had already been released from hospital when he was asked to return by the Penal service). If you are going to print sheer fictions it might be advisable to check that colleagues have not already directly contradicted them. Mr Harding’s copy belongs in a novel. A good tale – but not, in fact, true. And easily disprovable.

“A team from Russia’s FSB spy agency poisoned Navalny last summer with the nerve agent novichok, while he was travelling in Siberia.” Zero proof for this assertion. Simply none. It is the way that conjectures (nothing wrong with that) are read as fact which makes you concerned for Mr Harding’s mental balance.

“speaking from inside a guarded glass cage” – they must have been disappointed that Navalny appeared in court in a glass cage. It deprives them of the opportunity to use their usual trick of pretending that there is something unusual about defendants appearing in a cage in Russian courts. Even so Luke Harding manages to dress it up – “guarded glass cage”. Oh – just like in England then.

“His detention and court appearance prompted the biggest street protests in Russia since 2011-2012, with demonstrations in 180 towns and cities across Russia.” – I wonder where the source for this came from. Not from a group linked to Navalny by any chance? (And since the protests are ongoing Mr Harding needs to use the Present Perfect here).

“Navalnaya was herself arrested on 23 January while attending a rally in Moscow. She was later fined 20,000 roubles (£196) for taking part in what prosecutors said was an “unsanctioned protest”.” – this is another staple of this kind of garbage. (Sorry). There is a clear law in Russia – protests have to be cleared with the local authorities first. If not then they are ‘unsanctioned’ and attending them is a civil offence. It is not that prosecutors said it was an “unsanctioned protest” and it doesn’t need to be in inverted commas. It was an unsanctioned protest. (In the middle of a global viral epidemic – when no protests of any kind are allowed in England). The logic here is that Harding denies Russia the right to make and operate its own laws. So much for ‘democracy’.

One final thought. Liberal journalists are telling us that the charges against Navalny are political. They are describing him as a “political prisoner”. Yet complete silence on the fact that in France Marie Le Pen – a potential Presidential candidate who has a real chance of posing a serious challenge to Macron is currently being tried on trumped up charges of sharing ISIS images. She used some images not to boost ISIS but to make a political point in response to a journalist who compared her movement to ISIS. [1]

Notes

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/02/10/marine-le-pen-stands-trial-sharing-islamic-state-images-case/

De-existing Russians

Western liberals do it all the time. The millions of people in Eastern Ukraine who are historically linked to Russia and who would, in the main, prefer to be part of Russia than part of a Western-leaning Ukraine are simply de-existed. The resistance in Eastern Ukraine is ascribed to “Russian meddling”. They couldn’t possibly want it for themselves could they?

The same thing happens pretty much to the millions of Russians who are quite happy with the present political settlement and system in Russia. All the Western liberal press writes about is Navalny and his fans and the system he is trying to replace. Everyone else is ignored. At best they are depicted as passive (and stupid) victims of “Kremlin media control”.

The de-existing appears to be ‘institutionalised’. This appears in an (AFP contributed) article about a prosecution of an elderly lady who had worked (as a child) in a concentration camp:

In all, the Nazi regime exterminated 6 million Jews and hundreds of thousands of others in the Holocaust [1]

These figures seem to include the 6 million Jews plus homosexuals, disabled people and gypsies – people Western liberals care about. They omit the 5 million Russian (Soviet) civilians and 3 million Soviet prisoners of war. [2] Presumably because Russians don’t count.

Notes

Western agit-prop on Russia

Dominic Raab the UK Foreign Secretary is denouncing Russia for arresting ‘peaceful’ protestors for ‘merely expressing dissent’.

In the same article linked above the Guardian reports that protestors are blocking traffic.

In the UK last summer hundreds of people were arrested for blocking the roads in London in Extinction Rebellion protests. They face more serious penalties than many of those arrested in Russia.

This so often heard call about ‘peaceful protests’ is imperialism. Apart from the indisputable fact that people in the UK are arrested for ‘peaceful protests’ the fact is that these people are breaking Russian laws. Why does Raab think that ‘peaceful protests’ trump Russian law? Who is he to rewrite Russian law?

And, to make Raab’s calls for Russia to allow “peaceful protests” even more absurd we can note that as of now political protest in the UK – even a single-person protest – is completely illegal. Any political protest. Russia is also in a Coronavirus epidemic: the logic is that Raab thinks that in the UK the epidemic justifies a total ban on political protests, but in Russia large demonstrations should go ahead. It turns out that Raab doesn’t care a jot about ordinary Russians and whether they catch Covid. In fact he is all for it if it will lead to a political change and a more privatised Western-friendly business environment.

These people are absolutely despicable.