The progressive-liberals in the US confuse their own political agenda with democracy. They claim to have, and seem to believe that they have, a monopoly on democracy. They do the same thing in their foreign policy, where they seek to impose the values of liberalism, (tolerance of divergent opinions, individual freedom so long as it does not affect the freedom of others, a capitalist free-market, and free speech) on other countries by force. The paradox in both cases is that while liberalism preaches tolerance of different viewpoints, it seems that it is very intolerant of any viewpoint which is not liberalism. This story is complicated by the fact that modern political liberalism is itself undergoing a change and becoming progressively cult-like. Increasingly it insists that everyone sign up to a very narrow and specific ideology; intellectually it promotes a very reduced form of thinking which finds anything other than simple “true/false” facts too complex to handle, people with alternative opinions are exiled or demonised; not countered with arguments. It is increasingly hard to see how modern progressive-liberalism can claim to be grounded on the values of tolerance and acceptance of individual difference.
A case in point is how the US liberal media handles Trump. Trump has a specific political vision; a kind of nationalism (America First) combined with some of the traditional values of the Republicans, smaller government and less regulation. This is not progressive-liberalism, though it is still liberal in many ways, since it completely respects the freedom of the individual (to start a business, exploit workers, free speech, and so on). In an actual democracy we would have a political contest between Trump’s America First Republicanism and Democrat progressive-liberalism (state intervention, high taxes, tolerance of high immigration, environmental regulation, support for liberal secular political causes such as abortion and so on). But, what we have is the progressive liberals trying to shut down Trump’s America First political movement by any means possible.
Clearly liberals are trying to dispose of Trump via the courts. Most of the cases against Trump are a stretch. The business fraud case in New York was about inflation of business assets on forms applying for bank credit. This may indeed be illegal. However; I would be very sure that this kind of practice is not unusual in business. A case can be legally valid and yet at the same time brought for political reasons. The prosecutor in this case has a Democratic party affiliation, as did the judge. The Georgia trial on election interference relies on laws designed to tackle serious organised criminal gangs; criminals who are engaged in crimes including murder. The laws are being used to tackle people accused of half-baked, hardly serious, schemes to affect an election result; the schemes were devised by lawyers and are more like legal-political shenanigans than organised crime. In this case the lead prosecutor and lawyer are in hot water over a secret relationship. The liberal media is giving a fraction of the air-space to the unravelling of their story than it does to reporting on the allegation. The federal case against Trump for election interference includes claims that he tried to subvert the election by using false claims about election fraud. The effective premise is of course that there was no election fraud. Yet; in reality, there is a real case to be made around mail-in voting – which favours the Democrats. Much of the liberal media reporting on this matter is propaganda; they repeat claims that little evidence has been found of fraud in mail-in voting, which may be true, but which misses the point that mail-in voting favours the Democrats. [1] At any event Trump’s claims about “the election being stolen” are political hyperbole. Somewhere on YouTube Republicans have put a video with multiple clips of Democrat politicians claiming an election has been “stolen”. This is strong political language but not beyond any kind of bounds. The Democrats could have engaged with the claims at the level of political discourse. Trump is correct in part at least; the legal system is being deployed to fight political battles. (The civil trial about what happened on an unknown date many years ago in a department store I think I had better not comment on).
But – the motive for this post was an article in the Guardian. The author is one of the Guardian’s US writers. It seems that that the standards of journalism are different than in the UK. These US Guardian writers make no effort at all at objectivity and write quite simply as if they are writing for the house journal of their own political movement, rather than an international newspaper which at least purports to be doing “independent journalism”. The piece is an example of domestic propaganda.
The headline is: “‘My ultimate and absolute revenge’: Trump gives chilling CPAC speech on presidential agenda” However; it we read the article we find that the “revenge” Trump promises is that he will deliver “America’s unprecedented success”. There is, of course, nothing even remotely “chilling” about saying that you will show up your enemies by winning and delivering something good. Not content with this complete fiction the article continues: “democracy in imminent peril”. This is all unmoored from anything which Trump said. The theme is familiar; Trump “threatens democracy”. Only the Democrats (liberal-progressives) respect democracy. The article makes a sideways allusion comparing Trump’s ability to rouse a crowd at a rally to Hitler, but the real “threat to democracy” is the liberal-progressive plot to monopolise democracy, which, if we are looking for historical parallels is what the Bolsheviks did after the October Revolution. The Bolsheviks said “democracy can only happen through the Bolshevik Party” which is exactly what the liberal-progressive Democrats are, demonstrably, attempting.
A few other comments on this article;
“The overwhelmingly white crowd many wearing Make America Great Again regalia, rose to their feet and roared their approval”. The conference took place in the state of Maryland which has a significantly higher proportion of white residents than black residents. In general I think it is true that black and ethnic minority voters are more likely to vote Democrat. [2] This, in turn, may be a factor of income distribution or other factors rather than race per se. At any event; why is it necessary to say that the audience was “overwhelmingly white”. It is a feature of the liberal-progressive machine to try to weaponize race. For normal people it isn’t really an issue if the crowd was predominantly white or black.
“His puerile parody of the speaking style, finger pointing and gait of 81-year-old Biden earned roars of laughter”. The parody of course has to be “puerile”. There are several clips of Trump imitating Biden trying to walk off a stage on YouTube. It is clear Trump has worked on his impression. Some of the impressions are actually very good; they are at the level of professional acting.
“But, like demagogues of the past, the comedy and showmanship smuggled in a sinister undertow. Trump’s ability to play the crowd, turning its emotions from euphoria to fury as easily as flicking a switch, carry echoes that are hard to ignore.” This is the attempt to scare people into thinking that Trump is like Hitler; though, since the comparison is so absurd, (Hitler killed millions of Jewish people, disabled people, homosexuals, Russian POWS and so on through systematic and deliberate murder in camps), it has to be made obliquely. In the report at least there is no actual incident reported about the audience having a feeling of “fury”. This is, again, invented to scare you. He is coming for you…
“Trump argued without evidence: ‘The Stalinist show trials being carried out at Joe Biden’s orders set fire not only to our system of government but to hundreds of years of western legal tradition.'”. This is another characteristic line of this kind of propaganda. Trump is comparing his legal cases to the show trials under Stalin – mocked up trials designed to remove political opponents. He is making a political statement. He is not a scientist claiming to have discovered a new species of fish or a prosecutor demanding a conviction in court. He doesn’t need to produce “evidence”. The point about this demand for “evidence” is that it reduces all political claims to the level of simple facts – which can be said to be “true” or “false”. The idea is to block out the whole field in which people offer opinions and interpretations of events. The claim that the trials Trump is facing are politically motivated cannot be “proven”. There is circumstantial “evidence”, (we mention some above). If Trump had cited some of that the next line is that Trump repeated his “unproven claims”. Again; we have a similarity with the USSR where expression of opinion divergent from the official “truth” was not permitted because “truth” is something very simple and a matter of scientific fact.
“Once again he had the faithful eating out of the palm of his hand – a scene that may set off alarm bells for defenders of democracy.” A second reinforcement of the main propaganda message: Trump is outside of democracy. The corollary of this, and the one people should actually be concerned about, is that it shows that the liberal-progressives are trying to monopolise democracy. They confuse their liberalism, that is the modern form of progressive-liberalism, with democracy. They forget that if democracy means anything it can certainly return a result other than progressive-liberalism. Progressive-liberalism is ultimately a point of view which needs to be argued for. It is not an absolute. The cult-like aspect of this is that is seems than many of these progressive-liberals are psychologically incapable of accepting this, (that their ideology is not an absolute, it is something which needs to be argued for). In this respect what we have is an attempt to supplant democracy with a gigantic cult.
Notes
- https://www.lx.com/politics/poll-democrats-plan-to-mail-ballots-much-earlier-than-republican-voters/19709/ https://thenewobserver.co.uk/trump-and-the-big-lie-of-the-big-lie/
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/03/people-of-color-voting-republican-2024/