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What‘s been the most significant threat to journalism – the lifeblood of a free society – over the past decade? Maybe we can turn to George Monbiot, the doyen of the British liberal-left, for an answer.
He has a weekly column at the Guardian newspaper in which he exposes the abuses of state and corporate power. This critically important topic is surely something he has addressed at length.
And indeed, he has. But strange to report, what I assumed to be the most dangerous development for journalism in my lifetime has not registered at all on his Guardian-supplied radar.
The United Nations’ most distinguished legal experts have separately determined that Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, has endured both prolonged “arbitrary detention” and life-threatening “psychological torture” for years at the hands of the British state.
My latest: Sweden did not intend to prosecute Assange because it never had a case, writes UN expert. The aim was to trap him in an interminable process of non-prosecution while confining him in ever-worse conditions while the public was turned against him https://t.co/qGOLynClIO
— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) May 5, 2022
Assange, who has exposed more crimes by Western states than any other journalist in history, has been silenced for the best part of a decade. Should he be extradited to the US, as the British courts have so far approved, he faces spending the rest of his life in solitary confinement in a super-max jail.
What is his offence? According to the Trump and Biden administrations, any journalism that exposes their crimes must be redefined as “espionage”. Should Washington win this battle, any journalist making too much trouble for the US empire – and that could include Monbiot or me – can be snatched off the streets anywhere in the world, renditioned to the US and locked out of sight for good.
But apparently none of that has been worth a Guardian column from Monbiot, even though Assange’s persecution has been taking place in slow-motion for years. Instead Monbiot dedicates his latest column to a far more important, far graver matter. He promoted the article on Twitter with the question: “What the hell has happened to Russell Brand?”
Smearing progressives
The answer is apparently that Brand, as well as the independent journalist Glenn Greenwald, have become “more dangerous than the actual fascists” of the far right. Greenwald, let’s remember, brought us Edward Snowden’s revelations, showing that the US national security state, aided by Big Tech, was secretly surveilling all of us in violation of US laws.
Implicit in Monbiot’s critique is that Brand and Greenwald are also more of a threat than the national security state itself, the same one secretly spying on us and slowly killing Assange after he shone a light on their best-kept secrets.
Monbiot has form. For several years, he has been regularly smearing the other few icons of the progressive left, such as linguist Noam Chomsky and investigative journalist John Pilger. Now, it seems, it is comedian Russell Brand’s turn to come under Monbiot’s scalpel.
Monbiot has never written a column on the worst assault on press freedom in a generation: the political persecution of Julian Assange. Soil erosion, he said, took precedence. Now he's prioritised a witchhunt of left heretics on Ukraine over Assange's freedom. He's an utter fraud pic.twitter.com/OtJ7pTE6gx
— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) March 2, 2022
Once again, Assange will just have to wait for another day – if he doesn’t have a second and worse stroke than the first brought on by years of confinement and psychological torture.
As an aside, let us also note that the Guardian initially illustrated Monbiot’s column denouncing Brand’s “grim trajectory” with an image of the comedian standing alonside Stella Moris, Assange’s partner and the mother of his two children. They were together at a protest outside parliament against Assange’s continuing detention in Belmarsh high-security prison. As far as is known, Monbiot did not make the time, as Brand did, to protest Assange’s silencing.
I have criticised Monbiot plenty of times before in this space, not least for his previous attempts to smear the progressive left and his playground analysis of the West’s corporate war lobby and the endless foreign wars it has promoted. You can read those critiques here and here.
But I want to focus this time on the more general causes of the widening rift on the left – something Monbiot’s latest column inadvertently clarifies. The key tweet in a long thread by Monbiot publicising his column is here:
3. Even if his take doesn’t always align with theirs, his choice of subjects generally does. Think of an issue, however ridiculous, that animates the US far right: you’re likely to find it on his channel. Think of a major issue of no interest to them: it’s unlikely to feature.
— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) March 10, 2023
Even if his [Brand’s] take doesn’t always align with theirs [the far right’s], his choice of subjects generally does. Think of an issue, however ridiculous, that animates the US far right: you’re likely to find it on his channel. Think of a major issue of no interest to them: it’s unlikely to feature.
This is classic misdirection. But before we get to that, let us see how Monbiot expands on his theme:
A remarkably high proportion of [Brand’s] guests are the culture warriors the far right loves. So what’s going on? I think it’s simple. This is where the numbers are. If you want bigger audiences for your videos, the far right’s culture war tropes are the way to get them.
I don’t believe for a moment that his transition is ideological. I think it’s cynical. He has, as I see it, become a culture war entrepreneur, channelling issues and guests guaranteed to attract large audiences.
Guardian falsehoods
For starters, let’s not assume leftwingers are “cynical” for wishing to grow their audiences. That should be the left’s ambition if it is serious about meaningful social and political change.
Certainly, Brand, like Greenwald and the popular podcaster Joe Rogan, also castigated by Monbiot, have a business model that has doubtless increased their wealth. But doubtless too, they could have enriched themselves in other, possibly easier, ways.
Brand, for example, could have simply continued developing a Hollywood career. Greenwald could have put his principles aside and stayed at the Intercept, which paid him a small fortune even as it censored Biden-critical articles in violation of its agreement with him.
Monbiot has a business model too. That has involved sticking with the Guardian newspaper at all costs, even as it has been repeatedly exposed peddling establishment-serving misinformation.
For example, it published a provable falsehood that a Trump aide, Paul Manafort, visited Assange while the Wikileaks founder was arbitrarily detained in the Ecuadorean embassy. It was one of many examples of the Guardian seeking to discredit Assange with the left so that the left would less likely to protest his persecution.
Remember the Guardian's blockbuster that Manafort secretly visited Julian Assange 3 times in the Ecuadorian Embassy? Everyone now knows that story is not just false but a joke, but Guardian never retracted it because journaliste hate Assange so who cares. https://t.co/PvHYD56DYv
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 24, 2019
The Guardian is deeply mired in establishment attempts to demonise Assange, as I have repeatedly explained (such as here). That collusion has not prodded Monbiot into resigning from the paper. Should we characterise that failure as “cynical” – his critique of Brand and Greenwald. Or is it really ideological? More on that in a moment.
The game is up
So let us get to the numb of Monbiot’s criticism: that Brand and Greenwald are engaging with political issues and figures that interest the far right. Charitably, Monbiot admits that “Russell himself is not on the far right. But he is warming his hands at the far right’s flaming torch.”
This blurred framing is intentionally misleading. As Monbiot implicitly concedes, the political issues and figures Brand and Greenwald focus on are the most popular found on social media. And because social media is the preferred medium of the younger demographic, those issues and figures are also presumably the ones that most grab the attention of younger generations.
So in short, Monbiot is attacking Brand and Greenwald for engaging with the political subjects that are most visible to, and most discussed by, younger audiences.
Is that not a good thing? Brand and Greenwald are taking the left’s fight to where most young people are, not leaving that space to the far right to exploit unchallenged.
The reality is that the far right, first under Donald Trump and now through hybrid mainstream and social media stars like Tucker Carlson, have appropriated the concerns of the progressive left – unaccountable corporate power, dysfunctional poltics, media collusion with the establishment, the war industries – and harnessed them to their own cause.
Yes, they have done so for entirely cynical reasons. They understand that young people sense the political and media systems are rigged. They understand that declining living standards are hitting the young hardest. They understand that the planet’s eco-systems are collapsing. They understand that turbo-charged capitalism offers no solutions and are determined to deflect attention from its real crises.
What Monbiot terms the far right – some of it, beyond Trump and Carlson, is simply the disillusioned libertarian right – address these issues, even if they do so out of a mixture of bad faith and incompetence.
The Trumps and Carlsons want the discredited status quo to remain largely the same, but they also know the game is up. So they cosplay dissent to buy time – they steal ideas traditionally associated with the progressive left so they can pose as opposition to the technocratic establishment, which itself is cynically posturing as the rational, sensible centre.
These are the true “culture wars” Monbiot claims to be concerned about: a divided establishment at war with itself. On one side, the “entrepreneurial” establishment hopes to recruit support by playing up xenophobic, racist tropes among the alienated, naive and disillusioned. And on the other, the “technocratic” establishment hopes to recruit support by playing up the threats of “fake news” and “Putin assets” to older voters who smugly assume they will continue reaping the benefits of Western colonialism.
This phoney culture war masks two establishment visions of how best to continue a different war, a class one. It is MSNBC vs Fox News. It is designed precisely to exclude the progressive left, to keep it invisible.
Hushed whisper
Brand and Greenwald demand the right to stand outside this artificial structuring of our politics. They are trying to steal back the political concerns that were appropriated – cynically – by the right.
And it will be no easy task, for two reasons. One is that the pair are mostly denied a platform by the establishment media.
There's a reason why establishment pundits can't understand @rustyrockets's worldview, so resort to screaming "far-right!". There's also a reason he has his ]show on @rumblevideo, where – after just 6 months – his audience size exceeds many cable shows:pic.twitter.com/a60kPwT4YF
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 4, 2023
When Brand recently appeared on the Bill Maher show, he exposed the blinkered worldview of the centrist host and the other guest – an MSNBC journalist – in a gently mocking way that appeals to viewers. Doubtless, it is one reason such invitations are increasingly rare for him.
Nowadays Greenwald can only find a platform on the Tucker Carlson show on Fox News, where he is allowed to reach the mainstream right. But liberals who are so quick to shout him down for doing so never campaign to make sure his cutting critiques of the US domestic and foreign policy establishment are hosted on their own channels instead.
There is another reason why the task facing Brand and Greenwald is so difficult. Because those few figures supposedly on the left who have mainstream media platforms, such as Monbiot, have largely abandoned that task when it really matters.
My latest: Whenever it truly matters – from Julian Assange to Jeremy Corbyn – George Monbiot cripples the left https://t.co/UqNop4rGin
— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) October 11, 2022
I was thrilled when Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party, but it has been one fiasco after another. I have now lost all faith.
— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) January 26, 2017
Those include the UK’s participation in endless overseas wars; its ploughing of taxpayers’ money into nuclear missiles the UK does not even control; British support for an Israel that demands the right to oppress the Palestinians in return for projecting western power into the oil-rich Middle East; and austerity as a pretext for redistributing yet more of the common wealth to a tiny elite.
Unlike Monbiot, Brand and Greenwald have decided it is pointless pandering to the smug centre that assumes a few reforms, via a Joe Biden or a Sir Keir Starmer, will stop the rot. But that means venturing on to the battlefield of the right and seizing the initiative from it.
Cognitive capture
Monbiot would better understand what Brand and Greenwald were doing if his thinking were not so captured by the technocratic centre. He has become yet another partisan in the internal wars of a divided establishment.
Here’s Monbiot flaunting his own cognitive capture by the establishment “left”:
8. I can’t help noticing that most of the people who say “left? right? It’s all meaningless, man” are those who have made a major shift from left to right. Denying that left and right exist any longer seems to be a form of self-justification.
— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) March 10, 2023
I can’t help noticing that most of the people who say ‘left? right? It’s all meaningless, man’ are those who have made a major shift from left to right. Denying that left and right exist any longer seems to be a form of self-justification.
This from a “left” columnist who has repeatedly swallowed wholesale the line that western powers are waging a humanitarian fight – rather than one for their interests, for control over resources – in their endless Middle East wars and proxy wars.
This from a “left” columnist who betrayed the OPCW whistleblowers to prop up a key western imperial narrative after those whistleblowers revealed that the international chemical weapons body had caved to US pressure and doctored its report. The goal was to shift the blame for an alleged 2018 attack in Douma in Syria from the most likely culprits, Islamic jihadists, to Bashar al-Assad’s government to justify intensifying yet another regime change war by the West.
This from a “left” columnist who simple-mindedly peddles the western narrative that Ukraine is only fighting a war of liberation against Russian invasion, ignoring both that recent Ukrainian governments have been waging a domestic war against the country’s ethnic Russian population in the east and south, and that Nato has been aggressively expanding towards Russia’s borders for years, with Ukraine as the ultimate prize, to neutralise Moscow’s nuclear deterrent.
Nearly a year into the Ukraine war, the western narrative of an 'unprovoked attack' by Moscow has become impossible to sustain https://t.co/xTaHEibKax
— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) January 10, 2023
The truth is that younger audiences, those not reliant on the BBC, the Guardian and the Daily Mail for their knowledge of the world, no longer buy these self-serving narratives, even if Monbiot is employed to do so.
Telling too that, after Monbiot dedicated several of his thread posts about his new column to suggesting that Brand and Greenwald had adopted their current positions only because they want to become “the new winners of the digital economy”, Monbiot goes on to accuse the most distinguished journalists of an earlier, pre-digital age – Robert Fisk, John Pilger and Seymour Hersh – of doing exactly the same thing.
14. Glenn once put in the hard yards. He was a brilliant investigative journalist. But, like some others (Pilger, Fisk, Hersh) who once did great work, he appears to have found that he can do less and gain more: telling a particular demographic what it wants to hear.
— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) March 10, 2023
Greenwald “was a brilliant investigative journalist. But, like some others (Pilger, Fisk, Hersh) who once did great work, he appears to have found that he can do less and gain more: telling a particular demographic what it wants to hear.”
Monbiot is referring above to Hersh, the legendary investigative journalist who has just revealed – on Substack, because no establishment outlet will publish it – the details of how the US blew up the Nord Stream pipelines.
Meanwhile, establishment media like the Guardian, ignoring Hersh’s credible account, have expended precisely zero effort in investigating what happened but have instead peddled the entirely fanciful conspiracy theory that Russia blew up its own energy infrastructure. Liberal media, including the Guardian, now highlight the equally preposterous claim that a few guys in a yacht carried out a supremely complex act of international terrorism, and managed to conceal their tracks from the West’s all-seeing surveillance systems.
How do we know Hersh's investigation is right that the US carried out a major act of international sabotage in blewing up the Nordstream pipeline?
Because after ignoring Hersh's account, establishment media is now advancing ludicrous alternative stories https://t.co/i6yCsoxHwb
— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) March 8, 2023
Establishment pile-on
Demanding our pity and admiration for his own self-sacrifice, Monbiot concludes:
‘Labouring your whole life’ in journalism is less glamorous and certainly less lucrative. But it allows you to live with yourself, to retain your self-respect, to know you are trying to make things better, rather than flooding the zone with shit to grow your audience.
Except Monbiot is part of a vast conglomeration of corporate media outlets that seek to control the public discourse as tightly as the US seeks to control other countries’ access to the lubricant of the global economy, oil. The newspaper he uses as his platform to reach a large audience sacks journalists for writing critically about Israel. It worked overtime to destroy the only political leader ready to end corporate tyranny over Britain. It smears leading dissidents and trivialises their plight. Its main writers aggressively promote war. And its dependency on luxury advertising conspires in the destruction of the planet.
Monbiot is no hero, and his latest column is not daring, truth-telling journalism. Rather, it is just another phase in a liberal establishment pile-on, as journalists like Monbiot desperately try to retain their credibility in the face of challenges from independent journalists like Greenwald and Brand who are ready to tackle not just the right’s pieties but the liberal-left’s too.
This @NewStatesman article is entitled "We Have Lost Russell Brand." The "we" appears to be "the left" (I never knew NS was the avatar and membership-arbiter of "the left").
What's fascinating are the views now identified as hallmarks of the "far-right"https://t.co/1frio1OYde
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 7, 2023
A recent New Statesman article berated Brand for betraying the left because he supposedly promotes “every right-wing signalling trope”, by attacking “the ghoulish media; the dishonest and untrustworthy pharmaceutical industry; the West’s shameful treatment of Julian Assange and ‘American hero’ Edward Snowden.”
As Greenwald notes:
For as long as I can remember, those views – contempt for corporate media and Big Pharma, anger over mistreatment of ‘heroes’ Assange and Snowden – were deeply associated with the Western left.
It is indeed true that all those views – hatred of corporate media, distrust of globalized (multi-national) corporate giants, holding the US Security State in contempt and its adversaries as heroes – are now right-wing markers. Much has indeed changed. But Brand and I haven’t.
Similarly, distrust of the motives of the US/NATO proxy war in Ukraine is also a far-right signifier. Here we have yet another inversion: the liberal-left reverses western security agencies, globalized corporations and their wars as benevolent. Only the ‘far right’ distrusts them.
Monbiot’s column is stuffed with similar misrepresentations to the New Statesman’s, as well as the gross over-simplifications of which he accuses Brand. Watch this video dismissed by Monbiot as “a rant against Bill Gates”. In fact, it’s a very funny digression on how the billionaire becoming the largest private owner of farmland in the United States might not be an entirely good thing, especially in a time of food crisis.
Another video that seeks to understand why Trump still has so much political weight, while criticising the substance of his policies, is mischaracterised in knee-jerk fashion as “appearing to support Trump”.
Monbiot’s criticism of Brand for his choice of targets is laughable. Why is the Guardian columnist so keen to defend the World Economic Forum founder, Klaus Schwab; or former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; or the former US chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci; or a World Health Organization economically captive to the Big Pharma lobby; or, even more bafflingly, the Covid-profiteering pharmaceutical giant Pfizer?
The truth is Monbiot has become just another advocate for managerial, technocratic liberalism – a liberalism that has been entirely discredited since the financial collapse of 2008, and is now the target of contempt and ridicule from that same younger demographic and figures like Greenwald and Brand.
Monbiot is desperate to maintain his credibility. And he imagines he can keep it a little longer by widening the circle of people on the left he smears: from Chomsky and Pilger, Fisk and Hersh, to Brand and Greenwald. But the only person he is damaging is himself, narrowing his relevance down to a group of liberal cultists, those who still believe that the very same people who destroyed our world are the ones who will fix it.
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Monbiot is a good example from the real world of how Big Brother would be the natural child of English socialism, which always remained quite self-righteously, and viciously, imperialistic. Just like American Liberals. It’s a WASP thing.
I wasn’t aware anybody thought of Monbiot as anything butt an evil lying goat lover employed by the Kosher Nostra to further their goal of total subjugation of ‘the narrative’ to steal every material asset past, present and future on behalf of the Baal worshippers. Where’s the shock/outrage in revealing what we all already know about Georgie Puddin’ Lie?
Article in four words:
Monbiot is a troll.
Really, Cook why are you wasting your time on this?
Here’s an article which examines the world.
The Decline of Diplomacy
https://yesxorno.substack.com/p/the-decline-of-diplomacy
Today, saying “I once admired Monbiot, but…” is a little bit like someone 50 years ago saying “I once admired Cord Meyer, but…” The only difference is that Meyer was an honest peacenik till he succumbed to booze and Allen Dulles, whereas there is no evidence that Monbiot was ever anything but MI6.
By the way, Jonathan, if you haven’t heard that MI6 “heavily influences” The Guardian, I can introduce you to some ex-intel guys who will set you straight.
Greatly pleased that so many intelligent liberals are seeing the light. You mention Bill Maher. Also Naomi Wolf, Celia Farber.
I am a resident of Ukraine. A conservative country which would love nothing more dearly than to be left alone. True, we had neocons here for decades peddling their brand of divisiveness. Supporting biolabs – though nothing seems to have come of that thread. The Foggy Bottom crowd is evil.
You lose sight of the fact that SO IS PUTIN. He has been a bully for his entire career. Following in a Russian tradition. Before him came unprovoked wars in Japan, Ukraine (1921), Finland (1939), Afghanistan and Transnistria. The annexation of the Baltics. The Molotov-Ribbentrop supported division of Poland. Communist satellites in central and eastern Europe.
Putin himself continued the war in Transnistria and started wars in Chechnya, Georgia and Ukraine (2014). He always had excuses. Language is just an excuse, like it was for Hitler in the Sudetenland. I speak only Russian – had no trouble whatsoever traveling in Donetsk, Mariupol, Berdyansk, Sevastopol, Simferopol, Yalta and elsewhere. I dated girls from that part of Ukraine.
Language was a minor issue when I arrived in 2007. It got pushed by the American-supported Yushenko starting about 2005, and shoved hard the other way by Yanukovych in 2010 with Putin’s backing. It was not a dividing issue, certainly not enough to justify Russia’s fomenting revolutions in 2014 or the invasion last year.
Read Alexander Dugin, Foundations of Geopolitics, 1997. See my review of his 2014 Fourth Political Theory on Amazon. Conquering Ukraine was on Putin’s agenda from the beginning.
This is a battle with no white hats. Ukraine does not need the EU. It would not need NATO if Putin had not been so intent on taking us over. Please, Russia go home, everybody leave us alone.
That Monbiot’s parents were both Tory politicians and that he is from the elite is no surprise here. For the record, I hate Brand and always have. I think no matter one is inclined to disagree with him on (And there is plenty for anyone who isn’t Brand himself and even then…) it’s easy to conflate the two and his horrible person. Indeed the greatest example of this in history was what has been dubbed ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ which along with the neocon ‘Russiagate’ lie has made me give up on the upper middle classes entirely, it’s like an entirely different last 20 years happened to them.
But what has happened to the left in the West (Particularly in the Anglosphere) since the fall of the Soviet Union is ceding of too much ground to the right economically to the point that very quickly afterward there effectively was no difference in macro economic policy at all. (The words ‘industrial policy’ have fallen out of favour associated now with smoke stacks, factories that housed 10,000 workers, communism and fundamentally, the past.) To be sure taxes and some benefits will change from centre right to centre left elections but with the removal of true alternatives to neoliberalism the parasitic rot of it took true hold. So much so that it wasn’t long before politicians in the modern West stopped being leaders or even really politicians, they became managers. We’re seeing the results of this as any serious people have stopped going into politics 2 generations ago. Among the left we see people who aren’t from working class backgrounds but the children or grandchild (Or, in Monbiot’s case, not at all) of the working class and brought ever more bourgeois prejudices with them.
The best parody of this comes from Australia with the ‘Hollowmen’ series. In one episode they solve the problem of politics, namely having to actually have policies (What Alastair Campbell so memorably dismissed as “The vision thing”) and be accountable for them getting in the way of them keeping what they see as their jobs. So they finally solve their problems by just creating a giant glorified sovereign wealth fund by diverting tax money to it and get a ‘panel of experts’ to decide how to actually spend it. Which, in a way, is how the world currently works, Western politicians take their marching orders from unaccountable people. (Whom they also regard as their social superiors)
With that rot of neoliberalism came a vacuum for the left and so it began to focus on cultural liberalism (Read, social individualism). And this has not only come to dominate the left but has become a form of religion. The march of progress can now only be measured in ever greater social permissiveness and weakened social cohesion of the dominant or native population. This sounds great to the wealthier cohorts with lots of social capital but it spells doom for those from poorer backgrounds living in poorer areas for whom interpersonal social capital and societal social capital is hugely important. Alongside this the cohesion and activism of other groups was lauded and legitimised.
Immigration which began slowly (In the UK there was even a period in the 80s to the mid 90s when it was running very low.) and so the disposition of liberals and the left was to treat immigrants with dispensation, like a kid brother, one way of doing this was to reject any restriction on immigration. On the right where the early pro-immigration forces were from, support for it as a means of punishing the working class was understood, as was it’s role in keeping down wages and working conditions.
US hegemony meant that when the civil rights movement and other ethnic conflicts came to prominence the idea of ‘racism’ became not only the highest form of evil (People like Nelson Mandela no longer being seen as men but almost as saints) but an ever expanding concept which struck at the very idea of ethnic interests of the native populations of the West. The very idea of them having collective interests was seen as evil.
When immigration and neoliberalism along with neocon wars had reached a point where they were beginning to be intolerable, Donald Trump entered the stage. He won only through the solid blue populations of the great lakes areas of the US, former industrial heartlands, voting for him. Despite these same popel having voted for Obama twice, the inability of modern liberal elites to comprehend the rational interest these people had in anti-globalisation, immigration included, meant they lost their minds. And since they’d made taking these positions disreputable, only those, like Trump with impregnable egos and a disreputable character would openly hold them. This serves to validate their gut instinct that anti-immigration is the worst evil in the world and that the working classes whom they’d quietly felt to be contemptible social inferiors, were evil too, destined to be replaced (Except to suggest this is simultaneously a conspiracy theory) by their shiny new men of the future.
TL;DR: Having come to craft a kind of consensus politics better suited for somebody the more money they had (And came from) with little political debate inside the new Overton window, the mainstream left have become unable to comprehend dissent against it and why it seems most concentrated among the disenfranchised. (Class, for instance, is the single best indicator of whether somebody will swallow the war propaganda currently surging through the media) It is easy for them to simply discard this as the noise from low status people whom they have become so detached from that they are started to forget you’re not supposed to laugh and mock their low status but lament and try to change. The truth of something isn’t objective to them, it’s a matter of the status of the people claiming it.
Trump and Brexit fried their minds because they don’t understand why immigration is such a bad thing because they are willfully ignorant of the true costs and consequences of it and totally insulated from the tip of those costs unlike their former constituents in the native working classes. They have made ones stance on immigration the most central definition of good or evil. Unable to comprehend either Trump or Brexit due to narrative collapse and cognitive dissonance they gleefully imbibed every piece of propaganda from the elite about these populist victories and have now bought into the neocon propaganda of ‘Russiagate’ born out of neocon horror at Trump’s statements about the state department creating ISIS and his indifference to expand US involvement in Syria.
Until the mainstream left accepts that immigration is not just a problem for social democratic agendas (As much through lowering social trust and making the fulcrum of politics an ethnic one, meaning less focus on things like wars or climate change) but an existential threat to the native working classes they were made from, then no progress will be made.
Immigration, afterall, will ultimately be reach undesirable levels for anyone, so not stopping it will mean it gets to that level for everyone.
Well,
let’s take one issue
“Russia unprovoked” or as the author, and his claim to what young people believe. it is easy to claim one is provoked. In fact, people can be provoked legitimately by anything. The question is whether that provocation justifies invading another country.
I certainly feel the pain one must feel from having a former spouse marry someone and in so doing that spouse embraces so many things despised by the previous. But that is the nature of relations. It may be provocative, but enough to justify invading their home — not at all. The younger generation isn’t embracing Russia’s contentions for war and in this day and age it is a stretch that the younger generation is applauding an invasion designed to remove those engaged in conduct unbecoming:
being jewish
engaging same relational conduct
being liberal
embracing western liberal p0lity — even
the claim cleansing the land of nazis — the younger generations have been tolerating nazis for a longtime
what the younger generations fear is a fight that in their minds could end in nuclear exchange. That is the real bock, the real hesitation
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/03/learning/what-students-are-saying-about-russias-invasion-of-ukraine.html
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/3/2/a-year-on-what-do-young-russians-think-of-the-war-in-ukraine
They don’t believe Russia’s arguments — but they are not interested inprovoking a greater conflict by direct US involvement
I’ve never liked Monbiot so I’m pleased to see others come around. I’d be more pleased if Monbiot had proven me wrong.
As recently at 2014 The Gruaniad was publishing pieces about the danger of the US using The Ukraine (when did the definitive article drop?) to foment a war with Russia. Now every piece talks of “unprovoked Russian aggression”.
I know the current funders of the rag include Soros’ Open Society, Bill & Melinda Gates and the Rothschild’s .
It would be interesting to see how the flow of money matches the flow of bullshit.
There’s a lot in that to unpack, but there’s nothing I see that I disagree with on a first read.
One thing I’ve begun to ponder is whether realities of war will make the clowns come back to reality.
A few months ago I replaced a three-way switch on a ceiling fan $6 at Home Depot, it was made in China of course. I could have bought 3 for $5 on Amazon. I got on Alibaba. I can buy 5,000 for $250 or 5 cents each.
That switch added 5 cents to China’s GDP and $6 to that of the US which produced nothing. Looking at the long overdue slaughter of wokel’s in the Tech sector raises the question of just how real is the US economy and how much is pure bullshit.
A perfect example is this: The West is disarming itself in the proxy war with Russia.
Here’s a response
https://www.defensedaily.com/army-details-recent-deals-to-significantly-increase-155mm-artillery-shell-production/army/
Russia has been firing over 20,000 rounds a day for 6 months plus and despite the wall to wall bullshit from the whore media is not running out. The US plans to provide 7 weeks worth of shells over the next three and a half years.
The degree to which the crushing of the deplorables has destroyed the productive capacity of the country is both astonishing and largely invisible.
Somebody tell Cook that the Nazis were consummate leftists. Then maybe he’ll be less confused. The whole propaganda schtick since the end of WWII has been to call international socialism “left wing” while calling national socialism “right wing”. It is the very essence of a false dichotomy, which Cook perpetuates with this insane hand wringing. The true right wing has no need for central authority at all. What symbol still flanks the podium in the U.S. House of Representatives? The fasces, symbol of Roman imperial power and 20th century “progressivism” and fascism.
After all these years of the “left” lampooning the “right” as wannabe tyrants bent on taking away natural rights and freedoms, now we see the left’s proposed solution to this threat. They propose their own brand of tyranny and their own abolition of rights and freedoms. For the greater good of all. Because we’re stronger together. Only by uniting as one can we hope to oppose the forces of mindless conformity…
Has the left changed? No. Has the right changed? Not really. It’s long been an empty screen upon which the left projects its own darkest desires. And the left has ALWAYS been a wolf in sheep’s clothing. They are the ones dedicated to achieving a total economic monopoly. Their utopianism has always been a puerile fever dream. It is EASY to make empty promises and false accusations. Are we really going to let these assholes smooth talk their way to the end of history?
Fritz Thyssen claimed that Hitler was a ROTHSCHILD. Without Hitler, the modern state of Israel WOULD NOT EXIST. There is absolutely no forensic evidence of the “holocaust”. Just six million tall tales haunting the frayed conscience of the West.
Live free or die!
If you want to know what bullsh*t Western “services” want you to believe and thence infer Western elites planned misdeeds in the future, there are faster and more digestible ways than ingurgitating Monbiot’s word salads. As for the author’s clinging to the stereotype ‘left-good-purehearted-justice-enlightenement’ vs ‘right-wrong-cynical-injustice-confusion’, it really has me wonder whether leftism is a mental disease or an actual disability.
Monbiot is correct concerning ecological calamities, but he has been an unremitting Imperial bullshit peddler for decades. Getting ever worse, as these creatures do. Edward S. Herman chewed him up and spat him out over Srebrenica many moons ago, and he’s just been a pile of slowly decaying gob-shite ever since. Immensely arrogant with it.
It is NOT ‘Leftism’. It’s liberal fascism, nothing like socialism, communism or anarchism. It is the perpetual rule over humanity of God’s Chosen People, the Western, ‘White’, Judeo-Christian, neo-liberal elite of parasites and psychopaths. Little Satans, one and all. Moonbat is an Imperial arse-licker-it pays the bills.
The human misadventure is nearing its end, or, optimistically, a catastrophe that will destroy this human world and billions of people, from which we may rebuild, or sink into Olduwan primitivism, while the rest of Life on Earth breathes a sigh of relief, and wishes us a fond Good Riddance..
The ecological cataclysm of multitudinous synergistic catastrophes, the end of capitalism, buried by debt and inequality, the geopolitical frenzy of aggression by the dying Atlanticist Empire and the degradation of the human soul, psyche and spirit from the capitalist ‘monoculture of the mind’, advertising, technology advancing without any purpose but profit, debased ‘entertainment’, mass pornography, ‘trans-genderism’, etc, and other disasters is inescapable. Particularly if the world is ‘led’, forcibly, by that Hell-hole of lunatic narcissism and self-delusion, the USA.
The understanding of this End Times situation is slowly percolating into minds generally anaesthetised by consumption and unremitting brainwashing. When not admitted, and leading to open despair, it insinuates itself subconsciously, appearing in dreams, and rampant anxiety and depression. It will explode, soon, when the collapse becomes too obvious to continue denying. Doctor Pangloss becomes Pangloom, and the excrement will hit the air-conditioning.
I think that you are conflating left and right wing politics with authoritarian and libertarian world views. I have always considered myself “on the left”, but I have always been very much live and let live in my attitude, don’t fuck with me, I won’t fuck with you, don’t trust the state and don’t take from the state and have as little to do with the state as possible. Go your own way and sort your own shit out. For me, these viewpoints mean a whole lot more than left or right wing politics, which are, or at least used to be, about economics.
In the last few years, I’ve come to realise that left or right matters very little other than in being used as dog whistle politics by the centrist elite in order to divide natural allies, like me and you. For I am all about freedom and totally opposed to the authoritarian machinations of the centrist, zionist elite and the dullard normies who are sucked in by their propaganda and do all the heavy lifting for them whilst funding them through their dead headed, unquestioning consumerist tendencies. I don’t care if you are “left” or “right”. I have a lot more in common with libertarian “right wingers” than I do with the authoritarian mainstream “left”.
Monbiot was never admirable. He has always been a shill.
It is natural to grieve after your sacred cow, typically a flawed clockwork world view, has been slaughtered. Serial agitators funding 100 genders propaganda and related nonsense have duped so-called progressives into frivolous pursuits. Plebs are more concerned with blowback from the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes.
Chomsky is manipulative like Sidney Gottlieb, the Jewish chemist behind Project MKUltra. Devious Noam has even tried to devalue work done by Walt and Mearsheimer because the duo highlighted next of kin influencing US policies in the Middle East.
The left applauded when far-right deplorables were being persecuted for exposing catastrophic immigration and grooming gangs, but later Corbyn got the same treatment. Alan Sugar and others could have probably arranged a coup d’état. This is plausible. Rogue MI5 elements allegedly plotted to remove Harold Wilson, according to Peter Wright’s WikiLeaks of sorts autobiography.
Monbiot and Guardianistas are no different from Judith Miller formerly of the NYT. She accused Iraq of owning a smoking gun. However, ex-German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, his subordinate Joschka Fischer, Hans Blix, the chief United Nations weapons inspector at the time, said no to war in 2003, as did Dominique de Villepin in spite of ‘freedom fries’ blackmail.
The Guardian has been co-opted by the British state. Its offers unquestioning support for US/UK military operations. It is controlled opposition, and that is why it wants us to talk about transgender bathrooms and ethnic minorities.
Monbiot’s headline “We must confront Russian propaganda” is revealing. The British press, including the Guardian, offer us a non-stop diet of pro-Ukrainian propaganda. Why? Even the US MSM are occasionally willing to tell us how badly the war is going for Ukraine.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/03/13/ukraine-casualties-pessimism-ammunition-shortage/
not much faith left in journalism sorry can we have back honest non-agenda news reporting please
Perhaps you should do some reading. This for starters, written in 1997
https://www.pdfdrive.com/the-grand-chessboard-american-primacy-and-its-geostrategic-imperatives-d175987890.html
The United States (i.e. the elites who’ve wrecked the US but enriched themselves) have made their position quite clear
a) when Communism collapsed, the US became the only world power
b) they intend to keep things that way and expand their control over all “Western” countries – and the definition of what makes a “Western” country includes homosexual marriage and Drag Queen Story Hour – see Samantha Power visiting Hungary to fund various Soros-style groups.
c) they have discovered Mackinder’s World Island theory – basically “he who controls Eurasia controls the globe”
d) as defined in “The Grand Chessboard”, America must stop any other country being able to generate “global power”. Also as defined, Russia sans Ukraine = regional power, Russia plus Ukraine as an ally = global power.
e) therefore Ukraine must become part of “the West” with homosexual marriage, Drag Queen Story Hour – and lots of missiles pointed at Moscow from only 500km or so away. See the video below.
f) hence Nuland, Maidan and the mysterious gunmen who killed so many of the anti-Russian protesters AND the pro-Russian government’s police in 2014. Job done ! Pro-West Ukraine (except those Russian bits)!
Not surprisingly, Russia doesn’t quite see things through that lens and didn’t fancy a US Fleet sailing into Sebastopol. The US version is “Putin wants to be Peter The Great!”.
PS – you do realise that under Communism, “Russia” wasn’t actually run by Russians? Just look at the Holodomor people.
https://www.unz.com/isteve/people-with-frenchness/#comment-5783282
And promptly pissed it all away. 30 years of wage arbitrage is coming to and end and the USA can no longer afford to fix the potholes in roads currently eating cars up. And nothing left to use for any hypothetical reindustrialization. Unless they raid the CIA’s drug money account — which I honestly believe is the largest single fortune in the world.
Thanks for the clip of the Pride march. Looking at the majority of marchers makes me want to believe they are getting paid footstep by footstep. Apart from the obligatory freaks there are no happy faces.
Agreed. Once the idea of manufacturing became dirty and low-class, the plants closed, the jobs offshored, and finance became the be-all and end-all, both US and UK were doomed.
IMHO both the Thatcher and Reagan years weren’t a revival but more like a prosperity induced by eating the seed-corn.
To me, one of the biggest arguments against moving to a service rather than a manufacturing economy is that it’s generally a lot easier to increase productivity in manufacturing than it is in services.
This book is 13 years old now.
http://www.fingleton.net/extract-from-in-the-jaws-of-the-dragon/
After Monbiot wrote an article criticizing Michael Moore’s documentaries I wrote to him pointing out that Moore has reached many millions of people with important information. Monbiot’s latest tirade against the best dissident journalists and his fake virtue-signalling gesture of making his income public (while challenging these popular dissident journalists) is proof that he’s motivated by envy and professional jealousy. The superb truth tellers whom he targets have not sold out to anyone and garner audiences vastly larger than the unctuous, sneering smears in which Monbiot specializes, so he envies their professional success and the prosperity they have earned so honestly and ethically. Monbiot is totally consumed with jealousy. He’s a spiteful, snivelling and mean-spirited poseur and hypocrite and has become an apologist for some of the vilest members of the ruling and ownership elite e.g. Nancy Pelosi and Bill Gates.
The paycheck is a powerful controller. Monbiot was a good and intelligent writer and journalist but he first sold out to the climate hoaxers and then after MI6 invaded the Guardian office and smashed the hard drives to keep Julian Assange’s information under wraps. He’s a shithead and a sellout.
To be honest, a column about George is probably something which shouldn’t happen. If the Corporate Media have lowered themselves to not do their jobs, then as the public, we should ignore them too. Their relevancy is slowly flowing away and they can’t touch the outreach of people who no longer have a political home.
I note the CIA colour revolutions are missing from your timeline.
Had the moron Śmigły-Rydz listened to Piłsudski’s advice to make peace with Germany, instead of listening to Paris and London while resuming ethnic cleansing of Germans, Poland would have had Germany guarantee its borders for 25 years. Let’s not talk about Poland ordering mobilization in order to invade Germany, that would be inconvenient.
Russia is not the USSR. Putin is not perfect, but along with Lavrov, appears to be the only sane Caucasian politician(s) in the world.
But isn’t Monbiot Jewish? Possibly a cohencidence, I’m sure.
I like Jonathan but it would have been perfectly acceptable to say that Monbiot is an MI6 stooge and enemy of the working class majority. He attacks all the people that the US empire wants attacked. Good boy.
Monbiot is not a WASP. In fact he appears to be (((something else))) altogether.
You seem to have rather left the USSR and the (((Bolsheviks))) out of your narrative. Still at least those communist satellites got a mention.
The war in Finland – a Georgian dictator may have something to do with that. His two most senior military leaders at the time being, er, Ukrainians.
Guardian is controlled by Jews who use ‘leftism’ as a front for ultra-right Jewish Supremacism.
Jews launder their tribalism via ‘progressive’ sounding causes. ‘Muh democracy’ in Ukraine. ‘Save Muh Kurds’ in Syria.
There is no “widening rift on the left”. You just got demoted from “head” of the snake to the less glamorous position in its tail.
The Cthulhu swims ever Left. And the leftists were swimming after It for as long as there were leftists. Consequently, for almost as long as there were leftists, some were dropping out of this race. Quite often they adopt the position that swimming after Cthulhu until this particular buoy they passed was virtuous, but after the next buoy it suddenly became abomination and “gosh, where did we go wrong”. Some get penitent or paint themselves as “victims” and point one more buoy back — but, of course, this does not really matter.
It’s very obvious on the relatively fresh example of 1960s where the New Left in USA overthrew the Old Left and proclaimed it “Right”, so the adherents of New Deal 1.0 suddenly became the new “conservatives”.
Right now, the author of this article is in the exact same situation. As well as the previous generation of feminists (now denounced as “TERFs”).
It’s also very adaptive. That is, always useful for the Faster Left, as the Slower Left by definition is just like them, but out of breath, timid and/or slow-learning, and intrinsically isolated — naturally reviled both by those to the Right of them (who remember them as old avant-garde) and those to the Left of them (who denounce them as new “Right”). Thus they are designated punching bags that can never become an actual threat. Their only effects are:
1. slowing down self-destructive holiness spirals, and
2. piling more of useless garbage over the graves of actual Right and serving as walking strawmen for false dichotomy in “Inner Party vs Outer Party” style.