Leftist pundit and publisher, Glenn Greenwald has been angering people on his side more and more with his obnoxious habit of being willing to tell the truth. This outrages establishment shills and partisans on both sides, but it’s never as prominent in any ideology as it is on the Left. The “Sports team Left” comprises of the overwhelming majority of collectivist/Leftist thought. “Sports team leftists” is a term I made up that refers to Lefties who root for their perceived team far more than any underlying ideology or truth that team allegedly represents. It is descriptive despite not being a very good term (not very good just because “sports team” as a modifier has a boomer sounding clunkiness to it like someone unironically saying they’re going to “the Walmarts”) because Leftism claims to be more of a morality than a political position when the reality is that its most vocal proponents are zero sum team players who exhibit the most closed minded viciousness against even the most polite dissent or disagreement.
Their anger at Greenwald in this case is that he pointed out that some of the most popular and prominent right-wing figures actually support socialist policies. He said this as a guest on a show produced by the right-leaning Daily Caller, and boldly included in his outing of socialists-on-the-right, Daily Caller co-founder Tucker Carlson.
“Obviously the term ‘socialism’ carries a lot of baggage from the Cold War. It evokes, on purpose, the Soviet Union, or Castro, or Chavez, but I think what you are seeing is this kind of hybrid socialism that really is about nothing more than trying to sandpaper the edges off of neoliberalism” Greenwald noted.
The thing that triggered the choir in the cathedral is when Greenwald continued to say that he “would describe a lot of people on the right as being socialists,” such as former White House strategist Steve Bannon and “the 2016 iteration” of former President Donald Trump as a candidate, “based on what he was saying”, and that “I consider Tucker Carlson to be a socialist”.
This is of course, factually solid at least with the citations of Trumps 2016 rhetoric and Tucker Carlsons economic policy positions he espouses on his Fox News show. I don’t know enough about the other people cited to be able to cite their economic positions from memory, but I sure can with Trump & Carlson. In 2019, Carlson supported Socialist-lite Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren’s so called economic populism (the name for what people use when they want to refer to socialism as practiced without using socialism as ideologically defined by a specific strain).
Greenwald further explained that their “right-wing populism, which really is socialism” (fact check: True), that “says we should close our borders, not allow unconstrained immigration, and then take better care of our own working-class people and not allow this kind of transnational, global, corporatist elite to take everything for themselves under the guise of neoliberalism.”
True again… Before it the Left had to leverage its reliance on allegations of hate and racism as a way to con minorities into supporting them, “open borders” in America was openly considered a corporatist move that only hurts the lower class so that rich people can get cheap labor. “Open borders? No, that’s a Koch brothers proposal,” Bernie Sanders said on the topic in 2015. “That’s a right-wing proposal, which says essentially there is no United States.”
Greenwald supported the claim with his own example, pointing out that when it came to Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo wanting “to give tens of millions of dollars to Amazon to bring an office to New York”, Tucker Carlson and self-identified socialist, Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, agreed.
Greenwald attributed their agreement to people realizing “that neoliberalism doesn’t work” as his explanation of why they both supported the socialist position instead.
Their shared socialist position is wrong of course – New York was never going to “give” Amazon millions of dollars to open an office in the state – it was offering a tax break to the company if it chose New York for the job creating (and thus, ironically, tax revenue paying) addition the company could add to the states economy. AOC had asked for a similar deduction herself in 2012, but back to the lie in her position about it as a Congressperson: Phrasing the act of “people (or groups of people) keeping more of the money they earn” as a gift or giveaway is classic Socialist rhetoric because it starts with the premise that when an entity earns money, it has no right to it. Thus whatever the state allows it to keep is a gift or grant or giveaway rather than simply just “not stealing”.
Pointing out right-wing Socialism is a common Leftist argument
The econ Leftist argument to Repubs has always been that the supposedly “conservative” economics and/or figures they support are actually Socialist in nature. They dubiously try to claim that institutions like the police, military, and fire department – which enjoy solid support from the right – are actually “Socialist”. They’re liars and misinformed, of course – but the point here is that they argue it constantly. It is a standard talking point that comes up in popular dialogues frequently.
Glenn Greenwald points this exact thing out via prominent Republicans who are also economic populists /socialists & the Left gets pissed… over their own talking point.
Actually, “red-pilling” conservatives to the fact that their biggest leaders are actually economic populists and favor socialism isn’t a desperate plea to relevancy – its a necessary truth they need to hear to realize not everything “socialist” is bad because whether they realize it or not – they frequently support it.
The Leftist reactionaries got mad at this…
^At least market socialists recognize that their talking points are devoid of integrity and critical thinking skills… they just did so by accident.
It appears that the reason these pavlovian zombies got mad is because they have become so narrowly tribal that the thought of people they hate agreeing with them – or more accurately – the confrontation that *they* actually agree with those people they hate – makes their heads explode.
Social media Lefties erupted in outrage – and the angry kind of outrage that disguises itself as effusive laughter to signal dismissal of a point that triggers them into a fear response that it might spread. Know what didn’t erupt? Rebuttals. Corrections. -Any kind of factual presentation of why he might be or provably is offbase? lol nah. The dude said that people they hate agrees with them and that is OUTRAGEOUS.
Greenwalds crime, in the person above’s estimation, is that by using the Leftist talking point that some on the right are Socialists as well, that makes him “not an ally to the Left”.
Others wanted to make sure people got the message that Greenwald – a Leftist – is “not a leftist” for pointing out that some prominent people on the right actually endorse Socialism. lolwut?
^At least this person gave a rarely found actual-reason for why they are triggered by this take: their correction is that Tucker Carlson, Trump, Bannon, & Le Pen aren’t socialists – they’re neofascists, as if that is a distinction with a difference. It isn’t. The Nazi’s were fascist-socialists (Nazi is short for National Socialist German Workers’ Party) who demanded the nationalization of all industries; Something that this Greenwald reactionary appears to acknowledge:
^In other words – Nazi’s are the ‘bad-kinds’ of socialists and thus it must be kept a secret that they were socialists because it makes the brand look bad – and here jerknut Glenn Greenwald is all exposing the truth they’re trying to hide and allegedly doing so, er, in service to those people (as if any of the people Greenwald mentioned would be happy /consider it a shoe shine to be called a Socialist. lol).
Many iterations of fascism is just militantly enforced socialism, but the GroupThink on the Left is that “people I don’t like are fascists” rather than using the word historically and politically accurately.
This blue-check-mark sums up the reactionary response excellently by exposing the false assumption they’re all making: they think that because Socialism is good, then by pointing out the fact that (or in their ignorant estimations: what they think is not a fact at all)
And of course this is the theme the other haters were all operating on –
And that is the state of the Left, just as it has been my whole life: if you point out facts or make solid argument that appears to hurt the public marketing attempts made by the Left, then you are the enemy. Doesn’t matter if you’re right. Doesn’t matter if you’re using a Leftist argument that is common. If it appears like you are humanizing anyone who the Left seeks to demonize then you aren’t an ally and have to be dismissed.
Gross.