Those Poor, Put-Upon Corporate Democrats

In the guise of a concern-trolling piece about the plight of Democratic "moderates" within a party moving left, the New York Times has once again managed to correlate socialism with anti-Semitism.

This false narrative, of which British Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn was heretofore the most prominent villain, turns on its ear the historical and actual association of fascism and anti-Semitism, most recently displayed in this country by neo-Nazi groups of the type which wreaked such havoc in Virginia.  

On this side of the pond, the smearing of the left wing with the "bigot" moniker is being passive-aggressively framed as innocent Democrats forced to respond to attacks by GOP House Republicans. But at the very same time, it allows corporate Dems to tacitly give some credence to the GOP smears of the party's left flank.  Democratic centrists complain that they are being unfairly tainted by the allegedly dangerous, reckless and radical rhetoric of a specific trio of outspoken newcomers in the House of Representatives:  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar. 

Originally lauded by both Democratic Party elders and the neoliberal corporate media for their cool exotic identities, the three women are rapidly losing their initial marketing value as the poster girls of diversity. 

So to construct the revised narrative against these female upstarts, the Times sent out two of its female reporters to the wilds of Flyover Country to write about how conservative Democrats are coming under attack from their own constituents, simply for the sin of existing within the same governing body as AOC, Tlaib and Omar.

The innuendo-heavy hit piece by Catie Edmondson and Emily Cochraine couples the socialism-is-anti-Semitism smear right in the lede, composed of three rat-a-tat one-sentence paragraphs, the better with which to impart the desired tone of urgency and siege mentality:

In the suburbs of Salt Lake City, Representative Ben McAdams, a freshman, was grilled by constituents about the “socialism” and “anti-Semitism” that they saw coming out of the new Democratic House.

“How long do you intend to ride that train with those people?” one Utahan asked.

In Michigan, Representative Haley Stevens was asked about her ability to counter what one voter deemed the bigotry of some of her freshman colleagues — a concern fueled partly by remarks from her counterpart in nearby Detroit, Rashida Tlaib — and “the negative attitude they bring to Democrats.”

Although the Times does not explain the nature of this "negative attitude," what the reporters apparently refer to is Tlaib being caught on tape last month urging her cohort to "impeach the mother-f***er," meaning Trump. So as much as corporate Democrats might purport to "resist" Trump, elected officials calling him bad names or suggesting that he be impeached is beyond the pale, especially from a woman expected to stay in her identity politics-assigned place. The president does have his valuable moments, after all, especially when he properly rails against the dangerous socialistic scourge in Venezuela so Democrats don't have to do the actual regime-change dirty work as they wax indignant about his emergency declaration and his anti-immigrant wall.

Besides the pretense of objectivity through encasing its anti-left smears in a slew of self-protective quotation marks and ascribing them to poor ordinary Democratic constituents, the Times is also careful to foist the blame on Republicans, whose own bigotry the Paper of Record broadcasts --  purely in the interests of fairness and balance and "both-side-ism":

Just two months into the new Congress, Republicans have begun an all-out assault painting Democrats as extremists — even bigots — and trying to tar moderates with their more liberal freshman counterparts’ beliefs. Their talking points appear to be resonating with some voters the Democrats will need next year if they are to keep their majority — and the voters determined to flip the districts back.

In the part of the article showcasing Ben McAdams from Utah, he is quoted as vowing that Tlaib, Omar and AOC will never "corrupt" him, while acknowledging that the Democratic Party is composed of both "good and bad."

Meanwhile, the Times enthuses that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi bends over backwards to fairly critique GOP hypocrisy at the same time that she boldly condemned as "anti-Semitic"  lhan Omar's tweeted remarks about the big-dollar influence of the Israel government's AIPAC lobby.

 Many of the newly elected progressive freshmen probably “aren’t thinking that whatever they say might do harm to their class, and that’s not going to change,” said Rodell Mollineau, a Democratic strategist and former aide to Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the former majority leader. “The more progressive messaging is what sells right now. That’s what everyone is talking about, so it will be harder for moderates to break through. But that’s why it’s important to repeat their view of the world to their constituents.”

This paragraph encompasses in a nutshell the values of the corporate Democratic machine: first, do no harm to your Class (and that implicitly means the Donor Class); and always put party and power over country and constituents. Progressivism and socialism are just the latest trendy fads being foisted on the righteous conservatives whom the centrist Dems exist to please while they also fulfill the needs of their oligarchic paymasters.

The central misleading message in the Times article is that normal everyday Americans are conservatives. This has never been true, of course. The vast majority of Democrats, at least 90 percent, favor single payer health care, and about half of Republicans do. Most people favor progressive, even socialistic policies, provided of course that the "S" word is not first appended to them by pollsters like a big flashing red warning sign. The vast majority think that billionaires and corporations exercise too much influence on government policy and politicians, and that political corruption is a huge problem. Most are against American wars of aggression and runaway military spending.

Therefore, since too many people, especially younger people, no longer tremble in fear at the word "socialism," the power elites have pivoted to equating it with bigotry, in order to dissuade people from stridently agitating for policies and programs for the greater public good. The populace must be cowed and subdued, especially the increasingly restive liberals who must be taught to fear being called racists as well as purists and and unwitting Russian stooges and closet Trumpists should they start demanding too many nice things for themselves and their communities.

So the designated nasty side of the Duopoly, with Trump and his neocon kleptocrats as the latest spokesmen, falsely equate socialism with totalitarian cruelty and perverse Stalinism. And the pseudo-resistance corporate liberal party, while pitifully agreeing that Venezuelan socialism must be overcome with an invasion of nutritious humanitarian weaponry, if not with actual human troops, strives mightily to differentiate itself from Trump by associating, if not exactly equating, socialism with bigotry.

The political marketing tools of xenophobia on the one side, and the shallow, qualified embrace of diversity just for the sake of diversity on the other side, are mirror images of one another. They are divide-and-conquer propaganda techniques whose sole purpose is to keep the electorate submissive, their anger and fear properly directed at the contrived opposing mirror images.

That is how afraid of us the power elites are. Independent thinkers from outside the acceptable Knowledge Class are their worst enemies. So get ready for the smears to escalate as the perpetual presidential campaign thunders on... and on... and on.