Moment of Truth: The Crack in the Facade
I'm going to say this twice. Once here at the top, and a second time near the end. The first time because I think it's something on which everyone who opposes the controlling economic, political, and information system, as it is, can all agree. The second time because I will want to remind us all of its salience in light of what I'm about to lay out: the basis of a unified conspiracy theory of global fascist movements, large and small, in governments and in the streets.
This is the statement I wish to color all that will proceed hence: The establishment opposed to Donald Dump believe there is a line, below which he sits, on his tasteless gold toilet, tweeting his misspelled words and doing his second-tier, déclassé-collar crimes, while they look down their noses from their understated, right-thinking, right-acting positions of propriety. What they don't realize is that, while they bend over to scold him and dirt-devil up the shards and crumbs of the taco bowl he left on their lovely carpet, Dump is actually their own ass crack hanging shamefully out of the back of their silk-linen blend trousers.
I'm not arguing that Donald Dump conspired with Russia to break laws and undermine the 2016 election. He and/or his shitty family may have done that, and there may be evidence in the Mueller report that warrants further investigation into that. There is certainly the appearance of impropriety, which is one reason there was an investigation in the first place.
Hillary Clinton didn't lose the 2016 election because of Bernie Sanders or because of Russia. The British public didn't vote "leave" because of Russian interference. I want to make it clear that I am in no way pushing those narratives. But that doesn't mean Russia's noodling around, egging rightward mischief here and there, while entangled in shady deals for a few million here, a few million there, isn't a dark-money connection worth understanding. It is. John Gotti was a little tiny parodic maquette of the larger capitalist system, but he had to be brought down. Jon Burge wasn't in charge of all the racism in Chicago, but he was a problem, and if he could die again much more brutally, that would be a good thing.
The premise that, as a wise man named Chuck Mertz has said time and time again, "Everybody's stupid," seems to apply. There seems to be a mini-consensus among some left "radicals," or whatever, that interference by Russia in our electoral affairs is meaningless, and Mueller's investigation was just wasted time (which aligns with the GOP's outlook, ironically; it's even caused otherwise intelligent people to sound like Bill O'Reilly when criticizing "the media" and their "sexing up" of "Russiagate" –Rachel "Useful Idiot" Maddow is not the entire media). Looking at Russia's bit of aid in the Brexit vote and other international skulking, I would say it's the Russian government's goal, albeit in its little way, to fuel rightwing nationalist movements in the west while making deals with Dump and Dump-style wannabe or wannastay rich business criminals to push fasco-populist parties, candidates and policies. They hope to facilitate the slide of uber-capitalism into fascism. It's a definite pattern that qualifies as modus operandi. It likely has them loosely affiliated with Bannon, Gorka, The Northern League, white supremacists in the US, Australia, and national front nativist fascists in France, Italy, Greece, Spain, Scandinavia...
The resuscitation of Nazism and black-shirtism is the underlayment of capital's anti-labor and anti-communitarian movement, progressing like a glacier from Reagan and Thatcher till now. This is its varnish peeling off. When the economy cratered in 2008, revealing its biggest institutions to be unwieldy and dangerously top-heavy monstrosities, unfit for conducting affairs in a stable world society, finance capital knew it had to do something to derail the obvious popular conclusion that they were a Frankenstein that must be split into smaller pieces, their wealth divided into manageable portions that could possibly be doled out to the public. They couldn't have the public discussing wealth redistribution, so they had to revive, or rather exploit the preexisting condition of, the fascist antipathy toward socialism, progressivism, multiculturalism, and all the other boogeymen of misdirected white male resentment.
Seen in this light, the smug left's desire to own the libs regarding Russia is pretty myopic. They should care about this cabal of low rent tycoon-style gangsters that's populated a layer of power and has a lickspittle toady in the White House, helping move uber-capitalism toward a violent confrontation that is not the violent confrontation we want. Or at least, not the one I want. Maybe you all want it, I dunno.
Of course Russia didn't start the rise of the right. Of course they're not the biggest force behind it, not by a long shot. I'm not sure they could even be called a big force behind it. They're more a little node IN it. They didn't hijack our election, although I'm sure they would've loved to, but they did stick their fingers in it. I mean, if you don't connect the right's figurehead, Donald Dump, the cartoon duck with no pants, and his financial entanglements with the Russian oligarchy and Putin, and their desire to seed and see discord in the West, and get how they fall in line with capital's ultimate desires, I think you need to take another look. It's a grotesque little criminal partnership, with racist and fascist hatred, and the threat of violence, as a little fence around it.
Dump, who has allowed at least one Russian oligarch to launder millions through at least one of his properties and has multiple questionable real estate deals in that Wild West of the East, is just one little player in this racket, but he happens to be the POTUS now. It's dangerous and sickening.
Look, Donald Dump is a crook. He pockets taxpayer money through his stupid hotel. Even if that were all he did, I'd want to know about it, and I'd be pissed. But he gives violent Nazi ideologues something to live for, and kill for.
I see why some leftists have a problem caring about Russia's contribution to the rising right: they can only think about one thing at a time. If you say Russia had a hand in something, they have to say, no, you need to keep talking about how bad Obama and the Clintons are. OMG I've talked about how much I can't stand Obama and the Clintons' gifting a laisse-faire economy to finance capital, sucking the blood out of communities, enabling monopolies, sending trade-makers into the war zones they create to find great opportunities, selling labor down the river, SINCE THIS SHOW STARTED! They've set up the finance industry to make me poor! And to make the already poor really really destitute, desperate, and dead. Don't think I don't feel visceral rage about it every day.
And yes, Dump is the clownish, miniature version of the cruddy misleadership we've had all along. But he's also the clown prince of the fragmented neo-Nazi movement, his name a talisman in an Australian mass-killer's viral polemic. This is a bad global movement. It wants overt colonialism back again. If you think white schoolkids have it bad, wait till one of these fascists sets off a dirty bomb in a Bolivian metropolis. Yes, the neo-liberal project of uber- capitalism has primed the pump for these putsches. But this jag-off, this Donald Dump, is the boss now of the shadow that capitalism casts. He's the neo-liberal's henchman. He was dandled on the knee of Roy Cohn, himself a grand petty criminal and a natural born race-and-red-baiter if there ever was one.
Putin's a capo in the mob, and he treats Dump like another capo, albeit a kind of Fredo Corleone- type of capo. And I don't want Dump to have even that much juice. I want him crushed under a collapsing plaster Parthenon of his own gilded garishness.
It's an international mafia of creepy anti-communists, anti-socialists, and just plain greedy, lawless jerks who are finding each other and feeding the angry white classes below them with more fodder for their racism and eschatological violence. A white working class longing to ignite a race war is a gift to these guys. They love a divided working class. So do the Kochs. So do the Clintons. But no one's doing it quite the way Dump and Aaron Banks, the insurance and diamond millionaire and rabid pusher of Brexit, do it, both of whom wish they were richer and aren't embarrassed to get their hands covered in Russian poop to become so.
Look, Dump's not clever enough to profit from helping Haiti. He's smart enough to know that helping black people is the LAST thing his voters want. And they aren't a majority, those voters. So some of them have to be violent, conspiracy-enthralled assholes to keep the nonsense level up to eleven. That's the only way he wins. Yes, the neo-liberals win by making soft progressives believe they're kind and virtuous. These Dumpensteins win by making hard fascists think they have a chance to found a thousand year Reich on the blood of Jews, immigrants, queer people, and people of color.
Of course it's more about money for most of them (except Putin who really wants to control as much land as possible, because that's what statesmen want – real estate; he's like a real estate tycoon with an army).
It's a loose affiliation of creeps with common goals that are even worse in the short run than the ones we've gotten used to. I want them taken down, and if possible, to drag the system of which they are a parody down with them.
The reason Russia is important is specifically BECAUSE this is being investigated by the FBI. All these threads are connected, and if the FBI accidentally does its job (partly out of justified malicious feelings toward Dump) that might be a chance to learn about nefarious fascist support schemes in other spheres. I might remind you that Donald Dump is the POTUS who hired both Bannon AND entangled his own finances in Russia. So if you want to find the hub this whole mess is revolving around at this moment, why not look at the supposedly MOST POWERFUL POSITION IN GLOBAL POLITICS? I mean, I'm absolutely certain that if threads lead from Dump and money-laundering to Russia (and Deutschebank), those threads will connect with the National Christian Foundation, the US's largest Christian charity, Bannon and Bolsonaro (and the DOJ and IMF), Marine LaPenn, maybe even Macron and Merkel and of course Netanyahu, and the right wing in Australia and Hungary. I believe both libs and reds have tunnel vision here. This is a global movement of suspicious money funding anti-labor and anti-community operations in all sectors in both hemispheres.
The question the ruling class asks, whatever deal they're making, whatever legislation they're buying, whatever violence they're facilitating, is "How can we conduce actions and policies that will disrupt the efforts of those without money and power to organize and empower themselves?"
What I think is funny is that establishment types think bringing down Dump will rescue the system. What they don't realize, and what I would like to remind our listeners for a second time, is that Dump is just their own ass crack hanging embarrassingly out of their jeans.
So let's see what's in that report and if it goes anywhere, shall we? It could eventually connect with machinations the discovery of which will one day force the mask off those in charge of keeping a right and proper face on the kind of interference in public processes that somehow keep happening everywhere.