Re: <nettime> The Guardian's Summary of Julian Assange's Interview Went Viral and

[Flick Harrison <flick@flickharrison.com>]

This is really important. 

What I’m seeing out there on social media is the various left factions discrediting every critique of Trump that the other factions have made, in order to centralize their issues in the coming left reckonings.  The libertarian socialist left has really embraced the opportunity to stomp on Hillary Clinton’s corpse at the expense of any focus or sanity around Trump.

The lib-socialist left (dare I say brocialist?), with troll-army help no doubt, has decided to destroy the term "Fake News," for the simple reason, as far as I can tell, that if “Fake News” swung the election, this somehow proves Hillary wasn’t a vicious corporate war-hawk.  Same reason to discredit any talk of Russian interference in the election, the racism of Trump’s campaign, or the sexist bias of the general electorate.  Sure there are ways to debate these ideas, but right now it’s all or nothing.

“Russia didn’t hack the election, Hillary just sucked!!”  These are actually two separate issues.

Corporate media spin and bias is a different thing from “Fake News.”  “Fake News,” a term I refuse to drop, is a real thing that Putin / Breitbart does.  The Birther movement is the perfect example of a major imaginary story, with no basis in anything other than racist fantasy and alt-right strategy, which took over the mainstream discourse around the presidency.  This is what Fake News refers to, and diluting it to include corporate media bias is dishonest and counter-productive.

> On Jan 2, 2017, at 13:45 , C.Robbins <cpr@mindspring.com> wrote:
> 

> What is problematic ( and deeply disturbing to me as I have always reapected Greenwald's views)  is his own thinly veiled bias and, perhaps, blindness to some of the more vile and damning aspects Trump's behavior and speech ( as per Assange) by not offering any other critique:

The identity-politics left, of course, has no such luxury.  It’s pretty clear that people of colour and women etc are in for a rough ride, deportation and pussy-grabbing, while many lib-socialist dreams (cancelling trade agreements, destroying party establishments etc) are becoming possibilities.

It’s in that space that Assange’s comments about Trump as a neutral, almost natural-disaster-type change opportunity ring the most hollow.  In some ways Assange and the libertarian socialist bloc are proposing a type of Disaster Socialism… they are almost aligned with Trump in that sense.

It’s also in that space that the breakdown between these two camps, personified in the Bernie / Hillary DNC skullduggery and its aftermath, becomes a crisis.  Trade agreements disproportionately affect POC and women (even in their bad environmental effects) but in Trump’s view, the only problem with these deals is that they hurt American workers.  This conversation needs to happen on the left and instead we have finger-pointy factionalism and wrong-headed triumphalism.

ID politicos get super angry at any mention of white working-class concerns, because their operative axiom right now is that racism and sexism were the fundamentals of the race (or just racism or just sexism depending on whom you speak with), and everything else is a “derailment of the conversation.”

eg

The 'White Working Class' Can Kiss My Brown Ass

http://bust.com/feminism/18550-white-working-class.html

Hillary was a dishonest messenger of ID politics of course (hawkish super-predator capitalist that she is), but she had built a pretty diverse machine and really was the candidate speaking to domestic discrimination and marginalization in the face of Trump’s terrifying non-linear racist warfare.

The factions are digging in for a 4-year battle.

- Flick Harrison


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