You Cannot Stop War by Working with Warmongers

Leftists will never succeed in cooperating with the extreme right because the extreme right will never allow leftist goals to be realized.

Intellectuals including Diana Johnstone and Chris Hedges, independent journalists including Caitlin Johnstone and the good people at Revolutionary Blackout Network, and comedians-turned-COVIDiots who want you to die or become permanently disabled from an easily preventable viral infection because they’re too stupid to figure out how to properly wear an N95 mask and don’t want to be personally inconvenienced, are all urging leftists to attend and give money to the Rage Against the War Machine rally scheduled for 19 February 2023.

The problem is that this supposed anti-war rally is not anti-war, and is in fact a transparent attempt by right-wing extremists to hijack the anti-war movement in the United States (such as it is, which isn’t much), and is guaranteed to fail.

Black Agenda Report’s Jacqueline Luqman and others have explained why the Lyndon Larouche-worshipping bigots who, with their history of infiltrating left-wing organizations in order to undermine and destroy them from within, took over the Libertarian Party, are not to be trusted and why their involvement is merely an effort to give public platform to a failing political organization that drove out its more traditional right-wing lunatic members and has been suffering from a lack of funding and membership ever since the hostile takeover.

Among the speakers scheduled to appear at this alleged anti-war rally are anti-trans bigot and warmonger Tulsi Gabbard, who ran on a supposedly anti-war platform in the 2020 Democrat dictatorial primaries only to drop out and endorse career warmonger and war criminal Joe Biden (who has since provoked a proxy war against Russia via Nazi-ruled Ukraine, the regime of which he helped install in 2014); infamous Sinophobe and racist Ron Paul, who with his U.S. senator son have spent the ongoing pandemic fabricating blatantly false accusations against China blaming it for the debilitating and often lethal virus they dismiss as exaggerated or a hoax; and accused sexual predator Nick Brana, who has come under increasing scrutiny over his leadership of Movement for a People’s Party (MPP).

With a lineup like that, it’s not shocking that many actual anti-war leftists are boycotting this farce. Imagine holding a Green Party event and inviting Noam Chomsky to condescendingly lecture you about the need to vote Democrat because it would only help Trump. Chomsky, of course, actually has made that intellectually dishonest and morally repugnant argument for decades, and has attacked AntiFa (short for Anti-Fascists) as a “gift to right-wingers.” So imagine how off-putting and self-defeating it is to hold a self-proclaimed anti-war rally featuring decidedly pro-war speakers. Small wonder Scott Ritter, a vocal critic of the U.S. proxy war against Russia, decided after being disinvited and then re-invited not to attend after all. CODE PINK’s board of directors, for its part, has, according to Hedges, asked Medea Benjamin to cancel her planned attendence of the far right event, citing the involvement of the Larouche-cultists.

The extreme right cannot be worked with. It cannot be bargained or reasoned with. It does not compromise. It demands, ALWAYS, that its agenda take full priority to the exclusion of all others. It is always those who call themselves leftists who are the first to compromise, to betray those for whom they claim to fight. Already the attendees of this rally have thrown under the proverbial bus LGBTQ+ persons especially transgender, Black and Brown people, workers devastated by the ongoing pandemic, the disabled, and sexual assault victims, all while condescendingly lecturing actual leftists of the “need” to find “common ground” with the far right and to set aside “trivial” disagreements.

There is nothing trivial about rape, systemic bigotry, support for the destructive ideology of capital, or war.

And you’re not going to fight these things by joining up with people who advocate for them against everything you say you stand for. One by one the far right will expect and demand that you end your fight for the causes you believe in, to support theirs. And you will do it because it’s more important to you to make common cause with these subhuman degenerate savages than it is to truly stand up for those most oppressed by their savagery. In so doing, you reveal your true conservative nature that has always lain just beneath the surface waiting for its chance to be fully expressed.

I’m disappointed, but in no way surprised, to see Hedges, Johnstone, Benjamin, and others surrender their integrity and principles to their enemies for the sake of short term expediency. They’ve been defeated over and over again by the imperial war machine and are desperate for an ally, any ally, they think might help them further their cause.

But they’re not thinking clearly, and they’re not seeing the bigger picture. There is no genuine opposition among the extreme right to wars. Right-wingers see the war in Ukraine merely as a distraction from their desired war with China, which they see as a much bigger threat to U.S. global supremacy. And even many among those who want war with China link it to Russia, seeing the destruction of both as the only guarantee toward maintaining U.S. hegemony.

Cooperating with anti-China war hawks because they pretend to oppose war with Russia is doomed to failure. For two years now, COVIDiots such as Jimmy Dore, Russell Brand, Kim Iversen, and Jackson Hinkle have pushed the lab-leak lie, having decided their money is better earned sucking up to racist Trump supporters.

They’ve attacked anti-fascists, Black Lives Matter, and transgender persons using the same far right talking points labeling them terrorists, thugs and looters, and groomers, respectively, and we’re supposed to think joining up with the far right will somehow lead to other than a bad outcome? These people are, to quote Nick from RBN, “deeply unserious.”

Anyone claiming to be on the left but proposing to work with the far right on anything should set off immediate alarms in your mind. These are people whose only loyalty is to themselves and their own pet causes, not to you or anyone you care about. Whether it’s Vaush simping for literal Nazis or Glenn Greenwald attacking transgender people, whether it’s Max Blumenthal lying about COVID mitigation in defense of literal terrorists or Jimmy Dore defending spoiled brat billionaires abusing their ownership of social media platforms, their petulant demands to express their depraved views without challenge will always demand that you give up your beliefs, causes, even your very existence. That is exactly what happened to Dore, Greenwald, Blumenthal, Hinkle, Iversen, and others. They tried making common cause with right-wing extremists and all they got was assimilated into the far right cult of hate.

That is why this exercise in futility on 19 February is just that: an exercise in futility. There won’t be any actual anti-war voices allowed to speak. The Larouche-cultists will drown out all leftists as they use the rally to promote their anti-China, anti-abortion, anti-Black, anti-LGBTQ+, pro-corporate agenda. Everyone who still thinks critically knows there is nothing to be gained from this rally, everyone knows that to participate is to be assimilated into a pro-war, pro-big-business, bigoted movement.

There can be no anti-war activism, no movement for social, economic, and racial justice that alienates the very people who are most oppressed by the system that profits from oppression. Why on Earth I or anyone else has to explain this to supposed adults who are old enough to know better is beyond comprehension.