Exh. Xtian Parenti from Bahstan

Unlike Christian Parenti, I never repackage our Left critiques of state power, capitalism, surveillance, anti-working class politics, corporations, media, etc. for Right wing consumption . For Parenti that is a hallmark of the style he now exemplifies .It’s pretty glaring when he talks about liberals 2.0ers. But that is not the case for me 

But to quote Glenn Greenwald “ So many people on the left and on the right . . . have so much more in common in terms of their political views and their common enemies than either want to recognize. . . . Those old labels (left and right) don’t really tell us much anymore.”  A lot of right wingers actually hold lots of leftists values they just haven’t identified them as being leftist values

This is because the answers to Right Wingers concerns are found in the Left Wing (to the Left of the Democrat party). American right wingers in particular only have one option besides the Right wing, and that are the Center wing (Blue Dogs-New Democrats, Liberal 2.0, what they call ‘RINOs’) 

Or what right wingers think are right wing concerns are really Left wing concerns (to the Left of the Democrat party) but since that real Left wing isn’t mainstream ,those Right wingers wrongly assume those concerns they have are right wing concerns

Right Wingers and left wingers sometimes argue for the same exact aims (and thus agree) but in different ways and without even realizing they are arguing for the same exact aims and agreeing on said views

Back to the show

Christian Parenti says “leftists and liberals” are a problem (he probably means Liberal 2.0ers). On the one hand these categories place the groups apart from allegedly authentic socialist materialists like himself, while on the other hand they attract the ire of center to extreme Right readers. 

I agree with Christian Parenti’s point about how liberal 2.0ers side with “unaccountable censorship by large media and technology corporations.” These type of views by me and Parenti would be more convincing to Liberal 2.0ers and their ‘leftist’ sympathizers if the general Republican platforms about twitter, facebook, and the media pushing “fake news” and “cancel culture” didn’t hijack these views from us leftists like the Republican platform hijacked our Anti Globalization, non intervention/anti intervention, anti elitism etc viewpoints

So we know the majority of this outrage is caused by things like people challenging Joe Rogan’s theories. Parenti obviously uses Rogan as an example and talks of the complaints about this centimillionaire “coordinated attacks” presumably by evil worker-hating liberals (2.0ers). 

The liberal (2.0ers) in Parenti’s world “cheered on unprecedented amounts of repression aimed primarily at the working class,” even if those repressions were seen at the time to be needed based on what info they were given. We can’t say every time a Liberal 2.0er does something wrong or ambiguously gray it is in bad faith because that would be lying and hateful

Parenti is a believer in the power of the state and is understandably offended that the “socialist left, which wants to use state power to discipline capital has instead accepted the negative image of its goal: state power used to bully, harass, and discipline workers.” 

Contrary to Parenti’s talk of turning the state against capitalism his full argument here is that the state must control people to the benefit of capitalists. 

It has to get workers back to productivity and earning and get kids to help build a socialistic revolution

What workers are saying they want is of no concern to Parenti, like how teachers’ unions have protested wanting to be considered essential workers or healthcare workers begged people to do everything possible to halt the spread of the virus. 

Embracing the Great Barrington Declaration is not just “guilt by association” with a Libertarian think tank which many Liberal 2.0ers and Leftists who lean Liberal 2.0 such as Parenti always tend to do, shows Parenti falling victim to openly adhering to Right Libertarian pro-capitalist argumentation that lacks evidence based attributes like context and nuance

Christian Parenti is a walking talking version of those shopping bags that appeared after the 9/11 attacks which read “America: Open For Business.” 

More on Libcom