[Peace-discuss] Dem. Party donors funnel millions to protest groups.

Thu Oct 12 06:33:41 UTC 2017

Oh Carl. You don't think anything. Don't give yourself airs.

Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
(202) 448-2898 x1

Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen
https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580

On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 1:25 AM, Carl G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss <
peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:

> The WSWS article seems to me accurate and important: I think Bob’s choler
> arises from his recognition that it is.
>
> But he’s reduced to simple obloquy, which raises the question, Could Bob
> have been frightened by a Trotskyist (or maybe a Green party thug) when he
> was very young?
>
> See <https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/08/19/roaming-charges-
> prime-time-green/>:
>
> '...One of the chief purveyors of this bilge of misinformation [about Jill
> Stein] is a previously obscure fellow named Robert Naiman, who runs a
> nearly invisible group called Just Foreign Policy. Naiman was caught
> red-handed (so to speak) when his junk mail made its way to the inbox of
> John Stauber, author of Toxic Sludge is Good for You and a leading expert
> on the politics of propaganda and disinformation. Stauber knows a smear
> when he sees one...
>
> 'In a nasty email exchange with longtime Green organizer Kevin Zeese, who
> is now co-director of Popular Resistance, a group which grew out of the
> Occupy movement, Naiman sunk even further into the slime and threatened to
> expose Jill Stein as “a Trotskyite cancer.”
>
> '"On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 2:56 PM, Robert Naiman  wrote:
> Oh, is today my day to be harassed by Green Party thugs?
> I’ll make you a deal: call off your dogs and I won’t further expose Jill
> Stein as a Trokskyite cancer.
> Robert Naiman
> Policy Director
> Just Foreign Policy
> www.justforeignpolicy.org"
>
> 'Slandering Stein and the Greens for being “Trotskyites” (or
> “Trokskyites,” in Naiman’s quaint verbiage) is as intellectually vapid as
> it is vile. Everyone knows that most of Leon’s former disciples in the US
> have long since morphed into neocons and thus can be spotted in Georgetown
> cafes polishing their resumés for slots on Hillary’s foreign policy team.
>
> '“Robert Naiman epitomizes the attitude of the paid, professional Democrat
> progressives attacking the Green Party and Jill Stein,” John Stauber told
> me. “These shills see no hypocrisy in embracing a candidate supported by
> Wall Street, the Koch brothers and the neoconservatives who with Hillary
> lied America into attacking Iraq.  So there it is, Hillary is his champion
> while a woman running on the most progressive platform in America is just a
> damned Communist.  Rather than back down when he himself was exposed, he
> doubled down with a smear befitting the worst of American politics. Naiman
> is not an aberration however; indeed, he embodies the funded progressive
> elite who since 2000 have become a front group for the Democrats liberal
> oligarchs such as George Soros and his Democracy Alliance.”’
>
> —CGE
>
>
> > On Oct 12, 2017, at 12:33 AM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss <
> peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
> >
> > It's the combination of arrogance and dogmatic stupidity that pisses me
> off.
> >
> > Don't you have any shame at all about being so stupid?
> >
> >
> > Robert Naiman
> > Policy Director
> > Just Foreign Policy
> > www.justforeignpolicy.org
> > naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
> > (202) 448-2898 x1
> >
> > Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen
> > https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 12:24 AM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss <
> peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
> > I don’t know Bob, but I knew it would piss you off.
> >
> >
> >> On Oct 11, 2017, at 22:13, Robert Naiman <naiman at justforeignpolicy.org>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> Do you honestly think that this criminally retarded Trot nonsense is
> useful? Monkeys on typewriters could produce more useful analysis.
> >>
> >>
> >> Robert Naiman
> >> Policy Director
> >> Just Foreign Policy
> >> www.justforeignpolicy.org
> >> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
> >> (202) 448-2898 x1
> >>
> >> Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen
> >> https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580
> >>
> >>
> >> On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 11:53 PM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss <
> peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> Democratic Party donors funnel millions to protest groups
> >> By Tom Hall
> >> WSWS.ORG
> >> 11 October 2017
> >> A New York Times report titled “The ‘Resistance,’ Raising Big Money,
> Upends Liberal Politics” details how the Democratic Party’s billionaire and
> millionaire donors are giving millions of dollars to so-called left-wing
> and progressive protest groups around the Democratic Party.
> >> “It started as a scrappy grass-roots protest movement against President
> Trump,” the article begins, “but now the so-called resistance is attracting
> six- and seven-figure checks from major liberal donors, posing an insurgent
> challenge to some of the left’s most venerable institutions — and the
> Democratic Party itself.”
> >> The article highlights the efforts of one particular group, Democracy
> Alliance, which the Times describes as “a club of wealthy liberals” who
> have donated more than $600 million since 2005 and have “helped shape the
> institutional left.” Since the election of Donald Trump, the group has
> shifted its funding priorities away from well-established organizations
> that supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primaries into a host of new
> “anti-Trump” groups. Their aim is to bolster the left-wing credentials of
> the Democratic Party, stem the growth of social opposition, and block the
> development of interest in socialism among tens of millions of workers and
> youth.
> >> “The Democracy Alliance distributed a ‘resistance map’ to its donors in
> July including new groups focused on converting the anti-Trump energy into
> electoral wins, such as Flippable, Swing Left and Sister District, as well
> as legal watchdog groups and others focused on mobilizing protesters, such
> as Women’s March and Indivisible,” the article states.
> >> Indivisible, the Times notes, was able to expand from little more than
> an online text document detailing how to “resist” the Trump administration
> into a national organization of 40 staff members, with more than 6,000
> volunteer chapters across the country,” as well as two associated
> nonprofits which have raised $6 million dollars in donations.
> >> The Times article continues: “Yet Indivisible has also received funding
> from the tech entrepreneur Reid Hoffman, as well as foundations or
> coalitions tied to Democracy Alliance donors, including the San Francisco
> mortgage billionaire Herbert Sandler, the New York real estate heiress
> Patricia Bauman and the oil heiress Leah Hunt-Hendrix.” A representative
> from the group said that they would “gladly” accept funding from
> billionaire investor George Soros, a major financial backer of the
> Democratic Party.
> >> Cloaked under rhetorical attacks on the supposed “neoliberal” and
> “establishment” wing of the Democratic Party, a ferocious struggle is
> unfolding over the division of the spoils. The Center for American
> Progress, the Times observes, “has engendered resentment from others on the
> left for casting itself as a leader of the anti-Trump movement and raising
> money off the resistance nomenclature,” including selling t-shirts branded
> with the word “resist” on its website.
> >> Only the politically naive will believe that these Wall Street
> millionaires and billionaires will not see a “return on investment” from
> their donations. All of the “left-wing” groups that are receiving millions
> in donations seek, in one way or another, to camouflage the character of
> the Democratic Party as a party of the financial oligarchy and the military
> and promote illusions that the Democrats can be shifted through popular
> pressure to the left.
> >> The political goal behind these fundraising efforts is to boost the
> tattered credibility of the Democratic Party, widely seen as a party of
> Wall Street and the military, and to channel mass opposition to the Trump
> administration behind the Democrats in order to prevent it from escaping
> the control of the ruling class.
> >> Workers and young people who have been taken in by the illusion that
> the Democrats can be transformed from a party of Wall Street into a
> “people’s party” should consider the fact that the very groups promoting
> the perspective of pressuring the Democrats are themselves being directly
> backed and financed by Wall Street.
> >> “The resistance is strongest when everyone has access to our
> resources,” David Brock, founder of Media Matters and a prominent Clinton
> supporter, told the Times. “These grass-roots groups play a different,
> unique role, and their energy is something the progressive movement hadn’t
> seen in decades,” an official with the Center for American Progress added.
> The Times also cited Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Xochitl
> Hinojosa, who praised these groups’ work in Democratic electoral campaigns.
> >> This type of funding of supposedly left-wing protest groups did not
> emerge only after the 2016 presidential elections. Last October, the Ford
> Foundation announced that it would spend $100 million over six years on
> Black Lives Matter.
> >> The perspective of racial and gender identity politics that these
> groups espouse corresponds to the interests of a narrow layer of the
> affluent upper-middle class that has benefited directly over the past 30
> years from the rising stock market and whose gains come at the expense of
> the working class of all races.
> >> The bulk of the “left-wing” upper-middle class supported the primary
> campaign of Bernie Sanders, who combined progressive and even “socialist”
> phraseology with a total silence on the reactionary role of the Democratic
> Party. After unceremoniously capitulating to Clinton, Sanders went on a
> national postelection tour with Democratic National Committee Chairman
> Thomas Perez to save the Democrats’ image as a party of “working people.”
> Sanders constantly papered over the experience of the Obama administration
> in order to bolster illusions in the Democrats.
> >> The result of Sanders’ efforts has been disastrous for the working
> class. Far from turning the Democratic Party to the left, the Democratic
> Party has ignored the votes of Sanders’ 13 million voters, promised to make
> deals with Trump on everything from tax cuts for the rich to mass
> deportation, and launched a nationalist campaign aimed at whipping up
> hostility to Russia, blaming “Russian interference” for Trump’s victory.
> The leadership of the Democratic Party now hopes that by mobilizing wealthy
> donors they can inject a popular veneer into their pro-war, pro-corporate
> program and block the development of a mass movement for socialist
> revolution.
> >>
> >> ________
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