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

Thu Oct 12 07:29:55 UTC 2017

Be honest, Carl. Did you read the article?

I don't believe you did. I don't believe you agree with it. I don't believe
you're a Trot.

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 1:43 AM, Carl G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss <
peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:

> We should get to sleep, Bob. We obviously both need the rest. It’s
> affected your judgement (e.g., my AWARE colleague isn’t stupid).
>
> But in the clear light of dawn, give me some examples of “arrogance" and
> "dogmatic stupidity” in the WSWS piece.
>
> Put up or shut up.
>
> Regards, CGE
>
>
>
> On Oct 12, 2017, at 1:33 AM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss <
> peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
>
> 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 <(202)%20448-2898>
>
> 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-pri
>> me-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 <http://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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>
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