[Peace-discuss] Why it is Unlikely Sandernistas Will Catch Russiagate Fever and Why He Should Be Held Accountable Anyway

[David Johnson]

The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) is bringing together Black left
organizations and their friends in the movement to rebuild the Black
consensus on peace. BAP organizers have created
<https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58e19bb4725e250f972b9de7/t/5d5e15245
b7ea1000136e1c6/1566446885887/BAP+candidate+petition+%283%29.pdf> a petition
and a
<https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58e19bb4725e250f972b9de7/t/5d5e10513
6dffe00017ab5ab/1566445651258/BAP+-+Candidate+Pledge+Form+-+July+2019+%281%2
9.pdf> candidate pledge  to demand that war become a central issue in the
2020 election. The petition demands presidential candidates agree to a fifty
percent decrease in the U.S. military budget, the closure of the 800-plus
military bases around the world, and the abolition of AFRICOM and the
Department of Defense's 1033 weapons transfer program to local police
departments. Both the pledge and the petition provide concrete tools for
anti-war activists and the general movement to demand that Sanders and his
massive base make the struggle against imperialist aggression a priority in
the 2020 election.

 

 

 

 

 

https://blackagendareport.com/why-it-unlikely-sandernistas-will-catch-russia
gate-fever-and-why-he-should-be-held-accountable

	

 
<https://blackagendareport.com/why-it-unlikely-sandernistas-will-catch-russi
agate-fever-and-why-he-should-be-held-accountable> Why it is Unlikely
Sandernistas Will Catch Russiagate Fever and Why He Should Be Held
Accountable Anyway | Black Agenda Report

Bernie Sanders' rise to frontrunner status has done nothing to challenge the
endless wars waged by the US, yet he is sure to face more smears and attacks
the more his campaign succeeds. "When his opponents smear him with wild
Russiagate charges, Sanders take the bait."

blackagendareport.com

 

 
<https://blackagendareport.com/why-it-unlikely-sandernistas-will-catch-russi
agate-fever-and-why-he-should-be-held-accountable> Why it is Unlikely
Sandernistas Will Catch Russiagate Fever and Why He Should Be Held
Accountable Anyway

 
<https://blackagendareport.com/author/Danny%20Haiphong,%20BAR%20Contributing
%20Editor> Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor

  

04 Mar 2020

 

 

Why it is Unlikely Sandernistas Will Catch Russiagate Fever and Why He
Should Be Held Accountable Anyway

Bernie Sanders' rise to frontrunner status has done nothing to challenge the
endless wars waged by the US, yet he is sure to face more smears and attacks
the more his campaign succeeds.

"When his opponents smear him with wild Russiagate charges, Sanders take the
bait."

Just a day before the Nevada caucus, the U.S. intelligence apparatus briefed
Bernie Sanders about an attempt by the Russian government to interfere in
the process on his behalf.
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/bernie-sanders-briefed-by-
us-officials-that-russia-is-trying-to-help-his-presidential-campaign/2020/02
/21/5ad396a6-54bd-11ea-929a-64efa7482a77_story.html> The Washington Post , a
trusted mouthpiece of the C.I.A. in the corporate media, reported the story
without any evidence to support the claim. This was in keeping with the last
four years of the U.S. intelligence apparatus' Russiagate operation.
Russiagate has served as a McCarthy-esque attack on any inconvenience to
imperial rule both domestic and foreign. And Bernie Sanders took the bait.

To be fair, Bernie Sanders has never challenged Russiagate orthodoxy.
Sanders has largely parroted the line of U.S. intelligence that Russia
"hacked" the 2016 election to help Trump win the White House. His response
to the intelligence briefing was no different. Sanders told Russia to
<https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/sanders-trump-respond-differently-
russian-election-interference-n1141511> "stay out of our elections"  and
called Russian president Vladimir Putin an "autocrat" and a "thug." In his
continuing bid to differentiate himself from Donald Trump, Sanders
reiterated that he would not tolerate any foreign power meddling in U.S.
elections. When Michael Bloomberg opened the South Carolina debate attacking
Sanders with Russiagate smears, Sanders defended himself with anti-Russian
talking points.

"Russiagate has served as a McCarthy-esque attack on any inconvenience to
imperial rule both domestic and foreign."

Yet the claim that Russia is looking to sow chaos in U.S. politics by aiding
Sanders' campaign is just as ridiculous as the intelligence apparatus'
non-stop innuendo which positions Trump as an agent of the Kremlin who
worked with WikiLeaks to cheat Hillary Clinton from winning the 2016
election. Russiagate enthusiasts ignore the fact-free basis of their
arguments or that election meddling has historically been a job reserved for
the United States. Over the last half century alone, the U.S. has overthrown
nearly one hundred governments around the world by directly
<https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-interfered-in-elections-of-at-least-85-cou
ntries-worldwide-since-1945/5601481> interfering in their political process.
Russiagate was never designed to take down Trump. It was designed to
preserve a world order where the United States ruthlessly and violently
calls the shots.

The protection of the old and decaying imperialist order requires lies, and
plenty of them. Russiagate is the biggest lie of them all. This lie is
deployed whenever the U.S. ruling class is presented with another indicator
of political crisis. It is no coincidence that the so-called revelation of
Russian support for Sanders came directly before the Nevada primary. The U.S
intelligence apparatus understood full well that Sanders was going to win
big in Nevada. By making Sanders a target of the Russiagate operation, U.S.
spooks and their corporate backers hoped to undermine the obvious popularity
that Sanders' politics enjoys with large portions of the Democratic Party
base.

"Election meddling has historically been a job reserved for the United
States."

The effort fell short in Nevada, forcing the intelligence spooks to clarify
that their
<https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/23/politics/intelligence-briefer-russian-interf
erence-trump-sanders/index.html> briefing was "overstated."  Should Sanders
continue to steamroll the competition on Super Tuesday and beyond, the
Sandernistas will have little reason to catch Russiagate fever. Like most
people in the U.S., Sandernistas are more concerned with
<https://news.gallup.com/poll/1675/most-important-problem.aspx> healthcare,
jobs, and immigration . This doesn't mean that Russiagate should be
dismissed. In fact, that Russiagate smears are largely ignored speaks to a
different problem all together. Ignoring the problem doesn't make it go
away. And Bernie Sanders' rise to frontrunner status has done nothing to
challenge the endless wars waged by the U.S. war machine abroad, of which
Russiagate is a critical component.

Sandernistas are understandably sensitive to criticism of Bernie Sanders
because of the intense attack that he has faced from the corporate media and
the oligarchs in control of the Democratic Party. The attack has been so
intense that many
<https://www.liberationnews.org/the-bernie-sanders-campaign-and-building-the
-movement-for-socialism-in-the-us/> leftist organizations  and
<https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2020/02/08/the-movement-for-bernie-sander
s-which-side-are-you-on/> communist parties  have called for critical
support of Bernie Sanders. Some readers of Black Agenda Report (BAR) have
confused BAR's analysis of the reasons why the Democratic Party
establishment is so afraid of Sanders for outright support of his campaign.
Such a conclusion fails to consider that BAR has been one of the few
independent media outlets that has criticized Bernie Sanders for his
imperialist sympathies. Even worse, it privileges an emphasis on condemning
Sanders over the strategic, ideological, and organizational questions that
must be answered in order to move the anti-imperialist cause forward rather
than back. 

"BAR has been one of the few independent media outlets that has criticized
Bernie Sanders for his imperialist sympathies."

Bernie Sanders' long history of taking the Russiagate bait reflects an
enduring structural problem with the Democratic Party. That is, the
Democratic Party is the War Party. And as such, there are parameters that a
social democrat, no matter how earnest they are about Medicare for All and a
Green New Deal, cannot cross lest they be completely shunned from the U.S.
political process. Russiagate is not the only example of Sanders walking the
imperialist path. While he repeatedly calls for the world's nations to come
together to disinvest from weapons production and invest instead in
substantial climate change policy, Sanders has continued to bad mouth
nations under the gun from U.S. imperialism like
<https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bernie-sanders-distances-himself-from-venezuel
a-president-nicolas-maduro-when-pressed-on-socialism-at-debate/>  Venezuela
as corrupt dictatorships that deserve no gestures of friendship from a
future Sanders administration.

Bernie Sanders should be held accountable for offering no plan
<https://berniesanders.com/issues/responsible-foreign-policy/> to cut the
Pentagon  budget or reduce the catastrophic military footprint of the United
States. The trillion-plus dollar military albatross is not only an
instrument of mass murder, but the
<https://qz.com/1655268/us-military-is-a-bigger-polluter-than-140-countries-
combined/> top polluter of the planet as well . Sanders should be briefed by
the people that warmongering language toward China and the DPRK doesn't
serve the interests of working people in the United States. He should be
reminded that the U.S. invasion of Iraq is not so different from the
<https://www.globalresearch.ca/neocons-have-been-destroying-sovereign-nation
s-for-20-years/5603225> NATO-led invasions of Yugoslavia, Libya, and Syria .
The U.S. military and its various organs have one major priority and that is
the protection and enrichment of the very class of oligarchs who see Sanders
as an existential threat to their austerity regime. Selectively choosing
which U.S. interventions matter and which do not as Sanders does by calling
out the 1973 C.I.A coup in Chile and then claiming Xi Jingping is a dictator
shows that no amount of social democratic progressivism can change the fact
that the U.S. presidency is an instrument of imperialism.

"Sanders has continued to bad mouth nations under the gun from U.S.
imperialism like Venezuela."

Sanders cannot take all the blame for leading the masses astray on the
question of war and peace. A principle reason why an anti-imperialist
movement has not emerged from the growing popularity of social welfare
reform is that the most anti-war sector of the U.S. populace, Black America,
has yet to recover from four decades of brutal state repression and
political misleadership. The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) is bringing
together Black left organizations and their friends in the movement to
rebuild the Black consensus on peace. BAP organizers have created
<https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58e19bb4725e250f972b9de7/t/5d5e15245
b7ea1000136e1c6/1566446885887/BAP+candidate+petition+%283%29.pdf> a petition
and a
<https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58e19bb4725e250f972b9de7/t/5d5e10513
6dffe00017ab5ab/1566445651258/BAP+-+Candidate+Pledge+Form+-+July+2019+%281%2
9.pdf> candidate pledge  to demand that war become a central issue in the
2020 election. The petition demands presidential candidates agree to a fifty
percent decrease in the U.S. military budget, the closure of the 800-plus
military bases around the world, and the abolition of AFRICOM and the
Department of Defense's 1033 weapons transfer program to local police
departments. Both the pledge and the petition provide concrete tools for
anti-war activists and the general movement to demand that Sanders and his
massive base make the struggle against imperialist aggression a priority in
the 2020 election.

The truth is that the more Sanders becomes "electable," the less likely the
issue of war and peace will find room in the 2020 election. Electability in
the U.S. electoral system means capitulation to the imperial imperatives of
the one percent. While Sanders certainly won't backtrack on his domestic
social welfare agenda, he is sure to face more intense anti-communist smears
and attacks the more his campaign succeeds. The more Sanders is attacked by
the ruling class, the more his supporters and Sanders himself may think
twice before challenging the U.S. intelligence apparatus and the war
machine. The U.S. ruling class will not elect its own grave digger. It is up
to the power of the people to demand what Sanders nor any other candidate
dares to utter. No one is above the truth, especially when millions of lives
and the self-determination of nations are what's at stake. Not Bernie
Sanders, not anyone.

Danny Haiphong is an activist and journalist in the New York City area. He
and Roberto Sirvent are co-authors of the book entitled American
Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People's History of Fake News--From
the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror (Skyhorse Publishing). He can be
reached at wakeupriseup1990 at gmail.com, on Twitter @spiritofho, and on
Youtube at The Left Lens with Danny Haiphong.

COMMENTS?

Please join the conversation on Black Agenda Report's Facebook page at
http://facebook.com/blackagendareport

Or, you can comment by emailing us at comments at blackagendareport.com

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20200305/db2f92be/attachment-0001.htm>