The regressive progressives
“Hey, I only care about right-wing Nazis. Left-wing Nazis are okay in my book.” So says the “progressive” left — more accurately, the “regressive” left. I suppose I am old-fashioned, but would you actually want your senator to look like Graham Platner, who embodies the appearance of an axe murderer? Yes, I know — it’s that rugged outdoorsman look that supposedly personifies rural Maine. Never mind that it’s all an affectation from a prep school kid whose parents lent him $200,000 to buy a house he claimed was financed through the VA, and who calls himself an oyster farmer whose only client is his mother’s restaurant. It’s all for show.
What are Platner and his ilk actually for? Packing the court, ending the Electoral College, adding Puerto Rico and DC as states, abolishing ICE, open borders, cutting the military, raising the minimum wage, imposing rent controls and usury ceilings, taxing the rich, free daycare, free college, free universal single-payer healthcare, a government takeover of the means of production, ending right-to-work laws, legalizing abortion, more “gender-affirming” care, DEI, men in women’s sports, the Green New Deal, no nukes, a universal guaranteed income, reparations, higher corporate income taxes, defunding the police, globalizing the Intifada, free public transportation, more affordable housing, government grocery stores, caps on drug prices, social justice, no work requirements for government assistance, a living wage for all, ending mass incarceration, expanding gay rights, eliminating voter ID requirements, increased oversight of financial institutions, reducing income inequality, and increased regulatory oversight of industry — and whatever else I may have left out.
I have lost respect for my left-wing friends who refuse to disavow Platner. They try to throw Ken Paxton back at me — but I dislike Paxton, too. I feel sorry for the people of Texas who have to choose between Talarico and Paxton. Yet I have a particular contempt for those on the left who continue to support Platner over Susan Collins in order to flip the Senate at any cost. In part, this is part of the far left’s effort to continue its takeover of the democratic party. In many cases, the progressives seek to oust the establishment democrat with someone on the far left who wants to literally blow up the economy and the country. Personally, if either Paxton or Platner were elected, I would hope that the Senate would have the3 guts not to seat either one.
As one of Platner’s defenders has put it: “The days of weak, apologetic Dems are over. Our Tea Party is here.” Progressives compare themselves to the Tea Party? That’s an insult to the Tea Party, which was pro-America, not anti-America. I would not want to live in the progressive version of America — and frankly, if their agenda were ever fully implemented, most progressives wouldn’t either. Interestingly, the base of this movement — though driven by communist ideology — is not what Marx envisioned. It is not “workers of the world, unite” but rather college-educated whites, most notably white women, who are its driving force, not the union worker.
Red Rabbits
What is particularly disturbing, however, is the mobilization of a militant, Antifa-style cadre of trained agitators — the Red Rabbits, a name that is all too fitting. Note that they did not call themselves “blue”rabbits after the “red” state/ “blue” state nonesense. The Red Rabbits are the militant arm of the Democratic Socialists of America. The name stems from the Richard Adams’ novel Watership Down in which anthropomorphized rabbits escape the destruction of their warren and seek a place to establish a new home.
The group wants the DSA to become a “revolutionary force” that will “prepare for a national uprising against federal agents and police brutality.” Whoa! Insurrection? It certainly sounds like it. The DSA and its “Liberation Caucus” are led in part by an avowed Maoist — internet personality Christopher Winston — who, like Platner supporter Cenk Uygur, has a long history of inflammatory rhetoric. The DSA is constructing a nationwide apparatus of disruption to support its protests against ICE and facilitate direct-action demonstrators. Recently, organizers from Minnesota, Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, Tucson, Austin, and Portland compared notes. Their training has included martial-arts sparring, evacuation planning, wound-packing, radio communications, the use of umbrellas and signs to shield participants from and obstruct “fascists,” and even chemical-exposure training, in which participants practiced being pepper-sprayed.
In New Jersey, “DSA’s immigrant justice working group has become a go-to security resource for immigrant organizations and Palestine affinity groups.” In Philadelphia, the Red Rabbits began with abortion clinic “defense” efforts before expanding to assist groups focused on everything from “immigrant justice” to “Palestinian solidarity.” That work has also drawn the DSA into closer alliance with other radical organizations. Tucson’s Red Rabbits, for example, work with the Party for Socialism and Liberation — a would-be revolutionary political party with close ties to the Communist Party of China. Portland DSA cited its collaboration with the National Lawyers Guild — a left-wing legal organization with historic ties to the Soviet Union — to provide know-your-rights trainings.
So if the DSA is the kook left of the progressives, the Red Rabbits are the kook left of the DSA. That growing militancy worries me much like the terrorist wing of any political group. One would expect that Trump’s Department of Justice, the IRS, and the FBI will be taking a much closer look at the DSA and their “Red Rabbits.”
haroldblackphd.com 