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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 7/21/19

Five Myths of American Exceptionalism Killing the Left Part 1.

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Russiagate has reinvigorated the anti-communist hysteria that was so deeply embedded in the racist and imperialist political architecture of the U.S. over the course of the 20thcentury. The anti-Russian campaign has given the FBI and the CIA a public relations facelift after years of struggle by the left, especially the Black left, in exposing the agencies to be facilitators of torture and war domestically and abroad. A record number of Democratic Party candidates in the 2018 mid-terms came directly from the military intelligence apparatus . Left political forces such as the Black Agenda Report have been lumped together with the likes of Alex Jones by neo-con think-tanks such as the Atlantic Council and censored in various forms online. All the while Russia has been blamed for deploying RT and Sputnik as agents of a foreign government whose coverage of issues such as Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter are purportedly to blame for the Trump presidency.

"The whole Russiagte saga was never about facts in the first place."

Hatred toward Russia is dangerous for the left, not least because U.S. military hostilities with Russia have been intensifying for over a decade. Trump has gone along with the anti-Russian charade on the policy front. Making Russia the enemy of the U.S. is further stifling the ability of the left to spread its message online or on the ground in an already difficult political environment. It is not Russia that is sewing discord in the U.S. or anywhere else. Russia is not the enemy of the people. That job is reserved for the U.S. government. The very architects of the Russiagate saga are those forces that have historically murdered and imprisoned dozens of leaders of the Black liberation movement in an ongoing effort to neutralize the right to self-determination for oppressed nations such as Black America. Yet few speak out when the U.S. corporate state accuses Russia of sparking Black political unrest, as if Black Americans possess no grievances within an Empire that enslaved them and then kept them on the bottom of the economic, political, and social class ladder ever since.

Conclusion

Of course, there are many more myths of American exceptionalism that continue to disturb the sensibilities and political clarity of "the left" in the United States. American exceptionalism doesn't merely presume the U.S. to be a force for good, domestically and abroad. It demands that even the most left-leaning political constituencies take up a struggle to redeem a social system built upon the billions of corpses and half-lives produced by the system itself. This ultimately leads us to the struggle between reform and revolution. While demands for reform that expose the U.S. oligarchy are necessary to any effective left movement, it is the process by which such a movement goes about realizing those demands that shapes its class character. Adherence to American exceptionalism kills the left and then takes it to the Democratic Party-run graveyard for burial. A left that can sustain itself beyond the allure of American exceptionalism must ultimately confront its most challenging manifestations, many of which are normalized in the political culture of this declining empire.

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Danny Haiphong is co-coordinator of the Black Alliance for Peace Supporter Network and organizer with No Cold War. 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 (more...)
 

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