Biden is Not on the Left, But There is a Difference That Matters - Abby Martin

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Not in the streets. I'm far less worried about these far-right fascist organizations, and all that. It's the fascists in the police forces that I'm worried about. He's emboldened these racist, fascist sectors of the police forces.

Mm-hmm.

Like, I lived in Baltimore for a few years. A large number of cops in Baltimore hates white supremacy. Many of them are black, but not all. They don't want the police force to be fascist. And there's a real contention within the police force because the police union is so reactionary in many of these cities. Again, not all, but many. And Trump's emboldened that domestically. Of course, in terms of climate, the denial is catastrophic.

So, we get to choose between what I called in my article, the sections of capital. The sections of the society it's not all about finance. It's also about religious extremists and sections of the working class that have been influenced by these ideas. And, of course, a great deal of people that just simply always vote Republican because they want lower taxes and don't care about anything else. Those sections of the society are for a coercive state. This rhetoric against leftism and socialism, it's not just some ploy to connect Biden to these forces because, frankly, everybody knows he's no socialist. It's also to prepare public opinion so that if Trump wins, or even if he doesn't win, they're going to try to launch a real fight against socialist forces in the United States.

Why? Because it's obvious: for every bloody problem facing the country, a socialized, at least, solution, is the one that makes sense. You know, capitalism, liberal capitalism, whether it's the Democratic Party or even centrist-Republican, they're completely out of any real solutions.

But on these sections of capital: in some ways, to my mind, the rightwing sections of capital are smarter. They get that the objective world is leading people towards more socialistic solutions, and they don't like that. And they're going to fight that.

It's not like the individuals don't matter; the individual records don't matter. They do. But the analysis of who they represent is kind of more important. And then let's dig into the individual stuff.

I couldn't agree more with you. I think the tens of millions of people who were awakened I mean, for the first time that we know really since the labor movement was really strong for basically generations, Paul, as we know, anti-communism has been the dominant religion of the US. So, to see it [i.e., socialism] resurrected and palatable again, where it's no longer this big, bad, scary word and people are connecting it to issues for the first time, at least in my adult life, where I've been politically active, to systemic issues centered around capitalism is really amazing.

And it's a very optimistic thing. And that's exactly why the ruling class is so hellbent to destroy it, to focus on it as the end-all/be-all problem:" the left is really the problem for everything." And that's why Trump's rhetoric is so narrowed and focused on communism and socialism as this big, bad thing. And that's exactly why you see Biden focusing in on it as well, because they know that that's the real danger here: a popular uprising of people who are rejecting the status quo and rejecting capital. And we know that both parties really hinge on the status quo being what it is.

So, again, it's two heads of the same beast, yet, as we talked about, Trump is the cancerous tumor that needs to be severed before we really deal with the systemic cancer that bred him and that will continue to breed people like Trump out of this corrupt, failing, quote-unquote-democracy that we have.

But the people behind them, that's another good point. I mean, you can point to Biden and say, yeah, he has a lot of the mainstream media, a lot of this corporate media that has gone to bat for him. But Trump also has a hugely significant media arm, these rightwing billionaires, the Koch brothers, all of these crazy rightwing institutions who are funded by God-knows-what corporations and rightwing billionaires, like Gateway Pundit, Breitbart. I mean, the list goes on and on of his own media apparatus. And then, of course, you have Fox News which grovels to him. And essentially there's this feedback loop where, again, this cult of personality just signals to his base and they literally only believe his word.

And that's, I think, something unique that I haven't seen before either. So, it's a feedback loop of the regurgitation of Fox News and him feeding back into it, and then the millions of people, who are kind of cult followers of Trump, taking his word as gospel. And that's a whole other issue, right?

So, yeah, the forces behind Trump: the Sheldon Adelsons, the Mercers, the Bannons. I think Bannon is still kind of behind the scenes. Maybe not as much because you don't see Trump really on the level that he was in 2016 where he's [now] kind of faltering in terms of the populist rhetoric. So, I don't know how much Bannon really has sway in that.

But we know Bannon is behind the scenes in these anti-China think tanks and fostering fear against [China]. You know, the wing of the establishment which represents Trump really wants that chaos with China and they want a full-fledged potential confrontation with China. Whereas the more Bannon people behind the scenes want that predictability.

And I think that that's exactly why they don't want Trump again for four years because anything could happen. You know, whenever something happens like the assassination of General Soleimani: Biden didn't necessarily disagree with it. He just said we lacked strategy in order to carry it out. And I think that's exactly what the difference is in terms of foreign policy, specifically, because they don't necessarily want a different outcome. I mean, maybe they do want [a different outcome] but we don't hear Biden talking about lifting the sanctions with Iran. Trump has implemented devastating genocidal sanctions with Iran, at least eight hundred at this point. But Biden has not really confronted that situation and said we're going to lift these sanctions. Of course, if he wants to re-enlist with the nuclear deal, that's one thing, but there are still all the other sanctions around the world.

And I think that really leaves us with a quandary where it's really the strategy and that's where the ruling class doesn't want Trump, specifically in terms of the global hegemon, running as the CEO of the U.S. empire. Because they just want someone who they can really hedge their bets on in being exactly what they want to carry out in terms of the world order.

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