Beware the Trumpenleft!

Unless you move in certain leftist circles, you may not have heard about one of the Russians’ most insidiously evil active measures, an active measure so insidiously evil that it could only have been dreamed up in Moscow, the current wellspring of insidious evil. Its official Russo-Nazi-sounding code name is still being decided on by leftist cryptographers, but most people know it as the “Trumpenleft.”

The Trumpenleft (or “Sputnik Left,” as it is also called by professional anti-Putin-Nazi intelligence analysts) is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. It is a gang of nefarious Putin-Nazi infiltrators posing as respectable leftists in order to disseminate Trumpian ideology and Putin-Nazi propaganda among an assortment of online leftist magazines that hardly anyone ever actually reads. The aim of these insidious Trumpenleft infiltrators is to sow confusion, chaos, and discord among actual, real, authentic leftists who are going about the serious business of calling Donald Trump a fascist on the Internet twenty-five times a day, verbally abusing Julian Assange, occasionally pulling down oppressive statues, and sharing videos of racist idiots acting like racist idiots in public.

The Trumpenleft is determined to sabotage (or momentarily disrupt) this revolutionary work, mostly by tricking these actual leftists into critically thinking about a host of issues that there is no good reason to critically think about … global capitalism, national sovereignty, immigration, identity politics, corporate censorship, and other issues that there is no conceivable reason to discuss, or debate, or even casually mention, unless you’re some kind of Russia-loving Nazi.

Angela Nagle’s recent piece in American Affairs is a perfect example. Nagle (who is certainly Trumpenleft) puts forth the fascistic proposition that mass migration won’t help the world’s poor, and she claims that it creates “a race to the bottom for workers” in wealthier, developed countries and “a brain drain” in poorer, less developed countries. After deploying a variety of Trumpenleft sophistry (i.e., fact-based analysis, logic, and so on), she goes so far as to openly suggest that “progressives should focus on addressing the systemic exploitation at the root of mass migration rather than retreating to a shallow moralism” … a shallow moralism that reifies the dominant neoliberal ideology that is causing mass migration in the first place.

This is the type of gobbledegook the Trumpenleft use to try to dupe real leftists into putting down their phones for a minute and actually thinking through political issues! Fortunately, no one is falling for it. As any bona fide leftist knows, there is no “mass migration problem.” The whole thing is simply a racist hoax concocted by Putin, Alex Jones, and other Trumpian disinformationists. The only thing real leftists need to know about immigration is that immigrants are good, and Trump, and walls, and borders are bad! All that other fancy gibberish about global capitalism, Milton Friedman, labor markets, and national sovereignty is nothing but fascist propaganda (which needs to be censored, or at least deplatformed, or demonetized, or otherwise suppressed).

But Angela Nagle is just one example. The Trumpenleft is legion, and growing. Its membership includes a handful of prominent (and rather less prominent) fake leftist figures: Glenn Greenwald, who many among the “Resistance” would like to see renditioned and indefinitely detained in some offshore Trumpenleft gulag somewhere; Matt Taibbi, who just published a treasonous article challenging the right of the US government to prosecute publishers as “enemy agents” for publishing material they don’t want published; Julian Assange, who is one such publisher, and who the US has scheduled for public crucifixion just as soon as they can get their hands on him; Aaron Maté of the Real News Network, a notorious Trump-Russia “collusion denialist“; Caitlin Johnstone, an Australian blogger and poet who the Red-Brown Putin-Nazi hunters at CounterPunch have become totally obsessed with; Diana Johnstone, who they also don’t like; and (full disclosure) your humble narrator.

Now, normally, the opinions of some political journalists and rather marginal political writers wouldn’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world, but there’s a war on, so there’s no room for neutrality. As I mentioned in my latest essay, over the course of the next two years, the global capitalist ruling classes need to make an example of Trump, and Assange, and anyone else who has had the gall to fuck with their global empire. Part of how they are going to do this is to further polarize the already extremely polarized ideological spectrum until everyone is forced onto one or the other side of a pro- or anti-Trump equation, or a pro- or anti-populist equation … or a pro- or anti-fascist equation.

As you probably noticed, The Guardian has just launched a special six-week “investigative series” exploring the whole “new populism” phenomenon (which began with a lot of scary photos of Steve Bannon next to the word “populism”). We are going to be hearing a lot about “populism” over the course of the next two years. We are going to be hearing how “populism” is actually not that different from fascism, or at the very least is inherently racist, and anti-Semitic, and xenophobic, and how, basically, anyone who criticizes neoliberal elites or the corporate media is Russia-loving, pro-Trump Nazi.

And this is where this “Trumpenleft” malarkey fits into the ruling classes’ broader campaign to eliminate any kind of critical thinking and force people to mindlessly root for their “team.” See, the problem with us “Trumpenleft” types is not that we support Donald Trump. For the record, none of us really do. Some of us think he us a dangerous demagogue. Others of us think he is a blithering idiot. None of us think he’s Fidel Castro, or that he cares one iota about the working classes, or about anyone other than Donald Trump.

No, the problem is not that we’re on the wrong team; the problem is that we are asking people to question the propaganda of the team that we’re supposed to be on, or at least be rooting for. We are asking people to pay attention to how the global capitalist ruling establishment is going about quashing this “populist” insurgency (of which Brexit and Trump are manifestations, not causes) so they can get back to the business of relentlessly restructuring, privatizing, and debt-enslaving everything, as they’ve been doing since the end of the Cold War. We’re asking folks, not to join “the other team,” but to pay close attention to how they are being manipulated into believing that there are only two “teams,” and that they have to join one, and then mindlessly parrot whatever nonsense their team decides they need to disseminate in order to win a game that is merely a simulation they have conjured up (i.e., the ruling classes have conjured up) in order to inoculate themselves against an actual conflict they cannot win and so must prevent at all costs from ever beginning … which, they are doing a pretty good job of that so far.

In other words, the problem with us Trumpenlefters is, the prospect of defeating a fake Russian Hitler, and restoring neoliberal normality in the USA and the rest of the West, is just not all that terribly inspiring. So, rather than regurgitating the Russia hysteria and the fascism hysteria that is being produced by the global capitalist ruling establishment to gin up support for their counterinsurgency, we are continuing to focus on the capitalist ruling classes, which are actually still running things, globally, and will be running things long after Trump is gone (and the Imminent Threat of Global Fascist Takeover of Everything has disappeared, as the Imminent Threat of Nookular Terrorist Backpack Attack disappeared before it).

Or maybe all that is just a ruse, an attempt on my part to dupe you into going out and buying a MAGA hat and shouting racist abuse at Honduran kids, assuming you can find some in your vicinity. You never know with us Trumpenleft types. Probably the safest thing to do to protect yourself from our insidious treachery is to start your own personal Trumpenleft blacklist, and spread lies about us all over the Internet, or just report us to Twitter, or Facebook, or somebody, whoever you feel are the proper authorities. The main thing is to shut us up, or prophylactically delegitimize us, to keep us from infecting other leftists with our filthy, nonconformist ideas. The last thing we need at a time like this is a bunch of leftists thinking for themselves and questioning official leftist dogma. Who knows what that kind of behavior might lead to?

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N.B. As far as I could gather from my research, the “Trumpenleft” label was coined by Paul Street, a regular columnist at Truthdig and CounterPunch and all-around professional leftist. Like the editors of The New York Times, Street understands the importance of sloppily Germanicizing terms you want to frighten people with, because there’s nothing quite as terrifying as Nazi morphology!

CJ Hopkins
November 26, 2018
Photo: Jordán Francisco/CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

CJ Hopkins Summer 2018 thumbnailDISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not reflect the views and opinions of the Consent Factory, Inc., its staff, or any of its agents, subsidiaries, or assigns. If, for whatever inexplicable reason, you appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to support it, please go to his Patreon page (where you can contribute as little $1 per month), or send your contribution to his PayPal account, so that maybe he’ll stop coming around our offices trying to hit our staff up for money. Alternatively, you could purchase his satirical dystopian novel, Zone 23, which we understand is pretty gosh darn funny, or any of his subversive stage plays, which won some awards in Great Britain and Australia. If you do not appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to write him an abusive email, please feel free to contact him directly.

40 thoughts on “Beware the Trumpenleft!”

  1. Excellent observations on the truly absurd “state of things” in “progressive” Western discourse. One positive I see in the current – “Putin-Nazi-Trumpenleft” – madness is that it has exposed many of those who promote themselves as “left” or “progressive” as in reality simply shills for empire who in fact prefer reactionary censorship policies, character assassination and demonization of dissenting opinions to open honest debate and discussion of issues. Ironically, it is quite clear from such behavior where the true “fascist” sensibilities reside in this matter.

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  2. DJ, I just noticed that you linked to something I wrote about UNZ Review and the assholes that write for it. You have apparently nothing to say politically outside of defending idiots like yourself, Caitlan Johnstone, Diane Johnstone and anybody else who loves Putin and Assad because Nicholas Kristof hates them. Don’t you ever get tired of writing the same bullshit article? No wonder Jeff St. Clair dumped you. Your crime is not Putinism. It is being a crushing bore.

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    1. Thanks for proving just how right CJ is about people like you. The BS you’re pushing is an example. You can’t deal with the truth.

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  4. https://newleftreview.org/II/104/wolfgang-streeck-the-return-of-the-repressed

    Required reading for everyone who wants to understand why much of the working class has defected to the right. Streeck’s analysis of neoliberal capitalism is 100% on the mark.

    Even, or especially, people like Louis Proyect who go around mocking, belittling and generally insulting everyone who doesn’t take their words as self-evident scripture ought to read it and seriously think about the flaws in their own self-righteous world view.

    Go ahead and demolish Streeck’s argument…if you can.

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  7. I was completely with you until you fell out with Counterpunch and started looking for allies.

    Today I had a very gratifying Twitter exchange with someone who agrees with me that Assange, Greenwald, Snowden, The Intercept are very obvious intelligence fronts who arrange for people who leak to them to be hurt. That would include Seth Rich (dead), Michael Hastings (dead), Chelsea Manning (jail), Reality Lee Winner (jail).

    Anyone who is promoted or published by the corporate media has to be very suspect. All of Wikileaks major material was published by NYT and The Guardian, now Julian has struck out on his own to publish a Trump regime bashing article in the Washington Post, joining the official #resistance.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/julian-assange-the-cia-director-is-waging-war-on-truth-tellers-like-wikileaks/2017/04/25/b8aa5cfc-29c7-11e7-a616-d7c8a68c1a66_story.html

    My mind is completely boggled by alternative media Assange fanboys. How do they feel about the fact that the corporate media are falling over each other to defend the rights of Assange, forgetting they recently said he’s literally a Russian agent who put Trump in the White House. However a not at all credible ‘mistake’ appears to suggest Trump wants to prosecute him and now they love him like one of their own (which he is and always has been).

    Pure Orwellian Doublethink from the Huffington Post.

    ‘Julian Assange Made Bid For Russian Visa, Leaked Documents Reveal’

    https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/julian-assange-russian-visa-ap_uk_5b9fcf41e4b046313fbda23b

    ‘Julian Assange Faces Federal Charges. But Let’s Not Forget What We’ve Learned From WikiLeaks’.

    https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/wikileaks-top-stories-julian-assange_us_5bf33e8de4b0d9e7283c4451

    I am not a socialist. I grew up in a town where the Communist Party were regarded as moderates ! We were convinced a revolution was imminent. We did not expect it to be Margaret Thatcher. That’s reality. Thatcher/Blair/Obama are the only revolutions you will ever get.

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    1. Eric McDoo – “I was completely with you until you fell out with Counterpunch and started looking for allies.” – your comment.

      — uhmm, errrrh, so “regime change” shilling Counterpunch is your litmus test of credibility?! Wow! You simply must start following “Democracy Now” in that case. Actually there are plenty more where they come from. If fact here are all too many “regime change leftists” it is very sad to report.

      Counterpunch has now dumped anti-imperalist stalwarts Andre Vltcheck and Diana Johnstone, in addition to C.J. while continuing to promote the “Russiagate” and regime change nonsense of MSM through “writers” like Louis Proyect and Melvin Goodman among others. Your critical thinking faculties obviously work in some rather mysterious ways from what I can determine. Good luck with that.

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      1. No, sorry I wasn’t clearer. I generally agree about Counterpunch (who are now predominantly petit bourgeois). I don’t know how it degenerated so quickly. Some tectonic plate must have shifted.

        My problem is rather with CJ’s Assange fanboy allies like Caitlin Johnson, Diana Johnstone, Taibbi etc. Even OffGuardian who I have generally been supportive of. I don’t think Caitlin is even worth discussing now that she’s Jimmy Dore’s new friend. She got herself a lot of grief recently over dissing all conspiracy theories. Even from the redoubtable Ian56 who was trying to hide his conspiracy beliefs from the world and lost his temper.

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        1. Stevehayes13 – Let’s see, you deplore those folks I admire most – Caitlin Johnstone, Diana Johnstone, Jimmy Dore, OffGuardian and C.J., but you think of yourself as “progressive” no doubt? But then you like Counterpunch and therefore don’t like C.J., but then again you also don’t like Counterpunch – so does that mean you now like C.J. again? Geeze, this is so confusing. You’d make a great troll buddy. Just saying.

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  8. Taibbi is just another horrible Hunter S. Thompson wannabe. Like Taibbi, Thomson was only interested in having a good time, behaving very badly, making famous buddies, ignoring reality and kicking the **** of the liberal corporate punchbag du jour (Richard Nixon).

    Taibbi hit the street$ on January 17 2017 (!!!) with his ‘Insane Clown President’ heavily quoting Thompson’s hatred of Nixon in an interview with Amy Goodman. You need to be fast to beat this little hustler. His father was an NBC TV reporter.

    Thomson missed the biggest story in modern American history, COINTELPRO and the fact that Chomsky called Nixon ‘the Last Liberal President’.Too busy being a woman abusing, gun toting psychopath. Thomson and Taibbi are a total waste of f* time.

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    1. The real reason Thompson was a waste of space is that his brain was completely addled with every mind altering substance known to man. If you like drugs, stick to art, they’re a perfect match but pretty useless for dealing with politics/reality. They gave you a superior vantage point but you can’t see the details and you will always be wrong.

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  9. “It is a new Europe. It has the potential for a new direction. We are part of it, in at the ground floor. It’s where we should have always been. Now we’re there, we should stay there.” ~ Tony Blair

    “until the complete victory of communism brings about the total disappearance of the state, including the
    democratic state.” ~Lenin

    “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it
    was impossible to say which was which.” ~Orwell

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  11. The extent to which the neoliberal globalists accuse anyone who is critical of their narratives of being a propagandist is truly ironic. One would think these people have never heard of projection. Anonymous has recently released documents from Integrity Initiative, a United Kingdom government project, which works to meddle in the politics of other countries and foster hatred of Russia. I suspect the neoliberals are so reckless and greedy and sociopathic that they will provoke World War Three and that will be the war to end all wars, as their will be no more of our species left to bicker and quarrel and fight.

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  12. James Corbett on why the alternative media back in 2010 were extremely sceptical about Wikileaks.

    It’s an intelligence thing. It has nothing to do with socialism or being cool.

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  13. So Luke Harding is accusing Assange of being a Manafort/Trump/ collaborator while admitting that Trump wants to arrest Assange (at the end of the article). Meanwhile Julian is writing anti Trump articles in the Washington (CIA) Post. What a useful, multifaceted asset he is.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/27/manafort-held-secret-talks-with-assange-in-ecuadorian-embassy

    The double plus redoubtable Ian56 told me (privately) he knew Assange/Snowden/Greenwald were frauds but he wanted to wake people up. He even appeared on a live broadcast in which he was Assange’s fanboy in chief !! This week he lost the plot with Caitlin Johnstone and revealed his true conspiracy theory beliefs.

    I don’t want to wake people up or fight the evil ones. I just want to know the truth (and share it with those of a similar mind).

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  14. Here is the mega redoubtable Ian56 giving Glenn Greenwald a jolly good and deserved kicking for saying what a grand newspaper the Guardian (normally) is.

    Here is my contribution to that.

    This is a great pamphlet charting the Guardian’s unsavoury history right back to the start. It turns out that it was a vile, lying rag back in the 1990s when I was an enthusiastic reader. It hasn’t changed. I’m just paying more attention now.

    “50,000 editions of the imperialist, warmongering, hate-filled Guardian newspaper by Murray Mcdonald.

    http://neo-jacobins.blogspot.com/2007/09/neo-jacobin-special-against-guardian.html

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  15. Jimmy Dore and ilk are good examples of Trumpenleftists:

    Anyone knows by now that those who didn’t vote for Hillary want to take away women’s suffrage.

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  31. Dear CJ,

    I have always been: “I don’t support Trump, and I support Killary Klingon even less”. I list to port. Do a qualify for a “TrumpenLeft Traitor” pin and t-shirt?

    I see that Louis Proyect has weighed in above. Proyect is the prototypical Left Boot of NATO, the standard against which all other Left Boots are measured. His affectionate nickname is “Proyectile Vomiting”.

    Finally, I see that Eric Draitser’s latest smear-piece abortion has just been published on Counterpunch and has garnered an impressively small number of retweets/likes on Twitter. Read the entertaining reviews.

    I particularly liked this one (by @AndrewMoynihan2): https://twitter.com/AndrewMoynihan2/status/1109109479675707394

    (I will email you an address to send my TrumpenLeft Traitor paraphernalia to.)

    Best regards,

    Daniel Wirt

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