Calling Out the Misleaders of the Phony ‘Progressives’ and the Fake U.S. ‘Left’

Published in Issue 505 of The Black Commentator on February 21, 2013
Republished in freedom4um.com on February 21, 2013
Republished in thepeoplesvoice.org on March 1, 2013

By Larry Pinkney

“It is both sad and simultaneously horribly fascinating to observe so many euphorically pinning their hopes and dreams on Barack Obama, a chameleon who speaks liberally of ‘change’ but who is, himself, beholden to the very same blood-sucking corporate vampires (including Lockheed and others) who are ravaging the people of America, and the entire planet…Many Black Americans and our Brown and Red sisters and brothers will, I fear, come to be deeply disappointed in Barack Obama, once he demonstrates who he really is. There will be no peace or justice under an Obama presidency. Even the majority of White Americans, with the exception of the corporate liberals and conservatives, may yet come to realize that Obama’s interests are corporate interests; they are not the needs and interests of everyday people, who represent the overwhelming majority of this nation and the world.”

–Article entitled, Barack Obama and the Euphoria of Madness, by Larry Pinkney, The Black Commentator – February 7, 2008 – Issue 263

It is now February 2013, and Barack Obama has repeatedly demonstrated that he is the draconian ‘Kill List,’ drone missile, “war criminal” [reference http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/02/15-4] president of the United States. For these past years there has been, and continues to be, “no peace or justice under [the] Obama presidency.” The misleaders of the everyday people knew full well, or should have known, back in the years 2007 and 2008 that Barack Obama represented the systemic interests of the U.S. corporate/military power elite – not those of everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people. There was a wealth of information available (even in 2007 and 2008) that showed that Barack Obama was substantively no different from his predecessors in the White House – but the partisan ‘progressive’ and ‘leftist’ misleaders of the people chose to ignore it. Indeed, Barack Obama on his third day in office as U.S. president (in his first term), began slamming down predator drone missiles upon the people of Pakistan. Now, in 2013, Obama’s blood-baths and systemic terror have only grown and intensified.

Moreover, these misleaders chose to ignore common sense, which indicated in 2007 and 2008 that (then aspiring U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama) would never have received the overwhelming support that he did from the U.S. corporate-stream media if he was not already a well-honed, Trojan Horse tool on behalf of the corporate/military elite of this political system. Furthermore, a significant portion of the so-called ‘alternative’ media also played an insidious role in bringing the U.S. Constitution-destroying, drone missile loving, war mongering, Barack Obama to political power in this nation.

Today, without bothering to acknowledge and fully explain their previous support for Barack Obama, and in a crass attempt to re-invent themselves and thereby maintain their perceived positions as ‘progressive’ spokespersons (who are in fact veiled misleaders); there are those who now (in 2013) act as if they were never supporters of Obama – this war mongering, NDAA signing, ‘Kill List,’ drone missile U. S. president. In so doing, these fake leftists and phony ‘progressives’ should not be accorded the trust of the everyday people whom they have so opportunistically misled. They have been egregiously complicit in causing enormous harm and untold misery upon ordinary people of all colors in this nation and throughout Mother Earth. They must be exposed and held accountable.

Everyday ordinary Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people today remain the victims of corporate hegemony, deepening economic austerity, social injustice, and perpetual U.S. wars. Just as importantly however, knee-jerk ‘liberals,’ many so-called ‘progressives,’ and much of the ‘Left’ in this nation brazenly continue to show their hypocrisy and utter lack of principles as they support the unjust, amoral, and indefensible policies of Barack Obama at home and abroad. In a twist of morbid irony, some of these very same persons justifiably demand, and still demand, the prosecution of the war mongering Bush/Cheney regime of approximately five years ago. Yet, they virtually ignore the fact that there is a current war criminal in the White House in the person of Barack Obama, who has extended and expanded the reprehensible, despicable, and bloody policies of the previous Bush/Cheney regime. These persons are demonstrating that they are partisan political hypocrites and covert systemic gatekeepers, and they must be exposed and held accountable.

In a detailed February 11, 2013, article entitled, DOJ Kill List Memo Forces Many Dems Out of the Closet as Overtly Unprincipled Hacks, by columnist and former constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald, [reference http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/02/11-5] Mr. Greenwald writes, in relevant part,

“That many Democratic partisans and fervent Obama admirers are vapid unprincipled hacks willing to justify anything and everything when embraced by Obama – including exactly that which they pretended to oppose under George W. Bush – has also been clear for many years…In May, 2009, a once fervent Obama supporter, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, wrote a column warning that Obama was embracing many of the worst Bush/Cheney abuses and felt compelled – in the very first sentence – to explain what should be self-evident: “Policies that were wrong under George W. Bush are no less wrong [my emphasis] because Barack Obama is in the White House.” The same month, former Bush DOJ official Jack Goldsmith – who provided the legal authorization for the illegal Bush NSA warrantless eavesdropping program – went to the New Republic to celebrate that Obama was not only continuing the core Bush/Cheney approach to terrorism, but even better (from his perspective), was strengthening those policies far beyond [my emphasis] what Bush could achieve by transforming Democrats from opponents of these policies into supporters…A whole slew of policies that would have triggered the shrillest of progressive condemnations under Bush – waging war after Congress votes against authorizing it, the unprecedented persecution and even torturing of whistleblowers, literally re-writing FOIA to conceal evidence of torture, codifying indefinite detention on U.S. soil – are justified or, at best, ignored…In other words Obama has embraced and expanded [my emphasis] the core premises of the Bush/Cheney global war on terror that Democrats so vehemently claimed to find offensive, radical, a “shredding of the Constitution.” And they are now supportive for one reason and one reason only: It’s a Democratic president whom they trust – Barack Obama specifically doing it – rather than a Republican president whom they distrust. That is the very definition of vapid, unprincipled partisan hackdom, and it matters for several reasons…”

Be not misled. Neither the Democrat or Republican party’s leadership have the interests and needs of the struggling everyday people of this nation and world at heart. Moreover, many of those who claim to be so-called progressives and/or leftists are, in fact, the stealthy fifth column of the Democratic party. Furthermore, the term ‘liberal’ has become substantively, both hollow and meaningless, in the context of U.S. politics.

It is time to recognize, expose, and call out the misleaders of the so called ‘progressives’ and much of the ‘Left’ for the de facto systemic gatekeepers that they actually are. It is time to create a new model: One of systemic change, that genuinely serves the needs, human rights, and aspirations of everyday ordinary people! Nothing less will do. Don’t get fooled again!

Each one, reach one. Each one, teach one. Onward, then, my sisters and brothers. Onward!

Larry Pinkney is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities, Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, and more recently on the nationally syndicated Alex Jones Show. Pinkney is a former university instructor of political science and international relations, and his writings have been published in various places, including The Boston Globe, San Francisco BayView newspaper, Black Commentator, Intrepid Report, Global Research (Canada), LINKE ZEITUNG (Germany), 107 Cowgate (Ireland and Scotland), and Mayihlome News (Azania/South Africa). He is in the archives of Dr. Huey P. Newton (Stanford University, CA), cofounder of the Black Panther Party. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book.)