Have been enjoying C.J. Hopkins' writing, in particular, this essay ridiculing a Counterpunch-originated coinage, "Trumpenleft." (A variation on the insult that if you don't care for the Clintons and think the Russiagate narrative is a crock you must be "for" Trump.) Hopkins got his start at Counterpunch but was cold-shouldered a few months ago for not being a pure enough leftist, apparently. With Alexander Cockburn dead it's been disappointing to see Counterpunch becoming more doctrinaire, right up to embracing the Clintons' blame-Russia talking points. As Hopkins has noted, you can't be a "red" and also a fascist, but that's the notion the Democratic party is selling us.
Yesterday Hopkins described the process by established media of fitting France's yellow vest protests into the red-brown terror axis:
The English-language corporate media, after doing their best not to cover these protests (and, instead, to keep the American and British publics focused on imaginary Russians), have been forced to now begin the delicate process of delegitimizing the gilets jaunes without infuriating the the entire population of France and inciting the British and American proletariats to go out and start setting cars on fire. They got off to a bit of an awkward start.
For example, this piece by Angelique Chrisafis, The Guardian‘s Paris Bureau Chief, and her Twitter feed from the protests last Saturday. Somehow (probably a cock-up at headquarters), The Guardian honchos allowed Chrisafis to do some actual propaganda-free reporting (and some interviews with actual protesters) before they caught themselves and replaced her with Kim Willsher, who resumed The Guardian‘s usual neoliberal establishment-friendly narrative, which, in this case, entailed dividing the protesters into “real” gilets jaunes and “fake” gilet jaunes, and referring to the latter fictional group as “thuggish, extremist political agitators.”
By Sunday, the corporate media were insinuating that diabolical Russian Facebook bots had brainwashed the French into running amok, because who else could possibly be responsible? Certainly not the French people themselves!