The people will prevail - with or without the left!

A timely condemnation of the way a corrupted “left” is helping to impose the new global dictatorship has been issued by veteran US anarchist Keith McHenry.

He warns: “This is a left that has abandoned class struggle and instead embraces the master’s hyped-up divide-and-conquer culture wars.

“Many of my left friends have become enforcers of the program to geofence ourselves into the billionaire class’s digital prison”.

Keith, co-founder of the worldwide Food Not Bombs network in 1980, was spurred to speak out by a nasty and dishonest smear-attack against a local group with which he works in California.

As they state on their website, Brave and Free Santa Cruz aim to “stand together for our freedoms” and “build a large people’s movement in Santa Cruz County to fight the World Economic Forum’s ‘Great Reset'”.

They add: “We strive to create a community that is based on loving cooperation and service to each other, so that we may all thrive in a world that we are proud to pass on to future generations”.

The group was set up by two local women, Diane D. Jones, a retired carpenter, and Kathleen Lynch, a social worker who has dedicated her life to feeding the homeless and opposing war, notably with Peace Brigades International.

Brave and Free Santa Cruz came to the attention of a certain Joy Schendledecker (pictured), a supposedly left-wing local figure who ran unsuccessfully for mayor last year and is a “community organizer”, plus a member of the Working Families Party and Democratic Socialists of America.

Reportedly believing in “more transparency, more connection to local government and community-driven and community-led participatory processes”, you might have thought she would sympathise with Brave and Free Santa Cruz’s people-first politics.

But no, not a bit of it! Instead, she attacked them in terms that will be familiar to all those daring to stand up to the criminocracy, anywhere in the world.

Almost as if copying phrases from a smear-mongering handbook, she warned of “hate-fuelled conspiracy theories that harm or kill people”.

As well as being guilty of having an “anti-vaxx stance”, she claimed that Brave and Free Santa Cruz “employ dangerous tropes and misinformation, while partnering with people and organizations that are funded by the far-right”.

Despite finding no evidence of any of this, she insisted that there was some kind of invisible sub-text which meant their beliefs were, in fact, “inseparable from antisemitic, racist, anti-queer, trans-phobic, xenophobic, anti-abortion, and decidedly reactionary movements, ideas, and individuals”.

Rolling out the whole toxic fact-checking narrative, she complained that “the Great Reset conspiracy theory employs anti-semitic tropes and dog-whistles” and that “the 15-Minute City conspiracy theory… invokes the bogeymen of government surveillance, confinement, control, and scarcity”.

She went on: “We must make our community safe for ourselves and all of our diversities. If a rally or meeting is unsafe for any of us, then it’s not okay to keep going; or to allow those associated with hate to infiltrate our events”.

Keith (pictured), in his powerful response to these ridiculous smears, remarks: “One of the most terrifying features cultivated by those in power is how close-minded people who support their agenda have become”.

He rightly identifies Schendledecker’s stance as being part of a general collapse of authentic left-wing principles, particularly since the Covid moment.

He points out: “Before 2020, those of us on the far left lived by a slogan ‘Question Authority’. We stood against censorship, militarism, big Pharma, mass surveillance and CIA coups.

“We supported bodily autonomy, labor rights, the protection of the environment, and defended our civil liberties.

“That seems to no longer be the case for many of our colleagues, who see themselves as the ‘educated class’ and believe that the working class are ignorant, antisemitic, homophobic, racist rednecks”.

The contemporary fake-left’s fanatical defence of the globalist agenda, and venomous hatred of those who oppose that system, has particularly perturbed Keith.

He writes: “The left I have been a part of has a long history of organizing against the globalization of the economy.

“In 1992 I joined tens of thousands of labor, environmental and human rights activists in Bonn, West Germany, to protest the creation of the Euro and the European Union.

“Every year the left gathers in Davos, Switzerland, to denounce the exploitative policies of the World Economic Forum.

“In 1997, I spent two months traveling North America on the UnFree Trade Tour, speaking out against the World Trade Organization’s framework of corporate consolidation.

“We formed the Direct Action Network, disrupting the WTO’s Seattle summit in November 1999 and took our protest against the WTO to Cancún and Genoa.

“I worked with anti-war activist Ronnie Cummings and food sovereignty activist Vandana Shiva on the Millions Against Monsanto Campaign in an effort to stop the patenting of seeds.

“Private ownership of life is one key element of the trade agreements that we have been fighting against.

“So, when the institutions that those of us had spent decades protesting against started to implement what they called Build Back Better, Fourth Industrial Revolution, and ‘Great Reset’, I knew I had to push back”.

The most telling phrase in Schendledecker’s attack on Brave and Free Santa Cruz was, for me, her claim that: “They are linked to a world-wide movement that can be incredibly dangerous”.

Dangerous to whom, one might ask!

Her comment reminds me of the “left-wing” Montreal Counter Information site’s warning of “a transnational echo chamber of conspiracists who have been embracing increasingly reactionary, transphobic, and antisemitic ideas”.

Behind all the insults, they mean us, they mean our resistance to the criminocracy!

They are worried that we are gaining ground and that, for all their money and control, people power could yet thwart their vile plans for global digital slavery!

Let’s, together and everywhere, make their fears come true!

[Audio version]

My 2022 interview with Keith McHenry can be found here.