Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Then They Came for the Globalists

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Friday, March 23, 2018

Then They Came for the Globalists

Click here to access article by CJ Hopkins from CounterPunch.

Hopkins scores a bullseye with this satire on the neoconservative (transnational) section of the ruling capitalist class which have been on a rampage against the neo-nationalist capitalists and people like Hopkins who use words such as "globalist". Such people are "Nazis" and their worst crime of all was duping ordinary Americans to reject their candidate, Hillary Clinton, in 2016. Hopkins explains what this is all about.

Seriously, though, all satire aside, this stigmatization of terms like “globalist,” “globalism,” and “global capitalism” is a key component of The War on Dissent which the global capitalist ruling classes have been waging against a broad assortment of insurgent elements for the last eighteen months. It isn’t just a question of delegitimizing dissidents by smearing them as anti-Semites, Russian agents, and conspiracy theorists. The goal is also to conceal the essential nature of the conflict itself.

The neoconservative solution?

So what the global capitalist ruling classes have to do is … well, they have to lie. They have to disseminate a different narrative, a narrative that has nothing to do with the hegemony of global capitalism, the dissolution of national sovereignty, and the privatization of virtually everything. Because people aren’t total morons, this narrative needs to bear some resemblance to the actual conflict taking place. So, all right, a little rebranding is in order. Global neoliberalism becomes “Western democracy,” neo-nationalism becomes “Nazism,” and Vladimir Putin becomes Adolf Hitler.

Presto! Now things are nice and simple!

Unfortunately, this contest between neo-national capitalists and transnational capitalists (neoliberalism) is distracting attention from the anti-social nature of capitalism itself. Sooner or later capitalists were going to turn into transnational capitalists simply because the latter find national boundaries too restrictive, that is, they are no longer able satisfy their addictions to wealth and power within national boundaries. (Hint: The only real solution is to abolish the addictive system of capitalism so that ordinary people can create systems that guarantee equality, thereby preventing this drug-addicted ruling class from putting an end to all of us.)