Supercharged McCarthyism seeks to divide left
Finally something stupider than: “Medicare for All is racist.” Now there’s: “the left is fascist, actually.”
We all knew it was coming. Not satisfied with engineering the defeat of both Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaigns, it was inevitable that Democratic Party elites would eventually try to divide his supporters and delegitimize his ideas.
It wouldn’t be easy, though. First, the generic “McCarthyite red scare” formula is difficult to sell to a populace that now embraces socialism. Second, where do you find left-adjacent political operatives so lacking in character that they’ll engage in a baseless smear campaign against friends and colleagues?
Well, it appears the smear they’re going with is that a mysterious “red-brown” alliance seeks to paint the left as fascist, actually. And it turns out that finding unprincipled actors who cosplay as leftists is pretty easy, too.
This super-charged new McCarthyism is the foundation of a recent article in The Daily Beast called “These ‘Dirtbag Left’ Stars Are Flirting With The Far Right,” penned by Alexander Reid Ross who teased the 4500-word opinion piece on an episode of The Nomiki Konst Show, three weeks prior to publication.
A resident of Portland Oregon, Ross refers to himself as an “anarcho-MSNBC-ist” and claims his left-wing bona fides include “having been part of the left opposing bilateral free trade agreements.”
In the editorial Ross says that leftists are legitimizing the extreme right wing through an “ecosystem that draws left and right together.” He says that left media is motivated by profit to polarize working Americans against elites—as if wealth inequality and a disappearing middle class wasn’t doing a bang-up job of that already; and, as if left audiences reward leftists for embracing the right wing.
Then the op-ed was quickly and roundly ridiculed on social media and Ross didn’t take it well, as he told a reporter at The Daily Dot that those who disagree with his opinion “demonstrate the paranoid style of those who have...difficulty coping with journalism.” In the same breath said that efforts to malign his editorial constitute an “unfounded conspiracy theory” to discredit him “and smear the groups” he works with.
With regard to ‘smearing the groups’ he works with, Ross is a fellow at the Network Contagion Research Institute which is a think tank funded by Charles Koch and collaborates with ex-CIA agents, DHS officials, and a GOP congressman who is moonlights as a “Bigfoot scholar.” This organization is doing a fine job of casting doubt upon itself.
The “red-brown” theory isn’t new. Ross debuted the idea four years ago on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) Hatewatch blog, where he proposed that progressive and anti-war activists are “locked in a symbiotic relationship with Steve Bannon and the Kremlin.” In that article he also claimed Nation Magazine publisher Katrina Vanden Heuvel and her husband, the noted Russian scholar Steven F. Cohen were secret reactionaries, collaborating with the Russian government. He even suggested that bestselling author and editor of The Grayzone Max Blumenthal was implicated in a neo-nazi spree killing in 2014 outside of a Jewish community center.
SPLC retracted the article and wrote an apology to those smeared in it, saying that SPLC disclaims “any intention to suggest that any of them are white supremacists, fascists, and/or anti-Semites, that they hold such views, or that they are engaged in a conspiracy with the Russian government to promote such views or otherwise.”
This does not appear to be the track record of a leftist or an anarchist. It’s what you’d expect from a political operative who is occasionally trotted out to defame those who threaten elites and their institutions. For someone who markets himself as opposing the extreme right, Ross’s track record shows that he’s mostly interested in silencing the left.
Contempt for the left is not new, but it seems to be fashionable recently. The new book Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency, reveals how President Joe Biden harbors antipathy for the left, and that his animus is fueled by the material interests of the donor class. In this sequel to 2016’s Shattered, the authors say that Biden and other establishment Democrats saw the left “as an obstacle to reclaiming power and a scary bunch who, if given enough authority, would take too much from the haves, and give too much to the have-nots.”
Apparently people being able to see a doctor during a global pandemic would be “giving too much to the have-nots.”
Since malice for the left goes to the top of the Democratic Party and all the way to the Oval Office, there is massive incentive for faux-left operatives with dodgy histories to reconnoiter and volunteer for a project to harass and divide progressives. This narrative goes far beyond the usual condemnation of outsider activism as déclassé. Ross and Konst are indeed swinging for the fences on behalf of their patrons by claiming the left has forged an alliance with fascists who are in league with factions of the Russian government.
Given the establishment’s implicit and stated hostility to the “have-nots,” and their conspicuous attempts to inflict damage on the left, it behooves us to take a closer look at these players, and their new project.
FORCE THE VOTE THREATENED PEOPLE IN HIGH PLACES
These dynamics shine a different light on the smear campaign that raged on social media following a move to force a vote on Medicare For All.
The initial “Force The Vote” effort was led by a group that encouraged progressive members of Congress to withhold their votes for Nancy Pelosi’s election to Speaker of The House in exchange for putting Medicare For All to a floor vote. Those supporting the tactic included political activists and media practitioners such as Briahna Joy Gray, Lee Camp, Savage Joy, Jimmy Dore, and the founder of Movement For A People’s Party, Nick Brana.
The idea to force the vote was introduced by self-described “pothead comedian” Jimmy Dore when he released a video issuing the challenge on November 27, 2020 but it didn’t take off until LA Chargers running back Justin Jackson reached out to AOC personally on December 11. In that Twitter exchange Jackson said The Squad will be “revealing themselves” if they don’t force a floor vote on Medicare For All because “power concedes nothing without a demand.”
Two weeks later Briahna Joy Gray made the definitive argument to force the floor vote when Current Affairs Magazine published “The Case For Forcing A Floor Vote On Medicare For All.” In her article Gray writes, “A floor vote and the debate that comes with it could spark a referendum on our failing health care system at a moment when no other issue takes credible priority.” She continues, “Progressives want to force a vote now precisely because they believe the chance they can secure the votes for Medicare for All in the near future is remote.”
How did this seemingly benign Twitter discourse ignite weeks of harassment that chased many off of social media and turned friends against each other? And why was so much scrutiny applied to a “pothead comedian” when the effort was clearly championed by many others in addition to Jimmy Dore?
The answer is complicated but it makes complete sense.
The Daily Beast article, the social media harassment, and the effort to marginalize the left’s ‘outsider tactics’ all felt related in content and tone. They were aimed at delegitimizing the wishes of the rank-and-file while endorsing and reinforcing elites.
Many of the voices behind the anti force-the-vote effort also shared career, geography, and class status. They are political consultants and talking heads who inhabit cocktail circuits unfamiliar to American voters who are not fellows at think tanks and don’t fraternize with the media class in New York and Washington.
The anti force-the-vote effort smelled like a top-down project in which Democratic Party elites, threatened by the enthusiasm to force a vote on Medicare For All, determined they must protect the “haves against the have-nots.” Their key dogma was that activists would be told when and how to push a particular agenda—and they’d then do so with approved talking points.
The smear campaign against the left happened concurrently with the tail-end of a secret, well funded operation led by a coalition of “business titans,” the Chamber of Commerce, and labor unions. Time Magazine reported this campaign had initially been launched in late 2019 (during the Democratic Presidential Primary) and that it presumably concluded when Joe Biden was inaugurated. It’s not clear if this group was involved in the smear campaign against Force The Vote, but the capacity was certainly available to be loaned out if they’d been so inclined.
WHO IS NOMIKI KONST & WHY DID SHE PLATFORM ROSS?
Part of the reason for the immediate ridicule of Ross and his story was that it was sloppy and riddled with factual errors. He referred to Matt Christman of Chapo Trap House as “Matt Chrismas,” and erroneously claimed that Cum Town host Nick Mullen had dropped a number of n-words on the Bill Maher show (Mullen never appeared on Maher’s show).
But given Ross’ sordid history it’s worth asking why The Daily Beast provided a platform for him in the first place. Many have pointed to the fact that Chelsea Clinton sits on the board of The Daily Beast; and that the publication’s editor-in-chief, Noah Shachtman, is a former Clinton operative. Given this information, one might view The Daily Beast as having a political agenda.
But what about Nomiki Konst? Why did she tease this story a full three weeks before it dropped? Why is she platforming someone whose project is obviously to divide the left?
Many on the left remember Konst from her work on the DNC’s Unity Commission, and view her as an ally. But a quick refresher of her history suggests that there is much more to the story. Maybe Konst isn’t as progressive as many thought she was. Maybe she embellished her history. Maybe, if we knew who Nomiki Konst really is, some of this would make more sense. Konst has run for public office more than once, and so there has been a lot of scrutiny of her background and history.
When running for New York City Public Advocate, Konst was described by Politico as having “an uncanny ability to ingratiate herself with influential people,” and a “Zelig-like ability to appear around insurgent Democratic primary candidates.” When Politico contacted her for routine fact-checking prior to publication, Konst declined to answer 19 fact-checking questions such as whether she graduated college, or if an organization she founded ever registered as a non-profit. Politico was also unable to verify if Konst held a position on the board for the Los Angeles chapter of New Leaders Council (NLC, which shares a founder with the DLC), or if she held job title, West Coast Managing Director of Partnerships with the Truman Project (which had a vendor relationship with NLC as late as 2015). Incidentally, Pete Buttigieg also boasted a relationship with the Truman National Security Project, whose mission is to create a new “generation of hawkish Democrats.”
Alternatively, Politico was able to identify a Flickr account for an organization called Alliance Hollywood which seems to be associated with Konst. It was said that the group’s mission was to coach celebrities in public speaking for political advocacy, and that seems to be corroborated on the Alliance Hollywood Flickr account which features photos of Markos Moulitsas, founder of Daily Kos, and John Amato, founder of Crooks and Liars participating in sparsely attended events.
Konst finished in a dismal 11th place out of the 17-person race, but this wouldn’t be the worst outcome of the Public Advocate campaign because her compliance officer would soon accuse Konst as the candidate, her campaign entity (Friends of Nomiki Konst), and her treasurer of “massive fraud.” According to the complaint filed with the city’s campaign finance authorities, after receiving $500,00 in 8-to-1 matching funds, Konst conveyed $114,918 to a “sometimes boyfriend” who apparently served as an off-the-books, de facto campaign manager. The compliance officer alleged that the billed-for work appears to have never have happened, and raised eyebrows for billing this large amount in one lump sum. She denied any wrongdoing in the fraud allegation which was filed after the election.
Konst responded to the official complaint by issuing a statement through her lawyer alleging that her compliance officer was a “sexual predator” who had a “fatal attraction” for her, saying in part, “the campaign aide’s irrational behaviors have been delusional and physically threatening and we have notified the appropriate authorities and may pursue appropriate legal action if necessary.”
As regards Konst’s actual political ideology, Dan Cohen reports that her foreign policy leanings don’t appear to align with progressive doctrine, to say the least. Konst frequently appeared on Fox News to promote the wars in Syria and Iraq. She also spent time training the Islamist opposition in Libya “after the NATO intervention that deposed Mohammad Gaddafi” by jihadist proxies who murdered him in the streets.
Lest there be any confusion, Konst’s appearances on Fox News were not to argue progressive principles, as is often stated to contrast her work with other progressives who appear on the network. Instead, she appeared on Fox News to promote a NATO mission that aligned with Fox’s foreign policy views and was supported by noted neoconservatives such as Bill Kristol, John McCain, and Joe Lieberman.
While Alexander Reid Ross is at least fairly honest in his equivocal identification as a leftist, it’s fair to conclude that Nomiki Konst has cultivated a veneer of leftism that obscures her right-leaning, neoconservative affiliations and outlook.
But if she were more transparent, then she might not have such a large platform from which to gaslight the left.
MECHANICS OF A SMEAR CAMPAIGN
When Ross’s Daily Beast article dropped on March 8, the reaction on social media was overwhelmingly dismissive, but there is no denying the fact that it benefitted from buzz generated by weeks of anti force-the-vote discourse. Hundreds of messages, nearly identical in tone, flooded left Twitter in the weeks leading up to Ross’s ‘fascist footsie’ piece.
This could all be organic social media engagement, or is could be an organized smear campaign. One way to tell the difference is to look under the hood and see how it’s constructed. Does the anatomy of this campaign appear to be organic, or does it appear to be a political operation?
First, what does a smear that is a political operation look like?
Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, which has been used by political factions across the ideological spectrum for more than 50 years, provides a succinct description of a smear campaign:
pick a target;
freeze the target through ridicule;
personalize the fight, and finally;
alienate the target through polarization.
Alinsky describes a good target as one that can be unambiguously vilified. Any doubt about the smear-worthiness of a target could collapse the whole offensive. The campaign then aims to pin the target down (or freeze it) by hanging something awful around its neck. It’s advantageous if something distasteful can be singularly associated with the target. Have they broken the law? Are they accused of domestic violence? The fight is personalized when aspects of the villain’s personal life are brought forward for ridicule by individuals in the rank-and-file of the opposition.
In this particular smear campaign around force the vote, the target or villain is ‘leftists participating in outsider tactics’ but Jimmy Dore was villainized as a proxy for rank-and-file leftists, because it’s untoward to target regular people as Hillary Clinton found out when she labeled Trump voters as “deplorables.” Jimmy Dore was a good target to villainize because other force-the-vote advocates like Brihna Joy Gray pose the problem of being universally liked, while Dore cultivates a contrarian persona.
Social media offers is the perfect stage to personalize a smear because messaging is shared by presumably personal accounts. If a trusted primary participant shares a smear out to their followers, a number of their followers (second-level participants) will pile-on to stoke the conflict. Most second or third level participants on social media don’t know they’re being used. The primary-level participants, on the other hand, generally know what they’re doing because they’re necessarily in the forefront creating conflict.
RISKY BUSINESS
Smear campaigns sometimes backfire. When that happens, those creating conflict run the risk of becoming villains themselves. Experienced political activists are usually careful with negative influence campaigning because they risk of losing followers, volunteers, and friends. Entire accounts can be lost when Twitter suspends accounts for targeted harassment. That’s one reason why social media A-listers don’t usually participate in smear campaigns. More often it’s B-listers engaging D-listers to do the dirty work.
For non-celebrities, achieving A-list and B-list status on social media usually requires careful cultivation of one’s brand. So, it’s understandable that those with higher social media status would steer clear of smearing others because aside from possibly losing one’s account, there is the risk of damaging one’s brand. Having high social status affords one the ability to make friends and influence people which is difficult to do when an account has a reputation for smearing allies.
Given all these risks, why would anyone participate in smears? One reason is ‘social mobility.’ Social media D-listers might want to move up the hierarchy and become social media B-listers. How does one move quickly from D-list to B-list? According to this model, accuse competitors, colleagues and friends ofbeing secret fascists engaged in a conspiracy with the Russian government.
Some will know this is all theater. Others are unwitting participants, or they might not care either way, or they even might not be real people at all—but rather alts or sock puppets run by an organic user or even an industrial-sized troll farm.
‘SYNCRETIC NETWORKS’ ARE GUILT BY ASSOCIATION
Alexander Reid Ross centered his entire hypothesis on the fallacy of guilt by association. When Ross appeared on The Nomiki Konst Show he promoted his theory that leftists “are essentially working with fascists” through the transitive property of “syncretic networks.” The term syncretic, as he uses it, is intentionally obtuse because if he said these are “totally different things that I imagine are connected” few would listen.
Syncretism is a real thing, but it refers to phenomena such as Christians absorbing pagan high holidays and giving them new names. It does not mean that unaffiliated actors, such as leftists and fascists, automatically relate to each other because both share very general characteristics such as gathering on social media, or having an international history.
The American left and alt-right fascist groups simply don’t overlap in any substantive (or even metaphoric) way. What Ross would like everyone to believe is that Jimmy Dore interviewing a “proud boy” on his show is evidence of shared ideology, methods and nomenclature. Those matters of fact simply aren’t there. Instead, Dore brought someone on the show in an albeit trite “man bites dog” manner because the subject supposedly doesn’t hew to the usual, expected alt-right narrative.
By this measure any outlet that published any material on the alt-right could be viewed as “syncretically” fascist itself.
It’s notable too that Dore was more probing of the proud boy on his show than Konst was of Ross on her show.
Were she interested in journalism she might have pressed Ross to clearly unpack his theory of syncretism. Her audience deserved to know if Ross was presenting a valid theory, and she could have cleared that up by asking questions like: When did the alt-right voice support for left policy such as Medicare for All? What evidence is there that the American Left has adopted the alt-right project for a white ethnostate? Has either group adopted the other group’s ideology, methods, or nomenclature?
The only overlap between the left and the alt-right seems to be only in Ross’s imagination.
Throughout the interview Konst seemed more of a collaborator with Ross, than a journalist examining his work. In fact, she was so enthralled with his presentation that instead of asking for evidence of his claims, she embroidered her own fantasy enthusiastically on top of his, saying that Jimmy Dore was literally fomenting Civil War: “I don’t see it playing out in any other way except violence and a bunch of people monetizing whatever it is they’re trying to create.”
Lastly, if Konst delved into the meaning of “syncretic networks” she might have noticed that Ross’ syncretism is nothing more than a syllogistic fallacy. He states, for instance, that since the fascist right and the American left both have global histories, they’re essentially the same thing. It’s like saying “The sun is hot. The stove is hot. Therefore the stove is a sun.” But in this case it’s “The fascist right has a global populist history. The American Left has a global populist history. Therefore the American left is fascist.”
GATEWAY-ING OR GATEKEEPING
Ross would have us believe that interviewing a right-winger is proof that Jimmy Dore is secretly working with fascists. However, in the same interview with Ross, Konst brags that she and Sam Seder also put right-wingers on their show. She frames this as an entire project to provide a “gateway” for right wingers to access the left: “These audiences have gone away from the Ben Shapiros and away from the Jordan Petersons into the Sam Seders. And that’s amazing that he has that GATEWAY...It takes so much work.” (0:15:10)
Konst touts the fact that she and Seder intentionally seek out the right-wingers, and intentionally provide a “gateway” from the alt-right to liberalism. If Ross were interested in consistency, this would be seen as evidence of one of his syncretic networks. But naturally he wouldn’t do this because when Konst and Seder reach out to the alt-right, they have the blessing of the establishment and it’s called “conversion.” When anyone else does it, without the blessing of the establishment, it’s called “platforming fascists.”
The takeaway is that only establishment institutions confer legitimacy. Legitimacy is different from truth because elites may confer legitimacy onto something that’s untrue (example: the earth was made in seven days), and they may refuse legitimacy for that which is, in fact indisputable (example: the earth revolves around the sun). That’s called gatekeeping, and it enables the establishment to control the narrative because, by their definition, they’re the only source of legitimization.
WRONG KIND OF RISK INTOLERANCE
While the Democratic Party is intolerant to the risk inherent in fighting the big battles necessary to move the country away from Trumpism, they’re complacent with risks that divide the party, alienate allies and historically lose mid-term elections.
The American left provides a critique that says we need to take necessary risks, not only to win, but more importantly to save lives during this pandemic and beyond. We must tackle wealth inequality, provide Medicare for All, fix the student debt crisis, and address the looming climate disaster before it’s too late.
If Joe Biden insists on alienating the left, he will experience great difficulty as a leader, because our moment demands a steady course toward equality, justice, and freedom—the stuff that every democrat campaigns on, but refuses to fight for once elected. Pushing aside the left and its energy will likely prove to be a big mistake as the Republicans continue to court Trumpism.
As The Nation’s John Nichols said recently on the Bad Faith podcast, the question is “‘who is the hero and who is the villain?’ Those who have the critique, who stand up and challenge individual members of Congress—they’re not villains. They’re the ones who are actually trying to save this thing from falling apart.” They’re the heroes.
It’s time to reassess who is elevated to hero status and who is relegated to being villain because it seems as though we’ve been played once again.
Welcome to Brook Hines: notes from the porch
Subscribe for more free posts and follow me on Twitter.
Check out my podcast on Anchor.
SUPPORT MY WORK by donating through PayPal (click link or scan code).
Reproduction of work allowed through Creative Commons Share-alike, non-commercial license CC-SA-ND. If you DM on Twitter I’ll help promote too!
In the meantime, tell your friends!