Thanks for the article. That is a little shadow boxing on my part, Jeff. What I call the ultraleft ... which is an old term from decades ago ... others might call the woke left or some other name. My fear is that the narrowness and inward looking nature of the highly visible "ultraleft" is harming the prospects for liberals to actually win elections and make changes. To me, The Nation is on the left side of liberal, but in these days of hyper-partisanship, they are certainly not on the left in the sense that they might have been in decades past. I call it shadow boxing because I am not quite ready to write something more comprehensive in terms of the threat that I think they pose.
I see terms like "far left", "socialism" and "woke left" being used as dog whistles a lot by leaders of the Republican party to demonize things that would have been construed as centrist not very long ago. I haven't read enough of your posts to understand your politics. I myself don't mind being branded as either far left or socialist, although I take issue with specific positions of the most well-known socialist organizations such as the DSA, and the article I sent calls out one of those issues with DSA. Reading your post, I wasn't sure why people representing the far left would be expected to take a position on the current events in Kazakhstan or Ethiopia since the leaders/dictators of those countries aren't presenting themselves as progressives. Is it because Russia and China have roles in their violence and those countries are "on the left"? I don't see either China or Russia that way. Russia's economic system is dominated by state-sanctioned oligarchies and China is hyper capitalist, with state support.
I'm not sure what you mean by the term "ultraleft". I read a lot that is on the left end of the spectrum that is highly critical of both China and Russia when they violate human rights and other countries sovereignty. This recent article in the Nation is critical of China's policies in Xinjiang and people within DSA that are apologists for them. https://www.thenation.com/article/world/china-left-foreign-policy/?custno%3D20002526721&zip=94114&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=New%20Issue%20Alert:%20January%2024/31%2C%202022%20Issue%20-%2001.11.2022&utm_term=Active_Subscribers
Thanks for the article. That is a little shadow boxing on my part, Jeff. What I call the ultraleft ... which is an old term from decades ago ... others might call the woke left or some other name. My fear is that the narrowness and inward looking nature of the highly visible "ultraleft" is harming the prospects for liberals to actually win elections and make changes. To me, The Nation is on the left side of liberal, but in these days of hyper-partisanship, they are certainly not on the left in the sense that they might have been in decades past. I call it shadow boxing because I am not quite ready to write something more comprehensive in terms of the threat that I think they pose.
I see terms like "far left", "socialism" and "woke left" being used as dog whistles a lot by leaders of the Republican party to demonize things that would have been construed as centrist not very long ago. I haven't read enough of your posts to understand your politics. I myself don't mind being branded as either far left or socialist, although I take issue with specific positions of the most well-known socialist organizations such as the DSA, and the article I sent calls out one of those issues with DSA. Reading your post, I wasn't sure why people representing the far left would be expected to take a position on the current events in Kazakhstan or Ethiopia since the leaders/dictators of those countries aren't presenting themselves as progressives. Is it because Russia and China have roles in their violence and those countries are "on the left"? I don't see either China or Russia that way. Russia's economic system is dominated by state-sanctioned oligarchies and China is hyper capitalist, with state support.