RedWizard

Actually, he just pissed and moaned for, like, 30 min and didn't even hint at a war. Fantastic stuff.

Did we forget that he signed off on having the files released (yes, I know that likely won't happen; you can stop typing)? Venezuela has been on the hit list of the US Empire since the Bolivarian Revolution. Liberal news never draws the connection between Venezuela's shrinking GDP and the timing of US sanctions, starting in 2014 under Obama.

• 2014-2015 (Obama Admin): Initial targeted sanctions on individuals involved in human rights abuses and corruption.
• August 2017 (Trump Admin): E.O. 13808 prohibited U.S. entities from dealing in new Venezuelan - debt, limiting financial access.
• May 2018 (Trump Admin): E.O. 13835 expanded restrictions on specific transactions with the Venezuelan government.
• January 2019 (Trump Admin): E.O. 13857 targeted Venezuela's state oil company, PDVSA, and froze government assets.
• August 2019 (Trump Admin): E.O. 13884 blocked all property of the Venezuelan government.
• Oct 2023 (Biden Admin): General License 44 temporarily eased oil/gold sanctions after the Barbados Agreement for free elections.
• April 2024 (Biden Admin): Sanctions reimposed as Maduro failed to meet election fairness terms (e.g., banning María Corina Machado).
• March 2025 (Biden Admin): New order proposed 25% tariffs on countries importing Venezuelan oil.
• Late 2025 (Trump Admin): Escalated military presence in the Caribbean; FAA warnings about Venezuelan airspace

So this doesn't appear to be some new development as a distraction from the Epstein files. This has been building for some time now.

The image in question, just so no one actually has to go to twitter.

Jesus christ...

The ANTIFA are the friends we made along the way.

The justification for this sizure is suspect at best, and naturally, the NY Crimes is out here doing their part to manufacture consent for this kind of bullshit. I do find it amusing how many liberals will froth at the mouth over Trump's injustices demestically, but when Pam Bondi makes some shit up about Venezuela, suddenly all the liberals fall in line and salute the flag.

The long shadow of 9/11 still envelops the country.

Terms like "crony capitalism" imply that this is somehow an aberration within the capitalist system and not simply capitalism operating under its laws of motion and development. As Marx said, "The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie", It is, in other words, the most efficient means of increasing profits, the core drive under capitalism. Lobbying, regulatory capture, and favorable legislation are not some form of corrupt distortions of the system; they aid in the process of capital accumulation. The insistence on using terms like "crony capitalism" is to secede ground to the capitalist, who would want nothing more for people to cling on to the idea that there is some kind of "pure" or "ideal" capitalism that we need to return too. So long as quarterly earnings calls are what drive the economy, capitalism will always be reaching for influence and political power to keep those profits rising.

I don't see this as snubbing out the flame, though; we have seen what happens if pressure isn't kept up with candidates like this. The masses engage in the election, they win, then they return home. Some become disengaged as the duldrum of life beats that revolutionary spirit out of them; others return content, thinking the Democrats are finally making progress. Time passes, goalposts are changed, and lukewarm versions of campaign promises are implemented. There is a new wave of voters every year who fall for the same traps because they've never seen them before. I think this kind of discussion is good, and having it openly is good. People shouldn't take it as "doom and gloom". They should take it as, "Look what we've achieved, but we can do it better next time". This article feels very directed at the rank and file DSA members, if I'm being honest. I am interested to see what comes out of "Our Time", if they can keep themselves out of trouble, that is. They have to be committed to critique of Mamdani, though, if he strays from his stated agenda. The risk of him straying is far more likely with him associated with the Democrats than it would be if he wasn't.

The thing about these incremental wins, and I do see Mamdani as a win, is that the masses that are being built are now behind the Democrats and a Democratic Candidate. The Democrats will claim all his victories and push all his failures onto his socialist leanings. People who saw what Mamdani was offering and thought, "Yes, that is what we need!" are correct. He ran a very grounded and materialist campaign. The trouble, however, is that there isn't a party that shares his values backing him, and his supporters will not be funneled into a revolutionary movement because he isn't associated with one. He has associated himself with the status quo movement in hopes that he can shift that status quo. People who think they should join him in the realm of politics might go to the DSA, but they're just as likely to go to the Democrats, who are a real political party and hold office in their localities.

I think now is the time to start learning how to walk; we've been crawling for a long time.

Funny how there never seems to be any austerity for killing people. Lots of austerity going around for helping people, though.

I thought the article made its case pretty clearly and what they are asking of the DSA. From the first paragraph:

It is in this climate that Left Voice has called on the DSA to break from the reactionary capitalist graveyard of social movements that is the Democratic Party [emphasis mine]. It’s vital in this disruptive moment to keep a clear analysis of what is happening, what we want to happen, and what history tells us could happen.

The second section lays out what is at stake using a historical reference: fascist rule for 50 years. It could be longer, but it could also be shorter. They highlight that socialists' (in this context, that means "Democratic Socialists") attempts to work within existing systems of power ultimately lead to their destruction at the hands of that same system. In the case of the DSA, their current strategy of hitching a ride on the Democratic ticket binds them to a much more powerful system that ultimately corrupts and shapes their candidates, blunting their success.

In simple terms, history categorically condemns the social democratic strategy put forward by people like Karl Kautsky and adopted by those like Matteotti. In the wake of the Bolsheviks’ momentous seizure of power in Russia, these so-called “socialists” oriented themselves to a conciliatory strategy based on electoral gains. Lenin dissected this flawed logic with masterful prescience, but we can at least afford them the benefit of hindsight; they didn’t realize just how wrong they were as they hadn’t seen how bad things could get [emphasis mine]. All over the world, in Germany as in Italy, reformists not only failed to stop the rise of fascism within the halls of polite politics — losing at their own game — but also helped inform an atmosphere of non-confrontation in the streets.

It seems clear that the DSA (or at least, the DSA-NYC) has not learned these lessons of the past, even though they have every opportunity to do so. There are many competing worldviews within the broader DSA (don't let the name fool you), and there is a path forward for the DSA that could help build a larger, more effective working-class party and movement.

The article does present a real solution also; it is the headline of the second section: "Build a Working-Class Party to Defeat the Far-Right"

"OK but what does this mean?" You probably wonder. To your credit, I'll say they really could have done a better job of explaining what they mean when they say, "It is in this spirit that rank-and-file DSA members should reorient their organization away from the reformist strategy condemned by history." They mean that the DSA needs to end this policy of Democratic Party entryism, which has clearly not yielded any results and ultimately defanged most of their candidates and officials in the process. The Democrats obviously are not interested in cultivating these DSA candidates and incorporating them and their ideas into the party. Instead, they are clearly more interested in molding and shaping these DSA candidates to support Democratic Party ideas and filing down their more "radical" positions so that they can masquerade as anti-capitalists upholding working-class interests.

Instead of running on the Democratic Party ticket, they should be unifying their chapters, building out a structure that can support their members electorally, and building a working-class political party instead of a political organization. The fact that they are currently an organization and not a party means that they are not making any efforts to get themselves recognized by the states as a legitimate political party. Doing so would show that they will be met with pushback from Democrats, and this can be leveraged as rhetoric to pull Democratic voters who also support DSA ideas to the DSA. The PSL made many efforts in the past national election to be a registered party in many states. The Democrats in some of those states went so far as to spend money litigating against their petition in an attempt to keep them off the ballet. Part of the role of a working-class political party is to use the platforms given to you by the state to show the masses just how disfunctional and combative the existing state is to the ideas they support. Instead of just washing their hands of the failures as a win for bipartiteship, they would instead highlight how much people actually stand to lose by turning to the right under this system.

You were given a taste of this with the Mamdani campaign. The Democratic establishment turned against Mamdani, was outwardly hostile to their candidate, and pumped money into the campaigns of two independent candidates who changed their affiliations just to run against him. This is just a short list of the kind of tactics that show you what the Democrats are really about. Turning these attacks into political agitation against the Democrats is fully lacking in all the DSA's electoral efforts. So building a working-class political party out of the DSA and running against the establishment would be much more effective in educating the masses on just how much resistance there is to their ideas. That's what must be done here, alongside building a coalition with other leftist parties and leftist organizations.

One thing that should be kept in mind as well is the way the US political environment uses the words "left" or "leftist." Leftism starts at anti-capitalism; it has always and historically been an anti-capitalist movement, and to say otherwise is dealing in revisionist history. In the US, however, they have framed the "left" strictly around social issues, and social issues only. This lops off a massive history of thought and also leaves no room for a clear distinction between the policies of the Democrats and parties like the DSA. For all intents and purposes, that is all counted as "the left" and that means that phrases like "purity testing" allow the establishment to continue to stifle true leftism in the country, that being the anti-capitalist left. This is something both the Democrats and Republicans engage in and both find useful. The Democrats engage in it because it prevents people from seeking parties and candidates within the anti-capitalist left, claiming we can't let "perfect be the enemy of good" and that we should "be realistic", leading people back to candidates that are not anti-capitalist. The Republicans engage in it because it means they can attack both anti-capitalists and pro-capitalists and reformists together as if they were both the same threat, regardless of how many Democrats would take their side over the anti-capitalists. This is simply historically true.

It's like the poem by Pastor Marin Niemöller, states, "First they came for the communists". Why did they come for the communists first? Because the Social Democrats and the Fascists agreed on one thing: the preservation of capitalism. This is also the reason the poem draws a distinction between Communists and Socialists. "Then they came for the Socialists." it continues. Instead of moving to the left and uniting with the Communists, the Socialists fed them to the wolves, only to be eaten themselves.

A former UK politician and economist. Novara Media is primarily a UK publication.