In the years since Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders contested their parties’ Presidential nominations, radical politics have spread like wildfire and coronavirus across the United States. The Berniecrats have had some success in making their brand of Democratic Socialism (basic government services) popular and cool. Thousands of people joined the Democratic Socialists of America to fight for healthcare, dignified work, and human rights.
And some people are joining the movement for other reasons. Today’s case study will New American Left, one of the heroes trying to save Berniecrats from getting any more radical.
Anticommunism
The New American Left looks and sounds a lot like the Old American Right:
NAL’s video is entirely made up of recycled World Anti-Communist League propaganda. It uses right-wing principles and arguments to say that all Marxist revolutionaries and socialist projects were uniformly bad. It starts by giving a fundamentally false definition of Marxism, saying that it has “three pillars,” one of which is “Authoritarianism.” The video is loaded with factual errors: NAL says that the Soviet union was founded when Vladimir Lenin led an armed uprising in 1922! I wish he would tell us what month that was.
NAL even brings up Trotskyist criticisms of the USSR and accepts all of them as true… before rejecting Trotskyists completely because they are still Leninists and therefore authoritarian anti-socialists.
NAL is strangely pro-Cuba despite it being a “tankie” country. Why is NAL optimistic about Cuba’s future, I wonder?
Junior G-Man
New American Left is not shy about showing where his real loyalties lie. He repeats and reinforces what the US Government says about its enemies. He tries to discredit every alternative to the capitalist market. And he uses some suspicious and spooky methods of handling his followers.
NAL shows what qualifies as credible evidence of the evils of Korea:
NAL excuses paid defectors as a few bad apples, but doesn’t see any conflict of interest when the sensationalizing news media pays them to tell sensational stories. Evidently NAL wants their audience to uncritically accept the most wild stories about Korea.
What is the New American Left’s solution to the problem of capitalism?
NAL looks like just another debate bro or breadtuber but there is a special intimacy with him. To join his Discord server you have to give voice verification, an interview with NAL himself.
Let’s consider how the security measures on his server impact the security of members:
- You provide a voice print
- You identify yourself
- And say key words in response to interview questions
- And all of it could be recorded and used for any purpose
I’m not calling it a honeypot, but it does smell sickly sweet. This isn’t to say that NAL is a cop or a fed. He may just be a person with (bad, loud) opinions who wants to get paid to tell people what to think. It’s also possible that he is an aspiring cultist, or a cryptofascist trying to add naive leftists to a list, or a terminally online loner who wants followers.
Or maybe it’s all genuine?
The Grift
Uh, who is his audience? Who did he make this for?
I find this one interesting. The featured lesson for this video: don’t trust people who put class before Identity, they are all Nazbols. But… Don’t Nazbols put identity before class? Isn’t that what defines them as National Bolsheviks? And NAL wants you to put identity before class, too. Curious!
Was Pogan a /pol/ antisemite, calling himself “goy” to make himself out to be a victim of “Le Happy Merchant?” Reach out to us if you can confirm or deny.
It seems that Pogan made his old account private. The links from these Reddit posts point to privatized videos (but you can still watch Pogan debate Destiny here.) After a two-month YouTube career NewAmericanLeft has also closed his account. At least he made some Patreon money off of his 4,000 followers!
It’s encouraging to see the USA standing in solidarity with striking Iranian oil workers
NewAmericanLeft, probably
Liminal States 