It’s so yesterday to denounce “the left” when the term has been stripped to the bone of any meaning. Media defines the Clintons as the left; she herself claims she’s part of the “resistance.” Pro-Assad libertarians & screwballs call themselves the left, some even the revolutionary left, & denounce protesters against Trump & even the Muslim ban as liberals who they hate on with a vengeance that’s demented.

Anti-Assad social democrats & anarchists denounce the left, often with an axe to grind which is quite unseemly & irrational in polemics, but they group everybody together including Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali, Ajamu Baraka (all of whom support Democrats) with lost souls like Cindy Sheehan & Jeff Mackler, professional Assad propagandists like Bartlett & Beeley, fascist fellow travelers like Tim Anderson, & know-nothing, social climbing honoraria hounds like Max Blumenthal, Ben Norton, Vijay Prashad, & Rania Khalek.

How useful a term is “the left” when it has no meaning, when it’s falsely used by those who claim it & by those who denounce it? Most Assad supporters are rightwing libertarians & do not distinguish themselves in politics from Ron Paul or David Icke, especially in hating on immigrants, Muslims, & Jews, even though they mask it behind denunciations & caricatures like “Wahhabi/Salafi jihadis” & “Israhell anti-Zionism”. Many call themselves socialists & they are–of the Stalinist or National Socialist type.

Assad’s opponents don’t serve an understanding of the dynamics involved in Assadism by lashing out indiscriminately at “the left.” So much better to elaborate the political forces operating, the pressures bearing down that have allowed rightwing libertarianism to take center stage in politics & destroy resistance to war, co-opt Palestinian solidarity for their purposes, & make a mockery of “the left.” Whatever “the left” is.