Democrats & 'Progressives' Support Dictators...

...while claiming to oppose U.S. imperialism

(Haitians protest their U.S. backed dictator)

Soapbox’s fantastic podcast, “Left Bitches, Who are Right,” recently had on journalist Danny Haiphong as guest to discuss important topics like American propaganda and the cruel, criminal border policies of the Biden administration. I’m embedding the entire episode below so you can watch it.

According to Haiphong, members of The Squad like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are crucial pieces to the United States empire occluding its crimes in plain sight. The episode begins by playing clips from a recent Instagram video post from the Congresswoman where she attempts to defend herself and her Squad colleagues from criticism that they have not recently been as vocal in criticizing U.S. border concentration camps of Latin migrants and refugees as they were when Donald Trump was President.

“So much of our national ‘conversation ‘ - which is not a conversation - is driven by people who could not care less about immigrants. So often people want to say, ‘why aren’t you talking about the border crisis?’ Or, ‘why aren’t you talking about it in this way?’ Well, we’re talking about it. They just don’t like how we’re talking about it. Because it’s not a ‘border crisis',’ it’s an imperialism crisis, it’s a climate crisis, it’s a trade crisis. And also, it’s a carceral crisis. Because, as I have already said, even during this term and this president, our immigration system is based and designed on our carceral system,” she begins with a mix of vague claims (who are these critics of U.S. immigration policy that don’t care about immigrants?) and truisms (that U.S. empire, in its many manifestations, creates victims that become the refugees seeking asylum at our Southern borders).

“Our solutions need to be rooted in foreign policy because our interventionist history in foreign policy and history over decades of destabilizing regions drive people. But people don’t want to have that conversation. Secondly, let’s talk about climate crisis because the U.S. has disproportionately contributed to the total amount of emissions that is causing a planetary climate crisis right now. But who is bearing the brunt of that? Disproportionately it’s actually not us. We help create the problem but disproportionately it’s the global South…that are going to be experiencing the floods, wildfires, and droughts…which has already started a migration crisis.”

At this point the “Left Bitches…” crew chimes in as the chorus saying what so many of us on the Left might be thinking whenever we hear such fire from so-called Progressives and socialists like Ocasio-Cortez. “She sounds pretty fucking progressive, right? Imperialism, Climate Change, yeah!”

“She’s saying the words we want to hear, guys!”

“What’s wrong with this, though?”

This is where Haiphong, who has long warned us that Ocasio-Cortez is serving as a kind of controlled opposition in service of the corporate Democratic party, starts the exposition off. It isn’t that anything the Representative said is untrue, it’s that when it comes down to her work as a member of Congress, her actions don’t follow her words.

“This comes not too long after [an interview] where she calls those who have criticized Biden as an administration that won’t bring any progress because of his hostility and his hostility to Bernie Sanders and his wing of the Democratic Party and the fact that his track-record says on every single issue that matters to humanity that he is on the wrong side or on the corporate side or on the imperialist side, including on immigration so she publishes this video and it comes off as exactly the type of theatrics that she has been engaging in…on foreign policy issues,” Haiphong begins.

“They will talk a big game in certain instances but when it comes to holding the very political party - the Democratic Party - that has majorities across the board accountable, she’s really nowhere to be found. In fact, she will tell her affiliated organization, the DSA, that those who criticize Biden are making a privileged critique because undocumented people and Black people and other oppressed groups are in fact just that loyal to the Democratic party. And, what message are sending them when we say no progress is possible?”

One such recent and telling example is how President Joe Biden, abetted by the silence of supposed progressives like those in The Squad, is callously telling Haitian refugees to not come to the U.S. despite the fact that they are attempting to flee the clutches of a dictator that our government supports.

“On this question of immigration it is particularly abhorrent because Joe Biden just published through the Department of State a tweet saying in Haitian Creole, ‘Don’t come here,’ to the Haitian people as Joe Biden continues to support a neo-colonial dictatorship that is literally slaughtering people and that is literally the product of more than a century of U.S. intervention and more than a couple of centuries of Euro-American imperialist intervention in Haiti,” Haiphong reminds, before the rest of the crew points out other examples of Ocasio-Cortez explicitly supporting recent U.S. led coups and coup-attempts in Latin America, including her allegiance with Donald Trump in his attempted coup in Venezuela.

“So this is just another example of how the Democratic is morphing and adapting and using and exploiting - and AOC is really along for the ride and happy to do it - this kind of…so-called socialist politics as a real proxy to confuse people.”

Watch the entire episode (above) and share with loved ones and adversaries alike.