{"id":147772,"date":"2015-05-01T20:24:42","date_gmt":"2015-05-01T20:24:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=147772"},"modified":"2015-05-01T22:46:52","modified_gmt":"2015-05-01T22:46:52","slug":"what-the-media-get-very-wrong-about-socialism-and-about-senator-sanders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/what-the-media-get-very-wrong-about-socialism-and-about-senator-sanders\/","title":{"rendered":"What America’s Media Get Very Wrong About ‘Socialism’ — And About Senator Sanders"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/b>Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

(RINF<\/a>) – On April 30th, Jonathan Cohn at Huffington Post provided a perfect example of what America’s media get wrong about the meaning of \u201csocialism\u201d \u2013 and about the meaning of the new U.S. Presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Cohn’s report was aptly titled,\u00a0“Bernie Sanders Is A Socialist And That’s Not As Crazy As It Sounds\u201d<\/span><\/a>; and, indeed, he started right away with an assumption that socialism is crazy but \u201cnot as crazy as it sounds.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Cohn said that “Socialism, as commonly understood by Americans, means widespread government ownership of business,\u201d but Cohn said that, \u201cthat\u2019s not the agenda Sanders has actually been promoting.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Cohn reassured the reader there that Sanders instead “generally identifies himself as a\u00a0democratic\u00a0socialist. The distinction matters. Democratic socialism, as generally conceived in the U.S., is a milder, more aspirational form of the ideology.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013\u2013<\/span><\/p>\n

First of all, Cohn fundamentally misrepresented Sanders in this. Sanders has always<\/i> identified himself as a democratic socialist. There is a huge difference between \u201cgenerally\u201d versus \u201calways,\u201d in this particular context. To say that Sanders \u201cgenerally\u201d identifies himself as a democratic socialist is to say that sometimes<\/i> he self-identifies as being instead a proponent of dictatorial socialism. That\u2019s outright false.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the mush in Cohn\u2019s head then gets even mushier. He continues by alleging that \u201cDemocratic socialism \u2026 is a milder, more aspirational form of the ideology\u201d than is “widespread government ownership of business.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Actually, it\u2019s an entirely different ideology<\/i>. It\u2019s not a different \u201cform of the ideology\u201d; it\u2019s a different and fundamentally opposite (because democratic) ideology. \u201cWidespread government ownership of business\u201d is communism, not<\/i> socialism. Sanders never has supported or endorsed that. He has instead\u00a0said<\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u2013 and repeatedly and clearly, much more so than mush-headed \u2018journalists\u2019 such as Cohn \u2013 that (to use his words):\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBranding someone as a socialist has become the slur du jour by leading\u00a0lights of the American right from Newt Gingrich to Rush Limbaugh.\u00a0Some,\u00a0like Mike Huckabee, intentionally blur the differences between socialism\u00a0and communism, between democracy and totalitarianism.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, that very same statement from Senator Sanders continued:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“If we could get beyond such nonsense, I think this country could use a\u00a0good debate about what goes on here compared to places with a long\u00a0social-democratic tradition like Sweden, Norway and Finland, where, by\u00a0and large, the middle class has a far higher standard of living than we\u00a0do.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He was telling the truth there, not distorting what a U.S. Presidential candidate (namely, he) believes.<\/span><\/p>\n

No matter how many times the junior U.S. Senator from Vermont (junior to the veteran Democrat Patrick Leahy, who is almost a soul-mate of Sanders but more moderate in his expressions of his beliefs, and also slightly less progressive than he) asserts that the nordic European countries represent reasonably close models to Sanders\u2019s ideal, and that the former USSR never was anything of the kind, \u2018journalists,’ and Republicans, mush together those mainly-opposite models.<\/span><\/p>\n

For Republicans to do this is understandable, since they\u2019re supporters of the corporate State, otherwise called \u201cfascism,\u201d and that\u2019s (those corporations are) who donates the major money into the Republican Party and who have called its fascist tune almost without interruption since 1896; and democratic socialism is the very opposite of that. <\/span><\/p>\n

However, there\u2019s no excuse when \u2018journalists\u2019 do this. False \u2018reporting\u2019 is simply unprofessional. But it\u2019s normal in American \u2018journalism,\u2019 a field that\u2019s taught at the university level in schools that are in \u201cCommunications\u201d departments where they\u00a0share personnel with public relations and other forms of outright and prostituted deceptions-for-hire.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0That\u2019s the standard model of \u2018journalism’ in fascist countries, because they\u2019re controlled by their top international corporations. That\u2019s the virtually universal standard of \u2018journalism’ in the United States these days. Truthfulness is almost irrelevant in such \u2018journalism.\u2019 Authentic journalism is rare in such nations. (It\u2019s sadly rare in all nations.)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013\u2013<\/span><\/p>\n

Secondly, there is nothing at all \u2018aspirational\u2019 to Sanders\u2019s ideology: it was the ideology of U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and I present\u00a0the case in my latest book<\/span><\/a>\u00a0that FDR played a bigger role in establishing this ideology than did any other single person, starting in 1932 when he introduced in a campaign speech (and then in his subsequent Presidency) the intellectual underpinning for the most advanced form of this economic model, the most advanced form of a democratic-socialist economy and body-politic. If that was \u2018aspirational\u2019 for the greatest U.S. President of the 20th Century (as\u00a0historians generally recognize FDR to have been<\/i><\/span><\/a>), then what FDR was \u2018aspiring\u2019 to was still far more like today\u2019s nordic European democracies than it is like today\u2019s (the post-1980) U.S.A.; and Bernie Sanders represents that FDR-ideal far more than does any other current U.S. Presidential candidate.<\/span><\/p>\n

And Sanders represents not at all Marxism or communism (what Cohn called “widespread government ownership of business\u201d), and is just as alien to that tradition as he is to fascism, because both of those traditions are simply the left-and-right wings of dictatorship, and democracy is at the very opposite end from any of that.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013\u2013<\/span><\/p>\n

This essay from Sanders goes on, in fact, to describe his impression of one of the nordic democracies, Finland, from his recent visit there:<\/span><\/p>\n

“Finland is a country which provides high-quality health care to all of\u00a0its people with virtually no out-of-pocket expense; where parents and\u00a0their\u00a0young children receive free excellent childcare and\/or parental\u00a0leave benefits which dwarf what our nation provides; where college and\u00a0graduate\u00a0education is free to students and where children in the public\u00a0school system often record the highest results in international tests.\u00a0In Finland,\u00a0where 80 percent of workers belong to unions, all employees\u00a0enjoy at least 30 days paid vacation and the gap between the rich and\u00a0poor is far\u00a0more equitable than in the United States.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But Sanders also is realistic about the difference between any particular example, such as Finland, versus any ideal, such as democratic socialism:<\/span><\/p>\n

“Let’s be clear.\u00a0Finland is no utopia.\u00a0Not so many years ago, it\u00a0experienced a severe economic downturn.\u00a0Its economy today is not immune\u00a0to\u00a0what is happening in the rest of the world. There also are, to be\u00a0sure, important differences between the United States and Finland \u2013 a\u00a0small\u00a0country with a population of only 5.2 million people.\u00a0Finland has\u00a0a very homogenous population.\u00a0We are extremely diverse.\u00a0Finland is\u00a0the size of\u00a0Montana.\u00a0We stretch 3,000 miles from coast to coast.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013\u2013<\/span><\/p>\n

If you want to know what Sanders believes, read his statements, not articles about him in corporate media. Whereas the campaign statements of politicians such as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have often been contradicted by their actual actions once they have gained power, Sanders\u2019s statements and his entire record as a public official have been one-and-the-same.<\/span><\/p>\n

But, above all, get to know his\u00a0actual voting-record as a U.S. Senator and a Congressman before that. It\u2019s a record that Franklin Delano Roosevelt would probably be proud to call his own if he were still alive and in politics today.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Senator Sanders just wants to bring the Democratic Party \u2013 and the American Government \u2013 back to the ideals that motivated it when the greatest Democratic President was in charge.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sanders\u2019s message is based on something timeless. It goes all the way back to\u00a0the Gracchi brothers in ancient Rome.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0You see lots of that in FDR\u2019s speeches, too, and in FDR’s subsequent actions as the U.S. President. It\u2019s the ideology, progressivism, but Sanders sometimes uses the term \u201csocialism\u201d to refer to it, because that\u2019s the term that is used in the most-successful countries, where it has actually long been instituted.<\/span><\/p>\n

And, if you want to understand where that ideology comes from in the very particular case of Sanders himself, just read\u00a0his background<\/span><\/a>. (That\u2019s from wikipedia, but it fails to link to any documentation where it says that he “opposed the\u00a02003 invasion of Iraq,” so\u00a0here\u2019s the source<\/span><\/a>\u00a0on that highly important matter. He\u2019s not like Hillary Clinton; he doesn\u2019t have to apologize on that enormous \u2018blunder\u2019 by this country; he doesn\u2019t have to say, \u201cA person who got that judgment wrong will be the best person to occupy the Oval Office.\u201d He can hold his head high while he speaks the truth about important matters.)<\/span><\/p>\n

There: you now already know more about Sanders \u2013 and more about his \u201csocialism\u201d \u2013 than you are likely to get to know truthfully from America\u2019s corporate media (or from our corporate-backed NPR or PBS either).<\/span><\/p>\n

Making these sorts of things clear is not what America\u2019s press is designed to do. And that fact is going to become a very big problem for candidate Sanders to try to overcome \u2013 he won\u2019t be trying to overcome only Hillary Clinton and the Republican Party, but also the press. Or, as the propagandists put it: \u201cour free press.\u201d (It\u2019s not \u2018ours,\u2019 and it\u2019s not \u2018free.\u2019)<\/span><\/p>\n

They can mock his idealism and say that our country is too corrupt for anything of the sort to \u201cwork\u201d here. But that was already the general direction America was heading in between 1932 and 1968, when the racist and corporate opposition finally brought it down and Richard Nixon\u2019s \u201cSouthern Strategy\u201d restored the planter-class in its newer corporate form. Sanders is merely trying to turn that around. He wants to make a real political difference.<\/span><\/p>\n

He wants to present a clear alternative \u2013 and to do it within the Democratic Party, which was formerly led by the very same ideological tradition that he represents. He wants to bring the Democratic Party back to its own modern FDR roots.<\/span><\/p>\n

Far from its being \u2018aspirational,\u2019 Sanders\u2019s \u201csocialism\u201d was the actual direction this nation was going in during 1932-1968, and is the direction in which much of Europe has already surpassed America after the U.S. itself turned away from this \u201csocialism.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The corporate media will mock him, and the big money will be against him, but he is only doing what, under the prevailing historical circumstances, he believes that America, at this stage in our national history, needs to be done. He really believes that, if he doesn\u2019t do it, then no one will. And he really believes that the only way it can be done is if he wins the U.S. Presidency. Unlike Ralph Nader, he really is in this to win,\u00a0not merely to throw the election to the Republican nominee in order to punish the Democratic Party for its lack of purism.<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

One of the few real journalists (as opposed to mere stenographers to the powerful) whose career is successful in today’s America, Matt Taibbi, headlined in Rolling Stone<\/i>\u00a0(since he\u2019s too good a journalist to be hired by such media as The New York Times<\/i> or the Washington Post<\/i> or FRONTLINE or \u201c60 Minutes,\u201d or etc.) on April 29th,\u00a0\u201cGive \u2019Em Hell, Bernie: Bernie Sanders is more serious than you think,\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and he wrote, of Sanders, \u201cThat\u2019s the one who cares.\u201d Taibbi should know; he is among the few good journalists who have met enough of the aspirants to be able to recognize the difference between authenticity and fakery. And he had spent lots of time with Sanders back in 2005, to do an in-depth article subtitled,\u00a0“A month inside the house of horrors that is Congress.\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0Sanders is not part of the Establishment, and doesn\u2019t want to be.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sanders is a progressive populist who says what he means, and who means what he says; and that\u2019s the main reason why the Establishment is so afraid of him. They don\u2019t want to lose control of the Government. But he is committed to their losing control of the Government. Calling his ideology by any name, either \u201csocialism,\u201d or \u201cprogressivism,\u201d or \u201cpopulism,\u201d or simply \u201cdemocracy,\u201d they fear it. And they fear him.<\/span><\/p>\n

And this is why, if his candidacy somehow takes off, the bosses will be taking off their gloves, and putting on their brass knuckes. It will be political war in America, no mere political campaign. Thus, his candidacy, if it gets any traction at all, will supercharge Hillary Clinton\u2019s already-enormous campaign chest. All prior campaign-spending records will become exceeded long before Election Day has arrived. And things will have gotten very ugly. <\/span><\/p>\n

This will not be a sectional war, like 1860. It will be a class war. In 1860, the issue was whether to free the slaves from their masters. In 2016 it will be whether to free the public from the aristocracy. Think Europe 1848<\/span><\/a>, though it won\u2019t necessarily be the failure on this side of the Atlantic that that was on theirs nearly two centuries ago.<\/span><\/p>\n

But if Sanders\u2019s campaign fails to take off, there won\u2019t be any such war at all, just continued ongoing victory for the aristocracy<\/span><\/a>, against everyone else<\/span><\/a>. For example, in the latter link, the \u201cTable 1. Real Income Growth by Groups\u201d shows that during 2009-2012, the bottom 99% received 0.8% of America\u2019s \u201cReal Income Growth,\u201d while in 2012-1013, the bottom 99% received 0.2% of that \u201cReal Income Growth.\u201d Though essentially all of the economic benefits from the post-\u2018recession\u2019 \u2018recovery\u2019 went to the top 1% economic group, there was, starting in 2009, no more \u2018recession\u2019 in the U.S. as economists measure those things; all of this is instead referred to by them as \u2018economic recovery,\u2019 even though far fewer than 1% experienced any of whatever it was. <\/span><\/p>\n

Beyond any abstractions about ideology, Senator Sanders is now entering the Democratic Party to take it over by declaring that this is an economic performance that Democrats should condemn, as a Party. And he is hoping that many Independents and even a few Republicans will join with him in this fundamental battle for the collective heart, mind, and body, of this nation, this culture, this country, this society.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sanders is not a William Jennings Bryan type. He is no religious fundamentalist. His war is strictly about this world, not about any other. To him, morality concerns only how people treat others, not about how they treat any god.<\/span><\/p>\n

If he wins his war, then he will change the world, but it will be only this world, not any other, that he changes. His enemies might try to turn God against him, but he will not worry, if he has the people with him. And, in aristocrats\u2019 hearts of hearts, that\u2019s all they really worry about, too. Everything else is mere propaganda. The media know all about it. In a sense, it\u2019s their specialty.<\/span><\/p>\n

———-<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of\u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>, and\u00a0of\u00a0Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse (RINF) – On April 30th, Jonathan Cohn at Huffington Post provided a perfect example of what America’s media get wrong about the meaning of \u201csocialism\u201d \u2013 and about the meaning of the new U.S. Presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders.\u00a0 Cohn’s report was aptly titled,\u00a0“Bernie Sanders Is A Socialist And That’s Not As Crazy As […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":147774,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,1622],"tags":[937,905,115,30,32,951,96,948,545,950,931,949,952,953,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-147772","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-featured","9":"tag-937","10":"tag-aristocracy","11":"tag-barack-obama","12":"tag-big-brother","13":"tag-cia","14":"tag-clinton","15":"tag-cover-up","16":"tag-fdr","17":"tag-inequality","18":"tag-presidency","19":"tag-progressivism","20":"tag-sanders","21":"tag-socialism","22":"tag-top-1","23":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}