The Fierce Ideological War Between Progressives v. Liberals

Eric Zuesse (blogs at https://theduran.com/author/eric-zuesse/)

Back in the 1970s, the only big difference between liberals and progressives was that, whereas liberals, such as Hubert Humphrey, supported the military-industrial complex, progressives, such as George McGovern, opposed it. But, now, that difference has become expanded into a vast chasm, in which, whereas liberals support intensification of the Cold War, progressives oppose it; and whereas liberals support censorship, progressives oppose it; and whereas liberals support public-private partnerships (the corporate state), progressives oppose it; and whereas liberals support imperialism (our nation’s dictating to foreign countries how they should be governed and what policies they should have), progressives oppose it; and whereas liberals support race-and-ethnic-based laws, progressives oppose it.

In Britain, today’s head of the Labour Party, Keir Starmer (a Tony Blair liberal), is more like a Tory than like the previous Labour head, Jeremy Corbyn, who was a progressive. And Tony Blair was likewise more like America’s George W. Bush than like his immediate successor as the Labour head, Corbyn. What are conservatives even needed for, if there are liberals such as Blair and Starmer in the ‘opposite’ (the overtly conservative) Party?

Similarly, in America, today’s head of the Democratic Party, Joe Biden, is more like the liberals Blair and Starmer and Clinton and Obama, than like such progressives as George McGovern and Ted Kennedy and JFK and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

For example: on 8 June 2023, Robert Reich, who had been a fellow Rhodes (intensely pro-imperialism) scholar with Bill Clinton at Oxford, and then got appointed by Clinton as his Labor Secretary, headlined, at Eurasia Review, “Should We Be Worried About RFK Jr?” (and under a slew of other headlines elsewhere) and he answered a scathing yes, against Joe Biden’s only real competiton for the Democratic Party’s 2024 Presidential nomination, RFK Jr. In fact, Reich opened, “Were it not for his illustrious name, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would be just another crackpot in the growing number of bottom-feeding right-wing fringe politicians seeking high office.” He said “The younger RFK is a right-wing nut case.”  It was full of ad-hominems, and had no ad-rems — no evidence (supporting facts) (except false ones: misrepresentations of his policy-positions). Reich condemned that “He wants the federal government to consider the war in Ukraine from the perspective of Russians.” — as-if Russians aren’t very reasonably terrified at the idea that U.S. missiles might become placed at the nearest border to The Kremlin, which is Ukraine’s, just 300 miles and a five-minute flying-distance from a blitz-beheading of Russia’s central command there (which is the reason why Obama had grabbed Ukraine by a coup in 2014). The liberal Reich thinks ignoring Russia’s national-security “red lines” (like Biden does and Obaba did) is just fine. (He obviously wants a President like that.) And George W. Bush used to be considered as neoconservative (pro-U.S.-imperialism) as anyone could possibly be! That President was out-done by Obama (in Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela, and Russia), and, now, is being outdone by Biden. And Reich wants that extreme neoconservatism to continue, whereas RFK Jr. wants to end it and spend all that money here at home, instead, to improve Americans’ health care, education, and environment.

The Democratic Party has become as neoconservative as the Republicans were at their very worst; and RFK Jr. is opposed to its neoconservatism, and to its Cold War, and to its corporate state, and to its pro-MIC (pro-Lockheed etc.) stance, and to today’s Democratic Party’s domestic-policy focus on racial and ethnic issues more than on economic-class issues (which used to be its main domestic-policy concern). In running against Joe Biden right now, RFK Jr. is opposing a person whose values and passions resemble Donald Trump’s more than they resemble his own, or Ted Kennedy’s, or JFK’s, or George McGovern’s. The ideological contest now within the Democratic Party is bigger than is the ideological contrast between the two Parties, at the present time.

Both of today’s two Parties are ‘democratic’ (meaning now merely electoral, rather than actually representing more than 50% of the public) fascist (which instead imposes the collective will of the nation’s billionaires against the collective will of the nation’s public). The only difference between the Parties now is that the Republican Party is overtly fascist (billionaires-controlled), while the Democratic Party sweet-talks its versions of neoconservatism, race-driven politics, censorship, and the corporate state — which are the policies that billionaires want. RFK Jr. stands against both versions of fascism, and for progressivism (rule “of the people, for the people, and by the people” — NOT for and by the billionaires, which is what both of today’s Parties are actually imposing).

Liberalism now is just the hypocritical type of conservatism. Progressives oppose both the honest and the hypocritical types of conservatism — both types.

—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.