One striking thing about contemporary American politicians and pundits is their dubious ability to mangle words and concepts rendering them meaningless.

This common political illiteracy only leads to a degradation of critical powers among citizens to challenge the two-party monopoly. The upshot is the two-party tyranny is sustained and thus never held to account for inequities and crimes of war.

A recent example is the media row over Glenn Greenwald labelling Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson a “socialist”. Greenwald is supposed to be one of the most independent and intelligent of American journalists. It was his campaigning style of journalism that brought whistleblower Edward Snowden to the world’s attention and which exposed the many crimes of U.S. state surveillance.

But for Greenwald to call the Fox News host a “socialist” is a betrayal of intelligence and a lamentable distortion of political concepts. It’s ludicrous to use the term “socialist” alongside Carlson’s name when the latter has shown over and over on primetime TV that his own brand of politics shares sympathies with far-right, Neo-fascist supporters of former president Donald Trump.

Carlson has repeatedly sought to absolve the violent insurrection on January 6 when Trump supporters assailed the Capitol to overturn the joint Congressional session certifying the election win of Democrat rival Joe Biden. Carlson and his Fox News ilk have made out that the events were a show of patriotic fervor which was justified by (baseless) claims of election fraud.

By contrast it is quite clear from testimonies given before Congress that the events on January 6 were much more sinister and were incited by then President Trump. Especially damning is the fact that Trump’s appointed chiefs at the Pentagon refused to deploy the National Guard to the Capitol for over three hours while it was being ransacked by mobs calling for lynching of lawmakers inside. The event was a coup bid orchestrated by a fascist, loser president and his far-right militia supporters. People like Carlson and other Fox News pundits who try to justify the events or claim that they were sparked by leftwing provocateurs are at the outer fringes of rightwing, Neo-fascist lunacy.

For supposedly intelligent journalists like Greenwald to apply the term “socialist” to unhinged rightists like Fox’s Carlson only demonstrates a poverty of political discourse in America. (Curiously, too, Greenwald has in other writings also sought to play down the Capitol insurrection, and has taken up a secondary focus on how the event is being used to allegedly crackdown on civil liberties.)

The same mangling of words and concepts has been used by other commentators, including some at this site, who make the preposterous claim that Biden and the Democrats are “far-left socialists”. This is also a ludicrous misnomer.

Trump and other Republicans often depict America being taken over by “radical socialists” in the Democrat party who are aiming at turning the U.S. into a “Venezuela”. Such a discourse is another inane distortion which only serves to distract from the objective reality.

The objective reality is that the United States is an oligarchy ruled by an obscenely wealthy minuscule class. All of America’s social problems of poverty, inequality and infrastructure breakdown could be solved by the rational and egalitarian distribution of wealth achieved in part by breaking up corporate monopoly power. America’s problems of social and economic degeneration can be solved by socialism and democratic planning to meet human need over private profit. The same genuinely democratic politics would also put an end to imperialist wars which are fought only for the benefit of corporate profits.

The oligarchy is fronted with the window-dressing of two parties who argue and bicker with one another over relatively petty issues (“identity politics” and “culture war”), thereby giving valuable cover for the background, overarching reality: the oligarchic system of siphoning off wealth from the majority of working Americans and launching wars from time to time in order to shore up the presumed hegemony of American corporate capital in the world.

More enlightened American observers such as Eric Zeusse at this site know and clearly express the reality that the U.S. is a tyranny camouflaged by two parties who both compete to serve their rightwing, capitalist, imperialist masters. Both parties are in reality the War Party. New President Joe Biden will turn out just as belligerent and warmongering as all his predecessors, whether Democrat or Republican. It is damnable that this is so predictable of the American tyranny.

Pundits who throw brickbats around about one or other member of the War Party being allegedly “socialist” are just being disingenuous or else clueless about understanding the real condition of American power and its political window-dressing. Such nonsensical mangling of words only serves to disarm a popular mobilization against the oligarchic system which would mean throwing out the Democrats and the Republicans.

A big part of the problem is the American education system. There is systematic neglect among American schools, colleges and universities to teach principles of Marxism, socialism and a materialist critique of capitalism and imperialism.

The superficial distortions propagated by many American politicians and pundits only serve to sustain the status quo of oligarchic tyranny.

Trump and hawkish Republican figures have repeatedly toyed with the idea of “sending the troops in” to quell demonstrations that have engulfed the U.S. over the past month since the horrific killing by police officers of black man George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25.

That has, in turn, led to an outcry that the president is attempting to violate the country’s laws by threatening to deploy federal troops to do policing work which would normally fall under the authority of the individual states. Trump is also accused of inciting violence by fomenting fears over national security, fears which are exaggerated given the generally peaceful nature of protests against police violence and racism.

In a remarkable sign of the constitutionally explosive situation, the Pentagon’s top military commander General Mark Milley recently expressed regret about Trump’s politicization of the nation’s armed forces. Other former military leaders have weighed in similarly. The tensions reflect tacit concerns that Trump is assuming dictatorial powers. Democrat presidential rival Joe Biden got in on the act by making an extraordinary statement in which he said that he was confident the Pentagon would intervene to evict Trump from the White House, if the incumbent tried to defy the electorate in November. Even the public contemplation of such a scenario seems a bizarre acknowledgement of how far things have gone awry in U.S. politics.

That’s why Fox News’ fakery over the Seattle protests takes on an even more sinister aspect. Last week, the Murdoch-owned, pro-Trump channel published photoshopped images of armed protesters purportedly taking over Seattle. It also attributed scenes of burning buildings from previous unrest as if they were unfolding at the same time as the alleged armed insurrectionists.

Seattle, the most populous city in Washington state on the U.S.’ west coast, has seen a significant popular demonstration against police violence, whereby a downtown area has been declared a “cop-free zone”. The city’s police decided to deescalate confrontation that erupted after the killing of Floyd, by unilaterally withdrawing from the precinct. Citizens have formed a “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” (CHAZ). They are calling for “defunding” of the police budget and more spending on social services. The same demand has been made elsewhere by other cities and states.

What the Seattle protest has dramatically shown is that heavy police power is not required for law and order to prevail. Most reports have characterized the Seattle civilian occupation as largely peaceful, multiracial and a manifestation of people power. Where it will lead to and what it will achieve in terms of policing in the future is anybody’s guess right now.

But already the Seattle citizens have won the argument that U.S. policing is out of control in terms of its militarized operation and use of excessive lethal force, especially against African-Americans and other minorities. Some 1,000 people are shot dead every year in the U.S. by police officers.

The counter-narrative put out by Trump and his ilk is that “defunding” means scrapping police forces altogether and leaving the country at the mercy of criminals and anarchists. This fear-mongering paints an apocalyptic meltdown of American society. It is a favorite trope of elites and fascists whose depiction of society is one teetering on barbarian masses running amok, rather than trusting in the democratic cooperation between people to better organize society.

Fox News was forced into making an apology and retraction for its deliberate falsification over events in Seattle after local paper, The Seattle Times, investigated the images. However, that admission did not stop Trump from telling his millions of followers on Twitter that Seattle was being ransacked by “domestic terrorists”.

Addressing the city mayor and state governor, Trump fumed: “Take back your city NOW. If you don’t do it, I will. These ugly Anarchists must be stopped IMMEDIATELY.”

He may not have specified military force, but the implication is unavoidable. After all, Trump has previously threatened to send in combat troops to end other protests which he has also claimed have been orchestrated by “Antifa” (a loose network of anti-fascist activists).

Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan hit back, advising Trump to “go back to your bunker”. She added: “It’s not terrorism. It’s patriotism. We do not need anyone, including the president, to try to sow further divide, further mistrust and misinformation.”

Federal security organizations have found there is negligible involvement of “Antifa” in nationwide protests. The peaceful takeover of Seattle’s Capitol Hill is also not connected to such groups. There have been reports of an armed man appearing to be a protester in the city. Be that as it may, it is nowhere near reflecting the scenario painted by Fox and its most prominent subscriber of an armed insurrection and mob rule.

Irony abounds. Trump has made “fake news” a signature soundbite as if he is the sole victim of it. He also has claimed that his presidency is in danger of falling to a coup plotted by the deep state. But the Seattle episode shows there is no bigger peddler of fake news than Trump and his Fox friends. And if they could get away with it, this White House would be ordering federal troops to round up civilians exercising their democratic right to protest against police violence. Trump is the one sailing close to a fascist coup.

The propaganda campaign is intriguing, and although amateur and absurd in content and dissemination its message is believed by many of the millions at whom it is directed. The focus of the latest barbs is aimed at convincing the western world that China is responsible for the spread of Covid-19 – what the President of the United States and his Secretary of State refer to as the “China virus” – and it is not surprising that the major outlet for the latest Goebbels’ gambols is News Corp [sic; chaired by the egregious Rupert Murdoch] whose Australian Saturday Telegraph headlined on 4 May that “China deliberately suppressed or destroyed evidence of the coronavirus outbreak in an ‘assault on international transparency’’ that cost tens of thousands of lives, according to a dossier prepared by concerned Western governments on the COVID-19 contagion. The 15-page research document, obtained by The Saturday Telegraph, lays the foundation for the case of negligence being mounted against China.”

The report was given much cover by Fox News in the U.S. (owned and directed by Rupert Murdoch) which noted that “A research dossier compiled by the so-called ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence alliance, that reportedly concludes China intentionally hid or destroyed evidence of the coronavirus pandemic, is consistent with U.S. findings about the origins of the outbreak so far, senior U.S. officials told Fox News on Saturday [ May 2].” The reporter who produced the Telegraph story, ‘National Political Editor’ Sharri Markson, declared on Fox News next day that “It’s very clear from this 15-page dossier that has been prepared by concerned western governments that China deliberately covered up evidence of the virus early on in a pure case of negligence… this directly contributed to thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people getting sick and dying.”

It was utter nonsense, of course, and was therefore seized upon by the UK’s gutter tabloid the Daily Mail which informed its millions of readers that “Bombshell ‘Five Eyes’ Western intelligence dossier claims China lied about coronavirus.” To give them their due, the majority of the UK media declined to spread such garbage, but the stink has lingered in spite of the revelation on 7 May that “Australia has determined the report is not a Five Eyes intelligence document. It is not believed to include original intelligence from human sources or electronic intercepts.” Of course not. But that doesn’t matter to the propaganda-meisters who scored a victory over truth and decency.

And even supposedly respectable organisations are not averse to slanting information when there is an opportunity. As pointed out by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “United States Strategic Command, the branch of the U.S. military responsible for the nation’s nuclear weapons, recently released an imperially misleading infographic on Twitter. The graphic is confused – not only about when to use bold typeface, but also about the facts.” The graphic claims that “Russia, China, North Korea and Iran pursue new nuclear weapons and delivery systems to threaten the world” while, as the Bulletin points out “there’s no mention of Russia’s dramatic reductions [in numbers of nuclear weapons], which have outpaced those of the United States. Since 1990, the Russian stockpile has declined from roughly 37,000 warheads to 4,310 – an 88 percent decrease.” But the head of U.S. Strategic Command, Admiral Charles Richard, tweeted on 3 May that “The threats we face today and in the future are real, and have not changed during the pandemic. While we continue to seek and provide for a safe and secure world, others continue to act provocatively and irresponsibly.”

Perhaps nobody told Admiral Richard that the U.S. has 3,800 nuclear weapons while China has 300. And while his Command is alleging provocation and irresponsibility by China he should bear in mind the report on 30 April that “The U.S. military continued its weeklong show of force in the South China Sea with a sortie over the contested waters by two Air Force bombers. The B-1B Lancers from the 28th Bomb Wing at Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D., flew a 32-hour round trip to conduct operations over the sea as part of a joint bomber task force by the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and U.S. Strategic Command.” Not only this, but in the waters of the South China Sea “The guided-missile cruiser USS Bunker Hill sailed near the Spratlys on Wednesday as part of its so-called freedom-of-navigation operations” and “on Tuesday, the guided-missile destroyer USS Barry sailed near the Paracel Islands.” Provocation, anybody?

The Pentagon’s 2019 Report to Congress about China’s ‘Military and Security Developments’ notes that the Chinese navy’s “latest surface and subsurface platforms enable combat operations beyond the reach of China’s land-based defences. In particular, China’s aircraft carrier and planned follow-on carriers, once operational, will extend air defence coverage beyond the range of coastal and shipboard missile systems and will enable task group operations at increasingly longer ranges.” But nobody can believe that China will “follow-on” in the foreseeable future to the extent that it will have anything like the eleven nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed aircraft carriers that the U.S. Navy deploys all over the world.

The Covid-19 pandemic is a world crisis that should have resulted in all nations getting together and cooperating in every possible way to control the spread of the virus, combat its physical and economic consequences, and produce and administer an immunity vaccine. Instead, the priority of Trump Washington has been to denigrate China in every way possible. The exchange between Secretary of State Pompeo and Martha Raddatz on ABC television made this clear, when he was asked “Do you believe coronavirus was man-made?” to which he replied that “the best experts seem to think so.” Martha Raddatz wasn’t going to let him get away with that and pointed out that “the Director of National Intelligence says the consensus is it wasn’t.” Pompeo’s lame but most revelatory counter to her line of questioning was “What’s important is the Communist Party could’ve prevented this.”

And to further challenge the Communist Party, the Pentagon’s aggressive operations around China’s shores include the USS Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group along with “the amphibious assault ship USS America, smaller than the Reagan but carrying F-35B Lightning II stealth strike fighters” and the USS Nimitz Strike Group is about to leave San Diego for an undisclosed Indo-Pacific mission. The health crisis affected the U.S. fleet, and there will be yet more instances of virus infection, but the Chief of Naval operations, Admiral Gilday declared that in spite of the world health emergency the U.S. navy has “a duty to ensure we are ready to respond. We cannot simply take a knee or keep everyone in port until this enemy is defeated. We are America’s away team. The uncertainty caused by [the coronavirus] makes our mission of protecting America at sea more important than ever. That is why the U.S. Navy continues to operate forward every day.”

So now we know. Forget the world health crisis. Concentrate on confronting China. The “away team” is considered to be Washington’s route to a peaceful and prosperous future.

Hysteria about China has been kicked into high gear by the political/media class who are responsible for manufacturing support for the cold war escalations which will be necessary to prevent the US from being surpassed on the world stage as a unipolar superpower.

Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro has aired a fire-and-brimstone monologue on China that looks like a fictional news clip from some kind of film noir-style movie adaptation of a really ham-fisted dystopian graphic novel. It really needs to be seen to be believed, so give it a view here when you get a chance:

This seems more unhinged than normal pic.twitter.com/PmoLhMEaB7

— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) April 19, 2020

“China is the one that’s out of control,” Pirro spat, punching the word ‘China’ like she was speaking a profanity at someone she despises. “We’re not going to let you destroy this country or our way of life. We’ve fought too hard and we’ve fought too long to lose it to a Wuhan — that’s what I said, a WOO-HAN virus!”

“You want to control people? You politicians want to flex your muscles?” Pirro asked, referring to government lockdowns. “Well start working on how you’re gonna punish, ostracize, alienate, and financially sanction, and make China accountable for what they did to us and the rest of the world!”

It’s a legitimately scary segment with an unbelievable amount of vitriol, and Pirro isn’t the only Fox News pundit ramping up the anti-China hysteria.

Tucker Carlson recently had on “former” CIA officer Bryan Dean Wright to tell his massive audience about the danger posed by the Chinese menace, and pitched him a question clearly geared to set up Wright to claim without evidence that leaders of the Democratic Party may in fact be members of the Chinese intelligence agency MSS.

“Former” CIA officer @BryanDeanWright tells Tucker Carlson (who has also tried to join the CIA) that some Democratic Party leaders may in fact be secret intelligence agents working for China. This is easily as deranged as anything we’ve seen on MSNBC about Russia. pic.twitter.com/3IcRJzJuQm

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) April 19, 2020

“We reached out to Senator Feinstein and a number of other elected officials today and asked ‘Have you had contact recently since the outbreak with Chinese officials?’, and not a single one responded. What do you think we should infer from that?” asked Carlson, who is known to have himself tried to join the CIA in the past.

“I think that they’re nervous,” Wright replied. “I think there are a bunch of people who, because they’re either useful idiots, or they have some degree of knowledge and and relationships behind the scenes with the Chinese government. Some of them in fact could be Chinese agents of the MSS, their intelligence service, God forbid. They’re nervous.”

“We’ve got a lot of very nervous folks in the Democratic Party,” Wright added.

This is easily as unhinged as even the most cartoonishly ridiculous Russia hysteria we’ve seen uncorked by Rachel Maddow or anyone on MSNBC, and is not at all different in tone or content; even the use of the term “useful idiots” is right in line with the same reprehensible Russiagate rhetoric we’ve been hearing for the last four years.

The claim that rival parties have been infiltrated by communists has a very long and ugly history in US politics, and now that it’s being weaponized by the American right wing in such a shameless way we can expect it to get a whole lot uglier.

Welcome to the new cold war. Biden’s new ad is just unhinged anti-China propaganda.

Biden will attack Trump for supposedly being “too soft” on China, and Trump will do the same to Biden.

The 2020 election will be nonstop bipartisan scapegoating of China.pic.twitter.com/ANzV1dTkS7

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) April 18, 2020

Not to be outdone the Democrats are now working to out-Trump Trump, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi demanding that Trump “swiftly begin implementing the Hong Kong Human Rights & Democracy Act”, and a new Biden campaign ad attacking the president for being too soft on China for its handling of the Covid-19 virus.

The ad attacks Trump for failing to force Beijing to allow US government officials into Wuhan to monitor the governing of a sovereign nation during a pandemic outbreak.

“Trump praised the Chinese 15 times in January and February as the coronavirus spread across the world,” says the ad’s narrator in a menacing voice. “Trump never got a CDC team on the ground in China. And the travel ban he brags about? Trump let in 40,000 travelers from China into America after he signed it. Not exactly airtight.”

Attacking Trump from the right on foreign policy has become standard practice for the Biden campaign, with whoever runs his account recently tweeting “Donald Trump says he’s a wartime president — it’s time for him to act like one.”

This is the guy that American progressives still say can be moved to the left? Hilarious.

Even as the world confronts the coronavirus crisis, democracy and human rights continue to be attacked in Hong Kong. @RepMcGovern is right — @realDonaldTrump must swiftly begin implementing the Hong Kong Human Rights & Democracy Act. https://t.co/hn0GiuNrDm

— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) April 18, 2020

It is never a good sign when the political/media class all across the aisle begins loudly trying to out-hawk one another about a nation which refuses to be absorbed into the US-centralized world order. And make no mistake, this is all this is actually about.

It’s not a coincidence that the two nations the US political/media class has been shrieking the loudest about lately are the two strongest nations which have refused to be absorbed into the US empire. It’s never been about “collusion” or a virus, it’s about stopping multipolarism. This has been obvious for years, but partisan narrative control masks it. More than two years ago I was writing about how Russiagate isn’t about Trump or even really just about Russia, but about hamstringing the Russia-China tandem to stop China’s rise.

Ever since the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of neoconservatism, the prevailing orthodoxy in the US-centralized power alliance has been to preserve the unipolar world order at any cost. All US foreign policy has been a direct or indirect result of this agenda ever since.

Donald Trump says he’s a wartime president — it’s time for him to act like one.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) April 18, 2020

It’s not about Covid-19. It’s not about Uighurs. It’s not about a Putin pee tape. It’s not about terrorists. It’s not about weapons of mass destruction. It’s about world domination, plain and simple. And the oligarch-owned political/media class who controls the dominant narrative is helping to facilitate that.

I never voted for a world order where one powerful government is constantly attacking, destroying and sabotaging any nation that threatens its hegemony. I’m pretty sure you never did either. And yet here we are, forced to accept this insane paradigm, even when the targeted nations in question are nuclear armed and anything could go drastically wrong at any moment as a result of miscommunication or technical malfunction in the heat and confusion of escalated aggression.

This will continue to be foisted upon us whether we like it or not, until this way of life is locked in forever, or until we all die in a nuclear holocaust, or until we force them to stop. It’s that third option that they are working to cut off during the rapid increases in government surveillance and internet censorship we’ve seen implemented during this pandemic, so we’re going to have to want to live a lot more than the empire does.

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