If I were thirty or so years younger, I'd research and write a book geared to a popular audience, The Perpetual Suicide Of The American Left: A History. The topic would be the major and some of the minor figures who have grabbed the megaphone or, as those were invented, microphone to declare themselves the most leftisty of the leftist, impress and - their only real goal - leading a smaller or larger small faction of leftists who then a. act and talk to discredit the left, generally, b. split the left that might unite to win something possible instead of the inevitable make-believe, pie-in-the-glorious millennium that it is possible for such most leftist of the lefty to peddle to the stupid and gullible who are their following. And c. inevitably split bitterly and divisively.
Bernie Sanders' cult is only the current most successful of such con-men, they litter the wreckage that American leftism has generally been.
That wreckage comes from several parts of the history of the American "left". the less damaging and idiotic anarchists such as the idiotically elevated Emma Goldman who, late in life as she saw the rise of fascism in Europe rather stupidly asked her friends if she had wasted her life on her ideology of anarchism. It is one of the seldom mentioned aspects of the legendary Goldman and her idiot boyfriend, Alexander Berkman, that her great inspiration, the anarchist moral atrocity of "propaganda of the deed" was an ideological inspiration to Mussolini's conception of fascism as Goldman's other hero on the basis of his inversion of morality, Fredrich Nietzsche was an inspiration of Nazism. In the United States its self-indulgent violence did nothing to help the cause of the rights of workers and caused probably decades of setbacks for it. It is worth noting that the anarchists, even before Goldman and Berkman appeared on the scene were far better at fighting with each other and damaging the nascent socialist movement, inevitably splitting and destroying any such socialist group or party they attached themselves to like limpets.
This internal self-destructive activity is the most notable effect that the anarchists would have in the reality of real life. Even when anarchists like Goldman and Berkman developed what would be one of their many temporary enthusiasms for the ideas of someone else that wouldn't last. The idiots got a lot of their ideas about the attractively exciting violence of "propaganda of the deed" from the advocate of terrorism, Johann Most - as I recall Berkman brought her to one of his lectures as a first date - but they soon broke with him as they, no doubt, got bored and fussy and, no doubt, didn't get their way in some futile and stupid internal discussion and had a fight with him. I don't remember the unimportant details but Goldman got pissed off when Most said something uncomplimentary about her boyfriend and she slapped him across the face with a horse whip. Not that she and Berkman had a very stable relationship, either, they broke up as a couple to screw around with other people, including each other. Their ever temporary adoption of one or another sect of anarchism was never much more than temporary as those habits they share with virtually every major figure of the play left led to breaks and splits among them. The excuse was often some "principle" which I used to buy but I think it was mostly ego and personality and selfishness. It's remarkable what a selfish lot those ultra-idealsts were.
And what you can say about the anarchists in that regard you can probably say many times over about the various species and figures within Marxism. The Marxists were only ever good for the same things, a. discrediting and damaging the real left that actually had some political success,* b. dividing even the play left as they saved their aggression to use it up in internal struggles for controls of their pathetic little "parties" and organizations and to war among the ever tinier little cliques that came after the splits in the already tiny cults.
The history of the American left is an absolutely needed cautionary tale against continuing with the practices of the left here and elsewhere which have produced nothing good. I am convinced that the atheism, the naturalism, the scientism and the resultant amorality of most of the major figures in that left are the source of a large part of why they will always have that effect.
The attraction to violence among them is one of their most obvious features - given that the uniform effect of that in American politics has been radically counterproductive it would have been given up long ago if that violence wasn't their real goal. When that violence can be made vicarious through distance in place, time, economic class and race, it can be indulged in by the mostly affluent members of the academic play left without any actual inconvenience or risk to their own sweet asses. And there is no mistaking that as a main feature of that left, it is mostly of that kind - they complain bitterly whenever working-class and poor people opt for political associations that are more likely to get them something other than killed or imprisoned or discredited.
As I've mentioned before, it was the widespread affection for the most accomplished murderers of the 20th century among that "left" that was a shamefully belated insight for me. The day I realized that someone murdered by Stalin or Mao or in the German "Democratic" Republic or, yes, by Castro was as dead as a Jew or disabled person murdered by the Nazis and, that was the defining commonality between Nazism and Marxism was the key to my understanding of all of those dear old lefties that I'd been taught to revere in the magazines of the left, in the books issued by lefty professors by lefty presses, by the secondary hagiographic bull shit that led me to revere the memory of Stalin's agents and fan boys, be they the Rosenbergs or the Hollywood 10 as being no better than neo-Nazis and no real part of any American left that was ever going to succeed and which was, in no way, worthy of admiration, respect or lying for.
Bernie Sanders has a lot of people gulled, he's an old man with massive baggage in the form of his public-access TV show, his scribblings for various 1970s self-styled underground papers (they never had to be underground, that was part of the romantic let's-pretend bullshit that the "new left" was), and things like his support for the Trotskyite presidentical candidate in 1980 and 1984, when he could have been supporting the one and only people who were going to be president in stead of Reagan. That didn't much matter when he was merely a slightly accomplished member of the House or Senate from the eccentric NYC colony of Vermont. His one and only real use was in him caucusing with the Democrats to the extent that meant he might keep Republicans from the majority and for his voting with Democrats. Though it clearly gave his already too amply fed ego more nourishment than was safe. It also fed his legend which is what his campaign in the twilight of his life, as he's already had one heart attack and as the Republican-fascists will reveal that huge load of baggage he trails behind him to make him the McGovern for a new century. Supported by the rump end of the quasi-Marxist left, people like Michael Brooks and Sam Seder and In These Times and the even more obvious pseudo-lefties on the make such as The Young Turks, history is repeating itself in the most disastrous way possible.
The part played by the real left is in not facing the fact that we have got to get away from them, to push them away, to reject them and permanently identify them as our enemies. We can't continue to work with them because they don't work, they discredit, they divide, they enable their actual ideological cousins, the fascists.
The play left is not a real left, it is the enemy of the real left that has any hope of winning elections and controlling any of the branches of the American government. The self-pitying anarchists and Marxists don't deserve our pity, they certainly don't deserve our support - I'd even leave them on their own in trying to secure their rights to speech and freedom of press and association, rights their heroes don't grant to those they dictate to and which, no doubt, they'd suspend if they ever took power.
Here's a rule to live by, never, ever trust a "civil libertarian" who advocates the right of the opponents of democracy have an ability to spread their ideological poison. Never trust anyone, whether with a law license or a job in journalism who says we must be fair to fascists, nice to Nazis or kind to commies. We must not do anything that lets them get another try to kill people.
The ones who have a right to our support and help are the ones who the Marxists, the anarchists claim to champion but who will never get a thing from them. Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson made the most revolutionary change in the United States after Abraham Lincoln, two of them had to contend with being tarred with associations with the "real left" which bitterly hated both of them and ran candidates against them. The Democratic left owes the Marxists, the anarchists not a single thing.
* The quintessential example is, of course, the old Socialist Party which managed to do what no socialist or Marxist party has done since, won mayorships and seats in Congress and which was destroyed by some "most leftisty of leftists" I am convinced on orders from Lenin and Trotsky in 1919.
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