Comment by loathsome dongeater@lemmygrad.ml on Uncritical support for Ben Norton against the LaRouchite cranks at The Grayzone (like Max Blumenthal).

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/766438

Some of the replies and reposts have me chuckling.

American left is kinda nutty in that there are a lot of people siding with Blumenthal in the replies which I find insane. Some choice ones include a guy ridiculing Norton for calling Blumenthal’s turn right-wing. Some guy implying Norton is paid by Pfizer. Another one did not like how Norton covered the “freedom” convoy.

They need to readsettlers.org.

I could not care less if Norton stole money or intellectual property or whatever. It’s great if he did.

Why is it insane that people are siding with Blumenthal? I don’t know much about him/the situation, but these accusations seem pretty serious.

Being against people who don’t want to get “the jab” is damning?

I think they’re talking about Norton’s takeover (assuming Blumenthal is telling the truth) of their shared Patreon and social media accounts

This sounds to me like a personal business dispute that should not be aired out in public. Even if this is all true, and i would want to hear Ben’s side of the story too before making up my mind, it’s also not as if Blumenthal was financially crippled by Norton leaving with perhaps a somewhat bigger share than he was owed. Blumenthal still has a big and decently funded media organization at his disposal with the Grayzone whereas Norton is now presumably on his own.

agreed, and I think cornering him on a bus like that was a scummy move

MR YouTube channel is still up https://youtube.com/@ModerateRebels

But it looks like Multipolarista has a reeupload of its debut video, presumably from when the MR YouTube channel was briefly rebranded. https://youtu.be/zJy0VXn-wN0?si=uD5HgcU-GAHRNN1P

It looks like Ben is correct here, there was a settlement regarding the channel and they’ve parted ways and Max owns the MR content produced under the Greyzone label. Not really sure what a settled dispute has to do with Ben’s move to China or why publicly meltdown about it now.

Not really sure what a settled dispute has to do with Ben’s move to China or why publicly meltdown about it now.

Max can’t legally force Ben to do anything while Ben is in China, since China likely won’t enforce Western judgments about password control of a patreon or whatever. He was likely hoping to take Ben down legally and then Ben moved outside the reach of the law, so now he’s trying to publicly smear him

I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:

Eh, Settlers is kinda a bad book, has been done better since 1979, and includes stuff you learn in history class in school anyway.

The problem with the people supporting Blumenthal in the comments is that Twitter is filled with PatSocs and LaRouchites.

So fuck 'em

includes stuff you learn in history class in school anyway.

dog what, did you go to school on the moon or something?

Uh, I was in a southern state. I learned a lof of what it talked about in several history classes before reaching college (which definitely did talk about this stuff as well).

They didn’t cover next to anything that Sakai covered in Settlers in my history classes; for damned sure. Let’s hear about why you find it to be ‘a bad book’; because the only ‘critique’ I ever hear about it seems to be coming from aggrieved settlers who don’t like what they’re reading from an accountability standpoint; and I want to see if you’re any different to that trend.

Been there, argued that, not wasting the electrons again. Go away.

Btw that account is makan

I forgot, we’ve had this conversation before. He thinks Sakai is too critical of CPUSA’s favorite people.

I’m non-white. The person misquotes several people and attacks several orgs I know in-person for being. We don’t even know the person’s credentials or whether they are a “Sakai” to begin with. Prove to me the credentials of the person and maybe I’ll take what the person says at face-value; until then, read it critically and maybe consider the other side of the story when it comes to documenting the labor movement.

Man, I told you I’d been there and done that with you already. With all due respect, please fuck off. We’ve been here before, and I’m utterly disinterested in the anti-accountability horseshit you peddle. “Buh buh buh we don’t know who he really is” like we don’t have a LONG FUCKING HISTORY of pseudonymous publishing. For someone who’s non-white, you sure as shit argue like a white man. Fuck outta here.

Uh, I’m not against accountability. We also don’t really have a long history of pseudonymous publishing or one that’s really that extensive. Why are you attacking and acting rude toward me? It’s literally just one book out of many…

I am not American but I think American PSL type leftists should learn from these fellows , specially their recent activism against US foreign policy in Ukraine and China . I agree they have very low level /primitive/none understanding of LGBT issues but I think none of the so called left parties can address the issues of inherent racism and LGBT problems promptly . I like how they agitate against the US foreign policy which is the main driver of imperialism and also the causes of many problems in US. I mean you have Cornel west but he thinks USSR was anti semitic , I have found very scanty people who have a coherent ideology in the western hemisphere . I mean what is this from him

“Ronald Reagan was a freedom fighter in terms of supporting our Jewish bros & sis in the Soviet Union & opposing vicious forms of communism.”

PSL is doing activism against imperialism. It’s just not talked about because the media likes that anti-war stuff is only coming from the right, and RAtWM can be used as evidence for horseshoe theory.

Yeah but I haven’t seen them speaking against AOC or progressive democrats who pretend to be better than reps. May be I am wrong here but I feel leftists over there should be as aggressive as possible on the US foreign policy. Some CIA induced Mcfaul is saying oh Putin is Putler and then every mainstream left have to repeat that line. I mean Democracy Now brought a woman from India who represents 0.00001 percent Indians and she talked about how Putin and Modi are friends because they are both Nazis. And then on Twitter she repeated the holodomor lies and how Azov are brave people.

PSL isn’t democracy now. They are actually trying to build a left anti-war movement. Meanwhile RAtWM is just fueling horseshoe theory and opportunism.

I know PSL is good but it is also true that PSL doesn’t hold power in US Congress or in any government body. Your mainstream leftists like AOC and others are straight way sold to war lobby. They think Putin hijacked Trump’s campaign or think US is a benevolent force and sending weapons to Nazis. Their foreign policy is opening arms to ETIM, Tibetan slave owners etc. I mean even even if they claim they are progressives, their politics is just as regressive as it gets. I mean cornel West with that statement won’t get into our any commie party lol 😂 , naxals should have shot him the next day. What is RatWM btw?

There’s nothing really, I would say, wrong with PSL fundamentally. If they’re doing actual activism rather than Internet shenanigans, then they’re already more advanced than a lot of leftists out there.

I liked settlers. It’s thesis was a little extreme, but I learned a lot of new stuff from it (probably because it’s old). Which parts did you learn in history class? In a way I don’t want patsocs to be able to group us in the Sakai stans, but I’d also like to promote it to spite them. Yes, there are better books now.

We are communists, we don’t automatically refuse extreme just because. Problem with it that it was undialectical and thus unmarxist.

I don’t mean too extreme as in “extremism=bad” like libs. I mean he lays out evidence that USian crackers are part of an oppressor nation and have historically benefited from imperialism, but goes as far as to say that we cannot be working class and nothing good can ever come from us or from working with us because we are inherently opportunistic and bourgeois or something like that. I agree he failed to use dialectical and historical materialism as a mode of study.

The Filipino War, the genocide of Indigenous peoples, the ethnic cleansing of the “civilized tribes,” New Deal and the inherent racism of it, etc. I’m, err, not exactly sure what I’m missing, but there you go.

But hey, if you want to spite PatSocs, you do you. As you yourself said, there are better books now since 1979.

Maybe I will in the future but I didn’t learn much of that in school.

Talk about whatever, respecting the rules established by Lemmygrad. Failing to comply with the rules will grant you a few warnings, insisting on breaking them will grant you a beautiful shiny banwall.

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Uncritical support for Ben Norton against the LaRouchite cranks at The Grayzone (like Max Blumenthal).(twitter.com)

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