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Every evil thing the enemy does is done for money, for tangible material benefits. We know this because we are socialists
This is undeniable, yet so many of us have a knee-jerk compulsion that “we have to DEFEND the REVOLUTION”, viewing capitalist armed forces as a single-minded entity that “hates you 'cause you’re free [from the clutches of empire]” and assuming that every socialist project will be invaded regardless of what the costs and benefits are.
Get the vaccine- synthesis
Horse paste - antithesis
Horse past AND vaccine - synthesis
while you are correct in your analysis, capitalists are rarely unified in their thinking. which is why the bourgeois state exists: to mediate conflict between factions of the ruling class in the overall interest of Capital. the vast majority of capitalists threw tons of money into creating a vaccine as quickly as possible to get back to business as usual, as they saw this as the best path back to profits and growth, as technological solutions to the problems capitalism creates is what has kept them in power for centuries now.
but there is one faction of capitalist class funding all the anti-mask anti-vaxx nutjob ivermectin shit coming out, which is how it has spread so widely. and they are doing this because they thought the best way to return to profit/growth/normalcy was to try and downplay the pandemic and go on as usual and just let people die and ignore it. they began this line of reasoning before the vaccines were completed, as some were saying it could be years or decades before a viable vaccine was ready to use. that’s why they pushed junk like hydroxychloroquine, ideas that covid is no worse than the flu, etc… and now that faction is getting lots of people killed, but they don’t care. it’s not enough dead workers to disrupt profits more than the lockdowns did, so they are fine with it. hell both factions of the capitalist class would be fine with it if it wasn’t straining hospital capacity. i’m sure even the pro-vaccine majority would be fine with it if we just built more hospitals and ICU wards so the capacity wasn’t strained, and then went back to business as usual.
I was disappointed to see Max Blumenthal get on that shit too. Will make me take his foreign policy takes more skeptically now.
Max Blumenthal does associate with some libertarians (Scott Horton being one of them) for his anti-war journalism, so I guess it’s not too surprising to see that start to rub off on him. It’s a shame though that he ended up adopting one of libertarianism’s worst positions in being basically opposed to a lot of proactive pandemic policy out of liberal fears of “authoritarianism”, “violations of informed consent ”, and it being “draconian”.
While he acknowledges that American covid vaccines are effective at reducing hospitalizations, severe illness, and deaths and that high risk populations need to get vaccinated, he still opposes mandates, “vaccine passports”, and lockdowns because he apparently thinks that these policies are “draconian”, racist, and anti-working class. His naive stance here is in opposition to the proactive pandemic control policies of socialist governments like Vietnam and China that have had more success in combating the pandemic. I know other writers at the Grayzone disagree with Max on this issue like Aaron Mate and I believe Ben as well. It would be nice if they could do more to knock some sense into Max on this issue so he doesn’t keep embarrassing himself with these tangents that greatly detract from his foreign policy work. I had assumed that he leaned more ML, but I suppose it’s possible that he may have always had more libertarian sympathies than I had thought. Regardless, it’s disappointing to see.
Conservativism is a disease and horse paste is the cure
