Wherever Bernie Sanders’ campaign goes from here, the left critique of establishment politics is getting empirical backing through popular support for his candidacy. The establishment’s response— incredulity that the little people have the temerity to question their betters, is combined with a posture of victimhood, that blameless elites are being demonized by neo-collectivist malcontents who are too stupid to appreciate the blessing that four decades of neoliberalism has bestowed on them.
As we enter the second decade of the new century, signs of crisis are all around us. Climate change, rising economic inequality, assaults on workers’ rights and wages, unchecked corporate power, financialization, entrenched racism, misogyny, and xenophobia, and emboldened neo-fascism and right-wing populism, to name a few.
In the wake of Australian fire storms, global crop loss and catastrophic climate change shifts, billions of people are recognizing the dangers to society and life itself presented by capitalism’s profit-driven despoiling of nature. At the same time, the last 40 years of deepening inequality inside virtually all nations have undermined their social cohesion, and increasingly, capitalism’s mechanisms are being blamed. Anti-capitalism is exploding across many political landscapes.
The world’s oil, gas, and coal companies would incur what the Financial Times (FT) recently described as “breathtaking” losses if they’re not allowed to extract and burn their enormous reserves.
Photo: Funeral procession for Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Tehran on Jan 6, 2020 (AP photo by Ebrahim Noroozi)
On January 3, 2020, the Trump-led U.S. government carried out the assassinations of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi military commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. Both men had played key leading roles for years in the war against the right-wing paramilitaries of ISIS.[1]
