What Have We Learned From Russiagate?

My contribution to the attempt to increase text-based posts here we were talking about last week. This was all written off the cuff and unedited, so forgive any mistakes.

What have we learned from Russiagate?

Now that Mueller has concluded his investigation and left us with the result that most people here and in the other, saner corners of the American left predicted- that is, nothing whatsoever on the central claim of Russian collusion- we have to ask ourselves what we can learn from the past two years of completely hysterical obsession over this stuff in the media and in depressingly large sectors of the left.

To me, there are a few lessons we must pay attention to, because they're going to shape both politics and social discourse for decades to come. If we ignore these things and act like the playbook for the real left- which to me means people who are fundamentally committed to traditional left principles of liberte, egalite, fraternite, and to basic social democratic principles- is the same as it was twenty years ago, or even in 2016, we're going to be in big trouble down the road.

Even if we succeed in electing people like Bernie or Tulsi or AOC or Ilhan, we've only won a tenth of the battle. We have to continue expanding our message in the public consciousness, and Russiagate offers a lot of insight into the barriers that will be put up against that by the powerful and those comfortable with our brutal and vicious status quo.

Lesson One: The Left Can Be Stupid Too

Remember the GOP under Obama? Calling him a communist anarchist Muslim atheist closeted transgender rapist from Timbuktu who wasn't really a citizen? Remember how we all laughed at that insanity, comfortably assured that no matter what our internal disagreements, the left would never be so stupid and prejudiced?

Yeah, we were wrong about that. Because while the Russiagate narrative and its chilling effect on independent media and dissent in general was highly calculated (as time went on) by political elites, neocons and neolibs, not everyone who believe(s) (more on that later) in Russiagate is a despicable elitist. Many good, kind, solidly left-wing people have been duped into parroting or actually believing in the narrative that dissent just might be Russian trolling, or that developments in the world that challenge the status quo- good or bad- are probably Russian ops.

Just like the way the war in Iraq played out, immense propaganda efforts and elite scapegoating managed to turn not just ignorant conservative voters but also ignorant liberals into raving maniacs who ended up supporting catastrophically bad actions out of a blend of fear, conformity, and credulousness to power.

We can't ever rest comfortably in the assumption that it's only those people who are vulnerable to such propaganda. Liberals have emotional buttons too, and Trump pushed many people's amygdalas too hard for them to do any thinking- making them ripe for the plucking when MSM, the alphabet soup agencies or anyone else with a motive to grift told them what they wanted to hear.

Lesson Two: Russiagate is what modern propaganda looks like

One of the key things to remember is that Russiagate isn't supposed to appeal to lower class right-wing voters that way many such propaganda operations are. It's a model of propaganda that specifically appeals to the left- from the educated to the uneducated- and inculcates into its hardcore adherents fundamental tenants of neocon/neolib ideology, while claiming such beliefs are all in the service of taking down Trump.

Replace "taking down Trump" with "X", and you've got a very functional formula for modern propaganda aimed at lower-class liberals and bourgeois educated people generally.

Why does this matter? Because they're going to do it again.

We've already seen hints of it, with the sad, ridiculous attempts in both the US and the UK to claim that various dissenting voices, protest movements, rising star politicians who challenge neoliberalism or imperialism, and a number of other social changes are caused by, affiliated with, or are useful idiots of Russia/Putin/The Kremlin.

As long as enough people watch Rachael Maddow blame Putin for the marinara stain on her t-shirt every day, this is a very functional and profitable narrative to use again and again (just like the old toy commercials said!). It also serves as a useful inoculant against members of the "liberal class" (per Chris Hedges) getting funny ideas and maybe joining the real left- after all, the actual left is just a bunch of extremists influenced by Russian fake news, dontchaknow.

Effectively, this can be boiled down to saying that it's a more sophisticated iteration of the social pathologies of the Cold War. The vast majority of it is the same- there's even the same country playing the part of Eurasia/Eastasia- and the elite motivations for crushing dissent in this way are also identical to what was present in the Cold War period.

But I'd argue that this permutation is more insidious, because it is beginning to target the most important source of information in human history: the internet. Without the modern internet, the left can't survive. We can't organize, we can't spread our ideas, and we can't overcome the immense institutional disadvantages put up against us by the powers that be. Elites and neocons/neolibs know this, and the slow push for censorship and blacklisting, controlled by amorphous private "security firms" and unelected panels in major corporations, is a reflection of that.

We have to outline these facts clearly and concisely, and we have to put them in context of the broader Cold War reenactment that's going on right now. Failure to get our message out on this topic brings us one step closer to having, to put it simply, a Chinese internet- immense state and corporate censorship, VPNs everywhere, et al. We can't allow that to happen.

Lesson Three: Establishment Democrats, Neoliberal Elites, & Limousine Liberals Have No Shame, And Oppose The Left More Than The Right

It's true. There is no depth to which these groups won't stoop, up to and including outright lying (not simply spin) and openly messing with democracy and people's right to vote, as we saw in 2016.

This is yet another lesson for people who smugly thought that there were no factions on "their side" who would behave as barbarically or as prejudicially as Republicans, with their racist gerrymandering and "poll watching" where minorities voted, etc.

I'm not going to rehash 2016 again, but suffice it to say- from 2015 to right now- we've seen just how low the "liberal" establishment will go on all fronts, from elections to media coverage to pure propaganda, and there is no bottom to that barrel. We have to understand this, and also understand that as such, sometimes we have to play hardball-we're not going to convince true neolibs to support us anymore than they can convince Republicans in the Hamptons to vote Democrat by running some GOP-lite candidate like Clinton.

We also just have to develop a thick skin generally to being called everything from bigots to Russian trolls to every other thing under the sun, by everything from twitter swarms to stupid celebrities who swallowed some propaganda line they read in the WaPo. We in this forum don't seem to have a problem with that, but alot of progressives are very gentle souls and they really do.

There are more than those things to learn, but I don't want this post to go on too long. If you have any lessons to add please post them in the comments.