Can we lose the liberal jingoism? Loose talk about treason is only harming the resistance – Salon

After James Hodgkinson shotRepublican congressmanSteve Scalise and four other people at the Republican congressional baseball team practice last week in Virginia,it did not take long for right-wingersto start blaming the left. Hodgkinson, who had an anger management problem and a history of violence yetno trouble getting his hands on an assault rifle andhandgunhad also been a supporter of Bernie Sanders2016 presidential campaign, which was more than enough for partisanson the right to denouncetheentire left for violence.

On Fox News, former House speaker Newt Gingrich called the shooting part of a pattern on the left, where there has beenan increasing intensity of hostility. Those on theleft,Gingrichfurtherclaimed,have sent certain signals that tell people that its OK to hate Trump, its OK to think of Trump in violent terms, its OK to consider assassinating Trump (Incidentally, Gingrich has yet to call outTrump for encouragingpoliticalviolence last year, nor has hediscussed themuch moreserious pattern ofviolence on the far right).

Outside the right-wing echo chamber the mainstream media did not go so far as to blame the left for the actions of one deranged individual, but they did attempt to highlight what New York Times reporter Yamiche Alcindor called the rage buried in some corners of the progressive left, noting that Sanders supportershad come to have a belligerent reputation. Alcindor also observed thatHodgkinsons own social media posts were not far from Mr. Sanderss own message.

In other words, the paper of record rehashed the Bernie Bro narrative from last years Democratic primary, which had been originally manufactured by Hillary Clintons campto undermine the Sanders campaign.Though the Times uncritically reported this narrative,it was largelydebunked during the election (one study, for instance,found that Clinton supporters were more aggressive than Sanders supporters online).

While most of the press similarly portrayed Hodgkinson as aBernie Bro leftist, it became increasingly clear as more information came out about the gunmanthat the he was not only a deeply unstable and abusiveman (described in court papers as an abusive alcoholic who hit his foster daughter repeatedly), but that he had been taken in by much of the Russia hysteriathat has engulfed a large part of the Democratic Party over the past six months.

In late March, for example, Hodgkinson signed and shared a Change.com petition calling for the removal of the President & Vice President, et al for misprision of treason, and posted on Facebook: Trump is a traitor. Trump has destroyed our democracy. Its time to destroy Trump & Co. The petition itself claimsthat members of the Trump administration, along with certain donors and Republican members of Congress, had knowledgeof Trumps relationship with numerous Russian oligarchs and one Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, yet did not find patriotic merit in informing any US authorities of the clear and present US national security threat danger posed by Trumps presidential campaign.

So that the nightmare of having traitors to ournation,in charge of our nations affairs and our nuclear deterrent forces,might be swiftly rectified, the petition continues, Clinton and Tim Kaine should be simply declared the overall victors of the 2016 popular count election and installed immediately.

Considering that the progressive left has been highly critical of this Trump-Russiacollusion narrative, which has generated a great deal of fake news and conspiracy theory, it looks like the gunman was more a product of partisan hackery than left-wing politics. After all, ithasntbeen left-wingpublications that have been freelytossingaround the T-word and peddlingRussia conspiracies, butpartisan groups like ShareBlue (headed by Clinton loyalist David Brock)and fake news websites like The Palmer Report.

Just because there has been a lot of fake newsdoesnt mean that theres noRussia scandal,or that the president hasnt been compromised in some way and all reasonable people should support the investigations that are currently underway. As of this writing, however, there is still noevidencethat the president of the United States has committed any act that would qualify him as a traitor.There is plenty of evidencethat Trump is ademagogue, an ignorant bigot and acon man without an ethical bone in his body.But a traitor? That isnt a charge that should be thrown aroundlightly.

There is a reason why many on the left have been critical of this kind of language andthe Russia narrative in general. While partisan hacks have been quick to jump on the Trump is a treasonous Russian operative bandwagon, mostleftistshave cringed at what feels like a 21st-century liberal version of McCarthyism. Left-wingersknow a thing or two about being called traitors without any basis, and the paranoidrhetoric that has grown around the Russia scandalhas come to sound increasinglylike the paranoidjingoism thatwe witnessedat Tea Party rallies years ago. A tweetfrom MSNBC host Joy Reid last September before the Russia hysteria became all-consuming perfectly capturedthisneo-McCarthyism that has made some left-wingers wince:

I imagine the old time American Communist Party is spinning in its collective grave with envy at what Trump is accomplishing That said, for most Americans its shocking to see an American presidential candidate openly touting authoritarian, communist Russia.

Reidseems to beunawareof the fact that Russia ceasedto be communist more than 25 years ago, and appears to thinkthat Joseph McCarthyhad the right idea when he led witch hunts to crack down on the Communist Party USAand expose communist infiltrators in the U.S. government. What is truly revelatory, however, is Reidsapparent ignorance of 20th-century communismsinternationalist nature,as opposed tothe ferventnationalism of Russia under the Putin regime. In other words, she seems to think that the CPUSA and similar groups around the world aligned withthe Soviet Unionbecause it was Russia, not because it representedthe supposed ideals of global communism.

This bringsus back to why the politicalleft which is also internationalist in nature has rejectedthe jingoism andneo-McCarthyismthat has come todominate in some liberal circles, whereRussian apologistsand traitors are seen at every turn.

There isanother important reason why the left hasbeen critical of the Russia narrative, of course: It has been used by many partisan Democrats and Clinton loyalists includingHillary Clinton herself to avoid any significant self-reflection about last yearsdisastrouselection results. Rather than looking in the mirrorand tryingmake sense of 2016, they have blamed all their woes on Russia (and on James Comey). This is not only irrational but self-destructive. If Democrats do not adopt a more compellingmessageand populist tone in the years ahead,then 2018 and 2020 may not be the big electoral comebacks some are anticipating.

Political discourse has become increasingly toxic and tribalistic in America over the past few decades, and James Hodgkinson though clearly an unstable and isolated lunatic wasa product of this tribalism. While Republicans have played the biggest role in creating todays hyper-partisan atmosphere many Republicans (including the current president) were accusing Obama of being a Kenyan-born jihadi-sympathizerlong before liberals started calling Trump a traitor many Democrats have recently embraced this same partisan tribalism. One expects mindless jingoism and conspiracy-peddling from the party of Donald Trump, but even in this age of intense division and mutual incomprehension, liberals and progressives should know better.

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Can we lose the liberal jingoism? Loose talk about treason is only harming the resistance - Salon