Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton's E-mails by GUEST BLOGGER, Muhsin Y

Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton's E-mails
by Muhsin Y.

Sanders and Clinton: Clearly Enemies.

For over a week now, the liberal left of the Democratic Party has been praising Bernie Sanders for his uncharismatic performance at the Democratic Party presidential debate with the other candidates of that party, of which he is apparently a member.

Among the platitudes for which the senator from Vermont was held up as a shining example for what passes for a left in the United States was when party favourite Hillary Clinton was questioned about her e-mail scandal. Sanders, ever loyal to his “good friend” Ms. Clinton, rushed to her defence, stating that he was “sick and tired of hearing about [the] damn e-mails".

Contrary to the empty partisan discourse in the United States, these e-mails do not merely constitute a cheap target for the other of the two unapologetically bourgeois parties which control the US government and dominate all political discourse. As Secretary of State, Ms. Clinton's actions, statements, and views have all had influence far beyond Washington D.C. politics and indeed around the world. It was, for example, in these e-mails that it was revealed that Ms. Clinton covertly supported a coup in Honduras, by the same sort of fascist forces the United States has supported for decades across Latin America. These are the e-mails Bernie Sanders, the “independent” “socialist” is "sick and tired of hearing about"!

Is this “critical support”, as leftists are so used to referring to it? No! This is decidedly un-critical support for a party with no history of standing up for the real rights of the peoples of the United States, let alone for international socialism, to which Bernie Sanders has no meaningful or principled links. After all, it would harm his ability to ingratiate himself with the imperialist government at home if he were not, for example, to condemn the democratically elected leftist Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez as “a dead communist dictator”!

And while the left in the United States is supposed to keep their criticism to a minimum and let Bernie Sanders “open the way” for more radical rhetoric, he uses this unearned privilege to condemn Hugo Chavez, to remain silent about Honduras, to support a Tea Party budget deal, to underscore the view that exemplary “socialism” lies in bourgeois states in Scandinavia, while repudiating the heroic legacy of actually existing socialism, and otherwise to close the way for actual socialists and progressives in the United States!

Sanders, to his credit, does not even pretend as we are asked to pretend that his historic role is to push forward for other socialists in the United States. On the contrary, he openly admits that if he personally is not nominated president, he will automatically get behind the Democratic Party established order (most likely represented by Ms. Clinton) that he was supposed to represent some quantitative if not qualitative change from!

The left in the United States, as weak as it is, is being prepared to surrender to the Democrats again by Bernie Sanders, when it should be formulating a meaningful strategy and creative tactics to confront the Democrats and win over the revolutionary masses. This is what the peoples of the United States deserve.