Thread by @bobfrombrockley

As Trump time comes to an end, a disturbing section of the left is thinking about reaching out to the hard right to try and make itself relevant with his angry, bigoted followers... [a short thread]

...Some of the Extremely Online Left in the US has deluded itself into thinking that the far right insurgency is a bluecollar movement (a bit like how both Blue Labour centrists and the Trot/Stalinist left in the UK persuaded itself Brexit is a working class victory)...

(of course, we know now the 6 January rioters were CEOs, lawyers, cops and whitecollar GOP activists refinery29.com/en-us/2021/01/… HT @FFRAFAction )

...Here's two recent examples of the defective left thinking it's a good thing to reach out to the far right. First, Jacobin on QAnon and then Rovics promoting Matthew Heimbach:

Daniel Bessner & Amber A'Lee Frost just published something in Jacobin that says "QAnon-ers are correct about a lot of things", including the existence of an elite pedophile "cabal", and have "legitimate concerns" about the hidden forces controlling the world....

Both authors have form. Bessner, a a contributing editor at Jacobin and a non-resident fellow at the Koch Brothers funded @QuincyInst, tweeted this gem a couple of days after armed MAGA putschists stormed the Capitol:

(On the Quincy Institute, check out this thread:

https://twitter.com/charliearchy/status/1146494278564106240?s=20

It also has an uncomfortably large number of associates who've been accused of antisemitism: jpost.com/american-polit… )

And Frost, Chapo Trap House co-host, was of course celebrated by the UK's own Spiked for her "anti-woke" politics. In her Spiked interview, Frost said that Trump fans are "ours to win".

(If you don't know about Chapo, here's a good primer medium.com/@badly_xeroxed… )

Example 2: David Rovics, anarchist songwriter, hosted an actual Nazi, Matthew Heimbach (founder of the Traditionalist Worker Party), on his show:

https://twitter.com/RuthlessWe/status/1351737473177534464?s=20

Rovics seems to think Heimbach is an ex-fascist. At best this is gullibility: Heimbach's entire rebrand is designed to appeal to the left-wing fantasy of winning over mythical proto-socialist bluecollar MAGA fans.

https://twitter.com/RuthlessWe/status/1351743513398951936?s=20

One of the ways the likes of Heimbach reach out to the defective left is their apparent support for some version of "anti-imperialism". Here he is in a Hezbollah T-shirt (HT @JettGoldsmith)

Of course, Rovics has form too, as a long-time promoter of antisemite Gilad Atzmon, who is a common gateway for anti-Zionists to embrace fascist ideas.

https://twitter.com/TomNwainwright/status/1351798158322491392?s=20

Conclusion:
(a) winning over pro-Trump racists is a dangerous fantasy
(b)the left needs to be more vigilant about this stuff, and treat the people introducing far right ideas into our spaces as pariahs.

[HT for some content to @supergutman, @talktoharris1, & @pplswar, all of whom you should follow.

Other good sources on red-brown convergence include @transform6789, @daphlawless, @areidross, @Marusya_1312 & @emmibevensee.

Last, read this at @libcomorg: libcom.org/library/invest…

PS One thing in the Bessner/Frost piece I meant to also take issue with but forgot is their laughable claim that middle class professionals are absent from Q Anon. All analysts of the scene agree that middle class professionals make up a large part of it

https://twitter.com/Minkowitz/status/1351891885158248448?s=20

Also good on the claim that MAGA is the cry from the heart of the dispossesed and left behind, this new @newlinesmag piece by @michaeldweiss "They did not come from the factory floor or coal mine but the real estate brokerage and suburban split-level." newlinesmag.com/argument/littl…