Tag: Alex Jones

Jeffrey St. Clair: The Silent Death of the American Left

St. Clair gave an address which I just read in digest form in Counterpunch. In it he echoes one of the themes I’ve been riffing on for years, OWS, notwithstanding. Though he does not mention Occupy or Wisconsin or any of the rest of the happy face the left has been putting on activism for the past year or two they stand in as silent sentinels–they were the last gasps of a tired and finished movement.

Does the Left exist as an oppositional political, cultural or economic force? Is anyone intimidated or restrained by the Left? Is there a counterforce to the grinding machinery neoliberal capitalism and its political managers?

The answer is, of course, no such movement exists.

This is the politics of exhaustion. We have become a generation of leftovers. We have reached a moment of historical failure that would make even Nietzsche shudder.

St. Clair is a deeply insightful political thinker who is unafraid of the truth, despite the fact he had to work under the shadow of the petty-tyrant Alex Cockburn. His article is a tale of woe. He notes how the American public actually favors many progressive ideas yet the left gets no traction–he doesn’t say why–his article is just a cry of the heart.

What to Make of Alex Jones

I like Alex Jones but I don’t trust him. He’s sly but he’s also courageous and he’s unique as a commentator but, above all, he is a salesman. He is one of the only people who predicted 9/11 a few months before it happened–mind you he predicts a lot of things that don’t happen but his prediction of 9/11, nonetheless was uncanny–did he just hit a lucky number? Did he get some inside information–he claims to be privy to insider gossip and certainly the people that populate his shows are interesting. Mind you, I don’t like a lot of the crazy right-wingers he seems to agree with on his show (he tries to agree with everyone) but I think these ideas need airing and I don’t have to agree with people to consider what they are saying.

He has people I like on his show guys I would like hanging out with or who remind me of guys I liked hanging out with–Gerald Celente with his highly articulate ability to insult everyone in the best Italo-American tradition (I’ve hung out a lot with people like him), the Yale-educated intellectual and lover of Liebnitz (how endearing to listen to someone like that) Webster Tarpley, the grand southern gentleman Paul Craig Roberts and one of the most unique people in this country (who now lives in Mexico) Jesse Ventura. Because he keeps company with these highly interesting (btw, I don’t necessarily go along with everything these guys say but they base what they say on something real which is more than I can say about the MSM which is, in my view, consists entirely of edicts from the Central Committee. I have almost stopped listening to NPR unless it is a non- “news” show.

After the alleged assassination of OBL I got on the Alex Jones channel. I can’t listen to him for too long since he is, shall we say, somewhat erratic in his articulateness and “truthiness.” One of the figures who came out of the woodwork exclusively on the Alex Jones Show is Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik, a collaborator on several Tom Clancy books as well as long-time government operative and Assistant Secretary of State–the guy seems to be a real person but since he’s basically a spook and the model Clancy used to create the character of Jack Ryan there’s little real info on him. Having heard the guy on Alex’s show what he said not only about the OBL hoax (I think that is pretty obvious–the governments is so pathetic you have to be stupid not to think something is funny about it) but about the general situation. To me these interview are so explosive, particularly, when he explicitly warned Obama and his people that there would be a revolution if he attempted another false-flag operation which sounded a lot like a threat yet there’s virtually nothing on this interview in the MSM. You would think that they’d try to debunk Dr. Pieczenik or note his very real threat to Obama. If the guy is real they should note it if the guy is a fraud they should debunk it. All I’ve seen is that his Wikipedia entry which suddenly got a note that it is a candidate for deletion.

So what is going on? Is Jones really on to something? Has he become a focal point for dissenters? How much of what he says can be believed? He’s constantly drumming up fear that some terrible things are about to happen most of which, eventually, turn out to be false. Can we support someone who’s on the right as far as immigration policy, about “socialism” and about climate-change, yet is with us (those of us who are highly skeptical of the the official 9/11 story and the weird OBL execution and burial at sea) as well as being an anti-imperialist, anti-globalist and anti-police-state activist. The guy does stand up relentlessly for these things. So what do you think?