In the right ..er left circles the label of Jacinda label as a “pretty communist”, as levelled at her recently by NZ First apparatchiks, is not seen as insult but rather a badge of honour. It is however a description, that overlooking the already obvious red flag (e.g a cabinet made up neoliberal rogernomic left overs of the 1990’s), is not particularly true or accurate once the full story is given the deep dive.

Yes yes we know Jacinda became the leader of the International Socialist Organisation ( A US based organisation) youth leader in 2007. There is even a photo of her with cake with a great big sickle and hammer. Will sort of (if you squint your eyes and ignore the obvious photo shopping)

But to put that ‘evidence’ in context it did come after working as a senior policy adviser for neoliberal (right wing) British Prime Minister Tony Blair in the UK Cabinet Office (specifically the Better Bureau which critics say specialised in destroying small business for big business agendas). Blair policies in nutshell were privatise and bomb.

As for the ISO on March 28, 2019 the ISO dissolved spectacularly and toxically in a state of long brewing civil war.The reasons why are complex with many fingers pointed in many directions (depending on which brand of socialism your into) but the catalyst can be interpreted as a failed coup against the pro Obama Barack camp (resulting in mutual destruction) marketed as progressive liberals.

The far left magazine, New Militants, write of this fraction “In 2008 the organisation was convinced Obama’s election would mean a sort of return to Keynesianism in a new guise…articles were written about the new deal and Keynesianism, study groups organized and a political approach drawn out on this basis. None of this materialized, Obama’s governance economically represented total continuity of the existing neo-liberal order. As this became apparent, the organization adapted its analysis to match this. Yet there was never any critique, any interrogation of the previous approach. At no point would the leadership come out and simply say that their analysis was incorrect and had to be changed”.

Wether you buy into the New Militants Marxist verbose is moot. The core point of the ISO implosion is that not all form of socialism are equal and some are clearly less socialist than their branding indicates. And that clear of US socialism scene from which the ISO hatched who its emerges is in many case simply a front for CIA infiltration of campus liberalism and regime change in offshore nations.

Say What? Boris have you being at the Vodka again?

Ben Norton and Max Blumenthal authors for the Gray Zone a left wing online activism site write “Socialism is now apparently brought to you by the US State Department.From July 4 to 7, thousands of left-wing activists from across the United States are gathering in Chicago for the 2019 Socialism Conference.At this event, some of the most powerful institutions on the American socialist — but avowedly anti-communist — left have brought together a motley crew of regime-change activists to demonize Official Enemies of Washington. One anti-China panel at the conference features speakers from two different organisations that are both bankrolled by the US government’s soft-power arm the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a group founded out of Ronald Reagan’s CIA in the 1980s to grease the wheels of right-wing regime-change efforts and promote “free markets” across the planet.”

Gray Zone identified conference members

Anand Gopal, as working at a liberal foundation, that is directly funded by the US State Department, who target regimes in the Middle East the USA wants over thrown.

MONEY GUNS & LAWYERS.

Ashley Smith, a former leader of the ISO who has spent the past eight years peddling propaganda for foreign-backed, far-right sectarian Islamist “moderate rebels” in Syria. Jihadist armed by the Pentagon and working with the NED other CIA long term buddy USAID and its usual right wing (but given liberal sounding names to confuse you) think tanks.

While other 2019 conference panel spoke against the socialist governments of Nicaragua and Cuba. This includes speaker, Dan La Botz who hosted an event in 2018 that featured right-wing Nicaraguan activists wearing masks who disguised themselves as students. ‘Terrorists’ who were junketed to meet with Republican lawmakers in Washington by the US government-funded right-wing organisation Freedom House another Reagan NED CIA fun house.

The conference is described as the former platform of the ISO “who claimed to be anti-war, but its leaders spent a disproportionate percentage of their time and resources attacking the anti-imperialist left. They could more accurately be referred to as the anti-anti-imperialist left” states the Grey Zone who say they call for regime changes in Nicaragua, Cuba, Syria, Iran, China, and Russia. Nations seen as threat to the USA or at less the CIA/NED.

The conference brochure reads, “Brought to you by Haymarket, Jacobin, and the Democratic Socialists of America.” Haymarket is the book publishing arm of the now defunct ISO, and its editorial board features some of the group’s former leaders.
Haymarket has published several books attacking pacifist and whistle blowers such as “Indefensible,” a book-length denunciation of left wing journalists including Julian Assange, John Pilger, and Seymour Hersh, along with giving endorsements of support for virtually every US and NATO military intervention in the past 30 years, as well as the dirty war on Syria and the 2016 Maidan coup in Ukraine backed by the CIA and Pentagon funded neo nazi mercenaries.

https://thegrayzone.com/…/dsa-jacobin-iso-socialism-confer…/

REDS GIVE CINDY REDRUM & A BARE BUM.

As for the right-wing record of Jacinda Ardern’s government in New Zealand the World Socialist Website – and you can’t get a more red news source if you tried comrades – reports

“New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced on January 28 that the next election will be held on September 19, marking the beginning of an eight-month campaign.Since the Labour-New Zealand First-Greens coalition government was formed just over two years ago, it has received significant positive coverage in the world’s corporate media. New Zealand under Ardern has been depicted in the New York Times, the British Guardian and elsewhere as an oasis of kindness and egalitarianism, in contrast to right-wing governments led by Trump in the US, Boris Johnson in Britain and Scott Morrison in Australia. Ardern has appeared twice on Time’s yearly list of the world’s 100 most influential people: first for having a baby while in office, and second for her response to the Christchurch massacre. Her supposedly “groundbreaking” achievements have been hailed by British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and US Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to name just two of many politicians around the world. This international praise is aimed at fostering illusions that, with leaders like Ardern in charge, capitalism can be saved and its evils curbed…Ardern declared that the Labour Party would run a “positive, factual and robust election campaign,” highlighting the government’s supposed “progress on the long-term challenges facing New Zealand.” These included, she said, “making critical investments in health and education and reducing child poverty.” None of this rhetoric has any relationship to reality”.

Ouch!

It continues “She was installed as Labour leader just two months before the September 2017 election in a desperate bid to prevent the party’s collapse. Labour had suffered historic defeats in 2011 and 2014 and broad sections of the working class correctly view it as a party of big business, indistinguishable from the conservative National Party…. This propaganda has been exposed by the reality of the past two years. The Ardern government has overseen increased poverty, housing insecurity and starved public services of funding and resources. It has attacked democratic rights, strengthened the police; demonised immigrants; and intensified preparations for war….While starving crucial social services, such as health and education of funds, the government is committed to spending $20 billion on military assets by 2030 and expanding the size of the army from 4,500 to 6,000 troops. New Zealand hosts regular military exercises with US and Australian troops that are explicitly aimed at preparing to invade Pacific countries and suppress popular uprising.” (NZ 1984 military budget $850 million 2019 nearly 3 billion with gst included)

The rest of WSWS scathing review of comrade Jacinda Adern is not flattering as it farts super sonically in her general direction with explosive lumpy diarrhoea as it shits on her actual policies (as opposed to brand Adern) in the aftermath of the March 15th shootings as simultaneously destroying civil liberties and flaming the growth of right wing reactionary due to the way she mishandled the crisis and refused to hold those responsible for intelligence failures to account;

“Likewise, the state censorship of Tarrant’s manifesto is intended to disarm the working class by obscuring the connection between the terrorist’s fascist ideology and the right-wing nationalism advocated by the political establishment..the circumstances of the attack remain shrouded in secrecy, with the official royal commission of inquiry taking place behind closed doors. It is clear, however, that Tarrant was part of a network of fascists that enjoyed protection from the Australian and New Zealand police, who turned a blind eye to warnings about Tarrant’s violent threats against immigrants and “communists.” No explanation has been given for the failure of New Zealand’s intelligence agencies to stop the attack despite being extremely well-resourced to carry out mass surveillance as part of the US-led Five Eyes spying network. The massacre was seized upon as a pretext to further boost the resources of the spy agencies and introduce new armed police units in South Auckland, Waikato and Canterbury. Draconian new “anti-terror” legislation will allow police to label someone a terrorist, without any need to prove them guilty of a crime, and subject them to surveillance and other attacks on basic democratic rights”

A GOOSESTEP TO THE LEFT & A JUMP TO THE RIGHT

A fair point (the rabid red tone aside) when you consider corporate media’s hunt for right wing terrorism has demonised the centre right (pushing them further to the far right) as it targets law abiding gun loving rednecks who status as actual militants is highly questionable (ludicrous in fact) even if their status as morons is 1000% accurate.

For serious investigation of the far right (a topic this author has covered and had published in articles translated into over half dozen languages world wide over twenty five years), its connection to security forces, organised crime, including white supremacist biker gangs, eastern European militants, and the business community old boy net work (many of whom where mates of the NED/CIA) remain untouched as corporate journalists are unwilling to investigate real far right threats seriously. Solid links be it NZ far right ties to the international mercenary groups which date back to the 1980’s and the NED (archived in the publication of the same mainstream media who now wont publish those facts) and are now active in the Ukraine wont get touched by the same media so keen to bray beware of the nazi in the closet. Offered a review of material concerning document-able security failures and past right wing connections (again once covered by the national media and i their own archives) the lame stream run for the hills. Ditto given a chance to see primary documents of real right wing bank rollers the mainstream best and brightest turn a pale of white and politely decline.

My own 1999 best seller State Secrets, which forecast the rise of armed hate groups and even focused on the same source the shooter brought his weapons from Gun City. Our March 15th my article on Gun City history remain my highest ranking webpost ever. And while I was approached by Al Jazeer (who I help research a documentary on Gun City for) the local media never came near me other than to suggest (despite twenty five year of writing against fascism and – to carry on a family tradition of Nazi bashing) that I too was a right wing subversive. A Tui any one?

So carry on reading your corporate rags who warn sensationally of the far right (but offer no tangible evidence stronger than say a picture of a cake with a blurry image) and report of pissed off red necks hissing Jacinda’s “a pretty communist” give me back my guns. But ssh don’t mention her neoliberal credentials.

Or a Labour government, which along with National, supported the neoliberal TPPA, continued escalated military spending, is deeply in bed with the US defence military industrial complex and has a cabinet chocked full of former rogernomic pirates, busily replicating the privatisation and assert sales of the 1980s. A time when Labour and it big business corporate donors first embraced neoliberal right wing policies (kicking the red from out under the bed) and have continued to be it night porter ever since …..if the price is right.

Doesn’t sound very red to me, unless you mean red white blue.