Adam Gluntz Calls Out the College Liberals

Marxist-Leninist activist Adam Gluntz gives the trendy, academic left a piece of his mind, along with a schooling in facts not found on CNN, MSNBC, or even "The Daily Show"


Dear College "Liberals",



I have a serious bone to pick with you. Several, actually. I am growing sick and tired of college pseudo-left liberalism that seems to predominate on campuses across the United States. I find that most college liberals championing causes and candidates whose agendas are actually quite right-wing and personally, I find it quite revolting. I find the college liberal movement condescending, bourgeois, elitist, and all around detrimental to actual leftists who seek crazy things like equality and the liberation of humanity.



1. Trendy International Causes



One international cause has predominated the college liberal movement and another is growing. The first is the Save Darfur movement. I'm not going to stand here and pretend that the Sudanese government is not seriously problematic; it is. However, there are several major problems with this movement that are right-wing in their political nature. There are many repressive dictatorships around the globe. Moreover, there are many in the continent of Africa. Sudan can certainly be counted among these dictatorships. However, there are several major difference between Sudan and other dictatorships in the area. First, Sudan has oil, particularly in the Darfur region. Second, Sudan, unlike other dictatorships around the globe, does not support or trade with the United States. Third, Sudan does not support the U.S.-endorsed state of Israel, which has garnered a great deal of criticism around the globe as an instrument of U.S. imperialism. The Save Darfur movement's goal is to raise money to lobby congress and the white house to use military force to invade Darfur to "liberate" the people therein (and the oil) from the evil Sudanese government who won't give the oil to the U.S. Oh wait, it's actually about genocide, not oil. My mistake.



The other more recent issue is one that the U.S. government has acted upon. That's the situation in Libya. Again, no one is going to pretend that Gadaffi is a saint, but let's look at some facts about Libya. The uprisings are taking place in oil rich regions. Gadaffi considers himself a "socialist" (although the socialistic nature of his policies are questionable) and opposes the U.S. Gadaffi opposes the state of Israel. Is anyone noticing a trend here? I know that I didn't publish this article in a glossy magazine that I can afford to hand out to college students, so I'll venture no one is listening, but, to review, I see presence of oil, anti-U.S. foreign policy, and criticism of Israel. These are the reasons that I oppose both movements, but the bone I have to pick here is not just that the movements are right-wing and supportive of U.S. imperialism.



The thing that pisses me off is that pseudo-left college students act carry around this smug pretentious attitude of "We're standing up for something while everyone is just to self-involved to support us. We're taking a stand on issues that matter. We're really showing the system up." Do you know what would really constitute taking a stand and showing up the system? TAKING A STAND THAT OPPOSES THE U.S. GOVERNMENT. I mean, for god's sake, are you all just that hypnotized in your political self-importance to realize the things that the U.S. government is doing? Saudi Arabia is another brutal dictatorship under a monarchy. The penalty for homosexuality in Saudi Arabia is death. Oh, did I mention that the U.S. supports it so that we can partake in the country's oil reserves. How about the state of Israel, where anti-Muslim racism borders on fascistic (if it's not already well over the line)? The U.S. sends millions, maybe billions in military aid. Why don't you grow some gender respective gonads and take a stand where you don't have the support of the democratic party and Exxon Mobil behind you? The U.S. is behind some of the most brutal regimes worldwide and has historically funded Nazis (and I use that word to mean National Socialists, as in racists and anti-Semites who supported Adolf Hitler) to overthrow regimes that did not support U.S. interests (and by interests, I mean economic interests). Thanks to the United States, lives are lost every day around the world. Why don't you all stop being such god damn fucking cowards and take a REAL stand for once?



You know what, forget U.S. foreign policy for a second; why don't you actually take a stand on domestic policy for once too? If anyone has found the time to follow domestic politics between sips their fair trade coffee that costs twice as much as one that doesn't have that pretty label on it (which I'll get to in a moment), you might notice that U.S. citizens are facing a few political problems. Has anyone here heard about OH Senate Bill 5? In case you've missed out on the news because you've been too busy figuring out which conflicts in Africa the U.S. needs to referee (which the western world created, FYI, in a time known as the "Age of Imperialism"), the statehouse is passing (or has passed) a bill that strips public workers and teachers of their collective bargaining rights and moves to give the executive the ability privatize state prisons. In Michigan, there is a bill that would allow the Governor's administration to declare a city or town in a fiscal crisis and then appoint a financial manager to dismiss local elected officials. The union busting measure in Wisconsin was passed. There are people in U.S. borders who are suffering. Ever heard of police brutality? Well, that didn't just happen to Rodney King; it happens constantly. But I'm sure you missed out on Oscar Grant (executed by the Oakland Police) or even the Cleveland cases like the Whitbys or the Brounaughs because you were all too god damn busy reading up on obscure African history from your favorite pro-imperialist source.



2. Economic and Environmental Justice



This pisses me off to the nth degree like you just don't know. I'm a communist. I advocate a system called socialism. Communist, socialists, and anarchists were the original champions of economic justice. Do you know what those people did? They staged strikes trying to protect the workers from poverty level wages, unsafe working conditions, and absurdly long hours. Do you know how these strikes ended time and time again? Federal troops came in to break the strikers. Now, even though you would never know this because you're all too god damn stuck up to ever go to a real protest, but those weren't like modern protests where the cops stand there looking at you to see if you screw up. People died. People were arrested and executed for crimes that they didn't commit just for opposing the status quo. So how did this great tradition of American activism that won us things like the 40 hour work week, weekends, workers compensation, disability insurance, unemployment benefits, and pretty much everything else that makes working actually livable and reasonable boil down to spending twice as much money on coffee with a fair trade label? It thoroughly baffles me. Since when is buying fair trade coffee and lecturing me about why I should spend by hard earned (poverty level) paychecks on coffee that is supposedly grown with humane treatment of workers (BTW, I ain't buyin' that story) in a real fancy bag that looks so handmade that it just.......... couldn't......... possibly have been designed by a marketing guru somewhere that figured out that cheap-looking, rustic containment sells to students who act like they're buying something that was just brought to a local market by some nice farm worker who carried it on their donkey or whatever animal is commonly used for transportation in that area.



Also, getting back to this whole domestic policy thing, why is it that everyone seems so god damn concerned with the farmers in central America (which U.S. trade policy is responsible for fucking over) while showing little to no concern for workers in U.S. borders, especially undocumented workers. I'm not saying that having concern for the international working class is a bad thing (by no stretch), but there is some level of disconnect where we spend spend $25 for "fair trade" coffee and take little or no interest in the economic issues confronting us at home.



Then we have environmentalism. Most of my complaints are similar to the fair-trade BS. How did fighting to keep human living sustainable turn into spending tons of money on eco-friendly products to sooth our collective environmental guilt? My favorite: take time that you don't have as you're working two jobs to keep food on the table and spend it sorting out your plastics and metals for an underfunded recycling facility. The other thing that bothers me is that it seems absolutely absurd to me that one could be an environmentalist and a capitalist. I mean, this to me seems like a no-brainer: it is more profitable to carry out production in environmentally detrimental ways, so business owners screw up the environment to protect their bottom lines. But somehow you have it in your minds that it's really the fault of these stupid coal miners who do the work of the coal companies because their just too god damn stupid to realize that it's bad for the eagles. It couldn't be because that's the only realistic (a word that you may not understand growing up in privilege) option that they have to pay the bills. And it certainly isn't the coal company's fault. Or if it is, the workers are just as bad. And about greenhouse gasses, why do you seem to think that all we have to do to fix this is ride our bikes or walk? Does it not cross your privileged mind that some people drive because THAT'S THEIR ONLY REALISTIC MODE OF TRANSPORTATION? We don't have transit, thanks to the money that you raised for the Seize Darfur's Oil campaign, which I'd venture a guess finds it's way to lobbying congress to keep the population needing petroleum. No, it must be because of all of our bad personal choices.



This is one of the reasons why people who should, by all accounts, be left-wingers become right-wingers. Liberal in the United States has come to mean "self-important snobby student who tells me I should spend twice as much money that I don't have on fair-trade, eco-friendly, super-special-awesome everything" instead of "people who believe in fighting for those who are being repeated fucked up the ass by the system". College liberals and new leftists have procured this via their self-important BS. Thank you for making it that much harder on actual leftists to organize.



3. The Democratic Party



Okay, so it's like all super-special-awesome that you're into political organization and stuff. You are probably also legitimately feminists, pro-LGB, pro-trans, and all that other good stuff. That's terrific; so am I. Guess what: Obama isn't. Not was/is Clinton (either one), or Johnson, or Kennedy, or Sherrod Brown, or Al Gore, or anyone else really. My favorite pro-choice argument from Ms. Hilary Clinton is "legal, but rare". I'm sorry, but where does dominion over one's body factor into this? If you want to make it "rare", then you must be admitting that there is a moral problem with it, so why not just make it illegal and join the Republican party and call it murder with the rest of the anti-choice crowd. Repeal Don't Ask - Don't Tell? Was this really the best we can do for LGB rights is give LGB people the right to fight for an imperialist country that allows hate against them at all levels? I mean, yeah, it's a good thing, but seriously, the name of the democrat game is "how conservative will the Democratic party base let me get away with being?" and guess what, college liberals; you all support them. Do you even know history? The Civil Rights Act of 1965; you know who signed that, right? Lyndon Baines Johnson, a.k.a. Lynching Baines Johnson. The Democratic party was still notoriously the party of the old south and LBJ knew exactly where his political base was. I doubt he just "saw the light"; the movement made him sign the Civil Rights Act. So now "grassroots" activism has been almost completely replaced with the Democratic party astro-turf. So when are we going to do something crazy like actually telling the DEMs what WE WANT instead of letting them tell us what THEY CAN GET US? I mean, seriously, are you all (the Democratic party base) that fucking desperate that you'll support anyone who shows any chance of being anything less that an openly jingoist, racist, sexist, classist, ableist, anti-gay, anti-trans, pro-every-other-kind-of-oppression, anti-every-other-kind-of-oppressed-person asshole? News flash: the Democratic party is not against racism, sexism, etc.; their against OPEN racism & co. It's all just a big talk about what's the best way "to make sure that we maintain oppression and let these rich fucking bankers keep taking all these fucking dumb bastards' money". That's not say that I never vote democrat; I do. Kucinich is my representative and I am so proud of him right now, but I am god damn sick of college liberals repeating the Democratic party line instead of taking Democrats to task. We all know that only Republicans wage bad wars; Democrats wage good wars, like Vietnam (sarcasm).



Thank you for taking time to pretend to read my letter. I expect a series of offended responses about what a brainwashed jerk I am. I mean, I must be brainwashed because I'm doing something crazy like actually questioning the status quo and I'm a huge jerk for calling all y'all out for not doing likewise. I'm not saying that I want everyone to be a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary, but I'll say that blue sheep are just as ovine as red sheep. Of course, no one will actually read the content of what I'm saying because you'll be too worried about their precious ego as the saviors of humanity. Everyone enjoy your expensive coffee.



Sincerely,

Adam Gluntz