The American Left has forgotten the value of spreading propaganda far and wide

I see liberals, and some self-identified socialists and communists, criticize Jimmy Dore for going on shows like Tucker Carlson’s and Tulsi Gabbard’s. The most frequent claim is that when a leftist does this, he is somehow “validating” both of those individuals and all of their opinions. Videos like the following make their heads explode in righteous indignation:

I submit that this “validation” argument is an authoritarian tactic used by the powerful to suppress dissent in the United States since…well, forever. It has many names, including guilt-by-association and McCarthyism.

It was used to tell northern whites that they shouldn’t associate with radical abolitionists before the Civil War. It was used by the robber barons to divide workers and to prevent them from organizing. It was used by Attorney General Palmer in the First Red Scare and by Joe McCarthy in the Second Red Scare. It was used by the FBI to discredit the likes of Martin Luther King, Fred Hampton, Malcolm X, and the antiwar movement.

Basically, it goes like this: If you associate with those people in any way, shape or form, then other people will think you agree with them on everything and you will be shunned.

That’s a load of manure. It goes against the fundamental principles of individual liberty that my ancestor in the Continental Army fought for, and it is entirely counterproductive to forming a genuine, organized working class movement. In fact, that last is why it exists in the first place.

By going on programs like Carlson’s, Jimmy Dore is seizing the opportunity to broadcast his leftist, populist message to millions of people who might otherwise never be aware of it. This is called outreach by some. Marx, Lenin and Stalin would call it the useful and necessary dissemination of socialist propaganda.

If such propaganda had been ineffective in the US, the ruling class would never have had to make the term a negative one, and would never had to suppress it and manufacture its own versions, most commonly called “advertising” or “messaging.” Regardless, like a rose, propaganda by any other name is still expanding the reach of a political message to as large an audience as possible.

The platform is unimportant. The message is important. How many people the message reaches is important. And I can tell you that I personally know Republican voters—coworkers, a cousin or two, and a neighbor or two—who only learned that there were leftists who disagreed with Democrats every bit as much as they did because they listened to Jimmy Dore on Tucker Carlson.

Logic dictates that they are far from alone.

Democracy is supposed to be messy. It requires debate and understanding between very different people who can have some very different values and priorities. It requires the majority to find the things that they do have in common in order to get anything done, and leftists do have a few things in common with Tucker Carlson, Tulsi Gabbard, and far more importantly, their audiences.

Right now, the most important thing we have in common with them is opposition to imperialist war. This gives us an opportunity to explain to them why imperialist wars happen, and will continue to happen as long as our foreign policy is driven by capitalism’s insatiable lust for more profits soonest.

Most importantly, it gives leftists the chance to get other working class people thinking that capitalism itself might be the problem after all, and only after that happens can there be any chance of the working class coming together to exert its irresistible power to create a new, better, and more just economic system for all but the already privileged.

That’s why Jimmy Dore goes on those shows. That’s why the liberal media will never invite Jimmy Dore to their shows. That’s why liberals are smearing people like Dore in a manner of which Joe McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover would instantly recognize and approve.

As for socialists and communists smearing Dore for this, ask yourselves if Karl Marx or Leon Trotsky would have turned down the chance to appear on a show like Tucker Carlson’s that reaches millions of people in an instant. Either one of those men would have done so in a heartbeat, and if you don’t know that, you need to learn more about them.

Thank you for reading, good day, good luck, and if you’re a leftist and get the chance to go on some right-wing radio show, take it.