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"I want to apologize to everybody for the wrong I have done. I want to grow from this... inappropriate, hurtful language is totally, totally unacceptable."-Paula Deen

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Using a 21 st century iteration of a creative writing style stolen from Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, I like to engage in a public forums via a variety of different names, voices, and worldviews.

Some people play SIMS, I like to Spy and Mettle in other ways.

Whatever the ethics, it begets all sorts of unique stories based on hard to get data, like the anecdote and context I share in the below article.

Previously I've written about the dangerous-for-Leftists atmosphere in Colombia. Others that have spent a much longer time in the field and in the stacks have called this political genocide and noted that the social effects of this are profound and deleterious. I can now add my own small experience to such a literature.

In response to a comment on an article about the political genocide of Communists in Colombia Reports, I cited the empirical fact that by looking at all available evidence, civilians were significantly more likely to be killed by the State and by the Paras then by the FARC. I didn't say, though it's equally true, that by far the most targeted political assassinations comes from the Right and not the Left.

What the response was, well, I've attached a screen shot of it to let it speak for itself as well as some other of this person's comments found after some further research as I think it provides telling insight into the values of people that are antagonistic to the FARC specifically and Marxism genereally.

The USMC & the CIA: A Home White Supremacist Anti-Communists

So as you can see the guy who wants to torture and kill Communists also has some pretty strong, visceral feelings towards the "non-white" races.

A number of researchers have called such a belief system and practice as racial capitalism. Some have instead used the phrase Manifest Destiny, while others simply call it Americanism.

It's a view of the world which justifies Whites engaging in conquest, colonization, dispossession, enslavement and environmental destruction - AKA all the things that "civilized white" North Americans have brought to the South as a means of controlling resources and ensuring trade and labor relations are profitable.

Trying (and Failing) to Place a Face on Hate

That the U.S. has directly and indirectly played a major role in shaping Latin America's geo-politics isn't new news, it's history.

Nevertheless the comment having a full name and statement of profession so piqued my curiosity, I decided to if I could find out anything about this person.

I don't know if any of the people in the above snapshot of a search on Facebook is the person saying I should be electrocuted and that minorities are sub-humans - but I do know that it's not General David Rodgriguez. His service record only shows his time in Latin America as being part of the U.S. invasion of Panama.

Our brief exchange is not now available for verification by looking at the Colombia Reports article, as shortly after this exchange transpired Colombia Reports disabled the public comment function, however those with Disqus accounts, can search and confirm that this is not a Photoshop job.

The Ethnic and Religious Cleansing Power of Capitalism

The story related to the above image is particularly devastating and makes everyone look bad - the Government for non-intervention; the Paras for using the civilian population as a human shield; the FARC for unintentionally killing non-combatants. And it's also indicative of which demographics have been most affected by the civil war violence - the poor, Afro-Colombians and Indigenous communities.

It's because of this that in the final Colombian Peace Accords there is explicit language wherein the Colombian government formally recognizes that the injustices inflicted against black and indigenous communities are the historic "product of colonialism, slavery, exclusion, and it's drive to dispossess them of their lands, territories, and resources."

This is the rationale for the inclusion of this section in which they are guaranteed protection, the ability to participate in elections and to self-govern themselves whenever possible.

And though the accords are now signed, as former Marine and CIA operative David Rodriguez's comments show, there are still people that would like to throw that out and return to open violence against certain ethnic, racial, religious and political persuasions.

No Justice, No Peace

Given all the bullets fired and blood shed from opened veins throughout Latin America, it's understandable why people don't like to to talk about the region's past.

It's profoundly traumatic for many and saying certain things publicly certain could mean that your name winds up on a list that means you will be killed. But since the signing of the peace accords, despite the still simmering violence in the form of assassinations of political figures and civilian massacres, it's important to be aware of the values and intentions of the actors involved in the violence and to work to public delegitimize the voices that long for it's return.

Moving Forward, Together

Anthropomorphizing is certainly never always an appropriate form of argument, but I've always found it an insightful metaphor for the body politic and in this case I think it particularly instructive.

Just like when an individual is in a state of sustained panic and there is conflict over contrary instincts (people vs. profits); when executive functions and allocations of energy are no longer operating at an optimal level of survival (civil war); when external forces are relied upon to assist violent contractions rather than relying upon a new constitution (foreign intervention to preserve what is better served by forming a new constitution), peace is achieved from the negation of these and the sublimation to a new state of existence.

How can this be achieved? Through building bridges and through self-promotion.

Self-promotion entails the motions of going through and assessing one beliefs, values and abilities and clearly expressing it others.

Silencing the voices that would if they could bring about a return to practices of political genocide is part and parcel of that promotion. In another discipline, we'd call this reputation management.

Breaking free from the past in this particular circumstance of a bi-lateral peace agreement, requires that the negative voices which would threaten growth and development must be shown for what they are - violent white-supremacists that have Ayn Randian like disdain for non-capitalist socio-economic arrangements.

While this brief anecdote is unlikely to change all hearts and minds overnight, it's part of a narrative that now needs to be shared far and wide as it hasn't been told enough in the capitalist press. I'm hoping that some discerning Americans may now look with a new light on the stories that they've been told about the FARC and America's involvement in the region and start to reassess the felicity of the stories they've heard.

More so I hope in whatever little way possible that this helps bring an end to the still simmering violence and helps build bridges between former antagonists so that together they can build a stronger, safer country together. Cause let's be honest - the U.S. would sooner carpet-bomb all of Bogota then ever let the FARC come top power in a move that could help reconstitute Gran Colombia or a Bolivarian United States of Latin America.

Since I've started throwing out and packing my possessions to prepare for my move overseas, I've been thinking a lot of my Grandparents.

They came from the desirable countries. From Denmark and Russia. Neither side had any grasp of English before they first set foot on American soil. Neither side had anything other than pluck and their trades and a small bit of savings tucked away to make their way in the New World. They adapted to their environs, raised families and by most accounts flourished - but does that mean that they ever really became Americans?

By mere merit of my birth within territorial borders, does that really make me an American or is there something else that I should look to? I'd venture yes, I'm an American, but not for the reasons you think.

Despite excitement of days off school, the grandeur of fireworks, and the pleasant fictions told to children about: Independence; Noble Savages living in Peace with Entrepreneurial White Settlers; Supremely Ethical Founding Fathers; Dead soldiers fighting Worthy Wars abroad and Dead Leaders fighting Worthy Wars at home - my fondest memories as a boy never revolved around National Holidays and their accompanying spectacles of obeisance and foods that encourage obeseness. Instead I remember with vivid precision the energy and joy the different brought to religions and cultural costumes and practices of my Grandparents.

Though I can't speak Danish or Yiddish, hearing my grandparents speak bilingually and participating in these ceremonies as a child deeply affected me. Joy, of course. But also alienation. On both sides, I felt like I'd lost something that had been for a long line unbroken in my family. I felt like it weighted on me. All the more so as I was the fruit of a union between what once were families of award winning pig farming Epicureans and solemn Orthodox Rabbis.

I remember their warm laps and doting attention to the millions of questions I had about their stories, their struggles. Each side shared stories about outbreaks of state-sponsored violence around them. They weren't happy as it was some long-time dream to sever ties with all that one's ever known and go to a strange land with better opportunities, but because the conditions which for generations had once allowed their forebears to sustain family life and line so deteriorated.

Now joining the demographic pool of the 8.5 million people born in American living abroad, I can't help but think of my grandparents own voyage to a new world.

Their struggles are on my mind as while the forces which motivated them to pack up their things and leave is quite different in tenor, the violence of primitive dispossession is similar in effect to that enacted in the various markets in which people make their day to day way in the world. The opportunities for "good living" in the United States are rapidly disappearing and will continue to deteriorate further.

I say this not to invoke the rhetoric of disaster now popular because the most apt embodiment of the venality and corruption that is the American Ruling Class sits in the White House. No, Trump is but a symbol, a symptom of a deeper systemic illness rather than some special case. I say this as I've reviewed the metrics and can reasonably foresee that to have the family life like my grandparents aspired to, I would have to work myself to death so many of my compatriots do.

If America was once great for letting my grandparents in - those that were fleeing from violence - then it's not now. In fact it's reasonable to say that America is the opposite of great since its actions and those of its allies forcefully displace millions.

Defining America's greatness as the people and energy that composed it - the courageousness of some to brave the acclimation process to a foreign culture, a foreign language, foreign business environments - then the Great Land that was once America is now outside its borders. In fact it's reasonable to say that America is the opposite of great since those which direct the state openly display xenophobia and ahistorical cultural chauvinism - the same trends in different form which helped form my Grandparents decision to leave.

Were we to look to the ability of people to raise family and enough capital to live a good life as the basis for greatness, we'd see that the conditions today are quite different from then. The institutional embodiment of America, the political organization of the ruling class, Federal and State governments since the 70s have worked to erase the human face of what was always an oligarchy.

As I think about leaving the land that is America to live what I see as the noble ethos of America - meaning bravery to place oneself in uncomfortable situations to personally and professional develop and not the flipside of that spirit, the ignoble ethos which dispossessed natives, engaged in the slave economy and constructed a legal system and press thatjustified these and other injustices - I also cannot help but think of the life and work of Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. It is January 15th, after all, and while it wasn't my intention to leave on such a date it does seem appropriate.

A year to the day before his assassination, King said something that had his contemporaries listened to and acted upon would have drastically changed the current shape of America:

"Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism."

Had the people of King's time been more attuned to the long-term truth and acted with vigor to excise these qualities from the economy, from society, from the culture rather than fighting for their minor advantages I might feel better about staying. But they did not, and so I do not, and so I go - just like my amazingly brave Grandparents, on to greener pastures.

René Ramírez, National Secretary of Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation, interviewed by Orlando Perez

Translated from El Telefrago by Ariel Sheen

For the academic, 2016 "can be read as the year of the end of the long 20th century in historical terms". He adds that Brexit, the victory of Donald Trump in the United States and the death of Fidel Castro symbolically mark a turning point in the correlation of forces worldwide, both political and economic. Álvaro García Linera points out that it is the end of globalization.
What is your new book called?
' The Great Transition: In Search of New Common Senses '.
Why the great transition?
In reference to the book by Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation. I locate what happened in Ecuador in this decade in the framework of the political dispute, of the neoliberal background that marked two decades lost for the country and Latin America. There is a historical absurdity of wanting to point out that 10 years is enough to make a structural transformation, as some politicians like María Paula Romo and Guillermo Lasso have mentioned. That is to have no idea of ​​history, neither Ecuadorian nor global. That is impossible, even more so when institutions created to generate an oligarchic society had to be dismantled and, after destroying it, to rebuild another that seeks the common good of the great majorities. If someone is being dragged by the current in the direction of a waterfall, the first thing to do is to steer the boat to take another direction. These ten years have allowed us to re-direct the ship, sailing against the current of world power relations and generate enough social energy to go towards peaceful waters and be able to anchor in a good port. Part of the great transition involves having redirected the ship, while improving the welfare of its passengers.
Does this mean that there is not a decade won?
Of course there is a decade won. And we have another decade ahead of us to win, but it is first a decade to contest. However, we must make a historical reading of the decade gained. Beyond the social results, which are clearly positive. Ppoverty has been reduced, consumption levels have improved, income levels, universal access to education and health, among others. There is a decade gained in political terms justly because the possibility of continuing to dispute a transformation of social structures to build a new social order: the construction of a sustainable human democracy is alive; that is, the society of good living.
What are the historical conditions identified in this transition that make the great transformation viable?
That there has been a dismissal / constituent moment, where the citizenry manifests the need to sign a new social covenant pact that generates a new social order; that the new social pact allows a structural transformation and that the political decisions that accompany the new pact have been structuring actions that allow us to configure the conditions of possibility of being able to dispute the great transformation.
The dismissal / constituent moment is clear, but does the new social pact make a new social order possible?
I have absolutely no doubt it does. The horizon of meaning is embodied in the new constitutional text. There are multiple paths for transformation. For example, we must pass:

1) from anthropocentrism to biocentrism;
2) from colonialism and patriarchalism to the pluridiverse society (plurinational and intercultural);
3) from exclusively representative democracy (which is consubstantial to capitalism) to sustainable human democracy, based on social participation and deliberation;
4) from market capitalism (social de-commodification) to the social and solidarity economy and, 5) from the mercantilist corporate state to the popular sovereign state guaranteeing rights.

Europe raised the construction of the Welfare State and that has been the last proposal for the construction of a new social order (after the failure of the offers of society made by the Soviet bloc). Now it seems that the right begins to dismantle it. In this framework, the road was based, among other aspects, on recognizing the equality of citizens with respect to social rights based on representative democracy. Undoubtedly, the constitutional proposals of South America are moving in that direction and the progressive governments have made rapid progress in reducing poverty, inequality and democratization of rights. But in the world that we live that is insufficient. The "new modernity", if the term fits, goes through the construction of plurinational societies. This is what the Constitutions of Ecuador and Bolivia, which without a doubt are in the vanguard in these terms. While this was raised in the South, in Europe last week in two days, 340 migrants died trying to reach their land. In fact, in 2016 the record number of 4,300 deaths in the Mediterranean was reached with three times fewer arrivals of migrants by sea than in 2015.

Europe is now synonymous with obscurantism and barbarism. Equality has to live with diversity and recognize the diversity of identities that exist in the world. In this framework, the vanguard is to recognize universal citizenship and the recognition that unitary Plurinational States can be built respecting the pluriculturality of identities and nations that coexist in each territory. In Polanyi's diagnosis of the rise of fascism in the mid-twentieth century, he shows how xenophobic nationalism was a reaction against the enormous inequality caused by the free market. It was a social defense mechanism. In our days, in it's own unique way, it seems that history repeats itself.
In the economic sphere, what are the transitions that make the transformation viable?
Globally, you might think that 2016 can be read as the year of the end of the long 20th century in historical terms. The Brexit, the victory of Trump and the death of Fidel symbolically mark a watershed in the correlation of forces worldwide, both political and economic. Only the rejection of Trans-Atlantic and Trans-Pacific treaties and the exit of the EU from Great Britain configure another scenario in the world panorama. García Linera points out that it is the end of globalization. Personally I think it is the beginning of another globalization. Ecuador must think about that framework.

In these 10 years has been able to walk disputing the sense of the barbarism of what is capitalism but obviously within capitalism. The autistic left believes that it was viable to do it from another system. Impossible! Sometimes I feel that this left doesn't understand what power means, while the right has a great understanding not only of its meaning but also how to exercise it.

In summary terms, I can point out that in the book I argue that in this decade there have been three actions (at different speeds) that are essential to continue disputing a great transformation:

1) a great deconcentration of capital;
2) a new original socio-ecological accumulation;
3) a large accumulation of physical capital.

It remains a task of the vanguard to build a form of productive organization where redistribution is produced and produced by distributing. We propose the construction of a social economy of knowledge built from a collaborative logic.

In these processes, other common meanings must be configured to break the hegemony of the exchange value and a new social value-based appropriation based on life and use value. We must break with the society that knows the price of everything, but knows the value of very few things. The construction and appropriation of such a sensibility is the urgent task of the second transition now in dispute.
Does the left that you call autistic point out that the big winners are the capitalists? What do you think about this assertion?
The decade is won because the whole society won. The difference is that in comparison with the preceding decade, these ten years before had a deliberate priority: the poor and the workers.

In my book I show how the growth during these 10 years went largely to the poor and working class. Participation in the pie (which, incidentally, doubled) decreased by 10% for the capitalists and was distributed among the workers and in that so-called mixed economy (for example, popular economy, cooperatives, etc.). In these ten years, decisions were made that disputed a de-accumulation of capitalist logic; that is, that it passes from hands -either in stock or in future flows- of the capitalists towards society, either directly or indirectly through the State.

Here are some examples: the compensation of the two biggest social robberies in the history of the country. With the audit of the external debt and the recovery of the bank bailout of 2000; the social recovery of oil revenues; the financing of the doubling of the human development bonus destined to the poorest financed with the profits of the private banks are examples of this deconcentration of capital.

In structural terms, we must be vigilant that the trade agreement does not entail a re-concentration of the accumulation in transnational capital and that the original accumulation produced in this decade will not serve to generate accumulation elsewhere, but will produce a larger concentration of wealth where the economy it is produced. This develops a domestic pattern of economic diversification and specialization.

Likewise, there has been a new accumulation of socio-ecological capital and a democratization of access to programs which enhance human capacities. Access to education, health care, social security. Avoiding the emission of 6.3 tons / year of CO2 as a consequence of the change in the matrix energy, etc. Is it not amazing that the average life of Ecuadorians has increased 5.5 years in the past decade?!

In this transition, it is important to develop non-speculative physical capital to make another types of accumulation viable: roads, hydroelectric plants, ports, airports, etc.

What we must have clear about is that in the current scenario there has been an accumulation that did not exist before. The right is rubbing his hands over this. After this wealth that did not exist before was created, the Right seeks to concentrate the benefits in a few hands on national and / or transnational capitalists. They want to freeze the increase in social spending for 20 year and, impose the elimination of the state's obligation to guarantee initial and secondary education made public and free by Temer. They want a reduction of the government investment in Science and Technology a la Macri. Then there's Lasso's proposal to privatize social security so that each "one chooses" its provider in the name of freedom.

it is clear evidence of a new accumulation that the great capitals in our continent intend to do or are already doing after the social decade won by the progressive governments. The proposal of the right: the appropriation of human capacities and institutions of common interest. We must realize that in Argentina, and Brazil, for example, the dispute over transformation has become very opaque.
What should be the strategy?
In the contest to constitutionalize Ecuadorian society, we must be clear about the meaning of the history we are currently experiencing. A free flow of goods and services does not necessarily place us in the nexus of the world economy. As I point out in my book, it seems that 2017 will be the beginning of the 21st century.

That strategy is of the last century and would plunge us into the worst dependency in history. When I talk about the great transition in the book, I also point out that it is not a single transition, but two: the one that Ecuadorians sign and that is embodied in the constitutional text and the one that happens on a world scale: the transition from industrial capitalism to cognitive capitalism based both on processes of speculative financialization of the economy.

The new commercial policy will be directed towards the management of intellectual property. This strategy must then be linked to intelligent inclusion in the powerful circuits of generation of knowledge, technology and innovation. And all this within a framework that addresses the needs and potential of our peoples.

Unfortunately, I see very little debate about what is the role of science in social transformation and what strategy of technological development ought be followed in Ecuador's coming decades. Ecuador will not get out of the development traps previous set unless it has a clear strategy of how to break the technological and cognitive dependence it has. And it must know how to defend the biodiversity that it has.

It is not fortuitous that in world treaties countries are forced to put in penal codes randing from sanctions to imprisonment when copyright or property rights are undermined. Yet nothing is done when the biodiversity of our countries is stolen! This is biopiracy!

In my book I proposed that the new geopolitics is already contesting this knowledge-biodiversity relationship. That is why, the strategy I propose is for bio-knowledge for the good living of our peoples and nationalities. Thank God we have oil, but we must also be clear that only through deliberate social collective action can we be a tertiary exporting country of knowledge and technology. Thank God we have Galapagos, but thanks to the will of the Ecuadorians we are building Innopolis.
What do you mean when you point to the little debate that takes place on these issues in the electoral process?
It is very sad to see how we have fallen into the democracy of the "encuestología", that the government opposition consists simply in opposing everything the government has done according to their surveys. That is no proposal for how the future should be goverened. Not only that, if one analyzes what the candidates say, the country would fail sooner rather than later. Ecuador has no monetary policy towards the dollar, so trade policy may be cut for obvious reasons. This is heard in the proposals of the candidates who say they will lower taxes, will remove the tax at the exit of foreign currency or the advance of income tax, etc.

When the government put up safeguards, among other reasons, to defend dollarization, the right immediately went out to attack it. It wants to guarantee quality rights as in the 'first world', with a fourth world tax system. This is unfeasible! If such actions take place, Ecuador will soon have to exit dollarization (if the price of a barrel of oil changes radically upwards). I think we are in a very serious debate in the economic field in the electoral process.

One more point: the repressed past is being disputed. The right says: the government spent too much, now it is necessary to amend through sacrifice. It is punitive morality which seeks to induce fear and solve it by pointing to a scapegoat. In all the opposition speeches a negative messiah is announced and the pitiful tone of Ash Wednesday of the revolutionary carnival is heard. The left must continue to dispute the future, to hope, to embody the conviction that it is possible for all of us to live well, here, today and in this land called Ecuador. Let hope overcome fear!
What role do the media play in this dispute?
The media are the main tool of power used by the right to produce disenchantment and despair. The news, the newspapers try to build the society of fear, of suspicion, of distrust. The news that grows most in audience are the ones with the most blood. To this is added the social networks. This new public sphere allows anonymous trolls to defame without any public responsibility.

Their strategy of pyramidalization (I think this means reinforcing hegemony) when trying to generate the news of the week is clear: they use the massive media and the big 'influencers' who have many followers in their social network accounts. Not those who are random private media journalists. Therefore, one of the main principles that must be challenged in tofay's democracy is truth and defense of the public sphere.

As a citizen I would expect that any candidate for the Presidency of my country will always be attached to the truth and have the courage, in case of being wrong, to clarify and ask for public apology for the mistake they made. Not that lying ought be used as a deliberate strategy to win votes. That is the strategy of a right without morals. We must be clear that there will be no quality democracy as long as there is no ethics in politics and as long as the truth does not reign in the public sphere.
There is a left that indicates that it has been a wasted decade. What do you think?
I agree with the point made by Emir Sader: for those that see is as wasteful decade, it is because they wasted the decade. The question asked by the Brazilian sociologist is pertinent: if governments like the Citizen Revolution are responsible for the return of the right, as these groups usually affirm, then why is this 'ultra left' not strengthened? Because they have not taken advantage of the weakening of progressive governments and thus taken their place? No. It is simple. It is because they have no popular base and their arguments have not penetrated any sector of the population.

This left should learn that they are also responsible for their actions or non-actions. Unfortunately, the right has been much more astute and efficient in political terms than this left. It is no coincidence that this left in the next elections has no direct spokesperson as a presidential candidate. A left without a town, it is not a left. In this sense, it seems that the left noun remained large. Yes, they have wasted this decade!
What is the role of politics in this regard?
Perhaps as important as the viability of the contest is that the same described transition has been made within a democratic and peaceful framework. The process of social reconfiguration, having these characteristics, has allowed us to recover the trust in the other and above all the capacity of citizen astonishment in the face of social injustice - which has allowed people to move from indignant anger to the hope of a mindful citizen hope. The right is astute in pointing out that institutional confidence, citizen's hope in and the recovery of politics are the main weapons that progressive processes have to move forward.

In this context, it is vital for the right to disenchant, to despair of citizenship and to dismantle the image of politics as a space to create a just social order. In this framework, it is necessary to understand political action as a means but also as an end to the process of change. In this way, political action must create a virtuous circle, based on actors that support and push change, and that the change they sustain and support strengthens them. Faced with the society of mistrust and fear that the right seeks to establish as a common sense, one of the main challenges that Lenín Moreno has is to restrain the citizenry - as he does- in order to continue with the hopeful spirit we have had in these 10 years, which implies generating another aesthetic in politics.

Original text by Oscar Perez, Director de el Telegrafo

Translation by Ariel Sheen

In Europe, social democracy is not only going through its worst moment in history, but it has revealed itself as a tendency of those that are right of center. This is evident through the means of those that practice power in its name, the impact of policies on their respective countries, and in the frustration of those social groups that placed their hope in them. At the same time, however, there are still leaders and groups advocating within the social democracy camp for exit from the parliamentary process.

All this infighting is occurring during a period of emergence of various fascist right tendencies found deep within various electorates. The silence of Social Democrats on the triumph of Donald Trump in the USA and the lack of debate on the possibility of a fourth term for Angela Merkel is not something for which we should be grateful.

And in Ecuador? What remains of the social democratic programs that Rodrigo Borja raised despite the antagonism of the oligarchic right? Programs that he could never fulfill, for the same reasons that now lead us to think that it is an impossible political project for a country like ours.

Is it enough to mention the slogan "social justice with freedom" to reflect the crisis evident in this current of thought? Should we think of the social democratic project in Ecuador merely as those consisting of political representatives that claim this label? Could it be that having stretched the Ecuadorian political process to the left in the last 10 years forced a certain social democratic nostalgia without a proper analysis of its real content?

It is very convenient to appeal to the center and talk about absolute consensus. It sounds good - like something found in a self-help manual for times of existential crisis. The European and Latin American reality, however, tells us several truths about where such verities of political centrism leads.

If what is now described as Ecuadorian Social Democracy could adequately explain how society functions - perhaps it could also explain to itself why it has not exercised power for more than 20 years? And something else: why are those who now represent this movement not so different in their visions from the right? Why do certain right-wing actors join those self-described Social Democratic organizations without any misgivings? They will tell me that there are also others, of those who were called left. Yes, as it also happens in the US, where 'libertarian' groups that defend homosexuals, ecology and women now join Trump without any misgivings.

In practice there is not much difference between what so-called Social Democrats and what the Social Christians, the Christian Democrats and the right-wing libertarians propose. In fact, many of them have their best representatives in the media, in blogs and in the media or the many International NGOs with representatives in Ecuador.

Although one or the other speaks in favor of women's right to choose abortion or homosexuals to marry, they do not want to transform society much beyond that. It sounds very nice to defend the rights of women and sexual diversities, but within a society predicated on a capitalism means tolerance and nothing else.

This is how they conceive how our society should be: tolerance of diversity, but continued exclusion of opportunity via maintenance of in the distribution of wealth; women ought to be protected from assaulted or violated but not from market conditions which deny them decent jobs. Young people are free and sovereign, but only to sustain the market as good consumers and not as citizens part of a project of collective social transformation.

As the Colombian philosopher Santiago Castro-Gómez said recently in a lecture at La Falco: The only way a society can be changed is by transforming the common sense of our peoples and by taking institutions (not only in the state sense). From there can be exerted real and revolutionary political power!

Even if it is hard for them to recognize it, the new social democrats are actually right-wing libertarians. They have not learned from Rodrigo Borja much less the classics of international social democracy. This is neither meant to stigmatize nor underestimate their political performance.

On the contrary, I say this only to provide evidence for their political role during electoral campaign times. They do this to differentiate themselves from Alianza PAIS. They declare themselves to be anti-reformists to death, with all the consequences that this entails, but then agree with many of the postulates of the Right on the role of the State, fiscal matters, the state of the world economy and the quality of democracy in terms of rights of participation or social inclusion.

Of course, since intellectuals are very busy contributing to electoral campaigns, and profiting as consultants, pollsters and political marketing strategists - as could be seen in the last Political Communication Summit, held in Quito - they do not want to reflect on this. Perhaps this is because their intense work schedule does not give them time to reflect.

And yet there are still some truly independent intellectuals (some of them who write in this newspaper luckily) who have touched on Creole social democracy's open wounds. Something that can hardly be recognize themselves when one is silent about major developments that have happened in Spain, France, Germany or England over the past two decades.

The question is open and involves a response that in the middle of the electoral campaign should force a more serious debate: what social democracy do we speak of in Ecuador in the 21st century?
*
En Europa la socialdemocracia no solo atraviesa el peor momento de su historia, sino que se ha revelado como una tendencia de derecha antes que de centro, no solo por sus prácticas en el ejercicio del poder, sino por el impacto de sus políticas en sus respectivos países y en las sociedades de bienestar de las que tanto se preció. Al mismo tiempo hay líderes y grupos que disputan en el seno de esa socialdemocracia una salida por la izquierda.

Todo eso ocurre cuando la emergencia de derechas y tendencias fascistas cala hondo en el electorado. No es gratuito el silencio de la socialdemocracia sobre el triunfo de Donald Trump en EE.UU. y el casi nulo cuestionamiento a la posibilidad de un cuarto período para Angela Merkel.

¿Y en Ecuador? ¿Qué queda de representación de la socialdemocracia que Rodrigo Borja enarboló en plena disputa con la derecha oligárquica y con un programa que nunca pudo cumplir por las mismas razones que ahora nos llevan a pensar que es un proyecto político imposible para un país como el nuestro? ¿Basta con mencionar un eslogan (justicia social con libertad) para reflejar esa corriente de pensamiento en crisis en el mundo? ¿Se puede pensar en una socialdemocracia a la ecuatoriana a partir solo de la representación y las figuras de algunas personas que se autocalifican de ese modo? ¿No será que haber estirado hacia la izquierda el proceso político ecuatoriano de los últimos 10 años obligó a cierta nostalgia socialdemócrata sin el debido análisis sobre su real condumio?

Es muy cómodo llamarse de centro y hablar de consensos absolutos. Más bien huele a un manual de autoayuda en tiempos de crisis existencial, pero la realidad europea y la latinoamericana nos gritan varias verdades sobre las neutralidades o los centrismos políticos que ya sabemos dónde terminan. Si lo que ahora se autocalifica de socialdemocracia ecuatoriana pudiera explicar cómo entiende a nuestra sociedad, quizá podría también explicarse a sí misma por qué no ha ejercido el poder hace más de 20 años. Y algo más: por qué quienes ahora la representan no son tan distintos, en sus visiones, de la derecha, tan así que determinados actores de la derecha se afilian a esas organizaciones autocalificadas de socialdemócratas sin ningún recelo. Me dirán que también hay de los otros, de los que se llamaban de izquierda. Sí, como también ocurre en EE.UU., donde los grupos 'libertarios' que defienden a los homosexuales, la ecología y las mujeres ahora se afilian a Trump sin ningún recelo.

En la práctica no hay mucha diferencia entre lo que plantean los autodenominados socialdemócratas y lo que proponen los socialcristianos, los democratacristianos y los libertarios de derechas (muchos de los cuales tienen a sus mejores representantes en los medios de comunicación, en los blogs y en las ONG internacionales asentadas en Ecuador con representantes nacionales).

Aunque uno que otro hable a favor del aborto o del matrimonio homosexual, en el fondo no quieren transformar la sociedad. Suena muy bonito defender los derechos de las mujeres y las diversidades sexuales, pero dentro de un capitalismo intenso maquillado de tolerancia y nada más.
Así conciben nuestra sociedad: tolerancia con las diversidades aunque estas sigan siendo excluidas en la distribución de la riqueza; que las mujeres no sean agredidas ni violentadas pero que no tengan trabajos dignos ni sean sujetos de la transformación colectiva; y que los jóvenes sean libres y soberanos, pero para sostener al mercado como buenos consumidores y no precisamente como ciudadanos.

Como dijo hace poco el filósofo colombiano Santiago Castro-Gómez en una charla en la Flacso, del único modo que se puede cambiar una sociedad es transformando el sentido común de nuestros pueblos y tomándose las instituciones (no solo en el sentido estatal) para desde allí ejercer poder político real y revolucionario.

Los nuevos socialdemócratas (que no han leído los libros y reflexiones de un Rodrigo Borja y menos de los clásicos de la socialdemocracia internacional) son en realidad unos libertarios de derechas aunque les cueste reconocerlo. No es ni un estigma ni una subestimación a su actuación política.
Todo lo contrario, solo es la constatación de su rol político en tiempos de campaña electoral porque para diferenciarse de Alianza PAIS no solo se declaran anticorreístas a muerte -con todas las consecuencias que ello depara-, sino que coinciden en los postulados de la derecha sobre el rol del Estado, materia fiscal, estado de la economía mundial y la calidad de la democracia en cuanto a derechos de participación o de inclusión social.

Claro, como los intelectuales están muy ocupados en contribuir a las campañas electorales, en calidad de asesores, consultores, encuestadores y estrategas de marketing político (como se pudo constatar en la última Cumbre de Comunicación Política, desarrollada en Quito) no han querido reflexionar sobre esto.

Quizá por falta de tiempo dado el trabajo intenso al que están sometidos, pero hay todavía algunos intelectuales verdaderamente independientes (algunos de ellos que escriben en este diario por suerte) que han tocado en las heridas abiertas que tiene la socialdemocracia criolla y que muy difícilmente pueden reconocerse como tales cuando callan sobre lo ocurrido en las 2 últimas décadas en España, Francia, Alemania o Inglaterra.

La pregunta está abierta y conlleva una respuesta que en plena campaña electoral debería obligar a un debate más serio: ¿de qué socialdemocracia hablamos en el Ecuador del siglo XXI? (O)

For an American take on a similar theme, watch this:

Amazon has a serious problem with fake reviews populating their website. So much so that Forbes, NYMag, NYPost, C|Net, and Fortune are all writing about it.

After reviewing findings from data-based research by Ming Ooi, one of the co-founders of Fakespot, he offers this blunt assessment of Amazon's reviews ecosystem: "About 40 percent of reviews we see on Amazon are unreliable."

This video also goes details the issue:

In this blog post I'm going to examine to distinct types of fake reviews, examine it's commercial and political effects and then outline how it is that Amazon should be handling them.

Why go through the work of explaining this?

For one, as someone that has almost 150 book reviews on their website as a means of monetization, I find sending referral traffic to a website with a consumer rating function that has been hijacked by marketers to be highly unethical.

Secondly, I find the unresponsiveness of Amazon to taking simple steps to prevent this to be reflective of a corporate environment that

Let me give you two case study examples of products that I've recently come across that illustrate what I mean.

Freewrite: The Juicero of Word Processing

I use the same computer for word processing as I do for my marketing business, I know how susceptible to distraction the various alerts I have set up and immediate access to the internet can be. Thus when I first saw the Kickstarter ad for the Freewrite I was interested. I clicked the sponsored post in my Facebook feed, and began to read their promotional literature. As I did, my initial excitement on a new tool faded on learning of it's features and price.

Unlike others that have written negative reviews of the product after using it, I could tell without even investing $550 into it that it was, quoting Mashable, pretentious hipster nonsense.

Identifying Fake Amazon Reviews

Leading up to Christmas, I started to see ads announcing that the second generation of the product had been released. Hopeful at first that maybe they'd changed their product to address what I and others saw as flaws in it's features, I was disappointed to learn that they hadn't. And I was also confused. Fully aware that my preferences aren't universal, I still surprised at the high number of gushing customer review ratings on Amazon.

When I started to dig deeper I noticed a number of abnormalities in those people that were reviewing it. For one, you'll notice that a large number of the 5 star reviews are all written by people that have only ever reviewed one product: The FreeWrite.

I didn't take screenshots of them all, but if you look at some of the other reviews you'll notice that a lot of them also have only one or two reviews for items that were written years ago.

31 of the 42 reviews, or 74% of the 5 star reviews for FreeWrite all occur within a nine day period - between November 21st and November 30th 2016. Here's the data from Amazon that I collected should you want to review the numbers yourself. Many of them have a length and style that is directly mirrors FreeWrite's own marketing material and at least two reviews come from those that were incentivized to write it based upon being given the product for free. Why else, after all, would someone write a 2,300 word review of it?

Marketing Authenticity Whilst Acting Suspiciously

Above I said that FreeWrite is like the Juicero. How so? Well, they both created much hyped, over-priced products that poorly deliver on their promises. Like Douglas Evans, founder of Juicero, they then moved on to another project that is at it's core, well, ridiculous.

Evans is now marketing the unproven benefits of the dubiously named raw water he sells while AstroHaus tried to bring to market ClapBoss - a device that mandates you spend money and time programming a device that you can just as easily do without. It wasn't just schadenfreude that made me happy to see that this project didn't get funded, but a deep and genuine disdain for marketing language that mobilizes concepts such as "Freedom" and "Control Over Your Life" to encourages people to buy products such as these. I'd go so far as to venture that any person that would prefer a $550 FreeWrite to $510 dollars worth of books and some notebooks and pen or word processing software like Scrivener aren't real writers. That said, let me add I've never used Scrivener, I wasn't paid to point this out and that if you ascribe to a historical materialist view of the world you'll notice a troubling paradox in the reviews of products that could actually lead to freedom and control over your life.

Financial Incentive Not Sole Factor For Fake Reviews

As a subject area expert, George Ciccariello-Maher frequently writes, lectures and speaks on the subject of Venezuela and American political economy. One of my favorite history books of the past several years, in fact, was We Created Chavez by GCM. In my review of the book I favorably compared it's prose to that found in C. L. R. James' work on the Haitian Revolution The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, a historian that's quoted several times in the book.

Full disclosure, thought we've never met - we did both present research at the 2013 Rethinking Marxism: Surplus, Solidarity and Sufficiency 2013 Conference at UMASS Amherst - me critically defending the democratically elected government of Venezuela and Bolivarianism, he on decolonizing dialectics.

For those familiar with American history and political economy and that aren't white nationalists, the tweets for which he received negative press was funny, neigh, hilarious. Those that didn't like it - which was much of the commentariat - didn't get it and thus misrepresented views. In an interview GCM gave with The Inquirer, he explains as follows (Link to BET's coverage of the State Farm Insurance tweet added by me):

"On Christmas Eve, I sent a satirical tweet about an imaginary concept, 'white genocide,'" For those who haven't bothered to do their research, 'white genocide' is an idea invented by white supremacists and used to denounce everything from interracial relationships to multicultural policies (and most recently, against a tweet by State Farm Insurance). It is a figment of the racist imagination, it should be mocked, and I'm glad to have mocked it."

Historical Ignorance and Revisionism in Amazon Reviews

Following this the White Nationalist press got upset and mobilized their base, which also happens to have intersectional affinities with Venezuelans in Miami. The above screen shot shows how Google searches for "White Genocide" and "George Ciccariello-Maher" both peaked following his tweet going viral.

The ramifications of the Tweet wasn't just Google searches, however, but a campaign of harassment and death threats that lead to GCM being placed on leave and an attempt at delegitimizing his academic work via the means that most used online means of commerce in America - Amazon.

Amazon Reviews and The World Turned Inside Out

The above Amazon user yentl's sole contributions to Amazon are typical of others like it in level of insight and engagement following the uproar over two tweets by GCM. In fact, the seven reviews by yentl shown above are all for books written, translated or co-edited by George Ciccariello-Maher and are all the same - "It makes me want to Vomit!". Similar depth of insight and engagement with the text abounds in other reviews.

I didn't take the time to go through all of his books on Amazon, but it's worth noting that 42 of the 63 review for We Created Chavez occur within a one week period in March of 2017 and a 3 day period in December of 2016. For those that want to check my methods, feel free to review this data sheet I made.

Amazon and Authentic Reviews

With these two cases in mind, it's easy to see that the majority of positive reviews are done from financial motivation and those that are negative are ideological in origin. It's also easy to see how Amazon can help prevent these sorts of false distortions of reality from being considered real.

For one monitoring negative or positive spikes in reviews and flagging them for review prior to publication.

Secondly Amazon needs to take Abuse Reports seriously. I've reported a number of reviews that are clearly either spam or ideologically motivated only to see that several days, weeks, months later that they remain online as a genuine "experience" of the product.

Since Amazon claims they want to be the brand of Customer Experience, they need to address this. Now. While the tenor of political discourse is no where near as bad as it is elsewhere, there needs to be a greater degree of vigilance to ensure honest communication about the merits of products and worldview. What's at stake here isn't just about whether or not someone chooses to buy something - but the need to be vigilant towards a platform with "democratic aspirations" from inadvertently promoting the widening and deepening of false consciousness.

Since 2003 on December 1st across Medellin a large number of people in the lower strata barrios celebrate with bacchanalia and fireworks. The first is the birthday of Pablo Escobar, however this is not a celebration in honor of him, but the man that may be most responsible for his downfall and death - Don Berna.

December 1st 2003, marks the official demobilization of Don Berna's Cacique Nutibara paramilitary bloc. To show his continued influence despite his officially putting down arms, Don Berna paid for fireworks and gunpowder to be set off show the extent of his continued control over 10 of the 16 Comunas of Medellin despite his officially "laying down arms".

Not everyone celebrates this holiday, and depending on who you ask there are those that see the celebration of the day as shameful. For those that do, you'll see the same sort of enthusiasm that July the 4th is celebrated in the United States.

When I was in Medellin I was lucky enough to witness the fireworks display from the penthouse rooftop of a friend and then attend a block party. My iPhone didn't capture video nearly as nicely as the one below and I didn't want to dar papaya at the party so documented nothing, but it will give you the idea of how large an event it is.

Don Berna is now probably most notably known in America today via the depiction of him by Mauricio Cujar in the Netflix series Narcos. I haven't watched the series so can't speak to his acting performance. I can, however, speak to the context in which the acts of Don Berna took place that lead to such a day of celebration and how huge an affect the man has had on Colombian politics.

First Formation of Narco Class Consciousness

During the second week of November in 1981, the 26-year-old daughter of Fabio Ochoa Restrepo was kidnapped from the University of Antioquia by M-19, a Marxist guerrilla group. Considered by some to be the man behind Pablo Escobar, $12 million was demanded from Don Fabio for her release. Responding to this following her release, on Dec. 2, 1981 a small plane dropped leaflets announcing the formation of the group "Death to Kidnapers," which became known by its Spanish acronym MAS, over a Cali stadium during a soccer match. The leaflet said MAS had been formed by 223 leading drug traffickers that organized to resist the leftists preying on their families and that they would carry out "immediate and public execution" of Leftists. Unable to adequately defend themselves against the well-funded attacks, the leftist insurgencies in Colombia soon started to engage in narco-trafficking themselves in order to match the money and weapons that they and the State forces had at their disposal.

In one of the most deadly events in Colombian history four years later, The Palace of Justice was siege by the same Marxist group, M-19. This resulted the public deaths of many federal justices, the burning of legal documents related to Pablo Escobar and the Medellin cartel and a sea change in how the Colombian government decided to handle Pablo and how Pablo's allies started to view him. The Castaños, one of the most powerful criminal clans in Medellin, for instance grew distant from Pablo Escobar because of Escobar's stated affinity for left-wing guerrillas, his alleged links to M-19 and another rebel group, the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional - ELN). Their patriarch had been killed by the FARC and their zeal for the bloodletting of leftists was notorious.

Whether or not M-19 had the backing of Pablo Escobar is subject to debate. Given a little bit broader context, it becomes understandable why this the beginning of the end. These were, after all, times when any sort of public support or expression of sympathy to Leftists was considered just cause for classification as a enemy of the state, placement on a list of subversives and scheduling for capture, execution and disappearance of the body.

Pablo Escobar: Populist with Leftist Leanings

Pablo Escobar was no communist. In fact, if his son is to be believed then he, like Manuel Noriega, was involved with the CIA in profiting of the funneling of cocaine into the United States in order to circumvent oversight by the legislative branch to raise money to fight the Communist, nationalist, anti-colonialist, nativist insurgent movements in Central America. His particular flavor, however, was populist.

Parties and Partys in Colombia

"The objective of memory is to highlight both the struggle of the dead
and the nature of the powers that silenced them."
-Luis Carlos Restrepo

As part of my pre-visit area studies and research for Unraveling, I picked up Law in a Lawless Land: Diary of a Limpieza in Colombia by Michael Taussig prior to going to Medellin. A first person account told in a diary format over two weeks, Taussig recounts the dynamics, shares the stories of others and contextualizes the history of the region to explain the murders that once made Colombia the world's murder capital. While conditions and the murder rates have drastically changed since then, it's still a place where massacres of campesinos over access to land still occurs to this day.

Taussig's journal describes in at times uncomfortable details a number of large-scale public killings, referred to as limpiezas in Spanish, as well as the backgrounds of the actors and the historical context in which they occur. Besides this, Taussig also reflects on the role of memory and accountability from a personal in reflections on the process of writing a journal as well as in the political sense, ie - through which means hegemony is formed.

Indigenes, Viciosas, Delincuentes, Traficantes, Paras, Sicarios, Guerrillas, Policia y la Ejer cito Oh My!

While many of the participants in the conflict are prone to describing things in terms of good or evil, what is really going on is conflict over modes of production and access to fertile and resource rich lands. Though the quote from Karl Marx's work Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations is one that opens Michael Taussig's other book The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America, I think it a good one for quickly that describes the primary driver for conflict here as well.

Thus the ancient conception in which man always appears (in however narrowly national, religious or political a definition) as the aim of production, seems very much more exalted than the modern world, in which production is the aim of man and wealth the aim of production.

While not nearly as knowledgeable as Taussig about Colombia's past or collective psyche, my experience with various social strata in Medellin and Jerico, a pueblo in Antioquia, provided me a similar view. Those that primarily outside the capitalist mode of exchange for supplying their daily needs seemed more peaceful, calm and happy then those that depended on it.

In a long passage discussing the transformation of Cali's agricultural lands in the 1950s and 1960s, Taussig describes how the thousands of peasants, who were outside the capitalist mode of production as the variety of plants they would grow and rotate provided them with all they needed were forcibly dispossessed so that a foreign born family could grow and export sugar. These instances of rapid proletarianization helped contribute to the problems faced within the cities - people without capital or many skills flocking to them - and were accelerated once cocaine became the crop of choice for those wanting to live beyond subsistence means.

When You Don't Want Your Haters To Know Your Name

The immensity of the cocaine market drove traffickers to form paramilitary organizations to seize land and routes with high use value from the FARC and other large scale farmers. Unable to effectively contest such a well-financed group and still keep their scruples, the FARC got into the protection and trafficking rackets so that they could survive as an organization. Armed conflict over this left many frightened and dead , however this was not the full extent of the new dynamics influencing Colombia's political economy. Large nuber of addicts too cropped along with a profound incentivization for "bad behavior" as la vida facil - or the drug-dealing/trafficking life - was known to be sweet, but short.

Planfleto Amenzas, or warning pamphlets, like the one above along with the graffiti signs of paras scrawled around the community are the first indication that the paramilitaries are soon coming in for a cleansing of such mala gente. Translating the above picture, it says the following:

"We will be killing all rat bastard sons of bitches, leftist communists, defenders of human rights and the process of peace and restitution of the land, student communist groups, unionists and guerillas."

Then continues to name the people that will be killed following by the ominous entre otros, or "among others" and a warning that caught or informed upon for helping these people will also be receive lead.

Sometimes warnings are not so explicit and people must rely upon word of mouth news networks or wait until AUC graffiti was painted someplace public to know where and when the AUC was.

The Massive Scope of the Conflict

At the time of this book's publication in 2002, Michael Taussig states that he's been visiting Colombia to do fieldwork for 30 years. While the intensity of the civil war has halted, there are still multiple bad effects that stem from the narco-trafficking. There are neighborhoods that require thousands of police in Bogota to clear out the open air drug markets made by vendors and addicts and anyone visiting the area around El Centro in Medellin has seen the improvised encampments filled with bazuco addicts.

Taussig describes in details various encampments and characters he encounters in such places in a way the bring much needed levity to the stories he's sharing. Behind those moment of levity, however, is the underlying fear. Fear of being seen with the wrong person. Fear of saying the wrong thing. Fear of your name showing up on a computer provided to the paras by the military. In numerous anecdotes the absolute terror felt by those in towns undergoing a cleaning is clear. Just as who is behind these, the local power elites.

¡No Tiene Sentido!

One of the recurring themes in my readings thus far on Colombia which is again reinforced here, is how distorted the reporting of the events are in Colombia. Many journalists fear intimidation, harassment, assault or death as reporting a story in the wrong way would could mean various armed groups would target them, so often they distort reporting in favor of the government or the paras or do not report on important events at all. The result of this is a collective unreality on all sides.

Threats of violence aren't the only reasons why mass delusions as to the acts of the government, the paras and the guerillas are reported in a manner that later is corrected in the evidentiary findings of human rights NGOs.

Besides the stick, there is the carrot. Writing about the paradoxical viewpoint that many Colombians have, Taussig points out on page 76 the following commonplace hypocrisy of many Colombian political commentators:

"How is it that while the pandillas, or gangs of the young preoccupy everybody to the point of collective hysteria, while the bandas of the local upper class rarely get talked about? Is it because the bandas have for so long been a part of reality and that many people, or at least many influential people, get fat on them?"

The corruption in the country is notoriously endemic. In fact when asking one taxi drive in Medellin what he thought about the President Santos he want on a long rant about how all the politicians were corrupt - Liberals and Conservatives alike - and that stated that there's no party that represents the poor and the campesinos except for the FARC, who would never come to power given so many people disliked them for the reason I said above. As a result, leading to million and billions of dollars of state money going to development projects. Maybe a few dollars goes in the pocket of a reporter, or maybe the ownerships of the new outlet gets some money out of it so exercises editorial control, or maybe a company that purchases advertising threatens to pull money if certain things are said. Either way, there are are lot of incentives to sow confusion in community by incomplete or false reporting.

As income inequality worsens within countries around the world and more people grow disillusioned with the neo-liberal verities that justified their immiseration as well as the politicians which has been spouting them, more people have been rethinking whether or not policies based on socialist principles might be a better option. In fact with the recent election of Lee Carter, a marine veteran that identifies as a Democratic Socialist, along with a number of other left of center populists and socialists we might even be seeing the pivot begin to become a trend. This is making a lot of people nervous.

The Washington Post recently published an editorial decrying changes in language and politics as neo-bolshevism. The American Culture and Faith Institute recently published findings from a survey which outlets like the National Review are up in arms about. Why? Because younger people are becoming more sympathetic to socialism! Also in on the furor is the Victims Of Communism Foundation, they also published the results of a different survey that much to their and others dismay, also found that younger people view socialism favorably! Lest this seem like the new American generation simply is ignorant to the realities of socialism, it's worth noting that this trend wherein socialism is seen as desirable is not just in the U.S. but a sentiment found in the former Soviet Union as well.

It's in this context of growing demand for systemic political and economic change, that the son of the current American president, Donald Trump Jr., decided that he would use his following on Twitter to try to educate his followers on just how unfair, unjust and undesirable socialism is by posting the photo and text that I've screenshot on the right. The post, rightfully so, was mocked by a number of outlets, including Vice and Twitter.

A few days later Liberal (not leftist) Chris Hayes posted the following on his Twitter account . I can't say for sure whether or not this was in response to Trump Jr's tweet, but it does touch upon the (1) the correctness of Socialist analysis, (2) just how slow in coming to understand want Trump means for America and (3) that the received truths from most outlets (i.e. non-Marxist) are no longer valid.
Why Trump Jr is Wrong: Selective Redistribution is not Socialism
As many on Twitter pointed out, as far as analogies go Socialism = Halloween is a pretty bad one. But this isn't something that is unique to Trump Jr. There's a long history of purposeful misrepresentation of socialist thought and ideas by the media outlets of the wealthy going back over a hundred years. Puck Magazine was one such outlet that previously paid artists to publish cartoons of dirty, foreign socialists to discredit them. The sensibilities have changed, but the essence hasn't.

Now people like Dinesh D'Souza, a man convicted of violating campaign finance law, not only seek to discredit socialism, but to transform it's meeting so that the whole of the philosophy comes down to is " redistribution " and to claim that the the Democrats are in fact descended from Nazis. Thus, according to the new logic of the presumptive ruling class, World War II was really just leftist infighting between socialists in Germany and Russia and the US. By the by, this means that the Nazis actually won WW2 because, remember, FDR was a National Socialist...

The problem with all of this is, the logic turns to dust when you look to the seminal author on capitalism, Adam Smith. Here is from one of his maxims on taxes:

The Wealth Of Nations, Book V Chapter II Part II, Appendix to Articles I & II, p. 861, para. 12.
The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities...

Smith also includes four additional maxims that ought to inform how it is that taxation should transpire. That said, while tax percentages, sources and allocation is certainly a contentious dynamic, but there's nothing inherently "socialistic" about it. Social, yes, interaction between people. Socialist? No. That refers to principles of social and economic governance. While there are a variety of views on public ownerships of good and services - such as public schools, roads, national parks, etc. - but to claim that they are "socialist" is to mistake what socialism really is - the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Marx's Major Theoretical Writings Are About Capitalism, Not Socialism
If that last phrase of that last sentence needs some unpacking, that's understandable. Unlike the language and theories that Freud and the circles of readers and practitioners of the artistic science of psychoanalysis developed, Marxism hasn't entered into the popular lexicon. This shouldn't be that surprising given the indoctrination in our schools and churches that Communism/Marx is unAmerican, the fact that America has a long tradition of anti-intellectualism; state and para-state actors that seek to dissuade those that have made their way to Marx from acting on it and an entire cultural apparatus that is owned by a numerically small but politically powerful class that does not want to see or hear of their property being threatened.

Dictatorship is a heavily loaded term and it's worth noting that as is conceived in Marxian though, the term does not necessarily refer to a personalistic style of political rule, but to control over political institutions. Marxists say that currently, living in the class society that we do, we live under the dictatorship of capital. It's purely descriptive.

The proletariat is the group of workers that know they live in a class society and want to halt class rule through organized political struggle. The proletariat is categorically not the working class as a whole, who may not be active in the political economic struggle.

Class struggle, however, is just one component of Marxism socialism. There's a large body of primary literature (and for free, thanks marxists.org!) as well as secondary literature that can explain the varieties of socialism, be it How to Read Karl Marx, Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx: A Revolutionary Interpretation or David Harvey 's website.
Class Struggle! But What Else?
From my conversations around college campuses and at political events, validated by Jon Stewart, I think it's fair to say that as a whole Socialism/Marxism as ideologies tends to be conflated with economic leveling and giving greater political power to the people. Because of this unfortunate desire to appear "in the know" thousands of pages of theory and decades of history are obfuscated and I think that this focus distracts from the fact that there are a number of his non-revolutionary concepts and intellectual innovations within Socialist and Marxist literature.

I say non-revolutionary as there are a large number of writers on every possible locations on a political map that agree with a some of his concepts and interpretations of historical developments. I'm not going to cite them all, instead an excerpt of this article from Harvard Business Review shows that class struggle isn't specifically socialist or Marxist:

"Have these people never heard about Teddy Roosevelt excoriating the "malefactors of great wealth," or his cousin Franklin getting Congress to raise the tax rate on top incomes past 90%? Americans have been pillorying the rich on and off for more than 200 years, and our economic system has survived and mostly thrived. In fact, the political and labor-relations compromises occasioned by what you might call class warfare have on balance surely made the country stronger.

What's been unique, or at least highly unusual, has been the environment in which entrepreneurs and business executives were able to operate from the late 1970s through the early 2000s. Taxes dropped, high-end incomes exploded, and hardly anybody complained at all. Far from complaining, in fact, the news media for the most part celebrated the recipients of those exploding incomes for their boldness, creativity, and economic importance. It was a pretty stinking awesome time to be a plutocrat: You got to make billions of dollars, pay far less in taxes than you would have a quarter-century before, and get your face on the cover of Forbes or Fortune (or maybe even the top of your head on the cover of HBR)."

After you've read that entire article, which is worth your time, I'm sure you'll agree. However, unless you were familiar with socialist/Marxist thought, you wouldn't know this and just think it's just some "foreign" ideology.
Marx and the Many Schools of Economics
Understanding how societies operate is difficult and requires a specialized vocabulary to talk about various components. In the process of gaining deeper knowledge within an academic discipline, ones' lexicon and scholarship grows such that one can come to understand a variety of schools in relationship to one another and how the effects of their policies are. It's because of this - lack of study on the subject - that Trump Jr. makes such a poor analogy for socialism. One might consider that as a capitalist he might "have ideas", but all this means is that he's able to extract surplus value from people not that his position as such a historical agent makes his version of theory superior. It's not.

But Trump Jr. is not alone in his ignorance. If polled via mTurk, I think that less than 5% of people could give me an accurate definition of any number of terms used by Marx, be it alienation, commodification, division of labor, fetishism, solidarity, mode of production, etc. I believe the same would be true for concepts introduced by Marx's later interlocutors like Gramsci with hegemony, Rosa Luxembourg's analysis of reformism or Trotsky with permanent revolution. What great potential for a poll! Those the believe that schools have indoctrinated children with collectivist thought could finally have proof of it as knowledge of those words and other ideas related to it would quantitatively demonstrate public school led to collectivist thought!

Despite such claims, I would propound that with Trump there is a rise of people with a racial and nationalistic language for thinking through their politics, and I'm not alone in this assessment.
Socialism, or Barbarism
The middle class does not exist in the US anymore and as nationalism becomes the new watchword for determining US policy, American workers need to come to realize that they have more in common with a worker in China than they do with their own employer. Not history, language or culture, of course, but their economic precariousness and the fact that they compete with each other in the labor market due to a world connected by cargo shipping containers, transportation networks and a variety of shops.

The Right has been using racial and nationalistic language as well taking a few pages from Joe McCarthy's anti-communism playbook - as evidenced by the header image at the top of the page. However in the end it is less about fears of "others" than the precariousness of American's status to which they are appealing.

"You will not replace us" is anxiety about globalism and it's ability to decimate regions once industries leave for greener pastures (and less labor laws). It's taken a while for enough people to come to this perspective, but people are slowly recognizing that the economic game has been so changed in the past 30 years that they want the rules to change too. Neoliberalism is increasingly becoming a dead letter and in it's place will either go Socialism or Barbarism...
What is the Global State of Socialism? What Does that Mean in America?
While I've focused on the American case as we zoom out of our focus and head onto the world stage we see that Socialism, that cause for much American intervention in countries that elected such politicians, is not seen as such a bug bear.

In China, Xi Jinping is announced as a contributor to Communist thought and practice in the vein of Marx and Mao. Vietnam remains radicalized by their experiences with European colonialism and like China are a single Communist party state.

In Europe, Spain's PODEMOS party rules the country and while their leader Pablo Iglesias is not a Marxist, they are socialist in orientation. Same goes for Greece, wherethe current leader of the Syriza party, Alex Tsipras, continues to battle against Germany and the international credit market. While no longer a part of the EU, in the United Kingdom, Jeremy Corbyn, an avowed Trotskyist, is revivifying anti-austerity politics and helping to turn the Labour party in a working class party rather than a neoliberal party.

In Venezuela, Maduro's PSUV won heavily in the regional elections. In Colombia Rodrigo "Timonchenko" Londoño, the former leader of the FARC, a Marxist guerrilla organization, has announced he will be running for president. In Bolivia, Evo Morales has presided over a decade of socialist-inspired reforms. In Brazil, the Temer government cannot gain legitimacy and it looks like in 2018 Lula will return at the head of the Workers Party.

In Kerala, India the Washington Post positively describes the large socialist movement on the opposite end of the "Red Corridor" wherein a Maoist-inspired insurgency fights the government.

In Rojava, anarcho-communist Murray Bookchin has found a new audience amongst Kurds fighting for a socialist nation and those that are inspired to help them.

Many other developed nations, such as Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are not socialist, but have such a robust social safety net that it's nothing like the American notion of capitalism.
What does all this going on mean in America?
At the most general level, I think it means that Americans ought to familiarize themselves with socialist literature. There's a whole lot of false misconceptions as to what socialism is out there. There's a whole lot of people that think American socialists want to bring North Korea, Cuba or U.S.S.R. to America and despite s#!tposting that hints others, this couldn't be further from the truth.

That said, Socialism is a huge topic with a lot of debates within - take it all in slowly and with a grain of salt for as is to be expected in politics, there are underlying motives both professionally and ideologically operating here.

Lastly, I think it's worth pointing out that people should also meet with other people in their community to talk about their experiences in relation to what they are reading in order to make sure that they understand things correctly and to help form bonds. It's a whole lot more engaging and enjoyable than hearing an analogy that literally makes you stupider from the son of a reality T.V. star that would love to have more of your money because they tricked you into thinking that the modern American iteration of Socialism wouldn't be a treat...

I was waiting for another "advertisement campaign gone wrong" news story to happen to contrast the way in which the messages in traditional magazine style graphic ads differ with what can be done with content marketing and sure enough Dove does me the favor of running an ad that many are calling racist and is now facing a boycott of their product.

In this article I'm not going to judge the intentions of the people involved in this Facebook-based advertising campaign, but I will defend their intentions by stating I believe the screen grabs below that spread like wildfire across Twitter misconstrue the nature of the ad - which isn't nearly as direct in implications as this.

Instead, I'm going to show why it is that people claim it is racist; touch upon some of the ways in which a marketing messaging can be engaging and controversial but not offensive; and finally present a brief content marketing proposal that Dove could have instead done which would provide more value for their current and would be customers.
Racism in American Skin Care Marketing

Controversial marketing can be very effective, but if not done properly it can also lead to undesired press. Because of this it is important to always keep in mind the perspectives of the people being depicted or implicated in advertising.

One need not agree completely with all the views of prominent African American cultural commentator Ta-Nehisi Coates as to the power of whiteness to recognize that in the United States whiteness has been lauded as an definitive quality for culturally dominant standards of beauty and truth; legitimate political power and authority; etc. Additionally, one need not agree completely with Malcolm X to recognize that the media has a huge impact in how communities perceive themselves.

In this sense we can come to understand that the brouhaha is less about the manifest content - a skin cream that whitens - but the latent content, or social context, in which it is promoted.

To put it another way the issue at stake, pardon the pun, is not black and white but is specifically about what many people see as a culture that continuing to reinforce a social and economic order that denigrates and exploits black people. Because of this, these these types of advertisements are seen as ideologically supporting such a structure and why Proctor & Gamble's ad is so celebrated for being the opposite.

Cultural Sensitivity in Polarized Times and What Stays With Consumers

Skin whitening creams aren't the only type of product and services whose communications run the risk of being labelled racist and alienating customers.

Surf pulled a number of ads like the one above, which is especially ironic given criticism over roles and awards given to black actors in Hollywood films. In the wake of controversy over the defending hate groups prior to demonstrations in Charlotesville and their subsequent Twitter post shown above, the ACLU has changed their position on defending all groups right to free speech and apologized for their posting. State Farm's Twitter account briefly became

What these and the Dove ads miss is cultural sensitivity that would allow them to see how how black people and their allies could feel that such marketing messaging contributes to a culture that denigrates blackness.

While not speaking on race but sexual preference, Dan Cathy of Chick-Fil-A's reflection on the comments he'd made regarding gay marriage summaries provides a good insight in what companies should consider when approaching their messaging:

"Consumers want to do business with brands that they can interface with, that they can relate with. And it's probably very wise from our standpoint to make sure that we present our brand in a compelling way that the consumer can relate to."

If a consumer feels that a company is attacking them in their advertisement, intentional or not, it puts th consumer relationships at risk.
Great Content Marketing That Deals With Controversial Content
The problem with addressing or depicting controversy in advertisements is not necessarily that it gets attention, but what further message is then transmitted from it. Though many people purchase products such as bleaching creams or Surf detergent in order to get their skin or clothes whiter, the underlying message of "Darkness is undesirable" leads to wasted ad buys and time spent on handling criticisms. It's for this reason that content marketing is particularly effective.

This is one of the reasons why Zillow and NerdWallet's Content Marketing is doing such an amazing job. Not only are they both producing functional tools for people to used, but they are also coming out with reports like: Rising Rents, Stagnant Wages, And the Burden of Unstable Housing and Seeking Medical Debt Relief? Crowdfunding Rarely Pays Off the Bills.
Hiding Controversy in Plain Sight

Chances are as you read what my good examples of controversial choices for marketing content was you may have thought the following contentions:

These don't deal with race.

These aren't controversial.

I'm comparing apples and oranges.

Regarding the first point you are absolutely right. I will, however, provide an example of what good content marketing that deals with race looks like below so I hope you'll overlook this. As for them not being controversial let me explain how they are.

Your friends, if they're good friends, will certainly give sympathy for expressing anxiety and frustration over your income and how your daily struggles wouldn't feel so burdensome if you just earned just a few percentage points in your salary and some level of support. Your employer, who holds the power in making such a determination, is less likely to be as welcoming to such expressions and less likely to offer support - though this is changing.

The future of health care in America is so highly contested by a variety of actors that have stakes in saving and losing money that protests and coordinated movements to sway legislators have erupted all over the country. Regardless of one's view of what is to be done, information is power and this goes to show that private philanthropy is not doing nearly enough to prevent people from death or life-changing debt.

As for the third contention, that's a partial truth as they are different in format but as they are at their root marketing messages such a distinction is spurious and only gives heft to the claim of many advertising professionals today that content marketing is king. Unlike the visual-only ads, these content marketing projects do not veil the conditions of American political economy but make unveiling it their purpose. The value-proposition of Zillow and NerdWallet's content marketing is educational rather than mere single grahpic attention grab whose only message is: "This lotion will whiten your skin".
What Could Dove Have Done to Raise Brand Awareness Instead of Publishing An Ad the Replicates Racist Tropes?
Like many other people, I Feaking Love Science. Like many publishers, I also love survey based projects. Not wanting to go into too much details, it was with this in mind that I thought of some alternatives that Dove could have developed instead of the racially insensitive ads.

Were Dove to take a content marketing approach instead of the traditional single graphic ad for their campaign they would have had their marketing team produce content that educates about skin and race via an aesthetically engaging depiction and explanation of the science of skin color.

Were Dove to take a content marketing approach they could have presented the findings of a survey asking about perceptions of whiteness that combined analysis of their results with that of previous studies in an engaging manner. There a lot of them on race in relation to aspects of American society and such a study that examines original research ( Legal, psychological, etc.) along with the number produced, their findings and analysis of other qualities over time would contribute to the national conversation instead of being seen as just more evidence for one position or another.
Controversial Content, But Without The Baggage
One of the reasons content marketing is such an amazing field is that the value it creates is not as ephemeral, being more than a mere image, but also as it can be continuously updated, and parts of it can be repurposed. Like solely visual advertisements it seeks to gain a consumer's attention, but because of the format it is able to do so without the baggage and and in a more organic manner.

If you want to assure that your company's time is not wasted by apologizing for an insensitive advertisement and are interested in learning more how controversial content can help your marketing, reach out to me, Ariel Sheen, and ask about how I can help build up on-site material or how I can build you a content marketing campaign.

Not only do I have a track record of successful content marketing campaigns, but my extensive studies in America's history and culture means you won't end up with lots of press about how you inadvertently promoted racially insensitivity.

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Using a 21 st century iteration of a creative writing style stolen from Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, I like to engage in a public forums via a variety of different names, voices, and worldviews. Some people play SIMS, I like to Spy and Mettle in other ways.

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During a back-and-forth with Jeffrey Lord about the president in May, CNN’s Anderson Cooper told the conservative pundit that, “If [Trump] took a dump on his desk, you would defend it.” Cooper apologized on-air, and later tweeted that he regretted that “crude sentence”: “It was unprofessional. I am genuinely sorry.”

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“I apologized to this woman,” he said. “But my apology was, ‘My God, I’m in trouble with these people because this is an old man and their young daughter and the mother sees this’.”

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“I apologized to this woman,” he said. “But my apology was, ‘My God, I’m in trouble with these people because this is an old man and their young daughter and the mother sees this’.”

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Logan Paul

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Popular YouTube personality and gamer PewDiePie has issued an apology for uttering the n-word during a video game live-stream.

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Popular YouTube personality and gamer PewDiePie has issued an apology for uttering the n-word during a video game live-stream.

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Lorde's "I am so sorry" apology for her caption on the bathtub photo.

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Lorde's "I am so sorry" apology for her caption on the bathtub photo.

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Actor Jonah Hill apologizes for using homophobic slur

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Actor Jonah Hill apologizes for using homophobic slur

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"I played into exactly what he wanted and lost my cool and in that moment I said a disgusting word that does not at all reflect how I feel about any group of people."

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Astros first baseman Yuli Gurriel apologized and said he didn't mean to offend anyone after he was seen making an inappropriate gesture toward Dodgers pitcher Yu Darvish in the second inning of Houston's 5-3 win in Game 3 of the World Series

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Ryan Lochte

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“She told me about the power of Black women’s hair, and how beautiful it is, and the struggle. And I listened, and I heard, and I didn’t know. And I will never understand some of those things because of who I am. But I can educate myself, and that’s what I’m trying to do along the way," - Katy Perry
Katy uses vague language and does not actually apologize for her actions. If anything she tries to justify her actions. She uses indefinite pronouns.

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Predicate Choice

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The time American Airlines apologized for renaming economy class “the slut bin”: In a push to encourage customers to upgrade to first class, American Airlines briefly rebranded its coach section as “the slut bin,” even going so far as to print the new moniker on tickets and refer to passengers as “bimbos” while they were boarding. But after severe public backlash, the airline quickly backtracked, with the CEO noting in his apology that he is “the biggest whore of all time.”

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The time American Airlines apologized for renaming economy class “the slut bin”: In a push to encourage customers to upgrade to first class, American Airlines briefly rebranded its coach section as “the slut bin,” even going so far as to print the new moniker on tickets and refer to passengers as “bimbos” while they were boarding. But after severe public backlash, the airline quickly backtracked, with the CEO noting in his apology that he is “the biggest whore of all time.”

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Kanye West apologized after he interrupted Taylor Swift's acceptance speech at the MTV Music Video Awards 2009. He used predicate choice and hairsplitting strategy?

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Kanye West apologized after he interrupted Taylor Swift's acceptance speech at the MTV Music Video Awards 2009. He used predicate choice and hairsplitting strategy?

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“I’m sooooo sorry to Taylor Swift and her fans and her mom Andrea. I’m in the wrong for going on stage and taking away from her moment!”

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Justin Timberlake                  As much as we love Justin Timberlake, he showed poor form with his apology following Janet Jackson's infamous wardrobe malfunction in 2004. "Listen, I know it's been a rough week on everybody," Timberlake said in a statement. "What occurred was unintentional and completely regrettable, and I apologize if you guys were offended."That last line, "if you guys were offended," is also known as the classic way to say, "sorry, but I'm not really sorry."

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Justin Timberlake                  As much as we love Justin Timberlake, he showed poor form with his apology following Janet Jackson's infamous wardrobe malfunction in 2004. "Listen, I know it's been a rough week on everybody," Timberlake said in a statement. "What occurred was unintentional and completely regrettable, and I apologize if you guys were offended."That last line, "if you guys were offended," is also known as the classic way to say, "sorry, but I'm not really sorry."

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Fergie apologized for her rendition of the National Anthem

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Fergie apologized for her rendition of the National Anthem

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“I’ve always been honored and proud to perform the national anthem, and last night I wanted to try something special for the NBA,” she told TMZ. “I’m a risk taker artistically, but clearly this rendition didn’t strike the intended tone. I love this country and honestly tried my best.”

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“I just want to apologize to everyone I know. I’ve let my friends down. I’ve let my family down. I have nipples. It’s not something I’m proud of.”