After Charlottesville: A Discussion of Left Strategy

FEATURING ARUN GUPTA – There is a growing acknowledgement in the wake of the extreme right’s “Summer of Hate” in Charlottesville, Virginia, that the left needs to get better organized and fast. Although there are many groups active at various levels fighting for progressive policies, they are not all coordinated and with the furious assault on constitutional rights many have been pushed into reacting defensively.

Additionally there is much debate over the tactics of the so-called Antifa movement that is rooted in physically fighting back against white supremacists at the street level – some progressives feel that such tactics only feed the narrative that the left is just as violent as the right, while others are grateful for the countering of Nazi aggression.

Many are pouring their energies into Trump’s impeachment while others worry that we’ll just get President Pence who would be much worse.

At the government level, white supremacist White House advisor Steve Bannon is out of a job, and Trump appears increasingly isolated. Meanwhile progressive Senator Elizabeth Warren, publicly pushing her party to the left has excoriated Democrats for taking a centrist position in the face of Trump.

Arun Gupta, an investigative journalist who has written for dozens of publications including the Washington Post, the Guardian, The Nation, and Salon. He writes regularly at teleSUR English. He was a founding editor of the Occupy Wall Street Journal and is a regular news correspondent for Rising Up With Sonali.