December 1, 2023

COP28 is a perfection of words over action.

In the language of the UN meeting:

With the most important details of the Paris Climate Change Agreement negotiated and agreed over the last few years, COP 28 is all about implementing the Agreement and ramping up ambition and action.

The reality is that this year's COP is about country leaders wiggling out of the hard to reach targets that they made in the Paris agreement.

This is the "decisive decade" according to the IPCC. What we do in the next five years will determine what things will be like in the next 80 years.

Pundit focus of this year's meeting of hand-wringing mouthpieces of professional speech writers is on the reason for the COP to exist at all.

This COP is being hosted by that bastion of democratic and climate consciousness, the UAE. Many screen photons have been excited by those writing about a petro-state hosting a COP and "what it all means" editorials. Personally, I think it finally exposes how ridiculous this meeting has become.

The COPs are supposed to be decision making meetings, but it looks more and more like Comic Con for climate geeks in government. People dress-up like their favourite business leader and make grand statements while looking sadly realistic with a touch of hopefulness.

Every speech is the same. Start by outlining what a terrible job we are doing living-up to targets, act surprised that we are not living-up to those targets, blame yourself for not doing enough, state some facts on how we are all basically doomed if we don't do something, and then end on some positive note.

It is boring, repetitive, and ineffective. Perfect.

Yesterday Russia's top court (not exactly an independent body of state) announced that the "global LGBT+ movement" is an "extremist organization".

I tried to look-up this organization to see what the dues were as I am clearly behind in payment as I have only now heard of GLM, but I could not find it. It must be very underground not to show-up on the internet. Completely unclear is how you establish your membership, but I will continue to do research.

It seems no one is surprised by this turn of events in Russia. The news organizations around the world are focused the "growing hostility" towards LGBT folks in Russia.

However, it is much more serious than this. There is a growing hostility to everyone and everything on the far-right.

If you listen to Russian radio (don't) you will notice one extremely stark reality: it is all extreme right-wing populist in political orientation. The Russian state has spent years cultivating a far-right media. The focus has been on attacking anything that sounds "Western". However, since Russia is now fully part of the capitalist frame, the only thing Western to rail against and set itself apart are what it calls "progressive values".

"Progressive values" in Russia (and the far right in the West) are anything that question comically 1980's masculine sounding positions.

You will also notice one other thing: it is exactly the same as far-right radio in the USA.

This is not an import to Russia. The export is from Russia to the far-right in the rest of the world.

The link to the USA's right-wing is clear. So is the link to European far-right movement narratives. While Russia has been waging a war against the left-liberal narratives around the world, it has also been waging a battle against plurality at home. These direct links are why the politics of the right in the West are so strongly confused about the world. There is a stream of state sponsored right-wing narratives that flow into certain corners of the right-wing media. Small, local radio stations in the US have been and continue to be easy pickings.

It is also why supporters of the rights of individuals to be self-determinate without fear of oppression and reaction must also now be prepared for a renewed onslaught by Western far-right movements.

Our real global working class organizations must double-down on our defence of our politics. Now is not the time to debate giving an inch to those members in the mass organizations who are far-right agitators receiving "analysis" from their rage-driven online hate groups. Internal political expediency yields too much ground.

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A program of narrative control has been perfected in Russia using social media, state-controlled (as opposed to funded) media, aspects of state-supported violence, investment and financing of online gangs, and mobilization of far-right internet trolls and bots acting like trolls.

This was then exported to attack the enemies of the interest of the Russian state leadership around the world. It was a rather cheap response to the imperialists, one that is masterful as it is insidious.

What are the connections with economics of these crazed populist bigots?

It is not that they are "right-wing" or "conservative". Those are terms we use to define political positions that are coherent in form and function. They are tied together in interests of capital and the goals of the states that protect those interests.

The positions of the populist bigots the Russian state are promoting are not coherent in this way. Internally, it is about control over a population that has can turn on their leadership with effect.

Externally, it is about creating chaos and confusion to undermine the political resolve of those states it sees as threats.

This latest move by the Russian state should come not as a shock. However, like with the COP28, it leads to hand-wringing within the liberal circles. Socialists must not follow this tendency.

If you listen to these radio stations or read the chat forums, the far-right are increasingly talking about coming for those on the Left, targeting segments of it. Their enemy is clear and the hatred is sustained and real. In the USA, it is no different. Violence is an expected outcome.

In response, the left must unite around our shared values, defend them, explain them, and promote a solidarity in action advancing those values. We must also defend those targeted by the hatred.

What does this have to do with economics? Everything.

The economics of the populist are exactly what we see in Argentina and Italy. Far-right, bigoted weirdos running on what seems ridiculous narratives in times of crisis. Then getting elected and aligning immediately with the most regressive forces of capital.

This is the fascist program. It should not be confused with something else.

Here in Canada many people confuse these positions. Liberals tend to think that the far-right politician will moderate when they get into power and therefore are not as scary as they seem. That is the wrong analysis. It is this "moderating towards conservative capitalism" that makes them so dangerous. It is only their populist economics that "moderates" towards classical conservatism, not their social narratives.

The lesson is not that they moderate, it is that they are sustained by the far-right narrative that only leads in one direction. And, it is a direction the world cannot afford to continue to slide towards.