What The Hell Has Happened To The Left?

Where I’m Coming From

All of my adult life, I’ve been a member of the left. I’ve been and remain an anti-war advocate, a humanist and an intermittent activist since 1992. I’ve been an active participant in students rights protests, LGBT rights events, the Occupy movement as well as peace/anti-war marches and rallies since the early/mid 1990s. I’ve written songs for the World Peace March (2009) and for Occupy (2011), one of which was sung by crowds at marches in over 20 countries: (1),(1a) I actively supported, promoted and wrote campaign articles for Bernie Sanders in 2016 and in 2020. I have never voted Republican. Lastly, I spent a little over a year studying Economics with Richard Wolff (Marxist Economist) at the Brecht Forum in 2010-2011.

The Thought Virus That Has Infected The (Example Number 1)

In 2023 and 2024, I began to notice something disturbing developing in a notable portion of people I know personally and casually who consider themselves to be “left of center”. The most glaring and probably the most distressing example of this came in the form of people from the political left who were harshly criticizing articles and posts that spoke of the war crimes committed by Benjamin Netanyahu/Israel throughout 2024.

Many of these people simply couldn’t bear the idea of another four years of Donald Trump as POTUS. They felt that criticizing the genocide, which was green-lighted, funded and armed by a sitting Democrat POTUS, might hurt the Dems chances of winning the 2024 election. Interestingly, the most aggressive criticisms came from so-called “educated” Democrats. After being silent on the subject for years, these suddenly concerned (for Israel) citizens were armed with a bundle of ready-made quasi-facts they’d picked up from reading the The Atlantic, The NY Times, The Washington Post and/or by listening to on-line establishment-liberal pundits during the period of time that directly followed October 7th of 2023.

With three years of hindsight, it’s clear to most people now that a lot of the reporting coming out of the aforementioned legacy news outlets in the weeks and months that followed October 7th 2023 was disingenuous propaganda aimed at justifying what were obviously serious war crimes perpetrated by Israel.(2),(2a),(2b) The creepy aspect of all of this was how quickly and for how long much of the establishment left knee-jerkedly backed and/or kept silent about Israel’s genocide. It wasn’t until well into 2025 that the taboo was lifted on words like “Zionism” and “genocide”, which were essentially banned from use by the all-knowing invisible hand of the algorithm.

The Thought Virus That Has Infected The Left (Example Number 2)

Over the course of the last four to five years I’ve experienced a similar inability in many people who identify as part of the left to veer even slightly from the establishment Western news narrative when it comes to the subject of Russia and the war in Ukraine. I’ve found that any mention of the actual history that led up to Russia’s current “Special Military Operation” is immediately met with either an observable cringe or a general tensing of the body, followed by the pronouncement of a list of reasons why Vladimir Putin shouldn’t be thought of as anything but evil.

After looking at an immense amount of information about the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, from inside and from outside of the Western media sphere, I can say now with some assuredness, that:

A) Although I’m ethically opposed to all war, it’s quite clear to me that the US and NATO continually, over the course of several decades, poked, dared and pushed Russia to come to the (correct) conclusion that it was being existentially threatened by the US and Ukraine’s NATO installed, tutored, funded and armed government (3): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voINT0fcABo&t=134s This fact, that Russia is and has been being existentially threatened by the Collective West, is now clear to most people who’ve looked at the history of the conflict with a modicum of objectivity. Add to all of this, that a tremendous amount of money has been invested by Western oligarchs in “Project Ukraine”. From well before 2022, the plan to use Ukraine’s population as a military proxy, as cannon-fodder in order to eventually get at over 90 TRILLION dollars worth of Ukrainian and Russian natural resources, was being seriously discussed at the highest levels of US government and military planning. See the following citations which link to the 2019 RAND corporation memo outlining the plan:(4),(5),(6): https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB10014.html

B) The current leaders of the establishment-left in Europe, as well as those in Canada and the US, have built the lion’s share of their vision for the future around what they believe to be the necessity of moving toward war with Russia and eventually with China.(7) In fact, if Donald Trump had not been elected at the end of 2024, all indications are that the US and Europe would either be at war with Russia now, or in the process of going to war with Russia and eventually with Russia’s allies. *Making the aforementioned observation should not be conflated with my personal opinions of Mr. Trump’s accumulated actions as POTUS, as these are two independent subjects.

It should also be mentioned that, for all Europe’s leaders’ tough guy posturing, they’re sending more money to Russia (in order to keep their economy afloat) than they are to Ukraine (7a): https://x.com/AlternatNews/status/2033846778986983514

C) Vladimir Putin, whatever he ultimately is, has little in common with the person the Western media has been portraying him as over the course of the last ten to fifteen years. I realize how hard this is to grok for many people. I used to auto-despise Putin too. In fact, in a notable number of ways, he’s the diametric opposite of how he’s been portrayed in Western establishment media.(8) Talking about this discrepancy will (still) get you cancelled in many establishment-left circles. I’ll be writing a detailed article about this subject in the near future.

D) The fact that we, the left, are (rightly) disgusted by the dehumanizing images of the future that the tech-bro billionaires’ savant army and the current US presidential administration have used to galvanize their base should have no bearing on our duty to call out the establishment-left’s suicidal plan to move toward war with Russia. Not to mention the fact since this war began, 2,800 soldiers (on average) die each week in Ukraine. Again, I’m not excusing Trump’s own bellicose actions toward Iran and other nations here, I’m speaking now, in this article, about the establishment left’s complete disregard for logic and for human life.

Relatedly, if you’re not speaking your truth to power for fear of being labeled “right-wing” by indoctrinated lib-narks then you’re operating in bad faith, ie: cowardice, as well.

War Obsessed Establishment Imperialists Posing As “The Good Guys”

How did we, the left, become so apparently willing to back warmongers and censorship? Far too many of the people who identify as part of the left don’t yet see that today’s establishment Western leaders, from the left and from the right, are entirely war-obsessed. There is no Plan B for these fundamentalist ideologues. Canada’s leader Mark Carney just made a “one hundred year pact with Ukraine built on drones and defense”.(8a): https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ukraine-canada-drones-defence-russia-9.7339040

Germany’s Chancellor, BlackRock CEO Friedrich Merz has said, on multiple occasions, that he isn’t concerned with what the German public wants and that he will continue going forward with the plan to back Ukraine against Russia to the hilt.(8b):

EU leaders Ursula von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas don’t seem to be able to talk about anything but the imperative of continuing to attack Russia as well as cutting off diplomacy with Putin, just as the Biden administration did.(8c): https://political.org/2026/05/02/eu-should-not-humiliate-itself-with-direct-russia-talks-kaja-kallas-says/

Britain’s Prime Minister Andy Burnham has been even more war-obsessed than his predecessor Keir Starmer. He’s being referred to now as “Starmer 2.0”. (8d): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Wc3CcoqRTc

It’s time to cut through the BS: The current European, Canadian and US establishment leaders and politicians who are pushing for this war to continue, know very well at this point that Ukraine has no real chance of actually defeating Russia. They also know that Vladimir Putin has no intention of invading the rest of Europe. They’re careerists buying time by lying from dawn until dusk as they sacrifice between 10 to 15 thousand human lives per month.(8e): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ili3P-bLX0w

In fact it’s the new so-called “far-right” parties in Europe that are now calling for peace with Russia and an end to escalating government censorship. These alternative political parties are also becoming MUCH more popular than establishment parties.(9) Hmm, I wonder why?: https://www.timesofisrael.com/far-right-afd-comes-top-in-a-german-state-election-for-second-time-in-a-month-merz-rues-disaster/

Despite All of This

Despite all of this, I remain a member of what is left of the actual left. Conservatism, the desire to return to what no longer is, just isn’t my bag. That said, I will be damned before I back any of the uber-hawkish “right-light” relics that the donor dominated establishment-left has been trying to pass off as “moderates”. This includes anyone Biden-like, Macron-like, Merz-like, Carney-like, Burnham-like or ANYONE that’s dependent on war obsessed donor oligarchs and the banking City of London for their political survival, the way most of the current “leaders” from Europe, Canada and the US are. These so-called “neo-liberals” are actually establishment imperialists garbed in doltishly constructed anti-fascist disguises, posing smilingly as “the good guys”. (10): https://www.pressenza.com/2026/05/murderers-row-the-banking-city-of-londons-straw-bosses-call-for-war/

A World Without Wars

I realize that the tone of some of this article has been a little, shall we say, prickly? I also realize that I was picking specifically on the establishment left. Frankly, my aim was to get a bit of a rise out of people who haven’t realized yet that the current mainstream/establishment left is as war-obsessed (if not more war-obsessed) as the establishment right is. The days of kinder, gentler liberalism are very definitely over. That said, this isn’t a diss and run piece. Feel free to reach out/write to me if you feel called to ask any questions or if you have any opinions you’d like to discuss. I may agree with you and/or I may not. If you’re sincere though, I will listen to you. If we’re going to put an end to these constant wars, to the absolute insanity we’ve all been enduring these last few decades, we’re going to need to start listening to one another. Lastly, I’ve included a link here to an organization that I’m affiliated with, whose aim is to put an end to war: https://www.humanistmovement.net/?secc=6

CITATIONS:

1-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b9Bj72qzjg

1a-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxusA8bN7wk

2-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXdCd8VPo4g

2a-https://honestreporting.com/5-times-the-new-york-times-got-caught-out-and-its-pr-team-ran-cover/

2b-https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/08/world/middleeast/israel-netanyahu-2023-hamas-attack.html

3-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voINT0fcABo&t=134s

4-https://www.globalresearch.ca/ukraine-was-all-written-rand-corp-plan/5773288

5-https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB10014.html

6-https://www.voltairenet.org/article220162.html

7-https://www.tni.org/en/article/the-eu-is-on-a-war-path

7a-https://x.com/AlternatNews/status/2033846778986983514