Adbusters Worries: Is the Professional Left Corrupting Occupy?

Adbusters Worries: Is the Professional Left Corrupting Occupy?

Kalle Lasn and the crew at Adbusters are very worried about the future ofOccupy. They are now encouraging their fans and followers to defend it notfrom the police or conservative media outlets but from the encroaching professionalleft:

First they silenced our uprising with a media blackout. thenthey smashed our encampments with midnight paramilitary raids. and nowthey’re threatening to neutralize our insurgency with an insidious campaignof donor money and co-optation. This counter-strategy worked to kill off theTea Party’s outrage and turn it into a puppet of the Republican Party. Willthe same happen with Occupy Wall Street? Will our insurgency turn into theDemocrats’ Tea Party pet?

The Tea Party’s goal was always to change the way government operated, andthey were pretty successful in the 2010 elections, sweeping the House andstate houses around the country. But apparently participating in democraticelections is for suckers.

Will you allow Occupy to become a project of the old left, thesame cabal of old world thinkers who have blunted the possibility ofrevolution for decades? Will you allow MoveOn, The Nation and Ben &Jerry to put the brakes on our Spring Offensive and turn our struggle into a

We are now in a battle for the soul of Occupy. a fight to the finish betweenthe impotent old left and the new vibrant, horizontal left who launchedOccupy Wall Street from the bottom-up and who dreams of real democracy andanother world.

Lasn and his magazine want Occupy to stand for something besidesparticipation in the current system, which they see as hopelessly corrupt.But what they want to replace it with–“real democracy”–is just another way todescribe mob rule. That’s what Adbusters is about and that’s what Occupywas really about as well. It would be nice if the mainstream media wouldmake that goal as clear to readers and viewers as Adbusters does.

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