Barry Rubin: Why Occupy Wall Street Is a Disaster for the Obama Administration

Why Occupy Wall Street Is a Disaster for the Obama Administration

by Barry Rubin

I want to keep this brief so I’m not going to present a lot of supporting information — I’ll leave that for my next book, Silent Revolution, about how the far left first hijacked liberalism and key institutions, then hijacked America — but I hope you’ll see why the following argument makes sense.

The great advantage of the Obama administration and the far left has been concealment and deniability. They deny their extremism and sugar-coat their message, helped by the mass media and other institutions ranging from Hollywood through academia. Many sophisticated people — including those who aren’t leftists themselves — still believe that Obama is a regular liberal or even a centrist and think the idea that the media and academia are dominated by the far left is ridiculous.

But the Occupy Wall Street movement isn’t this sophisticated “New New Left” but like the Old Left and 1960s’ New Left in its rhetoric, methods, and symbols. It openly talks about anarchism, Communism, Marxism, and overthrowing capitalism. Unlike the clever Obamaites, these people have learned nothing from the fall of Communism or the failures of the previous two lefts.

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Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His latest book is Israel: An Introduction, was published by Yale University Press in January 2012. You can read more of Barry Rubin's posts at Rubin Reports, and now on his new blog, Rubin Reports, on Pajamas Media

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