Richard Grenell’s shadow foreign policy campaign is unsettling diplomats and threatens to collapse US interests
For Donald Trump, he is “my envoy”, the man apparently anointed as the former US president’s roving ambassador while he plots a return to the White House.
To critics, he is seen as “an online pest” and “a national disgrace” – and most importantly, the dark embodiment of what foreign policy in a second Trump administration would look like.
Meet Richard Grenell, vocal tribune of Trump’s America First credo on the international stage and the man hotly tipped to become secretary of state if the presumed Republican nominee beats Joe Biden in November’s presidential election.
A senior executive in the rightwing Newsmax cable channel, Grenell, 57, has crafted a persona as the archetypal Trump man, keen and ever-ready to troll liberals, allies and foreign statesmen in public forums and social media.
Grenell – who served as a rambunctious ambassador to Germany and acting director of national intelligence during Trump’s first term – has carved a niche as the articulator-in-chief of a Maga approach to global affairs that appears to echo his political master’s voice.
When I first learned about the IDU I was pretty horrified. Why are there all these big money right wing groups dedicated to pushing the world to be more right wing and zero left wing counterparts for it?
I KNOW!!!
Maybe because normal people with empathy don’t want to start a new world order where they can take control over their fellow humans to have power over them. Capitalism enables and rewards sociopathy. And sociopaths like to deceive and manipulate others. They get aggressive when they don’t get their way.
Maybe because left wing organizations are often bad for the bottom line.
Especially those who are like “Capitalism is a blight on the planet, and it is like a doomsday cult sprinting right into ecological disaster. Let’s make a new system, and eat the rich”
You know, a belief that many left wing people have.
Left wing policies are often designed to not benefit the rich, sometimes they are at the expense of those leeches.
Yeah I mean, I know why.
But it should be obvious to people when they see stuff like this and the heritage fund and other similar groups that it’s obvious propaganda efforts from the elites, and you think that alone would push people left.
But often times it doesn’t. And I don’t know how to fix that.
Well, people are trying to build the opposition to the conservative propagandized movements. Unfortunately, it’s hard thankless work that tends to get a lot of state repression. I think the movement to defend welaunee forest could have blossomed into something beautiful if the activists weren’t labeled terrorists and given RICO domestic terror charges :(
While I know it is pretty obviously fake, others don’t. While I can’t say for sure why that is, I do think it’s reactionaries recoiling to the new unfamiliar waters of the left’s attempt to rejoin mainstream politics after the fall of the Soviet Union, the crushing of left wing movements, and the rise of neoliberalism. Combine that with the crushing weight of late stage capitalism, mediocre leaders, and great propaganda and you’ve got the storm that I think is causing people to buy into the insane thinktank bullshit
Coming from my anarchistic perspective, I think forming movements based on solidarity and mutual aid is the best way forward. These movements are the most important when the state fails to address the needs of people (See cooperation jackson, or the mutual aid organizations that popped up after the state failed to address hurricane Katrina). If these movements are formed properly, it can be some of the most critical prefigurations for building a better society.
Unfortunately I don’t know how to counteract the radicalization of the members of the far right, but I do think what I outlined will help those who suffer because of it, and it will weaken the legitimacy of the conservative state that is beginning to seem inevitable.