It was a day that should have marked a small step forward for one of the most important rallying cries of the progressive left in the US. On July 24th, marches were held in over 50 US cities in support of Medicare for All, the ambitious proposal (most famously promoted by Bernie Sanders during his groundbreaking 2016 primary run) to give all US citizens public healthcare. This would bring the country in line with the type of universal healthcare coverage found in every single developed Western country, and even in many developing ones.
M4A, as it is often styled by its supporters, is not just appealing to the progressive left. It is astonishingly popular across the political spectrum, as evidenced by numerous polls that show a majority of Americans wanting either M4A or other forms of state-provided healthcare. In an age of moribund bipartisanship, it almost seems like a no-brainer were it not for the fact that the US’s political establishment, which happily accepts billions of lobbying money every year from the healthcare industry (more than any other industry), wants nothing of it.
The July 24th marches, branded as the March for Medicare for All (#M4M4ALL), unfortunately fell quite short of what was expected. Despite the dozens of cities in which the marches took place, most saw rather feeble attendances. In Los Angeles, an urban area of 15 million people and where some of the most high-profile speakers were scheduled to appear, barely over 100 people could be seen. Although a number of celebrities including Susan Sarandon and former presidential hopeful Marianne Williamson joined the fray, the march was notable for its absence of A-list politicians not least Bernie Sanders as well as most of the so-called Squad of leftist Democrats. Cori Bush was the only one to pop up to the DC march, unplanned.
Why did a march promoting one of the most important policies of the American progressive left flop? The answer lies not so much in disinterest but in disgust. As it turns out, the key figures behind this event are some of the most unsavory elements of the US online left, many of which are not nearly as committed to M4A as they claim to be. Worse still is that many have waded knee-deep into some of the same psychotic conspiracy theories embraced by the far right.
Anti-establishment for its own sake
If you have spent any amount of time among the left’s vibrant online punditry, you will surely have encountered one of its most polarizing figures, a former comedian turned anti-establishment firebrand known as Jimmy Dore. Dore self-styles as a (not particularly bright by his own admission) everyman whose gift is the ability and courage to speak truth to power, especially the powerful on his own side of the ideological divide. His videos usually focus on how progressive politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the rest of the Squad betray their voters and act little better than establishment Democrats, and how other online leftists (most notably his former colleagues at The Young Turks where he made his fame) are also traitors to the progressive cause. Also prominent is cheap anti-war posturing, the kind that whitewashes every human rights violation and war crime by the US’s enemies (Putin, Assad, take your pick) because the US is invariably worse.
This isn’t just legitimate criticism or policy disagreements with his fellow leftists. It’s all-out nuclear warfare, as best exemplified by his unhinged expletive-laden rants against Ocasio-Cortez which are all the more troublesome given his own accusations of sexual harassment. Or his self-victimization from the “McCarthy smears” of his opponents, all the while he repeatedly calls them out as CIA/state department propagandists or billionaire-funded corporate sellouts.
In line with this obsessively binary worldview, his fanbase has an almost cult-like devotion to Dore as well as the handful of other anti-establishment online pundits which orbit around him. In fact, a quick glimpse at the Twitter profiles of many of his supporters reveal a frightening overlap with many of the same beliefs that are more closely associated with the far right: distrust of big government, anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown views, as well as a revulsion to identity politics and wokeness. For example, a recent (and surprisingly decent) video where Dore defends critical race theory from its critics suffered the rare occurrence of being savaged by his own fans in the comments section, using the exact same anti-CRT arguments one would have expected from PragerU or Tucker Carlson. Speaking of Carlson, he has also frequently hosted Dore on his show, where Dore takes the opportunity to continue trashing the left all the while staying silent on Carlson’s thinly veiled white supremacism and anti-science propaganda. This despite once claiming back in his TYT days that anyone going on Fox News should be “shamed” for going on a “racist organization”.
On July 24th, Dore gave a short but fiery speech where he notably called out Bernie Sanders for not attending the march and urged supporters to “go to AOC’s house” to continue putting pressure on her, a disturbing statement which could potentially be construed as an incitement of violence. He did not mingle with his fans, perhaps thinking that such a meagre crowd was unbecoming of someone of his online stature (he has nearly a million followers on YouTube), or perhaps he was in a rush ahead of his July 26th appearance on the Joe Rogan Show where he discussed real progressive topics like the government hiding vaccine side effects from the public as well as the benefits of hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin.
His livestream of the M4A4ALL event was also hidden behind a paywall, a reminder that Dore’s message is not so much meant for the masses but meant for his own fame and fortune. A fortune which has allowed him to live off being “a pothead making videos in his basement” – of a $1.9 million LA home.
Behold the dum dum left
Dore is perhaps the most representative figure in what the late Michael Brooks (another prominent online leftist who sadly passed away last year) branded the “dum dum left”, an outrage-obsessed group of pundits who “confuse moral posturing with revolutionary fervor”. Another such figure and M4M4ALL speaker, Fiorella Isabel, is even more illustrative of how these fringes start to resemble QAnon more than they do Bernie Bros. Isabel is the co-host of an online outfit known as The Convo Couch, whose videos share an almost perfect overlap with Dore’s, most notably in their obsession with AOC and Bernie Sanders and their supposed betrayal of the left. This goes along with the traditional menu of anti-media and anti-imperialism issues, with the singular expertise aexpected of people who misspell Colombia as Columbia.
But it is Isabel’s Twitter history which is most problematic, given her constant dabbling of anti-vax hysterics. In a May 5th tweet, for example, she lashed out against her critics accusing them of having a “blind trust in big Pharama (sic)” and being “imperial boot lickers” while defending her distrust of “mandatory”/ ”experimental” vaccines. She has also claimed the media “suppresses” vaccine side effects and has also appeared to endorse the use of hydroxychloroquine.
Isabel’s Convo Couch co-host, Craig “Pasta” Jardula, is not much different. In fact, he cancelled his appearance at M4M4ALL a day before the march because he was asked to wear a mask and take a Covid test to which he responded “I support M4A. Not Medical Tyranny For All”. The M4M4ALL national committee took swift action following this debacle: they fired their LA organizer for having the gall to demand a Covid-safe environment for speakers and attendees.
Spending just a few minutes checking out the profiles of the followers and retweeters surrounding Isabel, The Convo Couch and other organizers of M4M4ALL is like entering a MAGA vortex – on the left. It’s an alternative Twitter-verse where Palestinian flags and hammer-and-sickle Unicode symbols stand in place of the o.k. sign and frog emojis; where #FreeAssagne, #FraudSquad, and #NeverBidenNeverTrump hashtags take over from #DrainTheSwamp and #TrumpTrain. As for the pervasive anti-vax mongering, it should not come as a surprise that the extreme fringes of the left succumb just as easily as the right. When your entire worldview is framed around anti-establishment and anti-imperialist sentiment, it’s not a big leap from being against Big (Western) Pharma to the vaccines made by Big (Western) Pharma, especially when they are being promoted by the same political establishment and mainstream media you thoroughly revile.
It is bad enough that people like Isabel were made to be the faces of M4M4ALL, but it could have been much worse. In June, it was announced that one of the keynote speakers for the event would be “Matt H. Bach” who was none other than Matthew Heimbach, a neo-Nazi and white supremacist who has since rebranded himself as a National Bolshevik – essentially fascists using socialist aesthetics to try and make themselves less repulsive. While this does appear to have been an unintended mistake by the organizers (he was eventually removed following public backlash) as well as malicious intent by Heimbach in infiltrating the event, it goes to show just how unprofessional the selection process for the speakers was.
Lose-lose for the left
It would seem patently obvious that an organized event that nearly let a neo-Nazi slip through the cracks and where many other keynote speakers are anti-vax conspiracy theorists would be an obvious no-go for politicians with a national profile like Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and the rest of the Squad. More so considering that these same politicians are the ones that are the principal targets of the anti-establishment rage from Dore and the rest of the dum dum left. Unfortunately, their non-attendance simply served to fuel the fire of their detractors. Damned if you go, to face hostile crowds and even more hostile speakers. Damned if you don’t go since you are simply reinforcing why they think you are a fake leftist corporate sell-out.
Further proof of why attending was a lose-lose proposition was the treatment given to the one member of the Squad who did make an appearance to the DC march, Cori Bush. While it appears that the majority of people at the event were delighted to see her present, the same could not be said of some of the figureheads who did not hold back their contempt on Twitter. Isabel herself lambasted Bush for “showing up for a photo op” to appease “gullible progressives” all the while “supporting fascist legislation” rather than M4A. Joy Marie Mann, another online activist with an obnoxious habit of accusing people who disagree with her of ableism (she is part blind), also went on a tirade against Bush for her “photo op appearance” and for not tweeting the #M4M4ALL hashtag. No attempt whatsoever was seemingly made to engage with Bush at all during the DC march that they both attended.
The most notable incident with Bush involved Kobi Azoulay, a self-described “citizen journalist” (read: guy with a Twitter account), who made an attempt to interview the congresswoman. Azoulay asked Bush about her lack of support for Force the Vote, a controversial tactic that arose in late 2020 to withhold support for Nanci Pelosi’s bid for Speaker of the House in exchange for a floor vote on Medicare for All. Bush allegedly responded that FTV was “a manufactured division” which resulted in Azoulay calling her out in public right in the middle of Mann’s speech. A more illustrative spectacle of the dum dum left’s totalitarian mindset, and of its pathological inability to compromise with its more moderate leftist peers, is hard to come by.
How Force the Vote created a monster
To say that there has ever been anything remotely resembling leftist unity online would be denying reality and history. The online space has only reinforced long-standing difficulties of leftist community-building, which are now manifested through obsessive virtue signaling and ideological purity tests. But as someone who has followed the dramas and debates of the online left for a couple of years, no event has come nearly as close as Force the Vote towards driving a rift between two broad factions of the left. One which understands the longer-term risks of tactics like FTV, and which looks to leverage what little political representation progressives have in the upper echelons of power in the US. The other which is more interested in waging political warfare through shock tactics and outrage to boost their online popularity, and feels the need to antagonize the few progressives in office in order present themselves as the true standard-bearers of the left.
Indeed, even most supporters of FTV recognize that the tactic was doomed from the start, given the near impossibility of gaining a majority to pass M4A even in a Democratic-controlled House. Instead, FTV was meant to give M4A greater visibility in the midst of a global pandemic as well as to put the spotlight on lawmakers who would have opposed it, perhaps leading to them getting primaried by more progressive opponents in future elections. With this in mind, FTV was certainly not without its merits, something which was openly recognized even by its skeptics. But the fact that passing M4A was not a realistic outcome should have been enough for its supporters to realize that this should not be hill that online leftism deserved to die on. Even leftist icon Noam Chomsky chipped in on the FTV debate earlier this year, calling it a “dream world” for “children wanting a piece of candy”.
That many of the speakers of the M4M4ALL marches like Dore, Isabel, and Mann continued to bring up FTV, months past its expiration date, shows just how the conflict over how to bring about M4A remains irreconcilable for the online left. The problem is that the aesthetics of struggle over M4A appear to be taking over the actual policy discussion on how to achieve it. As it turns out, many of the most vocal supporters of M4A speaking on July 24th aren’t really that into it. Isabel herself has made numerous embarrassing tweets opposing “big government” delivering M4A, which of course is exactly how a universal system like Medicare would be implemented. And people like Dore seem to forget M4A even exists whenever he is featured on massive platforms like Tucker Carlson Tonight, preferring instead to rant against identity politics or vaccines.
It is likely that people like Dore never really cared for M4A even before FTV enabled him to profit from it. For example, Dore endorsed Tulsi Gabbard (which much of the dum dum left seems to have a strange psycho-sexual obsession with) over Bernie Sanders during the 2020 Democratic primary, notwithstanding Gabbard’s flip-floppy healthcare agenda looked nothing like M4A or universal healthcare in general. She was never called out on it during one of Dore’s interviews with her, which was full of fawning praise and softball questions. He also later whitewashed her endorsement of Joe Biden over Bernie Sanders. Unsurprisingly, Gabbard did not show up to the M4M4ALL marches and nobody seemed to notice.
Manufacturing dissent
The lackluster attendance at the July 24th M4M4ALL event is unlikely to deter the charlatans and grifters who have been parasitically attaching themselves to the M4A movement to hype up their online profiles, even when their actual impact on the ground is negligible. Worse still for them, it’s dwindling. In late 2020, the campaign for FTV could at least count on the support of luminaries like Cornell West and was promoted by more respectable personalities on the online left like Krystal Ball, Briahna Joy Gray, Katie Halper, and Kyle Kulinski. All of which dabble in anti-establishment hysterics themselves though in a much less repulsive way as Dore and the dum dum left (Dore, in fact, has had no qualms in burning bridges with his former allies like Kulinski who he now calls a “nutless coward”).
Yet the signs were there on how FTV would morph into the monster that M4M4ALL became. The ad for a FTV Town Hall that was held on December 30th displayed the name of progressive politicians who had been invited but had not confirmed attendance; a not-too-subtle reminder that they were the villains of the story. The Town Hall itself was something of a fiasco, being little more than a glorified Zoom call between the organizers, with no input or engagement with viewers which begs the question why it was called a town hall in the first place. The “afterparty” was even more embarrassing, featuring a visibly drunk Dore having a meltdown merely because another participant dared suggest Ocasio-Cortez had done one good thing.
Many of the original promoters of FTV, unsurprisingly, took an arms-length relationship to M4M4ALL, perhaps mindful of the kind of people a movement with Dore as one of its main figureheads was likely to attract. Neither Gray, Halper, nor Kulinski showed up at any of the M4M4ALL marches, though Kulinski was quick to berate the media for its lack of coverage of it and Halper made a hissy fit over people complaining about the speakers. Gray tweeted about the march just once and Ball not at all. None of these former crusaders for FTV were ever called out for their lack of attendance to the marches, where their presence would have give them an air of legitimacy and seriousness that people like Dore could have never provided.
It is fortunate that the dum dum left’s attempt at hijacking the M4A debate is highly unlikely to influence the broader narrative over the need for universal healthcare in the US. But this doesn’t make it less problematic. From a moral perspective, it silences legitimate grievances against the horrors of the US healthcare system. There were many good faith speakers at the M4M4ALL marches who shared heart-breaking accounts of personal suffering from a rapacious profit-driven system that has no place in a civilized society. From an intellectual perspective, these tactics incentivize outrage and clickbait-fueled propagandizing which subsequently instills a totalizing ideology on their supporters, forgetting that something like M4A doesn’t have a magic bullet like FTV for its successful implementation. And from a practical perspective, it simply doesn’t work. The people desperate for healthcare would still not have it even if FTV had succeeded because it would have never passed a floor vote.
What the hijacking does more effectively is promote these people’s online recognition, as they continously milk leftist differences over issues like FTV months after it ceased being relevant, Grey being perhaps the most egregious offender aside from Dore in her profiting of lefist infighting for podcast subscriptions. Also weaseling in has been Nick Brana the national coordinator of the Movement for a People’s Party (MPP) which hopes to play the role of the vulture to the Democratic Party’s rotten carcass. Solidarity, a concept central to anyone holding progressive or socialist values, appears alien in a world where Twitter likes, YouTube followers, and Patreon subscribers are the ultimate manifestations of influence and power.
The future of M4A
“Outrage is a good business model and it’s easy click content… it’s an easy hustle, it’s an easy market, it’s an easy game, but it’s not contributing to anything. It’s not going to help us win”.
- Michael Brooks
One would be tempted to think that the fiasco of M4M4ALL is one step backwards for the US ever achieving Medicare for All or some other form of universal healthcare like every other developed country has. It need not be. More members of congress today openly support M4A than ever before and it’s not just the handful of Squad members. The 2021-22 incarnation of the M4A bill (H.R.1976) has 117 co-sponsors. That’s over half of all current sitting Democrats in the House.
The idea that progressives in Congress are just talk and no walk also fell flat on its face this week when Cori Bush herself led a days-long protest outside the Capitol over the looming evictions moratorium deadline on July 31st. Bush, along with Squad-mates Ilhan Oman and Ayanna Presley, even slept on the Capitol’s steps the night before the deadline. The protest was a success. Although the deadline expired, the Biden administration reversed course three days later, extending the moratorium until October. But as proof that absolutely nothing the Squad can do will ever satiate the dum dum left’s rage, Isabel responded to the news by claiming that this was “a staged PR move” and “symbolic gesture” and lambasted Bush yet again for M4A despite being irrelevant to the issue of evictions. Dore didn’t even bother mentioning it.
As a sad, pathetic epilogue to this story, on July 26th, various speakers of the M4M4ALL marches including Susan Sarandon followed up on Dore’s threats to “go to AOC’s house”, and traveled to protest outside her Bronx office. Unfortunately for them, Ocasio-Cortez was in Ohio, supporting Nina Turner in her run for an Ohio special election seat (she unfortunately lost to a Hillary Clinton-supported and Super PAC-funded opponent). Ironically, Ocasio-Cortez’s campaigning for Turner was one of the reasons M4M4ALL supporters berated her for not attending, which begs the question why they went to an empty office in the Bronx in the first place if not for the same type of “symbolic gestures” they accuse the Squad of.
In the end, Ocasio-Cortez did the right thing. Turner’s unfortunate defeat notwithstanding, at no time in recent history have progressive candidates running on small donations and grassroots-driven organizing had a more favorable environment for victory even against big money establishment opponents. Bush herself managed to dethrone a 52-year Democratic Party dynasty from her Mississippi seat. It is only a matter of time before a critical mass of M4A-supporting legislators (and possibly an M4A-supporting president) turns it into a reality.
This is how Medicare for All has a future. Not because of an angry rabble of online misfits and their nihilistic followers, but despite them.
Did you like this article? Follow me on Twitter at @raguileramx and on YouTube at ProgressumTV. You might also like my book, The Glass-Half Empty: Debunking the Myth of Progress in the Twenty-First Century (Repeater Books, 2020).
so we're in a pandemic where several thousand Americans died because they couldn't afford health care, but now isn't the time to push M4A? When will be the right time, when we're all dead?
AOC campaigned on getting a vote to push M4A forward, it's why a lot of people like me donated to her and worked towards putting her in Congress. Since then, she's told us now that it's not the right time since she started calling Pelosi "Mama Bear."
Dems have been running on universal health care since Clinton in 1992, and no matter how much of a majority they have in the House and Senate, it's never able to move forward. That's not. a coincidence. Like they say, "it's not a bug, it's a feature."
It's long past time to recognize that the Dems promise of health care is like Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown to kick every year. It's just. a come-on for votes for something they have no intention of pissing their donors off by passing.
After 30 years, it's time to wise up and recognize that the Dems are just playing the voters for fools, it's just a con game to keep giving them money and voting them in because "someday" they'll actually give us the kind of health care system that is common in the rest of the developed world. Well, I hate to break it to you, but "someday" is never going to come.
The only way we're actually going to get an actual universal health care system like the rest of the world is to start voting like the countries that already have it. There the Dems would be considered a right-wing regressive party that would have long ago lost to a real progressive left-wing political organization.
Continuing to support a duopoly that is owned and operated by the oligarchy is just keeping the voters in this country frustrated because their representatives refuse to vote in polices that we the people really want.