Above photo: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., departs the gala. Jamie McCarthy / Getty Images for The Met Museum.
“Compatible left” was a term used by the CIA to describe those on the left it has deemed compatible with maintaining imperialist world rule. This left has dominated the US left since the end of World War II, in large part a result of government operations repressing the communist or anti-imperialist left. Historically, this compatible left that the CIA worked to cultivate rejects actually existing socialism and formed a “third camp” or “plague on both houses” left between capitalist and socialist countries. Providing a “respectable” alternative to the anti-imperialists, it used its progressive flavor to lure in radical youth, activists, workers, and intellectuals.
The CIA is correctly seen as a ruthless organization that overthrows democratic governments considered a threat to US domination. But this overlooks the CIA’s “gentler” work: underwriting and encouraging a compatible left, one which looks to the Democratic Party for political leadership. The CIA has secretly funded and managed a wide range of these groups and individuals. It sought to drive a wedge between the anti-imperialist left and the compromising “democratic socialist” left it found could serve the needs of US imperialism.
Today, the US national security state continues this work to undermine the anti-imperialist left and build up a faux left that subscribes to the “lesser evil” of the Democratic Party. Corporate foundations, such as the Rockefeller, Ford, Open Society, and Tides foundations, continue to funnel CIA money to progressive causes critical of actual anti-imperialism.
This liberal left has taken many different forms over the years. A century ago, its proponents included Karl Kautsky and Social Democracy with their condemnations of the Bolshevik revolution. In the US after World War II, they were dubbed “State Department socialists,” those who fight for social reforms at home, but whose international politics harmonize with government foreign policy positions, particularly under Democratic administrations. The CIA funded “Western Marxism,” a non-communist left and helped it grow in stature. Herbert Marcuse, who worked with the Office of Strategic Services, and later the State Department, may be the most renowned of this group. The Frankfurt School was another, also CIA supported.
Ten years ago, compatible leftists often described themselves as anti anti-imperialists and launched virulent attacks on those speaking out against US intervention in Qaddafi’s Libya and Assad’s Syria. They dropped that self-designation, though, as it too obviously revealed where they stood. Today this compatible left is most easily identified with the Democratic Party-DSA milieu, the Squad, Bernie Sanders, Jacobin, In These Times, and The Nation.
The US rulers foster these “left” gatekeepers as boundary markers for “respectable” left views. In the 60s the term used was “responsible.” This left is used to undermine and marginalize the anti-war or anti-imperialist movement. It calls out “from the left” real or concocted human rights issues in countries the US targets, so help legitimize US propaganda campaigns, becoming witting or unwitting conveyor belts for them into our movement. As a result, this compatible left has much greater access to foundation funding and to progressive media than anti-imperialists. They are much more likely to be employed by universities, NGOs, progressive thinktanks, and to appear on mainstream and liberal-left news.
Recent Compatible Left Attacks on Venezuela
Lucas Koerner and Ricardo Vaz point out: “Every time Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution is faced with renewed threats to its survival, a stratum of U.S.-based intellectuals is always ready with ‘left’ critiques that deliberately obscure the permanent imperialist siege against the country.” Koerner and Vaz illustrated this type with Gabriel Hetland in New Left Review and Alejandro Velasco in The Nation. Hetland and Velasco capitulate to the US State Department position rejecting the electoral victory of Nicolas Maduro. They urge us to “‘resist apologism for Maduro’ and accept the victory of a fascist-led opposition movement.” Another of this type is Fred Fuentes, who once defended Bolivian President Evo Morales’ Movement for Socialism from the same type of attack.
Velasco was the executive editor for NACLA from 2015-2021, whose Board Chair Program Director is Thomas Kruse of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. The Nation, which published Hetland, receives hundreds of thousands a year in corporate foundation funding.
The US coup operation planned for the Venezuelan presidential election last July 28 was to culminate in the hacking and disruption of the vote count, with the defeated far right party of Maria Machado declaring themselves the winner. This was to be followed by guarimbas (chaos, destruction, and murders in the streets) and then military intervention to crush the Chavista movement. The US-backed operation has been exposed by numerous writers, including Francisco Dominguez, Leonardo Flores, Roger Harris, Maria Paez Victor, Stansfield Smith, Nino Pagliccia, Alfred de Zayas, National Lawyers Guild (and here), Arnold August, Edward Hunt, Luigino Bracci Roa, and others. Needless to say, the Hetland-Velasco type avoid addressing the realities these anti-imperialists present.
The US empire regularly cooks up human rights horror stories that this compatible left then feeds us, like this latest iteration of Chavista electoral fraud. The empire also concocted stories of “killing of students in Nicaragua in 2018, Qaddafi’s plans for mass rape and murder in Libya, Hamas mass killing and rape of civilians on October 7, Chinese genocide in Xinjiang, Iran’s killing of Mahsa Amin in 2022, Evo Morales stealing an election in 2019, Cuba’s repression of mass protests in 2021, Russia’s “unprovoked” intervention into Ukraine, Syria’s Assad chemical weapons attack on his own people, Venezuela’s President Maduro fixing the [2018] elections, Chavez’ supporters killing protestors in 2002, and on and on. The only truth to these stories is that the US corporate media constantly lie to us to win support for their interventions.”
The Hetland-Velasco compatible left type functions as a conveyor belt for this US “regime change” propaganda into the progressive and anti-war movement. Koerner and Vaz themselves noted similar compatible left campaigns against Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Yemen, Zimbabwe, China, Cuba, Bolivia, Brazil, Nicaragua, among others. To that can be added Russia, North Korea, Hamas, and Hezbollah.
“This approach [by the Hetland-Velasco type] of criticizing leaderships of countries targeted for overthrow, not imperialist aggression, and not building movements against intervention, is too common among progressives today. It portrays an elementary lack of anti-imperialist consciousness.”
The actual work of anti-imperialists requires exposing the US empire’s continuous interventionist actions and provocations, and consequent high costs we pay at home. It requires equipping people with this information and organizing working people against the domestic and foreign damage of the empire’s interference and interventions. Working people are still largely unaware of the toll of US coup attempts, terrorist actions, corporate arm-twisting of foreign leaders, the empire’s weaponizing international banking and finance, the effects of US “sanctions” and blockades, the use of NGOs as regime change tools, or the scope of corporate media disinformation. In short, all the US rulers’ behind-the-scenes activities that Julian Assange and Wikileaks brought to light. This, not critiquing victimized countries’ real or concocted human rights abuses or their responses to US aggression, is anti-imperialist work.
Fred Fuentes, while the compatible left type today, had an anti-imperialist past when covering the MAS leadership in Bolivia, even taking on the very type he has become. Back in 2014 he explained:
“The challenges Bolivia faces cannot be simply reduced to a question of [present day] imperialist ‘meddling’: they are a direct result of centuries of colonialism and imperialist oppression, which have entrenched Bolivia in its role within the world economy as a dependent raw commodity exporter….The main way we can help Bolivia’s social movements is still by winning over working people in the North to a position of solidarity with Bolivia. And the best way to do this is not to simply oppose “imperialist meddling” but to build an international movement against the imperialist system… explaining why, as long as imperialism exists, Bolivia’s process of change will undoubtedly continue to face tremendous obstacles and dangers.” (“Bad Left Government” versus “Good Left Social Movements”? in Latin America’s Radical Left, pp. 120, 121)
Today, Fuentes sings the Hetland-Velasco tune, claiming President Maduro and the Chavistas stole the election – the same position as the Venezuelan fascist right, the US State Department, and the CIA.
The Compatible Left Role in US Elections
We find this compatible left especially active in US presidential season. They tell us it’s vital for the left to vote for the genocidal Biden-Harris regime to save “democracy” from the “fascist” Trump. They may throw out there that the two parties are run by corporate America, that we need our own party. But they only say this to emphasize that this election is different, the most significant of our lifetimes, given the looming fascist danger.
Translated, they are saying no time is a good time for a labor party. Every election is the wrong time. Every election vote Democratic. Never try to build a third party. In election season their “lesser evil” rhetoric morphs into voting the Democratic ticket as actually a positive good. The Nation condemns President Maduro and endorses Kamala, finding her “worthy of our votes and our support.” Worse still, this type excuses, even covers up the constant rightward shift of the Democrats while exaggerating that shift in the Republicans, the same way the Hetland-Velasco-Fuentes type covers up US-sponsored election stealing regime change while making evidence-free fraud allegations against the Chavistas.
This faux left assures the Democrats that you can commit genocide for over a year, you can march humanity towards nuclear war with Russia, you can continue to neglect the needs of the people at home, and we will still harangue the left milieu to vote for you. That tells the Democrats they can keep moving to the right, they can ignore our protests against their inhumane policies, and they can still count on our votes. Their function is to sabotage the building of an independent working class political movement, just as they sabotage the anti-imperialist solidarity movement.
The compatible left attacks not just those defending other countries’ national liberation against the US empire, but also attacks our own fight for national liberation against this corporate ruling class at home.
In building the anti-imperialist working class movement, a key opponent we face is this liberal-left Fifth Column, though this is not so apparent in these times of relative social peace.
This conveyor belt of imperialist propaganda into the working class movement does possess decent “cred” in the left milieu, so earns a hearing here (as Democracy Now illustrates), something traditional bourgeois analysts and talking heads do not possess.
When the class struggle does heat up here, this type will be one final weapon the rulers will use against us before they actually resort to genuine fascist rule. We saw this with the Social Democrats and the Mensheviks in World War I and its aftermath. Regardless of the bluster the compatible left makes today about fighting “fascism,” the role they played then was essential for the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany. As the CIA recognizes, the compatible left plays a vital role in their “regime change” propaganda, and in obstructing the building of an anti-imperialist movement of working people in the US.