Comparing Corbyn and Trudeau

Martin Lukacs has an editorial in The Guardian in which he says that Justin Trudeau is a counterfeit progressive. He wins accolades from the international press for his "sunny ways," which appears to be mouthing progressive rhetoric and/or lying while being very, very handsome. Corbyn, meanwhile, was written off as fringe, unelectable, unstable and charmless.

Some liberal/Liberals here in Canada have taken Corbyn's recent success and linking it to the Trudeau majority as the sign of a progressive wave. Lukacs (and I agree with him) doesn't think much of Trudeau though:

Now that Corbyn has upended the rules that govern electoral life in the west, it will help us see Trudeau in proper perspective: as a smooth-talking centrist who has put the most coiffed gloss yet on the bankrupt and besieged neoliberalism of the age.

Trudeau’s coronation as a champion of everything fair and decent, after all, has much to do with shrewd and calculated public relations. I call it the Trudeau two-step.

First, he makes a sweeping proclamation pitched abroad – a bold pledge to tackle austerity or climate change, or to ensure the rights of refugees or Indigenous peoples. The fawning international coverage bolsters his domestic credibility.

What follows next are not policies to ambitiously fulfill these pledges: it is ploys to quietly evacuate them of any meaning. The success of this maneuver – as well as its sheer cynicism – has been astonishing.

In this manner, Trudeau has basically continued, and in some cases exceeded, the economic agenda of Conservative Stephen Harper: approved mega fossil fuel projects, sought parliamentary power grabs, cut-back healthcare funding and attacked public pensions, kept up the dispossession of Indigenous peoples, undermined the prospect of universal childcare, maintained tax loopholes for the richest, and detained and deported thousands of migrants.

Out of breath? He has also broken an electoral reform promise, initiated a privatization scheme that is a massive corporate handout, left un-repealed a Tory political spy bill, launched air strikes in Iraq and Syria despite pledging a withdrawal, and inked the largest-ever weapons deal with the brutal, misogynistic Saudi Arabian regime.

Not exactly what those who voted for “real change” were expecting? Before you answer, here’s something titillating to distract and disarm you: Justin and Barack Obama rekindling their progressive bromance at an uber-cool Montreal diner. Jeremy Corbyn has shown us the meaning of a politics of genuine hope: what Trudeau has deployed has only ever been a politics of hype.

Trudeau’s latest progressive posturing is over foreign policy. Last week his government announced, to wide-spread acclaim, a brave course for their military that is independent of the reviled US administration. Except they will boost wasteful military spending by more than $60bn, a shocking seventy percent budgetary increase, and are already entertaining new Nato missions — exactly as Donald Trump has demanded. The doublespeak seems to have escaped the navel-gazing pundits: this is utter deference masquerading as defiance.

Did you read that Trudeau-bots? Trudeau-Bro's and Trudeau-Sis's? Did you read those links? This isn't about only having had two years to undo stephen harper's damages. Some of those things were new policies that are terrible. And some things, Trudeau hasn't even pretended to do anything about (such as the draconian spy-bill C-51).

I can barely stomach the NDP. And in some cases, they've been worse than the Liberals. I saw so little difference in them that i voted Liberal last time. I'm thinking of not voting ever again.

But let's not fool ourselves that Trudeau is our friend. He's a bullshit artist. As I said here, being socially liberal is irrelevant to the project of capitalism. And capitalism requires imperialism. Hence all the US-initiated wars around the word and Canada's role as camp-follower.

Corbyn is the real deal. A leftist stalwart who never expected to be leader of the Labour Party but who has been embraced by the millions of ordinary people fucked-over by the system and sickened unto puking from the oily deluded Blairites.

That, by the way, is the proper Labour leader to link Trudeau to. Tony Blair. And years from now, he'll be just as rotten as Blair is.