For the last few weeks, I have been working through a quiet but constant rage against Elizabeth Warren and her supporters. It is difficult to express exactly why they make me so angry. With ghouls like Biden, Bennet, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar still in the race, it’s hard to justify my particular disdain for Warren’s campaign. After a fair bit of thought (and innumerable dinner table debates), I think what it comes down to is betrayal.

Betrayal is what I feel every time a stated ally comes out in support of Warren; betrayal is what I felt when the Working Families Party released their endorsement this morning.

I don’t expect better from Biden or his handlers. He and his ilk are unapologetic corporate goons with histories of racism, corporatism, and austerity. But Warren? She clothes herself in the language of socialism while pledging allegiance to capitalism. She sings a song of human progress while composing symphonies of means-tested, uninspired, and impotent reformism. She pretends to be a friend of the meek while ignoring tribal requests, funding Trump’s military, and supporting an imperialist agenda. Simply put: Elizabeth Warren is a liar, a traitor, or both.

Her supporters are worse.

Allies of the so-called pro-worker “progressive movement” have no business supporting a self-described capitalist. While I understand the desire to shift away from the “controversy” of socialism, that desire is founded in cowardice. Elizabeth Warren will not save us from student loan debt, private insurance, or American imperialism. Beyond her stated support for Israel’s occupation of Palestine and insufficient student-loan plan, her theory of power leaves no room for the kind of mass movement politics necessary for change.

There is a powerful establishment in Washington with a vested interest in perpetuating human suffering. Even if Warren intended to make the kinds of structural change that are necessary (she doesn’t), her enduring liberal belief that well-spoken wonkery and compromise will somehow convince corporate Democrats and fascist Republicans to pass social democratic reforms is delusional. Only a mass movement has a chance of dislocating those power structures, and only Bernie Sanders has demonstrated an understanding of that basic fact.

Beyond justifying my personal anger and Warren and her backers, this speaks to a deeper necessity for any kind of meaningful unity on the left. Solidarity means standing with one another in spite of the circumstances and with shared intentions. I can stand with those to Sanders’ left because I know their revolution has a place for me; I know that nearly every Marxist Leninist, Anarchist, and Syndicalist fights with me for human liberation. We can disagree on tactics, but so long as they stand with me, I will stand with them.

Elizabeth Warren, the Working Families Party, and the bleeding-heart Wonks do not stand with me. They do not stand with the working class. They will risk nothing for a better future. The impotence and cowardice of their movement is an insult to the values they claim to hold. And as that same simmering rage returns to my furiously-typing fingers, I leave you with one thought.

There’s a reason Dante put betrayers in the deepest circle of hell.

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