Corruption Tints Red

“Politicians are all the same” is a maxim one hears on a regular basis. It usually translates into the recurring problem of empty promises and demagoguery but in its acute form, it means corruption. Corruption scandals are ubiquitous to every political system, be it a democracy or a dictatorship, Western or Eastern, right-wing or left-wing.

There are many definitions of ‘corruption’ but a basic understanding of it would consist of the bypassing or perversion of public laws for private ends. If power corrupts, then the attraction of the corrupt for public office is only natural.

Looking at the woes of Spain’s PSOE (S&D) from Portugal, one cannot but feel history echoing across the border since it was a decade ago that Portugal’s former PM José Sócrates was arrested for corruption. Nuestros hermanos are undergoing much the same pathos that Portugal went through in the 2010s and—in my eyes—for many of the same reasons.

A clue to what is happening to socialist parties across the West can be found in the choice of Sócrates to lead Portugal’s Socialist Party (PS). Whereas most PMs rise to the position after leading an important ministry or a major city, José Sócrates’s highest office had been that of minister of the environment for all of two years.

How is it that none of the relevant state ministers in previous socialist governments was ready to step into the role of party leader and PM? How is it that an inconsequential environment minister becomes the only alternative available? 

The reality is that the most reputed names amongst the socialists chose not to pursue leadership. The very reluctance is the clue to the reason why: socialism was spent. Economically, socialism had been discredited by the communist experiences throughout the world; at times providing real world empirical counterfactuals within the same nation, such as was the case in Korea or Germany. Culturally, the sexual revolution having been won and counter culture reigning supreme, ‘progress’ could only possibly be furthered by delving into more extreme causes. Whether instinctively or fully cognizant, mainstream socialist higher-ups sensed that the future of socialism would have to become increasingly extremist and populist, by necessity.

Whereas PS had been founded by relatively aristocratic and bourgeois elites, it was now left to the devices of unscrupulous professional politicians of the lower middle class, experts only in special interest arrangements and get-rich-quick scheming.

José Sócrates’s most high-profile judicial proceedings began on July 3rd, a decade after the events that led to his arrest. The ‘Marques Affair’ features a Sócrates accused of influence trafficking, receiving millions in return for special governmental favours to large banks and construction companies.

Pedro Sánchez is but another iteration of the same trend: intersectional extremism coupled with low-scruple cadres, all fueled by corrupt media sensationalism. Cultural Marxism provides ideological legitimacy (watch out for all those who present ‘gender equal’ cabinets), outrageous corruption feeds the apparatchiks, and corrupted biased media provide public cover for all the abuses of power.

In Portugal, too, Sócrates began by distracting the Left and its media agents by borrowing far-left causes such as gay marriage or climate change, while embarking on white elephant projects such as high-speed rail and other mass infrastructure works—many never to materialize—and driving the public debt to astronomical levels, while exerting pressure on media conglomerates to control his and the government’s public image.

Sánchez or Sócrates, the script is the same and the structural necessity is the same: if no dragons present themselves for slaying, artificial ones must be created. The civil rights era is resurrected with soundbites such as ‘racism’ or ‘sexism’—updated into ‘structural racism’ and ‘misogyny’—and new sexually deviant causes, such as transgenderism, are brought to the fore to elicit humanitarian sympathy. The temporary distraction serves only to distribute public funds through aligned parasitical networks until the money runs out or the grift becomes too noticeable.

It is incontrovertibly true, naturally, that politicians of all beliefs and creeds are susceptible to corruption. However, the Left is particularly problematic in this regard.

The Right’s temptation is to mix its private sector contacts and interests with public office duties. Right-wing politicians often come from the private sector and revolving doors allow them to return to the private sphere after holding public office, usually in order to capitalize on their insider knowledge in state matters. Corrupt as it may be, public office is often only an avenue to more profitable endeavors in the private sector. Be it by social class or self-made merit, most right-wing grifters do not exclusively need the public sector in order to prosper—rather, they use it as they would have used any other business venture.

As an example, both Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy had successful business careers prior to entering politics. The two are also notorious for being tried for corruption but few doubt that they would have been successful outside of politics, regardless. Influence peddling, nepotism, and misuse of funds invariably take place in all institutions to a greater or lesser degree but playing fast and loose with the rules in a political context will always draw more attention and criticism.

The Left is different.

For one, where would all the left-wing activists be without public funding? Academics, QuaNGO employees, artists, trade unionists, where would their careers be if it weren’t for some form of public patronage? Would they have an otherwise profitable private sector job? Would they be capable of pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps? Doubtful.

Another important aspect is the significance of the state apparatus in their own worldview. Right-wing activists have the Church, the family, or their business to worry about. Leftists draw their money, familial ties, and morality, from the state. For some, taking into consideration their disregard for the value of life in their own personal connections, the state provides them with offspring and a sense of community. Hence why many leftists advocate for the children to be delivered to the state for their education and upbringing rather than taking the personal responsibility of raising them and being an example for them. Not only do they see children as inconvenient, but their sense of morality is absolutist, therefore being quite intolerant of parallel private competing sources of ethics other than their own universalist one. In other words, if the state is in charge of education, there is less need for debate and for coexistence with dissimilar views, since the narrative will be a monopoly of the government.

Leftist beliefs are inherently totalitarian since the ideal of equality is itself a uniformist absolute principle. This, in turn, means that the pursuit of equality will invariably result in greater levels of corruption.

It is not a coincidence that social democracy is beset by a gangrene of pernicious short term gain nouveau riche mafia coupled with extremist policies and an Orwellian public narrative. Pecuniary and moral corruption are the logical conclusion of leftism, the ultimate end state of the obsession with equality and social justice, of the politics of envy.