We don't support Marxists in Latin America, any leftist leader
who chooses socialism will be held accountable by the United States.
Already, Nine governments across South America, Central America, and
the Caribbean, are controlled by socialists.
All of these governments, with only one exception,
are also overtly and ideologically anti American.
>> All right, so,
Ted Cruz here is triggered by the inauguration of Gustavo Petro in Colombia.
He's drafted legislation called The Caution act, and
it's seeking to condition the aid that the United States gives to Colombia
because Ted Cruz has decided that they are now anti American.
They're also socialist, according to Ted Cruz.
So let's break that down.
According to Ted Cruz, it seems that socialism is whenever a government does
anything at all, that's not in the favor of multinational corporations.
And whenever they are un American, that basically means they're doing something to
inconvenience US based multinational corporations.
A bunch of folks in the US right now are pushing red scare tactic.
So John Mackey, the CEO of Hold Foods, said on a podcast this week,
the socialists are taking over.
They're marching through the institutions, they're taking everything over.
They're taking over education.
It looks like they've taken over a lot of corporations.
It looks like they've taken over the military, and it's just continuing,
very interesting.
De Santis also made comments recently about leftist corporations
having too much power in the United States.
So I would just love a list from John Mackey,
tell us which corporations have been taken over by socialists, please,
just incoherent and there's more incoherence.
Let's go back to Ted's rant, I think he makes a veiled threat here.
Let's watch.
>> Colombians are well aware of what has happened in other Latin American
countries that have elected or have seen leftist seized power.
Cuba and Venezuela, for example,
I don't wanna see Colombia follow the example of other socialist
governments in the Western hemisphere, we know where that leads.
>> Do you know where that leads?
It usually leads to CIA initiated and CIA backed coups.
It kinda sounds like a threat to me, what Ted is saying here.
Let's not forget that, not too long ago,
John Bolton said that the Monroe doctrine is alive and well, right?
This suggests that the United States controls foreign policy in the Western
hemisphere, including deciding which political and
economic systems folks have in Latin America.
But Ted is really categorizing Petro wrong, let's watch.
>> Petro is the first openly Marxist to be elected president of Colombia.
>> Okay, Petro is not a Marxist, and as much as we know, Ted Cruz is going
on an incoherent rant here, it's really important to point out who Petro is,
because they're really gonna keep pushing this narrative.
So he described that he wants to bring Colombia out of what he believes is
a feudal society.
His top aides, I follow their work, they're economist, and
really what they're all about is reforming capitalism to make it work for everyone.
He's brought together progressive groups,
he's brought together traditional conservative groups.
He's brought together conservatives and people from different social movements,
and he became popular as a senator there.
Because he exposed deep corruption scandal that's a very big deal in Colombia,
called where over 6,000 citizens were killed by the military
with the claim that they were army combatants when they were not.
And so he's really fought a lot of corruption since then,
since the duke a government, there have been killings of activists and
leaders all throughout the country.
And he ran on finding out who was responsible for this.
He's really an advocate for peace and Cruz is painting him as this guerilla fighter,
which isn't the case.
There was definitely a time period in Colombia where everyone was taking up arms
but Petro was a part of M19, which was never affiliated with the FARC,
never affiliated with Marxist, never affiliated with the ELN.
And actually partnered with the conservatives in Colombia,
with the interest of peace to write the new constitution.
But Ted won't talk about that, because he fundamentally doesn't understand
politically what is going on there.
And he has no interest too, because he's out to protect lobbyists which have
corporate interests in Latin America.
But he definitely also does not speak Spanish, let's watch this clip.
Mexican President Lopez Obrador.
>> He definitely practiced rolling his r's before taking the floor of Congress there.
He could have just called him on low, he didn't have to trip over that word.
I think it's kind of funny, what do y'all think?
Yeah, [APPLAUSE] that was awesome by the way.
[APPLAUSE] Seriously, that was a fantastic explainer please.
>> Okay, so first of all, let's talk about the funny parts first.
Ted Cruz's Canadian, so he's like Pedro, dude, just leave it alone.
Secondly, he's like, he's a Marxist, they call Obama a Marxist,
Obama couldn't be more establishment if he tried.
They totally taken away any meeting the word Marxist has, but
mainly he said socialist, and so the Whole Foods CEO.
And he's like, I love the CEO because he's like,
socialists are taking over corporations.
If they're socialists, why would they take over corporations?
[LAUGH] That doesn't make any sense, even under your definition.
Okay, speaking of which, the most important part of this is,
the media never ever explains what a socialist is,
it ranges from Stalin and North Korea to Norway, so which one is it, okay?
I had a guy the other day, speaking of funny, I'm walking down the street and
some douche rolls up in a Porsche SUV, and he looked like a douche,
I'll be honest, even before he said anything.
And then he shouts out the window at me, socialist.
He said that to you? >> Yeah.
>> What was your reaction?
>> I laughed so hard, genuinely.
I was like, [LAUGH], basically when somebody says, you're a socialist,
I'm like, so I want things to be like Norway, that sounds pretty good, right?
Look as it turns out, I'm not, I call myself a Democratic capitalist and
I can explain in fact, I got a book on it.
Okay, that'll come out at some point.
>> [INAUDIBLE] >> Okay, not really.
Anyways, I didn't even give the URL yet.
>> [LAUGH] >> Justicecomingbook.com, okay, thank you,
Ricky.
So anyways, but all socialism is a mixed economy, where some things are private and
some things are public, which by the way could also be here in America.
Cuz some things are public, like the military, the police and
other parts of the economy.
All right, Rick.
>> Okay, I don't have a book to plug, but when I do I'll be sure to give it and
blast it out, including on the TYTs Twitter account.
So how I feel about this is whenever, and I like how Jessica put this,
it's a red scare tactic to continually just frame something in the way that
has been politicized over and over for the last, however many years.
Cenk rightfully used the example of Barack Obama being labeled socialist,
didn't we not even here in the past,
let's say eight months, Joe Biden being called the socialist.
These are just scare tactic words, and even Anna,
who I'm not gonna dignify the opponent who was on the losing end, was running for
a congressional seat and called Anna.
This is one sentence, neo liberal Marxist,
socialist, leftist, globalist, seriously.
All that this is, is them using a word to rile up their base who cannot tell one
from the other, the only one they missed was communist.
Now, to get to what Jessica and Cenk were talking about,
with the Whole Foods CEO,, one of the weirdest things I had to learn
about this guy was, he liked being called a daddy of his workers.
Incredibly odd, incredibly weird.
Some labeled him like a right wing hippie.
You can be a hippie, and that's cool, but the weirdest part is he's talking
about how socialism has infected different parts of the business world.
When realistically how I view it is, it's a buzzword for his whole rhetoric,
which we might get into in a second, which was gen z doesn't wanna work anymore,
kids don't wanna work anymore.
No, no, no, it's because people don't wanna take the crappy jobs and
pay that you're offering them, and also how you're using heat maps to bust unions,
among many other things.
>> Yeah, last things for me, first of all, I love that description of Anna,
is a neo liberal Marxist.
You understand what any of the words means?
Those two things are directly opposed to one another.
And to Ted Cruz, saying, these governments, a lot of them
are historically anti American, maybe because we killed their leaders and
took their natural resources, that might be a reason why.
And then he turns around and ironically he's like, and
they better watch themselves.
Yeah, gee, I can't figure out why they even would be anti American.
>> Yeah, it's precisely the same script that they used in 1954 when
the CIA backed coup to take down Cobo Arbenz occurred, right?
They were saying, this guy is a raging socialist, he's aligned with Russia.
All Arbenz was saying was, we don't want our workers to be exploited and
all of our land taken by US based multinational corporations.
It's the same script, they're running in again half a century later,
more than half a century later.
But I do think we get caught up a lot in the ism, socialism,
neo liberalism, these are not words that everyday people,
if you stop them on the street, can easily define.
And we really lose ourselves in just attaching ourselves to those words.
I think whenever you use them, you should probably define them.
I don't have a book to plug, but I did give a Ted talk on this,
where I break down, we need a Democratic economy, forget all of all of the isms,
workers are entitled to the value of the labor they produce.
It's very simple.
And I think, moving away from the ISMs, is something good.
What do you believe in?
Do you believe in workers having rights,
being paid a living wage, being able to afford rent?
Let's talk about the issues, that's really where we win people over and
we really lose people by saying, they're all socialists, they're all bad.
I think we really need to move away from that, but
it's hard to when the right is talking about it all of the time.