The Backlash Against Jill Stein

More reasons why the US Green Party is so messed up

Not too long ago I wrote about how messed up the US Green Party had become and much of it was based on my own experience dealing with a predecessor of the US Greens, the now-defunct Citizens Party (which had declared itself the official US affiliate of the West German Green Party in the 1980s). Between not focusing very much on down-ballot races (as I wrote in that post, the national Green Party had pretty much ignored the two or three times that the late Bob Auerbach had ran as a Green for Steny Hoyer's House seat as a Maryland representative in the late 2000s-early 2010s), Ralph Nader’s disastrous two presidential runs on that ticket (with the last one paving the way for the election of George W. Bush), and Jill Stein's involvement with that party (along with her association with Vladimir Putin) which had led to her 2016 run being one of the reasons why Donald Trump won that year, I wrote that it has gotten to the point where the US Green Party is simply no longer viable as a major political movement and the only thing that can be done is to form a new independent progressive environmentally-focused political party that would have a policy of never accepting help from authoritarian dictators. This new party would begin with local, county, and state elections then move on to the federal elections after it has gained name recognition.

I'm not the only one who's writing this. The New Republic has an article with this headline: Jill Stein is Killing the Green Party. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has called Jill Stein and the Green Party out in this viral video for only running for president every four years while not doing much to grow the party into a genuine movement on the state and local levels.

Then there's that 2015 dinner in Moscow where Stein was seated at the same table as Vladimir Putin and future Trump Administration national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Jill Stein's notorious dinner with Vladimir Putin along with her criticizing Democrats more than Donald Trump isn't helping the US Green Party at all as a genuine political movement. In fact, according to this recent article in The New York Times, members of Jill Stein's own family had asked her not to run for president this year (which explains why none of her relatives are on the campaign trail with her) but she ignored their requests. I found it very telling that one of her adult sons, who gave an interview on behalf of the family, had asked to not be named because he wanted to avoid personal and professional repercussions.

She has also gained the endorsement of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Along with the fact that she paid $100,000 to a Republican consulting firm that's led by a January 6 rioter.

For the first time ever the Democrat Party has released two ads in key battleground states that target Jill Stein along with the message that a vote for Stein is ultimately a vote for Donald Trump. You can see those ads as part of this clip from Lawrence O'Donnell MSNBC show where he devotes this segment to Jill Stein.

Jill Stein has become so associated with Vladimir Putin that she now has her own entry on the Vatnik Soup website, which is a fascinating read, especially the quotes where she's essentially parroting Kremlin propaganda regarding NATO and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Today the founder of Vatnik Soup, Pekka Kallioniemi, had this to say about Jill Stein:

Lawyers and operatives affiliated with MAGA have supported Stein’s campaign in ballot access litigation. This includes Jay Sekulow, a former personal attorney for Donald Trump, and Michael Dean, a lawyer involved in efforts to challenge the 2020 US presidential election results.

Dean was actually part of the lawsuit that the voting machines were "hacked by foreigners".

Stein also paid 100 000 USD in July to a consulting firm that has worked with Republican and RFK Jr.'s campaigns.

Jill herself said she saw “no issue” collaborating with Republicans and would “take the help.”

Trump has praised Stein’s spoiler candidacy for years, saying he likes Jill “very much” because “she takes 100% from them [the Dems].”

Jill Stein is a spoiler candidate who's helping Trump get elected and they're not even hiding it anymore.

That explains why you'll hear Stein attack the Democrats far more than the Republicans.

Then there's Jill Stein's opinion about Vladimir Putin as a war criminal. When Medhi Hassan asked Stein about who she thinks is or is not a war criminal, she readily denounced Benjamin Netanyahu and Joe Biden as war criminals but she seemed to do this verbal dancing around where she hesitated to also call Putin a war criminal.

She later released a statement clarifying her position where she said that Vladimir Putin is a war criminal but has based her opinion on Russia's intervention in Syria, not its ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

And that's not to mention that Jill Stein claims to be the only “anti-genocide candidate” who is actively protesting the current situation in Gaza and is making the Palestinian cause the cornerstone of her campaign yet she's an investor in Raytheon, one of the largest defense contractors in the world who has made the weapons used on the Palestinians in Gaza. At the same time the so-called “anti-genocide candidate” has been silent on the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, which not only frequently targets civilian places like apartment buildings and hospitals but the Russians have been kidnapping Ukrainian children and taking them to Russia so they could be raised as Russians, which is considered to be a form of genocide. Of course it's not a surprise that she will never say anything negative about what Russia is doing to Ukraine as long as she remains allied with Vladimir Putin.

If Donald Trump does get elected because of her efforts to be the spoiler candidate, he will be far worse on Palestine than Kamala Harris. Trump is close with Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu and he has warned Jewish voters against voting for Harris because he calls himself Israel's protector. Both Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner have proposed turning Gaza into this glitzy Israeli beach vacation resort that caters to the very wealthy (not including Palestinians). If Trump gets back into office, that vision of Gaza is more likely to become a reality.

While I would love to see an independent environmentally-focused political movement that's a legitimate alternative to both the Democrats and the Republicans, the US Green Party under Jill Stein is NOT it. Stein is too closely aligned with both Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin to be really an independent politician. Her investments in companies that are totally opposed to her and the Green Party's public stances like Raytheon just makes her and the Greens not serious at all. I predict that after the US election, Jill Stein will slink away from the public spotlight and we won't hear from her again for the next few years, no matter who wins the election. After all, both Jill Stein and the Green Party, who claimed to be focused on the environment, were largely silent when Donald Trump was in office and he did things like withdraw the US from the Paris accords on climate change.

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