#controlled opposition

An Overview of Why The Left Opposes American Liberalism

American liberalism is not an ideology of liberation but a managerial tool to contain dissent, preserve capitalist hegemony, and moralize inaction. Its primary function is to simulate progress while actively sabotaging movements that threaten entrenched power.

American liberalism thrives on performative morality while serving the same corporate and imperial interests as conservatism:

Domestic policing: Liberals expand police budgets ("community policing"), pass draconian anti-protest laws (Pelosi condemning CHAZ/CHOP and the Biden Admin's reaction to college encampments), and criminalize poverty (homeless sweeps in "progressive" cities like San Francisco).

Imperial violence: Biden funds genocide in Gaza, Trump deports migrants, Obama drones weddings in Yemen — the bipartisan consensus on empire remains intact.

Co-optation: Liberal NGOs (ACLU, Planned Parenthood) partner with corporations like Amazon and Google, laundering their reputations while grassroots movements are starved of resources.

In fact, the NGO-ization of resistance may be Liberalism’s most insidious tool, which:

Professionalizes dissent: Turns activists into salaried employees who must avoid radical demands to keep funding (e.g., mainstream environmental groups taking oil money).

Fragments struggles: Reduces systemic issues (racism, climate collapse) to isolated, winnable "campaigns" (e.g., banning plastic straws instead of Exxon).

Gatekeeps resources: Foundations (Ford, Rockefeller) fund only "respectable" groups that won’t threaten capital (e.g., Black Lives Matter Global Network’s corporate partnerships).

And lastly, Liberalism functions as a safety-net for the capitalist system in ways such as:

FDR’s New Deal: Saved capitalism during the Great Depression by conceding minimal worker protections while excluding Black and Indigenous people.

Clinton’s "Welfare Reform": Destroyed social safety nets, expanded mass incarceration, and deregulated Wall Street.

Obama’s Austerity: Bailed out banks, deported 3M migrants, and dropped 26,171 bombs in 2016 alone.

Like Martin Luther King Jr. so relevantly warned:

Beware surveillance pricing bans where the legislation promotes surveillance pricing.

This shouldn't be a thing, but often the industry lobbyists write controlled-opposition legislation that is then adopted by politicians who are clueless, craven, careless, or on the take. 

The Economic Populist Gov. Wes Moore Claims Maryland Banned Surveillance Pricing for Groceries. It Didn't. The new law is riddled with loopholes, exemptions, and other problems. Economic Liberties Apr 29, 2026 Findings from a Federal Trade Commission survey released last year found that clients of third-party surveillance pricing software include grocery stores, apparel retailers, health and beauty retailers, home goods and furnishing stores, hardware stores, travel firms, and department stores. FTC staff found that “consumer behaviors ranging from mouse movements on a webpage to the type of products that consumers leave unpurchased in an online shopping cart can be tracked and used by retailers to tailor consumer pricing.” Contrary to Moore’s assertion, this is less about the checkout counter at an actual grocery store (though QR code price tags and required in-app purchasing are adapting to make in-person surveillance pricing more prevalent) and more about online commerce, where it’s possible to collect massive profiles of individuals, and prevent them from knowing that they’re being charged a different price than everyone else as they move across the web. Maryland’s bill suffers from several problems that will render it ineffective – and it only applies to groceries and grocery-delivery, leaving a wide swathe of the economy untouched. First, in a huge red flag, it allows surveillance pricing as long as a corporation claims a shopper “consented” to receiving the price, despite decades of research showing that consent policies don’t meaningfully prevent corporate abuse. (emphasis added)

They write supposedly regulatory laws that in action preemptively codify the actual thing the law is supposed to prevent. 

The same thing has been deployed with data center legislation claimed to be environmental, and has been attempted with medical mask legislation sold as disability justice. 

My letter to reps: 

Surveillance pricing should be outright banned. Nobody should be tracked online at all in the first place, and I don't want to hear about any exceptions where someone "consents" because we know that consent policies don't prevent corporate abuse, they just serve as legal cover to keep corporations from being at all held accountable. We need to hold these companies accountable, and prevent the damage being done in the first place. 

Beware Controlled Opposition and Strategize Effective Boycotts

@a-captions-blog