viewpoint: ben cohen

Jill Stein’s Green Party lies

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The far left U.S. Green Party marked a significant milestone in the current campaign cycle when CNN broadcast a town hall debate with its presidential candidate, Jill Stein, and her running mate, Ajamu Baraka. It was a chance for the largely obscure party to build upon the momentum generated by Sen. Bernie Sander’s bid for the Democratic Party nomination with a progressive platform untainted, as Stein and Baraka emphasized again and again, by the paw prints of corporate lobbyists, special interest groups and dubious foreign governments.

Lacking the kind of media broadcast training that turns our minted politicians into eternally smiling taking heads, Stein and Baraka certainly looked, on the CNN stage, like fairly ordinary people suddenly plunged into the limelight of politics. That should be seen as a plus for them, particularly at a time when political discourse is marked by a distrust of “elites.” 

Both Stein and Baraka spoke earnestly and that was matched in their body language. For much of the debate, Baraka wore a scholarly frown, while Stein carried herself with the kindly, caring bedside manner that befits a medical doctor. So, you might think a consummate performance all round, and a great opportunity for a party that has no chance of actually winning the election, as its candidates readily concede, to insert itself into the American debate moving forward.

Except for one confounding note: The Green Party’s self-image is built upon a series of lies, as I will duly explain. To understand how those lies came about, some context is first in order.

If “The Green Party” doesn’t sound like an especially American construct, that’s because it isn’t. The notion of an environmentalist political party is a European one, and it was in the countries of western Europe that “Green” parties first emerged, from the ashes of the failed student revolt at the end of the 1960s.

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