THE rIGHT IS THE lEFT:

Over the past year, as the far right trafficked in wild anti-masker and pro-Donald Trump fantasies that led to the Jan. 6 putsch on the Capitol, some prominent members of the so-called "Dirtbag Left" and radical left have been promoting figureheads in the Boogaloo movement, circulating deep-state conspiracies, and bantering about 'great replacement' talking points--ones that can sometimes sound an awful lot like the fever dreams of the alt-right.

Take, for instance, populist YouTuber and member of the Movement for a Peoples Party's Advisory Council, Jimmy Dore. He recently courted a public relations disaster when he offered a platform to Magnus Panvidya, a member of the Boogaloo Boys, a militant group that threatened violence ahead of Biden's inauguration. Emerging into the public eye last spring during right-wing anti-lockdown protests, the heavily armed Boogaloo Boys have promoted attacks against the state and government officials in retaliation for COVID safety restrictions. But Panvidya, who sports a rainbow flag in his Twitter bio, offered the movement a more palatable pro-LGBT and anti-racist face. (Panvidya also has tweeted that Kyle Rittenhouse, the Trump supporter who shot three men, killing two of them, during turbulent anti-racism protests over the summer, "was in his right to defend himself.")

During the interview with Dore, titled "Radical Michigan Anarchist Seeks Unity With the Left," Panvidya posed in front of a rainbow "Don't Tread On Me" flag and talked about why the Boogaloos are anti-cop. He asserted, "It is the top versus the bottom, it is not the left versus the right." Dore then listed the things they agree about: "We would agree on the war, we would agree on the corporate control of our government, we would agree on police brutality. We're not going to agree on the Second Amendment... you know what, I tell you what, I go back and forth on the Second Amendment."

Dore, who reportedly just dropped $1.9 million on an L.A. bungalow, has gotten populist mileage himself out of anti-lockdown sentiment, asking why small businesses closed while Amazon was allowed to remain open, saying that the World Health Organization was "cautioning against the lockdowns," and characterizing the lockdowns on gyms, salons and sporting goods stores as "creating death." He also aired a protester who opposed COVID-19 restrictions as "a conspiracy" and "a tyranny."

It's a complex ecosystem, when you map the strange areas of crossover between the political fringes. In some cases, leftists pay tribute to aspects of right-wing conspiracy theories ostensibly to coax some from the right into left-wing populism. On the other side, some leftists genuinely seek to transcend the boundary between left and right entirely to create a populist moment that challenges what they see as the elites.

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