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Tracey definitely has the “mental capacity” to differentiate between social and economic issues; his primary concern is that what he calls “the left” has been using the former in a way that completely mystifies the latter. But you are right that he uses “the left” in a way similar to right-wingers – which is one reason why “the left” (Tracey’s “left”) accuses him of being a right-winger.
Though I tend to agree with you on terminology, there is a rationale for Tracey’s usage. The CIA has a long history of ideological manipulation, and even recruitment, of the educated “non-communist left” in the postwar US. The current complete break between “new left” and “old (socialist) left” also has a long (and not unrelated) history going back to the sixties. The latter pretty much disappeared; the remnants of the former were domesticated, laundered through our elite educational institutions, and have become our cultural leaders whose job it is to mystify c