Strypey
"The brutal murder of Tyre Nichols by five Black Memphis police officers should be enough to implode the fantasy that identity politics and diversity will solve the social, economic and political decay that besets the United States. Not only are the former officers Black, but the city’s police department is headed by Cerelyn Davis, a Black woman. None of this helped Nichols, another victim of a modern-day police lynching."
#ChrisHedges, 2023
Strypey
"Glen Ford, the late editor of The Black Agenda Report... called those who promote identity politics 'representationalists' who 'want to see some Black people represented in all sectors of leadership, in all sectors of society.... They want Black movie stars. They want Black scholars at Harvard. They want Blacks on Wall Street. But it’s just representation. That’s it'.
The toll taken by corporate capitalism on the people these “representationalists” claim to represent exposes the con."
Strypey
It actually made a lot of sense, in the political climate of the 1980s and 90s, for the left to play up identity issues and focus less exclusively on class. For one thing, the existing traditions of working class solidarity politics *did* need to be hauled out of the 19th century. They did need to come to terms with the fact that certain identity markers (eg being a PoC, homosexual etc) push people further down class hierarchies.
(1/?)
Strypey
Also, the noisiest promoters of class politics in the 90s - when I was getting involved in political activism - were Vulgar Marxists. The last bastions of the 1950s version of the labour movement. Some of whom were saying disappointingly regressive things about our allies in movements focused on women's liberation, indigenous rights, and so on. Defending the CCP's brutal occupation of Tibet, even as they (quite rightly) condemned Indonesia's equally brutal occupation of Timor Leste.
(2/?)
Strypey
Even they were embarrassed a few years later, by their initial dismissal of the huge, global mobilizations against corporate globalisation. Which arguably peaked with the WTO shutdown in Seattle in 99 (the birth of the Indymedia movement). Before switching gears to become a massive, global anti-war movement, in response to 9/11 and its cynical misuse to action the Project for a New American Century plan to ramp up neo-colonisation of the Middle East.
(3/?)
AnthonyJK-Admin
One reason that I'm not a fan of Hedges is that he elevates "wokeness", which has become a classic pejorative and "dog whistle" for the Right to attack Black radicalism, to a central role in capitalism, rather than one side of the coin (the other being Christian Right Nationalism). He seems here to be pandering a bit too much to social conservatives in order to sell a right-wing "populist" coalition to challenge what he perceives as this hegemonic "wokeness".
Strypey
Being strongly associated with the authoritarian, social-conservative politics of Vulgar Marxists, would have been damaging to left of the time. Just as being assimilated into the authoritarian, liberal politics of Clinton and Blair has been for the broader left in the last decade. Throwing working class people under the bus to get more Black CEOs in corporations that ought to be abolished, or a female President of an utterly corrupt empire in decline, is short-sighted at best.
(4/?)
Strypey
At worst, this atomized style of politics - whose most iconic tactic is crypto-conservative public shaming against the "wrong" kinds of difference - has the unintended consequence of generating huge numbers of humiliated, frightened, angry people. Effectively grooming them as recruits for cryptofascist movements like this:
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/fact-checking-the-co-governance-roadshow
What's the reaction to this from the crypto-conservative "liberal left"?
Pour more of the same fuel on the fire:
https://www.change.org/p/the-stop-co-govenance-tour-is-in-breach-of-nzbora-and-human-rights-act
🤦♂️
(5/?)
AnthonyJK-Admin
Ummm....no. Nuh-uh.
Woke Neoliberalism can be legitimately criticized for its failures, but this smacks more of implication that the traditional social groups targeted by the social Right created and justified the backlash of social conservatives against them through excessive tactics. This completely ignores and masks the institutional social power of the Christian Nationalist Right in enabling and fueling said backlash.
AnthonyJK-Admin
Wait ...WHAT?????
So, if you oppose the US arming Ukrainian Nazis with cluster bombs and enabling them to attack nuclear plants, you are on the same level as "shaming Putin out of the Ukraine"? If you in any way are critical of US policy in the Far East, you become an "Anglophone apologist for the Chinese Communists"? If you advocate for a more robust and humane COVID containment policy not based on antivaxx/herd immunity/Ivermectin snake oil, you are ignoring inflation?
Really??
Strypey
We can't shame carbon emissions out of the atmosphere. We can't shame Putin into negotiating ceasefire with Ukraine. We can't shame down the price inflation amplified by these problems, and others, including the ongoing COVID pandemic, We can't even shame angry, politically-uneducated young white men away from fascists, neither the obvious ones on the right, nor those who masquerade as "left" (eg anglophone apologists for the CCP).
(6/?)
AnthonyJK-Admin
So, basically this boils down to the Left accepting "difference" and making nice with even reactionary fascists in order to expand beyond it's "bubble" & let in even the most retrograde fundamentalists for the greater goal of "class solidarity".
Sorry, but I don't think so.
In fact, doing this at a time when almost every liberal to socdem political tendency is bent on throwing marginalized people under their buses to jump on the fascist bandwagon, is political suicide for the Left.
Strypey
These problems can only be fixed by a left capable of organising to pursue justice for *all*. With full awareness of class hierarchies, within and between countries. Those foundations of the many forms and flavours of oppression that we *all* suffer under, if we don't have sufficient wealth (ie *capital*) to insulate ourselves. There is no place for public shaming of human beings in this.
I'll leave the last word to Francis Lee, who nailed it in this 2017 essay:
(7/?)
AnthonyJK-Admin
Organizing and educating people who don't support our goals and beliefs is one thing; weakening our standards in battling racism, sexism, homophobia, misogyny, and other forms of cultural fascism as part of our anti-capitalism simply to woo a few social conservatives is another thing altogether. The world is full of far too many examples of what abandonment of marginalized folk in the name of political expediency has wrought.
Once again, with all due respect, I must dissent.
AnthonyJK-Admin
I am all for universal solutions, and Socialism by definition seeks egalitarianism in all matters. To deny that particular groups are marginalized and targeted for elimination for no other reason than their race, creed, gender status, particular religious faith or lack thereof, and/or sexual orientation, and that this coexists alongside of and reinforces class inequality, however, is a total betrayal of the diversity of the working class, and a surrender to the Right.
Paul SomeoneElse
@AnthonyJK @strypey I read that differently than you did.
This made me think of how I've read in Jane McAlevy's books that in union solidarity you have to focus on the fight and your allies in *that* fight.
Which means in union issues specifically you can't "turn away" people based on political view. You can't get to 90% or whatever majority you need by excluding people.
AnthonyJK-Admin
I perfectly understand that in organizing you have to go after people who may fundamentally disagree with you. Usually, you can succeed in that by offering universal benefits so enticing that they overwhelm and dissolve cultural conflicts.
What I am talking about is that in political organization you have to lead by a foundational set of basic principles, and for any serious Indy Left/Socialist movement, solidarity with the most marginalized and targeted groups is essential.
Paul SomeoneElse
@AnthonyJK @strypey I also see the contradiction in that outlook, but I'm still mulling it over. For example I don't tolerate conservative people in my day to day life. Or on the internets.
(another thing I think of is like when Bernie went on Fox news. Which i respected a lot.)
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