6 KiB
+++ title = "liberalism and the rise of trump" summary = "there's some broad historical revisionism going on" date = "2018-01-14T10:35:00-00:00" source = [ "https://mastodon.social/@trwnh/99347736716090638", "https://mastodon.social/@trwnh/99355650165263881", "https://mastodon.social/@trwnh/99359516579847229", ] +++
some vox article about trump and liberalism
eh, the article and its analysis has many issues with it
- liberals aren't leftist
- "reforms" were gained by strikes and protests, and it was anarchists and communists that led the struggle, not liberals
- presents japanese internment as a "flaw" and not a great injustice
- "whether the state has a responsibility to ensure a moral and socially desirable distribution of wealth" is irrelevant; welfare capitalism is still capitalism
- you can't "correct" inequities by using the institutions that exist to propagate them; they are working as intended
- "appealing to national pride" is fascist
- anticommunism and mccarthyism WAS a major reactionary force, not a "purity test" by the left
- the "strategy" you quoted has mostly been adopted by modern democrats in reaction to the rise of the "religious right" and other ratfucking attempts
- the left was sabotaged by the fbi/cia
- academia and technocracy aren't hallmarks of the left, either
- "the hard work of liberal democratic politics" is, again, fruitless; the real issue is the complete defanging of the left by COINTELPRO and other initiatives; we need more haymarket squares and more may days, not endlessly begging politicians to not murder us
- in short: yes a revolt is justified because america was founded on a fascist mythos of expansionism and exceptionalism
i guess in conclusion i'd say that the "make america great again" point is really close to being on the money
-
the right = "make america great again" by national rebirth (one of the 3 main tenets of fascism)
-
the liberals = "america is already great" because we just need a bit of reform (and all horrors are simply aberrations)
-
the left = "america was never great" because it was explicitly founded as colonialist/imperialist/white-supremacist
[...]
no, the extreme right wants a reactionary / openly fascist state that broadly uses violence to liquidate "degenerates" and other "undesirables". the state would be an even stronger force of national supremacy and authority than it already is.
I guess the larger point I'm trying to make is that there's some broad historical revisionism going on, as an attempt to maintain authority. the idea of the nonviolent reformist solution to everything is not how most social revolutions work. this wasn't new to the 1960s; a much longer history of struggle against state violence exists, going back through all of america's colonial history
i.e. as a nation, we've never "reformed" anything. radical abolitionists like john brown and the free soil party did more to end slavery than abraham lincoln ever did. the black panther party's community policing and radical housing and food programs were effective despite the fbi assassinating almost every single one of their leaders. fdr proclaimed to businesses that the new deal would "save capitalism" from the labor insurgency.
the original article kind of glosses over all this in an attempt to paint trump as a new phenomenon and not the natural result of weak reformism utterly failing to uplift anyone. the central thesis is that the left failed because of a lack of bourgeois democracy, not because of pervasive sabotage efforts by the state like cointelpro
[...]
i can see that. i grew up in alabama, and there's a rich history of communism down here. (Hammer and Hoe is a good book to read about this)
the big switch from dem to GOP was an orchestrated effort to create an "identitarian" base of support. that is, by building up whiteness, by having politicians speak at churches and then funding preachers to spread political messages, etc... political parties hope to become functions of identity
the alt-right is, in fact, the most modern outgrowth of the "identitarian" movement -- their politics are descended directly from the cynical traditionalism employed by the political right for over half a century. the people who grew up with this stuff eventually realized that the GOP was in the same boat as the dems; that military contracts and tax subsidies was their only real aim.
but the real problem was that there was no opposition to this idea -- the fbi destroyed it with cointelpro and by assassinating anyone who became too influential.
in this void, the liberals decided that they would try to minimize racial tensions rather than approach them head-on. the outgrowth of this was the dlc, which argued that the democrats had gone "too far to the left" with the new deal and great society legislation.
if i had to pick a reason why much of the south doesn't like democrats, it would be that they just don't trust them. and their visible options have been restricted to the democrats and republicans, which is barely a choice at all. so some people vote gop because they think it'll trickle down or their taxes will go down. democrats are stuck in this perception that taxes and welfare are the only way forward, which doesn't really net much
but way more people around me are nonpolitical. most people don't vote. they're too busy working at jobs that don't pay enough, and either voting hasn't done anything for them, or they CAN'T vote. the conversation is dominated by republicans who promise lower taxes, and by democrats who insult them. every time alabama comes up in national news it's always derisively, and people notice that stuff.
i very much believe that if were any legitimate opposition to the established order, it would gain supporters in droves... but the state has prevented that from being viable by neutralizing opposition wherever it finds it. the FBI and CIA, as part of the "national security" apparatus, take the view that any subversion is harmful to national security. and i mean, they're kinda right. but that's the whole problem...