How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement
Hello friends, I’m thrilled to announce my upcoming book from Simon & Schuster, How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement, to be published on September 5th. It’s a sympathetic but critical look at the social justice movement of the past decade, particularly the culmination of those efforts in 2020. I look at BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo, the nonprofit industry, Occupy Wall Street and the Bernie Sanders movement, and various other forces that created a supposed moment of reckoning that year and ask: why didn’t any of it work? Approaching the three-year anniversary of George Floyd’s killing, evidence of real progress stemming from those heated days is thin on the ground. I consider the left’s messaging and tactics, the competing temptations of structurelessness and reliance on establishment institutions, and the overbearing influence of affluent white liberals on progressive politics. I advocate for a return to class-based messaging and lay out some tangible and actionable advice for how the social justice movement can achieve more than heat and noise in the future.
You can currently preorder the book in hardcover, Kindle, and audiobook formats on Amazon. If you’re an anti-Amazon type, I will have other ways to buy in the near future. Please consider preordering if you like my work, and share the news with people in your networks. I’m really excited about this book; it’s the culmination of many years of thinking and writing about what conditions hamstring the left and keep us from winning real change. And, inshallah, something like my last word on these issues. I’ll have more to share as publication day gets closer. Cheers and thanks.
Looking forward to reading it.
You ask....Why not return to a class based critique and activism (something I embrace)? Because social activism, regardless of intent, acts as cover for class.
The failure of Occupy Wall Street was near total. On the other hand, Black Lives Matter (and MeToo) were embraced by the business world precisely because they posed no threat to business models and their money making mission.
Pre-ordered a hard copy. Congrats for this. I can't believe you wrote a book while sustaining the pace on this substack. You have a hell of a work ethic.