Given the (I think) similar tendency on the right toward increasing intolerance of dissenting views, I'm inclined to think the problem is less with the ideology of the social justice movement than of the social dynamics of created by social media and increasing political polarization.
I once heard a ranger talk about baby rattlesnakes. Apparently, they are at their most dangerous when they're young and out and about because they can't control their venom. I always think about the generation that came of age on Tumblr and then got older and went to Twitter and then joined the work force as being like the baby rattlesnakes. They do not know their power so they kill things. What worries me more than the activists themselves are the corporations bowing to them. Therein lies the problem for our society. When publishing houses ban books, and movies and TV shows are dumbed down for the most sensitive among us, when we no longer can laugh at offensive jokes, when people can be fired for criticizing BLM -- that is when it goes from just destructive to the party to full blown 1984 land. I spend a lot of time on the right and they have the same inclinations as the left does - they just don't have the insitutional power. We need neutral entities and they're not at the moment. They've cast their side with the moneyed class which, now, is the left.
It's the juxtaposition of affected, swooning powerlessness with reality that stands out to me as well. People who had more spent on their education than I've spent in my entire life on everything, who've moved in elite circles since they can toddle, going around acting like they're Steve Biko.
Where I differ is, I think a lot of these people genuinely did think the riots were a good thing and genuinely do believe the things they say about power and identity. Maybe I'm overly optimistic. (I'd rather believe them sincere - and thus persuadable - than believe them capable of putting on the mask and thus unfathomably cynical, to the point of evil.)
But sincerity seems likely to me because of the efficacy gap. As you correctly point out, the riots didn't do a huge amount. (Trump looked weak in the face of them but he was going to lose anyway, most likely, and they weren't uniformly deployed to places he would be affected by. Portland still burns, a bit, for example.) But people still fight tooth and nail to defend them. I have an easier time thinking it's because these people actually believe that throwing a trash can through a laundromat's window is a revolutionary act, that small businesses are some disgusting bourgeois thing, and that opposition to this cry of the oppressed is itself violence.
Plus... those of us shivering outside the comfy confines of the Overton window may have an interest in backing you up here, but the pettier angels of our nature enjoy a wry smile when the likes of Bari Weiss are diet-cancelled. None of these people ever stood up for our rights, quite the opposite. David Shor is required reading to understand US elections, but does he care when the shoe is on the other foot? Do any of them?
I work for probably strongest Democratic state Legislature and I've seen older coworkers terrified (many of them Black) of saying the wrong thing or getting mixed up in something accidentally.
Something is seriously wrong when a woman born in the Jim Crow south (the REAL one) is apologizing for calling me honey.
I've never been one to defend the status quo, but the lack of allowing good faith dissent (and being able to handle the non good faith) has been extremely disappointing.
"Your with us or against us" the children of Bush are doing that right by him.
'In the span of a decade or less a bizarre form of linguistically-radical but substantively-conservative identity neoliberalism descended from decaying humanities departments in elite universities and infected social media like Tumblr and Twitter, through which it conquered the media and entertainment industries, the nonprofit industrial complex, and government entities as wide-ranging as the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights and the brass of the Pentagon.'
I don't what to say other than that the 'Left' is doing it wrong if it:
1) Is in the thrall of esoteric ideological fixations that appeal to a small Mandarin elite.
2) Has a relatively warm relationship with the CIA, NSA, FBI, and security state.
3) As its main job program expands the social work/HR class to surveil and punish both working class and white collar employees.
4) Is enthusiastically embraced by everyone from Raytheon to Coca Cola to Disney to the Google in deflecting critique of the neoliberal order.
5) Becomes essentially a state religion administered the Power Elite that cannibalizes more meaningful dissent.
6) Has absolute disdain for the working class and those in the 10th through 60th percentile of income in the US.
All of the affluent moderate Republican suburban house wives of my affluent suburban upbringing are now Instagram radicals.
It's like the algorithm has been perfectly tuned to create endless engagement and bread and circuses (sans bread). The only cohort of the Left that hasn't disgraced itself the past five years are the progressive civil libertarians.
'I think Klein didn’t really connect the dots between Shor’s cancelation and the debate about how the Democrats should strategize and message because he’s afraid of facing the same tactics Shor faced.'
Klein is the voice of his generation: endless dissembling and mealy-mouthed obfuscations.
I don't think he's ever voiced an opinion that isn't carefully calibrated and rehearsed to stay within the lines of the orthodoxies imposed by his peers.
I'm sorry to say that I don't think this dynamic in the Democratic party is fixable under current conditions. There's too much inertia and too much power behind this shitty status quo. Sooner or later it will almost certainly explode, lead to a political thrashing the likes of which we have never seen before. There's a vast reservoir of contempt, loathing, and resentment for these activists. It won't take much for the right kind of politician to tap into it. I find it highly unlikely that someone won't, and it probably won't take very long. It's not going to be pretty. I don't think activist Dems are aware this is as close as they'll probably get to power for a very long time. When you constantly antagonize most of the population sooner or later that same majority will stop putting up with it.
I've heard the argument made that stronger unions would help against all this, by preventing at-will firing of somebody to appease the frothing Twitter masses. Do you think this is so, and if so, how do we go about pushing for this change in the current climate?
Because something, structurally, needs to change to put an end to this insanity. Something that breaks the incentive structure driving all this.
On neoliberal sites and left-of-center sites, the woke mob is a problem of illiberal leftists.
On leftists sites that aren't woke, the woke mob is a problem of, as you put it "identity neoliberalism."
We aren't going to solve this problem by pointing at each other and saying its the others fault.
I don't know where it came from. I don't know who's fault it is. It could be smart phones, it could be American educational culture, it could be the legacy of the boomer generation that also thought it was the first truly moral generation and didn't acknowledge its forebears. I think the quest for power and control is a deeply seated human tendency, and that people are incredibly crafty in creating narratives that allow them to take power. In short, they will borrow from anything that works and make a new monster.
Great post on the erstwhile Columbus Day! I was ceremoniously unfriended last year for jokingly wishing everyone a "Happy Columbus Day" on FB. The unfriending then led to the lady doxing me for "defending rape" on some feminist site. Lost in all the rancor was the fact that I am a moderate Democrat who was just pointing out the absurdity of a half-assed name change to a holiday without ever trying to understand the voyages of discovery in the context of the era in which they happened. Or that the name change has not led to any real improvements within the Native-American communities. My post was sarcastic. At least I had no job to lose. . .But the irony of actually being lectured about my ignorance on a subject that I've thought deeply about over decades was amusing and pathetic.
I appreciate your focus on the silencing effect of fear in these movements. Everyone argues about who is or isn't "canceled", and all of that inevitably focuses on big names everyone has heard of. There's little recognition of how your average person is simply afraid to voice their opinions (which are by definition fairly average opinions). It's very stressful to live in a position where you're afraid that one wrong word could make you lose your job. So thank you for focusing on that.
I remain completely mystified by the fact that you claim to want the activists to win though. You write essay after essay writing about how awful these people are, and yet continue to claim to ally yourself with them. Why? Because they label themselves "leftist" even though most of them couldn't give two shits
The inevitable comeback to someone who disagrees with progressive Left orthodoxy on any point is, inevitably, that the objector will be labeled a "Trump Troll," which pretty much illustrates the progressive intolerance to any sort of criticism or critical reasoning that clashes with that of the progressive elites. It's knee jerk spawn of Godwin Law on steroids.
The hierarchy of suffering is a very interesting concept. I think it is a very real way many people think and preface some conversations.
I teach a diverse body of people in grad school (adults ranging 22-35 mainly) and will have a range of student issues each term ranging from deaths of parents, to bouts of physical or mental illness, to broke down cars, to sick pets. Each person is suffering and I do not evaluate their suffering. If they tell me they can't do an assignment I accept it. Race or gender orientation are not factors and if these are offered to convince me that the issue is even more valid..I tell them it's ok. I believe what you told me in the first place.
As for the larger world I do the same--assume each sufferer for their own reasons has a true belief in their suffering, but I do not assign them hierarchical status. I do not insert my personal history. Or in the words of a union colleague, we need to get this done for the greater good and "get over our own cheap selves."
Excellent post. I remember in the 2000s, we were fretting about whether we’d lose the white working class over “social issues” such as abortion and gay marriage. 20 years later, we’re happily telling the WWC to go fuck themselves. Democrats are screwed.
Given the (I think) similar tendency on the right toward increasing intolerance of dissenting views, I'm inclined to think the problem is less with the ideology of the social justice movement than of the social dynamics of created by social media and increasing political polarization.
I once heard a ranger talk about baby rattlesnakes. Apparently, they are at their most dangerous when they're young and out and about because they can't control their venom. I always think about the generation that came of age on Tumblr and then got older and went to Twitter and then joined the work force as being like the baby rattlesnakes. They do not know their power so they kill things. What worries me more than the activists themselves are the corporations bowing to them. Therein lies the problem for our society. When publishing houses ban books, and movies and TV shows are dumbed down for the most sensitive among us, when we no longer can laugh at offensive jokes, when people can be fired for criticizing BLM -- that is when it goes from just destructive to the party to full blown 1984 land. I spend a lot of time on the right and they have the same inclinations as the left does - they just don't have the insitutional power. We need neutral entities and they're not at the moment. They've cast their side with the moneyed class which, now, is the left.
It's the juxtaposition of affected, swooning powerlessness with reality that stands out to me as well. People who had more spent on their education than I've spent in my entire life on everything, who've moved in elite circles since they can toddle, going around acting like they're Steve Biko.
Where I differ is, I think a lot of these people genuinely did think the riots were a good thing and genuinely do believe the things they say about power and identity. Maybe I'm overly optimistic. (I'd rather believe them sincere - and thus persuadable - than believe them capable of putting on the mask and thus unfathomably cynical, to the point of evil.)
But sincerity seems likely to me because of the efficacy gap. As you correctly point out, the riots didn't do a huge amount. (Trump looked weak in the face of them but he was going to lose anyway, most likely, and they weren't uniformly deployed to places he would be affected by. Portland still burns, a bit, for example.) But people still fight tooth and nail to defend them. I have an easier time thinking it's because these people actually believe that throwing a trash can through a laundromat's window is a revolutionary act, that small businesses are some disgusting bourgeois thing, and that opposition to this cry of the oppressed is itself violence.
Plus... those of us shivering outside the comfy confines of the Overton window may have an interest in backing you up here, but the pettier angels of our nature enjoy a wry smile when the likes of Bari Weiss are diet-cancelled. None of these people ever stood up for our rights, quite the opposite. David Shor is required reading to understand US elections, but does he care when the shoe is on the other foot? Do any of them?
I work for probably strongest Democratic state Legislature and I've seen older coworkers terrified (many of them Black) of saying the wrong thing or getting mixed up in something accidentally.
Something is seriously wrong when a woman born in the Jim Crow south (the REAL one) is apologizing for calling me honey.
I've never been one to defend the status quo, but the lack of allowing good faith dissent (and being able to handle the non good faith) has been extremely disappointing.
"Your with us or against us" the children of Bush are doing that right by him.
Great piece.
I think this is basically sums it up:
'In the span of a decade or less a bizarre form of linguistically-radical but substantively-conservative identity neoliberalism descended from decaying humanities departments in elite universities and infected social media like Tumblr and Twitter, through which it conquered the media and entertainment industries, the nonprofit industrial complex, and government entities as wide-ranging as the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights and the brass of the Pentagon.'
I don't what to say other than that the 'Left' is doing it wrong if it:
1) Is in the thrall of esoteric ideological fixations that appeal to a small Mandarin elite.
2) Has a relatively warm relationship with the CIA, NSA, FBI, and security state.
3) As its main job program expands the social work/HR class to surveil and punish both working class and white collar employees.
4) Is enthusiastically embraced by everyone from Raytheon to Coca Cola to Disney to the Google in deflecting critique of the neoliberal order.
5) Becomes essentially a state religion administered the Power Elite that cannibalizes more meaningful dissent.
6) Has absolute disdain for the working class and those in the 10th through 60th percentile of income in the US.
All of the affluent moderate Republican suburban house wives of my affluent suburban upbringing are now Instagram radicals.
It's like the algorithm has been perfectly tuned to create endless engagement and bread and circuses (sans bread). The only cohort of the Left that hasn't disgraced itself the past five years are the progressive civil libertarians.
'I think Klein didn’t really connect the dots between Shor’s cancelation and the debate about how the Democrats should strategize and message because he’s afraid of facing the same tactics Shor faced.'
Klein is the voice of his generation: endless dissembling and mealy-mouthed obfuscations.
I don't think he's ever voiced an opinion that isn't carefully calibrated and rehearsed to stay within the lines of the orthodoxies imposed by his peers.
I'm sorry to say that I don't think this dynamic in the Democratic party is fixable under current conditions. There's too much inertia and too much power behind this shitty status quo. Sooner or later it will almost certainly explode, lead to a political thrashing the likes of which we have never seen before. There's a vast reservoir of contempt, loathing, and resentment for these activists. It won't take much for the right kind of politician to tap into it. I find it highly unlikely that someone won't, and it probably won't take very long. It's not going to be pretty. I don't think activist Dems are aware this is as close as they'll probably get to power for a very long time. When you constantly antagonize most of the population sooner or later that same majority will stop putting up with it.
I've heard the argument made that stronger unions would help against all this, by preventing at-will firing of somebody to appease the frothing Twitter masses. Do you think this is so, and if so, how do we go about pushing for this change in the current climate?
Because something, structurally, needs to change to put an end to this insanity. Something that breaks the incentive structure driving all this.
GREAT post, thank you Freddie.
On neoliberal sites and left-of-center sites, the woke mob is a problem of illiberal leftists.
On leftists sites that aren't woke, the woke mob is a problem of, as you put it "identity neoliberalism."
We aren't going to solve this problem by pointing at each other and saying its the others fault.
I don't know where it came from. I don't know who's fault it is. It could be smart phones, it could be American educational culture, it could be the legacy of the boomer generation that also thought it was the first truly moral generation and didn't acknowledge its forebears. I think the quest for power and control is a deeply seated human tendency, and that people are incredibly crafty in creating narratives that allow them to take power. In short, they will borrow from anything that works and make a new monster.
Does it matter where it came from?
Great post on the erstwhile Columbus Day! I was ceremoniously unfriended last year for jokingly wishing everyone a "Happy Columbus Day" on FB. The unfriending then led to the lady doxing me for "defending rape" on some feminist site. Lost in all the rancor was the fact that I am a moderate Democrat who was just pointing out the absurdity of a half-assed name change to a holiday without ever trying to understand the voyages of discovery in the context of the era in which they happened. Or that the name change has not led to any real improvements within the Native-American communities. My post was sarcastic. At least I had no job to lose. . .But the irony of actually being lectured about my ignorance on a subject that I've thought deeply about over decades was amusing and pathetic.
I appreciate your focus on the silencing effect of fear in these movements. Everyone argues about who is or isn't "canceled", and all of that inevitably focuses on big names everyone has heard of. There's little recognition of how your average person is simply afraid to voice their opinions (which are by definition fairly average opinions). It's very stressful to live in a position where you're afraid that one wrong word could make you lose your job. So thank you for focusing on that.
I remain completely mystified by the fact that you claim to want the activists to win though. You write essay after essay writing about how awful these people are, and yet continue to claim to ally yourself with them. Why? Because they label themselves "leftist" even though most of them couldn't give two shits
The inevitable comeback to someone who disagrees with progressive Left orthodoxy on any point is, inevitably, that the objector will be labeled a "Trump Troll," which pretty much illustrates the progressive intolerance to any sort of criticism or critical reasoning that clashes with that of the progressive elites. It's knee jerk spawn of Godwin Law on steroids.
The hierarchy of suffering is a very interesting concept. I think it is a very real way many people think and preface some conversations.
I teach a diverse body of people in grad school (adults ranging 22-35 mainly) and will have a range of student issues each term ranging from deaths of parents, to bouts of physical or mental illness, to broke down cars, to sick pets. Each person is suffering and I do not evaluate their suffering. If they tell me they can't do an assignment I accept it. Race or gender orientation are not factors and if these are offered to convince me that the issue is even more valid..I tell them it's ok. I believe what you told me in the first place.
As for the larger world I do the same--assume each sufferer for their own reasons has a true belief in their suffering, but I do not assign them hierarchical status. I do not insert my personal history. Or in the words of a union colleague, we need to get this done for the greater good and "get over our own cheap selves."
Excellent post. I remember in the 2000s, we were fretting about whether we’d lose the white working class over “social issues” such as abortion and gay marriage. 20 years later, we’re happily telling the WWC to go fuck themselves. Democrats are screwed.