Thread by @docrussjackson

Fascinating, wide-ranging analysis by @jemgilbert on the strengths, weaknesses & challenges facing the contemporary Left, on both sides of the Atlantic.

Well worth reading all of it. (Summary below).

opendemocracy.net/en/we-lost-bec…

The professional political class, & the interests it represents (finance capital/Big Tech) have fought off a democratic assault by convincing affluent professionals that the Left is a threat to their most cherished values: meritocratic, individualistic, cosmopolitan liberalism.

"The world-view of older voters with low-education is heavily shaped by the power of the tabloid press & its ideological allies online in the UK; by the media constellation organised around Fox News in the US."

These institutions, & the ideologies they propagate, remain major obstacles for any project that would seek to actually address the fundamental social questions raised by the fight against structural racism (or against rampant economic inequality, or against climate catastrophe).

'A degree of basic economic protection for the poorest workers has been stripped away since the 1970s. For poor white workers, especially straight men, the decline in the value accorded to their cultural status has coincided with a decline in their economic & political power.'

This provokes resentment of a cosmopolitan political elite, driving support for the far-Right. In the UK & US, the second most powerful section of the mass media (after neoliberals at the @BBC & other major broadcasters) is committed to an ideology of authoritarian nationalism.

In 2019 voters didn’t believe that a Corbyn govt would be able to deliver its programme. The City of London, the BBC, the Murdoch press, the Right wing of the @UKLabour Party would have conspired to ensure that it failed, & the movement just wasn’t big enough to take them on.

‘Disaster nationalist’ politics thrives in the chaos of a society in permanent crisis, deploying nationalist tropes to win support for its aim: to prevent a coherent challenge to capitalist power. Platform nationalism deploys social media & digital platforms to further this end.

"Despite the electoral setbacks of 2019/20, the organised Left is larger and more dynamic in both the UK and the US than it has been at any point since the catastrophic defeats of the 1980s. Just 5 years ago it would not have been remotely plausible to make such a claim."

Corbyn & Sanders inspired & mobilised hundreds of thousands of younger activists who had never been mobilised before, to remake connections between electoral politics & movement activism, detoxifying the concept of socialism with many voters: an enormous historical achievement.

Millions of people are now experiencing the lived contradiction between the obvious power of both govts & people to act collectively in a highly-networked world, AND the complete failure of neoliberal capitalism to deliver on its promises of prosperity & autonomy for citizens.

We continue to enjoy relatively high levels of union density: 23% as of 2018, as opposed to 10% in the US. Pressuring unions to take a more active role in countering Right-wing propaganda is an obvious task for the Left for the foreseeable future.

One implication of Jem Gilbert's analysis is the urgency of developing propaganda, alternative media and political education resources aimed not only at working class citizens and young graduates, but at the middle-aged, middle-class voters.

The attempt by the populist Right to associate the Green New Deal with a middle-class & cosmopolitan culture, that they will portray as inimical to the values & interests of the White post-industrial working-class, presents a significant ideological and organisational challenge.