Fascinating, wide-ranging analysis by @jemgilbert on the strengths, weaknesses & challenges facing the contemporary Left, on both sides of the Atlantic.
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.
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Americans who care about democracy, justice & the planet have to come together to prevent another Trump administration, which would attempt to introduce the regressive, antidemocratic & dangerously irresponsible policies laid out in the Heritage Foundation's #Project2025
Biden has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him as the nominee.
Before outlining some essential information about Harris, I'll quickly summarise the process be for choosing the Democratic nominee as described by Newsweek.
In a statement emailed to Newsweek, Democratic National Committee (DNC) chair Jaime Harrison said that the party would "undertake a transparent and orderly process to move forward as a united Democratic Party with a candidate who can defeat Donald Trump in November."
Professor of History & Public Policy at Duke University & author of the terrifying award-winning bestseller 'Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America', Nancy MacLean, recently discussed #Project2025.
Law professor & social critic Kimberlé Crenshaw interviewed MacLean about what the prescriptions in the Heritage Foundation’s #Project2025 mean for parents, public schools, & for multiracial democracy.
CRENSHAW: These wars on curricula are not new, of course; they go far back in our history. What folks might not know is that the Heritage Foundation, the main convenor of #Project2025, cut its teeth on curricular wars in the 1970s.
'The Republican blueprint for power contains the seeds of its own demise. It is not too late to stop the descent of the American political order into tyranny, oligarchy or anarchy', writes Timothy Snyder.
Pete Buttigieg is an American politician and former naval officer who is serving as the 19th United States secretary of transportation. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the 32nd mayor of South Bend, Indiana, from 2012 to 2020, which earned him the nickname "Mayor Pete".
Buttigieg is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Oxford, attending the latter on a Rhodes Scholarship. From 2009 to 2017, he was an intelligence officer in the United States Navy Reserve, attaining the rank of lieutenant.
Hitler survived assassination attempts. We know what that led to. Reagan & Thatcher survived assassination attempts. They gave us neoliberalism. Trump survived. He's chosen JD Vance as his running mate. If elected, America will become a dystopian free-market kleptocracy.
The 0.01% is gearing up to all but destroy US democracy.
Leading the charge & donating tens of millions of dollars to Trump's campaign are Silicon Valley's libertarian Tech billionaire extremists, led by Peter Thiel & Elon Musk - two of the most dangerous men on earth.
What's unfolding right now is like something from a dystopian sci-fi novel.
Except it's not fiction - it's real.
And it's a fucking nightmare assault on truth, fairness, equality, minorities, women's right, the environment & humanity, which democracy will struggle to survive.
"What first made Reform UK's white, privately educated multimillionaires Farage, Tice & Rupert Lowe oppose DEI?"
'Diversity Equity Inclusion' is a framework which promotes the fair treatment & full participation of ALL people, but particularly underrepresented groups...
Many people know that the term ‘DEI’ is being weaponized as a racist dog whistle (a coded, deniable bit of language that allows people to communicate ideas that would be too offensive if done explicitly).
There’s nothing new about using racist dog whistles. But the way DEI is used to play into racist sentiments is uniquely powerful, & may well be much more potent than other culture war terms.