If you are of the mind that the best and perhaps only way to correct the economic and social iniquities in American society is to bind together the lower and working classes and the dispossessed, regardless of their race, ethnicity or religion, then seeing black athletes kneel for the national anthem must be somewhere between frustrating and infuriating. And that’s because the result is easy to see. The people most offended by the seeming disrespect of our flag and anthem are precisely the whites from lower socioeconomic classes who are needed for the making of the great socialist revolution. This is a case where black athletes, whatever their good intentions, are pouring jet fuel on the things that divide us in the so-called Culture Wars.
That’s a point of view, and people are entitled to it. Others are entitled to see things differently. But this is how I interpret the following tweet from my colleague David Atkins which refers to the current brouhaha between Cornel West and Ta-Nehisi Coates. (For my observations on that matter, I have nothing to add to Simon Balto’s excellent piece from this weekend.)
The core of neoliberalism is to use the culture war to deny class struggle in order to preserve socially liberal, fiscally conservative policy. By (wrongly) claiming that no class solidarity could have stopped Trump, Serwer/Coates are (inadvertently?) serving neoliberal ends. https://t.co/ek5bl65uZW
— David Atkins (@DavidOAtkins) December 17, 2017
I am fully cognizant that the character limitations of a Tweet make it difficult to craft an unassailable argument. So, I don’t want to nitpick too much here, but I find it jarring to state the “core” of neoliberalism is anything other than a set of economic practices and political preferences. I’m willing to grant a lesser charge that neoliberal policies are empowered when the classes who should rightly oppose them are instead focused on other things, including fighting each other. And, therefore, encouraging the lower classes to fight each other is a sensible political ambition of anyone who wants to win a political battle in the interest of advancing neoliberal policies.
Based on this, it’s certainly possible for people to inadvertently do the neoliberals’ work for them by ramping up racial or ethnic or religious tensions. This wouldn’t make them neoliberals, though, which is the charge Cornel West leveled at Ta-Nehisi Coates. It would make them unwitting agents in their own oppression.
As I said at the top, though, the socialist point of view here isn’t the only possible point of view. Mainstream Democrats may be as frustrated by the anthem-kneeling as the Cornel Wests of the world, but for strictly short-term political reasons and with no reference to any curtailment or postponement of the great revolution.
At the same time, those who are focused primarily on police brutality and murder instead of the results of the next midterm elections are going to look at the anthem-kneeling in terms of its prospects for raising awareness, providing disruption and discomfort to the status quo, and its suitability for taking a strong moral stand. In other words, they’re engaged in a civil rights struggle, not a struggle to defeat Barry Goldwater and the Republican Party. Martin Luther King Jr. and the other heroes of his era didn’t worry about making LBJ and his Democrats uncomfortable or splitting their New Deal alliance because they had larger and more urgent concerns.
It would be nice if people could pursue social justice and political victories in complete synchronicity, but that’s almost never the case. The two are often out of time with each other and depending on your priorities you’ll often see one or the other as misguided or morally compromised.
If some will quarrel with the utility and effectiveness of the national anthem protests, the utopian assumptions of the socialist critique are at least as suspect. They don’t ignore civil rights concerns even though they are frequently accused of doing exactly that. Instead, they’d have us believe that issues of racial inequality and injustice will be solved best and once the great multiracial solidarity of the lower classes is finally achieved. Harping on these outrages is counterproductive if it only serves to delay the great alliance.
It’s easy to start from those assumptions and quickly reach a place where Ta-Nehisi Coates is a neoliberal because he’s doing their work for them. From there, you might even convince yourself that police brutality and murder would resolve itself if only Coates would shut up or change his argument and focus.
I frame things this way so that you can, hopefully, see how ridiculous the socialist critique really is. It suffers from the same defects that most ideologies suffer from, seeking too-pat solutions and wishing people would be different than they are.
Ta-Nahisi Coates didn’t cause the culture wars and he can’t be credibly accused of meaningfully exacerbating them. We have a president and a political movement that is stoking racial tensions so hard it’s turning the country into a blast furnace. To think that multiracial class solidarity is just around the corner and only delayed by folks who insist on their civil rights is the height of folly.
Far better to accept that everyone is going to fight their own battles in their own way on their own time, and that you’ll never be satisfied that they’re all working with you on a common purpose with an agreed strategy. This is okay. Really. It’s how things are.
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Far better to accept that everyone is going to fight their own battles in their own way on their own time, and that you’ll never be satisfied that they’re all working with you on a common purpose with an agreed strategy. This is okay. Really. It’s how things are.
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This. A thousand times this.
I see the issue between Coates and West as something far simpler. It has nothing to do with political or social issues. West wants relevance, he wants everyone to LISTEN, but only to him, or those he says are worth listening to. He wants to direct the conversation. So he can’t stand to see anyone else of color get attention, or be listened to. He had this problem with Obama, he now has it with Coates.
.
Fuck the soul searching.
Progressiveism is a fungible set of ideas. Everybody has a different twist to the bread, and some don’t even think its bread.
Let the protesters decide the place, time and action to suit the need. I think the kneel was the best thing since cut bread at the start. But like the free speech crusades of the IWW, its easy to outlive its usefulness.
However, its not my place to say who can protest, how they protest or what they protest.
It’s not that the perfect is the enemy of the good, it is that tactics have shelf lives. And protest has costs. Neither of those affect the controversy between West and Coates, which is akin to the controversies between other spokespersons for change througout history.
One can appreciate both of their points of view without having to join a personality cult. Just because Coates is easier for white people to take doesn’t mean that West does not have some critical insights that white people better take cognizance of for the sake of the country.
And the reality is if you want to build a movement large enough to change the status quo you will have to include many disparate elements with different perspectives, strategies, policies and leadership ambitions. Everyone doesn’t have to be marching in lock step as long as most are generally trying to head in a similar direction and are prepared to help each other along the way. Those who promote infighting between different groupings are merely dissipating the energy of the movement as a whole and making it less likely that the movement as a whole will achieve any of its aims. Best to focus on what unites you.
I’m frustrated with the anthem-kneeling for one reason and one reason only. Too many municipal, state, and federal officials do not realize that allowing law enforcement officials impunity in extrajudicial punishment, injury, and death of innocent people does not reduce crime…period.
How are people who are not the “right identity” supposed to register their opposition to this failure of justice.
I lived through the first 16 years of my life not knowing that on segregation social justice and politics were intended to align–that those fine words in the Declaration of Independence spoke to the necessity of that alignment for the survival of stable governments.
And then I saw those things that upset white people enough to murder black leaders and their white allies. And then I saw politics briefly align long enough with justice to make a huge difference, especially in the South. Now the South only has to deal with the injustice that the rest of the country does.
And I saw the party that brought about that massive change backtrack with talk about the perfect being the enemy of the good. To the point of not understanding the rise of white terrorism again.
And I am seeing the same old bogeymen invoked for failure to change. “You are pushing too hard.” The same old refrain. That was what FDR told Eleanor Roosevelt and what Strom Thurmond told Harry Truman.
What is means is that there are some people in politics who are committed to never fulfilling the promise of the US Constitution.
Deserting Black Lives Matter is a huge betrayal. Providing the ideology to do that is a failure of progressive thought. The same sort of failure that beset the country in 1875 and did not end until 1964.
Social justice is just “too hard” for white people to support in their own social networks. And who knows, there might be some murdering looneys now among their friends, co-workers, family members, and neighbors.
But those would are “SJW snowflakes” must be once again lectured like children who expect constitutions and laws to be obeyed and serve all members of society. After 241 years one would think the the United States of America would at least get that one thing implemented.
Last summer I watched the Democratic Party Convention put the Mothers Of The Movement on stage. I was extraordinarly happy they were given their national audience, and was impressed by the dignity and righteousness they displayed in their statements.
As I was watching the Mothers speak on live TV, I did develop a sense of disquiet. I flashed upon the likelihood that there would be many millions of persuadable white voters who would be opposed to their statements or made uncomfortable by what the Mothers were sharing in a way that would make it less likely for them to vote for candidates from the Democratic Party.
I’m comfortable with people joining me to devise effective organizing methods to push the Democratic Party to the left. I am not comfortable and am made very angry by those who organize against turnout for Democratic Party candidates in general elections because of their unwillingness to devise effective organizing methods.
When liberals make broad claims that Democrats are just as bad as a Republicans, or that they’re not worth turning out to vote for, or that they’re just “the lesser of two evils,” they leave rhetorical ordinance laying around which blow up their electoral chances to gain the policy changes they want.
Those who are unwilling to patiently and skillfully organize for their policy views within a viable political Party and electoral campaigns are part of the problem. Not just for us, but for themselves.
You know what’s not a skillful organizing technique on the Left? Assigning #1, 2 and 3 priority the delivery of complaints about how terrible Clinton/Obama/Pelosi/Schumer/the Party/etc. etc. etc. are, and burying responses to the highly, highly inferior Trump and Republican Party elected officials. That’s no goddamn way to win elections, or to move the Party to the left. It’s also no way to gain as many policy wins as we can during this despicable Presidency and Congressional term.
Another piss poor organizing technique? Bellowing out the view that the most broadly progressive President and Congress in history were all corrupt murderous neoliberal sellouts who were to the right of President Nixon. It’s profoundly alienating and guaranteed to fail to achieve the policy goals of the bellowers.
I watched the Democratic honoring of the Mothers of the Movement and also the honoring of Rev. William Barber of the Moral Monday Movement in North Carolina. Both of those have created material movement on these issues in their communities. That was welcome after so many Democratic mayors did not have the courage to call their police forces to account. And majority Democratic legislatures and city councils did not have the courage to call their police chief and police departments to account. The Governor of Missouri Jay Nixon created the mess in Ferguson; the Democratic district attorney made it worse; the Obama Department of Homeland Security allowed the local police and state patrol to treat a peaceful protest as a violent riot. Those are realities that politicized situations in exactly the wrong way to bring either order or change to the situation.
It was wrong in the same way that Gov. Lyttleton’s response to the Cherokee War in 1759 was wrong. Lyttleeton’s actions and that of his militia first held as hostage most all of the peace party of the Cherokee nation; and then, not knowing what to do, the hostages (remember, most all of the peace party) were killed leaving less of a counter-balance to the war party and perpetuating the war almost all the way off and on through the American Revolution (about 13 years).
The same kind of idiocy beset the Blue Dogs and New Democrats during and after the Obama 2008 election. Most of those Democrats are no longer with us. They could have been had they had the sense of Doug Jones. That Tim Kaine did not discipline them and argue for them to back the President was a weakness that he has shown several times since then. It was idiocy in 2010. It was idiocy in 2014. It was absolute idiocy in the way that the Clinton campaign went about campaigning in the South. Assuming and coddling bigotry has two results: reducing motivation of people of color to vote and not actually turning out the votes of whites who are not bigots. Southern Democrats during the 1960s and 1970s used to be able to make the progressive sale on the basis of economic development and better education and wise investment of government funds. They could make the local appeals to move forward out of the issues that de jure segregation left to deal with. Now, the bigots in power consider George Wallace a liberal sellout. People like Walter Jones and Richarrd Shelby just took a lazy way into public office.
A piss poor organizing technique is to have full court press GOTV to neighborhood level for two Presidential elections and then follow it in 2016 with nothing, leaving many volunteers waiting for a phone call and the recognition that Democrats have an institutional memory that values its volunteers and that is doing something useful with the multiple million of dollars pouring into the coffers.
Not sure which progressive President and Congress were “corrupt murderous neoliberal sellouts who were the right of President Nixon.” For historical accuracy, they would have to have followed Ronald Reagan. And for accuracy of labeling, they would have to have been blind to the failure of austerity to create financial
stability. One who fit that for sure was Kent Conrad.
As for murderous, Rahm Emanuel still fits that description. So do the Democrats still in power in the St. Louis area.
Governor Nixon and District Attorney McCulloch were indeed sacks of shit in their responses to the Ferguson protests and needless killing of a citizen in particular and in their contribution to the lack of police accountability in general. They were terrible Democrats.
But claiming “…the Obama Department of Homeland Security allowed the local police and state patrol to treat a peaceful protest as a violent riot” is an inaccurate and unwarranted criticism. The Ferguson Police Department acted improperly and counterproductively; they didn’t ask Homeland Security for pre-approval of their provocative, violent tactics, nor were they required to by law. I don’t know of any laws which give DHS officers the authority to execute prior restraint of local law enforcement. The Governor is the Executive who has most immediate authority over these incidents; it was the Governor who was slow to respond in words and deeds.
President Obama spoke disapprovingly of the FPD’s treatment of the media and protesters, sent Attorney General Holder to monitor the situation, and the Justice Department essentially forced Ferguson to accept a consent decree to monitor their long-term compliance in making many, many positive changes in law enforcement in the City. The differences between President Obama/AG Holder and President Trump/AG Sessions on consent decrees and other behaviors of the Justice Department have been dramatic.
Re. your last paragraph, people who claim the liberal mantle have claimed that President Obama and the 111th Congress created terrible, regressive policies; some have even compared him unfavorably to President Nixon. The broadness of many of these claims, and the plain mendacity of some of the specific claims, are hashed out here and elsewhere over and over again. In my view, some of these claims are made in poor faith.
Those who spent Fall 2016 actively trying to suppress votes for the only candidate who could prevent the President Trump Administration, and are now trying to depress electoral turnout for the only viable political Party which can take power from this clearly inferior Administration and Congress, are part of the problem.
Those who are gearing up to support the very best candidates in the 2018 primaries are partners in a movement which will lead to many electoral and policy wins. Those who are gearing up to encourage voters to stay home if their “very best candidate” fails to win the primary are a particularly big part of our problem.
There is sufficient evidence to show that from Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter to the No-DAPL protests in Cannon Ball ND to the inauguration protests and Charlottesville and other fascist-antifa protests, the Department of Homeland Security fusion centers have spun riot theater as the first response to peaceful protests, have privileged right-wing terrorists and over-policed actual peaceful protesters.
If you would like, I could cite chapter and verse of incidents for which during his administration President Obama should have known what the Fusion Centers were doing and should have changed the policy of his executive agency. In every case from the coordination of all of the takedowns of Occupy Wall Street tent cities of three weeks, it is clear that the Police Executive Research Foundation acted a the policy point for tasking the regional fusion centers in those take downs of marginal constitutionality.
The mendacity is the in the insistence of either good faith or the courage to challenge poor policies within the law enforcement community.
Your emphasis on those who resist voting for the “lesser of two evils” is on target, but don’t continue to conflate that issue with some demonstrable failures of the Obama administration and Obama himself. It was not a flawless performance and it should not have been expected to be. But the failure to honor the freedom of speech and the protections of the Fourth Amendment and the allowing of a growing police state networked into right-wing movements that thought they had (and still think they have impunity) within the law enforcement community was a clear failure that set a dangerous precedent for what future Presidents can do.
There better be some “very best candidates” in 2018 and not the sort that we have seen pushed off as “the best we can do”. I’m ready to vote for David Price again, but I would like a new face with stronger rhetorical presence in North Carolina and the ability to change some attitudes. The closest we have to a policy Congressman in North Carolina is Walter Jones and he was a Democrat to changed parties because he lost his dad’s seat in a primary challenge.
The Obama Administration’s DOJ successfully pursued the prosecution and eventual conviction of a County Sheriff who executed broad civil rights denials. That same Justice Department conducted investigations of many other local law enforcement agencies. Those investigations resulted in a large number of consent decrees, many of which were very broad and aggressive in their requirements that those local peace officers change their practices.
That said, I’m in strong agreement that the formation of Fusion Centers and other decisions made by Obama’s DHS were corrosive to an open society. It was a big error.
you are far more generous to cornel west than I ever would be.
Great post. The idea that anybody in the Democratic Party somehow exacerbates the “culture wars” is nuts. The so called progressive left has been whining like this for as long as I have followed politics – the Kennedy administration.
Neoliberal are exploiting Republican attacks on minorities and women to preserve the economic status quo? How about we say that the socialist bloc is using the class struggle to try to minimize civil rights in order to preserve white male privilege. That was certainly the view of the women and minorities when I was in university, back in the days when Bernie Sanders was stealing power from his neighbors.
The white ruling class has been successfully using race to divide the working class since the very beginning, for 300 years before the word neoliberal was invented. Since the 1960’s Democrats have been on the right side of this issue even though it is a political loser for them.
White people oppressing blacks to let poor whites feel superior. The problem is not with those who are oppressed. The problem is with the whites who race bait and with whites who leap at every chance to take the race bait.
West’s critique includes broad pronouncements like this: “Coates and I come from a great tradition of the black freedom struggle. He represents the neoliberal wing that sounds militant about white supremacy but renders black fightback invisible.”
Thank you, Cornel West, you insufferable ass. Thank you for demonstrating that you have not a scintilla of insight into your own arrogance. To you, neoliberal is anyone who doesn’t swallow your points of view whole. Talk about entitlement. You think you’re entitled to define the terms, articles and confines of every discussion, every struggle, every movement. Heck, you believe you get to define the bounds of the progressive cause itself. Obama didn’t bow before the great Cornel and, thus, was relegated to Uncle Tom status in your world.
How many black people on the street subscribe to West’s worldview? Obama never said a word in response because West is an irrelevance.
I like Cornell West and have never seen eye to eye with Coates but even I think tossing around neoliberal like this makes it a useless buzzword. I am going to need a lot more evidence before I belueve a man who champions slavery reparations is a neoliberal.
It’s just another example of how the word “neoliberal” has lost any useful meaning and devolved to the rhetorical equivalent of “poopyhead”.
I think West equates neoliberal with Wall Street, wars, global finance and austerity leading to poverty and sub optimal economics, inequality for Black people at the hand of white supremacists. He has a particular problem with Obama who he feels has not spoken up often or forcefully enough about things like Ferguson and criticizes Coates for taking too narrow a view and in particular about Obama. Both support reparations. And both oppose white supremacy.
I don’t read West as frequently as I used to, but I have heard him speaking a whole bunch in the last year. I disagree with the certainty of Cornel’s claim that Bernie would have been certain to defeat Trump. The nastiness of West’s personal attacks on anyone on the Left other than those who agree with 100% of his ideology make me disinclined to be sympathetic to him in the dispute he has ginned up with Coates.
I place West in the category of people who use “neoliberal” as a pejorative against those on the left side of the ideological spectrum who are unwilling to advocate and fight for the quick tearing out of our capitalist economy, military programs and security agencies. He and those who support his views haven’t built the case to win majority support from the American people for these changes, but they concentrate their rhetorical aim at others on the Left, openly supporting the poisonous, electorally destructive “two evils” frame.
He and Coates are in agreement on a number of issues, I believe, like white supremacy, poverty, police and prisons. They both voted for Sanders. You are right that West wants everyone to toe his line and Coates is reluctant to use the neoliberal rubric, and he does not join West in criticizing Obama. That may have been the trigger for this. West uses neoliberal as a hammer, all bad. The faster it went away the better he would feel I think. He looks at things globally. And so he uses it in connection with drone strikes and wars.
Neoliberalism IS all bad. I accept Coates defense that he doesn’t write about those parts of American Empire because he is not informed enough to do so. But it makes me think less of him that he has no interest in changing that.
not knowing enough to write about it doesn’t equal not wanting to know more but people specialize for a reason
You dont need majority support to do that, the GOP tore the heart out of the country not 3 hours ago with 37% approval.
That said I do think its incumbent upon us to build public and inter party support for those positions. I do think Bernie would have won but if we cant convince enough people of that to vote for him in the party primary then thats not worth much. By the same token the need to dispense with the old guard democeats and elevate new people like the republicans do us vital but the first step is convincing people they need to go. Thats on me and those of us who think they should.
I upgraded your comment but it’s broadly right on the money, but offer mild disagreement with the claim that Republicans “elevate new people”. McConnell and Ryan have been primary faces of their Congressional Caucuses for a long time, as have many of their most prominent colleagues (McCain, Hatch, etc.). The Republican Party establishment is not particularly supportive of new leaders like Cruz and was in downright opposition to “new person” Trump for quite a while.
As to whether the Democratic Party should toss Pelosi and Schumer from leadership positions, I’d point out that they are doing a fantastic job holding their entire caucuses in line. To get each and every one of the most conservative and liberal Democrats to vote the same way every time on all important legislation has been an important accomplishment which requires extremely strong leadership. I can’t name alternative Congressional Democrats who would be as skilled in making these outcomes so certain.
In other news, the republicans have successfully raided the treasury with hardly anyone noticing. The market yawned and fell a bit – why? Something not right?
The TrueLeftistsTM cannot get their heads around this concept. And also that there will still be misogyny and racism in the Great Worker’s Paradise.
Coates isn’t a Neoliberal – whatever that even means at this point - he’s a realist.