Fight internecine battles another day
A repeated theme in Anand Giridharadas’s “The Persuaders” (I’m about halfway through) is “Is there room among the woke for the waking?” The issue at hand is whether those on the left edge of the left — at the cutting edge of consciousness, if you prefer — possess enough critical mass form to move the culture in their direction by themselves.
Veteran activists Giridharadas profiles have decided they do not. Success means expanding their movements without compromising them. They’ve learned to “call in” progressives with whom they mostly agree rather than just calling them out for their failings, to focus more on conversion than on hunting heretics. They walk a fine line seeking to coalition with more moderate allies without watering down their own goals.
Progressives face a critical choice in 2022, writes Norman Solomon, the journalist and activist, a Bernie Sanders delegate in 2016 and 2020. French leftists this year held their noses and voted with moderates for president Emmanuel Macron this year to hold back far-right Marine Le Pen. The truce held long enough for France to dodge a bullet.
The American left — the woke and the waking in Giridharadas’s terms — needs a similar united front this November. “Claiming that there are no significant differences between the two parties is a form of super-ideological gaslighting on automatic pilot,” Solomon believes (Salon):
Now, progressives in the United States face similar choices. In key House districts and states with pivotal Senate races — including Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — leftist voters could tip the balance of congressional power. At this point, in the balloting that ends on Nov. 8, the choice is binary: neoliberalism or neofascism.
“Neoliberal” is a catch-all on the left for “to my right” the way the right uses “socialist” and “communist” to designate “to my left.” Given the threat at hand, Solomon is willing to set aside calling out the Democratic leadership class for its neoliberal sins even while he does so. But better that our wheezing democracy live so the woke may reengage the waking another day.
Republicans in office and even more extremist candidates seeking to join them are blending in with political scenery they’ve created to normalize gliding farther and farther rightward. They’re the electoral shock troops of a party now fully engaged in what scholar Jason Stanley, in his book “How Fascism Works,” calls “fascist politics.” What seemed dangerously outrageous not long ago can soon come to seem normal — and in fact even more dangerous.
In Stanley’s words, “Normalization of fascist ideology, by definition, would make charges of ‘fascism’ seem like an overreaction, even in societies whose norms are transforming along these worrisome lines…. The charge of fascism will always seem extreme; normalization means that the goalposts for the legitimate use of ‘extreme’ terminology continually move.”
Progressives have overarching responsibilities to oppose the corporate power that ushers in oligarchy and also to oppose the far-right forces that lead to tyranny. Focusing on just one of those responsibilities while dodging the other just won’t do.
“We will be living with the consequences of this crossroads for the rest of our lives,” Solomon concludes. We dare not take the wrong fork.
From my perch, I’ve not heard rumors of a “none of the above” movement on the left this year. Solomon seems worried enough to address it in print.