Thecharnelhouse.org

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But muh rain­bow co­ali­tion of mar­gin­al­ized iden­tit­ies will smash the kyri­archy as we sprinkle ma­gic di­versity pix­ie dust over every­one and cre­ate a shiny lib­er­al Star­bucks uto­pia. Yes­ter­day was 18 Bru­maire CCXXV ac­cord­ing to the French Re­pub­lic­an cal­en­dar, by the way. Just a happy co­in­cid­ence, I’m sure.

Left-lib­er­al “pro­gress­ives” did this to them­selves. This is ex­actly what re­treat­ing in­to cul­tur­al (i.e., iden­tity) polit­ics, while abandon­ing class as the basis for a so­cially trans­form­at­ive co­ali­tion, gets you. If you make no at­tempt to ap­peal to work­ers qua work­ers, the Right will in­ev­it­ably make in­roads with­in that group. As they in­deed have. So I don’t pity any­one who is ser­i­ously dis­traught by these res­ults. Blame for Trump can­not be laid solely at the door­step of “crack­ers” and hicks; he did sig­ni­fic­antly bet­ter among blacks and Lati­nos than Rom­ney, his Re­pub­lic­an pre­de­cessor.

Most anti-af­firm­at­ive ac­tion shit is totally right-wing, so I will be­gin by say­ing that I in no way share the polit­ics of most people who look to cri­ti­cize it. But it’s ul­ti­mately a cos­met­ic meas­ure, which cre­ates a black and minor­ity bour­geois­ie and polit­ic­al elite (“black faces in high places,” etc.). When coupled with gen­er­al eco­nom­ic stag­na­tion and wage de­pres­sion, grow­ing in­come in­equal­ity and job loss, it’s a re­cipe for re­vanchist ma­jor­it­ari­an back­lash. Edu­cated lib­er­al elites ex­pressed noth­ing but con­tempt for the work­ing poor in fly­over coun­try, whom they vil­i­fied as “one re­ac­tion­ary mass” — i.e., a “bas­ket of de­plor­ables” — of ig­nor­ant ra­cists.

In such an at­mo­sphere, even the slight­est over­ture to the work­ing class was bound to res­on­ate enorm­ously. Here, of course, the ap­peal was made us­ing xeno­phobic and hate­ful rhet­or­ic, ex­ploit­ing long­stand­ing ra­cial di­vi­sions and cap­it­al­iz­ing on deeply-felt anxi­et­ies. Plus, the lack of any ap­peal to the work­ing class by the Demo­crats also meant that poor minor­it­ies were not en­er­gized to vote for them. Smug, latte-sip­ping lib­er­als just res­ted on their laurels, se­cure in their be­lief that vic­tory was as­sured by simple demo­graph­ic shifts. All this while of­fer­ing noth­ing to work­ing blacks or Lati­nos, and prom­ising con­tin­ued war on those parts of the globe from which the refugee crisis first arose.

Feel­ing bad for my all my com­rades in Flor­ida, Michigan, Ohio, Ari­zona, and North Car­o­lina right now, who will in­ev­it­ably be blamed for God-Em­per­or Trump. This dra­mat­ic de­feat really can’t be chalked up to swing state voters, however. Her fate was sealed the mo­ment she was nom­in­ated in Au­gust. Clin­ton’s cam­paign had the air of a coron­a­tion from the start, des­pite al­most los­ing her pre­destined status as party nom­in­ee to a ram­bling old man (and self-pro­claimed so­cial­ist) who no one even heard of be­fore sum­mer 2015. Now it was #Her­Turn; the DNC saw to that.



Not gonna lie: the Schaden­freude of watch­ing all the Hil­lary sup­port­ers cry­ing at her planned cel­eb­ra­tion party was pretty in­tense. It al­most ap­proached the Kan­tian dy­nam­ic sub­lime, in the strict sense of the term — tfw there are forces swirling all around you that could crush you like a bug, but you’re sus­pen­ded in it, and can feel its awe­some majesty. See­ing her long-held pres­id­en­tial am­bi­tions crushed by a blither­ing buf­foon who re­sembles a Chee­to felt like a mor­bid, dizzying, asymp­tot­ic as­cent. Fuck­ing hil­ari­ous. Peals of laughter be­fore the void.

Won­der if we will see any buy­er’s re­morse from the mem­bers of the In­ter­na­tion­al So­cial­ist Or­gan­iz­a­tion who voted in fa­vor of Jill Stein’s mys­tic heal­ing crys­tals. Such Wed­nes­day-morn­ing elec­tion­eer­ing is mis­placed, however, as she wasn’t even a round­ing er­ror in many of the places that Trump won. And John­son siphoned off more Re­pub­lic­an votes from Trump than Stein took Demo­crat­ic voters away from Clin­ton, any­how. Demo­crats still haven’t ex­or­cised the ghost of Nader from 2000, and are still try­ing find any ex­cuse not to look them­selves in the mir­ror.

Van Jones even continued to whip up Mc­Carthy­ite para­noia late last night with his sug­ges­tion that Putin some­how rigged the elec­tion. Trump is just a Rus­si­an pup­pet or stooge, Van Jones in­sisted, a Man­churi­an can­did­ate. He was the op­pon­ent the Demo­crats wanted from the start, though. They used all their me­dia con­tacts to cyn­ic­ally pro­mote Trump’s “Pied Piper” can­did­acy, fan­ning the flames of hate, so that Amer­ic­ans could wake up the next morn­ing the day after the elec­tion con­grat­u­lat­ing them­selves that as aw­ful as Hil­lary was, at least that guy wasn’t go­ing to be pres­id­ent.

Well guess what… You reap what you sow.

Re­gard­less, any ef­fort to or­gan­ize mov­ing for­ward will have to res­ist the tempta­tion to re­build from with­in the Demo­crat­ic Party, which for more than fifty years has been called, with some justice, “the grave­yard of all so­cial move­ments.” The biggest obstacle to real polit­ic­al or­gan­iz­a­tion in the United States since the De­pres­sion has al­ways been the Demo­crats.

I close with these im­mor­tal lines from Marx and En­gels:

Even where there is no pro­spect of achiev­ing their elec­tion the work­ers must put up their own can­did­ates to pre­serve their in­de­pend­ence, to gauge their own strength and to bring their re­volu­tion­ary po­s­i­tion and party stand­point to pub­lic at­ten­tion. They must not be led astray by the empty phrases of the demo­crats, who will main­tain that the work­ers’ can­did­ates will split the demo­crat­ic party and of­fer the forces of re­ac­tion the chance of vic­tory. All such talk means, in the fi­nal ana­lys­is, that the pro­let­ari­at is to be swindled. The pro­gress which the pro­let­ari­an party will make by op­er­at­ing in­de­pend­ently in this way is in­fin­itely more im­port­ant than the dis­ad­vant­ages res­ult­ing from the pres­ence of a few re­ac­tion­ar­ies in the rep­res­ent­at­ive body.

Regardless of last night’s outcome, I would have posted this last excerpt.



Ad­dendum: My friend Spen­cer Sun­shine pos­ted this note about the “spon­tan­eous” protest marches that have ma­ter­i­al­ized in re­ac­tion to Trump’s elec­tion. He’s pretty much spot on:

I can’t be­lieve people are hold­ing demon­stra­tions today. What in the world is the point? Trump won. Now is the time to es­tab­lish emer­gency re­sponse struc­tures for ra­cist and state at­tacks, and plans for what to do if Trump ac­tu­ally tries to round up Muslims and un­doc­u­mented people. Get real, folks.

Hold­ing demon­stra­tions today just shows that the left is not a polit­ic­al move­ment which aims to change so­ci­ety, but is es­sen­tially a nar­ciss­ist­ic self-help move­ment pro­jec­ted in­to the so­cial realm.

If there are to be any demon­stra­tions held today, they should be demon­stra­tions against the Demo­crat­ic Party. Pro­pos­ing out­right se­ces­sion and with­draw­al from it and the cre­ation of re­volu­tion­ary mass work­ers’ party. Any­thing else is just hys­ter­ic­al lib­er­al­ism. You know most of these people wouldn’t be out on the streets if Clin­ton had won.

Ju­dith But­ler pre­dict­ably offered up the aca­dem­ic coun­ter­part to the act­iv­ist re­sponse of scan­dal­ized lib­er­als. Someone in a group I’m in pos­ted the fol­low­ing ex­cerpt from But­ler’s “State­ment,” pub­lished earli­er this morn­ing on the e-flux web­site:

The word “dev­ast­a­tion” doesn’t come close to the wide­spread feel­ing of the mo­ment among those I know… Who is this angry and nul­li­fy­ing pub­lic who would rather be ruled by a mad man than a wo­man? Who is this angry and ni­hil­ist­ic pub­lic who blames the dev­ast­a­tions of neo­lib­er­al­ism and de­reg­u­lated cap­it­al­ism on the Demo­crat­ic Party can­did­ate?

Pre­sum­ably the same pub­lic that saw her hus­band pass NAF­TA and re­peal Glass-Steagall, with her out­spoken ap­prov­al and sup­port. The same pub­lic that then saw her go on to praise the TPP as “the gold stand­ard” of trade treat­ies. Any­way, I di­gress. But­ler con­tin­ues:

We have to think now about pop­u­lism, right and left, and miso­gyny — how deep it really goes. For bet­ter or worse, Hil­lary is iden­ti­fied with es­tab­lish­ment polit­ics. But what should not be un­der­es­tim­ated is the deep-seated rage and an­ger against Hil­lary, par­tially the res­ult of a rank miso­gyny and the re­vul­sion against Obama, fueled by long sim­mer­ing ra­cism. Trump has un­leashed pent up an­ger against fem­in­ists, figured as cen­sori­ous po­lice, against mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, viewed as a threat to white priv­ileges.

Chalk­ing wide­spread dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion to ra­cism, pure and simple, is clearly mis­taken. The rust­belt and sun­belt voters who swept Trump in­to of­fice last night are many of the same who helped elect Obama eight years ago. If these people were all ir­re­deem­able ra­cists, they would have nev­er voted for a black pres­id­ent. Many of them did so twice. At­trib­ut­ing the pub­lic’s an­ti­pathy to­ward Hil­lary to sex­ism ig­nores that wo­men didn’t turn out in big num­bers to sup­port her. Fifty-three per­cent of white wo­men voted for Trump.

Demo­crat­ic pun­dits nev­er even en­ter­tained the idea that the re­jec­tion of Hil­lary might have had something to do with her polit­ics, rather than the fact she’s a wo­man. Was the only reas­on that Thatch­er was so re­viled due to her gender?