In a mood of complete disgust with most people who call themselves radicals, I am reassessing, from a political standpoint, what I do, whom I read and with whom I form alliances. I am proceeding under the following assumptions, which I regard as self-evident.
1. Underclass on underclass violence and underclass on working class violence are not good nor revolutionary things and people cheered by them are neither good nor revolutionary. In fact, the people cheered by this shit are almost invariably privileged, self-regarding fakes whose left politics is based in class envy, weird pet peeves and free-floating misanthropy rather than any real solidarity with the disadvantaged. They long for a revolution prosecuted entirely by poor people and wage slaves. In other words, they want it served up like everything else in their lives, and, as ever, they’re happy to coach.
2. One can and should acknowledge the ruling class appropriation of movements like feminism and LGBT rights without trivializing the institutionalized cruelty that gave rise to these movements in the first place.
3. Class struggle is not inherently at odds with struggles against racism, sexism and the repression of homosexuality. To the contrary, poorly reasoned resistance to at least the basic claims of identity struggles is inimical to class struggle, since it alienates people from it. By all means, if you’re a straight, white dude, feel free to express your misgivings just as others will feel free to tell you what a clueless twat you probably are.
4. The corollary of item 3 is that feminism is not an exercise in which one guy tries to prove his dick is bigger than some other guy’s by virtue of how much dipshitty mainstream feminist boilerplate he can throw at him.
5. Black folks have been as duped by the rulers as gay folks and women, and at a very cheap price. If you’re smacking gays and women around for being useful idiots, you should smack black folks also or probably shut the fuck up about identity politics.
6. An anarchist antipathy to the state is not inimical to engaging with the state in the short term. To the contrary, a belief that the state is fundamentally a malignant instrument of the ruling class makes engaging with it all that much more necessary regardless of whether or not you think the state should persist in the long term.
7. For most literate people of a leftward bent, there is no need for additional evidence that liberals are delusional, unintelligent hypocrites.
8. For most practical purposes, power relations are not complicated: Big fish eat smaller fish. Morality is not complicated either: Do unto others. . . People who discuss these things with impenetrable language or quotes from an original non-English source are not trying to be understood. They are staking out an advantaged position in relation to people with less education and less privilege.
9. A willingness to make common cause with empire in another country is the red flag of either a complete asshole or a counterrevolutionary.
10. A willingness to make common cause with reactionary dictators is the red flag of an asshole or a would-be thug.
Put another way, I am done with various nasty flavors of spoiled straight boys who have five half-true favorite things that they say over and over and over again. If they could possibly circle jerk themselves to death the rest of us would be much better off.
Can I suggest that it’s a mistake (for radicals and otherwise) to form “alliances” in the first place, at least in a broad sense? Isn’t it simply common sense to align with all comers that fundamentally agree with you on whatever relatively narrow point or agenda you’re working on at the moment? And where the boundaries of this single issue ceases to exist, so too does your association with this individual?
It’s like these Democratic leadership assholes who insist the activist movements sympathize with the President’s decisions and constraints because of some supposed broad alliance with their general agenda (not that I even buy that horseshit for a second). IT’S NOT THEIR JOB TO WORRY ABOUT APPROVAL RATINGS. Political calculations are for the politicians, who lacked enough moral compass to take the job in the first place. (A tangent, I know)
I bring all this up because it seems to pertain to a lot of what you mention. How this pertains to you: keep reading whatever blogs you like, gain what you can from that which is rewarding, discard/dispute the rest. How this pertains to the London Riots: It’s perfectly acceptable to say certain outcomes were desirable, others undesirable, align yourself with the desirable, disassociate/mourn the undesirable. How this pertains to identity politics: no one can be a useful idiot if they work tirelessly and unequivocally on a clearly defined set of undeniably positive goals. And I think it should be clear at this point that I agree with you on points 6-10, so I won’t blather on any more than I already have.
Hi Daniel:
Thanks for stopping by and for leaving a the thoughtful reply.
Isn’t it simply common sense to align with all comers that fundamentally agree with you on whatever relatively narrow point or agenda you’re working on at the moment? And where the boundaries of this single issue ceases to exist, so too does your association with this individual?
I agree with you completely here. I am not fond of broad alliances myself but not everyone seems to think this is common sense. A lot of leftists seem unwilling to forge any tactical alliance with anyone they don’t agree with 100%, with the possible of their increasingly indefensible quadrennial alliance with the Democrats. There are a lot of issues where lefts and real libertarians agree (militarism, drugs, prisons, civil liberties) but good luck getting the radicals to make common cause.
keep reading whatever blogs you like, gain what you can from that which is rewarding, discard/dispute the rest.
That’s what I had been doing but the areas of disagreement in some quarters was just becoming too annoying. I became convinced that a lot of the people I follow are simply not good people. That they are privileged people with no actual empathy for people who are struggling. If I felt that I hadn’t already read everything useful they have to say a hundred times more often than I’d needed to i wouldn’t be so quick to discard them. I like heterodoxy and certainly don’t expect everyone to agree with me on everything. That’s not what I am seeking.
no one can be a useful idiot if they work tirelessly and unequivocally on a clearly defined set of undeniably positive goals.
This is true but unfortunately gets tricky with those ‘undeniably positive goals.’ A good example is that gay people have devoted at least 50% of their political capital for the past decade or so to removing barriers to military service.
And I think it should be clear at this point that I agree with you on points 6-10, so I won’t blather on any more than I already have.
Feel free to blather here any time. I appreciate the dialogue.
Yeah, the DADT repeal is a tricky one for me. It reminds me of Emma Goldman’s opposition to women’s suffrage, which I always felt was short sighted. Not because she was technically wrong – nearly one hundred years later and no one can tell me with a straight face that our electoral process is any more effective – but because, like it or not, people listen to what the state has to say, and even if these gestures are only symbolic they have a way of kick starting a broader perception of equality.
But of course the DADT repeal isn’t merely symbolic. I don’t want anyone serving in the U.S. military, LGBT or straight. And I would agree that too much energy and resources have been spent in that interest.
Tarzie
I think you are off, with point 6. It hasn’t worked out well at any point where anarchists (a) had clout, and public support and (b) engaged with the state. See, the Ukraine. See, Catalonia. See, France. See, the Wobblies after the busting of Big Bill and Gurley-Flynn.
“I think you are off, with point 6.”
Hi Jack:
Thanks for stopping by. Honored.
Despite the certainty with which which I expressed everything, I am least sure of that one myself. I am sure your grasp of anarchist history far exceeds mine. I guess I am not really talking about engaging as anarchists with an anarchist agenda, but rather simply accepting the fact of the state and attempting to temper the malignant impact of the ruling class upon it. It seems to me that the left has really surrendered in the United States – without putting non-governmental solutions in place – and that the impact has been very severe. I think JR expressed something close to where I am at on this in a post I am sure you saw:
Radicalism and Reform
Hey, not a problem. Good stuff here.
My issue – and I’ll admit in advance that it’s a quibble – is that engaging with the state negates the anarchist claims about that state. It’s sort of like being Michele Bachmann, railing against pork and big gummint, and then taking gummint pork in order to promote policy and enrich one’s self.
I confess I’m a liberal libertarianish socialist type person(Okay, I dunno what I am), but i don’t like sectarianism, I don’t like apologists for authoritarian regimes, and I especially dislike LGBT/ race/ gender/ etc. issues being dismissed at identity politics, so your post hit all the right points for me. I also must agree with Daniel that DADT isn’t the ideal goal( which would be equal health care and nationalization of banks,etc.), but it’d be a step forward just like gay marriage has been for some states.
Hi Jenny –
Thanks for coming by. I keep planning a post or two about the appropriation of various identity movements by War Inc. At that time, I’ll parse out my problems with DADT further. Overall I think it was a win for the mainstreaming of gay people and for the military (since it needs bodies) but a big loss for non-militarism. That makes it a net loss for me.
I am not sure that it gained anything for gay people that other possible public equality campaigns might not have. I don’t think it’s moral to seek equal access to an institution as thoroughly vile as the military. Rather, I think the moral thing to do would be to embrace that particular exclusion – which gay people used to do when the personal stakes were higher – and contend with others.
To be continued. . .
I think ending DADT was right since other countries allow gays in their military as well, I just think it should be an even sort of thing as described here:
http://forwantofanail.com/2010/12/now-you-can-fight-openly-the-next-step-is-to-not-fight/
Okay, I have to ask one other thing; aren’t you sort of pitting LGBT people and race against each other in the case of opposing DADT?
“Okay, I have to ask one other thing; aren’t you sort of pitting LGBT people and race against each other in the case of opposing DADT?”
I am not sure I understand this question. I will assume that you mean that since, historically, blacks’ military service is disproportionately high and that since this is probably true of queer people seeking military access, the gay exclusion and my support for it disproportionately affects blacks.
My answer is simply that I don’t care. Being disadvantaged by race, like sexual orientation, does not give you carte blanche to be immoral in relation to people even more disadvantaged than you. I do not believe there is any interest that gay or black Americans have that is more morally compelling than the right of people to not be bombed, raped and occupied.
As to the idea that other countries provide queer access to the military, again, I don’t care. What other countries do does not influence me on moral principles such as when it’s ok to kill people or endorse it.
Hi Jenny. I appreciate your interest in this post. I regret I maintain this blog very sporadically so I am late in responding. To your points:
The For Want of a Nail post you linked say:
I don’t think anyone who credited the victims of military aggression with anything resembling personhood would endorse this. You cannot fight for access to the military without also endorsing what it does as legitimate. More concretely, you can not have a military without soldiers fighting in it. The fight against DADT was nothing less than a fight to make the business of empire more enjoyable and materially enriching for more people and to thereby increase the military’s size. That does not sound particularly left to me. This would be true even if every barrier for queer people but the military exclusion had been broken down, which obviously isn’t the case.
okay, this sort of conflicts with you’ve said on your twitter: you seem to be okay with reform one minute and then against it the next. What’s your political position exactly?
Position on what?
I think i have made my position on queer inclusion in the military clear. I am against it. I am not against it because it’s a reform. Though I’m fairly radical in my politics, I am not opposed to half-measures that actually ameliorate suffering, so long as they do not increase suffering in some other way.
I am against the repeal of DADT because I feel it is more costly humanity than beneficial. It feeds militarism, which is a greater evil than the gay exclusion. I do not believe that the additional benefit to gay people is commensurate with that cost.
If I have ever said something that contradicts that, please remind me.
#7 really had me laughing. Case in point: Amanda Marcotte. When the UN resolution forbidding the killing of people based on sexual orientation was struck down, I noticed that she (as well as many other mainstream feminists) was completely silent about it, and I think I know why: Shari’a Law only proscribes punishments for male homosexuality, and the only queers that feminists give a damn about are lesbians and bisexual women.
Any gay man who is in doubt should try this test: go up to a feminist and say “I don’t think feminism is useful anymore, and in fact, I think it’s now causing more harm than doing good.” He will instantly be called every gay-bashing insult in the book, and be told that his homosexuality is obviously a result of his inherent fear of feminine sexuality.
“Case in point: Amanda Marcotte.”
Oh, if only she and her colleagues were as principled as you accuse. They don’t concern themselves with any dark people, male or female, except inasmuch as it lines up with neoliberal foreign policy.
Around the time she and her fellow frauds were obsessing over Julian Assange’s sexual predation, I told her I thought it was somewhat hypocritical in light of her silence about rapes committed by soldiers in Iraq. I cited one particularly vicious incident where American soldiers premeditatedly gang-raped a 14-year-old Iraqi girl then murdered her and her entire family. Marcotte tweeted that my remark was fallacious. That you can’t infer a lack of concern for something based on the fact that someone hasn’t written about it. That’s true up to a point I suppose, but certainly it’s fair to assume that if, like Marcotte, a feminist doesn’t EVER write about rapes committed by American soldiers against Iraqi and Afghan women, they either don’t care or they’re concealing them. Riff raff like Marcotte are as easily damned by what they ignore as what they fret over.
When Iraqi women have a slut walk in Brooklyn or fly to the States for vajazzling or if one of them gets flashed by some sad dude on the New York subway, she and her kindred at Jezebel will be all over it, I’m sure.
Can you tell I hate those assholes?
“Can you tell I hate those assholes?”
Yes, very much. Marcotte is the left’s Ann Coulter.
I actually prefer Anne Coulter. She has a more wicked way with words. I don’t make large moral distinctions between neoconservative scumbags and neoliberal scumbags. Coulter is at least occasionally entertaining.