Exh neolibbvv
Have you noticed how, for example, being non pc towards overweight people has suddenly become a question of left-wing politics instead of proper upbringing and being a decent human being? Have you noticed suddenly embracing your own mental illnesses, instead of treating them in a proper way, and encouraging others to act the same, has become an act of political “emancipation” and “empowerment” of the individual? Have you noticed how toxic Western political correctness has become the mandatory language of the left-wing politics with its aim being the enforcement of a certain way of discussion without examining the content?
Have you noticed how being working class has suddenly become just one of the identities, how suddenly you can become working class just by association, instead of needing to work for a wage or being dependent on somebody that does, and how the working class has lost its role as the “wheel of social change” to become “oppressed peoplex”? Have you noticed how the problem of racism is suddenly “challenged” by enforcing particular ethnic identities?
In short: have you noticed how left-wing politics has completely abandoned its content in the pursuit for useless forms and/or smokescreens and how it has stopped being an idea aiming at the creation of a mass movement of the working class with the aim of change and the creation of a better society and has become a social scene for a socially non-adjusted people?
To quote the 16th century Spanish philologist and humanist Francisco Sánchez de las Brozas: “Latet enim veritas, sed nihil pretiosius veritate (Truth is hidden, but nothing is more beautiful than the truth).”[1]
THE POST-POST-MODERNISM OF THE DUMMIES
All of these problems represent a trend in left-wing politics and thought that is coming from “Anglo” academia, predominantly the United States of America, which is why I have decided to call this phenomenon ‘American Thought’.
What do I mean when I say ‘American Thought’? I am talking (mostly) about ideas such as cultural appropriation, identity politics, intersectionality, empowerment, shaming and privilege theories and American theories about race and racism, which the American left is mixing with Marxism, Third World “progressive” ethno-nationalism and projecting to the rest of the World – mostly Europe – without any real materialist analysis to back up these thoughts. After all, materialist scientific methods of analysis – brought to us by centuries of European enlightenment – are “useless”, mostly because they are asking for you to provide arguments, to handle certain theoretical apparatus and back up your claims with historical evidences. You know, all these annoying things that prevent you from expressing yourself and your oppression.
In its understanding of the World, ‘American Thought’ is not even that original. Essentially it is post-1968 French left theory, so called post-modernism, torn down to the tinniest bits and rearranged into a simplified language suitable for American campuses. It is French “theoretical poetry” stripped of its charms and romance into endless hysteria of word salads without making a single point.
Roots of this can be found in neoliberalism and its agenda of dissolving society into individuals and commodities. Of course, neoliberalism does not dissolve classes within production or the division of labour, but it dissolves the political potential of the working class through the individualisation of class. Which is why the left of today, in its inability to cope with the complete destruction of its historical counterpart through the 20th century, has decided to turn towards ideology and strategies of the far right, with its emphasis on the individual, its identity, ethnic romanticism and defence of culture and has replaced the class with it. The class interest of the working class is not what drives the left politics of today as the working class is viewed mainly as one of the “underdog” identities.
It is also extremely important to note how ‘American Thought’ benefits from American imperialism and its worldwide supremacy. American imperialism helps it spread mostly through social networks, popular culture and “independent” media, imposing itself, just like the USA, as the sharia police of this little socio-political scene on the international level. Or to put it in short: The World exists only if you look at it through the eyes of the American left.
Social networks are crucial for spreading of ‘American Thought’ not only because they promote simplified expression, but also they are simplifying language itself which suits this narrative of theoretical simplification and poverty.
Also, social networks allow certain academics, who have not published anything genuine or important in their lives and that cannot even grasp the basics of their own academic disciplines, to gain attention and a following just by saying “shocking things” on the Internet. I am talking about cases such as George Ciccariello-Maher’s “white genocide” stunt or Michael Rectenwald’s stunt to get full time employment at New York University. Narcissistic need for constant attention is certainly one of the most important missions of ‘American Thought’, but unlike academia of the past it is unable to fulfil its basic social purpose: to educate and to develop theory.
Even though, one could point out that they are still developing theory that serves the agenda of the ruling class in this present capitalist epoch with its identarian and individualist discourse. Also, this narcissism is present in activist circles too and one of the worst examples of that were “thinkpieces” regarding recent murder of Heather Heyer.
The phenomenon of the left on social networks was covered, among many other things, in an interesting new book by Angela Nagle called Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4Chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right (2017). Nagle herself, while criticising both the left and the right and their approach to social networks, has found herself a victim of a leftist slander campaign which has produced numerous articles which have not even engaged a single point she made but just aimed to discredit her. Which just describes a way that ‘American Thought’ is dealing with its criticists.
Usually when somebody criticizes ideas that comprise ‘American Thought’ – especially the merging of identity politics with Marxism – he or she is marked as a phobe (short for phobic). In the simpleminded and black-and-white world of the left politics every criticism is unnecessary and dangerous, so there are only “good” and “bad” guys. So, a phobe is basically a new fascist – an ultimate evil and enemy or just a person who does not agree with you. In order to be a “good” guy one has to win the ‘Oppression Olympics’; which is basically a ritual of acceptance designed by American leftists where one has to collect all the possible identities one can find in order to hide the fact that they mostly consist of university educated white people from the USA – the most privileged people in the World.
Nevertheless, if these ideas remained locked up in the campuses of American universities nobody would care about them. But it is not the case as this approach has spread across the world.
As one of my homies pointed out jokingly: “the idiocy of American left academia can easily be explained through an example of Judith Butler, because she at the same time considers an academic essay as a violence and Hamas and Hezbollah as part of the broad left.”
In the rest of this text I will discuss why particular elements of ‘American Thought’ have nothing in common with Marxism. But before I start I just have to make a disclaimer.
Firstly, despite naming this phenomenon after the country of its origin it is important to emphasise that purpose of this text is in no way to promote any form of nationalist thought, for example anti-Americanism. Anti-Americanism is something that is popular among the right and the left in post-socialist countries, it is connected with conspiracy theories, anti-Semitism and other forms of chauvinism and usually represents a particular nationalism in disguise.
Also, it is popular among the anti-imperialist left worldwide as it represents, as Moishe Postone puts it, “the anti-imperialism of fools”, because their concept of anti-capitalist emancipation is not building of a “human community” (Marx) but eradication of the “global evil” – USA.[2] And secondly, I do not think that this phenomenon represents the left in “Anglo” world as a whole. There are many comrades who participate in class struggle, either through organising or intervention, but unfortunately one has to be connected with them in order to get information about and insights into their work, their successes and failures, experience and lessons as everything is suffocated by narrative of ‘American Thought’.
WHITENESS, RACISM AND OPPRESSED PEOPLE
Today it is almost impossible to find a person who was engaged in a discussion with the left from the West and who never encountered ideas such as white privilege, White and whiteness. In this particular view the concept of White becomes a separate “sociological category”.
It looks like people sometimes forget how racism is, in similar way as class, a problem of the political and economic, i.e. it is a problem of access to societal resources and services, segregation, violence and in the role that certain group plays in a political process. It is always used to exclude certain ethnic groups based on their or their ancestors background.
‘American Thought’’s approach towards race and culture also reveals its poverty of understanding the historical role, limitations and fundamental concepts of classical liberalism; such as individuality as expressed in John Stuart Mill’s essay On Liberty (1859). It is expressing a constant need adhere to their own specific ethnic identities and to aggressively impose them to others. This is rooted in their constant fear of not having an identity and in their refusal to just accept that they are just Americans.
Furthermore, it seems that anti-racism of today has become the enforcement of racial and ethnic differences as an answer to the failure of “colourless” liberal anti-racism. I have said ethnic because, for example, the concept of whiteness is not rooted in what we know as “classical racial division”, as it excludes numerous ethnic groups which are usually considered as Caucasian on the basis of their political heritage of the 19th and 20th centuries. Of course, again, exclusively from an American perspective. It usually states how certain Caucasian groups are not white in a “sociological sense” and how, accordingly, all non-whites are considered as “oppressed people”. Who is actually white and who is not is the question on which there are a lot of answers as self-proclaimed Marxists are sinking deeper into the cesspool of “racial science” charlatanism.
If we go little bit deeper and place these concepts into the reality of political and economic discourse that has been present for the last few decades, i.e. so-called neoliberalism, we can get some interesting insights.
One of the most important outcomes of neoliberal policies has been the total destruction of the “public realm”, along with the sole idea of the public and social. Through the process of transition ex-socialist societies, such as the Croatian one, in which I am living, have been more radically hit with this change in discourse then Western ones. And in the political sphere this discourse did not only abolish the public and social, it did not only proclaim that the personal is now political, but it proclaimed the personal the only form of politics. Which in its essence, together with the dissolution of society into individuals, leads us towards situations where perusing ones racial or ethnic culture and identity is considered progressive.
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