We live in an age where these individuals are considered “radical” or “extreme”:
Here are some thoughts.
The idea of “radicalism” has been co-opted from times of old — say, pre-World War II. Back then, it meant something along the lines of “a belief in the necessity of altering the current mode of production, economic system, and/or system of governance,” i.e. a qualitative change in the society such that it is no longer the same society.
Nowadays, to be a “radical” leftist or “extreme” leftist or “leftist” of any kind means, more or less, genuflecting with ever greater ferocity to the sanctity of certain identities and agendas (like the environmental agenda) while doing nothing to alter the economic system that endangers or ostracizes them.
How does this work?
We live in a neoliberal society, a society in which the purpose of government is to enable and strengthen the power of markets.
It is not that neoliberalism believes in “small government.” It is that they believe that anything government does that helps markets is just fine, including growing government (especially its bureaucracy when it makes social services and goods like public education and the post office totally inoperable), running up huge deficits, becoming openly corrupt at the hands of unconstrained corporate donors, or interfering in the lives of its citizens.
In short:
helps markets (regressive taxes, deregulation, privatization, austerity, govt bureaucracy, low voter turnout, war)=good
hurts markets (progressive taxes, public ownership, collective bargaining, social services, high voter turnout, peace)=bad
Any activity of government that doesn’t reflect this outlook is done at its legislator’s peril.
Or, rather, it would be if any legislator currently in government was not, himself or herself, a neoliberal. That is, dedicated to government’s purpose as a liberator and protector of markets, above all.
Anyone who meaningfully advocates against this state of affairs has no chance in government.
So, the “extreme” or “radical” connotations applied to folks like Biden, Harris, and Murphy are only those allowed by neoliberalism and that would only function in this capacity under neoliberalism.
That is, if we lived under a different economic system, it would not be viewed as “extreme” to support the “teaching of transgender ideology” in elementary schools or the idea that racism is systemic.
Rather, it would be viewed as matter-of-fact and largely irrelevant, like arguing that the sky is blue. (Stay with me here.)
So-called “leftists” who prattled on about identity would be viewed as focusing on a distraction. They would be interrogatively asked, “why are you going on and on about this when you have nothing to say about altering the system that views these ideas as radical?”
Oddly enough, this defines a lot of so-called “leftists” today.
That is, questions of how to enhance “inclusion” would be secondary to how to disrupt the entire economic system. (Not that inclusion is not important; see below.) The current economic system would be laid bare as holding the many in thrall to the few and relying on underpaid and oppressed “underclasses” — like minorities and other historically oppressed groups — to bring down the real wages of everyone “above” them.
So an underclass brings down what the lowest-paid person gets paid, and then anyone who gets paid more than them feels like they’re kicking ass when really everyone is getting screwed.
A different society without such underclasses would by definition be less sexually restricted, personal choices would be less held to public scrutiny, public office would be less incentivized by profit and careerism and more by public service, all because of this reduction in strict economically defined (not merely identity-based) hierarchy.
Because of these fundamental differences, there would be no NEED for identity-based political positioning.
By categorizing people into identities and favoring them along these lines, however, neoliberalism allows for all of the APPEARANCE of “progressivism” with none of the substance.
What modern-day “extreme liberalism” or whatnot hopes to do is to function in the way that neoliberalism demands government function: to empower underrepresented identities as distinct markets, to be MARKETED to, to have their needs fulfilled under capitalist supply and demand, up to and including tuck-friendly bathing suits, and to be recognized as valid economic forces in the home, the workplace, the government itself, and in every other sphere.
…When, in fact, exploited underclasses—often composed of many of these minority markets—still exist, both at home and abroad (in the context of neo-imperialism, neoliberalism’s first cousin).
In the context of a patriarchal heteronormative society, being recognized as a market serves a function that is not to be dismissed. Black people, trans people, indigenous people…they ALL belong in the middle class.
But while Liberal politicians and corporations act as “advocates” for them, what is happening to the middle class? Who is advocating for it, let alone for the poor?
No one. And what is the net effect on liberalism or progressivism—the movement who positions itself as the advocate of “the people,” the “working person,” the whoever—as a whole?
It is reduced entirely to identity; it succumbs to various forms of minoritarianism and effectively forgets that a very, very large percentage of voting people in this country are white working class people who haven’t read Foucalt or bell hooks and don’t want to lose their “privilege” (an idea that they instinctively reject, being that they, too, are often poor, drug-addicted, crime-ridden, and underemployed [because of neoliberalism sending all of the good-paying jobs to the third world] even though it may still apply to them).
And it’s not just whitey either. More and more people of color are abandoning Democrats in favor of “no-nonsense” Republicans.
What the POCs and whitey see is a bunch of over-intellectual, virtue-signaling, status-seeking tree-huggers dabbing at their iPhones coming after their “god-given American freedoms.”
I’m not saying that’s what they all are, but that’s what a lot of poor and middle-class people see.
Neoliberal-friendly approaches among Liberals to combating climate change, racial violence, and other measures tend to look like this:
a) empowering profit-driven green energy corporations that put their coal-mining companies out of business
b) spouting off about “defunding the police” which successfully virtue-singles to the victims of police and racist violence but will never happen
c) running up the deficit and increase inflation, further disempowering the white working class (not to mention everyone else) with very little to show for it
d) never enacting the most popular measures like a single-payer healthcare or a constitutional amendment to protect abortion when they have the chance
These tendencies hardly demonstrate either the trustworthiness, competence, efficacy, intellectual cohesion/underpinnings, groundedness in reality, or benevolence of the so-called “Left”.
In addition, they often have trouble explaining or intellectually defending their ideas, they often lack emotional passion in what they are saying, and they are embroiled in political, financial, and personal scandal or in bed with corporate megadonors with enough regularity to demonstrate little distinction in terms of “integrity.”
The effect of all of this, of course, and its INTENDED effect—of which the Democratic Party IS AWARE—is to drive white people into the hands of reactionary rightwing politics.
In alienating this majority, liberalism pushes them away from privilege- and entitlement-based politics and towards the equally-identitarian politics of the rightwing, where white Christian nationalism reigns supreme.
Both “styles” are reactionary, one more than the other, but the effect is the same.
To touch on rightwingery for a moment, the Right likes to talk about Thought Policing on the left. It asks, in Zappa’s words, “who are the brain police?”
As I hinted at earlier in the pursuit of banning books, there is a rightwing brain police too.
Say, for example, I deign to suggest that while, yes, I support law and order, racism is a systematic problem, or that yes, while we mustn’t incentivize job-creators to leave the US, unions have a positive function in a totally profit-based society, or that, yes, while I believe in traditional roles for women, I also believe women deserve equal pay to men for equal work, or yes, while I want foreign wars to end, it’s not because “America has problems of its own” but because the lives of peoples in those soon-to-be-bombed-into-oblivion nations have value.
What would I be labeled among rightwing America?
“TREEHUGGER!” “LIBERAL!” “PANSY!” Or worst of all: “SOCIALIST!”
So anything that seems “socialist” is inherently bad. Anything that suggests that oppression exists; that humans share certain qualities and don’t all exist as pure individuals, and perhaps people are better able to represent their interests in groups rather than as individuals; that female, minority, or LGBTQ lives are of equal value to male, white, heterosexual lives, and that perhaps a rigid hierarchy of identity-based discrimination is, in fact, hurtful to everyone. And, oh yeah, other nations besides America exist and the people of those nations have as much of a right to a peaceful, full life as we do.
These are “socialist” ideas. Right?
So how is that not “brain policing”? It’s fear of what you don’t understand. Got that, Cletus?
Oddly enough, and similarly to what I said above about transgenderism in a truly transformed progressive society, any form of “actual” conservatism would not listen to or care about these ideas in a truly conservative society. They would not attempt to silence or alienate these ideas. Conservatism, at its core, AS I SEE IT, is or was once or could be about reducing government interference in the lives of individuals, preserving traditions and means of social cohesion, and ensuring that markets are free so that anyone can “pull himself up by his bootstraps” on his own merit and succeed.
So how does legislating against abortion, burning books, empowering billionaires, kowtowing to 15th century christian values (is this much different from radical Islamism?), destroying unions, and lining the so-called objective SCOTUS with freedom-haters like Kavanaugh and Koney-Barret do anything to protect these virtues?
The so-called “traditional values” that conservatives are supposed to defend are composed of a little thing called The Constitution: the right to free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, and all that shit.
THESE are the rights and freedoms that conservatives are supposed to want to prevent the government from curtailing, not abortion, not Black people voting. If they actually STOOD for that, maybe they wouldn’t have to gerrymander and steal elections.
But defending THESE rights and these values in good faith above all……does not empower markets, nor do they sell newspapers, nor do they stoke fear.
Similarly to liberalism, conservatism succumbed to completely market- and profit-driven forces to function as the open, brazen, and unashamed party that is against education, democracy, individual freedom, and, in fact, freedom of any kind. This last point is arguable based on the fact that the large majority of polled Republicans support Trump’s re-election; Trump, a man who literally wants to use the military against the people in furtherance of undermining an election.
While the conservative “transformation” started much sooner, it too complies with neoliberal dictates: of using identity to represent a certain population—white, male, and christian—as a recognized MARKET, in fact, the only market to which all others must aspire, while AT THE SAME TIME doing nothing to actually improve that identity’s position and in fact doing everything to WORSEN “his” position.
And why?
Because “left” or “right”, under neoliberalism, government’s purpose is to EMPOWER MARKETS. Both sides would rather do that and endanger losing our country to tyrannical rightwing psychos than stand one iota against the neoliberal order, which would doom them to political irrelevance and prevent them from ever appearing on any political campaign mailer, whether as the candidate or as the “hated, despised, country-destroying, RADICAL” enemy.
Aulos Media 