differences that matter.

a note on the cultural shift Right & the responses to it | + lists, links, recs <3

Greetings from the sick couch! I have been hit hard with a bug, and it pushed everything back this week, including this “Friday” note, and also the forthcoming Laura Mulvey/male gaze anniversary essay. Coming soon! 

Dear friends,

I’ve been reading and thinking a lot about the growing cultural shift to the Right, on all the things happening that are not-not on a spectrum of fascism, and how so many of us are feeling a little unhinged. (Michael Rance wrote an excellent essay that links to a lot of other great essays grappling with this moment, so I recommend that by way of a lit review.) One example of this trend is the anti-woke backlash easily identifiable not just in the Right’s assault on DEI (etcetera), but also in the Left’s apparent eagerness to follow suit. There is a new hegemony in town and it includes identity politics(1)-denouncing Dems, ostensibly progressive influencers who went from Black-square-posting to MAGA-hat-wearing, and Lefty writers who seem to be flirting with Red Scare-dom. In “Wokeness is Not to Blame for Trump,” Rebecca Traister makes an argument against a class-reductionist approach to politics, and urges “the left” to untangle attacks on wokeness from the right’s characterization of it: 

“The ‘DEI’ initiatives being ripped out of workplaces aren’t just those mindless videos about sexual harassment, but accessibility ramps, lactation facilities, job protections, pay equity requirements, and paid-leave and child-care programs. Rather than ceding to the right’s distortions, the left could use this moment to make legible what DEI policies actually do to make workers’ lives more stable and humane, could emphasize that this is not niche stuff for college campuses; it is policy that enables more humans more access to better lives.” 

I don’t disagree with this exactly. Of course I too am horrified by the material consequences of the executive orders and also the psychic toll of the symbolic parading and ugly rhetoric. But I am concerned with reactions like Traister’s that take a stance against shifting Right by ultimately anchoring us more firmly in the center.

Quickly, to get it out of the way, it is a problem to use the shorthand of “the left” to describe everything from liberal politicians to revolutionary Marxists, progressive pussy-hat protesters to radical anarchists. Journalists and writers will frequently lump themselves into the mix, under the assumption that “we” all need to do one thing or another to further our supposedly singular mission. I am not trying to be fringey to create division—the argument about in-fighting dividing us is so old and so hashed out, but the bottom line is that there are consequences when we don’t name differences that matter. And a difference that matters is whether or not we put on rose-colored glasses about the “before times,” as if DEI initiatives (even the important ones Traister names) were actually reducing suffering in substantial ways. A difference that matters is whether we put attention exclusively on policy instead of root causes of harm. If criticism of Trump’s administration—which is necessary and important!—perpetuates a narrative that suggests the Biden years were the glory days, well, then, we are fucked. 

Here’s another paragraph from Traister that really gets to what I fear: 

“it is difficult to overstate how discordant it feels to hear left thinkers talk about the benefits of woke movements accruing only to elites in a period in which studies of Black maternal mortality are being frozen, trans soldiers are being purged from the military, immigrants are being detained in Guantanamo, and pregnant women who can’t afford to travel are bleeding out in parking lots.” 

Okay first: one of these things is not like the others! It is beyond me how people who finally started to develop critiques of US militarism in response to our government literally arming a genocide can so inconsequentially turn around and root for trans people to get a chance to participate in the same institution responsible for it. If you want to read trans people writing urgently and importantly about not fighting for trans inclusion in US empire, go here. Second: these other things are deeply important, and also DEI initiatives will not get to the root causes of harm that enable high Black maternal mortality rates, immigrant detention, and economically disenfranchised pregnant people. As long as there is a system that protects whiteness through police and prisons, as long as there are borders, as long as capitalism exists, these harms will exist too. I am sad when people say anarchists have immature political analysis, because it feels far more immature to keep naming the problems and then returning to the same things that have never worked. No president (and certainly no DEI program) has ever reduced the reality of this kind of violence because the nation state requires it.

What I’m trying to say is that there needs to be a place for people on “the Left”(2)—by which I mean people committed to actually liberatory visions of the world— to critique hollow woke-ism and the insufficiencies of DEI. Not through nihilistic eye rolling about how SJWs ruined art (3), but through a commitment to addressing root causes of harm. In the meantime, I am genuinely grateful for my comrades who can stomach the work of policy, who understand that certain things (again, like Traister lists above) will make life more livable for many, and that that’s important. The people in these spheres who I respect the most, though, know that the work doesn’t end there. 

***

Below: a useful podcast about security culture, a sweet essay that honors the movies, some of my own Oscar weekend musings, a request for a playlist, and more. <3 

love & solidarity,

raechel 

(1)There’s a lot of good writing about how this term has shape-shifted; I’m using it above the way it’s now most often used, but I always encourage people to read it’s initial theorization by the Combahee River Collective. 

(2) Peter insists that anarchists not be included in “the Left” and in Spanish, Portuguese, and other languages, “the Left” retains its original meaning, referring to a progressive part of the political spectrum that is inside the government or intent on capturing the government. I really appreciate how this differentiates a major difference between anarchists and others—our relationship to the State—but I’m still not fully on board with it because I think there are tons of English-speakers who would never call themselves anarchists who hold aligned values. Also, in the US, most radical types generally think of themselves on the Left (as something distinct from liberals, which journalists tend not to differentiate). 

(3) To be fair, a lot of SJW stuff is for sure worthy of eye rolls. But snark about how cringe something is shouldn’t be the basis of a political vision, imo. 

Reading (+Podcasts).