Mar 22, 2024 04:26 PM
(This post was last modified: Mar 22, 2024 06:46 PM by C C.)
https://lithub.com/what-is-left-rebecca-...ican-left/
EXCERPT (Rebecca Solnit): . . . What is the left? I wish I knew. When the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the fact that some sector of what is supposed to be the left excused, justified, or even rooted for the Putin regime was, among other things, a reminder that “left” has long meant a grab bag full of contradictions. Later came the “peace marches” that argued the US should withdraw support and Ukraine should surrender.
Recent stories about these sectors of the left stumping for the Chinese government and downplaying its human rights abuses are reminders that this is an ongoing problem that takes many forms. I’ve seen genocide denial among this left: excusing the Chinese in the case of the Uyghur people, justifying the invasion and subjugation of Tibet, denying the Holodomor—the Soviet genocide through induced famine in 1930s Ukraine—even whitewashing the Pol Pot era in Cambodia, and siding with Assad as he wages a brutal war against the Syrian people.
It should be a modest request to ask that “left” not mean supporters of authoritarian regimes soaked in their own people’s blood. But the people and groups and agendas grouped together as the left contain not just contradictions but sworn enemies. Some of the loudest pro-Putin people are now clearly part of the right; some continue to claim the mantle of the left, begging the question of what the left is.
You could call this just a problem of nomenclature. Put that way, it might seem like a small problem, but being unable to distinguish and describe differences can be a large one. A few years ago I said to a man working for Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign, at a point when he and the campaign were dealing with a lot of attacks from people who considered themselves the true left, “It’s as if we called fire and water by the same name.”
Perhaps the left/right terminology that originated with the French Revolution has, more than two centuries later, outlived its appositeness. (In the French National Assembly of 1789, the royalists members sat to the right, the radicals to the left, and thus the terms were born.) The left I love is passionately committed to universal human rights and absolute equality and often is grounded in rights movements, including the Black civil rights movement. I sometimes think of the current US version as a latter-day version of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition.
This rainbow left pitches a big tent and as such is often more welcoming to, say, things like religion—after all, the Black church played a huge role in that movement, Cesar Chavez and Dorothy Day were among the devout Catholic radicals in American history, and Indigenous spirituality is central to many land rights and climate campaigns—while many traditional leftists often scorn organized religion.
I’d argue that because of its intersectional understanding of both problems and solutions, this left is more radical—radically inclusive, radically egalitarian—than those who treat race and gender as irrelevancies or distractions (including the men, from Ralph Nader in 2000 on, who’ve been dismissive of reproductive rights as an essential economic justice as well as rights issue). Perhaps it’s seen as less radical because bellicosity is often viewed as the measure of one’s radicalness.
Perhaps the left/right terminology that originated with the French Revolution has, more than two centuries later, outlived its appositeness.
Likewise, this rainbow left often has radical aims but is pragmatic about how to realize them. This might be because it includes a lot of people for whom social services and basic rights are crucial to survival, people who are used to compromise, as in not getting what they want or getting it in increments over time. All or nothing purity often means choosing the nothing that is hell for the vulnerable and I-told-you-so for the comfortable.
That’s the Rainbow Coalition-ish left; the other left has some overlap in its opposition to corporate capitalism and US militarism, but very different operating principles. It often feels retrograde in its goals and its views, including what I think of as economic fundamentalism, the idea that class trumps all else (and often the nostalgic vision of the working class as manly industrial labor rather than immigrants everywhere from nail salons to app-driven delivery jobs to agricultural fields).
This other left is often so focused on the considerable sins of the United States it overlooks or denies those of other nations, particularly those in conflict with the USA, decrying imperialism at home but excusing it abroad (and apparently seeing US aid to Ukraine through the lens of American invasions of Iraq and Vietnam rather than the more relevant US role in the European alliance against Germany and Italy in the Second World War). It often embraces whatever regime or leader opposes the US, even when that means siding with serious human rights abuses and inequalities, as if the sins of the one erased or undid the sins of the other. It tends to rage against Democrats more than Republicans.
This becomes the slippery slope down which some of the loud white men of the last several years have slid to become explicit rather than implicit defenders of the right. They often do so by attacking opponents of the right in the name of some abstract principle that just happens to serve the right; thus they can pretend they do not serve the Republican Party but find fault, again and again, with everyone who opposes it.
The Putin regime’s invasion of Ukraine brought to the surface some of the old conflicts in what the left is and should be. Not a few people claiming the mantle of the left have been cheerleaders of Putin and Russia for some time... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPT (Rebecca Solnit): . . . What is the left? I wish I knew. When the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the fact that some sector of what is supposed to be the left excused, justified, or even rooted for the Putin regime was, among other things, a reminder that “left” has long meant a grab bag full of contradictions. Later came the “peace marches” that argued the US should withdraw support and Ukraine should surrender.
Recent stories about these sectors of the left stumping for the Chinese government and downplaying its human rights abuses are reminders that this is an ongoing problem that takes many forms. I’ve seen genocide denial among this left: excusing the Chinese in the case of the Uyghur people, justifying the invasion and subjugation of Tibet, denying the Holodomor—the Soviet genocide through induced famine in 1930s Ukraine—even whitewashing the Pol Pot era in Cambodia, and siding with Assad as he wages a brutal war against the Syrian people.
It should be a modest request to ask that “left” not mean supporters of authoritarian regimes soaked in their own people’s blood. But the people and groups and agendas grouped together as the left contain not just contradictions but sworn enemies. Some of the loudest pro-Putin people are now clearly part of the right; some continue to claim the mantle of the left, begging the question of what the left is.
You could call this just a problem of nomenclature. Put that way, it might seem like a small problem, but being unable to distinguish and describe differences can be a large one. A few years ago I said to a man working for Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign, at a point when he and the campaign were dealing with a lot of attacks from people who considered themselves the true left, “It’s as if we called fire and water by the same name.”
Perhaps the left/right terminology that originated with the French Revolution has, more than two centuries later, outlived its appositeness. (In the French National Assembly of 1789, the royalists members sat to the right, the radicals to the left, and thus the terms were born.) The left I love is passionately committed to universal human rights and absolute equality and often is grounded in rights movements, including the Black civil rights movement. I sometimes think of the current US version as a latter-day version of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition.
This rainbow left pitches a big tent and as such is often more welcoming to, say, things like religion—after all, the Black church played a huge role in that movement, Cesar Chavez and Dorothy Day were among the devout Catholic radicals in American history, and Indigenous spirituality is central to many land rights and climate campaigns—while many traditional leftists often scorn organized religion.
I’d argue that because of its intersectional understanding of both problems and solutions, this left is more radical—radically inclusive, radically egalitarian—than those who treat race and gender as irrelevancies or distractions (including the men, from Ralph Nader in 2000 on, who’ve been dismissive of reproductive rights as an essential economic justice as well as rights issue). Perhaps it’s seen as less radical because bellicosity is often viewed as the measure of one’s radicalness.
Perhaps the left/right terminology that originated with the French Revolution has, more than two centuries later, outlived its appositeness.
Likewise, this rainbow left often has radical aims but is pragmatic about how to realize them. This might be because it includes a lot of people for whom social services and basic rights are crucial to survival, people who are used to compromise, as in not getting what they want or getting it in increments over time. All or nothing purity often means choosing the nothing that is hell for the vulnerable and I-told-you-so for the comfortable.
That’s the Rainbow Coalition-ish left; the other left has some overlap in its opposition to corporate capitalism and US militarism, but very different operating principles. It often feels retrograde in its goals and its views, including what I think of as economic fundamentalism, the idea that class trumps all else (and often the nostalgic vision of the working class as manly industrial labor rather than immigrants everywhere from nail salons to app-driven delivery jobs to agricultural fields).
This other left is often so focused on the considerable sins of the United States it overlooks or denies those of other nations, particularly those in conflict with the USA, decrying imperialism at home but excusing it abroad (and apparently seeing US aid to Ukraine through the lens of American invasions of Iraq and Vietnam rather than the more relevant US role in the European alliance against Germany and Italy in the Second World War). It often embraces whatever regime or leader opposes the US, even when that means siding with serious human rights abuses and inequalities, as if the sins of the one erased or undid the sins of the other. It tends to rage against Democrats more than Republicans.
This becomes the slippery slope down which some of the loud white men of the last several years have slid to become explicit rather than implicit defenders of the right. They often do so by attacking opponents of the right in the name of some abstract principle that just happens to serve the right; thus they can pretend they do not serve the Republican Party but find fault, again and again, with everyone who opposes it.
The Putin regime’s invasion of Ukraine brought to the surface some of the old conflicts in what the left is and should be. Not a few people claiming the mantle of the left have been cheerleaders of Putin and Russia for some time... (MORE - missing details)