Jacobinism - time for a revival

Campbell would have reminded us that the demonization of the Trump supporters who stormed the capital is a terrible mistake.

They aren't being demonized or canceled. They are being held to account, finally. We lived in bizarro world for 4 years. Even now 70% of Republicans claims to believe the election was stolen from Trump. Even now people claim systemic racism doesn't exist. 

To understand is not to condone.  But if the ruling elites, and their courtiers masquerading as journalists, continue to gleefully erase these people from the media landscape, to attack them as less than human, or as Hillary Clinton called them “deplorables,” while at the same time refusing to address the grotesque social inequality that has left them vulnerable and afraid, it will fuel ever greater levels of extremism and ever greater levels of state repression and censorship.    

The cancel culture, a witch hunt by self-appointed moral arbiters of speech, has become the boutique activism of a liberal class that lacks the courage and the organizational skills to challenge the actual centers of power — the military-industrial complex, lethal militarized police, the prison system, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, the intelligence agencies that make us the most spied upon, watched, photographed and monitored population in human history, the fossil fuel industry, and a political and economic system captured by oligarchic power.  

"Cancel culture" is a ridiculous term. It's called being held to account for the views you express.  It wasn't cancel culture when gay people were fired for being gay, or not permitted to serve in the miltary, or women were fired for getting pregnant. 

Economic hardship and lack of education are important factors that should be taken into account but they are not the only factors. They want a Leave it to Beaver America in which good women wait for marriage and white church goers dominate society while minorities remain minorities but also go to church. 

Racism is still shockingly rampant. It is "cancel culture" that prevents it from being openly promoted. Public condemnation is necessary to fight racism. The debates have been had. 

It's about economic hardship, but it is also about white Christian Americans maintaining the majority. 

This is war now. The majority in North America are left of the 30 to 40% of hard right wingers. Tea party/Reform party/Trumpites, will not be persuaded. There is no reason to pander to them. If they want to understand why they are wrong there is plenty of material available for self-education. 

People should lose their jobs for carrying a confederate flag. If BLM had stormed the capital scores would be dead. Losing their jobs is the least that should happen. I agree with the defense of many that they were answering the call of the president but that doesn't leave them entirely off the hook nor does their economic hardship or lack of education. Republicans have made a terrible mistake. They have emboldened the Proud Boys and Oathkeepers and the 3%.  

That Fisher article is very good.   Must say though, when I saw the thread title, I was hoping folks were talking about A Confederancy of Dunces.   Ignatius J. Reilly is my favourite monarchist.   

Re Greenwald #7

"What people who call Glenn Greenwald 'right-wing' are actually saying is that his views - opposition to monopoly, surveillance and censorship, skepticism of secret police agencies, belief in journalistic fairness - are incompatible with current Democratic Party orthodoxy."

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1362784645830606850

"What it actually shows is these labels -- which once signified a set of beliefs or an ideology -- have become largely useless and meaningless in a society where tribalism dominates. They're now just signifiers for the extent of one's captivity and loyalty to a particular faction."

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1362787325303001099

NDPP wrote:

"Most importantly, the cancel culture deflects attention from the far more egregious institutionalized abuses of power. It is this smug, self-righteousness crusade that makes the liberal elites so odious. The ruling elites and the courtiers who trumpet their moral superiority by damning and silencing those who do not linguistically conform to politically correct speech are the new Jacobins.

They wallow in a sanctimonious arrogance, one made possible by their privilege, which marks their subservience to corporate power, and for their amorality. They do not battle social and economic injustice. They silence, with the enthusiastic assistance of the digital platforms in Silicon Valley, those who are created and deformed by systems of oppression and those who lack their finely developed politesse and deference to linguistic fashion.

They are the useful idiots of corporate power and the emerging police state. Cancel culture is not the road to reform. It is the road to tyranny."

Hedges: Cancel Culture, Where Liberalism Goes to Die

https://scheerpost.com/2021/02/15/hedges-cancel-culture-where-liberalism...

Agreed that corporate "antiracism" is hypocritical bullshit. 

You're not seriously arguing that it's possible to make common ground with people who tried to keep Trump in power by force and against the will of the electorate- and there was no possible arguement for the Left joining them in the assault on the Capitol, becuase there was no chance of anything transformational or egalitarian coming of it.  Yes, some of them had financial troubles- but they were fighting to keep in power a man who had spent four years refusing to do anything to address their practical needs, and was never, if kept in power, going to do anything other then keep pandering to white male insecurity and rage towards the majority of the world who aren't white men.

There was no chance of getting these people to ever support anything revolutionary- they just wanted the preservation of white supremacy and nothing else- that's the only reason they were obsessed with keeping Trump in power.

In any case, nobody who uses slurs against BIPOC people, LGBTQ people, or cis-women is ever going to be brought to the point where they could be capable of joining the class struggle.  If you use the "N word", you are never going to join the class struggle.