This ‘revolution’ isn’t what it looks like
We’re really witnessing a counter-revolution of the neoliberal class
The Spectator, July 4, 2020: America is not in the middle of a revolution — it is a reactionary putsch. About four years ago, the sort of people who had acquired position and influence as a result of globalisation were turfed out of power for the first time in decades. They watched in horror as voters across the world chose Brexit, Donald Trump and other populist and conservative-nationalist options.
This deposition explains the storm of unrest battering American cities from coast to coast and making waves in Europe as well. The storm’s ferocity — the looting, the mobs, the mass lawlessness, the zealous iconoclasm, the deranged slogans like #DefundPolice — terrifies ordinary Americans. Many conservatives, especially, believe they are facing a revolution targeting the very foundations of American order.
But when national institutions bow (or kneel) to the street fighters’ demands, it should tell us that something else is going on. We aren’t dealing with a Maoist or Marxist revolt, even if some protagonists spout hard-leftish rhetoric. Rather, what’s playing out is a counter-revolution of the neoliberal class — academe, media, large corporations, ‘experts’, Big Tech — against the nationalist revolution launched in 2016. The supposed insurgents and the elites are marching in the streets together, taking the knee together.
They do not seek a radically new arrangement, but a return to the pre-Trump, pre-Brexit status quo ante which was working out very well for them. It was, of course, working out less well for the working class of all races, who bore the brunt of their preferred policy mix: open borders, free trade without limits, an aggressive cultural liberalism that corroded tradition and community, technocratic ‘global governance’ that neutered democracy and politics as such.
When national institutions bow to the street fighters’ demands, it tells us something else is going on
Conservatives generally don’t tend to pay much attention to class analysis. But in this case, it does help to explain what’s going on. And it helps to illuminate the true nature of social movements that pose as, and can get mistaken for, revolutionary leftism.
Does anyone seriously believe the American establishment — Walmart, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, the trustees of Ivy League universities, the major sports leagues, even Brooks Brothers, for God’s sake — would sign on to a movement that genuinely threatened its material interests? And yet these and many other firms and institutions are falling over themselves to express solidarity with the ‘uprising’, some going so far as to donate millions of dollars to Black Lives Matter, an outfit that lists among its objectives the abolition of the nuclear family.
Over the past four years, every trick in the book has been used to end the ‘nightmare’ of national conservatism and populism. The methods deployed by the elite reflect its tendencies and preferences as a class. Just think of recent skirmishes. A decisive majority of British voters resolved to leave the EU and then had to spend three years fighting a political establishment that marshalled all its vast resources to thwart Brexit. It failed. In America the liberal establishment tried harder, failed harder, but learned more. From the minute Trump won the presidential election, Democrats, elements of the security apparatus, and their media allies set out to undo the result. The marquee events were the ‘collusion’ probe and an impeachment push that was perhaps the single biggest insult ever to the intelligence of the American people. There were also countless smaller attempts to unseat Trump and destroy his entourage.
Trump survived it all. Now comes the new wave of rioters and mad iconoclasts, which many corporates and Democratic governors and mayors have actively encouraged, even as they continue to bar children from public parks and families from holding outdoor funerals, citing Covid-19 risks.
But wait: riots and statue-toppling — such things aren’t congenial to establishment figures, are they? The logic becomes apparent when you see it as a form of class struggle. For all its fury, the storm of the riots ends. There is little resembling demands for ongoing redistributive justice of the kind the old left championed. No labour solidarity, nothing to do with wages and job security. Just demands for ‘representation’ or diversity (on corporate boards, in university curricula, etc). And, of course, the firing of those who say the wrong or awkward thing in the digital public square, in workplaces or in classrooms.
The goal isn’t to rectify concrete economic injustices: massive inequalities in wealth, health and job security. The goal is precisely the opposite: to mitigate, to defer, to smooth over, to mask these substantive disagreements and instead have battles on procedural mechanisms for upholding manners.
Which social class most excels at politically correct manners? That would be the professional-managerial class, the laptop class. Its children learn the patois for discussing ‘issues of race, gender and sexuality’ from an early age. They’re expected to have mastered it by the time they take their entry-level jobs. It’s a skill that private schools are doubtless teaching already.
Working-class people, meanwhile, are most likely to struggle with this language. Even when they mean well they don’t always get it right, not least because the rules constantly shift with the vagaries of critical race theory and LGBTQ acronyms. By fortifying the requirements to speak and think correctly — and raising the stakes for failures — the neoliberal class has now built a repressive new mechanism for staying at the top and keeping the oiks down. Especially those who voted the wrong way in 2016.
So whatever you do, don’t call it a leftist revolution. With the flags, the protests, the kneeling and the new language, it’s a counter-revolution. The outcome remains uncertain, but the class war is well and truly under way.
This deposition explains the storm of unrest battering American cities from coast to coast and making waves in Europe as well. The storm’s ferocity — the looting, the mobs, the mass lawlessness, the zealous iconoclasm, the deranged slogans like #DefundPolice — terrifies ordinary Americans. Many conservatives, especially, believe they are facing a revolution targeting the very foundations of American order.
But when national institutions bow (or kneel) to the street fighters’ demands, it should tell us that something else is going on. We aren’t dealing with a Maoist or Marxist revolt, even if some protagonists spout hard-leftish rhetoric. Rather, what’s playing out is a counter-revolution of the neoliberal class — academe, media, large corporations, ‘experts’, Big Tech — against the nationalist revolution launched in 2016. The supposed insurgents and the elites are marching in the streets together, taking the knee together.
They do not seek a radically new arrangement, but a return to the pre-Trump, pre-Brexit status quo ante which was working out very well for them. It was, of course, working out less well for the working class of all races, who bore the brunt of their preferred policy mix: open borders, free trade without limits, an aggressive cultural liberalism that corroded tradition and community, technocratic ‘global governance’ that neutered democracy and politics as such.
When national institutions bow to the street fighters’ demands, it tells us something else is going on
Conservatives generally don’t tend to pay much attention to class analysis. But in this case, it does help to explain what’s going on. And it helps to illuminate the true nature of social movements that pose as, and can get mistaken for, revolutionary leftism.
Does anyone seriously believe the American establishment — Walmart, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, the trustees of Ivy League universities, the major sports leagues, even Brooks Brothers, for God’s sake — would sign on to a movement that genuinely threatened its material interests? And yet these and many other firms and institutions are falling over themselves to express solidarity with the ‘uprising’, some going so far as to donate millions of dollars to Black Lives Matter, an outfit that lists among its objectives the abolition of the nuclear family.
Over the past four years, every trick in the book has been used to end the ‘nightmare’ of national conservatism and populism. The methods deployed by the elite reflect its tendencies and preferences as a class. Just think of recent skirmishes. A decisive majority of British voters resolved to leave the EU and then had to spend three years fighting a political establishment that marshalled all its vast resources to thwart Brexit. It failed. In America the liberal establishment tried harder, failed harder, but learned more. From the minute Trump won the presidential election, Democrats, elements of the security apparatus, and their media allies set out to undo the result. The marquee events were the ‘collusion’ probe and an impeachment push that was perhaps the single biggest insult ever to the intelligence of the American people. There were also countless smaller attempts to unseat Trump and destroy his entourage.
Trump survived it all. Now comes the new wave of rioters and mad iconoclasts, which many corporates and Democratic governors and mayors have actively encouraged, even as they continue to bar children from public parks and families from holding outdoor funerals, citing Covid-19 risks.
But wait: riots and statue-toppling — such things aren’t congenial to establishment figures, are they? The logic becomes apparent when you see it as a form of class struggle. For all its fury, the storm of the riots ends. There is little resembling demands for ongoing redistributive justice of the kind the old left championed. No labour solidarity, nothing to do with wages and job security. Just demands for ‘representation’ or diversity (on corporate boards, in university curricula, etc). And, of course, the firing of those who say the wrong or awkward thing in the digital public square, in workplaces or in classrooms.
The goal isn’t to rectify concrete economic injustices: massive inequalities in wealth, health and job security. The goal is precisely the opposite: to mitigate, to defer, to smooth over, to mask these substantive disagreements and instead have battles on procedural mechanisms for upholding manners.
Which social class most excels at politically correct manners? That would be the professional-managerial class, the laptop class. Its children learn the patois for discussing ‘issues of race, gender and sexuality’ from an early age. They’re expected to have mastered it by the time they take their entry-level jobs. It’s a skill that private schools are doubtless teaching already.
Working-class people, meanwhile, are most likely to struggle with this language. Even when they mean well they don’t always get it right, not least because the rules constantly shift with the vagaries of critical race theory and LGBTQ acronyms. By fortifying the requirements to speak and think correctly — and raising the stakes for failures — the neoliberal class has now built a repressive new mechanism for staying at the top and keeping the oiks down. Especially those who voted the wrong way in 2016.
So whatever you do, don’t call it a leftist revolution. With the flags, the protests, the kneeling and the new language, it’s a counter-revolution. The outcome remains uncertain, but the class war is well and truly under way.
___________________________________________
Sohrab Ahmari is op-ed editor of the New York Post. His next book, The Unbroken Thread, will be published in spring 2021.
Sohrab Ahmari is op-ed editor of the New York Post. His next book, The Unbroken Thread, will be published in spring 2021.
I was reading recently about the Bankers' Plot against FDR (enter the term in a search engine), and it was quite simple. A group of billionaires get together to raise a large mercenary army and it marches on Washington. It would have had to deal with pro-New Deal states calling out the National Guard against it, but it didn't get that far because the billionaires couldn't find a general to lead the army.
ReplyDeleteTrump missed his chance to mirror FDR, but aside from that the current group of billionaires seem prone to complicated, obscure plotting for its own sake.
What Prescott Bush and friends wanted was National Socialism. They saw massive government investment in highway construction, military procurement, etc. as a profitable solution to the great depression. They also liked how Hitler allowed the great corporations to form price-fixing cartels. Unfortunately, their pick to carry out the revolution, General Smedley Butler, declined the job.
DeleteToday, Trump is the nearest thing America has to a Nationalist leader, but America's billionaires no longer want nationalism, which they see as obstructing their drive to create a world system. They want to off-shore jobs to the slave plantations of Asia, while Hispanic immigration continues to provide a solution to the "servant problem" as a later-generation Bush (George H. W.) put it.
The poor immigrants of course do much more than work as chambermaids at Trump hotels. They work in the black economy, untaxed and at below minimum wage, keeping down the cost of construction and agricultural production.
Today America has a choice: Trump and Crackpot Nationalism, or Biden and Demented Globalism.
It really is uncanny how often we agree. I am, basically, a contrarian, and increasingly, a curmudgeon.
ReplyDelete"They do not seek a radically new arrangement, but a return to the pre-Trump, pre-Brexit status quo ante which was working out very well for them. It was, of course, working out less well for the working class of all races, who bore the brunt of their preferred policy mix: open borders, free trade without limits, an aggressive cultural liberalism that corroded tradition and community, technocratic ‘global governance’ that neutered democracy and politics as such."
This is the only part I don't think nails it. No one out there, left or right, liberal or conservative, has been able to plausibly show how there can or will be a going back and a reversal.
Trump and Boris Johnson certainly haven't. Trump has done some things no doubt highly displeasing to the neoliberal class — academe, media, large corporations, ‘experts’, Big Tech-- but there is no way Trump is generally threatening to their class interests.
Trump mainly signals to the neoliberal class they've lost much of the popular support they took for granted. If he isn't destroyed, they will not be able to have everything exactly the way they want it. Why they would insist on having everything the way they want it, I couldn't say. It has to be the contempt they feel for us, as you have mentioned elsewhere. (This is of course pathetically stupid and a chink in the armor of which they are apparently unaware.)
I listened to the local AM radio station last night. This station mainly carries talk radio, largely conservative talk radio (along with some really kookie stuff). What was most interesting to me were the hourly news updates from ABC news radio. Trump is advocating the reopening of schools for children this fall. He reasonably concludes school children are not affected or genuinely endangered by the virus and best served by being allowed to get on with their education. ABC news radio propaganda portrayed this as Trump sacrificing the health and safety of America's children for the benefit of the economy, as choosing filthy lucre over all other concern. It was blatant.
A shorter and simpler way to say it: There was no Trump revolution so there can't be a neoliberal counter-revolution. There was a Trump annoyance, and then an effete, hysterical neoliberal scratching at it. Surely this is all smoke and mirrors and meant to distract us. Things are happening beneath the surface, big things.
ReplyDelete"all smoke and mirrors and meant to distract us"
DeleteSo it seems. And the Deep State plot to destroy the Administration has provided Trump with justification for for having accomplished so little.
The Deep State, having achieved a global system, may now be removing the traces of democratization and progress inherent in a global system. (The left practically defined itself on achievement of a global system: "Workers of the world, unite!")
ReplyDeleteThe Deep State played a dangerous game, and yet it looks as if they played it well.
Look at California. 40 million people! Many of them scraping to get by, many homeless.
In this, there's an incredible advantage for the plutocrats, as you say here:
"The poor immigrants of course do much more than work as chambermaids at Trump hotels. They work in the black economy, untaxed and at below minimum wage, keeping down the cost of construction and agricultural production."
At the same time, if these poor immigrants could ever, in almost any way, in any minor way, get it together, get together, they could with the sweep of a hand, (no riots, no muss, no fuss) wipe the plutocrats out of their lives.
They are not, it is clear,going to get it together.
A few months ago, at the supposed height of the pandemic (and it does look now as if that was the height, even if the data I use is provisional) able to shop at Fred Meyer without wearing a mask. Now I do.
There is no togetherness, no communication, no sense of a public space. There's a feeling of claustrophobia and panic. We're a bunch of invalids, almost. Nobody is going to stop and chat with an acquaintance, let alone say "Hey, what the hell is this? What's happening to us?"