Excellent! The fury we face when bringing this stuff up is truly amazing. I thought that this was unique to the gender discussion. But once I got out of that bubble I realized how really universal the problem is on "the left". I heard that Ryan Grim of DropSite faced some wrath for daring to criticize DEI. MR interviewed him about it, and the willful ignorance from the host and founder was...sigh. Let's just say "it's not happening, but it's a good thing, but it isn't happening, but it should happen, but it's a right-wing talking point, but...Trump bad".
Anyone who has organized has seen these pathologies. They haven’t stopped me from being on the left or doing what I can, but they have definitely inhibited the imagination of many leftists throughout the years. Part of what we are dealing with is maybe idpol was the best way to deliver the goods for a time under neoliberalism. But since at least 2008 it has been a conservative force. Being very generous there.
He and I were friends as were our sons. The hatred is real. He would like to humiliate me and shut me up. He ‘organized’ mobs to attack Amber Frost and Angela Nagle as well
I’m pretty much a twitter nobody — not verified, can count my followers on three fingers — but the post I just linked in response to Doug Henwood’s put down on the article is one of my most
Henwood got a bunch of X animals to pounce on me in 2021. It didn't silence me, but he and his people took over Jacobin. He is irrelevant and sad, but his job is to eliminate any critique of liberal Leftism, but he can't shut me up.
Listened to the Vivek Chibber interview that launched a thousand tweets of outrage. If I remember accurately, he confined his critique mostly to DEI trainings, and to college students behaving badly (“illiberally” condemning different povs as opposed to debating them). Catherine’s critique of contemporary self-identified left culture is more consistently broad, and includes entire swaths of the PMC. Which may be one reason why the PMC is so desperate to exile it. Heretics always hunted more ferociously than never-believers.
I wanted to criticize Jacobin more directly for pandering, but the editing softened my critique. Will put it behind the paywall here in a few days. Just too busy this week and had dental work lol
As you point out very well in much of your writing, the current dominant politics is devoid of substantive solidarity and the requisite comradely debate. Sometime it feels too far gone, but at least there are others who see it. We just don’t have any organizational power and are cut off from the most economically powerful workers.
The Chibber podcast misses the essential characteristic of the social-justice left, which is scaling single issues into mass organization. Prison Abolition(A.Davis and co.) has a pretty small little chunk of work that they carry on successfully in North America, and they scale it up on campus with appeals to Defund the Police and dismantle structural racism. Without those campaigns, their identity politics would have probably been dealt with and scaled back as Marxists and Anarchists have done, because they alienate people in their organizations. But because left wing professors and activists need to keep the “community” growing, they need to constantly appeal to broader groups of people using big tent issues. This has made their issues too digestible and cooptable by power. They weren’t able to do what the Frankfurt school did and distill their political beliefs into a philosophy of freedom in order to engage history, and this has left them in a powerless position, perpetually near the top. As Angela Davis says “it is an amazing accomplishment that Abolitionists have made it so that people must include abolition in the same sentence as reforming prisons.” Indeed it is, for the Police who have added another cost of lacquer to their veneer of public engagement in the funding board room.
Fundamentally single issues can’t be scaled up without losing track of the people who are calling for the reform. They also have to be reactive to each new shift in the capitalist landscape. But the contradictions that good organizers can use to make the working class strong can’t really be developed in a university that is hyper-safe and hyper bureaucratic. You need people involved who know their lot in life and will want to begin to find meaning in the collective project of human freedom. For example, good union organizers will center work life balance and the primacy of the family and social life over an increase in pay alone; society is ultimately the beneficiary of their struggle because they lead with bravery rather than pragmatism.
If Prison Abolition movements that are doing real work with real families can begin to develop a broader commitment to communities in need of reform, then they might be able to lead the charge in moving radial university politics toward a socialist future. Davis and other Abolitionist thinkers and activists have left the door to a Frankfurt School critique of their politics wide open by centering the oppressive/exploitative nature of capitalism, rather than the political potential within it, which has created a who’s-side-are-you-on situation, rather than a political alternative.
As Ruth Wilson Gilmore famously says in her book on Abolition Geography, “freedom is not a mere theory, but a place.”
But where is the party?
Like Gilmore, Chibber falls victim to his own historicism by locating the issue of identity politics in the university, rather than in the history of the left itself in the 20th century.
I think part of the conversation about the rise of identitarian ‘radicalism’ has to include the retreat of the internationalist revolutionary movement throughout the 30s-50s. Stalin’s ideological innovation to paint a retreat away from “International Proletarian Revolution” as a victory was to declare that it’s possible to build “Socialism in one country”. This allowed for nationalism to take on a fundamentally Left-wing character. The main contradiction became framed as Imperialist vs Anti-Imperialist as opposed to Capitalist vs Workers Power. This manifested within the US as cultural nationalism and Anti-Imperialism being associated with the leadership of specific identities. So, even if Aoki was an informant (which we only have vague FBI sourced documents or suspect testimony of FBI agents as supporting evidence) it wouldn’t explain the tremendous success of these politics. At its heart they embrace the development of islands of “liberation” (nationalism) that put off an attack on capitalism in favor of survival within the ruling order.
Okay, the FOIA evidence is damning. And after thinking about it all day because of your piece it fits with what I understood to be the political weakness of the radical politics at the time. I love the part where Aoki reports there were “No communists” in the BPPSD and says that even the political influences of Mao, Fanon and MalcolmX were only really understood by the top leadership circle. He was then entrusted to lead the education within the party! It makes me wonder about organizational structures that could prevent a fed from having so much ideological influence.
I agree re: anti Imperialism but Rosenberg uploaded the papers confirming that Aoki made 500 reports to the FBI throughout his career as a militant. Look at the blog I linked to
Okay, I will look and I believe you. I’d like to understand his politics more deeply, then. Is there a way he reconciled his public persona with privately helping the feds? In a certain sense, coming up with Ethnic Studies as a way to counteract radicalism seems way too advanced for the FBI. I suppose simply being anti-communist could explain that.
He killed himself in the early 2000s if that helps us understand what his motivation was. He professed anti-communism. There are a number of hagiograhical biographies of him that appeared right before the Rosenfeld book. Rosenfeld found out about Aoki by accident. He was investigating J Edgar Hoover's surveillance of the UC when he discovered the Aoki/FBI connection
I'm so glad you wrote this!
Excellent! The fury we face when bringing this stuff up is truly amazing. I thought that this was unique to the gender discussion. But once I got out of that bubble I realized how really universal the problem is on "the left". I heard that Ryan Grim of DropSite faced some wrath for daring to criticize DEI. MR interviewed him about it, and the willful ignorance from the host and founder was...sigh. Let's just say "it's not happening, but it's a good thing, but it isn't happening, but it should happen, but it's a right-wing talking point, but...Trump bad".
That's an impressive pod cast analysis.
Henwood is snarking about it. The leftists who deny this, I don’t get it.
He hates me and my effortlessness elegance lol
Anyone who has organized has seen these pathologies. They haven’t stopped me from being on the left or doing what I can, but they have definitely inhibited the imagination of many leftists throughout the years. Part of what we are dealing with is maybe idpol was the best way to deliver the goods for a time under neoliberalism. But since at least 2008 it has been a conservative force. Being very generous there.
He and I were friends as were our sons. The hatred is real. He would like to humiliate me and shut me up. He ‘organized’ mobs to attack Amber Frost and Angela Nagle as well
Jesus!
Everyone’s so tired. Lol
It was an excellent episode and I appreciate the additional information you have provided.
This is terrific!
Great piece. Enjoying the way Unherd is becoming a kind of dissident space for UK lefties!
I’m pretty much a twitter nobody — not verified, can count my followers on three fingers — but the post I just linked in response to Doug Henwood’s put down on the article is one of my most
‘successful ’ in terms of racking up views. Note Henwood didn’t post a link to the article — he just wanted to make fun of the title as a way of belittling Catherine’s status — https://x.com/emmalinejen/status/1886808867511681432?s=61&t=8XrcxNfnHkpW_zKQoQBiBg
Henwood got a bunch of X animals to pounce on me in 2021. It didn't silence me, but he and his people took over Jacobin. He is irrelevant and sad, but his job is to eliminate any critique of liberal Leftism, but he can't shut me up.
Listened to the Vivek Chibber interview that launched a thousand tweets of outrage. If I remember accurately, he confined his critique mostly to DEI trainings, and to college students behaving badly (“illiberally” condemning different povs as opposed to debating them). Catherine’s critique of contemporary self-identified left culture is more consistently broad, and includes entire swaths of the PMC. Which may be one reason why the PMC is so desperate to exile it. Heretics always hunted more ferociously than never-believers.
I wanted to criticize Jacobin more directly for pandering, but the editing softened my critique. Will put it behind the paywall here in a few days. Just too busy this week and had dental work lol
As you point out very well in much of your writing, the current dominant politics is devoid of substantive solidarity and the requisite comradely debate. Sometime it feels too far gone, but at least there are others who see it. We just don’t have any organizational power and are cut off from the most economically powerful workers.
The Chibber podcast misses the essential characteristic of the social-justice left, which is scaling single issues into mass organization. Prison Abolition(A.Davis and co.) has a pretty small little chunk of work that they carry on successfully in North America, and they scale it up on campus with appeals to Defund the Police and dismantle structural racism. Without those campaigns, their identity politics would have probably been dealt with and scaled back as Marxists and Anarchists have done, because they alienate people in their organizations. But because left wing professors and activists need to keep the “community” growing, they need to constantly appeal to broader groups of people using big tent issues. This has made their issues too digestible and cooptable by power. They weren’t able to do what the Frankfurt school did and distill their political beliefs into a philosophy of freedom in order to engage history, and this has left them in a powerless position, perpetually near the top. As Angela Davis says “it is an amazing accomplishment that Abolitionists have made it so that people must include abolition in the same sentence as reforming prisons.” Indeed it is, for the Police who have added another cost of lacquer to their veneer of public engagement in the funding board room.
Fundamentally single issues can’t be scaled up without losing track of the people who are calling for the reform. They also have to be reactive to each new shift in the capitalist landscape. But the contradictions that good organizers can use to make the working class strong can’t really be developed in a university that is hyper-safe and hyper bureaucratic. You need people involved who know their lot in life and will want to begin to find meaning in the collective project of human freedom. For example, good union organizers will center work life balance and the primacy of the family and social life over an increase in pay alone; society is ultimately the beneficiary of their struggle because they lead with bravery rather than pragmatism.
If Prison Abolition movements that are doing real work with real families can begin to develop a broader commitment to communities in need of reform, then they might be able to lead the charge in moving radial university politics toward a socialist future. Davis and other Abolitionist thinkers and activists have left the door to a Frankfurt School critique of their politics wide open by centering the oppressive/exploitative nature of capitalism, rather than the political potential within it, which has created a who’s-side-are-you-on situation, rather than a political alternative.
As Ruth Wilson Gilmore famously says in her book on Abolition Geography, “freedom is not a mere theory, but a place.”
But where is the party?
Like Gilmore, Chibber falls victim to his own historicism by locating the issue of identity politics in the university, rather than in the history of the left itself in the 20th century.
I think part of the conversation about the rise of identitarian ‘radicalism’ has to include the retreat of the internationalist revolutionary movement throughout the 30s-50s. Stalin’s ideological innovation to paint a retreat away from “International Proletarian Revolution” as a victory was to declare that it’s possible to build “Socialism in one country”. This allowed for nationalism to take on a fundamentally Left-wing character. The main contradiction became framed as Imperialist vs Anti-Imperialist as opposed to Capitalist vs Workers Power. This manifested within the US as cultural nationalism and Anti-Imperialism being associated with the leadership of specific identities. So, even if Aoki was an informant (which we only have vague FBI sourced documents or suspect testimony of FBI agents as supporting evidence) it wouldn’t explain the tremendous success of these politics. At its heart they embrace the development of islands of “liberation” (nationalism) that put off an attack on capitalism in favor of survival within the ruling order.
Okay, the FOIA evidence is damning. And after thinking about it all day because of your piece it fits with what I understood to be the political weakness of the radical politics at the time. I love the part where Aoki reports there were “No communists” in the BPPSD and says that even the political influences of Mao, Fanon and MalcolmX were only really understood by the top leadership circle. He was then entrusted to lead the education within the party! It makes me wonder about organizational structures that could prevent a fed from having so much ideological influence.
Yes
I agree re: anti Imperialism but Rosenberg uploaded the papers confirming that Aoki made 500 reports to the FBI throughout his career as a militant. Look at the blog I linked to
Okay, I will look and I believe you. I’d like to understand his politics more deeply, then. Is there a way he reconciled his public persona with privately helping the feds? In a certain sense, coming up with Ethnic Studies as a way to counteract radicalism seems way too advanced for the FBI. I suppose simply being anti-communist could explain that.
He killed himself in the early 2000s if that helps us understand what his motivation was. He professed anti-communism. There are a number of hagiograhical biographies of him that appeared right before the Rosenfeld book. Rosenfeld found out about Aoki by accident. He was investigating J Edgar Hoover's surveillance of the UC when he discovered the Aoki/FBI connection