Trump, Le Pen, Neoliberalism: Mea Culpa from a Far-Left Vermont Senator Supporter

[Madam45for2923]

by Prestyr John
https://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/resistance-to-trumpism-2/trump-le-pen-neoliberalism-mea-culpa-from-a-far-left-sanders-supporter.html

SNIP/

Mea Culpa: I have been following Andrew Kliman’s frequent warnings that Trumpism—and now, the possible victory of Marine Le Pen and her National Front in the French elections—pose a far more serious danger than neoliberalism does. I tried for a long time to disprove this in my own head. I didn’t want it to be right, because it’s just hard to admit that what I’ve been arguing and working for during the past year and a half is just not working out.
In fact it was just plain wrong.

I don’t speak for everyone on this, but cognitive dissonance is powerful, and I can call it so because if I ultimately agree that Trumpism and the National Front are far more dangerous, it has to be my personal attachment to my own work and identification thereof that has created a gap in my thinking, a gap that is not based in any material reality.

There clearly is a problem in the far left’s insistence on the purity of its politics, while also championing candidates like Bernie Sanders and defeated French presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who we also believe to be “pure”—that is, to speak the recognizable vocabulary of the modern left regarding neoliberalism, etc.—even though they themselves are not far left, but work within the present political system.

It clearly can’t be both.

The irony is that it is this insistence on pure politics free of “big banks” etc., etc., that has allowed people from the far left to think that it’s ok if they vote against the centrist candidate this time, even when the alternative is a fascist leader, because at least their candidate speaks our shared language of anti-neoliberalism.

I felt the same way last year. As someone who grew up as a leftist in the south, there is something very intoxicating about seeing the word “socialism” in the news and on TV, about finally seeing a candidate saying something, anything, about capitalism. This is what allowed me to sidestep my own principles, in the hopes that somehow and someway, despite Sanders’ flaws, his candidacy was the way out of the status quo, simply because the word “socialism” was attached to his name.

And I knew better. I knew this was a game that has been played before, but I didn’t care. I tried jumping through every ideological hula hoop, trying to explain to others, and mostly to myself, why this time was different, how it could fit into a revolutionary analysis.

But I’m too tired now.

I can speak bluntly about my mistake, in the hopes that other people who feel the same way can at least start to talk about why it happened. My mistake was an attempt to assuage my conscience. I felt that my conscience was “cleaner” by not voting for an established candidate.

Is that not exactly what the left was decrying about liberal votes for Hillary? That it made them feel better by not being Trump voters?
If that’s the case, then my argument ceased to be an argument and became a rationalization. It spoke more to how I felt about myself and my work than about the real circumstances of the 2016 election. I wanted to be free of the guilt of the sins of both parties.

It was a wager in which, had Hillary Clinton won, we would anticipate the inevitable—the “neoliberal” candidate behaving exactly how we thought she would–and I could glibly sit in my pure-politics corner and say “told you so.” That’s the worse kind of consciousness raising imaginable, but that’s as far as I could think.

Humans are abysmal at judging risk, and in this instance my foresight was catastrophic. It was selfish.

continues in link: https://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/resistance-to-trumpism-2/trump-le-pen-neoliberalism-mea-culpa-from-a-far-left-sanders-supporter.html



NOTE: I usually ignore any reading with words neo-anything. They just lose me instantaneously. I hate the word neo-liberal. But thought to leave this post as the writer wrote.

[Madam45for2923]

1. .

0. Trump, Le Pen, Neoliberalism: Mea Culpa from a Far-Left Vermont Senator Supporter
View profile
by Prestyr John
https://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/resistance-to-trumpism-2/trump-le-pen-neoliberalism-mea-culpa-from-a-far-left-sanders-supporter.html

SNIP/

Mea Culpa: I have been following Andrew Kliman’s frequent warnings that Trumpism—and now, the possible victory of Marine Le Pen and her National Front in the French elections—pose a far more serious danger than neoliberalism does. I tried for a long time to disprove this in my own head. I didn’t want it to be right, because it’s just hard to admit that what I’ve been arguing and working for during the past year and a half is just not working out.
In fact it was just plain wrong.

I don’t speak for everyone on this, but cognitive dissonance is powerful, and I can call it so because if I ultimately agree that Trumpism and the National Front are far more dangerous, it has to be my personal attachment to my own work and identification thereof that has created a gap in my thinking, a gap that is not based in any material reality.

There clearly is a problem in the far left’s insistence on the purity of its politics, while also championing candidates like Bernie Sanders and defeated French presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who we also believe to be “pure”—that is, to speak the recognizable vocabulary of the modern left regarding neoliberalism, etc.—even though they themselves are not far left, but work within the present political system.

It clearly can’t be both.

The irony is that it is this insistence on pure politics free of “big banks” etc., etc., that has allowed people from the far left to think that it’s ok if they vote against the centrist candidate this time, even when the alternative is a fascist leader, because at least their candidate speaks our shared language of anti-neoliberalism.

I felt the same way last year. As someone who grew up as a leftist in the south, there is something very intoxicating about seeing the word “socialism” in the news and on TV, about finally seeing a candidate saying something, anything, about capitalism. This is what allowed me to sidestep my own principles, in the hopes that somehow and someway, despite Sanders’ flaws, his candidacy was the way out of the status quo, simply because the word “socialism” was attached to his name.

And I knew better. I knew this was a game that has been played before, but I didn’t care. I tried jumping through every ideological hula hoop, trying to explain to others, and mostly to myself, why this time was different, how it could fit into a revolutionary analysis.

But I’m too tired now.

I can speak bluntly about my mistake, in the hopes that other people who feel the same way can at least start to talk about why it happened. My mistake was an attempt to assuage my conscience. I felt that my conscience was “cleaner” by not voting for an established candidate.

Is that not exactly what the left was decrying about liberal votes for Hillary? That it made them feel better by not being Trump voters?
If that’s the case, then my argument ceased to be an argument and became a rationalization. It spoke more to how I felt about myself and my work than about the real circumstances of the 2016 election. I wanted to be free of the guilt of the sins of both parties.

It was a wager in which, had Hillary Clinton won, we would anticipate the inevitable—the “neoliberal” candidate behaving exactly how we thought she would–and I could glibly sit in my pure-politics corner and say “told you so.” That’s the worse kind of consciousness raising imaginable, but that’s as far as I could think.

Humans are abysmal at judging risk, and in this instance my foresight was catastrophic. It was selfish.


continues in link: https://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/resistance-to-trumpism-2/trump-le-pen-neoliberalism-mea-culpa-from-a-far-left-sanders-supporter.html



NOTE: I usually ignore any reading with words neo-anything. They just lose me instantaneously. I hate the word neo-liberal. But thought to leave this post as the writer wrote.

[coolsandy]

2. THINK ON THESE THINGS. FACE IT! and than act accordingly.

Those of us who tried to warn you were roundly slammed, suspended, and some were banned. We shouldn't pretend this didn't happen to many worthy DU contributors. We shouldn't have it happen again.

[Madam45for2923]

3. Crazy dangerous times. Ball was dropped.

coolsandy
2. THINK ON THESE THINGS. FACE IT! and than act accordingly.
View profile
Those of us who tried to warn you were roundly slammed, suspended, and some were banned. We shouldn't pretend this didn't happen to many worthy DU contributors. We shouldn't have it happen again.

[WhiteTara]

4. Reminds me of the Nadir supporters in 2000

All weepy and sorry. Some people never learn until it's too late.

[Fiendish Thingy]

5. It's too bad you have such a strong reaction to the prefix "neo"

As both neoconservatism (hawkish foreign policy championed by Cheney and cabal), as well as neoliberalism (free market, globalist economic policy supported, with variations, by both Republicans and fiscally moderate to conservative democrats, including Obama and Clinton) are powerful forces in American politics, and are ignored at one's, and the nation's peril.

The article you posted is just another, perhaps more erudite, "lesser of two evils" ( or in the author's words "dangers" ) arguments.

[Madam45for2923]

6. Also I dislike post-anything. Visceral dislike. "Lesser of 2 evils", hmmmm! Not a fan.

5. It's too bad you have such a strong reaction to the prefix "neo"
View profile
As both neoconservatism (hawkish foreign policy championed by Cheney and cabal), as well as neoliberalism (free market, globalist economic policy supported, with variations, by both Republicans and fiscally moderate to conservative democrats, including Obama and Clinton) are powerful forces in American politics, and are ignored at one's, and the nation's peril.

The article you posted is just another, perhaps more erudite, "lesser of two evils" ( or in the author's words "dangers" ) arguments.

[Jim Lane]

7. Tying Bernie into this is absurd

The author's thesis is that principled political positions, such as opposition to the concentration of wealth in big banks, "allowed people from the far left to think that it’s ok if they vote against the centrist candidate this time...."

Yes, there were some people like that. They voted for a far-left Vermont Senator in the primaries and for a far-left Massachusetts doctor in the general election.

The vast majority of the people who had supported Bernie Sanders in the primary rejected that course, however. We agreed with Bernie that, despite our significant disagreements with Hillary Clinton on policy matters, voting for the centrist candidate was the right thing to do.

If this author was among the minority of Bernie's supporters who did not vote for Clinton, and who has now seen that Bernie was right and he was wrong, then I welcome his change of heart. Better late than never. It would have been better, however, if, having alluded to Bernie in his headline, he had acknowledged that Bernie was right.

[betsuni]

8. K&R