I find myself asking similar questions about a lot of what I would call the "dissident left", a group with which I fundamentally disagree philosophically, but pragmatically find myself often aligned with. The "ruling-class left" (if I can use your framework) controls a massive network of indoctrination camps (higher education) from which they then strategically press their advantage to extend that indoctrination across a range of other institution, from public schools to corporate media. The question for everyone who would seek to oppose their rule then has to start with the mechanisms that might be employed to "un-indoctrinate" people.
In my view, the process begins with the basic question that deBoer seems to be posing: what are the actual effects of left-wing activism on the putative beneficiaries of that activism? In other words, yes, "pragmatic leftism" is actually an oxymoron, but for that very reason, adherents to it are likely at step one in the deprogramming process. If ruling-class leftism is an ideological construct designed to fool the masses into accepting "bourgeois class rule", the antidote to that has to be the reality of the impact that bourgeois class rule has on people who are not part of that class.
Maybe deBoer is already past the point in his life/career where he might be willing to take the red pill, but I'm not sure that he and others like him are obscuring the true nature of the left so much as illuminating it via the contradictions in their own thought processes. In other words, it's not hard to imagine that there's a fairly straightforward path from critiquing the left "from within" to critiquing the left from "without", however ideologically diverse that next place might be.
A year ago I thought there something to be gained from a robust critique of the Left while still maintaining fealty to planks of its political project. I don't think so anymore. I think the whole thing is a mess. I can't use the world "left" of "Leftist" or "leftism" without scare quotes or without derision anymore. In that regard, BC's account and especially AT's account were far ahead on the game. I remember listening to a What's Left pod about two years ago (I think the pod was already a couple months old at the time) and Aimee Terese was already pillorying AOC. I thought, "Damn, take it easy sister." Everything she said was right. Everything.
Anybody who voted Biden in the end, all the "dissidents," all the "socialists," "leftists," Jacobin (which is now just The Nation), Current Affairs (which was even cringe in 2020), all of them crawl back under the umbrella on the Democratic Party when need be.
There's a pipeline theory of intellectual development. A smart person on the fringe of a dumb discourse may yearn for something more, and fail to find it, but later find it in someone who can bridge them from point A to point B. And then when they find themselves stuck at point B, there's another person who has been through that who will lead them to point C. And so on.
Suppose someone is stuck in a sandtrap of dreadful liberal pablum. And not just "someone" in particular, but most people. Liberal pablum is the default of the mainstream, it seems. There will be many people trying to engage with something deeper. They won't find a readily available exit, but they'll latch onto someone who at least appears to be carving a tunnel out of Shawshank.
DeBoer makes no tunnel. Or, he makes a half-tunnel at best. He's stuck in the prison that he spends his days criticizing, as this article establishes, while rhetorically trying to redeem the prison. But for the desperate and insightful onlooker, he drills enough cracks in the wall for the smart ones to start to crawl their own way out.
The end game of DeBoer is going to land back in the same conversation as the year 2014. But the audience there is wide enough where a savvy critic of DeBoer could drag his readers into a deeper conversation.
I hope the tactical benefit there isn't lost, even if he has reached his ceiling as a writer.
This almost gives him too much attention I think. I mean, he seems like a good guy honestly but as a writer he’s sort of a ploddingly earnest obscurity distinguished mainly by his incredible logorrhea (excuse me productivity). Maybe take on (the remains of) Chapo and Jacobin more directly, or is the issue there that they don’t even pretend to really question anything?
This is really good, because it deals with the "leftist dissident" in a generalisable way and shows why the arguments "against the left from the left" never question its actual tenets. I have had back and forths with Alex Hochuli about this (well actually just "backs", because he wouldn't reply to my criticism), about whom pretty much the same thing could be said as what you say here about Freddie. Anti-wokism in that sense is even sneakier than straightforwardly dumb wokism, because it legitimates alleged forms of discrimination as central to society even more straightforwardly. Especially the "I have never said that mansplaining (!), tone policing (!), sexism/racism/transphobia do not exist, of course they exist" defense is really poor, and there is not an ounce of content-related disagreement with anyone on the left. When I talked of the left as the ruling class in the last BungaCast, Alex said "this is simply wrong, the DSA is not the ruling class", which is the same mind bogglingly naive "some of them may be, but not the whole organisation" that feigns "nuancedness", when in fact it's just a bottom-line defense of THE LEFT AS THE RULING CLASS there is. So, we are in the realm of pseudo-criticism, a wide circle of (what I call) dirtbag leftists who serve as the fifth column of ruling class power consolidation, precisely by criticising the Left's "excess" vis-a-vis woke politics.
Well . . . maybe.
I find myself asking similar questions about a lot of what I would call the "dissident left", a group with which I fundamentally disagree philosophically, but pragmatically find myself often aligned with. The "ruling-class left" (if I can use your framework) controls a massive network of indoctrination camps (higher education) from which they then strategically press their advantage to extend that indoctrination across a range of other institution, from public schools to corporate media. The question for everyone who would seek to oppose their rule then has to start with the mechanisms that might be employed to "un-indoctrinate" people.
In my view, the process begins with the basic question that deBoer seems to be posing: what are the actual effects of left-wing activism on the putative beneficiaries of that activism? In other words, yes, "pragmatic leftism" is actually an oxymoron, but for that very reason, adherents to it are likely at step one in the deprogramming process. If ruling-class leftism is an ideological construct designed to fool the masses into accepting "bourgeois class rule", the antidote to that has to be the reality of the impact that bourgeois class rule has on people who are not part of that class.
Maybe deBoer is already past the point in his life/career where he might be willing to take the red pill, but I'm not sure that he and others like him are obscuring the true nature of the left so much as illuminating it via the contradictions in their own thought processes. In other words, it's not hard to imagine that there's a fairly straightforward path from critiquing the left "from within" to critiquing the left from "without", however ideologically diverse that next place might be.
A year ago I thought there something to be gained from a robust critique of the Left while still maintaining fealty to planks of its political project. I don't think so anymore. I think the whole thing is a mess. I can't use the world "left" of "Leftist" or "leftism" without scare quotes or without derision anymore. In that regard, BC's account and especially AT's account were far ahead on the game. I remember listening to a What's Left pod about two years ago (I think the pod was already a couple months old at the time) and Aimee Terese was already pillorying AOC. I thought, "Damn, take it easy sister." Everything she said was right. Everything.
Anybody who voted Biden in the end, all the "dissidents," all the "socialists," "leftists," Jacobin (which is now just The Nation), Current Affairs (which was even cringe in 2020), all of them crawl back under the umbrella on the Democratic Party when need be.
thanks for using "ruling-class leftism", it's the only form of leftism around at the moment.
There's a pipeline theory of intellectual development. A smart person on the fringe of a dumb discourse may yearn for something more, and fail to find it, but later find it in someone who can bridge them from point A to point B. And then when they find themselves stuck at point B, there's another person who has been through that who will lead them to point C. And so on.
Suppose someone is stuck in a sandtrap of dreadful liberal pablum. And not just "someone" in particular, but most people. Liberal pablum is the default of the mainstream, it seems. There will be many people trying to engage with something deeper. They won't find a readily available exit, but they'll latch onto someone who at least appears to be carving a tunnel out of Shawshank.
DeBoer makes no tunnel. Or, he makes a half-tunnel at best. He's stuck in the prison that he spends his days criticizing, as this article establishes, while rhetorically trying to redeem the prison. But for the desperate and insightful onlooker, he drills enough cracks in the wall for the smart ones to start to crawl their own way out.
The end game of DeBoer is going to land back in the same conversation as the year 2014. But the audience there is wide enough where a savvy critic of DeBoer could drag his readers into a deeper conversation.
I hope the tactical benefit there isn't lost, even if he has reached his ceiling as a writer.
This almost gives him too much attention I think. I mean, he seems like a good guy honestly but as a writer he’s sort of a ploddingly earnest obscurity distinguished mainly by his incredible logorrhea (excuse me productivity). Maybe take on (the remains of) Chapo and Jacobin more directly, or is the issue there that they don’t even pretend to really question anything?
Normies are still big fans of AOC and the rest…
This is really good, because it deals with the "leftist dissident" in a generalisable way and shows why the arguments "against the left from the left" never question its actual tenets. I have had back and forths with Alex Hochuli about this (well actually just "backs", because he wouldn't reply to my criticism), about whom pretty much the same thing could be said as what you say here about Freddie. Anti-wokism in that sense is even sneakier than straightforwardly dumb wokism, because it legitimates alleged forms of discrimination as central to society even more straightforwardly. Especially the "I have never said that mansplaining (!), tone policing (!), sexism/racism/transphobia do not exist, of course they exist" defense is really poor, and there is not an ounce of content-related disagreement with anyone on the left. When I talked of the left as the ruling class in the last BungaCast, Alex said "this is simply wrong, the DSA is not the ruling class", which is the same mind bogglingly naive "some of them may be, but not the whole organisation" that feigns "nuancedness", when in fact it's just a bottom-line defense of THE LEFT AS THE RULING CLASS there is. So, we are in the realm of pseudo-criticism, a wide circle of (what I call) dirtbag leftists who serve as the fifth column of ruling class power consolidation, precisely by criticising the Left's "excess" vis-a-vis woke politics.
Love it that both you and I have published on the limits of anti-woke leftism this week https://beefheart.substack.com/p/quo-vadis-dirtbag-leftist?s=w
I don't know if a takedown of Deboer accomplishes anything useful, but fuck i am here for it.
holy shit we finally get to hear from my 2 favorite ppl: bill clinton and j lo