Looking back on our conversation with the author and activist on how the left let the far right build a mirror world of negative politics — and how it can change
Naomi Klein's ideas, expressed here in June of 2024, should have been picked up by a well-organized D party, but Will Rogers's famous description of that party in his time still applies. Had the party leaders pushed the solutions of the early New Deal, revised them for our time and the near future, the Ds, especially Harris-Walz, could have done much better. So a word or two to the Ds who need to create programs for the next few years, read history and Naomi Klein.
“One” problem is labeling and how it relates to identity and coalescence (itself related to coalition building) vs. alienation. Another problem is “attention and focus” which by its very nature is exclusionary. Then there are the highly charged issues of “truth v deception,” “good intentions v evil ones,” and “justice v forgiveness & reconciliation” when there is so much fear (terror sometimes), guilt, and shame stemming from processes we can barely understand often because they are so inherently intimate in how we live our lives. These “intimate processes” charge how we see (or fear to see) ourselves and how we imagine (or fear) others see us. Other processes are only dimly understood (if at all) because they are so transcendently abstract even as they affect us materially every day while also looming menacingly above and below our awareness. It often gets down to who we see as victims and perpetrators and how we see (or allow ourselves to see — or fear to see) ourselves as victims, victimizers, heroes, cowards, competent agents, or helpless flotsam floundering shamefully in wounded innocence or seething pridefully (like Milton’s Satan) in maimed guilt. It often gets down to various highly charged views of “justice” or “defense” (and one can consider the question of Gaza as one way of trying to see how these processes interact).
Let’s say we want (or are forced to bear) the label “the left.” Even among ourselves, we’re still gonna have different ideas about how to make our world more just. And we’re still gonna stumble when we are led (or allow ourselves) to imagine our opponents are hostile to justice or are in favor of injustice. And then, our opponents will have even more reasons and evidence to see us as the ones who reject justice and prefer injustice. We, of course, can point out the nearly innumerable ways our opponents benefit from the degradation, exploitation, and oppression of others while they will have little trouble doing the same as they expose our hypocrisies and blindspots.
On the one hand we must grapple with processes we see in the world as capitalism, empire, colonialism, and globalism (forms of economic integration not always identical to empire and colonialism). On the other hand we must grapple with our own (everyday domestic, sexual, social, and careerist) blindspots, prides, and fears along with all shames and guilts associated with all the ways we have victimized others and have allowed others to victimize us.
Naomi Klein's ideas, expressed here in June of 2024, should have been picked up by a well-organized D party, but Will Rogers's famous description of that party in his time still applies. Had the party leaders pushed the solutions of the early New Deal, revised them for our time and the near future, the Ds, especially Harris-Walz, could have done much better. So a word or two to the Ds who need to create programs for the next few years, read history and Naomi Klein.
“One” problem is labeling and how it relates to identity and coalescence (itself related to coalition building) vs. alienation. Another problem is “attention and focus” which by its very nature is exclusionary. Then there are the highly charged issues of “truth v deception,” “good intentions v evil ones,” and “justice v forgiveness & reconciliation” when there is so much fear (terror sometimes), guilt, and shame stemming from processes we can barely understand often because they are so inherently intimate in how we live our lives. These “intimate processes” charge how we see (or fear to see) ourselves and how we imagine (or fear) others see us. Other processes are only dimly understood (if at all) because they are so transcendently abstract even as they affect us materially every day while also looming menacingly above and below our awareness. It often gets down to who we see as victims and perpetrators and how we see (or allow ourselves to see — or fear to see) ourselves as victims, victimizers, heroes, cowards, competent agents, or helpless flotsam floundering shamefully in wounded innocence or seething pridefully (like Milton’s Satan) in maimed guilt. It often gets down to various highly charged views of “justice” or “defense” (and one can consider the question of Gaza as one way of trying to see how these processes interact).
Let’s say we want (or are forced to bear) the label “the left.” Even among ourselves, we’re still gonna have different ideas about how to make our world more just. And we’re still gonna stumble when we are led (or allow ourselves) to imagine our opponents are hostile to justice or are in favor of injustice. And then, our opponents will have even more reasons and evidence to see us as the ones who reject justice and prefer injustice. We, of course, can point out the nearly innumerable ways our opponents benefit from the degradation, exploitation, and oppression of others while they will have little trouble doing the same as they expose our hypocrisies and blindspots.
On the one hand we must grapple with processes we see in the world as capitalism, empire, colonialism, and globalism (forms of economic integration not always identical to empire and colonialism). On the other hand we must grapple with our own (everyday domestic, sexual, social, and careerist) blindspots, prides, and fears along with all shames and guilts associated with all the ways we have victimized others and have allowed others to victimize us.