Re: <nettime> The Left Needs a New Strategy

[Dmytri Kleiner <dk@telekommunisten.net>]

On 2021-01-10 06:15, Brian Holmes wrote:

> Be certain that our side will respond over the next couple years. Be
> part of it.

The left has a strategy, you just may not know because you are not 
invovled.

The Communist Party of China knows, as do the Communist Parties of 
India, as does the MST in Brazil, and the movements behind the MAS in 
Bolovia. NUMSA knows. The left has a strategy, and through struggle and 
perseverance in the face of defeat, it's winning. It's just hard to tell 
from behind enemy lines.

The strategy is not a secret, it has been written down by many, 
revolutionaries like Mao and Lenin, but also educators like Freire, 
Psychologists like Fannon, and by labour organizers from William Z 
Foster to Jane McAlevey. The key to understanding it is understanding 
that only the oppressed can liberate themselves.

It's the narcissistic embedded left that is losing, and has always lost, 
and will always lose, because they are not really part of the team, they 
are just flunkies of the right, it's not their job to win, it's their 
job to ensure that the workers in the imperial core hate the workers in 
the underdeveloped and formerly colonized world, and sheepdog them into 
ineffective practices.

more here: 
https://dmytri.medium.com/we-have-lost-every-fight-cfc6873d6683

---

20–30 years later everything is worse in the US and Canada, every single 
damn thing we fought for or against we lost. This is not an 
exaggeration. Except for the personal legend and notoriety of some 
individuals and small groups, nothing was gained. Even our crowing 
achievement, the resignation of odious Ontario premier Mike Harris is 
symbolically erased by the odious current Ontario premier Doug Ford, 
brother of the late crack-smoking Mayor of Toronto Rob Ford awarding 
Harris the “Order of Ontario” a few days ago.

Meanwhile, the “old left” we made fun of, the “authoritarian” and “out 
of date” mostly brown and yellow “Tankies” of the world, like the 
Communist Parties of China, Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, the “pink tide” 
in Latin America, Marxist movements like MAS, MST, NUMSA, etc, have made 
incredible progress for humanity. Progress that is measurable, 
undeniable, and desperately needed.

Yet, the hip left in the West still loves to denounce foreign workers, 
their leaders, their countries, their movements. All their achievements 
are denounced or denied along with holding them to unrealistic standards 
and judging them according to the information and framing of the 
imperialist media and intelligence agencies. The only foreigners worth 
supporting to the hip embedded left are perfect victims and hopeless 
causes, which coincidentally pose little serious threat to imperialist 
powers.

What is common to both critical pedagogy and radical labour organizing 
is an opposition to “third party” activism, Freire covers this 
extensively, as do many labour organizers, most recently Jane McAlevey.

When people set themselves up as advocates, as separate from either the 
oppressor or the oppressed, from either the boss or the worker, from 
either the colonizer or the colonized. They are nothing more than 
“propagandists” as Freire puts it. They do not truly represent the 
oppressed and can not liberate them, for only the oppressed can liberate 
themselves.

McAlevey, in a similar vein denounces practices routed in “advocacy” or 
“mobilizing” as shallow and propagandistic, calling for “deep 
organizing” rooted in the leadership and efforts of the workers 
themselves.

The famous disability movement slogan “nothing about us without us” has 
the same tone.

I still love culture jamming and political art.

However, when I see it now I think back on the last 30 years and wonder 
whether the artist positions themselves with the oppressed, with the 
workers, with the colonized, or as third party advocating or mobilizing 
“on their behalf.”

And I wonder this knowing that it’s almost always the second form. That 
is the form promoted by the entrenched institutions that the the hip 
embedded left are the product of, institutions that include media, the 
education system, and, of course the “Mighty Wurlitzer” of the 
intelligence agencies, which works ‘round the clock to channel the hip 
embedded left away from practices and beliefs that threaten the elite, 
towards those that only superficially irritate the elite enough to 
provide satisfaction for activists without actually achieving anything 
consequential for the oppressed, for workers or for targets of 
imperialist aggression.

And often you don’t need to guess, they will tell you themselves, they 
are “against both sides.” They are against the US and Capitalism, for 
sure, of course, you can tell by their T-shirts and posters. But they 
are also against “authoritarian” foreign countries and movements, often 
even against some of the more militant local movements as well.

From this view, it is not so much an H60 allen key they need to open and 
“subvert” a bus shelter billboard, but they need to be working with and 
among the oppressed, not white-saving them with “clever hacks.”

They advocate on behalf of or critique an oppressed they do not work 
shoulder to shoulder with. They don’t share the same social position and 
interests. Their own real reproductive material interests are often more 
closely aligned with the oppressor, the boss and the imperialist 
aggressor than it is with the oppressed, workers or people in the 
nations targeted for aggression.

They therefore identify as neither the oppressor nor the oppressed, 
neither the worker nor the boss, neither colonizer nor the colonized.

They are a third party.

They position themselves above both sides offering enlightened 
judgement, but have no insight and no stake.

They are narcissistic propagandists.








--
Dmytri Kleiner
@dmytri
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