A plausible case can be made that in 2025 there has never before been a greater need for consciousness raising and engagement on the part of social movements among broader and broader swaths of the general population. It can likewise be reasonably argued that there have never been better conditions for this heightening and engagement to occur, thanks to the ongoing consciousness raising on the part of popular social movements over the last 60 years. Let’s keep in mind these movements – for peace, civil rights, international solidarity, environmental sanity, women’s rights and much else – were either non-existent or incomparable to recent levels prior to the 1960s.
After all, without this consciousness and engagement how are we to realize the changes and new realities needed? Greatly reducing compulsory working hours, rearranging the meaning of work, reducing inequality and eliminating poverty, hunger and homelessness, eliminating war, nuclear weapons and dismantling the machine that gives birth to those, creating the conditions for the conversion to a green economy – meaning a better quality of all aspects of life in every way for local communities the world over, consigning stifling classism, bureaucracy, hierarchy, racism, sexism to the dustbin of history. Creating truly optimal public healthcare systems, ending corporate privatization, corporate welfare and tax havens, ending corporations as we know them, preventing pandemics…and so much more. Through our collective efforts manifesting a new society with more fulfilling lives and outcomes – one more actually democratic, one of a participatory nature at work and in education, in the broader economy and political systems, at home and in social structures. Where individual and collective agency take on whole new meanings, roles and responsibilities.
Since we can all walk and chew gum at the same time, we as part of movements and of the broader population can dedicate collective efforts, organizations, programs and commitments in the here and now to strategies and visions to attain these future advances – all reasonable and necessary advances – while simultaneously and necessarily remaining in the trenches of the day to day fight against non-democratic elements in society and power itself which seek to block progress on all fronts. But, crucially, put up these fights in ways in which resistance and reform are not ends in themselves but are seen as steps on the way to a very different world. In fact if we think we can’t do both then we’re not only deluding ourselves as to our own collective capabilities but also deluding ourselves as to our prospects for evading the worst and having a real chance at creating that better world.
That is, we can – and are compelled to – engage in what we’re for and what we’re against at the same time.
But in some substantial measure isn’t the perception of movements – rightly or wrongly – on the part of too much of the disengaged public that of anger alone, bitterness, resentment, ranting and raving sometimes even about things that don’t apply to the public’s everyday struggles? The public too commonly sees tension, conformity, a lack of reaching out, defensiveness, defeatism. Posturing.
In other words, the public often see what we’re against, amongst other things. Not what we’re for.
They too often see not only no visions and no path to attain them, but solely analysis of dire situations. While analysis is necessary, it too often dominates, revealing something else – a measure of defeatism, hopelessness. How? Analysis at the expense of and not based on dialogue particularly with those not already engaged in social and political activism conceals, at least to some extent, a lack of humility in self and of faith in the other, which cuts off the possibility of critical reflection at the knees. Therefore analysis in and of itself signifies distance. It remains for the most part in the realm of the spectator and takes on paternalistic aspects. Expectedly, that very distance is going to be seen in part as a cynical posture by those struggling inside and outside of movements. For the distance emanates from the fact that most analysis for analysis sake fails to hold as a departure point the concerns, struggles and perspectives of the person on the other side, and fails to then engage in reflective and critical dialogue on that basis. Defensiveness is perceived at the expense of dialogue and vision. Perhaps worst of all is finally the cynicism expressed through the tone, point of departure and conclusions of the analysis.
It’s as if the content of the words and actions of movements – even when extremely important and accurate, as they often are – should rightfully take a back seat to how, and on what basis, and for what aim, and emanating from what place, and whether the content is genuinely attempting to create a sense of mutual agency.
These are some of the factors which lie behind the ability to maintain engagement with broader sectors of the public and increase popular participation and commitment in movements.
In that regard, do we believe there’s that much difference in what Trump voters want and what non-voters want on one hand and what liberals and leftists want? Better work and communities, a more equitable, just and peaceful society and all the rest.
This is not some kind of expression of sympathy with abhorrent misguidance of the act, per se, of pulling the lever for a fascist movement at the head of US society, but with the factors in society –including in progressive social movements – which have led so many to hold such destructively misguided beliefs and to take such self-harming actions in the first place.
Questions arise. Just a couple for now.
Despite their immense civilizing effect on society over recent generations, what part have activist social movements had in failing to create conditions through agency-centered education and transcending defensive-minded single-issue campaigns in order to appeal better to the broader public? What role have those deficiencies played in failing to prevent a burgeoning neo-fascist movement and the election of its figurehead?
And what dynamics internal to movements, what characteristics do many activists and leftists take on which regrettably coincide with the tendencies of disengaged as well as with Trump voters?
What, on the adverse side, do all three of these groups share to varying degrees which underlies these severely misguided beliefs and actions? At its base, it can’t be hard to identify.
Cynicism.
It’s not easy addressing cynicism. For one it’s easy for anyone to fall into and much harder to get out of. We all delude ourselves in all kinds of ways into believing that we aren’t cynical, whether we fall into it momentarily or for long stretches of our lives. It’s elusive and malignant. Alongside struggle, for much of society it’s a defining feature, movements not excluded. It lurks. It entangles. It perilously conditions our thoughts, beliefs and actions and inaction while persuading us that it isn’t there playing a crucial role.
In what ways might a vote for Trump be expressing something similar to the “leftist” voting 3rd “party” in current conditions, staying home or worse, the leftist equivocating and equating Trump and Republicans with Harris, Biden and Democrats? Or, for that matter, equating a vote against Trump as cheerleading support for the Democrats?
The same question applies to the enormous non-voting and non-engaged sector of the general population.
What “leftists” and non-engaged people with those perspectives are telling us without realizing it, particularly those who consider themselves activists, is that the situation is hopeless. Not only that, but to some degree that we’re deserving of the squalid conditions we find ourselves in. Therefore, ironically, retribution somewhere is in order.
Conversely, on the part of those voting for or even those more fully supporting fascist politics – most unknowingly – this cynicism morphing into revenge means punishing the elites and “liberal” peers in society – at the cost of severely, perhaps fatally, hurting themselves. The right perceives those liberal types along with leftist activists as supporting those same elites. Here rightist voters’ and supporters’ own false sense of agency – their own hopelessness – is on display. They’ve mistaken actual agency – realizing the power we all have as individuals but much more significantly in solidarity with others as a collective in order to mutually empower – with a warped, deformed and false sense of agency. Anti-agency actually. That is, you’re not only telling someone else to please come and save us, take care of our problems for us, blame the others, punish the others, find the scapegoats, make me feel better again – make us great again – give me the dignity that I refuse to see I and others around me already possess or take it upon myself to further in myself or others. But you’re also giving away that agency to the most bad faith actors in society – authoritarian types who have traversed these same mental processes, most ruthlessly internalized doctrine and become particularly adept at opportunism in order to rise through the ranks of power…so they can then punish others who went through the same processes and reward..and reward again..their own punishers. Become the punishers themselves. It’s pure subjugation of the self to doctrine and power. Servility. Giving away your agency. Rejecting actual solidarity – the embracing of mutually empowering education and organizing to work to rid ourselves of the actual oppressors both within and without.
Herein lies the logical endpoint of power, as expressed most commonly and viciously through rightism – the loss of the self. The selling of one’s own will, one’s own rationality, one’s own sense of care for self and empathy for others, the refusal to accept actual responsibility, the passing of one’s own personal and collective predicament onto others, particularly the most vulnerable in society. Crucially, this all occurs while, depending on your degree of self-deceit in your illusory engagement, you convince yourself that you are truly taking initiative, that you’re the real face of no-nonsense, rugged individualism, that you are even acting for the betterment of self and all, particularly when you’re acting in tandem with others. A warping and hijacking of what independence of thought, liberty, self-reliance, self-management, solidarity and even courage and strength should actually mean.
In other words, you’ve “won the victory over yourself,” as one particularly shrewd and well-known British writer put it last century.
With differing levels of awareness, we all give away varying degrees of our power to one extent or another. Those of us in movements with liberatory aims included. In doing it we fail to recognize our agency due to fear, indifference, apathy, lack of empathy, ignorance of the fragility of power, lack of solidarity from others, the lack of liberatory education in schools and society and movements, the lack of participatory structures in those same arenas.
One difference between on one hand those seeking power and their active supporters and on the other hand those seeking to dismantle power by empowering others and ourselves through mutally supportive engagement to understand it and democratize it, is that the latter group, if it considers itself serious, is not supposed to be occupying its time with retribution, and dedicating unduly energy to it at the expense of non-sectarian dialouge-based education and organizing.
Retribution is often the removal of responsibility for your own actions. Make no mistake, what substantial elements of the activist left as well as of the broader disengaged population are doing when they do not engage, or worse if they delude themselves into believing that they are indeed engaging by convincing themselves they’re able to punish power centers such as the US Democratic “party” through sitting out elections or voting 3rd “party”, is just that – engaging in pure illusion. And this would be the case even if it weren’t backed up by generations of clear, tangible evidence. What is also pure illusion is thinking that this attempt at punishing is not harming the society and yourself, for it seriously harms and marginalizes those movements whose sense of judgement and agency are on the contrary not overwhelmed by a false sense of agency, rage becoming self-punishment and sectarian hopelessness, among other things. It is wishful thinking. That is, that we can wish away one half of power by not engaging to impede it.
This all boils down to cynicism. Soul scorching, solidarity killing, delusion-producing, hate-fueling, self-harming, consciousness-deadening, agency-destroying, movement-stifling cynicism.
Herein lies the problem between equating the two sides of power. Among many other things, both beat down populations in innumerable ways, including regularly breaching international and domestic law in their war-making and war-investing, denying healthcare, denying meaningful participation in democracy, putting the species at immiment risk by refusing to confront the unprecedented threats of climate calamity and nuclear weapons.
So why not equate?
Power itself on all sides is defined in the aformentioned and following terms mentioned here, yet one side consistently and actively seeks to take it to its ultimate manifestation – and regularly succeeds in doing so in the real world. This side pays fealty to and appeals to a mind-set which in the end says, obliviously, let’s not only destroy everything and everyone else but also ourselves. As quickly as possible. And define this path in the meantime as a great victory for ourselves. Yet in the face of this what doesn’t often appear to be sufficiently understood by both the disengaged population and leftists is that small differences – and some not so small – in mammoth yet fragile power systems make for large differences in outcomes. Sometimes, exponentially large differences.
And not only. Cynicism knows no bounds and has bottomless depths, and on the part of those in power becomes a magnet to those cynical among us. It festers and is malignant. The appeals coming from the right are targeted at the most virulent instincts and most lethal tendencies in humankind. Malice, indifference, selfishness, hostility, obstinance, bigotry, fear, hate, parochialism, servile adherence to doctrine, delusion, cowardice. Ultimately these appeals are parasitical and exploitative to people’s insecurities. We might, by the way, ask ourselves why the most insecure personalities rise to the top levels of all sides of power systems. Are we not all paying dearly for the insecurity of some?
That’s just the beginning. It says maliciousness, hatred and punishment – usually of the most vulnerable as well as those seeking to undermine their delusions – are good. We have to embrace these “values.” More, we have to punish ourselves for not embracing them. And then glory in the punishment of ourselves and others and embrace in the malice once again. This is the essence of power, and power in its most pernicious form materializes into fascism. Mass delusion and malevolence celebrating itself, cruelty and power never sufficient.
These are defining characteristics and tendencies of power itself, but have always found their most deadly expression in the right, as they do right now. How could they not? The right, as demonstrably the most poisonous and destructive essence of power as expressed in society, grounds itself, among many other retrograde “values”, on tradition, hierarchy, paternalism, deference, submission, the closure of the individual and collective mind as well as the embrace of imposition of starting points and end points in opposition to initiative, enlightenment, originality and infinite possibility. Therefore inevitability, “natural” law, irrationality and delusion become logical outgrowths. In turn, classism, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, patriotism, nationalism and hatred of the vulnerable and those embracing critical dialogue are to be accepted – and furthered – because they supposedly recognize and reward those deemed as naturally strong, intelligent and deserving. Domination is good. Delusion is not delusion. Having no agency is having agency. Having dominion over your own lives and responsibility to a democratic participatory functioning of a community is anathema. At its core it’s anti-education, anti-opening of the mind, anti-possibility, anti-ever more horizons and anti-solidarity. And immeasurably destructive.
You want something more tangible right now as to why there should have been no question about what to do in the 2024 presidential election? As to why we shouldn’t equivocate then and now between power centers and why we first and foremost should oppose the authoritarian, neo-fascist march of power in the form of Trumpism, Maga and the Republican “party” and its counterparts the world over? Most importantly, why we should participate in the innumerable forms of resistance – and projects for expanding beyond solely resistance to neo-fascists as well as bankrupt centrists at the same time – in the here and now?
This winter these activities badly need more and more participation in order to protect societies’ most vulnerable and scapegoated thanks to the global north’s moral crisis – our so-called “immigration crisis.” This participation can and should also build badly needed solidarity in order to draw attention to the inherent interconnectedness between extreme immigrant vulnerability, trans vulnerability and the whole range of vulnerabilities we all face – healthcare crises, labor and housing precarity, the cost of living crisis, the time at work crisis, the education crisis, racism, sexism, war, genocide and the climate crisis, amongst much else.
We should be clear and honest that all of these crises, as during the first time around, are going to be exacerbated, some greatly, some incalculably so, under the Trump administration. Much more than they would’ve been under a Harris presidency. That includes genocide in Palestine and military spending in general, among all else. If it were the case that just one of these crises could have a better outcome even under a wretched, genocide-inflicting Democratic administration, that would be reason enough to block the other party – even if the other party weren’t on the edge of fascism, as it is. It happens that the Republicans are incomparably worse on the entire spectrum in terms of outcomes. Blaringly obvious here is the climate calamity. Without certain climate policies undergoing major changes in the coming years, we’re looking at the gradual evisceration of the human species over the next century thanks to our destruction of the natural world. One party is gravely inadequate, but can and has been pushed. The other? No chance. All deniers. That means game over. This all-ecompassing issue alone is an overt and explicit case in point as to why we are obliged to engage in order to block the worst, which would make the work of putting forth initiatives at the same time to go beyond current systems far and away less difficult.
The disaster here though in not engaging to prevent the worst is of an underlying nature – with clearcut outcomes over time. It’s normalization. Figures at all levels of political and corporate power, due to those reflexive lessons they’ve internalized allowing them to climb the ranks – anti-dialogue, anti-solidarity, obedience, submission to doctrine, opportunism, servility, domination – will reflexively move to accomodate to authoritarian power. The entire political spectrum goes in that direction, meaning right. Might this be the essence of power? That is, power itself as the ultimate expression of cynicism, attracts almost magnetically those cynically seeking power, and acts malignantly. Power, wealth and resources go right and become ever more centralized. Docility ensues.
Even those in privileged positions of power who don’t go along fully take on an entrenched defensive stance, losing in degrees their assertiveness and their position as one of many rallying points for progressive impulse.
Big media, most as giant corporations themselves, conform and normalize, so as not to call into question the very economic and political system which in substantial part produces neo-fascist movements and from which these media players draw power and wealth. This is seen across the board, most notably in the New York Times.
Similarly in some areas of alternative and left media, outlets look to capitalize cynically on their opportunistic sense of the prevailing winds, and capitulate in degrees to power centers.
Perhaps more critically, left media is drawn into a strictly oppositional position. Likewise, even more crucially, for movements of all kinds on the ground. The problem here is much of the public is already weary of what they perceive as the defining oppositional nature of left popular movements. This only greatly exacerbates that dynamic. On the contrary what is wanted and needed are popular organizations built around pro-active visions with strategies and educational initiatives to realize them. The possibilities of these occuring take a major blow since energy will go – necessarily – into defending the most vulnerable and the gains of the past.
With neo-fascism in power, the very attention on media itself as well as on those in power goes to the stratosphere, with infinite diversion of attention to crucial matters on the ground and to introspection itself. Appeals from on high towards mistrust of one another, division of us all, diversion, diversion, diversion, opportunism and scapegoating likewise go into hyperdrive. Anxiety, infantilization of the public, irrationality and defeatism go through the roof.
Finally, what does this normalization do to the young? What does growing up with neo-fascism in power and the ensuing normalization impart to the psyches of youth? What does it mean for their relationship to institutions? To movements who couldn’t prevent it? To their parents and teachers who may turn to diversion as a form of normalization so as not to “frighten” the children? To their parents who are weary of allowing their children to participate in protests because of its perceived “one-sideism”? To their relationship to power itself, with the exalting of authoritarian structures, measures and its sychophantic classes?
Spelled out here is cynicism, without whose malignancy in all sectors of society, including left movements, power could not propel itself forward. Or develop into neo-fascism in 2025. We shouldn’t mirror the cowardly cynicism of those across the spectrum of power. Rather, we should recognize it in ourselves and around us and educate for agency in a participatory manner through dialogue in order to battle against it and get on to the bigger and better things that are in dire need of our attention.
Thanks however to the dedicated work of activist movements on the ground over recent years and generations we are uniquely placed in 2025 to not only defend successfully against neo-fascist authoritarianism as well as insidious centrism but to begin to substantially overcome them at the grassroots, using these struggles to reveal the necessity and real prospects of developing new systems where current ills and cynicism do not reside in conditions in which they can continue to proliferate.
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2 Comments
Actually, the problem is the optimists. The ones who think the Democrats WILL care about us next time or tech WILL make everything better or America IS great and benevolent and it’ll all work out well. These are the people who don’t do anything to improve things and allow what’s happening to happen. The cynics I know are the most active but they’re really up against it.
I don’t know. If more people were cynical, we probably would not have billionaires and the politicians they control.