August 31, 2023
"Class-not-race became code for an increasingly infamous form of racism... 'color-blindness.'"
"Once considered an aspirational positive, a would-be 'color blind' pol like Sanders who focused on 'class-not-race' was understood to be denying the realities of discrimination, probably out of secret racism.
As the use of 'working class' on its own began to carry more penalties even for politicians like Sanders whose entire raison d’etre was supposedly class politics, new entrants to the electoral scene were encouraged to refer instead to the 'white working class,' perjoratively. This was soon described as a voting bloc that basically existed to make irrational/moronic demands.... Most importantly, it votes for Donald Trump, which means whatever it thinks about anything can safely be ignored... [A] phrase that was coined to express a specific political idea — that connections between people of a certain economic class are meaningful — once again came to mean more or less the exact opposite, i.e. that the only 'working class' that really exists is fractious and separated by ethinicity. White working class, black working class, Latinx working class (really!), and so on. Workers of the world, split up!"
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32 comments:
Taibbi should take a break for a while. It's not driven by increasingly complex ideology but a few facts on the ground and the needs of narrative.
very glad to see you getting Matt Taibbi's Substack on here.
huzzah.
Taibbi is 100 percent correct.
Althouse-you seem to have had enough. If I may presume.
Kudos for highlighting this.
very glad to see you getting Matt Taibbi's Substack on here.
huzzah.
Remember when Canadian workers united in opposition to draconian lockdowns and draconian vaccine mandates? They were branded fascists. As one of their leaders was being interviewed on camera, some person unknown walked behind him, but on camera, with a Canadian flag marked with swastikas with a Sharpie. Another person was seen waving a Nazi flag from a balcony, and months later, Canadians were told that his identity had been withheld for “national security” reasons. Regardless, these Canadian workers were demonized. These actions, likely by agent provocateurs,?were cited by Trudeau in justification of the harsh measures used against these workers. The treatment of the truckers is a big part of what has changed my views so completely. Of course the exact same thing is going on with J6 political prisoners, and the demonization of the “white working class” drives the apparent consent of this country for their treatment.
By the way, during those lockdowns, climate change caused wildfires in Canada almost came to a complete halt.
How would Bernie become aware of what a "worker" is? He's never had an honest job in his life. Including, and perhaps especially, his current position. He's an Olympic Class Poser.
Taibbi has always been a fair analyst and never takes the easy cheap shots that most of the other pontificators so love to take.
Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chairs.
I think Taibbi is on to something!
Progressive liberal euphemisms.
Diversity [dogma] (i.e. color judgment, class-based bigotry)
That said, diversity of individuals, minority of one. Men and women are equal in rights and complementary in nature.
#HateLovesAbortion
This is the end result of allowing others to control your speech. Telling you what words you may speak (the attempt on niggardly, for instance), which arbitrary classes you may not criticize (trans), which definitions now supersede commonly understood ones (woman), etc.
This is done under the veil of virtue, the instigators of the suppression always being persons of self-appointed virtue.
As Nancy said, "Just say no."
Or as I say, "Fuck off."
Everybody talks about how we feel more divided these days. I think Taibbi is hitting on why that is.
Sure there is a “need for a narrative,” but that fact alone doesn’t rule out that there is a lot of money and power to be gained by controlling what that narrative is.
Democrats lose on a class analysis, they are the “one percent,” after all. Therefore, such a view of politics cannot be allowed. Divide and conquer. Their plan is to do to Trump what Caesar did to Vercingetorix.
It is just amazing how people like Taibbi stay in the same place politically while they go from left to right in effect. The Democrats no longer represent any political philosophy but "By Any Means Necessary."
The left discovered racism is more useful to their purposes than color-blindness, and here we are.
How would Bernie become aware of what a "worker" is? He's never had an honest job in his life. Including, and perhaps especially, his current position. He's an Olympic Class Poser.
@BUMBLE BEE, Hell yes! People should read We Are As Gods, by Kate Dsliz (available via the Althouse Amazon portal). It’s the story of a commune in 1970s Vermont. At one point Bernie Sanders joins them, but eventually they kick out because he won’t do his fair share of the chores.
Прекрасно быть членом номенклатуры, товарищ. Рабочий не очень.
The best part — by far — of subscribing to Matt Taibbi’s Substack is getting his podcast on Fridays, “America This Week,” with the amazing Walter Kirn.
So by this redefinition, they would now classify (and need to cancel) Martin Luther King as a racist? Interesting.
Leftism always dies with division and with parts breaking off to become de facto conservatives.
Some revolutionaries are NEVER happy with the status quo (and and often mentally unstable or suicidal dead-enders), so they continue to demand further change even after an optimal solution is reached. Those who achieve happy Revolution #1 stop there (and are sudden conservatives). Those with a failing utopian vision often still demand further change and get desperate. They are led by bullies, dictators, totalitarians, genocidal crazies, and coup leaders.
Those who achieve Revolution #9 are stuck in the 1960s and should move on to fresh music.
Correction: The author of We Are As Gods is Kate Daloz. I do preview before I post, but I am a terrible proofreader of my own text and always have been.
I'm telling you, it only looks like I call everything NewAge because NewAge made this all happen over a decade before anybody else noticed. Wanna Orwell-like mindfuck? Look at how folk medicine was an alternative to medicine, which became complementary to medicine, but is now being integrated into medicine, to produce what they're calling functional medicine. Or remember how the bogus anti-vaccine views of Andrew Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy were accepted and promoted by Oprah and the left, but are now considered crazy once QAnon and the right embraced them.
There is a spiritual "hidden hand" at work in this country, that no one will acknowledge, unless they're condemning Christianity or getting another Jim Jones-level cult event out of it.
My first substack subscription...Matt Taibbi seems like he's trying to be a fair minded journalist who's willing to be curious minded and willing to take some chances in what he writes about.
The Marxists have always had trouble with the working class. If proles are too successful, they become petite bourgeois and their opinions can be discarded. If they're too poor, they become lumpen proletariat and their opinions can likewise be discarded. During the Russian Revolution, the only true members of the proletariat were followers of Lenin and Trotsky whose prole credentials were, to those who studied Marxist dialectics, impeccable....The working class during the halycon days of sit-down strikes and the Paris Commune was the revolutionary class, but those days are past. The true revolutionary class nowadays are the transgendered and overweight shoplifters. These are the people with clear ideas of how to shape America into a country that we can all be proud of.
The vast majority of lefty/socialists haven't got a clue as to what a working man does or what "the means of production" amounts to. But they have absolute, evangelical faith that they have the answer. They are wrong.
Taibbi should be commended for seeing and thinking clearly. The left reminds me so much of the behavior of the Bolsheviks when they were vying for power with the competitor revolutionary groups in pre-revolutionary Moscow.
Inherent, irredeemable, unconscious "-isms" are the equivalent of being any sinner being judged by the Inquisition, any educated person being judged by the panel of peasants during the Cultural Revolution, any person being sent to the Gulag by the Soviets. The intent is not to discern or expose guilt, the entire purpose is to inflict guilt and then punishment on those being judged.
To hell with that Midieval, Marxist, completely irrational bullshit, to hell with the 'Arbeit Macht Frei" of "colorblind" racism, and to hell with Taibbi. Some crap is so smelly one should not have to engage with it, simple avoidance is enough.
Inherent, irredeemable, unconscious "-isms" thrown at you are the equivalent of being any sinner judged by the Inquisition, any educated person judged by the panel of peasants during the Cultural Revolution, any person being sent to the Gulag by the Soviets. The intent is not to discern or expose any real guilt, the entire purpose is to impose, to inflict guilt and then force punishment on those being judged.
To hell with that Medieval, Marxist, completely irrational bullshit, to hell with the 'Arbeit Macht Frei" illogic of "colorblind" racism, and to hell with Taibbi. Some crap is so smelly one does not have to engage with it, simple avoidance is enough.
Taibbi is my only substack subscription, for about 3 years now. I second the opinion that the Friday pod cast with Walter Kirn is a treasure. While Taibbi is still viscerally repelled by the word 'Republican', with his advancing years and increasing awareness of things, he is by default being nudged toward conservatism as the Overton window shifts ever leftward, around him. Sometimes I am baffled by his inability to see certain Progressive behaviors for what they actually are, and also baffled by his inability to admit the existence of his changing views, but I do respect his journalistic integrity and am heartened by his sense of outrage at what is going on.
Thus the elevation of Juneteenth. Today's Progs view MLK's aspiratioal colorblindness as a problem
According to genetic scientists, race is a discredited myth. That's why politicians depend so heavily on keeping it alive.
"Today's Progs view MLK's aspiratioal colorblindness as a problem"
In other words, MLK was just a house-N.
He's doing a Devil's Dictionary turn on how the Left is perverting language in service of their politics. His second installment was on 'Democracy', and how we go from having too little (when Democrats lose) to too much (when Democrats also lose).
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