USA 2020. Violence and the Technological Impasse. Part 3.
This is part 3 of an ongoing conversation between PhD Researcher, Andrew P. Keltner and Research Fellow, Andreas Wilmes. While this was written in the months before the US elections, the content is nonetheless pertinant and raises questions valuable to understanding where the future might head.
Introduction by Andreas Wilmes
Right after the publication of “USA 2020. Violence and the Technological Impasse,” I suggested Andrew to continue our discussion by reversing the role of interviewer and interviewee. He pondered the idea during a couple of weeks, and eventually agreed to the project. For several reasons, Andrew’s task proved much more difficult than mine during our previous discussion on the BLM protests and police brutality. First, our new discussion revolved around American politics, a difficult topic which opens to a rather unpredictable future. Second, I turned out to be a more confrontational interviewer than Andrew was with me. Last but not least, Andrew is an American citizen; he does not occupy the comfortable position of the French scholar who is taking a look, merely out of intellectual curiosity, at the current events on the other side of the Atlantic.
Andrew and I have a common interest in the works of Jacques Ellul. Also, both of us have the conviction that the most pressing issues today pertain to the quite terrifying evolution of the technological system. I believe readers shall neither deny our disagreement nor exaggerate its extent in the discussion below. Andrew rejects the Two-party system in full. His take makes sense in that the technological system almost automatically produces binary oppositions on which politics become dependent – notwithstanding many of its rather debatable stances, the recent documentary The Social Dilemma had at least the merit to touch on this issue.
In contrast to Andrew, my perspective is more short-term: to me, there is currently no greater danger than the technological monopoly represented by the democratic party. I am aware of what some political commentators are saying. If Joe Biden were to be elected president, he would already be weakened by the corruption scandal unveiled during the last days of his campaign. Moreover, his room for maneuver would be considerably limited by the Senate. However, Democrats remain unclear on whether they are planning or not to pack the Supreme Court. Many problems such as the increasing pressure of one-track thinking go beyond the system of checks and balances. What is more, the battle between Technology and Law is more and more becoming a fundamentally asymmetrical conflict. There are further reasons of concern such as foreign policy on which I will not dwell on here.
At any rate, I understand Andrew’s frustration regarding the lack of a genuine alternative to the Two-Party system. There is a similar issue in France where Macron’s “La République en Marche!” has been, from the very outset, an illusory alternative leading towards a new Two-Party system. And, in the near future, France may very well become as radically divided in two as the US currently are…
July 18, 2020
Andreas Wilmes:
I read the introduction and conclusion you wrote to our previous discussion. You seem to be suggesting that what we are witnessing in the US today might not be as historically significant as most people tend to believe. May you expand on this or correct me if I am wrong?
Andrew P. Keltner:
I think that this is a fair summary of what my introduction and conclusion were speaking on, especially the conclusion. I think the introduction is a good premise for the conclusion. As you mentioned, the conclusion is basically stating that things will not change in the USA, the premise being because in the USA there are major issues with competition and with how technologized we are.
These two things go hand in hand as well as work separately in my opinion. On the issue of competition, I recently saw news of a study from the American Political Science Review in which they “found that only 3.5% of U.S. voters would cast ballots against their preferred candidates as punishment for undemocratic behavior, such as supporting gerrymandering, disenfranchisement, or press restrictions.” (23) This for me this isn’t surprising other than the fact that the figure is so low. 3.5% is an incredibly low number. Still, I could imagine it being a majority of the US population, but what the statistic means is that 96.5% of people are not willing to change their opinions. Even more simply, that means that if you took a random 20 people, you are marginally more likely to find not one person who is willing to base their decisions on having a functioning democracy. However, if we go back to the book I referenced in the conclusion of the original interview Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia by Gore Vidal we can see that this notion has long existed.
Now, some examples to demonstrate some domestic issues: 1) Obama and the propaganda of Hope and Change; 2) the March on Wall Street; 3) the seemingly illegal manner of the Bush/Gore elections in Florida; 4) and the issue with Debbie Wasserman Schultz the Democractic National Convention and Hillary Clinton being heavily favored; and 5) the recent nomination of Joe Biden and running mate Kamala Harris who at the beginning of the primaries were largely derided for their political decisions and the causal relation of the those decisions to contemporary issues.
Now, these issues also point towards larger, international issues: 1) the perpetuation of the military industrial complex with Obama who was supposed to change this; 2) the financial sector being perpetually untouchable, which leads to horrible international working conditions for millions, perhaps billions of people; 3) that important elections are not taken seriously by the general population of the United States, which as a nation having a huge influence globally tells us that who is elected in the USA has little difference from what has already been happening — which has largely been criticized abroad.
All of these point to what the study suggests, which is that the USA is a very tribalistic population and further points to how we approach our social positions, which can most aptly be described ‘if it is not in my backyard, I do not care’. A second thing we must consider is that this points to a stagnation in US politics. Now, typically when we think of something that is stagnant we think of something that is not moving, which can seem confusing in this example because it seems that there is a lot of movement in the US. However, I think this is more of a consequence of the 24 hour news media cycle. So, while there does seem to be movement, rather, there is, but it is going nowhere, it is just a cycle of anger and memory loss. Finally, a third thing, and I think this is related to social media, but is the problem of ‘fake caring’, which many people take part in. For example, there have been many social media influencers who used the protests recently for fame. As well, social media and showing that you are a part of an ‘in group’ is incredibly easy, and forming unique points of view has been lost. Instead now, most people perform actions that make them seem that they care about social injustice, but rather in my opinion is related to wanting to be accepted. I think this is a consequence of what I previously mentioned of being problems in the US where competition and technology create a society where compassion and natural modes of acting have been forgotten. At this point it does seem effective to say that the US will not change until there is a revolution of values.
A.W:
A change of values, however, would imply taking sides in the current and quite heated "culture wars." What are your thoughts on this?
A.P.K:
I disagree. I think values are more related to virtue rather than culture. Meaning, virtue is more related to the natural human element rather than the beliefs, projections, and the sensations that we use to uphold the notions of being a certain set of beliefs being more valuable or valued than others. This of course, is a history project that needs to have contemporary and universal value for everyone.
When culture becomes 'warring' it is usually from some tension. Typically tearing apart and tension are related. So, we can see this split in the US, Brasil, Western Europe, Hong Kong, Arab/Muslim nations, etc. There are countries with less tension, but it is felt on all continents.
For example. we can take investing. The reason I take this idea is that investing, in the contemporary sense, has value attached to it. If I go back to the point I made earlier about competition, we can as well think of the modern investment and financial model that currently exists. ‘Invest’ in the human sans capital/profit sense, seems to mean something along the lines of ‘give time and energy towards.’
This is a form of tension. There are those that see investing as a way to provide a certain way of life. And that is all of us. However, how we have been assimilated, if we take the chronologic progression of the etymology history of the word ‘invest’ to understand some humanologic/anthropologic/spiritualogic truth : we would maybe see that people are under a tension over the word ‘invest’.
For me, the most basic example is the Cold War, which, if we take the terms I have proposed, was a difference of how people cared to invest their time and energy (which we can say was stolen by machinery and technology — however, we do speak of the ‘primitivist movement’ : being that which can underestimate the value of machinery and technology). You could also say this with fascism and anarchy.
For, if we take that ‘investing’ as the main ‘value’ for humans to analyze it seems nothing more than a question of how one invests what they have towards what they want. The problem then gets centered into contemporary times, wherein we see that there are such a minute minute fraction of people able to actually choose how their time, resources, and energy are put into things.
For example, we commonly hear in the conversation of the “billionaire class versus the ‘rest-of-us-’” — there are 2,825 billionaires in the world. (24) This figure, taken from the CNBC article, writes about this amount of billionaires being a ‘record high’. However, if there is a record number of billionaires, we also have to ask: is there now a new group of people who are with less? It seems the answer is ‘yes’ if you take the global conversation surrounding the quality of living that is continuing over the last 20 years or so. Or, we take that the world population is growing and thus the figures mean nothing.
When we consider who now has the time, resources, and energy to work, we have to ask another question: are things better for people at the bottom? And when I say the bottom, I do not mean the lower classes, but more the people of periphery, that most of us forget are living amongst us: Spivak mentioned this group of people and defined them as the ‘sub-altern’ — those who have ‘no history and cannot speak.”
For, if the capital market system were to be of its essence then surely we would be getting closer to having less and less subaltern, however, with the coming climate migration crisis, the rise of nationalistic politics, the erasure of free speech in many countires, it seems the issue is growing. Much of this to me has to deal with how people are able to invest. The final question we need to ask is: for those of us with time, resources, and energy to invest — are we doing so for the belief we have in the thing we invest, or for ourselves?
A.W:
Insofar as it is deeply irrational (and does not seem to bother about linguistic consistency), isn't the current mob mentality of the left an obstacle to your analysis?
A.P.K:
I don’t think so. I think what we consider the ‘political left’ is a reaction to people not having time to invest in their life the way they would like. I would like to talk about how this happens, but first want to give my analysis of the ‘cultural left’. Basically, I do not think it is a very well put together concept. In the paper Dealing with Big Numbers: Representation and Understanding of Magnitudes Outside of Human Experience (25) the authors explain that large numbers are in general very hard for humans to put together, so any individual's cognitive ability to process the minds of the millions (give or take) or people who are part of the ‘cultural left’ seems to be a bit tricky. As well, I would add that the notion of a ‘cultural left’ in the USA is a bit of an absurd idea. It is fairly common knowledge that there is not any real leftist movement in the USA. There are people who sympathize with it, want to join a cause, even use it as a fad, fetishize it perhaps, and those who really do practical work. However, of all the people that are part of this reaction to the current issues in the US I would say it is much more likely that ‘people are mad as hell, and don’t want to take it anymore’ — to paraphrase the character Howard Beale from the movie ‘Network’. I think making a ‘cultural left’ is a propaganda tool used to keep away new ideas from people with little power. This is why Biden and Harris seem to have won the nomination and I worry it will pacify many people so that there will be no real changes in US policy.
Now, to move back to how people invest and tying that to the groups of people who are protesting, rioting, making dissent, etc. I think it comes down to when those creating history leave others behind. For, if things perpetuated in the USA the way they are going now and people did not react to mass amounts of state violence, class conflict, poor health care, little career choice, for the people in the lower rungs of society, then we would end up in a state where basically the military industrial complex runs domestic and international politics with neoliberal game rules.
Finally, I would like to mention more about this notion of the cultural left. If we are to act as if there is a cultural left, we also have to ask if there is a ‘cultural right’. Culture is defined as “the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group”, etymological speaking, it comes from Latin ‘colere’ — meaning to tend, or cultivate. But further being written “"Not common before the nineteenth century, except with strong consciousness of the metaphor involved, though used in Latin by Cicero." Meaning "learning and taste, the intellectual side of civilization" is by 1805; the closely related sense of "collective customs and achievements of a people, a particular form of collective intellectual development" is by 1867.” Now, if we are to compare the concept of culture with respective terms of right and left, it would seem that the right has a much stronger sense of culture. It is heavily more WASP - White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, and as well tied to the traditional idealism and mythos of the United States. Whereas the current reaction of people considered on the left are a much more diverse group of people in general, it seems. This of course, is to not typify so easily, but the history does show this is more the case. With that being said, I think it is sufficient to say that the right has had much more cultural influence than the left. What is now being called the ‘cultural left’ is the groups of people and individuals who are reacting to this trend. A trend I might add that: supported Operation Paperclip, the proposed Operation Northwoods, multiply coup d'etats around the globe, bombing of the MOVE community in Philadelphia, Tuskegee experiments, and the forced and secretive sterilization of thousands of Native American women in the 1970’s (26), to name a few actions.
A.W:
You mentioned the issue of propaganda which is one of your main research topics. According to you, what are the main features of propaganda with respect to the events we are witnessing today and to both sides of the political spectrum?
A.P.K:
Well, my first real introduction to studies of propaganda was from Jacues Ellul’s book Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes, which I will mention first. In the book, Ellul mentions four ideals, five myths, and four presuppositions found in propaganda and easily followed rationales. They are: four ideals — Nationalism, Democracy, Socialism, and Communism; five myths — work, nation, happiness, youth, hero; four presuppositions — life’s aim is happiness, man is naturally good, history develops in endless progress, everything is matter.
For the ideals : the ‘right’ side of the political spectrum obviously uses nationalism and democracy in their propaganda. As for the ‘left’ we see that democracy is a central concept as well, and as well there is a fetish with socialism and communism in the US left. I do think that practically speaking the nationalism of the right is a much stronger and scarier reality than the left's fascination with socialism and communism. For typically when the ‘left’ is talking about socialism, communism it is not so much about workers owning the means of production nearly as much as it is about being able to have their taxes go to health care, education, infrastructure — public good. As for their shared belief in democracy, I would say that it seems that in the propaganda it seems that the right upholds that the US is the de facto standard of democracy in the world and this is why establishmentarianism is valid. However, it seems that the left has a much better understanding of what it takes to be a solid democratic citizen, which is something more along the lines of constant fight to have a democracy. I use C. Douglas Lummis’s understanding of democracy from his book Radical Democracy as my template for this analysis. As well, this can be supported by The Economists study that found the US has a flawed democracy and places the US’s democracy at #25 in the world. Flawed democracies are defined as : “nations where elections are fair and free and basic civil liberties are honoured but may have issues (e.g. media freedom infringement and minor suppression of political opposition and critics). These nations have significant faults in other democratic aspects, including underdeveloped political culture, low levels of participation in politics, and issues in the functioning of governance.” (27) From this it seems much more certain that the left conception of democracy in the US is more accurate than the right.
As for the five myths: the three that really stand out. On the right we see again : nation, as well as hero. On the left : youth and hero. Again, on the right the conception of nation is very much tied to the mythology of the founding fathers, literal interpretation of the constitution, as well as the ‘traditional’ interpretation of history. On the left we see that the myth of youth is quite powerful. For me, this is a compelling argument. The average age of the 115th Congress is around 60 years old, with the average age of a US citizen being around 38. I think this demonstrates a valid response for the left to be concerned with a gerontological representation in politics. The criticism of this might be that older people are wiser, etc. but the response would be that this to assume that the people in politics are wise, which is a response that does not seem sufficient.
As for the myth of ‘hero’ of which both have it is more complicated. For, on the right the current main hero is the President, Donald J. Trump, but also cops are turned into heroes, as well as are pundits, and anyway who is pro-establishment. It is hard for me to find a hero on the right that actually fits a universalist definition of a hero. For example, one of the current issues that is being looked at is the case of Kyle Rittenhouse, who had over $250,000 raised by a Christian group after he killed two people and injured a third. (28) On the left heroes are also somehow serving a divisive task, but seem to have less centralized media support for finding people who become heroes who are also not somehow in a victims role. For example, Kyle Rittenhouse on the right is a 2nd amendment and police supporter, but killed two people. On the left, the heroes are usually victims of the killings. I think that this shows us something interesting: for, while both sides support heroes that ‘speak-truth-to-power’, as it were, by going against the ‘other’ or the group that is against them, what is curious is that the right is the establishment, and this not only includes the Republican right, but also the Democrats. So, while the right acts as if they are protecting people from a sinister power, that thing does not actually exist, and in fact in some cases oppresses people into victimhood. The left uses these victims as ‘heroes’ for their cause — which actually does seem to be the one that is more about truly ‘speaking-truth-to-power’.
I won’t go into much detail about the presuppositions that can be found on the left or the right, because I think when Ellul did his analysis these are more modern human features rather than solely political, and as well, complicate the understanding of contemporary issues.
Now, I would add that there are some additions we can add. Those are consumerism/neoliberalism, meliorism, and political correctness. On the right we have consumerism and neoliberalism that are seen as the political-economic way towards a just or equal society. On the left, the critique of neoliberalism and consumerism seems to be fought against by using politically correct tactics, which seem to have progressed into something quite confusing and without foundation in the last five years or so. Both sides think that their ideas are leading towards a better world, meliorism. But this is counterintuitive because if someone were to really be a meliorist they would see good coming from all, but in this case it is a ‘our good’ compared to ‘their good’ or better ‘their-imagine-but-not-real-good’. Meaning, both have ideas of the good coming from a teleological point of view, rather than good being an essence already existing.
As well, there are the common propaganda issues of race, gender, family values, Islamophobia, women's rights, among others, but I think that these points are so overplayed in the media that the reader probably does not need to hear anything about them here to understand the issues found in these ‘talking-points’.
Finally, I would add that we are talking about ‘left’ vs. ‘right’. I would like to mention there is also a larger and more vague population and those are the people who on any side of any issue and possible in any composition of a political person are somewhere closer to the center. I am not sure about propaganda towards the center, but I do think that propaganda from both sides affects people in the center. I believe people in the center are indecisive, which is a comfortable position to be in because you never have to offend anyone or support your ideas. I think this should change. For, it is okay to change your ideas, but you have to know why. Choosing to not think about these matters in some way is the easy way. However, a good criticism of this might be something along the rationality of ‘doing as little as possible’ might be better. For, if the fight in the US is futile as I mentioned in the beginning of the interview, perhaps people who are in the center, like Aristotle mentions, might be the most virtuous.
I would like to end with a small thought on the existential condition of what propaganda might be doing to the groups in the US: the left are having an existential crisis, the center does not want to confront it, and the right flat-out denies that an existential crisis for others even exists. In simplistic terms.
A.W:
Like many other people, I notice an imbalance regarding the practical means of propaganda. Universities and Silicon Valley are predominantly left. Corporate America’s support to BLM is no secret. Censorship and cancel culture on social media are mostly left-leaning. Also, as noticed by Douglas Murray in The Madness of Crowds, progressive biases are quite ironically used to enforce “machine learning fairness.” Examples could go on and go on. To be sure, more subtle political/ideological categories are desirable. However, our times are not subtle at all, and it seems to me one cannot avoid taking sides. The way I see it, the American left, due (among other things) to its technological monopoly and mob mentality, is proto-totalitarian. In contrast to you, I take what is happening as a very decisive historic moment. I would go as far as to say that we should hope Democrats will lose the elections. For if the imbalance of power I just mentioned remains, the US (and most likely western European countries) are likely to see very dark times ahead. What would be your answer to that?
A.P.K:
Well, first I am not sure that I agree with the imbalance. For instance, right wing propaganda leads more towards real violence while left leaning is seemingly more symbolic violence. With that, I would like to say that while there is corporate support of BLM, we should first focus on the fact that 93% of BLM protests have been found to be peaceful. (29) As well, Antifa up until early September had zero murders linked to them (30), while right wing extremists were responsible for 329. (31) So, while the left might have practical means with corporate and academic support, right wing propaganda seems to have much more savage consequences. With that, I will make the simple claim that the side with the more violence, while not having corporate or academic support, seems to be the propaganda that is much more dangerous. For example, I will play devil’s advocate and say: “Yes, well the left are trying to kill ideas”. But, the right are much more concretely killing ideas by killing the bodies that could produce them.
Then, I think it is problematic to equate corporate and academic support with a ‘real’ left wing. Either way, it might not be right wing, but corporations and universities are certainly more center, center-right, or center-left than they are true left. Both corporations and universities need private property to exist and are (in the US) connected much more to the neo-liberal model than they are to anything socialist or communist.
As for the Douglas Murray book, I have not read it and do not know what I can say on that matter of “machine learning fairness”.
However, to go back to the claim that the left is a technological authoritarian system. I think there is an issue here, which goes back to my issue with equating left-corporate-technological-university systems : to me there seems nothing like a leftist movement actually, but much more representative of the division of the two bourgeois states in the US that conveniently get the monikers Republican and Democratic political parties. That meaning, that in the US there is more likely a clash of the upper and wealthy classes that are divided along politics by way of what policies each respective political party can do for the money being invested by those rich folk who are involved in economic policy making. Now, these two political parties are each using their resources to fight each other, and their ways to manage propaganda are being utilized. For example, I see it as basically being an issue of the rural-right and the urban-right. The rural right which is tied to right-wing extremists and the urban-right is tied to BLM. Again, though we have to mention the massive, massive difference in violence between those two groups.
Finally, I would not say we should consider dark times ahead. For me, it seems we have already had dark times. This goes back to my original position in which I see this conflict not really seeing a resolve nor being all that different from anything in the recent past. The reason for many of these problems come from the right in general: right wing extremism in the police force (32) Republicans' history with universal healthcare and access to free education, military interventionism, to mention a few. I agree completely that Democrats are partially responsible, Clintons, Obamas, and Biden, among others seem much more center-right than left. For this reason, I consider supporting the left to be more altruistic than hoping the Democrats leave for the simple reason that the left is inherently tied to the Democratic party, for better or for worse. But I do not see how hoping the political party that is tied to 329 deaths is a better choice.
A.W:
So when the left is seizing the means of education, mass media and communication technologies it isn’t the ‘real left.’ But when extremists kill other people, that’s a genuine right-wing issue. Isn’t there some form of double standard in your reasoning?
A.P.K:
First, I would say that the left seizing the means of education, mass media and communication technologies is a bit of an over-dramatization of the facts. Betsy DeVos, the Secretary of the Department of Education is a Republican, and with or without a criticism of her tenure, we can say that she has been implementing Republican policy points. Now, I do know we were talking more specifically about the university system, but I think it is worth mentioning that the Department of Education is under Republican leadership. To the university system, I know that it is very common to see ‘left-wing’ professors in the media, but I think the numbers compared to centrists and conservative, or progressive, etc. professors is really minute. For example, at the beginning of the year The Economist published a study from Harvard concluded “Although the survey responses oscillated from year to year, the effects were not big enough to be statistically significant. Such a lack of evidence should discourage people from believing that academic elites push their left-wing agenda onto their impressionable young pupils. But given how often conservative-leaning media rail against leftist indoctrination in universities, it almost certainly will not.”
As for media and communication, the six largest corporations, their CEO’s, and the political affiliation is as follows:
Comcast, Brian L. Roberts, Democrat who has supported Republicans
Disney, Bob Iger, Independent
Time Warner, Jason Kilar, unknown, but sympathized with ‘Black community’
News Corp, Rupert Murdoch, Republican
National Amusements, Vacant - most recent was Sumner Redstone, Democrat
So, while the proof shows that Democrats have a larger portion of media and communication technologies, I would say there is a big difference between them and real leftists. So perhaps the fear isn’t so much qualified as being ‘left’ but perhaps the Democratic party. As well, if you are going to consider the Democratic Party in cahoots with leftists you must really ask and answer: why would they then not support Bernie Sanders? I would suggest, from my earlier thoughts, that Democrats are best described as the urban right. We cannot call them leftists.
As well, I think the violence on the right-wing side is a super concern, and those media outlets are as well.
I do not see a form of double-standards in my thoughts. Can you explain more how you see me having double standards?
A.W:
I notice your argumentative and linguistic subtleties only apply to the left. You are right about the 329 murders. However, you forgot to mention that they have been committed in the last 25 years. When I refer to the left as proto-totalitarian, I am trying to talk about what is happening today... What is more, it seems to me you are overvaluing statistics and other information. I personally doubt that the protests have been “mostly peaceful.” At any rate, why should the rise of a proto-totalitarian movement be measured solely through its most overt acts of violence? It is quite clear today that a lot of Americans are concealing their dissenting opinions just to keep their jobs. Everybody knows that right-wing ideology does not have the means to punish people for their “thought crimes.” The practice of self-censorship cannot be measured though statistics. What is more, ideology does not boil down to having a democratic party membership card. Admittedly, Disney’s CEO is ‘Independent.’ But it doesn’t seem to me that disney movies, and more generally pop culture, are designed for conservative audiences (most of the time, quite the opposite is true). Admittedly, Democrats do not support Bernie Sanders, but he is now supporting Joe Biden. If you do not mind, I suggest addressing the “big picture” of objective political alliances and ideology. You mentioned the “existential crisis” of the left. What do you mean by this?
A.P.K:
I think in this context it seems that I only apply this language to the left, and I should clear the air and mention that I find problems with how the right can be treated as well. For example, I think it is a shame that the term conservative now has a pejorative connotation among certain circles. I would add on that there are certain features found in the left that are totally connected with conservative thought. Agrarian politics, not being controlled through institutions that are not representative of the people, minimalist living fashion, DIY attitudes, grass roots movements, I think the list could go on.
To be clear then, I think when we talk about left and right most of the time we are discussing the extremes of these general terms. For this reason, I think it is important to stay focused on those who are actually doing the things we are concerned with. The media and internet have an amazing capability to manipulate us. I do think your question : “why should the rise of a proto-totalitarian movement be measured solely through its most overt acts of violence?” is saying two things. First, that there might be things more scary, detrimental, evil, etc. than violence. I am curious what to know is worse than direct violence. My logic in this is that violence is usually a reaction to something that is feared or hated. If it is hated, then it seems the right-wing extremists win the race in violence. If it is out of fear, then I wonder what the right-wing extremists fear. If it is a technological-authoritarian world, well, it was their predecessors in political identity that set this motion in action — so, they would then need to abandon politics of Thatcher, Reagan, and the Bush’s, to mention some.
As well, I don’t think we can look at things as just ‘in the moment’ or use the term ‘now’ without being direct. I think ‘history repeats itself’ and ‘those who don’t understand history are doomed to repeat it’, etc. and if the history this century is any indicator of the future then we know is that the political right wing, and the portion of their followers that are extremists continue what they’ve done then many innocent lives will be lost. Look at how they ignore climate change, treatment of children of illegal immigrants, refuse to raise the living wages, militaristic intervention, and other issues I’ve already mentioned.
These things I think are the existential crisis of the left. That being, that the left are vilified despite typically being made up of a group of people who do not have political identities existing previous to the past ten or twenty years. The crisis is then in part about how the left, or potential leftists, have to deal with the status quo — which I mentioned almost seems to not have any doubts about the world. If we look at the rhetoric of the right we see that they ignore climate issues, race issues, military issues, etc. However, we can also see that the left is guilty of this. For, if BLM cared about class and climate issues, they would not partner with the corporations that they do.
Finally, this idea of objective political ideologies. I think this notion is a bit farcical. There is not much difference between the two parties in terms of domestic or international relations. However, I will end by saying that we need to look at who the incognito extremists of these two ‘different’ parties are. Both are working class and frustrated, but one kills people, the other burns buildings. So?
A.W:
The phenomena revolving around "cancel culture" are reminiscent of a historical pattern called the "purity spiral" (33) (which is rarely correlated with advances in freedom or democracy). Today's purity spiral is very effective because it rests on the power of communication technologies. In this respect, the use of direct violence is less necessary. Guillotines are less necessary when "purity" can be enforced via scapegoating, censoring, and deplatforming people on Twitter, Facebook, and so forth…
A.P.K:
I guess the simplest answer would be that both parties are guilty of this. On the left there is a purity associated with political correct values, but on the other hand the right has long been associated with Christian values. So, who is to say which one is better? My answer is the one that is perhaps the most altruistic. This of course is a matrix of argumentation that no one can really escape from because there will be a lot of ‘who does this’ vs. ‘who does that’, etc. that is better for everyone. So, somehow it is a competition of who can be the most utilitarian, which then means that there is a competition of the two groups already supposing that their own manners of approach to political issues are inherently better. Alas, we see the big dilemma in politics in the USA and globally: no one wants to talk to each other. Therefore, democracy is being abandoned by both sides. For me, it seems that both sides are fine with democracy, as long as it is THEIR form of democracy, meaning not a democratic process, but a limited one that either goes this way or that way. Finally, I would say that fighting about politics of the divisional ‘right’ and ‘left’ are perhaps the intention of both sides, given the propagandistic advantage as such. What may be the best alternative is to abandon both sides and look for the real issues. However, this is perhaps the problem for our next interview: how do we talk about real problems without being political?
Conclusion
At the time of writing this conclusion, I am following the news both on mainstream and alternative media regarding the election results and Donald J. Trump’s legal battle. For now, I have nothing particular to say on this matter. L’avenir nous le dira.
The French writer Georges Bernanos predicted many features of our technological age. In La France contre les Robots (1947), he stated: "You understand absolutely nothing about modern civilization unless you first admit that it is a universal conspiracy against all interior life." To me, this quote points to the real problems that I would like to address with Andrew in a future interview.
November 6, 2020.
Photo Credit to Jason Blackeye