[Peace-discuss] "The Letter"

[David Green]

Anthony DiMaggio, like many Counterpunch writers during what is the
decadent phase of the website/newsletter's existence, post-Cockburn,
suffers from 2 fundamental symptoms:

Obviously Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), which allows him not to see
that the majority of the working class, and the vast majority if you
exclude blacks, has been rejected during the past 3 decades by the
Democratic Party, and has for lack of a better alternative migrated to the
Republican Party, or simply checked out of the political process. Thus, for
DiMaggio, Trump voters must be "racist" and therefore not worthy of their
objective working class position in our current political economy--as
opposed to the worthy academic such as himself .

Second, DiMaggio remains blissfully uncritical of progressive
neoliberalism, whom he describes as being from liberal to progressive to
radical. That is, he remains uncritical of the Woke identity politics that
now defines the "Left," embodied by the Professional-Managerial Class
(PMC), including the black PMC (Hannah-Jones, Coates, Kendi on down). He
pretends that they have somehow been excluded from mainstream discourse,
when in fact they are now in the catbird's seat of mainstream (NPR, MSNBC,
NYT, WP) media. DiMaggio's articles on Counterpunch in recent years,
especially his analysis of Trump supporters' "white nationalism" and "white
supremacy" would have found a perfect home on any of these mainstream Woke
platforms.

DiMaggio is defensive about accusations regarding "cancel culture,"
something that is very real and disturbing, which the open letter
accurately and rightly addresses. Of course some of the signatories are
hypocritical if not depraved, including Cary Nelson and Bari Weiss,
especially regarding Israel/Palestine. But the larger point remains, and
applies not just to mainstream outlets, but to allegedly alternative ones
like the Intercept, and indeed to Counterpunch itself, which has, with
exception of Rob Urie, excluded "anti-Woke" voices (I'm not talking about
myself, at least not yet), while promoting a Woke identitarian-Marxist
asshole like Louis Proyect and his support for the wretched 1619 Project.

DiMaggio lives within a Woke academic world which is a clusterfuck of
category errors regarding identity, oppression, liberation, etc. Those who
attempt to address this sorry state of affairs on campuses will indeed be
"cancelled" in various ways. Meanwhile, he narcissistically worries about
not being able to publish his "Gramscian" perspectives in
academic journals, for crying out loud.

In the post-Sanders, post-George Floyd, BLM/trans era, we are entering a
very dangerous situation, which will be characterized by "loyalty oaths",
purges, and a Maoist style culture war around identitarian issues. There
will be moral panics aplenty, such as we are experiencing now. There will
be many casualties, as the Woke Left will attempt to gain control of the
Democratic Party in coalition with both neoliberals and neoconservatives,
neither of whom the Woke PMC have any fundamental problems with; and we can
clearly see the neolibs/neocons strategically accommodating themselves to
the repressive demands of the Woke, such as what occurred at the NYT and
their editor. The DP will continue to exploit its remaining machine "base,"
which consists only of black voters, but no longer includes labor unions in
terms of voting loyalty (the DP basically began its abandonment of the
unions with McGovern in 1972).

We have seen a microcosm of this process and these emerging developments
locally in recent years, both on campus and in the county-city context, in
relation to both trans and "pro-immigrant" movements, and the rise of a
racialized, domineering political machine in the Democratic Party.
Neoliberalism, neoconservatism, and Wokeness get along just fine. Yes,
let's have trans people, especially black trans people, in the military.
And during the pandemic, let's have our public health official (Julie
Pryde) supporting unsafe and illegal public gatherings, because "racism is
a virus," with no local pushback at all from our "right-wing" newspaper.
That's just perfect.

Teachers and teachers' unions are going to be under the gun in terms of
racialized, white-shaming "re-education." It's going to get messy, it
already has, when the two superintendents kowtow to the notion that
"silence is violence." But the teachers are in a relatively advantageous,
unionized labor position, and we may see genuine struggle, and perhaps even
some light rather than heat regarding our education system and our
children's future; for example, if our districts try to implement the 1619
Project, there will be pushback, at least from me. And there promises to be
many comedic moments as our teachers are required by Human Resources to
examine their "white fragility."

There's much more to say, but suffice it to say that DiMaggio's
contribution to a necessary debate regarding free speech, cancellation, and
Wokeness is utterly ungrounded in any coherent analysis of our situation,
and absolutely tendentious; given his track record, all of this is
unsurprising.

DG
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