[Peace-discuss] "The Letter"

Sun Jul 12 04:36:21 UTC 2020

I find this analysis irrelevent and spurious, and moreover hard to digest. I’ll interpose some comments:

On Jul 11, 2020, at 12:17 PM, David Green via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net<mailto:peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>> wrote:

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 .

DiMaggio never mentions Trump or Trumpites in his critique, so just what relevency has this paragrwph to what he does say.  That he dosn’t mention the word “class” seems to be what you, David, are complaining about.

Second, DiMaggio remains blissfully uncritical of progressive neoliberalism, whom he describes as being from liberal to progressive to radical.

what are you talking about? Be more explicit with respect to his presnt words.

 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.

I find this to be a non sequitur. Again, irrelevent to what DiMaggio tries to say. This “woke” business doesn’t appear to me to enter at all into DiMaggio’s thesis.

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.

No comment: I haven’t read those articles. I’m sticking to what he says in the present critique.

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.

This is just the point DiMaggio promotes, although I do take issue to his final comments in his article, where he says he doesn’t give a damn about the right wing invitees to academic venues, and the protests they are subject to. Yet I symathize with his frustration, given the facts that  radical leftish speakers are largely ignored in academic circles, as toxic to academic enterprise, and faculty are indeed filtered for intellectual respectability, meaning going along more or less with the status quo on politics and current world political problems.

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.

Where does this conclusion come from? That he talks too much (elsewhere?) about racism, imperialism, plutocracy, neoliberalism, gender issues…? I guess I just missed it.
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.

A nasty remark, in my opinion. Narcissism? The point he tries to make is that discussion is way too limited in the academy.

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).

Who will be purged who is not already purged as far as popular discourse is concerned (on the mainstream airwaves and in literature). Take Chomsky as an example, reclining, declining in Arizona. Ellsberg, Greenwald, Saleita,…
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.

Yes, I agree that there is a problem here, but that has little to do with what DiMaggio is saying.

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.

This is pretentious, bombastic, haughty and unworthy as far as I can see with respect to Dimaggio’s remarks in his critique of the Letter.

David, let’s hear your detailed coherent analysis of our situation, whatever that situation is. I see no inkling of one here. Sorry to be so critical, but I think the criticisms here of DiMaggio are unfair. .

mkb

DG
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