[Peace-discuss] Chris Hedges rips Jon Stewart rally

[David Green]

This article will be posted tomorrow on ZNet:


November 2nd: The End of "Progressivism"?
David GreenWhatever its hopes and illusions, the American left has been 
(predictably, in my view) marginalized--in fact, demonized--in the age of Obama. 
There are sensible explanations in terms of the capitalist moment, the 
media, and the cynical nature of the Obama deception itself. Nevertheless, at 
some fundamental level it wouldn’t hurt for serious leftists to look in the 
mirror and address the development of an informed leftist discourse and 
terminology that makes some consistent sense in terms of history, ideology, 
principles, enemies, and proposals. Whatever the diverse and global 
philosophical heritage of popular movements for social justice, we could aspire 
to a discourse specific to the American left, reflecting its unique history and 
tribulations in relation to the most ruthlessly capitalistic and militaristic 
country in history, facilitated by dis-organized and racialized labor, as well 
as by the professional-managerial class. 
 
But the conventional, pervasive, careless, and mindless use of the label 
“progressive” to describe those who claim to be to the left of the Obama 
Administration and the Democratic Party in no way contributes to such an effort, 
and instead has for the past two years and longer shaped a slippery, evasive, 
disingenuous, self-serving, and faux-leftist discourse that functions to avoid 
fundamental issues of class struggle, war, and the incorrigibility of two-party 
politics.
 
The failure of “progressivism,” such as it currently is, partly reflects 
confusion about the history of the Progressive Era, ignorance of the 
historiography about that era, and the putative principles of the current 
movement in relation to the largely sordid genealogy of the ideology. It is 
remarkable that those who now claim to represent the left seem to be unable or 
unwilling to consider that the discourse of “progress” has most often been 
employed by elitist ideologues in order to promote capitalist “creative 
destruction” and technological innovation (government-funded or otherwise) 
instead of social justice, obviously to the long-term benefit of corporations 
and the ownership class, and to the detriment and ongoing immiseration of the 
working classes.
 
The Progressive Era (1890-1920) included the administrations of Theodore 
Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. During that Era, regulatory power was consolidated 
at the federal level, mainly to the benefit of corporate power, stability, and 
the accumulation of wealth. Thus the 1960s revisionist historian James Weinstein 
described an era of “corporate liberalism.” The dominant ideology of this period 
was defined by the founders of The New Republic, including Herbert Croly and 
Walter Lippmann; they were organic social theorists, elitists, and technocrats 
who defined “progress” in managerial, administrative, and orderly terms, not in 
terms of social struggle and social justice. They responded in some ways to 
genuine popular movements, but they also feared them and loathed them; the 
result was most often the pacification and co-optation of such movements, 
including the labor movement. Weinstein’s analysis was consistent with the 
seminal revisionist work of Gabriel Kolko and many others; Kolko described the 
result of the Progressive Era as the triumph of “political capitalism.” 

 
The Progressive Era featured a Progressive Party that was co-opted by Theodore 
Roosevelt’s “Bull Moose” party in the complicated election of 1912. Wisconsin’s 
Robert La Follette, upstaged by Roosevelt, later ran a much more authentically 
populist and leftist campaign for president in 1924, also under the banner of 
the Progressive Party; his resounding defeat also signaled the demise of that 
party at the national level. The journal he founded in 1909, The Progressive, 
has for over a century promoted views, including those of Howard Zinn, that bear 
little relation to the “progress” of the Progressive Era, which of course also 
included Wilson’s entrance into World War I.
 
Those who currently describe themselves as progressives, or those who routinely 
employ the term in their description of ideological differences between Obama 
and his “base,” display little understanding of these historical problems of the 
American left, and thus become subject to similar pitfalls. 

 
Thus the term “progressive” is currently a disingenuously “non-ideological” 
ideological placeholder, a vague and posturing term of connotation and 
convenience—ironically appropriate in the Age of Obama. It shuns socialist 
ideology for programmatic instrumentalism, even if their programs (pubic option, 
etc.) have never become so much as a glimmer in the eye of Obama. For the past 
two years, progressivism has consisted of a futile programmatic agenda without 
either an organization or a movement, and certainly without consistent 
principles, especially in relation to our wars.
 
As a result, current progressivism is increasingly defined by what it 
claims—implicitly or explicitly—not to be. It signifies not-radical in its 
failure to clearly name and address class struggle and warfare, not-socialist in 
its technocratic, elitist reformism, and not-antiwar in its willingness to place 
our imperial adventures on the back burner. Most of all, progressives are 
not-left in their dogged support for Democratic Party candidates. That is to 
say, progressives—like their worst historical antecedents—are not serious about 
democracy, and contemptuous of the people.
 
Not-left progressives nevertheless try to appeal to those “idealists” whom they 
perceive to be further to their left, in terms of two-party pragmatism and 
lesser-evilism. The “good Obama” is still thought to have a potentially 
“progressive” (i.e., liberal reformist) bone in his body, and the Democratic 
Party is claimed to oppose those who are assumed to be much worse than 
corporatists and militarists: racist Tea Partiers, religious fundamentalists, 
and mindless critics of “big government.” There seems to be no awareness of the 
historical “irony” that the principled (and populist) William Jennings Bryan 
resigned as Secretary of State upon the U.S. entrance into World War I, and 
later represented religious “creationists” in Tennessee.
 
When progressives finish defining themselves in terms of what they are not, it 
remains clear what they are: creatures of the corporate, two-party system. At 
their worst, progressives resort to explaining the “failures” of the 
pro-corporate Obama administration with words such as “weakness,” “stupidity,” 
“cowardice,” and “betrayal.” They claim, disingenuously, that Obama is a 
stranger to them. At this point progressivism becomes, if nothing else, an 
ideology of calculated outrage and the provocation of fear. The frequency of 
this terminology and these tactics has increased exponentially during the final 
weeks of the current election campaign; the Democratic Party will still be a 
major party, but progressivism will be mercifully unraveled.
 
The progressive movement, such as it is, increasingly reflects the Tea Party, 
such as it is, in defining itself in terms of what it is opposed to, and what it 
is afraid of. But interestingly, the Tea Party seems to more genuinely reflect a 
rejection of the (rightfully feared) two-corporate-party system, while 
progressives come to sound more like Thomas Friedman in their desperate and 
cynical efforts to save the Congress from the Republican Party; they revert to 
elitism, if in fact it can be called a reversion.
 
If those who currently call themselves progressives and take the term seriously 
have an alternative framework with which to help me to understand their 
behavior, I will gladly and seriously consider it.
 
Barring that, when the coming debacle is complete and the bodies are buried, it 
is to be hoped that one of them will be this habitual reliance on a term that 
merely reveals that in this country, many of those who claim to constitute the 
left nevertheless lack either the clarity or the courage of their convictions, 
and thus fail to act on them in a serious manner.
 




________________________________
From: C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>
To: Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
Sent: Mon, November 1, 2010 10:47:55 AM
Subject: [Peace-discuss] Chris Hedges rips Jon Stewart rally

"The Rally to Restore Sanity ... ridiculed followers of the tea
party without acknowledging that the pain and suffering expressed by
many who support the movement are not only real but legitimate. It made
fun of the buffoons who are rising up out of moral swamps to take over
the Republican Party without accepting that their supporters were sold
out by a liberal class, and especially a Democratic Party, which turned
its back on the working class for corporate money. Fox News’ Beck
and his allies on the far right can use hatred as a
mobilizing force because there are tens of millions of Americans who
have very good reason to hate. They have been betrayed by the elite who
run the corporate state, by the two main political parties and by the
liberal apologists, including those given public platforms on
television, who keep counseling moderation as jobs disappear, wages drop
and unemployment insurance runs out. As long as the liberal class speaks
in the dead voice of moderation it will continue to fuel the right-wing
backlash. Only when it appropriates this rage as its own, only when it
stands up to established systems of power, including the Democratic
Party, will we have any hope of holding off the lunatic fringe of the
Republican Party."

    The Phantom Left
    Posted on Oct 31, 2010
    By Chris Hedges

The American left is a phantom. It is conjured up by the right wing to
tag Barack Obama as a socialist and used by the liberal class to justify
its complacency and lethargy. It diverts attention from corporate power.
It perpetuates the myth of a democratic system that is influenced by the
votes of citizens, political platforms and the work of legislators. It
keeps the world neatly divided into a left and a right. The phantom left
functions as a convenient scapegoat. The right wing blames it for moral
degeneration and fiscal chaos. The liberal class uses it to call for
“moderation.” And while we waste our time talking nonsense, the engines
of corporate power—masked, ruthless and unexamined—happily devour the state.

The loss of a radical left in American politics has been catastrophic.
The left once harbored militant anarchist and communist labor unions, an
independent, alternative press, social movements and politicians not
tethered to corporate benefactors. But its disappearance, the result of
long witch hunts for communists, post-industrialization and the
silencing of those who did not sign on for the utopian vision of
globalization, means that there is no counterforce to halt our slide
into corporate neofeudalism. This harsh reality, however, is not
palatable. So the corporations that control mass communications conjure
up the phantom of a left. They blame the phantom for our debacle. And
they get us to speak in absurdities.

The phantom left took a central role on the mall this weekend in
Washington. It had performed admirably for Glenn Beck, who used it in
his own rally as a lightning rod to instill anger and fear. And the
phantom left proved equally useful for the comics Jon Stewart and
Stephen Colbert, who spoke to the crowd wearing red-white-and-blue
costumes. The two comics evoked the phantom left, as the liberal class
always does, in defense of moderation, which might better be described
as apathy. If the right wing is crazy and if the left wing is crazy, the
argument goes, then we moderates will be reasonable. We will be nice.
Exxon and Goldman Sachs, along with predatory banks and the arms
industry, may be ripping the guts out of the country, our
rights—including habeas corpus—may have been revoked, but don’t get mad.
Don’t be shrill. Don’t be like the crazies on the left.

“Why would you work with Marxists actively subverting our Constitution
or racists and homophobes who see no one’s humanity but their own?”
Stewart asked. “We hear every damn day about how fragile our country
is—on the brink of catastrophe—torn by polarizing hate, and how it’s a
shame that we can’t work together to get things done. But the truth is
we do. We work together to get things done every damn day. The only
place we don’t is here [in Washington] or on cable TV.”

The rally delivered a political message devoid of reality or content.
The corruption of electoral politics by corporate funds and lobbyists,
the naive belief that we can somehow vote ourselves back to democracy,
was ignored for emotional catharsis. The right hates. The liberals
laugh. And the country is taken hostage.

The Rally to Restore Sanity, held in Washington’s National Mall, was yet
another sad footnote to the death of the liberal class. It was as
innocuous as a Boy Scout jamboree. It ridiculed followers of the tea
party without acknowledging that the pain and suffering expressed by
many who support the movement are not only real but legitimate. It made
fun of the buffoons who are rising up out of moral swamps to take over
the Republican Party without accepting that their supporters were sold
out by a liberal class, and especially a Democratic Party, which turned
its back on the working class for corporate money.

Fox News’ Beck and his allies on the far right can use hatred as a
mobilizing force because there are tens of millions of Americans who
have very good reason to hate. They have been betrayed by the elite who
run the corporate state, by the two main political parties and by the
liberal apologists, including those given public platforms on
television, who keep counseling moderation as jobs disappear, wages drop
and unemployment insurance runs out. As long as the liberal class speaks
in the dead voice of moderation it will continue to fuel the right-wing
backlash. Only when it appropriates this rage as its own, only when it
stands up to established systems of power, including the Democratic
Party, will we have any hope of holding off the lunatic fringe of the
Republican Party.

Wall Street’s looting of the Treasury, the curtailing of our civil
liberties, the millions of fraudulent foreclosures, the long-term
unemployment, the bankruptcies from medical bills, the endless wars in
the Middle East and the amassing of trillions in debt that can never be
repaid are pushing us toward a Hobbesian world of internal collapse.
Being nice and moderate will not help. These are corporate forces that
are intent on reconfiguring the United States into a system of
neofeudalism. These corporate forces will not be halted by funny signs,
comics dressed up like Captain America or nice words.

The liberal class wants to inhabit a political center to remain morally
and politically disengaged. As long as there is a phantom left, one that
is as ridiculous and stunted as the right wing, the liberal class can
remain uncommitted. If the liberal class concedes that power has been
wrested from us it will be forced, if it wants to act, to build
movements outside the political system. This would require the liberal
class to demand acts of resistance, including civil disobedience, to
attempt to salvage what is left of our anemic democratic state. But this
type of political activity, as costly as it is difficult, is too
unpalatable to a bankrupt liberal establishment that has sold its soul
to corporate interests. And so the phantom left will be with us for a
long time.

Politics in America has become spectacle. It is another form of show
business. The crowd in Washington, well trained by television, was
conditioned to play its role before the cameras. The signs —“The Rant is
Too Damn High,” “Real Patriots Can Handle a Difference of Opinion” or “I
Masturbate and I Vote”—reflected the hollowness of current political
discourse and television’s perverse epistemology. The rally spoke
exclusively in the impoverished iconography and language of television.
It was filled with meaningless political pieties, music and jokes. It
was like any television variety program. Personalities were being sold,
not political platforms. And this is what the society of spectacle is about.

The modern spectacle, as the theorist Guy Debord pointed out, is a
potent tool for pacification and depoliticization. It is a “permanent
opium war” which stupefies its viewers and disconnects them from the
forces that control their lives. The spectacle diverts anger toward
phantoms and away from the perpetrators of exploitation and injustice.
It manufactures feelings of euphoria. It allows participants to confuse
the spectacle itself with political action.

The celebrities from Comedy Central and the trash talk show hosts on Fox
are in the same business. They are entertainers. They provide the empty,
emotionally laden material that propels endless chatter back and forth
on supposed left- and right-wing television programs. It is a national
Punch and Judy show. But don’t be fooled. It is not politics. It is
entertainment. It is spectacle. All national debate on the airwaves is
driven by the same empty gossip, the same absurd trivia, the same
celebrity meltdowns and the same ridiculous posturing. It is presented
with a different spin. But none of it is about ideas or truth. None of
it is about being informed. It caters to emotions. It makes us confuse
how we are made to feel with knowledge. And in the end, for those who
serve up this drivel, the game is about money in the form of ratings and
advertising.  Beck, Colbert and Stewart all serve the same masters. And
it is not us.

Chris Hedges, who writes every Monday for Truthdig, is the author of the
new book “Death of the Liberal Class.”

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_phantom_left_20101031/

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