“How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement” by Fredrik deBoer, 2023
This is a book by a non-profit organizer, former professor
and Ph.D who, yes, criticizes the conservative role of non-profits, academe, the
black and white middle class and the internet in radical movements. The term ‘elite’ – used by Republicans as a
dodge for class – he uses to refer to how these groups became proponents of
Black Lives Matter (BLM) in 2020. deBoer
also discusses Occupy Wall Street and #MeToo.
He claims he’s a socialist of some sort.
At one point he calls himself ‘very liberal’ and at another, a ‘Marxist.’
So he might be a secret DSA member.
The concrete results of the massive BLM movement are few,
though millions were involved. Some
people got hired, some organizations got money, some people were elected, some
laws were changed. Yet policing remains
almost identical to the situation prior to the protest upsurge around George
Floyd’s murder, even in Minneapolis. One
of the main issues is that symbols and language changed, but political power is key to substantial change. deBoer
wants to analyze why things turned out this way.
Groupthink
deBoer is irritated by radical group-think, which he
experienced in 2020. This process
doesn’t allow differences or debates but instead reams anyone who has a
difference with any popular left slogan, position or program. The prime weapon
is social media, but also within groups.
This is still true today on many issues – Ukraine, Gaza, transgenderism,
etc. He makes the valuable point that liberal
cultural ‘elites’ most interested in BLM favored symbolism and language over
concrete political results. These academic
and middle-class elements were more interested in ‘representations,’ not political
power. He does approve of telling off-the-wall types what they think is nuts,
ludicrous, wrong, absurd, idiotic. Oddly
he’s not quite sure what to do about tearing down statues of Confederates and
colonizers, but he kinda thinks it’s ok...
deBoer is hard against consensus, which is an ultra-liberal
totalitarian process to force everyone to agree on a question, unlike voting
which allows disagreement. Non-profits
and certain ad hoc or anarchist groups use consensus. Eventually if you don’t
agree, they can throw you out of the so-called organization - which is what
happened to him.
Defund
the Police
This is an admittedly vague demand, as it can be
interpreted in two ways. One way is a
reduction in funding for the police so as to pay for actual professionals to
handle traffic, the unhoused, mental health crises, drug use, family disputes, 'quality of life' issues and even
petty infractions, leaving the cops to handle significant crime. The second meaning is to cut all funding for
the police – to ‘abolish’ the police.
The latter is a utopian demand in a capitalist society and could only
become possible under real socialism. Demands with two meanings fail the clarity
test, and allows the Right to torpedo the demand. deBoer suggests the wonky main demand should
have been ‘End Qualified Legal Immunity’
for police misconduct, which allows cops to get away with trigger-happy,
arrest-happy and club-happy behavior.
deBoer hangs his hat on one poll showing older Black
residents wanted more police in 2020. As he should be aware, youth in both dark
and light-skinned communities are more suspicious of the police than their
elders. The real issue is crime and black
communities are ridden with it. Yet
deBoer doesn’t link crime to poverty, poverty to skin color castes, these castes to class and class to
capitalism. Police do catch some criminals, but the profit system produces
both, just as it hosts the incarceration state – another thing he ignores. He admits he would rather tail the older
religious and centrist Black residents in their desire for more cops. A businessman candidate for city council in
Minneapolis recently made just that argument in a mostly Black ward and lost to
a younger and more leftish alternative. Perhaps he should check the bank accounts of cities to see how many millions are going to pay off police misconduct settlements for another argument against his perspective.
 |
| End of the 3rd Precinct ... building. |
Violence
deBoer has an iffy chapter on violence, never mentioning
the concept of ‘self-defense’ once. He
is unclear on looting but clear that the ‘Left’ could never violently defeat
the forces of the capitalist state. He
makes no mention of eventually splitting the Army and National Guard, or future
conditions of state weakness. The state is his straw man when the immediate
conflict will actually be with fascists – who have been blunted by shows
of leftist force in the U.S. He does not
mention specifics of violence, but in Minneapolis 2020 it was varied. Looting is carried out by people with little
money, predictable in a capitalist society and something that happens in nearly
every breakdown of ‘law and order.’ Is
he upset by the burning of a fast-food chain outlet like Wendys? That might be a plus for health! Criminals, building owners, thrill-seekers and
provocateurs were also involved in fires and break-ins, and this is inevitable
too. On the other hand the burning or damaging
of many small local businesses, two post offices and a library were stupidly
counter-productive and anti-social.
Let’s get to the main building, the 3rd Precinct
police station, which was abandoned to the crowd by outnumbered police. Geography
is part of the power structure’s writ, as anyone knows. Occupy Wall Street found this out when
encampments in ‘public’ squares were removed across the country by Democratic
mayors. Indicative are the massive protests and encampments across the world
centered on squares, like Tahir in Egypt. In rebellions in other parts of the
world, police stations are targets too, as they were in Egypt. A part of a country held by an armed Left, as in
Mexico or India, is also significant, as the state no longer controls it. When the 3rd Precinct was
shut-down, this was a victory for Left street power against an opposing semi-military
force. And power is what deBoer
ostensibly wants. It made the whole country
stand up and take notice – Minneapolis was no longer just another normal protest
site.
Non-Profits
While still (?) working at a housing non-profit, deBoer
sees the huge non-profit sector 1. Privatizing
formerly government tasks; 2.
Domesticating radicals into bureaucrats; 3.
Providing a tax-haven for the wealthy, foundations and corporations; 4. Acting as a cautious, conservative,
legalistic brake to left causes. And yet he considers them an essential part of
‘the movement.’ He has no concept of an
organization between an ad hoc single-issue grassroots’ group and an organized,
professionalized non-profit. He
evidently can’t conceive of a Left party of any size, which is neither a non-profit
nor ad-hoc. Unions are invisible to him too. He once mentions a national and electoral workers party to
represent the Left and labor, then abandons that idea in his ‘solution’ summary.
Me Too
The ‘Me Too’ feminist movement also seems to be exhausted. deBoer looks at the various persons accused of
sexual rape, abuse and harassment and the collapse of Time’s Up due to its too
cozy relationship with Andrew Cuomo. His
main point is that #MeToo was always a meme, a ‘movement’ that was mostly
on-line; and memes have lifespans. #MeToo used existing law and corporate
policies to remove sexual predators. It
lacked what he calls ‘clear legislative
goals’ – so in his mind if you cannot put it into a bill in Congress, you
don’t have clarity. This is a heavily
sub-reformist way to structure demands, but his essential point, also in
reference to Occupy, is that clear demands and a real organizational,
on-the-ground presence are required.
Liberalism
and Solutions
deBoer does a well-worn anthropology of the conflicted upper
middle class liberal. He centers internal or external issues of control,
education and meritocracy, while identity politics and liberal guilt play
predictably damaging roles. Perhaps he
has spent too much time marinating in this atmosphere! At bottom, deBoer says he wants to turn these
liberals into leftists. To do this he
favors a class approach as the best way to unite the most people against
capital. This will actually lead the
majority to political power, in the process helping the disadvantaged the most.
In this regard he contests the slanders of ‘class reductionism’ and
‘class-first leftism.’ “A class-first philosophy for left-wing
movements ultimately foregrounds, rather than sidelines, traditional
oppressions of minority groups.” This attack on bourgeois identitarianism has been explored before by Adolph and
Toure Reed, Olufemi Taiwo and Asad Haider (all reviewed below), along with many
Marxists, so I’m not going to repeat it.
deBoer believes a social revolution is a ‘dream,’ so
prefers things like single-payer health care and laws making it easier to
organize unions. He has no transitional
program, only a few scattered demands and no organizational recommendations
except an in/out strategy related to the Democratic Party. His program might
even reflect the book’s title. It’s a
book worth reading if any of this is unfamiliar to you.
Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box,
upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms:
“Mistaken Identity” (Haider); “Elite Capture” (Taiwo); “Towards Freedom”
(T. Reed); “The South – Jim Crow and It’s Afterlives” (A. Reed); “George
Floyd,” “BLM,” “Are Prisons Obsolete?” (Davis); “Socialist Feminism and the New
Women’s Movement,” “feminism,” “The Revolution Will Not Be Funded,” Mutual
Aid,” “The Panthers Can’t Save Us Now,” “Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers Again.”
And I bought it with Solomon at May Day Books!
Red Frog
November 10, 2023
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