Are You Persuaded?

 “The Persuaders- At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds and Democracy” by Ananad Giridharadas, 2022

This is a liberal attempt in explaining how to persuade people who don't agree with you in order to broaden your coalition. It consists of interviews with activists who worked on the 2017 Women's March after Trump's win; a Left Palestinian organizer; a Black Lives Matter initiator; a duo of DEI 'race trainers,' a “leading consultant on political messaging for the movement left,” an anti-cult worker helping the relatives of delusional Trumpers; a pro-immigrant canvasser in Arizona; a gay rights crusader in California.

Some of these stories might be useful to socialists; to NGO types; to community organizations; to unionists; to political groups, as they show examples of successful persuasion. They may help curb sectarianism on the Left; the over-wokness of various identity practitioners; the false Blue / Red setup and even limit stupid trolling on Facebook and other platforms. There are also emotional issues that you might be able to 'therapize' by talking. Even the a-political method of 'love' gets a workout.

The key, as one woman explains, is to recognize how close people are to your perspective. She calls it the 90% / 75% / 50% / 25% and 0% - the 0% being fascists where no discussion is warranted.

The problem with the book is that the 'goal' is murky and the role of actual conditions is left unremarked. In other words class struggle is ignored. Some people will oppose you no matter what because of their material interests, so its not just a matter of 'persuasion.' You first have to understand their class position and how that might be working their thoughts, in a good way or not. If you are dealing with a landlord in conciliation court, a settlement might be possible, but it is a product not of persuasion, but legal pressure or force. This holds true far outside a small conflict like this - from political differences to occupations, strikes, street conflicts and social revolution. Persuasion can work, but it is not the only thing to take into account, as material reality also exists. Alone it is a form of liberal idealism. Its largest example is 2-Party 'bipartisanship' that sees both sides as having the same ultimate goal. Giridharadas later balks at this form of 'persuasion,' but its proponents trumpet it.

In the process, some of the subjects poke at trans pronouns, 'dead names,' 'safe' spaces, claims to special knowledge, guilt-spreading, cancel culture, 'calling out' and personalist purism like shaming and name-calling - all stupid barriers to working with others. These methods actually isolate the people who practice them and reveal a disinterest in building a powerful mass movement for anything. You've met these people. Yet a good chunk of the book dwells on the evils of having white skin, undermining this insight.

Labor organizers - not in the book

The conflicts in the book are 'intersectional' feminism and Hillary-style middle class feminism; GLBT and Muslim realities and conservative white people; anti-gentrification and anti-racism organizing and liberal approaches to these same issues; guilty white people who don't recognize their privilege; anti-immigrants who've never met an actual immigrant without papers; anti-gay fundamentalists who've never met a real gay person, and so on. Much success is based on personal relations by organizers with those they are trying to reach. A general pattern is that more radical groups are encouraged to work with liberal groups in the name of persuasion, and visa versa, to build a bigger reform front. The question is, who is being persuaded by whom?

In the process one BLM activist, Alicia Garza, redefines the concept of the 'popular front,' seeing it not as a long-standing, cross-class bloc but as a temporary alliance of forces for a reform. She claims Marx said this, which he didn't. That might better be called a coalition. Giridharadas has a chapter on Bernie Sanders' campaigns and a very long one on the 'inside-outside' game – which seems to be the theme here – starring Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. His focus becomes the liberal-left in the Democratic Party as the most prominent example of persuaders. And they've certainly had some effect on Biden, as Biden has adopted bits of Sanders-AOC's program, given centrist, neo-liberal politics have dead-ended. But Biden has also had a conservative effect on Sanders-AOC, as persuasion cuts both ways.

Giradharadas has a key chapter on the wanton police shooting of African-American Jacob Blake in Kenosha, WI, which was followed by the killing of two and wounding of one European-American BLM protesters by the budding fascist Kyle Rittenhouse. He focuses on a local, mostly African-American group, BLAK, which ignored the latter killings and concentrated on the former police shooting of Blake. If there was ever an event that demanded unity between skin colors, this was it, yet Giradharadas has not a word to say about that. This shows how his 'movement building' angle is a bit of a fraud, here boiling down to conservative black nationalism, full of an aging Jesse Jackson, block parties and bouncy castles.

Like all liberals and left-liberals Giradharadas wants to straddle the class line with a foot in both camps. He's appalled by Biden's fear-dripping ad that denounced 'rioting' after the events in Kenosha, but, fuck, Biden is still one of the persuadables. Am I drawing a line that is sectarian? No. Class is actually the main divide in society. It's not going away because someone writes or talks a lot, is kind, engages in 'love,' wants reforms, says the right things, or parses the real differences. In a way this book is a long attempt at persuading the Democratic Party not to always appeal to some sad 'middle' (read 'white working-class) voter or suck up to Republicans, but to have a more leftish position like Sanders. The former strategy is one they've pursued since 1972 and the McGovern disaster 54 years ago. Yet his strategy writes off a good chunk of the working-class once again. Nor are any of his interviewees from organized labor or free-lance labor, which seems significant.

In the end this is a deceptive book that pretends to be your friend, then persuades you otherwise.  Giridharadas is a commentator on MSNBC and a professor at the Carter Journalism Institute. He was a journalist at the NYT, used to pundit for the Aspen Institute, supports the liberal American Prospect and worked for McKinsey & Co. as an analyst, so there's that.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, us blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: “Winner Take All” (Giridharadas); “Beyond Liberal Egalitarianism,” “Death of the Liberal Class” (Hedges); “How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement,” “Kenosha Trial Was Rigged – Fascistic Murderer Gets Off,” “The Undertow” (Sharlet); “Notes From Minneapolis,” “Defund or Abolish the Police?”

May Day Books, to its credit, even carries volumes by liberals – though not this one.

And I got it at the Library!

Red Frog / March 26, 2024