Friday, November 10, 2023

'Moments' Don't Last

 “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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