Egolitarians and Class Cucks have Ruined the Working Class

Donald Trump's electoral victory was, perhaps, a greater win still for the alt-left.  The absurd and ersatz nature of the regressive left a-la Bill + Hillary Clinton has come in for intense scrutiny from across the political spectrum.  The "Bernie Bro's" lost this round, but as a result may end up being in a better position to eventually win the larger war.  Part of why this is so as that the events of this election have given the alt-left a powerful legitimizing narrative.

Even in the abodes of the regressive SJW media, there seems to be some soul searching in the wake of Trump's win.  The Guardian - Too frequently a megaphone for the likes of Jessica Valenti and Julie "all men are rapists and should be put in prison then shot" Bindel, ran an essay by Thomas Frank: "Donald Trump is Moving to the White House, and Liberals put him there." Frank's recent best seller, Listen Liberal, gives an insincere democratic party machine the same kind of droll, sarcastic dressing down that his earlier classic What's the Matter With Kansas gives the Republicans.

Frank's Guardian article is not even the tip of the iceberg.  Former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, Robert Reich, answers the question of  "Why the White Working Class Abandoned the Democratic Party."  From many sources a narrative of the defeat of Hillary Clinton and the lost opportunities of the Obama administration is emerging.  A narrative comparable in many ways to the "cuckservative" meme that drove the alt-right; the idea that weak and effeminate mainstream conservatives betrayed national interests by embracing social liberalism and sacrificed the west's European cultural heritage on the altar of immigration and multiculturalism.

Trump's election has given the alt-left its own variation of the same theme: weak and corrupt liberal and social democratic politicians, masking their sell out to neo liberal corporatism behind a mask of snobbish cultural liberalism, have betrayed the working class.  This class treason takes several forms:

• Running on reformist, hope-and-change platforms to get Wall Street back on a leash, only to not do this once taking office and instead opting for anti-worker free trade deals such as Bill Clinton's embrace of NAFTA and Barack Obama's support of the TPP.
• Embracing mass immigration, despite its damaging effects on unemployment and wage levels in order to built electoral constituencies, and then hide behind multiculturalism in order to preserve leftist cred and to avoid scrutiny and accuse critics of such policies of being "racist."  
• For the same reasons, promoting sexual and racial identity politics, which weaponizes feminist and minority grievances as tools with which to shame and guilt lower class white males into accepting reduced status, while simultaneously redirecting the anger of lower class women and minorities against the white male working class instead of against the rich and powerful institutions.  This also causes the white male working class to see women and minorities instead of those same rich and powerful institutions as their enemies.  Beneath the thin veneer of racial and sexual progressivism is a much darker and deeply regressive undercurrent of upper middle class smugness towards the unwashed masses. 
• Promoting visions of racial equality and feminist empowerment that are really about consumerism and careerism in the corporate world.
• Wasting activist vigor on silly and frivolous causes such as safe spaces, trigger warnings, cultural appropriation and privilege checking. This also makes the left objects of deserved ridicule in the eyes of the general public and makes the right seem more credible.  The polarity has completely reversed from where it was ten years ago, when intellectually vigorous liberals had a field day demolishing conservative foolishness like hurricanes being God's punishment for allowing gay marriage, creation "science" in schools and so on.
• Affirming decidedly illiberal ideas, such as censorship of "offensive" art and speech, and legitimization of racial and sexual bigotry, government in the bedrooms of the nation (if "consent" is not filled out in triplicate, it's rape culture!) so long as it's against acceptable targets - lower class white males, and defending these illiberal ideas in decidedly fanatical, closed minded and morally overbearing ways - naysayers are "mansplaining", "whitesplaining", the "voice of privilege", "crying white male tears", not to mention no platforming, bannings from social media, getting people sacked from their jobs and so on.

But the single most important point is that weak and corrupt liberal and social democratic politicians, masking their sell out to neo liberal corporatism behind a mask of snobbish cultural liberalism, have betrayed the working class.  That's what matters.  That's why white working class voters who would have voted for Bernie Sanders instead went for Donald Trump.  That's the narrative the alt-left needs to seize and they need to capitalize on the growing sympathy towards this narrative in social media.  And that social media presence grows all the time.  Observe the bar to the left of this page with links to different social media pages and YouTube channels.  Use 'em and spread 'em.  I'm sure there's more I haven't mentioned.  Let me know if there is in the comments section.

It needs to be communicated in short, quippy sound bites and internet memes.  It needs to be repeated as often as possible up to the point of backlash.  Meaning don't beat people over the head with it.  It needs to be repeated along with a small handful of popular policy proposals that we could potentially have seen enacted come 2017 had Bernie Sanders won the election: single payer health care, a somewhat progressive tax scheme, a livable minimum wage, opposition to Citizens United and similar ideas.  And for the leftist IdPol types out there, friendly reminders of what someone like Sanders could have given them too: pay equity, defense of abortion and gay marriage rights, an end to the drug war, prison privatization, the Patriot Act.  And don't pass up a chance to remind them that it was the Clinton presidency that buried Americans in a ton of regressive bullshit, and it was enabled for the most part by Senator Hillary Clinton (let's not forget her voting record) and doubled down on by President Obama.  It's quite important that it be emphasized that the secret to defeating Trump in 2020 is setting aside identity politics and building a broad coalition that keeps its eyes on the real prize.

This needs to be imparted by political activists who eschew corporate donations and fund raise primarily through individual small donors where possible, and these activists need to routinely call out political opponents who are on the corporate pay roll.

We need to learn from the success of the alt-right and the Trump presidential campaign that the medium is the message, depending on the forum.  Don't bore friends online with reams of policy when an internet meme says it all in a way that gets you all laughing at lame politicians with sharp, to the point insults like "cuckservative" or "Crooked Hillary."  

I've long been of the opinion that the political left needs to think long and hard about its relationship with academia.  Leftism is at its best when it's "from the streets" - when it's about genuinely marginalized people making themselves heard and gaining their rights through collective political action.  When the AFL-CIO organized in the 1930s and 40s, when civil rights were gradually acquired in the 1950s and 60s, when second wave feminism, whatever its flaws, emerged in the 70s - though by then the forces that were making leftism toxic were beginning to show themselves.  The intellectual leadership kept the whole thing organized, but there were no academic egos involved in making these movements about them personally and their careers.

I have no quarrel with academics who are leftists.  I know some and even have some in my family.  But critical theory and post modern philosophy is bad leftism and it's bad academia.  It's continued existence in the Ivory Tower needs to be openly questioned.  It's ultimately why American colleges have become the laughing stocks of social media, with "cry ins," safe spaces and trigger warnings.  Not that Herbert Marcuse or Simone de Beauvoir advocated those things, but their ideas began moving things in that direction. This is where abhorrent dogmas such as privilege theory and "prejudice plus power" first gained traction, and were then advanced with the certitude of the religious fanatic.  We need to get rid of it.  Political leftism thereby shifted from being about democratizing mass movements to being about a high browed secular clergy made certain of itself by credentializing its own ideologies, policing the language, opinions and manners of the unwashed masses.  It became dictatorial, elitist and focused on culture instead of economy - everything that leftism is not and should not be.  That stuff is garbage; smug rationalizations for self serving double standards favoring the pseudo leftist elect.  We need to get this crap out of academia.  End of story.

Oh, and did I mention, that Donald Trump won the White House because weak and corrupt liberal and social democratic politicians, masking their sell out to neo liberal corporatism behind a mask of snobbish cultural liberalism, have betrayed the working class?  I thought I did.  I'll mention it again.  And so should you.