Class vs Race Privilege

A question was recently put: Class privilege is real, white privilege isn't. Agree or disagree?

I think there's something to the idea of white privilege. But it's become this sweeping and reductionist idea that's been used to license shitty behavior.  Hate the white working class all you want, they have all the power because they’re white.  That makes it okay.  Upper middle class academic progressives can thereby scapegoat those stupid, unwashed rednecks for the collective historical sins of the white race. Beneath the very thin progressive veneer of this sentiment is downward punching snobbish regressivism at its ugliest.

Not that this makes racism among the white underclass okay.  It certainly doesn’t, for it erodes their capacity for solidarity with the black underclass that is so needed for both to get a better deal in the long run.  It also lends the legitimacy of “popular support” to regressive policy enacted against the black underclass by the elite.  So called "brocialists" should keep in mind that the black underclass does not have it easy, and that affirmative action and knapsacks of privilege have a funny and ironic way of being colorblind where the lower classes are concerned.  The black underclass has it worse, if anything.  So the white working class should take nothing that I say as a license to be racist towards blacks, so don’t be.  The white working class has a long history of class blindness, motivated in part by racial prejudice and in part by a US left that long ago traded in class for racial concerns and embraced neo-liberalism. This has repeatedly driven the white working class to support regressive right wing politics, as has been recently demonstrated in the US 2016 elections, and they've always ended up suffering for it. 

But for the varied segments of the underclasses to fight among each other over who has it worse is quite stupid, for reasons that should be obvious by now.  It is likewise misguided for the black underclass to despise whitey. This has been good for the black upper middle class that has arisen in the wake of the civil rights movement and the rise of neo-liberalism - the twin engines of the Democratic Party.  Better for them that the black underclass blame white rather than class privilege for their woes.  But this just puts them in a position oddly comparable to that of the Republican supporting white working class.  The real color of privilege is green, and this can only be challenged by white and black together.

Between class on the one hand and identity - race and gender - on the other, I do think class is the more fundamental of the two, though I don't think identity is completely irrelevant.  This is because it has been made relevant by an elite that has used race and identity as a means of dividing the underclass.  So the reality is that identity and class cannot be so easily extricated from one another.  The postmodern left likes to claim that racism/sexism is "prejudice plus power" and that powerless identities cannot oppress. But where does the power - that makes the prejudice of some groups more pernicious than others - come from?

Ownership of capital and the access to political power this inevitably entails. In short, class.

The problem with the postmodern academic left is not identity politics per-se, but how those politics have been co-opted and made to serve powerful interests. The academic postmodernist "left" refuses to see class for one simple reason: they're much higher up on the class totem pole than they'd like to admit. They're not Fortune 500 or Military Industrial Complex by any stretch of the imagination, but they do possess significant advantages over the working and middle classes. Namely that of supremely privileged access to media.

Their position can be compared to that of the clergy in a more religious era, such as that wherein Marx declared religion the opiate of the masses. They use institutions empowered by capital and backed by the state to spin the dominant cultural and social narratives. As we know from the theorists of the early Frankfurt school, Gramsci's theory of cultural hegemony and even from Marx himself, the ruling narrative of any era is the narrative of its ruling class. Or in this case, how its ruling class was NOT responsible for the historical atrocities brought to light by earlier generations of radicals.

Plus, you'll notice that the solutions to racial and gender inequality favored by these "leftists" always either empower capital - "fire him from his job!" - or the state - "sue for hate speech!"

As such, the SJWs - the new clergy of our secular era - are not radicals, but rather ego driven enforcers of a decidedly statist and capitalist status quo.

A Tale of Two Progressives

Okay, so then THAT happened.  And I'd be lying if I told you I was among those who saw this coming.

Of course, hindsight is always 20/20.  From the defeated camp, two narratives seem to be emerging.  Mainly because the defeated camp is be no means united.  Which is why they were the defeated camp, after all.

One of these camps is showing itself to be sadly predictable.  As boilerplate in its lack of self awareness as it is in what passes for its ideological content.  "I'm not shocked by any of this," began the tweet that the HuffPost described as a "Nightmare Election Night Summarized in 1 Bleak Tweet" - "People hate women for more than they hate racists."

Yawn.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm no fan of Trump.  I have grave reservations about his capacity to govern, given his glaring lack of political experience, among other numerous flaws and blemishes.  I do not condone his racial insensitivity nor his boorish attitude towards women.  But any kind of evil Hitler agenda will have to get through Congress first - which though in Republican hands, is so only by a margin, especially the senate.  And it's not like the G.O.P are solidly behind the Donald in any event.

HuffPost Canada did no better: "Hate and Fear Won!"  This saccharine article goes on to say, "When I think of my friends and family in the US, I genuinely fear for them. I fear for women, for minorities and people of colour. I fear for their professional and personal interactions, their reproductive rights and their right to basic safety and security. I fear for the legitimization of identity politics. I fear for climate change and the EPA."

Hate and fear won?

So too has irony.  In a paragraph laden with identity politics - "I fear for women, for minorities and people of color", the author goes on to say that she fears for "the legitimization of identity politics."  Oblivious to the irony, apparently.  And this is the deeper problem with this narrative: its comical lack of self awareness.  Hate and fear - of the uneducated white male working class got us here.  The legitimization of identity politics - for the exclusive charmed circle of feminists, minorities and people of color - also got us here.

Hate and fear of unemployment?  Hate and fear of terrorism?  Specifically, Islamic terrorism?  Hate and fear of the horrors Europe has been dealing with during its migrant crisis?  Nowhere in sight, apparently.

These articles are but two of a countless number cropping up everywhere online, including all of our Facebook news-feeds, since news of Trump's victory was announced.  Baskets and baskets full of deplorables turned loose on our streets.  Pepe the Frog on our computer screens!  Evil Hitler on the rise!

Can we really claim that racism drove so many to put Trump in office when the same electorate so recently handed a black man two terms in the Oval Office?  Was a vote for Trump really a vote against a woman president and for Trump's locker room boorishness?

Maybe.  I honestly hope not, but in some cases, people no doubt voted for Trump for the wrong reasons.  Or maybe it's an insult to all but a tiny handful of glaringly sociopathic voters to assume they had such dark motives.  Which is really part of the deeper problem.

Or maybe it was a vote against an obviously corrupt and Machiavellian DNC establishment candidate who willfully weaponized identity politics for use against Bernie Sander's basement dwelling supporters, and enjoyed considerable DNC favoritism in her race for the candidacy right from the get-go?

Or maybe it was a vote against Hillary's support of welfare reform while her hubby was in office?

Or maybe it was a vote against support for NAFTA, the TPP and other job killing trade deals?

Or maybe it was a vote against her hostility to union rights?

Or maybe it was a vote against the war on drugs, or against the war in Iraq?

And perhaps, most significantly, maybe it was a vote against an overarching sense of entitlement.  Hillary Clinton was not entitled to sit in the Oval Office.  Was she better qualified than Donald Trump to do so?  Quite probable.  But it doesn't work that way.  Hillary Clinton was not owed the White House.  Not because she is a Clinton.  Not because she is a Democrat.  Not because she is a woman.  Not because she is a progressive or a liberal.  And screaming "dat raciss!" or "Muhsogyny!" at anyone who won't vote for any of the above is just compounding the problem.  Shut up and get some self awareness before you drive progressive politics back into late 1980s levels of obscurity and political toxicity.

And this leads us into the second narrative to come from the other side of the defeated camp.  A narrative that is quieter and more introspective.  More level headed and frankly, more intelligent.

A narrative that wonders if it's such a good idea for progressive media to keep beating the rest of the country over the head with aggressive anti white male identity politics and political correctness?
A narrative that wonders if it was so wise for the DNC to screw the best candidate from a genuinely progressive perspective that they've had in decades, out of the nomination?
A narrative that wonders if the white working class who feels left behind and shut out by changes to the global economy aren't the kinds of people progressives should be reaching out to, rather than simply condemning as racist rubes?

I won't go as far as to say that the Democrats completely brought this on themselves.  Okay, who am I kidding?  They brought this completely on themselves.  With a still popular outgoing two term president - a remarkable achievement - they've quite suddenly stooped to levels of lacking political acumen that we've not seen from them since the bad old days of Gary Hart and Michael Dukakis.  An even more remarkable political achievement.  This was a very, very winnable election for them, and they lost it to their own glaring lack of collective self awareness.

Two different narratives from two different progressive mindsets.  One wants to tell you what to think or else you're a racist and a muhsogynist.  The other wants to listen to you and take your fears and concerns, including of racism and misogyny, seriously.  One of these has a political future.  The other does not.

No, your OTHER left

Maybe you've heard of the Alt-Right.  Meet its counterpart.  And there's more here.  And here.  And there's a few closed Alt-Left Facebook groups too.  These groups describe themselves as a kind of anti-PC left, some even willing to consider the notion of "race realism" (I'm not among these), or at least not cry "racist" or "heretic" against any straying from the culturally accepted narrative of white privilege.

Is this the thin end of a much larger wedge?  Moving from margin to center, you have decidedly liberal YouTubbers (think Sargon of Akkad or The Amazing Atheist, among many others) who spend at least as much time quarreling with feminist deconstructions of video games and social justice warrior culture more generally, as they do with any kind of religious or social conservatives.  And finally, you have fairly public figures such as Bill Maher, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris discussing the dangers of the "regressive left."  And that's hardly the tip of the iceberg. It's remarkable that the kinds of people who saw the religious right as the clear and present danger to democratic culture ten years ago now devote so much time to attacking this segment of the left.

So what's this really all about and is it important?  What it comes down to is widespread frustration among liberals with a liberalism that isn't very liberal.  The fact that many social justice movements are becoming closed belief systems with cult like atmospheres isn't sitting well with a growing number of people whose nature is to value skepticism and inquiry.  But it's been a slower and much less unified movement than the backlash against the religious right was.  This is due in part to a reluctance among the more educated and liberal segments of the population to openly challenge movements that profess to speak for marginalized peoples.  But the pace of growth of this inter-left or alt-left backlash is picking up.

The real objection isn't with the stated goals of most feminism, Black Lives Matter and other social justice causes, but with the style employed by the regressive left, centered in academia and certain social media spaces (tumblr is especially notorious) and obsessed with identity politics. Its methods are to make identity and "privilege" into a kind of totalistic social determinism, and all interactions between people are evaluated solely on the basis of the ideology's immutable definitions of what kinds of people are "privileged" and what kinds are "marginalized", often to the exclusion of all other factors or individual context.

This is what leads us to social justice warriors making statements like, "white people don't get to decide what's racist" or "males don't get to have an opinion on feminism" - unless the white commentator happens to decide something that another white person has said or done is racist, or unless the male insists that whomever he's speaking with accept feminist authority without question, even if his audience is female(!)  Even  members of marginalized demographics can't speak for themselves unless they first accept and internalize the ideological paradigm. Spectres such as the old notion of "false consciousness" are raised to dismiss heretics and thought criminals who are otherwise deemed marginalized or oppressed, by the advocates of regressive left ideology.

This ought to be raising a lot of red flags - and I do mean RED flags here, because this kind of thinking was the foundation of the totalitarian states that Lenin and later Mao would end up creating, and that shed so much of their own citizen's blood.  This old idea of the revolutionary vanguard, dressed up and modernized for the internet age.  The idea that even violence carried out by so called "marginalized" groups against their "oppressors" is justified or even righteous (#KillAllMen, anyone?) has its predecessor in the much less tongue-in-cheek ideas of "revolutionary terror" that was not merely an ironic expression of frustration to the Soviet regime, but a very real rationalization for very real violence and terror.  And while even those few instances of #KillAllWhiteMen that are

meant to be taken at face value are ultimately toothless given that they don't have the power of a totalitarian state at their backs (not yet anyway), no small number of otherwise liberal minded people who sympathize with feminist goals in the long run find themselves wondering if this sort of thing really speaks for them and their values, especially since they certainly would not by countenancing such humor were it directed by men at women.  I'd be the first to agree that we should all be a little less uptight and learn to laugh a bit more than we do, but in all seriousness, is the degree of hostility fomented in regressive left circles against males a good thing?  Seems to me as though better and stronger relationships between the sexes are what we should be advocating if we want to see better treatment of women by men overall.  Instead, academia and most mainstream media are doing all in their power to push things the opposite direction.  Seems to me as though this will create more, not less misogyny in the long run.  No one was ever rejected into liking and respecting the people rejecting them.  But then, I'm just a white male, so what do I know?

Sure, it could be argued that the two can't be compared, since men have the social power and women do not, and so #KillAllWomen should be taken more seriously as a threat.  But that's precisely the problem with regressive left thinking: it's ultimately circular and relies on its own premises to prove its own points. And if all else fails, just call your opponent a racist or imply that they're a misogynist rube or the like.  And even if power differentials across racial or gender lines were so clear cut and immutable, just how many double standards should we be prepared to accept as a result?  And is advocacy of double standards in favor of marginalized groups really the best way to achieve equality at all?  Or are regressive left canards denying the existence of misandry or anti-white racism in reality what they most certainly look like to me: rationalizations for self serving double standards offered up by people who would benefit from them.

Seems to me as though if people were all treated as equals, with equal standards of conduct applying to all, this would, by definition, erode social privilege and result in greater degrees of cultural equality, without nearly the backlash we're otherwise seeing because most (though by no means all) white males would be a lot more likely to buy into social justice if it were exactly what it describes itself as being, and the rules applied to everybody.  Instead, we have legions of online shills for black and female supremacy attributing the blowback they're getting to racism and misogyny.  While some of it is indeed "old white dudes" unwilling to relinquish their prejudices, just as many are real liberals who are looking at tumblr, Everyday Feminism, Jezebel, BuzzFeed or any other pro-social justice space and seriously wondering if that's what they signed up for?

If I didn't know any better, I'd suspect that gags like #KillAllWhiteMen, however seriously (or not) they're meant to be taken, have a lot more to do with appealing to the EGOS of an educated urban liberal cohort that is not nearly as marginalized as they'd have us believe, than it does with any actual social inequality.  And that's the real problem with regressive leftism.  It doesn't actually do a damned thing to tackle inequality, alienation, poverty, prejudice or any other kind of social evil.  That's why it so often comes from academia and mainstream media and so often targets the lower classes of the wrong gender and color in so condescending a way.  Kind of like masturbation, regressive leftist virtue signalling feels good while you're doing it, but it's only yourself you're benefiting, if even that, in the end.

For many of those who've been fortunate enough to live in the western world and attend its elite learning institutions, ideologies that lay the blame for injustice and inequality at the feat of entire races or genders as opposed to economic class and politics may even be a cathartic way to resolve the cognitive dissonance that one would expect from being a moral egalitarian, yet personally benefiting from sitting near the top of the global shit heap.  The problem with it is, the real poor and the real marginalized, regardless of race or gender, need and deserve so much better.