One of the hoariest memes of left-wing politics is the notion of the "protest," the excluded and the oppressed taking to the streets to express their plight and the injustice of their suffering at the hands of the ruling class.
I had an epiphany on this a year or two ago when reading semi-lefty Karl Polanyi's Great Transformation about the 19th century. Once the workers got the vote, he explained, and found that the political system was responding to their needs, they stopped the marching and rioting. People only take to the streets as a last resort, and usually in a hopeless reaction to wage cuts, unemployment and famine.
Oh really, I thought. Who knew?
Because of course in our age we have all been carefully taught that the woods are full of helpless victims, excluded from representation, for whom "protest" is the only way to advertise their wretchedness.
But when you hear of women activists wailing in the Senate gallery, and women activists dressing up as a wall, and so forth, you are not hearing the cry of the oppressed. You are hearing the supporters of the ruling class. This fact is obvious when you look at photos of the protesters. I'm sorry, but I know the difference between lower-class single women working marginal jobs and educated women doing a bit of "creative protest."
In fact, the very creativity of much of modern protest, with people dressed up as polar bears to protest climate change, tells the story. People of the Creative Self are the kind of people that feel that one must do something to make a protest original and creative rather than just march.
It is a fact that 97.2 percent of the "protests" you see on TV or read about on social media are merely the political stage-shows of the educated ruling class.
Put it this way. How would a bunch of the genuinely oppressed get into the Senate gallery? Access to the gallery is through the senators. So any activist group wanting to "protest" the Kavanaugh vote in the Senate gallery would have to go through a friendly Democratic Senator; it would have to have "connections." Get it?
So I believe that the fundamental thing to understand about "activism" and "protest" in these latter days is that the chances are 97.2 percent that you are looking at people supported by powerful interests closely allied to the ruling class.
And of course, these days Good Little Girls, well-born damsels, go to college to learn the theory and practice of "activism" and "protest." So when you see twentysomething girls with their cute protest signs and their cute dress-ups, you are looking at the naive stooges of the ruling class. You might say they are nostalgic reenactors, reenacting the glorious marches and protests of the workers back in the 19th century.
That would make sense, given my notion of the left as a Great Reaction.
But really, these folks are the cadet battalions of the ruling class, doing a spell in the activist trenches before taking their inherited places in the corridors of power. They are like midshipmen in a Napoleonic War novel. Yes, they rough it a bit, and get knocked about a bit by the bullies in the midshipmen's mess and by the officers if they don't learn their navigation, but in due course they will get their commissions and take their wine in the wardroom. While the ordinary seamen still suffer under ruthless naval discipline and once against it is all hands to witness punishment.
As you know, I explain this ruling-class "fake protest" politics with my "little darlings" theory. The left, starting with rich-kids Marx and Engels, has created a politics out of advocating for the oppressed and the exploited. But every group they discover eventually gets enrolled in the "system" and ceases to be useful and political rank-and-file for marchin' and protestin'. Because the warrant for "activism" is always a marginalized group outside the system for whom street protest is the only way to get the attention of the rulers.
Thus, at present, our fake protesters are advocating for illegal aliens and Muslims, because right now they are outside the gates, and not represented within the political system.
Oh and women, because upscale and educated women are the most appallingly exploited and oppressed victims in human history.
But the interesting thing is that once a group gets inside the system, the cadet battalion commanders lose interest in them. Thus, in the United States, the liberal activists lost interest in the working class in the Sixties, and for 50 years the white working class wandered in the political wilderness without someone to advocate for them in the councils of power.
Until Donald Trump.
Note to ambitious youngsters: I dare say that in the coming decades the sweet spot for political careerists will be identifying and then leading former "little darlings" of the left, groups that the left used to lead when they were not franchised and not of interest to elected politicians but are now abandoned because they are no longer outside the system but merely neglected.
Put it this way. Activists represent people "outside the system," because only outsider status warrants street "protest" and marching. Politicians represent people "inside the system" who may be courted and bribed for their votes in the ordinary process of elective politics. But there is always a political middle ground of voters that are nominally within the system but that the elected politicians have tended to neglect over the years.
Meanwhile the one thing to understand is that 97.2 of the protesters you see on TV are fake. They are well-born scions of the ruling class and they ought to be ashamed of themselves.
I had an epiphany on this a year or two ago when reading semi-lefty Karl Polanyi's Great Transformation about the 19th century. Once the workers got the vote, he explained, and found that the political system was responding to their needs, they stopped the marching and rioting. People only take to the streets as a last resort, and usually in a hopeless reaction to wage cuts, unemployment and famine.
Oh really, I thought. Who knew?
Because of course in our age we have all been carefully taught that the woods are full of helpless victims, excluded from representation, for whom "protest" is the only way to advertise their wretchedness.
But when you hear of women activists wailing in the Senate gallery, and women activists dressing up as a wall, and so forth, you are not hearing the cry of the oppressed. You are hearing the supporters of the ruling class. This fact is obvious when you look at photos of the protesters. I'm sorry, but I know the difference between lower-class single women working marginal jobs and educated women doing a bit of "creative protest."
In fact, the very creativity of much of modern protest, with people dressed up as polar bears to protest climate change, tells the story. People of the Creative Self are the kind of people that feel that one must do something to make a protest original and creative rather than just march.
It is a fact that 97.2 percent of the "protests" you see on TV or read about on social media are merely the political stage-shows of the educated ruling class.
Put it this way. How would a bunch of the genuinely oppressed get into the Senate gallery? Access to the gallery is through the senators. So any activist group wanting to "protest" the Kavanaugh vote in the Senate gallery would have to go through a friendly Democratic Senator; it would have to have "connections." Get it?
So I believe that the fundamental thing to understand about "activism" and "protest" in these latter days is that the chances are 97.2 percent that you are looking at people supported by powerful interests closely allied to the ruling class.
And of course, these days Good Little Girls, well-born damsels, go to college to learn the theory and practice of "activism" and "protest." So when you see twentysomething girls with their cute protest signs and their cute dress-ups, you are looking at the naive stooges of the ruling class. You might say they are nostalgic reenactors, reenacting the glorious marches and protests of the workers back in the 19th century.
That would make sense, given my notion of the left as a Great Reaction.
But really, these folks are the cadet battalions of the ruling class, doing a spell in the activist trenches before taking their inherited places in the corridors of power. They are like midshipmen in a Napoleonic War novel. Yes, they rough it a bit, and get knocked about a bit by the bullies in the midshipmen's mess and by the officers if they don't learn their navigation, but in due course they will get their commissions and take their wine in the wardroom. While the ordinary seamen still suffer under ruthless naval discipline and once against it is all hands to witness punishment.
As you know, I explain this ruling-class "fake protest" politics with my "little darlings" theory. The left, starting with rich-kids Marx and Engels, has created a politics out of advocating for the oppressed and the exploited. But every group they discover eventually gets enrolled in the "system" and ceases to be useful and political rank-and-file for marchin' and protestin'. Because the warrant for "activism" is always a marginalized group outside the system for whom street protest is the only way to get the attention of the rulers.
Thus, at present, our fake protesters are advocating for illegal aliens and Muslims, because right now they are outside the gates, and not represented within the political system.
Oh and women, because upscale and educated women are the most appallingly exploited and oppressed victims in human history.
But the interesting thing is that once a group gets inside the system, the cadet battalion commanders lose interest in them. Thus, in the United States, the liberal activists lost interest in the working class in the Sixties, and for 50 years the white working class wandered in the political wilderness without someone to advocate for them in the councils of power.
Until Donald Trump.
Note to ambitious youngsters: I dare say that in the coming decades the sweet spot for political careerists will be identifying and then leading former "little darlings" of the left, groups that the left used to lead when they were not franchised and not of interest to elected politicians but are now abandoned because they are no longer outside the system but merely neglected.
Put it this way. Activists represent people "outside the system," because only outsider status warrants street "protest" and marching. Politicians represent people "inside the system" who may be courted and bribed for their votes in the ordinary process of elective politics. But there is always a political middle ground of voters that are nominally within the system but that the elected politicians have tended to neglect over the years.
Meanwhile the one thing to understand is that 97.2 of the protesters you see on TV are fake. They are well-born scions of the ruling class and they ought to be ashamed of themselves.
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