by
Jacobin
98
So while it’s true that many Trump voters do express higher rates of racist or sexist views, this shouldn’t be the end of the conversation. People don’t have pre-packaged ideological beliefs. Their ideas are rooted in an ambiguous set of experiences open
to interpretation and change.
So while it’s true that many Trump voters do express higher rates of racist or sexist views, this shouldn’t be the end of the conversation. People don’t have pre-packaged ideological beliefs. Their ideas are rooted in an ambiguous set of experiences open
to interpretation and change.
101
In the Guy Fawkes mask-wearing days of the early Occupy movement, pro-hacker progressives did a great deal to glamorize 4chan because of its leaderlessness and its nonhierarchical form. But as Evgeny Morozov warned, this network fetish could easily cause us to overlook the real content of any movement’s ideas, which in this case remains the lowest form of a vacuous, faux-ironic, sniggering moral imbecilism. Its empty postmodern style has energized and fused with the openly antisemitic and white-supremacist core of the alt-right who mean what they say literally but snobbishly roll their eyes at the normies and “basic bitches” who “don’t get” their sophisticated non-irony as they Sieg Heil and very clearly lay out their vision for a white ethno-state.
In the Guy Fawkes mask-wearing days of the early Occupy movement, pro-hacker progressives did a great deal to glamorize 4chan because of its leaderlessness and its nonhierarchical form. But as Evgeny Morozov warned, this network fetish could easily cause us to overlook the real content of any movement’s ideas, which in this case remains the lowest form of a vacuous, faux-ironic, sniggering moral imbecilism. Its empty postmodern style has energized and fused with the openly antisemitic and white-supremacist core of the alt-right who mean what they say literally but snobbishly roll their eyes at the normies and “basic bitches” who “don’t get” their sophisticated non-irony as they Sieg Heil and very clearly lay out their vision for a white ethno-state.
108
The decline of neoliberalism is emphatically not the decline of capitalism, so what does it mean to say neoliberalism is past its sell-by date? Neoliberalism is not, after all, just a set of policies that can be discontinued and replaced with something else — neoliberal capitalism has birthed a complex global economy that isn’t going to change overnight. Moreover, neoliberalism is also an encompassing set of orienting ideas that pervades all spheres of life; its core ethos of faith in private enterprise, ever-expanding commodification, and bootstrap individualism remains robust.
The decline of neoliberalism is emphatically not the decline of capitalism, so what does it mean to say neoliberalism is past its sell-by date? Neoliberalism is not, after all, just a set of policies that can be discontinued and replaced with something else — neoliberal capitalism has birthed a complex global economy that isn’t going to change overnight. Moreover, neoliberalism is also an encompassing set of orienting ideas that pervades all spheres of life; its core ethos of faith in private enterprise, ever-expanding commodification, and bootstrap individualism remains robust.
109
For these opinion makers, the death of the post-Communist liberal world is a terrible thing. For them it represents something great that has been thrown away in a fit of stupidity.
The funeral dirge for the liberal world order goes something like this: After World War II, some forward-thinking Americans began setting up a system of rules and institutions that allowed global trade, investment, and democracy to flourish. This system evolved and improved over the decades, particularly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, giving us container ships full of Poäng chairs and PlayStations, all while boosting wealth and democracy for the global poor.
According to liberals, the linchpin of this awesomeness was the United States unselfishly superintending the global economy and providing a model of democracy that world masses aspired to and authoritarian governments feared. [...]
on people who mourned Clinton's loss because they liked the way things were going
For these opinion makers, the death of the post-Communist liberal world is a terrible thing. For them it represents something great that has been thrown away in a fit of stupidity.
The funeral dirge for the liberal world order goes something like this: After World War II, some forward-thinking Americans began setting up a system of rules and institutions that allowed global trade, investment, and democracy to flourish. This system evolved and improved over the decades, particularly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, giving us container ships full of Poäng chairs and PlayStations, all while boosting wealth and democracy for the global poor.
According to liberals, the linchpin of this awesomeness was the United States unselfishly superintending the global economy and providing a model of democracy that world masses aspired to and authoritarian governments feared. [...]
on people who mourned Clinton's loss because they liked the way things were going
114
This legitimacy crisis is what has birthed Trump. And the muddled nature of his vision speaks to the impasse that countries find themselves in. The reigning centrist elites and their party alliances are seen as hopelessly bankrupt, and the Left has no power to enact its demands. This leaves the Right to speak to working people’s fears and anger, but that right is itself divided between capitalist elites and social conservatives. Trump simply stepped into a vacancy, an opportunist capitalist speaking the confused language of an angry right-populist vision.
This legitimacy crisis is what has birthed Trump. And the muddled nature of his vision speaks to the impasse that countries find themselves in. The reigning centrist elites and their party alliances are seen as hopelessly bankrupt, and the Left has no power to enact its demands. This leaves the Right to speak to working people’s fears and anger, but that right is itself divided between capitalist elites and social conservatives. Trump simply stepped into a vacancy, an opportunist capitalist speaking the confused language of an angry right-populist vision.