The very fact that the AOC pile-on happened at all is a testament to her power and voice. And her (and others') ascendency. The jeering men-children are at least smart enough to recognize a threat when they see one.
1.) AOC joined Bernie after the 2024 election in repeating the old canard that Democrats lost to Trump because they "abandoned the working class". But both of them were fully behind Biden--and in fact opposed him leaving the race--because they thought he had been the "best president for the working class in decades".
Try as their supporters might to deny it, there is a logical disconnect there.
2.) Toby Buckle has done God's work exposing and debunking the old "Voters are turning to fascism because they are economically deprived" bullshit--he best encapsulated that debunking here:
3.) AOC, much as I like her, is going to have to be an FDR-like figure if she gains the presidency--and not in terms of "fighting for the working class". But in terms of leading the free world against tyranny.
I do not think that is a job she is prepared for, interested in, or planning for.
If she becomes president, or even gains real power in America, she had damn well be ready to have that mantle thrust upon her. Because it's coming.
"A Disease of Affluence" was a really fascinating article. I was going to write about "status anxiety" in my comment above, and I kind of wish that I had. I think it's a very real thing.
Do people know who they are and what they have if they lack a strong basis of comparison? And if you're judged by what you have, and you're indistinguishable from those around you, then maybe you splinter off into different sub-groups of identity to distinguish yourself. I know I've seen that. ": People like having social inferiors." Very succinct articulation. I've been having a side conversation with a friend about this article on the coming AI-initiated crisis: https://intimatemirror.substack.com/p/the-end-of-hoop-jumping?r=1831a&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true
and we can see that just as much in a potentially hidden-but-perceptible superiority among those of us who perceive ourselves as "valley crossers" and therefore more prepared for the coming age than the poor sops who thought they were doing it right by jumping through hoops.
I think if we're being honest, we all do it. Moral superiority, spiritual superiority, material superiority. Whatever we can access.
I mean, there's also the basic fact that (as a caricature) if you're picking between "going to a barbecue and drinking Budweieser and listening to Kid Rock versus going to a party of progressives and dancing on eggshells on various issues, which is probably almost objectively more fun?
Economic-only messaging work similarly to focusing solely on kitchen table issues - it walks around the biggest problem, that is most voters, and working class especially, are not strongly against fascism and pro democracy. Rise of far right is in part because many people genuinely like those values, and more because of the hatred of "elites", connected to liberalism.
"It’s true that Trump has quickly squandered the cross-racial working-class support he built in 2024, but there’s good reason to believe these voters have defected not simply because he broke his economic promises. They walked away because his whole schtick is an affront to liberty and decency, without any upside." - I think they walked away simply due to anti-incumbency. Trump, Biden, Democracy, Fascism - nothing matters more than being against current thing.
Trump's 2024 campaign was "an affront to liberty and decency," and the multiracial working class didn't walk away from him then. Sure, I hope there are some Trump voters who had second thoughts on moral/ethical grounds. But for the most part, the disillusionment is "Trump promised to magically fix everything --> everything has not been fixed --> I'm disappointed --> I don't support Trump anymore."
Isn’t the Achilles heel of leftist internationalism the fact that the US is just a lot richer than every other major economy in the world?
Working class Americans have higher wages and more purchasing power than working class Europeans, to say nothing of Asians, Africans, or Latins, and any step to close that gap is going to be extremely unpopular in the US while any steps to keep that gap nice and fat is going to ring hollow in a leftist “workers of the world” framework.
In general, agree with this post. The only thing I'd expand upon is that what you're describing has been one of the Achilles heels* of leftist movements since the 19th century; the assumption that working class people or just people lower down the income scale are entirely class conscious in their view of the world or can be made to orient their views of the world an entirely class conscious direction. People have loyalties and biases that supersede class loyalties, some of them understandable like devotion to family first above all else, some are uglier like race solidarity, but those additional loyalties are there are conservative parties for 150 years have remained electorally viable by playing on those loyalties and indeed bigotries.
I do have a bone to pick with this statement "The one variable that changed everywhere all at once is the proliferation of disruptive new information technology". While I don't fully subscribe to the "smart phone theory of everything" I do absolutely subscribe to your theory that modern information environment is part of the story here. But only part. But the other big variable is inflation. And one pretty consistent finding is periods of high inflation, voters not only "kick the bums out" (which happened in almost every country in the western world no matter which party was in power), but they do tend to turn to right wing parties. Not just in the most famous example, but see late 70s and early 80s in US, UK and Canada.
>We just experienced Biden’s economy, which did more to compress inequality than most people realize, faster than almost anyone thought possible, and it did not create cross-racial class solidarity
Right, well, the thing about that is: to the average working class person "inequality" is an abstraction. Nobody *likes* it, but it's not something you feel day to day.
Whereas their car insurance renewal going up 25% in a couple of years, and rents skyrocketing all around them, and grocery prices soaring, and the prospect of ever owning a house flying out the window as housing prices go up at least 50%...these are, to put it incredibly mildly, very much *not* abstractions.
I agree with you entirely. I am also trying, like Gretchen from Mean Girls trying to "make 'fetch' happen," to get people thinking in terms of a Mosaic Revolution. Because it will take all of the above and then some. I don't think that many on the political left are really, in their heart of hearts, reckoning with the power of identity and belonging (and the response to the threats to identity and belonging). I just don't see it. I don't see ANYONE expressing any degree of understanding of what it means to lose your sense of location, except as the virtue-signalling solidarity with the oppressed (much of it sincere, plenty of it strategic). We may write about it, academically and in the media, but the EXPRESSION — that nonverbally communicated vibe of really "feeling it" — of that sort of real understanding of the complexity of peoples' lives does not come through much at all. And as you rightly point out, we have just exepreinced the tip of the spear of the social undoing that's coming. Did anyone here read Andrew Yang's alarming but cogent portrait of the coming upheaval? https://blog.andrewyang.com/p/the-end-of-the-office?r=1831a&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true
This is where opinions will meet the road of unfathomable expereince in many cases. People who "did everything right," etc etc. I think we are at the very beginnings of that.
I want to comment on this: "The appeal of far-right politics has grown even in social democracies, notwithstanding their robust safety nets and benefit systems."
Safety nets and benefit systems are under attack in Europe as well as here. People judge from the conditions at home. The feeling about losing generals benefits or about getting them cut will cause similar political consequences regardless of the starting points in the different countries.
The very fact that the AOC pile-on happened at all is a testament to her power and voice. And her (and others') ascendency. The jeering men-children are at least smart enough to recognize a threat when they see one.
Yes, 100%, all of this.
And a few additional points:
1.) AOC joined Bernie after the 2024 election in repeating the old canard that Democrats lost to Trump because they "abandoned the working class". But both of them were fully behind Biden--and in fact opposed him leaving the race--because they thought he had been the "best president for the working class in decades".
Try as their supporters might to deny it, there is a logical disconnect there.
2.) Toby Buckle has done God's work exposing and debunking the old "Voters are turning to fascism because they are economically deprived" bullshit--he best encapsulated that debunking here:
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/a-disease-of-affluence/
3.) AOC, much as I like her, is going to have to be an FDR-like figure if she gains the presidency--and not in terms of "fighting for the working class". But in terms of leading the free world against tyranny.
I do not think that is a job she is prepared for, interested in, or planning for.
If she becomes president, or even gains real power in America, she had damn well be ready to have that mantle thrust upon her. Because it's coming.
"A Disease of Affluence" was a really fascinating article. I was going to write about "status anxiety" in my comment above, and I kind of wish that I had. I think it's a very real thing.
Do people know who they are and what they have if they lack a strong basis of comparison? And if you're judged by what you have, and you're indistinguishable from those around you, then maybe you splinter off into different sub-groups of identity to distinguish yourself. I know I've seen that. ": People like having social inferiors." Very succinct articulation. I've been having a side conversation with a friend about this article on the coming AI-initiated crisis: https://intimatemirror.substack.com/p/the-end-of-hoop-jumping?r=1831a&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true
and we can see that just as much in a potentially hidden-but-perceptible superiority among those of us who perceive ourselves as "valley crossers" and therefore more prepared for the coming age than the poor sops who thought they were doing it right by jumping through hoops.
I think if we're being honest, we all do it. Moral superiority, spiritual superiority, material superiority. Whatever we can access.
I mean, there's also the basic fact that (as a caricature) if you're picking between "going to a barbecue and drinking Budweieser and listening to Kid Rock versus going to a party of progressives and dancing on eggshells on various issues, which is probably almost objectively more fun?
“ Google AOC + Munich”
Google AOC? Ahem. Your brain has been Borked.
Try the more Brandeisian “do a web-search”.
Economic-only messaging work similarly to focusing solely on kitchen table issues - it walks around the biggest problem, that is most voters, and working class especially, are not strongly against fascism and pro democracy. Rise of far right is in part because many people genuinely like those values, and more because of the hatred of "elites", connected to liberalism.
"It’s true that Trump has quickly squandered the cross-racial working-class support he built in 2024, but there’s good reason to believe these voters have defected not simply because he broke his economic promises. They walked away because his whole schtick is an affront to liberty and decency, without any upside." - I think they walked away simply due to anti-incumbency. Trump, Biden, Democracy, Fascism - nothing matters more than being against current thing.
This.
Trump's 2024 campaign was "an affront to liberty and decency," and the multiracial working class didn't walk away from him then. Sure, I hope there are some Trump voters who had second thoughts on moral/ethical grounds. But for the most part, the disillusionment is "Trump promised to magically fix everything --> everything has not been fixed --> I'm disappointed --> I don't support Trump anymore."
Isn’t the Achilles heel of leftist internationalism the fact that the US is just a lot richer than every other major economy in the world?
Working class Americans have higher wages and more purchasing power than working class Europeans, to say nothing of Asians, Africans, or Latins, and any step to close that gap is going to be extremely unpopular in the US while any steps to keep that gap nice and fat is going to ring hollow in a leftist “workers of the world” framework.
In general, agree with this post. The only thing I'd expand upon is that what you're describing has been one of the Achilles heels* of leftist movements since the 19th century; the assumption that working class people or just people lower down the income scale are entirely class conscious in their view of the world or can be made to orient their views of the world an entirely class conscious direction. People have loyalties and biases that supersede class loyalties, some of them understandable like devotion to family first above all else, some are uglier like race solidarity, but those additional loyalties are there are conservative parties for 150 years have remained electorally viable by playing on those loyalties and indeed bigotries.
I do have a bone to pick with this statement "The one variable that changed everywhere all at once is the proliferation of disruptive new information technology". While I don't fully subscribe to the "smart phone theory of everything" I do absolutely subscribe to your theory that modern information environment is part of the story here. But only part. But the other big variable is inflation. And one pretty consistent finding is periods of high inflation, voters not only "kick the bums out" (which happened in almost every country in the western world no matter which party was in power), but they do tend to turn to right wing parties. Not just in the most famous example, but see late 70s and early 80s in US, UK and Canada.
>We just experienced Biden’s economy, which did more to compress inequality than most people realize, faster than almost anyone thought possible, and it did not create cross-racial class solidarity
Right, well, the thing about that is: to the average working class person "inequality" is an abstraction. Nobody *likes* it, but it's not something you feel day to day.
Whereas their car insurance renewal going up 25% in a couple of years, and rents skyrocketing all around them, and grocery prices soaring, and the prospect of ever owning a house flying out the window as housing prices go up at least 50%...these are, to put it incredibly mildly, very much *not* abstractions.
I agree with you entirely. I am also trying, like Gretchen from Mean Girls trying to "make 'fetch' happen," to get people thinking in terms of a Mosaic Revolution. Because it will take all of the above and then some. I don't think that many on the political left are really, in their heart of hearts, reckoning with the power of identity and belonging (and the response to the threats to identity and belonging). I just don't see it. I don't see ANYONE expressing any degree of understanding of what it means to lose your sense of location, except as the virtue-signalling solidarity with the oppressed (much of it sincere, plenty of it strategic). We may write about it, academically and in the media, but the EXPRESSION — that nonverbally communicated vibe of really "feeling it" — of that sort of real understanding of the complexity of peoples' lives does not come through much at all. And as you rightly point out, we have just exepreinced the tip of the spear of the social undoing that's coming. Did anyone here read Andrew Yang's alarming but cogent portrait of the coming upheaval? https://blog.andrewyang.com/p/the-end-of-the-office?r=1831a&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true
This is where opinions will meet the road of unfathomable expereince in many cases. People who "did everything right," etc etc. I think we are at the very beginnings of that.
I want to comment on this: "The appeal of far-right politics has grown even in social democracies, notwithstanding their robust safety nets and benefit systems."
Safety nets and benefit systems are under attack in Europe as well as here. People judge from the conditions at home. The feeling about losing generals benefits or about getting them cut will cause similar political consequences regardless of the starting points in the different countries.