{"id":26987,"date":"2023-06-17T13:42:11","date_gmt":"2023-06-17T20:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=26987"},"modified":"2023-06-17T13:42:12","modified_gmt":"2023-06-17T20:42:12","slug":"the-culture-war-is-just-as-urgent-as-the-class-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/06\/17\/the-culture-war-is-just-as-urgent-as-the-class-war\/","title":{"rendered":"THE CULTURE WAR IS JUST AS URGENT AS THE CLASS WAR"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

FRI, 6\/9\/2023 – BY\u00a0CARL GIBSON<\/a> (Occupy.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cNo war but the class war\u201d is an old saying in leftist circles dating back decades. While initially an anti-war statement, it also became an argument for the American left to embrace class reductionist thinking in lieu of the \u201cculture war,\u201d which is typically a reference for issues pertaining to racism, sexism, and the LGBTQ+ community. But winning the culture war is just as paramount as winning the class war \u2013 and is arguably more urgent in 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Proponents of class reductionism<\/a> (the belief that focusing on class politics and economics should take precedence over all other issues) argue that subscribing to intersectionality<\/a> (the belief that all struggles are interconnected) benefits the ruling class, as it diffuses the energy of our organizing efforts and further enables the upward redistribution of the rapidly dwindling wealth of the working class. But in reality, we ignore the culture war at our own peril: Ceding the culture war to conservatives will only further alienate marginalized populations, and widen the divide within the working class at a time when building universal working class solidarity is more urgent than ever. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2023 and 2024 will be decisive years for the American culture war, and when a winner emerges, we will be a radically different country, either for worse or for better. That outcome is entirely dependent on how willing the so-called \u201callies\u201d of marginalized populations \u2013 in particular, the transgender community \u2013 are to get their hands dirty in today\u2019s culture war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The culture war has the left feeling frustrated and exhausted<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As the Occupy Wall Street movement\u2019s energy faded in 2012, there was a sentiment among activists at the Occupy camps I participated in (including Houston, Texas; Jackson, Mississippi, and New York City) that the movement\u2019s focus on identity-specific issues was the reason for its dissipation. And this wasn\u2019t just communicated by white leftists: Wilfred Reilly, an associate political science professor at Kentucky\u2019s oldest historically black university, made a similar argument in a USA Today op-ed from 2020, stating that \u201ceconomic leftists must ditch wokeness.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOccupy Chicago, possibly the largest gathering of Guy Fawkes-mask wearing radicals outside Manhattan\u2019s Zucotti Park, fell apart largely because of the endless bifurcation of members\u2019 agendas,\u201d Reilly wrote of his Occupy experience. \u201cWhenever a task force of leading members was proposed to discuss some almost-consensus working-class issue like support for an increased minimum wage, the call would immediately come for a women\u2019s task force. Then, what about a Black women\u2019s task force? A Black gay women\u2019s task force?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Senator Bernie Sanders\u2019 (I-Vermont) 2016 campaign was widely viewed<\/a> as the electoral manifestation of the Occupy movement. And, similar to the Occupy movement, Sanders\u2019 2016 campaign was criticized for its saturation with white, male supporters. Sanders himself admitted on MSNBC<\/a> that struggles with diversity were one of his campaign\u2019s biggest stumbling blocks. His 2020 campaign, on the other hand, made great efforts to diversify its leadership. Whereas his 2016 endeavor was led by white male consultants like Jeff Weaver and Tad Devine<\/a>, his 2020 campaign was led by a more diverse team. Women of color were centered, like former Ohio state senator Nina Turner and former San Juan, Puerto Rico mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz as two of the campaign\u2019s four co-chairs and Briahna Joy Gray as the campaign\u2019s chief spokesperson. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) was one of the campaign\u2019s chief surrogates<\/a>. Other \u201csquad\u201d members like Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) loudly endorsed Sanders. Yet for all of his efforts at inclusivity, Sanders lost the Democratic nomination to Joe Biden in 2020 by an even wider margin than he lost to Hillary Clinton in 2016. Sanders\u2019 2020 loss led to condemnations of identity politics in leftist spaces. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After Sanders\u2019 concession to Joe Biden, Angela Nagle, a contributor to leftist magazine Jacobin, co-wrote a lengthy American Affairs article<\/a> with journalist Michael Tracey (formerly a contributor to progressive YouTube network The Young Turks) blaming Sanders\u2019 failure on his capitulations to conventional progressive identity politics:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[I]n fruitlessly catering to this demographic, Sanders jettisoned another quality that gave his campaign an aura of excitement in 2016, when he exuded the sense of being distinct from the rest of the mainstream Democratic Party. Four years later, there he was, participating in the obligatory anti-Trump sweepstakes\u2014competing with the other can\u00addidates over who could inveigh the most vociferously against Trump. While Sanders never lost what always came across as a gen\u00aduinely felt populist fervor against the billionaire class, he often sound\u00aded like he was half-heartedly reading from the script of a liberal afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome when he would go through the mo\u00adtions of listing Trump\u2019s various crimes: racism, sexism, homo\u00adphobia, xenophobia, etc., etc., etc. After four exhausting years of this from all liberal quarters, many of those who chose Bernie over Hillary last time were neither convinced nor impressed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jacobin published an article in response entitled \u201cWe Need a Class War, Not a Culture War<\/a>,\u201d disagreeing with the original premise of Nagle and Tracey\u2019s article, but agreeing that \u201cif we want to win, we have to leave the culture war behind,\u201d and that \u201cwe should drop the alienating \u2018woke\u2019 rhetoric.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[C]ouldn\u2019t we strive to capitalize on Bernie\u2019s popular economic agenda and ditch the Left side of the culture war? Nagle and Tracey are pessimistic. No doubt, it is a challenge. Left-wing candidates and campaigns are currently held hostage by a toxic brew of alienating language, like the term \u2018Latinx\u2019 (unpopular<\/a> with Latinos themselves), fashionable maximalist slogans that make heavy use of the word \u2018abolish,\u2019 and bizarre postures like Kirsten Gillibrand harping about her \u201cwhite privilege.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese are serious liabilities for any candidate (and countless<\/a> articles<\/a> were<\/a> written<\/a> about how the \u2018wokest\u2019 candidates did the worst). But fortunately for us, left-wing candidates don\u2019t adopt these stances because big money donors insist on them. Instead, insurgent candidates run on issues they think their base will find it appealing. Therefore, shifting campaign rhetoric away from the kind of language that Nagle and Tracey rightly identify as alienating is possible, so long as we can prove that such appeals are unpopular among most social-democratically inclined working-class voters.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s true that Bernie Sanders performed worse in 2020 compared to 2016 despite higher name recognition, more money, and a robust grassroots campaign infrastructure already in place. The chief reason for Biden\u2019s victory wasn\u2019t due to superior organizing or financial advantages, but simply because he was seen as the most electable candidate<\/a> against Donald Trump in a general election. But postmortems like the aforementioned are an indicator that Sanders supporters\u2019 nauseating condescension toward any issues not pertaining to kitchen-table economics could be a large reason why his campaign struggled to gain more diverse cross-sections of supporters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Opting to ignore the culture war isn\u2019t just a tactical blunder that could imperil future leftist political campaigns: It could also endanger the lives of the people we need to build broad working-class solidarity altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Trans rights: The front line of the culture war<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Right now, Republicans are winning the culture war largely unimpeded, given their widespread assault on transgender rights and unchecked genocidal language toward the transgender population. Very few public officials \u2013 with notable exceptions like Nebraska state senator Machaela Cavanaugh (D), who waged a months-long filibuster<\/a> against anti-trans legislation \u2013 are fighting back in any meaningful way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kentucky state representative Josh Calloway (R) recently called the LGBTQ+ community a \u201cdisease,\u201d<\/a> and doubled down on his comments instead of apologizing. Daily Wire host Michael Knowles told the Conservative Political Action Conference he wanted to eradicate \u201ctransgenderism\u201d<\/a> to applause. And fascist regimes in the past have carried out genocide after first practicing on the LGBTQ+ population. As Occupy.com previously reported<\/a>, Hitler\u2019s reign as chancellor began<\/a> with a brutal campaign targeting gay people across Germany:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The police established lists of homosexually active persons. Significant numbers of gay men were arrested, of whom an estimated 50,000 received severe jail sentences in brutal conditions. Most homosexuals were sent to police prisons, rather than concentration camps, where they were exposed to inhumane treatment. There they could be subjected to hard labour and torture, or they were experimented upon or executed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An estimated 10-15,000 men who were accused of homosexuality were deported to concentration camps. Most died in the camps, often from exhaustion. Many were castrated and some subjected to gruesome medical experiments. Collective murder actions were undertaken against gay detainees, exterminating hundreds at a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bans on gender-affirming care for minors have already passed in 19 states and counting<\/a> in 2023, and several other states, including Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas, are considering banning it for adults up to 26 years old. But it isn\u2019t hyperbole to say that Florida in particular is leading the war on trans people: In May, Governor Ron DeSantis signed Senate Bill 254 into law, which, among other things, allows the state to take transgender children away from their families<\/a> if parents allow their children to receive gender-affirming care. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bill not only bans gender-affirming care for minors, but also effectively for transgender adults: SB 254 makes it so nurse practitioners are no longer allowed to prescribe gender-affirming care, which, according to the Los Angeles Blade, means up to 80% of Florida\u2019s transgender population<\/a> \u2013 including both youth and adults \u2013 will no longer be able to access the safe, FDA-approved care they\u2019ve received for years. This is despite both the American Medical Association<\/a> and the American Academy of Pediatrics<\/a> endorsing gender-affirming care as necessary for the well-being of anyone experiencing gender dysphoria. It becomes clear that SB 254 isn\u2019t about \u201cprotecting children\u201d as its proponents claim, but about making life even more difficult for an already marginalized population, and providing the state with an apparatus which could potentially be used to oppress other undesirable populations in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The transgender population numbers just 1.6 million people nationwide<\/a> according to a June 2022 study from UCLA, with youth between the ages of 13 and 17 making up roughly 20% of that population. That comes out to just one half of one percent of the population. Mathematically, that makes it essentially impossible for the transgender population to win the culture war on their own. Lutheran pastor Martin Niemoller\u2019s \u201cfirst they came for<\/a>\u201d Holocaust poem is cited often in making the case for solidarity, but the underlying message is just as prevalent in 2023 as it was during World War II: If we don\u2019t all come together for marginalized people when they have become official targets of state cruelty, then there will be no one left when the weapons of the state are turned against us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Carl Gibson is an independent journalist whose work has been published in CNN, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The Houston Chronicle, The Louisville Courier-Journal, Barron\u2019s, Business Insider, The Independent, and NPR, among others. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FRI, 6\/9\/2023 – BY\u00a0CARL GIBSON (Occupy.com) \u201cNo war but the class war\u201d is an old saying in leftist circles dating back decades. While initially an anti-war statement, it also became an argument for the American left to embrace class reductionist thinking in lieu of the \u201cculture war,\u201d which is typically… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[697],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26987"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26987"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26988,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26987\/revisions\/26988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}