What is The Resistance if it does not resist the Ruling Class?
What is The Resistance if it does not resist the Establishment in all its guises and the corruption pervading it to its core?
What is The Resistance if it does not resist neoliberalism, neoconservatism, globalization, privatization, and exploitation in all of its forms?
Resisting neoliberalism involves a radical (from the roots) change of heart. Traditional models of political leadership have tended to demand a “politics of celebrity” in which movement-building is typically created from the top down, not from the roots (radical). Turn on your television with the sound off and scroll through the “news” channels, notice who the media considers proper political celebrities, and notice that their views all sound pretty much the same. This is planned, it’s this way by design. You are only permitted to see and hear views that support the neoliberal capitalist Ruling Class and its controlled opposition. If, by chance, you do see a Working Class person, you can be sure this person has been carefully groomed for the screen and may even be a paid actor. It’s been done. Really.
Occupy, Ferguson, Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock… our protests reflect the practice of remembering the dead, the oppressed, the deliberately silenced, the fearful, the disenfranchised, and the alienated in order to challenge and make visible the brutal violence of neoliberal capitalist Establishment institutions and their spokesmodels.
A truthful press is incompatible with this Establishment, it always has been; it should not welcome their celebrity leadership with a chair on its talk shows or a lecture from its paid speakers. A truthful press should directly and fearlessly challenge celebrity leadership, questioning its motives, its agenda, its alliances, its funding, and its duplicity (holding one view in public and the opposite view in private, for example). The most striking thing about the mainstream corporate media, and particularly its opinionists/commentators, is the completely irresponsible carping of people who have never been and never expect to be in a position of oppressive poverty.
Resistance without advancing a genuinely progressive plan and vision for decentralized (small d) democratic governance that does the most good for the Working Class is no resistance at all. If your resistance consists solely in saying “no” to this administration and its political party and your message is “we’re not Them, so vote for Us”… your resistance is a big fail and election losses will continue for the foreseeable future.
A question that is inevitably at the heart of any future politics of the Left: What will bring about the end of neoliberal capitalism — and what will replace it? You should be asking yourselves and your political candidates this question, over and over if necessary. If The Resistance isn’t offering a comprehensive plan as an answer, it is no resistance at all — because you can be sure the neoliberal capitalists have plans that span decades, maybe even lifetimes.
The term ‘neoliberalism’ has been made purposefully ambiguous so as to obstruct a clear understanding of its meaning. (Even now, there are neoliberals trying their hardest to do the same thing to the word ‘progressive’ after they successfully obfuscated the meaning of the word ‘liberal.’) In general, ‘neoliberalism’ denotes a political and economic ideology that has come to dominate most of the capitalist worldview over the past fifty years or so. In fact, neoliberalism is a sort of political project that was launched by the corporate capitalist Ruling Class in the early Seventies to curb the power of organized labor and to also dismantle the welfare state in order to restore the dominance of the Ruling Class that was so pervasive in the Gilded Age of the Industrial Revolution. Historians will, no doubt, remind us that it was only gilded for the few, not the many.
Why else do you think the capitalists invest so heavily in lobbying and political spending and think tanks and other propaganda if it’s not to push forward and disseminate their anti-Working Class dogma. “But what about unions…?” Heh, if unions were truly an uncorrupted opposition, they surely wouldn’t have backed a neoliberal corporatist Democrat for president (some unions didn’t, but they were few). Ask yourselves: Was this candidate at Occupy, Ferguson, or Standing Rock? If the answer is “no” they can hardly be considered a shining example of a brave progressive leader in touch with average Americans who puts themselves on the line in standing up for Working Class people.
Resisting and dismantling neoliberalism involves more than asking for greater federal/state regulations over markets or requesting more social service assistance to vulnerable populations. While important, these actions do not at all disrupt and rupture the neoliberal character of the Ruling Class Establishment and its oppressive policies. Long-standing institutions are ripe for disruption, not the least of which are the major political parties. The Democrats spent $1.2 billion on a presidential campaign and did not house one homeless person or feed anyone suffering from hunger? How can that even be allowed to happen? Can you even see the tremendous value of actually walking the walk and how that would play out in election season? If not, you shouldn’t be running for office or working on a political campaign.
Resist that.
