Stop believing stupid things
Like Harris lost because she was too woke
I’ve done it. So have you. And my list is long. It includes (but is not limited to):
· I don’t need to write it down, I’ll remember it if I just focus.
· This time, if I explain really carefully, the barber won’t cut my hair like I’m a marine in 1958.
· I’m a good guy, so I must be in the right about this thing that makes me feel bad.
· I’m a good guy.
· {Confidently} That’s a black widow spider {in Oxfordshire}.
· No alarm necessary – I’m sure I’ll wake up naturally.
· Bristol is on the coast. {honestly, I am still on the fence about this one}
· A lot of people hold that opinion, so maybe there’s something in it.
This impressively non-exhaustive list is a mere smattering of the stupid shit I have fully believed over just the last few years. I’m sure you have your own. The individually stupid things we believe, though, are nothing in comparison to the collective stupidity we are capable of as groups.
I have been struck by a few of them over the last few months, but one has stood out by virtue of its staggering dumbness-intensity and the number of people who seem to believe it. It goes like this:
‘Woke has gone broke’
Not since ‘Jeremy Corbyn is probably an anti-semite’, a take beloved of lazy liberals who prefer to listen to the Guardian and count the number of times a thing is said rather than interrogate it, have I heard such a whopper. But here we are.
Is it an opinion that requires some self-administered oxygen-starvation to hold? Maybe not. But the number of prize dummies who hold it should at least give smart people pause. The logic (such as it is) goes: the Democratic Party lost the election because it went ‘too woke’, and now it needs to roll back the wokeness, embrace ‘the centre’ (a set of attitudes only a sociopath could all anything but right wing) and win back power.
I’d laugh if I wasn’t being sick in my mouth.
Like the Bad Corbyn opinion, it sounds like it might be true, and, like Bad Corbyn, it requires ignoring the facts almost entirely.
The Democratic party did not campaign on wokeness. It refused to allow a single Palestinian or trans person to speak at the DNC, even if they promised to endorse Harris. Does that sound woke to you? Harris (whose entire career was built on support for institutions marginalised people tend to fear, like the police and carceral system) courted big business and right-wing voters, shifting the party even further right than it had been for most of the Biden regime’s time in office – in impressive feat even from someone who used to call herself ‘Top Cop’. Harris and the Democrat campaign machine distancing themselves from leftist or even progressive groups, instead cosying up to war criminals like the Dick Cheney. And then, in a shock to no politically aware people everywhere, they faced a rebellion from leftists and left-leaning Democrats who could not vote for someone who was part of an administration funding genocide.
This led many Democrats on social media to blame Palestinians and the Left for the Trump victory, a bizarrely stupid position to take considering where and by how many votes Harris lost. What was interesting was how they expressed the blame. Influencers who had been shilling for the Democrats (some of whom, it later turned out, had been paid) become quite vitriolic about it all. People who had claimed a degree of solidarity with Palestinians proudly posted videos of them shopping at boycotted businesses and encouraging others to do the same. Some repeated Maga talking points, like hoping Gaza was turned into a parking lot and suggesting they might buy property there.
There is a saying on the Left, that is you scratch a liberal (for these purposes someone who wants everything a bit nicer and freer but with no significant change to the economic or imperial orders), a fascist bleeds. I’m not sure that is fair, but it was certainly eye-opening how fast some people turned from ‘Trump is an existential threat’ to actual islamophobia and racism.
The fact is, the Democrats didn’t feel they needed the Left, because the Left (and people for who genocide was a red line) was, by their estimation, too small to help them win. It’s a shame, because it seems they could have done with every little bit of help. Ultimately, though, Harris and co failed to energise enough voters to pick them. There was none of the excitement about the campaign (bar some deeply cringe social media in lime green) that surrounded Obama’s, or even Bernie’s (in the primaries Obama scuppered for him to allow Clinton to run). They weren’t exciting because they were not promising anything new.
To blame their well-deserved defeat on being ‘too woke’ is like saying Liz Truss lost Downing Street for being too competent and likeable.
And yet people have lapped it up like dogs thirsty for validation of their centrist politics (I had a pup like that once – awful creature). That’s because the double-speak of the narrative is brilliant, having a powerful effect on brains stuck perpetually in neutral. It sounds plausible if you accept, uncritically, all the billionaire-owned media’s gnashing of teeth at any small positive change in society. ‘It’s all gone too far,’ they say. ‘Everything that’s different is woke and bad.’
But if we unsmooth our brains for just a moment, it’s clear that the opposite it true. The Democrats ran on a platform of ‘we’re not that guy’, offering only the status quo to a populace who is finding the status quo increasingly intolerable. Had the dems offered real change, perhaps enough of the people who have become disillusioned with politics in general might have bothered.
If life is getting harder and harder, and someone offers you significant change from the administrations that have overseen things getting worse, a lot of people are likely to choose that option.
Now, did many vote for Trump because they themselves are bigots? Yes. Racism and prejudice are the foundational sins of America (and misogyny permeates almost every society still) and repentance on any significant scale has never happened.
But there are enough decent people, and people who can be enlightened if we bother to communicate with them, to make up a majority in most societies, that could choose positive change, if inspired to. People voted for Obama in droves. Harris simply failed to offer a vision of an alternative, and the forces of evil on the Right effectively weaponised the fear of change, the fear of the Other and a bunch of venal prejudices usually reserved for the Right. They failed to consider that, if someone believes the lies of the Right, they may be more easily persuaded to vote for the very right-wing candidate, rather than the quite right-wing candidate. Particularly when the luke-warm option is also part of groups those prejudices (if not always all the people who sometimes hold them) loathe.
The Democrats have long been accused by socialists and communists of primarily fulfilling the function of keeping the masses from engaging in truly radical politics, throwing them the occasional bone while focusing on maintaining the status quo. They have been caricatured as hating the Left far more than they hate the Right and this election seemed to bear that out.
Depending on your view of humanity, your theology or philosophy, you may see this in hopeless terms or hopeful. I prefer the latter. I think people are not fundamentally selfish, hateful and fear-driven, even if they are easily manipulated into those ways of being. I think that huge numbers of voters and those who don’t normally vote could be energised by a genuinely positive, genuinely different option.
But if our media, our politicians and our churches keep trotting out stupid narratives, and if we keep believing them, then I don’t see a lot of hope for a credible opposition to the rise of the Right. At least within electoral politics.
So, um, yeah. Merry Christmas.
Another ‘stop believing stupid things, focusing on narratives about Trump, will feature in Issue 1 of S(h)ibboleth magazine. Order your copy now.
New podcast episodes
Cracking episodes of Beer Christianity came out this week. One about the rise of the Right, its use of Christian rhetoric and how we stop it, another remembering Tony Campolo in the week he died. They are both rather good. Go check them out wherever you get your podcasts.
Exciting announcement - S(h)ibboleth magazine
The people behind Beer Christianity have collaborated with a large group of thinkers, activists, writers and drag artists for the first issue of a new magazine for Left-leaning Christians, deconstructors, reconstructions and the Christ-curious. We hope it will be an inclusive and helpful alternative to much of the right-wing Christian media out there. It launches in December and you can find out more about it, as well as order your copy, subscribe to five issues, or support it financially, at shibbolethmag.com.
We really think you’re going to find it interesting. It’s a cracking first issue.
Anyway, that’s it. I hope you liked it. And I hope you are doing okay. It all looks so dark, particularly for trans folks, women and Palestinians. Keep all of them in your prayers and your actions, and be well, be safe. xoxoJonty